"It"s the governor"s chopper," Corello told Flyte.
"The governor?" Flyte said. "He"s here?"
"No. But he"s put his helicopter at your disposal."
As they climbed through the door, into the comfortable pa.s.sengers" compartment, the rotors began to churn overhead.
Forehead pressed to the cool window, Timothy Flyte watched San Francisco fall away into the night.
He was excited. Before the plane had landed, he had felt dopey and bedraggled; not any more. He was alert and eager to learn more about what was happening in Snowfield.
The JetRanger had a high cruising speed for a helicopter, and the trip to Santa Mira took less than two hours. Corello- a clever, fast-talking, amusing man-helped Timothy prepare another statement for the media people who were waiting for them. The journey pa.s.sed quickly.
They touched down with a thump in the middle of the fenced parking lot behind the county sheriff"s headquarters. Corello opened the door of the pa.s.sengers" compartment even before the chopper"s rotors had stopped whirling; he plunged out of the craft, turned to the door again, buffeted by the wind from the blades, and lent a hand to Timothy.
An aggressive contingent of journalists-even more of them than in San Francisco-fitted the alleyway. They were pressed against the chain-link fence, shouting questions, aiming microphones and cameras.
"We"ll give them a statement later, at our conveinence, Corello told him, shouting in order to be heard above the din. "Right now, the police here are waiting to put you on the phone to the sheriff up in Snowfield."
A couple of deputies hustled Timothy and Corello into the building, along the hallway, and into an office where another uniformed man was waiting for them. His name was Charlie Mercer. He was husky, with the bushiest eyebrows that Timothy had ever seen-and the briskly efficient manner of a first-rate executive secretary.
Timothy was escorted to the chair behind the desk.
Mercer dialed a number in Snowfield, making the connection with Sheriff Hammond. The call was put on a conference speaker, so that Timothy didn"t have to hold a receiver, and so that everyone in the room could hear both sides of the conversation.
Hammond delivered the first shocker as soon as he and Timothy had exchanged greetings: "Dr. Flyte, we"ve seen the ancient enemy. Or at least I guess it"s the thing you had in mind. A ma.s.sive ... amoeboid thing. A shape-changer that can mimic anything."
Timothy"s hands were shaking; he gripped the arms of his chair. "My G.o.d."
"Is that your ancient enemy?" Hammond asked.
"Yes. A survivor from another era. Millions of years old."
"You can tell us more when you get here," Hammond said. "If I can persuade you to come."
Timothy only heard half of what the sheriff was saying. He was thinking of the ancient enemy. He had written about it; he had truly believed in it; yet, somehow, he had not been prepared to actually have his theory confirmed. It rocked him.
Hammond told him about the hideous death of a deputy named Gordy Brogan.
Besides Timothy himself, only Sal Corello looked stunned and horrified by Hammond"s story. Mercer and the others had evidently heard all about it hours ago.
"You"ve seen it and lived?" Timothy said, amazed.
"It had to leave some of us alive," Hammond said, "so that we"d try to convince you to come. It has guaranteed your safe conduct."
Timothy chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip.
Hammond said, "Dr. Flyte? Are you still there?"
"What? Oh ... yes. Yes, I"m still here. What do you mean by saying it guaranteed my safe pa.s.sage?"
Hammond told him an astonishing story about communication with the ancient enemy by way of a computer.
As the sheriff talked, Timothy broke into a sweat. He saw a box of Kleenex on one comer of the desk in front of him; he grabbed a handful of tissues and mopped his face.
When the sheriff finished, the professor drew a deep breath and spoke in a strained voice. "I never antic.i.p.ated ... I mean ... well, it never occurred to me that ..."
"What"s wrong?" Hammond asked.
Timothy cleared his throat. "It never occurred to me that the ancient enemy would possess human-level intelligence."
"I suspect it may even be a superior intelligence," Hammond said.
"But I always thought of it as just a dumb animal, of distinctly limited self-awareness."
"It"s not."
"That makes it a lot more dangerous. My G.o.d. A lot more dangerous."
"Will you come up here?" Hammond asked.
"I hadn"t intended to come any closer than I am now," Timothy said. "But if it"s intelligent ... and if it"s offering me safe pa.s.sage ..."
On the telephone, a child"s voice piped up, the sweet voice of a young boy, perhaps five or six years old: "Please, please, please come play with me, Dr. Flyte. Please. We"ll have lots of fun. Please?"
And then, before Timothy could respond, there came a woman"s soft and musical voice: "Yes, dear Dr. Flyte, by all means, do come pay us a visit. You"re more than welcome. No one will harm you."
Finally, the voice of an old man came over the line, warm and tender: "You have so much to learn about me, Dr. Flyte. So much wisdom to acquire. Please come and begin your studies. The offer of safe pa.s.sage is sincere."
Silence.
Confused, Timothy said, "h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo? Who"s this?"
"I"m still here," Hammond answered.
The other voices did not return.
"Just me now," Hammond said.
Timothy said, "But who were those people?"
"They"re not actually people. They"re just phantoms. Mimicry. Don"t you get it? In three different voices, it just offered you safe pa.s.sage again. The ancient enemy, Doctor."
Timothy looked at the other four men in the room. They were all staring intently at the black conference box from which Hammond"s voice-and the voices of the creature-had issued.
Clutching a wad of already sodden paper tissues in one hand, Timothy wiped his sweat-slick face again. "I"ll come."
Now, everyone in the room looked at him.
On the telephone, Sheriff Hammond said, "Doctor, there"s no good reason to believe that it"ll keep its promise. Once you"re here, you may very well be a dead man, too."
"But if it"s intelligent ..."
"That doesn"t mean it plays fair," Hammond said. "In fact, all of us up here are certain of one thing: This creature is the very essence of evil. Evil, Dr. Flyte. Would you trust in the Devil"s promise?"
The child"s voice came on the line again, still lilting and sweet: "If you come, Dr. Flyte, I"ll not only spare you, but these six people who"re trapped here. I"ll let them go if you come play with me. But if you don"t come, I"ll take these pigs. I"ll crush them. I"ll squeeze the blood and s.h.i.t out of them, squeeze them into pulp, and use them up."
Those words were spoken in light, innocent, childlike tones-which somehow made them far more frightening than if they had been shouted in a ba.s.so profundo rage.
Timothy"s heart was pounding.
"That settles it," he said. "I"ll come. I have no choice."
"Don"t come on our account," Hammond said. "It might spare you because it calls you its Saint Matthew, its Mark, its Luke and John. But it sure as h.e.l.l won"t spare us, no matter what it says."
"I"ll come," Timothy insisted.
Hammond hesitated. Then: "Very well. I"ll have one of my men drive you to the Snowfield roadblock. From there, you"ll have to come alone. I can"t risk another man. Do you drive?"
"Yes, sir," Timothy said. "You provide the car, and I"ll get there by myself."
The line went dead.
"h.e.l.lo?" Timothy said. "Sheriff?"
No answer.
"Are you there? Sheriff Hammond?"
Nothing.
It had cut them off.
Timothy looked up at Sal Corello, Charlie Mercer, and the two men whose names he didn"t know.
They were all staring at him as if he were already dead and lying in a casket.
But if I die in Snowfield, if the shape-changer takes me, he thought, there"ll be no casket. No grave. No everlasting peace.
"I"ll drive you as far as the roadblock," Charlie Mercer said. "I"ll drive you myself."
Timothy nodded.
It was time to go.
36.
Face to Face At 3:12 A.M., Snowfield"s church bells began to clang.
In the lobby of the Hilltop Inn, Bryce got up from his chair. The others rose, too.
The firehouse siren wailed.
Jenny said, "Flyte must be here."
The six of them went outside.
The streetlights were flashing off and on, casting leaping marionette shadows through the shifting banks of fog.
At the foot of Skyline Road, a car turned the corner. Its headlights speared upward, imparting a silvery sheen to the mist.
The streetlamps stopped blinking, and Bryce stepped into the soft cascade of yellow light beneath one of them, hoping that Flyte would be able to see him through the veils of fog.
The bells continued to peal, and the siren shrieked, and the car crawled slowly up the long hill. It was a green and white sheriff"s department cruiser. It pulled to the curb and stopped ten feet from where Bryce stood; the driver extinguished the headlights.
The driver"s door opened, and Flyte got out. He wasn"t what Bryce had expected. He was wearing thick gla.s.ses that made his eyes appear abnormally large. His fine, white, tangled hair bristled in a halo around his head. Someone at headquarters had lent him an insulated jacket with the Santa Mira County Sheriff"s Department seal on the left breast.
The bells stopped ringing.
The siren groaned to a throaty finish.
The subsequent silence was profound.
Flyte gazed around the fog-shrouded street, listening and waiting.
At last Bryce said, "Apparently, it"s not ready to show itself."
Flyte turned to him. "Sheriff Hammond?"
"Yes. Let"s go inside and be comfortable while we wait."
The inn"s dining room. Hot coffee.
Shaky hands clattered china mugs against the tabletop. Nervous hands curled and clamped around the warm mugs in order to make themselves be still.
The six survivors leaned forward, hunched over the table, the better to listen to Timothy Flyte.
Lisa was clearly enthralled by the British scientist, but at first Jenny had serious doubts. He seemed to be an outright caricature of the absent-minded professor. But when he began to speak about his theories, Jenny was forced to discard her initial, unfavorable opinion, and soon she was as fascinated as Lisa.
He told them about vanishing armies in Spain and China, about abandoned Mayan cities, the Roanoke Island colony.
And he told them of Joya Verde, a South American jungle settlement that had met a fate similar to Snowfield"s. Joya Verde, which means Green Jewel, was a trading post on the Amazon River, far from civilization. In 1923, six hundred and five people-every man, woman, and child who lived there-vanished from Joya Verde in a single afternoon, sometime between the morning and evening visits of regularly scheduled riverboats. At first it was thought that nearby Indians, who were normally peaceful, had become inexplicably hostile and had launched a surprise attack. However, there were no bodies found, no indications of fighting, and no evidence of looting. A message was discovered on the blackboard at the mission school: It has no shape, yet it has every shape. Many who investigated the Joya Verde mystery were quick to dismiss those nine chalk-scrawled words as having no connection with the disappearances. Flyte believed otherwise, and after listening to him, so did Jenny.