Time's Dark Laughter Part 24

"I will be fine," Beauty continued. "My legs do not hurt hi this cold."

"Prepare yourself," said Ollie. He grabbed Beauty under the shoulders and dragged him around to the ventral side of the flaccid Mammoth. Once again, the pain was more than Beauty could bear, and he mercifully lost consciousness.

Ollie took his knife and pierced the Mammoth's abdomen just under the breastbone; then with ripping, halting cuts, he extended his incision down the entire length of the sad animal's belly. The steaming guts puffed through the seam. The spinal cord had been severed, though, so the animal felt no pain. With great difficulty-for his own hands were now blue and numb with cold-Ollie dragged and stuffed Beauty, who remained unconscious, into the belly of the beast. Soon, only the Centaur's head remained outside the huge abdominal cavity. With that, Ollie climbed in, easing himself among the warm, wet loops of intestine. When his head, too, remained alone outside in the frigid gale, he pulled together two flaps of woolly skin and closed the rent he had made, holding the incision together by sticking Beauty's barbed arrows through the opposing edges of flesh, stapling the Mammoth from the inside.

As the wind and cold increased, Ollie pulled even their heads inside, leaving only their mouths and noses exposed to the air. And so they spent the night: sleeping fitfully, sucking on the bitter-cold wind from their refuge deep in the bowels of the Mammoth. They were exhausted and bat- tered, but finally, warm. If Beauty kept still, he felt no pain. In the end, their only awareness of that long night was hi the sound of the baying wind without; the creature's slow, almost serene respirations within; and its heartbeat, the rhythmic, resonant mmm mmp, surrounding and filling them, lulling them at last to sleep.

When Ollie awoke, he was first aware that the Mammoth's heart had stopped; then, that its breathing had stopped. He pulled apart the skin flaps that retained him, and rolled out into two feet of snow.

The wind still blew hard, but the snow had ceased falling. The day was sunny. Ollie washed the blood and fluids off himself in- the dry snow, then bundled up in the coat he had le.ft outside during the night. Still, his face was frozen hi seconds, and he broke the ice off his hands only by moving his fingers constantly.

Beauty awoke. "Thank you," he said.

Ollie shrugged.

Beauty went on. "I will stay here. The poor beast is dead finally, but his corpse will keep me warm another day at least. Now, you must go."

Ollie nodded. "I'll come back," he said.

"Of course you will." Beauty stared at him hard, a farewell stare. "Now go."

Ollie walked into the wind. The few hours of sleep he had stolen couldn't make up for the total enervation he felt, but it was a new day, and he walked on. He walked down a gentle grade, and then up a steep rise-which he practically had to crawl, the wind being so strong, the ice so featureless. At the top of the rise, he looked down.

Less than a hundred yards away he saw the vision: a vertical crystal wall of ice; inside it, a glowing red flame, like a resistant ember deep hi the iceberg. It was the Mo-sian Firecaves.

Ollie wept at the sight of it, fat, salty tears that froze as soon as they formed.

Inflated by the strength of salvation, he walked toward the glacier.

With difficulty he traversed the ice mountain's western face, coming finally to a gla.s.sy plateau, which he slid across on his backside for a hundred feet. This brought him to the lip of a sheer creva.s.se that looked down to a flaming volcanic pit two hundred feet below. Ollie was unsure where to go next.

But his thinking had become sluggish. Finally, remembering the handholds Jasmine had told him to look for, he discovered a series of cloth-covered rungs tracking down the northern wall of the ice shaft, toward what looked like the bottom of the fiery pit itself. Slowly, the boy made his descent.

Twice he almost fell, so weak was his grip. But the fires below warmed him as he went deeper, and soon it was hotter than he would have liked. Somewhere farther down, magma gurgled thickly. And then, just when he couldn't tolerate the heat another moment, he came to an opening in the ice. The glacier was glistening with its own melt here, and constantly refreezing-so that Ollie had to be particularly careful how he stepped, for one slip away was the pit.

He made it into the portal, though, and rested there a few minutes, trembling and weak. When he had his legs back, he stood, and found himself looking along a thin tunnel of ice. He walked the narrow channel of translucent whiteness until it turned right, and down; and so he followed it. Hall after hall of the cold aqueous crystal, ever deeper, ever colder. Sometimes pulsing orange flames could be seen indistinctly through ice walls whose thickness Ollie could hardly guess; sometimes, all was blackness.

Until he came to a well-lit chamber of cavernous dimensions, in the middle of which stood a man. Ollie approached him.

"I am Leeds," said the man. "And who might you be?" He wasn't like any man Ollie had ever seen before. His body was Human-shaped, but only roughly so-yet flowing and graceful. The flesh was clear as bubbly water, so the brain and nerves could almost be seen inside. The face was without features, the hands without fingers, the very shape without . . . definition. Like a partially melted ice sculpture.

"My name is Ollie. My friend, Beauty, a Centaur, is hiding in a dead Mammoth a hundred yards back. His legs are broken-he needs help. I have a message for your leader from my friend Jasmine, the Neuroman."

At Jasmine's name, this ice man's attention seemed to focus more, though it was difficult to say how. "And what is this message?"

Ollie took the vial from his belt. "These are the cells from a creature too dangerous to live. Jasmine instructed me to tell you a word: Plasmid."

At the mention of this secret word, the creature took Ollie's hand in his mitt and led the boy to a ma.s.sive, frozen wall. A few moments later the wall opened, and the two entered the City of Ice.

Leeds was a Neuroman, it turned out. They were almost all Neuromans here. A lot of them were Cognons- Neuromans with electrodes implanted in their cognitive centers, which they could stimulate at will. Most were, among other things, genetic engineers. A few robots lived here, too; but they functioned simply as manual laborers.

The city itself was a series of ice cathedrals, carved inside the gigantic frozen ocean that formed the glacier. They were great, flame-shaped rooms, etched away from the inside by the Firecaves lacing the area-volcanic holes that bubbled and hissed, and supplied all the energy the city needed to drive its generators.

Thirty or forty Neuromans lived there now, mostly working on experiments that interested them, particularly experiments hi bioengineering, senescence, geophysics. They greeted Ollie's entrance with some consternation.

Visitors were few. Jasmine's stay was well remembered-they had repaired her body, and she had told them stories. And they hadn't been visited since. Ollie's appearance now, with the emergency codeword on his lips and an agar-tube tissue culture, was cause for alarm.

They immediately called a meeting of the entire city, and asked Ollie to tell his story completely-which he did, after insisting that the robots be dispatched to retrieve Beauty in the interim. Which was done.

When the tale was finished, they all debated and considered the issue for an hour, finally deciding that the matter was indeed urgent. Whereupon they took the vial from Ol-lie, and went to work on it in the labs that very afternoon.

Beauty was brought in, and his legs were set. Then there was nothing to do but wait.

For a week Ollie explored the City of Ice. How they had tunneled into, connected, and embellished the palaces was a glorious mystery to him. It was as if everything he saw were made of diamonds and pearls. And so big! Thousands might have lived there, instead of the few dozen who did.

There was a giant central generator, powered by the forced steam that was so readily available amidst all the fire and ice. Four great cathedrals cornered the power station, each a laboratory devoted to a different science or philosophy. At the base of each floor was a crackling fire pit, whose heat had clearly effected the hollowing out of the cathedral in which it was centered, for each ceiling was arched and peaked, some in the shape of tongues of flame, some with tiaras of exploding ice bubbles intermingled among majestic icicle stalact.i.tes. Concentric levels of smaller rooms ab.u.t.ted each major cathedral, serving myriad functions, from conferences to gaming to meditating to sleeping.

Ollie examined them with the curiosity of a cautious Cat. He maintained an intense interest in all new environments-primarily from a survival perspective-and the Firecaves were unlike anything he had seen before. Most of the furniture was ice-tables, divans, beds-and all the decor consisted of variations on the theme. Ice sculpture was everywhere, abstract and figurative. Stalact.i.tes were frequently cultured-sometimes into fantastic shapes, sometimes tinted like exotic jewelry. Thick ice windows looked out on orange-red lava pits that churned and boiled like the soul of the planet. Ollie slowly became entranced with the marvels and, after a couple of days, even allowed himself the luxury of wonder.

"At the base of each floor was a crackling fire-pit, whose heat had clearly effected the hollowing out of the cathedral in which it was centered-for each ceiling was arched and peaked . . ."

Beauty, meanwhile, recuperated. Slowly. The doctors told him it would be weeks before he would walk, months before he would run. Ollie spent time with him, and Leeds spent time with both, listening to stories of the outside world, its latest calamities and catastrophes. When Ollie asked about results in the laboratory, he was told only that progress was being made.

At the end of the first week, Phe arrived with news of Aba. Phe was Aba's elder sister-a giant, big-bosomed, jolly Vampire with frizzy yellow hair and a booming laugh.

The story she told was that Aba's cries for help had been heard.

"By who?" asked Ollie.

"By me b.l.o.o.d.y self, is who," she thundered, and her great b.r.e.a.s.t.s shook. "The Baby-Sire came down not twenty yards from the back door to Lon's den-may his spirit never clot. Me and Heart-Sure flashed right out and ended that poor Accident's tenure." Again the laugh. Heart-Sire was her name for their older brother, Lev. "So Baby-Sire, he's recovering from his injuries now. Gave me his vial of cells and told me where to go with 'em, and here I am, then." She bowed.

"What were you doing in Lon's den?" Beauty asked her.

"We live there, Blood. Me and Heart-Sire and Lon's old harem and about half of Bal's old harem. See, Bal was this bad-blood Sire who-"

"How's Aba now?" asked Ollie. He still felt guilty about his treatment of Aba, though his only conscious sensation was of a painful itch around the healing scar where the ruby had been torn from his chest. Unconsciously he scratched at it now, and winced.

"Oh, fine, fine," beamed Phe. "The boy's got red blood. The plan is now, it is, for me to fly you back to your people with whatever weapon these clever bloods devise. Baby-Sire, he'll come along directly, when he's up to heme."

"Then there's nothing to do but wait for these experiments to end."

"Wait for these thin-bloods, it is. And wait I can. I drank myself silly last night, and I wouldn't touch a gout of blood now for two weeks if you dropped a b.l.o.o.d.y hemophiliac at my feet, and that's the b.l.o.o.d.y truth!" At which she laughed and laughed until the ice halls echoed.

But she didn't have long to wait. The next day, the genetic engineers had the solution. Three solutions, actually, in aerosol spray cans.

"It's a virus," said Leeds. "It's designed to attack a very small segment of unique DNA we found in this child's cells. It's highly specific that way-pathologic only to creatures with that specific configuration of nucleic acids. And as far as we know, she's the only creature with that configuration."

"What'll it do?" asked Ollie.

"Well, it's quite virulent. Has a very short prodrome, then progresses rapidly to encephalitis and death."

"And how do we give it to her?"

"These cans produce a good airborne vector. Just spray them in her general direction. She'll get the message."

So they left. Ollie said good-bye to Beauty, telling him they would be back hi four or five weeks, when Beauty was well enough to travel. Beauty nodded and wished him well. Seeing Ollie go gave him a feeling of monumental isolation such as he had never had before. The thought of being left behind, in the hollow ice caves, in the care of the coldblooded ice-men, was overwhelming to the point of tears. To have come so far, only to become everyone else's fond memory, seemed unendurable.

"I wish us all well," the Centaur added in whisper. He had, at once, an oppressive sense of loss, as if his world were dissolving before and around him. He saw it all-his past, present, and future-through a darkening, reducing lens, and heard the voices of his dreams and memories as fading echoes in a twilight time. He grabbed Ollie and hugged the boy fiercely to his breast-Ollie, the messenger of Beauty's muted well-wishes, the trusted bearer of the Centaur's final touch: this, somehow, Beauty believed.

Then Phe took Ollie under her arm as lightly as if he were paper, stuck the aerosol cans in her belt, walked out onto the snow-swept ice plateau that covered the city, and roared: "Now, hold on to your bones, me blood. This is what we call a nonstop flight!"

And with that, she soared into the wind.

CHAPTER 18: Journeys into Darkness.

The morning after Ollie and the others left the Bookery camp for the City of Ice with the child's cells in culture, Joshua was awakened from sleep by a voice in his brain.

Father, come.

He walked to the City. There was no gate, as such, any more. Most of the rocks that const.i.tuted the high outer wall had melted, then resolidified into an amorphous gray ma.s.s that generally surrounded what had been the City.

A city no more. Houses burned, streets in shambles. Creatures wandered aimlessly; weeping, snarling, vacant. A bank of brown fog hovered ominously over the river that coursed through the yard. Joshua crossed the teetering Bridge of Whispers, and entered the castle.

There was a snowstorm in the main hallway, turning to hail and sleet in the stairwell. All was quiet by the second floor. Quickly, he went to her chamber.

Again, she had changed. A full array of feathers spread gloriously along her arms, now, looking like wings, with her strange little clawed hands at the wingtips. Red, gold, green. Down her back, too, and up her neck to fan out over the top of her head in a bright burgundy plumage. Her beak was longer, the lips beneath it fuller. Her eyes were a black fire.

"Welcome, creator." She projected a new sense to him, twisting her words thickly: it made Josh feel almost drugged.

"h.e.l.lo. How are you today?"

"/ am powerful today. You made something very potent when you molded me. You should feel joyous. Come, touch your creation. Feel what you've made."

Josh was confused, hesitant. "What.. . what do you ..."

"Come, touch me, creator, see what you . . . Wait, why do you shun me? You pull away, you . . . What's that? What did you . . . You did something to me. What was it?" Her thoughts were stern, now. Josh recoiled.

"I ... I didn't do . . ."

She leapt to the tall back of the throne and perched there, glowering. "What did you do to me? You hide something, you keep it from me-what is it? You must tell me, you cannot hide it, your thoughts are murky, but your guilt is clear."

Joshua shrank under the pressure of her eyes. "I don't, I don't know, she said something about clones, I think, I don't . . ."

"Clones! What of clones? She who? Who said this, who?"

"Jasmine, she said she wanted your cells, in case . . ."

"Say it! Say what you did!"

"WE took your cells," he whispered. "I'm not sure why."

The child looked perplexed, dark. "Who is this Jasmine who wants my cells?"

"A friend, she's a friend of-"

"I will kill her."

"No!" Josh blurted out. "You can't harm her-you promised you wouldn't! You swore you wouldn't ever hurt me or mine. And she's mine. And I forbid you to harm her."

The child rocked on her perch, simmering. The air around her crackled. Finally: "Why do you want to clone me? Am / so unloved! You wish to do me harm?"

"We wish you no harm if you mean to do good in the world."

"But a clone, is it. To do me battle, do you think? That would be a battle to burn the planet. You would all lose that battle, creator."

"Perhaps to reason with you in your own language."

"Ahhh, to speak in the tongue of the electron, the language of the wave particle. How primitive your words in comparison. What nuances you miss, what depths you cannot even imagine. My clone; Mother-Ether, what a thought! I would never be alone again. My sister, my bride. My self."

"I ... I don't know if ..."

"I can focus better, now, you know. I know how ... if I only knew on what"

"You need company, I think," said Josh. "Someone to talk to."

"You see through me, don't you?" she regarded him closely.

"What do you-"

"You know my mind."

"I know your confusion. I can feel your distress."

"Father, what should / do?"

"What do you want?"

"It's in my mind to destroy all things."

"Why? Why would you-"