Six
Once they left the infirmary, Nigel bore her rapidly down first one corridor and then another. They came to escalators that looked as if they had been frozen in place for centuries. Halfway down one of them, a steel ball on legs flashed its amber eyes at Nigel and cried, “Howp! Howp!” Nigel responded “Howp, howp!” in return and then said to Susannah (in the confidential tone certain gossipy people adopt when discussing Those Who Are Unfortunate), “He’s a Mech Foreman and has been stuck there for over eight hundred years—fried boards, I imagine. Poor soul! But he still tries to do his best.”
Twice Nigel asked her if she believed his eyes could be replaced. The first time Susannah told him she didn’t know. The second time—feeling a little sorry for him (definitely him now, not it)—she asked what he thought.
“I think my days of service are nearly over,” he said, and then added something that made her arms tingle with gooseflesh: “O Discordia!”
The Diem Brothers are dead, she thought, remembering—had it been a dream? a vision? a glimpse of her Tower?—something from her time with Mia. Or had it been her time in Oxford, Mississippi? Or both? Papa Doc Duvalier is dead. Christa McAuliffe is dead. Stephen King is dead, popular writer killed while taking afternoon walk, O Discordia, O lost!
But who was Stephen King? Who was Christa McAuliffe, for that matter?
Once they passed a low man who had been present at the birth of Mia’s monster. He lay curled on a dusty corridor floor like a human shrimp with his gun in one hand and a hole in his head. Susannah thought he’d committed suicide. In a way, she supposed that made sense. Because things had gone wrong, hadn’t they? And unless Mia’s baby found its way to where it belonged on its own, Big Red Daddy was going to be mad. Might be mad even if Mordred somehow found his way home.
His other father. For this was a world of twins and mirror images, and Susannah now understood more about what she’d seen than she really wanted to. Mordred too was a twin, a Jekyll-and-Hyde creature with two selves, and he—or it—had the faces of two fathers to remember.
They came upon a number of other corpses; all looked like suicides to Susannah. She asked Nigel if he could tell—by their smells, or something—but he claimed he could not.
“How many are still here, do you think?” she asked. Her blood had had time to cool a little, and now she felt nervous.
“Not many, madam. I believe that most have moved on. Very likely to the Derva.”
“What’s the Derva?”
Nigel said he was dreadfully sorry, but that information was restricted and could be accessed only with the proper password. Susannah tried chassit, but it was no good. Neither was nineteen or, her final try, ninety-nine. She supposed she’d have to be content with just knowing most of them were gone.
Nigel turned left, into a new corridor with doors on both sides. She got him to stop long enough to try one of them, but there was nothing of particular note inside. It was an office, and long-abandoned, judging by the thick fall of dust. She was interested to see a poster of madly jitterbugging teenagers on one wall. Beneath it, in large blue letters, was this:
SAY, YOU COOL CATS AND BOPPIN’ KITTIES!
I ROCKED AT THE HOP WITH ALAN FREED!
CLEVELAND, OHIO, OCTOBER 1954
Susannah was pretty sure that the performer on stage was Richard Penniman. Club-crawling folkies such as herself affected disdain for anyone who rocked harder than Phil Ochs, but Suze had always had a soft spot in her heart for Little Richard; good golly, Miss Molly, you sure like to ball. She guessed it was a Detta thing.
Did these people once upon a time use their doors to vacation in various wheres and whens of their choice? Did they use the power of the Beams to turn certain levels of the Tower into tourist attractions?
She asked Nigel, who told her he was sure he did not know. Nigel still sounded sad about the loss of his eyes.
Finally they came into an echoing rotunda with doors marching all around its mighty circumference. The marble tiles on the floor were laid in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern Susannah remembered from certain troubled dreams in which Mia had fed her chap. Above, high and high, constellations of electric stars winked in a blue firmament that was now showing plenty of cracks. This place reminded her of the Cradle of Lud, and even more strongly of Grand Central Station. Somewhere in the walls, air-conditioners or -exchangers ran rustily. The smell in the air was weirdly familiar, and after a short struggle, Susannah identified it: Comet Cleanser. They sponsored The Price Is Right, which she sometimes watched on TV if she happened to be home in the morning. “I’m Don Pardo, now please welcome your host, Mr. Bill Cullen!” Susannah felt a moment of vertigo and closed her eyes.
Bill Cullen is dead. Don Pardo is dead. Martin Luther King is dead, shot down in Memphis. Rule Discordia!
O Christ, those voices, would they never stop?
She opened her eyes and saw doors marked SHANGHAI/FEDIC and BOMBAY/FEDIC and one marked DALLAS (NOVEMBER 1963)/FEDIC. Others were written in runes that meant nothing to her. At last Nigel stopped in front of one she recognized.
NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD.
New York/Fedic
Maximum Security
All of this Susannah recognized from the other side, but below VERBAL ENTRY CODE REQUIRED was this message, flashing ominous red:
#9 FINAL DEFAULT
Seven
“What would you like to do next, madam?” Nigel asked.
“Set me down, sugarpie.”
She had time to wonder what her response would be if Nigel declined to do so, but he didn’t even hesitate. She walk-hopped-scuttled to the door in her old way and put her hands on it. Beneath them she felt a texture that was neither wood nor metal. She thought she could hear a very faint hum. She considered trying chassit—her version of Ali Baba’s Open, sesame—and didn’t bother. There wasn’t even a doorknob. One-way meant one-way, she reckoned; no kidding around.
(JAKE!)
She sent it with all her might.
No answer. Not even that faint
(wimeweh)
nonsense word. She waited a moment longer, then turned around and sat with her back propped against the door. She dropped the extra ammo clips between her spread knees and then held the Walther PPK up in her right hand. A good weapon to have with your back to a locked door, she reckoned; she liked the weight of it. Once upon a time, she and others had been trained in a protest technique called passive resistance. Lie down on the lunchroom floor, cover your soft middle and softer privates. Do not respond to those who strike you and revile you and curse your parents. Sing in your chains like the sea. What would her old friends make of what she had become?
Susannah said: “You know what? I don’t give shit one. Passive resistance is also dead.”
“Madam?”
“Nothing, Nigel.”
“Madam, may I ask—”
“What I’m doing?”
“Exactly, madam.”
“Waiting on a friend, Chumley. Just waiting on a friend.”
She thought that DNK 45932 would remind her that his name was Nigel, but he didn’t. Instead, he asked how long she would wait for her friend. Susannah told him until hell froze over. This elicited a long silence. Finally Nigel asked: “May I go, then, madam?”
“How will you see?”
“I have switched to infrared. It is less satisfying than three-X macrovision, but it will suffice to get me to the repair bays.”
“Is there anyone in the repair bays who can fix you?” Susannah asked with mild curiosity. She pushed the button that dropped the clip out of the Walther’s butt, then rammed it back in, taking a certain elemental pleasure in the oily, metallic SNACK! sound it made.