The Lower Deep (36 page)

Clermont put his phone down and again turned to the jar containing the fetus. "Ed, there's someone I ought to show this to," he said to Beliard. "I'll see you later."

"Louis, for God's sake be discreet! If anyone—"

"I know. All hell could break loose. Don't worry, I won't do anything too stupid." Having finished rewrapping the jar, this time in a pillowcase, Clermont paused at the door. "You want me for anything, I'll be at home. No office today." Walking out, he went down the back stairs to the hospital parking lot, where his car was.

At home in Dame Marie, Clermont put the jar on the floor in his front room and spent a frantic moment searching his billfold for the phone number given him by Paul Henninger's brother-in-law, Commander Norman Morris. Oh, Lord, he thought, don't tell me I left it at my office.

He hadn't, and when he found the number and put the call through, he eventually got an answer. His watch said five past six. Soon after he finished talking to the navy man, Steve Spence called him from the Azagon to say that Paul Henninger and Juan Mendoza had disappeared.

Commander Morris arrived at Clermont's house soon after nine, again wearing civilian clothes despite his navy title. This time his shirt was the brilliant orange of certain life jackets designed to be easily spotted at sea in an emergency. Opening the door to him, Clermont said briskly, "Thanks for coming. I've got something to show you."

He led his caller across the front room and lifted the hospital jar from the floor to a table so the commander could more comfortably examine it. The man did so, bending his knees to bring his eyes to the proper level. For thirty or forty seconds he studied the object in the jar without comment. Then Clermont, becoming impatient, nudged him and said, "Here, look at this," and thrust at him the watercolor Morris had left with him on his earlier visit to Dame Marie.

Evidently the commander's career in the navy had taught him to be long on thought and frugal with words. Before speaking, he took time to compare the painting very carefully with the object in the jar. Then at last he said with a shake of his head, "So Paul didn't dream them up. This one in the jar is a baby?"

"Unborn. I was going to ask you how big Paul said they got to be."

"Smaller than humans, he said, but not much. What are they, Doctor?"

"Dr. Beliard at the hospital believes they originated the same way we did. Then when a prolonged drought forced us all back into the sea, they chose to stay there when we crawled out."

"Paul thinks that, too. But it was only a guess on his part. He wasn't there long enough to learn much, he told me." Studying the creature in the jar again, Morris added with a shake of his head, "My God, they're ugly. How can anything part human be this ugly?"

"More important," Clermont said, "is that they have established a hold on certain people here. Patients and doctors at the Azagon. George Benson, the fishing fellow. The girl who died this morning with this thing inside her—and I shouldn't be telling you about her, so forget I said it." He walked to a chair and let his lank frame collapse onto it. "Quite likely there are others I don't know about. I called you because your brother-in-law obviously felt you might pitch in and help somehow."

"How? How can I help?"

"At this point, who knows? All I'm sure of now is that Paul isn't the weak link we all thought he was. Not you, perhaps, but the rest of us. Seems to me he fought them right down to the wire and when they finally got him to go there, wherever it is they are, and he saw what was going on, he still had guts enough to escape from them. Then he made up his mind not to quit his job at the Azagon but to stick around and fight. Isn't that why he called on you, when you come right down to it? To help him fight them?"

"It would seem so, Doctor."

"Well? I mean, do you have any idea how to go about it?"

Commander Morris refolded the watercolor Paul Henninger had painted for him, depicting an adult version of the miniature nightmare in the jar, and handed it back to Clermont. "Doctor," he said with care, "the more I say now, the more likely I am to find myself in hot water later. For the time being I'll just pass on this, if you don't mind. I would like to talk to Paul again, though, if it's possible. Where is he? At the Azagon?"

"He left there very early this morning, they told me over the phone a while ago. I have to assume he hasn't returned or he would have called me."

"They don't know where he went?"

"They don't know where he went. Hold on, will you? Where are you off to in such a hurry?"

"Back to my plane," the navy man said crisply on his way to the door. "I've things to do and not much time, it seems. Maybe not time enough."

I
t was much like the dream, George Benson discovered. Of course it would be, because Alice was the one who had put the dream into his subconscious in the first place.

There was the deepening green of the tropical sea, like thick green glass. There were the fairy forests made up of growing things, some delicate and lacy, some writhing in tangled masses like the snake-hairs of Medusa. He had no idea how deep Alice was leading him, but he felt no discomfort. When he looked to see how Dannie was faring, she appeared to be having no trouble either.

How long had Alice been doing this, anyway? A long time, probably. Months. That "leader" she talked about . . . whoever he was, she had evidently met him soon after they came to Dame Marie from the States.

Ahead of him Alice turned, looked up at the brighter water through which they had descended, and lifted an arm to point. A shadow was passing over them, trailing an even longer appendage of bubbles. The fishing boat they were hiding from? It must be.

He watched it go by and saw Alice laughing, and for a moment even felt a touch of exultation himself. Only for a moment, though. Then he remembered some of the things she had been telling him during the long swim from Anse Douce, and began again the seemingly hopeless struggle to free his mind from her control.

There was still the all-important question: Did one small part of his mind really belong to him, or was Alice only letting him think so to amuse herself?

The sea floor could not be at too great a depth here, he decided, or he would be feeling some pressure. How much pressure could the human body endure? He didn't know. Perhaps his "training" had equipped him to endure more than others could. Swimming along just above a carpet of sand dotted with a Dali-world display of shells and starfish, he forgot his fears for a moment, forgot the naked shape in front of him leading him to God knew what fate, and for a moment surrendered to the pure beauty of his surroundings.

But suddenly his mind—that precious part of his mind that was still his—heard a voice crying out, "Look behind you, George! Behind you!"

Slashing the opal-hued water with both arms, he flung himself around and saw coming at him a great gray torpedo. Mouth agape and full of teeth, it had swept past Dannie and was no more than ten feet from him on a collision course. Though a commercial fisherman for most of his adult life, never before had he seen a tiger shark so huge and frightening.

The voice reached him again through his terror. "George! Oh, George, look out!" Was he hearing it or imagining it? Hearing it, he was sure—at least in his mind—though it was barely strong enough to get through to him. Then another voice, this the one he had been receiving without difficulty for a long time now, came through calmly and clearly, saying, "No need to be afraid, George darling. It won't attack you."

Alice. Dear Alice. And amused.

The mouth of the shark was a gaping tunnel as the monster turned on its side and came racing at him. He found himself looking straight into the yawning maw behind that forest of teeth, too scared even to lift a hand in defense. He could almost have touched it when with a violent twist it unexpectedly shot off to one side, missed him by inches, and was gone.

And again Alice's voice mocked him, saying, "You should have more faith in me, George. I told you back at the beach the repellent would protect you."

Slowly the effects of the terror passed and he could think again. His part of his mind could think again. And he thought not of the shark or of what
Alice was saying—for she was still mocking him—but of the other voice.

He did own part of his mind, then. Yes, by God, he did! Maybe Alice was leaving it free for her own amusement, but so long as she continued to do so, it was his. Because, of course, the voice that had tried to scream a warning had been Dannie's. Faint, yes. Almost no voice at all compared with Alice's trumpeting. But he had heard it and recognized it.

Dannie, too, still owned some part of her mind, then.

Loud in his head, the voice of his wife was jeering at him-for his display of fear. "Really, George, I thought you were much braver than that." And that other voice, that mere ghost of one from seemingly far away, said with concern, "Are you all right, George?"

He wondered. If he answered Dannie, would Alice home in on it? Could she hear Dannie communicating with him? He had to know.

"Dannie," he projected, "can you hear me?"

The answer came back, "Just barely, George, but yes," while Alice continued to mock him for his cowardice.

"Dannie!" he sent. "We can talk and she doesn't know!"

"Are you sure she doesn't know?"

"She's talking to me right now. I'm getting both of you at the same time."

"If only we don't slip up somehow," Dannie said tremulously. "George, she's telling me we have to go up."

She was telling him, too, George realized. In
fact, she was swimming back toward him. Watching her naked body glide through the dark water almost as swiftly as the shark had come, he felt nearly the same panic he had experienced when the fish attacked.

She swam close to him and pointed upward, telling him at the same time, "Come, George. Time to go."

He followed her back up through layers of changing color into sudden brilliant sunlight, and all that had happened in the depths was like a dream. All but the shark. Still shuddering at the memory, he knew he could never have dreamed a monster of that size. And what of that fellow from the alcoholics' place, Lindo? Had he been dead when he was attacked, or had he—God forbid—known what was going to happen to him?

What time was it?

How much longer would the ordeal continue?

He looked around. The fishing boat they had evaded was still visible as a faint gray shape in the distance. A ghost ship. There was nothing else but water, all aglitter with sunlight, sluggishly heaving as though the sea were one vast living body breathing in its sleep.

He swam on, following Alice, looking back to be sure Dannie was behind him. There was no talk for a while.

Then he heard a voice that belonged to neither Alice nor Dannie. It was a man's voice, saying, "You're doing very well, Benson. Very well indeed. I expected to catch up with you long before this."

"Who are you?" George replied. "Where are you?"

"Your advisor, friend. Your leader. Just under you."

George looked down and saw a human shape, naked, effortlessly swimming along with him about six feet below. It was no one he knew, he decided. The swimmer rose at an angle and cleaved the sea's surface just a few feet to his right, turning its face toward him while matching his forward motion.

No, he didn't know the man. Had only seen him around town a time or two. It was the Cuban fellow from the Azagon. Juan Mendoza.

"You?" George thought. "A doctor?" But the Cuban was both doctor and patient, wasn't he?

The answer was a laugh, though there was no lip movement in the face turned toward him. "They didn't care what I was when they took me down, friend."

"Down where?"

"You'll see."

"Who are 'they'?" George asked.

"Alice hasn't told you?"

'No."

"Well, I don't see why you can't be told. You'll be there soon. They've been here quite a while now, friend. Exactly what part of the ocean this particular group came from they haven't told me yet, except to say it's one of the deepest parts. I suspect the Puerto Rico Trench, which isn't too far from here and contains the greatest known depth in the Atlantic, 28,374 feet, in case you don't keep up with that sort of thing."

"Why are they here off St. Joseph?" George asked.

"Well, they came here to have a look at us and found us suitable, so they stayed."

George was genuinely interested, perhaps because in the voice of Juan Mendoza he felt none of the threat he had felt in that of his wife. "How did you find them, Doctor?"

"They found me, one day when I was exploring the reef between St. Joe and Ile du Vent. There I was, poking along with scuba gear, minding my own business, and suddenly four strange beings materialized in the water around me. They did something to me. To my mind, I mean. I don't know what or how—only that they are much better and quicker at it than your wife or I will ever be. When I recovered, I was at their base, able to exist in an airless environment without effort. In just a few minutes, while blacked out, I had absorbed more knowledge from them than you have learned from Alice in all your weeks of indoctrination."