The Great And Secret Show Part 34

"Surely that's what made you human," Tesla said. "Isn't that what the Nuncio does?"

"I don't know," Raul said simply. "Whatever it did to me, I don't thank it for. I was happier...being an ape. If I'd stayed an ape I'd be dead by now."

"Don't talk that way," Tesla said. "Fletcher wouldn't want to hear you full of regrets."

"Fletcher left me," Raul reminded her. "He taught me enough to know what I could never be, then he left me."

"He had his reasons. I've seen his enemy, the Jaff. The man has to be stopped."

"There-" said Raul, pointing to a place further along the wall. "There's Jaffe."

The portrait was able enough. Tesla recognized the devouring stare, the swollen head. Had Raul actually seen Jaffe in his evolved condition or was this portrait of man as monstrous babe an instinctive response? She had no opportunity to enquire. Raul was coaxing her away again.

"I'm thirsty," he said. "We can look at the rest later."

"It'll be too dark."

"No. They'll come up and light candles when the sungoes. Come and talk with me for a while. Tell me how my father died."

II.

It took Tommy-Ray longer to reach the Mision de Santa Catrina than the woman he was racing against because of an incident along the route which, though minor, showed him a place in himself he would later come to know very well. In a small town south of Ensenada, stopping in the early evening to get something for his parched throat, he found himself in a bar that offered-for a mere ten bucks-access to an entertainment undreamed of in Palomo Grove. It was too tasty an offer to refuse. He put his money down, bought a beer, and was allowed entrance to a smoke-filled s.p.a.ce which could only have been twice the size of his bedroom. There was an audience of maybe ten men, sprawled on creaking chairs. They were watching a woman having s.e.x with a large black dog. He found nothing about the scene arousing. Neither, apparently, did the rest of the audience; at least not in the s.e.xual sense. They leaned forward to watch the display with an excitement he didn't understand until the beer began to work on his wearied system, tunnelling his vision until the woman's face mesmerized him. She might once have been pretty, but her face, like her body, was wasted now, her arms showing plain proof of the addiction that had brought her so low. She teased the hound with the expertise of one who'd done this countless times before, then went on all fours before it. It sniffed, then lazily put itself to the task. Only once it had mounted her did Tommy-Ray realize what claim her expression had upon him, and, presumably, upon the others. She looked like somebody already dead. The thought was a door in his head opening on to a stinking yellow place; a wallowing place. He'd seen this look before, not just on the faces of girls in the skin mags, but on celebrities trapped by cameras. s.e.x-zombies, star-zombies; dead folks pa.s.sing for living. When he plugged back into the scene in front of him the dog had found its rhythm, and was making at the girl with doggy l.u.s.t, foam dripping from its mouth on her back; and this time-thinking of the girl as dead-it was s.e.xy. The more excited the animal became the more excited he became and the more dead the woman looked to him, feeling the dog's d.i.c.k in her and his eyes on her, until it became a race between him and the dog as to which was going to finish first.

The dog won, working itself up into a stabbing frenzy then stopping suddenly. On cue one of the men sitting in the front row stepped up and separated the pair, the animal instantly uninterested. Her partner led away, the woman was left center stage to gather up a scattering of clothes she'd presumably shed before Tommy-Ray had entered. She then exited through the same side door where the dog and its pimp had gone, her face the same slack mask it had been from the outset. There was apparently another part of the show to follow, because n.o.body vacated their seats. But Tommy-Ray had seen all he needed to see. He made his way back towards the door, pushing through a soft-bodied knot of newcomers, and out into the dusky bar.

It was only much later, when he was almost at the Mission, that he realized his pockets had been picked. There was no time to go back, he knew; nor indeed any purpose. The thief could have been any of the men who'd crowded his path as he'd left. Besides, it had been worth the lost dollars. He had found a new definition of death. Not even new. Simply his first and only.

The sun had long set by the time he drove up the hill towards the Mission, but as he began the ascent a distinct sense of deja vu crept over him. Was he seeing the place with the Jaff's eyes? Whether or not, the recognition proved useful. Knowing that Fletcher's agent had undoubtedly arrived ahead of him he decided to leave the car a little way down the hill and climb the rest of the way on foot so as not to alert her to his coming. Dark though it was, he didn't travel blind. His feet knew the way even though his memory didn't.

He'd come prepared for violence, should the occasion demand. The Jaff had provided him with a gun-courtesy of one of the many victims the Jaff had relieved of their terata- and the idea of using it was undoubtedly appealing. Now, after a climb which had made his chest ache, he was within sight of the Mission. The moon had risen behind him, the color of a shark's underbelly. It lit the ruined walls, and the skin of his arms and hands, with its sickly light, making him long for a mirror in which to study his face. Surely he'd be able to see the bones beneath the meat; the skull gleaming the way his teeth gleamed when he smiled. After all, wasn't that what a smile said? h.e.l.lo world, this is the way I'll look when the wet parts are rotted.

His head tender with such thoughts, he trod through the withering blossoms to the Mission.

III.

Raul's hut was fifty yards beyond the main building, a primitive structure in which two occupants were a crowd. He depended, he explained to Tesla, entirely on the generosity of the local people, who supplied him with food and clothing in return for his being caretaker of the Mission. Despite the poverty of his means he had been at pains to elevate the hut from a hovel. There were signs everywhere of a delicate sensibility at work. The squat candles on the table were seated in a ring of stones chosen for their smoothness; the blanket on the simple cot had been decorated with the feathers of sea-birds.

"I have one vice only," Raul said, once he'd set Tesla down in the single chair. "I have it from my father."

"What's that?"

"I smoke cigarettes. One a day. You'll share with me."

"I used to smoke," Tesla began, "but I don't any longer."

"Tonight you will," Raul said, leaving no room for dissension. "We'll smoke to toast my father."

He brought a hand-rolled cigarette from a small tin, along with matches. She watched his face as he went about the business of lighting it up. All that she'd found unnerving about him at first sight remained unnerving. His features were neither simian nor human, but the unhappiest of marriages between the two. And yet in every other respect-his speech, his manners, the way he was even now holding the cigarette between his long, dark fingers-he was so very civilized. The kind of man, indeed, mother might have wished her to marry, had he not been an ape.

"Fletcher hasn't gone, you know," he said to her, handing the cigarette across. She took it reluctantly, not particularly eager to put to her lips what had been between his. But he watched her, candle light flickering in his eyes, until she obliged, smiling with pleasure at her sharing with him. "He became something else, I'm sure," he went on. "Something other."

"I'll toast that," she said, taking another drag. Only now did it occur to her that perhaps the tobacco they smoked down here was a little more potent than in L.A.

"What's in this?" she said.

"Good stuff," he replied. "You like it?"

"They bring you dope as well?"

"They grow it themselves," Raul said in a matter-of-fact way.

"Good for them," she said, and claimed a third hit before handing it back to him. It was indeed strong stuff. Her mouth was already half way through a sentence her mind had no idea of how to finish before she knew she was even speaking.

"...this is the night I tell my kids about...except that I won't have any kids...well, my grandchildren then...I'll tell them when I sat with a man who used to be a monkey...you don't mind me telling you that do you? Only it's my first time...and we sat and we talked about his friend...and my friend...who used to be a man..."

"And when you tell them," Raul said, "what will you say about yourself?"

"About myself?"

"Where will you fit into the pattern? What are you going to become?"

She mused on this. "Do I have to become anything?" she asked eventually.

Raul pa.s.sed the remnants of the cigarette back to her. "Everything is becoming. Sitting here, we're becoming."

"What?"

"Older. Closer to death."

"Oh s.h.i.t. I don't want to be closer to death."

"No choice," Raul said simply. Tesla shook her head. It kept moving, long after the motion had ceased.

"I want to understand," she said finally.

"Anything in particular?"

She mused a little more, running through all the possible options, and came up with one.

"Everything?" she said.

He laughed, and his laughter sounded like bells to her. Good trick, she was about to tell him, until she realized that he was up and at the door.

"Somebody's at the Mission," she heard him say.

"...come to light the candles," she suggested, her head seeming to precede her body in pursuit of him.

"No," he said to her as he stepped out into the darkness. "They don't step where the bells are..."

She had been staring into the candle flame as she'd mulled over Raul's questions, and its image was imprinted on the darkness she now stumbled through, a will o' the wisp that might have led her over the cliff-edge had she not followed his voice. As they approached the walls he told her to stay where she was but she ignored him and followed anyway. The candlelighters had indeed come visiting; their handiwork threw its glamour through from the room of portraits. Though the contents of Raul's cigarette had put s.p.a.ce between her thoughts they were cogent enough to fear that she'd idled too long, and that her purpose here was now in jeopardy. Why hadn't she just found the Nuncio immediately and pitched it into the ocean as Fletcher had directed? Her irritation with herself made her bold. In the murk of the mural room she managed to overtake Raul and so step through into the candlelit laboratory first.

It was not candles that had been lit here, nor was the visitor a supplicant.

In the middle of the chamber a small, smoky fire had been lit, and a man-with his back at present turned to her- was ferreting through the tangle of equipment with his bare hands. She had not expected to recognize him when he looked in her direction, which was, on reflection, foolish. In the last few days she'd come to know most of the actors in this piece, if not by name then at least by sight. This one she knew by both. Tommy-Ray McGuire. He turned full face. In the perfect symmetry of his features a little ball of lunacy- the Jaff's inheritance-bounded back and forth, glittering.

"Hi!" he said; a bland, casual greeting. "I wondered where you were. The Jaff said you'd be here."

"Don't touch the Nuncio," she told him. "It's dangerous."

"That's what I'm hoping," he said with a grin.

There was something in his hand, she saw. Catching her glance he proffered it. "Yeah, I got it," he said. The vial was indeed as Fletcher had described it.

"Throw it away," she advised, attempting to be cool.

"Was that what you were going to do?" he asked.

"Yes. I swear, yes. It's lethal."

She saw his eyes flit from her face to Raul, whose breath she heard behind and a little to the side of her. Tommy-Ray looked in no way concerned at being outnumbered. Indeed she wondered if there was any threat to life or limb that would dislodge the smug satisfaction from his face. The Nuncio, perhaps? G.o.d Almighty, what possibilities would it find waiting in his barbaric heart, to praise and magnify?

Again she said: "Destroy it, Tommy-Ray, before it destroys you."

"No way," he said. "The Jaff's got plans for it."

"And what about you, when you've finished working for him? He doesn't care about you."

"He's my father and he loves me," Tommy-Ray replied, with a certainty that would have been touching in a sane soul.

She began to move towards him, talking as she went. "Just listen to me for a few moments, will you...?"

He pocketed the Nuncio, and reached into his other pocket as he did so. He brought out a gun.

"What did you call the stuff?" he asked, pointing the weapon at her.

"Nuncio," she said, slowing her advance but still approaching steadily.

"No. Something else. You called it something else."

"Lethal."

He grinned. "Yeah," he said, slurring the word. "Lethal. That means it kills you, right?"

"Right."

"I like that."

"No, Tommy..."

"Don't tell me what I like," he said. "I said I like lethal and I mean it."

She suddenly realized she'd entirely miscalculated this scene. If she'd written it, he'd have held her at gunpoint till he made his escape. But he had his own scenario.

"I'm the Death-Boy," he said, and pulled the trigger.

VI.

Unnerved by the episode at Ellen's house, Grillo had taken refuge in writing, a discipline he felt more in need of the deeper this pool of ambiguities became. At first it was easy. He struck out for the dry ground of fact, and stated it in prose Swift would have been proud of. Later he could extract from this account the sections to be sent through to Abernethy. For now his duty was to set down as much as he could remember.

Mid-way through the process, he got a call from Hotchkiss, who suggested that they might have an hour drinking and talking together. The Grove had only two bars, he explained, Starky's, in Deerdell, being the less tame of the two and consequently the preferable. An hour after the conversation, with the bulk of the previous night's events securely laid on paper, Grillo left the hotel and met with Hotchkiss. Starky's was practically empty. In one corner an old man sat quietly singing to himself, and there were two kids at the bar who looked too young to be drinking; otherwise they had the place to themselves. Even so, Hotchkiss barely raised his voice above a whisper throughout the entire conversation.

"You don't know much about me," he said at the outset. "I realized that last night. It's time you knew."

He didn't need any further encouragement to tell. His account was offered without emotion, as though the burden of feeling were so heavy it had long ago squeezed the tears from him. Grillo was glad of the fact. If the teller could be dispa.s.sionate then it freed him to be the same, probing between the lines of Hotchkiss's account for details the man had pa.s.sed over. He spoke of Carolyn's part in the story first, of course, not praising or d.a.m.ning his daughter, merely describing her and the tragedy that had taken her from him. Then he threw the net of his story wider, and drew in others, first giving a thumbnail portrait of Trudi Katz, Joyce McGuire and Arleen Farrell, then relating how each of them had fared. Grillo was busily filling in details for himself as Hotchkiss spoke: creating a family tree whose roots went where Hotchkiss's account so often returned: underground.

"That's where the answers are," he said more than once. "I believe Fletcher and the Jaff, whoever they are, whatever they are, were responsible for what happened to my Carolyn. And to the other girls."

"They were in the caves all this time?"

"We saw them escape didn't we?" Hotchkiss said. "So yes, I think they waited down there all these years." He swallowed a mouthful of Scotch. "After last night at the Mall I just stayed up, trying to work it all out. Trying to make sense of it all."

"And?"

"I've decided to go down into the caves."

"What the h.e.l.l for?"

"All those years, locked away, they must have been doing something. Maybe they left clues. Maybe we can find a way to destroy them down there."

"Fletcher's already gone," Grillo reminded him.

"Has he?" Hotchkiss said. "I don't know any more. Things linger, Grillo. They seem to disappear, but they linger, just out of sight. In the mind. In the ground. You climb down a little way and you're in the past. Every step another thousand years."

"My memory doesn't go back that far," Grillo quipped.

"But it does," Hotchkiss said, in deadly earnest. "It goes back to being a speck in the sea. That's what haunts us." He raised his hand. "Looks solid, doesn't it?" he said. "But it's mostly water." He seemed to be struggling for another thought, but it wouldn't come.

"The creatures the Jaff made look like they've been dug up," Grillo said. "You think that's what you're going to find down there?"

Hotchkiss's response was the thought he'd been unable to shape a moment earlier. "When she died," he said. "Carolyn I mean...when Carolyn died I had dreams of her just dissolving in front of me. Not rotting. Dissolving. Like the sea took her back."

"Do you still have those dreams?"