Gayle shivered.
“It is a question of technicalities,” Haverner explained. “Legal forms must be gone through. You do not wish trouble with your government, I am sure, Mrs. Petrie. So the instrument must be carefully drawn. I will direct you to a gentleman, resident in Ciudad Vizcaya but an American and expert in these matters, who handles such affairs for me. You’ll doubtless have to stay there a few days till he’s finished, to be available for consultation and the like. But it’s quite a picturesque city.” He ran tongue over lips. “And you need not lack for companionship, need you?”
“Get this thing over with,” Larry snapped, “before I forget Anselmo and his gun are on call.”
“Yes.” Julia let go his hand, folded both hers on her lap, sat rifle-straight in the rattan chair and said fast, out of white countenance, “There were seven of us. I want a seven-way split. ” For the first time in more years than the four had been on earth, Sunderland Haverner was seen to be astounded, even shocked. “That is, of course Kilby must have what she needs. I am taking half the million home with me—but that includes both my seventh and Matt’s, since I don’t intend to reward murder. As for his wife and children—now that he’s out of the way—if I know anything about the … the Family, they’ll be taken care of.” Julia drew breath. “So, for the rest of the players, one hundred thousand each. Ellis’s people can use his share if he’s incapacitated. And if Orestes hasn’t left any kin that can be traced, whatever village he came from can have his portion. I’m sure they need it.”
Gayle gasped and burst into weeping. Byron held her close, and the inner happiness which had shown on him this morning before the meeting now resurged.
Julia turned to Larry. The smile that passed between them was tender. “Whatever I have left from my own winnings,” she told the group, “will go toward the Morgana le Fay Oceanographic Research Foundation.”
He kissed her, lightly but in front of everyone’s eyes. “Can I buy into that outfit?” Byron asked.
“And me?” Gayle gulped through her tears.
“No, hold on awhile, sweetheart,” Byron counseled, “till we see how things work out … for you.”
She laid her head against his breast. “But, but I know they will.”
“What is this nonsense?” Haverner demanded.
Then, slowly, his mouth quirked. “Interesting,” he breathed. “No, fascinating.”
SUNDERLAND HAVERNER
Night leaps over the horizon and engulfs us.
Us: myself and the muttering madman in this office with me, him drugged half-unconscious to hold the dead men at bay. I thought it would be worth observing him as the sedation wears off, but he merely lies there, empty-faced, in the chaise for which my own weary bones are longing.
I press the button that summons York. A brandy would lessen this unreasonable interior cold. The machines stare and stare, like Nordberg. Well, let’s start that final set of tapes going; let’s learn what happened yesterday after they needed no longer follow the leader. The information should help explain that scene they played out this noon. Not that it was anything more than half-hysterical reaction. Too bad I won’t be able to collect the details of how they will repent and seek to squirm out of their pledges.
A knock. “Come in.” Anselmo. Oh, yes, York left today! Where am I going to find another factotum as competent? What drove him?
“¿Señor?” Anselmo inquires.
“A-a-aguardiente.” Why do I stammer? “Una botella.”
He asks who should bring it. He won’t, of course; that is beneath his dignity. We discuss the matter of York’s replacement. Am I imagining things, or does Anselmo’s gaze despise me?
What difference? Don’t let it make a difference. He’s my hireling, isn’t he?
My hands shudder so that it’s hard to set up the playback.
How long do those dogs need to fetch me a bottle? And strange how I crave a smoke, after ten years of abstention. I must resist. The doctors have warned me. They warn too much, too officiously, which is why I don’t have one on the premises. Nevertheless, this dwindled heart, those papery arteries … I can buy death, but I cannot buy Death.
All right, then, you young swine! Perform for me! I bought you, didn’t I?
The brandy comes, and the first double shot slides into my bloodstream, hot as the bodies of Indian girls whom I can no longer recall. I smile at Nordberg. “Care for a show?” His response to it may be significant.
He doesn’t give me any. He is too lost in his darkness. Well, the video brings hardly a thing, from rooms where the lights were turned off. The sound is excellent. It fills this chamber.
“Don’t you understand, Gayle? I love you. I want you to marry me.”
“And don’t you understand, Byron? After these horrors …I’m through chasing money. I am.”
“Do you blame me for being rich?”
“No, of course not, silly. But, well, a couple of nights, when we were both feeling scared and guilty and desperate, what do they mean?”
“They mean everything to me, Gayle. Someday I’ll tell you precisely how much. I love you. I need you. I’m as, as adoringly thankful to you as—I don’t know. I haven’t the words.”
“M-m-m … you’re sweet. I’d no notion how dear you are, till now. But a lifetime together? We’re damned different, Byron, honey. Sooner or later, the crunch will come.”
“We can last that out. If we try.” Humbly: “If you want.”
“I do want, I do want! But I will not use you. Listen. They’ll call it a shack-up, but screw them.” A giggle, warm in the dark. “I mean, screw me. We’ll try for a year or two. No promises on either side. No legal claims if it doesn’t work out.” She stops his words with what I, amplifying, identify as a kiss. “Don’t talk for a minute yet, Byron. Only listen. This is the way it’s going to be, or I’ll have no part of it. Can’t you see, I’ve got to become something I can respect. I’ve got to make sure I’m worth—not your money, but your time, your life—before I can take a promise from you.”
“Oh, Gayle, Gayle, Gayle.”
Sickening.
Did she mean what was said? Did he? Obviously, the Petrie woman’s decision today came as a surprise to them both. The Thayer slut didn’t know she’d get that sum. Therefore, last night she was showing a measure of psychological independence. As for him, he finally met a woman, experienced but not unduly expectant, who was at the same time in real need of him as a person. Naturally, he’s delirious about that.
Well, a permanent cure won’t come fast or easy, Shaddock my friend, and you can seek a more appropriate partner after you have some idea of what to look for and how. Or she may well find you delightfully gentle and cultured at the moment, but in time that can pall.
Then why did they go to my airplane hand in hand? Could the ludicrous romance conceivably last?
Never mind those babes in the woods. Jam Rance and Petrie into the machine.
The recording indicates she was in a very bad way. Pity she didn’t crack.
He disbelieves her at first, but soon changes his mind. Why, the big baby joins his tears to hers. I speed up the next hours, during which together they exorcise the demons, in search of something more coherent. Ah.
“I love you, Larry. I’ve been fighting it every step, but here at the end of that road, I love you. ”
“Same here. What’re we going to do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Julia!”
“Hush, darling.”
“But—”
“Oh, we’ll have a little, little while to carry us through the years. Then will come the hardest time—because I’m going to help you with your boat, Larry, and we’ll have to make practical arrangements. You’ll be our house guest off and on and we your guests on her shakedown cruise. I don’t pretend that’ll be easy.”
“Julia, no.”
“Hush. Listen. But kiss me first.” Stillness for a minute. “Larry, believe. I want you to have your boat, not bec
ause you need her, though you do, but because the world needs her. Do you remember telling us half the oxygen we breathe comes from plankton? And the oceans are already loaded with chemical fallout? We have our children to think about. Go learn what we need to know.”
“Missing you every second?”
Low laughter. “Oh Larry, you know better. All my days I’ll love you, and hope you do me. But does that keep us from finding new loves? You will, I’m sure. A sailor girl from Australia or Polynesia or Asia to bear and rear your sailor sons. Or we go back to old ones, Larry. Me to Malcolm.”
“Why not to me?”
“Please, darling. Malcolm because of Kilby, and because he has my oath, and because I think I’ve come to realize what I was to him and that it’s never really died and we can light it again. You—” A sigh. “You’re stronger than he is. I found that out this night. Therefore it’s you I must say goodbye to.” Silence again, until she ends. “It’s a terrible responsibility, isn’t it, being loved?”
My finger smashes the switch down to stop.
No more, no more! Tomorrow I destroy every last record. But what can I do to forget this man here beside me, who was broken not by weakness but by a buried honor?
I stand among my machines. Like none of the seven, living and dead, I alone have always been alone. I always will be. The knowledge is unbearable.
“Samael,” I cry in my need, “help!”
And Ellis Nordberg turns his dead face toward me, and his mumbling somehow also carries words. I lurch back, hand held out as if to fend off this last manifestation.
“Have I not helped you enough, Sunderland Haverner, helped you to where and what you are?”
From some unknown place comes the strength to confront that which is here and to say, “I did your will all these many years. Didn’t I? Now, your part of the bargain, whatever you are. At least tell me I was right.”
“Right about what?”
“About what’s real. About the way things are. That those … those white rats of ours … were nothing more, can’t ever be, are as worthless as—”
“As yourself?” asks Samael quite softly. Then out of Nordbergs’s throat comes laughter. “Why, how do you know that my entire purpose was not their salvation, and that I did not begin my work before they were born? Can you be certain that the sacrifices made toward that end are for eternity?”
“What?” I scream.
Once more Samael laughs. “To be sure, there remains the possibility that they have simply been my experimental means for testing you to destruction.”
My body will not bear me up. I sink to my knees.
“I am not going to answer any such questions, of course,” Samael continues. “I am not even going to tell you whether my silence comes from cruelty, or indifference, or mercy.” Sternness: “You shall carry out your promise to the players. You shall trouble them no more in their lives. Otherwise, you will not like the way in which I return.”
Terror grips me by the heart. The pain forces me down onto all fours. I can only nod my head again and again and again.
“For I am leaving you,” Samael goes on. “You have, as you said, served my purposes. In what few years remain to you, seek your own.
“Farewell, Sunderland Haverner.”
The madman sinks back into his hell. I lie on the floor and weep.
Table of Contents
SAMAEL
THE ISLAND
INTRODUCTIONS
INTERVAL ONE
SUNDERLAND HAVERNER
INTERVAL TWO
LARRY RANCE
INTERVAL THREE
GAYLE THAYER
INTERVAL FOUR
BYRON SHADDOCK
INTERVAL FIVE
ORESTES CRUZ
INTERVAL SIX
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
ELLIS NORDBERG
INTERVAL SEVEN
Part One
MATTHEW FLAGLER
INTERVAL SEVEN
Part Two
JULIA PETRIE
FAREWELLS
SUNDERLAND HAVERNER
The Devil's Game Page 28
