and the rest of them. Her eyes widened, and their sudden power was so intense that it was sickening. She smiled triumphantly, the victor of a prolonged game. "You'd better gag her before we take her down," she said. ------------------------------------294 ------------------------------------295
295
Thirty-six
A sudden lurch threw Barbara against the side of the van. She managed to heave herself upright, her bound hands scrabbling behind her, her right shoulder throbbing, so that she could see out of the rear window. A smell of dust crawled in her nostrils, she tasted ink and paper from the letter which they'd stuffed into her mouth. She was afraid she was going to be sick. Perhaps that might dislodge the gag.
The van was speeding through the dock area. Blankfaced warehouses lowered over deserted streets, blocks of ight hovered beneath the glaring streetlamps. Was the cult looking for somewhere as deserted as this? She redoubled her efforts to break her bonds. She had to be free before the van stopped, before they came to get her.
Her struggles were having no effect that she could Perceive. The tights which were strangling her wrists and ------------------------------------296
ankles, flimsy though they always seemed as clothes, made unbreakable bonds. She had little room to struggle: luggage--suitcases and up-ended trunks--occupied most of the back of the van, which felt oppressively cramped. Even if she managed to break free, another of the vans was following; she would never be able to open the doors unnoticed. Nevertheless she wrenched at her bonds, tried to force her wrists apart as the tights cut into her skin. She had to keep trying while there was a chance of saving Angela.
But was there still a chance, when Barbara had already been so wrong about her--about the initiation? Of course that wasn't something that took place all at once when the children were thirteen; that was only when it was completed. No doubt Angela's initiation had begun as soon as they had captured her.
And her game with her mother, luring her from place to place, had been part of the initiation. Perhaps Angela would have continued playing her, confusing her and tiring her before the kill, if the cult hadn't needed to leave Glasgow hurriedly. Now that they had captured Barbara, what was the rest of the initiation?
She mustn't think about that. Above all, she mustn't brood over the hatred she had glimpsed in Angela's eyes. The cult had made Angela feel that way, whatever they had told her--perhaps that Barbara had taken her father away from her, to judge by her bitter remark in the car. No doubt they had poisoned her more thoroughly against Barbara, but for the moment it was more important to remember that they needed to corrupt her utterly. Shouldn't that mean that until the initiation was completed, she could be saved?
Perhaps it did, yet when Barbara remembered her eyes, there seemed no point in trying. The psychometer had ------------------------------------297
been right, nine years ago: Angela had great power. But now that power was perverted beyond recognition in the service of the nameless. No wonder Ted was their puppet-- presumably he had been since the day he'd disappeared in Glasgow--though one of the worst things had been his indifferent stare as he had tightened Barbara's bonds.
Angela's look was worse, for it was beyond indifference. When their eyes met, Barbara had felt destroyed, worthless, meaningful only as a victim. Angela's eyes looked unnaturally blue, polluted. Their gaze had held her mother absolutely still while she was being bound and gagged. Was Angela the reason why the cult was near its goal? Could her power have been what the cult had been awaiting?
Barbara mustn't think that, for it led to despair. She had already felt how the power of the cult seized on despair. Her arms were throbbing and shaking as she tried to loosen the bonds at her wrists, her anklebones scraped together as she sawed her ankles back and forth. Surely her bonds could yield half an inch, even a quarter, to give her the extra surge of strength she needed.
By now the vans had left London behind. There was nothing beside the road for miles except distant floodlit factories, glaring across dark fields or marshes. Trucks roared by, their headlights tumbling shadows between the trunks that filled the van. A sack or a coat was slumped between two of the trunks.
Could she attract the attention of one of the truck drivers? She tried to squirm toward the rear doors, to be able to press her face against the window while she thought how to communicate, but a jumble of suitcases blocked her way. She struggled to hoist herself over them--it didn't matter if she fell--but it was hopeless. In any case, the driver of the van behind hers would see her before any of the truck drivers had the chance. Between the trunks next ------------------------------------298
to the doors, the sack or the coat looked unpleasantly like a small figure with a collapsed head.
She searched the suitcases as best she could, for a metal edge with which she could saw through her bonds. There was none--no doubt her captors had made sure that none was within reach. Shadows staggered among the trunks as trucks passed. The van seemed to be growing smaller and dustier; certainly there was a harsh dry smell. As headlights rushed past the van, the shape between the trunks appeared to nod toward her, raising its caved-in face.
All at once the van lurched away from the trucks, onto an unlit road. She was thrown bodily onto the heap of suitcases, one of which snapped open. Now the only light came from the following van, a couple of dim scraps which jerked about near the roof and left the rest of the interior in darkness. Another lurch, and she was hurled back against the wall. She heard an object thud out of the open suitcase and roll against her thigh.
After a struggle she succeeded in touching the object with her hand. Perhaps it was an ornament, or something equally fragile, for it was wrapped in cloth that felt stiff with stains. Parts of it were soft, or was that the cloth? Perhaps it was a container of some kind, for it had fallen open within the wrapping. There was no reason for her to writhe away from it: why should the smell of earth be intrinsically horrible? Nevertheless she squirmed violently until she managed to kick the wrapped object across the van.
When the van stopped it was almost a relief. Then the headlights of the van behind went out, and it was no relief at all. She was alone in the dark with the smells of earth and dust, with a faint dry stirring between her and the doors. Though she was choking on paper she held herself absolutely still, as if that would make her imperceptible. ------------------------------------299
By the time they came to take her out she was shaking with the effort or with fear.
At first there seemed to be almost nothing outside the van, just darkness flattened by a hissing wind. When her eyes adjusted she saw that she was close to a small river which presumably led to the Thames. All around her, marshes glimmered spikily beneath a sky that glowed like fog. Gulls flaked away from the landscape, screaming. The smudges on the horizon might be hills or clouds. The lumps of darkness further up the river were houses, perhaps abandoned; all the windows were dark.
Angela came to where two of the men were holding Barbara. She stared at her mother for a while. Her dim face was unreadable as fog, but her eyes were gleaming. Eventually she glanced past Barbara, at the van in which she had been locked. Barbara couldn't understand why her captors grew tense, tightened their hold on her, until she heard something emerge from the van.
Ted saw it before she did. For a moment his face writhed, appalled, and then grew blank once more. In a few moments the dwarfish shape had stumbled to Angela. In the darkness Barbara might have mistaken it for a child, except that its unstable head was disproportionately small, its skin appeared to be flapping. It dropped the wrapped object that smelled of earth at Barbara's feet. When the wrappings fell open, Barbara closed her eyes.
"I thought you should see this," Angela said. "It belonged to your friend Gerry Martin."
Barbara waited as long as she could before she opened her eyes, but when she did so Angela was holding up the unwrapped object by its hair for her to see. It wasn't as bad as she'd feared; it was so incomplete that she co
uld pretend it was unrecognizable. Even so, she looked away, gagging on the wad of paper. ------------------------------------300
"It doesn't matter," Angela said, shrugging. "You'll be like that when we've finished. Only in your case it's going to take longer."
She handed the object to the dwarfish thing, which floundered away at once, toward the marshes. Barbara was beyond reacting. All she could think of was the way that everyone had drawn back from the thing--everyone but Angela. ------------------------------------301
301
Thirty-seven
When the trunks and suitcases had been unloaded, the vans drove away into the dark. Once the engines faded there was no sound except for the scraping of marsh grasses, twitching in the wind. Even the children were silent, the children who smelled overpoweringly of Barbara's perfume.
If she managed to chew through the gag her cries for help would seem very loud. Surely they would wake someone in the nearby houses, if the houses were occupied. She was trying to move the gag forward surreptitiously, but it was lodged against the back of her mouth. If she fought it more violently her captors would notice; they must be able to see her face, since she could see theirs now--the lopsided woman, a large man whose bald head was dark with stubble, a small dumpy woman with a permanent defensive simper, a thick-lipped man whose tongue kept squeezing ------------------------------------302
out between his lips. All of them seemed embarrassed by her presence as victim, for all of them avoided looking at her. No doubt when it came to torturing her they would be enthusiastic enough.
She seemed to fight to dislodge the gag for hours; it was impossible to judge the passage of time beneath the looming sky. The ink tasted like bile. Her captors seemed utterly indifferent to where they were, to the chill wind and the desolation--she might have deduced as much from the houses where they lived. No doubt that was one effect of their belief that they were only the tools of what they were doing. She had to believe that Angela was only a tool, unable to comprehend what she was doing--but of course she couldn't believe that at all.
Before she was able to shift the gag, the drivers of the vans came back. The cultists picked up the luggage and followed Angela stealthily toward the river. It seemed nightmarishly banal, a parody of a holiday outing that didn't dare take place in daylight. There were even a couple of stooped old people to make it more like a family party. At the end of the procession, one man carried nothing. She couldn't make out his face.
One of her captors had freed her legs. The two men marched her crabwise along the path, whose edges were sharp with grass. She was halfway there before she realized that the procession was heading directly for the houses. If the cult intended to hide in one of them, surely the neighbors would hear.
Angela led the procession into one of the long gardens, where a meagre stream glimmered beneath a pathless rustic bridge. The procession went straight past the bungalow, and Barbara saw that a powerboat was moored at the end of the garden, at a small landing-stage. She fought to cry out, to make any sound beyond a strangled moaning.
Half the luggage had been transferred to the boat when a ------------------------------------303
light went on in the bungalow. Barbara grew tense as a spring while she made herself pretend to be limp and hopeless. Almost at once the back porch lit up. The door swung open, and a burly man stood there staring at the people in his garden.
She managed to drag herself free of one of her captors and stagger a step toward the owner of the property--but it was no use. When he made out the people who were waiting in the dark, he switched out the porch light and strode to the boat, where he waited in the wheelhouse for them. She ought to have seen that he was dressed for a voyage.
There was hardly enough room on the deck for everyone. The children, the two who'd met her in her flat and a girl about six years old, were sent into the wheelhouse. They obeyed at once, though it was impossible to tell which of the cultists were their parents, and sat out of the way, against the wall of the open cabin. When Barbara was shoved onto the deck, into the midst of the crowd, the boat heeled alarmingly. She couldn't feel any more vulnerable.
As soon as everyone was aboard, the boat moved off with a roar. Surely the noise must wake someone in the houses--but the houses were falling behind now, and they were still dark. The faces of her captors had grown brighter, green toward the starboard side, red toward port. In the glow from the dials in the wheelhouse she could see some of them clearly, Angela and Ted both watching her emotionlessly, a raggedly tonsured youth whom she thought she'd seen before, a girl with hair like a cap of tar. Some of them were beginning to glance eagerly at Barbara now that they were on their way.
Soon the houses had sunk into the marshes. There was only the flat treeless glistening land, broken by wide strips of darkness that were ditches. Above the horizon, toward the North Sea, the clouds were the color of ashen fire. ------------------------------------304
Here and there pale blotches stirred, moved away lowing across the grass. They were the only signs of life.
When the boat reached the sea wall she began to shiver. Beyond the salt marshes and half-concealed gleams of their creeks, the Thames led to the open sea. That was where the boat was heading. Were the nameless bound for another country? How could they expect to make the crossing, crammed into a small boat? Perhaps they were to meet a ship, or perhaps they didn't even care where they were bound now that they were so close to their goal.
And she was the victim who would enable them to achieve their goal at last. As the boat moved out into the Thames, her tongue was struggling more violently than ever, bruising itself against her teeth. Miles away along the bank, where orange flames danced above the metal desolation of an oil refinery, tankers were gathering. Even if she managed a cry it would never be heard over the engines, and in any case the boat was heading away from the bank.
Her tongue slipped, her cheek bulged, and Angela saw what she was doing. When she stepped forward Barbara shrank within herself, appalled to be afraid of her own child. But Angela thrust her fingers contemptuously into her mouth and pulled out the gag. Barbara could scream as loud as she wanted in this enormous emptiness.
At first Barbara dared not speak. She no longer knew Angela, she had no idea how to reach her, she was afraid to try. She must try. "Thank you, Angela," she said unevenly.
Angela was already turning away, and didn't even glance at her. Perhaps she no longer recognized her name. Barbara couldn't bear her indifference. "Listen to me, Angela," she said more loudly, trying to ignore her captors, all of whom looked ready to stop up her mouth.
When Angela halted, her face made it clear that it was not ------------------------------------305
because the words were meant for her. Barbara was shouting into the wind, her mouth was harsh with ink, but she had to go on. "I don't know what they've told you about me, but I would have spent my whole life trying to find you except that they made me believe you were dead. They killed one of their own children to make me think that. I wouldn't have dared to dream you were still alive until the day you called me. You must know how I felt, even if you don't want them to think so. You remember how I loved you. You can remember how you loved me."
Angela looked bored, and all at once Barbara thought she knew why: to judge from things she had referred to on the way from Glasgow, she remembered most clearly how Barbara had used to leave her all day, had left her to be stolen by the cult. She was right, of course; she had every reason to hate her mother. Whatever they did to Barbara would be a kind of justice.
She managed to push back her despair, for there was something else that Angela had said in the car. "You think I took your father away from you," Barbara said desperately. "I suppose they told you so, but it wasn't like that at all. They took you away from him by taking you away from me."
For a moment Angela showed her teeth. Was she jealous as only a child can be, or might she even blame her mother for his death? The deck was slippery, Barba
ra's legs felt crippled by having been tied, the boat was rocking. Surely that was why she fell helplessly at Angela's feet, not because Angela had glanced sharply at her.
There was one more insight Barbara was reluctant to put into words, even to stop Angela from turning indifferently away. "I don't know what they want you to do to me, Angela, but don't you see that proves I still mean something to you? They realize that, and that's why they've ------------------------------------306
tried to make you think the opposite. Otherwise they wouldn't have been so anxious for you to capture me."
Angela gazed at her, and her eyes were blank as a clear sky. "It wasn't their idea. I chose you. We've always used strangers before. That's the only reason I needed you."
She sounded coolly reasonable, not at all defensive. She was telling the simple truth. She turned away, having dealt with her mother. The rest` of them watched Barbara, and she could see they were impatient to begin on her. Only Ted's eyes were blank.
Hadn't she glimpsed pity in his eyes just now, when she had fallen? Certainly he had looked appalled when the thing had emerged from the van. His personality wasn't entirely destroyed, they couldn't have had enough time. Perhaps she could reach whatever was left of him, if only he would meet her eyes.
She lay on her throbbing shoulder and willed him to look at her, and at last he did so. She made herself smile at the person he had used to be, the person who was still inside him somewhere, at the mercy of his puppet body. She tried to put a sense of him into her mute appeal for help, a sense of the years they had known each other, the times they had shared. He was swaying back and forth but still watching her face, a faint bewildered look was growing in his eyes, as if he was beginning to waken and afraid to do so, and then the dumpy woman pointed at Barbara. Her simper had fallen awry. "She's trying to make him help her!" she squealed.
"We've finished with him now. He won't be able to swim." In fact he couldn't swim, but Angela seemed to mean that even if he had the skill, she would take it from him. "He tried to trick me when he was driving down from Glasgow," she said.
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