by Greg Bear
No luck. We're stuck until someone comes to get us. Or we can hike out in the morning, if this thing isn't still busy." Is it snowing?" No. Clear as a bell and fairly warm for this time of year. Snow is out for the next few days, and that may be in our favor. We can walk out of here and hitch a ride on the upper highway. Not many cars pass through the valley."
Prohaska closed his eyes and folded his hands on his chest, then winced. You've been gouged in two places around the sternum, but they're clean now." I should get a tetanus shot." Maybe. We'll see when we get into town. For now, sleep." Sleep, and dream, Prohaska said, his voice fading. Fowler tucked the blankets in around the reporter's shoulders and stood back. His face was lined with worry and fatigue. It was almost midnight. The microwave level had dropped from its earlier plateau, and the climate of the valley appeared to be back to normal, but that was no guarantee the night was going to be quiet. He needed to sleep, but didn't dare. In the living room, his equipment waited faithfully, the chart recorder humming slightly. It would be time to put in a new roll of paper soonperhaps an hour or so. He wondered what good the records were going to do. If something showed up on the photographs, how would they interpret it? What would all of the information mean when it was assembled? He sat down in the La-Z-Boy and pulled the recliner back, then picked up one of Jordan Taggart's books. Tomorrow, if the schedule was being followed, the new dam would release overflow water into the valley. The lower driveway, just before the highway, would be flooded to the depth of a foot or so. Jordan Taggart's cabin would sit on an island of two acres, surrounded by a slow, shallow river. The stream boundaries had been marked by stakes and flags. His eyes closed and the book started to slip from his hands. Then he sat up abruptly, grabbed the book, and cursed in surprise. Somewhere in Taggart's library, he had read that vampires couldn't cross running water. He searched the shelf for the particular book and located itThe Vampire in Europe, by Montague Summers. It quoted an extensive passage from Apuleius Golden Ass about an early vampire. Fowler began to search through the other books for more documentation. And then he found it, in an old, crumbling paperback on witchcraft and black magic. Spirits and the undead could not cross running water. It's a conductor, he mused, putting a piece of paper into the book as a placemark. It shorts them out. They can't cross over it if they're bound to the Earth. He was beginning to feel excited, but the tiredness was overcoming the new energy and he lay back, eyes blinking. If the thing returned, it would announce itself. Sleep was very important to health. At three in the morning, Fowler slept and the chart recorder ran out of paper. Old. Living with magnetic flux, born in other spaces, not a part of the human progress. A separate, predatory thing, always angry, cunning but not bright ... as creative as the moulds in the forest floor. Master of the germ, the weak, delighter in decay. A thing halfway, yet on neither side. Primal hater. Antithesis. Opponent. Plague. Something roared and he awoke. Outside, it was bright. Fowler looked at his watch and groaned. Eleven-thirty in the morning. There was a car in the drive. He got off the couch and peered outside. A sheriff's car, two people inside. Shaking his head, resigned, he walked to the back bedroom and looked in on Prohaska. The reporter was tangled in his sheets and blankets. Like Fowler, he must have had unpleasant dreams. Fowler gently shook him awake. The swelling had gone down. Prohaska looked at him through gluey eyes and managed a weak smile. They're on to us, Fowler said. Psychlone What?" The sheriff is here." Christ." Are you strong enough to get up?" I think so. Ouchthese bandages are tight." Just as well that they're here. We'll get you to a hospital and let professionals look you over." The knock on the front door was familiar and even welcome this time. He straightened his clothes and looked at his hair briefly in the bathroom mirrornoticing the tub was clean todaythen went to answer.
He swung the door open. Yes? The sheriff looked at him, frowning indecisively. Dorothy left the car and walked to the cabin. You're Lawrence Fowler?" Yes, sir." The sheriff was about thirty, husky and not to be fooled with. Dorothy stood in the middle of the drive, among the potholes and bare spots, looking around, frightened. My name is Parkins, Howard Parkins. What the hell are you doing here, Mr. Fowler?" I'm playing amateur investigator, Fowler said, smiling weakly. No ... I mean, what happened around the cabin?" Fowler stepped out of the door and looked at the clearing and woods. Besides the wreckage of the cars, the underbrush and trees around the cabin looked like a thousand bears had been set loose on them. The bark was stripped from the trunks, the branches broken and bent and bare, and the turf lay scattered in yard-wide divots. I'm not sure, Fowler said. I was asleep." The sheriff shook his head and walked back to the car. I'm going to call in, say you're all right. Is there a reporter here with you?"
Psychlone Sam Prohaska, yes. He was injured last nightnot serious, I think." Dorothy approached him, hands clasped in front of her. There was no call, she said, her lips tight. I was very worried. I flew up here and chartered a flight to Lone Pine ... Larry, there's water over the road now." I know. A dam overflow." What happened to the trees?" Same thing, I think, that happened to the cars. I don't know whether it happened last night or this morning. I must have been zonked. Prohaska was attacked last night." By what?" A giant boar. He couldn't prevent himself from laughing. He leaned against the doorjamb, feeling relief and anxiety and a bubbleheaded lightness he couldn't explain. Oh, Larry, Dorothy said, touching his face with one cool hand. She was wearing a safari suit tailored to fit, with high-fashion leather hiking boots that came to her calves. Her hair was dishevelled. He took her in his arms but she didn't come easily, seeming to resist, then give in complacently. He caught the signals right away. She was furious with him but didn't want to show it. The sheriff returned and Dorothy broke from his embrace. Mr. Fowler, you're occupying these premises illegally. You've broken a seal and I don't know what else, and it looks like you had a drunken ball around here. I don't know whether to arrest you or just kick you the hell out. Any damage in the cabin?" No, sir. I've been keeping it clean. Cleaning the bathroom regularly. He managed to hold back his smile this time, but just barely. The sheriff pierced him with a glance.
You still stoned?"
I have not been stoned, and what you see now is relief. You've just saved me from a task bigger than I could handle." What would that be?" Fowler pointed to the cars and the trees. I didn't do any of this. How could I? Take a look at the cars.
His eye fell on the dirt where the gravel had been removed. He walked over to the bare spot and pointed at a hoofprint in the dirt. Do you have pigs this large around here?" No pigs at all." Prohaska came to the cabin door, dressed in his fawn-colored suit, walking awkwardly. Hello, Howard, he greeted the sheriff.
Sam, are you all crazy here? This woman tells me her boyfriend is camping out in a secured cabin, fighting off ghostswhat in hell happened to you?" Prohaska shook his head. I wasn't drunk, and I was here for the same reasons as Mr. Fowler. But I don't know how to tell about it. You're a pretty level-headed fellow." The sheriff nodded. All the worse, Prohaska concluded. Come in, have some coffeefor my sake, pleaseand I'll try to tell you. Mr. Fowler isn't crazy, and he has all kinds of evidence to prove it." Fowler took Dorothy's hand and led her into the cabin. In the kitchen, she helped him prepare the coffee and warmed up a few frozen breakfast rolls. The sheriff ate hesitantly, uncertain about the legalities, as Prohaska related what had happened. Fowler drained his cup and swore softly. What's the matter? Dorothy asked. The chart paper has to be replaced. I let it go last nightbroke the record. While he worked over the recorder, he talked about the equipment and mentioned he had first come to the cabin at Henry Taggart's request. Parkins sipped his coffee slowly, not reacting to anything yet, his eyes going back and forth between Fowler and Prohaska.
You knew Henry Taggart well? he asked. Went to high school together. Kept in touch after I came back from Vietnam." You dabble in this occult stuff?" Never have before. And I hope never to again."
Mr. Fowler, Sam, I don't know what to do with you. Sam here has done five
or six stories on this area, he's a smart fellow, and fair, too. I don't know about you, Mr. Fowler. I'd trust almost anything Sam says. But Jesus, you're telling me a pig made out of rocks did all this damage, wrecked two cars and ripped up a forest?" Fowler nodded. And worked over Sam." You need a doctor, Sam? Parkins asked. Not immediately. I can wait for a couple of hours. But I'm sore as hell." There aren't any birds outside, Dorothy said. I couldn't hear anything singing or moving. It was so quiet." Water's all around the place now, Fowler said. I don't know how it will react."
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Fowler made a last check of the cabin, to be sure everything was as it had been, then took Henry's key from his pocket and locked the front door. The emotions he was feeling were too mixed to sort out and identify, but he knew he had failed. What evidence he had was ridiculous, useless to convince a world even more incredulous than he washad been. No, he was incredulous stilldespite what had happened, he hardly believed the past few days himself. He took Dorothy by the arm and walked with her to the police car. I'll have a tow truck out here by tomorrow morning, Parkins said. He opened the rear door of his car for them. Fowler started to get into the back seat, then hesitated and snapped his fingers. I left the bag of gravel in the kitchen, he said. Prohaska looked at him from the front seat and nodded. It'll wait. We'll get it to you by mail, if it's so important, Parkins said. Fowler agreed meekly and stepped in. Dorothy sat beside him, hands folded in her lap, silent. Her face was rigid. He glanced at her, then turned away to look at the cabin. As if nothing had happened, it was unmarredbut for a few scratches on the front doorand serene. The sheriff backed the car out, turned it around, and drove down the gravel drive. Psychlone It'll be glad to see us go, I think, Fowler said. Dorothy flinched. They were almost to the new stream when a loud bang and the car's sudden wobble made the sheriff brake to a stop. They all sat mute for a second. Prohaska looked out the window. Blew a tire, he said. I don't believe it, Parkins said. He opened his door and walked around the car to examine the damage. Mr. Fowler, you'll have to help me move your equipment to get at the spare." Fowler waited for him to open the door on his sidethere was no interior handleand pulled his cases out of the trunk, laying them carefully on the gravel. Together they hoisted the tire and jack out and carried them to the front right fender. You know how to set this kind of jack up? the sheriff asked. Fowler nodded. Can I help? Prohaska asked. Just get out of the car, both of you. Mr. Fowler and I will handle it." I'm not helpless, you know. Then, under his breath, It wants us to stay for lunch." "Stop it," Dorothy said firmly. I don't want to hear any more about it." Fowler placed the jack under the car frame and began to pump the handle. Slowly the car lifted from the deflated tire. Okay, that's enough, the sheriff said. Here, there's a safety on the jack. He pointed and Fowler flipped the little clip. Using the pry-bar, the sheriff removed the hub cap and began to strain at the nuts. Goddamn electric wrenches put these things on too tight, he said.
Fowler grinned sympathetically and helped apply pressure on the other nuts. They slipped the tire off and replaced it with the spare. Fowler slapped at a mosquito, then looked at his palm. He had hit it. There was the evidencea smear of blood, fragments of insect. The blood smear turned black. The fragments powdered and fell away. He put his hand down slowly and looked around. Better hurry, he told the sheriff.
Why?" Just hurry." There was a crashing in the woods behind them. Prohaska jerked and moaned as his bruised hand hit the open car door. Fowler held the nuts out to Parkins one by one. What will it do when it finds out it's trapped? Prohaska asked. Fowler glanced at Dorothy, whose face was stony, and shook his head.
The tire was on and the nuts were tight. He put the hubcap in place and the sheriff slapped it with his palm. It refused to clamp in easily. Each time he hit one side, the other flopped out. They hit it together, tangling their arms, and it clanged into place. Parkins stood and brushed off his knees. Fowler approached the open door as the sheriff let the car down and pulled the jack away. He was lugging it to the trunk when more snapping and crashing noises came from the woods. Fowler looked up the gentle slope toward the cabin. At the crest of the rise, a two-legged figure was standing, arms raised. Hold it, Parkins said. There's someone up there." Get in the car, Fowler said. "Please!" It's gray, Prohaska said, gripping the car door. Sheriff, get us out of here." Parkins packed the jack away and sighed raggedly. You lift your equipment in, I'm going up to see what he's doing here." Sheriff" Mr. Fowler, don't tempt me to change my mind about you! Nobody is going to wander around this area, is that understood?" It's not someone, look at it!" The road was covered by tree shadows and the figure was indistinct across the thirty yards. Parkins squinted, then held his hand over his eyes to cut the sun glaring in his face from the West. Stay here, he said. Fowler quickly loaded his cases while Parkins hiked up the incline. Dorothy and Prohaska got into the car. Whoever you are, you're not supposed to be here, the sheriff said loudly. The figure didn't move. Parkins swatted at flies buzzing around his head and repeated what he'd said. What's happening, Larry? Dorothy asked. I don't know." Prohaska leaned out the car window. Howard, stay away from it!" Parkins stopped and put his hands on his hips. You! You heard anything I've said? Come down from there." The figure lowered its arms and appeared to hunch its shoulders. A low hum rose from the woods. Parkins backed away a step and put his hand on his pistol. Down from there right now, he growled, unstrapping the holster flap. A cloud rose around the figure's feet, as if a dust devil was swirling. The sheriff started to walk backward. Fowler ran toward him and grabbed his left arm, leaving his gun hand free. He tugged and Parkins stumbled after him, still trying to face the crest of the rise. Fowler aimed him for the driver's seat. Get in, get us out of here or you'll need a tow truck for this car, too. Parkins started the engine and Fowler climbed into the back seat, grabbing the window edge to pull the door shut. The dust around the figure cleared and Dorothy sucked in her breath. The pig, Prohaska said, looking back. It was at least as large as it had been the night before. Bits of gravel rose from the road bed and collected on its surface, adding to its bulk as Fowler watched. It advanced one foreleg, then the other, awkward, as if remembering how to move. The car lurched forward. The boar leaped and scrambled. The entire forest shrieked. It knew. Fowler pushed Dorothy into a crouch and covered the back of his neck. The gravel beast bounded into the air as the car skidded toward the new creek. Its forelegs crazed the rear window and punched a hole through, sending a shower of pebbles onto their necks. It bellowed with a nauseating, slate-squeaky edge and kicked at the rear of the car. The front tires hit the water and the car slewed on fresh mud and silt until it lay half in the creek. Parkins put it into reverse and backed up, ramming something heavy and unyielding, like a post. Fowler didn't dare look back. Dorothy was hyperventilating and trying to scream, unable to make any effective noise. Fucking hell! the sheriff bellowed. The engine died. At the same moment, the boar's attack stopped. Parkins turned the key and the wet engine sputtered. The longer they stayed in the water, the less chance there was that the engine would start. Dorothy began to pray in sobbing half-audible syllables. Fowler wondered if a cross would help. Somehow, he didn't think the creature was religiously observant. It was too primal. He raised his head and looked back through the cracked rear window. He could see a dark shape lumbering behind them, and through a hole in the glass he discerned the pebbled skin. All around the car, the trees were shivering. The shape vanished for a moment. The car bounced as the thing landed on the roof. A stony hoof crashed through the rear window and stopped against the back of the seat, flexing this way and that. He pushed Dorothy against the door and backed himself up to the rear seat. The hoof withdrew. A dancing series of beats on the roof followed Parkins attempt to start the engine again. The engine caught, coughed, then held. The sheriff gunned it and put it into drive. The car leaped forward and the boar fell off the roof, lancing another hole through the window, catching one leg and being dragged, wailing, across the creek. The car raced up
the last portion of the drive and skidded onto the road, almost across it into the field beyond. Parkins straightened it out and floored the accelerator. Tires smoking, they bounced and wobbled across the asphalt until the tread grabbed and they were off. Fowler shook his head and began to laugh helplessly. He could think of no more appropriate reaction. The boarwhat he could see of ithad broken up as soon as they crossed the creek. They were home free. It was trapped.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Haverstock, Illinois, was a bedroom community for Chicago. Each day, twenty thousand commuters took trains and cars into the city, and each night they returned. The town itself was old and honorable, with new housing tracts surrounding a central downtown district. The sprawl had been fast and unorganized in the forties, and now there were only a few open areas, broad fields and empty hillsides, between the developments. In three acres of such open space, Charles Q. Taylor had built a geodesic cabin and set up a business which was riding the wave of current fads. His front and back garages and toolsheds were filled with stacked lengths of rod and piping. As a showplace and training area for salesmen, the acre in front of the round house was littered with samples of his stock-in-trade: pyramids. The hollow frameworks, some covered with plastic sheeting and some open to the winds, gave a playgroundlike air to the yard. The pipes and rods were painted in rainbow colors. Accessories were placed in a neat single-wide mobile-home parked twenty yards from the house. The whole area was enclosed by chain-link fencing. Taylor was a bachelor and alone for the first time in a week. The night was cold and still, clear enough to almost reach up and touch the stars and moon. He finished his dinner at seven-thirty and stood on the back porch, smoking a pipe and casually looking for constellations. There was a kind of turbulence or cloud cover to the west, a rippling effect not unlike the northern lights, which he had seen once from the general vicinity of Haverstock, but of course not in the west. He wondered if he had missed the sunset results of a rocket misfire. Taylor, unlike many people in his business, genuinely believed in his merchandise. He had put tiny pyramids in his bathroom and bedroom, and in them he kept his razor blades, bars of soap, even bottles of vitamin C, to preserve them. When he swore an oath about his merchandise's efficacy in concentrating the pyramidic energy of the cosmos, he was honest and devoted. Despite the clarity of the air, this night he had a headache. He wasn't prone to headaches, not as bad as this at least, but a combination of meditation and sitting under the main pyramid in the front yard usually did the trick. He picked up his tobacco pouch, put on a sweater and walked out the front door. When names flashed in and out of his head, he wasn't alarmed. He'd gone through Dianetics and est and knew the sources of many irrational things. No doubt the name that kept occurring to him had been heard by his mother many years ago, when he'd been an impressionable fetus. That name stuck with him now, called back by the energizing of some buried engram. What had Corporal S.K. Percher to do with his mother? He shook his head and grinned. Best not to inquire, sometimes. That was the good part about being cleared of the hangups of the pastpast lives, parental lives, and the past of the current life. He hadn't gone far enough in any discipline to achieve that state. He admired those who hadbut for him, there hadn't been enough financial incentive. He hadn't found the right wave to ride. No central figure controlled the sale of pyramids or pyramid literatureno franchise interrupted the flow of profits. Pyramids were something he could dedicate himself to completely. He pulled out a plastic cushion and placed it on the cold concrete base of the open pyramid. He took out a key, unlocked the light switch and flicked it. Neon tubes on the metal piping flickered, then steadied into a bright blue glow. That was better. He squatted on the pad, pulled his feet and knees into a lotus position and tamped his pipe onto the cement. He sucked in a breath and released it with a resonant, loud, Auooooooommmmm..." A dark room, tiny windows What? His concentration was broken. He frowned and took up the mantra again. Exercise detail. In the yard of a concrete building Auooo ... darn! He stopped and rearranged himself to face north. The sweater was usually enough under the big pyramid, but now he was shivering. Best to raise the heat from the center of his energy-being. Best to concentrate and Tiny drone, high above God damn! He stood up and grasped the poles of the pyramid, almost ready to shake it down. He'd never had this much trouble before. The headache was worse. He was feeling very depressed now, worse than he'd felt in a long while. Bad vibes tonight, very bad vibes. He looked to the west and saw that the ripply patch was gone. Then he felt his shoulders tingle, as though someone were watching him. Not someonea crowd. Incineration He just had time to see the stars above waver as if distorted by rising heat. Then his hands were glued to the bars of the pyramid. To his horror he saw it was because the skin was charred and the joints were cooked solid. The neon lights shattered and sprayed powdered glass across the lawn. All the other pyramids were glowing with something like St. Elmo's fire, but it was red, and it was melting them as he watched. They crumpled into slag, more like wax than iron or aluminum. His shoulders began to smoke. Before he could scream, he was done clear through. The trees in the yard began to squirm, then to blacken, like burning hands grabbing for the sky. In the house, potted plants wilted and fell away in brown shards. Quietly, mildew began to grow along the inner walls, on the bedclothes in the upstairs room, and up and down the curtains across the plate-glass windows. The sky stopped shimmering, and the blight moved on. In downtown Haverstock, Mrs. Lenora McCarthy, a widow, sat in her modest apartment, reading a new Ladies Home Journal and waiting for a quiche to cook in the small, chipped oven. She heard a scream downstairs and did nothingthere were always noises in the old building, and unless they kept up for minutes at a stretch, it was best to ignore them. She had lived in the apartment for five years, and had adapted. Her husband had left her enough money to get along, and in another year she would be eligible for social security. She looked up from her reading and scratched her shoulder absently. An old memory was returning, not an unpleasant one now, but she hadn't thought about the war years for a long time. Why the memories should press on her at this moment was unaccountable. Stanley, she murmured. Then she saw him, far off in the living-room mirror. He looked worried. She stood up and let the magazine drop to the floor. The figure in the mirror was trying to say something to her: Go away, leave. She became frightened. Stanley was dead, had diedthe memory of the government telegram came to her, Missing in action, presumed deadthirty-three years before, destroying their dream, ending that stage of her life. She had subdued all these pains. Now they came back to her. If those disastrous days had never been, she would now be Mrs. Percher. Go away, leave She heard a sound like airplanes, high aboveno, a single airplane, faint as a mosquito. Then she saw that Stanley was no longer alone in the mirror. This confirmed the dream she had had, thirty-five years agoa dream of Stanley in a gray little room, with a tiny window, leaving to exercise in a gray-concrete yard, and flowers blooming along the top of the wall, beginning to burn, becoming bright and painful. He had not died when his plane went down. What happened to them, Stan? she asked. The screams were louder and more insistent. Stanley was crying. She looked down at her arms and hands. She could see the bones in them. The glare was intolerable for a moment. Then she saw the skin was burned and scarred, but it didn't hurt. Her hands began to glow, lighting up the little room. She couldn't leave now. It was too late. Theyand their pain, their hellwere in the room with her, and would not let her go. An hour later, the police sirens began to wail.