Time's Dark Laughter Part 15

"No, no," Blackwind protested, "I want to go up. I can go." On wobbly legs, he stood. Jasmine steadied him. "I'm fine," he said. "I'll go first, I know the way."

He pushed her back and glanced with not a little triumph at Ollie. Slowly, he put his foot on the first rung of the shaft and began the vertical climb. Jasmine waited thirty seconds, then began to follow, but hadn't pulled herself ten rungs up before Blackwind ran into her coining down again. They both dropped down to the main tunnel, where Ollie waited.

"What?" Ollie demanded.

"As I feared," Blackwind's breath came rapidly. "An electrified grid across the chute halfway up. Strong enough to knock a man out, or almost."

"You have tools to cut it?" Ollie looked at Jasmine.

"Yes, but there might be an alarm system to detect breaks in the circuit. Is there another way?"

"As far as we know, all conduits leading anywhere have the electric grids-except Tunnel Twenty-two."

"What's that?" Ollie pointed fifty feet up the tunnel to the next vertical shaft. Something could be seen hanging out the bottom, an irregular shape clicking against the stone. They walked up-to it with care.

It was a broken mesh grid, dangling down the end of the shaft by a few remaining strands of wire that trailed back up the tube to where the grid had been connected.

"Looks like it fell out of this one," Blackwind said quietly.

"Looks like it was torn out," commented Jasmine. "In any case, this looks like the shaft with the access. Let's go."

Blackwind held her arm. "This one leads to the Queen's Chambers." He spoke with reverence and fear.

"Will she see us come up?" Jasmine asked.

"I-I don't know. She'll be alone, unless she's holding audience, which is rare."

"Can we rush her?" Ollie asked.

"The Queen!" Blackwind couldn't comprehend it.

"If we can sneak past her, so much the better," Jasmine advised. "We have other things to do right now."

Ollie agreed.

"Can you take us directly into the Communion Room from up there?" Jasmine looked above them.

Blackwind nodded uncertainly. His face was darker than ever, but with a thin-lipped smile he climbed around the hanging screen and up the chute. Jasmine and Ollie quickly followed.

It was a long climb. Fifty yards up, they found the shelf from which the broken grid hung and gingerly hoisted themselves over it. Fifty yards beyond that, Blackwind stealthily raised his head over the top lip of the shaft that rose out of the floor as the refuse bin in the Queen's chamber. Jasmine and Ollie held the rungs inside the shaft just below him.

With a strange mixture of cunning and awe, Blackwind looked around the darkened room until his gaze fell upon the sleeping Queen forty feet away. And there his gaze froze.

He had never seen his Queen before. His brain had been plugged into hers, his being as one with hers, but he had never seen her. He stared at the shadowy form as if this were G.o.d herself. G.o.d and the Devil. It made him tremble.

The Queen never truly slept, of course-as Blackwind well knew-but her attention was now directed inward, so she was unaware of his half-hidden presence. Gently he lifted himself over the edge of the bin and dropped to the floor without a sound. Immediately the other two followed him.

For a long moment, they all stared intently at the Queen to see if they had wakened her clouded, shrouded being. Then, in single file, like ghosts they tiptoed ten paces to the side door and exited.

They found themselves in the Communion Room: row upon row of Humans, lying in dense quasi coma, black cables trailing from their heads. Jasmine and Ollie stared, incredulous, powerless to move, mesmerized by this vision. Blackwind couldn't contain himself.

He gazed, weeping, at his comrades-in-circuit. He fell to his knees, distractedly pulling tufts of hair from his head. He gulped air between sobs. He fell forward into the electrified screen that separated the corridor in which they stood from the rest of the room. There was a brief buzzing of electricity before Jasmine kicked him off the wires, unconscious.

She checked his pulse. "Alive and well." They pulled him into a dark corner.

"Leave him here," whispered Ollie.

Jasmine nodded. She pointed her head toward the room of wired bodies. "He's not there." Meaning Josh.

Ollie nodded, then inclined his head toward the next door. They moved into the next room.

They quickly went through Limbo and Nirvana-the first consisting of Humans, encased in gla.s.s boxes, in a state of diminished metabolism; the second, similar, except that the Humans were without brains. The brains were revealed to them in a third room, a room of bottles and shelves. But nowhere, Joshua.

The next room was a large lab. It offered no clues to anything, but Jasmine stocked up on numerous items she thought might be of use at some future date: syringes, wires, batteries, an all-purpose biokit that included microtome, wax, lenses, forceps, autoincubator, culture tubes, agar patches, scalpels, transistors, plugs and cables, copper tubing. All this she stuffed into her secret abdominal compartment, then reclosed it with a snap. Ollie, meanwhile, was trying other doors, other rooms. And still, no Joshua.

At length, he returned. "I've found the Human Quarters," he whispered.

Two doors, two halls, another door. He opened it a crack, and Jasmine looked inside. Cages, floor to ceiling; Humans filling every cage. Twenty feet away, in the center of the room, sat two Neuromans and two Vampires. One Neuro-man dozed; his three cohorts rolled bones. Ollie shut the door again.

"Fast and straight," he said.

She thought a moment. "All right I can't think of a better way."

They opened the door and were two steps into the room before the nearest Vampire looked up. Ollie raced at the creatures as they stood, off-balance, their wings half-furled. With a syringe in her hand, Jasmine ran toward the startled Neuroman.

With unbelievable speed, Ollie was on the Vampires. In pa.s.sing, he slit one's throat. This gave the other one time to come alert, though, and in a moment, he and Ollie were locked in a death grip-Ollie's knife in the Vampire's side, the Vampire's teeth in Ollie's neck. In two seconds the air reeked with b.l.o.o.d.y vapor.

Isis snapped her head up out of a deep sleep, ears twitching, pupils wide, nares flared. Joshua? No, but close. Like Joshua. Kin, perhaps. She jumped out of the curl of Beauty's belly and stretched.

Her neck hairs were on end as she slipped out the door Beauty had left open for her. She smelled excitement. Out in the darkened corridor she put her nose up and sniffed the air for several seconds, then turned left and began briskly walking in the direction of the smell.

So, more of Joshua. First his own smell, his very smell, on the boring Queen. Then the appearance of the old comrade, the Centaur. Now this brother smell-and it was a blood smell. It was bringing her closer to Josh, she just knew it. Soon they would be together again, and he would love her and take care of her, as she would him.

The blood smell grew stronger. She ran, Cat-fast, up the next stairway.

Jasmine and Ollie sat on the floor, back to back, recovering then- energies. Strewn beside them, two dead Vampires lay, thick with new blood; and beyond them, two dead Neuromans. Jasmine had killed them-the last one with Ollie's a.s.sistance-by flipping open the Hemolube valves on the back of their heads, and injecting 50 cc of air into the valve spiggot with a syringe she had just stolen from the lab.

Jasmine was unhurt. Ollie was bleeding, slowly now, from the neck and arm. They looked at the hundreds of Humans who stared at them from the cages along the walls. Gaunt, scared, hollow, the prisoners gazed from the squalor of their cells like repressed nightmares. Ollie couldn't look at them long. They reminded him too much of himself.

Jasmine looked them over, grim and hard; Josh wasn't among them.

She searched the bodies of the guards but couldn't find keys to the cells anywhere. Some of the prisoners stuck their arms through the bars; none of them spoke.

"We haven't much time left," said Jasmine. "We're sure to be-"

"We have to find Josh."

"I don't think he's here, Ollie. I think we should leave. We can make a new plan later."

He looked at her bitterly: it was good to kill Vampires, but he still needed to find his brother. They ran into the hall, closed the door behind them, and sidled around toward their point of origin.

They made it back to the labs without incident. Not until they were almost to the Communion Room did they hear the Vampire patrol.

"Somewhere in Q Sector," came one burly voice in the adjacent hallway. "Electrical discharge."

"Probably a short circuit," said another.

"Or a lost sewer Rat."

Ollie looked at Jasmine. "They're heading toward Communion," he whispered.

"Blackwind," she said.

They quickened their step. The door to the Communion Room was ajar, and through it they could see a squad of four Vampires and two Neuromans just discovering Black-wind's still-unconscious body. Ollie whispered to Jasmine, "You must escape. To bring help."

She nodded. Before she could say another word, he leapt into the room. He killed two Vampires before anyone knew what was happening. Jasmine was right behind him, breaking the head valve on the nearest Neuroman.

The commotion woke up Blackwind. With a shudder, he threw his arms around the knees of the other Neuroman, and began wailing: "Plug me, I beg of you." He cried openly, tangling himself in almost everyone's feet.

Ollie was in a clinch with one Vampire, while the other was beating him from behind. He was beginning to sink. Jasmine finally killed her opponent, but saw the other Neuroman was dragging Blackwind off into another room.

Jasmine saw Ollie go down. But she couldn't let Black-wind be taken alive: they had only to plug his brain into the Queen's to gain total access to all the information stored there-the location of Tunnel Twenty-two, the location of the Bookery and the Pluggers, all their plans and secrets. She couldn't let that knowledge into these hands.

She pointed her finger at the Neuroman and triggered the small napalm flare inside it. The flame danced across the room and ignited the plastic skin of the Neuroman guard, who dropped Blackwind to the floor. Jasmine swung her hand around and pointed what was left of the flare at the Vampires throttling Ollie. The fire drove one back but made the other one only madder.

Jasmine slung the swooning Blackwind over her shoulder, ran through the Queen's door and shut it behind her. The noise aroused the Queen, fifty feet away.

"What is that?" mumbled the disoriented monarch.

Jasmine ignored her and ran to the bin. Balancing Blackwind precariously, she climbed over the lip and began the long descent down the shaft. Just as she reached bottom, the guards began throwing things down at her from above.

In the Communion Room, two Vampires held Ollie to the wall, while a third beat and bit him.

In a corner crouched Isis, watching, invisible as a shadow on the dark side of time.

Beauty awoke with the dawning sun in his eyes and Isis's tongue on his cheek.

"Good morning, small Cat. And what is our lot today?"

"Ollie herrre."

Beauty squinted awake, sat up. "What do you mean? Ollie is here? In the castle?"

The Cat nodded.

"Since when?" the Centaur pressed. "You know where he is?"

"Caught last night, sneaking innn. Caught harrrd."

Beauty brought his head down to Cat-level. "Where is he now, Isis? Where are they keeping him?"

Isis shrugged. "Joshua still not herrre.'*

She rubbed her side against his beard. He scratched her neck, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

Suddenly Aba came in through the connecting door, from his bedroom. "Good luck," he said with a smile. "They're letting us leave today."

Beauty looked at him. "Now we must stay." He looked past the young Vampire, into the near future.

Jasmine sat on the stone floor of the cave, surrounded by a few Books and a crowd of Pluggers. Blackwind lay beside her. He was dying.

Gla.s.s thrown from above had pierced his belly just before he cleared the shaft. The wound wouldn't stop bleeding. By the time Jasmine got him back to camp, he had lost too much blood, and too much heart.

Jasmine was finis.h.i.+ng her story: telling the others the tale of the adventure, what they had gamed and what they had lost. The a.s.sembled listened in rapt silence, their fingers meshed in Plug-sign. When she was done, no one spoke for several minutes, digesting the implications.

Finally, Candlefire shook his head sadly. "So much suffering. Starcore dead, and Blackwind dying before our eyes. Was it worth all that? What have we to show for it?"

Jasmine, still numb from the effort and the pain, stared into the fire that warmed them. These people seemed to have no will to act-or perhaps too many wills, so that action was suffocated by the fits and starts of a million indecisions. The caves. Slowly, she opened and reached into her abdominal cavity, extracting the cables and plugs she had stolen from the lab. "This, for one thing."

There was a collective gasp from the Pluggers. Candle-fire took the connectors from her as if they were sacred artifacts. Blackwind sensed something of the kind and, with great effort, opened his eyes. When he saw the cables hi Candlefire's hands, he reached out with trembling fingers. "Plug me," he whispered.

Candlefire sorted through the tangle and found a cable with plugs at both ends having the right number of p.r.o.ngs. Gently, he lifted Blackwind's head and plugged one end of the cable into the occipital socket. Then he lay down beside Blackwind and plugged the other end of the cable into his own head. For many minutes they lay there, side by side, unconscious to the world, barely breathing, surrounded by an audience in awe. Then, in a single moment, Blackwind sighed, Candlefire opened his mouth in a grimace of pain or ecstasy, and it was over.

Candlefire sat up and pulled the plug from his head. "It's over," he said to the group. "He's dead."

Rose sat beside Jasmine and put -her arms around the Neuroman. "We'll have to think about this," she said. "But I'm glad you're safe." She felt close to Jasmine once more. Partly because Jasmine was now her last link to the past, a past as fondly remembered as a childhood before some great loss of innocence; partly because she knew Jasmine was trying to understand her plight as a Plugger-the Neuroman was attempting to reach out across the chasm that had come between them: the breach was too wide, yet Rose still felt touched. She hugged Jasmine again and whispered, "Forgive me."

Again, Jasmine saw the pain and confusion in her old friend; but she had already given so much that, at the moment, she had nothing left to give. She merely let herself be embraced, and nodded tiredly. Finally she stood, and spoke.. "I'm going to the other side now. To tell the Books." She walked over to the few Books who had been present. "Come on," she said.

Rose accompanied them to the door. "We have cables now," she wept, dumbfounded. "You gave us cables."

"But now Ollie is trapped again, and Josh is still missing. I think it was a bad trade."

"You think this will work?" growled D'Ursu.

"Yes," said Beauty, with more conviction than he felt. Then, to Aba: "I am not proud of exploiting your friends.h.i.+p with this Vampire."

Aba waved it aside. "To save a Human life is a rare privilege."

Beauty bared his neck to the Vampire, and Aba bowed low.

D'Ursu grumbled, "I would save a hundred Humans if I could leave this stinking city."

Aba smiled nervously and left, walking elegantly toward Osi's suite.

"Tell Sire Osi it is Sire Aba," said Aba, standing at the door.

The old manservant waved him in. "Yes, Sire. On my Blood, he will be pleased."