“Your contract?” repeated Tone, sitting back in his chair. “What d’you mean?”
Enid explained it alclass="underline" the effect of the Change on his contract, how the contract bound him, the way the music could charm, could shield… could twist. “Cal’s gonna cut my music free and I’m gonna help him find his sister and cut her free. Maybe cut us all free.”
Tone laughed, raucous. “I don’t know which is more crazy, thinkin’ you can get someone back from the Storm, or thinkin’ you can get ’em back from Primal.”
Whatever Tone saw in Cal’s eyes cut his laughter off at the pass. “It sounds as if Enid isn’t the only musician with a … contractual problem.”
Tone lowered his eyes. “There’ve been others.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Cal. “Strange as it seems, the legal bindings in Enid’s contract are still in effect, they just work on a different level. In theory, if we confront the Primal executives, we can void the contract. Which is where we might need your help. Is there a safe way to get into the Chicago Media Arts Building?”
“You’re screwin’ with me, right? You ain’t goin’ in there.
Man, that thing’ll eat her alive.” He jerked his head in Magritte’s direction. “The rest of you it’ll just chew up and spit out.”
Cal shifted from one foot to the other like he’d borrowed some of Goldie’s bees. Made me wish he’d sit down. “What thing?” he asked.
Tone looked at him as if he’d dropped in from another planet. “Primal, what else?”
Cal held up his hands. “Wait a minute. Primal is a record company.”
“Primal is a monster.” Venus was perched on a stool at the end of Jelly’s bar, watching us. She shrugged. “Or a savior, or both-depending on how you look at it. I suppose if it weren’t for Primal, this city would’ve imploded on itself in the first week after. But it didn’t, because of whatever it is that Primal does.”
Cal turned slowly to look at her. “Primal generates the firewall?”
She nodded. “Somehow it keeps the Storm from reaching in here.”
“So Primal isn’t… the Storm. Isn’t related to the Storm.”
Our new acquaintances exchanged a series of glances that spoke volumes about the uncertainty of present-day life. Then Venus said, “I don’t see how that could be. Like I said, Primal keeps the Storm out.”
“Or at least it seems that way,” added Jelly. “Hell, I don’t think a one of us can pretend to know jack-diddly about anything these days. All we know is, when Primal’s Red Zone went up, the Storm went away.”
“But you think it’s a monster,” said Cal. “You hide from it-why?”
“Back in the beginning, we had some like her,” Venus said. She canted her head toward Magritte, who drifted closer to Goldie. “The Storm got some of them, then Primal put up that bloody canopy and it didn’t get any more. Right about the time we were thanking God for that, they started disappearing again. This time it was Primal doing the taking.”
Cal paled. “Why?”
“We don’t know,” said Jelly. “It just takes them whenever it gets the chance. It can’t suck them up like the Storm does, though, so it lures them or sends its goons after them.”
“The Tough Guys?” guessed Cal.
Tone curled his lip. “Surface scum.”
“But why would this Primal create the Red Zone?” asked Doc rocking forward in his chair. “What would it have to gain from putting this place under a bubble?”
“Maybe it’s hiding out, too,” said Magritte softly.
Tone was nodding. “A king in its castle.”
Or a spider in its web.
“But where’s it getting the power to do that?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. Damn, I was having trouble tracking suddenly-craving sleep. “If it’s all that powerful, why didn’t it take Magritte when it had the chance? We were right there. Standing out in the street like a bunch of gawking tourists. Hell, even I could feel…” I hesitated, not wanting to remember what I’d felt.
“I was jamming,” murmured Enid, his eyes on Cal’s face. He tugged at one of his dreadlocks, shaking the little course of bells at the end, pulsing out a rhythm. “I was jamming harder than I ever jammed in my life. Maybe it couldn’t reach past the music.”
“I think you were a surprise,” said Goldie. He was still sitting at the bar, aimlessly sloshing chicory around in his cup. “You’d been silent up till then. And we were being drawn in, right to them.”
That sent a jolt of slimy electricity up my spine. Damn that troll, Russo. If I ever saw him again, I was going to skin him, tan his hide, and wear it for a rain slicker.
Cal was shaking his head. “It, them… what are we talking about here? I’ll ask again: What is Primal?”
“One Voice in front of many,” mumbled Goldie. His own voice was flat, gray, all the normal colors leached out of it. From what I could see of his face, it matched.
I caught Doc’s eye and canted my head toward Goldie. He all right? I mouthed.
Doc’s expression did not ease my mind one bit. He got up and moved over to the bar. I watched for a moment as he put his head close to Goldie’s, their foreheads nearly touching. Viktor Lysenko, Guardian Angel. My lips smiled without me telling them to.
“What are we up against here?” Cal asked. “You say we’re facing a monster-do you mean that literally? We’d gotten the impression that Primal Records was still run by a group of people.”
Tone opened his eyes so wide, I could see the whites gleam in the dim light. “Who told you that?”
“Howard Russo, not in so many words.”
“Russo? Shit, he’s nobody you’d want to be givin’ head space too. That rodent sold out I don’t know how many devas before we got on to him.”
“I knew it,” I said. “I friggin’ knew it. He delivered us right to the front door. Like Chinese takeout.” I remembered five lousy words of Shakespeare. They twisted in my head: All the world’s a puppet theater.
Enid’s face had lost most of its color. “Why, Tone? Why would he?”
“T’save his own ass, I s’pose. He’s under contract, too, isn’t he?”
Cal sank into Doc’s chair and leaned across the table, eyes on Tone’s face. “What is Primal?”
“We don’t know.” Venus slid off her bar stool and moved to our table, her arms wrapped around herself as if keeping out a chill. “Says it was the first thing the Storm birthed.”
“Then you’ve seen it.”
“I came close one time,” she said. “Too damn close.”
“I seen it.”
The voice came from the darkest corner of the room, where a hallway fed back into the private quarters. I didn’t see anyone at first, then there was a shuffling sound and a dark figure moved unsteadily into the light of the room.
It was an old man. A tall, lean old man, a little stooped, hair grizzled white, clothes the same tones and colors as his skin-a walking, talking gingerbread man. Lamplight fell across his face. His eyes were completely white with cataracts. It’d been a long time since he’d seen anything. “Now, Papa…” said Venus.
“I seen it,” the old man insisted quietly.
“Who …?” Cal looked to Tone and gestured at the old guy.
“They call me Papa Sky,” the old man said. “You must be our travelers. Welcome to Legends.”
TWENTY-THREE
DOC
Goldie was not all right. And it took no medical degree to know it. Like a man whose fever had just broken, he quivered in icy perspiration. He sat hunched over the bar, clinging to his mug as if it possessed powers of salvation, while Magritte hovered in suspended animation by his side.
I slid onto the bar stool next to him and leaned in, keeping my voice low. “What’s wrong, Goldie?”
He raised his eyes to my face, giving me a fleeting glimpse of a place even my deepest grief had never taken me.