He called her name again, very loudly. She suddenly sat bolt upright, eyes wide and staring at him.
"Jesus!" she said. She was panting, as though she'd just run a race. "Jesus. Jesus. Jesus."
"You were shouting . . ." he said, trying to begin to explain his presence in the room.
Only now did she seem to realize their situation: her nakedness, his embarrassed fascination. She reached for a sheet and started to haul it over her, but her intention was distracted by what she'd just experienced.
"I was there," she said.
"I know."
"Trinity. Kissoon's Loop."
As they'd driven back up the coast she'd done her best to explain to him the vision she'd had while the Nuncio had been healing her, both as a way to fix its details in her head and to keep a recurrence at bay by coaxing the memories out of the sealed cell of her inner life and into shared experience. She painted a repulsive picture of Kissoon.
"You saw him?" Raul said.
"I didn't get to the hut," she replied. "But he wants me there. I can feel him pulling. " She put her hand on her stomach. "I can feel him now, Raul."
"I'm here," he said. "I won't let you go."
"I know, and I'm glad."
She reached out. "Take hold of my hand, huh?" He tentatively approached the bed. "Please," she said. He did so. "I saw that town again," she went on. "It seems so real, except there's nobody there, nobody at all. It's . . . it's like a stage . . . like something's going to be performed there."
"Performed."
"This is making no sense, I know, but I'm just telling you what I feel. Something terrible's going to happen there, Raul. The worst thing imaginable."
"You don't know what?"
"Or maybe it already happened?" she said. "Maybe that's why there's nobody in the town. No. No. That's not it. It's not over, it's just about to happen."
She tried to make sense of her confusions the best way she knew. If she were setting a scene in that town, for a movie, what would it be? A gun-fight on Main Street? The citizens locked up behind their doors while the White Hats and the Black Hats shot it out? Possibly. Or a town vacated as some stomping behemoth appeared on the horizon? The classic fifties monster scenario: a creature woken by nuclear tests—
"That's closer," she said.
"What is?"
"Maybe it's a dinosaur movie. Or a giant tarantula. I don't know. That's definitely closer. Christ, this is frustrating! I know something about this place, Raul, and I can't quite get hold of it."
From next door, the strains of Donizetti's masterpiece. She knew it so well now she could have sung along with it had she had the voice.
"I'm going to make some coffee," she said. "Wake myself up. Will you go and ask Ron for some milk?"
"Yes. Of course."
"Just tell him you're a friend of mine."
Raul got up off the bed, detaching his hand from hers.
"Ron's apartment's number four," she called after him, then went through to the bathroom and took her postponed shower, still vexed by the problem of the town. By the time she'd sluiced herself down and found a clean T-shirt and jeans Raul was back in the apartment, and the telephone was ringing. From the other end, opera and Ron.
"Where did you find him?" he wanted to know. "And does he have a brother?"
"Is it impossible to have a private life around here?" she said.
"You shouldn't have paraded him, girl," Ron replied. "What is he, a truck driver? Marines? He's so broad."
"That he is."
"If he gets bored just send him back over."
"He'll be flattered," Tesla said, and put the phone down. "You've got yourself an admirer," she told Raul. "Ron thinks you're very sexy."
Raul's look was less perplexed than she'd anticipated. It made her ask: "Are there gay apes, do you suppose?"
"Gay?"
"Homosexual. Men who like other men in bed."
"Is Ron?"
"Is Ron?" she laughed. "Yes, Ron is. It's that kind of neighborhood. That's why I like it."
She started to measure out the coffee into the cups. As she heard the granules slide from the spoon she felt the vision beginning in on her again.
She dropped the spoon. Turned to Raul. He was a long way from her, across a room that seemed to be filling with dust.
"Raul?" she said.
"What's wrong?" she saw him say. Saw rather than heard; the volume had been turned down to zero in the world she was slipping from. Panic set in. She reached out for Raul with both hands.
"Don't let me go—" she yelled at him. "—I don't want to go! I don't— "
Then the dust came between them, eroding him. Her hands missed his in the storm and instead of falling into his solid embrace she was pitched back into the desert, moving at speed across by now familiar terrain. The same baked earth she'd travelled twice before.
Her apartment had disappeared completely. She was back in the Loop, heading through the town. Above her, the sky was delicately tinted, as it had been the first time she'd travelled here. The sun was still close to the horizon. She could see it clearly, unlike that first time. More than see, stare at, without having to look away. She could even make out details. Solar flares leaping from its rim like arms of fire. A cluster of sun-spots marking its burning face. When she looked back to earth she was approaching the town.
With the first flush of panic over she began to take control of her circumstances, reminding herself sharply that this was the third time she'd been here, and she should be able to grasp the trick of it by now. She willed her pace to slow, and found that indeed she was slowing, giving her more time to study the town as she came to its fringes. Her instinct, seeing it for the first time, had been that it was somehow fake. That instinct was now confirmed. The boards of the houses were not weather-beaten, nor even painted. There were no curtains at the windows; no key-holes in the doors. And beyond those doors and windows? She told her floating system to veer towards one of the houses, and peered through the window. The roof of the house had been improperly finished; sunlight darted between the cracks and illuminated the interior. It was empty. There was no furniture, nor any other sign of human habitation. There was not even any division of the interior into rooms. The building was a complete sham. And if this one, then the next too presumably. She moved along the row to confirm the suspicion. It was also completely deserted.
As she drew away from the second window she felt the pull she'd experienced back in the other world: Kissoon was trying to bring her to him. She hoped now that Raul made no attempt to wake her, if indeed her body was still present in the world she'd left. Though she had a fear of this place, and a profound suspicion of the man who'd called her here, her curiosity laid stronger claim upon her. The mysteries of Palomo Grove had been bizarre enough, but nothing in Fletcher's hurried transfer of information about the Jaff, the Art and Quiddity went far towards explaining this place. The answers lay with Kissoon, she'd not the slightest doubt of that. If she could dig between the lines of his conversation, oblique as it was, she might have a hope of understanding. And with her newfound confidence in this condition she felt easier at the thought of returning to the hut. If he threatened her, or got a hard-on, she'd simply leave. It was within her power. Anything was within her power, if she wanted it badly enough. If she could look at the sun and not be blinded, she could certainly deal with Kissoon's fumbling claims on her body.
She started on through the town, aware that she was now walking, or had at least decided to present herself with that illusion. Once she'd imagined herself here, as she'd done the first time, the process of bringing her flesh with her was automatic. She couldn't feel the ground beneath her feet, nor did the act of walking take the least effort, but she had carried with her from the other world that idea of how to advance, and was using it here whether it was necessary or not. Probably not. Probably a thought was all that was required to whisk her around. But the more of the reality she knew best that she imported into this place, s
he reasoned, the more control she had over it. She would operate here by the rules she'd assumed were universal, until recently. Then, if they changed, she'd know it was not her doing. The more she thought this through the more solid she felt. Her shadow deepened beneath her; she began to feel the ground hot beneath her feet.
Reassuring as it was to have natural senses here, Kissoon clearly did not approve. She felt his pull on her strengthen, like he'd put his hand into her stomach and was tugging.
"All right . . ." she murmured ". . . I'm coming. But in my time, not in yours."
There was more than weight and shadow in the condition she was learning; there was smell and sound. Both of these brought surprises; both unwelcome. To her nostrils a sickening smell, one she knew without doubt to be that of putrefying meat. Was there a dead animal somewhere on the street? She could see nothing. But sound gave her a second clue. Her ears, sharper than they'd ever been, caught the seething of insect life. She listened closely to discover its direction, and guessing it, crossed the street to another of the houses. It was as featureless as those whose windows she'd peered through, but this one was not empty. The strengthening stench and the sound that came with it confirmed that instinct. There was something dead behind that banal facade. Many things, she began to suspect. The smell was getting to be overpowering; it made her innards churn. But she had to see what secret this town concealed.
Halfway across the street she felt another tug on her stomach. She resisted it, but Kissoon wasn't quite so ready to let her off the hook this time. He pulled again, harder, and she found herself moved down the street against her will. One moment she was approaching the House of the Stench, the next she was twenty yards from where she'd been.
"I want to see, " she said through gritted teeth, hoping that Kissoon could hear her.
Even if he couldn't he pulled again. This time she was ready for the tug and actively fought against it, demanding that her body move back towards the House.
"You're not going to stop me," she said.
In reply, he pulled once more, and despite her best efforts hauled her even further from her target.
"Fuck you!" she yelled out loud, furious at his intervention.
He used her anger against her. As she burned energy in her outburst he pulled yet again, and this time succeeded in moving her almost all the way down the street to the other end of the town. There was nothing she could do to resist him. He was quite simply stronger than her, and the more furious she became the more his grip strengthened, until she was moving at some speed away from the town, prey to his summons the way she'd been the first time she'd come into the Loop.
She knew her anger was weakening her resistance, and calmly instructed herself to control it as the desert speeded by.
"Calm yourself, woman," she told herself. "He's just a bully. Nothing more. Nothing less. Chill out."
Her advice to herself worked. She felt self-determination beginning to swell in her again. She didn't allow herself the luxury of satisfaction. She simply exercised the power she'd claimed back to show herself once more. Kissoon didn't relinquish his claim, of course; she felt his fist in her gut pulling as hard as ever. It hurt. But she resisted, and went on resisting, until she had almost come to a dead stop.
He'd succeeded in one of his ambitions at least, however. The town was a speck on the horizon behind her. The trek back to it was presently beyond her. She was not certain, even if she began it, that she could resist his tugging for such a distance.
Again, she offered herself some silent advice: this time to stand still for a few moments and take stock of her situation. She'd lost the fight in the town, there was no two ways about that. But she'd gained a few sticky questions to ask Kissoon when she was finally face to face with him. One, what the source of the stench actually was, and two, why he was so afraid of her seeing it. But given the strength he clearly possessed, even at this distance, she knew she had to be careful. The greatest mistake she could make in these circumstances was to assume any government she had over herself was permanent. Her presence here was at Kissoon's behest, and whatever he'd told her about being a prisoner here himself he knew more about its rules than she did. She was prey every moment to his power, the limits of which she could only guess. She had to proceed with greater caution, or risk losing what little authority she had over her condition.
Turning her back on the town she began to move in the direction of the hut. The solidity she'd earned in the town had not been taken from her, but when she moved it was with a lightness of step utterly unlike anything she'd experienced hitherto. A moon walk of a type: her strides long and easy, her speed impossible even for the fastest of sprinters. Sensing her approach Kissoon no longer hauled on her gut, though he maintained a presence there, as if to remind her of the strength he could use should he turn his will to it.
Ahead now she saw the second of the landmarks here: the tower. The wind whined in its tethering wires. Again she slowed her pace, so as to study the structure better. There was very little to see. It stood perhaps a hundred feet high, was made of steel, and had atop it a simple wood platform covered on three of its sides by sheets of corrugated iron. Its function defied her. As a viewing platform it seemed singularly useless, given that there was so little to view. Nor did it seem to be serving any technical purpose. Besides the corrugated iron up top—and some parcel hanging between—there was no sign of aerials or monitoring apparatus. She thought of Buñuel, of all people, and of her favorite of his films, Simon del Desierto, a satiric vision of St. Simon tempted by the Devil as he sat in penitence on the top of a pillar in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps the tower had been built for a similarly masochist saint. If so, he'd gone to dust, or Godhood.
There was nothing more to be seen here, she decided, and moved on past the tower, leaving it to its whining, enigmatic life. She could not yet see Kissoon's hut, but she knew it couldn't be far. There was no dust storm on the horizon to keep it from sight; the scene before her—the desert floor and the sky above—was exactly as she remembered it from her last trip here. The fact momentarily struck her as strange: that nothing whatsoever seemed to have changed. Maybe nothing ever changed here, she thought. Maybe it was forever, this place. Or like a movie, re-run and re-run, until the sprocket holes snapped or the picture burned up in the gate.
She'd no sooner imagined constancy than a rogue element she'd almost forgotten came into view. The woman.
Last time, with Kissoon drawing her to the hut, she'd had no chance to make contact with this other player on the desert stage. Indeed Kissoon had attempted to convince her that the woman had been a mirage; a projection of his erotic musings, and to be avoided. But now, with the woman close enough to call to, Tesla thought the explanation a likelier fantasy than the woman. However perverse Kissoon was, and she didn't doubt he'd had his moments, the figure before her was no masturbatory aid. True, she was close to naked, the shreds of clothing wrapped around her body pitifully inadequate. True, she had a face luminous with intelligence. But her long hair looked to have been torn out in several places, the blood dried to a dirty brown on her brow and cheeks. Her body was thin, and badly bruised, scratches on her thighs and arms only partially healed. There was a more profound wound, Tesla suspected, beneath the scraps of what might have once been a white dress. It was glued to the middle of her body, and she hugged herself there, almost bent double with pain. She was no pin-up; nor a mirage. She existed in the same plane of being as Tesla, and suffered here.
As she'd suspected Kissoon was aware that his warning had been ignored, and had begun to tug on Tesla once more. This time she was completely prepared for it. Instead of raging against his claim on her she stood quite still, preserving her calm. His mind-fingers fought for purchase, then began to slip through her innards. He snatched at them again; slipped again, and snatched. She didn't respond in any way, but simply kept her place, her eyes fixed on the woman all the time.
She'd stood upright, and was no longer holding her belly, but
let her hands hang by her sides. Very slowly, Tesla began to walk towards her, preserving as best she could the calm that was denying Kissoon his hold. The woman made no move either to advance or retreat. With every step Tesla took she got a better impression of her. She was fifty, maybe, her eyes, though sunk in their sockets, the liveliest part of her; the rest was fatigue. Around her neck she wore a chain on which hung a simple cross. It was all that remained of the life she might once have had before she'd become lost in this wilderness.
Suddenly, she opened her mouth, a look of anguish crossing her face. She started to speak, but either her vocal cords weren't strong enough or her lungs large enough for the words to cover the space between them.
"Wait," Tesla told her, concerned the woman not exhaust what little energy she had. "Let me get closer."
If she understood, the woman ignored the instruction, and began to speak again, repeating something over and over.
"I can't hear you," Tesla shouted back, aware that her distress at the woman's distress was giving Kissoon a handle on her. "Wait, will you?" she said, picking up speed.
As she did so she realized that the look on the woman's face was not anguish at all, but fear. That her eyes were no longer looking at Tesla, but at something else. And that the word she was repeating was "Lix! Lix!"
In horror, she turned, to see the desert floor behind her alive with Lix: a dozen on first glance, twice that on second. They were all exactly the same, like snakes from which every distinguishing mark had been struck, reducing them to ten-foot lengths of writhing muscle, coming at her at full speed. She had thought the one she'd glimpsed previously, pulling open the door, mouthless. She'd been wrong. They had mouths, all right; black holes lined with black teeth, opened wide. She was readying herself for their attack when she realized (too late) they'd been summoned as a distraction. Kissoon clutched her gut and pulled. The desert slid away beneath her, the Lix dividing as she was hauled through their throng.