by Sue Perry
"They were more powerful than we were the last time and we stopped them then," Miles said.
"All tomorrows are possible," Monk added.
The river shrieked and moaned. The water that flowed sideways took on the sheen of spoiled milk.
"It's time we go," Kelly Joe said.
"We will see you, Nica, when it is our time again to see you," Monk said, with what sounded like sadness. I understood. They couldn't stay with us. The allies had to oppose the Cysts on many fronts and that meant we would often work separately.
"Give us a climb," Miles said in farewell.
I had to climb off the platform over the void above the East River. Sometimes I'm brave and anyway the Towers wouldn't let me fall. Nor would Kelly Joe. I held my breath and pushed through the water then exhaled with a shout, clinging to Miles. I scrambled from girder to girder, then Monk tilted and I climbed onto him and hugged him for a while. To return me to Kelly Joe's side, Monk somehow rose up and tilted over the street so that I could jump down.
And then we split up. The Towers translated north. Kelly Joe and I headed east. Anya and Anwyl remained south, in the meeting hall. Hernandez was way out west. We had the compass covered. We had this. For the first time since entering the Framekeeps meeting hall, I shed my worry. Worry and fear. They never help. In fact, they eat my courage and thin my resolve. I know this, I've lived this. Yet sometimes I have to slip deep into them in order to regain my balance.
Kelly Joe and I retraced our steps through the district of suspended buildings at an even quicker pace than we had arrived. Every Cobra person we passed had a smug hostile look, as though they wished us ill and knew the wish would come true. The river's cackles grew louder and echoed under the streets.
I put it on my anti–bucket list: never again visit Expletive Deleted.
27. SCUFFED BY THE STEPS OF THE WICKED
On the Williamsburg Bridge, the trains spread the news. Bread 'n' butter. Framekeep ouster. They moved faster than they had before. The coup had given the day a freefall acceleration.
Step step step step. As soon as we reached the Brooklyn Bridge approach, Kelly Joe could start Traveling us the hell outta this Frame. I spotted the Bridge arches—we were almost there.
I stopped. A short couple blocks inland was the building on Keap Street that, on Ma'Urth, had housed the Lobotomist meeting room where Sam Strongfellow got indoctrinated. That building might have information that led us to the Lobotomist managers, the only way to stop the Lobotomists.
"Keap Street," I said and my musician nodded. "Maybe outside Frivolous Bedlam that building can tell us things about the Lobotomists."
As Kelly Joe considered, he rubbed the arms of his denim jacket, or the tattoos beneath. A pair of Cobra women passed us with a sneer and a hiss. Kelly Joe extended a hand to me. "We'll need to be ready to Travel away and we can't stay for long. Word of the coup is spreading."
I accepted his terms by taking his hand.
I caught myself hoping we'd run into Sam. As awful as my last encounter with him had been, the way he'd responded to Lilah's name told me he wasn't all vile. Perhaps the process of becoming a Lobotomist was reversible.
When we got to Keap Street, Kelly Joe stopped and frowned. "From this neighborhood, we can Travel to no other Frame." Expletive Deleted turns out to be full of deadends like that. Which can become traps.
Here in Expletive Deleted, the building that housed the Lobotomist meeting room had shattered windows, crumbling steps, and pocked sidewalks where someone had pogoed with a jackhammer. Building chatter was subdued; the buildings sounded tired.
"No grannies around here," I noted.
"I feel no peace here," Kelly Joe agreed.
Inside the second floor meeting room, something flickered behind the broken window glass. The flicker repeated, brighter for longer. We hurried into the dark splintered hole that was the building entrance and up to the second floor. The stair railing glistened like stomach bile.
The big meeting room was empty save for a pair of male models, sitting on the floor, setting little bits of something on fire, like runaways burning family photos.
"Your kind can't come in here," one of them warned. Like all male models, he had a voice like a personal fitness trainer, firm and upbeat.
"Whatever that kind is," the other sneered, displaying the Lobotomist M.O. Hate everyone who isn't like you.
"Did I miss the meeting today?"
"You weren't invited," the more hostile one said.
"Indirectly I was. In meetings at home on Ma'Urth they told us to branch out, get to know some—others." I had to speak carefully. The Lobotomists were enough like a cult to use special jargon, which I didn't know.
More Hostile resumed the burning of bits.
Less Hostile sounded envious. "We're supposed to go to Ma'Urth but we're not ready yet."
"Really? You seem pretty ready to me."
My new friend, Less Hostile, confided, "I'm going to be ready by the time the managers visit."
"Good for you! That is a worthy goal. How long have you got until they show up?"
"They will be at our acceptance ceremony, eight rotations from now."
"Nice!" Too eager.
More Hostile stopped burning bits to study me. Time to go.
"Maybe we'll see you later." Kelly Joe and I strolled out. Behind us, More Hostile gave Less Hostile grief for talking to us.
As we hustled toward the waterfront and the Brooklyn Bridge, the streets were empty of all but foreboding. Kelly Joe added to the gloom, "You'll want to avoid Lobotomists. You maybe might deceive other trainees but pod handlers will read your thoughts."
"Copy that. So a handler is a supervisor that's lower than a manager?"
A nod. He was focused on Traveling us away from Expletive Deleted. We were halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge when Kelly Joe turned to me, which suggested that he was done concentrating on tricky Frame changes.
At last I could ask the question that had been pestering me. "Lobotomist recruiting occurs in the same building in multiple Frames. And that building feels creepy. It doesn't gab like the goofy buildings, but it lacks the uppity attitude of the truly sentient buildings. Can a building be bad?"
"Not in my experience but we're all small in the Frames." Another one of those sayings, by his tone. He called to the air, "What do you think, Spanner? Can a building be bad?"
"There is no precedent." A voice as rich as the low tones on a trombone enveloped us, a voice that infused the pavement below our feet.
This is why I love Traveling. Brooklyn Bridge was speaking to us, and if that wasn't wonder enough, its voice was aurally translucent—whenever it spoke, I heard other, distant, voices, which cut off whenever Brooklyn Bridge stopped talking. Eventually I would learn that a bridge carries the voices of the land, water, and beings that touch it at the moment it speaks.
Brooklyn Bridge continued, musingly, "However, lack of precedent does not equate with absence of possibility, as we know."
"No fact is better known. Spanner, this is Nica of the New Yorks. Guide her feet as you would my own."
"I welcome the return of that gait. Nica, you crossed me at an exercise pace, a fortnight past."
Wow. Brooklyn Bridge recognized my feet after a single run, two weeks before. This made me go all fangirl but Kelly Joe took it as routine so I mimicked his man–of–the–Frames demeanor. "Yup, I was here. I tried to run but mostly I jogged in place waiting for an opening. The crowds are crazy on you."
"In most Frames of my awareness this holds true."
"May I ask you a personal question?"
"You have piqued my interest. What do you seek to learn?"
"Are you sentient in all Frames?"
"No being can answer that question about itself. Where I lack sentience, I lack awareness that a Frame exists around me."
"Thinking about that is going to cause me some headaches later." I groped for another question. I didn't want the Bridge to stop talking. The wash of underlying voices ma
de me feel wonderfully connected, in much the way that Kelly Joe's music did. "Are you animate in any Frame?" I bet watching Brooklyn Bridge walk would be even better than seeing Monk and Miles translate.
"No, my duty is to span these waters, persistent through the Frames." The Bridge's pride swelled the concrete and had me walking taller.
Suddenly I did something I hadn't done for years—a spontaneous handstand. When I was a kid, I'd get so enthused I'd get destructive, in a bull–meets–china–shop way. My dad taught me to do handstands to expend energy safely. I hand–walked a few steps on the Bridge then sank to my shins. Our recent Frame shifts had messed with my balance. I reoriented quickly but continued to kneel, massaged by Brooklyn Bridge's rolling laugh, which was like a train in a mile–long tunnel.
"Nica is animate in all Frames," Kelly Joe told the Bridge by way of teasing me.
"Whether on fingers or toes, it is a pleasure to support pure steps such as hers. Particularly now, when I am scuffed by the steps of the wicked."
"Those will grow," Kelly Joe sympathized as we resumed walking.
"In numbers and in wickedness. Yes, Anya and Anwyl have warned much the same."
The feet we'd seen on our Frame shifts today, feet clawed and gnarly, swaddled in cloth, fortified in armored boots. You can't spot wicked steps by staring at feet. You can make yourself paranoid as a ferret. I reassured myself by telling Brooklyn Bridge, "With you on our side, I feel much better about stopping those wicked steps."
"I am on no side and all sides. It is my duty to support all who pass over me."
"Oh."
"However, to whom I impart information is at my discretion." And if a bridge could wink, this one was doing so now.
Kelly Joe reached for my hand while saying to the Bridge, "Thank you, Spanner, for another safe passage. We'll be –"
The Bridge interrupted, "Excuse me. Hold a moment. Anya and Anwyl have stepped onto my other terminus."
"Should we wait for them?" Kelly Joe stopped walking.
After a time the Bridge reported, "No. They will meet you at Nica's abode in Frivolous Bedlam. Nica, with your next step you will depart my domain. I enjoy your pace and look forward to its resumption here. Meantime, safe strides to you both."
"Hope to talk again soon!" I replied, but wasn't sure if the Bridge could still hear me. Or maybe it did reply and I couldn't hear. The world was too noisy. We were back in Frivolous Bedlam.
I turned for a final look at the solid gothic spires of the Bridge. "Why didn't we talk to the Williamsburg Bridge? Can't we trust it?"
"I couldn't say. I've never been in a Frame where it's sentient."
"Really? So it's just a structure then, like the Manhattan Bridge."
"The Manhattan Bridge is not just a structure."
The Frames were always more complicated than my understanding. "Oh. I. Assumed that it was just a structure because it doesn't persist. It was missing from most of the Frames we visited today."
"Such was not always the case. In the last battle for the free Frames, we nearly lost that spanner. Warty Sebaceous Cysts destroyed it in most Frames. As the Manhattan Bridge heals, it re–emerges here and there. But never mind about bridges." He waited for me to look at him. "We need to conclude your training. You may be called upon to transport beings."
"Yeah, I've got a ways to go with that." A woman passed us, dragging a tiny leashed dog. The dog bared its ludicrous little teeth at me. I gave the dog a thumb's up and told Kelly Joe, "Bet I could Travel with that dog." It was a safe bet to impress my teacher. Leon was bigger and I'd transported him.
"The time for gradual training is behind us." He held out his hand. "You'll transport me."
I could have laughed but it wouldn't have made him kidding.
"You're stronger than you believe." He held my gaze.
With the confidence of a dyslexic at a spelling bee, I took his hand.
He explained as we went. I would succeed when I learned to tap energy reserves I thought I lacked. It was like crossing the finish line at a marathon, then having someone tell you oops this isn't the end, go another mile and somehow you muster what it takes to move again, and after that mile someone says Leon got hit by a car, hurry!
After my nine billionth attempt to transport Kelly Joe, I lost count of my tries. My will to succeed was bolstered by my thought that the most likely use of this ability would be to transport an ally who was too injured to Travel alone. Eventually, I found the right combination of self–trickery, stamina, and stubbornness and I delivered Kelly Joe to Ma'Urth, where I collapsed on a sidewalk in the Bowery. Next to my face was a maggoty pile of chili fries. Turns out that major gross–outs boost energy. I thanked the fries, got to my feet, and returned us to Frivolous Bedlam.
Kelly Joe's praise, the pavement scraping my cheek, his arms sliding beneath me. He carried me somewhere and when I came to, my field of vision was filled with torturers.
28. YOUR NATURE IS NOT A FLAW
Maybe not torturers, per se, but they showed no mercy. Anwyl, Anya, Kelly Joe peered at me upside down and sideways as I dangled off my couch, whimpering. Transporting Kelly Joe from Bedlam to Ma'Urth to Bedlam had done me in. I was too weak to barf. I was a candle spluttering in the gutter. I was garbage washed up on shore. I was –
Anwyl bumped my leg with his boot. "Arise, we have much to accomplish."
"I'm dying," I informed them.
Kelly Joe dragged me vertical. "You're not." It must have been Anwyl's influence, Kelly Joe was usually sympathetic.
Anya touched my cheek like the rain that ends the drought. "You distracted the Framekeeps well today."
"I loved it when they recognized me. I liked being their ill wind." This made Anwyl chuckle. I propped myself against my wall. "I thought we would kick back and celebrate getting rid of the bad Framekeeps. But nobody even paused to blink."
Anya nodded. "Our actions today signal that we will stand between our foes and their desires. Conflict will escalate from this moment forward."
Kelly Joe added, "Each of us must be ready to use our powers at any moment."
I slid down the wall to rest a minute on the couch arm. I was too weak to feel dizzy.
"I've taught you long and you've learned well," Kelly Joe continued. "Now, Anya and Anwyl will see what you know and what they need to teach you."
"You mean they're here to give me a final exam?"
"It does not hurt to think it so," Anya said.
But Anwyl overrode her with, "It will be with our enemies that you face your real tests."
No one had to say more. They wanted to make sure an encounter with our enemies wouldn't be my truly final exam.
I got myself to stand without props and they tested what I knew about Frame Travel, then tweaked my performance and tested me again. I showed all of us how much I had learned, and then learned some more.
The effort left me a trifle worn and I concluded in my starting position, upside down and sideways on the couch, head lolled over the edge of a seat cushion. They looked funny, tilted. As they finished praising me for my great work and progress, I smiled and a little drool ran up my cheek.
Suddenly I sat up, re–energized. Anya was dishing out vague dangerous assignments. Kelly Joe would lead unspecified raids with allies unnamed. Anwyl would consult with anonymous military experts to pinpoint the significance of certain recent events. Anya was off to unidentified Frames to convince others to join our cause.
"Take no unnecessary chances." Anwyl gave Kelly Joe this order with a farewell embrace. I resolved anew to understand Kelly Joe's self–destructive bent.
But first things first. "What about me? What's my assignment?"
Anwyl and Anya exchanged a glance, then Anya said, "It will benefit our cause if you can locate additional compromised construction sites."
"So it's safe for me to go back to Ma'Urth now?"
"Yes, your return poses no problem for us." Weird way for Anwyl to put it, but I didn't ask for clarification. He was
all gruff impatience today.
"Why can't I help any of you?" The prospect of being on my own again made me feel lonelier than a carrot on a stick.
Anwyl said, "In this phase of our campaign, surprise begets success."
"Your thoughts are easily read," Anya added gently.
"Wait, have I been holed up in Frivolous Bedlam to protect me or to keep my leaky brain uninformed?"
"Your isolation met both those needs."
I felt a special sort of exhaustion. Today had seemed like a new beginning as part of the team, but now here I was facing solo again, and because of a personal defect. "What's the point of all this training if you're ditching me?"
"We can't know when our paths will intersect next but we can be sure they will," Kelly Joe said as I glared at each in turn.
Fine. I yanked the strings from the violin I'd been playing. I would be on my own and I would find ways to make myself useful. Anyway, "Somebody could teach me how to hide my thoughts."
Anwyl and Anya exchanged a look that was even less scrutable than usual.
"Your nature is not a flaw," Anya's words were softer than her fingers on my arm in farewell, "and will do great service to our cause. We shall next meet in days yet darker..."
"...lightened only by our union," Kelly Joe finished the saying.
"We must away," Anwyl braced Kelly Joe's shoulders then he and Anya were gone.
Kelly Joe gave me a grizzly bear's hug and then my musician was gone, too, leaving me alone with my leaky thoughts.
I reassured myself that they would have left me in Los Angeles if I was never going to be part of the action. I glared at the ceiling. At some point Leon and Dizzy joined me, vibrating me with their purring and grooming, respectively. It was nice to not be alone.
"Books, to me."
My collection rose from the built–in shelf and circled overhead. During a sharp turn that must have required extra concentration, Summer shed text, which whizzed past my nose. Lose Twenty Pounds squawked at Summer until I interrupted. "Don't rag on her, it was an accident. You're all improving. It's just a matter of practice. But maybe widen your circle so you're not directly overhead. After I rest a little more I'm taking us home, so this will be your last chance to practice flying for a while." I mostly trusted Lose Twenty Pounds to stay inside my apartment in Frivolous Bedlam if that was my order. But he was so gung ho to train the others, I could imagine him reinterpreting my command if I was absent for long.