Jon stopped reading.
Incapable of taking in anything around him, he closed his eyes and his head fell forward towards his chest. Only a few seconds passed before he began taking in impressions from the basement again.
It was his sense of hearing that returned first, very slowly, as if someone were turning up the volume. He could sense commotion around him, the sound of footsteps and furniture being moved. Nervous voices conversed, though he couldn't hear what they were saying, and a crackling sound sliced through the air above his head. Then he smelled smoke; the sharp odour of burning wool and plastic found its way into his nose, tearing at his nostrils. Then Jon opened his eyes.
The sight he encountered was so unreal that his first thought was that it had to be a dream, or that he was still immersed in the story. The room was almost completely filled with smoke, several of the candles had toppled over, the chair on his left had fallen backwards, and sparks and electrical discharges were flying out of the light fixtures. Iversen and Pau were running around putting out the flames that had taken hold on the carpet and furniture. Pau was using his sweater while Iversen was armed with a rug.
Katherina was sitting to Jon's right, staring at him with a blank expression in her eyes. Two thin streams of blood were coming out of her nose, collecting at her lips, and running down her chin. Her hands were clutching the armrests of her chair so hard that her knuckles were white.
Jon's next thought was that the bookshop had been attacked again.
'Who was it?' he managed to stammer, noticing how dry his throat was.
Pau cast a glance at Jon on his way over to a switch near the door where a burst of flame had just ignited the door frame.
'Hey, he's back,' shouted Pau to Iversen, flinging his sweater with his left hand at the flames coming from the electrical outlet. 'She did it.'
Jon noticed that Pau's right arm hung limply at his side.
'Jon?' Iversen came over to him. 'Jon, close the book. Do you hear me?'
Jon turned his head towards Iversen, who came closer with the rug slung over one arm. Jon was about to look down at the book when Iversen began shouting at him.
'Jon, look at me! Just close the book, Jon. Look at me, and close the book!' There was fear in Iversen's voice.
Jon kept eye contact with Iversen as he slowly closed the book. An obvious expression of relief spread over Iversen's face.
'Who was it?' Jon asked again.
'It was you, Jon,' said Iversen. At the same instant he caught sight of new flames leaping up behind Jon's chair. He immediately went over to slam the rug at the fire until the flames died out. In the meantime, Pau had put out the fire at the electrical outlet and was now standing at alert, keeping an eye on the room in case any new fire should break out. The sweater he was holding ready in his hand was smoking faintly.
Katherina had bowed her head so her chin rested on her chest. Her hands were clasped in her lap, as if in prayer. They were trembling ever so slightly.
Jon tried to stand up, but was immediately seized with dizziness and dropped back into his chair. He felt Iversen's hand gripping his shoulder.
'Just stay where you are, Jon. It'll be over soon.'
He wanted to turn round to face Iversen to ask for an explanation, but before he managed to turn his head, he blacked out.
21
'That was crazy!'
Katherina heard Pau's excited voice as if it were a radio that had suddenly been switched on, much too close. It sounded as if she were in the bookshop. Judging by the leather underneath her, she must be sitting in the armchair behind the counter, with her head tilted to one side.
Why was she sitting here? She felt so exhausted that she couldn't even open her eyes. What had happened?
She heard Iversen answer Pau in a somewhat more subdued tone, his voice extremely grave.
'Things could have gone terribly wrong,' he pointed out. 'And we still don't know how they're feeling. What about you? How's your arm?'
'It's okay,' replied Pau casually. 'It just tingles a bit, like it's asleep. But holy shit, it sure hurt when he zapped me. How'd he do that?'
'I don't know, Pau,' said Iversen wearily.
'If that's what activations are like, we should have more of them,' said Pau firmly.
'That was absolutely not normal,' Iversen emphasized. 'I've… I've never seen anything like it.'
Katherina could hear a trace of nervousness in Iversen's voice. He was scared. Why? She tried to think back. They'd been downstairs in the basement. Jon had been there too. The activation.
She gave a start when she remembered.
'Is she awake?'
Katherina felt someone bending over her.
'No,' said Iversen very close. 'It was just a spasm.'
She wanted to shut them out for a little while longer. First she had to work out what had happened.
All four of them had been in the basement for Jon's activation. She herself had made all the preparations, with candles and everything. It was supposed to be pleasant, like adopting a new family member, but something had gone wrong.
At first everything proceeded according to plan. Iversen started reading, and Jon quickly fell into the rhythm, helped along by Katherina's efforts to focus his attention on the text. Pau had just sat there, gawking, with a silly smile on his face, as if he were waiting for a chance to tease the new boy in class.
After a couple of pages Iversen had glanced at her and nodded. She closed her eyes and concentrated on Jon's reading as she shut out everything else. Slowly she reinforced his attempts to accentuate the text he was reading, and she made sure his attention continued to be directed at the book. The images he created became more and more rich and detailed, until she held him back a bit. She sensed him trying to override this sudden obstacle, like a mass of water that had been dammed up.
Then Katherina opened her eyes. Iversen had stopped reading, and again he nodded to her. She closed her eyes again and removed the barrier to Jon's progress, as if she were uncorking a bottle. At the same time she enhanced what he was accentuating so the result was an explosive leap forward, filled with colours and a rapid flow of pictures. The activation was achieved, and she was surprised at the richness of detail and depth in Jon's interpretation of the text. The images he had created as an ordinary reader seemed like blurry black-and-white pictures in comparison to these, which were saturated with colour, clarity and nuance. It was like the difference between watching a film on TV and on a cinema screen.
Gradually she reduced her own influence. Jon now had no trouble maintaining his concentration, and she even sensed how he was experimenting with his new instrument. When she opened her eyes, Iversen was sitting there with a big grin on his face, while Pau was so immersed in the story that he paid no attention to anything else around him.
'What did I tell you?' whispered Iversen, giving Katherina a wink. She smiled back.
It was hard not to get caught up in Jon's gripping storytelling technique. The images and associations he created kept enticing the listeners to go along on a fantastic journey. Katherina, who had heardDon Quixote many times, didn't remember ever being so tempted to immerse herself in the story as she was now. The hair on her arms stood on end, and she felt a slight tickling in her stomach.
Katherina again turned her attention to Jon's discovery of his powers. She directed his focus to the various means at his disposal, and each time he surprised her by going further than she thought possible.
It was during these breakthroughs that physical phenomena began to manifest themselves. The candles were blown out. The lamps pulsed with shifting voltage, the furniture began to shake.
Iversen asked Katherina to bring Jon back. There was a trace of nervousness in his voice. Jon didn't notice anything, but sweat was pouring down his face and little blood vessels had burst in the whites of his eyes. But he kept on reading in a loud, clear voice and all of Katherina's attempts to subdue him were in vain. The bookcases began to shake violently. The boo
ks came toppling off the shelves and fell to the floor.
The commotion brought Pau out of his trance. He got up to take hold of Jon but before he could touch him a blue spark leaped from Jon's elbow and through Pau's outspread fingers. Pau was slammed back into his chair, which fell over backwards. He quickly got to his feet but he was holding onto his right arm and moaning loudly.
Katherina continued her attempts to mentally put the brakes on Jon but the discharges got even stronger. Little flashes of lightning danced out of Jon's body and over to the electrical fixtures, which sprayed sparks into the room. Pau and Iversen were fully occupied stomping out the embers and flames, while the furniture started shaking more violently and jumping about. At one point a bookcase fell on top of Iversen and Pau had to come to his rescue.
Katherina tried to follow the pulse that she sensed lay behind the bursts of energy coming from Jon. They occurred spasmodically, at regular intervals, and when the next pause came, she directed all her powers at breaking Jon's concentration. Her chair was shoved a metre away from him, but the reading stopped, and he raised his eyes from the book to stare at Katherina. His bloodshot eyes were filled with confusion and fear.
After that she remembered nothing more.
'Katherina?' Iversen's voice was very close.
She opened her eyes and looked up into Iversen's worried face. He smiled.
'Are you feeling all right?'
Aside from a sluggishness in her whole body and the feeling that she hadn't slept in a long time, she was fine. She nodded.
'What about Jon?' she asked.
'The master of fireworks?' said Pau, poking his head into her field of vision. 'He's totally out of it. But still alive.'
The two men straightened up and looked behind them, where Jon was lying on a camp bed. From what Katherina could see, he was sleeping peacefully.
'We lugged the two of you up from the basement,' Iversen explained. 'It's still being aired out. I don't think the electrical switches are ever going to work again. They're completely melted.'
'How could that happen?' asked Katherina, her voice hoarse.
Iversen shrugged. 'It's beyond me,' he admitted. 'We were hoping you could tell us something.'
'Nothing except that he was incredibly strong,' replied Katherina. 'Stronger than any transmitter I've ever encountered before.'
Iversen nodded pensively.
'But lightning?' Pau interjected. 'Was that wild enough for you?'
'It does seem very extreme,' Iversen acknowledged. 'But we activated latent areas of his brain. Who knows how much is hidden away up there?' He tapped his index finger on his temple. 'Maybe we flipped a couple of extra switches.'
'Or blew a fuse,' suggested Pau cynically.
All three of them fell silent as they exchanged worried looks. Even Pau seemed to have grasped the seriousness of the situation. A hint of nervousness had slipped into his eyes. From the camp bed they could hear Jon breathing evenly.
Katherina looked down at her hands. It had been her job to control the seance. Of course no one could have predicted how things would go, but she was the one who should have stopped Jon earlier and prevented everything from getting out of control. Maybe she had put too much pressure on him. Her fascination with how his powers were unfolding had made her hesitate when she should have intervened. The electrical switches might not be the only things that had melted. Even though Jon was breathing all right, they couldn't know whether he was nothing more than a vegetable behind his closed eyes.
'Maybe we should have someone take a look at him,' said Katherina.
'We've discussed that,' said Iversen with a sigh. 'But who would we get, and what should we tell them?'
Katherina had no answer.
'Whatever else we do,' Iversen went on, 'we'll have to contact Kortmann.'
Katherina gave a start. During all the preparations for the activation and Iversen's homecoming from the hospital, they had completely forgotten to inform Kortmann about their meeting with Tom Nшrreskov and what he'd said about the Shadow Organization. To top it all off, they had thrown themselves into an activation that Kortmann had specifically advised against.
With a nod she gave her assent.
'I think we should call in Clara too,' she added firmly. 'The receivers have just as much right to know what's going on as the transmitters.'
After an hour Clara turned up, the first to appear of those they had summoned. Jon was still asleep. Katherina had been sitting at his side most of the time, and apart from a couple of grunts and incomprehensible sounds, he had remained calm. Clara greeted everyone and then leaned over Jon as if to assure herself that he was actually sleeping and not just pretending. She squatted down next to the bed and grabbed his wrist to take his pulse.
'And he's been like this ever since the activation?' she asked perfunctorily.
Iversen confirmed that Jon's condition hadn't changed and then recounted in rough outline what had happened during the seance. When Clara heard about the physical phenomena, she opened her eyes wide and let go of Jon's wrist, as if she'd burned herself.
'Very interesting,' she said and stood up. Her eyes met Katherina's, as if looking for an answer, but Katherina could only shake her head weakly.
At that instant the door to the bookshop opened and a young man came in. It was Kortmann's chauffeur. Without looking at them, he held the door open for Kortmann, who with some difficulty rolled his wheelchair over the threshold. He hesitated for a moment when he saw Clara, but then he turned to his assistant and nodded. The young man left Libri di Luca, closing the door carefully behind him.
'Clara,' he said loudly. 'I didn't expect to see you here. It's been a long time.'
'Same here, William,' said Clara, going over to the man in the wheelchair and holding out her hand.
Kortmann grimaced and shook her hand briefly.
'And Iversen is up and about again, I see.'
Iversen smiled and nodded. 'I'm fine.'
Kortmann moved closer to the bed and studied Jon's face.
'That's more than can be said for our young friend here,' he said, shifting his gaze to Katherina. She could see his jaw muscles tighten. 'How could you even think of carrying out an activation without telling me?' Kortmann abruptly turned his head to look at Iversen.
Iversen looked terrified and had to search for words. 'We didn't think it was necessary,' he managed to stammer. 'And he insisted on doing it as soon as possible.'
'So what happened?'
For the second time Iversen described the seance. Kortmann didn't visibly react to what he heard, but he kept his eyes fixed on Iversen.
'Let me see the basement,' Kortmann demanded. 'You,' he said, pointing to Pau. 'If your arm is all right now, you can carry me downstairs.'
Pau nodded eagerly and then struggled a bit with the man's frail body until he got a proper grip and lifted him out of the chair. Katherina thought Pau looked like a ventriloquist with Kortmann as the well-dressed dummy. While the others went down the spiral staircase to the basement, she stayed behind with Jon. It was impossible to tell just by looking at him that only a few hours ago sparks had flown out of his body. His eyes moved behind his eyelids, and his breathing was calm. Cautiously she placed her hand on his forehead. It was warm and slightly damp.
After ten minutes the others returned. Pau put Kortmann back in his wheelchair and wiped his brow with the back of his hand.
Kortmann moved closer to the bed and studied the unconscious Jon with renewed interest.
'Young Campelli is full of surprises,' he said to himself. 'Have any of you ever seen anything like this before?' he asked Clara, who was standing on one side of the bed.
She shook her head. 'Never. There's never been anything that even resembled physical phenomena, energy discharges or whatever you want to call it.'
'So we don't in fact know what we're dealing with here,' said Kortmann. 'It could be a new sort of Lector power that we haven't yet seen, or it could be a separate phenomenon
– an area of the brain that became activated by accident and has no relation to our powers.'
Katherina cleared her throat. 'I think it has something to do with his powers.'
'Can you explain?' asked Kortmann, sounding annoyed.
'When we use our powers on transmitters, we can feel a kind of pulse in the accentuations or energies they emit.' Clara nodded agreement. 'And I sensed that the phenomena followed the beat of Jon's heart,' Katherina explained. 'It's true that the frequency was irregular, but the phenomena occurred and were reinforced with every pulse – I'm sure of that.'
'And this… pulse. Is it something that only transmitters have?' The tone of Kortmann's voice was gentler but his eyes were cold. Katherina shifted her glance to Clara, who was smiling at her like a proud mother.
'Yes,' replied Katherina. 'It has nothing to do with a normal pulse. It only occurs when transmitters use their powers.'
'That's how we, as receivers, can determine whether someone has transmitter powers and is using them or not,' Clara added.
Kortmann rolled his wheelchair a short distance away from Jon's bed.
'So that means he's not dangerous as long as he's not reading. Is that right?'
'That seems to be the conclusion,' said Clara.
Kortmann cast a glance at the bookshelves surrounding them.
'But when he reads…' he said slowly, as if he were working out a maths problem. 'We have to assume he didn't do it deliberately. Is he at all able to control these energy discharges?' Kortmann fixed his eyes on Iversen, who was leaning against the counter.
'As far as I could tell, he had no idea what was happening around him,' said Iversen.
'He was totally out of it,' Pau added.
'My sense was that he was able to control the force of the energy discharges,' said Katherina, 'exactly the way you can accentuate the text with more or less force. The range he has at his disposal is simply much greater.' The others had all turned to look at her, but they didn't seem to have understood the implications of what she was saying. 'If the phenomena occur during the very violent discharges, as I felt they did, he is also capable of preventing them from happening.' She raised her index finger before the others could say anything. 'On the other hand, I don't think he can control the energy once it's been set loose.'
The Library of Shadows Page 22