LeSeur wiped the blood out of his eye again and flung it away with a snap of his fingers. He turned again to the chief radio officer. “Send a message over the PA. All passengers are to report to their quarters immediately—no exceptions. They are to don the flotation devices found under their bunks. They are then to get in their berths, feet facing forward, in fetal position, and cushion themselves with pillows and blankets. If they can’t reach their cabins, they are to get into the closest chair they can find and assume a protective position—hands clasped behind the head, head between the knees.”
“Yes, sir.”
“
after impact they are all to report to their lifeboat assembly stations, just as in the drills. They are to take absolutely nothing with them but their PFDs. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.” He turned back toward his terminal. A moment later, a siren went off and his voice sounded over the public address system, giving the orders.
LeSeur turned to Emily Dahlberg. “I guess that goes for you, as well. You’d better return to your cabin.”
She looked back at him. After a moment, she nodded.
“And Mrs. Dahlberg? Thank you.”
She left the bridge.
LeSeur watched the hatch close behind her. Next he turned a baleful eye on the CCTV displaying a grainy image of the helm. Mason was still standing there, one hand draped on the wheel, the other lightly resting on the two fore pod throttles, maintaining heading by slight adjustments to the speed of the screws.
LeSeur pushed the transmit button on the internal bridge-to-bridge intercom and leaned into it. “Mason? I know you can hear me.”
No answer.
“Are you
going to do this?”
As if in answer, her white hand moved from the throttle to a small covered panel. She flicked off the cover, pulled two levers, then returned to the throttles, pressing both as far forward as they would go. There was a throaty rumble as the engines responded.
“Jesus,” said Halsey, staring at the engine panel. “She’s redlining the gas turbines.”
The ship surged forward. With a sick feeling, LeSeur watched the speed indicator begin to creep up. Twenty-two knots. Twenty-four. Twenty-six.
“How is this possible?” he asked, flabbergasted. “We lost half our propulsion back there!”
“She’s goosing the turbines way beyond their specs,” said Halsey.
“How high can they go?”
“I’m not sure. She’s pushing them past five thousand rpms . . .” He leaned over and touched one of the dials, as if in disbelief. “And now she’s redlining all four Wartsila diesels, directing the excess power to the two remaining pods.”
“Is that going to burn them out?”
“Hell, yes. But not soon enough.”
“How long?”
“She could go on like this for . . . thirty, forty minutes.”
LeSeur glanced at the chartplotter. The
was back up to almost thirty knots and the Carrion Rocks were twelve nautical miles ahead. “All she needs,” he said slowly, “is twenty-four.”
75
PENDERGAST LAY PROSTRATE IN A SCREAMING NIGHT. HE HAD MADE one final, almost superhuman effort to defend himself, rallying all the newfound intellectual powers the Agozyen had conferred upon him—and exhausting them in the process. It had been no use. The tulpa had sunk into the marrow of his bones, into the deepest core of his mind. He felt a dreadful alienness within himself, like the depersonalization of the worst kind of panic attack. A hostile entity was relentlessly, implacably devouring him . . . and like a man in the paralysis of a nightmare, he was incapable of resistance. It was a psychic agony far worse than the most appalling physical torture.
He withstood it for an endless, indescribable moment. And then, quite suddenly, blessed darkness rushed over him.
How long he lay—unable to think, unable to move—he did not know. And then, out of the darkness, came a voice. A voice he recognized.
“Don’t you think it’s time we spoke?” it said.
Slowly—hesitantly—Pendergast opened his eyes. He found himself in a small, dim space with a low, sloping roof. On one side was a plaster wall, covered with childish treasure maps and scrawled imitations of famous paintings in crayon and pastel; on the other, a latticed doorway. Weak afternoon light trickled through the lattices, revealing dust motes floating lazily in the air and giving the hidden space the otherworldly glow of an undersea grotto. Books by Howard Pyle, Arthur Ransome, and Booth Tarkington lay scattered in the corners. It smelled pleasantly of old wood and floor polish.
Across from him sat his brother, Diogenes Pendergast. His limbs were sunk into deep shadow, but the latticed light revealed the sharp contours of his face. Both his eyes were still hazel . . . as they were before the Event.
This had been their hideout, the tiny room they had fashioned beneath the back stairs in the old house: the one they’d called Plato’s Cave. Its creation was one of the last things they had done together, before the bad times began.
Pendergast stared at his brother. “You’re dead.”
“Dead.” Diogenes rolled the word around, as if tasting it. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I’ll always be alive in your mind. And in this house.”
This was most unexpected. Pendergast paused a moment to examine his own sensations. He realized that the dreadful, probing pain of the tulpa was gone, at least for the moment. He felt nothing: not surprise, not even a sense of unreality. He was, he guessed, in some unsuspected, unfathomably deep recess of his own subconscious mind.
“You’re in rather dire straits,” his brother continued. “Perhaps more dire than any I’ve seen you in before. I’m chagrined to admit that, this time, they are not of my devising. And so I ask again: don’t you think it’s time we spoke?”
“I can’t defeat it,” Pendergast said.
“Precisely.”
“And it cannot be killed.”
“True. It will only leave when its mission is done. But that does not mean it cannot be mastered.”
Pendergast hesitated. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve studied the literature. You’ve experienced the teachings. Tulpas are undependable, unreliable things.”
Pendergast did not immediately reply.
“They might be summoned for a particular purpose. But once summoned, they tend to stray, to develop minds of their own. That is one reason they can be so very, very dangerous if used—shall we say?—irresponsibly. That is something you can turn to your advantage.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Must I spell it out for you,
