Mountain of Black Glass

by Tad Williams

  "The creature, who had told me that his master hated the name 'Dread'—and who in doing so had thus told me his name, which we had not known—nodded slowly. 'Either way,' he said, I'm betting that even if this device gets loaned to guests, the letter on it isn't just to make it look like an old-fashioned lighter—it's a monogram of the person who had it made.' His voice was still light, but I heard the hard, uncaring tone that was never far from the surface. 'Which should make it a lot easier to find out who it belongs to.'

  " 'Why do you care about that?' I could not help asking. 'I thought you wanted to know how to use it.'

  "He went still then. I cannot explain what my senses show me, but it was as though he turned cold all over—a change that may have been purely my own imagination as I realized I had gone too far. It was only the fact that I was still useful that saved me then, I know.

  " 'Because I have plans,' he said at last. 'And they're none of your business, sweetness.' He stood up abruptly and walked to the corpse of the Upper Pantry Clerk, which had begun to slide down the wall. He put his fingers in her hair and jerked the body upright. 'You're not paying attention, nuba,' he said to the cadaver—it might have been her name, or some word the system did not translate. 'Martine is working hard to prove how clever and useful she is—you should listen.' He turned, and I could feel the grin stretching his face, hear the way it changed his voice. 'Girls can be so foolish sometimes,' he said, and . . . and laughed.

  "Horrified, my heart once more knocking at my ribs, I did my best to offer more observations about the lighter—wild speculation mostly, which in my panic I did my best to justify. At last he said, 'Well, I suppose you've earned a little rest, my sweet Martine. You've worked hard, and in fact you've earned more than that. You've earned another day!' He eased himself into the chair where he still remains. 'And Daddy needs some sleep, too. Don't get into any trouble.'

  "Then he was gone, or at least the sim stopped moving. It is possible he has indeed gone offline to sleep or perform other tasks, or else that he simply naps inside Quan Li's body like some ghastly parasite.

  "Can he have been the only one in the sim for all this time, all these weeks? It is hard to imagine he would trust another, but if not, how does he live? Where is his real, physical body?

  "These questions have no answers now, and I doubt I will survive to discover the truth, but I have earned one more day—the monster still needs me. I cannot help thinking of my own body, tended by micromachines in my cavern home, separated from the rest of the world by mountain stone as surely as I am separated from it by the toils of the network. And what of the others, Renie, !Xabbu and the rest—and what of their bodies? What of their caretakers, Jeremiah and Renie's father, themselves imprisoned in a mountain just as I am, but without even the solace of having chosen it?

  "It is odd to realize that I have friends. I have had coworkers and lovers—sometimes one became the other—but just as the mountain protects me, I have protected myself. Now that things have changed, it no longer matters, because they are lost to me and I to them,

  "God, it seems, is fond of jokes. Or someone is, anyway.

  "Code Delphi. End here."

  It didn't matter what he did, or where he went, or how thoroughly he pretended not to think about it. He was thinking about it. He was waiting for it.

  The netfeed news flickered on the tiny instrument console screen, a ceaseless roll of disasters and near-disasters. Even isolated as he was, it was hard not to feel that things were getting worse in the world outside: the news rumbled of mounting Chinese-American tensions, and also of a feared mutation of the Bukavu 4 virus, deadlier and faster-spreading. Smaller miseries crowded in close behind, industrial disasters, terrorist attacks on incomprehensible targets, the camera-drones transmitting pictures of the latest carnage within seconds. The net throbbed with simple, everyday murders as well, with earthquakes and other natural catastrophes, even a decommissioned satellite which had failed to destruct, instead hitting a near-orbital passenger jet like a bomb as it reentered the atmosphere, incinerating seven hundred eighty-eight passengers and crew. All the commentators gravely commented how lucky it was that the plane was only half full.

  Not all the netfeed was bad, of course. The media had the almost reflexive skill of self-perpetuation, knew as a bird knows it must migrate that they had to temper what would otherwise be an unremitting flow of bad news with pleasant stories—charity events, neighbors helping neighbors, criminals foiled by a quick-thinking bystander with a homemade stun-baton. The net also offered dramas, sports, education, and every kind of interactive environment imaginable. All in all, even with the primitive equipment which was all he had for access, it should have been enough to keep anyone occupied.

  But all Jeremiah Dako was doing was waiting for the phone to ring.

  He knew he should have found a sledgehammer and smashed the thing off its pillar days ago, but he had worried that somehow whoever or whatever was on the other end would know that something had changed, that the sudden alteration would signal life when Jeremiah and his charges needed secrecy. He had also had a less definable fear that even if he destroyed the ancient telephone, the ring would simply move to one of the base's other receivers. In a nightmare he had seen himself destroying all the equipment in the base, even shattering the controls to the V-tanks, only to find the chilling burr of the phone still coming out of empty air.

  He woke sweating. And of course, the phone had been ringing again.

  It was growing hard to concentrate on his work. Two helpless people were relying on him, but Jeremiah was consumed by a sound, a mere electronic signal. If it had only settled into a regular pattern he might have been able to cope, putting himself on the opposite side of the base, out of earshot, during the appointed times, but it was as randomly cruel as a snake crushed by a wheel but still alive. There might be nothing for hours, to the point where he thought he would be granted an entire day without hearing it, then it would start ringing again a few minutes later and continue on for hours, a dying creature emptying its venom into anything that ventured near.

  It was making him quite mad. Jeremiah could feel it. It had been difficult enough to keep his spirits up after Joseph's defection, with only the V-tanked living dead for company, but with books and naps—something he had never had time for in the past—and a rationed dose of net, he had been getting by. But now this endlessly, crazily persistent device was all he thought about. Even when he was most occupied, caught up by something on the net to the point that he momentarily forgot where he was, a part of him was still tensely waiting, like a battered child who knows another assault will come. Then the shattering, clanging noise would return. His heart would beat and his head would pound, and he would all but hide beneath the desk until it stopped again.

  But not today. Not ever again.

  He was waiting for it, of course—he was always waiting for it these days—but this time he was going to do something. Perhaps it was dangerously foolish to answer it, but he could not take the miserable feeling of being probed at anymore, could not cope with the growing obsessive madness. And a thought had been gnawing at him until between that and the anticipatory fear of the sound, there was little room left for anything else.

  What if he had to answer it to make it stop?

  It had only been a casual idea at first. Perhaps it was some kind of automessager, programmed for random retries. Perhaps all that was needed—all that had been needed all along—was for someone to answer the call and either accept its message or demonstrate that the line was not equipped to carry information more complex than audible sound. Perhaps if he'd only picked it up the first time, that would also have been the last time.

  He'd laughed when he'd thought that, a hollow wheeze of bitter amusement that felt like it might turn into something much uglier and more painful if he wasn't careful.

  But maybe that's not all that will happen, another voice had whispered. Perhaps it's some kind of hunter-killer gear, one of those thing
s you see on the net, and it's just trying to get into the system here. Maybe one of those Grail people has sent it to kill the V-tanks.

  But if so, a more sensible inner voice suggested, then why send it to an audio phone? And what harm can it do over audio lines, even if I pick it up? Jeremiah didn't know much about technology, but he knew that someone couldn't send gear that would drip out of an old-fashioned phone and go crawling across the floor. He dimly remembered that Renie and the others had been talking about people like Renie's brother being struck down while using a low-cost station, but even so, that was a station, for God's sake, not an antique telephone!

  The idea of answering, despite its attendant worries, had begun to grow over the last forty-eight hours. Every flinch-inducing ring of the phone bell had given the idea strength. He had actually meant to pick it up the last time it had rung, but the ring had sounded like the scream of a sick animal echoing in his ears, and his courage had failed. Now he was waiting again. He could do nothing else. He was waiting.

  Jeremiah had dropped into a half-sleep, nodding over the V-tank console. When the phone rang, it was as though someone had poured a bucket of ice water on his head.

  His heart was beating so swiftly he thought he might faint. Idiot, he told himself, trying to force his legs to lift him from the chair, it's just a phone. You've been letting yourself be panicked by a twitch of electric current. No one knows anyone is here at all. Phones ring all the time. Just pick it up, damn you!

  He edged toward it as though afraid to startle the thing. The ring sounded for the third time.

  Just pick it up. Reach out your hand. Pick it up.

  His fingers closed on the rectangular handset just after the fourth ring. He knew if it rang again under his hand, it would feel like an electrical shock. He had to take it off the cradle.

  It's just a phone, he told himself. It's nothing to do with you.

  There's a spider on the other end, a voice whispered in his mind. Forcing poison through the lines. . . .

  Just a phone. A fluke. Pick it up. . . .

  He squeezed it and lifted it to his ear but said nothing. He felt himself swaying, and put out his free hand to the pillar. For a moment he heard only static, and relief began to climb through him. Then someone spoke.

  It was a voice distorted, if not by mechanical means then by some incomprehensible malformation. It was the voice of a monster.

  "Who is this?" it hissed. A second passed, then two. His mouth worked, but even if he had wanted to answer, he could not have. "Is it Joseph Sulaweyo?" Buzzing, crackling. It did not sound human at all. "No, I know who you are. You are Jeremiah Dako."

  The voice began to say something else, but Jeremiah could not hear it above the roaring in his ears. His fingers had turned lifeless as carved wood. The handset slipped from his grasp and clattered to the cement floor.

  CHAPTER 15

  Waiting For Exodus

  NETFEED/ENTERTAINMENT: "Concrete" Revival

  (visual: explosions)

  VO: The popular linear drama "Concrete Sun, " which finished its run only weeks ago, is already being turned into a musical comedy. Writers Chaim Bendix and Jennifer Spradlin are preparing a stage version for the opening of the new theater at the Disney Gigaplex just being completed in Monte Carlo.

  (visual: Spradlin superimposed over footage of man throwing a dog into a hovering helicopter)

  SPRADLIN: "It's got everything—doctors in trouble, pets, diseases—how could it not make a great musical?"

  Feeling more like a teenager than he had in some time, Orlando waited for the grown-ups to decide what they were all going to do. He was tired—exhausted—but too nervous to sleep and bored with sitting in one place. With Fredericks worriedly following, he set out on a slow journey around the Temple of Ra. Unsurprisingly, the Wicked Tribe insisted on coming. After a negotiation punctured by many high-pitched shrieks of "Not fair, not fair," Orlando wangled the concession that they remain perched on him or Fredericks at all times.

  For any ordinary people, simply walking through the temple would have provoked continuous astonishment—even the architecture could only have been possible in a virtual world, the unsupported stone ceiling so high that it could have held Skywalker jets stacked like cordwood—but Orlando and Fredericks had been veterans of online fantasy worlds long before they had come to the Otherland network: they barely glanced at the magical carvings that flowed with life, the talking statues dispensing cryptic wisdom, or even the multiplicity of gods and goddesses, animal-headed and otherwise, who wandered the vast besieged temple, apparently as stifled and apprehensive as the two teenagers.

  As the pair turned away from a fakir who had created twin serpents of red-and-blue fire, then set them to battling on the floor before a group of fascinated children, the monkeys began to complain loudly about not having any fun. The Wicked Tribe were still doing what they had been ordered to do, namely stay perched on Orlando and Fredericks and keep relatively quiet, but they were growing restless.

  A large crowd had formed around Upaut's throne at the center of the room and Orlando found himself drawn toward it. A group of priests in white robes crouched before the wolf-god, already well into some ritual, chanting and knocking their heads against the stone flags; Upaut ignored them, gazing off into the air with the expression of a weary philosopher. Some of the siege victims crowded around the throne were calling out to him, demanding to know what was being done to protect them from the attack everyone seemed sure was coming, but the wolf had mastered the attitude of heavenly royalty if nothing else; their shouts went unanswered.

  As Orlando led Fredericks to a spot between a bare-chested man with a child on his shoulders and a minor tutelary deity with the head of a goose, someone touched his arm. He turned to see Bonnie Mae Simpkins.

  "Don't you say anything to that wolf," she quietly warned him. "He's got everyone in enough trouble. Goodness only knows what he'll do next."

  "Who are those priests?" Orlando asked. "Are they his?"

  "They belong to the temple, I suppose." She frowned at having to discuss heathen practices. "They're priests of Ra. You can tell by those gold disks. . . ."

  "But if this is Ra's temple, where is Ra? Isn't he the . . . the big guy around here? Egypt, I mean?"

  "Ra?" She shook her head. "He used to be, but he's pretty much retired now. Kind of like one of those Mafia things, I s'pose, where the old don isn't dead yet." She frowned. "Don't look at me funny, boy, I watch the net like anyone else. Osiris is the old fellow's grandson. He's the one who really runs things. They all give lip service to Ra, but all the old fellow does is sail through the sky in his boat, being the sun, or whatever the story is. But they still have to respect him, at least in public." Bonnie Mae's expression became something altogether grimmer. "That's why they'll wait until night before they do anything, when Ra is in the underworld. Why are you grinning? You think that what's going to happen here is funny?"

  He didn't, not really, but the sudden notion of an Egyptian Mafia in linen skirts and heavy black wigs was hard to suppress. "Do you think they're going to attack tonight?"

  "Nobody knows. But there are rumors that Osiris is coming back soon, and Tefy and Mewat sure won't want him to know about this—doesn't look good for them at all. So it seems likely. But we'll get you out of here before that, boy. Both of you."

  "Yeah, but what about you and the others?" Fredericks asked.

  Instead of answering, Bonnie Mae suddenly bent down and caught one of the Wicked Tribe, who had shinnied down Fredericks' robe to the floor. "I oughta find a tiny little stick to whup you with," she told the squirming primate before placing it gently back on Fredericks' shoulder.

  "Didn't mean to!" it shrilled. "Fell!"

  "Likely story." Bonnie Mae paused for a moment, then reached out and squeezed both boys' arms before heading back to the corner of the Temple where the Circle kept their camp.

  "I don't like this waiting. . . ." Fredericks began. A hoarse voice interrupted him.<
br />
  "Ah! It is the gods from the river!" Upaut had spotted them, and was beckoning them toward his throne with long, hairy fingers. Orlando turned and caught Bonnie Mae's eye where she had stopped again; the look she sent back to him was full of helpless worry.

  He and Fredericks stepped forward until they stood before the throne. Lifted by the high chair, Upaut's head towered almost three meters above them, but even at that distance Orlando could see that the wolf-god did not look good: his eyes were red-rimmed and his ceremonial wig sat slightly askew, partially covering one of his ears. He held a flail and a spear in his hands, and tapped the flail nervously against the side of the throne, a continuous and rather irritating beat. Fredericks stared at it as if hypnotized as the wolf leaned toward them, sharing a too-wide grin and carrion breath.

  "Well, now!" His jollity sounded a bit hollow. "You have come to see me—and look! As I promised, I am leading heaven against those who have wronged me!"

  Orlando nodded, trying to summon a smile.

  "And you have come all the way here to join me—good, very good! It was the gift of your boat which brought me back from exile, after all. I shall be sure that your trust in me does not go unrewarded—your names will echo forever in the halls of heaven." He looked around the room. Perhaps reminded of his situation, he said in a slightly less emphatic voice, "You have come to join me, yes?"