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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] melody was one I couldn't resist. When we reached the top of the gangway, I said to my dog, "So . . . anytime You want to start explaining all this to me, I'm ready to listen." Even if Orson could have answered me, he didn't seem to be in a communicative mood. My bicycle was still leaning against the dock railing. The rubber handlebar grips were cold and slick, wet with condensation. Behind us, the Nostromo's en ines turned over. When I glanced back, I saw the running lights of the boat diffused and ringed by halos in the fog. I couldn't make out Roosevelt at the upper helm station, but I knew he was there. Though only a few hours of darkness remained, he was moving his boat out to his mooring even in this low visibility. As I walked my bike shoreward through the marina, among the gently rocking boats, I looked back a couple of times, to see if I could spot Mungojerrie in the dim wash of the dock lights. If he was following us, he was being discreet. I suspected that the cat was still aboard the Nostromo. . . . the reason most of them revere You is because of who your mother was. When we turned right onto the main dock pier and headed toward the entrance to the marina, a foul odor rose off the water. Evidently the tide had washed a dead squid or a man-of-war or a fish in among the pilings. The rotting corpse must have gotten caught above the water line on one of the jagged masses of barnacles that encrusted the concrete caissons. The stench became so ripe that the humid air seemed to be not merely scented but flavored with it, as repulsive as a broth from the devil's dinner table. I held my breath and kept my mouth tightly closed against the disgusting taste that had been imparted to the fog. The grumble of the Nostromo's engines had faded as it cruised out to the mooring. Now the muffled rhythmic thumping that came across the water sounded not like engine noise at all but like the ominous beat of a leviathan's heart, as though a monster of the deep might surface in the marina, sinking all the boats, battering apart the dock, and plunging us into a cold wet grave. When we reached the midpoint of the main pier, I looked back and saw neither the cat nora more fearsome pursuer. Nevertheless, I said to Orson, "Damn, but it's starting to feel like the end of the world." He chuffed in agreement as we left the stench of death behind us and walked toward the glow of the quaint ship lanterns that were mounted on massive teak pilasters at the main pier entrance. Moving out of an almost liquid gloom beside the marina office, Lewis Stevenson, the chief of police, still in uniform as I had seen him earlier in the night, crossed into the light. He said, "I'm in a mood here." For an instant, as he stepped from the shadows, something about him was so peculiar that a chill bored like a corkscrew in my spine. Whatever I had seen-or thought I'd seen-passed in a blink, however, and I found myself shivering and keenly disturbed, overcome by an extraordinary perception of being in the presence of something unearthly and malevolent, without being able to identify the precise cause of this feeling. Chief Stevenson was holding a formidable-looking pistol in his right hand. Although he was not in a shooting stance, his grip on the weapon wasn't casual. The muzzle was trained on Orson, who was two steps ahead of me, standing in the outer arc of the lantern light, while I remained in shadows. "You want to guess what mood I'm in?" Stevenson asked, stopping no more than ten feet from us. "Not good," I ventured. "I'm in a mood not to be screwed with." The chief didn't sound like himself. His voice was familiar, the timbre and the accent unchanged, but there was a hard note when before there had been quiet authority. Usually his speech flowed like a stream, and You found yourself almost floating on it, calm and warm and assured; but now the flow was fast and turbulent, cold and stinging. "I don't feel good," he said. "I don't feel good at all. In fact, I feel like shit, and I don't have much patience for anything that makes me feel even worse. You understand me?" Although I didn't understand him entirely, I nodded and said, "Yes. Yes, sir, I understand." Orson was as still as cast iron, and his eyes never left the muzzle of the chief's pistol. I was acutely aware that the marina was a desolate place at this hour. The office and the fueling station were not staffed after six o'clock. Only five boat owners, other than Roosevelt Frost, lived aboard their vessels, and they were no doubt sound asleep. The docks were no less lonely than the granite rows of eternal berths in St. Bernadette's cemetery. The fog muffled our voices. No one was likely to hear our conversation and be drawn to it. Keeping his attention on Orson but addressing me, Stevenson said, "I can't get what I need, because I don't even know what it is I need. Isn't that a bitch?" I sensed that this was a man at risk of coming apart, perilously holding himself together. He had lost his noble aspect. Even his handsomeness was sliding away as the planes of his face were pulled [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |