Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [45]
Jack complied. He closed his eyes and savored the cool shade.
“Look at all the little people at play.”
Jack opened his eyes and saw Mr. Drexler gesturing with his cane down the slope toward Quaker Lake. People sat or sunbathed on blankets by the water’s edge. With the arrival of an Indian summer, Mark Mulliner had brought his rental canoes back to the lake. People paddled them to and fro under the bridge.
“I guess they look little from here.”
“They don’t merely look little, they are little. In every sense.”
Jack glanced at him. “I’m not following.”
“There are two classes of people in this world: the Movers and the Moved, the High and the Low, the Wheat and the Chaff, the Select and the Hoi Polloi.”
“Hoi polloi?”
“It’s Greek for ‘the many.’ It refers to the masses. The low folk.”
Jack shrugged. “I guess it’s always that way—high and low. Some people are smarter than others or work harder than others, some people want it more, and other folks want it less or don’t want to spend the time and effort chasing it.”
Mr. Drexler’s eyebrows rose, almost framing his widow’s peak. “My dear boy, I am not talking about ants and grasshoppers, nor about success and endeavor. You can’t earn your way into the Mover class. The proverbial sweat and hard work and stick-to-itiveness will not move you up. Nor can you buy your way in. One must be born to it.”
“You mean, like royalty?”
“Royalty is more about prestige, and the perception of power rather than the actual wielding of it. True power is knowledge, and that is what separates the Movers from the Moved: knowledge.”
Jack nodded. “Yeah. ‘Knowledge is power.’ I’ve heard that before. But anyone who works at it can get knowledge, right?”
Mr. Drexler tsked. “Do not confuse knowledge with information. Certain knowledge can be trusted to only a few.”
Jack had no idea where this conversation had come from or where it was going, or why they were even having it. But it seemed important to Mr. Drexler. He was really into it.
“Why not just spread it around?”
“Because, as you said, knowledge is power, and if everyone has power, then no one has power.”
“You mean, no one would have power over anyone else.”
Mr. Drexler’s eyes lit as he pointed the silver head of his black cane at Jack. Was it really wrapped in rhinoceros hide?
“Exactly!”
“But isn’t that the best way?”
He snickered. “That’s what the Moved—the hoi polloi—and their naïve, egalitarian apologists would have you think, but that’s not the way the world works.”
“But isn’t knowledge simply truth? Shouldn’t everyone know the truth?”
“No-no-no,” he said with a vigorous shake of his head. “Absolutely not. Only the Movers can handle certain truths, only they are entitled to share them.”
“You’re talking about secrets, then. Secret truths.”
“Of course. Only a select few share them. It’s been that way throughout history.”
Jack gave him a sidelong look. “Like what’s under the Lodge?”
“You mean what was under the Lodge.” Mr. Drexler frowned. “It’s lost now, thanks to you.”
Jack bristled at that. “Wasn’t my fault that the lake—”
Mr. Drexler waved a hand. “Water under the bridge, so to speak. I was referring to secrets much larger in scope.”
Weezy’s pet theory leaped into his brain. “The Secret History of the World.”
“If you mean that certain truths have been kept secret and passed on throughout the history of the world, yes, that is so.”
“But when Weezy mentioned it you called it a … a…”
“A ‘wild imagining’? Yes, I did. Because that’s the way the Moved have been conditioned to see that theory, and that’s the way they must go on seeing it. Because the Moved cannot handle the truth. In fact, at the risk of sounding like I’m quoting purple prose, the truth would drive some of them stark raving mad. So in a sense it is for their own good that they remain in the dark.”
“But what is the truth?”
Mr. Drexler stared at him. “Do you really want to know?”
“Of course. Doesn’t everyone?”
He shook his head. “No. Not really. Your father, for one. He didn’t care to learn.”
The words