CROUCHED BY THE BROOK that ran close to her shack, Nellie traced her fingers slowly over the top of her head. Tiny hairs bristled and a scattering of scrape marks smarted, still raw, under her touch. Deller had shaved her scalp with deliberate carelessness, leaving erratic tufts so her hair would grow back ugly and uneven. Not such a major penalty to suffer, thought Nellie, scowling at her watery reflection. If you considered his missing finger. Obviously he blamed her for that, and maybe it was partly her fault. With a shiver of unease, she recalled the snarling dog and Deller’s eerie moonlit scream. Tit for tat ruled Dorniver’s streets, and no one who’d been violated like Deller could have rested until he’d claimed his revenge. The shaving of her head had been a matter of honor, she understood this. But if the Skulls hadn’t found the scars on her head, and if she hadn’t come up with the lie about the bomb, what would have happened after Deller had carved the D into her scalp? Would they have set her free? Would they?
She was going to get herself pretty at the barbershop. Covering her ravaged scalp with her hands Nellie clucked softly, talking to herself in the wordless sounds she used when alone. Any vague memories she’d had of her mother brushing and braiding her hair had been blown to smithereens by her ordeal with the Skulls. They were gone now; she would never get them back, and her scalp felt like an orphan, like loneliness, an ugly open-mouthed wail. She had to find some way to cover it, hide all that sadness so it wasn’t living in full view for everyone to see. That would mean sweating out the summer months under a stupid hat, and where was she going to find one that would cover her entire scalp? She couldn’t let any part of it be seen, she couldn’t let anyone see the worms.
Worms was how she thought of them—four thick worms that writhed silently across her head. Why couldn’t she remember how she’d gotten them? Why? Hands trembling, Nellie ran her fingers over her scalp yet again. Tracing the scars was like reaching into a coffin to touch the dead, some lost part of herself she couldn’t remember. The scar tissue felt different from the rest of her scalp— dense and smooth, an alien presence. Once upon a time in the Interior long ago, doctors in white rooms had cut her open, dense thick worms had crawled out of her brain onto her scalp and died there.
Nausea twisted Nellie’s stomach, bile rose in her throat and she gagged. Leaning forward she ducked her face into the brook and drank deeply, letting the water wash the tears from her face. She’d come to this quiet place, knowing she had to get out of the shack to think her way through this or her terror would settle into every crack and cranny of her home, coming out at night and making it difficult to sleep. Outside was the best place to work through these kinds of thoughts, where they could be mulled over, then released into the far blue sky.
And so she had chosen this half-circle of kwikwilla trees, whose twisted trunks leaned over a slow-moving pool the brook had carved into the bank. The place was her favorite bathing spot, the quiet pool curtained off by the kwikwillas’ thick green fall of wispy branches. This morning she’d been here for over an hour, crouched on the bank, riding the frightened thud of her heart. Grimly she retraced the long lines of deadness in her scalp. The scars felt like the gates in the molecular field that she used to pass between the levels. Did that make the scars on her scalp some kind of a gate too?
They contained secrets to her past, that was certain. But did she want to open those secrets and explore them more deeply? The short blurred memories she retained of the white rooms were already enough to leave her whimpering with fear. Whatever the pain doctors had done to the inside of her head was over and done with. Was it important to remember the exact details?
Most of her memories of the Interior revealed scenes from a very normal life—an average-looking, squirmy, loud-mouthed kid goofing off on the school playground or eating supper with her mother. But the scenes changed so often—Nellie could remember what felt like an endless stream of apartments and schools. Looking back, it seemed as if she and her mother had been on the run throughout the last few years they’d lived in the Interior, but had pretended nothing unusual was going on, even between themselves. Why? thought Nellie, hugging herself and rocking. Why had her mother never explained their frequent moves, or the long moody silences that had filled their last few apartments? Every time she looked at these memories, Nellie filled with an overwhelming sense of deadness, as if the memories themselves were playacting at being alive, as if they’d never been the real thing even when they were happening.
Sometimes, in odd quiet moments when she was least expecting it, she would feel a shift inside her head and a different kind of memory would surface—something that felt real, that almost explained things. Like the time she was four years old and visiting a neighbor’s newborn with her mother. The new mother had been sitting on her living room couch, smiling and cradling a tightly wrapped blanket. “Come here, Nellie,” she’d called, and Nellie had run toward the woman, a sweet scent of milk and baby powder rising to meet her as she’d peeked into the blanket. A tiny wrinkled face had blinked unfocused eyes at her and waved a delicate red fist. Immediately Nellie’s gaze had slid to the inside of the infant’s wrist, and a sudden vivid knowing had sung through her brain. Pointing to the infant’s fresh tattoo, she’d declared, “That’s so they know where she can go to.”
Silence had dropped on the room then, so thick and intense it had seemed to swallow the very air. Confused, Nellie had turned from the neighbor woman to her mother, but both women’s eyes had flitted away as if they’d no longer wanted to see her, no longer wanted even to remain in the same room. When they’d gotten back to their own apartment, her mother had started packing. At bedtime Nellie had been given a pill and when she’d woken, they were somewhere else. In the weeks that followed, she remembered waking each morning in a different place, her mother’s body curled around her own like a warm hand. Nothing had been explained, but she’d felt the fear her words had caused. Lying beside her silent mother she’d thought back to that moment, trying to remember why she’d spoken those exact words, but their meaning had come and gone like the blink of an eye, a turn of the head. Like flux.
That’s so they know where she can go to. Crouched beside the brook, Nellie rested her chin on her knees and stared into the rippling water. The newborn’s tattoo had been a Cat, like her own. They’d been of the same caste, which meant the infant would eventually attend the same schools, use the same public swimming pools, and choose from the same narrow range of career options. Everyone knew this, so why had her words caused so much dread?
Unless I was talking about the levels. The thought exploded across Nellie’s mind, thundering her heart. But how could I? she thought wildly. I didn’t know about levels back then. The Interior doesn’t have levels, just like it doesn’t have flux.
Or did it? Was it possible her inability to remember much about her life in the Interior was connected to the levels that existed there, and the way flux was used to travel them? After all, she’d seen an agent step out of a pocket of flux in a corner store wall, so someone from the Interior obviously knew about it. And the experiment she’d seen by the quarry, with the children and the birdlike machines—that had been about traveling too. Nellie’s heart plummeted. What if the mysterious scars worming across her scalp were also connected to experiments with flux and the levels? Getting quickly to her feet, she stripped and waded into the quiet pool. It wasn’t good to do too much thinking in one day, especially if she wasn’t sure what she was thinking about. And it couldn’t be healthy for a brain to work too hard, especially one that had been cut open like hers. She’d better give it a rest and think about something easy, like getting hold of a stupid hat.
Eyes closed she floated on the murmuring water, trying to forget the worms on her scalp and the white rooms that hid behind them. Turning onto her side, she whispered softly to the flecks of light that speckled the water’s surface: Have you seen my mother? She disappeared sixteen months ago. She never said goodbye, but sometimes she still comes to me and tells me she loves me ...
A WICKAWOO CRIED LOW in its throat and Nellie stiffened, hugging the shadow of a backyard shed. Up and down the alley a ripple passed through the air as Outbackers turned in their beds, following the bird’s warning cry through their dreams. Pressed against the shed Nellie counted heartbeats and waited, but nothing moved in the stillness. The night had turned deep into the hour past midnight, and the wickawoo had caught her creeping through one of Dorniver’s southern districts, a neighborhood known locally as ‘Snake Eye’ due to its many witches and healers. All things considered, it was a perfect place to be on the first night of Lulunar, the month of the twins, the only time of year the two moons came together to ride the night sky in a parallel arc, and the air breathed flux.
During the year’s eight other months the moons could be seen at various positions in the night sky, separated by vast distances. By loneliness, thought Nellie, staring up at them. After all, the moons were human, the souls of the Goddess’s twin sons. Separated at birth, they’d spent their entire lives searching for each other without success. Upon their deaths the gods had granted them immortality for their perseverance, and now their pure shining souls rode the heavens every night as a reminder of the gods’ wisdom and love. What would it be like, Nellie pondered from her position in the shed’s shadow, to be immortal and ride the skies like that? The Goddess’s priests were always talking about how the faithful would become stars when they died. She scowled. And pagans would fall into utter darkness and vanish into nothingness. Serve them right for not believing in the Goddess and living in filth and wickedness.
What was weird, she thought, giving the moons one last glance, was the way people thought of Lulunar as the month of insanity, when everything became its opposite and chaos reigned. Already Outbackers were posting small statues of the Goddess over doorways and in windows as protection against the doubling that was said to attack even the clearest of minds at this time. Why Lulunar was considered the month of insanity, when it was the only time the twins’ souls were united, was something Nellie hadn’t been able to figure out. Certainly her schoolteacher hadn’t explained this aspect of the myth when they’d studied it in the Interior. She shrugged. Back then she hadn’t paid much attention to the Goddess and Her sons. Sure she’d gone to church on major holidays and paid obeisance to the gods and the stars, but she’d had a mother then, and she’d thought she always would. She hadn’t needed the Goddess, not really. Fiercely Nellie blinked back the tears stinging her eyes. Fortunately, Ivana was the Mother of all mothers, and willing to overlook mistakes of the past. Otherwise there would be no one to love her now.
Easing out of the shed’s shadow, she waited, but the troubled wickawoo seemed to have subsided into sleep. Still, she knew enough to be cautious—the twin moons might be in their crescent phase, but they were currently riding the center of the sky, casting everything into sharp relief, and the city was a restless sleeper at the best of times. With a last glance up and down the alley she started off, lifting the kerchief wrapped around her head and scratching irritably. A week had elapsed since the Skulls’ attack and her scalp itched constantly as new hairs pushed through the skin. Sometimes the urge to scratch drove her frantic and she would claw at her scalp, wanting to dig the itch out by its roots. Sniffing her fingertips for blood, she licked them clean, then tied the kerchief securely into place.
A doogden tree loomed to her right and she slipped behind it, then peered out at a domed structure that sat at the alley’s far end. A wealth of arches and gables, the Sanctuary of the Blessed Goddess was one of many small parishes dedicated to Ivana that were scattered throughout Dorniver’s poorer suburbs. Rising from the center of its domed roof was a spire tipped by a pair of brass hands—the Goddess’s hands, cupped and lifted high above the city. Again tears stung Nellie’s eyes. The Goddess never rested; all over Dorniver Her hands lifted from church spires, continually beseeching the heavens to gaze upon Her followers with mercy.
Leaving the doogden tree, she trotted down the alley toward the church. A quick run across a small parking lot, then along a short wall brought her into a narrow courtyard that nestled against the back of the building. Sharp-edged shadows slanted down the parish walls. In the radiant moonlight each cobblestone was clearly etched and the silvered air hung motionless, waiting within itself. As far as she could see, everything was on schedule, which meant she was early.
Darting across the courtyard, she ducked behind a large rain barrel that stood opposite a metal dumpster. It had taken several weeks’ careful watching to discover the secret that lay behind the dumpster—a small service door that led directly into the church. During the day the dumpster was kept shoved against the wall so the door couldn’t be seen, but on certain nights it was pulled out just enough to permit the body of a man to slip sideways through the gap—not just one, as Nellie had eventually discovered, but eight, in a predictable sequence with five minutes’ wait between each one. If everything went as usual tonight, she’d arrived approximately ten minutes ahead of the first man. Flattening herself against the barrel, she tucked her breathing into a quiet inner place, and settled down to wait.
She would never have known about the hidden door if it hadn’t been for a gang of boys who’d been hired to patrol the neighborhood on the nights the men came to the church. About a month ago she’d been out rambling Snake Eye’s curiously twisted streets on one of her frequent night prowls, when the gang had spotted her and shoved her around before warning her off the area. Something about the way they’d delivered the message, as if it came from the Goddess Herself, and the way they’d let her off so easily, had told Nellie they were working for someone who wanted the area kept clear and quiet. In the following weeks, she’d haunted the neighborhood. The gang had been easy enough to avoid once she’d known they were there, and she’d soon noted the shadowy men who’d turned, one by one, down the side wall of the Sanctuary of the Blessed Goddess. It had been short work to track them to the courtyard and the hidden door, and several more weeks’ observation had established their meeting times—alternating every third and fourth night, one hour past midnight.
Gradually the men began to arrive. As usual they kept to a tight schedule, slipping around the far corner at five-minute intervals, glancing once around the courtyard, then heading directly toward the dumpster and the hidden door. Each man entered the courtyard wearing the same guarded posture, and their order of arrival followed an established sequence. In fact everything about the men seemed prearranged and methodical, and it was this that had originally piqued Nellie’s curiosity. Fixed patterns of behavior were the norm in the Interior, but in the Outbacks they stuck out like a sore thumb. Squeezing herself deeper into the narrow space behind the barrel, she scratched at the pimples forming over several ingrown hairs on her scalp, and waited.
The first man slipped across the courtyard, then the second. Predictable as ever, they were also deadly quiet—one moment the courtyard stretched silent and empty, and the next a soundless figure was gliding past Nellie’s hiding place toward the dumpster, his face clearly identifiable in the moonlight. During the past few weeks she’d passed several of these men in the street during daylight hours and they’d seemed entirely ordinary, with nothing to distinguish them from the next man. What would call them from their beds to come sneaking through the streets to the Goddess’s sanctuary, night after night? And what could the Goddess possibly have to tell them one hour past midnight that She couldn’t say during daylight hours? If Ivana had secrets to tell, Nellie damn well wanted to hear them. Slitting her eyes, she maintained a careful watch on the silent courtyard.
Overhead the twin moons traveled their parallel arc, pouring down a thick pearly light. The third man arrived, and the fourth. Then a long pause followed, during which Nellie massaged a cramp in her leg, stopping immediately when the sixth man appeared. Where was the fifth? Nellie counted in her head, recalling the men’s individual faces. Yes, it was the fifth man who hadn’t shown. Sometimes a man failed to arrive, but the order of appearance always continued unchanged. As the seventh, then eighth man slipped behind the dumpster she crouched, arguing furiously with herself. Her tentative plan had been to follow the eighth man into the church, but what if the fifth had been delayed and was just around the corner? Don’t be a wimp, she scoffed inwardly. These guys were robots. If the fifth man hadn’t shown in sequence, he was sick or out of town.
She was about to step out from the barrel when a slight sound froze her into position, just in time to escape the notice of a figure that was slinking into the courtyard. Shooting glances in every direction, it crept cautiously toward the dumpster. A hyper-alertness sang through Nellie’s brain and she leaned forward, muttering under her breath. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t one of the usual eight. He was too short for one thing, and was moving with greater stealth, keeping an arm over his face. Even so, she was sure she knew him from somewhere. The figure reached the dumpster and turned, dropping its arm to sweep the courtyard with one last glance, and Nellie went rigid, recognizing Deller’s narrow weasely face. Still favoring his bandaged hand, he was cradling it against his stomach. Without a sound he turned toward the dumpster and slid behind it.
Well, that settled it. Any hesitation Nellie might have had about following strange men into an unfamiliar building late at night went up in smoke as she watched Deller slip through the shadowy doorway ahead of her. No way was she sitting with her butt glued to a mundane rain barrel while that nine-fingered weasel was in there, spying on Snake Eye’s inner mysteries. Easing out from behind the barrel, she was halfway across the courtyard when a sudden murmur of voices coming along the church’s west wall sent her scuttling back to her hiding place. Hunched deep in the barrel’s shadow, she peered out cautiously, then stared wide-eyed at the two men crossing the courtyard. One was the fifth man, out of sequence—no surprise there. But unless Lulunar was pulling one of its doubling tricks, she’d seen his companion one week ago, close to the deserted quarry. For the tenth figure currently crossing the courtyard was the driver of the burgundy van, the man who’d lifted the four children out of the back of the vehicle. Why would the fifth man bring a pain doctor, an Interior agent, to a middle-of-the-night meeting in one of the Goddess’s sanctuaries?
Stifling a yelp of warning, Nellie sank further into the barrel’s shadow. Vague white rooms swirled in her head, followed by a wave of nausea. Get a grip, she thought, hitting her stomach with both hands. No one’s going to live this life for you if you don’t.
When her nausea cleared, she peered around the barrel and saw the two men had gone in. Quickly she crossed the courtyard and slid behind the dumpster, then passed through a narrow doorway into a low-ceilinged corridor. There she waited, nostrils flared, as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The air felt heavy, weighted with the scent of closed-in places. To her left the corridor disappeared into darkness, but a hundred feet to her right a low-watt ceiling bulb burned.
Leaving the door to the courtyard slightly ajar, Nellie turned, about to proceed along the hall when she noticed a small alcove carved into the wall directly opposite. Set into the alcove was a statue of the Goddess dressed in Her usual blue robe, hands raised in supplication and an unlit candle at Her feet. At the sight of the candle, a hiss snaked from Nellie’s lips. Sacrilege. Any true believer would have the parish priest drawn and quartered for such disrespect. Leaning forward she kissed Ivana’s feet and whispered profuse apologies, then turned and tiptoed along the narrow corridor. The walls leaned in, the air pressed close. Without tuning into the molecular field she could sense what seemed to be countless gates to other levels, their spidery seams running the walls, ceiling, and floor. A tiny wave of flux came at her, rippling the air with warning. Instinctively she stepped toward it, always ready for another shape-shifting rush, then regretfully drew back. She was here for a higher purpose, a divine purpose really—to discover the Goddess’s secrets and protect Her from the ninth man, if need be. For tonight, the joys of flux would have to wait.
She reached the low-watt bulb to find the corridor forked and turned left toward an open doorway. Through it she could see rows of pews and beyond them, a faintly lit floor-to-ceiling statue of the Goddess. Creeping to the doorway, Nellie peered into the main sanctuary of the church. All around the room candles flickered in alcoves and on various tables, blossoming into a fiery field beneath the feet of the huge statue of the Goddess that dominated the front wall. Hands cupped She stood in the usual position, feet bare and eyes uplifted. Sometimes those hands held ceremonial objects that had been consecrated for a specific purpose, and several times Nellie had seen them cradle the bloody heart of a freshly sacrificed animal, but tonight they were empty.
At the front of the sanctuary she could see the shadowy outlines of the men seated in the first several pews. Facing them was the parish priest, dressed in his emerald green robe of daily office. As they spoke the men’s voices blurred and overlapped, playing tricks with echoes, too quick to be made out clearly. Nellie scowled. She was going to have to move in closer if she wanted to hear anything, but that should be easy enough among the pews—just as long as she didn’t bump into Deller. A quick scan of the sanctuary hadn’t revealed his hiding place, and the pews were the obvious option. Dropping to her knees, she began to crawl up a side aisle. Fortunately the priest was standing in front of the center aisle, and his view of her was blocked. Unobserved, she slid into the fifth pew and flattened herself against the stone floor.
The men seemed to be discussing different suburbs of the city. “Not Waktuk,” said someone quickly. “They’ve already met their quota.”
“What about Skrenden?” asked someone else.
“You’re better off in West Daven,” came a third voice. “School attendance is low, and the kids are anywhere and everywhere.”
“Do the West Daven police know how to handle complaints?” asked a fourth.
“No one in West Daven goes to the police,” came the dry response. “But that won’t make it easy—West Daven women don’t cut the placenta until the tenth year.”
The men shared a chuckle, and then the man who’d inquired about the police asked, “What about the churches, Father?”
“The churches are Dorniver’s only adequate birth registry,” said the priest. “Everyone brings their newborns to the Goddess Ivana.”
There was another agreeable murmur of laughter from the men, and then the same voice—probably, Nellie realized, the Interior agent—asked, “Father, I need to know—”
A sneeze erupted at the back of the sanctuary. For one knife-edged moment Nellie froze, then erupted from her pew. There was no point in continuing to crouch on the floor, hoping to remain unobserved—the men had been alerted to the presence of someone else in the room and they would be searching everywhere. As she tore down the aisle, a shout went up behind her, and she put on a surge of speed. No need to panic, she told herself grimly, she had a good head start. But as she approached the back entrance, the drapes to a nearby confessional booth opened and Deller burst into her path. Furiously they struggled in the entranceway, clawing and shoving. In a diamond-brilliant frenzy, Nellie grabbed Deller’s bandaged hand and twisted it until he fell back with a gasp. Then she was through the doorway and pounding down the narrow corridor with him at her heels.
He’d recognized her. In spite of the gloom and their mutual fear, Deller had gone bug-eyed when he’d fixed on her. But this was no time to gloat. Behind them the men seemed to be gaining, and Nellie sprinted, her feet pounding panic through her body. On either side the walls slanted inward, cold shoulders cutting off her escape. The door behind the dumpster was too far, she would never reach it in time, and when the Interior agent saw her scalp he would drag her to the floor and cut her open a second time. Dizziness flooded Nellie’s knees and she staggered, whimpering.
“Oh no, you don’t.” A hand shoved her firmly onward and Deller hissed, “You’re not screwing me up again, bitch.”
The men were so close, Nellie was sure she could hear their breathing. “We can’t do it,” she whispered, and Deller shoved her again, hard. If only, she thought wildly, she could figure out where the closest gate to the next level was. But she couldn’t actually see the gates unless she tuned into the molecular field, and she couldn’t get enough focus to do that while she was pounding in absolute terror down some creepy Goddess-forsaken hallway.
Or could she? There were so many gates in this place, the air virtually throbbed with them. Even in the middle of her panic Nellie could feel them, she could feel them. Then, to her right, she saw a pocket of flux undulating in the wall. Stumbling to a halt, she turned and threw the full force of her fear directly at it. Immediately the wall divided cleanly, leaving a space the height and breadth of her body. With a cry Nellie sprang through the opening. Sudden darkness enveloped her and she paused, instinctively assessing the new level’s molecular field. Quickly her body adjusted to its vibratory rate. Then she turned, intending to send her mind into the gate and draw it closed, but was almost knocked off her feet as Deller came hurtling through the gap.
“Out of my way!” she hissed, ducking to one side. Then she sent her mind into the faintly lit opening and drew it closed.