by Tad Williams
He was also terrified.
There was no explanation for what he had experienced. He did not insult himself by pretending it might have been a bad dream—the details were too sharp, his waking position on the floor in front of the wallscreen too telltale. But there was no simple way of understanding. The thing that had contacted him was no ordinary hacker, that was laughably clear. He didn't believe in ghosts, especially ghosts who appeared on wallscreens. So what did that leave?
Paul sat by the window with shaking hands. Below, he could see one of the corporation's hovercrafts arriving at the esplanade just below the tower, the ship's cheerful white-and-blue paint at odds with his own current viewpoint—that the ferry was basically a larger version of Charon's boat, conveying passengers to a Hades in which Paul was already a resident.
He roused himself. The sight had given him a longing to be somewhere else, anywhere else. He could not spend another day inside the great black building. He needed to move, to get out. Maybe then he could think properly.
As he dressed he felt a pang of worry and sorrow for Ava. If he simply disappeared, even just for the morning, she would be frightened. He was reluctant to ride all the way up to her house, frightened that he would never be able to pull himself away from her, so he called and left a message with one of Finney's many assistants. "Mr. Jonas has business to take care of because his mother in England has died. He will be out for the day. Please ask Miss Jongleur to study her geometry and read two more chapters of Emma. Lessons will resume as usual tomorrow." Hanging up, he felt the same sort of guilt he had experienced as a child skiving off school.
I have to get out, he told himself. Just for a while.
Walking from the elevator across the huge atrium lobby to the front doors, Paul could not resist looking around to see if someone was following him.
But isn't that just what you aren't supposed to do when you leave Hades? What was that from, the Orpheus legend? That you weren't supposed to look back?
Whatever the case, he was not being followed by either weeping ghosts or dark-suited security personnel, although the vast lobby was so full of people it was hard to tell for certain. The wash of commingled voices echoing from the marble walls and down the crystalline, pyramidal ceiling was like the roar of an ocean, like the rush of childish faces that had invaded his sleep now made into sound.
He paused for a moment in the plaza before the front doors to look up at the tower, a mountain-high finger of warped black glass, a million darkly translucent plates trussed and polished. If this was indeed the gate of the netherworld, what kind of fool was he even to think about coming back? He had planned a day's research trip, since he was afraid to access the larger net from within the J Corporation matrix, but what was there to draw him back at all? A doomed girl? It would take someone with a lot more power in the world than Paul Jonas to break her free from that cage. Something called the Grail, some threat to the world's children? Surely he could do much more from the outside, perhaps as a secret informant to some serious investigative journalists, than he could ever manage under constant surveillance.
Should I just take off? Just go? For God's sake, what job is worth this madness, this kind of paranoia?
"There's something wrong with your badge," the woman said. He could see the ferry's gangplank just the other side of the security-glass air-lock door, but the door itself did not open.
"What do you mean?"
The young woman frowned at the symbols dancing on the inside of her goggles. "It's not cleared for departure from the island, sir. I'm afraid you'll have to step out."
"My badge isn't cleared?" He stared at her, then back at the gangplank, only a few meters away. "Then keep the damn thing."
"You'll have to step out, sir. There's a security hold on it. You can speak to my supervisor."
Before a half-dozen sharp words were out of his mouth, the security guards—exactly the sort that he had half-expected to be following him through the tower lobby—had escorted him to a quiet office for, as they put it, a quiet chat.
It was at least a little solace that afterward he was allowed to walk back out of the departure area and back to the tower by himself. Security hadn't been ordered to do anything to him, not even detain him, as long as he stayed on the island. A little solace, but not much.
Conscious that he had sweated himself rank inside his coat and shirt despite the cool of the morning, Paul stood inside the lobby elevators, full of terrified indecision. Did this mean they had heard him after all, talking the J Corporation equivalent of treason with the master's daughter? Or might it just be a fluke?
He had to see Finney. If he didn't, if he simply did as he wanted so desperately to do, returned to his room and got shatteringly drunk, he would be admitting that he deserved this treatment. He had to act innocent.
Finney's assistant kept him waiting twenty-five minutes. The spectacular view across to the city—a city now heart-breakingly out of reach, although it seemed so close he might reach out and prick his finger on the Riverwalk Spire—did little to soothe him.
When he was finally allowed in, Finney was finishing a call. He looked up, his eyes as always strangely hard to see behind his spectacles. "What is it, Jonas?"
"I . . . they wouldn't let me leave the island. Security."
Finney looked at him calmly. "Why?"
"I don't know! Something wrong with my badge. They said there was a security hold on it, something like that."
"Leave it with my assistant. We'll sort it out."
Paul felt a gush of relief. "So . . . I can get a temporary replacement or something? I've got some things I have to do in New Orleans." In the silence, he felt the need to make it more compelling. "My mother died. I have arrangements to make."
Finney was looking at his desk, although the desktop appeared to be bare. He nodded distractedly. "Sorry to hear that. We can make arrangements for you."
"But I want to do it myself."
Finney looked up at him. "Fine. As I said, leave your badge with my assistant."
"But I want to go now! Go off the island, deal with things. I mean . . . you can't keep me here. Not just . . . keep me here."
"But, my dear Jonas, what is your hurry? Surely you can make arrangements by net more efficiently. And these procedures might seem silly to you, but I promise you they're deadly serious. Deadly serious. Why, if someone tried to get onto the island—or off it, for that matter—without a valid badge, I wouldn't even want to think about the kind of terrible things that might happen!" Finney gave him a slow smile. "So you just sit tight, will you? Be a good boy. Entertain Miss Jongleur. We'll straighten everything out . . . in time."
Back in the elevator, Paul could hardly support his own weight. He stumbled to his room, turned off the lights, carefully and definitely shut off the wallscreen, then sat in darkness broken only by a pane of light tilting out from the crack between window and blind and tried to drink himself into oblivion.
He could see his own fingers touching the button of the elevator, see the dawn light bleeding into the corridor disappear as the doors swished shut behind him—he could see it, but he could not quite feel it. The drunkenness was still on him, a twisted, feverish disconnection. He did not know what time it was, only knew it was morning, only knew he could not take another night of such monstrous dreams.
The door hissed open, revealing the inner door. He leaned against it, resting his head on the cool frame while he clumsily entered his code and pressed his hand against the palm reader. Dizzy, he remained leaning for several stupefied moments after the lock had clicked.
One of the parlormaids looked up in surprise as he stumbled through. In her wide-eyed gaze he saw an entire factory of deceit. "You're real," he said. "So you must be a liar."
"Where are you going, sir?" She took a careful backward step, as though preparing to turn and run.
"Important business. Miss Jongleur. We're going out." The spectacle he must be presenting finally sank in. He tried to assume a
slightly more dignified manner. "Sorry. I'm not well. But I need to give Miss Jongleur her lessons—she has to have her lesson plan for today. I'll be gone in a few minutes."
He continued down the corridor, trying to walk a straight line.
I'm not drunk, he thought. Not really. I'm bloody well coming apart at the seams.
He knocked on the door, waited, then knocked again.
"Who is it?"
"It's me," he said, then remembered the no-doubt listening ears. "Mr. Jonas. I have to give you your lessons for today."
The door flew open. She wore a white nightgown, soft but opaque, and had pulled her dressing gown on without tying it closed. Her dark hair, unbound and surprisingly long, spilled down past her shoulders.
Angel, he thought, remembering the ghost-thing's words. You're beautiful, he wanted to say, but retained enough sense to lift his hand and push his own sweat-damp hair from his forehead. "I need to speak to you for just a moment, Miss Jongleur."
"Paul! What's happened to you?"
"I'm ill, Miss Jongleur." He lifted his finger to his lips in a clumsy admonishment to silence. "Perhaps I need a little air. Would you mind coming outside with me while we discuss your work for today?"
"Let me . . . I just need to dress."
"No time," he said hoarsely. "I'm . . . I'm really not very well. Can you come out with me?"
She was frightened, but trying not to show it. "Let me get my shoes, then."
It was all he could do to refrain from pulling her down the hall by the arm. Two of the maids were standing in the doorway of the sunporch, for the moment not even counterfeiting work; they stepped aside as Paul and Ava approached, casting their eyes down.
"But I insist, Mr. Jonas," Ava said brightly for their benefit. "You are looking very poorly indeed. A turn in the garden while we talk will do you a world of good."
He could almost feel the maids' shocked propriety and was embarrassed for his pupil. His own floating, hapless confusion was such that he did not remember until they had reached the garden path that whatever else they might be, the Jongleur servants were not young women from two centuries past.
This time Ava did not hurry toward the wood, but walked with care, asking solicitously about Paul's health as they went, insisting that immediately upon leaving her he should drink a cup of chamomile tea and go straight to bed. It was only when they had reached the ostensible security of the mushroom ring that she turned and threw herself at him, clutching him so tightly he had to struggle to stay upright.
"Oh, Paul, dear Paul, where were you? When you did not come yesterday, I was so frightened!"
He did not have the strength to hold her off, did not have the strength to do much of anything. He had no plan, no solution. He was not entirely certain he was not going mad himself. "Your ghost friend. He came to me. Showed me . . . children."
"So you believe me?" She leaned back, staring at his face as though she might never see it again. "Do you?"
"I still don't know what to believe, Ava. But I know I have to get you out of here, somehow." A heaviness settled in his chest. "But I can't even leave myself. I tried to get off the island yesterday and they wouldn't let me."
"An island?" she said. "How strange. Are we on an island?"
The hopelessness of it all came crashing down on him. What did he think he was going to do? Kidnap and hide a girl who had never even left this building, the daughter of the world's richest man? A man with his own army, with tanks and helicopters? A man with half the world's leaders in his pocket? His knees weakening, Paul let himself slide down to the ground. Ava came with him, still clinging, and for a moment they were tangled together, the girl half atop him, her slim, uncorseted body pressing against him.
"I don't know what to do, Ava." He was light-headed, almost stoned on despair. Her face was very close, her hair surrounding both their heads like a canopy so that for a moment they were in half-darkness.
"Just love me," she said. "Then everything will be right."
"I can't . . . I shouldn't. . . ." But he had his arms around her waist, in self-defense if nothing else, to keep her from wriggling along the length of his body. "You're just a child."
"Stony limits," she reminded him, and her giggle was so unexpected he almost smiled himself.
And I am Fortune's fool. The quote swam up like the fish in the tiny, tended stream gurgling a few meters away.
Fortune's fool. He lifted his head and kissed her. She gave it back to him with all the untutored enthusiasm of her age, her breath sharp and fast, and after a moment he had to lift her away from him and sit up. The grass slowly sprang back erect where they had lain.
"My true heart," she murmured, tears in her eyes.
He could think of nothing to say back to her. Romeo and Juliet, he thought. Good Christ, look what happened to them.
"I have something for you!" she said suddenly. She reached into the collar of her nightgown and withdrew a tasseled bag that hung around her neck. She shook something small and glittery into her hand and held it out toward him. It was a silver ring with a blue-green stone cut into the shape of a feather. "It was a present from my father," she said. "I think it was my mother's once. He brought it back for her from North Africa." She held it up until the feather-shape caught the light, sparkling clear as a tropical ocean, then passed it to him. "He said the stone is a tourmaline."
Paul stared at it. The feather was strikingly carved, something light as air made from stone, the solidity of earth turned into a puff of wind.
"Put it on."
Still in a sort of trance, he slipped it onto his finger.
"Now you can't leave me." There was more than just pleading in her voice—it almost had the force of a command or an incantation. "You can't ever leave me now." An instant later she had crawled into his lap and put her arms about his neck, pressing her lips to his. He fought it for a moment, then surrendered to the full, forceful tide of madness.
"Oh ho!" someone said.
Ava shrieked and threw herself backward out of Paul's arms. He turned to see the grinning, misshapen face of Mudd peering at them through the trees.
"Naughty, naughty," said the fat man.
Suddenly everything went dark, sucked away as if down a long drain. The light, the air, the sound of Ava weeping, the trill of birds and the rustle of leaves, all fled. Nothing was left but blackness and empty silence.
He had been in the dark for so long that he had almost forgotten there was anything else. Then something cold crashed down over him and he woke up screaming.
Paul Jonas struggled up out of the emptiness, his skin raw and shocked, his head hot and swollen, as though he had been left out in the desert sun for hours. It was not sand or sun that he found when he opened his sticky eyes, though, but the flickering semidarkness of a cell.
The dull-faced priest Userhotep stood over him, still holding the clay water jar which he had emptied over Paul's bound body. Frowning as at a piece of machinery which had proved to be shoddily manufactured, the priest examined Paul for a moment, testing his pulse and pulling back his eyelid with a grubby finger before stepping away.
Robert Wells' yellow, hairless face split in a clownish grin. "My God, once you get started you don't shut up, do you?"
Paul tried to say something but could only moan. The arteries serving his brain seemed to be pumping something far more thick and caustic than blood.
"But we still haven't learned much," Wells complained. "So you found out something about the Grail—well, golly, I could have guessed that. It still doesn't explain why the Old Man didn't just have you killed. And it's clear from what you remember that his operating system was even more unreliable than we guessed, than even Jongleur guessed—that it achieved some kind of consciousness. But we stopped just short of the really interesting stuff." He shook his head. "That last part of the block is pretty strong, which suggests it was the thing he originally wanted wiped out. So, of course, that's what I want to learn."
Paul's throa
t was as rough as sharkskin, but he at last mustered the saliva to speak. "Why do you care? It's all over now. Jongleur's dead, my friends and I are prisoners, Dread's in charge. What does it matter?" The truth was, he didn't want to touch any more memories. A brooding disquiet lay over all that had returned to him, a sense that something horrible waited just around the corner. "Go ahead and kill me, if you really aren't any better than your new boss." It would be an end at least to the pain, it would be an end.
Wells wagged a lemony finger. "Selfish, Mr. Jonas, very selfish of you. If the Old Man's dead, that's all the more reason we need to know as much as possible. You may not be on the guest list, but the rest of us intend to make our homes here for a long, long time. If we have to replace the plumbing; we need to know the extent of the problem." He leaned forward until his face was very close. "And I must admit I'm curious about you. Who are you? Why did Jongleur single you out for such star treatment instead of just dumping your body in his private swamp?" He's had us taking very elaborate care of you at Telemorphix, you know. We really wondered who you were."
"You won't find out the rest," Paul said hoarsely. "The brainwashing, the hypnotic block, whatever it is, it's too strong."
"Hmmm. I think we can go a long way toward testing that theory without killing you." Ptah the Artificer moved back and the lector priest Userhotep stepped forward again. "I was wrong to think we could do the job with only minimal damage, though. We'll have to push the envelope a bit—see how much you can take. It's amazing what the brain will do to cope with extreme pain, you know. Some pretty extreme neurological effects. I wouldn't be surprised if we have you singing like a bird before we've done much beyond taking the top layers of your skin off."
Robert Wells crossed his bandaged arms over his chest, stared at Paul for a moment, then nodded cheerfully to the priest. "Well, Userhotep, I guess you might as well get started."
