Janus (24 page)

Scream—but those hands could be on her before she did more than draw breath. And if he did nothing and someone came, what could she say?

She had stopped walking, and he stood in her path. Leaves like scraps of paper blew between them.

“But you are the violinist,” he said. “The musician who has lost her calling. Is it because she wants to lose it?” He moved to her side. She flinched away, and suddenly was walking up the hill. Ahead of her the woods were dark; and, an impossible distance away, was the dark row of housing where she lived.

A creature the size of a large dog, with pale golden bars glowing along its head, crossed the path and scurried out of sight.

Insane. Do something. Run, scream. Anything.

But he was at her side, still speaking quietly. “Does she still yearn to feel the bow in her hands? The huntress’s bow if not the artist’s. But finally, the two are the same, of course. Think of the shrieks of the creature impaled by the huntress’s arrow, and think of the song of the strings. In unskilled hands they are not to be distinguished. And that is because they are both songs of pain. Only, the instrument of art is the crueller and more refined. It disguises the torment of the flesh by its form. You rack the creature’s guts when you tune, do you not? And tighten the strings to the unbearable edge of breaking. If they could cry out then, would they not scream? But they have been stretched, racked until any movement is intolerable. So when it is plucked, the string, the brute inarticulate matter of the string—yelps. And when you stroke them, when you draw a harsh unrelenting bow—the huntress’s instrument—across those racked and agonised cords, when you rack them beyond all bearing—they sing. And the song, like all true beauty, is built of pain.”

He was silent for a dozen steps, as though timing his next speech. And she waited to hear him, hypnotised. “Eventually,” he said, “the tortured string can sing no more, and breaks. But that is the inevitable price of beauty. I have always felt, myself, that a true spiritual experience is worth whatever price it exacts. Don’t you agree?”

“What are you saying?” She felt herself trying to break the spell. “Do you believe any of that, or are you just trying to scare me?” As soon as she had spoken, she was appalled at her recklessness. You were supposed to humour maniacs, not antagonise them.

“Even if I wanted to,” he continued smoothly, “how could I be frightening someone who is merely hurrying home to get a good night’s rest? After all, we’re just walking in the moonlight, discussing the origins of music. In fact, you are much safer now than before our fortunate meeting. The woods here, how dark—and who knows for sure what may hide in them? There must be caves and gullies there, where one could be hidden for days, out of sight, and out of earshot of all who pass by—where even the loudest and most desperate cries would be heard only by the one who had brought you there, and who might find in them the purest exaltation.”

“Someone like you?” The words forced themselves out of her. In a moment she would believe where this was leading and be too terrified to utter a word. “Cut the bullshit. If you’re going to try something, get on with it.”
Insane. Insane.

“I do like a woman with spirit,” he said, looking her up and down. “But I’m really not sure what you can mean. I was offering to protect you from whatever dangers might be abroad tonight. Though, come to think of it, I have noticed that those who have never experienced acute suffering are the ones most inclined to precipitate its occurrence.”

“You’ve noticed that have you? I wonder where.” Why was she goading him? “For all you know, I don’t need your protection. I might carry a nasty little gun with me on my late night walks.”

“Of course you might. Though it would have to be a very small one, and even so, I doubt you could get it out in time to foil a sudden attack. But such weapons are frowned on, and I don’t think you’re the type to flout the local conventions. No, on the whole, I think you are unarmed. Whereas I . . . but let’s not slice away the skin of decorum from the flesh of our discussion. I always find a little uncertainty sharpens the perceptions remarkably, and this is such splendid night, it would be a pity not to experience it fully.”

And then he was silent, walking quietly at her elbow until they reached the dark corner of her road. If she had had a weapon, she would have drawn it then.

“Well,” he remarked, “the time has come. All things must end, and our little adventure has reached its finale. A pity we cannot achieve a final cadence of true poignancy, but we must content ourselves with a mere
andante morendo
. I mean, of course, that now I must abandon you to the uncertainties of the night. But I’ve enjoyed our little discussion immensely: you have suggested several interesting possibilities to me, and I can only hope you have found it instructive as well, because if we meet again like this, I’m certain we’ll be able to extend the scope of our investigation and explore some of these topics more substantially.”

Her tongue was shrivelled in her mouth. Before she could speak, he had turned and was walking back down the slope. Immediately she began to run up the slope, and that was a mistake, because it released the fear she had been holding in check, and she could not tell if he had really gone, or was playing with her, stalking her again, closing in on her under cover of her footfalls. She allowed herself one look back over her shoulder, then forced herself back to a walk. A monster. A psychopath. Barbara’s leaflet was right. She
should
have run, she should have screamed for help and run. But the voice had held her, the rhythm of the words-how could she have fled while he was still talking quietly of music and pain?

She concentrated on controlling her breathing.
In
four steps,
out
four steps. The wind roared about her. That exit line of his had been a threat:
If I catch you there again.
. . . The last curve in the road was coming up ahead. Cold spectral lightning bloomed among the pillared clouds. Another hundred metres. A hundred steps, twenty-five more breaths. A threat. How much did he know? Had he seen her following Larsen?

Was she going to have to be on her guard the whole time now? Was every hour going to be as harrowing as this until she got to the end of whatever tangle she was unearthing? It was too much. The fear would exhaust her.

She looked at Paulina and Louise’s home, but all the windows were dark. Her own home was closer. She broke down and ran the rest of the way.

With lights on and the door locked behind her, she let herself collapse. She dragged herself to the bed and lay, still dressed, staring at the light. It churned up images for her: Larsen’s candles, the paper-maker’s elegant horror, and some that did not fit.

She felt that if she went and looked out of the window, the dark would be held back by a row of purple-white mercury lamps on chipped concrete poles scrawled with graffiti. There would be cars parked along the curb—rust buckets with twisted bumpers, cracked windshields, broken headlights, their paintwork smeared with dust that the kids’ fingers had turned to blackboards, all colours bleached to anonymous greys by the streetlights.

She closed her eyes and shook her head, but the picture only became clearer. She got up and walked through the house, switching on lights, and it went with her.

There were flattened beer cans in the gutter, milk cartons, torn candy-wrappers, scraps of newspaper, blackened leaves. A gaunt mongrel rooted there, then lifted its head and scuttled away towards the bank of the dead canal beyond the row of lights. A patrol cruiser was entering the street, a dark bulk above the parked cars. Blades of red and blue light rotated from its cupola.

Her hands knew what to do. They found a black pencil and copies of Barbara’s leaflet. They slashed a group of horizontal lines along the back of a sheet, poised to make other marks.

The patrol car was outside, was stopping, its lights beating against the window blind. Blue, then dark, then red. Footsteps on the steps outside, approaching. Stopping.

Dark.

Blue.

Dark.

Red—

The door thundered.

Her pencil ripped through the paper and snapped. Then she was in the kitchen, blocking her ears with the rush of water. The sink filled, and the ceiling light glared back at her from a thousand jagged facets. She moaned, unable to look away, then let her head go down. The cold burned her face, bit into her eyes and ears, until there was only a high singing sound from somewhere inside her. Air plopped from her mouth; water forced itself into her throat in hard lumps. She retched and straightened up, spilling water over the floor. The pictures had gone. She was sick and trembling all over, but the pictures had gone. And she no longer wanted to know what buried memories they had come from.

She pulled out a chair, sat. And began to force the world back into place.

Pain scored Grebbel’s arm. He floated in a grey space, where pictures and sounds circled at the edge of awareness. Sometimes they drifted closer, where he could examine them. One was a thought:
I can’t feel my face.
Others were images: faces in white masks looming like clouds. Red and white dapple. A mouth straining open, showing the tongue and the stained molars, the cheeks white and beaded with sweat, rucked up in folds against the clenched eyes. There was no sound with that image, as though whatever should have accompanied it could be properly represented only by silence.

“Mr. Grebbel.”

He recognised that the voice was from outside the greyness. He thought words in reply, but could not push them into the air.

Now there was a woman’s face lit by moonlight. The air was freezing, and they clung together for warmth. Behind them was the long snow slope down to the fence and the trees. Orion reared above them.

“Jon Grebbel.”

He thought words again, and this time there came a croak from the void where his face should be.

“You can hear me. Good. Listen to what I say, but don’t try to move. In a few minutes we’ll be ready to begin.”

The voice continued, but he was out in the snow, holding her for warmth, then turning, trying to shield her from the wind.

“They’ve given you a heavy dose of analgesic. You may not be fully aware of what’s happening to you, but the procedures should work well enough. Afterwards you’ll be disoriented for perhaps several days. Try to remember not to say anything that will reveal what happened to you. As far as possible, don’t speak except to answer questions. We will implant a hypnotic suggestion to that effect, but it’s as well if the conscious mind has the same instruction. We’ll be starting soon. Don’t be alarmed if you feel yourself being moved.”

She was laughing with him and the snow was whipping past them unfelt. The world darkened around her. She glowed for him in the night, moonfire, moonsilver, and his reflection lived in her eyes.

“We’re wheeling you into the treatment room now. We’ve got the place to ourselves. In a minute you’ll feel the headset being put on. Then we’ll uncover your eyes. After that, we’ll have to put you under for an hour. You may feel the needle, but nothing else. When you come out of it, we’ll be finished.”

He held her until he could not tell where his body ended and hers began. Still he strained towards her. For a moment the wind screamed icy words in his ears. Then he broke through into the light that annihilated all thought, pain and fear.

Niels Larsen straightened from the oscilloscope screen and looked across at Osmon. “He’s into phase epsilon. Cut off the drug now until I tell you.”

“Whatever you wish.”

As usual, if there was irony in Osmon’s subservient manner, Larsen couldn’t be sure of it. Mercifully, Osmon was an almost pathological follower, without initiative; it was all that tempered the other sides of his nature. But at least he seemed to be behaving himself now.

They looked at the man in the bed. He was wrenching at the straps, his eyes staring blindly from above his bandaged cheeks. “Yes,” Larsen muttered, “it’s working now.”