“Think of the Library as the wrapper a Big Mac comes in.”
“OK. What’s the Big Mac?”
“The universe. The other one.”
“That’s somewhat helpful,” Steve said. “Thank you. As long as you’re feeling comprehensible, here’s another one: What are we going to do up there?”
“I need to hang David.” She jiggled the shoelace, and he bobbed, weightless. The black ball had grown as they walked. Now only the bottom half of one foot was still visible, the shoelace tied to his hairy toe.
“Hang him?”
“Yeah. Plus I left some food in a cooler. And there are lawn chairs, and a barbecue grill. I thought we could have a picnic! Do you like picnics?”
“Um…sure. Picnics are nice, I guess.”
She flashed him a smile and, to his astonishment, giggled a little. Then she started up the stairs. “Food!”
Steve looked up, daunted. Even setting aside both his fear of heights and the fact that the stairs hovered unsupported in thin air, the towering spiral was easily the tallest man-made thing he’d ever seen—three thousand feet, minimum. Probably more. No railing, either. The disk at the top looked small enough to hide behind his thumbnail. “You really want to walk all the way up this?”
“Yeah. It’s not as bad as it looks.” And indeed, in just a few seconds she’d somehow traveled upward fifty feet or more.
“No elevator?”
“No. Father thought they were ugly. I could fly you up, if you like.”
He considered this. “I’ll pass. Thanks, though.”
“Oh, come on! It’s good exercise.” She bounced on tiptoes a couple of times, flexing her calf muscles. “Keep you fit! And there’s steaks!”
Still he hesitated.
Carolyn said something in lion-speak, possibly about lunch. Naga started up the stairs without so much as a glance back.
“Traitor!” Steve called.
“There’s also beer,” Carolyn said.
“Beer?”
“Beer.”
“Yeah,” Steve said with a sigh. “OK.”
II
It was still a bit of a climb, about the equivalent of five normal flights of stairs, but nothing like the pack-some-sammiches-and-we’ll-make-a-weekend-of-it alpine ordeal he had envisioned when looking up from the base. Steve mentioned his thought about airport slidewalks. Carolyn said, “Sort of,” then explained—if that was the word—that the jade surfaces changed the way distance worked. Steve said, “Oh.” A few steps later he looked down to see that they were over a thousand feet up. Numb now, his only real reaction was to be grateful that there wasn’t much of a breeze. Just as his calf muscles were starting to burn, they emerged at the top of the tower.
It was capped by a sort of observation platform, also jade, about a foot thick and about as wide as a football field. Steve was susceptible to vertigo in tall buildings, but this was more like being in an airliner. For some reason, that wasn’t as bad. Anyway, it felt rock-solid underfoot. Over in one corner he saw a barbecue grill and half a dozen lawn chairs. His stomach rumbled.
Then he noticed something else.
Nearer the geometric center of the disk the cloud of lights hung low, close enough to reach up and touch. Under that point he saw a small brown lump on the floor. He took a couple of steps toward it, squinting. Carolyn didn’t follow—she was looking up at the lights.
“Hey, who’s this?” The lump was a young woman—barely more than a child, really—sleeping on the floor, curled in the fetal position. “Another one of your sisters?”
“What?” Carolyn frowned. “No. There shouldn’t be anyone here. Move away, Steve.” Her tone was chilly again, the way it had been in the car. “That’s got to be Mithraganhi.”
“Who?”
“Mithraganhi. One of Father’s anointed, from the third age. Nobununga’s sister, I think. She was the sun, until a couple of hours ago.”
“The sun?”
“Yeah. Remember when it got dark out, a couple of hours ago? I changed her back.”
“Uh…if you say so. What’s she doing up here?”
“I don’t know. She should have died up there.” Carolyn walked around Steve, heading toward the girl. “She must have climbed down somehow.”
“From where?”
She pointed up. Steve followed her finger, then froze. He hadn’t noticed at first, but this close, the points of light in the cloud overhead weren’t really points anymore. He saw now that each of them was itself a tiny swirling spiral, almost but not quite frozen. Galaxies? He reached up to touch one and—
“Poru sinh Ablakha?” The girl’s voice was high, childlike. She was awake now, propped up on her elbows. She was a platinum blonde and pretty, if a trifle smudged. Her eyes were a shade of gray he’d only ever seen on battleships.
Carolyn squatted down next to her, smiling. “You’ll be with him soon.” She stroked the child’s forehead with the back of her right hand. Her left moved to the small of her back and emerged with the obsidian knife.
What the hell? “Carolyn, no!”
Carolyn stabbed the girl in the neck, just once, then bounced backward, getting a surprising amount of air. She came down in a three-point stance, knife at the ready, her eyes fixed on the girl.
All three of them froze for a moment. We’re the murder exhibit at a wax museum, Steve thought, horrified to the point of giggles. Blood squirted from the child’s neck in a finger-thick stream—once, then again. It landed on the jade with a splashing sound. Another squirt. A puddle began to collect.
The girl touched her hand to her neck. Her fingers came away red. She showed them to Carolyn. “Moru panh? Moru panh ka seiter?”
Carolyn smiled the way a gargoyle might. “Chah seh Ablakha.”
The girl slumped. Another squirt of arterial spray, weaker this time.
“Jesus!” Steve screamed. “Carolyn, what did you do?” He ran for the girl, thinking, perhaps, to hold his hand over the wound, stanch the bleeding somehow. But his course took him near Carolyn. Somehow, passing her, he tripped. He hit the jade floor hard.
“It’s all right, Steve.”
His front tooth was rough now, newly chipped. He tasted blood. “All right? It’s not all right! That kid is just a kid, Carolyn. What did she ever do to you?” He felt Naga near him, muscular and violent.
Carolyn spoke without emotion. “She’s sixty thousand years old, and she’s loyal to Father.”
“So. Fucking. What?” He wasn’t quite screaming.
Carolyn blinked. “You have no idea what the stakes are, Steve. You don’t understand about Father, how dangerous this is.”
“She’s just a kid, Carolyn!” Steve scrabbled to his feet and went to the girl. She clutched at his sweatpants with one bloody hand, pleading in a language he didn’t know. Her lips were blue.
Steve lifted her hand away, inspected the wound. Her carotid artery gaped open, a lipless mouth. “Hold still,” he said. “I’ll—”
Carolyn put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t. It’ll be over in a minute.” She didn’t threaten him with the knife.
“Can I…would you mind if I just held her hand?” Naga paced between him and Carolyn, guarding him.
“No,” Carolyn said. “Too dangerous.”
Steve hesitated for a second, then took the girl’s hand anyway. He could hear Carolyn’s teeth gritting, but she didn’t move to stop him. Mithraganhi’s hand was small, birdlike in his palm. She looked at him with her gray eyes, pleading.
“I don’t know what to do,” Steve said to her. “I’m so sorry.”
“Moru panh?” she said again. Her voice was fading.
“What’s she saying?”
“It means ‘Why are you doing this?’ ” Carolyn said.
“I’m so sorry.” Steve reached out to her cheek, but she flinched away from his touch. Her eyelids drooped.
Then she was gone.
“There,” Carolyn said. “That’s done.”
Steve
shut the girl’s eyes, then looked at his hands. They were red. He showed them to Carolyn. “Yeah. I guess so.”
Seeing the look on his face, she seemed to return to herself a little bit. Her face fell. “You don’t understand,” she said again.
“You got that right.” He was thinking, However handy she might be with that knife, I’m a lot bigger than she is. He was thinking, We’re not that far from the edge.
Carolyn’s expression darkened. Her hand drifted to the small of her back. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” His tone was pleasant.
“Just don’t. OK? I won’t kill you, but I’ll hurt you if I have to. I don’t want to—I really don’t want to—but I will.” Then, pleading, “Steve…let me explain.”
“OK,” he said. “Fine.”
“Mithraganhi might have looked like a child, but she wasn’t.”
“What, then?”
She rubbed her forehead. “I’m not sure. Not exactly. The records are lost, or maybe destroyed. But she was important. She was one of Father’s key lieutenants. If she was still loyal to him—and there’s no reason to think anything else—she might have found a way to bring him back.”
“OK. All right. Fine. But…so what?”
Carolyn boggled at him, laughed a little. “We really are from different worlds, you know that?”
“Yes. Yes, that thought has crossed my mind once or twice as well. Can you maybe try to explain it to me? Small words?”
“Father was…” She trailed off, then laughed a little. “You know, I know literally every word ever spoken, but I can’t think of a single one that’s adequate to your question. Father was Father.”
“That’s not much help.”
“I know.” Carolyn held her hand up. “Give me a minute.” She pinched her chin for several seconds, then looked up at him. “When one of my brothers was about nine, Father tasked him with convincing a Deep One to accept him as an apprentice.”
“Deep One?”
“A giant squid. Sort of.”
“Oh.”
“Michael tried and tried, but the Deep One wouldn’t go for it. Something to do with the Forest God, or maybe he just hated people. Probably that was the real lesson, but we still didn’t understand how Father worked. We were young then. My brother tried to explain the situation, but Father wouldn’t listen. He said my brother was ‘not properly motivated.’ ” She shuddered.
“You OK?”
“I just—even hearing those words, you know? ‘Not properly motivated.’ I want to throw up.”
“You can stop if you want.”
“No. Thanks, but no. You need to understand this.” She was looking up at the lights overhead. The iron was back in her voice.
“So…what happened?”
“He got a hot poker and burned out Michael’s eyes.”
“What? Jesus! He blinded the kid?”
“Yeah. Blinded him. Well—not the way you probably mean. Not permanently.”
“How can that—”
“The white catalog, Jennifer’s catalog, is medicine. Exotic medicine. None of our physical wounds were ever permanent. Father could heal anything. Jennifer was even better.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Well…I suppose. Yes. It had its moments. But there are costs, too. Philosophical costs.”
“Now I really don’t understand.”
Carolyn knelt at the puddle of the child’s blood. Her back was to him, but the blood was still, not yet coagulated, shiny. He could see her face reflected in it. “It was different for us. For you, Americans, if things get bad enough…well. You always have an out.”
“Suicide?”
“Death.”
“But…you guys didn’t?”
“No. Father burned Michael’s eyes out. Every night, over and over. The rest of us had to attend him, had to watch. Each time took about twenty minutes—the first eye was quick, but after that Michael had to. To. To watch. One-eyed, you see. He’d watch as Father, um, Father, you know, heated the poker back up. The next morning Jennifer would grow them both back. Both eyes, you see. And then they’d do it again.” The muscles of her back bunched and coiled like thick snakes under her robe as she spoke.
“What happened? How did it end?”
Carolyn snarled. In the puddle of child’s blood Steve saw a flash of white teeth, reflected. “Michael became motivated.” She spat the words out like someone vomiting up rotten food. “After eleven days of this my brother concocted a way to bow the Deep One to his will.”
She was trembling. It crossed his mind to go to her, to touch her shoulders and offer comfort, but he didn’t quite dare. “That’s the worst thing I ever heard of.”
“That,” Carolyn said, “is Father. He wasn’t even really angry. It was routine. Just a discipline thing. Do you see?”
Steve thought about it before he answered. “Yeah. Maybe I do. A little bit, anyway. And this kid, what’s her name—Mythronnie?”
“Mithraganhi.”
“She’s buddies with this guy?”
“Well…she was.”
Steve groaned, feeling sick. He went to the edge of the platform and looked down. “I went up to the top of the World Trade Center once,” he said. “This is higher.”
“Yes. A lot.”
“Let’s say I believe you. About the girl.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. She looked harmless to me.” He shrugged. “But I’m not used to being up this high. Maybe the rules are different up here. Are they?”
“I don’t know that there are any rules,” Carolyn said. “I won. That’s the only rule I’m aware of.”
“Why me?” He spoke softly. “Why am I here? I don’t understand.”
“You’re a klutz, Steve. I needed someone to drop the magazine. I couldn’t do it myself, couldn’t even look at it. David might have seen it, in my mind.”
“That’s it? You expect me to believe that you dragged me into this because I’m clumsy? That’s why you ruined my life?”
“Oh, you’re exaggerating.”
“EXA—” Steve cut himself off. Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it. That helped a little bit. “You fucking framed me for fucking murder, Carolyn, and then tried to get me eaten alive by wild dogs. Remember?” He patted Naga on the shoulders. “Naga remembers.”
Naga shoulder-bumped Steve in solidarity. The two of them glared at Carolyn.
“OK, fine, yes, there is a bit more to it than just that you’re clumsy.”
“Well. That’s progress.” He and Naga exchanged a glance. “Do, please, go on. Why me?”
“I’ll explain. I really will. But first, I need to hang David.” She wiggled the shoelace. Blackness had swallowed him completely, even his last hairy toe.
Steve felt his eyes go wide. The blackness around David had grown noticeably in just the last few minutes. Now, even from five feet away Steve felt the heat. It was like a furnace. He took a half step back. “What’s happening to him?”
“Remember how I said he was frozen in time?”
“Uh…I guess.” The blackness around David had a fluid quality, the surface swirling.
“And do you remember what he was doing when I froze him?”
“Is this a quiz?”
“More like a teaching method. You’ll understand better if I pull it out of you. Do you remember?”
“Well…yeah, I guess. He was dying, right? And you’d just given him a little zap in the pain center of his brain. You said it was ‘the theoretical upper limit of suffering.’ ” Then, under his breath, “I mean…damn.”
“Exactly. But here’s the difference. Suffering—normal suffering—is transient. What we perceive as emotion is just a quick connection between three-dimensional space and one of the higher physical planes—rage, joy, pleasure, whatever. The repercussions can echo for years, but the actual link usually only lasts for a fraction of a second.” She gave her gargoyle sm
ile again. “Usually.”
“But…not this time?”
“Exactly.” She jiggled the black sphere. “Time isn’t passing inside this. And I got it just right, too. David is connected to pure anguish, and he can’t move on.” She looked at Steve expectantly.
Steve thought about this for a good long while, then gave up. “Um. So what?”
“So,” she said, “the potential energy between the planes will continue to be realized. It’s like a capacitor with an infinite charge.”
“Energy.” He looked at David, now completely swallowed by blackness. The ball had grown visibly while they talked, and it was warmer now. “You mean, the black stuff? That’s energy?”
“Exactly.”
“How big will it get?”
“I’m not sure. A million miles, give or take. That’s why we came up here. We need to set him in the heavens, where there’s room.”
“Come again?”
“By this time tomorrow, David will be our new sun.”
III
She reached into the cloud of stars overhead and made a shooing motion with her hand. The lights spun at her touch, not unlike the lazy Susan on the big corner table at a Chinese restaurant. When she had the right spot, she poked up a finger to stop the spinning, and pulled. Space rushed past them, the scale of the things they saw shrinking—first whole galaxies, then clouds, then individual stars, and finally planets. “Recognize that one?”
“Uh…Jupiter?” His lips felt numb.
“No, it’s Saturn. See the rings?”
“Right. Saturn. That’s what I meant.”
“It’s OK. Now, hush for a second. I need to concentrate.”
Steve watched as she took David by the shoelace—only a few inches were still poking out—and pushed him gently through the thin membrane separating the reality Steve had grown up in and the Library. David seemed to shrink as he passed through.
“There we go,” she said, and dusted her hands off theatrically. “All done!”
“How long before he’s the sun?”
“I’m not sure. At least a couple of hours. I’ll come back and fix the orbits later. Can’t have the wee little marbles bumping into one another, can we?”