River of Blue Fire

by Tad Williams

  “Grandfather Mantis rides between the horns of the eland, so he is very small. But he is oldest and cleverest of the First People, the grandfather of the Elder Race, so he is very big, too.”

  “Ah.” She examined his expression, but could see no mockery. “Then I suppose I’m ready for the story.”

  !Xabbu nodded. He quickly brought his fingers apart and began to move them in and out, until another many-angled pattern had formed. “In the early days, there was a time when Grandfather Mantis was sick, and almost felt himself to be dying. He had eaten biltong—that is dried meat—that he had stolen from his own son, Kwammanga the Rainbow, and when Kwammanga found out it was gone, he said ‘Let that biltong be alive again in the stomach of the person who has stolen from me.’ He did not know it was his own father. And so the biltong became alive again in the stomach of Grandfather Mantis, and gave him a terrible pain.”

  !Xabbu’s fingers flexed and the picture rippled. A shape near the middle wriggled from side to side, so that Renie could almost see Grandfather Mantis writhing in his agony.

  “He went to his wife, Rock-Rabbit, and told her he felt himself to be very ill. She told him to go into the bush and find water, so that by drinking he would soothe himself. Groaning, he went away.

  “There was no water close by, and Mantis walked for many days, until he came at last to the Tsodilo Hills, and in their heights he found the water he had been seeking. Drinking deeply, he felt better, and decided he would rest a while before returning to his home.”

  The baboon hands moved through a succession of shapes, and Renie saw the hills rise and the water shimmer. A short distance away, Azador had stopped whistling and seemed to be listening.

  “But back in Grandfather Mantis’ kraal everyone was frightened that he had not returned, and they feared that if he died they would never see him again, for no one of the Early Race had ever died before. So his wife Rock-Rabbit sent her cousin, the hare, to go and look for him.”

  For just a brief moment Hare made his appearance in the net of string, then bounded off.

  “Hare ran in Mantis’ footprints all the way to the Tsodilo Hills, for he was a very swift runner, and reached them by nightfall. When he had climbed the hills, he found Mantis sitting beside the water, drinking and bathing the dust from his body. ‘Grandfather,’ said Hare, ‘your wife and your children and all the other First People send to ask how you are. They fear that you are dying, and thus that they will never see you again.’

  “Mantis was feeling much better, and he was sorry that all the others were worried. ‘Go back to them and say that they are foolish—there is no true death,’ he told Hare. ‘What, do you think that when we die, we are like this grass?’ He lifted a handful of grass. ‘That we die and, feeling ourselves to be like the dry grass, turn into this dust?’ He lifted the dust in his other hand and flung it into the air, then pointed at the moon, which hung in the night sky.

  “Grandfather Mantis himself had caused the moon to be, but that is another story.

  “‘Go and tell them,’ he said, ‘that as the moon dies but then is made new, so too in dying they shall be made new. And thus they should have no fear.’ And so he sent the Hare back down out of the hills, bearing his message.

  “But Hare was of the sort who believes himself very clever, and as he ran back toward the kraal of Grandfather Mantis and his family, he thought to himself, ‘Old Mantis cannot be certain of this, for does not everything die and turn to dust? If I give them this foolish message, they will think me foolish, and I shall never find a bride, and the other people of the Early Race will turn away from me.’ So when he reached the kraal, where Rock-Rabbit and all the rest were waiting for him, he told them, ‘Grandfather Mantis says that dying we will not be renewed like the moon, but instead like the grass we will turn into dust.’

  “And so all the people of Mantis’ family told all the other First People what Hare told them Grandfather Mantis had said, and all the First People were filled with great fear, and wept and fought among themselves. Thus, when Mantis himself came back to his home, with his bag of hartebeeste skin over one shoulder and his digging stick in his hand, he found everyone full of sadness. When he learned what the Hare had said, and which was now being spoken as the truth by all the First People in the world, he was so angry that he lifted his digging stick and struck the Hare, splitting his lip. Then he told Hare that none of the bushes or grass of the veldt or rocks of the desert pans would ever keep him safe, and that his enemies would always seek him and find him.

  “And that is why the hare has a split lip.”

  The last string picture vibrated for a moment between !Xabbu’s outstretched hands, then he brought his palms together, making it disappear.

  “That was lovely.” Renie would have said more, but Azador abruptly stood.

  “Time to go.”

  Renie’s arms were starting to hurt. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It does not make sense to you,” Azador said airily. “Just keep your hands pressed flat.”

  Renie muttered a curse. The position, facing the wall with her arms spread wide, pushing against the cold cement, was unpleasantly reminiscent of being arrested. Azador was lying on his stomach between her feet with his hands also pressed against the wall, parallel to hers but just above the floor. “All right,” she said, “you’ve convinced me you’re out of your mind. What now?”

  “Now it’s what’s-your-name’s turn—monkey man.” Azador craned to look over his shoulder at !Xabbu, who was watching with a certain lack of enthusiasm. “Pick a spot as close to the center as possible—where the middle of an ‘x’ would be if our hands were on the ends. Then hit it.”

  “It is a very hard wall,” !Xabbu pointed out.

  Azador’s laugh was a grunt of irritation. “You are not going to break it down with your little hand, monkey man. Just do what I say.”

  !Xabbu slid in so that his head was against Renie’s stomach, just below her breasts. It made her uncomfortable, but her friend did not hesitate. When he had chosen his spot, he struck with the flat of his hand.

  Before the smack had finished echoing from the cell’s hard surfaces, the section of wall demarcated by their extended arms had vanished, leaving a blank white surface on all the exposed edges. With nothing left to support her, Renie stumbled forward into the next cell.

  “How did you do that?” she demanded.

  Azador’s smile was infuriatingly self-satisfied. “This is VR, Ms. Otepi—all make-believe. I just know how to make it believe something different. Now that part of the wall thinks it is no longer a wall.”

  !Xabbu had sidled through, and was looking around the empty cell, an exact replica of the one they had just left. “But what good has this done us? Must we do this through every wall until we are outside?”

  Azador’s pleased expression did not change. He walked to the new cell’s door. One tug of the handle and it slid sideways, open to the hallway. “No one bothers to lock the empty cells.”

  To cover her irritation at the man’s success—her first impulse had been to say “That’s cheating!”, which she knew would have been a marvelously stupid remark—she slid past him and peered into the hallway. There was nothing but mint-green cement and closed doors all the way to the turning of the corridor on both sides, the monotony broken only by posters depicting the Scarecrow—a healthy, vibrant, stern Scarecrow—proclaiming “10,000 Munchkins Dead—For What? Remember Oz!” and “Emerald Needs YOU!”

  “There’s no one out there—let’s go.” Renie turned to Azador. “Do you know how to get out of here?”

  “There is a service bay at the back of the cells. There may be guards, but there will be fewer than at the front, where all the government offices are.”

  “Then let’s do it.” She took a few steps, then looked at !Xabbu. “What’s wrong?”


  He shook his head. “I hear something . . . smell something. I am not sure.”

  A flat boom broke the stillness, so faint as to be almost inaudible: someone might have dropped a book on a table a few rooms away. The sound was repeated a few times, then silence fell again.

  “Well, whatever it is, it’s a long way away,” Renie declared. “We’d better not wait for it to get here.”

  Not only the corridor before their cell, but all the corridors were empty. The sound of their hurrying footsteps—or hers and Azador’s, since !Xabbu’s feet made only the faintest noise—rebounded eerily from the long walls as they ran, and made Renie uneasy. “Where is everybody?”

  “I told you, this place is falling apart,” said Azador. “The war has been going on for years—Scarecrow has only a few minions left. Why do you think we were the only prisoners? The others have been set free and then sent to fight in Forest, or in the Works.”

  Renie did not even want to know what “the Works” was. First Atasco’s realm, then the destruction of the Hive, now this. Would these simworlds simply crumble into virtual dust, like the veldt grass of !Xabbu’s story? Or would something even more sinister replace them?

  “Go slow,” !Xabbu said. “I hear something. And I feel something, too—it is tapping in my chest. Something is wrong here.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Azador demanded. “We’re almost at the loading bay. We are sure as hell not just going to stop.”

  “You should trust him,” Renie said. “He knows what he’s talking about.”

  Moving more cautiously, they rounded a corner and found themselves at a nexus of corridors. In the middle of the open area lay a tall man with a long green beard and a pair of smashed green spectacles. An antique rifle of some kind lay beside him. He was clearly dead: several things that should have been inside him had oozed out onto the floor.

  Renie fought an urge to vomit. Why did people have innards in this simulation, but not in the bugworld?

  Azador took a wide route around the body. “The loading bay is just another hundred meters this way,” he whispered, pointing to where the wide corridor bent sharply. “We can . . .”

  A scream of pain rattled through the corridor, so fierce that Renie’s knees went weak. Even Azador was clearly shaken, but the three of them went cautiously to the bend in the corridor and peered around.

  On the wide loading ramp at the end of the corridor, several more men with green beards and spectacles were fighting to the death to keep an army of tiktoks at bay. The greenbeards were supported in their struggle by a few even odder creatures—skinny men with wheels for hands and feet, a teddy bear with a popgun, other soldiers that seemed to be made entirely of paper—but the defenders were clearly outgunned, and several dozen of them had been destroyed. Only one of the tiktoks had gone down, although two or three others were staggering in circles with their insides blown out, but the green-bearded soldiers appeared to have exhausted their ammunition and were now using their long rifles exclusively as clubs. Sensing imminent victory, the buzzing tiktoks were swarming closer to the defenders, like flies around a dying animal.

  “Damn!” Renie was almost as irritated as she was frightened. “Games! These people and their bloody stupid war games!”

  “It will not be a game if those things get us,” Azador hissed. “Turn back! We will go out another way.”

  As they returned to the places where the corridors crossed, and where the first defender’s body they had encountered still lay, !Xabbu reached up to tug at Renie’s hand. “Why is this dead one here, when the fighting is still at the entrance?”

  It took Renie a moment to understand what he was asking, and by that time they had left the green-bearded corpse behind them. Their cellmate had turned right and was sprinting up the corridor.

  “Azador?” she called, but he had stopped already.

  Two more corpses lay near the wall at the next corridor branch—two bodies in three pieces, since the soldier’s top half had been forcibly separated from his bottom half. Beside him lay the pulped remains of one of the flying monkeys. Loud simian squawking echoed from the side-corridor, more monkeys in pain and terror.

  “We do not need to go that way!” said Azador in relief. “I have remembered another route.” He started to move forward, and did not turn even when a very human, very female scream came bouncing down the passageway.

  “Emily . . . ?” Renie shouted at Azador’s retreating back, “I think that’s our friend!”

  He did not turn or slow down, even when she cursed at him. !Xabbu had already started down the corridor toward Emily’s voice. Renie hurried to catch up.

  They had just caught sight of a battle that, although now familiar, would never be less less than bizarre—flying monkeys and mechanical men, struggling to the death—when Emily’s slender form burst from the melee and came running toward them. Renie grabbed at her as she tried to run past and was almost knocked down. The girl fought like a tail-dangled cat until Renie wrapped her arms around her and squeezed as hard as she could.

  “It’s me, Emily, it’s me, we’re going to help you,” she said, over and over until the girl stopped struggling and finally looked at her new captors. Her already panic-widened eyes grew wider.

  “You! The strangers!”

  Before Renie could reply, a monkey flew past them down the corridor, but not under its own power. It smacked against one wall, flopped bonelessly, and skidded.

  “We have to go,” Renie said. “Come on!” She took one of the girl’s hands and !Xabbu took the other as they sprinted away from the unpleasant sounds of buzzing and claw-crunched monkeys. Azador was not in sight, but they turned in the direction he had gone. Emily, as though she had not been under tiktok attack only a few moments earlier, babbled happily.

  “. . . I didn’t think you’d come back—or I didn’t think I’d come back, really. The king, he had this machine do all these funny things to me—it was worse than anything the medical henrys ever do, made me feel all goosebumpy, and you know what?”

  Renie was doing her best to ignore her. “Do you hear anything?” she asked !Xabbu. “Any more of those machine men ahead of us?”

  He shrugged his narrow shoulders and tugged at Emily’s hand, trying to get her to move faster.

  “Do you know what he said to me?” Emily went on. “It was such a surprise—I thought I was in trouble, see, and that they were going to send me to the Bad Farm. That’s the place you go when they catch you trying to steal from the food barn, like this other emily I know, and she went there for just a few months, but when she came back, she looked like she was way much older. But do you know what they said to me?”

  “Emily, shut up.” Renie slowed them now as they turned another corner. This one opened into a wide room with polished tile floors and shiny metal staircases leading to a mezzanine. More monkey corpses were scattered about the floor here, and also the bodies of a pair of tiktoks, which had apparently tumbled through the mezzanine handrail where it was bent like silver licorice. The windup men had smashed like expensive watches dropped onto pavement, but next to one of them, something was moving.

  Emily was still prattling. “He told me that I’m going to have a little baby!”

  It was Azador. A dying spasm from one of the tiktoks had fastened on his leg, and now he was struggling to pull himself free of the thing’s locked grip. He looked up at their approach; his fearful expression quickly turned to one of annoyance.

  “Get this thing off me,” he growled, but before he could say more, he was interrupted by a shriek from Emily so loud that Renie flinched away from her in pain.

  “Henry!” Emily skittered across the room and leaped over one of the smashed Tiktoks, then flung herself onto Azador. Her attack thumped him back against the floor so hard that his leg jerked free of the claw, tearing his overalls and leaving red
weals on his ankle. Emily climbed on him like an overstimulated puppy and he could not push her away. “Henry!” she squealed. “My pretty pretty prettiest henry! My pudding-heart lover! My special Crismustreat!” She stopped, straddling his chest, as he looked back at her in stunned surprise. “Guess what,” she demanded. “Guess what the king just told me. You and me—we made a baby!”

  The high-ceilinged room fell silent in the wake of this revelation. After a moment, the dead tiktok made a clicking noise, and the claw that had held Azador’s ankle ratcheted one final time, then froze again.

  “This,” said Renie at last, “is really, really strange.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Shoppers and Sleepers

  * * *

  NETFEED/NEWS: Experts Debate “Slow-Time” Prisons

  (visual: file footage of morgue attendant checking drawers)

  VO: The UN is sponsoring a debate between civil libertarians and penologists about a controversial technique known as “slow-timing,” in which prisoners’ metabolisms are slowed by cryotherapy while they are simultaneously exposed to subliminal messaging, so that a twenty year prison term would seem to pass in months.

  (visual: Telfer in front of UN)

  ReMell Telfer, of the civil rights group Humanity is Watching, calls this further evidence that we have become what he terms a “people-processing society.”

  TELFER: “They say they want these prisoners to return to society more quickly, but they just want more manageable prisoners and faster turnaround. Instead of trying to prevent crime, we spend our money on more and more expensive methods of punishing people—bigger prisons, more police. Now they want to take some poor jerk who’s stolen someone’s wallet and spend half a million of the taxpayer’s credits to put him in a coma . . .!”