Kaleos

Joshua decided to rent a car and drive to Rome, which would give him time to think, go over in his mind the infor­mation he’d gathered up to this point.

The road went through some of the most beautiful topography in the world, but he barely noticed it.  His route took him from the heavily industrialized part of Italy into a more traditional and peaceful agrarian countryside.  Lush vegetation abounded.  Majestic forests nestled against mountains of un­surpassed beauty, which would have reminded him of his home had he not been so preoccupied.  He passed quaint little towns, vineyards, farms, visitor centers, but at the end of the six hours it took him to reach Rome, he would remember none of it. Sights which had drawn and impressed tourists for ages had done little more for him than provide a background for the jumble of thoughts he was attempting to form into a cohesive unit.

The overabundance of disparate details he had discovered since falling into this Chinese fire-drill were all swimming around in his head, careening about in crazy loop-the-loops, like bumper cars in some hellish amusement park, where all the attendants had blank dead holes for eyes, and offered wild rides which resulted not in exhiliration, but something much worse.

He felt more and more like he was being manipulated.  This was a palpable thing, easily imagined.  He could almost see strings attached to his body, and strangely, somehow also to his mind.  But the worst part was that he strongly suspected the hands which held those strings belonged to someone who was happily insane, howling with demented laughter, immensely enjoy­ing this lunatic Punch and Judy show, with no solicitude what­soever toward its characters.

Joshua might have already quit this enterprize had it not been so damned interesting.  No, make that compelling.  The im­probability factor, the impossible sights he had seen, unbelievable concepts to which he would have given no consideration at all up until just a few months ago, were kicking his interest into high gear, despite the all too obvious negative aspects of the case.  All the diverse and eerie factors in this thing he’d become involved with; even though he’d been half scared out of his wits, it seemed that a driving need was growing simultan­eously, a deep desire to see it through to whatever end it might bring him.

Lashe had drawn him into it with a promise of unimaginable rewards.  But was that the only reason he decided so quickly to take the case? Again, he thought of his desire to jump in with both feet, a lust to be involved, to find answers.

Then he considered Andromeda.  She had come into his life long before Lashe, but by her own admission, because of him.

And what to make of Sophia Scarlotti, another very major player in this piece, and if he trusted his gut, perhaps one of the most important parts of the puzzle.  Added to all this, the girl’s strange message brought the weirdness, large as it had been, up yet another notch or two.

Then he remembered the small, almost unconscious spark of insight he’d had during the transatlantic call to Doctor Pavese.  The old man had spoken with an almost worshipful awe as he talked about the girl.

This brought Joshua’s thoughts round again to Sophia Scarlotti’s supposed very great age, and by association, that of Lashe and Andromeda.

Here was a thought: what if the girl was even older than Pavese had said? The asylum had no birth records for her. Could she be more than a hundred years old? How about two hundred, five hundred, even? Well, he mused, using Lashe’s phrase, why not go all the way from insanity to outright lunacy.  As long as we’re speculating, let’s speculate wildly. Could she be a thousand years old, two thousand? Ridiculous, yes, but since he had begun to accept the improbable, why not consider the impossible also?

Okay.  For the sake of argument, just so we have someplace to put our feet, let’s say the girl is two thousand years old, and consider her a real-life counterpart to Ayesha, the fictional immortal of H. Ryder Haggard’s “She.” And next, considering the genetic trait she shares with Lashe and Andromeda, namely the abnormality of their eyes, perhaps these worthies might also be older than they look.  Was there a possibility that they too could be of the same superannuated age?  Lashe had made certain references to people and events in history which had been, for some reason, disturbing.  In retrospect, Joshua realized that for quite some time now, he might’ve been unconsciously suspecting that Lashe was much older than he seemed.

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