Carrion Comfort (91 page)

Saul grimaced a bit when he first tasted it. “How is it?” asked Natalie, sipping at her own cup.

“Nice and strong,” said Saul. “Just the way I like it. You’d best go to bed. I may be up late with this.”

“All right,” said Natalie. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and went through the door to her adjoining room.

Thirty minutes later she came back in quietly, dressed in a long skirt, dark blouse, and light sweater. Saul was asleep in the green vinyl chair, the computer and EEG still on and a stack of dossiers on his lap. Natalie switched off the equipment, set the folders on the table with her brief note on top, removed Saul’s glasses and covered him with a light blanket. She gently touched his shoulder for a few seconds before she left.

Natalie made sure nothing of value was in the station wagon. The C-4 had been stored in the closet of her room, the detonators in Saul’s. She remembered the motel key and carried it into her room. She carried neither purse nor passport, nothing that might reveal any additional information.

Natalie drove carefully to the Old Section, obeying traffic lights and speed limits. She parked the station wagon near Henry’s Restaurant, right where she had told Saul in the note that it would be, and walked the few blocks to Melanie Fuller’s home. The night was dark and humid, the heavy foliage seeming to come together overhead to shut off starlight and soak up oxygen.

When she arrived at the Fuller house, Natalie did not hesitate. The tall gate was locked, but it had an ornamental knocker. Natalie banged metal against metal and waited in the darkness.

No lights were on in either building except for the green glow from Melanie Fuller’s room. No lights came on, but after a minute two men approached in the darkness. The taller of the two shuffled forward, a hairless mountain of flesh with the small eyes, unfocused gaze, and microcephalic skull of the terminally retarded. “What do you want?” he mumbled, each word enunciated as if it had been formed by a faulty speech synthesizer.

“I want to talk to Melanie,” Natalie said loudly. “Tell her that Nina is here.”

Neither man moved a muscle for over a minute. Insects made noises in the undergrowth and a night bird flapped its way out of a tall palmetto near the second-story bay window of the old house. Somewhere several blocks away a siren screamed a single, sustained note of pain and was cut off. Natalie concentrated on standing upright on legs gone weak with fear.

Finally the huge man spoke. “Come.” He opened the gate with a turn of a key and a jerk, pulled Natalie inside the courtyard, and locked the gate behind her.

Someone opened the front door from the inside. Natalie saw only darkness there. Walking quickly between the two men, her right arm still in the giant’s grip, she entered the house.

S
he said she was from Nina.

For a minute I was so frightened that I escaped into myself, tried to crawl from my bed, my right arm and leg flailing, dragging the dead side of my body along like so much wasted meat. Tubes pulled out of my arms, stands toppled. For a second I lost control of all of them— Howard, Nancy, Culley, the doctor and nurses, the Negro boy still standing in the darkness of the side yard with the butcher knife— and then I relaxed, let my body slide into curled stillness, and I was in control again.

My first thought was to let Culley, Howard, and the colored boy finish her in the courtyard. They could use water from the fountain to wash away any stains on the courtyard bricks. Howard would take her around to the garage, wrap the remains in a shower curtain to keep the interior of Dr. Hartman’s Cadillac clean, and Culley would be down the alley and off to the dump in five minutes.

But I did not know enough. Not yet. If she was from Nina, I had to learn more. If she was not from Nina, I wanted to find out who had sent her before we did anything.

Culley and Howard led her into the house. Dr. Hartman, Nurse Old-smith, Nancy, and Miss Sewell gathered around while Marvin stood guard outside. Justin kept me company upstairs.

The Negro girl who said she was from Nina looked around my parlor at my family. “It’s dark,” she said in a strange, small voice.

I rarely use the lights anymore. I know the house so well that I could make my way through it blindfolded and the family members have no real use for electric lights except when they are tending me, and up here the soft, pleasant glow from the medical monitors is usually adequate.

If this colored girl was speaking for Nina, I found it odd that Nina was not used to the dark yet. Her coffin certainly must be dark enough. If the girl was lying, she would be familiar with the dark soon enough.

Dr. Hartman spoke for me. “What do you want, girl?”

The Negress licked her lips. Culley had helped her into her seat on the divan. My family members were all standing. Faint lines of light fell across a white face or arm here or there, but the rest of us must have looked like dark masses to her as she stared up at us. “I’ve come to talk to you, Melanie,” said the girl. Her voice held a soft quaver unlike anything I had ever heard in Nina’s speech.

“There’s no one here by that name,” said Dr. Hartman in the darkness.

The Negro girl laughed. Had there been a hint of Nina’s husky laugh in that sound? The thought of it chilled me. “I know you’re here,” she said. “Just like I knew where to find you in Philadelphia.”

How had she found me? I had Culley’s huge hands rise to the top of the divan behind the girl.

“We don’t know what you’re talking about, miss,” said Howard.

The girl shook her head.
Why would Nina Use a Negro?
I wondered. “Melanie,” she said, “I know you’re here. I know you’re not feeling well. I’ve come to warn you.”

To warn me of what? The whispers had warned me in Grumble thorpe, but she had not been part of the whispers. She had come later, when things went bad. Wait, she had not found me— I found her! Vincent had fetched her and brought her back to me.

And she had killed Vincent.

If this girl were truly an emissary from Nina, it might still be best to kill her. That way Nina would understand that I was not to be trifled with, that I would not allow her to eliminate my cat’s-paws without some retribution.

Marvin still waited in the darkness outside with a long knife Miss Sewell had left lying on the butcher block. It would be better outside. I would not have to worry about stains on the carpet and hardwood floors.

“Young lady,” I had Dr. Hartman say, “I’m afraid that none of us know what you are talking about. There’s no one here named Melanie. Culley will see you outside.”

“Wait!” cried the woman as Culley lifted her by the arm. He turned her toward the door. “Wait a minute!” she said in a voice not even remotely like Nina’s unhurried drawl.

“Good-bye,” the five of us said in unison.

The colored boy waited just beyond the fountain. It had been weeks since I had Fed.

The girl twisted in Culley’s grasp just as she reached the door. “Willi isn’t dead!” she cried.

I had Culley stop. None of us moved. After a moment I had Dr. Hartman say, “What was that?”

The Negro girl looked at us with an insolent defiance. “Willi is not dead,” she said calmly.

“Explain yourself,” said Howard.

The girl shook her head. “Melanie, I will speak to
you.
Only to you. If you kill this messenger, then I will not try to contact you again. The people who tried to kill Willi and who are planning to kill you can have their way.” She turned and stared into the corner, disinterested, paying no attention to Culley’s huge hand where it was clasped tightly on her arm. The girl looked like a machine that someone had switched off.

Upstairs, alone except for the silent company of little Justin, I writhed in indecision. My head hurt. It was all like a bad dream. I wanted this woman just to go away and leave me alone. Nina was dead. Willi was dead.

Culley brought her back across the room and sat her on the divan.

All of us watched her.

I considered Using the girl. Sometimes— frequently—during the transition to another’s mind, during the second of dominance, there is a shared flow of surface thoughts accompanying the sensory impressions. If Nina was Using this one, I might not be able to break the conditioning, but I might be able to sense Nina herself. If it was not Nina, I might catch a glimpse of her true motivations.

Howard said, “Melanie will be right down,” and in that second of reaction— whether fright or satisfaction I do not know— I slipped into the girl’s mind.

There was no opposition. I had been braced to try to wrest control from Nina, and the lack of opposing force caused me to mentally stumble forward like a person in the dark leaning his weight on a chair or dresser that was not there. Contact was brief. I caught the fear-scent of panic, the sense of
not again
common to people who had been Used before but not conditioned in the interval, and a scurry of thoughts like a stampede of small animals in the dark. But no coherent thoughts. There was a fragment of image— an old stone bridge of sun-warmed stone crossing a strange sea of sand dunes and shadows. It meant nothing to me. I could not associate it with any of Nina’s memories, although there were too many years after the war where I had not been with her for me to be sure.

I withdrew.

The girl convulsed, sat upright, swept her stare around the dark room. Nina regaining control or an impostor flailing for composure?

“Do
not
do that again, Melanie,” said the Negress and in her imperial tone I heard the first convincing echo of Nina Drayton.

Justin entered the room carrying a candle. The flame illuminated his six-year-old face from below and by a trick of light caused his eyes to look ancient. And mad.

The Negro girl watched him, watched me, as a skittish horse would watch the approach of a snake.

I set the candle on the Georgian tea table and looked at the Negro girl. “Hello, Nina,” I said.

The girl blinked once, slowly. “Hello, Melanie. Aren’t you going to say hello in person?”

“I am somewhat indisposed at the moment,” I said. “Perhaps I will come down when you choose to come in person.”

The black girl showed a hint of a smile. “That would be difficult for me to do.”

The world spun before my eyes and for several seconds it was all I could do to keep control of my people.
What if Nina had not died?
What if she had been injured but not mortally?

I saw the hole in her forehead. Her blue eyes rolling up in her head.

The cartridges were old. What if the bullet had struck the skull, even entered it, but done no more damage to her brain than my cerebral-vascular-incident had done to me?

The news had announced that she had died. I had heard and read her name among the victims.

As was my name.

Next to my bed, one of the medical monitors began beeping a shrill alarm. I forced my breathing and heart rate to calm. The beeping ceased.

From my other viewpoints I could see that Justin’s expression had not changed in the few seconds that had passed. His six-year-old’s face was still distorted by the leaping candle flame into the mask of a young demon. His small saddle shoes pointed straight up on the cushion of the upholstered leather chair that had always been Father’s favorite.

“Tell me about Willi,” I said through Justin. “He is alive,” said the girl. “Impossible. His plane was destroyed with all aboard.”

“All except Willi and his two henchmen,” said the Negress. “They got off before it departed.”

“Then why did you turn on
me
if you knew that you had not succeeded with Willi?” I snapped.

The girl hesitated a second. “I did not destroy the plane,” she said. Upstairs, my heart pounded and an oscilloscope showed green peaks that caused the green light in the room to pulse along with my heartbeat. “Who did?” I asked.

“The others,” she said flatly. “What others?”

The girl took a deep breath. “There is a group of others with our power. A secret group of . . .”

“Our power?” I interrupted. “Do you mean the Ability?”

“Yes,” she said. “Nonsense. We have never encountered anyone with more than a shade of our Ability.” I had Culley raise his hands in the darkness. Her neck rose thin and straight from her dark sweater. It would snap like a dry twig.

“These others have it,” the colored girl said in a strong voice. “They tried to kill Willi. They tried to kill
you.
Didn’t you wonder who it was in Germantown? The shooting? The helicopter that crashed into the river?”

How could Nina know about that? How could anyone know?
“You could be one of
them
,” I said craftily.

The girl nodded calmly. “Yes, but if I were, would I come to you to warn you? I tried to warn you in Germantown, but you would not listen.”

I tried to remember. Had the Negro girl warned me of anything? The whispers had been so loud then; it had been hard to concentrate. “You and the sheriff came to kill me,” I said.

“No.” The girl’s head moved slowly, a rusty metal marionette. Nina’s Barret Kramer had moved like that. “The sheriff was sent by Willi. He also came to warn you.”

“Who are these others?” I asked. “Famous people,” she said, “Powerful people. People with names such as Barent, Kepler, Sutter, and Harod.”

“Those names mean nothing to me,” I said. Suddenly I was shouting in Justin’s shrill, six-year-old voice. “You’re lying! You’re not Nina! You’re dead! How would you know about these people?”

The girl hesitated as if debating whether to speak. “I knew some of them in New York,” she said at last. “They talked me into doing . . . what I did.”

There was a silence so still and so prolonged that through all eight of my sources I could hear doves roosting on the ledge outside the bay window on the second floor. I had the boy outside shift the knife from his cramped right hand to his left. Miss Sewell had backed softly into the kitchen and returned now to stand in the shadows of the doorway with the meat cleaver held behind her beige skirt. Culley stirred and in his hungry impatience I caught an echo of Vincent’s sharp-edged eagerness. “They urged you to kill me,” I said, “and promised to eliminate Willi while you dealt with me.”

“Yes,” she said. “But they failed and so did you.”

“Yes.”

“Why are you telling me this, Nina?” I said. “It only makes me hate you more.”

“They betrayed me,” she said. “They left me alone when you came for me. I want you to finish
them
before they return for you.”

I had Justin lean forward. “Talk to me, Nina,” I whispered. “Tell me about old times.”

She shook her head. “There is no time for this, Melanie.”

I smiled, feeling the saliva moistening Justin’s baby teeth. “Where did we meet, Nina? Whose ball were we at when we first compared dance cards?”

The Negro girl trembled slightly and raised a dark hand to her forehead. “Melanie, my memory . . . there are gaps . . . my injury.”

“It did not seem to bother you a moment ago,” I snapped. “Who went with us to Daniel Island on our picnics, Nina, dear? You do remember him, do you not? Who were our beaus that long-ago summer?”

The girl swayed, her hand still at her temple. “Melanie, please, I remember and then I forget . . . the pain . . .”

Miss Sewell approached the girl from behind. Her thick-soled nurse’s shoes made no sound on the rug.

“Who was the first one claimed in our Game that summer at Bad Ischl?” I asked just to allow Miss Sewell time to take the last two silent steps. I knew this colored impostor could not answer. We would see if she could imitate Nina when her body remained sitting on the divan while her head rolled across the floor. Perhaps Justin would like something new to play with.

The Negro girl said, “The first one was that dancer from Berlin— Meier I think her name was— I do not remember all the details, but we spotted her from the Cafe Zauner as always.”

Everything stopped. “What?” I said. “The next day . . . no, it was two days later, a Wednesday . . . there was that ridiculous little iceman. We left his body in the ice house . . . hanging from that iron hook . . . Melanie, it
hurts.
I remember and then I don’t!” The girl began to cry.

Justin scrunched to the edge of the cushion, dropped to the floor, and went around the tea table to pat her on the shoulder. “Nina,” I said, “I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

Miss Sewell made tea and served it in my best Wedgwood china. Culley brought in more candles. Dr. Hartman and Nurse Oldsmith came upstairs to check on me while Howard, Nancy, and the others found seats in the parlor. The little black boy stayed in the bushes outside.

“Where is Willi?” I asked through Justin. “How is he?”

“He is well,” said Nina, “but I am not sure where because he must remain in hiding.”

“From those same people you mentioned?” I asked. “Yes.”