Waterfall (19 page)

Eureka couldn’t take her eyes off Dad’s expression on the robot’s face.

“Ovid is a soldier,” Solon continued. “Like all things made of orichalcum, it is meant to be indentured to one master. You will find it very useful.”

Eureka glanced at Solon. “Does it know where the Marais is?”

“Yes, it does.”

“And it’s going to take me there? And help me defeat Atlas?”

“That has long been the plan.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

She got to her feet. “Tonight?”

Solon pulled her back down. “The time is almost right,
but Ovid will not go prematurely. It is … special. Its orichalcum is but a shell for what—or rather, who—fills it with purpose. Today, your father became the first ghost to fill it.”

“The Filling,” Eureka said. Solon had mentioned it last night. She sensed it was something terrible. Why was Dad involved?

“The Filling is Atlas’s master plan. It is what the Seedbearers are—and the rest of the world should be—so afraid of.”

“Tell me.”

Solon walked to the wall where a bottle of prosecco rested in an ice bucket in a stone recess. He poured himself a glass, drained it, and poured himself another. Then he lit a cigarette and took a long drag.

“The world into which Atlantis rises will be a muddy, unrecognizable slop. After the flood, everything will need rebuilding. And rebuilding requires workers. But workers have been known to revolt. To avoid that, Atlas plans to use the dead to build his empire by housing ghosts from the Waking World in invincible, weaponized bodies he controls. Imagine a billion souls’ hopes and dreams and energies and visions, all of their intelligence and experience combined. This is how Atlas will conquer the world.”

Eureka stared into the waterfall. “If Atlas wants a world of ghosts, doesn’t he have to kill everyone first?”

Solon stared sadly at Eureka. “Atlas won’t have to.”

“Because I’m doing it for him,” Eureka said. “My storm is going to poison the entire Waking World? How soon?”

“Most will die before the full moon.”

“Then who am I trying to save?”

“Everyone. But you must take their lives before you save them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Eureka,” Ovid said in Dad’s familiar bayou drawl.

“You will have questions,” Solon said. “First, let us hear what your father has to say.”

“That is not my father. It’s a monster Atlas made.”

“Every ghost gets a dying message,” Solon said. “Until they adjust to inhabiting the robot, this death letter forms the entirety of the ghost’s language. Think of your father as a little baby ghost who needs time and nurturing to grow to his full potential. Now, listen.”

A metallic tear glistened in the corner of Ovid’s eye as it began to speak. “When you were born I was afraid of how much I loved you. You’ve always seemed so free. Your mother was the same way, not scared of anything, never needing any help.”

“I need you,” Eureka whispered.

“It was hard when your mom died.” The robot paused, its lower lip jutting out the way Dad’s did when he was thinking. “It was hard before that, too. I knew you were mad at me, even though you didn’t. I was afraid you’d leave me, too. So I protected myself, added people to my life like armor against loneliness. I married Rhoda; we had the twins. I don’t know how it happened, but I turned my back on you. Sometimes when
you try not to repeat your mistakes, you forget that the original mistakes are still unfolding. I never planned to live forever and it wouldn’t matter if I had. Man plans, God cancels. I want you to know I love you. I believe in you.” His orichalcum eyes gazed into hers. “Ander makes you happy. I wish I could take back what Diana said about him.”

Today I met the boy who’s going to break Eureka’s heart.

“I don’t believe it anymore,” Dad said. “So you tell him to take care of you. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Learn from mine and make your own and tell your children what you did wrong so they can do even better than you. Don’t turn your back on what you love because you’re scared. I hope we’ll meet again in Heaven.” The robot made the sign of the cross. “Make things right, Eureka. Stare your mistakes straight in the eye. If anyone can, it’s you.”

Eureka flung herself into Ovid’s arms and embraced it. Its body felt nothing like Dad’s, and that made her miss him more than she had since he died. She grew disgusted with herself for allowing one of Atlas’s machines to make her feel.

When she pulled away the robot’s face looked different. She couldn’t see Dad anywhere. The orichalcum features seemed to be rearranging themselves in a deep tangle of movement. It was a horrifying sight. Eyes spread. Cheeks slackened. The nose hooked at the bridge.

“What’s happening?” Eureka asked Solon.

“Another ghost is surfacing,” Solon said. “Now that your
father opened Ovid, it will draw all the newly dead within a certain radius to it. Think of it as a vortex of local ghosts.”

“My dad is trapped inside with other dead people?” Eureka thought of her nightmare and drew her arms around her chest.

“Not dead people,” Solon said. “Ghosts. Souls. Big difference. The biggest difference there is.”

“What about Heaven?” Eureka believed in Heaven, and that her parents were there now.

“Since your tears began the Rising, all the souls who perish in the Waking World are trapped in a new limbo. Before you cried, they would have made their way, like the souls that died before them, wherever they were destined to go.”

“But now?” Eureka asked.

“They are being held for the Filling. They cannot flow into Atlas’s other robots until those robots rise with the rest of Atlantis. And if Atlantis doesn’t rise before the full moon, the dead’s deterioration will be too great. The souls won’t make it into the machines, or to Heaven—if there is such a place—or anywhere else, for that matter.”

“That’s what you meant about the wasted dead,” Eureka said.

Solon nodded. “Your tears have already killed many. In order for their souls not to rot and waste away, Atlantis must rise in the next seven days. All ghosts must flow into the machines. Your mission will be to find some method of release.”

“Release into what?” Eureka asked.

“A better fate than eternal enslavement by the Evil One.”

As the features on the robot’s face fixed into place, Eureka began to sweat. Solon didn’t have to tell her who the other ghost was inside Ovid. She recognized Seyma, the woman she had murdered, wrinkling the robot’s skin.

“Filiz!” Seyma’s ghost began her death message in a language Eureka was surprised to understand. “Do not let the Tearline girl deceive you. She is the world’s worst dream come true.” The old woman’s voice softened. “A blind man could see how much I love you, Filiz. Why you never saw it, I don’t know.”

Then the robot closed its orichalcum eyes. Seyma was gone.

“Ovid is programmed with some sort of translation device,” Solon said. “It knows what the listener will understand.”

“My father’s ghost and the ghost of the woman who murdered him are together inside this machine? How does that work?”

“The mind boggles,” Solon said. “An unfathomable number of ghosts can populate Ovid’s body, propelling its thoughts and deeds like the atoms of a wave. They will make Ovid brilliant, and immortal—and conflicted, I assume. World wars could rage inside a single orichalcum body … if some clever ghost were to organize a resistance.” Solon paused and drummed fingers against his chin. “Actually, that sounds like fun.”

“How many ghosts are in it now?” Eureka touched her yellow ribbon. “There was a girl we passed on the way to the Bitter Cloud. I wanted to bury her.…”

“So far it seems only two ghosts are imprinted. Ovid’s acquiring radius is quite small at the beginning, but will grow with each ghost that fills the machine. It will be a grand rite of passage when Ovid acquires its third ghost. Then this miraculous trinary robot will be fully operational, ready for the world, such as it is.”

“That’s when I go to the Marais,” Eureka realized.

“In good time. Remember, someone else still has to die before Ovid is ready to guide you. Before that grisly occurrence, I suggest you go upstairs and get some rest.” Solon smiled into the waterfall. “I wonder who the lucky bastard will be.”

C
at was gone.

Eureka returned upstairs to find a pallet of empty blankets where she’d last seen her friend. She checked the kitchen, all six candlelit alcoves in Solon’s salon, the tiny bathroom off the staircase. Cat had fled the Bitter Cloud.

Eureka had known Cat long enough to guess where she had gone. The Poet had pointed out his rooftop from Solon’s veranda the night they arrived. It was just across the Tearline pond. For the first time, Eureka regretted not telling the others she’d seen Atlas the night before. Now Cat had crossed the witches’ glaze without knowing he was near. If Atlas found her, he would look like Brooks to her. Cat had no idea how much there was to fear.

Eureka snatched her purple bag. She considered taking the witches’ torch, but it would make her too visible in the dark. At the doorway of the guest room she paused to watch the twins and Ander sleep. William whimpered, nestling closer to Claire, who swatted him, then changed her dream-mind and embraced him.

Part of Eureka would feel safer if Ander went with her, but after Seyma’s death, Eureka no longer knew how to be around him. And she didn’t want the twins to wake up alone. Besides, if she did encounter Brooks and Atlas tonight, she couldn’t risk Ander’s trying to kill them.

She aimed to be back before sunrise, before any of them woke up.

Silently, she climbed the stairs to the veranda. Rain pinged off her thunderstone as she looked over the rail. She scanned the rocks for Cat. For Brooks.

The water had risen ten or twenty feet since that morning. On the far side of the pond, mouthlike black openings marked the Celan caves. One of those caves had swallowed Cat. Unless Atlas had found her first.

After circling the veranda’s perimeter, Eureka discovered a place where she could safely jump to the rocks below. She was lowering herself over the rail when a hand grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back.

“Where are you going?” Ander asked.

Their shoulders touched. She wanted to hold him, to be held.

“Cat’s gone,” she said. “I think she’s with the Poet.”

“We have to tell Solon.”

“No. I’m going after her. Go back downstairs.”

“Are you crazy? I’m not letting you go out there, especially not alone.”

“Cat could die,” she said. “If …”

“Say it,” Ander said. “Say what you think might happen to her. I know he’s out there, Eureka. We both know it. What I don’t know is why you’re so eager to walk into his trap.”

He wanted her to deny it, to touch the smooth line of his cheekbone where it angled toward his jaw, and beg him to come with her. She wanted all of that, too—but she couldn’t want it.

“I can’t lose you,” he said.

“You watched me kill someone today. You know what my tears are doing to the world. You act like Cupid shot us with arrows and we’re supposed to forget that everything is falling apart. We’re in hell, and if I don’t stop it, it’s only going to get worse.”

“If you could love yourself the way I love you, you would be invincible.”

He was wrong. Love wasn’t going to defeat Atlas. Ruthlessness and rage would.

“If you could turn off your feelings for me the way I’ve turned off my feelings for you, you’d never age a day.” Eureka hoisted herself over the rail and leapt to the rocks below. Her ankles throbbed dully from the drop.

Ander sucked in his breath. When he exhaled into the rain it shot sideways across the pond and generated a single angry wave.

“You can stop caring for me”—he began to hoist himself over the rail—“but you can’t stop me from caring for you.”

“Eureka,” a silky voice called from everywhere and nowhere. For an instant the limits of the witches’ glaze glowed purple in the darkness. Through the steady patter of rain on rock, Eureka heard the low drone of buzzing bees.

“Who’s there?” Ander paused. “Eureka, wait.”

A figure wearing a long caftan stepped from the shadows. Esme’s painted lips and eyelids looked like portions of the night. Raindrops pattered against the petals of her dress. Her fingers traced her crystal teardrop necklace, making little swirls.

“I can show you the way to your friend.”

“You know where Cat is?” Eureka asked.

“Don’t go with her!” Ander called as Eureka approached the witch. He had landed on the rocks and moved toward her.

“I can help you lose him.” Esme nodded at Ander. “I heard your little lovers’ quarrel. Didn’t you know shallow worries like those have been washed away?” Her pointer finger beckoned Eureka closer. “It is time for deep women to rise.”

Rain slid down Eureka’s shoulders. “Where are we going?”

“To the Glimmering, of course,” Esme said. “Step through the glaze within the glaze and be free.”

Eureka glanced back at Ander. He was only a few feet
away. She took Esme’s icy hand and stepped through one invisible glaze into another.

“Eureka!” Ander shouted, and she knew he could no longer see her. He rushed forward as Esme winked and pulled Eureka aside on the path. Ander spun in a circle.