Time's Dark Laughter Part 27

The battle raged on, though both sides by now had few combatants; so there were signs of slowing. Carefully, the child inched backward, through the duct, until she came to a crossing of ducts in the system, an intersection and widening, where she could sit up.

What did this all mean? she wondered. What should she do? And when? And why?

Suddenly Isis trotted up to her, as if she had been waiting all along. Funny little Cat, always curled up sleeping in the middle of everything. Little spirit-Cat. The child petted Isis behind the ears; Isis purred and leaned into the child's spindly fingers.

"You've been with me since the moment of my birth," the child said to the purring Cat.

Isis bit down on the capsule Jasmine had put in her mouth earlier; a warm, bitter liquid oozed out of it, coating her tongue. She sat up and began licking the child's face.

The child giggled and cooed a moment-for the Cat's tongue was warm, soft, scratchy, tickly. Then suddenly a wave of horror washed over the bird-child's face, washed through her core like a molten star-for she sensed, all of an instant, what the little Cat was about, what it was up to, what it had done.

Starkly, she pushed Isis away, and sat back against the vertical ventilation shaft. The terror rose to her throat, began suffocating her, strangling her. She screamed: "I'm not ready! I'm not ready!"

But no one answered. Isis backed down another duct, and vanished.

"I'm not ready," the child whimpered, but already the words were sticking in her throat.

The battle ended. Wounded from both sides dragged themselves out the doors, looking for daylight.

Ollie searched Ugo's body and found the key to the Human cages. He walked, with great difficulty-for his leg was badly cut-down to the Human Quarters, and opened all the cells. Half were dead of starvation. Most of the oth- ers filed out disbelievingly and, dreamily, wandered toward the doors. Ollie went back to look for Josh. But Josh was nowhere to be found.

Paula, nearly dead from blood loss, managed to find Jasmine-nearly dead from Hemolube loss-and recap the Neuroman's head valve. She carried Jasmine out of the castle and halfway to the City gates before Aba saw them, picked them up, and flew them both back to the Bookery camp.

And so the others-those still alive-slowly straggled back, to lick their wounds and wonder if they had won.

CHAPTER 20: The Seven Days.

JOSH was vaguely aware of a gentle tugging at the side of his chin, over and over until it became more of a coa.r.s.e scratching. The next thing he was aware of was that he was wet all over-wet and cold-and there seemed to be water was.h.i.+ng steadily across his legs. The next thing he noticed was the smell: foul, fetid, all-encompa.s.sing. Finally, there was the weight on his chest-not heavy, but insistent.

He opened his eyes. He was lying on his back in the semidarkness. Isis sat patiently on his chest, rhythmically licking first his chin, then his cheek. When he opened his eyes, she kept licking. He smiled weakly and scratched her behind the ear, just where she liked it "Hi, Fur-face," he said in a gravelly whisper.

She stepped down beside him and sat on the damp rock as he pushed himself up to slump against the wall. He had been lying in one of the sanitation tunnels beneath the City, half in the swiftly flowing subterranean tributary, halt up a moist, unlit side conduit. A dim bulb still shed some light twenty yards upstream, in the main tunnel. Josh took a deep breath, and coughed. An impossible stench filled his nostrils: he retched until his stomach twisted, empty.

Decaying matter floated by down the main tunnel-the sewage of the apocalypse: rotting torsos, grimacing heads bobbing darkly, like half-remembered fragments of a nightmare.

"What's happened?" Josh croaked. He looked like he had been thrown out death's back door. His eyes were vacant; he was broken, bleeding from the ears. Filth clung to him, matted his hair, stuck to his torn skin and shredded clothes. The only clear, calm part of him was his face, which Isis had licked clean.

"Herrrrre," purred Isis, nodding her head up the direction of the dry side tunnel.

Josh followed her a few steps, then stopped. "Wait," he said. There was a humming in his brain, almost a whine.

Ooooooooooooh Like wind blowing through deserted corridors.

"This way," said Josh. He picked Isis up and began trudging down the main tunnel, knee-deep in dirty water.

Ooooooooooooooooh As if he knew every turn, Josh navigated the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the City, Isis perched on his shoulder.

Ooooh He reached one of the myriad vertical shafts that pierced the underground tributaries, and began to climb the iron rungs that ran up the side. Fifty yards up, a hundred yards.

Oooooooooh He climbed over the lip of the shaft and stepped out into the darkened throne room. The child lay a few feet away, curled fetally on the floor.

"Oooooooooooooooh," she whimpered.

Josh knelt beside her. He put his hand on her forehead. She was burning.

"Ooooooooh."

He looked on her with great sorrow. She was feverish, pale. Her teeth began to chatter, and almost immediately the doors in the room started rattling.

Who was this creature? He could not know. He had all but gone mad hi the abyss of her eyes. He had seen things through her he could never explain, never understand. She had been demented, playful, sad, unpenetrable, pitiable. He had had a part in creating her.

She seemed, now, like the saddest of all creatures.

He picked her up hi his arms and carried her toward the door. Isis paused.

"Come on," said Josh, and Isis trotted along behind.

As he walked down the main staircase, still carrying her, she had shaking chills. With that, the walls began to quake, and great stones fell from the ceiling to crash and shatter all around. Josh made it out of the castle as the entire structure began to collapse into rubble, with Isis running ahead of him, her eyes wild, her ears pressed flat to her head.

The feathered bird-child hung limply in Joshua's arms, a cold, waxy sweat upon her lip.

Isis skipped merrily into camp early the next morning. A few minutes later, Josh arrived and laid his burden on the ground: the bird-child remained unconscious, breathing heavily.

In a short time, the entire community had gathered around them to watch. Josh covered the child with a blanket,' adjusted her feet, mopped her forehead; Isis curled up a few feet away and fell asleep.

There were, perhaps, a hundred creatures still in camp, all straining to see the father and child: the remaining Books; the cachectic, liberated Humans; Jasmine, Rose, Aba, Paula, Phe, Ollie, Osi. Refugees from Newport had begun wandering in, as well: Bears, Elves, Satyrs. Everyone was murmuring at once, wondering what to do, how to feel. Ollie and Jasmine stepped forward from different directions.

"You should have let her die in the castle," said Ollie. "We could see the explosions from here. She would have died."

"She's dying," said Josh.

"Quick death would have been better," Jasmine suggested.

"For who?" Josh whispered pointedly.

"For her and for us," Jasmine replied.

"I ... couldn't leave her there," Josh stammered, "I'll kill her now," said Osi ominously, coming close. He had strong feelings still about this child who had had such a hold over him. Even seeing her alive shamed him.

Josh stood in his way, though. "No. I won't let you."

"You cannot stop me," Osi grimaced.

Josh held his ground. "Maybe. But you'll have to kill me first." He stood over the child, and spoke louder to the group. "That goes for all of you. No one will harm this child without killing me first!" "But Joshua-" began Jasmine.

"No!" he barked. "She is blood of my blood. She's shown me things, taken me places, made me see-see what no one else has ever seen. Will ever see. Can ever know. And even if she's dying now, she may yet share something more with us-and I will not have that possibility cut short!" His eyes flamed with pa.s.sion; not a creature there had, any longer, the strength to take issue with him. Most were too weak or injured to protest, in any case; and the rest simply had no interest in opposing Joshua's will.

Osi hesitated, considering the options, then finally shrugged and walked away.

Ollie shook his head once, and also drifted off. A minute later his flute could be heard playing tag with the wind. A week of dire and unaccountable events followed. That whole first day, the child was plagued by attacks of alternating chills and fever. During the former periods, the temperature of the air in camp would plunge to arctic levels. Animals froze to death. During the child's febrility, ambient weather conditions reversed with the speed of a dream, the temperature soaring. More animals died.

A great sense of loss began to pervade the area-for comrades lost in battle, lost in quest, lost in deceit, and to disillusion: Candlefire, Redsun, Michael, Beauty, D'Ursu, Ellen, David; most of the Pluggers and most of the Books were gone forever. And more died each day that the fading child lived.

But the survivors felt a sense of loss of themselves, as well. So much lost, so much changing. Not a one would ever be the same. The world they had known was over; the new world was not yet begun. For most of the huddling camp, it was a time of despair, or fear, or bereavement, or nostalgia-each, in its way, the experience of loss of something deep within.

The child, meanwhile, got sicker. Her eyes would open wide, sometimes, staring starkly-and at those times the sun in the sky would become blindingly, painfully bright.

Then her eyes would screw shut tight, and the sun would darken, as if eclipsed.

She had fitful dreams over the next two days, during which she would turn from side to side, whimpering, panting. On several occasions she was quite delirious. It was during this period that the new animals appeared.

Not the ordinary sort of new animals, either, as had been wandering in of late. These were entirely new animals, such as had never been seen anywhere. Some looked like patchworks of old animals. Some were simply out of whole cloth: crazy heads on strangely colored bodies, funny feet, speaking exotic, unintelligible languages. They were bizarre, or scary, or silly, or mean, or scared, or just too odd to interpret.

New flora began to appear all over as well. Surreal, fernlike things atop ridiculously tall, skinny trunks; orange, or purple fruit trees, dripping juices.

It was a true dream world, and it was frightening. Friends tended to stay near one another, for safety and comfort.

On the morning of the fifth day, Osi came forward and stood before them all. "I have given the matter much thought," he announced, "and I have decided to leave. No good can come of this-the child makes the Earth ill with her disease-and since we are disallowed by fiat from stopping this madness"-here he looked pointedly at Josh-"I will start my life anew elsewhere."

"Go, then," Paula said, without intonation.

"And so I shall," answered Osi. "But first, I would ask for volunteers to accompany me-to be the core of my new harem."

"Harem!" Paula roared.

"Volunteers!" Ollie echoed.

"That is what I said," Osi replied quietly. "To all who join me, I promise: you can leave my harem whenever you wish. As long as you stay with me, I will keep you warm and sheltered, fed and appreciated. I will protect you from the elements and from attack by any beast. I will allow no other Sires to force their attentions on you. We will grow, and be a family."

"A family!" Ollie sang, and then burst out laughing. The laughter broke the tension, and Osi responded in kind.

"A family it is, brother, and let no one tell you different. And I swear, we'll squabble and bicker and love and laugh. What say you, Sire Aba? Was my harem not a model family?"

"It was a family," nodded Aba. "And they seemed well content, all in all. Just so." Paula looked at her lover, half-aghast, half-questioningly.

Ph6 joined in jovially. "I'd snap his offer up quick if I was you, you runny-bloods-this Osi-Sire's a fine specimen of a Sire if ever I saw one, and he'll not soon be back this way." She laughed gleefully, and her whole body shook.

"You've got nothing to look forward to here, I can tell you," Osi went on. "Nothing but misery and privation, and a hard, short life." He smiled, waiting, looking over the crowd.

There was a long silence. Then a voice from the back said, "I'll go." It was one of the few surviving Books. "Me too," said another.

Jasmine smiled the smile of a three-hundred-year-old woman who still didn't understand a thing.

In the end, two Books and two of the freed Humans elected to accompany Osi. He gathered them all up under his powerful arms, called good-bye, and flew off into the eastern sky without one look back.

Ph became very protective of her young brother Aba. "Baby-Sire, don't you go sniffing off after that b.l.o.o.d.y pumper and get yourselves lost hi these clot-sucking times."

"Phe', I'm not going anywhere," Aba responded with some annoyance. "And Paula is not a b.l.o.o.d.y pumper!"

"She's lovely, Baby-Sire, and red as the sunset-but they're all b.l.o.o.d.y pumpers under the tooth." She laughed raucously, and slapped him on the back.

"You embarra.s.s me, Sister," he shook his head, not without love.

"Embarra.s.sment is secret glee," she nodded broadly, and winked as Paula approached.

"Embarra.s.sment is having a sister with yellow hair and a floppy tongue," he admonished.

"I like your sister's hair," said Paula as she joined them. "Why do you mock it?"

"It's me silver tongue he hates, but never mind. I'll take care of the Baby-Sure in spite of the b.l.o.o.d.y p.i.s.s in his veins." At which she laughed and shook and pinched them both, and finally wandered off to make good-natured trouble elsewhere.

In the next forty hours, both the child and the world deteriorated rapidly. She began having paroxysms of vomiting, carpopedal spasms, increasing nuchal rigidity, and, finally, a long string of bad convulsions. Concomitant with all this was the appearance, across the land, of volcanoes spewing molten rock and sulphurous magma; firestorms that scorched the ground and burned the flesh of all who weren't tucked safely away; earthquakes that turned the plains on their sides, opening into bottomless wells, spitting geysers of flame.

At some moments the very fabric of the sky seemed to rip, letting the Void's black fluid spill out. The Earth itself began spinning faster, so nights and days lasted only a few hours, and Time rushed around like a rabid Bat, too quick to follow and all aflutter.

There was doom in the air. Some of the animals became withdrawn; but it had the opposite effect in many, inducing feelings of reckless infatuation, or deep pa.s.sion. Paula and Aba became even more singularly preoccupied than usual. Desperately in love, they were virtually oblivious to the natural-or unnatural-catastrophes that crashed about them.

Josh and Rose also came together during this period. The oldest of friends, they now rediscovered sleeping pa.s.sions-awakened, somehow, by their love for the Centaur whose absence they felt so acutely.

"I'm worried for him." Rose spoke softly to keep her voice from running away. "He must be so alone."

"He's safe up there-safer than us, probably. And well taken care of by the Neuromans, Ollie said."

"Will we ever see him again? There are so many things I wish I'd said ..."

"He knows. He knows you love him. As he knows I love him. It makes no difference if we see him here again," Josh told her, looking out at a cl.u.s.ter of flaming trees. "We never stopped seeing him here," he went on, touching her breast.

She shook her head, crying. "But I miss him so." He took her and held her, and they were both crying, and soon they were making love; and for brief moments over the next two days, each of them touched Beauty again, through the love the other had for that n.o.ble Centaur, dear friend.

But of all the couplings that arose during these cataclysms surrounding the child's illness, perhaps the oddest was the one between Ollie and Phe.

She came upon him playing his flute while the sea burned on the fifth day.

"Funny weather we're havin'," she noted. "Looks like the end of the world," he observed. She nodded. "So long as it doesn't rain. I hate the bloodless rain."

They eyed each other with guarded appreciation. "It was a fast flight you made down here," he said to her. "I ... meant to thank you."

She shrugged. "Keepin' warm is the main thing, with alt.i.tude flyin'. You kept me warm, is all."

"No, you've got strength and speed-I admire those things." He surprised himself a bit; he had never been so open.