As soon as she looked at him, he turned and made for the starboard rail. Hadn't Barbara wakened him ------------------------------------307
sufficiently for him to be able to resist? Apparently not, for he trudged unfalteringly across the deck, through the aisle the others made for him. Their faces were green from the navigation light, and eager; the tongue of the thick-lipped man was crawling back and forth between his lips, the dumpy woman was rubbing her hands together. Their power, or the power which they served, was stronger. It had sensed the promise of a death.
Barbara could feel it now, for it had taken hold of her together with the rest of them. Ted didn't matter, he meant nothing. The enormous dark beyond the rail made him utterly insignificant. He could be meaningful only as an offering to it, to the darkness that it represented. Angela's corruption didn't matter. Barbara was meaningless, her whole life was. She was an offering, just like the rest of the world, and very soon that was what they would be. Soon the power would be able to claim its offerings for itself.
Her mind shrank back, for she'd had a glimpse of the source of all this, bloating impatiently in its own darkness, infinitely distant and perhaps infinitely huge yet as close as the depths of her mind. Now she was aware of the boat once more, but that was no help. Ted was nearly at the rail.
Angela must be having him take his time because she was enjoying herself, or because the dark power was. Angela was only a tool of the power after all, but Barbara saw no way to use that insight. Though it was true, it was meaningless. Only Ted's walk led to meaning, and even then his death would be unsatisfactory, too quick.
The dark was looming down at Ted, it seemed to close hungrily about the boat, to mock the microscopic lights of the deck and the wheelhouse. Ted was at the rail, and she could hear the water slopping like a huge loose mouth. She was resigned to his death, almost eager for its hint of ------------------------------------308
meaning. But someone was stooping to her and taking hold of her shoulder as if to shake her out of her trance. It was the man whose face she hadn't been able to see.
She knew at once that it was Arthur. She hadn't dared to believe he was here, and she had been right not to hope; he wasn't even able to raise her to her feet. All he could do was make her feel his grief at her plight, grief so piercing that it broke through her indifference and restored her emotions. Now she could suffer as she watched Ted stepping out to his death, she could cry out to him, and her cry achieved nothing at all. The cultists glanced blankly at her while Ted gripped the rail and lowered himself beneath it. When she cried out more wildly he didn't even turn.
But Angela turned, and stared at Barbara. For the first time she looked uneasy. She must be wondering how Barbara had managed to cry out when she ought to be silenced by the power--but no, it was more than that. She was gazing in Barbara's direction, not at Barbara herself. Her face grew tightly hostile. "Go away," she said.
She was talking to her father. Perhaps she could feel his grief. Yes, she could, for her eyes were gleaming viciously, trying to bring him under her control. How could she grasp him with her power if she couldn't even see him? "Leave me alone," she said coldly, but her eyes were flickering; perhaps she was straining not to look at her memories. Was she remembering the days when she and her father had talked secretly, when he had waited by her cot until she went to sleep? Was he talking to her now?
The other cultists stared uneasily at her. The dark power seemed to be withdrawing now that she was distracted. She was swaying, perhaps not only with the motion of the boat. Though her eyes still gleamed, she was visibly struggling to ward off the onslaught of grief. "Leave me alone," she cried, and now her voice was trembling.
Suddenly there was a commotion in the wheelhouse. ------------------------------------309
Ted had regained himself at least partially while her control was weakened. He'd rushed at the man at the helm and had knocked him down. Once he was sure that the man was unconscious he clung to the wheel and steered for the Kentish shore.
The cultists turned on him. He was easier to deal with than Angela's behavior. "Pull him to bits," the dumpy woman squealed. Perhaps she felt that torturing him would recall the dark power, to keep its promise of meaning. They crowded into the wheelhouse, squashing the children against the wall. Their hands were claws.
Ted tried to keep hold of the wheel with his left hand and fight with the other. The thick-lipped man reeled back from the first punch; his lower lip was burst and streaming. But the boat was plunging from side to side, heading now for the tankers, now for the Kentish shore, and Ted lost his balance. At once half a dozen of them clung to his arms.
The girl with the tarry hair was bending the fingers of his right hand, trying to snap them. The dumpy woman had wrapped her arms around his legs and was biting deep into his thigh. Angela stared at her fellows, and all at once her face filled with disgust. By the way her mouth was quivering Barbara could tell that some, perhaps most, of her disgust was for Angela herself.
As soon as her eyes widened, the cultists began to scream. They swarmed out of the wheelhouse like insects, tearing at themselves as though their innards had come alive. As faces were lit by the red light to port they looked raw, and perhaps they were. Certainly the cultists were trying to open themselves to reach whatever was torturing them. Some of them plunged blindly overboard as if that would drown what was inside them.
Barbara recalled how Iris had said that the bad got into them yet Angela was making all this happen to them now. It was a child's exaggerated show of repentance, an ------------------------------------310
acting out of her self-disgust, proof that she repudiated everything the cult stood for, perhaps in order to regain her father's love. Her victims were staggering about the cramped deck, stumbling over Barbara. The tonsured youth was clutching his face, and she thought she saw one of his eyes pushed out from within. She squeezed her own eyes shut and huddled into herself until the screaming had stopped and the boat felt empty.
When she opened her eyes at last she was alone but for Angela, Ted, and the three children. The children huddled in the wheelhouse; they looked stunned, unable to grasp what was happening. Once she'd untied her mother's hands Angela made to retreat, looking sickened and ashamed. Barbara seized her hand and held tight, though the girl tried to squirm away from any contact. She was afraid that Angela might try to throw herself overboard for shame.
Ted had taken the wheel again. The Kentish coast seeped closer in the dark. Flooded meadows glimmered beyond groynes, trailers clustered like snails on a firmer stretch. On the horizon of the marshes, flames reddened the clouds above an oil refinery. Barbara wondered where the boat would be able to reach the shore.
All at once Ted began to groan. He sounded so dismayed that she went to him, taking Angela with her. As soon as she reached him he let go of the wheel and leaned shuddering against the cabin wall. "Oh Christ," he was muttering, over and over.
"It's all right, Ted." She was glad when Angela took the wheel and seemed capable of handling the boat. "It's over now."
"It isn't all right. You don't know what I've done. Yes, you do know some of it, I did it to you." When she tried to hold him he shuddered away from her. "You mustn't let me touch you," he cried.
"You were made to do those things. You couldn't help ------------------------------------311
yourself." His face was growing blank, as if he was trying to hide within himself, and she was afraid he would become like Iris. "Whatever you've done, you can tell me. There's nobody else you can tell."
She seemed to have trapped him. "I was going to take Judy to them, except they wouldn't have wanted the police looking for her," he said at last, and turned his face away.
"But you didn't. You didn't do anything that can't be mended. It's all right now," she said.
Without warning the boat began to vibrate. She glanced nervously at Angela, until she saw that they had reached a landing-stage. Beyond it was only dark land and the dist
ant flames, but it looked solid enough. Angela was trying to maneuver the boat alongside. "You'll have to moor," she said.
The stern was swinging in toward the landing-stage. Ted hurried back at once, glad to have a task to occupy him, and uncoiled the rope. "He can't moor by himself," Angela said urgently.
Barbara ran to join him, past the children who looked as if they no longer even knew where they were. For a moment she hesitated at the rail, as the stern bumped the landing-stage, then she leapt into the dark. Wood slithered underfoot, but she kept her balance, weakened though she was. She stood up, ready to catch the rope--and then she saw Angela gazing at her.
At once she realized that there had been no need to moor the boat, that the boat was moving slowly enough to allow them to grab the children and make the leap. Had Angela prevented her from realizing? Perhaps Barbara was allowed to think now that it was too late.
As Ted leaned forward to throw the rope the boat jerked violently, hurling him over the rail. It was close enough to the landing-stage for him to fall at the very edge and ------------------------------------312
clamber to safety. The boat roared out onto the vast dark water. "Angela!" Barbara screamed.
Angela turned at the sound of her name. All at once she looked very small, a child afraid to be alone in the dark. She took one yearning step out of the wheelhouse, back toward Barbara. Then she must have remembered everything she had done, for she covered her face with her hands. Was there a shadow beside her, or could it be the figure of a man, one hand on her shoulder? If so, he could do nothing to prevent her. The next moment she burst into flame.
It was the last use of her power. She stood absolutely still as the flames rushed up her body. By the time Barbara stumbled to the edge of the river and reached out helplessly, the flames had streamed under the roof of the wheelhouse, toward the sky. The boat was on fire, it was drifting out of her field of vision, but she hardly noticed, even when it exploded. She was staring at the charred place on her vision where Angela had been.
Eventually she noticed that Ted was gripping her arm, so painfully that it wasn't clear if he meant to reassure her or himself. He sounded as if he was trying to understand or to believe. "They couldn't kill her, they could only corrupt her. And they didn't manage that, not completely. She's given herself another chance."
She had to believe that was true. As he managed to capture her hands, which were still reaching out to the charred darkness, and helped her to turn away, she saw the distant flames streaming upward beyond the marshes. Once Angela had seen something like that. The wind whined through the grasses, the river slopped against the wooden pilings, the eastern sky began to grow paler. They slumped against a post on the landing-stage and clung to each other, unable for the moment to speak. She watched the undying flames and tried to believe while she waited through the chill gray time until dawn.
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