Flux (26 page)

“Dunno,” said her double, watching her closely. “That’s the big mystery. Something’s happening in this skin that’s different than the next nine. You’re vibrating out of sync with the pattern. For some reason you’re not as fixed as the others.”

Nellie stared at her blankly. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s good,” hissed her double, pointing the knife at her, “
if
you smarten up and quit ripping through the skins like a truck.
And
if you’ll start listening, and let me teach you a few things about living properly in flux.”

“Deller knows,” Nellie said suddenly, feeling the need to confess. “And the Skulls. I haven’t taken them to another level yet, but Deller told them so they’d let me join and stay in their headquarters.”

Her double let loose a hiss of swear words, then sat sucking her lower lip until it disappeared into her mouth. “Do they know about me?” she asked finally.

Nellie shook her head. “Last thing I wanted was for him to find out about you. He wants me to take the Skulls into the levels so we can all start looking for Fen.”

Her double’s face twisted into an expression of delicate pain. “That would be just about the absolutest stupidest idea in all the skins put together,” she said darkly. “The only way I’m teaching you anything is if you promise never to show any of it to the Skulls.”

“What about Deller?” Nellie asked quickly.

A thinking expression crossed her double’s face. “Maybe Deller,” she said cautiously. “He’s smarter than the others. Smarter than you, at any rate. C’mere.”

Fighting the urge to bristle, Nellie joined her double so they stood side by side in the deepening dusk, facing the cardboard-covered window. “First things first,” said her double grimly. A faint line of light cast by the split in the cardboard ran down the center of her face. “You’ve got to learn to listen to the skins.”

“Tune in,” Nellie said immediately. She already knew this part, it was easy. She just had to let her mind tilt to the right and the molecular field would come into focus like it was doing now, leaping in its dance of energy and color. Even her double was transformed, radiating luminescent wings of orange and sky blue.

“No,” her double said tersely. “
Listen
, not see. If you can’t listen to
me
, how are you going to hear the skins?”

Chastened, Nellie stood staring at the molecular field.
Listen
? What was there to listen to? Sure there were lots of humming and crackling noises, but that was just the boring old background noise molecules always made. It was the same in every level. Why not find a gate and open ...

“Are you listening?” demanded her double.

Heaving an almighty sigh, Nellie focused on the tiny humming sounds. It was a little like listening to a field of evening crickets, the sound pulsing against her ears in liquid waves, except that sometimes the sound came high and sometimes it came low, and every now and then it seemed to step sideways into a different range altogether.

“What d’you hear?” asked her double.

“Noise,” Nellie said shortly.

Her double sighed. “And?”

Nellie shrugged. “Different molecules make different sounds. It depends on their color. And the gates don’t make any sound at all.”

“Gates?” asked her double.

“Where you go through,” said Nellie, pointing to one that hovered midair, a few steps away. “They’re like dead space—no vibrations, no color, no noise.”

“That’s because they are dead space,” snapped her double. “They used to be alive, but then some idiot pushed her way through and killed that part of the skin’s soul.”

Stunned, Nellie protested, “Lots of travelers use gates. How else are you supposed to get to other levels?”

“Ssssst,” hissed her double. “You might get into another skin, but you’re not
part
of that skin once you enter its turf. Any skin will be dead set against you if you come into it through a wound.”

“A wound?” Suddenly Nellie’s mind was reeling as she relived the pain she’d felt coming through the gate in the church wall. So it
was
the molecular field that had let out that scream of agony. But why? It wasn’t human, it couldn’t have thoughts and feelings like people did.

“Yeah, a wound,” said her double. “All those
gates
as you call them didn’t used to exist. They were torn open by someone forcing her way from one skin to the next. The wound suffered for a while, then closed over and that part of the skin died. Unfortunately the scar still showed, and you know bullies and idiots—they always look for the easiest way through anything.”

“I’m not a bully,” Nellie said defensively. “I didn’t know, that’s all.”

“Bullies and
idiots
,” said her double distinctly. “Idiots think tuning into the skins is like watching TV. The skins are
alive
, just like you and me. Now start listening to your body the way you were listening to the skin.”

Nellie scowled. This was getting stupider and stupider. Her double had seen her travel and knew she could shapeshift, so why did she insist on treating her like a know-nothing? Sullenly she turned her attention to the molecular field and focused on her own body. It was easy enough, she used to do this regularly when she first discovered the molecular field—tune in and watch the various energies at play inside her body—but she’d never paid attention to the sounds they emitted. Now as she listened, she heard the same chorus of humming crackling noises that the surrounding molecular field was making.

“It’s the same,” she said diffidently.

“Not quite,” said her double, but she sounded pleased. “Listen deeper.”

Deeper? thought Nellie. How did you listen deeper? Focusing again on her body’s molecular field, she let her mind walk downward into sound as if descending a ladder. As she did sound slowed, and there was a brief sensation of pressure. Then this cleared and the sound changed, opening into something entirely different—a deep kind of calling, many voices swirling through each other in a vast vibrating ocean of sound.

“Like the stars,” Nellie gasped. “It’s like the dream of singing stars I get when flux is coming.”

“It is coming,” said her double. “Put out your hand.”

Nellie stretched out her hand and saw that it was no longer there. Glancing at her body, she saw that it had also vanished. Somehow, without any conscious decision on her part, her entire molecular structure had dissolved and she’d entered a state of pure sound— the voices of her flesh.

“Can you hear yourself?” asked her double.

“Yes,” Nellie whispered.

“Now,” said her double, “listen beyond yourself. Listen to the skin.”

Lifting out of the sound of herself, Nellie opened to the song of the molecular field. On all sides she saw energy leaping and dancing as usual, and yet she seemed to have stepped into a new level of reality where molecules had dissolved their basic structures and colors interwove in a kinetic tapestry. From everywhere came a huge crying out of voices, their eerie beauty swirling around Nellie like a kaleidoscope that had broken its pattern, the vibrations of the surrounding molecular field calling toward the vibrations of Nellie’s body until she lost all sense of herself and became part of a vast shimmering river of sound.

Gradually the sensation faded and she became aware of herself again, standing beside her double in the dimly-lit room that was the Skulls’ headquarters. Ahead of her sagged the split cardboard that had been taped over the window, to her left leaned a three-legged chair, and behind her she could see the edge of the table. Taking a slow breath, she followed the rush of air through the tunnels of her nose, deep into the cave of her lungs. Everything was as it had been, and yet it was utterly changed. For she now recognized the life that sang in that three-legged chair, and she’d been one with the vibrations that pulsed through the table. For one brief soul-shimmering moment, everything in the room had been part of her, and she a part of it.

Nellie’s double sighed, then said quietly, “That was the beginning of listening. Remember—listening will always take you further than
seeing. The eyes tell lies, but the ears are harder to fool. Practice listening to this skin, hearing what it’s got to tell you. And no matter what happens, don’t go barreling in and out of the other skins until I come back and teach you how to sing your way into them.”

“Come back?” Alarmed, Nellie turned toward her double. “But you can’t go, you’ve got to help us find Fen. And what about Ayne and those people from City Hall you said were after me? If I can’t travel—”

“I’ve got things to do,” her double said gruffly. “You’re not the only possibility, y’know. Just do what I told you—practice listening to the skin and hearing what it’s got to tell you.”

Then, as Nellie stared, her double began to disappear. “Wait a minute,” Nellie yelped, lunging toward the ghostly shimmer. “You can’t just—”

But her groping hands slid vainly through her double’s fading outline, and when she tuned into the molecular field she found no gate where her double had vanished. With a disconsolate grunt, Nellie settled into her nest of blankets. How could her double be so heartless, so extremely weasely, and at the same time know how to tune into such exquisite, soul-singing beauty? Just the memory of that eerie ocean of voices made Nellie’s breath pause in wonder. Could she do it again? Well, why not try? Her double had said she was supposed to practice.

Tuning into the molecular field, she descended into its crackling hum and felt herself open into a liquid wave of sound. Yes, the beauty was still here, she could do this on her own. All she had to do was concentrate and she could sense the vibrations coming from the closest three-legged chair. That sound over there had to be the table, and the vibrating cradle of song that surrounded her could only belong to the blankets in which she was wrapped. Running along her back was the thick murmur of the warehouse wall, and beyond it the deepening melody of night settling into the street. Everywhere Nellie sent her mind, she could hear the faint white cry of summer heat sinking into the soothing tones of darkness.
Breathing softly, she lay listening to the molecular field croon itself to sleep, touching this sound, then that one with her mind, and running her thoughts along the torn dead length of each gate she encountered.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t know how you were made. I thought you were just a thing, like a nail or a stone, but even they can sing and you can’t. I know I used a lot of gates, but I swear I only
made
the one at the Sanctuary of the Blessed Goddess. Funny, it only hurt the second time I used it, when I was coming back through. Maybe it went into shock when I tore it open the first time, like when you cut your finger and it doesn’t hurt right away. What’s it like to be dead? Can you see—no hear—the world of the dead? Can you hear my mother? Is she just dead space now, without feelings, or can she still love the most important person in her life? Does she remember me ... ?”

But the gates gave her no answer and at length, worn out by questions, Nellie fell asleep, the song of the evening air crooning gently against her skin.

Chapter 17

S
HE WOKE TO THE SCRAPE
of the padlock being slipped from the door. Shock ricocheted through her and she bolted upright, clutching the blankets and staring around herself at the shadowy room.
Where am I? What is this place? What am I doing?

“Nellie?” hissed a voice from the doorway. “You awake?”

Deller
. Pulling the blankets over her head, Nellie sank to the floor in an acid wave of relief. “Yeah, I’m here,” she mumbled, jamming her hands into her underarms to contain their shaking.

“Where?” demanded Deller. Cautious footsteps shuffled into the room and she lowered the blankets to see him standing in the doorway, peering about himself. As he caught sight of her he went stock still, then wrapped his arms tightly around himself. “They got Mom,” he mumbled, sinking to the floor opposite and hugging his knees with his arms. “They got Mom, and they bombed the Jinnet.”

Rigid in her nest of blankets, Nellie stared at his hunched figure. “Your mom?” she stammered. “The Jinnet? What—?”

“I went out last night,” Deller said helplessly, still hugging himself. Even in the thick pre-dawn gray, she could see he was shivering.

“To watch the church, see if they had another meeting. There was a Jinnet meeting at the same time. I was supposed to be there.” Dazed, he covered his face with his hands. A whimper came out of him, then another. “The resistance is over,” he said. “They killed Dad five years ago—left him in a field with the Mark of Silence on him. Now Fen’s probably dead, and Mom’s gone too.”

Nellie’s skin leapt with panic. Jumping to her feet she grabbed one of the blankets, darted across the room, and wrapped it awkwardly around Deller. In the soft bewildered heartbeats that followed she found herself on her knees beside him, her hands fluttering about his head, gently brushing his hair from his face.

“Your mom?” she whispered. “They got your mom?”

Shoulders caved, Deller stared at the floor. “I watched the church for a while, but nobody came. So I went to the restaurant.” He faltered, and she heard his swallow lock halfway down his throat. “It’s gone, just a pile of rocks. There was a crowd, people wailing, cops and fire engines. Someone set off a bomb in the meeting room. Everyone’s dead.” A deep shudder ran through him. “So I went home, but when I got there, they were taking her away in a car.”

“Who was taking her?” Nellie asked hoarsely.

Deller’s eyes flicked toward her, slurred with fear. “Ayne. And the extra man who came to the church the night we set it on fire.”

“The ninth man?” Nellie asked. “The Interior agent?”

Deller nodded and another shudder ran through him. “There was blood on her face,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. I took off after them on my bike, but I lost them after a couple of blocks. I don’t know where they took her. And it’s all my fault. It’s because I took you to the Jinnet. They probably think she knows where I hid you.”