by Sean Platt
Up in the sky’s stone chamber, the six members of the Realm underground had turned to Clint, waiting for direction from their supposed Chosen One. Clint asked what he was supposed to do. Oliver said that they didn’t know; he was the Chosen One and must be the one to decide. So Clint had said, “I want to find Edward” and Oliver had replied that the water readers — the scholars — might know where he was and maybe even how to contact him. And so Clint had said, “Then we will go to see the scholars” with more certainty than he felt, and the others hadn’t questioned him. They had simply led him away, doing their best to follow his arbitrary decree.
So Clint allowed himself to be dressed in the loathed captain’s uniform, to have his fake beard applied, and to have his brown hat replaced by a blue cap with a crest on its front. Then, after dressing as two officers and five guards, the group headed out of the hidden room, down another long and apparently underground corridor, and came up through another lift that rose into the middle of an open lawn. He stepped onto the greener-than-green grass and found himself facing a circle of buildings that crawled with ivy. Then he watched as the other six left the liftbox, and as the liftbox descended beneath the grass. Once below ground, the box vanished and grass appeared above its top.
“Harden your heart,” said Oliver, speaking through his streamlined helmet. “The edutoriums are less whimsical than the city, but the air is still thick with bliss. Bliss doesn’t only come from balms sold in stores. It’s actually engineered into the grass. Walk on grass in The Realm for long enough without turning your mind to unpleasant thoughts, and you’ll soon find yourself rolling on the ground, dreaming of pirouetting with fairies and pixies.”
“Think about leaving people killt,” Boricio suggested.
“And that will keep me from succumbing to bliss?” said Clint.
But Boricio wasn’t listening. Clint decided it might simply have been one of the man’s standard suggestions.
As they crossed the lawn toward one of the ivy-covered buildings, Clint felt the magic begin to work on him. He found himself wanting to be happy. It was as if the strange emotions he’d felt in the farback of Solace’s saloon on his botched hitching day were suddenly everywhere, pungent like an overused perfume. They pressed in on him, insistently pleasant and comfortable. So Clint thought of bullets. Of lost friends. Of Mai, and how he hadn’t heard her voice inside of him since he’d gone into prison. Had she gone away again, now that her role as Orb was complete? He didn’t think so. He thought he could feel her deep inside, but that might just be the bliss talking. He didn’t want to hope. Hope would be bad now. So he thought of the worst, about how there was nothing to live for, and when they finally arrived at the ivy-covered building, Clint once again wanted to die. He found the feeling strangely comfortable, like a well-worn shoe.
As they entered the building, a man with a white beard greeted Morph and told the group that he’d seen them coming in his viewer and he knew what they wanted to learn. He told them that he could answer their query, that he knew exactly where Edward the Brave was.
Edward, he said, was being held in the Realm stables. His horn had been sheared from his head.
CHAPTER FOUR:
A NEEDLE THROUGH A
STACK OF CLOTH
They were in a dark room. There was a huge pool of water in front of them, churning slightly in a basin that looked less like a basin and more like the frame of a viewer. The water, Clint decided, was magical. This seemed logical, given that the basin was mounted to a wall and the water wasn’t spilling.
“He’s in the stables,” the scholar repeated. He stared into the water, two fingers in the corner of the pool, submerged to the second knuckle. Clint looked into the water and saw nothing but ripples and swirls.
“There’s a pool of black water outside the stables,” said the scholar. “I’ve never seen the pool before; it’s new since the last time I’ve looked on this place. I do not know what the water is, but the unicorns in the stables seem to fear it. All are backed away, toward the rear of the stalls. The stalls are locked and are holding despite the fact that a unicorn can melt a lock into a puddle of alloy. I do not understand the magic I see. The stalls are not all filled, and those that are have unicorns in them that do not belong. This is no longer the marshals’ stable. It’s a prison. I see Edward the Brave, yes. But I also see Harley the Pure, James the Vengeful, and many others.”
The scholar pulled his fingers from the water, then turned to Oliver. “I do not know what it means, but there are many powerful unicorns being held in those stables and they are not trying — or are unable to — escape. This will not help your cause, savant.”
“Thank you, Bemis,” said Oliver.
“Thank me only by telling nobody that I read for you and your Conspiracists,” the scholar replied.
Clint pushed his way forward and spoke at the back of the scholar’s head.
“What is the pool of black water you saw?” he said.
The white-bearded scholar turned to Clint. He looked briefly into the gunslinger’s blue eyes, then replaced a wire-framed set of spectacles he’d taken off to read the water. “I do not understand the magic,” he repeated. “I do not know what the pool is. But it is as I said: the unicorns in the stables have been shorn of their horns, probably so they cannot broadcast a call for help. I do not understand why they cannot regrow their horns, but mayhap it is the same reason they are not trying to escape. It is strange, seeing these unicorns captive. Most of the pure unicorns have left for the Sands by now. Only a few have remained in The Realm as marshals’ partners, and those who have stayed are all ashy or gray. The captive unicorns I saw were pure white. This suggests to me that they are probably dissidents who would be — or already are — friends to your cause.”
“How did they capture Edward?” Clint asked, thinking of how impossible the notion of “capturing Edward” sounded to him. “Did he come to The Realm after me?”
“No. The door can only be opened from the inside. They went to him. The move was obvious and predictable. So after I learned of your arrival, Marshal, I started looking for your companion. I could not see him at first.”
“I left him with the Triangulum Enchantem.”
“Ah. Then there would be far too much interference. So when I couldn’t find him, I consulted the forecast tables and my own knowledge of the minds of the Senator and the Ministry and began to search for his mate. I found her at her house and waited, watching. A shimmer opened and paladins entered with several ashy gray unicorns. They took her easily. My reading barely wavered, there was so little magic used. She surrendered because they told her they had Edward, which they did not. I do not know where they took her; mayhap she is in the stables and I did not see her. Then later, when Edward returned to his home, they were waiting for him. They told him the same thing: they had his mate. Sir Edward did not surrender as she had. I do not know how they captured him because there was a fantastic explosion of magic and I lost my view, but somehow they did. My reading of the stables is proof.”
Clint looked at the frame filled with water defying gravity on the wall. Colors swirled, showing him the same nonsense patterns he’d seen beyond the fingers of many a Sands reader, including his own kin, Kullem the Brew.
“You are sure of your reading?”
The scholar didn’t look insulted, but Clint suspected that it was only because he was too well-bred. “Positive,” he said.
There was something else Clint needed to ask, but he was afraid of the answer. He took a deep breath and said, “Why haven’t they killed him?”
“You would need to ask the owls,” said the scholar. “I traffic in the present. The future is their domain.”
“It’s not a future question,” said Clint.
“Nor do I read minds,” the scholar added.
“I can answer your question,” said Oliver, stepping forward. “I can’t access everything that’s in here, in my codex,” he said, tapping his head, “but like Sly, I’ve se
en bits and pieces of the information that has been buried in the genetic material of my line. I know which event the prophecy says will herald the start of the apocalypse, and it’s the death of Edward the Brave.”
Clint squinted, fighting an urge to declare the entire endeavor — prophecies, readers, Chosen Ones, and everything else — ridiculous. “You’re saying that by keeping him alive,” he said, “they hope prevent the apocalypse? That’s turkey stupid.”
“I’ve verified it with the owls,” said Oliver, “but…”
“… but if ids meant ta be, ids gonna be,” mumbled Dylan Brooce.
“True, but they don’t see it as an inevitable thing,” said Oliver. “Fate isn’t an easy concept to grasp — especially for the people of The Realm, who aren’t used to thinking of the future. The Realm deals only in today, and thinks only of what will make today most pleasant. They think they can fight what’s ‘meant to be.’ So it makes a kind of sense. They might have imprisoned Edward to protect him. ‘Put the unicorn in a cell and keep him safe, because as long as no harm comes to him, the worlds will keep ticking.’ It’s dumb, but it’s how they think. The story of The Realm is rich with blind failure to understand the forces that underly The Realm’s very existence. It’s as if the founders, finding themselves in the dark, discovered a mysterious blob of substance that could light a room for them… and so they used that mysterious glowing blob to light their way, never stopping to think that the power that made it glow might also make it fatal.”
“You’re saying magic is fatal?” said Clint. But he didn’t really need an answer to that one. He’d seen what magic had done to Mai.
“Yes,” said Oliver, Brooce, and Morph together. Churchill beeped. Z, still wearing his helmet, nodded.
“Gonna leave us killt like a cockroach kicked to the curb,” Boricio added.
Then the six Conspiracists looked at Clint, waiting to see what he’d make of everything he’d heard. Waiting for instructions, or maybe for an ill-suited savior.
“We have to go and get Edward,” said Clint, breaking the silence.
Oliver shook his head. “We can’t. Not if he’s at the marshals’ stables. We got you out of the Keep because of Morph and his position with the Royal Guard, but we have no insiders with the marshals.”
“You have me,” said Clint.
Oliver continued to shake his head. “You’re a legend, but that’s exactly the problem. Everyone knows who you are, and knows that you’re no longer one of them. There have been many changes to marshal training since your exile. What you may not realize is that you and Dharma Kold represented catastrophic failures to the system. You can’t imagine what a blow your exile was to them. For a system based on honor, loyalty, and an impeccable moral code, having to send their own away — and execute another — was very, very bad. From what we’ve pieced together from that time, the failure of your training and conditioning undermined the confidence of all of the ranks. We’re raised here to believe that the people of The Realm are special, and that those in the Sands are lesser beings. They exist to serve us and to send us magic. Everyone — still today, despite mass defections — trusts the purity of white unicorns. And so back then, for one of them to be… well, you know the story.”
“I know enough,” Clint said, not wanting to head further down a tangent. Some day, when they were out of this, if they survived, Clint promised himself that he’d finally sit with Edward in whatever shards of civilization remained and have a long, tall brew and recount the story from start to finish. But now was not the time.
“Your kind are flat-out brainwashed now,” Oliver continued. “Modern marshals are raised from babes under the Ministry’s care. Nobody knows that, of course. The public image of the marshal program still makes it appear elite, like something a child might aspire to, and every kid still grows up watching flickers and believing that one day he might become a marshal true. But it’s a lie, like almost everything on the flickers, glossy books, and telescreens is a lie.”
“Conspir’cies,” mumbled Brooce.
“Unpleasant truths,” Oliver countered. He turned back to Clint. “Did you know that most of our entertainment is borrowed from cultures in worlds we know nothing about? It’s true. The Founders discovered magic and used it without understanding it, so why stop there? The tunnel system, accessible through portals, pierces an untold number of worlds like a needle through a stack of cloth. Magic opened the tunnels, and Realm pioneers found and heard things in them — thoughts, memories, broadcasts, ideas — that they decided to repurpose and to re-broadcast as flickers. The Smurfs? Seinfeld? Even Risk and Joelsongs? Sands, even the formula for Fanta is from somewhere else. We know not where any of those things are from. What if they’re poisons? What if they were sent from other worlds with the purpose of mind control? But that’s not how The Realm thinks, and never has.”
Boricio shook his head. “History is heaped a haystack higher with chaos than conspiracy, Stone.”
Oliver shrugged and tapped his head. “It’s not paranoia if everyone really is out to get you.” He turned to Clint. “Don’t listen to them. I’m right about this. People think the marshals are essentially highly-trained Hill Streets, but they’re not. They’re closer to drones, and they can’t be reasoned with. They will not let us pass, and we can’t fool or infiltrate them, even with Morph. As long as Edward is in those stables, we cannot get him.”
Clint thought of the marshals, imagining them as the unstoppable drones Oliver portrayed them as being. The thought made him recall the Teedawge archetypes. Clint (and Pompi Bobo, and Sly Stone, and Mai, and Rigo Montoya, and Buckaroo) had faced those drones in vastly superior numbers and had triumphed. He wondered how the new-and-improved Teedawges would fare against the new-and-improved Realm marshals. The marshals would be better, sure, but how much better could they be? How many Teedawges would it take to simply overwhelm them with superior numbers?
“We need Edward,” said Clint. Then, because he had an ace in the hole he’d yet to play, he added, “I feel, as your ‘Chosen One,’ that we need him.”
“It’s impossible,” said Oliver. “We’d need an army to get into the stables.”
“Well,” said Clint, tapping his chin, “it just so happens I have one.”
CHAPTER FIVE:
THE RED ROOM
Clint asked the scholar how people in The Realm — vein-stitching crews, the soldiers who had nabbed Cameron and Edward, even those who’d welcomed Clint himself — opened shimmers into the Sands. The scholar looked at the others in the group and laughed. The others laughed back — all except for Z, who stood motionless with his arms crossed, his blank helmet visor cooly assessing Clint and his intentions.
“It’s easy,” said the scholar. “You just need to find the Red Room. Once you find the Red Room, you can open any door out of The Realm that you want.”
“Okay. Where is the Red Room?”
Everyone laughed again.
“Oldest joke in The Realm,” said Oliver, reading Clint’s annoyed expression. “You’ve heard the expression, ‘Who is John Galt?’ ”
“Nar.”
“It’s okay,” Oliver continued. “Nobody knows where that expression came from anyway — probably one more stolen bit from yet another world. It refers to an unanswerable question. Like the Red Room. People talk about ‘running to the Red Room and back’ when they want to say they went very far away, or on a long errand. People say, ‘Consider me in the Red Room’ when they want people to leave them alone for a while. Parents tell their kids they’ll send them to the Red Room if they misbehave. Once I got lost on the way to a party because the hosts had given me poor directions, and when I yelled at them about it after missing the party, my friends said, ‘it was in the Red Room; didn’t you look?’ ”
Clint’s blue eyes steeled as he gazed at Oliver and the scholar. “You’re joking with me?”
Churchill held up a silver hand. “There is a real Red Room,” he said. “People use it as a joke, but it
’s a real place. But no one knows where it is other than those in the Ministry. The man I used to work for, when I was a serving machine, was in the Ministry. Once I gained my sentience and met Dylan, I searched my employer’s files, which is very easy when you’re a machine. His files were full of references to the Red Room, but no indication of its whereabouts.”
“I’ve tried to infiltrate the Ministry, but it’s as impossible as infiltrating the marshals,” said Morph. “The Royal Guard is easy to get into, relatively speaking. The Guard are only soldiers. But I’d never match a marshal’s skill, and I’d never be able to bluff my way through the Ministry. It’s as Oliver said — the Ministry is seen as a body of angel-like leaders. They’re considered benevolent and infallible by all of the Bliss-heads out there. Some even consider the Ministry to be holy, descended from NextWorld to take care of the chosen people. But in reality, they’re power-hungry, sadistic, and full of dark ritual. Just ask Churchill what else he found in those files.”
The thinking machine nodded its silver, shiny-looking head.
“Our best guess,” said Oliver, “is that the location of the Red Room is never written down or recorded in any way. Unless you turn a member of the Ministry, you’ll never learn it.”
“So follow a member,” said Clint.
“You can’t. They move through spatial folds, like shimmers.”
Clint closed his eyes and shook his head. He’d never felt so completely and totally out of his element. “We can’t open a door into the Sands unless we find the Red Room?” he said.
Oliver nodded.
“And there’s no way to find the Red Room.”
Oliver nodded again.