The flaring light subsided. The boy and girl stood, frightened but still unmoved by the rushing, scintillating waters. They were holding hands. "Tell him," the little girl said to her companion, her whispering voice carrying up to Renie as though it were meant for her alone. "He's really scared!"
The little black-haired boy was crying now, his shoulders trembling. He looked at the girl, then at the shadow-child huddled on the river bank. "P–people," he said slowly, so quietly Renie found herself leaning forward to hear, "some people, they want to help, seen?" His breath hitched. "Some people really try to help you." He was crying so hard he could barely speak. "It's t–t–true."
The glowing river swirled and sparked. !Xabbu twisted in Renie's arms but when she looked down in fright, his face seemed a little calmer. She turned back to the pit.
The shadow-child rose and stood on the bank, then stepped into the glowing river. For a long moment the children stood facing each other in a silence that seemed the deepest communication of all, the two shining in the river's light, the other so small and murky-dark that even in the heart of such radiance no light could touch him. Then all three were gone. Renie was not sure what had happened but her eyes were blurry with tears. A moment later she felt the darkness fold in on them, taking the desert, the pit, everything. With her last thought she clutched !Xabbu tightly to her.
The end, she thought. Finally. And then, Oh, Stephen. . . !
Olga was covered with scratches and bleeding in a dozen places by the time she reached the deserted house. She pushed in, then threw the bolt on the front door. It would not take them long to get past it, but she didn't care about that either. She watched the two figures, the fat one and the thin one, stagger out of the trees at the bottom of the garden and turn to look up at the house. However long they had been in those tanks, it had been long enough to make the chase difficult for them.
I've kept in shape, she thought. Who knew it was for this?
Riding the elevator up she had felt a sudden almost horrifying sense of freedom. Her life had been a lie. She had built it all on lies. All the years she had entertained children, mourning her loss, her own child had been alive—suffering as perhaps no living creature had ever suffered. What could you do, knowing that, but shake your fist at the universe? Spit at God? It didn't matter now.
"Olga. . . ." Sellars' voice in her ear was thunderously loud but paradoxically weak. She turned down the volume. "He's coming to you. Don't be afraid."
"Not afraid," she murmured. "Not that."
When her son came at last, she did not hear him, but felt him—a tiny constellation of lights drifting up out of subterranean depths, tracking toward her across unimaginable distances. He came like a flock of birds, of shadow-shapes, a whirring and a fluttering that was all confusion and fear.
"I'm here," she said gently, so gently. "Oh, my little one, I'm here."
They were banging at the front door of the abandoned house now, trying to dislodge the bolt. Olga moved from room to room, ever deeper, until she reached the girl's bedroom. She sat on the dusty coverlet beneath the shelf of ancient, wide-eyed dolls.
"I'm here," she said again.
The voices began as something she had heard in her dreams, a chaotic whispering, a moaning, laughing chorus of children. They swelled into a noise like a river, blending, merging, until at last it was one voice—nothing human, but one solitary voice.
"Mother. . . ?"
She could feel him now, could feel everything, even as her ears dimly registered the crunch of the front door being knocked off its hinges. A moment later she heard the glee-drunk shouting of the fat man down the halls, the sharp tones of his thin companion.
"I'm here," she whispered. "They took you from me. But I never forgot you."
"Mother." There was a sadness in it no human voice could have contained. It swam up like a blind thing from the bottom of the ocean. "Lonely."
"I know, my little one. But not for much longer."
"Yoo hoo!" The voice of the fat man was just outside the bedroom door now. The tiny latch would last only moments.
A voice crashed in on the side channel. "Olga, this is Ramsey. You have to get out now!"
She was annoyed at the interruption, but she reminded herself that Catur Ramsey was in a different world—the world of the living. Things seemed different there.
"There may be a few minutes left, time to. . . ."
"Just a moment, Mr. Ramsey. I am finishing Mr. Sellars' errand." She disconnected from him, then stood. "I'm still here," she assured the huge, lonely thing. "I won't leave. But you have to let them help you, my beautiful child. Do you feel someone reaching to you? Give him what he wants." She felt a spasm of guilt, hating to use these precious few moments of mother-love in this way, hating to manipulate a child who had known nothing else, but she had promised. She still owed a little something to the living.
"Give him. . . ?"
"He'll save what he can. Then you don't have to worry anymore."
The bedroom door shook, made splintering noises.
"Yes . . . Mother." A brief pause, then she felt him again. "Did it."
She let out a sigh. All obligations finished now. A memory, long buried, too painful, finally surfaced. "You have a name, little one, did you know that? No, of course, you could not know—but you have a name. Your father and I chose it for you. We were going to call you Daniel."
A moment passed, a long moment. "Daniel. . . ?"
"Yes. Daniel, the prophet who kept his faith even in the lion's den. But don't be afraid—the lions can't hurt you anymore."
"Have . . . a name. Daniel."
"You do." It was hard to speak. No tears, only a dry numbness, something beyond pain. "I'm coming to see you now."
When she opened the door the fat man and the thin man started back, surprised but prepared for violence. She lifted her hands to show they were empty.
"I think there's something you should see," she said, then calmly walked past them toward the parlor. The two gleaming, naked men stared after her in astonishment. The fat man's hands twitched but she was already gone. They looked at each other for a moment, then turned and followed her through the parlor and out onto the front porch.
"So you've decided to do the sensible thing," the thin one began.
"Mr. Ramsey, can you have your mechanical agent friend open a window on this floor?" she asked. "Something big that I can see from the front of the house?"
"B–but, Olga. . . !" he stuttered in her ear.
"Just do it, please."
"What the hell is going on?" the fat man growled. He reached forward and closed his massive, stubby fingers around her wrist. "What kind of trick. . . ?" He broke off in surprise as, with a grinding of long-unused gears, a huge square section of the roof slid back, revealing the dark evening sky, the true sky, its sprinkling of stars dimmed by the lights of the metroplex below. All the stars but one, which was growing brighter, ever brighter on the horizon.
"Olga. . . ."
"It's all right, Mr. Ramsey. Catur. Thank you for everything. I mean that But I am not going anywhere." She turned and smiled again at the fat man and his thin companion. "So here we are, gentlemen. We have a few moments—time for you to catch your breath."