by Tad Williams
"What?" He thought for a second, then laughed, showing his missing tooth. "Bichos? That just mean bugs." He laughed again. "You thought I said 'bitches,' huh?"
She gasped. "You did say it!"
The boy let himself slide back into his bed, staring up at the ceiling. All she could see was the tip of his nose above the pillow. "Tell you what, not gonna wait around, me. Next chance I get, Cho-Cho be too much gone."
"You're . . . you're going to run away? But . . . Mister Sellars, he needs you!" She couldn't understand—it seemed like the kind of wickedness they talked about in church sometimes, not Sunday school, but the big room with the benches and the glass window of Jesus. Run away from that poor old man?
And her mother would be sad, too, Christabel realized. Mommy complained about it a lot, but she really seemed to like making Cho-Cho bathe and wear clean clothes, giving him extra food to eat.
The boy made a noise she could just barely hear—it might have been another laugh. "I thought there was some efectivo around here, some money, but it's just a bunch of crazy people trying on some spyflick mierda. Little Cho-Cho, soon he going to be too . . . much . . . gone."
He didn't say any more. Christabel could only lie in the bed next to his; straining to hear her parents' low voices, and wonder how the world could have turned so strange.
She had drawn enough hieroglyphs on the countertop with powdered creamer for an entirely lactose-free edition of the Book of the Dead. She had listened to the quiet hiss and hum of her employer's expensive coma bed adjusting itself until she wanted to scream. A thousand channels of net input and she couldn't muster interest in any of them.
Dulcie knew she ought to go lie down, but knew equally firmly that she wouldn't sleep for hours. She pulled on her lightweight raincoat and keyed the security sequence for the front door lock. When it chimed she hesitated, then went back and got her newly-assembled gun from its hiding place in the coffee cabinet.
A little before midnight and the hilly streets of Redfern were shiny with rain just fallen, although at the moment the skies were clear. A loud group of people were streaming out of a dirge club down the block, mostly young white and Asian kids dressed in funereal clothes, baggy black 'chutes and wrapped fellaheen hoods. She fell in behind the largest group, drawn down the street behind them as their voices rang off the building facades like the excited piping of a flock of bats. They seemed to be shouting things at each other in some pidgin Aboriginal dialect. Dulcie remembered a time when she could have stood on the streets of Soho or the Village next to a bunch of young people like this and done in-depth social anthropology on every word, every item of clothing and its positioning. Now she couldn't even remember if this particular sub-sub-group were Dirt Farmers or No-Siders, or anything much else about them except that they liked organic hallucinogens, loud slow music, and artificial skin bleaching.
It all seems so important when you're young, she thought. Marking yourself up so everyone knows who you are. People should just have ID readouts in real life like they do with VR sims, so instead of going to all the trouble to get your skin laced or your face branded, you could just display a little message—"I like cats and bondage, don't listen to any music older than six months ago, and am punishing my father by getting too many subdermals."
Or in my case, "I'm punishing my mother by doing things with my life that she probably wouldn't care about if she knew." Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?
She was depressed, she realized. The missed moment with Dread, because of bad timing or whatever, had turned the possibility of something spontaneous and a little scary into another nightmare checklist of should-she, shouldn't-she. The fact was, although she rather enjoyed being played in that way he had—jerked back and forth emotionally, frightened and then petted—the too-long courtship, if that was what it was, had begun to lose her undivided attention. The fact that she didn't actually like him much was starting to weigh more heavily than it should.
The real truth is, he hasn't told me anything. He's dragged me into some major industrial espionage on pretty thin promises, paying me decent but unspectacular hourly rates, and for all I know he could have found a way to turn lead into gold. I have no guarantees. And what if it turns bad—I wouldn't let him take the gun for me, why should I let him keep me in the dark here in somebody else's country? I don't even know what the laws on this stuff are like in Australia.
And what else did he tell me, like it was the big payout—"Do you want to be a god, Dulcie?" Meaning what, immortality in the Grail network? Well, who knows? The fact is, he hasn't offered. He hasn't really offered me anything but himself, and although that's not bad, it isn't enough. Not for this girl.
The crowd was dispersing quickly, some to the bus stops, others flagging down taxis. Coming home from the apres-Jihad party, she thought with dry amusement as a group of black-turbaned youths jostled its way into a shared cab. Then she realized that a wide but dark street that had been crowded and noisy only moments ago was now nearly empty.
Where am I? That would be great—get lost out here in the middle of the night.
The street signs weren't particularly edifying and she had left her t-jack in the loft, so she couldn't even access a map. Angry with herself but not too worried—there were still people on the street, including some couples—she began to retrace her steps, doing her best to remember how many times she had turned while following the crowd. The old row houses with their rusting wrought-iron balconies seemed to watch her like blank but disapproving faces. She patted her coat pocket, reassuring herself. At least she was armed.
Three dark-skinned men watched her as she approached the corner on which they stood, and even though none of them moved or said anything—the youngest one even smiled very sweetly at her as she passed—she found her steps quickening as she moved away from them down a dark side street.
It's like we're always in the shadow of them, somehow, she thought. Men are just there, blocking the light, and there's nothing we can do about it. Is it only because society has been shaped that way over the years, or is there something more prehistoric going on—because they were stronger back in the beginning?
Felix Jongleur, a prime example of a predatory old man, flashed through her mind. His strange Ushabti file was apparently some kind of last will and testament—an if-you're-seeing-this-I-must'be-dead bit of drama carefully prepared for an heir who seemingly never was. What would his real successors think about that when he did finally give up his lamprey-grip on life? Would they be as puzzled as she was?
Men and their secrets. It was part of their power, wasn't it? So hard to get them to talk about important things that you'd think someone was trying to steal their souls. Dread was another example—a very pertinent example, now that she thought about it. What did she know about him anyway? Sure, with the work he did, she didn't expect to find anything very useful in her few early stabs at researching his background, but she had been impressed at how much of a nonperson he was—or had made himself. There wasn't even a Dread-shaped hole to be found in any of the international files, criminal record banks, anywhere. He was Australian and, by the looks of him, of mixed racial ancestry, which could describe millions of people. Where did he come from? What was his story? It must be an interesting one. Jongleur had secrets. All powerful men had secrets. So what was it that John More Dread was hiding?
She heard the noise before she saw the clump of shadow on the sidewalk half a block ahead of her—a soft retching sound like a cat bringing up a furball. She slowed as she tried to make sense of the shape, which only resolved a few slowing paces later into a man standing over a kneeling woman. At first Dulcie thought he was holding her head while she vomited—the results of a night's excess at one of the bars or clubs—but even as she began to step out into the gutter to swing around the pair she saw that the man was actually pushing her down, forcing her toward the sidewalk.
The pale-haired man looked up, his eyes assessing and dismissing Dulcie within a heartbeat in a way
that infuriated her despite her sudden fear. He turned his attention back to the woman, saying something loud in a language that sounded Slavic, and the woman, weeping, choked out something in the same language. Dulcie remembered Dread mentioning all the immigrants who had come to Redfern after the Ukrainian grain belt disasters; he had said it with a sense almost of irritation, which she had thought at the time was some kind of anti-white racism, and only realized afterward was the exotic Mr. Dread experiencing a very common thing—discomfort at his old neighborhood changing.
The woman was bleeding a little from a cut on her lip, fighting clumsily to stand. The man, his wide jaw set in a line of fury, was holding her head down, the kind of thing a playground bully might do. Something about the situation pricked at nerves long Manhattan-numbed. Dulcie stopped a few meters from the slow-motion struggle and said loudly, "Leave her alone."
The man scowled at her, then turned back to the woman and shoved down hard, so that she gave up resisting and sank all the way to her hands and knees.
"I said, leave her alone."
"You want it too?" His accent was thick but the words quite understandable.
"Just let her stand up. If she's your girlfriend, that's no way to treat her. If she's not your girlfriend, I'll have the police on your ass in twenty seconds."
"No," the woman said in a kind of despair. The man's broad hand was still on top of her head; she looked out from beneath his spread fingers like a beaten dog. "No, okay. Is okay. He not hurt me."
"Bullshit. You're bleeding."
The man's face, which at first had showed a trace of amusement, began to shift. His scowl congealed into something quite frightening. He pushed the woman again so suddenly that she toppled over into the gutter, then he turned toward Dulcie. "You want? You come here, then."
Something that had been burning in Dulcie all day flared hotly. She tugged the gun out of her coat pocket and leveled it at him, bracing her wrist in best shooting-range style.
"No, you come here, asshole." It was strange to feel that power all the way up her arm, like godly lightning at her fingertips. "Get down on your knees, why don't you?" She saw the man's mouth drop open and her feverish high expanded. This was the way those Baptist snake-handlers must feel with thrashing, living death in their hands.
"You . . . you crazy!" The man began backing away, trying to keep his face hard but failing. The woman in the gutter was weeping and covering her head.
She was tempted to squeeze off a shot, just to let the bullying bastard feel the wind of it past his face, but she hadn't test-fired it, didn't know how sticky the pull was, anything.
So I miss and take his ear off instead, she thought. Or worse. So what?
But the face of the Colombian gearhead Celestino swam up out of the turbid darkness of her thoughts, his brown eyes big with fear like a wounded dog, although in real life she had never actually seen fear in his face, since he had been fiberlinked online and blind to her when she shot him.
The young Russian man turned and walked swiftly up the street, barely restraining the urge to run. Before Dulcie could take a step forward to help her up, the woman he had been brutalizing staggered upright, then—with only a brief scared-rabbit look at Dulcie—ran after him. She left both of her high-heeled shoes behind her on the sidewalk.
Dulcie was still breathing a little too fast, vibrating with an excitement that was beginning to turn a little sour, when she found her way back to the street that held the loft.
It's about power, isn't it? she thought. You give them all the power, let them keep all the secrets, and they can grind you down. Without some kind of equalizer the game just isn't fair.
So what's Dread hiding? Just his Swiss bank accounts? Blackmail-quality details on some of the Grail folk?
She thought about the little invisible box on his system, a boy's carton of dirty secrets slid under the bed, out of reach of Sister and Mom.
I can find out, can't I? If I can crack the whole J Corporation, I can sure as hell beat some hidden storage on Dread's home system. I can get in and out without him even guessing.
Then I'll have something on him for a change. I wonder how he'd feel about that?
She had a feeling he wouldn't like it very much, but just now, with fear and fury and triumph singing together in her veins, she didn't care.
CHAPTER 22
More Very Bush
* * *
NETFEED/LIFESTYLE: Mayor Declares Dying Illegal
(visual: Ladley Burn High Street)
VO: The mayor of Ladley Burn, a charming rural village in Cheshire, England, has declared it against the law to die within the town limits. What sounds like a quixotic attempt to turn back death is actually a pragmatic move to save the village's thirteenth-century graveyard, which is already almost full and whose few remaining plots are the object of fierce competition among local residents,
(visual: Mayor Beekin in front of churchyard)
BEEKIN: "It's rather simple, actually. If you die in Ladley Burn, you break the law, and the penalty is you get buried somewhere else. Where? That's not our lookout, I'm afraid."
* * *
Baffled and defeated, Renie slumped to the ground beside the black waters, which were still rippling from the disappearance of the Witching Tree. The Stone Girl had edged away from her, frightened by the strength of Renie's anger.
"Come back," Renie said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have shouted. Come back, please."
"You made the Witching Tree go away," the little mud girl said. "That never happened before."
Renie sighed. "What did it tell you? Am I allowed to ask? I heard something about the Ending, and some boys-and-girls rhyme. . . ."
The Stone Girl looked at her curiously. "You said the tree stole your brother."
"It . . . it's hard to explain. But not the tree, no." A sudden thought struck her; however unlikely, it was worth asking about. "Do you know anyone named Stephen? A little boy. . . ?"
"Stephen?" She giggled. "What a funny name!"
"I take it that's a no," said Renie. "Jesus Mercy, what have I done? What kind of foolish, crazy place is this?" She let her shoulders slump, conscious for the first time in a while that the forest was turning chilly. "What else did the Witching Tree tell you?"
Her guide became somber again. "That things are bad. That the Ending is going to come closer and closer until there's nowhere left to go. That I should come to the Well with all the other people, because that would be the last place left."
"The Well? What's that?"
The Stone Girl furrowed her earthen brow. "It's a place like this, except way more big, across the river and across the river and across the river. Where the Lady comes, sometimes, and talks to people."
"The Lady?" Renie's neck prickled—she knew who that must be. "She comes to this Well and . . . what?"
"Tells people things that the One is thinking." The Stone Girl shook her head. "But she doesn't do it anymore. Not since the Ending started to come." She got up. "I have to go. The Witching Tree said I need to go to the Well, so I'm going to start walking." She hesitated. "Do you want to come with me?"
"I can't, I have to wait for my friends." Renie felt events slipping through her fingers. "But I don't even know where I am. How can I get back to the place I was before you found me?"
The Stone Girl cocked her head to one side. "Where did you come from?"
Renie did her best to describe what she could remember of the rolling meadows, the distant hills, their translucency. Trying to remember it now, it felt like a distant dream.
"You must have been at Over Thaw Hills, in Faraway," the little girl decided. "But it's probably all gone now. The Ending was already there when I was looking for the Witching Tree. That's how come it was all empty in some of it, like you said."
And she had been so sure she had found a place that was becoming more real! Renie felt a harsh pang of fear for !Xabbu and Fredericks. What if they were not lucky enough to stumble on a crossing, as she had been? She ha
d to go find them.
Yes, but find them how? Wander around these weird places by yourself while it all evaporates around you? What good will that do?
But what was the alternative? To follow a fairy-tale creature like this Stone Girl deeper into madness?
I shouldn't have lost my temper. Just for once, why couldn't I have kept my mouth shut? Maybe I would have got some useful information out of that thing if I'd been nicer. She should have remembered what it was like to deal with Stephen, how shouting and scolding just drove him deeper into sullenness. The operating system was so much like a child, and what had she done? Treated it as though she were an angry parent. And not even a particularly smart angry parent.
"What was that you said the . . . the tree told you? That you were supposed to go to this Well, and that all the other people were going there, too?"
The Stone Girl nodded, still standing at the clearing's edge.
What if Stephen really is here? Renie thought. What if he's one of the people drawn or sent to this Well? What if I could finally find him, reach him . . . touch him?
So here was the balancing point. Renie was exhausted, but she couldn't put off the decision. The little girl was leaving, with her or without her. Did she abandon !Xabbu and the others, or perhaps abandon the chance to find Stephen?
Years of university, and for what? How can you make a decision like this—no facts, no discernible logic, no real information. . . ? It was agonizing to think of !Xabbu, who she knew would be looking for her just as diligently as she had been looking for him. It was no less agonizing to think of Stephen, her beautiful, shining little man, so close he was almost her own child, now curled in a hospital bed—a thing of sticks and skin like a broken, discarded kite. She felt bruised inside, helpless, miserable.
And just think—here in the network, I'm really nothing but a living brain. A brain with a bad case of heartache. . . .