by Farris, John
When the beam flicked away Robin wedged himself deeper in the waist of the chimney.
"Robin? Where are you? Please answer me!"
I'll kill you, Robin thought. Don't think I can't do it.
The room to which Gillian had been escorted by Granny Sig and Lana, the black-haired girl with the yellow headband and the deadly Taser, was a spacious end bedroom on the third floor. East-west windows and a big north fireplace wall. A fire on the hearth was burning low. Granny Sig turned on lights. Gillian stood shivering.
"O-open the windows," she begged.
"Lamb, you're shaking to pieces already," said Granny Sig.
"He's up there! Right up there!" Gillian pointed to a corner of the ceiling. "Please open the—"
Granny Sig looked at Lana, who moved her tough little jaw over a wad of gum. Lana shrugged.
"It's only your ass," she said. "Freeze it off it you want to." Gillian snatched at the drapes of the east-facing windows.
Peter slipped and fell to his hands and knees. The steel flashlight he'd tied to his right wrist banged against the slate roof, but the faceplate was unbreakable glass and the light didn't go out.
Jesus, he thought, sweating inside his clothes despite the cold.
He stood up cautiously, a hand going to the nylon cord looped around his chest and waist. The line to the attic window he had climbed out of minutes ago was taut. He signaled curtly for slack. Just as he got it the wind, reversing abruptly, almost picked him off again. Snow felt like ground glass on his face. He crooked his left arm with difficulty and cleaned his lashes with the gloved back of one hand.
"Robin?"
But maybe the watchers had been mistaken, and hadn't seen him on this end of the roof after all. Robin could be a hundred and ninety feet away on the other side of the house, crouched in the lee of another chimney, unable to hear him. Certainly he wouldn't be able to see much better than Peter, and Peter felt nearly blind up here.
Or Robin might have fallen, soundless and unseen, some time ago. In the morning, sun breaking orange over the vast white fields, they'd find him half-buried in a drift gone hard as rock during the subzero night.
The wind changed again and Peter smelled something unmistakably human: urine.
He brought his light to bear on the big chimney ahead. There was nothing beyond it but the dark and the streaming snow. Nothing in front of the chimney, either. But he moved closer, playing the light back and forth over the several facings of the double-octagon chimney.
Something was reflecting light in the deep dividing niche—it reflected high as lurking eyes. Oh God. He took another step.
Another.
"R-Robin?"
A face emerged warily from deep shadow. He was wedged in there sideways, although the niche scarcely afforded room for an average-sized boy. Peter could see that Robin was far from average. He'd grown tall, taller than his father. Peter doted on the red, snow-encrusted sprawl of curls on the manly forehead. Oh beautiful! Peter sobbed aloud. So familiar a face, yet dauntingly strange. He lowered the light so it wouldn't blind his son.
"Robin—Robin!"
Robin bared his teeth like a dog. Peter came up short and signaled impatiently for slack in the nylon line. They gave him another two feet. "It's Dad, Robin."
Robin remained very still, but his eyes narrowed.
"I know—they told you I was dead. They lied! I've spent the last eighteen months looking for you. I never gave up, I—what's the trouble, Skipper? Don't you recognize me? Can't you say hello to your old man?"
He realized, belatedly, how stupid that sounded. Because he was standing behind the flashlight, Robin couldn't possibly make him out. To Robin's dazzled eyes he was just a vague shape in the near-dark.
Smiling, Peter turned the light on himself.
"Here I am, Skipper. It's no joke. I'm not a—"
Robin's charge took him completely by surprise, but at the perimeter of light he was casting on himself he saw the flash of a bottle aimed at his head and jerked his left shoulder high to take the crippling blow. It ended what little feeling he still had in the length of his arm. Slipping, falling, he clutched at Robin with his right hand and pulled the boy off balance. Then they both stepped off the flat of the roof and onto the slant, which was twelve feet of greased lightning.
They plummeted in a tangle to the gutter shelf and hung there. The two men at the other end of the nylon rope were jerked up against the inside of the attic window by the combined weight of Peter and Robin, and they lost valuable line, which branded their hands smoking hot and deep as the bone.
Outside, Robin went over the edge, hand in hand with Peter. He dangled face-up in the biting wind, eyes wide and a clean, celestial blue in the light from the swinging flashlight, his mouth almost a perfect O of surprise. Peter, with the lower half of his body on the roof and the looped cord strangling him at the waist, tried to reach out with his left hand to reinforce the precarious hold he had on his son.
There was no response at all. His left hand lay cramped and useless beneath him.
"PULL US UP! FOR GOD'S SAKE PULL US UP!" It took all the breath he had, but the wind shrieked louder.
Peter felt a sawing on the line; they slipped another two inches. Robin, still gazing at him in rapt attention, gasped but didn't struggle.
"Reach up," Peter said. "With your other hand. Get hold of the shoulder of my parka. Climb up over me. I'm—God—tied down, I can't fall. Come on, now. Do it. Before I pass out."
Robin reached up slowly, very slowly. His left hand touched the down-filled parka. He looked deeply into Peter's eyes. His hand moved on, touched Peter's face. Tears fell on the back of his hand.
"Oh, Skipper," Peter mumbled. "Come on; just come on. Grab hold."
Something joyous broke through the rigidly neutral expression on Robin's face.
"Ahhhhh—" he said, secure in that moment of vital recognition. "Help me, Commander!"
He smiled.
Then he fell, released by Peter.
Fell down and down, twisting in the air like a cat. He smashed into piled snow and the rocks at the edge of the lake.
The wind prowled over him. Men ran and lifted his body, and there was a dark blot where his head had split open. Peter, hanging head down from the edge of the roof, looked on with somber inquiring eyes, betraying no understanding of the sudden tragedy. His expression of earnest inquiry didn't change when the one-armed man appeared in the snow to rant and curse him. It didn't change when the rope squeaked and slackened and he was lowered off the roof. Easier for him to go down than up. He momentarily lost consciousness when his legs swung down and the blood rushed from his head.
Peter was lowered another ten feet. When he lifted his head he saw Gillian's stunned face at a window. Grief took him by the throat.
"Oh, girl," he said—or thought he said. "How did it go so wrong?"
Peter wondered if she'd heard him. But he couldn't bear to go on looking at her. His eyes filmed over and he slumped, his head nodding forward. He swayed in the wind at the end of the crushing rope.
Childermass ran through the bedroom and pulled Gillian away from the window. He leaned out, batting the snow from his eyes.
"Peter! Peter, you son of a bitch!"
Peter's head was caked with snow. It drifted down his silent, closed face.
"You let him go! I saw it! You killed your own son! Why! Goddamn you, Peter, I know you're not dead! Give me an answer."
He seemed to have seriously misjudged Peter for the last time. But then slowly, very slowly, Peter lifted his head until he was staring into Childermass's furious eyes. Granny Sig, looking on, thought she saw Peter smile. Perhaps not. But the gesture he made was unmistakable. Right hand lifted, rigid index finger extended.
Childermass turned away from the window, seized the nearest MORG agent and said, "Give me your piece."
"No!" Gillian screamed. She was dragged to the floor before she could place herself between Childermass and Peter.
; Childermass was handed a .44 Magnum revolver. Six rounds of high-velocity, hollow-nosed ammunition. Taking up his shooting stance at the window, Childermass blew a great deal of Peter away with the six shots. Set him twirling fiercely in a lull. He had the decency to pull the drapes immediately after.
Lana was sitting on Gillian in order to keep her under control. Gillian's eyes rolled hysterically as Childermass kneeled beside her.
"Well, I don't have Robin anymore," he said. "You'll have to do." He threw the hot revolver on the bed and left the room.
Chapter Twenty
The thing that killed was in the mind.
In her dream Gillian opened windows wide as the world and looked out at Peter, who was suspended in a void on a child's swing. Feet together, pumping rhythmically—successive arcs carried Peter higher and higher. He laughed and waved at her as he swung past the windows. Such good spirits.
/The doll, he called.
Gillian looked reluctantly at the Skipper doll in her hands. She'd always had Skipper, and she didn't want to share him. But Peter insisted. He had a right to Skipper too.
/Give him to me, Gillian, Peter said on his next slow pass at the windows. /Hand him over. His mood had changed. He wasn't laughing any more. She knew she'd better do what he said.
All she needed to do was lean out and Peter would swoopingly gather Skipper in his arms. But she couldn't be brave about the void she faced. Nothingness terrified her. She wanted to close her eyes and hold Skipper at arm's length for Peter to snatch away. But she had no eyelids. No matter which way she turned her head she was forced to see. Endlessly she went on seeing.
Skipper's head was in her hands. Skipper hung down dancing within reach of Peter, but Peter missed him. When Peter stretched out backwards, making a second effort to get his hands on Skipper, he lost his seat. He took Skipper down with him, they dwindled in the lonesome void. Gillian at the windows, hands outstretched, seeing, seeing. She was cursed with eternal vision. The eye dictated to the mind. It was a strange form of insanity, and the horrors had just begun.
She was still holding Skipper's head.
It rolled woodenly on her flattened palms, winking and giggling, sticking its tongue out at her. The head rolled up one arm and perched on her shoulder. There it turned into a toucan, a bird with a tyrannical eye and a fierce horn beak that gleamed like polished boots. The toucan picked up an ear and ate it. Gillian tolerated this. Peckishly it dismantled the bones of her head. Then it paused, gloating over the throb of blue uncovered brains. Now this is too much, Gillian thought tearfully. What's mine is mine. You miserable bird!
She awoke with a quiet shudder, blinking, instantly reassured that she was not doomed to a lidless existence. The mind despised the all-seeing eye, and did its best to shroud reality for the sake of the vulnerable organism. Her dream dissolved slowly. There was a glaze of firelight on the ceiling of the cold room in which she was bedded. She heard someone else breathing, through a stuffy nose, heard the pages of a magazine turning. Gillian moved her head carefully on the pillow, not wanting to rustle the crisp sheets.
The girl with the yellow headband was sitting in a chair near the fire with a magazine in her lap, rubbing her nose on the back of one hand. A high-intensity lamp beamed down on her. Gillian heard a clock ticking and wondered what time it was, and why she wasn't sleeping. Granny Sig had insisted that she take the capsules that would bomb her out for a day or more. Granny Sig had been kind of tough about it.
But her mind, despite the awful dreams, was sharp and clear. She was wide awake and, she hoped, able to think rationally. She even remembered the name of the girl with the yellow headband. Lana had been a constant companion since Shadowdown.
So if she wasn't sleeping, then the pills she had swallowed were nothing but sugar.
There was a point to that.
Granny Sig was the only one who seemed to care about her. As far as she knew, Gillian had never met a real transvestite before, although some of her mother's acquaintances. . . . She'd always considered transvestites to be woebegone, ridiculous creatures, but Granny Sig was forthright and intelligent and very easy to talk to. They'd spent nearly two hours discussing the tragedy, talking over Robin's many accomplishments and his ultimate failure to cope with his powers: the powers which she and Robin had in common. It was not difficult then for Gillian to unburden herself. Granny Sig understood.
A phone beside Lana rang. She glanced at Gillian, who was studying her through slitted eyes, and picked up the receiver. She listened for a few moments without speaking, then turned her head again.
"Totally knocked out," Lana said. She listened a while longer, then put down the receiver and approached the bed. Gillian feigned sound sleep. Lana put a hand on one shoulder and shook her gently. Gillian sensed that wouldn't be all, and willed herself to be a rock. Lana pinched her earlobe with sharp fingernails. Gillian didn't bat an eye.
Satisfied, Lana left her, murmured into the phone again, hung up and left the room.
Gillian waited, counted off two minutes. Then she sat up. She was alone. She got out of bed and, shivering, put on her clothes. She was thinking about Peter and the talk they'd had less than twenty-four hours ago. She wept for Peter, but her tears didn't last long. It wasn't what he would have wanted.
Her room was on the third floor. Granny Sig had made sure, during their whispered colloquy, that she had full knowledge of how the house was laid out.
The staircase down to the little-used servants' quarters was cold and poorly lighted; Gillian stumbled once and made some noise, then froze to the railing until she could get her heart out of her mouth.
When she reached the second floor the door, as Granny Sig had promised, was unlocked. A cabinet clock ticked loudly as she walked down the hall to the south wing. It was ten minutes past four in the morning.
But what about dogs? she had said, and Granny Sig said, Childermass hates vicious dogs. He won't have them in the house.
All the bedroom doors in the south wing of the house were closed. Gillian was momentarily confused. She counted and recounted, then put her ear to one door and heard nothing. Listening at the next door she heard Lana, faintly, talking inside. She waited, poised to run. Nobody came near the door. Gillian continued to listen, but she didn't hear Lana speak again.
/What you do accidentally, Granny Sig said, you can do on purpose. By willing it.
No, it's horrible, I can't!
/Then you will surely end up like Robin. As mad and monstrous as Robin.
(The thing that killed was in the mind)
Gillian turned the knob and eased the door open. She entered the sitting room of Childermass's suite.
A single lamp was lit. Beyond the lamp, in the bedroom, Childermass sat naked on the side of his bed. Lana, still wearing her yellow headband but nothing else, was down on one knee between his legs, face close to his groin. She nuzzled and nursed. For all the reaction she was getting she might as well not have been there.
Gillian singled out a closet door near the bedroom door. Then, without much interest, she watched the sexual dumbshow as long as it lasted. Very tiring for Lana, but she brought him off.
As soon as Lana was finished, Gillian popped into the closet.
She heard them talking again. Apparently Childermass was an insomniac. He thought a hot bath might help. Gillian heard Lana in the bathroom filling the tub. When she came out Childermass complained that he was hungry. He wanted steak and eggs and a shot of brandy. Lana put her clothes on. From deep inside the closet Gillian watched her leave the bedroom. A few moments later the outside door clicked shut behind Lana.
Cut off the head, Peter had told her, and MORG's enemies will devour the body.
Gillian opened the closet door and started into the bedroom. Then she doubled back to lock the outside door.
Up to now she had stayed reasonably calm, but the act of locking herself in with Childermass almost snapped her nerve. Her mind seemed to slip out of gear, because the next thing she knew sh
e was standing agape in the bedroom just a few feet from his bath, hearing him sigh and splash lethargically in the deep tub. Childermass's back was to the door.
/What affects you might be described as rare form of epilepsy.
Oh, God, how can I do this?
I'm like a generator. Turn me on, turn me off.
/Robin could do it, said Granny Sig.
(What I can do you can do, Gillian. You're my sister)
But what turns the generator on, Granny Sig?
/Hate. Anger. Any powerful emotion.
I can't. I'm too afraid.
/Yes, fear. Fear will do. Use it.
/Use it, Gillian!
Keeping an eye on the bathroom door, Gillian quietly stripped the coverlet and blankets from the bed. She moved deliberately, but her pulse was hammering incredibly fast, at well over two hundred beats a minute. Her skin was flushed. She pulled the top sheet off and folded it twice.
When the bathroom door opened on a squeaking hinge Childermass trembled all over, startled out of a nodding doze.
"Lana?" he said. "Run some more hot water. And I could use a smoke."
"Go to hell," Gillian said.
With a mighty splash he sat up straight, craning his head. He had only a glimpse of Gillian's furious face before she threw the doubled sheet over him and followed with an arm lock on his stubby body, bearing him down, holding him in the tub with all her strength. His scream was muffled by the sheet and cut off by a gush of water down his throat, although he managed immediately to get his face above the water line. He fought with his one arm, but the wet sheet clung suffocatingly. When he kicked his feet his head slipped far under water and Gillian pressed down again, snorting, her arms wet to the shoulders, her face dripping.
Then his blood began to flow beneath the sheet. Childermass, gasping and sobbing, thrust his head up yet another time before he sank again. Gillian looked away. It was terrible, yet better than her dreams. Here she could close her eyes and not watch the sheet turn red, the water turn vilely dark.
