Sea of Silver Light o-4

by Tad Williams

  She resisted the urge to look at !Xabbu. "Really?"

  "Since . . . Troy." Azador sat up and folded his arms across his chest as though he had performed a magic trick.

  "What . . . what are you talking about?"

  He smiled kindly. "Do not try to trick me, pretty lady. I have been all around—I have seen more of the network than any other man. You are the only people in this place. I saw you on the mountaintop—yes, you remember! I see it on your faces. I know you are the same people I followed from Troy."

  Sam was trying to make sense of this. Were they in trouble? Were all !Xabbu's warnings to her now useless? She looked from the Bushman's intent face to Jongleur, whose expression was entirely unreadable. "But . . . but why would you follow us? If we were the people you think we are, that is."

  "Because you were with the man Ionas. I knew he was more than he admitted to me, and when I saw him lead you and the others into a temple in the middle of a burning city, I knew he was looking for a gateway. Do not forget, Azador has been all over this network! The Grail Brotherhood has pursued me everywhere! There are some that say that I am the bravest man in all these worlds." He spread his hands in a gesture of humility. "I myself would never make such a claim."

  His silliness was beginning to subdue her fears, but she could not help wondering if that was an intended effect. God, this whole adventure just scans and scans. It's like playing Halloween party games in a pitch-black room, like for months—but if you lose, someone kills you.

  "Why were you following this . . . Ionas?" !Xabbu asked.

  "Because he was my friend. I knew he would get himself in trouble in that Trojan world—he had not done the things I have done, seen the things I have seen. I wished to help him, to . . . protect him."

  !Xabbu was carefully keeping doubt off his face. Sam cleared her throat, "So you followed . . . these people . . . into a temple?"

  Azador laughed. "You wish to keep pretending, little lady? Very well—I have nothing to hide. Yes, I followed Ionas and . . . his friends into the temple. All through the maze—I could hear them just ahead of me. Then they stopped. I stopped, too, out of sight in the corridors behind them while they argued. It was a long argument, and I thought the gateway was broken, that they would all turn back and I would have to follow them out into the city again, where people were being killed like animals. But instead the gate opened and all went through, with much shouting and more arguing. I waited as long as I could but I was afraid the gate would close again, so I went through."

  "But if Ionas was your friend, why didn't you want to be seen?"

  For a moment a flicker of irritation crossed Azador's face. "Because I did not know the people he was with. I have many enemies."

  "Okay," Sam said. "So you went through. And. . . ?"

  "And found myself in a strange place—the strangest yet. I heard voices on the mountain ahead of me, so I waited until they began to move, then followed. Slowly, slowly, and very quietly. You . . . or should I say, the friends of Ionas. . . ?" He smiled in a way that Sam felt sure he thought extremely winning. "The people ahead of me, they walked very slowly. But patiently I followed. By the time we reached the top I had let them get far ahead of me. I saw the giant there." He shook his head, apparently in genuine dismay. "What a thing that was! I have seen nothing like it in any of these worlds. And I saw Ionas and the others very close to it. But when I went to follow them, something . . . something happened." He closed his eyes, thinking. "Everything came apart, as though someone had broken a window and the pieces flew everywhere."

  There was a sudden stir beside her. Sam realized that Jongleur had sat upright; from the corner of her eye she could see tension in the lines of the old man's body. In all this strangeness, what had grabbed his attention so firmly? "Everything came apart," she prompted.

  "And then I do not remember much," Azador said. "I fell. I think I hit my head." He reached up and massaged the base of his skull. "When I awakened the mountain was gone and I was surrounded by nothing—all gray, like a fog, but with no up or down. I have been searching ever since, and even when I found a world to be in, there was no one there. Azador was alone, except for the hunting creatures. Until I saw the light of your fire."

  "Hunting creatures?" !Xabbu poked up the fire. "What are those?"

  "You have not seen them? You are lucky." Azador patted himself on the chest. "Shapes that freeze the blood. Monsters, ghosts—who knows? But they hunt men. They hunted me. Only on the river was I safe, so I built myself a raft."

  Satisfied with the drama of his recitation, the newcomer sat back and gazed solemnly into the shifting flames.

  "So we've let you get warm at our fire," Sam said. "What else do you want?"

  "To travel with you," he said promptly. "There is safety in numbers, and you will have much benefit from pining Azador as a companion. I can trap animals for food, I can fish. . . ."

  "We don't eat," Sam pointed out.

  ". . . And I can build a raft with my bare hands!"

  "Which keeps sinking, you said." She looked to !Xabbu, half-amused, half-disgusted. Was it just chance that kept saddling them with horrible traveling companions?

  "There is no Ionas here," !Xabbu said. "I can say with truth that I have never known such a person in this world."

  "Ah, even with your different faces, I knew that he was not with you," said Azador cheerfully. "After all, Ionas was brave, in his way—for an Englishman, that is. He would not have stayed silent and pretended he was someone else with his friend Azador standing before him. But if he is lost somewhere in this world, then I will find him."

  Sam looked at !Xabbu, who was watching Jongleur, but the old man's face was again an impenetrable mask. When !Xabbu finally turned to her she saw that, beneath his composed expression, the only person here she trusted was just as worried and confused as she was. She almost used his name, but caught herself. "So what should we do, then?"

  He looked at Azador, who was smiling confidently. "I do not know," !Xabbu shook his head. "I suppose you will travel with us, Azador. For a while, at least."

  The newcomer smiled and ran a finger along the bottom of his mustache. "You will not regret it. This I swear."

  CHAPTER 20

  Thompson's Iron

  NETFEED/NEWS: Expert Decries Apocalyptic Themes

  (visual: excerpt from How to Kill Your Teacher,)

  VO: Net ethics watchdog Sian Kelly thinks kid's programming is going too far these days—all the way to the end of the world.

  KELLY: "It's a trend, and it's not a good one. So many of the children's interactives—Teen Mob, Blodger Park, Backstab, that Kill Your Teacher thing—are running shows with apocalyptic themes. Kids are very suggestible, and the emphasis on suicide cults and the end of the world is irresponsible and frightening."

  VO: The networks uniformly deny any collusion between writers and creators of the shows cited.

  (visual: Ruy Contreras-Simons, GCN)

  CONTRERAS-SIMONS: "It's a trend, sure, but it's nothing anyone has decided to do. I guess it's just in the air. . . ."

  The trip down into the burrow had been horrible, the four of them carried like pieces of dead meat, which was clearly how the mutant web-builders already thought of them. Paul had fought back, but with his limbs tightly held had managed only to get himself dragged along sharp rocks and to earn a stinging blow on the head from a misshapen claw that was not quite either a hand or a hoof.

  The only bit of good fortune was that they were not bound. The sticky cables remained as part of the web; the creatures had needed to drool some putrid-smelling fluid on their captives just to pull them free of it.

  Several dozen of the monsters were in just this open part of the burrow where the captives had been thrown down, but Paul, his senses raw in the darkness, thought he could hear chattering voices down the side tunnels as well. It was not completely dark; something was burning or gleaming in one of the tunnels, letting in a bit of the light and throwing just enough definition
onto their crawling captors and the nest to make Paul see how hopeless was any thought of escape.

  The things were not human. He had to keep reminding himself of that, both to ease the horror and to keep the embers of hope smoldering. The spider-buffalos showed little or no organization, and were clearly used to prey that was either stunned or already dead. Other than roughly shoving T4b back when the boy had tried to scramble out of the pit, they had not bothered with any other precautions against escape. Not that more precautions seemed needed: they outnumbered Paul and his friends by ten to one or more, and were each at least as strong as a person.

  Trying to decide what the things actually were, with an eye toward discovering a weakness, was little help. They were just some wild mutation of the simworld, possibly intentional—perhaps there was even a cruel joke in the way they resembled the buffalo of the American West that had been so completely and swiftly slaughtered for their hides, massacred by the thousands, skinned, and then left to rot on the plains. In any case, they were big, fast, apparently without conscience, and obviously had a tooth for human flesh. Man-bones crunched underfoot on the tunnel floors and in greater numbers here in the pit itself, becoming even more common lower down the slope toward the pit's black depths.

  As if to underscore this, Paul put his hand down on something sharp. He felt around, expecting to discover another jawbone, and found instead something small, square and hard which he held up to catch the faint light. It was a rusty belt buckle, bent as though the belt itself had been torn open with great force while still fastened. Paul's stomach lurched. It was not hard to imagine these fierce, hairy creatures doing just that in their haste to make a meal of the tender flesh beneath it.

  Despair swept over him like a cold rain. What could they do? Fight the monstrosities with bare hands and a belt buckle? Or take up jawbones, like Samson, to smite their enemies?

  But I'm no bloody Samson, am I?

  "Paul?" It was Florimel, a short distance away. "Are you there? You cried out—are you hurt?"

  "Just put my hand on something." He stared up the slope at the grotesque figures moving in the half-light—probably performing the mutant equivalent of setting the table—and tried to keep the hopelessness out of his voice. "Any ideas?"

  He could not see her, but he could hear her grunt of misery. "Nothing. I can barely crawl. I landed hard when we fell from the wagon."

  "How are the others?"

  "Martine is alive, but I think she is hurt, too—she is very quiet, talking to herself just over there. T4b . . . T4b is praying."

  "Praying?" It startled him, but he could not claim to have any better ideas.

  "There are so many of these monsters, and we are all so tired. I am frightened, Paul."

  "I am, too."

  Florimel fell into troubled silence. Paul could see no reason to make her talk. It would be one thing if they had a plan, but the situation was too bleak for peppy chats.

  So it is me, then? Is it down to me to come up with something? I didn't bloody well ask to be here in this network in the first place. At least he didn't think he had—he still couldn't remember, but it would be hard to imagine: "Oh, and if you have a few spare moments, Mr. Jongleur, how about locking me up in a World War One simulation and torturing me a bit, all right?"

  But why, then? He was a nobody, a museum employee, a university graduate with less power than a classroom teacher or a shop steward. If he had interfered in the raising of Jongleur's daughter, why hadn't they just fired him? If he had somehow discovered something of the Grail Project, as seemed likely, why not just kill him? Perhaps they had not wanted the irritation of arranging an accident or a suicide, but it seemed bizarre to think that people like Felix Jongleur and his associates would lavish so much attention on a nonentity.

  Even if the World War One simulation had been something already built. Finch and Mullet, otherwise known as Finney and Mudd, had devoted a great deal of time to him, and had doggedly tracked him all over the Grail network. Why?

  Shuddersome memories of his escape from the trenches came back to him, made worse by the similarity to his present situation. The mud, the bodies, the shattered pieces of men and their machines lying beneath his feet. . . .

  A thought sparked. Paul, who had been crouching on his heels, suddenly dropped back onto all fours and crawled down the slope, feeling with his hands. It was disgusting work. Not only were the human and animal remains more common as the slope descended, but many of them had not been completely cleaned of meat, remnants perhaps from days of great feasting when all the spider-creatures ate their fill with some left over. The bleak realization struck him that he and his friends probably represented a similar bounty—that they had been unharmed so far only because they were to be the centerpiece of some grisly festival meal.

  The stench near the bottom of the pit was terrible, the ground and remains alike active with small creatures taking advantage of the web-builders' generosity. Worst of all, the farther he crawled the less light he had, and he was forced to handle every collection of remains as he looked for something which might save his life and the lives of his companions.

  Clambering across the rot and muck, it was hard to put the last hours of the World War One simulation out of his mind. Ava—Avialle—had appeared to him there as well, lying in a coffin like a vampire princess. "Come to us," she had said. Was she simply speaking lines the Other had given her, as Martine guessed? Trying to bring Paul and his companions together in a sort of fairy-tale-inspired rescue mission? But why? And what was Ava's part in it? Why did she pick such strange ways to contact him?

  He had been running his hands across the thing for some seconds before he realized what it was. At first he had unconsciously rejected it—if a buckle was no use, what good could be done with a rotting belt?—but as his fingers traced the length of it, coming at last to the large triangular pouch at the end, he felt his heart thump as though it might stop.

  He had been hoping only for a walking stick or perhaps even a knife, something the creatures had thrown away that would even the odds a little. Now he hardly dared breathe as he pulled the pistol out of its holster. It seemed to be a revolver such as he had seen in old Western flicks. It was surprisingly heavy, but that was all he could tell about it by touch—he was no expert, and had never thought he would need to know anything about pistols, ancient or modern. Of course, not even the most paranoid of gun-obsessives had ever envisioned a situation quite like this.

  Working slowly, but with a pounding sense of urgency, he carefully pulled and pushed at the cylindrical drum until it pivoted free of the barrel. He squinted, but could see nothing. A finger carefully inserted into one of the holes found an obstruction, and further examination showed that all the rest of the gun's six chambers were the same. Bullets—or mud? There was no way to tell without light and time, and Paul doubted he would get enough of either. And even if they proved to be bullets, there was still no guarantee that damp and dirt had not made them useless.

  He hesitated. A part of him wanted to continue down the slope, a wild gambler's impulse suddenly activated by success. Maybe he would find enough pistols to arm the whole company. This was Dodge City, after all—many of the creature's captives must have been armed. Perhaps he would find something even more useful. It was hard to believe there would be a Gatling gun lying in the pit's muddy reaches, but there might be a shotgun. Paul actually knew how to shoot one of those, having endured several hunting weekends in Staffordshire with Niles and his family before mustering the courage to admit to himself, and then to Niles, that he never again wanted to stand on a cold moor with a group of people whose idea of a good time was to get drunk and blast small animals to shreds.

  Still, he would not mind blasting the things capering above him into random particles, not at all. A shotgun would be a very satisfying, mind-easing thing to have, and he would not be placing all his hope on the performance of one gun—a pistol that could have been lying here in the dark for the simworld's equival
ent of years, for all he knew. . . .

  It was tempting, but he could not take the risk. He was almost fifty meters down the slope from his companions—what if the creatures snatched them now? He would have to get quite close before aiming would be anything more than a blind lottery in this near-darkness.

  He turned and began laboring up the slope, cursing now when he slipped on the bones and decomposing tissue he had so actively sought on the way down. As if to confirm his worst fears, definite activity of some kind had begun on the rim of the pit: the spidery creatures were gathering, their hissing, gulping cries rising in shared excitement. Paul heard a panicky shout from Martine. He tripped and fell, too numb and frightened now even to curse his luck, and scrambled upward on all fours like an animal, struggling to keep the gun out of the dirt.

  "I'm coming!" he called. "Get ready to run!"

  He reached the top of the pit in time to see one of the two women—in the half-light he could not tell which—being dragged out by a cluster of hairy creatures while her two companions pulled desperately at her arms in a gallant but failing struggle to keep her. Paul pushed up beside them and found himself only a meter away from the closest of the buffalo-spiders, which turned its smashed face toward him, squinting lopsidedly at this slightly unexpected arrival. It left its fellows to the job of dragging Florimel off to be eaten and reached for Paul with hideously long arms. He lifted the pistol and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell. Nothing happened.

  The creature's horn-plated paw struck him on the head and knocked him backward. The pistol flew from his hand into the darkness and dirt. He sank to his knees, the faint lights and deep shadows now wavering as though seen through water. The creature that had slapped at him hesitated for a moment, torn between following up the attack and going back to help its fellows secure the chosen meal. In that space of a half-dozen fluttering heartbeats Paul recovered enough of himself to crawl after the gun. He lifted it again, certain that it was all useless, steadied his hand, and yanked the trigger once more.