The Chase Page 0,63

gamesmanship," Dee gasped at last. Her eyes opened into narrow onyx slits, her breath still hitching. "I'll give him gamesmanship right up the-"

"He's gone," Zach interrupted flatly. "And we're all in trouble, so I wouldn't waste your breath."

For a moment Jenny was so glad to see Dee unhurt that she didn't care. Then she looked up and understood what Zach meant.

They were inside a ring of fire.

It was just slightly smaller than the dimensions of the cafeteria-and for all Jenny knew the cafeteria walls were still outside of it. You couldn't see through it to tell. It was as high as the cafeteria ceiling, and it was hot.

And loud.

Incredibly loud. Jenny realized that she and the others had been shouting over it to be heard. It made an unbelievable, unremitting roaring. Like the thundering of Niagara Falls, or the blast of a hurricane.

How weird, Jenny thought, part of her mind examining this fact with a curious calm. I guess when you get to a certain extreme, the elements all sound like one another-fire sounds like water sounds like wind. I'll have to remember that.

There was something else about the sound. It was deadly.

You knew, somehow, listening to it, that it was absolutely lethal. If destruction had a voice, this was it.

"I suppose that's why people jump out of windows, even from the twentieth floor, or whatever," she said to Tom, almost dreamily. "You know, from a burning building, I mean."

He gave her a sharp look, then lifted her, practically carrying her to one of the cafeteria tables. "Lie down."

"I'm all right-"

"Jenny, lie down before you pass out."

Jenny suddenly realized that she'd better. She was shaking violently all over, tiny tremors that seemed to come from deep inside her. Her fingers and lips were numb.

"She's in shock," Audrey said as Jenny lay back on the bench. "And no wonder, after everything that's happened. Jenny, shut your eyes for a while. Try to relax."

Jenny shut her eyes obediently. She could see the fire just as well that way as with them open. A wave of dizziness rolled over her. She could hear the others speaking, but their shouts seemed thin and far away.

"-not going to last long with this heat," Tom was saying.

"No-but what can we do?" That was Zach.

"We're going to get roasted." And that was Michael. "Better find some mint sauce."

"Shut up or I'll croak you myself, Mikey," Dee said.

I can't let them get roasted, Jenny thought. Her thoughts were vague and dreamlike, held together by the thinnest of floating strings. It was a state almost like the moments before sleep, when nonsense seems perfectly sensible, and words and pictures come from nowhere.

Right now she was experiencing something like drowning. Her life flashing before her-or at least the last three weeks-or at least bits of them. Disconnected, jumbled images, each sharp as a clip from a high-grade home video.

Julian appeared, beautiful as a December morning, his eyes like liquid cobalt, his hair moon-wet. "I never cheat. I practice Gamesmanship. ..."

And Aba, her old face with its fine bones under velvety night-black skin. "Last night I dreamed a Hausa story. ..."

And Michael, dear Michael, his hair wildly mussed, dark eyes shining with enthusiasm: "See, your brain is like a modeling system. It takes the input from your senses and makes the most reasonable model it can...."

And Zach, thin and beaky-nosed, gray eyes alight with a fierce gleam. "A picture of a pipe is not a pipe."

As Jenny drifted, ears filled with the noise of the fire, all the images seemed to float together, merging and intertwining. As if Aba and Michael and Zach were speaking at once.

"Without another word the girl dived into the river of fire. ..."

"Touching's just another sense. It could befooled, too...."

"The image isn't reality. Even though we're used to thinking that way. ..."

"The fire burned her, of course-my mother always said 'The fire burned her like fire.

"If a model's good enough, there would be no way to tell it wasn't real...."

"We show a kid a picture of a dog and say 'This is a doggie'-but it's not. ..."

Jenny sat up. The fire was burning as fiercely as ever, like all the beach bonfires in the world fused into one. Tom and Dee and the others were standing in a sort of football huddle a few feet away. Jenny felt light-headed but good. She felt light all over, in fact, as if carbonated bubbles were lifting her toward the ceiling, bursting inside her. She felt glorious.

"That's it," she