12

So Fawkes came with us. He seemed to want to. I wasn't sure why. If he was willing to go along with me through miles of dark smelly tunnel with a bunch of other Ghouls at the end of the trip, why wouldn't he go into Megaton?

I knew the answer to that now, though. Megaton reminded him of the Vault Dweller, and people there remembered him, and from that he had run away as fast as he could go. Physical pain he just shrugged off. If I'd only known it, I could've hurt him worse with a harsh word than I had with my plasma rifle. I shook my head at this. If the other two noticed they didn't say anything.

"Fawkes, can I ask a question?" I said. There was no chance of going quiet now, not with those enormous boots crunching along beside us.

"Yes, of course," replied Fawkes.

"What were you doing down here?"

"In point of fact, I was on my way to Underworld," said Fawkes.

I glanced up at him. I don't have eyebrows, but a certain lift in the general brow region is possible for me. Not that he could probably see that. The tunnel section we were in was loud with the crackle of dying electronics and a lot of the lights were out. I wasn't worried. Things that would jump me and Three would run like scared radroaches from me, Three and Fawkes. (Fawkes here says it should be Fawkes, Three and me. I don't see why. He's kneeling behind my chair now, the better to read over my shoulder without getting a kink in that thick neck of his.)

"Why?" I asked.

"Thistle," said Gary, evidently determined to practice.

"Yes," said Fawkes, talking over my head. "I assumed she would return there." It took a second for me to catch on.

"How'd you know?" I said.

"You told me you've been there before," said Fawkes. "Most Ghouls return to Underworld at some point."

"It might've been a long wait," I said.

"Yes," said Fawkes. "I was prepared for that possibility."

I stopped talking to circumvent a hole in the floor. Fawkes just stepped over it. His foot came down on a protruding rebar, which made an awful creak as it bent under his weight.

"But why?" I said. "We met what, two weeks ago? You did me the favor, not the other way around. And what happened to all that talk about detachment?"

Fawkes grinned. I know that sounds impossible, since he can't un-bare his teeth, but he did. Maybe his mouth went up at the corners.

"A flaw in the philosopher does not constitute a flaw in the philosophy," he said. "I note that you haven't managed to achieve detachment in my absence." He looked over my head at Three again.

"Well, yeah," I said. "But that's only because he insisted."

Three snorted. "Gary," he said. "No." After a little more struggle he managed to say "Moriarty's. Garygarygary was. Your. Decision." These last two words came out between his clenched teeth again. I could see sweat shining on his forehead when the nearest light flickered on it and lit up his face.

"You mean if I hadn't messed with Radcliff none of it would've happened," I said.

Three nodded.

That led to my explaining to Fawkes exactly what had happened in the bar. Fawkes said that it was a good thing I'd bought so many stimpaks, since I was apparently quite free in my use of them. (I can feel him chuckling behind me now, shaking my chair.) Three managed to convey, in bits and scraps of words in between much Gary-ing, that the fact I was willing to jump up and haul out the stimpaks for a wounded super mutant was probably reason enough for Fawkes to come looking for me again.

Which was an implication that Fawkes had understood right away, of course. He always does.

"Like I said," I told Three now. "I owe him. He helped me out after that bastard Jay shot me in the gut trying to get Tulip's package off me. I shot it to pieces and he took off. That's why I'm going to back to Underworld now, to tell Tulip why I don't have it."

Three nodded again. He was breathing hard, like talking was harder than running, and when the light hit his face sometimes he squinted his eyes like it hurt. Whatever was wrong inside his head had been that way for a long, long time. It wasn't going to go away in a day.

"This is the first I have heard of this package," said Fawkes.

"It was a nightie and underwear. And somebody wanted it bad enough to pay Jay to get it, which means they wanted it real bad."

"Gary?" said Three. I suspected it was going to be a while before we got any other words out of him.

"That's kind of a long story," I said.

"We have considerable time," said Fawkes. I looked over at Three. He nodded.

"Okay," I said, and told them about McPherson and Jay. It wasn't really a long story. I just didn't like talking about it that much. There's a gap a lifetime wide between me and Consuelo Garcia – Call me Connie, everyone else does - and it kind of stings to try and look back across it. After that, I told them about escorting the older lady from Underworld, how she'd given me the package to take back, and how Jay had ambushed me and I'd blown up the underwear. Three laughed at that. He didn't make any noise, but I saw his shoulders twitching.

"Then he left," I concluded. "So I laid up next to the pond where I could soak up the rads. Fawkes came there to get to the water. You know the rest." Three nodded.

"I am surprised this acquaintance of yours did not attempt further violence," said Fawkes.

"Not Jay," I said. "I've seen his type before. There's not much he cares about one way or the other. He'd probably torture somebody if somebody else paid him to. He just wouldn't do it for fun or like that. Nobody gave him money to kill me, just to get the package."

"Gary," said Three thoughtfully.

"I have encountered such a perspective," said Fawkes. "Though I cannot agree with it. It's odd that he left you a stimpak."

"Yeah," I said. "Normally he's got no more feelings than a mirelurk. Less. They care about their eggs. Maybe he just did it because he could."

"I doubt I will ever understand human beings," said Fawkes. "Though I once was one. I'm not certain whether the loss of memory is a curse or a blessing."

"Yeah," I said. "Me, neither. And I got all mine still."

Beside me I heard Three sigh. I guess he agreed. Things must've been pretty bad in old 108 for him to leave everything he knew and go roaming out into a world full of people he couldn't talk to. Maybe they'd run out of food and were eating each other. That's happened a lot in what's left of the world now. Or maybe he'd spent the last hundred-odd years watching his sort-of parent and sort-of brothers going crazier all the time. Or, given how fey he was (which is a word I got from my helpful friend here because before this I thought it meant, you know, girly), maybe he was just ready to die and wanted to see the actual sky first.

That probably wasn't it. I'd never seen anybody fight so hard without a weapon. Once in a while you run into somebody with an anger that deep and wide and hot, a fire in their belly fit to burn the whole world. Maybe two hundred years ago they'd have locked him up. I guess the lab coats in 108 had tried. It wasn't hard to see why he'd latched onto me. I was probably the first friendly face he'd seen, Atom help the man.

We walked. And walked. There's not really a day or a night down in the Underground, and climbing to the surface isn't a good idea if you don't know what's apt to be waiting for you when you get there. At least I knew that when we got to the Museum there wouldn't be anything worse than Willow waiting up top.

I don't carry a watch. They're worth their weight in gold and more now, since there's only so many Pre-War ones and hardly anybody knows how to build them. So I can't tell you how many hours it was before we got to Metro Central. It seemed like more than eight, but it could've been five or six. We felt the draft first of all, blowing down the tunnel cool and quiet.

"Fresh air," said Fawkes. "We are near a station." Three nodded.

"Should be Metro Central," I said. Fawkes agreed with this, which made it sound like he'd been down there before. He probably had. There's not that many ways to get around in D.C. I took the rifle off my shoulder and powered it up as we moved down the tunnel. Metro Central is three floors of big open spaces with a bunch of ways in and out. Spaces like that attract Ferals and Raiders. I'd snuck past last time I was here, but there was no chance of that with Fawkes. (Who, by the way, thinks snuck is not a word. I can't imagine why. I hear it all the time.)

And if there weren't Ferals or Raiders, then there was always the chance of getting shot by someone passing through, whether on the off chance that we might be one of the above, or just because they had a missile launcher and caught a glimpse of a super mutant. If you've lived long enough in the Wasteland to find this terminal and read what I'm typing, you've probably learned that there is always an idiot with a big gun when you least want to see one. And he will be stupid enough to fire it underground. So I was feeling pretty tense by the time we saw the opening up ahead.

The tunnel opened out into a high and dusty space with a platform high up between the dead escalators and the tracks running each way below it. Right in front of us was the stairwell down to the Red line. An old train bulked large in the dim on our left, and there was another on the other side of the platform. Someone had nailed together two-by-fours so they formed a sort of walkway along the top of the farther one, commanding a good view of the area. That was new since I was last here. So was the set of dividers down beside it. They were made of corrugated steel and more two-bys. Even from where we stood, I could see the spray paint on them. I couldn't read the words. I didn't have to. There are only so many bad words in English and some of them are too long for most Raiders to spell.

There were no heads showing. Maybe we could just pass them by. I pointed down the stairwell and looked at the others. Three nodded. Fawkes unlimbered the gatling laser. "I suggest you remain here," the super mutant said. "It would be helpful if you were to insure I am not attacked from above." He spoke quietly, for him, but I had to stifle a wince at the rumble through the soles of my feet. It was just possible someone on the other side of the platform might miss it. Maybe.

"Okay," I said. "Three, you probably should stick with me." Fawkes tended to get a little crazy with the gat and I didn't want Three getting shot up while he was trying to get at someone barehanded. I edged over to the side of the tunnel mouth as Fawkes marched forward and down out of sight.

I held the rifle and waited. Beside me Three settled into a squat, looking around with bright, cold eyes.