Eternity Road

19

The world kept trying to turn on its side and Chaka didn’t care whether she lived or died. Avila’s anxious face hovered over her. There was a damp cloth on her forehead and her blouse was loosened and Avila was telling her to rest.

The daylight hurt.

“Quait’s awake, too.” The words were only out there, hanging in air, devoid of meaning.

Quait. “Where is he?”

“Still in the bank. The table won’t let them go.” Avila almost managed a grin.

Chaka tried to get up but her head lurched and her stomach fell away. She brought up her breakfast. Avila gave her water to sip and reapplied the cloth, and she began to feel better.

The sun was directly overhead. She’d been out a couple of hours. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

“Actually,” said Avila, “I have an idea. Wait here.”

That was a joke. As if she could go anywhere.

Avila disappeared and Chaka closed her eyes. She just lay quietly, breathing, feeling as if all her muscles had come unstrung. When Avila came back Chaka saw she’d changed into clean clothes. She wore a new pair of dark blue linen trousers, a green blouse, and a white vest. “Do I look like a police official?” she asked.

Despite everything, Chaka giggled. “Try to frown,” she said.

“The blouse is clerical. I was supposed to give it back when I left.” She smiled. “I’ve always thought I looked good in it.”

Chaka shook her head. “It’ll never work.”

“You have a better idea?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Well,” said Avila, “we know the table’s eyesight is pretty good. Maybe it’s not too smart.” She bent over Chaka. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.”

“Good. Sit tight. I’ll be back in a few minutes. I hope.”

“Are you going in now?”

“Yes. I can get in the rear door. Which is a good thing. It wouldn’t be seemly for the police to have to climb through the window.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” said Chaka. “We’re going to wind up with three people inside.”

Avila looked at her. The wind was picking up. It was out of the west, and the forest swayed in its embrace. “I’m open for suggestions.”

“Wait it out. When the police don’t come it’ll get tired and let them go. Anyway, what am I supposed to do when it adds you to the collection?”

“Throw rocks,” said Avila. “Seriously, if that does happen, go to the alternate plan.”

“Which is?”

“Your idea. Wait. Take care of the horses and wait for it to get bored.”

Five minutes later Avila squeezed through a cluster of wisp-berry bushes and strode briskly in the back entrance of the bank. She was carrying her wedge concealed in the palm of her hand. You never knew.

“Somebody here call police?” she asked.

Both men were seated on the floor. But Avila’s gaze locked on the dust and bones. It was her first glimpse of the skeletal remains, and her stride faltered as its significance struck home. Quait’s back was to the counter, and he looked dazed and discouraged. When he saw her he registered disapproval and shook his head no. Flojian had the presence of mind to show the hangdog reaction of a man about to be hauled off to incarceration. “Yes,” said the overhead voice.

“I’m Investigator Avila Kap,” she said, hoping she’d guessed right on the title. “I’ll take charge of them now.” The table made no move to back away. She looked severely at the two on the floor. “Trying to rob the bank, were we?” She reached behind Flojian, took him by the back of his neck, and raised him to his feet. Simultaneously she motioned Quait up. “This is a lawful town, and we don’t have much patience with your type.” She hoped she sounded sufficiently official. “Lei’s go, you,” she told Quait, pushing him toward the door.

“Just a moment, Investigator Kap.” The voice was flat. Emotionless. “Please give the authorization code.”

She looked at Quait and Flojian, at the ceiling with its hidden voice, and at the three-legged table, arthropodic and serene. She made a pretense of fumbling in her pocket. “I seem to have forgot it,” she said. At that moment, as unobtrusively as she could, she aimed the wedge at the table and squeezed it. The weapon vibrated slightly. Aside from that, nothing happened.

“We require the authorization code before we can release the prisoners, ” said the voice. “Policy memorandum six-eight-one-echo slash one-four, dated March 11. 2067.”

“I’ll have to go back to my office to get it,” she said. “Why don’t I take the prisoners with me and I’ll send the information back to you.”

“Why don’t you call your office?”

Avila imagined herself leaning out the window and yodeling for the authorization code. “There’s something else I have to check on,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Leave the malefactors.”

“Righl,” she said. She signaled Quait and Flojian that she would find a way, and started for the rear exit.

“Inspector Kap.”

She stopped. Turned around.

“I would not presume to tell you how to perform your job, but these two look desperate. You might want to bring assistance when you return.”

“I knew it was dumb.”

“Okay. What’s your suggeslion?”

“I told you. Wait it out.”

“That’s already been tried.”

“Say again?”

“There are bones in there from the bank’s last visitors.”

“Oh.” Chaka shook her head. “We need a new approach.”

“Good.”

“Think about Mike.”

“What about Mike?”

“Gray boxes. Maybe we can find its gray box and shut it off at the source.”

Avila’s eyes registered respect. “That’s a good idea. You think it would be in the building?”

“We have to assume it is. If it isn’t, we’re not going to find it.”

Avila sat down on a fallen log. “There’re closed doors in the passageways. They’re the only places I can think of to look. But they’re almost certainly locked. Or warped. Or both. So unless we can find a way to guess the right door and take it down in a couple of seconds, I don’t think the prospect is good.”

“How many doors?”

Avila closed her eyes and pictured the corridors. “Six,” she said. “Or maybe eight.”

“Pity you didn’t pay more attention.”

“I was busy. Why don’t you stick your head in the window and look? If you push in a little bit you can see down one hallway.”

“You made your point,” Chaka said. She tried to get to her feet but was driven back by a wave of vertigo.

“The weapon is a little like the wedges,” said Avila.

“Yeah,” said Chaka. She was damp with perspiration, and her eyes were closed. “Except that the thing they have means business.” ‘It doesn’t kill,” Avila said.

“No. But it takes the fight out of you.” She lay quietly for several minutes, and Avila thought she’d gone to sleep. But Chaka took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and eased into sitting position.

“Feeling better?”

“A little. Listen, how about if we just walk in and jump the thing. That ought to work.”

“That sounds like a last resort,” said Avila. “I might have a better idea.” She looked through the window. The table was still standing motionless in the middle of the lobby, apparently watching its victims. “It strikes me there’s a humanity in these procedures that we might be able to turn to our advantage.”

“A humanity?”

“The weapons don’t kill. The ones in the bank don’t. The ones Mike gave us don’t.”

“But they scramble your head pretty well.”

“Chaka, you and Quait were shot and are still alive. That shows a reluctance to kill. Maybe that reluctance will give us a chance.”

Chaka strolled in through the back door, carrying a leather bag, trying to appear simultaneously casual and concerned. She took several steps into the lobby, stopped, looked around, carefully smothered her reaction to the piles of bones, and pretended to spot the two men on the floor. “I’m Dr. Milana,” she said to Quait. “Have you been injured?”

“Yes,” said Quait, who looked puzzled but was smart enough to play along. “Broken ribs, I think.”

“Who’s in charge here?” she asked loudly. “And who,” asked the ceiling, “summoned you. Doctor?”

“We were told there was a medical emergency here.” She knelt beside Quait and put her ear to his chest. “Good thing I happened to be in the neighborhood. This man has an irregular heartbeat. He’s going into Quadristasis.” Quait groaned.

“We’ll have to get him to surgery immediately.” She turned to Flojian and peered into his eyes. “This one, too. Injured iris. Can you walk, sir?”

“I think so, Doctor.”

“Just a minute. No one goes anywhere until the police get here.”

The voice came from above somewhere, but beyond that she couldn’t narrow it down. The role called for her to glare indignantly, but it was hard to do when there was no target.

She tried anyhow. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What’s your authority here?”

“Technoguard Security Systems. We’re hired—”

“All right, Technoguard Security Systems. One of these two men may die unless he gets immediate medical care. The other may suffer permanent eye damage. I’ve no intention of allowing that to happen. So if you want to stop us from leaving you’ll have to shoot me too.”

“I don’t think so, Doctor.”

Chaka helped Quait to his feet. She signaled for Flojian to follow, and began edging toward the door.

“If you persist, I will simply target the two malefactors again.”

“If you do that, you’ll probably kill this one. Is that what you want?”

“The weapon is nonlethal.”

“Nonlethal? Whose bones are these?”

“They belong to previous malefactors.”

“Whom you killed.”

“They died awaiting the police. I merely apprehended them.”

“You killed them. Why were you holding them for the police?”

“Because they tried to rob the bank.”

“And why is that a reason to have them arrested?”

“Don’t be foolish. Bank robbery is a violation of the criminal code.”

“And I put it to you that murder is a violation of the criminal code. You should be turned over to the police. For capital crimes.”

She kept moving.

“It’s not true.”

“Of course it’s true. And you’re about to do it again. You’re determined to kill these men by keeping them here and refusing them the medical assistance they desperately need.”

“That is not so.”

“It is so. And you know it is so.”

She’d reached the rear corridor. The table stood swaying but otherwise motionless in the middle of the lobby. Its weapon had not tracked them. It was still aimed toward the counter.

“Police have been summoned.” The voice went to a higher pitch.

“Summon them again,” said Chaka. “We’ve caught a murderer.”

“Brilliant,” said Quait. They walked away from the bank in a jubilant mood, shaking hands and embracing all around.

“That wasn’t even the plan,” laughed Chaka.

“That’s right,” said Avila. “The plan was for her to distract them long enough for me to make a run into the side corridor. There was a decent chance that the device that controls the table would be behind one of the doors. I was hoping to reach it and shut it off. But she was doing so well, I stayed put.”

“I saw the doors,” said Flojian. “What makes you think they wouldn’t have been locked?”

“If I couldn’t get in, or the table came after me, Chaka had a rock in the bag.”

“She was going to hit it with a rock?” asked Flojian.

“Yes,” said Chaka. “It was a big rock.” She showed them. There’d be a lot going on, and we thought I might get a good shot at it.”

They all laughed.

“Listen,” Avila said, “it’s not as desperate as it sounds. We had a backup plan too.”

“What was that?”

Chaka did a double thumbs-up. “You were great in there, Flojian,” she said. And she hugged him. “The backup idea was to build a fire outside the window. There’s a stiff wind, and we might have been able to get enough black smoke inside to shake things up. Maybe even set off some sort of anti-fire system. Who knows? But we’d have got a lot of confusion.”

“Confusion?” Quait looked back at the heavy shrubbery surrounding the building. “You’d have got a conflagration. Those bushes would have gone up like dry timber.”

“Well, yes,” she said reluctantly. “We knew that. That’s why it was the backup plan.”

“To the other wild idea,” laughed Flojian.

Avila sighed. “I wouldn’t make fun of it. She got you out.”

The strange sort of half-life that had generated the sound in the pole and the response in the bank seemed to infest Ann Arbor. Lights came on outside a stone house as they approached, and blinked off as the last horse (hurried along by Chaka) passed. Elsewhere, a few bars of soft music drifted from a three-story brick building and repeated over and over until they were out of earshot. In a glade, Flojian leaned against a forty-foot-long metallic fence and was startled when a bell rang and three gates sprang open. (There were a dozen gates altogether in the fence, but the others stayed motionless.)

It was restless country and they were glad to be out of it.

They traveled late that evening, moving before a line of thunderclouds, and found shelter in a small Roadmaker church. It was an ideal situation, with a decent supply of wood left over from the last visitor, and a roof that was sufficiently decayed to let out smoke, but whole enough to protect them from the storm. The front door was missing, but that was okay because they were sharing the building with the animals. They watered and fed the horses and rubbed them down and then relaxed wearily in front of a fire.

They had no ale or wine left with which to toast the good fortune of the day, but Quait produced his Walloon. His fingers danced across the strings, and he invited requests.

“A good camp song,” suggested Chaka.

“Indeed, you shall have it, my lady,” he said. “Avila, do you know ‘The Golden Company’?”

Avila held up her pipe and essayed a few bars. And Quait sang:

They sang as many verses as they knew and then switched to “Barrel Up,” and changed pace with “Tan.” Fueled by their sense of loss, mingled with the exhilaration of the day’s escape, the evening became an emotional event. They observed moments of silence for Silas and for Jon Shannon; raised cups of tea to Chaka, “our glorious rescuer”; and laughed over how people back home would react to hearing how they had outwitted a table.

“When she announced that she was Doctor Milana and that thing took her seriously,” said Flojian, “I was barely able to keep a straight face.” He went on to draw the lesson: “The intelligences that haunt the Roadmaker ruins aren’t really very bright. If there are any more incidents, we need to keep our heads.”

Chaka noticed that Quait grew increasingly quiet during the latter part of the evening, and seemed almost distracted when Avila announced that she was going to call it a night.

“Before you do,” said Quait, “I have something to say.” His voice was off-tone. Jittery.

The firelight created an aura around him. He looked at Chaka for a long moment, and tugged at the drawstrings of his shirt. “I wouldn’t want to be like the trooper in the song and miss my chance. I wouldn’t want to ride away one day and leave you—” he was still watching her, his gray eyes very round and very intense,”—leave you waving good-bye.”

A stillness came over the moment. Light and shadow drifted around the crumbling walls. Chaka discovered she was barely breathing.

“I would be very happy if, when we return to Illyria, you would marry me.”

The stiffness melted out of his expression and she read a new message: There, I’ve said it and nothing can make me take it back.

Rain was falling steadily, beating on the roof, pouring through here and there into the old building. “This is a surprise, Quait,” she said, stalling for time to collect her thoughts. She flicked back to Illyria and brought up an image of Raney, but he wouldn’t come clear.

She took his hand and squeezed it. “I think so. Yes. I would like very much to marry you, Quait.”