The Book of Water (39 page)

“Now, none of that. I don’t have time. Besides, you’ll make Nikko nervous. He’s feeling jumpy today.”

“Awww, what is it? Another bomb threat?”

“There are always bomb threats. There’s not enough explosive made to supply all the bomb threats we get in a month.”

“Poor darling . . .”

N’Doch is sort of relieved there’s gonna be none of “that,” just a mini-lecture on the perils of doing business. Sitting over here in the dark is like watching the daytime vid when only the sound is working. But the news of the food riots crowds into his mind.
Close call
, he thinks.
We were just there. It must’ve all started when the marché opened up again for the afternoon
.

“Look, Glory, I just had the damnedest dream.”

“Now, darling, what has Glory told you about sleeping in the middle of the day?”

“That’s what’s so damn peculiar. I wasn’t asleep.”

Lealé laughs, low and throaty. “A daydream, was it? Was Glory in it?”

“Yes. You were.” But there is no intimacy in his reply.

“Excuse me, sir.” A soft male voice chimes in at the door. “Mr. D is on the line.”

“About time. Ask if he’s seen the numbers this morning. No, give it here . . . Marco! You seen the . . . yeah! What’s the deal? All of a sudden, they’re killing us! . . . yeah . . . no, I’m at . . . I’m in a meeting right now. Shouldn’t be long . . . well, get on it, man! I’ll be back to you.”

Now N’Doch gets his first real twinge of envy for the bankroll. Before the music thing grabbed him so hard, and he was running with the Needles Gang, he’d had a phone for a while. Some deck jockey had fixed it so it fed off a random selection of purloined access codes. He could call anywhere, for as long as he liked. Now,
that
was power. He can still feel the lightness of it in his hand, like it was nothing, but that phone was more lethal in its way than any hand weapon. Then one day he up and sold it to buy his first set of amps. It seemed like the right move at the time, but since then, there’s been times he’s wondered.
Hindsight’s twenty-twenty
, he tells himself,
so meanwhile, back to the soap opera
. . . .

“Sasha, here! Get this thing outa my sight! And hold the calls now, got it?” The bankroll paces a bit more. N’Doch guesses that Glory’s just sitting there watching, waiting for him to work it out. “It’s a bad time, Glory, a bad time. You better be making enough to support the two of us.”

“Oh, darling . . .”

“No bullshit, Glory, and to tell you the truth, it’s not just me. Things are about to fall down around our ears, I can feel it. And then there’s this damn dream! It was . . . like the ones you have.”

“Kenzo, dearest, you’re not supposed to be having that kind of Dreams . . . let Glory do that for you! She’ll take the worry out of it.”

Kenzo?
N’Doch’s not sure he’s heard her right. He supposes there’s more than one “Kenzo” in the business world, but . . .

“Fine,” the bankroll growls, “but I had it anyway.”

“Then you better just sit down and tell Glory all about it.”

As the bankroll spins out the long and torturous dream-strand that’s shaken him so badly, N’Doch listens hard, not to the words, but to the voice, which he is now trying like
crazy to identify. But he can’t quite be sure, and finally he knows he’s got to risk it. He
has
to get a real look at this dude.

He moves as slowly as he knows how, tries to time his moves with the rhythm of the bankroll’s speech, so the voice’ll cover the creaking of the damn chair.
No good spy
, he thinks,
would ever sit in a leather chair
. He gets his head and shoulders twisted around, then leans out over the arm of the chair. He gets a clean shot, a full-face view of the guy with his hands in the air, sketching a particular detail in his narrative. Once the input from his eyes reaches the processing part of his brain, N’Doch nearly stops breathing.

Omigod.
Baraga!

N
ow that she knew the truth about her less-than-substantial meal, Erde was no longer so confident about how recovered she felt, or about the apparent comfort of her current situation. If the Presence was a prisoner in this wood, could that not mean that she was also? If she couldn’t leave and couldn’t eat, starvation became a real possibility. And how could she even be sure the Presence was telling the truth about itself? Perhaps it was holding
her
prisoner.

Certainly, she needed to talk to it further, but an in-depth discussion was going to prove difficult if the only way the Presence could communicate was by making the wood and its creatures act out each intended meaning. There was a game at home something like that, intended for long winter afternoons by the fireplace. But Erde didn’t feel much like playing games, even in the interests of communication. It seemed that the Presence could manage to convey its emotional state, particularly assent or dissent. It just wasn’t very good at actual information. So perhaps if she asked only questions with yes or no answers, she might make more progress.

For instance: “Do you know a way out of this wood?”

The leaves rose and fell, rose and fell. Negation.

“Does that mean I’m a prisoner, too?”

A definite stirring. Negation.

Erde pondered the apparent contradiction. “You mean . . . I can get out, but you can’t?”

A stillness, tinged with melancholy. Assent.

Perhaps it would tell her about its own situation. “Are
you a prisoner because of something . . . you did?” she asked carefully.

A sudden rotating gust snatched at Erde’s clothing and tousled her hair. Fistfuls of leaves detached and threw themselves in her face.

“Please! Please! I’m sorry! I apologize!”

The gust died as if it had never been. Fallen leaves were nowhere in sight.

“If you have all this power, why can’t you just leave?”

No response at all. Not a yes or no question.

Erde chewed her lip. “I can’t say why, but I believe you. And of course I’d like to help you, but I don’t see how I can.” She found herself thinking about the dragons again, both of them this time, and recalling how Earth had at first been able to talk to her only in mind pictures. Finally, an understanding bloomed.

“Is it the dragons’ help you want?”

Not a leaf or blade in motion. Total assent.

She couldn’t figure out a way to shape, “How did you know about the dragons?” into a yes or no query. If the Presence had known she was thirsty and hungry without her saying so out loud, probably it had learned about the dragons the very same way.

“I’m sure they would help you if they knew, but they’re never going to unless I find a way out of here.”

The silent wood came alive again. The ginger cat, the brown mouse and the blue swallow all appeared from different directions and met on the grass at Erde’s feet. Once there, all three of them promptly settled down and went to sleep.

Erde stared. This really was like a child’s game. “Is it something about sleeping?”

Assent.

“You need to sleep now?”

Negation.

“Ummm . . . you think I need to sleep?”

Assent.

“But I don’t want to sleep! I want to get out of here!”

A long silence. Assent and reassurance.

And as she watched, the three sleeping creatures woke up, not as animals usually do, instantly on the alert, but stretching and yawning like humans. Then, as one, they
looked up and about them, as if in realization, then jumped up and took off joyfully, each in the direction it had come.

“Oh, dear,” said Erde. “I think I understand. I’m still not awake yet, am I?”

Assent, softened with sympathy.

“So, to get out of here, I have to go to sleep in my dream, this dream that I’m still in, then I have to wake up, and hope that I’ve woken up for real this time.”

Assent. Assent. Assent.

She had said she didn’t want to sleep, but suddenly, she did. The urge was so overpowering that even she knew it wasn’t her own. She wondered if the Presence understood that the chances were about even: She could end up in 2013 with the dragons, or a thousand years earlier. She thought of Köthen, and decided it didn’t matter. Either would be preferable to starvation for an eternity in this weird, weird wood.

As she lay down and tried to prepare herself for any eventuality, she noticed a queer thing: A long line of soldier ants were picking out a very eccentric trail through the velvety grass. They were . . . Erde yawned. Sleep was approaching faster than she’d expected . . . spelling out letters? Words? Why not? In a dream, anything was possible.

She lifted her head the barest inch, all she could manage as sleep rushed toward her. Words, definitely words.

They read: RESIST TEMPTATION.

*   *   *

He flattens himself back into the deepest part of the chair. At first, he can’t even think.

Baraga.
Here
.

His heart races. He stares into the fireplace, sees only darkness.

Baraga.
Baraga!

But the roof doesn’t cave in, and the man at the other end of the parlor continues his recitation as if nothing has changed, and finally, N’Doch gets hold of himself.

Kenzo Baraga, the Media King, the man he now and forever most loves to hate, is sitting not thirty feet away from him. The slick-black Asian hair of Baraga’s Japanese mother might have clued him in if he’d been thinking, but . . . whoever would have thought? Kenzo Baraga, in person, right in this room. And what’s he doing? Not forging
dreams and deals or ending careers and hopes, like he’s supposed to be, no—he’s complaining about some stupid dream he’s had! N’Doch can’t believe it.

Not that he supposed the Big Man wouldn’t have problems. But they should be world-class problems, and Baraga should be eating ’em for breakfast, not be sitting there pouring his heart out like a schoolboy to some fawning woman! But in a way, N’Doch likes it that the Big Man’s got a soft side. It humanizes him.

“I’m on this road,” the Media King is saying, “and it’s hotter ’n hell, and dusty. The road is crap, like it was paved once, a very long time ago and never kept up. And I’m alone, and walking, can you imagine? My . . .” He stops, and in the still room, everyone listens as sirens wail past outside the gates. “So my clothes are all torn, and all I can see, everywhere around me, is burned-out buildings.”

“There, you see?” Lealé soothed. “It’s just the riots that have you worried.”

“I had this dream
before
the riots started. And besides, this place looked like a city, or what’s left of one, but I knew . . . in the dream, I knew it was really my life, my business, all of it. Everything! Everything I’ve built, gone up in smoke!”

“I know you’ve been very anxious lately, darling, but . . .”

Now N’Doch’s brain is working overtime. He recognizes opportunity when it finally comes knocking. It may take some pondering, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t figure a way to turn this bizarre coincidence to his advantage.

Briefly, he reviews his options. First, he could just go up and introduce himself to the Big Man as Lealé’s . . . as Glory’s dear friend of a dear friend, then work the conversation around to asking for an audition. N’Doch’s mouth twists. Yeah, right. Probably the next thing he’d see would be the business end of Nikko the bodyguard. The Media King’s not known for being free with his time to unknowns like N’Doch. Besides, if he’s as jealous as Lealé says, he might jump to the wrong conclusions and think his woman’s taken a younger lover. That would about finish his chances right then and there. No, the only way is, he’s gotta figure out some pressure he can bring to bear. Which means, entirely powerless as he is compared to Baraga, that he’s gotta
either have something the Media King wants, or something he wants to keep from everybody else.

N’Doch hears other copters in the air outside, and the occasional crack of a sniper’s rifle. Probably chasing the rioters out of the square. If things get worse out there, Baraga will probably bolt for his safe-hole on the beach, but meanwhile, the recitation continues.

“. . . suddenly there’s this guy in front of me in a spotlight, all decked out in gold, with this huge wall of flame behind him—great pyro, you know? And this amazing looking woman . . .” Baraga pauses. N’Doch hears him take a sip of his brandy. “In fact, he’s pretty amazing looking, so I think he must be one of my groups, but the guy’s not wired or anything, and I don’t see his backup anywhere. I can’t even hear them—it’s like the sound’s gone dead—and I really want to, ’cause what if they’re
good?
”

“I think it must mean that you will hear them,” offers Lealé. “Perhaps very soon. And they will be good, and your worries will be over.”

“That’ll take a lot more than one group.”

Lealé laughed. “I know, darling. We all need people to start making some money again.”

“The hell with that. I need a better way to make ’em spend what they already got on me now! I need a miracle! And even that it looks like somebody’s got to ahead of me . . .!”

Yup
, nods N’Doch. Salesmanship or blackmail. His only choices.