Flux (7 page)

Darting across the courtyard, she ducked behind a large rain barrel that stood opposite a metal dumpster. It had taken several weeks’ careful watching to discover the secret that lay behind the dumpster—a small service door that led directly into the church. During the day the dumpster was kept shoved against the wall so the door couldn’t be seen, but on certain nights it was pulled out just enough to permit the body of a man to slip sideways through the gap—not just one, as Nellie had eventually discovered, but eight, in a predictable sequence with five minutes’ wait between each one. If everything went as usual tonight, she’d arrived approxi
mately ten minutes ahead of the first man. Flattening herself against the barrel, she tucked her breathing into a quiet inner place, and settled down to wait.

She would never have known about the hidden door if it hadn’t been for a gang of boys who’d been hired to patrol the neighborhood on the nights the men came to the church. About a month ago she’d been out rambling Snake Eye’s curiously twisted streets on one of her frequent night prowls, when the gang had spotted her and shoved her around before warning her off the area. Something about the way they’d delivered the message, as if it came from the Goddess Herself, and the way they’d let her off so easily, had told Nellie they were working for someone who wanted the area kept clear and quiet. In the following weeks, she’d haunted the neighborhood. The gang had been easy enough to avoid once she’d known they were there, and she’d soon noted the shadowy men who’d turned, one by one, down the side wall of the Sanctuary of the Blessed Goddess. It had been short work to track them to the courtyard and the hidden door, and several more weeks’ observation had established their meeting times—alternating every third and fourth night, one hour past midnight.

Gradually the men began to arrive. As usual they kept to a tight schedule, slipping around the far corner at five-minute intervals, glancing once around the courtyard, then heading directly toward the dumpster and the hidden door. Each man entered the courtyard wearing the same guarded posture, and their order of arrival followed an established sequence. In fact everything about the men seemed prearranged and methodical, and it was this that had originally piqued Nellie’s curiosity. Fixed patterns of behavior were the norm in the Interior, but in the Outbacks they stuck out like a sore thumb. Squeezing herself deeper into the narrow space behind the barrel, she scratched at the pimples forming over several ingrown hairs on her scalp, and waited.

The first man slipped across the courtyard, then the second. Predictable as ever, they were also deadly quiet—one moment the
courtyard stretched silent and empty, and the next a soundless figure was gliding past Nellie’s hiding place toward the dumpster, his face clearly identifiable in the moonlight. During the past few weeks she’d passed several of these men in the street during daylight hours and they’d seemed entirely ordinary, with nothing to distinguish them from the next man. What would call them from their beds to come sneaking through the streets to the Goddess’s sanctuary, night after night? And what could the Goddess possibly have to tell them one hour past midnight that She couldn’t say during daylight hours? If Ivana had secrets to tell, Nellie damn well wanted to hear them. Slitting her eyes, she maintained a careful watch on the silent courtyard.

Overhead the twin moons traveled their parallel arc, pouring down a thick pearly light. The third man arrived, and the fourth. Then a long pause followed, during which Nellie massaged a cramp in her leg, stopping immediately when the sixth man appeared. Where was the fifth? Nellie counted in her head, recalling the men’s individual faces. Yes, it was the fifth man who hadn’t shown. Sometimes a man failed to arrive, but the order of appearance always continued unchanged. As the seventh, then eighth man slipped behind the dumpster she crouched, arguing furiously with herself. Her tentative plan had been to follow the eighth man into the church, but what if the fifth had been delayed and was just around the corner?
Don’t be a wimp
, she scoffed inwardly. These guys were robots. If the fifth man hadn’t shown in sequence, he was sick or out of town.

She was about to step out from the barrel when a slight sound froze her into position, just in time to escape the notice of a figure that was slinking into the courtyard. Shooting glances in every direction, it crept cautiously toward the dumpster. A hyper-alertness sang through Nellie’s brain and she leaned forward, muttering under her breath. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t one of the usual eight. He was too short for one thing, and was moving with greater stealth, keeping an arm over his face. Even so, she was sure she
knew him from somewhere. The figure reached the dumpster and turned, dropping its arm to sweep the courtyard with one last glance, and Nellie went rigid, recognizing Deller’s narrow weasely face. Still favoring his bandaged hand, he was cradling it against his stomach. Without a sound he turned toward the dumpster and slid behind it.

Well, that settled it. Any hesitation Nellie might have had about following strange men into an unfamiliar building late at night went up in smoke as she watched Deller slip through the shadowy doorway ahead of her. No way was she sitting with her butt glued to a mundane rain barrel while that nine-fingered weasel was in there, spying on Snake Eye’s inner mysteries. Easing out from behind the barrel, she was halfway across the courtyard when a sudden murmur of voices coming along the church’s west wall sent her scuttling back to her hiding place. Hunched deep in the barrel’s shadow, she peered out cautiously, then stared wide-eyed at the two men crossing the courtyard. One was the fifth man, out of sequence—no surprise there. But unless Lulunar was pulling one of its doubling tricks, she’d seen his companion one week ago, close to the deserted quarry. For the tenth figure currently crossing the courtyard was the driver of the burgundy van, the man who’d lifted the four children out of the back of the vehicle. Why would the fifth man bring a pain doctor, an Interior agent, to a middle-of-the-night meeting in one of the Goddess’s sanctuaries?

Stifling a yelp of warning, Nellie sank further into the barrel’s shadow. Vague white rooms swirled in her head, followed by a wave of nausea.
Get a grip
, she thought, hitting her stomach with both hands.
No one’s going to live this life for you if you don’t.

When her nausea cleared, she peered around the barrel and saw the two men had gone in. Quickly she crossed the courtyard and slid behind the dumpster, then passed through a narrow doorway into a low-ceilinged corridor. There she waited, nostrils flared, as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The air felt heavy, weighted with the scent of closed-in places. To her left the corridor disappeared
into darkness, but a hundred feet to her right a low-watt ceiling bulb burned.

Leaving the door to the courtyard slightly ajar, Nellie turned, about to proceed along the hall when she noticed a small alcove carved into the wall directly opposite. Set into the alcove was a statue of the Goddess dressed in Her usual blue robe, hands raised in supplication and an unlit candle at Her feet. At the sight of the candle, a hiss snaked from Nellie’s lips.
Sacrilege
. Any true believer would have the parish priest drawn and quartered for such disrespect. Leaning forward she kissed Ivana’s feet and whispered profuse apologies, then turned and tiptoed along the narrow corridor. The walls leaned in, the air pressed close. Without tuning into the molecular field she could sense what seemed to be countless gates to other levels, their spidery seams running the walls, ceiling, and floor. A tiny wave of flux came at her, rippling the air with warning. Instinctively she stepped toward it, always ready for another shape-shifting rush, then regretfully drew back. She was here for a higher purpose, a divine purpose really—to discover the Goddess’s secrets and protect Her from the ninth man, if need be. For tonight, the joys of flux would have to wait.

She reached the low-watt bulb to find the corridor forked and turned left toward an open doorway. Through it she could see rows of pews and beyond them, a faintly lit floor-to-ceiling statue of the Goddess. Creeping to the doorway, Nellie peered into the main sanctuary of the church. All around the room candles flickered in alcoves and on various tables, blossoming into a fiery field beneath the feet of the huge statue of the Goddess that dominated the front wall. Hands cupped She stood in the usual position, feet bare and eyes uplifted. Sometimes those hands held ceremonial objects that had been consecrated for a specific purpose, and several times Nellie had seen them cradle the bloody heart of a freshly sacrificed animal, but tonight they were empty.

At the front of the sanctuary she could see the shadowy outlines of the men seated in the first several pews. Facing them was the
parish priest, dressed in his emerald green robe of daily office. As they spoke the men’s voices blurred and overlapped, playing tricks with echoes, too quick to be made out clearly. Nellie scowled. She was going to have to move in closer if she wanted to hear anything, but that should be easy enough among the pews—just as long as she didn’t bump into Deller. A quick scan of the sanctuary hadn’t revealed his hiding place, and the pews were the obvious option. Dropping to her knees, she began to crawl up a side aisle. Fortunately the priest was standing in front of the center aisle, and his view of her was blocked. Unobserved, she slid into the fifth pew and flattened herself against the stone floor.

The men seemed to be discussing different suburbs of the city. “Not Waktuk,” said someone quickly. “They’ve already met their quota.”

“What about Skrenden?” asked someone else.

“You’re better off in West Daven,” came a third voice. “School attendance is low, and the kids are anywhere and everywhere.”

“Do the West Daven police know how to handle complaints?” asked a fourth.

“No one in West Daven goes to the police,” came the dry response. “But that won’t make it easy—West Daven women don’t cut the placenta until the tenth year.”

The men shared a chuckle, and then the man who’d inquired about the police asked, “What about the churches, Father?”

“The churches are Dorniver’s only adequate birth registry,” said the priest. “Everyone brings their newborns to the Goddess Ivana.”

There was another agreeable murmur of laughter from the men, and then the same voice—probably, Nellie realized, the Interior agent—asked, “Father, I need to know—”

A sneeze erupted at the back of the sanctuary. For one knife-edged moment Nellie froze, then erupted from her pew. There was no point in continuing to crouch on the floor, hoping to remain unobserved—the men had been alerted to the presence of someone
else in the room and they would be searching everywhere. As she tore down the aisle, a shout went up behind her, and she put on a surge of speed. No need to panic, she told herself grimly, she had a good head start. But as she approached the back entrance, the drapes to a nearby confessional booth opened and Deller burst into her path. Furiously they struggled in the entranceway, clawing and shoving. In a diamond-brilliant frenzy, Nellie grabbed Deller’s bandaged hand and twisted it until he fell back with a gasp. Then she was through the doorway and pounding down the narrow corridor with him at her heels.

He’d recognized her. In spite of the gloom and their mutual fear, Deller had gone bug-eyed when he’d fixed on her. But this was no time to gloat. Behind them the men seemed to be gaining, and Nellie sprinted, her feet pounding panic through her body. On either side the walls slanted inward, cold shoulders cutting off her escape. The door behind the dumpster was too far, she would never reach it in time, and when the Interior agent saw her scalp he would drag her to the floor and cut her open a second time. Dizziness flooded Nellie’s knees and she staggered, whimpering.

“Oh no, you don’t.” A hand shoved her firmly onward and Deller hissed, “You’re not screwing me up again, bitch.”

The men were so close, Nellie was sure she could hear their breathing. “We can’t do it,” she whispered, and Deller shoved her again, hard. If only, she thought wildly, she could figure out where the closest gate to the next level was. But she couldn’t actually see the gates unless she tuned into the molecular field, and she couldn’t get enough focus to do that while she was pounding in absolute terror down some creepy Goddess-forsaken hallway.

Or could she? There were so many gates in this place, the air virtually throbbed with them. Even in the middle of her panic Nellie could feel them, she could
feel
them. Then, to her right, she saw a pocket of flux undulating in the wall. Stumbling to a halt, she turned and threw the full force of her fear directly at it. Immediately the wall divided cleanly, leaving a space the height and breadth
of her body. With a cry Nellie sprang through the opening. Sudden darkness enveloped her and she paused, instinctively assessing the new level’s molecular field. Quickly her body adjusted to its vibratory rate. Then she turned, intending to send her mind into the gate and draw it closed, but was almost knocked off her feet as Deller came hurtling through the gap.

“Out of my way!” she hissed, ducking to one side. Then she sent her mind into the faintly lit opening and drew it closed.

Chapter 6

I
N PITCH DARKNESS
Nellie slumped against the wall behind her and rode out the initial buzz in her brain as her body completed its adjustment to the new level’s quicker vibratory rate. Through the wall she could hear two sets of footsteps fading rapidly down the hall and she tensed, realizing they must belong to her double and Deller’s. A heavy pounding of men’s feet followed. Would they make it? Their doubles had a better chance than she and Deller since her own double hadn’t stopped to open a gate, but even if they reached the door hidden behind the dumpster the men would probably catch them in the courtyard. If not, the patrol gang awaited them in the streets. Oh well. Nellie gave a mental shrug. They were just doubles from another level, and not worth worrying about. What she needed to do now was figure out where she was, then come up with a plan to dump Deller.