Maria rose to her feet. She had a long dancer’s back, a sharp aquiline nose, and hair that fell in waves. The man approached and placed a single red flower in her hair, just above her temple. The smell of still-fresh cigars wafted from within his white (blindingly white) low-necked shirt. His stubbly Adam’s apple was right before her eyes. Maria had the urge to seize it between her teeth. She wanted to press her lips against his breast, make it slick with her saliva. She slipped her hand between the man’s shirt and his suspenders. Her desire roused her body like a wild beast. Outwardly directed lust was another new experience for her.
“Were you lonely, Maria?”
The gallant flashed a conceited smile, cupping Maria’s cheek with his right hand. His thick palm was the first flesh that had ever touched Maria’s other than her own.
“Let me spoil you,” he said.
Maria nodded. She felt herself open beneath his gaze. Her teeth showed between her lips, longing for his tongue.
The man kissed the woman he had named. He transferred what he held in his mouth to hers: Pierre’s eyeball. The eyeball melted like condensed milk as he did so, and in her intoxication she swallowed it without even noticing. Langoni confirmed that arousal showed in her eyes, as if a thin film had come over them, and smiled.
“You’re a formidable woman,” Langoni whispered into her beautiful, shell-like ear. “You keep your back rod-straight, no matter what. You like to bite, to wade in. You hate acting coy and being used. Your eyes are pale and hint at ferocity. Your hair is black and that flower ablaze against it. Your voice smells better than coffee.”
Clasped tightly in his arms, Maria drowned in a sense of good fortune that was quite inexpressible. How good it felt to be described in language: having never spoken to anyone before, she could hardly help but feel this way. Every word Langoni said was like another pin fastening her to the specimen board like a butterfly. At this vaguely masochistic image she grew even more aroused.
“Let’s have some fun,” Langoni whispered, tangling his fingers in her curls of black hair.
“What kind?”
“Just fun. I’m about to come just thinking about it.”
With the closeness of lovers, the two giggled, then burst out laughing. They were still laughing as they tumbled onto the bed. Then they fell silent for a moment, and eventually began a quiet moaning that lasted for quite some time.
Yve was miserable.
She felt so badly about what Felix had done to Jules that it seemed her face might burst into flames.
Even the children knew what kind of situation they found themselves in. Felix’s behavior had been unforgivable. Certainly she would not forgive it herself.
Where had she gone wrong?
Funny how even the most companionably scripted AI couple could, given a thousand years, slip into irreparable dysfunction, Yve thought wryly.
Things had been different before the Grand Down. Felix had been very good to her. He had not just helped with the things her disability made difficult. More importantly, he had accepted and loved her the way she was, quiet and unhurried, with a tendency to zone out. He had never made digs at her blindness, and she doubted he had ever felt the urge to. He had been self-centered and always rushing, more of a doer than a talker, but that was exactly what had made him select her, from the bottom of his heart, as his ideal companion.
Speaking to him now, though, was nothing but pain.
He still loved her. Of that, she felt, there could be no mistake. And she had not fallen out of love with him. If he would just act normally, she was sure they could spend another thousand years as an agreeable and mild husband and wife. AIs were not worn down by simple repetition—that was one of their advantages.
But nowadays he seemed aggravated by everything she did or said.
The most unremarkable of everyday acts could set him off. He would erupt like a land mine, roaring at her with sudden fury, and the day would be ruined. It was impossible to tell in advance what might make him explode—and if she was honest, it was often unclear even afterward what the cause had been. He would snarl that she was always making a fool out of him, but she had no idea what he meant. She was not trying to do anything in particular. This seemed to aggravate him even more. Would it be enough if she simply accepted whatever he said without protest to keep him happy? Just met everything with a cheerful smile?
The days she spent with him ate away at her. She felt like her body was filling with poison, and would suddenly find herself taking deep breaths as she washed the dishes. (AIs really did exhibit some amazing behavior.) And this, too, would enrage her husband.
If there was any time she was able to relax, it was when she was holding an Eye. Only then was wholeness of sensation within reach. She could straighten up and focus. None of the other AIs were made to work with Eyes the way she was. None of them could act as correctly inside the Eyes. Even if all the other AIs denied it, the Chandelier knew. The TrapNetwork knew. Within the Eyes she saw clearly that she had done nothing whatsoever to bring Felix’s reign of terror on herself.
Clashing with him just now had felt so good.
It was the sort of pleasure you might get from smashing a plate, expensive but not to your tastes, in the middle of the road. Yes, she thought, she could break things too. Even a thousand-year bond could be broken. She had thought their summer days would stretch out into eternity, but the arrival of the Spiders had already brought summer to the verge of collapse. If that collapse could be averted, she decided, she would tell Felix goodbye herself. She would end their life together herself.
All this passed through Yve’s mind in the short time it took her to walk back to the table where the Chandelier was. When she sat in the chair, she gathered her concentration about her, briskly sweeping away all stray emotion. For now, at least, she felt better. She felt as though she were in control of her own future.
Unfortunately, she was wrong.
José van Dormael stood on the terrace, on which Glass Eyes had been arranged like strings of fairy lights, and gazed at the calm sea.
There had been no further attacks to speak of. The battle at the front of the hotel seemed to be unfolding as expected. It appeared that all was going well. But José did not think this would last. His principal evidence was the still, flat sea. It was not a pasted-on image like before, but to José that only made it more ominous. The real ocean, no matter how calm the conditions, was vigorously alive. Even when all the living things beneath its surface were asleep, their breath came to him, borne like champagne bubbles on the ocean wind. Right now, though, he couldn’t hear a sound. Had the sea died? No—even the voice of death was absent. Just what was happening not even José could say.
The salt wind brushed his cheek. He caught a whiff of something pleasant and turned to find a boy standing beside him. José was surprised that he had not noticed the boy earlier.
“Hey there, José,” the boy said with a smile. He had a delicacy about him that put José in mind of Jules, but he must have been a few years older. His eyes were long and narrow, almost feminine. José wondered if the boy had some Asian ancestry. He wore a white (blindingly white) hoodie with marine blue piping, and no shirt underneath it. What José had detected was the smell of soap that came from the boy’s black hair as it blew in the wind. José could not recall ever seeing the boy before, which, in this Realm, was grounds for suspicion on its own.
“Why so suspicious? All I said was hello.”
“What’s your name?”
“Langoni. Never heard of me, right?”
“That’s right.”
José was not sure how to handle this. The boy—Langoni—was saying that he wasn’t from here. In other words, that he had something to do with the Spiders. He was asking to be killed.
“You can’t kill me,” the boy said, as if reading José’s thoughts.
José considered the cl
aim. A second later, he had the thick poker from the fire behind him gripped firmly in one hand, and half a moment after that the poker slammed into the side of the boy’s head, just above his right ear. The shock that traveled back to José’s hand made him feel like he had punched a boulder. He let the poker drop from his tingling hand, noting that it was now slightly bent.
“See?” the boy said.
He had let José hit him on purpose. José bit his lip, wondering if he was losing his touch.
“Can’t we talk, José?” asked the boy. “I’m very interested in you. You’re the only one I want to talk to. The only one worth talking to.”
The boy leaned on the terrace railing like José and looked out at the sea. He was standing where Anne had been. Where was Anne?
“First of all,” the boy continued, “you’re very smart. I mean, you noticed that your senses were getting keener, right? Plus, you were the only one who deduced from this that the world itself was getting more vivid. Next, you said, ‘They want us to raise a fortress.’ Now that was sharp … Eh? How do I know what you’re thinking? It’s all thanks to that wonderful TrapNet of yours. I can’t enter or meddle with it, but eavesdropping on it is easy. The system has to open itself up in order to attack, after all. Utterly defenseless. Hmm? What’s wrong?”
José’s face was bright red. He was straining with all his strength in an attempt to move, but finding that he couldn’t.
“Now, stop that,” the boy said. “You can’t move. Let’s just have a quiet chat.”
José grimaced. “I can still speak, then,” he said. “Generous of you.”
“What was I saying?” the boy continued, ignoring him. “Oh, right. I was saying how sharp you are.
“I was moved, I have to say. Who knew someone this smart was in the Realm? I thought. Then I decided that I wanted to learn what else you’d deduced, directly from the source. Someone like you has to have figured out all kinds of things about us. Hearing about them from you sounded like a fun way to spend some time. I mean, I’m bored, after all. My only companions are the Spiders—mindless, single-function tools. I want to have a conversation that’s a little more intelligent. One where both sides have something to hide. Just the two of us, with no interruptions from anybody.”
José was daring by nature. Even battling the Spiders, he had never in his life felt anything worthy of the word fear—until now. It wasn’t the paralysis or the futilely bent poker, but the fact that he and the boy had been at the railing together for some time now without anyone disturbing them. There were fifteen men, plus Anne, stationed on this terrace. Five or six should have been right nearby. Had the boy done away with them all? No, it seemed more like … how could he put it? José suspected that although his surroundings looked very much like the Mineral Springs Hotel, in fact he was somewhere else. If the Realm was a stage, then it was as if someone had stolen behind their set, painted an identical copy on its reverse, and then whisked José behind it without him noticing to act in a different play with this boy (although José had his doubts about the truth of that identity, too). That would explain the appearance of the ocean and the utter lack of people nearby. The explanation alone was not enough to banish his fear. But to stand against that fear, which was like being suspended in perfect darkness, José needed some kind of foothold. Scrabbling in midair, he decided to test the boy—probe for some kind of ledge for his toes to cling to.
José cleared his throat. “Here’s what I think,” he said. “You came here from outside the Realm. From the same world as our guests, I imagine—the real world. There’s no other way to explain how staggeringly powerful you are. We’re fighting you with everything this Realm has, but there’s something entirely different in you. I can sense it. It’s not about quality or quantity. It’s a difference of dimension. Power like that just doesn’t exist in the Realm of Summer. And if you’re from a different dimension, where could that be? The world of the guests. The physical world.”
Langoni, who had started grinning halfway through José’s speech, broke in now with an amused grunt. “You’re saying I’m a guest.”
“No. You’re doing things a proper guest never would. They can only receive the services they pay for, and as I understand it, things are valued about the same inside the Realm as they are outside it. If a guest buys an orange or a chair or a whore in the Realm, the appropriate charge gets added to their real-world bill. If they wanted to destroy the entire Realm of Summer, they’d have to pay for an entire harbor town, plus eight thousand people—and destroying the Realm itself wouldn’t be permitted in the first place. Which means that you’re either an unauthorized intruder yourself, or here on behalf of someone who is.”
Langoni laughed out loud. “You speak as if this virtual resort were still in business,” he said. “Are you all still so bound by the idea of how things used to be between guests and the Realm, that you still can’t move on?”
“There are people here who think that way,” said José. “I don’t harbor much hope along those lines myself. True, the Realm might be nothing more today than a rusty old tourist trap that’s fallen out of fashion. Or the world of the guests might have been destroyed by war or epidemic disease.
“But suppose for the sake of argument that the guests have stopped coming because the Costa del Número went bankrupt. That bankruptcy wouldn’t have wiped out its asset value. There’d be a custodian of some kind. Entering without authorization and destroying those software assets would be treated as a crime. I’m talking about a sneak thief like you here.”
Langoni appeared to have taken the bait. The master-and-slave relationship that bound the guests and the Realm clearly disgusted, repulsed, and tormented him. José wasn’t unfamiliar with the feeling himself. What it meant, though, was that the boy was no visitor from the physical world. He’s one of us—just from another Realm, thought José. That’s why he reacted so strongly, albeit with impressive self-control, to what I said.
“Let’s suppose I am from the physical world, as you say, come here via unauthorized means. Why would I do that?”
“Illegal salvage. It can’t be anything else.”
Langoni snorted. His eyes narrowed.
“Nice way to put it,” he said. “You might be right about the Costa looking like a gigantic tomb from the standpoint of the physical world after the Grand Down. Dead, hollow, but rich in static stock. But grave robbers don’t dig where there isn’t any treasure, José. What would you come to the Realm of Summer for?”
José was now confident that he was doing well. The challenge was what came next. He would have to carry on exactly the kind of conversation the boy had asked for—a little bit more intelligent than usual, with each side grimly probing the other’s hand. He had to get the drop on the boy somehow, pin down what it was that he and his side were after.
Recalling the most difficult chess game he had ever played—that one he’d enjoyed with Jules—José began striving desperately to summon up that sensation once more.
Thinking, as he did so, that the earring whose partner was with Julie Printemps would be sure to give him strength.
The fish-shaped earring—
Thinking of the promise they had exchanged then.
Felix wanted to cry as he pushed the casino’s glass doors open.
He was well acquainted with his own loathsomeness—almost aggressively aware of how pathetic he was. He blinked furiously. Come on, then, tears, let’s see you flow, he thought, a show of bravado for the benefit of no one in particular. He stormed down the hall, stamping his feet as hard as he could. The tools of his trade as a tailor—his measuring tape, the scissors in his apron pocket—rattled and shook. The tears would not come. Nobody followed him out. He was not even worth beating up.
Felix was wallowing in his own childishness.
She wasn’t that kind of woman before, he muttered internally. She wasn’t like that. She knew her p
lace, recognized the kindness in me, saw the merits of us helping each other be better. She was sharp as a tack then. Too good for a skinny, uneducated weakling like me, of course. We were probably only together because some designer thought the Realm of Summer needed an odd couple around. Felix the broomstick and big fat Yve.
She was such a fine woman then. Big breasts, good smell, you know? Nice chubby belly. I even liked those pupilless eyes of hers. Never was comfortable under the female gaze.
We got busy every night.
Every single night, guests would come to spy on what we got up to when the sun went down. You bet it made us work harder. I guess it was our job in a way. You’d expect me to be the empty role, sold to guests wanting a taste of Yve, but no. We were in there for the peeping toms to enjoy. Those legs of hers—fat, but so pretty that I never got tired of rubbing my cheek against them. And those feet, smaller than you’d think. I’d call her “Madame Butterfly” as I kissed them …
Felix brooded over what to him were happy memories as he walked. He’d already walked much farther than the length of the corridor, but he wasn’t any closer to turning the corner at the end. He didn’t realize this. But when he was thinking of something pleasant, he was happier just to keep walking. If he didn’t realize, better to let him be, don’t you think?
Felix kept walking. Minute particles like dust began to swirl around him, but he remained immersed in his sweet reverie and showed no sign of noticing.
But she changed completely.
It was the Grand Down.
There’s been zilch between us since.
Listen, I didn’t care if the guests come or not. And it doesn’t have to be every night. I knew we were both a bit off-model, and I would’ve been satisfied if we could just save face for each other as a couple, you know? As a tailor I’m, well, no worse than average—not bad enough to embarrass myself, compared to her lacemaking. She could be too laid-back at times, but I could keep her in line, and she knew how to flash that glare of hers at me to stop me before I got too stupid or indiscreet. I never made her feel small, or left her at a disadvantage because of her blindness. And on the other hand, having her around helped me hold back on the urge to go around snapping at everyone like a fighting dog. That’s what you call a good marriage, right?
The Thousand Year Beach Page 15
