The Illusionists

by Laure Eve

  ‘I suppose it can be when your parents leave you on a farm doorstep with no explanation,’ said Rue.

  ‘Orphans are a rare phenomenon in World. I’m curious as to how it happens.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘Do you have any other family you are aware of?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Hopefully that will have made the transition easier. It’s one of the reasons Wren picked you, and I’m pleased he hasn’t faulted in that area.’

  Rue frowned, picking over Greta’s words.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ she said.

  ‘Because a little bit of truth never did anyone any harm. I want you to be under no illusions, Rue. You were hand-picked, so you can feel proud of that, if you wish. But the rest of your Angle Tar group was also tested. In most cases, they would have found the transition too difficult.’

  ‘Because they have families?’ said Rue, incredulous.

  ‘That’s only a part of it. There were other factors.’ Greta looked at Wren. ‘You can leave now. You have projects to finish.’

  Wren stood up and bowed. ‘My lady,’ he said, with the merest touch of playful insolence, and moved out of the room.

  Rue felt her heart sink. She didn’t want to be left alone here. She needed Wren; she couldn’t navigate this strange culture without him.

  ‘So, Rue,’ Greta began, but Rue cut her short.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘Just … please.’

  She had barely begun to process the revelation that the rest of her group had also been approached, and presumably by Wren; the thought of him seducing them with his strangeness and loveliness and promise of an incredible adventure made her cheeks flush. So she wasn’t the only one he had done that with, then.

  Did she care? Should she care?

  ‘What is it?’ said Greta.

  Rue searched for the right questions. ‘So Wren picked me because I’m an orphan? How did he know anything about me in the first place?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that, much as I’d like to. It’s a part of a larger operational issue.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Greta raised a brow. ‘It means I can’t tell you.’

  Rue wanted to press it, but kept silent instead.

  ‘Do you find him handsome?’ said Greta, with a smile.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s an easy question, I’d have thought. Do you find Wren handsome?’

  Rue watched her, but those constructed green eyes gave nothing away.

  Was this some sort of test? What was the right answer?

  ‘Yes,’ she said, cautiously.

  ‘Naturally. You know he didn’t used to look like that, don’t you? When I first met him, he was a podgy, rather drab-looking boy. He knows how to disguise himself, that one. He’s good at showing you what you want to see. That’s why he’s so useful to us. That and his Talent.’

  Rue felt herself diagnosed under that gaze, but Greta’s expression was warm and pleasant.

  ‘Which brings me to you,’ she continued. ‘In many ways, you’re quite different to Wren. His Talent is obvious, ridiculously so. He likes to flaunt it. You don’t. You’re shyer, and sweeter, than him. A less complex nature.’

  Rue couldn’t help it. Her eyes narrowed.

  Greta laughed. ‘Oh, don’t take it as an insult, I meant it in quite the opposite way. That’s an attractive quality. And you’re naturally pretty, which is another point of difference to Wren.’ A little smile spread across her lips. ‘Very pretty, actually.’

  Now what was this all about? What was she supposed to do with such twisty sentences that seemed to have more than one meaning, none of which she could fathom? She was supposed to blush, she supposed, and be coy. Or say something equally twisty back.

  So she didn’t.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said, instead.

  Greta’s smile stiffened. ‘What am I doing?’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes. It’s weird. I don’t like it. Why don’t you speak straight?’

  There was a pause.

  Then Greta laughed. ‘Oh dear. You don’t take compliments well, do you? You might want to work on that.’

  She was supposed to feel stupid now, she knew; out of line and clumsy. But Greta’s face had an edge to it that wasn’t there before, and she knew she’d upset something.

  Begun well, haven’t we? she thought. Oh, Rue. Perhaps you should learn to play games better.

  But she couldn’t see much of a point in that.

  ‘So,’ said Greta. ‘I’m sure you’d like to know a little bit more about how things work here.’ She leaned back. Her avatar’s eyes were a lovely old velveteen kind of green, like plush upholstery. The kind that made you feel rich and beautiful when you sat on it. ‘Much like in Angle Tar, we source Talented people and take them under our care. I run the research division of this programme, where we try to determine what Talent is and what it can do. I work directly under Alasdair Snearing, so you can imagine how seriously we take our Talented programme here.’

  She raised a brow when Rue didn’t react.

  ‘Alasdair Snearing?’ she said.

  Rue shrugged. ‘I don’t know who that is.’

  ‘He’s a rather famous politician. Haven’t you been familiarising yourself with the culture here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see. Well, that is what I do.’

  ‘And what do I do?’ said Rue. ‘I mean … why did you pick me? Why am I here?’

  ‘Why are you here?’ Greta replied.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Greta spread a hand. ‘Why are you here?’ she repeated. ‘I’ve told you that we picked you out based on compatibility. I’ve told you that we sought you and others like you. But you were the one who said yes. You were the one who responded to Wren. And you made the choice to leave. We would never have forced you, but you were eager to go. I’d be very interested to know why.’

  Rue was silent, a war raging inside her. White’s face surfaced in her mind, inevitable.

  Why did you run away, Rue? Because right now, you can’t think of a good reason. Not one.

  No one wanted me there, she argued back silently. I bet they don’t even miss me, not a bit. And they lied about the rest of the world; they kept us from it! It shouldn’t be illegal to know the truth. They all lied to me, even Fernie. Sat there for years while I told her I saw the world in my dreams, and she said it was nothing. Lied to my face.

  Oh, said her other self, amused. But here they’ll tell you the truth. Won’t they?

  ‘I’ll let you think about it, shall I?’ came Greta’s voice. ‘In the meantime, why don’t you go home and brush up on current events? I’d like you to integrate yourself here, Rue. Go to parties, socialise. In time, we’ll begin a few studies on you to help us further our research. Wren will look after you. Rely on him. Trust him. Eventually we’ll get you an implant. I think you’d like that, wouldn’t you, instead of having to use that decrepit old box all the time?’ Greta smiled. ‘We’re here to help you become a Worlder, Rue. And if you work hard to do so, you’ll be one in no time.’

  Rue felt a strange twisting chill down her back.

  That was what she was supposed to want, wasn’t it?

  She came out of Greta’s room and made her way back to her Life account, pushing carefully up from HI-Life to surface Life, until she opened her eyes and saw the now-familiar shifting and dancing wallpaper of Wren’s bedroom once more, watched those Old Times characters go about their repetitive business.

  Well.

  That had not gone the way she had expected it to one bit.

  What did you want? More people telling you how special you are? Stop being a child. You’re a grown-up now.

  Brush up on current events. Integrate into World.

  Might as well start now.

  She remained in Surface Life, scrolling aimlessly through news feeds until one heading caught her eye. It was about a suspected Tech
nophobe accused of hacking into a major World city’s power grid with the intention of shutting it down.

  Rue read it through, then lifted a finger and pressed on the word ‘Technophobe’. The new search brought reams of images and words scrolling past her curious gaze.

  The Technophobes had started out as a moral protest group. Such things were common here, apparently. Rue couldn’t conceive of such a notion. If you were unhappy about something in Angle Tar, you spoke to your mayor’s representative about it, who would do something if the price was right or if he felt like it, but more often than not had no power to change anything. Here, protesting appeared to be something of a national pastime.

  The group was small at first, and easily ignored. But no one had predicted how big their voice would get. In only a few years they started to become something of a concern to authorities, as they never appeared to go away or grow tired of their protests, and they liked extremes.

  Images rolled past her eyes, of words and paintings daubed on walls and street pavements. People screaming and roaring into a row of silent police with guns and face shields. Like watching the sea crash against a cliff.

  Interviews with Technophobe sympathisers, or haters. Opinions, opinions everywhere. Faces expanded in her vision. Images of people attending rally meetings, surging crowds. Such ordinary looking people, to her. Some of them looked like children, they were so young.

  White.

  Her heart leapt straight into her mouth.

  She stared at the image that had just played.

  That was him.

  She paused the screen and expanded his face until it filled her vision.

  He was younger, but it was him. He had the same sharp edges, the same eyes. His skin wasn’t yet as luminous as she remembered it to be, but it was as pale.

  A peculiar feeling came over her, one she couldn’t immediately place. The pit of her belly was squeezing, knotting her up. She looked at the details flashing beside his face. He’d had a different name, before Angle Tar. It was Jacob Yun.

  Jacob.

  She put her finger on his face.

  The image opened up in a rush towards her. Information poured out. Images of an older White, thinner and hollow. She saw the word ‘interrogation’.

  More words, one in particular. ‘Prison’.

  He had been in prison.

  She shouldn’t be looking at this. It was his private pain, a past he would never want her or any other Angle Tarain knowing about.

  Current whereabouts: Angle Tar was listed. Capital City was listed.

  An image of him standing next to Frith, taken from afar.

  So it was true. That particular rumour she’d heard about him really was true, and he had betrayed his country by leaving it.

  Just like you did, said a voice in her head.

  But unlike Rue, White had been imprisoned first. Tortured. Humiliated and ripped to pieces. The most pain Rue had ever endured was rejection; nothing compared to this.

  Did this change something? Now that she understood him a little better, was she supposed to forgive him for the way he was? Should it matter?

  She gestured, pulling the information away from her field of vision as if she could sweep him from her mind, too. Sweep him away and forget him, because it was all too late for that.

  A soft bleep sounded in Rue’s ear. She switched to the view of her Life account, and saw the bouncing icon of a new message. She opened it up.

  It was a party invitation from their area team. She looked at the list of invitees included in the message. Wren was on there, too.

  Her first party. She supposed she should be excited by that, but instead all she felt was a churning nervous sickness.

  You’ll get used to it, she told herself. You need to give it time.

  She sighed.

  When Wren wasn’t around and she didn’t feel like leaving the house, Rue spent her time alone jacked into Life, playing games, endless varieties of games. Some games let you become another person for a while, let you keep a pet or build a house, or go to strange places where people danced to the most bizarre noise Rue had ever heard and had long, involved conversations with each other. Other environments she had stumbled upon in Life were too odd to mention or make much sense of, and she had left those places quickly.

  Old Times was rapidly becoming her favourite game. It really did seem the most popular game in World – at any one time, it told her that millions of people were playing it. All it seemed to consist of was chores and tasks, a hundred different things she had done every day of her life as a young girl. Milking, feeding, cooking, making beds, sweeping out stalls, washing. Male players spent their time farming out in virtual fields, made tools, reaped and sowed.

  She supposed, from a Worlder point of view, that she could see the fascination of it, of such an extraordinarily different way of living. No one here seemed quite able to believe that there was a place in the world where people really did still live like that, even when she told them about it. For herself it was like being a child again, working on the farm back in her old village. It reminded her very strongly of Angle Tar, and it was confusing, and irritating, to know that she couldn’t let go of her old life as easily as she would have liked.

  The virtual world of Life was becoming everything that she knew. There was something about that feeling that appalled her, but her choice was limited.

  It was that, or nothing.

  CHAPTER 4

  WORLD

  WREN

  Heart screaming in terror, legs like paper and crumpling treacherously underneath him, Wren ran for his life.

  The thin rustle-buzz of its wings filled the corridor, filled his ears. It sounded like it was right on top of him, but he knew it wasn’t. He knew he was outrunning it. He had to know that and to believe it or he was dead.

  He turned a corner. The corridor before him was completely different. A carpeted floor instead of flagstones, flimsy blowing curtains lining the creamy walls and skirting the ground. He slowed.

  The buzzing had been cut off.

  He risked a quick look behind him, his insides churning in dread, but the thing had gone. He was all alone.

  He put his back against the nearest wall. The chill pressed up against his palms. His heart still smashed painfully in his chest, but it had begun to slow, calming. It took a while. There was no noise, he told himself, over and over.

  It had gone.

  He started to walk along the corridor, eyes wide for anything lurking.

  A little further along sat a massive chest, pushed back into an alcove. It had thick black hinges and gold scrollwork etched across its lid. Closer to Wren another alcove held a tall, spidery lamp, made of some material he couldn’t even begin to guess at – like smoked glass, but with curling tendrils peeling away from its stem that were too thin to be anything he could fathom. Hanging from one of the tendrils was a little brass key on a chain.

  The lamp was closest. He inched towards it. The key glinted, tantalising him. It opened something. It had to mean something. He was obviously meant to find it. There would be doors around here, hundreds of them. There always were in the Castle. The key would open one of them, and behind the door would be a clue to the power this place held. A way for him to get it.

  Or maybe it opened that chest over there.

  The lamp was really very strange, up close. Smoked glass was a poor way to describe what it was made of – like calling the sea a big puddle of water. The material was impregnated with tiny figures, creatures that resembled nothing he’d ever seen before. The stuff looked solid, but when he touched it, it felt like gel, and his fingers, when he pulled them away, were smeared with it. And it seemed thin from far away, but up close he realised that it was actually huge. Thicker than his arm. No, thicker than a bed. No, even thicker than that. Maybe as wide as a house, or a garden, or maybe even a whole town.

  ‘You should stop that,’ said a voice behind him.

  The lamp’s spell was shattered. He did
n’t bother turning around. The voice was all too familiar.

  ‘Why?’ he said.

  ‘It’s one of those “the more you examine it, the stranger it gets” things,’ said the voice. ‘You’ll get lost in it. It’s really easy to get lost, here. You shouldn’t have run away from me.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘That thing nearly ate you. I rescued you.’

  Wren turned, finally, amazed. ‘Rescued me?’ he sneered.

  ‘I pulled you to another part of the Castle, far away from it.’

  The Ghost Girl tilted her head to one side, her scribbly eyes examining him.

  ‘What were you trying to do?’ she said.

  Wren considered. Lying was extremely difficult here. He didn’t know why. He always fudged it when he tried. It was just easier not to speak at all, but he wasn’t very good at that.

  ‘I was trying to talk to one of them,’ he replied.

  ‘You’ll probably need to stop being so afraid of them first, then.’

  He looked down, before his eyes could give away the rage he felt.

  ‘You can’t just run away from me every time I call you here,’ she said. ‘You’ll get lost. You’ll die. I told you not to try and open the Castle. Not to talk to them. I told you what would happen if anyone did. Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Wren wearily.

  But she was edgy. Sometimes he could push it, but not this time. Too fast to feel it before it happened, and he was on the floor as if he’d been smacked off his feet. She stood where she had been, a little statue. She hadn’t moved.

  He felt a spasm of pure, beautiful rage. It propelled him up, but she held him down. And he couldn’t fight her.

  You’ll pay for that, he thought, because he couldn’t seem to speak. The day I’m more powerful than you, I’ll come looking for you.

  ‘And how will you find me?’ said the Ghost Girl, as if he had spoken aloud. ‘You can’t even come here by yourself. You can only come when I let you.’

  SCREW YOU, screamed his mind.

  ‘I wish you weren’t so angry, Wren,’ she said, eventually. ‘I wish that for you.’