Behold a Dark Mirror (38 page)

"How much juice do you think I should take?"  Primus said.

"The same as anybody else," Nero answered.

"Thanks, Mr. Vetrol, but I've made up my mind.  What do you say?  Five times as much?  Ten times as much?"

"Stop it!" said Rebecca.

"I'm sorry," Primus said, and swallowed a heaping spoonful of catjuice paste.  Right away, he injected himself with the syringe.  Terry ingested his pill, and Rebecca injected him.  Max contemplated his pill, from all sides.  He bounced it in his hand and smirked.

"If you don't take it, you're foams fodder," Nero said.

Max puckered his lips, put the pill in his mouth, and downed it with a large cup of the lemonade Rebecca had brought along.  His hand shook, spilling the drink all over his shirt.  When he was done he passed a hand through his white hair and gave his arm to Rebecca for the injection.

Nero put a hand in his pocket and pulled out a box.  "I still have my checkers.  Anyone want to play?"

Nobody took the challenge.  Interminable minutes of silence followed.  Terry's forehead sweated.  Max's eyes were closed, his hands in his lap.  Silence reigned, broken only by the rustling leaves of the yellowtrees.  An afternoon wind blew warm and fragrant, its mild gusts echoing through a million whispering branches and bushes.  Shadows moved across the ground, dodging and teasing each blade of grass.

The blast of a cavitation bang startled everyone out of their trances.

"Primus!"  Rebecca said.

Terry said, "He... Where—"  and fell forward in mid-sentence, his flesh appearing to mingle with the grass on which it lay.  Max fell like a deflated balloon.  Nero and Rebecca realized that Primus's body had vanished completely:  Primus was not there any more.

*

Two moons were high in the sky when Rebecca woke up.  Stars pricked the blackness, and the air was cooler.  She was highly aware of her breathing and tried to remember what had happened during the last few hours.  To her, it should have been daytime.  She rose to her knees, then sat back on her heels, holding her head in her hands.  She looked around.  The moons had become three.  No—they were still two.  There were people lying on the grass.  She drank from a lemonade bottle, three deep gulps, and coughed, resting on all fours.  Her hair fell to both sides of her head in a curtain.  She shook her head and the hair waved in fluid motions.  She giggled.  She did it again, that was really funny.  Someone coughed.

Why am I in a forest?
  she wondered. 
There might be animals out at night, predators!
  She looked up and found herself staring straight at a Ghost.  Somehow she thought it should have scared her, but it looked strange, it was different somehow.  She cocked her head to look at it from another point of view. 
What's the difference?
  The would-be Ghost moved closer.  Rebecca sat on her heels and stretched out her arms:  "Hi," she said, closing her eyes.  The Ghost touched her fingers and all sound disappeared:  the wind in the trees, the faint noise of the grass under her skin—gone.

...immortalimmortalimmortalimmortal...

What a strange thought had come into her head.

...
immortalimmortalimmortal.

Why were her arms tingling so much?  She opened her eyes and realized her arms were embedded up to their elbows into gelatin suspended in midair.  Her arms didn't appear to be solid.  Fear was creeping into her thoughts.

friendlovefriendlovefriendlove...

Another strange thought;  this one made fear stop growing, but didn't diminish it.  "What are you?"  she said, coming to her senses, trying to contain her urge to panic.

friendfatherfriendfatherfriendfather...

"Primus?" she whispered.  She realized that her legs were not touching the grass anymore.  Most of her body was wrapped in the ectoplasm.  The tingling was intense but not painful.  A flash of contentment pervaded her being.

*

Nero blinked, his eyes thick.  The moon—moons—were high.  A thin shade of pink touched the east horizon.  He tried to get up, and with effort sat on the grass.  Sprawled around him bodies—and something else.  He rubbed his eyes and coughed.

Night comes after day.  The last day, they were in danger.  Danger.  Bodies.

Something happened to Primus—what?  He rubbed his eyes, and  a thing of horrid beauty appeared:  A pyramid of Ghosts, meters and meters tall, rose from the grass somewhat apart from where two human bodies lay sprawled.  Dozens—hundreds—of Ghosts were packed against each other, and supported—Rebecca!  As if his realization had tolled the bell of dawn, the pyramid began dissolving in a pyrotechnic show of ectoplasmic shrapnel.  The pyramid became smaller until it was nothing but a rain of Ghosts, laying Rebecca on the grass.

Nero exhaled, realizing he needed air.  His relief matched his earlier horror.  He stood up, wobbling towards Rebecca.  She was warm and her pulse was regular.  He collapsed next to her.

Terry coughed.

*

Dawn was breaking without the noises of life that earth had taught its children to expect.  The breeze through the leaves was the only sound besides Nero speaking to Terry:  "You can't go back to town like that."

"I've got no time to lose.  Rebecca was OK after her ignition; I'll be well too."

"You've got bags under your eyes that will take days to go away," Rebecca said.

"Even if I stay, what can you do for me that my wife can't?"

Nero shrugged and looked at Rebecca;  she, too, shrugged.

"Max is dead, Primus is—dead?  What am I to do?"  Terry said.

"Take care of your family," Nero handed him a bag with some catjuice paste.  "They're young, they'll live."

Rebecca held out a box containing syringes and medication.  Terry took the goods.

"We need to bury Max."  Nero said.

"I'll help," Terry said.

They gathered rocks and mounded them around the body of Max Hopkins;  the old man had paid with his life for his spirit. 

The last stone laid, Terry broke the silence.  "I'm going now.  Call me if...  if you need me."  Then Terry, lips thin over his teeth, disappeared.

After Terry was gone, Nero said to Rebecca,  "You really don't remember what happened to you last night?"

"I do remember—I didn't want Terry to know.  I think Primus is alive, in a way."

"Let's go get Kebe; you tell me there."

They closed their eyes...

...and reopened them inside what was once Jenus and Kebe's home.  The entrance door had been kicked in.  Fragments of china and small utensils lay scattered on the floor.  The door to the bedroom was open.  Nero rushed in.

"She's gone!"  he said.

Rebecca followed.  "They took her."

"Damn!"  Nero said raising his clenched fists.  "I should never have left her alone, I should not have left her alone!"

"We'll get her back," Rebecca said.  "Nothing can touch us, remember?  And we have the key to every jail," she said, raising the bag of catjuice paste.

CHAPTER 45

"We need to get in and find out where they're keeping her," Nero whispered to Rebecca, walking past ConSEnt's building.  "The guards are garrison retreads—not ConSEnt's assassins."

"Don’t be cocky, all rifles are equally deadly."

"We must get Kebe out of there.  Too bad we've never been inside;  what do you say, shall we pose as informants?"

Rebecca feigned shock.  "You'd snitch on yourself?"

He smirked.  "You will, too.  That'll get us in, and once we remember we can get back any time we want;  but first, Kebe."

They walked to the understated main entrance.  One of the two guards stopped them.  "Access is controlled now, who are you and what do you want?"

"Frank and Rebecca Goldsmith," Nero said, cursing his poor imagination.  "We've got info on catjuice."

The guard removed his helmet to wipe his sweaty forehead.  "Two more snitches, eh?"

"Must be hot with all that gear on," Rebecca said.

The guard nodded.  "New regulations.  What info have you got?  Better be good—rumor is they caught a pretty big fish last night..."

Nero's heart skipped.

"...that must have juicy intelligence.  Seems she don't talk much though.  What’s your story?"

Nero and Rebecca looked at each other.

"I..."  Rebecca said, rummaging in a deep pocket, "I've got a sample of catjuice."  She produced a speck of white paste on the palm of her hand, in a tiny fragment of waxed paper.

The second guard burst out laughing.  "That," he said between fits, "is one of the best I've heard so far."

Rebecca looked at him with a gaze that would burn a hole through concrete.  "Then try some!"  she said, offering him the paste, "or risk losing the best lead of the day."

The guard sobered up, looked at his peer, who nodded and gestured with the gun for them to go to the Citizen Relations waiting room at the end of a deserted corridor.

Nero and Rebecca walked into the building.  "Together or alone?"  Nero said.

"Alone," Rebecca said.

Nero saw a gents room, waved at Rebecca, and left her.  The door of the restroom closed behind him on a spring.  Inside, Nero took a good look around, entered a stall, observing the walls and the head to impress it in his mind, then returned to the corridor.  Rebecca had disappeared.  He walked slowly, feeling the doors.  One was ajar, opening onto an empty office.  Nero entered quickly.

Checking the drawers of the desk, he found a sonic stunner—a gentle weapon except at close range;  not much, but better than nothing.  He searched the papers that littered the desk: food provisions and clothing lists.

Food provisions.

He picked up the phone, a cheap voice-only contraption, and dialed the operator.

"Hello," Nero scrambled to read the nameplate on the desk, "Sgt. Alonza speaking."

"How're you doing Bo, you sound funny—you OK?"

Nero coughed and spoke as if chewing his tongue.  "Yeah, yeah.  Look, I'm doing provisioning; do you have a head count on the guests in the slammer?"

"Bo, what's the matter with you?  You sure you're OK?"

Nero gripped the phone so hard he thought he'd break it.  "Leave my damn health to myself and gimme the head count, shit!"

"Chill out man; let's see, there's the seven in the basement, and that's it—no, there's a new one on the cell on the top floor, and—"

Steps.  Nero hung up in mid-sentence;  the door was opening.  Nero closed his eyes...

...and was standing in a stall of the gents room, silent and empty, with a sonic stunner in hand and one goal in life:  make it to the top floor.  He got into the corridor and walked toward the stairwell.  He ran past Alonza's office, overhearing one side of a phone conversation:  "I called you?  You called me!  Prisoners?  Who gives a shit about pr—"

Kebe was on the top floor.  He started climbing.  First floor;  then second of five, third, all was going well.  The stairs were wide, and he had a now a partial sight of the landing on the fifth floor, so he could save himself the climb...

...and reappeared breathing down the neck of an assassin. 
Damn!
  Nero thought as he armed the stunner.  He fired it point blank into the assassin's neck.  Unconscious, the soldier turned and collapsed on the floor.  Nero rested against the wall.

Prudence, Rebecca said.  Prudence, Nero,
he thought.

"What’s up over there?"  a voice yelled around a blind corner.  Nero grunted loudly what he hoped would sound like a reassuring reply.  Bending over the stunned assassin, he lifted his sidearm, a fully automatic needle gun.  He peeked around the stairwell corner: about two-thirds of the way into a broad hallway, another assassin guarded a door.  Steps sounded from the stairs:  Nero flattened himself on the wall.  The steps halted and resumed;  their sound was gentle, not from boots.

He peeked out:  Rebecca was climbing up.  Nero leaned over the banister, motioning Rebecca to hurry up and hush.  He showed her the corridor and the assassins.  With hand gestures he explained he wanted to get into the room.  Rebecca nodded.

She walked boldly into the hallway, unresponsive to Nero hand sweeps and silent signals.

"Stop there!" the assassin ordered Rebecca, his weapon aimed and ready to fire.

Rebecca stopped.  "Oh—I'm sorry, I must be in the wrong place," she said, her voice firm.  She turned, and reappeared next to Nero as a shot opened a crater in the wall.  Rebecca rushed down the stairs, making a lot of noise.  Nero heard the guard running.  Rebecca's footfalls vanished, the assassin's boots sounded closer...

...and moving away, as Nero stood in front of the locked door, which had an armored glass window in it.  Nero peeked through it...

...then he was on the other side.  A beam of sunlight through a slit-thin window in the outer wall lit up the cell.  Nero knelt next to Kebe's limp body, which lay along the wall, her face against the baseboard.  He probed her limbs gently for broken bones, then carefully rolled her  onto her back.  Her face was a mask of blood, her beautiful green eyes badly bruised, her forehead and cheeks purple, her dark hair encrusted with dried blood.  Her mouth fell open, and he saw that her tongue had been chewed.  He sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His eyes—what was the matter with his eyes?  He couldn't see clearly.  He blinked, and tears dropped onto the tiles.

He dried his eyes with his sleeve.  She had been savagely beaten—what else did they do to her?  He rolled up Kebe's sleeves, showing angry blue welts on her skin and needle marks in her arms.  But she was still breathing.

Nero, blinking to maintain vision, tried to arrange Kebe so he could load her light frame onto his shoulders.  As he moved her, she moaned.

"No," she whispered, attempting to shake her head, unable to open her swollen eyes.

"I'll take you away."

"Nr?"  she whispered.

"It's me, Kebe.  I'm Nero."

Her broken lips moved as if saying,
I got you, at last
.  Her hands rose, in a grimace of pain, to touch Nero's face and follow his profile.  "I lv a," she said.

"I love you too," Nero caressed her face.

"...die," Kebe whispered.

"No!  You won’t!  I’ll get you out of here."

"Prms... Prms e drm wi liv."

Nero cradled her head, saying in a broken voice:  "I promise you, I swear that your dream will live.  I promise you!"  He was sobbing.  "Don’t die, Kebe, don’t die."

Nero raised her light body onto his shoulder.  Kebe murmured in pain at the handling.  Nero fired at the door lock and kicked the door open.  A siren went off.  A band of assassins burst through a door and saw him carrying Kebe away.  He fired a burst and dodged back into Kebe's cell.  He felt for her pulse—none.  The assassins, outside, were firing at the wall.  She was dead.  He laid down gently her lifeless body and slid to the floor sobbing in loud rants.