The drums sounded on, and it was still his time they beat. He ran through black space, splashing, running as it were in his own grave, running away from Baron Samedi, whose dark space he inhabited, the presiding god of his life and lord of his adventures. The lord of all who had made a grave of their lives. Baron Samedi's drums still beat for him.
But there were fires ahead too, and electric light flickering among them. He was encouraged, although the water around his legs was growing deeper and the bottom grew softer and clung to his steps. He heard shots, someone was firing; the reports were mostly single but now and then there came a burst of automatic fire. None of the shooting was close as far as he could tell.
His exhaustion made a copper taste in his mouth. He could hear his own breathing, a dry wheeze, unrelieved. Still gagging on the taste of the fiery alcohol, he wanted water. He put down a hand as he ran, trying to scoop up something cool and drinkable; the move threw him off balance, into a series of crazy-legged staggers from which he recovered with difficulty. His cupped hand brought up something bad-smelling, much too thick to drink and too repellent.
He thought he heard other runners behind him, splashing through the same stream he had followed, fanned out from bank to bank. He saw a car maneuvering along a road fifty yards away, halfway up a rise. The fires ahead were close to the road, barrel fires that stank of gasoline and sent out fumes of oily black smoke, visible in the fire's own light. The hill along which the road ran was walled by ridges of congealed earth whose contours showed against the firelight like the definitions on a relief map. At the top of the same hill, searchlights were being played around the valley. He did not try to stay out of their way, only to find his own by their intermittent patterns.
For a while, as he ran, he believed absolutely that Baron Samedi was running with him, not staggering in the same ungainly manner but moving along beside him, for amusement, to exercise his possession. He had to concentrate to put the thought out of his mind.
Reaching the road, he saw that its surface showed the traces of paving. For the first time since he had started running he was confronted with his own rational intentions. He had been running with the god entirely. The god had been his pursuer, his goal, the notion of his nearly mindless flight, the process of running.
Along that remnant of a modern road he felt he was either leaving the illusion of his master's presence or entering an illusion in which he was free of it. He had stopped running. There was no more breath for it.
Before him was a blocu. Fifty or so island people, almost all of them men, stood in the road. Piles of old half-burnt tires were heaped along the shoulder. Big hundred-gallon drums filled with tire strips sent up a black stink, like meat butchered and roasted raw, the living flesh of some vile animal. Farther from the road he could see stripped tires piled in towers and burning. Others stood as though prepared for the next occasion, a midnight Mass of Pére Lebrun, when the living meat would be less exotic, a more familiar dish, and the mystic ritual would be transubstantiation in reverse as every grain of life transcendent was burned howling out of the beast.
A big young cane cutter approached. "Hey mon, you got somefin' for me, yah?" "Lajan, blan," another kid called. Patois hung at that end of the island. Her part. Who? Lara, her name was Lara. Her soul had belonged to Marinette, as his to Ghede, the Baron Samedi. There was a race and he had run it. She was gone.
He had wads of dollars and local bills. He straightened them out, flexed them with an appealing snap and delivered. He half shouldered his way through the crowd, a discreet, polite and most accommodating way of shouldering. The handouts worked somewhat; by the time he was out of bills he was among the losers and runts who had been forced to the rear and had nothing to play against his fear except their need and desperation. These were not to be despised, because he had survived the blocu. There had not been much tourism on the island for years, and the hatred of the islanders had cooled somewhat.
Walking beside the potholed road, he was never alone. The drums kept him company. Figures passed him, some moving so quickly he might have been standing still. From the darkness people shouted his name. Voices addressed him as Legba; sometimes he thought he was wearing a stovepipe hat. On his chin he felt the fringes of a false beard.
There was a car behind him sounding its horn. He moved farther off the road, but after the car had eased past it stopped for him. It was a Mercedes, the sleek fender covered in red dust. An island soldier was driving it and there was a soldier with an automatic rifle beside him.
The rear door opened and Michael saw a long-legged olive-skinned man with a neat mustache settled in the back seat. He was in uniform; his collar was adorned with the red tabs of a senior British officer. It was Colonel Junot, the administrator of the new order, graduate of Fort Benning and veteran of Grenada.
"Spare yourself, Ahearn," the colonel said. "I'll take you where you're going. Oh me," he said, seeing Michael's spattered trousers.
"No," Michael said. "I've worked it out."
The colonel reached out patiently and took him by the arm. "Yes, yes, worked it out, very good. Here, come take a ride with me."
So Michael got in and the soldier handed him a Miami Herald.
"To sit on," the colonel explained. They followed the road along the Morne until they were driving far above the ocean, with the stars overhead and a risen moon at the edge of the sea's dark horizon. Low clouds dissipated against the jutting rocks below the road.
"Too bad, you can only get the view here by daylight, Ahearn. This is one of the great views of the Western Hemisphere. The French wanted to fight the Battle of the Saints here. On that bay!" He pointed into darkness to the right. "Well, you can't see it now."
When they had gone a little farther, Colonel Junot said, "Dutch Point! Lovely peninsula. I suppose you know we haven't been having many visitors recently. It's our somewhat violent political situation. Social unrest, you see."
"Yes," Michael said.
"Well, here's a secret. The cruise line companies use Dutch Point all the same. They just don't tell their passengers where they are. They tell them it's Point Paradise. Where could be sweeter? Mum and Dad and the wee bairns go to Point Paradise, wot? So close the bloody roads to the point, and put a skirmish line of about a hundred-fifty rent-a-cops to seal it off. Let a couple of colorfully garbed vendors and a steel band through. Good, isn't it?"
"It's good thinking."
"Yes," Junot said, "good thinking on the part of the cruise lines. Paradise Point. Bloody tourists disport themselves in the surf, no idea they're in between a Glock and a griddle, I mean a hot spot. No, they're in Paradise. If we had those rent-a-cops stand down, the bastards would think they'd died and gone to hell. They'd experience some social tension."
"You're taking over, aren't you, Colonel?"
The colonel shrugged modestly.
"Will you continue the Paradise Point tradition? With the cruise lines?"
"Certainly," the colonel said. "But one day we won't have to build paradise with rent-a-cops. With luck — and, unfortunately, a little discreet repression — we'll have good old paradise back all over the island. Paradise, paradise! Upscale, upscale!" The colonel laughed and sighed.