The two of them were standing beside a huge pillar at the center of the hall, the ceiling invisible above them, the walls showing only as a distant limit to the darkness. Unlike other walls they had passed, these were covered with murals: Frickians in arms, Frickians involved in great battles, the landscapes of military engagement. Jacent took Metty’s hand and drew her to the pillar, as though to refuge, like some small forest creature to a tree, putting the bulk of it between them and the sounds.
Leaning against it Jacent could hear the footsteps of the others, amplified through the great support post into the sound of an ominous army marching, around, around. What if he cried out “Beware!” or “Danger”? He imagined himself shouting out the words, imagined them coming back like an avalanche, sending his friends fleeing wildly. He knew what would happen then. They would become separated. They would be lost. All of them. That would be something real, an actual happening, something Council Supervisory could not merely wave away, something they’d have to deal with! Search parties would have to come from the Great Rotunda! The Inner Circle would have to do something!
He swallowed the hysterical impulse to scream such a warning and breathed deeply, as he did on waking from his nighttime terrors. Kermac had the hansl, and Kermac was across the vast room, near the opening of a corridor. If Kermac was startled, he would flee down that corridor, leaving Jacent and Metty where they were, abandoned to the voices of this place. Jacent did not want to be abandoned here. Not even for the sake of excitement. Tugging Metty after him once more, he went to the place where Kermac and Jum stood.
Jacent no longer believed the reverberations they had heard were really echoes. Had he ever believed they were echoes? Well, if he had, now he didn’t. They were voices, real voices, growling ominous threats and accusations from some not far distant room. Not far distant enough, at any rate.
“What was this place?” he asked, almost in a whisper.
“The army barracks,” Kermac said very softly. “From settlement times.”
“Why should an old barracks be … be like this?” Jacent wondered, still whispering. “I mean, it was just Frickians, wasn’t it? You’d expect a place like this in … oh, Derbeck, maybe. Or Molock. Or what’s that place in Enarae, the Swale?”
“I’ve monitored the Swale,” said Metty. “It’s a little, you know, depraved, but this is really spooky!” “But why?” Jacent persisted.
“It’s worse the farther down you go,” murmured one of the girls from over their shoulders. “You notice that? The more stairs we go down, the worse it gets.”
“Oh, you and your farther down,” said Jum defiantly. His face was white and drawn. There was fear in his eyes, but his determination to fight the fear made him reckless. Jacent saw that. Jum was doing the same thing he, Jacent, did, when he wakened from those damned nightmares! Moved by both sympathy and fear at what Jum might do, Jacent put out his hands—too late. Jum darted away from them to face the empty distance, the vacant corridors, the lurking dark.
“You don’t scare me!” he cried. “I can laugh at you!” And he did, screaming laughter into the brooding quiet. “Ha ha, ha ha ha,” forced hammer blows of mocking laughter.
On the tail of his laughter the sound came back, without an instant’s delay, and they went down before it like grain before a scythe. The laughter was a drum roll of thunder, an earthquake of sound. Somewhere a chorus of monsters was enjoying a terrible joke. The adventurers rolled on the floor, their hands over their ears, trembling in a frenzy of horror while the demonic sounds abated.
An expectant silence drew in about them as though awaiting the next jest.
From afar off came a liquid swallowing.
One of the youths whispered, “This was a rotten idea. This is a nightmare.”
“I have nightmares,” Jacent murmured into his hands. “All the time.” He looked up to find a circle of eyes fixed on him. “Don’t you?”
There were flushes and nods of assent as they rose, brushing the dust from their knees.
“Why?” he whispered.
“I don’t think this is the place,” Metty murmured from her position beside Jum, still crouched, still covering his ears. “Not the place to talk about it, Jacent.”
It was not the place. They agreed wordlessly to that. Jum struggled to his feet, and the group turned as one toward the door through which they had come. Kermac led them back, all of them on tiptoe in a straggling line, everyone trying to be quiet, wanting no noise at all. Jum shook his head at Metty when she tried to help him, waving her away. She came to walk beside Jacent once more.
“He’s frightened. It makes him angry,” she whispered.
Jacent nodded. Being scared half to death always made him angry too. Later on. When he thought about it.
They caught themselves glancing toward the walls, all of them now seeing what Jacent had seen on the way in, the movement of things that weren’t there. Right-angled corners shifted into unaccustomed configurations. The line where walls and ceilings met wriggled like serpents, along with the tops of the doors, the edges of stairs.
Shadows, Jacent told himself firmly, ignoring the fact that the light was shadowless, and if there had been shadows, what would have made them move?
At last they came to the door they had left ajar, the door they had unsealed and wished now they had left alone. They wriggled through it one by one. When they had pushed it shut, Kermac set about renewing the seals while the others stood together, saying very little, not sure what to say.
“Where’s Jum?” asked Metty suddenly. “Where’s my brother?”
“He was right behind me,” said someone. “He was bringing up the rear.”
“We have to go back and get him,” cried Metty. No one moved.
“I’ll go alone!” she cried. “I have to find him! Kermac, give me the hansl.”
Kermac swallowed. “I already wiped the trip record. As soon as we got to the door. I didn’t want it in there….”
“You didn’t!” she screamed. “You couldn’t have.”
He shouted at her. “I borrowed it from the supplies room. I didn’t want anybody to know….”
She ran down the empty corridor toward the Great Rotunda, her feet clattering, the sharp, clean echoes coming back at them like slaps. “I’ll get help,” she cried. “Help.”
The others stared at one another guilt-faced, then went after her, slowly, shamefully slowly, far too slowly to catch up with her. At the first intersection, one of them turned off, and another at the next. Soon Jacent found himself alone in the main corridor near the monitor section. The rest of them had gone away, here and there. They were not going to get involved if they could help it, so much was clear.
So what should Jacent do? He couldn’t simply abandon Metty. She was his friend! After a moment’s thought, he went into the monitor section and sought out a Files access, one which was not only vacant at the moment but also set in a corner that hid it from any human or mechanical observer. When he asked for the plans of the Frickian barracks, he used the general work code for the current shift, not his personal code. The plans materialized before him, and he flicked back and forth through them, locating the door by which they had entered, retracing the way they had gone. The area was ramified and labyrinthine indeed, but not particularly mysterious. Several levels down he found the vast hall where they had heard the filthy echoes. It was the only space of its kind and size they could have reached in the time they had spent getting there. So, even without the trip recorder, it should be possible to trace the way they had gone. If Jum had stayed put, he could be found. Jacent would find Metty and tell her.
As he was about to erase the plans and go in search of her, however, his eye was caught by a red-lined access route leading from the vast assembly hall, through a narrow sideway, and thence downward into blankness.
“Query,” he asked. “What’s here?” indicating the vacant space.
Files was silent. A red light flickered at the bottom of the Files acces
s, one which told him he was about to receive assistance whether he wanted it or not. Abruptly, Jacent flicked off the access and left the room. He was barely in time. Behind him the unit came back on, and a querulous voice asked, “Who just used this access? Enter your personal code at once!”
Damned officious, interfering … Even in the library back on Heaven, he had sometimes had a librarian materialize out of nothing to ask why he wanted to know this, why he wanted to know that. It hardly ever used to happen, not when he was much younger, but in the last few years it had begun happening all the time! Files seemed to be getting very touchy about questions to do with certain things. Early times, mostly.
He stood hidden at one side of the doorway, peering up and down the corridor. In both directions monitor lights came on, waiting for him to pass, waiting to identify who was here, who might have used that access. There were just too damned many things one couldn’t do in Tolerance, and asking the question he had just asked was obviously another of them. So, if it was forbidden to ask what lay below the old barracks, what was going to happen to Metty when she got back to the Great Rotunda or wherever and started screaming for help? Hah? When she told someone, anyone where they’d all been? When she mentioned names? What was going to happen to all of them then?
Nearby was one of the almost invisible doors giving access to the servants hall. Jacent slipped through and up a twisting ramp. “I wasn’t involved,” he rehearsed as he wound his way back to his personal quarters via ways reserved for Frickian flunkeys, corridors which were not, so far as he knew, monitored at all because no one cared where servants were, where servants went. At least, not Frickian servants, because Frickians, as everyone knew, were incapable of conspiracy or rebellion. If he didn’t let Files see him leaving the area, Files wouldn’t know who had asked that particular question.
Of course, this meant he couldn’t offer to help Metty. If he told her, then Files would know who’d been looking up the plans. Perhaps … perhaps in a day or two, when things settled down. Jum wouldn’t starve in a day or two.
Where the servants hall intersected the corridor to his own rooms, he waited until a talkative crowd came by, then joined it as though he had been part of it all along, laughing, chatting, finding out where they’d all been for the last watch, what they’d been doing. If necessary, he’d say he had been with them. If asked. Only if asked.
When Metty had left the others, she had run toward the monitoring center, or rather toward the storage area that lay beneath it. The center itself was two levels above, and there were shift mates on duty today, people she knew, people who could raise the alarm and get a search party together. Asking for help would mean being found out, of course, which would mean some form of discipline, and she didn’t look forward to that! Nonetheless….
Jum was such a fool. He didn’t have sense enough to just be scared. He always had to put a brave face on everything, even when it was just stupid to do it. He’d been the same as a little boy, always facing up to bullies bigger than he was, always determined to fight or die. He’d probably gone back, by himself, needing to prove he could! Poor little muggins. That’s what their mother had always called him. Her little muggins. “Take care of him, Metty,” she said when Jum first came to Tolerance. “Take care of him.”
And what had she done but gone and lost him! Ahead of her she could see the paired red doors that led into one of the Files storage levels. Beyond them were the lifts, people, help.
Around her, the air shifted horribly, as it had done in the old barracks. She staggered, feeling an abrupt, agonizing pain in her hip. She put her hand on it and drew it away wet. Bloody.
Damn, she’d run into something.
The pain came again. Worse.
She looked down. Blood was flowing, soaking through her clothing, pouring out of her.
She opened her mouth to scream. Nothing came out but froth, pink froth.
She gasped. No air. No air at all. The pain was everywhere, in both hips, in her shoulders. Everything was going black.
She fell, sprawling, gurgling, flopping on the floor, unable to get up. Her right leg twitched, jerked, tore away at the hip, and moved away. She could see it moving away, like something tugged at the end of an invisible string. She tried to scream and couldn’t get it out. Then the left leg. She saw it go, tugging away. Then the arms, one at a time. Blood poured out. Her chest still heaved. Her mouth still moved. She kept trying to call someone, beg someone….
Then darkness came down and it was all gone.
Her body parts lay quietly on the dusty floor, like the parts of a puppet, disassembled. A leg moved farther away from the torso. An arm twitched. No one came this way except an occasional Frickian patrol. It would be some time before this was found. At the edges of the carmine pool, blood began to clot. The parts continued to move, here and there, making different patterns, smearing the blood into different patterns, letters, words.
Fool. That was one word. With the blood still dribbling from the left shoulder, something wrote that word on the floor several times, then another word, over and over.
Shadows moved at the edges of the walls, along the corners of the walls, accompanied by an interested sound, a satisfied gulping sound. Almost, but not quite, a chuckle.
5
Fringe Owldark’s home was a loft above a river-trade warehouse, four tiny rooms and two large ones that looked through tall windows at the passing barges; four tiny rooms and two large ones made up mostly of bare and shining space. The bedroom held only a simple float bed and the most complete information-entertainment console available in Enarae. Through the narrow windows, Fringe could watch the boats moving slowly by, night or day. Three doors along the inside wall opened into the saniton, into her wardrobe, and into her workroom.
The other large room was hardly ever used, not it, not the food synthesizers in the tiny kitchen. It was a room for guests and she never had guests. Four skeleton chairs, like dark fish bones, poised on the polished floor along with one sculptural table and a few blocks of polished precious stone with things on them, things that spoke to Fringe, whether or not others would have found them meaningful.
It had taken her years of moving about before she found this space. It had taken a lengthy time of living in it before she’d felt fully at home. She could count on her fingers the times she had brought anyone into this home space with her. She preferred that it be hers alone. She preferred to find it empty, untenanted, its air unbreathed.
Evenings when she was not on duty, she most often spent alone, perhaps lying quietly on her float bed, thinking of not much, watching the turgid flow of the river. This is what she was doing a day or two after her interview with the Final Equity Manager, when the evening reverie was interrupted by a call from Yilland so-called Dorwalk. If Fringe didn’t mind, Yilland said after introducing herself in a too-bright voice, she would like to come for a brief visit.
Fringe did mind, with a flush of anger so bright and shining it seemed it would set the place afire. The heat dwindled however, giving way to a mild curiosity. What did Yilland so-called Dorwalk have in mind?
The question was answered as soon as she showed up, for Yilland could barely conceal her frantic embarrassment as she chirped her plaint in an aggrieved voice.
“These last few claims that just came in, they’re claims from your mother’s brother and sister, and there’s no way Father’s Book can meet them!”
Yilland’s hair was slightly disheveled. Her face was blotchy from recent tears. Her comfort and poise were further compromised by the latest Professional fashion in clothing, a ridiculous profusion of bobbles, dangles, and drapes.
“My ma’s kin?” Fringe asked, gesturing to one of her skeleton chairs and seating herself across from the woman. “I heard it mentioned that Ma had a sister and a brother, but I never knew them. What claim might they have?”
“They’re claiming damages against Char for letting their father die before his time. In the Pighouse.”
Fringe snorted. “Ari was as old as sin. He spent the last year or so in a life box, being pumped in and out, with no more brain than a chicken. If his children wanted the old man, why didn’t they claim him earlier?”
“They say they didn’t know their sister died, didn’t know their father’s habitation was threatened, changed, oh, you know. They claim they should have been informed.”
“Who knew where they were? I certainly didn’t. They’d taken some pains to disappear, the way I remember the story.” Fringe shrugged, feeling angry. “You can probably buy them off for almost nothing.”
“But there’s nothing left, and they’re demanding I sell myself….”
Fringe said patiently, “The claim is unrighteous and unenforceable, and chances are they know it! They’re owed no such debt.”
“I know that!” Yilland shrieked, putting a hand over her mouth as though in shock at the sound she had made. “I know I probably wouldn’t have to do it. But they won’t let me alone and I don’t know what to do! They won’t let me alone!” Her face twitched, in spasms.
Fringe read the signs and got up, her lips quirking with a barely suppressed snort, half amusement, half anger. Wasn’t this ironic! Pa had repudiated her because of her chosen career, at least that had been his excuse, and here came his chosen classly daughter, wanting an Enforcer!
“You want me to Attend the Situation?”
“Would you. Oh, please. They frighten me!”
Fringe got out her pocket file and clicked it open. “Names?” she asked.
“The man says he’s your uncle, Zerka Troms. The woman’s name is Zenubi.”
“Where are they staying?”
“At Bridge House number three.” Yilland put her hand to her lips once more, as though to stop their trembling. “I have no right to ask you to do this, except they’re your kinfolk….”
“I suppose they could be, in a manner of speaking. But they’re not making any claim against me.”
“I know, I know, it’s just they’re so …”