The Wheel of Darkness p-8

by Douglas Preston;Lincoln Child

  In the dark void, he summoned a hundred of the world’s most important philosophers and set them all to conversation: Parmenides and Descartes, Heraclitus and Kant, Socrates and Nietzsche. At once, dozens upon dozens of arguments sprouted—of nature and consciousness, freedom and pure reason, truth and the divinity of numbers—forming a storm of intellectual noise stretching from horizon to horizon. Scarcely breathing, Pendergast maintained the construct through sheer force of will.

  A ripple coursed through the susurrus of dialogues, like a drop of water on the surface of a black pond. As it spread outward, the nearest conversations of the philosophers fell silent. A silent hole formed in the center, like the eye of a storm. Implacably, the smoke ghost drifted through the hole, coming closer.

  Instantly, Pendergast dissolved the innumerable debates, drove the men and women from his mind. With great effort, he purged himself of conscious thought once again. If such a purely rational approach would not work, perhaps a more abstract one would.

  Quickly, he arrayed in his mind the thousand greatest paintings of the Western tradition. One after another, in chronological order, he allowed them to fill up to the edges the entire frame of his consciousness; he willed their colors, brushstrokes, symbols, hidden meanings, allegories subtle and obvious, to flood his entire consciousness. Duccio’sMaestà; Botticelli’sBirth of Venus; Masaccio’s Trinity; Fabriano’sAdoration ; Van Eyck’sBetrothal of Arnolfini burst again and again upon his mental landscape, drowning all thought with their complexity, their ravishing beauty. He continued through them, faster and faster, until he approached the present, Rousseau and Kandinsky and Marin. Then he went back and started over from the beginning, moving still faster now, until all was a blur of color and shape, each image simultaneously held in his mind in overwhelming complexity, allowing the demon no foothold . . .

  The blur of colors wavered, began to melt. The low rough form of the tulpa shouldered its way through the kaleidoscope of images, a sink of darkness, sucking everything in as it grew ever nearer in his mind.

  Pendergast watched it approach, frozen like a mouse under the gaze of a cobra. With a huge effort, he tore his thoughts free. He was aware of his heart beating much faster now. He could sense the thing’s ardent appetite for his essence, hissoul . Desire radiated out from the smoke ghost like heat. This awareness sent a prickle of panic through him, little poppings and blisterings at the edges of his consciousness.

  It was so much stronger than he had ever imagined. Clearly, anyone without the unique mental armor he now enjoyed would have succumbed to the tulpa immediately, without struggle.

  The thing came closer still. With something close to despair, Pendergast fell back into the realm of absolute logic, releasing a torrent of pure mathematics across the increasingly fractured landscape of his mind. The tulpa glided through this defense more quickly than ever.

  It remained unaffected by every device he had tried. Perhaps it was, in fact, invincible . . .

  And now, quite suddenly, the full extremity of his peril was laid bare. For not only was the thing attacking his mind but his body as well. He could feel his muscles jerking in uncontrollable spasms; feel his heart labor; feel his hands clench and unclench. It was terrible and terrifying, a double possession of mind and physical form. Dissociation from his body, so vital to maintaining the state ofstong pa nyid , grew ever harder to uphold. His limbs fell increasingly under the control of the tulpa; the effort needed to ignore his physical form became increasingly acute.

  And then came the moment when it grew impossible. All his carefully constructed defenses, his feints and ploys and stratagems, fell away. And all Pendergast could think about was mere survival.

  Now the old family mansion on Dauphine Street rose before him, the memory palace that had always promised refuge in the past. He ran toward it with desperate speed. The yard was crossed in a heartbeat, the front steps taken in a bound. And then he was inside, panting with exertion, fumbling with the locks and door chains.

  He turned, back pressed against the doorframe, looking around wildly. The Maison de la Rochenoire was silent and watchful. Ahead, at the end of a long and shadow-haunted hallway, he could see the curve of the grand foyer, with its matchless collections of curiosities and objets d’art, and the double-curved sweep of staircases leading to the second floor. Still farther on, wrapped in gloom, lay the library, its thousands of leather-bound volumes dozing beneath a thin mantle of dust. Normally, this prospect filled him with tranquil pleasure.

  Right now, all he felt was the atavistic dread of the hunted.

  He raced down the refectory hall, heading toward the foyer, forcing himself not to look over his shoulder. Reaching the foyer, he wheeled around, eyes searching desperately for a place of concealment.

  From behind came a shiver of cold, clammy air.

  His gaze fell on an arched doorway, little more than a tracery of black against black in the polished woodwork of a far wall. Beyond, he knew, lay the stairway leading down to the basement and—beyond that—to the rambling chambers and catacombs of the mansion’s sub-basement. He knew of literally hundreds of niches, crypts, and hidden passages down there in which he could secret himself.

  He moved quickly toward the closed door, then stopped. The thought of cowering in some dark, damp cul-de-sac—waiting, like a cornered rat, for the thing to find him—could not be borne.

  With increasing desperation, he raced down the back corridor, through a set of doors and into the kitchens. Here there was a confusing warren of dusty pantries and maids’ ports, and he tore through them, searching for some safe haven. It was fruitless. He whirled around again, gasping for breath. The thing was here, he could feel it—and growing closer all the time.

  Without wasting another moment he ran back to the foyer. He hesitated only a second, staring wildly around at the polished wood cabinets, the glittering chandelier, the trompe l’oeil ceiling. There was only one possible bolt-hole, one place he might be safe.

  He raced up the curving staircase to the second floor and ran as quickly as he could down the echoing gallery. Reaching an open door halfway down on the left, he leapt through it and slammed the door behind him, turning the lock savagely in the key and throwing the deadbolt.

  His room—his own room. Although the mansion had burned long ago, he had nevertheless always been safe here. It was the one place in his memory construct so well defended that nobody—even his own brother, Diogenes—could ever penetrate.

  The fire crackled in the grate, and candles guttered on the side tables. The air was perfumed by woodsmoke. He waited, his breathing gradually slowing. Just being back in the warm indirect light had a calming effect on him. His heartbeat decelerated. To think that, not long before, he had sat in this room, meditating with Constance, taking on new and unimagined mental powers. It was ironic, even slightly mortifying. But no matter. Soon—very soon—the danger would pass and he could emerge again. He’d been frightened, badly frightened, and with good reason: the thing that had already enveloped him in the physical world had almost enveloped him in the psychical world as well. He had been mere minutes from having his life, his memories, his soul, everything that defined him as a human being, rent asunder. Butit would not penetrate here. It could not, never, never . . .

  All at once he felt that sensation again, close on the back of his neck: a moist, chill breath of clammy air, heavy with the stench of damp earth and rustling, oily insects.

  With a cry, he rose to his feet. It was there already , in his room, curling toward him, its red-and-black face contorted into the rictus of a smile, vague gray arms extending out toward him with a gesture that would have been almost tender if it were not for the claws . . .

  He fell back and it was on him immediately, violating him in the most horrible fashion, spreading in and down and throughout, sucking, relentlessly sucking, until he felt something deep inside him—some essence so very deep he had never been aware that it lay at the core of his being—begin to swell, slip loose,
distort . . . and he realized with a shudder of pure horror there was no hope for him anymore—no hope at all.

  Constance clutched the bookshelves, rooted by fear, as Pendergast lay on the living room floor, against the wall, deathly still, haloed in mist. The ship continued to tilt, things crashing around her, the roar of water outside rising as the ship heeled. More than once she had tried to stretch out a hand to him, but she had been unable to keep hold, with the violent slanting of the cabin and the crash of books and objects around her.

  Now, as she watched, the bizarre and fearful thing that had covered Pendergast like swamp vapor began to shift and break apart. Hope that had left her heart during the brief, dreadful vigil now suddenly returned: Pendergast had won. The tulpa was vanquished.

  But then, with a new thrill of horror, she saw that the tulpa was not dispersing—it was instead sinking

  into

  Pendergast’s body.

  Suddenly, his clothes began to twitch and writhe, as if countless cockroaches were skittering about beneath them. His limbs convulsed, his frame animated as by a foreign presence. His facial muscles spasmed and vellicated. His eyes opened briefly, staring out at nothing, and in that brief silvery window she saw depths of terror and despair as deep as the universe itself.

  A foreign presence . . .

  Suddenly, Constance was conflicted no longer. She knew what she had to do.

  She stood up, forced her way across the room and up the bizarrely slanting staircase, and passed into Pendergast’s bedroom. Ignoring the heeling of the ship, she searched through one drawer after another until her hand closed over his Les Baer .45. She pulled out the weapon, drew back the slide to ensure there was a round in the chamber, then clicked off the safety.

  She knew how Pendergast would want to live—and how he would want to die. If she couldn’t help him in any other way, at least she could help him with this.

  Weapon in hand, she exited the bedroom and—taking tight hold of the railing—descended the slanting stairs to the living room.

  74

  LESEUR STARED AT the plated red bow of the Grenfell as the Canadian ship desperately backed its screws, trying to swing itself out of the way of theBritannia even as the great ocean liner yawed into it at flank speed.

  The deck of the aux bridge shook as the podded propulsion systems strained under the extreme maneuver forced upon them. LeSeur didn’t even need to glance at the instruments to know it was over: he could extrapolate the trajectories of the two ships merely by staring out the bridge windows. He knew they were each on a course that would bring them together in the worst possible way. Even though the Grenfell ’s headway had fallen off three or four knots while it tried to maneuver, theBritannia was still driving forward at full power with its two fixed screws while the aft pods, rotated ninety degrees, delivered a sideways thrust that was swinging its stern around like a baseball bat toward theGrenfell .

  “

  My God, my God, my God

  . . .” LeSeur heard the chief engineer repeating to himself, a continuous sotto voce prayer, as he stared out the window.

  The aux bridge shuddered, tilting at an even crazier angle. The deck warning systems had lit up as the lowest decks shipped water. LeSeur heard a chorus of fresh sounds: the screeching and tearing of plated steel, the machine-gun popping of rivets, the deep groaning of the ship’s immense steel frame.

  “My God,”

  whispered the engineer again.

  A deep boom sounded from below, followed by a violent shimmy, as if the hull of the ship had been rung like a massive bell. The violence of it threw LeSeur to the floor; and as he rose to his knees a second boom rocked the aux bridge, slamming him sideways into the corner of the navigation table and gashing his forehead. A framed photograph of theBritannia ’s launching, with Queen Elizabeth presiding, popped free of its screw mounts and cartwheeled along the floor, shedding pieces of glass, skidding to a halt in front of LeSeur’s face. With a sense of unreality, he stared at the queen’s serene, smiling visage, one white-gloved hand raised to the adoring crowd, and then for a moment he felt a horrible wash of failure—hisfailure. He had failed his queen, his country, everything he stood for and believed in. He had allowed the ship to be taken over by a monster. It was his fault.

  He grabbed the edge of the table and pulled himself up, feeling a rivulet of warm blood running down into his eye. With a savage sweep of his hand he wiped it away and tried to recover his senses.

  He immediately realized that something significant had just happened to the ship. The deck was righting itself at increasing speed, and theBritannia surged forward, no longer yawing but now moving straight ahead. Fresh alarms sounded.

  “What on earth—?” LeSeur said. “Halsey, what’s happening?” Halsey had scrambled to his feet, and he stared at the engine panel, his face blanked out with horror.

  But LeSeur didn’t need Halsey to explain. He suddenly understood what had happened: the Britannia had torn off both of its aft rotating pods—essentially, its rudder. TheGrenfell was now almost dead ahead, a few dozen seconds from impact. TheBritannia had stopped swinging into her and was now driving toward her in a straight line.

  LeSeur grabbed for the radio.

  “Grenfell!”

  he cried. “Stop backing and straighten out! We’ve lost steerage!”

  The call was unnecessary; LeSeur could already see a massive boiling of water around Grenfell ’s stern as her captain understood implicitly what he had to do. TheGrenfell trimmed itself parallel to the Britannia just as the two ships closed in on each other.

  There was a rush of sound as the Grenfell ’s bows passed theBritannia ’s, the ships so close LeSeur could hear the roaring of water, compressed into a wind tunnel formed by the narrow space between the two hulls. There was a loud series of bangs and screeches of metal as the port bridge wing of the Grenfell made contact with a lower deck of theBritannia, trailing vast geysers of sparks—and then, quite suddenly, it was over. The two ships had passed.

  A ragged cheer rose up over the alarms on the auxiliary bridge, and LeSeur could make out a corresponding cheer coming over the VHF from the

  Grenfell

  .

  The chief engineer looked over at him, his face bathed in sweat. “Mr. LeSeur, we lost both aft pods, just tore them right off—”

  “I know,” LeSeur replied. “And the hull’s breached.” He felt a swell of triumph. “Mr. Halsey, let the aft bilge spaces and compartments six and five flood

  .

  Seal the bilge bulkheads amidships.”

  But Halsey did nothing but stand there.

  “Do it!”

  LeSeur barked.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  Halsey held out his hands. “Not possible. The bulkheads seal automatically.” He pointed at an emergency panel.

  “Then

  unseal

  them! Get a team down there to open the hatches manually!”

  “Can’t,” repeated Halsey helplessly. “Not when they’re flooded. There’s no override.”

  “God

  damn

  this automation! What’s the status on the other two pods?”

  “Operational. Each delivering full power to the screws. But our speed is down to twenty knots.”

  “And with the aft pods gone, she’ll be steering with engine power now.” LeSeur glanced over at the officer of the watch. “ETA Carrion Rocks?”

  “At this speed and heading, thirty-five minutes, sir.”

  LeSeur stared out the bridge windows at the forecastle of the Britannia , still pounding relentlessly through the seas. Even at twenty knots they were screwed. What were their options? None that he could see.

  “I’m giving the order to abandon ship,” he said.

  A stillness enveloped the bridge.

  “Excuse me, sir—with what?” the chief engineer asked.

  “With the lifeboats, of course.”

  “You can’t do
that!” cried a new voice—a feminine voice.

  LeSeur looked over and saw that the female member of Gavin Bruce’s team, Emily Dahlberg, had entered the auxiliary bridge. Her clothes were torn and sopping. He stared at her in surprise.

  “You can’t launch the lifeboats,” she said. “Gavin and Niles Welch attempted a test launch—their boat ruptured.”

  “Ruptured?” LeSeur repeated. “Where are Liu and Crowley? Why haven’t they reported back?”

  “There was a mob on the lifeboat deck,” Dahlberg said, breathing heavily. “Liu and Crowley were attacked. Maybe killed. The passengers launched a second boat. That one burst open when it hit the sea, as well.”

  This was greeted by shocked silence.

  LeSeur turned to the chief radio officer. “Activate the automatic abandon-ship message.”

  “Sir, you heard her!” Kemper spoke up. “Those boats would be no better than floating coffins. Besides, it takes forty-five minutes to load and launch the lifeboats under ideal circumstances. We’ve got thirty. We’ll impact when all the passengers are standing crowded on the half decks—which are open, all steel and struts. It’ll be a massacre. Half of them will go overboard and the rest will be beaten to hell.”

  “We’ll get as many on as we can, hold them on the boats until impact, and then launch.”

  “The force of the impact may derail the boats. They’ll be jammed up in the half deck and there won’t be any way to launch them. They’ll go down with the ship.”

  LeSeur turned to Halsey. “True?”

  The man’s face was white. “I believe that is correct, sir.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “We get the passengers into their cabins and have them brace for impact.”