Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show

As she'd suspected Kissoon was aware that his warning had been ignored, and had begun to tug on Tesla once more. This time she was completely prepared for it. Instead of raging against his claim on her she stood quite still, preserving her calm. His mind-fingers fought for purchase, then began to slip through her innards. He snatched at them again; slipped again, and snatched. She didn't respond in any way, but simply kept her place, her eyes fixed on the woman all the time.

She'd stood upright, and was no longer holding her belly, but let her hands hang by her sides. Very slowly, Tesla began to walk towards her, preserving as best she could the calm that was denying Kissoon his hold. The woman made no move either to advance or retreat. With every step Tesla took she got a better impression of her. She was fifty, maybe, her eyes, though sunk in their sockets, the liveliest part of her; the rest was fatigue. Around her neck she wore a chain on which hung a simple cross. It was all that remained of the life she might once have had before she'd become lost in this wilderness.

Suddenly, she opened her mouth, a look of anguish crossing her face. She started to speak, but either her vocal cords weren't strong enough or her lungs large enough for the words to cover the space between them.

"Wait," Tesla told her, concerned the woman not exhaust what little energy she had. "Let me get closer."

If she understood, the woman ignored the instruction, and began to speak again, repeating something over and over.

"I can't hear you," Tesla shouted back, aware that her distress at the woman's distress was giving Kissoon a handle on her. "Wait, will you?" she said, picking up speed.

As she did so she realized that the look on the woman's face was not anguish at all, but fear. That her eyes were no longer looking at Tesla, but at something else. And that the word she was repeating was "Lix! Lix!"

In horror, she turned, to see the desert floor behind her alive with Lix: a dozen on first glance, twice that on second. They were all exactly the same, like snakes from which every distinguishing mark had been struck, reducing them to ten-foot lengths of writhing muscle, coming at her at full speed. She had thought the one she'd glimpsed previously, pulling open the door, mouthless. She'd been wrong. They had mouths, all right; black holes lined with black teeth, opened wide. She was readying herself for their attack when she realized (too late) they'd been summoned as a distraction. Kissoon clutched her gut and pulled. The desert slid away beneath her, the Lix dividing as she was hauled through their throng.

Ahead, the hut. She was at its threshold in seconds, the door opening on cue.

"Come on in," Kissoon said. "It's been too long."

Left behind in Tesla's apartment, Raul could only wait. He had no doubt of where she'd gone, or who'd claimed her, but without a means of access, he was helpless. Which wasn't to say he didn't sense her. His system had been touched by the Nuncio twice, and it knew she was not that far from him. When, in the car, Tesla had attempted to describe what her trip into the Loop had felt like, he'd badly wanted to articulate something he'd come to understand in the years he'd spent at the Mission. His vocabulary was not equal to the task, however. It still wasn't. But the feelings had borne strongly upon the way he now sensed Tesla.

She was in a different place, but place was just another kind of being, and all states could, if the means were found, speak with every other state. Ape with man, man with moon. It was nothing to do with technologies. It was about the indi--isibility of the world. Just as Fletcher had made the Nuncio from a soup of disciplines, not caring where science became magic, or logic nonsense; just as Tesla moved between realities like a dreaming fog, in defiance of established law; just as he had moved from the apparently simian to the apparently human, and never known where one became the other, or if it ever did, so he knew he might reach now, if only he had, the wit or the words, which he didn't, through to the place where Tesla was. It was very close, as were all spaces at all times; parts of the same landscape of mind. But he could shape none of this into action. It was beyond him, as yet.

All he could do was know, and wait, which in its way was more painful than believing himself forsaken.

"You're a fuckhead and a liar," she said when she'd closed the door.

The fire was burning brightly. There was very little smoke. Kissoon sat on its far side, staring up at her, his eyes brighter than she remembered. There was excitement in them.

"You wanted to come back," he said to her. "Don't deny it. I felt it in you. You could have resisted while you were out there in the Cosm but you really didn't want to. Tell me I'm a liar about that. I dare you."

"No," she said. "I admit it. I'm curious."

"Good."

"But that doesn't give you the right to just drag me here."

"How else was I to show you the way?" he asked her lightly.

"Show me the way?" she said, knowing he was infuriating her deliberately but unable to get the sensation of helplessness out of her head. She hated nothing more vehemently than to be out of control, and his hold of her made her mad as hell.

"I'm not stupid," she said. "And I'm not a toy you can just pull on when it suits you."

"I don't mean to treat you as either," Kissoon said. "Please, can't we make peace? We're on the same side after all?"

"Are we?"

"You can't doubt that."

"Can't I?"

"After all I told you," Kissoon said. "The secrets I shared with you."

"Seems to me there's a few you're not willing to share."

"Oh?" Kissoon said, his gaze moving from her to the flames.

"The town, for instance."

"What about it?"

"I wanted to see what was in the house, but no, you just hauled me away."

Kissoon sighed. "I don't deny it," he said. "If I hadn't, you wouldn't be here."

"I don't follow."

"Don't you sense the atmosphere there? I can't believe you don't. The sheer dread."

Now it was she who expelled breath, softly, between her teeth.

"Yes," she said. "I felt something."

"The Iad Uroboros has its agents everywhere," Kissoon said. "I believe one of them is in hiding in that town. I don't know what form it takes, and I don't want to know. But it would be fatal to look, I suspect. Anyway, I'm not about to risk it, and you shouldn't either, however curious you are."

It was difficult to argue with this point of view when it so closely approximated her own feelings. Only minutes ago, back in her apartment, she'd told Raul she sensed something about to happen in that empty Main Street. Now Kissoon was confirming her suspicion.

"I suppose I have to thank you then," she said reluctantly.

"Don't bother," Kissoon replied. "I didn't save you for your sake, I saved you for more important duties." He took a moment to dig at the core of the fire with a blackened stick. It blazed higher, and the hut was illuminated more brightly than ever. "I'm sorry," he went on, "if I frightened you when you were last here. I say if. I know I did and I can't apologize enough." He didn't look at her through this speech, which had a rehearsed quality to it. But coming from a man she suspected had a major ego, it was doubly welcome. "I was...moved, shall we say...by your physical presence in a way I hadn't quite taken account of, and you were right to be suspicious of my motives." He put one hand between his legs and took his penis between forefinger and thumb. "I'm chastened now," he said. "As you can see."

She looked. He was quite limp.

"Apology accepted," she said.

"So now, we can get back to business I hope."

"I'm not going to give my body to you, Kissoon," she said flatly. "If that's what you mean by business, no deal."