Walkers (43 page)

‘Ah, you’re back,’ said Gil.
‘There’s coffee in the kitchen. I just made it.’

Henry poured himself a cup of coffee
and then came back in. He sat down on the opposite side of the table, and said
nothing for a while, watching Gil read.

‘Anything interesting in the paper?’
he asked, eventually.

‘Padres licked hell out of the
Braves.’

‘Well, that’s one bit of good news.’

Gil folded up the paper and tossed
it aside. ‘They’ve had more earth tremors down in Baja. Two winos were found
dead in Balboa Park. Shamu the killer whale had been suffering from
flatulence.’

‘Thanks for the precis.’

Gil said, ‘I’m real pleased we got
Samena back. I’m sorry about your ex-wife, though.’

Henry shrugged. ‘It had to be her,
of all people. Still, I’m going up to the laboratory as soon as I’m dressed.
Maybe she hasn’t been taken over by that Devil after all. It happened pretty
much in the very last second of that dream, didn’t it?’

‘The stuff about asking her that
question,’ said Gil. ‘Do you think it’s really going to work?’ ‘Don’t ask me.
But what else can I do?’ Gil was silent for a long time, and then he said, ‘You
know something, Henry, this is all crazy. This whole thing is completely crazy.
Here are you and I and Susan – and now Lloyd Curran, too – all risking life and
limb and sanity just to fight off some insane creature that only appears in
people’s dreams. I mean, why the hell should we?’ ‘You want to quit?’ asked
Henry, straightforwardly. ‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Well, I don’t want to quit,’ said
Henry. ‘That creature we were fighting last night, he’s only one out of ten,
maybe a dozen. He’s only a fledgling, too. Imagine what kind of power he’s
going to have when he’s fully grown. He’s going to get inside people’s heads
while they sleep and he’s going to make them think and feel anything he damn
well wants them to think and feel. Come on, Gil, we spend one-third of our
lives asleep. That creature and all his brothers are going to be able to
dominate one-third of our existence – and probably the other two-thirds, too.’
Henry stared at Gil steadily. ‘Somewhere, Gil – somewhere not too far away
-Yaomauitl
himself is
prowling around
– and he’s impregnating more women with Devils every day. God knows how many
he’s managed to fertilise already. Think about it: each woman has a dozen eels,
each eel becomes a fully grown Devil within only a couple of months . .

. how long, mathematically, before
we have Devils in their
thousands,
and
those Devils are dominating the minds of nearly everybody in the country? Let
me tell you something, Gil, this is nothing short of an invasion.’

Gil said, ‘But why
us,
that’s what I want to know? Why does
it have to be
us
who must try and
stop it?’

Henry finished his coffee. He looked
at Gil for a moment, and then turned his head and looked out of the window,
towards the sea. It was a bright, sharp, glittery morning.

‘I guess it has to be us because it
was always written that it was going to be us. What did those Arabs say last
night?
Mektoub,
it is written.’

‘You really believe that? I didn’t
think philosophers believed that.’

‘I don’t think you want a long
lecture on Determinism and historical inevitability, do you?’ smiled Henry.

Gil shook his head. ‘The point is,
whether it’s written or not, what are we going to do about it? I mean, what
can
we do about it?’

Henry said, ‘Do you want to drive me
up to La Jolla? We can start by trying to find out if this creature’s got any
kind of a hold on Andrea.’

Gil checked his watch. ‘Let me call
my mom and dad first. Then – okay, I’ll drive you.

If it’s written, then I guess it’s
written, and there’s nothing that any of us can do about it.’

They reached the Scripps Institute
of Oceanography shortly after eight. There were three police cars in the
parking-lot, which Henry took as a bad sign that they may not be able to get as
close to the embryo Devil as they might have liked. Gil parked the Mustang, and
heaved himself out without opening the door. Henry sat in the passenger-seat
without moving for a while, and then awkwardly clambered out in the same way,
showing his maroon socks as he did so.

‘Hey!’ Gil complimented him.
‘The Dukes of Hazzard
strike again!’

They went inside the marine biology
department. It was cool and air conditioned and almost silent. At the far side
of a wide reception area, a Mexican security guard was talking to a newly
arrived receptionist. She kept saying, over and over again, ‘Well, they won’t
even
think
of changing the lunch
break, I know that. They won’t even
think
of it. I’ve tried, I’ve tried asking them, well, I’ve tried asking them, but
they won’t even
think
of it.’

Henry and Gil waited for a minute or
two, and then Henry noisily cleared his throat.

‘Yes?’ asked the receptionist,
plainly irritated by the interruption.

‘We’d like to see Dr Andrea
Steinway, please,’ said Henry.

‘Who shall I say wants her?’

‘Her husband, if you don’t mind.

‘‘Ex-husband,’ put in Gil, and Henry
dug him sharply in the ribs.

It was nearly ten minutes before
Andrea appeared. She was wearing her white lab coat, with a row of pencils in
the breast-pocket, and her hair was severely tied back with a green riband.

‘Henry,’ she said, in an odd tone of
voice.

‘Hello, Andrea.’

‘What are you doing here? This is
most peculiar.’

‘What’s peculiar about it?’ asked
Henry.

‘I -’ began Andrea, and then stopped
herself. But Henry could see in her eyes the unspoken mystification that she
was feeling. Last night, she had dreamed; and in her dreams she had seen Henry,
in extraordinary armour, with an unfamiliar youth – who was now standing next
to him, in real life, amongst the potted plants of the Scripps Institute’s
reception area.

Henry said, ‘I wanted to know how
the work was coming along.’

‘Work?’ asked Andrea, still a little
dazed. “ ‘Your investigations... the creature they dug up on the beach.’

‘Oh, that – well, we’re waiting for
two or three digestive experiments, as well as a full electro-encephalograph,
and some skin and blood analyses.’

Henry thrust his hands into his
pockets and tried to look affable. ‘I was wondering if you’d had any
preliminary ideas – made any guesses about it.’

‘Henry, you know very well that I
simply don’t work that way – and, listen, why on earth are you here at eight
o’clock in the morning asking such peculiar questions?

And who on earth is this?’

Henry turned around and looked at
Gil as if he had never seen him before in his life.

‘This?’

‘Yes, Henry, I – ‘ She leaned
forward a little, and peered at Gil quite closely. ‘I’m sorry to sound rude,’
she said, ‘but have I met you somewhere before?’

Gil said, ‘I’m Gil Miller. Your
husband, your ex-husband and me, we were the ones who found the girl’s body on
the beach.’ He put out his hand, and Andrea rather distractedly shook it.

Henry asked, nonchalantly, ‘Is there
any chance that we could take a look at the creature?’

‘A
look?’
said Andrea. ‘No, I’m sorry, that’s out of the question. The
police are here, guarding it. They’ve been here ever since it was brought over
from the coroner’s department.’

‘Surely a look won’t do any harm,’
said Henry.

‘I’m sorry, Henry, no, they won’t
allow it.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Henry, ‘I guess
that was a wasted journey.’

‘Yes,’ Andrea agreed, still baffled.
‘I guess that it was.’

‘You, er... don’t happen to know when
the police might release some information?’

‘Henry, I don’t understand why
you’re asking me these peculiar questions.’

‘You’re right, they
are
peculiar,’ Henry told her, suddenly
smiling. ‘Like –
what are the
seven tests of Abrahel?’

Andrea stared at Henry for what
seemed like minutes on end. He could almost feel the world turning under his
feet. Andrea didn’t blink for the whole of that time; her eyes remained fixed
on Henry as if she were trying to set fire to him with X-ray vision. He stared
back at her, but it wasn’t easy. There was such force in her eyes – or in
whatever it was that was concealed behind her eyes – that he could scarcely
prevent himself from looking away, and then turning around and hurrying out of
that building as quickly as he could.

Gil sensed the tremendous tension
between them, and stepped back a little way, a response that he suddenly
realised was one that Tebulot would have made, rather than Gil as he once used
to be.

Gil could sense the evil, too, the
increasing coldness; and whether Andrea answered Henry’s question from the
Demonic Interrogation or not, he knew that the Devil was here and that the
Devil had possessed her. ‘I. . .’ began Andrea. Her voice was deep and thick
and turgid, as if her throat was filled with frozen slush. ‘The. . .’

Henry tried to smile, but his face
was rigid. ‘The seven tests of Abrahel, Andrea?

What are they? That’s all I want to
know.’

‘You... want to know-’Andrea said,
hoarsely. ‘If. . .’

‘If what, Andrea? Come on, you can
say it. Don’t be afraid. We used to be man and wife remember? We shouldn’t have
secrets, even now.’

Terrified as he was, Henry stepped
closer, until he was no more than a foot away.

Andrea still didn’t take her eyes
away from him, and now they were dark and glistening like the eyes of some
predatory beast. He could feel the coldness pouring off her like liquid oxygen;
the coldness which those who have come close to Devils always remember,
‘uerie cold, like unto yce’.

Andrea said, quickly and quietly,
‘The seven tests of Abrahel are his and his alone.

Now, go, both of you, and don’t let
me see you here again, do you understand?’

Henry rested his hand on Andrea’s
shoulder. She slowly turned her head sideways to stare at it, but she made no
move to push it off.

‘Andrea,’ said Henry, ‘I know all
about your dream last night. I know what happened to you. I’ve come to help.’

She looked back at him. ‘You
know...
how can you know?’

Henry smiled. There was enough
residual energy in his body for him to warm her up, to dissipate the coldness
of Yaomauitl’s bastard offspring. The Devil may have captured her
dream-personality, but he had not yet captured her earthbound body, or her
Christian soul.

‘It’s hard to explain,’ Henry said,
still smiling. ‘But all you have to know is that I understand what’s happened
to you, and that I can help you.’

‘You’re lying,’ she said. ‘You’re
mad.’

‘Remember Morocco?’ asked Henry.
‘Remember the back room of the shop?’

Andrea stiffened. She took hold of
Henry’s hand, and lifted it off her shoulder as if it were something inanimate
that she had been carrying there – a hat, or a dead bird.

Henry could tell that there were two
distinct forces inside her, tumbling and turning and raging against each other.
Her indecision was catastrophic. She turned around, and began to walk away; and
then she turned again, and began to walk back again.

‘You
can’t -’
she said. ‘You can’t
possibly
-’
It was then, however, that Lieutenant Salvador Ortega appeared from the
direction of Andrea’s laboratory. Today, he was wearing a green-and-yellow
plaid sports jacket, and green slacks, and a green bow-tie. He came up to
Andrea in a matter-of-fact way, not noticing her intense agitation, and linked
her arm through his.

‘Now then, Doctor, I’m going to
start getting jealous. We were supposed to be running through these pathology
tests, weren’t we? And what do I find? You’re out here, making time with your
husband-as-was.’

Andrea stiffened, and then tugged
her arm away. For the first time, Salvador realised that something was wrong.
‘Dr Steinway?’ he asked. But Andrea stalked away, back to her laboratory,
leaving Salvador with Henry and Gil and his own perplexity.

‘What did I say?’ Salvador asked
Henry. ‘It was not what you said,’ Henry told him.

‘Well, then, what did
you
say? She was fine when she came in
this morning. Now look at her.’

‘Salvador,’ said Henry, ‘I want you
for once in your career to stand logic and procedure right on their heads. I
want you to believe that what you’ve got in there – that creature – has already
had a serious effect on my ex-wife’s mind, and that unless you destroy it – and
I mean right away,
now –
it could
very well kill her.’

Salvador turned and looked back
toward the laboratory. Then he said, ‘Do you have any evidence of this, Henry?’
‘What kind of evidence do you want?’ ‘Concrete evidence, Henry. Something in
black and white that I can show to the captain of detectives.’