The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [108]
There were now nearly two inches of crack between the fabric, and the speaker's back came into view.
Or, partly into view. He was a stocky man with a few grey threads in his dark hair, wearing an expensively cut black suit. When he turned to the right a little, I caught a glimpse of English skin darkened by the tropics. His voice was low and compelling, a perfect blend of friendship and authority. He was from the north originally, a touch of Scots buried under English and overlaid by a stronger version of the clipped tones I had heard in Damian's voice.
Who are you? I asked. And what are you doing in Damian Adler's life?
I had no doubt at all: This was The Master.
He greeted his followers, thanked them for their work during the past weeks, and apologised for his recent absences. He singled out “our sister Millicent,” for her especial efforts, and I stretched around until she came into view, pink and pleased. He then spoke about Yolanda, another “sister,” expressing his grief over her death and his hope that the Circle, and the Children as a whole, would only be strengthened by having known her.
He sounded insincere to me, but then, I was prepared for insincerity: Religion has proved the refuge of so many scoundrels, one begins by doubting, and waits to be proven wrong.
The Master spoke for ten or twelve minutes, most of it touching lightly on phrases and images from Testimony, causing his admirers to nod their heads in appreciation.
Nothing that he said could be in the least construed as information. All his ideas, and many of his phrases, reflected the book that I could see lying open on an altar between two candelabra set with black candles. It might as well have been Millicent Dunworthy reading aloud, but for his compelling presence.
Even that, I found hard to understand. Perhaps I was simply outside his gaze and immune to the timbre of his voice, but the people in the room were not. They hung on every syllable, their pupils dark as if aroused, smiling obediently at any faint touch of cleverness or humour in his words. From my perch, I watched his effects on five congregants: Millicent Dunworthy was one, wearing a dull green linen dress that did nothing for her complexion, and with her two women in their fifties, one thin, one stout, both in flowered frocks—the stout one, I realised, was the woman whom I'd imagined as a nurse, who with her brother had set up the altar on Saturday night. Slightly apart from them stood the sharp-nosed woman I had spoken with, wearing a skirt and tailored blouse, her hair waved in a fashion that had been popular ten years earlier. Beside her was a stout, red-faced man in his fifties wearing a suit and waistcoat far too warm for the room. Millicent, the nurse, and the sharp-nosed woman all wore the gold rings on their right hands.
I wondered if any of them also had tattoos on their stomachs.
Then I saw a sixth listener, in the dim back corner, and wondered that I had taken so long to pick him out—this man did not belong in the same room as the others. He was big all over in a grey summer-weight suit that was slightly loose in the body but snug over his wide shoulders and heavy thighs; his face would have looked more at home above a convict's checks.
He may have imagined that his thoughts were invisible, hidden from the believers behind a straight face. But one did not need a bright light to know that there would be scorn in his eyes and a curl to his lips as he surveyed the backs of these people worshipping the man in the black suit. His very stance, leaning against the glass-fronted bookshelves, shouted his superiority and contempt. He looked like the bodyguard of a mobster; he looked the very definition of shady character.
Marcus Gunderson?
My leg muscles were quivering, and now the meeting began to break up—or no, merely changing. The group deposited their empty glasses on nearby tables, then moved towards