Slowly, she shone the light in all directions; her eyes glittered above it.
A long, smooth-walled chamber. Swirls of dust around shadowy forms.
She had left the outside world—that place of automobiles and towering skyscrapers and huge ocean liners—and stepped into the world of the ancients, so different and stunning it made the blood icy in her veins. And so silent. So very, very silent. She moved into the chamber, and before her the waves of dust undulated.
There were figures on either side of her. Life-size statues, frozen in poses of combat, bearing spears and swords. Impassive, blank-eyed faces stared back at the light. “Beautiful,” she heard herself say, and the voice echoed beautiful-beautiful-beautiful a hundred times over, each time fainter than the last. These statues had been carved of glowing marble, and as she neared one of them, playing the light along its surfaces of battle dress, she saw that they were—
Her blood trilled.
Yes. Yes. They are. They…are…
The flashlight trembled in her hand, making the shadows dance darkly.
With another few steps she saw the remnants of battlefield murals on the walls, cracked by age but still retaining some of the original, bold reds and greens and blues: warriors raising swords over the fallen; huge war-horses trampling down rows of armored enemies; archers firing arrows toward the sun; scenes of slaughter—broken limbs and decapitated heads with ragged necks, slaves bound by chains and dragged behind golden horses. Her heart pounded in her head; the air smelled of ancient, secret, terrible things, but she could not bring herself to leave this chamber, with its exquisite beauty and horror.
She thought she heard Dr. Vodantis calling her name again, over and over, but in another instant the sound had faded into the walls and she was alone. She stepped forward, into darkness, the noise of her footsteps echoing as if someone followed close behind. Someone or some thing, avoiding the light.
And at the far end of the chamber the light fell upon something that gleamed blackly. A large, dark, rough-edged slab of stone, waist-high. The woman moved forward, her shoes stirring more of the thick dust, and then stopped. She aimed the light down at the floor. Scattered about were dozens of crudely forged metal objects, rust-flaked and falling to pieces, recognizable only to a trained eye. The hilt of a sword; what might have been the point of a spear; a few ravaged helmets, one of them completely flattened; scarred and rusted fragments of armor, bleeding in the mounds of white dust. She searched with the light, moving it back and forth: more weapons, lying as if suddenly discarded, among them the ragged remnants of ax blades, dully reflecting the light into her eyes. She blinked; the beam of light tripped and fell over something on the floor She found it again in another moment.
A bone.
And now, as she moved toward it, she began to see other bones lying among the weapons and dust. A scattering of bones, lying intertwined in the long and terrible darkness. Here a broken skull grinned at her. She moved the flashlight up above the bones, saw that the walls and ceiling were thick with black char. And then she staggered back a step, drawing in her breath with an audible gasp.
For there was a pedestal jutting out from the far wall, above that black stone, and another figure stood, arms seemingly outstretched to her. Frozen, to watch forever over the dead. The eyes of the idol were upon her, and the statue was so lifelike and intricate, the woman thought for an instant that those sightless orbs moved. Shadows fled the light. And she was certain she heard her name called now; Dr. Vodantis calling for her from a strange time and place. No. Not Dr. Vodantis…
But another.
A rustle of shadows, gathering shape, gathering strength. She drew a lungful of air, found it bittersweet and…strange. Whirling, she played the light on the honor guard of statues. Had they moved? Had they drawn themselves toward her? Had those heads turned slightly on their marble necks? One of them, a figure armed with a bow, seemed to be watching her. The blank white gaze burned through to her soul and marked it with fire.
A whisper. Her name, spoken from vast distances.
Poised above the black stone—an altar?—the protective idol seemed to be waiting, and around it the dust spun and swirled like something alive. A voice, clearer now, borne to her by a cold wind that stirred dust into patterns that merged and broke and remerged kaleidoscopically, scrawling strange shadows before the path of the flashlight. The language was unfamiliar—no, it was some kind of garbled Greek. A crude, ancient Greek, a dialect filled with a rising urgency and raw, brute strength. She dare not let the light fall to the floor, but it seemed a tremendous effort to hold on to it. She could understand only fragments of the message, above the pounding noise in her head that sounded like the beat of an army’s war drums. Backing away from the black stone, from the idol poised overhead, she swung the light from side to side; the voice was stronger now, imploring, becoming many voices, powerful and inescapable, echoing from all sides. She cast the light upon those haunted faces, and when the voice came to her again, it carried a power that made her stumble, fall onto her knees in supplication to the idol; in that instant she thought she saw the idol’s head turn slightly, very slightly, and she thought she saw blue flames flicker across those marble sockets, there and then gone in the briefest of seconds.
And something moved within the thick, smoky folds of dust, like someone slowly walking out of a fire. The figure, a thing of shadow and light, dust and stone, approached the woman with vaporish strides and undulated before her; where the face would have been there was a dark outline. Orbs of glittering blue, like burning diamonds, flashed with a power that rocked the woman’s head back; she felt that same terrible, awesome power wrench at her heart, exposing blood and bones and muscle. Ages passed between them, and when she opened her. mouth to cry out, she failed to recognize her own voice. The figure wavered before her, and the shadowy outline of what might have been an arm brushed past her face, leaving the odors of dust and dry, brittle age. And then the dust welled up again, an ocean of it, obscuring whatever it was that the woman had thought she’d seen; she found the strength to rise to her feet and began backing away, her senses raw and screaming. The voice—no, many voices merged into one—fading now, gradually, back beyond the wall it had slipped through. And finally gone.
Reaching the opening to the tunnel, she pulled herself up through it and sucked at the fresher air until her lungs were filled. Her body felt strange; her nerves vibrated, and her muscles twitched as though she had lost control over them. She wanted to look back into the cavern, to see for one more moment the commanding murals and the black stone and the protective idol, but there was no room to turn her head in the tunnel; she began to crawl back toward where Dr. Vodantis waited for her, toward a world of madness and pollution, crime and brutality.
The voices were gone, but in the depths of her soul she could hear the echo, again and again and again…
Flames of electric blue danced briefly through the woman’s eyes, and she followed the tunnel back to where the men waited.
2
* * *
Vietnam
1970
HE HAD BEEN BOUND to the coarse-clothed cot by harsh wires around his wrists and ankles, and now, naked and spread-eagled, he waited.
Sweat had beaded and trickled and beaded again over his body, and beneath him the cot was as wet as the rain-filled hole he’d huddled in while the mortars had ripped the jungle into black shreds all around him. But this was worse, because it was quiet and there was no way to know when the next shell would fall or where it would hit. One by one, they had taken them all from the bamboo cages: Endicott, Lyttle, the nameless corporal who had dysentery and cried all the time, Vinzant, Dickerson, and now him. He hadn’t wanted to be last. He’d wanted to get it over with, because he’d heard their screams and seen their faces when they’d been dumped back into the cages, left to whimper and moan or contort their bodies, fetuslike, to escape the unendurable reality of torture.
He’d prayed to God that he wouldn??
?t be last. But hearing his prayers, God must have laughed and turned away.
Because now it was his time to be alone. To wait.
He tried to gather memories; he tried to relive them to take his mind off this dark hut that had been built of black-painted boards and then camouflaged with green netting so that it blended in with the jungle. Faces: his mother and father in the front room of their small house in Ohio, snow falling steadily outside the windows, a Christmas tree freshly cut and glittering with ornaments in the corner. His brother…no, Eric was dead that year, but bring him into the memory anyway, make everything right, as it should have been. How do they torture you? Beatings? Bring Eric into the room; let him sit down in front of the fire the way he liked to; let the flakes of snow clinging to his hair and jacket slowly melt away. Let the fire touch his face and Mother’s and Father’s faces, too. No, not beatings. The others hadn’t been beaten, had they? At least not where the wounds and bruises showed. The recollection of the Christmas pine stirred younger, fresher memories. His mother knitting that forest green sweater she’d given him that year. Even though he’d known what his present was, she’d wrapped it in a box with golden comets on the paper. Now count all the corners. One. Two. Three. But if they didn’t beat you, then how was it done? He hadn’t seen the others’ fingers; had they driven the bamboo spikes under the nails, or was that only done in black-and-white war movies? Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight cornets. Firelight licking the walls. He—hadn’t Eric gone, too?—had helped his father cut wood out in the deep forest for the fire that morning, and his father had knelt down in the snow and showed him the path a deer had taken as it made its way toward the protection of the hills. “Progress makin’ ’em run.” Father had said. “They know the towns are eatin’ up the forest land, and it’s not right.” How do they do it, then? Why had they taken off his clothes like this? Why did they make him wait?
And in the light of the fire Eric—dead Eric—turns his head very slowly. His eyes are white and filled with fluid, like the liquid eyes of a doe Father had shot once by mistake in the fiery days of autumn. His eyes are unseeing, yet they pierce through souls like shrapnel and they uncover the secrets lying there.
“You did this,” Eric says in a whisper. The fire snaps behind him, like the closing of a steel trap or the sound a tripwire makes when you trigger it and you know Holy Christ my number’s up. “You killed me because you knew. You killed me, and I’m never going to let you forget it.” That dead, familiar yet horrible face grins. The teeth are flecked with grave dirt.
“Now, Eric,” Mother says quietly, absorbed in her knitting. “Stop that kind of talk. Let’s have a nice Christmas.”
The man on the cot trembled, squeezing his eyes tightly shut because his efforts to avoid torture had turned into a deeper, more terrifying ordeal than they could ever dream up. He shook his head from side to side, letting the images fade into blue and then vanish, like pictures drawn in disappearing ink.
“Lieutenant Reid?”
A man’s voice, and Evan knew immediately who it was: the tall, lean Vietcong officer who always wore a clean uniform, the one who detested even going near the filth-covered prisoners. The one with a cat’s smile, and eyes that could bore through steel; the Smiling Gentleman, Dickerson called him.
And now the man stepped into Evan’s line of vision. In the light of the single overhead bulb the man’s bald head glittered with pinpoints of perspiration; he mopped his head with a white handkerchief and then smiled into Evan’s eyes, very slightly, the cheekbones jutting out from the rest of his skull and dark hollows beneath. “Lieutenant Reid,” he said, nodding. “finally we meet without cages between us.”
Evan said nothing. He closed his eyes to escape that light-haloed face. Was that why his clothes had been taken away—because they were filthy with mud and excrement, and the Gentleman might have been offended?
“Why do Americans find a strength in silence?” the Gentleman asked softly. “In unfriendliness? Surely you know that for you the war is ended. Why insist…? Ah, well. I expect you’ll be like all the others were at first. Except for the young corporal, and unfortunately he’s too…ill…to be coherent.”
Evan ground his teeth.
“I’d like to ask some things of you,” the man said, trying hard to enunciate correctly. “I’d like to get to know you better. Would that be agreeable?”
Don’t speak, Evan warned himself. Don’t let him in, don’t…
“I’d like to know where you’re from, where you were born,” the Gentleman said. “Surely you can answer me that? Ah, well. Wherever it was, I’m sure you miss it very much, don’t you? I have a wife and two girls. A fine family. Do you have a family as well? Lieutenant Reid, I don’t care for monologues.”
Evan opened his eyes and looked deeply into the face of the man who stood over him. Deeper. His gaze probed through the facial muscles, back through bone. The Gentleman was smiling like a long-lost friend or brother. And as Evan concentrated, he watched that face suddenly change, begin to melt like the face of a waxwork figure. The teeth lengthened, became fanglike; the eyes were centers of a seething red hate that seemed to grip at Evan’s heart. Yes. This was the true man behind the facade of smiles.
“You see?” the Gentleman said. “I’m your friend. I wish you no harm.”
“Go to hell,” Evan said, immediately wishing he’d remained silent.
The Gentleman laughed. “Ah. A response. Not a good one, but a response. How did you join your military, Lieutenant? Were you—what is it called?—inducted? Or did you join by choice, out of a misguided patriotism? That doesn’t mean very much now, does it? I’m sure it doesn’t mean very much to the young corporal. I fear he may die.”
“Then why don’t you get a doctor for him?” Evan asked.
“You’ll all have doctors for your injuries,” the man said in an even tone of voice. “You’ll all have good food and drink and real beds. If you show your worth. We won’t waste our time and effort on those who would be…unappreciative. I was hoping you would show your worth, Lieutenant, because I like you and I—”
“Liar,” Evan said. I can see through you. I know what you are. He could see himself, bleary-eyed and shaken, standing before a whirring camera to denounce the evil military imperialism of the United States. Or would they parade him through the streets of Hanoi with a rope around his neck and let the little children throw filth at him?
The Gentleman stepped nearer. “There’s no point in this. I can make things good for you, or I can make them bad. We have some things we would like you to do for us. It’s your choice, really. I can see you’re afraid because you do not know what is ahead for you. Neither do I, because soon the matter will be out of my hands. There is another here who wishes to harm you.” His eyes glittered tigerishly. “Someone skilled in the arts of fear. Now, Lieutenant Reid, why don’t we talk as civilized men?”
A drop of sweat rolled into Evan’s eye and burned as if it were a torch. He remained silent.
“Do you hate yourself so much?” the Gentleman asked softly. “Ah, then. I’m very much sorry for you.” He stood over the cot a moment longer, and then he disappeared into the shadows like a wraith.
And for a long time—an hour? two hours?—nothing moved.
When the next shadow came, it came quietly, standing in the circle of light over Evan’s cot before he’d even known it was there.
“Lieutenant Reid,” the figure said, a voice of silk that made a chill work its way up his spine. “Let us consider for a moment the female of the species.”
Evan blinked. The wires were red-hot at his wrists and ankles, and he couldn’t feel his hands or feet anymore.
A woman stood over him; she was Vietcong, dressed in a neat uniform with a black scarf around her throat. Her hair was gathered into a sleek black bun, and the eyes in that face were almond slits of cold contempt. She ran her gaze across his body. “Most dangerous is the female,” she said softly, “because she strikes without warning. She a
ppears soft, and weak, and directionless, but that is the basis of her power. When the time is right”—she drew a fingernail across his stomach, and a red welt rose slowly—“the female has no hesitation.”
She paused for long moments, her eyes motionless; one hand left her side, moved beyond the circle of light. “The female’s capacity for revenge and retaliation is legendary, Lieutenant; why else does the male try to control and placate her? Because he is afraid.” The hand came back; something dangled from the fingers. “The bite of the female can be excruciating. And deadly as well. For instance, this”—the woman held a small bamboo cage in her hand, dangling it over Evan’s stomach—“female here. You see?” In her other hand there was a jagged bamboo shoot. She jabbed it several times into the cage and began to smile. Something scuttled within the cage. “Now she has received an injury that will make her senses scream for revenge.” Once again she jabbed the shoot into the cage; Evan thought he heard a sharp squeal, and a strand of dark liquid oozed from the bottom of the cage onto the floor. Not blood, no, but—
Venom.
“If you do not wish to talk,” the woman said, “perhaps you wish to scream…” She unsnapped a latch and, holding the cage at arm’s length, shook it over Evan’s cringing, sweat-filmed body.
And what fell out onto his thigh drove a whine of pure terror from his throat.
A jungle spider perhaps half the size of his hand, flecked with sleek, greenish brown hairs. Black eyes the size of pencil points searched for the source of its agony. It scrabbled forward, through the risen blisters of sweat, along his thigh; he lifted his head, eyes distorted and wild, and saw the red cup of the spider’s mouth centered between black mandibles. He wanted to scream and thrash, but with his last threads of willpower he kept himself still. The woman stepped back, the light splayed across her shoulders, and he could hear the noise of her ragged, excited breathing.