by Tad Williams
"I had nearly given up when I found something that seemed a possibility. It was a nested confusion of signatures, of small movements, on the far side of the temple. From what I could discern it was located in a sort of alcove, perhaps a niche behind a cloth hanging, which was worrisome. The second and less-formed part of my plan would be very difficult if it was.
With the location fixed in my mind I surfaced again. My head was throbbing even more painfully now, but I had only to consider what Nandi and Bonnie Mae Simpkins had endured, and what we all could still expect, to drag myself up off the floor and move toward the door of the cell, where I lay down with my face against the open space at the bottom.
" 'What are you doing?' Florimel asked worriedly. 'Are you having trouble breathing?'
" 'I need silence now more than ever!' I told her. 'Please, just be patient for me. Try not to move if you can help it.'
"I turned my ear to the crack under the door and listened. I listened in the same way I had let all my senses roam, but with a narrowing of focus. All I wanted now was sound, in any form I could perceive it. I imagined the temple as a two-dimensional maze and did my best to locate and chart the movement of air currents, following back along the track I had navigated earlier until I could detect the quiet rustle and murmur from the alcove. Describing it, I make it easier than it was, not out of false modesty—it was astoundingly difficult—but because I am running short of time to describe what happened.
"Once I had heard the excruciatingly faint sounds I sought, I began the hardest part of all. I turned my face and spoke a soft, almost silent word to the crack under the door, then followed its progress. The coherence of the wave of sound dissipated quickly, vanishing into diffused silence by the end of the corridor.
"Someone, I think it was T4b, moved behind me, and to my fiercely-straining senses it was like the roar of the ocean. It was all I could do not to scream at my companions. Instead, I tried again.
"It took me the better part of two hours, and could have taken forever if I had not had the wonderful luck that the corridors I was using were mostly deserted. It was like plotting the most complicated billiard shot in the universe, trying to move a small sequence of sound from one end of the temple to the other—bouncing off walls, caroming around corners, all dependent on nearly microscopic differences in the initial direction and on excellent guesses about the swirl of air currents. Still, for all my painstaking care, the fact that I eventually succeeded was mostly luck.
"It was easier to hear the reply, although it took some moments drifting back, No one but me could have heard it—in fact, the sound wave was so small I was not really hearing it, but reading it.
" 'Who that?' it said. 'How you know Zunni's name? How you know Wicked Tribe?'
"It was too difficult to carry on a conversation—it would have taken hours of hit and miss—and based on the stories I had been told, I did not have the highest belief in the patience of the Wicked Tribe children. I banked my entire roll on one message.
" 'We are friends of Orlando Gardiner's. We are locked in a prison cell here in the temple. They are going to hurt us. We need help right now.'
"I heard no reply back. A guard had begun to talk in the corridor outside, blasting the subtle pipeline of space and movement into crazy ripples.
"So that is that. It is a ridiculously unlikely possibility that they even heard the whole of my message, or that they can do anything about it, but it was the only plan I could devise. At least I was right in my guess that the monkey-children were still hiding in the temple. And against all odds I have told someone that we are here, that we need help. The fact that our safety is now dependent on a group of preschool children leaves us no worse off then we were, if not a great deal better.
"Still, although Bonnie Mae Simpkins was happy to hear that the children had survived, I think the rest of my companions were depressed to hear of the slim thread I had expended so much time and energy constructing, and on which our hopes now hung.
"However, I was so tired and felt so sick at that point that I was not even afraid of Dread—would not have cared if Satan himself had knocked on the cell door. I fell asleep almost immediately despite my head banging like a drum. Now I am awake again, but nothing has changed. My head still aches, a persistent throb that I fear will never leave me. Poor Paul Jonas is suffering God alone knows what kind of punishments. The rest of us still wait for death—or worse. We wait for Dread. And perhaps I have accomplished nothing—perhaps I am a failure as a witch. But at least I have done . . . something.
"If I am to die soon, that might be a little solace. A little.
"Code Delphi. End here."
He was tied and helpless, his back bent across the curved stone table so that he felt the merest touch would split open his belly. In the dim, torchlit chamber the yellow face of Ptah hovered like a sickly sun.
"Comfy?"
Paul struggled against the bonds that were already rubbing skin from his wrists and ankles. "Why are you doing this, Wells?"
"Because I want to know." He straightened up and told the guard who had tied Paul, "Go find Userhotep."
"But I don't know myself! You can't torture someone into telling something he doesn't know!"
Robert Wells shook his head in mock sadness. "Oh, but I can. This isn't the real world anymore, Jonas. This is something much more complicated—more interesting, too."
"Interesting enough to get you killed if your new master doesn't like what you're doing to me."
His captor laughed. "Oh, I'll leave plenty for him to play with, don't worry. But first we're going to try a few tricks of our own." He looked up at the sound of footsteps. "And here's the chief trickster himself."
"I live to serve you, O Lord of the White Walls." The man who spoke might have been old or young—it was hard to tell in the shadowy chamber, and was made more difficult by the fleshy smoothness of the stranger's features. He was not fat—his arms showed hints of terrifying muscle beneath the unusually pale skin—but he was rounded, almost curvaceous, and had the sexless look of a eunuch.
"Userhotep is a very special person," Wells said solemnly. "A . . . damn, what's the term? There's a little snake that talks in my ear, but it almost never shuts up and I get tired of listening. Ah, right, a kheri-heb. A special kind of priest."
"He's a torturer," Paul snapped. "And you're an arrogant criminal bastard, Wells. Does your snake-gear have an Egyptian translation for that?"
"You know it already. The term is . . . a god." Robert Wells smiled. "But Userhotep is far more skilled than any mere torturer. He's a lector priest. That means a magician. And he's going to help you tell me everything you know. And everything you don't know, too."
Userhotep moved closer, raising his hands above Paul's unprotected belly. When Paul flinched, the priest frowned slightly, but his eyes remained as empty as the glazed stare of a fish.
No, a shark, Paul thought miserably. Something that uses its teeth just because it has them.
"No need to squirm," Wells said. "The painful bit is a pretty small part of the whole operation—I just mentioned it to give your cellmates something to think about. No, Userhotep here is going to cast a spell over you, then you're going to sing like a canary."
"You've been in here too long if you think some of Jongleur's ancient Egyptian mumbo-jumbo is going to make me tell you anything." He strained against the ropes, lifting his head until he could look into Userhotep's epicene face. "You're code, did you know that? You don't even exist. You're imaginary—a bunch of numbers in a big machine!"
Wells chuckled. "He won't hear anything that doesn't fit in with the simulation, Jonas. And it's you who doesn't understand much if you think this . . . mumbo-jumbo won't affect you."
Userhotep bent. When he stood again a long bronze blade was in his hand, more like a straight razor than a dagger. Before Paul had time to react, the priest swiped it across his chest. He had made three shallow cuts before Paul felt the burning pain of the first.
&nbs
p; "You bastard!"
Paying no attention to Paul's struggles, Userhotep lifted a jar from the floor and dipped out something black and viscous. He rubbed it across the incisions. It was all Paul could do not to scream as it burned into the raw flesh.
"I think that's probably poppy-seed paste," Wells observed. "Kind of a primitive opium to help you dream. They have a multidisciplinary approach here, you see—a little science, a little magic, a little pain. . . ."
"Here is the malefactor, O gods,"
the priest chanted,
"The one whose mouth is closed against you
as a door is shut
Here is the one who will not tell truth
Unless you open his mouth so that his spirit
has no shade in which to hide!
Give unto me the provenance of his tongue!
Give unto me the secrets of his heart!"
Even as he spoke the charm Userhotep sliced at Paul's skin again and again, caulking each wound with salty black paste. His fluting voice was distant, distracted, as though he were reading the minutes of an unimportant, forgotten meeting, but there was a curious intensity to the man's flat, cold eyes: as the pain mounted, they seemed to grow brighter, until the face was all Paul could see, the rest of the room falling back into shadow.
"See, it doesn't matter whether you believe or not," Wells said from somewhere behind him, the yellow Ptah-face eclipsed by the priest's round visage like the sun disappearing behind the moon. "That's one of the clever things about this network—really, you have to give old Jongleur credit, it approaches genius. . . ."
"I don't know anything!" Paul groaned, fighting uselessly against the ropes, the burning of his skin.
"Oh, but you do. And if we play the system right, perform the proper spells, you'll talk whether you want to or not—whether you think you remember or not. Surely you've noticed by now that the network operates below the conscious level? Makes everything more real? Hides things that you know must actually be there, even kills people just by convincing them they're dead? If I'd known how Jongleur managed it all, I would have pushed him out a long time ago." Wells' bad-boy giggle penetrated only slowly—Paul was having trouble understanding, his mind beset by storms of agony and confusion.
"See, the gods are waiting for you in the caverns
of the Netherworld!
See, how they crush the heart of your silence!
See them in all their power, and know fear!
The Upreared One!
The Terrible One!
Turned Face!
He of the Coffin!
She who Combs Out!
The Cobra Speaking in Flame!"
". . . Of course, that's probably why he never let any of us know how it worked." Wells' voice was now quite distant, barely audible above the priest's chanting. Hot cramps pulled at Paul's joints, threatening to force them apart. "What was his little joke-term? Reality Enhancement Mechanism. Get it? REM, like when you dream. But damn him, you have to admit it works. Are you feeling it yet?"
Paul could not catch his breath. A black fever was creeping through him, hot and thick as the poppy paste, dark as the caverns of the priest's spell, caverns he could almost see, impossibly deep, full of watching eyes. . . .
"Now, Jonas, I think it's time for you to tell me everything you know about our friend Jongleur." The yellow face of the god returned, floating into the swirling shadows of Paul's vision. "Tell me what happened. . . ."
"Give me the force of his tongue, that I shall
make it a whip to chastise the gods'
enemies!"
the priest said, a triumphant note now entering the drone,
"Give me the force of his tongue, that he shall
hide his secrets no more!
Make me master of his silence!
Make me priest of his hidden heart!
Speak now!
Speak now!
Speak now!
The gods command it. . . !"
"I . . . I don't. . . ." The priest's voice seemed like thunder in his ears, a din so great he could barely think. Images whirled past, fragments of his life in the tower, Ava's sad dark eyes, the smell of wet greenery. His own words were echoing both inside and outside his head. "I'm . . . I'm. . . ." He could see himself, could see everything, and the past tore open, ripped like flesh—painful, shriekingly painful, as the memories came tumbling out.
The darkness fell away, dropping him into something deeper still. He heard his own voice speak as if from a great distance.
"I'm . . . an orphan. . . ."
CHAPTER 29
Stony Limits
* * *
NETFEED/MUSIC: Horrible Animals to Reunite?
(visual: Benchlows entering hospital for presurgical exploration)
VO: In what even their staunchest fans admit has become a rather bizarre saga, onetime conjoined twins Saskia and Martinus Benchlow, founding members of My Family and Other Horrible Horrible Animals, who had themselves surgically separated a few months ago to facilitate the breakup of their musical partnership, are now contemplating reattachment.
S. BENCHLOW: "Even after we broke up, we were spending all our time together arguing. My new manager said, "What's with you two, it's like you're joined at the hip," and, well, it got us thinking. . . ."
M. BENCHLOW: "The whole separation's been utterly weird. I never knew it could be so lonely going to the toilet."
* * *
He said it again, caught on some incomprehensible cusp. The momentary blackness was fading, but his voice echoed strangely, as if he stood outside himself, listening. "I'm an orphan. . . !"
"Sorry you had to find out about it like this, lad." Niles sounded genuinely troubled, but his face on the screen was as unreadably reasonable as ever. "For some reason the hospital couldn't get through to you there in the States, so they called me. I suppose you must have put me down as a backup or something."
"I'm . . . I'm an orphan," Paul said for the third time.
"Well, that's pushing it a bit, isn't it?" Niles spoke kindly. "I mean, I think you have to be an actual child to qualify, don't you? But I really am sorry, Paul. Still, she had a good run, didn't she? How old was she?"
"Seventy-two." He'd been in America for over half a year, he realized. "Seventy-three. That's not old at all. I thought . . . I thought she'd be around a few more years." I thought I'd get back to see her. How could I let her die alone?
"Still, she wasn't well. Kindest thing, isn't it?"
For an instant, Paul hated his friend's handsome face and easy sympathy. Kindest thing? Yes, if you come from the sort of family that shoots its old dogs and horses, it probably seems that way, A moment later the rush of fury was gone.
"Yes, I suppose it is," he said heavily. "I should call and make the arrangements. . . ."
"Done it for you, mate. It was all in her records, anyway. Do you want the ashes sent there?"
It was such a strangely repellent idea that Paul actually considered it for a moment. "No. No, I don't think so. I don't think she'd like Louisiana. I suppose she'll want to go in that place next to Dad." He couldn't for the life of him think of the name of the so-called remembrance park, had never visited his father's resting place—if a cubbyhole with a door in a fibramic wall made to look like marble could really be dignified to that extent. "I'll look up the details and call you tomorrow."
"That's fine. We're at the Oaks." Which was a breezy way of saying Niles' family were having one of their semiannual bivouacs at their country house in Staffordshire.
"Thanks, Niles. You're a good friend."
"Worry not. But how are things going on your end? I had sort of a strange call from your Americans a while back."
"I know." He debated telling Niles the whole story, but he was already in his friend's debt—how much did you actually owe someone who arranged to have your mother burned, anyway?—and did not want to descend deeper by keeping him on the phone listening to complaints and suspicions and just plain weir
dness. "Things are okay here. Lots of stories to tell when we get together. A bit odd, I guess, but basically everything's fine."
Niles gave him a quizzical look, but with his usual deftness swiftly turned it into a smile. "Right. Well, stay out of trouble, old man. And I am sorry about your mum."
"I'll call you tomorrow. Thanks again."
He was embarrassed he'd said it in front of Niles, but as the elevator shot soundlessly upward, the word would not leave his head.
Orphan. I'm an orphan. I've got no one left. . . .
It was a bit overblown, perhaps—he hadn't seen Mum since leaving England, and while he was there he hadn't exactly moved heaven and earth to keep her at his side once she'd got sick the first time—but now that she was gone, something had definitely changed.
Who do you have, really? Niles? He'd be just as kind and efficient if it was you who'd snuffed it, and then he'd get on with his fabulous life. "You remember Paul Jonas," he'd say to his friends, who wouldn't. "Chap I've known since Cranleigh—we were at university together, too. Worked at the Tate? Poor old Paul. . . ."
She met him in the antique study, her fine features so rigid they seemed almost a mask, and gave him a very small, very polite smile. "Come in, Mr. Jonas. I've been looking forward to our lesson."
He paused in the doorway, disconcerted by the gleam in her eyes, a hint of excitement or even fear. "Miss Jongleur, I. . . ."
"Please!" Her laugh was a little too shrill. "We should waste no more time! You are already a bit late, dear Mr. Jonas, although I do not criticize. You must understand that time weighs heavily on me between activities."
He allowed himself to be pulled inside, yanking his hand through just in time to keep it from being caught by the closing door. Before he could even take a breath she had thrown her arms about his neck and was covering his face with kisses.
"Miss Jongleur!" He tried to detach himself but she clung to him like a creature of the tide pools fastened onto a rock. "Ava! Have you lost your mind?" He managed to get one arm against the firmness of her corseted stomach and push her back until he could get a grip on her shoulders and hold her away. He was shocked to see her eyes streaming with tears.
