Descendant

panic.

“On second thought — maybe we’re being too hasty,” I suggested. “Maybe we should leave it for today and come back tomorrow.”

“I have no surgery tomorrow, I regret,” said Duca. “Tomorrow I have. other obligations.”

“In that case, maybe we should leave it till after we’re married.”

“Is something wrong, my dear sir?” asked Duca, and there was something very knowing in his tone of voice, something very arch. I wondered if he might have remembered who I looked like, and guessed why I was here.

“Wrong? No, of course there’s nothing wrong. It’s just that this is a very important decision and I don’t want us to rush into doing something that we both regret.”

“I don’t see why you are so concerned. If you find that you dislike this particular method of birth control, all you have to do is to stop using it. But look at you. You seem very agitated. You are perspiring. Perhaps something else is worrying you.”

“Of course not. It’s a very warm day, that’s all.”

But it was then that Jill said, “It’s all right. Why doesn’t Dr. Duca examine me, and you can wait outside?” At the same time, she lifted her eyes toward the upstairs landing, and I realized what she was trying to tell me. While Duca is busy measuring my cervix, you can go looking for the wheel.

I didn’t know what to say. I felt that I had lost control of the situation, and to my own surprise I also felt both protective and jealous. Jill was trying to prove herself to me, trying to show me that she was brave enough to be a Screecher-hunter. But the proof that she was offering me was the same proof that she had offered me last night, as proof that she was attracted to me.

Duca laid his arm around her shoulders. His fingernails were very long, and pale, and immaculately manicured. Jill said, “Don’t worry, darling, honestly. I’ll be quite all right.” The way she called me “darling” made me feel even worse.

“You’re absolutely sure about this?” I asked her.

She nodded. What could I say, without arousing Duca’s suspicions? “All right,” I said. “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

Duca ushered her into its surgery and closed the door. I said to Terence, “Go get my Kit. Stay right outside. If I shout out, come on in as fast as you can.”

“God,” said Terence, “you’re not going to let it —?”

“I don’t have any choice. Hurry!”

Terence went out of the front door, and I ran up the stairs as quietly and as quickly as I could. If the worn- out stair carpet and the dusty window ledges were anything to go by, Dr. Watkins lived alone. No woman would have kept a vase of dried honesty on the landing, so old that the leaves had turned skeletal.

First of all I opened the bedroom door on the left. A guest bedroom, quite small and smelling of damp. Next to it was a bathroom, with a large pale green bath that was streaked with rust. I went to the bedrooms on the right. A medium-sized room, which must have been a schoolboy’s room once upon a time, with athletics trophies on the windowsill and a single model Spitfire still hanging from the ceiling, thick with woolly dust.

In the master bedroom stood a large mahogany bed with a pink satin quilt. The quilt and the pillows had been so fastidiously arranged that I knew that Duca must be sleeping here. Or resting, anyhow. Screechers don’t sleep in the same way that humans do, and so of course they never dream. The nearest they ever get to dreaming is a reverie about their lost humanity, and the people who used to love them.

I found Duca’s wheel at once. It was hanging on a fine gold chain from the side of the mirror on the dressing table. On top of the dressing table stood several bottles of hair lotion and cologne, as well as a miniature portrait of a young woman in an oval frame. I picked it up and looked at it more closely. I could see why Duca was so attracted to Jill. This young woman looked more Slavic than Jill, but she had similar features, with high cheekbones and feline eyes. The name Anca was written on the bottom of the portrait, in faded mauve ink.

I lifted the wheel off the mirror and dropped it into my coat pocket. Then I left the master bedroom on tiptoes and started to make my way downstairs. The door to the surgery was still closed and the receptionist was still pecking away at her typewriter.

I was only a little more than halfway down, however, when the surgery door opened and Duca appeared, sleeking back its hair with both hands. It looked up and saw me and said, “Aha!” It didn’t look angry, or outraged. Instead, it looked triumphant, as if it had known all along what Jill and I were doing here.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was looking for the bathroom.”

Duca pointed to a door right behind me. It had a hand-lettered card pinned to it: Patients’ Toilet.

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t see that! I must think about getting myself some eyeglasses.”

Duca glanced upstairs and then it looked back at me. “I think perhaps you were looking for something else, not a bathroom.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

It held out its hand. “I think perhaps you have taken something that does not belong to you.”

“Still don’t know what you mean.”

“I am not a fool, Mr. Billings, or whatever your real name is. I recognized your Romanian ancestry the moment you walked into my surgery. You think that I cannot smell where you come from, by your blood?

It took a step toward me, still holding out its hand. “I can also sense what you have stolen from me, Mr. Billings. I think it would be wise of you to return it to me, now.”

“Terence!” I shouted. “Terence!”

The front door was flung wide and Terence appeared, carrying my Kit. Duca swung around and spat, “You too? You with your ridiculous allergy to timothy grass? I should have guessed!”

“Oh, bugger,” said Terence.

“Jill!” I called her. “Jill — are you OK?”

Duca turned around again and faced me. I could see how furious it was, by the way it kept wincing, but its voice was cold and utterly controlled. “So it was you, then, who caught my two proteges? I am going to kill you for that, my friend. I am going to kill both of you, with much pain.”

“Jill!” I yelled. I was getting worried about her now. “Terence — bring me the Kit!”

Terence came toward us, holding up the Kit in both hands as if he were quite prepared to smash Duca on the head with it. I hoped that he didn’t, because I didn’t want anything broken.

I reached behind me and tugged my gun out of my belt. I pointed it directly at Duca’s chest and said, “I’ve had to wait a long time for this, Duca.”

“You know me? You know who I am?”

“Oh, yes. I know who you are. I also know what you are.”

“That is very flattering. But if you know me so well, you will know that you have absolutely no chance of catching me.”

“Terence,” I said, “do you want to open the Kit for me?”

“What?” said Duca. “You really believe that I am going to stand here and allow you to work your ridiculous hocus-pocus on me?”

“Terence, open the Kit and take out the Bible. Open it up where the ribbon is.”

Terence flicked open the catches, but before he could lift out the Bible, Duca lunged at me, and snatched my wrist. I fired at point-blank range, right through his perfectly tailored vest and into his lungs. The bang was so loud that the receptionist shrieked and dropped her telephone.

Duca stared at me, still holding my wrist. The expression on its face was unreadable. That’s one of the things about Screechers: they’ve lived so long and they’ve seen so much that you can never really understand what they’re thinking.

There was a three-second pause, and then Duca coughed, so that blood sprayed out from between its lips,