I stroked twice, hard, on my left, waited while the nose of the kayak swung around to the desired direction, then resumed my steady windmill paddling, trying to concentrate on taking deep, steady breaths. The air was growing even fouler as we crossed the water toward the far shore with its infernal machine, and the rain forest beyond.
'He's coming, Mr. Mongo!' Vicky cried out in a small, frightened voice as she pointed back over my shoulder.
Although I knew it would disrupt my rhythm, fear made me stop paddling and glance back behind me. I wished I hadn't. We were perhaps a quarter of the way across Eden's ocean; yet, despite the fact that Tanker Thompson had to be suffering a giant headache, and despite the fact that he'd had to wade or swim out into the water to retrieve the rowboat, he was no more than twenty-five or thirty yards behind me. Like the monsters of nightmares that keep coming at you, he was rowing the boat with steady, powerful strokes generated by his bulk and the bulging muscles in his broad back and thick arms. Even with his back to me, I could see that he was covered with offal from the fouled waters; he glistened in the pale green light like some giant slug turned into human form.
As I stared back at him, momentarily paralyzed with horror, he slowed his pace slightly, turned around, and met my gaze. He was close enough so that I could clearly see his features; his small eyes were filled with hate, and his lips were twisted in a grimace of fierce determination. The main outrider of the second horseman out of Eden was threatening to ride me down-or sink me. I wondered if he still had his fire ax with him.
I wondered what time it was, and if it was going to make any difference.
And then Tanker Thompson turned back, leaned far forward, dipped his oars in the water, and gave a mighty pull. His boat seemed to surge through the water; with that one pull, it seemed to me that he had almost halved the distance between us.
His performance was tremendously inspiring to me.
'Are we still heading in the right direction, Vicky?!' I shouted as I turned my head forward and began to paddle furiously.
'That way a little, Mr. Mongo!' she shouted back, pointing a few more degrees to the right. 'Please don't let him catch us! I'm scared!'
Me too. Escaping from Tanker Thompson had become a moot point. He was definitely going to catch us-or at least me; I was resigned to the fact that I was a dead man, even though I didn't much care for the idea. The only question that remained was whether I was going to be able to wreck the transmitter before Tanker Thompson wrecked me.
And I had to find a way to save Vicky Brown. The child Garth and I had pledged to help must not die.
'Vicky! Is there a way to get out of Eden on the other side?!'
'No, Mr. Mongo!'
'How do you get out?!'
'There's a door back there behind the church! But it's locked to keep the demons out!'
'Vicky!'
'What about my mommy and daddy?!'
I tried to think of something reassuring to say to the little girl, but I had no more lies left in me, and precious little wind. 'I hope they'll be all right, too. By now, your mommy and daddy will be with the others.'
'But they could be hurt by the bombs.'
'I'm. . sorry, Vicky.'
The girl began to cry, but I could think of nothing else to say. The fire that had started in my belly was now blazing in my arms and thighs, and I noted with alarm that it was burning away much of my remaining strength and resolve. There was a terrible temptation simply to stop paddling, lean forward, and wait for Tanker Thompson to come up and split my head open. I wondered if my heart would rupture when the fire in me reached it, but I tried to put that thought out of my mind.
There seemed no point in trying to see what progress I was making, and no point at all in looking behind, and so I screwed my eyes shut, sucked in a deep breath, then opened them to slits and concentrated only on trying to keep the kayak pointed in the right direction. The only point was somehow to keep going. I tried not to think of the pain and fire in me, and tried to find solace in the fact that Tanker Thompson, despite his seemingly superhuman endurance and tolerance for pain, also had to be hurting; if I could suddenly collapse with a heart attack, or simply run out of gas and pass out, then-damn it-so could he.
I hoped. I certainly had to admit that Tanker Thompson was the closest thing to a flesh and blood demon I had ever come across, a terrifying creature that kept popping up, back, from death by freezing, bludgeoning, and bullets like some malevolent jack-in-the-box from hell.
That's the kind of thinking an oxygen-starved brain will give you, I mused, and might have smiled if I'd had the energy.
In any case, I just didn't think Tanker Thompson was going to do me any favors by having a heart attack or passing out. Just as I was operating far over the edge, discovering reserves of energy and determination inside myself I wouldn't have imagined I had, because I was driven by the need to save one child in particular and millions of people in general, so, too, was Thompson operating far over his edge, driven by his equally fervent desire- implanted, he fully believed, by God-to see this child and those millions of people die.
I knew I was now in danger of completely losing it; the fire in me had spread up to my neck, down to my toes, and my head felt like it was ready to explode. I was breathing in a series of small, tortured gasps, and my windpipe felt like it would seize up and close at any moment.
Desperately, I tried to concentrate on images of scorched earth, flattened buildings, craters in the ground- and bodies; millions of bodies. That was what was going to happen if I couldn't reach and destroy the transmitter.
I wondered what time it was.
A universe of pain, a world without air, heart and lungs that felt ready to burst at any moment. I tried to recall what I was doing, why I was suffering, where I was going, and what it was I was supposed to do when I got there.
Pull. .
Somewhere, sometime soon, something horrible was going to happen unless. .
Unless. .
'Mr. Mongo, wake up! Wake up!'
Oh-oh. I snapped awake to find myself slumped forward in the portal of the kayak. My hands were empty, the paddle having slipped from my fingers. I was wondering how long I'd been out, then realized that it could only have been seconds; I could see the paddle ten yards or so to my right, just beginning to float out of sight.
'Mr. Mongo-!'
I spun around and looked up just in time to see Tanker Thompson rear up in the prow of the rowboat, fire ax raised over his head. .
And then the prow of the kayak bumped the shore at the same time as the fire ax came swinging down, narrowly missing my head, crushing the stern of the kayak. I rolled to my left, out of the portal and into the water, put my feet down and touched bottom. I plucked Vicky out of the front portal, staggered up on the shore, and set her down.
A metal structure perhaps three feet high, enclosed in what looked like an inverted test tube with an enormous aerial atop it, rose out of the sand perhaps twenty yards up a slope, slightly to my left, clearly visible in
