"You have seen them die, and you have seen them rise," said Langhorne. "But you ain't seen nothin' yet. Gentlemen, I direct your attention to the man on the conning tower."
Sandoval had climbed stairs up to the port sailplane, the one opposite the band, and was picking up an elaborate compound bow. It was camouflage-colored, with Day-Glo arrows attached to it, and with practiced grace, he removed one, nocked it, and cranked back the string. His posture with the bow was heroic, Olympian.
Unbelieving, I mouthed the words, "What is he…?"
Without the slightest hesitation, Sandoval let fly. The arrow flitted across the water, too fast to follow, but then as if by magic was planted in Cowper's chest, its bladed point sticking out his back as if to indicate something. The old man barely reacted except to steady himself from the impact. Easy as plucking off a piece of lint, he removed the arrow and dropped it on the ice. It came out perfectly clean.
Sandoval called out, "Anybody else want to take a turn?" He held up an armload of bows.
The Moguls were suddenly animated with surprise and delight. They had not been expecting party favors this interesting. Sandoval passed down the bows, and men lined up along the wall to try their luck.
"This is sick," I said.
"It's a guy thing," Langhorne replied over her shoulder.
The row of archers, twelve in all, tested the feel of their bows, some more awkwardly than others. They were so close to Cowper they could scarcely miss, but the first two who fired did, sending their arrows skittering far across the ice. Friendly ribbing and encouragement emanated from their less-adventurous fellows: "Hey, Chauncy, got your game permit?" Then several men shot almost simultaneously, and three arrows struck Cowper's upper body-one so deeply that its gaudy quills resembled a pink boutonniere. I flinched. He didn't bother removing them.
Everything became very quiet as the men methodically fired and reloaded. I was reminded of the boys' grisly revenge on the fallen Xombie in the sub, so long ago. The men's catharsis continued until the supply of arrows was exhausted. I made myself turn away, more out of protest than horror-I knew Cowper couldn't be hurt, though he was the picture of martyrdom with all those spines sticking out of him. When they were done he looked exactly like what he was: an archery target. There were even arrows in his face! For a long moment he stood there in the water-dappled light, literally transfixed.
After a span of awed silence, the Moguls began to applaud. The bows were tossed aside and the archers welcomed back into the crowd.
Langhorne asked, "Do we all agree he can't be harmed?"
The spectators scoffed, "Of course!" Fun over, they were more annoyed than impressed, convinced that this had been only a cheap stunt. While they were grumbling, Sandoval gave a signal and several doctors began maneuvering a light pontoon bridge across the water. This caused pandemonium:
"Are you out of your mind? Stop! He's a killer!"
Langhorne replied, "Strictly speaking, Maenads don't kill; they share. But I understand your anxiety. Be assured you are in no danger whatsoever."
While Dr. Langhorne was trying to calm them, Sandoval nudged me, smiling benignly. "Go to your father," he said.
"What?"
"Go to your father, Lulu. This is it: the reunion you've been waiting for. It's why you're here. It's why we're all here. Don't be afraid."
"I'm not."
My instinct was to resist, but then I realized I wanted to go to him, no matter what happened. I really wasn't afraid. Sandoval saw the change, the tears, and nodded in encouragement. The bastard. I slapped him and jumped over the wall onto the wobbly platform, making my way across. The crowd buzz doubled, and I could hear boys entreating me to stop.
Cowper waited for me as patiently as he had borne the arrows. Something was different, I knew, or he would have been all over me. I was almost disappointed. Red speckles danced on him, and on my back as well, I'm sure. Freezer-cold air wafted off the water-I tried not to look into the depths.
As I mounted the far ice bank, I began to get anxious, thinking of the wolfish faces of Xombies I had known, including his. But this new Cowper had the calm bearing of a guru, regarding my approach with world-weary compassion rather than animal lust. Looking out from that thicket of feathered shafts, his marble black eyes were full of pity.
I wasn't sure he knew me, and ventured, "Mr. Cowper?"
He didn't respond.
By then we were about ten feet apart, and as I cautiously closed the distance, he turned his face away, showing all those embedded spines in profile. They looked strangely ceremonial, shamanistic. He was looking across the ice to the dark side of the dome. Someone there was running out of the shadows toward us-someone I dreaded to see.
It was Julian. He was not placid like Cowper, but of the more-familiar Maenad type, monstrous and vulpine, with all the rapturous fury of an avenging angel. A Fury.
He came straight for me, ignoring Cowper. From the crowd, boys' voices entreated me to swim for it, run, hurry, but there was not a thing I could do to escape, and I didn't try. As Julian got close, Cowper suddenly darted between us, snagging the boy by one leg, whirling with it, and slamming him down on his face. Julian was bigger and younger, but he seemed clumsy next to Cowper-or maybe it was just that he wasn't fighting back at all. While Cowper attacked, he behaved as if the old man were some kind of baffling invisible obstacle, like a high wind. In a flurry of blue limbs, Julian tried to break free and get at me, but Cowper was tenacious as a pit bull. He wrestled Julian to the edge of the ice and finally flipped him into the water. With a pleading cry of, "Lulu!" Julian scrabbled at the slick ice, then sank like a stone.
The wind was knocked out of me, seeing Julian just vanish like that, but I slowly became aware of the sensation his death caused among the spectators on the opposite shore. It was fizzing in me as well-What just happened? Could it be true that those doctors had done what they promised? Had they cured Cowper? No. He wasn't a horrible Xombie, but he wasn't human. What had they turned him into?
The show was not over. As I stood there in shock, something else stirred in the darkness: many people this time. A whole host of men came shuffling into the spotlight, and from the way they walked I knew at once that they were human. There were about a hundred of them. Even before they fully emerged, I began frantically slipping and sliding my way over, because it was obvious from their clothes that they were the men from the sub. Commander Coombs was in front. Flanking him were Mr. Robles and Mr. Monte, with Noteiro and Fisk and all the others streaming after. Kranuski and Webb were there, too, the creeps.
They all looked haggard and suspicious, and the sight of me in my getup didn't seem to alleviate their fears. I couldn't blame them; I was just one more part of the whole appalling circus. My own relief was short-lived. Before I could reach the men, there was more commotion from another direction, a line of dark figures that unmercifully resolved itself into feral blue Xombies, scores of them, swarming in to intercept us.
A collective moan of dread arose from the living. As the rampaging creatures skittered into the light I could make out the warped features of Albemarle and Jake and Cole and Lemuel, as well as Xombies from the tanks in the research compound and many others I had never seen before-forty or fifty all told. But there was something unusually awkward about them, and as they swept forward like a bizarre chorus line, I realized what it was: They were connected together by a cable that had been threaded through their bodies, like fish on a loop.
Coombs and the others reacted as if they had been expecting something like this, bracing themselves for the attack. They were doomed and knew it. Nothing would protect any of us from that host. Not even Cowper.
Just before the two groups could collide, however, the tethered Xombies were abruptly jerked up short as if they had reached the end of their leash. Thrashing wildly, they began to be dragged backward, then, one after another, hoisted upward, until the whole string of them flailed in the air, dangling from the boom of a high crane.
"Ooooh," went the crowd.
Jim Sandoval's amplified voice rang out: "This is to all the new citizens of Valhalla: Congratulations, your period of orientation is finished. We welcome you to this ceremony ushering in a new age of mankind, and we invite you to join our community, to share in our fortune, and to enter a world where the Maenad threat has been lifted."
Relieved laughter and grudging applause from the Moguls met this pronouncement. The rest of us looked on stonily.
Sandoval continued, "Today we bury the past, not just symbolically, but in our hearts. We bury it and put flowers on it and stand before its gravestone to say our final good-byes. Today we renounce the past and are baptized anew. There can be no doubters, no one left dangling. Lulu, will you please come forward?"
The float bridge had been put back in place, and at the end of it stood Sandoval, reaching out to me with a big phony smile. I hesitated, reluctant to leave Cowper and the other men. I was suddenly very self-conscious about participating in whatever this was they were doing. Having cast my lot with the undead, I couldn't bear to set foot back on that deceiving turf. What would happen if I refused? As if reading my thoughts, Sandoval flicked his eyes warningly upward at the flailing Xombies. The sword of Damocles. There was no choice-I went.
"Don't be nervous," Sandoval said, helping me across. Before anyone else could follow, Rudy brought Don over on a chain to police the bridge, barely restraining the beast from charging across and attacking Cowper. Dr. Langhorne came up and took my arm.
"What's going on?" I asked her.
"Cheer up," she said. "You're about to be saved."
They walked me around to the garden side of the fairwater and stopped before the brilliant ocean pool sunk in the grass. The crowd moved with us. Several doctors, including wire-haired Chandra Stevens, were waiting there with medical instruments and an aluminum stretcher.
"Now just relax," Langhorne said, and ripped my dress off.
There was a minor uproar among some of the boys, shouts of "Leave her alone!" but Sandoval, who was standing back from the whole thing, quashed it by saying, "Now now-these are doctors. Professionals." The Blackpudlians, who had been softly singing the whole time, went dead. As Langhorne strapped me naked to the stretcher, I asked, "Why are you doing this?"
"Because it's the only thing to do. My daughter was about your age, so don't think this is easy for me. But there's no cure, no future-nowadays little girls grow up to be Furies. This is all that's left." She put her lips to my ear, whispered, "None of this would be happening if you'd done what you were supposed to."
"What?"
"I expected your cycle to have kicked in by now, honey. A surprise package for that bum I was married to. Why do you think I let him have you? But I guess he gets the last laugh after all, the bastard. Now he gets to be Christ Almighty." She strapped an oxygen mask to my face and turned on the flow. Cold air hissed through. It seemed thin-I couldn't get enough and began hyperventilating.
While Dr. Langhorne was ministering to me, Sandoval addressed the Moguls. As unctuously as a TV evangelist, he said, "There is no salvation without baptism. Cold-water immersion-not as a superstitious rite, mind you, but as a means of preserving higher brain function while the morphocyte conquers the body-is the key to resurrection." He shook his head despairingly. "But what kind of resurrection? Resurrection as an intelligent monster, anathema to all that's human? That's not my idea of a quality afterlife. Quality resurrection requires something more. Alice, can you hand me the inhalant?" A small glass tube was produced, and he held it up for all to see. "This is it. The chalice. The sacrament. It doesn't look like much, does it? But it is body, mind, and spirit. It is freedom and safety from the ravages of time."
The Moguls were fiercely intrigued, their competing babble resembling the trading floor of a stock exchange. Questions rang out: Is it really the lost formula? Is there enough to go around? How much are you asking for it? Is it safe? Does it have to make you blue? Many of them were concerned with the disposition of their wealth and power-would they still have use for these things and the ability to manage their affairs? Above all, they wanted to remain themselves, or what was the point?
Sandoval grinned, holding up his hands. "Gentlemen, please. In answer to your questions, let me just explain that this is indeed the end product of Dr. Uri Miska's research: the famous noninfectious, behavior-stabilized strain of the ASR morphocyte, which I promised you we had recovered. New, improved Agent X, now Xombie-free!" That inspired laughter all around. "It's not a myth. You've just seen for yourselves how well it works in that unscripted demonstration of paternal love-a father very clearly recognizing his daughter and rescuing her from a marauding ghoul! It was a beautiful moment, wasn't it? Is that the ugly behavior we have all come to associate with life after death? Of course not. Aside from the minor cosmetic alteration, it's perfect, and as far as we know, this is all there is of it in the whole world. A single, last dose is all that remains."
This sobered the crowd. Someone said, "That's all? Just what's in that little bottle?"
"Yes." He paused a moment to let them stew, then said, "But we can make more. Oh yes. We can make quite a bit more, as I will demonstrate. Because just as wine is changed into Sangre de Cristo by the miracle of transubstantiation, so the morphocyte multiplies in the fecund female body, changing it into a wellspring of eternal life. Gentlemen, I hold before you your future-" He handed the ampoule back to Langhorne, who loaded it into a pneumatic gun resembling a cordless drill. "Synthesized in the consecrated body of a virgin, and extracted and distilled for your everlasting benefit by me and the dedicated staff of Mogul Research Division. But, as a famous man once said, 'You must act now.'"
A tumultuous clamor of bidding and protest erupted from the crowd.
The doctors tipped me upright and quickly began lowering me by ropes into the pool. Struggling for breath, I couldn't scream as my feet dipped in. It was deep and cold, and so clear-I could see all the way to the bottom of the ice ridge, ten or fifteen feet below the surface, to the yawning black gulf beneath. Tiny fish swirled down there in spears of olive light.
The stretcher banged against the enamel white sides, then lurched violently, swinging me around. Someone plunged into the water at my feet, a doctor, and the freezing splash interrupted my terror like a slap, so that I could hear other shouts from above.
With a jerk the stretcher rose and landed hard on the grass. Someone yanked off my oxygen mask and unfastened my restraints. It was Wally, of the Blackpudlians, wearing a big fake John Lennon mustache and gold epaulets. "'Ave you out in a second, luv," he said breathlessly.
Over his shoulder I could see Phil and Reggie in a wild-eyed defensive stance, brandishing their electric guitars by the necks like war clubs, strings twanging, and Dick up on the dive plane, hurling equipment at the doctors from above.
"Dance, you sorry sods!" Dick bellowed, swinging an amplifier by its cord and letting it fly. "It's the British invasion!"