by Tad Williams
Where in the world was he? On a train in Europe, in an American mall, sizing up his next victim? Or somewhere closer? Still on the Australian continent, maybe? Lying low in some cattle station in the Outback, waiting until the time was right to come back to his old haunts with a new identity? Waiting like an evil spirit. . . .
The beep of her pad startled her badly.
"Yes?"
It was Gerry Two Iron. "Been working on that thing of yours, seen?"
She could feel her heart beating. "And you found out. . . ?"
He looked a little ashamed. "Harder than I thought it was. Somebody got a rare venture here. Duppy little piece of fenfen."
She was proud of her self-control. "Gerry, I don't know what any of that means. Just tell me in English."
He rolled his eyes. "It's, like, complicated, yaa? Trying to track it down, but it's all over the place. All kinds of switchbacks, blind repeaters, fen like that."
"Does that mean it's not from the University of Helsinki?"
"Means it's from the University of Scan Major. Someone made this real twisty. Someone good at hiding things."
Calliope sat forward. "So it's not just a straightforward request."
Gerry Two Iron shrugged, his frosted hair bouncing gently. "Don't know about that—could just be from someone utterly private, seen? Someone who doesn't like anyone else knowing their venture."
She tried to keep her elation under control. What did they have, really? As the boy said, it might be a perfectly ordinary request from someone who, for whatever reason, had a well-shielded system. But she could not help looking up at the frozen, smeary face of John Wulgaru on the wallscreen above her. I'm going to get you, you bastard. Somehow. Some day.
"When can you find out for sure where it's from?"
"Don't know." He stuck out his lower lip, thinking. "Pretty drezzed right now. I'll work on it again tomorrow. But might take me some more days than that."
"You can't work on it again until tomorrow?"
Gerry Two Iron gave Calliope the universal teenage look saved for crazy grown-ups. "Haven't even had anything to eat yet, me." He smiled his annoyance. "Even the police let a guy eat, don't they?"
"Okay, you're right. I really appreciate what you're doing—sorry to be difficult."
When he had broken off, she sat back, irritated with herself. It wasn't like there was any real time pressure, was there? Polly Merapanui had been dead and buried for five years. John Wulgaru, aka Johnny Dread, had been presumed dead for a few months longer than that. What was the hurry?
Still, as she sat with the blurry pictures and the picked-over files on the wallscreen providing the only light in the darkening apartment, she could not help feeling that more than a weekend was slipping away.
Most of the morning was gone when she dragged herself out of bed. It had taken her four beers after dinner to get relaxed enough to sleep and she felt every one of them. She sat in the living room nursing her coffee with the blinds shut tight, wondering whether God had deliberately made the light of Sunday mornings unpleasant to the eye to try to force sinners to shelter in dark churches.
She was finishing the second cup and deciding that she might even be able to eat a little something when she finally noticed that what she had dismissed as a symptom of her incipient headache was actually a message alert blinking in the corner of her wallscreen. She had slept through a call, apparently.
Elisabetta? Or Kendrick's friend? Could this turn out to be a decent day after all? Suffering with a sour stomach and a dry, gritty mouth, she found that hard to believe, but she called the message up.
It was from Gerry Two Iron. He had been working late, he said, and he had a little something for her. That thing she wanted to know about, his recorded image reported with heavy significance. Even through impatience and the actual arrival of the headache, she had to smile. This kid watches too many spyflicks. She called him back.
When they were finished, she thanked him for his help—yes, she promised, she would definitely look into the chance of him becoming a police auxiliary (whatever the hell that meant)—then sat back, staring at the now-cold coffee in her mug. The fruits of Gerry Two Iron's search might be something useful, but it could just as easily turn out to be no more than what the original request had seemed to be—someone researching a piece of Aboriginal folklore, But it was out of a Sydney telecom router, so if she could get the provider to cough up a street address. . . .
Calliope sighed. Was this any way to spend a Sunday? If she couldn't get any voluntary help from the telecom company, she'd need a judge's order to get anything. How could she get that without opening herself up to a bulk scorch from the captain, or maybe even a formal inquiry?
She'd try a little persuasion on the provider and see what happened. Another weekend day shot to hell. Well, it was better than cleaning.
And what if she did somehow get an address? Wait until Monday?
Stan's line rang for a long time. When it finally answered, the face that greeted her was a monster's, powder-blue, with insect eyes and long antennae.
"Christ!" she said, startled.
"Stanley Chan is not home," the thing said doomfully. "He has left the planet."
"Kidnapped!" said another bug-eyed mask, shoving its way into view. "Kidnapped by aliens!"
Now Calliope could see Man sitting on the couch, pretending to be tied up while his nephews recorded the message. He waved his hands, bound by what looked like the belt of a bathrobe. "Sorry, everybody! I'm being taken to another planet," he called. "Or the zoo. Or something."
"Into space, to be tortured," said the first monster, rubbing his hands in anticipation.
"Message," hissed the second.
"Oh, yeah. If you want to leave a message, go ahead. But it won't do Mr. Chan any good, because he'll be on our home planet, being like utterly tortured to death."
Calliope left a message asking the prisoner to call back when he got home. Even if her partner was no longer in the galaxy, and she was about to waste her Sunday trying to track down a meaningless detail from a closed case, she didn't want to lose touch with him entirely.
CHAPTER 34
Desert Smile
NETFEED/DOC/GAME: IEN, Hr. 17 (En, NAm)—"TICK TICK TICK"
(visual: contestant in flames)
VO: The season-ending episode of the popular game show, in which twelve contestants are given mystery injections and have to wait a week for the results. Ten are harmless, and the contestants win only the home version of the game. One injection creates the famous "Wild Credits" logo on the winner's skin, signifying that he or she has won a million Swiss credits. The twelfth contestant—a designation the show has now made famous—spontaneously combusts. The fun comes in watching what the contestants do during the seven-day countdown as they wait to discover their fate on live television at week's end. This final episode of the season ends last week's contest, and also provides a retrospective of some of the most touching and outrageous moments from earlier shows.
The priest with the dull eyes set the ivory box down on the stone beside Paul. One corner pressed into his skin as the priest opened it and began carefully to remove a collection of bronze knives and other objects not so immediately classifiable.
"Here is the malefactor, O gods,"
Userhotep chanted,
"The one whose mouth is closed against you as a
door is shut."
Paul tried desperately to concentrate on the drone of the priest's voice, the flickering lamplight as it splashed and ebbed along the ceiling, even the smirking god-mask of Robert Wells—anything but what was going to happen.
As the dead-eyed man bent toward him, a polished crescent of bronze shining in his fingers like a tiny moon, Paul tensed his muscles, then jerked his torso to one side, stretching the ropes until they creaked. The knife made only a shallow cut, which nevertheless left a stripe of agony along his rib cage. Paul's breast heaved with the effort but he had bought himself only a few seconds. Userho
tep shot him a look of contempt, then prepared to cut again.
"It's really rather pointless, Mr. Jonas," said Robert Wells. "All this struggling. Why don't you just be a good sport?"
Staring at the hateful yellow face, Paul felt his mouth fill with acid rage and despair. Something burned into his side like a white-hot flame and a scream forced its way out of him like an animal fleeing its lair.
"The sooner you relax and stop fighting, the sooner we can break down that hypnotic block." Wells' voice floated to him from what seemed a great distance. "Then the pain will stop."
"You bastard," Paul sobbed. The shadows in the room seemed to be coming alive. Something was moving behind Wells, a widening angle of black.
The kheri-heb priest suddenly dropped his knife. Even before it clinked on the stone floor the torturer had staggered back from the butcher block, waving at his face. He was being swarmed by something Paul could not quite see, a moving cloud of pale shapes.
"Master," the priest shrieked, "save me!"
But something had grabbed Wells, too: Paul could just see him from the corner of his eye, a tall, bandaged figure struggling with something small and hairy that gripped his leg like a dog. Wells was cursing in shock and pain, flailing at his attacker. Then other shapes poured into the room. People shouted. The torches fluttered so that the shadows, which moments earlier had been so still, began to leap along the walls. Everything seemed to expand and waver.
Now Wells was wrestling with a dark-haired figure almost his own size. As they rolled on the floor together a flash of electrical light turned the world blue for a painful instant. Paul strained his head upward from the stone, trying to blink away the effects of the explosive glare.
What's happening. . . ? was all he had time to think, then Userhotep rose up beside him, still screaming, another knife in his hand and his face acrawl with squirming shapes. The priest fell across the altar, smashing Paul's head back against the stone and filling his head with blackness.
His limbs, now free, were on fire, and his heart felt like a motor working on bad fuel. His head felt worse. Somebody was under each of his arms, holding him up.
"My God, he's all wet—he's bleeding. . . !"
Paul recognized Martine's voice with a rush of gratitude. He tried to open his eyes but they were full of something salty that burned. "Shallow. . . ." he gasped, struggling unsuccessfully to support his own weight with his legs. The returning circulation felt like a swarm of murderously stinging ants. "Shallow cuts. They only . . . started. . . ."
"Don't talk," ordered Florimel from his other side. "Save your strength. We'll help you, but we have to get moving."
"I never thought I would see the yellow-faced one like this." This was a voice Paul did not know, deep and hoarse; it came from somewhere close to the ground, as though its owner were kneeling. "Look at him wiggle like a worm on a hot rock." The laugh was gleeful. "That is a powerful spell you hold in your hand, fellow."
"Just want out, me," Paul heard T4b say. The boy sounded as breathless as if he had just run a marathon. "Before that sayee lo killer come looking for us."
"Should we finish him off?" Florimel asked, and for a moment, in his pain and confused exhaustion, Paul thought his friends were planning to put him out of his misery.
"Look, look!" a tiny, high-pitched voice said almost inside his ear. "All blood! You fall down, mister? Look like zoomflier ripscrape, huh?"
"What the hell is going on?" Paul moaned. "What happened?"
"You speak lightly of finishing off Ptah," said the hoarse voice, going on as if Paul had not spoken, "but I must tell you that to kill a god changes the shape of heaven—especially one so important as the Lord of the White Walls."
"Wells is not our enemy," Martine said. "The real monster is coming—he might be here at any moment."
The voice by Paul's knees snorted. "If your enemy is our new lord and master Anubis," he said, "then you don't need any other enemies. If he catches us he will crush you—and me, too—like dust beneath his black heels."
Paul had at last managed to blink his eyes clear. The figure before him was not kneeling. It was a dwarf of some kind, with a great tangle of beard and a shockingly ugly face which widened in a grin as he saw Paul looking at him.
"Your friend can see again," he said, then bowed. "No need to thank Bes for saving you and your companions. There is little work for a household god in a land where all the households have been smashed into ruin." The dwarf laughed. He seemed to laugh a lot, but Paul could not help noticing that he didn't seem very happy. "However, I suppose all my work could be called little work."
Paul shook his head, dazed. A yellow monkey the length of his finger was hovering just before him now. A moment later a half dozen more joined the formation. "Nobody tells us where 'Landogarner is," the tiny ape complained. "You know? And Freddicks?"
Robert Wells lay on the stone floor a few feet away, writhing as though in the grip of a seizure, clutching at his bandaged head. The priest Userhotep was crumpled against the far wall in a spreading dark pool that reflected torchlight.
"What's going on?" Paul asked again, helplessly.
"We'll tell you later." Martine reached up from under his arm and patted his face. Her hand lingered there for a moment, cool and reassuring. "You're safe now."
"As safe as the rest of us, anyway," said Florimel darkly. "Here are your clothes."
"Leave Wells," Martine said. "It's time to go. I don't know exactly how far it is to the gateway."
"Gateway. . . ?" Paul's head felt as though it were sloshingly full of black paint or dirty oil, something sticky that kept fouling the connections. There were two other people in the room, he saw, the prisoners who had been brought in just before Paul had been dragged out. When Nandi Paradivash saw him looking, he limped over.
"I am glad you are alive, Paul Jonas." Patches of Nandi's skin had been scraped raw on his face and arms, and he had gruesome, hand-shaped burns on his legs. He seemed shriveled, a shadow of his earlier brave and resourceful self. "I will never forgive myself for betraying you." Paul shrugged, unsure of what to say. Nandi seemed to want some kind of absolution, but at the moment Paul could not make much sense of such an abstract idea. "Mrs. Simpkins and I. . . ." Nandi gestured awkwardly to the woman, "we were . . . prisoners of the man called Dread for many days."
"We'll talk about it later." The Simpkins woman sounded rational and calm, but her shadowed eyes did not meet Paul's, and her hands drooped like they were boneless.
"Can you walk if we help you, Paul?" Martine asked, "We have to hurry and it will be hard to carry you. We distracted the guards, but they'll be back."
Bes chuckled and trotted to the door, then pulled it open. Paul could hear distant shouts in the corridor. "It is impressive how much distraction you can cause when you give a torch to a troop of flying monkeys."
A yellow cloud of simians exploded into the air and out into the hallway.
"Burn burn burn!" they squealed, whirling like a dust devil. "Burn all pretty!"
"Big fuego!"
"Ruling Tribe!"
T4b lurched after them. He was holding one of his hands as though it hurt. Paul could not help noticing that the hand was glowing.
Supported by Martine and Florimel, Paul staggered out of the cell. He had to step over one of Wells' legs, which jerked and twitched as though electrified.
The sun overhead was a vast white disk, the air outside Abydos-That-Was so dry and hot Paul could almost feel it sucking the moisture out of his lungs. Ruined, fire-blackened buildings stood on all sides of the great temple, some still bleeding dark smoke into the sky. Dread appeared to have thrown a party here much like the one in Dodge City.
Paul needed to lean a little on Florimel, but he had regained enough strength that Martine could let go of him and walk down the stone pier that jutted out from the back of the temple into the flat brown water of a wide canal. The monkeys hovered around her for a moment, then darted forward to inspect the immense golde
n barge waiting at the end of the pier like a floating hotel. Martine stopped halfway down the span and turned slowly from side to side.
"It's not here." Her voice was tight with growing panic. "The gateway—I can feel it, but it's not here."
"What does that mean?" Florimel demanded. "It's invisible?"
"No, it's simply not here. I could sense it out here when we were inside. I can still feel it, very strongly, but. . . ." She turned until she was facing away from the temple, looking down the river valley to the south. "My God," she said slowly. "It's . . . it's far away. But it's so strong! That's why I thought it was just here, at the edge of the temple." She turned to Bes, who watched her with the serene calm of someone who saw and even made miracles himself every day. "What's out there?"
"Sand," he growled. "Scorpions. More sand. It's closer to the point to talk about what isn't out there—water, shade, things like that." He tugged at his curly beard. "That way lies the Red Desert."
"But what's out there? What am I sensing? Something big, powerful—an opening." She frowned; Paul guessed she was searching for a way to explain that the dwarf would understand. "Some . . . some very big and dark magic."
Bes only shook his head. "You don't want to go there, woman."
"Damn it, we have to!" Martine came back up the pier toward him. "Just tell us. We will make our own choices."
The bearded god stared at her for a moment, then shook his head again. "When the little apes found me, I came to help you because I regretted how I had left these two—he gestured toward Nandi and Mrs. Simpkins, "—at an evil time in the temple of Ra, Now you want to go somewhere even worse? I am not the most noble of gods, woman, but neither do I wish to send good people to their ruin."
"Just tell us what is out there!" snapped Martine.
Mrs. Simpkins stepped forward; her uselessly dangling hands made her look like a begging dog. "We need to know, Bes," she said. "After that, it's up to us, not you."
