(How close are we?)
(Uh . . . this is Madison and Forty-ninth.
Three blocks north and a long one east.)
(Can we rest? This air burns to breathe. And we’ve been
going fast.)
(Yeah, let’s.)
They crouched together in the shadow of a doorway, two wary
darknesses and a dim light, watching the traffic that went by.
Mostly cabs prowled past, wearing the same hungry look as the one
that had wounded Kit. Or a sullen truck might lumber by, or a
passenger car, looking uneasy and dingy and bitter. None of the
cars or trucks had drivers, or looked like they wanted them. They
ignored the traffic lights, and their engines growled.
Nita’s eyes burned in the dark air. She rubbed them and
glanced down at Kit’s leg, bound now with a torn-off
piece of her shirt. (How is it?)
(Not too bad. It feels stiff. I guess it stopped bleeding.) He
looked down, felt the makeshift bandage, winced.
(Yeah . . . I’m hungry.)
Nita’s stomach turned over—she was too nervous to
even consider eating—as Kit came up with a ham sandwich and
offered her half. (You go ahead,) she said. She leaned against the
hard cold wall, and on a sudden thought she pulled her pen out of
her pocket and looked at it. It seemed all right, but as she held
it she could feel a sort of odd tingling in its metal that
hadn’t been there before.
(Uh, Fred—)
He hung beside her at eye level, making worried feelings that
matched the dimness of his light, (Are you sure that light
didn’t hurt you?)
(Yeah. It’s not that.) She held out the pen to him. Fred
backed away a little—as if afraid
he might swallow it again. (Is this radioactive or anything?) Nita
said.
He drifted close to it, bobbed up and down to look at it from
several angles. (You mean beta and gamma and those other emissions
you have trouble with? No.)
Nita still felt suspicious about the pen. She dug into her
backpack for a piece of scrap paper, laid it on her wizards’
manual, clicked the point out, and scribbled on the paper. Then she
breathed out, perplexed. (Come on, Fred! Look at that!)
He floated down to look. The pen’s blue-black ink
would normally have been hard to see in that dimness, no matter how
white the paper. But the scrawl had a subtle glimmer about it, a
luminosity just bright enough to make out. (I don’t think
it’s anything harmful to you,) Fred said. (Are you sure it
didn’t do that before?)
(Yes!)
(Well, look at it this way. Now you can see what you’re
writing when it’s dark. Surprising you people hadn’t
come up with something like that already.)
Nita shook her head, put the paper away, and clipped the pen
back in her pocket. Kit, finishing the first half of his sandwich,
looked over at the scribble with interest. (Comes of being inside
Fred, I guess. With him having his own claudication, and all the
energy boiling around inside him, you might have expected something
like that to happen.)
(Yeah, well, I don’t like it. The pen was fine the way it
was.)
(Considering where it’s been,) Kit said, (you’re
lucky to get it back in the same shape, instead of crushed into a
little lump.) He wrapped up the other half of his sandwich and
shoved it into his backpack. (Should we go?)
(Yeah.)
They got up, checked their surroundings as usual to make sure
that no cabs or cars were anywhere close, and started up Madison
again, ducking into doorways or between buildings whenever they saw
or heard traffic coming.
(No people,) Kit said, as if trying to work it out. (Just
things—all dark and ruined—and machines, all twisted.
Alive—but they seem to hate everything—And
pigeons—)
(Dogs, too,) Nita said.
(Where?) Kit looked hurriedly around him.
(Check the sidewalk and the gutter. They’re here. And
remember that nest.) Nita shrugged uneasily, setting her pack
higher. (I don’t know. Maybe people just can’t live
here.)
(We’re here,) Kit said unhappily. (And maybe not for
long.)
A sudden grinding sound like tortured metal made them dive for
another shadowy doorway close to the corner of Madison and
Fiftieth. No traffic was in sight; nothing showed but the glowering
eye of the traffic light and the unchanging don’t walk signs.
The grinding sound came again—metal scrapping on concrete,
somewhere across Madison, down Fiftieth, to their left. Kit edged a
bit forward in the doorway.
(What are you—)
(I want to see.) He reached around behind him, taking the
antenna in his hand.
(But if—)
(If that’s something that might chase us later, I at least
want a look at it. Fred? Take a peek for us?)
(Right.) Fred sailed ahead of them, keeping low and close to the
building walls, his light dimmed to the faintest glimmer. By the
lamppost at Madison and Fiftieth he paused, then shot low across
the street and down Fiftieth between Madison and Fifth, vanishing
past the corner. Nita and Kit waited, sweating.
From around the comer Fred radiated feelings of uncertainty and
curiosity. (These are like the other things that run these
streets. But these aren’t moving. Maybe they were dangerous
once. I don’t know about now.)
(Come on,) Kit said. He put his head out of the doorway.
(It’s clear.)
With utmost caution they crossed the street and slipped around
the corner, flattening to the wall. Here stores and dingy
four-story brownstones with long flights of railed stairs
lined the street. Halfway down the block, jagged and bizarre in the
dimness and the feeble yellow glow of a flickering
sodium-vapor street light, was the remains of an accident.
One car, a heavy two-door sedan, lay crumpled against the pole of
another nearby street light, its right-hand door ripped away and
the whole right side of it laid open. A little distance away, in
the middle of the street, lay the car that had hit the sedan,
resting on its back and skewed right around so that its front end
was pointed at Kit and Nita. It was a sports car of some kind, so
dark a brown that it was almost black. Its windshield had been
shattered when it overturned, and it had many other dents and
scrapes, some quite deep. From its front right wheel jutted a long
jagged strip of chrome, part of the other car’s fender, now
wound into the sports car’s wheel.
(I don’t get it,) Nita said silently. (If that dark one
hit the other, why isn’t his front all smashed in—)
She broke off as with a terrible metallic groan the sports car
suddenly rocked back and forth, like a
turtle on its back trying to right itself. Kit sucked in a long
breath and didn’t move. The car stopped rocking for a moment,
then with another scrape of metal started again, rocking more
energetically this time. Each time the side-to-side
motion became larger. It rocked partway onto one door, then back
the other way and partway onto the other,
then back again—and full onto its left-hand door. There
it balanced, precarious, for a few long
seconds, as if getting its breath. And then twitched
and shuddered all the way over, and fell
right-side down.
The scream that filled the air as the sports car came down on
the fender-tangled right wheel was terrible to hear.
Instantly it hunched up the fouled wheel, holding it away from the
street, crouching on the three good wheels and shaking with its
effort. Nita thought of an old sculpture she had seen once, a
wounded lion favoring one forelimb—weary and in pain, but
still dangerous.
Very slowly, as if approaching a hurt animal and not wanting to
alarm it, Kit stepped away from the building and walked out into
the street.
(Kit!)
(Ssssh,) he said silently. (Don’t freak it.)
(Are you out of your—)
(Ssssshhh!)
The sports car watched Kit come, not moving. Now that it was
right-side up, Nita could get a better idea of its shape. It
was actually rather beautiful in its deadly looking
way—sleekly swept-back and slung low to the ground. Its
curves were battered in places; its once-shining hide was
scored and dull. It stared at Kit from hunter’s eyes,
headlights wide with pain, and breathed shallowly, waiting.
(Lotus Esprit,) Kit said to Nita, not taking his eyes off the
car, matching it stare for stare.
Nita shook her head anxiously. (Does that mean something? I
don’t know cars.)
(It’s a racer. A mean one. What it is here—Look,
Nita, there’s your answer. Look at the front of it, under the
headlights.) He kept moving forward, his hands out in front of him.
The Lotus held perfectly still, watching.
Nita looked at the low-sloping grille. (It’s all
full of oil or something.)
(It’s a predator. These other cars, like that
sedan—they must be what it hunts. This time its prey hurt the
Lotus before it made its kill. Like a tiger getting gored by a bull
or something. Ooops!)
Kit, eight or ten feet away from the Lotus’s grille, took
one step too many; it abruptly rolled back away from him a foot or
so. Very quietly its engine stuttered to life and settled into a
throaty growl.
(Kit, you’re—)
(Shut up,) “I won’t hurt you,” he said in the
Speech, aloud. “Let me see to that wheel.”
The engine-growl got louder—the sound of the Speech
seemed to upset the Lotus. It rolled back another couple of feet,
getting close to the curb, and glared at Kit. But the glare seemed
to have as much fear as threat in it now—
“I won’t hurt you,” Kit repeated, stepping
closer, holding out his hands—one of them with the antenna in
it. “Come on, you know what this is. Let me do something
about that wheel. You can’t run on it. And if you can’t
run . . .
“I bet there are other hunters here, aren’t there? Or
scavengers. I’m sure there are scavengers. Who ‘ll be
coming here to clean up this kill? And do you want them to find you
here, helpless?”
The Lotus stared at him, shifting a little from side to side,
now, swaying uncertainly. The growl had not stopped, but it
hadn’t gotten any louder either. “If I were going to
hurt you, I would have by now,” Kit said, getting closer. The
car was four feet away, and its headlights were having to look up
at Kit now. “Just let me do something about that fender stuck
in you, then you’ll go your way and I’ll go
mine.”
The dark eyes stared at the antenna, then at Kit, and back at
the antenna again. The Lotus stopped swaying, held very still. Kit
was two feet away. He reached out with his free hand, very slowly,
reached down to touch the scratched fiberglass hide—
The engine raced, a sudden startling roar that made Nita stifle
a scream and made Kit flinch all over—but he didn’t
jump away, and neither did the Lotus. For a second or two he and
the car stood there just looking at each other—small
trembling boy, large trembling predator. Then Kit laid his hand
carefully on the brown hide, a gingerly gesture. The car shook all
over, stared at him. Its engine quieted to an uncertain
rumbling.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Will you let me
take care of it?”
The Lotus muttered deep under its hood. It still stared at Kit
with those fearsome eyes, but its expression was mostly perplexed
now. So was Kit’s. He rubbed the curve of the hurt wheelwell
in distress. (I can’t understand why it’s mute,) he
said unhappily, (The Edsel wasn’t. All it took was a couple
of sentences in the Speech and it was talking.)
(It’s bound,} Nita said, edging out of the shadow of the
building she stood against. (Can’t you feel it, Kit?
There’s some kind of huge binding spell laid over this whole
place to keep it the way it is.)
She stopped short as the Lotus saw her and began to growl again.
“Relax,” Kit said. “She’s with me, she
won’t hurt you either.”
Slowly the growl dwindled, but the feral headlight-eyes
stayed on Nita. She gulped and sat down on the curb, where she
could see up and down the street. “Kit, do what you’re
going to do. If another of those cabs comes along—”
“Right. Fred, give me a hand? No, no, no,” he said
hastily, as Fred drifted down beside him and made a
light-pattern and a sound as if he was going to emit
something. “Not that kind. Just make some light so I can see
what to do down here.”
Kit knelt beside the right wheel, studying the damage, and Fred
floated in so to lend his light to the business, while the Lotus
watched the process suspiciously. “Mmmfff—nothing too
bad, it’s mostly wrapped around the tire. Lucky it
didn’t get fouled with the axle.
“Come on, come on,” Kit said in the Speech, patting
the bottom of the tire, “relax it, loosen up. You’re
forcing the scrap into yourself, holding the wheel up like that.
Come on.” The Lotus moaned softly and with fearful care
relaxed the uplifted wheel a bit. “That’s
better.” Kit slipped the antenna up under the Lotus’s
wheelwell, aiming for some piece of chrome that was out of sight.
“Fred, can you get in there so I can see? Good. Okay, this
may sting a little.” Molten light, half-seen, sparked
under the Lotus’s fender. It jumped, and an uneven
half-circle-shaped piece of chrome fell clanging onto
the pavement. “Now hunch the wheel up again. A little
higher—” Kit reached in with both hands and,
after a moment’s tugging and twisting, freed the other half
of the piece of metal. “There,” Kit said, satisfied. He
tossed the second piece of scrap to the ground.
The engine roared again with terrible suddenness, deafening.
This time Kit scrambled frantically backward as the Lotus leaped
snarling away from him. With a screech of tires it swept so close
past Nita that she fell over backward onto the sidewalk. Its engine
screaming, the Lotus tore away down Fiftieth toward Madison, flung
itself left around the corner in a cloud of blue exhaust, and was
gone.
Very slowly Kit stood up, pushed the antenna into his pants
pocket, and stood in the street dusting his hands off on his shirt
as he gazed in disappointment after the Lotus. Nita sat
herself back up again, shaking her head and brushing at herself. (I
thought maybe it was going to stay long enough to thank you,) she
said.
Kit shook his head, evidently in annoyance at himself for having
thought the same thing, (Well, I don’t know—I was
thinking of what Picchu said. ‘Don’t be afraid to
help.’) He shrugged. (Doesn’t really matter, I guess.
It was hurting; fixing it was the right thing to do.)
(I hope so,) Nita said. (I’d hate to think the grateful
creature might run off to—you know—and tell everybody
about the people who helped it instead of hurting it. I have a
feeling that doing good deeds sticks out more than usual around
here.)
Kit nodded, looking uncomfortable. (Maybe I should’ve left
well enough alone.)
(Don’t be dumb. Let’s get going, huh?
The . . . whatever the place is where the dark
Book’s kept, it’s pretty close. I feel nervous standing
out here.)
They recrossed Madison and again started the weary progression
from doorway to driveway to shadowed wall, heading north.
At Madison and Fifty-second, Nita turned right and paused.
(It’s on this block somewhere,) she said, trying to keep even
the thought quiet. (The north side, I think. Fred, you feel
anything?)
Fred held still for a moment, not even making a flicker, (The
darkness feels thicker up ahead, at the middle of the block.)
Kit and Nita peered down the block. (It doesn’t look any
different,) Kit said. (But you’re the expert on light, Fred.
Lead the way.)
With even greater care than usual they picked their way down
Fifty-second. This street was stores and office buildings
again; all the store windows empty, all the windows dark. But here,
though external appearances were no different, the feeling slowly
began to grow that there was a reason for the grimy darkness of the
windows. Something watched, something peered out those windows,
using the darkness as a cloak, and no shadow was deep enough to
hide in; the silent eyes would see. Nothing happened, nothing
stirred anywhere. No traffic was in sight. But the street felt more
and more like a trap, laid open for some unsuspecting creature to
walk into. Nita tried to swallow as they ducked from one hiding
place to another, but her mouth was too dry. Kit was sweating.
Fred’s light was out.
(This is it,) he said suddenly, his thought sounding unusually
muted even for Fred. (This is the middle of the darkness.)
(This?) Kit and Nita thought at the same time, in shock, and
then simultaneously hushed themselves. Nita edged out to the
sidewalk to get a better look at the place. She had to crane her
neck. They were in front of a skyscraper, faced completely in
black plate glass, an ominous, windowless monolith.
(Must be about ninety stories,) Nita said. (I don’t see
any lights.)
(Why would you?) Fred said. (Whoever lives in this place
doesn’t seem fond of light at all. How shall we go in?)
Nita glanced back up the street. (We passed a driveway that
might go down to a delivery entrance.)
(I’ll talk to the lock,) Kit said. (Let’s go!)
They went back the way they had come and tiptoed down the
driveway. It seemed meant for trucks to back into. A flight of
steps at one side led up to a loading platform about four feet
above the deepest part of the ramp. Climbing the stairs, Kit went
to a door on the right and ran his hands over it as Nita and Fred
came up behind. (No lock,) Kit said. (It’s controlled from
inside.)
(We can’t get in? We’re dead.)
(We’re not dead yet. There’s a machine in there that
makes the garage doors go up. That’s all I need.) Kit got out
the antenna and held it against the door as he might have held a
pencil he was about to write with. He closed his eyes. (If I can
just feel up through the metal and the wires, find
it . . . )
Nita and Fred kept still while Kit’s eyes squeezed tighter
and tighter shut in fierce concentration.
Inside one garage door something rattled, fell silent,
rattled again, began to grind. Little by
little the door rose until there was an opening at the bottom of
it, three feet high. Kit opened his eyes but kept the antenna
pressed against the metal. (Go on in.)
Fred and Nita ducked through into darkness. Kit came swiftly
after them. Behind him, the door began to move slowly downward
again, shutting with a thunderous clang. Nita pulled out the rowan
wand, so they could look around. There were wooden loading pallets
stacked on the floor, but nothing else—bare concrete walls,
bare ceiling. Set in the back wall of the huge room was one
normal-sized double door.
(Let’s see if this one has a lock,) Kit said as they went
quietly up to it. He touched the right-hand knob carefully,
whispered a word or two in the Speech, tried it. The right side of
the double door opened.
(Huh. Wasn’t even locked!) Through the open door, much to
everyone’s surprise, light spilled—plain old
fluorescent office-building light, but cheery as a sunny day
after the gloom outdoors. On the other side of the door was a
perfectly normal-looking corridor with beige walls and
charcoal-color doors and carpeting. The normality came as
something of a shock. (Fred, I thought you said it was darker
here!)
(Felt darker, And colder. And it does,) Fred said, shivering,
his faint light rippling as he did so. (We’re very close to
the source of the coldness. It’s farther up, though.)
(Up?) Nita looked at Kit uneasily. (If we’re going to get
the dark Book and get out of here fast, we can’t fool with
stairs again. We’ll have to use the elevators somehow.)
Kit glanced down at the antenna. (I think I can manage an
elevator if it gets difficult. Let’s find one.)
They slipped through the door and went down the hall to their
right, heading for a lobby at its far end. There they peered out at
a bank of elevators set in the same dark-green marble as the
rest of the lobby. No one was there.
Kit walked to the elevators, punched the call button, and
hurriedly mentioned Nita and Fred to join him. Nita stayed where
she was for a moment (Shouldn’t we stay out of sight
here?)
(Come on!)
She went out to him, Fred bobbing along beside. Kit watched the
elevator lights to see which one was coming down and then slipped
into a recess at the side. Nita took the hint and joined him. The
elevator bell chimed; doors slid open—
The perytons piled out of the middle elevator in a hurry, five
of them together, not looking to left or right, and burst out the
front door into the street. Once outside they began their awful
chorus of howls and snarls, but Nita and Kit and Fred weren’t
sitting around to listen. They dove into the middle elevator, and
Kit struck the control panel with the antenna, hard. “Close
up and take off!”
The elevator doors closed, but then a rumbling, scraping,
gear-grinding screech began—low at first, then louder,
a combination of every weird, unsettling noise Nita had ever
heard an elevator make. Cables twanged and ratchets ratcheted,
and, had they been moving, she would have sworn they were about to
go plunging down to crash in the cellar.
“Cut it out or I’ll snap your cables myself when
I’m through with you!” Kit yelled in the Speech. Almost
immediately the elevator jerked slightly and then started
upward.
Nita tried again to swallow and had no better luck than the last
time. “Those perytons are going to pick up our scent right
outside that door, Kit! And they’ll track us inside, and it
won’t be five minutes before—”
“I know, I know. Fred, how well can you feel the middle of
the darkness?”
(We’re closer.)
“Good. You’ll have to tell me when to
stop.”
The elevator went all the way up to the top, the
eighty-ninth floor, before Fred said, (This is it!)
Kit rapped the control panel one last time with his antenna.
“You stay where you are,” he said.
The elevator doors opened silently to reveal another
normal-looking floor, this one more opulent than the floor
downstairs. Here the carpets were ivory-white and thick; the
wall opposite the elevators was one huge bookcase of polished wood,
filled with hundreds of books, like volumes of one huge set. Going
left they came to another hallway, stretching off to their left
like the long stroke of an L; this one too was lined with
bookcases. At the far end stood a huge polished desk, with papers
and Dictaphone equipment and an intercom and a multiline phone
jumbled about on it. At the desk sat—it was hard to know what
to call it. Kit and Nita, peering around the corner, were silent
with confusion and fear. The thing sitting in a secretary’s
swivel chair and typing on an expensive electric typewriter was
dark green and warty, and sat about four feet high in the
chair—It had limbs with tentacles and claws, all knotted
together under a big eggplant-shaped head, and goggly, wicked
eyes. All the limbs didn’t seem to help the creature’s
typing much, for every few seconds it made a mistake and went
grumbling and fumbling over the top of its messy desk for a bottle
of correcting fluid. The creature’s grumbling was of more
interest than its typing. It used the Speech, but haltingly, as if
it didn’t care much for the language—and indeed the
smooth, stately rhythms of the wizardly tongue suffered somewhat,
coming out of that misshapen mouth.
Kit leaned back against the wall. (We’ve gotta do
something. Fred, are you sure it’s up here?)
(Absolutely. And past that door, behind that—) Fred
indicated the warty typist. From down the hall came another brief
burst of typing, then more grumbling and scrabbling on the
desk.
(We’ve got to get it away from there.) Nita glanced at
Fred.
(I shall create a diversion,) Fred said, with relish.
(I’ve been good at it so far.)
(Great. Something big. Something alive again, if you can manage
it—then again, forget that.) Nita breathed out unhappily. (I
wouldn’t leave anything alive here.)
(Not even Joanne?) Kit said with a small but evil grin.
(Not even her. This place has her outclassed. Fred,
just—)
A voice spoke, sounding so loud that Kit and Nita stopped
breathing, practically stopped thinking. “Akthanath,”
it called, a male voice, sounding weary and hassled and bored,
“come in here a moment . . . ”
Nita glanced at Kit. They carefully peeked down the hall once
more and saw the tentacled thing hunch itself up, drop to the floor
behind the desk, and wobble its way into the inner office,
(Now?) Fred said.
(No, save it! But come on, this is our best chance!) Nita
followed Kit down the hall to the door, crouched by it, and looked
in. Past it was another room. They slipped into it and found
themselves facing a partly open door that led to the office the
typist had gone into. Through the slit they could just see the
tentacly creature’s back and could hear the voice of the man
talking to it. “Hold all my calls for the next hour or so,
until they get this thing cleared up. I don’t want
everybody’s half-baked ideas of what’s going on.
Let Garm and his people handle it. And here, get Mike on the phone
for me. I want to see if I can get something useful out of
him.”
Nita looked around, trying not even to think loudly. The room
they were in was lined with shelves and shelves of heavy, dark,
leatherpound books with gold-stamped spines. Kit tiptoed to
one bookshelf, pulled out a volume at random, and opened it. His
face registered shock; he held out the book for Nita to look at.
The print was the same as that in Carl’s large Advisory
manual, line after line of the clear graceful symbols of the
Speech—but whatever was being discussed on the page Nita
looked at was so complicated she could only understand one word out
of every ten or twenty. She glanced at Kit as he turned back to the
front of the book and showed her the title.
“UNIVERSES, PARAUNIVERSES AND PLANES—ASSEMBLY AND
MAINTENANCE”, it said. a creator’s manual. And
underneath, in smaller letters, Volume 108—Natural and
Supernatural Laws.
Nita gulped. Beside her, Fred was dancing about in the air in
great agitation. (What is it?) she asked him.
(It’s in here.)
(Where?) Kit said.
(One of those. I can’t tell which, it’s so dark down
that end of the room.) Fred indicated a bookcase on the farthest
wall. (It’s worst over there.) Nita stopped dead when she saw
the room’s second door, which gave on the inner office and
was wide open.
Nita got ready to scoot past the door. The man who sat at the
desk in the elegant office had his back to it and was staring out
the window into the dimness. His warty secretary handed him the
phone, and he swiveled around in the high-backed chair to
take it, showing himself in profile. Nita stared at him, confused,
as he picked up the phone. A businessman, young, maybe thirty, and
very handsome—red-gold hair and a clean-lined
face above a trim, dark three-piece suit. This was the
Witherer, the Kindler of Wildfires, the one who decreed darkness,
the Starsnuffer?
“Hi, Michael,” he said. He had a pleasant voice,
warm and deep. “Oh, nothing much—”
(Never mind him,) Kit said. (We’ve got to get that
Book.)
(We can’t go past the door till he turns around.)
“—the answer to that is pretty obvious, Mike. I
can’t do a bloody thing with this place unless I can get some
more power for it. I can’t afford street lights, I can barely
afford a little electricity, much less a star. The entropy
rating—”
The young man swiveled in his chair again, leaning back and
looking out the window. Nita realized with a chill that he had a
superb view of the downtown skyline, including the top of the Pan
Am Building, where even now wisps of smoke curled black against the
lowering gray. She tapped Kit on the elbow, and together they
slipped past the doorway to the bookshelf.
(Fred, do you have even a little idea—)
(Maybe one of those up there.) He indicated a shelf just within
reach. Kit and Nita started taking down one book after another,
looking at them. Nita was shaking—she had no clear idea what
they were looking for.
(What if it’s one of those up there, out of reach?)
(You’ll stand on my shoulders. Kit, hurry!)
“—Michael, don’t you think you could talk to
the rest of Them and get me just a little more energy?—Well,
They’ve never given me what I asked for, have They? All I
wanted was my own Universe where everything works—Which
brings me to the reason for this call. Who’s this new
operative you turned loose in here? This Universe is at a very
delicate stage, interference will—”
They were down to the second-to-last shelf, and none
of the books had what they were looking for. Nita was sweating
worse. (Fred, are you sure—)
(It’s dark there, it’s all dark. What do you want
from me?)
Kit, kneeling by the bottom shelf, suddenly jumped as if
shocked. (Huh?) Nita said.
(It stung me. Nita!) Kit grabbed at the volume his hand had
brushed, yanked it out of the case, and knelt there, juggling it
like a hot potato. He managed to get it open and held it out,
showing Nita not the usual clean page, close-printed with the
fine small symbols of the Speech, but a block of transparency like
many pages of thinnest glass laid together. Beneath the smooth
surface, characters and symbols seethed as if boiling up from a
great depth and sinking down again.
Nita found herself squinting. (It hurts to look at.)
(It hurts to hold!) Kit shut the book hurriedly and held it out
to Fred for him to check, for externally it looked no different
from any other book there. (Is this what we’re looking
for?)
Fred’s faint glimmer went out like a blown candle flame
with the nearness of the book. (The darkness—it
blinds—)
Kit bundled the book into his backpack and rubbed his hands on
his jacket. (Now if we can just get out of
here . . . )
“—oh, come on, Mike,” the voice was saying in
the other office. “Don’t get cute with me. I had an
incident on top of one of my buildings. One of my favorite
constructs got shot up and the site stinks of wizardry. Your brand,
moonlight and Moon-forged metal.” The voice of the
handsome young man in the three-piece suit was still pleasant
enough, but Nita, peering around the edge of the door, saw his face
going hard and sharp as the edge of a knife. He swiveled around in
his chair again to look out the window at that thin plume of
ascending smoke, and Nita waved Kit past the door, then scuttled
after him herself. “—that’s a dumb question to be
asking me, Michael. If I knew, would I tell you where the bright
Book was? And how likely is it that I know at all? You people keep
such close tabs on it, at least that’s what I hear. Anyway,
if it’s not read from every so often, don’t I go ffft!
like everything else?—You’re absolutely right,
that’s not a responsive answer. Why should I be responsive,
you’re not being very helpful—”
Kit and Nita peeked back into the hall. Fred floated up to hang
between them. (I get a feeling—) Kit started to say, but the
sudden coldness in the voice of the man on the phone silenced
him.
“—Look, Mike, I’ve had about enough of this
silliness. The Bright Powers got miffed because I wanted to work on
projects of my own instead of following-the-leader like
you do, working from Their blueprints instead of drawing up your
own. You can do what you please, but I thought when I settled down
in this little pittance of a Universe that They would let me be and
let me do things my way. They said They didn’t need me when
They threw me out—well, I’ve done pretty well without
Them too. Maybe They don’t like that, because now all of a
sudden I’m getting interference. You say this operative
isn’t one of your sweetness-and-Light types?
Fine. Then you won’t mind if when I catch him, her, or it, I
make his stay interesting and permanent. Whoever’s disrupting
my status quo will wish he’d never been born, spawned, or
engendered. And when you see the rest of Them, you tell Them from
me that—hello? Hello?”
The phone slammed down. There was no sound for a few seconds.
“Akthanath,” the young man’s voice finally said
into the silence, “someone’s soul is going to writhe
for this.”
The slow cold of the words got into Nita’s spine. She and
Kit slipped around the door and ran for it, down the hall and into
the elevator. “—he’s playing it close to the
chest,” that angry voice floated down the hall to them.
“I don’t know what’s going on. The Eldest still
has it safe?—Good, then see that guards are mounted at the
usual accesses. And have Garm send a pack of his people back in time
to the most recent gate opening. I want to know which universe
these agents are coming from.”
In the elevator, Kit whipped out the antenna and rapped the
control panel with it. “Down!”
Doors closed, and down it went, Nita leaned back against one
wall of the elevator, panting. Now she knew why that first crowd of
perytons had come howling after them on top of the Pan Am Building,
but the solution of that small mystery made her feel no better at
all. “Kit, they’ll be waiting downstairs, for
sure.”
He bit his lip. “Yeah. Well, we won’t be where they
think we’ll be, that’s all. If we get off a couple of
floors too high and take the stairs—”
“Right.”
“Stop at Four,” Kit said to the elevator.
The elevator stopped, opened its doors. Kit headed out the door
fast and tripped—the elevator had stopped several inches
beneath the fourth floor. “Watch your step,” the
elevator said, snickering.
Kit turned and smacked the open elevator door with his antenna
as Nita and Fred got out. “Very funny. You stay here until I
give the word. C’mon, let’s get out of here!”
They ran down the hall together, found the stairs, and plunged
down them. Kit was panting as hard as Nita now. Fred shot down past
landing after Ending with them, his light flickering as if it were
an effort to keep up. “Kit,” Nita said, “where
are we going to go after we leave this building? We need
time, and a place to do the spell to
find the bright Book.”
Kit sounded unhappy. “I dunno, How about Central Park? If
we hid in there—”
“But you saw what it looks like from the top of Pan Am.
It’s all dark in there—there were things moving—”
“There’s a lot of room to hide. Look, Nita, if I can
handle the machines here, it’s a good bet you can handle the
plants. You’re good with plants and live stuff, you
said.”
She nodded reluctantly. “I guess we’ll find out how
good.”
They came to the last landing, the ground door. Nita pushed the
door open a crack and found that they were almost directly across
from the green lobby and the elevators.
(What’s the situation?) Kit said silently.
(They’re waiting.) Six perytons, black-coated,
brown-coated, one a steely gray, were sitting or standing
around the middle elevator with their tongues hanging out and looks
of anticipation and hunger in their too-human eyes.
(Now?) Fred said, sounding eager.
(Not yet. We may not need a diversion, Fred.) “Go!”
he whispered then in the Speech. The antenna in his hand sparked
and sputtered with molten light, and Kit pressed close behind Nita.
(Watch them!)
There was no bell, but even if there had been one, the sound of
it and of the elevator doors opening would have been drowned out in
snarls as the perytons leaped in a body into the elevator. The
moment the perytons were out of sight, Nita pushed the door open
and headed for the one to the garage. It stuck and stung her as the
dark Book had; she jerked her hand away from it. Kit came up behind
her and blasted it with the antenna, then grabbed it himself. This
time it came open. They dashed through and Kit sealed the door
behind them.
No one was in the garage, but a feeling was growing in the air
as if the storm of rage they’d heard beginning upstairs was
about to break over their heads. Kit raised the antenna again,
firing a line of hot light that zapped the ceiling-mounted
controls of the delivery door. With excruciating slowness the door
began to rumble upward. (Now?) Fred said anxiously as they ran
toward it.
(No, not yet, just—)
They bent over double, ducked underneath the opening door, and
ran up the driveway. It was then that the perytons leaped at them
from both sides howling, and Nita grabbed for her wand and
managed one slash with it, yelling, “Now, Fred!
Now.’”
All she saw clearly was the peryton that jumped at her, a huge,
blue-eyed, brindled she-wolf, as the rowan wand spat
silver moonfire and the peryton ran away screaming. Then came the
explosion, and it hurled both her and Kit staggering off to their
right. The street shook as if lightning-struck, and
part of the front of the dark building was demolished in a
shower of shattered plate glass as tons and tons and tons of red
bricks came crashing down from somewhere to fill the street from
side to side, burying sidewalks and peryton and doors and the
delivery bay twenty feet deep.
Nita picked herself up. A few feet away, Kit was doing the same,
and bobbed over to them as an ominous stillness settled over
everything. (How was I?) Fred said, seeming dazed but pleased.
“Are you all right?” Kit said.
(I’m alive, but my gnaester will never be the same,) Fred
said. (You two?)
“We’re fine,” Kit said.
“And I think we’re in trouble,” Nita added,
looking at the blocked street. “Let’s get
going!”
They ran toward Fifth Avenue, and the shadows took them.
(How close are we?)
(Uh . . . this is Madison and Forty-ninth.
Three blocks north and a long one east.)
(Can we rest? This air burns to breathe. And we’ve been
going fast.)
(Yeah, let’s.)
They crouched together in the shadow of a doorway, two wary
darknesses and a dim light, watching the traffic that went by.
Mostly cabs prowled past, wearing the same hungry look as the one
that had wounded Kit. Or a sullen truck might lumber by, or a
passenger car, looking uneasy and dingy and bitter. None of the
cars or trucks had drivers, or looked like they wanted them. They
ignored the traffic lights, and their engines growled.
Nita’s eyes burned in the dark air. She rubbed them and
glanced down at Kit’s leg, bound now with a torn-off
piece of her shirt. (How is it?)
(Not too bad. It feels stiff. I guess it stopped bleeding.) He
looked down, felt the makeshift bandage, winced.
(Yeah . . . I’m hungry.)
Nita’s stomach turned over—she was too nervous to
even consider eating—as Kit came up with a ham sandwich and
offered her half. (You go ahead,) she said. She leaned against the
hard cold wall, and on a sudden thought she pulled her pen out of
her pocket and looked at it. It seemed all right, but as she held
it she could feel a sort of odd tingling in its metal that
hadn’t been there before.
(Uh, Fred—)
He hung beside her at eye level, making worried feelings that
matched the dimness of his light, (Are you sure that light
didn’t hurt you?)
(Yeah. It’s not that.) She held out the pen to him. Fred
backed away a little—as if afraid
he might swallow it again. (Is this radioactive or anything?) Nita
said.
He drifted close to it, bobbed up and down to look at it from
several angles. (You mean beta and gamma and those other emissions
you have trouble with? No.)
Nita still felt suspicious about the pen. She dug into her
backpack for a piece of scrap paper, laid it on her wizards’
manual, clicked the point out, and scribbled on the paper. Then she
breathed out, perplexed. (Come on, Fred! Look at that!)
He floated down to look. The pen’s blue-black ink
would normally have been hard to see in that dimness, no matter how
white the paper. But the scrawl had a subtle glimmer about it, a
luminosity just bright enough to make out. (I don’t think
it’s anything harmful to you,) Fred said. (Are you sure it
didn’t do that before?)
(Yes!)
(Well, look at it this way. Now you can see what you’re
writing when it’s dark. Surprising you people hadn’t
come up with something like that already.)
Nita shook her head, put the paper away, and clipped the pen
back in her pocket. Kit, finishing the first half of his sandwich,
looked over at the scribble with interest. (Comes of being inside
Fred, I guess. With him having his own claudication, and all the
energy boiling around inside him, you might have expected something
like that to happen.)
(Yeah, well, I don’t like it. The pen was fine the way it
was.)
(Considering where it’s been,) Kit said, (you’re
lucky to get it back in the same shape, instead of crushed into a
little lump.) He wrapped up the other half of his sandwich and
shoved it into his backpack. (Should we go?)
(Yeah.)
They got up, checked their surroundings as usual to make sure
that no cabs or cars were anywhere close, and started up Madison
again, ducking into doorways or between buildings whenever they saw
or heard traffic coming.
(No people,) Kit said, as if trying to work it out. (Just
things—all dark and ruined—and machines, all twisted.
Alive—but they seem to hate everything—And
pigeons—)
(Dogs, too,) Nita said.
(Where?) Kit looked hurriedly around him.
(Check the sidewalk and the gutter. They’re here. And
remember that nest.) Nita shrugged uneasily, setting her pack
higher. (I don’t know. Maybe people just can’t live
here.)
(We’re here,) Kit said unhappily. (And maybe not for
long.)
A sudden grinding sound like tortured metal made them dive for
another shadowy doorway close to the corner of Madison and
Fiftieth. No traffic was in sight; nothing showed but the glowering
eye of the traffic light and the unchanging don’t walk signs.
The grinding sound came again—metal scrapping on concrete,
somewhere across Madison, down Fiftieth, to their left. Kit edged a
bit forward in the doorway.
(What are you—)
(I want to see.) He reached around behind him, taking the
antenna in his hand.
(But if—)
(If that’s something that might chase us later, I at least
want a look at it. Fred? Take a peek for us?)
(Right.) Fred sailed ahead of them, keeping low and close to the
building walls, his light dimmed to the faintest glimmer. By the
lamppost at Madison and Fiftieth he paused, then shot low across
the street and down Fiftieth between Madison and Fifth, vanishing
past the corner. Nita and Kit waited, sweating.
From around the comer Fred radiated feelings of uncertainty and
curiosity. (These are like the other things that run these
streets. But these aren’t moving. Maybe they were dangerous
once. I don’t know about now.)
(Come on,) Kit said. He put his head out of the doorway.
(It’s clear.)
With utmost caution they crossed the street and slipped around
the corner, flattening to the wall. Here stores and dingy
four-story brownstones with long flights of railed stairs
lined the street. Halfway down the block, jagged and bizarre in the
dimness and the feeble yellow glow of a flickering
sodium-vapor street light, was the remains of an accident.
One car, a heavy two-door sedan, lay crumpled against the pole of
another nearby street light, its right-hand door ripped away and
the whole right side of it laid open. A little distance away, in
the middle of the street, lay the car that had hit the sedan,
resting on its back and skewed right around so that its front end
was pointed at Kit and Nita. It was a sports car of some kind, so
dark a brown that it was almost black. Its windshield had been
shattered when it overturned, and it had many other dents and
scrapes, some quite deep. From its front right wheel jutted a long
jagged strip of chrome, part of the other car’s fender, now
wound into the sports car’s wheel.
(I don’t get it,) Nita said silently. (If that dark one
hit the other, why isn’t his front all smashed in—)
She broke off as with a terrible metallic groan the sports car
suddenly rocked back and forth, like a
turtle on its back trying to right itself. Kit sucked in a long
breath and didn’t move. The car stopped rocking for a moment,
then with another scrape of metal started again, rocking more
energetically this time. Each time the side-to-side
motion became larger. It rocked partway onto one door, then back
the other way and partway onto the other,
then back again—and full onto its left-hand door. There
it balanced, precarious, for a few long
seconds, as if getting its breath. And then twitched
and shuddered all the way over, and fell
right-side down.
The scream that filled the air as the sports car came down on
the fender-tangled right wheel was terrible to hear.
Instantly it hunched up the fouled wheel, holding it away from the
street, crouching on the three good wheels and shaking with its
effort. Nita thought of an old sculpture she had seen once, a
wounded lion favoring one forelimb—weary and in pain, but
still dangerous.
Very slowly, as if approaching a hurt animal and not wanting to
alarm it, Kit stepped away from the building and walked out into
the street.
(Kit!)
(Ssssh,) he said silently. (Don’t freak it.)
(Are you out of your—)
(Ssssshhh!)
The sports car watched Kit come, not moving. Now that it was
right-side up, Nita could get a better idea of its shape. It
was actually rather beautiful in its deadly looking
way—sleekly swept-back and slung low to the ground. Its
curves were battered in places; its once-shining hide was
scored and dull. It stared at Kit from hunter’s eyes,
headlights wide with pain, and breathed shallowly, waiting.
(Lotus Esprit,) Kit said to Nita, not taking his eyes off the
car, matching it stare for stare.
Nita shook her head anxiously. (Does that mean something? I
don’t know cars.)
(It’s a racer. A mean one. What it is here—Look,
Nita, there’s your answer. Look at the front of it, under the
headlights.) He kept moving forward, his hands out in front of him.
The Lotus held perfectly still, watching.
Nita looked at the low-sloping grille. (It’s all
full of oil or something.)
(It’s a predator. These other cars, like that
sedan—they must be what it hunts. This time its prey hurt the
Lotus before it made its kill. Like a tiger getting gored by a bull
or something. Ooops!)
Kit, eight or ten feet away from the Lotus’s grille, took
one step too many; it abruptly rolled back away from him a foot or
so. Very quietly its engine stuttered to life and settled into a
throaty growl.
(Kit, you’re—)
(Shut up,) “I won’t hurt you,” he said in the
Speech, aloud. “Let me see to that wheel.”
The engine-growl got louder—the sound of the Speech
seemed to upset the Lotus. It rolled back another couple of feet,
getting close to the curb, and glared at Kit. But the glare seemed
to have as much fear as threat in it now—
“I won’t hurt you,” Kit repeated, stepping
closer, holding out his hands—one of them with the antenna in
it. “Come on, you know what this is. Let me do something
about that wheel. You can’t run on it. And if you can’t
run . . .
“I bet there are other hunters here, aren’t there? Or
scavengers. I’m sure there are scavengers. Who ‘ll be
coming here to clean up this kill? And do you want them to find you
here, helpless?”
The Lotus stared at him, shifting a little from side to side,
now, swaying uncertainly. The growl had not stopped, but it
hadn’t gotten any louder either. “If I were going to
hurt you, I would have by now,” Kit said, getting closer. The
car was four feet away, and its headlights were having to look up
at Kit now. “Just let me do something about that fender stuck
in you, then you’ll go your way and I’ll go
mine.”
The dark eyes stared at the antenna, then at Kit, and back at
the antenna again. The Lotus stopped swaying, held very still. Kit
was two feet away. He reached out with his free hand, very slowly,
reached down to touch the scratched fiberglass hide—
The engine raced, a sudden startling roar that made Nita stifle
a scream and made Kit flinch all over—but he didn’t
jump away, and neither did the Lotus. For a second or two he and
the car stood there just looking at each other—small
trembling boy, large trembling predator. Then Kit laid his hand
carefully on the brown hide, a gingerly gesture. The car shook all
over, stared at him. Its engine quieted to an uncertain
rumbling.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Will you let me
take care of it?”
The Lotus muttered deep under its hood. It still stared at Kit
with those fearsome eyes, but its expression was mostly perplexed
now. So was Kit’s. He rubbed the curve of the hurt wheelwell
in distress. (I can’t understand why it’s mute,) he
said unhappily, (The Edsel wasn’t. All it took was a couple
of sentences in the Speech and it was talking.)
(It’s bound,} Nita said, edging out of the shadow of the
building she stood against. (Can’t you feel it, Kit?
There’s some kind of huge binding spell laid over this whole
place to keep it the way it is.)
She stopped short as the Lotus saw her and began to growl again.
“Relax,” Kit said. “She’s with me, she
won’t hurt you either.”
Slowly the growl dwindled, but the feral headlight-eyes
stayed on Nita. She gulped and sat down on the curb, where she
could see up and down the street. “Kit, do what you’re
going to do. If another of those cabs comes along—”
“Right. Fred, give me a hand? No, no, no,” he said
hastily, as Fred drifted down beside him and made a
light-pattern and a sound as if he was going to emit
something. “Not that kind. Just make some light so I can see
what to do down here.”
Kit knelt beside the right wheel, studying the damage, and Fred
floated in so to lend his light to the business, while the Lotus
watched the process suspiciously. “Mmmfff—nothing too
bad, it’s mostly wrapped around the tire. Lucky it
didn’t get fouled with the axle.
“Come on, come on,” Kit said in the Speech, patting
the bottom of the tire, “relax it, loosen up. You’re
forcing the scrap into yourself, holding the wheel up like that.
Come on.” The Lotus moaned softly and with fearful care
relaxed the uplifted wheel a bit. “That’s
better.” Kit slipped the antenna up under the Lotus’s
wheelwell, aiming for some piece of chrome that was out of sight.
“Fred, can you get in there so I can see? Good. Okay, this
may sting a little.” Molten light, half-seen, sparked
under the Lotus’s fender. It jumped, and an uneven
half-circle-shaped piece of chrome fell clanging onto
the pavement. “Now hunch the wheel up again. A little
higher—” Kit reached in with both hands and,
after a moment’s tugging and twisting, freed the other half
of the piece of metal. “There,” Kit said, satisfied. He
tossed the second piece of scrap to the ground.
The engine roared again with terrible suddenness, deafening.
This time Kit scrambled frantically backward as the Lotus leaped
snarling away from him. With a screech of tires it swept so close
past Nita that she fell over backward onto the sidewalk. Its engine
screaming, the Lotus tore away down Fiftieth toward Madison, flung
itself left around the corner in a cloud of blue exhaust, and was
gone.
Very slowly Kit stood up, pushed the antenna into his pants
pocket, and stood in the street dusting his hands off on his shirt
as he gazed in disappointment after the Lotus. Nita sat
herself back up again, shaking her head and brushing at herself. (I
thought maybe it was going to stay long enough to thank you,) she
said.
Kit shook his head, evidently in annoyance at himself for having
thought the same thing, (Well, I don’t know—I was
thinking of what Picchu said. ‘Don’t be afraid to
help.’) He shrugged. (Doesn’t really matter, I guess.
It was hurting; fixing it was the right thing to do.)
(I hope so,) Nita said. (I’d hate to think the grateful
creature might run off to—you know—and tell everybody
about the people who helped it instead of hurting it. I have a
feeling that doing good deeds sticks out more than usual around
here.)
Kit nodded, looking uncomfortable. (Maybe I should’ve left
well enough alone.)
(Don’t be dumb. Let’s get going, huh?
The . . . whatever the place is where the dark
Book’s kept, it’s pretty close. I feel nervous standing
out here.)
They recrossed Madison and again started the weary progression
from doorway to driveway to shadowed wall, heading north.
At Madison and Fifty-second, Nita turned right and paused.
(It’s on this block somewhere,) she said, trying to keep even
the thought quiet. (The north side, I think. Fred, you feel
anything?)
Fred held still for a moment, not even making a flicker, (The
darkness feels thicker up ahead, at the middle of the block.)
Kit and Nita peered down the block. (It doesn’t look any
different,) Kit said. (But you’re the expert on light, Fred.
Lead the way.)
With even greater care than usual they picked their way down
Fifty-second. This street was stores and office buildings
again; all the store windows empty, all the windows dark. But here,
though external appearances were no different, the feeling slowly
began to grow that there was a reason for the grimy darkness of the
windows. Something watched, something peered out those windows,
using the darkness as a cloak, and no shadow was deep enough to
hide in; the silent eyes would see. Nothing happened, nothing
stirred anywhere. No traffic was in sight. But the street felt more
and more like a trap, laid open for some unsuspecting creature to
walk into. Nita tried to swallow as they ducked from one hiding
place to another, but her mouth was too dry. Kit was sweating.
Fred’s light was out.
(This is it,) he said suddenly, his thought sounding unusually
muted even for Fred. (This is the middle of the darkness.)
(This?) Kit and Nita thought at the same time, in shock, and
then simultaneously hushed themselves. Nita edged out to the
sidewalk to get a better look at the place. She had to crane her
neck. They were in front of a skyscraper, faced completely in
black plate glass, an ominous, windowless monolith.
(Must be about ninety stories,) Nita said. (I don’t see
any lights.)
(Why would you?) Fred said. (Whoever lives in this place
doesn’t seem fond of light at all. How shall we go in?)
Nita glanced back up the street. (We passed a driveway that
might go down to a delivery entrance.)
(I’ll talk to the lock,) Kit said. (Let’s go!)
They went back the way they had come and tiptoed down the
driveway. It seemed meant for trucks to back into. A flight of
steps at one side led up to a loading platform about four feet
above the deepest part of the ramp. Climbing the stairs, Kit went
to a door on the right and ran his hands over it as Nita and Fred
came up behind. (No lock,) Kit said. (It’s controlled from
inside.)
(We can’t get in? We’re dead.)
(We’re not dead yet. There’s a machine in there that
makes the garage doors go up. That’s all I need.) Kit got out
the antenna and held it against the door as he might have held a
pencil he was about to write with. He closed his eyes. (If I can
just feel up through the metal and the wires, find
it . . . )
Nita and Fred kept still while Kit’s eyes squeezed tighter
and tighter shut in fierce concentration.
Inside one garage door something rattled, fell silent,
rattled again, began to grind. Little by
little the door rose until there was an opening at the bottom of
it, three feet high. Kit opened his eyes but kept the antenna
pressed against the metal. (Go on in.)
Fred and Nita ducked through into darkness. Kit came swiftly
after them. Behind him, the door began to move slowly downward
again, shutting with a thunderous clang. Nita pulled out the rowan
wand, so they could look around. There were wooden loading pallets
stacked on the floor, but nothing else—bare concrete walls,
bare ceiling. Set in the back wall of the huge room was one
normal-sized double door.
(Let’s see if this one has a lock,) Kit said as they went
quietly up to it. He touched the right-hand knob carefully,
whispered a word or two in the Speech, tried it. The right side of
the double door opened.
(Huh. Wasn’t even locked!) Through the open door, much to
everyone’s surprise, light spilled—plain old
fluorescent office-building light, but cheery as a sunny day
after the gloom outdoors. On the other side of the door was a
perfectly normal-looking corridor with beige walls and
charcoal-color doors and carpeting. The normality came as
something of a shock. (Fred, I thought you said it was darker
here!)
(Felt darker, And colder. And it does,) Fred said, shivering,
his faint light rippling as he did so. (We’re very close to
the source of the coldness. It’s farther up, though.)
(Up?) Nita looked at Kit uneasily. (If we’re going to get
the dark Book and get out of here fast, we can’t fool with
stairs again. We’ll have to use the elevators somehow.)
Kit glanced down at the antenna. (I think I can manage an
elevator if it gets difficult. Let’s find one.)
They slipped through the door and went down the hall to their
right, heading for a lobby at its far end. There they peered out at
a bank of elevators set in the same dark-green marble as the
rest of the lobby. No one was there.
Kit walked to the elevators, punched the call button, and
hurriedly mentioned Nita and Fred to join him. Nita stayed where
she was for a moment (Shouldn’t we stay out of sight
here?)
(Come on!)
She went out to him, Fred bobbing along beside. Kit watched the
elevator lights to see which one was coming down and then slipped
into a recess at the side. Nita took the hint and joined him. The
elevator bell chimed; doors slid open—
The perytons piled out of the middle elevator in a hurry, five
of them together, not looking to left or right, and burst out the
front door into the street. Once outside they began their awful
chorus of howls and snarls, but Nita and Kit and Fred weren’t
sitting around to listen. They dove into the middle elevator, and
Kit struck the control panel with the antenna, hard. “Close
up and take off!”
The elevator doors closed, but then a rumbling, scraping,
gear-grinding screech began—low at first, then louder,
a combination of every weird, unsettling noise Nita had ever
heard an elevator make. Cables twanged and ratchets ratcheted,
and, had they been moving, she would have sworn they were about to
go plunging down to crash in the cellar.
“Cut it out or I’ll snap your cables myself when
I’m through with you!” Kit yelled in the Speech. Almost
immediately the elevator jerked slightly and then started
upward.
Nita tried again to swallow and had no better luck than the last
time. “Those perytons are going to pick up our scent right
outside that door, Kit! And they’ll track us inside, and it
won’t be five minutes before—”
“I know, I know. Fred, how well can you feel the middle of
the darkness?”
(We’re closer.)
“Good. You’ll have to tell me when to
stop.”
The elevator went all the way up to the top, the
eighty-ninth floor, before Fred said, (This is it!)
Kit rapped the control panel one last time with his antenna.
“You stay where you are,” he said.
The elevator doors opened silently to reveal another
normal-looking floor, this one more opulent than the floor
downstairs. Here the carpets were ivory-white and thick; the
wall opposite the elevators was one huge bookcase of polished wood,
filled with hundreds of books, like volumes of one huge set. Going
left they came to another hallway, stretching off to their left
like the long stroke of an L; this one too was lined with
bookcases. At the far end stood a huge polished desk, with papers
and Dictaphone equipment and an intercom and a multiline phone
jumbled about on it. At the desk sat—it was hard to know what
to call it. Kit and Nita, peering around the corner, were silent
with confusion and fear. The thing sitting in a secretary’s
swivel chair and typing on an expensive electric typewriter was
dark green and warty, and sat about four feet high in the
chair—It had limbs with tentacles and claws, all knotted
together under a big eggplant-shaped head, and goggly, wicked
eyes. All the limbs didn’t seem to help the creature’s
typing much, for every few seconds it made a mistake and went
grumbling and fumbling over the top of its messy desk for a bottle
of correcting fluid. The creature’s grumbling was of more
interest than its typing. It used the Speech, but haltingly, as if
it didn’t care much for the language—and indeed the
smooth, stately rhythms of the wizardly tongue suffered somewhat,
coming out of that misshapen mouth.
Kit leaned back against the wall. (We’ve gotta do
something. Fred, are you sure it’s up here?)
(Absolutely. And past that door, behind that—) Fred
indicated the warty typist. From down the hall came another brief
burst of typing, then more grumbling and scrabbling on the
desk.
(We’ve got to get it away from there.) Nita glanced at
Fred.
(I shall create a diversion,) Fred said, with relish.
(I’ve been good at it so far.)
(Great. Something big. Something alive again, if you can manage
it—then again, forget that.) Nita breathed out unhappily. (I
wouldn’t leave anything alive here.)
(Not even Joanne?) Kit said with a small but evil grin.
(Not even her. This place has her outclassed. Fred,
just—)
A voice spoke, sounding so loud that Kit and Nita stopped
breathing, practically stopped thinking. “Akthanath,”
it called, a male voice, sounding weary and hassled and bored,
“come in here a moment . . . ”
Nita glanced at Kit. They carefully peeked down the hall once
more and saw the tentacled thing hunch itself up, drop to the floor
behind the desk, and wobble its way into the inner office,
(Now?) Fred said.
(No, save it! But come on, this is our best chance!) Nita
followed Kit down the hall to the door, crouched by it, and looked
in. Past it was another room. They slipped into it and found
themselves facing a partly open door that led to the office the
typist had gone into. Through the slit they could just see the
tentacly creature’s back and could hear the voice of the man
talking to it. “Hold all my calls for the next hour or so,
until they get this thing cleared up. I don’t want
everybody’s half-baked ideas of what’s going on.
Let Garm and his people handle it. And here, get Mike on the phone
for me. I want to see if I can get something useful out of
him.”
Nita looked around, trying not even to think loudly. The room
they were in was lined with shelves and shelves of heavy, dark,
leatherpound books with gold-stamped spines. Kit tiptoed to
one bookshelf, pulled out a volume at random, and opened it. His
face registered shock; he held out the book for Nita to look at.
The print was the same as that in Carl’s large Advisory
manual, line after line of the clear graceful symbols of the
Speech—but whatever was being discussed on the page Nita
looked at was so complicated she could only understand one word out
of every ten or twenty. She glanced at Kit as he turned back to the
front of the book and showed her the title.
“UNIVERSES, PARAUNIVERSES AND PLANES—ASSEMBLY AND
MAINTENANCE”, it said. a creator’s manual. And
underneath, in smaller letters, Volume 108—Natural and
Supernatural Laws.
Nita gulped. Beside her, Fred was dancing about in the air in
great agitation. (What is it?) she asked him.
(It’s in here.)
(Where?) Kit said.
(One of those. I can’t tell which, it’s so dark down
that end of the room.) Fred indicated a bookcase on the farthest
wall. (It’s worst over there.) Nita stopped dead when she saw
the room’s second door, which gave on the inner office and
was wide open.
Nita got ready to scoot past the door. The man who sat at the
desk in the elegant office had his back to it and was staring out
the window into the dimness. His warty secretary handed him the
phone, and he swiveled around in the high-backed chair to
take it, showing himself in profile. Nita stared at him, confused,
as he picked up the phone. A businessman, young, maybe thirty, and
very handsome—red-gold hair and a clean-lined
face above a trim, dark three-piece suit. This was the
Witherer, the Kindler of Wildfires, the one who decreed darkness,
the Starsnuffer?
“Hi, Michael,” he said. He had a pleasant voice,
warm and deep. “Oh, nothing much—”
(Never mind him,) Kit said. (We’ve got to get that
Book.)
(We can’t go past the door till he turns around.)
“—the answer to that is pretty obvious, Mike. I
can’t do a bloody thing with this place unless I can get some
more power for it. I can’t afford street lights, I can barely
afford a little electricity, much less a star. The entropy
rating—”
The young man swiveled in his chair again, leaning back and
looking out the window. Nita realized with a chill that he had a
superb view of the downtown skyline, including the top of the Pan
Am Building, where even now wisps of smoke curled black against the
lowering gray. She tapped Kit on the elbow, and together they
slipped past the doorway to the bookshelf.
(Fred, do you have even a little idea—)
(Maybe one of those up there.) He indicated a shelf just within
reach. Kit and Nita started taking down one book after another,
looking at them. Nita was shaking—she had no clear idea what
they were looking for.
(What if it’s one of those up there, out of reach?)
(You’ll stand on my shoulders. Kit, hurry!)
“—Michael, don’t you think you could talk to
the rest of Them and get me just a little more energy?—Well,
They’ve never given me what I asked for, have They? All I
wanted was my own Universe where everything works—Which
brings me to the reason for this call. Who’s this new
operative you turned loose in here? This Universe is at a very
delicate stage, interference will—”
They were down to the second-to-last shelf, and none
of the books had what they were looking for. Nita was sweating
worse. (Fred, are you sure—)
(It’s dark there, it’s all dark. What do you want
from me?)
Kit, kneeling by the bottom shelf, suddenly jumped as if
shocked. (Huh?) Nita said.
(It stung me. Nita!) Kit grabbed at the volume his hand had
brushed, yanked it out of the case, and knelt there, juggling it
like a hot potato. He managed to get it open and held it out,
showing Nita not the usual clean page, close-printed with the
fine small symbols of the Speech, but a block of transparency like
many pages of thinnest glass laid together. Beneath the smooth
surface, characters and symbols seethed as if boiling up from a
great depth and sinking down again.
Nita found herself squinting. (It hurts to look at.)
(It hurts to hold!) Kit shut the book hurriedly and held it out
to Fred for him to check, for externally it looked no different
from any other book there. (Is this what we’re looking
for?)
Fred’s faint glimmer went out like a blown candle flame
with the nearness of the book. (The darkness—it
blinds—)
Kit bundled the book into his backpack and rubbed his hands on
his jacket. (Now if we can just get out of
here . . . )
“—oh, come on, Mike,” the voice was saying in
the other office. “Don’t get cute with me. I had an
incident on top of one of my buildings. One of my favorite
constructs got shot up and the site stinks of wizardry. Your brand,
moonlight and Moon-forged metal.” The voice of the
handsome young man in the three-piece suit was still pleasant
enough, but Nita, peering around the edge of the door, saw his face
going hard and sharp as the edge of a knife. He swiveled around in
his chair again to look out the window at that thin plume of
ascending smoke, and Nita waved Kit past the door, then scuttled
after him herself. “—that’s a dumb question to be
asking me, Michael. If I knew, would I tell you where the bright
Book was? And how likely is it that I know at all? You people keep
such close tabs on it, at least that’s what I hear. Anyway,
if it’s not read from every so often, don’t I go ffft!
like everything else?—You’re absolutely right,
that’s not a responsive answer. Why should I be responsive,
you’re not being very helpful—”
Kit and Nita peeked back into the hall. Fred floated up to hang
between them. (I get a feeling—) Kit started to say, but the
sudden coldness in the voice of the man on the phone silenced
him.
“—Look, Mike, I’ve had about enough of this
silliness. The Bright Powers got miffed because I wanted to work on
projects of my own instead of following-the-leader like
you do, working from Their blueprints instead of drawing up your
own. You can do what you please, but I thought when I settled down
in this little pittance of a Universe that They would let me be and
let me do things my way. They said They didn’t need me when
They threw me out—well, I’ve done pretty well without
Them too. Maybe They don’t like that, because now all of a
sudden I’m getting interference. You say this operative
isn’t one of your sweetness-and-Light types?
Fine. Then you won’t mind if when I catch him, her, or it, I
make his stay interesting and permanent. Whoever’s disrupting
my status quo will wish he’d never been born, spawned, or
engendered. And when you see the rest of Them, you tell Them from
me that—hello? Hello?”
The phone slammed down. There was no sound for a few seconds.
“Akthanath,” the young man’s voice finally said
into the silence, “someone’s soul is going to writhe
for this.”
The slow cold of the words got into Nita’s spine. She and
Kit slipped around the door and ran for it, down the hall and into
the elevator. “—he’s playing it close to the
chest,” that angry voice floated down the hall to them.
“I don’t know what’s going on. The Eldest still
has it safe?—Good, then see that guards are mounted at the
usual accesses. And have Garm send a pack of his people back in time
to the most recent gate opening. I want to know which universe
these agents are coming from.”
In the elevator, Kit whipped out the antenna and rapped the
control panel with it. “Down!”
Doors closed, and down it went, Nita leaned back against one
wall of the elevator, panting. Now she knew why that first crowd of
perytons had come howling after them on top of the Pan Am Building,
but the solution of that small mystery made her feel no better at
all. “Kit, they’ll be waiting downstairs, for
sure.”
He bit his lip. “Yeah. Well, we won’t be where they
think we’ll be, that’s all. If we get off a couple of
floors too high and take the stairs—”
“Right.”
“Stop at Four,” Kit said to the elevator.
The elevator stopped, opened its doors. Kit headed out the door
fast and tripped—the elevator had stopped several inches
beneath the fourth floor. “Watch your step,” the
elevator said, snickering.
Kit turned and smacked the open elevator door with his antenna
as Nita and Fred got out. “Very funny. You stay here until I
give the word. C’mon, let’s get out of here!”
They ran down the hall together, found the stairs, and plunged
down them. Kit was panting as hard as Nita now. Fred shot down past
landing after Ending with them, his light flickering as if it were
an effort to keep up. “Kit,” Nita said, “where
are we going to go after we leave this building? We need
time, and a place to do the spell to
find the bright Book.”
Kit sounded unhappy. “I dunno, How about Central Park? If
we hid in there—”
“But you saw what it looks like from the top of Pan Am.
It’s all dark in there—there were things moving—”
“There’s a lot of room to hide. Look, Nita, if I can
handle the machines here, it’s a good bet you can handle the
plants. You’re good with plants and live stuff, you
said.”
She nodded reluctantly. “I guess we’ll find out how
good.”
They came to the last landing, the ground door. Nita pushed the
door open a crack and found that they were almost directly across
from the green lobby and the elevators.
(What’s the situation?) Kit said silently.
(They’re waiting.) Six perytons, black-coated,
brown-coated, one a steely gray, were sitting or standing
around the middle elevator with their tongues hanging out and looks
of anticipation and hunger in their too-human eyes.
(Now?) Fred said, sounding eager.
(Not yet. We may not need a diversion, Fred.) “Go!”
he whispered then in the Speech. The antenna in his hand sparked
and sputtered with molten light, and Kit pressed close behind Nita.
(Watch them!)
There was no bell, but even if there had been one, the sound of
it and of the elevator doors opening would have been drowned out in
snarls as the perytons leaped in a body into the elevator. The
moment the perytons were out of sight, Nita pushed the door open
and headed for the one to the garage. It stuck and stung her as the
dark Book had; she jerked her hand away from it. Kit came up behind
her and blasted it with the antenna, then grabbed it himself. This
time it came open. They dashed through and Kit sealed the door
behind them.
No one was in the garage, but a feeling was growing in the air
as if the storm of rage they’d heard beginning upstairs was
about to break over their heads. Kit raised the antenna again,
firing a line of hot light that zapped the ceiling-mounted
controls of the delivery door. With excruciating slowness the door
began to rumble upward. (Now?) Fred said anxiously as they ran
toward it.
(No, not yet, just—)
They bent over double, ducked underneath the opening door, and
ran up the driveway. It was then that the perytons leaped at them
from both sides howling, and Nita grabbed for her wand and
managed one slash with it, yelling, “Now, Fred!
Now.’”
All she saw clearly was the peryton that jumped at her, a huge,
blue-eyed, brindled she-wolf, as the rowan wand spat
silver moonfire and the peryton ran away screaming. Then came the
explosion, and it hurled both her and Kit staggering off to their
right. The street shook as if lightning-struck, and
part of the front of the dark building was demolished in a
shower of shattered plate glass as tons and tons and tons of red
bricks came crashing down from somewhere to fill the street from
side to side, burying sidewalks and peryton and doors and the
delivery bay twenty feet deep.
Nita picked herself up. A few feet away, Kit was doing the same,
and bobbed over to them as an ominous stillness settled over
everything. (How was I?) Fred said, seeming dazed but pleased.
“Are you all right?” Kit said.
(I’m alive, but my gnaester will never be the same,) Fred
said. (You two?)
“We’re fine,” Kit said.
“And I think we’re in trouble,” Nita added,
looking at the blocked street. “Let’s get
going!”
They ran toward Fifth Avenue, and the shadows took them.