(19) Crucia

Was Wingate right? thought Sanguineus. He could not believe what he heard that morning from the biologist, and he could hardly believe what he saw now.

Fabienne stood staring into the eyes of Pegasus, her hands caressing the flexing jaw muscles of the restless grey stallion.

Ambrosia was chanting verses that Sanguineus could not quite hear except for the oft-repeated "Myga, myga," fly, fly... Her arms were raised and her hands moved like those of a ballerina. Her head was tilted back.

To Sanguineus, watching through his goggles, the audience was a line of green tinted figures mesmerized by something more than the lilting voice and the fluid hand motions. There was a palpable feeling in the air that even he could feel. The two besmocked women, the two dull-eyed thugs with their arms swaying at their sides, Agape holding the thermos in both hands against his chest, the bodyguard next to him looking like a man who had stepped into the wrong room; these figures seemed as fixed as the sculptures whose heads support the roofs of ancient Greek temples.

But this was only a momentary observation. Sanguineus focused his attention on the horse, the mighty Pegasus, the offspring of gods, the personification of myth, the victim of a drug that unleashed its most powerful and bizarre effect in slow degrees that now, conceded Wingate, would explain the medusean stare of Fabienne Chora.

The blood sample of Pegasus, and the sample from the girl, were very nearly a match in one particular respect...

"By whom was this girl drugged?" wondered Wingate that morning at the hotel, gazing down at the sleeping Fabienne lying on the cashmere sofa, as Carlos, seated at her feet, shook his head, Rolgo patted the armrests of his claw-footed chair, and Sally Anne paced the room shaking her fists.

She and Sanguineus intuited the answer at almost the same moment.

"Berenice Chora," they said to each other.

Sanguineus, his back to the awning-shaded window, spoke to Wingate. "Ambrosia told me that Berenice has experimented with the super-horse drug. I think the girl's mother has been injecting her with it."

"Expecting what?" asked Wingate, his hands brushing back his thinning blondish hair as though this could assist his thinking. "Not the Medusa stare!"

"Of course the Medusa stare," said Sally Anne, "but she would have had to see a sign of that in Pegasus first."

"Not seen," said Rolgo, "felt. She felt it. She felt it when she looked into the eyes of the horse."

"Then so would Ambrosia feel the same effect," Sanguineus said. "And she's mentioned nothing of that to me."

He smiled sourly. Ambrosia had not heard the last ninety seconds of the recording. He had deleted it. She was not to know of it.

Wingate expressed his learned opinion in his usual frantic mannerisms. "To put this in the simplest layman's terms, the drug does not affect the muscles per se, but the whole complex concept of vibrations," he said so quickly that a indifferent listener would think he was blithering. "These vibrations cause everything to move and to change, and, in the case of life itself, they bring it into a physical state, an actual reality. Stop the vibrations and everything would revert back to the spiritual state, the conceptual level. The drug affects the mind in such a way that the vibrations at the quantum depth of one's existence become increasingly more dense. Not in matter, but in nature. If the horse isn't killed by the stress put on its heart through a mind that is gradually closing off its connections to the brain, then it will not just jump to great heights. It will fly. It will be free of the effects of gravity's fabric. Unfortunately, the density of its psychic energy, when it looks at a living thing as an obstacle, condenses the matter of the object, and can do so until the object is utterly solidified."

"So it's the mind," said Rolgo, "not the muscle fibers, that give Pegasus his extraordinary power."

"And, apparently, Fabienne her medusean stare," said Wingate. "But I'm speculating here. I must admit to myself now that I felt the beginnings of what Miss Bern felt when the little girl was staring at her. I put the horse into a mild respiratory suppression through morphine and the 'happy juice' that patients are given before an operation. But by now Pegasus is back on his hoofs and the effects of the super-horse drug are continuing and increasing in power. If my speculations are correct, Pegasus will very soon become like his namesake's mother."

"Like Medusa," said Sally Anne.

Sanguineus adjusted his rifle scope until the two upright crosses, one to each side of the broad gap in the circle of trees, shone like dark green crucifixes seen from behind.

He noticed then that the foot of both crosses were not touching the ground. It seemed a levitation effect.

Pegasus was loping around and around the crosses, bobbing his head, his mane luffing, nostrils flaring, eyes bright with a unique and peculiar intensity.

Sanguineus studied the expressions in the line of faces as best he could through the poor visibility. There was no indication of surprise. The levitating crosses was a spectacle they had seen before.

Berenice and Marianne now stood with their backs to the uprights and their arms stretched to their sides along the crossbeams. They had given no resistance to their fate.

Ambrosia was following Pegasus around the crosses, in and out of the grove with her palms together at her breasts.

Fabienne stood facing the two women whose wrists were being tied by... Sanguineus could not tell. Who was winding lengths of rope around the wrists, waists, and ankles, pausing, like an artist, to examine his handiwork?

This person, having completed his task, went to the middle of the clearing to stand beside Fabienne, and was now seen to be wearing a hooded robe. Sanguineus would have identified the person as Tragos, but he saw no beard dangling from the deep shadow of the hood.

The unexpectedly calm solemnity of the ritual had Sanguineus deciding to abandon his post for that of Sally Anne's. There he would be somewhat closer to the placid action and have a view of the crosses from a front-on position.

He imitated the cry of a Scops owl. This would alert Sally Anne to his approach, for in his version there were three cries, not two. She would not mistake him for the owl.

Sally Anne heard the expert mimicry. She scooted backwards toward the summit's downward slope where the rank growth was thicker, more troublesome, but offered better concealment for the rendezvous with Sanguineus.

Meanwhile she kept an eye on the clearing. She watched Fabienne go up to each cross and kneel down to kiss the bare feet of first Marianne, her teacher, and then Berenice, her mother. This wasn't at all what Sally Anne had been led to expect.

A small stone landed on her left leg and rolled off. She turned over on her right side.

Sanguineus came crawling up beside her and lay on his left side, their noses almost touching.

"Is anything working out the way we thought?" she whispered. "Where's Tragos? Wasn't he supposed to be one of the victims? Why is Berenice so docile? And Marianne, too! I can't see that they're to be killed, or they wouldn't be so lackadaisical about all this."

"I didn't think this would concern you, what Carlos told me about Ambrosia," he said, "with your job being to protect the girl. I didn't want Ambrosia knowing about Carlos' suspicions, nor about his knowledge of her involvement with Marianne. But I think now there's going to be just one victim here, and you need to know the whole business."