Flux (9 page)

“I’ll take the far side,” said Deller. “You stick to this wall.” Then he was off, stopping only to lift a lit candle from a nearby alcove before ducking along the back wall. Quickly Nellie darted to another alcove and grabbed two candles that were glowing at the base of a small blue-robed statue. Slipping behind a confessional booth, she raised one of the lit stubs to the lower edge of a tapestry. Blood pounded in her head as she watched the flame flicker against the thick border, the heavy cloth refusing to catch. Impatient, she jammed the candle against the tapestry and the flame snuffed out. Nellie’s entire body convulsed with disappointment.
Moron
, she thought contemptuously, breathed deep, and brought the second candle to the tapestry’s lower edge.

It caught. Slow flames licked at the border’s thick weave, then mounted the tapestry’s design. Fascinated, she stared, then jerked herself out of her trance and slipped from behind the confessional booth. A glance toward the front of the church showed shadowy figures continuing to swarm, focused on their prey. As Deller’s double let out another cry, Nellie set the confessional booth’s drapes on fire. Beside it stood a small table covered with pamphlets. Circling it in a crouch, she touched the candle flame to the various stacks of paper and the table went up in a crackling roar.

Shouts alerted her and she glanced up to see the men turning en masse toward the back of the church. Suddenly Deller came barreling past, hunched low to the floor, and she followed him up the side aisle as the group of men tore down the center of the room.

“Stay here,” Deller hissed and took off toward the boy who sprawled semi-conscious, alone before the altar. Just beyond them loomed the floor-to-ceiling statue of the Goddess, a mass of prayer smouldering at her feet. Closing her eyes, Nellie wished those prayers
leaping up the tapestries behind the statue, eating the walls alive. Then she opened her eyes to see a vivid line of flame meandering up the central tapestry. Beneath it she could just make out Deller’s dark outline reaching down to hook his double under the arms.

All over the sanctuary men were running and shouting, flap-ping their shirts uselessly at flaming tapestries. Somewhere a fire alarm had gone off, and a bucket brigade was forming at the back entrance. As Nellie watched, the priest came darting through the doorway with a fire extinguisher, but to no avail—the tapestries were ancient, as old as the church itself, and ready to release their souls. With a creaking roar the entire back wall of the sanctuary erupted into flame, a century of prayer spewing ashes and smoke.

Darting forward, Nellie grabbed one of the Deller’s double’s arms and helped Deller pull him into the hallway. “I think he’s coming to,” Deller panted, one arm over his face to muffle a cough. Thick tendrils of smoke were beginning to drift into the corridor. “How do we explain this to him?”

“We don’t.” Yanking the boy’s inert form from Deller, Nellie started lugging it down the hall for all she was worth. “We shove him out the first door we come to, and then we ditch this level and head back to our own.”

“Okay, okay.” Darting after her, Deller retrieved his double. “I’ll handle him. You find the door.”

Leaving them behind, Nellie flew down the shadowy hall, pausing only when she reached a T-intersection at the far end. To her right she saw a short stairwell, leading down to a lobby and an outside entrance. “Over here,” she hissed, waving her arms madly at Deller. Then she ducked down the stairs and shoved the push-handle door so hard she was carried outside in a wide arc. Cool night air rushed her face, kissing her cheeks and neck.
The Goddess
, thought Nellie, blinking furiously.
Letting me know She loves me, even in the middle of this mess.
With a sob she turned toward the lobby and saw Deller coming down the stairs, carrying his woozy double on his back. Dragging the boy through the doorway, he
propped him against the outer wall and slapped his face lightly. The boy shuddered and opened his eyes.

“Enough,” Nellie hissed from the open doorway. “Come
on
.”

Motionless, the boy stared at Deller. His lips parted slightly and he blinked. Leaning into his face, Deller slapped him again, harder. “Listen to me,” he said urgently. “You’re in big trouble. You’ve got to get running, fast. Quick now, go on.”

The boy gawked, wide-eyed and openmouthed.

“
Now
,” Deller repeated. “Run. For your life.” He shoved the boy who, staggered, ran a few steps and turned back again to stare. Riveted, Deller stood staring back.

“Shit!” hissed Nellie. Grabbing Deller firmly by the hair, she yanked him through the doorway. Then they were tearing together down the hall, their hearts thundering, the breath clawing at their lungs. Ahead the entrance to the sanctuary floated, a delicate orange blossom. Smoke clogged the air, sirens wailed outside the church. Swerving through the storage room entrance, Nellie slammed the door and locked it. There was a click as Deller turned on the overhead light and the storage room took shape around them—a jumble of confessional booth drapes, boxed hymnals and crates of small blue-robed statues.

“Turn it off,” said Nellie. “It has to be the same as when we came in.”

The light clicked off and she stood probing the darkness with her mind. Tuning into the molecular field, she tested one gate after another but none felt familiar, their seams at the wrong height or angle. Fighting panic, she sent her mind skittering along the back wall. It had to be here; gates didn’t just disappear. Was she going too fast, had she lost the knack, had the Goddess decided to keep them—

“Got it!” she exulted and sent her mind into the full length of the gate, forcing it open.

A wave of pain hit her. Instead of dead scar tissue, the gate was stunningly, screamingly alive, and Nellie felt as if she was slicing
through a wall of nerves. A terrified shriek lit up the inside of her head and she reeled back against Deller.

“Hey, wrong way,” he grunted and pushed her through the opening. The air swirled and sang as she stumbled into the hall and leaned against the opposite wall, adjusting to her home level’s vibratory rate. Then she focused on the gate and drew it closed. Abrupt silence descended as the other level’s sirens and shouts were cut off. Sighing, she closed her eyes. Coming through the gate, with that colossal freaky blast of pain, had drained her. Fortunately the men who’d been chasing them in this level appeared to have given up and gone home. Briefly Nellie wondered what the men had thought when they saw her and Deller disappear into thin air, but it didn’t really matter as long as they were gone and she could rest for a bit. Just a moment of quiet, that was all she needed. Then she would get going again. Just a minute ...

It was too quiet. “Deller?” she whispered, opening her eyes. To either side the hall stretched, shadowy and empty. Panic flared and she came bolt upright. Had the gate shut too quickly, sealing him into the other level? She’d been joking when she’d thought about dumping him there; she never would have actually done it. Desperately Nellie scanned the hall again, and her shoulders sagged with relief. There he was, a fuzzy outline hovering a few steps to her left. He must have been disoriented by the wave of pain that erupted from the gate and was having trouble adjusting to their home level’s vibratory rate. It had happened to her a few times—a bit of a delay in the adjustment period. For a moment she’d been completely out of sync, surrounded by a vast gray blur. Nellie shivered. The first time she’d thought she’d died.

Quickly she stepped toward the blurred figure and touched it with her hand. All Deller had to do was slow his frequencies to bring himself into sync, but there was no way he could know that. Slowing her own thoughts, Nellie listened to the hum at the base of her brain, then sent her mind into Deller’s molecular field. There was quite a buzz coming off him; this whole thing had him really
hyped. Gradually she brought him into sync and he solidified before her, staring incredulously as his surroundings came into view.

“Bunny?” he asked, his voice trembling.

Rerraren
. She could see the accusation in his eyes. It was taking a major risk, letting him know she could play with vibratory states like this. Supposedly only witches could do it, and the church adamantly forbade the practice. If the priests heard about her ability, her name would be added to the List of Undesirables and she would be banned from every parish. The Goddess would hate her. But the only option was to leave Deller in his ghostlike state, and the last thing she needed was him floating around, haunting her in her home level.

Taking off down the hall, Nellie unbolted the door behind the dumpster, then sighed with relief as the courtyard came into view. She and Deller were lucky—the priest had locked the door but hadn’t yet gotten around to shoving the dumpster back against the wall. As she emerged into the pre-dawn courtyard, she saw the crescent moons descending in a parallel arc toward their final moment over the horizon. The world before her was a blurred gray thought between sleep and waking. Without hesitation she bolted alone down the alley, letting the uncertainty on Deller’s face fade behind her like any other dream.

Chapter 7

N
ELLIE HOVERED BENEATH
the surface of waking, the early evening heat a heavy arm pressed over her face. Eyes closed, she lay vibrating within shrill heartless voices as a sky of whirling stars faded from her mind. With a soft grunt she turned over and opened her gummy eyes, focusing on a small blue-robed statue that stood on the upturned crate beneath the window. Hands cradled in supplication, eyes lifted upward, the ceramic Goddess’s glinted in the dim, green-shadowed light. Just looking at Her, Nellie felt wrapped in calm and wordless understanding. Finally Ivana had chosen to bless this shack directly with Her presence, finally the Mother of all mothers had descended to dwell with the loneliest of Her children.

Whispering her devotion, Nellie leaned forward and kissed the Goddess’s tiny toes. Then she scratched intently at the latest bug bite on her shin, popping the inflamed blister and digging deep into the delicious combination of itch and pain. After a hurried encounter with the bucket of rainwater in the corner, she reached for the bag of buns and fruit she kept hanging from a wall hook. The buns were stale and the nevva fruits bruised, but she munched steadily, her eyes fixed on the ceramic statue. Images from the pre
vious night kept flashing through her head—the face of the Interior agent as he came through the moonlit courtyard, the church wall splitting as she threw her mind at it, the screams of Deller’s double as he was beaten in the sanctuary. Then the floor-to-ceiling statue of the Goddess standing silent and immovable as flames devoured the wall behind it, and Deller locked into a trance, staring at his double’s bloodied face. Finally, their return to this level and that moment of inexplicable pain as the gate opened—a sensation so intense, just remembering it made Nellie feel as if the membranes of her brain were tearing apart.

A thick shudder ran through her and she ducked the memory, then came back to it tentatively. Why had that gate been different? Every other gate she’d opened had been nothing more than dead space. Their surrounding molecular fields had pulsed and danced with energy, but the gates themselves had been motionless hairlike seams—simply doorways to be opened, passed through and closed. Had this gate felt pain because she’d opened it so quickly? But why would speed matter to dead space? And why hadn’t she felt any pain the first time she’d opened it? Like a pulsing light, the memory of the second opening kept flashing through Nellie’s mind—brilliant, terrifying, a soundless scream. Trembling, she knelt before the Goddess and repeatedly kissed Her naked feet.

“Blessed Ivana, come to me,” Nellie whispered, rocking on her knees. “Blessed Ivana, bless all the lonely children suffering because their mothers are gone.”

She’d grabbed the blue-robed figure from an open crate in the split second before Deller had turned off the storage room’s overhead light. Cold and smooth, the statue had been surprisingly heavy for its size. Ramming it under her T-shirt, she’d cradled it against her stomach all the way home, talking to it in low whispers, dedicating herself to it, promising it her love.

“Blessed Ivana,” she whispered to it now, rocking desperately. “Blessed, blessed,
blessed
Ivana.”

Usually the Goddess’s blessing came swiftly, a formless whisper that passed through Nellie’s brain, causing the tangled mess of her thoughts to relax. But today there was no release, just the statue’s dull upward stare and the early evening heat crushing all hope to the ground. Again the memory of the opening gate tore at Nellie’s mind, and she cried out in fear. Why did the moment keep coming at her like this? Had it taken over her mind for good? What if a similar wave of pain attacked her every time she opened a gate to another level? That would be unbearable; she would have to stop traveling the levels and live out the rest of her life stuck in the mundane like everyone else.

She had to get out of the shack into the open, where the sky would take her thoughts and scatter them like clouds in a fast-moving wind. Tying a kerchief firmly over her bristling scalp, Nellie tugged on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts and slipped out the door. The sensation of coolness was immediate and she hoisted herself into the nearest tree, crawling branch to branch until she reached the edge of the copse. Then she dropped with a quiet thud into the long blond grass and crouched silently, sniffing the air.

Nothing came to her but the sweet scent of the dreaming grass. In every direction the evening stretched, shadowing itself endlessly, blurring her sharp-edged thoughts and giving them room to move. Low over the horizon the twin moons could be seen, the tips of two ghostly thumbprints in a sepia-blue dusk. A few remnants of sleep still grumbled at the base of Nellie’s brain and she leaned against a doogden tree, waiting for them to drift free of her head. A quick walk to Dorniver was what she needed. She’d taken a few dollars from her secret stash under the remembering dress and her plan was to buy something to eat, then hang around, looking for an easy pocket to pick. Today was the second day of Lulunar, when the Festival of the Twins was celebrated, and the streets would be crowded with pockets loaded for spending. Any target she chose, however, would have to be
very
easy, and in
this
level. Until she figured out what had gone wrong with the last gate, she was going to have to take the risks every pickpocket faced.