Servant of the Bones

"The Bones," I said. "The Bones," I said into the wind.

The lights of the city of New York spread out in all directions, more magnificent and tremendous than the lights of Rome at its greatest, or of Calcutta now full of millions upon millions of lamps. I could hear Gregory's voice.

And then before me in the dark, there appeared the Bones, tiny, distant, certain, and golden.

21

It was a large room, not in the apartments of Gregory and Rachel, but higher in the building. I realized for the first time that the building itself was the Temple of the Mind of God and it throbbed throughout its many floors with people.

The room itself glistened with steel and glass and tables made of manipulated stone, hard as anything mined from the earth; machines lined the walls, and cameras which moved as the inhabitants of the room moved.

There were plenty of inhabitants.

I entered invisible, easily passing through all barriers, as if I were made of tiny fish and the walls were nets. I wandered among the tables, eyeing the video screens in rows on the walls, the computers set into niches, and other devices which I couldn't understand.

Silently, broadcasts from all over the planet came in on these video screens. Some of them showed the news that all people can receive. Others were obviously monitoring particular and private places. The spy monitors were the most dull, greenish, murky.

The Bones lay in the very middle of the room on a sterile table. The casket, empty, lay to the side. The men surrounding Gregory were obviously physicians. They had the poise and attitude of learned men.

Gregory was in mid-conversation, describing the Bones as a relic, which must be analyzed in every conceivable way without bringing harm to it, X-rayed, carbon-dated, minute scrapings made for contents. Attempt at aspiration if anything inside were liquid.

Gregory was shaken, disheveled. He wore the same clothes as before but he was not the same man.

"You're not listening to me!" he said fiercely to these his loyal court physicians. "Treat this as priceless," he said. "I want no mishaps. I want no leaks to the press. I want no leaks within this building. Do this work yourself. Keep the jabber-mouth technicians away from it."

The men took all this in stride. Not fawning like lackeys, they wrote notes on their clipboards, exchanged glances of agreement with one another, and nodded with dignity to the man who paid the bills.

I knew their kind. Very modern scientists who are just learned enough to be certain that nothing spiritual exists, that the world is completely material, self-created, or the result of some "big bang," and that ghosts, spells, God, and the Devil were useless concepts.

They weren't by nature kind. In fact, there was a peculiar hardness which they all shared, not a sinister quality so much as a moral deformity. It was in their demeanor, but I caught it merely from scanning them carefully. All these men had committed crimes of some kind, with medicine, and their status was entirely dependent upon the protection of Gregory Belkin.

In other words, this was a gang of fugitive doctors hand-picked to do special jobs for Gregory.

It struck me as marvelously good luck that he had committed the Bones to this pack of fools, rather than to magicians. But then where would he find a magician?

What a different scene this might have been if he had called upon the Hasidim-zaddiks who didn't hate or fear him-or on Buddhists or Zoroastrians. Even a Hindu doctor of Western mind might have been a danger.

I took an upright stance, still invisible, then drew close, until I was touching Gregory's shoulder. I smelled his perfumed skin, his fine silken face. His voice was crisp and angry, concealing all his anxiety as if it were a cloud that he could collect and swallow and let out only in a perfect narrow stream of fluid speech.

The Bones. I felt nothing as I saw them. Do some good mischief here, get the scarf and get back to Rachel. Obviously the moving of the Bones had no effect on me; neither did the prying eyes of these doctors.

Am I finished with you now? I spoke to the Bones, but the Bones gave no answer.

They were not in order. They were a haphazardly gathered skeleton, tumbled, their gold brilliant under the electric lights. Flecks of cloth clung to them, like bits of leaves or dirt. Ashes clung to them, but they seemed as solid as ever, as enduring. For all time.

Was my soul, my tzelem, locked within them?

Do I need you anymore? Can you hurt me. Master?

Gregory knew I was there! He turned from right to left, but he couldn't see me. The others-and there were six-noted his agitation, questioned him.

One man touched the casket.

"Don't do it!" said Gregory. He was wonderfully afraid. I loved this too much!

There is always an element of pride in tormenting the solid and the living, but really, it was so easy, I had to restrain myself.

To test him and to test myself-that was my mission here, and I must not play games.

"We'll handle them with extreme care, Gregory," said a young doctor amongst them. "But we're going to have to take some substantial scrapings; we've been through that. In order to get carbon dating and DNA, we may have to take-"

"And you want full DNA, don't you," asked another, eager for the eye and the favor of the leader. "You want everything we can come up with about this skeleton-gender, age, cause of death, anything that might be locked inside there-"

"-You're going to be amazed what we can find out."

"-the Mummy project in Manchester, you saw all that?"

Gregory gave them nods and stiff affirmations in silence because he knew I was there. I was invisible still, but now formed in all my parts and wearing my garments of choice, fluid enough to pass through him if I wanted to, which would have sickened him and hurt him and made him fall.

I touched Gregory's cheek. He felt it, and he was petrified. I pushed my fingers into his hair. He drew in his breath.

On and on came the science babble-

"Size of the skull, a male, and the pelvis, probably, you realize . . ."

"Be careful with them!" Gregory burst out suddenly. The scientists were silenced. "I mean, treat them like a relic, you hear me?"

"Yes, sir, we understand, sir."

"Look, the scientists who do this work on Egyptian and-"

"Don't tell me how. Just tell me what! Keep it secret. We don't have many days left, gentlemen."

What could this mean?

"I don't like stopping work for this, so do it at once."

"Everything's going splendidly," said an older doctor. "Don't worry about time. A day or two won't matter."

"I suppose you're right," Gregory said, crestfallen. "But something can still go wrong, very wrong."