CHAPTER 39
Broken Angel
NETFEED/NEWS: Widow Sues Nanotech Firm Over Honeymoon Holocaust
(visuaclass="underline" Sabine Wendel at husband's funeral)
VO: Capping a tragedy that has already become fodder for comedians all over the world, Sabine Wendel of Bonn, Germany, has filed suit against the distributors of Masterman, a nanotech-based product advertised to cure erectile dysfunction. Although the manufacturers Borchardt-Schliemer insist their product is to be used only under a doctor's care, many distributors sell the product without prescription, and that is apparently how Jorg Wendel purchased the microscopic Masterman trigger-mites that led to the fatal accident dubbed "the Sexplosion" by many tabnets. . . ."
They stumbled down out of the hills and onto the desolate plain, lightning flickering through the sky behind them as they raced toward what looked like an ocean full of stars. A cluster of strange shapes lined its shores, waiting. Night was falling, the constellations overhead dimmer than those swimming in the pit.
It's like the end of H.G. Wells' Time Machine, Paul thought. The horrible last moments of Earth the time traveler sees—gray skies, gray soil, a dying crab-thing on an empty beach.
Bonita Mae Simpkins tripped and fell heavily, unable to use her crippled hands to stop herself. Paul leaned close to help her up. The roaring of the thing that had followed them from Egypt was muffled now by the intervening hills and the electrical storm still hugged the distant spot where the monstrous form had appeared, but Paul had no doubt that Martine was right—no matter how strenuously the operating system fought back, Dread would be after them soon. He was hunting them.
Mrs. Simpkins was whispering as he dragged her onto her feet. ". . . He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. . . ."
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Paul thought. I will fear no evil. But he did fear—he did. They had been swallowed by a nightmare.
The others were far ahead now, although Nandi Paradivash had stopped to wait. Paul put his arm around Mrs. Simpkins and hurried her forward.
"Thank you," she whispered. "God bless you."
Nandi silently pulled the woman's other arm around his shoulders so he and Paul could keep her upright. The pool of surging, flaring radiance seemed very close now. Some of the throng that surrounded it came swarming toward Martine and the others. For a moment, as his companions disappeared in the tide of bodies, Paul fought panic, then he saw that Martine and Florimel and the rest—that tall one was certainly T4b—were being surrounded but not openly menaced. In fact, the crowd that enveloped them acted more like the beggar children he had seen in Rome and Madrid than like an overt threat.
"Those people are . . . they are. . . ." Nandi was watching, too. "I have no idea what they are!"
Neither did Paul. As they reached the outskirts of the crowd he was astounded by the wild, seemingly pointless diversity of its parts—upright animals and creatures with human faces and the bodies of beasts, as well as others made of things from which no living being could ever be composed. The variety was amazing, but what was most astonishing about them was the apparent whimsy. It was an army of purely make-believe creatures that swarmed out to meet them, a population decanted from children's storybooks.
The nearest, a collection of anthropomorphic bears and goats, fish with legs—even a skinny and fat couple who Paul guessed must be Jack Sprat from the nursery rhyme and his huge wife, but whose silhouettes gave him a moment's nasty turn—now came running toward Paul and his two companions, even the most inhuman faces full of unmistakable fear, the childish voices shrill.
"What is it?" scrawny Jack Sprat cried. "Who are you? Did the One send you?"
"Who took the stars?" shrieked his wobbling spouse. "Have you seen the Lady?"
"Why won't she come to the Well? Why won't she tell us what to do?"
Caught up in the swirl of pleading creatures, Paul was rushed along toward the shore of the pulsing sea like a leaf going over the rapids. "Martine!" he shouted, struggling to hold onto Bonnie Mae and Nandi even as furry fingers and graspingly prehensile wings tugged at him. "Florimel! Where are you?" Someone yanked at Bonnie Mae so hard that Paul, still trying to keep her upright, lost his grip on her and was pulled off his feet. For a moment he was certain he would be trampled to death.
After all this, I'm killed by cartoons, he thought, choking in the dust. There's irony in that, isn't there?
Suddenly people around him began to shout in alarm; the bizarrely diverse collection of legs and feet hemming him in began to back away. Paul struggled to his feet and discovered Nandi and Mrs. Simpkins only a few meters away, staring. He turned to see what they were looking at.
It was not the most unusual sight of the day, but it was still a bit of a surprise.
Rolling toward them through the crowd, moving slowly to give the fairy-tale creatures a chance to get out of his way—but helping them along with occasional light flicks of his riding whip—was Azador, smiling hugely. He was perched on the driver's bench of a fantastically colorful coach pulled by two white horses.
"Ionas, my friend!" he shouted, teeth gleaming beneath the luxuriant mustache. "There you are! Come, you and your other friends—climb up or these idiots will step on your toes."
Paul could not help staring, and not just at the unexpected rescue. In all the time he had traveled with Azador, even in the toils of the Lotos-dream, the man had never seemed a fraction this cheerful. Paul looked up at the sky, which was almost pitch-black now, the stars dwindled to tiny points. How could anyone be in a good mood with this going on? Unless he's daft as a brush.
Still, it was better than being trampled by teddy bears.
Paul clambered onto the side of the wagon and helped Nandi and Mrs. Simpkins up onto the step beside him, then Azador clicked his tongue at the horses, cracked his whip, and turned the carriage back toward the flickering sea.
"There are people waiting to see you, my friend!" Azador cried. "You will be so happy. We will sing and dance and celebrate!"
Not just a little daft, thought Paul as they rolled along beneath the dying sky. Utterly, utterly mad.
Azador's tribe of Gypsies had arranged the dozens of wagons they had retained into a semicircle along the shore of the strange crater, walling themselves off from the rest of the refugees and making a little city with wheels, the lacquered coaches shining both from the light of many campfires and the silver-and-blue glimmer of the great pit. Paul was grateful for the respite, however temporary, but he could not help looking back at the hills. Lightning still leaped above the hilltops, swift as swordplay, but the display seemed to have diminished, as if the contest being fought there was coming to an end.
Paul did not feel good about what that ending might be.
He was immediately distracted by people hurrying toward him, calling his name as they forced their way through the crowd of curious Gypsies. If they had not introduced themselves he would never have recognized Sam Fredericks and the Bushman !Xabbu, He might have guessed who the small, almond-eyed man was, given a slightly less confusing situation in which to consider it, but he had all but forgotten Fredericks' confession back in Troy about being a girl.
"It's . . . I'm astonished to see you both," he said. "And delighted." He hesitated. "Where . . . Where is Renie?"