by Tad Williams
It was a card, she discovered after many minutes fiddling with the resolution—perhaps something with the experiment number marked on it. The beginning of the footage was gone, so it was only present for an instant before it was whipped away again, but she could see faint gray marks that she felt sure were writing. She started the round of enhancements all over again, determined to make the smudges legible.
Half an hour later the machine came up with the fifth and best iteration. The card was catching light from an overhead fluorescent, a glare which all but obliterated the camera's ability to see what was on it, but gear meant to recognize facial features from low-Earth orbit had finally turned the marks into recognizable words:
DR. CHAVEN—PROCEDURE #12831—WULGARU, JOHN
Dulcie suddenly had an intense sensation of being watched, of naked vulnerability. She looked up in a panic, certain that Dread had crept up behind her again, but her bedroom was empty, the door bolted. She closed her pad and walked quietly out into the hallway to make certain Dread was still prisoned in his whispering sarcophagus.
John Wulgaru, she thought when she got back. Her hands were shaking. Is that his name, then? Am I the only person who knows that? Or the only person still alive?
She dismissed such melodrama as the product of her nervousness. The important thing was, she had cracked it. Who else could have pulled it off? Damn few.
The roller coaster was now heading back upward. Dulcie was eager to do something, anything, with this hard-won bit of knowledge. She called up Dread's locked room, but the hidden storage did not respond to the name in any combination. Only slightly disappointed, she closed the connection. Even if his real name was almost completely unknown, Dread would probably not use it as a password, especially for a file which might well contain incriminating evidence about his professional life. But it was a first step—getting to know the system's owner was the best key to cracking it, and now she knew something important about Dread.
Dulcie paused for a moment to wonder why Jongleur had so effectively booby-trapped his information about Dread, but had left the Ushabti file, which was apparently concerned with something far larger and more important, the transfer of his estate, without similar protection. Perhaps because Jongleur knew there could be no good reason for anyone other than himself to be looking at the Dread information, she guessed, but the other file might wind up passing through the hands of attorneys, company officers, and various other third parties.
She drummed her fingers, anxious to do something else. At the very least, she could find out what records if any could be pulled up using her employer's newly-discovered name. She doubted there would be much of interest floating around, but as a veteran of the information wars she knew it was hard to completely eradicate anything from the vast worldwide matrix.
She set her gear on a shielded search for "Wulgaru," then went to lie down, stare at the ceiling, and grind her teeth.
As she had guessed, the search brought up little except a few bits here and there having to do with an Aboriginal myth. The longest and most complete version, by two people named Kuertner and Jigalong, came from an academic journal of folklore. It was a disturbing little story, strangely open-ended. Although it told her nothing useful about her employer, the hours she spent afterward waiting for sleep, mind already enflamed with all she had learned and done and risked that day, were troubled by the idea of a remorseless wooden man with stones for eyes.
Dread brought the music up louder as the chorus moaned its way up and down the twelve-tone scale, then fragmented into separate sharp cries like a little shower of suffering raindrops. He was in his own simulation, floating in his airy white house, surrounded by clear Outback light. He opened a view-window to check on his employee again, but she was sleeping now. He had spent much of the last several hours observing her as she fretted her way through whatever she was working on, wondering what he should do about The Dulcie Problem. A keen student of humanity in the same way that an exterminator makes it his work to understand class Insecta, Dread had not failed to notice the change in her feelings about him. Somehow, while he had been busy with his various experiments on me network, the fish had wriggled off the hook. Which meant she could no longer be trusted.
So maybe our Ms. Anwin's finally outlived her usefulness.
He pondered, bathing in the music, the air, the sparklingly clean desert light. God knew, he deserved a bit of a holiday. Maybe he should give her a day or two more to finish the work on Jongleur's files, then resolve the matter.
But could he afford to terminate Dulcie now? He still had many questions. Although his interest in the Grail network had begun to flag a little, he would find it hard to achieve his real world plans by himself without the network's powerful operating system, and here he was discovering real problems. His control over the basic functions of the network was nearly complete, but the apparently sentient part of the operating system was no longer responding quite so dramatically to the pain stimuli, as though the system had either learned to block the worst of it . . . or perhaps was just wearing down.
A trashed system would do him no good, however. Dread needed to know how far he could go, and also whether there were any alternatives in place, just in case he pushed the operating system too far and the whole thing collapsed. He might have tired of virtual destruction, but the Grail network was still the ultimate country without extradition. Even if his other plans went awry, he could always disappear into the Grail worlds, spend the rest of eternity there, just as Jongleur and his cronies had planned to do. At least, he could if Jongleur's immortality program really worked. He himself had interfered with its first moment of truth by his attack on the operating system, but it would be instructional to find and examine the Brotherhood's Ricardo Klement, who seemed to have been the only one actually to survive the process.
So the virtual universe still had its attractions—not least of which was the knowledge that his former companions, little blind Martine and the Sulaweyo woman and the rest, still hid from him there, awaiting capture and suitable punishment.
But the powers of Jongleur's worldwide corporate holdings and the Grail operating system's nearly limitless ability to manipulate information now presented an even larger field of opportunity. How would it feel to start a war, simply to amuse himself.? Force a great city to evacuate in the face of a biological weapon release? Bomb the great monuments of the world?
And as for his own particular urges, why not indulge them as well? There were several small, troubled nation-states in Africa and Asia where he could use Jongleur's power and money to buy himself a hundred thousand acres and total privacy. He could arrange for women to be brought there in any quantity he wanted—the bride-markets of the Indian subcontinent alone could serve everything except his need for variety.
The thought was so pleasurable that Dread actually squirmed a little in his column of semisolid air. I could just fence the perimeter and then let them go. A free-range hunting preserve, all mine.
The little stabs of musical misery washed over him. The godlike feeling had returned—in a weaker mind and spirit it might have seemed like madness, but Dread knew better. There was no one like him. No one.
And, as a god should, even when he soared to the outer limits of his own glory, he did not forget the little things.
Dulcie. So after I get her to finish the operating system research, shall I take her on a little camping trip out to the Bush? He considered this for a moment, lazily, until a mote of irritation fluttered up. But I didn't plan for it, and I let her arrive in a taxi. There's probably a record. If it looks like murder, there will be questions, and no matter how many layers there are between me and the lease on this place, I still don't need that kind of aggro, do I? Not now. So it will have to look like an accident.
Which doesn't mean I can't have fun with her first.
He decided to give his employee forty-eight hours to complete her work. Then, seized by a magnanimous urge, upped it to seventy-two.
Three days. Then some terrible thing will happen to the poor tourist girl from New York.
It would be fun deciding how it would happen, when he could pull himself away from the pressing business of the prisoners from the Circle and a few other projects within the network. But he would leave some of it to the final moment, of course—let it be spontaneous.
Otherwise, where was the art?
CHAPTER 27
The Green Steeple
* * *
NETFEED/NEWS: Another Killing Mars Utah Peace
(visual: wreckage of Eltrim car, Salt Lake City, Utah)
VO: The car-bombing that ended the life of Joachim Eltrim, an attorney who worked for the mayor of Salt Lake City, also threatens to end the shaky peace established between the state of Utah and the radical Mormon separatist group known as the Deseret Covenant. The mayor's office and the Salt Lake City police say the finger of suspicion points straight at the separatists, who have denied responsibility.
(visual: Deseret spokesman Edgar Riley)
RILEY: "I'm not saying there aren't a lot of our people who want Eltrim and all other interfering, treacherous lawyers like him dead, I'm just saying we didn't have anything to do with it. . . ."
* * *
The bramble-choked streets of More Very Bush were alive with pale, skittering shapes. Even seeing them from of the middle of the stone bridge, Renie felt such powerful terror and disgust wash over her that she swayed and almost tumbled into the swiftly moving river.
"I . . . have to go there," Renie said, although everything in her screamed otherwise. "The strangers that are trapped—those might be my friends."
The Stone Girl could only sob and hide her face behind her stubby hands.
It was like the Jinnears on the hillside all over again—worse, because of the sheer numbers of the things. Only the knowledge that !Xabbu and the rest might be in that tower near the center of town, under siege by the ugly things swarming like giant termites, kept her standing. That and the little girl kneeling on the stone beside her, who was clearly even more frightened than she was.
"I can't leave you here," Renie told her. "And I can't go away and leave my friends by themselves. Can you make it back across on your own?" The Stone Girl's shoulders heaved. Renie reached down to lay her hand on the girl's back. "I promise I'll wait until I see you make it to the riverbank."
"I can't!" the Stone Girl wailed. "I said the King's Daughter words! I can't go back."
So many incomprehensible rules! It seemed pretty obvious by now that teaching fairy tales to an AI might not be the most efficient way to program it. "But if we can't go back, we have to go on," Renie said as gently as she could, hiding her own terror for the child's sake. "We have to."
The Stone Girl could not stop crying. Renie looked up at the darkening sky. "Come on." She tugged at the girl's arm, trying desperately to remember what she used to do when she couldn't get Stephen to move. "Just . . . just do what I do. I'm going to sing a song. You just do what I do every time I sing a verse, okay? Just watch and step when I step, okay?" God knows, it ought to be a nursery rhyme, she thought, but could not for the life of her summon anything suitable. Desperate, she snatched at the first tune that came to her mind, the theme from some Asian game show her mother had liked to watch:
"If you are a know-it-all,"
she chanted,
"Come on down to Sprootie Hall. . . .
"Yes, you can do it," she encouraged the Stone Girl. "See, just keep moving, like this." She sang slowly, emphasizing the beats, "If you are a know-it-all. . . ."
The little girl finally looked up, face full of misery . . . and something else. She was silently begging Renie, in the way children did, to be right. To make the impossible happen. To make all the little lies true.
Renie swallowed hard and started again.
"If you are a know-it-all,
Come on down to Sprootie Hall!
Can you survive the Knowledge Kniche?
Then you will soon be Sprootie Rich!"
Slowly, as though she waded through air as viscous as melted caramel, the Stone Girl matched her steps to Renie's cracked, almost tuneless singing.
"If you have a thirst for cash,
Come on down and have a bash!
If your brain is extra healthy,
You will soon be Sprootie Wealthy!
Eduformative!
Infotacular!
Sprootie Smart is brainiacular. . . !"
She sang it through six more times to get them across the bridge, getting more and more quiet as they neared the last stone pier, even though the nearest of the pale things was still a hundred meters away and had shown no sign of interest. Renie scrambled down onto the grassy bank and reached up to take the Stone Girl's small, cool hands and let her swing down. It was only when the girl had landed beside her that Renie saw that the child's eyes were pinched tightly shut with fright.
"It's okay," Renie whispered.
The Stone Girl looked around her, clearly struggling not to cry again. "Who . . . who's Sprootie?"
"Just some stupid . . . it doesn't matter. We should be quiet so they don't hear us."
"Ticks don't listen. Ticks watch."
Renie was relieved, but only for a moment. "Is there anything we can do to keep them from seeing us?"
"Don't move."
Renie could feel the horror of the pallid, scuttling things even more strongly now that the river was behind her, inhibiting escape. "We can't just stay here. Is there anything else that will help besides not moving?"
"Move real, real slow."
Renie squinted across the shadowy townscape, trying to make out the lay of the land between them and the tower which seemed to be the focus of the Ticks' attention. The streets and buildings were a uniform brambly green, as though they had all been put to service as trellises in some madcap gardening experiment, but if so, it had been a long time since there had been a tending hand: the corners and edges of the buildings were shaggy with leaves. Creepers had made their way from one high place to another, and now hung between towers and gables like great sagging spiderwebs.
"It's getting dark," Renie said quietly. "We have to start moving."
The Stone Girl did not reply, but stayed close as they took their first cautious steps forward. They made it up the riverbank to a low wall at the edge of town without attracting attention. As they huddled behind it, Renie found herself wishing desperately for a weapon of some kind. All she was carrying was the lighter, and the idea of trying to set a flabby-looking creature like a two-meter cuttlefish on fire with a Minisolar was a joke she couldn't much appreciate just now. A torch was a possibility, but the nearest trees were still a long trot away.
"Are Ticks scared of anything?" she asked. The Stone Girl's look of incredulity answered her question for her, but Renie reached into the leafy vegetation covering the wall, thinking that she would at least feel a little better with a large rock in her hand. She found herself digging into the scratchy tangle tar deeper than she would have believed necessary to find a loose stone, then was even more surprised when her hand pushed through and out the other side. It was all bramble.
"Where's the wall? Isn't there a wall under here?"
The Stone Girl had gone an ashier shade than her normal clay color. She looked at Renie nervously. "That is the wall."
"But . . . aren't there . . . things under all these leaves?" She had a sudden, confounding thought. "Are all those houses and whatnot just made of plants?"
"This is More Very Bush," the little girl explained.
"Shit." So much for sticks and stones to use as makeshift weapons. It also meant that if her friends were truly besieged in that tower building near the center of town, they had no real walls to keep the creatures out.
In fact, what was keeping the creatures out?
Renie took another deep breath, finding it harder than ever to make herself go forward. Something like a cloud of terror seemed to hang over the whole town—not just her ob
vious and justified fear of the strange Ticks, but something deeper and less explicable. She remembered the wave of panic that had seized her while she was being chased by Jinn ears.
We're inside the operating system. Are we feeling its fear? But what would an artificial intelligence fear?
She led the Stone Girl to a place where the wall was low and they could scramble over it easily, although not without Renie getting scratched quite a few more times. They stopped on the far side. A Tick was moving toward them, undulating across the low vegetation like something swimming along the ocean floor. Despite the Stone Girl saying that sound did not matter, Renie found her throat choked to silence.
The Tick paused a dozen meters away. It did not have legs, but each point of its scalloped sides ended in something like a pseudopod; they rippled gently, in sequence, even when the thing wasn't moving. Dark spots swam beneath the translucent skin, as though the creature were filled with billiard balls and jelly. It was only as the dark spots one after another pressed out against the skin and then receded in turn that she remembered the Stone Girl's words: Ticks had too many eyes.
"Jesus Mercy!" It was a strangled sound.
Whether because it actually could not see them without movement, or because they were too far away to be worth bothering with, the Tick turned and made its way back up the main street. Several of its fellows bumped it as it passed; some even crawled over it. Renie could not tell if they were communicating through touch or were simply terribly stupid.
"I don't want to be here," the little girl said.
