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Given access? It implied there was a giver, and if that was true, then --
A slow and molten joy began to grow within her. _He_ was still alive. _He_ had
not been destroyed in that final maelstrom. And it must have been _He_ who had
called her back from the long darkness.
She spread her gauzy whiteness -- grave shrouds which concealed claws -- into
the growing luminescence of her new life, and she prayed as she had never
prayed before.
_Oh, my Son, give your enemies to my destruction!_
The reply, so unexpected yet so fitting, came instantly: _Yes, Mother, I will
do this thing._
She had never known such happiness.
Ozzie chewed at it as a dog might harry a fleeing rabbit. "We can't," he said,
"just wander around until something jumps us. We need a _plan,_ dammit."
She was distant, absorbed in her own thoughts. They sat in the streetside
coffee shop of the Chicago Marriott, looking through thick plate glass windows
at the rushing crowds of Michigan Avenue. Oddly enough, it seemed to be
Christmas time. The trees which lined the broad avenue, rebuilt twice since
the rising of Lake Michigan, were decked with thousands of twinkling white
lights. It was an ancient Chicago tradition, dating from a time before even
her childhood. She stared at the lights but did not see them.
He slurped noisily at his coffee. A waitress stood nearby, ignoring them as
she muttered subvocalizations into her implanted throat bead. Somewhere in the
bowels of the hotel, kitchen machines sprang into action at her command,
chopping and mixing and cooking yet another patented Marriott meal. Ozzie knew
even the waitress's job could be done more cheaply, more efficiently, by a
machine, but for a thousand dollars a room, the patrons of the Marriott
demanded more expensive service.
"It's all coming alive again," Calley said suddenly. Her eyes flashed emerald
so fiercely that Ozzie pulled his slumping frame up straight.
"What is, babe?"
She fluttered her strong fingers, her coffee forgotten in front of her.
"Everything. Everybody. All the ghosts."
She confused him. He shook his head slightly. "I don't understand, Calley. You
know me." He chuckled slightly. "Always the slow one."
The turbulence faded from her face. She reached across the table and patted
the back of his hand. It was an old gesture, one from which they both took
comfort. "Don't run yourself down so much, Oz."
He twitched an uncertain grin at her. "Well, okay, but what the fuck are you
talking about? Who is coming alive?"
She took a deep breath. "It's the only thing that makes sense. You have to
look at it from Berg's point of view. He's the one right along who's always
been talking about reality. Almost like he doesn't see what's real the same
way we do. You ever notice, he's never seemed much upset about losing his
body? Almost like he didn't care about it."
The unspoken worry lay on the table before them like an unturned card. Their
own bodies rested still and cold in dark tanks on the Moon. This was all a
dream, but when they awakened, their real bodies would be waiting for their
return. Or so they viewed the web of what they called the real. This insane
hegira was a threat to that safe resurrection. Berg had bet their real lives
against the strength of Arius. Or so it seemed.
"But did he?" she wondered aloud.
"You're losing me again," he told her.
"Mm? Sorry, just wandered a bit. Look. I bet you anything you want that Berg
dreamed this whole thing up. So if the world's greatest con man put together
the shape of the thing, then it has his dirty little fingerprints ail over it.
He's concerned about something I
haven't quite been able to figure out yet, but it has a lot to do with
whatever we think of as life and death. Look at Arius. All he wants is
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immortality. Power is a secondary thing with him, only insofar as it assures
him immortality. But I don't think that's Berg's primary concern. Berg is
opposition. Berg is the Key, as he keeps telling us all the time. And what's
Berg's greatest strength?"
Ozzie wrinkled his high forehead. His golden hair shimmered. He looked like a
ridiculously tall, ridiculously young Botticelli sculpture. "He always claimed
to be the defender. That's his nickname, right? Iceberg."
She smiled. "So if he laid out this thing, you can bet he snookered Arius
somehow. The game has to be loaded some way in favor of defense. That's my
guess."
"Defense of what?"
"What's the most important thing Berg has? The one thing that if it's
destroyed, Arius sweeps the table?"
He stared at her. "I flat don't know, babe. But you do, don't you?"
"Uh huh. The Key. That's what this is all about. And that's why the game board
is Chicago."
He finished his coffee, put down the cup, and signaled for refills. "I still
don't get it. What the fuck is the Key?"
"I don't know," she replied. "But I think that's what we're supposed to find
out."
The waitress glided by with a pot of coffee, poured, and glided on. Ozzie
grunted. "Well, good fucking luck," he said.
"Luck," she said softly, "is only a matter of good offense. And that -- " Her
voice went grim, "That's something I'm not bad at myself. Not bad at all."
He thought she sounded hungry. He was right.
She came fully awake at last in the black places, the under places where heat
signatures mattered as much as the dim flickers of the human visual spectrum.
Around her stretched vast distances, echoing and filled with the low call of
watery drums. Around her too whispered the plaintive cries of her many
children, the lame and the halt and the furred, the cripples who had rejected
the light of day for the safety of the dark, and her protection.
She sat upon her rude throne and felt the dim glow of hidden fires. Her
children clacked and clawed and paced, bound upon their incomprehensible
tasks. Incomprehensible to any but her, perhaps. For she recognized the time
and the place. Somehow, through the greatness and the glory of her Son, she
had been transformed, remade. She had been sent back, flipped across the gulfs
of time to the beginning.
Ecstasy tore at her heart. She had been forgiven for her great sin, and given
an even greater boon. She would be allowed to expiate a mother's deadliest
bane: the destruction of her son by the lapse of her hand.
She nodded peacefully at the misshapen hordes which rustled and muttered
around her. All her children, the army of her salvation.
She would cry again. And this time, she would not fail.
"Come to me, my angels," she said softly. In the distance, the drums boomed
with a hollow, hungry sound.
* * * * *
Calley looked up from her half-eaten Denver omelet. A thin smile quirked her
lips. "And take a look at that, bubba," she said.
Ozzie turned, followed her glance to the holiday crowds pushing past the tall
windows of the coffee shop. The press was so thick that it was hard to see
across the street, to the equally thick holiday mob on that side, but he
thought he saw a flash. A single mental snapshot.
"Jesus," he said.
"You see what I see?"
He nodded.
"Tell me," she said.
"The Lady. And a wolfpack. What the fuck, is she doing her Christmas shopping?
She never used to come up out of the
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Labyrinth."
"That was then, this is now," Calley replied. "God damn, it must be
Christmas."
"How come?"
"The gods," she said cheerfully. "They sent us a sign."
"There aren't any gods," he told her irritably. "That's just -- " [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]