by Tad Williams
"Let him go!" she shouted. "You big mean mamalocker, let him go!"
!Xabbu leaped forward and grabbed Jongleur's free arm and yanked hard. Jecky Nibble jerked free, then fled the clearing in a tangle of digging limbs. Jongleur, eyes slitted with fury, raised his hand as if to strike !Xabbu.
Sam dashed forward, waving the broken blade of Orlando's sword. "If you hit him I'll . . . I'll cut your balls off, you old bastard." Jongleur snarled at her, actually snarled like an animal, and for a horrifying moment she thought he had gone completely mad, that she would have to fight this cruel, muscular man to the death. She spread her feet wide apart, forcing herself to hold the shattered blade level, and prayed he wouldn't see her knees threatening to buckle. "I mean it!"
Jongleur's eyes widened. He looked slowly from her to !Xabbu, as though he had no idea how a Remote Area Dweller of the Okavango Delta had come to be attached to his arm, then shook himself free. He turned his back on them both and stalked out of the clearing.
Sam sat down, certain that she would collapse if she did not. !Xabbu was at her side in a moment.
"Are you hurt?"
"Me?" She laughed, far too loud. "It was you whose head he was going to tear off. I never even got near him." The strangeness of it all swam up on her. What was Sam Fredericks doing in a place like this, almost getting in a knife fight with the meanest, richest man in the world? She should be home studying, or listening to music, or talking to friends on the net. "Oh, God," she said, "this just locks in so many, many different ways!"
!Xabbu patted her shoulder. "You were very brave. But I would not have been as easy a victim as he might have thought."
"Don't get all regular-guy on me, okay?" Sam tried to smile. "You're not one of those. That's why Renie loves you."
!Xabbu stared at her for a moment, then blinked. "What are we to do now?"
"I don't know. I don't think I can stand to be around that man anymore. Did you see him? He's . . . I don't know. Seriously scanny."
"It is bad enough that he attacked someone who was our guest," !Xabbu said. "But we might have learned much from those children."
"Children?"
"I am certain. Do you not remember what Paul Jonas told us? About the boy Gaily and his companions, waiting to cross the White Ocean?"
Sam nodded slowly. "Yeah. And that little chipmunk or whatever it was . . . it said something about Bubble Bunnies! That's like this net show for micros back in the real world!" She darted !Xabbu a quick glance. "Micros means kids. Children."
He smiled. "I guessed." The moment's cheer evaporated. "As I said, there is much we might have learned. . . ."
Now it was Sam's turn to touch the small man's arm in sympathy. "We'll find out what this is about. We'll find Renie, too."
"I will gather some more wood," !Xabbu said. "You should lie down and try to sleep. I will guard us—I do not think I shall sleep again for a while."
Despite !Xabbu's suggestions, a restless, wakeful hour passed for Sam before movement in the vegetation brought her upright again. She kept the hilt of the ruined sword firmly in her hand; her fingers tightened when she saw Jongleur's hawkish features looming above them.
"What do you want? Do you think I was dupping about what I'd do. . . ?"
Jongleur scowled, but there was something strange in his expression. He spread his hands. They were shaking. "I have come back. . . ." He hesitated, then turned his face away, so that it took a moment before Sam made sense of the words. "I have come back to say that I was wrong."
Sam looked at !Xabbu, then back at Jongleur. "What?"
"You heard me, child. Do you think to make me crawl? I was wrong. I let my temper control me and I spoiled an opportunity to learn something, perhaps something important." He glared, but it was directed at no one, at least no one visible. "I was a fool."
!Xabbu cocked his head to one side. "Are you saying that you wish to be forgiven?"
Sam watched a visible shudder run up the man's naked torso. "I do not ask forgiveness. I never have. Not from anyone! But that does not mean I cannot admit fault. I was wrong." As if the firelight made him uncomfortable, he stepped back until he was almost in the shadows once more. "It was . . . it was hearing what they said. How they spoke of my invention. The One. . . ! That is my operating system they spoke of, as though it were a god! He . . . it, whatever one calls it—the Other has made things without my permission, taken tremendous liberties! This is why the system was sluggish, why there were problems with the network that delayed the Grail Ceremony for so long! Because the damnable operating system was stealing power to make this little project for itself, this laughable, broken little Eden. Christ Jesus, I am betrayed on all sides!"
After a moment, !Xabbu quietly said, "Yes, you have been unlucky with your servants, haven't you?"
Jongleur gave him a wolfish smile. "You remind me that you are not a savage, after all. You have an unpleasantly sharp wit when you wish to use it—like one of your people's poisoned arrows, eh?" He shook his head and sank down onto the forest floor. Sam finally realized that the man was shaking not with anger, but with weariness and perhaps something else as well. For the first time she saw what he truly was beneath the mask—an old, old man. "I deserve it. I have made two gross miscalculations and now I am paying for them. That may provide the two of you some little satisfaction, anyway."
Before she could say anything, !Xabbu touched her arm. "We have no satisfaction in any of this," he said quietly. "We are trying to stay alive. Your operating system and your . . . what is the word? Employee. Your employee. They are our problems as much as they are yours."
Jongleur nodded slowly. "He is horrifically clever, young Mr. Dread. He used that name to taunt me—More Dread, he called himself. Do you understand the reference? But even I did not see the full significance."
Sam frowned. She knew !Xabbu wanted to keep the man talking, so surely a question wouldn't hurt, would it? "I don't know what any of that means—More Dread."
"The Grail legend. Mordred, son of King Arthur. The bastard who betrayed the Round Table. Just as Dread has betrayed me, and perhaps destroyed my Grail." Jongleur looked at his hands as though they too might prove treacherous. "He has talents, he does, my little Johnny Dread. Did you know he is a bona fide miracle worker?"
!Xabbu settled himself with the quiet unobtrusiveness of a hunter who does not wish to startle his quarry. "Miracle worker?"
"He is a telekinetic. He has power. A genetic fluke, something that has probably been in the race for a million years, but scarcely noticed. He can affect electromagnetic currents. It is such a minute amount of force that I doubt it was even noticeable as a trait until humankind developed a society dependent on those currents. He could not push a paper cup off a tabletop with his mind, but he can alter information machinery. Doubtless he found some way to use it to burglarize my system, the miserable cur. But the true irony is that I taught him to control that power!"
The fire was beginning to die again, but neither Sam nor !Xabbu made a move to stoke it. The bizarrely geometric trees grew remote as the flames faltered and shrank.
"You see, I have long been interested in such . . . talents. I have eyes and ears in many places, and when certain records pertaining to a boy named Johnny Wulgaru came to my attention, I made sure he was committed as a ward to one of my institutes. What he had was only a rough talent, but then, he was a rough boy. He'd already killed a few when I found him. He has killed many more since—only a small number of them on my behalf, I might add. But I should have known that someone so self-indulgent would never make a useful tool."
"You . . . trained him?"
"My researchers took him and his raw skill in hand, yes. We helped him learn to use his unusual ability. We taught him restraint, selectivity, strategy. In fact, we taught him more than that—we made a street animal into a human being, or at least a convincing simulacrum." Jongleur's laugh was sharp. "As I said, even I underestimated him, so we did our work well."
"And
he used this . . . power . . . on your behalf?"
"Only incidentally. Even when he had learned to focus it, to fully harness his latent abilities, it was still capable of only small miracles—things that in most circumstances could be achieved by more mundane methods. He himself has found it useful for subverting surveillance equipment. But I discovered he had other, more practical skills as well. He is completely ruthless and he is clever. He made an extremely useful tool. Until recently."
!Xabbu waited a while before speaking. "And . . . the operating system? The thing some call the Other?"
Jongleur narrowed his eyes. "It is of no consequence. Dread controls it, and thus controls the network."
"But he does not control this part of the network, whatever it is." !Xabbu gestured to the surreal, shadowy forest. "Or he would have found us here, would he not?"
The old man shrugged. "Perhaps. I still do not know where 'here' is. But our true enemy is John Dread."
!Xabbu frowned. "I think that if this man Dread controls the network through the operating system, then knowing more of the operating system might be important—how it works, how Dread is forcing it to work for him."
"Nevertheless, I have said all I will say."
!Xabbu stared hard. "If Renie were here, I think she would know what questions to ask. But she is not." His eyes wandered for a moment. "She is not."
"So we're just impacted, then?" Sam was trying to keep her temper and not entirely succeeding. The memory of Orlando, staggering bravely through his final hours while this crusty old monster sat in his golden house, planning to live forever, burned her. "Everything's just utterly scorched and nothing to do about it? And what do you mean, 'our enemy is Dread.' Our enemy? As far as I can see, you're as much an enemy to us as he is."
!Xabbu watched her for a moment, eyes serious and remote. "You frightened away innocents who might have helped us," he said to Jongleur. "You or your helpers have tried to kill us many times. She is right—why should we continue to deal with you?"
For a moment it seemed the old man might lose his temper again. The lines around his mouth grew tight. "I have said I was wrong. Do you wish me to crawl? I will not. I never will do that."
!Xabbu sighed. "Never since I first left the delta has it been so clear to me that speaking the same tongue does not mean understanding. We do not care about apologies. The things you have done to us and people we care for can never be made better by apologies. We are as . . . practical . . . as you are. What can you do for us? Why should we trust you?"
Jongleur was silent for a long time. "I have underestimated you again," he said at last. "I should have remembered from my time in Africa that there are many hard-headed bargainers among the dark peoples. Very well." He spread his hands as if to show his unweaponed harmlessness. "I swear that I will help you to get out of this place, and that I will not hurt you even if given the chance. Even if I will not willingly give you all my information—and what else do I have to bargain with?—I still know much that you do not. You need me. I would be in great danger alone, so I need you, too. What do you say?"
"!Xabbu, don't," Sam said. "He's a liar. You can't trust him."
"Then if you won't bargain, what will you do?" Jongleur demanded. "Kill me? I think not. I will simply follow you, deriving some benefit of safety from your presence while you gain none from mine."
!Xabbu looked to Sam, troubled. "Renie wished us to work with him."
"But Renie's not here. Doesn't it matter what I want?"
"Of course."
Frustrated, she whirled on Jongleur. "Where are we going, anyway? How are you going to help? Like, strangle all the little forest animals until they tell us what we want to know?"
He scowled. "It was a mistake. I have already said so."
"If he comes with us, we're going to take turns sleeping." Sam said. "Like we were in enemy territory. Because I don't trust him not to kill us in our sleep."
"You have not answered her other question," !Xabbu pointed out. "Where are we going?"
"In. To the heart of this place, I suppose. To find . . . what did they call it, those pathetic creatures? To find the One."
"You said knowing about the operating system would do us no good."
"I said I had told you all I wished to tell. And in truth there is nothing much we can do as long as Dread controls it. But if the operating system built this world, then there must be a direct connection back to the operating system somewhere in it." He fell silent, musing, then seemed to realize he had not finished. "If we can find that connection, we can use it to reach Dread as well."
"And then what?" !Xabbu suddenly seemed very weary. "Then what?"
"I do not know." Jongleur too had run out of strength. "But otherwise we wander here like ghosts, until our bodies die the real death."
"I just want to go home," said Sam quietly.
"A long way." For a moment Jongleur almost sounded human. "A very long way."
CHAPTER 15
Confessional
NETFEED/FASHION: A New Direction for Mbinda?
(visual: models wearing designer's troubled Chutes line)
VO: After a disastrous year, many designers would rethink their fashion ideas. Hussein Mbinda has done more than that. Yesterday he announced that he is considering an even more radical approach to his profession.
(visual: Mbinda backstage at Milan show)
MBINDA: "I had a dream that everyone was naked. I was in a place where clothes didn't matter, because everyone was young and beautiful forever. I realized it must be heaven, and that what I was seeing was people's souls. God sent this vision just to me, seen? And so I wanted to find a way to show everyone that fashion and money and all that—it doesn't matter. . . ."
VO: Mbinda's spiritual insight has provided his latest direction: latex sprays, but not in the usual fashion shades. Every one of Mbinda's new sprays is a human flesh tone, so that the wearers can be naked even when they're dressed. Despite the religious inspiration, they're apparently going to be quite expensive, too. . . ."
He had stared at his pad long enough. He had performed every other undone task he could remember, and had improvised a few new ones. There was really no acceptable reason for putting off the call any longer. He spoke the code phrase Sellars had given him, the one that the strange man had promised would give him an untraceable connection, then waited.
In the past several days Catur Ramsey had come to believe in several impossible things—that a worldwide conspiracy existed to sacrifice children for the immortality of a few incredibly rich people, that an entire virtual universe had been created almost without any public notice, and even that the minuscule hope for its defeat rested in the crippled hands of a man who had been living in an abandoned tunnel under an army base. Ramsey had seen a father and his child kidnapped out of a public restaurant by the US military, had been threatened himself by a rogue general and then had seen that officer suddenly die, and now he and several other fugitives were apparently in terrible danger simply for having chanced on the vast and malevolent design. One set of clients had a child in a mysterious coma apparently caused by the conspiracy. Another client was being led by supernatural voices. Catur Ramsey had been through a lot just lately.
Somehow, though, this felt like the most difficult thing yet.
On the tenth ring the answering service clicked on. Disgusted by his own relief, he began to leave his message. Then Orlando's mother picked up the call.
"Ramsey," she said, nodding in an oddly deliberate manner. "Mr. Ramsey. Of course. How are you?"
All abstract thoughts about danger and loss left him in a moment, blasted away by the reality of Vivien Fennis Gardiner. As jet fuel had changed Sellars' exterior so completely that it was almost surreal, grief seemed to have performed some similar dark alchemy inside Orlando's mother; behind the hollow stare and clumsy makeup—he couldn't remember her wearing makeup in their previous meetings—something terrifying hid.
He struggled to find words. "Oh, Ms.
Fennis, I am so sorry. So sorry."
"We got your message. Thank you for your prayers and kind thoughts." Her voice might have been a sleepwalker's.
"I . . . I called to say how bad I felt about missing Orlando's memorial service. . . ."
"We understand, Mr. Ramsey. You're a very busy man."
"No!" Even this inappropriate outburst did not startle any deeper reaction out of her. "No, I mean, that's not why I missed it. Really." He felt himself suddenly in deep water, floundering. What could he tell her, even over a safe line? That he had been afraid agents of a secret conspiracy might follow him back to Sellars and the others? He had already withheld crucial information from her once, fearing to deepen her grief. What could he tell her now, after the worst had happened, that would make any sense at all?
At least some of the truth, damn it. You owe her that.
She was waiting silently, like a doll left upright, slack until someone came again to give it life. "I've been . . . I've been following up the investigation I told you about. And . . . and there's definitely something going on. Something big. And that's . . . that's why. . . ." He felt a weight of sudden fear on the back of his neck. Surely if these Grail people were willing to steal Major Sorensen out of a public place, they wouldn't balk at tapping Orlando's family's home line. What could he tell her? Even if everything Sellars said was true, the Grail conspiracy didn't necessarily know how much Ramsey himself had discovered—how deep into it all he now was. "Orlando . . . all that stuff he was doing online. . . ."
"Oh," said Vivien abruptly, animation flickering across the Kabuki mask of her face for the first time. "Was it you who sent those men?"
"What?"
"Those men. The men who came and asked to go through his files. I thought they said they were government researchers—something about Tandagore's Syndrome. That's what they say Orlando had, you know. At the end." She nodded slowly, slowly. "But it was the day after Orlando . . . and Conrad was back at the hospital . . . and I wasn't really paying attention. . . ." Her face sagged again. "We never did find that bug of Orlando's, that . . . agent. Maybe they took that thing, too. I hope they did. I hated that creepy little thing."
