“There’s more, of course.”

“Wonderful.”

“A moment, if you’ll indulge me.” He toddled off and returned with a manila folder sealed with string yoked by fancy clasps. He spread crinkled newspaper clippings on the table. “What do you know about the planet’s magnetic field?”

“I know it’s generated by superheated iron in the crust of the earth.”

“Yes, a vast sea of liquid metal creates a magnetic shield that reflects the worst of incoming cosmic radiation. Every so often the magnetic poles reverse. This last occurred in the neighborhood of the Stone Age. The interval before the magnetic field reverses polarity is fraught with peril for life on Earth. Because the magnetic shield is severely weakened during a partial reversal, our ozone is bombarded with cosmic radiation. During the exceedingly rare full reversal, the threat of an extinction-level event rises precipitously. This has occurred and will again.” He patted my hand. “As our wrinkles and scars define us, remnants of an ancient tree in New Zealand serve as an extant recording of epochs of this phenomenon and suggests we are, in fact, overdue for a complete magnetic reversal. We may be experiencing one now.”

“Why do I get the notion this is bad for reasons other than the obvious?”

“Unscrupulous individuals are watching, waiting.”

“The Redlicks,” I said. “Obviously.”

“The Redlicks and others of their ilk.”

“I understand that Sean was attracted to your research; the wilder, the better. But what does this have to do with him directly?”

He raised three fingers.

“Imprudently wealthy men seek immortality via three primary channels. Replication. Great works. Miracles. The Redlicks have assiduously tracked climate change and the advent of the magnetic field’s reversal, seeking to manipulate the effects for personal gain. Tell me, Isaiah, what would be a logical consequence of the ecosystem’s increased exposure to gamma radiation, for example?”

“Sickness. Cancer,” I said. “Two-headed babies.”

“In the natural order of things, those are predictable outcomes,” he said. “Imagine what rich men armed with unlimited resources and advanced science could accomplish were they to harness the powers cosmic. Cross that with faith in supernatural methods. Well. I shudder to think. Gerald Redlick and Tom Mandibole accept heroic myth, including religious texts, as veiled accounts of genetic mutation from lesser breaches of the field. DNA altered by radiation to produce a lineage of wonders and horrors. With this belief as a motive force, we arrive at the creation of cults and cultists whose fervor is maniacal, whose philosophy is impenetrable, whose vision is terrifying.”

“The Mares of Thrace,” I said. “They’re . . .”

“Frightful?”

“What are they? Really. It may sound stupid, but I have to ask. Are they, uh, fully human?”

“I would assume so.” He smiled in bemusement. “Indoctrination, ritual hypnosis, a unique diet . . . These could lead to aberrant psychology and aberrant physical traits. The Mares are one of numerous cults inhabiting the occulted margins of our rational world. Adherents of ancient rites and beliefs. Feral children of the wood who desire renewed vitality and vigor. Hence the pagan rituals, the rumored suckling of animal blood, the preoccupation with youth. Alas, its members are in thrall to a darker ideology than the petty goal of regeneration. The Mares are merely agents who serve a cabal that venerates the notion of godhead. A cabal that would engineer supermen, angels, devils. The cabal yearns to transcend humanity entirely and introduce a state of being whose very nature relegates Homo sapiens to a servitor species, an expendable resource, a plaything.”