The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [114]
"Who's to say? It's only our perceptions anyway...."
"Rubbish; it's drug-induced, not a natural state. Surely you haven't gone that far adrift from common sense."
"Bless you, Doyle; consistent to the end. Let's have that feet-planted-firmly-in-the-garden-of-man's-innate-goodness nonsense from you now; I could always depend on you for that____"
Doyle could no longer restrain himself. "Why would you speak to me that way? What harm did I ever do you? You've done it all to yourself."
Sparks turned away: Was that the hint of a smirk or a grimace?
"So you added opium addiction to your curriculum vitae; bravo Jack, I was afraid you might leave it out entirely. What's next on your agenda, rape? Pedophilia? Or did you cover both of those with that Brazilian girl? Heartless murder's already on the list; shame to let a little free will go to waste. Since that's your modus operandi now, why deny yourself anything? It's all defensible the way you've defined the game."
"What is it that offends you: My crimes or their so-called immorality?"
"As if they could be so easily divided. I'll tell you: It's the casual contempt with which you dismiss the efforts of what you call ordinary people to live a life that adheres to a semblance of decency; that you 'discovered' the way human beings live, as if you were observing a colony of ants. What gives you the right to pass such judgments? Where's the virtue that elevates you to such a godlike plane? You think your suffering entitles you to an exclusion from justice? Let me tell you: Everyone suffers and it relieves no one of his responsibility to obey the law. Do you honestly believe you're above the reach of consequences for what you've done?"
"Far from it..."
"I'll tell you to your face, you sound like a lunatic, Jack Sparks, and a menace to any person you might meet, myself included. The truth is you've fallen onto the same road that led your brother to that disastrous ruin of a human life. Or has that been your ambition all along?"
Jack couldn't face him now. "No ..."
"I dispute you. I've built a life for myself these last ten years. I did it with determination and hard work and, yes, through obedience to standards of social order. Without that "contract binding us, every man dedicated to his own pleasure according to an unfixed code of moral conduct, all you have left is unmitigated savagery and a civilization no better off, no more advanced, than the sort lived by jackals. I thought you were a good man once; no, a great man. I wanted nothing more in my life than to be like you. I am shocked. Shocked and I am bitterly disappointed. If you're the result of a life lived to the contrary, then I say thank God for society and thank God for the laws of man. You've left them behind; you're beyond the pale."
Jack turned slowly back in his seat and looked at Doyle: his pale face stark white, the scar lining his jaw livid, radiating tension and despair. His mouth hung open; his eyes sank deep into their sockets.
"I never claimed there were no consequences," he whispered harshly. "Consequences are all I've been describing."
"Then let's be clear about it: Are you telling me all this to ask for my sympathy or approval?"
"No..."
"Because if what you want is absolution, I can tell you I haven't the authority or inclination to give it."
"No, no. I thought... all I had hoped for ... something closer to"—Jack's chest heaved with sudden uncontainable emotion; his breath quivered violently, face contorted in pain-—"to understanding. You, of all people. I thought you might... understand."
Jack inhaled sharply, then he sobbed. "I don't know... who I am. I don't know how ... I don't know how to live...."
Doyle watched in shock as the man before him came disastrously undone. His crippled hands clenched spasmodically at the fabric of the seats, tears splashed from his scarlet eyes; he sat upright for a long moment, rigid as a post, then sagged over as if his spine had collapsed.
"I'm so ... ashamed ... so deeply ashamed, the things