"So all right," she snapped. "That's what I'll do." She donned goggles and dust mask, and plugged in the electric grinder.
"Tell ya what, Sis. Not that I don't trust you or nothing, but how about you set up a mirror over on the workbench so I can watch what you're doing? I can talk you through it."
Jane hesitated, then nodded. She set up the mirror.
"Okay, the first thing you wanna do is find a spot where the rust ain't so bad. Up near the front flank, say."
Half an hour later, the left front fender was looking pretty good. Not perfect, but a few coats of paint to smooth things out, and it'd be fine. Jane felt a little better, too. Work could do that. There was nothing like a little directed action to fill up the mind, steady the nerves, drive away thought.
"Yo, girlie," Ragwort said. "Now that you got all that free-floating anxiety out of your system, I don't suppose you'd mind telling me just what's bugging you?"
"Oh, Ragwort. It's all too complicated and you don't even know the people involved."
"Like who?"
"Oh, gosh, like Ratsnickle, Grunt, the—"
"Don't know Grunt! Him and me, we're asshole buddies. Why, last year he come in the shop when I was telling some a my old war stories and he tried to say I was never no combat model. The little prick said I'd never seen action. I showed him some action all right. Stepped on his foot and broke three bones. He ain't been back since."
Jane stifled a laugh. "Really?"
"All together now, class." Ragwort managed a rough but identifiable imitation of Grunt's voice. "The four fucks: Fucked-up, Fucked-over, Fucked-out, and just plain Fucked."
Jane laughed until she choked, and couldn't stop, even then. It poured out of her endlessly, as if all the pain and fear within had been converted to a river of laughter. "No, please!" she gasped.
"That's better," he said. "Dry them tears, girlie. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."
— 9 —
"I'VE BEEN DOING SOME FIGURING," JANE SAID. "DO YOU know how much work it's going to take to completely restore you?"
The dragon did not answer. He was watching the meryons, as usual. Lines of tiny soldiers were marching off to battle. Derringer-sized cannons and other instruments of war were hauled by machines no larger than mice. Their tanks were marvels of miniaturization. Wisps of smoke arose from the temples.
"Years!"
No response.
"Decades!"
No response.
"Centuries!"
Silence.
She opened the grimoire and quoted: "Seventy-nine years of specialized labor go into each Moloch-class dragon. This does not include the armaments or surveillance and communication equipment, which are fitted to the mainframe after completion." Her voice went up slightly. "If the labor involved in crafting pretooled parts bought from outside vendors were factored into account, the total would be closer to eighty-six years." She slammed shut the grimoire. "Eighty-six years! I remember once Peter spent three days reworking the wiring on a horse he was trying to fix, and we're talking about something that probably only took ten minutes to install in the first place."
A cool breeze tumbled a poplar leaf through the cabin window. The leaf was yellow and shaped like a spearhead. The wind dropped it in Jane's lap. It seemed an omen, of what she did not know.
"You lied to me." The dragon's gaze was fixed on the streams of captives winding their way up the outsides of the temples. Priests waited on the top, invisible daggers in their hands. The temples formed a semicircle, all facing the dragon; from a certain perspective they looked like stylized geometric representations of his face. There was a sick interdependence between Melanchthon and the meryons; he gave them materials they required for their industries, and they in turn fed his monstrous need for diversion. "You made me promise I'd fix you, but that's not possible and you know it. You knew it then. Why did you make me promise something you knew couldn't be done?"
No answer.
She bolted out the doorway, leaving the hatch ajar. At the bottom of the ladder she hesitated to make certain there were no meryons underfoot. What had once been elementary courtesy was now a necessity. Their weaponry had advanced to the point where they were capable of killing her now, should she crush any of their number. Over her shoulder, she shouted, "I'm going to the mall."
As it turned out, she went to Peter's instead, to see Gwen.
* * *
Gwen was not in a good mood. The campaign for next year's wicker queen officially began that morning. Five candidates had declared, and she approved of none of them. "Look at these grubby bitches!" She waved a fistful of handbills in the air. "Sleekit's running—am I supposed to take
her
seriously? She can't even keep her fingernails clean." She laughed bitterly. "I'm going to be torched by someone with five days' stubble on her legs. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic."
"Oh, she'll grow into the role, whoever they choose." Peter picked up a flyer. "This one looks pretty cute." He winked at Jane. "I could go for her."
"You'll pay for that comment, Master Hillside," Gwen said ominously. She thrust a paper at Jane. "Did you ever see such makeup? She must slather it on with a butter knife."
Jane stared down into a face a million times more beautiful than her own would ever be. "It looks like a mask."
"Exactly! Peter, what are we sitting around here for? I don't want to be here. Let's go someplace, all three of us together."
"The clubs won't be open for hours."
"Who said it had to be a club? There's more to life than just dancing. Let's go to my place, Jane's never seen it, have you, Jane? I think she ought to see it, at least once. Come on, let's go."
Informed by some technological precognition, the limo was waiting at the curb when they hit the street. A black dwarf held the door open for them, then ascended to a box over the front boot and took up the reins. The interior was all gray plush with charcoal fittings. There was a built-in bar, but Jane didn't dare open it. Gwen stared moodily out the window the entire way.
Jane had never been in Gwen's penthouse before. Peter didn't like spending time there; it was where she entertained her gentleman friends. Round-eyed, Jane stared at the white grand piano, the slim vases of cut flowers, the enormous round water bed.
"Well? Try it out." After a second's hesitation Jane bounced down on the bed. Ripples fled, rebounded, lifted her like a boat. Gwen twisted her fingers in a sigil of power, and hidden motors began to revolve the bed. Another mystic sign and the sound system came on.
It was the single most luxurious thing Jane had ever encountered. You could lie flat on the white satin sheets and watch your image turning slowly in the mirrored ceiling, like a new constellation wheeling in the sky. The speakers were built into the frame: When Bloodaxe ripped into "Mama's Last Wish" from their
No Exit
album, the bass went right through your guts and made your stomach ache.
"This is wonderful!" she shouted.
"Yes, isn't it?" Gwen extended a hand and pulled her up. "Let me show you around." She spun about the room, opening doors. "Sauna's here, weight room here. This is the bathroom."
"What's that?"
"A bidet."
Reddening, Jane said, "Oh."
There was a Jacuzzi set in a faux-rock grotto. Orchids drooped from artfully natural niches and spider plants hung their babies down almost into the water. Colored lights spun at its bottom. There were closets crammed with impossible hoards of silks and synthetics. Gwen's dressing table had so many perfume bottles that an oppressive miasma hung over it. She lifted a sprayer from the clutter and let an infinitesimal touch of scent grace the side of her long neck. "I know it's awful of me to say so, but I can't help it—Isn't it all lovely?"
"Yeah, great," Peter said. He'd been silent ever since arriving. He parted the drapes, made an eyeslit in the blinds with his fingers, let it snap shut. "Heck of a view."
"Oh, don't be like that!" Gwen drew open a drawer and from beneath a mist of lace underthings retrieved a small silver snuffbox. "A little pixie dust will pick you right up." She picked up an unframed oval mirror. They all sat down on the edge of the bed.
The mirror was like a mountain pool in her hands. Her reflection was a beautiful wraith, drowning in its depths. She chopped three lines of fairy powder, produced a straw, and inhaled one in three even, ladylike snorts. "Ahhhhh."
Peter took mirror and straw from her and did up the second line. He handed them on to Jane, who looked down at her fearful face. She took the straw, held it as Gwen had, inhaled.
A scattering of fine powder hit the back of her throat. Her eyes opened wide, and the world became very clear. It was as if a fever she hadn't known she suffered from had abruptly broken and dissolved. She bent to snort up the rest.
"Watch out!" Gwen's hand darted forward to raise Jane's hair back and away from the dust. "Do you have any idea how much this shit costs?"
"Everything you've got," Peter muttered sullenly.
"Thank you, Mr. Sunshine." Gwen scowled and then, impulsively, reached out and hugged him. With a mischievous smile, she said, "Did I ever tell you how Peter and I met?"
"Oh, she doesn't want to hear that."
"Yes, I do! Please!"
"Well. When I was young"—Peter held up two fingers; two years ago, she meant—"I lived in an absolute hovel. In a trailer camp, if you can imagine that, by the edge of a marsh. The mosquitoes there were dreadful, and there were white apes that lived in the trees and would swoop down and snatch you up if you went out too late at night. They'd bite off your fingers and toes and the ears off your head. I knew a girl who lost her nose." She shuddered graciously.
"I was so unhappy there. I had absolutely nothing worth owning. And then one day…" She fell silent. Her chin rose, and she stared into the distant past.
Energy crawled around inside Jane. It trembled her right leg, and raced her heart. It took an effort of will not to bounce up and down on the bed. Gwen's face was lovely in profile, so pure and focused. Jane leaned forward, eager to hear. "What happened?"
"Huh? Well, I suppose nothing happened. If by 'happened' you mean some event or remark that pushed me over the edge." She tapped out some more pixie dust onto the mirror, bent over it again to chop it fine with a gold-plated razor blade. "But it all became too much. It was all of a sameness, you see. No one day was different from any other. It was all gray, gray, gray.
"So I went out into the marshes."
They paused to snort up some more dust.
"There was a little trail at the back of the trailer camp you could follow in. At the edges, it's all junk refrigerators and concrete rubble. You go past that, and there are all these little pools where they've dumped chemical wastes. Some of them have a kind of brown plastic crust, and others will try to ooze after you if you linger. Some are a beautiful, beautiful turquoise blue, and if you peer into them long enough, vapors rise from the water and you die. But if you go beyond them, you come to a place that's almost pristine. There are pools there where the black apples grow. They go down forever, into the heart of the earth."
"Black apples?"
"Yes. It took me an hour to get that far in, and I was all scratched and sweaty by then. But I found one of the pools. It was very quiet there, and the surface of the water was smooth as glass.
"I looked around to make sure nobody was looking and took off my stuff. This horrible flowered blouse and a pair of jeans that didn't even fit right. It's a funny thing. They were so cheap that when I stood there unclothed to the sun and wind, I felt beautiful."
"You
were
beautiful," Peter said earnestly.
"Isn't he sweet? But you're getting ahead of the story. So I gathered myself together, took a deep breath, and dove in. It was the single bravest thing I ever did in my life." Gwen put the mirror on her knees, tipped the snuffbox and tapped its side. Nothing came out. "Shit! Is this all there is? Peter! You were supposed to score some more for me." She flung it and the mirror aside. "I'm sick of this place. Let's go!"
"Where?" Peter asked.
"What the fuck do I care where? The clubs will be opening soon. We'll think of someplace, just let's go."
The limo was waiting. They got within, started down the streets. Gwen hammered on the roof with the flat of her hand. "Faster!" The dwarf obeyed. A twist of her hand and Green Man came on, their
Whitsuntide
album. She stared out the window.
"What happened then?" Jane asked. "After you dove into the pool?"
With a start, Gwen turned, frowning, to her. Then her mood shifted again, and she smiled. "I went down, down, down. At first the water was brown, like tea. But it turned black, fast, and then I couldn't see. I lost track of which way I was swimming, but it must have been down because I didn't return to the surface. My lungs hurt, and my ears—you can't imagine! It was like having nails driven through them.
"Little tendrils touched me, gently, like the fingers of a thousand small lovers. Then more insistently. They grew thicker and clung to my face and by now I was drowning, and even though that was what I wanted, I couldn't help struggling. But that only entangled me all the more firmly. I kicked and tore at the roots until I was shrouded in them, and could not move. It was then that something bumped against my mouth.
"It was soft, like an overripe plum, and about the size of my fist. It was a black apple, I realized that at once, one that had inexplicably grown much closer to the light than is normal. I thought to myself how sweet it would be to die with the taste of one in my mouth." Gwen reached out to stroke Peter's jeans. He shifted in his seat, parting his legs a bit, and she absently kneaded the inside of his thigh.