by Tad Williams
Christabel could tell that the dark-skinned man was not happy because he didn't smile at her, and even though she had only known him a while, she could tell he was the kind of man who almost always smiled at kids. "I feel terrible," he told Mister Sellars. "I've been a real idiot. It's just still so hard to take all this stuff seriously! Having to worry about being traced—it's like some bad netflick."
"No one blames you," Sellars told him gently, "But I wanted to ask you something before I descend into my traveling sanctum sanctorum. Have you heard anything back from Olga Pirofsky since we spoke this morning?"
"No. Nothing."
"May I make a suggestion? If you were her, doing something as dangerous and questionable as she is doing, and your attorney sent you a message that said, 'Don't do anything until you talk to me.' what would you assume?" She could see Ramsey trying hard to think, like Christabel herself when she hadn't been listening to the teacher but got asked a question anyway. "I don't know. I guess that my attorney was going to try to talk me out of this crazy thing."
"Exactly. And if you were her, would you bother to reply?"
Now, even though Mister Sellars was talking in his usual quiet, hooty voice, Mister Ramsey looked like Christabel when the teacher yelled at her. "No. No, I guess wouldn't. Not if I'd already made up my mind."
"I think that's probably the case. If I may make a suggestion, you might send her another message saying something along the lines of, "I know what you're doing and believe it or not I think you're right and I want to help you get inside as safely as possible. Please get in touch with me."
"Right. Right." Ramsey turned and walked away fast, back toward his motel room.
"Well, little Christabel," said Mister Sellars, "I see your father coming to help strap me into my pilot's seat. The best captains always lead from behind, you know. Or even beneath." He laughed, but Christabel thought he was less happy than she had almost ever seen him. "I'll be out before you know it. Have a good trip and I'll see you soon."
The boy was already in the car. Christabel was too confused and worried by everything to pay very much attention.
"What your problem, mu'chita?" he asked.
She just ignored him, trying to understand why Mister Sellars had seemed so different than usual—so dark underneath the smile, so quiet and tired.
"Hey, I'm talking to you, weenit!"
"I know," she said. "I'm thinking. Talk to yourself."
He called her names but she ignored him. She knew that if her mother had not been in and out of the car, shoving in bags and cases, he would probably have poked her or pinched her. She wouldn't have cared if he did. Mister Sellars was very sad. Something bad was happening—something even worse than the worst things she had worried about before her parents found out.
"Okay, okay, just tell me what you thinking about, okay?"
She looked up, surprised by the sound of the boy's voice. He didn't look angry, or at least that wasn't all she could see.
"Mister Sellars. I'm thinking about Mister Sellars," she said.
"He one strange viejo."
"He's scared."
"Yeah. Me, too."
For a moment she didn't realize what she had heard. She had to look up to make sure it was the same mean-faced boy with the missing tooth. "You're scared?"
He stared for a moment as though waiting for her to make fun of him. "Not stupid, me. I heard some of what they been talking about. Army men trying to kill them, all that. That's all locked up, seen? The azules, the police and stuff, most times they don't go after people like your mama and papa, they go after kids like me, or maybe big crooks, whatever. And if your dad actually snuck el viejo out of an army base, and brought his family along, even a little gatita like you—well, you know that's trouble major." He looked out the car window. "Think I'm going to get out of here soon." He turned back to her suddenly. "You tell anyone, I'll kill you. No dupping."
A few days before, thinking about the little boy running away would have made Christabel happy enough to dance. Now it just made her even more lonely and frightened than she had been.
Something was very, very wrong, but Christabel had no idea what it was.
Long Joseph carried a huge, red-painted fire ax, and was creeping along the corridor with what he probably believed was the warlike stealth of his Zulu ancestors. Jeremiah Dako still hadn't found any weapon better than the table leg with which he had almost brained Joseph and Del Ray during their unexpected entrance, but he couldn't imagine many situations in which they were going to get a chance to hit anyone anyway.
Jeremiah had not much wanted to bring Joseph with him, but it would have been impossible to convince the man to stay with the equipment and their slumbering charges, Renie and !Xabbu, and since it would be hard to carry Del Ray back by himself, Jeremiah had made only a token argument. To Joseph Sulaweyo's credit, he was at least keeping his mouth shut for once.
Now the man stopped at an intersection of aisles and made a theatrically broad gesture, fingers to his lips, other hand pointing at the right-hand corridor. The silliness of it all—Jeremiah knew perfectly well where they were, and where Del Ray was lying so unmovingly—suddenly brought home to him their terrible danger.
There are men out there who want to kill us. Men with guns and God knows what else. Maybe even the same men who beat Doctor Susan so that she died.
If he stopped to think about it any longer he knew his legs would collapse beneath him, but there was a flame of anger burning now, too. Jeremiah put a hand against Joseph's chest and, returning the older man's wide-eyed stare of outrage with the most purposeful look he could muster, slid past him to the turning of the corridor. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled forward until he could see Del Ray's feet, one of them only wearing a sock, the shoe lying half a meter away. It made Jeremiah feel quietly sick.
Go on, man. Nothing else to be done. Go on.
Certain that any moment someone was going to step out of the shadows—which would somehow be worse, he could not help thinking, than someone simply shooting him—Jeremiah crept toward Del Ray . . . or at least toward his legs. . . .
Oh, my God, what if he has been shot in half by one of those machine guns?
He slid another few meters forward over industrial carpet so old and threadbare he could feel exposed patches of cold concrete pass beneath his belly, until at last he was close enough to reach out and touch Del Ray's unshod foot. It felt warm and alive, but that meant little—everything had happened only a few minutes earlier. Eyes closed, even more frightened now, he let his hand travel up the outside of Del Ray's leg until, to his great relief, he felt the bunched fabric of the man's shirt, then his arm, shoulder, and even the base of his chin. He was in one piece, anyway.
Jeremiah had just lifted up his hand to beckon Joseph forward when someone hissed in his ear. "Where they shoot him? In the belly? Between the eyes?"
When Jeremiah's heart had slid back down from his mouth into its normal spot, he turned and glared. "Just shut up! We have to get him out of here."
"Tell you one problem," Joseph whispered. "There is a big pipe on his arm, over here."
Jeremiah, feeling a little braver now that a minute had gone by out in the open and no one had put a bullet in his spine, rose until he could kneel beside Del Ray. He touched the young man's chest, which seemed to be moving, then found a living pulse at the base of his jaw. His relief suddenly turned sour when he brought back his hand and found it covered with something dark and sticky.
"Oh, Christ! He's bleeding from the head."
"Then he is dead," said Joseph, not unkindly. "Nobody gets a shot in the head, then they go back to work on Monday."
"Shut up and help me move him. We have to get him back where I can have a better look at him."
Joseph had been right—there was indeed a long piece of heavy pipe, about the thickness of a wine bottle, lying across Del Ray's arm. They pushed it off, not without effort, and although Jeremiah flinched when it clanked to t
he floor, he also began to feel a little relief. Perhaps Del Ray hadn't been shot. Perhaps this thing had fallen on him, clubbing him down in the dark.
Jeremiah looked up and his heart threatened to stop again. A jackstraw clutter of the heavy iron pipes hung down from the ceiling above their heads, all at strange angles, most only connected now at one end, as though some huge hand had reached up and pulled them away from their moorings. The clutter of metal looked as though it might come down at any moment. He gestured urgently to Joseph and they began to drag Del Ray back toward the corridor.
At the last moment Jeremiah remembered the gun. He hesitated, fearful of spending another second out in the open, of letting Del Ray's wounds go untended any longer. What good would a single pistol and a few bullets do them? Joseph made impatient noises. Jeremiah hesitated, then turned and crept back, moving as quietly as he could beneath the Damoclean assortment of broken pipes. Del Ray's jacket was lying almost hidden in shadow. Jeremiah tugged it toward him, patted the pockets until he felt the telltale chunk of smooth, heavy metal, then sprinted away from the treacherous spot.
While Joseph checked the vital signs on the V-tanks, Jeremiah stretched Del Ray full length on a blanket laid out on a conference table in one of the side rooms. He could feel a distinct swelling on the left side of the young man's head, a bump underneath a long but seemingly shallow laceration. His fingers came away slick with blood. Jeremiah would have liked to believe that was the only injury, but much of Del Ray's shirt around the collar and behind his shoulders was dark and damp as well. He hoped it was only that, the young man had been lying in the blood of his own head wound, but he could not be sure.
Might have been shot first, then grabbed at a loose pipe on his way down.
Satisfied that Del Ray was at least breathing, Jeremiah began to cut the shirt away with his pocketknife. Long Joseph came in from the main room and watched, his expression hard to read, but he stepped forward when Jeremiah asked, helping to turn Del Ray's wiry body over so that Jeremiah could investigate his back.
Jeremiah splashed water from a squeeze bottle on a ragged strip of shirt and began wiping away the blood, grateful that they still had the overhead fluorescents—the idea of doing this by flashlight and perhaps missing a vital wound chilled him. He was relieved to find no evidence of another injury. He took a small bottle from the first-aid kit and splashed it on a comparatively clean piece of Del Ray's shirt, then began cleaning the head wound.
"What is that stuff you putting on there?" Joseph asked.
"Alcohol. Not the kind you can drink."
"I know that," said Joseph, disgusted.
Probably from experience, Jeremiah thought, but kept it to himself. The edge of the cut was ragged, but gentle probing with his fingers revealed no deep hole, nothing that might be an entrance wound. Feeling better than he had in the last hour, he made a pad of wet shirt and used one of the severed sleeves to tie it in place, then with Joseph's help turned Del Ray back over.
The younger man's groan was so pitiful that for a moment Jeremiah froze in horror, positive he had done something terribly wrong. Then Del Ray's eyes fluttered open. The pupils wandered for a moment, unfixed, confused by the bright bank of fluorescents.
"Is . . . is that you?" Del Ray said at last. He could have meant anyone, but Jeremiah was not going to split hairs.
"Yes, it's us. We brought you back safe. You seem to have been hit on the head. What happened?"
He groaned again, but this time it was more a sound of frustration than pain. "I'm . . . I'm not sure. I was just coming back from the elevator when something up on the ceiling went boom!" He squinted and tried to turn away from the lights, but the pad kept his head from rolling. Jeremiah leaned forward to shade his eyes. "I think . . . I think maybe they're using some kind of explosives up there. Trying to blast through to our part of the base." He winced and slowly brought a hand up to his head, his eyes widening slightly as he felt the bandages. "What . . . how bad is it?"
"Not bad," Jeremiah said. "A pipe fell down, I think. If they set something off upstairs, that would make sense. I heard loud noises, three of them. I think—bang, hang, bang!"
"What, so they are trying to bomb us out now?" Joseph said. "Foolish. They not going to get me out so easy. They blow a hole, I come out of it and knock in some heads."
Jeremiah rolled his eyes. "He's right about one thing, though," he told Del Ray. "I don't think they'll get through that concrete or that heavy door on the elevator—not right away, anyway."
Del Ray murmured something, then tried to sit up. Jeremiah leaned forward to restrain him but the younger man would not be stopped. His skin had paled and he was shaking, but he seemed otherwise almost normal.
"The question is," Del Ray said at last, "how long do we have to hold them off? A week? We might be able to do it. Forever? That's not going to work."
"Not if you are going to get knocked out, walking into pipes," declared Joseph. "I told you, you should let me go and do that."
Tired and irritated, Jeremiah could not resist. "You know, Del Ray, it's been a real pleasure to see you with your shirt off. Joseph was right—you're a very handsome young man."
"What?" Long Joseph Sulaweyo leaped up, almost spitting with indignation. "What are you talking about? I didn't say nothing like that! What are you talking about?"
Jeremiah was laughing too hard to push it any farther. Even Del Ray managed a wincing smile as the older man stomped off to the other room, presumably to drown the insult to his manliness in a few swallows of his precious wine.
"I shouldn't do it," Jeremiah said when he was gone, but could not restrain a last quiet chuckle. "He's not all bad, and we need to stick together. Help each other."
"You helped me," said Del Ray. "Thanks."
Jeremiah waved it off. "It's nothing. But I was scared. I thought they'd broken in, shooting. They're still out there, though, and we're still safe in here—for the moment. Ah!" Reminded, he bent and picked up Del Ray's jacket off the floor. "And we even have a gun."
Del Ray took the heavy pistol out of his pocket and turned it over, looking at it as though it were some completely new object. "Yes," he said. "One gun, but only two bullets." He wiped a tiny trickle of blood off his ear and gave Jeremiah a mournful look. "When they do manage to get in, that's not even enough to shoot ourselves."
CHAPTER 12
The Boy in the Well
NETFEED/MUSIC: Christ Not Happy As "Superstar"
(visual: Christ with Blond Bitch on stage)
VO: The story of singer Johann Sebastian Christ, who came back from both a crippling adrenochrome addiction and the loss of his band in a freak stage accident, is to be made into a partially fictionalized net drama—if it can get past one crucial snag.
(visual: entertainment journalist Patsy Lou Corry)
CORRY: "Apparently the network is under huge pressure from Bible Belt advertisers not to have a character named Christ who wears a dog mask and performs naked from the waist down, among his more presentable habits. The network has suggested they could rename the character Johann Sebastian Superstar.' Christ wants to call off the project, but he doesn't want to return the network's money. It'll wind up in court."
(visual: Christ in press conference)
CHRIST: "Lawsuit? You know what International Entertainment can do? It can bend right over and start counting shower tiles. . . ."
Like school, this is," said T4b miserably.
It had been a long time since Paul had been in school, but he knew what their Goggleboy companion meant.
They had been trapped in the bubble for what felt to Paul like hours, perhaps half a day. In a different situation the bobbing journey atop the swell of the river would have been fascinating: the current had pushed them past a great deal of Kunohara's jungle, past huge mangrove trees with roots sunk deep into the water, monstrously tangled edifices of bark proportionately large as entire cities. Strange fish had nosed them, leviathans up from the river mud to investigate, but
fortunately none had decided the strange bubble was worth trying to swallow. Birds with wingspans like jumbo jets and colored like an explosion in God's own fireworks factory, a rat the size of a warehouse, water beetles big as motorboats—they had floated past all kinds of wonders. But the four of them were trapped in a sphere scarcely large enough to allow them all to sit with their legs stretched out, and they were bored, stiff, and miserable.
Worse, Renie's unfinished message seemed to hang in the sealed air of the bubble like a curl of poisonous gas. She was in trouble somewhere and her friends could do nothing.
With nothing to do but rest and talk, they had puzzled and argued for hours, but Paul thought they were no closer to solving any of the riddles that haunted them. He had related all that he had remembered so far of his life in Jongleur's tower, but although the others had been fascinated, they could offer nothing to help him make sense of what the fragments meant.
"So what happens?" T4b said, breaking the long silence. "Just go on, us, all rub-a-dub-dub like this, forever?"
Paul smiled sadly. Personally, he had been thinking of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod adrift in their wooden shoe, but the idea was much the same.
"We will go through to the next simulation," Florimel said wearily. "When we get to the gateway, Martine will try to manipulate it to send us back to Troy, so that we might perhaps cross through to the place where Renie and the others are. We have said all this before."
Paul looked to Martine, who at the moment didn't appear capable of manipulating anything more complicated than a bath towel or a spoon. The blind woman sagged, her earlier confidence gone, or at least worn down for the moment. Her lips were moving, as though she were talking to herself. Or praying.
I hope she doesn't give up, he thought in sudden fear. Without Renie to push us along, she's all we have. Florimel's smart and brave, but she doesn't think ahead like the two of them, she gets angry and discouraged. T4b—well, he's a teenager, and not a very patient one at that.