by Tad Williams
I've stepped out of reality, Olga decided. I thought the dream-children were crazy? This is crazier still.
"All right," Sellars said, "listen carefully and I'll explain what you should do next. We have less than three days before they begin to figure out something's wrong—that's if everything goes perfectly. There are still people in that building and you shouldn't let any of them see you from this moment on. I'll do my best to help you with the surveillance, but even so, this will be more difficult than you can possibly imagine, and in all honesty probably hopeless. But we have no other choice."
Olga considered. "Now you I could believe were Jewish, Mr. Sellars."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you."
"Never mind." She sighed and stretched her aching legs as far as the tiny closet would allow. "Go ahead—I'm listening."
CHAPTER 24
Getting out of Dodge
NETFEED/BUSINESS: Bad Year for Executives
(visual: Dedoblanco funeral, Bangkok, Thailand)
VO: The death of Krittapong Electronics' Ymona Dedoblanco pointed up once again that it has been a bad year for business executives. Several moguls, perhaps the richest and certainly the most famous being Chinese financier Jiun Bhao, have died during the last few months. Little has been seen of several others, including Felix Jongleur, the aged Franco-American entrepreneur, who seldom leaves his Louisiana compound.
(visual: business journalist She-Ra Mottram)
MOTTRAM: "Yes, there have been several significant losses in the business community, and it's made the markets a bit shaky. Of course, most of these people were extremely old. That's why it's ironic that two of the oldest, Jongleur and Robert Wells, are still alive and kicking. They must get a certain pleasure out of seeing their younger rivals dropping by the wayside. . . ."
Paul stared at the lithe, dark man trussed on the floor of the cavern. The prisoner stared back, eyes narrowed as though he were a dog about to bite; Paul had no doubt that, given the chance, he would indeed cheerfully rip out their throats. "A thousand more? What do you mean?"
Bat Masterson shoved the prisoner with the toe of his boot, earning a look of even more tightly focused hatred. "Just as I said, friend. When they came down on us, we thought they were an ordinary war party of Comanche or Cheyenne. We didn't have much chance to get acquainted, though—we were too busy getting killed—so we only noticed after a while that they all look just the same. It's a ticklish mystery, sure enough. I reckon it's some tribe that's been inbreeding too long." But he did not look confident in his solution.
"They're devils," the mustached man who had been guarding Dread suggested. "Simple as can be. Ground opened up. Hell busted out."
"But, shit, Dave why would hell be full of octoroons?" Masterson tugged at his mustache. "Oh. Begging your pardon, ladies."
Martine, for one, was paying little attention to what was being said. "It is Dread," she murmured dreamily, "but also it is less. I can feel that now. He has copied himself somehow—used something as a framework, perhaps one of the Indian tribes, then replicated himself."
"Ma'am," Masterson told her, "I have to say that I can't figure out what in blazes you're talking about. Have you met these fellows before?"
Paul shrugged, tried to think of something to say. "Not really. It's hard to explain."
"Met him, yeah," T4b said. "Sixed him, too," he added unhelpfully.
As Masterson stood perplexed, scratching his head beneath the plug hat, Paul put his hand on Martine's shoulder. They needed to do something, it was clear, but it was pointless trying to explain the devolution of the network to the sims who lived in it. "Now what?"
"Even if a million of these waited for us," she said softly, "we would still have to make our way past them. We have no other way out of here." She turned to Masterson. "Can you lead us to Dodge City? Or at least tell us something of what to expect? We do not want to go there, but we have no choice."
"If'n you folks just want to get killed," the man named Dave offered, "you all oughta just walk off the cliff yonder. Be quicker and a lot cleaner."
"Mysterious Dave doesn't talk much," Masterson said with a sour smile, "but when he does, it's usually to a purpose. He's right. You go down there, you'll all die. No question about it. No, you stay here with us and stay alive—we could use a few more hands."
"We can't," said Paul, wishing fervently that it were otherwise. He'd heard enough about Dread to thoroughly terrify him, a monster as bad as Finney and Mudd, but with brains. The idea of a thousand of them, waiting. . . . "We can't. God, I wish we could stay. But we have to go."
"But why, blast it?" Masterson almost shouted. "Where are you from? And more importantly, didn't your mothers have any children with brains?"
Florimel, who had been watching the Dread sim with a mixture of horror and disgust, finally spoke up. "We cannot stay. We have a need to go to your Dodge City. It cannot be explained any more than that."
"It's . . . it's religious, I guess you could say," Paul said, reaching desperately. "We've sworn an oath."
Masterson fell silent for a moment, eyeing them all. "I suppose I should have known, seeing those queer outfits you're wearing. But it's still a bad bargain all around. We lose your help, you lose your lives." He spat in disgust, missing the snarling face of Dread only by mischance.
"Can you tell us the best way to reach the place?" Martine asked. "We do not know these mountains, and we don't want to meet any more of the monsters who caught us before."
"You'll find that this fellow's kin are worse than any jackalos." Masterson growled. "As far as finding your way down into that hellhole. . . ."
"I'll take 'em as far as the river," a voice said.
Paul turned to see the black man named Titus, who had been leaning on the cavern wall listening. "Thank you. That's very kind."
"See if you feel that way when they're taking your scalp off," said Titus. "I think you're fools, but I got me another long patrol to do so I might as well keep you out of trouble until you're closer. But it'll have to wait until dark."
Masterson had walked a short distance across the cavern; he returned with the pistol Paul had carried earlier. "Take this," he said. "It's reloaded. I hate like sin to see it lost and the bullets wasted, but I've got a Christian duty of sorts, I guess."
Paul stared at the ivory handle and dark steel barrel as though it were a snake. "I said I didn't want to carry it anymore. Besides, if there are a thousand of them, what good will six bullets do me?"
Masterson shoved it into his hands and leaned close to Paul's ear. "I thought you had at least a little sense, friend. You think I'm going to let you take women down into that place without a gun to do the honorable thing? Do you think when they catch you they're just going to kill you?"
Paul could only swallow what felt like a stone in his throat and accept the gun.
Only a few people saw them off. The rest of the refugees seemed to have decided that there was not much point in wasting time on a group of doomed fanatics. Of the half-dozen who stood at the cavern's outer edge, only Annie Ladue seemed genuinely sad.
"I can't believe you're going off to . . . that you're going off without even taking a meal with us."
Paul frowned. How to explain that they needed no food and could not afford to waste time eating? All this prevarication, not being able to tell people the truth about their own existences. . . . It was something like being a god among mortals, but he doubted most gods ever felt so miserable. "It's our religion," he said, by way of an explanation.
Annie shook her head. "Well, I'm not the most Christian woman you'll meet, I suppose, but Godspeed to you all." She turned abruptly and walked back inside.
"I'll not offer you my hand," Masterson said. "I can't abide such foolishness as this. But I will echo what Annie said, and add 'good luck.' I can't imagine where anyone could find that much luck, though. Titus, make sure you at least come back safely."
"What . . . what are you going to do with the prisoner?" Paul ask
ed.
"Let's put it this way," said Masterson, "in consideration of tender sensibilities. We're not going to be giving him a testimonial dinner. But it'll be a lot quicker than what you'll get down in Dodge if his kinfolk catch hold of you." He nodded his head, tipped his hat to Martine and Florimel, and led the rest of the silent farewell party back into the cavern.
"Well, on that cheerful note," Titus said, "I reckon we should get going. Y'all follow me close and quiet. If I hold my hand up like this, just stop—don't say nothing, just stop. Got me?"
The river was already hidden in shadow below them as they set off, and evening shadows ran purple down the far mountains. Bringing up the rear, Paul could barely see his companions, although the nearest was only a few meters in front of him.
How many worlds? he wondered. How many worlds are falling under shadow right now?
It was not a question he could ponder very long or very thoroughly while making his way down the steep mountain slope, a thousand feet or more above the river valley.
Even with the confident Titus leading the way, they did not make very fast time. Florimel's bad leg slowed them, and T4b did not seem to like heights anywhere near so much when he wasn't imagining himself playing a familiar game. Almost half the night passed before they felt the moisture of the river in the air, although they had heard its thrashing roar for some time.
Titus was sparing of conversation, but during their stops for rest he told them a little of his life, of his childhood in Maryland as the son of a freed slave and his own escape westward. He had spent much of his adulthood as a trail hand—Paul had never known that there were black cowboys, but Titus said there were thousands like him all over the southwest. He had been riding herd on a shipment of shorthorns that had come up from Texas to the Dodge City railhead, and was in town spending his pay on the night the earth began to move.
"The most frightening thing I ever saw." He was almost invisible in the moonlight, but his pale, crooked teeth showed for a moment as he put a wad of tobacco into his mouth. "Worse than all those hundreds of same-looking fellows on horseback that came later, screaming and hollering. Everything was shaking, then the land just folded up—at first I thought we were sinking into the middle of the Earth, then I saw that it was mountains growing right up out of the ground all around us, shooting up like a cane-brake. I thought it was Judgment Day, like my mama taught me. Maybe it was. Maybe this is the End of Days. Lots of others think so."
And for them it is, Paul thought. But when they're all dead, will they rise again and start over like the Looking Glass people? Or has Dread frozen this simulation in permanent decay?
Titus was right—the mountains had simply sprouted from the ground like weeds. As they neared the valley floor they found no foothills, no gentling of the slope, only a jumble of boulders and scree around the mountains' roots. This was the most difficult part of the journey so far, every step threatening to set off a landslide, so although he was aware of the glow for some time, it wasn't until they were actually standing on the muddy fiats beside the river that Paul saw the fires of Dodge City.
"Great God," Florimel said quietly. "What have they done?"
"What they'll do to you," Titus whispered. "And to me, too, so shut up!"
He beckoned them into a hollow where a cluster of boulders had tumbled free of the mountainside and stood piled like a giant pawnbroker's sign. From this pathetic hiding place they could look out across the river and the narrow valley to a huge bonfire in the main street that blotted the stars with its massive plume of smoke, as well as countless lesser blazes running along the roofs of Dodge City like Christmas tinsel. Shadows leaped and twirled through the stark, red-lighted streets; even from the far side of the river, they could hear screams.
"It's burning down," Paul whispered.
"Naw. Been like that since those devil-men took it," said.
Titus. "Burns and burns, but it doesn't never burn down." He shook his head slowly. "The End of Days."
"So where are we going, exactly?" Paul quietly asked Martine. He could feel his own heart hammering, and could see that Florimel and T4b were no less disturbed at the idea of walking into such a terrible place.
"I don't know. Let me have a quiet moment to think." She got up and crawled a few meters away, putting one of the massive boulders between herself and her companions.
"Hate to spoil things," Titus said, "but it's time for this mother's son to be moving on."
"Just wait a moment longer," Paul begged him. "We may have more questions to ask you. . . ."
The moment stretched into something longer, while Paul and the others watched the proof of Titus' words not a half-kilometer away, flames that burned and burned along the housetops and high false fronts but never consumed them, despite the apparent flimsiness of the buildings.
"It is no use," Martine said, crawling back. "I can make nothing of it—too many distractions, too much disruption. If Dread had set out deliberately to make things difficult for my senses, he could not have done better."
"So where then?" Florimel demanded. "Simply walk into that? It would be madness."
"Just follow the river, us," T4b suggested. "Make a raft. Sail on out of this scan-palace."
"Were you not listening?" Although her voice was low, Martine sounded as angry as Paul had ever heard her. "There is no other way to the place we seek. If we follow the river to the far gateway, and we are not killed by something on the way, there is little chance the gate will be open and no guarantee it will not dump us somewhere worse. If we wish to reach Egypt we must find this nearer gateway."
"Find we get sixed up true, ask me," T4b muttered, but fell silent.
"Where are the places we have encountered these things before," she said to Paul and Florimel. "Mazes? Catacombs?"
"The mines?" Florimel suggested. "There were mines on the mountainside." She groaned. "Great God, I do not think I can climb back up."
"Cemeteries," Paul said. "Places of the dead. The Brotherhood's little joke." He allowed himself a grim smile. "Came back and bit them in the arse, too, didn't it?" He turned to Titus, who had been watching them with puzzled fascination. "Is there a cemetery in the town?"
"Oh, yeah, just outside to the northwest. Over that way." He pointed across the river, out toward the darkness to the left of the blazing town. "Got some silly-ass name. Boot Hill, something like that."
"Boot Hill," Paul breathed. "I've heard of it. Can we just cross the river and walk to it?" He looked at his companions. "We won't even have to go into the town at all."
"I got no idea what kind of nonsense you all plan to get up to, but I can tell you this—you're not getting to Boot Hill by going around Dodge that direction. When the mountains came up, the riverbanks broke up over there. It's a swamp now, and there are snakes as big around as a bedroll and long as a twenty-mule team, not to mention mosquitoes the size of hawks." He shrugged. "I know it doesn't make no earthly sense, snakes and jackalos and whatnot just coming up out of the ground like that—why didn't anyone see one before? That's why I think it's Judgment."
"We know about the snakes here," said Paul. "We met one. What about the other way around, east of the town?"
"Not too good of an idea. Just beyond town that way the Arkansas drops off just like that," he tilted his long fingers steeply downward, "—a waterfall—and there's a canyon goes down so deep it's dark at the bottom even at high noon. Canyon stretches for miles that direction. Why do you think we're all living on that mountainside instead of getting the blazes away from here?" He stood up. "You should have listened to Masterson when he told you to stay put. He's a good man, and has a lot more sense than most. Now I'm going to get moving. I don't like being this close to Dodge."
"But wait," Florimel said, a hint of panic in her voice. "Do we just . . . walk across the bridge?"
"If you can't wait to lose your scalps, sure enough. There's a dozen or so of them devil-men sitting on it night and day. But if you'd like to draw the whole thing out a li
ttle longer, I suggest you wade across the river a few hundred feet this side of the bridge. The Arkansas is good and shallow this time of year, even with all this topsy-turvy."
He threw them a mocking salute and then was gone into the darkness, silent as a bird flying.
"Everyone seems pretty damned certain we're going to be killed," Paul said quietly.
"Everyone is probably right," growled Florimel.
The Arkansas waters, though never more than waist-deep, had a distinctly sinister feel, warm and oily. The river even had a strange undertow which tugged steadily at the travelers despite the sluggishness of the current, like a street urchin who had found his intended mark and would not turn loose.
Paul found he did not want to think about the water much, not just because of the unpleasant feel, but because he found himself imagining the many different things that might be swimming toward them from the swamp Titus had described.
Far on their right along the riverbank, illuminated by another group of huge bonfires, stood a massive fenced enclosure that Paul guessed was some kind of yard for shipping cattle. Despite the late hour it seemed that branding was going on, although wordless but still distinctive shrieks made it clear the victims were not cows.
Not all the voices were raised in pain. As a chorus of shouts and laughs rolled out from the stockyard Paul saw Martine falter and almost fall into the water. He grabbed her arm to brace her.
"To hear his voice again," she whispered, eyes squeezed tightly shut as if she could somehow make herself deaf by increasing her blindness. "To hear it multiplied, echoed over and over on all sides. . . ."
"It's just a trick. Like you said, they're just crude copies. He's not really here." But was that true, he wondered, or wishful thinking? Perhaps Dodge had a new sheriff.
A dozen meters from the bank, Martine grabbed Paul's arm again. For a moment he thought that the situation had finally become too much for her, but though her face showed strain, she was alert, listening, scanning.
