77 Shadow Street (61 page)

The second small Pogromite launched at Bailey. He backed rapidly away at first sight, firing four rounds point-blank, scrambling its face, punching out the back of its skull. It collapsed at his feet, mostly brainless but spasming, snapping at his shoes. He kicked it aside, swung toward the pool-room door, and a third beast appeared, bigger than the others.

Something had seemed familiar about the first two, and now Silas knew why. As the Pogromite that had been formed out of the substance of Sally Hollander had vaguely resembled her, so this creature bore a subtle resemblance to Margaret Pendleton, the wife of Andrew, who with her daughter and son had gone missing in 1897. Silas had seen photographs of the woman and her children—and these were the things that they had become. This Pogromite was the size of Padmini, whom it at once attacked.

Twyla Trahern

The sudden eruption of the creatures from the lap-pool doorway distracted Twyla for an instant, and in that moment the Pogromite from the HVAC vault burst through the doorway behind her. So fast, so strong, it swept her aside with one arm, knocked her off her feet, and the gun flew from her hand. She landed on her left hip, pain shot the length of that leg. Sparkle screamed, Iris screamed. Twyla rolled over, sat up, saw the gray beast in the yellow gloom tear the rifle with the fixed bayonet out of Winny’s hands and toss it away. Pogromite. It called itself a Pogromite. She scrambled toward the pistol, something treacherous underfoot, oily fragments of glowing fungi that had fallen from the ceiling, as slick as ice. The Pogromite seized Winny by his arms, lifted him high, as though making an offering of him to some god of blood, and abruptly the Pendleton roared with psychotic voices, a psychic wave of hatred slammed over Twyla as she snatched up the pistol, convulsing her with its power, yellow light seemed to flare within her head, so that reflexively she fired the pistol, bullet-shattered bits of concrete prickling her face—

Tom Tran

With one six-fingered hand, almost quicker than the eye, the thing seized Padmini by the throat, and with the other hand, it encircled her, pulling her against it. Her gun was trapped between them, she squeezed off two shots into its abdomen, but it was more machine than flesh, only head shots—taking out the logic circuits—would stop it. The Pogromite snapped at her face as it dragged her backward, and she twisted her head away, avoiding one bite, then a second.

When the creature dragged her across the threshold into the lap-pool
room, Tom followed close, the Beretta in a two-hand grip, hoping for a clear shot at the thing’s hateful face, afraid to fire because of the way Padmini whipped her head side to side as she desperately tried to avoid being bitten. Dr. Ignis was standing to one side, his face twisted in a lunatic expression that was half terror and half triumph. Operating strictly on instinct, Tom shot Ignis in the right shoulder, and the many voices of the One exploded from every wall, from out of the pool, shrieking in rage. To protect Ignis, the Pogromite threw Padmini aside and sprang at Tom. Although not fully automatic, the pistol would fire as rapidly as he could squeeze the trigger, and the creature’s face was nearly dissolved when it crashed into him and knocked him off his feet.

Twyla Trahern

—Winny lifted over the Pogromite’s head, the sweet lamb to the high altar, but then brought down face-to-face, and the gray priest hissing in consecration of the sacrifice, baring its teeth for the mortal bite, with Sparkle in the quick of it and plunging the bayonet into the small of the beast’s back to no effect. Twyla fast, no music in her now, only a shrill discordant cry of rage and terror and all-shattering love, the pistol bucking in her hands once, twice, and again. Gray teeth to the smooth cheek—but then the head bursting, the Pogromite falling, Winny dropping, Winny unbitten, Winny with gray nanocomputers crawling across his face.

Bailey Hawks

Shaken, Padmini came through the lap-pool door into the hallway.

Tom Tran followed her, gripping Kirby Ignis by one arm, pressing the muzzle of the pistol against his throat.

“Stalemate,” Bailey shouted.

Recognizing that it might never come to exist if Ignis died, the shrieking legions of the One grew quieter, though the voices were no less enraged.

Clutching his shoulder wound with his left hand, Kirby Ignis looked surprised, which didn’t speak well for him, that he could be surprised by anything after seeing the One and the world that his institute had furthered. He didn’t expect the wound because in spite of his expressed regret and the acknowledgment that such a future must never come to pass, he still did not truly see himself at fault. He was aghast at the dire unintended consequences, but incapable of admitting to any responsibility for what had happened.

Within the walls, legions continued to protest, all expressing the same wordless outrage in the same voice, the latest version of the faceless mobs of history. The One seemed to be arguing with itself, deciding on its next move.

“Bailey, you’re making a terrible mistake,” Ignis said. “My work, our work at the institute, can relieve all human suffering. The world can be made
right
.”

Bailey thought of how often they looked like what they were not. The men around Hitler could have been your sweet-faced uncle, your chubby-cheeked cousin, your grandfather with his pipe and slippers and easy smile. At times in his life, Albert Speer somewhat resembled Gregory Peck, the actor with the perfect looks for righteous roles. Roosevelt called Stalin “Uncle Joe.” Uncle Joe and Uncle Ho Chi Minh. When he smiled, Pol Pot, of the Cambodian killing fields, might have been the nice man behind the counter at your dry-cleaning shop.

As the voices in the walls seethed, Ignis appealed to Padmini Bahrati. “With nanomachines to edit the DNA of the fetus in the womb, no child will ever be born with disabilities.”

“Or perhaps no child will ever be born,” she said.

“No, no. Listen. Listen to me. Nanobot microbivores swimming in the bloodstream could download instructions for recognizing any virus or bacteria and wipe out any disease hundreds of times faster than antibiotics.”

Entering from the stairwell, Witness said, “There is no disease in this future.”

Ignis said, “Forget about this future. This was never
intended
.”

Urging everyone to join forces with Sparkle and Twyla at the midpoint of the corridor, Bailey glanced back at Witness, who chose not to accompany them, and asked, “What year is this, anyway?”

“Not as far from your time as you think. This is 2049.”

Smiling, shaking his head, Mickey Dime said, “I didn’t hear that. I don’t want to think about that. It makes no sense.”

With a
ding
, the elevator arrived at the basement from realms below.

Sparkle Sykes

She wiped frantically at the sludge on Winny’s face, afraid that the horde would dissolve his flesh, and suddenly Iris was there and engaged, finding the courage to endure contact with another, wiping tenderly at Winny’s left ear, at his neck. The nanothings tingled over Sparkle’s hands, like thousands of swarming ants, but they didn’t bite or sting, and Winny’s face remained unscathed. As she wiped her hands vigorously on her clothes, the horde already seemed to be moving more sluggishly across her skin.

Bailey Hawks

As everyone came together in the middle of the hallway, finishing plaster cracked and fell from overhead and drywall screws popped
loose. A slab of Sheetrock swung down like a big trapdoor, fanning Bailey with powdered gypsum and nearly knocking Tom Tran to his knees. Overhead, seething between the ceiling joists, death-loving life in pale profusion squirmed and thrashed and reached down for them.

Jamming the muzzle harder into Ignis’s throat, Tom Tran shouted, “
I’ll kill him
!”

The One seemed to have decided it must risk its creator’s life, because out of the blue light of the elevator surged a furious swarm of hideous manifestations, animal-plant-machine entities at the sight of which his eyes rebelled and his heart shrank, a hobgoblin horde that might have been the denizens of the nightmares that demons dreamed when they slept in Hell. This pack would have torn them to pieces if sudden sheets of blue light had not shimmered up the walls. The transition reversed, the roar of bedlam voices abruptly silenced, rust and ruin vanished, as did the dead Pogromites and those borne by the elevator. And here were the surviving neighbors, here where the future had not yet happened, here in the still point of ever-turning time, where all was possible and nothing was yet lost.