Katharine made herself smile.
“Gillian, would you like to spend the rest of the night in my room?”
“Yes. Oh, I would like that, Mother.”
“Some warm milk might help you sleep.”
“I’d love some warm milk.”
Gillian also wanted the housecats for company, but sometimes they made themselves scarce for no good reason. So Gillian went to bed upstairs without them. Katharine sat up with her daughter. They played a game of stink-pink, just like old times. Katharine then entertained with gossip about some of the less obscene peccadilloes of those members of the cat-pack with whom they were both acquainted; occasionally she paused to wipe tears of fatigue from her eyes. At last Gillian fell into a heavy unmoving sleep.
Katharine helped herself to more milk, laced it with brandy, debated calling Avery at his hotel in Boston, decided it should wait until morning. She stood for a long time looking at the unconscious Gillian, who slept with one hand curled lightly between her breasts. Something was stuck in Katharine’s craw, and the memory of it slowly twisted her mouth out of shape. She turned abruptly and almost ran downstairs and entered Gillian’s room, her heart pounding. She went straight to the marionette theatre and pulled the curtains apart.
The Skipper puppet wasn’t there. In its place was a badly mangled marmalade cat which had gone by the name of Sulky Sue.
Katharine felt the essence of her sanity shifting about in her head like heavy smoke, looking for a way to escape into the open air. She clamped a hand over her mouth. The threatened scream was bottled up in her throat.
Sulky Sue didn’t look run-over, nor did the corpse smell of death. There wasn’t any gore to be seen. Sulky Sue looked as if she had been taken apart by a devilishly inquisitive mind, then put back together, but badly, as if the mind couldn’t quite remember what a cat was supposed to look like. Oh, yes, of course, it was similar to some of Gillian’s youthful crayon drawings. Vivid coloring, but the tail depended from the body in an unlikely place. One ear was much larger than the other. The feet were crudely clubbed, not defined by toes. And the eyes.…
Katharine didn’t look any closer. She went to the closet and stripped a cleaner’s storage bag from one of Gillian’s dresses and, using a big ruler instead of her hand, she bagged the strange, orange-and-persimmon cat-thing.
Now what? Gillian mustn’t under any circumstances see it.
Mrs. Busk had retired for the night. Katharine carried her burden downstairs and rang for Patrick. When he came to the door she made up a story about having found the poor animal dead on the kitchen doorstep, obviously struck by a car, could he get rid of it please?
Patrick glanced inside at the tumbled mass of fur, shook his head sympathetically and was about to carry it away when Katharine said with a little laugh,
“Patrick, when you—when you’ve done that, I’d like the entire house searched.”
Patrick may have connected the dead cat with her anxiety, but he asked no questions. When he returned he had another member of the private patrol force with him.
Katharine dreaded going into Gillian’s room again; she couldn’t have done it without knowing there were armed men just down the hall. She turned on all the lights and searched the bedroom herself. The Skipper puppet wasn’t there.
Either it had been taken, and the cat substituted, or—
But absolutely she had not imagined Skipper, she’d seen him lying limp and smug in Gillian’s hands, and gross as a dildo. Of course that was the purpose it was intended for, but what was Gilly doing with it? Was Skipper some girlish-kinky thing the kids at Bordendale were passing around? Katharine had too high an opinion of Gillian’s good taste and sensitivity to believe it. Nevertheless she’d cuddled the loathsome thing.
Well, where was it? She was on the verge of waking up Mrs. Busk, but wouldn’t that be something: she’d look like a real idiot accusing the doughty old housekeeper of making off with a doll that had a penis-replica capable of—
Patrick and his partner came to the door and knocked. Patrick had an armful of squirming alley cat, a black and white neutered male with a regal Egyptian head. Mr. Rudolph.
“Found this little fellow hiding in the powder room downstairs.” Mr. Rudolph leaped down and ran. He wanted no part of Gillian’s room tonight.
“Mrs. Bellaver, the house is secure. If you’d like I’ll have Donny here stay a while.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary, thank you, Patrick.”
When they were gone, Katharine sat on the bed and made an urgent reappraisal. One, the room had been almost dark. Two, her common sense had been overruled by the crushing fear that Gillian had been raped earlier that evening, and this fear resulted in a grotesque but appropriate hallucination. So blame it all on a temporarily dislocated psyche. Gillian had fawned over some other doll, one that reminded her of childhood’s Skipper.
As for the cat—it had been injured, all right, perhaps much earlier in the day, and had gradually made its way upstairs to die in Gillian’s room, in that snarly nest of puppets behind the curtains of the marionette theatre.
Katharine could devise no other explanations; and she badly needed something to get her through the remainder of the night.
The helicopter from Washington flew low up the Hudson River, slowly angling toward the Jersey shore where floodlights on the old railroad pier were concentrated on a salvage operation.
The pilot circled an area delineated by pink flares. The chopper, gravid with sitting men, eased into the blown-down winter grass and coughed itself dead. Childermass got out behind his bodyguard, who openly carried a machine gun. He was greeted by two of his executives on MORG’s domestic side, usually referred to as “Homefolks.”
“I was watching Dietrich in Dishonored tonight,” Childermass said as they walked toward the pier. “I wonder if either of you have seen it?”
“No, sir.”
“No, sir.”
“It’s a gem. Dietrich never showed to better advantage than she did under Von Sternberg’s direction. She is sexual, enticing, drolly wanton. There is more passionate energy in one of her studied glances than in three hours of Hamlet.”
“I’d like to see it sometime.”
“So would I.”
“I own one of the two complete prints in existence. I understand Dietrich herself has the other one.”
They walked between parked cars, hearing the grinding groan of the winch on the back of a big wrecker brought in to haul the police car from the bottom of the river.
“What’s the box score?” Childermass asked.
“So far, we’ve had seven deads.”
“Two men missing. They may have drowned.”
“Nine injureds, three serious.”
“Three vehicles totally destroyed. Five others damaged.”
Childermass shook his head ruefully. “Peter fixed us up tonight, didn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What happened to Darkfeather?”
“He was thrown clear of one of the chase cars that crashed and burned.”
“But he was burned himself. Just a mass of charcoal.”
“Still alive when they got to him. At least his eyes looked alive, that was the one part of him that wasn’t burned.”
“But when they tried to move him he just broke into pieces.”
“Oh, too bad,” Childermass said with a frown.
They walked almost to the end of the pier and stood watching as the winch chain slowly wound around the drum. There were frogmen in the flashy water. The car wasn’t visible yet at the end of the taut slanted chain.
“Any animal must react to threat if he is to survive,” Childermass mused, “but he must not overreact.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s right.”
“Tonight Peter overreacted. But after all. How long has it been, a year and a half? We may have succeeded, at one hell of a cost, in driving him nearly insane.”
“Crazy bastard.”
“Crazy.”
Childermass fixed them rebukingly with his larger eye.
“There’ll never be another like him. He had savvy and a fanatical sense of balance. His skin had eyes. I honestly believe there were pits in his skull with a thermo-sensitive capacity, like those of a rattlesnake.”
Childermass paused, as if searching his memory for a quotation that might serve as epitaph.
“Some guys didn’t like his style, but I liked it a lot,” he concluded.
The rear end of the police car had broken the surface of the river. Soon water was streaming out of the drowned vehicle from a dozen openings. Scuba divers pried open one of the doors and aimed torch beams inside.
“He’s not in here!” one of them called to the watchers on the pier.
Childermass’s head jerked up. He smiled apprehensively. He stared at his executives as if accusing them of abetting a Houdini-like bit of showmanship. His bodyguard snicked the safety off the machine gun.
Childermass walked briskly away from the end of the pier, stopped, walked back, leaned so far over that one of the execs frantically grabbed the back of his coat.
“Drag the river!”
“We’ll drag the goddamn river!”
“We’ll find him, sir.”
“No you won’t,” Childermass said. “Because Peter has done it again.”
He then flew into a tantrum that lasted more than five minutes. He repeatedly kicked the side of a car. He snatched the machine gun from his bodyguard and shot out two searchlights. Grown men got in each other’s ways trying to make themselves scarce. Childermass dropped the machine gun and hit himself in the face with his fist until they were able to subdue him and sit him down and pour whiskey into him.
The whiskey calmed Childermass, but it also gave him the giggles. A punched eye swelled. His executives squatted around him looking like blanched owls. Finally Childermass staggered to his feet and lurched toward the salvaged police car. It had been raised to the level of the pier, and dangled there.
“Sir.”
“Sir.”
“Don’t bother me! So it’s another laugher, right? But the laugh’s not on me, boys. This time it’s on Peter Sandza. You want to know why?”
He picked up a piece of driftwood and brandished it for emphasis. Then he turned and howled his punch line at the river.
“BECAUSE ROBIN DOESN’T CARE ANY MORE! HE DOESN’T CARE IF HIS FATHER IS ALIVE OR DEAD!”
He teetered on the edge of the pier for a few moments, but even his bodyguard didn’t want to go near him during this emotional crisis. Eventually Childermass collected his wits, dropped the piece of wood and came walking fast back to the little knot of men. He seemed anxious to get away from the lights and off the exposed pier.
“What the hell,” he muttered, wiping tears from his puffy eye. “It’s New Year’s. Let’s all fly over to Fun City and get laid. My treat.”
Chapter Twelve
PSI FACULTY
JUNE-JULY 1975
Robin awoke still tasting the oily river, and his stomach was badly unsettled. He got down off the high double bed with its posts of oak almost as big around as telephone poles; he was wobbly on his feet. He had on his old yellow cotton pajamas, washed so many times you could read a newspaper through the material. The pajama shirt hung unbuttoned. Someone had mended the tear under one arm.
He swallowed several times, finding his throat a little raw, and then a cramp propelled him into the bathroom. He retched until he was worried he’d rupture his navel. Nothing much came up but bright yellow bile. His head ached from his exertions. He looked around the bathroom with teary eyes. Everything was on a vast scale, even for him, and he was getting closer to six feet all the time. Half an acre of tiled floor, probably a billion of those little six-sided tiles, a square basin big enough to bathe in, a curious tub like a big sea shell that stood four feet off the floor. Wherever he was, it was a dumpy old place, older than the house in Lambeth.
Thinking of Lambeth and his Aunt Fay caused the tears to run and run until he washed his face in cold water. When he finished his fingers still tingled but the stomach cramps had stopped. His pajamas were spotted and wet, so Robin took them off before returning to the bedroom.
He’d had a noiseless visitor. The drapes were open; sheer curtains billowed in a lavish morning breeze. The air, scented by a forest, felt and tasted good, it melted on his tongue like a wafer. Also it gave him a raging appetite. That had been anticipated. On a round table in the center of the bedroom he found a tray with an icily sweating carafe of fresh orange juice. And there was a typed note for him.
Good Morning Robin!
Would you take the yellow and green capsule and the white tablet with your juice they’ll get rid of the nausea and help your head kindest regards Gwyneth
Gwyneth?
Robin poured a generous glassful of the juice, sipped eagerly, remembered the pills and studied them with suspicion. He compromised and swallowed the tablet, which was so small he had trouble picking it up with two fingers. Anything that small probably wouldn’t kill him. He hadn’t seen anyone in this place yet, but he didn’t trust them no matter what.
Because the juice tasted okay he finished what was in the glass. Then he looked around for clothes to put on.
With a little effort Robin found most of his old stuff, including a lot of things he hadn’t taken to that other place in New York, because they’d told him he was only going to be there for a few days. Also there were new Levi’s, the style he liked, and body shirts and walk shorts and a couple of dress-up outfits, including a double-breasted knit blazer from Saks Fifth Avenue. In other drawers he found neatly packed away games and books and pictures and other precious memorabilia. One closet was filled with his sports gear.
“Robin?”
The sweet clear voice startled him just as he was about to give in to the push and shove of memory and start weeping again. Someone outside, calling him. Who was she, and what did she want? He grabbed a pair of stringy cut-off Levi’s and a faded red tank top and put them on. Then he walked barefoot onto the balcony which was outside the tall windows that opened like doors, and there he had his first look at his new surroundings.
Blue-green mountains and a far sparkling lake and, nearer, fieldstone buildings with steep slate roofs in a naturally wooded setting. A school? Nearer still he saw a garden with squared-off hemlock hedges, beds of marigold and gracefully curving footpaths walled with roses. Beside the house there was a private swimming lake studded with rock outcrops, ringed by perfect specimens of spruce. A wooden bridge arched above a spillway. A multilevel, flagged terrace in the wide angle formed by the wings of the house went down to the water’s edge.
The girl swimming in the green water raised an arm when she saw him.
“Hi! Come on down and finish your breakfast!” She dived beneath the surface and he saw her stroking underwater, fluid as an otter, toward the terrace.
A tall man wearing a white mess jacket and pinstripe gray-and-black trousers was waiting for Robin in the bedroom doorway. He smiled, revealing crinkled lines around the eyes.
“This way, sir,” he said.
Robin followed him. The hallway was an interior gallery rich in wood, with a carpet like an abstract painting in tones of burnt orange, rust and brown. The gallery was lit by high opposing windows, three of them, each the size of a badminton court; the streaming hot light of the morning sun was regulated by stained glass louvres which appeared to have a religious motif.
“We’ll take the elevator to the terrace,” the man said. “It’s faster than walking down all those steps. By the way, I’m Ken.”
“What is this place?”
“It was the home of the chancellor of Woodlawn College for Women, before the school went broke. When Psi Faculty took over the campus it became the Director’s office and residence.”
“Psi Faculty?”
“Dr. Charles will explain all that
to you,” Ken said, smiling again. He showed Robin the cabinet-sized elevator, which descended to the first floor. They walked through a chapel which had been turned into a luncheon/meeting room and out onto the terrace, past a grotto with a trickling waterfall. Here religious statuary had been removed, replaced by a huge piece of stone that looked like a cross to Robin, except for the top part, which was in the form of a loop.
“What’s that?”
“It’s called an ankh,” Ken explained. “It’s the ancient Egyptian symbol of—immortality, I think. Dr. Charles knows more about it than I do, you could ask—”
Another man in a mess jacket was setting out breakfast on an oval-shaped, wrought-iron table painted a subdued shade of yellow. The table had a pebbly glass top and was shaded by a large fringed umbrella.
“Bart,” Ken said, “this is Robin.”
“Hello, Robin,” Bart said. He had a lot of brassy curly hair and keen blue eyes and a smile the equal of Ken’s. “Why don’t you sit here, facing the water? Dr. Charles will be along in a minute. Would you care for more juice?”
“No … thank you.”
“Okay, well, there’s iced Persian melon to start, or sliced fresh papaya if you prefer that, it’s really good with a big spoonful of Devonshire clotted cream. We have toast made from the terrific wholegrain bread they sell down at the co-op, or frosted bran muffins, those are especially good with raspberry jam. I’ll take your egg order now … no eggs? Could I tempt you with a small filet of poached speckled trout? Fresh-caught at five o’clock this morning, just a half mile down the road from here.”
When Bart left him Robin picked up a spoon and dipped into the pale soft melon, but his throat tightened before he could take a bite.
He got up and walked to the edge of the lake, thinking about the girl he’d seen swimming. He hadn’t been able to tell much about her from the third-floor balcony. The half-submerged rocks at the water’s edge were fringed with green-gold streamers, some sort of aquatic plant life. But the water had a decided flow even this close to shore and it looked clean, so clean and clear he could see the round brown stones on the pebbled bottom out to a depth of seven or eight feet.
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