"ARE YOU MAD?" Jongleur bellowed, his face replicated all along the wall like the masks of an enraged god. Colorful birds, startled by the gunshots, had abandoned the trees and now filled the air, squawking and fluttering. "YOU COULD HAVE HIT MY DAUGHTER!"
"No more firing, you idiots!" shrilled Finney.
Paul lay on the ground below the sill, strengthless, almost numb. He had lost. The window was still closed. A huge hand tightened on his collar and yanked him to his feet.
"You little shit." Mudd leaned close. "You can't even imagine the trouble you're in."
Finney had grabbed Ava and was pulling her back toward the forest. "Father!" she cried, struggling hard. "Father, do something!"
"SEDATE HER," Jongleur said. "THIS WAS A MISTAKE AND SOMEONE WILL PAY."
Finney stopped. "But, sir. . . !"
"AND PUT THE TUTOR SOMEWHERE, TOO. WE'LL DEAL WITH HIM LATER."
Mudd shoved Paul toward the guards. One of them stepped forward as if to catch him, but instead raised a fist and smashed it into the side of Paul's head. He dropped, his skull bursting with fireworks and flapping birds.
"No!" shrieked Ava, then she had pulled free of Finney and was running toward Paul.
"STOP HER, DAMN IT!" thundered Jongleur.
Finney snatched at her nightgown, which held for a heartbeat, then tore. One of the other guards threw himself at her feet, and tripped her, sending her staggering backward toward the window. Some of the birds that had settled on the sill fluttered up in panic; she snatched at them wildly, hopelessly, as she struck the glass.
The bullet-pocked window splintered in a thousand jagged cracks and for a single quantum instant she hung there, suspended against emptiness as if frozen in flight, surrounded with radiating lines like a stained glass angel. Then the window collapsed outward in a sparkle of broken crystal and she was gone into the gray air.
A dull clung as she hit the rail of the fire escape. An endless second before Paul heard her scream begin, then an eternity before it whistled away and faded. It might have been a wordless yowl of terror. It might have been his name.
Everything was silent then—Finney, Mudd, the guards, even the giant, astonished masks of Felix Jongleur, a curving hall of petrified images. Suddenly a cloud of colors, of sparks, of something Paul could not at first understand, swirled out of the trees and darted out through the shattered window.
The birds.
Wings beating, whirring, a murmur of questioning calls finally rising to a many-voiced screech of triumph, the birds escaped their long prisoning, sprang out into the rain-misted sky and then scattered, bright feathers shimmering like the shards of a broken rainbow.
In the stillness that followed, a single gleam of blue-green drifted down through the space between the trees and the shockingly empty window, riding the air in broad loops until it settled at last on the floor between Paul's hands.
CHAPTER 40
The Third Head of Cerberus
NETFEED/CHILDREN'S INTERACTIVES: HN, Hr. 2.0 (Eu, NAm)—"Pippa's Potato Patch"
(visuaclass="underline" Pippa and Purdy looking for Cracky Hoe)
VO: Pippa wants to plant flowers, but Rascal Rabbit has other ideas and hides her tools. Also featuring a short episode of Magic Counting Box and when the wind blows the cradle will rock when the bough breaks the cradle will fall and down will come baby down will come baby down will come baby down will come baby. . . .
Just stay put," Catur Ramsey told her. "I don't think there will be enough smoke to make it all the way up to your storeroom, but you might keep a wet cloth handy to put over your mouth, just in case."
"By these calculations, it'll fill up the basement pretty good," Beezle said. "More than fill it up."
"Sellars wanted enough that no one could get down there right away and find out how much of a fire there was—especially since there won't really be a fire."
Olga looked at the vents high on the wall of the storeroom. "You are sure I won't be suffocated up here? Or in one of the elevators?"
"Trust me, lady," Beezle grunted.
"Trust you?" Olga was tired and nervy. She had been up and down so many elevators in the last forty-eight hours that she was starting to look for numbers every time she walked through a door. The idea of being caught inside one with smoke billowing in through the air ducts was terrifying. "Why should I trust you? Where did you come from—and who are you, anyway?"
"He's a friend," Ramsey said hurriedly. "He's. . . ."
"I'm an agent, lady. Didn't you know?"
"What?" Olga tried to sort it out. "A theatrical agent? A secret agent? What kind of agent?"
His noise of disgust was as vivid as a cartoon fart. "A software agent—I'm gear. An Infosect virtual assistant, manufactured by Funsmart Entertainment. Jeez, Ramsey, you didn't tell her?"
"I . . . I didn't . . . we were in such a hurry. . . ."
"Hold on, please. You . . . you have turned all this over to an imaginary person?" Something tickled her memory. "An Infosect? That is a child's toy! We sold it on Uncle Jingle. Years ago!"
"Hey, lady, I'm not the newest gear out of the box but I'm still the best."
"Mr. Ramsey, I cannot believe you would do this to me." It felt like betrayal. For the first time in many days of stress and danger tears sprang to her eyes. "My safety—a toy!"
"Ms. Pirofsky . . . Olga." Ramsey sounded like a boy caught stealing, almost stammering with contrition. "I'm sorry, really sorry. You're right, I should have told you. I would have told you, but things have been happening so fast. Beezle isn't just kiddie gear—he's been upgraded a lot. And I've been working with him for a while now. . . ."
"He's a child's plaything, Mr. Ramsey! We sold the damn things on my show. My God, he came in a box with a picture on it of a little boy saying 'Wow! My new best friend!' If you had a client on trial for his life would you get a Judge Jingle Courtroom Playset to do your research? I do not think so. But you're asking me to put my life in the hands of this . . . jack-in-the-box?"
"Yeah, it's nice to meet you, too, lady."
"Look, it's not like that, Olga, honestly." Ramsey sounded panicked now and it undercut a little of her anger. He was trying so hard. Foolish, maybe, but a nice young man, that was what he was, still at an age where he thought life could be argued into doing the right things.
But life doesn't argue back, she thought. It just rolls over you like the tide, over and over, taking away a little bit each time.
"Who am I fooling?" she said aloud, and almost laughed. "I came here because there were voices in my head, ghost-children talking to me. I'm sneaking around like a spy. We are going to burn down the richest man in the world's building—if only by accident. Why shouldn't a child's toy run the operation? Let's do it."
"I told you, Olga, I'm sorry." Ramsey had misread the swing in her mood, had taken the doomed amusement for pure sarcasm. "I can help you, but only with Beezle to. . . ."
"I just said we'll go on, Mr. Ramsey. Why not?" She did laugh now. It almost felt good. "Better to risk breaking your neck than never to look up at the sky, as my father used to say."