by Tad Williams
To Paul's horror she began to squirm toward the barrier on her stomach. He grabbed her waist to hold her back, but whatever pulled at her was strong, horribly strong. Flailing, sobbing, she fought him until he had to wrap both his arms and legs around her. T4b shoved his way through the crush of bodies and grabbed her shoulders and at last Martine stopped struggling. She wept harder now, her body shivering convulsively. Paul put his face against her cheek and held her tightly, murmured meaningless assurances in her ear.
"Well," said Dread. "Then we'll have to play it a different way," He moved sideways along the barrier, swift as a spider on a web, then stopped. "Just because I'm on the outside doesn't mean I can't touch you at all. Doesn't mean I can't make it . . . interesting. This little wall the operating system threw together may keep me out for a few minutes—but it also means you're locked in with some old friends of yours." He pressed his fingers against the barrier, tenting the net of mists inward. "They're everywhere, aren't they? The whole network is rotten with the things. Harmless enough, this lot." He chuckled. "Until I wake them up."
In the puzzled hush that followed, Paul pulled Martine up into a sitting position but kept her wrapped firmly in his arms. A thin scream floated up from farther down the shoreline, then another and another until a chorus of shrieking filled the air. That part of the crowd began to shove outward in all directions, a frenzied rush like rats off a burning ship. Something was growing at the center of the disturbance, a bizarre and complicated shape swelling up and out as if unfolding out of the dry dust.
No, Paul saw, and his guts twisted. Two shapes. He could hear Dread laughing inside his head, T4b cursing helplessly behind him. Martine hung in his arms like an empty sack.
Jack Sprat and his wife blossomed outward in a sprawling explosion of flesh until they towered over the other refugees. Sprat's bony fingers twisted and stretched like fast-growing twigs. His legs lengthened, his toes humped and clawed, even his face stretched and distorted until he was as tall and gnarl-limbed as an old tree. He reached out his skeletal claws and snatched up a squealing shape covered in fur and wearing a pink ribbon, then tore it to pieces, raining bits down on the refugees struggling to escape.
Sprat's wife was expanding like a fairground balloon, her arms and legs remaining doll-tiny while the great gross body spread and crushed the helpless creatures packed in around her. The head began to disappear in the humped inflation of shoulders, until all that could be seen was a huge hippopotamus mouth full of crooked teeth, gaping on the lumpy bosom. She leaned, folding like a great pudding, then came back up with a dozen more fairy-tale, figures in her maw. She swallowed slowly. Her neck distended, small shapes still moving inside it.
"Where is the princess?" Jack Sprat had no eyes now, only a crease across the narrowest part of his head.
"The princess!" his wife belched out. A small, sodden creature tried to escape her mouth but was sucked back in and vigorously chewed. "Our pretty, tasty princess!"
They began to wade through the crowd, Jack Sprat tangle-fingered and five meters tall, his wife humping along beside him like a massive jellyfish, killing as they went. The refugees, trapped between the wall of fog and the pit and unable to scatter, trampled each other in mindless terror. Bodies and pieces of bodies flew through the air. The screams rose to an unbroken chorus of wailing.
Forced backward by the crush Paul could only clutch Martine and struggle to keep her sagging form upright. Light strobed and flashed from the pit behind them as though some kind of terrible conflagration was building, but Paul was hemmed so tightly now he could not look around, could barely breathe.
"Give us the princess!" Jack Sprat had something in his twiggy fingers that might once have been a living being. He was using it as a club. "Bring her to us!"
They were only meters away from Paul and the others now. The light leaped and burned on them, making them even more grotesque.
"Stop!" The voice was thin, but it cut through the chaos like a razor. "Stop!" it cried again. "You are hurting them—killing them!"
The huge, deformed shapes paused, eyeless and rapt, facing out toward the pit.
"Our princess." Jack Sprat's wife almost groaned it, a ravening hunger finally introduced to the ultimate feast. "Princess!"
The shrieks of the wounded and dying still drifted to the skies, but even the refugees had slowed and stopped as if under compulsion, turning from their murderers to stare out at the pit.
She hung above the agitated sea of light with her arms spread wide, hung on some invisible cross of misery, flickering in and out of existence like an image on ancient celluloid film. It had been so long since he had seen her that Paul had forgotten the beauty of her presence, the great light that could shine through even this corrupted incarnation.
"Ava." His voice was choked, no more than a murmur. "Avialle."
She did not see him, or did not care that he was there. In the sudden stillness she flickered and grew even more insubstantial, her ghostly face full of pain and horror.
"Let . . . them be. She was beginning to smear like dirt on a rain-spattered window. "You . . . are . . . hurting us. . . ."
"We eat you, princess bellowed Jack Sprat's monstrous wife. "Come home!" The Twins began to shuffle toward the edge of the pit, sweeping bodies from their path or crushing them into the dead gray earth.
She moaned, a sound that swept across the shore, then brought her arms together in front of her face in helpless resignation.
"Avialle! Avialle!"
It was not Paul's voice this time. A man was shoving his way through the press of refugees toward the hovering apparition. It was Felix Jongleur.
"Avialle!" the bald man screamed, and this time Paul could hear the rage beneath the desperation. Jongleur's face, pale and full of crazed intensity, seemed to grow so bright that Paul could see nothing else, not even the shimmering angel shape that had haunted him for so long. "Come to me! Avialle!"
His words echoed in Paul's head, growing instead of diminishing, until all he could hear was her name sounding over and over, tumbling through his brain like a bullet, smashing his mind into fragments so that the blackness beneath came up and swallowed him whole.
Oh Ho!" someone said.
Ava shrieked and threw herself backward out of Paul's arms. He turned to see the grinning, misshapen face of Mudd peering through the trees.
"Naughty, naughty," said the fat man. "What have we here?" But despite the mockery, Mudd seemed a little uncertain, as though he too had been caught by surprise.
"Leave us alone!" cried Ava.
"Oh, I don't think so." Mudd shook his large head. "I think Mr. Jonas has overstepped his privileges." He gave Paul a look of gleeful malice. "I think some punishment is in order." Now he turned his leer on Ava. "For both of you, perhaps."
"No!" Ava leaped to her feet but stumbled, tangled in her long nightgown. Mudd stretched out a heavy hand to seize her, or perhaps just to steady her. Seeing that great paw reach toward her, Paul snatched up the first heavy thing he could find, a rock the size of a fist, and flung it into Mudd's face. The big man bellowed in pain and fell backward, when his hands came away from his forehead they were covered in blood.
"I'll kill you, you little shit," he rasped. "I'll pull your bones out!" Paul yanked Ava to her feet and ran. Behind him, Mudd was talking to someone, talking to the air. "Attention! Security to Conservatory Level. Now!"
Branches slapped Paul's face as he pushed Ava before him, running blindly through the tangle of trees. Where could they go? This was not a true forest, it was a park on top of a skyscraper. Security would be coming up in the elevators. There was no way down.
He slowed to a walk. "This is pointless, Ava. We can't escape, and you might be hurt." And they're going to hurt me no matter what, he thought but did not say. "Is there some way you can contact your father directly?"
"I don't know! I only speak to him when he . . . calls me." Her eyes were wide, feverish, as though she were the one who had drunk too much.
Paul felt himself growing cold and distant, everything happening at a great distance. "I can't let them hurt you," she said, tears welling up. "I love you, Paul."
"It was all foolish," he said. "We should never have let it happen. I'll give up."
"No!"
"Yes." They had him and they could do what they wanted to him. He had a sudden thought, an unlikely glimmer of hope. "Can you talk to your helper—the one you call the ghost? Can you contact him now?" It was perhaps the only insurance he could provide against simply being swatted and disposed of like a troublesome insect. If the intruder could enter the communication lines, perhaps it could contact his friend Niles Peneddyn. At the very least he could construct a message for Niles, tell him something of what was happening. It would make it much harder for Jongleur's men to make him disappear—perhaps he could even use it as a bargaining chip. "Can you contact him?" he asked Ava again.
"I . . . I don't know." She stopped and closed her eyes. "Help me! My friend! I need you now!"
In the silence that followed Paul could hear the sounds of pursuit—not just Mudd's voice now but several others too, shouting back and forth through the trees—along with the alarmed shrieks and whistles of birds. The first security team must have arrived, he decided, and were even now fanning out through the artificial forest behind him.
"He's . . . he's not answering me," Ava said miserably. "Sometimes he doesn't come right away. . . ."
Now I know why they wanted to hire someone like me, who didn't have one of those implanted jacks, Paul thought bitterly. I thought it was because it looked too modem, but they just didn't want anyone who could communicate freely with the outside world.
"Where is he?" The sharp, high-pitched voice echoing through the trees was Finney's. Jongleur's dogs were all out now, in full cry. Paul considered sitting down and waiting for the inevitable.
"Help me!" Ava cried to the air.
"Forget it." He felt little more than anger now—anger at himself, at this foolish, deluded girl, even at Niles and his upper-class contacts. "It's over."
"No." Ava pulled her arm from beneath his hand and dashed away into the trees. "We'll go beyond the forest—there has to be a way out!"
"There is no way out!" Paul shouted, but she was already crashing through the thick vegetation. His legs as heavy as in a nightmare, he stumbled after her.
All around him the hunters were closing in, narrowing the angle, hemming their escape. Ava was plunging ahead as though the forest would truly come to an end, as though they might burst from the trees to see hills and meadows and freedom stretching before them.
"Come back!" he shouted, but she was not listening. Her billowing nightgown snagged on trailing branches, but she still moved much more swiftly than he could, an elusive phantom. He struggled after her, trying to remember what was ahead of them. Another elevator? No, not on this side. But wasn't there a fire escape? Hadn't Mudd or Finney said something about that the first day?
Yes. "You'd better hope you never have to use it, Jonas," Mudd had told him, grinning. "Because the window's sealed. Mr. Jongleur doesn't like the government telling him how to run his own house."
Sealed. But sealed how? Smacked and poked by branches, stumbling over the bumpy, artificial forest floor, he could scarcely think. Ava was a dozen meters ahead now, calling for him to hurry. He also heard the pursuers clearly, clipped voices passing information to each other, efficient as robots.
"Don't be stupid, Jonas!" Finney sounded only steps behind. "Stop now before you get hurt."
The hell with you, mate, he thought.
"Paul, I can see the end of the trees. . . !" Her voice was full of hope. A moment later she cried out, an animal howl of pain and misery. Paul's heart lurched. He crashed through the last of the branches to find Ava frozen and stupefied at the end of the natural earth, staring at an empty white wall. Seamless, without openings or features of any kind, the wall stretched straight up for ten meters before curving up to roof the entire floor and display the artificial sky. The space between forest and wall also bent away to either side, hidden within a few paces by the tangling trees.
"It's . . . it's. . . ." Ava was stunned.
"I know." Paul's heart was beating so fast he was dizzy. The bland curve of the outside wall gave no hint of what to do. Their pursuers were crashing toward them, only moments away. He had to pick a direction. He had no idea where to find the fire escape. Opposite the elevator—but where would that be? They had run through the forest in a zigzag track and might be a hundred meters from it or more.
Left, he decided, his thoughts flickering like agitated fish. Coin-flip. Fifty percent, and it probably won't matter anyway. He grabbed Ava—she seemed light as a small child, almost hollow-boned—and pulled her along, the curve of the wall.
Some of the tree branches snaked out beyond the bounds of the artificial forest. They scraped at Paul's face as he tugged the girl forward, forcing him to put a hand in front of his eyes. He could barely see, and did not notice at first when the branches stopped touching him. Something cool and smooth pressed against his other side, something more slippery than the wall.
Paul stopped and uncovered his eyes. The sweep of the entire island stretched below him on one side, although the view was strangely distorted, the colors blurry and prismatic. The window ran from a few feet above his head down to knee level, perhaps five by five meters. Beneath their feet lay only smooth parquet—the artificial woodland curved away from the wall and its inset window here, broadening the walkway, forming a space between glass and forest wide enough to park a couple of trucks.
Mudd was shouting in the trees, bellowing like a bull as he hurried closer. It sounded like he was knocking the trunks down with his bare hands.
"He's here!" Ava said in a strangled voice.
"I know." Paul wished he had another rock—it would be a great pleasure to try to smash the fat man's ugly teeth. Or put out one of Finney's little snake eyes.
"No, I mean my friend—he's here!"
Paul looked around, half expecting to see a spectral figure, but of course there was nothing. His eye flicked down to the weird view through the window, the buildings far below bent crazily up toward him as though reflected in the bowl of a spoon. The glass is energized somehow, he thought. Some kind of electrical charge running through it—probably one of those hyperglass things, meant to keep anyone from firing a missile through it and blowing up Jongleur and this madhouse of his. . . .
"Tell him to turn off the window," Paul said. "The power, the electrical power—it has to be turned off or we can't reach the fire escape stairs."
"I don't understand," said Ava, but apparently something did. The window abruptly changed, the view leaping out clear and unwarped, the sky gray, the air full of drizzle, the buildings beneath them now as sharp-edged as some kind of expressionist sculpture.
The wall began to flicker around the window. For a split-instant Paul thought, wildly, that it too might dissolve, everything illusion, leaving them standing naked to the elements. Instead the angry, hawklike face of Felix Jongleur appeared ten meters high along the wall, first twinned on either side of the window, then multiplying outward all the way along the curve.
"WHO SET OFF THE ALARMS?" It was the face of an angry god, a voice like a controlled explosion. Paul shrank back, fighting not to drop reflexively to his knees. "AVIALLE? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
"Father!" she cried. "They are trying to kill us!"
A group of security guards dove out of the bushes onto the walkway and rolled to a crouch, leveling an ugly variety of guns that Paul had not dreamed existed outside of net dramas. The effect of frightening, fatal efficiency was undercut slightly as the guards saw the massive face of Felix Jongleur—one of them even let out a cry of startled surprise. All stared with their mouths open. Finney strode out of the trees just a few meters from Paul, his expensive suit snagged in several places, covered with leaves and dirt.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?" Jongleur roared.
> Ava wept, sagging against Paul. "I love him!"
"It's under control, sir," declared Finney, but he looked nervous. Twenty meters down the curve of the wall, on the other side of Paul and Ava, Mudd smashed out of the forest like an angry rhinoceros, followed by a half-dozen more guards.
"There you are, you little Limey bastard," grunted Mudd. He had tried to wipe the blood from his face but had only managed to smear it into a warpaint mask. "Somebody shoot him."
"Shut up," Finney snapped.
"No!" Ava swung herself in front of Paul. "Don't hurt him—Father, don't let them hurt him!"
The nightmare had swung far out of control. Whatever the girl believed, Paul did not think for a second that Jongleur would spare him—they just didn't want it to happen in front of her. He took a quick glance over his shoulder, then flung himself backward and turned to scramble toward the lever at the edge of the window frame. For a moment he had it in his hand, could even look down and see the black metal rail of the fire escape outside the window, then one of the guards' guns went off in a series of explosive pops. The bullets stitched past him, blowing fist-size pieces of construction foam out of the wall and spiderwebbing the heavy glass above his head.
"ARE YOU MAD?" Jongleur bellowed, his face replicated all along the wall like the masks of an enraged god. Colorful birds, startled by the gunshots, had abandoned the trees and now filled the air, squawking and fluttering. "YOU COULD HAVE HIT MY DAUGHTER!"
"No more firing, you idiots!" shrilled Finney.
Paul lay on the ground below the sill, strengthless, almost numb. He had lost. The window was still closed. A huge hand tightened on his collar and yanked him to his feet.
"You little shit." Mudd leaned close. "You can't even imagine the trouble you're in."
Finney had grabbed Ava and was pulling her back toward the forest. "Father!" she cried, struggling hard. "Father, do something!"
"SEDATE HER," Jongleur said. "THIS WAS A MISTAKE AND SOMEONE WILL PAY."