Ashbless turned away, snatched up the sword and as he and the Master both screamed he swung it in a hard overhead wood-chopping stroke that not only snapped the taut rope but shattered the blade and a roof tile.
Still screaming, the Master receded rapidly away, as though he were lying in the bed of an invisible truck that was trying to beat the zero-to-sixty record. Then he was out past the roof edge and picking up more speed, skimming away twenty feet or so above the ground. He was silhouetted against the moon, so Ashbless could see him clearly even in the deepening dusk.
“Enjoy it in the stinking madhouse, Doyle!” roared a voice from the pit below Ashbless’ feet. “Eating excrement and being buggered by the guards, that’s what’s in store for you, boy! It’s true, Romanelli jumped ahead and looked! And listen, we already rescued Rebecca, Romanelli’s got her, but now that she’s no good for barter I’ll tell you what she can look forward to… “
As the voice raved on, Ashbless realized that it was the Master speaking through the one wax man that still had a head. The Master himself was just a dot on the face of the moon now, slowly shrinking. After a minute or two the voice from the pit, which was still dilating upon the defilements in store for Rebecca, and how much she’d eventually come to relish them, abruptly choked and ceased. Either the wax speaking apparatus had broken down or the Master was out of range.
Ashbless shambled back through the hole in the wall and lurched down the stairs. When he reached the ground floor hall he saw someone start out of a dark doorway on his right and then, hearing his approach, scramble back inside; but Ashbless didn’t even look into the room as he passed it.
When he got outside he glanced around. The horses had suffered the same disintegrative fate as Mustapha’s sons, so Ashbless set out, barefoot, to walk the five and a half miles to the Harbor of Boolak. His boat didn’t leave until dawn, so it didn’t matter that he walked very slowly, pausing every few steps to glance fearfully up at the rising full moon.
A few minutes after Ashbless had shambled away out of sight a wild-eyed, dirty, bearded face peeked out of the doorway and blinked at the darkening funeral plain.
“See what you’ve done, Darrow?” the man was muttering. “Perfectly safe, you said! I remember you saying it—’It is perfectly safe, Doyle.’ Hell, you might as well have let Treff come along. He couldn’t have made things any worse. I’ve got to get back to the river, see if I can’t swim back up to when everything was all right.”
And the Ashbless ka tiptoed out into the evening air and stood looking around uncertainly, for he couldn’t exactly recall where the river was or what it was called, though he did know he’d seen a number of branches of it. Then he remembered that one could get to it anywhere, so he chose a direction at random and strode away, a jerky but confident smile on his face.
CHAPTER 14
“Sisters, weave the web of death;
Sisters, cease, the work is done.”
Once again he was trying to find his way out of the maze of fog-choked alleys; and though Darrow—in the dream he could never remember his new name—had groped several miles through the snaky, doubling-back and sometimes simply dead end lanes and alleys, he still hadn’t come to a street wide enough to wheel a cart through, much less the broad, well-trafficked pavement of Leadenhall Street. Finally he stopped, and heard, as he always did at this point in the dream, a slow, irregular knocking somewhere in the thick fog overhead; and then a second or two later a shuffling of footsteps nearby.
“Hello,” he said timidly; then, more confidently, “hello there! Perhaps you can help me find my way.”
The footsteps rasped closer across the fog-damp grittiness of the cobblestones, and a dark blur in the fog became recognizable as a ragged man.
As always, Darrow recoiled in mind-numbing fear when he realized it was Brendan Doyle. “Jesus, Doyle,” he screamed, “I’m sorry, stay away please, oh God…” He’d have run back up the alley, but his legs wouldn’t move.
Doyle smiled and pointed upward, into the fog.
Helplessly, Darrow looked up—and then put his entire soul into a shriek so loud that it woke him.
He crouched motionless on the bed until, with considerable relief, he recognized the furniture in the dim room, and realized he was in his own bed. Once again it had just been a dream. His hand darted out, seized the neck of the brandy decanter on the bedside table, tipped the thing upside-down to expel the glass stopper, and then he righted it and brought it to his lips.
The door to Claire’s room snapped open and she hurried across the room toward Dundee’s bed, frowning sleepily through her disordered hair. “What in hell is the matter, Jacob?”
“Muscle cramp… (gulp)… in my back.” He clanked the decanter back down on the table.
“You and your muscle cramps!” She sat down on the bed. “I’m your wife, Jacob, you don’t have to lie to me. I know it’s a nightmare. You always yell, ‘I’m sorry, Doyle!’ when you come crashing awake. Go ahead and tell me about it—who’s Doyle? Did he have something to do with you getting so wealthy?”
Dundee took a breath, then let it out. “It’s just muscle cramps, Claire. I’m sorry I woke you up.”
She pursed her lips. “Is the cramp gone now?”
Dundee groped for the stopper and poked it back into the decanter neck. “Yes. You can go back to bed.”
She leaned forward and kissed him lightly. “Maybe I’ll stay here with you for a little while.”
“I don’t think—” he began hastily, but was interrupted by a knock at the hall door.
A muffled voice asked, “Are you all right, sir?”
“Yes, Joe, no problem,” Dundee called. “Just couldn’t sleep.”
“I could bring you a cup of rum coffee if you’d like, sir.”
“No thank you, Joe, I—” Dundee hesitated, glanced at his wife, then said, “Thank you, Joe, yes, that might help.”
Footsteps receded away down the carpeted hall, and Claire stood up.
Knowing she wouldn’t take him up on it now, Dundee raised his eyebrows and said, “I thought you were going to stay here for a bit.”
Claire’s mouth was a straight line. “You know how I feel about Joe.” She strode back into her own room and closed the door.
Dundee stood up, clawed the hair back from his forehead and crossed to the window. He pulled the curtain aside and stared down at the broad curve of St. James Street, the uniformly elegant housefronts all palely lit in amber by the flickering street lights. The sky was less black toward the east—it would be dawn soon, a clear Sunday in March.
Yes, my dear, he thought bleakly, I do know how you feel about Joe. But I certainly can’t explain to you why I need to support him and keep him around. I wish to hell he’d get a new body, though, so I could tell you I fired him and hired this new guy—but he likes Maturo’s body, and I don’t dare try to force him. After all, he’s going to be my partner long, long after you’ve died of old age, my dear… after I’ve taken the best of our sons, and then our grandsons, and then great-grandsons, getting richer and buying more and more during my successive stays in each descendant’s body, until by the time 1983 rolls around again I will be the secret owner of all the world’s important corporations. I’ll own whole cities—whole countries. And after 1983, when old J. Cochran Darrow disappears, I’ll be able to come out of hiding, step out from behind the screen of corporate links and overlaps and figureheads and front men, and I’ll damn well no exaggeration rule the goddamn world.