“Swell. They sure know how to get what they want, don’t they?”
“Generally.”
From the rear floated treble snatches of, “Oh dear God! I saw it! Oh my!” which meant that Sandi was conscious again and functioning normally.
“How do you feel?” Mike almost whispered.
“Me?” Scared.”
“Me, too.”
“Groovy. What do we do now?”
We thought about that for a while. Outside, the darkness thickened. There were no stars visible and no moon, though last night at this time the moon was halfway up and nearly full. The sky had been clear at sunset, too. Apparently the lobster gang wasn’t taking any chances or missing any bets. I didn’t mention this to Mike, though.
We were waiting, intensely waiting, all of us and everything, consciously, yearningly, terrifiedly waiting. It was a texture, this waiting, a pressure where pressure was impossible. The dull, scared taste of apprehension covered everything: I could almost hear it. I had to give Ktch credit; he was thorough.
“I don’t know,” Mike said a little shrilly. “I don’t know what to do at all. I had something worked out before, but I’ve forgotten it.” I’d never heard him sound afraid before. I didn’t like it.
“Well, the first thing we’ve got to do,” with fraudulent briskness, “is keep that beach as brightly lit as we can, to keep the lobster gang from pouring their reality drug into the reservoir. That’s the important thing.”
“Light? Why should that stop them?” He still sounded scared.
“Shame, Michael, unadulterated shame. The things they believe and the things they do are almost mutually exclusive, for one thing; and they seem to be compulsive rationalizers, for another; which leads me to think they have an overdeveloped sense of shame.”
“Hey!” a bit less fear, “maybe we can work on their sense of shame!!”
“Not a chance. A sense of shame’s not much use to anyone. They won’t mind dosing our water, but they won’t want to do it while we’re watching, and that’s all the benefit we can expect from their sense of shame. However…”
One of the troopers screamed like a sudden banshee. Mike nearly fainted. I ran back to see what was happening.
Nothing was happening.
“I don’t know what got into me,” Karen sobbed. “I just, you know, kept getting scareder and scareder, until I just had to let it out or do something horrible. I don’t know!” She poured tears on Andrew’s shoulder.
This was Ktch’s waiting-and-apprehension game at work. I could feel it myself, though I wasn’t paying much attention to it. But something had to be done. A mere glance at our formerly brave little band was enough to tell me that. They were all unnaturally pale, some had developed tics, more had taken to looking back over their shoulders nervously, as though some hellish Thing were lurking there, and none of them looked at all happy. Even Pat’s grin, impossible to erase, had a rather hollow look to it.
“Listen to me, you guys,” I ordered firmly and loudly. “This is just one of the lobster gang’s tricks, this fear-and-waiting bit. That’s all it is, just a trick. It’s not real. Honestly it’s not.”
They looked half hopeful and a bit less credulous, which was an improvement, but not enough.
“Listen. We don’t have to put up with this. We can make them stop it. Yes we can. I did it. I did it last night, and I did it again this morning, when they had me tied up in their loft. It’s easy.”
I moved back to the harpsichord, gesturing to the rest of the band to follow.
“All we have to do is sing at them. Really. That’s all there is to it. We’ll give ’em ‘Love Sold in Doses,’ right? That’s the song I used, and it worked like a charm. Honestly! I think they’re a little afraid of it. Everybody sing, you hear? If you don’t know the words, hum something. Ready? Let’s go!”
And Sativa and The Tripouts and the MacDougal Street Commandos swung into “Love Sold in Doses.” It was pretty ragged at first, but it firmed up quickly, and by the end of the second verse we were doing right well by it. We were feeling better, too — all of us. You could tell it from the singing.
And then, suddenly, like a guitar string snapping, the waiting-and-apprehension business stopped. We all lit up like happy bulbs.
“Keep on singing!” I yelled. “Sing it again. Don’t stop until I do. And sing louder! Let the lobster gang hear it like it is. Louder!”
Oh my, but they were loud! Gary the cacophonous Frog was the loudest of the lot, of course, and flat to boot, but this was no time for technical quibbles. I smiled encouragement at him and — mirabile! — he sang even louder.
Halfway through the second time, the sky began to lighten. When we started on the third time, it was perfectly clear, with stars all over and a big old full moon brighter than a streetlight, and we just went on singing.
At the end of the fifth performance, Laszlo Scott shuffled onto the beach waving a piece of white cloth. We gave them a sixth performance for luck, then quit. We were all a little hoarse, and some of us weren’t as fond of “Love Sold in Doses” as we had been, but we’d won our first skirmish with the lobster gang and we all felt approximately wonderful.
“Head for shore, Mike,” I yelled. “Loathsome Laszlo wants to talk.”
24
HE DIDN’T have a lot to say, and he didn’t say it very well, but that’s Laszlo. We weren’t expecting more.
We might as well forget the music gambit, he told us. All the lobsters were wearing protective suits now. I accepted this, but only because I could see lurking in the trees behind Laszlo two lobsters dressed in silvery blankets. Even so, I wasn’t all that sure we couldn’t make them feel at least a bit uncomfortable. We had a lot of energy going for us.
Ktch sent me his regards, said Laszlo, and promised that if my friends and I would agree to go home right now, he’d personally guarantee that we’d get away from the reservoir unharmed.
I gave Laszlo four detailed and imaginative things he and Ktch could do with that safe-conduct guarantee. Then I demanded that Ktch come out like a man or whatever and speak to me man to thing. In fact, I made quite a scene about it, a virtuoso tantrum, at the end of which Laszlo was huddled on the sand, sniveling, and the MacDougal Street Commandos were cheering.
No soap. Ktch stayed safely out of sight. Too busy, Laszlo claimed. Chicken, I replied.
Then Laszlo haltingly expressed Ktch’s regret that our ill-advised stubbornness (those words gave Laszlo fits) forced him to take strong measures. If we still refused to leave, said Laszlo, Ktch couldn’t even guarantee our lives.
Since we hadn’t expected any such guarantee, I replied, not having it wouldn’t seriously inconvenience us.
(I didn’t feel half as cocksure as I sounded. The triple dinosaur was proof that Ktch could throw some pretty strong magic at us. But I knew that if we didn’t win this fight, being alive afterward wasn’t going to be a particularly advantageous condition. And there was always a possibility, albeit a misty one, that we might actually win.)
Because he so respected me, Laszlo choked out, Ktch was going to give us one last chance. He was going to show us what we’d be up against if we didn’t go quietly home right now like good little cats and chicks.
Then we all screamed. Something was standing behind Laszlo. It was only a shadow, a big opaque black shadow, featureless and formless; but just looking at it turned my stomach, and when it moved a prophecy of pain crawled through my nervous system, a memory of agony to come. It wasn’t just a shadow, it was Evil, a whole history of Evil, contradicting everything I loved in waves of future torment. That was bad. Oh, bad.
And then the thing was gone.
That was only one of the weapons Ktch could use against us, Laszlo chortled, and not the worst one, either. Surely we could see we had no chance. Why did we persist in this foolishness?