Shadowfires

forced into it, and he was
afraid to tell his parents.”
    “It's a common pattern,” Julio said, “even in families that aren't
religious. The child blames himself for the adult's crime.”
    Solberg said, “His terror of Barry Hampstead-that was the first
name, yes-grew greater month by month, week by week. And finally,
when Eric was nine, he stabbed Hampstead to death.”
    “Nine?” Reese said, appalled. “Good heavens.”
    “Hampstead was asleep on the sofa,” Solberg continued, “and Eric
killed him with a butcher's knife.”
    Julio considered the effects of that trauma on a nine-year-old boy
who was already emotionally disturbed from the ordeal of long-term
physical abuse. In his
mind's eye, he saw the knife clutched in the child's small hand,
rising and falling, blood flying off the shining blade, and the boy's eyes fixed in horror upon his grisly handiwork, repelled by what he was doing, yet compelled to finish it.
    Julio shivered.
    “Though everyone then learned what had been going on,” Solberg
said,
“Eric's parents somehow, in their twisted way, saw him as both a fornicator and a murderer, and they began a fevered and very psychologically damaging campaign to save his soul from hell, praying over him day and night, disciplining him, forcing him to read and reread passages of the Bible aloud until his throat cracked and his voice faded to a hoarse whisper. Even after he got out of that dark and hateful house and got through college by working part-time jobs and winning scholarships, even after he'd
piled up a mountain of academic achievements and had become a
respected man of science, Eric continued to half believe in hell and
in his own certain damnation. Maybe he even more than half believed.”
    Suddenly Julio saw what was coming, and a chill as cold as any he
had ever felt sneaked up the small of his back. He glanced at his
partner and saw, in
Reese's face, a look of horror that mirrored Julio's feelings.
    Still staring out at the verdant campus, which was as thoroughly
sun-splashed as before but which seemed to have grown darker, Easton
Solberg said, “You already know of
Eric' s deep and abiding commitment to longevity research and his dream of immortality achieved through genetic engineering. But now perhaps you see why he was so obsessed with achieving that unrealistic-some would call it irrational and impossible-goal. In spite of all his education, in spite of his ability to reason, he was illogical about this one thing: in his heart he believed that he would go to hell when he died, not merely because he had sinned with his uncle but because he had killed his uncle as well, and was both a fornicator and a murderer. He told me once that he was afraid he'd
meet his uncle again in hell and that eternity would be, for him,
total submission to Barry Hampstead's lust.”
    “Dear God,” Julio said shakily, and he unconsciously made the sign
of the cross, something he had not done outside of church since he
was a child.
    Turning away from the window and facing the detectives at last,
the professor said, “So for Eric Leben, immortality on earth was a
goal sought not only out of a love of life but out of a special fear
of hell. I imagine you can see how, with such motivation, he was
destined to be a driven man, obsessed.”
    “Inevitably,” Julio said.
    “Driven to young girls, driven to seek ways to extend the human
life span, driven to cheat the devil,” Solberg said. “Year by year it
became worse. We drifted apart after that weekend when he made his
confessions, probably because he regretted that
he'd told me his secrets. I doubt he even told his wife about his uncle and his childhood when he married her a few years later. I was probably the only one. But in spite of the growing distance between us, I heard from poor Eric often enough to know his fear of death and damnation became worse as he grew older. In fact, after forty, he was downright frantic. I'm
sorry he died yesterday; he was a brilliant man, and he had the power
to contribute so much to humanity. On the other hand, his was not a
happy life. And perhaps his death was even a blessing in disguise
because…”
    “Yes?” Julio said.
    Solberg sighed and wiped one hand over his moonish face, which had
sagged somewhat with weariness. “Well, sometimes I worried about what
Eric might do if he ever achieved a breakthrough in the kind of
research he was pursuing. If he thought he had a means of editing his
genetic