"I hear you, I acknowledge that much!" she cried. She was clutching the silver mike so tightly that it trembled in her grasp. "I'm in 1999! June of 1999! But I'm not understanding you as well as I need to, sug! Say again, and tell me if you're all right!"
But Eddie was gone.
After calling for him half a dozen times and getting nothing but that blur of static, she set the microphone down again and tried to figure out what he had been trying to tell her. Trying also to set aside her joy just in knowing that Eddie could still try to tell heranything.
"Burn up day," she said. That part, at least, had come through loud and clear. "Burn upthe day. As in kill some time. " She thought that almost had to be right. Eddie wanted Susannah to slow Mia down. Maybe because Jake and Pere Callahan were coming? About that part she wasn't so sure, and she didn't much like it, anyway. Jake was a gunslinger, all right, but he was also only a kid. And Susannah had an idea that the Dixie Pig was full of very nasty people.
Meanwhile, on Mia-Vision, the elevator doors were opening again. The hijacking mommy-bitch had reached the lobby. For the time being Susannah put Eddie, Jake, and Pere Callahan out of her mind. She was recalling how Mia had refused tocome forward, even when their Susannah-Mio legs were threatening to disappear right out from under their shared Susannah-Mio body. Because she was, to misquote some old poem or other, alone and afraid in a world she never made.
Because she wasshy.
And my goodness, things in the lobby of the Plaza - Park had changed while the hijacking mommy-bitch had been upstairs waiting for her phone call. They had changed alot.
Susannah leaned forward with her elbows propped on the edge of the Dogan's main instrument panel and her chin propped on the palms of her hands.
This might be interesting.
Seven
Mia stepped out of the elevator, then attempted to step right back in. She thumped against the doors instead, and hard enough to make her teeth come together with a little ivory click. She looked around, bewildered, at first not sure how it was that the little descending room had disappeared.
Susannah! What happened to it?
No answer from the dark-skinned woman whose face she now wore, but Mia discovered she didn't actually need one. She could see the place where the door slid in and out. If she pushed the button the door would probably open again, but she had to conquer her sudden strong desire to go back up to Room 1919. Her business there was done. Herreal business was somewhere beyond the lobby doors.
She looked toward those doors with the sort of lip-biting dismay which may escalate into panic at a single rough word or angry look.
She'd been upstairs for a little over an hour, and during that time the lobby's early-afternoon lull had ended. Half a dozen taxis from La Guardia and Kennedy had pulled up in front of the hotel at roughly the same time; so had a Japanese tour-bus from Newark Airport. The tour had originated in Sapporo and consisted of fifty couples with reservations at the Plaza - Park. Now the lobby was rapidly filling with chattering people. Most had dark, slanted eyes and shiny black hair, and were wearing oblong objects around their necks on straps. Every now and then one would raise one of these objects and point it at someone else. There would be a brilliant flash, laughter, and cries ofDomo! Domo! There were three lines forming at the desk. The beautiful woman who'd checked Mia in during quieter times had been joined by two other clerks, all of them working like mad. The high-ceilinged lobby echoed with laughter and mingled conversation in some strange tongue that sounded to Mia like the twittering of birds. The banks of mirror-glass added to the general confusion by making the lobby seem twice as full as it actually was.
Mia cringed back, wondering what to do.
"Front!" yelled a desk clerk, and banged a bell. The sound seemed to shoot across Mia's confused thoughts like a silver arrow. "Front, please!"
A grinning man - black hair slicked against his skull, yellow skin, slanting eyes behind round spectacles - came rushing up to Mia, holding one of the oblong flash-things. Mia steeled herself to kill him if he attacked.
"Ah-yoo takea pickcha me and my wife?"
Offering her the flash-thing. Wanting her to take it from him. Mia cringed away, wondering if it ran on radiation, if the flashes might hurt her baby.
Susannah! What do I do?
No answer. Of course not, she really couldn't expect Susannah's help after what had just happened, but. . .
The grinning man was still thrusting the flash-machine at her. He looked a trifle puzzled, but mostly undaunted. "Yooo take-ah pickcha, preese?" And put the oblong thing in her hand. He stepped back and put his arm around a lady who looked exactly like him except for her shiny black hair, which was cut across her forehead in what Mia thought of as a wench-clip. Even the round glasses were the same.
"No," Mia said. "No, cry pardon. . . no. " The panic was very close now and very bright, whirling and gibbering right in front of her
(yooo take-ah pickcha, we kill-ah baby)
and Mia's impulse was to drop the oblong flasher on the floor. That might break it, however, and release the deviltry that powered the flashes.
She put it down carefully instead, smiling apologetically at the astonished Japanese couple (the man still had his arm around his wife), and hurried across the lobby in the direction of the little shop. Even the piano music had changed; instead of the former soothing melodies, it was pounding out something jagged and dissonant, a kind of musical headache.
I need a shirt because there's blood on this one. I'll get the shirt and then I'll go to the Dixie Pig, Sixty-first and Lexingworth. . . Lexington,I mean, Lexing ton. . . and then I'll have my baby. I'll have my baby and all this confusion will end. I'll think of how I was afraid and I'll laugh.
But the shop was also full. Japanese women examined souvenirs and twittered to each other in their bird-language while they waited for their husbands to get them checked in. Mia could see a counter stacked with shirts, but there were women all around it, examining them. And there was another line at the counter.
; Susannah, what should I do? You've got to help me!
No answer. She was in there, Mia could feel her, but she would not help. And really, she thought,would I, if I were in her position?
Well, perhaps she would. Someone would have to offer her the right inducement, of course, but -
The only inducement I want from you is the truth,Susannah said coldly.
Someone brushed against Mia as she stood in the door to the shop and she turned, her hands coming up. If it was an enemy, or some enemy of her chap, she would claw his eyes out.
"Solly," said a smiling black-haired woman. Like the man, she was holding out one of the oblong flash-things. In the middle was a circular glass eye that stared at Mia. She could see her own face in it, small and dark and bewildered.
"You take pickcha, preese? Take pickcha me and my fliend?"
Mia had no idea what the woman was saying or what she wanted or what the flash-makers were supposed to do. She only knew that there were too many people, they were everywhere, this was a madhouse. Through the shop window she could see that the front of the hotel was likewise thronged. There were yellow cars and long black cars with windows you couldn't look into (although the people inside could doubtless look out), and a huge silver conveyance that sat rumbling at the curb. Two men in green uniforms were in the street, blowing silver whistles. Somewhere close by something began to rattle loudly. To Mia, who had never heard a jackhammer, it sounded like a speed-shooter gun, but no one outside was throwing himself to the sidewalk; no one even looked alarmed.
How was she supposed to get to the Dixie Pig on her own? Richard P. Sayre had said he was sure Susannah could help her find it, but Susannah had fallen stubbornly silent, and Mia herself was on the verge of losing control entirely.
Then Susannah spoke up again.
If I help you a little now - get you to a quiet place where you can catch your breath and at least do something about your shirt - will you give me some straight answers?
About what?
About the baby, Mia. And about the mother. About you.
I did!
I don't think so. I don't think you're any more elemental than. . . well, than I am. I want the truth.
Why?
I want the truth,Susannah repeated, and then fell silent, refusing to respond to any more of Mia's questions. And when yet another grinning little man approached her with yet another flash-thing, Mia's nerve broke. Right now just getting across the hotel lobby looked like more than she could manage on her own; how was she supposed to get all the way to this Dixie Pig place? After so many years in
(Fedic)
(Discordia)
(the Castle on the Abyss)
to be among so many people made her feel like screaming. And after all, why not tell the dark-skinned woman what little she knew? She - Mia, daughter of none, mother of one - was firmly in charge. What harm in a little truth-telling?
All right,she said. I'll do as you ask, Susannah or Odetta or whoever you are. Just help me. Get me out of here.
Susannah Deancame forward.