Flight (57 page)

Having suffered through these kinds of
Fflowersian misdirections hundreds of times, Smarkzy has patiently
waited for the question he knows is coming.

“Which am I?”

Smarkzy doesn’t hesitate, “You’ve
changed.”

Fflowers waits. Smarkzy holds up a finger,
“One. You’ve known where Elena is and you have left her alone. Two.
You seem more interested in understanding Prissi than in possessing
her. Three. You are old and sick, but you don’t seem overly
concerned with finding out whether the scattered knowledge that
Trinity discovered is coming back together again.”

Fflower’s mutter barely carries to the chair
where Smarkzy is sitting.

“Sometimes the blind are allowed to see. If
only for a day. I am interested in what happens to the girl. You
tell me her father has been killed and that she has disappeared. So
I’ll ask you what you asked me a couple of minutes ago. What do you
think is going on?”

Smarkzy takes his time responding. “I think
there is a good chance that she has enemies both because of who she
is and because of what she may possess. If she is important to you,
then, whoever controls Prissi gains some control over you.”

“I have many enemies.”

“And, if, somehow, she possesses a key to
bringing Trinity’s work back into the light, then, almost anyone
could be interested.”

Fflowers’ sigh disturbs so much fluid in his
lungs it sounds like someone thrumming a thick rubber band.

“I’m tired. Can you help me?”

Smarkzy’s eyes grow bright at his old
friend’s request.

“I can try. If Trinity’s work is awakening,
then that must in some way involve Elena. Tell me where she is and
I’ll go there to find out if Prissi has also made her way
there.”

Fflowers’ eyes are shut as if he already has
abdicated his role.

“I can’t do that. For twenty-three years, I
have known where she is. There even have been periods when I have
known what she was doing. More than anything I have ever wanted to
do, I wanted to go there. To show myself. To stand before Elena’s
fury and her despite. To see the loathing in her eyes. To hear her
tell me of how my pride poisoned us and poisoned her. I wanted to
go before her and stand still long enough to absorb all of her fury
until she herself would grow still. And, when that quiet moment
finally came, where her emotions were exhausted, to tell her that
since she left, ‘I have been and always will be undone.’

“Vart, I have spent thousands of an old man’s
dwindling hours imagining myself in the clearing before her door
saying, ‘I am undone.’ But, I can’t go, couldn’t go, shouldn’t go,
wouldn’t go. Some harm is sufficient enough. And if I can’t go,
then neither can you.”

While the Fflowers’ histrionics have been
going on, Smarkzy wonders if the old man hamming and shamming
before him is even the slightest bit aware of his self-delusions.
Telling himself that he will pay more attention to that later, but
to focus now on getting what he wants, he raises the palms of his
hands as if he is about to receive a beneficence.

“A humble megalomaniac. A pentitent, ecstatic
in his remorse. When will delusion end? When will myth get turned
aside for reality, Josh? The girl needs help, protection. You may
have the means to do that. If you do nothing, and she is harmed or
killed, then, not only do you destroy her, but you destroy Elena a
second time. Where is she? Where’s Elena?”

While Smarkzy has been speaking, Joshua
Fflowers’ face has remained closed in a barely breathing death
mask. Even after Smarkzy finishes, Fflowers remains as if in last
sleep.

“I need to know!”

Finally, the failing man’s lips move and
three syllables, quiet as a moth’s flight, drift out,
“Brookhaven.”

Vartan Smarkzy hasn’t heard that word in
years. Brookhaven National Laboratory had been an immense research
facility out on Long Island. As Smarkzy remembers, it had covered
hundreds, if not thousands, of acres. The word that Fflowers has
spoken would not be enough to find Elena.

“Where?

“Building Eight.”

Destruction

It had been a day since Prissi had been
unhooked from her medical ganglia. After Prissi was free, Olewan
had helped her to sit up and get her feet planted on the floor.
After taking several minutes to gather her strength, finally, she
stood, took a step and then another. At first, she was wobbly. The
first half-dozen steps were done with Olewan’s dry twisted fingers
holding Prissi’s elbow in a tight grip. But, after that, using more
will than skill, she had managed to walk four times across her room
and back by herself. She finished her walk, eased into her bed and
fell deeply asleep.

The next morning after she had finished her
breakfast, Prissi agreed to go outside with Olewan. Half-way to the
door, Prissi winced and slumped. The old woman grabbed her arm and
whispered encouragements, none of which reminded Prissi of Ms.
Tronce’s blandishments. Once they were through the door, the
ancient woman let go. Prissi took over steadying herself for
several more steps by trailing a hand along the cool walls of the
hall. After getting some confidence, Prissi paid less attention to
the walls and more to the end of the corridor where muted sunlight
painted a pale yellow patch on the floor of the lobby. That
shimmering patch drew Prissi forward like a trumpet vine draws
hummingbirds. She suddenly realized just how much of the time since
spring break began that she had spent away from the sun. In Africa,
the sun was every day. Its presence lifted and lightened the death,
poverty and disease that were everywhere. Prissi realized how much
she counted on the sun when she saw those weak rays at the end of
the hall. She felt like the days in this place, the days
underground in the subway, even the hours spent in the Gramercy
Arms basement and the library had blanched her, like asparagus.

Prissi picked up her pace. Her weakness
itself seemed to weaken with each step she took. She was more than
half-way down the long corridor when the sunlight on the floor was
replaced by a pulsing shadow and a thunderous pounding.

Prissi came to a sudden stop when Olewan
grabbed her sleeve.

“In here.”

Olewan snapped a door handle and pushed
Prissi into a pitch black room.

“Stay here.”

As Prissi listened to the old woman shuffle
away, she was reminded of lying in bed in her darkened dorm room on
Sunday mornings at Dutton listening to the herd of hungry girls
shuffling in their Drylons to the dining hall for brunch.

The pounding stopped and shouting began.
After a few seconds, another pounding began, a different pounding,
one that Prissi could feel through the bottom of her feet. Seconds
later, Prissi heard glass being smashed. That was followed by a
slapping sound which she recognized as footsteps running down the
hall. Hiding in the dark was getting to be too hard. Prissi put a
hand in front of her trying to find the door.

As Olewan had scuttled toward the door, she
had expected to see a furious Mortos. He had been to the Bury the
day before talking about a hostage, a good friend of the girl’s,
who he would trade for a guarantee from Olewan that she would
produce twenty-four centaur clones and teach Mortos how to care for
them. The old scientist had brushed aside the centaur’s proposals
with the same asperity she would have had for any ridiculous
self-indulgence. It wasn’t until later, sitting in the shadows
looking at her own clone rhythmically raise and lower the worn
blanket covering her chest that Olewan considered her own
self-indulgence.

Olewan wanted to live. Forever and ever. With
her daughter. Gift from the forgiving gods. She wanted to live. She
wanted the crystals that would allow her to live.

Even before she was close to the door, Olewan
was screaming at the centaur. She was sure that Mortos had stolen
the crystals and her future when he found the girl. Olewan’s rage,
that the leader of the centaurs might be withholding the means for
her to live another two hundred years with the girl whose elbow she
had just held, caused Olewan’s vision to fracture into faceted
images, like an insect’s, as she approached the door.

It wasn’t until her hand, made unsteady from
the chemistry of her wrath, reached for the door handle that Olewan
saw that it was more than just Mortos on the other side of the
filthy glass of the narrow sidelight to the heavy metal door.

The old crone’s hand was quaking as her
fingers grasped the handle. She shrieked, “What do you want?”

Even though Mortos’ low drone was muffled by
the door, his message was clear.

“Want a future. Like humans. Like you.”

Olewan peered through the door.

“Give me the crystals.”

“What? What crystals?”

“The ones you stole.”

“Didn’t steal. You’re the thief. Steal our
future. We have Bird Bob. Girl’s friend. Here to trade.”

Olewan looked at the ancient winger. The
craggy-faced man was leaning on a stick. A worn rope was tied over
his shoulders and under his wings before being attached to the neck
of Portos. Something about the man’s face enraged Olewan as much as
the centaur’s lies and demands.

“The crystals!”

Caught up in his own rage, Mortos rose up and
smashed his front hooves on the cracked concrete in front of the
door. The centaur’s back hooves lashed out, and, if Bob Tom hadn’t
anticipated what was coming and stumbled sideways, they would have
destroyed the riverman. When Mortos realized that he had almost
killed what he had come to trade, he let loose with a tangle of
noise twisted from strands of rage, frustration and remorse. The
centaur reared up again and battered his hooves against the massive
door. The door dented, but did not give.

From the other side, Mortos heard a muffled
cry, “The crystals. The crystals.”

The centaur didn’t have any crystals. All he
had was the old man. He continued his assault except that his anger
had so robbed him of reason that after three or four more strikes
against the door, his right hoof slipped off target. It smashed
through the wire-reinforced glass of the sidelight and became
wedged in a trap of glass and wire. The centaur reared back in fury
at the pain, a move which only served to set his hoof tighter in
its trap. Blood streamed from the deep gashes in his fetlock and
followed the fault lines of the fractured glass to make a crimson
web.

The centaur’s torso writhed violently,
seemingly willing, like a mink in a trap, to severe its hoof to
regain its freedom. On the other side of the glass, Olewan stood
frozen in shock except for her eyes which darted from the twisting,
jerking hoof to the rivulets of blood to the hundreds of small
pieces of tempered glass strewn across the floor like spilled
treasure.

After an interminable two seconds, the old
woman shrieked, “Stop! Stop!” in a way that seemed like a command
to the hoof itself rather than the centaur. In an uncanny echo
Olewan heard, “Stop!” screamed from beyond the door and also from
behind her.

Bob Tom’s jerk on his rope was so unexpected
by Portos, whose attention was riveted on his leader’s dilemma,
that he staggered forward the two paces the riverman needed.

Working himself under the trapped right leg
of the centaur, very well aware of the danger the flailing second
leg presented, Bob Tom reached up and wrapped his hands around the
bleeding leg and began pushing upward in an attempt to free it. The
groan of Bob Tom’s efforts, as he struggled against the weight of
the centaur’s leg, were drowned out by the anguished sounds the
centaur himself was making. Bob Tom pushed and strained, but he
couldn’t quite get Mortos’ leg up high enough to where the hole in
the window widened. After the days of the quest, followed by two
days of little water, less food, and an untended broken foot, the
riverman could feel his strength quickly fading. Some of the gain
Bob Tom had made getting the leg free was lost when Mortos, his own
strength flagging from the loss of blood and loss of anger’s quick
burst of energy, had his back legs falter. Bob Tom reset his feet
and pushed up with all of his might. The centaur’s leg moved a
little, but not enough.

“Help.”

The riverman wondered why the centaur he was
chained to didn’t come to his leader’s aid, but Portos could do
nothing to help. A decade of arthritis had crippled his shoulders
so that his hands could barely reach his mouth to feed himself.

Bob Tom groaned and shoved, but nothing
happened except that the broken edges of glass seemed to cut even
more deeply into the horse’s flesh. The ancient riverman pushed
with what he knew would be his last effort given how badly his
knees and arms were shaking. Suddenly, his task became easier. The
leg moved upward, first a centimeter and, then, two more. Bob Tom
saw a wild-haired something, man, boy, simian, on the other side of
the blood streaked glass. Another centimeter. Bob Tom looked up and
saw that another three or four centimeters would be enough. He took
a deep, hopeful breath and pushed, but nothing happened. Too much
of his strength was gone. The anguished howl of the centaur shocked
him. He pushed again. Nothing. Nothing. Then, something. The leg
rose and rose and rose until it was centered in the hole. He heard
a voice scream, “Now.”

A force pushed the wounded hoof back through
the window. Bob Tom started to scramble sideways to get out of
harm’s way as the dripping red leg came crashing down, but froze
when he realized that there were two faces on the other side of the
streaked and mottled window. The wild-haired boy had been joined by
a wan-skinned, fierce-faced girl.

Death

Joe’s startled, convulsive response to its
inveigling paws causes the bear to be as afraid as the boy. Each
stares at the other through the dawn’s pink mist with hearts racing
and limbs more prepared for flight than fight. Joe’s lungs are
grabbing great gouts of the misty dawn air trying to keep up with
his body’s demands for oxygen. He can hear the bear’s ragged
breathing as well as his own. That sound reminds him of Doormat
Doorley after doing a dozen sprints down and back on the ice.
Except for his heaving chest, Joe stays stock still. Although his
mind is drowning in adrenaline and epinephrine, he calms a tiny
piece of it to try to figure out his next moves. Can he outrun the
bear? No. Not unless he can get on the larger path with the
Schwinner. Can he out-climb it? No. Out-think it? At the moment, he
even doubts that. His only option seems to be to out-wait it.