My turn to frown. But I told him, “Come on. Let’s move.”
I started laying out the cables. There wasn’t much finesse in it. I had to tighten up a few connections. Everything seemed to be there, at least. I pushed the furniture aside. Melody was breathing now in little, tiny gasps. They sounded like hiccups. I talked while I worked. “I’m going to run a charge through the cables. I’m going to drive the god out. This is my job, this is what I do. I’ve done it loads of times. The god goes in the flask. I close the flask . . .” I knew she wasn’t following it. I hoped the sound of my voice was comforting to her. Or maybe I was trying to reassure myself. I don’t know which.
I wrapped her in the cables till she looked like a Christmas tree. I put the flask between her knees because I didn’t know where else to put it.
Like I said: no finesse.
Silverman had the plug on the power lead. Good. I started linking it all up: flask to cables, cables to console, console to mains.
“This thing’s a hundred years old. Jesus.”
Silverman, wisely, said nothing. But he was watching with an odd sort of intensity, like a lecher at a strip club. It really was an odd kind of a look.
The socket sparked when I plugged in. I went over to the console, switched on.
I’ll be honest: I was half expecting that the damn thing would be dead. But it wasn’t. The lights flashed on. A faint hum filled the room.
Business.
“You’re, um, you’re Field Ops, right?” said Silverman. There was a kind of frightened fascination in his eyes.
I nodded.
“You’ve done this before?”
He gave a tight smile.
“Not like this,” I said.
“Ah. Um.”
“You can leave if you want.”
“No, I’ll—um. I’ll stay.”
The principle is simple. You run a charge through the cables. The god is sensitive, and moves away from it. But of course, the cable is a loop, so there’s actually no escaping. Or not unless you’re seriously unlucky. And within the first loop is a second loop, so you run a charge through that, and on and on, driving it inwards, till your little god drops straight into the flask, like a lobster in a pot. The practice can be quite a bit more complex, but the theory’s as easy as they come.
Usually, I’d work in a church or temple or on ancient, sacred ground. Once, in the ruins of an old Iraqi city, where I got the Russian mafia on my tail, just to make life interesting. I’ve known retrievals done in sacred groves, and wishing wells, and even in a London railway station.
But to take a god out of a human being?
Never.
I could kill her, just by trying. And if I didn’t try . . . then she was dead for sure.
I hit the first charge, to contain the thing, to let it know that I was there, and there was no point settling down for the night.
Melody jolted. She folded stick-like arms around herself. Her feet came off the floor.
I hit the second charge and she shook and shuddered and an awful, trembling wail burst from her throat.
Someone was beating on the door. It had been going on a while before I noticed it. I told Silverman, “You see to that, will you?”
There were cables all over her. It was ridiculous. I hoped her heart would hold out. I hoped— The flask went over, fallen on its side. That shouldn’t be a problem. I ran another charge. She yelled. She shrieked. The sound rose into frequencies I didn’t think the human voice could reach. Furniture shook. Ornaments started to dance off the sideboard, dropping on the floor with sharp little thuds.
The skin on her face was moving. Something was making patterns in her flesh, whorls and twists and swirls, all just below the surface, like some kind of violent weather system, racing through her body.
There were voices at the door. I had been moving slowly, trying not to cause her too much pain, but now I knew I’d have to take the risk. I hit three short bursts in quick succession, fast as I dared. Her body arched, bounced, and her tongue lolled out of her mouth. Her false teeth had come loose.
A couple of paramedics appeared. Silverman was trying to take the flak for me. I was grateful. Someone started shouting and I yelled back, “Five minutes!” and I ran another charge. I could feel it, burning, tingling in the air, and I thought, maybe this one, maybe this’ll do it— And the lights went out. The equipment died. The power just drained away. And in the pitch dark Melody Duchess screamed and screamed until her voice was no more than a gasp and wheeze like air escaping from a leaky tire.
Somebody pushed me out the way. There was a flashlight shining and a lot of shouting, then someone found the electric panel and reset the circuit breakers. The lights came on.
I said, “This isn’t what you think—”
But my part in it all was over then, and everybody knew it.
Well, except for me.
Chapter 11
Indiana Jones