17

Belion stood on the other side of the small door. He had decided to shrink himself. He had already gone through the door. This was the only course of action he could pursue. He had now pursued it, and he was on the other side.

Silvergirl’s avatar was nowhere on the regular map of the game. She was in a dark spot on his map, or to put it in coding terms she was in a set of numbers that had no definition. The game was coded in chunks, in blocks, and every space, every object, every creature had a number. The numbers she inhabited had not, it appeared, been assigned. They had been skipped.

It was as if when she passed through that door she went into another world—one that had ceased to exist or had not yet been created. Or had she given up on him, quit the game, deleted her character, ended her life? He had never been told by an administrator, “This player has committed suicide. Please erase her avatar and distribute her belongings among her friends.” You couldn’t kill yourself in the game universe. You fought for your life, because a fighter never quits. That was the whole idea. Stabbing yourself in the guts with a knife was an invalid operation. You could, however, inadvertently become a jumper. People did that all the time. Only to regenerate at the fountain in their hometowns, good as new.

On the other side of the door, he quickly made himself big again. He got back his water buffalo horns. He put back on his large-size armor. Enough of being small and going through stupid little doors. He was now gigantic again and a god. He followed a path out of the cave and through the dim forest, listening to repeated ambient noises of birdsong and the rustle of squirrels on a loop.

Belion, sitting in Toledo, turned to a different monitor and checked that he was still listed as online. He was. His character appeared in a dark part of the map. He could see Silvergirl there, too, but he couldn’t see what was between him and her. Belion felt, for the first time in a long while, worried about his safety. He had no idea if he was still invincible. The thought that he could be killed or even hurt was new to him. But instead of unpacking the idea, he felt like throwing it down a well. Stupid idea.

He came to a grand gate in a stone wall. On each side of the gate were huge carved figures, like solemn pillars. They had cone-shaped beards made of regular stone curls, and they wore fez-shaped hats. Their round eyes regarded Belion without concern. Above them was a huge stone lintel, carved in pictures and angular marks. The gate was just an opening in the wall, and nothing was stopping Belion from going inside, so he did.

Before him the main causeway of the city was dusty and empty, lined on both sides by ancient buildings and rubble. He listened intently, but the ambient noises coded into this area were just a whistling breeze and the scratch of ragged linen on stone. He found himself checking his other screen for approaching PCs, but there was nothing to be seen. He could not tell if he was in danger or not. This was living. This was not spectating, orchestrating, or destroying. This was life.

He stood inside the gates of this dusty old city and surveyed the rough streets, crumbling red stone buildings. At the bottom of his screen, a text box informed him that he felt a thin breeze, and smelled something sour. A horned lizard watched him from the railing on one battered patio. Belion moved toward the first intersection, and almost immediately he was attacked. The thing came at him from the side: a woman with the body of a four-legged beast. It pounded at him with gnarled fists, licking its lips greedily. After the initial shock of seeing his own hit count go down for the first time in a year, he removed its head with one stroke of his club. When he clicked the command to search its corpse for valuables, he removed from it a lavender stone.

He crossed a bridge over a wide river. There were no boats on the river; nothing floated there. On his left he saw an official-looking building, and inside he opened a glass cabinet and withdrew a silver flute. He smashed a table and found nothing underneath. In a murky fountain he saw what he thought might be a rotted arm, but the graphics were so lame, he wasn’t sure.

He turned down a side street, killed two more of the woman beasts, and came to an abandoned marketplace with tattered awnings stretched over dusty stalls. There were stalls that had held tapestries, stalls that had held furniture. In one stall he found something he could pick up—when he examined it, the game told him it was a chunk of venison. Venison. He shook his head and dropped it. He checked the map on his other screen and saw that he was coming near to the dot that marked Silvergirl’s presence. She was alone at the edge of the city.

There were four watchtowers, one at each corner of the city wall. He thumped up a circular staircase, a squeeze for his wide shoulders. No more shrinking, thought Belion. This is it. Upstairs, he found a stone golem and the back of a girl. He saw the wrinkle of her silver cowl at her neck, and knew that it was she. Silvergirl sat in the window, her feet outside, the robe puddled on the sill around her buttocks. The world outside her window was blurry and incomplete. It had not been properly coded and the textures were rough, but she looked at it as if it were some kind of damned sparkling vista or something.

“Stand down,” she said, and the golem, who was silently standing there, not looking at Belion or anything else, dropped his weapon and dissolved into dust, leaving a full set of mithril armor on the ground.

“Put it on,” she said to Belion. “You’re going to need it.”

“I don’t mind the lamia,” said Belion. “I already killed five.”

“You’re going to kill something else,” she said. “A beholder.”

“Wait a minute, am I in Thalos? Where did you get the code for this area?”

“You’re in Babylon,” she said. “Think about it. Did you ever see a river in Thalos?”

With that she dropped out the window. Belion leaned out after her, aghast, and could see her down below, on the ground, collecting herself and walking away down the street. He rushed down the stairs to catch up to her.

*   *   *

The phone beside Belion’s desk rang. He picked it up quickly, discovered it was not his phone, but rather the house phone at Irene’s mother’s house. Mentally staggering through layers of disorientation from coming out of gaming and into this unfamiliar house, he jabbed the wrong button and turned it off. He stared at the phone until it rang again.

“Hello?” He jabbed the right button. “Hello?”

“Belion?” It was Irene. On the screen in front of him, Silvergirl was passing him a smooth ball of quartz.

“Yeah?” Belion did not want to be interrupted.

“Belion, I need to break up with you.”

“Yep, OK.” He examined the ball of quartz in his inventory. A light source. He followed Silvergirl down a wide main street and saw a domed temple before him, rising up out of dried gardens, the desiccated vines and trees still climbing colonnades and statuary.

“I’m breaking up with you now,” Irene was saying.

“Got it,” said Belion. “Thanks.”

He moved his avatar over to the doorway to the temple and angled himself to be able to peer inside, but it was dark. Silvergirl stood at the entrance to the temple, and she put out a hand to stop him from entering. She pulled back her cowl, showing her face to him, and then she leaned over and gave his avatar a kiss on the cheek.

“Belion,” said Irene in his ear, “do you understand what I am saying to you? We are broken up. I had sex with another man. Penis sex. I am not your girlfriend as of now.”

“Sad,” said Belion. “Sorry. Miss you. Gotta go.”

He pulled his broadsword out of its sheath and strode into the temple.

*   *   *

George and Irene sat in Irene’s car in the parking lot of the Metropolitan Funeral Home. They’d stopped at Frankie’s to eat breakfast: jalapeño eggs for Irene and coffee for George. Then Irene had said she needed to run an errand.

“I hope you’re not tired. Are you tired?” she asked. “I’m not tired a bit.”

“Not tired,” said George. He was not tired if tired meant she was going home without him. He would stay awake forever.

“Maybe you should go home,” said Irene. “And get some sleep.”

“No,” said George.

George’s head pounded. He palmed a small, flat vial out of his pocket and twisted the cap. Painkillers. The only way to get on with the day, sometimes. He stuck the cap in his nostril, squeezed the vial, and sniffed. Then he stretched his mouth open and gulped a little.

“What was that?”

“I’m fine,” said George.

“I’m sure you are,” said Irene, “But what did you just put in your nose?”

“I take medicine,” said George. “Vitamins, really. For health purposes.”

“Vitamins don’t look like that. And you don’t put them in your nose. What was that thing?”

“Irene, I love you,” said George.

“Wow, that must be some interesting stuff, for you to deflect like that.”

“Yeah, no, it’s just a vitamin. But maybe we should go home. We.” George emphasized the plural. “We should go home to my house together.”

“Aren’t you working today?”

“Not this morning,” said George. “I don’t have a lecture until three.”

“Fine, then,” she said. “We can squeeze in my errand. But we have to hurry.”

“Here?” asked George groggily. He could feel the painkiller invading his skull from the top, like a dripping river of precious ice water numbing his head, making it all so much better.

“Yes, here,” said Irene.

“But they don’t open now,” he said. The sky was barely pink, and it couldn’t have been after seven.

“Now is the right time. They’ve burned her up, but they haven’t opened for the day.”

George put his hand on Irene’s leg. Maybe she would crawl out from under the steering wheel and into his lap, and she would fold herself up under his chin and rest her head on his chest. He would put his arms around her, around all of her, her folded legs and her small back. He would lock her in, and they would fall asleep for a little while, her cheek against his throat, his cheek against her hair, just for an hour or two. It couldn’t hurt.

“George,” said Irene. He popped awake.

“Yes,” he said.

“I told you my mother died three days ago, right?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Well, I have to go get her, and I’m not filling out any forms or organizing any sort of meeting with any sort of undertaker. I’ve sat in that lobby once, and looked at that damn parade of mouth-breathing dead people on that monitor, I’m not doing it again.”

“They’re not open,” George repeated. “And dead people—”

“George, if I go in there, and pick her up, and sign a form, then before I know it I’ll be picking out an urn. And if I pick out an urn, then I’m arranging a service, and if I’m arranging a service, then I’m buying a dress, and making a list of people, and composing an ad to go in the paper, and opening the house for a condolence party with cream cheese and olive sandwiches and ginger ale and lilies. Don’t you see I can’t do that? Condolences? It’s not even viable.”

“Probably you should though,” he said. She seemed so determined, and her adorable face was being very serious and fierce. He wanted to help her, even if it meant eating a dead person’s breathing mouth on cream cheese.

“I’m asking you one more time what was in that little bottle,” said Irene.

“Opiate,” said George, too medicated not to be honest. “It’s opiate. It’s totally legal and a prescription. A pre-scrip-tion,” he said slowly. “For me. Mine. My water buffalo. Mine.”

“Oh my god,” said Irene. She opened her mouth and shut it again. She started to laugh but then rolled her eyes instead. “At least you’ll have plausible deniability,” she said. “I’m sorry, officer, I was just helping my friend here steal her mother’s ashes. No, that’s not opium. That’s prescription embalming fluid!”

George frowned. He really wanted to lie down. The tentacles of his headache were being peeled away from his skull one by one by the medicine, and it was so helpful. If he could lie down, and sleep, perhaps with his face nestled in the crease between Irene’s breast and her upper arm, that would be even better. It actually was all perfectly legal. There had been doctors involved at all levels of the operation. Doctor, I have a terrible headache. What, again? Yes, and nothing seems to help. Here, let me get you this nasal spray. Take it if you need it, but by all means don’t take it and then break into a crematorium.

“Come on, George,” said Irene. “You have to boost me.”

“OK,” said George. He unfolded himself from her bitty little car and stood up and stretched. Immediately he felt better. He felt he could boost her, and steal these ashes. “Come on,” she said. “This is the part of the building with the crematorium. See the chimneys? Plus, you can’t get into this wing from inside, so you know. They must be doing something in there.”

George nodded and followed her. There were no other cars in the lot on this side of the building. There was one car in the lot on the other side, possibly a security guard or another early mourner or someone who had just cheated and parked here while headed to a restaurant, a theater, a bar, and then they had too many drinks, and they were like I can drive, and their friend was like no you can’t, and they were like where did I even park?

“George!” Irene was saying. He tried to listen to her very carefully, but she had walked all the way across the parking lot and was standing under one of the windows. It was high on the wall, possibly to prevent onlookers from viewing the furnaces being stoked, viewing the corpses being loaded into them, viewing the whole morbid spectacle. When George made it all the way across the parking lot and found he was standing next to her again he felt like crying with relief. Just to be near her, this familiar person, who felt like a warm, satisfying piece in his puzzle, shaped just right. His only disappointment was that he wasn’t kissing her.

“Boost me,” she said. She was holding a long piece of metal and another small device that looked like a battery.

“What are you going to do?”

“Apparently scale this brick wall by myself or go get a ladder,” said Irene impatiently.

He boosted her onto his shoulders. She sat there, fiddling with the piece of metal and the battery. Her thighs pressed against his ears. The back of his head was pressed into her lady bits through the black jeans. He could not resist bouncing her up and down a little bit. No one could have.

“Quit it,” she said, and dug her heel into his ribs. But then she put her hand on the top of his head and ran her fingers down through his hair, curling around his ear in the most pleasing, soothing, maddening way. He knew that if nothing else happened, and he just felt the magic sensation of that hand running its way down through his hair, he would have lived for a reason. He looked up at her, and she was threading the long piece of metal through the bottom of the window frame. It was like a yardstick. Once she’d got it through, she applied the little battery to one end and flipped a switch.

“It’s a shape-memory alloy,” she said. “Nickel titanium, to be exact.”

“You mean Terminator metal?”

“Yeah.”

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“I got it,” she said. “It’s commercially available.”

“For this particular application?”

She didn’t answer, but used the device on the end of the metal stick. When she applied the current to the metal, the part inside the window began to twist and shape itself into the form it had previously known. There was a reason for making metal like this, George knew, and it had to do with heart surgery and engine diagnostics. It did not have to do with robbing crematoriums. When she was satisfied with the shape of the memory metal, she gave a few quick jerks and the latch of the window swung free.

“I’m guessing it’s not armed,” she said. “The ones in the front weren’t, and that was where the money was kept. Back here is just dead people.”

“Great,” said George.

Irene lifted the window and flung herself up and through. For a minute her feet were dangling, and then she was inside. George stood on the green grass around the building, looking at morning bursting onto Toledo, hoping not to be too conspicuous against the brick wall.

“Come in,” he heard her call. “I’ll throw you out something.”

George leaned against the cool bricks. In a few seconds, she said, “Stand clear of the window.” But before his addled brain could figure out what that meant, there was a stool hurtling over the ledge and onto the grass. George picked it up and set it against the wall, using it to climb up on the ledge and through. Then they were both inside.

The crematorium was like an operating room, all brushed metal and shining tile, and in the dim light it had a bluish and sparkling tinge to it, as if it had all been recently wet. There were gurneys draped in white cloth, and there were instruments in racks, overhead lights in trapezoid shades, and two desks near the door. The minute he swept the room with his eyes, he knew that something here was very bad. There was a lurking presence, a gap in the air, a shadow in his vision. This was not a good time for his gods and goddesses to show up. Or, it was a very good time for them to show up, but not this one. This felt terrible. He was afraid. Apart from that fear, he found the crematorium was very much like a lab. It had the same look, but not the same feel.

“Come on,” said Irene.

The only door in the room was operated by one of those “panic bar” pressure handles, and George assumed the door was locked. There was no way out but the window, and he’d fallen six feet down to the floor. In a blaze of forethought that he paused to notice with pride, he grabbed another stool and set it by the window.

“Escape stool,” he said to Irene. “This is very important.”

She nodded. She was walking through the room quietly, her hands touching lightly on the gurneys as she passed each one. There was a clipboard with a few papers clipped to it hanging off the front of each gurney, but none were occupied. Irene examined the clipboards. She did not lift the cloths that were left on top. There were no toe tags lying around, discarded. Maybe the morgue had upgraded to wristbands, or forehead tattoos, or earrings. Left is right, right is dead. George examined a list on the wall, and Irene read over his shoulder.

Things to check for before using the retort:

1. Pacemaker

2. Liquor bottles placed in the coffin by friends of the deceased

Either can cause an EXPLOSION. Please mind the clients are properly prepared for the retort.

“This must be the retort,” she said.

George looked at her, hoping to make a joke. About the word “retort.” And how, in death, there is no retort, or something. However, behind Irene, he saw a dark shape move between a filing cabinet and one of the desks. It was not blurry, but flat and black, in the shape of a human, but possibly made of coal. The worst problem about it was that it had no face. He knew, without knowing quite how he knew, that this thing was disease and death. It was the god of death: Hades, or Satan, or Ereshkigal, or whatever you wanted to say: this was the modern American version of that. The stripped-down version. No horns, no blue skin, no pagoda on its head. No romance. No fire. The thing walked on tiptoe. He couldn’t tell where it was looking. He closed his eyes and opened them again. Irene was looking at a row of machines that looked like front-loading washers. On top of them, in a metal tray, were a number of shining metal balls. George had to watch as this crusty, blank Osiris put its elbows on a gurney and jutted its chin toward Irene. Its face elongated, and it brayed. George jumped, bumping into a tray of instruments and sending a pair of forceps clattering to the ground.

“What’s wrong with you,” Irene barked.

She had found the ovens. Each had a metal clasp and was the height of one of the gurneys. There were three in all. Irene moved from one to the next, touching her hand to each one as if checking the temperature. The dry black thing came behind her, touching each one, too, mimicking her movements. George frowned. “Stop that,” he said.

“I want to know which one she was in,” said Irene.

“There’s no way to know that,” said George. “It was cool, or they wouldn’t have taken her out.”

Irene opened one of the doors. It opened with a hiss, and they saw inside the oven. It was very clean, a brick tube with a trench in the far end to collect the ashes. There were no bits of tooth and bone, no piles of dust in the corner. It all looked very sanitary. She shut the door again. Outside the door, there was a small peephole. She looked through it.

“Of course,” she said. “They wouldn’t want to mix up the people.”

Her voice sounded strangled. He thought he should get her out of there, but she was moving again, around the wall. She had found a wire shelving unit that had small black boxes lined up on it in rows.

“Here,” said Irene. “See here?”

George went to stand next to her and face the boxes on the shelves, shuddering to be so close to the death thing that kept walking around after her, but wanting to keep it away. He saw it go so close to her, but he didn’t know what to do.

“Haven’t you ever sat on a garden hose and said, hey, this is what it’s like to get fucked by Poseidon?” it hissed into Irene’s ear. George heard it clearly, but Irene seemed not to notice.

George put his arm around her. The dead thing put its arm around her on the other side. George couldn’t feel where their arms brushed together but he could feel Irene being pulled away, being pulled toward that black dryness. “She’s got to be here,” said Irene. “Look at the names. The dates.”

Each black box had a plain white rectangle on the end and the name of a person printed there. Irene ran her finger down over the names.

“Haven’t you ever sat on a vacuum cleaner and said, hey, this is what it’s like to get eaten out by Aeolus?” it hissed again.

“We have to go,” said George.

“I know,” said Irene. “I know.”

George pulled her sharply toward him. She looked up at him and smiled, so bravely, so sweetly, and behind her head he could see the black shape of the dead thing’s head, trying to tilt at the same angle.

“I’m sorry,” said Irene. “We’ll go. Here she is.”

Irene reached out both hands, hesitated, and then pulled one of the boxes off the shelf. “Heavy,” she said. “I didn’t expect that.”

The death thing was climbing on the shelf now, rattling it, shaking it like an agitated monkey.

“Popped her cherry, did you George?” it said. There was no mouth to move, no ears to hear an answer.

“Come on,” said George. “Climb through the window. I’ll hand the box out to you.”

“You can’t drop it, though.” She laughed nervously. “That would be too horrific.”

“Naturally,” said George, trying very hard to pretend to be amused. “I’m allergic to dusty clouds of dead mothers-in-law.”

“She’s not your mother-in-law,” said Irene quietly. She climbed up on the stool and heaved herself out, sat on the ledge, and then swung her legs out, dropped away.

Now George was alone with the thing and its black breath. The thing is this: there had never been anything all that bad in his life. No one had died. No one had even been very sick. His mother had laid waste to every problem in his path. She spread out the world, easy for his taking, tuned to his key, ripe for his harvest. No grandmother to wither, no teacher at school, no college chum, no one would have come to end up here or anywhere else where death could find them. His mother had kept that all from happening, from the sheer force of her human will. And now George stood, one foot on the stool, one hand on the window ledge, the black box of ashes tucked under his arm, and the bad ugly god said one more thing to him.

“I’m coming for you,” it said. “Believe it.”