by Tad Williams
"Keep them, then," !Xabbu said in disgust. "Keep your secrets."
"A man without secrets is no man at all," Jongleur spat back.
"Tchi seen," said Sam. "He's scannulated. Forget him. !Xabbu. Let's get going." But she was puzzled by the change from Jongleur's normally icy expression. For a moment he had looked like a man pursued by demons.
The idea of sharing a dream was still bothering her as they walked. "How could that be?" she asked him. "I mean, it's one thing for us to see the same things, because they're all pumped into our heads by the system. But you can't pump in thoughts and dreams and fenfen like that." She frowned. "Can you?"
!Xabbu shrugged. "Since we have been in this network, there have been nothing but questions." He turned to Jongleur. "Tell us, since you will not talk of dreams, how it is that we are kept on this network against our will? You call yourself a master, a god even, but now you, too, are trapped here. How can such a thing be? With all that expensive equipment of yours, you may be little more than a mind in the wires, perhaps—but me? I am not even wearing a neurocannula, if that is the word. The system has no direct contact to my brain."
"There is always direct contact between the outside and the brain," Jongleur responded sourly. "Constantly. You of all people, with your talk of ancient tribal ways and living close to nature, should know that it has been going on since the beginning of time. We do not see unless light transmits messages to the brain, or hear without sound imposing patterns on it." He smirked. "It is happening all the time, all through life. What you mean is that there is no direct electronic contact between your brain and this network—no wires. And that is meaningless in this situation."
"I do not understand," !Xabbu said patiently. Sam had thought he was taunting the older man out of anger, but she thought now he was working toward something else. "What do you mean—are you saying there are other ways of putting thoughts in my mind?"
Jongleur rolled his eyes. "If you think I am going to reveal the secrets of my expensive operating system as part of this childish catechism, you are mistaken. But any school-child, even one from the backwaters of Africa, should be able to guess what it is that keeps us online. Have you gone offline?"
"I have," Sam said grimly. The memory was horrible.
"And what happened?" He looked at her fiercely, intently, like some grandfather from hell. "Come, tell me. What happened?"
"It . . . hurt. I mean just majorly scorching."
Jongleur rolled his eyes. "I have been forced to endure ten generations of teenage slang. That alone would be enough to discourage a lesser man from wanting to live as long as I have. Yes, it hurt. But you didn't manage to get offline by yourself, did you?"
"No," Sam said grudgingly. "Someone unplugged me. Back in RL."
"Yes, in 'real life.' How appropriate." Jongleur showed his teeth—a sort of chilly grin. "Because you couldn't find the way to do it yourself, just as I can't now. And do you think that is because, as those religious fools in the Circle believe will happen one day, we have been translated into Paradise, into incorruptible bodies, innocent of such things as neurocannulae? Do you think so?"
"No." Sam scowled at him. "Chance not."
"Then why else can't you find something you know perfectly well is there? Think, child!" He turned to !Xabbu. "Have I lost you? Can you not guess?"
The Bushman looked back at Jongleur coldly. "If we could guess, we would have already done so without your lecture, which explains nothing."
Jongleur threw his hands up in a gesture of mock-frustration. "Then I will bore you no longer. Solve the riddles yourself." He slowed until he was several paces behind them once more.
"I hate him," Sam said in whispered fury.
"Do not waste your strength, and especially do not let anger blind you to him. He is clever—I was a fool to think I could draw him out so simply. He has plans of his own, I am sure, and will not easily give anything for anyone else's benefit."
Sam fingered the length of broken sword thrust through the waist of her garment. "All the same, I hope he gives me an excuse to use this on him."
!Xabbu squeezed her arm hard. "Do nothing reckless, Sam. I tell you as a friend. Renie would tell you the same if she were here. He is a dangerous man."
"I'm dangerous too," said Sam, but in a voice so quiet even !Xabbu didn't hear.
They had stopped three times for sleep when !Xabbu finally made his discovery.
Sam and !Xabbu had experienced similar dreams each time, although never exact duplicates. Jongleur continued to make uneasy noises in his sleep, but remained silent about it when awake.
The tramping through the endless, featureless overcast had itself turned into a kind of dreary dream—faced with such unending nothing, Sam had several times slid over into hallucination. Once she saw the front doors of her school in West Virginia, as clearly as if she stood at the bottom of the steps. She even raised her hands to pull them open, braced for the noise of the echoing hallways, then found that she was reaching out toward nothingness and that !Xabbu was looking at her with concern. She also saw Orlando and her parents several times, distant but unmistakable shapes. Once she saw her grandfather trimming a hedge.
Even !Xabbu seemed oppressed by the monotony, the terrible dull pale cloudiness of everything, the continuous pointless now; even he grew increasingly silent and withdrawn. Thus, when he paused suddenly and awkwardly in the middle of one of his investigations, interrupting what had by now become a sort of boringly familiar dance of turning and listening, turning and listening, Sam thought maybe he too had been caught by a hallucination—a vision of Renie, perhaps, or some feature of his people's desert home.
"I do not believe it!" Surprisingly, he had an eager tone in his voice that had been missing for some time. "Unless I am losing my mind." He laughed. "Come, this way."
Jongleur, who had been showing little more animation than a sleepwalker, dutifully followed, setting one foot after the other as though reading it from an instruction manual. Sam hurried to catch up with !Xabbu.
"What is it?" she said. "Did you hear something?"
"I need quiet, Sam."
"Sorry." She fell back a little way. Please let him be right, she thought, watching the poised, flexible tension of his naked back. Please let him find something. I hate this gray. I hate it so much. . . .
!Xabbu abruptly stopped and crouched. The silvery void was all around him, unchanged and seemingly unchangeable. The small man grew wide-eyed, waving his fingers at nothing visible, paddling them in small circular motions at ground level, until Sam suddenly became terrified that he had lost his mind.
"What are you doing?" She almost shouted it.
"Feel, Sam, feel!" He dragged her down beside him and shoved her hand into the perfectly empty patch of nothing identical with every other cubic meter of nothing that stretched away in all directions. "There. Do you see?"
She shook her head, fearful. Jongleur had stumped up and now paused, looking down on them as though they were beggars he had discovered living in his rose garden. "I don't see anything," she moaned.
"I am sorry. I spoke badly—there is nothing to see. But maybe you can feel or hear it. . . ." He held her hands in his own and gently moved them back and forth just above the ground. "Anything?" When she shook her head, he pulled his own hands away from hers. "Try again. Concentrate."
It took long moments, but at last she felt it—the faintest, most negligible force, a weak current of skin-temperature air, perhaps, or a vibration so meager she could barely distinguish it from the tremble of her own pulse in her fingers. "What . . . what is it?"
"A river," !Xabbu said triumphantly. "I am certain it is. Or at least it will be."
CHAPTER 9
Hannibal's Return
NETFEED/INTERACTIVES: HN, Hr. 6.5 (Eu, NAm)—"Teen Mob!"
(visual: Mako and Crank Monkey searching alley for Klorine)
VO: Suicidal Klorine (Bibi Tanzy) has just discovered she is not her parents' biological daughter. She
takes an overdose of pills, but none of the Teen Mob know where she is. Her friends Crank Monkey and Mako only have two hours to find her before it's too late. Producers claim: "Surprise Ending of the Year!" Casting 12 Madness Mall employees, pharmacist. Flak to: HN.TNMB.CAST
"I should have guessed," said Florimel bitterly, staring into the view-window at the distant, beetle-riding shape. "Someone like Robert Wells will always find a way to get himself onto the winning side." They all stood frozen, helpless. Even Kunohara had stopped trying to make his ruined system function. The crush of mutated wasps swarming over the bubble-house filled Paul with claustrophobic terror—any moment the barbed stingers dimpling the transparent walls would break through and the whole thing would dissolve into tatters, dropping the squirming mass directly on top of them. But what could they do? They were surrounded, but even if they got out, the Twins were waiting. Once he was out of the bubble and onto open ground, they would hunt him down without mercy. . . .
"You still have not answered my question, Kunohara." Martine's voice was raw—Paul could hear her fighting to keep her words steady. "We must rely on each other or we have nothing. Did you have an informant among us?"
He turned on her angrily. "You have no right to question me! You and your carelessness have brought this down on us all." He glared, then turned back to the window. "I will go out. Wells at least I can talk to, although I doubt I can trust him."
"Gonna sell us out, him," T4b growled, but bluster could not hide his fright. "Don't let him do it!"
Paul astonished himself by saying, "Then I'll go with him."
Even Kunohara looked surprised, but there was cold rage in his eyes as well. "Why? Do you think if this child was correct with his accusations of treachery, you could stop me?"
"That's not why. Those creatures—the Twins. They've been hunting me all along. If it's me they're looking for, well . . . maybe without me the others would be safe." It sounded even more foolish spoken out loud, but he could not simply wait here for everything to collapse.
"I'm not sure I understand you," Kunohara said. "But if you are with me, you are in no greater danger out there than here."
"Maybe you could just . . . take us all away." Paul was already regretting having volunteered. "Wouldn't that be better? Move us all somewhere else, like you brought us back from where the scorpion was?"
"And give up my house to them?" Kunohara looked at him with scorn. "This is what I have left to keep me alive. This is my local interface—the seat of my power, at least what little of it remains. If I flee and they destroy this place, we would not last half an hour out in that world." He shook his head, face a grim mask. "Do you still wish to come out to parley with me?"
Paul took a breath. "I think so, yes."
The house vanished, replaced by a cold, windy riverbank. The outcropping of stone on which they now stood was surrounded by deformed beetles and wasps, the buzzing so loud he feared it would make him sick to his stomach. The bubble which they had just left was invisible beneath a crawling mass of insects.
"Wells!" Kunohara shouted at a human figure watching the action from the edge of the stone. "Robert Wells!"
The man sitting astride a beetle as proportionately large as an elephant turned at the call. He kicked with his heels at the creature's shell until it slowly turned toward them, moving with an almost mechanical dignity. The human rider leaned forward, squinting.
"Ah," he said brightly. "Doctor Kunohara, I presume?" Paul understood what Martine had meant—Wells' sim did indeed look slightly less than realistic. The pale hair and the general shape of the face echoed what he had seen in newsnet footage of the technocrat, but there was something unfinished, almost doll-like about the features.
Kunohara was tight-lipped. "Yes, it is me. But I do not recall inviting you here, Wells. You are even wearing one of my scientists' jumpsuits, I see. What of the agreement I had with the Brotherhood?"
Wells looked briefly and incuriously at Paul before turning back to Kunohara. "Oh, the Brotherhood. Well, that ship ran into a bit of an iceberg, if you haven't heard." He laughed breathily. Paul did not know the man, but thought he seemed strange, almost a little mad. "Oh, yes, the Old Man screwed that up pretty damn thoroughly. Then got bumped off by one of his own employees, no less. A corporate power play, I suppose you'd call it, although the timing was unfortunate," His not-quite-human smile didn't fade. "Everything's gone to hell now, really. But it's not all bad. We just have to stay in the saddle until everything calms down again."
Kunohara's expression had not changed. "You make jokes, Wells, but as you do so, you are trying to destroy my home, the things I have built here."
Wells swayed a little as the beetle changed position underneath him. "Not me! I'm just along for the ride. It's my new friends you want to talk to." He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. Paul's heart raced as two mismatched figures appeared over the edge of the stone. It was all he could do not to run, to trust Kunohara's failing abilities instead. "It's not even you they're after, Kunohara, it's your guests," Wells said. Now he looked at Paul again, the smile lazy and a bit disconnected. "Apparently they've gotten on the wrong side of the new management. If you'd just hand them over to the boys," he cocked his head at the approaching pair, "I'm sure you'd be welcome to join us." He leaned forward and winked. "Time to choose up sides, you know. At the moment, it's not a hard choice at all."
Paul hardly registered Wells' words. He was fixed in sickly fascination on the two creatures moving toward them, the sagging, fleshy caterpillar and the albino cricket—Mullet and Finch—no, that had only been their names in the trenches. Mudd and Finney.
A spark of memory. Mudd and Finney . . . a dark room, two mismatched shapes. . . .
It was gone. Paul shuddered. They were as horrible to look at as they always were, no matter the incarnation, and every sensible instinct shrieked at him to run as fast and far away from them as he could—but still, something was subtly different this time. Only as they reached Wells and stopped on either side of the beetle did Paul begin to understand what it was.
"What do you want?" the Finney-cricket asked in a scraping, petulant voice. "The new master says hurry. He is impatient for us to secure these creatures."
"If we help him," the Mudd-caterpillar rumbled, "he will give us the little queen."
"Yes, the little queen." The eyeless cricket rubbed its forelegs together in pleased anticipation. "We have hunted for her so long. . . !" It turned its smooth head toward Kunohara and Paul. "And what are these things? Prisoners?"
"Do we eat them?" the caterpillar inquired, rearing up so that the front half of its huge heavy body towered over them both.
Paul took a step back in alarm, but there was a surge of elation, I'm right, he thought. I don't feel that terrible, sickening fear I've felt in the past—and look at them! They don't even recognize me.
Wells appeared to consider the caterpillar's request for a moment. "No, I think not. Kunohara, at least, will be a useful source of conversation in this godforsaken place." He smiled and nodded. "But you really better let them have the others, Doctor K. This pair are pretty damn single-minded. . . ."
"We will bring the new master the ones who spoke through the air," the blind cricket rasped, "and then he will let us have our little queen. Our lively, lovely larva."
"I miss her," the caterpillar said, something like a fond smile twisting its tusky mouth. "So pale, so fat. . . ! When we find her, I will nibble on all of her dozens of little toes!"
Paul now knew for certain that these versions of the Twins were not the remorseless creatures who had stalked him through so many worlds, but something more like the Pankies, oblivious to him, consumed with a quest of their own. A memory of Undine Pankie came to him then, her doughy face transfixed by some grotesque instinct just like the caterpillar's, babbling about "my dear Viola. . . ."
Viola. Something tickled his thoughts. Viola. Vaala. Avialle.
Ava.
". . . I must insist you tur
n them away, Wells," Kunohara was sputtering. "This is my house, my domain, and whatever has changed, I still insist on my rights. No guests of mine will be taken from under my roof."
Wells nodded, the soul of reason. "Oh, sure, I understand. But what's that old saying about cutting off your nose to spite your face? You don't really want to go up against the new boss, Kunohara. As for me, I have no pull with him at all—not yet, anyway. Nothing personal, but I just can't help you."
The cricket and the caterpillar, slow and self-absorbed as their thoughts were, nevertheless had begun to pay attention. "This is the one?" the cricket whined, pale blind face turning to Kunohara. "This is the one who keeps us from the others?"
With a squelching noise like a giant water mattress, the caterpillar moved closer. A ripple passed through its legs as those nearest Paul stretched toward him, the tips curling and clenching. "They keep us from the little queen. . . ?"
"Enough," Kunohara said, and gestured. A moment later the-stone outcrop was gone and Paul, caught by surprise, stumbled and sat down in the middle of Kunohara's bubble-house.
"What happened?" asked Florimel. "We couldn't hear. . . ."
Paul turned on Kunohara. "Why didn't you blast them—snow or wind or something, one of your god-tricks? We were far enough away from the house. . . ."
"Something blocked me in their presence." Kunohara was clearly troubled. "Their new master, this Dread it must be, has protected them. He is playing tricks with my world." The worried look changed to a scowl. "But I will not be destroyed so easily. Not in my own home."
The wasps had become more agitated on top of the bubble, the slowly moving tapestry of chitin now sped until it was almost a liquid blur, their buzzing so intense it made the air in the transparent house vibrate.
"Op that!" T4b shouted. He took a hurried step back and knocked Paul staggering. Just above their heads the weight of the swarming creatures had begun to push the arch of the dome downward. "Don't get out of here, be six-meat, us!"
