Acceleration.
The front of the hotel was ablaze with every source of light that had been available. The windows were bright all the way up to the fourth floor. The hotel’s front yard was as bright as day.
More than thirty people were present, making them the largest group of defenders. The hotel’s two wings enclosed the private beach and yard; this side, with the front yard and forest, was longer, and harder to defend. No doubt that was why Bastin had volunteered here.
The Spiders had already pushed forward right to the edge of the light. Yve could sense them out there in the darkness clearly, a writhing mass of Spiders of every shape and size.
“Come on, then.”
Bastin stood under the roof of the porte cochère. Pierre emerged from the lobby to offer him some coffee in a small tin cup.
“Pierre.”
“Yes?”
“Does your house receive guests?”
“Yes. My younger sister. The role is empty. So the guests are usually young women.”
“I wonder what that’s like. We don’t have guests at my house. It seems I’m not the type to arouse much interest.”
“You should be glad of it. There’s nothing good about having guests come to visit.”
Pierre scratched his ear, blue eyes clouding over. The chain at his wrist jangled.
The chain, Bastin noticed, was connected to a metal shaft that went through Pierre’s wrist. He turned his eyes away.
“Well, I suppose they do beat Spiders.”
And then he stopped the jangling.
Everyone fell silent.
In the next moment, a single Spider emerged from the darkness. It looked less like an arthropod than a fishbone laid flat. Its “ribs” were jointed in the middle and reached down to act as legs. A single fork-shaped antenna waved from its head. It was about as big as a cow.
It darted across the front yard with the unnatural lightness of a marionette and then leapt up, trying to cling to the wall of the hotel.
But, the instant before it made contact,
the Spider was engulfed in a ball of fire.
Dazzling gouts of flame roared from the hotel wall, crushed the Spider as if in an infernal fist, then exploded. A heat wave and a shock wave.
In the casino, people screamed as the building shuddered.
Jules started to rise from the sofa, but the old man who shared his name grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t lose your nerve,” he said.
There was a distant cheer from the front yard. The trap had worked perfectly. Deeply relieved, Jules sank back into the sofa.
But the atmosphere in the casino was agitated. The explosion had them panicking.
“It’s all right,” he heard Julie saying. “Everyone, the hotel is fine. Don’t panic.”
Jules chimed in, raising his voice too. “The Father of Flame went off as planned,” he said. “That’s all. We got one of the Spiders, I think.”
“Exactly!” said Julie. “I saw it happen. No.” Then she looked down at the table again and continued her concentration.
The five women were arranged around the table peering into the Chandelier.
Their faces shone in its gleaming light.
Julie Printemps dove in. She saw Yve’s back and her broad, gently sloping shoulders right away, which let her determine her own position.
Just don’t think about how weird this all is!
Julie felt as if she might go a little crazy.
—I mean, think about it. We live in a world that is itself a virtual resort space—the Costa del Número is a virtual resort space. We’ve whipped up a second level of virtual world inside that, and it’s swallowed me up.
Julie looked “up.” It seemed to her that she could see herself peering into the table, far above. So that was her “real” virtual body?
Julie returned her gaze to her surroundings.
Inside the Chandelier, order was cohering apace. The program Jules had written into the lace had finished its expansion, and data sent in by external Eyes was being processed smoothly. This data was stored as holographic memory, and would presumably be the basis for the necessary bodily sensations once the trap network had attained its own unity.
There didn’t seem to be any more need for the “widows” to exert conscious control there. The TrapNet would continue organizing its insides like a living thing, taking full advantage of the unique resonances and interpermeability of the Eyes. Its basic character was defined by the lace. There would be no major departures from this.
More important now was establishing the network’s offensive capabilities. The Father of Flame had fired successfully, but the fact remained that they had joined the fray without any drilling. They had to keep damage to a minimum while they taught the net how to fight. Julie’s throat was dry with nervousness at the prospect.
Julie gathered the etherized essence of the Father of Flame standing by around her into her hands. The coke burning in a blacksmith’s forge. She stretched it apart with both hands as if pulling taffy. The fire became a thin string, then a whip. She placed this in the “flow,” the distribution route that was still being generated within the net. Following the forks in the flow, the string of fire was carried to every corner of the net with shocking speed, becoming like a many-headed serpent. Then she summoned up the next fire.
Beside her, Yve was gathering a small house in the palm of her hand. Snowscape. And at her feet, a pair of cats patiently waited their turn.
Leaving that self to continue the battle, Julie moved the rest of her concentration to the front of the hotel, where the fighting had grown fiercer, and focused there.
Julie stood beside Bastin under the porte cochère. He, of course, could not see her.
A Spider was rolling around in a ball of fire. It was the one from before. There was no smell of burning meat. Just the bouquet of the flames.
Pierre chuckled. “Looks like the Spider didn’t see its own web before it jumped,” he said.
Because the hotel was, in fact, swathed in a veil of woven Spider-web. Thin strands had been separated out and run along the walls, hidden as best as possible under the ivy that was already there. It was a nervous system covering the hotel’s epidermis, an immune system against foreign bodies, and the cutting edge from which they would launch their attacks.
When any part of it received a stimulus, the nearest low-level Eye would send for the Father of Flame’s power through the net. The energy brought by the Spider-web would be released at the place where the stimulus had been received, and the Spider would be burned to a crisp, just as the first attack had shown.
This network could transmit virtually everything the Eyes made available. Superheated explosions of flame, freezing blasts from Snowscape—even the Black Grid …
Bastin narrowed his eyes. Pierre was rigid with nerves. Julie felt this with the utmost clarity.
Still engulfed in flames, the Spider retreated to a grove of trees. The flames illuminated the outline of its brethren squirming in the darkness, one by one.
Then that wall suddenly collapsed.
The mass of Spiders became a black tide sweeping toward the hotel’s façade.
But they were unable even to touch it.
The light bulbs in the entryway porte cochère and those evenly spaced around the yard had all been replaced with Eyes. These now glowed white-hot as the Father of Flame’s fiery energy poured forth. This attack was far hotter than the first had been. The hail of flame smothered the Spiders coming up the path, burning them alive.
For the Spiders coming across the lawn, a different attack had been prepared.
The web extending through the grass activated.
Thousands of glittering silver needles, so large and sharp that they were really small daggers, fired directly upward out of the lawn, running the swarm of Spiders through from below. The Spi
ders were torn to shreds in an instant. The needles maintained their trajectory, rising higher than the hotel’s roof before turning and falling back down, pinning the Spiders’ skeletons to the lawn.
Catsilver was a special kind of Eye. It contained a pair of fantastical beasts: cats with dazzling silver fur, eyes green as celadon, and tongues redder than blood. Closely examined, their fur was a coat of sharp, stiff spines like a hedgehog’s, and when they were enraged these spines bristled and flew through the air, propelled by powerfully twitching muscles.
The trap network exaggerated their abilities to the point of parody, turning their spines into daggers of considerable destructive power. These were what had been hidden in the lawn.
Now, those spines were augmented with the power of Snowscape.
“Look at that!” Pierre said, pointing. Fierce cold streamed from the daggers as the AIs watched, freezing the skeletons that were pinned to the ground.
“Jules was right,” said Bastin hoarsely. “Snowscape’s externalizing its cold through Catsilver’s spines. Eyes can exert their power even on things that aren’t corrected to the net directly. This is incredible.”
The scene evolved further. The daggers’ channel was changed, and they released an invisible shock wave of searing heat from the Father of Flame. Unable to withstand the rapid change of temperature, the remains of the Spiders crumbled to dust to be blown away. The shock wave was so tightly targeted that the lawn itself wasn’t even charred.
A cheer went up.
The men at the entrance scrambled onto the lawn to seize the daggers standing in it, now returned to normal temperatures. They hurled them at the Spiders, now in disarray, as they charged. Each dagger exploded like a hand grenade, releasing shock waves of heat and cold that destroyed their massed enemy. The front line of Spiders fell back, broke formation, and was torn to shreds.
Everything’s going unbelievably well. Let’s hope this lasts …
Julie was now watching the battle in the front yard. But that was not all she was taking in. Even as her focus remained at the front of the hotel, she was receiving sensory data from elsewhere, too.
For example,
The amber scent of the brandy squeezed between his molars.
Warming a drop in his mouth to heighten the aroma, Georges Crespin signaled to the other nine hunters and their dogs by cocking his head just a fraction. The Spiders were coming. Everyone quieted their presence and raised their guns. Georges’s rifle was larger than the others; he had made it himself, and he held it fixed before his chest now. He stayed down on one knee, silent and utterly motionless.
The green scent of the grass and moss crushed beneath his knee. The bluish steel aroma of his polished rifle barrel. The smell of his old amulet and the new leather thong it hung on. And the warm, lingering fragrance of breast milk that had come from Marie’s chest as she put the amulet around his neck. She had made it for him herself. She was gone now, and so was Hector. The sweet perfume of the candle on their dinner table the night before came back to Georges for just an instant.
Deep in the darkness of the forest there was movement that caught only Georges’s eye. Twenty or thirty Spiders had gathered to entwine themselves with each other, removing and recombining body parts to remake themselves into a single gigantic monster.
Two eyestalks sprouted like periscopes from its newly constructed torso. Each stalk had two eyeballs, and the four eyes stared at Georges—yes, at Georges; of that there could be no mistake—from the depths of the forest.
Unflinching, Georges retained his composure. But Julie, who was taking in this scene from inside him, trembled at the Spider’s expressionless eyes.
Georges’s finger curled around the trigger of his rifle. Lurking in his finger, Julie felt the weight of the trigger vividly.
In the darkness, the giant Spider moved. The chaotic, buzzing jumble of Spiders converged into a single presence that swelled and rose to its feet. It was so enormous that the very forest itself seemed to have stood on a hundred legs. It was at least half as large as the hotel.
The nine hunters fell into a temporary state of shutdown. They were powerless, their minds totally blank.
But Georges kept his aim steady, not the slightest twitch in his posture or his expression. Only his sharp eyes moved, searching for the right spot to shoot. Julie, deep within his eyes, followed that deft, unwasteful “appraisal.”
The Spider kicked the trees of the forest out of its way. The trees went flying like matchsticks, taking out two of the hunters as they tumbled haphazardly to earth. The Spider fired its sharp, pulsive hunger like a machine gun. A line of manhole-sized holes in the ground stretched toward them, and two more hunters perished in the line of fire.
The Spider’s body shook with sneering laughter. Inaudible low-frequency waves resonated in the hunters’ chest cavities until they were ruined inside. Blood spilled from their mouths and guns fired wildly. The iron smell of coughed-up blood mixed with a gunpowder tang.
Georges’s eardrums ruptured instantly. His lungs filled with red fluid. But still he did not move a muscle. His entire sensory awareness was concentrated in his eyes. Motionless, he waited until the last possible moment. Finally his eyes gave his body the order: Shoot.
Twice in succession Georges squeezed the trigger. The hot fragrance of gunpowder. The kick smashed his lungs once and for all, but his face remained motionless. His last drop of life was sent to his eyes, to chase the shots he had fired. But that was where it ended. Georges closed his eyes. He slowly fell onto his back, his last breath forced out between his lips.
That amber scent.
Or, for example,
Taste.
The taste of meat.
Biting through the crisp, fragrant outer layer to the red inside, chewy and dense. The taste of fat and meat juice spread as the meat was chewed, followed by a gamey scent. Muscle fiber broken down by tooth and tongue and the inside of the cheek.
The taste of meat roasted on a metal skewer.
But José stopped at one bite. Leaving the rest of the meat untouched, he stabbed the whole skewer into the charcoal, letting it stand upright.
Julie clung to José, feeling like a sheer veil. The refreshing coolness of the sea breeze and the heat radiating thickly from the charcoal were pleasant.
Hey, José… Julie spoke into the ear adorned with a fish-shaped earring. She concealed herself in the whisper of the sea breeze so that he wouldn’t hear. Do you mind me being here? Is it okay if I see what it’s like inside you?
The young fishermen wrapped a strand of web about the terrace railing. The strand was punctuated along its length by dozens of Eyes like tiny light bulbs. It looked like a cheap line of fairy lights at a garden party. But José’s eyes were turned to the blue-black surface of the sea beyond.
The gentle waves twinkled with reflected light.
“I don’t like this sea.”
“Oh, yeah?” said one of the young fishermen casually. “How come?”
“What have you been looking at, dumbass?” Anne bellowed at the fisherman.
José scooped a drink out of the nearest punch bowl, using the mixture of wine and orange juice to wash down the meat. He felt as if the cool juice were filling his cells with new energy.
“I can tell,” said José. “This sea is a lie.”
Anne nodded. “A poster, if I’m not mistaken.”
José nodded and gripped the long metal skewer he had stripped bare earlier. Standing at the edge of the terrace, he brandished the scorched skewer like a harpoon and glared at the face of the waters.
And with that, the entire ocean shuddered, as far as he could see, and all the waves and reflections froze.
With unbelievable quickness, the picture of the sea was rolled up toward them, gathering itself into a bundle just below the terrace and then bouncing above their heads like a tennis bal
l. It bloomed with spines that sprang out like a sea urchin’s.
This, of course, was a diversion.
José was not looking at any sea urchin.
José was looking at a single tiny Spider that had been hiding on the surface of the sea but had now become flat as paper and was attempting to crawl under the terrace. José stabbed it through with the metal skewer and pulled that up to plunge the Spider right into the charcoal. Its flesh contracted with a constricted squeal and a foul smell filled the air.
“Want a bite?” José said.
“Give me a break.” Anne, who had been batting down the sea urchin, wrinkled her nose in disgust. She had imagined the flavor before she could stop herself. “Blech.”
Julie tasted that imaginary flavor too.
Blech.
That was disgusting.
Julie was gradually getting used to her situation and beginning to enjoy herself. She and the other “widows” had become one with the Mineral Springs Hotel and the trap network.
Could a person listen to a hundred songs at the same time and savor them all? Down to the subtlest nuance? What about the same song played by a hundred different musicians at the same time—would it be possible to tell how they differed?
This was something like that, but even more amazing… Like listening to a hundred songs, reading a hundred books, and at the same time tasting a hundred plates of food—along with one Spider (blech).
Julie knew that her self had unambiguously become the drop of brandy savored by Georges, the twinkling at the tips of Catsilver’s daggers, the jangling of Pierre’s chains. She had become every detail available to the trap network, and also become the whole.
Smoke that aggravated her throat.
A half-smoked cigarette fell to the floor of the bathroom. A thin tendril of smoke rose from it.
Stella was sitting on the toilet with her skirt pulled up higher than necessary. The front of her apron was also pulled to one side, baring her large, freckled breasts. These she caressed with the fingers and palm of one hand, while her other hand was under her skirt engrossed in different work.
Stella was lost in her masturbation. She groped with her fingers for the heat she felt inside her body, fanning it, calming it and postponing it, keeping it under masterful control. She would eventually draw it together and raise it to a peak, but that, she thought, could wait a little longer. Her cigarette was now mostly ash, marking the time she had devoted to her pleasure.
The Thousand Year Beach Page 12
