Open-mouthed, Jack stared in at his mother. She was dying, he could not doubt that any longer: even her skin seemed bleached and unhealthy, and her hair, too, had lost several shades of color. The nurses around her bustled about, straightening the sheets or rearranging books on a table, but they assumed this busy and purposeful manner because they had no real idea of how to help their patient. The nurses knew that for such a patient there was no real help. If they could stave off death for another month, or even a week, they were at the fullest extent of their powers.
He looked back at the face turned upward like a waxen mask and finally saw that the woman on the bed was not his mother. Her chin was rounder, the shape of her nose slightly more classical. The dying woman was his mother's Twinner; it was Laura DeLoessian. If Speedy had wanted him to see more, he was not capable of it: that white moveless face told him nothing of the woman behind it.
'Okay,' he whispered, pushing the panel back into place, and the Captain lowered him to the floor.
In the darkness he asked, 'What's wrong with her?'
'Nobody can find that out,' came from above him. 'The Queen cannot see, she cannot speak, she cannot move ' There was silence for a moment, and then the Captain touched his hand and said, 'We must return.' They quietly emerged from blackness into the dusty empty room. The Captain brushed ropy cobwebs from the front of his uniform. His head cocked to one side, he considered Jack for a long moment, worry very plain upon his face. 'Now you must answer a question of mine,' he said.
'Yes.'
'Were you sent here to save her? To save the Queen?'
Jack nodded. 'I think so - I think that's part of it. Tell me just one thing.' He hesitated. 'Why don't those creeps out there just take over? She sure couldn't stop them.'
The Captain smiled. There was no humor in that smile. 'Me,' he said. 'My men. We'd stop them. I know not what they may have gotten up to in the Outposts, where order is thin - but here we hold to the Queen.'
A muscle just below the eye on the unscarred cheekbone jumped like a fish. He was pressing his hands together, palm to palm. 'And your directions, your orders, whatever, are to . . . ah, to go west, is that correct?'
Jack could practically feel the man vibrating, controlling his growing agitation only from a lifetime's habit of self-discipline. 'That's right,' he said. 'I'm supposed to go west. Isn't that right? Shouldn't I go west? To the other Alhambra?'
'I can't say, I can't say,' the Captain blurted, taking a step backward. 'We have to get you out of here right now. I can't tell you what to do.' He could not even look at Jack now, the boy saw. 'But you can't stay here a minute longer - let's, ah, let's see if we can get you out and away before Morgan gets here.'
'Morgan?' Jack said, almost thinking that he had not heard the name correctly. 'Morgan Sloat? Is he coming here?'
CHAPTER 7 Farren
1
The Captain appeared not to have heard Jack's question. He was looking away into the corner of this empty unused room as if there were something there to see. He was thinking long and hard and fast; Jack recognized that. And Uncle Tommy had taught him that interrupting an adult who was thinking hard was just as impolite as interrupting an adult who was speaking. But -
Steer clear of ole Bloat. Watch for his trail - his own and his Twinner's . . . he's gonna be after you like a fox after a goose.
Speedy had said that, and Jack had been concentrating so hard on the Talisman that he had almost missed it. Now the words came back and came home with a nasty double-thud that was like being hit in the back of the neck.
'What does he look like?' he asked the Captain urgently. 'Morgan?' the Captain asked, as if startled out of some interior dream.
'Is he fat? Is he fat and sorta going bald? Does he go like this when he's mad?' And employing the innate gift for mimicry he'd always had - a gift which had made his father roar with laughter even when he was tired and feeling down - Jack 'did' Morgan Sloat. Age fell into his face as he laddered his brow the way Uncle Morgan's brow laddered into lines when he was pissed off about something. At the same time, Jack sucked his cheeks in and pulled his head down to create a double chin. His lips flared out in a fishy pout and he began to waggle his eyebrows rapidly up and down. 'Does he go like that?'
'No,' the Captain said, but something flickered in his eyes, the way something had flickered there when Jack told him that Speedy Parker was old. 'Morgan's tall. He wears his hair long' - the Captain held a hand by his right shoulder to show Jack how long - 'and he has a limp. One foot's deformed. He wears a built-up boot, but - ' He shrugged.
'You looked like you knew him when I did him! You - '
'Shhh! Not so God-pounding loud, boy!' Jack lowered his voice. 'I think I know the guy,' he said - and for the first time he felt fear as an informed emotion . . . something he could grasp in a way he could not as yet grasp this world. Uncle Morgan here? Jesus!
'Morgan is just Morgan. No one to fool around with, boy. Come on, let's get out of here.' His hand closed around Jack's upper arm again. Jack winced but resisted.
Parker becomes Parkus. And Morgan . . . it's just too big a coincidence.
'Not yet,' he said. Another question had occurred to him. 'Did she have a son?'
'The Queen?'
'Yes.'
'She had a son,' the Captain replied reluctantly. 'Yes. Boy, we can't stay here. We - '