Time's Dark Laughter by James Kahn

Author:James Kahn [Kahn, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Usenet, Speculative Fiction, C429, Kat, Exratorrents
ISBN: 9780345327017
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 1982-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11: In Which There Are Two Daring Escapes

OLLIE sat in the dark corner of a Bookery cave, teasing melancholy strains from his bamboo flute.

Jasmine sat twenty feet away, alone beside a small fire. She brooded.

Addie crouched at a low table near one entrance, setting the record. In the next room, Michael and Ellen nattered at each other about some obscure footnote in a recently unearthed, revised edition. All the other Books were either in conference or out scouting; or scribbling in the Great Lexicon; or tending the Bookery winery on the first level; or sleeping, or reading, or eating.

Jasmine brooded over the fact that she couldn't find a way out of this morass. There was so much internecine bickering among the Books and Pluggers that she couldn't rely on them for anything. They had been waiting two days now for the Pluggers to make a decision, and as far as Jasmine was concerned, it might have been two years. Furthermore, she had little hope of finding the connecting tunnel without help, and the news of electric screens covering all the other openings was particularly frustrating. Josh was in the castle, Paula had said. Every hour brought him closer to Final Decontamination.

It was the caves. Jasmine didn't know exactly how, but she felt them: sinister, suffocating, miring. Evil, almost. As if, in their endless, shadowed inturnings, the tunnels had devised a power for stifling lesser wills, smothering all hope. She felt it almost as an external consciousness, engulfing—or, perhaps, seducing—them.

She looked at Ollie, absorbed in his somber melody. His feelings were too distorted for her to analyze, his mask too thick.

Footsteps approached from another entrance. A shadow jumped, then lay still between Jasmine and the fire. She looked up at the figure who stood before her.

"Rose," she whispered.

"Hello, Jasmine," said Rose.

In the corner, the music stopped. Ollie stood, dropping his flute, with a clatter, onto the stone. He ran over, paused; and for a long second, they looked into each other's eyes. Then they fell together in a powerful embrace that took away their breaths and held at bay their demons. They had been prisoners together five years before, herded south by Vampires and Accidents, tortured, humiliated, and intimidated. This was a bond of fire that would never break.

When finally they pulled apart, they were weak with cumulative tension. Jasmine stood, and also hugged Rose, somewhat less desperately.

"Rose," Jasmine said again.

"Yes, it's good to see you, too," she answered.

"Tell us what's happened." Jasmine's voice was tender.

All three sat before the fire. "I'm a Plugger now," Rose began. "Nine prongs. I pulled the cap off my outlet back in the Saddlebacks, so I can receive again now."

"Receive what?" Ollie asked. So many emotions skittered through the boy's heart, he was near collapse. Joy at seeing Rose, who had helped him so much to endure their first ordeal together; fear at her tone; hope and despair about Joshua's plight; rage at such a world—

"I could never explain to any of you what it was like, what it felt to be .

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