by Tad Williams
"You can't. We closed off the elevator—shut those armored security doors like Sellars told us to do. There's no other way up. And we are not going to take the chance of opening them again."
Del Ray stood looking at the floor for a moment, then straightened, some of the panic suddenly gone from his face. "Hold on. I don't think I left it in the kitchen after all. I think I just left it outside the elevator on the top floor of our part of the base. I stored most of the water bottles and the extra generator up there, and I think that's where I took my jacket off."
"I will get it," said Long Joseph brightly, but both men turned on him.
"Shut up."
"Yes, shut up, Joseph."
Del Ray started off toward the stairs. "It's too bad we had to seal off the elevator at both ends—it would be nice if we could keep it to use just down here for dragging stuff up and down."
"Too noisy," Jeremiah called after him. "If we are lucky, they won't even know there are more rooms down here." He suddenly realized how loud his voice was.
Too noisy, you say, and listen to you! What if they're up there with stethoscopes or something, listening to the floor, looking for us. . . .
The idea of the faceless mercenaries—Jeremiah alone of the three had not seen them—crawling along the floor, tapping on the concrete like woodpeckers, was deeply disturbing.
We don't even know they're inside, he told himself. Maybe they can't get through that big front door, like a bank's vault. It took Renie and her hacker friends at least this long to get it open.
Still, the vision would not go away. He looked at Joseph, who was sucking a measured amount of Mountain Rose with a face full of wounded dignity, and decided he had better find something with which to keep himself occupied.
Del Ray had levered open the console and its array of security monitors, revealing a mare's nest of cables that looked like something from an ancient telephone switchboard. Jeremiah sat in the chair the younger man had vacated and meditatively flicked switches. The console had power—all the monitor screens had little red lights glowing beneath them—but the screens themselves were blackly empty.
Joseph was right. If Renie was here she'd have this running in a few minutes.
He tugged at the bundle of cables. All but a few were connected. He took one of those that wasn't and tried it in a few of the open slots, but nothing changed. A second provided nothing different, but as he pulled up the third another came tangled with it, and as it brushed something in the board, the screens momentarily hiccuped with light, then went black again.
Excited, Jeremiah pulled the end of the trailing cable free and began to touch it to the open connections in succession. Suddenly the monitors jumped into life again. Jeremiah attached the cable, warm with pride. Now they could see outside their bunker. They were no longer forced to wait blindly.
Before he could tell Long Joseph of his triumph, something caught Jeremiah's attention. One of the monitors displayed a rectangle of trees and scrub brush, framed by blackness. Puzzled, he stared at it for long moments before he realized what he was seeing.
It was the base's massive front gate, seen from a camera just inside. The gate was open.
Three loud cracks came from somewhere above Jeremiah's head. Long Joseph leaped up, swearing, so startled that he dropped his squeeze bottle of wine to the floor. Jeremiah's skin turned cold.
"Del Ray!" he shouted. "Del Ray, is that you?"
For once Joseph kept his mouth shut as they both listened. Nothing came to them but the echo of Jeremiah's own voice.
"Is he shooting that gun?" asked Joseph in a hoarse, nervous whisper. "Or someone shooting at him?"
Jeremiah felt as though his own cry had emptied all the air from his chest: he could only shake his head. For a moment he stood, frightened and confused, trying to decide whether they should shut off the lights and hide. He turned to the console and tried to make sense of the almost monochrome images, seeing what he thought were flickers of movement here or there, but never able to make out anything definitive.
Which one shows upstairs, where Del Ray went?
He recognized the elevator bay at last—not by the elevator itself, which was only a dark shadow along the wall, but because of the old sign posted beside it, a stern warning about the weight the elevator could handle that he had seen so many times he sometimes found himself muttering it under his breath.
He only had time to think, for the very first time in all the weeks he had been immured in the underground base, Seems funny that there is no freight elevator for a place with this much equipment, then he saw the dim outline of a pair of legs stretched on the floor, disappearing offscreen. It was too dark to be absolutely sure, but Jeremiah knew with an indisputable horror whose legs and feet those were, lying so still beside the darkness of the elevator door.
Dear Mr. Ramsey,
The first time you walked into my house, I thought you were a very nice man. I know it may not have seemed that way, that I may have seemed suspicious. Just listening to me without letting your thoughts show on your face was a kind thing to do, because I am sure you must have thought I was a crazy old woman.
When you read what I have to tell you now, you will be very certain that you were right. I don't mind. When I started to get old, I used to feel bad because men didn't look at me the same way any more, that I wasn't a young girl. I was never pretty, but I was young once, and men do look. When if stopped I felt a little bad, but I thought at least they will take me seriously now. Then when all the things happened to me, the headaches and the problems and my ideas about this Tandagore disease, people stopped even looking at me like I had a brain in my head. But you treated me like a real person. You are a nice man, I was right about you.
I am doing something that is hard to explain and if I am wrong I will wind up in a jail somewhere. If I am right, I will probably be killed. It is a long distance to go to prove a point, I bet you are saying.
But this letter is to tell you that if I am crazy, it doesn't feel like it to me, and that I am doing this with the knowledge that it doesn't seem to make sense. But if you heard the voices I hear in my head, or that I used to hear, you would do what I am doing too. I know you would, because I can tell what kind of man you are.
Before I tell you the other things, that reminds me of something I wanted to say to you. I feel very light now, as if I have taken off a heavy coat and am walking through the snow. Later I may freeze, but for now I am just happy to have that heavy weight off my back. The weight is pretending, you see, and instead I am telling the truth. So I will tell you something that I would never have said to you otherwise. You should get married. You are a good man who works too hard, always in your office, never at your home. I know you will say, what is this crazy old Polish-Russian lady talking about, but you need to find someone to share your life with. I don't even know if you like men or women, and you know what? It doesn't matter to me. But find someone to live with you, that you want to go home for. If you can, have children. Somehow children make sense out of life.
Now I will tell you the rest, about the voices and about Obolos Corporation and Felix Jongleur. Then even if you still think I am crazy, you will understand why I am doing what I am doing. I am telling you just so that someone knows it.
Do you know, if my baby had lived, he would have been just about your age? I think about things like that too much.
And when I have finished explaining there will only be one more thing for you to do. I think there is something called a power of attorney? And since you are an attorney, you would know about this. If I disappear, then please will you sell my things? Mostly only small things and not worth the trouble,-but there is Obolos stock and my house. I have no living relatives and that stock now feels to me like something unclean—"treyf," as my mother would have said. Will you sell them both, please, and give the money to the children's hospital in Toronto?
I am sitting here at this desk, looking at this screen, and it is very hard to find a place
to begin to explain. The voices had not come to me when you and I first met. If they are just something in my own head, something to do with the headache, then I will have made a fool of myself. But you know what? I don't care. There are children hurting, both those with the terrible coma disease and I think maybe others too—the voices who speak to me. It is for the children I must risk it. If I am wrong it is only one more old woman locked away. If I am right, no one will believe me, not even you, but at least I will have tried to do something.
The voices, and now the black tower. It is like a castle from one of my mother's stories. It frightens me very much. But I will go there and I will get inside and I will try to find the truth. . . .
". . . And it ends, 'Yours very sincerely, Olga Pirofsky,' " Ramsey finished.
Kaylene Sorensen broke the silence. "That poor woman!"
"That poor woman, indeed." Sellars leaned forward, eyes half shut. He had rolled his wheelchair back into the most shadowed corner of the room, but even the small amount of sunlight arrowing in beneath the drapes seemed to make him uncomfortable. "She's brave, though. She is walking into the lion's den."
"You don't think they'll really kill her, do you?" Ramsey's hands were still shaking; Olga's letter had disturbed him deeply. "That wouldn't be very smart of them. Surely if they catch her trespassing on J Corporation property they'll just toss her out, maybe have her arrested?"
Sellars shook his head sadly. "If Jongleur and his associates had nothing to hide, that would certainly be the case. But do you think your client will go quietly if they do catch her? Or will she make loud claims that will attract more attention than a trespasser usually gets?" He sighed. "Here is another question. What can she tell them about you?"
"What?" Ramsey was caught unprepared. "I don't get you."
"If this mess is everything he claims it is," Major Sorensen interjected, "then Sellars is right—they'll question her. And if they're that ugly, they will get information. You don't want to think about that part too much, but trust me—you saw the kind of boys General Yacoubian was running around with. What does she know about you, Ramsey . . . about . . . all this?"
Catur Ramsey suddenly noticed that his heart was racing. He took a step backward and sank into one of the shiny metal chairs. The cheap servo-motors tried to adjust the seat to fit him, but gave up about halfway through the process. "Christ."
"What I don't get, though," Sorensen continued, "is all this crap about 'voices.' Is it like you talking to my daughter and to me, Sellars? Is someone tricking her? Or is she just . . . well, you know . . . nuts?"
"I don't know," the old man said. He looked as troubled as Ramsey felt. "But I suspect it is something stranger and more complicated than either."
"Good Lord, we have to stop her!" Ramsey shoved himself to the edge of the chair, prompting a whine of indignation from the internal mechanism. "We can't just let her walk into that, whether she's a risk to me or not. I didn't have a chance to tell her half the things I'd found out. I don't know about these voices either, but somehow she's stumbled into this thing—completely separate from you, Sellars. all on her own—and she still thinks she might be imagining it." He thought about it and slumped back. "God, the poor woman."
"Did you respond to what she sent you?" Major Sorensen asked.
"Of course I did! I sent her back a message to call me immediately—not to go one step without talking to me first." He saw the look on the military man's face and felt his stomach go sour. It took a couple of seconds for him to understand why. "Shit. I gave her the number for this motel."
To his credit, Sorensen did no more than shake his head once in irritation before standing up. "Right. First thing, we move. Kaylene, why don't you round up the kids and I'll start throwing stuff in the car. Sellars, we're going to have to return the chair, and we may not be able to rent another. I'm afraid you're going back in the wheel-well when we travel, too. The military may not be actively searching for us right now, especially if we really were a private matter of Yacoubian's, but you're still way too easily noticed and remembered."
"Where are we going, Mike?" Kaylene Sorensen, a veteran military spouse, was already tossing things into bags. "Can't we just go home? We can find Mr. Sellars someplace to hide, can't we? Maybe he could stay with Mr. Ramsey for a while. Christabel has to get back to school."
Even Catur Ramsey could see past her husband's carefully maintained expression to the misery in his eyes. "I don't think we're going back there for a while, honey. And at the moment, I don't have any idea where we're heading—just out of here."
"I need to call Olga again before we leave," Ramsey said. "If there's any chance of keeping her from trying to get into that place, I owe it to her."
"On the contrary," Sellars said abruptly. He had been sitting very still, eyes almost closed, like a lizard sunning on a rock. Now he lifted his head to show his strange yellow gaze. "On the contrary, we must not stop her. And I also know where we must go—some of us, anyway."
"What are you talking about?" Sorensen demanded.
"I told you that there have been many odd things going on with the Grail Brotherhood in the last few days. I have been watching carefully, trying to make some sense of the events that are sealed away from me within the network, and have seen evidence of uncertainty within the Brotherhood's various holdings and private domains. Jongleur's little kingdom is no different. There are definite suggestions of a tremor in the routines, of confusion at the top."
"So?" Ramsey was impatient.
"So instead of trying to keep your Ms. Pirofsky away from the J Corporation, I think we should instead help her to get in, Mr. Ramsey. I have been forced to use innocents to help me often enough in this grim task—the Sorensens can testify to that. Olga Pirofsky is at least already determined to take the risk. We will see what we can do to help, and to protect her while she is in there."
"That's . . . that's crazy." Ramsey got up so quickly he almost knocked over the coffee tray. "She doesn't deserve that—she doesn't know what she's getting into!"
For a moment there was a kind of flash in the straw-colored eyes, a sudden glimpse of the aerial predator Sellars had once been. "Nobody deserves this, Mr. Ramsey. But others have dealt the cards—we have no choice but to play the hand." He turned to the Sorensens, who had both stopped to watch, the major with a certain reluctant professional interest, his wife with growing discomfort. "I cannot compel you two, but I know where I am going, and I rather suspect that when he thinks it through, where Mr. Ramsey is going as well."
"And that is. . . ?"
"Mike, don't even talk to him," Kaylene Sorensen said. "I don't want to hear this. It's crazy. . . !"
"To New Orleans, of course," said Sellars. "To the very lair of the Beast. Our plight is so desperate that in retrospect it now seems an obvious endgame move. I wish I had thought of it earlier,"
They were moving again. Christabel wasn't sure why, but that never mattered much when things like this were happening. She wondered if when she was older people would tell her things, explain things, or if being grown-up she would just know.
What almost seemed like the saddest thing of all, sadder even than leaving the new motel just when she had figured out where the candy bar machine was, was that Mister Sellars was going to have to go back into the place in the back of the van where Daddy normally kept the spare tire. It seemed such an awful place, so tiny.
The old man was sitting in the doorway of the van, waiting for her father to finish some other things and help him in, when Christabel found him.
"It's all right, little Christabel," he said when she told him her worries. "I don't mind, really. I don't use my body for much these days, anyway. As long as my mind is free—what is it Hamlet says? 'Were I bounded in a nutshell, still could I count myself a king of infinite space. . . .'—something like that." For a moment he looked very sad. If he was supposed to be making her feel better, Christabel thought, he wasn't doing a very good job.
"Mommy said you have
wires inside you," she said at last. "Is that true?"
Sellars laughed quietly. "I suppose I do, my young friend."
"Do they hurt?"
"No. I have pain, but it's more to do with my burns, with . . . with other old injuries. And most of the wires aren't really wires anymore. I've had lots of help changing things inside me. There are plenty of gearmakers hungry for a challenge, more than a few out-of-work nano-engineers in need of a few extra credits."
Christabel wasn't at all sure what he was talking about. "Nano-engineers" made her think of Ophelia Weiner's Nanoo dress. The thought of a lot of train-drivers in party dresses that changed color and shape didn't explain anything, so she let it slide away, another thing a kid just worked around. "You mean you had wires, but you don't anymore?"
"Wires are sort of old-fashioned, especially when there are so many other ways to transmit information. I'm confusing you, aren't I? Well, do you remember when I had you bring me soap to eat?"
She nodded, pleased to be back on familiar ground.
"I sometimes have to eat funny things like that, because my body is making something new for me, or repairing something that's not working very well. I eat little bits of polymer sometimes, too—plastic, you'd call it. Or I have to get more metal. Sometimes there are pills that will help, but usually they don't have enough of what I need. I used to have to eat a couple of copper pennies a week, but that's past now." He nodded at her and smiled. "It doesn't matter, Christabel. I have funny insides, but I'm still me. I don't mind what's in your insides—can you still be my friend, too?"
She nodded her head rapidly. She hadn't meant anything bad at all, certainly not that she wouldn't be his friend. Her mother's passing remark had been worrying her all day—the thought of sharp wires sticking in Mister Sellars' insides had almost made her cry.
"Oh, just a moment, Christabel," Sellars told her, then waved for Mister Ramsey to come over.
