by Hal Annas
Vivi was led away and he was surrounded by dreamlike creatures, ethereal until he concentrated on one, and then that one became startlingly real and sentient. The others did not vanish but remained dreamlike until his attention shifted to one or more of them. It was as though he were among shimmering shadows which took on substance in coordination with some whim of his mind. But he could not direct the process consciously.
They danced about him and his surroundings changed to a vast garden, fragrant and beautiful, in the center of which was a sparkling pool. He was nude and swimming in the pool, feeling that he was one with the nymphs about him, and the sense of his flesh was one of exhilaration without the Confusion of desire.
And then he was sleepily lying on a couch and it seemed that something was cutting into the side of his neck. His temples itched. His body was without volition and he could not so much as move an eyelid of his own will.
Terrified screams shrieked about him. His involuntary senses informed him of the proximity of horror and madness, but strive as he would he could not move. Inside him a terrific tension, an accumulation of chained energy, built up until it seemed he would burst.
How long he remained paralyzed was a question he could not answer. Time seemed suspended. The identical horror seemed to go on and on interminably. Then he was free and it seemed that he had been free all the time but unable to make the decision to act. He acted now.
Leaping off the couch, he plunged through a curtained archway into a room of grotesque shadows. A new and more terrifying shock came. Vivi was there, supine on a high table. A man stood over her with a knife raised and ready to plunge into her throat.
Driscoll’s movements never paused from the moment he left the couch until he swung with all his might at the man standing over Vivi. The blow, he knew, should have broken the man’s jaw and neck. But the man simply melted away.
Vivi leaped up. “It was a test,” she cried. “They were testing your new powers.”
He knew then that he would be warned when she was in danger. The warning would come with a cutting pain in his neck, increasing the adrenalin flow, and an itching in his temples to stimulate wakeful sensitivity. He knew now that he was attuned, mentally and physically, to the girl.
The thought troubled him, brought new unrest, for he had already been drawn toward Vivi more than he had ever been drawn toward another, and it required both mental and physical energy to resist the attraction, to keep his thoughts on the task ahead, and to remain alert. He became dynamically eager to get the job done.
They returned to the plane which was then launched as strangely as it had landed. It lifted vertically five thousand feet and then went westward on its own motors.
AT the airport near Los Angeles l they took a taxi to midtown. In the shop district Vivi instructed the driver to halt. “I want to get some clothes,” she said. With Boxer on one side and Driscoll on the other, she started toward an entrance. Halfway there Driscoll felt a sharp cutting pain in his neck, and itching in his temples.
Twisting his neck, he tried to look in every direction, saw no sign of danger. He was reassured by the sight of a police officer who was giving them more than ordinary attention, but the pain increased in intensity and the itching became an annoying irritant.
The sudden movement of the officer galvanized Driscoll’s energy. He swung Vivi behind him, rushed the officer as the gun came out of the holster. There was a sudden clap of close thunder and then he had the officer’s arm in a powerful grip. He broke it at the elbow.
Other officers appeared; a crowd gathered. Driscoll demanded, “Why did you try to shoot me?”
The officer shook his head as in a daze. “I wasn’t trying to shoot you. I was trying to shoot that monster behind you.” He pointed at Vivi.
The other officers shook their heads, took down the names of witnesses. Boxer showed his identification and vouched for Driscoll and Vivi.
Vivi said, “They’re closing in again. The Darklings! They grip the minds of the crowd. They’ll turn into a mob in a moment. We must get away.”
They hurried back to the taxi. The driver was standing on the sidewalk. He refused to carry them farther. “There was a shot fired.” He pointed at Driscoll’s jacket. “It clipped you under the right arm. Stay out of my cab. You’re on the spot. I’m a married man with children. I don’t want to get mixed up in nothing.”
As Driscoll looked back the mob surged toward them. He turned to Boxer, nodded. Boxer rammed his own gun against the driver’s side, said, “Get in and drive.”
“Are you hurt?” Vivi asked as Driscoll seated himself beside her. “Don’t think so.”
She probed the ripped and scorched place in his jacket until she was certain he had not been wounded.
Looking back from the front seat, Boxer demanded to know where she wanted the driver to take them.
“Toward Hollywood,” she said. “I don’t know the exact place yet.” Sometime later she told the driver to turn left and stop in front of the tabernacle. As they got out Boxer handed the driver a ten-dollar bill and then another. “For the wife and kids,” he said.
Driscoll pointed to the assemblage before the tabernacle. “I don’t like it,” he said.
“Neither do I,” Boxer put in. “Another mob. And that guy in the robe is performing miracles. Look! That old lady. A minute ago she could hardly hobble and looked as if she were dying. Now she’s standing up straight. And that expression on her face! As if she’d received a divine revelation.”
As Driscoll watched, the miracles went on and on. There was nothing really remarkable about them. They were the kind of miracles any seasoned emotion monger could perform among the devout. A stiff knee, rheumatism in the joints, and like ailments, Driscoll knew, could be banished with an emotional upsurge. It happened every day in cult-ridden Los Angeles. He couldn’t understand why Vivi was interested.
She was staring at the setting of a ring on her right thumb. Earlier he had thought it was an opal. Now its center glowed. A figure took shape within the glow. It had two perspectives.
Driscoll gasped. “It’s alive,” he breathed. “It’s the same as the man in the robe.”
Vivi nodded. “We’ve found the lost god. We must work closer.” He followed apprehensively as she worked through the gathering and approached the man in the robe. Boxer went ahead of her and opened a path. A hymn that evoked memories was being sung. The miracles went on with machinelike regularity. The god seemed never to fail.
As Vivi drew near, the eyes of the god lifted, burned brightly. He studied her as though struck by her remarkable beauty.
The itching began in both of Driscoll’s temples. The cutting pain throbbed in his neck. His vision flashed from one to another in the gathering in effort to single out the one or many who threatened the girl. Nowhere did he see a person who looked as though he might offer harm.
The warning persisted with maddening intensity.
Vivi moved still closer under the watchful eyes of the god. The crowd fell back, to get a look at Vivi, to look where the eyes of the god looked.
A hush came over the gathering. There had been singing and murmuring and breathing and now there was no sound. A tomb could have given forth no more silence. A pause in the midst of a play could not have been more dramatic. The god and the multitude looked at Vivi, and there was stillness.
Driscoll stood in agonized quiet, nerves alert, muscles quivering.
The god lifted a fine artistic hand and pointed. He could not have made a more startling gesture. His hand stretched toward Vivi. An accusing finger pointed with an air of condemnation.
“Behold! My betrayer!”
The words, in a fine rich tone, were like a voice from beyond. They hung in the air as music, vibrant with accusation, but lacking in indignation or any of the small emotions common to men who have been wronged.
“Behold! They have come armed as against a thief.”
It was then that Driscoll understood that he was among the accused. Th
e pointing finger included him and Boxer.
Terrible doubt came into his mind. It flowed with the flood of adrenalin through his body. It brought a moment of total and nearly fatal indecision. Almost too late he turned his back to Vivi, faced the gathering. He knew Boxer had done the same on the other side.
Murmuring ran through the crowd. Those behind pushed forward; those near at hand remained in indecision. And then the mob cry broke:
“Kill them!”
The action, for which Driscoll’s body ached, came swiftly. Smashing right and left with more than ordinary strength, he knocked three men down, one after the other, and cleared a space about him. He might have plunged into the gathering itself had not Boxer followed his own training in dealing with mobs. The echoing of Boxer’s gun as he fired into the air brought a cessation of hostilities.
“Cops!” somebody yelled, and others took it up.
At the sound of those frantic words the mob dispersed. The faithful deserted their god as other faithful had done two millennia in the past.
On the way to the police station Driscoll experienced shame. Peaceful people had been gathered together and he and those with him had brought among them strife, had no doubt shaken their faith.
Boxer had no difficulty arranging for their freedom, but it required more time to arrange to take the god in charge. Communication with Washington finally accomplished it.
“What now?” Driscoll asked of Vivi.
“We return to Washington”
AS they drove in the police car to the airport, Driscoll wondered. The man they had taken seemed harmless. He had not been disturbing the peace or doing anything wrong in curing his flock of their minor ailments. The thought came that he, Boxer and Vivi were making a mistake in delivering him to the beings from space.
This brooding seemed contagious. In the plane, Vivi showed signs of nervousness. Across the aisle from Driscoll, she continued twisting to look at the god who sat quietly beside Boxer. Driscoll kept one eye on her while the other tried to close.
She continued squirming. And each time her autumn-brown eyes flashed toward the god they paused to study Driscoll’s features. And each time she seemed as though she were going to lean toward him and confide something.
Driscoll remained troubled. He couldn’t banish from his thoughts the longing she evoked and could envision no safe opportunity to fan the flame of that longing. He knew he had to concentrate on the task ahead, or someone might die for his neglect.
When she turned toward him again he closed his eyes and opened them. It seemed that not more than two seconds could have elapsed in the interval. She had been sitting across the aisle. When he opened his eyes she was standing over him, a look of terror on her features.
“Are you all right?” she gasped.
Boxer came forward, said, “What’s the trouble?”
Driscoll stared from one to the other. “What’s coming off?” he demanded.
“Something happened to you,” Vivi said. “While you were asleep.”
“I haven’t been asleep.”
“You must’ve been asleep,” Vivi insisted. “I shook you. Your face was black. It seemed all the light had gone out of you and something come in its place.”
Driscoll studied her eyes. “Are you sure you weren’t suffering hallucinations?”
Vivi appealed to Boxer. “Wasn’t he asleep?”
Boxer shrugged. “I saw you shaking him. I couldn’t see his face at the time. He looks all right now.”
“I haven’t been asleep,” Driscoll said.
Vivi and Boxer exchanged a look. “Okay,” Boxer said. “You weren’t asleep. Just had your mind on something. It took her a couple minutes to shake you out of it.”
“How long?”
“A minute, anyway. She’d been standing over you over a minute before I decided to come up and find out what had happened.” Driscoll glanced out the window, back at Vivi, at Boxer. “Do you think something could be monkeying up our minds?” he asked. Then: “Where’s the god?”
Boxer whirled, turned back slowly. “It’s all right,” he said. “You can’t walk off from an airplane in flight. He’s probably gone to the washroom. I’ll give him a minute and then stroll back.”
“Learning anything about the guy?” Driscoll asked.
“Not much. Seems like a nice guy and I don’t want to badger him. I call him Jesse. They booked him as J. Jesse in L.A.”
“He may be dangerous,” Vivi said.
Boxer grinned. “With me and Driscoll here, what difference does it make? He can get as dangerous as he wants. We’ll take care of it.”
“But something happened to Eldward.”
“You’ve been through a lot,” Boxer said. “Try to relax.”
“It isn’t that. It’s Edward. I’m worried about him.”
Boxer turned to Driscoll. “Maybe you’d better sit beside her. She’s nervous about something. We used to call it woman fears.”
“It isn’t woman fears,” Vivi flared.
“But it’s a good idea for me to sit beside you,” Driscoll said. “I’ve been wondering how to make the suggestion myself. You sit next to the window.”
“No. I want to sit next to the aisle.”
“He can make you feel safer if he’s next to the aisle,” Boxer said.
“No.” Vivi shook her head. “I want him to sit next to the window.”
A grin broke over Boxer’s features. “You aren’t afraid for yourself? You’re actually afraid of what might happen to him. You want to sit on the aisle side so that it will happen to you instead?”
Vivi’s hands trembled. “Don’t make it so difficult,” she said.
Boxer shrugged, turned away. Driscoll moved so that she could sit near the aisle.
“Slide down,” she said. “Let me get my arm round your shoulders.”
“Huh?”
“Something’s going to happen. It may be that my powers can stop it.”
“What powers?”
“One that hasn’t been tested. If I lower my head until the diadem is directly in line with something, and then hold a certain thought in mind—Well, we’ll see.”
Driscoll slumped down in the seat, waited, hoping that what was going to happen would happen soon. With her arm about him, her soft body so warm and close, he had difficulty keeping his mind on the task ahead.
She began to tremble.
“I like the snuggling,” he admitted. “If it wasn’t for the job I’d demonstrate how much I like it. But I can’t do things halfway.
If I let myself go I won’t think about anything but you. It’s the way I’m built. You do something to me and I’m flesh and blood. You understand? And I’m supposed to concentrate solely on protecting you.”
“I don’t care what happens to me,” she breathed. “Something is going to happen to you and I must try to prevent it.”
Rising, he lifted her to her feet. “We both need a drink,” he said. “There’s a bar in the back. Maybe we can get it open.”
“No! Please! Don’t move around. Something is closing in.”
He searched the cabin with his eyes, noticed nothing unusual. “I’ll find out what’s keeping Boxer.”
“No,” she said. “It isn’t safe to go back there.”
He concentrated on his temples and the sensitive place in his neck. Not the vaguest hint of danger came to him. Nothing was out of order. They were sailing four miles above the ground in one of the smoothest flights he had ever experienced. The plane was as nearly perfect as man could make it. The possibility that something could go wrong was remote.
“You’ve been keyed up for some time,” he said. “It’s become hysteria. I know the remedy for that.” He picked her up and carried her toward the bar.
Halfway there he felt something like a cold breath against the back of his neck. He didn’t pause, didn’t turn to look, but felt the girl’s arms tighten about him as if she were resisting something that would tear them apart.
At the
bar he placed her on her feet. She trembled, almost fell, swayed against him, clung.
“I’ll jiggle up a drink,” he said softly and reassuringly.
Something beyond her drew his attention. The shock came then. He had consciously to will his heart not to jump, to will his hands to be steady, to keep himself from shouting.
In the archway opening into the washroom were two shoes with ankles protruding from them. They were suspended in mid-air. Whatever was attached to them was invisible behind the facing of the arch.
He drew Vivi close to him, held her attention. With consciously controlled and labored movements, he mixed a drink, extended the glass to her. Her hands shook so that she couldn’t hold the glass. He pressed it to her lips.
The shoes and the ankles hung there as a hint of dreadful things, a portent of horrors to come.
Vivi’s teeth clicked against the glass. He placed a hand behind her head and held her steady. She closed her eyes and seemed to drink against some inner resistance. Halfway through, she opened her eyes, lifted a hand to her face, cringed back. Her eyes were wide and staring—straight at him.
Then she screamed.
Stunned and uncomprehending, he held her close. For a moment it seemed that she would faint. Her eyes came open again, wide and staring.
Again she screamed with all her might.
Mouth open, stark horror in her features, she cringed back, her body quivering like a leaf. She backed away from him. And then with another piercing shriek she turned and fled to the distant end of the cabin.
Suspended between the demand to investigate the thing in the washroom and the overwhelming need of the girl, he remained a moment in indecision. The need of the girl won. He plunged after her.
Then he saw that she was trying literally to push her way through the bulkhead into the pilot’s compartment. Her eyes mirrored dazed horror; her features were dreadfully distorted. Her lips shaped the word “Darkling” and she slumped in a dead faint.
The truth struck Driscoll like a flash of the sun in his eyes. For a moment he was blinded. Then the full impact smote his body. It was like a sledgehammer against his solarplexus.
