by Tad Williams
"Is . . . is that you?" Del Ray said at last. He could have meant anyone, but Jeremiah was not going to split hairs.
"Yes, it's us. We brought you back safe. You seem to have been hit on the head. What happened?"
He groaned again, but this time it was more a sound of frustration than pain. "I'm . . . I'm not sure. I was just coming back from the elevator when something up on the ceiling went boom!" He squinted and tried to turn away from the lights, but the pad kept his head from rolling. Jeremiah leaned forward to shade his eyes. "I think . . . I think maybe they're using some kind of explosives up there. Trying to blast through to our part of the base." He winced and slowly brought a hand up to his head, his eyes widening slightly as he felt the bandages. "What . . . how bad is it?"
"Not bad," Jeremiah said. "A pipe fell down, I think. If they set something off upstairs, that would make sense. I heard loud noises, three of them. I think—bang, hang, bang!"
"What, so they are trying to bomb us out now?" Joseph said. "Foolish. They not going to get me out so easy. They blow a hole, I come out of it and knock in some heads."
Jeremiah rolled his eyes. "He's right about one thing, though," he told Del Ray. "I don't think they'll get through that concrete or that heavy door on the elevator—not right away, anyway."
Del Ray murmured something, then tried to sit up. Jeremiah leaned forward to restrain him but the younger man would not be stopped. His skin had paled and he was shaking, but he seemed otherwise almost normal.
"The question is," Del Ray said at last, "how long do we have to hold them off? A week? We might be able to do it. Forever? That's not going to work."
"Not if you are going to get knocked out, walking into pipes," declared Joseph. "I told you, you should let me go and do that."
Tired and irritated, Jeremiah could not resist. "You know, Del Ray, it's been a real pleasure to see you with your shirt off. Joseph was right—you're a very handsome young man."
"What?" Long Joseph Sulaweyo leaped up, almost spitting with indignation. "What are you talking about? I didn't say nothing like that! What are you talking about?"
Jeremiah was laughing too hard to push it any farther. Even Del Ray managed a wincing smile as the older man stomped off to the other room, presumably to drown the insult to his manliness in a few swallows of his precious wine.
"I shouldn't do it," Jeremiah said when he was gone, but could not restrain a last quiet chuckle. "He's not all bad, and we need to stick together. Help each other."
"You helped me," said Del Ray. "Thanks."
Jeremiah waved it off. "It's nothing. But I was scared. I thought they'd broken in, shooting. They're still out there, though, and we're still safe in here—for the moment. Ah!" Reminded, he bent and picked up Del Ray's jacket off the floor. "And we even have a gun."
Del Ray took the heavy pistol out of his pocket and turned it over, looking at it as though it were some completely new object. "Yes," he said. "One gun, but only two bullets." He wiped a tiny trickle of blood off his ear and gave Jeremiah a mournful look. "When they do manage to get in, that's not even enough to shoot ourselves."
CHAPTER 12
The Boy in the Well
* * *
NETFEED/MUSIC: Christ Not Happy As "Superstar"
(visual: Christ with Blond Bitch on stage)
VO: The story of singer Johann Sebastian Christ, who came back from both a crippling adrenochrome addiction and the loss of his band in a freak stage accident, is to be made into a partially fictionalized net drama-if it can get past one crucial snag.
(visual: entertainment journalist Patsy Lou Corry)
CORRY: "Apparently the network is under huge pressure from Bible Belt advertisers not to have a character named Christ who wears a dog mask and performs naked from the waist down, among his more presentable habits. The network has suggested they could rename the character Johann Sebastian Superstar.' Christ wants to call off the project, but he doesn't want to return the network's money. It'll wind up in court."
(visual: Christ in press conference)
CHRIST: "Lawsuit? You know what International Entertainment can do? It can bend right over and start counting shower tiles. . . ."
* * *
Like school, this is," said T4b miserably.
It had been a long time since Paul had been in school, but he knew what their Goggleboy companion meant.
They had been trapped in the bubble for what felt to Paul like hours, perhaps half a day. In a different situation the bobbing journey atop the swell of the river would have been fascinating: the current had pushed them past a great deal of Kunohara's jungle, past huge mangrove trees with roots sunk deep into the water, monstrously tangled edifices of bark proportionately large as entire cities. Strange fish had nosed them, leviathans up from the river mud to investigate, but fortunately none had decided the strange bubble was worth trying to swallow. Birds with wingspans like jumbo jets and colored like an explosion in God's own fireworks factory, a rat the size of a warehouse, water beetles big as motorboats—they had floated past all kinds of wonders. But the four of them were trapped in a sphere scarcely large enough to allow them all to sit with their legs stretched out, and they were bored, stiff, and miserable.
Worse, Renie's unfinished message seemed to hang in the sealed air of the bubble like a curl of poisonous gas. She was in trouble somewhere and her friends could do nothing.
With nothing to do but rest and talk, they had puzzled and argued for hours, but Paul thought they were no closer to solving any of the riddles that haunted them. He had related all that he had remembered so far of his life in Jongleur's tower, but although the others had been fascinated, they could offer nothing to help him make sense of what the fragments meant.
"So what happens?" T4b said, breaking the long silence. "Just go on, us, all rub-a-dub-dub like this, forever?"
Paul smiled sadly. Personally, he had been thinking of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod adrift in their wooden shoe, but the idea was much the same.
"We will go through to the next simulation," Florimel said wearily. "When we get to the gateway, Martine will try to manipulate it to send us back to Troy, so that we might perhaps cross through to the place where Renie and the others are. We have said all this before."
Paul looked to Martine, who at the moment didn't appear capable of manipulating anything more complicated than a bath towel or a spoon. The blind woman sagged, her earlier confidence gone, or at least worn down for the moment. Her lips were moving, as though she were talking to herself. Or praying.
I hope she doesn't give up, he thought in sudden fear. Without Renie to push us along, she's all we have. Florimel's smart and brave, but she doesn't think ahead like the two of them, she gets angry and discouraged. T4b—well, he's a teenager, and not a very patient one at that.
But what about me? Even the thought of taking responsibility for the lives of these people made him feel a little queasy. Yes, but that's shit, man, and you know it. You've been through things in the last weeks that nobody—nobody!—in the real world has experienced, let alone survived. Chased by monsters, fought in the bloody Trojan War. Why shouldn't you take the lead if it were necessary?
Because it feels like it's hard enough just being Paul Jonas, he answered himself. Because it's hard enough getting by when it feels like a big piece of my life is missing. Because I'm damned tired, that's why.
Somehow, they didn't sound like very good excuses.
Martine stirred and sat up. "I am troubled," she said. "Troubled by many things."
"And who is not?" Florimel snorted.
"This thing about Kunohara having an informant among us?" Paul asked her.
"No. There is nothing we can do about that if it is true, and I am willing to believe you all when you say you know nothing about it." But her sightless gaze seemed to pause for a moment on T4b, who shifted uncomfortably. "I am troubled by the song that the . . . the operating system, as I suppose I must call it, was singing. A song that I think I taught it
to sing."
"You can call it the Other," said Florimel. "Many others seem to, and it is easier to say."
Martine waved her hand in impatience. "It does not matter. The fact is, I am troubled because it might hold answers to some of our questions, but I can remember very little about that time, those events."
Paul shrugged. "We don't know anything except what you've told us."
"And that is as much as I wish to tell. I was . . . experimented upon. I communicated remotely with what I thought was another child—a strange, even frightening child, but also somehow pitiful. I played games with it, as I assume other children in the institute did. I taught it stories, songs. I think that I taught it the song it was singing. . . ." She broke off, staring at nothing.
"And now you think this playmate of yours was an AI?" Paul finished for her. "They were . . . training the operating system to be like a human, for some reason."
T4b shook his head. "Locktacious. Those old Grail-knockers scan freely, huh?"
"Stories," Martine said quietly. "Yes, there was a story that went with the song. What was it? God, it was so long ago!"
"I do not remember the song," Florimel said. "Much that happened on that mountaintop—it was all very confusing. Frightening."
Martine raised her hands as though trying to keep her balance. The others fell silent. When she spoke Paul expected some revelation, but instead the blind woman said, "We are almost there."
"What? Where?"
"The end of this simulation. I can feel the . . . the falling-off. The ending." She swiveled her head. "I must have quiet. I wish we could land and go through slowly, but we have no way to control our movement, so I must take this as it comes. If I can get us to Troy, I will. If not, there is no telling where we may find ourselves."
They were all still for a moment, the bubble rising and falling with the movement of the river.
"Will we have a boat on the other side?" Florimel asked hoarsely.
Martine shook her head in irritation, hardly listening, intent on something none of the others could perceive.
"What do you mean?" Paul asked.
"This was not a standard craft," Florimel said. "We walked out of this simulation the first time we were here. Renie and !Xabbu used one of the entomological institute's planes, which was translated into something else on the far side of the gateway. But what is this?" She spread her arms. "It is a bubble, something that did not exist until Kunohara made it. Will it be something on the far side? Or will it just . . . disappear?"
"Jesus." Paul reached out and clutched Martine's hand. "Everybody grab on. At least that way we'll go into the water together." The blind woman did not seem to notice. Florimel took her other hand, then they both linked with T4b, who had gone pale and as silent as Martine. The water seemed to be moving faster now, the bubble jouncing through streaks of white foam. "I think we're heading toward another waterfall." Paul tried hard to keep his voice steady.
"Going all blue, like," T4b growled, trying as hard as Paul. "Sparkly."
"Hold tightly." Florimel closed her eyes. "If we do go in the water, lake a big breath. Do not struggle, do not swim until you know what is up or down."
"If we can tell," Paul said, but it was nearly a whisper. Beside him Martine had gone rigid, locked onto some incomprehensible signal.
The current was definitely moving faster now. The bubble bounced from one swift-moving eddy to another, barely dimpling the surface of the water. A lurch turned them all sideways, and for a moment Florimel and T4b rose up above Paul's head before tumbling down on top of him in a bruising pile of elbows and knees. Somehow they managed to keep their hands locked; a moment later the bubble had righted itself, leaving them sprawled on their backs once more, panting and silent.
Blue fire began to rise around them in glittering cascades. The bubble rose, fell, skimmed, and spun.
Where next? Paul thought wildly as they were flung head over heels again. Good God, where next?
A fog of blue sparks surrounded them completely. Martine grunted in pain and fell sideways into Paul's lap just as the bubble evaporated around them and black water splashed in on all sides.
"We're still alive," Paul said. He spoke the words aloud in part because he was still not entirely certain it was true. Their bubble was gone and already he missed it dearly. It had been replaced by a small boat, a crude craft that seemed like something to be poled rather than rowed, although there were no implements on board to do either. The storm that had greeted them at the gateway had swept past, but it had left them drenched and the air was frosty. Paul could already feel his wet clothes crackling with ice.
The river around them was black. The land, such of it as they could see through the mists, was all white. They were surrounded by snow.
"How is Martine?" asked Florimel.
Paul pulled her upright against him. "Shivering, but I think she's okay. Martine, can you hear me?"
T4b squinted out across the apparently polar landscape. "Don't look like that Troy place to me."
Martine groaned quietly and shook her head. "It is not. I could not find the Trojan simulation in the information at the gateway." She wrapped her arms tight around her body, still shivering. "I had to work so fast! Many of the gateways are closed—the information system for the gateway was like a building with most of its lights out."
"So where are we?" Florimel asked. "And if we can't get to Troy, what are we going to do?"
"Freeze, if we don't make a fire," Paul said through clenched teeth; he was shivering now. "Time later to worry about other things if we manage to survive. We'll have to go ashore." He wished that he felt as confident, as certain as he was trying to sound. This simworld along the river-banks reminded him of nothing so much as the Ice Age, although he hoped it wasn't so; it was impossible to forget the giant hyenas that had chased him into an icy river much like this one. He did not want to encounter any more primitive megafauna.
"There is nowhere here to make a fire, and nothing to make one with." Florimel pointed at the hummocks of snow which seemed to extend from the riverbanks all the way to the dim, fogbound mountains. "Do you see any trees? Any wood?"
"Those hills up ahead," Paul said. "Where the river turns—who knows what's behind them, or even under them? Maybe this is some kind of futuristic simworld, and there are underground houses with atomic furnaces or something. We can't just give up. We'll freeze."
"Not necessarily," Florimel said sharply. "None of us is like Renie and !Xabbu, with their real bodies suspended in liquid. Our bodies are all resting at room temperature somewhere. How can we freeze? Our nerves can be fooled into feeling cold, but that is not the same as actually being cold." Despite her words, she too was now wracked with trembling. "Psychosomatically we can be convinced perhaps to radiate more heat, as though we had fever, but surely we cannot be forced to freeze ourselves?"
"By that logic," Martine pointed out through chattering teeth, "we could not be bitten in half by a giant scorpion, either—it would only be a tactile illusion. But none of us were very eager to test that assumption, were we?"
Florimel opened her mouth, then shut it.
"We need to find something to use as paddles, anyway," Paul said. "It will take us days to drift through at this rate."
"Only thing for sure is turning all ice," T4b grumbled. "Rest of you can jawjack about it. Want to get warm, me."
"We should huddle close," Martine said. "Whatever the somatic truth, I can perceive heat leaving your virtual bodies very quickly."
They crowded into the center of the boat. For once even T4b, not the most companionable of their number, had no complaints. The boat moved, but the current was sluggish, the black river flat as glass.
"Somebody talk," Paul said after a while, "Keep our minds off this. Martine, you said you remembered a story that went with that song the . . . the Other was singing?"
"That is just the p–problem." She was shivering so badly now she could hardly speak, "I don't re–re–remember
it. It's been so long. It was just an old fairy tale. About a b–boy, a little boy who fell down a hole."
"Sing the song." Worried for her, Paul began rubbing her arms and back, trying to make some heat by friction. "Maybe that will tell us something."
Martine shook her head, but began in a low, trembling voice to sing. "An . . . an angel touched me, an angel touched me. . . ." She frowned, thinking. "A river . . . no, the river washed me and now I am clean."
Paul remembered it clearly now, the eerie sound echoing across the black mountaintop. "And you think that it's significant somehow. . . ?"
"I know that story," Florimel said abruptly. "It was one of Eirene's favorites. From the Gurnemanz collection."
"You know it from a German book?" Martine said, surprised. "But it is an old French fairy tale."
"What's that?" T4b asked.
"A f–fairy tale. . . ?" Martine was stunned despite her suffering. "You d–d–do not know what a fairy tale is? My God, what have they done to our ch–children?"
"No," said T4b disgustedly. "What's that?"
He was pointing at a mound of snow perhaps a thousand meters ahead of them, one of the outriders to the cluster of snowy hills Paul had seen earlier.
"It's a pile of snow." Paul said it a trifle rudely, but he wanted to hear what Florimel had to say about the story. A moment later he was startled and embarrassed to see the glint of something that was not snow or ice. "Good Lord, you're right, it's a tower. A tower!"
"What, think I'm blind, me?" T4b growled. A moment later he frowned and turned to Martine, "Didn't mean no slapdown."
"Understood." She frowned into the distance. "I p–per–ceive no signs of life at all. I ca–ca–can barely sense that there is anything there at all beside ice and snow. What do you see?"
"It's the top of a tower." Paul squinted. "It's . . . very narrow. Like a minaret. Decorated. But I can't see anything of what's underneath. Damn, this current is slow!"