Walkers (39 page)

‘Trainee photographer,’ said Lloyd,
still suspicious. Henry didn’t know what kind of recruiting spiel Springer had
given him to persuade him to take Ashapola’s shilling, but it was obvious that
he had been expecting something rather different. Certainly not a
skinny-looking storekeeper’s son from Solana Beach and a blotchy-faced
philosophy professor in creased pyjamas.

‘Springer said you were a
slide-boxer,’ put in Gil. ‘Did you try it out yet? The suit?

The slide-boxing?’

‘Kind of,’ said Lloyd.

‘Can we have a demonstration?’ asked
Henry. ‘We don’t even know what slide-boxing is.’

Springer walked around and touched
Henry’s arm. ‘If you charge up, Henry, you’ll all be able to show each other
what you can do.’

Henry knelt down, and Gil and Lloyd
knelt down beside him. Springer stood over them, and recited the words that would
transform them into Night Warriors. Three golden haloes shone over their heads,
and then faded. At last they stood up.

Kasyx’s crimson armour crackled with
even more static power than it had before.

Springer said, ‘I have given you the
maximum charge this time. You have two powerful combatants to supply, and you
will need it. The only reason I gave you less last time was because I did not
expect you to have to fight so violently; and also because there is always a
risk with an inexperienced charge-keeper of accidental discharge, which can not
only kill you and your warriors, but the dreamer, too.’

Kasyx laid his hand on Tebulot’s
shoulder and Tebulot’s weapon immediately hummed with full power, its golden
charge-scale glowing bright. Now they turned to Xaxxa, the slide-boxer.

Xaxxa seemed even more muscular and
well developed than he had before. His chest bulged and gleamed, and his
stomach was flat and hard. He wore a white domed helmet which flashed and
sparkled with bursts of silver light, as if it had been lacquered with flakes
of chrome. There was a curved white bar around the brow of the helmet, and
around this bar teemed dozens of tiny coloured lights.

On his shoulders, Xaxxa wore white
protective pads, overleaved like the scales of a dragon. His torso was bare and
all he wore around his loins was a tight white protective codpiece, of the same
sparkling substance as his helmet. It was fastened in place by a thin leather
waistband and a thin leather strap which cleaved deep between his muscular buttocks.
His calves were clad in white boots, the sides of which were clustered with
complicated insets of silver and copper, in patterns which reminded Kasyx of
micro-circuits.

‘The boots are the key to Xaxxa’s
talent,’ said Springer. ‘If you will charge him up, Kasyx, he will show you
something of what he can do.’

Kasyx laid his hand on Xaxxa’s
shoulder. Xaxxa watched him closely as the power of Ashapola thrummed into his
body. ‘I always got to depend on you for power?’ he asked Kasyx.

Kasyx nodded. ‘Just as I, in my
turn, have to depend on Springer’s god-of-gods, Ashapola. In the Night
Warriors, old buddy, we are all dependent on each other.’ As Xaxxa’s body was
infused with power, the metallic patterns on his boots began to sparkle and
glow. At last, Springer said, ‘Enough,’ and Kasyx drew away. Springer stepped
forward and lowered the white bar from the brow of Xaxxa’s helmet to the level
of his chin. Over his face, there appeared a curved visor of absolute energy,
which from the outside was an optically perfect mirror. Whenever an opponent
faced Xaxxa, he would see nothing but his own face.

‘Now, watch,’ said Springer. ‘I will
pretend to be Xaxxa’s opponent. Xaxxa will defend himself, and then attack me
in his turn.’

Springer poised herself in an
attacking position, her knees bent, her hands raised.

Xaxxa crouched down, too, gradually
moving away from her in a diagonal, his open hands tensely circling in the air.

There was a split-second of total
tension. Then Springer flashed in towards Xaxxa, her hands flying in a style
that looked like hyper-complicated kung fu. But there was a sharp
veeeowwfff!
and Xaxxa slid instantly to
one side, on a shining two-foot-wide strip of pure golden power. Then, with a
longer whistle, curving and higher pitched, a strip of power zipped across the
room, twisting itself into a corkscrew loop, and Xaxxa slid along it at high
speed, like a two-hundred-mile-an-hour surfer. He actually turned upside down
at the top of the loop, then came hurtling back towards Springer on a streaking
strip of power that brought him right up behind her, poised to drop-kick her in
the back, even before she had recovered herself enough to turn around.

He allowed the power-strip to fade,
and came to a standstill. He lifted his visor, grinning widely. ‘Slide-boxing,’
he announced. Then, ‘
Wow!’

‘That’s something,’ said Kasyx. He
was impressed.

Tebulot was almost envious. ‘Here
you’ve got me lugging this damned great machine around with me, and look at him
go!’

Springer touched each of them on the
forehead. ‘Each Night Warrior has his part to play. You are several, but you
are one.’

‘Well, then,’ said Kasyx. ‘Isn’t it
time we went looking for Samena?’

‘Yes,’ said Springer.

‘Whose dream?’ asked Kasyx, looking
at Springer meaningfully.

‘Your ex-wife’s, I’m afraid. Out of
all of those who have been studying the creature at Scripps, hers is the most
vivid response. She was tired tonight; she went to bed at nine-thirty, and is
already asleep.’

‘We going into his ex-wife’s
nightmare?’ asked Xaxxa.

Springer nodded.

‘You said we were going into black
dreams, as well as white. How come the very first dream I get has to be white?’

‘You’ll have a really good time,’
said Tebulot. ‘White people dream about other white people, so you’ll have
plenty of crackers to knock around.’

‘Are you trying to be funny?’ asked
Xaxxa.

‘What are you going to do?’ Tebulot
challenged him. ‘Loop-de-loop and smack me in the back of the head? This weapon
fires backwards, in case you’re interested.’

‘Jive ass,’ Xaxxa retorted.

Kasyx said, ‘For Christ’s sake,
Xaxxa, stop trying to act like Mr T.’

‘Mr T?’ Xaxxa yelped. ‘Where’s this
man been?’

‘He’s a philosophy professor,’ said
Tebulot. ‘That is, during the day. But tonight he’s Kasyx, your charge-keeper,
and you need him; just like you need me and I need you.

So let’s go find Samena.’

Xaxxa made no more complaints.
Tebulot recognised that in any case he was only playing the part of the
aggressive black because he was nervous and excited and unsure of himself, the
same way that Tebulot had been, just yesterday – and to a great extent, still
was. He saw strength in Xaxxa, and resilience, and humour, and all of those
qualities would make him a good man to rely on in case of a crisis. The three
Night Warriors gathered close together, and clasped hands. There was no
animosity on Xaxxa’s face as he interlaced his fingers with Kasyx and Tebulot;
only anticipation and excitement and a small measure of that feeling called
fear. They rose up, through the ceiling of the room, through the rafters of the
attic, through the shingles of the roof, and then they were out in the night,
more than a hundred feet high, and turning southwards. This time, there was no
need for Springer to direct them to the house of their dreamer. Kasyx had
Andrea’s address engraved on his bank balance.

‘I keep thinking this can’t be
real,’ Xaxxa whispered.

‘Me too,’ said Tebulot.

‘I mean this is Peter Pan, right?
This is real flying. I only wish I could bring my Pentax. The pictures you
could get, you know? The shots!’

They followed the curve of the
coastline southwards to La Jolla, perched on its headland overlooking La Jolla
Bay. They turned inland when they reached the cove, flying over the glittering
balconies of all the fashionable restaurants, over Prospect Street to Pearl
Street, where they spiralled downwards at last towards a neat, small,
whitewashed house with Spanish-style arches and a red-tiled roof. Andrea’s
Volkswagen Rabbit was parked in the exact centre of the well-swept driveway.

The three of them faded in through
the red-tiled roof, into the main bedroom. Andrea was lying on her back on the
Spanish carved double bed, her hair in curlers, her pale green nightdress
rumpled up around her thighs. A paperback copy of Hardy’s
World
of Plankton
lay on
the bedside table, next to a jar of cold cream and a small Cartier alarm-clock
that had once belonged to Henry. The room smelled of Estee Lauder perfume, and
it gave Kasyx something of a familiar shock. So did the sight of Andrea in her
nightdress. Ever since their divorce, she had always been fully dressed when he
met her, smart and neat and businesslike. To see her like this reminded him
uncomfortably of the four years in which they had been married. ‘Your ex?’
Xaxxa whispered. ‘Not bad looking, if you don’t object to a second opinion.’

Kasyx looked at her curiously. He
supposed, after all, that she wasn’t all that bad looking. His impression of
her face had been distorted by acrimony and alimony, so that if he had been
asked to draw her, she probably would have turned out uglier than Yaomauitl.

‘Let’s get into the dream,’ he
suggested. ‘How about you, Xaxxa? Are you ready for this?’

‘Do your worstest,’ said Xaxxa.

Kasyx lifted his hands, and across
the darkness of the bedroom drew the crackling blue octagon of light. Then he
pushed forward his hands, and divided the darkness inside the octagon like a
curtain, stretching it apart. Slowly, a sunlit street-scene appeared, although
none of the sunlight fell into the bedroom. Kasyx beckoned Tebulot and Xaxxa to
stand close beside him, and then he raised the octagon over their heads. They
held hands tightly as the light descended all around them, and gradually
enveloped them in Andrea’s dream.

Xaxxa breathed, ‘Holy shit.’

The instant the octagon touched the
floor, the three Night Warriors found themselves in a dusty, hot, brightly
sunlit square, in what appeared to be a North African city like Tangiers or
Marrakesh. A mosaic fountain splashed in the roasting wind and palm trees
rattled above the white domed rooftops. They could hear the hoarse throaty
tremolo of a bamboo
chebaba;
and the
clamour of a street market not far away.

Figures in green-and-white
jellabas
hurried through the square,
every one of them wearing dark mask-like sunglasses. There was a smell of heat and
sewage and roasted meat. Xaxxa looked around in awe. ‘This is a dream? This is
actually a dream?’

Kasyx said, ‘That’s right. And we’re
right inside it.’ ‘And we going to find this devil character inside this
dream?’ ‘That’s what Springer says.’

‘Fee-eew!’
said
Xaxxa.

Tebulot suddenly pointed across the
square, to a wide archway. ‘There,’ he said.

‘Isn’t that your wife?’

Kasyx pressed his hand to the left
of his helmet, and his vision instantly jumped to close-up. He glimpsed a
woman’s back as she disappeared into the crowds of the
souk;
a woman in a solar topi and a white bush-shirt. He didn’t see
her face, but he saw the green feather in her hatband. Andrea’s trademark
colour had always been green.

‘You’re probably right,’ he told
Tebulot. ‘I guess we’d better follow her, see where, she goes. But can you
please remember that she’s my
ex-wife.’

Tebulot smiled, and beckoned to
Xaxxa. Together, keeping shoulder-to-shoulder, the three of them crossed the
square, and went through the archway, elbowing and pushing their way through
crowds of Arabs. The sorrowful music of the
chebaba
grew louder, and was joined by the tremulous playing of pipes. Pan-pipes, from
the Atlas mountains; magical pipes whose music could convey the listener into
dreams beyond dreams. The crowds jostled even closer, and the Night Warriors
found themselves forcing their way along a narrow market street, sheltered from
the midday sun by layers of striped awnings and lined on each side by stalls
selling bronze dishes and copper jugs, strange bead embroidery, leather shoes
and intricate camel harnesses, caged birds which whistled and piped, and
sweetmeats studded with flaked almonds and blowflies.

At the very end of this street they
saw the white woman disappearing into the doorway of a shop. They followed her
to the front of the shop, pushing aside dark-skinned children who danced around
them for money. There was Arabic writing across the doorway; from inside, there
was the sound of a radio playing Arab music, and the fragrance of
kif
resin, burning in a pipe.

‘What do we do, go in?’ asked Xaxxa.

Tebulot slung his weapon across his
back. ‘I don’t see that we have any choice, Kasyx, do you?’

Kasyx shrugged. ‘I just want to be
careful. There’s no telling what my ex-wife might do to me, if she finds that
she’s got me cold, right inside her own dream.’

‘Just so long as she don’t wake
herself up,’ said Xaxxa. Kasyx cautiously entered the shop doorway. ‘Anybody
there?’ he called loudly.