The Power of Five Oblivion

make? For all the millions that have been poured into Africa, there have always been children starving while the charity workers drive around in their nice, shiny four-by-fours, looking for people to save. Do-gooders may have felt good about themselves but you know and I know that nothing ever changed. There just weren’t enough of them. They were wasting their time.
    “There were never any heroes. But there weren’t any villains either. All the problems that you see in the world right now – global warming, pollution, poverty, over-population, war, famine … all the rest of it – whose fault is it? Is it the wicked businessmen? I don’t think so. Because they’d all go bankrupt if people didn’t want to buy what they were selling. Is it the politicians? Come on! Who voted for them in the first place? I know what Matt would tell you. He’d say it was the Old Ones. The Church has been saying the same for the last two thousand years – not of course that anyone listens any more. It’s just like the Devil in the Bible. You’ve got to blame someone, so blame him. And when the five of you get together, you’ll banish them and that will be the end of it. Everyone will live happily ever after.
    “But you know that’s not true. If you think about it for half a second, you can see it’s ridiculous. Man is to blame. Not devils. Not demons. There is no Voldemort. There is no Darth Vader. There’s just selfish, greedy, uncaring, destructive man.”
    The meal was over. Scott had left the table and was sitting in an armchair, facing the fair-haired man. Once again, he couldn’t remember getting there. He was very full. He was feeling satisfied and slightly drowsy. He knew who the man was now. His name was Jonas Mortlake and Susan Mortlake had been his mother. That was why he had recognized him. But how did he know it? When had he been told?
    “So that’s why I say to you that you have to decide. You have to choose which side you want to be on.”
    The man was still talking. It seemed he had never stopped.
    “Now, at one level, that’s simply a choice between being here in this room having lunch with me or back in the cell eating leftovers with the Stick Insect. It means having nice clothes and a warm bed and everything you could possibly want to make you happy, or having your brain mashed up by chemicals and electric shocks. I would have said that choice was a no-brainer, if you’ll forgive the expression. I could call my men in and have them beat you right now. I could make you agree to anything and I’d actually quite enjoy doing that, Scott. I like that sort of thing.
    “But what would that prove? Nothing! As I sit here now, I’m much more interested in persuading you to see things my way without hurting you. I want to reason with you because at the end of the day the victory will be all the sweeter. To take one of the Five and to turn him against the others. To recruit him. That’s what I’m hoping to do with you, Scott. That’s what the Old Ones want. It’s why they sent me here.”
    It was already night-time. Hours had passed since Scott had been given the lunch. And he was no longer in the same room. He was in a small and comfortable bedroom. There was a single bed with a pillow and a blanket, a wardrobe, pictures on the walls. He looked down and saw that someone had put a stuffed toy in the middle of the bed, a monkey. He’d had a toy just like that when he was six years old, living in the orphanage in Carson City. Maybe it was the same one.
    “I don’t know what you want,” Scott said. He was feeling very tired and he had eaten too much too quickly. He wanted to get into the bed.
    “It’s what you want that matters, Scott. You can go back to that cell if you like. We can take those clothes off you and you can spend another night shivering with the Stick Insect. Stale bread for breakfast. Maybe a beating before lunch. The two of you can stay together for another month or a year or even ten years. Or you can stay here. The only trouble is, I’m going to need some sign from you, some proof that you’ve actually been listening to what I’ve been saying.”
    “I have been listening.”
    “I know.”
    “But I don’t have anything…”
    “You’re going to have to give me a sign.”
    “What sign?”
    Jonas Mortlake seemed to consider for a moment but Scott knew that he was only pretending. He had already worked this out. It was what he had been leading up to all the time.
    “I want