An Evil Guest (36 page)

Nodding, Cassie opened her lipstick.

“Then you know. It is a place of strange beliefs. Spiritualists, Buddhists, pagans to prance naked beneath the full moon.” Briefly Dr. Schoonveld smiled.

“These do little harm, I think, but there are worse. There was a circle of fools to pay homage to the Storm King, but quite small. Also Satanists, and their groups became one. This was larger and grew quickly.”

“Sounds bad,” Cassie said.

“His Majesty wished to know who was there and what was planned. He found Jane Doe, who would see for him. One of our guards discovered her on the beach. He telephoned, and she was carried here. This is all I know.”

“She’s not talking?” Cassie inspected her lipstick in her little mirror.

“To me, no. To Izanami, more. To His Majesty, yes. To you more still, I think.”

“How do I look?”

“Beautiful. No man could resist you.”

“Thanks.” Cassie smiled. “Lipstick on my teeth?”

“No. None.”

“If she talks to me, I may not be able to tell you everything she told me.”

“This I understand, Your Majesty.”

Cassie rose. “But if she tells me anything that seems like it would help you treat her, you’ll get it.”

F
OR
a moment, the room seemed very different from the small, stark one in which the assassin lay; flowers will do that. Orchids and hibiscus, Cassie decided after studying the big bouquets. Orange blossoms, or something very like orange blossoms. Passion flowers? She tried to remember how passion flowers were supposed to look. Bougainvillea.

The woman in the bed lay upon her side, her face turned away from the door. A tall woman, Cassie thought, though the rangy body was hidden by a sheet and the long legs drawn up.

“Hello?” Cassie spoke softly. “I don’t want to disturb you, and if you’d rather not talk to me I’ll go. But the doctor said you wanted to see me.”

She sensed that the tall woman was awake, though there was no sound and no movement.

“I’m Cassie.”

Still nothing.

“I—I’m afraid I’m the queen here. Queen Cassiopeia, if you want to be formal.”

The tall woman rolled over. The eyes in her wasted face appeared large; their stare was hypnotic.

“I don’t know what happened to you, except that it was very bad. Whatever it was, I’m sure my husband didn’t intend for you to be so—so hurt.”

Slowly, the tall woman was sitting up. Long, bare legs slipped over the edge of the bed. The sheet was thrown back to reveal the usual inadequate hospital gown. White, in this case, with bloodless pink stripes.

“If you need some favor . . . Well, I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do what I can.”

The tall woman stood, swaying, hands outstretched. Cassie took them, knowing somehow that it was what was asked.

And woke.

It had been only a dream, all of it. Her girlhood in San José, college, her work in the agency, the midnight meetings in strange places, and the strange visitors who sometimes appeared at those meetings.

There was only . . .

This.

This warm water, these bubbles spiraling slowly toward the surface with each breath she drew.

Less breath each time. Breaths more and more widely spaced. What was the value of breathing? Once she had known. Now she groped for the answer. Of what use was breath?

The world changed, silently, subtly, reversing as old-fashioned negatives are reversed. Light was darkness, and darkness light. Night lay below her, making dim her bright being with its starless self that was all shadow, the land of the murk-marred soul.

Above her the city shone, a city on the sun, its proud towers streaming with coruscant banners of holy vegetation that fluttered and snapped in crystal currents.

She removed her mask and the clumsy tank that held the air she did not need. They neither floated toward the city nor sunk toward the surface, but remained motionless where she had been. She herself made haste to meet those who made haste to meet her, angels too high and holy to serve any other god. They swarmed around her, larger—yet far smaller than she, kissing thighs and buttocks, sucking her ears and licking organs she had not known she possessed. Might she someday be as they?

Yes. He could do it. Would do it. . . .

He was the city, and the city he, his supple arms wrapping this world, warm and knowing, subtly favoring those who served him.

As she had served him to betray him.

I have come to see him and speak with him
. She spoke to herself and thus to those who swarmed about her, swarmed like buzzing blue-backed flies, like minnows, like graceful gray slugs come to devour the dead, like lions circling an elephant whose blood soaks the soil on which he stands, an elephant whose strength is of the past, kept standing by pride, by the inborn knowing. It was—it is—the true king. It is royal and will remain royal even as carrion.

“Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”

I have come that I may behold his face, and he mine
.

Their reply came on the rush of the current.
You may not enter, much as we love and hate you
.

I must, or die
.

Their laugher blew her upward, toward the city they denied her.
Already you are dead
.

She held her hands before her eyes. They were whiter than any chalk, hands molded of snow traced with blue—and that myriad who had swarmed her was no more. So soon as she no longer saw them, they were no more. She lowered her hands and swam, and they were back. She willed not to see them, willed as the man with the living beard, the six-fingered man, had taught her, had taught them all. Willed away, they were gone.

I am dead, bringing my bones to lay upon the heavens in tribute to him
. This she spoke to herself, and thus to the keeper at the gate.

And you are . . . ?

Shalimar of the circle am I, Pat Gomez of Presidio Security, Patty Darling, Sweetheart, and Baby. All these
.

The keeper of the gate remained erect; the gate bowed low.
Enter!

The city was the god, the god the city. She entered into it as a man enters into a woman, triumphant in defeat.

They lay on white slabs all about her, his living dead. She wandered among them, changed by each, stronger in body and mind and less trusting of her strength, the storehouse of strange skills of language, murder, art, and love. She gloried in her strength and longed for the day when he would send her forth to rend his foe.

Long and long she waited; then the torture began. There remained in her,
somewhere and somehow, the seed of humanity. A spore unseen but real; a thing that valued life in all its wild fantasies, standing awed before the slime mold and the butterfly. To root out that spore he broke her, scattering the bits from pole to pole.

Reassembling them in strange ways, scraped, washed, and cleaned. Broke her again, sifted the rubbish that remained for burning.

Until at last it came to her that if it continued she would come to hate him whom she had loved so briefly. And afterward that such hatred was proper, was right, was what he sought. Armed with the knowing, she rebelled. She would not hate him, though she wiped him from the world.

This was her first case, for which all the others, the skips and the shoplifters, the frauds, the cheaters, and the missing heir had been mere practice.

No, entertainment. Busywork . . .

Once she had made chains of colored paper, snipping out each link with clumsy, careful scissors, welding each closed with fubsy fingers that knew but little of tape and nothing of chains.

She escaped—or was rejected. Too dead to drown, she was cast up by the surf and nibbled by sea-green crabs that scuttled away when the footfalls sounded.

A man as large as any wrestler rolled her over. He might have had her there, there on the strand. So she thought and prepared herself to be violated, promising him that she was no longer sea-chilled but warmed now by the sun, sun-warmed and dead and welcoming his love. Surely there were those who spent their seed in the dead, who caressed cadavers such as she and struck them afterward in the corruption of their love?

He was not of their number. He took her in his arms, cradling her as he might have cradled a child, and carried her to the tiny cemetery behind the infirmary, went inside and told a nurse that he had found a body, a
haole wahine
, a white woman, dead.

The nurse had gone to look at her and had him carry her into an examination room. There she had lain faceup, salt water trickling from nostrils white as snow, as though the snow melted under the bright lights, melted in the cool air of the infirmary as it had in the warm sunlight of the beach.

There Dr. Schoonveld had tried this and that, a mask that breathed deep for her who did not breathe, stimulants injected directly into the heart muscles, shock.

He declared her dead and returned her to the cemetery, where she had vomited salt water, groaned, and wept for the grave this vomiting, these groans, denied her.

C
ASSIE
started, and found herself alone and trembling, staring down at the dead woman who had . . .

Clasped her hands, if it had not been a dream. She shook herself and shivered, suddenly lonely for the strong arms that had held her through the night, for the furry hands of winged friends who grasped strange knowledge.

The arm of the woman who lay before her was limp. The wrist held no pulse save for one single weak beat that was almost certainly a mistake, a blunder by the stupid Cassie Casey she had tried so hard to forget, by the silly stagestruck woman who knew less of medicine than any drugstore clerk.

That stupid Cassie Casey who was in fact herself and no queen at all. She found Dr. Schoonveld and told him his patient was dead, had been dead when she came into the room, although her hands had been clasped by that same dead patient, whose name was Pat Gomez.

C
ASSIE
herself left his infirmary and stood staring up for a long minute at the Navy hopper that cruised grayly against the high blue vault, aerodynamically impossible, bristling with guns and antennae, yet flying as it seemed without effort.

Were they looking for her?

No, King Kanoa had said they were looking for Reis’s gold, but would not find it. After a time she was joined by Hiapo, whom she sent looking for Reis.

After a still longer time, she was joined by the Japanese nurse, who feared she might be ill.

“No, I’m just trying to get over finding Pat Gomez dead. That was a jolt.”

“You know her?” The Japanese nurse smiled politely. “Doctor, he say the king say it was her name.”

“No,” Cassie said. Then, “Yes. Yes I suppose I did know her. I played her for a while.”

“I know you love me,” Cassie told Reis, “and gosh knows I love you. I know you’re busy, too.”

Reis nodded.

“So what I’m asking for is a big gift, but I’m going to ask for it anyway. I want some time alone with you. Now. Two or more hours at least. Three might be better. I’ve got questions, and I think it’s time we really got to know each other. Can I have it, Bill? Please?”

“Yes.” He glanced at his watch. “Starting this minute if you like. I’m flattered. I hope you know that.”

“I don’t believe it, but I sure would like to. I want us to take a walk together. Down there on the beach would be too dangerous, wouldn’t it?”

“The beach here in front of the palace would, yes. Absolutely. What about another beach, would that do if it’s a nice one?”

Cassie nodded. “It might be better.”

“In that case, there’s no problem.” Reis spoke into his watch; half a minute later, a hopper popped into being far above them. As he turned off the cell phone function, he said, “Our beach is watched, I’m sure of it. Not by the Storm King himself but by his worshippers. Luckily for us, there are thousands of islands in this part of the Pacific. They can’t possibly watch them all, so they don’t.”

“W
HERE
are we?” Cassie asked as the hopper rose and boomed into nothing above them.

Reis smiled. “Let’s not be overly specific. We’re outside the Takanga Group. This could be Tuvalu or the Solomons, or a lot of other places. We’ll be a little bit safer if I don’t say it, perhaps. If you want the name of this particular island, I don’t know it and it may not have one. It’s uninhabited as far as we know.”

“Except for the volcano.”

Reis’s smile widened. “Yes. Except for that. I’m glad you remember.”

“So am I. Did you write that show, Bill?”

“Yes, with a collaborator. I knew what show I wanted and he knew how shows ought to work. I suppose I ought to say I sweated blood over it, but it was fun. I enjoyed it. I didn’t compose the music, you understand. For the most part I sketched out the plot and told my collaborator what ought to happen in various scenes. Are we going to walk along the beach?”

Cassie said, “I hope so. That’s what I wanted.”

“In that case I’ll take off my shoes.” Reis found a shady spot beneath a palm tree and sat.