"When you first met Cho-Cho, I know he scared you. I think you have come to see that he is not as bad as all that—perhaps you understand that he has had a difficult life and does not trust people, that he is worried that only bad things will happen to him. His life has made him different than you, but there is a lot of good inside him.
"I want you to remember that, little Christabel, because I may need your help. If I do, I will be asking you to . . . to meet someone. That is the only way I can explain it. And that someone may seem even more different and frightening than Cho-Cho. You will have to be as brave as you have ever been, Christabel. And that is very brave indeed. . . ."
CHAPTER 37
The Locked Roam
NETFEED/NEWS: Suing Do-Gooder Parents for Doing too Much Good
(visuaclass="underline" Wahlstrom heirs entering Stockholm courthouse)
VO: The four children of the late Gunnar and Ki Wahlstrom, famous Swedish environmental activists, are suing their parents' estate, demanding that the Wahlstroms' substantial bequests to environmental organizations be given to them instead.
(visuaclass="underline" Per Wahlstrom)
WAHLSTROM: "Everybody thinks what we are doing is so terrible. But they didn't have to live with parents who paid attention to everything but their own children. Not a one of us cared a fig for whales or rain forests. What about us? Don't we deserve something for putting up with absentee parents for all those years? They cared much more about snails than they did about us."
Paul ran up to the front of the temple praying that the Wicked Tribe had exaggerated. As he skidded through the door the heat and light hit him like a small explosion and for a moment he could only stand, blinking against the dazzle.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw it first as a homeless shadow—something black sliding swiftly along the desert sands. Even though he had been prepared, warned by the children, it was only when he saw it climb one of the nearby hills in just a few steps, the dust of its seismic footsteps billowing behind it, that he realized how terrifyingly huge it was.
It paused on the hilltop, a colossus come to life. The doglike muzzle lifted as it howled and seconds later the air outside the temple, kilometers away, surged and snapped. Then it lowered its head and began to run once more.
Paul stumbled back through the door on legs that felt like burned matchsticks.
"He's coming! Dread's coming!" He lurched to a halt just inside the inner chamber. Florimel and T4b and the others looked up at him, eyes wide and faces slack from terrors that seemed to have no end. "They're right—he's huge!"
Only Martine had not turned. She was facing the pure white human silhouette that had appeared to them moments earlier and now hung just above the ground like something out of a puppet show. "Tell me," she asked it, "can you talk to Sellars?"
"El Viejo?" The thing squirmed, making its outlines hard to distinguish. "Sometimes. I hear him. But he's all busy right now. Said I was supposed to stay with you."
"Then he gave you a death sentence!" Paul heard something close to utter despair in Florimel's cracked voice. A distant sound like a monstrous drum being pounded—boom, boom, boom—sent faint vibrations through the massive stones of the temple floor.
"Gonna step on us!" T4b shouted.
"Silence, please." Martine turned away from them to face the great black sarcophagus lying at the center of the chamber. "Stay together," she called. "Someone get the little monkeys."
"What are you doing?" asked Nandi Paradivash, even as he summoned the Wicked Tribe down out of the air with urgent gestures. A few of them settled on Paul, clinging to his clothes and hair.
"Just be quiet. Martine s eyes were closed, her head down. "We have only moments."
The floor was shaking in earnest now, as though bombs were being set off deep beneath the temple. Each titan footfall was louder than the last.
"Hear me!" Martine called out. "Set, Other, whatever your name is—do you remember me? We have met before, I think."
The sarcophagus lay secretive as an unhatched egg. The shuddering made Paul stagger to keep his balance.
"What is this psycho place?" demanded the white silhouette fearfully.
Bonita Mae Simpkins was praying. "Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. . . ."
"Listen! I am Martine Desroubins," she said to the low black box. "I taught you the story of the boy in the well. Can you hear me? I am trapped here in this simulation world, and so are many others that you brought into your network. Some of them are children. If you do not help us, we will die." The moment stretched. They could hear the roar of the approaching monster's breath, hissing like a sandstorm. "It will not listen to me," Martine said at last, her voice raw with despair. "I cannot make it listen."
The ground shivered so violently that the whole temple seemed to shift around them. Trickles of rock dust filtered down the walls; Bonnie Mae and T4b were knocked off their feet. Then the footsteps stopped. Even the monstrous sound of breathing was stilled.
Paul licked his lips. It was almost impossible to speak. "Try . . . try again, Martine."
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and put her hands to her head. "Help us, whatever you are—whoever you are. God damn it, I can feel you listening to me! I know you are hurting, but these children will be killed! Help us!"
Something exploded like a bomb above their heads. There was a second concussive crash, then another and another. Flung onto his back, Paul could only stare upward in horror as huge fingers poked through the rocky walls at the top of the great temple. A moment later, with a sustained smash of sound and a rain of falling stones, the entire roof of the cavernous chamber tore free and rose up into the air. A boulder the size of a small car rolled unsteadily past Paul and crashed into the far wall, but he could not even move. Sunlight blazed in, the limitless desert sky now spread above them once more.
The monstrous jackal-headed figure shifted the roof to one side and dropped it. Stone dust boiled up like a mushroom cloud as the giant leaned into the gaping wound that had been the top of the temple room. It smiled, tongue lolling out from jaws that could gulp a Tyrannosaurus like a boiled chicken.
"I'M NOT VERY HAPPY WITH YOU LOT," rumbled Anubis. More stone and dust showered from the crumbling walls. "YOU LEFT BEFORE THE PARTY STARTED—AND THAT'S A BIT RUDE."
Only Martine was standing, still swaying beside the sarcophagus. Paul crawled toward her, intent on pulling her down before the monster reached in and beheaded her like a dandelion puff.
"Help us," he heard her say again. It was little more than a whisper.
"WELL, WELL. WHAT'S THAT WIGGLING ALONG THE FLOOR?" the thing said gleefully.
The sarcophagus began to come apart. Cracks streamed along its angled edges, red light leaking like blood; a moment later the whole thing shifted inside out, as though it contained not the corpse of a god but some new dimension of space-time, unfolding and expanding like a slow-motion detonation until the utter black and the bright, bright glaring red were all Paul could see.
"It's screaming. . . !" he heard Martine cry, her own voice cracked with agony, but she was fading like a dying signal. "The children are. . . ." Paul's head seemed to be filling with fog—chill, empty, dead.