She'd accepted the challenge, of course, and had succeeded in decoding the cross; thus making the Jaff her ally, at least for a time. The fact that she'd worked out what the symbols meant was not of any great significance in Buddenbaum's estimation. The fact that she'd put her life on the line while she grappled with the problem was.
A woman who would take such a risk was more dangerous than a visionary spirit. If Seth brought her to him, he would have to be ready to dispatch her at the flicker of an eye Tesla was halfway down the path to Phoebe's front door before she saw the figure rising from the step.
"I've been looking all over for you," he said. It was the boy from the crossroads; Buddenbaum's sallow apprentice. "I'm Seth," he said.
"What do you want?"
"It's not really what I want@'
"Whatever you're selling, I'm not interested," she said, "I've got a baby here needs tending to." I'@t me help," Seth replied. There was something almost pitiful in his appeal. "I'm good with kids."
She was too exhausted to refuse. She tossed the keys in his direction.
"Pick 'em up and open the door," she told him.
While he did so she cast a glance up at the mountain, which was just visible between the houses opposite. There was a smoking spiral of mist around the summit.
"Do you know what's going on up there?" Seth said.
"I've got a pretty good idea."
"It's dangerous, right?"
"That's an understatement."
"Buddenbaum says-"
"Have you got the door open yet?"
"Yeah." He pushed it wide.
"Put on the light." He did so. "I don't want to talk about Buddenbaum till I'm sure the kid's okay," she said, stepping into the house.
"But he says-"
"I don't give a shit what he says," she told him calmly. "Now, are you going to help me or are you going to get out?"
Harry and Raul were almost at the tree line when Raul stopped in his tracks. "Somebody's talking@' he said. "I don't hear anything."
"Well I do," Raul replied, looking around. There was nobody in sight.
"I heard voices like this before, when I was sharing Tesla's head." "Who the hell is it?" "The dead, I think." "Hmm." "Aren't you bothered?"
"Depends what they want." "He's saying something about his wife, finding his wife@'
"He hears me!" Coker yelled. "Thank God! He hears me!" Erwin looked back up at the mountaintop, thinking again of what Dolan had said, standing outside his candy store: We're like smoke. Maybe it wasn't so bad as that, being smoke, if the world was going to be overtaken by what he'd seen up there, coming through a crack in the sky.
Coker, meanwhile, was still talking to the creature ho'd saved D'Amour, directing him into the trees...
There were two people there in the shadows. One a woman of some antiquity, sitting with her back to a tree trunk, drinking from a silver flask. The other a man lying face-down a few yards from her.
"He's dead," the woman said as Harry leaned over to examine the man.
"Damn him."
"Are you one of Zury's people?" Harry asked her.
The woman hacked up a gob of phlegm and spat on the ground inches from Harry's foot. "Mary Mother of God, do I look like one of Zury's people?" She jabbed her finger in Raul's direction. "7hat's one of his!"
"He may look like one," Harry replied, "but he's got the soul of a man."
"Thank you for that," Raul said to Harry.
"Well, and are you man enough to carry me down?" the woman said to Harry. "I'd like to see my city before the world goes to Hell."
"Your city?"
"Yes, mine! My name's Maeve O'Connell, and that damn place"@he pointed down through the uses towards Everville@'wouldn't even exist if it weren't for me!"
"Listen to her," Coker rhapsodized. "Oh Lord in Heaven, listen to her." He was kneeling beside the harridan, his bestial face covered in bliss.
"I know now why I didn't go to oblivion, Erwin. I know why I waited on the mountain all these years. to be here to see her face. to hear her voice."
"She'll never know," Erwin said.
"Oh but she will. This fellow Raul will be my gobetween. She's going to know how much I loved her, Erwin. How much I still love her."
"I don't want your hands on me!" Maeve was roaring at Raul. "It's this man's back I'll be on or I'll damn well crawl wn there on my hands and knees." She turned to Harry. Now are you going to pick me up or not?"
"That depends," said Harry.
"On what?"
"On whether you can shut your mouth or not."
The woman looked as though she'd just been slapped. Then her narrow mouth twitched into a smile. "What's your name?" she said.
"D'Amour."
"As in love?"
"As in love.'
She grunted. "That never got me any place I wanted to go," she said.
"She doesn't mean that," Coker said. "She can't-"
"People change," Erwin said. "How many years has it beent'
"I haven't changed," Coker said.
"You can't be the judge of that," Erwin replied. "It's no use breaking your heart over this."
"Easy for you to say. What did you everfeel?"
"Less than I should," Erwin replied softly.
"I'm sorry," Coker said. "I didn't mean that."
"Whether you meant it or not it's the truth," Erwin said, turning his gaze from the woman-who was now clambering up onto D'Amour's back-and again studying the Heights. "You think there's more time than there is," he said, half to himself. "And there's always less. Always."
"Are you going to come with us?" Coker said.
"I'm glad for you," Erwin replied. "Seeing your wife again. I'm really glad."
"I want you to be part of it, Erwin."
"That's nice to say. But-I'm better, staying here. I'll be in the way."
Coker slipped his arm around Erwin's shoulder. "What's to see here?" he said. "Come on-they're leaving us behind."
Erwin glanced round. The trio were already twenty yards away down the slope. "Come see the city my sweet lady built," Coker said. "Before it disappears forever."
After the tumult, silence.
The rain of stones dwindled to a drizzle and then ceased altogether. The sea calmed its frenzy, and came lisping against the shore, its waters thickened into mud. There was no sign of life moving in its shallows, unless the glistening remnants of lad's eggs, bobbing in the filth, could be called life. Nor were there birds.
Phoebe sat amid the rubble of what had once been Liverpool's harbor, and wept. Behind her, the ships that had once swayed at anchor here were smashed in the streets; streets that had been reduced to gorges between piles of smoking debris.
What now? she thought. Plainly there was no way home. And little or no hope of finding Joe, now that she'd lost her guides in this wilderness. She could bear the idea of never separated from Joe forever was unendurable. She would have to hide that likelihood from herself for a while, or else she'd lose her sanity.
She turned her thoughts to the fate of King Texas. Could rock die, she wondered, or was he simply lying low for a while, to recover his strength? If the latter, perhaps he might show his face again and help her in her search. A negligible hope, to be sure, but enough to keep her from utter despair.
After a time, her stomach began to rumble, and knowing hunger would only make her weepier, she got up and into the devastation in search of sustenance.
Just a couple of miles from where she wandered, Joe stood in the veils of dust still falling where the door had been, and turned over the significance of all he'd witnessed. This was not, he knew, a total victory; not by any stretch of the imagination. For one, some portion of the lad had found its way over the threshold into the Cosm before the shore rose to annex it. For another, he was by no means certain the greater part, which now lay buried somewhere under his spirit's feet, w as dead. And for a third, he doubted the continent from which this force had come was now deserted. The invasion party might have been defeated, but the nation that had sent it out was still intact, somewhere beyond the Ephemeris. It would come again, he knew. And again, and again. Whatever the lad were-the dreamers or the dreamed-whatever ambitions they nurtured, they had today sent a force into the Heiter Incendo, where it would doubtless be able to prepare for a larger and perhaps definitive, invasion.