Страница 86 из 89
And there stood the nature of the chasm. I cherished the individual. He cherished society. He was willing to chunk anybody down a well if that would make this a better world for the survivors.
I caught movement from the corner of my eye. I spun to face nothing. Relway told me, ‘‘I’ll be watching.’’
‘‘I won’t let it bother me.’’
Saucerhead, over there trying to look small in the doorway, must have gotten a better look at what I thought I’d seen. He made a frightened noise and broke trail for Relway as the little terror left.
I muttered, ‘‘Head, that must be some brutal bad memory you have.’’ Hard to imagine a tough guy like him not being able to hang in there against what he knew was mostly inside his head.
92
It was like Dean felt me coming. He had supper ready. Singe had me a spot set up in the Dead Man’s room. The beer was perfect and plentiful. The downside was, Dean had made stuffed cabbage.
I’m not a cooked cabbage fan. A raw cabbage heart can be tasty.
John Stretch’s efforts today proved gratifying. We have fulfilled that part of our commitment. No bugs were found. A handful of live grubs and pupea were, too few to mean anything negative. No viable eggs were discovered.
‘‘None?’’
The dragon appears capable of protecting itself from the younger forms. John Stretch’s rat encountered their ghost counterparts doing the same work while ignoring the nutritionalopportunities.
‘‘Ghost rats wouldn’t need to eat a lot. You’re sure?’’
They had no odor.
Which would mean a lot to the rats.
Miss Pe
‘‘The little witch seems able to charm her way in anywhere.’’ Sourly. That was my specialty. ‘‘She identify any eyewitnesses? Or find out what became of the dragons after they broke out?’’
No eyewitnesses. But a lot about the sort of places where dragon awakenings happen. And about what happens once they do.
I forced cabbage down. I wouldn’t taste it now. But, for sure, I’d be tasting it later.
Because of their restrictions on information, what we can learn about the Venageti incidents is limited. But Pe
I can make some remarkable co
Old Bones closed in on himself. I ate cabbage and tried to smile when Dean came to see how I was doing.
Given the essential tropes of the dragon hoard story, that could well be the case.
Close your eyes. I need the use of your mind briefly. And I need it undistracted by outside visuals.
I didn’t get a chance to argue.
My eyes closed, like it or not. A frighteningly detailed three-dimensional picture of the world beneath the World coalesced inside my head. I don’t know how I managed to grasp it. It took all his minds to shape it. It was built of everything he had been able to dig out of John Stretch. Which was an amazing lot.
This is still little more than speculation. Rats are not good on time, distance, or shapes. They are better on temperature, taste, and smell. Smell especially. I could not put that togetherinside my own head because I needed the full capacitiesof all my minds to translate rat sensory inputs into data a human mind could understand.
I had to take his word for all that.
I have built the picture now but can make nothing of it. Where is the dragon?
My head filled with a three-dimensional hundred-gallon ink splash sprawl in saffron. Without knowing how I knew, I understood that this was a fragment of a larger whole. This was all that John Stretch had been able to see within short rat range of the World.
This is all within the silt deposit. The bottom of that restson limestone, which lies far deeper here than it does down under the brewing district. The dragon must be in a cavern beneath the silt.
‘‘You’re losing me, Old Bones. You might even be losing yourself.’’
Sarcasm is a sign of—
‘‘A sign of impatience with those who won’t admit that they don’t know what they’re talking about.’’
As you will, then. Go play the hand you have dealt yourself.When you return we will begin developing a new strategy.
I sensed impatience with my failure to subscribe to the dragon theory.
Might be interesting, someday, to dig around in the old records and see if a Loghyr wasn’t somehow co
Though I doubted strongly that this Loghyr had been.
Singe joined me in the hallway as I shrugged me into my new royal beaver coat. ‘‘You are going out again? At night?»
‘‘I need to do something at the World. When nobody else is around.’’
‘‘Really?’’
‘‘Yes. Why?’’
‘‘I was hoping to ask you about some things. I could go along.’’
‘‘I have to do this without anyone else being there. Maybe tomorrow night.’’ I opened the door and went outside.
The door chunked shut behind me, anger-driven.
Old Bones didn’t clue me. I guessed it had to do with her book. She kept bringing that up, tentatively.
93
Saucerhead’s guys were on the job. Which they proved by spindling, folding, and nearly mutilating me after I failed to check in at the guard shack before trying to go into the World. I avoided being choked long enough to let them know I was the guy who brought the money around.
Tharpe mused, ‘‘What’re we go
‘‘That’s reassuring.’’
‘‘So, what’s up?’’
‘‘I’m going to spend some time inside there seeing what happens when there isn’t a crowd.’’
‘‘You sure? All right. I always said you got more balls than brains. I’ll have the guys come charging in when they hear you screaming.’’
‘‘I appreciate that, Head.’’ I didn’t remind him that nobody outside heard anything when Belinda Contague did her screaming. I didn’t want to recall that myself.
I borrowed a lamp from the guard shack. It looked remarkably like the lamps used inside the World. I headed in there.
I found and lighted two lanterns the workmen used when they had to do without daylight. Those cast circles of light that failed to push the darkness back very far.
I built a seat from loose flooring. I sat and waited.
Not for long.
The beautiful woman in the old-fashioned clothing came out of the darkness smiling, pleased to see me. My heart spun. We were old friends. She settled beside me on the lumber, the little lamp between us. Eleanor.
I said, ‘‘I guessed right. It worked.’’
‘‘It worked. But you may not be pleased by what it will cost. This may be the end.’’
I moved my left hand toward her right, let it hover, not sure I wanted to find out.
‘‘You probably shouldn’t.’’
«Um.»
‘‘It would seem real. Right now I’m as real as I was when we met. But you have another obligation today.’’
I did. I’d been going around blurting out stuff about her being my fiancйe. ‘‘You’re right. But you’ll never know how powerful this was. What I had for you.’’
‘‘I do know. It’s why there’s always so much of me still here with you.’’