The Watched

XIV

The realization was so profound that it penetrated the pleasant delirium induced by the rose perfume, and Ordier stepped back again. He turned around, staring first at the wall of the folly behind him, then across at the plantation of roses. It seemed to him that there was a movement somewhere in the bushes, and, distracted from the girl, Ordier walked slowly toward them. They seemed to be looming over him, so near were they. The bushes grew to an unnatural height; they were like small trees, and nearly all were taller than him. Convinced that someone was standing concealed behind the plants, Ordier ran toward where he thought he had seen the movement, and plunged into the nearest row of bushes. At once he was halted; the thorns of the branches snagged and tore at his skin, bringing spots and streaks of blood to his chest and arms. Here, in the plantation itself, the thick smell of the roses was so concentrated that it felt as if the air itself had been replaced by the sweetness of scent. He could not think or focus his mind. Was there anyone beyond, hiding in the roses, or had he imagined it? Ordier peered forward and to each side, but was unable to see. In the distance, just visible across the top of the plantation, were the screens around the Qataari camp. Ordier turned away. He stumbled back through the prickly branches of the roses, and returned to the arena.

The statues faced inward, staring down at the girl buried beneath the petals. A memory, surfacing sluggishly like waterlogged timber through the muddy pool of his mind: the statues, the statues. Earlier in the ritual… why were they there? He remembered, dimly, the men gathered around the girl, the cleaning and polishing of the statues. And later…? As the girl walked into the center of the arena, some of the men… climbed into the hollow statues! The ritual had not changed. When he returned to the hidden cell that morning, the Qataari had been positioned exactly as he had last seen them. But he had forgotten the men inside the statues! Were they still there? Ordier stood before the one nearest to him, and stared up at it. It depicted a man of great physical strength and beauty, holding in one hand a scroll, and in the other a long spear with a phallus for a head. Although the figure was nude from the waist up, its legs were invisible because of a voluminous, loose-fitting garment, shaped brilliantly out of the metal of the statue. The face looked downward, directly at him and beyond, to where the girl lay inside the petals. The eyes… There were no eyes. Just two holes, behind which it would be possible for human eyes to hide. Ordier stared up, looking at the dark recesses behind the eye-holes, trying to see if anyone was there. The statue gazed back vacantly, implacably. Ordier turned away toward the pile of rose petals, knowing the girl still lay there a few paces away from him. But beyond the petals were other statues, staring down with the same sinister emptiness. Ordier fancied he saw a movement: behind the eyes of one, a head ducking down. He stumbled across the arena, tripping on one of the ropes (the petals of the mound rustled and shifted; had he tugged at the girl’s arm?), and lurched up to the suspect statue. He felt his way around to the other side, groping for some kind of handle which would open the hinged back. His fingers closed on a knob shaped like a raised disc, and he pulled at it. The hinges squeaked, the back came open, and Ordier, who had fallen to his knees, looked inside. The statue was empty. He opened the others, all of them, all around the circle… but each one was empty. He kicked his naked foot against them, he hammered with his fists and slammed the metal doors, and all the statues rang with a hollow reverberation. The girl was still there, bound and silent beneath the petals, listening to his noisy and increasingly desperate searches, and Ordier was growing steadily more aware of her mute, uncritical presence. She was waiting for him in the manner of her people, and she was prepared. He returned to the mound in the center of the arena, satisfied, as far as it was possible to be satisfied in this state of narcosis, that he had done all he could. There was no one about, no one watching. He was alone with the girl. But as he stood before her, breathing the sickly fragrance of the roses, he could still feel the pressure of eyes as distinctly as if it were the touch of a hand on the back of his neck.