by Tad Williams
"Just doing my job," said Calliope, and made her way slowly to the door.
The guard recognized her but still made her wave her badge in front of the reader before he would allow her in. Calliope silently approved. The heavy door clunked open and she stepped through into the hallway with the big oneway windows. The guard leaned past her to make sure the door closed again behind her.
"Anything?" she asked.
"Nah. Two more doctors today. Nothing. Reflex tests, pupil dilation, you name it. If he isn't dead, it's a technicality. They might as well bury him."
The idea started a shiver of superstitious horror. I'd have to stand over the grave with silver bullets and a sharpened stake. "He's already been dead once," she told the guard. "Let's not get too cocky." She moved to the window, stared through the crosshatching of tensor-wire. The figure in the pool of light was strapped to the heavy bedframe and festooned with tubes and wires and dermal sensors, which evoked further horror-flick thoughts—the Frankenstein monster rising, crackling with electricity, snapping his restraints. Dread's eyes were open just a tiny fraction, his fingers slightly curled. She tried to fool herself that she could see a twitch of movement here or there, but except for the slow expansion and contraction of his torso, the automatic pumping systems moving breath and blood, there was nothing.
He's not coming back, she told herself. Whatever happened to him, charge, some kind of data-eater, he's somewhere else now—as good as dead, like the man said. You could come here every day for the rest of your life and nothing would change, Skouros. He's not coming back.
Oddly, this did not bring her much relief, let alone the release she was only beginning to realize she badly needed. But that means he's escaped, she thought, and did not realize how her fingers were tightening on the windowsill until she felt the stab of pain in her healing back muscles.
He's gone out the easy way. After everything he did, he just got away. He should be in hell, screaming. Instead he's probably just going to sleep out the rest of his life, then slip away quietly.
She pulled her crutches tight against her forearms again, gave a last look at the still, almost handsome face, then made her way slowly back toward the security door.
Life goes on, she told herself. Sometimes it ends this. way. The universe isn't a kid's story, where everybody gets their just desserts at the end.
She sighed and hoped Stan would have found a parking place close to the facility. Her legs hurt and she badly needed a cup of coffee.
He wanted to sleep, ached to sleep, but would not get the chance. It had been days since he had slept, maybe weeks. He couldn't remember. As it was, he had not even regained his breath, which still sawed in his throat, when he smelled the smoke.
Bushfire. They've set a bushfire to drive me out of the trees. For a moment he was so filled with rage and despair that he wanted to stand and shriek at the sky. Why wouldn't they leave him alone? Days, weeks, months—he had lost track. He had no more strength.
But he could not give up—what they would do was too terrible. He could not let his fear overcome him. He never had and he never would.
The smoke ran past him in tendrils, curling like beckoning fingers. He could hear the noises now, not just behind him but closing in on his left as well, the shrill cries whispering down the flame-hot wind. He stumbled wearily onto his feet and took a few limping steps through the tangle of undergrowth. They were driving him out of the stand of gum trees and back into the empty lands. The light was dim—it was always so dim! Where was the sun? Where was the daylight that would drive these terrible things into hiding in the earth, that would allow him to rest?
It's been twilight forever, he wanted to scream, it's not fair! But even as he raged at the monstrous cruelty of the universe he heard a coughing bark close behind him. He staggered out of the now useless security of the trees and into the open. The field of gray-yellow stone that lay before him promised to cut his bare feet unmercifully, but he had no choice. Sweating, already exhausted and the chase just starting again, he hurried down the salt pan and out into the dead, dusty land.
The cries behind him grew louder now, inhuman voices whooping with glee, screeching like carrion crows. He looked back, although he knew he should not, that it could only weaken him to see them. Surrounded by the flames of the bushfire, they came loping out of the copse he had just left, laughing and cackling as they spotted him, a crowd of horrid shapes from his mother's stories, some animal, some not, but uniformly monstrous in size and aspect. All of them were female.
His mother ran yipping at the front of the pack, the Dreamtime Bitch herself, first and fiercest as always, her bright dingo eyes glaring, her hairy dingo jaws open to swallow him down into her horrible red insides. Behind her came the Sulaweyo bitch with her sharp spear, as well as the whores Martine and Polly who had somehow grown together into one stone-eyed, blind, remorseless thing. And behind them, through the spreading smoke, hurried all the others—the hungry pack of mopaditi, the nameless, almost faceless dead. But they did not need faces. The dead women had terrible claws and jagged teeth, and legs that could run forever without growing tired.
They had hunted him, hour after hour, day after day, week after week. They would always hunt him.
Weeping like a nightmare-plagued child, whimpering with exhaustion and pain and terror, Johnny Wulgaru ran naked across the dry lands of the Dreamtime, searching desperately for a hiding place that did not exist.
She pulled him into a little park across from the hospital, although she wasn't sure why. The late afternoon light was slanting between the buildings and the thought of taking a taxi back to the rooming house with the harsh light in her eyes depressed her. She wanted to sleep, but she also wanted to talk. The truth was she didn't know what she wanted anymore.
They sat on a bench beside the path, next to a small but surprisingly well-tended flower bed. A group of children were playing atop a bench on the other side of the park, laughing, pushing each other off. One tumbled onto the cement path, but even as Renie leaned forward in reflexive fear the little girl sprang up again and clambered back onto the bench, determined to regain her place.
"He looked better today, didn't he?" Renie asked !Xabbu. "I mean, the way he smiled—that was a real Stephen-smile."
"He does seem better." !Xabbu watched the children for a moment, nodding. "One day, I would like you to see the place I grew up," he said. "Not just the delta, but the desert, too. It can be very beautiful."
Renie was still worrying about Stephen; it took her a second to catch up. "But I've been there!" she said. "The one you built, anyway. That was a beautiful place."
He looked at her carefully. "You seem full of worry, Renie."
"Me? Just thinking about Stephen, I guess." She settled back against the bench. The children had now scrambled down to the ground and were running in a circle on the dusty, cracked cement at the middle of the park, using a solitary palm tree as their center pole. "Do you wonder sometimes what it all means?" she asked suddenly. "I mean now . . . now that we know."
He looked at her again, then back to the shrieking children. "What it all means. . . ?"
"I mean, well, you saw those creatures. Those . . . information people. If they're what comes next, then what about us?"
"I don't understand, Renie."
"What about us? What . . . purpose is there for us? All of us. Everyone on Earth, still living, breeding, dying. Making things. Having arguments. But those information creatures are what comes next, and they've gone on without us."
He nodded slowly. "And parents, when their children are born, do they need to die? Are their lives ended?"
"Well, no—but this is different. Parents take care of their children. They raise them. They help them." She sighed. "Sorry, I'm just . . . I don't know, sad. I don't know why."
He took her hand.
"I just wonder what it all means now," she said, laughing a little. "I suppose it's just that so many things have happened. The world almost came t
o an end. We're getting a place together. We have money! But I'm still not certain I want to accept it."
"Stephen will need a wheelchair and a special bed," !Xabbu said gently. "For a while, anyway. And you liked that house in the hills."
"Yes, but I'm not sure I belong in that house." She laughed again, shook her head. "Sorry. I'm just being difficult."
He smiled, a small, secret smile. "Besides, I have something I wish to spend some of my share of the money on. In fact, I have already done it."
"What? You look very mysterious."
"I have bought some land. In the Okavango Delta. One of the treaties lapsed and it was being sold."
"That's where you grew up. What . . . what are you going to do with it?"
"Spend some time there." He saw her expression and his eyes widened. "Not by myself! With you, I hope. And with Stephen, when he is strong enough, and perhaps even someday with children that you and I might have. Just because they will live in the city world should not mean they never know anything else."
She settled back, her sense of alarm fading. "For a moment there I thought you'd changed your mind . . . about us." She couldn't help frowning. "You could have told me, you know. I wouldn't have tried to stop you."
"I am telling you. I had to make the decision very quickly on the way to meet you at the hospital." He smiled again. "You see what your city life is doing to me? I promise not to hurry again for a year."
She smiled back, a little wearily, and squeezed his hand. "I really am sorry I'm such bad company. All these things to think about, everything is so big and important and . . . and for some reason I'm still wondering if any of it matters."
He looked at her for a moment. "So because the new people took my people's stories on some strange voyage we cannot imagine, does that mean that my people themselves no longer matter?"
"Does it. . . ? Of course not!"
"And because you have seen a version of my desert world—one that I built from my own particular memory—does that mean there would be nothing to gain from seeing its true shape and color? Nothing to gain from taking Stephen and our children there to sleep under the real and living stars?"
"No."
He let go of her hand and reached down beside the bench. When he straightened up he held a small red blossom in his hand. "Do you remember the flower I made for you? The first day you showed me how your virtual world worked?"
"Of course." She could not help staring at the petals, slightly ragged along one edge where something small had chewed them, at their rich, red, velvety color, even at the golden pollen smudged against !Xabbu's brown wrist. "It was very nice."
"I did not make this one," he said. "It is real and it will die. But we can still look at it together, in this moment. That is something, is it not?"
He handed it to her. She raised it to her nose and sniffed it.
"You're right." She took his hand again. Something within her that had been pinched and confined since she had stepped out of the tank at last began to open—to unfurl its wings inside her heart. "Yes. Oh, yes. That is definitely something."
The streetlights were coming on, but across the park the children played on as night fell, oblivious.
Afterword
Even the sounds of the battle had almost vanished now, the pounding roar of the German heavy guns reduced to bass notes that throbbed but no longer had the power to inspire terror. He was swimming up through something, caught and carried toward a light like a dawning sky, and as he rose he could hear her voice again, the dream-voice that had spoken to him for so long.
"Paul! Don't leave us!"
But there was something different about it now—something different about everything. He had heard her so many times, felt her, almost, a presence with wings, with pleading eyes, but now in the confusion and the growing light he saw her whole. She floated before him, her arms spread. Her wings, he realized, were a network of cracks that radiated light. Her face was sad, infinitely sad, but somehow not quite real, like an icon that had been painted and repainted until the original face was almost gone.
"Don't leave, Paul," she begged. For the first time there was something more than sadness in her words—a demanding note, a hopeless, harsh command.
He tried to answer her but found he could not speak. He finally recognized her. It all came flooding back—the tower, the lies, the terrible last moments. And her name came back, too.
"Ava!" But as he said it, as he finally found his voice, she was gone. And then he woke up.
For the first moments he thought he was still trapped in endless nightmare, but had simply shuffled into a different foul dream, the chaos of battle and the surreality of the giant's castle now to be replaced by some horrible vision of death—white walls, faceless white phantoms. Then one of the doctors pulled away his surgical mask and straightened. His face was an ordinary one, a stranger's face.
"He's back."
The others stood up too, shuffled back, then there was a new surgical-smocked figure on the stage, leaning over him, a smiling man with Asian features.
"Welcome back, Mr. Jones," he said. "My name is Owen Tanabe."
Paul could only stare at him, overwhelmed. He let his eyes slide around the wide white room, the banks of machinery. He had not the slightest idea where he was.
"You're undoubtedly a bit disoriented," Tanabe said. "That's all right—you may rest as long as you like. We've provided you with a first-class room—the one this hospital saves for visiting dignitaries." He laughed softly. Paul could tell the man was nervous. "But you are not merely visiting, Mr. Jonas. You're back!"
"Where . . . where am I?"
"In Portland, Oregon, Mr. Jonas. At Gateway Hospital. Where you are the guest of the Telemorphix Corporation."
Things were filtering up, scatters of memory, but they only made him more confused. "Telemorphix. . . ? Oregon? Not Louisiana? Not the . . . the J Corporation?"
"Ah." Tanabe nodded solemnly. "I see that you're beginning to remember. It's a terrible thing, Mr. Jonas, a terrible thing. A very grave mistake . . . an error made not by us but by the J Corporation, I must hasten to point out. But we have rectified it. We hope . . . we hope you will remember that."
Paul could only shake his head. "I don't understand."
"Time and rest, Mr. Jonas, that's all you need. But please—let's not keep you here any longer. Some of my colleagues wanted to have a conversation with you, but I said, 'First we must show Mr. Jonas the depth of our commitment, demonstrate our sorrow and indignation over what was done to him.' You've suffered from a regrettable mistake, Mr. Jonas, but we are on your side. The Telemorphix Corporation is your friend. We will see that everything is put right."
Paul was still shaking his head and fingering the neurocannula at the base of his skull—a piece of expensive equipment he had no memory of acquiring—when he was wheeled into the private room, which did indeed bear a greater resemblance to a hotel suite than anything usually found in a hospital. Only the discreet bank of monitors beside the bed gave any hint of the place's true purpose. A pair of silent orderlies helped him up onto the mattress—Paul was astonished to discover that his legs almost worked, although he felt horribly weak—and then there was only Tanabe standing in the doorway, still smiling.
"Oh, one other thing. I imagine you're too tired to have a visitor?"
"Visitor?" He was exhausted, but frightened to close his eyes—terrified he might wake up in some even stranger situation. "No. I'm not too tired."
Tanabe's mask of good cheer slipped a little. "Ah. Very well. But your doctor and . . . and your visitor's lawyer . . . have agreed that it will only be a fifteen-minute visit. We don't want to risk your health." He regained his expression of unflappable optimism. "After all, you're an important man to all of us."
Paul could only stare, dumbfounded, as the door closed behind Tanabe. He heard someone say something in the hall—voices might have been raised, but the walls were thick and Paul's head felt thick, too. Then the door swu
ng open and a woman he had never seen before walked in. She was about his own age, slender and well-dressed, but clearly ill-at-ease. The only thing he could not quite understand was why she was wearing dark glasses in a dimly lit room.
"Do you mind if I sit?" Her English was lightly accented—Italian? French?
"No." He shook his head, willing to let whatever else was to happen wash over him. Just drift, he thought. Until things make sense. Then it occurred to him that drifting hadn't been a very good strategy so far. He felt a stab of regret for poor, dead Ava, for his own negligent foolishness. "Who are you?"
She looked down for a long moment, then turned the dark lenses back toward him. "I did not think that would hurt, but it did. We are strangers, Paul. But we are friends, too. My name is Martine Desroubins."
He stared at her as she lowered herself into a chair beside his bed. "I've never seen you before—at least I don't think so." He frowned, still slow, still cloudy in his head. "Are you blind?"
"I was." She folded her hands on her lap. "I am still . . . not used to seeing. My eyes hurt from the light sometimes." She tipped her head a little to the side. "But I can see well enough. And it is very good to see you again, Paul."
"I still don't understand any of this. I was working for . . . for Felix Jongleur. In Louisiana. Then something terrible happened. A girl died. I think I've been unconscious since then."
"You have . . . and you have not." She shook her head. "I am confusing you again, of course. I am sorry, but it is a long story—a very long story. Before I begin, though, I need to tell you something important, since they may try to enforce their ridiculous fifteen minutes. Do not sign anything. No matter what the people from that corporation ask you to do, or promise you, give them nothing. Nothing!"
He nodded slowly. "That Tanabe fellow—he was nervous."
"As well he should be, since they helped steal two years of your life. Did he tell you they paid for this hospital room? That is a lie—your friends paid for it. No, that is unfair. You earned it—many times over."
