Sea of Silver Light o-4

by Tad Williams

  Not going to talk your way out of this one, man, he told himself as he trundled the handtruck into the elevator. Before pushing the down button he cocked an ear, wondering if they would be able to hear when the thugs outside finally broke the code on the massive front door, or whether it would simply swing open silently, allowing the killers to walk in like cats coming through a window by night. All was quiet now; he could not even hear the sounds of Jeremiah and Del Ray two floors below. Only his own labored breathing gave the place life, made it something other than a hole surrounded by stone, as uninhabited as an empty seashell.

  The elevator door clunked open. Groaning quietly, Joseph levered the cart into position and began to drag the water supplies along the landing. He could see Jeremiah's feet sticking out from beneath the console, surrounded by various components and cables, and he was reminded briefly of Elephant's storage-bin version of a mad scientist's lab. "It's not a secret anymore," the fat man had said about the military base, and he had been right. Not that Joseph was ever planning to look him up and congratulate him on his accuracy.

  "This is all the water," he shouted to Jeremiah's feet. "I am going to bring down the food next. Don't know why—it is nothing but packaged rubbish. Want to kill ourselves after a few more weeks just from eating that."

  Jeremiah slid out from under the console wearing a frown on which Joseph could have opened a beer bottle, if he had been lucky enough to have one. "Yes, it's a great shame. Which is why I'm certain that while you were out trotting around southern Africa, and I was cooped up here watching over your helpless daughter, you bought a few treats for me, yes? Some expensive candy bars, perhaps? A dozen koeksisters from the bakery? Something to compensate for leaving me hanging, stuck with nothing but the food you so accurately describe as rubbish?"

  Joseph, from long experience with his daughter and others, recognized an argument he was not going to win; he hurried on with the cart to the spot where he had begun his pyramid of water jugs. On the way back, with Jeremiah safely under the console once more and Del Ray nowhere in sight, he paused to look down onto the laboratory floor. The silent shapes of the v-tanks, dusty, dead objects on a museum shelf, abruptly brought tears to the corner of his eyes. Surprised, he rubbed them away.

  But one thing, he silently told the nearest pod. One thing is, they are never going to get you unless they go through me first. Somehow I get you back out into the sun again. He was surprised to hear himself making a speech in his own head, but even more surprised to realize what he was saying was true. "You hear me, girl?" he whispered. "Not unless they go through me."

  He was afraid Del Ray or Jeremiah would see him, and in any case, the place was stony and miserable as a tomb. He hurried back to the elevator.

  Calliope Skouros made a face and put the coffee back down. It wasn't so much that it tasted bad, although it did, the steaming product of one of those little flash-brew drink packets, but that she'd downed so much coffee the night before that even after five hours of ineffective sleep she could still feel yesterday's caffeine hustling around in her system like one of those horrible cheery people who live to organize neighborhood events. Calliope was in a pretty good mood, though. While there wasn't exactly sweeping victory on the waitress front, there was definite progress. Elisabetta (bearer of tattoos and all that coffee) had revealed her name, and now dropped by Calliope's table to chat even when an occasional miscalculation of the seat-yourself policy put the detective in another server's section. To her surprise and pleasure, Calliope had discovered that there was more to the young woman than simply her rough, attractive look. She was an art student—of course—but seemed to have a lot on her mind, and was even willing to listen for short stretches when she could be distracted from the eternal waitress complaints of lousy bosses, sore feet, and problems with rent and transportation.

  Interestingly, over several nights' worth of fleeting conversation, the other major component of waitress-misery had not come up: so far there had been no mention of lazy, ignorant, or violent boyfriends. In fact, there had been no mention of boyfriends (or girlfriends) of any kind.

  This had better turn into something, Calliope thought, considering the prospect of months lurking amid the garish, beach-party ambience of Bondi Baby. Otherwise, the caffeine alone's going to kill me.

  "I'd offer a penny for your thoughts, partner mine. . . ." Stan Chan slipped into the narrow, wallscreened place the cops all referred to as "the green room" and threw his coat over the back of a chair; as usual, the tiny room was practically a sauna. "But I'm sure that I'd be undervaluing. You look utterly deep today. What are they worth? Swiss credits? Real estate?" He gazed at the screen, which showed a dark, thin, scar-covered man. The room where the prisoner sat was empty but for an old table and several chairs, the walls a hideously cheerful orange fibramic tile designed to repel graffiti and, it was reputed, blood. "Speaking of valuable things, is this our friend 3Big?"

  Stan was occasionally a bit much in the morning, even when Calliope's head wasn't churning with the perfectly legal equivalent of a couple pops of hotwire. "Can you talk a little more quietly? Yeah, that's him. He's been boxed all night, and now we're going to chat with him."

  "Lovely." Her partner really was in a frighteningly good mood. She wondered if he'd had another date or something. "Can I be nasty? Is it my turn?"

  "Your turn."

  "You're a mate." He paused, frowning, and poked her in the ribs. "You're not wearing your flakkie, Skouros."

  "In the station?" She hated wearing the gel-filled vest, an item commonly referred to around the office as "bulletproof underwear."

  "Regulations. After all, while he was in the holding cell our friend in there might have manufactured a pistol out of soap and floor lint."

  "Yeah, right. No wonder you like to wear yours—it makes you look like you actually have muscles. It just makes me look fat."

  "I think of you as the husky angel of Justice." His face turned briefly serious. "You really need to wear that thing. Skouros."

  "Okay, I will. Now let's do some work, Mr. Nasty."

  Stan snapped his fingers to douse the green room lights so that only darkness would show in the doorway behind them as they stepped through into the glare of the orange tiles. The prisoner looked up at them, his face emptied of anything except for a lip-droop of casual disgust. Calliope liked that—she enjoyed it more when they pretended to be hard.

  "Good morning, Edward," she said brightly as she and Stan slid into the chairs across from the prisoner. "I'm Detective Skouros, this is Detective Chan."

  The dark man did not reply, but brought a finger up to stroke the long scars on his cheek.

  Calliope decided to be puzzled. "You are Edward Pike, aren't you? I'm sure this is the right interview room." She turned to Stan. "Guess this one will have to go back to the box while we figure out the mistake."

  "Nobody call me Edward but my mother, and she dead two years," he said sullenly. "3Big, that's how I go. 3Big."

  "Yeah, this is him, fear not," Stan said. "Ugly little street beast, just picked up carrying six dozen carts of D-jak wipers in a customized flak belt. Retail weight of Indonesian charge—you're going to do ten years for that, 3-boy, and it won't be in one of the nice places either."

  "It was for personal use, seen?" The denial was pro forma—everybody knew they were fencing until the public defender showed up. "I need rehabilitation. Got a bad 'diction, me."

  Stan made a spitting noise. "That's going to play, yeah. Judge take one look at you, notice that you were within half a kilometer of a school, she's going to recommend we put you in one of the refuse barges and sink you in the ocean."

  Calliope sat quietly for a few minutes and watched her partner moving through the formally aggressive steps of the dance. Edward "3Big" Pike was a habitual, so he knew the motions as well as Stan. He wasn't the worst sort they had to deal with—lots of priors for receiving and handling, and one decent stretch in Silverwater for dealing, but as far as she knew he hadn't
ever killed anyone who hadn't tried to kill him first, which in Darlinghurst Road terms practically made him Robin Hood. He was known for being a bit smarter than the average King's Cross street beast, and the fact that he'd only gone down once for dealing testified to that. Calliope wondered if there might be a little pride wrapped up in that, another place they could insert the thin end of the wedge.

  Stan had the man snarling and defensive, which meant it was about time for her to start her pitch. "Detective Chan?" She made her voice a little harsh. "I don't think this is the right way to deal with the situation. Why don't you go get a drink of water?"

  "Nah, I don't think so." Stan gave the prisoner a stare of radiant contempt. "But if you think you can deal with this curb creature, be my guest."

  "Look, Mr. Pike," Calliope began, "technically you belong to Street Crime, so we don't have any formal jurisdiction over you. But if you help us out with a little information—and if it's good information—we might be able to get them back down to simple possession. With your priors you'll still do some time, but it won't be anything too bad."

  He was interested but trying not to show it, his heavy-lidded eyes burning brightly behind the surprisingly long lashes. "What you want? Not going to roll over on no one, me. Coming out the box early won't mean nothing if I get sixed first time I touch the Darling."

  "We just want some information. About an old acquaintance of yours, someone you spent some time with back in Minda Juvenile. Johnny Wulgaru. . . ?"

  His face was blank. "Don't know him."

  "Also known as Johnny Dark—Johnny Dread?"

  Now something did move beneath the stony features, something swift as mercury rolling in a pan. "You talking about John More Dread? Talking about Dread?" A complicated series of emotions ran across him, ending in a nervous scowl. "What you want with him? He's carked it, right? Dead?"

  "Supposed to be. Have you heard otherwise?" She looked, but he had fallen back behind the street mask once more. "We're just trying to clear up an old homicide. A girl named Polly Merapanui."

  He was on safer ground now. "Don't know her. Never heard nothing about her." He blinked and reconsidered. "She the one that got her eyes cut out?"

  Calliope leaned forward, keeping her voice casual. "You know something about it?"

  He shrugged. "Saw it on the net."

  "We just want to know if you heard anything about Johnny Dread connected with that crime. Anything at all."

  "Not going to roll on nobody, me."

  Stan Chan leaned in. "How can you be rolling on anyone if he's dead, you little shit? Talk some sense."

  3Big gave Calliope a look of wounded dignity. "This your dog? Because if he don't stop biting my knackers, you might as well put me back in the box."

  Calliope waved Stan back into his chair. "Just tell me what you remember about John Dread."

  The prisoner smirked. "Nothing. I forgot everything. And if I ever hear anything about him after today, I forget that too. He was one sayee lo bastard. Wouldn't talk slice to him for hard money."

  Calliope kept asking questions, augmented by suggestions about 3Big's heritage and social life from Stan that were occasionally rather surreal. If it was a fencing match, the prisoner was not playing to win, but simply not to be scored upon, an unsatisfying experience that went on so long that the last of the caffeine rush finally wore off, leaving Calliope tired and irritable.

  "So he's dead, and you haven't seen him for years anyway. That's what you're telling me, right?"

  He nodded. "For true."

  "Then why do I get the feeling you're holding out? You're facing a long stretch, Mr. Pike. Eddie. Three Bug, or whatever bullshit you want to call yourself. If I were where you are, I'd be climbing across this table right now, trying hard to kiss my big Greek backside, because there aren't going to be many people offering you anything in the next little while. Unless it's someone in the shower when you go back to Silverwater, handing you a chocolate bar to bend over." He was clearly a little surprised by how abruptly she had abandoned the pretense of helpfulness, but he maintained his smirk. "So why won't you talk?

  "I'm talking."

  "Talk about something real, I mean. We could scrape three to five years off your sentence if you told us something useful about John Dread."

  He looked at her for a strangely long time. Stan Chan started to say something, but Calliope touched his knee under the table, asking for patience. 3Big fidgeted with his scars again, sighed, then dropped his hands to the tabletop.

  "Look, woman," he said slowly. "I tell you something for free. I don't know nothing about Dread. But even if I did know something, I wouldn't tell you shit. Not for good behavior time, not for reduction, not for nothing."

  "But if he's dead. . . !"

  He shook his head, his gaze hidden now, curtained behind those long lashes like a panther in a canebrake. "Don't matter. You don't know Dread, you never met him. You cross him, he come back out of the ground and kill you three ways. If there was ever someone be a mopaditi, come back and six you in the dark, Dread do it."

  "Mopaditi. What does that mean?"

  He had retreated far back now, surveying them as though from the depths of a cave. "Ghost. When you dead, but you don't go away. I'll go back to the box now."

  "Well, that was useless." Stan Chan waited expectantly.

  "Hang on." Calliope took out her hearplug and popped it into its padded slot in her pad. She wondered again if it was time to invest in a can. It was tedious lugging the pad around, even the new, wafer-thin Krittapong she had bought herself as a birthday present. "Doctor Jigalong is out of town. I've left her messages at work and home."

  "About 'mopaditi'?"

  "Yeah, I haven't heard that in street slang before, have you?"

  "No." He put his feet up on the desk. "That's what, eight, nine of these people we've rousted? Not getting much."

  "We got something there."

  Stan gave her the eyebrow. "You mean because he used an aboriginal word? In case you didn't notice, Skouros, the man was indeed of aboriginal heritage himself. Don't you say 'hopa!' or 'retsina' or even 'acropolis' every now and then? I've been known to use the occasional ethnic expression myself—I think I called you 'round-eye' just the other day. . . ."

  "He reacted when I asked him about Johnny Dread. He was surprised." Something else was bothering her too, some detail, maddeningly out of reach.

  "Well, the man is officially dead. Might be reason for surprise, being questioned about someone you thought was dead."

  "Might be. But there was something weird about his reaction. Maybe he's heard something on the street."

  "Maybe won't get us over the hump, Skouros. What next? Charming as it may be, we're running out of street culture to investigate."

  Calliope shook her head, perplexed and distressed and, with the caffeine finally drained out of her system and nothing gone in to replace it, feeling generally pretty godawful.

  Sleeplessly out of skew, she sat on the couch and accessed the interview from the department system to run it on her wallscreen. She had decided for her own good to stay away from Bondi Baby. It wasn't even so much the near-obsessive interest in the waitress Elisabetta, but the fact that she had realized she was actually beginning to look forward to the gooey desserts the place served.

  Not going to lose any weight that way, Skouros, she told herself. Better to stay home. She hadn't shopped in days, so there was little except crispbread to imperil her determination. She watched the questioning all the way through, then jumped back to the spot where she had first mentioned their quarry's name.

  "You talking about John More Dread?" 3Big said, then said it yet again as Calliope backed up and played it over ". . . Talking about Dread?"

  That's it, she thought. John More Dread. Haven't heard that one before. But why should one more alias—for a suspect who already had many—catch in her thoughts this way, like a splinter working its way under the skin? More Dread. More Dread. Where have I heard that befor
e?

  The thought of the photo taken at Feverbrook Hospital drifted back to her, the blur of dark presence, the formless, smoky face.

  3Big Pike said a ghost. If there's anyone who'd come back as a ghost. . . .

  She closed her eyes and opened them, trying to use the familiarity of her apartment to push back the feeling of being watched. Of being haunted.

  She was back on the balcony again. The tower drew her as though she were a moth and its black immensity some kind of inverse light. Even now, with the voices gone, when she was somehow farther from it than she'd been even back in Juniper Bay, she could not ignore it.

  A sparkle of red signal lights ringed the top like a crown of embers, and on the uppermost floors a few windows glowed, illuminated singly or in small clusters. Otherwise, it was only visible against the night sky because of the searchlights that swept across the empty parking lot, glancing off the shiny, irregular exterior as they tracked across the rows of painted stalls.

  The voices were gone. The children were gone. Were they one and the same? Olga Pirofsky had been immersed in the dreamy unreality of her southward journey for so long that she could not quite remember. She was exhausted, too. The nights when the children had pulled her and hurried her, whispering their lives into her dreaming ear, had somehow been far more restful than the dead black hours she had experienced after they had fallen silent. Now she woke each day slow-thinking and hollow, feeling like a helium balloon that had finally leaked the last of its buoyancy and could only roll along the carpet, sagging, useless.

  So what now? she asked herself. She could not pull her eyes from the tower, the center of its own dark kingdom. Go home? Kill yourself?

  But she had no home anymore. Misha was gone, and Juniper Bay seemed like another planet—like the circus, like the dear, sweet murdered days when she had still been with Aleksandr. And she had pushed away those who might have helped her, Roland McDaniel and her other few friends from work, that nice lawyer Mr. Ramsey. There was nothing left for her but silence.