by Tom Clancy
At first it had seemed to Nick merely a frustration de- signed to weed out those who weren't really serious about finding the way down to Nine. But slowly he had begun to suspect the truth lay elsewhere. Whether he would find i it in time to descend to Nine before his money ran out, and before his folks entirely lost patience, was now his main concern.
He sat down on one of the benches let into the wet black stone wall, underneath one of the occasional torches that were fitted into iron wall-brackets, and listened. It was damp down here. He was below the level of the lake, Nick guessed, and that warm saline body leaked and oozed through to most places on this level, trickling down walls, welling up as puddles in the narrow, close, dark stone passages. Listening was the whole art of finding your way around here, listening for the sound of water and the direction in which it ran, listening to other voices, finding your way to them, discovering what they had to say. It was not like Seven, where manipulation of the pain of the Damned was how you found out what you needed to know. Here, keeping your own mouth shut and your ears open was everything. Someone's story told in a long soft monologue, a phrase of music heard in silence and waited for, was what would make the difference. There was always a clue, something useful.
It's a shame that listening to people in the real world isn't always this useful, Nick thought. If it could be this way with other kids at school, or with parents, or other people you met, what a difference it would make. Unfortunately they were usually intent on forcing you to come around to their way of thinking, and any listening on their part was limited to checking to see whether you were agreeing with them.
Though who knows, he thought. Maybe it would be possible to outlisten them, if you just had enough patience. He got up again, stretched. Last time Nick sat there for nearly two hours before he caught that faint soft shimmer of music, far away in another passage, and after much feeling his way around in near-total darkness, he finally found his way to the little chest set into one of the stone walls, where the lift of "Down the Narrow Ways" had been hidden. But Nick didn't think there was any point in waiting here any longer, for a certain "feel" was missing to this tunnel/passage which the other one, where he'd found the lift, had had. So now Nick was trying to cover as much ground as possible in each session, trying to locate spots that had the same "feel," and which could also conceal doorways or hidden passages that might somehow lead to the Maze itself.
He turned right, then right again, down another low-ceilinged passageway, paused, and listened for sound, for that particular "feel." Nothing. Nick went on, trailing his hand along the wet, cold stone.
"Ow!" he said then, stopping and looking at the wall. Nothing but lumpy rock, and here and there something jutting out that might have been an elbow, a knee, frozen in the stone. Except where his hand had been-there was someone's mouth, there were teeth, and half-buried in the stone, the glint of an eye, watching him.
"Sorry," Nick said, making a resolution to watch where he put his hands in the future, and went on walking. This could take me a long time, Nick thought. Some of the walk-throughs claimed that the so-called "anteroom chambers," the approaches to the Maze itself, regenerated themselves in new and random patterns every few days, so that you would think you had learned them and then return to find them completely different. Others said that no such thing happened at all, and that the people making the claim were confused. Nick wasn't sure what to think. In his cynical moods, it struck him that randomly regenerating the pattern would be a great way to make some extra money. But somehow he didn't think Joey Bane was quite that desperate for funds…
Nick came to a dark opening on his right and paused, looked in. It was just a little cavelet, not much bigger than a walk-in closet, with a stone bench built into the black stone wall and going right around from one side to the other. The light from the burning cresset out in the main "hallway" reached it only dimly. Nick had run into these in other parts of the "anteroom chambers" over the past few hours, and often enough they were in places where you might hear something if you stayed there long enough. So he went in, and sat down, and spent a little while more just listening.
His head turned as, down the corridor, in the direction from which he had come, he heard voices, and the sound of soft footsteps approaching. At first Nick was torn, and thought about leaving… not sure I want to meet anybody right now… But he was also feeling a little lazy, and a little curious, especially as the voices got closer. One was a guy, one a girl, though her voice was not that light-it had a husky sound. So far he had tended to keep to himself in Deathworld, except for a few chance encounters such as that with Shade, but maybe it would be better to start putting aside that tendency down here.
Nick stayed where he was. "Look, forget it," said the soft husky voice. "I'm not going to waste any more time arguing about it with you, either. I'm just going to find it, no matter how long it takes… "
Two shapes passed by the doorway, silhouetted against the cresset-light from the passage. One of them kept right on going, but the other paused to peer in, taking a moment about it, letting her eyes get used to the dark. She was about Nick's height, maybe a little younger than he was. It was hard to tell. He saw a long fall of blond hair, nearly waist length, stirring a little in the cool air running down the passageway behind her; she was dressed in light shorts and an "infrablack" T-shirt that glowed slightly, even in this shadowy place, with the intensity of its darkness. She drew in breath sharply as she looked at him.
Nick blinked. "Uh, sorry," he said.
She looked at him for a moment more. Elsewhere it would have been an invasive stare, but in Deathworld you got familiar with it fairly quickly-the expression of someone trying to work out whether you were part of the game or not, and whether it was worth their while to stop to talk to you. Nick had to chuckle a little. "I'm not local," he said, that being one of the code phrases meant to indicate that you weren't a plant or a generated feature.
The girl looked at him a little less intently, but the expression was still curious. A moment later she was joined in the doorway by her companion. At first glance he looked like a football player-tall, big across the shoulders, brawny. The effect was increased by the fact that he was wearing a plaidh mhor, the so-called "great kilt" which was just coming into style for guys at the moment. The kilt was patterned in infrablack and a very dark blue, the so-called "Armstrong Hunting" plaid, and everything else about the guy's clothes matched, from shoes to the tied-on headband. He looked like her brother, or maybe an extremely well-matched boyfriend. "Somebody you know?" he said.
"No," Nick said, and "No," the girl said, in the same breath. Then the girl laughed.
"You waiting for somebody?" she said.
"Besides Joey? Nope," said Nick. "Nobody here right now but us chickens."
The guy looked at him like he was, from Mars. The girl looked oddly at him, too, but then she laughed. "I thought my mom was the only person on earth to say that anymore," she said. "Suddenly I don't feel quite so weird."
The two of them glanced around them. Nick knew why. "No booby traps in here," he said. "It's a quiet spot."
"We should go-" the guy said.
"Why?" said the girl, sounding annoyed. "We haven't found anything. And we're not going to, not today, not before our nickel runs out, anyway… "
"You're looking for-?" Nick said.
"The Maze," said the guy. "Like everyone else down here."
"Among other things," the girl muttered. She sighed. "You mind if we sit down?"
Nick moved down on the bench a little. They came into the chamber and sat down, looking around the way people do when they're suddenly in a small space with someone they don't know.
"Thanks," the girl said. "Sometimes the quiet down here gets to me." She sighed. "Tires me out, a little… " Then she gave him a slightly embarrassed look. "Sorry," she said. "I'm Khasm."
"Nick," he said, nodding to her.
"I'm Spile," said the guy.
"Pleased," Nick said. To Khasm
he said, "I know what you mean, though. It's a lot quieter down here than up in the top levels. Not quite so much of the screams and yells of the tormented."
Khasm laughed, a very brief sound, not all that humorous. "No need," she said. "We're the torment, walking around, doing what we want, saying what we like… and there's nothing they can do about it." She glanced at the wall, out of which here and there a face looked, frozen in stone, the only thing alive about them their eyes, which watched, watched everything.
Nick thought about what Khasm had said. Somewhere, once, he had read someone's opinion about life: Hell is other people. Maybe this was the same principle. "I wouldn't bet on them not being able to do anything," he said. "One of them bit me a little while ago."
"Hope you got your shots," Spile said, and grinned, also a rather mirthless expression. "You find any lifts around here?"
"Not close," Nick said. "The last one was about, oh, half a mile back that way." He pointed off to his left and behind him. "Or up a little… or down a little. You know how this place twists."
"What was it you found?" said the guy, fiddling with his plaid as if he wanted to get going again.
"Uh, 'Down the Narrow Ways.' "
The girl's eyes went wide. Nick could see it clearly even in this light. "You did? Where?"
Her intensity, and the almost anguished sound of her voice, surprised him. Sure, there were a lot of people who got really worked up about Bane's music… but so far Nick hadn't met any of them. "Uh, if you're really looking for it, I can show you. It's not too far, unless the corridors have reconfigured themselves."
"It's not for me," Khasm said. Nick suddenly noticed how tightly her fingers were laced together. "I have… I had a friend who was looking for it."
The sudden "had" came down in the middle of the sentence like a boot stamping on something. The hair stood up on the back of Nick's neck. "You…" He stopped, unused to being so certain about something, and uncertain just how to proceed. After a moment he said, much more softly, "You knew one of them. One of the Angels of the Pit."
"I hate that name," growled Spile, staring at the floor.
"Two of them," said Khasm, sounding bleak. "Or anyway, I knew Jeannie Metz. She lived down the street from me. We went to the same school. We were buddies." She looked over at Spile. "He and Mal Dwyer played virtual football together."
Nick didn't know what to say. But at the same time he was shocked into a sudden alertness that surprised him. This was more than just some story that would help you find your way to the Maze. This was real.
He couldn't keep himself from asking. "What made them do it?" he said softly.
Spile turned his head away, wouldn't say anything. "I don't know," said Khasm, angry. "I know this, though. She wasn't suicidal."
Nick wasn't going to say anything.
"I know what you're thinking!" Khasm burst out. "That nobody knows anybody as well as they think they do, and all that crap. I've had it up to here with hearing that, the last week! From everybody. Even her mom. She of all people should know better… but she really doesn't know her, either, it turns out. Not if she seriously thinks Jeannie did any drugs."
Nick opened his mouth, closed it. "Oh, yeah," Khasm said, "it wasn't in the news. The cops said they were doing her family a favor by not letting it get out… said it was tragic enough." She scowled. "But they told her family that, all right. Some favor."
"They claim," said Spile, looking up at last, "that it was one of these 'amnesia' drugs. Real convenient." He shook his head fiercely. "And now both the families are blaming each other's kid for getting the other one to kill themselves. Real neat." He glared at Nick. "Mal was the most normal, geekly guy you ever saw. Terrified of doing anything illegal. He wouldn't ever have done drugs, just because it would have embarrassed his folks, and he would have hated that. Plus, he wouldn't have seen the point anyway. He used to say to me, 'Why do I need another level of consciousness when I like the one I have just fine?' " He lowered his head, looking suddenly stricken, like someone who had too accurately reproduced someone's tone of voice, and now was stricken to the heart by it. "And he sure would never have killed himself," Spile said. "He'd been having a hard time of it lately… but not that hard!"
"And Jeannie hated drugs more than anything," Khasm said. "Her dad died of an overdose a few years ago. She'd never have done drugs, no matter how depressed she was!"
"Uh," Nick said. He was a little shocked to find himself edging away from them both. "Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"
They looked at him in some shock themselves. Then Khasm sagged. "Sorry," she said. "I'm sorry. It's just that-you know how it is, everybody here we knew has beengoing around not asking the question-but you know they're thinking about it-and then when somebody does actually ask it-"
"It's okay," Nick said."… Look, I can take you to where that 'lift' is."
"That'd be nice of you," Khasm said, sounding subdued.
"Yeah," said Spile. "Once we've got it… we can get out of here… "
They stood up. "Down this way," Nick said, and started retracing his steps through the low dark corridors, with the other two behind him.
Neither of them said much for a while. After some minutes Khasm said, "The last time I saw her… it was a couple of weeks ago, with Mal and Bitsy and a few other friends. Down here. They loved this place." She sniffed once, softly, like someone trying to hide it. "She and Mal would come down here and hang out with the rest of us when things weren't going right… when we couldn't hang out together elsewhere."
Nick thought for a moment about the best way to phrase this. "Was there some kind of problem?"
"Oh, yeah, Jeannie and Mal had a thing going… and her mom didn't approve. Neither did his folks. They all thought they were too young to be thinking about marriage." Another sniff. "Both of them were angry about that, yeah, and a little depressed… but not that depressed. They were going to wait their parents out for a couple of years, let them get used to the idea. Jeannie told me so. And she told me that Mal agreed."
Nick paused at a corner, trying to remember which way he was headed. There was something niggling at him, and he felt he had to ask. He turned to Khasm. "Look, uh…" There was no kindly way to ask. He gave up trying. "You're saying she didn't ever mention suicide…?"
"Exactly once in all the time I knew her," said Khasm, and somewhat to Nick's surprise, she didn't sound angry this time, just tired. "What normal person doesn't think about it every now and then? It would be sick not to admit that it happens. And dumb, when life gets nasty, not to admit that it wouldn't be nice if all the pain just stopped!
But not that way. She never talked about it to do it. You know what I mean?"
Nick thought of that sudden rush of make-it-stop that he'd had the other day. Yet at the same time he hadn't had the slightest intention of taking the thought through to its logical conclusion.
"That was why the drug thing was so awful," Spile said as they turned a sharp corner, left, then right again. "But at least it didn't make the news… "
Nick thought about that. Somehow it didn't seem either accidental to him, or an act of kindness. The newspeople were notorious for publishing anything they could get their hands on, the more scandalous the better. I wonder… is that something the cops are keeping secret?
But why?
It was weirding him out. Nick saw as much pain and death and unhappiness on the Net news as anyone else did, but coming up against it in terms of real people, real lives, was something else again. And there was something else going on inside him, too. His dad was a Netcam man, one of the best. That was why he kept getting sent all over the place, why they had had to keep moving around so much when Nick was younger. Reporters fought to be assigned with his father, for he had (one of them had said once, in Nick's hearing) "a gift for finding trouble and following up on it." Now, unnerved, Nick was beginning to wonder whether that gift was starting to reveal itself in the next generation.
"Here," he said, and turne
d the last corner. Fortunately the corridors hadn't been doing anything unusual. Right up until now everything had been where it was supposed to be, and now the wall at the far end of what otherwise looked like a featureless dead end was exactly where Nick had left it. "Your account open?"
"Yeah," Khasm said. Nick went down to that blank wall, bent close to it. The light wasn't great down here, and he had only found this lift's hiding place because of a stubborn tendency to touch everything. "Here," he said, getting down on one knee. "See that kind of dimple there? It just caught my eye. It doesn't belong… "
"Yeah," Khasm said again. She leaned down to touch it.
The rock in front of them seemed to tear itself open. A moment later they were all looking at what Nick had found earlier: a small chest carved of what appeared to be a single emerald. Down in the bottom of it was what Nick had found there before, when he opened it himself: a single eighth note, glowing gold.
Khasm looked at it for a long moment before she reached in and touched it. The air filled with the sound of Camiun's strings being plucked slowly, one after another, more as their own small soft poem on the air rather than any accompaniment, and then came Joey Bane's voice, sorrowful and low:
"I never went the way you told me to, I argued every word you said.
I never thought the way you would have liked, I never walked the way you led.
And now he's gone with you where I would not, There in the dark he holds your hand;
And how I simply let you go to be with him I'll never understand.
So now I have them all to myself, at last, All my sorry, empty days, And now I walk alone and self-sufficient Down the narrow ways…
Nick stayed where he was, didn't move, as Khasm and Spile held still and listened to the second verse of the song. Finally the last few notes faded away, and Khasm lifted the eighth note out of the casket and closed her hand around it. When she opened her hand again, the note was gone.
She stood up and sighed, and sniffled again, and for a few moments she wouldn't say anything. "When they release the body and let her mom bury her," Khasm said at last, "I'll play it at the grave for her… after the funeral, when things quiet down."