Brother Odd by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page B

occasionally blown a monastery to bits. I am pretty sure, however, they never did it intentionally.
        I could not imagine Brother John, philanthropist and cookie-maker, in a weirdly lighted laboratory, cackling a mad-scientist cackle and scheming to destroy the world. Although brilliant, he was human, so I could easily see him looking up in alarm from an experiment and saying Whoops, just before unintentionally reducing the abbey to a puddle of nano-goo.
        "Something," he finally said. Sir?
        He raised his head to look at me directly again. "Yes, perhaps something."
        "Something, sir?"
        "Yes. You asked whether there was a possibility that my work here might blow up or something. I can't see a way it could blow up. I mean, not the work itself."
        "Oh. But something else could happen."
        "Maybe yes, probably no. Something."
        "But maybe yes. Like what?"
        "Whatever."
        "What whatever?" I asked.
        "Whatever can be imagined."
        "Sir?"
        "Have another cookie."
        "Sir, anything can be imagined."
        "Yes. That's right. Imagination knows no limits."
        "So anything might go wrong?"
        "Might isn't will. Any terrible, disastrous thing might happen, but probably nothing will."
        "Probably?"
        "Probability is an important factor, Odd Thomas. A blood vessel might burst in your brain, killing you an instant from now."
        At once I regretted not having taken a second cookie.
        He smiled. He looked at his watch. He looked at me. He shrugged. "See? The probability was low."
        "The anything that might happen," I said, "supposing that it did happen, could it result in a lot of people dying horribly?"
        "Horribly?"
        "Yes, sir. Horribly."
        "That's a subjective judgment. Horrible to one person might not be the same as horrible to another."
        "Shattering bones, bursting hearts, exploding heads, burning flesh, blood, pain, screaming-that kind of horrible."
        "Maybe yes, probably no."
        "This again."
        "More likely, they would just cease to exist."
        "That's death."
        "No, it's different. Death leaves a corpse."
        I had been reaching for a cookie. I pulled my hand back without taking one from the plate.
        "Sir, you're scaring me."
        A settled blue heron astonishes when it reveals its true height by unfolding its long sticklike legs; likewise, Brother John proved even taller than I remembered when he rose from his chair. "I've been badly scared myself, badly, for quite a few years now. You learn to live with it."
        Getting to my feet, I said, "Brother John… whatever this work is you do here, are you sure you should be doing it?"
        "My intellect is God-given. I've a sacred obligation to use it."
        His words resonated with me. When one of the lingering dead has been murdered and comes to me for justice, I always feel obliged to help the poor soul.
        The difference is that I rely both on reason and on something that you might call a sixth sense, while in his research Brother John is strictly using his intellect.
        A sixth sense is a miraculous thing, which in itself suggests a supernatural order. The human intellect, however, for all its power and triumphs, is largely formed by this world and is therefore corruptible.
        This monk's hands, like his intellect, were also God-given, but he could choose to use them to strangle babies.
        I did not need to remind him of this. I only said, "I had a terrible dream. I'm worried about the children at the school."
        Unlike Sister Angela, he did not instantly recognize that my dream was a lie. He said, "Have your dreams come true in the past?"
        "No, sir. But this was very… real."
        He pulled his hood over his head. "Try to dream of something pleasant, Odd Thomas."
        "I can't control my dreams,