Then I saw it, coming up between the horns of the science complex and by God, Tania was right: it was livid as a drowned man's skin and pocked with white mold. The clearing got brighter and brighter, 'til it seemed to glow. The moon, the blue moon.
Something cold touched my ankles. The mist was flowing sluggishly out of the tree shadows and into the clearing, and it glowed too. But there was no wind . . .
Next thing I knew, I was 'cross the open space and half way through the woods on the other side. Seems I ran straight through Duley's boo-juice loonies somewhere en route without even noticing, much less saying hello—something I'd normally do, they being 'bout the only decent norm pack on campus. Didn't stop at all 'til my knees gave out on the steps of St. John's dorm.
* * *
TWO MINUTES LATER and fifteen stories up, Tania met me at the apartment door, stricken-eyed.
"What is it?" I said, hearing my voice skitter upward. "What's happened?"
Lancaster popped up b'hind her. "Quiet!" he hissed at me, loud enough to loosen plaster.
There was a thud in the other room and the sound of bare feet running. Tania shrank back against me as Ammie burst through the inner doorway. The smile on her face looked as if it were held up by poor tape, and in her hand was a med-kit needler with the three-inch hypo out, gleaming cold.
For a second, we just stared. Then Lancaster screeched and dove for cover b'hind the sofa, nearly colliding with Miri who'd been perched there and was now en route out the window, anti-grav pack whining. Ammie spun 'round once, lost world eyes skimming the room. Then she focused on the open hall door (with Tania and me still in it) and started for it, the needle in her hand tracing a silver arc b'fore her.
Jame appeared in the bedroom door, rubbing her elbow.
"Watch the door!" she called to me.
I took a deep breath and pushed Tania ahead of me into the room, keeping both hands on her shoulders in case I had to shove her clear. Wasn't necessary. Soon as the light hit my face, Ammie pulled up short, her smile crumbling. The needler hit the floor. A moment later she was down too, hands over her face, sobbing. Then Jame was on her knees beside her, arms 'round her shoulders. They stayed like that for a minute b'fore Jame picked up the instrument and got Ammie back on her feet.
I couldn't help b'cause of Tania. When Ammie folded, so did she, or would have if I hadn't caught her. Soon as the two kittens had disappeared into the bedroom, I put her in the room's only chair, liberated, like the sofa, from some stu lounge. She was shaking fit to fall apart. We were always afraid that campus life would kill her sooner or later. No empath, even one who only felt for half the population, had ever lasted through graduation. We might have lost her then and there if the crying in the other room hadn't suddenly died.
Jame came out of the bedroom, sheathing the needler.
"What kind of circus was that?" I asked her. "And who took the bite out of your elbow?"
"The floor," she said, glancing down at raw skin. "Ammie heard you at the door, pounced for the needler, and knocked me off the bed. You needn't laugh. Not now, anyway. St. John is dead."
"You don't know that!" It was Lancaster, up from b'hind the furniture and shriller than ever. "Two anonymous messages, and for that you call us out on finals' eve? Dammit, I have a final tomorrow afternoon!"
"And I have one in the morning," says Jame, cold as the Dean's heart. "The pack comes first. Sam, are you all right?" Guess I looked pretty green. "W-what happened?"
"He answered a call from the Under-Earth hours ago," said Miri from the window ledge, breathless as always, "and then someone 'phoned Jame and Ammie to say he was dead, so when Ammie heard you she must have thought he'd come home after all, and grabbed the needler to take to him like she always does with shiny things, and that's all we know . . . all!"
Jame had been leaning 'gainst the wall, gloved fingertips pressed 'gainst her eyes. Now she looked up. "Where are the rest of us?"
"Tsuma is in sanctuary at the library," said Tania's small, bleached-out voice from the bottom of the chair. "The Spider is on duty at the comp center. St. John is . . . "
"WE DON'T KNOW THAT!"
It was nearly a scream. Seeing that Jame had never learned to suffer nerps gladly, and looked ready to explode in this one's face, I jumped in fast: "So what do we do now?"
"First," glaring at Lancaster, "we don't panic. Second, we verify. Tsuma and the Spider are safe enough for now. You two stay here until we get back. Miri, if you go out, keep to the air."
"And me?" I said, afraid I was going to get left parked under a table somewhere.
"If you're willing, you run with me. To verify." The half smile turned grim. "Alive or dead, St. John is coming home tonight."
* * *
TEN MINUTES LATER we were in the forest, traveling fast. We didn't meet any interference that trip, for a wonder: no hunting packs, and still no noise. Every time we came to one of those slow mist streams, Jame either detoured 'round or jumped over it. That made me feel better 'bout getting the fur up b'fore.
Watching how that kitten moved made me wonder how anyone could not know she was a Kennie, but then people didn't know much 'bout the Kencyrath in those days. Most folks thought it was just one of the mutie groups that popped up after the war. Me, I guessed different. Splintered as humanity had b'come, the Kencyrath was . . . something else again, with its own caste system, fight form, and even god. I'd run with enough Kennies in the city to know that much. Still, Jame Talissen threw me. Everything I'd come to expect in a Kennie she had: the lithe build, night-sighted eyes, and fine hands; the parallel streaks of honor and violence. But every trait was stronger or stranger in a way I couldn't quite nail down. It made me wonder if I really knew the Kennies at all.
I was thinking 'bout that and watching Jame when my foot sank into a patch of mist and I pitched forward flat on my face. Jame was crouching b'side me quick as a blink. Concern disappeared b'hind that solemn mask she usually wore to hide laughter, soon as she saw I was all right.
"Gotta watch that, Samuel," she said. "It's much too early for broken necks. Save that for later. C'mon."
She took my hand. We ran the rest of the way to the Pit.
The Pit. Just a gaping hole in the ground from the top. At night, just another big, black shadow. Easy enough to step right over the edge. Plenty of toms bought a straight ticket to the Under-Earth that way and arrived terminally zonkers. Not necessary. Not if you knew the footholds. Jame did, and so did St. John. They'd been drug runners to the Under-Earth for twelve quarters, altogether. Wasn't the sort of job they could do by daylight, either, what with all the rules 'gainst helping the Earthers in any way, most of all by smuggling in bootleg medicine swiped from the Center. Would have been a force ten box for sure if they'd ever been caught.
We sent down slow and easy that night, past the soil layer with its tree roots groping out like frozen snakes, past the plastisteel shell that supports the whole campus, down into the stagnant air of the Under-Earth.
Heights freak me, so I didn't rubberneck, much as I would have liked to. See, this was my first trip Earthside. The place used to be a living museum—y'know, a community preserved the way it had been back maybe two hundred years ago, b'fore the world went mad. Everything else like it had been razed to make way for new layers of the city. This town held out as long as it could. Then the 'versity made its proposition: the town would have its protection and patronage, plus access to the woods the 'versity meant to plant topside, if the locals would let their whole valley be roofed over and the new school built on top. Maybe greed got them; maybe they were just plain tired of fighting the zoning board. Anyway, they agreed. The dome was put up and an artificial sun was hung under it. Things went fine 'til the war. Then the school was knocked out of business, the access tube in the Pit destroyed, the sun extinguished, and the people Earthside died by the thousands, in the dark.
But not all of them. A few survived, and their descendants, warped by decades of darkness, radiation, and i
nterbreeding, were the ones we called the Firsters. Weren't many of them left, and those weren't what you'd call the best of company.
I was running over that in my mind and wondering if I shouldn't be climbing up that pile of debris twice as fast as I was coming down it when my foot hit solid earth and I knew it was too late for second thoughts, however intelligent. We'd arrived.
All I could see at first was more debris and some big rectangular holes in the ground, each one with a faint, cold light gleaming up from its depths. We were standing 'mid the ruins left when the houses nearest the bottom of the Pit had been razed to make the huge mound down which we'd just climbed. Only the basements were left. Beyond, however, rose the phosphorescent outline of buildings.
Minutes later we were trekking down main street b'tween rows of black decaying houses and skeletons of trees straining up into the darkness. Dome was so far up, it couldn't be seen. Everywhere there were little streams of water like luminous slugs crawling through the dark weeds, and the death light of fungus, and the choking smell of rot. Everywhere, the mist bubbling up in the hollows slow and thick as pus, doors gaping black, glowing veins of mold on sagging walls, dust-dim windows showing items the peelings signs above never promised to sell, curtains held together with spider webs, eyes.
I saw the faces at the windows, white and still as the dead, watching us pass. They b'longed to the toms, yeah, and the kittens too, who had opted out. When they saw they didn't stand a chance of ever graduating free and clear and that the only alternatives left were a) to contract out to the government, thereby b'coming twenty year slaves, b) to hang on here 'til the box turned their brains to mush and the psych people got hold of them, or c) to die, and b'come med center property, they chose to drop out and down. Earthside, they never had to worry 'bout another exam, the box, the packs, or stuffing their kids under the bed every time there was a noise in the hall. It also meant they would never walk free in the topside world again. Since one of the 'versity's main purposes was to keep all the younglings under its thumb 'til they could be tied into the new society one way or another, isn't surprising that Admin didn't feel kindly to the ones that skipped out by going Under-Earth. The Earthers were nothing but vermin to it, and we all knew that sooner or later it would move 'gainst them. That was in those watching eyes, too: suspicion, hate, anger. The weight of it bit into my shoulders.
"Has it occurred to you that this isn't the safest place to be?" I asked Jame.
"Relax. No one's going to pounce us."
"Su-u-ure. I bet St. John told himself the same thing."
"St. John must not have had an escort. We do. Look."
I looked, and then, back b'hind the rows of houses, I saw them. Kids, dozens of Earther kids, white faces, huge eyes, skinny bare legs, skimming through the ruins of backyards, never making a sound, never taking their eyes off of us. They looked hungry. I tried to ignore them.
Then we came to the edge of town, with the rank, rolling fields freckled with corpse lights stretching out before us up to the mountain that ran into darkness to meet the horizon of the dome. Last house out was a big, brick one, nearly invisible under luminous mold. Its door stood open.
"We're expected," Jame told me. "Don't say a word once we're inside. He's been having one holy hell of a time lately, and there's no telling what he might do if you cross him."
Only one tom she could mean by that: Rimmon, lord of the Under-Earth. St. John had told me 'bout him. He'd been one of the brightest toms on campus with less than a quarter to go when he killed Sid Dillon's brother by accident in a pack clash. After that, it was either turn Earther or zonker, so he came b'low. Took up mushrooming, then organizing. Pretty soon, he had the whole territory under his paw. Drove out the Firsters, gave the place the first order it had had since the war. Then he caught the optic rot and went blind. He wasn't such a bad tom, according to Jame, but pain made him unpredictable, and sometimes vicious.
At first, it looked as if the house was empty. Just big rooms soft with dry rot, lit by murals of luminous lichen. Then there he was motionless in a corner, a tall skeleton of a man all in black, stretched out on a pile of silver grey rat skins. A scarf was wound tight 'round his eyes. Threads of mycelium crept out from under it and down over cheekbones near sharp enough to cut the paper white skins stretched over them. The minute I saw him, I guessed something St. John hadn't told me. Jame clinched it when she gave him a formal salute and said in Kens, "Honor to you, lord."
"And to you, Shanir," said the Highborn. Clipped words, the last one almost spat out. Jame went wary-eyed. "So, my runner found you."
"No runner, just a voice on the 'phone. Is it true, then?"
"Yes. I didn't know he was Earthside 'til one of my hunters found him. This was in his back." He reached into the furs, keeping his head still as a skull nailed on a post, and drew out a knife. Heavy blade, notched hilt, ugly.
Jame took it. Something in her face b'tween skin and bone seemed to twist. "And the body?" she asked, very softly.
"Gone. It was being held for you near the Pit, but the camp-cops staged a surprise raid and snatched it."
"He doesn't miss a twist," Jame said bitterly. "St. John dead, Ammie threatened, and now this. He's playing mouse with me. Well, we can play a game or two ourselves."
She bent over and whispered something in Rimmon's ear. The tom's head jerked back, anger or surprise, couldn't tell which, turning to a hiss of pain as his hands shot up to the bandage. Jame's gloved fingers were over his in a second. No emp could have reacted faster.
"It can't be done," he said, voice taut. "Not even by you, not even tonight, not even with the help of that filthy book. Don't try, Jame. You, of all people, know there are worse things than death."
That was too much for me. "Listen," I said to both of them, "will someone please tell me what's going on? I haven't scanned even half of all this."
The eyeless face lifted and turned on me.
"So . . . the little friend can talk."
Then he was speaking to me in Kens, so low I could hardly hear. Was as if the air 'round me was thickening, pressing in, and the darkness of the room b'gan to blur. Call it sorcery or high psi. All I know is that the words were in my ears, in my brain, and I was going blind.
Jame caught my arm. "Stop it!" I heard her say, sharp as bones breaking. "Is it his fault he can see and you can't? Leave him alone!"
Rimmon laughed, and the pressure was gone so suddenly that my knees almost buckled. Jame steadied me.
"Idiot," she hissed in my ear. "I told you to keep quiet." Then, to Rimmon, "Well? Will you do it?"
His mouth relaxed into a wry grimace. "If I can't hinder, I may as well help." The hands sketched a ritual gesture of submission, half mocking. "As you will, Shanir."
Again the salute, colder this time. "You honor me, lord. Honor be to you. C'mon, Sam."
She'd just turned to go when Rimmon's hand shot out and clamped on her elbow, and I nearly went for his throat, like a Pekinese after a cobra.
"If things go wrong tomorrow," he said to her in a low voice, "come back to me. Here you'll be welcome, and safe."
His whisper followed us out of the dark room, dry, rustling, almost gentle: "Be careful, Shanir."
* * *
"YOU KNOW WHO KILLED St. John, don't you?" I said to Jame as we headed back through the dead city, again with our escort keeping pace.
No answer, to that or any other question I bounced off her, all the way to the Pit and up the mound of debris. Don't think she even heard me.
Then, topside, with the black woods leaning in on us and the full moon staring down, "Samuel," she says, "I have an errand for you. Go to my room and find the Book Bound in Pale Leather. Bring it to St. John's apartment. If I'm not back in two hours, try to burn it, then do what you can for Ammie." She was almost under the trees b'fore I got back enough wits to shout after her.
"Hey! At least tell me what's going to happen tomorrow!" For a second she hesitated, slim and white in the shadows. Then
, "Dissection exams," she said, and was gone.
Sweet Trinity, of course. Where do zonkers go? To the morgue. Why? So that med students, like Jame, can cut them, like for a dissection exam. Jame had some bad enemies high up, those days, as well as some unlikely friends. They'd give her St. John to cut, and she wouldn't, and then it would be the box for sure. They'd make sure she never left it sane, like poor Ammie.
* * *
IT TOOK ME MAYBE FIVE MINUTES to reach Jame's dorm, and longer to find the book, which turned out to be tucked all nice and snug in her bed. When the room's cool air hit it, the little white hairs studding its pale binding bristled. I picked it up, and nearly dropped it again: the damn thing seemed to have a pulse. Not liking the feel of it at all, I found an old knapsack and gingerly poked the book into it.
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