One of the officers took a small manual snipper from a belt and clipped the stripcuff apart. Avery shook her hands free and smoothed down the sleeves of her Business suit, then folded her arms and stood, waiting. The four officers seemed to confer in some inaudible fashion, then all turned as one and marched out of the small room. The door closed behind them.
In the first instant that they were alone, Avery snapped, "Why have you brought me here?"
"I did not bring you, Businessman. The Social Police did. They do not, as you may have observed, come and go at my order. Join me here at the window. We must talk."
"I have nothing to say to you."
"Don't be an ass; you've said a great deal already. Come."
Avery reluctantly paced toward him. Tan'elKoth towered over her like some kind of beast that should be extinct in the wild. She did not want to get too close; she could not guess what he might do, but she was frighteningly sure that she could not stop him. When the Social Police had zipped the stripcuffs tight around her wrists, she had been yanked out of the world she knew. Here, her wealth and power and status meant nothing; all that mattered was that she was thin and frail and no longer young, and in the presence of something brutal, massive, and possibly predatory.
But she was still a Shanks. Though society might fail her, pride would endure.
At the window, she placed herself deliberately within the reach of his huge arm, and just as deliberately refused to look at him, gazing instead down into the room beyond
At a small child with golden hair strapped down to a steel table in a blank white room.
"Faith!" She gasped and pressed her hands against the glass. "Oh, my god, Faith!" An overpowering vision of Faith in convulsion, pounding her skull and spine against this unpadded stainless steel torture rack, nearly paralyzed her; she could hardly speak. "What have you done to her? What have you done?"
"Tried to protect her, as best I can," Tan'elKoth replied grimly.
"Protect her?" Avery could not tear her eyes away from the horror of that small sterile room. "This is how you protect her?"
"I can do no better," Tan'elKoth said. "Businessman, look at me."
She ignored him, staring through the glass at the only meaning all this
had for her: Faith was breathing, she was still breathing. "You must get her out of here!"
One huge hand caught her shoulder and turned her toward him like a child, so overpowering that she could not even dream of resistance. "Look at me," he repeated, his whisper-hoarse voice now a fierce rasp. "My status here is written upon my face."
Avery gaped openly, seventy years of proper Business reserve and decorum wiped away in an instant.
She remembered that he had once been beautiful.
His face looked like a handful of spoiled hamburger, with bulbous growths of moldy yellow and purple and green interpenetrating and overlapping; one eyebrow had been shaved, a vertical wound across it held closed with black insectile stitches, the eye below it swollen shut like a mouth held primly pursed over a tennis ball; a similarly stitched line climbed over the curve of his forehead into a shaved-back hairline; one side of his mouth hung loose and bulbous, two curves of stitches trailing from its corner, one up and one down, giving him a cartoon smile and frown simultaneously.
His left hand still clutched her shoulder; he lifted his right, to show her the bandage that blanketed a stomach-churning absence where his smallest finger should have been. He said, "If you only knew what I have endured, to protect that child."
"Protect her from what?" Avery said, now as hoarse as he. "Tan'elKoth, you must tell me what is happening!"
"Do you know where we are? This is the Curioseum menagerie, Businessman. This is the veterinary center. Specifically, the surgery. If you cannot or do not help me help Faith, this is where the creature who prisons us all will rape her, kill her, and dissect her body." Tan'elKoth's face compressed with pain. "And likely eat the pieces."
"You can't expect me to ... This isn't possible! You cannot possibly be serious!"
"No?" Tan'elKoth lifted his maimed hand and held it out for her inspection.
Avery stared at it, unable to speak, her own hand slowly coming up to cover her mouth. "What what creature? Who is behind all this? Does this have something to do with Kollberg?"
"It is better that you do not know; you have seen too much already. Some ignorance is a kindness, Businessman—some ignorance may, in this matter, save your life."
"And so you won't tell me."
"You would not believe me if I did."
Slowly, stiffly, feeling now her years, Avery straightened, and she let her hand fall. She looked up into the ex-Emperor's one open eye, and her mouth returned to its customary knife-slash line. "And why?" she asked steadily. "Why should I help you?"
"I am not asking you to help me. I am asking you to help Faith."
"Why should I believe you? I admit that your ... injuries . . . shocked me, but how am Ito know how you got them? You could have been in a car accident. You could have been mugged."
Heat surged up into her face; anger filled every part of her that dread and horror had emptied. She clenched fists tightly against her thighs, livid. "You are a liar. A murderer. You tied my son to a cross. Did you think I would forget that? Did you think I could forgive it? Do you think I don't know who called me that night? Do you think I don't know who pretended to be..."
Words failed her; the grief that cut her heart would admit of no expression. Karl ... oh, Karl, she thought, and hot needles of tears pricked at her eyes. "You scum," she whispered. "You vile, manipulative peasant of a man—"
"Businessman," Tan'elKoth said softly, kindly, his voice warm as a hug, "there was no pretense. In a way more real than I fear you can ever understand, I am your son."
"I saw," she said through teeth grimly clenched. "I saw your . . . your act. .. at Kollberg's trial. You are not Karl."
"Not all of me, no; but all of him. Karl is here, within me. He is frightened, and sad, and he misses you very much."
She lowered her head and tried to stop her tears by pressing the edge of her hand against her face, as though stanching blood from open wounds. "How dare you ..." Her whisper was barely audible. "How dare you even speak his name?"
"Mother ..." her son's voice said softly. "Mother, close your eyes, and I'm here. Maybe just for a little, for a little while—but I'm here. I need you, Mother ..."
Grief sawed through her knees, and she sagged against his chest. "Oh, Karl ... How can you do this? How can you do this to me?"
Inhumanly powerful arms encircled her, but there was comfort in giving herself over to their unguessable strength. For a cold moment, she could imagine that she had become once again a moody, difficult little girl, finally getting an embrace from a father far kinder than the one with which fate had cursed her. A maimed hand stroked her brush of steel-colored hair.
"Mother, please—you have to help her. You don't know what they want to do to her. We—you and all of us—we're her only hope. She's my daughter, Mother. You promised—when I left for the Conservatory, remember? You promised you'd always be there for me. Please—you know I'd never ask if we didn't need you—"
Avery took a deep, shuddering breath and gathered the ragged remnants of her strength. She straightened, and she pushed herself away from those encircling arms. She had to stare at her fists for a long moment before she could bear the sight of Faith strapped to the surgical table of stain-less steel. "Swear—swear that you will . . ." she said hoarsely, and stopped, struggling with her self-command.
Cords jumped beside her jaw.
"Swear that you will never do that to me again—" she rasped, staring at her reflected ghost within the glass. "Swear it, and I will do whatever you ask."
4
Faith could be almost content when she was nothing at all.
Her eyes would go away, and some other little girl would see what was inside them, all the cold lights and bright shiny metal shapes and the big mir
ror that was part of one wall; her ears could go to some other place, and a second little girl heard the whisper of the vents and the sounds of the door opening and somebody talking that real quiet way Daddy always did around Grandpa; a third little girl felt cold metal beneath her legs and head, and the thin white plastic of her hospital gown; a fourth smelled the hospital smell.
And her remembery had gone to someone else, too—that fifth girl was the unhappiest of them all, because the little fifth girl had to look at the bad thing that made her scream and scream and scream.
But Faith, though, she wasn't any of those little girls. She was pretty much nothing at all. She was here, safe in the big dark hush, and she kept finding ways to make it darker, and even hushier, because she was pretty sure that if she could make it dark enough, and hushy enough, to where none of those other little girls could bother her anymore ever again, she might even be able to hear the river.
Because that was the only trouble; that was how she kept having to be almost nothing, instead of really nothing.
If she was really nothing, she wouldn't be so lonely.
Now the rumbly man was coming back. He stomped through her quiet place, shouting at her. He was so loud. He couldn't see her, not as long as she didn't move and didn't answer. She knew he didn't mean to be loud; she could tell from the half-whispery, kind of wheedly voice he was using, the way he kept calling her honey and asking her to take his hand.
She didn't like the nimbly man—she remembered him from back when she was something, one time when Daddy had taken her to the Curiemuseum. He'd scared her a little then—with his great big hands and hungry eyes, like the troll under the bridge from Billy Goats Gruff—but not too much, because Mommy wasn't afraid of him, and neither was the river.
But now she was all alone in the hushy dark, and he was coming closer and closer. She tried to push him away, to hold him on the outside of the dark, and for a little while it seemed like it was working. She could use the dark to hold him outside; the darker she made it, the farther away he got. She'd done it before, but he kept on coming back, and she was getting so tired
Tired from pushing him, tired from pushing the five little girls, tired from hanging on to the dark and the hush, and he never seemed to get tired at all
"Faith? Faith, child, can you hear me?"
And she couldn't, not really—it was another little girl, the second one, who heard Grandmaman's voice; the third little girl felt Grandmaman's hand on her hair; the first other little girl could see Grandmaman in the bright hard light, and the fourth could smell her musty Grandpa-smelling breath.
"Faith, you must listen to Grandmaman, now. This is important."
Mommy had told her, way way back ago, that she was to mind Grandmaman until Daddy came for her. No good pretending anymore; Mommy was never fooled by pretending. Faith could pretend so hard that she pretty much believed herself, but Mommy always knew better—and Mommy had told her to mind Grandmaman.
With a little shuddering sigh, Faith let go of the hush, and stopped pretending there was a second little girl who had her ears; she let go of the dark, and stopped pretending about the other little girls who had her eyes, and her nose and her hands and her mouth and practically everything else.
Grandmaman stood over her in the white room, and her hair was sparkly in the bright lights. Faith didn't remember where the white room was, or why it was different from some other white room that she didn't really remember; she didn't remember how she had gotten here, or why Grandmaman should look so upset, because she was still holding on to the last little girl, the fifth one, the little girl who had Faith's remembery. As long as she could hold on to the last little girl, the others didn't really matter.
The last little girl was the one who kept screaming, way off in the hushy dark.
Grandmaman leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. "Faith, you have to—have to—" She looked back at the big numbly man, who stood over by a little door with his great big troll arms crossed over his great big troll chest.
"Tell her to stop hiding," the big rumbly man said in his big rumbly voice. "Tell her to come to the front of her head."
"Faith, you must stop hiding. Come to the front of your head."
That she could hear Grandmaman and the big numbly man both meant she was already at the front of her head, all alone where it was loud and bright and cold and really scary. Faith blinked and tried to not—tried to be brave—but a tear leaked out anyway and trickled down into her ear. "It's too empty up here," she told Grandmaman in a little tiny whispery voice. "It's lonely."
"Tell her," said the big rumbly man, "that if she takes my hand, inside her head, she will never be lonely again."
Never be lonely again ... Faith heard that echo and echo and echo, and it didn't even fade away: again again again. She let herself fall back down into the dark, and started to feel around for the rumbly man's hand.
"Faith, did you hear him? I want you to do what he says, do you understand? Take his hand, Faith. Faith?—Tan'elKoth, I feel completely ridiculous. What is this supposed to mean, take your hand inside her head? This is a foolish waste of time."
She couldn't see the big rumbly man, but she could feel him all around her, as though he was made out of really thick fog and she was walking through him, except fog is kind of cold and wet and icky, and the big rumbly man was really warm and dry and kind of, kind of, almost, friendly. Like he liked her. Like he maybe even loved her a little bit.
"You surrender too easily. Not only does she hear you, she struggles to comply. I can see it."
He didn't love her the way Mommy did, of course, it wasn't the same thing, but more like the way she loved her lemon-and-green toga that Daddy had bought her in Chicago: the way you love something that you figure is not really smart enough to love you back.
That was okay with her. She didn't want to have to love him back. When you love them back, you end up like the little fifth girl.
"See? What is there to see?"
"You have first-handed a thaumaturge; Karl himself was somewhat adept. You must remember how the Shell appears to one in mindview—even now, the child crudely and clumsily tunes her Shell to match the frequencies mine generates."
She couldn't find the big rumbly man's hand, but she got herself to just about where it ought to be, and she reached out and sort of imagined his hand. Kind of like when you're having a dream and you're lost in a big dark building that you've never seen before, but you decide that it's really your house, and somehow you know it is even though it doesn't look like it at first: she just took hold of the fog and the dark and the big dry warmth and decided that this was his hand.
"You're in mindview? Right now? Don't you have to concentrate?" "I am concentrating."
"Then how can you still talk?"
"I am Tan'elKoth."
And when she kept on imagining—kept on deciding—the fog got to be more and more like a hand, got bigger and warmer and drier, until it was sort of really pretty solid.
"She's tuning her Shell? Like an adept?"
"Not like an adept. Like a child. All children have some skill with magick. The primary function of pedagogy, in your society, is the murder of this ability."
She didn't know what any of that was supposed to mean, but that was okay, because she was really mostly paying attention to the hand. So far, it looked kind of like a cartoon hand, you know, the right number of fingers and stuff but it didn't look like it really belonged to anybody. It was just real big.
But she hung on and kept on deciding—a real hand would have some wrinkles on the knuckles, and some more on the palm here, and it would have little bulgy things at the bottom of each finger, and of course since the big rumbly man was a grown-up there'd be a little bit of hair on the back
As the hand got to be really pretty real, the bushy dark wasn't so bushy anymore: She could hear somebody talking, somebody saying in a little tiny squeaky voice Be careful—oh, please be careful. Pretty soon she could see him, and the more
she listened, the clearer he got. This was somebody she didn't know, some little old man, all wrinkled and bent over, and he looked like he wouldn't smell very good.
There were other people here now, lots of people, all dressed funny—not like real Administrators or Artisans or anybody else—all dressed like they were going to some kind of grown-up costume party, or maybe to a convention, like Fancon. And they all came crowding up around, and they were all talking at once, and it was pretty scary but none of them really looked mean or anything. There was one man who looked kind of like the big rumbly man, except he was a lot bigger, and he had really long wavy hair and a huge bristly beard. And there was another big man with golden hair and beautiful blue eyes, and he came right up close to her and kneeled down and looked like he was going to cry.
Faith? Do you know me, Faith? Do you know who I am?
She really hated when grown-ups asked that kind of question, because usually you didn't, and then they seemed kind of disappointed and sometimes even hurt. So she didn't really want to answer him, even though he had really nice hair and really nice eyes, and he looked pretty upset. He put his hand out and touched her arm and said Faith: Faith, honey
And the big rumbly man shouted inside her head: BACK! DOWN, YOU JACKALS! BACK WITHIN THE GATES. THIS ONE IS MINE!
He must have done something to all the people that scared them and maybe even hurt, because they all went away a lot faster than they had come, and the big rumbly man was so loud, and so angry, and kind of mean-sounding that she started to cry, and as soon as she started to cry she wanted Mommy to be here, and as soon as she wanted Mommy to be here she forgot to pretend about the little fifth girl.
Her remembery came back, and she remembered that she was the little fifth girl all along.
She started to scream, and scream, and scream—and the big rumbly man was squeezing her hand, and it hurt and she wanted Mommy or Daddy or anybody to come and make him stop, but then he snatched her other hand, too, and squeezed them both together, squeezed them both together, SQUEEZED them both TOGETHER