The Night Children Read online

  The roving spotlights go out.

  A single strong light plays on the float and fixes on the figure in the austere straight chair.

  After a pause, the figure gestures and one of his black-suited lackeys presents a microphone. The light narrows to a pin spot on his face. Tick elbows Jule and she grunts. It’s him. Where his people are dressed in business suits or Security uniforms, this person . . . no, this personage is tall in gold platform boots and gorgeous in a sweeping black robe.

  Old, he is incredibly old. His head shines like a piece of ivory polished to a high gloss. A mystery, until Jule sees that his entire head is covered in gleaming platinum. The true face of the personage is protected by a handsome mask. The beautiful beaten metal face is as stern and cruel as an Aztec idol’s. The platinum top of the head is flawless and perfectly rounded, bare as a naked skull. Stringy as its body is, the figure looks strong and stern and in this setting, extremely powerful.

  The air in the courtyard buzzes and sizzles. “Z . . . zzz . . . zzz . . . z . . .” It sounds like a thousand hornets worshiping something bigger than they are. “Z . . . zzz . . . zzz . . . z . . .”

  “Shut up!” The big voice crackles in all the loudspeakers.

  As one, the dozens of uniformed followers clap their foreheads, roaring, “Zozz!”

  Jule’s heart stumbles. “Is that . . .”

  With a touch on the arm, Tick silences her.

  The Zozzpeople applaud until their leader raises his hand, shouting in a voice loud enough to fill the hall. “Stop!”

  His people fall silent too.

  “Now. We have work to do.” He orders, “Bring Isabella.”

  A hundred voices rise, “Isabella . . . Isabella . . . bella . . . ella . . .” Then a hundred people fall silent and wait.

  The figure in the black robe is frighteningly still. He is like a statue of a king, waiting. Then, loud enough to short out the speakers for several seconds, he shouts, “Isabella!”

  There is a clatter in the far corridor, the sound of someone running in tremendously high heels. Gasping and disheveled in her once-perfect white suit, the woman Jule knows only from the portrait in Town Hall rushes to the base of the platform, crying, “Yes, Father. Yes!” So much for the haughty Isabella Zozz. She’s just as scared of their leader as everybody else.

  Now the man in flowing black pushes back the chair and stands. He is tall. No, he is tremendous. Towering over everybody in the courtyard, the figure in the platinum mask commands, “Bring out the new prisoners.”

  It is Amos Zozz.

  TWENTY-THREE

  IT IS SOME TIME later.

  Bent over the console in the Communications Center in Zozzco headquarters, Lance is watching the proceedings in the Dark Hall. They have been going on for much too long. Why has the old man turned this day into a call to judgment? Why is the judging so personal, and why is the old man so cruel?

  Lance watches the march of the prisoners—a sad procession of people who didn’t deserve to be at the mercy of Amos Zozz. Some, he remembers from the early days. They are the builders and designers Amos took prisoner; the powerful billionaire keeps them captive in the drafting gallery, working away on—what? Lance knows they spend their days chained to their drawing boards, working on a secret project for the old man.

  Embittered old Amos has always been a spoiler. Lance remembers what evil joy he took in moving people around like pieces on the chessboard back when Lance was small. Cackling, the old man patted his round satin bed. “Come play, boy. Look. Isn’t this wonderful?”

  “No, it’s awful!”

  “Come back,” Amos cried. “Some day all this will be yours.”

  “Well, I don’t want it!” Sobbing, Lance fled.

  The old man shouted after him; the words lashed at his ankles, cutting him to the bone. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

  What can I do? he thought at the time—he was eight! Shuddering, he retreated. Nothing, he thought emptily. He did what he could at the time. He separated. He grew.

  Now Lance the Loner says in a strong, loud voice, “Yet.”

  Lance knew in his bones that this day was coming sooner or later. He just didn’t expect it to come so soon.

  Neither did Amos, he sees, which may give Lance the advantage.

  Look at the old man standing up there in the mask of beaten platinum he puts on when he meets the public, imposing in the black cape and the long black robe. See the elevated boots, crafted especially to make him look taller than he really is. Amos has put on the face he wants his people to see, which is nothing like his real face, Lance knows all too well. He is glorying in the odd beauty the mask and the fittings give him. He is glorying in the power.

  Like the pharaoh of a long-dead civilization, Amos makes his prisoners kneel at the foot of the dais. “Some of you,” he says in a big voice, “will be useful as we enter Phase Two, and the rest of you . . .”

  During the pause that follows, the weak ones weep and the strong ones groan.

  Twirling his bony fingers, Amos quiets the group like a director at an audition. “The rest of you will have to prove yourselves! I decide,” he shouts.

  The silence that follows is terrible.

  Lance grinds his teeth. This is even worse than I thought. If he’d stayed above ground, if he’d put on the uniform and lived in company headquarters, could he have prevented this? Or would he be propped up in one of Amos’s commercial display cases, dressed as a shoemaker? Would he have ended up behind bars in the deepest dungeon in the Dark Hall? Lance doesn’t know. He only knows that for the longest time, he was too young to do anything about all this, except walk away. But now . . .

  Sick down to the toes of his thick army boots, Lance understands that the old man has brought all these people—including the uniformed Zozzpeople in the audience, who think they are here to watch—to judgment. Oh, he’ll make a show of it, Amos loves to make people suffer for his own entertainment, but there is something much more sinister going on.

  He is rushing into the mysterious Phase Two.

  “Prisoners of the Dark Hall,” Amos bellows. “Convince me you are worthy!”

  As Lance watches, the willful tycoon summons his prisoners to the platform, one by one. They are carefully kept, these Zozz prisoners, combed and elaborately dressed, like dolls refurbished to fit into a play house owned by a large, spoiled child. Some, Amos keeps because they are useful, and the others . . . It’s hard to say.

  As the prisoners step up on the dais he says to them, one after another, “Show me what you’ve got!”

  They are all desperate to prove themselves. In the parade to judgment the architects and designers come first. The architects carry miniature scale models of new sectors, and designers present sketches and blueprints for improvements to come. As the prisoners keep coming Lance recognizes some of Castertown’s missing councilmen, the ones who voted against the MegaMall. Trusted Zozzco employees follow—executives who, Lance had been told, had resigned. He sees captive chefs come in flourishing their best dishes and he sees shop owners; he sees the athletes and models who serve as ornaments in the old man’s palatial apartments simply because they’re beautiful. One by one they step up to judgment by Amos Zozz.

  These are followed by a sad procession of shoppers foolish enough to max out their credit cards while still on the premises. Some of the shoppers, Amos uses as living displays in his shopping dioramas; pale and miserable, they look weary in their period costumes, from frilly nineteenth-century French outfits and wigs to early pioneer garb, dressed up because better than anything, Amos loves to control. Some are his personal servants. The luckier debtors, Amos has turned into entertainers or models in the midnight fashion shows at which he sits like a king, handsome in his splendid platinum mask.

  Lance watches as the MegaMall captives step up on the dais. They give speeches or show paintings and blueprints or perform dramatic monologs or do frantic tap dances in an attempt to demonstrate their worth.
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br />   There is an excruciating silence when they’re done.

  Did they please Amos? Does anybody? What happens to the ones who fail?

  Lance leans forward as Amos delivers the verdict: “OK.”

  Or, more often: “I’m tired of you!” That imperious wave. “Take him away.”

  The old man sends his captives, his creatures to the right or to his left, according to whether they are to stay in the Castertown MegaMall or be disposed of. A third group huddles in the enclosure nearest the platform.

  They are the chosen. Earmarked for Phase Two. Most of the builders, designers and decorators have been herded into the enclosure, where Security guards them behind velvet ropes.

  The others have a harder time. In the hour that Lance has been watching, a handful of the old man’s captive storekeepers and clothing models have gotten the OK. When this is over, Lance supposes, the approved ones will go back to their environments. Correction. Cells.

  What happens to the rest? In a hastily erected corral to the left of Amos Zozz, a growing crowd of the old man’s discarded playthings waits, muttering. He is like an angry child, ready to destroy anything that displeases him. If they’re thinking to escape, they can forget it. All of Mega-Mall Security is lined up here, closing the circle.

  Finally the billionaire founder and owner of the Castertown MegaMall, the wealthy and terrifying Amos Zozz, tires of the activity. It is not enough to own the people here. He is bored. Amos Zozz is totally bored!

  Disgusted, he shouts, “That’s enough for now. And after the break . . .” He finishes with an ugly laugh. “Just you wait.”

  The unexamined prisoners still lined up waiting for their moment of judgment jostle and fret. What will become of them?

  “I said, that’s enough! Take them away!” With an imperious wave, Amos shouts, “I’m sick of you.”

  The words hit Lance in the stomach like a sack of rocks. He doesn’t know how this will end, only that it will end badly. There is a hush in the Dark Hall. Then Amos looks up. It is almost as though he is talking directly into the surveill camera. No. As if he is talking directly to Lance.

  “I’m sick of you too.”

  Then he turns to his employees, the loyal Zozzpeople, saying in that harsh, dry voice that carries to the ends of the Dark Hall. “I’m sick of you all!”

  Their moan grows like a whirlwind. “Ooooh, nooooo.”

  Amos says directly to the camera, “What am I going to do with you?”

  Lance gulps. He knows better, but Amos is talking in that odd, pointed way that Lance knows all too well.

  Then Amos twirls his fingers as though none of this has happened and food comes. Late at night or early in the morning as it is, roasts come in on silver salvers and Yorkshire pudding comes on platters and steamed plum puddings come and coffee in great gold samovars comes. Lackeys lay out a banquet table and Amos Zozz steps down and takes the great chair at the head of the table. On the mogul’s right sits his daughter, Isabella Zozz. Smug, because without Lance here, she is second in command. Although he saw overdressed Isabella rush into the Great Room all disheveled and distracted when this show began, her hair is once again perfect.

  Every fingernail glitters like steel. The sleek white suit and the golden wedge heels and the gold-and-diamond Zozzco emblem hanging at the cold but beautiful Isabella’s throat make her stand out like a white tiger among all the scared, dutiful Zozzco executives buzzing around her in their black suits.

  Isabella smiles at the camera—does she know Lance is here? Sweet-looking face for once. In spite of everything she has done. Something big and sad jumps in Lance’s throat.

  Amos says, “Isabella.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  An odd, new sound comes out of Amos Zozz. It is an ominous laugh. “Wait’ll you get a load of my next project.”

  Knowing the old man, Lance shudders to think. He clenches his fists. You could stop him if you wanted to.

  The lines in the platinum mask pull together in an evil leer. “You’re gonna love it.”

  You can’t!

  The people in the Great Room won’t hear what he hisses into Isabella’s ear but she hears, and sitting in the Communications Center, Lance hears. Spit flies around inside the platinum mask as Amos whispers, “The children.”

  The children! Lance strains forward, willing her: Lady, do something!

  The dry whisper continues. “Time to deal with the children.”

  Startled, Isabella blinks. For a second, the beautiful, vain woman Lance knows too well to admire, ponders. She is deciding whether or not Amos is crazy. She’s deciding whether it’s time to make that grab for power. Many things hang in the balance.

  Lance fumes. Aren’t you going to do anything?

  Instead, Isabella turns to her father, fawning with a deceitful smile. Her next words bring Lance to his feet. “How positively divine.”

  Lance pounds the console. No! He has come to a decision.

  With the flip of a switch, Lance the Loner diverts audio transmission from the Dark Hall sector into the system that serves the entire MegaMall. Part One. All he has to do is trip the switch. Where he has lived in the tunnels for years, observing without the power to change what goes on here, everything just changed. Where he thought moving out kept him from being responsible for what goes on here, it’s not that easy. Lance has changed. He is preparing to act.

  One-way streets are the easiest traveled, Lance tells himself, and is not sure what that means.

  What he does next has to be done quickly. It’s getting late. Cleaning crews on the early morning shift will be finishing up in all the shopping sectors. The first shuttles of the day from Castertown and from the MegaMall Airport are preparing to bring hundreds of retail clerks to the stores, cooks and wait-people to the many restaurants, the daytime security guards to replace the sinister night shift.

  Masses of earlybird shoppers are lined up at the entrances, all hoping to be first in the Castertown MegaMall. Soon the stores in all the galleries will be filled with workers. Soon, Lance knows, shoppers will fan out in every courtyard and every corridor. There will be thousands of people here in the MegaMall.

  In ordinary circumstances, this might be a bad thing for Lance, who spends his daytime hours in the MegaMall avoiding outsiders. He prefers to stay hidden, but given what’s going on right now, having people by the thousands stalking the MegaMall along with him is a good thing. In an odd way, it fits in with his plan.

  Therefore, Lance prerecords two short messages. This is Part Two. They will go mallwide when it’s time.

  Then he presets the amplifying system to pipe his announcements into every sector at specific times—one ten minutes from now, while the galleries and tunnels are empty of everyone but stray night children and the cleanup crews, and the second thirty minutes from now, when the shoppers are scheduled to start coming in.

  Once this is done, Lance sets a third timer. This one activates the mallwide sound system. Then he picks up the remote.

  When he triggers the sound system, everyone in the old man’s vast shopping empire will hear what’s going on in the Dark Hall.

  Just when he should be leaving, Lance turns back to the banks of screens. He spends a long minute studying Isabella Zozz in close-up. Beautiful, really. In spite of that flash of sweetness, greedy and cold. Too loyal to Amos to do anything but stand by while he has his way. It has paid off for her. Look at the gold stripes on her sleeve. Zozzco second in command. Is it worth it, really?

  “Oh, Mother,” he rumbles in a voice rusty from disuse. “Get over yourself.”

  Then with a shrug, he turns his back on the polished image of Isabella Zozz and closes the door on the Communications Center for good. He locks it and walks away. It doesn’t take long to lift the grate in the marble floor in the management sector. Where he spent a long time considering what to do next, Lance is quick and decisive now. Bypassing the ladder, he grabs the fireman’s pole and slides down to the loading dock where his tram
is parked.

  He sets the gauges and kicks it into high.

  From here, he will move fast.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE CHANGING LIGHT ON the onyx floor tells Tick and Jule that far above the smoked glass dome above the Great Room, the sun is climbing in the sky. From where they are lying, flat on their bellies on the onyx floor of the circular Great Room, they watch legs and shuffling feet go by as the tycoon’s last prisoners advance to the dais on the forced march to judgment. Faces are harder to see, although they are trying.

  They’ve been lying here for so long that the cold bites to the bone, leaving them stiff and shivering. Could they move if they had to? Stand up? Run? They don’t know. The crowd is so thick that the night children can’t see much of the captives, but they can hear them, and—the voices!

  The old man’s prisoners sound so much like friends, like relatives that it’s hard to keep from yelling, “Hang on, we came to help!” How, exactly, is a big question. Huddled under the bench, Jule sobs without making a sound. Deep in shadow though they are, she can see tears running down Tick’s face.

  The sad procession drags on until finally even Amos tires of it.

  “Enough,” he shouts. Confetti overflows the giant shredder his hulking vice presidents hoisted onto the platform before the trials began. For what seems like forever he examined blueprints and sketches. He studied designs and business plans produced by prisoners commanded to prove their worth. They’ll do anything to earn a ticket to Phase Two, even though Amos alone knows what Phase Two really means.

  Survival, Tick supposes.

  Jule wonders: What does he do with his playthings when he tires of them?

  Disgusted, Amos has fed most of the prisoners’ offerings to his hungry shredder, casting the bearers aside without caring where they fell. What if he shreds unwanted prisoners too? “Enough,” he shouts again.

  Still they come.

  Amos roars, “I said, enough!”

  The few remaining are so terrified that they flood the dais, tap dancers and ballerinas and clowns alike, frantically doing the buck-and-wing, wild pirouettes and mad cartwheels, anything to make him choose them.