by Tad Williams
"We don't want to use it." Martine's words were slurred by exhaustion. "None of its other functions work now anyway, as far as I can tell. Just the communication." She yawned. "We only want to sleep."
"Very well, then." Kunohara waved his hand. "Sleep. You too, Jonas, since you were wakened by your friends' call. I am not happy with the foolish thing you people have done, but the step is taken now. I will discover what I can and wake you again soon enough."
He vanished, leaving them alone in the wide, curving room with the sounds and distorted motion of the river. T4b looked critically at the modest furnishings and the corpse of the mutated wood louse, which still hung in midair in its little box of light at one end of the room.
"Beats hiding under a leaf, maybe," he said, and stretched out on the floor mat.
"Code Delphi. Start here.
"I am hurrying to record these thoughts. God alone knows when I will have a chance again—everything seems tenuous now, tinged with catastrophe, as though this entire virtual world has tipped from its normal orbit. But I must make the effort to do things well, no matter how I feel time slipping away. Perhaps this is what it feels like to be Renie, always driven to move forward. . . .
"I believe I had recorded most of the events in Troy and atop the black mountain when we were interrupted by the scorpion. Now I will try to make some kind of sense out of how we left the mountain and what has happened since. There is little chance that I will ever recover these subvocalizations tossed out into the ether of the network, but I have always ordered my life this way, although usually with a more conventional journal, and it is a crutch I prefer not to do without.
"That is a thought, is it not? All my life, I have found my solace and my sanity in talking to machines, and through them to myself. Psychologically transparent, I suppose, and rather grim.
"Enough.
"In the final moments on the peak of the black mountain, as what we could perceive of reality fractured around us, I found myself consumed by images and feelings—powerful sensations as overwhelming as a demonic possession. I suspect now, after talking to Florimel and the others, that somehow my altered senses were perceiving the attack on the Other by Dread—to me it was a phantasm of bird shapes and shadows and the voices of screaming children, and surges of pain and horror for which there are no words. Whether or not the Other is the lonely thing I met in the controlled darkness of the Pestalozzi Institute when I was a child, and no matter what it has done to the old hacker Singh or anyone else, I feel pity for it—yes, pity, even if it is only some kind of highly evolved machine. I can think of almost nothing more pathetic than hearing it sing that old nursery rhyme, that bit of an old fairy tale. But whether it is good or bad or something less straightforward, its agonies nearly killed me.
"As the Other fought to protect itself against Dread's attack, things were happening all around me which I have had to reconstruct from the accounts of others. T4b's successful attack on one of the Grail Brotherhood—apparently an American general named Yacoubian, the true owner of our access device—will bear much considering, since somehow the strange thing that happened to our young companion's hand when we were in the patchwork simworld before the House allowed him to . . . I do not know. Disrupt Yacoubian's control over the virtual environment? Break down the protective algorithms that all the Brotherhood until recently enjoyed?
"In any case, soon after that, the Other's giant hand came down, apparently obliterating Renie, !Xabbu, Orlando, and Sam, and perhaps also Jongleur, the Grail master who wore the Osiris sim. But I am not certain I believe that, and neither is Florimel. It seems strange to think that a manifestation of the operating system would do something as crude as swat our companions like flies.
"In any case, with Florimel practically dragging me, we hurried to help T4b, who had been knocked aside by the monster and lay stunned just a few meters from the edge of the titan hand. That hand abruptly vanished—I felt the Other's presence vanish at the same time, a sudden vacuum in my head that I cannot begin to describe—leaving behind no trace of our companions, only the body of the falcon-headed Yacoubian. Florimel, who was far more composed than I was, saw something lying in Yacoubian's oversized fingers. It was another lighter, identical to the one Renie had taken with her into death or wherever she has gone—apparently Yacoubian had replaced his lost original. Even as Florimel bent and snatched it up, the world fell apart again.
"The Other was gone. I felt Paul's angel, Ava, shattered into fragments around us, each one suffering, a terrible chorus of pain almost as devastating as the Other's. The reality of the network was collapsing in some way I still cannot define, literally coming to pieces. I reached out for anything that might save me, as a drowning woman might snatch in desperation at a chunk of wood far too small to help her float.
"But what I found was indeed enough to save us from perishing in the overflow of chaos. How can I explain it? If I had a hope someone other than myself might actually hear these thoughts someday, I would perhaps try harder, but I cannot summon that belief.
"It was a . . . something. The words do not matter, since words cannot describe it—it was a ray of light, a silvery thread, a string of coherent energies. A connection of some kind between where we were and . . . somewhere else, that was all I knew for certain. The closest thing to it I have experienced was the terrifying moment in the Place of the Lost when I reached out through the nothingness to find !Xabbu on the other end. But this time there seemed to be no one on the far side of the shining filament. As all around me degenerated into meaningless information, only that bright thread remained constant, although it, too, was beginning to lose its cohesion. I snatched at it—again, there are no proper words—as I had done before with !Xabbu's extension of his personality, and I clung. I tried to fix my mind on all my companions—Renie, Florimel, Paul, all of them—tried to see their patterns in the information storm so I could pull them along with me on that slender lifeline. But the abilities I have here are not science, they are more like art, and once more the words fail me. If I knew how consistently to do the things I can sometimes do, I myself would be one of the gods of this place. In any case, I saved only a few.
"And so we came through and found ourselves dropped without warning into the stormy night of Kunohara's world, wearing our old sims from when we first entered the system, but dressed in identical coveralls with a patch reading 'The Hive' on the breast—apparently some kind of default garb here in Kunohara's world. It is too bad we were only granted the clothes and not the research installation itself. It would have been nice to have a roof and walls. Instead, we huddled under leaves for shelter from the crushing rain, prey to any monsters who might brave such weather to go hunting. And indeed, we nearly found ourselves eaten by one such creature, until Paul Jonas and Kunohara intervened. I am glad I could not see the thing. Sensing its size and power was bad enough.
"And now we are here in Kunohara's house, where after a short sleep we talked for many, many hours. I am tired again, but I must continue with this a little longer while the others are resting, because who knows when I will next have the chance to sort through my experiences? This network refutes any notion of natural inertia—if something can happen here, it almost undoubtedly will.
"When we awakened in the relative safety of this strange bubble, we explained to Paul what had happened since he was separated from us on the mountaintop. I suppose somehow I was able to drag him with us along that gleaming track. Kunohara would not talk to me about what it might have been that led us here, but I have my . . . no, I will keep things in their proper order.
"In any case, our host is a strange man. He spent the afternoon drinking some virtual liquor that he offered to us with a shrug. Only T4b accepted, but did not finish his glass. Kunohara seems fey and fatalistic—the knowledge that he is trapped here, subject to the same fears and mortal dangers the rest of us have lived with for weeks, seems to have affected him badly.
"As we explained to Paul, when Florimel, T4b, and
I first found ourselves returned to Kunohara's microworld, we also discovered we had not come alone. Two of the Grail Brotherhood had been pulled through with us, no longer dressed as Egyptian gods, but given some kind of default sims—Florimel tells me both were quite generic, more like composites than actual people. She was the one who guessed they must be of the Grail, and with the help of T4b and his strange hand—after all, they had seen what it had done to their comrade Yacoubian—she convinced them to cooperate. The network's former masters had discovered that they no longer had any control over their own system, and I think they were rather shocked and disoriented.
"The less confused of the two was Robert Wells. It was incredibly strange to be huddling in the dirt beneath a monstrous leaf with one of the world's most powerful men, and just as surprising to discover his companion was a no less impressive figure, the Chinese financier Jiun Bhao. Jiun could not completely grasp what had happened, and seemed to think that Florimel, T4b, and I were there to help him get back offline, or failing that, into one of his own simulation worlds. We quickly disabused him of that idea. He spent most of the hours we were together in sullen, almost childish, silence.
"Wells was a sharper character, and quickly made it clear he had information to trade if we would help him. He did not specify what information, and I regret now that we did not take the time to barter, but we had already received frighteningly close scrutiny from a hunting centipede, and Florimel and I were more concerned with making our position defensible than trying to find out what Wells might know.
"Ahhh. Too many words, Martine. I am telling this more slowly than when we explained it to Paul and Kunohara. Soon the scorpion found us. In desperation, I tried to use the lighter, and heard the voice of that monster Dread telling us that he would be . . . how did he put it? Sending some friends to find us. Thank God we are no longer stuck in the place where I used the communicator. I do not ever want to see that . . . that. . . .
"It is hard to talk when I think of him, remember being his prisoner, his voice speaking cheerfully of so many ghastly things. Stop, Martine. Make sense of what you have, what you know and remember.
"Whether he was more frightened of Dread or the scorpion, I cannot say, but Robert Wells decided to run, and vanished behind us into the thick vegetation. Jiun waited a few moments longer to desert us, but he chose the wrong direction. I cannot say I will lose much sleep over the death of a cruel, self-serving old man like Jiun, but I wish I knew where Wells might be. It is doubtless cold-blooded to say so, but I would be. happier if I felt sure he would meet the same fate as Jiun Bhao. I could tell even in our brief hours together that Wells is frighteningly clever.
"Kunohara was highly amused by what happened to Jiun, but did not seem overly concerned about Wells being loose in his simworld. Actually, it is hard to tell what Kunohara thinks at all. Paul says he believes our host is ready to share information, but I have seen little of it, and as the day goes on, he grows more silent and strange. Despite his promise, he has still told us little we do not already know. What kind of ally is this? Only slightly better than the enemies we already have. With so many of our friends lost or dead, it is hard not to resent him and his self-pity.
"At times this Kunohara reminds me of a boy I knew in university, highly popular and very daring—he would do anything for applause. But always I heard in his voice a note of darkness. He died trying to climb the wall of a ten-story residence building and everyone said it was a terrible, sad accident, but I thought when I heard it that he was searching for that accident, and finally found it.
"Kunohara, especially with this quiet drunkenness upon him, seems to me like that boy. . . .
"The others are stirring again, and there is much to discuss. I will have to continue these thoughts later.
"Code Delphi. End here."
Paul was surprised by how much better he felt simply having Martine and the others sitting beside him. Kunohara's right—I barely know these people, he thought. But it doesn't feel like that.
"So, Mr. Kunohara." There was an edge in Martine's voice. "Now perhaps it is your turn to share a little information. After all, your life is now as much in danger as ours."
Kunohara smiled, acknowledging her point. "I have never harmed you. As I told your friends, it was a risk simply to speak to you. You have the sort of enemies someone like me tries to avoid."
"You can't avoid them anymore," Florimel said bluntly. "So talk to us. What do you know about all this?"
Kunohara sighed and folded his legs beneath him. Outside the bubble the first morning light was warming the sky from black to violet. The river was almost completely obscured by mists—they might have been floating through the clouds in a balloon. "I will tell you what I can, but it is not much. If you do not already know who I am and how I came to be here, I see no sense in explaining. I have built this place because I could, and have lived in uneasy truce with the Grail Brotherhood for a long time. I will not pretend I did not know what they were doing, or what crimes they committed, but I have done nothing wrong myself. It is not my duty to save the world."
Florimel made a low noise that might have been an angry growl, but Kunohara ignored her.
"All I wanted—all that I still want—is to be left alone. I am not particularly fond of people. It is strange now to see my quiet, private house turned into a barracks, but there is nothing to be done about it. It is hard to ignore someone who keeps appearing in one's garden, however much one might wish it."
"You said you knew what the Grail Brotherhood were doing," Martine said. "Tell us. We have had to rely on guesswork."
"I think by now you must know all that I do. They have made an immortality machine for themselves and killed to keep it secret, although it has done them little good so far. Despite all their planning they did not account for this maniac employee of Felix Jongleur's who, from what you tell me, seems to have somehow hijacked the operating system."
"But what is the system?" Florimel said. "It has a name of sorts. They call it the Other. What is it?"
"By now you probably know more about it than I do." Kunohara showed a thin smile. "Jongleur has kept it secret even from the rest of the Brotherhood. How it was constructed, what its principle of operation is, only Jongleur knows. It is as though it sprang from nowhere."
"It didn't spring from nowhere," Martine said suddenly. "I met it myself twenty-eight years ago."
Having heard her say something about this on the mountaintop, Paul was the only one who did not look at her in surprise. Martine quickly told her story. Despite her calm, dry voice, it was not hard to hear the terror of that long-ago child reverberating in her words.
Kunohara shook his head wonderingly. "So however it is constructed, Jongleur has been programming it in some way for perhaps three decades. As though teaching it to be human." He frowned, considering; his strange mood seemed to have abated, at least for the moment. "He must have gained something by both mimicking and using human consciousness as the root of his system."
"That's right!" Paul said urgently. "God, I had nearly forgotten. This man Azador—Renie and !Xabbu met him, too—he told me that the system used the brains of children, Gypsy children, and also . . . what did he call them? The unborn?" The memories were dim, distorted by his dreamlike experiences on the island of Lotos. "Why do you seem so surprised?" he asked Kunohara, who was looking at him very oddly. "We knew they were using children somehow—that's what brought most of these people here in the first place."
Kunohara realized he was staring and made a show of poking the fire. "So this is what they have constructed, then? A sort of net of linked human brains?"
"But what does 'unborn' mean?" Florimel seemed to be struggling to hold down anger. "Stillborn children? Aborted fetuses?"
"We have only hearsay from . . . from the person Jonas mentioned," Kunohara said. "But it would not surprise me if the most basic array of neural nodes were unimprinted brains of that sort, yes." He shrugged liquidly. "The South American, Klement
, he made his fortune in the black market for human organs."
"Chizz that those old scanners sixed out, then," said T4b with sudden loathing. "Wish those Grail-Knockers had even more exit-pain, like."
"It is a horrible idea," scowled Florimel. "Horrible. But why would they need living children, too? Why would they need to take someone like Renie's brother, or . . . or my Eirene?"
"Matti, too," T4b said. "Just a poor little micro—didn't scuff no one."
"Hard to know," said Kunohara. "Perhaps they derive some different value from a more developed brain."
"How do they do it anyway?" Florimel demanded. "You can't just suck someone's mind out like a vampire stealing blood. This place is madness on top of madness, but it still has rules. It still exists within the real universe of physics. . . ."
"I want to ask Mr. Kunohara another question." Martine's quiet but firm voice shut Florimel off like a faucet. "You have said that we know all we need to know about you, but I'm not certain I believe that. If nothing else, there are still the riddles you set for us. Why? And what did they mean?"
Kunohara looked at her coolly. It was interesting and a little depressing, Paul thought, to see how quickly the owner of this particular world had sized up Martine as his most formidable challenge, relegating Paul and the others to bystander status. "In my own way, I tried to help. I am a meddler, I suppose, and thus not the perfect type to be a hermit, after all. You came crashing through my world as innocent as sheep and I thought it might help you to think a little about what was happening. But as I said before, I could not afford to assist you too obviously. I have remained safe both here and in the real world largely because of the indifference of Jongleur and his cabal."