Ambient Read online

  "Often enough," Margot said, overhearing. "Such a traipse encows you, sweets?"

  "I wasn't talking to you," Avalon said.

  "Your flabberskin all acreep?" Margot continued, so keen to annoy as Enid wished to overlook. "These wet walls dry your own as sludge bemires your twinkling toes?"

  "There's no need to be so fuckin' nasty-" Avalon shouted.

  "No need but much desire."

  "Hushabye!" said Enid, stopping in midstride. "Don't spend useful air ticing words to fill. Both assail overmuch overlong. Hush and carry forth."

  We hadn't gotten much further along before Avalon spoke once more.

  "What's your problem, anyway?" she asked Margot. "You act like you think everyone's against you."

  Margot, hearing this, laughed; had I not known her for so long as I had, hearing that sound echoing through the dark would have given rise to deepest terror. Her gaiety's rasp raked the skin bloody raw.

  "Think?" she said, calming enough to speak. "Know. Know now, knew then, shall ever know. "

  "What makes you think anyone cares?"

  Margot turned her head, slowly, so as to face Avalon as we pulled along. With the prescience so common to born Ambients I knew she'd deciphered the inherent fear underlying Avalon's distaste.

  "Even in limoed path our way lends pause to smug minds," she said. "See us and see what dwells deep under seemly form, beneath blue eyes and golden mops. No shelter gives shield to our constancy. Our fire sets its own track, and by our glow, the blind see. The deaf hear. The unknowing know. Those unafraid tremble and shake."

  "I didn't even know what Ambients were-" Avalon tried to say.

  "In younger time, nada listened and nada heard," Margot shot back. "But our shouts painted the air even as we parted our mother's legs. As their docs lifted us high, vizzed and swooned, we hollered blast at that we reached unwanted. The gov buzzed and clucked and left us to lozel's paws and the tests of wrinkle- wizzers. Pillpushers took our tears to make for spit. But no one wanted but those who bore. All others stilled their games and let drop their chains. Had they pick they'd have doublebagged us and dropped us full fathom doubledeep. They didn't. So they skipped, and so we sprouted, cleaved from all eight times tri- pleover. All viz early when vizzing with Ambient eyes. So we vizzed, looking in mirrors, aghast at what we saw. We knew. "

  As Margot spoke, the most peculiar sense appeared in her voice's tone-that, I think, is the only way it may be properly described. It seemed a sense not so much of regret as of disgust; not so filled with sadness as with a sense of waste.

  "None but our bearers cared," Margot continued. "And one by one they shuffled off. We kept alone. Given wood for cake and stones for bread, our way lined each morn with numps and nowls and gagtoothed pricksters all achant, bespewing larkish cries of freak freak freak. . . . Blood drained alone speckles and tars where one may stand. Blood drained from all at once floods high and drowns those who break the wounds. So by the Goblin Year we'd sealed our bond; to our own and to our own only, keep ever true. We buried ourselves neath the stones they tossed. Made ourselves fast within the splits of the sticks they slung. Our teeth chop hard when idle fingers pry, and so we chopped when need called. We took the Godness they tossed off so freely and fizzed in whose image our own forms took shape. The wise, then, forbear, and leave us as we list, and one morn our sun shall shine-

  "The wild wind reaps. The seed sowed grows the fruit as given. This sorry world's ear listens in vain. We speak to the new world, await solution for the trials bespoken. For oppro to set loose over the windfuckers who troubled then and trouble now. A chance regiven for all, in all, and to all, for a world so new it's not out of the box. The slow fasts, the last firsts. As shall we."

  The tunnel narrowed before it widened again, and with some effort we all scraped through. We reached what appeared once to have been one of the old equipment rooms.

  "There aren't enough of you to change anything," said Avalon.

  "In form, no," said Margot. "In spirit, twenty times redoubled. Our pest spreads like bloody flux. Once the bonebag withers, the soul goes traipsing light. Ambient is as Ambient does, at end's turn. To know us is to be us."

  "I'm not Ambient," said Avalon.

  "Time tells," said Margot, "time sees. He knows." She nodded toward me, and smiled.

  "Here now," said Enid, gesturing toward a metal disc embedded in the floor's wet concrete. "Lift away, Seamus."

  As I lifted the heavy cover, hundreds of enormous beetles dripped off, dropping down my sleeves, falling onto the floor, scurrying away over our shoes. I tossed the lid away; my yipes resounded.

  "I so hate those beasts," said Enid, lowering her flash.

  "You don't mind them at home," I said, brushing off strays.

  "In casa they move in gentle shape," she said. A ladder led downward, I saw, its rungs glistening. Enid motioned for me to go first. I did; they followed. It smelled worse here than it had in the subway, or in the street. For long minutes I felt stifled, as if my head had been unwrapped in filthy bags; then my nose grew used to it, and I could breathe once more. Aiming my flash in all directions, once down, I saw that we were in another tunnel, half the size of the subway. In it stood water two feet deep, black and smooth.

  "Where are we?" Avalon asked; I helped her off the ladder, letting her straddle my back so as to keep her feet out of the water as we danced through.

  "In the sewers," I said. "One of the old mainlines, judging from the size."

  "Bearing east," said Enid, Margot holding tight to her spikes.

  We splashed through the murk as if through a bog in the night. Our flashes cast weak reflections here, as if the air was too sodden to permit the light's unsullied flow. Even on these walls graffiti was scrawled, the lettering dimmed and gray. Besides the slow rush of water, the only sounds were the chirping of rats and the occasional hiss of what I-romantic I-imagined to be alligators. The rats in the old sewers were more unsettling than any alligator; nasty brutes two feet long or more, scampering and swaying at the edges of the brick crawlways, swimming downstream with us, as if waiting for us to dive or fall below. They didn't come too close; I suppose Enid and Margot scared them away.

  "How much further, Enid?" I asked, after what seemed an eternity. I felt near collapse.

  "Down here and right. Then up, up, up."

  We reached another ladder; Enid set Margot upon the rungs and turned off her flash. Looking up, I could see that above this exit there was no cover; diffuse light poured down from above. We climbed up; reached the top and crawled out. I looked around; my eyes were still adjusting to the brighter dark.

  "Where are we now?" I asked.

  "Near to riveredge," said Enid.

  We stood in an intersection, in the midst of an old housing project. Moonlight seemed to cause the fog to glow and swirl around us. Buildings rose high on every side, black hulks with edges blurred as if for camouflage. When I was young, people still lived in these places, but before the Ebb, a ruling came down that the state had no legal right to provide anyone's housing, for to provide housing to some was unfair to those who didn't need it. Everyone was evicted and left bare to street's equality.

  "Enid-" I began saying as we trudged down the street; our shoes splashed out lakes of filthy water behind us.

  "That building center. Ours."

  "Then what?"

  "Over and up."

  The fog grew more dense as we approached the river. The huge buildings huddled in clusters as if in mutual protection. The dusty yards once surrounding the blocks had become jungles of wild scrub and ailanthus, and impenetrable grass. Roots of dead trees buckled the sidewalks, and their limbs entwined overhead; through their tunnels we now passed. Between their spidery arms swept lights from copters buzzing far overhead. I no longer suspected that we were being followed. From across the river we heard the kiss of distant shells as they landed.

  "You know this part of town?" Avalon asked.

  "I haven't been down here i
n years."

  "It's horrible."

  "Peaceful," I said.

  "What's that noise?" she asked.

  "Blasts," I said. "In Brooklyn. On the far side."

  "No. I mean that other noise. What the hell is it?"

  I listened again, tuning hard. There was another noise, low and steady. There wasn't surf heavy enough in the East River to cause such breakers, even during high tide. The sound was quick, and rhythmic, and deliberate.

  "Drums," Enid explained. "Long lengths of pipe pounded. Brooklyn on the air, ticing all in hearshot. "

  There were paths slashed through the brush, leading to the towers, and so down one we walked, hearing animals moving unseen on either side of us. Crossing the old parking lot, we shortly reached the central tower's entrance. The doors were long gone; access was free and easy. The lobby reminded one that the buildings had been left unattended for years-no furniture remained, rubbish covered the floor three feet deep in places, the walls were covered with an undecipherable blend of phrasings. We didn't even go near the elevators; made our way, instead, to the stairway. From there, our flashes still shining the route, we ascended twenty flights.

  "Here," said Enid, as we entered the hall, washed agleam with moonlight. "This way."

  Enid kicked in the door of our reserved room-a previous tenant had thoughtlessly left it locked-and we went in. There were three rooms, mostly bare. Two futons lay on the living room floor; there was a table in the kitchen, and in the cabinets an assortment of boxes of heavily sugared breakfast cereal and bottles of water awaited. Enid nodded toward the undraped windows.

  "Look there," she said, "Viz the stew ablaze with poison's light."

  So high up as we were-compared with where we had beenthe air appeared, however illusory, so clear as polished glass. Clouds roiled around the towers as if arising from censers. The city looked as it always did from a distance, or in photos-beautiful, and still, and warming. Taking comfort in such hallucinations, we made our feast.

  "What are you going to do?" I asked Enid, finishing the box of cereal I'd broken open. I hated to think what manner of chemicals was encrusting my innards, even as I opened a new box.

  "Home to bed and hideaway after such late carryings-on," she said. "See what goes. Hasten off callers awaiting your return. "

  "Be careful," I said.

  "Fear whelms like bile if the flow isn't choked, Seamus," she said. "We'll away to drift warm in Morphy's arms, till we hear other from you. AO?"

  "But something afoots. What if-?"

  Margot sat perched in the windowsill, staring out upon the city as if, by gazing intently enough, she might at last make it disappear.

  "Talk's time is longaway," Enid said. "Do as you list. Keep eye alight. These wild souls roaming bespeak a cunning armed to steal you soon from tear's vale."

  "Not if I can help it," I said, wondering if I could.

  "In all time comes all, well and bad. As events turn, I'll step my way and go on. Compre?"

  Inodded.

  "Does the nightmare ride?" I shook my head.

  "No," I said, "But it's not going to be amateur hour."

  "Nor do amateurs go," she said. "If any foil or lead astray our dead stand close in spirit, your hands to clasp. Chance no more shall call, Seamus. Use trickery and cozenage. Take hands and grab."

  "If there's naught to grab?"

  "Then grab so well as if there were," she said. "It's the do, not the get, at end-turn. And I spec now that we'd best fly."

  "Be careful," I repeated.

  "On angel's wings all fear passes far."

  I saw them out, hearing the thud of her boots against the hall floor, the clatter of Margot's hobnails as they tapped along. Avalon had pulled a futon further out into the center of the living room. The apartment was on the narrow end of the building, and from there the window's view faced east. I stared out, past the surrounding towers-dark, mostly, but on each floor of each one flickering candlelight betrayed squatter's presence.

  "Look at the sky out there, Shameless," Avalon murmured, lying on her side; she'd removed her boots before falling onto the floor.

  Past the towers, in the east, the colors diffused and glared won- derbright. The crimson sky lightened into a yellowish ocher near the horizon, sharply outlining the stubs and stumps of Brooklyn. Particulates deepened the sky's natural hues, but knowing the cause in no way lessened the effect. Spouts of flame rose up, spraying like geysers at scattered points along the old city's visible length, as if Brooklyn's fathers had wished to decorate the borough with spectacular fountains and had gotten it not quite right.

  "How are you?" I asked her, remaining by the window, watching transfixed, as if gazing into a fireplace.

  "Tired," she said. "I didn't think we'd make it."

  "I didn't either," I said, not wishing to point out that we still hadn't.

  "Your head better?" she said, whispering. I reached up, pulling her sweater off. Placing my hand to my head, I felt a gigantic, painful wound.

  "Seems to be," I said.

  We were silent for several minutes. Though I sat boneached and sore, sleep wasn't finding me with ease. I remained at the window.

  "What are you thinking about?" she asked me.

  "Years ago. I used to sit and stare out the window all the time, just like this," I said. "When I was young, my family lived on Riverside Drive. Corner of 79th. Dad owned the building. Enid and I each had a big room all to ourselves. I'd listen to the stereo or read. Enid would bring her boyfriends over-"

  "Boyfriends?"

  "She had them, then," I said. "From other schools. She went to Brearley. In any event, my windows looked out over the Hudson, and you could see the park, and the river, and Jersey. It was beautiful to watch the seasons change. The trees would all suddenly turn color in November. First heavy rain would come along and the leaves would all fall off. Then one morning in late April or May you'd wake up and new leaves would have popped out overnight. Gray one day and green the next. I'd sit by the window for hours when I could, looking out, wondering what everything else was like. Wondering what I'd do someday. Where I'd go.

  "When Mom died, I stayed in my room a lot more. Then not long after that everything changed. It happened so fast-course, I was so young I hadn't paid attention to anything and wouldn't have known what was happening even if I had just seems like one Monday everything was fine and by the next we were down on Avenue C. That first week down there we had our first breakin. They got my stereo, the TV. We didn't have money anymore, Dad said, and couldn't get new ones. I remember that I couldn't really understand why, it'd seemed like we'd always had plenty.

  "The next week another bunch broke in while Enid and I were home alone-the schools were still closed-Enid shoved me into our old toy chest and told me not to come out or say anything when we heard them breaking down the front door. She tried to get out on the fire escape but they caught her. There were three of them, she said later, and I heard her scream as they raped her over and over and over again. . . . Sometimes now, at night, I'll hear her screaming again, and then I'll wake up and she'll be lying there, safe and fast asleep.

  "After they left, I dried her off and bandaged her up and then Dad came home. He went in the kitchen and shut the door and didn't come out for a long time. Enid and I talked. We decided we'd stand together and fix them all if they tried anything else.

  "She and I went out and bartered some stuff we had for a sledgehammer and a couple of chains. Went home and both of us practiced with them for a while, breaking stuff in our room. Dad was out trying to get food, I think. Sure enough, the next evening a couple of them came back to visit. We were ready for them. We did kind of overdo it that first time, but we'd caught them by surprise and once you started it was awfully hard to stop. Dad came back while we were still working them over. He didn't say anything. Not long after that he just went out and disappeared one night . . .

  "I don't know, Avalon. It's so strange. When I was young I think it all just seemed
like some kind of game, and then somewhere along the way I figured out that I never got to throw the dice. I guess I've been trying to get my turn ever since.

  "I never wanted that much, I don't think. Just a different sort of something. Another chance. Anything like that. It just doesn't seem right anymore. It's all wrong. I don't know if it'll ever be right. What do you think?"

  Nostalgia had rubbed me down as nothing else had. I felt ready to sleep forever.

  "Avalon?"

  She had no reply; as I'd talked, she'd slipped into sleep's shadow and fled the fretful world.

  11

  My dreams rushed in after I went to sleep, sparkling with fear, fresh and clean. I dreamed I ran, then fell: from where to where, I had no idea; knew only of my accelerating descent, tumbling downward as thousands cheered. Before I struck ground I awoke, reaching out for Avalon, but clutching still air. As I sat up I hoped to see her nearby, even as, at once, I knew I wouldn't.

  "Avalon?"

  She was gone. That I could have slept through her departure seemed inconceivable, though obvious.

  "Avalon!"

  As I attempted to stand, my legs folded in on themselves, and I collapsed back onto the futon. A great scabbed lump rose on my head where I'd been struck. With much effort I got up again, feeling as if I'd been crushed into pieces and then reglued by someone unfamiliar with the human form. My arms would barely rise above my head as I lifted them; it took several painful minutes to draw up my trousers.

  "Avalon!" I shouted, in case-for whatever reason-she had stepped into the hall. She hadn't. When I reached for my boots, I spotted a small card lying atop the laces. The blank side, no longer blank, was turned upward. On that side of the card were two printed words. The hand was unrecognizable.

  You're next.

  I flipped the card over, seeing that it was one of Mister Dryden's personal business cards. Beneath his engraved name and number someone had scrawled the notice, contact now. I read those notes again and again. Looking back, I wonder why it took so long for the message to take effect. After I tied my boots, I pulled on my coat-slowly-checked the apartment once again, and then left, moving down the stairs so quickly as I could.