Part 29 (1/2)

She started to answer, but could not. She was a tough old bird, and she hadn't cried for a long time. There were tears in her eyes now, and her throat had constricted. Tyler eased an arm around her. ”Kind of a pretty light, though,” he said. ”If you like purple.”

”I hate it,” she managed.

”Can't say I cotton to it much, either.” His voice was soft, but he was mulling over some hard questions. He didn't know how they would come, or when, but he didn't mean to give up without one h.e.l.l of a fight. He was going to drill as many as he could, and go down fighting like Davy Crockett at the Alamo. But the worst question gnawed at him: should he save a bullet for Bess, or not?

He was thinking about it, his gaze on the road, when he heard a woman scream. He looked at Bess. They stared at each other for a second. The woman's scream came again. They both realized what it was at the same time. Not the scream of a woman, but the shrieking of Sweetpea, back in the barn.

”Get a flashlight! Hurry!” he told her, and as she ran inside he sprinted on his wiry legs off the porch and around the house. The barn was about thirty yards back, next to Bess's cactus garden. He heard the frantic thump of Sweetpea's hooves. .h.i.tting the sides of his stall, and Tyler's palms were wet around the rifle. Something was at the horse.

He threw back the crossbeam and hauled the doors open. Everything was as dark as sin in there. The big palomino was still screaming, about to bash the boards loose. Tyler shouted, ”Whoa there, Sweetpea! Settle down, boy!” but the horse was going wild.

Tyler's first thought was that a sidewinder or scorpion must've gotten into the stall-but suddenly there was a cracking noise and the barn's floor shook under his boots. Sweetpea grunted as if he had been kicked in the belly. There followed a thras.h.i.+ng, panicked sound coupled with Sweetpea's high screams. Tyler looked over his shoulder, saw Bess running with a flashlight's beam spearing ahead. She gave it to him, and he aimed it at the horse's stall. The palomino was sunk up to his flanks in the sandy earth, broken floorboards jutting up around him. Sweetpea's eyes were red with terror, and foam snorted from his nostrils as he fought. His hind legs had disappeared into the hole, the front legs pawing at the air. Muscles rippled along his body as he tried to tear loose from whatever was pulling him through the barn floor. Tyler gasped, the sense knocked out of him. The horse sank another two feet, and the barn echoed with Sweetpea's cries.

”The rope!” Bess shouted, and reached for the lariat coiled near the door. There was a slipknot already on it, and she widened the noose, swung the rope twice around to play it out, and let fly for Sweetpea's head. Her aim was off by six inches, and she quickly reeled it back to try again as the horse was jerked down to his shoulders in a spray of sand.

On the next attempt, the rope slipped over Sweetpea's skull and tightened around the base of the neck. The rope pulled taut between them, started smoking a raw groove through Bess's hands. Tyler dropped the rifle, wedged the flashlight into the joint of two beams, and grabbed the rope, but both he and Bess were wrenched off their feet and dragged across the splintery floor. Sweetpea disappeared into the earth up to his throat.

Tyler struggled up, the rope entwined around his hands and his shoulder muscles popping. He planted his boots and fought it, his fingers turning blue, but he was being pulled steadily toward the stall. Now only Sweetpea's muzzle was still visible, and the sand was starting to slide over it.

”No!” Tyler yelled, and heaved backward on the rope so hard the raw flesh of his fingers split open like blood-gorged sausages. The sand eddied around like a whirlpool, there was a last feeble thras.h.i.+ng, and Sweetpea was gone.

But the rope continued to be drawn downward by a tremendous strength. Bess grabbed her husband's waist, and they went to the floor again. ”Let go!” Bess screamed, and Tyler opened his b.l.o.o.d.y fingers but the rope was tangled around his hands.

Bess held on, splinters piercing her arms and legs. Tyler was trying to shake the rope loose, and they were almost pulled under the railing into Sweetpea's stall before he felt the tension go slack. Tyler lay on his belly, tears of pain crawling down his cheeks. Bess rolled over on her side, softly moaning.

He sat up, forced his hands to close around the rope and started pulling it from the depths. ”Bess, bring the light,” he told her, and she silently went to get it. The rope came up, foot after foot. Bess retrieved the flashlight. Its bulb had dimmed, in need of a fresh battery. She pointed it toward the empty stall.

Tyler walked into the stall, continuing to draw the rope up. It was wet, and glistened in the murky light. Everything was dreamlike to him, this couldn't possibly be real, and in a minute or so he would awaken to Bess's call that breakfast was on the table. He sank to his knees beside the broken floorboards and watched the rope slither from the sand.

Its other end emerged. Tyler picked it up. Held it toward the light. Strands of thick gray ooze dripped from the ragged edge.

”Looks like... it's been sawed clean through,” he said.

And a shape came corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up in a whirl of sand, so fast Tyler had no time to react. A pair of jaws opened. Silver-blue needles snapped shut on Tyler's throat. The flat, reptilian head flailed viciously from side to side, the needle teeth ripping through tissue and arteries. Tyler's mouth filled with blood. He realized that the rope had not been sawed; it had been chewed.

That was his last thought, because with the next savage twist the creature broke his neck. It kept twisting, and Tyler's head with its bulging, sightless eyes began to crack from the spinal column. Bess screamed, dropped the flashlight as her hands pressed to her mouth. She saw what the creature was: a large dog-a Doberman concocted from a madman's nightmare. Instead of hair, its hide was covered with leathery, interlocking scales, and beneath it the knots of muscle bunched and rippled. Its amber eyes found her. The thing gave Tyler's neck one last ferocious shake and began to stretch its jaws impossibly wide, like the unhinging jaws of a snake. It flung the dead man aside. Bess backpedaled, tripped, and fell on her tailbone. The monster scrabbled up over the top board of Sweetpea's stall, dropped to the floor, and advanced on her, its mouth trailing Tyler's blood. The Winchester had tripped her up. Her legs were lying across it. She swung the rifle up and started shooting at the approaching shape. One bullet furrowed across its skull, a second entered its shoulder, a third slammed into its ribs. But then it was upon her, and its mouthful of needles clamped shut on her face.

She kept fighting. Her finger continued to spasm on the Winchester's trigger, sending bullets through the walls while the other fist beat at the thing's scaly hide. She was a Texas woman, and she didn't give up easily.

The issue was settled in another five seconds. Bess's skull broke with a noise like that of a clay jar cracking, and rows of needle teeth sawed into her brain.

Blood ran through the hay. The monster released the crushed ma.s.s and turned upon the flashlight, tearing it to pieces with teeth and metal-nailed claws. Then it crouched in the darkness, belly to the floor, and listened eagerly for the sounds of any other humans nearby; there were none, and the thing gave a low grunt of what might have been disappointment. It climbed back into Sweetpea's stall and began to dig down through the sand where the horse had gone. The monster's front and hind legs moved in a blur of synchronized power, and in another moment it had burrowed into the earth and the sand s.h.i.+fted over it like a whisper.

44 Through the Inner Eye

”Don't be afraid,” Daufin said. ”Seal your external visualizers.”

”Huh?” Tom asked.

”Close your eyes.”

He did. And promptly opened them again. ”Is this... going to hurt?”

”Only me, because I'll see my home again.”

”What are you going to do?” Jessie's arm was tight, ready to pull away.

”I'm going to take you on a journey, backward through the inner eye. I want to answer your questions about why I'm called a criminal. These things can't be told; they must be experienced.”

”Wow!” Nasty stepped forward, the light sparkling off the bits of golden glitter in her Mohawk. ”Can I... like... go with you?”

”I'm sorry, no,” Daufin said. ”There's only room for two.” She caught Nasty's wistful expression.

”Maybe some other time. Close your eyes,” she repeated to Tom and Jessie, and they did. Cody came closer to watch, and his heart was beating hard but he didn't have a clue as to what was about to happen.

Daufin's eyes shut. She waited, as the energy cells of her memory began to charge like complex batteries.

Jessie feared that Stevie's body temperature was getting too high, and that the heat would damage her brain and organs. But Daufin had said that Stevie was safe, and she had to trust this creature or she would lose her mind. Still, the hand she held continued to heat up; Stevie's body could tolerate such a fever for more than a few minutes without breaking down.

Tom said, ”I feel like we're getting ready to go play hide-and-see... d.a.m.n! ” He jumped, because what had seemed like a thunderbolt had snapped along his spine. He opened his eyes but the light was a brutal shock, with a hard yellow-green underglow, and he shut them again.

”Tom? What is it?” Jessie asked. To him her voice was a slow, underwater slur, and he thought, My brain's getting scrambled.

”Silence,” Daufin whispered, and in her voice chimes echoed. Jessie kept her eyes closed, waiting for she didn't know what. Though the hand she held seethed with heat, cold currents were beginning to run through her arm and up her shoulder; an electrical power being generated within Stevie's body, steadily gaining strength and entering Jessie through the connection of flesh.

The cold pulse had entered Tom's bones too, and he s.h.i.+vered. He thought he could no longer feel the floor beneath his feet; he seemed to be drifting, his body slowly skewing to right and left, held only by Daufin's grip. ”What's happen-” He stopped speaking, because the harshness of his own voice, the alien quality of it, terrified him.

Jessie had heard a hoa.r.s.e grunt that may have been the semblance of a human voice. The cold had enfolded her, from scalp to toes, like a breeze from the Ice House on a blistering July day. Another sensation was coming upon her: movement at a tremendous speed. She thought that if she could force her eyelids up, she might see the atoms in the wall in motion like patterns of static on a television screen and her own body moving so fast it found an opening between them and slipped through. There was no panic, only exhilaration. It was what she thought a night sky-dive might be like, freefalling through darkness except there was no up or down-just out, beyond what she knew of life. Something glinted on her left, on her right, above and below. Blurred points and cl.u.s.ters of light pa.s.sing at incredible velocity. But her eyes were still closed-or at least she sensed they were. Stars, she realized. My G.o.d... I'm in the middle of a universe!

Tom had seen them too. Constellations wheeled across the heavens, ringed worlds luminous with distant sunlight, gas clouds rippling like the wings of manta rays. And then they were almost upon it: a world as white as a pearl, surrounded by six white moons that crossed each other's...o...b..t with unerring precision. The planet loomed before them, citadels of clouds covering its surface and in their midst storms spinning with silent ferocity. Too fast! Jessie thought as the clouds came up at her. Too fast! We're going to- They pierced the clouds, descending through whirlwinds. A smell of ammonia filled Jessie's nostrils. There was another breath-stealing shock of cold, followed by utter darkness. They were still traveling at high speed, slanting downward. Warmth touched Tom and Jessie, chasing away the cold. The darkness lightened to royal blue, then a rich, aquatic blue-green. Silken liquid pressed at Tom's face, and claustrophobia gripped him. We're going to drown! he thought, and tried to pull free from Daufin's hand but her grip strengthened, would not release him. He wanted to thrash loose and get to the surface, but he realized he was still breathing just fine. We're not really in an alien ocean, he told himself as they continued down. This is a dream... we're still standing in the apartment building, back in Inferno...

With an effort, he twisted his head to look at Daufin for rea.s.surance. He was no longer holding the hand of a little girl.

The hand was ghostly gray, as transparent as mist, with two slender fingers and a short, flattened thumb. It was a small thing that looked as fragile as blown gla.s.s, and attached to that hand was a stalk that trailed four or five feet to Daufin's real form.

Beside Tom in the gliding aquamarine was a body shaped like a torpedo, perhaps eight feet in length and full of iridescence like trapped stars. More stalks-tough, tentaclelike arms-drifted with the motion of the liquid around them, each with a similar two-fingered, single-thumbed hand. The body ended in a thick flat paddle of muscle that effortlessly propelled them onward, and attached to a protrusion just short of the tail was a silver filament that linked the body with its small black sphere. Electrical energy sparked through Daufin's translucent flesh. Organs were visible in there, anch.o.r.ed by a simple framework of gray cartilage. Tom looked at where he thought Daufin's head should be, and saw a curved k.n.o.b with a sickle-shaped mouth and a trunklike appendage about two feet long. He could see one of the eyes: a yellow orb the size of a baseball, with a vertical green pupil. The eye c.o.c.ked in his direction. There was peace in its gaze, a languid power. The head nodded, and Tom inhaled sharply at the sign of recognition; air filled his lungs instead of liquid. The ghostly, electric-charged fingers squeezed his hand, and another arm drifted up and touched Tom's shoulder in a gesture of comfort. Daufin took them deeper. Warm currents slid around their bodies and the light was growing stronger, as if this planet's sun lay at its center.

Rising up from the depths like flickers of moving neon were more of Daufin's tribe. Jessie recoiled, felt Daufin's strong grip, and then she looked and saw Daufin as Tom had. Her first impulse was to pull away from the spindly hand, but she checked it. Of course Daufin was a different form; what else could she have expected? Daufin was a creature designed for an oceanic world, even though the ”ocean” might be composed of ammonia and nitrogen.

The other creatures propelled themselves in joyous spirals, leaving phosph.o.r.escent wakes and their pods weaving at the ends of the tethers. They were oblivious to the human presence, but both Tom and Jessie knew that this was Daufin's memory-her inner eye-and they were only visitors here, the alien ghosts of the future. Hundreds of the creatures made a formation around Daufin, sailing with the precise movements of birds through untroubled air, and Jessie realized Daufin must be a leader of some kind to merit such an escort.

Now the impressions of Daufin's world, filtered through her inner eye, came in rapid succession to Jessie and Tom: s.h.i.+mmering outlines of Everest-sized mountains and deep valleys between them, huge orchards where rows of kelplike vegetation were tended, creva.s.ses showing cracks of fierce white glare-a glimpse into the immense power source that lay at the heart of this world. The vermiform towers of a city-sloping, curved, and ridged shapes that resembled the intricacies of seash.e.l.ls-stood beyond the mountains, and thousands of Daufin's tribe moved in currents above their walls. Time s.h.i.+fted, or Daufin's memory skipped tracks. In a valley below was a miles-long chasm of white fire that shot up whiplashes of electricity. The tides had changed too; they were no longer gentle, but swirled with restless energy. Daufin began to roll over and over, still gripping Tom and Jessie, and underneath what might have been the throat a series of small gill-like flaps vibrated; from them issued a compelling chiming sound.

In response came Daufin's tribe, struggling against the currents. They rolled like Daufin, and from the underside of their bodies emerged round pink nipples. Other shapes, also summoned by Daufin's song, rose from the valley's chasm; they were disk-shaped creatures, blue electrical impulses sparkling around their rims and at their centers a knot of pulsing fire. As Daufin's song continued, the new creatures began to attach themselves to the pink underbelly nipples. Dark fluids jetted, s.h.i.+mmering with iridescence. Wheels of creatures danced, rose, and fell in the turbulence. Three of them fixed to nipples on Daufin's belly, spasmed, and spun away like dead leaves. It was a ma.s.s mating ritual, Jessie realized; a ballet of life and death.

Another blink of time. Something was approaching from beyond. Something alien, and horribly cold. It arrowed through the sea with a chatter of circuits, expelled a black harpoon, and sped downward into the valley of fire. More came, following the first. The new arrivals were connected to long clear hoses that snaked up to the surface. Machinery began to grind and pumps hissed, and through the hoses were drawn hundreds of the disk-shaped creatures that lived at the center of Daufin's world. Down came more dark spears, more greedy hoses. The brutal harvest continued, suctioning up seed-giving creatures older than time itself, that were a vital part of the planet's power source. When the wild currents called Daufin and she sang again, there weren't enough seed-givers to impregnate even half the tribe; they were being harvested faster than the unknown creation processes of the planet could produce them.