by Tad Williams
I won't let it happen!
It came to him suddenly, but he could not at first decide if it was genius or complete madness. Months—they had been immobilized for almost twenty-four months. Would it work? It would—it had to. He triggered a massive dose of adrenaline to be administered to both of them. It would work. He knew it would. He was excited now, his pulse suddenly racing with feverish glee instead of terror. What was the release sequence? If that much adrenaline hit them and they couldn't get out, they would thrash themselves to death—damage the breathing masks and drown in the suspension fluid.
There. He selected the commands. In the window in his mind, the system brought up the life signs, the graphs already spiking as they rose toward something like normal function, then moved on beyond, fueled by the adrenal surge. He brought up the view of the room again, the heedless woman sitting obliviously on the floor of his sanctum sanctorum between his own helpless body and the last remnants of Ushabti, the terrible mistake that had destroyed his beautiful Avialle.
Violated. She has. . . .
"There is an intruder just steps away from you," he told his servants, making the words thunder in their ears so they would retain them even in the confusion of waking to their real bodies for the first time in two years. "Take her and hurt her and find out what she knows. Do this and afterward you may remain free."
The indicator lights blinked, then blinked again as the lids of the two black pods slowly began to rise.
CHAPTER 45
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NETFEED/OBITUARY: Robert Wells, Founder of TMX
(visual: Wells at Telemorphix "torchlight rally" company meeting)
VO: Robert Wells, techology pioneer and one of the world's richest men, died of a heart attack yesterday. Wells, the founder of the Telemorphix Corporation, was one hundred and eleven years old.
(visual: Owen Tanabe, Wells' executive assistant)
TANABE: "He went out the way he would have wanted—at the office, plugged into the net, working right up until the last moment on ways to improve human life. Even though he's gone, all of us will be feeling the impact of Bob Wells' personal vision for years to come. . . ."
He was laughing, laughing out loud. He couldn't help it. His heart was aflame with exhilaration, his thoughts swirling like smoke and sparks. He was as alive as he had ever been—it was like the last moment of the hunt, drawn out by some hallucinatory distortion of time into an hours-long orgasm.
The chorus in his head had reached a crescendo. Camera in close. Face flushed but coldly handsome. The winner. Unstoppable.
All his enemies inside the network were at his fingertips now, hopelessly trapped—the blind woman, Jongleur, the Sulaweyo bitch, even the operating system itself. They cowered before him. He was the destroyer, the beast, the devil-devil man. He was a god.
And outside the network. . . ?
Pull back to reveal his enemies at his feet. Long shot. Only one standing.
Dread looked down at the two bodies on the floor of the loft. Dulcie lay silent in a tangle of arms and legs like a puppet with its strings slashed, blood pooling around her. The policewoman was still moving, but only a little, her head twitching in time with her swift, jerky breathing, bright red arterial blood frothing on her lips. He frowned. Even in the flaring majesty of the moment he remembered his mantra against overconfidence.
Dread muted his inner music, then bent and rolled the policewoman onto her side. She gave a little whistling grunt but otherwise did not respond, even when he wiggled the handle of the knife in her back. A shame to leave her unattended in the last moments, but he had bigger game afoot. She wasn't his type, anyway—he didn't like them stocky. He reached down into her overcoat, found the holstered Glock, and pulled it out. He put the barrel against the policewoman's head, then remembered that even after he returned to the network her final moments would be recorded on the loft's surveillance cameras.
Why waste a slow death? he thought. Dulcie's end had turned out to be a bit disappointingly swift, after all.
He considered briefly, then ejected the bullets from the policewoman's gun and Dulcie's snapped-together pistol and tucked both weapons into the pockets of his robe. He reached back into the woman's breast pocket and found her police pad. Sorry, sweetness, no calls. He ground it under his heel until he heard components shatter, then kicked it across the room.
No sense in putting temptation in the way of a dying woman, he thought cheerfully. Women just couldn't resist temptation—pretty things, bright colors, false hopes. They were like animals that way.
He climbed back onto the coma bed and frowned at the blood he was smearing on the purity of the white surfaces. Can't be helped. Fix it in editing. Then again, maybe it would be a nice effect. . . ? He ran a quick check to make sure the cameras would pick up everything that happened in the loft, and that he himself would have a view of it even when he was back on the network. Confident, cocky, lazy, dead, right? Not this boy.
Dread brought his music back up, a swell of triumphant strings and kettledrums. The chorus came in again, hundreds of voices singing in the bones of his skull as he dropped back into the universe he had conquered.
Paul could only stare at the spot where Felix Jongleur had stood a moment before. One second the ancient man had been there, then he had simply vanished—pop, like a soap bubble.
T4b was the first to speak. He sounded lost, younger than Paul had ever heard him. "Old Grail-knocker . . . won, him? Just . . . over? All over?"
Sam Fredericks was crying. Beside her, Orlando Gardiner put a muscular barbarian arm around her shoulder. "I knew it!" she said for the fourth or fifth time. "So impacted—we were all so stupid! He was just waiting!"
Paul could only nod in stunned agreement. I should have seen it coming—should have known a device like that lighter would be worth something to someone—to Jongleur. But he had let himself be lulled by Jongleur's unusual volubility, his surrender of secrets. The old man had acted like someone without hope. Paul had recognized the feeling, and so he had believed it.
"We may have only moments," Martine said softly.
"It's in God's hands," said Bonita Mae Simpkins. "We don't know what He has planned."
It is out of our hands, Martine replied, that is the one certain thing."
Florimel stood. "No. I cannot believe that. I will not give up my life, my daughter's life, without a fight."
"Who are you going to fight?" Paul's own misery made it difficult even to speak. "We underestimated him. Now he's gone. And even if something keeps him from shutting down the system, what about that?" He pointed to the dome of clouds, the silhouette of Dread moving along the edge like a shadow-puppet demon. "What about him?"
"Where has the boy gone?" asked Nandi. "Sellars' boy. He was frightened. He ran."
Orlando pointed. "Over there."
Paul could see Cho-Cho crouched on the rim of the Well, a small shadow against the flickering lights. "I'll get him," he said heavily. He knew what it was to be lost and confused. We should face it together, as Martine said.
"Something is happening." Martine Desroubins' face tightened in concentration. Paul hesitated, but then turned to go after the boy.
The end, he thought. The end is happening, that's all.
The weakening glare of the Well made him think of Ava as she had last appeared, suffering, fighting hopelessly against the inevitable. I'm sorry, he told her memory. Whatever you were, whoever, it doesn't matter. You risked everything for me—lost everything. And I failed you.
The boy was on all fours, shuddering. When Paul touched him he scrambled back along the edge, making Paul fear he might tumble into the Well.
But what difference does it make, really? Still, he put out his hand. "It's all right, lad. It's all right. I'm one of the good guys." And that's a laugh, isn't it?
"He here," the boy said.
"No, he's gone. The man is gone."
"He not! He in my head, verdad!"
Paul paused, his hand still stret
ched toward the boy. "What are you talking about?"
"El viejo! Sellars! He in my head—I can hear him!" The boy backed a little farther along the rim of the pit, keeping well out of Paul's reach. "It hurts!"
My God, Paul thought. Just don't scare him into falling. He squatted down, then extended his hand again. "We can help you. Please come back." What if he falls? What if he falls and we never find out? "What is Sellars saying to you?"
"Don't know! Can't understand—it hurts my head! He want . . . he want . . . want you to listen. . . ." The boy began to cry, then rubbed his face angrily as if to push the tears back into the ducts. "Leave me alone, m'entiendes?" It was hard to tell who he was shouting at.
Paul risked turning away for a moment so he could wave to some of his companions to come and help, but he could not tell if anyone had seen him. "Cho-Cho—that's your name, right? Come back with me. That man who tried to hurt you is gone. Sellars can tell us how to get out of here—how we can all get out of here. You want that, don't you?"
"Mentiroso," the boy snarled. "Heard what you said before. All gonna die here."
"Not if Sellars can help us." He inched a little closer. "Please, just come with me. I won't touch you, I promise. No one will touch you. I'll just turn and walk back to the others, and you walk with me." The boy crawled a little farther away. Paul looked around, but none of the others were coming, although a few were watching with a kind of glazed curiosity. "Look. I'm getting up now and I'm going back to the fire. You come with me if you want. We're friends here." Who is this boy, anyway? What can I say to him that will convince him? "There really are people in the world who want to help, you know. There really are."
He waited a few seconds, but the boy did not move or speak. Knowing that he was almost certainly doing a foolish thing—how many minutes did they have left, in any case?—Paul got up, turned, and walked deliberately back to the campfire. He did not look back. He heard no sounds behind him: if the boy was there, he was moving silently across the gray, dead ground.
Florimel and Nandi were nearest; they looked up at him with a question in their eyes. Paul stopped beside them, then carefully sat down, eyes still averted.
"Anybody touch me," the boy promised, "I cut them."
"Then you just sit there," said Florimel.
Paul cleared his throat. "Sellars is talking to him."
"What?"
"He trying to," the boy said sullenly. "But it locking up my head."
The others around the fire had turned toward them now. "The child is terrified," said Bonnie Mae.
"Just tell us what you think he is trying to say," said Florimel. "That is all we want. Martine, are you listening?"
"I am . . . trying. It is . . . There are . . . distractions."
Paul could tell it was far worse than a distraction. Martine Desroubins had the look of someone suffering a five-alarm migraine.
"He talking again," Cho-Cho said suddenly. The others leaned toward him. "He say . . . he say. . . ." The boy sighed and his eyes squeezed shut. For a long, tense moment he was silent, his jaw working. "This . . . is very difficult," he said at last. "I apologize . . . for the confusion." But though it still was Cho-Cho's voice, a child's voice, the intonation had changed.
"Sellars?" asked Florimel. "Is that you?"
"Yes." Cho-Cho's eyes remained closed even as his mouth moved, as though the child were talking in his sleep. As though he were possessed, Paul thought. "In fact," Sellars continued, "I have many apologies to make, but we don't have the time. It is not easy to manipulate the child's neurocannular connection to speak directly to you, but what I have to say is too important and too complicated to be relayed through little Cho-Cho."
"What's going on?" Florimel's voice held anger as well as relief. "Where have you been all this time? While everything in this damned artificial universe was trying to kill us?"
"No time to explain, I'm afraid. I am deep into the workings of the network and the operating system and my head feels like it's going to explode—and that's the least of our problems." Paul could hear the incredible strain even through the child's supple voice.
"You know about Jongleur escaping, then?" he asked.
"What?" The boy's face remained impassive but the voice was clearly startled. "Jongleur?"
Paul told him, with help from the others.
"He was planning it all along," said Sam Fredericks miserably.
"It's not your fault, Frederico," Orlando told her. "But if we get another chance, let's cut his head off, okay?"
"Oh, my," said Sellars. "Is that . . . do I hear . . . Orlando Gardiner?"
Orlando grinned sourly. "Pretty scanny, huh?"
"Explanations must wait until later—if there is such a thing as later," Sellars told him. "The operating system is failing, preparing for its own destruction. I need to make direct contact with it now. That is our only hope to preserve the system long enough to get you out, and it's a very thin hope. Quick, now. I saw some trace of a contact, just minutes ago, between your group and the innermost workings of the system."
"Yes, Renie Sulaweyo is there, in the center of it. That is who we were speaking to with the access device," Florimel said heavily. "But Jongleur has taken it."
Paul waited for Sellars to say something, anything, but the voice that spoke through Cho-Cho's virtual body had gone silent. "So is that it?" Paul asked at last. "We were ready to give up before we heard your voice. Is that all you've got to give us?"
"I am thinking, damn it," Sellars snapped. "But I confess I am at a loss. I have tried everything possible on my end, but the conscious part of the operating system has isolated itself and won't respond to me."
Paul turned to Martine Desroubins, who seemed to be listening with only half her attention. "Martine, you told me how you found your way out of that other strange world—how you and !Xabbu managed to open a gateway. Could you do it again?"
"Open . . . a gateway. . . ?" The pain in her voice was palpable. She and Sellars both sounded like they were trying to carry on business while being stung to death by bees. "Renie . . . !Xabbu . . . they are . . . beyond any gateway, I think."
"But you had the communicator in your hand." Paul leaned closer, trying to keep her focused. "Can't you . . . feel it? You said when we came back from the mountain to Kunohara's world that you fell a connection, sensed it with your mind somehow—that you held on so we could follow it back. Come on, Martine, you can do things none of the rest of us can do! We have no other chance!"
"Do it," T4b said. He put out a hand and touched the blind woman's fingers. She flinched a little, startled. "Be strong. Don't want to get sixed, us—not yet!"
"But that connection to Kunohara's world was alive," Martine said weakly. "I caught it just before it faded!"
"Try," Paul urged her. "We need you. No one else can do it."
"He's right," Florimel said, but gently. "It is in your hands."
"It is not fair." Martine shook her head violently. "Already, the pain . . . I cannot . . . bear it."
Paul crawled to her side and put his arms around her. "You can," he said. "You have already done miracles. For God's sake, Martine, what's one more?"
She put her hands in front of her face. "When I did not care," she whispered hoarsely, "I did not hurt so much." She shook her head as Paul started to speak. "No. Do not bother to say it. I must have silence."
Renie stared at the lighter in baffled fury. The orange moon hung low in the sky, a mocking face. "No! I heard her—you heard her, too! She was right there!"
"I did hear her," !Xabbu said. "But I heard Jongleur's voice as well."
"What happened?" Renie could not reconcile the extremes—the joy of hearing Martine speak, the moment of exhilarating contact with their friends, then the ugly surprise of hearing Felix Jongleur's voice bark out something about a priority override. And now. . . .
"Nothing," she said, running through the sequences again. "It's dead."
!Xabbu reached out his hand. Renie passed i
t to him, then turned her eyes back to the minuscule form of the dying mantis. "I hope you're happy," she snarled down at it. "Our friends are gone now. If I wasn't certain it was Jongleur who did it—if I thought it was you. . . ."
Dying. The everywhere-and-nowhere voice was so faint now as to be almost inaudible. Tried to last . . . until the children . . . could be . . . saved.
"The children?" Renie asked bitterly. "You haven't saved any children. Didn't you hear? Jongleur, the man who built you—he's in charge again now."
No. The devil. Still . . . the devil. The one who hurts and hurts. . . .
"I feel something," !Xabbu said quietly.
"What?"
"I . . . I am not certain. Distant." He frowned and closed his eyes. "Like a faint spoor. Like the musk of an antelope on the wind, half a day away." His eyes opened wide. "The string game! Someone is asking about the string game!"
"What are you talking about?" Renie began, and then she remembered. "Martine! Isn't that how you and Martine. . . ?"
He closed his eyes again. "I can feel something, but it is so . . . difficult."
No. The wind-murmur of the mantis voice had become a little stronger. No, you must not open us again to . . . to. . . .
"Shut up!" Renie squirmed in anger. "Our friends are trying to call us!"
The mantis struggled up onto its bent-twig legs. The tiny eyes were filmed, dark. You will lead the devil here too soon—steal the last moments. . . .
"I think I am losing it." !Xabbu held the lighter so tightly Renie could see his knuckles bulging, pale against his brown skin. "She is so far away!"
Will not . . . must not . . . No!
"Stop it!" Renie said, then the desert began to melt around them, the dark night colors, the amber moon, even the flaring stars all smearing. "Stop!"
It was too late. The sky and the ground ran together, swirling as though someone had dipped a stick into a paint pot and begun to stir. Renie threw out her hand to seize the tiny insect but it was simultaneously growing and dwindling, dominating everything even as it receded, shrank, became a tiny spot of nothing that sped away before her.
