Watson, Ian - Novel 10

by Deathhunter (v1. 1)

  Another slug hit the cabin.

  “We’ll shin down the ladder. We’ll run for the trees.’’

  A bullet whined overhead, completely missing the cabin. Resnick must be jerking the rifle every time he pulled the trigger.

  “We’ll be okay. He’ll miss us. People have to overcome a mighty aversion to using guns on other people. It screws up their shooting.’’

  “It didn’t screw yours up.’’ Jim did not offer to hand the gun over to Weinberger, though. Nor did Weinberger seem anxious to be holding it.

  “I’m going first, Jim. You’ve got three shots to fire at the chopper while you follow me. Don't worry too much about hitting it!’’

  “Hey —’’

  But Weinberger had already yanked the trapdoor open, and was scrambling down the ladder.

  Nathan jumped the last half dozen feet to the ground. But he misjudged the distance. The impact twisted his ankle and he fell, the ankle a sudden ball of pain. Seizing his ankle, he squeezed it and rubbed — and heard another rifle shot whine high overhead. The worst of the pain went away quite quickly. Nothing was broken. Nathan hauled himself to his feet. His ankle was tender but he knew that he could run — limpingly.

  Thirty feet above his head, Todhunter seemed to have snagged his jacket on a nail — or was it between two spars? The man looked too big and ungainly to climb down properly. Wrenching his coat free, Todhunter loosed another wild shot.

  “The plane was the net!’’ screamed Nathan. “But Resnick is the harpoon!”

  Nathan began hobble-running across the grass. Where was the helicopter, damn it? As he looked, the machine soared right over the tower, and a little bundle was tossed out.

  Nathan had a couple of moments to guess what it might be, and to throw himself down with his eyes shut, before the dynamite exploded.

  Nathan recovered enough senses to know that he was dying. Something had impaled him. It was frightfully painful, but somehow it was stopping his life from leaking out of him all at once.

  He concentrated. The important thing was: was he dying too quickly, or not quickly enough? Would he have time for his body to realize that it was dying and begin sweating to signal Death? He hoped so. On the other hand, if Resnick got to him too soon he dreaded the prospect of a sudden coup de grdce. He fought the pain, so that he could fear the coup de grdce.

  Awkwardly he turned his head. The helicopter was settling down on to grass littered with wreckage. He couldn’t hear its rotors; he was deaf. The firetower no longer towered overhead, though some tall timbers stayed drunkenly erect. The tower and its cabin had been broken up and thrown around. Some piece of the pylon must be sticking through his body. Like a harpoon.

  ‘Praise be, my little Death’s here already! Ah no, its only blood . . . spilling, spurting.’

  With momentary clarity Nathan saw where Todhunter lay. For a moment he couldn’t quite understand what he saw. Then he realized that Todhunter had lost his head. Permanently.

  As soon as the rotor blades had stopped, Noel Resnick clambered out. The big man looked about cautiously, saw Todhunter’s headless trunk, and was promptly sick upon the grass.

  ‘Surely I’ve spent enough time dying by now? Surely?’

  Nathan’s vision blurred with a rosy haze. Was this his little Death coming flying to him now? Or was it Resnick? He summoned up a suitable insult for the man.

  ‘Murderer.’

  He wasn’t sure whether he said this aloud. Actually, he thought, in most other respects Resnick — Master of the House of Death — was a saviour of souls.

  Pain preoccupied Nathan.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Jim swam. Or flew. He wasn’t sure which. Rapture possessed him. He had very little awareness of a body. Ahead, were . . .

  Lights: great sparkling, beautiful lights! Shining facets. Coloured mirrors in which he might see who he was, and become what he saw. He was tiny, and they were great — with oh so many faces, bright blank faces that yearned to picture him.

  Not all of them so yearned. By no means all. Many were already ‘full*, he realized. They were complete. Now he felt panic. He might not find one, to complete himself.

  But no; for the further through this medium he went, the more of them were available. He could sense those from afar. It was as if they scented the medium with their light, with a most compelling musky scent of light.

  Yet something made him fly on further, greedily.

  He was Aladdin, rushing through the cave of silver coins and the cave of gold coins — where faces were already stamped upon many of the coins — seeking for the garden with the trees of perfect jewels . . .

  Memory flooded back. In horror he recalled a tiny wormlike creature with a human face being dragged willy-nilly through this very place in the beak of a red bat-moth!

  The horror died, as he remembered what the bat-moth really was. Then the horror surged back again, redoubled. Nothing whatever was dragging him along — for his own salvation!

  He knew exactly where he was. And he knew that he had died. Most suddenly.

  The crystal fog was even vaster than he remembered. Or he was much smaller. The ‘gravity’ of the crystals was fully apparent to him now. It was a gravity of mood rather than of mass. Those crystals which were already full repelled him emotionally — and his line of flight obeyed his emotions. Available jewels tugged from afar. For the time being the various forces of repulsion and attraction seemed to balance out, allowing him to proceed as he wished — since he had no desire to be caught. But gradually the trend was becoming attractive, pulling him more fiercely.

  How he struggled to keep clear of them. How he willed himself to fly right through, without coming close to any.

  He flew for hours, or for minutes. No time existed. Surely he must be nearing the outer fringes now, so strongly did the empty crystals ache for him! There were many more empty ones out here.

  But where was the void beyond them? Where was the lucid emptiness? Was it up? Was it down? Was it through here?

  The light appeared to be whiter in one direction, less prismatic . . .

  No! He turned back.

  He was losing his strength. His will was ebbing.

  Now he was in a cul-de-sac, a blind channel bright with azure, rose and golden icebergs. As he turned sluggishly to escape once more, fighting against some kind of current which was pressing him the other way, the ice closed up . . .

  TWENTY-NINE

  As the monorail train from Gracchus sped out of the final black tunnel into the honeyed sunlight, Jim beheld the enchanted valley of Egremont. . .

  He saw the hills aflame, the blue mirror of Lake Tulane, the orchards, farms and factory domes, the tiny Beadway pods, the peak of the distant House of Death.

  He sat, numbed by the sight.

  I’m dead. Dead. And here is my crystal prison . . .

  I’m dead because Noel Resnick shot me. (Did he shoot me? Tm not sure, but he certainly killed me.)

  ‘And I know that I’m dead. So here is a world of truth, not fantasy. Here is a perfect recording of the real world.

  ‘How perfect is it?’

  All the inhabitants of this recreated Egremont — Marta and Weinberger, Resnick and Alice Huron — would be the furniture of his own mind. They would be his own memories, incarnated. Would they still be able to act with purposes and motives of their own?

  With all the strength of his will he concentrated on the passing scene, trying to shift one single item in it, to force it to change into something else.

  ‘That tree! Let it be a fountain!’

  The tree was a tree was a tree.

  ‘I’m the Controller — oh yes, I’m that now! — but things won’t obey my control. . .’

  Now the train was slowing as it approached the station.

  On impulse he patted his pocket, in case — somehow — the gun

  was still there; but his pocket was empty of any gun.

  Rising, he tugged down his valise. Why had he stuck it u
p there on the luggage rack in the first place, when the train was empty except for himself? Out of a sense of tidiness, perhaps. He had always been worried about bumping into things.

  And now he had bumped into something which would hold him for an eternity . . . Though how could that be, if ordinary minutes and hours and days applied in Egremont? He had no idea. He just felt extraordinarily lonely. Where were the doors from here into other possible worlds? Nowhere. That was the nature of this place.

  ‘Hell,’ he thought, ‘is the world come round again. And Tm in Hell, which is quite simply Egremont.’

  A cheerful, buxom woman stood waiting for him on the platform . . .

  Of course. Who else? But could she speak freely? Could she change her lines? For that matter, could he?

  “A wonderful day, Jim!” Marta exclaimed gaily, as they shook hands. “And an especially wonderful day for Egremont.”

  “Yes, Norman Harper’s retiring today, isn’t he?”

  Jim had not said that last time. He hadn’t known. But Marta was not in the least put out.

  “Right! Our P and J: our Pride and Joy. The ceremony’s quite soon, in fact. We’ll just be in time to catch it.”

  “Quite an auspicious moment to arrive,” said Jim cautiously. “I suppose Alice Huron is going to guide him?”

  “Oh yes. Though how can any of us really guide his death? You know Alice, do you?”

  He nodded.

  “She doesn’t know me, though.”

  Marta’s eyes narrowed, puzzled.

  “Then how did you know —?” She faltered. “Oh, I think I see . . .” She began to move away towards the waiting electric runabout.

  He caught her by the arm.

  “What do you see?”

  “Jim — Mr Todhunter — what’s the matter with you? Do you feel ill?”

  He let go of her.

  “I’m all right. Sorry.”

  She smiled. “It’s just that I don’t like to get involved in, well, any sort of intrigue. There are so many more pleasant things going on. This beautiful day, to begin with!”

  What she saw, no doubt, was that he was a secret agent involved in some kind of House politicking, and he would like to recruit her to his side as an informant.

  To put her at her ease Jim said firmly, “Oh, it’s nothing like that — nothing at all! I assure you, Marta, I really do. I just heard on the grapevine that Alice Huron was going to guide Harper. That’s all.”

  Reassured, she led him to the runabout.

  As they drove along, Marta pointed out the sights of Egremont: Harper Street, the Farming Co-op, the school complex where she was a guide, the famous Mall where he could dine on the finest food around at the Three Spires restaurant . . . She had recovered her jolly composure.

  ‘Here we go again . . .’

  This time, forewarned — doubly forewarned by his initial faux pas with Marta! — he must bide his time and trace out all Resnick’s lines of power. He must work out Resnick’s exact place in the spider’s web which included Alice Huron and Mary-Ann Sczepanski and Toni Bekker and which extended he knew not how far, nor with how many tangles in it. Marta’s reaction to his armgrabbing question had sounded quite spontaneous, quite free. It had almost set up an entirely different situation with regard to her, losing him perhaps her friendly trust.

  ‘Hell is a lot more complicated to live in than I thought. . .’He felt no pain as such. Only the ache of loneliness, and the strain of the exhausting, futile mental acrobatics he would have to perform to lead a feasible ‘life’ here.

  This time at least (he promised himself) he must certainly go to bed with someone! Someone other than Nathan Weinberger . . .

  Weinberger . . .! Harper. The ceremony!

  Marta and he were driving towards a murder, a murder which was so much a part of him by now that it seemed ordinary and obvious — a murder which he could still prevent.

  Yet if he did prevent it, then Weinberger would inevitably remain in Mary-Ann Sczepanski’s charge, and so by proxy in Resnick’s clutches. Jim would never have an excuse to work with him.

  “. . .I oughtn’t to tell you, but we’ve fixed up a ‘get-to-know- you’ barbecue out at the Lake this evening.”

  “Sounds great,” said Jim automatically.

  “You don’t sound very excited.”

  “Oh, I am. I am.”

  “You haven’t tasted our local white wine, from the Vinehouse!”

  “I look forward to it, Marta. Really Ido.” ‘But it won7 happen this evening. It won’t happen till Friday evening, by which time everything will have changed.

  ‘And I shall be working with Nathan by then — doing what?

  ‘Why, building a cage for Death!’

  Yes, the first thing he must do was build a cage for Death, to catch one of those little red go-between critturs and force it to lead him out of here. Out of this crystal prison which bound him, in a perfect retake of Egremont. Out into unspace, into freedom.

  ‘It should take me with it right away. I’m already dead.’

  But would it be a real Death which he caught in Weinberger’s cage? Could he really summon one of those creatures into this crystal — or would he only imagine that he did so?

  ‘Who needs to build a cage? I only need the Mike Mullen tape, and I’ve already got that, and the Neo-H pills from the pharmacy. And the pheromone, of course — I need that, and Weinberger has it, left in his sealed apartment under lock and key. There’s no way of getting in there without authority. So I’ll have to play along with Nathan’s present fears. We’ll just have to build the cage, after all. . .’

  But how could he possibly allow Harper to be murdered, this very afternoon, in perhaps half an hour or an hour? How could he let the poet be killed by surprise, so that a very deserving man (his poetry aside) went to Hell?

  “. . . and that’s the Octagon. Our Peace Office.”

  There was, of course, no church in Egremont. Egremont was a model of an enlightened, well-adjusted community . . .

  But this particular Norman Harper was only part of the furniture of Jim’s own mind! As was the Weinberger who waited ahead, with the hidden gun.

  Yet Marta — and presumably everyone else — appeared to be thoroughly alive. Pinch Marta and she would squeal, and Jim would suffer the consequehces.

  If he did pinch her, maybe the runabout would go out of control. Maybe they would crash.

  At a sedate fifteen miles per hour this would hardly do much damage — but suppose they were travelling much faster? Could Jim be killed, when he was already dead? Alternatively, could he take his own life?

  Would he simply find himself back on the monorail train, heading into Egremont forever and forever?

  The House of Death and the Hospital rose up ahead, twin pyramids clad in gardens.

  Maybe this had already all happened before not once but many times? With the difference that this timey uniqudy, he remembered!

  If that was so, then the tipsy alien angel called Lai and all the little Deaths and the whole crystal fog would be the furniture of his mind too!

  Oh, how this crystal which had encysted him must be feasting on his misery and doubt! If the crystal existed at all. . .

  Perhaps there had once been a ‘real’ world far from here, quite different from Egremont and Gracchus and the society of death? Jim tried to imagine what it might have been like.

  ‘I was actually a priest, who lost his faith — or who never had one. A priest with an itchy, frustrated libido. And Marta and Weinberger and all the others were my parishioners, whom I utterly failed. And this is what God has done to me. But I never believed in God. There’s only unspace — and the crystal fog. I never believed in God, so He isn’t here. His House isn’t here.

  ‘Why was I a priest? Because I couldn’t cope with the intrigues of life. Only with the simplicity of death. I must have killed myself when I still couldn’t cope with the deviousness, the life politics. I tried to run out on it all into the empty wilderness, o
f death. So now I hive to repeat over and over again what I couldn’t cope with when I was alive: the web of relationships, and lust, and power... It all got so complicated that I felt I was going mad with the complexities that other people take for granted. Easing people out of life into death would be just the way I’d try to trim the world, wouldn’t it? Dead people are simpler than living people. (Only, they bloody well aren’t here!) So I simplified things. Because I didn't understand them. I didn’t understand sex or money or politics. Or relationships. It was easier to be a priest, except that I didn’t believe. Or I stopped believing. Or my belief was taken away from me . . .’

  As they turned into the concourse between the Hospital and the House, Jim prayed.

  There was no response. How could there be? This other life of his was only a passing fantasy.

  ‘There are no more priests, damn it! Well, give or take a few hundred who’ve gone underground into priest holes, with powerful protectors. Their God was just an early morning mist. And I was never one of those! Whatever made me think it? I’m a guide, and a good one. I only failed as a guide because of the damned intrigues. But I did succeed in one thing: I found out what death really is.

  ‘And this is my death: trapped inside one jewel in the crystal fog — a jewel where one man aches alone.

  ‘And this is my first repeat of Egremont.

  ‘I’m in danger of losing my sanity here. What is insanity? Complete disconnection from the world, that’s what. So all the captive dead are mad.’

  As Marta opened the door of the runabout, Jim felt like cudgelling his forehead with his fists. But he got out. He allowed Marta to tug him along by the arm, down through the ranks of the audience. Earlier he had grabbed her arm; now she grabbed his, in mischievous reprise. She was solid, she was wholesome. He desired her.

  They sat together on the turf.

  “That’s Norman Harper on the left.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  But Jim was staring at Mark Barnes, the natty negro Mayor of Egremont. Today was the only day when Jim would have a chance to see him, according to the way events went before. Where was the Mayor’s place in all the chains of relationships?