Watson, Ian - Novel 10 by Deathhunter (v1.1) Read Free Book Online Page A

well. It attracts Death to the dying.
Death is the soul-vulture, Jim.”
                 Jim
noted the use of his first name, but he was too stunned by Weinberger’s fantasy
to feel really thankful.
                 “You’re
saying that there’s a parasite — a creature that feeds on our deaths? A thing that eats souls? And because we prepare everyone for
death in the Houses, no one is getting through its net?”
                 “The
victims of sudden accidents get through. The victims of
murder. Maybe I ought to be saying the ‘beneficiaries’ of murder and
accident.”
                 “That’s
a pretty wild assertion.”
                 “Oh,
I can prove it. Or rather, I was getting to the point of proving it. Then the
crab got me by the claw. Now there isn’t time.”
                 “Have
you told this to anyone else?”
                 Weinberger
laughed dismissively.
                 “People
are too banal. They’re too ordinary, to accept that their world’s really
upside-down and inside-out.”
                 “I’m
glad you feel you can confide in me.”
                 “Do
you know why I quit the House? To pursue my own research! They would never have
let me do it here. It’s the same with you. Where have your afterlife studies got to? And you aren’t even looking in the right ball
court.”
                 “Do
you suppose that Death — Mister D — is somehow censoring research into his
nature?”
                 “Not
‘his’ nature. I’m not that dumb. I don’t know the answer to that question —
except maybe. All I managed to do in this House was collect enough
corpse-sweat, secretly, to work with. Really small amounts, but I finally
managed to synthesize some. Again, not very much. I
have to keep it shielded, of course.”
                “Of course.”
                 “In a vacuum flask dispenser. A small electromagnetic cage
might be even safer. I’m not sure. This kind of research is like groping in the
dark ...”
                 The
interview had gone extremely well so far. Superficially, that is. On any other
level it had gone preposterously, and Jim hardly knew what to do. He was a
death-guide, not an abnormal psychiatrist — though he knew enough psychiatry to
realize that Weinberger was definitely paranoid. And no House book covered such
a case, for drugs, not guidance, helped the dying of the incurably insane.
                 Paranoid, yes. Weinberger had set up a self-consistent
system based on the most outrageous of premises — a blend of persecution,
private knowledge of The Truth (which nobody else knew), and a supposedly
practical plan for proving the equivalent of day being night, or light being
darkness. All because he was dying.
                 No,
that couldn’t be the reason. Weinberger had started on this mad course a whole
decade ago . . .
                 Mad.
And Jim had to guide him, notwithstanding, because the man in his madness had
murdered Norman Harper and now he was too important simply to be drugged
towards a peaceful death.
                 Somehow
Weinberger’s duties in the House of Death a decade ago must have unbalanced his
mind. His mind had flipped into a new and unique configuration of beliefs
utterly at odds with everything taught and known in this country.
                 “How
did you first discover all this? What set you on the trail?”
                “I sat with a lot of my clients right through euthanasia. As they began to fade out
— as the EEG began to pick up the pre-death ‘thanatos’ rhythm — well, I began
to see something in the room. Only, I couldn’t ever quite see it. I couldn’t
get a direct look. It was as though it was out of the corner of my eye.”
                 ‘Out
of the corner of your mind’s eye,’