"My G.o.d," Tesla remembered the House of the Stench, and shuddered, "I almost got to see them for myself."

"Kissoon prevented you of course."

"Not forcibly. It was more a matter of persuasion. He's very convincing."

"Certainly. He had us all fooled for years. The Shoal is-I mean was-the most difficult society to join in the world. There are means, incredibly elaborate, to test and purify possible members before they even realize the society exists. Somehow Kissoon faked his way through those procedures. Or else the Iad somehow tainted him once he was a member, which is possible."

"Is as little known about the Iad as he said?"

"Scarcely any information emerges from the Metacosm. It's a sealed condition of being. What we know about the Iad can be summed up in a few words. They are many; their definition of life is not that of you humans-indeed may be its ant.i.thesis; and they want the Cosm."

"What do you mean, you humans?" Tesla said. "You're as human as I am."

"Yes and no," Mary replied. "I certainly was once as you are. But the processes of purification change your nature. If I'd been human I couldn't have survived in Trinity for twenty odd years, with scorpions to eat and mud to drink. I'd be dead, the way Kissoon intended."

"How come you survived the murder attempt and the others didn't?"

"Luck. Instinct. Sheer refusal to let that b.a.s.t.a.r.d win. It isn't just Quiddity that's at stake, though that's valuable enough. It's the Cosm. If the Iad break through nothing on this plane of being will survive intact. I believe-" She stopped talking suddenly, and sat up in bed.

"What is it?" Tesla said.

"I heard something. Next door."

"Grand opera," Tesla said. Lucia di Lammermoor still trailed through.

"No," Mary said. "Something else."

Raul was already off in search of the sound's source before Tesla asked him. She turned her attention back to Mary.

"There's still some stuff I haven't got straight," she said. "A lot of stuff. Like, why Kissoon went to the trouble of taking the bodies into the Loop. Why didn't he destroy them out here in the normal world? And why did you let him take you?"

"I was wounded; almost dead. Near enough for him and his a.s.sa.s.sins to think I was dead. It was only when they were tossing me on a pile of bodies I came to my senses."

"So what happened to his a.s.sa.s.sins?"

"Knowing Kissoon he probably let them die in the Loop, trying to find their way out. That sort of thing would amuse him."

"So for twenty odd years the only human beings in the Loop-or near human-were you and Kissoon."

"Me half mad. And him all the way."

"And those f.u.c.king Lix, whatever they are."

"His s.h.i.t and s.e.m.e.n is what they are," Mary said. "His t.u.r.ds, got fat and frisky."

"Jesus."

"They're trapped there the way he is," Mary said, with some satisfaction. "At Zero, if Zero can be-"

Raul's yell from the next room stopped her in mid-thought. Tesla was up and through into the kitchen in seconds, to find him wrestling with one of Kissoon's s.h.i.t-creatures. Her a.s.sumption, that they'd been dying when they were brought through from the Loop, could not have been farther off the mark. If anything the beast in his hands looked stronger than those she and Mary had fought, despite being only the head-end. Its mouth was wide and closing on Raul's face. It had already struck there twice at least. There was blood pouring from a wound in the center of his forehead. She crossed to him and took hold of it with both hands, more disgusted by its feel and smell than ever now she knew its origins. Even with four hands to keep it from doing further damage it was not about to be subdued. It had the strength of three of its earlier incarnations. She knew it was only a matter of time before it wore them both down, and got to Raul's face again. This time it wouldn't be just his frown it bit off.

"I'm going to let go," Tesla said, "and get a knife. OK?"

"Be quick about it."

"You betcha. On a count of three, right? Get ready to take the whole thing."

"I'm ready."

"One...two...three!"

She let go on three, and ran through to the sink. There were piles of unwashed dishes beside it. She rummaged amongst the chaos looking for a suitable weapon, the dishes sliding in every direction, several of them smashing as they fell to the floor. But the avalanche uncovered steel; one of a set of kitchen knives her mother had given her two Christmases ago. She picked it up. Its handle was sticky with last week's lasagna and the mold it had sprouted since, but it felt good in her hand.

As she turned back to go to Raul's aid it struck her that there had been more than one of the Lix pieces brought through from the Loop-five or six at least, she thought-and that only one was visible. The others had gone from the floor. She had not time to concern herself any further. Raul cried out. She rushed to his aid, stabbing at the body of the Lix with the knife. The beast responded instantly to the attack, snapping its head around, black needle-teeth bared. She aimed a stab at its face, opening a wound in its jaw, from which the dirty yellow muck that she'd taken for blood 'til minutes ago spat in fat spurts. Its gyrations became a frenzy, which Raul was only barely able to control.

"Count of three-" she said to him.

"What this time?"

"Throw it!"

"It can move quickly."

"I'll stop it," she said. "Just do as I say! On three! One...two...three!"

He did as instructed. The Lix flew across the room and hit the floor. As it struggled to get itself ready to attack again Tesla raised the knife and brought it down in one two-handed stab that transfixed the creature. Mother had good taste in knives. The blade sliced into the creature and buried itself in the floor, effectively nailing it down, while its life-fluids continued to leak from the wounds.

"Got you, you f.u.c.ker!" she said, then turned to Raul. The attack had left him shaking, and the blood was still flowing copiously from his face.

"Better wash those wounds," Tesla told him. "You don't know what kind of poison's in those things."

He nodded, and headed through to the bathroom, while she returned her gaze to the death-throes of the Lix. Just as she recaptured the thought she'd had as she'd emerged with the knife (where were the rest of them?) she heard Raul say: "...Tesla."

and she knew where they'd gone.

He was standing at the door of her bedroom. It was clear from the expression of horror on his face what he was looking at. But it still brought a sob of revulsion from her to see what Kissoon's beasts had done to the woman she'd left lying on her bed. They were still busy with their murder. Six of them in all, like the one that had attacked Raul, stronger than those they'd encountered in the Loop. Mary's resistance had profited her not at all. While Tesla had been busy digging for a blade to protect Raul-an attack mounted as a distraction- they'd crawled on her and wound themselves around her neck and head. She'd struggled fiercely, her fight throwing her half off the bed, where her body, a racked bag of bones, still lay. One of the Lix unravelled itself from around her face. It had crushed her features beyond recognition.

She was suddenly aware of Raul, still shuddering at her shoulder.

"Nothing to be done," she said. "You should go wash." He nodded grimly, and left her side. The Lix were running down, their motions becoming sluggish. Presumably Kis-soon had better things to do with his energies than waste them pressing his agents to further mischief. She closed the door on the sight, sickened to her stomach, and went back through to check under the furniture that there were no others lurking around. The creature she'd nailed to the floor was now completely dead; or at least inert. She stepped past it and went to find another weapon before checking the rest of the apartment.

In the bathroom Raul let the bloodied water run from the sink, and peered at the hurt the Lix had done him. It was superficial. But some of its poison had got into his system, as Tesla had warned. His whole body seemed to be shaking from the inside out, and the arm that had been touched by the Nuncio was throbbing as though he'd just plunged it into boiling water. He looked down. The arm was insubstantial in front of him, the sink behind it showing through more solid flesh and bone. Panicking, he looked back up at his reflection. That too was growing hazy, the bathroom wall blurring, and some other image-harsh and bright-demanding to be seen behind it.

He opened his mouth to cry for Tesla's help but before he could do so his image disappeared from the mirror entirely; and so-a moment of utter dislocation later-did the mirror itself. The glare grew blinding around him, and something took hold of his Nunciate arm. He remembered Tesla describing Kissoon's grip on her gut. Now that same mind took his hand, and pulled.

As the last trace of Tesla's apartment gave way to an endless, burning horizon, he threw his untainted arm out to where the sink had been. He seemed to connect with something in the world he'd left, but he couldn't be sure.

Then all hope was gone, and he was in Kissoon's Loop.

Tesla heard something drop in the bathroom.

"Raul?" she said.

There was no answer.

"Raul? Are you all right?"

Fearing the worst she went quickly, knife in hand. The door was closed but not locked.

"Are you there?" she said. When she received no reply a third time she opened the door. A b.l.o.o.d.y towel had been dropped on the floor, or fallen, carrying a number of toiletry items with it: the noise she'd heard. But Raul was not there.

"s.h.i.t!"

She turned off the faucet, which was still gushing, and about-faced, calling his name again, then going through the apartment, dreading with every turn she was going to find him prey to the same horror that had claimed Mary. But there was no sign of him; nor of any further Lix. Finally, steeling herself for the sight on the sheets, she opened her bedroom door. He was not there either.

Standing at the door brought back to Tesla the look of horror on his face when he'd seen Mary's corpse. Had that simply been too much for him? She shut off the sight of the body on the bed and went to the front door. It was ajar, the way she'd left it when they'd first come in. Leaving it that way she started down the stairs and along the side of the building, calling after him as she went, the certainty growing in her that he'd simply decided he could stand no more of this madness and had taken to the streets of West Hollywood. If he had he was exchanging one madness for another, but that was his choice and she couldn't be responsible for the consequences.

He wasn't in the street when she reached it. In the porch of the house opposite two young men were sitting enjoying the last light of the afternoon. She knew the names of neither, but she crossed to them and said: "Have you seen a man?" which raised eyebrows and smiles from both.

"Recently?" one of them said.

"Just now. Ran out of the building opposite?"

"We just came out here," said the other. "Sorry."

"What'd he do?" the first said, looking at the knife in Tesla's hand. "Too much or not enough?"

"Not enough," Tesla said.

"f.u.c.k him," came the reply. "There's plenty more."

"Not like him," she replied. "Trust me. Not like him. Thanks anyhow."

"What did he look like?" came the question as she re-crossed the street.

A little vengeful part of Tesla, one she wasn't much proud of but which always came to the fore when someone did the dirty on her like this, replied: "Like a f.u.c.king monkey," in a voice that must have been heard halfway down Santa Monica and Melrose. "He looked like a f.u.c.king monkey."

So, Tesla babe, what now?

She poured herself a Tequila, sat herself down, and reviewed the overall picture. Raul gone; Kissoon in league with the Iad; Mary Muralles dead in the bedroom. Not a lot to take comfort from. She poured herself a second Tequila, not unaware that drunkenness, like sleep, might put her closer to Kissoon than she'd strictly like to be, but needing the burn of it in her throat and belly.

There was no purpose in staying in the apartment. The real action was back in Palomo Grove.

She put a call through to Grillo. He was not at the hotel. She asked the hotel operator to put her through to the front desk and enquired there if anyone knew where he was. n.o.body did. He'd gone out in the middle of the afternoon she was told. It was now four-twenty-five. They estimated he'd been gone an hour at least. To the party on the Hill she guessed.

With nothing to detain her at North Huntley Drive but mourning her sudden loss of allies, her best move now, she decided, was to go find Grillo, before circ.u.mstance took him from her too.

VIII.

Grillo hadn't come to the Grove with garb appropriate for the gathering up at Coney Eye, but this being California, where sneakers and jeans were formal dress, he thought he wouldn't be conspicuous in his casual gear. That was the first of the afternoon's many errors. Even the guards at the front gate were wearing tuxedos and black ties. But he had the invitation, on which he'd inscribed a false name (Jon Swift), and it was not questioned.

This was not the first time he'd slipped into a gathering under an a.s.sumed ident.i.ty. Back in his days as an investigative reporter (as opposed to his present role as muckraker) he'd attended a neo-n.a.z.is' revival meeting in Detroit as a distant relation of Goebbels, several faith-healing sessions by a defrocked priest whose scam he'd later uncovered in a series of pieces that had earned him a Pulitzer nomination, and, most memorably, a gathering of sado-m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.ts, his account of which had been smothered by the senator he'd seen chained up eating dog food. In those various companies he'd felt like a just man in dangerous company, going in search of truth: Philip Marlowe with a pen. Here he simply felt nauseous. A beggar sickened at the feast. From Ellen's account of the party he'd expected to see famous faces; what he hadn't antic.i.p.ated was the strange authority they'd had over him, quite out of proportion to their skills. Gathered under Buddy Vance's roof were dozens of the most well-known faces in the world; legends, idols, style-makers. Around them, faces he couldn't have put names to but he recognized from copies of Variety and Hollywood Reporter. The potentates of the industry-agents, lawyers and studio executives. Tesla, in her frequent railings against the New Hollywood, saved the sourest venom for these, the business-school types who'd superseded the old-style studio bosses, Warner, Selznick, Goldwyn and their clan, to rule the dream factories with their demographics and their calculators. These were the men and women who chose next year's deities, and put their names on audiences' lips around the world. It didn't always work of course. The public was fickle, sometimes positively perverse, deciding to deify an unknown against all expectation. But the system was prepared for such anomalies. The rank outsider would be drawn into the pantheon-at startling speed, and everyone would claim how they'd known all along the man was a star.

There were several such stars among this gathering, young actors who could not have known Buddy Vance personally but were presumably here because this was the Party of the Week; the place to be seen, and the company to be seen in.

He caught sight of Roch.e.l.le across the room, but she was engaged in being flattered-a whole gamut of admirers gathered around her, feeding on her beauty. She didn't look Grillo's way. Even if she had he doubted she would have recognized him. She had the distracted, dreamy air of one high on something other than admiration. Besides which, experience had taught him that his face was interchangeable with many others. There was a blandness about him which he'd put down to being so much a mongrel. Swedish, Russian, Lithuanian, Jewish and English trails could be found in his blood. They effectively cancelled each other out. He was everything and nothing. In such circ.u.mstances as these it gave him a strange confidence. He could pa.s.s himself off as any number of characters and not be called on it unless he made a major faux pas, and even then he could usually extricate himself.

Accepting a gla.s.s of champagne from one of the waiters he mingled with the crowd, mentally noting the names of faces he recognized; and the names of the company they kept. Though n.o.body in the room, other than Roch.e.l.le, had the slightest idea who he was he garnered nods from almost everyone whose eyes he met, and even a wave or two from individuals who were presumably scoring points among their circle as to how many of this dazzling congregation they were acquainted with. He fuelled the fiction, nodding when he was nodded at, waving when he was waved at, so that by the time he'd crossed the room his credentials were firmly established: he was one of the boys. This in turn led to an approach by a woman in her late fifties, who b.u.t.tonholed him with a glance and a sharp: "So who are you?"

He hadn't prepared a detailed alter-ego, as he had with the neo-n.a.z.is and the faith-healer, so he simply said: "Swift. Jonathan."

She nodded, almost as though she knew.

"I'm Evelyn Quayle," she said. "Please call me Eve. Everyone does."

"Eve it is."

"What do people call you?"

"Swift," he said.

"Fine," she said. "Would you catch that waiter and get me a fresh gla.s.s of champagne? They move so d.a.m.n fast."

It was not the last she drank. She knew a great deal about the company they were keeping, which she furnished in greater detail the more gla.s.ses of champagne and compliments Grillo provided, one of the latter quite genuine. He'd guessed Eve to be in her mid-fifties. In fact she admitted to seventy-one.

"You don't look anything like that."

"Control, my dear," she said. "I have every vice, but none to excess. Would you reach for another of those gla.s.ses before they slip by?"

She was the perfect gossip: beneficent in her b.i.t.c.hery. There was scarcely a man or woman in the room she couldn't supply some dirt about. The anorexic in scarlet, for instance, was the twin sister of Annie Kristol, darling of the celebrity game shows. She was wasting away at a rate that would prove fatal, Eve opined, within three months. By contrast, Merv Turner, one of the recently sacked board of Universal, had put on so much weight since exiting the Black Tower his wife refused to have s.e.x with him. As for Liza Andreatta, poor child, she'd been hospitalized for three weeks after the birth of her second child having been persuaded by her therapist that in nature the mother always ate the placenta. She'd eaten her own and been so traumatized she'd almost orphaned her child before it had seen its mother's face.

"Madness," she said, smiling from ear to ear, "isn't it?"

Grillo had to agree.

"A wonderful madness," she went on. "I've been part of it all my life and it's as wild now as it ever was. I'm getting rather warm; shall we step outside for a while?"

"Sure."

She took Grillo's arm. "You listen well," she said as they stepped out into the garden. "Which is unusual in this kind of company."

"Really?" said Grillo.

"What are you: a writer?"