Walkers (52 page)

Down here, there was silence. They
were deep inside a metallic cavern, only a little higher than their heads. They
cautiously climbed down the steps and looked around, Kasyx using his helmet to
illuminate the furthest depths of the cavern. They could glimpse shadowy
archways, and massive pillared supports, and greasy black electrical cables
that hung from the roof like boa constrictors.

Kasyx looked from one side to the
other, and then said, ‘There’s nothing here. This is way down underneath the
surface. The power and maintenance department, if you ask me.’

‘Shall we call it a night?’ Samena
suggested anxiously.

‘I think so,’ said Kasyx. ‘Tebulot?
Xaxxa?’

Xaxxa nodded. ‘Let’s face it, man,
he outsmarted us that time, but next time we’re going to be ready. Next time
we’re going to blast that mother right where it hurts the most.’

Tebulot raised his hand in
agreement. He had been fighting hard, and his machine was heavy, and he was
looking weary. Kasyx therefore took a single step backwards, and opened out his
arms so that he could draw the octagon in the air.

‘We shall return to fight Yaomauitl
again,’ he said. Samena, Tebulot, and Xaxxa gave him, bravely, the salute of
the Night Warriors.

At that moment, however, they heard
a grinding, clashing sound from the darker recesses of the metallic cavern.
Kasyx looked this way and that, his horizontal beam flickering from one shadow
to another. Tebulot, tired as he was, lifted up his machine again; Samena
unhooked an arrowhead from the jingling collection on her belt.

‘What the hell is that noise?’
Tebulot asked, alert and nervous.

His question was answered
immediately, for out of the darkness, on all sides, ten or eleven gigantic
clockwork machines appeared, advancing on them in that same whirring rush that
characterizes all clockwork devices. Each machine was different, but all were
nothing much more than a huge wheeled collection of churning cogs and ticking
springs and swinging foliots and spinning crown-wheels. The Devil’s machinery –
because it had no other purpose than to mangle or maim anybody who was caught
in their way.

Xaxxa instantly sped away from the
rest of the Night Warriors on a power-slide that illuminated the whole cavern.
He banked and turned, keeping his head low so that he didn’t hit it on the
cavern ceiling, and streaked in to drop-kick one of the machines on its
side-plate. His first kick did nothing but unbalance the machine for a moment,
but then he circled around again, ducking low, and delivered another two-footed
kick, right against the very top of the machine.

The machine teetered on its wheels,
and for a second Kasyx thought that it would regain its equilibrium, and keep
on coming. But the momentum of its own cogs swung it to one side, and it
crashed to the floor of the cavern in a thunderous explosion of flying
gear-wheels and tumbling spindles.

Samena ran forward, somersaulted
between two machines, and fired a double-headed arrow as she did so. Each
arrowhead trailed out behind it a long thin cable of braided steel, and the
cables flew into the clockwork mechanisms, instantly tangling them up. The two
machines screeched and ground and strained at their springs, and eventually
jammed up completely, then stopped.

Tebulot blipped off four or five
small energy-bolts, wrecking one machine and sending another round and round in
clattering circles, shedding nuts and bolts and pieces of framework as it went.
Kasyx shouted, ‘Back! Back! Let’s get out of here!’ and lifted his arms again
to draw the octagon. But as he did so, Samena screamed at him,
‘Behind you! Kasyx! Behind your
Kasyx
heard the machine before he saw it. His ears were suddenly filled with the
whirring of flywheels, close up behind him, and then he turned and saw that one
of the machines was almost on top of him. He tried to stumble clear but the
cogs snatched at his ankle, and suddenly half of his leg had been tugged in
between the wheels and springs. He roared out in pain, hopping on his one free
leg and desperately trying to push against the mechanism’s framework to drag
himself away.

If he hadn’t been wearing armour,
his leg would have been completely mangled. As it was, the cogs had crushed the
greaves below the knee, and twisted the alloy of his sabatons. The machine
squealed loudly as its crown-wheels tried to pull him deeper inside, and the
teeth of its cogs rattled against his poleyns, or knee-plates. He gritted his
teeth, and pushed harder against the framework. He felt his muscles cracking,
and the sweat streaking down the side of his face, inside his helmet. His
trapped leg felt as if it were on fire, and he knew that if he relaxed even for
one instant, he would be pulled right inside the clockwork and killed.

He could have used his last
remaining power to disable the machine. But, if he did that, there would be no
energy left to take the Night Warriors back to the real world.

They would be imprisoned in the
clockwork city for as long as the clockwork city lasted, and then swallowed up
for all eternity when the boy-dreamer awoke.

‘Kasyx!’ Samena shouted, and came
running up to help him.

‘Get back!’ he gasped. ‘Don’t come
too close!’

Now Xaxxa and Tebulot came up, and
in spite of Kasyx’s protests, caught hold of him under his arms, and helped him
to maintain his steady pull against the devouring machine.

‘Let me go!’ Kasyx demanded. ‘I
can... draw theoctagon... then you can – For Christ’s sake, let me go!’

Tebulot said, ‘No martyrs in this
cause, old-timer. Hang on tight. Samena, let’s have one of those wires of
yours, to jam up this machinery.’

Samena came up close, and fired off
a wire-trailing arrowhead at close range. The wire lashed itself around the
crown-wheels as tightly and as quickly as a fuse-spring, and the clockwork
juddered and snarled and came to a stop.

‘Right,’ said Tebulot, ‘Xaxxa – see
if you can kick those cogs free.’

Supporting himself against the
machine’s framework, Xaxxa kicked out at the gear-wheel again and again and
again. At last, one of the spindles burst out of its socket, and three cogs
clattered on to the ground. Xaxxa kicked again, and Kasyx’s leg came free.

The three of them lifted the
charge-keeper out of the machinery. His leg was twisted at an odd angle, and he
was white with pain.

‘Put him down for a moment,’ said
Tebulot, but Kasyx violently shook his head and said, ‘No – no! Let’s get back!
Just gather around me, and let’s get back!’

They did as they were told. They all
came close to him, supporting him this time instead of simply holding his hand,
and he drew the sparkling blue octagon right in the air in front of them. As he
lifted it above their heads, they heard more clockwork machines grinding toward
them, but Yaomauitl had missed his chance. The octagon sank all around them,
and when it touched the floor they were back in the sleeping boy’s bedroom.

The house was quiet now; the lights
were out. The sun was just beginning to lighten the sky over the Santa Monica
mountains. The boy had buried himself in his covers some time during the course
of the night, and now lay hot and tousled, with his arm hanging over the edge
of the bed.

Kasyx winced, and half collapsed.
‘Jesus! This hurts,’ he gritted, between tightly clenched teeth. Tebulot said,
‘Come on, I’ll get you home. You should be okay, once you’re back in your own body.’

Samena clasped his hand, and said,
‘Take care, Kasyx. I’ll call you as soon as I can.’

And Xaxxa put his arm around him,
and looked straight into his eyes, and gave him a short strong nod which meant
more than words could ever have expressed. We’re brothers; we’re friends; we’ve
fought together; we’ve been scared together. It doesn’t matter that I’m young
and black and that you’re old and white. We’re Night Warriors, and when we
fight the Devil we’re together.

Samena and Xaxxa rose and faded
through the ceiling of the house, and were gone.

Tebulot supported Kasyx with his
arm, and helped him to lift himself slowly into the air, and fly out over the
early morning canyons of Beverly Hills.

They had a long way to go, back to
Del Mar, but the wind was warm and the morning was sunny and Tebulot had
sufficient strength for both of them. He carried Kasyx back past San Juan
Capistrano and San Clemente and Cardiff -on-Sea, slowly and gently and as
solicitously as a son.

Nobody could have seen them flying
past. The sun was too bright and their images were too insubstantial. But they
were as graceful as the transparent wings of dragonflies; as silent as a kind
thought; and they carried with them the last hope of returning Yaomauitl the
Deadly Enemy to his elm-wood prison in Mexico.

J
ennifer woke up in the middle of the
night and she was drenched in sweat. She had been dreaming that dream again,
that dream in which the Devil had been lying on top of her, forcing her legs
apart, and whispering in her ear,
‘Now
you will be my little
mother.1
She
had dreamed it two or three times a week, ever since that encounter with
Bernard at the supermarket, and it was always the same. The weight of its body,
the feel of its fur, the stench of its breath.

But tonight it was different.
Tonight when she woke, clutching the tangled sheets, sweating, shuddering
-tonight she could still feel something. Tonight there was a stirring in her
stomach, a strange slithering sensation, and a persistent nausea that refused
to be swallowed away. As she lay in the darkness with Paul sleeping heavily
beside her, and only the green eyes of her digital clock for company, she tried
to think what it was that she had eaten that day that could have upset her so
much. The passion-fruit juice, at breakfast? The herb-and-tomato omelette she
had eaten round at Sandra’s, for lunch? The fillets of veal which she had
cooked for Paul’s dinner?

Usually, when she felt nauseous, she
had only to think about what she had eaten to be able to identify what it was
that was making her feel unwell. But this sickness was quite different: this
sickness kept turning and rolling inside of her stomach as if she were still
trying to digest something that was only half chewed. This sickness had a
movement of its own.

She lay and sweated for another
half-hour. The sky outside the tightly drawn curtains began to lighten. She
longed to get up, to draw back the curtains and make herself a cup of hot
strong lemon tea. But Paul was a hair trigger sleeper, easily disturbed, and he
needed his rest after five straight days in Denver, trying to wrap up the
Trianon deal. So she lay where she was, rigidly, clutching and releasing the
sheets, sweating, trying to suppress the rolling and the slithering, trying not
to feel so desperate.

Slowly, she moved one hand down
until it rested on her naked abdomen. Her muscles were churning all right, she
could feel them. Yet they couldn’t be her stomach muscles, they were too low
down; and this slow turning-over sensation wasn’t at all like gas.

It suddenly occurred to her just
what this sensation felt like. She hadn’t felt it for a very long time, not
since the days when she and Paul had been poorer, but happier, and they had
lived in that third-floor apartment over on Santa Monica Boulevard, next to the
Mexican restaurant. They had
wanted
a
family in those days, but that was before Paul had started getting serious
about his promotion prospects, and about office politics, and about his status
in the air-conditioning industry.

She remembered the happiness. She
remembered the sunshine. She remembered the day that she had come back from the
doctor and told Paul that he was going to be a father.

She also remembered the day when it
had all ended. The pain, the spasms of labour, the blurred faces in the
hospital. She had heard it cry, just once. Too young, too underdeveloped, to
survive. Paul had held her hand. Her mother had brought her walnut candies.

But now, tonight – this feeling.
This intermittent pushing and rolling. This was the same, or almost the same.
She didn’t know how – she had taken her pill religiously – and Paul had been
away so frequently and for so long that they scarcely ever had sex any more.
But it was the same!
She couldn’t deny
it, no matter how much she tried to pretend that it was omelette or fillet of
veal or plain old flatulence.

She felt as if she were having a baby.
She stared at the ceiling. This was ridiculous.

Of course she wasn’t having a baby.
Apart from the fact that she hadn’t missed a single pill, she had experienced no
morning sickness, no changes of mood, no swelling of her breasts. She hadn’t
had a period, of course, but then she took her pills continuously, most of the
time; and even when she did allow herself to menstruate – to flush herself out,
as she liked to think of it – her flow was always very light.

She couldn’t be having a baby. And
yet – what else could it possibly be? It was inside her, and it was moving on
its own. She was sure that it was shifting around of its own accord; around and
around as if it couldn’t settle itself for a moment.

She looked across at Paul. It was
light enough now for Jennifer to be able to make out his face. His eyes were
closed, his mouth was slightly open. He wasn’t snoring, he never did. He always
looked as if he were dead. It only took one wind-rattled door, however, or one
dripping tap, or one foot creaking on a wooden floorboard, and he was instantly
and irrevocably awake.