"Gotcha," he said.
She looked past him to the door, where Grillo was standing, staring into the schism, against which Quiddity's waves were breaking with mounting frequency and ferocity. She yelled his name, but he didn't respond Sweat ran down his face; saliva dribbled from his slack jaw. Wherever he was out wandering, he wasn't home.
Had she been able to sit in Grillo's skull she'd have understood his fascination. Once over the threshold the innocents had disappeared from his mind's eye, superseded by a sharper distress. His eyes were drawn to the surf, and in it he saw horrors. Closest to the shore were two bodies, thrown towards the Cosm then dragged back by an undertow which threatened to drown them. He knew them, though their faces were much changed. One was Jo-Beth McGuire. The other was Howie Katz. Further out in the waves he thought he glimpsed a third figure, pale against the dark sky. This one he didn't know. There appeared to be no flesh left on his face to recognize. He was a death's-head, riding the surf.
It was further out still, however, where the real horror began. Forms massive and rotting, the air around them dense with activity, as though flies the size of birds were feeding on their foulness. The Iad Uroboros. Even now, mesmerized, his mind (inspired by Swift) looked for words to describe the sight, but the vocabulary was impoverished when it came to evil. Depravity, iniquity, godlessness: what were those simple conditions in the face of such unredeemable essences? Hobbies and entertainments. Palate cleansers between viler courses. He almost envied those closer to the abominations the comprehension that might come with proximity—
Tossed in the tumult of the waves, Howie could have told him a thing or two. As the Iad had closed on them, he'd remembered where he'd sensed this horror before: in the Chicago slaughterhouse where he'd worked two years previous. It was memories of that month that filled his head. The slaughterhouse in summer, blood congealing in the gutters, the animals emptying their bladders and bowels at the sound of the deaths that went before them. Life turned to meat with a single shot. He tried to look beyond these loathsome images to Jo-Beth, with whom he'd come so far, on a tide which had conspired to keep them together, but couldn't get them to the shore fast enough to save them from the slaughterers at their backs. The sight of her, which might have sweetened these last despairing moments, was denied him. All he could see was the cattle beaten on to the ramps, and the shit and blood being hosed away, and kicking carcasses being hooked up by one broken leg and sent down the line for disembowelment. The same horror filling his head forever and forever.
The place beyond the surf was as invisible to her as Jo-Beth, so he had no idea of how far—or indeed how near— they were to its shores. Had he had the power of sight he'd have seen Jo-Beth's father, stricken, and speaking with Tommy-Ray's voice:
". . . here we come! . . . here we come . . .," —and Grillo staring out at the Iad; and Tesla, on the verge of losing her life to a man she called—
"Kissoon! For pity's sake! Look at them! Look!"
Kissoon glanced towards the schism, and the freight being brought by the tide.
"I see them," he said.
"You think they give a fuck about you? If they come through you're dead like all of us!"
"No," he said. "They're bringing a new world, and I've earned my place in it. A high place. You know how many years I've waited for this? Planned for it? Murdered for it? They'll reward me."
"Signed a contract did you? Got it in writing?"
"I'm their liberator. I made this possible. You should have joined the team back in the Loop. Lent me your body for a while. I'd have protected you. But no. You had your own ambitions. Like him." He looked at Jaffe. "Him the same. Had to have a piece of the pie. You both choked on it." Knowing Tesla couldn't leave now, when there was nowhere to leave to, he let her go and took a step towards Jaffe. "He got closer than you did, but then he had the balls."
Tommy-Ray's whoops of exhilaration were no longer issuing from Jaffe. There was only a low moan, which might have been the father, or the son, or a combination of both.
"You should see," Kissoon said to the tormented face. "Jaffe. Look at me. / want you to see!"
Tesla looked back towards the schism. How many waves were there left to break before the Iad reached the shore? A dozen? Half that number?
Kissoon's irritation with Jaffe was growing. He began to shake the man.
"Look at me, damn you!"
Tesla let him rage. It granted her a moment's grace; a moment in which she might just begin the process of removal to the Loop afresh.
"Wake up and see me, fucker. It's Kissoon. I got out! I got out!"
She let his haranguings become part of the scene she was picturing. Nothing could be excluded. Jaffe, Grillo, the doorway out to Cosm, and of course the doorway to Quiddity, all of it had to be devoured. Even she, the devourer, had to be part of this removal. Chewed up and spat into another time.
Kissoon's shouts suddenly stopped.
"What are you doing?" he said, turning to look at her. His stolen features, not used to expressing rage, were knotted up in a grotesque fashion. She didn't let the sight distract her. That too was part of the scene to be swallowed. She was equal to it.
"Don't you dare!" Kissoon said. "Hear me?"
She heard, and ate.
"I'm warning you," he said, moving back in her direction. "Don't you dare!"
Somewhere in the recesses of Randolph Jaffe's memory those three words, and the tone of their delivery, started an echo. He'd been in a hut once, with the man who'd delivered them in just that fashion. He remembered the hut's stale heat, and the smell of his own sweat. He remembered the scrawny old man squatting beyond the fire. And most of all he remembered the exchange now delivered into his head out of the past:
"Don't you dare. "
"Red rag to a bull, saying dare to me. I've seen stuff. . . done stuff . . ."
Prompted by the words, he remembered a motion. His hand going down to the pocket of his jacket, to find a blunt-bladed knife that was waiting there. A knife with an appetite for opening up sealed and secret things. Like letters; like skulls.
He heard the words again—
"Don't you dare. "
—and opened his sight to the scene in front of him. His arm, a parody of the strong limb he'd once owned—went down to his pocket. All these years he'd never let the knife out of his possession. It was still blunt. It was still hungry. His withered digits closed around the handle. His eyes focused on the head of the man who'd spoken from his memories. It was an easy target.
Tesla saw the motion of Jaffe's head from the corner of her eye; saw him push himself away from the wall and start to raise his right arm up from the vicinity of his pocket. She didn't see what was in it, not until the last possible moment, by which time Kissoon's fingers were tight around her neck, and the Lix around her shins. She'd not let his assault stop the removal. It too became part of the picture she was devouring. And now Jaffe. And his raised hand. And the knife she finally saw glinting in his raised hand. Raised, and falling, driving into the back of Kissoon's neck.
The shaman screamed, his hands dropping from her throat and going around the back of his head to protect himself. She liked his cry. It was the pain of her enemy, and her power seemed to rise on its arc, the task she'd undertaken suddenly easier than it had ever been, as though part of Kissoon's strength was passing to her in the sound. She felt the space they occupied in her mind's mouth, and chewed on it. The house shuddered as a significant piece of it was wrenched away and removed into the closed moments of the Loop.
Instantly, light.
The light of the Loop's perpetual dawn, pouring in through the door. With it the same wind that had blown on her face whenever she'd been here. It blew through the hallway, and took a portion of the Iad's taint with it, off across the wasteland. With its passing she saw the glazed look leaving Grillo's face. He grabbed hold of the door jamb, squinting against the light and shaking his head like a dog maddened with fleas.
With their m
aker wounded, the Lix had left off their attack, but she didn't hope they'd leave her be for long. Before he could redirect them she made for the door, pausing only to push Grillo ahead of her.
"What in God's name have you done?" he said as they stepped out on to bleached desert earth.
She hurried him away from the relocated rooms, which without a structure around them to spread the load of Quiddity's breakers were already coming apart at every corner.
"You want the good news or the bad?" she said.
"The good."
"This is the Loop. I brought part of the house through—"
Now she'd done it she could barely believe she'd succeeded.
"I did," she said, as though Grillo had contradicted her. "Fuck me, I did!"
"Including the Iad?" Grillo said.
"The schism and whatever's on the other side came too."
"So what's the bad news?"
"This is Trinity, remember? Point Zero?"
"Oh Jesus."
"And that—" she pointed to the steel tower, which was no more than a quarter of a mile from where they stood, "— is the bomb."
"So when does it blow? Have we got time—"
"I don't know," she said. "Maybe it won't detonate as long as Kissoon's alive. He's held that moment, all these years."
"Is there any way out?"
"Yes."
"Which direction? Let's do it."
"Don't waste time wishing, Grillo. We're not getting out of here alive."
"You can think us out. You thought us in."
"No. I'm staying. I have to see it to the end."
"This is the end," he said, pointing back towards the fragment of the house. "Look."
The walls were toppling in clouds of plaster dust, as Quiddity's waves were thrown against them. "How much more end do you want? Let's get the fuck out of here."
Tesla looked for some sign of either Kissoon or Jaffe in the confusion, but the ether of the dream-sea was spilling out in all directions, too thick now to be dispersed by the wind. They were in it somewhere, but out of sight.
"Tesla? Are you listening to me?"
"The bomb won't go till Kissoon's dead," she said. "He's holding the moment—"
"So you said."
"If you want to run for the exit, you might make it. It's in that direction." She pointed beyond the cloud through the town and out the other side. "You'd better get going."
"You think I'm a coward."
"Did I say that?"
A wave of ether curled towards them.
"If you're going to go, go," she said, her gaze fixed on the rubble of Coney Eye's lounge and hall. Above it, just visible through Quiddity's spillage, was the schism, hanging in the air. It doubled in size in the space between blinks, tearing itself open. She readied herself for the sight of the giants. But it was human forms she saw first, two of them, thrown up and out on to this arid shore.
"Howie?" she said.
It was. And beside him, Jo-Beth. Something had happened to them, she saw. Their faces and bodies were a mass of growths, as though their tissue had sprouted some vile blossom. She braved the next wave of ether to go back to them, shouting their names as she went. It was Jo-Beth who looked up first. Leading Howie by the hand she sought Tesla out in the turmoil.
"This way," Tesla said. "You have to get away from the hole—"
The tainted ether was inducing nightmares. They itched to be seen. But Jo-Beth seemed able to think her way through them to a simple question.
"Where are we?"
There was no simple answer.
"Grillo will tell you," she said. "Later. Grillo?"
He was there, already getting that same distracted look she'd seen in his eyes at the door of Coney Eye.
"Children," he said. "Why's it always children?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," she told him. "Listen to me, Grillo."
"I'm . . . listening," he said.
"You wanted to get out. I told you the way, remember?"
"Through the town."
"Through the town."
"Out the other side."
"Right."
"Take Howie and Jo-Beth with you. Maybe you can still outrun it."
"Outrun what?" Howie said, only raising his head with difficulty. It was weighed down with monstrous growths.
"The Iad or the bomb," Tesla told him. "Take your pick. Can you run?"
"We can try," Jo-Beth said. She looked at Howie. "We can try."
"Then go to it. All of you."
"I still . . . don't see . . ." Grillo began, his voice betraying the Iad's influence.
"Why I have to stay?"
"Yes"
"It's simple," she said. "This is the final trial. All things to all men, remember?"
"Damn stupid," he said, holding her gaze, as though the sight of her helped him keep the insanity at bay.
"Damn right," she said.
"So many things . . ." he said.
"What?"
"I haven't said to you."
"You didn't need to. And I hope neither did I."
"You were right."
"Except one. Something I should have told you."
"What?"
"I should have said—" she began; then grinned a wide, almost ecstatic grin that she didn't need to fake because it came from some contented place in her; and with it terminated her sentence as she'd terminated so many telephone calls between them and turned away, heading off into the next wave out of the schism, where she knew he couldn't follow.
Somebody was coming her way; another swimmer in the dream-sea, thrown up on the beach.
Tommy-Ray, the Death-Boy. The changes wrought in Jo-Beth and Howie had been profound, but they were kindness itself compared with what he'd sustained. His hair was still Malibu gold, and his face still bore the grin which had once charmed Palomo Grove to its knees. But his teeth were not the only gleam about him. Quiddity had bleached his flesh so that it resembled bone. His brows and cheeks had swollen up, his eyes sunk. He looked like a living skull. He wiped a thread of saliva from his chin with the back of his hand, the pinpoints of his gaze directed past Tesla to where his sister stood.
"Jo-Beth . . ." he said, moving through the wash of dark air. Tesla saw Jo-Beth look back towards him, then take a step away from Howie as though she was ready to part from him. Though she had urgent business to finish Tesla could not help but watch, as Tommy-Ray moved to claim his sister. The love that had ignited between Howie and Jo-Beth had begun this whole story, or at least its most recent chapter. Was it possible that Quiddity had undone that love?
She had the answer a beat later, as Jo-Beth took a second step from Howie's side, till they were at arm's length, her right hand still holding his left. With a thrill of comprehension Tesla saw what Jo-Beth was displaying to her brother. She and Howie Katz were not simply holding hands. They were joined. Quiddity had fused them, their interlocked fingers became a knot of forms that bound them together.
There was no need for words. Tommy-Ray let out a shout of disgust, and stopped in his tracks. Tesla could not see the expression on his face. Most probably there was none. Skulls could only grin and grimace; opposites collided in one expression. She saw Jo-Beth's look, however, even through the intervening murk. There was a little pity in it. But only a little. The rest was dispassion.
Tesla saw Grillo speak, words to summon the lovers away. They went immediately; all three. Tommy-Ray didn't move to follow.
"Death-Boy?" she said.
He looked around at her. The skull was still capable of tears. They welled on the curve of his sockets.
"How far are they behind you?" she asked him. "The Iad?"
"Iad?" he said.
"The giants."
"There are no giants. Just darkness."
"How far?"
"Very close."
When she looked back towards the schism she understood what he meant by darkness. Clots of it were emerging, carried out on the waves like gobs of tar the size
of boats, then rising up into the air above the desert. They had some kind of life, propelling themselves with rhythmic motions that ran down through the dozens of limbs arrayed along their flanks. Filaments of matter as dark as their bodies trailed beneath them, like coils of decaying gut. This was not, she knew, the Iad itself; but they couldn't be far behind.
She glanced away from the sight towards the steel tower, and the platform on top of it. The bomb was her species' ultimate idiocy, but it might justify its existence if it was quick in its detonation. There was no flicker from the platform, however. The bomb hung in its cradle like a bandaged baby, refusing to wake.
Kissoon was still alive; still holding the moment. She started back towards the rubble in the hope of finding him, and in the vainer hope of stopping his life with her own hands. As she approached she realized the clots had purpose in their upward movement. They were assembling themselves in layers, their filaments knotting so as to create a vast curtain. It was already thirty feet in the air, and each wave that broke brought more clots, their number rising exponentially as the schism widened.
She searched the maelstrom for a sign of Kissoon, and found both him and Jaffe on the far side of the rubble that had been the rooms. They were standing face to face, hands at each other's throats, the knife still in Jaffe's fist but held from further work by Kissoon. It had been busy. What had once been Raul's body was covered in stab wounds, from which blood was freely running. The cuts seemed not to have impaired Kissoon's strength. Even as she came in sight of them the shaman tore at Jaffe's throat. Pieces of his flesh came away. Kissoon went back for more instantly, opening the wound further. She directed him from his assault with a cry.
"Kissoon!"
The shaman glanced her way.
"Too late," he said. "The Iad's almost here."
She took what comfort she could from that almost.
"You both lost," he said, taking a back-handed swipe at Jaffe which threw the man off him to the ground. The frail, bony body didn't land heavily; it had too little weight. But it rolled some distance, the knife going from Jaffe's hand. Kissoon offered his opponent a contemptuous glance, then laughed.