Infernus (14 page)

[This chapter, originally the
first
chapter of the book, has been placed at the end for the purpose of informing others of the origins of this terrible manuscript. It has little value beyond that. Many have chosen to scan it or skip it entirely. I will leave that up to
you
.]

"THE INTERVIEW"

Anthony Begels was a celebrated anthropologist. She wore her long brown hair in a ponytail and always sported safari clothing ordered from catalogs. She now sat stiffly in a chair, staring across the publisher's polished mahogany desk. It would have been impossible for her to ignore a giant reproduction of a woodcut that stretched the entire length of the wall behind him - "Moebius Strip II." Much red, black, and gray-green. Red ants crawling over a grid twisted into a figure eight, a google, or sign of infinity. Its inside and outside were equally twisting in and out of itself. Yet the ants seemed to be unaware of this; pacing, pacing, always tracking onward towards infinity...towards nothing. To her, it looked stereoscopic.

He caught her stare. "Gorgeous, isn't it? Cost me a pretty penny, I'll tell you. About a million and a half."

"
Dollars?
I think you got ripped off," she said, frowning, and thought,
A million and a half for a print?

He snickered. "Watch this," he added, sounding pleased with himself.

His hands hovered over the desk for a moment, and then lightly placed an index finger on a specific spot in the middle of the desktop. He then steepled his fingers and stared into her face for a reaction. She tried to look over the surface of the desk, but she could not figure out what he was doing. Then something happened that made the whole room shift slightly. She felt her equilibrium momentarily shudder.

The grid on which the ants walked began slowly turning, in high definition, and the ants crept over it, inside and out, tirelessly. When it turned a certain way, a tiny spark of artificial sun beamed off an edge, giving it a definite metallic look, gleaming gray-green. The entire wall was a projected image, although no one ever guessed that at first glance. All were fooled, equally. And, she silently observed, it was not her imagination that it appeared stereoscopic; there was great depth in the graphic. She gasped and thought Escher would have been pleased with the wonders of modern technology as his print had, quite literally, sprang to life.

"Love Escher," was her simple reply.

"I stare at it all the time. The entire wall is covered with a
very
expensive lenticular lens, so no 3-D glasses are needed. It couldn't really exist, of course, because one of these realities simply isn't there. Not real. Not 'true', is a better way of saying it. Maybe none of them are real." He recollected the remarks he was going to make the moment she entered his office, and decided to start there. "Your appearance here, Dr. Begels, is surprising." He laughed nervously. "I'm sure you've heard
that
a thousand times." When he saw that she was not looking at him, but had continued to stare at the Escher display, he touched the surface of the desk again, and the walking ants and the revolving grid stopped, but did not seem flat like ordinary paintings. "Too distracting, you see." And tittered, proud of this modern marvel.

She smiled/winced. "And the other one."

"The 'other one?'"

"'Your father must have wanted a boy.' And before you ask, yes, it is my real name." She brushed a long strand of hair back that had escaped her ponytail. And sighed.

"Ah," he said, sizing her up. He tapped his fingers on the boxed manuscript that was positioned neatly on the right corner of his desk. Leaning forward, he asked suddenly, "Dr. Begels, do you understand the importance of this find, this manuscript? I really don't know what to make of it, actually. Of course, it's too controversial
not
to publish. You say you have submitted it to no one else?"

"That's right," she said, with a sly grin. "We agreed on a set price - rather steep - and that is all I ask. Well, actually, I shall expect my share of the royalties, should this hideous little tome become popular. I have my doubts, though. I have lived with this hellish book for more years than I care to think. I have fulfilled my part of the bargain. The rest is up to you."

"What do you mean?"

"I have promised a certain group - who I will tell you more about later - to do my best to get it published. I have done my part. They believe that it is not important that the book becomes popular, but that it does exist as a serious reference for posterity, or something like that. They said something about the manuscript being an important key of some sort. I do not understand that - the thing about a 'key' - even though I translated the book. And I promise you, I won't pursue trying to understand it either." She brushed a trembling hand beneath an eye, and then put it stiffly in her lap with the other one.

"I see. In your" (slight, painful grimace, she noticed), "quite lengthy cover letter, Dr. Begels, you say that you personally unearthed seventeen bound leather volumes in, um, let me check some notes I made...in 1989. Is that right?"

"That's right. Before we are permitted to dig in an area, we must show just cause. I went before my team and conducted a few preliminary digs." She blinked several times. He nodded, believing it was a nervous twitch, or better yet, a mild form of Tourettes syndrome.

"Is that, uh, legal?"

"No, not at all, but I did it anyway. I had a funny feeling about this one. Anyway, when I found a few volumes, I begged my father to purchase the land so that the find could be mine alone."

"Clever," the publisher said. "I have a question about the person who received this uh, unedited manuscript in the form of, uh, apparently automatic writing, isn't that right?"

"Unfortunately, I cannot tell you what would amount to concrete evidence. Everything I'm about to share with you, in one degree or another, is educated conjecture. Reliable guess-timates, you see? Whether it was male or female, there was simply no historical record. There was none with any of the bound manuscripts. I can only surmise - without data - that the person was driven quite insane. To have this hideous stuff just appear in your head...horrible! The compulsion to write it all down would have been maddening, I'm sure. The reason I think it was written in pretty much an automatic style, as do the others in the group, is because much of it is written in a rushed hand. The same rushed hand, the words jammed together - unbroken. It gave me the impression that great parts of it were written at once. Not thought over, not plotted, like a novel, but rushed. We thought it might hint at the fact that it was written as if
dictated
.

"And let me assure you, sir," she said grinning wryly, "there are no more volumes, so please don't think that if the book becomes popular, that a few million dollars might make me mysteriously 'find' some more that, whoops! we just overlooked the first time, thus creating sequels. The royalty checks, if there are any, can be sent to my attorney, who will forward them to me.

"But I will tell you what I think happened, if you like." Her face lost its disinterested stare, he noted. This was obviously born of conviction.

"Uh, yes, I wish you would."

"I think it was forced upon some young girl just blossoming into womanhood, or -"

"Or," he interjected, "someone of a strict religious order."

"You've thought of that one, too," she said, smiling, then hurriedly chewed on a bit of fingernail.

"How cruel that - I'm just guessing on the method of transcribing, mind you - every time you sat down to write your lessons or perhaps to painstakingly write out a page of illuminated manuscript...and this came out!"

"But, in the unedited manuscript, which is impossible to imagine in print," she added, "if this were the case, she either buried the manuscript herself, or kept it hidden from everyone. A woman writing this kind of literature up until modern times was considered unstable, at best, if they wrote this kind of thing. Worst-case scenario, she could have been burned at the stake or tortured, depending on what era she actually lived. If it were kept by a dark order, her identity could possibly have been kept secret."

"You keep saying 'she.' Is that intentional?"

"I'll get to that in a minute. Now, all of this is pure conjecture. It's frustrating, because the mind naturally plows this ground, seeking answers. The person who received all of this, who was mentioned in the manuscript only briefly, is never referred to by name or sex."

"In fact," he said, excited, "the narrator seems genuinely surprised that there is a connection between himself and a stenographer at all. Isn't that the impression you get?"

"Most definitely. To think that someone had to live with this for weeks...months. What if it came sporadically over the course of ten or twenty years?" She looked out the window to sigh and collect her thoughts for the next onslaught. "Imagine, if you will, but I suppose we will never possess what any of us could consider hard evidence. In fact, since the timeframe in which the manuscripts were carbon-dated; when they might have been written, and which years they speak of, which was all 'future' to the poor wretch - since all of that is impossible anyway, it's unknowable with any degree of certainty, when it was written.

"The last hope I had, was to take the most innocent sample I could find from the first page to a handwriting analyst. All of the Koine-like Greek was printed, unfortunately for us, so I could not say clearly whether it was masculine or feminine.

"Given what we do know of handwriting is based on relatively modern samples. We can't be sure they apply to someone living, say, a few thousand years ago."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Given it's a safe bet to assume someone living a thousand years ago would be exposed to none of the modern conveniences we take for granted, male or female, their thought processes would be nothing like ours. They would be, for all intents and purposes, remarkably alien to us." With some satisfaction she folded her hands in her lap, and smiled. Then brushed her pant leg. Again. For that invisible
something
she seemed to never locate.

"And?" he asked, suspecting this was only the beginning.

"Having said all that," she said triumphantly, "I'll still give you the impression we have. I consulted with three handwriting experts, two women and one man. Cities apart, and across a few months. Given all I've told you, they all three were positive that the handwriting, such as it was - and they knew nothing of the timeframes that I have discussed - was done by a woman. I only felt, having lived inside the manuscript for a few years, translating it, that it had a woman's touch.

"One of the women and the man expressly said they felt sure 'her' life had been subjected to strict inner and outer discipline, possibly by a religious order."

"Interesting," he said. "The story is like a virus. And like the story, the sickness always spreads to the most negative possible outbreak. Think of a poor young nun, in another century, and every time she sits down, she envisions
this
."

"Maybe it
is
interesting," she said. Now that he knew a great deal about the book, she felt she could convey to him the most open, and weariest of looks, without being misunderstood. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a small bottle that rattled when she opened the cap, and dropped a pill into her palm. She swallowed it without asking for water. "This 'book' has made me so vulnerable, that I'm sure if we wouldn't just do better without it ever having been found in the first place."

"If," he emphasized meaningfully, "you
did
discover it, and it wasn't the other way around, I mean, think about it; haven't you been
more
instrumental than all the others. Well, except for the person who wrote it in the first place, I mean. You and I are part of the final stage. We are seemingly working very hard to get it published. How do you know that we are not as much a part of this integral puzzle as all the rest?" He stopped, realizing how far he'd gone. "I'm sorry. I know how this probably sounds."

"Well, I doubt it, but I know what you mean. The dark brotherhood disagrees with me. They feel that it was destiny, as you say. They have made sure that I cannot lose. If no publisher releases it, they say they would make me filthy rich forever - out of gratitude, you understand."

"Hunh?"

"In their minds it was meant for me to find it, to translate it, to be contacted by them, to want to give them the book. You see, to them, this filth is their first truly holy book. I was told that my name will go down in their history books forever. Anyone harming me will feel the full intercontinental wrath of their assassins. Funny, isn't it?"

"Fascinating!" he said, his eyes aglow.

"But what can protect me against my destiny? I've found myself in the book, you know. Don't ask, I won't tell you where. I pray you do not find yourself inside the book. Do yourself a favor, and don't read it any more than you have. It's a grave responsibility. That part is my private part of Hell. I told the dark brotherhood about my dreams." She laughed a little kind of insane laugh. "They rejoiced. They said it guarantees my place in eternity. I actually
hate
them for saying that."

There was silence between them for a minute, while demons walked over their graves.

"And you say, in your cover letter, that it took how long?"

A brief ache passed through her blond brow. "I've spent the last five years carefully, painfully translating the copious text."

"But you said the text was Koine Greek. The ease of this -"

"It was very
like
Greek. I found that the Greek was almost like an evolved language that would have been used hundreds of years from now, maybe. Yet, still Koine, or common Greek."

"Is there any proof of the existence of the two physicians mentioned in the manuscript?"

"I have discovered," she began saying, as she looked through his tall windows, "much about them. They both attended the same medical schools. The short dark one did seem, according to those who went to school with him, to have an unreasonable sense of competition with the other. And, according to those who knew one or the other, or both, the tall muscular man was completely unaware of the other's jealousy. That may have been part of the problem, as you have read. I tracked their last known location to the same hospital in Brussels."