The Lower Deep (17 page)

"I can walk as fast and as far as you,
compere,"
Steve grumbled, setting out in pursuit. "And you won't hear any footfalls from these old moccasins."

He could, he discovered. Moreover, the night was dark and he could do so without being observed.

Lazaire set a fast pace, however, and at the edge of town took a significant turn. Steve recalled what Juan Mendoza had said after tailing Paul Henninger from the Azagon, the night of the manager's long-distance swim.

"You know the section of town they call The Hounfor, in back of the marketplace? That's where I lost him."

On Steve's left stood a ghostly forest of poles supporting a roof of banana thatch—the now-deserted, open-air marketplace. Lazaire had already passed it and was entering a district of shacks beyond. Could he be seeking the same thing Henninger had sought that night? He probably was, Steve decided. But what was it?

Anyway, I mustn't lose him the way Mendoza lost the fat man, damn it! I've got to find out where he goes.

Steve stepped up his pursuit. The road was narrow here. Even a Jeep would have trouble squirming between the rows of houses. And it was dark. Lazaire was just a shadow ghosting along by the houses, visible only because he was in motion.

For a while he maintained a straight course into the heart of the district. Then a turn to the right, one to the left, and he suddenly disappeared through a gap in a sagging board fence. Steve hurried to the gap and paused there, peering in. But now nothing at all moved, and there was no sign of his quarry.

A huge
mapou,
a
kind of tree sacred to voodoo, dominated the yard, making it so dark that moments passed before his eyes adjusted. Then he saw, beyond the tree, a bigger than average house with a zinc-roofed peristyle attached. The house would harbor a
hounfor,
he guessed—that special inner sanctum reserved for the altar, the
govis,
the baptized drums, and other paraphernalia essential to the holding of services, though the roofed peristyle would be where most of the services actually took place.

He could imagine the peristyle yellowed by lantern light and packed with people, drums throbbing and voices shrilling out the chants to the
loa,
while the
houngan
in charge traced his intricate
vèvés
on the ground with cornmeal or ashes and the white-robed
hounsis
danced. While working at
the Brightman in Fond des Pintards he had attended many different kinds of services, ranging from a simple
man gé-les-morts,
or feeding of the dead, to the mystifying
brulé zin
in which servitors being raised to the rank of
kanzo
had to put their hands seven times into iron pots of boiling oil. Never, he knew, would he understand all of what he had seen.

Suddenly he heard a sound of knocking—his quarry rapping on a door, perhaps?—and a rectangle of light at the side of the house momentarily revealed a doorway, a man framed in it, and the familiar figure of Lazaire on the stoop outside. The cook stepped in over the threshold.

The door closed.

What to do now?

There was no point in hanging around, Steve reluctantly decided. He would not be demanding an explanation when Lazaire emerged, anyway—certainly not here. In fact, all this had to be thought about before he questioned the fellow at all.

Perhaps it was a job for Lieutenant Etienne.

But as he turned away, a sound of drumming stopped him. Then a sound of women's voices intoning a chant.

A service? One for which they had been awaiting Lazaire's arrival? Curious to know what kind it might be, he leaned against the fence and waited.

"Agoué, O Agoué Woyo! Li sorti nan mer la! Canon ii chargé! Canon ii chargé pou tire!"

Agoué was their god of the sea, and the words of the chant referred to his coming from there with his cannon loaded, ready to fire. Thunder
over the sea was always Agoué's doing. The service, if it was a service, would be a long one.

It would begin here in the
hounfor
and peristyle, where the drawing of the
vèvé
by the
houngan
would be accompanied by drumming and chanting to the usual lineup of gods. The
vèvé—
in
this case Agoué's ship—would disappear under the shuffling bare feet of the dancers. Then the
houngan
and his helpers would bring from the inner sanctum a small wooden boat that they would fill with food and drink for Agoué himself.

All night long the ceremony would continue in one form or another: chanting, dancing, drumming, the recitation of prayers, at times only a silent vigil. Then at dawn the people would carry their offering down to the sea—no doubt to Pointe Pierre here—where they would embark with it in one of the fishing boats. With them they would carry, along with other sacrificial animals, a white sheep with its feet trussed. White was Agoué's ritual color. The sheep was an essential offering.

There would be more drumming and chanting as the fishing boat put out to sea. Now, too, there would be a sound of seashell trumpets as the craft sailed through the dawn to a chosen place of sacrifice. And there, as the little wooden boat with its offering of food and drink was set adrift, some of the
houngan's
helpers would become possessed and go into a frenzy, and the white sheep with its feet trussed would be cast into the sea to drown.

It was a ceremony Steve had witnessed during his early investigation of voodoo, before his nightmare experience at La Souvenance and the "lost" five days. It was, too, a service the climax of which he would have walked away from had he been in a position to do so. But why this sort of thing for Ti-Jean Lazaire—if, indeed, it was for him? And if it was, were they doing it in his honor or was it something he had requested and paid for?

Questions, he thought as he began the long walk back to the Azagon.

So many questions.

F
or the third time in as many nights, George Benson
found himself walking by the sea at Anse Douce. But this time there was a difference. This time he was not alone. Danielle André walked at his side.

He had no idea what time it was. Back at the house, Alice and he had sat up until eleven or so, he with his reports for the government people who employed him, she with her schoolwork, and then had retired to their separate rooms. He remembered hearing her in the bathroom, going through her pre-bed routine. He could recall nothing else.

Nothing.

There was a moon in the sky now, and he wished he were well enough versed in that sort of thing to judge the time by it, but he was not. It was just
a moon, or part of one, and by its light the beach was beautiful but strange, as though it were part of some alien world.

Small shells gleamed like jewels in the moon's pale glow. Clumps of washed-up seaweed looked like nameless sea creatures that might at any moment come to life and leap into action—perhaps to attack anyone who dared intrude upon their domain. Live crabs and their weirdly elongated shadows actually did dart into motion when disturbed—not to attack, but to flee.

The fact that Dannie and he were both naked as they walked hand in hand along the hard, wet sand at the water's edge only made the situation even more improbable. He did not remember going to her place to pick her up, even.

In fact, he did not recall leaving his own house. Or even his bed.

He was
the
one responsible for their being here, though; of that he was reasonably certain. It had been his idea, not hers. And he was still the one calling the signals as he halted and turned to face her.

"Ready, darling?"

"Yes,
George."

"Not afraid?"

She leaned forward to touch her lips to his. "Not with you to show me how."

George folded her lovely nude body in his arms, pressing her close against him for a moment, then stepped back and looked deep into her expressive, dark chocolate eyes. "Remember," he warned. "You may think you can't do it, but you can. You only have to believe."

"I believe, George."

"Let's go."

Turning from his contemplation of her, he walked slowly into the sea. There was no hurry, he told himself. The journey ahead was long, but there was nothing to fear from the distance. Both of them were mentally and physically prepared for it now. All they had to do was swim out slowly, without effort, and await instructions.

What form the instructions would take he was not sure, but he would recognize them when the time came. Meanwhile the sea was comfortably warm and quiet. When he had slowly waded in up to his waist, he let himself fall gently forward and began stroking.

It was really quite easy to swim without tiring if you were mentally and physically prepared for it. For weeks now he had been training for tonight's venture, he reminded himself. Night after night he had worked on his breathing, especially. If your mind said you could hold your breath a long time, you could do it. It was all mental. Man had evolved from creatures that lived in the water. He had only to relearn forgotten techniques.

He slowed a little and looked back. Dannie was having no trouble keeping up with him. As he trod water she came alongside, pale and pretty in the moonlight, and he reached out to touch her, letting his hand slide into the hollow of her back and over the familiar swell of her bottom.

"Everything okay, darling?"

"Of course, George."

"Shall we try going down?"

"Whatever you say, George."

He took in a slow, deep breath and left the misty glow of moonlight behind him. It was not really dark in the depths, he discovered. Whoever said it was dark was mistaken. His eyes quickly adjusting, he soon saw that he was swimming through a kind of undersea forest of coral formations and ferny, waving things that sensuously stroked his body. Looking back, he saw Dannie gliding through the same undulating caresses.

Beautiful, he thought. Both the woman and the watery forest. Like something in a dream. Under him was a sea floor as white—or was it black?—as the velvety substance in a jeweler's showcase, on which all kinds of shell-shaped gems and glittering star things lay only inches below his eyes. A Salvador Dali world of dreams and magic. Bright, small fishes swam playfully along with him.

It was all so lovely, time meant nothing. But at last, reluctantly, he reminded himself this was just a test, and he was not supposed to overdo it.

Slowing to a stop, he pointed upward as Dannie came gliding to his side. "Need some air," he told her. At least, his mind formed the words and she seemed to understand, for after a longing last look at the enchanted world they had been exploring, she nodded.

He led the way back up, stretching his arms straight out before him and cleaving the surface of the moonlit sea like a dolphin at play. With a smile at Dannie he opened his mouth, sucked in a huge gulp of air, and closed it again.

Then in a blaze of pain George Benson awoke from his dream to find himself once again bolt upright in bed, clutching a mouth filling with blood from a bitten tongue.

The torment slowly subsided and he realized his room was gray with daylight. The clock on the bureau said seven-ten.

The dream again. For three successive nights he'd had it—almost the same dream each time except that tonight, for the first time, Dannie had accompanied him on his undersea journey.

In this house of small bedrooms, George's bed was snug against the wall, and he began to slide out of it on the only side such a maneuver was possible. Then he remembered what he had done last night before retiring.

Without touching his feet to the carpet, he drew back and leaned over to examine its pale gray surface for telltale signs.

He could see none. Never mind; he hadn't really expected anything definitive. Wriggling to the foot of the bed, he got out that way, stretching to touch his feet to the floor as far from the bed as he could. Then he dressed and went into the kitchen, where he had heard Alice moving about, probably gathering up her books and papers before leaving for school.

Would she be surprised to learn he had bitten his tongue again?

She seemed to be. Turning from the kitchen counter to frown at him as he entered, she spoke in a voice full of what certainly could have passed for compassion. "Oh, George! Not again!"

He sank onto a chair. What he ought to do, he supposed, was go to the bathroom and wash the blood from his mouth. But it seemed important not to interrupt what was happening here.

"George—really—hasn't Dr. Clermont been able to do anything for you?" Alice's show of indignation was bigger than life.

He shrugged. "Doesn't seem so, does it?"