by Tad Williams
"Please keep your hands out of the water." The guide retained her smile even as her voice hardened to something less cheerful. "This isn't an amusement park, remember—our alligators are not mechanical."
Everyone except Olga laughed dutifully, but the boy still did not stop swiping at the water until his father said, "Lay off, Gareth," and smacked him on the back of the head.
Strange, so strange, Olga thought. So strange, all the years and miles of my life, to wind up here. A bank of cypress loomed ahead in the fast-dissolving morning mist, a gathering of phantoms. Here at the end.
Three days now since she had reached the end of the journey, or perhaps since the journey itself had deserted her. Everything was stasis, pointless as the quiet little guideboat moving along its preprogrammed route across the resurrected swamp. Sleepless through the silent nights, only able to slip into unconsciousness when dawn touched the window blinds of her motel room, Olga could scarcely find the energy to eat and drink, let alone do anything more strenuous. She didn't even know what impulse had led her to buy a ticket for the tour, and nothing so far had made it worth missing the few hours of sleep she might have had in its place. She could see the object of her quest from almost anywhere in the area, after all—the black tower dominated the vicinity as thoroughly as a medieval cathedral its village and fields.
Three days without the voices, without the children. She had not felt so bereft since those distant and terrible days when Aleksandr and the baby had died.
And I can't even remember now what that felt like, she realized. A big emptiness, that's all that's left. Like a hole, and my life since then has just been little things I throw into that hole, trying to fill it up. But I can't feel it.
She never had felt it, she realized—not fully, not truly. Even now it was a blackness that was out of reach, on the other side of some kind of membrane of deliberate ignorance, a thin wall separating her from a horror as complete as the vacuum of space.
If I had ever let it through, she thought, I would be dead. I thought I was strong, but no one is that strong. I kept it away.
"Since the completion of the intracoastal Barrier," the guide was saying, "thousands and thousands of acres of waterway which were being lost to erosion and increasing salinity have been returned to their pristine state, preserved for future generations to enjoy." She nodded, as though she herself had climbed out of bed every morning, smeared on her sunblock, donned her waders, and assembled the barrier.
But it is beautiful, Olga thought, even if it's all an illusion. The boat was murmuring through a patch of vibrantly lavender water hyacinths. Small paddling birds moved unhurriedly out of their way, clearly familiar with what by now must be a generations-old routine. The cypresses were looming closer. The sun had lifted a full span in the east above the Mississippi Sound and the gulf beyond, but the light could not penetrate too deeply among the trees and their knee-high blanket of mist. The darkness between them looked restful, like sleep.
"Yes," said the male half of the professional couple suddenly, "but didn't making the Intracoastal whatever . . . Barrier . . . didn't that utterly ruin like almost all the wetlands that were already there?" He turned to his wife or girlfriend, who tried to look interested. "See, the corporation that owns all this dredged out Lake Borgne over there completely. It was only a few meters deep, then they opened it up to the sea, sank the pilings for that island with the corporate headquarters, all that." He looked up to the guide, a little defiance on his thin face. Olga decided he was an engineer, someone to whom management was usually the enemy. "So, yeah, it was part of the deal that they had to patch the rest of this up, make it a nice little nature park. But it pretty much killed the fishing all around."
"You an environmentalist or something?" the British man asked flatly.
"No." He was a little defensive now. "Just . . . I just follow the news."
"The J Corporation didn't have to do anything," the guide said primly. "They had permission to build in Lake Borgne. It was all legal. They just. . . ." she was reaching, veering an uncomfortable distance off her usual recititativo. . . . "they just wanted to give something back. To the community." She turned and looked at the young pilot, who rolled his eyes but then added a little speed. They began to pass the first cypress stumps, pointy islands breasting the dark water like miniature versions of the mountain that haunted Olga's dreams.
There's nowhere left to go, she thought. I've reached the tower, but it's all private property. Someone even said that the corporation that owns it has a whole standing army. No tours, no visitors, no way. She sighed as the cypresses slid toward them through the mist, enfolding the little boat in mist and angled light.
It was indeed, as the promotional material had claimed, like a watery cathedral, a hall of vertical pillars and hangings, the cypress trees draped with moss like a freeze-frame of liquid flow, the water itself still as a drumhead but for the threading wake of the boat. She could almost imagine that they had passed not just out of the direct sun, but out of the direct surveillance of time itself, had slipped back through millennia to a time when humans had not even touched the vast continents of the Americas.
"Look," said the tour guide, her precisely animated diction puncturing the mood like a needle, "an abandoned boat. That's a pirogue, one of the flat boats the swamp trappers and fishermen used to use."
Olga turned resignedly to see the skeletonized hull of the little craft, its ribs colonized with hyacinths like the capitals of an illuminated breviary. It was beautifully picturesque. Too picturesque.
"A prop," the young professional man whispered to his companion. "This wasn't even swamp until ten years ago—they literally built it after they finished the Lake Borgne project."
"It was a hard life for the people who made their living in the swamp," the guide continued, ignoring the man. "Although there were periodic economic booms in the area, based around fur or cypress wood, the downturns were generally longer. Before J Corporation created the Louisiana Swamp Preserve, it was a dying way of life."
"Don't look like there's a lot of people making a living here now," the British man offered, and laughed.
"Gareth, leave the turtle alone," his wife said.
"Ah, but there are people still making a living in the old-fashioned way," the guide responded cheerfully, pleased that she had been given an easy one. "You'll see on the last stop on our tour, when we reach the Swamp Market. The old crafts and skills haven't been forgotten, but preserved."
"Like a dead pig in a jar of alcohol," the engineer said quietly, displaying what Olga thought was an unexpected gift for simile.
"If it comes to that," the guide said, finally allowing her own defensiveness to show through, "Charleroi's people come from this same area, didn't they?" She turned to the young pilot, who gazed back at her with infinite weariness. "Isn't your family from right around here?"
"Yah." He nodded, then spat over the side. "And look at me today."
"Piloting a boat through the swamp," the tour guide said, her point proved.
As the guide went on to list in great detail the red-shouldered hawk, ibis, annhinga, and other creatures winged and otherwise who frequented the reclaimed swamp, Olga let her mind wander away, lazy as the track through the floating duckweed of yesterday's final tour, which their own boat was following with only the smallest of deviations. A bird the guide identified as a bittern made a sound like a hammer striking a board. The cypresses began to thin, the mist to burn away.
They slipped from the grove to find the stern black finger of God held up before them, dominating the horizon beyond the swamp's vegetative carpet.
"Lord," said the Englishwoman. "Gareth, look at that, darling."
"It's just that building," the child said, rooting in the daypack for something else to eat. "We saw it before,"
"Yes, that's the J Corporation tower," the guide said, as proud of the distant structure as she had been of the Intra-coastal Barrier. "You can't see from here, but the island in Lak
e Borgne contains an entire city, with its own airport and police force."
"They basically make their own law," the professional man told his partner, who was dabbing her forehead with a handkerchief. He didn't bother to whisper this time. "The guy who owns it, Jongleur, is one of the richest guys in the world, no dupping. They say he pretty much owns the government down here."
"That's not very fair, sir. . . ." the guide began, flushing.
"Are you kidding?" The man snorted, then turned to the British family. "They say that the only reason Jongleur doesn't admit he owns the government outright is because then he'd have to pay taxes on it."
"Isn't he the one who's two hundred years old?" the British woman asked as her husband chortled at the idea of owning your own government. "I saw about him on the tabnets—he's a machine or something." She turned to her husband. "I saw it. Made me go cold all over, thinking about it."
The guide waved her hands. "There is a great deal of exaggeration about Mr. Jongleur, most of it cruel. He's an old man and he's very ill, it's true." She put on what Olga thought of as the Sad Newsreader Face, the one that net people donned when presenting schoolbus crashes or senseless homicides. "And of course he's influential—the J Corporation is the biggest employer in the New Orleans area, and has interests worldwide. They're a major stockholder in many companies, household names—CommerceBank, Clinsor Pharmaceutical, Dartheon. Obolos Entertainment, for that matter, the children's interactive company. What's your name," she asked the little boy, "Gareth, isn't it? Surely you know Uncle Jingle, don't you, Gareth?"
"Yeah. 'Snot fair!' " He laughed and slapped his mother's shin with his lightstick.
"See? J Corporation is involved in lots of things, vested in wholesome and consumer-friendly companies all over the world. We are, as we like to say, a 'people corporation'. . . ."
The rest of the spiel was lost to Olga—in fact, she had stopped hearing what the woman said after the mention of Obolos. In all her years working for the company she did not remember being told anything about J Corporation. But, of course, who paid attention? In a world where every corporate fish was both eater and eaten, who could even tell which fish had swallowed last?
I should have researched the tower, I should have. . . .
But it had been a religious experience, a revelation, not a school assignment. The children's voices had demanded she come, and so she had put away her worldly goods and come.
Uncle Jingle—Uncle Jingle comes from the black tower.
Olga Pirofsky spent almost two more hours in the tiny boat, surrounded by faces whose mouths moved but whose voices she could no longer bear to listen to, an interstellar traveler landed among babbling aliens.
Uncle Jingle is murdering the children. And I helped him do it.
"I don't understand here," said Long Joseph. "Where is this Sellars? You said he was on the phone—you said he was calling and calling on the phone. But now he don't call at all, anytime."
"He said he'd call back." Jeremiah spread his hands helplessly. "He said there were things going on . . . we're not the only ones with problems."
"Yeah, but I bet we are the only ones locked up in a mountain while a bunch of Boer murderers trying to burn their way in and kill us."
"Just settle down, would you? You're making my head hurt." Del Ray Chiume had returned from his brief inspection tour. "Don't pay any attention to him," he told Jeremiah. "Just read us the notes you made—it's not like we have a lot of time to waste arguing."
Long Joseph Sulaweyo didn't like anything much about the way this was going. It was bad enough being trapped in a deep underground base in the middle of nowhere, with only three bottles of anything decent to drink to last God only knew how long, and people outside who wanted to kill him, but now it appeared that Del Ray—Del Ray who Joseph himself had brought here—was making common cause with Jeremiah Dako, ganging up against him.
Joseph could make no sense of it, unless Del Ray, too, was secretly a girly-man as well, and the deep fraternal bond was stronger than other loyalties. Maybe that is the real reason he broke up with my Renie.
"So I am supposed to trust my life to this kak?" he demanded.
"Don't start with me, Joseph Sulaweyo," Jeremiah said. "Not after you just disappeared for days without an explanation, leaving me to handle everything."
"I had to go see my son." But he could not escape a small flitting shadow of guilt. He would not want to be cooped up in this place alone. Perhaps it had not been easy for Jeremiah either. "All right, then, who is this Sellars man? What business does he have with us, that he calls up from nowhere and tells us what to do?"
"The business is trying to save our lives," Jeremiah growled. "And if you hadn't shown up when you did, he would have been the only thing to keep me from being murdered by those men out there."
"That and several feet of battleship steel plate." Del Ray was trying to sound cheerful but hadn't quite succeeded. "There are worse places to be under siege than in a hardened military bunker."
"Not if we don't get things in order," Jeremiah said primly. "Now, are you going to listen?"
Joseph had not entirely buried his suspicions. "But if this man is away in America like you say, how did he find this place? It is supposed to be a big secret."
"I'm not exactly sure. He knows a lot about Renie and !Xabbu and the French woman—he even knew something about that old man Singh. Sellars says he's dead."
"Why he say a thing like that?" Joseph felt a thrill of superstitious fear. It had been so strange holding the empty line, waiting for the voice out of nowhere—the voice that never came. "This man Sellars really tell you he is dead?"
Jeremiah stared, then gave a snort of exasperation. "He said Singh was dead. Singh. The old man that helped Renie and the others. Now will you shut up and listen to what I've written here? There are men trying to break into this place. A folding bed crammed in the elevator door is not truly a long-term solution."
Joseph waved his hand. That was one thing about these homosexual men—like women, they always got so stressed up about things. "Talk, then. I will listen."
Jeremiah snorted again, then looked at the notes he had scribbled in old-fashioned pencil on the concrete pillar. "Sellars says that we can't just block the elevator—that they could come down the shaft. We have to seal off this entire section of the base. He says that the plans show how to do that. But we also have to prepare for a long siege, so we have to bring everything we need down to this place. Joseph, that means you have to haul as much food and water as you can down from the kitchen. We don't know how long we have until they manage to get through the outer doors, so we have to be ready to seal the. thing up as quickly as possible. If we get it ready, then have more time, we'll bring down more food and water."
"What, you want me just to haul those plastic water things like a day laborer? Who is going to look for the guns—Del Ray? You should see him with a pistol in his hand. He is more dangerous to us than to those bad men."
Joseph closed his eyes for a moment. Del Ray said something nasty under his breath. "It's hard to believe there were moments I actually almost missed your company," Jeremiah said. "First, there are no guns, just like there aren't any office supplies. Almost anything small enough to be carried away was taken when they closed this place down. They only left food and water because they thought they might use it someday as a bomb shelter or something. Second, even if we had guns, we couldn't stop these people. You said yourself they were armored like a Special Operations team. Sellars says the best thing for us to do is to seal this off and wait them out."
Long Joseph wasn't sure whether he was sorry or not that he wouldn't be shooting it out with the Boer hitmen. "So what is he going to be doing?" he asked, cocking a thumb at Del Ray.
"Depends. Mr. Chiume, do you know anything about computer systems, electronics?"
Del Ray shook his head. "My degree was political science. I know how to use a pad, but that's about it."
Jeremiah sighed.
"I was afraid of that. Sellars said there are lots of patches to be made so that he can help us more. I guess I'll just have to muddle through them myself, if I can figure out his instructions. God, I hope he calls back soon."
"Patches?"
"This is a very old-fashioned system here, twenty, thirty years old or more. I don't know what exactly he plans to do, but he said it was important." He tried to smile. He looked very gray and drawn. "Well, then, Mr. Chiume, I suppose you will have generator duty."
"Call me Del Ray, please. What am I supposed to do?"
"If we're going to be locked down here in the lab, we need the generator, because those men up there will certainly be trying to turn off the main power. We have to have power just to get air in and out of here, not to mention keeping the tanks running." He gestured toward the huge shapes on the floor a level beneath them, tangled in their cables like stones overgrown with clinging vines. "Sellars said we're lucky they have a hydrogen-storage generator down here, not a reactor, because the military would have taken the hot material out of a reactor and we'd have nothing except the main power source."
"I still do not understand," grumbled Long Joseph, his mind full of the unattractive picture of himself carrying dozens of heavy plastic water jugs and food canisters down from the upper level. "What does he know of my Renie? How would she know someone from America, him get all involved with this, with us?"
Del Ray shrugged and answered for Jeremiah. "What are any of us doing here in this strange place? Why did a bunch of thugs come to my door and threaten to kill me because my ex-girlfriend was talking to a French researcher? It's a strange world and it's getting stranger."
"That is the first thing you say all day that makes sense," declared Joseph.
Joseph felt sweaty and irritable, but what was more disturbing was how the empty, echoing halls of the Wasp's Nest base made the sweat turn cold on his skin. Joseph did not like to think of himself as the type to be shivering with fear—although it had happened to him more than once in his life—but neither could he pretend that everything was going to be okay either.
