The Devil's Eye ab-4 Read online

  So we fell asleep for the second successive evening under the blue star. Eventually I woke up, thinking I'd heard something. But the night was quiet. The last log was still burning. I lay listening to the river, and the wind, and the quiescent hum of insects. Occasionally, wings fluttered above me, in the branches. I pulled my blanket a bit higher, adjusted the jacket I was using for a pillow, and was about to close my eyes again when I saw a light in the trees. On the other side of the river. I watched while it floated along the bank. It was a gauzy, dull glow, vaguely resembling a long cloak. I woke Alex. "What?" he said. I pointed. "Look."

  He half rolled over. "It's an animal of some kind," he said. "Ignore it." "It doesn't look like any animal I've ever seen." "You're on another world, Chase. What do you expect?"

  THIRTEEN

  The media show us that supernatural creatures, when they come onstage, are uniformly disquieting, twisted, terrifying. One has only to see them to back away. To be repulsed. The truth is quite the opposite, child. These apparitions that come out of the night, that come seeking body and soul, are in their own way extremely attractive. One might say, ravishing. They are in fact quite irresistible. And that is why they are dangerous.

  - Wish You Were Here

  As I watched, it floated away from the trees and started across the river. I got up and went to the bank, as close as I could get, and took some pictures. It was a patch of luminescence, a radiant mist. A candle adrift in the night. I activated my link. "Identify," I said.

  "Range, please?"

  "Fifty meters." I watched its reflection in the water.

  "Object unknown."

  "It does not match with any life-form on Salud Afar?"

  "Negative. There are various microscopic-"

  "Any natural phenomenon?"

  "None known."

  It was almost across. I hurried forward, but it was drifting downstream, away from me. It floated over the riverbank and merged with the forest. I watched for a while, until long after it was gone. It was, I decided, a reflection. Or possibly some local machination, another unquiet grave, to entertain tourists. Well, they had me hooked. I went back and put another log on the fire. The river was dark and quiet. I climbed into my blanket, closed my eyes, and tried to laugh at myself. The insects got a bit louder, and somewhere a branch creaked. Go to sleep, Kolpath. The fire cracked and popped. I liked the smell of the burning logs. There was something reassuring about it. I opened my eyes and looked again. Still nothing out there. But I couldn't get back to sleep. I lay several minutes, listening to the forest and the river, and finally I got up, pulled my jacket around my shoulders, switched on my lamp, and walked back to the edge of the river. There was nothing. I wondered if someone in a control room somewhere was having a good laugh at my expense. Callistra had set. The area where the apparition had entered the trees was dark. The only light anywhere, other than that I was providing, came from the misty edge of the galaxy, now rising in the east. It was getting cold. I started back to the campfire. And saw a glimmer in the forest. It was back. I turned off the lamp.

  It appeared to be just at the edge of the forest, not quite at treetop level, drifting quietly with the wind while it rose and sank. I thought about waking Alex, but he'd have complained again. He was probably right. Undoubtedly right. Still- When I was a little girl, I had a kitten named Ceily. I used to amuse myself with Ceily by pointing a laser light at the floor in front of her. She loved to chase it, and I used to run the laser around the room and up the walls. Whenever I got it down within her reach, she'd go into her crouch and sneak up on it and try to grab it. I felt a little bit like Ceily that night. I walked toward the light, taking my time, as if I might scare the thing off. The ground was uneven, and I wasn't paying attention, so I almost fell on my face. The apparition retreated. Moved deeper into the trees. I followed. The grass was stiffer than anything we had at home, and it crackled underfoot. There was no clear track; I had to blunder forward as best I could through bushes filled with thorns and vines that, somehow, when they touched my skin, excited a tingling reaction. I pulled my hands up into my jacket sleeves. Then it disappeared again. I aimed the lamp at the trees, saw nothing, and decided to hell with it. Enough was enough. I turned to start back. And saw it behind me. About ten or twelve paces away. A gust of wind rattled the branches but had no effect on it. I wasn't sure if I'd simply not noticed before, but the apparition was pulsing, alternately brightening and dimming. In sync with my heart. I was the woman in the haunted-house story who sees strange lights upstairs and goes in to see what's happening. Even at that moment I wasn't really afraid of it, so strong was my assumption that it was a hoax. I knew, absolutely knew , that someone, nearby, was controlling it. But I put my hand on the barrel of the scrambler. Somewhere a bell sounded. Twice. Three times. Probably from the Hub. Maybe from a passing boat. The apparition didn't waver. Didn't move. It simply floated in front of me. And I found myself thinking of Ceily. Of her last day. I'd been directed not to let her out of the house. Kittens weren't safe outside, my father had warned me. We lived on the edge of a forest, and the woods were filled with predators. But she always wanted out, always tried to get through the door when I opened it, and I felt mean and contemptible keeping her inside. So one day I held the door open for her. She followed me onto the front lawn and we had such a good time together that I did it again the next day. I don't know why, but I've always remembered it was the second day and not the first. And I was standing there minutes later watching her crouch as if she were going after one of the birds in the feeder when a yakim came out of nowhere and seized her in its claws, scooped her up, and soared into the sky with her. The last I saw of Ceily was her big eyes fastened on me, pleading with me to help. Within seconds the yakim and the kitten were gone, into the trees, and I went screaming after them. I never found her, of course. But I kept running and crying until I was exhausted. Then I realized I didn't know the way home. And it got dark. It was a couple of hours before I heard distant voices calling my name. It was the only time in my life I wanted to die. And that night, in the forest on Salud Afar, it all came rushing back, as if everything had happened at once: Ceily rolled into the yakim's claws, her eyes round and desperate, my heart pounding so loudly I couldn't breathe, the dark woods stretching for miles in all directions, the dull dead sounds of the forest, the voices behind me somewhere. I fought back tears and thought how the world must have seemed to Ceily in those last moments, how alone she must have felt. And I traded places with her and rode with the yakim, while the ground fell away, knowing the claws would tear me apart within the next moments. Knowing I was alone.

  Then Alex was there, holding me upright, asking in a scared voice what had happened?

  I'm not sure what I said, but he responded by asking me about Ceily. "Say again: Who is she?" He looked out of focus. "Where is it?" I asked. "Where's what ?" "The light." He thought I was talking about my lamp, which was lying on the ground, its beam playing across a tangle of thorns and berries. "No," I said. "In the trees." He looked around. "I don't see anything. Who's Ceily?"

  In the morning, it only seemed like a bad dream. Alex thought it was another warning that we should back off. But it wasn't like that at all. Something out there had gotten at me and triggered a response that no simple gimmick could have managed. I was still shaky when we called the people at Marquesi's to inquire about Vicki. She'd left her canoe in the hands of the boat-rental outfit until Marquesi's could fly someone out to ride it back. The store manager's lips tightened. "You're not planning to do the same thing, are you?" he asked. His voice had turned hostile. "I'll make it worth your while," Alex said.

  "Damn worth my while. You told me this wouldn't happen."

  Alex made the arrangements, and we gave the canoe over to Bessarlik Boating. By the way, did the owner remember somebody else doing this? Her name was Vicki Greene. "The horror lady," she said. "Sure. I'd never forget her." "Why? Did she say anything out of the way?" "Oh, no. Simply that I've read all her books.
I loved meeting her." "How'd she seem?" "How do you mean?" "Was she all right? Did she seem upset, or anything like that?" "No. She was really nice. Why? She's okay, isn't she?"

  Vicki had mentioned she was headed for Morningdale. It was a town with a history of werewolves. Sounded like Vicki's kind of place. Alex and I arranged transportation, and an hour later we'd leased a skimmer and were on our way again. Below, I noticed one of the beanbags drifting near the edge of the river. And suddenly, while I watched, a long green tentacle whipped out of the trees. A moment later both the tentacle and the beanbag were gone. "Your imagination," said Alex. Maybe. By then, as far as I was concerned, tentacles were minor stuff.

  FOURTEEN

  A person must have time to grow accustomed to the idea that he will die soon. When it happens violently, suddenly, unexpectedly, he is simply not ready to leave. He will cling to a favorite chair, or retreat inside an AI. He will hang on to the things that are familiar and resist all effort at removal. In the end, you must throw out the furniture. If that doesn't work, sell the house.

  - Midnight and Roses

  The werewolf was a bust. Something howled in the woods around Morningdale, but there was no reason to believe it was anything other than a mahar , the local wolf-equivalent. Besides, I asked the lady at the hotel where we stayed, how could you have a werewolf when you don't get a full moon? Don't have a moon at all? "When Callistra is directly overhead," she said solemnly, "it happens." I laughed. She got annoyed. "It's true," she said. "That star is the Devil's Eye." "Oh," I said. "Stay close to the hotel, and you should be okay." The Devil's Eye. There it was again. The title for Vicki's next novel. The archives revealed there'd been a series of gruesome killings in the Morningdale area forty years earlier. But those had been attributed to an unusually malevolent mahar . The werewolf legend had started because a young man with mental problems had claimed to be the killer. When the authorities decided he needed psychiatric help, he'd resisted. Police had been summoned; the man had fled into the forest. Next day his body was found in the river that runs past the town. The killings stopped. But there were two similar incidents later. Each was accompanied by a string of murders, of people apparently torn apart by a wild animal. Each time, someone came forward, claiming guilt, claiming to be a werewolf. One of the nutcases was a woman. The killings were never resolved. And the confessions were attributed to a psychiatric disorder and the simple need to draw attention to oneself. In each case, according to one psychiatrist described as prominent, the victim had developed a morbid interest in the original werewolf story. "Ordinarily," he said, "mahar s will not attack a human, but there are exceptions. What clearly happened in Morningdale is that there was a string of killings, and an unbalanced person attributed the actions to himself. Or, in this case, three unbalanced people. And I suspect, in future years, the pattern will repeat." It had been eleven years since the last outbreak. But the town kept the story alive with the usual gift shop and several books purporting to reveal "the truth" about the killings, and an HV presentation put together by a group of true believers. I'd have thought that the possibility of running into a werewolf would keep people out , but it apparently didn't work that way. In any case, I was relieved to learn that Vicki hadn't spent a night in the woods. She'd rented a room in a house at the edge of the forest and simply made herself comfortable on the porch during the hours when Callistra was overhead. The Devil's Eye. So we followed suit. We sat out there and listened to the sound of the woods. Occasionally, something howled. Presumably a mahar . The owner of the house, who stayed with us for a while, assured us that the creatures rarely came near the town. "They're scared of people," he said. The psychiatrist seemed to me to have a handle on things. Nevertheless, I had my scrambler with me. Alex smiled at that. "It's a good move," he said. "You never know. But-" "But what, Alex?" "We'd probably be safer if you had something that shoots silver bullets."

  We followed Vicki around the world. We spent a quiet night in a church supposedly infected by demonic forces. We visited an office building that claimed to have a haunted storage room on the eighth floor. We spent three nights on Fermo Beach, where the only thing that came ashore was a harmless creature with an oversized shell. We visited an archeological site where, seven hundred years earlier, the inhabitants had sacrificed children and virgins. (It was hard to believe that was still going on nine thousand years after the Enlightenment.) We dropped in on several haunted houses. We watched in vain for the appearance of a phantom aircraft that was said to be a relic of an accident that had occurred three thousand years ago. The vehicle developed engine trouble over a populated area, and rather than attempt a landing that endangered people on the ground, the pilot turned out to sea. The plane went down, and the pilot was

  lost before rescuers could reach him. According to local legend, the plane reappeared each year on the anniversary of the event. Vicki had planned her trip well, and arranged to be present on the correct night. We couldn't duplicate the date without waiting the better part of a year. Was there anything to the story? There had been sightings of the ghostly aircraft, but it was easy enough to put a plane in the air and do a flyby. One year, as a stunt, the locals were able to persuade the airfields in the area to watch the traffic on that night "to prevent hoaxes." They got a lot of publicity out of it, and of course the plane was sighted anyhow. Some years there have been two or three ghost planes. "The kids," one shopkeeper told us in a moment of unbridled rectitude, "love it."

  The most interesting site, for me, was the Time Lab at Jesperson. It's out in the woods, not much more than a ruin now. It was originally built and operated eight centuries ago. The government funded it for a while, but there was no success, and eventually, according to the story, they gave up and abandoned the place. The townspeople insist that there was a breakthrough, though, but that the program directors, confronted with the ability to move through the ages, decided it was too dangerous. So they hid the truth. The lab was officially abandoned. Some of the researchers, however, had disappeared into the past and the future. People there claimed they still showed up on occasion. It's been eight hundred years, and, if you believe the story, they're still young. "Why," a waitress at the Copper Club told us, "Gene Korashevski was here just last week." "Who's Gene Korashevski?" "One of the researchers. He lives in the Carassa Age." "Lives? You mean he's still alive? After eight hundred years?" "In the Carassa Age, he is." Alex couldn't resist himself. "Never heard of the Carassa Age," he said. "When was that?" "It hasn't happened yet." She was good. She was talking as if this was matter-of-fact stuff. The way you might tell somebody you collect cats. Later, when we were alone at the table eating lunch, Alex speculated on how nice it would be to have the capability to travel in time. "What would you do with it?" I asked him. "Where would you go?" He loved the idea. "Imagine what we could do. How about going back and securing the cup that held Socrates' poison? Can you even begin to imagine what that would be worth?" "Alex, is that really the best thing you can think of to do with a time machine? How about going back a few years earlier and actually talking to Socrates? Maybe take him to lunch?" "I don't speak classical Greek." "Well," I said, "I guess you have a point." "And it would be nice to get an early draft of First Light ." First Light . The masterpiece by Saija Brant, the greatest dramatist of all time. "I think I'd still settle," I said, "for a chance to say hello to Saija Brant." Our salads came. He studied his for a moment, then looked up. "Chase, you have no imagination."

  FIFTEEN

  There's no such thing as the supernatural. Everything, by definition, is natural . But you have to find out what the rules are.

  - Love You to Death

  Eventually, we tracked her to Livingstone, the two-hundred-year-old estate of Borgas Cleev, where the dictator had delighted in personally running drills and lasers into anyone who displeased him, and where, according to legend, the cries of his victims could still be heard on windswept nights, when Callistra commanded the heavens. But the trail went cold there. Vicki had arranged to s
pend a night inside the mansion, talked the next day with a few of the townspeople, then gone away. We could find no sign of her after that. We roamed the area, questioning book dealers, librarians, police officers, journalists, anyone we found in the streets. Several reported having seen her, and a few said they'd talked with her. She'd seemed in good spirits, they'd said. But there was no indication of her destination after she'd left Livingstone. So we sat frustrated in a hotel suite. Alex had been tracking the time line, and Vicki's appearance in Livingstone had come near the end of her stay on Salud Afar. Ten days after she'd left here, she would board the Arbison and return to Rimway. "I wonder," Alex said, "when she decided to leave." He made a couple of calls, got the StarFlight ticket office, and identified himself. He asked when the Arbison would have had to leave Salud Afar. They gave him the date. It was eleven days after she'd left Livingstone. "I'm trying to find an old friend," he said. "She was on that flight. I wonder if you could tell me when she bought her ticket?"