by Tad Williams
Troubled, Renie wandered back around the table.
"Javier is criticizing my appearance," Florimel announced.
"Chance not!" T4b said. The glyphs of light on his cheeks dimmed when he blushed. "Just saying that the patch looks chizz. She only did some other stuff, could be major scorchery."
"Like what?" Florimel gave him a severe look. "Buy my sim some gigantic breasts?"
Javier shook his head vigorously. "Didn't say that, me—not all unrespectful like that! Just meant you could get some sub-Ds. Like your initials, something. . . ." He trailed off and his own subdermals became even harder to see. "Oh. You molly-dupping me, huh?"
"If that means teasing, Javier, then yes." Florimel shared an amused glance with Renie. "But why are you so dressed up? I'm assuming that is what you really look like today. Such nice clothes just for old friends like us?"
He shrugged. "Got an interview, me."
"For a job?" Renie asked.
"Chance not. Tryin' to get back into school. AGAPA."
"Arizona General and Pastoral Academy," Mrs. Simpkins elaborated.
"Seen. It was Bonnie Mae's idea, like." He suddenly looked like he wanted to back away from the gathering. "Well, mine too."
"Tell them what you want to do, Javier," Mrs. Simpkins said.
He scowled, "Thought . . . thought after all the things happened, I might try to be . . . a minister, like. Youth minister, seen? Work with micros." His shoulders came up as if to protect him from a beating. He looked at Florimel out of the corner of his eye.
Renie and !Xabbu congratulated him, but he was waiting for something.
"Well," Florimel said after a moment. "I think that is a wonderful idea, Javier. I really do." Smiling, she leaned forward and carefully kissed him on his glowing cheek. "I hope your dream comes true."
Even as his subdermals threatened to disappear entirely, another kind of light stole onto his face. "Make it through all that sayee lo stuff, can make it through anything, me," he promised.
"Amen," said Bonnie Mae.
CHAPTER 53
A Borrowed House
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"Are you ready?" Catur Ramsey did his best to keep his voice calm. His stomach was full of small active flutterings, and he of all of them had the least reason to be nervous. Jet lag didn't help. "I think it's time."
"I don't know." Vivien Fennis looked around their living room as if she might never see it again. "I don't know what to do."
"Should we say something?" asked Conrad Gardiner hoarsely. He had been pacing for half an hour while the other two made sure the gear for his wife's new neurocannula was working properly, and now he could hardly sit still on the couch. "Or is there some . . . button we have to push?"
"No." Ramsey smiled. "If you're ready, just let me and Mr. Sellars do the rest."
The transition was instantaneous: one moment they were in a well-furnished California house in a gated community, the next on a path at the edge of a dark and ancient forest.
"Oh my God," said Vivien. She turned away from the trees and surveyed the meadowed hills, the grass glinting with dew in the morning sunshine. "It's . . . it's so real!"
"Not quite up to the network's earlier standards," said Ramsey. "But yes, it's still pretty impressive, isn't it? I haven't got used to it myself."
"Who's that?" asked Conrad. "Is that. . . ?"
Ramsey squinted at the figure coming down the curving hill path. "No, it's Sam Fredericks, right on time."
She waved, then walked briskly toward them, a little incongruous-looking in her pants and dark shirt. Ramsey could not help an inward flinch of embarrassment as he remembered her reaction when he suggested that for such a special occasion she could wear a dress if she wanted to. Still, he had to admit that other than the workaday teenager clothes, she looked like someone who belonged in a storybook setting like this, her eyes bright, her cloud of fluffy brown hair wrapped but not contained by a bright scarf.
She stopped in front of them, suddenly shy. "You're . . . you're Orlando's parents, right?"
"Yes. I'm Vivien and this is Conrad." Ramsey had to admire the woman's aplomb. After all, in the impatient hours leading up to this he had seen almost all of the emotions she was now hiding so effectively. "And you must be Sam. We've met your folks." She hesitated, then swept Sam into a trembling hug. Both of them hung on for a moment as though unsure what to do. "We feel like . . . we feel like we know you, too," Vivien said, releasing her.
Sam nodded. Her own careful composure was also threatening to come undone. "Well, I guess we oughta go," she said after a moment. "He's waiting."
As the four of them made their way up the curving, stone-lined path, Ramsey saw that Orlando's parents were holding hands. They've had too much horror to practice on, he thought—but maybe it helps now.
Still, how could anyone be ready for this?
"What . . . what is this place?" Vivien asked. They had almost reached the top of the hill. A river splashed down beside the path, loud among the reeds, the water so musical it almost chimed. Behind them the forest spread like a shadowy, frozen ocean. "I've never seen anything like it."
"It's from Orlando's favorite book," Sam said. "Somebody had made it already. He could have lived in a castle or something, one of the fancy parts, but he liked this part better." She turned her gaze down to the ground; her smile was strained.
"Somebody . . . made this?" asked Conrad. "I guess I knew that, but. . . ."
"There's more than this," said Ramsey. "Lots more. You can see it all someday if you want."
"You should see Rivendell!" Sam offered. "It's so chizz! Even without the elves."
Conrad Gardiner shook his head in bafflement, but his wife was no longer listening. As they neared the crest of the low hill they could see the next rise. On a knoll above them stood a low house made of stone and wood surrounded by trees, simple in construction but somehow perfect for its setting. "Oh my God," Vivien said quietly as they reached the bottom of the short slope and started up again. "Is that it? I didn't know I'd be so nervous."
A figure appeared in the doorway. It looked down on them but did not smile or wave.
"Who is that?" asked Conrad Gardiner. "That doesn't look anything like. . . ."
"Oh, Conrad, don't you listen?" Her voice sounded like something about to rip at the edge. "That's what he looks here. Now." She turned to Ramsey eyes wide. "Isn't that right? Isn't it?"
Catur Ramsey could only nod; he no longer trusted himself to speak. When he turned back the figure was making its way down the path toward them.
"He's so big!" Vivien said. "So big!"
"You should have seen him before he got younger." Sam Fredericks laughed—a little wildly, Ramsey thought. He stopped and touched Sam's arm, reminding her. They let Orlando's parents walk the rest of the short distance to meet him by themselves.
"Orlando. . . ?" Ramsey could hear sudden doubt in the woman's voice as she looked at the tall, black-haired youth before her. "Is that . . . are you. . . ?"
"It's me, Vivien." He lifted his hands, then suddenly clamped them over his nose and mouth for a moment as though to keep in something that wanted powerfully to escape. "It's me, Mom."
She closed the distance in a step and threw her arms around him so hard that they both almost toppled onto the turf beside the path. "Hey, careful!" Orlando said, laughing raggedly, then Conrad had grabbed them both. The
threesome did stumble then, and fell to the grass in awkward stages. They sat holding each other, babbling things that Ramsey could not quite hear.
Vivien was the first to lean back, but she kept one hand against Orlando's face and gripped his arm with the other, as if afraid to let him go. "But how . . . I don't understand. . . ." Her hands not free to wipe her face, she could only shake her head and sniff loudly. "I mean, I understand—Mr. Ramsey explained, or tried to, but. . . ." She pulled his hand against her own cheek, then kissed it. "Are you certain it's you?" Her smile was crooked, her eyes bright with fear and hope. "I mean, really you?"
"I don't know." Orlando watched her as though he had forgotten what she looked like and might have only this small time to rememorize her features. "I don't know. But I feel like me. I think like me. I just . . . I don't have a real body anymore."
"We'll do something about it." Conrad Gardiner had a fixed, miserable grin on his face and was holding Orlando's other arm with both hands. "Specialists . . . somebody must. . . ." He shook his head, suddenly speechless.
Orlando smiled. "Believe me—there are no specialists in this stuff. But maybe someday." His smile faded a little. "Just be glad for what we have."
"Oh, Orlando, we are," said his mother.
"Think of it . . . think of it like I'm in Heaven. Except you can visit me whenever you want." Tears were running down his cheeks again. "Don't cry, Mom! You're scanning me out."
"Sorry." She let go of him for a moment to blot away her own tears with the arm of her blouse, stopped to stare at it. "It . . . feels like it's real. This all does." She looked at her son. "So do you, even if I've never seen . . . this version of you before."
"It feels real, too," he said. "And this is what I look like now. That other me—well, he's gone. You don't ever have to look at him again and feel sorry because . . . because he looked like that."
"We never cared!"
"You cared about how I felt when other people stared at me." He reached out and touched her cheek, caught a drop of wetness there. "This is how it is now, Vivien. It's not all bad, is it?" He swallowed hard, then suddenly sprang to his feet, pulling his parents up as though they were children.
"You're so strong!"
"I'm Thargor the barbarian—sort of." Orlando grinned. "But I don't think I'll use that name anymore. It's kind of . . . woofie." He was eager to move now. "Let me show you my house. It's not really mine. I'm just borrowing it from Tom Bombadil until I build my own."
"Tom. . . ?"
"Bombadil. Come on, you remember—you were the one who told me to read it in the first place." He pulled her to him and hugged her; when he let go she was in tears again, swaying. "I want to show you all of it. The next time you're here the barrow wights and Tom and Goldberry and everyone will be back. It'll be different." He turned to Ramsey and Sam. "You two—come on! You should see the view I have down the river valley."
As Orlando's parents brushed leaves and grass from their clothes, they were startled by a movement at their feet. Something black, hairy, and decidedly bizarre climbed out from underneath one of the borderstones along the path.
"You gotta do something about those little psychos, boss," it shouted. "They're makin' me nuts!" It saw Orlando's guests and stopped, eyes impossibly wide.
Vivien took an involuntary step backward. "What. . . ?"
"This is Beezle," Orlando said, grinning again. "Beezle, these are my parents, Vivien and Conrad."
The misshapen cartoon bug looked at them for a moment, then performed a little bow. "Oh, yeah. Pleased to meetcha."
Conrad stared, "This . . . it's . . . this is that gear thing."
Beezle's lopsided eyes narrowed. "Oh, nice. 'Gear thing,' huh? I told the boss, sure, bygones are bygones—but seems to me the last time we hooked up, you were trying to unplug me."
Orlando was smiling. "Beezle saved the world, you guys."
The bug shrugged. "I had some help."
"And he's going to be here with me—help me out with things. Have adventures." Orlando stood up straighter. "Hey! I have to tell you about my new job!"
"Job?" asked Conrad weakly.
"We . . . we're pleased to meet you, Beezle," said Vivien carefully, but she didn't look very pleased at all.
"It's 'Mr. Bug' to you, lady," he growled, then suddenly flashed a broad cartoon smile. "Nah, just kiddin'. Don't worry about it. Gear don't hold grudges."
Further discussion was forestalled by a cloud of tiny yellow monkeys that swirled out of the forest, shrieking.
"Beegle buzz! Found you!"
"Come play!"
"Play stretch-a-bug!"
Beezle let out a string of curses that sounded exactly like random punctuation, then disappeared back into the ground. The monkeys hovered for a moment, disappointed.
"No fun," said a tiny voice.
"We're busy now, kids," Orlando told them. "Could you go play somewhere else for a while?"
The monkey-tornado swirled about his head for a moment, then lifted into the air.
"Okay, 'Landogarner!" one shrilled. "We go now!"
"Kilohana!" squealed another. "Time to poop on the stone trolls!"
The yellow cloud coalesced and flashed across the hills. Orlando's parents stood like accident victims, so clearly overwhelmed by everything that Ramsey wanted to turn his back and give them some privacy.
"Don't worry—it's not always this exciting around here," said Orlando.
"We . . . we just want to be with you." Vivien took a deep breath and tried to smile. "Wherever you are."
"I'm glad you're here." For a long moment he only stood looking at them. His lip trembled, but then he forced a smile of his own. "Hey, come see the house. Everybody come!"
He started up the path, then turned back so he could take Conrad and Vivien each by the hand. He was much taller than either of them, and they were almost forced to run to keep up with his long strides.
Ramsey looked at Sam Fredericks. He offered her his virtual handkerchief and gave her a moment to use it, then they followed the Gardiner family up the hill.
"You look a lot better than the last time I saw you," Calliope said.
The woman in the bed nodded. Her expression was flat, as though someone had carefully rubbed the life out of it. "So do you. I'm surprised you're walking."
Calliope pointed to the plasteel tubes beside her chair. "On crutches. Very slowly. But the doctors can do some amazing things these days. You should know."
"I'm not going to be walking, no matter what they do."
There wasn't anything much to be said to that, but Calliope tried. "Would dying have been better?" she asked gently.
"That's an excellent question."
Calliope sighed. "I'm sorry you've had such a bad time of it, Ms. Anwin."
"It's not like I didn't deserve it," said the young woman. "I wasn't an innocent. An idiot, yes—but not an innocent."
"Nobody deserves John Dread," Calliope said firmly.
"Maybe. But he isn't going to get what he deserves, is he!"
Calliope shrugged, although the same thought had been burning in her own mind for days. "Who ever does? But I've been meaning to ask you something. What exactly were you doing with the pad after I made the emergency call? What were you trying to send?"
The American woman blinked slowly. "A dataphage." She read Calliope's expression. "Something that chews up information. It had eaten half my system a few hours earlier, so I figured it might do him some damage. I wrapped it in his own . . . files. Those horrible images. So he wouldn't know at first what it was."
"Maybe that's what put him in the coma."
"I wanted it to kill him," she said flatly. "Painfully. Anything less was a failure."
They sat for a few moments in silence, but when Calliope at last began to shift her weight, preparing to stand, the woman suddenly spoke. "I . . . I have something on my conscience." Something came into her eyes, a strange mixture of fear and hope that made Calliope uneasy. "It's been . . . bo
thering me for a long time. It happened in Cartagena. . . ."
Calliope held up her hand. "I'm not a priest, Ms. Anwin. And I don't want to hear anything more about this case from you. I've studied the reports and your interview with Detective Chan. I can read between the lines as well as the next person." She stilled another attempt with a glare. "I'm serious. I represent the law. Think very carefully before you say anything else. Then, if you still need to do something to . . . ease your conscience, well, you can always call the Cartagena police. But I can tell you that the jails in Colombia are not all that nice." She softened her tone. "You've been through a lot. You're going to have a lot more time to think while you heal, then you have to decide what you're going to do with the rest of your life."
"You mean because I won't be able to use my legs, don't you?" There was more than a hint of self-pity; Calliope's anger sparked.
"Yes, without your legs. But you're alive, right? You have a chance to start over. That's more than a lot of people get. That's more than Dread's other women got."
For a moment Dulcie Anwin glared at her with something like fury and Calliope braced for the harsh words, but the American woman stayed silent. After a moment her face sagged. "Yeah," she said. "You're right. Count my blessings, huh?"
"It'll be easier to do that later," Calliope told her. "Listen, good luck. I mean that. But now I've got to go."
Dulcie nodded and reached for a glass of water on the bedside table, then hesitated. "Is he really gone?" she asked. "Not coming back? Are you sure?"
"As sure as anyone can be." Calliope tried to keep her voice calmly professional. "He hasn't shown anything for a week—no change, no sign of waking. And he's guarded day and night. Even if he comes out of it, he goes right to prison."
Dulcie didn't say anything. She took the water and held it close to her mouth with trembling hands, but did not drink.
"Sorry, but I really do have to go." Calliope picked up her crutches. "Call me if I can help with anything. Your visa's been extended, by the way."
"Thanks." Dulcie finally took a drink, then put the glass down. "And thanks for . . . for everything else."
