"Don't say it," Hari interrupted. "We can't talk about it on an open line. Just tell me if you're ready for an upload."
"Hari, I'm as ready as it gets," Clearlake answered with a smile of his own. "I'm just wondering what's taking so long."
"All right. Now listen: this is important. What I'm about to send you? You need to review it off-line. There's a security capture keyed to a couple words in here—I've got a countermeasure, but it's ablative. Save it for the broadcast."
"Security captures and countermeasures-just how big is this?" "As big as it gets, Jed."
"You sure I'll want to broadcast?"
Hari nodded. "I'm thinking special edition; I'm thinking prime-time preempt. I'm thinking license fees for clips from this report should run into eight figures, easy."
"Bring it on then, Hari. You've always been good luck"
Hari leaned over to glance down at Tan'elKoth. "Ready?" he said softly. Tan'elKoth's reply had the hollow distance of mindview. "I am."
It's going to work Hari thought. His fingers trembled, just a little bit. Not nerves, though, no: fuck nerves. This was fun.
Maybe not a whole lot of fun, but he couldn't remember the last time he'd had any at all.
Hari stroked the final key.
As the file uploaded, Tan'elKoth channeled the tenuous Flow that obtained within the Curioseum's Overworld-normal field into the net. A living nervous system is the natural interface between Flow and the material world; Tan'elKoth could gather Flow here and funnel the energy across the boundary by touch. He couldn't do much—the power he could exert in terrestrial physics was just one hair this side of nonexistent—but a surge of a few microvolts in the right place is all it takes to burn out a molecular circuit or randomize a couple lines of code. He didn't even need to know exactly what he was affecting—hardware, software, it didn't matter. Tan'elKoth had put it this way: "A thing is what it does. My power becomes a needle that will prick any hand which attempts to seize the dream within this cube."
Five seconds of burst-feed later, it was done.
"Got it," Clearlake said. "Confirmed."
"All right. Signing off, Jed—miles to go before I sleep, that kind of thing."
"You want your finder's percentage? If you're right about that eight figures, it could run into a substantial chunk."
"Put it in escrow," Hari said. "If this gets my ass fired, I'll need it" "Will do. Later."
"Yeah."
Hari hit the cancel and folded down the screen. Tan'elKoth rose and stretched until his shoulder joints popped with a pair of meaty squelches. "Success."
"You're sure?"
"I am Tan'elKoth." This he said without even a ghost of a smile. Hari took a deep breath. So far, so good.
This was an improved version of what Hansen had been trying to do by capturing Rossi in the first place—he'd been trying to get through to a group of first-handers, in hopes of finding some Leisurefolk with big enough bleeding hearts to get involved. But that was because he didn't understand first-handers. Hari did. He'd built his life understanding first-handers.
Rossi's first-handers could. have experienced everything on that cube and thought it was nothing more than part of the story. For them, it'd be nothing they need to do anything about, except sit back and watch how J'Than and the rest of the ISP cast handle it. Hari's way, it would go onto the net, out of context.
Instead of being part of a story, it was the story.
Instead of watching the hero in place do something about it, each Leisureman and Leisurewoman becomes the hero for their own little story: they see the problem, they see they have the power to do something about it, and they make the choice to do it or not, all on their own. Not too fucking bad, he thought. We're off to a running start.
Tan'elKoth cracked his enormous knuckles. "Now: I have done as you asked, and it is time to move on. There is only one course of action, and we both know it: You must return me to Ankhana without delay."
Hari shook his head. "Not gonna happen."
Tan'elKoth looked as though he might spit on the floor. "You waste all this effort, all this thought, in persuasion. It is ultimately futile. Childish. You depend upon your Leisure caste as surrogate parents, to act for you; thus shall you inevitably fail."
Hari's smile tightened. "We use what tools we have."
"Bah. Useless tools produce nothing of use. Call upon me, Caine. I will help your cause."
"You have already."
"Of course. And I will continue to do what you ask of me, everything you ask of me—until and including the moment when you realize that all these plans are useless. Your sole remaining choice is to send me home."
Hari sighed. "It's not gonna happen," he repeated.
"Caine, it must. Direct action is my world's only hope. Exposing this crime is a worthy stroke, but it will not win the war. My people—my very world—is bent beneath the axe. You must let me save it."
"Yeah, sure," Hari said with a bitter smile. "Save the world, my ass." "Why do you resist the inevitable?"
That's the main question of my life, Hari thought, but he said, "Because I can't fucking trust you."
The ex-Emperor stiffened. "You doubt that I would save my Children?"
"Oh, yeah, sure, your Children," Hari said. "But what about the elves? Shit, Tan'elKoth, how stupid do you think I am? You think I forgot why the Monasteries were supporting your government? Your policy on the other humanoid races wasn't exactly a secret. Once your Aktir-tokar consolidated your power over the nobles, you were gonna fire up your own personal genocide. I have a feeling this primal friend of mine wouldn't be too happy to see you back."
"Yet I am his only hope."
"If you were still Emperor, you'd be the number one suspect"
Tan'elKoth came to Hari's side, towering over him, forbidding, unassailable. "The power of a god is required, to avert this disaster. I am that god."
"No, you're not"
"I am. The gods of my world cannot intervene, bound as they are by the Covenant of Pirichanthe. And even if they could—no god of my world has the faintest understanding of virology, let alone the specifics of HRVP: the minds of those gods are merely the sums of the minds of their worshipers. My world's only hope lies in the action of a god who has both comprehension of HRVP and the power to do something about it."
"Okay, sure," Hari allowed, "But you're not the god."
Tan'elKoth's rumble dripped sarcasm. "And which god, then, did you have in mind?"
"You know her," Hari said. "She'll be here in about five minutes."
With his comprehension, Tan'elKoth's expression twisted into one of distaste. "She is unworthy of this task."
"Don't start with me," Hari said through his teeth. "You know better." "She is unworthy of you, Caine."
"Drop it."
"She is weak. Prissy. She holds herself removed from the realities of deity; I have never understood why you tolerate her manifest frailties."
"Not so weak," he said, heating up. "Not so weak she couldn't kick your ass
"Perhaps not; but so weak that she didn't. Not even to save your life, Caine."
Hari lowered his eyes and turned his face away, struggling with his temper. Finally he said, "You're not going back. You're never going back. Knowing what you know about the Studio, Actors, what you know about Earth, with the kinds of power you can throw around over there? No chance."
"You would take the side of the Studio against me? Against my world? Caine, who do you think has done this? Whom do you think you are fighting?"
"There's fighting and then there's fighting," Hari said. "Send you back on my own authority? They'd shoot me down like a dog. The Bog would blow up this whole Studio to keep you off Overworld; shit, they'd nuke the city."
"And even if your Board of Governors--the Bog, as you say—should be so rash, one city is a small price to pay for an entire world."
"Yeah?" Hari said flatly. "What if it's your city?"
Muscle bulged around the corners of
Tan'elKoth's jaw. "I am willing to take that risk."
"Yeah, well, I'm not. Once this story hits the nets, people are going to be all over the Studio to do something about it; the Bog, all virtuous, will have to point at me and say, `Through the swift and decisive action of Chairman Hari Michaelson, and the power of the great Pallas Ril, the situation is already under control: They're gonna have to thank me, don't you get it? When Shanna gets back, Wes Turner will probably be giving her a medal."
Tan'elKoth took a step back; with a slow breath, he drew himself up to his full height. He seemed to change, somehow, inhaling some new reality along with his breath, transforming his polo shirt and dungarees into a costume, and his tired, aging face into a mask.
"You are a brilliant tactician," he said slowly; remotely, with that quality of performance as though he spoke once more for that audience inside his head, "perhaps the most brilliant I have ever known. But tactics win only battles; one can win every battle and still lose the war. Remember, in your hour of darkness, that you were offered this chance, and you refused it."
Hari squinted at him. "Y'know, I wouldn't swear to it, but that kind of sounded like a threat."
Tan'elKoth looked away, over Hari's head; his eyes drifted closed as though tired with a familiar pain. "Your—" He seemed to search for the proper word. "—wife . . . has arrived."
8
In the empty silence left behind by the departure of Caine and his pet goddess, minutes passed like days for the man who had once been a god. They had watched their cube-trapped dream, made their plans, and left to save the world; now he sat alone in the tenebrous gloom.
Silence enfolded him, enwrapped his heart, soaked through his pores: silence so deep it screamed with imaginary echoes. Silence was the fertile earth from which sprouts of possibility budded within his far-ranging mind; these sprouts grew to mighty fractal trees of world-paths, blossomed, and died, only to sprout again in new variations for the future. Like a gardener, he sought ways to guide this growth with gentle efficiency; like a gardener, he would use the course of nature to his advantage.
Thus, the thought, finding a branch upon which the weight of his finger could curve the entire tree toward his desire; and thus, another spot where his breath upon its bark would color the blooms of this new curve; and finally, thus.
And the tree of the future had the shape of his dreams.
He had watched her—the mock-deity, the make-believe avatar of Chambaraya—watched her review the captured dream, had watched the lust of her river sparkling within her eyes. He had read there the joy of leaving behind this sterile hell of concrete and steel; he had read that she had been only waiting for an excuse.
I can get you there right away, Caine had told her, slowly, as though it hurt him to say the words. We'll do it freemod, just like your regular shift—no audience, so we don't need approval from the Scheduling Board. How long will it take?
Four days, she had said. Maybe five. Creating a new life-form is a complicated thing, even for a god; it'll take at least that long to make sure my cure doesn't turn out to be worse than the disease. Four or five days on Overworld, and I should have a safe countervirus.
And thus did she pronounce her doom. Three days would be the measure of her life.
He must act now; to wait until she had won his battle would cost him his war. Her power would suffice against HRVP; but the true threat to his people came not from the disease itself, but from the forces gathered behind it. Against those, she had no hope; thinking her war won, she would return to Earth, and be destroyed.
If his people were to be saved, Ma'elKoth must live again.
The men within him clamored for his attention; he opened the gates of his mind to release them. He stood before them as a giant, and he regarded them coldly. First among them, as he had ever been, was the fading palimpsestic remnant of the contemptible weakling he'd once been: Hannto the Scythe.
Hannto of Ptreia—Hannto the Scythe, the bent-backed asthmatic necromancer—had been nearsighted, slight, and nervous, the lonely child of a journeyman scribe. Hannto now begged for caution, cringing against the imagined humiliation of failure. To Hannto, he said: I am more than you were. I am Tan'elKoth. Failure is impossible.
At Hannto's side stood a more recent tenant of Tan'elKoth's mind: Lamorak—Karl Shanks—whose life had been etched permanently into Tan'elKoth's brain by magick nearly seven years ago. Lamorak—who'd been terrorized by his older, tougher brothers, who'd been beaten and nearly raped by Berne in the Imperial Donjon, who'd lain helpless under Master Arkadeil's knives in the Theater of Truth—haunted the darkest chambers of Tan'elKoth's mind, whispering surrender.
Lamorak feared and hated Caine. His most potent memory was of that brilliant noon on the arena sand, when Caine had drawn his neck against Kosall's irresistible edge and tossed his head like a child's ball into Ma'elKoth's lap. Lamorak regarded Pallas Ril with mingled lust and fury; his deepest desire was to fuck her to death, yet his spirit was bound with chains of helplessness and despair. Lamorak forever whispered that all is random, mere chance, that life is an accident at the mercy of the universe's whim: since all is meaningless, it is better to survive in safety, here as he was, than to engage in the pain and risk of futile struggle. To Lamorak, he said, Life is mere chance only when one allows it to be. I am more than you were.
Behind Lamorak crowded ghosts of the many others consumed over his years as Ma'elKoth: faceless, nearly shapeless shades, lives too small to remain distinct even in this mock afterlife. Their voices blended together into an oceanic murmur, begging that he remember them, that he love them, that he care for their children. To the crowd, he said, Fear not, for I am with you.
He marshaled his strength and pushed them all back within the gates, and locked the gates against them. One figure alone remained to face him. Ma'elKoth.
Towering in his strength, majestic in his armor of polished obsidian, his beard long and bristling, his hair a pelagic cascade past his shoulders, his eyes black diamonds. To Ma'elKoth, he said, I am coming. You shall live again.
And the silent god within his mind lifted an omnipotent hand in benediction.
Tan'elKoth breached once more the surface of his consciousness, to regard the wider world. He typed a code into his deskpad. Each keystroke fell with a measured, echoic cadence: the drumroll of an execution.
The mirror of his screen lit with an animated image of a cheerful stenographic clerk, sitting at a desk, and a pleasant voice told him that he could now record a message for the Adventures Unlimited Board of Governors.
"I am the Emperor-in-exile Tan'elKoth," he said with slow precision. "Tell your Board of Governors this: in exchange for certain considerations, I shall undertake to solve their Michaelson problem."
He stroked the disconnect, and sighed.
Soon now, he said to the god within. Soon.
9
Hari stood on the techdeck. On the laser scale, beyond a transparent wall of armorglass, lay the dull grey ceramic lozenge of Shanna's freemod coffin. He tried not to imagine how happy she must be, lying there right now. The freemod techdeck was a busy place, these days. Formerly, it had only been used twice a year, to transfer the most recent graduates of the Studio Conservatory to Overworld for their two-year freemod tour; this was the oldest Studio in the system, and was the only Earthside freemod site. On Overworld, there were twenty-five scattered freemod sites—not counting the Railhead in Thorncleft—all in remote locations, all disguised as temples to a particularly forbidding spider god.
The Overworld sites did not require extensive equipment; all they needed was a small transfer pump to drive an Earth-normal field—for data storage and communications—and some exceptionally sophisticated mechanical scales. The freemod process is essentially a swap, an even trade of mass-energy between the universes, and thus requires extreme precision in the weighing of materials to be exchanged. The closer the mass-energy ratio to 1:1, the less energy was required. Even the air inside the coffin was contro
lled to a nicety.
This was the primary factor that had kept the San Francisco Studio afloat these past few years. Once the studio had formed the Overworld Company and gone into full-scale exploitation of Overworld resources, San Francisco had been the only Studio with freemod technology already in place.
On the far side of the techdeck, beyond another, larger window of armorglass, lay the docks: an immense cavern of a room crowded with sealed crates, each labeled in Westerling with their destinations. Off to another side were titanic slag canisters the size of freight cars; when there were no supplies of equipment to be sent, incoming shipments of ore were balanced by returning to Overworld the waste products left after valuable metals had been refined out. The docks were always loud with the rumble of heavy turbines; an endless stream of freightliners landed and lifted off again outside.
But Hari had no eyes for that now; he could only stare at Shanna's coffin, and listen to the tech at his side mutter low-voiced corrections to another tech a universe away.
Yeah, better not fuck with Caine, he thought, helplessly bitter. If he gets really pissed, he'll tell his wife on you.
He shook his head sharply. Fucking cut it out, he snarled at himself. I don't have to do everything myself Don't be such a suckass. Yet how was he supposed to stand here and watch her go, and not ache with envy?
She'd promised to look in on Kris. Hari knew Hansen was in for a bad time; a word of hope from the goddess should do him wonders. She wouldn't have any trouble finding him; once joined with Chambaraya, she became aware of every living creature that partook of its waters. She'd said the recording had given her a good enough sense of him that she would know his touch, even among the hundreds of thousands of people in Ankhana, and she should make contact with him, anyway: if he was carrying HRVP, he'd be her most convenient source for a sample of the virus.
He could still taste her lips. Just a little kiss, a little see ya later peck; he couldn't have taken more.
For a few minutes there, it had been almost like old times—he'd almost felt like he could do things. For the brief span they'd spent walking from the Curioseum, planning together, anticipating a little action, he'd almost felt like they were a team again. Like they'd briefly been, back all those years ago.
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