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"Don't stand there," Puck said. "Are you nuts?" He yanked her away.
The streets swelled and rolled underfoot. Jane had to clutch Puck's arm to keep from falling. "Where are we going?" she asked.
"Well, I'd staked out a space behind a dumpster out back of Bellegarde. But I wasted a lot of time looking for you. We'd never make it back there now. Old Mouldiwarp would take us in, but his digs are over across the river. There's a nest of mimsies I know would give me shelter, but I'm male—they wouldn't take you. We don't have many choices." He sounded like he were not so much ru
"Where?" she insisted.
"There." They turned a corner and were on a street bypassed by the mob. Ahead, a cluster of slum buildings huddled under the supporting buttresses of an iron suspension bridge. It could not be far to the wharves; Jane could smell the river. The buildings were all abandoned and their windows had been boarded over. A single unbroken streetlight cast just enough light to read the sign over what had once been a restaurant:
SISTER MINNIE'S KITCHEN
"It's a shooting gallery," Puck explained. "Wicked Tom runs it. But it'll be as safe as anyplace is tonight. Nothing in it but junkies on the nod. Nothing worth stealing. Nothing worth burning. So long as Tom's not there, we'll be fine. And he won't be there. He'll be out looking for me." He clucked his tongue. "Last place he'd ever look."
"You're sure of that?"
"I wasn't pla
A shriek tore the sky. A black hint of wings wrapped them in dread for the briefest instant and then was gone as the terror lifted up for a perch atop the bridge. More dark shapes fell from the cables, screaming. Like nightmare gulls, they fought with the first for something it held in its beak.
Two of the fliers collided, and the morsel tumbled down toward the street. It hit with a sickeningly meaty sound. "Ugh!" Jane cried involuntarily.
"Don't look," Puck commanded. But of course she did. It was the armless and legless torso of a dwarf. It was far from the most horrid thing she had seen that night, but somehow it affected her more. She felt it like a slap in the face.
"Take me inside," she pleaded.
They climbed a single crumbling concrete step. Puck pushed open a splintered door with a loop of string through the hole where the doorknob had been.
It opened onto splendor.
The interior was as elegant as a perfume ad. The floors were a checkerboard of gleaming marble. Slim pillars of semiprecious stone held up a roof too high to be seen. Snowy owls fluttered in the air, appearing and disappearing at random. Silk hangings floated before the walls. Below them godlike youths lounged on enormous throw pillows. A tape of synthesizer music droned in the background.
A wave of dizziness washed over Jane. She put a hand against a porphyry column to steady herself. Chips of dried paint crackled under her fingertips. The marble floor sagged underfoot. It felt slightly spongy.
"It's all glamour." Puck let the door swing shut behind them. "We're catching a kind of contact high." One of the golden dreamers swam languidly toward them. Puck held out a coin but the dreamer waved it away with a toothy grin. "Everything's free tonight." He gestured toward a line of white plates, each with a cone of powder or stack of resin bars at its center. "Take as much as you like. There's enough for all and everything the best." Jane caught a rank whiff of putrefaction. "Our host is paying for it all."
"Leave it to Tom to find a cheap way to pay the Teind."
"He is generosity itself," agreed the youth.
"He's a putrid son of a bitch."
With a shrug and a hint of a salaam, the dreamer returned to his hookah. High over his head an arched and grated window afforded a glimpse into a midsummer afternoon, all flowered vines and songbirds. A touch of breeze carried its scent to Jane and she caught her breath. It was her mother's garden! She'd recognize that smell among a million others.
Puck took Jane's head in his hands and forcibly turned it away. "You don't want to get too involved," he said. "I knew a girl once who fixated on that garden. She kept coming back, trying to find a way in. She was as bad as a crackhead looking for crumbs. She just couldn't stop. She was sure there had to be a door."
"So what happened to her?"
"Nothing happened to her." Puck's face was like stone. "She's around here somewhere."
Jane shivered. "I've never actually seen anybody on the bane before. It's not like I imagined it."
"This crap? This isn't the bane. Just your everyday vein food. Front room stuff. Nothing happening here but dreams and pretty pictures."
"Oh," Jane said. Then, "You seem to know a lot about this stuff."
"Yeah, well, I made a few mistakes when I was young." Puck glanced about tensely. "I wonder if there's anyplace around here that's clean enough we can sit down."
A curtain shot to in a Moorish arch doorway at the far end of the room. A figure clothed in the light of the sun stepped through it.
"College boy!" Tom gri
Jane knew then what it was like to enter somebody else's story midway through the plot. Nothing of what happened then made any sense to her. There was no chance to ask questions. She knew they would take hours to explain. And she wasn't in any shape for explanations anyway. It all seemed hopelessly unfair.
"You know where my office is," Tom said. "I got the game all set up and ready for you."
"What is this? What's going on?"
"I made a few mistakes once."
"Aw, don't be so hard on yourself," Wicked Tom said. "Everybody makes mistakes. How else ya going to learn?"
"But I still want to know—" Jane began.
Puck rounded on Tom and grabbed the front of his blouse. "Nothing happens to her! Get that?" he said fiercely. "No matter what happens, she walks free!"
"She ain't done nothing to me. Why should I do anything to her? Not that you've got any say in it."
All the life went out of Puck. "Yeah, yeah." He released Wicked Tom's shirtfront. They passed through the Moorish doorway.
On the far side the silk curtain was a torn and dingy rag. Gray linoleum curled up underfoot. A poorly lit hall led by rooms that went beyond squalid. The doors had been removed and Jane could see thin junkies nodding on piss-damp mattresses. On one wall was a hand-lettered sign reading "Let Us Clean You're Needles 4 U."
Tom glanced shrewdly at Jane. "That's the bane. Not like that bullshit up front. No illusions. No dreams. No lies. Nothing but the straight truth."
This last briefly roused Puck from his torpor. "What is truth?" he said bleakly.
"Well, we're go
At the end of the hall was a real door. Tom opened it onto a room that was lit only by five television sets scattered about the floor and one atop a metal filing cabinet. They hissed and sputtered noisily. Their screens were all snow. Were they always tuned to dead cha
A card table had been set up with two rickety chairs. On the tabletop were a pair of leather straps and two loaded syringes. Puck sat down on one of the chairs. His eyes were empty.
The televisions crackled and spat.
How do you talk somebody out of something you don't understand? Jane squeezed Puck's shoulder and whispered, "Please don't do this."
"He ain't got that option, young lady," Tom said, almost regretfully. "All this was established long before you entered the picture." He sat down facing Puck. "Trial by injection all right with you?"
Puck nodded.
They looped the straps around their upper arms. When the straps were yanked tight they clenched and unclenched their hands to pump up the veins. Tom gave Puck his choice of syringes. He picked up the other and studied the milk gray fluid within. "Yer looking at the basis of all our civilization."