I finished washing the dishes, dried them (a prodigy), and put them away (a bigger prodigy). Then I took a shower, and after that I went back into the bedroom and got dressed to face the new day.
Facing the day, in fact, was easy: when I opened the bedroom drapes, the eastern sky was brilliant pink, shading toward gold at the horizon. It got brighter by the second as I watched. Finally the sun crawled up into sight. Another day had started. I didn’t feel too bad, not physically. Mentally, spiritually… a different story.
The sun rose higher, as the sun has a way of doing. What had been a black mystery out past my window was revealed as—what a surprise!-romantic Hawthorne, a not particularly exotic suburb of Angels City.
I started to turn my back on the too-familiar panorama, then stopped with one foot in the air. Before I fell over, I spun around and ran for the little book by my phone. I was just about sure I had that number, but not quite. I checked. I had it. I called it.
“Hello?” Through two phone imps, I recognized that groggy tone. I’d had it myself, the too early in the morning when Charlie Kelly called me and got me and Judy and maybe the whole world into the mess we were in. I didn’t care. I started to talk.
I found a parking spot right at the comer of Thirty-Fourth and Vine, settled my carpet into it, and settled me down to wait I’d got there twenty minutes before I was supposed to meet him. He’d promised he’d come. He’d even sounded eager to help, which to my way of thinking only proved he didn’t fully understand the situation.
That comer wasn’t one of the swankier ones in Angels City, and it wasn’t an angel who sauntered past and gave’me the eye. It was a succubus, swinging her hips fit to make the Pope sweat. But my mind was on other things. She muttered something I was lucky enough not to catch and walked on down the street.
Two spaces in front of me, a carpet pulled out and headed up Vine. Within half a minute, another one slid into the space. Tony!” I exclaimed gladly; promises or no, I’d feared he’d find some reason not to come. Before six in the morning, you’re liable to promise anything, just to get a pest off the phone.
But here he was, grinning like a man who’s had some sleep, anyhow. “Let’s go, Dave,” he said. “I’ve read a lot about virtuous reality; you think I’m gonna throw away a chance to check it out from the inside?”
If he’d had any sense, he would have. He must not have had sense; he gave me a shot in the ribs with his elbow and went into the office building ahead of me. He was singing something in Lithuanian. I caught Perkunas’ name, but that was all. Before I’d met Tony, I wouldn’t have understood that, either.
My legs are longer than his. By the time we got to Madame Ruth’s office, I was a couple of strides in front of him. I opened the door and went in. Tony on my heels. If I told you Madame Ruth looked delighted to see me, I’d be tying.
“Mr. Fisher,” she said, as patiently as she could (which wasn’t very), “we told you yesterday we couldn’t do anything more for you.”
“No, that’s not quite what you said,” I answered. “Nigel Cholmondeley said you couldn’t do anything unless I came up with something extraordinary. Well, here he is—Mr.
Antanas Sudakis.” I wasn’t making all the sense I might have; more than a day without sleep will do that to you.
Tony grinned. “Something extraordinary, hey? I like that.”
Madame Ruth did not look amused. “Why is he extraordinary?” she asked. Why is he extraordinary, wise guy? was what her tone said.
So I told her why, in detail and probably repeating myself more than a little. I watched her eyebrows, or rather the painted lines that showed where they used to live. They’d ridden high and skeptical on her forehead when I started, but the longer I talked, the lower they got.
When I finished, she just said, “Wait here, both ofyouse.”
She walked out, came back a minute later with Nigel Cholmondeley. “Okay, buster, tell him what you just told me.”
So I did. I doubt I was any smoother the second time around than I had been the first. By the time I was through, Cholmondeley was rubbing his long, horsy chin in speculation. When he spoke, it wasn’t to me but to Tony Sudakis:
“My principal objection, sir, is doubt that Perkunas is a Power sufficiently powerful (please forgive the play on words) to achieve the effect desired in the Nine Beyonds.”
The Thunderer not powerful enough?” Tony was a man of direct action. I was afraid he’d take some now: pitching Cholmondeley through a wall, for instance. But he didn’t; he just said, “Listen, once upon a time not so long ago a fanner invited the Devil to his daughter’s wedding. He didn’t really want him there, so he said the Christian God, the Virgin, and a bunch of saints were coming, too. The Devil didn’t care.
Then the fanner told him he’d invited Perkunas, and the Devil stayed away—he remembered how the Thunderer had beaten the tar out of him the last time they met. If he can do that, you think he can’t handle something like the One Called Night?”
Madame Ruth and Cholmondeley looked at each other.
I’m no psychic, but I could read their minds anyhow: Perkunas had to be one tough, smart Power to have survived so long in the predominantly Christian thecosystem of Europe.
I wouldn’t have wanted to run him up against Huitzilopochtli or Huehueteoti, but the One Called Night wasn’t a Power on their order of magnitude himself.
The other variable in the equation was that Perkunas hadn’t gone down to hell to beat the tar out of the Devil.
Could he do it in the Nine Beyonds, even with the advantage I’d outlined to the virtuous reality practitioners?
I had no idea. I did know I wasn’t going to bring it up if the medium and the channeler didn’t. I was willing to take any chance at all to go after Judy again; I wanted to persuade them to try again, too, because I couldn’t reach the Nine Beyonds without ’em.
“Gentlemen, do please excuse us,” Nigel Cholmondeley said. “We shall have to consult with each other on the proper course of action to take.”
They went over into the next office, which was Cholmondeleys. Last time they’d done that, I hadn’t heard a thing.
Now, Madame Ruth’s screeches came right through the wall.
A moment later, so did Cholmondeley’s shouts. I was glad they’d identified what they were doing as a consultation. If they hadn’t, I’d have called it a brawl.
But everything was sweetness and light when they came back into Madame Ruth’s office. Madame Ruth glared at me, scowled at Sudakis, glared at me again. Then she said,
“Let’s go.”
I gaped. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” she said. “We’ve got nothing calendared till late this afternoon, and either we’ll be able to bring this off by then or else we’ll end up stuck in the Nine Beyonds and we won’t gotta worry about it. So come on.”
On we came. Tony and I flew to the West Hills Temple of Healing each on his own carpet. That sort of thing adds to Angels City’s traffic nightmares, but it was more convenient for both of us because we’d be going home in opposite directions. Besides, I didn’t want to endanger anybody but me if I fell asleep at the fringe.
We got into the West Hills parking lot within a couple of minutes of each other, then stood around waiting for Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth. I figured they’d be a little while; they had to pack up their gear before they flew over.
Tony smoked a cigarillo while we waited. He’d just ground it out under his heel when their carpet settled itself a couple of spaces over from mine.
“We can go straight up,” Cholmondeley said as he hauled the case toward the doorway. “I called ahead to make sure Mistress Ather isn’t undergoing any other spiritual therapy at the moment.” He—was more efficient than I’d given him credit for.
“Good,” I said, from the bottom of my heart, for it also meant they hadn’t had to transfer Judy to the IPU or anything like that. They were supposed to call and let you know when they did that, but I’d been
away from home all moming. She hadn’t got worse, then. Where she was struck me as bad enough.
We went up to the fifth floor together. Waiting for us in Judy’s room, along with the constable, was Hr. Murad. He and Madame Ruth exchanged unfriendly looks. I felt like reminding them they were on the same side, but they remembered by themselves. Murad arranged the chairs for the virtuous reality circle before anyone asked him to, and he remembered that circle would have an extra member today.
This time I shifted Judy to the foot of the bed. However much I’d hoped it would, it didn’t feel as if I were touching the woman I loved. Her flesh might have been there on the bed, but her essence wasn’t.
Nigel Cholmondeley slid the virtuous reality helmet onto her head; As before, he and Madame Ruth took the seats to either side of her. I sat on the other side of Madame Ruth, with Tony between me and Cholmondeley.
From his case, Cholmondeley passed us virtuous reality helmets. The room went black as I slipped mine on. Again as before, a few seconds’ undignified fumbling followed, with all of us trying to find our neighbors’ hands.
And then we were back in the Nine Beyonds: blacker than black, hot, wet, fetid. Somehow I got the idea the One Called Night knew we were there faster than he had before.
I couldn’t see anything, but the space around me already felt tight and strained, as if my spirit was trying to fit into a pair of pants a couple of inches too small for it.
“Boy, this may be the Other Side, but it’s sure not the high-rent district,” Tony Sudakis said. When he spoke, he became visible to me in the midst of the darkness. When I met him, I thought he looked like somebody who’d been a good football player till the competition got too big for him to handle. Well, his virtuous reality image was about seven feet tell and maybe four feet wide through the shoulders: big enough to make a good football team, not just a player.
Other than size, though, it looked like Tony.
This is what I warned you about,” I said, mostly to make myself known to him. Madame Ruth and Nigel Cholmondeley spoke up, too, and appeared in my second sight as they did so. No trace of Judy. I hadn’t expected one, but you never give up hope.
Cholmondeley turned to Tony Sudakis. “If this is to work, it had best work soon: the advantage of surprise, don’t you know?” he said. “The longer the One Called Night has to gather his resources against us, the worse our likely plight.”
“Okay.” Tony’s virtuous voice was nearly an octave deeper than the one he really had. He reached inside the shirt that had grown with his torso, pulled out the little amber amulet I’d seen him use the first time I walked into his office.
Here, though, it didn’t seem like just amber. It shone like a tiny piece of the sun, and shed real light through the gloom of the Nine Beyonds. Looking at trees and mud and stagnant water wasn’t much, but it beat looking at hostile, smothering black nine ways from Sunday.
In that rumbling, thunderous voice. Tony Sudakis called,
“Perkunas, Thunderer, hear your loyal subject Do for us, trapped here in the Nine Beyonds, as you did for the Morning Star at her wedding: give us, I pray you, the Nine Suns in the sky!”
He’d sworn by Perkunas and the Nine Suns a couple of times, enough to make me think his god might have some power in the Nine Beyonds that the One Called Night wouldn’t expect. If ever a Power seemed ideally suited to influence another’s home environment, this was the time.
I waited for what felt like forever, though I knew time was, to say the least, arbitrary in the realm of virtuous reality.
Then that glowing bit of what had been amber flew off the chain around Tony’s neck and streaked for the black sky.
Surely you’ve wished on a falling star. There in the Nine Beyonds, I wished on a rising one.
Up and up the shining spark flew. No matter how high it rose, it didn’t get any dimmer. Its progress halted directly over what would have been my head if I could have sensed myself in virtuous reality.
Another pause, and then a great explosion of light, enough and more to dazzle the eyes I didn’t have here. The sky stayed black, but suddenly nine suns blazed there, in the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen.
“By Jove,” Nigel Cholmondeley murmured.
“No,” Tony said smugly. “By Perkunas.”
Light spread over the Nine Beyonds for the first time since the One Called Night shaped his realm from the raw stuff of the Other Side. I could see what was around me and, in a different way, I could perceive the whole domain at once.
I could be wrong, but I thought each of the Nine Suns illuminated a different Beyond. I sensed all Nine Beyonds.
All I’ll say about them is that, even illuminated, each was less attractive than the next. If the One Called Night had designed this place for his personal comfort, well, if you ask me, he should have hired a decorator.
And there, off in the distance and yet at the same time close enough to reach out and touch, I saw something that didn’t belong in this dark jungle. “Judy!” I cried. The One Called Night might have tried to hide her, but he couldn’t, not with Perkunas’ Nine Suns blazing down from the black sky.
No sooner had I called her name than she stood there beside me. As I’ve said, virtuous reality images have a way of improving on mundane reality. Not, you understand, that I ever thought Judy needed improving on, but seeing her there made me understand all at once how Beatrice must have looked to Dante.
Dante hadn’t needed virtuous reality to see that way, but Dante was an artist and a genius. Me, I’m just an EPA man.
However it had come to me, I knew I’d cherish Judy’s virtuous image the rest of my days.
You know what else? By her expression, I didn’t look half bad to her, either.
She said, “Thank you, David. I was beginning to be afraid I’d never get out of this dreadful place. I never lost hope, but I was worried. When the One Called Night hid me from you the last time you came here, whenever that was, I wondered if anyone could sense me. But you found a way.”
“I never lost hope, either,” I said. “I—” The light that filled the Nine Beyonds got dimmer. I looked up into the sky. The Nine Suns were still there, but they seemed to fade more with every apparent second I watched.
“We have to escape at once,” Madame Ruth said urgently.
“This is the domain of the One Called Night. Perkunas and the Nine Suns may have taken him by surprise, but Perkunas is not the ruling Power here.”
“My colleague is correct,” Nigel Cholmondeley said. “We must break the virtuous reality circle. Remember your fleshly forms; will them to separate one from the other, to loose the hands you are now holding. Quickly!”
I concentrated on the body I’d left behind at the West Hills Temple of Healing. Remembering I had hands, let alone moving them, took more effort than I thought I had in me. And all the while, the Nine Beyonds got darker and darker and darker. I felt the power of the One Called Night closing in around us.
And then I was back in room 547 again. I was still holding hands with Tony Sudakis and Madame Ruth, so I hadn’t been the one to let go. That was the first thing I noticed as I did turn loose of my companions and snatch the virtuous reality helmet off my head. Only then, as I blinked against light that seemed much too bright, did I realize the One Called Night hadn’t tried to chase us as we left his domain this time.
You have to understand—all that passed through my mind in a fraction of a second, and a small fraction to bootThen I stopped caring about it, because Judy had taken off her helmet, too. She was sitting up in her bed, looking over her shoulder at me, and smiling bright as all Nine Suns put together.
I smiled back. So did Tony, Nigel Cholmondeley, Hr. Murad, and the constable who’d been keeping watch on her. she wasn’t wearing her own clothes, just a pure white healing gown of virgin linen, and all it had in back was a couple of ties that didn’t do much to hold it together.
When Judy figured that out, she squeaked and wiggled around so the part of the
gown that actually covered her was frontways to us. Then she said to me, “David, I think you’d better introduce me to these people. You got to me through virtuous reality, didn’t you?”
“That’s right,” I said, and did as she’d asked. After the hellos and thank-yous, I went on, “You told me you wanted to get involved in the new technology. I don’t suppose you wanted to see it from the inside out, though.”
“No.” She shook her head so her hair flew every which way, a Judy gesture I’d seen since the day I met her. It made any tiny doubts I’d had disappear: she was back on This Side, fully and completely. “It was still interesting,” she added. “I’d recognize all of you from the way I saw you in the Nine Beyonds, but you, David, you looked just the same to me.”
Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth gave me an odd look I didn’t understand for a second, and then I did: you need to be a person of unusual virtue—Brother Vahan, say—to keep your normal appearance in virtuous reality. My ears got hot.
“Must be love,” I muttered.
“Very likely,” Nigel Cholmondeley said. “After all, were it not for the love you bear for Mistress Ather, she would still be trapped on the Other Side.”
That only made my ears hotter. Back in the Nine Beyonds, I’d idealized Judy into an image I’d cherish all my life, while she’d seen me just as I am. Which was the greater compliment? I couldn’t begin to tell you.
The constable pulled out a sheet of parchment and a pen.
Where the rest of us were exalted, he stayed businesslike.
“Can you describe the motivations of the alleged perpetrators who caused your spirit to be projected into the realm on the Other Side termed the Nine Beyonds, Mistress Ather?” he asked formally.
“You mean, why they sent me there?” Judy said—sure enough, a copy editor to the core. She shook her head again.
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