Time's Dark Laughter Part 21

The Centaur prided himself on this game, for it required balance and delicacy. On his knees, he removed one stick from the pile; then another, and- A great roiling explosion somewhere in the west wing shook the entire castle, causing the little pile of sticks to move again. "Ah," smiled Beauty. "There is chance again. So be it. Now comes your turn, child."

The child still looked faintly puzzled by the whole thing, but jumped down from the throne and studied the sticks. After a while, she said, "See? Do you see it? What it forms?"

Beauty and Josh shook their heads.

"It is the South Wall of the Serengeti Crater. This configuration is not new. Is that the game? To recognize the pattern? To name where it has been before? Ah, I see now! What a good game. I like games. But where is the chance in this?"

Josh and Beauty exchanged a glance that was not altogether lost on the child. She looked crestfallen, and said, "I've lost the game, haven't I?"

"You make your own games," Josh replied gently.

"So. I make new words, and I make new games," she said a little defiantly.

"And you make new friends," Beauty said, bowing his head, gracious but formal.

The remark made her coy. She smiled, began to speak, then didn't.

"What you did with the weather last night," Josh interceded, "that was really something."

A smile flashed brightly across her face, followed by a vexing glower. "I cannot do as I wish, though," she admitted. "I try to turn the air into fire-instead, it rains. I try to turn the sea to stone-instead, rocks melt. I bid the moon ignite for me-and it does, only it's a moon of Saturn." She looked down; then up at Josh. "I told you pride-fully I was stretching my mind, but I fear it stretches me. Father, what should I do?"

Her voice suddenly had a bleak and helpless ring. Josh was reminded of his first impression of her: vulnerable, confused.

"Go slower," he advised her. "Time is your servant. Be a little gentle with things-with the Earth and its creatures- and you'll learn much more of their nature . . ."

"And of your own nature, little curious one," Beauty added.

The child smiled a sad smile, catching the others in the prism of her reflective eyes. She shook her head slowly, and Josh was briefly seized by the sense that the lonely child was sage beyond her years. "The universe is not gentle, Father," she whispered.

"Thus with gentle friends.h.i.+ps do we hold back the Void," breathed Beauty.

"Then let's drink to gentle friends," said Josh, uncorking his bottle and pouring three cups.

"And to new games," she added, taking a cup from him.

Beauty took the last cup. Isis suddenly had an itch, and began biting furiously between the first two claws of her left forefoot.

Josh raised his gla.s.s. "To new games, and the gentleness of friends."

They all drank. They all drank one sip, and then spat and sputtered on the floor-the wine had gone bad. The child threw her gla.s.s down. They pursed their lips and spat again, trying to rid their mouths of the sour, bitter taste.

"What filth is this?" the child screamed. The sudden commotion scared Isis, who jumped down to the floor and put her paw right into a glob of the child's red-streaked spittle. She shook her foot hurriedly, and ran into the corner.

"It's no trick," Josh apologized, trying to smile. "The wine just turned. It happens sometimes, to old wine. There's nothing to be-"

"Leave me," the child-Queen rumbled. Her feathers were all up; her eyes, twitching star cl.u.s.ters; her words, again edged with telepathy.

"No, really," Josh pursued, "it's just vinegar from-"

Beauty tried to restrain him with a surrept.i.tious touch, but it was too late. The child screamed at them: "Leave, I say!" Sparks crackled around her head; the ah- pressure in the room seemed to drop.

Josh and Beauty slowly backed out the door. Isis darted out just ahead of them from the corner she had been crouching in. In a moment, they were all gone.

Leaving the child-Queen alone in the half-darkness.

For many minutes she sat there, seething. She knew there had been no malice involved, on Joshua's part, in this drink business. She had felt his mind on that account, and his mind was clear. In fact, the taste of the wine seemed to surprise them all equally. Still, she hated discomfort of any kind, and she was angry.

She sulked a while, but this just got her more pent up. She needed release; catharsis of her confusions. The darkness of her thoughts tormented her. She wanted to scream; to explode.

Osi.

Steam began to rise from her head, so much hotter was it than the surrounding air. Rhythmically, distractedly, she scratched her nails on the arm of the throne.

Osiiiiiiil Osi walked in, approached the throne. The difference in their statures was remarkable-he was over seven feet tall, she was barely four. His body was hairless from head to foot, hers was feathered. His skin was dark, her spirit was darker.

"You wanted me, Highness?" In his mind he had heard her call; and was helpless to resist. Something about this bird-child had possessed him; corrupted him, somehow. She had begun making him do ... things. Toying with him in a way he was unable to stop-or unwilling to. So much else about his life was in tatters now, like a raveled edge. This child had become his only focus. That was the only reason he could find for why he stayed in this crumbling ruin of a city-something about the bird-child he both feared and l.u.s.ted after: the same feelings members of his harem had for him, he knew. He smiled philosophically as he stood before the bird-child now. She is my Vampire, he thought. Perhaps everybody has somebody who is his Vampire.

The child nodded, as if she had heard his acknowledgment. "Kneel," she told him.

He knelt before the throne. She nodded imperceptibly. With a smile that mixed antic.i.p.ation and fear, he began to lick one of her smooth thighs as he caressed the other with "his brown, powerful fingers. She wrapped her prehensile tail around the back of his neck, pulling his head closer in. He let his fingers wander up her belly, linger over the delicate whiteness of her chest, dent the small rosy nipples.

A hiss poured from her mouth, like air escaping under pressure, and she dug her talons into his shoulders, so deep, deeper; an inch deep. He tensed as her razor nails punctured his skin, felt his own blood trickle down his arms.

She released her tail grip on his head, and with strength far greater than his own, pulled him up by the claw hold she maintained in his shoulder muscles. His wings unfurled. Wet all over, now, steaming and sweating, she wrapped her legs around his waist; pulled her nails from his shoulders; buried her right claw ferociously into his left breast; and with her left hand, pulled his mouth to her throat. He bit down hard on her jugular, sucking in rapt obsession.

Her feathers fanned out full, her slight body flushed all over. The air around them crackled and smoked. They writhed, and rolled to the floor, bleeding, reeling toward release.

CHAPTER 16: In Which It Is Possible, on Starry Nights, to Hear the Laughter of Time

JOSHUA, Beauty, and Isis quickly made their way out of the castle and into the City. The castle itself seemed completely deserted as they ran down its now randomly lighted corridors, stepping quickly over rubble and dead bodies- some already beginning to decompose.

The City outside the castle walls was a different matter. Dozens of creatures lined the streets of the Inner City- huddling, whimpering, waiting. Vampires, Humans, Neu-romans, Lizards, Accidents. Josh and company walked by under the surveillance of this spooky a.s.semblage, but no one came near, no one moved. Steam filled the air.

The ground began to rumble, next-a continuous, jolting shudder that made it hard to walk. It wasn't like an earthquake. There were no shocks, no s.h.i.+fts of land. Just an unceasing rumble, as if the land were s.h.i.+vering. Then the sky began to change colors: suddenly bright orange, then an intense lavender; now obsidian black, now emerald green.

Josh picked up Isis and jumped on Beauty's back. The Centaur trotted to the inner gate; when he emerged into the Outer City, he began to gallop.

All the evils of the City were fouling one another here. Vampires, Cerberus guards, Minotaurs, giant Rats, sewer Snakes, Cidons, Accidents, and mixed-breed pirates were running amok. Gangs of them would overtake some lone beast-wounded or weakened-and eat it alive. Josh saw a Rat calmly gnawing whatever parts of its own body it could reach with its mouth, until it finally lost consciousness, bleeding and mutilated. Creatures were tied to roofs, and then the houses set afire. Death was everywhere, like the undertow in troubled waters.

Quickly, Beauty ran through the gates. No one followed them. There was no steam outside the walls of the City, and the sky was a normal, clear blue. Beauty reared up on his hind legs, pawed the air, and set off southeast at a dead run.

Ollie lay baking on the sand of the Ansa Blanca. The sun burned down, burned through him, parched his dry flesh, killed the budding mold within. In this cleansing desert crucible, he waited for death.

He had reached his crisis with Aba, and come through it. The putrefaction that had been growing in his soul all these years had come to a head under the heat of that Vampire-Ollie had picked at the boil and worried it until finally it had burst, spewing its purulence and b.l.o.o.d.y agony over all who came near, leaving Ollie drained, torn, released.

And now, cleansing. The purifying sun radiated down, healing the frayed edges of his wound, baking out the last vile pocket of pus. He could feel it: all the years of jungle rot necrotizing within him were burning away, searing to ash. When the process was complete, he knew there would be little left of himself, so much of his substance had rotted. Then he would die when the sun finished its business. This was his test by fire, then. If he still lived at the end of this crucible day, after all the reek of his spirit had done oozing and the sun had evaporated his evil and cauterized the wound-if he still lived then, he knew he could start over with what substance remained. Weak but clean. He doubted he would live until evening.

The sun was at its zenith now: unremitting, without antic.i.p.ation or memory. The sands of the Ansa Blanca stretched out in all directions like a waterless ocean of infinite depth.

Ollie touched the hole in his chest where the ruby had been ripped out. It was sticky with a fresh clot at the center, crusted with dry flakes at the edges. Painful but clean.

He took a deep breath, filled his lungs with desert air, and waited for death.

Jasmine walked up to them as Josh slid down off Beauty's back. "How did it go?" she asked.

Josh shook his head in consternation.

Beauty said, "Badly."

They all sat around the campfire and ate as Josh and Beauty gave their impressions of the interview with the child. Isis sat quietly in Jasmine's lap.

"She has powers she does not begin to understand," concluded Beauty. "She is given to whims and tantrums. She cannot be trusted."

"She's only a child, though," Josh added. "She'll grow. She'll mature. I think, with some guidance . . ."

Jasmine, absorbed in concentration, finally spoke. "Joshua, I hope you're right. But I think we have to make some immediate contingency plans."

The whole camp was listening. Most would do whatever Josh said: but they knew his great respect for Jasmine's judgment, and they focused intently on her words.

"What do you suggest?"

She opened her hidden abdominal compartment, removed a number of tubes and implements, and laid them beside her in the gra.s.s. Next, she lifted Isis's front paw, took a scissors, and cut a slender thread that had tied a little patch of material to the foot-pad. She held the patch up for all to see.

"This is an agar cell patch," she said. "It happened to be in the box of bioengineering lab paraphernalia I stole when I raided the castle with Ollie. It's a special polymer-nutrient adhesive, designed centuries ago to hold a tissue culture for up to forty-eight hours. I tied it to the bottom of Isis's foot this morning, but left it sealed. I gave her instructions to bite off the seal-secretly-when she was safely ensconced somewhere near the child-Queen."

"But why-" began Josh.

"I didn't tell any of you of this before because we believe the child can read the minds in her immediate vicinity-if not thought for thought, at least intent and feeling. So if you knew what my intent was, then she would know. I didn't even tell Isis the real reason I wanted her to do what I asked her to do."

"Which was what?"

"Which was that when the child spat, Isis was to put her paw down on the spittle and soak it up with this agar patch. Then, if possible, she was un.o.btrusively to cover the patch up with another paper seal I'd stuck to the bottom of her other foot. Which it looks like she was able to do." She stroked Isis's head fondly, and Isis beamed.

"But how did you know the child was going to spit?" asked Beauty.

Jasmine laughed. "Because I knew the wine was bad. That lot turned sour years ago-bottles I'd stored in my hiding-cave."

Josh-and everyone else-looked confused. "I still don't get it."

Jasmine tore the seal off the agar patch, took a slender spatula, and sc.r.a.ped half the jelly off the patch. She then uncapped a silver test tube, stirred the spit-and-agar-filled spatula around in it, and finally recapped the tube. She repeated this entire process with the other half of the patch and another tube. When done, she spoke again: "I wanted the child to spit-that's why I had you offer her bitter wine. I wanted her to spit because I knew she would probably shed some cells from the inside of her cheek into her saliva, and those cells would then get adsorbed onto the agar patch when Isis made contact. The child's own cells, that's what we want. The cells were kept alive on the patch, which, thank goodness, Isis was able to seal again-"

"In the corner, when she jumped off the throne-" Josh interjected.

"Wherever. I told her only that I wanted her to get the child's saliva on her foot, so I could smell it when she got back-nothing particularly threatening about that for the child to tune in on. The second seal was crucial, too-the cells probably wouldn't have lived without it during your journey back here. In any case, I've taken the brew and divided it in two, now, half into each of the two culture tubes-tubes containing a bacteriocidal culture medium that greatly favors the growth of animal cells, promotes tissue culture. And there's enough nutrient in each tube to keep a tissue culture alive for weeks!" she ended brightly.

Most of her listeners still weren't very clear just what her purpose was. Aba had studied some of these ancient forms of magic with Lon, though, and so was more sophisticated than most. "But why would we want a culture of the child's buccal cells?" he asked. His throat was still bruised with Ollie's thumb prints, so he spoke slowly and without volume.

Jasmine smiled. "A good question. In fact, that's precisely the question to ask. And the answer is that I have friends in a camp in the Mosian Firecaves-Neuromans, many of them genetic engineers, the same people who reconditioned my body two years ago and gave me all these tricks up my fingers, my secret compartment here, and so on-friends, in any event, who can make use of these cells. Because I'm convinced that if we have to defend ourselves against this child-and I'm not saying we will-but if we do, her powers are beyond equal. So our only possible defense will be a molecular-biological one."

Aba nodded tentatively.

"Huh?" Josh said.

"Well," Jasmine went on, "they've got a good, isolated lab up there. They haven't got all the resources they used to, but they haven't been sitting still, either. They'll be able to isolate the genetic material from the cells that have proliferated in these tubes, a.n.a.lyze the genome-reconstruct it if they want, either identically or with alterations. They could clone it and get a twin identical to our child in the castle-or a twin with differences if they had enough time. Unfortunately, time may be a factor, though. There are numerous possibilities, however-they have all kinds of experiments up there that may prove fruitful when applied to our problem. So, the point is, we have to get these cells up there in a hurry. I've divided them into two parts because I think two expeditionary forces should set out by different routes; if one fails, the other may not. I suggest one group take one tube and carry it east and north, around the Terrarium. The other tube could be entrusted to another party of three or four. They could take Joshua's gla.s.s submarine straight up the coast-that would be fastest-then anchor it way north in some hidden cove and trek due east to the camp in the Firecaves. I'll give the parties going an emergency codeword known only to Mo-sian Neuromans, so they realize this is top priority. So that's my plan. So what do you think?"

All in all, they thought it was a good plan. At least, it gave them something to hang their hopes on, in the face of the strange, disconcerting turn of events.

As they began deciding who would go north, Aba stepped forward. His face was swollen, his right hand bandaged. "I'll take one tube," he said to the group.

There was a stunned, guilty silence. He spoke again. "It's the only sensible way-I have the best chance of getting through. Besides, I can fly there faster than anyone here can walk."

Partly it was a heroic gesture to throw in the face of all the Books who had spurned him as his relations.h.i.+p with Paula had grown. Partly it was just for Paula. He sensed more and more that she was-they all were-in real danger from the queer child; his proposal seemed an essential step toward their protection.

There was a long, general hesitation; no one knew quite what to say. At last, Josh spoke: "I say this is a Vampire who's won our trust. He was once the best friend of the finest Vampire I ever knew; he's never done us harm, yet we've treated him badly. And now, he offers us his life in our service. I humbly thank him; and I say he goes."

That decided it, without debate; for Josh was the leader. In any case, before more could be said, Ollie suddenly reappeared, almost out of nowhere. He was sunburned red over brown, with great areas of white, dead skin peeling off in wrinkly, thin flakes. His lips were cracked and puffy, his eyes deep-set with dehydration; yet he smiled. "And I'll take the other tube," he a.s.serted loudly. There were murmurs and exclamations.

Paula walked up. "You've got some nerve even showing your face here again."

Ollie looked at her, then at the rest. He spoke slowly and clearly. "I ask your pardon for my behavior-all of you; and you . . ." he briefly locked eyes with Aba, then went on: "I wish to atone for my crimes against the spirit of our humanity. I ask you to let me bear the burden of this mission for you."

Jasmine looked intensely at Ollie. "You think we can trust you?"

He bridled, then wilted, then stood his ground. "I've never broken my word. Besides, I have a better chance than anyone here-except you, maybe-of fighting my way through hostile territory to make it up there. I'm the best natural commando around. And besides that, Aba is right-he should take one tube, for he can fly there faster than anyone-and at this point I could hardly ask him to do anything for us I wouldn't do myself."

Ollie and Aba looked at each other. There was still a deep-rooted strain between them-but now, with the first threads of acceptance.

Ollie felt a measure of burden lifted by his mea culpcr, and he felt lighter by half when by consensus he was granted the grave and terrible adventure. He hoped he could beat Aba to the Mosian Firecaves-for, recantations notwithstanding, Ollie was still Ollie, and he craved some kind of honorable victory over this Vampire nemesis.

Four others were decided upon to accompany him: Beauty, who knew the area round the Firecaves and how to get there; Michael, who was nearly exploding with potential energy; Ellen, whose vocabulary was great and who would try to protect the enterprise with the strength of her Scribery; and David, who pulled rank to go-probably so he could prove something to Michael.

Jasmine, Josh, and Rose, it was decided, would stay behind to monitor the child-Queen. Paula would remain to supervise continued work on the Great Lexicon.

AH was concluded over the course of the evening; by midnight, good-byes were being said to the brave departing messengers.

Beauty bade farewell first to Rose, whom he loved now as an old friend with whom he had shared good times and misery. The scarred ligaments of their love were fused forever. They hugged without words, close once again under the specter of their obscure new peril.

Next, Beauty told Jasmine good-bye. Once more, as he had five years before, he now felt both happy at the knowing of her and sad at the knowing so little. He wanted more, and again circ.u.mstances had prevented any deeper connection between them.

"You are a remarkable woman," he said to her, his hands on her shoulders, "and I shall miss you."