"Raul?"
Of all people, Raul.
Just as she'd got a grip on the task before her he stepped through the door, his appearance here so shocking she might have put it down to some mental aberrance, had she not been certain of her mind's workings now as she'd never been certain in her life before. This was no hallucination. He was here in the flesh, her name on his lips and a look of welcome on his face.
"What are you doing here?" she said, feeling her grasp of the suit slipping from her.
"I came for you," was his reply. On its heels, and on his, came grim comprehension of what he meant by that. There were Lix slithering over the doorstep into the house.
"What have you done?" she said.
"I told you," he replied. "I came for you. We all did."
She took a step away from him, but with the schism occupying half the house and the Lix guarding the door, the only route of escape available to her was up the stairs. At best that promised a temporary reprieve. She'd be trapped up there, waiting for them to find her in their own good time, except that they wouldn't need to bother. In minutes, the Iad would be in the Cosm. After which, death might very well be desirable. She had to stay put, Lix or no Lix. Her business was here, and it had to be done quickly.
"Keep away from me," she said to Raul. "I don't know why you're here, but just keep your distance!"
"I came to see the arrival," Raul replied. "We can wait here together if you like."
Raul's shirt was unbuttoned, and around his neck she caught sight of a familiar object: the Shoal medallion. With the sight came a suspicion: that this wasn't Raul at all. His manner wasn't that of the frightened Nunciate she'd met at the Mision de Santa Catrina. There was somebody else behind his semi-simian face: the man who'd first shown her the Shoal's enigmatic sigil.
"Kissoon," she said.
"Now you've spoiled my surprise," he replied.
"What have you done to Raul?"
"Unhoused him. Occupied the body. It wasn't difficult. He'd got a lot of Nuncio in him. That made him available. I pulled him into the Loop, the same way I did with you. Only he didn't have the wits to resist me the way you or Randolph resisted. He gave in quickly enough."
"You murdered him."
"Oh no," Kissoon said lightly. "His spirit's alive and kicking. Keeping my flesh from the fire till I go back for it. I'll reoccupy it once it's out of the Loop. I certainly don't want to stay in this. It's repulsive."
He came at her suddenly, agile as only Raul could be, leaping to catch hold of her arm. She yelled at the force of his grip. He smiled at her again, closing on her in two quick steps, his face inches from hers in a heartbeat.
"Gotcha," he said.
She looked past him to the door, where Grillo was standing, staring into the schism, against which Quiddity's waves were breaking with mounting frequency and ferocity. She yelled his name, but he didn't respond. Sweat ran down his face; saliva dribbled from his slack jaw. Wherever he was out wandering, he wasn't home.
Had she been able to sit in Grillo's skull she'd have understood his fascination. Once over the threshold the innocents had disappeared from his mind's eye, superseded by a sharper distress. His eyes were drawn to the surf, and in it he saw horrors. Closest to the shore were two bodies, thrown towards the Cosm then dragged back by an undertow which threatened to drown them. He knew them, though their faces were much changed. One was Jo-Beth McGuire. The other was Howie Katz. Further out in the waves he thought he glimpsed a third figure, pale against the dark sky. This one he didn't know. There appeared to be no flesh left on his face to recognize. He was a death's-head, riding the surf.
It was further out still, however, where the real horror began. Forms massive and rotting, the air around them dense with activity, as though flies the size of birds were feeding on their foulness. The Iad Uroboros. Even now, mesmerized, his mind (inspired by Swift) looked for words to describe the sight, but the vocabulary was impoverished when it came to evil. Depravity, iniquity, godlessness: what were those simple conditions in the face of such unredeemable essences? Hobbies and entertainments. Palate cleansers between viler courses. He almost envied those closer to the abominations the comprehension that might come with proximity—
Tossed in the tumult of the waves, Howie could have told him a thing or two. As the Iad had closed on them, he'd remembered where he'd sensed this horror before: in the Chicago slaughterhouse where he'd worked two years previous. It was memories of that month that filled his head. The slaughterhouse in summer, blood congealing in the gutters, the animals emptying their bladders and bowels at the sound of the deaths that went before them. Life turned to meat with a single shot. He tried to look beyond these loathsome images to Jo-Beth, with whom he'd come so far, on a tide which had conspired to keep them together, but couldn't get them to the shore fast enough to save them from the slaughterers at their backs. The sight of her, which might have sweetened these last despairing moments, was denied him. All he could see was the cattle beaten on to the ramps, and the shit and blood being hosed away, and kicking carcasses being hooked up by one broken leg and sent down the line for disembowelment. The same horror filling his head forever and forever.
The place beyond the surf was as invisible to him as Jo-Beth, so he had no idea of how far—or indeed how near— they were to its shores. Had he had the power of sight he'd have seen Jo-Beth's father, stricken, and speaking with Tommy-Ray's voice:
"...here we come!...here we come...,"
—and Grillo staring out at the Iad; and Tesla, on the verge of losing her life to a man she called—
"Kissoon! For pity's sake! Look at them! Look!"
Kissoon glanced towards the schism, and the freight being brought by the tide.
"I see them," he said.
"You think they give a fuck about you? If they come through you're dead like all of us!"
"No," he said. "They're bringing a new world, and I've earned my place in it. A high place. You know how many years I've waited for this? Planned for it? Murdered for it? They'll reward me."
"Signed a contract did you? Got it in writing?"
"I'm their liberator. I made this possible. You should have joined the team back in the Loop. Lent me your body for a while. I'd have protected you. But no. You had your own ambitions. Like him." He looked at Jaffe. "Him the same. Had to have a piece of the pie. You both choked on it." Knowing Tesla couldn't leave now, when there was nowhere to leave to, he let her go and took a step towards Jaffe. "He got closer than you did, but then he had the balls."