by Cave, Hugh
"Mother Jarrett," Grant said, halting before the trio in the entrance. "You are Mother Jarrett, aren't you?"
The woman stood tall and looked at him with disdain. "I am called that."
"May I ask why you are here?"
"I have come for Georgie Dakin."
"How did you get here? Did Emmanuel Williams bring you?"
"He showed me how to get here," Mother Jarrett said.
"And where is he now?"
"I have no idea."
"Did you think for one moment, woman, that I would allow you to come here and take the Dakin boy away?"
"You are not all-powerful, Mr. Grant."
"But you are?"
"God is."
To the men holding her, Grant said sharply, "Did you see anyone with her?"
"No, sir," one replied. "She was coming up the passage from the waterfall and we did see her when we coming from the tunnel-four training room. We just grab her and bring her here."
"Did you look for others?"
"Well, no' sir. We thought we should bring her straightaway to you, her being such an important catch. But if you say so, we—"
Waving him to silence, Grant stood there gazing at the captive, rubbing his palms together as though fate had brought him the greatest possible prize. For a time he seemed content to peer into her face as though searching for the secret of the powers he had heard about. Finally he stepped back.
"Take her to the Eye," he instructed the two who held her. "Strip her. Chain her there." His gaze traveled over the others in the room, and still his tongue kept sliding over his lips as though in anticipation. "The rest of you go, too. Take every candidate. Take Sheldon. Tie his hands. All of us must be there when the master makes this woman one of us. For when he does, she will be our leader—even mine. Never doubt it!"
37
IN THE CENTER OF THE EYE, MOTHER JARRETT WAS naked on her knees. Her eyes were shut. She held her hands pressed together before her breasts in a posture of prayer. Her lips moved but made no sound. She was a statue carved from black ivory, seen through clouds of emerald green vapor.
Peter had never seen a black woman naked before, except from a distance. While driving the rural roads he had sometimes glimpsed women and girls bathing in the island's streams, but not this close. He was impressed by this woman's dignity, as he had been on every other occasion. Being stripped of her robe had not reduced it. If anything, she was an even more commanding figure now than before. Nor had being chained to the ring in the floor shaken her incredible calm.
Peter stood at Linford Grant's left along the wall, some thirty feet from her. Around the same circular wall of this strange room with its intense green light were lined up men enough to fill nearly all the beds he had seen in the dormitory. Evidently all those now undergoing training were here.
Most of them watched the kneeling figure in restless anticipation, but a few still looked curiously around the room itself. Those were seeing it for the first time, perhaps, though they must have heard of it even if they had never been brought here before. There had been a constant whispering and murmuring until Grant angrily demanded silence.
Four of those along the wall were armed. That was the number Grant had mentioned, wasn't it? Four could be wholly trusted now. The others were still undergoing indoctrination at one stage or another. One of the select four was Georgie Dakin, standing a few yards to Peter's left. Another was the man who had brought Edith and her fiancé here, Paul Pennock.
Grant had not brought a gun, not even the conveniently small submachine gun Peter had seen him with earlier. If my hands were free, Peter thought, and I could just catch Georgie off guard . . . but Gerald Dakin's twin was too far away to be taken by surprise.
And, anyway, Peter's hands were bound behind him. Before marching him from the room where he had been ordered to rape Edith, they had removed one of the four ropes that held her to the bed, and used it on him.
The last he had seen of Edith, when he looked back while being led away, she had still been lying there naked, with both wrists and one ankle fast to the immovable bed. With the revered Mother Jarrett having stumbled into his hands, Grant evidently no longer cared what became of the woman from England.
Grant cared what was happening here, however. Leaning toward Peter, he whispered excitedly, "Look at her, Sheldon! Observe the light!"
Peter stopped trying to think of some way to reach Georgie Dakin's rifle and saw that the naked woman in the center of the Eye had slightly changed her position. She still knelt, and her lips moved, but her long, thin arms were now folded over her breasts, exerting pressure as though to hold back some inner pain. Her body trembled now.
She was feeling the presence, he guessed, just as he had. She was hearing the voice that for so long had insinuated itself into his mind. But—and this startled him—she was apparently more susceptible than he had been. She was already weakening.
Grant saw it, too, but had an explanation. "The master really wants this one, Sheldon," he said in triumph. "He merely toyed with you here, but there is no way this woman can escape him!" Hoarsely he added, "Look, man! Look at her!"
Yes, the woman in the center of the Eye was under attack and in trouble. Around her the green light was more intense than it had been. More alive. She was caught in a whirlpool of color. The whole room, in fact, was filled with an ever-more-luminous green mist. Peter heard cries of alarm from the men along the wall.
"He has her!" Grant was gloating. "He could have had you the same way, Sheldon, but wouldn't stoop to exert himself."
It must be true, Peter thought, for the cries of alarm from those about him were matched by his own sensation of dread as the glow increased. Nothing he had experienced while chained here could be compared with this. The voice he heard in his head now was not one of mockery and banter. It was a thunder of command, demanding immediate capitulation. And though he felt his mind being torn and twisted by its impact, it was aimed not at him, but at her.
He saw the kneeling shape stiffen to a thing of stone, seemingly too rigid even to tremble. Her head high, eyes still closed, arms fiercely enfolding her breasts, she moved only her mouth. No sound came from it, but it moved as though in prayer.
The green whirlpool of light raced faster and still faster. At its outer edge Peter felt it as a hot wind searing his body and sucking away his breath. In a futile effort to escape it he pressed back against the wall and saw that the others were doing the same. Even the man in the scout uniform did so.
Then the pressure eased, the light began to lose its evil glitter, and Peter saw the woman in the center of the Eye slowly become less rigid, as though relieved at least temporarily of her agony.
He, too, felt a physical relief and was able to breathe again without gasping. He looked at Grant beside him. The scout leader gazed at Mother Jarrett and seemed puzzled, then angry.
"All right," Grant muttered. "It only proves she is worth having. She can't deny him again."
No, Peter thought, she can't deny him forever. She will become weak from thirst and hunger, as I did. Besides, what was happening to her was not the simple game of cat and mouse that he had endured. The green light had never been a seething whirlpool for him, or so blindingly intense. And she was older than he. Much older.
How long would she be able to hold out? That was the only question yet to be answered.
Time passed, but he had not wound his watch since letting it stop and so could only guess how long he had been standing there against the wall. His legs ached. He was cold. Enough time had crawled by since Georgie Dakin had given him food and water in the dormitory for him to be hungry and thirsty again. Especially thirsty.
With his hands hidden behind him, he worked on his bonds. Had, in fact, been doing so since the rope was first twisted about his wrists. He had good wrists, strong hands, and could even reach the hurriedly tied knots with his fingers. In time he would be able to slip one wrist through a loosened loop, he was certain. Then . . .
&nb
sp; He kept an eye on Georgie and hoped the waiting would dull the boy's attention. No one else with a weapon was nearer. But it seemed hopeless. Some of the other trainees appeared to be mesmerized by what was happening to Mother Jarrett, but not the ones with the guns. Those four did not relax their vigil for even a moment. Their attention shifted constantly from the kneeling woman in the center of the room to the men around its perimeter, and the four automatic rifles never once drooped.
A shame, Peter thought as he watched Georgie. The twin brothers had been fine boys, good workers. Their mother, Bronzie, was a decent woman. How many other terrorists here in little St. Alban and throughout the world had been good people once?
The light was intensifying again. Was moving more swiftly. In the middle of the room the intended victim braced herself to endure a new assault. Peter saw her shoulders stiffen, her arms tighten against her breasts, her long fingers dig into her sides. Her lips were in motion again, if they had ever stopped. Had they ever stopped? He did not think so.
What was she saying? A prayer, probably, or many prayers. But what kind? She was known to have carried God's word to remote parts of the world. She must know a number of tongues and more than a few ways to pray. He wished she would pray aloud.
"This will end it, Sheldon," the man beside him said confidently, and even smiled in expectation. An ugly smile. Had Peter's hands not been roped behind him, he would have been tempted to wipe it off and accept the terrible consequences. He could never escape from this hell, anyway. Nor could Edith.
This time he had to force his eyes to stay open against the glare as the light grew more brilliant. Even its hue changed, from the assorted greens of shallow tropical waters to a blazingly bright viridian. It was as though the room were indeed an eye, a hideous green one that was being narrowed to focus its owner's fury on a mote that annoyed him.
Once more the watchers around the wall cried out in fear and huddled back against the stone. Once more Peter felt his mind battered by the commands being aimed at the kneeling woman.
"She can never stand up to this," Linford Grant muttered. "But what a woman we shall have, Sheldon! What a prize!"
Braced against the wall, Peter watched her while the viridian cyclone tore at his senses. If he stopped watching her, he must be destroyed by what was happening, he felt. She was his anchor, his one hope of survival. He tried to think of the way she had healed him by touching his torn face with her hands. Of how she had helped Gerald Dakin when Gerald, through some mysterious bond between twins, endured the training inflicted here on his brother Georgie.
He watched her and prayed she would find the strength to go on resisting. If she yielded, he knew he would in total desperation make an attempt to reach Georgie Dakin's rifle, whether his hands were free or not.
It would be a suicidal effort, of course. How in God's name could a man, even with free hands, snatch a weapon away from anyone so alert and hope to live long enough to use it when others, too, had guns and would cut him down?
The color storm continued, all but blinding him. His body felt touched by a blowtorch. He could not think anymore. Immeasurable by any senses left to him, time flowed on. Then when his sight slowly returned and his mind could again absorb what his eyes were seeing, he could scarcely believe it.
The storm had passed. The woman in the center of the Eye was still in the same defiant position. Her head was still high. Her lips still moved.
Again there was an aeon of calm and waiting. Peter looked at Linford Grant. The man was unconcerned, even elated.
"I have a feeling it will not be necessary to train this woman as a terrorist before accepting her as our leader," Grant said. "In fact, if we had to, we probably could not. But the master will do it for us."
Peter said, "I'm beginning to believe one thing you told me, at least. There is a presence in this room, and it isn't a person"
"A power, Sheldon. A thought."
"Something like that. Producing this light and using it."
"Using it, yes. You'll see. She will yield to it."
If I leap at Georgie and smash the rifle out of his hands, Peter thought, I might have a chance of reaching it on the floor before he does . . . if I fall on it just right, in a position to grab it and swing it up and use it. But can I reach him before he cuts me down with it? Even with my hands free?
He had almost succeeded in loosening the rope enough to liberate one wrist. The waiting went on.
He studied the others who had guns. Georgie, standing a little forward from the wall, seemed a shade more alert now than they. Perhaps they suffered from leaning naked against the wall too long, with their feet planted on the equally cold stone floor. Just as I'm so stupidly doing, Peter thought, and took a step forward to change position.
Still, the target for any attempt at escape had to be Georgie. The others with guns were too far away.
Mother Jarrett knelt with her eyes closed and her lips moving, awaiting the next assault upon her mind. Where was Manny Williams, who must have shown her the way here? Why hadn't Manny come with her and been caught with her?
"We've been here eight hours, Sheldon," the man in brown said, frowning at his watch. "Not once has that woman moved from her knees. What endurance!"
And not once has she stopped praying, Peter thought.
"She is thirsty now, though," Grant said. "Probably hungry, too, for she must have been in the cavern a long time before she was discovered. I don't believe we shall have much longer to wait."
Peter heard himself say in anger, "Turn your damned light on, then, and get it over with!"
"It is not my light, Sheldon. I have no control over it. "
"The hell you haven't. You've got a power plant here somewhere." Peter did not believe that; it was simply something to say. If the light came from a power plant, there would be wires. Anyway, no light such as this could be produced artificially, he was certain.
Grant gravely shook his head. "The light was here when he first brought me here, Sheldon. Haven't I told you that? It's part of the force here. A part of him that he projects to indicate his presence."
"Well, then, tell him to rev it up and put an end to this comedy!" And this time I'll be watching Georgie instead of Mother Jarrett, Peter promised himself.
"I don't tell the master what to do," Grant said. "He tells me."
Peter resigned himself to waiting. Watching the woman in the center of the chamber, he wondered how much longer she could endure the agony of kneeling on that brutal stone floor. Her whole body must now be full of pain. He remembered how he had suffered here, and he had not forced himself to assume her posture of supplication but had changed position constantly in search of relief.
In so many, many ways she was a remarkable woman.
Now the light was brightening again. He heard Grant draw a deep breath of satisfaction and say, "This will do it, Sheldon. Watch!"
As the whirlpool built up speed, the light blazed with a new, more terrible intensity. Peter's naked body felt alternately caressed with frigid slime and cooked on a spit. Concentrating on the movements of Georgie Dakin, as he had planned, required every atom of energy he could muster. Surely what was happening would make all those with the guns less vigilant and give him the opening he sought!
"Look!" Grant cried out in triumph. "Look at her, Sheldon!" His right hand shot out to point.
Intending only to snatch a glimpse of whatever was happening, then to watch Georgie again, Peter responded. So much for a man's desperately thought out plans, even with his life at stake. When his gaze touched Mother Jarrett, he could not look away.
She was on fire.
No, not really on fire. There were no flames. But the swirling green light, incredibly bright there at the core of the maelstrom, appeared to have drilled its way into her. She was no longer a kneeling woman but a statue radiating an unearthly luminescence.
"He has her!" Grant shouted.
Mother Jarrett's arms had been folded over her breasts. She moved them
now and raised her hands in front of her face, with their palms together. Her face appeared to have been transformed into a mask of green metal, so fiercely glowing with inner heat that it must at any moment begin to melt.
But, incredibly, her lips still moved.
The fire began to fade.
It dimmed first in her face, allowing her handsome features to come through as those of a woman unafraid, still silently praying. It faded from her body, flowing downward from her shoulders in such a way that Peter half expected to see it form a pool of liquid green on the floor around her. No such pool was to be seen, but the light deserted her and became part of the whirlpool still spinning around her. Then that, too, began to fade and lose momentum.
It disappeared more swiftly than it had attained speed and brightness in the first place. In a matter of seconds the motion had ceased and the room was back to its original glow. Then that, too, began to dim, and from the center of the Eye where the woman still knelt in prayer, a circle of darkness began to spread outward. The glow retreated before it. In a few seconds the chamber must be totally dark.
Linford Grant saw what was happening and screamed a command that echoed from the walls. "Shoot her!" he screamed, lurching forward. "Shoot her! Kill her!" In panic, he jerked himself around to direct his command at Georgie Dakin. "You, Dakin! Quick!"
Bronzie Dakin's son stepped forward. Spinning on one bare foot, he aimed his rifle not at Mother Jarrett but at Grant—and squeezed the trigger.
In the fading green light the burst of fire sent the leader reeling. Taking him horizontally across his open mouth, it all but sliced his head in half. Then it shifted to those others who had guns, and sprayed them, too. In a bloody death ballet they followed Grant to the floor.
Georgie swung to cover those who had no guns. "No one move!" he said. "You move, you dead!" When sure they would not challenge him, he glanced at Peter. "Mr. Peter, you is all right?"
With the last faint glow of green disappearing, the room was nearly dark. Whatever the light had been, Mother Jarrett had conquered it in some final, supreme effort. With a final effort of his own, Peter freed his wrists and started toward her. "I'm all right," he said in answer to Georgie's question. "Thank you, Georgie."
