by Tad Williams
"Where are you going, sir?" She took a careful backward step, as though preparing to turn and run.
"Important business. Miss Jongleur. We're going out." The spectacle he must be presenting finally sank in. He tried to assume a slightly more dignified manner. "Sorry. I'm not well. But I need to give Miss Jongleur her lessons—she has to have her lesson plan for today. I'll be gone in a few minutes."
He continued down the corridor, trying to walk a straight line.
I'm not drunk, he thought. Not really. I'm bloody well coming apart at the seams.
He knocked on the door, waited, then knocked again.
"Who is it?"
"It's me," he said, then remembered the no-doubt listening ears. "Mr. Jonas. I have to give you your lessons for today."
The door flew open. She wore a white nightgown, soft but opaque, and had pulled her dressing gown on without tying it closed. Her dark hair, unbound and surprisingly long, spilled down past her shoulders.
Angel, he thought, remembering the ghost-thing's words. You're beautiful, he wanted to say, but retained enough sense to lift his hand and push his own sweat-damp hair from his forehead. "I need to speak to you for just a moment, Miss Jongleur."
"Paul! What's happened to you?"
"I'm ill, Miss Jongleur." He lifted his finger to his lips in a clumsy admonishment to silence. "Perhaps I need a little air. Would you mind coming outside with me while we discuss your work for today?"
"Let me . . . I just need to dress."
"No time," he said hoarsely. "I'm . . . I'm really not very well. Can you come out with me?"
She was frightened, but trying not to show it. "Let me get my shoes, then."
It was all he could do to refrain from pulling her down the hall by the arm. Two of the maids were standing in the doorway of the sunporch, for the moment not even counterfeiting work; they stepped aside as Paul and Ava approached, casting their eyes down.
"But I insist, Mr. Jonas," Ava said brightly for their benefit. "You are looking very poorly indeed. A turn in the garden while we talk will do you a world of good."
He could almost feel the maids' shocked propriety and was embarrassed for his pupil. His own floating, hapless confusion was such that he did not remember until they had reached the garden path that whatever else they might be, the Jongleur servants were not young women from two centuries past.
This time Ava did not hurry toward the wood, but walked with care, asking solicitously about Paul's health as they went, insisting that immediately upon leaving her he should drink a cup of chamomile tea and go straight to bed. It was only when they had reached the ostensible security of the mushroom ring that she turned and threw herself at him, clutching him so tightly he had to struggle to stay upright.
"Oh, Paul, dear Paul, where were you? When you did not come yesterday, I was so frightened!"
He did not have the strength to hold her off, did not have the strength to do much of anything. He had no plan, no solution. He was not entirely certain he was not going mad himself. "Your ghost friend. He came to me. Showed me . . . children."
"So you believe me?" She leaned back, staring at his face as though she might never see it again. "Do you?"
"I still don't know what to believe, Ava. But I know I have to get you out of here, somehow." A heaviness settled in his chest. "But I can't even leave myself. I tried to get off the island yesterday and they wouldn't let me."
"An island?" she said. "How strange. Are we on an island?"
The hopelessness of it all came crashing down on him. What did he think he was going to do? Kidnap and hide a girl who had never even left this building, the daughter of the world's richest man? A man with his own army, with tanks and helicopters? A man with half the world's leaders in his pocket? His knees weakening, Paul let himself slide down to the ground. Ava came with him, still clinging, and for a moment they were tangled together, the girl half atop him, her slim, uncorseted body pressing against him.
"I don't know what to do, Ava." He was light-headed, almost stoned on despair. Her face was very close, her hair surrounding both their heads like a canopy so that for a moment they were in half-darkness.
"Just love me," she said. "Then everything will be right."
"I can't . . . I shouldn't. . . ." But he had his arms around her waist, in self-defense if nothing else, to keep her from wriggling along the length of his body. "You're just a child."
"Stony limits," she reminded him, and her giggle was so unexpected he almost smiled himself.
And I am Fortune's fool. The quote swam up like the fish in the tiny, tended stream gurgling a few meters away.
Fortune's fool. He lifted his head and kissed her. She gave it back to him with all the untutored enthusiasm of her age, her breath sharp and fast, and after a moment he had to lift her away from him and sit up. The grass slowly sprang back erect where they had lain.
"My true heart," she murmured, tears in her eyes.
He could think of nothing to say back to her. Romeo and Juliet, he thought. Good Christ, look what happened to them.
"I have something for you!" she said suddenly. She reached into the collar of her nightgown and withdrew a tasseled bag that hung around her neck. She shook something small and glittery into her hand and held it out toward him. It was a silver ring with a blue-green stone cut into the shape of a feather. "It was a present from my father," she said. "I think it was my mother's once. He brought it back for her from North Africa." She held it up until the feather-shape caught the light, sparkling clear as a tropical ocean, then passed it to him. "He said the stone is a tourmaline."
Paul stared at it. The feather was strikingly carved, something light as air made from stone, the solidity of earth turned into a puff of wind.
"Put it on."
Still in a sort of trance, he slipped it onto his finger.
"Now you can't leave me." There was more than just pleading in her voice—it almost had the force of a command or an incantation. "You can't ever leave me now." An instant later she had crawled into his lap and put her arms about his neck, pressing her lips to his. He fought it for a moment, then surrendered to the full, forceful tide of madness.
"Oh ho!" someone said.
Ava shrieked and threw herself backward out of Paul's arms. He turned to see the grinning, misshapen face of Mudd peering at them through the trees.
"Naughty, naughty," said the fat man.
Suddenly everything went dark, sucked away as if down a long drain. The light, the air, the sound of Ava weeping, the trill of birds and the rustle of leaves, all fled. Nothing was left but blackness and empty silence.
He had been in the dark for so long that he had almost forgotten there was anything else. Then something cold crashed down over him and he woke up screaming.
Paul Jonas struggled up out of the emptiness, his skin raw and shocked, his head hot and swollen, as though he had been left out in the desert sun for hours. It was not sand or sun that he found when he opened his sticky eyes, though, but the flickering semidarkness of a cell.
The dull-faced priest Userhotep stood over him, still holding the clay water jar which he had emptied over Paul's bound body. Frowning as at a piece of machinery which had proved to be shoddily manufactured, the priest examined Paul for a moment, testing his pulse and pulling back his eyelid with a grubby finger before stepping away.
Robert Wells' yellow, hairless face split in a clownish grin. "My God, once you get started you don't shut up, do you?"
Paul tried to say something but could only moan. The arteries serving his brain seemed to be pumping something far more thick and caustic than blood.
"But we still haven't learned much," Wells complained. "So you found out something about the Grail—well, golly, I could have guessed that. It still doesn't explain why the Old Man didn't just have you killed. And it's clear from what you remember that his operating system was even more unreliable than we guessed, than even Jongleur guessed—that it achieved some kind of consciousness.
But we stopped just short of the really interesting stuff." He shook his head. "That last part of the block is pretty strong, which suggests it was the thing he originally wanted wiped out. So, of course, that's what I want to learn."
Paul's throat was as rough as sharkskin, but he at last mustered the saliva to speak. "Why do you care? It's all over now. Jongleur's dead, my friends and I are prisoners, Dread's in charge. What does it matter?" The truth was, he didn't want to touch any more memories. A brooding disquiet lay over all that had returned to him, a sense that something horrible waited just around the corner. "Go ahead and kill me, if you really aren't any better than your new boss." It would be an end at least to the pain, it would be an end.
Wells wagged a lemony finger. "Selfish, Mr. Jonas, very selfish of you. If the Old Man's dead, that's all the more reason we need to know as much as possible. You may not be on the guest list, but the rest of us intend to make our homes here for a long, long time. If we have to replace the plumbing; we need to know the extent of the problem." He leaned forward until his face was very close. "And I must admit I'm curious about you. Who are you? Why did Jongleur single you out for such star treatment instead of just dumping your body in his private swamp?" He's had us taking very elaborate care of you at Telemorphix, you know. We really wondered who you were."
"You won't find out the rest," Paul said hoarsely. "The brainwashing, the hypnotic block, whatever it is, it's too strong."
"Hmmm. I think we can go a long way toward testing that theory without killing you." Ptah the Artificer moved back and the lector priest Userhotep stepped forward again. "I was wrong to think we could do the job with only minimal damage, though. We'll have to push the envelope a bit—see how much you can take. It's amazing what the brain will do to cope with extreme pain, you know. Some pretty extreme neurological effects. I wouldn't be surprised if we have you singing like a bird before we've done much beyond taking the top layers of your skin off."
Robert Wells crossed his bandaged arms over his chest, stared at Paul for a moment, then nodded cheerfully to the priest. "Well, Userhotep, I guess you might as well get started."
CHAPTER 30
Climbing the Mountain
NETFEED/NEWS: Doctor Sued for Keeping Patient Alive
(visual: Dr. Sheila Loughtin and Beltings' parents at news conference)
VO: In what the International Medical Association is calling "a frightening low point in corporate compassion," a doctor is being sued by an insurance provider for keeping a patient alive past the point which Trans-European Health Insurance claims is "either ethically or financially supportable." The patient, ten-year-old Eamon Sellings of Killarney, Ireland, has been in a Tandagore coma for almost a year, but his parents and doctor refuse to remove his life support despite the demands of the insurance company. . . .
"I'm sorry," Sellars told her, but it has to go all the way to the back. That way it will be hard for anyone to find the source—that might buy you an additional half an hour to get out."
Olga wiped the sweat out of her eyes and leaned back into the duct, wedging her shoulders so she could keep her hands free. The basement hadn't seemed that hot when she started half an hour earlier, but it was beginning to feel like she was working in a sauna. She angled the camera ring to pick up the corner where the flashlight had splashed white, trying to make sure Sellars could see. "Back there?"
"Yes, that should do it. But see if you can get it behind that bundle of cables so it's a little less visible."
Olga took a moment to wipe her wet, slippery hands clean on her coveralls before lifting the bottle out of her backpack.
"You have to prime it first," Sellars said, almost apologetically. "Twist the nozzle until it clicks."
She did, briefly fearful that despite the assurances of Sellars and Major Sorensen the thing might explode in her hands, but it made only the expected noise; a moment later she was pushing it into the space she had opened by yanking a twined cable of polymer-covered cables to one side. She sat up, rubbing her hands again, and said, "It's in. Do you want to see it?"
"That's all right. . . ." Sellars had begun when someone grabbed her waist from behind.
"Caught you!"
Olga shrieked and fell off the edge of the duct backward and landed on the concrete floor, banging her elbow painfully. Panicked, she scrambled into a crouch, conscious that she had no weapon except her flashlight, and that if Sellars triggered the smoke bomb now it would be more likely to asphyxiate her than to help her escape. She could hear his startled voice talking inside her head.
"Olga? What happened?"
She reached up and pressed the t-jack, damping the sound input. The man standing over her looked just as shocked as she did. He wore a J Corporation uniform like hers, and had a lot of gray in his hair, but his posture was that of a scolded child, arms held up, hands dangling.
"You're not Lena!" He backed up a step. "Who are you?"
Olga's heart was beating like a drumroll, as though she stood at the top of a platform about to leap out to a distant trapeze. "No," she said, trying to decide if she should take advantage of his obvious surprise and shove her way past him to the door. "No, I'm not."
He leaned toward her, squinting. His eyes were a little foggy and there was something strange about the shape of his facial bones, as though they had been hastily reassembled after being dropped. "You're not Lena," he said again, "I thought you were Lena."
She took a shaky breath. "I'm . . . I'm new."
He nodded solemnly, as though she had answered some troubling question, but he still wore a worried look. "I thought you were her. I was . . . I was just teasing. I didn't mean nothing. Me and Lena, we have a joke like that." He lifted his hand and briefly chewed on one finger. "Who are you? You're not mad at me, are you?"
"No, I'm not mad at you." She felt her pulse slow a little. She remembered seeing milky eyes like his in an accident victim who had gone through a sight-saving operation. Whatever was going on, the man didn't seem like a security guard who had just caught an intruder. She finally noticed the object behind him that her eyes had flicked across several times in the last seconds while searching for an escape route—a rolling plastic bucket and long-handled mop. He was a janitor of some kind.
"That's good. I was just playing a joke, because I thought you were Lena." He smiled tentatively. "You're new, huh? What's your name? I'm Jerome."
She briefly considered lying to him, but decided that it would do little good—either he would report an unauthorized person in the basement, or he wouldn't: the name she gave would make little difference if people started looking for her in earnest. "My name is Olga, Jerome. It's nice to meet you."
He nodded his head. It was. A moment later, he squinted again. "What are you doing? Did you lose something?"
Her heart pit-pattered again. The door to the duct still hung open behind her. She turned as casually as she could and pushed it shut, searching desperately for something to tell him. "Mice," she said at last. "I thought I heard mice."
Jerome's eyes got big. "Down here? I never seen any down here." He frowned. "Should I put down some traps, maybe? We had to do that for the roaches. I don't like roaches."
"That sounds like a good idea, Jerome." She stood up, brushing herself off, forcing herself to speak slowly and calmly. "I should get back to work upstairs."
"So isn't Lena coming in this weekend?"
Olga had no idea who Lena was, and now regretted having given her name—Jerome might not be too curious, but this Lena might be. "I don't know. If I see her, I'll tell her you were asking. But I've got to get back to work now."
"Okay." He frowned again, thinking. She took the opportunity to make her way past him toward the basement stairs. "Olga?"
She let out a breath and stopped. "Yes?"
"If you see Lena, maybe you better not tell her. See, I'm not supposed to be down here yet. 'Cause I'm supposed to do the other floor first. But I heard her down here—no, I heard you down here, huh? So I came dow
n to do a joke on her. But Mr. Kingery might be mad if he knew I came down here to do a joke on Lena."
"I won't tell anyone, Jerome. Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you. You can come down sometime when it's time to have a break. I eat my dinner down here—except it's really breakfast, I guess, because I eat it in the morning. . . ."
"That would be nice, Jerome." She waved and hurried up the stairs, unmuting the t-jack as soon as she reached the next level.
". . . Olga, can you hear me? Can you hear me?"
She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes, drawing the first deep breath she had taken in minutes. "I can hear you. It is okay. A janitor surprised me. I think he might be . . . how do you say it? A little slow."
"Are you on your own now?"
"Yes. But I need to stop and rest. I almost had a heart attack when he grabbed me."
"Grabbed you?"
"Never mind. Let me get my breath back, then I will explain."
"Sorry about all the stairs," Sellars told her. "But if we interfere with the surveillance cameras in the elevators too often, building security might wonder why so many empty elevators are going up and down."
"I . . . understand." But it didn't make it any easier not to fall over in a faint.
"Catch your breath. The plans I'm looking at say the patch room is on this floor."
She peered into the hallway in time to see a flirt of color at the end of the hall as someone stepped into the elevator. She froze, waiting, but no one got out, which was good. Sellars could hide her movements by looping the output from a security camera, but only if the corridor was deserted first. It wouldn't do to have people suddenly vanishing when they entered one end and then reappearing at the other end.
The elevator door whispered shut. Now the corridor was silent again, the long stretch of dark carpet empty as a country road at night.
Sellars' long-distance manipulation of her badge worked as well for the patch room door as it had for basement access. He had begun to loop the surveillance signals in the room even before she entered, so after the door hissed open she stepped in quickly and shut the door behind her. The room, a walkway a hundred meters long with machines in racks standing on either side like the monuments of dead kings, was surprisingly cold.
