Sea of Silver Light o-4

by Tad Williams

  Renie let out a hysterical giggle. But that means I'm a Jinnear, too—I have a degree and everything. Why didn't the Other make me a killer ghost-jellyfish as well?

  "Why are you laughing?" the Stone Girl demanded in a quavering voice. "You're scaring me!"

  "Sorry. I just thought of something. Don't mind me." But oh my God what did the techs and engineers do to this Al or whatever it is to make it think of them like that. . . ?

  The vegetable firmness of the tower wall was startlingly close now. She could see the open window only two or three meters above her head, glowing against the dark sky, but the vines, which hung from the very top of the protruding roof, would not bring her very close, and the angle was soon going to be too steep anyway.

  "We're going to have to get off the vines and try to climb up the wall," she said as lightly and calmly as she could. "I'm going to lean over as far as I can before I let go, but I'm going to have to jump. Will you hold on tight?"

  "Jump. . . ?"

  "It's the only way I can reach it. I'm sure the bushes will hold us," she said without actually being sure at all. She got a good grip on the upper vine, then stopped so she could gently but firmly pry loose the fingers of the Stone Girl, who had decided to hold on as well. "You can't do that. If you're still holding on when I jump . . . well, we're in a lot of trouble."

  "Okay," the small voice said in her ear.

  She trusts me. I almost wish she didn't. . . .

  Renie braced herself, then set the vine swaying, figuring even a few extra inches would help. On the fourth wide swing, she jumped toward the shadowy wall.

  For a moment, as the dry leaves tore beneath her hands like paper and they slid downward, she was certain they were dead. Then she caught at something stiffer and more substantial and grabbed hard, digging her toes in as well, insensible of what she was doing to her bare feet and fingers. When they stopped sliding she clung for a moment, gasping.

  Can't wait. Can't hang. No strength.

  She forced herself up, grip by difficult, hard-won grip. What had looked like two or three meters to climb from the relative safety of the branch now felt like a hundred. Every muscle seemed to be writhing in agony.

  The glow of the window was hallucinatory in its brightness. She pulled herself over the brambly sill and slid down to the brambly floor, gasping for breath, moaning as her muscles knotted, as star-flecked blackness rolled across her eyes.

  The first thing she noticed when she could see properly again was the source of light in the tower room, a great, nodding flower hanging at the apex of the vaulted ceiling, glowing a waxy yellow at the heart of its petals. She heard the Stone Girl stirring behind her and sat up. Someone was sitting on the far side of the small room, half-hidden by leaves and shadows. It was not !Xabbu. It was Ricardo Klement, the Grail Project's only success, such as he was—handsome, young, and brain-damaged.

  "Is that your friend?" the Stone Girl asked quietly.

  Renie gave a sharp, cracked laugh. "Where are the others?" She could barely muster the strength to speak. "My friends. Are they here?"

  Klement looked at her incuriously. He held something small cradled in his arms, but she could not make it out. "Others? No others. Only me . . . us."

  "Who?" She was getting a very bad feeling. "Us who?"

  Klement slowly lifted the thing he was holding. It was small and unpleasant to look at, a sort of blue-gray, eyeless blob with rudimentary arms and legs and head, a loose gape for a mouth.

  "Jesus Mercy," Renie said in disgust and misery. "What the hell is that?"

  "It is. . . ." Klement hesitated, his face blank as he sought for the words. "It is me . . . no . . . it is mine. . . ."

  After all that, to find nothing but Klement and this inexplicable little monstrosity. . . ! Every bit of her was afire with pain, but worse than anything was the disappointment, a stunning blow like a bullet wound in the chest. "What are you doing here?"

  "Waiting for . . . something," Klement said tonelessly. "Not for you."

  "I feel exactly the same way." Despite herself, Renie began to cry. "God damn it all."

  CHAPTER 28

  Master of His Silence

  NETFEED/PERSONALS: So Sad And Lonely. . . .

  (visual: picture of advertiser, M.J. [anonymated])

  M.J.: "I don't care any more. There's nobody here, and I don't even want to try. It's . . . it's really lonely here. Dark. I wanted someone to call me because I'm alone and I'm sad. But nobody ever called—I guess there's no one out there listening after all. . . ."

  It had been bad enough falling out of Dodge City and into Egypt, but this second transition was much harder, far more painful. When Paul's thoughts came back they seemed to swim in dark, bloody waters, like primeval fish, He opened his eyes to find a yellow face hovering just before him, grinning. Paul groaned.

  "Oh, good," said the clownish, lemon-colored mask. It was perched atop a body swathed in immaculate mummy wrappings. "You're awake. I was afraid the sphinx had damaged you—but he's very gentle, in his way,"

  Martine was gasping in pain beside him, as though she had not been brought any more gently to this place, a windowless gray stone room. T4b and Florimel were already awake, staring at their captor with grim faces.

  "What do you want with us?" Paul could not make himself sound anything but hopeless and pathetic. His arms were tied securely behind his back, his ankles too. The four captives had been propped against the wall like unwanted parcels.

  "I haven't really decided yet, to tell the truth," said the yellow-faced man. "I suppose Ptah the Artificer should know these things, but I've only really started this god business in earnest pretty recently." He giggled. "But now I'm really wondering where I've met you before. I would have recognized my old traveling companions, of course, even if you weren't still wearing the same old clothes—hello! But you. . . ." He tilted his bright face as he regarded Paul. "I have met you before, haven't I? Oh, wait, you're a friend of Kunohara's."

  "Wells?" Paul was shocked, although he could now see the weird, underwater resemblance. "Robert Wells?"

  The response was another pleased chortle. "Oh, yes. But my Egyptian identity is rather to the fore at the moment. Lord Anubis has been kind enough to forgive my past bad associations."

  "Anubis?" Martine spoke hollowly. "You mean Dread, don't you? You mean Jongleur's pet murderer."

  "Yes, I suppose that's his name. I would have found it much easier piecing these things together from the outside, but I've had to make do."

  "That's an understatement," said Paul. "You've fallen pretty low, Wells, haven't you—throwing in your lot with a butchering psychopath."

  "Don't waste your time, Paul." Florimel's voice was cracked, the defiance unconvincingly forced. "He is no better than Dread."

  "Anyone who knows anything about business knows that sometimes you have to overlook certain foibles in your CEO if you want a take-charge kind of guy," Wells said cheerfully. "And the fact is, right now Mr. Dread holds all the stock. Which means I'm proud to be on his team."

  "So . . . so you'll just stand by and let him do whatever he wants?" Paul said. "Destroy the network, rape and murder and God knows what else. . . ?"

  "In a word—yes," said Wells. "But he won't destroy the network. He wants to live forever, just like anyone else. Just like me." He turned and tapped on the door. "But he'll be back very soon, our gracious Lord Anubis, so I'm sure he'll be glad to explain things to you himself,"

  The heavy door swung open, revealing a trio of shaven-headed guards just outside, their muscles shining with oil. The door thumped shut behind Wells and the bolt crashed back into place.

  "Dread has us!" Martine seemed to speak from some far shore of despair. "Oh, God, the monster has us!"

  Exhausted and heartsick, squeezed to cramping agony by their bonds, neither Paul nor his companions felt much like talking. Something close to an hour passed before the bolt grated again and the door swung open to reveal the bizarre , yellow countenance of R
obert Wells.

  "Keeping yourselves amused, I hope," he said. "Singing camp songs or something? Michael row the boat ashore. . . ?" His smile—in fact, Paul thought, his entire aspect—seemed quite insane. "I've brought along some pals of yours." A pair of guards shouldered their way into the room, each holding a sagging figure. When they let go of them, the prisoners stumbled and fell to the floor. Paul did not know the small, round woman in tattered Egyptian clothes, but after a moment recognized the man's face through the blood and bruises.

  "Nandi. . . ?"

  The prisoner rolled reddened, swollen-lidded eyes in his direction. "I'm sorry . . . I . . . never thought. . . ."

  "Ah, yes!" said Wells. "He never thought you'd actually be here, or he would have kept his mouth shut about meeting you." The yellow mask nodded. "It took a little while before I put two and two together. Then I realized it would be a bit of a coincidence for you to be a different Paul than the one this gentleman has been telling us about so eagerly."

  "You monster!" Nandi Paradivash struggled to crawl toward Wells, but was kicked brutally back to the floor by the nearest guard, where he lay, sobbing and wheezing.

  "Paul Jonas." Wells surveyed him with a glittering eye. "Or 'X', as I was calling you for a long time—Jongleur's mystery experiment. First I got a name to go with it, now a face." He crossed his bandaged arms over his chest. "Soon I'll have a lot more than that. You can explain everything. Not that it means much with Jongleur dead or missing in action, but still—I'm interested."

  Paul could only stare defiantly. "Even if I knew . . . and I don't . . . I wouldn't tell you. It was wiped out of my memory."

  "Then maybe you'll thank me." Wells smiled. "When I help you remember." He flicked his hand and the guards hurried forward and picked up Paul like a rolled carpet. He had no time to shout something brave to his companions, not even a good-bye, before they were hurrying him along a torchlit corridor. Wells' voice echoed after them.

  "I'll be right there, boys. Make sure he stays tied. Oh, and sharpen everything, will you?"

  "Code Delphi. Start here.

  "I never expected to speak those words again.

  "A few hours ago I was certain that continuing this journal in the face of all but certain death—a journal that no one but me would ever find, even if the network survives—would be complete madness. These entries spoken into air are only to remind me of what I felt and thought, in the unlikely event that I can look back on this time from some future I still cannot imagine. So when I was at my lowest points of despair, as I was then, it seemed even worse than mad—it seemed dull and pointless. I have never wanted to leave some dramatic last will and testament that no one will hear. I have never been moved by displays of hopeless bravery, and certainly was not going to bother with one of my own.

  "In short, I had surrendered.

  "I do not know that anything has truly changed—our chance of survival is still vanishingly small—but I have found a little unexpected hope. No, not hope. I still believe we will lose our lives without seeing the end of this. Determination? Perhaps.

  "When we survived the feverish horror of the Dodge City simworld only to be captured in Egypt, and worst of all, when we discovered we were—and still are—being held for Dread himself, I fell for a while into the lowest despair. The pit. A hole into darkness. I could not speak, could barely even think except for nightmare images of that room in the House world where Dread tormented me. If someone at that moment had offered to put a bullet in my head, I would have accepted it with gratitude.

  "Then everything changed again—for the worse, if such a thing were possible". Our captor, Robert Wells, who apparently has now become Dread's lieutenant, brought two more prisoners to join us and took away Paul Jonas for interrogation. My misery was such that I could scarcely move. I fear for Paul. God, how I fear for him. He has already been through so much. . . ! I am shamed that my own suffering should have left me so self-involved. I cannot even imagine what he has experienced, lost in this network with little memory of his own real history and no knowledge of what was happening to him. To have kept so sane, to be so kind and so brave. . . . It is astonishing. And it is equally astonishing that I did not truly realize how much I admired him until he was taken away.

  "Even now, he could be dead. Or perhaps in terrible, terrible, pain. Which would be worse?

  "This is the curse I perceived before, the burden I have evaded all my life. To like people, to . . . love people, is to make oneself a hostage to fortune.

  "So it was I began my slide into the abyss. For long minutes after Paul was taken—it might have been hours for all I could have guessed—I simply could not speak. Could not think. Terror had seized my heart, frozen my thoughts, turned me into something which could not move, and had nowhere to go even if it could.

  "This is just a more direct version, I realize now, of what I have done in my own real life. Frightened, I have gradually sealed myself in the rocky depths of the mountains, in the sanctuary I share only with my machines. Without realizing it, I have actively conspired in making myself something much less than a person.

  "Still, in the grip of the terror I could not see these things, but only now that it has passed. I might never nave left the black panic if it had not been for the hands of my friends upon me, Florimel and T4b, who thought I was having a heart attack. I felt them and heard them as though from a long distance, and for a while I did not wish to be plugged back into my nerves and senses. Better to hide in the black pit. Better to let my overwhelming fear protect me, as blocks of ice make a home that shelters Arctic hunters from the cold.

  "Then, still at a great distance from my own self, I felt another set of hands upon me, clumsy, halting hands, and heard another voice. The new woman prisoner had dragged herself over to help, ignoring her own injuries. Even in the depths of my isolation I was shamed. Here was someone who had suffered what I only feared, and yet she could find the strength to worry about me, a stranger!

  "I had thought that I would never come back to sanity, that I would simply fall down into that slow-motion blackness forever. How much worse, in a way, to return and find myself being cared for by my exhausted friends and even this newcomer, her limbs still trembling with the pain of what she had endured, as though I were a tired, fretful child commanding the attention of a group of adults.

  "There are times when kindness is the sharpest cut of all.

  "But even my shame passed. I realized that I knew both of the new prisoners at least by name—Bonnie Mae Simpkins, who had shown such kindness to Orlando and Fredericks, and Nandi Paradivash, who had been the first to explain to Paul that he was trapped in Jongleur's simulation network. Nandi was in a state something like I had been, torn with guilt at what had happened to Paul, and also clearly the victim of agonizing treatment, but the Simpkins woman spoke for both of them. She told how in opening a gateway and sending Orlando and Fredericks through, the remaining members of the Circle had waited too long, so that their own escape was prevented by the collapse of the great Temple of Ra which followed Jongleur's appearance in his guise as Osiris, master of this simulation world. Jongleur had not stayed long, and the survivors had hidden in the ruins, hoping to find another way out of the simulation, but within days Osiris had been supplanted by Anubis and the already bad state of affairs rapidly became worse.

  "Bonnie Mae Simpkins described the destruction that followed Dread's taking control of the simworld, an orgy of murder and torture at feast as grisly as that which we had seen in Dodge City. Although I thought myself numbed by this point, I was nevertheless chilled by her description of what happened here, of the public burnings, Dread's orchestrated symphonies of murder, wild jackals devouring the bodies of children in the streets while their parents were forced to watch. Chilled because I realized that even in this network where every whim could be indulged, there was no upper limit to his homicidal madness.

  "Dread's power and his ambition are growing, but how long can mere simulations feed such an
appetite? If he has Jongleur's power outside the network as well as inside—and if Jongleur is truly dead, why shouldn't Dread control his worldwide operations?—then the possibilities are quite terrifyingly vast.

  "As Bonnie Mae spoke, I had a sudden thought, and asked, 'What about the other children? The little flying children that Orlando mentioned?' I could not remember the name they called themselves—the Wicked Group, the Nasty Club, something silly.

  "This question made her even more sad. She told us that although the monkey-children had wanted to follow Orlando and Fredericks through the gateway, they had been distracted by the chaos in the temple of Ra and so they had all been left behind when the gateway closed.

  "Bonnie Mae Simpkins said she had tried to keep them hidden when soldiers found her and Nandi and brought them here, but the monkey-children had flown away, pursued by some of the temple guards. She felt sure they had been captured and probably killed, since even Dread would have felt there was little information to be gathered from a group of children who had not reached school age.

  "She went on to tell something of the horrors she and Nandi had experienced, largely because Dread knew they had been seen in the company of Orlando and Fredericks. This was chilling too—it was bad enough to know we were soon to be delivered to Dread, worse to know he had been actively seeking us. His vengeance, it seems, will not be offhanded.

  "But the idea of Orlando's monkey-children friends would not leave my head.

  "You see, I had turned a corner of sorts. I was and am still resigned to death, and to an unpleasant one at that, but I cannot bear to wait for it passively. Where this has led me, I will tell in a moment. But I listened less and less closely to Bonnie Mae Simpkins' terrible stories, because . . . because I needed to think about something else. I understand now Renie's bullheaded, chronic need to go forward—when there is nothing to be done, to want to do something anyway.