The manitou (22 page)

I crushed out
my cigarette. A thought had occurred to me. I said: “That typewriter I threw at
the Star Beast – did you see that?”

“Sure,” said
Singing Rock. “It saved your life.”

“Well – when it
exploded – when it actually touched the Star Beast’s outline – I’m sure that I
sensed something. It wasn’t actually a face or anything as dear as that. It was
more like a disembodied expression.”

Singing Rock
nodded. He said: “What you thought you saw was the spirit of the machine, the
typewriter’s own manitou. In its conflict with the Star Beast manitou, it
became momentarily visible while it expended whatever energy it had. You can
rest assured that the Star Beast thoroughly destroyed it.”

I frowned. “The
typewriter had a manitou?”

“Of course,”
said Singing Rock. “Everything does.
A pen, a cup, a piece of
paper.
There is a greater or lesser spirit in everything.”

“I think we’re
getting away from the point,” said Lieutenant Marino testily. “What we want to
know is – how can we get rid of this Great Old One?”

“Wait,” I put
in. “This may be relevant. Why did the manitou of the typewriter come into
conflict with the Star Beast? What did they have to fight about?”

Singing Rock
pulled a face. “I don’t really know. The spirits are as much in conflict with
each other as human beings. The spirits of the rocks are in conflict with the
spirits of the winds and the trees. I guess it could have been something to do
with ancient sorcery against technology.”

“What do you
mean?” asked Jack Hughes, leaning forward.

“Simply that
the Star Beast is a very ancient manitou, from times unknown,” explained
Singing Rock. “The manitou of the typewriter is part of the manitou of human
electrical technology.

They are bound
to come into conflict. The spirit world mirrors the physical world to a
remarkable degree.”

I thought for a
while. Then I said: “Supposing we had the technological manitous on our side?

Wouldn’t they
help us? I mean – they’d be more inclined to support us than Misquamacus,
wouldn’t they?”

“I guess so,”
said Singing Rock. “But what are you getting at?”

“Look – if
there’s a manitou in every piece of machinery and human technological creation
– we must be able to find a manitou that’s able to assist us. The typewriter
manitou was small and weak, but supposing we found one that was powerful and
strong? Couldn’t that defeat the Great Old One?”

Lieutenant
Marino rubbed his eyes. “This is too much for me,” he said tiredly. “If I
hadn’t seen eleven of my own men killed and frozen in front of my eyes, I’d run
you straight round to the nuthouse.”

Jack Hughes
said: “What you want is a machine with tremendous power.
Something
overwhelming.”

“A hydraulic power station?”
I suggested.

Singing Rock
shook his head.
“Too risky.
The Water spirits would
obey the command of the Great Old One, and hold back your power.”

“How about an airplane?
Or a ship?”

“Same problem,”
said Singing Rock.

We pondered for
a few more minutes. The floor began to sway even more violently, and pens and
paper dips skated off Jack Hughes’ desk on to the floor. The lights dimmed,
paused, and struggled on again. The floor heaved some more, and Dr. Hughes’
single Valentine card tipped over and fluttered under Lieutenant Marino’s
chair. I began to hear that monotonous wind noise even more
distinctly,
and there was a denseness, a closeness about the air that made me feel we were
all going to suffocate. The heating system may not have worked too well in this
office before, but now the place began to grow insufferably hot.

Officer Redfern
came to the door. He said tensely: “They’re still trying to break in, sir. They
came on the radio and they’re still trying. Lieutenant Geoghegan said the
building looks as if it’s swaying or something. He says we got strange blue
lights on the ninth or tenth floor. Shall I tell the rest of the men to
evacuate, sir?”

“Evacuate?”
snarled Marino.
“What for?”

“Well, sir,
it’s an earthquake, isn’t it? In disaster drill, sir, they say that you’re
supposed to evacuate tall buildings.”

Lieutenant
Marino slapped the palm of his hand on the desk.

“Earthquake?”
he said bitterly. “I wish it damned well was. Just round up two or three of the
guys and see if you can help that idiot Geoghegan to get in. Take the stairs
and watch out for the tenth floor.”

“Right, sir.
Oh – and sir?”

“Yes, Redfern?”

“Detective
Wisbech told me to say that he’s run the m.o. through Unitrak, and so far
there’s no precedent. No known murderer kills that way, sir. Not by freezing.”

Lieutenant
Marino sighed. “All right, Redfern.” He turned back to us, and said: “That’s
police efficiency for you. Eleven men get chopped up and chilled, and we have
to run it through a computer to see if anyone ever went around doing things
like that before. What the hell is wrong with memories these days?”

Redfern left,
with a quick salute. The floor was stirring again, and he looked relieved to have
been sent down to street level. What’s more, the wind noise was moaning even
louder, and how can you explain to people who hear gales blowing that there are
no gales, and that the wind is the wind of occult malevolence?

“Just a
minute,” said Jack Hughes, “how did your detective get in touch with this
computer?”

Lieutenant
Marino said: “By phone. It’s available to all police forces in the state of New
York. If there’s anything you need to know about missing automobiles, missing
persons, crime patterns, anything like that, it can tell you in just a few
seconds.”

“Is it a big
computer?”

“Sure. Unitrak
is one of the largest on the Eastern seaboard.”

Jack Hughes
turned to Singing Rock. “I think we have found you a technological manitou,” he
said.
“The Unitrak computer.”

Singing Rock
nodded. “That sounds more like it,” he said. “Do you have the phone number,
lieutenant?”

Lieutenant
Marino looked bewildered. “Now wait a minute,” he said. “That computer is
strictly for authorized police personnel only. You need a code to get through.”

“Have you got a
code?” asked Singing Rock.

“Sure, but...”

“But me no
buts,” said Singing Rock. “If you want to catch the thing that killed your
eleven men, then this is the only way to do it.”

“What are you
talking about?” snapped Lieutenant Marino. “Are you trying to tell me that you
can conjure up a goddamned spirit out of a police department computer?”

“Why not?” said
Singing Rock. “I won’t say it’s going to be easy, but Unitrak’s manitou is
bound to be Christian and God-fearing and dedicated to the cause of law and
order. Unitrak was made for that purpose. A machine’s manitou cannot go
contrary to the underlying intent with which it was fashioned. If I can summon
it up, it will be perfect. History will repeat itself.”

“What do you mean
– history will repeat itself?”

Singing Rock
rubbed the back of his neck tiredly. “This continent and its Red Indian spirits
were defeated once by the white manitous of law and Christianity. I expect they
can be defeated again.”

Lieutenant
Marino was just reaching for his computer code card when the air seemed to go
suddenly still. We looked around at each other uncertainly. The floor had
stopped swaying, but now it was vibrating, very faintly, as if someone was
drilling their way through concrete, floors and floors beneath us. Way down
below in the street, we heard sirens and fire truck horns, and also the
sorrowful moan of that magical wind.

Abruptly, the
lights died Lieutenant Marino shouted: “Don’t move! Nobody move! If anyone
moves, I’ll shoot!” We stayed frozen like statues, listening and waiting to see
if we were being attacked. I felt drops of sweat sliding silently down the side
of my face and into my collar. The rooms on the eighteenth floor were stifling
and airless, and it was obvious that the air-conditioning had stopped, too.

I heard them
first. Rushing and scurrying down the walls, like a phantom river. I saw
Lieutenant Marino raise his police special in alarm, but he didn’t fire.
Chilled with fright, we peered through the luminous gloom of the offices, and
saw them. They were like ghostly rats – torrents and torrents of scampering
ghostly rats – and they were pouring down every wall. They emerged from
nowhere, and disappeared into the floor as if it wasn’t solid at all. There
must have been millions of them – whispering and rustling and scuttling
everywhere in a hideous tide of furry bodies.

“What is it?”
said Lieutenant Marino hoarsely. “What are they?”

“Exactly what
they look like,” said Singing Rock. “They are the parasites that accompany the
Great Old One. In a spiritual sense, he is verminous, and these are the vermin.
It looks as if Misquamacus is using the hospital building itself as a gateway
to summon the Great Old One, and that’s why they’re pouring down the walls like
that. I expect they’re assembling on the tenth floor. After that – well, who
knows?”

Lieutenant
Marino didn’t say a word. He simply handed his computer code card to Singing
Rock, and pointed to the number on it. He seemed to be shocked and numbed, but
then we all were. Even the newspaper reporters and the television crew were
silent and apprehensive, and we stared at each other with the haunted eyes of
men who are trapped in a sinking submarine.

Singing Rock
went into a small side office and picked up the phone. I stayed with him while
he dialed, and I could hear the ringing tone, and the click of the recorded
answering machine.

Squinting
closely at Lieutenant Marino’s card, Singing Rock read off a series of numbers,
and waited to be put in touch with Unitrak.

“What are you
going to do?” I asked him. “How can you tell a computer that you need some help
from its manitou?”

Singing Rock
lit
himself
a small cigar, and puffed out smoke. “I
guess it’s going to be a question of using the right language,” he said.
“And also persuading the programmers that I’m not totally crazy.”

There was
another click, and a matter-of-fact WASPish voice said: “Unitrak. Could you
state your business please?”

Singing Rock
coughed. “I’m speaking for Lieutenant Marino of the New York Police Department.
Lieutenant Marino would like to know if Unitrak has a spiritual existence.”

There was a
silence. Then the voice said: “What? Would you repeat that?”

“Lieutenant
Marino would like Unitrak to state if it has a spiritual existence.”

There was
another silence. Then the voice said: “Look – what is this?
Some
kind of a joke?”

“Please – just
ask the question.”

There was a
sigh. “Unitrak is not programmed to answer questions like that. Unitrak is a
working computer – not one of your fancy university poem-writing gadgets. Now,
if that’s all?”

“Wait,” said
Singing Rock urgently. “Please ask Unitrak one important question. Ask it if it
has any data on the Great Old One.”

“The Great What?”

“The Great Old One.
He’s a – kind of a criminal ringleader.”

“What division?
Fraud, homicide, arson – what?”

Singing Rock
thought for a moment,
then
he said: “Homicide.”

“There was a
silence. The voice said: “You’re spelling ‘Great’ as in ‘Great Grief?’“

“That’s
correct.”

“Okay – hold
on, then.”

Through the
receiver, I could hear distant whirrs and clicks as Singing Rock’s question was
punched on to cards. Singing Rock smoked and fidgeted, and in the background we
could hear the terrible sound of that spooky wind. The floor stirred again, and
Singing Rock covered the mouthpiece with his hand and whispered: “I don’t think
this is going to work. It won’t be long now, and the Great Old One will be let
through the gateway.”

I hissed: “Is
there anything else we can do?
Any other way of stopping
him?”

Singing Rock
said: “There must be another way. After all, the ancient wonder-workers were
able to seal the Great Old One in his own domain. But even if I knew what it
was, I don’t expect I’d be capable of doing it.”

As we waited
for Unitrak to come up with an answer, I began to feel an odd kind of nausea.
At first I thought it was the swaying and rippling of the hospital floor, but
then I realized it was a smell. A ripe, fetid, revolting smell that reminded me
of a frozen rabbit I had once bought which turned out rotten. I sniffed, pulled
a face, and looked at Singing Rock.

“He’s coming,”
said Singing Rock, without apparent emotion. “The Great Old One is coming.”

I heard
shouting outside, and I left Singing Rock holding on to the telephone and went
to see what was going on. There was a crowd of doctors and nurses around the
CBS camera. I pushed my way through to Jack Hughes and asked him what had
happened. He looked pale and ill, and his hand was obviously hurting him a
great deal.

“It was one of
the cameramen,” he said. “He was holding on to his camera, and it seemed like
he just collapsed. He was shaking like he’d had an electric shock, but it isn’t
that.”

I struggled
forward toward the cameraman. He was young and sandy-haired, dressed in jeans
and a red T-shirt. His eyes were closed and his face was contorted and white.
His bottom lip kept shuddering and curling in a strange kind of snarl. One of
the interns was rolling up his sleeve to inject him with tranquilizer.

“What’s wrong?”
I said. “Is he having a fit?”