She’d better make it back home.
Is this what it was like? A stream of words she couldn’t turn off?
She’s going to die there.
“Shut up!” Pauline screamed.
Oh! Someone just screamed “shut up” in my head! said the voice.
What? Maybe Pauline truly was going crazy. Now the voice was hearing voices in its head.
This would never have happened if I hadn’t been so selfish, said the voice.
Pauline banged her head on the hard stone floor, but it didn’t help.
“I need you, Mersey!” shouted Pauline as loudly as she could, but the thick, fetid air and dank walls and utter darkness swallowed it up.
What? said the voice.
“What?”
I said, What?
“I said I need Mersey.”
Pauline was sure she’d lost it; she was now conversing with the voice in her head.
I need you, too. Uh, where are you?
Ah, the voice sounded like Mersey.
“I refuse to answer a nonexistent entity!” shouted Pauline.
Pauline’s voice is in my head. Am I going nuts?
“Uh, Mersey?”
Pauline?
“That couldn’t possibly be you, could it?”
And that couldn’t possibly be you, could it?
“I can’t see how. Yet it appears to be true. Oh my, I’ve lost my mind.”
Pauline, said the Mersey figment in her head, you wouldn’t happen to be in possession of the missing piece of fulgurite?
“What are you talking about?”
Do you have it or not?
“I … do.”
That’s how we’re communicating. Remember what the internet said? Two pieces from the same fulgurite can allow long-distance communication?
At first Pauline refused to believe this. It just wasn’t possible.
On the other hand … pig-turtles shouldn’t have been possible, either. Or vampires. Or Balliopes. Or vast underground hospitals devoted to keeping them hale.
“I … I guess so,” said Pauline, allowing herself to believe, the relief she was not alone so potent she was forced to put her head between her knees to keep from fainting. “Mersey, you won’t believe this, but I’m in the basement of a ten-mile-deep hospital.”
I know; I’m on the website—unbelievable.
“I can’t find Chance; he was here, in a jail cell, but he’s escaped, and I have no idea where to find him.”
Don’t worry. I will help. You’re not alone.
CHAPTER 18
Chance woke to find himself in a round room with yellow walls, secured to a low table with thick woven straps like seat belts. His eyes were burning from whatever chemical he’d been sprayed with, his sinuses felt stuffed with rubber bullets, his tongue was swollen to twice its size, and his throat was virtually closed off. He coughed. A Balliope stood and made its way over.
“What’s the matter, little human?” it said. It was wearing a surgical mask.
“Everything hurts.”
The Balliope nearly fell to pieces laughing.
“Whoo!” it said. “Priceless! Well, just so you know, you won’t feel much better where you’re going.”
“Where?” Chance felt he had nothing to lose by being direct.
“The basement, baby. The jail.”
“No!”
Chance’s pockets felt light. They had probably taken everything. Had they found the letter, too?
“Yes. The jail. Ha-ha-ha!”
“Please, at least don’t put me in cell number two hundred ninety-nine!”
The Balliope looked at him closely. Chance noticed it was wearing a name tag: Nurtzi-Clajk.
“You,” said Nurtzi-Clajk, “have absolutely no say over which cell you get. Pal.”
“Anywhere but number two hundred ninety-nine, have mercy!” said Chance, pretending to cry. Or was he pretending? He couldn’t tell. He felt pretty awful, and he thought a real cry might do him good.
The door opened and four more Balliopes strode in, their long halberds nearly poking the ceiling. Each was wearing a gas mask. Did they think he was infectious?
“Finally,” said Nurtzi-Clajk. “What took so long? Never mind. Chet, take our human to the basement.”
“Where?” said Chet, the largest Balliope.
“Why,” said Nurtzi-Clajk, “Cell number two hundred ninety-nine, of course.”
“Nooo!” wailed Chance, delighted. Reverse psychology never worked on his sister.
Chet wheeled him into yet another hallway, this one beige and green. Unlike the last hallway he’d been in, it was bustling with all sorts of beings. Some were in wheelchairs, slowly rolling down the hall, weaving among the hurrying figures of creatures dressed in hospital scrubs, who in turn dodged creatures wheeling mops and buckets and pushing laundry hampers and carrying bags of mail. Everyone dodged the golf carts hurtling down the hall, their drivers yelling “Delivery for Miss Tolphrinombah” or “Emergency, coming through,” or “Looking for Mr. Phlees Irkis.” The whole scene, in spite of its frantic pace, seemed perfectly choreographed.
Chet took elevator after elevator after elevator, embarking and disembarking, sometimes even backtracking, and, several times, taking trams from one bank of elevators to another on the same floor; hours and hours of this went by until a rickety elevator made entirely of wood dropped them off at the basement.
“Gah, I forgot how much it stinks down here,” said Chet, locking the door to the elevator. He started down the hall, jabbing at all the creatures that were reaching out of their cages for him. “Back, vermin, back!”
They slowly made their way along the dark passageway, lit only by pitch torches every dozen yards, until they reached Cell #299.
“Hey,” said Chet. “There’s already some dude in here. Hey, buddy, wake up, you got a roommate!”
The cell was indeed the domicile of a short elf-like man shackled to the wall by a long chain attached to his ankle. His long, stringy hair hung in greasy clumps. Very greasy, as though dipped in lard. Gross. Chet unstrapped Chance, dragged him in, and locked the door behind him with a many-toothed key. The being hissed at him with a deranged look, his greasy locks flying about his head. Chance cowered in a corner as far away as possible from Simon Sleight, if this was in fact he.
“Human, I don’t want to ever see you again,” said Chet, in a way that seemed to prophesy an encounter in the not-too-distant future.
Chance waited until Chet was out of sight, then checked his pocket. Ah, thank heavens. The letter was still there. All he had to do was deliver it, get out of this infernal cell, find Arbipift Obriirpt and the escape map, and flee.
“Hello,” said Chance.
“Fie!” shouted the thing, slowly getting to its feet.
Chance said, “Are you, uh, Si—”
“May it please the gods dawdling in their pantheon above, what in the name of Donbaloh have I done to warrant the close and fetid society of a human companion? Are you colonized with disease? Not that it matters to me.”
“I—”
“When,” it said, its voice rising, “in the infinite curve of time has a détenu of the sacred bowels of the great infirmary’s terminal story been obliged to share a cell with another being of any ilk?”
“—have a note—”
“And a child, no less—a gobbling, stupefied tween—innocent of all suffering, devoid of reason and a past, and delivered, I suppose, by the same vengeful bureaucracy that deposited me into this reeking Hades to begin with!”
“—from—”
“O, why must I suffer not only the chary gruel and botulinal water so infrequently imparted me, but also the obligation to share it with what is clearly a ravenous beastie of bottomless gut?”
“—Fallor—”
“Whom I cannot dispatch in my shoe box duchy—for who would remove its corpse?—and whom I cannot flog into silence, as the strength I once possessed in such abundance has now been withered b
y Iptid’s Misery, which will at any moment render me deceased!”
“—Medoby—”
“Nor whom can I disregard: Who among the living can allow a mosquito to suck its very ichor without slapping it away or permit the mantle rat to gnaw at one’s feet without punting it into space?”
“—Dox—”
“And, furthermore, why does a spineless piglet … Just a moment here. What did you say, human?”
“What?”
“Were you just invoking the name Fallor Medoby Dox?” said Detainee 251987.
“Uh, yes,” said Chance, more than a little frightened of this thing even though it appeared to be in ill health, presumably from Iptid’s Misery, whatever that was. “I’m here to deliver a letter from him.”
“To me?”
“Maybe,” said Chance. “What’s your name?”
“Simon. Simon Sleight, Deviklopt, thank you very much.”
Chance removed the soiled and multiply creased letter from his back pocket and handed it to Simon, who snatched it away with one hand, crawled over to the bars, and read it in the dim light of a torch.
“Human, how did you come to be in possession of this?”
Chance told him.
“And … and you risked your own life to save a population you were not even sure was extant?”
“Uh, I guess, uh, I felt really bad taking the letter in the first place.”
“Yes, that was without a doubt a reprehensible act of impropriety. However, I must admit that the chances of my receiving this letter through the customary channels were very slim indeed—postal delivery is, to say the least, not very reliable here in Saint Philomene’s, and it’s quite absent on the penal floors. Your bringing it personally speaks well not only of you, but of the human race.”
“Oh, well—”
“Prithee, what is your name and title?”
“Chance. Uh, kid.”
“Kid Chance.”
“Just Chance is fine.”
“Chance it is then,” said the Deviklopt, carefully placing the unfolded letter on the floor. “Chance, I have much to ask of you.”
“What?” said Chance, looking around the cell. As old and decrepit as it was, it still appeared sturdy enough to retain a boy and a fever-wracked Deviklopt forever.
“The one million eight hundred thousand patients and staff members of Saint Philomene’s Infirmary for Magical Creatures are, unknowingly, at the mercy of a vile madman, a lone evildoer, a desperate and self-serving criminal who happens to have little time left on this side of the meager scrim separating life from death. Perhaps less than a day or two.”
Simon began to cough—breathless, rib-shaking, spasmodic hacks that alarmed Chance.
“Simon!”
“It’s all right, all is well,” he said, the fit finally subsiding. “As you may have surmised, I am not well, either. I will also be gone soon, likely in less than twenty-four hours.”
“But the paper,” said Chance. “The flerk. We can save you.”
“Indeed.”
Simon produced a tin can from somewhere. He picked up the letter and wadded it up into a small ball, then placed it in the can. From a tin bucket he poured in just enough water to cover the paper ball, then set it on the ground.
“Two hours we wait. Have you a watch?”
“No, but I can count seconds without thinking about it.” Chance did not want to know how Simon planned to spill twelve drops of his own blood.
“Then begin counting, young savant. Where was I? Ah! The sociopathic monster with our lives in its hands. You see, it is a human. Like yourself.”
“How did it get in?” Chance felt strange calling a human an it, but when in Rome …
“In Oppabof—which I’m sure you’ve realized is our name for the terranean world you humans inhabit, along with vampires, kelpies, so on and so forth—there is a very rare disease. There it is called JENCKX30; here it is called GIGI. It is always fatal in Oppabof. Here in the infirmary, however, there exists a treatment.”
“Is it flerk?” said Chance, wondering idly how Simon Sleight was planning to boil off the water when the time came.
Simon threw his head back and laughed.
“If only it were that easy. No, lad, flerk will not cure the madman. Only a certain medicine can do it. And there is only one creature that knows how to concoct that drug. And that creature, Yryssy Ayopy, a Geckasoft, is also very ill and has only a few days left to live, at most. She is in a deep coma. But now that we will soon have a dose of precious flerk, it must be delivered to Yryssy so she may be cured and then able to deliver the medicine, called Ypocrasyne, to the human with GIGI: Dave Green, from Lubbock, Texas.”
“Why is Yryssy the only one that knows how to concoct Ypocrasyne?”
“The formula was considered so sensitive that it was passed down only by word of mouth from Yryssy’s grandfather, who developed it, to Yryssy’s father, to Yryssy. Yryssy is the only survivor in the Ayopy line, so now she is the only one who knows it.”
“Why is Dave Green so bad?”
“Dave Green is in control of a virus that he will release into the air, killing every last living thing in Saint Philomene’s Infirmary for Magical Creatures, unless Yryssy is revived and cures him of GIGI. He will then return to Oppabof. But if he feels he will die, he will release the virus. He is quite mad. That is the issue—GIGI, in its end stages, drives one, er, as they say, bonkers.”
“But how did he get here in the first place?”
Simon grew quiet. He peered into the tin can, swirled it about once or twice, and set it down.
“I play chess.”
“Chess?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
More silence. This was awkward. Chance was about to say “I do Pokémon” when Simon said, “I am a destructive force in the main line of the Ruy Lopez, and a concrete bunker with the Sicilian Defense, Najdorf Variation. Care for a game while we wait?”
“Uh, okay,” said Chance, wondering where Simon kept his chessboard, whether there would be enough light to see, and why he wasn’t answering his question.
“Very well. As I shall be dying soon, I will claim the privilege of white for the first game. Ready?”
“Uh…”
“Good,” said Simon, closing his eyes. “e4.”
Chance thought himself fairly adept at chess, especially when sacrificing pieces for positional advantages, but he was not sure if he could play without a chessboard. Or pieces. He had certainly never tried.
He closed his eyes, too, and pictured a white pawn on e4, the black array before him.
“e5.”
“Nf3.”
And Chance squeezed his eyes tight and essayed his imaginary c knight, the classic Ruy Lopez, an opening systematically studied in a 1561 book but known to have been included in the Göttingen manuscript in 1490. Simon attacked the knight with a bishop, Chance repelled it with a6, and the fight was on, but Chance knew that he was really just playing the opening from memory—once he got to the fifteenth move he would be at sea. And that was exactly what happened. A few treacherous moves on Chance’s part, and Simon played 21. c5! threatening c6, a discovered check. Chance thought for almost an hour, retreated a knight, then lost his mental image of the board and resigned before Simon could even play.
Simon opened his eyes.
“Well. You are a fine player, though I did not understand your bishop fianchetto at … 17! I suppose it is for the best that I accept your resignation. I would just be putting off answering your question about how Dave Green got here. So. Ever since I came to the infirmary—I was admitted for treatment of Iptid’s Misery, of course, three weeks ago—I have not been able to find a suitably skilled opponent in-house, apart from Yryssy Ayopy, who works here at Saint Philomene’s. She came to my room twice for a game, wearing a hazmat suit since Iptid’s Misery is highly contagious (don’t worry, humans are not at risk), but for the most part, she was too busy to play. So I found a computer t
erminal, hacked out of our infirmary intranet onto the Oppabof internet, and signed on to ChessKnight.com, which Yryssy is also a member of. This, as you can imagine, is verboten. After several games with talentless punters, I found an opponent a good deal better than I. Ultimately, I won seventeen and drew nineteen out of the sixty-seven games we played—and we started up a banter during games. I, of course, didn’t reveal I was from Donbaloh—not even one in a million subterranean creatures would—but he did eventually tell me he was dying of an incurable disease.”
“GIGI,” said Chance.
“Yes. I had grown fond of him and valued him as an opponent. In a rash moment of empathy, I told him about Saint Philomene’s Infirmary for Magical Creatures and Yryssy Ayopy, who was in possession of a cure.”
“He believed you?”
“Not at first. But what did he have to lose? I informed him of a pipe entryway within the third Dumpster behind an Albertsons franchise in Lubbock. I told him to vault into the Dumpster at a certain instant and he’d suddenly find himself in a little cart in a large pipe, moving at about ninety-five miles per hour. But I advised him to disguise himself beforehand. I told him to shave his head and put on some Marilyn Manson contact lenses and pretend he’s a ghoul, which is another race of Oppabof creatures that is susceptible to GIGI. Ghouls, unlike humans, are welcome here. Before long, Dave Green had arrived in Pipeport 311 and was being whisked to a private room to wait for Yryssy to concoct enough Ypocrasyne to cure him.
“But when they told Dave Green Yryssy was ill and unavailable to treat him, he lost his mind. He stormed through the hallways upsetting carts of surgical instruments, screaming, cursing out nurses and techs and maintenance crews, flinging insults, slamming doors, threatening ruin, tipping over creatures in sickbeds, and worse.”
“Worse?”
“Indeed.”
“Why didn’t the Balliopes just come get him and put him in jail?”
“Dave Green, who is a biochemist working for the United States government, produced a small amber vial and brandished it before the Balliopes who had gathered around him. He said it was a biological warfare virus called Terabug. He warned the Balliopes that if he dashed the vial to the floor, the virus would disperse throughout the infirmary in a matter of hours and kill every creature in it. He said that if they didn’t believe him, they should look him up on the internet—he was famous.”
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