Into The Out Of

  "I know from my time in your country that such unions are frowned upon by American wives, so I would make sure to obtain permission from Merry."

  "Merry and I aren't married."

  Olkeloki eyed him in surprise. "You're not? She is not your asanja?"

  "Nope. We're just friends. We're only here together because the old man latched on to both of us at the same time."

  Kakombe let out a Maasai whoop of exclamation, a cross between a whistle and a yelp, and unfolded himself from beneath the leaves. The rain had nearly ceased.

  "Wonderful news! I do not need you to sleep with Eseyo. Merry and I can have a child of our own."

  "Hey, whoa, hold on a second!" Oak scrambled to his feet. "Just because she and I aren't married doesn't mean you can sleep with her."

  Kakombe looked back down at him. "Have you slept with her?"

  "No, but I—"

  "Is she betrothed to you?"

  "Not exactly, but we—"

  "Then do not tell me what I can and cannot do." He started forward.

  Oak hurried to block his path. "Now wait just a damn minute. Stay away from Merry. She's been through a lot lately and she doesn't need any more complications in her life."

  "We will let her decide if my proposal is a complication." The warrior took a step forward and again Oak confronted him.

  "I'm warning you. Lay off her."

  "If you are interested in bedding her, or wedding her, you may make her the same proposition. We will let her choose. If you are not that interested you should shut up. Get out of my way, ilmeet."

  "You don't understand. Where we come from we don't—you can't just walk up to a woman and…"

  "Are you interested in her or not?"

  Oak considered the question, enveloped in the stink of rotting vegetation and otherworldly purple twilight. Hadn't he come along on this crazy odyssey as much to look after innocent, naive Merry Sharrow from Seattle as for the gold and jewels? Hadn't he wanted to take her out from the time he'd first set eyes on her back in Washington? They'd been through a lot together and that was no lie, was it? Didn't that count for something? He'd been dodging his feelings about Merry Sharrow ever since they'd left Heathrow. Now this African herdsman with the Boston education was forcing him to confront them. Hell of a note.

  So—how did he really feel about Merry? Was his interest in her honest and heartfelt or just macho-proprietary? Did he want her or did he just want to deny her to Kakombe? And was the Maasai voicing intentions, he, Oak, hadn't had the guts to put into words?

  Ten years of phone calls in the middle of the night. Ten years of hiding out and pretending to be people he wasn't, all in the line of duty. Was it possible to fall in love with a woman before you went to bed with her? Could he have fallen in love with silly-strong Merry Sharrow when he wasn't looking? Damn Kakombe, anyhow! Damn him for his forthrightness and his uncomplicated attitudes, and damn him for forcing an examination of emotions easier left glazed over.

  Okay, so he'd face himself for a change. He'd tell Merry as soon as the moment presented itself. He hadn't waited too long. He ought to thank Kakombe for forcing it out of him.

  "You bet your ass I'm interested in her," he said finally. "And as soon as I get the chance, I'm going to ask her to marry me."

  "Excellent. And I will ask her the same, and we can let her choose between us."

  Oak started to laugh, held back. It wasn't Kakombe's fault. He just didn't understand. Merry wouldn't have anything to do with him. Oh sure, they were friends and all that. You didn't bounce around in the rear seat of a four-wheel drive for days without making friends with your neighbor. But the herdsman-warrior was a member of a primitive, tradition-ridden African tribe. Maybe he knew English, and maybe he'd had a taste of formal Western education, but he was utterly unsophisticated in other matters. He didn't have a thing to offer Merry Sharrow, who'd lived a sheltered middle-class life in Seattle, Washington. Just because he was nearly seven feet tall and muscular and pretty good-looking and articulate and brave and considerate and thoughtful and exotic and…

  All of a sudden Oak didn't have to work to hold back the laughter.

  Evidently Kakombe had been watching him carefully. "Strange. First you are angry, then confused, then amused. Now you look uncertain again. University or no, I will never understand the ilmeet."

  That made Oak smile again. He started to chuckle, then to laugh quietly.

  "Amused again. What do you find so funny in this unwholesome place?"

  "Me. You. Us. Both of us dancing for days around the fact that one member of our party is an attractive lady."

  "I thought Merry was your woman. Otherwise I would not so have danced."

  "Elephant crap. I don't buy that. You didn't know how to handle it and neither did I. It's damn ironic. In this place we both ought to be scared shitless. Instead we're standing here arguing over a woman."

  "There is no special time or place for arguing over a woman, Joshua Oak. Any time or place will do. You learn that as a junior warrior." He kicked at the dirt, gazed off into the woods. "I have been tracking too fast for you. It was intentional. In trying to make you smaller, I was trying to make myself the bigger man. That is the wrong way for an Alaunoni to act. You take the lead, friend Oak, and I will follow. If you make a wrong turn I will still be able to correct our path from behind. In this way you can set your own pace and will not get too tired."

  "Who says I was getting tired?" Oak turned angrily and pointed off between two trees. "That way, damnit."

  Kakombe approved. "You have done some tracking yourself. I never met an ilmeet who knew how to track." They started down the path Oak had chosen. "What animals have you tracked, my friend?"

  "Only the two-legged kind."

  Kakombe considered this, then nodded solemnly.

  The forest grew thicker around them, slowing their progress. Unnatural sounds filtered through the trees, cries of birds that weren't birds and small broken things that hugged the earth in fear. Tiny eyes glared at them from between leaves and branches. They glowed red-orange and occasionally a faint bilious green.

  Once they stumbled into a school of silver-sided fish swimming through the damp air. All of them showed the imprint of an unknown aquatic disease. They raced away to the south, flying beneath the trunks of tortured trees. As they passed beneath an overhanging branch they were attacked by half a down sparrow-sized birds. The birds sang as they struck; harsh, rasping notes. Their oversized eyes bulged out of their sockets. Except for their unevenly feathered wings their small bodies were naked and pink, and they sliced at fish-flesh with minuscule needlelike teeth.

  The aimless sun did not set, but it did plunge lower on the horizon. In the gathering darkness a swarm of tiny white-glowing shapes feasted on the corpse of a three-legged quagga. The quagga's stripes were as uneven and broken as its body, a mutated version of its recently extinct self. Oak and Kakombe detoured around the bloated corpse, whose smell rose even above the perpetually rank atmosphere. As they circled, all the glowing grub-things paused in their feeding. They rose on their hind legs and began to sway back and forth in unison, their tiny black jaws leaving phosphorescent trails in the air. A faint breathy whistling rose from their collective throats. Oak felt the gorge rise hot and sour in his throat, and was glad when they'd left the concourse of maggots behind.

  What happened then should not have shocked or surprised him, but it did. Olkeloki had tried to warn him that they might encounter other things in the Out Of besides shetani and dancing maggots and flesh-eating sparrows. Blasphemous horrors that might manifest themselves at any time, without warning.

  Stunned, he turned to seek support from his powerful companion, but Kakombe had vanished. The senior warrior was nowhere to be seen. Convulsively clutching the ebony spear, Oak stumbled backward until he felt the unyielding bulk of a tree against his spine. His throat had gone dry and his legs trembled. He was alone against them, all alone this time with no help in view. They'd been sniffi
ng after him for years and now their time had finally come. They were going to get him. There was no escape for him here, not in this dark, alien place. And there were so many of them! Somehow he hadn't thought that when they finally came for him there would be so many.

  His worst nightmare was a populous one.

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  26

  In the forefront marched the whey-faced men in their white robes. Bloody crosses stained their cowls and breasts. Several of them held small burning crosses out in front of them, as though Oak were a vampire they sought to exorcise. The flames did not bother them because there was no meat on their bones. White skeleton hands reached out from skeleton arms that disappeared into the sleeves of white sheets. Beneath the cowls eyeless skulls grinned out at him.

  He pushed away from the tree and tried to run, only to find the way blocked by a couple of hirsute, bent shapes. Their eyes were wild in anticipation of destruction. Two held guns and the third a cluster of dynamite on which the fuse was rapidly burning down. Oak retreated and nearly backed into a cluster of men and women clad in neat red, white, and blue uniforms. On each chest was sewn a black swastika.

  They were closing in on him; all the extremists and murderers and political and religious fanatics, all the would-be usurpers and führers and emperors. He knew them all intimately. They were ready to kill and destroy because they didn't like the way the government interpreted the law, their law. They were ready to beat and maim because they were offended by their neighbor's skin color, or his beliefs, or the country his grandparents had emigrated from. They were all there, all the bigots and fanatics and throwbacks he'd helped to crush or humiliate with the truth or put behind bars. Dead minds, dead bodies, they'd come for him at last.

  It didn't matter that he'd done what he'd done to uphold the right and protect the helpless. There was no right in this place, no truth or justice, and the only law was the law of the maniacally insane. Half faces, half skulls, all of them grinning at him while they mouthed empty slogans and curses and most of all, one name: his name. He couldn't hide his identity here, couldn't hide beneath a cleverly constructed false persona. Because this was his nightmare. One that wouldn't end until they'd torn the flesh from his bones to get at the soft, pulsating soul buried within.

  There was no retreat. He lowered the spear and searched for an opening, even a tiny gap where he might have a chance to dart through before they descended on him. One of the white-robed figures came too close and he slashed sideways with the spear. The long blade sliced through sheet and bone but just like the real bigot the nightmarish form was a shade of, there was neither blood nor dampness, no real juice at all. The figure collapsed and Oak saw that it had no backbone.

  A cry halfway between a whistle and a yelp split the air as Kakombe fell on them from behind, swinging the ebony spear in wide arcs. Phantom neo-nazis splintered under the force of the senior warrior's attack. Soulless fundamentalists burned in the hellfire they had reserved for all who did not agree with them.

  Oak struck out with his own weapon, cutting a path to his friend. His nightmare tried to close in around him. A lesser man, one without Oak's experience and determination, would have gone down in the grasp of those clutching, groping fingers. A giggling mouthless horror wrapped long arms around his waist. He cut it away. Then a strong arm was pulling, then pushing him back into the woods and he was running, running hard and sucking in the thick, cloying air as though it blew straight off the clean, salty Atlantic. Each stride away from the nightmare seemed to add strength to his legs.

  Only when they finally stopped deep in the forest did he realize how weak he really was. He had to sit because he could no longer stand. As he lay on his back staring up at the purple sky he realized it wasn't the skeletal hands or flames or ghostly weapons which had threatened him. It had been the presence of so much unadulterated evil, so much mindless hatred. It had been sucking the life out of him and he hadn't even realized it at the time.

  But it didn't seem to have affected Kakombe.

  "Not my nightmare." Viewed from the ground, the warrior resembled one of the tall trees more than he did a man. "The ilmeet have very strange dreams. It meant nothing to me, but I saw it would be best to attack it from behind. So I waited and then fell on the nightmare from a tree." He wore the satisfied look of someone who had finally managed to pay off a long-standing debt.

  "Something struck at me from out of a tree and I thought it a good opportunity to return the favor."

  Oak sat up, put his arms around his knees. "Damn good thing you did."

  "Who were all those people, anyway? Some looked like spirits, but stranger spirits than I thought even the ilmeet believed in. They were all dead."

  "A lot of them don't look or act all that much different when they're alive." He extended his right hand and let Kakombe pull him to his feet. "Okay, I'm lost. Which way now, tracker?"

  The senior warrior studied the wall of decaying vegetation, finally pointed. He took a step in the chosen direction, only to be restrained by Oak.

  "Hang on. Didn't you hear that?"

  "Hear w