by Tad Williams
Casaro snorted, then stepped out the door to wait for his partner in the motel parking lot, under hot gray skies.
Upshaw shook her head. For the first time her smile seemed honest—an amused grin. "No, ma'am. No, I'm afraid there isn't. See, we're not really that kind of corporation."
Jeremiah was up in the sleeping area, changing the dressing on Del Ray's head wound, so Joseph had become the official watcher of the monitor screens. All of the men upstairs were in view on one camera, still in the same place beside the elevator doors. At the moment they were resting and smoking, but dusty chunks of concrete lay piled all around and the man standing in the hole, leaning on the handle of his pick, was a good half meter below his fellows.
Joseph supposed he and his companions should be grateful at least that they were so far out in the middle of nowhere, or the men upstairs would probably have fetched in air hammers and a compressor by now.
"Coward bastards," he said, half-whispering. Just what they were doing that was so cowardly he couldn't quite define, but waiting was difficult, especially when you were probably waiting to be killed.
He looked down to the floor of the lab where the silent V-tanks lay. How strange, to think Renie was so close. And her friend, too—both of them sealed in the dark, like those little oiled fish in cans. He missed her.
The thought was so surprising that he had to stop and try it out for size and feel. Yes, he did, he truly missed her. Not just feared for her, not just wanted to protect her, do the fatherly duty of keeping her safe from bad men—he wished she were here to talk to him.
It was something he hadn't thought about much, and he had trouble holding it together to consider it. It was all wrapped up somehow with Renie's mother, but not with the awful helplessness of watching her die, as his feelings of protectiveness were. He missed having someone around who cared about him. He missed the company of someone who understood his little jokes. Not that Renie liked them very much, and sometimes she pretended they weren't jokes at all, that he was just being stupid or difficult, but there had been times when she was just as amused by him as her mother had been.
Now that he thought of it, though, it had been a long while. Not many jokes in the last few years, at least not the kind you could laugh about.
She was funny herself when she wanted to be, but it seemed to Joseph it had been some time since there had been much of that from her end either. She had got so serious, somehow. Angry, even. Because her mama was dead? Because her father couldn't work, with his bad back? That was no reason to lose your sense of humor. That was when you needed it most of all—Long Joseph knew that for a fact. If he couldn't have gone out and had a drink every now and then with Walter and Dog and found a laugh or two with them, he would have killed himself a long time since.
When she was a little girl, we used to talk. She'd ask me questions, and if I didn't know, I'd make up some foolishness just to see her laugh. He hadn't seen that laugh in a long time, that surprised laugh where her whole face lit up. Such a serious little girl she'd been, he and her mother couldn't help but tease her sometimes.
Come back, baby girl. He stared at the silent tank, then turned back to the monitor. Break time was over: three men were digging now in the hole in the concrete floor, dust billowing up like they were devils in the smokes of hell. Joseph had the strangest feeling, like he was going to cry. He reached out and took a swallow of his last, dwindling bottle of wine. You come back soon and laugh with me. . . .
The ringing of the telephone startled him so badly that he almost dropped the precious squeeze bottle with its cap open. He stared at the device for a moment as he would a black mamba. Jeremiah was upstairs, but he must be able to hear the ring—with the floors all open to the high central ceiling, the underground lab complex was like being in some big train-station waiting room.
Maybe I just leave it alone until he gets down, Joseph thought, but the thought of being frightened of an antique telephone was too much. As it rang again, he stood up and snatched it off its dented metal cradle.
"Who is that?"
There was a pause on the other end. The voice, when it came, was ghostly and distorted. "Is that Joseph?"
Only after the first superstitious chill had raced across his skin did he remember, but he wanted to be sure. "You tell me who's calling, first."
"It's Sellars. Surely Mr. Dako has told you about me."
Joseph didn't want to talk about Jeremiah. Joseph was the one who had answered the phone; he was the one in charge of this emergency. "What do you want?"
"To help, I hope. I take it that they haven't managed to break in yet."
"They are trying. They are surely trying."
In the silence that followed, Joseph found himself suddenly worried that he had done something wrong, driven off their benefactor. "I don't have much time," Sellars finally said. "And, I must confess, not a lot of ideas, either. You managed to get the armored elevator doors closed?"
"Yes. But those men are digging through the floor now—started out with a grenade, I think, but now they using picks, shovels. Coming right down through the cement."
"That's bad. Do you have the monitors working?"
"I am looking at those men right now. They are digging like dogs after a bone." Jeremiah had appeared, a look of worry on his face. Joseph waved him back: everything was being taken care of.
Sellars sighed. "Do you think you can help me connect to your surveillance system? That would give me a better idea of what's going on."
"You mean these cameras and so on?" Joseph felt his competence suddenly under heavy fire. "Hook you up? To those?"
"We should be able to do it, even with that old equipment you have there." There was a strange, wheezing laugh. "I'm pretty old equipment myself, after all. Yes, I think I can talk you through it."
Joseph was disturbed. Every cell in his body told him to take charge, to make something happen, but he knew Jeremiah had spent much more time with the machinery than he had. In fact, he knew he hadn't even bothered to learn anything about the monitors at all. With real regret, he said, "I will let you talk to Jeremiah." But he could not give up without even a show of involvement. "It is that man Sellars," he whispered as he passed the receiver. "He wants to get hooked up with the pictures."
Jeremiah stared at him quizzically, then leaned forward and tapped a button on the instrument panel. "I've put you on the speaker, Mr. Sellars," he said out loud, then hung up the receiver. "That way we can both hear you."
Joseph was caught off-balance. Was Jeremiah being kind to him, like to a child? Or was he treating him as an equal? Joseph wanted to be irritated, but could not help feeling a small glow of pleasure.
"Good." Sellars' voice sounded even more strange now, scratchy on the small speaker. "I'm trying to think of things to do, but first could you patch me in to your monitors?" He gave a list of instructions to Jeremiah that Joseph could not quite follow, which left him feeling annoyed again. Who had been the mechanical one in this group, after all? Not Jeremiah, a kind of glorified lady's maid for a rich old white woman. Not Del Ray, an overgrown schoolboy who wore suits and sat behind a desk.
By the time Joseph had summoned up the meditative calm to shrug off the unintended insult, Jeremiah had apparently done what Sellars wanted.
"I see three working and one with a gun, watching," the tinny voice said. "Is that all of them?"
"I'm not sure," said Jeremiah.
Joseph frowned, thinking. When he and Del Ray had snuck in, they had seen . . . how many? "Five," he said suddenly. "There are five of those men."
"So one's off somewhere," Sellars said. "We shouldn't forget about him. But first we have to deal with the digging. How thick are the floors, any idea? Wait. I should be able to access the plans."
For long seconds the speaker was silent. Joseph's thoughts were just turning sadly to the small bit of wine he had left when the strange voice spoke again. "Roughly two meters deep where they're working, next to the elevator bay. Which means
they're probably about a quarter of the way there." He made a strange sound, perhaps a hiss of frustration. "It's heavy concrete, but they'll be through in a day at the most."
"We only have one gun, Mr. Sellars," Jeremiah said. "Two bullets. We're not going to be able to fight with them when they get through."
"Then we have to see what we can do to keep them out," Sellars replied. "I wish this place were a bit older, then maybe I could find a way to banjax the heaters, fill that upper section with carbon monoxide."
Joseph remembered enough from his days in the construction trade to remember something about those carbon what-so-oxides. "Yes, kill the bastards! Poison them. That would be a fine thing."
Jeremiah winced. "Kill them in cold blood?"
"We can't do it," Sellars said, "or at least I can't see a way just now, so it's not worth debating the morality of it. But you must understand that those are not ordinary men, Mr. Dako. They are murderers—perhaps the very men who attacked your friend, the doctor."
"How do you know about that?" asked Jeremiah, startled. "Did Renie tell you?"
"In fact, they have killed someone else that Joseph knows," Sellars said, leaving Jeremiah's question unanswered. "The young technician you visited in Durban."
Joseph had to think for a moment. "The fat boy? Elephant?"
"Oh, God, they didn't!" said Del Ray.
"Yes. Shot him in the head and burned his building." Sellars was speaking briskly now, as though a timer inside him was ticking loudly. "And they will kill you, too, as blithely as swatting a fly, if it suits them . . . and I suspect that it will."
In his mind's eye, Joseph could see the cluttered storage depot burning. His initial horrified fascination began to curdle into something else as he remembered Elephant's cheerfulness, his pride in his top-of-the-line equipment.
Not right. That is not right. He just helped us because Del Ray ask him.
"What will we do, then?" asked Jeremiah. "Wait tor them to break through and murder us?"
"He said about police." Joseph felt anger building, a different kind of anger. "Why don't we just call someone—the army? Tell them some men are trying to kill us right here in their base?"
"Because you are yourselves wanted by the police," Sellars said, his voice flattened by the electronic distortion. "The Brotherhood has seen to that. Do you not remember what happened when Mr. Dako tried to use one of his cards?"
"How do you know about all this?" Jeremiah demanded. "I didn't tell you any of that when we talked before."
"Never mind." Their invisible companion seemed frustrated. "I told you, I have little time and much to do elsewhere. If you call the authorities it will take hours for any suitable force to respond—you are far up in the mountains. Then, even if they drive away or capture Klekker and his thugs, what will happen to you? More importantly, what will happen to Renie and !Xabbu? After you three are arrested, they will either be left alone and untended here, with the place empty and perhaps the power shut off, or, if you tell the authorities, they will be disconnected and dragged away. Still deep in what will appear to be comas, would be my guess. Moving them now might even be fatal."
The idea of the electricity failing and Renie waking in the darkness of the tank, struggling to get out, thrashing in that strange jelly, was even more horrible than imagining her lying in some hospital, as unresponsive as her brother. Joseph slapped his hand down on the table. "It will not happen. I don't leave my girl here."
"Then we have to think of another solution," Sellers said. "And quickly—I have my hands full just now trying to put out fires, and for every one I control, two more seem to flare up." A moment of silence was filled with the looping hum of the mystery man's voice-distortion gear. "Hang on. That may be it."
"What? That may be what?" Jeremiah asked.
"Let me look at the plans," Sellars told him. "If I'm right, we'll have to work fast—you'll all have lots to do. And it's risky."
"Just a small pile at first," Sellars told them. "Concentrate on the things you know will burn—paper, cloth."
Joseph looked down at the huge heap of trash they had spent the last hour and a half collecting under Sellars' guidance. The paper and kitchen rags he could understand, the dusty military-issue sheets from the supply depot they had dragged down in the first days of their occupation, but what on earth were they going to do with the wheels off all the office chairs? Plastic floor mats? Rugs?
"Let me test it one more time before we commit ourselves," Sellars said. "Unlike your enemies, you don't have access to outside air." As if a ghost had flicked a switch, a rattling noise sprang up behind the wall vent. It mounted higher, until it was a high-pitched whine, then eased down again. "Good. Someone please start the fire."
Del Ray, who had dragged himself from his convalescent bed to help, looked first at Jeremiah, then at Joseph. "Start it? How?"
Something like weariness was in Sellars' voice. "Isn't there anything you can use? The base is old—surely someone left behind a lighter, something?"
Joseph and the others looked around, as though such an object might magically appear.
"There's a little petrol in the emergency starter for the generator," Jeremiah said. "Only a spark would do it. We can make a spark, can't we?"
"I suppose you can cut into the wires in the monitor console," Sellars said. "Those are the only ones you can get to easily. . . ."
"Hold on!" Joseph stood up straight. "I know. Long Joseph will fix this problem." He turned and hurried toward the room where he slept.
He had put Renie's clothes in a box, knowing she would want them when she came out of the tank. He felt in the pockets, and to his great joy discovered her cigarettes, but could find no trace of a lighter no matter how he looked. His moment of pride turned sour.
"Shit," he said, letting the clothes fall back into the box. He stared at the cigarettes, wondering dully how Renie was coping without them. Could you smoke in the computer-place she was?
She must be crazy if she can't, he thought. 'Course, I am in the real world and I can't get any wine, so who has got it worse?
"Good thinking!" someone said from the doorway.
Joseph looked up at Del Ray. "No lighter, no matches." The younger man seemed puzzled for a moment, then smiled. "Don't need any of that. Those are self-lighting."
Joseph stared at the packet of cigarettes, relief mixed with a certain angry regret at having to be told something important by someone his daughter's age. He took a breath, then swallowed what he had been about to say. He tossed Del Ray the cigarettes and followed him back to the makeshift bonfire.
The tab pulled, the end of the cigarette smoldered alight. Del Ray dropped it on the knee-high pile of paper and rags. Little tongues of yellow flame scalloped the top of the pile; within half a minute it was burning well. As Joseph and the others heaped more of the most flammable objects on top of it, smoke began to drift upward in a visible cloud. The whine of the air intake deepened and the smoke was drawn toward the wall vent.
"Slowly." Sellars' disembodied voice was hard to hear above the noises the fire was making. "It has to be burning very hot before you can put any of the plastic or rubber on it."
Joseph wandered over to the monitors. The men in the hole beside the elevator well upstairs were working just as hard as ever, nearly waist-deep now. The white one watching their progress had a cigar in the corner of his mouth,
"You will get your smoke, ugly man," Joseph said, then went back to help the others.
Within twenty minutes the flames were as high as Long Joseph himself, the blaze several meters across, and only the air-intake, which now roared like a small plane taking off, kept them from being choked by the clouds of gray smoke.
"Push in the pans of oil," Sellars said. "And start throwing on the rubber mats."
Jeremiah and Joseph used a pair of broom handles to slide the kitchen baking pans full of machine oil into the heart of the blaze. Del Ray threw much of the material they had been saving onto the top of the
pile. The smoke, and even the flames themselves, began to change color: the cloud billowing out now and being drawn into the vent was stormy black, and even through the wet rag wrapped around his nose and mouth the smell was making Joseph woozy. His eyes were burning too: the safety goggles they'd found in a cabinet were ancient and fit badly. He stepped away to watch Jeremiah and Del Ray throw the last boxes of plastic and rubber onto the top of the burning pile. The flames beat out so fiercely the three of them were forced back across the wide area they'd cleared on the cement floor, coughing all the way.
Weren't for that getting sucked out, Joseph thought as the inky clouds disappeared into the vent, so thick they almost folded rather than flowed, we all be dead. He suddenly realized what Sellars had meant when he said "risky." If the power failed, if something in the burning, black cloud choked the intake system, that black mass would come flowing back on them. Then their choice would be to suffocate or open the armored elevator doors and stumble out into the gunsights of the killers.
The pall of black was beginning to overcome the intake's capabilities, curling back, widening like a thunderhead. Joseph felt a rising terror.
"Where is that damn man?" he said. Jeremiah and Del Ray were too busy coughing to answer. Joseph, in a moment of unusual clarity, turned to memorize the location of the V-tanks so he could find them and release the prisoners if the power went out. His thoughts, absorbed by the fire-building, were now beginning to grow fragmented and panicky. "Sellars! Whatever your name is, what are you doing, man? We choking to death here!"
"Sorry," the voice hummed. "I had to disable the fire alarms. I'm ready now."
Easy enough for you, Joseph thought. You are not fighting just to breathe.
He and the others gathered around the monitor, wheezing. The full-throated roar of the intake did not change, but there was a succession of distant clanks, as though someone was striking a metal pipe with a hammer. An instant later Joseph felt the pressure of the room change, not enough to make his ears pop, but a definite shift. The plume of black wavered and then bent visibly toward the vent. The rest of the smoke that had escaped the intake began moving back toward the vent, too, as though the mountain itself had just inhaled.