Nightworld

"When's this other fellow arriving?"

"I'm not sure," Glaeken said.

He looked up from the couch at Repairman Jack standing at the picture window staring out at the Park. Everyone who came to his apartment was drawn to that window, including Glaeken himself. The vista had always been breathtaking. With that hole in the Sheep Meadow now, it was captivating.

Jack intrigued him. He wore slightly wrinkled beige slacks and a light blue shirt with the sleeves rolled half-way up his forearms. Average height, dark brown hair with a low hairline, and deceptively mild brown eyes. You would not pick him out of a crowd; in fact his manner of dress, his whole demeanor was geared toward unobtrusiveness. This man could dog your steps all day long and you'd never notice him.

Glaeken liked Jack, felt a rapport with him on a very fundamental level. Perhaps because Jack reminded him of himself in another era, another epoch, when he was that age. A warrior. He sensed the strength coiled within the man; not mere physical strength, although he knew there was plenty of that in his wiry muscles, but inner strength. A toughness, a resolve to see a task through to the end. He had the strength, too, to question himself, to examine his motives and actions and wonder at the wisdom, the sanity of the life he had chosen for himself.

Glaeken wondered if Jack might prove to be the one he was seeking.

He saw a downside to Jack, though. He was unruly and untamed. He recognized no master, no authority over himself. He followed his own code. And he was angry. Too angry, perhaps. At times the cold fire of his rage fairly lit the room.

Still, Glaeken desperately needed his services. Jack was the only one in this world who had any chance of retrieving the ancient necklaces. Glaeken knew he had to tread carefully with this man, and be at his most convincing.

"How long are we going to wait for him?" Jack said, turning from the window.

"He should be here by now. I have a feeling he might have been delayed by a sick friend."

Glaeken had watched on TV as the diving bell had returned from the depths of the hole. It continually amazed him how much one could experience through television without ever leaving the living room. When the first footprints were stamped into the surface of the moon, he had been there watching via television, just as he had been watching an hour or so ago when Bill's friend and the other scientist had been removed from the bell. The other man, a Dr. Buckley, was dead of cardiac arrest, and Dr. Quinn had been rushed to an emergency room in shock. Glaeken assumed that Bill had followed.

Too bad—for Bill's friend and because Glaeken had wanted Bill and Jack to meet, perhaps become friends. He'd have to save that for another time.

Jack dropped into a chair opposite Glaeken.

"Let's get on with it, then. You mentioned the necklaces again. You're not still set on getting ahold of them, are you?"

"Yes. I'm afraid they're an absolute necessity."

"To prevent 'the end of life as we know it,' right?"

"Correct."

Jack rose from the chair and stepped to the window again.

"I still say you're crazy," he said, looking down at the Park again. "But the damn Park is smaller, isn't it? I mean, it's lost whatever amount of surface area that hole swallowed. So it has shrunk, just like you said." He turned and stared at Glaeken. "How did you know that hole was going to open up?"

"Lucky guess."

"Yeah. Right. But you're going to need more than a lucky guess to find Kolabati and those necklaces."

"I've learned exactly where she is."

Jack sat down again.

"Where?"

"She's living on Maui, on the northwest slope of Haleakala, above Kula. And she has both necklaces with her."

"How'd you find that out? Two nights ago you hadn't the faintest idea where she was."

"I ran into an old acquaintance who happened to know."

"How convenient."

"Not really. I sought out this acquaintance."

Glaeken allowed himself a tight little smile and said no more. Let Jack assume that the acquaintance was a person. He could hardly tell him about the Dat-tay-vao, at least not at this juncture. He wasn't ready for it. But the truth was that when he had touched that boy Jeffy yesterday, he had made contact with the Dat-tay-vao, and in a flash that contact revealed the location of the necklaces. For the Dat-tay-vao always knew the whereabouts of the necklaces. They had been intimately linked once. Hopefully, with the cooperation of men like Repairman Jack, they would soon be reunited.

"And you want me to go there and convince Kolabati to give them up so she can turn into an old hag and die as a result."

"I want you to get them. Simply get them."

"Well, since she won't part with them willingly, I'll have to steal them. I'm not a thief, Mr. Veilleur."

"But you do steal things back for people, don't you?"

Jack leaned back in the chair and tapped his fingers on the arms.

"On occasion."

"Very well: those necklaces—or rather, the metal they were made from—originally belonged to me."

Jack shook his head slowly. "Uh-uh. That won't fly. I know for a fact that those necklaces date from pre-Vedic times, and that they've been in her family for generations. And believe me, hers is a family with long generations."

"Still, it is true. The source material was stolen from me long, long ago."

Jack's eyes narrowed. "You're telling me you're a couple of thousand years old?"

Glaeken sensed that he had pushed Jack's credulity to its limits. The whole truth might make him walk out again as he had from the tavern the other night. Probably wise to back off a step for now.

"Let's just say, then, that some time in the dim past a member of her family stole it from a member of mine. Will that do?"

Jack rubbed his eyes and shook his head as if to clear it.

"Why do I believe you?"

"Because I'm telling you the truth." Or something reasonably close to it.

"All right," Jack said after a lengthy pause. "I'll think about it. I'm not committing yet. I could use some detailed drawings of the necklaces, though. Got any?"

"I can have them for you tomorrow. Why?"

"That's my business." He rose to his feet. "You know my fee, and it doesn't look like you'll have any trouble meeting it, so—"

"Fee? I assumed you'd do this because you want to."

"Now why would I want to?"

"Your own self-interest. That hole out there is only the first. Many more holes will follow—countless holes. Those necklaces will go a long way toward stopping them."

Jack smiled. "Sure. Look, Mr. V. I'm in business, but it's not the business of saving the world. I'll be by tomorrow to pick up the drawings. And the down payment. See you then."

"It's almost sundown," Glaeken said as Jack headed for the door. "Go straight home."

Jack laughed. "Why? Vampires on the loose?"

"No," Glaeken said. "Worse. Do not go out after dark, especially near that hole."

Jack just smiled and waved at the door.

Glaeken hoped Jack heeded him. He truly liked the man; and he needed him. He didn't want him killed.