Carrion Comfort (99 page)

Knowing that this would be the first of his dreams that were not dreams, Saul accepted it. And slept.

T
ony Harod watched Willi arrive an hour before sunset on Sunday, the twin-engined executive jet setting down on a smooth runway painted with the shadows of tall oaks. Barent, Sutter, and Kepler joined Harod in the small, air-conditioned terminal at the end of the taxi apron. Harod was so sure that Willi would not be on the plane that when the familiar faces of Tom Reynolds, Jensen Luhar, and then Willi Borden himself appeared, Harod almost gasped in surprise.

No one else seemed shocked. Joseph Kepler made the introductions as if he were an old friend of Willi’s. Jimmy Wayne Sutter bowed and smiled enigmatically as he shook Willi’s hand. Harod could only stare as they shook hands and Willi said, “You see, my friend Tony, paradise
is
an island.” Barent was more than gracious as he pumped Willi’s hand in welcome, grasping the producer’s elbow in a politician’s grip. Willi was dressed in evening clothes: black tie and tails.

“This is a long overdue plea sure.” Barent grinned, not releasing Willi’s hand.

“
Ja,
” said Willi, smiling, “it is.”

The entourage moved to the Manse in a convoy of golf carts, picking up aides and bodyguards as they went. Maria Chen greeted Willi in the Great Hall, kissing him on each cheek and beaming at him. “Bill, we’re so glad that you’re back. We missed you terribly.”

Willi nodded. “I have missed your beauty and your wit, my dear,” he said and kissed her hand. “Should you ever get tired of Tony’s poor manners, please consider my employ.” His pale eyes sparkled.

Maria Chen laughed and squeezed his hand. “I hope we all will be working together soon,” she said.

“
Ja
, perhaps very soon,” said Willi and took her arm as they followed Barent and the others into the dining room.

Dinner was a banquet that lasted until well after nine. There were more than twenty people at the dinner table— only Tony Harod had brought a single aide— but afterward, when Barent led the way to the Game Room in the empty west wing, there were just the five of them.

“We don’t start right away, do we?” asked Harod with some alarm. He had no idea whether he could Use the woman he’d brought from Savannah and he had not even seen the other surrogates.

“No, not yet,” said Barent. “It is customary to conduct Island Club business in the Game Room before choosing the surrogates for to night’s game.”

Harod looked around. The room was impressive: part library, part Victorian English club, and part executive boardroom: two walls of books with balconies and ladders, leather chairs with softly glowing lamps, separate snooker and pool tables, and— near the far wall— a massive circular, green-baized table illuminated by a single hanging lamp. Five leather wing-back chairs sat in the shadows around the circumference of the table.

Barent touched a button on a recessed panel and heavy curtains silently drew back to reveal thirty feet of window looking down on floodlit gardens and the long tunnel of Live Oak Lane. Harod was sure that the faintly polarized glass was opaque from the outside and quite bulletproof.

Barent held his hand out palm up, as if presenting the room and the view to Willi Borden. Willi nodded and sat in the nearest leather chair. The overhead lighting transformed his face into a lined mask and set his eyes in pools of darkness. “
Ja
, very nice,” he said. “Whose chair is this?”

“It was . . . ah . . . Mr. Trask’s” said Barent. “It seems fitting that it is now yours.”

The others sat, Sutter pointing Harod to the proper chair. Harod sank into the aged, luxurious leather, folded his hands on the baize tabletop, and thought of Charles Colben’s body feeding fish for the three days until they had found it in the dark waters of the Schuylkill River. “Not a bad club house,” he said. “What do we do now— learn the secret oath and sing songs?”

Barent chuckled indulgently and looked around the circle. “The twenty-seventh annual session of the Island Club is now convened,” he said. “Is there any old business?” Silence. “New business that needs to be dealt with to night?”

“Will there be other plenary sessions when new business can be discussed?” asked Willi.

“Of course,” said Kepler. “Anyone can call a session at any time this week except when the games are actually in progress.”

Willi nodded. “In that case I will save my new business until a future session.” He smiled at Barent, his teeth glowing yellowly in the harsh light from above. “I must remember my place as a new member and act accordingly,
nicht wahr
?”

“Not at all,” said Barent. “We are all equal around this table . . . peers and friends.” Barent looked directly at Harod for the first time. “There being no new business to night, is everyone ready to tour the surrogate pens and make their choices for to night?”

Harod nodded, but Willi spoke up. “I would like to use one of my own people.”

Kepler frowned slightly. “Bill, I don’t know if . . . I mean, you can if you wish, but we try to avoid using our . . . uh . . . permanent people. The chance of winning all five nights is . . . ah . . . quite low, really, and we want to avoid offending anyone or having him depart with bad feelings because of . . . uh . . . losing a valuable resource.”

“
Ja
, I understand,” said Willi, “but I still would prefer to use one of my own. It is allowed, yes?”

“Yep,” said Jimmy Wayne Sutter, “but you have to have him inspected and kept in the surrogate pens just like the others if he survives to night.”

“Agreed,” said Willi. He smiled again, increasing Harod’s impression that he was listening to an eyeless skull speak. “It is nice of you to humor an old man. Shall we see the pens and choose the pieces for to night’s game?”

It was the first time Harod had been north of the security zone. The underground complex surprised him even though he had known there must be a security headquarters somewhere on the island. Although twenty-five or thirty men in coveralls were visible at guard posts and monitoring rooms, the security seemed almost non ex is tent compared to the crush of bodyguards during Summer Camp week. Harod realized that the bulk of Barent’s security force must be at sea— billeted on the yacht or the picket ships— concentrating on keeping people
away
from the island. He wondered what these guards thought of the surrogate pens and the games. Harod had worked in Hollywood for two decades; he knew that there was nothing people would not do to other people if the price was right. Sometimes they would line up to do it for free. Harod doubted that Barent would have had trouble finding people for this kind of work even without his unique Ability.

The pens were strange, carved into native rock in a corridor much older and narrower than the rest of the complex. He followed the others past the shelves holding curled, naked forms, and thought for the twentieth time that this was real B-movie stuff. If a writer had presented Harod with a treatment like this he would have strangled the dumb bastard and then had him posthumously kicked out of the Guild.

“These holding pens predate the original Vanderhoof plantation and even the older Dubose place.” Barent was saying. “An archaeologist-historian I employed theorized that these particular cells were used by the Spanish to house rebellious elements of the island Indian population, although the Spanish rarely established bases this far north. The cells, at any rate, were carved out prior to 1600 A.D. It is interesting to contemplate the fact that Christopher Columbus was the first slave-master of this hemi sphere. He shipped several thousand Indians to Eu rope and enslaved or killed many thousands more on the islands themselves. He might have wiped out the entire indigenous population if the Pope had not intervened with threats of excommunication.”

“The Pope probably stopped it because he wasn’t getting a big enough share of the action,” said the Reverend Jimmy Wayne Sutter. “Can we pick from any of these?”

“Any except the two Mr. Harod brought in last night,” said Barent. “I presume they are for your personal use, Tony?”

“Yeah,” said Harod.

Kepler came closer and jostled Harod’s elbow. “Jimmy tells me one of them is a man, Tony. Are you changing your preferences or is this a special friend of yours?”

Harod looked at Joseph Kepler’s perfectly trimmed hair, perfect teeth, and perfectly tanned skin, and seriously considered reducing the arrangement to something less than perfection. He said nothing.

Willi raised an eyebrow. “A male surrogate, Tony? I leave for only a few weeks and you surprise me. Where is this man you will use?”

Harod stared at the old producer but could detect no message in Willi’s countenance. “Down there somewhere,” he said, gesturing vaguely down the full length of the corridor.

The group spread out, inspecting bodies like judges at a dog show. Either someone had warned the prisoners to stay quiet or the mere presence of the five quelled any noise immediately, for the only sounds were the echoes of footsteps and a slight trickle of water from the darkest, unused section of the ancient tunnel.

Harod was nervous, going from niche to niche in search of the two he had brought from Savannah. Was Willi playing with him again, Harod wondered, or had he been off on his assessment about what was going on? No, goddammit, it made no sense for any of the others to have him smuggle specially conditioned surrogates onto the island. Unless Kepler or Sutter were up to something. Or Barent was playing an especially cute game. Or unless it was simply a trap to discredit him.

Harod felt sick. He hurried down the corridor, peering through bars at white, frightened faces, wondering if his own looked as terrified.

“Tony,” said Willi from twenty paces down the tunnel. There was the snap of command in his voice. “Is
this
your male surrogate?”

Harod hurried over and stared at the man lying on the chest-high ledge. The shadows were deep, gray stubble outlined the man’s gaunt cheeks, but Harod was sure it was the man he had brought from Savannah. What the hell was Willi up to?

Willi leaned closer to the bars. The man stared back, eyes red from being awakened. Something beyond recognition seemed to pass between the two. “
Wilkommen in der Hölle, mein Bauer
,” Willi said to the man.

“
Geh zum Teufel
, Oberst,” said the prisoner through gritted teeth. Willi laughed, the noise echoing in the narrow corridor, and Harod knew that he had royally fucked up.

Unless Willi was jerking him around.

Barent came up to them, his blow-dried gray hair glowing softly in the light from a bare 60-watt bulb. “Is there something funny, gentlemen?”

Willi clapped Tony oh the shoulder and smiled at Barent. “A little joke that my protégé was telling me, C. Arnold. Nothing more.”

Barent looked at both of them, nodded, and moved away down the narrow corridor.

Still holding Harod’s shoulder, Willi squeezed until Harod grimaced with the pain. “I hope you know what you are doing, Tony,” Willi hissed, his face red. “We will talk later.” Willi turned and followed Barent and the others toward the security complex.

Shaken, Harod looked at the man he had been sure was Willi’s pawn. Naked, his pale face almost swallowed by shadows, curled on cold stone behind steel bars, the man seemed old, frail, and all but worn away by age and hard times. A livid scar ran the length of his left forearm and his ribs were clearly visible. To Harod, the old man seemed harmless enough; the only possible sense of threat coming from the visible glare of defiance smoldering in the large, sad eyes.

“Tony,” called the Reverend Jimmy Wayne Sutter, “hurry and choose your surrogates. We want to return to the Manse and begin our play.”

Harod nodded, took a last look at the man behind bars, and moved away, peering intently at faces, trying to find a woman young enough and strong enough, yet easy to dominate for the night’s activities.

W
illi was alive!

Staring through Miss Sewell’s eyes, I looked up through the bars of the cage and recognized him at once, even with the light bulb behind his head throwing a halo of harsh light around his remaining white wisps of weasel-fur hair.

Willi alive. Nina had not been lying to me about that at least. I understood almost none of this: Nina and I bringing our sacrificial victims to this vicious feast while Willi— whose life Nina claimed was in imminent danger— laughed and moved freely among his nominal captors.

Willi looked almost the same— perhaps a bit more marked by his self-indulgences than he had been six months earlier. When his face first became clear in the stark light and deep shadow of the corridor, I had Miss Sewell turn away, pulling back into the shadows of her cell before I realized how silly that was. Willi spoke in German to the man Nina’s Negress had called Saul, welcoming him to hell. The man had told Willi to go to the devil, Willi had laughed and said something to a younger man with reptilian eyes, and then a very handsome gentleman came up. Willi addressed him as C. Arnold, and I knew that this must be the legendary Mr. Barent that Miss Sewell had done research on. Even in the harsh light and the squalid surroundings of this tunnel, I could tell at once that here was a man of noble bearing and refinement. His voice held the educated Cambridge accent of my beloved Charles, his dark blazer was exquisitely tailored, and if Miss Sewell’s research was correct, he was one of the eight richest men in the world. I suspected that this was a man who could appreciate my own maturity and genteel upbringing, someone who would understand me. I had Miss Sewell move closer to the bars, look up, and half close her eyes with a provocative lowering of lashes. Mr. Barent did not seem to notice. He walked away even before Willi and his young friend left.

“What’s going on?” asked Nina’s Negress, the one who had called herself Natalie.

I had Justin turn toward her in anger. “See for yourself.”

“I can’t right now,” said the colored girl. “As I explained before, at this distance the contact is imperfect.” The girl’s eyes were luminous in the candlelight as we sat in the parlor. I could see no trace of Nina’s cornsilk blue in those muddy brown irises.

“Then how can you keep control, my dear?” I asked, Justin’s slight lisp making my voice even sweeter than I had intended.

“Conditioning,” said Nina’s catspaw. “What is going on?”

I sighed. “We are still in the little cells, Willi was just here . . .”

“Willi!” cried the girl. “Why so surprised, Nina? You yourself told me that Willi had been ordered to be there. Were you lying when you said that you have been in touch with him?”

“Of course not,” snapped the girl, recovering her composure in that quick, sure way that did remind me of Nina. “But I’ve not seen him in some time. Does he look well?”

“No,” I snapped. I hesitated, decided to test her. “Mr. Barent was there,” I said.

“Oh?”

“He is very . . . impressive.”

“Yes, he is, isn’t he?”

Was there a hint of coyness there? “I see why you allowed him to talk to you into betraying me, Nina, dear,” I said. “Did you . . . sleep with him?” I hated the absurd aphorism, but I could think of no less crude way to confront her with the question.

The colored girl merely stared at me and for the hundredth time I silently cursed Nina for Using this . . .
servant
. . . in place of a person I could treat as an equal. Even the loathsome Miss Barrett Kramer would have been preferable as an interlocutor.

We sat in silence for some time, the Negress lost in what ever reverie Nina placed in her head and my own attention divided among my new family, Miss Sewell’s limited sensory impressions of cold stone and the empty corridor, Justin’s careful monitoring of Nina’s catspaw, and the final, most tenuous of touches in the mind of our new friend at sea. This final contact was by far the hardest to maintain— not merely because of distance, for distance had ceased to be much of an obstacle since my illness— but because the connection had to remain subtle to the point of invisibility until that moment when Nina decreed otherwise.

Or so she thought. I had accepted the challenge because of my need to play along with Nina at the time and because of her somewhat childish taunt that it would not be possible for me to establish and maintain such a contact with someone I had seen only through binoculars. But now that I had proven my point, I had little need to follow the rest of Nina’s plan. This was especially true now that I better understood the severe limitations that death had placed on Nina’s Ability. I doubt if she could have Used someone at a distance of almost two hundred miles
before
our disagreement six months earlier in Charleston, but I was sure that she would
not
have revealed her weakness or placed herself in a situation where she was in any way dependent upon me.

As she was dependent now. The Negress sat in my parlor, wearing a loose and strangely lumpy sweater over her drab dress, and to all intents and purposes Nina was blind and deaf. What ever happened on the island would be known to her now— I was increasingly convinced— only if I told her. I did not believe her for a second when she said that she had intermittent control over the catspaw called Saul. I had touched his mind for the merest fraction of a second during the boat trip out, and although I glimpsed the resonances of someone who had been Used— massively Used at some time in the past— and also sensed something else, something layered and latent and potentially dangerous, as if Nina had booby-trapped his mind in some inexplicable manner, I also sensed that this was a person not under her present control. I knew how limited the Use of even the most adequately conditioned catspaw was when conditions changed or unexpected contingencies arose. Of all of our merry trio through years past, I had held the honor of having the strongest Ability when it came to conditioning my people. Nina had teased me that it was because I was afraid to move on to new conquests; Willi had been contemptuous of any sort of long-term relationship, moving from catspaw to catspaw with the same shallow alacrity he moved from one bed partner to the next.

No, Nina was doomed to disappointment if she hoped to be effective on the island only through a conditioned instrument. And at this point I felt the balance shift between us— after all these years!— so that the next move would be mine to make at my own choosing of time and place and circumstance.

But I did so want to know where Nina was.

The Negress in my parlor— in the parlor! Father would have died!— sipped her tea in the mindless ignorance of the fact that as soon as I had an alternate route of tracing Nina’s whereabouts, this particular colored instrument of my embarrassment would be eliminated in such a way that even Nina would be impressed with my originality.

I could wait. Every hour improved the strength of my position and weakened Nina’s.

The grandfather clock in the hall had just struck eleven, Justin was on the verge of dozing, when the jailers in their drab overalls crashed open the ancient iron door at the end of the corridor and hydraulically raised the bars on five cages. Miss Sewell’s cell was not one opened, nor was Nina’s catspaw’s on the niche above.

I watched the four men and one woman walk by, obviously already being Used, and I realized with a strong shock of recognition that the tall, heavily muscled Negro was the one Willi had shown difficulty handling at our last Reunion— Jensen something.

I was curious. Using every last shred of my enhanced Ability, dimming my awareness of Justin, the family, the man asleep in his small, softly pitching wardroom,
everyone
— even myself— I was able to project myself to one of the guards with enough control to receive at least dim sensory impressions, somewhat like watching a dull reflection of a poorly tuned tele vi sion, while the group walked the length of the corridor, passed the iron doors and ancient portcullis, passed down the same subterranean avenue we had entered by, and climbed the long, dark ramp toward the smell of rotting vegetation and the tropical night.