“Lucia, I think he’s telling you the truth,” said Oberon in the same languid disdainful voice with which he spoke to us. “I can smell death. It’s all around us. I think the rule of the Drug Merchants has come to an ignominious end. Alas, your Ariel is free, my precious and prosperous pussycat, why don’t you go?”
Oberon moved slowly across the room, swaying a little from one hip to the other, dipping his head to this side and that, and dipping down to pick up the gun, and looking at it as if it was a curiosity, and as Lucia watched, perplexed, enraged, frustrated, furious, helpless, Oberon slipped the gun into the right position and shot Lucia three times in the face.
So much for Lucia. She went down with knees bent, arms out, face pulp.
“She was kind to me.” he said. “The statue is for me. I visited the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe when the Secret People went to Mexico City. You can’t have the statue. Even if you rescue me, I won’t give it to you.”
“Cool,” I replied. “You’re in such a good bargaining position. But who am I to steal Saint Juan Diego from anyone? I’m sure I can find another statue. But why did you kill her if she was so kind?”
Oberon shrugged. “To see if I could do it,” he said. “Are you ready now to go after the others? Now that I’m packing, I am more than ready to play my part.”
“Oh God in Heaven,” Mona sighed. I could see the shudder pass through her. She took several shaky steps forward and then collapsed in the white leather chair, her heels together, her hand to her forehead.
“Oh, do tell me what’s wrong, pretty little grandmother of the tribe,” said Oberon. “What, you thought we were all little flutter-wing angels like Morrigan? Must I describe to you nature’s purpose in designing the double helix, regardless of its number of chromosomes? It’s to produce a variety of creatures within the species. Cheer up. We’ve a party to go to, don’t we?”
Quinn’s face was grim. “Maybe you should give one of us that gun,” he said.
“Not on your life,” Oberon replied. He slipped the gun into his low-slung waist. “Now where should we start? Let me fill you in on such facts as I possess. Now pay attention.”
“Marvelous,” I said. “Something besides performance art and gilded insults.”
He chuckled. He went on undaunted, the voice black syrup again pouring thickly and slowly:
“I can tell you that Silas and the vast majority of the Secret People were gunned down on the day that the Drug Merchants came. Torwan and several other females were kept for a while. But they cried all the time. Torwan tried to get away in a boat, and they caught her on the pier and stabbed her to death. I saw that. Of the men, only Elath and Hiram and I were kept. Then Elath killed one of the Drug Merchants and they shot him, and Hiram disappeared. And I think I saw Isaac once, but I’m not sure. I think they’re all dead. Except for Miravelle and Lorkyn.”
“What about Mother and Father?” I asked.
Oberon shrugged.
“Handsome Blood Thief, I must confess I hold out no hope. They were dying from the poison when the Drug Merchants landed here. Father told us to hide. Miravelle took care of them. Miravelle slept with them. We’d long ago put a stop to the poisoning but the damage was done. And no one could stop Silas and his rebellion. Right before Silas made his fatal mistake, Miravelle and Mother apparently had an opportunity to blind Silas with a screwdriver, but Miravelle, precious little thing, just couldn’t bring herself to do it, sob, and Silas got free of Mother and knocked her unconscious. Oh, so tragic. I know now that I should have killed Silas first time I ever laid eyes on him. Father should have killed Silas as soon as Silas started threatening the Secret People. Lorkyn could have done it. She was the coldest female ever birthed on this island. A beast, I tell you. Alas! Who would have ever dreamed that Silas would rise up and try to take on the outside world.”
I shook my head. “Cut to the connection between the rebellion of Silas and the coming of these drug people?”
He shrugged. One of his great spidery hands smoothed his hair and firmed the red bandanna.
“Silas started the war against them,” he said. “He spied upon their work on a small nearby island. Don’t ask me where. I never went there. But Silas plotted against them. He took a gang of the most aggressive and warlike of the tribe to their island, and went in smiling and saying kind things, and slowly and systematically murdered the whole gang. He took their drugs and their weapons.
“Silas said the reign of Father had to end. Father was ancient, pure Taltos, unfit for the modern world. Silas said we had Mayfair genes, human cleverness, human dreaming.”
I stood beside Mona as she cried silently.
“The tribe celebrated, snorted the cocaine and shot off the guns. They smoked marijuana and went absolutely crazy. They killed two of us—Evan and Ruth—by accident. Can you imagine how stupid? Nobody had ever seen a dead Taltos before. It was ghastly. Silas had them ceremoniously dumped in the sea. Flowers flung into the water! Ludicrous. Silas began to shoot those whom he suspected of disloyalty!” He gave a deep disgusted laugh.
“Lorkyn made a speech. She said that going to the drug island had been a typical Taltos blunder. The drug people belonged to a great cartel. Their cohorts would come to get us. We had to take Father and Mother and get onto the yacht and leave the island. We could do it. Silas tried to kill her, but the others stopped him. Now that was a revelation. But Lorkyn has a way with her. No one was prepared to see her go down.”
He shrugged, rolled his eyes, pushed the gun more firmly into the belt of his beautiful brown leather jeans.
“The drug people came,” he said, swaying languidly as he went on. “By nightfall they were here. Silas and his allies ran at them, shooting off the guns they’d stolen. Rat tat tat! Can you picture it? They didn’t even shoot from under cover.” He sneered. “The Drug Merchants shot every Taltos in sight. They kicked open doors all over the villa. Quite an unforgettable experience, waiting for them to kick open one’s door.
“It was the complete end of the Secret People. Those of us who were kept for a while? We were the quiet ones. The ones who didn’t rush into battle.
“They didn’t find me till the third day. I was simply lying in my room, upstairs in the villa. In they walked. They made a servant of me. They taught me to mix Caipirinhas out of cachaça and lime juice for Carlos. I knew the computer very well. I did the bookkeeping, spread sheets, payroll, all of that too. Then Lucia fell passionately in love with me. How could she not? She’s well past the age where a male Taltos can make her bleed to death—.
“—That’s what we males do to human women, you know, unless they’re past their menarche. Lucia showered me with attention. She did this room all in white for me. She went to Miami Beach to have her inviting little privy chamber surgically tightened till it felt like the sheath of a twelve-year-old. She did that for me. Very nice. Of course I’ve never been with a human twelve-year-old. She was a delicious lover.”
“Hmmm,” I said. “You don’t mind her lying there with a pool of blood for a face?”
“Not particularly. You said every human on the island was going to die. Didn’t you mean it?”
He sat down in his desk chair. He turned, poured himself another glass of milk from the pitcher and drank it down.
He fell to studying the three of us again, Quinn and I standing and Mona on the edge of the white chair, knees up, her face beating with the blood, and her tearfilled eyes so unutterably sad they were indescribable.
“Is that computer connected to the outside world?” Mona asked. Her voice was feeble, but she was still holding back the tears.
“Of course not,” he said sardonically. “What kind of idiot do you think I am? If it had been, I would have gotten help. I would have tried to reach Rowan Mayfair at Mayfair Medical in New Orleans.”
We were all of us silently shocked.
“How did you know about Rowan?” asked Mona. She wiped at her eyes. The black feathers of her dress brushed her cheeks.
“Father told all of us—if ever we found ourselves in grave trouble, we were to contact Rowan Mayfair at Mayfair Medical in New Orleans. I think that was two years after I was born. Father was already being poisoned by Silas but he didn’t know it. He only knew he was getting weaker. He thought he was dying of old age. He had been to see his lawyers in New York. Very secret. No names. No numbers. That was Father’s way. Morrigan was seldom if ever awake. Father knew things were going on behind his back. Morrigan woke up one time and accused Father of being in love with Rowan Mayfair.”
In love with Rowan Mayfair.
“Why did she say that?” asked Mona in a broken voice.
“I don’t know,” he said wearily, with mock innocence. “All I know is, she’s my only lifeline to the human world. Then suddenly you show up, Grandmother Dear, and you want to rescue us. Aren’t you a child? You look like one. Playing with your mother’s clothes perhaps?”
“Were you always of this disposition?” I asked. “Or has this enslavement altered you?”
He laughed a mirthless knowing laugh. He stared at the dead woman on the floor.
“You’re a tricky one,” he said. “I was born knowing Father and Mother were doomed.” He smiled. “Father didn’t have the temperament to control the young males. There were secret births all the time. You might say I sang a tragic song from the beginning. After all . . .” He stopped, yawned and then continued: “How is one to rule a community of Taltos unless one is willing to kill the unwanted births and those who breed against one’s rules?” He shook his head. “I don’t see any other way. Unless of course one puts chastity belts on the females. That could be done. You know, modern nylon chastity belts or some such. But that was certainly not the way of Mother and Father.”
“What did the Secret People do here?” Mona asked. She was trying to speak firmly. “Did you simply live pleasurably on this island?”
“Oh, certainly not,” Oberon responded. “Father and Mother provided a marvelous life for us. Father had a wonderful plane. It’s in New York somewhere, stranded, dead, orphaned. Like Little Boy Blue’s toys, waiting for him to come back. In that plane we visited all the great cities of the world. I loved Rome and Bombay in particular. I would love to see them all again—London, Rio, Hong Kong, Paris. And Mexico City. We were shepherded everywhere. And we were taught to observe human beings and pretend to be human beings. As long as we did that, Father and Mother took complete care of us. Simply terrific life. Father was very strict and very cautious. No telephones, no Internet. That might have been a fatal error in the long run.”
“Did you ever want to escape?” asked Quinn.
“Not me,” he said with a shrug. “I loved the Secret People. Besides, human beings generally kill male Taltos. The women they let live. They use them. But the males they always kill. Everyone knew that. Our life here was good. We had superb teachers here on the island. Father had them flown in for two to three weeks at a time. Of course they didn’t know what we really were, but that didn’t matter. We had an excellent library in the main building—books, films, all that.”
He took another glass of the milk, making a slight face.
“It’s not cold enough,” he whispered. Then: “Sometimes we had human guides on our trips. Like when we went to India. We had the yacht, you know, the cabin cruiser for going out on the water. And the cleanup crew came in twice a week and went through the entire property. And then there was the jungle. Elath and Releth loved to go off in the jungle. So did Seth. I’m not much for gnats and scratches and snakes and that sort of thing.” He made a weary gesture with his long arm.
“No, it was quite a nice life. Until Silas started his rebellion with the slow poisoning of Mother and Father. And of course, though Silas never lived to find out, there were others breeding behind his back, and plotting against him too at the end. It was out of control, totally out of control.” He shrugged again. “You might say it was a disaster.” He leaned back and looked down at Mona as she sat crouched on the edge of the white chair.
“Don’t be so sad,” he said hatefully, “Little Grandmother of the tribe. It’s not your fault. It’s the way it is. Taltos can’t live with humans. Taltos make fatal blunders. Father told me if it hadn’t been Silas, it would have been another. The Secret People was an absurd idea. Near the end he talked a lot about Rowan Mayfair. Rowan Mayfair would know what to do. But he was a virtual prisoner in the penthouse by then. And Mother was only conscious occasionally.”
Mona’s heart was broken. The cautions in Maharet’s electronic letter made sense. Darwinian principles, Stirling had called them. I wanted to wrap Mona in my arms.
But we had yet to enter the main body of the villa. And I could hear shouting now. A handful of mortals had discovered the dead we had left behind in the other suites.
The door burst open again, and this time the black greasy barrel of a gun preceded the man who had kicked it in. I sent the discrete power to hurl him backwards and destroy his heart. A spray of bullets struck the white ceiling. Too close. They might have killed this vile talking creature. What a loss!
I plunged through the door. I found myself in a long thatch-roofed porch. Another mortal lifted his weapon. I sent the Fire. And in the sudden brilliant illumination, I saw another man running. The Fire caught him.
Be quick.
When I turned around, a young woman, jeans, shirt, snarling curses in my face, came at me with a big automatic weapon. I disarmed her, and sent the power. She collapsed, blood gushing from her mouth. I closed my eyes. I was sickened.
I hoped to God that we’d cleared away most of the underlings. Maybe all.
The Bossa Nova was very loud now here in this courtyard. I could hear the whispered words in Portuguese, the swooning dance. The music said Peace. It said Slumber. It was so sweet, so hypnotic.
Through huge open doors I could see the deserted lobby with its lavish plants, the pink tile running to the broad central stairs. I was eager to get up there, get to the heart of the evil.
I went back into the white-walled room, shut the door, stepped over the dead Lucia and got to the point: