Mirror Space - Marianne de Pierres [59]
‘Try and locate Lat and Catchut - same way as you found me.’
‘And?’
‘Maybe by then you’ll have stirred up enough shit that we can find a crack to slip through.’
‘Hummph.’ This time Jo-Jo let the silence stretch.
‘Josef?’
Jo-Jo was gratified that she sounded nervous again. ‘Yeah, well. I can’t think of anything better but I ain’t rushing into that idea, either. We’ll continue this later.’
‘Fair enough. Hope to...hear you again.’
‘Yeah, well, keep shouting and I’ll find you.’
Jo-Jo loosened his mental hold on her voice in the way he might relax a flexed muscle, and in a moment he was back in the jackass, and then finally the buzz.
He felt tired. Not a body ache tired - he still couldn’t feel a damn thing - but the kind of cloudy sensation that settles on your mind when you’ve thought too long or too hard. Even the buzz seemed less irritating. He slipped into a kind of numb consciousness that lasted as long as it lasted, not sleep but something.
When it passed, his mind seemed sharper: the buzz louder.
He thought about Randall’s suggestion. If he could in some way let it be known he was the God Discoverer, what would happen? Right now, he wasn’t dead but he might as well be - trapped as he was like some frickin’ sound bite in this weird auditory jail. What would the Post-Species do with him if they knew he’d been God-touched?
Maybe he’d try to listen in on a few things before he made that call. First thing though, he’d try to find Randall again - just so he knew he could.
He focused on the buzz, and the transition through the jackass sound into the clamour of voices was almost instantaneous this time. He floated above them and waited. The cacophony of noise had its own colour and texture. Not that he could see it, but the sounds created a mind-picture. He let that picture develop into something he could reference: an enormous spinning multicoloured wheel, like the Ferris wheels on the vacation planet Fair.
Jo-Jo’s mother had taken him to Fair, once, as a child. He remembered the exotic night landscape of it; the slippery trails of the slider rides and the pounding, pulsing flash of the Sudden Drops. One thing dominated the fairground vista, the fiery little gondolas attached to the gigantic Ferris wheel. The wheel took several hours to complete one revolution, which gave the fair-goers time enough to truly appreciate the scenery. Little food traders buzzed around the gondolas, bringing water and confectionery, and the Park rangers did their own tending to the needs of passengers who’d forgotten to use the amenities before beginning the ride or had been overcome by the breadth of the spectacle.
Jo-Jo never got to ride the wheel - it turned out his mum had brought him there because the latest in her string of lovers was a ride operator. What was his name? Jo-Jo couldn’t remember. But the guy had hoisted him on his shoulders and twirled him around and told him stories of how some people never came back from the Big Ride, and others grew old while they were on there, and some changed into ginkos and ate their own tails.
The more he twirled Jo-Jo on his shoulders, the more the gondola lights streamed, until the Big Ride turned into a giant blazing lollipop spinning in an endless twirl of fluorescing colour.
The clamour of voices created the same image for him now. Somewhere in the circling sound vibrations were individual gondolas - unique groups of voices - and maybe within them, single beings.
That’s how he’d found Rast.
He listened for her now, concentrating on seeking the intonation and pitch that was unique to her voice.
This time he didn’t have to follow it. Once he’d located it peaking out of the flow he instantaneously heard her.
She was shouting his name, over and over.
‘No need to bellow,’ he said.
‘Josef?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘Thank fucking Crux,’ she whispered. ‘Being alone in my head with this infernal buzz is sending me nuts. I tried finding Lat and Catchut, but nothing. Just the fucking buzz.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Don’t leave,’ she said quickly. ‘I mean, I don’t know how long