F. Paul Wilson - Ground Zero

Is it real, is this the truth, or does it simply seem that way because I so want to believe?

She hesitated, then steeled herself to ask.

“Can you show me a different you?”

The Lady frowned. “Normally I would not even consider such a request, but for you . . . what would you prefer?”

“How about . . .”—something way different—“an Inuit woman?”

Mrs. Clevenger blurred, then sharpened to a shorter, darker-skinned woman with almond eyes and black hair braided into two long pigtails. She looked to be in her twenties and was snuggled in a fur-lined parka.

The dog barked and Weezy looked to see a large male husky standing on four legs and wagging its tail.

“Another question,” Jack said. “You’re always with a dog. Why a dog?”

She shrugged and spoke in a younger, softer voice. “He’s my male counterpart. Just as something in the consciousness of the noosphere demands I appear as female—”

“The eternal feminine,” Weezy said. It explained so much ancient mythology.

“Perhaps. But the noosphere demands that he appear as a male dog. I don’t know why. I am supposedly his mistress, but he doesn’t always listen.”

She picked up a knife from the table and held it before her, staring at the blade as she rotated it back and forth. Then she plunged it through the palm of her other hand.

Weezy let out a yelp of shock. “Ohmygod!”

The Lady smiled. “Not to worry. I do not eat or drink, and I cannot be hurt in the usual sense.” She removed the knife and the skin immediately sealed itself. “But I can be hurt.”

She rose and shed the parka, revealing small, dark-tipped breasts.

Weezy heard Jack say, “Yikes,” but she could not take her eyes off the deep dimple in the Lady’s abdomen to the right of the navel, wide enough to admit two fingertips.

Then she turned and Weezy gasped as she saw her back. The skin was pocked with hundreds of punctate scars and crisscrossed with fine red lines connecting them. She noticed another dimple in the small of her back, similar to the one in front. For a second she thought she saw light flash within it, but that couldn’t be.

She shook her head. Couldn’t be? What did that mean anymore?

Neither Jack nor Veilleur seemed surprised, although Jack looked uncomfortable. He’d apparently seen it before.

“What . . . what happened?”

“Opus Omega,” she said, then pointed to the Compendium . “You will read about it in there.”

Again that instantaneous flash from the dimple. Weezy cocked her head and leaned a little to the right—and froze as she saw light from the window.

The dimple was a tunnel, a through-and-through passage.

Weezy didn’t ask about that . . . wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.

“ All about it?” she asked.

The Lady raised the parka back over her shoulders. It was closed when she turned to face her.

“Much of it. The Compendium is ancient and long out of date. Jack knows some of what is not in there. He can fill you in. Study it well, Weezy.”

“And keep a special eye out for this,” Veilleur said, speaking for the first time since they’d sat down.

He passed her a slip of paper on which he’d written a strange word: Fhinntmanchca .

“What is it?”

“A legend. See what, if anything, the Compendium has to say about it.”

“I don’t think she should be wasting her time on things that never were and never shall be,” the Lady said.

Veilleur shrugged. “There’s been an Alarm about it. We can’t ignore it.”

The Lady turned to Weezy. “Absorb all you can. Use your brain to help us thwart the Adversary.”

The charge overwhelmed her. “Me? What can I do that you can’t? What can I learn that you don’t already know?”

“I have blind spots. Many things that involve the Ally and the Otherness are shielded from me.”

“Like the Fhinntmanchca , perhaps?” Veilleur said, a smile peeking through his beard.

She sighed. “Perhaps. At times I can sense the Adversary’s presence and know what he is doing—he is human, after all—but other times he seems to wink out of existence. He is active on a number of fronts now. Some are petty, involving simple vengeance, others are hidden from me. But he has a plan . . . he most certainly has a plan.”

“To do what?”

“Open the gates to the Otherness and let it flood through. And that will be the end of you and, as a consequence, the end of me. For once the Change occurs, the Ally will not want us back. By combining your knowledge of known history with the secrets of the First Age, you may find a way to impede the Adversary, or perhaps even stop him. He is fallible—he has made mistakes in the past—and therefore stoppable.”

By me? Weezy thought. Me? I don’t think so.

12

“I have to go in there?” Darryl said, staring at the Orsa.

“Well, no.” Drexler spoke from where he stood about ten feet away with Hank. “But you do have to reach in and remove the compound. ‘He who would be healed must remove the compound from the Orsa.’ Or so tradition says.”

Darryl did not like that idea one bit. He didn’t want any part of him inside that thing. But for a cure, he might go through with it.

“But the thing’s alive. You said so yourself. And I’m reaching into its mouth and—”

“It doesn’t have a mouth. It doesn’t eat in the sense you’re thinking. It draws sustenance from contact with the Opus Omega column buried beneath it. That column is planted at an intersection point in the Nexus Grid. That is why we dug up the concrete there, so the Orsa could have contact with the column and draw life from the Grid.”

Darryl scratched his scraggly jaw, wondering what the hell Drexler had just said. Bunch of gobbledygook.

“I don’t know, man . . .”

“See that groove encircling the very end there?”

He saw it. Maybe half an inch deep running around the conical end, maybe a foot in from the tip.

“Yeah?”

“That is a plug of sorts. You simply have to remove it, then reach inside for the compound. Place the compound in the bin by your feet as you remove it. Very simple.”

Easy for you to say.

He stared at the thing. The light reflecting off its dull surface partially obscured the vein of brown dust within. He adjusted his angle to study it. He wondered how it had got in there. Then again, what did it matter? He had to get it out.

Okay. Here goes.

He slipped his fingers into the groove and felt the Orsa’s surface ripple as he touched it. He stifled his own ripple—of revulsion—and kept his grip. Leaning back he began to pull and twist.

The plug moved surprisingly easily, almost as though the Orsa was helping to push it out. Darryl didn’t know if he liked that idea. But maybe the Orsa wanted to be rid of it, like getting a splinter removed from its skin.

He thought of that old story about somebody removing a splinter from a lion’s paw, and then the lion becoming his friend. Maybe that was how this worked. If he removed the plug, the Orsa would be his friend and cure him.

Finally it released with a slurping pop! He could have sworn he heard the Orsa sigh as the plug fell into his hands.

“Excellent,” Drexler said. “Now, begin removing the compound.”

Darryl stared at the pocket left by the plug. A ways beyond it lay the vein of dust. He reached in, immersing his arm to the shoulder.

“Hey, it’s warm in here and kind of wet.”

“Does it smell like fish?” Hank said.

“Not funny, Hank.”

Thankfully it didn’t smell like anything.

His questing fingers found the compound and he pulled out a handful. He stared at it. Brown and powdery, with little flecks of what looked like fine gravel.