Rivas ran trembling fingers through his hair and took the invitation out of his pocket. This must be the place, he thought, and started forward. He walked slowly, for each step required an individual choice between continuing and fleeing.
At the top of the bridge he paused to look around. Deviant's Palace, he saw, was the hub of a dozen canals, which all disappeared inside the place through high arches. He descended the far side of the bridge and approached the stairs.
A fat, hooded person scrambled out of a manhole in front of him and blocked his way. In glowing letters on the person's robe front was spelled out: I GOT MY ASHES HAULED AT DEVIANT'S PALACE. «Sorry, sir, invitation only tonight,» piped up a sexless voice.
Rivas held up his invitation^
The hooded figure peered at it in the bright electric light. «Well, excuse me, the guest of honor! Just head right on in—you're expected.»
The situation had already had a fever-dream unreality to it, but this grotesque courtesy totally disoriented Rivas. «Thank you,» he said, and as he went up the steps he actually caught himself wishing he'd shaved.
From overhead he heard a windy sighing, and looking up he saw the wooden gargoyles he'd once heard described. They were writhing and stretching out splintery arms and rolling their heads. Rivas had been told that when the things cried out it was with human voices, but tonight it was just a whispery roaring that he heard, like the voices of the trash men in Irvine.
Through the open doors he could see a carpeted hallway. He shrugged and stepped inside.
In a loop of a canal a few hundred feet from the structure, ripples spread as a corpse drained of blood floated to the surface.
That's a little better, thought the thing under the water. I can think a little more clearly now. So he thinks he can lose me by going into that place, does he? Think again, Gregorio.
It swam closer, already faintly uncomfortable with the burning and itching, in spite of the shielding water around it. He knows I hate these places, it thought. That's why he keeps going to them. But once I've got him, we'll go where I want to go.
It looked back and up at the floating corpse, wishing the old drunk had had more vitality. That's what I need, it thought. If I could drain somebody strong, then I could become so strong myself, and solid, that I could simply beat Rivas into submission.
The thing shivered with pleasure at the thought.
Well, it told itself, get moving. You don't want Rivas to die before you can catch up to him. It kicked its froggy feet and swam toward one of the arches in the wall of Deviant's Palace.
Another hooded figure approached Rivas as soon as he'd entered the low hall.
«We meet again, Mister Rivas!» came a woman's voice from inside the cowl. «The Lord will be pleased that you could attend on such short notice.» The hood was flung back and Sister Sue smiled crazily at him. «You should be flattered,» she said. «He nearly never troubles himself to invite anyone. Generally he just lets them drift west.»
Rivas had managed to control, and, he hoped, conceal, his instant impulse to run. Right at the moment, he told himself firmly, there are many more dire things to fear than this girl. «Well hello, Sister Sue,» he said, deciding he might as well enter into the spirit of the evening. «Uh . . . what an unexpected pleasure.»
With a clever but completely unconvincing imitation of vivacity she took his arm and led him up the hall. «During our brief acquaintance,» she said, «I've gathered that you're fond of music and drink. The former, as you perceive, is provided.» Evidently she meant the two-tone hum. «Might we furnish you with some of the latter?»
All at once the whole awkwardly stilted pretense, from the calligraphic invitation to Sister Sue's nearly impenetrable imitation of high society speech, made Rivas vaguely sick. «Yes, thanks,» he said tiredly. «Tequila neat, please.» At least the offer of a drink was an indication that they didn't intend to hit him with the sacrament. The smell of the sea seemed to be even stronger inside the building.
She led him down the hall to a flight of stairs and down these to a beautifully tiled but lopsided arch, and simultaneously a drink was put into his hand and he stepped through the arch.
He nearly dropped the glass. He was standing on a sort of dock at the bottom of a vast cathedral of a chamber, and he almost thought he was outside again because of the damp chill and a faint mist that made the ceiling hard to see. Colored lamps dangling on long chains set the mist aglow and cast highlights on the broad and apparently deep pool that was most of the floor. Wide tiers with tables and chairs on them ringed the ascending walls at uneven intervals, and bridges spanned the gulf in several places. The arch Rivas had walked out through was the smallest of at least a dozen that ringed the chamber, and with a thrill of panic Rivas realized that the whole place looked inadequately supported—the tiers, the bridges, the vast expanses of inward-sloping stone far above his head; the structure, it seemed to Rivas, needed many more pillars.
Big polygonal rafts drifted on the surface of the lagoon like leaves on a pond, and as Rivas's eyes grew accustomed to the soaring volume of the place and able to focus on smaller things, he saw that there were chairs and a table and candles, and in most cases a party of diners, on each raft. Waiters in little gondolas sculled among them, occasionally raising waves and drawing curses from the diners.
One raft held steady, perhaps anchored, way out in the middle of the lagoon, and instead of a table it had a ring of holes cut in it. All the holes were empty except the bigger central one, in which bobbed something that Rivas thought was a leather beanbag chair. The smell on the chilly air, he noticed, was the same one he'd encountered in Irvine—a mix of fish and garbage.
Sister Sue rang a bell mounted on the arch beside them, and though the silvery note wasn't loud, conversation stopped at all the tables. The monotonous singing stopped too, and the thing Rivas had thought was a beanbag chair straightened up, revealing itself to be the unsubmerged top half of a man—bald, brown, and fatter than Rivas would have thought a person could get.
«Mister Rivas,» came a glutinous whisper that echoed among the canal arches. «So good of you to come.» And Rivas realized that this must be his host, Norton Jaybush himself, Lord of Irvine and Venice.
Rivas remembered the drink in his hand, and took a sip of it. It was tequila all right, and the peppery bite of it was reassuring, evidence that a sane world did still exist somewhere outside. «Mister Jaybush, I think,» he said loudly; but when his voice echoed back at him he realized that he could speak in a conversational tone and still be heard throughout the enormous chamber—evidently the place had been built with acoustics in mind. «Or should I say Mister Sevatividam? High time we met.» Cool, he thought with some cautious satisfaction. Very cool.
One of the gondolas swept up to the dock, and the boatman's pole flexed as he brought the boat to a halt. With a smile, Rivas solicitously took Sister Sue's elbow as if to help her aboard, but she smiled back—with such joyful malice that his smile became a wince—and said, «You first, brother.»