Now, as she watched, the bizarre and fearful thing that had covered Pendergast like swamp vapor began to shift and break apart. Hope that had left her heart during the brief, dreadful vigil now suddenly returned: Pendergast had won. The tulpa was vanquished.
But then, with a new thrill of horror, she saw that the tulpa was not dispersing—it was instead sinking into Pendergast’s body.
Suddenly, his clothes began to twitch and writhe, as if countless cockroaches were skittering about beneath them. His limbs convulsed, his frame animated as by a foreign presence. His facial muscles spasmed and vellicated. His eyes opened briefly, staring out at nothing, and in that brief silvery window she saw depths of terror and despair as deep as the universe itself.
A foreign presence . . .
Suddenly, Constance was conflicted no longer. She knew what she had to do.
She stood up, forced her way across the room and up the bizarrely slanting staircase, and passed into Pendergast’s bedroom. Ignoring the heeling of the ship, she searched through one drawer after another until her hand closed over his Les Baer .45. She pulled out the weapon, drew back the slide to ensure there was a round in the chamber, then clicked off the safety.
She knew how Pendergast would want to live—and how he would want to die. If she couldn’t help him in any other way, at least she could help him with this.
Weapon in hand, she exited the bedroom and—taking tight hold of the railing—descended the slanting stairs to the living room.
74
LESEUR STARED AT the plated red bow of the Grenfell as the Canadian ship desperately backed its screws, trying to swing itself out of the way of the Britannia even as the great ocean liner yawed into it at flank speed.
The deck of the aux bridge shook as the podded propulsion systems strained under the extreme maneuver forced upon them. LeSeur didn’t even need to glance at the instruments to know it was over: he could extrapolate the trajectories of the two ships merely by staring out the bridge windows. He knew they were each on a course that would bring them together in the worst possible way. Even though the Grenfell’s headway had fallen off three or four knots while it tried to maneuver, the Britannia was still driving forward at full power with its two fixed screws while the aft pods, rotated ninety degrees, delivered a sideways thrust that was swinging its stern around like a baseball bat toward the Grenfell.
“My God, my God, my God . . .” LeSeur heard the chief engineer repeating to himself, a continuous sotto voce prayer, as he stared out the window.
The aux bridge shuddered, tilting at an even crazier angle. The deck warning systems had lit up as the lowest decks shipped water. LeSeur heard a chorus of fresh sounds: the screeching and tearing of plated steel, the machine-gun popping of rivets, the deep groaning of the ship’s immense steel frame.
“My God,” whispered the engineer again.
A deep boom sounded from below, followed by a violent shimmy, as if the hull of the ship had been rung like a massive bell. The violence of it threw LeSeur to the floor; and as he rose to his knees a second boom rocked the aux bridge, slamming him sideways into the corner of the navigation table and gashing his forehead. A framed photograph of the Britannia’s launching, with Queen Elizabeth presiding, popped free of its screw mounts and cartwheeled along the floor, shedding pieces of glass, skidding to a halt in front of LeSeur’s face. With a sense of unreality, he stared at the queen’s serene, smiling visage, one white-gloved hand raised to the adoring crowd, and then for a moment he felt a horrible wash of failure—his failure. He had failed his queen, his country, everything he stood for and believed in. He had allowed the ship to be taken over by a monster. It was his fault.
He grabbed the edge of the table and pulled himself up, feeling a rivulet of warm blood running down into his eye. With a savage sweep of his hand he wiped it away and tried to recover his senses.
He immediately realized that something significant had just happened to the ship. The deck was righting itself at increasing speed, and the Britannia surged forward, no longer yawing but now moving straight ahead. Fresh alarms sounded.
“What on earth—?” LeSeur said. “Halsey, what’s happening?”
Halsey had scrambled to his feet, and he stared at the engine panel, his face blanked out with horror.
But LeSeur didn’t need Halsey to explain. He suddenly understood what had happened: the Britannia had torn off both of its aft rotating pods—essentially, its rudder. The Grenfell was now almost dead ahead, a few dozen seconds from impact. The Britannia had stopped swinging into her and was now driving toward her in a straight line.
LeSeur grabbed for the radio. “Grenfell!” he cried. “Stop backing and straighten out! We’ve lost steerage!”
The call was unnecessary; LeSeur could already see a massive boiling of water around Grenfell’s stern as her captain understood implicitly what he had to do. The Grenfell trimmed itself parallel to the Britannia just as the two ships closed in on each other.
There was a rush of sound as the Grenfell’s bows passed the Britannia’s, the ships so close LeSeur could hear the roaring of water, compressed into a wind tunnel formed by the narrow space between the two hulls. There was a loud series of bangs and screeches of metal as the port bridge wing of the Grenfell made contact with a lower deck of the Britannia, trailing vast geysers of sparks—and then, quite suddenly, it was over. The two ships had passed.
A ragged cheer rose up over the alarms on the auxiliary bridge, and LeSeur could make out a corresponding cheer coming over the VHF from the Grenfell.
The chief engineer looked over at him, his face bathed in sweat. “Mr. LeSeur, we lost both aft pods, just tore them right off—”
“I know,” LeSeur replied. “And the hull’s breached.” He felt a swell of triumph. “Mr. Halsey, let the aft bilge spaces and compartments six and five flood. Seal the bilge bulkheads amidships.”
But Halsey did nothing but stand there.
“Do it!” LeSeur barked.
“I can’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
Halsey held out his hands. “Not possible. The bulkheads seal automatically.” He pointed at an emergency panel.
“Then unseal them! Get a team down there to open the hatches manually!”
“Can’t,” repeated Halsey helplessly. “Not when they’re flooded. There’s no override.”
“God damn this automation! What’s the status on the other two pods?”
“Operational. Each delivering full power to the screws. But our speed is down to twenty knots.”
“And with the aft pods gone, she’ll be steering with engine power now.” LeSeur glanced over at the officer of the watch. “ETA Carrion Rocks?”
“At this speed and heading, thirty-five minutes, sir.”
LeSeur stared out the bridge windows at the forecastle of the Britannia, still pounding relentlessly through the seas. Even at twenty knots they were screwed. What were their options? None that he could see.
“I’m giving the order to abandon ship,” he said.
A stillness enveloped the bridge.
“Excuse me, sir—with what?” the chief engineer asked.
“With the lifeboats, of course.”
“You can’t do that!” cried a new voice—a feminine voice.
LeSeur looked over and saw that the female member of Gavin Bruce’s team, Emily Dahlberg, had entered the auxiliary bridge. Her clothes were torn and sopping. He stared at her in surprise.
“You can’t launch the lifeboats,” she said. “Gavin and Niles Welch attempted a test launch—their boat ruptured.”
“Ruptured?” LeSeur repeated. “Where are Liu and Crowley? Why haven’t they reported back?”
“There was a mob on the lifeboat deck,” Dahlberg said, breathing heavily. “Liu and Crowley were attacked. Maybe killed. The passengers launched a second boat. That one burst open when it hit the sea, as well.”
This was greeted by shocked silence.
LeSeur turned to th
e chief radio officer. “Activate the automatic abandon-ship message.”
“Sir, you heard her!” Kemper spoke up. “Those boats would be no better than floating coffins. Besides, it takes forty-five minutes to load and launch the lifeboats under ideal circumstances. We’ve got thirty. We’ll impact when all the passengers are standing crowded on the half decks—which are open, all steel and struts. It’ll be a massacre. Half of them will go overboard and the rest will be beaten to hell.”
“We’ll get as many on as we can, hold them on the boats until impact, and then launch.”
“The force of the impact may derail the boats. They’ll be jammed up in the half deck and there won’t be any way to launch them. They’ll go down with the ship.”
LeSeur turned to Halsey. “True?”
The man’s face was white. “I believe that is correct, sir.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“We get the passengers into their cabins and have them brace for impact.”
“And then what? The ship’ll go down in five minutes!”
“Then we load and launch the lifeboats.”
“But I just heard the impact may derail the lifeboats!” LeSeur realized he was hyperventilating. He forced himself to slow down.
“At twenty knots, there’ll be less damage, less of an impact. At least some lifeboats will remain railed and ready to launch. And with less of an impact, maybe we’ll have more time before . . . we sink.”
“Maybe? That’s not good enough.”
“That’s all we’ve got,” said Halsey.
LeSeur wiped the blood out of his eye again and flung it away with a snap of his fingers. He turned again to the chief radio officer. “Send a message over the PA. All passengers are to report to their quarters immediately—no exceptions. They are to don the flotation devices found under their bunks. They are then to get in their berths, feet facing forward, in fetal position, and cushion themselves with pillows and blankets. If they can’t reach their cabins, they are to get into the closest chair they can find and assume a protective position—hands clasped behind the head, head between the knees.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Immediately after impact they are all to report to their lifeboat assembly stations, just as in the drills. They are to take absolutely nothing with them but their PFDs. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.” He turned back toward his terminal. A moment later, a siren went off and his voice sounded over the public address system, giving the orders.
LeSeur turned to Emily Dahlberg. “I guess that goes for you, as well. You’d better return to your cabin.”
She looked back at him. After a moment, she nodded.
“And Mrs. Dahlberg? Thank you.”
She left the bridge.
LeSeur watched the hatch close behind her. Next he turned a baleful eye on the CCTV displaying a grainy image of the helm. Mason was still standing there, one hand draped on the wheel, the other lightly resting on the two fore pod throttles, maintaining heading by slight adjustments to the speed of the screws.
LeSeur pushed the transmit button on the internal bridge-to-bridge intercom and leaned into it. “Mason? I know you can hear me.”
No answer.
“Are you really going to do this?”
As if in answer, her white hand moved from the throttle to a small covered panel. She flicked off the cover, pulled two levers, then returned to the throttles, pressing both as far forward as they would go.
There was a throaty rumble as the engines responded.
“Jesus,” said Halsey, staring at the engine panel. “She’s redlining the gas turbines.”
The ship surged forward. With a sick feeling, LeSeur watched the speed indicator begin to creep up. Twenty-two knots. Twenty-four. Twenty-six.
“How is this possible?” he asked, flabbergasted. “We lost half our propulsion back there!”
“She’s goosing the turbines way beyond their specs,” said Halsey.
“How high can they go?”
“I’m not sure. She’s pushing them past five thousand rpms . . .” He leaned over and touched one of the dials, as if in disbelief. “And now she’s redlining all four Wärtsilä diesels, directing the excess power to the two remaining pods.”
“Is that going to burn them out?”
“Hell, yes. But not soon enough.”
“How long?”
“She could go on like this for . . . thirty, forty minutes.”
LeSeur glanced at the chartplotter. The Britannia was back up to almost thirty knots and the Carrion Rocks were twelve nautical miles ahead. “All she needs,” he said slowly, “is twenty-four.”
75
PENDERGAST LAY PROSTRATE IN A SCREAMING NIGHT. HE HAD MADE one final, almost superhuman effort to defend himself, rallying all the newfound intellectual powers the Agozyen had conferred upon him—and exhausting them in the process. It had been no use. The tulpa had sunk into the marrow of his bones, into the deepest core of his mind. He felt a dreadful alienness within himself, like the depersonalization of the worst kind of panic attack. A hostile entity was relentlessly, implacably devouring him . . . and like a man in the paralysis of a nightmare, he was incapable of resistance. It was a psychic agony far worse than the most appalling physical torture.
He withstood it for an endless, indescribable moment. And then, quite suddenly, blessed darkness rushed over him.
How long he lay—unable to think, unable to move—he did not know. And then, out of the darkness, came a voice. A voice he recognized.
“Don’t you think it’s time we spoke?” it said.
Slowly—hesitantly—Pendergast opened his eyes. He found himself in a small, dim space with a low, sloping roof. On one side was a plaster wall, covered with childish treasure maps and scrawled imitations of famous paintings in crayon and pastel; on the other, a latticed doorway. Weak afternoon light trickled through the lattices, revealing dust motes floating lazily in the air and giving the hidden space the otherworldly glow of an undersea grotto. Books by Howard Pyle, Arthur Ransome, and Booth Tarkington lay scattered in the corners. It smelled pleasantly of old wood and floor polish.
Across from him sat his brother, Diogenes Pendergast. His limbs were sunk into deep shadow, but the latticed light revealed the sharp contours of his face. Both his eyes were still hazel . . . as they were before the Event.
This had been their hideout, the tiny room they had fashioned beneath the back stairs in the old house: the one they’d called Plato’s Cave. Its creation was one of the last things they had done together, before the bad times began.
Pendergast stared at his brother. “You’re dead.”
“Dead.” Diogenes rolled the word around, as if tasting it. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I’ll always be alive in your mind. And in this house.”
This was most unexpected. Pendergast paused a moment to examine his own sensations. He realized that the dreadful, probing pain of the tulpa was gone, at least for the moment. He felt nothing: not surprise, not even a sense of unreality. He was, he guessed, in some unsuspected, unfathomably deep recess of his own subconscious mind.
“You’re in rather dire straits,” his brother continued. “Perhaps more dire than any I’ve seen you in before. I’m chagrined to admit that, this time, they are not of my devising. And so I ask again: don’t you think it’s time we spoke?”
“I can’t defeat it,” Pendergast said.
“Precisely.”
“And it cannot be killed.”
“True. It will only leave when its mission is done. But that does not mean it cannot be mastered.”
Pendergast hesitated. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve studied the literature. You’ve experienced the teachings. Tulpas are undependable, unreliable things.”
Pendergast did not immediately reply.
“They might be summoned for a particular purpose. But once summoned, they tend to stray, to develop minds of their own. That is one reason they can be so very, ver
y dangerous if used—shall we say?—irresponsibly. That is something you can turn to your advantage.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Must I spell it out for you, frater? I’ve told you: it is possible to bend a tulpa to your will. All you have to do is change its purpose.”
“I’m in no condition to change anything. I’ve struggled with it—struggled to the end of my strength—and I’ve been bested.”
Diogenes smirked. “How like you, Aloysius. You’re so used to everything being easy that, at the first sign of difficulty, you throw up your hands like a petulant child.”
“All that makes me unique has been drawn from me like marrow from a bone. There’s nothing left.”
“You’re wrong. Only the outer carapace has been torn away: this supposed superweapon of intellect you’ve recently taken upon yourself. The core of your being remains—at least for now. If it was gone, completely gone, you’d know it—and we wouldn’t be speaking now.”
“What can I do? I can’t struggle any longer.”
“That’s precisely the problem. You’re looking at it the wrong way: as a struggle. Have you forgotten all they taught you?”
For a moment, Pendergast sat staring at his brother, uncomprehending. Then, quite suddenly, he understood.
“The lama,” he breathed.
Diogenes smiled. “Bravo.”
“How . . .” Pendergast stopped, began again. “How do you know these things?”
“You know them, too. For the moment, you were simply too . . . overwrought to see them. Now, go forth and sin no more.”
Pendergast glanced away from his brother, toward the stripes of gold light that slanted in through the latticed door. He realized, with a faint surprise, that he was afraid: that the very last thing he wanted to do was step out through that door.
Taking a deep breath, he willed himself to push it open.
The Wheel of Darkness Page 34
