Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (29 page)

 
          
It
was so close to what Janelle had said that Winter was startled at the echo. She
regarded Ramsey narrowly. "Are you saying we're all doomed to be
failures?" Winter asked evenly.

 
          
Ramsey
glanced up at her and grinned engagingly. "Comforting if true, don't you
think? But as a matter of fact, I'm not." He lifted his wineglass toward
the light, studying it intently while the planes of his young-old face fell
into somber lines.

 
          
"The
way I see it," Ramsey said, "—and this is the fruit of many hours of
philosophical deliberation as the Steelers and the Buckeyes ran off with my
money—is that sooner or later we all turn into our parents. Well, I ask you:
Who else did we spend all our time watching when we were kids? We live our
parents' lives—I am, anyway."

 
          
"But
doesn't everyone become their parents? You make it sound awfully grim. As if
it's some kind of trap." Something stirred beneath the surface of her
memories. Winter pushed it away.

 
          
"It
is," Ramsey said seriously. "Because we don't become the best of our
parents. We become them at their worst, and there's only a small window of
opportunity for escape—to become someone else, someone unique. Anything you do
in that golden time sets the patterns you'll live out for the rest of your
life. Everyone gets a chance at it—back when we're all too young to understand
what we're getting—but of all of us,
Jannie
and
Cassilda
and me, I always thought that only you and Grey
really made it out. Well, you know what Morrison used to say: 'No one here
gets out alive.'"

 
          
But I didn't get away, Ramsey, and Jim
Morrison's dead. And I'm still trapped, and I don't know how to get free.

 
          
There
were more questions to ask, but Winter didn't quite have the heart for them
tonight. She helped Ramsey wash up after dinner, but after that she pleaded
tiredness caused by the long drive.

 
          
A
short time later Winter was sitting alone in the guest room, a last glass of
wine in her hand, staring down at the gaudy cover of
Venus Afflicted.
She could hear the sound of the living room
television faintly through the door.

 
          
Everybody grows up,
Winter told herself
sternly.
There's no tragedy in becoming
an adult.

 
          
But
there was tragedy in a wasted life—and Ramsey's life
was
a waste, Winter told herself with clinical detachment. It was
on a—what was that buzzword?—on a downward economic spiral. That used-car lot
could never have paid for this house; gambling debts aside, Ramsey must have
been making more money once—money enough to afford everything that Laura Miller
had taken with her, and this house as well.

 
          
.
. .
And all who sail in her,
Winter
thought, raising her glass in a faintly
tiddly
salute. Laura-the-wife, and the children now in
Cleveland
. It didn't sound as if Ramsey was going to
even try to sue for visitation or joint custody. What had he said at dinner?
Something about a golden time, a window of opportunity when you had the chance
to set the pattern of your life, where to fail was like a bad hand of
solitaire that you would play out forever.

 
          
Could
it be true?

 
          
Winter
shook her head, refusing to think about it. She ought to do some work: make a
list of questions to ask Ramsey, try to find out what he remembered about
Nuclear Circle
's work. See if he had ghosts, for that
matter—if the thing had visited Janelle it would probably be after him as well.

 
          
If
the Elemental even existed. If the Elemental was visiting all the former
members of
Nuclear Circle
. And if it was—why?

 
          
But
she didn't have the energy to be so organized tonight, not after seeing what
had happened to her old friend. If the trap that Ramsey had fallen into was not
as obvious a one as Janelle's, it was no less destructive.

 
          
"I
fling open the gates of
Dayton
,
Ohio
, and shower its cultural riches upon
you," Ramsey said, tossing a ring of keys onto the blanket as Winter started
groggily awake. "I figured you wouldn't want to be cooped up in the house
all day. There's a mall up the road if you want to do any shopping; there's a
street map on the kitchen table and I've marked it for you. See you
later."

 
          
Winter
sat up, stiff from sleeping in the unfamiliar bed. "
G'bye
,
Ramsey. Have fun," she said sleepily.
Don't
sell any Corvettes to
Arnold
Schwarzenegger.

 
          
Later,
when he was gone, Winter got up and prowled around the deserted house.
Paradoxically, it did not seem as empty when Ramsey was gone. Without his
presence to remind it of what it had been, the house could be just any empty
house.

 
          
Underfurnisbed
, of course, and downright weird in spots,
but. . .

 
          
Ramsey's
bedroom was more or less intact—at least Winter didn't see any pressure marks
in the rug to show where heavy furniture had been taken away. The suite was
that heavy dark mock-Mediterranean style that had been popular a few years
back, and looked as if the only way you'd get rid of it was to burn the house
down around it. Winter closed the door behind her and tiptoed off, in search of
the kitchen and coffee or tea. She vaguely remembered buying both last night at
the store; she and Ramsey, two old friends—acquaintances now—playing house.

 
          
It
gave Winter an odd detached thrill to pretend for a few moments that this could
be her house and her life—a woman just moved into town, most of the furniture
still on a moving van in another state, but all poised to settle into
domesticity and family life. A kind of life she had— bypassed? Run away from?
Tried and found wanting?

 
          
Was
it really too late to go back and pick up the pieces of her life that she'd
jettisoned?

 
          
In
the kitchen Winter found the kettle and put water on to boil, deciding on tea.
She wanted toast, but couldn't find a toaster—more of Laura's efficiency,
Winter supposed—and decided to settle for dry cereal instead. She found the box
in the cupboard and carried it over to the table.

 
          
What
should she do today? She picked up the street map and tossed it aside. If she
wanted to go shopping, there were better stores in
New York
. In fact, there was better
everything
in
New York
—what in Heaven's name was she doing out
here in the middle of nowhere?

 
          
Ramsey's here,
she reminded herself. And
she needed to find out what Ramsey remembered about the Class of '82, and
Nuclear Circle
. Assuming that their teenaged occult
dabblings
didn't just constitute a silly coincidence, and
really had anything to do with the things that were happening to her now.

 
          
It
had been nearly two weeks now since the night at the lab at the
Bidney
Institute, and already the events were becoming hazy
in Winter's mind—a memory-of-a-memory, soon to dissolve completely into unthinking
acceptance of things as they were. The thought that something so vivid could
just vanish was disturbing on a primal level; how many other thoughts,
experiences, feelings, memories was she losing every day?

 
          
No more than anyone else,
Winter told
herself brutally.
Now is all we have. Now
is all that matters.

 
          
But
the danger that followed her—and the growing suspicion that there was something
she must do—mattered, too.

 
          
"Ramsey,
you remember that Thorne Blackburn stuff we were mixed up with in
college?"

 
          
Cartons
of Chinese take-out food were strewn over every countertop surface of the
kitchen. Ramsey was no better a cook than Winter was, and tonight he'd taken
this easy way out.

 
          
"Thorne
who?" He paused with chopsticks full of noodles halfway to his mouth.

 
          
"Thorne
Blackburn. You know, the . . . occultist?" The unfamiliar term came
clumsily to Winter's tongue. "You and I and Grey and
Jannie
and Cassie—back in school."

 
          
Ramsey
regarded her with responsive interest, but without comprehension.

 
          
"We
used to go up to
Nuclear
Lake
."
And
do something I can't quite remember, and this book of Truth's isn't much help,
either.
"Just the five of us. You remember," Winter said
coaxingly.
I
do. Don't I?

 
          
"I
guess I don't." Ramsey's tone was regretful but uninterested. "I must
not have gone with you."

 
          
But you did! You were there
—/
saw you!
"We used to go up there
quite a lot," Winter began cautiously. "For years. It was Grey's idea
at first, I guess, but we all fell in with it. He was doing something called
the Blackburn Work, and we were all involved in it with him."

 
          
"Not
me," Ramsey said, a little more decisively than could really be expected
from someone searching through memories more than a decade lost.

 
          
As if he doesn't want to remember
—
and Janelle didn't talk about it either. And
I
want
to remember, but I can't,
Winter
thought in frustration.

 
          
"I
went back to visit the campus, you know," Winter began, trying another
tack.

 
          
But
while Ramsey was willing to discuss the campus, and professors they'd had in
common, and even the
Bidney
Institute itself, Winter
could not find any way whatever to bring
Nuclear
Lake
back into the conversation.

 
          
But
Nuclear
Lake
did
exist.
Nina
Fowler'd
had no trouble remembering it—and
driving there. And neither had Truth
Jourdemayne
—in
fact, Truth had seen the basement room where they'd all done what Truth had
called the Blackburn Work.

 
          
Another
memory, swiftly nickering like a butterfly's wing: the laboratory basement at
Nuclear
Lake
, bleached white by hissing propane
lanterns; Janelle on her knees, carefully painting a line on the floor as Ramsey
held the jar of paint ready for her . . .

           
"Ramsey, don't you remember
anything about Nuclear Lake?" Winter asked in frustration.

 
          
"It
doesn't look like
I'm
the one having
memory problems," Ramsey said with unusual asperity.

 
          
"
Touche
, you little yellow devil,'" Winter said,
quoting
Dooms-bury
with a smile.
"You're right: I'm not sure about what happened there either. There are a
lot of places where my memory's just . . . jumbled."

 
          
Ramsey
put a hand over hers in sympathy. "Sometimes, you know, it's better not to
remember," he said gently.

 
          
And normally I'd agree with that, old
friend, but unfortunately, this time the stakes are too high,
Winter
thought sorrowfully.