by Tad Williams
The voices shrieked. White and red. White walls, splattered with red. The deep barking adult voices wrenched into a higher pitch. Blood became a fine mist in the air. Dark shapes fell down and lay writhing.
Renie was inside the horror, drowning in it, but it wasn't directed at her. It simply was, and she was in it, like a weakening swimmer flailing in the ocean.
Hang onto something, she thought. Grab something. A stick, anything. Drowning.
Stephen.
But for a dizzy moment she could not even remember who Stephen was, what he was to her. Was he one of these torn faces shrieking at her? Was she?
My brother. Little brother.
She snatched at that thought, threw her weight onto it as the fear battered her, as the darkness and the screaming madness strobed through her. She struggled to build something—Stephen, with his bright eyes and his close-cropped hair, his ears that stuck out just a little too far, his slouchy walk that imitated a teenage strut while making him look more of a child than ever. She had lost him. This thing, this frozen storm of horror, had taken him. She would not forget that. She could not forget that.
I want him back! If she had a mouth, she would have screamed it. I won't give up looking for him. You'll have to kill me like you killed the others.
The blackness collapsed in on her like an avalanche of ice, the pictures gone now, the spikes of madness freezing into something far more deadly, far more implacable.
Stephen, she thought. I came here for him. He's not yours. I don't care what you are, what they did to you, how they built you, how they used you. He's not yours. None of the children belong to you.
The blackness crushed her, trying to silence her. Renie felt herself vanishing, being absorbed into a cold despair as endless as a journey across the universe.
I won't stop. It was a last thought—a lie, a pathetic boast, because everything that she was . . . was stopping. . . .
And then the blackness became something else.
There was so little left of her, it seemed, that for a long time she could only lie with her eyes closed, stretched full length on her back, trying to remember not who she was, or where, but why she should care about either question. It was only the sound of distant crying which finally forced her to live again.
Renie opened her eyes to a gray world. At first all she could make of it was vertical shadow, darker on one side of her than the other. Only after a few searching, puzzled moments could she begin to make sense of it.
She lay on a path, a bit of rough stone running along the edge of a wall of stone, a little like the corkscrew trail that had led them up and down the black mountain. But as if to prove that every version of reality here had its inversion, this path seemed to curve around the inner rim of a great, circular hole: a great and empty blackness lay beside the path, but she thought she could just make out an opposite wall beyond it.
A pit, she thought. I'm stuck on a trail down the side of some huge pit.
The Well, she remembered a moment later. That's where the Stone Girl said we were going.
Where did the light come from? Renie looked up and saw something like stars in the murk far above her, a circular field that, she reasoned, must be the top of the hole. It was a vast, wide circle, but a momentary hope that this signified she was close to it disappeared when she tracked the far side of the pit upward. It would be hours of climbing to reach that opening, even if this massive hole was something closer in scale to the real world than the impossibly tall black mountain had been.
That's it—this thing is like the mountain turned upside down . . . inside out. . . . was the beginning of a thought, then the muted sound of a child sobbing snapped her attention back again.
Stone Girl. She's somewhere below me.
Renie tried to get up, groaned, then tried again. Her body felt like a damp sack that might fall to pieces with the slightest rough handling. Her head seemed far too heavy for the strength of her neck.
On the third try she dragged herself onto her feet. The path was uneven but wide, the light of the oddly foggy stars enough that, with care, she could navigate it safely.
The crying came again, at intervals. As Renie stumbled downward, as minutes became what seemed closer to an hour, she began to fear that some trick of the acoustics was leading her farther away from the source of the noise, that it might actually be above her. Only the fact that the Well itself, if that was truly what it was, slowly became narrower, its far wall looming closer with each long circle, kept her from giving up in despair.
At last, when her already exhausted body and mind were close to collapse, she found the bottom of the Well. But the bottom was out of reach.
The trail tapered to an ending which left her perched still some ten or fifteen meters above the base of the pit, where a thread of dark water flecked with subdued blue light murmured across the rough stone. A small, bent shape huddled beside this modest river.
"Is that you?" Renie asked. The figure did not look up. The quiet sound of weeping floated to Renie's perch, heartbreaking and ghostly. "Stone Girl?"
The small shape went quiet. For a moment she feared it was all illusion, that she had mistaken some nodule of rock on the bottom of this pointless place in this most pointless of universes for a child, that the sound of weeping came from nowhere or everywhere, that she should just lie down here and die and solve all problems once and for all. Then the child looked up. It was Stephen.
Fourth:
SORROW'S CHILDREN
"One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret
Never to be told"
—Traditional
CHAPTER 33
Weekend Hours
NETFEED/NEWS: Sea Squirt Squad—A Damp Squib?
(visual: S3 members wearing fish masks and kilts)
VO: The "Sea Squirt Squad," the militant arm of an anti-net group called the Dada Retrieval Collective, have failed on another attempt to, in their words, "kill the net." For the fifth time since announcing this goal, a Sea Squirt action has gone badly wrong. This time, an attempt to destroy the sales records of one of the main online retailers, which would theoretically have meant a loss of billions in revenue, resulted only in buyers receiving electronic Christmas cards several months out of season.
(visual: DRC member wearing Sepp Oswalt mask)
DRC: "You people are underestimating what a shock it was for Jewish and Islamic shoppers to receive those Christmas cards. We've had a few setbacks, seen, but we're well on our way to achieving our goal. Just wait until we hack the national elections."
Calliope Skouros sat in the wreckage of a Saturday morning—unwashed coffee cups and breakfast plates, some of which dated back to Wednesday, the news blaring across most of her wallscreen while some children's show that had caught her attention fizzed and giggled in an inset panel—and wondered what it would feel like to have a personal life.
It wasn't sex she was thinking about, particularly, just company. Wondering what it would feel like to be sitting next to another human being—Elisabetta the waitress, just for instance—and talking about the day ahead, maybe planning a trip to a museum or the park, instead of wondering how much longer she could go without doing her laundry, and whether if she ate that other waffle she would have to skip having a bowl of ice cream after dinner.
When work crashed, when the job changed dramatically, as hers had when she and Stan had been pulled off the now officially moribund Merapanui case, it was a lot harder to ignore the emptiness.
Maybe I should get a pet, she thought. Yeah, chance not. Imprison some poor dog in here all day while I'm working? There are laws about that.
It had been a busy if boring week, mostly spent catching up on unfinished paperwork—a curiously old-fashioned expression, so redolent of ancient offices and dusty files. With Merapanui closed, she and Stan had rolled ba
ck onto a number of other pending matters, most of them of the grim, foot-slogging variety, interviewing sullen or intentionally stupid witnesses about stabbings, canvassing neighbors for the last damning details of domestic disputes that had suddenly turned fatal. What was it about the Merapanui case that had kept her so fascinated? The sniff of brimstone that seemed to accompany all reminiscences of John Dread? Or was it the hopelessness of Polly Merapanui, as overlooked in death as she had been in life, waiting with the patience of the perpetually put-off for someone to give her savage murder some meaning?
It's over, Skouros, she told herself. You took your shot. It didn't work out. Now you get to do laundry. That's what life is shaped like.
She tightened the belt on her sagging dressing gown, then began to pick up cups and spoons.
The message had been left on her work account near the end of Friday afternoon. It was from Kell Herlihy in Records, and its importunate blink reminded her how tired she had been at quitting time yesterday, how even checking her mail had seemed like a cruel imposition, and of her tiny, pleasurable feeling of escape when she had decided against it,
It can wait, she told herself now. Probably the stuff on what's-his-name, the Maxie Club arson guy. But what else was there to demand her attention except the last Belgian waffle?
Fifteen seconds after she had opened the message, she was on the central database, trying to find out Kell Herlihy's home number.
When she finally made the call the screen came up dark. She could hear two or three kids arguing loudly in the background, plus a loud play-by-play of what sounded like Aussie Rules. "Hello?" a woman said.
"Kell? It's Calliope Skouros. Sorry to bother you. I just got your message."
A moment later the image flicked on. Herlihy from Records looked like she was having the married-with-kids version of Calliope's Saturday morning, although Calliope couldn't help noticing with some chagrin that the one with kids had at least managed to get dressed.
"Yes?" Herlihy looked a little dazed. Watching the three girls in the background, who appeared to be trying to dress a cat in baby clothes, Calliope refined her idea of the advantages of company.
"I'm really, really sorry, Kell, but I just had to follow up. You said you got something about John Wulgaru?"
"C'mon, Skouros, it's the weekend. Don't you ever do anything but work? Besides, I thought Merapanui was closed."
"Not by my choice. Just tell me what you have."
Kell Herlihy made a disgusted noise. "A headache. Christ, what was it? It wasn't John Wulgaru, anyway—it was just 'Wulgaru.' An inquiry. I had that automatic monitoring thing set up for you." She frowned, then turned away for a moment to rescue the cat and send her daughters out of the room, who went squealing in tripartite protest. "If you ever miss the joys of being a breeder, feel free to do some babysitting for me."
Calliope forced a laugh. "Tempting, Kell. Look, what do you mean, 'just Wulgaru'?"
"Just that. It was a word search. Someone trying to find out what it meant. I thought you'd want to know, since that was about the only active hit we ever got since I set up the monitor."
"A word search?" Calliope's excitement had cooled just a little. "Where was it from?"
"Some university, somewhere weird. Helsinki, I think. That's in Finland, right?"
"Yeah." As quickly as it had blown up, the storm of excitement faded. "Just someone from a university in Finland doing a search. Shit."
"I didn't think it was much, but if you want to do a follow-up, the trackback information is attached to the original message."
"No. Thanks anyway, Kell. As you pointed out, the case is closed. Not much use in bothering some graduate student in Finland." She reached out to close the connection.
"Yeah, probably not, if that's where it's from."
Calliope paused. "What do you mean?"
"I mean if that's really where it's from." Herlihy looked away, distracted by some dire sound from the other room that Calliope couldn't hear.
"But you said it was from Finland. A university."
Herlihy stared at her for a moment, impressed by Calliope's naivete. "That's where it's supposed to be from. But people use universities all the time to screen stuff. Easy to hack into, lots of nodes to confuse things, sloppy accounting procedures because of all the students sharing time—you know."
"I didn't know. Does that mean this search could . . . could be from somewhere else entirely?"
"Yeah." Herlihy shrugged. "Or it could be just what it looks like."
"Can you find out for me?"
"Oh, God. If I can find some time, Monday or Tuesday. . . ." She looked doubtful. "I can try, Calliope. But I'm really, really busy right now."
She had to ask. "How about this weekend?"
"What?" Kell Herlihy weary amusement sharpened into something like real anger. "Are you joking? You are, aren't you? Tell me you are. I have three kids rioting here, my lump of a husband's going to take all day just to wash the car, and you want to know if I can drop everything and track down some. . . !"
"Okay, okay! Bad idea. I'm sorry, Kell."
"I mean, come on! Just because you're single and you don't have anything to do on weekends. . . ."
"Sorry." She thanked the woman from records several times, in a hurry now to get off the phone. "I'm an idiot. You're right."
When the call was over she sat staring at the wallscreen. The news was showing some in-depth report on a tottering Asian gear empire and the apparent mortal illness of its mega-rich owner. The woman's face, as full of hard lines and surgically-smooth planes as an Easter Island statue, was horrifyingly shallow and empty, even in a piece of publicity file footage obviously meant to flatter.
That's what happens to people who don't get a life, Calliope thought. They die on the inside, but nobody knows it for a long time.
The odd thought lingered, confusing her. But I can't just let this go. Not without checking this last bit, whatever it is. Sure, it's probably meaningless. . . .
. . . But what if it isn't? And how can you ever know unless you try?
Stan was sitting on the couch between his two nephews, of whom Calliope could see only half of each, one long skinny leg and one bare foot. From the sound of it, she was sharing the Chan wallscreen with the same sporting event that Kell Herlihy's husband-lump had been watching.
"You really have too much spare time, Skouros," Stan said. "It's Saturday."
"Why does everybody feel so free to talk about my personal life?"
The Chan eyebrow crept up. "Who was it who spent most of the last week or so keeping me up to the minute on the Wild, Wonderful World of Waitresses? Without me asking once, I might add."
"All right. I'm a little sensitive today. So sue me." She was glad she'd at least shed the dressing gown for actual I-have-a-life clothes. "Better, why don't you humor me? You must know someone who can help with this."
"On a weekend? It's a closed case, Skouros. Finito. Kaput. If you're going to flog a dead horse, why don't you at least let the poor bugger rest in peace until Monday?"
"Because I want to know. Monday everything will start over again, all the usual shit, and poor little Polly Merapanui will get farther and farther away." She tried another tack. "Not to mention that on Monday I'd be using office time for what you so accurately point out is a closed case. Right now, I'm only wasting my own."
"And mine." But Stan shut his mouth for a moment, thinking. "Honestly, I can't come up with anyone, not that I could reach on a weekend." One of his nephews said something Calliope couldn't hear. "You're joking, right?" Stan asked.
"I'm not!" Calliope said, aggrieved.
"No, I'm talking to Kendrick. He said he has a friend who could help you."
"A friend . . . like, someone his age?"
"Yeah. I don't think you can afford to quibble, Skouros." Stan grinned. "Not if you're looking for someone who'll work weekend hours."
Calliope sank a little in her chair. "Shit. Okay, put Kendrick on."
; Ten minutes seemed to pass between the time his older sister left to find him and the moment when Kendrick's friend appeared on Calliope's wallscreen. The boy, barely a teenager, coupled a small frame and dark, round face with an immense head of curly black hair, artificially frosted with white so that he looked like some kind of mutant dandelion.
"You the police lady?" Kendrick had already called to explain, it seemed.
"Yes, my name is Detective Skouros. And you're Gerry Two Iron, right?"
"Seen."
She paused, trying to remember how to deal with a teenager who was not accused of any crimes. It was not an area in which she had much experience. "So . . . hey, Two Iron is a really unusual name. What tribe is it from?"
He was amused. "Golf."
"Beg your pardon?"
"My dad's the club pro at Trial Bay, up north. That's what everyone calls him, so the kids at school there called me that too. Our real name's Baker."
"Ah." What was that you said about yourself earlier, Skouros? Was "idiot" the word? "Uh, did Kendrick tell you what I need?"
He nodded his head. "You want to find out where someone's request comes from—whether it's real or, like, duppy."
"Exactly. I'm sending you the information I have—the person who got it for me says all the trackback is included."
Gerry Two Iron was already scrutinizing the bottom of his screen. "Worry not. Looks easy."
"Are you sure . . . are you sure this is all right? Your parents won't mind? Do they want to talk to me or anything?"
"Nah. Mom's in Penrith with her boyfriend this weekend anyway. But I did all my homework last night, so I'd just be in No Face Five or Middle Country this afternoon. Weather locks today—I have asthma, seen? If I find this out for you, can I be, like, some kind of official police auxiliary or something?"
