by Tad Williams
Without the reflections obscuring his view he could see the rocky bottom of the river-pond beneath him, which to his eyes seemed as craggy and distant as a mountain range seen from a passenger seat on a jet. From time to time vast shapes slid between stones on the riverbottom, creatures which made Paul flinch in atavistic fear, although he knew that they must be very small fish by any normal standards. There were also a few semi transparent animals a little like attenuated, spider-legged lobsters or even more unusual shapes. Paul moved down to the bottommost step and stood there, reluctant to step onto the glassy material even though he could see a low couch and other furnishings below him, indicating that the floor could hold weight. One of the lobster-things floated up and bumped its head against the bubble, black bead eyes swiveling on stalks, whip-thin legs scrabbling across the curving surface, perhaps wondering why it could not reach something it could see.
"Penaeus vannemei, postlarval stage," Kunohara said from behind him. "Baby shrimp. I changed the refraction of the bubble here on the bottom, so what you are seeing is a bit magnified. Really they would be much smaller even than we are in our present size."
"You've got . . . it's very impressive." Paul did not say so, but although the bubble-house was striking, it was also strangely modest for one of the gods of a virtual universe. "A beautiful house."
Paul waved his hand at the topmost step; when the lights came back on, he saw his own reflection stretched along the curve of the wall like a sideshow mirror. Despite the unfamiliar jumpsuit, the man looking back was definitely him, the Paul Jonas he remembered, although with enough of a beard to give him the look of a shipwreck survivor.
But why do I always look like me, he wondered? When everyone else keeps changing? Someone said !Xabbu was even a monkey for a while.
Shaking his head, he mounted the stairs and discovered the dead wood louse Kunohara had brought back floating in the center of the room, suspended in a hexahedron of white light as though fossilized in amber. Paul's host walked around it, staring; when he gestured, the bug revolved in place. A pale scrimshaw of kanji text ran across the surface of the transparent container.
"Is it . . . something you haven't seen before?"
"Worse. It is something that should not be." Kunohara grunted. "Can you drink?"
"Can I?"
"Do you have the receptors? What would you like? You are a guest. Courtesy demands I offer you something, even if you and your friends have ruined my life."
Kunohara had twice accused Paul and his companions of causing him harm, but he wasn't ready yet to pursue the subject. "I can drink. I don't know if I can get drunk, so I suppose it doesn't matter." He had a sudden thought. "You wouldn't happen to have any tea, would you?"
Kunohara's smile this time was only a few degrees short of friendly. "Forty or fifty varieties. Green teas, which are my favorite, but also black—orange pekoe, congou, souchong. I have oolong, too. What do you want?"
"I'd kill for English tea."
Kunohara frowned. "Strictly speaking, there are no 'English' teas, unless they have begun growing it in the high tropical hills of the Cotswolds while I was not looking. But I have Darjeeling and even Earl Grey."
"Darjeeling would be lovely."
Paul had no doubt that Kunohara could have magicked the tea into existence just as he had magicked them into the bubble, but his host was clearly a man of carefully preserved idiosyncrasies—both Kunohara and his environment were a strange combination of the naturalistic and absurd. An old-fashioned fire burned in a brazier in a depression in the floor filled with sand, but although there was no visible way for the smoke to vent from the bubble, the air in the room was smoke-free. As Kunohara hung a pot of water above the low flames and Paul sat down on a mat beside the fire pit to wait, he found himself overwhelmed by yet another absurdist juxtaposition—one moment about to be murdered by mutants, five minutes later waiting for water to boil for tea.
"What are those . . . things?" he asked, gesturing at the hovering wood louse.
"They are perversions," Kunohara said harshly. "A new and terrible interference with my world. Another reason for me to despise your companions."
"Renie and the others had something to do with those monsters?"
"I have found strange anomalies in my world for some time—mutations that made no sense, and which could not have come from the normal functioning of the simulation—but this is something else. Look at it! An ugly parody of humanity. These have been created deliberately. Someone with power—someone in the Grail Brotherhood, I do not doubt—has decided to punish me."
"Punish you? Mutations?" Paul sat back, shaking his head. He was beginning to realize that even if the tea behaved as it did in the real world, it was not going to be enough to clear his head. He was exhausted. "I don't understand any of this."
Kunohara stared at the wood louse in scowling silence.
Steam chuffed from the kettle, spread in a cheerful cloud, then vanished, as though overwhelmed by the chill coming from Paul's host. Paul accepted the cup which Kunohara conjured out of midair, then watched as he poured boiling water over an infuser. The fumes rising from the steeping tea were the first thing Paul had experienced in longer than he could remember that made him feel like there might be some point to the world. "I'm sorry," he said. "Maybe I'm being dense, but I'm very, very tired. It's been the long day to end all long days." He laughed, and heard a tiny edge of hysteria in his voice. He leaned his head over the cup to breathe in the vapor. "Can you just tell me what terrible thing my friends did to you?"
"Exactly what I expected them to do," Kunohara snapped. "In fact, it is myself I am angry with as much as them. They pitted themselves against a far superior force and lost, and now it is the rest of us who will pay the price."
"Lost?" Paul took his first sip. "Oh, my God, this is wonderful." He blew on the tea and sipped again, trying to make sense of what Kunohara was saying. "But . . . but nobody's lost anything yet, as far as I can tell. Except the Brotherhood. I think most of them are dead now." He stopped, suddenly fearing that in his weariness he had said too much. Was Kunohara one of the Brotherhood, or just someone who rented space from them?
His host was shaking his head. "What nonsense is this?"
Paul stared at him. There was, of course, no way to know what someone was really thinking behind his face back in the real world, let alone here. But, he reminded himself, it might have been as little as an hour since he and Renie and the others had experienced . . . whatever it was they had experienced. It was too late in the day, and he himself was too helpless, to offend potential allies.
"You're saying you don't know what happened to us? That we saw the Grail Brotherhood have their ceremony—that we met the Other? This is all news to you?"
Paul had the not-inconsiderable pleasure of watching Kunohara's hard face melt into an expression of astonishment. "You met . . . the operating system? And you are alive?"
"Apparently." It was not, Paul reflected, as sarcastic a remark as it sounded.
Kunohara lifted the teapot. Admirably, his hand did not tremble. "It seems clear you know things I do not."
"From what my friends told me, it was usually the other way around. Perhaps this time you'll be a little more generous with your own information."
Kunohara looked shaken. "I will answer your questions, I promise. Tell me what happened to you."
Hideki Kunohara listened carefully to Paul's story, stopping him often for clarification. Even in a drastically streamlined version it was still a long tale: by the time he was describing the climb up the black mountain, the world outside the bubble had passed from twilight into evening and stars hung in the black heavens above the river. Except for the flicker of the fire, Kunohara had allowed his house to grow dark too; there were moments when Paul forgot he was inside the shining, curved walls and could almost believe himself back on one of the Greek islands with Azador, huddled by a campfire beneath naked sky.
Exhausted now and wanting to finish, Pau
l did his best to keep to what was important, but with so many mysteries it was hard to know what to leave out. Kunohara seemed particularly interested in the silver lighter, and disappointed to hear it had apparently been lost on the mountaintop. At the mention of Dread and the murderer's boastful announcement of his control over the operating system, his expression became dark and remote.
"But this is all most, most strange," he said when Paul had paused to finish his fourth cup of Darjeeling. "All of it. I had some inkling of what the Brotherhood intended. They approached me about it long ago, and they seemed surprised that although I could have afforded to join their inner circle, I chose not to." He met Paul's look with a grim smile. "I said I would answer your questions, but that does not mean I must explain everything of myself. My reasons for not wanting to pursue the Brotherhood's immortality are my own."
"You don't have to apologize for that," Paul said hastily. "I'd like to think that if it was offered to me, and I knew how many children would have to suffer and even die, that I'd say no, too."
"Yes, the children," Kunohara nodded. "There is the matter of the children, too." For a moment he sat in distracted silence. "But the Other, that is truly astonishing. I had long suspected that some kind of unique artificial intelligence underlay the system, and even that in some ways it had begun to change the environments. As I said, there have been unlikely mutations in my own biosphere almost since the beginning. At first I attributed them to processing errors because of the mounting complexity of the network, but I began to doubt that. Now these latest. . . ." He paused and closed his eyes for a moment. In the silence, Paul felt his own weariness tugging him down like a heavy burden. "You saw them," Kunohara finally said. "Those mutant isopoda were no chance corruption of the programming. They even speak!" He shook his head. "I suspect that this creature who calls himself Dread has truly bent the system to his own will and is beginning to play with his new toy."
The idea of the monstrous personality that Renie had described having such power over the network sent a chill through Paul.
"And your own story is just as strange," Kunohara said abruptly. "You were actually employed by Felix Jongleur?"
"That's what I remember, but beyond that point there's still some kind of block. The rest is all blank, except for the angel—except for Ava."
"Jongleur's daughter." Kunohara frowned. "But how could that be? The man is nearing the end of his second century of life. From what I know, his body has been almost entirely useless for many decades, floating in a tank, kept alive by machines—far longer than the age of the girl you apparently tutored. Why should he want a child?"
Paul sighed. "I hadn't even thought of that. I don't understand any of it. Not yet."
Kunohara slapped his hands on his legs and stood.
"There will be much to consider and discuss tomorrow, but I see that you are falling asleep. Find yourself a place to stretch out. If you need anything you have only to ask the house, but I think you will find the beds are comfortable. I will darken the wall of the place you choose so the morning sun will not wake you too soon."
"Thank you." Paul got laboriously to his feet. "I said it before, but I'll say it again. You saved my life."
Kunohara shrugged. "As you may yet save mine. Information is the most valuable capital in this network. I have always maintained sources of my own, of course, out of necessity. Sharing this network with Jongleur and his associates is like living in the Florence of the Medicis. But I must confess that we have come to a time when my knowledge is failing me."
Paul staggered across the room toward an alcove where a bed that was little more than a padded mat lay unrolled on the floor. "One more question," he said as he slumped onto it. "Why were you so certain we'd lost? That the Brotherhood had won?"
Kunohara paused at the entrance to the alcove. His face was again a stoic mask. "Because things have changed."
"Those new mutants?"
He shook his head. "I did not know of them until I saw your distress. But shortly before that happened, I discovered that I have been affected by the same thing you others have experienced, despite being one of the founders of this virtual universe." His smile seemed almost mocking. "I can no longer leave the network. So I too can die here, it seems." He gave a brief bow. "Sleep well."
Paul woke in the middle of the night, disoriented from yet another dream of being chased across clouds by a giant whose every step made tremors. He sat upright, heart speeding, and discovered he was still bouncing, although it was less than in the terrifying dream-pursuit, but as he saw the quiet, restful shapes of Kunohara's house around him, he relaxed. It was raining outside, the drops huge from his perspective. They thudded down on the bubble walls and stirred up the waters of the eddy, but Kunohara had apparently buffered the force so that Paul felt it as no more than a mild jouncing.
He had just lain down again, trying to make his mind a companionable blank in the hope of finding a more soothing dream this time, when a loud and weirdly familiar voice filled the room.
"Are you there? Can you hear me? Renie?"
He scrambled to his feet. The room was empty—the voice had come from thin air. He took a few steps and banged his shin on a low table.
"Renie, can you hear us? We're in bad shape. . . !"
It was the blind woman, Martine, and she sounded frightened. Paul pawed at his head, confused and frustrated by the voice from nowhere. "Kunohara!" he shouted. "What's going on?"
Light began to glow all around him, a dim, sourceless radiance. His host appeared, dressed in a dark robe. He too seemed disoriented. "Someone . . . someone is using the open communication band," he said. "The fools! What do they think they are doing?"
"What communication band?" Paul demanded, but the other man was making a series of gestures. "Those are my friends! What's going on?"
A group of view-windows sprang open in midair, filled with darting sparks of light that might have been numbers or letters or something even more obscure, but they seemed to make sense to Kunohara, who scowled. "Seven hells! They are here—in my world!"
"What's going on?" Paul watched as Kunohara opened a new and larger window. This one was full of dark forms; it was a moment until Paul realized he was looking at a section of the macrojungle by moonlight. Rain was splashing down with a force like artillery shells. Paul could make out several dim shapes huddled beneath an overhanging leaf. "Is that them? How are they talking to us?"
"Please answer us, Renie," Martine's voice moaned. "We're stuck somewhere without. . . ."
The sound abruptly died. Before Paul could open his mouth to ask more questions, another disembodied voice cracked through the room, deeper and stronger than the first. He had heard this one before too, Paul realized with mounting horror, but only once—from the sky above the black glass mountain. . . .
"Martine! Is that you, sweetness?" The big bad wolf discovering that bricks were no longer being issued to pigs could not have sounded more pleased. "I've missed you! Do you have any of my other old mates with you?"
Martine had lapsed into what was doubtless terrified silence, but the gloating voice did not seem to mind.
"I'm a bit busy at the moment, my old darling, but I'll send some friends to find you. Don't move! They'll be with you in a few minutes. Actually, go ahead and move if you want—it won't do you a bit of good." Dread laughed, a clear, wholehearted sound of enjoyment. The figures Paul could see in the open view-window shrank back even farther into the shadows beneath the leaf.
He turned and grabbed Kunohara's arm. "We have to help them!"
In the dim light, Kunohara's profile seemed carved from unmoving stone. "There is nothing we can do. They have brought this on themselves."
"You saved me!"
"You did not reveal yourself to those who would destroy me. In any case, I think it is too late for them anyway, no matter what this Dread chooses to do. They have been found by a nearer enemy."
"What are you talking about?"
Kunohara poin
ted at the window. The leaf where Martine and the others huddled still bounded beneath the heavy raindrops, but a huge shadow had crossed into Paul's field of view, a towering mass of jointed legs and armor that seemed, eclipse-like, to swallow the projected image.
"It is a whip scorpion," said Kunohara. "At least they will not suffer long."
CHAPTER 4
In Silver Dreaming
* * *
NETFEED/NEWS: Free Speech for Talking Toys?
(visual: Maxie Mouth Insult Doll, manufacturer's demo)
VO: Parents of a nine-year-old boy in Switzerland are suing the local school authorities, saying that their child is being punished for insubordinate speech when the real culprit is a talking toy named Maxie Mouth, manufactured by the FunSmart company,
(visual: Funsmart VPPR Dilip Rangel)
RANGEL: "Maxie Mouth is a full-range interactive toy. It talks-that's what it does. Sometimes it says bad things. No matter how unpleasant the remarks may have been, they are not the fault of the owner, who is a minor child. It's one thing to confiscate the toy-we've seen a lot of that-another thing to hold a child responsible for what the toy calls a teacher. Who is apparently a fairly oppressive old bitch, by the way. . . ."
* * *
There could be no mountain so tall, it was inconceivable.
"If this were the real world," Renie gasped to !Xabbu in the agonizing middle of what seemed to be their fourth or maybe fifth full day descending the mountain, "then the top would have been above the atmosphere, in outer space. There wouldn't have been any air. The cold would have flash-frozen our bones in our bodies."
"Then I suppose we should be grateful." He did not sound convinced.
"Chance not," Sam muttered. '"Cause if we were poking up into outer space, we'd be dead and we wouldn't have to do this hiking fenfen any more."
