Nightworld ac-6

by F. Paul Wilson

  Aloha was closing with his target, arms stretched out for the big shove, when the old guy stepped aside and stuck out his cane. Aloha went down on his belly and skidded face first along the sidewalk, screaming curses all the way. When he stopped his slide, he began to roll to his feet. But the old guy was there, holding the bottom end of his cane in a two-handed grip like a golf club. He didn't yell "Fore!" as he swung the heavy metal handle around in a smooth wide arc. Jack heard the crack when it landed against the side of Aloha's skull. The mugger stiffened, then flopped back like a sack of flour.

  Jack stopped dead and stared, then he began to laugh. He pumped a fist in the old guy's direction.

  "Yes!"

  Looked like he wasn't the only one in town who'd had enough.

  Still smiling, Jack broke into an easy jog, intending to give the old dude a wide berth on his way by. The fellow eyed him as he neared.

  "No worry," Jack said, raising his empty palms, "I'm on your side."

  "I know that, Jack."

  Jack nearly tripped as he stuttered to a halt and turned. The old guy had his cane by the handle again; he stepped over Aloha like he was so much refuse and strolled Jack's way as if nothing had happened. The guy had style.

  "Why'd you call me Jack?"

  The old man came abreast of him and stopped. Gray hair, a wrinkled face, pale eyes.

  "You are Repairman Jack, aren't you?"

  Jack scrutinized the man. Even though stooped, he was still taller than Jack. A big guy. Old, but big. And a complete stranger. Jack didn't like being recognized. It put him on edge. But there was something appealing about that half smile playing about the old dude's lips.

  "Do I know you?"

  "No. My name's Veilleur, by the way." He offered his hand. "And I've wanted to meet you for some time now. I came out here tonight to remedy that."

  Jack shook his hand, baffled. "How did you—?"

  "Let's walk, shall we?"

  They crossed Central Park West and headed toward Columbus Avenue.

  "Want to tell me what's going on?"

  "The end of life as we know it."

  "Swell." A nut. "Look, it was nice meeting you but I've got a few errands I've got to run and—"

  "I'm not crazy."

  "I'm sure you're not, but—"

  "And I'd think that after your run-in with the rakoshi you'd be more open-minded than most about occurrences that the average person would write off immediately as madness."

  As memories of that summer of death and horror swirled about him, Jack stopped and grabbed Veilleur's arm.

  "Wait a sec. Wait a sec. What do you know about rakoshi? And how do you know?"

  "I'm sensitive to certain things. I sensed their arrival. But I was more acutely aware of the necklaces worn by Mr. Bahkti and his sister."

  Jack felt slightly numb. The only other people who knew about the rakoshi and the necklaces were the two most important people in the world to Jack—Gia and Vicki. And one other.

  "Did Kolabati send you?"

  "No. I wish I knew where she was. You see, it is Kolabati and those necklaces that I wish to discuss with you." He smiled at Jack. "Still have to run off on those errands?"

  "They can wait," Jack said. "You like beer?"

  "I love it."

  "Come on. I know a place where we can talk."

  * * *

  "I like that sign over the bar," Veilleur said.

  Jack glanced up at Julio's "Free Beer Tomorrow" logo. It had been there so long, Jack no longer noticed it.

  "Yeah. Gets him in trouble sometimes."

  They were each on their third pint of John Courage. Julio had put it on tap as a special favor to Jack but it had quickly become a favorite of the regulars. Unfortunately, its availability had attracted the attention of the area's abundant yuppy population, and for a while Julio's had seemed in danger of being overrun.

  But it was relatively quiet here tonight and Jack and the old guy had the rear section pretty much to themselves. An arrangement Jack preferred on most occasions, but especially tonight. He wouldn't have wanted anyone he knew overhearing this Veilleur character's story. It was crazy. No, it went far beyond crazy. It was to crazy what a .45 prefragmented full load was to a BB.

  But there was something about the old guy that Jack couldn't help liking and trusting. On a very deep, very basic, very primitive level he didn't understand, he sensed a solidarity with Veilleur, a subliminal bond, as if they were kindred spirits. He wouldn't lie to Jack.

  But that didn't mean he wasn't a few bricks shy of the proverbial full load.

  Yet he knew about the rakoshi, those dark, murderous, reeking demons from Bengali folklore, and about Kolabati and her pair of necklaces, with their power to heal and prolong life.

  "I wore one of those necklaces for a while. Bati offered it to me."

  "And you refused? Why?"

  "Didn't like the price tag."

  Veilleur nodded his approval and somehow that gave Jack a good feeling. What was it about this old dude?

  "So this problem with the sun they've been talking about all day is really this guy Rasalom's doing? He made the sun rise late?"

  "And set early. Apparently you haven't heard the evening news. Sundown was a little over ten minutes ahead of schedule."

  The idea that the sun was no longer following its own rules gave Jack a queasy feeling.

  "But assuming you're right, what it all mean?"

  "I told you—"

  "Right. 'The end of life as we know it.'" Jack was almost afraid to ask the next question. "Why were you looking for me?"

  "I'm trying to locate Kolabati."

  Kolabati…Jack was devoted to Gia, now more than ever. But there were times when memories of Kolabati and her long, dark, slender body floated back to him.

  "Afraid I can't help you. I haven't seen her for years."

  "Oh, I realize that. I'll find her eventually. And when I do, that's when I'll need your help."

  "What for?"

  "I need the necklaces."

  Jack suppressed a laugh. "You don't know what you're asking. Kolabati will never give them up. Not in a million years. You might talk her out of one, but never both."

  "I'll need both. And soon."

  "Then forget it. The necklace keeps her alive, keeps her young. She's a hundred and fifty years old."

  "Not quite," Veilleur said. "But close."

  "Whatever. But she only looks thirty or so. All because of the necklace. Do you think she's going to give that up?"

  "That's why I've contacted you. So you can convince her once I've located her."

  "She'll die without it."

  "I have faith in you."

  Jack stared at him.

  "You really are crazy, aren't you?" He rose and dropped a twenty on the table. "I don't think we can do business."

  Veilleur reached into his breast pocket and produced a card.

  "This is my number. Please take it. And call me when you reconsider."

  Reluctantly, Jack took the card and tucked it away.

  "You mean if I reconsider."

  "Will you reconsider if Central Park shrinks?"

  "Sure." That seemed a safe bet. "When Central Park shrinks, I'll give you a buzz."

  "Fine," Veilleur said, smiling and nodding. "I'll be waiting."

  Jack left him there, sipping his Courage. Nice old guy, but he'd developed a few loose wires in his old age.

  As he walked home, he thought about Kolabati and wondered how she was. Where she was. And what she was up to these days.

  4 • KOLABATI

  Maui—upcountry

  The wind stopped.

  Kolabati put down her book and rose from her chair. Not sure at first what had happened, she took her coffee cup and stepped out on the lanai; she stood there for a moment, listening. Something was wrong. Too quiet. In her years on Maui she could not remember a truly silent moment. She had no neighbors to speak of, at least none within shouting or even bullhorn distance,
but even when you were too far from the ocean to hear the surf, even when the birds and insects were silent, there was always the Maui breeze, child of the tireless tradewinds rolling from the northeast, a constant sussurant undertone varying in pitch but always there, perpetual, interminable, timeless, relentless.

  But it paused now. The ceramic wind chimes hung silent on the corners of the unscreened lanai. The air lay perfectly still, as if resting. Or holding its breath.

  What was happening? First the news of the late sunrise this morning, and now this.

  Kolabati looked down the slope of Haleakala past the rooftops of Kula to the valley spread out below her in the late afternoon sun. A gently curved, almost flat span between the two volcanic masses that defined the island of Maui, the valley was a narrowed waist checkered with the pale green squares of sugar cane, the darker green of pineapple plants, the rich red-brown of newly tilled earth, and the near black of a recently burned cane field. She spent part of each day out here on the lanai, staring across the valley at the cloud-capped West Maui Mountains, waiting for her daily rainbow, or watching the cloud-shadows run across the valley floor thousands of feet below. But the shadows weren't running now. The streaming tradewinds that propelled the clouds had stalled. The clouds and their shadows waited.

  Kolabati waited too. The air should have grown warmer in the wind's absence, yet she felt a chill of foreboding. Something was wrong. The perpetual Maui breeze occasionally changed its pattern when the kona winds came, but the air always moved.

  Krishna, Vishnu, she said, silently praying to the ancient Indian gods of her youth, please don't let anything spoil this. Not now. Not when I've finally found peace.

  Peace. Kolabati had searched for it all her life, and it had been a long life. She looked thirty, perhaps a youngish thirty-five, yet she had been born in 1848.

  She had decided that she would cease counting her birthdays after the one hundred and fiftieth, which was fast approaching.

  A long time to be searching for contentment. She thought she'd found a chance for it a few years ago with a man named Jack but he had spurned her and the gift of longevity she'd offered him. She'd left him sitting in a pool of his own blood, dying. He was probably dead, and the thought of that saddened her. Such a vital man…

  But I'm different now. The new Kolabati would have stayed and helped Jack, or at least called a doctor for him despite the cruel things he had said to her.

  Maui had helped make the difference in her. Maui and Moki. A place and a man. Together they had given her what peace there was in this world.

  Here on Maui, clinging to the breast of Haleakala, the world's largest dormant volcano, she had all of the world within reach. If she tired of watching the valley below, cloud-dappled on sunny days, or lashed by rain and speared by lightning when storms marched through, she could travel to Haleakala's windward east coat and visit the jungles above Hana; further around on the south slope she could pretend she was in the savannahs of Africa or the plains of North America, grazing cattle and all; or she could travel across the valley and wander among the rich Japanese and American vacationers in the resorts at Ka'anapali and Kapalua, or travel into the Iao Valley and beyond to the rainforests of the second wettest spot in the world, or return to Haleakala itself and walk the floor of its crater; there in the heart of desolation, she could wander among its thousand-foot cinder cones and imagine she was exploring the surface of Mars.

  Wonders were close at hand too. Directly below the lanai her silversword garden grew. She had transplanted the seedlings from her wanderings on Haleakala's slopes and was perhaps unduly proud of her collection of the rare spiky clusters. Each would grow for twenty years before producing its one magnificent flower. Kolabati could wait. She had time.

  She glanced down at the cup in her hands. Oh, yes. And coffee from the big island's Kona Coast—the richest coffee in the world. She sipped.

  No, she could not see herself tiring of living here, even if she didn't have Moki. But Moki was here, and Moki gave meaning to all of it.

  She could hear him in the back now, working in his shop. Moki—her kane, her man. He carved driftwood. Together they would scour the beaches and the banks of Haleakala's countless streams and waterfalls, searching for branches and small trunks, the long dead pieces, bleached and hardened by time and the elements. They'd bring these gnarled, weathered remains back to the house and set them up around Moki's workshop. There he would get to know them, live with them for a while. And gradually he would see things in them—the wrinkles around the eyes of an old woman's face, the curve of a panther's back, a lizard's claws. Once he had spied the form hiding within, he would bring his small ax and array of chisels into play, working on the wood and with the wood to expose the hidden form to the light of day.

  Moki was modest about his work, never taking credit and refusing blame for the nature of the works he produced. His stock phrase: "It was already there in the wood; I just cleared away the excess material and set it free."

  But he deserved far more credit than he took. For Moki wasn't content to leave his work as simple wood sculptures. They were Hawaiian wood carved by an almost full-blooded Hawaiian, but that wasn't quite Hawaiian enough for Moki. When each was finished he shipped it to the big island and carried it to the fiery mouth of Kilauea, the active crater on the southeastern slope of Mauna Loa. There he trapped some of the living lava, poured it into a shape that complemented his sculpture, allowed the lava to cool to a point where it wouldn't damage the wood, then set his sculpture into the gooey stone.

  Kolabati had first seen Moki's work with its intricate cuts and swirls and unique lava rock bases in a Honolulu gallery. She'd been completely taken by them and had asked to meet the artist. She commissioned a piece, and visited Moki many times during its fashioning. She found herself as taken by the man as she was by his work. His intensity, his passion for living, his love of his native islands. He was complete. In that sense he reminded her a little of her dead brother, Kusum.

  Moki wanted her, but he didn't need her, and that made him all the more attractive. Theirs was a relationship of passionate equals. She didn't want to own Moki, didn't demand all his passion. She knew some of his passion had to be funneled off into his art and she encouraged that. To dominate him, to possess him would risk destroying a wild and wonderful talent. Instead of having all of him, she would wind up with less than she had begun with.

  Moki needed his art, needed to be Moki, and very much needed to be Hawaiian. He would have loved to have lived and worked on Niihau, the forbidden island, oldest of the Hawaiian chain, but had not been able to wrangle an invitation from the last of the pure-bred Hawaiians living there in the old, primitive ways. Like most Hawaiians, Moki was not pure-bred—he could find traces of Portuguese and Filipino in his bloodline.

  But he remained pure Hawaiian in his heart, dressing the part around their hale or house, speaking the old language and teaching it to Kolabati. And together they moved to the side of Haleakala where he carved and sculpted his wood, and braved the heat of Kilauea to fashion his pieces.

  The results, the graceful and the grotesque, were scattered about the islands, in galleries, museums, corporate offices, and on every available surface in their house. Kolabati loved the clutter, which was unusual for her. As a rule she preferred an ordered existence. But not in this case. The clutter was Moki. It put his stamp on their home, made it truly theirs. For there was no other place on earth quite like it.

  And Kolabati did not want that to change. For the first time in her many years the persistent voice of dissatisfaction was silent within her. For the first time she no longer hungered for new people, new sensations, new feelings, the Next New Thing. Continuity—that was what counted most now.

  "Bati. Hele mai!"

  Moki's voice, calling from his workshop, telling her to come to him. He sounded excited. She started toward the rear of the house but he was already coming her way.

  The old Kolabati used to tire of a man after
two weeks. They were all the same; so few had anything new to offer. But even after two years with Moki, the sight of him still excited her. His long, wild, red-brown hair—he was considered an ehu, a red-haired Hawaiian—his lean, dark, muscled body, and his eyes as dark as her own. An artist, a sensitive man, as attuned to the mysteries of the wood he worked as to the mysteries within her own psyche. And yet he still retained an untamed quality, as witness the brief, loincloth-like malo he wore now. No two days were alike with Moki.

  Which was why Kolabati called him her kane and allowed him to wear the other necklace.

  And she loved his lilting accent.

  "Bati look!"

  He held out his left palm to her. A ragged red line ran across it.

  "Oh, Moki! What happened?"

  "I cut myself."

  "But you're always cutting yourself."

  She looked at the cut. It was barely bleeding. He'd done worse to his hands before. What was so special about this?

  "Yes, but this was a bad one. I slipped badly. I thought the chisel went half way through my palm. Blood started spurting a foot into the air—and then it stopped. I squeezed it for a few minutes, and when I checked again, it was half healed. And in the time it took me to come in from the workshop, it's healed even further. Look at it. You can almost see it closing before your eyes!"

  He was right. Kolabati watched with uneasy fascination as the wound stopped oozing and became shallower.

  "What's going on?" he said.

  "I don't know."

  He touched the necklace around his throat—a heavy chain of sculpted iron, each crescent link embossed with pre-Vedic script; centered over the notch atop his breast bone lay a matched pair of bright yellow elliptical stones, like thumb-sized topazes, each with a black center. Moki's necklace perfectly matched her own. They'd been in her family for generations…since before history.

  "You said these things would help heal us, keep us young and healthy, but I >never—"

  "They don't work like this," Kolabati said. "They've never worked like this."

  It was true. The necklace could heal illnesses, prolong life, stave off death from all but the most catastrophic injuries. But it worked slowly, subtly. Not like this. The healing of Moki's hand was crude, garish, like a sideshow trick.