He felt something shifting in his head, as though he was slipping towards the golden circle.
Going, going...
And oh, it felt fine. He was done with his wounded flesh, done with bruises and bleeding balls; done with Joe.
He felt his body start to fall, and as it did so-as the life went out of it utterly-he fell into the circle of the 'shu's eye.
He was granted a moment of rest there: but a moment filled with such grace and such ease it wiped all the sufferings of the days that had brought him here, and of the years that had proceeded them.
There was no confusion, nor fear. He understood what had happened to him with absolute clarity. He'd died on the edge of the pool, and his spirit had fallen into the eye of the Zehrapushu. There, in that gilded round, it stayed for a blissful moment. Then it was gone, up and away along the line of shu's sight towards the cloud of the lad.
In the temple below him he heard Noah let out a cry of rage, and for an instant, though he had neither eyes nor head to put them in, his spirit saw quite plainly what was happening below. Noah had stepped over Joe's corpse and had plunged his blood-stained hands into the pool of Quiddity's waters. The 'shu had responded to the trespass instantly.
Its tentacles had started to flail wildly, and one of themwhether by intention or chance Joe would never know-had wrapped around Noah's arm. Enraged and revolted, Noah picked up the sword he'd just set aside and even as Joe watched he plunged the blade into the 'shu's unblinking eye.
A tremor passed through Joe's world. Through the gaze in which he traveled, through the temple below, and out, across the plaza of columns and through the streets of b'Kether Sabbat. He knew on the instant what had happened. The 'shu's hold on the Iad had slipped; and the great wave that had been frozen over the city began to curl.
Joe turned his spirit-sight up towards the Iad, and to his astonishment saw that he was almost upon it, flying like an arrow into its roiling substance.
Below him, the city shook itself into despair, and the island of Mem-6 b'Kether Sabbat fell beneath the lad's shadow.
And he, Joe Flicker, who had given up life but had not perished, flew into the heart of the city's destroyer, and lost himself there as surely as if he had died.
The S@ Motel was a modest establishment, set a quarter of a mile back from the road along what was little more than a gravel strewn track, barely wide enough to allow two cars to pass. The motel itself was a single-story, wooden structure built around two and a quarter sides of a parking lot, the quarter being the office, over which a fitfully illuminated sign boasted that there were NO VACANCIES. Apparently most of the occupants were out having a high time in Everville, because when Tesia drove in, the lot was empty but for three vehicles. One was a flathed truck, parked outside the office, one a beaten up Mustang, which Tesla assumed was Grillo's, and the third was an even more dilapidated Ford Pinto.
She had not even turned off the engine of her bike when the door of room six opened and a scrawny, balding man in a shirt and pants several sizes too big for him stepped out and said her name. She was about to ask him if they knew each other when she realized it was Grillo. There was no way to conceal her shock. He seemed not to notice, however, or perhaps not to care. He opened his arms to her (so thin! oh, so thin!) and they embraced.
"You don't know how glad I am to see you," he said. The frailty wasn't just in his body. It was in his voice too. He sounded remote, as though his sickness, whatever it was, was already carrying him away. Both of us, she thought, not long for this world.
"There's so much to tell you," Grillo was saying. "But I'll keep it simple." He halted, as though waiting for her permission to tell. She told him to go on. "Well... Jo-Beth's behaving really strangely. Some of the time she's so excitable, I want to gag her. The rest of the time she's practically catatonic."
"Does she talk about Tommy-Ray?"
Grillo shook his head. "I've tried to make her talk, but she doesn't trust me. I'm hoping maybe she'll talk to you,. cause we need some inside track here or we're tucked."
"You're sure Tommy-Ray's alive?"
"I don't know about alive, but I know he's around."
"And what about Howie?"
"Not good. We're all playing some kind of endgame here, Tes. It's like everything's coming together, in the worst way. 11
"I know that feeling," she told him.
"And I'm too old for this shit, Tes. Too old and too sick."
"I can see... things aren't good," she said to him. "If you want to talk-"
'No, he said hurriedly. "I don't. There's nothing worth saying anyway. It's just the way things go."
"One question?" "All right. One."
"Is this why you didn't want me to come see you?" tillo nodded. "Stupid, I know. But I guess we all deal with shit the best way we know how. I decided to hide away and work on the Reef."
"How's it going?"
"I want you to see it for yourself, Tes, if we come out of this." She didn't tell them she wouldn't; just nodded. "I think maybe you'd make more sense of it than I have. You knowmake the connections better." He put his arm around her shoulder. "Shall we go in?" he said.
Once, somewhere on the road, Tesia had contemplated setting the story of Jo-Beth McGuire and Howie Katz down for posterity. How in the sunny kingdom of Palomo Grove these two perfect people had met and fallen in love, not realizing that their fathers had sired them to do battle. How their passion had enraged their fathers, and how that rage had erupted into open warfare in the streets of the gilded kingdom. Many had suffered as a consequence. Some had even perished. But by some miracle the lovers had survived their travails intact.
(It was not the first time a story of ill-matched lovers had been told, of course, but more often than not it was the couple who suffered and died, perhaps because people wanted the perfect pair snuffed out before their love could lose its perfection. Better a murdered ideal, which at least kept hope alive, than one'that withered with time.)
While making her notes for this story Tesla had several times wondered what happened to the golden lovers of Palomo Grove. Here, in room six, she had her answer.
Despite the warning Grillo had given, she was not prepared to find the couple so changed: both gray-faced, their speech and action devoid of any spark of vitality. When, after some wan greetings had been exchanged, Howie began to describe for Tesla the events that had brought them to this sorry place and condition, the pair scarcely glanced at each other.
"Just help me kill the sonofabitch," Howie said to Tesla, the subject of the Death-Boy's dispatch rousing a passion in him absent until now. She told him she didn't have any answers. Perhaps the Nuncio had bestowed some form of invulnerability upon him (after all, he'd escaped the conflagration in the Loop).
"You think he's beyond death, right?" Grillo said.
"It's possible, yes-"
"And that's from the Nuncio?"
"I don't know," Tesla said, staring down at her palms. "I have a taste of the Nuncio myself, and I'm damn sure I'm still mortal."
When she looked up at Grillo again, she saw such despair in his eyes she could only hold his gaze for a moment before looking away.
It was Jo-Beth, who had added little to the exchange so far, who broke the silence. "I want you to stop talking about him now," she said.
Howie threw his wife a sour, sideways glance. "We're not done yet," he said.
"Well, I am," Jo-Beth said a little more forcibly, and crossing to the bed she picked up the baby and headed for the door. "Where are you going?" Howie said to her.