River of Blue Fire (50 page)

Woolagaroo
. Calliope silently tasted the word.
Devil-devil. Stones for its eyes, just like the old story, she said
.

It was nothing, of course. But it was a little better quality of nothing than anything else so far.

“B
UT since you are an attorney, Mr. Ramsey, surely you of all people can understand that we don't give out our performers' home lines or any other private information. That would be unheard of. Impossible.” Even as she shot him down, the public relations woman's smile did not change. In fact, with the shimmering, animated Uncle Jingle poster covering the entire wall behind her, and the inset window featuring the live feed from the show her fixed professional grin was about the only thing on Catur Ramsey's wallscreen that wasn't moving.

“I'm not asking for her home code Ms. Dreibach. But I have a matter of great importance to discuss with her, and she hasn't answered a single one of my messages through any of the other channels.”

“That is her right, isn't it, Mr. Ramsey?” The smile lost a little of the rictus quality—she was perhaps a tiny bit concerned. “If this is a legal issue, shouldn't you be contacting our legal department directly?”

On the live feed, Uncle Jingle was being swallowed by a whale, or something that would certainly have been one if cetaceans were made of bricks. Ramsey had Watched enough of the Uncle Jingle show during the past week to know that this creature was called the Walling Whale. Uncle Jingle's melodramatic terror was not entirely comfortable to watch. What did kids really think of this stuff, anyway? “Maybe I haven't made myself clear,” he said, tearing his eye away from the miniaturized spectacle. “Olga Pirofsky has done nothing wrong. My clients have no complaint with either Uncle Jingle's Jungle or the Obolos Entertainment Corporation. We simply want to talk to Ms. Pirofsky about something very important to my clients, and I'm asking for your help because she isn't answering my messages.”

Ms. Dreibach patted her helmet of glossy hair. She looked relieved, but not entirely convinced. “I'm glad to hear that, Mr. Ramsey. Obolos is the world leader in children's entertainment, you know, and we don't want to see unfounded rumors of some kind of legal problems all over the nets. But I don't think I can do anything to help you. I can't force one of our employees to take your call, after all.”

“Look, is there
anything
you can think of? could someone hand-deliver a message for me? Assure Ms. Pirofsky that she might be able to help my clients with a very important matter, at no cost to herself except a few minutes for my phone call?”

“Well . . .” The public relations woman had weathered her tiny storm of doubt, and now appeared to be thinking about potential tradeoffs down the line. “We'd hate for you to go away thinking that we don't do our best here at “The Happiest Place on the Net.” I could give you the office line for the show's director, I suppose. Perhaps she . . . oops, it's a
he
this week!” She made a “silly-me” face that took ten points off her IQ and added almost that many years to her age. “Perhaps he could give your message to Olga. To Ms. Pirofsky.”

“Thank you. That would be wonderful, Ms. Dreibach. I can't tell you how helpful you've been.”

She went still again as she consulted her directory. On the wall behind her, Uncle Jingle turned a cartwheel that never ended, spinning around and around and around.

The call came in at a few minutes before ten o'clock, just as he was thinking he might actually be ready to go home. He sighed and sank back into his chair. “
Answer
.”

The incoming line was voice-only. The voice itself sounded very, very tentative, with a faint trace of accent which he had never noticed on the Uncle Jingle show. “Hello? Is there someone there named . . . Ramsey?”

“Decatur Ramsey, Ms. Pirofsky. That's me. Thank you so much for returning my call. I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy . . .”

“What do you want?”

So much for formalities. The director had as much as said that she was an odd bird. “I'm an attorney—I hope they told you that. I'd like to ask you some questions on behalf of my clients.”

“Who are they?”

“I'm not at liberty to disclose that just now, I'm afraid.”

“I have done nothing to anyone.”

“No one's saying you have, Ms. Pirofsky.”
Jesus
, he thought,
this woman isn't just regular odd
—
she sounds frightened
. “Please, just listen to the questions. If you don't want to answer them, all you have to do is tell me so. Don't get me wrong—you will be doing my clients a huge favor if you do help. They are dealing with a very, very difficult problem, and they're desperate.”

“How can I help them? I don't even know who these people are.”

He took a breath, praying to the God of Depositions for patience. “Just let me ask you the first question. Are you familiar with something called Tandagore's Syndrome?”

There was a long silence. “Go on,” she said at last.

“Go on?”

“Let me hear all the questions, then I'll decide if I'm going to answer you.”

Catur Ramsey was half-convinced that he'd stumbled onto some kind of lunatic—the kind who believed that the government had a bunch of little green men stashed away somewhere, or that the intelligence agencies were beaming messages into their brains—but since his clients' own case was pretty damn strange, there was at least a remote chance he might be onto something.

“I can't really ask you the rest of the questions unless I know the answer to the first,” he explained. “I suppose they would go something like, ‘Do you know someone who has it? If not, why are you interested in this and other related medical conditions?' See, Ms. Pirofsky? Like that. But I need to get that first answer.”

There was an even longer silence this time. He began to think she had soundlessly cut the connection when she abruptly asked, in a voice little more than a whisper, “How . . . how did you know I was interested in the Tandagore sickness?”

My God
, he thought.
I've scared this poor woman almost to death
.

“It's no secret, ma'am—I mean, Ms. Pirofsky. Nothing shady. I'm researching these syndromes for my clients. I've been contacting lots of people who have asked the mednets for information, or have written articles, or even who have just had undiagnosed illnesses in their family that resemble the Tandagore profile. You're not the only person I've contacted, by any means.”
But you're certainly one of the most interesting
, he did not say aloud,
since you work on the net itself, and directly with children. You're also one of the most ridiculously damn difficult to get hold of
.

“I've been having these terrible headaches,” she said, then hurriedly added, “oh, God, you're going to think I'm a crazy person. Or that I have a brain tumor or something. But I don't. The doctors say I'm fine.” She fell silent for a moment. “You're going to think I'm even crazier, but I can't talk to you about this on the phone.” She laughed nervously. “Have you noticed how hardly anyone says ‘phone' any more? I suppose that means I'm really getting old.”

Ramsey struggled to sort through the clutter of ideas. “You don't want to talk on . . . on the phone. Is that right?”

“Maybe you could visit me?”

“I'm not sure, Ms. Pirofsky. Where are you? Somewhere near Toronto, right?” He had found a newsnet snippet on her from five years back, a minor personality piece from a small net magazine.

“I live . . .” She stopped again, and several seconds of silence followed. “Oh, no. If you saw my name, looking into this Tandagore thing, then that means . . . that means
anyone
can find out.” Her voice got smaller at the end, as though she had stepped away from the speaker, or toppled down a hole. “Oh, God,” she murmured. “I have to get off. I can't talk.”

“Ms. Pirofsky, please . . .” he began, but the connection clicked off.

He sat staring at the dark screen for some moments before he brought his wallpaper back up, wondering what he could give up to make time for a visit to Canada, and wondering how he would feel about that if the woman turned out to be as unstable as she sounded.

Jaleel Fredericks was one of those people who gave the impression you'd just dragged him away from something
really
important—that even if you were calling to tell him his house was burning down, he'd be a little surprised you'd bothered him when there were things that truly deserved his attention.

“Forgive me, Ramsey, but I'm tired,” he said. “What this comes down to is that you don't really have anything yet. Am I right?”

“Basically.” It was bad strategy to equivocate with Fredericks, but you couldn't let him run roughshod over you, either. He was a good man, Catur Ramsey had long ago decided, but he was used to folding people into shapes that suited him. “But you have to clear the brush before you can start building the cabin.”

“I'm sure.” He frowned as his wife said something offscreen. “That's not what he's calling about.” Fredericks turned his attention back to the attorney. “She says she's been trying to get the authorization for those records you wanted, but it may be a few more days. And did you get that stuff of Sam's she sent you.”

“No problem. And yes, I got those files, but I haven't had a chance to look through them yet. I'll get back to you at the beginning of the week, let you know what all this research amounts to.”

As he was waiting for the Gardiner family's number to pick up, Ramsey watched the stream of cars sliding past on the elevated freeway three floors below his office window, the rain-slick asphalt streaked with reflections from the headlights. He knew he should have asked the Frederickses to authorize a trip up to Toronto, but the idea of explaining the Uncle Jingle woman to Jaleel Fredericks was less than appealing. He wasn't sure himself why he felt there might be something worth pursuing there.

He only had to wade halfway through the incoming call filter before Conrad Gardiner picked up. He was Ramsey's age, perhaps even a bit younger, but he looked ready for retirement, his face barely animated.

“What can we do for you, Mr. Ramsey?”

“I was just curious about something. Do you still have that problem with your son's agent and the missing files?”

“Yes. We've had two different companies in to see what they can do, but no results.” He shook his head slowly. “I can't believe all that stuff has just been mailed right out of our system by . . . by a
program
. Gear, making its own decisions.” His laugh was not a happy one. “Well, that's the twenty-first century for you, isn't it?”

“What was its name?”

“You mean Orlando's agent? I don't know. It was ‘something something
PsAI
‘—a Pseudo-Artificial-Intelligence, you know? Old, but expensive when we got it. I suppose I could look it up.”

“Actually, I was wondering if Orlando had a name for it. You know, a nickname? People, especially kids, often do that.”

“Jesus, you're kidding.” Gardiner was taken aback. “I really can't remember. Vivien!”

His wife walked into the room, just barely visible on Ramsey's screen. She was taking off her coat; he guessed she'd been at the hospital. Her husband passed the question on to her, and she said something Ramsey couldn't hear.

“Beezle Bug,” Gardiner reported. “That's right. I'd forgotten. He's had it since he was a little kid.” His mouth twitched, and he turned away for a moment. When he had mastered himself, he asked: “What do you want to know that for, anyway?”

“Just wondering,” Ramsey said. “An idea. I'll tell you about it another time.”

He broke the connection, then sat back to think, watching the cars leave snail trails of light on the freeway below.

It was midnight by the time he got home. Third time that week, and it was only Thursday.

I
T was almost worse that he knew it was a dream.

Such visions were all that ever came to him in the bloodless darkness that was now the closest he came to sleep—the same tired images, the same recycled shames and horrors. They might be broken apart and then sifted together in strange combinations, but they were still the very ones that had visited him for years, some for over a century.

Even Felix Jongleur's ghosts were growing old.

The three senior boys stood before him, blocking the stairway and any chance of escape. Oldfield had the collar of his white shirt turned up, and held a cigarette cupped in his hand. Patto and Halsall, who had been waiting for their turn, followed Oldfield's gaze. The three stared at him like Macbeth's witches.

“What are you looking at, Jingle-Jangle?” Oldfield demanded.

“Little sniveler,” added Halsall. “Sniveling Frog bastard.”

“Juggles wants to join in,” Patto said, grinning. “He wants a puff on your fag, Oley.”

It was all so predictable—history and fantasy splashed together in an untrustworthy mix. The part of Jongleur's ancient brain that stood at a critical distance from the dream-stage recognized that the stairwell and landing were not from the Cranleigh School residence but his childhood house in Limoux, and that the dream-Patto had almost entirely lost his true features, and looked instead like a man Jongleur had known (and whose business he had ruined) back at the turn of the most recent century, almost ninety years later than these imperfectly remembered school days.

But for all its repetitions, the humiliation of this dream and others like it did not become less.

The English boys were on him now, like jackals on a fallen antelope. Halsall wrenched his arm behind his back while Oldfield grabbed at his crotch and twisted until he screeched with pain and sucked in air and smoke from the stolen cigarette. He could feel it again, that horrible taste; each breath was a red fire going down his throat. He choked until he almost vomited.