Hymn (32 page)

Lloyd was silent for a long time.

‘What's wrong?' asked Celia.

‘For Christ's sake, tell me what's right.'

‘The world is going to be a better place to live in, Lloyd. Believe me.'

‘Did you burn Sylvia?' he asked her.

Celia looked away. ‘No, I didn't burn Sylvia.'

‘Sylvia had the hymn. You wanted it back. Who else could have burned her?'

‘I went to get it and she gave it to me. I don't know what happened to her afterwards!'

But Lloyd wouldn't let her get away with that. ‘You burned her, Celia,' he repeated. ‘You personally cremated her. Maybe Otto was responsible for the others, but if Otto still doesn't know that you have the Hymn, then Sylvia's burning must have been down to you.'

Celia was oddly flustered. She spoke in a quick, sideways manner, like Joan Crawford denying that she had ever punished her children. ‘Lloyd, I swear—things haven't been easy. Burning yourself, it isn't easy. Coming out of your body as nothing but smoke and soul, do you have any idea what that's like? I felt as if I were walking into a blast-furnace. Pain, panic, terrible self-doubt. Thinking to myself, Why did I do it? Why?'

‘Celia,' said Lloyd, ‘when this Transformation ceremony is over, and just as soon as Otto will let me, I'm walking. I don't want to hear any more about your master race, I don't want to hear any more about your immortality. As far as I'm concerned, we were finished the moment you struck that match and set fire to yourself. In fact, we were finished the first day you went to Otto for help, and not to me. Talk about trust—Jesus! Talk about truthfulness!'

‘Could you have cured me of multiple sclerosis?'

‘Of course I damn well couldn't.'

Celia removed her dark glasses and revealed eye-sockets as black as memories, as black as the insides of cameras. ‘You could join me, you know. It would be wonderful if you could join me.'

‘I've told you, Celia. I don't want to live for ever. I'm not that goddamned proud. I'm not that goddamned important. You know, to the general scheme of things.'

‘Many hundreds of people will.'

‘Not your invited audience, I hope?'

‘Otto chose them personally, you know. It took him years. Each one had to be checked and cross-filed. It took so long that some of them had died before we could send out the invitations.'

‘So who's coming?'

Celia made a face. ‘The faithful, I guess. The old Germans, the new young rich. The right-wing intellectuals. The scientists. Half of UC San Diego. Some from the Scripps Institute. Anybody intelligent and good-looking and progressive.'

‘And white?'

‘Otto doesn't insist on that. He says we have to adapt to changing times. We have Japanese, Hispanics, Italians.'

‘No blacks?'

‘Not as far as I know.'

‘No Jews?'

‘Lloyd!' smiled Celia, in disbelief. ‘We won't have enough room for everybody!'

Lloyd finished his drink, and set down his glass on the drainer with exaggerated care. ‘I think that's what they said the last time they tried to create a master race.'

They were still talking when the kitchen door opened and Franklin appeared, tucking his shirt-tails into his jeans, and blinking in the light. ‘What's going on?' he asked. ‘I heard voices.'

Celia stepped out from behind the refrigerator with a smile on her face. ‘Hallo, you've woken up? That's a good boy. We're all going back to Rancho Santa Fe in just a while.'

‘His name's Franklin,' said Lloyd.

Celia frowned at him. ‘What?'

‘His name's Franklin. That's what we've named him Franklin Free.'

‘Well . . . not free just yet, I'm afraid,' Celia told him. ‘Not until Otto decides it.'

Franklin's face fell. ‘Lloyd, I don't want to go back. Please don't make me go back, Lloyd.'

Lloyd said, ‘Listen, Franklin, it's all right. Everything's going to work out fine. Why don't you go get your little doll? You understand me? Go get your little doll, and then we can all think about leaving.'

Franklin didn't appear to understand at first, but then he left the kitchen and went back toward the bedrooms, closing the door behind him.

‘Poor mutt,' Celia remarked. ‘I guess he means well.'

‘Yes, I guess he does,' Lloyd agreed, trying not to sound too sharp.

They waited for a minute or two, and then they heard footsteps coming back toward the kitchen. They stopped right outside the door, and for a long moment there was silence. Celia stepped back in uncertainty. ‘Why doesn't he just come in?' she asked.

‘I think he wants to make a dramatic entrance,' said Lloyd.

He did. With one massive kick, he flattened the door to the floor, ripping out the hinges and splintering the door-frame. He stepped into the kitchen with one buccaneering stride; and what was even more dramatic was that he was carrying Tony Express on his back, white of eye and grinning with sleep, brandishing the ‘little doll'—the shaggy, dead-decorated sundance doll, with its tiny cross face and its tattered fur hangings.

Celia immediately seized the lapel of her raincoat and tore it open, buttons bouncing and rattling across the kitchen floor. She faced Franklin and Tony Express completely nude, her grayish skin already beginning to darken and rise in temperature. Smoke rose flatly from her shoulders.

‘For God's sake, be careful!' Lloyd shouted. ‘Don't let her touch you!'

The kitchen was filled with the nostril-burning smell of intense metallic heat. Celia stalked up toward Franklin and Tony Express, trailing one hand along the kitchen counter, and where she trailed it, she left a deeply-burned furrow, and the acrid smoke of plastic laminate and chipboard.

‘Tony! Franklin!' Lloyd shouted at them. ‘Forget it! She'll cremate you alive!'

Celia whipped her head around and stared at him, grinning. She plucked off her dark glasses and he saw her for what she really was: a creature of smoke and fire. Both open eye-sockets flared with orange flame, like blowtorches, and her grin seethed with sparks.

But Tony Express, out of all of them, was unafraid. Tony Express couldn't see Celia, although he could hear her, and feel her heat, and smell the smoke of melting Formica. He sat piggy-back on Franklin's broad shoulders, lifted his sundance doll, and shook it violently.

‘Weksa-dek!' he shrilled. ‘Weksa-dek!' He shook the sundance doll until it rattled and rattled, bones and beads.

‘Don't you dare . . . ‘ Celia began, but then she was suddenly silent. She stayed where she was, not moving, not advancing, although flames still funnelled out of her eyes, and rainbows of coppery heat crawled across the skin of her back.

Tony Express shook his doll yet again, and began to build up a strange rhythm with it, shouting out, ‘Weksit-patesk! Weksit-patesk! Na! Na! Weksit-patesk!'

At last Celia stood completely still, and even from three or four feet away, Lloyd could feel that she was cooling. Tony Express slid down from Franklin's back and approached her, and laid his hand on her bare breast.

‘See, she's cold now. Easy.'

‘What the hell did you do? Some kind of Pechanga magic?'

‘Algonquin, as a matter of fact. Their stuff is older, much more in tune with the Norse magic, know what I mean? Like the Norse people lived in America years before Christ. You know “weksa-dek” is Algonquin for “it's getting hotter”—and the Norse for “it's getting hotter” is “vaeckser hedt”. You know, like, “it's waxing hot”. Everybody in the world speaks the same language, except the Japs, and who wants to go around saying “kamikaze Toyota sushi” all the time, man?'

Lloyd walked around Celia slowly, touched her shoulder. She was quite cool, and she didn't seem to react at all.

‘Did you hypnotize her, too?'

Tony Express groped for Franklin's hand. ‘I did the same to her as I did to those cops. Lowered her vital what's-their-names, so that she's living at about a hundredth of the normal speed. As far as she's concerned, we're moving around this kitchen so fast now that she can't even see us.'

‘What about Otto?' asked Lloyd.

‘Who's Otto?'

‘Otto's the Junius man. The one who burned the bus. He's sitting in the next room asleep. Least, I hope he's asleep.'

‘Is he hot, like this one?'

‘No;' said Lloyd. ‘He's mortal. But he can start fires, just by thinking about them. He's pretty damned dangerous. Look what he did to my hands.'

‘He can set light to things just by thinking about them?'

‘That's right.'

‘Then maybe we can make him think about something else, man, apart from us.'

‘I'm not too sure what you mean.'

Tony Express squeezed Franklin's hand and said, ‘Go see if Otto's still asleep, would you, Franklin?'

Franklin looked anxiously across at Lloyd, as if to say, what's going to happen if Otto's awake, and he orders me to stay where I am, and I can't disobey him? But Lloyd nodded and said, ‘Go ahead, Franklin, you'll be okay. You're Franklin, right?'

‘Sure, I'm Franklin.'

He circled around Celia, glancing at her from time to time as he did so, obviously afraid that she was going to spring back to life, and set fire to him. As a matter of fact, Lloyd could actually see Celia moving, as gradually as the hour-hand on a clock, but her movement was so long-drawn-out that it would have taken her the rest of the day to cross the kitchen floor.

Franklin pushed the door open a little way so that he could see into the living-room. ‘He's there,' he reported back hoarsely. ‘He's still asleep.'

‘Men with no mothers sleep like the dead,' Tony Express remarked. When Lloyd raised an eyebrow in response, he said, ‘Old Pechanga saying, man. Don't ask me what it means.'

Lloyd said, We're going to have to get out of here, now that Otto's found us. They're holding the Transformation ceremony at Civic Theater tomorrow evening. It sounds like Otto's got a whole lot of arranging to do, so it should be pretty easy to stay out of his way. First of all I need to get back to Escondido.'

‘Escondido?' asked Tony Express. ‘Why d'you have to get back to Escondido?'

Lloyd looked at Celia. Her metabolic rate may have been reduced to that of a turtle, but he still preferred not to say anything about Wagner's Hymn of Atonement right in front of her. ‘I'll tell you later,' he answered. ‘Meanwhile, let's get our stuff together and get the hell out of here.'

He took hold of Franklin's arm and indicated to him in dumbshow that he should go pack up his clothes, and Tony Express's clothes, too. Then he stepped quietly into the living-room and crossed the rug on tiptoe, right past the sleeping Otto.

Otto's eyes were deeply sunken, his mouth was slightly open, and he was breathing so quietly that he might just as well have been dead. Only the slighest tic in the muscle of his left hand indicated that he was still alive. Lloyd passed within six inches of him, grimacing with the effort of keeping so quiet.

He went into the bedroom. In spite of all the noise they had been making in the kitchen, Kathleen was still asleep. She must have been totally exhausted by everything that had happened to her. Lloyd sat on the bed beside her and shook her shoulder.

‘Kathleen? Kathleen? Wake up, we have to get out of here.'

She stirred, then tangled her fingers into her hair, and turned over.

‘Kathleen, come on, we have to go.'

At last she sat up. ‘What time is it?' she asked, blurrily.

‘Nearly dawn. Otto's found us, he's here, we have to leave.'

‘He's here?'

‘He's asleep, but I don't know for how long.'

Kathleen climbed out of bed, and while Lloyd kept an eye on the door, she dressed. ‘I didn't hear a thing,' she admitted. ‘I must have been completely out of it. I was dreaming about Mike again.'

‘Quick as you can,' Lloyd urged her.

As soon as she was ready, they crept out of the bedroom and back across the living-room. Otto remained where he was, silently breathing. It was only when they had reached the kitchen door that he opened his eyes and said in that husk-dry voice of his, You're not leaving, Mr Denman?'

Lloyd gritted his teeth. Shit, he thought. Nearly made it, and now the bastard's woken up. He pushed Kathleen ahead of him into the kitchen and indicated wildly that she should call Tony Express.

He heard Kathleen say ‘Ah!' as she encountered Celia in the kitchen, but then there was silence.

Lloyd turned back to Otto, chafing his hands together, and said, ‘We were getting ourselves packed and ready to go back to Rancho Santa Fe, that's all.'

‘And are you ready now?'

‘Yes, well, pretty much.'

Otto gave himself an almost imperceptible stretch, and Lloyd heard the cracking of vertebrae. Then Otto stood up, and replaced his hat, and stood looking at Lloyd with an expression that Lloyd found impossible to interpret. It was partly amusement, partly cruelty, partly the tiredness of the post-war years. After the fall of Berlin, the rest of the twentieth century, for Otto at least, had been one long anticlimax. Only tomorrow's Transformation could possibly redeem it. Only the re-establishment of the master race.

He said, distractedly, ‘We'd better think of leaving, then. Do you have any food here? You'd better take that, too.'

Lloyd said, ‘Celia told me what you plan to do tomorrow . . . all about the Transformation.'

‘Oh, yes? And what was your reaction to that, Mr Denman?'

‘I, uh—well, you know how I felt at first. But I think I begin to see the logic of it now. You know, the master race, all of that. I didn't think too much of it to begin with. I guess I thought you were trying to bring back Nazi Germany. But Celia explained that you weren't.' He hesitated, and shrugged. ‘And, uh—she told me that we could still have a child. Still live together, just like we planned. It sounds . . . well, it sounds attractive. Magical, almost.'

Otto listened to this fastidiously. Then he said, ‘You're trying to tell me, then, that you have changed your mind? That you will be helpful, rather than obstructive?'

‘I guess that's the size of it, yes.' He looked quickly over his shoulder. Where the hell are you, Tony? We have to get out of here!

Otto tugged his fingers so that his knuckles popped. ‘It will be the greatest occasion in modern history. The very creation of a new race of demi-gods! Men and women at whose feet you will be glad to fall.'

‘Oh, sure thing,' said Lloyd, and at that moment the kitchen door opened and Tony Express stepped in, a slight mis-step to the left, holding up his sundance doll, and shaking it.

‘Na! Na!' Tony Express screamed out.

‘This is the boy?' asked Otto, calmly.

‘Er, yes,' said Lloyd. ‘He's kind of . . . ebullient, I'd guess you'd call it.'

‘He's blind.'

‘Yes, he's blind. He's also an Indian. His parents called him Child-Who-Looked-At-The-Sun. He's okay. Very well meaning.'

Tony Express came slowly forward on the softest of soles. He held the sundance doll up to Otto's face and shook it very, very gently, so that it sounded flat and threatening like a rattlesnake under a rock.

“You're the one, man,' he declared.

‘I'm which one?' Otto asked Lloyd. He seemed to be unable to address himself to Tony Express directly, as if his blindness made him deaf and mentally defective, too. ‘What is he talking about?'

‘You were the one who torched the bus, man, out in the Anza Borrego.'

‘How does he think he knows such a thing?' asked Otto, with a smile. ‘He has no eyes.'

‘I can recognize voices, man,' Tony Express told him. ‘And I can recognize yours. “Junius!” That's what you said! “Junius!”'

‘Well . . . I hope you think this will do you some good,' Otto replied.

‘Good testimony, in a court of law, man,' Tony Express suggested.

‘I don't think so,' said Otto. He was growing irritable now. ‘Let's get out of this place, now we've all had our sleep, and get back to Paseo Delicias.'

Tony Express shook his sundance doll. ‘No, Otto,' he said, and his voice sounded peculiarly sweet and high, almost feminine. ‘We're going, but you're staying.'

‘Enough of this nonsense!' Otto snapped at him. ‘You will all get into the sedan, now, and drive to Rancho Santa Fe. Celia and I will follow in the sports car.'

‘Otto . . . not a second time,' Tony Express told him, in that clear girlish voice. He shook his sundance doll once, twice, three times.

Right in front of Otto, the air began to curdle and eddy, as if it were water. Then gradually a figure began to take shape, dim and shadowy at first, but gradually clearer. Lloyd stared at it and a thrill of fright scuttled right up the back of his neck. It was a young girl, no more than fifteen or sixteen, with long shining blonde hair. She was standing between Otto and Tony Express with her head bowed. She wore a dark pinafore dress with a white smock over it, and short white socks, and black lace-up boots.

‘Don't leave me again, Otto,' Tony Express repeated, and this time it sounded as if he were talking in stereo, two voices overlapping.

Otto stared at the apparition of the little girl in fascination and shock. He took off his hat and leaned forward, so that he could see her better.

‘Gretchen?' he trembled. ‘Is that really Gretchen?'

‘Don't leave me again, Otto,' the girl pleaded, although she still wouldn't lift her head so that Otto could see her face. ‘You hurt me so much the last time . . . But the worst hurt was when you left me.'

Otto stroked her hair, over and over, and even though it was almost invisible, it built up static electricity, and rose softly crackling into the palm of his hand. ‘Gretchen, I had to leave you . . . how could I have taken you with me, when you were dead?'

‘I hated that ditch,' Gretchen whined. ‘It was so cold, and wet, and dark, and I was all tied up with wire. Why did you leave me, Otto?'

Tony Express took one step back, then another, and then nudged Lloyd's elbow. Lloyd was so enthralled by the apparition that Tony Express had conjured up that he was reluctant to leave, but Tony Express hissed at him, ‘Go! Go! This won't last much longer!'

‘Oh, Otto, why did you hurt me so much?' Gretchen kept on whining.

‘Little one . . . you were so beautiful,' Otto told her, his voice cracking with dryness. ‘I had to have you, I had to take everything that you had to offer. Even in that ditch when you were dead, white skin smeared with black mud—even in that ditch you were beautiful. I knelt in that ditch and I didn't care about my clothes and I took you one last time.'

‘I honoured you, Otto,' Gretchen replied, as Lloyd and Tony Express slipped out into the kitchen and softly closed the door behind them. ‘I respected you, and worshipped you. To me you were more like a knight from the days of old than a real man.'

Otto bent forward and kissed her hand. You were always so sweet, my little Gretchen. You could not have died better.'

‘Creep,' said Gretchen.

Otto thought he had misheard her. He lifted his head and said, ‘What? What did you say?'

‘I said creep rat fink A-hole, that's what I said.'

Gretchen lifted her one stiffened middle-finger at him, and then raised her face so that he could see it. Her silky blonde hair fell back and there was the blind black grinning expression of Tony Express.

Otto stood very still and rigid. So! Die Zauberei! He had never realized that America was a land of sorcerers, too! And what kind of magic was this—that the girl on whom he had inflicted the cruellest acts of his entire life could be materialized in front of his eyes—could speak to him, accuse him directly of everything that he had done? He had left Gretchen in that ditch near Wuppertal in the winter of 1943, and nobody else had known about it except him.