She marched back across the dell. If she stepped on one more dead animal, she would scream. He went this way, didn't he? Toward that path. She pa.s.sed the sump again, and the mounds. She knew Sladder was under there, and probably that Penelope chick too. She stopped midstride and stared. Was the second mound moving?

She aimed the SL, stooping. Suddenly an arm, or something like an arm, pushed out of the mounded dirt.

"Jesus Christ!" she shrieked.

In the hole, a misshapen face appeared. Its jawless mouth blubbered, the flaccid arm reaching out.

"H h helup helup help me!" the stretched face blabbered through spittle. Lopsided eyes like hard boiled eggs beseeched her from the sagging sack of flesh that was a face. The big rubbery mouth chewed on words: "They ate my baby! They took out my b b bones!"

CHAPTER 23.

Jervis awoke in graven dark. He struggled to his feet, head tingling. In slabs of sound and image, he remembered: Besser. Winnifred. And the hammer.

Jervis stood up straight. It all came back to him like a rushing tide. He'd been changed-for the Supremate.

-JERVIS. MY NEW SON. WELCOME.

At once, Jervis knew...everything. He knew what he was now, and what he was to do.

-WHAT YOU WANT MORE THAN ANYTHING YOU SHALL HAVE VERY SOON.

"Revenge!" He glanced frantically to the window, where he'd seen his love rubbed in his face like s.h.i.t. Yes! Revenge!

He could sense his new master's smile, the trust of the promise, and the truth. That's all he'd ever wanted anyway. The truth.

And now he had it. The Supremate had made him a veritable reaper of truth. And, oh, how I will reap, he thought.

He rushed to the bathroom, flicked on the light. Despite the new gift of knowledge and power, there were still a few things he wasn't clear on. His mirror image looked...well, pale. Dark bruises showed under his eyes. Around his neck hung his amulet, and his transceptionrod could be seen just past his hairline. What? he slowly thought. What am...

He touched his throat. It felt cold. He pressed a finger under his jaw. Nothing. Then his wrist...

Nothing, he thought. No heat. No pulse.

Jervis stared. What faced him in the mirror was a corpse.

"Holy s.h.i.t," he muttered. "I'm dead."

-But we're not going to eat you, Wade. You're special!

"Who are you?" Wade half gasped.

-I'm your new sister, and...look! She pointed into the perverted grove. A bare hillock rose from the fog, and upon it sat a black oblong box, like a coffin on end.

-Your new home, Wade! the girl in black said.

"My home's Connecticut, kid, and that's where I'm heading right now."

Concern toned down the brightness of the girl's face. -Oh, but you can't leave. The Supremate needs you. We have to take you to him.

Now Wade saw what the little freak meant by we. Three more figures surrounded him. They all looked the same, in the same black capes and hoods, grinning identical grins from identical bright white faces. Their only difference was size. The young one stood less than five feet, the second five five, the third perhaps five eleven. The fourth one stood well over six feet tall.

From one of the snotlike webs, the little girl plucked an unruly, moist spider about the size of a golf ball.

"Aw, Jesus, kid," Wade implored. "Don't do that-"

The girl popped the spider into her mouth and ate it. It crunched like pretzels. Another was biting into a twitching gourd, sucking black mush and seeds from its case. The tallest woman fished one of the gilled snakes from the fog and swallowed it whole.

Wade threw up. Then he bolted.

The sisters bolted after him. They giggled like demented wh.o.r.es. Things whinnied and crunched as Wade dashed through the lake of fog. He sprinted into the perverted woods, slimy webs spreading across his face. Small monstrosities t.i.ttered at him from cl.u.s.tered nests amid the leaves. The giggling of the four cloaked women rose and fell, and followed him through the woods. What would happen when they caught him?

Wade tripped and fell. His hand landed in a big, swollen mushroom with a face, which spat at him. Moist beetles crawled up his shirt, leaving syrupy trails.

"Liiiiiiiideeeeaahhhhhhhhhh!" he screamed.

The six footer had outrun the others. Her grinning face loomed over him, big and bright as a headlamp. Her cloak had come apart, showing perfectly formed yet nippleless b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Blue chalklike veins traced faintly beneath her white abdomen.

-I caught you! she celebrated.

Wade fired Lydia's O.P. six times at the freak woman's face. She flinched, waving her hand. Nothing happened.

-I wish we could make love, she told him.

"I sure as s.h.i.t don't!" he answered, crawling back against a stout, sweating tree. The white pillars of her legs strode over him, and the hooded face leaned closer.

-I'm going to kiss you now, Wade.

Wade jerked aside. Something blurred past his ear, and a wailing whistled up. What had happened? He dragged himself away through forest muck and shined his flashlight back.

A long, pink positor stretched from the woman's mouth. The needled bulb at its end was stuck in the bark of the flexing tree. She pulled, trying to disengage it, as the whistling wail continued. But it wasn't the girl who wailed. It was the tree.

Out of here, Wade thought. He ran deeper into the woods.

-He's getting away! a tiny voice protested behind him.

-There he is! shrieked another.

Wade realized they saw his light. He dropped it and continued through the smothering darkness. Only remnants of instinct propelled him back to the first clearing.

He ran straight into Lydia, toppling them both.

"We gotta get out of here!" he bellowed. He picked her up and dragged her toward the Vette. "They're right behind me!"

"Who?" Lydia yelled.

He shoved her in the car, gunned the engine, and snapped on the headlights. "That's who!" he bellowed, pointing.

The four figures stared at them from the edge of the woods. They were all grinning, their mouths full of crystalline fangs.

-Don't leave, Wade! We can give you everything!

Wade floored the Vette and didn't look back.

CHAPTER 24.

The Erblings had drained well. Jervis tapped them as they hung from the lividityharnesses, punching an eductionlance into each of their feet. The bone sludge oozed out thickly as frozen custard. He milked each soft foot like a big teat.

This had been his first a.s.signment in the labyrinth. He lit a Carlton and looked up at the now deboned fissionizationvessels. The Erblings had been two of the prettiest girls on campus. Now they were just quivering flesh sacks. Too bad, Jervis thought.

Transfection was positive; new life was already swelling in their radiophaseshifttriionized wombs. Jervis appraised Stella's shiny bloated belly. Logarithmic-dissolvedoxygencarbonsourceoptimization effected full gestation in less than twenty four hours. That's some serious baby making, Jervis considered, impressed.

He took them down and packed them neatly into their incubreedcatalyzationcapsules, then activated the final exponentialcellularfissionsequence on the functionplate. Easy as pi. Next he grabbed the sludge jugs and extromitted from the germinationwarren. He left through pointaccessmain#l.

The Dodge Colt was waiting. He drove away from the labyrinth through the green, settled fog. Unseen things crunched as he drove over them. Veined plants with bulbs large as human heads collapsed under the b.u.mper, and filmy eyes viewed him from ripples in the fog. The entire grove teemed in low moonlight. When he pulled into the secreted graveyard, Roxy's version of "In the Midnight Hour" came on the radio. What a great song to dig graves to!

Humming, he emptied the sludge jugs into the sump. Then he spied the second mound. Well, I'll be! Penelope's arms and flabby head had emerged. The rubber limbs flapped vainly against the dirt. Jervis jammed the shovel handle into her face and shoved her back down the hole. She mewled in protest. "Oh, don't be such a baby," he quipped Monty Python. He filled in the little tunnel she'd dug, then stomped on it. The woods shuddered. He could hear her howling underneath.

He dug two more graves, smiling to himself. Digging graves in the middle of the night had a certain charm. He dragged the two big garbage bags from the car. The first contained David "Do-Horse" Willet, or what was left of him. Mostly sinewy bones, an emptied skull, and intestines. Jervis buried the bag in the first grave.

The second bag contained- "Mr. Czanek!" Jervis exclaimed. "I never forget a face, not even a split one! How's business, buddy?"

Czanek lay in two clean pieces, bifurcated. Tom had done an impressive job with the hewer-right down the middle, perfect.

He buried Czanek in the second grave. Four mounds now stood in the silent clearing. He wondered how many more there would be when they left.

Jervis, who was more self aware than the average reanimated corpse, paused for reflection. My Existenz has found me, he pondered. I'm the right hand of destiny. Pure selfhood for a higher meaning. I am the ultimate existential man.

He wiped off his hands and got back in the Dodge. Now that the dirty work was done, the real fun could begin.

The Supremate smiled over them all, his children.

He watched from dozens of different places at once, heard, saw and felt all that his children did. The one called Besser was drawing up the departure a.s.signments, which were vital to the Supremate. The stasisfield grew low; soon the labyrinth would become vulnerable. According to the dataprobe that had been sent long ago, the ruling cla.s.ses here might now have the technological capabilities to break the labyrinth during a weakened charge. Such calamities were rare, but they'd happened. One labyrinth, several thousand years ago, had never made it off its targetobjective. The natives had not been friendly: The duty supremate had been executed, its daughters slaughtered. Fissionizationvessels had been raped en ma.s.se, and holotypes had been burned as fuel or dissected for research.

-DISGRACE, the Supremate thought.

The one called Winnifred was with Besser, too. She sat masturbating in a chair. Sometimes a nativeemissarial would not remain serviceable after the exordipathicsignaltrances, exposure to the psilight, and the Supremate's overall influence. But she had helped in minor ways and had shown great faith. Too bad she would have to die. And Besser, the rotund one, too.

The Supremate continued its overseeing. Two sisters were inspecting the Erbling subjects in the activeport. The Hartley subject had already birthed her first metisunit, which now squalled healthily in the biomaintenancecarbonsourcehypersaturationvault. Many more sisters worked throughout the labyrinth, happy and close to mindless in the discharge of their duties. The sisters were all integrated into the Supremate-prime, living examples of the master plan's capabilities.

-SO WHAT IF I CAN'T BE G.o.d, the Supremate mused. -COULD G.o.d DO ALL OF THIS?

Shauna Applegate stared into her ENG 291 text, bored s.h.i.tless. Her roommate, Inez Packer, sat in the next room, doing much the same. They were both in academic hot water. They were reading about how F. Scott Fitzgerald had died in disgrace, wholly despised by the literary community of the times, even though he was a better writer than any of his contemporaries. But of course, Shauna and Inez couldn't've s.h.i.t cared less. They'd rather be partying.

Just as Shauna thought she'd die of boredom, someone knocked on the door. "Who is it?" she asked.

"Sushi Express."

Sushi? Yuck! "Inez! Did you order any carry out sushi?"

"Yuck!" Inez responded. "No way!"

"You must have the wrong-" But when Shauna looked in the peephole, she gasped. A dead man's face grinned back at her.

"Go away!" she shouted, checking the lock. "I'll call the cops!"

"All right," said the voice. "I'm going away."

The hewer cut the door down in one strike. Shauna screamed as Jervis let himself in. A sister drifted in behind him.

"Are you Inez Packer?" he politely inquired.

"N no, she's in the-"

Jervis brought the hewer down spectacularly-wooosh!-and sheared Shauna Applegate in half, from head to crotch. Shauna's two halves twitched on the carpet. At least she wouldn't have to worry about that G.o.dd.a.m.n English cla.s.s anymore.

Inez had seen it all from her room (your roommate being cut in half by a dead man with a beam hewer was a hard thing to miss). She screamed steadily and threw books. The Great Gatsby hit Jervis in the head. The Beautiful and the d.a.m.ned popped him in the groin. When she slammed her door closed, Jervis hewed it down. "Miss Packer?" he announced. "Your limo is waiting." He lifted Inez up by the hair. The sister's spicule darted out in a pink blur.

Inez turned limp, bewildered and paralyzed. Jervis carried her out to the Dodge as the sister knelt at Shauna's halves, to eat.

"Hey! What the h.e.l.l are you doing there?" a skinny security guard demanded on the exit stairs.

"I'm abducting a healthy female college student for bifertilization with alien holotypes," Jervis answered, and palmed the guard hard enough in the face to drive bone shards into his brain. With his free hand then, Jervis dragged the guard out by the eye sockets, kind of like carrying a bowling ball, and loaded them both into the Dodge Colt. Thank heaven for hatchbacks!

Back upstairs, the kneeling sister seemed disappointed. This was the same sister who had eaten David "Do Horse" Willet's p.e.n.i.s the night before.

-Jervis? How come there's no...