by Tad Williams
"But my name is Thestor, great Achilles. . . ."
Orlando ignored him. A moment later a small round shape emerged from beneath the cabin, blinking its eyes. "As I have pointed out several times, I am actually a tortoise."
"I need armor. I need weapons. Where can I find some?"
"If you could wait a night, your immortal mother might apply to Hephaestus, god of the forge, to create some for you. He does very nice work, you know."
"No time. I need some armor right now."
The tortoise closed its eyes as it consulted the current state of the simulation. The old man Thestor, whether because the system itself had removed him from the loop, or because divine madness was an unremarkable thing in heroes, seemed content to wait while his master Achilles talked animatedly to nothing.
"For some reason, the, armor of Glaucus of Lycia has been discarded," the tortoise announced, "and even now lies behind Agamemnon's cabin. It should fit you, and it has a long and heroic lineage. . . ."
"I don't care. It'll do." He turned to Thestor. "Do you know where Agamemnon's cabin is?"
The old man nodded, trembling. "Of course. . . ."
"There's some armor behind it. Go find it and bring it back. All of it. Run!"
"My legs are frail, great king. . . ."
"Then jog. But get going!"
Thestor obediently creaked off. Orlando went back into the cabin and picked up the single spear left behind. It was hugely heavy, and so long that it was not easy to steer it back out the door, but it fit his hand with a familiarity that was strangely satisfying.
The tortoise eyed it complacently. "Your great spear—it was too much weapon for brave Patroclus, although he took everything else."
"Is he—Patroclus—is he alive?"
"Only the gods know what men cannot see," the tortoise said. "He rode out onto the plain, driving the Trojans before him like sheep. Great was their terror when they saw the armor of Achilles."
"Oh, jeez, Fredericks, why didn't you stop once you turned away the attack?" Orlando groaned. "You utter scanbox!"
With the help of the tortoise, Orlando had discovered a replacement sword and shield by the time Thestor returned, panting beneath the burden of Glaucus' armor. The chestplate gleamed like a gaudy punchbowl.
"It's gold!" Orlando said, impressed.
"From carrying it, I would have guessed lead," wheezed the old man. "But heroes are stronger than ordinary men—doubtless you shall scarce notice the crushing weight, my king, the weight which has nearly killed an old freedman."
"Help me put it on,"
As Orlando first tried to wait, then in impatience tried to speed up the process by tying on those pieces he could manage himself, he finally began to consider the old man fumbling at the greave-ties as something other than a bit of the background. Whatever else was going on, whatever code determined his behaviors, ancient Thestor truly seemed to be what he was meant to appear—a frightened, weary old man with shaking hands. Orlando began to regret his short temper.
"That's all right." He gently but firmly tugged the groin-piece from the man's grip. "I can do that myself." The man's white-stubbled jaw suddenly reminded him of his own father, unshaven on a Sunday morning, trying to pretend that it was another normal weekend day like everyone else's, despite the fact that he and his son were not going to be going out to any baseball games or museums, or strolling in the park. Despite the slightness of the memory, it hit him like a fist in the stomach: for a moment Orlando was afraid he might burst into tears.
"Do you . . . do you have any kids?" he asked Thestor.
The old man eyed him warily. "Goats? No, my king. I have never owned anything except a white pullet, and once a pair of dogs, but I could not afford to keep them fed."
Orlando cursed his own stupidity. "No, I mean children. Do you have any children?"
Thestor shook his head. "I had a wife, but she died. I have traveled with your household now for many years, Lord, in many lands, but I have not found another who pleased me as she did." He straightened. "There. You are girded for war, my king. You look like Phoebus Apollo himself, if I may say so without incurring the god's wrath." He lowered his voice. "They are a touchy lot, Lord, if you did not know it."
"Oh, I know it, all right." Orlando sighed. "Believe me."
The horse was picking up speed, jouncing him almost off its bare back as they hurried across the battlefield. All around him the bodies of Greek and Trojan soldiers lay in frozen stillness, as though some wall sculpture from a museum had crumbled and fallen to the floor. The slaves who had remained behind as the battle surged back across the plain, capably plundering the Trojan corpses on behalf of their masters or perhaps themselves, stood up and pointed as he passed, astonished both by his bright golden armor and the sight of a warrior riding on a horsed back.
Here it comes, Orlando thought grimly as he kicked his heels into the horse's ribs, urging it forward. The world's first and smallest cavalry.
Ahead, and growing closer every moment, lay the glinting, seething ruck of battle. He could hear men's voices, tiny, threadlike screams of fury and agony rising to the skies. Carrion birds circled above, following the movable feast with patience bred through thousands of generations.
Here I come, Fredericks. Please don't be dead. Just hang on until I get there.
The horse pounded on across the smoky plain.
CHAPTER 31
The Hall Wherein They Rest
NETFEED/NEWS: Node for Homeless Draws Criticism
(visual: portal to Streethouse)
VO: Streethouse, a nonprofit node established for the homeless has drawn fire from retail nodes with similar names, like StreetSmart Apparel,
(visual: StreetSmart spokesperson Vy Lewin)
LEWIN: ". . . No, look, we're totally supportive of the homeless—we give lots of money to charities every year—but this directly interferes with our business. People looking for that Streethouse node just come wandering into our showrooms and annoy our customers. We had a group of gypsies, or whatever you call them these days, who moved into the big and tall showroom of our main retail node and wouldn't leave. Once they find a node like ours with lots of entertainments and private dressing rooms, they keep coming back with different aliases. It's a real problem."
(visual: Condé Del Fuego, spokesperson for Streethouse)
DEL FUEGO: "Basically, the retailers just want poor people to go away, even online. It's the same old story—'Yes, it's too bad, but go suffer somewhere else. . . .' "
In the flick that was always running in the background of his thoughts, Dread was now a knight in shining armor, a lone hero girding himself for battle. His castle was a converted warehouse in the Redfern district, his squire a young woman named Dulcinea Anwin whose mind he was slowly, carefully destroying. In place of breastplate and buckler, he had strapped himself into a Clinsor LR-5300 Patient Care Station (known more prosaically as a coma bed) and, with connections less physical but no less real, into the matrix of his own heavily-modified system. Instead of a gleaming sword, the man who had once called himself Johnny Dark bore the only weapon he truly trusted, the white-hot fire of his own mind—his twist.
"How are the meters?" he asked, taking care of a few remaining details. He did not flinch as he inserted the catheter.
Dulcie looked up at him, bedraggled, eyes hollow from jet lag. "Good. Everything's working."
Burning with impatience and three tabs of Adrenex, he had pushed open her door in the middle of the night. She had struggled up from sleep, eyes wide, fearful—a look that Dread was usually pleased to evoke from his female acquaintances—but he had a more important use for this particular woman, at least for the time being.
He had let the adrenaline flow through him like hot gold, carefully channeling his exultation into charm. He sat on the edge of her bed, amused by a seeming intimacy that only he fully understood, and apologized for how distant and abrupt he had been since her arrival. He told her how important she was to him, ho
w much he needed her help. He even pretended to be a bit embarrassed as he hinted that his feelings for her might be more than mere collegiality and professional respect. A momentary dislocation of her attention, a flash of confusion that turned into a blush, had confirmed his guess.
Just before leaving her room, he had leaned across and cradled the back of her head in one gentle, firm hand as he pinioned her wrists with the other, then kissed her softly on the mouth. Pretending that he had surprised even himself by the moment of passionate indulgence, he had said an awkward good-bye and then slipped back out the door.
"He was fairly sure she hadn't gotten much sleep after that.
Dread smiled now, watching her move among the display screens like a sleepwalker, fatigued and confused. He was well on the way now, whipsawing her back and forth between fear and desire. If he played his cards correctly, there would come a point when she would throw herself from a high window or walk in front of a speeding car if he asked her to—not that he would leave her inevitable death to something so impersonal, so unsatisfying. But that ultimate pleasure would have to wait: for now, she was far more useful to him alive. He was going into the unknown, to fight a monster. He needed someone loyal to watch his back.
"I'm going to leave a channel open," he said. "I don't know if it will still work after I penetrate the network, but I'll be able to talk to you at least until then."
She nodded. Her hair hung down, curtaining her face.
"Right. Wish me luck, sweetness."
"Of course. Good luck."
Dread subvocalized a command and dropped into the empty surface level of his own system. He closed his eyes, centering himself, reaching out along the ganglia of the system matrix which he knew as well or better than he did his own body. He tested the new capacities, the greater speed and vastly increased memory, and found it all good. He had only a vague idea of what he might find, and what might happen when he found it; he wanted to be prepared for all contingencies.
But something was missing, he realized. The hero was going into battle with no music. Dread considered for a moment. It was dangerous to squander even a tiny amount of his resources, surely—but what about style? Wasn't it part of being a hero to waste a little energy on swagger? He summoned up his catalog—he was not going to be so foolish as to try to manipulate an invented score during an assault like this—and settled at last on an old, old friend, Beethoven's Ninth. Some might consider it a cliché. Fine. Let the snotty bastards step in with him and face the dragon, or if not, shut up. Better, let them step in and face Dread himself. A little music might actually help focus his resolve, and if it became a drain on either his resources or his attention, he would shut it off.
As the first portentous string figures drifted up, he called up the entry sequence on Dulcie's copy of the stolen access device. When he had first tried to reenter after being knocked out of the system, the response had been swift and savage—a bolt of hideous input like bad charge, worse than anything the Old Man had ever done to him. This time he was prepared. He had found a way to hide his point of connection while the Otherland system considered the request. Any attack would be pointless, and would pinpoint the source of resistance.
But to Dread's surprise, instead of another retaliatory stroke, the sequence keyed through and the system opened, presenting him with an initial choice of parameters—a kind of visitor's lobby for the exclusive environs of the Otherland system. Elated that Dulcie's tinkering had solved the access failure from last time, he was about to make his first set of choices when he became aware of an unusual sensation.
Something was waiting for him.
It was bizarre—it made no sense at all—but Dread's instincts were very sharp, and like the predator he was, he always trusted them. He paused to think about what he was feeling. He was in one of the preliminary levels of the Otherland system, far too distant from the VR environments to be receiving information in anything other than straightforward ways, sound and vision. Any normally sensible person would discount the sensation as an effect of his own nervousness and get on with making selections, but Dread had never been a normal person.
He hesitated, then initiated the first of the subroutines he and Dulcie had created for this incursion, this one a secondary call-up, a falsified but very realistic request from an access line other than his own. When it had connected with the preliminary level, it randomly made a selection from the presented choices. A second later it had been rubbed out of existence.
Dulcie's voice purred in his jawbone, a little interest adding color to her dulled tones. "The secondary call-up just got sixed. Not just ended, but something blew it up completely—the line is out of service now, too."
A security system that could set traps and then brutally dispatch what it captured. Dread smiled. You are a clever bastard, aren't you? It was impossible to feel that vast patient malice just behind the facade of the system and not think of it as a person—and judging by its swift, skillful viciousness, a person not that different from himself. Neural net, ALife—whatever you are . . . I'm going to enjoy taking you down.
In her examination of the access device, Dulcie had found what she thought was an override—a priority access, just the sort of thing that members of the Grail Brotherhood would demand, especially in those days when they'd been forced to share the system with others not of their cabal. Dread brought in the tertiary call-up and gave it that priority, which seemed to work—this probe was not attacked, and within moments had opened up the outer level. The system threw up auxiliary defenses, some of which Dread and Dulcie had only been able to anticipate in the most general of ways: since their access device was a copy, it had not been regularly updated. Dread saw the probe halted by a light-swift array of queries for which it had no immediate answers. He decided it was time to get aggressive.
He routed his original call through what was now the active line, inhabiting that probe into the secondary level of the Otherland system as though it were a suit of clothing, while his peculiar ability—his twist—began slowly to work. The levels of complexity, the layer on layer of subroutines, were so much more Byzantine than even the Atascos' top-flight security system that for a moment he despaired, but he clung to the crack he had opened in the system and began to look around.
Dulcie was boosting him with every tool they had prepared—she even improvised a few—but although his probe was not being attacked as the first one had been, neither was it able to penetrate the next level of security. If it had been a simpler system, this might have been the point at which failure of their assault became automatic, but the Otherland system seemed able to live with the paradox of a priority code that was nevertheless incomplete. They held their beachhead, but could not move farther.
The Ninth Symphony had finished and begun again, a low, muscular pulse of strings just at the edge of Dread's hearing, when he finally found a weak point. He had been using his twist sparingly, conscious that unlike the rest of the arsenal he and Dulcie had assembled, it was organic and prone to fatigue: now, as he assayed another test of the Otherland system's responses, he discovered something he could only think of as a hesitancy, a space where the system which was resisting him so assiduously showed an almost imperceptible lag.
An ordinary intruder, reliant on numbers and experience, might have missed it, but Dread's odd gift was only coincidentally something that could be used against information systems: whatever genetic mystery had caused it, it was a part of him. Dread was a hunter, his talent a hunter's talent. When the system hesitated on each cycle, the split instant of delayed reaction was still far too swift to be noted by any normal animal senses—but through the twist he felt it, as a shark might smell a spoonful of blood in the water a mile distant.
He let everything slide away—Dulcie, the subroutines, his own meat body—until only the twist mattered, a pulse of energy at the farthest extension of his mind. He ignored the now constant migrainous pain, slowed his breathing, then extended his understanding out along the
tendrils of his consciousness and beyond, until he himself became that point in conceptual space—until he was the twist. And he waited.
The Otherland system might seem to have put an impenetrable wall between his probe and what he sought, but it was only a wall in the same way matter appeared to be solid—a false seeming, a concession to the limits of perception. Just as solidity itself was an illusion of whirling, bonded energy, the fire wall with which the system held him at bay was an illusion of unbreachable speed. Deep within the nearly continuous flash of information, there was an all but imperceptible hitch.
Dread waited, his consciousness extended like an antenna, the potentiality of his probe waiting like a synapse poised to fire. The cycles of the resisting system sped past. Dread waited. Then, trusting an impulse too inexplicable even to be called instinct, he twisted hard.
It was an impossible feat, like throwing a broomstraw unscathed through the whirling blades of a propellor. He succeeded.
The system fell open before him, an astonishing array of conduits connecting an almost equally vast collection of information nodes, all open, all as accessible as if he had built them himself. The system, or at least its security apparatus, lay behind him now, evaded and neutralized. He could go anywhere, assume any form, with the same godlike ease as the brotherhood wielded. He had as much power within the network as the Old Man himself.
He felt like a huge gray wolf who had found a valley full of fat, unshepherded sheep.
Dread paused to rest and nurse the dull red ache behind his eyes. Once again the twist had served him well. He brought the volume back up on the Beethoven, just in time for the tenderly melodic opening of the third movement.
"It worked," he told Dulcie. "Can you hear me? Is the spike carrying this back out?"
She did not hear him, or did not reply, but he was not bothered. His joys had always been solitary.
Should he move immediately to find and destroy that Sulaweyo bitch and her friends, which would now be as easy as swatting flies, or should he play closer to the vest so as not to risk his long-term goal—the destruction of the Old Man and the usurpation of his power? Dread was considering all the exciting possibilities when something else, something unexpected, tugged at his imagination.
