Tommy-Ray's whoops of exhilaration were no longer issuing from Jaffe. There was only a low moan, which might have been the father, or the son, or a combination of both.
"You should see," Kissoon said to the tormented face. "Jaffe. Look at me. I want you to see!"
Tesla looked back towards the schism. How many waves were there left to break before the Iad reached the shore? A dozen? Half that number?
Kissoon's irritation with Jaffe was growing. He began to shake the man.
"Look at me, damn you!"
Tesla let him rage. It granted her a moment's grace; a moment in which she might just begin the process of removal to the Loop afresh.
"Wake up and see me, fucker. It's Kissoon. I got out! I got out!"
She let his haranguings become part of the scene she was picturing. Nothing could be excluded. Jaffe, Grillo, the doorway out to Cosm, and of course the doorway to Quiddity, all of it had to be devoured. Even she, the devourer, had to be part of this removal. Chewed up and spat into another time.
Kissoon's shouts suddenly stopped.
"What are you doing?" he said, turning to look at her. His stolen features, not used to expressing rage, were knotted up in a grotesque fashion. She didn't let the sight distract her. That too was part of the scene to be swallowed. She was equal to it.
"Don't you dare!" Kissoon said. "Hear me?"
She heard, and ate.
"I'm warning you," he said, moving back in her direction. "Don't you dare!"
Somewhere in the recesses of Randolph Jaffe's memory those three words, and the tone of their delivery, started an echo. He'd been in a hut once, with the man who'd delivered them in just that fashion. He remembered the hut's stale heat, and the smell of his own sweat. He remembered the scrawny old man squatting beyond the fire. And most of all he remembered the exchange now delivered into his head out of the past:
"Don't you dare."
"Red rag to a bull, saying dare to me. I've seen stuff...done stuff..."
Prompted by the words, he remembered a motion. His hand going down to the pocket of his jacket, to find a blunt-bladed knife that was waiting there. A knife with an appetite for opening up sealed and secret things. Like letters; like skulls.
He heard the words again—
"Don't you dare."
—and opened his sight to the scene in front of him. His arm, a parody of the strong limb he'd once owned—went down to his pocket. All these years he'd never let the knife out of his possession. It was still blunt. It was still hungry. His withered digits closed around the handle. His eyes focused on the head of the man who'd spoken from his memories. It was an easy target.
Tesla saw the motion of Jaffe's head from the corner of her eye; saw him push himself away from the wall and start to raise his right arm up from the vicinity of his pocket. She didn't see what was in it, not until the last possible moment, by which time Kissoon's fingers were tight around her neck, and the Lix around her shins. She'd not let his assault stop the removal. It too became part of the picture she was devouring. And now Jaffe. And his raised hand. And the knife she finally saw glinting in his raised hand. Raised, and falling, driving into the back of Kissoon's neck.
The shaman screamed, his hands dropping from her throat and going around the back of his head to protect himself. She liked his cry. It was the pain of her enemy, and her power seemed to rise on its arc, the task she'd undertaken suddenly easier than it had ever been, as though part of Kissoon's strength was passing to her in the sound. She felt the space they occupied in her mind's mouth, and chewed on it. The house shuddered as a significant piece of it was wrenched away and removed into the closed moments of the Loop.
Instantly, light.
The light of the Loop's perpetual dawn, pouring in through the door. With it the same wind that had blown on her face whenever she'd been here. It blew through the hallway, and took a portion of the Iad's taint with it, off across the wasteland. With its passing she saw the glazed look leaving Grillo's face. He grabbed hold of the door jamb, squinting against the light and shaking his head like a dog maddened with fleas.
With their maker wounded, the Lix had left off their attack, but she didn't hope they'd leave her be for long. Before he could redirect them she made for the door, pausing only to push Grillo ahead of her.
"What in God's name have you done?" he said as they stepped out on to bleached desert earth.
She hurried him away from the relocated rooms, which without a structure around them to spread the load of Quiddity's breakers were already coming apart at every corner.
"You want the good news or the bad?" she said.
"The good."
"This is the Loop. I brought part of the house through—"
Now she'd done it she could barely believe she'd succeeded.
"I did," she said, as though Grillo had contradicted her. "Fuck me, I did!"
"Including the Iad?" Grillo said.
"The schism and whatever's on the other side came too."
"So what's the bad news?"
"This is Trinity, remember? Point Zero?"
"Oh Jesus."
"And that—" she pointed to the steel tower, which was no more than a quarter of a mile from where they stood, "— is the bomb."
"So when does it blow? Have we got time—"
"I don't know," she said. "Maybe it won't detonate as long as Kissoon's alive. He's held that moment, all these years."
"Is there any way out?"
"Yes."
"Which direction? Let's do it."
"Don't waste time wishing, Grillo. We're not getting out of here alive."
"You can think us out. You thought us in."
"No. I'm staying. I have to see it to the end."
"This is the end," he said, pointing back towards the fragment of the house. "Look."
The walls were toppling in clouds of plaster dust, as Quiddity's waves were thrown against them. "How much more end do you want? Let's get the fuck out of here."
Tesla looked for some sign of either Kissoon or Jaffe in the confusion, but the ether of the dream-sea was spilling out in all directions, too thick now to be dispersed by the wind. They were in it somewhere, but out of sight.
"Tesla? Are you listening to me?"
"The bomb won't go till Kissoon's dead," she said. "He's holding the moment—"
"So you said."
"If you want to run for the exit, you might make it. It's in that direction." She pointed beyond the cloud through the town and out the other side. "You'd better get going."
"You think I'm a coward."
"Did I say that?"
A wave of ether curled towards them.
"If you're going to go, go," she said, her gaze fixed on the rubble of Coney Eye's lounge and hall. Above it, just visible through Quiddity's spillage, was the schism, hanging in the air. It doubled in size in the space between blinks, tearing itself open. She readied herself for the sight of the giants. But it was human forms she saw first, two of them, thrown up and out on to this arid shore.
"Howie?" she said.
It was. And beside him, Jo-Beth. Something had happened to them, she saw. Their faces and bodies were a mass of growths, as though their tissue had sprouted some vile blossom. She braved the next wave of ether to go back to them, shouting their names as she went. It was Jo-Beth who looked up first. Leading Howie by the hand she sought Tesla out in the turmoil.
"This way," Tesla said. "You have to get away from the hole—"
The tainted ether was inducing nightmares. They itched to be seen. But Jo-Beth seemed able to think her way through them to a simple question.
"Where are we?"
There was no simple answer.
"Grillo will tell you," she said. "Later. Grillo?"
He was there, already getting that same distracted look she'd seen in his eyes at the door of Coney Eye.