Everville (54 page)

Perhaps he could do it here. Concealing his eagerness, he turned back to Noah.

"Before we go in," he said, "answer my question."

"Ask it.,'

"I want to know what it is the families have been arguing about all these years. I want to know what's made them kill each other." Noah said nothing. "You promised me," Joe prompted him.

"Yes," he said at last. "I did."

"So tell me."

Noah shrugged. "What does it matter now?" he said to himself. "I'll tell you He looked back towards the battlefield once, then, his voice lowered to a whisper he said: "The dynasty of Ezso Aetherium believe that the lad exists because Sapas Humana dreamed them into being. That the lad are the darkness in the collective soul of your species."

"And your family?"

"We believe the other way about," Noah said.

It took Joe a little time to realize what he was being told. "You think we're something the lad Uroboros dreamed up."

"Yes, Afrique. That's what we believe."

"Who invented this crap?" Noah shrugged. "Who knows where wisdom comes from?" "That's not wisdom," Joe said. "It's fucking stupidity." "Why do you say so?" "Because I'm not a dream." "If you were, why do you suppose you'd know it?" Noah said.

Joe didn't try to get his head around that notion. He simply threw up his hands and said, "Let's just get the hell on with this," and turning his back on Noah he pressed against the door. It didn't swing open, but nor did he remain on the outside of it. Instead he felt a sudden ache through his body, almost like an electric shock, and the next moment he was standing in a buzzing darkness on the inside of the temple. He waited for the ache to subside, and then looked round for Noah. There was a motion in the murk behind him, but he was by no means sure it was his fellow trespasser, and before he could look again he heard somebody call his name.

He looked ahead of him, and saw that the dark ground at the center of the chamber was glittering, the light coming down upon it from a round hole in the roof. Joe crossed the floor to study the phenomenon better, and as he did so realized that he was looking at a pool, perhaps twelve feet across.

It was filled with Quiddity's waters, he had no doubt of that. He could smell the piquancy of the dream-sea, and his skin tingled with the subtle energies it gave off. But as he came to the edge of the pool he had further proof that this was indeed an annex of Quiddity. There, a little way beneath the surface, lurked a 'shu so large it could barely be containe in the pool, but was wrapped around itse in a tangle of encrusted tentacles, from the nest of which one of its eyes-which was from rim to rim a yard across, or morestared up and out, gleaming gold. Its gaze was not upon Joe, at least not directly. The creature was looking up through the roof of the temple, into the roiling wall of the invader.

"It's holding the lad Joe breathed. "My God. My God. It's holding the lad." He had no sooner spoken than he heard Noah from somewhere in the dark. "Do you feel it?" he said. "Do you feel the power in this place?"

"Oh yeah," Joe said softly. It was so palpable it almost felt like an act of aggression. His flesh ran with sweat, and every bruise and wound his body had sustained-back to the beating he'd taken from Morton Cobb-ached with fresh vigor, as though it had just been sustained. But still he wanted to get closer to the pool; to see what the lad was seeing, when it gazed into the 'shu's majestic eye. He took another step towards the water, his body wracked with shudders.

"Speak to it," Noah said. "Tell it what you want."

"It doesn't matter what we want," Joe said. "We're nothing here. Do you understand? We're nothing at all."

"Damn you, Afrique," Noah said, his voice closer to Joe now. "I've done all the suffering I intend to do. I want to live in glory when the lad's passed by." He drew closer still. "Now put your hand in the ivater-"

"What happened to all that talk about being buried in your own country?"

"I'd forgotten how fine it was to be alive. Especially here. There is no finer place in your world or mine than this city. And I want to be the one who heals it, after the cataclysm. I want to be its protector."

"You want to own it," Joe said.

"Nobody could ever own b'Kether Sabbat." "I think you're ready to try," Joe said.

"Well that's between me and the city, isn't it?" Noah said, moving to press the blade against Joe's back. "Go on now," he said. "Touch the waters for me."

"And if I don't?"

"Your body will touch the waters, whether there's life in it or not."

,it's holding the lad-"

"Very possibly." "If we disturb it@,

"The lad finishes its business here and moves on. It's going to happen sooner or later. If you make it sooner then you've changed the course of history, and maybe got yourself power at the same time. That doesn't sound so terrible, does it?" He pushed the blade a little harder. "It's what you came here for, remember?"

Joe remembered. The pain in his balls was a perfect reminder of why he'd made this journey: to never be powerless again. But in the Process of coming here@f seeing all that he'd seen, and learning all that he'd learned-the pursuit of power had come to seem like a very petty thing. He'd had love, which was more than most people got in their lives. He'd had physical pleasures. He'd known a woman whose smile made him smile, and whose sighs made him sigh, and whose arms had been an utter comfort to him.

they would not come again, those smiles, those sighs, and it was a worse ache than the sum of his wounds to think of that, but life hadn't cheated him, had it? He could die, now, and not feel his time had been wasted.

"I don't... want power," he said to Noah.

11 Liar," said the face in the darkness.

"You can say what you want," Joe replied. "I know what's true and that's all that matters."

The words seemed to dismay Noah. He made a little moan, and without another word of warning drove his blade into Joe's gut. Oh God, but it hurt! Joe let out a sob of pain, which only inspired Noah to press the blade home. Then he twisted it, and pulled it out. Joe entertained no hope of doing his killer damage in return. He'd invited this, after his fashion. He put his hands to the wound, hot blood running through his fingers and slapping on the ground between his legs, then he started to turn his back on Noah. The darkness was becoming piebald; gray blotches appearing at the corners of his sight. But he wanted to look at the Ishu one last time before death took him. Just to meet its golden gaze...

He started to turn, pressing both hands against the wound now, to keep his body from emptying. There was still pain, but it was becoming more remote from him with every heartbeat. He had just a little time.

"Hold on... " he murmured to himself.

He had the gaze in the corner of his eye now, and it was vast. A ring of gold and a circle of darkness. Beautiful in its perfection and in its simplicity. Round and round, gleaming gold, uninterrupted, unspoiled, glorious, glorious...

He felt something shifting in his head, as though he was slipping towards the golden circle.

Going, going...

And oh, it felt fine. He was done with his wounded flesh, done with bruises and bleeding balls; done with Joe.

He felt his body start to fall, and as it did so-as the life went out of it utterly-he fell into the circle of the 'shu's eye.

He was granted a moment of rest there: but a moment filled with such grace and such ease it wiped all the sufferings of the days that had brought him here, and of the years that had proceeded them.

There was no confusion, nor fear. He understood what had happened to him with absolute clarity. He'd died on the edge of the pool, and his spirit had fallen into the eye of the Zehrapushu. There, in that gilded round, it stayed for a blissful moment. Then it was gone, up and away along the line of shu's sight towards the cloud of the lad.

In the temple below him he heard Noah let out a cry of rage, and for an instant, though he had neither eyes nor head to put them in, his spirit saw quite plainly what was happening below. Noah had stepped over Joe's corpse and had plunged his blood-stained hands into the pool of Quiddity's waters. The 'shu had responded to the trespass instantly.

Its tentacles had started to flail wildly, and one of themwhether by intention or chance Joe would never know-had wrapped around Noah's arm. Enraged and revolted, Noah picked up the sword he'd just set aside and even as Joe watched he plunged the blade into the 'shu's unblinking eye.

A tremor passed through Joe's world. Through the gaze in which he traveled, through the temple below, and out, across the plaza of columns and through the streets of b'Kether Sabbat. He knew on the instant what had happened. The 'shu's hold on the Iad had slipped; and the great wave that had been frozen over the city began to curl.

Joe turned his spirit-sight up towards the Iad, and to his astonishment saw that he was almost upon it, flying like an arrow into its roiling substance.

Below him, the city shook itself into despair, and the island of Mem-6 b'Kether Sabbat fell beneath the lad's shadow.

And he, Joe Flicker, who had given up life but had not perished, flew into the heart of the city's destroyer, and lost himself there as surely as if he had died.

The S@ Motel was a modest establishment, set a quarter of a mile back from the road along what was little more than a gravel strewn track, barely wide enough to allow two cars to pass. The motel itself was a single-story, wooden structure built around two and a quarter sides of a parking lot, the quarter being the office, over which a fitfully illuminated sign boasted that there were NO VACANCIES. Apparently most of the occupants were out having a high time in Everville, because when Tesia drove in, the lot was empty but for three vehicles. One was a flathed truck, parked outside the office, one a beaten up Mustang, which Tesla assumed was Grillo's, and the third was an even more dilapidated Ford Pinto.

She had not even turned off the engine of her bike when the door of room six opened and a scrawny, balding man in a shirt and pants several sizes too big for him stepped out and said her name. She was about to ask him if they knew each other when she realized it was Grillo. There was no way to conceal her shock. He seemed not to notice, however, or perhaps not to care. He opened his arms to her (so thin! oh, so thin!) and they embraced.

"You don't know how glad I am to see you," he said. The frailty wasn't just in his body. It was in his voice too. He sounded remote, as though his sickness, whatever it was, was already carrying him away. Both of us, she thought, not long for this world.

"There's so much to tell you," Grillo was saying. "But I'll keep it simple." He halted, as though waiting for her permission to tell. She told him to go on. "Well... Jo-Beth's behaving really strangely. Some of the time she's so excitable, I want to gag her. The rest of the time she's practically catatonic."

"Does she talk about Tommy-Ray?"

Grillo shook his head. "I've tried to make her talk, but she doesn't trust me. I'm hoping maybe she'll talk to you,. cause we need some inside track here or we're tucked."

"You're sure Tommy-Ray's alive?"

"I don't know about alive, but I know he's around."

"And what about Howie?"

"Not good. We're all playing some kind of endgame here, Tes. It's like everything's coming together, in the worst way. 11

"I know that feeling," she told him.

"And I'm too old for this shit, Tes. Too old and too sick."

"I can see... things aren't good," she said to him. "If you want to talk-"

'No, he said hurriedly. "I don't. There's nothing worth saying anyway. It's just the way things go."

"One question?" "All right. One."

"Is this why you didn't want me to come see you?" tillo nodded. "Stupid, I know. But I guess we all deal with shit the best way we know how. I decided to hide away and work on the Reef."

"How's it going?"

"I want you to see it for yourself, Tes, if we come out of this." She didn't tell them she wouldn't; just nodded. "I think maybe you'd make more sense of it than I have. You knowmake the connections better." He put his arm around her shoulder. "Shall we go in?" he said.

Once, somewhere on the road, Tesia had contemplated setting the story of Jo-Beth McGuire and Howie Katz down for posterity. How in the sunny kingdom of Palomo Grove these two perfect people had met and fallen in love, not realizing that their fathers had sired them to do battle. How their passion had enraged their fathers, and how that rage had erupted into open warfare in the streets of the gilded kingdom. Many had suffered as a consequence. Some had even perished. But by some miracle the lovers had survived their travails intact.

(It was not the first time a story of ill-matched lovers had been told, of course, but more often than not it was the couple who suffered and died, perhaps because people wanted the perfect pair snuffed out before their love could lose its perfection. Better a murdered ideal, which at least kept hope alive, than one'that withered with time.)

While making her notes for this story Tesla had several times wondered what happened to the golden lovers of Palomo Grove. Here, in room six, she had her answer.

Despite the warning Grillo had given, she was not prepared to find the couple so changed: both gray-faced, their speech and action devoid of any spark of vitality. When, after some wan greetings had been exchanged, Howie began to describe for Tesla the events that had brought them to this sorry place and condition, the pair scarcely glanced at each other.

"Just help me kill the sonofabitch," Howie said to Tesla, the subject of the Death-Boy's dispatch rousing a passion in him absent until now. She told him she didn't have any answers. Perhaps the Nuncio had bestowed some form of invulnerability upon him (after all, he'd escaped the conflagration in the Loop).

"You think he's beyond death, right?" Grillo said.

"It's possible, yes-"

"And that's from the Nuncio?"