“You’re not supposed to escape,” Cap said in a hateful, childish voice. “That’s not in the scenario.” “It is now, “Andy said, and pushed again. “Owwwww!” Cap whined… “Do you understand that?” “Yes, I understand, don’t, don’t do that anymore, it hurts!” “This Hockstetter-will he question my going to the funeral?” “No, Hockstetter is all wrapped up in the little girl. He thinks of little else these days.”
“Good.” It wasn’t good at all. It was desperation. “Last thing, Captain Hollister. You’re going to forget that we had this little talk.” “Yes, I’m going to forget all about it.”
The black horse was loose. It was starting its run. Take me out of here, Andy thought dimly. Take me out of here; the horse is loose and the woods are burning. The headache came in a sickish cycle of thudding pain.
“Everything I’ve told you will occur naturally to you as your own idea.”
“Yes.”
Andy looked at Cap’s desk and saw a box of Kleenex there. He took one of them and began dabbing at his eyes with it. He was not crying, but the headache had caused his eyes to water and that was just as good.
“I’m ready to go now,” he said to Cap.
He let go. Cap looked out at the alders again, thoughtfully blank. Little by little, animation came back into his face, and he turned toward Andy, who was wiping at his eyes a bit and sniffing. There was no need to overact.
“How are you feeling now, Andy?”
“A little better,” Andy said. “But… you know… to hear it like that…”
“Yes, you were very upset,” Cap said. “Would you like to have a coffee or something?”
“No, thanks. I’d like to go back to my apartment please.”
“Of course. I’ll see you out.”
“Thank you.”
22
The two men who had seen him up to the office looked at Andy with doubtful suspicion-the Kleenex, the red and watering eyes, the paternal arm that Cap had put around his shoulders. Much the same expression came into the eyes of Cap’s secretary.
“He broke down and cried when he heard Pynchot was dead,” Cap said quietly. “He was very upset. I believe I’ll see if I can arrange for him to attend Herman’s funeral with me. Would you like to do that, Andy?”
“Yes,” Andy said. “Yes, please. If it can be arranged. Poor Dr. Pynchot.” And suddenly he burst into real tears. The two men led him past Senator Thompson’s bewildered, embarrassed aide, who had several blue-bound folders in his hands. They took Andy out, still weeping, each with a hand clasped lightly at his elbow. Each of them wore an expression of disgust that was very similar to Cap’s-disgust for this fat drug addict who had totally lost control of his emotions and any sense of perspective and gushed tears for the man who had been his captor.
Andy’s tears were real… but it was Charlie he wept for.
23
John always rode with her, but in her dreams Charlie rode alone. The head groom, Peter Drabble, had fitted her out with a small, neat English saddle, but in her dreams she rode bareback. She and John rode on the bridle paths that wove their way across the Shop grounds, moving in and out of the toy forest of sugarpines and skirting the duckpond, never doing more than an easy canter, but in her dreams she and Necromancer galloped together, faster and faster, through a real forest; they plunged at speed down a wild trail and the light was green through the interlaced branches overhead, and her hair streamed out behind her.
She could feel the ripple of Necromancer’s muscles under his silky hide, and she rode with her hands twisted in his mane and whispered in his ear that she wanted to go faster… faster… faster.
Necromancer responded. His hooves were thunder. The path through these tangled, green woods was a tunnel, and from somewhere behind her there came a faint crackling “and
(the woods are burning)
a whiff” of smoke. It was a fire, a fire she had started, but there was no guilt-only exhilaration. They could outrace it. Necromancer could go anywhere, do anything. They would escape the foresttunnel. She could sense brightness ahead.
“Faster. Faster.”
The exhilaration. The freedom. She could no longer tell where her thighs ended and Necromancer’s sides began. They were one, fused, as fused as the metals she welded with her power when she did their tests. Ahead of them was a huge deadfall, a blowdown of white wood like a tangled cairn of bones. Wild with lunatic joy, she kicked at Necromancer lightly with her bare heels and felt his hindquarters bunch.
They leaped it, for a moment floating in the air. Her head was back; her hands held horsehair and she screamed-not in fear but simply because not to scream, to hold in, might cause her to explode. Free, free, free… Necromancer, I love you.
They cleared the deadfall easily but now the smell of smoke was sharper, clearer-there was a popping sound from behind them and it was only when a spark spiraled down and briefly stung her flesh like a nettle before going out that she realized she was naked. Naked and
(but the woods are burning)
free, unfettered, loose-she and Necromancer, running for the light.
“Faster,” she whispered. “Faster, oh please.”
Somehow the big black gelding produced even more speed. The wind in Charlie’s ears was rushing thunder. She did not have to.breathe; air was scooped into her throat through her half-open mouth. Sun shone through these old trees in dusty bars like old copper.
And up ahead was the light-the end of the forest, open land, where she and Necromancer would run forever. The fire was behind them, the hateful smell of smoke, the feel of fear. The sun was ahead, and she would ride Necromancer all the way to the sea, where she would perhaps find her father and the two of them would live by pulling in nets full of shining, slippery fish.
“Faster!” she cried triumphantly. “Oh, Necromancer, go faster, go faster, go-”
And that was when the silhouette stepped into the widening funnel of light where the woods ended, blocking the light in its own shape, blocking the way out. At first, as always in this dream, she thought it was her father, was sure it was her father, and her joy became almost hurtful… before suddenly transforming into utter terror.
She just had time to register the fact that the man was too big, too tall-and yet somehow familiar, dreadfully familiar, even in silhouette-before Necromancer reared, screaming.
Can horses scream? I didn’t know they could scream-
Struggling to stay on, her thighs slipping as his hooves pawed at the air, and he wasn’t screaming, he was whinnying, but it was a scream and there were other screaming whinnies somewhere behind her, oh dear God, she thought, horses back there, horses back there and the woods are burning-
Up ahead, blocking the light, that silhouette, that dreadful shape. Now it began to come toward her; she had fallen onto the path and Necromancer touched her bare stomach gently with his muzzle.
“Don’t you hurt my horse!” she screamed at the advancing silhouette, the dream-father who was not her father. “Don’t you hurt the horses. Oh, please don’t hurt the horses!”
But the figure came on and it was drawing a gun and that was when she awoke, sometimes with a scream, sometimes only in a shuddery cold sweat, knowing that she had dreamed badly but unable to remember anything save the mad, exhilarating plunge down the wooded trail and the smell of fire… these things, and an almost sick feeling of betrayal…