by Tad Williams
"What about my friends?"
"They're alive. The young man—Chiume, is that his name? He lost some fingers to a dog bite. And the older man had a bullet wound in his leg. You all have other injuries as well, but nothing life-threatening."
"I want to talk to them."
"Until the captain says you can, you don't talk to anyone. Well, perhaps an attorney." The young doctor shook his head. "What were you playing at?"
"We were not playing," Joseph said sullenly. He wanted to sleep again, but could not—not yet. "You tell them my daughter and her friend are still down in that basement, in those tanks full of electric jelly. You tell them to be very careful when they take her out. And tell them not to look—she have no clothes on."
The doctor's expression said quite clearly that he thought Joseph was out of his mind, but he went and told someone anyway.
She woke up to see Stan Chan sitting at the other end of a long tunnel. She thought it was a tunnel, but she also thought it might just be that the room was dark and he was sitting under a small light.
She wasn't quite sure where she was. She made a noise and Stan saw her, jumped up, and came over. He was harder to see when he was standing next to her than when he was far away. She asked him for water because her throat was dry and it was hard to talk, but for some reason he only shook his head.
"You should have taken me with you, Calliope," he said quietly. "I called back, but you were already gone."
It was more than hard to talk, it hurt like hell. There was some kind of pipe in the corner of her mouth which kept her from closing her jaw. "Didn't . . . want . . . spoil . . . your . . . weekend," she told him as best she could.
He didn't make a joke in return, which struck her as odd. As she slid back into sleep she suddenly realized he had called her by her first name. That frightened her. That meant there was a very good chance she wasn't going to make it.
"You look okay, Skouros. Not too tan and a little thin, but you had enough of both to burn."
"Yeah. Those are beautiful flowers. Thanks."
"I've been here every day. You think I'm still bringing you flowers? Those are from your waitress friend."
"Elisabetta?"
"How many waitresses you know well enough to send you flowers and a Sherlock Holmes teddy bear?" He shook his head. "Teddy bears. I'm not sure about that one, Skouros."
"I guess I'm going to live, eh?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"Because you're calling me by my last name again," She fumbled some ice into her mouth, wincing at the pain of moving her arm. The stitching on her back went layers deep—sometimes she thought she could feel it all the way to her breastbone—and she felt fragile as spun sugar. She wondered if she'd ever feel normal again. "You've been stonewalling me, Stan. Tell me what happened. He got away, didn't he?"
He looked surprised. "Johnny Dread? No, he didn't. We've got him and we've got his files. He's the Real Killer, Calliope. Why do you think I've been sitting here every day? Just because I'm your partner and I love you?"
"It wasn't because you love me?"
"Well, maybe. But every tabnet reporter in New South Wales is trying to get in here. No, every reporter in Oz. Somebody even snuck a camera-drone in under the cover of your fruit cup. You were sleeping, so you didn't hear me chasing the damn thing around until I could swat it with a magazine."
"I heard it." She could not hold down the growing sense of joy—stitches, punctured lung, breathing tube be damned! "We got him?"
"Bang to rights. You know how the Real Killer kept blanking the surveillance cameras? Well, he didn't—not exactly. Somehow he rerouted the images to his own system. Damn smart. We still don't know how he did it. And he saved all of them—his own little Hall of Fame." Stan shook his head. "Sick bastard played games with the images, too—added music to them, even edited in his mother's old booking photo at the end of one of the murders. Guess which one."
"Which murder? Merapanui."
"In one."
"But we've got him, right? And we've got good evidence." When she laughed it felt like someone was twisting a sharp stick into her back muscles but she didn't care. "That's wonderful, Stan."
"Yeah." There was something in his face she didn't like. "If he ever comes out of it, he's clocked, docked, and locked."
"Comes . . . out of it? What are you talking about?"
Stan rested his chin on his steepled fingers. "He's catatonic. Doesn't move, doesn't talk. Kind of an open-eyed coma. The unit that responded to your emergency call found him that way."
"What?" Her exhilaration had turned into something quite different. She felt a breath almost of terror, a cold tingling at her neck. "It's not true, Stan—he's faking. I swear he is. I know that bastard now."
"He's been examined by doctors. He's not faking. Anyway, he's under top security until the boys and girls upstairs decide what to do with him. Twenty-four-hour guard. Strapped to a schizo-ward restraint bed." Stan Chan stood and brushed the wrinkles out of his pants—even micro-weaves could be depressed by being in a hospital, it seemed. "He was online when they found him. They think it might be some kind of serious charge damage, one of those new China Sea blasters or something, but gone badly wrong," He saw the look on her face. "Honestly, Skouros, don't worry. He's not faking it, but even if he is, he wouldn't be going anywhere. He's the biggest arrest in years." A smile flickered across his face. "You're a bit of a hero, Skouros. That why you didn't take me with you?"
"Yeah." She tried to follow his mood, but she wasn't really feeling it. "Yeah, I said, 'If I can just stiff my partner, get stabbed in the lung and almost die, then call in an ambulance while I'm puking my blood out on the floor, I'll be famous.' "
"I was joking. Calliope."
"So was I, believe it or not." She reached for another piece of ice. "What about the American woman?"
"Touch and go, but she's still alive. Bad spinal injuries, lost a lot of blood. She should have been wearing a flakkie. Like you, Skouros."
"Like me." She smiled to show him they were still friends. "If you're going, who's keeping out the tabnet flacks?" But it was not reporters she was thinking about.
"Couple of street blues just outside. Worry not."
When he was gone she tried to watch the wallscreen. There was mention of the case on many of the information nodes, spy-camera footage on the comatose killer, even once a shot of her—the picture was an old one, and she felt a bump of despair at how chunky she looked—but she could not concentrate and eventually she flicked it off. Instead she watched the narrow wedge of light at the bottom of the door, wondering what she would do if the door swung open and he was standing there, the shadow with a knife, the devil-devil man, grinning at her.
"So this is it," Orlando said softly.
Sam was scared and angry, but she didn't quite know why. "It's not it, scanbox. I just have to go offline. I have to see my parents."
"Yeah." He nodded, but she could hear what he was thinking as if he'd said it loud. Some of us don't get to go offline.
"I'll come see you every day!" She turned to Sellars. One by one the others had left the network, taking their leave with tears and promises; beside herself and Orlando, only Hideki Kunohara remained with Sellars in the shadowy cavern. "I can come back here, can't I? You can fix that."
"Not here, Sam."
Something clutched at her guts. "What do you mean?"
He smiled. It was such a strange face, almost frightening. That may he how he really looks, she couldn't help thinking, but why doesn't he choose something else? "Don't worry, Sam. I just mean that I won't hold together this particular part of the Other's central simulation, since the Other and . . . the rest are gone. We're short on processing power, so I'm consolidating some things, closing down others."
She was distracted by a thought. "All the fairy-tale children. . . ?"
"I'm only shutting down this particular part—the Well. Those who survived will be returned to their original environments," he said
. "They all have a right to existence, at least existence here in the network."
"We should be able to reconstitute the ones who died, if you can call it that," said Kunohara with the air of someone considering a minor but interesting chess problem. "I am betting there are records of them somewhere—snapshot recordings, or even better, the original code. . . ."
"Perhaps," Sellars said, cutting him off. Sam got the feeling he didn't want to speculate about such things in front of her—or maybe in front of Orlando, since he was code himself.
Code. She felt a dizzy strangeness at the thought. My best friend's dead. My best friend's alive. My best friend is code. "But I can come back, can't I? Can't I?"
"Yes, Sam. We will just choose another place, that's all. We have all the network to pick from. Or almost all." Sellars was solemn. "There are a few simworlds that I may not choose to continue."
"But they are all worth study!" said Kunohara.
"Perhaps. But we will have a sufficiently difficult time just to keep the Grail network functioning. You will forgive me if I do not choose to devote precious resources to the worlds built almost entirely around torture and pederasty."
"I suppose you are right." Kunohara did not seem entirely convinced.
Sam turned back to Orlando and tried to catch his eye, but couldn't. For the first time in the years she had known him the Thargor body seemed not his real self but a costume, the face a mask. Where was he? Was he still the same Orlando in there? She thought so, but the friend that had meant so much to her seemed at the moment to be out of reach.
"I'll be back to visit you every day," she told him. "I promise."
"Don't make any promises, Frederico," he said gruffly.
"What do you mean?" Now she was angry. "Do you think I'll forget you? Orlando Gardiner, you scan so utterly, utterly. . . !"
He lifted his big hand. "No, I don't mean that, Frederico. I just mean . . . don't make promises. I don't want to think that when you come to see me, it's because . . . because you made a promise."
She opened her mouth again, then closed it. "Chizz," she said at last. "No promises. But I will come. Every day. You just see if I don't."
He smiled a little. "Okay."
She didn't like the silence that followed. She balanced on one foot. Sellars had turned Kunohara aside, she guessed to engage him in some interesting grown-up discussion. "Well, fenfen, Gardiner," she said at last, "aren't you going to hug me or anything?"
He did, clumsily, but then he held tight. His voice sounded funny. "I'll see you around, Fredericks, Sam." He squeezed. "I . . . I love you."
"I love you too, Orlando. And don't you ever dare think I'm coming to see you because I have to or some impacted idea like that." She wiped at her eyes angrily. "And don't think I'm crying because I'm a girl."
"Okay. Don't think I'm crying because I'm dead."
She laughed, gulped, then pushed him away. "See you tomorrow."
"Yeah. See you."
She made the command gesture. "Offline."
It wasn't as easy as she thought it would be—as it seemed like it should be. There was no pain this time, at least not the hideous voltage she had experienced before, but her body ached and she could not open her eyes.
When she did at last manage to get her gummed lids apart, it was almost worse. Her eyes itched, but she could not raise her arms to rub them. She seemed caught in a web of barbed wire, prickling, leaden. She rolled her head down—it was so heavy!—and saw the tubes taped to her arms and legs. How could such flimsy plastic things feel so much like chains?
Sellars had called her parents, just as he had promised he would. She could see them asleep at the end of the bed, their chairs side by side, her mother slumped across her father's chest, her head tucked against his broad neck just below his jaw.
I'm crying again, she thought as her parents' faces blurred. That's all I've been doing lately. That's so stupid. . . ! She tried to call them but her voice was as weak and unready as her limbs. Nothing came out but a wheezing gurgle.
I hope after all that, I'm not dying or something, Sam thought, but she was not frightened, only tired, tired. I'm so scanny. I've been in bed for, like, weeks, but all I want to do is sleep. She tried to call her parents again, and although the sound she finally made was no louder than a fish coughing, her mother heard her.
Enrica Fredericks' eyes came open. An initial moment of bleariness vanished when she saw Sam looking at her.
"Jaleel!" she shrieked. "Jaleel, look!" She leaped toward the bed and kissed Sam's face. With his prop gone, her husband woke up to find himself sliding toward the floor.
"What the hell. . . !"
But then he saw, and he was up and coming toward her too, big and dark and beautiful, his arms spread so wide that it looked like he would grab Sam and his wife together, fold them into his arms and lift them both up in the air. Sam couldn't muster the strength even to turn her head so she could hardly see her mother, who was kissing her cheek and getting it wet and saying things that Sam couldn't quite make out—but she didn't need to, because she recognized the sounds of joy, real joy.
The kind that only comes when you think someone's going to die, but they don't, Sam thought, and tried to smile at her father. There was an idea there, an important idea, but it was too high and complicated for such a moment. When death turns its face away. . . .
She let it go and gave herself up to happiness.
CHAPTER 51
Watching Cars Explode
NETFEED/ENTERTAINMENT: Robinette Murphy Won't Concede
(visual: excerpt from FRM's Around the Corner net series)
VO: Professional psychic Fawzi Robinette Murphy, who surprised the entertainment world by retiring after predicting that the end of the world was imminent, does not appear at all embarrassed that her proclaimed deadline for apocalypse has passed.
(visual: FRM interviewed by GCN's Martin Boabdil)
BOABDIL: "Do you want to extend the timeline on your original prediction?"
MURPHY: "It doesn't matter what I say, what you say. It happened."
BOABDIL: "What happened?"
MURPHY: "The world ended."
BOABDIL: "I'm sorry, I don't understand. I mean, isn't this a world we're both sitting in?"
MURPHY: "Not the same one. I can't explain it any better than that."
BOABDIL: "So you meant the whole thing . . . philosophically? Like, every day the old world ends and a new one begins? I suppose that makes a certain kind of sense."
MURPHY: "You really are an idiot, aren't you?"
The memorial service was a small one. The minister they hired to say a few words clearly felt something was going on that he didn't understand, but was enough of a professional not to ask too many questions.
He probably thinks we're in a good mood because we didn't like the dear departed much, or because we're making out like bandits in the will, Ramsey thought as he listened to the recorded music. Well, that part's true, anyway.
The only face in the tiny gathering that seemed to wear a wholly appropriate expression was that of the little girl Christabel—wide-eyed, confused, tearful. Ramsey and her parents had done their best to explain, but she was very young and was having trouble understanding.
Hell, he thought, I'm having trouble with it myself.
"Patrick Sellars was an aviator," the minister said. "I'm told he gave freely of himself in service to his country and to his friends, and that although he was badly injured in that service, he never lost his kindness, his sense of duty . . . or his humanity."
Welllll. . . .
"Today we say farewell to his mortal remains." The minister indicated the simple white coffin surrounded by flowers—Mrs. Sorensen's touch. "He was a gardener," she had insisted. "We have to have flowers." "But the part of him that is immortal lives on." The minister cleared his throat—a nice man, thought Ramsey, way out of his depth. But he would never know that. "I think it might not be too great a liberty to suggest that he is flying still�
��going to a place none of us has yet reached, seeing things none of us has yet seen, free of the encumbrance of his wounded body, the burden of his wearisome years. He is free, now, truly free to fly." And that, thought Ramsey, is some world-class irony.
"They have a little surveillance camera in the corner of the chapel," Sellars told them when they returned. On the wallscreen he looked just the same as he had in real life, although his surroundings were quite different. Ramsey thought the stony plain and faint stars behind him looked distinctly eerie—otherworldly, even. He could not help wondering why Sellars would choose such an odd background but preserve his image in that same strange, crippled body, unless it was to make the little girl more comfortable. "I couldn't resist the temptation to watch the service," the old man went on. "I found it unexpectedly moving." His smile was just a little wicked.
"But why are you dead?" Christabel was still close to tears. "I don't understand."
"I know, little Christabel," he said. "It's difficult. The fact is, that body of mine was just worn out. And I can't use it anymore, so I had to . . . had to use some tools I have now to transfer myself. Make a new home, I guess you'd say. I live on the net, now—or at least in this special part of it. So I'm not dead, not really. But I didn't have any more use for that old body, and it's just as well that people think I've . . . passed on." He looked out at the others. "There will be fewer questions."
"There'll be plenty of questions anyway," said Major Sorensen.
"Yes, there will."
"I'm still not sure I forgive you," said Kaylene Sorensen. "I believe you when you say it was an accident—about Christabel, I mean—but I'm still angry." She frowned, then showed a little half-smile, her own touch of wickedness. "But I suppose we shouldn't speak ill of the dead."
