She had always wanted to write something on a mirror in red lipstick.
She dropped the lipstick in her pocket.
Outside in the theater, the golf cart was gone. The doors she had come through were open. She walked down the hallway baring her fangs, keeping a close eye out for real vampires.
Every so often, she’d mark a red-lipstick X on a wall.
She took the first elevator she found down to the 2,279th floor. It opened onto a narrow, dark hallway. It took her eyes a moment to adjust. Directly across from her was a door with a small green glass window. Before she opened it, she made a lipstick X at eye level on the wall beside the door. She stepped through the door, made another X on the other side, and found herself on a narrow balcony looking down into a huge open space.
Huge.
It was hundreds of stories deep and thousands of feet in width, and in the midst of the space flew hot-air balloons; little flying-saucer-like craft; toy helicopters; and huge birdlike beasts not unlike pterodactyls, each making sounds similar to those Pauline had heard on the recording Mersey had played her.
This was where Dave Green was hiding. Right out in the open, somewhere.
CHAPTER 26
The immense, empty space dominated the center of Saint Philomene’s Infirmary for Magical Creatures. Middlespace was an open area in the shape of a stick of butter that was more than a third of a mile in breadth and more than a mile and a quarter deep. Around each of the seven hundred surrounding floors Middlespace took up was a balcony from which creatures could gaze. The space was placid and harmonious, and many beings spent time meditating on the balconies or watching the activities through one of the many telescopes, which cost merely one thin clahd to operate for a full thirty minutes. Once a week on the bottom floor, an orchestra assembled and played beautiful music that reached every floor in the acoustically perfect space.
Creatures flew kites, paper planes, and radio-operated helicopters; they blew bubbles and watched helium balloons float to the ceiling; huge Blutch spiders spun webs in the corners; great winged Flok’embles sailed through the air, chasing insects and smaller birds; lesser Perdelids glided on updrafts.
Flightless creatures could ride out into Middlespace on teacup-shaped open-air craft called jelsairs, which were provided by the infirmary’s Parks and Recreation Department for a nominal rental fee. For a bit more, hot-air balloons could also be rented for a full day or more, some with large baskets designed to carry a dozen creatures, some that held two or three, and some that held just one being; the last was merely a seat-belted armchair equipped with a small flame jet to heat the air in the balloon and a quiet fan that could be used to serenely navigate around the space.
Middlespace was so large that it produced its own weather: Clouds would sometimes form around the 2,000th floor, occasionally gray-green ones that exploded into crackling thunder and torrents of rain and hung with fleeting chandeliers of blue and pink lightning. When the storms ended, the jelsairs and Flok’embles and balloons of all sizes that had been forced to take shelter would repopulate the fresh, clean rain-washed air in Middlespace.
It was in one of the small one-creature balloon-chairs that Dave Green, international chess master (FIDE rating 2296), GIGI sufferer, military biochemist, possessor of a small vial, was presently seated. His right hand gripped the vial, holding it over the edge of the chair so that if he were to die, his hand would go limp and let the vial go, and it would plummet a mile and explode on the hard floor below. No one knew where Dave was, no one could hurt him, and no one could stop him. When it was time, Yryssy would radio Dave, who would reveal his location, which Yryssy Ayopy would fly to in a jelsair to cure him. At that time, he would simply float to a balloon station, disembark—vial still firmly in hand—and have Bittius personally escort him to a pipe that would carry him back to the Lubbock, Texas, Dumpster whence he’d come.
Dave floated in Middlespace, still disguised as a ghoul, careful not to lose his grip on the vial and careful not to drop the radio into space. Both of those scenarios spelled doom for Dave.
Dave’s greatest enemy was sleep. He had been floating out here without shut-eye for a long, long time, and sleep now heartily tugged at his eyelids. The fever—an indicator that the end was but a few hours away—had started a short while before. Now it throbbed like a tiny magnetar in the center of his brain.
The balloon imperceptibly rose and fell and rotated while toy helicopters whizzed by and jelsairs darted this way and that. Flok’embles swooped and dove, hunting, sometimes curling into balls and dropping a thousand feet before unfurling and landing gently on the floor of Middlespace, where they would pluck at their breast feathers and utter their distinctive icawk-awk at the patrons crowding the cafés and at the children swimming in pools of blue-green water and at the Balliopes scattered around the tennis courts like billiard balls on a vast table.
Dave Green checked his watch. He radioed Sir Amk Bittius IV.
“Mr. Green,” said Bittius, his tone a symphony of false levity. “Hello, hello. We are still working to revive Yryssy Ayopy.”
Toy helicopters thitthitthited; open-air jelsairs ossshed through the air; Flok’embles icawk-awked as they hunted for bugs and small birds. Dave Green was oblivious to the noise; he heard only the crash of the waves of disappointment in his mind.
“I see. And are you optimistic?” said Dave.
“Oh yes,” said Bittius. “Why don’t you let me know where you are, so when Yryssy is awake, no time will be wasted?”
“I don’t think so, Bittius. You just radio me when the time is near. And that time had better be almost nigh or quite a bit of blood will be on your hands.”
“But I—”
“Good-bye.”
Dave Green clicked off.
CHAPTER 27
Chance and Braig found the golf cart in the theater precisely where it had been left. The machine started right up, and Chance took off down the hallway at top speed, Braig navigating from the passenger seat and screaming “Emergency!” as creatures of every conceivable form leaped out of their path. Eventually they rounded a corner and shuddered to a stop in front of 2222.001, through whose open door Chance was relieved to behold Mrs. Rurriery, who lay flat on her back on a gurney, an IV line leading from a vein in one arm to a bag of ichor hanging from a hook on a pole.
“C’mon, Chance, let’s move!”
Chance undid the string of belts he’d wrapped around his waist, hooked one end to the head of Mrs. Rurriery’s gurney, rolled her out into the hallway, and tied the other end to the back of the golf cart. He started off slowly, then picked up speed until they were careening along the polished linoleum floor, Mrs. Rurriery in tow.
“Be careful taking corners!” shouted Braig. “Go right at the end of the hall!”
Chance slowly decelerated until they’d rounded the corner. Then he took off at top speed again. Soon they came to a bank of elevators, one of which went to the 2,250th floor and beyond.
“We’ll have to ditch the cart,” said Braig.
They unhooked the gurney, with Chance re-wrapping the belt-rope around his waist.
When the elevator came, they wheeled Mrs. Rurriery, still serenely insensate, inside the crowded car and waited while it stopped at every single floor all the way down to 2,250, where the three of them disembarked. They made their way toward Yryssy’s room. On the way, they stopped at a supply closet. Braig emerged with a yard’s length of clear tubing, some white medical tape, and several cannulas, then they made their way as quickly as possible to 2250.984, which they discovered happened to be guarded by two outsize Balliopes who looked like they ate nails and drank lye and brooked no shenanigans.
“Hello,” said Braig, carefully approaching the less menacing of the two. “We’re here to see Miss Yryssy Ayopy.”
“No entry,” it said. “Begone!”
Braig and Chance retreated. Chance noticed that 2250.986, right next door, was vacant.
The Balliopes didn’t no
tice when the trio ducked into the empty adjoining room.
“There’s no way we can get into Yryssy’s room,” said Braig, wheeling Mrs. Rurriery into a far corner.
“But there is,” said Chance. “We’ll need a really long piece of ichor tubing, though. Can you get that?”
Braig ran out the door, closing it behind him.
Chance studied the room until Braig returned with twenty yards of clear plastic tubing.
“Now what?” said Braig.
“Climb onto the gurney,” said Chance. “Straddle Mrs. Rurriery and stand up.”
Braig did as he was told. Then Chance climbed on, praying the gurney wouldn’t collapse under the weight of all three of them. He put the tape and the cannulas in his pocket and shouldered the coil of tubing.
“Now, hoist me up.”
Braig laced his fingers together, and Chance put his foot in the stirrup made by Braig’s hand.
“Now. One, two, three … up!”
Braig lifted Chance up to the ceiling. Chance knocked out the air vent grille and hoisted himself up into the cooling duct. Once inside, he uncoiled one end of the tubing, attached a cannula, and lowered it down to Braig.
“Hurry,” whispered Braig, taking the tube and sticking the sharp port cannula into the stent in Mrs. Rurriery’s vein. “We have to do this before Mrs. Rurriery has metabolized all the flerk in her system.”
Chance crawled through the air duct, letting out a little tubing as he went, until he arrived at a vent directly over Yryssy Ayopy’s bed in the next room. He peeked through the slits. She looked an awful lot like Mrs. Rurriery. Emerging from one arm was a long tube leading to a bag of oily brownish-green fluid hanging from a hook attached to a pole.
And there a Deviklopt sat in a large chair, looking much like a younger version of Simon Sleight. It was dozing, its horrible, carious mouth wide open and drooling on its smock.
Chance lifted out the air vent grille. He quietly unwrapped the belts from his waist. The buckle on the end of one featured a small metal hook. Chance slowly lowered it like a hook on a fishing line into Yryssy’s room. Reaching as far as he could, he guided it toward the long tube leading from the gross bag of fluid to her arm.
Yryssy’s color had turned from a light gray to an angry, bruised slate green in just the few moments Chance had been here. She was dying.
He snared the tube with the hook and gently reeled it in. When it was within reach, he grabbed it and pulled it inside the air duct. Then he bit right through the plastic, pinching both ends closed, keeping the fluid in the tube. He taped the end of the tube that was attached to Yryssy’s bag to the cool metal wall of the air vent—if he let it drop, ichor would leak out all over the floor. He picked up the end of the tube stuck in Mrs. Rurriery’s arm, sucked out the air, taped the ends of the two tubes together, and allowed the Geckasofts’ ichor streams to mingle. Chance had no idea how long that would take, or if it would even work at all. Braig had said flerk metabolizes slowly, and that there might be enough left in Mrs. Rurriery’s veins to at least awaken Yryssy for a few moments—long enough, perhaps, to allow her to tell them how to concoct and deliver her anti-GIGI drug, Ypocrasyne, to Dave Green.
Why wouldn’t she wake up? The Deviklopt in the chair snored away.
Suddenly, Yryssy turned her head to the left. Then to the right. Her eyes fluttered open.
“What’s happening here?” she said, croaky and creaky from her speechless comatose days. “Where am I?”
The Deviklopt in the chair bolted awake. Chance ducked back into the air duct and quickly put the grille back in place, leaving it ajar an inch so it wouldn’t pinch the tube.
“Miss Ayopy,” said the Deviklopt, jumping up from the chair. “It is I, Sir Amk Bittius the Fourth, chairman. I can’t believe you’re … never mind, I’m so thankful you’re back with us again.”
Chance watched and listened through the slits in the grille as Bittius informed Yryssy of the situation and then radioed Dave Green.
“Mr. Green, I’ve got Yryssy. Mr. Green, are you there? Mr. Green?”
“I’m here,” said Dave Green, sounding existentially tired. “She’s awake? Put her on.”
“This is Yryssy Ayopy,” she said, accepting the radio from Bittius. “You must come to room 2250.984, now.”
“I … I can barely…”
“What? What?”
“… move.”
“Where are you, Mr. Green?”
“Middle … space. Floor…”
“Floor what?”
“I’m not—”
And the radio went dead.
“Let’s go,” said Bittius, lifting Yryssy into a wheelchair with the help of the Balliopes. “Wait. What is this?” He looked at the tube leading from her arm into the ceiling.
“No idea, boss,” said the two Balliopes, looking at each other sheepishly.
“We’ll worry about it later,” said Bittius, pulling the needle out of her arm. “Now, come.”
Then they were gone.
Chance allowed himself to think, just for an instant, that all would be well, even though they still didn’t know where Dave Green was. Chance backed up through the air duct until he reached the air vent he’d first entered. He looked down.
Both Braig and Mrs. Rurriery were gone. What the…?
Chance let himself drop to the floor. He dashed out into the hallway. No Braig, and no gurney in sight.
CHAPTER 28
Pauline looked into the huge space with incredulity and awe. Of all the things she’d experienced in Saint Philomene’s Infirmary for Magical Creatures—the harrowing mail room, the nine-mile elevator-shaft plummeting, the basement gloom, Rod Nthn’s bone-and-bottle-cap throne—only the immensity of the serene space open before her gave her an understanding and appreciation of the true scope of the infirmary, and of the magnitude of potential destruction Dave Green held in one hand.
She needed to find him. Now.
She located a coin-operated telescope mounted on a balcony nearby, inserted a blue-black clahd penny, and began to search the huge “sky,” sparsely occupied as it was by balloons and other aircraft, until the rather fuzzy lenses began to give her a headache.
She turned the telescope over to an impatient creature waiting its turn. Pauline looked down into the depths. A few stories below her was a place that rented out strange teacup-shaped aircraft. She found a staircase that led to that floor. She waited in line behind a Vyrndeet dressed in a leather suit emblazoned with stickers and patches, like a race-car driver’s outfit.
The rental agent was a particularly hideous Harrow-Teaguer with only one arm. It was giving the Vyrndeet instructions.
“Just drive it like a golf cart, except raise or lower the steering wheel to go up or down. Here’s the throttle, and there’s the brake. If you let go of all the controls, the craft will stop and hover. And remember, just press that big red button on the dash if you have any trouble, and the jelsair will automatically fly you to the nearest dock. And don’t worry about crashing into anything—jelsairs can sense obstacles and will automatically fly around them or, if you’re on your way to crashing into the ground or the balconies, it will simply stop and hover. It’s foolproof. There’s a telephone in there; just dial five-five-five, eight-two-eight, seven-seven-seven-seven to reach an agent if you have questions. Air time is five clahd per minute or a hundred clahd for thirty minutes. Just feed the coins into that slot by the eight-track player. If you run out of time and money, the machine will simply fly itself back here.”
Pauline searched her front pocket and pulled out her cache of coins. She counted 155 clahd, enough for forty-one minutes in the air.
The Vyrndeet flew away. The Harrow-Teaguer guided Pauline to a jelsair and helped her step in. It was about the size of a small playground merry-go-round, and the inside, nearly six feet across, with seating for four, was shaped like a shallow cup. The single wing, like a ring of Saturn, was glass-clear. She put the top down, sat in the driver’s seat, and b
uckled herself in.
“Have any ghouls rented a jelsair from you?” she said, on the off chance.
“Not lately,” said the Harrow-Teaguer.
“Humans?”
“Serious?”
“Just kidding. Ha-ha-ha!”
“You’re pretty funny, for a vampiress.”
“I get it from my mother.”
The Harrow-Teaguer put the top up, and pushed the craft away from the dock with one foot. And Pauline was airborne.
It took a few moments to get used to steering, but before long she was racing through space, flying as close to balloons and other jelsairs as she dared, looking for ghouls or humans.
She had started looking for Dave Green around the 2,250th floor, but Middlespace was so large that she was able to cover only a minuscule portion of it. She checked the clock on the dash—only thirty-two minutes left. There must be a way to narrow down the search!
As she flew, she noticed that the fire jets used to heat the air in the medium-sized and large balloons roared like dragons, but the jets on the small armchair balloons for one made little sound at all. She thought about the sounds on the tape and the osssh of the jelsairs, the icawk-awk of the big pterodactyl-like birds, the thitthitthit of the toy helicopters. There had been no dragon-roaring on the recordings.
She concluded Dave Green could only be in one of the little balloons.
There were hundreds. Some were near the 2,250th floor.
Pauline flew from armchair to armchair, some many hundreds of yards away from the others, some floating in the dead center, others so close to the balconies that they were in danger of bumping into them. In one armchair, a Fauxgre near the north end of 2,277 had managed to get its balloon to spin in place; in another, an ouphe was flying a small remote-control jet in circles around his balloon near the center of the 2,315th floor, and in yet another, a teenage Wreau was deeply asleep in his chair, floating aimlessly near the 2,040th floor, high above her.
But no sick-looking ghouls or humans.
Only seventeen minutes left.
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