Sea of Silver Light o-4

by Tad Williams

  Confident, cocky, lazy, dead, he reminded himself. The Old Man had thought himself unquestioned master of the network and he had lived to regret it. Dread decided he needed to pay better attention to avoid making similar mistakes. But who could threaten him?

  It was not all bad, he reflected—if nothing else, locating Martine and the rest of his former companions would be the first challenge he had found in days. And Jongleur himself seemed to have disappeared from the system entirely, even disconnected from his own system's port into the network. Was he dead, or simply offline and lying low? Dread knew his victory would not be complete until his onetime employer groveled before him. It would be a fine day when it came. Even the devastation of Toyworld and Atlanta and Rome would seem like a picnic compared to what Dread was planning for Felix Jongleur.

  Oh, and the Sulaweyo bitch. Not only was the virtual Renie out there somewhere in the Grail network, but Klekker and his boys should be getting hold of her real body very soon now. He made a mental note to check on the progress of the Drakensberg operation. Won't that be interesting? I'll have her offline and online, both—her body and her mind. It could be . . . very special.

  Dread let the halls of his ice-white palace fill with music, a children's chorale from out of the random choice of his system. The singers, innocent as bees making honey, brought back to him the final hours of Toyland, a thought that at this moment he found aesthetically unpleasant. He dropped the voices in pitch and felt relaxation flow through him.

  God, or at least the Grail network's bloody-handed equivalent, rested a while from his heavy labors.

  The thing is, he thought after a while, I can't do without little Dulcie Anwin just yet. I don't know how to make new things, I don't really know how to modify things in any big way. The operating system is like a door—if I lean on it, it opens or closes, but the options are pretty limited.

  He had tried giving it natural language commands, but either the system was not set up that way or it was pretending not to understand. All the pain he could inflict on it had not made it communicate, which had left him only able to reshape things that already existed—mutation gradients, sim replacement algorithms. Such limitations were frustrating, and the need to work with the vagaries of a network that should have been his like a cheap whore offended him.

  One thing was clear: if he wanted to find Renie Sulaweyo and Martine Desroubins and the others, he needed to be able to use the system in a more sophisticated way. Jongleur's own agents were hopelessly flawed, based on what was happening in the bugworld. Dread was also beginning to think nothing else in this virtual world could be nearly as interesting as getting his own hands on the real people who had defied him. And he would take such magnificent revenge when he did! Something fabulous and inventive and achingly slow. Surely the mind that had imagined flaying the leading citizens of Rome, then turning their skins into hot air balloons set aloft with their families clinging to the bottomless baskets—surely a mind of such artistry could deal with his few remaining enemies in a way that would be truly awesome, even . . . beautiful?

  Dread slipped into a half-sleep, floating in his white palace, chasing ideals of pain and power that others could not even imagine.

  The elevator seemed to take a long time to go down ten floors. Anger made him tight all over, hot and full of pressure. When the door at last whispered open, Paul thought he might explode out into the reception area like boiling blood out of a hemorrhaging artery.

  There was no one at the reception desk, which was just as well—he didn't much like the pale, angular young woman who usually sat there, and didn't want her to see him screaming like a maniac. He walked around the curved room, just composed enough not to trip over any of the stylish and expensive Rostov Modern furniture, and laid his hand on the door panel.

  His first reflexive thought at seeing them huddled close together at the desk, the small neat head almost touching the shiny bald one, surprised even him.

  They know all the secrets. All the bad secrets.

  He stood in the doorway, suddenly aware of his own breach of propriety, his own relative powerlessness, and the self-righteous fury cooled. But there was another side to his upset, the silly, embarrassing part of him that believed all those childhood ideals, the ones he had dragged with him through school like a ragged coat despite manifest evidence that it was going to lose him more friends than it gained. No sneaking, no grassing—he still believed it. Duty and fair play. All that high-minded public school nonsense, which the children who had been born to it had discarded while they were still in short pants, but which to a scholarship boy like himself was exotic and precious.

  He looked at the two of them, silent and oblivious to the intruder, undoubtedly communing through some cordless connection—Paul himself didn't even have a neurocannula, further proof of his old-fashioned hopelessness—and could not help feeling exactly like a schoolboy again. He had come to scold the older boys for not playing fair, but now that he was alone with them, he knew that what he was going to get was a terrible beating.

  Don't be stupid, he told himself. Besides, they don't even know I'm here. I can just turn around and come back later. . . .

  The eyes of the small one came up, flashing behind the spectacles, giving the lie to his self-reassurance.

  "Jonas." Finney stared at him as though he had arrived naked. "You are in my office. The door was closed."

  His companion Mudd was still oblivious, staring at nothing, a grin of disturbing pleasure stretching his lips.

  "It's just. . . ." Paul realized he was short of breath, his heart beating now not from anger but from something closer to fear. "It's . . . I know I should have phoned first. . . ."

  Finney's face was so pinched with disapproval that Paul actually felt his anger smoldering up again. This wasn't school. Nobody was going to thrash anyone. And he had a bone to pick with this little shrew-faced man.

  Mudd abruptly surfaced, touching his hand to his neck and then turning his piggy eyes toward Paul. "Jonas? What the hell are you doing down here?"

  "I've just talked to a friend of mine." Paul stopped to take a breath, then realized he was better off forging ahead while his courage held. "And I have to say, I'm very upset. Yes, very upset. You had no right."

  Finney tilted his head as though Paul were not only naked but frothing. As the angle changed, the nearly invisible overhead lights turned his spectacles into two blank bars of white. "What on earth are you babbling about?"

  "My friend Niles Peneddyn. He was the one who recommended the job to me." Paul took another breath. "He said you contacted him."

  One of Finney's eyebrows rose, thin as a fly's leg. "He recommended the job to you? That's droll, Jonas. He recommended you to us—and a good thing, because Mr. Peneddyn, unlike yourself, is of a well-known family and has excellent connections."

  It was a line of insult he knew well. He did not let it distract him. "Yes. Yes, that's him. He said you contacted him."

  "So?"

  Mudd leaned his huge hip against the desk like an elephant scratching its hide on a tree trunk. "What exactly is your problem, Jonas?"

  "I just talked to him. He was very concerned. He said you told him there was a problem in my relationship with my pupil."

  "He recommended you to us. We wanted to make sure there was no mistake—that he had not simply done a favor for someone he didn't really know."

  "What problem?" Paul had to struggle not to shout. "How dare you do that? How dare you call my friend and suggest that there's something . . . irregular in my conduct?"

  If the moment had not been of such high seriousness, Paul would have almost thought Finney was hiding a laugh. "Oh, and that upset you?"

  "You're damn right it upset me!"

  A few moments went by. In the silence, Paul's memory of his own voice grew louder and louder, until he began to suspect he had actually shouted at his multtzillionaire employer's right-hand man.

  "Listen, Jonas," Finney said at last, all trace of hu
mor certainly gone now. "We pay close attention to all our responsibilities—Mr. Jongleur is a very, very bad man to displease. And we happen to believe that there are . . . tendencies in your relationship with your pupil we don't like."

  "What tendencies are you talking about? And what are you basing this on?"

  Finney ignored Paul's second question. "There seems to be too great an emotional attachment developing between you and Miss Jongleur. We don't approve, and rest assured, her father would most definitely not approve either,"

  "I . . . I have no idea what you're talking about." he shook his head, but his courage was flagging. They must know something about the secret meetings, he felt sure—he should never have let himself get into such a position. Damn his own tendency to let things happen to him! But if they guessed even a little bit of what was going on, wouldn't their response be far more draconian than simply a call to Niles. . . ?

  Paul struggled to find his indignation again. Because he actually hadn't done anything wrong, had he? After all? "I . . . damn it, this is my job. And she's just a child!"

  Finney pulled a sour smile. "She is fifteen years old, Jonas. Not a child in most senses of the word."

  "In the legal sense. In the professional sense. My God, as far as I'm concerned, too. In my own sense."

  "Don't tell us about children, Jonas," said Mudd with heavy amusement. "We know all about children."

  "What are you basing this on?" Paul asked. "Did Ava say something? She's a young girl kept locked up like a storybook princess—she's . . . well, she's a little eccentric, perhaps, imaginative. But I would never. . . ."

  "No, you would never," Finney said, cutting him off. "You definitely would never. Because we would know. And you would spend the rest of your life regretting it." He leaned forward, and even laid his pale fingers on Paul's arm, as though about to tell him a useful secret. "The rest of your very short life."

  "A short life, but a merry one!" said Mudd, and laughed out loud.

  Bizarrely, as the office door closed behind Paul, he heard Finney join in the laughter. It was a strange, terrible sound.

  When the door opened on the top floor, the swelling scent of gardenias washed into the elevator. A moment later, before he had taken more than a few steps into the hall. Ava had thrown herself at him, wrapping her arms around him so tightly it took him long seconds to pull free.

  "Oh, darling," she said, her eyes so bright they might have been harboring tears, "do they know about us?"

  "Jesus, Ava." Paul quickly led her outside into the garden. "Are you mad?" he whispered. "Don't do that."

  The look of melodramatic sorrow on her face turned into something infinitely more subtle, infinitely more painful to see. She rushed past him and disappeared into the trees that took up most of the vast towertop. A fireworks display of white and yellow birds leaped into the air, disturbed by her headlong flight. . . .

  He woke to find his head on Florimel's lap, although at first it was hard to separate the throbbing ache from the lap. All his bones hurt too, and he made a little noise of pain as he tried to sit up. Florimel calmly pushed him back down again. With a strip of cloth tied over her wounded eye and ear, she looked piratical. The up-and-down motion of the bubble, which was doing Paul's head no good, added to the buccaneering illusion.

  "She was so . . . unstable," he said. "I'd forgotten, but it's no wonder all the things she's told me have been so hard to understand."

  "He's delirious," Florimel told Martine.

  "No, no. I'm talking about Ava—about Jongleur's daughter. Another memory just came back, I guess while I was unconscious. Like a dream, but it wasn't a dream." He was bursting to tell them all that he'd remembered, but suddenly realized there was a here and now quite separate from the returned memories, no matter how sharp and new they felt. "Where are we? On the river?"

  Martine nodded. "Bobbing along. No sign of Wells or the Twins or their monster insects."

  "Yes," Florimel said, "and Martine and T4b and I all survived, too, although we're sore and badly bruised. Thank you for asking."

  "Sorry." Paul shrugged and winced. "Kunohara?"

  Florimel shook her head. "I cannot believe he lived through the collapse of his house. We never saw it come back to the surface after the river took it."

  "Fishfood," said T4b, not without satisfaction. "Pure."

  "So where are we heading? Is there any way to control this thing?" The ride was actually fairly comfortable, the bubble so much a part of the river that there was little jostling. He had heard once that riding in a dirigible felt the same way, because the ship moved with the air currents, not through them.

  Florimel grunted in disgust. "Control it? Look around—do you see a rudder? A steering wheel?"

  "What do we do then?" He sat up, resting his back against the curve of the wall, and moved carefully to disentangle himself from Florimel. They all faced each other, feet touching at the bottom of the bubble, the river water flowing along beneath them as though they hung in open space. "Just wait until we snag on a sandbar or something?"

  "Or until we reach the end of the river and pass through a gateway," Martine said. "Orlando told us that many of the gates are no longer functioning. We will have to hope that if the next simworld is closed off we will be able to find another. One that is safe."

  "Is that all we're going to do? Just wait and see?"

  "We could worry about how much air we have in here," Florimel observed. "But that wouldn't do us any good either."

  "I would rather talk about Kunohara," Martine said. "If he had denied he had an informant with us in Troy, and if it had felt to me even slightly likely that he told the truth, that would have been the end of it. But you heard him—he had no answer."

  "We were being attacked by giant wasps," Paul pointed out, compelled for some reason to defend the man. "He saved our lives."

  "That is not the issue." Martine was firm. Paul found himself a little alarmed—what had happened to the quiet voice, the almost ghostly presence? "If he was playing a double game, it might make a difference to us—and if one of us has kept a secret. . . ." She did not finish, but did not need to. Paul knew without being told what it had meant to these people to discover that a murderer had traveled with them in Quan Li's body, a murderer they had treated as a trustworthy friend.

  "Perhaps," said Florimel. "But suspicion can be devastating, too. And we are only half of those who were in Troy."

  "Just tell me," Martine said. "Tell me that you had no secret relationship with Kunohara. I will believe you."

  Florimel did not look pleased. "Martine, you are not like us. Don't pretend you with not look at us with your little lie-detector rays."

  "I have no lie-detector rays." Her smile was bitter, her voice hard. "Tell me, Florimel."

  "I have had no dealings with Kunohara that the rest of you have not been part of." Her voice was angry, and Paul thought there was a great deal of pain, too. This network, with its masks and labyrinths, was hard on friendship.

  "Paul?" Martine asked.

  "The same. This is the first time I've met him—I didn't know him when I was in Troy."

  Martine turned to T4b, who had been unusually silent. "Javier?" She waited a moment, then prompted him again. He looked like a spring coiled too tight. "Just tell the truth, Javier."

  "Off my face, you," he snarled. Even Paul felt there was something defensive in his voice. "Got nothing to do with Kuno-whatever. Just like Florimel said, the rest of you seen it all." He seemed to feel Martine's continuing gaze as an assault. He swiveled his head angrily. "Stop staring! No dupping, I told you! Off my face."

  Martine looked troubled, but before she spoke, someone else did.

  "Martine? I heard you before—can you hear me now?"

  It sounded so much like the familiar voice was right beside him that for a moment Paul found himself wondering how anyone could be in the bubble without being seen. Then as Martine pulled out the lighter, he understood.

  "Renie? Is that y
ou?" Florimel made an angry shushing gesture at her, but the blind woman shook her head. "Dread knows where we are," Martine said quietly. "And he will until we get out of this world, so it doesn't matter." She raised her voice. "Renie? We hear you. Talk to us."

  When it came again, the voice was quieter, not distorted but diminished, with clean holes in the flow of speech. "We never left . . . mountain," she said. "We're in . . . must be . . . ocean. But I've lost !Xabbu and. . . ."

  "We can't understand you very well. Where are you exactly?"

  ". . . Think I'm . . . like the heart of the system." For the first time, Paul could hear the terror subdued beneath collapsing control. "But I'm . . . trouble—bad trouble. . . !"

  There was nothing after that, no matter how many times Martine begged her to speak again. At last Martine put the lighter away and they sat in silence, carried as froth on the river surface, hurrying toward the end of one world among many.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Land of Glass and Air

  NETFEED/BUSINESS: Death of Figueim Leaves Shipbuilding Firm High and Dry

  (visual: Figueira breaking bottle across bow of tanker)

  VO: The sudden death of Maximiliao Figueira, chairman and CEO of Figueira Maritima SA, Portugal's largest shipbuilding firm, has left the company reeling.