128. Ruins For a long time there was only darkness; emptier than the Void, not even the terrible sucking to prove to her that she still existed. She had time to think; more time than she'd ever had. It was very quiet. Her anger drained out slowly into the vast silence. She could have done differently; could have avoided reacting to the djinn's provocation, could have pressed her offer to help him. But it seemed to her that she didn't want his help under those terms. The answer he offered might be workable, but at the gut level she didn't believe that it could be the right one. Eventually she lost interest in her past mistakes, and only dreamed, thinking of Martha, of the printer she'd healed, of the gardens of Anubis. Her memories were only human now, but they were clear enough; she walked the green islands, swam in the pools, circled high above to taste the wind's sweetness. Walked the crystalline corridors of Anubis, saw her reflection in the mirrored pools, felt the pulse of the system's life at its shadowy center. Time passed as she had never imagined time, measureless and endless. With a prickling shock, like life coming back into numbed limbs, she found herself standing on a surface of broken, sliding cement. There were stars overhead, ruins all around her: stubs of walls, pavement cracked and pitted by rain, though there were no plants to hasten its destruction. It was as dark as the jungle at night, no sign of city lights anywhere. She looked around, saw a deeper darkness off to her left; a large hole, its mouth strung with broken girders and cables. She walked toward it, stopped on the edge. She didn't know whether she could fly, but the drop held no fear for her. This close, the girders resolved themselves into a rough web, spiralling in to the center. Something stirred there, pulled itself up into clear view. It was a spider, larger than she, with faint traceries of green light running beneath the fur of its massive body. Its claws dug into the webbing, which trembled slightly beneath its weight. Black eyes tipped with red stared out at her. Silence had left her unused to speaking. She sat down on the edge of the hole--she could see no bottom to it, even this close--and watched the spider. It advanced slowly across the web until it was only a few meters away from her. The great legs arched high over her head, but its face was nearly on a level with hers. "Jayhawk," it said in a soft cold voice. "Why have you come here?" She found her voice after a little struggle. "I'm trying to find out how to heal the Dragon at Paradisio." "You have set yourself a hard task." It settled onto the webstrand, legs outstretched. "What do you need to know?" Haltingly, she described her plan. What was this creature? Ratty had summoned it from the death-lands, but even he hadn't known what it was. Ally or foe of Paradisio? She didn't know which to hope for anymore. "I don't know how to convince him to listen to me. I hoped that having done this, having come here for him--that might carry some weight. And I don't know how to deal with the ghosts." "The ghosts could be summoned and bound here. It would require a token, some bit of Him to act as bait. If you can provide such a thing, I will do it. The ghosts themselves are payment enough." "What kind of token? Provide it to whom?" "A liter of blood, or perhaps a few scales....To Ratty. He will know what to do with it." "Will he agree? We aren't allies any longer. I don't know if he'll listen to me. And he's promised the ghosts vengeance." "You don't need to ask him, or mention this at all. Send him the token; that will be enough. By Midsummer." She frowned, staring at the spider. Its many-eyed expression was wholly unreadable. It was clearly trying to manipulate her, manipulate Ratty through her; did that make its advice bad? She could send the token and a message as well, let Ratty decide. She knew just enough of the theory of magic to guess that the blood would be a tool for him, if he was resolved to destroy the Dragon. Let him choose. She nodded. "As to your other question," it went on, "there is not much I can tell you. Only this: if you decide that you must destroy Him, strike quickly. He wants to live more fiercely than I think He knows. And in any case, be very sure what you want. He will sense it in you, and if you waver you are lost." She remembered the early days of her captivity in Paradisio, how she'd prayed to the Spider for help. She'd promised it her service in exchange for her freedom. Slowly, reluctantly, she said, "Did you hear me calling, when I as in the High Temple? Did you answer?" "Ah. That was you. I heard you, but I had no way to answer." Its eyes seemed to sparkle with a secret amusement; it saw her relief, she guessed. She didn't care. She'd been very much afraid that she owed this creature more than she was willing to pay. She turned to look at the ruined city. "How do I get back?" she said softly, afraid of the answer. "Let go of being here. It's not difficult." She tried, imagining stepping from this place to the island-gardens as she would from the Matrix. Nothing happened. Unwilling to ask the spider anything more, she got up, walked out into the ruins. "Not that way," it said. "I know," she replied, a little irritated, and addressed herself to the problem. It wasn't like crossing between levels, or like accessing the Matrix. She reached out to the dark city, tried to feel Anubis beyond it, fall into mergeance. Nothing answered. At last, between one step and another, she found the key to dissolution, like the strand Piebald had pulled out of their IC. The scene around her didn'd dissolve; her awareness did, a briefly frightening feeling. There was not even darkness in the transition. She found herself in the CPU at Anubis, cradled in a webwork hammock. A half-formed query to the system gave her the date: June 19. Two days to Midsummer. Anubis was luminous with life around her; for a little while she drank it in, probed every part of the machine looking for damage, found none. It occured to her to test herself as well; she rose, called up a surface of reflective glass. To her eyes she was unchanged, the Hawk's mark burning crimson on her forehead, the gossamer web of her life around her. But there was something different, though she could put no name to it, and analysis code returned nothing. Like a shadow, clinging to her, though she saw nothing. A shadow out of the deathlands, the mark of what she'd done. She wasn't sure whether she was glad or sorry. -- Copyright 1992 Mary K. Kuhner