by Tad Williams
"Where do Bushmen come from?" she asked suddenly. When !Xabbu did not immediately answer she felt a pang of worry. "Oh, is that an utterly rude question?"
His slanted eyes were so narrow the brown irises were almost invisible until something made them open wide in surprise or amusement. She could not tell which of those her second question had produced. "No, no. It is not rude, Sam. I am just trying to think of the answer." He touched his chest. "In my case, a small country called Botswana, but people with my blood are scattered throughout the southern part of Africa. Or do you mean originally?"
"I guess so, yeah." She moved closer, matching her stride to his; she did not want to include Jongleur in the conversation.
"No one knows for certain. In my school days I was told we migrated down from the northern part of the continent long, long ago—a hundred thousand years ago, perhaps. But there are other theories."
"Is that why you can walk, like, forever? Because you're a Bushman?"
He smiled. "I suppose so. I was raised in two traditions, and both made for hard lives, but my father's people—the old, old tradition, the nomadic hunters—sometimes walked and ran for days on the track of game. I am not as strong as they were, I think, but I had to harden myself when I lived with them."
"Were? You mean they're not around anymore?"
Something moved across his brown face, a shadow in this place with no shadows. "I could not find them when I looked for them again a few years ago. There were few left, in any case, and the Kalahari is harsh. It could be that there are no more people who live the old life."
"Impacted! Then you're like . . . the last of the Bushmen." Even as she said it, she realized what a terrible thing that would be.
To his credit, !Xabbu did his best to smile again. "I do not think of myself that way, Sam. I was only a visitor to the original way of life, for one thing. I lived with them just a few years. But it could be that no one else will learn the old ways as I did, that is true enough." He seemed lost for a moment. In the silence, Sam could hear Jongleur's harsh, even breathing behind them. "It is not surprising. It is a life I value, but I do not think many others would agree. If you were one of that tribe, Sam, you would find it very hard."
There was something in the way he said it that poked at Sam's heart—he seemed needy, something she had never seen in him before. Perhaps it was Renie's disappearance. "Tell me about it," she said. "Would I have to hunt lions with a spear or something?"
He laughed. "No. In the delta, where my mother's people live, they sometimes fish with spears, but in the desert the killing of large animals is done with a bow and arrow. I do not know anyone who has ever killed a lion, few who have ever seen one—they are dying out, too. No, we shoot poison arrows, then track the animal until the poison has killed it."
She thought that was a bit unfair, but didn't want to say so. "Do girls do it?"
!Xabbu shook his head. "No, at least not among my father's people. And even men only go hunting big animals from time to time. Mostly they snare smaller game. The women have other duties. If you were one of my tribe, an unmarried girl like you, you would help with the children—watch them, play games with them. . . ."
"That doesn't sound so bad. What would I wear?" She looked down at her improvised bikini, a last sad reminder of Orlando. "Something like this?"
"No, no, Sam. The sun would burn you up in a day. You would wear a kaross—a kind of dress made from the hide of an antelope with the tail still on it. And besides watching the children, you would help the other women dig for melons and roots and grubs—things I think you would not much like to eat. But nothing goes to waste in the Kalahari. We use our bows to make music as well as shoot arrows. And our thumb pianos—" he mimed the playing of a small, two-handed instrument, "—we also use as workbenches for braiding rope. Everything is used as many ways as possible. Nothing goes to waste."
She considered this for a moment. "I think that part is good. But I don't know if I'd want to eat grubs."
"And eggs from ants," he said solemnly. "We eat those too."
"Yick! You're making that up!"
"I swear I am not," he said, but he was smiling again. "Sam, I fear for that life, and I would miss ant eggs were I never to eat them again, but I know most people would not want to live in that way."
"It sounds so hard."
"It is." He nodded suddenly a little distant, a little sad. "It is."
The endless march at last found a temporary ending. Jongleur was limping, although he refused to admit he was suffering. Sam, who was footsore and exhausted herself, had to surrender her pride and suggest that it was time to stop.
She was getting frighteningly good at falling asleep without pillow or blanket—the many back-country trips Pithlit had made with Thargor had already prepared her a bit—and the invisible ground was no harder than some other places she'd slept, but even exhaustion couldn't bring her peace. The dreams of darkness and solitude returned, not quite as vivid as before, but still enough for her to wake several times, discovering on the last that !Xabbu was kneeling beside her in the pearly false dawn, a concerned look on his face.
"You cried out," he said. "You said that the birds would not come to you. . . ?"
Sam couldn't remember anything about birds—the details of the dream were already beginning to recede—but she did remember the loneliness, and how desperate she had been for companionship, some contact that might warm the long, cold dark. When she told him, !Xabbu looked at her strangely.
"That is much like the dreams I have had," he said. He turned to look at Felix Jongleur, who was coming up from his own sleep with a host of small twitches and whimpers. !Xabbu went to him and shook him awake.
"What do you want?" Jongleur snarled, but Sam thought there was something weak and frightened beneath his words.
"My friend and I have had the same dream," !Xabbu told him. "Tell us how you dreamed."
Jongleur pulled away as though burned. "I will tell you nothing. Don't touch me."
!Xabbu stared at him intently. "This could be important to us. We are all trapped in this place together."
"What is inside my head is mine alone," Jongleur said loudly. "Not yours—not anyone's!" He struggled to his feet and stood, fists clenched and face pale. Sam was suddenly reminded how strange it was that they should all wear such lifelike forms, that everything should be so much like the real world while still being completely unreal.
"Keep them, then," !Xabbu said in disgust. "Keep your secrets."
"A man without secrets is no man at all," Jongleur spat back.
"Tchi seen," said Sam. "He's scannulated. Forget him. !Xabbu. Let's get going." But she was puzzled by the change from Jongleur's normally icy expression. For a moment he had looked like a man pursued by demons.
The idea of sharing a dream was still bothering her as they walked. "How could that be?" she asked him. "I mean, it's one thing for us to see the same things, because they're all pumped into our heads by the system. But you can't pump in thoughts and dreams and fenfen like that." She frowned. "Can you?"
!Xabbu shrugged. "Since we have been in this network, there have been nothing but questions." He turned to Jongleur. "Tell us, since you will not talk of dreams, how it is that we are kept on this network against our will? You call yourself a master, a god even, but now you, too, are trapped here. How can such a thing be? With all that expensive equipment of yours, you may be little more than a mind in the wires, perhaps—but me? I am not even wearing a neurocannula, if that is the word. The system has no direct contact to my brain."
"There is always direct contact between the outside and the brain," Jongleur responded sourly. "Constantly. You of all people, with your talk of ancient tribal ways and living close to nature, should know that it has been going on since the beginning of time. We do not see unless light transmits messages to the brain, or hear without sound imposing patterns on it." He smirked. "It is happening all the time, all through life. What you mean is that there is no direct
electronic contact between your brain and this network—no wires. And that is meaningless in this situation."
"I do not understand," !Xabbu said patiently. Sam had thought he was taunting the older man out of anger, but she thought now he was working toward something else. "What do you mean—are you saying there are other ways of putting thoughts in my mind?"
Jongleur rolled his eyes. "If you think I am going to reveal the secrets of my expensive operating system as part of this childish catechism, you are mistaken. But any school-child, even one from the backwaters of Africa, should be able to guess what it is that keeps us online. Have you gone offline?"
"I have," Sam said grimly. The memory was horrible.
"And what happened?" He looked at her fiercely, intently, like some grandfather from hell. "Come, tell me. What happened?"
"It . . . hurt. I mean just majorly scorching."
Jongleur rolled his eyes. "I have been forced to endure ten generations of teenage slang. That alone would be enough to discourage a lesser man from wanting to live as long as I have. Yes, it hurt. But you didn't manage to get offline by yourself, did you?"
"No," Sam said grudgingly. "Someone unplugged me. Back in RL."
"Yes, in 'real life.' How appropriate." Jongleur showed his teeth—a sort of chilly grin. "Because you couldn't find the way to do it yourself, just as I can't now. And do you think that is because, as those religious fools in the Circle believe will happen one day, we have been translated into Paradise, into incorruptible bodies, innocent of such things as neurocannulae? Do you think so?"
"No." Sam scowled at him. "Chance not."
"Then why else can't you find something you know perfectly well is there? Think, child!" He turned to !Xabbu. "Have I lost you? Can you not guess?"
The Bushman looked back at Jongleur coldly. "If we could guess, we would have already done so without your lecture, which explains nothing."
Jongleur threw his hands up in a gesture of mock-frustration. "Then I will bore you no longer. Solve the riddles yourself." He slowed until he was several paces behind them once more.
"I hate him," Sam said in whispered fury.
"Do not waste your strength, and especially do not let anger blind you to him. He is clever—I was a fool to think I could draw him out so simply. He has plans of his own, I am sure, and will not easily give anything for anyone else's benefit."
Sam fingered the length of broken sword thrust through the waist of her garment. "All the same, I hope he gives me an excuse to use this on him."
!Xabbu squeezed her arm hard. "Do nothing reckless, Sam. I tell you as a friend. Renie would tell you the same if she were here. He is a dangerous man."
"I'm dangerous too," said Sam, but in a voice so quiet even !Xabbu didn't hear.
They had stopped three times for sleep when !Xabbu finally made his discovery.
Sam and !Xabbu had experienced similar dreams each time, although never exact duplicates. Jongleur continued to make uneasy noises in his sleep, but remained silent about it when awake.
The tramping through the endless, featureless overcast had itself turned into a kind of dreary dream—faced with such unending nothing, Sam had several times slid over into hallucination. Once she saw the front doors of her school in West Virginia, as clearly as if she stood at the bottom of the steps. She even raised her hands to pull them open, braced for the noise of the echoing hallways, then found that she was reaching out toward nothingness and that !Xabbu was looking at her with concern. She also saw Orlando and her parents several times, distant but unmistakable shapes. Once she saw her grandfather trimming a hedge.
Even !Xabbu seemed oppressed by the monotony, the terrible dull pale cloudiness of everything, the continuous pointless now; even he grew increasingly silent and withdrawn. Thus, when he paused suddenly and awkwardly in the middle of one of his investigations, interrupting what had by now become a sort of boringly familiar dance of turning and listening, turning and listening, Sam thought maybe he too had been caught by a hallucination—a vision of Renie, perhaps, or some feature of his people's desert home.
"I do not believe it!" Surprisingly, he had an eager tone in his voice that had been missing for some time. "Unless I am losing my mind." He laughed. "Come, this way."
Jongleur, who had been showing little more animation than a sleepwalker, dutifully followed, setting one foot after the other as though reading it from an instruction manual. Sam hurried to catch up with !Xabbu.
"What is it?" she said. "Did you hear something?"
"I need quiet, Sam."
"Sorry." She fell back a little way. Please let him be right, she thought, watching the poised, flexible tension of his naked back. Please let him find something. I hate this gray. I hate it so much. . . .
!Xabbu abruptly stopped and crouched. The silvery void was all around him, unchanged and seemingly unchangeable. The small man grew wide-eyed, waving his fingers at nothing visible, paddling them in small circular motions at ground level, until Sam suddenly became terrified that he had lost his mind.
"What are you doing?" She almost shouted it.
"Feel, Sam, feel!" He dragged her down beside him and shoved her hand into the perfectly empty patch of nothing identical with every other cubic meter of nothing that stretched away in all directions. "There. Do you see?"
She shook her head, fearful. Jongleur had stumped up and now paused, looking down on them as though they were beggars he had discovered living in his rose garden. "I don't see anything," she moaned.
"I am sorry. I spoke badly—there is nothing to see. But maybe you can feel or hear it. . . ." He held her hands in his own and gently moved them back and forth just above the ground. "Anything?" When she shook her head, he pulled his own hands away from hers. "Try again. Concentrate."
It took long moments, but at last she felt it—the faintest, most negligible force, a weak current of skin-temperature air, perhaps, or a vibration so meager she could barely distinguish it from the tremble of her own pulse in her fingers. "What . . . what is it?"
"A river," !Xabbu said triumphantly. "I am certain it is. Or at least it will be."
CHAPTER 9
Hannibal's Return
* * *
NETFEED/INTERACTIVES: HN, Hr. 6.5 (Eu, NAm)-"Teen Mob!"
(visual: Mako and Crank Monkey searching alley for Klorine)
VO: Suicidal Klorine (Bibi Tanzy) has just discovered she is not her parents' biological daughter. She takes an overdose of pills, but none of the Teen Mob know where she is. Her friends Crank Monkey and Mako only have two hours to find her before it's too late. Producers claim: "Surprise Ending of the Year!" Casting 12 Madness Mall employees, pharmacist. Flak to: HN.TNMB.CAST
* * *
"I should have guessed," said Florimel bitterly, staring into the view-window at the distant, beetle-riding shape. "Someone like Robert Wells will always find a way to get himself onto the winning side." They all stood frozen, helpless. Even Kunohara had stopped trying to make his ruined system function. The crush of mutated wasps swarming over the bubble-house filled Paul with claustrophobic terror—any moment the barbed stingers dimpling the transparent walls would break through and the whole thing would dissolve into tatters, dropping the squirming mass directly on top of them. But what could they do? They were surrounded, but even if they got out, the Twins were waiting. Once he was out of the bubble and onto open ground, they would hunt him down without mercy. . . .
"You still have not answered my question, Kunohara." Martine's voice was raw—Paul could hear her fighting to keep her words steady. "We must rely on each other or we have nothing. Did you have an informant among us?"
He turned on her angrily. "You have no right to question me! You and your carelessness have brought this down on us all." He glared, then turned back to the window. "I will go out. Wells at least I can talk to, although I doubt I can trust him."
"Gonna sell us out, him," T4b growled, but bluster could not hide his fright. "Don't let him do it!"
Paul astonished himself by saying, "Then I'll go with him."
Even Kunohara looked surprised, but there was cold rage in his eyes as well. "Why? Do you think if this child was correct with his accusations of treachery, you could stop me?"
"That's not why. Those creatures—the Twins. They've been hunting me all along. If it's me they're looking for, well . . . maybe without me the others would be safe." It sounded even more foolish spoken out loud, but he could not simply wait here for everything to collapse.
"I'm not sure I understand you," Kunohara said. "But if you are with me, you are in no greater danger out there than here."
"Maybe you could just . . . take us all away." Paul was already regretting having volunteered. "Wouldn't that be better? Move us all somewhere else, like you brought us back from where the scorpion was?"
"And give up my house to them?" Kunohara looked at him with scorn. "This is what I have left to keep me alive. This is my local interface—the seat of my power, at least what little of it remains. If I flee and they destroy this place, we would not last half an hour out in that world." He shook his head, face a grim mask. "Do you still wish to come out to parley with me?"
Paul took a breath. "I think so, yes."
The house vanished, replaced by a cold, windy riverbank. The outcropping of stone on which they now stood was surrounded by deformed beetles and wasps, the buzzing so loud he feared it would make him sick to his stomach. The bubble which they had just left was invisible beneath a crawling mass of insects.
"Wells!" Kunohara shouted at a human figure watching the action from the edge of the stone. "Robert Wells!"
The man sitting astride a beetle as proportionately large as an elephant turned at the call. He kicked with his heels at the creature's shell until it slowly turned toward them, moving with an almost mechanical dignity. The human rider leaned forward, squinting.