Now this was funny: Biddy's eyeballs were a part of the weave, and her eyeballs were the painted-on part of her. But otherwise, this girl here was not in the swelling weave at all. Serpents and patricks in the scenes on her eyeballs, the rooms of the patrick Bagley back home and the ape-dog plappergeist who served him! The plappergeist picked up a small sign and showed it and words flashed themselves across it. Freddy, this is Biddy in the words. They moved in on me, they took me over, she crowded me out. That's not me Biddy in her. I go back to the weave now. We're going to break it and throw it.
This girl here with him didn't even know that the pictures on her eyeballs changed, but she was chattering Biddy chatter and leading Fred Foley in a direction he didn't seem to want to go. And then there was the overpowering business of the breaking of the weave.
Hondo Silverio (that big, healing snake of a man) was into the weave very powerfully to throw it. Foley had the feeling and fear that Hondo would throw the weave to him. Even so, the weave was cleaner now. And Biddy Bencher was into the weave; dead, but not at all spiritless. The most overrated member of the weave, Baubo the demon indeed, was being broken out of it by Hondo and Salzy and Wing Manion; he began to lose his hold and to fall, whimpering and gibbering.
Arouet Manion, the writhing reticulatus on the stone floor, had been to his last arena. He died now with a flickering blue and orange glow about him; the glow gathered itself into a little ball-lightning that hung in the air a moment. It decayed with hissing and noisome odor, exploded with a weak poof, and was gone. And that was all the soul that Arouet Manion had had.
Jim Bauer, purpled and choking on his own tongue, staggered from the patio and reeled groaning down the iron-railed stairway to the lake. His own soul gulped out of his mouth in garish globs as he diminished and dimmed. A crackling purple light fell past him and plunged through the lake, falling down into interior infinity. It was the demon named Baubo who had been broken out of the weave and finally let go.
And Bauer was letting go, though his fingers throbbed out blood from the intensity of his grip on the iron railing. One by one, the members broke him out of the weave. Letitia Alive arose from a couch in an interior room, the hypnosis over her broken. She walked out of the house Morada and into the road. She had no resemblance to Letitia Bauer now, and no remembrance of the several days she had spent in Morada, Completely confused, back as the girl she had been before she was mind-napped, she walked away down the front road. She left the weave. She had never been in it strongly.
Letitia Dead found release in the cleansing of the weave and felt the first joy since she had died. And Hondo (why such a thing, why such a thing?) was throwing the weave to Fred Foley, as soon as Bauer should be completely broken out of it.
Biddy Bencher was dead, but still strong and in communication. And this girl here with Foley, who looked like Biddy and was not, was aware of many outre things, but she was completely blind and deaf to the weave itself. And her painted eyeballs ceased to change now; they were no more than dead paint. No, one last flick, one final material message from Biddy herself in words across the painted eyeballs.
Fooled her, Freddy, one last trick. The Harvester mark on the forehead is cancerous. It's a short-term body she's stolen from me.
Then the eyes were dead paint for an end, and this girl was someone else.
“What happened to Biddy Bencher?” Freddy asked her sullenly. Powerful men from the dark gripped each of Foley's arms. He would go in the direction this girl wished.
“But I'm Biddy Bencher,” she said. “How could there be another?”
“Then what happened to Miss Cora Addamson the beautiful and evergreen harpy?”
“I'm still beautiful, don't you think so? It's nice to be several persons, and you yourself will sample that pleasure. When did you know?”
“When you called me ‘little poodle-tooth.’ Biddy had several hundred pet names for me, but they followed a pattern known only to the two of us. ‘Poodle-tooth’ couldn't be among them. Why are we going back to the Bug? And what did you do with Biddy?” Those men were hustling Foley along at a pretty good clip now.
“I became Biddy, what else?” said the Beautiful Addamson harpy. “You already know that. And you begin to doubt your sanity now when you were so sure of it before? Oh, you'll have a period of that, Freddy, but when you come through on the other side you'll be sound. We don't make mistakes in those we select to join us.”
“Dammit, Addamson, at least tell me where is her body, or yours, or the other.”
“When the lights came on in the town you saw it lying in the gutter and you passed it by without a second look. An empty body doesn't have much meaning when the personality has been drained out of it. Our beloved Carmody Overlark (now enjoying a well-earned sleep) told you that we were superb mimics, but I'm afraid he didn't tell you all that's involved in our very ancient art of mimicry. So now you don't know whether this is her body or mine.”
“Why Biddy? She wasn't prominent in the world.”
“In her potential she was staggering. Never in my lives did I move into such a house. And her father was prominent and rich and powerful, with a lifelong slumbering powerhouse of a mind. My own father, who is still my father and who has now become Bencher, selected him and her. My own father hadn't appeared in the world in quite some centuries and there are reasons why he can't be recognized even now. He rather overstepped himself the last time around and became one of the permanent legends of evil. Quite a good fellow, though. In not too long a time you'll appreciate him as a father-in-law.”
“Had Bencher been taken over by your father when I saw him last?”
“Yes. Just minutes before.”
They were back at the Bug. Two strong men dragged Fred Foley in. Doctor Millhouse was presiding.
“Ah, Smith-Foley, you wandered off to see your girl,” he purred. “Fortunately she had the good sense to have you brought back here. You've guessed, haven't you, that the Bug is more than the Bug? It's one of our Centers.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“So did Croll. And Boneface, coming suddenly, killed another man whom I put up as a shield and gave my appearance (in the bone-face mind). And now things will go on as before.”
“But the world is going to pieces,” Foley protested.
“So it is,” agreed Doctor Millhouse. “Exactly as before. We keep it going to pieces. And it'll be a smaller world when we put the pieces together again sometime hence. We have to shrink it periodically; that's part of the cycle. You also become part of it. You'll be one of us now. Foley. Your catharsis will begin now. Oh yes, you really will lose your mind, but only for a while. It'll be a much more amenable mind when it's restored to you. These things are so predictable.”
But one thing not at all predictable was suffering terrible spasm and alteration.
In one context, James Bauer had lurched down to the bottom of the iron stairway and was standing ankle-deep in the waters of his lake, hanging on with the last skin of his life and moaning that he should fall. But in another context he had gone down the world cliff that is the side of Morada. This cliff has no bottom, and nobody has even been more than a dozen steps down that broken stairway from the top. Concrete steps breaking off from the everlasting stone; the iron railing, which had been built by giants, now swinging loose over the void; steeper and more pitchful steps and a great gap in them, and also the disappearance above of those steps that were already climbed down.
Bauer leapt the first gap, clawed stone, found the remnant of a step and even a last rusty length of an iron rail, slid purposefully toward a ledge, hung there a moment with bleeding fingers. He saw a continuance of the steps below, back in under the cliff at a dizzy angle. He swung himself in under, let go, scraped rougher rock in search of a foothold, missed his footing and hold in a sudden dampness and slickness (that was the lake in the mundane aspect) and fell downward, and down, and down, screaming hoarsely forever.
“It's a new weave now,” said Hond
o Silverio. Even that strong one, growing stronger, was shaken by Bauer's fall like black lightning. “A new weave. Here, Freddy, catch the tangle of it! We give you the Mastery!”
All his life people gave valuable things to Freddy unasked — powers, lives, worlds.
It beat the other thing into him. Hondo and Salzy Silverio, Wing Manion, the dead Letitia Bauer and the dead Bedelia Bencher, all were tangled up in him and they were stronger than the new intruder.
But a tired spirit was intruded into Foley then while men held him fast and other men plunged needles into him and Doctor Millhouse presided.
“He takes you over, Foley,” the doctor said, “but he's old and he's incomplete. It's necessary that a lot of you survive along with him. You'll make your arrangements. Go mad now! But when your long madness passes you'll be one of us, what's left of you.” And Doctor Millhouse held a watch in his hand, studying it.
“What are you looking at? Dammit, what are you watching?” Fred Foley demanded as the darkness began to gulp him down.
“The second hand,” said the doctor. “These things are so predictable.”
“Why? Why? Nothing is going to happen to me,” Freddy declared. “I have strengths that you don't know about.” (Pride of patricks, monstrous harvest of the brain-weave, flight of falcons.) “Biddy — Oh, dammit! Cora Addamson, what's he waiting for?”
Cora-Biddy had the curious old shell-form ears, the itching ears of Scripture. She had them from both her components, for the people of the weave are as evilly avid for novelty as are the returning people.
“The stridor vesanus, Freddy,” said Cora-Biddy. “Be patient. It comes.”
“The what?” Fred Foley asked, but he already knew. The second night in the tomb is always the most hideous one. What comes forth, comes forth from that delirium. And the last floating spider-silk had now settled on him. He was caught in the spiderweb.
“The screaming, Freddy,” Cora the beautiful and evergreen harpy said. “It always comes on schedule.”
Then, as Doctor Millhouse looked up from his watch, Foley's mind gave way. He began to scream. The old, returning Other entered and mingled with his mind and body. He continued the screaming (the final tomb humiliation) as they laced him into the jacket to take him away. And that was the end of Fred Foley as he had been.
But it wasn't the end of him as he would be. He did have strengths that they didn't know about.
He was Master of the weave, and now the weave need not remain anarchic.
With a word he could become Master of the falcon. He could fly the falcon, or he could ground it.
He was companion of patricks, and now he was himself more than a patrick. He was more than a Croll or Aloysius. He was Emperor.
He now had a returning lightning-toad intruded into his head and his body, and in the toad was the wisdom-jewel.
He was Everyman. He was Everylout.
Nobody else, coming in simplicity, had ever partaken of all four Monsters. Nobody else had had such good eyes, had ever been able to see on all the levels and into all the worlds. No person else had ever integrated all his archetypes and become fully conscious — even while tumbling into needle-induced unconsciousness.
He had been called, as the patricks had not been, as the Harvesters themselves had not been, as none of the exterior creatures had been of themselves. The Harvesters, the persons of the weave, had not themselves truly mutated. They couldn't have done it; they hadn't the holy simplicity for it. Theirs was a false and premature mutation, It was Fred Foley who now became the first of the new mutation, the special sort of man.
And in the morning —
(Green-mottled humor in him, helical passion, saintly sex-fish, ashen death-joy, cinnamon cookie for Cerberus —
Pride of patricks in him, Black Patricks of New York and Nairobi, Yellow Patricks of Moscow and Lhasa, Brown Patricks of Batangas and Tongareva, Nobility of Metropolitans and Simplicity of Crolls, the Exarch of Yerevan and the Aloysius of Dublin in him —
Oceanic ages in him, insane flitting reptilian wraiths that have a random gift that isn't given to proper creatures, and a new interior guest from that returning jewel-headed toad people —
Flight of falcons in him. “You can command the falcon, Freddy, when you wake to it,” came the underground voice of Miguel. “You can even command the falcon to furl its wings again.” —
Unweaponed simplicity in him that could burst every bond. Every under-thing rooted in him now —
The ashen Letitia herself had just borne a child who was truly beautiful and full of light, somehow, in a manner and place that we do not know the names of. So —
Letitia-gladness in him. Gobbled devils in him — )
— and in the morning he would come out of it all: a new element that the returnees had not calculated in adjusting the cyclic trajectory. (Returnees also in him.)
On so small a new module it might depend. What would be the shape and direction of it now: still the repeating cycle, or the ascending spiral?
Would the next Mansions be the First again? Or the Fifth?
Fourth Mansions Page 23