by Tad Williams
It quickly became clear—and here for the first time T4b spoke expansively if, as always, somewhat opaquely—that he was a natural. ("Major hammerhead netboy," was how he described himself.) His grandparents began to feel that maybe their gamble was going to pay off. Things were not really that simple, of course—one of the main attractions of the net was that he could still run with his old Goggleboy crowd, even if only virtually—but it was true that young Javier had begun to feel a freedom and a sense of possibility he hadn't known before. "Magic big," he called the experience, providing a bit of poetry. But as he went on to explain, it was only when his friend Matti succumbed to a mysterious illness that he had made the net his full-time crusade.
"I have never heard of anyone your age being affected by the Grail Brotherhood's online virus, or whatever it is," said Florimel. "The illness that has taken my Eirene."
"So?" T4b glowered. "Calling me duppy?" His unchanging mask of Kabuki-warrior ferocity and his spiky, formfitting armor made it hard to think of him as someone named Javier, but it was not difficult to sense the insecure street kid underneath it all.
In fact, thought Renie, that's what they all wear anyway. Whether they're on my street in Pinetown or wherever it is he comes from—"So-Phee"—most of them are so armored up that they can barely move. But here in VR you can actually see it.
"No," Florimel told him calmly, "I am not calling you anything." Finally telling her own story seemed to have taken some of the edge off her approach; she sounded, Renie thought, almost human. "I'm just trying to get information which may be important to all of us. How old was this Matti when it happened?"
T4b stared at her, then abruptly turned away, going from frightening robot to spike-studded child in moments. Renie wondered whether they were asking for the right person's age.
"Please answer. It might help us, T4b," said Martine. "We are all here for the same reasons, or at least we are all in the same danger."
T4b mumbled something.
"What?" Renie resisted the urge to shake him, mostly because there were few spots on him that were safe to touch. She had never been good with people playing hard-to-get. "We can't hear you."
T4b spoke in a gust of anger and shame. "Nine. He nine. But wasn't nothing weird—not like that William. No babybouncer, me."
"William said he meant and did nothing wrong," Martine said, her voice so soothing Renie found herself nodding like a comic bystander. "I believed him. And I believe you, too."
Renie thought she saw Florimel mouth the words, Speak for yourself, but she was distracted by T4b's reaction.
"Don't understand nothin', you." He grabbed a handful of the not-earth and crushed it into translucent powder in his servo-motored fist. "Matti, he was crash—he knew all stuff nobody here know. All over the net, he going here, going there. For a micro, he was outmax. Whatever got him had to be far far dire. So got all matrixed and went lookin' for it, me." He proceeded to describe a search across the net that seemed to have taken him months, culminating in the discovery of one of Sellars' golden gems near a tribute wall in a VR park frequented by the youngest Goggleboys, like Matti.
Renie was wondering whether Javier Rogers' grandparents were rich, and if not, how he could afford to stay online so long; she was also growing curious as to who was taking care of T4b's physical body right now. Suddenly Emily spoke up with a question that Renie herself had occasionally been tempted to ask.
"So," the young woman asked, her tone half-contemptuous but ever so slightly flirty as well—a change, because she had been treating T4b like the plague since he had arrived—"what are you supposed to be, anyway? Some kind of spaceman?"
Florimel hid a snort of laughter, but poorly.
"Spaceman?" asked T4b in high dudgeon. It was an old-fashioned word, and he repeated it as though she had asked him whether he was a farmer or a janitor. "Not no sayee-lo spaceman. This a Manstroid D-9 Screamer Battlesuit, like outta Boyz Go 2 Hell!" He looked around, but no one responded. "Boyz Go 2 Hell?" he tried again. "Like with the Ballbuster Bugs and the Scorchmarkers. . . ."
"If it's an interactive game," Renie said, "you've got the wrong crowd, I'm afraid. If Orlando and Fredericks were here, I'm sure they'd recognize it."
"Don't even know Manstroid Screamer. . . ." he muttered, shaking his great metal head.
"I have a question, too," !Xabbu piped up. "Is that mask the only face you have in this place, or is there another underneath?"
T4b stared at him in stunned silence. "Underneath. . . ?"
"Underneath the mask," Florimel said. "Have you even tried to take it off?"
He had swiveled to face her now, but did not react to what she said, only stared as though in a dream. At last, slowly, his spike-gauntleted hands crept up to the flared sides of the battle-mask, sliding up and down the polished edges until one of his fingers slid into a slot below one of the finny protuberances. He found the corresponding slot, then pressed them both. A loud click was followed by the front of the mask swinging up out of the way like a medieval knight's face shield.
The face that peered out from beneath was simply that of a brown-skinned teenager with long black hair and startled eyes. Even the runic Goggleboy designs picked out on his cheeks, neck, and forehead in faintly luminous subdermals could not disguise how ordinarily homely and normal a face it was. Renie did not doubt that she was seeing a very convincing simulation of the true Javier Rogers.
Only a few seconds passed before T4b flinched beneath the weight of their collected gazes and clicked the mask back into place.
The fire had burned down. They had talked and talked until they had fallen into a surreal timelessness unusual even for this place.
". . . So this is what it all comes down to," Renie said at last. "Do we try to explore this place and find a way out? Or do we search for the lighter that . . . I want to say Quan Li, but it wasn't Quan Li, of course. Do we search for that lighter instead, which could bring us some control over our environment?
"How we gonna hunt something like that?" T4b asked. Like Florimel, he seemed to have lost a little of his abrasiveness after confession. Even his rigorously unintelligible Goggleboy patois had shifted a little closer to normal speech. "Need one to find one."
"We may not." Renie turned to !Xabbu. "That's why I gave it to you to open a gateway for that monster—hoping that if you did it, it would make some impression on you. Do you think there's any way you could find that gateway again? By . . . dancing, or by doing anything at all?"
!Xabbu looked worried, an oddly natural expression for a furrowed baboon brow. "I found it difficult even when I had the lighter in my hand, Renie. And as I have told you, the dancing, the searching for answers, is not like ordering something in the mail. It is not a foolproof delivery system."
"Nothing is foolproof for us these days." She couldn't even smile.
"Perhaps I could help." Martine spoke slowly. "I have learned things myself since I have been in this place, and since !Xabbu and I . . . connected through the access device, I suppose you could say. Perhaps together we could find that gateway again and open it." She turned her blind eyes to Renie. "I think it would be a great gamble, but if you are all in a gambling mood, there are few enough opportunities left to us."
"Let's vote on it," Seeing the faces of her companions, Renie relented. "If you're not too tired, that is. I suppose we could wait until tomorrow."
"Could we not wait in any case?" Martine asked. "I mean, would it not be good to explore this unusual part of the network first, no matter what?"
"But if we wait, we give that bastard a greater chance to escape," Renie pointed out. "Not to mention the fact that you and !Xabbu may lose whatever insight you have—you may just forget, like trying to remember some stranger's name three days after they tell it to you."
"I am not certain that is a good analogy," said Martine, "but there is perhaps something in what you say."
"Very well, then, Renie," Florimel said, amused and disgusted. "We will have no peace
until we give you your vote. I assume I know what you and !Xabbu will say. For me, I say we stay here until we know more about this place."
"But. . . ." Renie began.
"Is it not enough we are voting?" Florimel asked. "Do you need to harangue those who disagree with you?"
Renie frowned. "You're right. I'm sorry. Let's go on."
"I want to vote, too," said Emily suddenly. "I know I'm not one of your friends, but I don't have anywhere else to go, and I want to vote." She said it as though it were a treat.
Renie was uncomfortable with the idea of putting someone who might not even be fully real on an equal footing with the rest of them. "But, Emily, you don't know all the things we know—you haven't been through everything. . . ."
"Don't be mean!" the girl said. "I heard everything you've said since we've been here, and I'm not stupid."
"Let her," rumbled T4b, recovering from the embarrassment of showing his naked face. "Prejudiced, you, somethin'?"
Renie sighed. She didn't even want to begin discussing the ins and outs of Emily's possible status, since it would have to be done in front of the girl herself. "What do the rest of you think about Emily voting?"
Florimel and Martine nodded slowly. "You remember what I have said, Renie," !Xabbu reminded her quietly.
Which is that he thinks she's real, Renie thought. Which should carry some weight, after all—he hasn't often been wrong about anything. "All right, then," she said aloud. "What do you think we should do, Emily?"
"Get out of here," the girl said promptly. "I hate this place. It's not right. And there's nothing to eat."
Renie could not help but notice that she had been resisting a vote in her own favor, but was still not entirely comfortable about its source. "Okay. Who else?"
"I'm afraid I agree with Florimel, instead," said Martine. "I need rest—we have come through a very frightening time."
"We all have!" Renie caught herself. "Sorry. I'm out of line again."
"That was my thought, too," Florimel told Martine. "I don't want to go anywhere yet—if nothing else, I need to build up some strength. Remember that you were here for a day before we got here, Renie. Perhaps after the rest of us have had a chance to recover, and to get to know this place somewhat. . . ."
"So we come down to you, T4b." Renie turned to the spiky, fire-glinting shape. "What will it be?"
"Fen—that dup tried to six us! Say we catch her, me, and vile her up good." T4b curled a mailed fist. "Don't let her get away, what it means."
"I'm not at all sure it's a 'her,' " Renie said, but inside she was pleased: that made it four to two to follow the spy—and, more importantly, Azador's lighter. "So that's it, then."
"No." !Xabbu raised one small hand. "I have not made my vote yet. Florimel said she assumed I would vote as you did, Renie. But I do not."
"You . . . you don't?" She felt nearly as astonished as if he instead of Quan Li had turned out to be a murderous stranger.
"When I look at our friends, I see that they are very tired, and I would like to see them rested before we run to danger again. But more importantly, Renie, whatever hid behind Quan Li's face, it frightens me."
"Of course it does," Renie said. "Don't you think I'm frightened, too?"
!Xabbu shook his head. "That is not what I mean. I . . . felt something, saw something. I do not have the words. But it was as though for a moment I felt the breath of Hyena, out of the old tales—or worse. There is a deep, hungry darkness in that one, whatever it is. I do not wish to rush toward it. Not yet, anyway, not until I can think about what I saw, what I felt. I vote we wait."
Renie was more than a little stunned. "So . . . so that makes it three to three. . . . What do we do, then?" She blinked. "Is that the same as if I were outvoted? That doesn't seem fair."
"Let us say instead that we will take the vote again soon." Martine patted Renie's hand. "Perhaps we will feel differently after we have had another night's sleep."
"Night?" Florimel laughed flatly. "You ask for too much, Martine. But just sleep will be enough."
Martine's smile was sad. "Of course, Florimel. I forget sometimes that for others it is not always night."
CHAPTER 2
An Old-Fashioned Sound
NETFEED/NEWS: Gruhov Denies He Implanted Russian Leader
(visual: Gruhov coming out of fast-food restaurant)
VO: Although he is avoiding the media, renowned behaviorist Doctor Konstantin Gruhov has flatly denied that he implanted a control chip in Russian President Nikolai Polyanin under orders from high officials in Polyanin's lame-duck Russian government, and that his being called suddenly to the Kremlin during the president's recent illness was merely a coincidence. . . .
(visual: Gruhov in university garden, prerecorded statement)
GRUHOV: ". . . Really, it is preposterous. It's hard enough simply trying to keep someone from shoplifting—how could you hope to control a politician. . . ?"
Waiting to die, as Joseph Sulaweyo discovered, was surprisingly like waiting for anything else: after a long enough time, your mind began to wander.
Long Joseph had been lying in darkness on the floor of a car with his face covered by some kind of sack for what seemed at least an hour as his kidnappers drove slowly through the streets of Durban. The hard shin of the man who had snatched him from in front of the hospital was pinning Joseph's arm against his side, and the even harder barrel of the gun rested against the top of his head like the beak of a murderous bird. The sack itself was foul and close, with the ammonia-stink of old, sweaty clothes.
It was not the first time in his life that Joseph had been abducted by armed men. Twenty years earlier a rumor of cuckoldry had led one of the neighborhood hard men and his cousins to drag Joseph out of his house and bundle him into a truck, then drive him to a shebeen one of the men owned on the far side of Pinetown. Guns had been waved around and Joseph had been slapped a few times, but at least a dozen witnesses had seen him dragged from the streets and knew who had done it. The whole thing was mostly a face-saving display by the husband of the whispered-about wife. Joseph had been much more afraid of a bad beating than of being killed.
Not this time, he thought to himself, and felt cold all over. Not these men. The kind of people Renie got onto, they don't bother with no hitting and yelling. Take you out to the edge of the township and just put bullets into you.
Beyond a swift, partially whispered conversation as he was being forced into the car, his two captors had not spoken. The man driving seemed in no hurry, or perhaps was trying to avoid being noticed. Whatever the case, Joseph had at first been frightened rigid, but had found that he could not sustain such an extreme pitch of fear. After going round and round with the imminence of his own death dozens of times, he began to slip into a kind of waking dream.
This what Renie feel like, down in the dark? He shifted on the car floor, his back arched uncomfortably. The man with the gun shoved him, more in irritation than in threat. Just wish I could see her again, one more time. Tell her she's a good girl, even though she drive me crazy with her nagging.
He thought of Renie's mother, Miriam, who had nagged him, too, but who had also loved him up sweet as honey. Once, when they were first together, he had stripped naked and waited for her on the front room couch. She had laughed when she came in and saw him, saying, What will I do with a crazy man like you? What if my mother had been with me?
Sorry, he had said, but you have to tell her I am just not interested.
Miriam had laughed so hard. That night, as they lay together on top of the sheets, the old fan only barely pushing the hot air around the room, he had told her that she was going to marry him.
Might as well, she had said, and he could hear her smile, there in the dark beside him. Otherwise you'll probably just keep bothering me.
They had made Renie in that bed, and Stephen, too. And Miriam had slept with him there the last night she spent at home, the night before that terrible day when she did not come back from the
department store. That had been the last night they lay together belly to belly, with her snoring in his ear the way she did—the way that sometimes when his head ached had made him crazy, but which he would now give anything to hear again. He would have slept beside her in her hospital bed in her last days, but she was too badly burned. Even a slight movement of the mattress, just setting down a magazine near her arm, had made her whimper.
Goddamn, it is not fair, he thought, then continued with an unusual leap of perspective. Especially for poor Renie. First her mother, then her brother, now her foolish father gone and get himself killed, and she has nobody. He entertained a brief fantasy of managing to escape when the car reached its destination, a sprint for freedom that would take the kidnappers by surprise, but the unlikeliness of it was too heavy a weight for his reverie to bear. Not these men, he told himself. People burn down a whole flat-block just to tell someone like Renie to shut up and leave things alone, they not going to make any mistakes. . . .
Without warning, the car slowed and then stopped. The driver switched off the engine. Long Joseph's body turned to ice in an instant—it was all he could do to keep from pissing himself.
"I don't go any farther," the driver said, the seat between them muffling his voice so that Long Joseph had to strain to make out his words. "You get me?"
It seemed a strange thing to say, but before Joseph could think about it, the man with the gun made a noise, almost a grunt, and pressed the barrel hard against his neck. "Get up," he told Joseph gruffly. "Don't do anything foolish."
Tripping and staggering, grudgingly assisted by his captors, Long Joseph at last managed to clamber out of the car and onto his own two feet again, lost in the dark sack covering his head. He heard a distant shout echoing as though down a long street. The car door slammed shut, the engine started, and it rumbled away.
Someone yanked the bag off, pulling at his hair in the process so that despite everything he yelped in anger and surprise. At first the dark street and its one flickering streetlight seemed shockingly bright. Tall, graffiti-tattooed walls loomed on either side. Half a hundred meters down the street a fire burned in a metal drum, surrounded by a small crowd of figures warming their hands, but before he could even contemplate calling out to them the gun jabbed his backbone.
