Son of the Endless Night, page 40
"Have a drink of this," a woman said calmly in his ear. "Sounds as if you need it, my dear."
He accepted the bottle of wine without looking at its donor, and drank deep. The wine stung his lips and tongue and washed the dust from his parched throat. He gradually stopped coughing.
"You had a narrow escape. I suppose that bus has parked in that very spot day in and day out for a number of years without mishap. Suddenly a lava tube no one knew was there gives way. Well, that's the nature of this island. I presume no one else was aboard."
"No," Conor said. "Nobody got killed this time." He handed the bottle back and thanked her. She was a small Englishwoman, ruddy, wrinkled, with short gray hair ascatter in the wind, a fine appraising eye, and a stubborn mouth; she looked as if she could be temperamental.
"This time?"
He shrugged; he didn't feel like trying to explain to a stranger. The boy who had wanted to sell him refreshments aboard the bus moments before the ground opened appeared lugging Conor's valise in two hands. Conor gave him money. His face was smarting; he touched it carefully. Blisters.
"Those should be attended to," the woman said. "There's always a danger of infection."
"Yeah," Conor said indifferently. He had been hurt worse at backyard barbecues. "Well, now there's no bus," he said, looking around. "And I have to get to La Loma.'' He was more annoyed than shaken by his second close shave in twenty-four hours. "I don't suppose I'll find a taxi in this place."
"I think not. I seldom come this way myself. Only when la Duquesa is not feeling up to par. The local vet is very good with camels, particularly a camel with a toothache. There is a taxi in La Loma, which may come this far to fetch you or may not, depending on the whim of its owner. But if you're up to it, I can provide you with transportation, as I'm going that way myself."
From a woven basket at her feet she took a straw hat with a deep brim and a black hatband. She tied it on her head with a bow under the chin. The hat shaded all of her face.
"You mean ride a camel?"
"It takes some getting used to, but the Duchess is very dependable, particularly where there are no roads to speak of."
"Well, thanks. I— uh . . . why not. Can your camel carry someone my size?"
"If she chooses. You must pass inspection. But her toothache is much better, and she realizes she owes me a favor. Follow me."
"By the way, thanks for the wine." He looked for the label. There wasn't one. The woman smiled acerbically as Conor gave the bottle back to her.
"I am my own vintner. A labor of love. A good bottle of wine is always useful for barter. I carry several with me on town days."
"You grow grapes in a place like this?"
"This godforsaken pile of cinders?" Her mouth held amusement like a bird holds a tidbit. "Yes, we grow grapes, and very successfully. A single one of my vines will often yield more than a hundred pounds of grapes. Where I am living we grow all of our own food; much more, really, than we can consume."
"Where do you live?"
"In a small community overlooking Playa Cascajo." She gestured vaguely to the west.
"Do you mean Sundial?"
"Yes."
"Do you know Edith Leighton?"
The woman walked on a few paces without replying, and Conor assumed she hadn't heard him because of the incessant wind, which had become a kind of phantom companion, too close for comfort, mindless, a giant who tried to be playful, and spoke in a numbing monotone. Then she turned suddenly, bringing him up short, and lifted her gaze to him from under the brim of her hat.
"I've been on rather good terms with her for some sixty-eight years now."
"You're— "
"Yes. But who on earth are you, my dear?"
"Conor Devon."
"Devon?" She said it a second time, to herself, before signaling recognition. "Oh, I see. Rather unfair of you to show up like this." She set her basket aside and reached down with both hands to bat dust from her long skirt of azul de anil. "I must tell you I have no intention of reversing the decision which I relayed to Father Merlo." She looked up then, noted his disappointment with a defensive tightening of her own lips, and turned her black eyes from his face to the jagged hole in the roadway which had swallowed the bus. The hole was still fuming.
"Since you are here," she said, after turning the matter over in her mind for a few moments longer, "I suppose I should take you in hand for the remainder of your stay. Otherwise I suspect you have virtually no chance of leaving Heraclio alive."
72
Judge Natty Eames was a little man of threescore and ten; he had bristling gray hair, a flat nose, a smile aggressively filled with little sharp teeth, and the sometimes rabidly hostile eyes of a Pekingese dog. Like any other man, he was not tolerant of those who tried to cross him, particularly ambitious young trial lawyers. His courtroom was sanctified ground. In it he was God Almighty.
He said to Adam, seven withering seconds after Adam had walked into the judge's chambers, "Where do you get off thinking you can turn my courtroom into a freak show?"
"That certainly was not my intention, Your Honor, when I— "
"Just sit down and listen."
"Sir, with all due respect, I'm fully convinced my client is— "
"Sit down!"
Adam sat.
"I have a certain amount of influence in this state where you happen to practice law. I assume you want to continue to practice, and that this notice of 'demonic possession' you've filed is not some form of suicidal bloodletting you've decided to carry on in public. If it is your wish to pursue the practice of criminal law in Vermont, I advise you to take a little time, say forty-eight hours, to think over what you've done, at the end of which time you may withdraw your notice and file another which the court will find more acceptable, and I won't say any more about your faulty judgment and questionable behavior to date. Don't waste your time fiddling around with any notion of a change of venue or a preempt. I feel that I speak for all of my fellow jurists in expressing my contempt for this travesty. While you are mulling over good advice and hopefully coming to your senses, you're restrained from discussing any aspect of this case with the press. Good morning to you, Counselor."
73
There was no art to riding a camel; it was, Conor found, a matter of sheer staying power. He rode in one of two wood and canvas chairs with adjustable footrests, that were suspended from either side of la Duquesa's considerable hump. Edith Leighton occupied the other chair. Conor's size put his legs easily within reach of great grinding teeth, and la Duquesa had found him an unaccustomed heavy burden. Edith kept the camel's attention properly fixed on the meandering track they followed westward from La Loma with an occasional stinging flick of the whip she held in one hand. In response the Duchess roared in a spine-tingling way, but she made no attempt to gnaw off one of Conor's feet.
The land they passed through was black with cinders and lush with crops that grew on both sides of the track as far as Conor could see.
"There is some rainfall here," Edith said to him above the moaning of the trade winds. "But only about five inches a year. Not enough for the growth of vegetation which, as in Hawaii, would help break down the quantities of lava into a rich loam. The island is a desert. But what seems harsh can be a blessing. Farmers learned long ago that the loose volcanic cinders have their value agriculturally. The lapilli form a blanket which soaks up the winter rain and the dew that falls every night, and prevents this trapped moisture from evaporating. Not a drop is wasted, and during the rainless months much can be accomplished even with this small amount of water."
Conor looked at a slope pocked, like a section of golf ball painted black, with precisely formed craters, each about ten feet in diameter and three feet deep; each had its little curved wall of black stone to windward. In the craters were vivid green vines, clusters of grapes.
"The craters," she said, "protect the vines from the wind, which would uproot them. But we have uses for the wind as well."
They traveled down through a wild and uninhabited area of crags and volcanic arroyos, where the land fumed hotly around pieces of basaltic lava as colorful as Gypsy beads. The odor of sulfur was a surprising tonic for Conor's hangover, made worse the last few miles by the jouncing ride in the cramped seat. The sea came into view on their left and soon they were going north at the edge of a cliff so barren not even lichens grew there. Below lay windmills and the drying beds of a salt works. Edith explained how the windmills pumped sea water over the beds, where the sun evaporated the shallow water and left deposits of salt, much of it used by the island's fishermen to preserve their catches for export.
"On the other Canary islands flowers grow in tropical profusion, and flowers are used in their celebrations. What we have the most of is cinders and salt. So the salt is colored and made into elaborate paintings for the feast of Corpus Christi and other religious observances. It's a fascinating culture. The fortitude required to get to know it is well rewarded. The original inhabitants, called Guanche, were tall, fair, Stone Age people, but socially well-organized in spite of their primitive status. It took the Spaniards nearly a hundred years to conquer and assimilate the Guanches. Genetically you still see signs of them, quite lovely blond children with penetrating blue eyes. I suppose the strangest thing of all for an island people is the fact that the Guanches had no boats."
"Where did they come from?"
"Atlantis, I'm sure. These islands were once the easternmost part of the continent of Atlantis, a civilization which flourished, as you may have heard, some twenty-five thousand years ago, when the coasts of Africa and America were in the sea."
Conor smiled skeptically. The track they were following began to wind down precipitously toward a lagoon of many shades of green, all of them balm for the eyes. He saw bathers on an arc of black beach, small boats and wind-surfers. Behind the beach, at a distance of about a hundred yards, was a reddish cliff like a petrified comber of the sea. Atop the cliff stood the sugar-cube houses, trimmed in cool colors, and the windmills of the Sundial community. The houses and Roman-style pavilions were surrounded by gardens, a few palm trees, and groves of citrus and fig trees planted in great bowls beneath the level of the wind.
The community occupied all of the dark cliff plateau between the eye of the lagoon and the bloody snout of the central volcano of the mountain of fire that loomed in the background. The side of the volcano was broken in places into deep crevasses, studded with the ugly red teats of spatter cones, stained with the yellow spots of sulfur deposits. It was, Conor thought, a bizarre place to choose to live: hell at the back door, demiparadise in front. Yet no one was here who didn't want to be. He knew from Merlo that Edith Leighton had been one of England's most distinguished barristers— a QC, or member of the Queen's Counsel, the juggernauts of the British legal system, called in for only the most important cases. She could have afforded to live anywhere, in distinguished company. But she seemed to relish the peasant clothing of this virtually unknown island, everyday toil in her garden, the company of a balky and complaining camel. Well, la Duquesa saved on gas, which was probably scarce here. Conor saw a few rugged four-wheel drive vehicles parked along the unpaved lanes of the community, and more camels in pens.
Edith flicked the Duchess with the whip to coax her off the track as an old Land-Rover, nearly stripped of paint by the grit-laden winds, came grinding up from below. The mailman behind the wheel grinned and waved to Edith.
"How many residents are there?" Conor asked her.
"The number fluctuates. Perhaps five hundred, not counting the students who board during the week. Many of us are still active in the Work, and come and go constantly; others never leave. I detest driving and seldom go even as far as La Loma these days, because of the obvious difficulties in getting there. Perhaps you wouldn't mind walking the last half mile, it's a troubling descent for la Duquesa from this point on."
Presently they reached the community and passed low open buildings on the cliff's edge, through which the sea was visible. Conor heard the voices of children, saw them sitting in small groups around their tutors. Beyond the school was a large plaza, covered with a mosaic of salt paintings framed by low rock walls. A huge pelican in one of the paintings had bitten its own snowy breast and was bleeding into a golden chalice. In the midst of the plaza was a great bronze object perhaps twelve feet in diameter, elevated on a pedestal of rough-hewn granite blocks. It was a very old sundial, meticulously maintained, and looked as if it weighed a couple of tons. The paintings and the sundial combined in a motif that was religious, but not recognizably denominational.
"Religion?" Edith said, when he inquired. "We have God here, but not God the son; no 'religion' with its do's and don't's, it's dependency-inducing rituals of blood and emotional purgings, its priestly hierarchies. The leadership of our convocation rotates among us. Out there"— she indicated the world beyond the cliff with a sweeping hand— "is Satan. He is enough for us to fear, and respect.
And oppose, wherever we encounter him. This has been the only purpose of our society since it was founded nearly two thousand years ago. The truth of the human condition is quite simply expressed. There is good in the world, and there is evil. The struggle between the two forces has not let up for even one moment throughout history. What we try to do is to heighten the influence of good, not through rituals and dehumanizing mumbo-jumbo, but through the power of prayer and psychic intervention, which is all one and the same anyway."
"How did you get a sundial that size down the mountain?"
"It was not brought here, not by human hands. During the great eruptions, earthquakes, and tidal waves of 1730 to '36, the sundial was cast up from the sea and came to rest, on its side, just where you see it now. It remained in that position for another two hundred years. Those few people who saw it during that time had no idea of what it was. Meanwhile certain evolutionary changes in the vibrational patterns of our little square mile of earth were completed, and individuals within our society whose vibrations corresponded with the enhanced frequency here were attracted— "
"Vibrational patterns? I don't know what you— "
"Oh, I haven't time to explain anything now," she said impatiently, almost rudely. "I want to get home. You have too much of Outside Earth clinging to you as it is, and it's causing all kinds of interference. I get an uncomfortable buzzing at the temples when I'm too close to you. Let's go."
Her house was near the cliff's edge, and had two calcimined cement walls around it, one higher than the other. Between the two walls orange and lemon trees, undisturbed by the whipsawing wind, were fragrantly in bloom. In Edith's cinder garden he saw tomato plants, lentils, peppers, even a watermelon patch. The fruits and vegetables were outsized; they didn't look real. She paused to pick a tomato larger than Conor's fist that was drooping almost to the ground by the path to the door. Then, after tethering la Duquesa and providing her with a lunch that included prickly-pear cactus and watermelon rind, Edith took Conor inside.
The doorway was low, he had to stoop slightly. He found the interior of the house similarly snug. There were ceiling fans. A windmill he had seen at one side of the house provided what little electricity was required, and running water. The cleverly baffled veranda that seemed to overhang the spectacular lagoon tamed the stiff trade winds to cool breezes, and woven sunscreens filtered the afternoon glare. They went straight through the house to this wide and deep veranda; Conor noticed in passing the excellent paintings on every wall.
There were two people on the veranda. A man about Edith's age, a girl who looked to be in her early twenties. He was sitting to one side of a large round table facing the sea; the girl was constructing a salt painting in a shallow wood box. Some thirty wide-mouthed bottles of colored salt were on the table. The man didn't look around at Edith's bustling return, but the girl, who had been leaning over the table with one knee on a stool, straightened and smiled, brushing grains of green and ochre salt off the backs of her slim hands. She was nearly six feet tall.
"Hello, Philip," Edith said to her husband. "Bit delayed; I'm sorry." She looked at the untouched lunch on the tray beside him. The girl shrugged soberly. "Well, there was some excitement on the road," Edith continued. "Lava tube collapsed, and the La Loma bus was swallowed whole. This gentleman managed to arrange his escape in the nick of time. He was the sole passenger, fortunately. Conor, wasn't it? Yes. Conor Devon, from the U.S. My husband, Philip Leighton."
Leighton's hands remained folded in his lap. He nodded and smiled but didn't look at Conor. And he said nothing. After a moment the smile faded. He had the eyes of a wayfarer locked into some permanent contemplation of unachievable horizons.
"He talked to me for a minute or two this morning," the girl volunteered. "He had some very helpful things to say about my painting. Oh, yes, and he moved his bowels."
"My husband," Edith Leighton said, looking at Conor, "has Alzheimer's disease."
"I don't think I've ever heard of it."
"Not too many years ago Alzheimer's went virtually undiagnosed; its symptoms were mistaken for a host of other conditions. Now it's become recognized as a rather pervasive killer: an irreversible form of premature senility. I find this particularly sad because Philip is an artist, and had been doing some of his finest work when I noticed he was— slowing down, talking less, indulging in some erratic behavior that alarmed me." Her husband nodded gently. "He knows about his condition, and during those moments of lucidity which he still has, we discuss what the effects ultimately will be. He accepts the prognosis, but then he's not really capable of feeling much emotion anymore. And he can't look after himself. Someone must be with him all the time."
"I see. I'm very sorry, I didn't have any idea— "
