Song of Susannah (35 page)

Susannah made no reply.

Mia nodded as though she had, then winced when a fresh contraction struck. It passed, and she went on. “The sperm was Roland’s. I believe it may have been preserved somehow by the old people’s science while the demon elemental turned itself inside out and made man from woman, but that isn’t the important part. The important part is that it lived and found the rest of itself, as ordained by ka.”

“My egg.”

“Your egg.”

“When I was raped in the ring of stones.”

“Say true.”

Susannah sat, musing. Finally she looked up. “Seem to me that it’s what I said before. You didn’t like it then, not apt to like it now, but—girl, you just the baby-sitter.”

There was no rage this time. Mia only smiled. “Who went on having her periods, even when she was being sick in the mornings? You did. And who’s got the full belly today?
I
do. If there was a baby-sitter, Susannah of New York, it was you.”

“How can that be? Do you know?”

Mia did.

The baby, Walter had told her, would be
transmitted
to Mia; sent to her cell by cell just as a fax is sent line by line.

Susannah opened her mouth to say she didn’t know what a fax was, then closed it again. She understood the
gist
of what Mia was saying, and
that was enough to fill her with a terrible combination of awe and rage. She
had
been pregnant. She was, in a real sense, pregnant right this minute. But the baby was being

(
faxed
)

sent to Mia. Was this a process that had started fast and slowed down, or started slow and speeded up? The latter, she thought, because as time passed she’d felt less pregnant instead of more. The little swelling in her belly had mostly flattened out again. And now she understood how both she and Mia could feel an equal attachment to the chap: it did, in fact, belong to both of them. Had been passed on like a . . . a blood transfusion.

Only when they want to take your blood and put it into someone else, they ask your permission. If they’re doctors, that is, and not one of Pere Callahan’s vampires. You’re a lot closer to one of those, Mia, aren’t you?

“Science or magic?” Susannah asked. “Which one was it that allowed you to steal my baby?”

Mia flushed a little at that, but when she turned to Susannah, she was able to meet Susannah’s eyes squarely. “I don’t know,” she said. “Likely a mixture of both. And don’t be so self-righteous! It’s in
me
, not you. It’s feeding off my bones and my blood, not yours.”

“So what? Do you think that changes anything? You stole it, with the help of some filthy magician.”

Mia shook her head vehemently, her hair a storm around her face.

“No?” Susannah asked. “Then how come
you
weren’t the one eating frogs out of the swamp and shoats out of the pen and God knows what other nasty things? How come you needed all that make-believe nonsense about the banquets in the castle, where you could pretend to be the one eating? In short, sugarpie, how come your chap’s nourishment had to go down
my
throat?”

“Because . . . because . . .” Mia’s eyes, Susannah saw, were filling with tears. “Because this is spoiled land! Blasted land! The place of the Red Death and the edge of the Discordia! I’d not feed my chap from here!”

It was a good answer, Susannah reckoned, but not the
complete
answer. And Mia knew it, too. Because Baby Michael, perfect Baby Michael, had been conceived here, had thrived here, had been thriving when Mia last saw him. And if she was so sure, why were those tears standing in her eyes?

“Mia, they’re lying to you about your chap.”

“You don’t know that, so don’t be hateful!”

“I
do
know it.” And she did. But there wasn’t proof, gods damn it! How did you prove a feeling, even one as strong as this?

“Flagg—Walter, if you like that better—he promised you seven years. Sayre says you can have five. What if they hand you a card,
GOOD FOR THREE YEARS OF CHILD-REARING WITH STAMP
, when you get to this Dixie Pig? Gonna go with that, too?”

“That won’t happen! You’re as nasty as the other one! Shut up!”

“You got a nerve calling
me
nasty! Can’t wait to give birth to a child supposed to murder his Daddy.”

“I don’t care!”

“You’re all confused, girl, between what you want to happen and what
will
happen. How do you know they aren’t gonna kill him before he can cry out his first breath, and grind him up and feed him to these Breaker bastards?”

“Shut . . . up!”

“Kind of a super-food? Finish the job all at once?”

“Shut
up
, I said,
shut UP!
”

“Point is, you don’t know. You don’t know anything. You just the baby-sitter, just the au pair. You know they lie, you know they trick and never treat, and yet you go on. And you want
me
to shut up.”

“Yes!
Yes!
”

“I won’t,” Susannah told her grimly, and seized Mia’s shoulders. They were amazingly bony under the dress, but hot, as if the woman were running a fever. “I won’t because it’s really mine and you know it. Cat can have kittens in the oven, girl, but that won’t ever make em muffins.”

All right, they had made it back to all-out fury after all. Mia’s face twisted into something both horrible and unhappy. In Mia’s eyes, Susannah thought she could see the endless, craving, grieving creature this woman once had been. And something else. A spark that might be blown into belief. If there was time.

“I’ll
shut
you up,” Mia said, and suddenly Fedic’s main street tore open, just as the allure had. Behind it was a kind of bulging darkness. But not empty. Oh no, not empty, Susannah felt that very clearly.

They fell toward it. Mia
propelled
them toward it. Susannah tried to hold them back with no success at all. As they tumbled into the dark, she heard a singsong thought running through her head, running in an endless worry-circle:
Oh Susannah-Mio, divided girl of mine, Done parked her RIG

in the DIXIE PIG, In the year of
—

Before this annoying (but ever so important) jingle could finish its latest circuit through Susannah-Mio’s head, the head in question struck something, and hard enough to send a galaxy of bright stars exploding across her field of vision. When they cleared, she saw, very large, in front of her eyes:

NK AWA

She pulled back and saw
BANGO SKANK AWAITS THE KING
! It was the graffito written on the inside of the toilet stall’s door. Her life was haunted by doors—had been, it seemed, ever since the door of her cell had clanged closed behind her in Oxford, Mississippi—but this one was shut. Good. She was coming to believe that shut doors presented fewer problems. Soon enough this one would open and the problems would start again.

Mia:
I told you all I know. Now are you going to help me get to the Dixie Pig, or do I have to do it on my own? I can if I have to, especially with the turtle to help me.

Susannah:
I’ll help.

Although how much or how little help Mia got from her sort of depended on what time it was right now. How long had they been in here? Her legs felt completely numb from the knees down—her butt, too—and she thought that was a good sign, but under these fluorescent lights, Susannah supposed it was always half-past anytime.

What does it matter to you?
Mia asked, suspicious.
What does it matter to you what time it is?

Susannah scrambled for an explanation.

The baby. You know that what I did will keep it from coming only for so long, don’t you?

Of course I do. That’s why I want to get moving.

All right. Let’s see the cash our old pal Mats left us.

Mia took out the little wad of bills and looked at them uncomprehendingly.

Take the one that says Jackson.

I
. . . Embarrassment.
I can’t read.

Let me
come forward. I’ll
read it.

No!

All right, all right, calm down. It’s the guy with the long white hair combed back kind of like Elvis.

I don’t know this Elvis—

Never mind, it’s that one right on top. Good. Now put the rest of the cash back in your pocket, nice and safe. Hold the twenty in the palm of your hand. Okay, we’re blowing this pop-stand.

What’s a pop-stand?

Mia, shut up.

When they re-entered the lobby—walking slowly, on legs that tingled with pins and needles—Susannah was marginally encouraged to see that it was dusk outside. She hadn’t succeeded in burning up the entire day, it seemed, but she’d gotten rid of most of it.

The lobby was busy but no longer frantic. The beautiful Eurasian girl who’d checked her/them in was gone, her shift finished. Under the canopy, two new men in green monkeysuits were whistling up cabs for folks, many of whom were wearing tuxedos or long sparkly dresses.

Going out to parties
, Susannah said.
Or maybe the theater.

Susannah, I care not. Do we need to get one of the yellow vehicles from one of the men in the green suits?

No. We’ll get a cab on the corner.

Do you say so?

Oh, quit with the suspicion. You’re taking your kid to either its death or yours, I’m sure of that, but I recognize your intention to do well and I’ll keep my promise. Yes, I do say so.

All right.

Without another word—certainly none of apology—Mia left the hotel, turned right, and began walking back toward Second Avenue, 2 Hammarskjöld Plaza, and the beautiful song of the rose.

On the corner of Second and Forty-sixth, a metal waggon of faded red was parked at the curb. The curb was yellow at this point, and a man in a blue suit—a Guard o’ the Watch, by his sidearm—seemed to be discussing that fact with a tall, white-bearded man.

Inside of her, Mia felt a flurry of startled movement.

Susannah? What is it?

That man!

The Guard o’ the Watch? Him?

No, the one with the beard! He looks almost exactly like Henchick! Henchick of the Manni! Do you not see?

Mia neither saw nor cared. She gathered that although parking waggons along the yellow curb was forbidden, and the man with the beard seemed to understand this, he still would not move. He went on setting up easels and then putting pictures on them. Mia sensed this was an old argument between the two men.

“I’m gonna have to give you a ticket, Rev.”

“Do what you need to do, Officer Benzyck. God loves you.”

“Good. Delighted to hear it. As for the ticket, you’ll tear it up. Right?”

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; render unto God those things that are God’s. So says the Bible, and blessed be the Lord’s Holy Book.”

“I can get behind that,” said Benzyck o’ the
Watch. He pulled a thick pad of paper from his back pocket and began to scribble on it. This also had the feel of an old ritual. “But let me tell you something, Harrigan—sooner or later City Hall is gonna catch up to your action, and they’re gonna render unto your scofflaw holy-rollin’
ass.
I only hope I’m there when it happens.”

He tore a sheet from his pad, went over to the metal waggon, and slipped the paper beneath a black window-slider resting on the waggon’s glass front.

Susannah, amused:
He’s gettin a ticket. Not the first one, either, from the sound.

Mia, momentarily diverted in spite of herself:
What does it say on the side of his waggon, Susannah?

There was a slight shift as Susanna
came
partway
forward
, and the sense of a squint. It was a strange sensation for Mia, like having a tickle deep in her head.

Susannah, still sounding amused:
It says
CHURCH OF THE HOLY GOD-BOMB
,
Rev. Earl Harrigan. It also says
YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS WILL BE REWARDED IN HEAVEN
.

What’s heaven?

Another name for the clearing at the end of the path.

Ah.

Benzyck o’ the Watch was strolling away with his hands clasped behind his back, his considerable ass bunching beneath his blue uniform trousers, his duty done. The Rev. Harrigan, meanwhile, was adjusting his easels. The picture on one showed a
man being let out of jail by a fellow in a white robe. The whiterobe’s head was glowing. The picture on the other showed the whiterobe turning away from a monster with red skin and horns on his head. The monster with the horns looked pissed like a bear at sai Whiterobe.

Susannah, is that red thing how the folk of this world see the Crimson King?

Susannah:
I guess so. It’s Satan, if you care—lord of the underworld. Have the god-guy get you a cab, why don’t you? Use the turtle.

Again, suspicious (Mia apparently couldn’t help it):
Do you say so?

Say true! Aye! Say Jesus Christ, woman!

All right, all right.
Mia sounded a bit embarrassed. She walked toward Rev. Harrigan, pulling the scrimshaw turtle out of her pocket.

What she needed to do came to Susannah in a flash. She withdrew from Mia (if the woman couldn’t get a taxi with the help of that magic turtle, she was hopeless) and with her eyes squeezed shut visualized the Dogan. When she opened them, she was there. She grabbed the microphone she’d used to call Eddie and depressed the toggle.

“Harrigan!” she said into the mike. “Reverend Earl Harrigan! Are you there? Do you read me, sugar?
Do you read me?
”