Chapter 57
AS THE FANT?ME MADE its way southward through the Delta, Dorion Magnus stood in the pilothouse—perched upon the highest deck of the vessel, like the top of a wedding cake—and watched the low-lying shores of the Mississippi slide by.
They had just passed Venice to the starboard; beyond that small town, the Delta became a wilderness of twisting bayous, ponds, bays, islands, and marshland, where even a boat as large and conspicuous as the Fant?me could effectively disappear.
The river was muddy and brown, the surface smooth, not a breath of wind.
The Fant?me was making good headway: eight knots, assisted by two knots of current.
As the boat moved southward, the trees disappeared, and all that could be seen were dark channels winding among endless islands of cordgrass, cane, and bulltongue, with patches of black mangrove.
It was a sultry, dead afternoon, the humid air smelling of salt and mud, the sun sinking into a bloody swirl of clouds over the Gulf.
A few fishermen in johnboats plied the channel, becoming fewer as they continued southward.
The shrimpers, who usually left in the early morning, had returned with their catch hours ago, and the main channel was mostly deserted.
It was chilly in the air-conditioned pilothouse, all the windows shut against the mosquitoes and muggy evening air.
Magnus glanced at his captain: a stout, grizzled old Louisianan with pale-blue eyes and a perpetual squint.
His name was LaGrange, and he was a man of few words and unquestioning loyalty, manning the helm as skillfully as if he’d been born with it in his hands.
On his other side stood Magnus’s right-hand man, Mako John, big, broad, and solid with a heavy face, mashed nose, and thick lips, the crude visage concealing a clever and nimble brain.
John oversaw the small group of loyal men who protected him—and kept his secrets.
Magnus kept an eye out on the port side, and soon he saw what he anticipated: an opening in the main channel called Cubits Gap.
The Fant?me slowed, the paddle wheel churning as the triple rudders began turning the boat’s heading from the main waterway.
Cubits Gap led into a maze of the deeper bayous and ponds among islands, continuing for many miles before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico.
It was a place he knew well, having spent many an afternoon exploring these channels as a youth—before the big change.
Once in the gap, the current fell off and LaGrange slowed the engine as the channel narrowed.
Magnus could see the low outline of Savage Island: first looming to port, then passing by as they steered into Brant Bayou.
He remained motionless as the boat reached Octave Pass and slowed to bare headway, the paddle wheel turning more slowly.
They were now entering the most remote and beautiful stretch of the Delta, the air wheeling with gulls and terns, black skimmers flying low over the water, the shorelines dotted with snowy egrets and wading herons.
He felt relief at ridding himself of New Orleans: leaving behind its chattering masses and banalities, exchanging them for the watery freedom of the Delta’s wilderness.
The PSI powers Magnus had acquired ten years ago allowed him to peer, albeit as if through a dark mirror, into the minds of others.
His powers did not extend far in terms of space—no more than fifteen or twenty feet—and they could not penetrate walls or other barriers.
Inside that limit, however, as others passed in and out of his psionic range, he unwillingly picked up, like stray broadcasts, the half-baked inanities rattling around in the hollow vessels of their minds.
It was hard to tune out, not unlike a home in which the television is left on to blare incessantly in the background.
After the novelty and first flush of acquiring this unexpected sixth sense had receded, he began noticing, with dismay, the appalling banality, the vacuity, the swamplands of thought he’d discovered inside the minds of most people he encountered.
Before his awakening, he had had no idea how tedious the average human being was; how almost no one expressed a glimmer of intelligence or original thinking.
In this one way, his gift had become a golden curse: giving him enormous powers to manipulate others while torturing him with their farcicalities at the same time.
And there was another curse beyond even that one: an almost physical blow he had not been able to bear without reacting—by dealing fate an equal, but opposite, blow of his own…
He’d made his point—he could console himself knowing his response to the mocking, hateful universe had not been in vain.
And the consolation itself would soon be aboard, almost directly below where he now stood.
But for the time being, there were other matters to consider—and this pilothouse was the perfect place.
Although he could not go among the throngs and still remain deaf to their contemptible thoughts and coarse notions, here in the Delta he could escape.
And yet…
From time to time, he’d encountered a startlingly original mind; a person whose thoughts took unexpected paths in the gardens of ratiocination.
This fellow Pendergast was one of those…
but he was even more. He had, it seemed, the ability to climb the hilltops girdling the gardens and take in the entire landscape, displaying powers that rivaled Magnus’s own.
He was sui generis—a man possessing one of the most intriguing and dangerous minds he’d ever encountered.
Magnus felt uneasy about him, even troubled, questioning if perhaps he’d finally met his match or—more worrying—if his own PSI powers were fading.
He wondered what Pendergast knew, or had guessed, about him—and whom he might have shared that knowledge with.
Magnus sensed it would not be wise to keep the man alive on his boat for long: just long enough to plumb the depths of his mind more aggressively, get answers to the questions currently troubling him…
before killing the man and disposing of the corpse.