“There’s a girl,” Ed said. “I don’t have a lot of friends, just a few people I get together with now and then.”
“Urizen will find them. He’ll use them to get to you. He has no scruples. Avoid talking to anyone until I can figure out our next move. Ken will contact you soon, once I’ve decided what to do. Most of all, you need to get away from Washington, where Urizen is strongest. Leave right away.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood up. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I hope we all survive to see each other again.”
* * *
Every day Fleming and the others were forced to watch a movie in the big room with the blue horse painted on the ceiling. Fleming liked movies, but not this kind of movie. These films were strange and incomprehensible, full of loud sounds and disturbing images that made no sense. They were projected on a bedsheet hung against the rock wall of the chamber. The projector was a big machine that looked like it had been borrowed from a movie theater. When the movie ended, Seymour had trouble remembering what he had seen. Even so, the images from the movies filled his dreams every night, and the dreams were fearsome.
All the while, Arthur sat chained in his chair without moving or speaking. Fleming thought they were preventing him from speaking somehow. Five men sat on folding chairs next to his platform, focusing all their attention on him, and it seemed that whatever they were doing was keeping him subdued. Four of those men were Nathaniel’s original disciples, men who had been with him since before the invasion of Society House. The fifth was Jason Lingelback. Lingelback had been one of Arthur’s closest men. Fleming didn’t know how they had managed to get him on their side, but it chilled him to know that such a thing could happen. It was like a case of Stockboy Syndrome, or whatever it was called. Looking at Lingelback, it was clear that his will had somehow been broken. His eyes didn’t focus right. Nathaniel had removed the flashing device from his neck and given him a blue shirt and jeans, which appeared to be the uniform of the Horsemen.
And Lingelback wasn’t the only one. Of the thirty who had been taken, most still had the look of caged animals. But a few of them had changed. They were no longer locked up at night, and they ate and socialized with Nathaniel’s men during the day. Fleming wasn’t sure what had changed them, but he was sure it must be something dreadful.
Underneath it all was the hum. Fleming could hear it day and night, like the sound of machinery deep beneath the earth. It was a deep, soft, insistent sound like a giant humming a single, long note to himself. The hum had been a mere curiosity at first, one of the many odd things about this place. Fleming had thought he’d get used to it. But during that first night he had awoken in the darkness and realized the hum had been surrounding and filling his dreams until it felt like his whole body was vibrating along with it. It made him feel sick to his stomach. He’d been unable to eat much for breakfast the next morning.
By the end of the first week, the hum was driving him out of his mind.
Fleming quickly learned the names of the Horsemen. The second-worst one was a man named Mr. Tinch, a vicious brute with long, blond hair who took great pleasure in causing pain. He never told them his first name. Tinch had taken a special interest in Seymour, and it was not the sort of interest you wanted a man like Mr. Tinch to take in you.
Tinch was only the second-worst. The very worst one was called Croaker Norge. He was seldom seen, and never spoke. Norge was a fleshy man, with pale gray eyes and floppy wet lips like a fish. Something about those eyes made Fleming want to run away whenever Croaker Norge looked at him. Seymour made sure to stay as far from Norge as possible.
Each man was locked in a private cell at night. The cells were in one of the upper levels of the huge network of tunnels, where the straight corridors had concrete walls and bright fluorescent lights overhead. Every room contained a narrow bed with a soft but uncomfortable mattress, a toilet, a sink, and a thick steel door that locked from the outside. There was a small ventilation opening in the corner, out of which came a steady stream of cool, fresh air, but it was far too small for a person to fit into. Each prisoner was fed in his cell. There were few opportunities for the men to communicate with one another.
Each of the Society men was given a set of clothes to wear. They were dull green, like Army clothes. Seymour had noticed that a lot of the items used in the tunnels appeared to be military in nature, which made him wonder whether there was an Army base nearby.
At first, there were only two times each day when he saw any of the others. One was when they were taken to the Horse Room to watch those terrible movies. The chamber was deep below ground, where the manmade tunnels gave way to natural caves. They were brought there in groups of ten, each group accompanied by two of the Horsemen. That was what Nathaniel called them: his Horsemen. The blue horse painting stared madly down at them from the ceiling as they watched the movies. The groups of ten changed every day, so Fleming saw different men each time. He tried to keep track of which men he’d seen, but the constant mechanical hum made it hard to think.
The other time he was allowed to see other men from the Society was when they were brought to the meeting chamber for their exercise time. This was Fleming’s least favorite part of the day. Stripping down to their shorts, they did pushups, jumping jacks, and sit-ups. They ran in place and lifted weights. They didn’t yell at the men who failed to keep up. There were no verbal lashings or physical punishments. If any man didn’t obey the orders promptly, he was rewarded with a flash of pain that the leader of the Horsemen applied directly to the offender’s brain. Fleming, who was not in the best of shape, received these shocks more often than most.
Every few days they were organized into two groups and made to fight each other one-on-one. Fleming always fared poorly in the fights, and dreaded the days when he would be made to do it. Sometimes they fought with bare hands, sometimes with padded weapons. Once, on a day when the fights were officiated by Mr. Tinch, the pads were taken off and Adams and Larson had to fight each other with baseball bats. Larson had quickly disarmed Franklin Adams and pummeled him without mercy, leaving dark, wet welts on Adams’ back. Tinch had let that fight go on too long. By the time he called it, they’d had to haul Adams’ unconscious body out of the room.
As they were dragging him out, Nathaniel had watched from the doorway with a dark expression. He had not been pleased with Tinch that day.
Through it all, the hum was always there. Seymour got used to it after a while. He was able to eat normally after a few days as the nausea got a little better. One night, after two or three weeks of captivity, Fleming was finally able to fall asleep and get a little bit of rest in spite of the hum. He still awoke several times a night to hear the sound boring into his skull, but interrupted sleep was better than none at all.
Three days after that first restful night, they stopped locking Seymour in his cell. When he got up in the morning, he found the door unlocked. Thinking they had just forgotten, he waited for a guard to escort him to breakfast as usual. A lot of time passed. Fleming’s stomach began growling. He waited as long as he could, but hunger got the best of him and he opened the door to look out into the hall.
There was no one in the corridor. All the cell doors were closed. His first inclination was to attempt an escape. He was mulling this thought over when another door opened down the hall and Kevin Larson stepped out. They looked at each other in confusion. They were soon joined by Alan Spence, who had been in charge of the Society’s bank accounts.
“Door was unlocked,” Larson said to no one in particular. His voice sounded out of place in the otherwise silent corridor.
“Mine too,” said Seymour.
Larson ignored him. He was crinkling his nose, as though smelling something. Soon Seymour noticed it as well. There was a faint, familiar smell in the air. Spence and Larson looked at each other, and Spence said what they were all thinking. “Bacon.” They stood there for a moment, the red lights on their metal collars blinking slowly. Then they both took off running in s
earch of the source of the smell.
Fleming didn’t go with them. Larson had always been friendly with Spence, who handled accounts for the Society. Alan Spence wasn’t openly part of Arthur’s faction, but Fleming didn’t quite trust him.
Questions were bouncing around inside Seymour’s head. Why would Nathaniel let any Society men wander around unguarded, after weeks of watching them so closely? Was it a mistake? If so, would he get in trouble for leaving his room? Probably. But this was an opportunity he couldn’t waste—the chance to explore, and possibly to escape these tunnels.
But he was terribly hungry. The smell of food was hard to resist. And the hum kept on humming.
Seymour’s cell was the last one at the end of the hallway. He walked past the other cells until he reached a cross-corridor. To his right, the way sloped gently up toward ground level. To the left, it went down into the deeper areas, caverns in the rock that had been widened by whoever had dug the mine. The smell of food was coming from that way. He looked right again, toward possible escape, then left toward his captors and their food.
In the end, hunger beat curiosity. He wouldn’t get far on an empty stomach, Seymour reasoned. He had to keep his strength up. Besides, if they had left his cell unlocked once, they could very well do it again. He turned left and found his way to the dining hall where the Horsemen ate.
Larson and Spence were at one of the tables, stuffing themselves with bacon and eggs and toast and oatmeal. A few of the men in blue sat at the other tables, but no other Society men were present. There was a kitchen in the back, where two of the Horsemen were serving food. Fleming found a tray and was helping himself to a large helping of scrambled eggs when he became aware that all conversations had stopped. The men were all staring at the big man who had just entered the room.
Croaker Norge, with his fish lips and dead, gray eyes, was coming straight toward Seymour. Fleming froze, hoping he would walk right past, but he did not.
“F-ffffffleming,” Norge said, spittle flying from his lips into Seymour’s scrambled eggs.
“Yes, sir,” Fleming replied shakily.
“Come with m-me. You’re l-l-late for work.”
13
Scarface
The phone rang just after three in the morning, waking Sarah out of a sound sleep. She jumped out of bed and hurried to answer the door. But the door wasn’t where she expected it to be, and she bumped into a wall instead. That woke her up enough to realize that she was not in her own apartment—she was in a hotel in San Francisco—and it was the phone that was ringing, not the doorbell.
She knocked the telephone to the floor and had to get down on all fours to search for the receiver. Then she found it, held it up to her face, and said, “Huhhll.” But she had the receiver upside-down, and had to flip it over before she could hear anything.
“—me to call you,” a man was saying.
“Hello?” Sarah tried again.
“Can you hear me? Is this Miss Greenbaum?”
“Yes,” she replied, remembering a moment too late that she was supposed to be using a different name.
“This is Lester. Eileen asked me to call. She said you’d given her some kind of ultimatum.”
Sarah rubbed her eyes. Tiny spots of light danced in her vision from the pressure of her fingers. “That was two days ago,” she said. “I told her I’d quit if I didn’t hear from you by yesterday.”
“Ah, then I’m too late. It’s been a pleasure working with you. I wish you the best of luck in the future. Good night.”
“Wait!” She had meant it at the time, that she was ready to quit, but that was starting to seem like a rash decision. “Are you still there?”
She heard a soft laugh on the line. “Yes, I’m still here. Do you still work for me?”
“For now.”
“I’m glad. It would be a shame to lose you so soon after passing the test.”
Sarah was still sitting on the floor in the dark. She picked up the telephone and sat on the edge of the bed, then switched on the lamp. “Yes,” she said, “it would.” Her groggy mind strained to remember what he’d just said. “What test?”
“I needed to know if I could trust you to dedicate yourself to your work. As Eileen told you, your job is to do what I say. Even when it’s difficult. Even if it means leaving behind everything you care about. You’ve proven quite trustworthy so far, even if you are a bit of a complainer.”
That pissed her off a little, but she was too tired to engage in an argument. “Eileen never told me there would be a test.”
“That’s because you weren’t supposed to know.”
Lester was lucky that Sarah’s stomach had started feeling better. If he’d called when she was still feeling sick, she would have let him have it. Even so, the man had some explaining to do. “How come I’ve never met you?” she demanded, maybe a bit too forcefully. But he was the one who’d called her at three in the morning.
“You mean, how come I’ve never bothered to show myself and give you my orders in person?”
“You got it.”
He laughed again. The man was enjoying his game a little too much. “Didn’t Eileen tell you I’m a very busy man?”
“That’s bullcrap.”
“It’s a bad excuse, but it’s the simple truth. I’m on the road every day of the year except for my birthday. I always take my birthday off. Haven’t been in the Manhattan office for at least six months. There was just no way I could have met with you in person.”
“But you obviously know how to use a phone.”
She heard him sigh. “You’ve got me there. Yes, I could have called. But first I wanted to see how you’d do on my test. You’ve shown me that you’re ready for the next phase. None of the others lasted beyond the first two weeks. Congratulations—you’ve just been promoted.”
“Does that mean I can stop traveling?”
“Ahhh, no. Your trips are essential to the business. But you do get a raise and a new title. You’re now an A&R Assistant.
“That’s already my title,” she said.
“Oh. Senior A&R Assistant, then. How’s an extra thousand dollars a year sound?”
“Two thousand.”
He snorted loudly. “I’m not giving you two,” he said. “Fifteen hundred. And you need to stop complaining so much to Eileen. It gets her down.”
“Fine. But I want to be home on the weekends.”
“Lady,” he said good-naturedly, “you’re a pain in the rear end. Ron told me you would be. Look, I’ll tell Judy to make sure you’re home at least two weekends a month. That’s the best I can do.”
Sarah supposed she wouldn’t do any better than this in her negotiation; in fact, she was surprised he’d conceded as much as he had. “Deal,” she said.
“Whoa, not quite. You passed the test, but you’re still too flighty for my taste. I’m going to need some kind of a commitment. Can’t have you quitting at the drop of a hat. I want you to commit to at least one year with Nightfinger, starting tomorrow.”
A year. The first couple of months had already been enough to make her want to call it quits. A year… What would Ed say about that? He hated how much she was away. She wanted a job, to prove that she could be independent, but this was proving to be too much for her. “I don’t think I can agree to that,” she said.
“Think about it. I’d hate to see you leave us. Your next assignment is too important to risk losing you.” He hesitated. “It could be dangerous. Very slightly dangerous.”
That woke her up the rest of the way. “Why would it be dangerous?”
“Miss Greenbaum, you’re a smart gal. I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that Nightfinger Records is not just a record company.”
Where was that coming from? Sarah hadn’t guessed anything of the sort. “I had my suspicions,” she said.
“I could tell you were onto us. Oh, sure, we make records. That’s our bread and butter. Our revenue stream, as they say. But our real business is much more complex.”
What on earth had she gotten herself into? “And would you care to let me in on what exactly Nightfinger Records does, besides making records?”
“I would love to tell you. But―”
“But you’re not going to.”
“I can’t. Not just yet. You need to understand, the work we do is very important, and very sensitive.”
“Are you some kind of spy outfit? Oh no, that’s it. You’re with the government, aren’t you? I should’ve listened to Ed.”
Lester Myles laughed again, this time with a hint of nervousness in his voice. “No! You’ve got us all wrong.”
“He told me not to trust you, and this is why.”
“We have nothing to do with the government.”
“But if you did, you wouldn’t tell me.”
He paused to think about that. “I suppose I wouldn’t. All I can do is give you my word. If you agree to help us, you’ll be doing something important. Something more important than anything you’ve ever done.”
Sarah pulled the receiver away from her ear, stared at it for a long moment, then dropped it down on the hook. The conversation was a bit much for her at this hour. “Insane,” she muttered to herself as she turned off the light and got back in bed. “Ridiculous.” She was probably dreaming it all anyway. Even if she wasn’t dreaming, this was no time of night to be making big decisions.
The phone rang again. She fumbled for the receiver. “Yeah?”
“You hung up on me,” said Lester.
“I wanted to see if you were for real. Sometimes I have crazy dreams.”
“You can have your two thousand. Is that real enough for you?”
“I think you’re out of your mind.”
“I’ve been told that before,” he said. “You may be right.”
The Music of the Machine (The Book of Terwilliger 2) Page 19
