The dial on his forearm was smashed, the needle dangling and useless.
He sucked in breath until his lungs stopped aching, then looked up and across the roofs of the buildings. Far away, the topmost part of the tail on Muehlenfeldt’s jet could be seen. He gripped the rifle and started toward the silver beacon, running past the buildings and ignoring the fiery eyes that watched him from within.
The plane’s bulk shielded him from the yellow sky. “Hey!” he shouted up at the curved belly. A panel shifted and slid open. He stepped back as the stairs slowly lowered, the bottom step finally grinding against the street’s asphalt.
No one stopped him at the top of the ramp. He walked cautiously into the silent interior.
The fish in the cabin’s huge aquarium was dead, floating at the top of the water. “Ralph,” came Muehlenfeldt’s voice as he stepped around the tank. “Come on. You can’t avoid this moment forever.”
The senator was sitting in the high-backed leather chair. His white hair no longer lay smooth against his skull but stood on end in a corona.
Ralph stood a couple of yards away and pointed the gun at him. “I need to know where the slithergadee is.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Muehlenfeldt. “Stop waving that thing about. I know what it’s for. You can’t hurt me with it.” He paused, smiling. “Come on. Nothing to say now?”
“Where is it?” Ralph lowered the gun.
“It’s no use to ask. You’ll never find it.” The smile grew wider and more wicked. “You’ll never find Sarah either. She’s not here—you’ll die universes apart from each other. Sad, don’t you think. She really is my daughter, you know.”
“No,” said Ralph. “She isn’t.”
Muehlenfeldt laughed. “Oh, but she is. Though perhaps spawn is a better word. We reproduce asexually—ah, yes, your friend Spencer was right about me. Very intuitive of him. Sarah told me all about his theories.” He tilted his head to one side. “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth—isn’t that how it goes? I was very surprised when she turned against me. But then maybe she was sick in some way. Maybe she forgot what she was and now she really believes she’s human. This taking on other creatures’ identities can be a dangerous business. So let it be that way, then. She can die with her adopted species.”
Lying, thought Ralph. His hands sweated on the gun stock. Confusion.
“Still nothing to say?” Muehlenfeldt leaned forward in his chair.
“Nothing to ask? Before it ends?” He sighed. “That’s the trouble with you—all of you. Too easily distracted by trivialities. Like that military nonsense in South America. That Ximento business. I instigated that—money in the right places, and enough of it. Just as a distraction, otherwise I’m sure my real purpose would have been exposed much sooner. Perhaps even delayed.”
One of his wrinkled hands described a sphere in the air. “Think of it as a work of art,” he said. “The transformation of your meaningless and dirty little lives into pure light. Perfect and intense. Like a star—that’s how it’ll look from far enough away. Don’t you think that’s worth more than the mere continuation of your petty existence?”
“You’re insane,” said Ralph. “You’ll die, too.”
“Fool. As if this were the only place in which I exist. I’ll be watching from out there when this poor husk is consumed with everything else.” He gripped the arms of the chair and laughed with his head thrown back, the cords in his neck beating.
Ralph watched, numb with sickness and the weight of defeat.
Muehlenfeldt’s laughter grew louder until it filled the space. A string of saliva bisected the cavernous mouth.
The yellowish teeth suddenly lengthened, sliding in their gums.
The teeth. Ralph stared, the realization bursting in him. He’s the slithergadee!
The laughter stopped. Muehlenfeldt’s figure seemed to grow larger as it rose from the chair. It was swelling, changing into its true shape. “Yes,” said the voice from the gaping mouth, sounding hollow and distant. “But it’s too late! Look out the window!”
He looked and saw that the sky outside had turned red, a fire that stretched to the end of every universe. Fumbling with the rifle, he backed away from the thing in front of him. The floor tilted beneath him and he fell against a table. The jet was climbing.
“Too late!” The voice was buried beneath the thing’s armor. Its claws ripped the carpet as it scrabbled toward him, the fangs in its mouth fully extended.
Ralph rolled over the top of the table and fell on the other side. His fingers trembling, he matched the dials on top of the gun. He pushed himself away from the table, lifted the gun and fired point-blank at the thing rising above him like a wave.
A flash of light and Muehlenfeldt’s muffled laughter echoed again in the cabin. “Idiot! How can you hit me with that thing when I can alter my level at will?”
“No,” moaned Ralph. He lifted the gun to his face. The needle of the dial on the left was swaying erratically back and forth.
“Give up,” intoned the buried voice.
Ralph got to his feet on the angled floor. He shouted something but the blood roaring in his ears drowned it out. A mountain of glistening scales and fangs toppled toward him. He didn’t look but watched the left dial’s needle reach its farthest point, then fall the other way. With the gun butt braced against his stomach, he turned the right dial’s needle in the opposite direction. In the split-second when they matched positions he fired.
Light, which grew brighter until he was blinded. He felt himself pressed upward against something. It dissolved and he was falling. Then he burned away as well, leaving nothing.
Chapter 17
He awoke on the shimmering desert. Sand and sky danced blurrily until he blinked and cleared his eyes. He lifted himself up on his elbows and looked around. There was nothing to be seen but the empty desert.
I wonder where the base is. He stood up, his knees trembling unsteadily for a moment, and shaded his eyes. One direction’s good as another, he thought, shrugging his shoulders. He started walking, his head lowered.
After several minutes of trudging through the sand and dry brush, he heard the sound of an automobile engine approaching. It appeared on the horizon, trailing a cloud of dust, and grew larger. He stopped and waited for it.
Sarah was at the wheel of a jeep. She pulled in front of him and stopped. The black dress, dusty now, was rolled up over her knees. “Get in,” she said.
The wind bathed him, coming over the lowered windshield. The jeep bounced over the sand and rocks for a little while, then climbed onto a strip of asphalt road and picked up speed.
“Where’d you get this?” he said finally.
“It was at the base.” Sarah pointed behind them with her thumb. “I managed to reach there after he—or whatever it was—dumped me off the plane. Spencer filled me in on what was happening, where you’d gone. Then I sneaked out and stole this.” Her hand patted the dash.
“Oh.” He looked at the strip of highway bisecting the desert in front of them. “How’d you find me out there?”
“Didn’t I tell you once I had a knack for finding things that were important to me? I knew where to look.” Her hand drew a line in the air. “You were like a falling star when you came back. Would you like something to eat? There’s a carton of something in the back.”
He found it and lifted it onto his lap. It was filled with cans marked U.S. Army, followed by a number of several digits. He pulled the opening strip on one and discovered canned peaches inside. He plunged his hand into the warm syrup and pulled out a slippery golden crescent that dissolved in his mouth like part of the sun. “Where’re we going?” he asked when he had finished the can.
“I thought up north would be pleasant,” said Sarah. “Big redwood trees with lots of shade under them. And it rains every week. Isn’t there a town up there called Eureka?”
“I have found it,” murmured Ralph. He closed his eyes. He opened them again when an after-image form
ed inside the lids of a gaping fanged mouth. “Got any money?” he said. “It’s a long drive.”
She pulled a man’s wallet from under the seat and handed it to him.
“Should be enough.”
It was crammed with folded bills. A twenty fluttered free as he looked inside. The wind caught the bill and sucked it into the dust behind them.
When he laid the wallet on the seat between them, Sarah took one hand from the wheel and touched his. Without thinking, he jerked it away, as though it were burned.
Her face turned a little, the eyes studying him. “He told you that I’m—like he was. Didn’t he? The same kind of thing. He told me he would say that to you.”
Ralph nodded. “Yeah. He said that.”
“It’s not true. It was just hate on his part, trying to come up with the lie that would hurt you most.”
He pressed his hand softly to her cheek. “I didn’t really believe it anyway.”
They drove on for a while. Ralph scratched his chin. “Won’t Spencer and the Beta group wonder what happened to me?”
She shrugged. “They’ll probably just figure you were destroyed when you set off the detonator. The whole dreamfield collapsed and went out of existence. They’ll look for your body for a little while and then give up. What does it matter? You’ve done enough for them.”
Ralph nodded. Maybe up north I’ll start writing again, he thought. He decided it wasn’t worth trying to get into L.A. and fetching his old unfinished manuscript from his parents’ house. They were probably still mad at him for abandoning their Ford somewhere in the city. Better to start all over. With everything. He turned and watched Sarah for a few moments, her hands resting easy on the jeep’s wheel.
“What’s the matter?” Her glance caught his. “Still thinking of what that thing said about me?”
“No,” said Ralph. He leaned back in the seat. “I don’t really care anyway. It’s all right with me if you are really a being from some other star. Just as long as you don’t do that thing with the teeth. You know? Where they turn into fangs and come sliding out in their sockets?”
“Okay,” she said. And smiled.
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The Dreamfields Page 17
