by Tad Williams
"Bonnie . . . Nandi. . . ." he murmured. They couldn't just leave them behind. And the Wicked Tribe. . . .
"Stand up, Gardiner!" his friend shouted. Fredericks dragged him forward, deeper into the room. "Somebody help us!" On the far side of the chamber a flicker of light suddenly became a wall of golden flame.
That means something, Orlando realized, but it was too hard to think. A whirlwind of black shapes came spinning toward him—bats or monkeys, monkeys or bats. He couldn't remember which was which, or why he should care.
"Help us!" Fredericks shouted again, but it was faint now, as though his friend had fallen down a deep tunnel.
The golden light was the last thing Orlando saw, a wavering gleam that held out against the dark for a long second after everything else was gone, but at last even that spot of brightness shrank and was extinguished.
There was no protocol for something like this, Catur Ramsey knew. It was like being the first delegation to an alien planet. When you were in the presence of parents whose child was dying, there were no words, no gestures, that could ever bridge such an incomprehensible gap.
He shifted, uncomfortably aware of the scratchy rattle of his disposable hospital sanitaries. It made no difference, though; he suspected he could have fired a gun in the air and the parents would still not have taken their eyes off their child's pale, wizened face.
Sunk deep in the slow machineries of the coma bed, with cheeks sunken and skull almost visible beneath the translucent skin, Orlando Gardiner resembled nothing so much as the corpse of some superannuated ruler put on display for public viewing. And yet he was still alive: some tiny flickering thing in the depths of his brain kept his heart beating. A tiny thing, yet when it ceased, so much would change. Ramsey felt guilty looking at the dying child, as though he were trespassing on something private—which in a way he was, perhaps the most private thing of all, the final and most solitary of journeys. Only the shiny button of the neurocannula, still planted in the boy's neck like a plug that might keep the last of his life from draining away, seemed out of place. It troubled Ramsey, reminding him of things he should say—things he did not want to say.
Orlando's mother reached out and touched the boy's slack face.
Her expression was so terrible that Ramsey could not watch any longer. He sidled to the door and stepped out into the hallway, full of guilt at his immediate sense of relief.
The hospital's Family Center did not make Ramsey a great deal more comfortable than the wards. It had been decorated in an aggressively cheerful style, which, although he understood the reasoning behind it, depressed him. The toys and holographic displays and bright, overstuffed furniture did not disguise the pain and fear that hung over a place like this, whatever the decor—you had only to look at the families huddling together waiting for visits, or pulling themselves together after such a visit, to see the truth. Instead the toytown furnishings merely made it seem that expressing that pain or fear would somehow be an expression of ingratitude. Be a team player, the teddy bear lamps and the cartoons flickering on the wallscreen seemed to urge. Smile. Watch what you say.
If that was the message, Vivien Fennis and Conrad Gardiner were not getting with the program.
"It's so . . . it's so hard." Vivien brushed a strand of hair from her eyes, heedless as a famine victim shooing a fly. "We knew it would happen. We knew it would only be a matter of time—progeria kids just don't last very long. But you can't live your life that way, waiting." She stared at her hands, fighting anger. "You have to go ahead as though . . . as though. . . ." Tears formed, and her anger seemed aimed at herself as she wiped them away. Her husband only stared, as though he were surrounded by a glass box and knew reaching out was useless.
"I'm so sorry." Ramsey did not reach out either, did not even offer her one of the tissues that sat in the middle of the table. It felt like it would be an insult.
"It's kind of you to come," Vivien said at last. "I'm sorry—it just doesn't seem important at the moment. Please don't give up on us. I'm sure it will mean something later, when . . . when we're a little less crazy."
"Did you find someone for us to sue?" Conrad Gardiner's joke was so dreadfully hollow, so hopeless, that Ramsey flinched.
"No, not really. But . . . but I have run across some strange things." It was time to tell them about Beezle, he knew. It might be too late to save their son—it was hard to look at the child and imagine otherwise—but how could he deny them the chance at communication? "I noticed that Orlando's neurocannula is still in place. . . ." he said, trying to find a way to raise the subject.
"Yeah, it drives the doctors crazy." Vivien laughed, a short dry rasp. "They're eager to take it out again. But we saw what happened the last time they tried. It was horrible. And even if that wouldn't happen now, why take the chance? Anyway, there's still brain activity." She shook her head at the strangeness of the idea. "Still. . . . And if it's a comfort to him somehow. . . ."
Conrad stood up so suddenly his chair caught on the carpet and toppled backward. Vivien started to rise, too, but her husband waved her off and staggered away from the table. He wandered seemingly at random for long seconds until he stopped in front of a tropical fish tank. He leaned against the glass, keeping his back to the room.
"Our own fish are all sick," Vivien said quietly. "We've hardly cleaned their tank in weeks. We've hardly done anything. We're living at this damned hospital, pretty much. But it's better than being somewhere else when . . . when. . . ." She swallowed hard, then smiled a smile that was as hard for Ramsey to look at as Orlando himself had been. "But you do what you need to, don't you? So what do you have to tell us, Mr. Ramsey? Don't wait for Conrad—I'll pass along anything important."
And now here it was, the moment in all its inevitability when the secret should be shared, but Catur Ramsey suddenly realized that he did not want to tell this brave sad woman anything about it. What could he offer them? A story that would be hard for anyone to understand or believe, let alone the parents of a boy who was clearly on the very edge of death? And even if he could convince them that Beezle's unlikely-sounding tale was true—that the software agent could talk to Orlando even in the depths of his coma, and that the boy himself was somehow trapped like a lost spirit in some kind of alternate universe—what if Beezle could not make contact with Orlando again, could not find the proper dream-window to reach him? How cruel would that be, to raise their hopes, confound all the thankless, miserable work they had done to come to terms with what was happening, and then not be able to deliver? It wasn't as though Ramsey himself had actually spoken with Orlando. It was all secondhand, all hearsay from a piece of gear that considered itself a talking bug.
Suddenly he felt paralyzed. It was too great a risk. He had thought that he had no other honorable choice, but now, seeing Vivien with grief heavy on her, as though Orlando's coma had lasted years instead of days, seeing her husband weeping quietly against the fish tank, he did not trust his earlier conclusion. One of the headiest things about his career, back in the early days, had been the godlike feeling of holding people's lives in his hands—confessor, interlocutor, sometimes even savior. Now he would have given anything to let the cup pass.
But can I really take away their only chance to say good-bye? Because I'm afraid it might be a mistake?
A small, cowardly part of him whispered, If you don't tell them today, you can always change your mind tomorrow. But once you speak, it's too late—you can't unsay it.
To his shame, he listened to that whispering part and found himself agreeing.
Vivien was trying to pay attention, but she was clearly having trouble concentrating. "So you're saying it was some kind of thing in this gameworld of his? Someone . . . lured him?"
Conrad had returned, but seemed willing to let Vivien ask the questions. He was making a pile on the table before him of tiny little pieces of tissue, tearing each one from the now-ragged larger sheet and then setting it down on top of the others.
"I suppos
e, although it's not really clear yet why someone would want to lure him or any of the other kids that might have run across this thing."
"This . . . picture of a city."
"Yes. But from what I can tell, someone went to a lot of trouble, and must have spent a lot of money, too—everything I can discover about this makes it seem like a lot of work went into it. But why? I still have no real idea."
"So someone did do this to Orlando." For the first time Vivien's voice had something like a normal tone—the tone of an outraged parent.
"Perhaps. It would be a strange coincidence otherwise, especially considering that Salome Fredericks is also in a coma, and she was helping Orlando look into it."
"That damned Middle Country—I hate that place! He practically lived there the last few years." Vivien suddenly began to laugh. "Monsters! My poor son wanted monsters he could kill. No surprise there, I guess, considering the real stuff he couldn't do anything about. He was very good at it, too."
"That's what everyone there tells me."
"So let's sue the bastards." She looked to her husband, who offered a ghost of a smile, acknowledging her return of his earlier serve. "Those Middle Country bastards. Let's make them pay. It won't bring Orlando back, but it may help some other kids."
"I don't really think they're the problem, Ms. Fennis." Ramsey had decided to avoid the painful subject of communication with Orlando, but here was yet another place where he did not feel comfortable. Everything he had discovered about Orlando's case so far screamed out like a tabnet shoutline—Worldwide Conspiracy! Science Fiction Plot to Steal Children! He couldn't really start talking about stuff like this to grieving parents until he had more proof. "Let me look into it a little more, then maybe next time we get together I can make some positive recommendations. Don't worry about the hours, please. The Fredericks are still paying me, and I'm doing some of it on my own time, too."
"That's very kind of you," Vivien said.
He shook his head, embarrassed. "No, I didn't mean it that way. It's just . . . it's caught me, that's all. I need to get to the bottom of it now. I hope if I solve it, it will . . . I don't know, bring you and your husband a little peace. But I couldn't stop caring about this if I wanted to."
He realized he'd said all he could say. He rose and stuck out his hand. Conrad Gardiner took it carefully, squeezed it for a moment, then let it go. Vivien's handshake was only a little more robust. Her eyes were shiny again, but her mouth was set in a firm line.
"I don't really care about suing anyone," she said. "Not unless they've done something wrong, not unless they hurt my boy somehow. But it's all just so strange. It would be nice to have some answers."
"I'll try to get you some. I truly will."
As he turned and headed across the colorful puppies-and-kitties carpet toward the exit, she left her husband at the table and walked with him. "You know the worst thing?" she asked. "We were ready for this—we really were, as ready as any parents could ever be for something so terrible and unfair. We had been getting ready for this for years. But we always thought we'd at least have a chance to say good-bye." She stopped somehow, as though she had struck some kind of invisible wall. When Ramsey hesitated she waved for him to go on, then turned to walk back to the husband who was waiting for her, waiting to return with her to the alien world of grief that normal people could not enter.
Ramsey took his own far different pain with him out through the lobby and into the parking lot.
It was hard to make his way back out of the darkness—harder than it had ever been. Something held him, not in a cruel way, but with a grip as elastic yet implacable as a spiderweb strung wide between the stars. He fought it, but it merely gave, and all the energy of his being burned uselessly; he fought on anyway, for a span that might have been centuries. After a while, it seemed pointless to continue struggling. How long could anyone fight the inevitable? Forever? Maybe someone else could, but he couldn't.
When he relaxed the darkness did not become deeper, as he had expected. Rather, the darkness itself began to glow, warming almost imperceptibly from ultimate black into some deep, polar range of violet, a light he could only feel, not see. Then something spoke to him—not a voice, and not in words, but he understood it, and understood that it was somehow separate from himself, or at least separate from the part of him that thought.
You have a choice, it said.
I don't understand.
There are always choices. That is the pattern beneath all things. Universes appear and disappear with each choice—and worlds are destroyed with every breath.
Tell me. I don't understand.
A place in the soft violet darkness began to glow a little brighter, as though the fabric of negation grew thinner there. He could see shapes for the first time, oblongs and angles that made no sense, but simply seeing them made him hungry for life again.
That is your choice, his voiceless, wordless adviser told him.
And as the imprecise vista became clearer, he realized that he was looking down on something from above. At first, the lines and odd shapes made him wonder if he hovered over some alien landscape, but then the shadows and brightnesses resolved themselves into a face, a sleeping face . . . his face.
Hospital, he thought, and the word seemed something icy and hard—a knife, a bone. That's me. Dying. His features, so strangely shriveled by his disease and yet so cruelly familiar, hung just on the other side of an imperfect barrier like a fogged window. Why are you showing me this?
It is part of your choice, it said. Look closer.
And now he could see the huddled, dark forms beside the bed, one of them extending a shadowy hand to touch the insensible mask of his face—his own face!—and he knew who they were.
Vivien and Conrad. Mom and Dad.
The presence, the companion that was not a companion—was in fact nothing but a certain illogical knowledge—said nothing, but suddenly he saw the choice before him.
I can go back and say good-bye. . . . he said slowly, or would have if there had been any words to speak, sounds to hear. I can go back and see them before I die—but I'll leave my friends behind, won't I? I'll lose Fredericks, and Renie, and Bonnie Mae, and the others. . . .
He could feel the presence beside him, silently assenting. It was true.
And I have to choose now?
No reply, but none was needed.
As he stared at the shadowy forms, a terrible loneliness swept over him. How could he not return to them, even if only for a last touch, a last sight of his mother's face before the final, dark door opened? But Fredericks and all the children, all those poor lost children. . . .
The time he had spent resisting the initial darkness was nothing to that which seemed to pass now as he hung between worlds, between something more subtle and complicated than simply life and death. It was an impossible decision, but it could not be avoided. It was the single most terrible thing imaginable.
But in the end he chose.
It took a while before Orlando realized he was dreaming now, just dreaming. At first the strange filtered light and the half-glimpsed shapes seemed almost a continuation of what had gone before, but then the blurriness lifted and he found himself staring at . . . a bear. The animal was sitting on its rump on wet gray concrete with its leather footpads extended. A collar of nearly white fur around its neck made a startling contrast to the rest of its black pelt.
Something bounced off the bear's chest. It snapped downward with its jaws, but the peanut had fallen away, skittering into the cement moat and out of reach. The bear's eyes were so piercingly sad that even though it was a dream of the remote past, Orlando found himself weeping all over again. Conrad's head appeared at the edge of his vision, poking in past the netting his parents used to keep Orlando safe from both bright sunshine and prying eyes.
"What's wrong, honey? Does the bear scare you? It's called a sun bear—see, it's friendly."
Something moved on his other side. Vivien's hand came through th
e netting and took his fingers, squeezed them. "It's okay, Orlando. We can go somewhere else. We can go look at some other animals. Or are you tired? Do you want to go home?"
He tried to find the words, but the six-year-old Orlando—far too old for a stroller if he had been a normal child, but condemned to one by his frail bones and easily overtaxed muscles—had not been able to explain the deep sadness of the bear. Even in this dream-version he still could not make his parents understand.
Someone tossed another peanut. The bear waved at it with its paws, and for a moment almost had it, but the peanut slithered down its belly and into the pit. The bear looked mournfully after it, then looked up again, bobbing its head, waiting for another throw.
"Boss?" someone said. Orlando looked down. He was holding a shelled peanut in his own bony, knob-knuckled little hand, a peanut he was afraid to throw for fear he would not even be able to make it across the moat, but the peanut was moving. Tiny legs had sprouted from its side and waved helplessly in the air. "Boss, can you hear me?"
He stared at it. Vivien and Conrad were still talking to him, asking if he wanted to see the elephants, or maybe something smaller and less frightening like the birds. Orlando did not want to lose them, did not want to miss what they were saying, but the squirming of the peanut was distracting him.
"Boss? Can you hear me? Talk to me!"
"Beezle?"
"I'm losing you, Boss! Say something!"
The peanut, the peanut's voice, his parents, the white-collared sun bear, all began to fade.
"Beezle? My parents, tell them . . . tell them. . . ."
But the dream had evaporated, and Beezle and his parents were gone—so completely vanished that he felt certain he had left them all behind forever.
The diffuse light made everything almost gray. This time there was no mechanized womb of an expensive hospital bed, no angers-eye-view of a dying boy, only the inconstant light of burning embers gleaming through translucent fabric.
