anything illegal. He wouldn't ever have done drugs, just because it would have embarrassed his folks, and he would have hated that. Plus, he wouldn't have seen the point anyway. He used to say to me, 'Why do I need another level of consciousness when I like the one I have just fine?' ' He lowered his head, looking suddenly stricken, like someone who had too accurately reproduced someone's tone of voice, and now was stricken to the heart by it. 'And he sure would never have killed himself,' Spile said. 'He'd been having a hard time of it lately… but not that hard!'
'And Jeannie hated drugs more than anything,' Khasm said. 'Her dad died of an overdose a few years ago. She'd never have done drugs, no matter how depressed she was!'
'Uh,' Nick said. He was a little shocked to find himself edging away from them both. 'Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-'
They looked at him in some shock themselves. Then Khasm sagged. 'Sorry,' she said. 'I'm sorry. It's just that-you know how it is, everybody here we knew has beengoing around not asking the question-but you know they're thinking about it-and then when somebody does actually ask it-'
'It's okay,' Nick said.'… Look, I can take you to where that 'lift' is.'
'That'd be nice of you,' Khasm said, sounding subdued.
'Yeah,' said Spile. 'Once we've got it… we can get out of here… '
They stood up. 'Down this way,' Nick said, and started retracing his steps through the low dark corridors, with the other two behind him.
Neither of them said much for a while. After some minutes Khasm said, 'The last time I saw her… it was a couple of weeks ago, with Mal and Bitsy and a few other friends. Down here. They loved this place.' She sniffed once, softly, like someone trying to hide it. 'She and Mal would come down here and hang out with the rest of us when things weren't going right… when we couldn't hang out together elsewhere.'
Nick thought for a moment about the best way to phrase this. 'Was there some kind of problem?'
'Oh, yeah, Jeannie and Mal had a thing going… and her mom didn't approve. Neither did his folks. They all thought they were too young to be thinking about marriage.' Another sniff. 'Both of them were angry about that, yeah, and a little depressed… but not that depressed. They were going to wait their parents out for a couple of years, let them get used to the idea. Jeannie told me so. And she told me that Mal agreed.'
Nick paused at a corner, trying to remember which way he was headed. There was something niggling at him, and he felt he had to ask. He turned to Khasm. 'Look, uh…' There was no kindly way to ask. He gave up trying. 'You're saying she didn't ever mention suicide…?'
'Exactly once in all the time I knew her,' said Khasm, and somewhat to Nick's surprise, she didn't sound angry this time, just tired. 'What normal person doesn't think about it every now and then? It would be sick not to admit that it happens. And dumb, when life gets nasty, not to admit that it wouldn't be nice if all the pain just stopped!
But not that way. She never talked about it to do it. You know what I mean?'
Nick thought of that sudden rush of make-it-stop that he'd had the other day. Yet at the same time he hadn't had the slightest intention of taking the thought through to its logical conclusion.
'That was why the drug thing was so awful,' Spile said as they turned a sharp corner, left, then right again. 'But at least it didn't make the news… '
Nick thought about that. Somehow it didn't seem either accidental to him, or an act of kindness. The newspeople were notorious for publishing anything they could get their hands on, the more scandalous the better. I wonder… is that something the cops are keeping secret?
But why?
It was weirding him out. Nick saw as much pain and death and unhappiness on the Net news as anyone else did, but coming up against it in terms of real people, real lives, was something else again. And there was something else going on inside him, too. His dad was a Netcam man, one of the best. That was why he kept getting sent all over the place, why they had had to keep moving around so much when Nick was younger. Reporters fought to be assigned with his father, for he had (one of them had said once, in Nick's hearing) 'a gift for finding trouble and following up on it.' Now, unnerved, Nick was beginning to wonder whether that gift was starting to reveal itself in the next generation.
'Here,' he said, and turned the last corner. Fortunately the corridors hadn't been doing anything unusual. Right up until now everything had been where it was supposed to be, and now the wall at the far end of what otherwise looked like a featureless dead end was exactly where Nick had left it. 'Your account open?'
'Yeah,' Khasm said. Nick went down to that blank wall, bent close to it. The light wasn't great down here, and he had only found this lift's hiding place because of a stubborn tendency to touch everything. 'Here,' he said, getting down on one knee. 'See that kind of dimple there? It just caught my eye. It doesn't belong… '
'Yeah,' Khasm said again. She leaned down to touch it.
The rock in front of them seemed to tear itself open. A moment later they were all looking at what Nick had found earlier: a small chest carved of what appeared to be a single emerald. Down in the bottom of it was what Nick had found there before, when he opened it himself: a single eighth note, glowing gold.
Khasm looked at it for a long moment before she reached in and touched it. The air filled with the sound of Camiun's strings being plucked slowly, one after another, more as their own small soft poem on the air rather than any accompaniment, and then came Joey Bane's voice, sorrowful and low:
'I never went the way you told me to, I argued every word you said.
I never thought the way you would have liked, I never walked the way you led.
And now he's gone with you where I would not, There in the dark he holds your hand;
And how I simply let you go to be with him I'll never understand.
So now I have them all to myself, at last, All my sorry, empty days, And now I walk alone and self-sufficient Down the narrow ways…
Nick stayed where he was, didn't move, as Khasm and Spile held still and listened to the second verse of the song. Finally the last few notes faded away, and Khasm lifted the eighth note out of the casket and closed her hand around it. When she opened her hand again, the note was gone.
She stood up and sighed, and sniffled again, and for a few moments she wouldn't say anything. 'When they release the body and let her mom bury her,' Khasm said at last, 'I'll play it at the grave for her… after the funeral, when things quiet down.'
They went out into the corridor. Nick, following her and Spite, was finding it hard to understand how he felt. Spite was a silent lowering presence in this darkness, but there was no feeling of threat about him, only pain, and Khasm, her eyes downcast, seemed to have gotten control of herself again, but that was even worse for Nick, in a way, than the sound of her fighting with her tears had been.
'Look,' he said. 'If there's anything else I can do-'
Khasm shook her head. 'This,' she said, holding up the closed hand that no longer had an eighth note in it, 'this meant a lot. Uh… thanks.'
She went off down the corridor, and Spile started to go after her. Nick astonished himself by putting a hand on that huge arm. Spile stopped and stared at him.
'I mean it,' he said.
Spite looked at him in a kind of lowering silence, then said, 'Yeah. Thanks. I-'
'Nick Melchior,' Nick said. 'I'm in the login lists.'
'Okay,' said Spite. 'I- Maybe we'll get in touch.'
He went after Khasm. Nick stood there, watching them go, and then headed out into the corridor himself, in the opposite direction, slowly making his way back toward where he had been when they'd found him.
It had never occurred to him that there might have been something odd about those suicides. But Khasm and Spite had been absolutely certain. And now Nick found himself remembering that Charlie had been a little concerned about Deathworld, himself, and all the time Nick was spending there.
Was he thinking about the suicides, too?
There was no telling. But he had certainly mentioned them once… and Nick had brushed him off. And then Charlie had asked him for that walk-through.
Nick had been delighted about this earlier: the idea of ranging around Deathworld with Charlie in tow would have been fun. Part of that was that Charlie was so smart about a lot of stuff. Nick didn't grudge him that. His buddy had been through hell in his time, a real hell as opposed to this rather entertaining fake one. But this would
