End of the Century (20 page)

The next little while passed in a blur.

Here's what Alice later remembered:

Alice was hungry, and so had an order of the fish and fries, though steered well clear of the frozen peas.

She drank some more.

She smoked all the cigarettes in the pack and started on the next.

She fended off all manner of losers and creeps who tried to hit on her.

There was only one other incident that stuck out in memory. One of the creeps who tried to hit on her had adopted, at least, a novel approach. When he saw that Alice was reading Lewis Carroll—but she wasn't reading it, not really, just finding comfort in flipping through the pages, looking at the familiar images and well-worn clusters of words—he started talking about mathematics, and physics, and fractals. He said he was an amateur mathematician himself, and had read a book all about a mathematician named Kurt Gödel, and that the book had used characters and stories from Carroll's Alice stories to illustrate its points. He talked about Carroll's mathematical paradoxes, the word games she remembered from her father's book. And he talked about how Gödel had espoused all kinds of strange notions, including the idea that if the universe were revolving, then it would be possible to travel backwards and forward in time just by moving far enough through space.

Hadn't Roxanne mentioned something about time travel, too? Alice couldn't remember.

The amateur mathematician had moved on, getting bored of his unsuccessful attempts to dazzle Alice with his erudition and trying the tactics on a pair of clerical workers further along the bar.

Then it was last call, and the bartender or publican or whatever was telling everyone that they didn't have to go home, but they couldn't stay there.

Alice couldn't go home if she wanted to. She'd only bought a one-way ticket and couldn't afford to get back. She doubted there was room on her
credit card to cover the cost and knew there wasn't enough in the bank. She was stuck.

Alice slid off the stool. She'd moved from the booth after Roxanne left and hadn't stood up in hours. Now, it seemed like the universe
was
revolving after all, the way the walls spun around her.

She lit a cigarette, to cover her disorientation, and then followed the burning coal at the cigarette's end like a lighthouse beacon, managing to get outside and onto the sidewalk without falling down. Barely.

It must have taken her longer to stand up and walk out then she thought. As soon as she was outside, the lights behind her turned off, the bartender or publican or whatever locked the door, and Alice was alone on the sidewalk. Where had everyone else gone? Home or somewhere else, she supposed. Just not here.

Alice started walking up the road. She didn't know where she was going, just that she was moving. Then she heard the sound of fluttering and looked down.

There, blocking her path, was a large black bird. At first she thought it was a crow, or a grackle. Then she realized. No, it was a raven.

A raven, and it wasn't alone.

It wasn't just one raven, blocking Alice's path. There were several. No, a half dozen. More. Seven, altogether.

There were three on the sidewalk, moving in little hops, two more ruffling their feathers atop the streetlights, and two at the edge of the awning over a nearby shop window. Seven ravens. It was like a scene from that old Hitchcock movie.

None of the birds made a sound. They just looked at her with their cold, ink black eyes. Dead black eyes like the loveless, joyless eyes of a shark.

Alice drew the last of her cigarette into her lungs, then dropped the butt to the pavement. She tried to grind it under her heel, missed, but felt the attempt was enough.

“Leave me alone,” she said, slurring her words. “I don't want any special destiny, you get me?”

Then she turned around, spinning on her heel, almost but not quite
losing her balance, almost but not quite getting dizzy again and throwing up all over her shirt. She kept her fish and fries and alcohol down, though, thank you very much the ghost of Nancy, and took a step away from the ravens.

“Alice. Wait.” The voice was squeaky and high, but ragged, like someone with laryngitis had just sucked down a balloon's worth of helium and tried out their best monster voice. “Unworld. Waits. Soon.”

Alice stopped and sighed. Was it one of the creeps from the bar, come back to try his luck again? Maybe the amateur mathematician?

It was only when she was turning around that Alice realized she hadn't told any of the creeps her name.

“Alice. Unworld. Waits.”

Alice narrowed her eyes. There was no one but the birds, on the ground and overhead.

“Who's there?” Alice asked. She knew already, but couldn't admit it, didn't really want to know.

One of the ravens hopped forward.

It opened its black beak.

“Disk. Memory. Within. Save. Alice. Unworld. Waits. Alice.”

There was the high squeaky laryngitis-helium voice she'd heard. Coming out of the raven's mouth. Just like she'd known it would.

“No.” Alice shook her head. “No, no, no.” She put her hands over her ears. “Not for me.”

If she'd smelled smoke, or seen the flashing light, she'd have thought she was having an episode. But this didn't have the same sense of meaning suffused through everything, the feeling that something important was happening. She was just drunk on a sidewalk in London, being accosted by a flock of ravens. Or was that a murder of ravens? She could never keep that straight.

“Alice. Memory. Save. Disk. Unworld. Waits.”

She could still hear the high-pitched, growly-squeaky voice even with her ears covered.

“I've changed my mind, okay?” Alice said, lowering her hands, pleading with the ravens. “I went up in the Ferris wheel like you said, then nothing happened, and now I just want to go home again. Is that okay? Can't you find someone else?”

The raven hopped forward another few inches, tilted its head to one side, and studied Alice intently through one ink black eye.

“Alice. Save.”

She'd had enough. Alice turned and took to her heels.

Alice ran as fast as she could, but given how drunk she was, it probably wasn't very fast. She wasn't sure where she was going, didn't even know what she was running from, just that she had to get away.

She rounded the corner at the end of the street and plowed right into somebody.

Whoever it was that Alice had run into was surer on their feet than she was, since they were still standing when she rebounded and fell sprawled on the pavement.

“Hey, watch it!”

Alice looked up from the pavement, breathless. There was an old man standing over her. Old as in fifty, not one hundred.

“You okay, love?”

The guy looked like Michael Caine in
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
without the mustache, but talked like Michael Caine in
The Italian Job.
Naomi had always had a thing for the actor, and Alice must have seen every one of his movies growing up.

The guy reached out a hand to help Alice to her feet and she couldn't help but think he looked familiar somehow, beyond the resemblance to her grandmother's favorite actor.

Alice looked at his proffered hand like it was a dead fish.

He chuckled. “Don't worry, love, I won't bite. Trust me, you're not my type.”

The guy pulled Alice to her feet, and she got a better look at him. He looked a little less like Michael Caine than she'd thought. He was wearing a gray suit that had seen better days, his shirt open at the collar with no tie, and over this a ratty-looking trench coat. Blond hair gone to gray, a week's worth of beard on his chin. But his eyes. His eyes, they were the color of the iceberg in the nighttime shots of
Titanic
, ice-chip blue.

Ice-chip blue eyes.

“Still waters,” Alice said, scarcely above a whisper.

The guy narrowed his eyes and regarded her with surprise and suspicion. “Yeah, my name's Stillman Waters. Who told you that?”

So that was the eye over the city, and the ravens, and the mirror-still water, and the man with the ice-chip blue eyes. Alice almost had a complete set. Where was the jewel?

“Look, love,” the man called Stillman Waters said, releasing his hold on her arm. “Much as I'd love to stay and chat, I really don't want to stay and chat, so if you'll excuse me I think I'll be on my way.”

There was a noise from behind her, and Alice looked to see a raven alighting on a red cast-iron mailbox. In seconds, its six friends flapped into view, settling on lampposts and awnings.

“Alice,” said the squeaky-growly voice of the raven. “Run.”

Stillman Waters looked from the raven to Alice. “Friend of yours, is it, love?”

Then, before introductions could be made, the dogs crashed the party.

There were five of them, so the ravens outnumbered the dogs by two, but what the dogs lacked in numerical superiority, they more than made up in terrifying hostility.

They had white coats, except for their ears, which were tipped with swathes of red, and when they curled back their lips Alice could see that their fangs, like their claws, had been dyed red.

“Bugger!” Stillman Waters spat, and his hand dove into the pocket of his ratty trench coat. When it came out again, there was a weird-looking pistol in his fist.