For half his life, Loman had loved this woman, his best friend's wife, though he had never acted upon his feelings. He had always told himself that it was a strictly platonic attraction. Looking at her now, however, he knew passion had been a part of it.
The disturbing thing was … well, though he knew what he had felt for her all these years, though he remembered it, he could not feel it any longer. His love, his passion, his pleasant yet melancholy longing had faded as had most of his other emotional responses; he was still aware of his previous feelings for her, but they were like another aspect of him that had split off and drifted away like a ghost departing a corpse.
Worthy set the filled syringe on the nightstand. He unbuttoned and pushed up the loose sleeve on Nelia's blouse, then tied a length of rubber tubing around her arm, tight enough to make a vein more evident.
As the physician swabbed Nella's arm with an alcohol-soaked cottonball, she said, 'Loman, what are we going to do?'
'Everything will be fine,' he said, stroking her hand.
'No. How can you say that? Eddie's dead. He was so sweet, so small and sweet, and now he's gone. Nothing will be fine again.'
'Very soon you'll feel better,' Loman assured her. 'Before you know it the hurt will be gone. It won't matter as much as it does now. I promise it won't.'
She blinked and stared at him as if he were talking nonsense, but then she did not know what was about to happen to her. Worthy slipped the needle into her arm.
She twitched.
The golden fluid flowed out of the syringe, into her bloodstream.
She closed her eyes and began to cry softly again, not at the pain of the needle but at the loss of her son.
Maybe it is better not to care so much, not to love so much, Loman thought.
The syringe was empty.
Worthy withdrew the needle from her vein.
Again Loman met the doctor's gaze.
Nella shuddered.
The Change would require two more injections, and someone would have to stay with Nella for the next four or five hours, not only to administer the drugs but to make sure that she did not hurt herself during the conversion. Becoming a New Person was not a painless process.
Nella shuddered again.
Worthy tilted his head, and the lamplight struck his wirerimmed glasses at a new angle, transforming the lenses into mirrors that for a moment hid his eyes, giving him an uncharacteristically menacing appearance.
Shudders, more violent and protracted this time, swept through Nella.
From the doorway George Valdoski said, 'What's going on here?'
Loman had been so focused on Nella that he had not heard George coming. He got up at once and let go of Nella's hand. 'The doctor thought she needed—'
'What's that horse needle for?' George said, referring to the huge syringe. The needle itself was no larger than an ordinary hypodermic.
'Tranquilizer,' Dr. Worthy said. 'She needs to—'
'Tranquilizer?' George interrupted. 'Looks like you gave her enough to knock down a bull.'
Loman said, 'Now, George, the doctor knows what he's—'
On the bed Nella fell under the thrall of the injection. Her body suddenly stiffened, her hands curled into tight fists, her teeth clenched, and her jaw muscles bulged. In her throat and temples, the arteries swelled and throbbed visibly as her heartbeat drastically accelerated. Her eyes glazed over, and she passed into the peculiar twilight that was the Change, neither conscious nor unconscious.
'What's wrong with her?' George demanded.
Between clenched teeth, lips peeled back in a grimace of pain, Nella let out a strange, low groan. She arched her back until only her shoulders and heels were in contact with the bed. She appeared to be full of violent energy, as if she were a boiler straining with excess steam pressure, and for a moment she seemed about to explode. Then she collapsed back onto the mattress, shuddered more violently than ever, and broke out in a copious sweat.
George looked at Worthy, at Loman. He clearly realized that something was very wrong, though he could not begin to understand the nature of that wrongness.
'Stop.' Loman drew his revolver as George stepped backward toward the second-floor hall.
'Come all the way in here, George, and lie down on the bed beside Nella.'
In the doorway George Valdoski froze, staring in disbelief and dismay at the revolver.
'If you try to leave,' Loman said, 'I'll have to shoot you, and I don't really want to do that.'
'You wouldn't,' George said, counting on decades of friendship to protect him.
'Yes, I would,' Loman said coldly.
'I'd kill you if I had to, and we'd cover it with a story you wouldn't like. We'd say that we caught you in a contradiction, that we found some evidence that you were the one who killed Eddie, killed your own boy, some twisted sex thing, and that when we confronted you with the proof, you grabbed my revolver out of my holster. There was a struggle. You were shot. Case closed.'
Coming from someone who was supposed to be a close and treasured friend, Loman's threat was so monstrous that at first George was speechless. Then, as he stepped back into the room, he said, 'You'd let everyone think … think I did those terrible things to Eddie? Why? What're you doing, Loman? What the hell are you doing? Who … who are you protecting?'
'Lie down on the bed,' Loman said.
Dr. Worthy was preparing another syringe for George.
On the bed Nella was shivering ceaselessly, twitching, writhing. Sweat trickled down her face; her hair was damp and tangled. Her eyes were open, but she seemed unaware that others were in the room. Maybe she was not even conscious of her whereabouts. She was seeing a place beyond this room or looking within herself; Loman didn't know which and could remember nothing of his own conversion except that the pain had been excruciating.
Reluctantly approaching the bed, George Valdoski said, 'What's happening, Loman? Christ, what is this? What's wrong?'
'Everything'll be fine,' Loman assured him. 'It's for the best, George. It's really for the best.'
'
'Lie down, George. Everything'll be fine.'
'What's happening to Nella?'
'Lie down, George. It's for the best,' Loman said.
'It's for the best,' Dr. Worthy agreed as he finished filling the syringe from a new bottle of the golden fluid.
'It's really for the best,' Loman said. 'Trust me.' With the revolver he waved George toward the bed and smiled reassuringly.
18
Harry Talbot's house was Bauhaus-inspired redwood, with a wealth of big windows. It was three blocks south of the heart of Moonlight Cove, on the east side of Conquistador Avenue, a street named for the fact that Spanish conquerors had bivouacked in that area centuries earlier, when accompanying the Catholic clergy along the California coast to establish missions. On rare occasions Harry dreamed of being one of those ancient soldiers, marching northward into unexplored territory, and it was always a nice dream because, in that adventure fantasy, he was never wheelchair-bound.
Most of Moonlight Cove was built on wooded hillsides facing the sea, and Harry's lot sloped down to Conquistador, providing a perfect perch for a man whose main activity in life was spying on his fellow townsmen. From his third-floor bedroom at the northwest corner of the house, he could see at least portions of all the streets
