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I am sitting here at this desk, looking at this screen, and it is very hard to find a place to begin to explain. The voices had not come to me when you and I first met. If they are just something in my own head, something to do with the headache, then I will have made a fool of myself. But you know what? I don't care. There are children hurting, both those with the terrible coma disease and I think maybe others too—the voices who speak to me. It is for the children I must risk it. If I am wrong it is only one more old woman locked away. If I am right, no one will believe me, not even you, but at least I will have tried to do something.
The voices, and now the black tower. It is like a castle from one of my mother's stories. It frightens me very much. But I will go there and I will get inside and I will try to find the truth. . . .
". . . And it ends, 'Yours very sincerely, Olga Pirofsky,' " Ramsey finished.
Kaylene Sorensen broke the silence. "That poor woman!"
"That poor woman, indeed." Sellars leaned forward, eyes half shut. He had rolled his wheelchair back into the most shadowed corner of the room, but even the small amount of sunlight arrowing in beneath the drapes seemed to make him uncomfortable. "She's brave, though. She is walking into the lion's den."
"You don't think they'll really kill her, do you?" Ramsey's hands were still shaking; Olga's letter had disturbed him deeply. "That wouldn't be very smart of them. Surely if they catch her trespassing on J Corporation property they'll just toss her out, maybe have her arrested?"
Sellars shook his head sadly. "If Jongleur and his associates had nothing to hide, that would certainly be the case. But do you think your client will go quietly if they do catch her? Or will she make loud claims that will attract more attention than a trespasser usually gets?" He sighed. "Here is another question. What can she tell them about you?"
"What?" Ramsey was caught unprepared. "I don't get you."
"If this mess is everything he claims it is," Major Sorensen interjected, "then Sellars is right—they'll question her. And if they're that ugly, they will get information. You don't want to think about that part too much, but trust me—you saw the kind of boys General Yacoubian was ru
Catur Ramsey suddenly noticed that his heart was racing. He took a step backward and sank into one of the shiny metal chairs. The cheap servo-motors tried to adjust the seat to fit him, but gave up about halfway through the process. "Christ."
"What I don't get, though," Sorensen continued, "is all this crap about 'voices.' Is it like you talking to my daughter and to me, Sellars? Is someone tricking her? Or is she just . . . well, you know . . . nuts?"
"I don't know," the old man said. He looked as troubled as Ramsey felt. "But I suspect it is something stranger and more complicated than either."
"Good Lord, we have to stop her!" Ramsey shoved himself to the edge of the chair, prompting a whine of indignation from the internal mechanism. "We can't just let her walk into that, whether she's a risk to me or not. I didn't have a chance to tell her half the things I'd found out. I don't know about these voices either, but somehow she's stumbled into this thing—completely separate from you, Sellars. all on her own—and she still thinks she might be imagining it." He thought about it and slumped back. "God, the poor woman."
"Did you respond to what she sent you?" Major Sorensen asked.
"Of course I did! I sent her back a message to call me immediately—not to go one step without talking to me first." He saw the look on the military man's face and felt his stomach go sour. It took a couple of seconds for him to understand why. "Shit. I gave her the number for this motel."
To his credit, Sorensen did no more than shake his head once in irritation before standing up. "Right. First thing, we move. Kaylene, why don't you round up the kids and I'll start throwing stuff in the car. Sellars, we're going to have to return the chair, and we may not be able to rent another. I'm afraid you're going back in the wheel-well when we travel, too. The military may not be actively searching for us right now, especially if we really were a private matter of Yacoubian's, but you're still way too easily noticed and remembered."
"Where are we going, Mike?" Kaylene Sorensen, a veteran military spouse, was already tossing things into bags. "Can't we just go home? We can find Mr. Sellars someplace to hide, can't we? Maybe he could stay with Mr. Ramsey for a while. Christabel has to get back to school."
Even Catur Ramsey could see past her husband's carefully maintained expression to the misery in his eyes. "I don't think we're going back there for a while, honey. And at the moment, I don't have any idea where we're heading—just out of here."
"I need to call Olga again before we leave," Ramsey said. "If there's any chance of keeping her from trying to get into that place, I owe it to her."
"On the contrary," Sellars said abruptly. He had been sitting very still, eyes almost closed, like a lizard su
"What are you talking about?" Sorensen demanded.
"I told you that there have been many odd things going on with the Grail Brotherhood in the last few days. I have been watching carefully, trying to make some sense of the events that are sealed away from me within the network, and have seen evidence of uncertainty within the Brotherhood's various holdings and private domains. Jongleur's little kingdom is no different. There are definite suggestions of a tremor in the routines, of confusion at the top."
"So?" Ramsey was impatient.
"So instead of trying to keep your Ms. Pirofsky away from the J Corporation, I think we should instead help her to get in, Mr. Ramsey. I have been forced to use i
"That's . . . that's crazy." Ramsey got up so quickly he almost knocked over the coffee tray. "She doesn't deserve that—she doesn't know what she's getting into!"
For a moment there was a kind of flash in the straw-colored eyes, a sudden glimpse of the aerial predator Sellars had once been. "Nobody deserves this, Mr. Ramsey. But others have dealt the cards—we have no choice but to play the hand." He turned to the Sorensens, who had both stopped to watch, the major with a certain reluctant professional interest, his wife with growing discomfort. "I ca
"And that is. . . ?"
"Mike, don't even talk to him," Kaylene Sorensen said. "I don't want to hear this. It's crazy. . . !"
"To New Orleans, of course," said Sellars. "To the very lair of the Beast. Our plight is so desperate that in retrospect it now seems an obvious endgame move. I wish I had thought of it earlier,"
They were moving again. Christabel wasn't sure why, but that never mattered much when things like this were happening. She wondered if when she was older people would tell her things, explain things, or if being grown-up she would just know.
What almost seemed like the saddest thing of all, sadder even than leaving the new motel just when she had figured out where the candy bar machine was, was that Mister Sellars was going to have to go back into the place in the back of the van where Daddy normally kept the spare tire. It seemed such an awful place, so tiny.