The Wheel of Darkness (44 page)

“Ruptured?” LeSeur repeated. “Where are Liu and Crowley? Why haven’t they reported back?”

“There was a mob on the lifeboat deck,” Dahlberg said, breathing heavily. “Liu and Crowley were attacked. Maybe killed. The passengers launched a second boat. That one burst open when it hit the sea, as well.”

This was greeted by shocked silence.

LeSeur turned to the chief radio officer. “Activate the automatic abandon-ship message.”

“Sir, you heard her!” Kemper spoke up. “Those boats would be no better than floating coffins. Besides, it takes forty-five minutes to load and launch the lifeboats under ideal circumstances. We’ve got thirty. We’ll impact when all the passengers are standing crowded on the half decks—which are open, all steel and struts. It’ll be a massacre. Half of them will go overboard and the rest will be beaten to hell.”

“We’ll get as many on as we can, hold them on the boats until impact, and then launch.”

“The force of the impact may derail the boats. They’ll be jammed up in the half deck and there won’t be any way to launch them. They’ll go down with the ship.”

LeSeur turned to Halsey. “True?”

The man’s face was white. “I believe that is correct, sir.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“We get the passengers into their cabins and have them brace for impact.”

“And then what? The ship’ll go down in five minutes!”

“Then we load and launch the lifeboats.”

“But I just heard the impact may
derail
the lifeboats!” LeSeur realized he was hyperventilating. He forced himself to slow down.

“At twenty knots, there’ll be less damage, less of an impact. At least some lifeboats will remain railed and ready to launch. And with less of an impact, maybe we’ll have more time before . . . we sink.”

“Maybe? That’s not good enough.”

“That’s all we’ve got,” said Halsey.

LeSeur wiped the blood out of his eye again and flung it away with a snap of his fingers. He turned again to the chief radio officer. “Send a message over the PA. All passengers are to report to their quarters immediately—no exceptions. They are to don the flotation devices found under their bunks. They are then to get in their berths, feet facing forward, in fetal position, and cushion themselves with pillows and blankets. If they can’t reach their cabins, they are to get into the closest chair they can find and assume a protective position—hands clasped behind the head, head between the knees.”

“Yes, sir.”

“
Immediately
after impact they are all to report to their lifeboat assembly stations, just as in the drills. They are to take absolutely nothing with them but their PFDs. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.” He turned back toward his terminal. A moment later, a siren went off and his voice sounded over the public address system, giving the orders.

LeSeur turned to Emily Dahlberg. “I guess that goes for you, as well. You’d better return to your cabin.”

She looked back at him. After a moment, she nodded.

“And Mrs. Dahlberg? Thank you.”

She left the bridge.

LeSeur watched the hatch close behind her. Next he turned a baleful eye on the CCTV displaying a grainy image of the helm. Mason was still standing there, one hand draped on the wheel, the other lightly resting on the two fore pod throttles, maintaining heading by slight adjustments to the speed of the screws.

LeSeur pushed the transmit button on the internal bridge-to-bridge intercom and leaned into it. “Mason? I know you can hear me.”

No answer.

“Are you
really
going to do this?”

As if in answer, her white hand moved from the throttle to a small covered panel. She flicked off the cover, pulled two levers, then returned to the throttles, pressing both as far forward as they would go.

There was a throaty rumble as the engines responded.

“Jesus,” said Halsey, staring at the engine panel. “She’s redlining the gas turbines.”

The ship surged forward. With a sick feeling, LeSeur watched the speed indicator begin to creep up. Twenty-two knots. Twenty-four. Twenty-six.

“How is this possible?” he asked, flabbergasted. “We lost half our propulsion back there!”

“She’s goosing the turbines way beyond their specs,” said Halsey.

“How high can they go?”

“I’m not sure. She’s pushing them past five thousand rpms . . .” He leaned over and touched one of the dials, as if in disbelief. “And now she’s redlining all four Wärtsilä diesels, directing the excess power to the two remaining pods.”

“Is that going to burn them out?”

“Hell, yes. But not soon enough.”

“How long?”

“She could go on like this for . . . thirty, forty minutes.”

LeSeur glanced at the chartplotter. The
Britannia
was back up to almost thirty knots and the Carrion Rocks were twelve nautical miles ahead. “All she needs,” he said slowly, “is twenty-four.”

P
ENDERGAST LAY PROSTRATE IN A SCREAMING NIGHT. HE HAD MADE
one final, almost superhuman effort to defend himself, rallying all the newfound intellectual powers the Agozyen had conferred upon him—and exhausting them in the process. It had been no use. The tulpa had sunk into the marrow of his bones, into the deepest core of his mind. He felt a dreadful alienness within himself, like the depersonalization of the worst kind of panic attack. A hostile entity was relentlessly, implacably devouring him . . . and like a man in the paralysis of a nightmare, he was incapable of resistance. It was a psychic agony far worse than the most appalling physical torture.

He withstood it for an endless, indescribable moment. And then, quite suddenly, blessed darkness rushed over him.

How long he lay—unable to think, unable to move—he did not know. And then, out of the darkness, came a voice. A voice he recognized.

“Don’t you think it’s time we spoke?” it said.

Slowly—hesitantly—Pendergast opened his eyes. He found himself in a small, dim space with a low, sloping roof. On one side was a plaster wall, covered with childish treasure maps and scrawled imitations of famous paintings in crayon and pastel; on the other, a latticed doorway. Weak afternoon light trickled through the lattices, revealing dust motes floating lazily in the air and giving the hidden space the otherworldly glow of an undersea grotto. Books by Howard Pyle, Arthur Ransome, and Booth Tarkington lay scattered in the corners. It smelled pleasantly of old wood and floor polish.

Across from him sat his brother, Diogenes Pendergast. His limbs were sunk into deep shadow, but the latticed light revealed the sharp contours of his face. Both his eyes were still hazel . . . as they were before the Event.

This had been their hideout, the tiny room they had fashioned beneath the back stairs in the old house: the one they’d called Plato’s Cave. Its creation was one of the last things they had done together, before the bad times began.

Pendergast stared at his brother. “You’re dead.”

“Dead.” Diogenes rolled the word around, as if tasting it. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I’ll always be alive in your mind. And in this house.”

This was most unexpected. Pendergast paused a moment to examine his own sensations. He realized that the dreadful, probing pain of the tulpa was gone, at least for the moment. He felt nothing: not surprise, not even a sense of unreality. He was, he guessed, in some unsuspected, unfathomably deep recess of his own subconscious mind.

“You’re in rather dire straits,” his brother continued. “Perhaps more dire than any I’ve seen you in before. I’m chagrined to admit that, this time, they are not of my devising. And so I ask again: don’t you think it’s time we spoke?”

“I can’t defeat it,” Pendergast said.

“Precisely.”

“And it cannot be killed.”

“True. It will only leave when its mission is done. But that does not mean it cannot be mastered.”

Pendergast hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve studied the literature. You’ve experienced the teachings. Tulpas are undependable, unreliable things.”

Pendergast did not immediately reply.

“They might be summoned for a particular purpose. But once summoned, they tend to stray, to develop minds of their own. That is one reason they can be so very, very dangerous if used—shall we say?—irresponsibly. That is something you can turn to your advantage.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Must I spell it out for you,
frater
? I’ve told you: it is possible to bend a tulpa to your will. All you have to do is
change its purpose
.”

“I’m in no condition to change anything. I’ve struggled with it—struggled to the end of my strength—and I’ve been bested.”

Diogenes smirked. “How like you, Aloysius. You’re so used to everything being easy that, at the first sign of difficulty, you throw up your hands like a petulant child.”

“All that makes me unique has been drawn from me like marrow from a bone. There’s nothing left.”

“You’re wrong. Only the outer carapace has been torn away: this supposed superweapon of intellect you’ve recently taken upon yourself. The core of your being remains—at least for now. If it was gone, completely gone, you’d know it—and we wouldn’t be speaking now.”

“What can I do? I can’t struggle any longer.”

“That’s precisely the problem. You’re looking at it the wrong way: as a struggle. Have you forgotten all they taught you?”

For a moment, Pendergast sat staring at his brother, uncomprehending. Then, quite suddenly, he understood.

“The lama,” he breathed.

Diogenes smiled. “Bravo.”

“How . . .” Pendergast stopped, began again. “How do you know these things?”

“You know them, too. For the moment, you were simply too . . .
overwrought
to see them. Now, go forth and sin no more.”

Pendergast glanced away from his brother, toward the stripes of gold light that slanted in through the latticed door. He realized, with a faint surprise, that he was afraid: that the very last thing he wanted to do was step out through that door.

Taking a deep breath, he willed himself to push it open.

Yawning, passionate blackness took him once again. Again came the hungry, enveloping thing: again he felt the dreadful alienness
within
him, thrusting its way through his thoughts and limbs alike, insinuating itself into his most primitive emotions, a violation more intimate and ravening and insatiable than anything he had ever imagined. He felt utterly, impossibly alone, beyond sympathy or succor—and that, somehow, seemed worse than any pain.

He took one more breath, summoning his last reserves of physical and emotional strength. He knew he would have only one chance; after that, he would be lost forever, consumed utterly.

Emptying his mind as best he could, he put aside the ravening thing and recalled the lama’s own teachings on desire. He imagined himself on a lake, quite saline, precisely at body temperature, of indeterminate color. He imagined himself floating in it, perfectly motionless. Then—and this was hardest of all—he slowly stopped struggling.

Do you fear annihilation
? he asked himself.

A pause.
No
.

Do you care about being subsumed into the void?

Another pause.
No
.

Are you willing to surrender everything?

Yes.

To give yourself to it utterly?

More quickly now:
Yes
.

Then you are ready.

His limbs convulsed in a long shudder, then relaxed. Throughout his mental and physical being—in every muscle, every synapse—he felt the tulpa hesitate. There was a strange, utterly inexpressible moment of stasis. Then, slowly, the thing relaxed its hold.

And as it did so, Pendergast let a new image—single, powerful, inescapable—form in his mind.

As if from far away, he heard his brother speak again:
Vale, frater
.

For a moment, Diogenes became visible again. Then, as quickly as he had come, he began to fade away.

“Wait,” Pendergast said. “Don’t go.”

“But I must.”

“I have to know. Are you really dead?”

Diogenes did not answer.

“Why did you do this? Why did you help me?”

“I didn’t do it for you,” Diogenes replied. “I did it for my child.” And as he faded into the enfolding dark, he gave a small, enigmatic smile.

Constance sat in the wing chair at Pendergast’s feet. A dozen times, she had raised the gun and pointed it at his heart; a dozen times, she had hesitated. She had hardly noticed when the ship righted itself suddenly, when it drove forward again at high speed. For her, the ship had ceased to exist.

She could wait no longer. It was cruel to let him suffer. He had been kind to her; she should respect what, she was certain, would be his wishes. Taking a strong grip on the weapon, she raised it with fresh resolve.

A violent shudder raked Pendergast’s frame. A moment later, his eyes fluttered open.

“Aloysius?” she asked.

For a moment, he did not move. Then he gave the faintest of nods.

Suddenly, she became aware of the smoke ghost. It had materialized by the agent’s shoulder. For a moment it was still. Then it drifted first one way, then another, almost like a dog searching for a scent. Shortly, it began to move away.

“Do not interfere,” Pendergast whispered. And for a moment Constance feared the dreadful change was still over him. But then he opened his eyes again and looked at her, and she knew the truth immediately.

“You’ve come back,” she said.

He nodded.

“How?” she whispered.

When he answered, it was in the faintest of voices. “That which I took on when I beheld the Agozyen has been burned away in my struggle. Not unlike the lost wax process in metal casting. All that now remains is the . . . original.”

Weakly, he raised one hand. Without another word, she knelt at his side, grasped it tightly.

“Let me rest,” he whispered. “For two minutes—no more. Then we must go.”

She nodded, glanced at the clock on the mantel. Over her shoulder, the tulpa was gliding away. As she turned to watch, it drifted—slowly, but with implacable purpose—over the still form of the unconscious Marya; through the front door of the suite; and on into mystery.