Marmodesse. Part 2

It was an odd feeling to be at the helm of a sea-going vessel. Scarbo and I took turns, while Tallin sat glumly to one side looking at the deck. It was hard to know what to think. I realised that Dewi Dammo wanted us out here, had engineered it all, that true to his handling of Pederson and Ella Okani he wished to deal with us here in his special domain - to satisfy some sense of personal justice.

Ben turned to me from the helm. "They all said: No to your questions, Tom. The monitor was working."

"It seemed to be, Ben. It was properly sealed. But Namuren or the Seamaster himself could have interfered with it. How would we know?"

"Then Dewi could be aboard. He's actually one of us." Scarbo marvelled at the possibility.

"Pederson said: Three. Could three of them be Dewi Dammo?" Scarbo frowned. "A corporate persona?"

"Why not? Three people operating a collective alias, using it as a front, a blind. The Ab'Os have the power and the technology to maintain such a deception, using a single person to distract investigators from a more widespread corporate situation."

"Namuren?"

"They'd need one Ab'0 at least," I said. "Or the Seamaster ... no, he would have to be aboard, wouldn't he? If we trust the monitor. MacRommurque's 'No'

after the 'Yes' didn't cancel the green."

Scarbo corrected our course a few degrees.

"Another thing," he said. "Namuren identified die island as Marmordesse. Why didn't Pederson Try to give us that name?"

I studied the island ahead of us. "For a start, if he knew the name he wouldn't dare use it. Maximum stress. Just thinking about it would kill him. No, he would have had to talk his way around it. Or, maybe he never knew it by that name. It could be Dewi's special name for it."

"Which brings us back to Namuren again. Dewi certainly wants us to know that name now."

"True," I said. "And Namuren could be the Port Merilyn Seamaster for all we know. Hammon didn't see him first-hand."

Scarbo made an impatient sound. "So who else would you suspect? MacRommurque?"

"I'd say so."

Tallin Okani looked up. "Jarvain Alis," she said. "Are you serious?" I asked. She shrugged and watched the island. "You said you need an Ab'O. A Seamaster or a high port official. You have an excursion captain who loves the Sea. Why not a religious leader, someone more involved with charling profits than his sect?"

"But your sister, Tallin ..." I said.

The Samoan girl snorted with contempt. "Jarvain Alis was in love with my sister." "Then he had good cause to seek out Dewi and..."

"Ella was an identical twin!" Tallin said and turned to the rail so her back was to us. Scarbo and I considered the implications, watching the breeze stir Tallin's long dark hair.

Scarbo frowned, lowered his voice. "But they all said: No to both questions, Tom. Not being Dewi is one thing, especially if it is a shared persona. But they didn't know who Dewi was. Wouldn't that violate the monitor's function?" Ben shook his head.

"Then the device was faulty, which explains the double answer for Dewi being on board."

"So why did MacRommurque get rid of it - to stop further questions?"

"Possibly. Or just to mislead us further. The one thing we do know for certain is that Dewi wants us out here like this - otherwise MacRommurque wouldn't have been on the dock yesterday, and Alis and Namuren wouldn't have come. We would have found only hirelings, possibly innocent ones who could honestly face a monitor and leave us with no further clues." Tallin turned back to us. "Then what could Dewi's motives be?" she asked. "Why bother with this? Ben told me about the mirror-s.h.i.+ps before. Why doesn't Dewi have you killed far from here, back at Angel Bay, even in Port Merilyn? Did he underestimate you?"

We were nearly at the island. Marmordesse rose from the warm Sea a mile ahead, the dark openings of the doors to the vigil-cells visible between the tall cedars on the central ridge, a simple whitewashed mortuary building on the beach below, with a wooden jetty reaching out into the lake on timber piles. The place looked deserted. Not a soul could be seen - just the quiet sun-drenched beach with low waves rolling between the piles of the jetty and lapping at the white sand, and the quiet shadowed groves and glades beyond. I watched the island getting closer, thinking again of Griff and Ella, then returned to Tallin's questions.

"Two things occur to me, Tallin. One is that Dewi Dammo would like someone to pierce his disguise, to appreciate the intricate operation 'he' has devised. It's a need for sensation, for an audience, even a temporary one since he can't afford to let us leave with knowledge of Marmordesse. Our elimination anywhere else removes the problem, yes, but without the pleasure of having someone know. It may just be vanity." I hesitated. "And it's possible that Ella ..."

Tallin finished for me. "That she discovered Dewi's true ident.i.ty. What is the other explanation?"

"You said it yourself before: Ella was your identical twin. If Jarvain Alis is part of a corporate Dewi Dammo and he loves you, he has Ella again in a sense, safe in his domain."

"How close are you to your brother?" Scarbo asked.

"Not very," Tallin replied. "We're closer now because of Ella, though tnere was no love mere either. They fought all the time. Pride is much closer to the sect. He could be Dewi Dammo for all I know."

"So could you," Scarbo said.

"True," Tallin admitted calmly. "But do think of what's involved in murdering your identical twin."

I did so, then thought of Pederson's violent death at Angel Bay.The conditioning had been in him, yes, but could Jarvain Alis have followed him to make sure the dying man did not reveal too much at the moment of his death?

The mere presence of Alis would have brought on thoughts of Dewi, accelerating the process, hastening poor Peter's decline dramatically.

"What an agony it must have been for Pederson to sit there with us, with a part of Dewi present."

"So what do we do now?" Tallin said.

"We go ash.o.r.e on Marmordesse as Dewi intends, though I doubt we'll find a monitor there. But first we must search this vessel as thoroughly as we can - for another single person, for a hiding place, for anything that will explain MacRommurque's Yes-No answer."

Tallin and I went to do that while Scarbo brought us in to the small jetty. First we searched the empty upper deck and then - trying to appear as casual about it as we could - went down to where Jarvain Alis, Pride and James Namuren were talking outside a locked crew cabin.

"We have arrived I see," Namuren said. "Do we go ash.o.r.e?"

"Yes, Mr Namuren. Are you armed?"

The Ab'0 produced a small laser baton. "I am."

"Then please take the MacRommurques with you. We shall meet on the beach in ten minutes."

"What of you, Captain Tyson?" Jarvain Alis asked, and I could not help but detect a new sinister intelligence behind those steady eyes. I saw no point in concealing what I intended.

"Scarbo and I wish to search the vessel. In view of Captain MacRommurque's Yes-No answer, we must make certain no-one else is on board." Jarvain Alis smiled. "Should not Mr Namuren be present?"

"He is most welcome, of course," I said. "Three of us will make quick work of it."

We watched Alis take the baton from the Ab'0 official. then set about our task.

When the search was done, we joined the small group of figures on the beach. It was noon; the sun blazed down on the island. Cicadas droned in the cedars; a stillness hung over everything, broken only by the waves rolling on to the beach.

"Nothing?" Alis said.

"Nothing," I answered. "Where are the doctors?"

"We've seen no-one. The building over there is unoccupied."

"At this hour," Namuren said, looking up at the cliff, "they are probably down in the crypts out of the heat. We must go looking." We started up the slope into the small forest, Pride and Jarvain Alis in the lead, then the grim-faced MacRommurques followed by the port official, once again holding the baton, then Scarbo, Tallin and myself. It took only minutes to reach the rockface where the 17 narrow doors opened into dark cool chambers. Some were comparatively shallow, like the place where Griff had died, with room for a bed, a chair, toilet facilities, and a small service annexe.

Two of these chambers contained dying Ab'Os, both old men, one of them tended by a tiny frail black woman who could barely move from her chair to her husband's side. Other doorways had steps leading down into darkness, into the service rooms where the charling vats were, and Namuren led us into these as well, one after the other. Each was deep enough to have a sea-door into a common channel. Each had a floor vat where the nascent charling could grow to viability before using that channel to enter the waters of the lake beyond. It was an ordeal to stand in the stink and the gloom of the five torch-lit occupied cells and see the various stages of transformation. Two cultures were still taking and not yet motile - the charling growths already showing form, working inwards, devouring their human hosts, striving to reach the spines so they could anchor their own rudimentary spinal-cords and become vertebrate. The other three were already fully formed, it seemed, and lay splas.h.i.+ng and rolling in the darkness of their vats, waving their flukes, waiting to be released into the channel and the Sea.

"There is only one chamber left," Namuren said when we were out in the heat and glare once more.

I watched his dark eyes closely. They seemed to glitter with controlled amus.e.m.e.nt. "The Ab'0 doctors will be there, I suppose?" James Namuren smiled. His baton no longer covered the MacRommurques. In fact the Scotsman was looking unusually alert, his eyes glittering as well.

"And the monitor will be there?" Scarbo said. "And Dewi Dammo?" I added.

"Yes and no," Namuren answered, still smiling. From a tall stone doorway on the far side of a cedar, four Ab'0 doctors appeared holding laser batons, pointing them at Tallin, Scarbo and myself.

"I knew it," Scarbo said. "Alis, Namuren and MacRommurque! They're the three Pederson meant. They're Dewi."

"No, Ben," I told him. "Dewi is down in the last crypt. The three are the carriers for his personality; another example of Dewi's great skill with projections."

"Well done, Captain," Namuren said. "You are "... quite correct ..." said MacRommurque.

"... in almost every detail," Jarvain Alis finished. "Do we meet the real Dewi?" I asked, combat-ready, watching the tips of the batons for any advantage.

"No," MacRommurque said. "Not yet." He too produced a baton. "We must not take undue risks."

"You would not like what you see," added Alis. I studied the three very different faces. "So what happens now?"

"Different things," Namuren answered, his eyes glinting with the presence of Dewi Dammo. "Pride Okani undergoes extensive surgery and receives an implant to take the signal. I become four instead of three. Then, someday, five and six ..."

"And Tallin?

Jarvain Alis answered. "Becomes my bride-in place of Ella. An Inner Eye ritual. Ella should not have refused me. This is Marmordesse ..."

"And Scarbo and myself?"

"Become charling!" Jarvain Alis was carrying the Dewi signal. The arrogance of the man was the same as before, but there was an edge of cruelty and an insanity there now, not just the ambition, the greed, the yearning for power over the tribes and the charling fleets. "The boat has explosives on board, and a timer. Closer to curfew, the vessel will be taken nearer Port Merilyn and destroyed. I there will be no searcn tor bodies because this Sea is sacred. It will look as if an Ab'0 satellite has destroyed a smuggling operation. Unfortunately, Tom Rynosseros and Kitemaster Scarbo were on board when the strike occurred." Jarvain Alis laughed, an odd harsh sound. "Ab'0 justice can be indiscriminate like this. Take them!" Three of the Ab'0 doctors came forward, and with Michael MacRommurque led Scarbo and me towards one of the empty deeper crypts, while Tallin was dragged struggling and screaming into the hypogeum we had not entered. We heard her cries echoing across the island, then silence.

"You will die in great pain," MacRommurque was saying, fully himself now. Dewi was in one of the others. "But it will be a holy death. True to Inner Eye. The proper internalisation into new flesh and form. A return to Ichthus." We reached the door and started down the steps. Our eyes had yet to adjust to the gloom and it was a confined s.p.a.ce. There would be no better time. Scarbo was ahead of me, a doctor before him. MacRommurque and the other doctors came behind.

I pushed Scarbo, trusting he would land atop the man in front. At the same time, I dropped to the steps, pulling at the Scotsman's legs so he fell forward and down.

In the dim torch-light, the two doctors behind could not tell us apart. There was a laser flash, which only served to blind us further. Then an explosion shook the stone about us. "It's the Seamaster's men!" I cried, trusting, hoping that Namuren was not the seamaster. "The island's under attack! They've come for you!"

The two doctors behind us panicked, knowing the deaths they faced at tribal hands. They fled back up the steps, while I struggled with MacRommurque and Scarbo fought the remaining Ab'O.

Michael MacRommurque was stronger than I, but he was handicapped. Dewi came and went behind his eyes, trying to discover what was happening, unable to keep away. The Scotsman was disoriented and could not coordinate. I pushed him away during a personality s.h.i.+ft, and Scarbo burned him through the skull with a baton he had wrested from the unconscious doctor's grasp.

"Quickly, Ben!" I yelled, s.n.a.t.c.hing up MacRommurque's baton. There were footsteps above us. The other two doctors had realised the folly of failing Dewi and had returned. We shot them while they were still framed in the doorway above us. Then we rushed out into the glaring sunlight, and ran along the cliff face to the last doorway. Through the big cedar trunks, we caught glimpses of the beach, saw the coiling black smoke, the wreckage of the excursion boat and the jetty, the damaged mortuary building. Then we were in darkness again, hurrying down steps that curved into the rock. In a dimly-lit staging room, we met Pride Okani and Maura MacRommurque rus.h.i.+ng towards us, no doubt sent to help the Scotsman. Dewi had probably a.s.sumed his red-haired carrier was unconscious, and needed to keep him safe. It was a matter of timing, of reflexes and luck. Scarbo and I have had weapons-training and we knew to drop to the sides of the pa.s.sage. Pride and Maura did not. Pride's bolt went where I had been, and Maura simply did not react quickly enough. I shot the woman through the neck, Scarbo burned a neat hole in the Samoan's skull.

Then it was another flight of steps, and Scarbo and I burst into the primary chamber. We took in what we saw in an instant: Tallin, strapped naked to a mortuary altar, struggling, a ballgag in her mouth, her eyes wild; Jarvain Alis and Namuren standing over her, holding loaded syringes, but smaller, more delicate instruments than would normally be used to introduce the growths - they did not wish the shots themselves to kill her. There was the remaining Ab'0 doctor holding his baton, and a fully-grown charling lying very still in the floor vat, leads and contacts connecting its head and spine to the banks of hi-tech equipment beyond.

The Ab'0 doctor raised his baton; Scarbo shot him through the heart.

"No!" Alis cried, and it was Dewi speaking. I burned Alis where he stood. The syringe clattered on the floor and rolled to the side.

Namuren brandished his own syringe of charling culture.

"No!" he cried, and it was Dewi again.

"Do nothing, Dewi," I said, "or you die this instant! Put the hypodermic down!'

Namuren obeyed, his eyes glittering with the panic and rage of the unmoving creature in the vat.

Scarbo went to the altar and freed Tallin. She had not been harmed yet, it turned out, though she sobbed hysterically when Ben unstrapped the ball from her mouth and held her to him.

"Do nothing!" I said again to Namuren, for Dewi's final carrier was showing enormous agitation.

"The Seamaster is here?" Namuren demanded, and I couldn't be sure if it was Dewi's question or the port official's. Then I realised that Dewi would not relax his hold on Namuren for a moment, not for a second. This was his only point of contact, his only path to life.

"No," Scarbo told him, told the creature in the narrow vat. "We found the explosives on the boat and set the timer early. We knew we were in a trap."

"Explain Dewi to us!" I said.

Namuren calmed. His eyes steadied a little, perhaps sensing hope, a way for life in exchange for knowlege.

"I was Ab'0," Namuren said. "A scientist deprived of reward because what we achieve is always for the tribes, not ourselves. I was dying and I had the knowledge to keep my brain alive in charling flesh. I halted the attrition. I found a way to do it. I arranged for my closest colleagues to be carriers, to surrender moments of their lives. I did it, don't you see? I did it! I am still alive, thinking, years after bodily death."

"And insane and cruel!" Scarbo said. "The charling has changed you. You've adapted; lost your humanity!"

"No!" Namuren cried, then steadied again. "What will you do to me?"

"Disconnect you," I said. "For Pederson and Ella's sakes. Then open the gate. Release you into the Sea."

"No! No!" Namuren shrieked, and lunged for the baton dropped by the Ab'0 doctor.

But Tallin already had the weapon from Jarvain Alis' body, and she shot the port official, fired again at the dully-gleaming hi-tech beyond. There were several small explosions, the snap and chatter of circuits fusing. In the vat, the creature which was all that was left of Dewi Dammo thrashed in the shallow water, tearing free of the contacts.

But Tallin did more. She grabbed a loaded syringe from the floor, leant down over the creature's head, and thrust it into where the brain would be. It was a light needle, meant for human flesh, and it may not have pierced the special sac surrounding Dewi's brain. But it didn't bend or break, and Tallin pressed the plunger home. She left the needle fixed there, then turned and opened the sea-door by hand. The maddened charling plunged out into the channel, its flukes flailing, and was gone.

"For Ella," Tallin said, climbing up to us. "I did that for Ella." The the girl's ordeal caught up with her. She staggered, went to reach for a wall to help her stand, and stumbled forward. Scarbo and I supported her between us and helped her up to the staging room where we found her clothes. While she dressed, she studied the bodies of Pride and Maura MacRommurque without a word. We continued on out into the sunlight, then made our way through the cedar grove down to the beach. Looking towards Port Merilyn, we could see three boats approaching Marmordesse, flying the Seamaster's colours.

"It is over now, Tallin," I said. "What will you do?" She stared at the dazzling water of the Inland Sea, watching the boats draw nearer.

"Inner Eye," she said, fingering the small golden sign pinned below her collar. "It is not over yet. I will get special dispensation from the Seamaster and hire a boat. I will find that charling."

"And then?"

"Why, I will eat him," Tallin said. "I will eat him."