at the crime scene, run screaming to Deb and beg for mercy after the patient little insects found him, entered his body cavities as he slept, and slowly began to eat him away from inside. He had seen a monofilament thread, woven into the cloak’s hem, become in Deb’s hands first a defensive weapon that cut a swinging club in two, and then in the same continuing movement an edge so keen that the attacker was decapitated while he still believed that he was bludgeoning his helpless victim.
Deb had promised a surprise, but it was nothing in the cloak. Something new and extraordinary — and unpleasant — would be needed to astonish Chan. Deb knew that. No mere method of attack or defense would be enough. Even twenty years ago, responding to a joking challenge, she had listed eighty-two different poisons that resided within her cloak and could leave a victim dead, apparently of natural causes.
The tunnels under Mount Ararat were narrower as they went north. At first, Chan and Deb were able to walk side by side. Then it was one at a time, with Deb in front. Ten minutes later, the hood of her cloak brushed the ceiling and Chan had to crouch in order to avoid banging his head on the unfinished rock of the tunnel roof.
“Are you sure Tully lives out here?” he said, as the tunnel dwindled another five centimeters in height and width.
She turned, so that for the first time since they started out her angry brown eyes stared directly into his. “You think maybe you know better?” She moved back against the wall so that he could squeeze past her, and waved a hand along the tunnel. “Go ahead. Be my guest.”
“No, that’s all right.” Chan wished that he had kept his mouth shut. “I just didn’t expect Tully to be in a place like this. The greatest linguist I ever met—”
“The greatest anybody ever met. But what need has there been for linguists since the starways closed? The translating machines are enough for talk between humans.”
“Even so, Tully could have found a better place to live. Why would he choose to be out here?”
“Thirty seconds more, and you’ll find out. Just around the next corner.”
The tunnel was no wider than Chan’s shoulders, and he had to bend far forward or go down on his hands and knees. The light came from wan yellow tubes, nailed one every twenty meters or so on the rough-cut walls or ceiling. He swore as the tunnel made a sharp turn and he failed to stoop quite low enough. His head banged on one of the lights.
“Welcome to Europa, low-rent district,” Deb’s voice said from around the turn. “Are we having fun yet?”
“This is no worse than parts of the Gallimaufries. The difference is, the Gallimaufries used to be the worst place in the solar system. Earth set the standard for lousy living. But since the quarantine, everywhere is getting more and more like the worst parts of Earth.”
There was a silence from ahead, then Deb’s cold voice. “You don’t stop pushing, do you? I know we need the quarantine to end. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have walked a single step with you. So get off my back, and be ready to say hello to Tully O’Toole.”
Chan squeezed his way along to where Deb was standing in front of a door about four feet high. In the gloom beyond it, Chan saw a steep descending stairway.
“Down there.” Deb pointed. “You, not me.”
Chan hesitated. He had the feeling that something awful was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. “Are you sure Tully will be there?”
“If he’s not, I don’t know where he is.”
The stairs were so steep, the only safe way to go down was to turn and hold the steps above as though descending a ladder. Chan began to go down, counting as he went. By the eighth step, a curious smell hit his nostrils. Suddenly he knew the nature of Deb’s unpleasant surprise. The aroma was quite unmistakable and dreadfully familiar. He paused, wanting to climb back up and run far away.
He couldn’t do that. For Tully O’Toole’s sake, for old times sake, for Chan’s own sake, he had to learn how bad it was. He continued down. As he reached the bottom he took a deep breath and turned the corner leading into a more brightly lit room.
They were on the floor, about forty of them lying on thin mattresses. Each facial expression was different, from joyful bliss to dark, haunted agony. Their dress ranged from expensive and new to old, worn-out rags. A few were fat, most were skeletally thin. All had in common a dead gray tone to the skin and lines of tiny purple-black dots on bare arms and legs: the stigmata of Paradox, the milky alkaloid to which everyone in the room was a slave.
Chan was appalled, but he had seen too many Paradox dens to be shocked by the condition of the occupants. He scanned the rows of mattresses, seeking a familiar face. He had almost given up, ready to tell Deb Bisson back at the top of the stairs that they had made a wasted trip, when a tattered wreck right at his feet raised a hand and croaked, “Mercy me, what do I see? Do my eyes scan Chan the man?”
It was the singsong delivery of the words more than the voice. Chan stepped forward and sank to his knees. “Tully? Tully the Rhymer?”
“Less of that than I was. But yes, you have it right. The man you see, that is he.”
Chan reached out, gripped Tully O’Toole’s outstretched hand, and gently lifted until the other man was sitting upright on the mattress. The hand that gripped Chan’s was all bone, and the fingers felt fleshless. “How are you, Tully?”
It was an inane question, given O’Toole’s condition, but Tully laughed. “Oh, never too bad and never too sad. I’m not the man I once was, Chan, but who of us is? Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down. Nights get worse as they go on, the darkest hour before the dawn. We’re about halfway.”
At least Tully knew that it
“Tully, I have something important to tell you. But you’ll have to wait another minute or two before I can say it. Will you wait? I’ll be right back.”
“Where would I be going? Take your time. I’ll sit tight, if it takes all night.”
“It won’t. Three minutes, no more.”
Chan hurried back up the steep stairs. Deb stood at the top, still and silent as a statue in her cowled cloak. She said, “Well, now you’ve seen for yourself. Ready to give up and leave me alone?”
“Deb, Tully can’t stay here like this. We have to get him away.”
“Where were you, all these past years? Do you think I haven’t tried? I love Tully. In the old days he was close to me as a brother. I’ve been here a dozen times, and I’ve begged and pleaded with him to take treatment. And got nowhere. He won’t listen. He
“You don’t have to tell me that Paradox is hard to break. But there are ways to get through. I’m going back to talk to him.”
“Oh, sure. You think you’ll succeed where I failed.”
“I don’t think that. But I know how to try, better than most. Look, Deb, I want to ask a favor.”
“Whatever it is, no. I don’t owe you a favor — any favor.”
“It’s not a favor for me. It’s for Tully. If I can persuade him to leave this place, I have to head out at once to look for Chrissie and the Tarbush in the Oort Cloud. I’ll be gone only a few days, but Tully can’t be left on his own. Will you look after him until I come back?”
“I’d do anything to help Tully. But you don’t know what you’re asking. He’d be with me for a few hours, then he’d want the drug. Unless I chained him down I couldn’t stop him from getting it — and I’m not so sure that would work, either. He’d find a way.”
“He would if he was here on Mount Ararat. But if we left Europa — if you took him to Ceres—”
“I see. I take him to Ceres, so you get
“That’s not true, Deb. I care about Tully. And don’t pretend
Chan turned and stumbled back down the stairs without looking at Deb or waiting to hear her reply. In the
