Chapter 10: Knights of Infinity.

"Most people live dejectedly in worldly joys or sorrows. They sit on the sidelines and do not join in the dance. The knights of infinity are dancers and possess elevation. They rise up and fall down again, and this is no mean pastime, nor unpleasant to behold." -- Søren Kierkegaard, 'Fear and Trembling.'

Water, Winston decided, was God's gift to mankind. There was something about running water first thing in the morning that made a man feel human again. Others required coffee to rejoin the world of the living but not Winston. A hot shower followed by a clean shave and the mechanic was ready to take on the world.

His good mood ebbed slightly on entering the kitchen. Ray was the only person there, busily buttering toast. He looked haggard, as if he hadn't been able to wake up properly.

"You okay, Ray?" He sat down and began piling pancakes onto a spare plate.

The engineer smiled weakly. "I think I managed to get a few hours sleep last night," he commented ruefully.

Winston's dark eyes were intense as he studied him. "It's not enough," his voice was firm.

Ray stifled a yawn. "You won't get any arguments from me," he agreed. "But I'll live."

The mechanic studied his friend in puzzlement. Last night, Ray had been so shaken by his nightmares he had barely been strong enough to describe them to his closest friends. Now, despite his obvious exhaustion, his mood was almost cheerful. Winston didn't understand it. "You sure about that, Ray?" he asked quietly.

Ray looked up from his breakfast and studied Winston's face. The dark skin was etched deeply with lines of worry. Whatever nightmares were plaguing the mechanic, they were obviously not bad enough for him to suffer anything worse than an uncomfortable night and disrupted sleep. Of all of them, Winston had the most experience with handling these kinds of situations and that experience was showing through now. Winston was currently in a far better state of mind than everyone else in the firehouse.

But Winston knew it too and whatever advantage he had from his army experiences had been eroded by his obvious concern for his colleagues. Ray found himself wondering how much of the mechanic's sleeplessness was caused by the terrible things they had witnessed in the garden and how much of it was caused by the effect the situation was having on his friends.

Winston had been the last of their tight-knit group to join, arriving on the scene even after Janine. Just like the secretary, however, he had become an integral part of their family. His background was completely different to anything the three scientists understood - a stable family life, raised on physical labour and rigorous army training, Winston's world-weary experiences meant he technically had much more in common with the secretary than with the other three Ghostbusters. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, he had found a much-needed role to fulfil in their misfit organisation and from almost the first day he had made himself indispensable. Ray could barely remember what his life had been like before Winston's arrival and often found himself wondering how any of the three academics had managed to survive before the mechanic's steady, calming influence had entered their lives.

Ray smiled at him. "I'm sure, Winston," he tried to sound reassuring but knew he was too tired to pull it off. "It's what's going on in Peter's head we need to worry about," his smile became tinged with sympathetic understanding as he watched Winston run his hands through his tight, black curls with a weary groan.

"Something happened to him in the garden, Ray. Something he's not talking about."

"I know."

"Something he's afraid has affected Janine."

"I know."

Winston gave the engineer a sharp look. Ray grinned at him. "My nightmares are bad, Winston but that's all they are." His smile quivered then faded completely. "But you heard Janine scream last night. And I saw the look in Peter's eyes when he woke her. What they're suffering, Winston - it's nothing I know anything about. I've had nightmares before. I had real bad ones after my parents died. I know I can survive them, I've done it before. But what's happening to them is something else and we have to help them. I know it!"

Winston stared at Ray's determined face. The engineer didn't know it but Winston was in awe of him. Coming from an extremely physical, down-to-earth family, Winston had been raised to never fear the sweat and grind of an honest day's work and, just like his parents, had found a strange peace, even spirituality, in hard physical labour. He hadn't been the first member of his family to enter the army. His parents had been extremely proud of his decision but he hadn't fully understood why or what it all meant until he had found himself in the thick of the action, slowly being worn down by the grim reality of war. In Vietnam, he had learned another kind of strength existed. There, he had learned to see beyond physical appearances and see the strength of the soul. There, he had watched battle-hardened warriors collapse under the strain of the violence, torture and death even as he witnessed old women and young children bury their dead and return to the daily struggle to survive with barely a whisper of complaint. There, he had come to understand that sometimes a man had to witness the blackest pits of the human condition in order to see just how beautiful humanity could be.

Once he left the army and moved back home, he had found himself learning the lesson all over again as he came to understand that it wasn't just in a war zone that the best and worst of humanity could be found. It was everywhere he looked, even in the heart of a city as large and urbanised as New York. It had been a search for this duality of the human soul that had made Winston draw a red circle around an odd little job advert in the back of the local newspaper and turn up on the doorstep of a converted firehouse in a bad part of town to apply for a job he didn't believe in. He hadn't realised it back then; it had taken years for the understanding to reach his conscious awareness. It was almost an epiphany revealed in the speech of an academic who, despite being plagued so badly with nightmares that he hadn't slept in three nights, nevertheless believed others were in greater need than himself.

In that moment, Winston realised that Ray Stantz was one of the most beautiful people he had ever met in his life.

"Promise me something, Ray," he said quietly. "Don't ever change."

Startled, the engineer looked up and saw in those near-black eyes a conviction so great it was almost spiritual. He flushed and looked back at his plate, speechless and not entirely sure how to respond or even what he had done to illicit such an emotion from the normally level-headed mechanic.

The moment was shattered by the sound of a door closing quietly and then Egon walked into the kitchen. He paused in the doorway and his eyebrows lifted. "Am I interrupting something?" he asked, sensing the odd mood.

Winston grinned. "Just me realising I have some of the best friends a guy could ask for," he gave the startled physicist an intent look. "Speaking of which, how are you?"

Egon considered that then glanced at the still embarrassed Ray. "I'm fine, Winston," he poured himself some coffee and joined them. "We need to discuss Humbaba," he changed the subject abruptly.

"Yeah, we were just about to do that," Ray agreed. He cleared his throat and visibly pulled himself back together before continuing. He paused again, however, as Peter stumbled into the kitchen. The three men stared at him but when he fell, rather than sat, into a chair, Egon shoved his untouched coffee under the psychologist's nose and rose to make himself a new drink. Obviously on automatic, Peter downed the coffee in one and then, finally, blinked. "Morning, Peter," Ray smiled.

"I'm so glad you didn't put 'good' in that greeting. I would have had to kill you," Peter rubbed his eyes and grabbed a pancake.

Winston glanced at Egon. "Better give Pete the entire pot," he said with a grin.

Egon nodded once, saved himself a mug and placed the rest in front of the psychologist before resuming his seat. "If you're awake, Peter, we need to discuss Humbaba."

"Okay," he yawned. "What happened in the garden? Where did the wind barrier come from? How can we get it down again? How do we kick Humbaba's butt when our throwers didn't affect him? How long have we got before Humbaba wakes up?" He paused. "Did I miss anything?"

"Not bad for someone who's sleepwalking."

Peter grimaced and Ray chuckled at his expression but it was Winston who spoke up first. "Guys, what happened in the garden?" He glanced at each of them in turn. "Where did those ghosts come from? Ray and I got a real good look in that garden when we were in the helicopter and we didn't see any ghosts. Why did they only show up when the barrier went down?"

"We might not have been able to see them," Ray became more serious as he pondered the question. "They had no reason to manifest until we entered the garden. If they were in a diffuse state when we flew over the place we wouldn't have seen them and Humbaba's spectral signature is so powerful it would have masked them from the P.K.E. meter as well..." he trailed off as he noticed Egon was shaking his head slowly. "You have another theory, Egon?"

"Mea culpa," the physicist's voice was sour. He glanced down at his coffee when his audience all turned the same startled stare on him and sighed. "Given the events that had taken place in the garden, I considered the probability of the six victims becoming ghosts. I speculated such an event might produce Class III focused repeaters, perhaps Class IV at worst. As noted by Ray, there was no way to verify my theory prior to actually witnessing the ghosts because of the degree of psychokinetic flux we were detecting..."

"So you didn't mention it at all until the barrier went down," Peter interrupted dryly. "Egon, you really need to start letting us in on your suspicions before we run headlong into them..." he raised a hand to stall the objection forming on Egon's lips. "Spengs, there's an axe splitting a crack through my head the size of the Grand Canyon, give me a break and just hear me out, will ya?" When Egon obediently stilled, he smiled wanly and continued. "If it offends your scientific sensibilities that much, make it clear you're just hypothesising. Scientists do that, right Egon? Throw out a few hypotheses and then run off to test them? Think of Ghostbusting the same way if you have to but for Mother Mary's sake, stop springing these surprises on us at the last minute!"

A tiny smile fluttered across the physicist's lips before he could stop himself. "I didn't think I would ever live to see the day when Doctor Venkman would be lecturing me on scientific methodology," his tone was somewhat rueful.

"Can you imagine the look on Dean Jaeger's face if he could see us now?" Ray grinned broadly then he sighed and patted Egon's arm. "Seriously, Egon, I should have considered that myself..."

"We all should have considered that," Winston interrupted. "We've all been doing this gig long enough to know what happens when people die violent deaths. It could have occurred to any one of us but it didn't. It's not your fault they surprised us, Egon."

"And when you did try and tell us, I didn't even let you speak," Ray added. "I should be apologising to you, Egon. I thought badly of you and I should have known better."

Egon glanced between the pair of them and shook his head. "I think you misunderstand the point I am trying to make, gentlemen," he said wearily. "What I speculated we would encounter is exactly what we appeared to encounter but we were unable to take readings to verify that the six ghosts we trapped truly were Class III or Class IV entities. Or even that they belonged to the six people who died in that garden. I completely neglected to consider the possibility that they were connected from the very beginning to Humbaba or the wind shield and in doing so exposed us all to unnecessary risk."

There was silence for a moment. "You mean they weren't the people who died in the garden?" Peter demanded.

"I knew there was something weird going on in there!" Winston muttered. "Those ghosts didn't make any sense to me!"

Egon studied Winston thoughtfully for a moment. They had all learned over the years, sometimes the hard way, to trust Winston's instincts. He was able understand patterns none of the rest of them could even recognise and they relied heavily on his ability to put clues together to bring into focus the various mysteries they often encountered during busts. "I think the deaths brought the entities into existence," he explained slowly as if feeling his way through his own theory. "I am uncertain as to whether the entities absorbed the victims' ghosts or whether the victims' ghosts themselves became the entities in question," his blue gaze refocused on his audience then he turned to regard Ray solemnly. "While Peter and Janine were in hospital, I spent my time analysing the behaviour of the ghosts in the Containment Unit and reading up on the information you had researched on Humbaba. Are you familiar with the galla-demons?"

"Sure," Ray replied immediately. "The seven demons who drag the dead and dying down into the underworld," he frowned. "Egon, I see what you're getting at but you can't possibly be right. The gallas work in groups of two or seven. Never six."

There was a disgruntled expression on Egon's face. "But you agree that is exactly what they appeared to be?"

"Well yes, now that you mention it," Ray pushed his plate away and leaned forward. "Do you think we've left one behind?"

"It's possible the seventh chose not to manifest and attack us when the other six did," Egon was starting to look frustrated. "But that makes no logical sense. It would be defying its own nature to stand back and not participate."

"You know what else doesn't make sense?" The engineer took control of the conversation. "Why would they attack us in the first place? We weren't dead or even dying. The gallas are only supposed to be interested in the dead and dying."

Winston sucked in a sharp breath as realisation dawned. Across the table, he saw the haunted shadow flare in Peter's eyes as the psychologist caught on as well. "Guys..."

"You're right, Ray," Egon mused, although there was an exasperated lilt to his tone now. "Fascinating. Could both of my theories be wrong?"

"Guys."

"I don't think so, Egon. I think there's more going on here than we realise." Ray smiled at the irritated physicist. "We'll find the answers, Egon. You're right, they couldn't have been the normal Class III or IV ghosts which means Humbaba was doing something else in that garden. I'm betting it's tied in to whatever plan Humbaba has for us. We know he hates humanity but he doesn't generally have any more control over death than we do. Maybe what he did was shape those ghosts into a simulacrum of the gallas? They were trying to protect him, after all. The gallas wouldn't have any reason to protect him." He paused and frowned, suddenly worried. "Would they?"

"GUYS!" Winston's voice rang out like a drill sergeant, silencing both scientists at once. He took a deep breath before continuing in a more normal tone of voice. "Guys, you're both missing something here. Those ghosts didn't attack us," he gazed at the pair intently.

Ray and Egon stared at him then glanced at each other. "Sure looked like it from where I was standing," Ray was indignant.

"Really?" Winston retorted. "From where I was standing it looked like the only folks in the garden they cared about were Peter and Janine. Even when we started firing, they ignored us in favour of attacking those two. Now why is that?"

Ray gasped and his brown eyes widened in shock. "Gosh, Egon, he's right!" he turned to stare at Peter, who was watching them all uneasily. The engineer didn't fail to notice how white the psychologist now looked. He looked back at Egon and Winston, his worry increasing. "What do you think it means? It doesn't make any sense. What's so special about Peter and Janine?"

"Gee, thanks Ray," Peter's protest was weak and half-hearted. He looked shaken.

"Here's the stinger," Winston added gravely. "We didn't even know Janine would be coming with us until the last minute. We had to fight Egon to let her come, remember? Whatever made those ghosts decide to home in on Peter and Janine had to be something they decided when they saw us. It couldn't have been planned if even we didn't know Janine would be coming until we were ready to go."

"Did they do anything that stood out when we were there?" Ray looked at them all.

"They were the first to enter the garden?" Winston suggested.

"No," Egon disagreed immediately. "The four of you entered the garden together."

"Maybe they were closest to the ghosts?" Ray tried.

Egon shook his head. "Peter certainly was but Janine was standing beside Winston. Ray was closer to the ghosts than Janine and they didn't pay any attention to him."

The three lapsed into silence as they considered this mystery but even Winston looked stumped. "You weren't doing anything we didn't notice, were you?" Ray asked Peter jokingly but frowned when he received no reply. "Peter?"

"Huh? What?" Peter blinked and refocused on them and it was then the three Ghostbusters realised that the psychologist hadn't been listening to a word they were saying. Even now, he seemed distracted, his eyes dark with an undefined emotion that disturbed them.

"You alright, Pete?" Winston asked him quietly.

Peter's gaze slid away from the group to scan the kitchen, almost as if he was unable to meet their gaze. "Yeah, fine," his tone failing to reassure any of them. "Where's Janine?"

There was a sudden silence. Peter's eyes finally focused on the others as he tried to analyse the reason for it. Winston glanced his way looking as puzzled as he felt, so he turned his attention to Ray and Egon. Egon was intently studying his coffee mug and Ray looked uneasy as if he wasn't sure what to say. "She got up early," the engineer said at last. "Went downstairs."

"So she's at her desk then?" Peter tried to pin down the reason for the obvious evasion. "Has she eaten breakfast? Maybe we should go get her," he started to rise to his feet and saw Ray glance in Egon's direction. He also saw Egon wince in response.

"She had an appointment with that plant doctor this morning," Egon said calmly without meeting his gaze.

Peter sat back down, eyeing the physicist suspiciously. "She went alone?"

Egon's jaw tightened slightly. "Peter, it's really not an unusual occurrence," he pointed out.

Peter didn't answer immediately; he was trying to understand Egon's tone of voice. It was familiar and, at the same time, unusual.

"We didn't want her to go alone, not after everything that's been happening recently and not after last night," Ray admitted when Egon lapsed into silence. "She thought we were being overprotective. I didn't know how far to push it but Egon..." he trailed off for a moment and glanced at the physicist. Egon returned the gaze with an expressionless stare. Ray frowned as he realised his recalcitrant friend had no intention of helping him out this time. If Egon had no intention of letting him know how much he should reveal, there was nothing stopping him from being honest. "They both got pretty steamed at each other. She said she expected this behaviour off her mother not her bosses and if we're going to force her to account for her every move, she's going to go back home and only come here during work hours."

Peter sighed as he finally recognised the self-recrimination that had been in Egon's voice. "So she stormed off and Egon's been sulking in his lab?" He ignored the glare the physicist shot him. "When's she due back?"

"She didn't say," Ray replied uneasily. "It doesn't really matter though, does it? She does have a point, Peter. Just because she's living here at the moment doesn't mean she answers to us outside of business hours."

Peter let his breath out in a hiss. He only had a gut feeling, nothing concrete, that her life was in danger. He didn't understand the sensation; all he could see was the look on her face as she tumbled into the abyss in his dreams. She had trusted him to save his life and he had betrayed her. But that had been a dream, it had nothing to do with reality. He knew he was letting it get to him when it shouldn't, affecting the way he was reacting to events taking place in reality, events that didn't have anything to do with his dream.

It was a hollow denial. It was hollow because while the others had been discussing the garden, he had realised something. As they speculated about the amount of ghosts in the garden, he had remembered the ghosts in his dream. He had remembered there were seven ghosts in his dream.

He didn't know what that meant but something told him it was significant. The psychologist inside him, the one who had listened in the lectures devoted to dream symbolism and interpreting the subconscious mind, had sat up and paid attention to his friends' discussion from that moment on. And as they debated the significance of Peter and Janine being the only targets, he had considered the events of his dream with growing fear.

Now he felt trapped. He didn't know what to tell them because he wasn't sure he had anything to say. Part of him wanted to toss aside the dream and write it off as being exactly what it appeared to be - a nightmare, a jarring, unpleasant nightmare, but nothing more sinister than that. Another part, the part that had gotten him through two PhDs, was refusing to allow him to brush off his experience and he had to admit to himself that he was confused. He didn't know what to do next. All he knew was that it was a mistake for Janine to be away from the firehouse alone. He knew it completely and passionately and yet had no logical reason for believing it. He had no words to explain his feelings to the others and so he said nothing at all.

Aware of the irony of his decision in light of his lecture to Egon, he sighed and ran his hands through his thick mane of hair. "We don't know how long Humbaba's reach is," he pointed out. "Remember Gozer? Gozer hadn't even arrived in our world but that didn't stop Dana and Louis being possessed and acting out his will."

"This is not the same," Egon responded, automatically categorising the facts but nevertheless unable to hide his unease. "Dana and Louis were possessed because of where they lived not because of who they were. Humbaba has no structures designed to facilitate his return to our world and no minions to help him arrive. He has to do the work himself."

"You sure about that, Egon?" Peter pressed. "Think about it. You and Ray just speculated there might be seven ghosts... gallas... whatever you called them. What if you're right? What if the other six attacked to give the seventh time to escape? What if we're being spied on or stalked?" he knew he was laying it on thick but that sense of some impending doom hovering just out of reach refused to leave him. Besides, he could see he had their attention now. "We were all in the garden, the ghost could know our faces, or read our auras or however it is that ghosts track living people down. Come on, Winston, it's alone against superior numbers. What's it gonna do?"

Winston sighed, his shoulders slumping. "It'll strike when we're at our weakest - when we're alone and can't summon help."

Egon readjusted his glasses restlessly. "This is all speculation, Peter."

"Yes, it is. I don't have a shred of proof to back any of this up, just a feeling I can't explain," Peter's voice was flat as he leaned forward. "Let me lay it on the table for you, Spengs. What went on at the pier between you, Janine and the lotsabuck?"

The physicist started visibly and his eyes widened. The question had come out of the blue and caught him completely off guard. Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw Ray and Winston shift uneasily but he held firm, gaze unwaveringly fixed on Egon. This was it, he had realised. The only way to address the situation at hand was to confront the situation they had all been avoiding. Peter knew none of them had come to terms with the situation yet. It wasn't just Janine who had been left wrestling with inner demons; all the Ghostbusters were struggling with their guilt at not having realised sooner that something was horribly wrong with their secretary. However, no-one felt comfortable actually raising the subject and so it had been skirted around, coyly brushed past, as if they felt they had no right to be the person who mentioned it. An unspoken pact had therefore been forged between Ray, Peter and Winston; to hold their peace until either Janine or Egon broke the silence first.

Until now.

"I'm not certain I see the relevance," Egon said slowly, stiffly.

Peter sighed in exasperation. "No, I don't suppose you do, Egon." His eyes narrowed in irritation. "When we turned up, that lotsabuck was about to kill you. You didn't have your pack on; you weren't trying to protect yourself. From our point of view, it looked like you were trying to get yourself killed and if we'd arrived just a few seconds later, you know as well as I do that this conversation now wouldn't be happening. Let me take a wild guess here. You pulled an emotional and utterly crazy stunt because you believed it would work. No logic, just a gut feeling. Am I right?"

Egon's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Yes," he agreed cautiously.

"Then it's fair to say that you were willing to place more importance on Janine's safety than on finding a more logical solution? That you considered Janine's life more important than your own?"

Egon stared at him in silence for several moments as if he was calculating whether honesty now would cost him more than he was willing to pay later. "Yes," he admitted at last, his tone neutral. He knew exactly what else he had just confessed to but refused to acknowledge the smiles that appeared on Ray and Winston's faces. Peter did not smile. He wasn't in the mood, the nightmares had seen to that.

"So it's equally fair to say that you'd be more willing to take a chance on us being unnecessarily overprotective now, resulting in an angry - but alive - Janine later, than in us letting her carry on as normal which ends with us laying wreaths on her coffin?"

"When you put it that way..." Egon gave in, his voice sour.

"Sorry, Egon." Peter's tone was genuinely sympathetic. "But sometimes the only way to get you to listen is to use a sledgehammer."

"Criticism noted, Doctor Venkman." The physicist didn't look appeased. "What do you suggest?"

Peter sighed. "Unfortunately, sometimes Janine needs to be hit over the head with a sledgehammer too, so I vote we pile into Ecto-1 and drag her back here by force."

"She is not gonna like that," Ray grinned.

"I'll use the damn Crimebuster traps if I have to," Peter retorted. "But one way or the other, she's coming back to this firehouse."

Egon studied his face thoughtfully then frowned. "You really do believe Janine's in trouble, don't you?" His expression and tone of voice suggested it was only just occurring to him that Peter's fears were genuine and that he had not been looking for future blackmail material after all.

Peter sighed again. "I believe Winston's right, Egon. I think something happened to both Janine and myself in that garden. I don't understand it but I definitely do know I don't like it. It's not just Janine I don't want wandering around the city alone, I want all of us to be careful."

Winston nodded. "I still think those ghosts were a distraction to stop us dealing with Humbaba. We can't put off dealing with him any longer, guys. We need a plan."

"I have an idea," Egon said slowly.

"Egon, you kidder, you had one all along, didn't you?" For this first time since entering the kitchen that morning, the old Peter Venkman seemed to be waking up.

Egon frowned at him. By contrast, the physicist's mood had soured dramatically at the mention of the recent lotsabuck threat and was showing signs of deteriorating further. "You won't like it," he said.

"Egon, I never like your plans," the psychologist pointed out. "What is it?"

Egon shook his head and rose, his breakfast untouched. "First we find Janine."

Peter grinned at the physicist's urgency. It was proof that the lotsabuck subject had done its intended job but he had to ignore a tiny clinical voice at the back of his mind that observed the subject still needed a proper discussion. For now, however, there just wasn't time so he squashed that little voice ruthlessly. "And then we discuss the plan?"

"No," the physicist spotted the grin, understood exactly why it had appeared and frowned irritably. "When we have found Janine, we proceed to the Mayor's office. I want his input during the discussion of my idea."

"The Mayor?" Winston looked startled. "What on earth is this plan, Egon?"

"One the Mayor won't like either, Winston," Egon admitted and strode out of the room leaving three worried Ghostbusters in his wake.

Ray felt a small light-bulb go off in the back of his mind. There was a solution. In fact, he could think of two. Convinced he knew exactly what Egon had in mind, he hurried out of the kitchen before the others could ask him what he thought the physicist was up to.

Egon was right, they weren't going to like this plan at all.