they don't care what it does to them, or how many millions of people they starve in the process of feeding just a few a ton more than they need, or making special foods for themselves with no calories to speak of… '
Nick gulped. He was hanging on to his control as best he could, trying to stay cool, to look cool, like none of this bothered him. It may take me a while, he thought, I don't care how much time I'm going to have to spend in here, but I'm going to learn to cope with it whatever I do. I am not going to look stupid in front of-
'Fourth floor down,' Joey Bane said, looking over the rail of the escalator. 'The Haves and the Throwaways. All gamblers, really, except some of them do it with stocks and bonds and margins and others do it at the gaming tables or in factories where they burn up resources that can't ever be replaced… ' He made a gentle tsk, tsk noise as the two of them passed on by and downward. 'This is an awfully underrated area. Hardly anyone spends more than the minimum time watching this bunch. It must be the suits.'
Or the screams, Nick thought, or these were truly appalling. They came out of thick billowing darkness, and there were terrible crashing and crushing noises coming out of it as well, like a constant multicar accident being continually enacted in the gloom. Nick swallowed as another crash produced a chorus of screams. They did not sound like the kind of thing you would hear in a madefor-Net drama. They sounded real.
'Accountants,' Joey Bane said idly as they went past one more thick rock floor/ceiling. 'Not so quiet and colorless, are they? This is nothing, though. Wait till you see what happens to the lawyers. Oh, not all of them, by any means. Many of them are very nice people, but the ones we get down here- Ah, here we are. Five…'
The music had been scaling up around them all the while. Now, as they came out on the floor of the fifth level, it crashed into the savage main chorus of 'You Said You Weren't Gonna Wait Up,' and just as Nick was about to start singing the next verse, the music started to fade away into silence. This was not one of those dark circles, and Nick swallowed when he saw what was there.
Huge cliffs reared up in the distance on all sides, and beneath them strode and strutted gigantic parent- figures dressed absurdly in clothes dating to before the turn of the last century. Bizarre floppy sweats and backward hats, and even stranger, the non-'smart' jeans of the previous few decades, with T-shirts that hadn't yet learned the art of molding themselves to the wearer's body. They stalked around the dark rocky circle holding huge weapons in their hands-though they hadn't started out as weapons, actually, but as hammers and ax handles, kitchen knives and rolled-up newspapers. Their eyes glowed with a ter rible light, and it wasn't until one or another of them had passed you that you saw the demons' wings, sinewed and fingered like those of bats, stunted and clawed. Among these awful figures, reaching no higher than their knees and running in all possible directions to get away from them, were adult figures in modern clothes, sliktites and leotites and new chitons, all terrified, all trying to get away… but they couldn't. There was nowhere for them to run, no way out, no way to climb the slick cliffs that bounded the circle here. The giant parent-demons pursued the helpless adults and attacked them with the household implements they carried. Nick wanted to look away, but an awful fascination kept him watching. The punishment was deadly and endless. Broken heads resealed themselves, packing the brains tracelessly back in: broken bones reknit themselves, and bruises spread just long enough to go black, then paled back out of lividity to normal flesh again as the demons with the clubs and ax handles chased after the abusing parents and gave them back what they had given their own children.
Next to Nick, Joey Bane was smiling slightly and singing what the lyric of the next verse would have been if the 'outer' music had still been playing: 'She hit it right on when she said it: 'They only hit you till you cry…
And the tormented ones were crying as they fled, yelling and howling as loudly as they could, but the demon-parents were all deaf, and couldn't hear them, and just kept hitting. Around and around they went, the demons beating their victims while intoning phrases like 'This hurts me more than it hurts you' and 'You'll thank me for this some day… '
Nick had heard that one often enough lately, about college. Though no one had hit him while saying it, he had been bruised enough by the words, by Mother's absolute certainty that Nick would someday actually thank her for making him so miserable. Does she even listen to herself say these things? he wondered furiously, but she was suf fering from the same syndrome as the demons here were. She didn't hear him…
'Nasty neighborhood,' Joey Bane said after a moment, lounging against a handy rock. 'But thesepeople should have known better. They started smacking their kids around to keep them in line… forgetting how they'd been smacked for the same reasons when they were kids, and it hadn't worked then, and it wasn't going to work now… ' His eyes blazed. 'Or screaming at their kids day after day, telling them how stupid they are… until the kids finally begin to believe it. There are worse things than that, but not many… '
Nick swallowed. 'Do you think,' he said slowly, 'that… somewhere… this really happens to people like that?'
Joey Bane threw him a look. 'I don't know about somewhere,' he said. 'But it sure happens here… and that's enough for me.' He raised his eyebrows. 'You?'
Nick swallowed. 'Yeah,' he said softly.
'Right,' Joey said. 'So listen… I've got places to be.' Over his shoulder Camiun muttered a few notes under its breath. 'Have fun while you're here… and take a good look around before you leave, so you can work out how to get down here on your own. The usual clues are here and there. Don't forget, it's not just child abusers who're down here. We've got all kinds of violence on this level.'
He started off across the circle. Suddenly, in the direction Bane was heading, Nick could see something that hadn't been there before. Where there had only been tall cliffs, now he saw the towered and crenellated outlines of the ramparts and seven gateways of the Keep of the Dark Artificer. Nick was suddenly afire with excitement again. They said that once you got in there, you could hear music that had never been heard in concert… and with the music, said the rumors, went images of fury and violence and despair that were too wild and scary for anything of them ever to have been shown elsewhere in public. Gotta see that!
Nick started after Joey Bane, already just imagining what the other kids in school would say when they heard that not only was he a regular in Bane's Place, but that he'd gotten through the gates of the Keep and taken the Oath never to reveal what he had seen there. This is gonna be spat beyond belief…
But Joey stopped and half-turned. 'And where do you think you're going?'
'With you!'
'Not today, pally,' Bane said.
'But you said it was an upgrade-'
'One-time,' Joey Bane's virtual self said. 'And did I say sixth floor? Didn't say a word about six. Two levels, that's what you get today.'
Nick glared at him.
'What, you're complaining?' Bane said, and chuckled. 'What a little ingrate. You ought to be careful… this kind of thing can go on your permanent record.'
The good-natured mockery was somehow disarming. Nick's anger began to seep away. 'Please,' he said. 'I just want to see inside the Keep… '
'What, for free? Half the Banies on the planet want in there,' Bane said. 'What makes you so special that you get it without working for it? Nobody gets in there until they solve all the higher levels and earn the points.. You know the drill.'
Nick frowned. 'This whole thing has just been a come-on, hasn't it?' he said.
'Hey, all of life is marketing these days,' Bane said. 'Look… I'm in a good mood. You just spend the rest of the session walking around, getting to know some of these people. If people is the word we're looking for.'
Nick looked behind him to where the vanished escalator had been. 'But how am I supposed to get out? I haven't solved Four yet, I don't know where the entrance to this level is.'
'Oh, well,' Joey Bane said, 'I guess that's fair. Look, you see those two over there-' He pointed off to one side, by the base of one of the huge cliffs, where a man with a lion's head and a woman with a tiger's were tearing at each other with terrible claws. 'They might tell you the way out if you can get them to stop fighting for a moment.' Bane looked at them and shook his head. 'Songwriters,' he said softly. 'You can get too hung up on whose name comes first in the credits… '
Nick looked at them dubiously. 'Okay,' he said. 'Thanks.'
'Polite,' Joey said. 'That's what I like to hear. Guess I don't have to cut the strings just yet.' He turned away again and started walking once more toward the gates of the Dark Artificer's keep.
'You're gonna love Six!' he shouted over his shoulder. 'Just wait' 11 you see who we've got in the Lake of Boiling Blood. Not to mention the lifts from the new Wraiths of Wrath collection-'
