THEY WERE SITTING at the kitchen table, waiting for a car- serole to warm up in the oven. A dense silence hunched over the room, broken only by an odd pinging noise the oven made as it heated. Tilted back in his chair Deller sat with his eyes closed, running a fingertip repeatedly over the bandage on his wounded hand. Slouched opposite, Nellie watched the tense line of his jaw, the twist of his lips as thoughts surfaced onto his face. Fidgets kept jumping out all over her skin. She wanted to reach across the table and touch the soft heat of his arm; she wanted to take off pell-mell in the opposite direction.
“You think he’s already dead?” Deller asked abruptly, opening his eyes. “Kids die in those experiments, don’t they?”
“I dunno,” Nellie said reluctantly. “I don’t remember much about that stuff.”
Deller watched her through the muted green of his eyes. “So you really don’t know what they did to your brain.”
She shrugged, glancing away. “I know it somewhere inside me. I can feel it hidden, like a secret, something I’m not supposed to know. It’s like a heavy ...” Her face scrunched up as she thought. “... blob sitting in my brain. Sometimes I get blurry pictures of what happened. Doctors in lab coats. White rooms full of machines. Other kids.” A thick shudder oozed through her, and she trailed off.
“What were they doing to the other kids?” Deller asked quickly.
“They were in machines. They weren’t dead. I don’t remember anyone being dead.” Nellie’s eyes darted in and out of his gaze. “No blood, or anything like that.”
“Just machines?” Deller said hopefully. “That’s the way you saw Fen, right? In a machine?”
“Yeah, and he wasn’t dead,” Nellie said emphatically. “I didn’t see any blood, not even bruises.”
Deller watched her steadily, checking her face for lies. She stared back, feeling the desperate need of the moment, trying to carry its weight without a fidget or cough. Finally he lowered his chair and placed his bandaged hand on the table. Peeling back one edge of the bandage, he lifted it off. Quietly Nellie sucked in her breath. The stub of his missing finger was swollen, the flesh jagged and purplish-red, straining against the stitches that held it together.
“I hated you when this happened.” Deller stared down at his hand, shifting the remaining fingers, letting them rise and fall. “I thought, ‘What did I do to her? Why didn’t she just come down when I told her to? Why’d she have to jump me and jam my hand into the fence?’—”
“I didn’t jam your hand into the fence!” Nellie exploded.
“I said that’s what I thought,” Deller said carefully, without looking at her. “That’s what I made up in my head so I wouldn’t have to think about what really happened, how we were ganging up on some girl we didn’t know, who just happened to be alone... So I didn’t have to think about what might’ve happened if we’d caught you.” His face contorted briefly, and he stared intently at his hand. Lifting it into the air, he spread his fingers and looked at Nellie through the gap. “This missing finger,” he said brood-ingly, “this empty space holds what could’ve happened to you. What I might’ve done.”
Their eyes locked and Nellie found herself staring into the raw fear of his knowing.
“I’m glad it’s empty,” he said hoarsely. “I’m just so glad there’s nothing there.” His mouth trembled and he hesitated. “Mom and me had a long talk last night,” he said finally. “About the Skulls and magazine stuff. We looked ... at a magazine. She talked about girls, about how they need to be happy. ‘It’s important for girls to be happy,’ she said. ‘Girls have secret private things hidden inside them that have to do with the keeping of life. With the making of life and the carrying of it. It’s a sacred thing,’ she said, ‘and you can’t fool with it. When girls are happy, everything is happy. The sky is happy, the earth is happy, you can feel the dirt smiling beneath your feet. When girls are happy, you’ll be happy, son,’ she said.”
Taking a wobbly breath, Deller tilted his chair against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “When Fen disappeared I went kind of snake, I guess. I’ve been an incredible shit, but last night my mom did me the biggest favor of my life. Maybe now I’ll finally get things right. Skulls,” he said bitterly. “Numbskulls.”
Nellie was shaking, deep quivery shudders. Happiness—Deller and his mother had actually sat and talked about her happiness. “It’s still bleeding,” she whispered. “Where your finger was.”
“I was putting the bandage on real tight.” Deller grimaced. “To punish myself, I guess.”
“Maybe now you can stop.” Nellie’s eyes darted across his, then ran away to the corners of the room. “Because you didn’t do anything to me, Deller, not really. Except cut my hair, and that’ll grow back. And this afternoon you stopped your double from hurting my double, so that sort of makes up for it, doesn’t it? Anyway, the Goddess wouldn’t want you to punish yourself. She’d want you to be happy too. She’d forgive you, I know She would.”
“The Goddess.” Deller gave a ragged laugh. “I should’ve known She’d show up sooner or later.”
Their eyes snuck across each other’s faces, and they gave each other tentative smiles.
“Um?” Nellie fidgeted, her nervousness running through her like a live thing. “D’you think maybe we could fix your finger first?”
“That’s all right,” said Deller, staring at it. “I’ll put another bandage on it.”
“No,” said Nellie gruffly. “You do it too tight.”
Time stretched as Deller stared at the wound in his hand. Finally he rose without speaking and left the room. When he returned he was carrying a tube of ointment, a cotton swab and a box of bandages. Silently he sat down and held out his hand. As she leaned toward him, Nellie was visited with a memory of her mother standing over her, gently smearing a sharp-smelling ointment onto a scrape on her arm. Taking a careful breath, she squeezed some ointment onto the cotton swab and touched it to Deller’s wound. He hissed and she whispered an apology, then he apologized for hissing. Slowly she peeled open a bandage, her mind like a freshly washed window, singing with light. Laying the bandage over the wound, she pressed it softly into place. A long breath lifted through her. She could feel the ointment sending itself into the wound in smooth easy wishes.
“Feels better already,” said Deller.
Nellie patted the tube of ointment, cotton swab and bandages into a careful pile. The silence in the kitchen was so excruciating, she was almost afraid to move. Then without warning, her stomach let loose with a raging bellow.
A thorough grin took Deller’s face. Leaning forward, he said, “I’m hungrier.”
“Betcha,” Nellie challenged.
“You’re on,” Deller agreed.
THEY LEFT FOR THE meeting soon after eating, double-riding Deller’s bike through back alleys until they crossed the river and passed into the West Haven district. There, Deller locked his bike outside a corner store and gestured to Nellie to follow. As they came around the back of the building, she found herself suddenly facing a group of young toughs wearing black caps low over their eyes. Without a word Deller stepped back and they closed in, soundless beyond the thundering of her heart.
Rigid, Nellie stood, her fingers curled and ready to scratch. What was this, why hadn’t Deller warned her, she hadn’t expected any kind of handing over, a roughing up. Behind her someone stomped his foot, and she jerked in white-hot fear. Someone else snickered.
“That’s right, girlie,” said the man facing her. “You’d best be real scared. We’re the welcoming committee for where you’re going. You’ve got to get past us before you see them.”
Nellie’s eyes slitted and her heart slowed its thundering, giving her thinking room. So this was just a scare tactic. Probably the best thing was to look dumb and stupid—that usually kept bullies happy. “What d’you want?” she whimpered, raising an arm protectively to her face.
“C’mere,” said the man facing her. Dressed in jeans and a black vest, he kept running one hand across the sweaty skin of his chest. Reluctantly Nellie took a step toward him and he leered, “Take off the headgear, cutie.”
She removed the kerchief. Off to one side she could see Deller shuffling his feet and slanting sideways glances at the group. When this was over, she was going to grab that hand of his and twist it tight as a tourniquet, she was—
“Closer,” said Mr. Bare Chest, and she stepped dead into the reek of sweat and aftershave. As fingers prodded the quarter-inch bristle of hair on her head, she tried to keep her shoulders from crawling up her neck. “I see three,” said Mr. Bare Chest, glancing at Deller. “I thought you said four.”
“There’s one down the back,” Deller said quickly. “I can show you.”
With a grunt, the man grabbed Nellie’s shoulders and spun her around. The world swirled dizzily, fingers poked at the back of her head, and she was given a small shove. “Okay,” said Mr. Bare Chest. “Her brains are toast, like you said. Take her in.”
Abruptly the circle of toughs swooped toward Nellie and howled like wild dogs. Cowering, she counted heartbeats as they backed away snickering, then took off. A deep bruised silence settled into the alley, into Nellie’s breathing, her skin. Cautious footsteps approached and she looked up to see Deller peering at her, his face pinched and anxious. She felt exhausted, a pile of dust waiting for any breeze to come along and blow her away.
“They did that to me too,” Deller said quietly. “They do it to everyone, just so you know to keep your mouth shut.”
“Could’ve warned me.” Shakily Nellie retied her kerchief around her head.
“Those guys know fear,” Deller said. “It’s their specialty. It had to be real, or things would’ve gotten worse until it was. C’mon.”
He set off toward the street and Nellie stared after him, realizing this was all she was going to get—he wasn’t about to play hero for her, offer her any blood. Slouching in his wake she kicked savagely at pebbles, jettisoning her hurt bit by bit into the gutter. After several blocks it lifted, and she noticed the crowd gathered in small groups along the sidewalk. It was the fifth day of Lulunar and though no major celebrations were scheduled, small booths dotted the streets and people remained in a festive mood. Several children ran past wearing mirrored masks, and Nellie spotted a sign outside a striped tent in a small park that advertised a mindjoy artist. Everywhere she looked shop windows displayed statues of the Goddess, and most of the cars parked along the street also sported a blue-robed figure dangling from the rear-view mirror. Stopping in front of a booth with a sky-blue covering, she pondered a large display of Goddess jewelry. What she wanted right now was a set of Goddess knuckle rings, so she could punch out that bare-chested moron behind the corner store. One knock-out Goddess punch straight between the eyes, Nellie thought moodily, to send him on a quick trip all the way to the other end of Lulunar.
“C’mon,” hissed Deller, tugging at her sleeve. “It’s in here.”
Jerking her arm free she scuffed grumpily after him, then halted as he turned into a restaurant. Puzzled, she stepped back and scanned the building. Shoved between a pawn shop and a secondhand furniture store, the narrow restaurant looked like a gloomy afterthought. Sagging curtains obscured the windows and a dust-covered statue of the Goddess stood on the sill. Inside, the only customers were two old men drinking coffee at opposite ends of the room.
“Two pieces of dengleberry pie with no whipped cream, please,” Deller said to the woman at the counter. Glancing at him she nodded, but made no move toward the pie sitting in the display case. “Are there any washrooms?” Deller asked, scratching the back of his neck. Again the woman nodded, then placed two forks in a cross on the counter. This time Deller nodded and turned to Nellie. “You said you had to use the can, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure,” she stammered, her mind racing to keep up. “C’mon then.” As Deller started toward the back of the restaurant, Nellie saw the old man in the right corner glance toward them, then write something in a notebook. The other man coughed, and the air blinked a horde of invisible hooded eyes. Uneasily she followed Deller down a short hallway, past a door marked ‘Women’ and another marked ‘Men’. At a third door Deller stopped and knocked quietly—four short taps and three long. The door opened and a man in a black cap gave them a cursory glance.
“Three knives to the Elfadden,” he said.
“Eye, throat and belly,” Deller replied.
The man beckoned them through. Descending a flight of stairs, they entered a musty basement lit by a bare bulb and piled with crates. “Through here,” said Deller, opening a door onto a second room, also crowded with crates. At the back of this room, a third door opened onto a narrow tunnel. “The Jinnet bought the businesses on this side of the block, then dug a common room off the basements for meetings,” Deller said tersely as he led the way along the tunnel. “You can get to it from several of the stores. Saves anyone noticing the traffic.”
As they approached the door that stood at the tunnel’s far end, Nellie felt a familiar shift deep in her brain and a sudden panorama of stars erupted across the inside of her head. Singing in shrill eerie voices, they swirled without discernible alignment or pattern. Dimly she heard Deller give another coded knock and stood, waiting it out as the stars faded from her mind. When they’d cleared she found herself facing an open doorway, Deller standing beyond it, looking back at her from a crowded room. Cautiously she peered past him, the memory of the stars’ shrill voices reverberating through her brain. She’d just been given a warning, she was sure of it. Waiting for her in this large dimly lit room was some kind of flux.
She stepped through the doorway and immediately recognized the shadowy figures that stood about, jam-packing the place. Dressed in long-suffering clothes and rundown shoes, they were Dorniver’s street vendors and factory workers, mechanics and waitresses, the odd witch and healer. Here and there she recognized a face, but the rest she understood simply by the careful hunch of their shoulders and the weasely set of their faces. There were no priests in this gathering, no factory owners or City Hall administrators. Ahead of her someone shifted, and a break in the crowd allowed her a glimpse of a podium that had been set up at the room’s far end. Behind it stood a table with several seated figures. Instantly Nellie zeroed in on them. Obviously these were the big shots. Big shots always found a way of setting themselves apart, and in this room they’d chosen to sit while everyone else stood.
The only thing Deller had told her was that the Jinnet would ask her to explain her ability to travel the levels and describe her encounter with Fen. After hinting they might also ask for a demonstration, he’d left the rest to her imagination. Uneasily Nellie glanced at the hunched figures surrounding her. What would they think if they saw her open a gate and step through it to another level? Probably get all uptight and start calling her a sarpa or rerraren. Filled with misgivings she turned toward Deller, but he was standing with his back to her, engrossed in a conversation with a man who smelled as if he made his living selling fish. If she was going to check this place out, it looked as if she was going to have to do it on her own. Tugging at her kerchief to make sure it was firmly tied, Nellie began to push her way through the throng of hunched shoulders and careful voices that separated her from the big shots seated at the front of the room.
Suddenly her brain tilted dangerously, swinging so deep into the shrill singing of stars she thought she might pass out. When the sensation faded she tuned into the molecular field, scanning it for signs of flux but could find no shimmering undulations, not a single gate running the walls, ceiling or floor. Confused, she checked midair and again found nothing. For a long stretched moment Nellie dragged her gaze once more across the room, searching for a hairline crack, any shadowy seam in the molecular play of energy. About her people pulsated as figures of light. Excess energy rose wing like from their bodies, and she could almost see the thoughts throbbing in their brains.
Then ahead of her, a single narrow seam came into focus. Quickly Nellie tuned out of the molecular field, eager to discover the gate’s exact location, and found herself staring directly at a woman who was seated behind the table at the front of the room. Unable to believe her eyes, Nellie tuned back into the molecular field and the gate came into focus, but though she gazed intently she could find no sign of the woman’s presence. The gate seemed to be hovering midair, unattached to anything in the surrounding dance of energy.
Bewildered, she tuned out of the molecular field and stood staring at the woman. How was it possible for someone to exist as a solid reality, but not as energy? Biting her lip, Nellie tuned into the molecular field one last time and probed the area around the gate with her mind. An immediate sensation of deadness hit her, a heaviness that latched onto her thoughts and dragged them downward. Frantically she tuned out of the molecular field and took several steps back. As she’d thought, the gate was running directly through the woman’s body, but it appeared to be a body without a soul.
Instinctively she made the sign of the Goddess and began backing toward the door. Never in all her days had she encountered a gate within a person’s body, nor had she seen someone who didn’t show up in the molecular field. Obviously this woman was doubled. Nellie had no idea what lived on the other side of this particular gate and she had no intention of finding out. Too bad if Deller had staked his reputation on her cooperation, she hadn’t agreed to cooperate with a doubling. True, most doublings came and went like a sneeze, just a quick sense of something there and gone. The odd one stuck around longer—a few hours, maybe a week—and during this time the person who’d been doubled could exhibit strange behaviors, sometimes merely quixotic, sometimes dangerous and unearthly. But at some point the doubling ended and the person returned to normal. Most left no side effects beyond temporary dizziness or headaches, and some healers and witches were rumored to seek them out.
This doubling was different. The woman seated behind the table looked normal enough—plump and middle-aged, hair in a bright orange perm and chatting animatedly—but her molecular field ... her body... had been permanently breached end to end, and her soul stolen.
Whimpering, Nellie wormed her way through the crowd. Since her arrival the gathering had grown and now stood packed shoulder to shoulder. From the front of the room came the ringing of a bell. Voices stilled as people turned from individual conversations toward the sound. Several feet from the door, Nellie continued to squeeze determinedly between bodies. She could hear someone addressing the crowd, and the ripple of laughter that came in response. Almost at the exit, she paused and observed the man in the black cap who was standing guard. Eyes fixed on the front of the room, he seemed caught up in the speaker’s words. Carefully she eased behind him and gripped the doorknob. Easy now, just a quick turn to the right—
“Where d’you think you’re going?” Turning swiftly, the guard grabbed her wrist. Nellie kicked savagely at his shin, but the burly man simply wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet. Suddenly she was walking air, her arms pinned, with nothing to bite or scratch as she was lugged through the crowd to the front of the room.
“What’s happening, Millen?” asked a male voice as she was dumped onto her feet before the table.
“She was trying to get out.” The guard grabbed Nellie by the back of the neck and forced her head downward, keeping her at arm’s length so she couldn’t scratch or bite. “Going off to report, probably.”
An ugly murmur rose from the crowd and all Nellie could think of was her butt flying high, ripe for kicking. Then Deller’s voice threw itself above the noise, shouting to be heard.
“No!” he called frantically. “She’s the girl I brought to tell you about Fen. She’s here to help us.” Scuffling and panting erupted behind Nellie’s butt and then she saw a pair of runners appear to her left. “Let her go,” Deller said to Millen. “C’mon, what’s she going to do?”
“She was trying to get out,” Millen repeated, giving Nellie’s head another downward thrust. Pain shot through her neck and she grunted under her breath.
“She was probably looking for me,” Deller said quickly, poking Nellie’s shoulder. “Right, Nellie? You couldn’t find me and you got scared, right?”
“Yeah,” Nellie croaked to the floor, and the vice-like grip slowly released her neck. She straightened, swaying slightly.
“Put her over to the side, Millen,” said a bearded man seated at the center of the table. A quick glance told Nellie she’d seen him before, probably working the docks by the river. The man’s eyes passed carelessly over her and he said, “We’ll deal with a few things while her head clears.”
A throat coughed to his left, and someone else said, “Perhaps we should question the girl before we discuss anything in front of her.”
A murmur of assent rose from the crowd and Nellie’s eyes shot toward the second speaker. For a moment she stood blinking, unable to connect the narrow blue eyes, sharp nose and wide thin mouth with the warning that snapped awake in her head. Then she remembered the man she’d seen stepping out of a moment of flux in the corner store wall. Interior Police.
The bearded man nodded to the Interior agent. “Agreed,” he said, glancing at Nellie. “What’s your name then?”
Eyes slitted, Nellie stared back at him. Did he know the guy seated two chairs to his right was Interior Police? Maybe he did, maybe all five big shots seated behind the table had secret connections to the Interior. Or maybe only the narrow blue-eyed man did, and no one else realized the Jinnet had been infiltrated. But if she took the risk of identifying the Interior agent, would anyone but Deller believe her? Would Deller?
“Come on,” hissed Deller, elbowing her. “Answer him.” Slouching her shoulders, Nellie stepped away from him. “Bunny,” she muttered to her feet. “My name’s Bunny.”
The bearded man glanced quickly at Deller. “I thought you said her name was Nellie?” he said sharply.
Deller darted a look at Nellie, his face flushed and weasely-looking. Make that weasely-shit-scared -looking, Nellie thought.
“It is Nellie,” Deller stammered.
The bearded man looked back at Nellie and she shrugged. “Bunny’s my nickname,” she allowed reluctantly.
The man’s eyebrows rose. “And your last name?”
Nellie’s mouth locked tight into silence. No way was she giving her last name with Interior Police listening. As soon as he had it, her surname would be on its way to the Interior and a sleek gray van would come heading in her direction, just as it had for her mother. Crossing her arms, Nellie stood mute, staring at the floor.
“Deller?” snapped the man.
“I don’t know her last name,” Deller said helplessly. “And I don’t know why she’s acting this way. She said she’d tell you about Fen —”
“Who’s Fen?” asked Nellie, turning toward him.
Deller gaped, his eyes bugging. “Fen, my brother.”
“Never heard of him,” Nellie said flatly. Sticking a finger into her nose, she pulled out a gooey wad and sucked at it. “Yum, yum,” she sang softly, crossing her eyes. “The blind man’s hung by the river and the fish are all waiting, the fish are all wait—”
“Slap her,” said the bearded man, and Nellie’s head was whacked soundly from behind. Stumbling, she fell against the table. Immediately two hands gripped her face, pulling her forward. “Don’t play games with me, girlie,” hissed the bearded man. “You remember the welcoming committee? You want to see them again?”
He gave her a shove and she staggered backward, wobbling to a halt beside Deller. So crazy wasn’t going to work, she thought grimly. Well, she’d just have to keep her mouth shut then. There was no way she could freeze a molecular field with this many people, and the only gate in this underground room was in that doubled bitch. Quickly Nellie slanted a glance at Deller. If only she had some way of explaining this to him. Fists clenched, he looked so desperate and pissed-off she knew he would never think of speaking to her again.
“Okay, so I lied,” she said sullenly to the bearded man. “But it’s not Deller’s fault. He didn’t know. I just wanted to make him feel better about his brother, so I told him a story about finding Fen. I never actually saw Fen—”
“You took me through the gate in Fen’s old room,” Deller bellowed, hurt pouring out of him. “And you opened the gate at the church and we set a fire, and—”
“You imagined it,” Nellie said curtly. “He’s got a good imagination,” she added significantly to the bearded man. “People make up stories when someone they love dies. Believe me, I kno—” Just in time she cut herself off. Jamming her hands into her pockets, she tried to stop their shaking. “I told him stories to make him feel better about his dead brother,” she lied steadily to her feet, “and he believed them all.”
Face incredulous, the bearded man rose to his feet. “Do you know who we are?” he demanded.
“The Jinnet,” Nellie said immediately. “You’re the resistance that fights the Interior.”
The man leaned toward her. “And have you heard of the ‘Cup of Tea List’?” he hissed. “You’re getting mighty close to drinking your last cup. Do you want to drink your last cup?”
Coldness oozed up Nellie’s throat and she shook her head.
“Let me probe her, Gareth.” A new voice spoke up, so mellow it was almost a caress. Without thinking, Nellie glanced toward the woman seated behind the table and then she was trapped, locked into a deepening stare. At that moment, she knew they knew. The Jinnet knew this woman was doubled, and they were gambling that the power that held her was on their side. But a power like this didn’t take sides, it used whatever came to it for its own purposes. As Nellie’s gaze locked with the woman’s, she felt something unseen slip out of the woman’s body and into her own brain. Deeper and deeper it probed, jabbing fiercely. Agony rocked Nellie’s head, she heard her own groans as if they were a stranger’s. Fight, she had to fight to stay ahead of the pain. If she didn’t, she would be cracked like a nut and all the secrets she was carrying, even the ones she herself didn’t yet know, would be stolen.
Suddenly an intense blur appeared to Nellie’s right, moving directly toward the table. Still locked into the probe, she caught only a glimpse of a hazy gold-brocaded dress and the flash of a transparent knife as it rose and descended into the face of the woman behind the table. Abruptly the pain in her own head vanished, and she was able to break the probe. Turning, she scanned frantically for her out-of-sync double. There to her right, she was sure she saw the vague shimmer of a gold-brocaded dress disappearing into the crowd. At the front of the room, the woman who’d been probing her now sat holding her orange-permed head in her hands. The crowd waited, holding its breath as she slowly raised her head.
Nellie could see fear in her eyes.
“She’s crazy,” the woman snapped. “Out of her head. The reason she didn’t tell you her last name is because she doesn’t know it. Give her the Double Goodbye, then set her loose in the streets. You’ll get no trouble from her.”
She’s lying, Nellie thought incredulously. Why is she lying?
“What about the boy?” asked Gareth.
“The boy is loyal,” said the woman. “He’ll obey orders never to speak to the girl again.”
“You got that boy?” asked Gareth.
Sucking in his breath, Deller stiffened, then nodded.
“Millen,” said Gareth. “You’ve got your orders. Give the girl the Double Goodbye, then dump her on the other side of the river.”
“And nothing more,” the woman added sharply.
Stepping up beside Nellie, Millen nodded. With a queasy lurch the room upended, and then Nellie was watching Millen’s meaty butt as he carried her unceremoniously from the room.