Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) (68 page)

JO: Awright, man. We’ve had confirmation. A few other good people have CB’d in to tell us that yes, there is some heavy light coming out of the sky on Central Park West up near the Sheep Meadow.

FREDDY: Yeah, and if you remember, that’s near where the first of those nasty bug holes opened up. We don’t know if there’s a connection so you might want to be careful, but the folks who’ve contacted us say they’re going to try to get over to it and check it out.

JO: We’ll keep you informed. As long as we’ve got juice from the generator, we’ll be here. So keep us on.

Carol pointed into the dark blob that was Central Park. The thread of light that wove through the blackness there had not lengthened in the past few minutes.

“Glaeken must have stopped moving,” she said. “Do you think something’s wrong?”

“I don’t think we’ll see it move any farther,” Bill said. “It looks like it’s reached the hole. He’s probably out of sight now, moving down.”

“I hope the light’s still following him. And where’s Jack?”

No one had an answer.

Carol glanced down at the sidewalks below in time to see a battered car skid to a halt against the curb. It was covered—smothered—with night things, but they slipped away when the car penetrated the edge of the light. The door flew open and a half dozen people—a man, two women, and three kids—tumbled out. They began to run for the door of the building but slowed to a stop as they realized they were no longer being pursued. They looked up at the light, spread their arms, laughed, and began to hug each other.

Another car flew out of the darkness and bounded over the curb before it came to a stop. Another group of people jumped out. The first greeted them with cheers and they all embraced.

“I don’t know if I like this,” Bill said.

Carol looked at him. “They’re coming to the light.”

“That could be trouble. Think we ought to get downstairs, Ba?”

The big Asian stood behind Sylvia and Jeffy. He shook his head.

“I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” Carol said. “I mean, I think we should share the light.”

Bill nodded. “I do too. As long as that’s all they want.”

Carol looked down again. More people had reached the light, some apparently on foot from neighboring buildings. She noticed something.

“Bill? Remember when we first looked down? Wasn’t the light just to the edge of the sidewalk?”

Bill shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t notice.”

Carol stared down at the rim of shadow that encircled the building. It now reached a good yard beyond the curb on the asphalt of the street.

A hundred or so feet down the western wall, Glaeken found the mouth of the lateral passage—a dozen feet across and the only break in the smooth granite surface. He swung inward and landed on his feet. He pulled the weapon free and started walking. He needed no signpost to tell him that Rasalom lay ahead.

The light followed, filling the tunnel in his wake, stretching his shadow far ahead, sending dark things scuttling and slithering and fluttering out of the way.

He pushed on, not running, but moving swiftly with quick, long strides. The sense of urgency clung to his back, propelling him forward. He swung the blade back and forth, splashing the air with bright arcs of light, then waded through them.

But as he progressed deeper and farther along the tunnel, he noticed a dimming of the light. He turned and looked back along his path. Back there the light looked as thick and bright as before, but down here it seemed attenuated, diluted, tainted …

It could only mean he was nearing his goal, the heart of the darkness.

Not much farther on, the light loosened its embrace and pulled free; it hung back, abandoning him to penetrate the beckoning blackness of the tunnel ahead alone.

Glaeken kept moving, slower now, stepping more carefully. Only the blade was glowing now, and that faintly, struggling against the thickening blackness that devoured its light. Soon its light failed too. Glaeken stood in a featureless black limbo, cold, silent, expectant. Darkness complete, victorious.

And then, as he knew it would, came the voice, the loathed voice, speaking into his mind.

“Welcome, Glaeken. Welcome to a place where your light cannot go. My place. A place of no light. Remind you of anywhere from the past?”

Glaeken refused to reply.

“Keep walking, Glaeken. I won’t stop you. There’s light of sorts ahead. A different light, the kind I choose to allow here. No traps or tricks, I promise. I want you here. I’ve been waiting for you. The Change is almost complete. I want you to marvel at my new form. I want you to be the first to see me. I want to be the very last thing you see.”

Glaeken felt his palms dampen. He was in another country now, where Rasalom made all the rules. Tightening his grip on the hilt, he stepped forward into the black.

WFPW-FM

JO: Okay. We’ve had somebody CB us from right inside the beam of light over on Central Park West and they say it’s the real thing. Bright, warm, and the bugs won’t go near it. Nobody knows how long it’ll last, but it’s there now and these folks think it might be there to stay.

FREDDY: So look, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna make this loop and set it going, then we’re outta here. We’re heading there ourselves. We’ll have a message on the tape, then we’ll follow it with a Travelin’ Wilburys song, and the whole deal will play over and over.

JO: And here’s the message: Get to the light. Get over to Central Park West any way you can and get into the light. Get moving and good luck. And while you’re on the move, here’s some appropriate traveling music. See you there, man.

Dim light ahead, oozing around the next bend in the passage.

Unhealthy light. A sickly, wan, greasy glow, clinging to the tunnel walls like grime, casting no shadows. No hope dwelt in that light, no succor from the night, merely a confirmation of the dark’s superiority.

As Glaeken moved toward the feeble glow, the air grew colder; an acrid odor stung his nostrils. He rounded the bend and stopped.

In the center of a huge granite cavern, a hundred feet across, Rasalom’s new form hung suspended over a softly glowing abyss. Four gleaming ebony pillars reached from the corners of the chamber, arching across the chasm to fuse over its center. A huge sac, bulging, pendulous, nearly the size of a small warehouse, hung suspended from that central fusion. Glaeken could make out no details of the shape floating within its inky amnion. He didn’t need to see Rasalom to know it was he, undergoing the final stage of his transformation.

“Welcome to my womb, Glaeken.”

Glaeken did not reply. Instead, he leapt upon the nearest support where it sprang from the wall and strode along its upper surface toward the center where Rasalom hung.

“Glaeken, wait! Stop!”
Rasalom’s voice took on a panicky edge in his head.
“What are you doing?”

Glaeken kept moving toward the center, the weapon raised before him.

“There’s no need for this, Glaeken! I’m so close! You’ll ruin everything!”

Glaeken slowed, alerted by the anxious tone. This was the Adversary’s time, and Rasalom’s natural arrogance must have ballooned to gargantuan proportions by now. Glaeken could count on any sign of uncertainty being a sham, a lure to draw him closer, not put him off.

He’d cautiously progressed to within a dozen feet of the sac when the surface of the support suddenly softened and erupted in hundreds of fine tendrils that wrapped around his ankles, snaring them, encasing them in a squirming mass, then recrystallized to rocklike hardness. He pulled and strained but his feet were locked down. He chopped with the blade but remained trapped like a fly on a pest strip.

He stared down at the sac hanging within spitting distance below. A huge eye rolled against the inner surface of the membrane and stopped to stare back at him.

“That is quite far enough.”

“Perhaps you’re right.”

He shifted his grip on the hilt and raised the weapon over his shoulder like a spear, its point directed at the eye. Rasalom’s voice screamed in his brain.

“No! Glaeken, wait! I can help you!”

That didn’t sound feigned. Was Rasalom vulnerable while not fully reshaped?

“No deals, Rasalom.”

He reared back to hurl the weapon.

“I can make her whole again!”

Glaeken hesitated. He couldn’t help it.

“Whole again? Who?”

“Your woman. That Hungarian Jewess who stole your heart. I can give her back her mind—and make her young again.”

“No. You can’t. Not even the
Dat-tay-vao
—”

“I’m far more powerful than that puny elemental. This is
my
world now. When I complete the Change I can do whatever I wish. I will be making the rules here, Glaeken.
All
the rules. And if I say the woman called Magda shall be thirty again and sound of mind and body forever—
forever
—then so it shall be.”

Magda … alert, young, healthy,
sane
 … the vision of the two of them together as they used to be …

He shook it off.

“No. Not in this world.”

“It doesn’t have to be this world. You can have your own corner of the globe, your own island, your own archipelago. All to yourselves. You can even take some of your friends. The sun will shine there forever. You can live on in idyllic splendor.”

“While the rest of the world…?”

“Is mine. All you have to do is acknowledge me as master of this sphere and drop your weapon into the abyss. After that I shall see to all your comforts.”

For a heartbeat he half considered it—and the realization rocked Glaeken.