"Nasty neighborhood," Joey Bane said after a moment, lounging against a handy rock. "But thesepeople should have known better. They started smacking their kids around to keep them in line… forgetting how they'd been smacked for the same reasons when they were kids, and it hadn't worked then, and it wasn't going to work now… " His eyes blazed. "Or screaming at their kids day after day, telling them how stupid they are… until the kids finally begin to believe it. There are worse things than that, but not many… "
Nick swallowed. "Do you think," he said slowly, "that… somewhere… this really happens to people like that?"
Joey Bane threw him a look. "I don't know about somewhere," he said. "But it sure happens here… and that's enough for me." He raised his eyebrows. "You?"
Nick swallowed. "Yeah," he said softly.
"Right," Joey said. "So listen… I've got places to be." Over his shoulder Camiun muttered a few notes under its breath. "Have fun while you're here… and take a good look around before you leave, so you can work out how to get down here on your own. The usual clues are here and there. Don't forget, it's not just child abusers who're down here. We've got all kinds of violence on this level."
He started off across the circle. Suddenly, in the direction Bane was heading, Nick could see something that hadn't been there before. Where there had only been tall cliffs, now he saw the towered and crenellated outlines of the ramparts and seven gateways of the Keep of the Dark Artificer. Nick was suddenly afire with excitement again. They said that once you got in there, you could hear music that had never been heard in concert… and with the music, said the rumors, went images of fury and violence and despair that were too wild and scary for anything of them ever to have been shown elsewhere in public. Gotta see that!
Nick started after Joey Bane, already just imagining what the other kids in school would say when they heard that not only was he a regular in Bane's Place, but that he'd gotten through the gates of the Keep and taken the Oath never to reveal what he had seen there. This is gonna be spat beyond belief…
But Joey stopped and half-turned. "And where do you think you're going?"
"With you!"
"Not today, pally," Bane said.
"But you said it was an upgrade-"
"One-time," Joey Bane's virtual self said. "And did I say sixth floor? Didn't say a word about six. Two levels, that's what you get today."
Nick glared at him.
"What, you're complaining?" Bane said, and chuckled. "What a little ingrate. You ought to be careful… this kind of thing can go on your permanent record."
The good-natured mockery was somehow disarming. Nick's anger began to seep away. "Please," he said. "I just want to see inside the Keep… "
"What, for free? Half the Banies on the planet want in there," Bane said. "What makes you so special that you get it without working for it? Nobody gets in there until they solve all the higher levels and earn the points.. You know the drill."
Nick frowned. "This whole thing has just been a come-on, hasn't it?" he said.
"Hey, all of life is marketing these days," Bane said. "Look… I'm in a good mood. You just spend the rest of the session walking around, getting to know some of these people. If people is the word we're looking for."
Nick looked behind him to where the vanished escalator had been. "But how am I supposed to get out? I haven't solved Four yet, I don't know where the entrance to this level is."
"Oh, well," Joey Bane said, "I guess that's fair. Look, you see those two over there-" He pointed off to one side, by the base of one of the huge cliffs, where a man with a lion's head and a woman with a tiger's were tearing at each other with terrible claws. "They might tell you the way out if you can get them to stop fighting for a moment." Bane looked at them and shook his head. "Songwriters," he said softly. "You can get too hung up on whose name comes first in the credits… "
Nick looked at them dubiously. "Okay," he said. "Thanks."
"Polite," Joey said. "That's what I like to hear. Guess I don't have to cut the strings just yet." He turned away again and started walking once more toward the gates of the Dark Artificer's keep.
"You're gonna love Six!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Just wait' 11 you see who we've got in the Lake of Boiling Blood. Not to mention the lifts from the new Wraiths of Wrath collection-"
Nick could hardly bear the thought of not hearing that new music before everybody else did. "Why did you bring me just here and tell me all this stuff, and then just walk away?" he yelled. "Just to make me crazy, or what?"
"You figure it out!" Joey Bane yelled back, still walking away through the gathering darkness, as behind him a demon-giant in an old-fashioned Mets uniform chased a hapless mother and father across the circle with a baseball bat. Nick caught a glance at the back of the uniform shirt as the demon passed. The name was hard to make out, but its number was 666. Nice touch, that. "But haven't I been telling you life stinks?" Bane said. "Don't you even listen to the lyrics? Bye bye, stinker… "
And he vanished into the darkness, laughing.
Nick stood there, heart pounding, not knowing whether to be delighted or furious. Finally he decided on furious… but it was a cheerful kind of fury, one that left him determined. "I'll be back!" he yelled at the darkness. "I'll do it, however much time it takes! I'll be back, and I'll meet you down on Six… and deeper than that!"
Only the faint sound of mocking laughter came floating back to him from the walls of the Keep, and a glint of silver and black as from away up high there, Camiun trilled once, amused.
It took a long while to get the lion man and the tiger woman to stop fighting and talk to him, but finally they showed him the way back up to Four, through a door, and up a stairway hidden in the stone of the cliffs, and the tiger woman dropped a line about a "golden key" that Nick was sure was a hint that had to do with how you were supposed to get into the Keep. Nick headed upward in a much improved mood, but there was still an edge of anger on his determination to come back here and show everybody that he hadn't hit his level, that he didn't need any more favors, that he was enough of a Banie to succeed down here no matter how the program tried to get under his skin, and no matter how long it took to do it. His dad was probably going to have a spasm when he saw the Net bill, but Nick was more certain than ever that he didn't care… this was worth it.
In the gateway the abandon-hope words were still burning red when he got back up there, but as Nick approached them, they twisted and curled in the air like burning red worms and formed themselves into new words. These said:
THE TIGER WOMAN IS A LIAR
He stopped and looked at that. It's not completely true, Nick thought. She did tell me how to get back up to Four…
Then he paused just on the inside of the gateway, wondering. She and the lion man had interrupted each other constantly once he got them to stop ripping each other up, and now he wasn't at all sure just which of them had told him about the way back up to Four. But he definitely remembered her telling him about the key.
So is it a false lead? Or is this a lie itself?
Nick let out a long breath. He wasgoing to have to come back as soon as he could and start working out how to get from Three to Four, so that he could test the situation and see what the real story was. One thing you have to give this place, Nick thought. It keeps you coming back…
There was no point in lingering any longer, though. He had stuff to do at home. Nick passed through the gateway, and as usual, that big red asterisk appeared in the floor under his feet, burning like lava. Just for amusement, he stepped on it.