Song of Susannah

Not going to take long,she thought in a voice that was part Susa

But then the pain let up slightly. She snatched the extinguisher off the wall when it did, trained the slim black horn on the flaming control panel, and pressed the trigger. Foam billowed out, coating the flames. There was a baleful hissing sound and a smell like burning hair.

“THE FIRE…IS OUT,” the Voice of the Dogan proclaimed. “THE FIRE…IS OUT.” And then changing, quick as a flash, to a plummy British Lord Haw-Haw accent:

“I SAY,JOLLY GOOD SHOW, SEW-ZANNAH, AB-SO-LUTELYBRILLLL-IANT! ”

She lurched across the minefield of the Dogan’s floor again, seized the microphone, and pressed the transmit toggle. Above her, on one of the TV screens still operating, she could see that Mia was on the move again, crossing Sixtieth.

Then Susa

“Eddie!” she shouted into the microphone. “Eddie or Roland!” And what the hell, she might as well make it a clean sweep. “Jake! Pere Callahan! We’ve reached the Dixie Pig and we’re going to have this damn baby! Come for us if you can, but be careful!”

She looked up at the screen again. Mia was now on the Dixie Pig side of the street, peering at the green awning. Hesitating. Could she read the words DIXIE PIG? Probably not, but she could surely understand the cartoon. The smiling, smoking pig. And she wouldn’t hesitate long in any case, now that her labor had started.

“Eddie, I have to go. I love you, sugar! Whatever else happens, you remember that! Never forget it!I love you! This is…” Her eye fell on the semicircular readout on the panel behind the mike. The needle had fallen out of the red. She thought it would stay in the yellow until the labor was over, then subside into the green.

Unless something went wrong, that was.

She realized she was still gripping the mike.

“This is Susa

She put the microphone down and closed her eyes.

Susa

Susa

Yes, Mia.

I agreed to mortality.

So you said.

And certainly Mia had looked mortal in Fedic. Mortal andterribly pregnant.

Yet I’ve missed most of what makes the short-time life worthwhile. Haven’t I?The grief in that voice was awful; the surprise was even worse.And there’s no time for you to tell me. Not now.

Go somewhere else,Susa

If I have it anywhere but here, it will die and we’ll die with it.She spoke with utter certainty.And I willhave it. I’ve been cheated of all but my chap, and I willhave it. But…Susa

I lied. It was me in Oxford. Lying was easier than trying to explain time travel and parallel worlds.

Show me the truth. Show me your mother. Show me, I beg!

There was no time to debate this request pro and con; it was either do it or refuse on the spur of the moment. Susa

Look,she said.

In the Land of Memory, the time is alwaysNow.

There is an Unfound Door

(O lost)

and when Susa

“Odetta, come and sit with me,” says the woman at the table, she who is mother. “Have something sweet. You lookgood, girl.”

And she smiles.

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again!

Prosaic enough, you would say, so you would. A young girl comes home from school with her book-bag in one hand and her gym-bag in the other, wearing her white blouse and her pleated St. A

(you lookgood,girl )

and showed her in a concrete way she had previously not understood how rich motherhood could be…if,that was, it was allowed to run its course uninterrupted.

The rewards?

Immeasurable.

In the endyou could be the woman sitting in the shaft of sun.You could be the one looking at the child sailing bravely out of childhood’s harbor. You could be the wind in that child’s unfurled sails.

You.

Odetta, come and sit with me.

Mia’s breath began to hitch in her chest.

Have something sweet.

Her eyes fogged over, the smiling cartoon pig on the awning first doubling, then quadrupling.

You lookgood,girl.

Some time was better than no time at all. Even five years—or three—was better than no time at all. She couldn’t read, hadn’t been to Morehouse, hadn’t been tono house, but she could do that much math with no trouble: three = better than none. Even one = better than none.

Oh…

Oh, but…

Mia thought of a blue-eyed boy stepping through a door, one that was found instead of lost. She thought of saying to himYou look good,son!

She began to weep.

What have I donewas a terrible question.What else couldI have done was perhaps even worse.

O Discordia!

This was Susa

She pulled it out and flipped it behind her, casting it into the gutter. From her hand into the lap of ka.

Then she was carried up the three steps to the double doors of the Dixie Pig.

It was very dim inside and at first Mia could see nothing but murky, reddish-orange lights. Electricflambeaux of the sort that still lit some of the rooms in Castle Discordia. Her sense of smell needed no adjusting, however, and even as a fresh labor pain clamped her tight, her stomach reacted to the smell of roasting pork and cried out to be fed. Herchap cried out to be fed.

That’s not pork, Mia,Susa

As the doors were closed behind her—there was a man (or a manlike being) standing at each of them—she began to see better. She was at the head of a long, narrow dining room. White napery shone. On each table was a candle in an orange-tinted holder. They glowed like fox-eyes. The floor here in the foyer was black marble, but beyond themaître d ’s stand there was a rug of darkest crimson.

Beside the stand was a sai of about sixty with white hair combed back from a lean and rather predatory face. It was the face of an intelligent man, but his clothes—the blaring yellow sportcoat, the red shirt, the black tie—were those of a used-car salesman or a gambler who specializes in rooking small-town rubes. In the center of his forehead was a red hole about an inch across, as if he had been shot at close range. It swam with blood that never overflowed onto his pallid skin.