by Sue Perry
These four young guys worked for Warty Sebaceous Cysts but they weren't even obnoxious, much less evil.
The encounter tweaked me. And as we continued down the block, Jenn asked, "Which side are we on in this thing anyway? Are we the good guys?"
"Does Hernandez seem like someone who'd fight for the bad guys?"
"We're putting a lot of people out of work."
"I know."
We connected with Hernandez and he read our faces. "Something happen?"
Jenn said, "We got interrupted, I didn't get that last door. Our next stop's on West 36th."
I felt the weight of trust from the books in the pack on my back. Time to go. Jenn and Hernandez were using their mantras and acting more or less like themselves. I had an idea I needed to pursue before I lost my nerve. I said, "I need to shoo, things to do," and backed away then dashed. I didn't catch their reaction to my hasty departure.
As I hastened away, I spotted an orange streak across the street. Leon had been shadowing us.
56. FOUR BEINGS SURVIVED
I sat on Julian's front stoop in Frivolous Bedlam, waiting for the buildings to relay my message to Kelly Joe. No emergency. Nica needs to see you. That's the message I sent; I'd find out what message the buildings conveyed. Frivolous Bedlam's sky was still too pale to be called blue—but the sun was warm on these steps. Here where Maelstrom couldn't reach, it was a lovely fall day.
A blue–furred couple hurried by me. "What news of Marzipan?" I called. They flinched and increased their speed.
The door opened behind me and I smelled sweat. And blood.
"You're alive and unharmed," Kelly Joe's voice noted. He remained standing behind me, which was fine with me. My distaste for him had grown while away from him and I had to force myself to look in his direction. Being around him felt like being around Jenn's mom, who killed a child during the fourth of her six DUIs.
"I'm sorry if the buildings said otherwise. I did try to communicate urgent–but–not–emergency." He had blood stains on his jeans and jacket. "Will you be in battles all the time now?"
"I only know about today. If you wish, I can teach you to contact me when I'm in another Frame."
The way he said it, he knew that I found his presence distasteful. Which broke me through to the other side of it. I'd always hate the man whose ambition helped establish the baby farm. So would he. Kelly Joe was no longer that person—but he'd never regain his own regard. In the face of such intense self–hatred, my distaste felt petty.
"You're my musician. Teach me."
He jumped down to the sidewalk. "I'm going to Travel to another Frame and you're going to come after me. You'll see what direction I walk, which will make your task easier. You won't often know that information. Focus on my being with you, keep your thoughts on me. Walk behind me and find the Frame I go to. Mind you, don't guess. Follow the signature of my energy."
After enough tries to wear down the pavement, I got the hang of it. Finally we were back in Bedlam, sitting on Julian's front stoop, and Kelly Joe bent notes on his harmonica, which restored the strength I'd lost. It annoyed me that his music could so readily affect me.
I focused on the positive. "Thank you for showing me how to do that, now I don't feel so cut off."
"If someone intends to hide from you, he will. If someone is many Frames away, his trace will be faint and you won't have the skill to follow. A being with power can detect your search, so don't follow an enemy or you'll get ambushed."
"In other words, don't think I've learned much of anything. Got it."
"You had the buildings fetch me."
"Oh right." I watched my feet as I tapped my shoes together, feigning forgetfulness. Then I copped to my reluctance. "I don't know whether I can trust you."
He stood to leave. "Then I'll be getting back."
"Wait. I do trust you overall," I said, and realized it was true. "I want to confide in you about a plan of mine. It could help the allies—maybe a lot—but if you tell Anwyl or Anya, they'll say it's too dangerous and make me stop. Can I trust you not to fink on me?"
"They want you alive because you have a role to play."
"I want me alive, too! For that and other reasons!" My backpack full of books grew so heavy that my spine curved toward my heart.
"I have allegiance to Anya and Anwyl but I'm your musician."
I kept my mouth shut. Kelly Joe wasn't looking for response, he was reasoning it through. He pushed up his jacket sleeves. No change in his tattoos: the green hummingbird and the blood and the books.
He lowered his sleeves. "If you have a plan, it may be worth trying. I can't say which action will be more dangerous, or whether taking no action is safer. If Anya or Anwyl ask me about this plan, I won't lie to them. Until they ask, I won't volunteer what I know."
My backpack became so light it pulled me up to stand beside him. "I want to free the books. Or maybe change who they obey. I know that part's possible because I have books who obey me."
He was watching me almost as closely as I was watching him, but I couldn't read his reaction. "Do you think I have a chance?"
"Surely I don't know. Is there an answer that would change your plan?" He bent notes on his harmonica.
"No." I'd had a rush of jubilance because he would keep my secret; it had a sweet short life.
"What is worth trying and what will fail?" He bent more notes.
"Exactly! If only we could find those answers..." As I searched for a fitting conclusion, he finished for me.
"We would still proceed."
The sweet chatter of the buildings flowed around us. "Yes. We would. We have to try. I've been to the Halls of Shared Knowledge. I learned that three beings helped with the baby farm and survived. Somehow they are also tied up with the enslavement of books. I've figured out how to question two of them. I need your help getting to the third, if she still lives. Her name is Mavis and she is from Next Vast. That's all I know."
He sat on the top step of the stoop. "Four beings survived." He stared into the shadows across the street. The sun had moved along and being near him gave me a chill.
I kept shifting my position until he looked at me. I wanted remorse from the fourth being to survive the baby farm, but he gave me bleak defiance, which disgusted me all over again. Before I had asked the buildings to fetch him, I'd vowed to avoid confrontation. I kept the vow about as long as a New Year's resolution. "What the fuck were you thinking?"
"Thinking? I didn't earn that credit."
"That's your excuse for helping with the baby farm? You weren't thinking?"
"I offer no excuse." He didn't break eye contact but he wasn't seeing me.
"How about regret? Apology?"
"What debt would that discharge?"
Gunning myself into his wall of self–hatred would get us nowhere. I kicked the bottom step and my throbbing toe helped me change the subject. "Why were you four spared?"
"The three escaped and Frame collapse kept Maelstrom from going after them. I was spared because Maelstrom enjoyed my reaction when I learned the truth, and kept me close to stir those emotions." Kelly Joe stood and stepped toward Julian's front door. "Never pity me."
"You can't leave now. I need your help to find Mavis in a way that won't get back to Miles and Monk."
He watched the shadows advance across the street. "Luck favors you. Mavis is in the New Yorks."
57. AT FULL SPEED, HOLD ON
Back in Los Angeles, when I'd visited Miles and Monk in Next Vast their Frame looked very similar to mine; but here in the New Yorks, there was a dazzling difference. In Next Vast, the buildings, sidewalks, and streets were translucent. The sky was clear and pale as in Frivolous Bedlam, and the whole place shimmered, even down in the subway, which is where Kelly Joe led me.
The subway turnstile spun in greeting then leveled its bars so that Kelly Joe and I could vault over it. We trouped down the stairs and along the platform, but I paused on the platform edge when he jumped down to the track. The t
rain tunnel glowed with infinitely diffused light. This must be the view from inside a cocoon. However, wet muck and garbage lined the track, just like at home.
"Unh!" I emitted when he stepped on the third rail to avoid the muck. The third rail must not be a power source here, because he continued, unfried. "No electricity in this Frame, I take it."
"None that the trains need."
From the tunnel ahead of us came a rhythmic scraping, made by a subway train that moved away at a speed (if you could call it that) of about one mile per hour. I'd seen a train like this once, back on Ma'Urth, hauling steel pipe. It was called a worker train and it inched forward, forcing the trains behind it to inch, too, their windows steamed by passenger distress.
This train was two cars long, a hundred years old, and mustard gas yellow. The connectors between its cars rattled and the wheels squealed, but the train was silent, its welded bolted iron cars moving as a single solid unit.
Kelly Joe and then I jumped aboard and clung to the back railing. He greeted the train and introduced me to her. You know you're in Next Vast when the name is seventeen syllables and all consonants.
I told the train, "It's a pleasure to meet you. The closest I can get to pronouncing your name is to call you Mavis."
"That's a lovely alternative." The iron train's voice was as tough as butterfly wings. I might have said gossamer but that has a contradictory definition. It can mean something delicate; but it also refers to a spider web, one of the toughest materials there is.
Thinking about gossamer, I missed what Kelly Joe said about the reason for our visit. Fortunately, this early in the conversation it was easy to bluff my way back in. "I'm trying to understand how Maelstrom enslaved books. The Halls of Shared Knowledge identify you as involved in that process, because you worked at the baby farm. I don't see the connection between book enslavement and baby farm. What am I missing?"
The train said, "You must love this one, Kelly Joe, that she may speak of this around you."
He stared behind us, perhaps at the receding tunnel entrance. "I'm her musician."
"Is that so? Come and sit, lucky girl, in case I bump around these curves." The back train car was open like a flatbed truck and filled with building supplies. I perched on a bag of cement as Mavis continued, "The books were also innocents, and Maelstrom savors the pain of innocents."
"Do you mean he hurt the books when he converted them?"
"Of course, violence is not in their nature."
"How did he perform the conversion?"
"That I didn't see, I only heard the cries. I delivered crates of books from many Frames. Warty Sebaceous Cysts opened every box in every crate and selected which books to take away. They took books that were sweet and calm, brought them back full of anger and deceit. The books sliced their crates to escape. My steel got rough with cuts from text. They began to cover the cargo in nets, specially made to hold books. They didn't do that to protect me, of course."
"How did they decide which books to take? Anything you heard could help."
"They would read names on the side of the boxes. My impression was that those were the names of the books inside. They grouped the boxes with the same names. Then they would open one box, remove a book, and check a number."
I frowned at her chassis, trying to understand. "The number of pages?" I looked at Kelly Joe. "Maybe they only wanted the longest books?"
Mavis sounded sad. "I am so sorry, I don't know. I do recall that they took the lowest numbers. For example, nineteen nineteen, not nineteen fifty–two."
"Copyright dates? Earlier editions?" I asked. That would fit the pecking order I had observed among my own books.
Kelly Joe shrugged but he didn't seem to be listening. His jaw had a tic and he flexed his wrists like he was making his tattoos jump, under his jacket sleeves.
Mavis said, "Edition! I remember that word. They got excited with first editions. 'These will rule the others', they would say and it sounded like they were bragging more than usual."
I tried an idea on for size. It fit the evidence so far. "Maybe earlier editions controlled later editions."
"I don't know that either, but I can tell you that the books in the other boxes, the ones left behind on my back? They changed and became mean, too; but the books that went away changed first. Please forgive me for noticing so little, I didn't understand it could be important someday."
"Are you kidding? This is fantastic, you are helping me so much."
"I am tickled to be of service," Mavis warbled. "More curves ahead, and now that I'm at full speed, hold on!"
Full speed. I could have somersaulted off and hit the ground without a jolt. Nonetheless, I clung to her railing as though she were supersonic. "Where did you deliver the crates of books and where did Warty Sebaceous Cysts take the ones they selected?"
"I always met them in Times Square. I don't know where they went from there."
Kelly Joe came back from wherever his thoughts had dragged him. "In those days, Times Square was a Connector hub in many Frames."
My questioning continued but I got no additional information from Mavis. At the next subway platform we debarked.
"I'm here when you need me," Mavis gave a gossamer farewell.
"We'll surely be together soon." Kelly Joe patted her goodbye.
As we emerged from the subway, I tried a guess about their relationship. "She makes a good confidante." I wouldn't call that nosy.
Kelly Joe led us across the street. "When the worst battles commence, Mavis will be there. She's one of the greatest warriors the Frames have seen."
Below us, under the translucent pavement, Mavis trundled away. "How is that possible? Anyone can outrun her and she's about as mean as a daisy. By the way, if there's a Frame where daisies are assassins, I don't want to know."
Kelly Joe chuckled, "I'll not say a word about them." He offered his hand and when I took it, he Travelled us to Ma'Urth, then led us northwest toward the Julian before he added, "Mavis moves slowly, but she never stops. She does tire easily, here in her ancient days, so we won't use her until we must."
I grabbed a pretzel as we passed a food cart. "Lady!" the vendor yelled after me.
Oh right. I wasn't in Bedlam. "Oops. Forgot I was supposed to pay here," I said, which did not soften the vendor's expression. I fished a bill from my pocket, waved my hand for him to keep the change. As we resumed walking, I offered Kelly Joe a piece of pretzel. Declined.
I shoved that piece in my mouth then regretted taking the time to chew. Much as I loved a fresh pretzel, the rest would have to wait until this conversation was concluded. "I wouldn't call Mavis ancient. I've been to the Transit Museum so I happen to know that her style of train was built about a hundred years ago. That's old but not ancient."
"Mavis is not her shape, she's her materials. Before she was made into subway cars, she lived, in one shape then another, for all the cycles of the moon and stars."
"Wow. So Mavis has seen a lot." I bookmarked that info for future investigations.
"Indeed she has."
Kelly Joe would speed up then slow down but never quite wait for me. I assured him, "If you need to take off, go ahead. I can get myself home from here."
"I do need to get back. Anya and I were in three kinds of trouble and –" He vanished out of Frame before the last of his words reached me.
Kelly Joe had so many opportunities to work on his death wish, these days.
58. EVERYONE I LOVE IS AT RISK
Within moments of Kelly Joe's departure, I caught peripheral glimpses of an orange feline cockroach. Leon kept pace during the rest of my walk home and waited under a mailbox when I did some shopping for the grannies. It was nice not being alone.
Now that I was back in a Frame with cell phone service, I called Ben to find out how Maelstrom was affecting him. In fact, every couple of blocks I called Ben. He never answers phones. Futilely, I texted him.
:: Answer your phone, enneth–Kay!
That referenced
a joke from our dating days, to confirm it was my calls that he was ignoring.
In the front room of my apartment, Jenn watched news clips on my laptop and Hernandez was on his phone in Spanish. I stowed my two large shopping bags next to the couch. Jenn looked at the bags, which were tie–dyed with rainbows. Long live 1967.
"That looks like a buttload of acid."
"Long story. I'll tell you later." She sounded much more Jenn–like, today, and I attributed that to her barely audible mutter, every several exhales. Her mantra.
She waved me over to the couch. "Check this out. There was a riot at home and they attacked a news crew and it was Fatty and she's in the hospital."
She replayed a clip. Watching made me furious—fear always converts to anger in me. On the night Maelstrom got free, near downtown Los Angeles, blackouts followed the building explosions and, to share light, people congregated in MacArthur Park. The congregation was crowded but orderly, until a new group barged in, shoving and shouting.
Outrage predominated in the eyewitness interviews.
"They came here looking to rumble, totally unprovoked attacks," said an angry young dad.
"When they knocked somebody down, they laughed!" This teen was trying to stop crying.
"We didn't fight, we fought back," said a bruised middle–aged couple.
"They ignored other news crews all over the place. They chased down that one, like they knew each other, or something."
Or something. Other news crews got plenty of footage of the intruding group, which had two components: frozen–faced Lobotomists led by war–whooping handlers. The latter stopped in front of news cameras to display their t–shirts. Hi Neeks.
Their pushing and shoving grew into a riot that put ten people into hospitals, two in critical condition. The object of the attack, news reporter Fatima Jones, was in serious condition; her cameraman, Mikal Petrescu, sustained critical injury. No attackers were in custody but with so much video footage of them on the air, police were confident they would have arrests soon.
Hernandez joined us on Jenn's other side. Their fingers twined instantly. He looked over her head to ask me, "Attackers got to be out of Frame by now, right?"