Sea of Silver Light o-4

by Tad Williams

  He looked at her angrily. "The Temple of Set," he said at last. "The house of the Lost One. That is what you sense out there in the desert. It is a hole into the underworld, a place that even great Osiris entered like a mortal man being dragged alive into his own tomb. And if you go there you will be lost forever."

  Martine stared toward him, an unreadable expression on her sightless face. Nandi and T4b limped back from the end of the pier where they had been examining the vast barge.

  "Like, all these black guys with oars in there," T4b reported. He still cradled his glowing hand as though it hurt him. "Just sitting, staring at nothing. Locking scanned."

  "Go, then," Bes said to Martine. "Just step onto the boat and say where you wish to go. The boat will take you. You will be there sooner than you wish."

  "We have to do it," she said quietly.

  "Then you go without Bes." The little god turned in disgust and began to walk back toward the temple. "May the seven Hathors give you a merciful ending."

  Mrs. Simpkins turned to call after him. "Thank you for helping us! God bless you!"

  Bes made a gesture, half-fare well, half-dismissal. The monkeys wheeled around his head for a moment, then fluttered back toward Paul and the others.

  "Is it just me," Florimel asked heavily, "or is someone always telling us that we are going to hate the place we are going even worse than where we are?"

  Even in the hot Egyptian air, Paul was shivering. "Well, they've been right every time," he said.

  "Code Delphi. Start here.

  "We have been incredibly lucky. No, I have been incredibly lucky. My desperate attempt to find help roused the Wicked Tribe, and the children themselves located the little god Bes, friend of our fellow prisoners Nandi Paradivash and Bonita Mae Simpkins. That in itself was a great stroke of fortune—the tiny Tribe children could never have lifted the bolt on our cell door themselves, but Bes is far more powerful than his stature would suggest. He is a god, after all.

  "And against all my dark certainties, we have rescued Paul Jonas as well, injured and traumatized, but still alive, still sane. Even now, his skin washed clean of blood, his many wounds bandaged to the best of my ability, he is sleeping beside my feet. Nandi and Bonnie Mae have also survived torture, although there is a shadow across them both. The virtual galley slaves are rowing the barge of Osiris upstream, like an engine that does not care who is driving—upstream toward the Temple of Set.

  "I did not need Bes to tell me how dangerous our journey is. Orlando and Fredericks were drawn to this temple once, sucked in like leaves into a whirlpool, and Orlando said they barely survived it. Still, I cannot help feeling at least a little optimistic, foolish as that is. We are still alive, when good sense proclaims we should not be. And we have escaped from under the very nose of Dread, at least for a moment. Something inside me dances like a child let out into the garden after a long boring day inside. I am alive! There is nothing more important than that. It is all I have. For the moment, it is enough.

  "But as I sense Paul lying near me—so deep in exhausted, trembling sleep that he resembles Robert Wells after Javier jabbed that strange, glowing hand of his into the back of Wells' head, dropping someone who was a great god in this Egyptian simworld straight to the floor like a slaughtered bullock—I cannot help wondering what it all means. Is it only luck that we are again rescued? We are inside an operating system that has been fed with the idea of stories, so perhaps the thread of coincidence and strange chance is not so unbelievable. Perhaps T4b having been damaged in just the way that would save us makes a kind of sense—perhaps it was part of the story of the network. But that does not explain every odd stroke of fortune that has affected us. I came into this network by my own choice, trying to help Renie Sulaweyo find her brother, absolutely unaware that it might have anything to do with that long-ago day I lost my sight. How could such an extreme coincidence be?

  "Unless there is more to this idea of story than anyone understands.

  "After all, is it not the way we humans shape the universe, shape time itself? Do we not take the raw stuff of chaos and impose a beginning, middle, and end on it, like the simplest and most profound of folktales, to reflect the shapes of our own tiny lives? And if the physicists are right, that the physical world changes as it is observed, and we are its only known observers, then might we not be bending the entire chaotic universe, the eternal, ever-active Now, to fit that familiar form?

  "If so, the universe, from the finest quantum dust to the widest vacuum spaces, does indeed have a shape. It begins 'Once upon a time. . . .'

  "And if it is true, then only we humans, poor, naked semi-apes crouching in the thin light of our single star, marooned on the rim of a minor galaxy, can determine whether there will be a 'Happily ever after'?

  "It makes my head hurt to think of it. It is a possibility too large and strange to contain for long, especially when we are still in such danger.

  "The ship of Osiris breasts the sluggish river current, rocking beneath me, the timbers creaking, the oars beating an inhumanly steady rhythm. We are heading up the Nile to the darkest place in this world, maybe in any of these worlds. I am very tired. I think I will try to sleep for a little while.

  "Code Delphi. End here."

  Dread floated in the white spaces of his bone-sparse Outback castle. The yip of a dingo sounded through the archway, offering a weird but compelling counterpoint to the piano melody shivering in the air. Dread muted the light, pushing the arid landscape into twilight so he could better see the abstract which Dulcie Anwin had prepared for him.

  He frowned, annoyed by having to pay attention when he would rather have drifted and daydreamed. The abstract was an expanding treasure box of charts, three-dimensional graphs, and lists of assets—a neat summation of the hugely various holdings controlled by Felix Jongleur. A forest of markers sprang from each point, containing information about access and connection, and for a little while he entertained himself with contemplating how each subcorporation, holding company, and business asset could be used as an instrument of pain.

  He listened with pleasure to the lonely, atonal lurch of the piano. I can make a true symphony out of it, he thought. An economic collapse here, a plague there, so that even the rich ones cop it sweet. War, famine—all the bloody horsemen of the Apocalypse, one after the other. Like World War Three, but in slow motion. Which will make it easier to enjoy.

  Of course, I'll have to play it carefully—make sure it doesn't get too far out of hand. After all, I don't want anything happening to me, now do I?

  But before the real fun could begin he had to get the last details dealt with. It was one thing to be able to access Felix Jongleur's high-level information, another to implement the kind of wild art projects Dread was now envisioning. Surely at some point Jongleur's absence would officially become Jongleur's death, and his various boards of directors and successor-designates would step in, sending armies of accountants and data analysts ahead of them. Before that happened, Dread knew he would have to firm up his own controls, transferring the assets and connections he needed into his own hands.

  Did he need Dulcie for that? No. She had lived out her usefulness. In fact, she knew far too much. Another day or so while she helped him handle the various transfers of power, then her trip to Australia would end. He had decided that he could combine the need for an unsuspicious resolution with a little pleasure for himself, after all. Who would be surprised if an American tourist were to be found robbed and murdered in one of the seamier parts of Sydney?

  The piano was joined again, not by a wild dog this time, but by the quiet beeping of an urgent message. Dread considered ignoring it, but knew it might be from Dulcie. Since they had such a short time left together, he wanted to keep her working. A good manager didn't waste an asset.

  To his surprise, the call was on a line he hadn't yet used. The head that filled the view-window was shaved bald, the robes streaked gray and black with soot.

  "O Lord of All!" the pr
iest said, stuttering in his haste and panic. "Woe is come upon us, O Great House. Your servants are full of despair—all the Black Land is in terror!"

  Dread frowned. It was one of the Old Man's virtual priests. The call had been routed directly to him through Jongleur's connection to the Grail network, just as though the servitor were calling from the real world instead of an imaginary Egypt.

  "What do you want?"

  "O blessed Anubis, master of the final journey, there is fire in great Abydos! Many priests are dead, many more lie burned and dying!"

  Which was a pretty funny thing to call him about, Dread reflected, since he had been torturing and murdering priests himself in the temple complex of Abydos-That-Was not twenty-four hours ago. "So?"

  The ash-smeared face went paler still. The man's mouth worked without noise for a moment. "And the prisoners of the great god have escaped."

  "What?" He narrowed his eyes. "You let those two idiots from the Circle get away? Both of them?"

  The priest swallowed. When he spoke, it was almost a whisper. "All of them. All of the great god's prisoners."

  "What are you talking about?" He heard his voice rise to an angry howl, as though he truly were the god the priest must be seeing. "Don't move!"

  With a flick of thought, he threw himself into Egypt.

  Wells cowered on the floor of the cell, his mummy wrappings smeared with dirt, his banana-yellow face tight with fear and resentment as he stared up at the huge, jackal-headed figure of Anubis.

  "How was I to know?" Wells was slurring his words as though something had damaged his brain. "It was just some kid—he must have been the same one who got Yacoubian. He just . . . stuck his hand in me. I was paralyzed—almost felt like I was thrown offline, except I was still locked inside this virtual body."

  "What the hell are you babbling about?" Dread whirled and struck Wells hard across the side of the head, knocking the bandaged god to the floor. "I'll give you paralyzed, you whining poof. The priests said my prisoners escaped—all my prisoners. I had two little god-botherers I was hanging onto, but they weren't going anywhere. Almost dead, they were. So what are the priests talking about?"

  "They just . . . showed up here," Wells said quickly. "The ones I came to Kunohara's world with. They showed up here and I was holding them for you."

  "Kunohara's world. . . ?" Dread stared at the cowering figure. "Are you telling me. . . ?"

  Wells climbed to his feet. "But Paul Jonas was with them, see?"

  "Who the bloody hell is that?" The name was slightly familiar, but any memory was washed away in a hot red fury that made him feel as though he might burst into flame.

  "Someone Jongleur was searching for!" Wells seemed to feel he had redeemed himself with this information; he clambered back onto his feet. "The Old Man turned the network upside down trying to find him, but we never knew why—we didn't even know his name. Jonas has some kind of post-hypnotic block on his memory, so I thought a little session with one of the kheri-heb priests might loosen it up. . . ."

  "Shut up!" Dread roared. "I don't give a shit about this Jonas. Who was here? What prisoners? Who escaped?"

  Wells flinched back, blinking. "I told you, the . . . the ones from Kunohara's world. You remember, don't you? You sent all those mutant bugs after them. The boy with the strange hand. The woman with the bandaged head. The blind woman. . . ."

  "You . . . you had Martine here. . . ?" Dread could hardly speak. His hands were shaking. "You had Martine Desroubins and her friends here and you didn't tell me?"

  Wells took a step backward. He tried to stand taller. "I would have told you. I would have! But I can make some decisions on my own, you know. I ran one of the largest companies in the world—and now I'm a god, too!"

  Dread was on him so fast that Robert Wells did not even have time to squeak. The jackal-god's huge hand closed around the other's throat, then he lifted his victim up until his bandaged feet dangled helplessly a meter above the ground.

  "Which way did they go?"

  Wells shook his head violently, eyes bulging.

  "Right. I'll find out myself." He pulled Wells closer still, until he could have closed his jaws on Ptah's hairless head and cracked it like a walnut. "You goddamned Yanks think you know everything. Well, here's some information for you, mate. You may be a god now . . . but around here, I'm God Almighty."

  His captive struggled in terror, but only for a moment. Dread's hand shot out, swift as a cobra's strike, and plunged into Robert Wells' gaping mouth, then his fingers curved upward, poking through the skull as though it were an eggshell as he set his grip. With the smaller god secured, he took his other hand from Wells' throat and pulled the yellow lips hideously wide, stretching them back like a latex mask until the face disappeared. Then, with a terrible twisting motion of his long arm, Dread yanked Ptah's entire skeleton out of his body and let it drop to the floor. A puppet of bone and sinew twitched like a landed fish beside the empty, rubbery folds of its own flesh. The eyes, still trapped in the orbits of the naked skull, rolled wildly even as their intelligence began to fade.

  "So you're a god, eh?" Dread spat beside the slick, shiny bones. "Then heal that.'"

  His mood ever so slightly improved, Anubis went in search of his prisoners.

  He could think better now. The oppressive cloud that had darkened and confused his thoughts was beginning to disperse, as if baked away by the glaring Egyptian sun, but despite the improvement, Paul found himself not just uninterested in thinking but actively unwilling to try. The memory of his own helplessness was a shame and a terror.

  Upon waking he had dragged himself into the shade of the boat's gilded deck awning. They seemed to have left the canal and moved out onto the Nile itself: on either side of the wide brown river stretched kilometers of empty sand. The rugged mountains, ocher-gray and indistinct in the distance, only underscored the flat, featureless desert.

  Whether he wanted them or not, scraps of memory fluttered through his head—Ava, the chirping of the birds, Mudd's triumphant, subhuman face as he found them embracing.

  I kissed her. Did I love her? Why can't I feel it? If you love someone, surely you can't forget that.

  But it was all too dark, too heavy with misery. He didn't want to know any more—surely one of them had somehow betrayed the other. Nothing else would explain his revulsion at the idea of uncovering additional memories.

  He was distracted, and was grateful for it, by Nandi Paradivash lowering himself carefully down beside him. "I see you are awake." He spoke far more slowly than Paul remembered from their first meeting. In fact, this Nandi seemed quite different from the mercurial character with whom he had sailed through Xanadu—hard and dry, as though some crucial petrifaction had occurred. "I am glad to see you again, Paul Jonas."

  "And I'm glad to see you. I never got the chance to thank you for saving me."

  "From the Khan's men?" Nandi showed him the phantom of a smile. "They actually caught me, but I escaped. It is much like an adventure game, this life, eh? But all too dangerous, both to the body and the soul."

  "Nothing around you is true, but the things you see can hurt you or kill you," Paul quoted. "That was the message I was given—I think I told you. And you did save me, in the most important way. You told me what was really going on. Then I didn't have to be afraid I was losing my mind."

  Nandi slowly eased himself into a lotus position, being careful with his burned legs. The scarred flesh brought back Paul's own last hours in the temple so strongly that for a moment he thought he might be sick.

  Nandi did not seem to notice: his eyes were on the riverbank. "God will protect us from evil men. They will live to see their works cast down." He turned to Paul. "And their works have been cast down, haven't they? I have been told of what happened to the Grail Brotherhood's ceremony of immortality."

  "Yes. But somehow it still doesn't feel like we're winning."

  After they had sat in silence for a little while, Paul suddenly said, "You know, you were
right. About the Pankies."

  Nandi frowned. "Who?"

  "That English couple. The man and woman who were with me when you and I first met. You told me they weren't what they seemed." He related the strange happenings in the catacombs beneath Venice, when for a moment the Twins and the Pankies had confronted each other as though looking into a mirror, and how Sefton and Undine Pankie had turned away and vanished. "But that still doesn't explain them," he said.

  "Early versions, perhaps," Nandi offered. "A release that was superseded by a later, improved product. But someone forgot to delete the original version."

  "But there have been others, too," Paul said, remembering Kunohara's world. "I met a pair who were insects, but they didn't care about me either. They were obsessed with something they called the Little Queen," A memory prickled him. "And the Pankies were looking for their imaginary daughter."

  "A common thread in both versions, no doubt," Nandi said. "Martine told me you know the originals."

  Paul was taken aback at the thought that people were discussing his ugly secrets, his imperfectly remembered life—it was his life, after all, wasn't it?

  But it's everyone's mystery, he reminded himself. Everyone here is in terrible danger.

  "Yes, I suppose I do, but I don't remember everything even now." It was there again, a shadow at the edge of his thoughts, a dim perception of something he did not want to know better. "But why should there be different versions doing different things? Why are some of them after me, hunting me, and others don't care?" Again the Venetian catacombs loomed in his memory, the mirrored pairs facing each other as he and poor Gally and the woman Eleanora watched.

  "Perhaps they're simply programmed differently." Nandi didn't seem to see much purpose in speculating, but Paul was trying to remember something else, something Eleanora had told him, or showed him. . . .