Part 46 (1/2)

'Then leave,' came de l'Orme's voice.

Out the window behind his head, dark thunderheads were piling for an afternoon storm. His face was positively radiant with the reflected flames. His tone was stern. 'You may hand the torch on,' he told Thomas, 'but you may not extinguish it.'

'We're too d.a.m.ned close, Thomas,' January said.

'Close to what?' Thomas asked. 'Among us, we have over five hundred years of combined scholars.h.i.+p and experience. And where have we gotten with it in a year and a half of searching?' He dropped the strand of Lynch's teeth into the box, like so many rosary beads. 'That one of us is Satan. My friends, we've looked into the dark water so long it has become a mirror.'

A streak of lightning lanced between two limestone towers in the middle distance. Its thunder cracked through the room. Down below, the hired drivers and nurses fled for the cars just as a mountain squall attacked.

'You can't stop us, Thomas,' said de l'Orme. 'We have our own resources. We have our own imperatives. We'll follow the path you opened to us, wherever it may lead.'

Thomas closed the box and rested his fingers on the cardboard.

'Follow it then,' he said. 'This pains me to say. But from this day on you follow your path without the blessing and imprimatur of the Holy Father. And you follow it without me. My friends, I lack your strength. I lack your conviction. Forgive me my doubt. May G.o.d bless you.' He picked up the box.

'Don't go,' whispered January.

'Good-bye,' he said to them, and walked into the storm.

23 - THE SEA.

It had ceased to be a blank s.p.a.ce of delightful mystery...

-JOSEPH CONRAD, Heart of Darkness Beneath the Mariana and Yap Trenches, 6,010 fathoms

The sea stretched on. They had been walking for twenty-one days. Ike kept them on a short leash. He set the pace, resting every half hour, circulating among them like Gunga Din, filling their water bottles, congratulating them on their endurance. 'Man, where were you guys when I needed you on Makalu?' he would say.

Next to Ike, the strongest was Troy, the forensics kid, who'd probably been watching Sesame Street at the time Ike was battling his Himalayan peaks. He did a fine job trying to be Ike-like, solicitous and useful. But he was wearing down, too. Sometimes Ike posted him at the front, a place of trust, his way of honoring the boy.

Ali decided the best help she could be was to walk with Twiggs, whom everyone else wanted to hogtie and leave. From the moment he woke, the man whined and begged and committed petty thefts. The microbotanist was a born panhandler. Only Ali could deal with him. She treated him like a teenage novitiate with pimples. When Pia or Chelsea marveled at her patience, Ali explained that if it wasn't Twiggs, it would be someone else. She had never seen a tribe without a scapegoat.

Their tents were history. They slept on thin sleeping pads as a pretense of their former civilization. Only three of them had sleeping bags, because the three pounds of weight had proven too much for the rest. When the temperature cooled, they pressed together and draped the bags over their collective body. Ike rarely slept with them. Usually he took his shotgun and wandered away, returning in the morning.

On one such morning, before Ike came in from his night patrolling, Ali woke and walked down to the sea to clean her face. A boggy mist had come in off the water, but she could see to place her feet on the phosph.o.r.escent sand. Just as she was about to skirt a large boulder, she heard noises.

The sounds were delicate and bony. Instantly she knew this was not English, probably not human. She listened more keenly, then gently worked ahead several more steps to the flank of the boulder and kept herself hidden.

There seemed to be two figures down there. In silence she listened to the voices murmur and click and slowly dial her into a different horizon of existence. There was no question they were hadals.

She was breathless. One sounded little different from the water lightly lapping against the sh.o.r.e. The other was less joined at the vowels, more cut and dried at the edges of his word strings. They sounded polite or old. She stepped from around the rock to see them.

There weren't two, but three. One was a gargoyle similar to those that Shoat and Ike had killed. It was perched upon the very skin of the water, hands flat, while its wings fanned languidly up and down. The other two appeared to be amphibians, or close to it, like fishermen who have no memory but the sea, half man, half fish. One lay on his side on the sand, feet in the water, while the other drifted in repose. They had the sleek heads and large eyes of seals, but with sharpened teeth. Their flesh was slick and white, with small black hairs fletching their backs.

She had been afraid they would flee.

Abruptly she was afraid they would not.

One of the amphibians stirred and twisted to see her, showing his thick pizzle. It was erect. He'd been stroking himself, she realized. The gargoyle flexed his mouth like a baboon, and the dental arcade looked vicious.

'Oh,' Ali said foolishly.

What had she been thinking, to come here alone?

They watched her with the composure of philosophers in a glen. One of the amphibians went ahead and finished his thought in their soft language, still looking at her.

Ali considered running back to the group. She set one foot behind her to turn and go. The gargoyle cut the briefest of side glances at her.

'Don't move,' muttered Ike.

He was hunkered on top of the boulder to her left, balanced on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet. The pistol in one hand hung relaxed.

The hadals didn't speak anymore. They had that peculiar Oriental ease with long silences. The one went on stroking himself with apelike bemus.e.m.e.nt, not at all self-conscious or purposeful. There was nothing to hear but the water licking sand, and the skin sound of the one fondling himself.

After a while, the gargoyle cast one more glance at Ali, then pushed forward against the water's surface and departed on slow wings, never rising more than a few inches above the sea. He diagonaled into the mist and was gone.

By the time Ali brought her attention back to the amphibians, one had vanished. The last one - the masturbator - reached a state of boredom and quit. He slid below the water, and it was as if he had been drawn into a mouth. The lips of the sea sealed over him.

'Did that really happen?' Ali asked in a low voice. Her heart was pounding. She started forward to verify the handprints in the sand, to confirm the reality.

'Don't go near that water,' Ike warned her. 'He's waiting for you.'

'He's still there?' Her Zen hadals, lurking? But they were so pacific.

'You want to back up, please. You're making me nervous, Sister.'

'Ike,' she suddenly bubbled, 'you can understand them?'

'Not a word. Not these.'

'There are others?'

'I keep telling you, we're not alone.'

'But to actually see them...'

'Ali, we've been pa.s.sing among them the whole time.'

'Ones like those?'

'And ones you don't want to know about.'

'But they looked so peaceful. Like three poets.'

Ike tsk'ed.