She found the elevator and summoned it with her badge. When she had stepped in and the door had shut behind her, Ramsey moved to his other line.
"She's taking forever, Beezle—she's going to the next floor down to look there, too. How are we doing? Firefighters show up yet?" The agent did not reply. "Beezle?"
"I had to cut in and I'm afraid I've lost him," said a voice that was definitely not Beezle. "Things are a bit . . . difficult at the moment."
"Sellars?"
"Barely, but yes."
It was unquestionably his voice but there was something eerie about it, a jittering tension beneath the calm. Ramsey thought he sounded like a man holding the live ends of a fifty thousand volt electrical cable. "Jesus, what's going on?"
"It's a long story. I see Olga is still in the tower. . . ."
"Yes, and I can't get her to leave. We've tricked up all the alarms, all the stuff you set up, but the authorities are probably going to be breaking in the doors any moment now and I keep telling her to get out, but she won't listen—she's still wandering around looking for the children, you know, the voices in her head. . . ."
"Mr. Ramsey," Sellars interrupted, "at this moment I am already swimming in information—no, drowning. I am surrounded by data, more data than you can imagine. Every nerve in my body is about to catch fire and burn to carbon." Sellars took a shaky breath. "So will you do me a favor and shut the hell up?"
"Sure. Sure, yes."
"Good. I have to talk to Olga. While I'm doing that, I need you to go next door and talk to the Sorensens. If I have time, I'll join you and speak to them myself. This is critically important. If they're not there you have to find them immediately."
"Got it."
"And when I get done with Olga, I want you on the other line with her."
"Me? But. . . ?"
In remarkably few words, Sellars explained what he had discovered and was shortly going to tell Olga Pirofsky. Ramsey felt as though he had been kicked in the gut by a horse.
". . . So perhaps now you can understand why I want you with her when I've finished," Sellars said a bit harshly. He was maintaining his calm, but clearly at a price.
"Christ." Ramsey looked at the screen, barely able to focus. "Oh, Christ. Oh, God." Olga's feet were still in view, stepping out of the elevator and onto a carpeted floor. "She's . . . she's just getting out."
"I know," said Sellars, a little more gently now. "Go and talk to the Sorensens, will you, please?" And then he was gone.
"Who the hell was that?" demanded Beezle. "Sucker cut me right off, booted me off the line."
"I can't talk now," Ramsey told the agent. "Oh, my God, I can't believe this. Just stay on the line. I'll be back."
"Jeez," said Beezle. "This'll teach me to quit working with meat."
"So is there nothing left we can do?" Florimel asked angrily. "Again we must wait?"
"Unless we can discover some way out," said Martine, "we have little choice."
Orlando sat up and stretched his long arms, then tested the point of his sword with his fingertip. It was an old, familiar Thargor gesture, and it distracted Sam just as she was trying to remember something important. For a moment she could almost believe they were back in the Middle Country, in a world where games had rules. Thargor was here. Didn't that mean they would win? Thargor always won,
But there is no Thargor, she thought sadly, not really. There's just Orlando and he already got killed once. She looked to the unreal gray wall of cloud. And even if we can't see him at the moment, that guy Dread is still out there. Sam felt like a mouse caught away from its hole, being stalked by an unhurried cat.
I'm really going to die, she thought. It hadn't quite hit her before—there had always been hope, or at least distraction. Now nothing remained between her and nothingness but the last defenses of the dying system. I'm never going to see Mom or Dad again. My school. Even my stupid room . . .
"What about this child?" asked Nandi Paradivash. "You said he was the emissary of the man Sellars."
"Ain't no messary, vato," snarled the little boy Cho-Cho, who was sitting so far away from the others that the nearest person to him was the unsocial Felix Jongleur. "He never touch me—I cut anyone who try that. Me, I'm just helping him out."
"That's what it means, boy," said Bonnie Mae Simpkins. "An emissary's a helper. Someone who carries messages."
"But what message?" Florimel had calmed a little since the Twins had been dispatched but she was still edgy, her anger barely controlled. Looking around at the wreckage left by the Twins' attack, hundreds of miserable survivors still huddled around the edge of the Well and too many victims still lying where they had fallen, Sam couldn't really blame her. Any of the cowering fairy-tale folk could be Florimel's daughter or Renie's brother, but random questioning had confirmed that none of them seemed to remember a prior life. "What message?" Florimel repeated. "We know nothing. We continue in absolute ignorance as we have since the beginning!"
"Has Sellars said anything to you?" Martine asked the little boy. "Can you hear him at all?"
"Not since that dog-head mamalocker pulled the roof off that place," Cho-Cho said sullenly. "He just ditched me, like."
"So it seems we won't get much from Sellars." Paul said wearily. "What next?"
Felix Jongleur pierced the uncomfortable silence. "It is a miracle you have all stayed alive so long. Democracy is a frightening thing, seen up close."
"Shut up," Florimel snapped. "You pig-dog, you want to see the frightening side of democracy? Remember, there are a lot of us and then there is just you."
"The idea was that he would be useful," said Paul slowly. Sam had never seen him looking so cold and angry. "Well, it's about time he was. It may be too late to do us much good, but I'd still like some answers. About the operating system—about the whole thing. . . ."
Several of the others seemed to agree: an increasingly unhappy murmur rose around the campfire. They all turned to look at Jongleur, who accepted their attention with his usual flat, forbidding gaze, but Sam thought she saw something else just beneath, something peculiar. Was he ashamed? Frightened? He seemed almost . . . nervous.
"Come, friend," Azador called from his seat next to Martine. "These people have questions. Put their minds at rest."
Paul turned on the Gypsy. "And you, Azador—what is your problem? Do you know who your so-called friend really is? That's Felix Jongleur, the man who ran the Grail Brotherhood. Remember the bastards you went on and on about, the ones who chased you and imprisoned all your people, who used them to make their machines work? That's the head of it all—that man, right there."
Sam held her breath, wondering if Azador would now attack Jongleur as Paul had earlier. It was a miracle, really, that the secret she and !Xabbu had agreed to keep should have lasted so long. . . .
"!Xabbu!" she said out loud, suddenly remembering.
Azador was not listening. He peered intently at Jongleur, then at Paul Jonas. Finally he shrugged, oddly embarrassed. "It seems a long, long time ago."
"What?" Paul was almost screaming. "Good Lord, this man has been killing your people but you're just going to let bygones be bygones because you're you're . . . bloody chums now? How can you?"
"Because it never happened," Jongleur said scornfully. "These are his people, what is left of them." He waved his hand to indicate the wreckage of the wagons, the remaining Gypsy men and women huddled around their fires. "Everything else was fantasy."
"!Xabbu!" Sam said, louder this time. "Everybody, I utterly forgot about !Xabbu because of those monsters, and Orlando, and . . . and everything. He went into that pit—he dived in! I went in after him but it spit me out and I couldn't get him. He thought Renie was down there!"