Root (34 page)

I looked up at the great, studded dome of the
basilica. That was where I needed to be, if nothing else, to have a
quiet place to think.

I surged across the flagstones, shuffled
through security and rushed into the basilica, looking neither left
nor right at the masterpieces on display, making no signs of
crosses, no gestures of humility or respect as I waited my turn at
the cordon to penetrate the depths of the dome and reach those pews
under the lonesome, alabaster dove.

And there, despite myself, I prayed in the
wishful way a little kid talks under his breath to a fallen star or
to an array of smoldering birthday candles. And you know what I
wished for. I had no hope it would be granted.

One would have thought if any place on earth
was holy enough to keep me out of an infernal place like Root it
would be here, but those roots came twining up out of the pew in
full view, I assumed, of the tourists and pilgrims. Was it a
miracle, I wondered, to be transported in public to Hell’s
doorstep?

I was wide awake and fully aware of every inch
of my journey down through the catacombs, my molecules gliding
through dirt and stone like elementary particles, and then a twist
and a turn through something not even made of this
earth.

A musty smell pervaded my senses, but was
quickly replaced by notes of ginger and lemon. I found myself in a
heap of pillows and rolled-up futons. An alabaster dove still
loomed above me—only this one wasn’t Bernini’s, it was
Karla’s.

***

“
Karla?” I scrambled to my feet, all
lightheaded and giddy. “You here?”

I was thrilled to have made my entrance
directly into her dome, and not have to fight my way out of another
pod out in the tunnels. I wasn’t sure what it meant, coming here
instead of there, but in any case, it was progress.

“
Karla?”

When she didn’t answer, I pawed gently through
a pile of rumpled blankets to see if she might be snoozing beneath,
but she wasn’t there.

The dome was so quiet, surely I would have
heard her breathing. But all I could hear was water dripping from a
tap and the nearly inaudible gurgles of some distant
Reaper.

The dome was a mess. Karla usually kept it so
neat. Someone—Luther?—had ransacked the place. Her earring tree lay
upended, its jewelry scattered everywhere, crunching and bending
underfoot.

More of Karla’s weavings seemed to be coming
undone, and that included the dome itself. Walls that had been
smooth were now corrugated with individual strands of pencil-thick
roots. Some roots had broken free and hung dangling in coils
throughout the room.

I rummaged through the debris on the
floor—various tapestries and embroideries, some so finely rendered
they looked just like watercolor paintings and photographs. Others,
much cruder, had disintegrated into a mass of individual strands
that wriggled like a bunch of maggots.

I was probably looking at a record of her
progress as a Weaver, from her earliest, childish and least stable
efforts to some truly masterful work on par with my glass giraffe.
She had a box of miscellaneous tools that were indiscernible in
heft and detail from the real thing. If these were Karla’s doing
then she was a much better Weaver than she made herself out to
be.

I studied the pictures and designs for
insights. The old, maggoty stuff was mainly simple flags with
crosses on fields of red, X’s on fields of blue—basic geometric
designs on which she practiced her art.

Intermediate in skill were her landscapes.
Rolling, denuded hills and long lakes or fjords seemed to be a
common theme. They could have been depictions of the lake country
in northern Italy or Scandinavia.

The most adept images seemed to revolve around
a little girl in blondish pigtails who looked sort of like a
younger Karla, especially around the eyes. I found another picture
that showed her holding hands with an older girl whose face was
smudged out. Could this be Karla and her little sister?

There were a few pictures of an older woman
whom I took to be Hanna—Karla’s mother. The woman’s expression
haunted me—so flat and empty. I could plainly see the wish for
death in those eyes. There was nothing at all of her father Edmund,
except perhaps some abstract but disturbing renderings of monsters
that could have easily represented Reapers.

One of the more advanced embroideries had an
‘I’ superimposed over an ‘H’ with a smaller ‘S’ swirling around the
‘I,’ like a snake on a caduceus.

HIS?

As opposed to HERS?

ISH?

In rapper slang, that meant ‘shit.’

IHS?

Wasn’t that some kind of shorthand for
Jesus?

There was nothing under the dome with any
writing beyond those three letters, nothing that told me where
Karla had come from or where she had gone.

I found my kilt and white shirt neatly folded
on a stool, put them on and opened the hatch to the tunnel that led
to Luthersburg, startled to find the tunnel all clogged with
dangling, writhing roots. The walls had been shaggy before, but
this was ridiculous.

I brushed against some roots and they all
sprung up and stiffened into spikes, all pointing toward
me.

“
What the heck?”

Gooey lobes like frogs’ tongues dribbled down
between the spikes and adhered to my face and neck. I ripped them
away in disgust and stumbled back. Crouching down, I could see the
sitting room at the other end of the tunnel through a jungle of
spikes. A machete would have come in handy, but in lieu of that, I
dropped down on my hands and knees and crawled.

Spikes jutted and jabbed at me as I picked my
way slowly along. One shot out and got me good, puncturing my side
and drawing blood. I lashed out and snapped it off. The broken end
went limp and inched away.

Knobs then began to form on the previously
smooth floor and grew into spikes. I was crawling on a bed of
nails! My fury peaked.

“
Bastards!” I screamed in
frustration.

Every nob on that floor softened and collapsed
under my gaze, surprising the heck out of me. But as soon as my
attention wavered, the nobs regrouped and reformed. I scrambled
ahead, diving and rolling into the sitting room when I reached the
end of the tunnel.

When I reached the sitting room, I was shocked
again. The door the square was still there but was now merged
seamlessly with the wall. The window was now flush with the plaster
and had gone all gray and opaque.

The door still had a knob, and the window a
latch, but when I tried opening them, but the changes proved no
illusion. This was a solid wall now with only visual traces
remaining of its former portals. Apart from the knob and latch, it
could have passed for a painting of a room with no view.

Frustrated, I banged at the door and found it
had no play in it whatsoever. Hitting it was like knocking on a
brick wall. The window was pretty much the same. What the heck was
going on?

I tried breaking through one of the side
walls. The stuff looked like plaster or sheet rock, but felt like
stone. The opposite wall proved no better. I paced like a captive
animal.

I felt this burning potency build in my chest.
I don’t know where it came from, but my will had some real oomph
behind it now, and I wasn’t going to waste it on glass
giraffes.

“
Goddamnit!” I smashed my fist into
the door and this time it made a deep indentation, but the thing
was, the dimpling began even before my fist ever hit, as if it were
flinching in anticipation of being struck. I stood there and
watched the tiny strands wriggle into the dent to reclaim
it.

I let the hatred flare in me, letting my
passions stoke it like pitch pine tossed on a camp fire. My hate
rose up against all the nasty roots that dared thwart me. And as
that feeling grew, I channeled it down the length of my
arms.

The surface flaked away, curling out from the
center like the pages of a book under a blow torch. Layer after
layer peeled back until I had made a six inch deep pit in the wall.
Frayed edges reverted back to roots and retreated, making the hole
even wider.

Light began to filter through the paper thin
layers remaining. I kept at it until I burned all the way through
and I was peering through a hole the size of my fist.

I pressed my face close and looked out to the
center of the square. The big tree was gone and the obelisk was
back. Now that I knew St. Peter’s Square, I noticed its resemblance
to the ‘Burg, but Luther’s creation was a crude echo of the Piazza
San Pietro, embraced by arcs of quaint townhouses instead of
Grecian columns.

The central platform looked vacant. I could
see no sign of Luther. People clustered in small groups on the
cobbles here and there. And I caught a glimpse of some
animals—wolves?—running in formation. Wolves?

I went back to work on the hole, which was
already trying to heal itself. I held my palms together like a
Buddhist praying and extended them into the hole as if I intended
to take a swan dive. I wanted these damned roots out of my way and
let them know it. When I pulled my palms apart, the hole widened as
if my hands were hot blades carving through butter.

When I saw the roots surrounding the hole
their integrity and sag, I thrust my head through the gap before
they could rally, wriggled my shoulders through and dropped into
the garden on the other side.

This damned wall was probably the reason Karla
wasn’t in her dome. She was probably stuck out here in the square
with the others.

The pack of ‘wolves’ came running toward me.
As they neared, I could see they were just German Shepherd dogs,
but their strides and leaps were weirdly synchronized. They barked
together in perfect unison.

A woman trotting behind them let out a
piercing whistle and they all pulled up, circled back together and
formed a straight line facing me, like some kind of canine circus
act, going from frenzied to calm in a flash as if a switch had
flipped in their heads.

“
James?”

The woman was Astrid and she was carrying this
bulky tube-like contraption looked sort of like a gnarled bazooka.
She gaped at the hole I had made in the door, the gap already
partially filled as roots crept and swelled to plug the
breach.

“
How did you get through that wall?
Luther made it … impenetrable.”

“
Um … guess not.”

“
But how?”

“
I just did that … weaving …
thing.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off those dogs. Their
tails swished in unison. Whenever one moved its head, they all did,
in time and exactly the same way. They reminded me of those street
performers who danced with puppets lashed to frames that
transferred every move.

Only one dog—the lead dog, I assumed—had its
eyes fixed on me. The others had their heads angled the same way,
but their parallel sight lines had them looking off into empty
space.

“
What’d Luther do? Make them all
share one brain?”

“
They are his eyes and ears,” said
Astrid. “They won’t hurt you, as long as you do what they
say.”

“
What they
say
? You mean they talk?”

“
Intruder, identify yourself!” said
the dogs in a chorus of flat, tinny voices. It was like they had
cheap speakers implanted in their muzzles.

“
Freaky!”

“
They pass Luther’s messages,
collect information and enforce his edicts. You’d better tell them
who you are.”

“
You’ve got to be
kidding.”

“
James. This is serious. They can
and will hurt you if they consider you a threat. I only have
limited control.”

I shook my head. “German Shepherds, really?
Luther’s so … lame.”

“
James, please. Be respectful. Your
words will be reported back to him verbatim.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Okay … um … hi …
uh … doggies, and uh … Luther. I’m James Moody, but you already
knew that.” I reached out my hand to what I took to be the alpha
dog. They all lurched away in synch and growled at me.

“
This is nuts. What’s going on? Why
are all the doors sealed?”

“
Luther has declared a maximum
alert. An attack is imminent, he says.”

“
From … what? Reapers?”

“
Victoria.”

“
Huh? Why would
she
attack? She has absolutely no
interest in us.”

Astrid shrugged. “I trust his judgment. Luther
knows this world. He’s been here a long time. Why not give him the
benefit of the doubt?”

I sighed and picked some stray bits of root
off my shoulders and looked out over the square. “You seen
Karla?”

“
Not since you were last
here.”

“
Really?” My spirits sagged. “What
about Lille? Bern?”

“
They’re around … somewhere … out on
the plaza with everyone else.”