Dead Lines

by Greg Bear

  One passion giving way to another?

  Peter needed guidance. Needed his connection with the reason for being here at all.

  “Honey?” he called softly.

  From across the main hall, Michelle answered in a brassy, echoing voice, “Is that you, Peter? Are you all right?”

  He could not see her. Echoes kept him from tracking her by sound. Peter crossed the wide hallway beneath the high dome, then under the balustrade, between thick, spiraling Moorish pillars and wrought-iron rails, toward the voluminous and unknown rear of the house. He did not see Michelle, but he could hear her breathing, as if she had just been exercising; a pretty intake followed by a little sigh as of gratified weariness. He heard a door close.

  “You’re running me a merry chase,” she called. Suddenly her voice was tiny and she seemed far away.

  Peter stopped. Blinked at the sweat, but did not dare wipe his eyes. The temptation to blind himself and see no more was too great. He was a man on the edge of honest-to-God madness, perhaps over the edge, clutching the bloody sweater, still feeling Daniella’s ripping pain. He might be capable of anything.

  Peter glanced over his shoulder. A dark, thin curtain of smoky gloom rippled and spread to obscure the entire atrium. He had underestimated its magnitude; either that, or like an octopus, it could expand to amazing size.

  Whatever, he was not afraid of it. It meant him no harm; he was not its prey. Peter had become a dog following a scent.

  Leading a hunter to its real quarry.

  “We need to talk,” he tried to shout to Michelle. It came out as a husky moan. He lowered his chin to more efficiently use what little voice he had left. “Joseph is dead. I think you killed him.”

  A door hinge creaked down a long hall, at the end of which a tall window was showing a pale fan of dawn.

  “Let’s talk it over, just like the old days,” Michelle answered. “But stay where you are, okay?”

  Peter was turned around now; he had thought the house was oriented east to west, and the sun would rise behind him. Instead, the sun seemed to be coming up directly ahead.

  “Why not face-to-face?” Peter hollered, feeling his vocal cords flare.

  “You wouldn’t like my real face, Peter,” Michelle said. “You’re in my ocean now. It is so dark down here. You’re out of your depth, don’t you know?”

  He did know, but he could not stop.

  MICHELLE HAD DROPPED Trans units along the hall. As he walked toward the fanlight window, Peter counted twelve of them, all different colors, like a trail of huge candies. For a moment, he thought the carpet had been stained a pale, milky blue. But as he walked, the blueness parted around his shoes and quickly flowed back. Smooth, odorless, the gassy fluid was pouring from the seams and grill and display of each unit, clinging to the floor like a heavy fog, less than half an inch thick.

  He stooped to pick up a unit. His fingers brushed the fluid. Abruptly, the blue changed to yellow and green shot through with veins of red. Shock knocked him back against the wall, not electricity—pain and grief. He slumped and his hands spread to stop his fall. As they touched the fluid, an incredible ache seeped up his arms and spine—pain of loss; guilt; miserable, hopeless frustration; fear of confinement, of being boxed in and beaten and spat upon and clubbed down by men in uniforms with expressionless faces; alone in endless dark with dripping water and roaches and spiders. The catalog ran quickly into varieties of interior and exterior torture he had never encountered in his own life.

  Hopeless torment was leaking from the plastic units like oil from a motor. The foulness numbed his ankles, spread up his legs and along his veins like infection. He could feel the anguish creep into his abdomen, his heart, find purchase on his nerves and climb higher, until it bit into his brain like a razor-sharp and rotting tooth.

  The swirling mist had turned the color of bloody pus.

  Being strapped into chairs, trying to hold a breath against a rising vapor redolent of bitter almonds; tied to hard tables, nostrils widening at the antiseptic whiff of alcohol, the gentle pinch of expert fingers bringing up an artery, the burning sting of the long needle, and every time, all those times, pale faces swimming outside the thick glass, watching, watching in horrified fascination, like visitors to a monstrous aquarium.

  Peter pushed himself frantically against the wall and stood. He stared down at the mist. Knew with absolute certainty he was standing in prison soup, thin broth boiled down from the memories and emotions of tens of thousands of incarcerated and executed men and women, the condensation and distillation of all that was cruel and hopeless in human nature.

  The lethal heart of San Andreas had subverted the Trans network. It had finally found a way into Arpad’s transponder, and now it was free. It could go anywhere it wanted, anywhere there was a Trans.

  Confused, he looked to the end of the hall, the closed doors, the fanlight window, the glow of dawn brightening outside. All turned around. No need to even try to understand. A mosquito in a hurricane will never get it right.

  “I still have the gun,” Michelle called, her voice muffled. “I’ll use it if you don’t get out of here.”

  Peter’s lips curved in a raw smile. If he found her now, it would all be worth it. From the mist he had soaked up a powerful supply of undiluted loathing, enough to top off his tank a thousand times over with high-octane vengeance.

  “What part of the ocean are you from, Michelle? What kind of creature are you? The kind that steals bodies for protection, to hide in? How do I kill something like you?” Peter’s mind easily filled with a thousand scenes of gory violence.

  “You can’t,” she said, almost too soft to hear. “Nobody can touch me.”

  The shadow rose behind him. He did not turn to look, but he could feel it. He could feel its power and its hunger.

  “I’ve brought a friend, Michelle!” he shouted, and for a few moments, everything really did turn an awful red. It’s like I’m bleeding inside my eyes. That’s rage, all right. Don’t give in. If you let it, it will stain you to the core. Your essence will stink. They will have to burn your soul. “You know all about my friend, don’t you? You must be old acquaintances.”

  “Don’t come in here,” Michelle said, her voice suddenly unsure. No more banter.

  They were getting too close.

  “What kind of miserable, parasitic creature are you?” Peter harangued, teeth bared, his smile savage. This thief had stolen his daughter. “I think you’re a crab. A hermit crab, soft and vulnerable, scuttling around looking for empty shells. Well I’ve found something that loves to dig out hermit crabs. You’re it’s prey, aren’t you? Is that what you’re afraid of?”

  “Just let me leave, let me get out of here,” the small voice called. “You’ll never see me again. Think of all we shared. Think of what I did for you, Peter.”

  “Think of all you did for Joseph and Daniella and the others,” Peter growled. “How many, a hundred, a thousand? They certainly won’t like it.” It was not his voice alone that spoke now. He twisted; his muscles knotted and he almost fell over. Recovering, bracing against the wall, he felt the pus-colored mist clawing at his insides, trying to form words with his tongue. The dead of San Andreas recognized the creature inside Michelle.

  They knew it intimately.

  “All the men and women ever put through the gas chamber, they won’t like it, either. Can you see them? They’re here with us, flooding your precious carpet. All the anguish your kind has caused . . . All the killers, the criminals, the sad, empty shells you’ve filled with murder and pain. That’s what I’m wading through, a hundred-proof liquor of hate. Come on out. Let us see you, Michelle, or whatever your name is. Do you even have a name?”

  “If you come any closer, I’ll do worse than kill you,” Michelle shouted, arrogance and assurance trying to return and not succeeding.

  “Too late,” Peter said, and gave in to a fit of violent coughing. As he recovered, he suddenly understood why Michelle had tried to dispers
e the Trans units, giving them to all she met. The solution arrived in a spreading blot of induction. For whatever occupied Michelle, the crab in its pitiful shell, it was a matter of survival. A Trans changed the weather. It was like a smoke screen. It provided cover and distraction, making the entire invisible world spark and change.

  And that could put a hunter off the scent.

  Still, she had not taken into account the side effects.

  Nobody had.

  NONE OF THE doors were locked. Two of them opened into ordinary rooms, redecorated like model showrooms, filled with ordinary furniture, ordinary if antique wallpapers, common pastel colors. All the masks of normality, of trying to visibly fit in and not raise a ripple of concern.

  Nothing more—and in context, nothing less.

  He found the right door on the third try.

  THE WALLS OF the room behind the door had been torn out but no further work had been done. Just a small, closed room awaiting the decorator’s touch: lath and bits of cracked plaster, a dusty parquet floor, a window.

  Miasma washed in a thin flood around his feet.

  Peter’s chest suddenly went hollow. He could not immediately reconcile what he saw and what he felt. He had always been glad to see Michelle. Always interested in what she might say, what anecdotes she might convey about Joseph’s rich eccentricities. She had made a very pleasant mask indeed, she had fooled them all.

  Perhaps the hermit crab had used something of the real Michelle. He would never know. But that Michelle was gone. What remained was pushed back into the far corner. She wore a shift dress and her arms were bare and skinny, her legs scrawny. Whatever beauty she had once possessed was now less than a memory. She looked just this side of old; face pale, hair spiky and matted.

  He could not hate this. The mist pulled back from his feet, leaving him in a void, and crept toward the corner.

  “Why my daughter?” he asked. “What did she ever do to you?”

  “Peter, please,” she said, holding up her arms, elbows presented like shields. One hand clutched a black Beretta. Her eyes went to the doorway.

  “You said I was your project,” Peter reminded her. “You were helping me. Why kill Daniella?” He held up the sweater. “What did my daughter ever do to deserve you?”

  “You were my project, not her,” she said, shrinking back, dropping her arms, pulling in her strength for one last ploy. “If you take away their most valued things, people only get better.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “How sadness becomes you. How you’ve grown, Peter.” Then the eyes expanded, wide, enormous, like a lemur’s. She shivered. Peter did not frighten her in the least, but still, she trembled as if with fever.

  No escape. She knows it. I almost feel sorry for her.

  “Can I talk to Michelle?” he asked. “Is there anything left of her?”

  “Just dried strings. I’m the one you love, the one you want. I’ve been at Salammbo, for all of my men, for ever so long.” She pointed the gun at him. The air behind her head grew murky. “We played. You learned. Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it, just a little. All that sympathy. Just imagine what your life would have been like if you hadn’t been so utterly charming.”

  Her finger tightened on the trigger. The room filled with painful noise. A bullet whizzed by his head and he smelled burned powder. His eyes stung and his ears buzzed.

  “Let me go,” she demanded, and tried to pull the trigger again. But her features softened. The gun barrel wavered. Oily flowers like dark liquid glass squeezed from her eyes, her mouth, her ears. The rider, the hermit crab, was trying to make a break, to scuttle away from its shell.

  Michelle’s body went limp. The gun fell. From all of Michelle’s orifices sprang dark, gleaming blossoms. As the gun hit the floor, the hunter shoved through the wall and flooded the room with ribbons of shadow like long elastic fingers. The fingers curled and pinched at the black flowers. They were seized and jerked out, to be instantly and brutally snipped by sudden, scissorlike appendages, then whirled into a mouth like a tangle of razor blades and broken china, a mouth that chewed and cut and spat. The hunter’s savor was instantly obvious. The air filled with expanding, glutted sacs, stomachs, receptacles. Bits slopped over in its enthusiasm. Black nubs squirmed, then drifted to the parquetry to be swept up by greedy, urgent black whiskers.

  It was over in a few seconds, violent and final. Nothing wasted—nothing of interest to the hunter.

  A thin, pale woman with matted, wet hair and parboiled, milky eyes sagged to the floor in the corner of the dusty, unfinished room. Grime caked her knees and calves. A wreath of coiled shadows briefly crowned her damp forehead, writhed, and then vanished. She stared fixedly at her ankles and took shallow, husking breaths.

  The room cleared.

  The empty woman’s head wobbled and tipped. Her face bore the helpless, animal confusion of an imbecilic patient in an old, filthy sanitarium—a raped patient who has just given birth to a stillborn. She glanced up, dazed and listless. Her eyes barely tracked Peter.

  The hermit crab, Michelle’s rider, a delicacy in the invisible world, had been plucked forth, dispatched, and swallowed. The hunter had left behind only the shell—and nothing else that really mattered.

  Not even vengeance.

  Peter picked her up in his arms—she hung like an empty sack—and carried her down the long hall, through the atrium, and out of Jesus Wept. The stench that rose from her was finally too much. He deposited her as gently as he could manage on the stone porch. She stood for a moment, legs like frail sticks, then dropped to her hands and knees, rotated like a sick dog, and crawled back inside through the heavy black door. Peter tried to grab her ankle but she turned, eyes flaccid. Her legs flopped and pushed like a frog’s. Her teeth clacked and snicked like castanets, and for a moment, Peter thought she would rise up to attack him, all teeth and Michelle’s long, thickly painted fingernails.

  He jumped back and almost fell down the steps.

  The door swung ponderously, then slammed shut.

  CHAPTER 45

  PETER HAD NOT gotten turned around inside Jesus Wept. The glow through the fanlight window was not sunrise, but Flaubert House. He found a gap in the long row of oleanders and crawled through to stand and watch as the old mansion blew jets of flame from its windows. The roof was already fully engulfed and the northeast corner of the building—where Joseph’s body still sat in its chair—had collapsed.

  A long tower of smoke climbed above Salammbo.

  He heard sirens. Time to make a decision. He could stay on the estate and try to explain what had happened, present the sweater and whatever remained of the bodies in the tunnel as evidence. Scragg would be interested, no doubt.

  Smoke puffed from cracks in the lawn, almost beneath his feet. He could feel the heat. The grass, spotted with morning dew, started to steam. Over the hedge he saw a gray haze rise from Jesus Wept. Fire had crept along the tunnel. Lordy Trenton’s underground trolley line was turning into an inferno.

  Peter’s mind worked quickly despite his exhaustion. Evidence was being destroyed. No one would believe him about Michelle—certainly not Scragg, as hardheaded and skeptical as they came. Peter now looked psychotic enough. Why not blame him for his daughter’s murder?

  And all the others as well?

  Peter had little faith in justice.

  He hoped what was left of Michelle would have sense to flee a fire. And if she didn’t . . . he honestly couldn’t put together the will or the energy to return to Jesus Wept and find her.

  He had what he wanted—or at least he thought he did. Had he actually seen Michelle’s rider hunted down and consumed? Or had that just been smoke mixing with the last of a long string of hallucinations? An amazing and convoluted construct of horror and fantasy erected to get around his grief, his self-destructive refusal to work again in the real world . . .

  Peter, all by himself, could give the police what they needed to put him behind bars for life. How could he convince himself otherwise, now t
hat he stood under the morning sun, with real flames burning a real house to very real ashes?

  Staying for the last of this truly dreadful party would be a bad idea.

  Peter climbed into the brick-red Porsche. He laid the sweater carefully on the side seat and looked down at it. Sat upright.

  He put the car in gear and backed up. Glanced in his rearview mirror to see if fire trucks or bystanders might witness his departure—so far, so good—then swung left and took a side road around Flaubert House to the rear of the estate. Hidden by trees on the western boundary was a fence secured with a rusty chain and an old lock that dated back to the forties at least. He was pretty sure a tire iron would break it loose. Beyond the fence lay an unpaved fire road that followed some ridges down to the coastal highway.

  If the rains hadn’t left too many ruts, Peter thought the old Porsche might make it.

  CHAPTER 46

  SLEEP NO MORE.

  He did not even try. But he rested.

  He stripped off his bloody and filthy clothes, but lacked the energy to take a shower. Lying on his bed in the old, familiar house in the Glendale hills, with the sound of wind chimes rising from the backyard, he looked away from the pebbly, diffuse peace of the old popcorn ceiling.

  A tired old man stood by the foot of his bed, watching him.

  Peter sat up on the rumpled sheets.

  The old man was ragged at the edges, but not worn down—not yet. After a few minutes, lying as still as he dared, Peter’s legs began to go numb. The old man barely moved—a slow rise and fall of his shoulder, an almost mechanical turn of the head—but Peter thought he recognized him.

  A wraith, not a specter. A stray scrap of Peter Russell, but not from the past. Not this time.

  “You guys really like the foot of the bed, don’t you?” Peter asked, indignant. “Why?”

  The figure showed some surprise, raised a hand in protest, and then—with a frightened, focused consternation of empty eyes—faded to a scrim and winked out.