by Tad Williams
But when she had put on her warm slippers and pulled her big coat on right over her pajamas, Mommy said something so strange that for a moment Christabel almost thought she was still asleep and having a dream.
"Mister Sellars wants to talk to you before we go."
Daddy was in the kitchen, drinking coffee and looking at maps. He smiled at her as her mommy led her by, but it was a small, tired smile. Out in the garage all the van's doors were open, but Christabel didn't see Mister Sellars anywhere.
"He's in the back," her mother said.
Christabel walked around to the far end of the van. Her daddy had taken out the tire and the other things that were usually under the floor in the van's back part. Mister Sellars was lying in the empty space, curled up on an unrolled sleeping bag like a squirrel in its nest.
He looked up and smiled. "Hello, little Christabel. I just wanted you to see that I was all right before your father put the top back on. See, I have water—" he pointed to a couple of squeeze bottles lying beside him, "—and a nice soft place."
She didn't know what to say. Everything was so strange. "Is he going to put the top back?" she asked.
"Yes, but I'll be fine." He smiled again. He looked tired, too. "I'm used to confined places, and besides, there are things I can do while I'm in here and things I need to think about. I'll be fine. Besides, it's only for a little while. You just do what your mommy and daddy tell you to do. They're being very brave, and I hope you'll be brave also. Remember how I told you about Jack when he was climbing up to the giant's castle? He was scared, but he did it anyway, and everything turned out for the best."
Her mother, standing a little way behind her, made a funny noise, kind of a snort. Christabel turned to look at her but her mommy just shook her head and said, "Okay, sweetie, come on now. We have to get going."
"I'll see you real soon," Mister Sellars said. "This is still a secret, but not from your mommy and daddy anymore, and that's very good for everyone."
Her daddy came out of the kitchen wiping his hands. As he started to put the floor of the van over Mister Sellars, talking to the old man in a quiet voice, Christabel's mother helped her up into the middle part where the seats were.
"Now if anyone asks," her mommy said, "you tell them Cho-Cho's your cousin. If they ask you any other questions, just say you don't know."
Christabel was trying to figure out why her mommy would say something like that when she saw the terrible boy on the back seat, wearing one of her daddy's jackets. Christabel stopped, scared, but her mother took her arm and helped her sit down. The boy only looked back at her. It was funny, but he suddenly looked much smaller. His hair was wet and close to his head, and the jacket and pants were so big that he seemed like a really little kid dressed up.
She still didn't like him, though. "Is he going with us?"
"Yes, sweetie." Her mommy helped her fasten her seat belt. Christabel squeezed over to one side, so there would be lots of space between her and the terrible boy, but he wasn't even looking at her anymore. "Everything is a little . . . unusual today," her mother said. "That's all. You sleep if you can."
She couldn't sleep, and she couldn't stop thinking about the boy Cho-Cho, who was just a few inches away, staring out the window. She also couldn't stop thinking about Mister Sellars lying under the carpet in the back. Were they going to take the boy back to his home outside the Base? Why did Mister Sellars want to bring him along? And why was Mister Sellars hiding if Daddy and Mommy knew about him and knew that he wasn't bad? She hoped it wouldn't hurt his legs to be curled up like that. She hoped he wouldn't be scared. He had said he had work to do, but what could he do in the dark, in a little small place like that?
There was just a hint of light in the sky as they drove toward the front gate of the Base, enough to make the trees look like black cutouts. Most of the houses had a light on in front or inside, but the ones that didn't looked dark and sad.
Her daddy talked to the soldier at the first guardhouse for a few minutes. She thought another soldier looked through the window at her and Cho-Cho, but she wasn't sure because she was pretending to be asleep.
They stopped for less time at the second guardhouse, then they were out beyond the fences and driving. She could see the sky now, all gray but with light behind it. Her mother and father were talking quietly, but they weren't arguing. The terrible boy had his eyes closed.
Christabel couldn't think about anything any more. The gentle bump, bump, bump of the car and the noise of the engine made her want to go to sleep for real, so she did.
"I really thought we were done here," Ramsey said.
"Don't blame me," Beezle replied. "I didn't pass you that note."
Catur Ramsey sighed. The streets and alleys of Madrikhor were becoming depressingly familiar. "Which way did you say it was?"
"Street of Silver Coins," the disembodied voice told him. "Take a right when you get to the Ogre Fountain. It's not too long a walk."
"Easy for you to say," Ramsey grumbled.
He had been following up the last of several leads developed from the files he had received from the Polito kid—better known here in the Middle Country as the wizard Dreyra Jarh—and like all the rest it had come to nothing. Like the others, it had also come to nothing in a particularly Middle-Countryish way, requiring a long walk to somewhere. The contact—another pretend wizard—turned out to have vacated his enchanter's cottage in the Darksome Wood, but as Ramsey had stood on the picturesquely shabby front porch, cursing the fruitless visit, he had discovered a cryptic note in his own pocket, a folded square of parchment reading "Blue Book of Saltpetrius" that he knew damn well hadn't been there at the beginning of the expedition.
"How did it get there?" he had demanded of Beezle.
"Search me," the agent had said, his gear sufficient to convey a verbal shrug. "One of those black squirrels maybe. There were a lot of 'em out today."
Ramsey had only been able to shake his head. How could you properly pursue a case of life-or-death importance where you had to track down teenage sorcerers and information was dropped into your pocket by hired squirrels?
"Hey, Beezle, isn't that the Scriptorium over there?" Ramsey pointed to a large impressive tower looming several blocks away above the local skyline, basalt walls smoldering in the torchlight of midnight Madrikhor, roof covered with gargoyles like nuts on an ice-cream sundae. "We're going the wrong direction."
"Nah," his invisible companion said. "That's the Scriptorium Arcanum—where they keep the books of magic spells and like that. Real high-volume operation, lotsa visitors. The Saltpetrius thing is some kinda local government document, so we're going to the Scriptorium Civilis. See, that's it right there."
Ramsey at first had no idea what Beezle was referring to, since the building in front of them was tiny and rundown even for this part of Madrikhor. He took a few steps forward, squinting, and saw the plaque above the front gate—"Scrip or um. " Apparently they had a bit of a woodworm problem.
Like most of the places in Madrikhor, especially near the center of town, the Scriptorium was bigger than it looked on the outside, but since it had looked pretty damn small from the outside that wasn't a very impressive trick. What lay beyond the front door was a dark room lit by a few meager lamps, its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stuffed with scrolls and bound volumes in many varieties of neglect and decay.
The ancient creature behind the front desk took so long to respond to his question that at first Ramsey thought it was an uninhabited sim. When the gaunt, bearded thing finally moved, stretched, yawned, scratched itself in several spots, then gestured to a small stairwell near the back of the room, it was like watching a mechanical toy ratcheting through the last spasm of a winding.
"You take me to the nicest places, Beezle," he subvocalized.
"Huh. You like this joint?" Apparently the agent was not geared for sarcasm.
The clerk on duty downstairs at first seemed to provide a marked contrast to the upstairs employee. The y
oung elf prince was the complete package—tall, slender, golden-haired, with pointed ears and an angular catlike face—but as he listened to Ramsey's query with a look of dull disinterest, the lawyer noticed that the elfin sim's face was no more detailed or individual than that of a mannequin, as though the clerk had been forced to settle for some kind of unmodified starter set,
"Saltpetrius?" The elf prince frowned like counter help in a fast-food depot asked to detail the heritage of the vat-beef. "Dunno. Back there, somewhere." He hooked a pale thumb in the direction of a narrow corridor between two leaning shelves. "Under 'S,' prob'ly. Unless it's under 'B' for 'Blue Book'. . . ."
Working his way back to Adventurer Class on minimum wage, Ramsey guessed.
This downstairs room was if anything darker and more cramped than the prisonlike conditions of the ground floor. It took Ramsey long minutes of squinting and fumbling in the shadowy "S" aisle, not to mention a few near misses with death-by-book-avalanche, before he found the volume in question, a small tome with a greasy leather cover. It was fortunate that the name "Saltpetrius" was printed prominently on the spine, because he would have needed to build a bonfire with several dozen of the other volumes to be able to make out the color.
Ramsey carried it out into the closest thing to useful lighting the room provided. The clerk was slumped behind the counter, his bland face looking at nothing as he tapped his pointy-booted foot aimlessly to some stirring adventurer's anthem he alone could hear.
The book itself was an impenetrable tangle of densely packed, illegible handwritten characters. Ramsey was feeling his bemusement curdle into disgust when a square of parchment dropped out of the pages and drifted to the floor. He picked it up quickly, sneaking a look at the clerk, but His Elfin Majesty didn't seem as though he would have noticed if Ramsey had turned into a crocodile and begun singing "Streets of Laredo."
Step through the back door, the note read. Ramsey compared it with the note he had found in his pocket. It looked like it had come from the same source.
"They want me to go out the back door," he subvocalized to Beezle. "Do you think it's an ambush or something like that?"
"Seems like a lot o' trouble just to knock your head in," the agent pointed out. "You can hire a couple of guys in any tavern around here who'd beat you to tapioca in broad daylight for half a tankard of beer each."
God, listen to me, Ramsey thought in disgust. Ambush. Like I was somewhere it mattered, instead of in a role-playing game.
"Right," he told Beezle, and stuffed the second note into the pocket of his cloak. "Then I think I'll go find the back door."
It wasn't hard to locate, although getting to it meant stepping over piles of unfiled scrolls against the back door. Ramsey guessed they probably didn't have fire marshals in the Middle Country.
The alley was suitably damp and dark. After Ramsey took a look around and saw no one waiting, or any object big enough to hide someone, he let the door fall shut behind him.
"I feel like the new kid at summer camp," he told Beezle. "The one who keeps getting sent out to find left-handed smoke-shifters. . . ."
Something flared in front of him so abruptly that he staggered back, instinctively raising his hands before his face to keep from being burned. But not only did the pulsing white thing give off no heat, despite its bright glare the alley around it also remained sunken in shadow.
"What the hell. . . ?" Ramsey said. He grabbed at his sword, struggling to wrestle it out of the sheath even as the white shape coalesced into something vaguely human in outline. It raised the raw shapes that were its arms, but did not step toward him.
"Good evening, Mister Ramsey," it said, just quietly enough to suggest discretion. The voice was obviously filtered; it sounded like nothing human. "I apologize for all the mystery, but it really is necessary, whatever you may think. My name is Sellars . . . and I think it's time the two of us had a conversation."
CHAPTER 23
Buried in the Sky
NETFEED/MUSIC: Horrible Animals to Split Even Farther
(visual: Benchlows at home in pool)
VO: Twins Saskia and Martinus Benchlow, founding members of My Family And Other Horrible Horrible Animals, broke up their band this year, but now they have decided to split in the old-fashioned way, too.
(visual: close-up on connective tissue)
VO: The Benchlows, who are conjoined twins, have decided that they can best lead their individual artistic lives if they surgically separate themselves.
S. BENCHLOW: "It's a big step, but we both need to spread our wings and hit the ground running. It's hard to say good-bye, but we can always keep in touch the way other twins do. . . ."
M. BENCHLOW: "That's so true, you know, because we both have jets, but we've never used more than one of them at a time."
In the instant before the Quan Li thing killed her, Renie felt a surprising stab of regret that she would never see her father again.
I can't even tell him he was right—I was a fool to come here. . . .
Before the hammer of the flintlock drew back, something with clawing hands and feet flew into the murderer's face. It wrapped around his eyes in an instant and wrenched his arm upward so that he lost his balance and staggered backward, bellowing in rage. The murderer and the clinging, tawny attacker whirled across the landing like a single mad creature trying to bite its own tail. The Quan Li thing's shout of surprise had electrified Renie. She clambered onto her feet, then ducked as gun and arm whirled past at head level.
"!Xabbu!" She was full of wonder and terror. The man in the baboon sim was all over the Quan Li thing, but the gun had not yet been fired, and if their enemy could get his arm up for one clear shot. . . .
She took one step toward them and tripped over something. It was only when she fell onto her hands and knees, skidding in blood, that she realized it was Florimel's limp body. She staggered up, fighting to get footing, then flung herself forward. She tackled the spinning thing and threw the Quan Li creature back against the wall near the broken windows. Their enemy sagged but did not fall. He was struggling to tear clinging !Xabbu away from his face, but had managed to twist the gun free of the baboon's grip; before he could point it at either one of his attackers Renie grabbed the slender wrist in both hands and smashed it back against the wall. The gun clattered free and bounced across the floor and off the landing, down into shadow.
Renie turned back in time to see the complicated shape made by !Xabbu and the Quan Li thing reel a few steps back toward the window. The sill hit the dark-haired woman's form in the back of the legs; the Quan Li creature threw out his arms for balance, but he was confused and blinded by the clawing monkey. He tipped, grabbed at nothing, then fell backward into the evening sky with !Xabbu still clinging to its head.
Renie screamed, but the window now framed only emptiness.
A noise from outside sent her hurrying to the sill to look down.
To her amazement, !Xabbu and the Quan Li thing had not plummeted to their deaths, but had dropped onto a pitched roof half a dozen meters below that extended from the side of the tower like an awning and ended in a narrow parapet. Beyond that parapet was only air, a final fall down to the roofs of the House far below. !Xabbu had slid halfway down the roof. The Quan Li thing had the high ground.
The murderer had found a long rod with a metal hook on one end, a tool left behind by some long-dead workman, and was swinging it like a scythe, forcing !Xabbu farther down the slope and onto the parapet. As Renie watched fearfully, the thing in Quan Li's body snapped the rod out again and again, slashing at !Xabbu as he danced back along the plastered rail. Only his small size and quick reflexes saved him, but he had to drop over the parapet to avoid the last blow. He swung by his hands for a heart-stopping moment before pulling himself back up again, but the Quan Li thing was still swinging the rod in swift, wicked arcs, intent on driving him to the corner of the parapet. Renie desperately wanted to help !Xabbu, but she knew she could not drop such a distance and keep her balanc
e on that steep slope.
The gun! she thought, then remembered that it had fallen off the landing. Even if it hadn't already shattered into several antique pieces, by the time she found it !Xabbu would surely have been killed.
Something scraped behind her. She whirled away from the windowsill to find T4b staggering up the stairs toward the landing.
"He shot you," Renie said, conscious of how stupid that sounded even as the words escaped her.
"Seen." He hesitated for a moment at the top step, where Emily crouched weeping with her face in her hands, then stepped over Florimel without looking down, but with a certain care nevertheless. T4b's armored chest was a puckered, blackened mess of what looked like melted plastic. All that remained of his voluminous robe was tatters. "That's why I got a Manstroid D-9 Screamer. Sixin' gear."
"Help me get down there—he's got !Xabbu trapped on the roof."
T4b peered at the window, then back at Renie. "You sure?"
"Jesus Mercy, of course I'm sure! He'll kill him!" She scrabbled on the ground for the sharpened curtain rod she had lost in the shock of the first gunshot, then set it by the window and climbed up onto the sill, grateful at least that the broken glass had fallen out long ago. "Just take my hand, then brace yourself and let me down as carefully as you can. I'll try to find some handholds or footholds."
T4b made a doubtful noise but did as she had told him, grabbing her wrist with his gauntleted hands. She could feel a tingling from the hand that had been seemingly vaporized in the patchwork simworld, but it seemed otherwise as strong and sturdy as the other. As she let go of the windowsill and felt herself swing out into space, she looked down. The Quan Li thing still had !Xabbu pinned at the edge of the roof, forcing him to use his simian skills to the utmost just to stay alive. The enemy turned and gave Renie a swift, seemingly casual glance, but took a moment to pull a long, ugly knife from his belt before turning back with disheartening swiftness to lash at the baboon again. !Xabbu had tried to take advantage of the distraction to scramble down from the parapet, and now had to swing back up once more. The rod hissed so close to his retreating form Renie thought it must have touched his fur.