by Tad Williams
Jongleur suddenly lunged forward and snatched a smoldering branch from the fire. By the time he had straightened up the creature had vanished back into the tall grass.
"Stop," !Xabbu said. "It offered us no harm."
Jongleur scowled. "And doubtless the first piranha to reach a swimmer is well-mannered, too. But there are many more out there. I heard them."
Before either !Xabbu or Sam could respond, the wide-eyed face appeared at the edge of the clearing again. Despite the creature's unfortunate aspect, Sam felt her heart touched by its bravery—it was half the size of Sam and her companions, and clearly frightened almost to death. But she was still startled when the creature spoke.
"You . . . you talk?" It slurred and mumbled the words, but they were still clear.
"We talk, yes," !Xabbu replied. "Who are you? Will you come and sit by our fire?"
"Sit by our fire. . . !" Jongleur exploded. The scrawny creature flinched away from him but stood its ground.
"Yes. Where I come from, we do not drive someone from our fire who has shown us no harm." !Xabbu turned back to their small, hairy visitor. "Come and sit. Tell us your name."
The thing hesitated, bobbing on its long legs, rubbing its front paws together. "Others are with me. Cold and frightened. They can come to the fire?"
!Xabbu quelled Jongleur with a look, which impressed Sam no end, although on this particular issue she was closer to Jongleur's opinion than to her friend's. "Yes," !Xabbu told the stranger, "if they mean no harm."
The thing smiled nervously. "Nice. Things are . . . are not good. Everyone frightened." It turned on its long legs, then turned back. "Jecky Nibble. That's my name. You are nice people." It faced out toward the forest and made a fluting sound, summoning its companions.
At first it seemed to Sam as though someone had thrown open the doors of a pet shop and let the merchandise escape. The dozen or so creatures that crept cautiously out of the undergrowth and into the faint firelight were mostly small and might have been mistaken for rats or dogs or cats until the firelight began to reveal a few odd details. Even as she found herself both disturbed and fascinated by the many tiny ways they were not the things they resembled, she heard a whirring above her head and looked up to see another score or so of visitors, winged creatures in the approximate shape of birds, settling in the branches all around the clearing.
"What, has the Ark sprung a leak?" Jongleur growled.
"Hey! He made a joke—sort of." Sam tried to keep her voice light, but didn't take her eyes off the squadron of small, strange creatures that now shared their campfire. "He must be scanning out pretty bad."
"I will build up the fire," !Xabbu told the first creature. "We have no food to offer, but you are welcome to share the warmth."
Jecky Nibble gave a funny bow, long legs flexing. "Nice. Very." It fluted again and the small animals scurried forward across the clearing, making a ring around the fire.
"Who are your companions?" !Xabbu asked as he laid some colorful deadwood on the fire. "Or are they your children?"
To Sam it seemed a very strange question—how could a monkey-kangaroo be the parent of birds and three-eared rabbits?—but Jecky Nibble did not seem to find it unusual. "No, not mine. I make. . . ." It paused, big round eyes suddenly asquint as it thought. "I do . . . I take? I take care of them? Of new ones—find them places, families. But no families left. Outside the gathering-places, it's very bad."
It shook its small round head. "We are trying to find a bridge. The world is getting so small! I think the One is angry at us!"
"Who's . . . the One?" Sam asked. "And what do you mean, 'find them families'?"
A flicker of apprehension slid across Jecky Nibble's face, plain even in the dim light. "You don't know? Don't know the One?"
"We are from far away," !Xabbu said quickly. "Perhaps our name is different than yours. You mean . . . you mean the One who made all this?"
It nodded, relieved. "Yes, yes! The One who made us all. Brought us across the White Ocean. Feeds us. Gives us families."
The smaller creatures, who had been murmuring and chirping quietly, now fell into reverent silence. Some of them nodded their tiny heads, smiling distantly, lost in a dream of nourishing community.
But Felix Jongleur was not smiling. In fact, Sam couldn't help noticing that he looked angry enough to bite someone. The visitors seemed to have noticed, too, and although they were now thick on the ground across the camp, they kept conspicuously distant from him.
Sam realized she had been sitting in one place so long that her joints were aching. She sat up, and the movement sent a flurry of startlement through their small guests. A few of the birds went whirring up into the air and did not settle back on their branches until Sam was still again.
The weird audience of tiny, staring creatures was becoming almost too much for her. Sam repressed a giggle. "It's just like, what was that scanbox show for kids? Bubble Bunnies on the Torture Planet? Any minute, they're going to start singing, '. . . Bunny ears, bunny toes, extra-flexy bunny nose. . . .' "
"Shut up, child," Jongleur snapped. "How can a man think with all this prattling?"
"Do not talk to her that way," said !Xabbu.
"Worry not—I don't pay any attention to him. . . ." Sam was interrupted by one of the small, vaguely squirrellike creatures, who suddenly took a few steps toward her and stood on its rear legs, staring at her fixedly.
"He always says I spend too much time on the net," it proclaimed in a thin voice. "Just 'cause he thinks Bubble Bunnies is stupid and doesn't have mortal values." It looked at her expectantly after finishing, as though awaiting a counteroffer on a major proposal. Then its tiny face fell and it crept back among its fellows.
"Who always says?" Sam could make no sense of it. "I mean, did you hear that? It utterly talked! It talked about Bubble Bunnies!" She turned to !Xabbu, trying not to giggle, but somehow very frightened too. "What did that mean?"
"That . . . the ghost-life," said Jecky Nibble, worried again. "Didn't you have one when you first came here? The One gives it to all—but maybe you forgot yours when you found your place. It happens."
Before she or !Xabbu could reply, Jongleur suddenly bent over the monkeylike creature. "The . . . One, you say? It made you?" He leaned in closer. "Made all this?"
Jecky Nibble raised long arms above its head for protection. "Of course! One made everything. One made you, too!"
"Oh, did it?" Jongleur's voice had become quieter and nastier, like a burner turned down to a fierce blue flame. "Well, you just take me to this One." His hand snapped out with startling speed and locked on a thin, furry wrist. "Then we will damn well find out."
Jecky Nibble let out a shriek as though it had been burned. Its charges fled the clearing in a hiss of wings and trampled grass. A moment later only the captured creature remained, trying desperately to free itself from Jongleur's grip. The look of raw terror on its little face made Sam feel ill.
"Let him go!" she shouted. "You big mean mamalocker, let him go!"
!Xabbu leaped forward and grabbed Jongleur's free arm and yanked hard. Jecky Nibble jerked free, then fled the clearing in a tangle of digging limbs. Jongleur, eyes slitted with fury, raised his hand as if to strike !Xabbu.
Sam dashed forward, waving the broken blade of Orlando's sword. "If you hit him I'll . . . I'll cut your balls off, you old bastard." Jongleur snarled at her, actually snarled like an animal, and for a horrifying moment she thought he had gone completely mad, that she would have to fight this cruel, muscular man to the death. She spread her feet wide apart, forcing herself to hold the shattered blade level, and prayed he wouldn't see her knees threatening to buckle. "I mean it!"
Jongleur's eyes widened. He looked slowly from her to !Xabbu, as though he had no idea how a Remote Area Dweller of the Okavango Delta had come to be attached to his arm, then shook himself free. He turned his back on them both and stalked out of the clearing.
Sam sat down, certain that she would collapse if she
did not. !Xabbu was at her side in a moment.
"Are you hurt?"
"Me?" She laughed, far too loud. "It was you whose head he was going to tear off. I never even got near him." The strangeness of it all swam up on her. What was Sam Fredericks doing in a place like this, almost getting in a knife fight with the meanest, richest man in the world? She should be home studying, or listening to music, or talking to friends on the net. "Oh, God," she said, "this just locks in so many, many different ways!"
!Xabbu patted her shoulder. "You were very brave. But I would not have been as easy a victim as he might have thought."
"Don't get all regular-guy on me, okay?" Sam tried to smile. "You're not one of those. That's why Renie loves you."
!Xabbu stared at her for a moment, then blinked. "What are we to do now?"
"I don't know. I don't think I can stand to be around that man anymore. Did you see him? He's . . . I don't know. Seriously scanny."
"It is bad enough that he attacked someone who was our guest," !Xabbu said. "But we might have learned much from those children."
"Children?"
"I am certain. Do you not remember what Paul Jonas told us? About the boy Gaily and his companions, waiting to cross the White Ocean?"
Sam nodded slowly. "Yeah. And that little chipmunk or whatever it was . . . it said something about Bubble Bunnies! That's like this net show for micros back in the real world!" She darted !Xabbu a quick glance. "Micros means kids. Children."
He smiled. "I guessed." The moment's cheer evaporated. "As I said, there is much we might have learned. . . ."
Now it was Sam's turn to touch the small man's arm in sympathy. "We'll find out what this is about. We'll find Renie, too."
"I will gather some more wood," !Xabbu said. "You should lie down and try to sleep. I will guard us—I do not think I shall sleep again for a while."
Despite !Xabbu's suggestions, a restless, wakeful hour passed for Sam before movement in the vegetation brought her upright again. She kept the hilt of the ruined sword firmly in her hand; her fingers tightened when she saw Jongleur's hawkish features looming above them.
"What do you want? Do you think I was dupping about what I'd do. . . ?"
Jongleur scowled, but there was something strange in his expression. He spread his hands. They were shaking. "I have come back. . . ." He hesitated, then turned his face away, so that it took a moment before Sam made sense of the words. "I have come back to say that I was wrong."
Sam looked at !Xabbu, then back at Jongleur. "What?"
"You heard me, child. Do you think to make me crawl? I was wrong. I let my temper control me and I spoiled an opportunity to learn something, perhaps something important." He glared, but it was directed at no one, at least no one visible. "I was a fool."
!Xabbu cocked his head to one side. "Are you saying that you wish to be forgiven?"
Sam watched a visible shudder run up the man's naked torso. "I do not ask forgiveness. I never have. Not from anyone! But that does not mean I cannot admit fault. I was wrong." As if the firelight made him uncomfortable, he stepped back until he was almost in the shadows once more. "It was . . . it was hearing what they said. How they spoke of my invention. The One. . . ! That is my operating system they spoke of, as though it were a god! He . . . it, whatever one calls it—the Other has made things without my permission, taken tremendous liberties! This is why the system was sluggish, why there were problems with the network that delayed the Grail Ceremony for so long! Because the damnable operating system was stealing power to make this little project for itself, this laughable, broken little Eden. Christ Jesus, I am betrayed on all sides!"
After a moment, !Xabbu quietly said, "Yes, you have been unlucky with your servants, haven't you?"
Jongleur gave him a wolfish smile. "You remind me that you are not a savage, after all. You have an unpleasantly sharp wit when you wish to use it—like one of your people's poisoned arrows, eh?" He shook his head and sank down onto the forest floor. Sam finally realized that the man was shaking not with anger, but with weariness and perhaps something else as well. For the first time she saw what he truly was beneath the mask—an old, old man. "I deserve it. I have made two gross miscalculations and now I am paying for them. That may provide the two of you some little satisfaction, anyway."
Before she could say anything, !Xabbu touched her arm. "We have no satisfaction in any of this," he said quietly. "We are trying to stay alive. Your operating system and your . . . what is the word? Employee. Your employee. They are our problems as much as they are yours."
Jongleur nodded slowly. "He is horrifically clever, young Mr. Dread. He used that name to taunt me—More Dread, he called himself. Do you understand the reference? But even I did not see the full significance."
Sam frowned. She knew !Xabbu wanted to keep the man talking, so surely a question wouldn't hurt, would it? "I don't know what any of that means—More Dread."
"The Grail legend. Mordred, son of King Arthur. The bastard who betrayed the Round Table. Just as Dread has betrayed me, and perhaps destroyed my Grail." Jongleur looked at his hands as though they too might prove treacherous. "He has talents, he does, my little Johnny Dread. Did you know he is a bona fide miracle worker?"
!Xabbu settled himself with the quiet unobtrusiveness of a hunter who does not wish to startle his quarry. "Miracle worker?"
"He is a telekinetic. He has power. A genetic fluke, something that has probably been in the race for a million years, but scarcely noticed. He can affect electromagnetic currents. It is such a minute amount of force that I doubt it was even noticeable as a trait until humankind developed a society dependent on those currents. He could not push a paper cup off a tabletop with his mind, but he can alter information machinery. Doubtless he found some way to use it to burglarize my system, the miserable cur. But the true irony is that I taught him to control that power!"
The fire was beginning to die again, but neither Sam nor !Xabbu made a move to stoke it. The bizarrely geometric trees grew remote as the flames faltered and shrank.
"You see, I have long been interested in such . . . talents. I have eyes and ears in many places, and when certain records pertaining to a boy named Johnny Wulgaru came to my attention, I made sure he was committed as a ward to one of my institutes. What he had was only a rough talent, but then, he was a rough boy. He'd already killed a few when I found him. He has killed many more since—only a small number of them on my behalf, I might add. But I should have known that someone so self-indulgent would never make a useful tool."
"You . . . trained him?"
"My researchers took him and his raw skill in hand, yes. We helped him learn to use his unusual ability. We taught him restraint, selectivity, strategy. In fact, we taught him more than that—we made a street animal into a human being, or at least a convincing simulacrum." Jongleur's laugh was sharp. "As I said, even I underestimated him, so we did our work well."
"And he used this . . . power . . . on your behalf?"
"Only incidentally. Even when he had learned to focus it, to fully harness his latent abilities, it was still capable of only small miracles—things that in most circumstances could be achieved by more mundane methods. He himself has found it useful for subverting surveillance equipment. But I discovered he had other, more practical skills as well. He is completely ruthless and he is clever. He made an extremely useful tool. Until recently."
!Xabbu waited a while before speaking. "And . . . the operating system? The thing some call the Other?"
Jongleur narrowed his eyes. "It is of no consequence. Dread controls it, and thus controls the network."
"But he does not control this part of the network, whatever it is." !Xabbu gestured to the surreal, shadowy forest. "Or he would have found us here, would he not?"
The old man shrugged. "Perhaps. I still do not know where 'here' is. But our true enemy is John Dread."
!Xabbu frowned. "I think that if this man Dread controls the network through the operating system
, then knowing more of the operating system might be important—how it works, how Dread is forcing it to work for him."
"Nevertheless, I have said all I will say."
!Xabbu stared hard. "If Renie were here, I think she would know what questions to ask. But she is not." His eyes wandered for a moment. "She is not."
"So we're just impacted, then?" Sam was trying to keep her temper and not entirely succeeding. The memory of Orlando, staggering bravely through his final hours while this crusty old monster sat in his golden house, planning to live forever, burned her. "Everything's just utterly scorched and nothing to do about it? And what do you mean, 'our enemy is Dread.' Our enemy? As far as I can see, you're as much an enemy to us as he is."
!Xabbu watched her for a moment, eyes serious and remote. "You frightened away innocents who might have helped us," he said to Jongleur. "You or your helpers have tried to kill us many times. She is right—why should we continue to deal with you?"
For a moment it seemed the old man might lose his temper again. The lines around his mouth grew tight. "I have said I was wrong. Do you wish me to crawl? I will not. I never will do that."
!Xabbu sighed. "Never since I first left the delta has it been so clear to me that speaking the same tongue does not mean understanding. We do not care about apologies. The things you have done to us and people we care for can never be made better by apologies. We are as . . . practical . . . as you are. What can you do for us? Why should we trust you?"
Jongleur was silent for a long time. "I have underestimated you again," he said at last. "I should have remembered from my time in Africa that there are many hard-headed bargainers among the dark peoples. Very well." He spread his hands as if to show his unweaponed harmlessness. "I swear that I will help you to get out of this place, and that I will not hurt you even if given the chance. Even if I will not willingly give you all my information—and what else do I have to bargain with?—I still know much that you do not. You need me. I would be in great danger alone, so I need you, too. What do you say?"
