by Tad Williams
"But . . . why were you still alive, then? Before you found out about the Grail Project?"
"Because I have been balancing a scale for a long time, Mr. Ramsey. On one side is the normal urge to live, my joys and my interests, solitary and limited as they may be. On the other is the pain. Because of my many surgeries, the things that have grown into my bones and my organs, the strains on my glands . . . it hurts to be me, Mr. Ramsey. My life is very painful."
"But surely if you have such control, you could turn off the pain?"
"I did not have as much control over my own functions when I first discovered the Brotherhood as I have gained recently, but yes, even then I could probably have switched off the feelings in my hands, my skin, cut my brain off from my entire body. But then why be alive? There is little enough of the physical in my life—for so long I have lived mostly in my own mind, as prisoners often do. Should I give up the sensation of a breeze on my face? The taste of the few foods I am able to eat?"
"I . . . I think I understand."
"And in fact, the time was nearly upon me when the tradeoff was no longer going to be worth it. Then this Grail network reared its head, a problem I could not simply ignore. Still, I did not think I would be needed past the initial stages—I was planting seeds, as it were. I wanted to find a group of trustworthy people, teach them what I knew, and then be free to do as I wished. I even told them my real name, so you can imagine I was not planning to be around long! But things went wrong at the very beginning—the invasion of Atasco's island, the weird behavior of the operating system which prevented the people I rather dubiously call my volunteers from getting offline—and here I am, more needed than ever."
"So what can I do? Besides listen."
"Listening is very helpful, do not doubt it. It is an unimaginable pleasure just to be able to talk openly. But I have some very specific needs, too. I'm fighting on many fronts, Mr. Ramsey. . . ."
"Call me Catur, please. Or even Decatur, if that's too informal."
"Decatur. A nice name." The old man blinked slowly, summoning back his thoughts. "Many fronts. There is that group, allies of ours, who are literally under siege in South Africa. There are various plans the Brotherhood had already put into action which have to be monitored and in some cases covertly resisted. And most importantly, there is the constant struggle to find and aid those people I've already brought into the Grail network. And that's where you . . . and Ms. Pirofsky . . . come in."
"I don't understand."
Sellars fluted a sigh. "Perhaps when I tell you this, Mr. Ramsey, you will understand something of my frustration and weariness. I have been trying to locate and contact my volunteers within the system ever since I was first forced to abandon them in the Atascos' simulation world, but from the moment the Grail network was fully operational, I have found it impossible to get past the network's security. But I have told you a little bit about the operating system, haven't I? Its strange affinity for children? I discovered that if I bring the boy Cho-Cho online, at a certain point in the process, at a high enough level, the operating system will simply let him through. Not me, no matter how I disguise my intrusion—the operating system has always blocked me, sometimes quite painfully—but a real child will be allowed inside."
"Well, that's good, isn't it?"
"You do not see the whole problem, Mr. Ramsey. Decatur, excuse me. Imagine that you had a sealed box full of tiny beads, and a single thin needle you needed to push through the wall of the box so that it touched one particular bead, which could be anywhere in the container. How would you do that?"
"I. . . ." Ramsey frowned. "I wouldn't, I guess. Is it a trick question?"
"I wish it were. That's my problem—tracking my volunteers. Fortunately, it means that the Brotherhood hasn't been able to track them, either. The one I helped release, Paul Jonas, seems to have eluded them for quite some time."
"But you did make contact with them a couple of times, didn't you? You said so."
"Yes. I got Cho-Cho to the right spot. That was a little coup—I was quite proud of myself. Do you know how I did it? The operating system—this quasi-living neural network, or whatever it is—seemed to be fascinated with my volunteers. It paid special attention to them, and by carefully observing its actions, I could roughly track their whereabouts. Let me show you something."
Sellars gestured, and the jai alai game from South America that Ramsey had been half-watching disappeared. In its place was a strange, fish-eye view of masses of green growing things.
"That is my Garden, my place of meditation," Sellars said. "Or my tèarmunn, as I would name it in the language of my birth. Every source of knowledge I have is represented there, displayed as trees, moss, flowers, and so on. Thus, what you are looking at is not a garden at all, but the complete, up-to-the-moment picture of all my information.
"Or rather, what you see is how it looked a week ago. Do you see those dark fungal traces sprouting up through the soil? There, and there? And a large something below the surface there? That was the operating system. A knot like that, a node of activity, showed that a great deal of the system's effort was being expended there. Often—but by no means always—it meant the system was monitoring part of my volunteer task force. As you can see, they have split into several groups."
"So you can use a kid like Cho-Cho to get into the system. You can figure out approximately where your people are by the shape of the operating system." Ramsey squinted at the complex green shapes on the wallscreen. "So what's the problem?"
"That was a week ago. This is now."
The difference was striking, even to Ramsey. Sellars' garden appeared to have been hit by a killing frost—whole structures gone, others blackened and shriveled. He could not tell what any of it meant, but it was clear something devastating had happened.
"The operating system. It's . . . gone."
"Not gone, but vastly reduced, or perhaps withdrawn." Sellars briefly highlighted a few points in the now-barren garden. "It is now operating like a true machine, as if its advanced functions have been demolished. I can make no sense of it. Worse, there is no longer any correspondence that I can use to locate my people within the system. They are lost to me."
"I can see why you're upset. . . ."
"There is more. Have you noticed how quiet and sullen the boy Cho-Cho has been today? Last night, we had a very disturbing experience. Even though I could not locate any of my volunteers, I tried to get the boy online just to discover what I could about the current state of the network. We were both nearly killed."
"What?"
"The operating system no longer acts in its earlier manner, at least as far as allowing intrusions into the network. There are no more inexplicable exemptions for children—or for anything else. The security of the Grail network, still deadly dangerous for reasons I've never been able to understand, is now utterly seamless. Nothing gets in, nothing comes out."
Ramsey had to sit and think about this for a while. "So the people you brought into the system are just . . . lost?"
"At the moment, yes. Completely. It is a very helpless feeling, Decatur. And that is where you come in."
"Me? Somehow I don't think a lawsuit is going to do much good."
Sellars' smile was less than hearty. "We are far beyond that stage, I'm afraid. I know you cannot completely understand my Garden, but trust me—time is short. Things are changing quickly. The entire Grail system is extremely unstable, in danger of collapse."
"But that's good, isn't it?"
"No. Not while there are children whose health is still wrapped up with this network. Not while people whom I brought into this war of mine are somehow trapped inside the thing. You've already seen one child die while we all waited helplessly. Do you want to make that same call to the parents of Salome Fredericks?"
"No. Jesus, of course not. But what possible use can you make of me?"
"Because the more I think of it, the more I realize that Olga Pirofsky may be our only hope. I have tried e
verything I can imagine to penetrate the system. I have tried tapping into my volunteers' own connections from the outside world, but although I can access them, there is still something that prevents me from tracing that link through the security system and into the network."
"So what the hell is Olga Pirofsky going to do? She's just a nice woman who hears voices."
"If she succeeds in her goal, it could be that she can do much. What we need at this point is something she might be able to provide—access to Felix Jongleur's own system."
Ramsey blinked. "Felix Jongleur's. . . ."
"If there is anyone who can bypass the network security, it will be the man who created the thing. If there is anything that can get us onto the Grail network, and thus back in touch with the people I have put in mortal danger, it will be found in Jongleur's system."
"But Olga. . . ? You don't need some nice middle-aged lady, you need some kind of—Christ, I don't know, a tactical unit! Commandos! This is a job for Major Sorensen, not a kiddie-show host."
"No, it is precisely a job for someone like Olga. Major Sorensen will be very useful to us, I promise you—we will need all his security expertise. But no one is going to swim to Jongleur's island by night, bypass the attentions of his private army, and climb up the outside of his corporate tower like some kind of spy hero. The only way someone will get into the enemy's stronghold is if he . . . or she . . . is invited in."
"Invited? She quit her job, Sellars. She doesn't even work for them anymore. Do you think they're going to say, 'Oh, this is fun, a disgruntled ex-employee who hears voices and is on medical retirement—let's take her up to see the boss!' That's crazy."
"No, Decatur, I don't think that's going to happen. Nor would we want it to. There are people who go in and out of those buildings all the time and no one notices them. Cleaners—hundreds of them, mostly poor women born in other countries.
"Olga Pirofsky is more likely to get into that place pushing a vacuum cleaner than Major Sorensen would driving a tank."
A half hour later, Ramsey's disbelief had not precisely turned to heartfelt agreement, but had at least mellowed into a kind of stunned acceptance. "But I still don't understand why me?"
"Because I cannot do everything, and I fear I will be stretched even farther before the end comes, whatever that end may be. Ms. Pirofsky will need constant supervision, support, encouragement. Sorensen will be able to help with many of the technical problems, and I will help with others; but she is going into the labyrinth, as it were—inside the monster's lair. She will need someone on the other end of the ball of string, if I'm not overdoing it with the mythological allusions. And of all of us, you are the only one she knows and trusts. Who better?"
"You're assuming that she'll contact me again," Ramsey said, unable to keep bitterness out of his voice. "That's a big assumption."
Sellars let out a soft sigh. "Decatur, we can only plan for what we can do, not what we can't."
Ramsey nodded, but he wasn't happy about any of it. Worst of all was the knowledge that even if they succeeded in getting in touch with Olga Pirofsky, instead of giving her sensible advice—like, for instance, get the hell out of town and stay away from J Corporation—he would be trying to persuade her to do something far more dangerous than she had planned to do on her own. All this on behalf of a cause he hadn't even known about a week ago, and which still struck him as a half-step from total unbelievability.
Sellars cleared his throat. "If you don't mind, Decatur, I find that I am indeed tired now. You don't need to leave, but you'll forgive me if I take a rest."
"Of course, go ahead." He jumped as Sellars relinquished control of the wallscreen and the Garden disappeared, replaced by some kind of car race through what appeared to be a mined course. Ramsey muted the sudden grind of sound. A slow-motion replay of an armored vehicle spinning into the air on the back of a bright explosive flash made him think of Sellars' horrific burns.
"Hang on." He turned back to Sellars. The old man had closed his eyes, and for a moment a wave of pity washed through Ramsey. He should leave the poor crippled bastard alone. If even half of what he said was true, the old pilot deserved all the rest he could get. . . .
But Catur Ramsey had spent his early years working in a prosecutor's office, and the training had never entirely left him.
"Hang on. One more thing before you fall asleep."
The yellow eyes flicked open, alert and solemn as the stare of an owl. "Yes?"
"You said that you were going to tell me the real story of how you found out about the Grail Network."
"Decatur, I am very tired. . . ."
"I know. And I'm sorry. But if Olga calls back, I'm going to have to decide what to tell her. I don't like loose ends. Confessional, remember."
Sellars took a raspy breath. "I half-hoped you had forgotten." He levered himself awkwardly into an upright position, each almost-hidden twinge of pain a rebuke to his interrogator. Ramsey did his best to harden his heart. "Very well," Sellars said when he was resettled. "I will give you this last piece of the story. And when I've finished telling you what I've done, I hope you will remember that confession is not complete without the possibility of absolution. I feel in need of it after all this time."
And so, in a room lit only by the flicker of the wallscreen, by silent images of destruction and triumph from somewhere in the wide, wide world, Sellars began to talk. And as he listened to the old man's quiet words, Catur Ramsey's confusion and surprise gradually became something else entirely.
CHAPTER 16
Badlands
* * *
NETFEED/ENTERTAINMENT: Gills a Deal-Breaker
(visual: Orchid and attorney)
VO: Homeground Netproduct has dropped actor Monty Orchid from its upcoming series Bite My Beethoven because of Orchid's recent cosmetic surgery. Orchid, best known for his work as the doctor's estranged son on the Concrete Sun series, was to have played a student at a music academy who doubles as a government mercenary, but Homeground says that Orchid's new cosmetic gills are a violation of his contract. Orchid is suing.
(visual: Orchid at press conference)
ORCHID: "They could have worked with me . . . we could have made him some kind of underwater mutant guy-you know, music student by day, sabotage frogman by night. But they just didn't have any imagination."
* * *
The bleached, icy expanses of what had once been Arabia Desert stretched on and on, drift upon drift of white like spilled sugar, the misty sky almost the same color as the empty countryside. By the end of the second day, the miserable cold was no longer Paul's greatest concern. He was beginning to miss color the way a starving man misses food.
"But for me," Florimel said, "it is the waste of time I most regret. It is like being forced to walk down train tracks for hundreds of kilometers while trains pass on the other tracks. An entire system set up for instant travel, but we cannot make it work."
They had searched several more snowbound Arabian palaces in hopes of finding another gateway, with no luck. "If we could only see enough of this place to make some sense of it," Paul complained, as he had already done many times, "we could probably find the sort of place they usually hide their gates."
"Oh, chizz," said T4b. "So oughta just keep digging in the snow like some kind of dogs, us? Chance not."
"We have already agreed." Martine's plume of breath was the only sign she had spoken. Like the others, she was so wrapped in rugs pilfered from the icy fantasy castles that her face was all but hidden. Paul thought they all looked like piles of washing waiting to go in the machine. "We continue to the end of the river. At least we know we will find one there."
"I didn't mean to open up the argument again." Paul stared disconsolately at the line of the black river stretching ahead. "Just . . . thinking about Renie and the others . . . feeling so useless. . . ."
"We are all feeling the same way," Martine assured him. "Some of us may even feel worse than that."
It came up so sl
owly, perhaps because of the thickening mist, perhaps because the dark, cold water muted its normal vibrance, that Paul and the others were on top of it before they noticed.
"Op it," said T4b. "In the water around the boat-that blue light!"
"My God," Martine gasped. "We dare not go through on the river. Head for land!"
They applied their makeshift paddles, beautifully carved bits of paneling stolen from cabinets and chests in the empty palaces, to fight against the sluggish current. When the bow of the small boat grounded in the shallows they waded to shore through freezing water, losing several precious blankets in the process.
"I don't want to pressure you, Martine," Paul said, his wet feet already making him shiver, "but we're going to be frostbitten if this takes too long."
She nodded distractedly. "We are right at the edge of the simulation. I am trying to find the gate information." The river and its banks nearly vanished in the mists only a few hundred yards ahead, but some trick of the simworld's programming gave glimpses of greater distances, made it seem that there was more river and more land beyond. Paul wondered what would have been seen here before Dread covered the place with killing frost-an illusion of unending desert?
"I think I have it," Martine finally announced. "Pull the boat along beside us so we don't lose it. We must all walk forward."
They followed her small, shrouded figure through the drifts like a group of lost mountaineers trying to slay close to their Sherpa guide. T4b was the slowest, making his way along the river shore with the boat's rope, pulling the little craft against the current. He had been quiet much of the trip, even his usual litany of complaints muted, so much so that Paul wondered if the young man were going through some kind of personality change.
Paul could not help remembering a young soldier in his squadron, a lad from Cheshire with a thin, girlish face and a habit of talking about his family back home as though everyone in the trenches knew them and wanted to hear what they said and thought. The first bad bombardment had silenced him quite thoroughly. After seeing the reality of what the Germans wanted to do to them all, he became as miserly of speech as the most confirmed misanthrope in the trenches.