by Tad Williams
To the top, she thought suddenly. This man built this place. He owns Uncle Jingle. He is the one poisoning children's minds, somehow, making them sick. If he is up there, then at least I can let him know that someone knows he is doing wrong. If I can get up there. If the guards don't kill me. I'll tell him to his face, then whatever will happen will happen.
What else can I do?
Olga began to pack up her few possessions for the journey to the top of the mountain.
CHAPTER 31
Romany Fair
* * *
NETFEED/NEWS: Multibillionaire Offers to Buy Mars Project
(visual: Krellor in Monte Carlo news conference)
VO: After declaring bankruptcy only months earlier, former nanotechnology baron Uberto Krellor has come forward with a startling offer to buy the crippled Mars Base Construction Project, lock, stock, and minirobot barrel, providing the UN will give him long-term rights to Mars, including concessions on mining and real estate rights on terraformed environments. Krellor is rumored to be the front man for a shadow-group of financiers kept out of the MBC Project sweepstakes by earlier UN decisions to avoid complete privatization of Martian ventures.
KRELLOR: "Nobody wants to see governments throwing the people's money away over these things anymore. Let a businessman see what he can do, someone who is used to taking risks. If I succeed, all humankind will share the triumph. . . ."
* * *
Sam Fredericks had seen quite a few things since she had entered the network. After the bloody climax of the Trojan War, a battle between Egyptian gods and sphinxes, and an attack by giant carnivorous salad tongs, she should have been bored with miracles, but she was still a little impressed with the way they started out crossing one river and finished up crossing an entirely different one.
The river itself still seemed largely the same, the water inky beneath the dark sky, feathered with white where it splashed around stones. In happier conditions its breathy murmuring might have been charming, the stone bridge beneath their feet picturesque. Then, as the mists cleared mid-span, Sam saw that the meadowed bank visible from the foot of the bridge had now become the edge of a fogbound forest instead, with steep black mountains looming beyond the trees. She had to admit it was a very effective trick.
But she was sick to death of tricks.
"How?" she whispered to !Xabbu. Azador walked ahead of them, more sleepwalker than traveler. "How did he find this bridge? And how did you know he could do it? We went past this spot before! There utterly wasn't any bridge here."
"Because I suspect we were not here." Her friend was avidly surveying the breakfront of ancient trees—hoping, perhaps, to see another one of Renie's markers fluttering from a branch. "Not the here that has a bridge, I mean." He saw the look on her face and smiled. "It does not make much sense to me either, Sam, but I believe Azador is from this . . . Other's land to begin with, this place built by the operating system, and so things will happen for him that will not happen for us. That is my guess."
"So far, it's a pretty good guess," Sam had to admit.
Azador had already descended from the bridge and was making his way up the dark soil of the bank, apparently headed for the trees.
"We should stop," !Xabbu called after him. "It is getting dark!" Azador did not slow or even turn. "We will have to hurry to keep up with him," !Xabbu told Sam. "If we lose him in the trees we may never find him again."
The bridge sloped down to the bank, joining a road so overgrown with grass that they had not been able to see it from the river. The track, filled with ancient ruts and a few that looked more recent, curved away up into the woods. Sam looked back. Jongleur was still behind them, his slow stride that of a man walking into a dark and doomful place.
They caught up with Azador as he passed under the edge of the trees.
"I think it is time to stop," !Xabbu told him. "It is getting dark, and we are tired."
Azador turned to regard him with strangely mild eyes. "It's just ahead."
"What is just ahead?"
"There will be fires—many fires. The horses will be brushed, shiny. All the band will be wearing their finest clothes. And singing!" He seemed to be talking to someone else: his eyes had returned to the winding track between the trees. "Shoon! Listen! I can almost hear them!"
Sam, on the edge of a question, closed her mouth. She heard nothing but the velvety rubbing of the wind through countless branches.
Azador's face showed that he too was listening; after a moment, his gaze grew troubled. "No, I cannot. Perhaps we are not close enough yet."
Sam was footsore, exhausted. They had spent all of a long wearying day searching for the bridge, and now that they had crossed it she certainly did not want to want to spend the rest of the night following Azador through the wilderness as he searched for magic elves or forest musicians or whatever it was he was seeking. She was about to tell him so, but something in his eyes, a haunted but also hopeful look unlike anything she had seen in him so far, kept her quiet.
The forest was more real than anything since they had first reached the black mountain, the trees almost perfect, although where she could see their upper branches in the fading light the leaves were not sharp and individual, but seemed to blur into a cloudy mass. Still, there was recognizable grass underfoot, even if thicker and more like a lawn than what Sam guessed you would find in a real wild wood, and moss on the stones and tree trunks. The only thing that seemed distinctly wrong was the absence of wind or bird or cricket sounds. The woods were as silent as an empty church.
Azador led them on, lifting his hands before him wonderingly as though to touch the things he saw, lost in some kind of waking dream. Even Jongleur seemed struck by the strangeness of their forest journey, bringing up the back of the tiny procession in silence.
"Where are we?" Sam whispered, but !Xabbu had stopped, wide-eyed. A piece of pale cloth dangled beside the path, rippling in the faint breeze, "Chizz—is it from Renie?"
!Xabbu's face fell, "It cannot be. The color is wrong, more yellow than what you and she are wearing, and there is too much of it."
But the strip of cloth seemed to mean something to Azador, who reached out and touched it carefully, then left the wide track and struck out across the woods. He was moving quickly now; Sam and !Xabbu had to hurry to keep up.
A piece of blood-red fabric dangled on a shrub; Azador turned left. A hundred paces later two white strips side by side marked one edge of a clearing. Azador turned his back on them and walked out the other side. They emerged from a screen of trees onto a hillside and found the woodland road again, or one much like it, torn with the passage of many wheels.
They followed this track down into a grove of tall trees with twisted gray trunks. Now Sam could smell smoke. Inside the dense ring of trees, hidden from anyone outside, stood the wagons.
At first Sam thought they had stumbled on some odd kind of circus. Even in the dying light the wagons were stunning, two dozen or more, painted with many colors in almost unbelievable combinations, striped and swirled and checked, festooned with feathers and tassels, brass fittings on the wheels and doors. So splendid was the sight that it took her a moment to realize something was wrong.
"But . . . where is everybody?"
Azador groaned, staring around wildly as he entered the clearing, as though the crowd of people and horses who brought the wagons to this place might be hiding behind a tree. Sam and !Xabbu followed him. Azador stopped and stiffened, then bolted across the open ground. A wavering line of smoke drifted up from behind one of the farthest wagons, a somber vehicle by comparison to the rest, painted in deep midnight blue and dotted with white stars.
A small fire burned in a circle of stones on the ground beside the wagon. A set of steps had been unfolded between the high wooden wheels. On the bottom step, smoking a pipe and wearing a bonnet, sat what Sam at first thought was an old woman; only as she got closer did she notice that the stranger was slightly transparent around the edges.
The woman looked up. Sam felt a chill. What she could see of the woman's face looked as smoky as the gray plumes curling above the fire, the eyes only points of light, small but bright as the coals at the edge of the fire pit.
"You come back to us, Azador." Her voice was strangely resonant, not at all as insubstantial as the rest of her. "Out of time, my chabo, my ill-omened one. Your name proves a true name. They all are gone."
"Gone?" The misery in his voice was palpable. "All?"
"All. The morts and their mards, all the children. They have run ahead of the Ending. As you see, some were so fearful they even left their vardoni behind." She looked to the wagons and shook her head in disapproval. Azador seemed stunned. Clearly leaving without these bright, beloved vehicles was a sign of something very dire. "And at the last, here you are. It was an unlucky day when you left. Now it is an equally unlucky day when you return."
"Where . . . where have they gone, Stepmother?"
"The Ending is coming. All the Romany have gone to the Well. The One has commanded it. They hope when they get there, the Black Lady will speak to them, tell them some way to save themselves."
"But why are you still here, Stepmother?"
"I could not rest until all my chabos had been told. It was my task. Now that you are back, after all these years, my task is ended." She stood up and mounted slowly to the door of her wagon. "Now at last I can go."
"But how do I get to the Well?" Azador was on the verge of tears. "I can remember so little. Will you take me with you?"
She shook her head; for a moment the light of her eyes was shrouded. "I am not going there. My task is ended." She began to turn away, then hesitated. "Always I knew your destiny was a strange one, an unhappy one, my lost chabo. When you were born, I read the leaves—oh, what sadness! He will die by his own hand, but unwillingly, that is what they told me. But perhaps it can be different. Now, when all is coming to an end, when even the One himself is dying, who can say what will happen?"
"How do I reach the Well?" Azador asked again. "I cannot remember."
"You of all the Romany, who left the world of his forefathers to go who knows where—you can find your way. Not across the world but through it. Inward. To the place where you touch the One, as we all do." It was impossible to read expressions in the smoky countenance, but Sam thought the next words might almost be spoken with a smile. "Perhaps you will even reach the place before the rest of your people. Just like the Unlucky One that would be, eh? To leave after the others, but to reach the Ending first?" She nodded, then stepped into the darkness of her wagon. Azador dragged himself to his feet, one hand stretched toward the place where the thing he called his stepmother had, stood, but the firelight flickered and the wagon faded until all that could be seen were the pale painted stars that had decorated its side, hanging in the air like the dying image of a pyrotechnic display. Then even the stars were gone.
Azador fell down into the dirt and sobbed. Sam reached for !Xabbu's hand and held it. She did not understand what had happened, but she knew what a broken heart looked like.
Azador was clearly not going to be much use for a while. Sam was helping !Xabbu gather more wood—the stepmother's campfire at least had remained—when she noticed Jongleur was gone.
"That's impacted!" she said. "He waited till we were distracted, then ditched us!"
"Perhaps." !Xabbu did not seem convinced. "Let us look."
They found the old man sitting against a tree at the edge of the clearing, as coldly serene as a statue. He was so still that for a moment, until he flicked them with an expressionless glance, Sam thought he might have had a stroke. She was mildly disappointed to discover it was not true, but could not help thinking there had been something odd about his behavior all day.
"What are you doing?" she demanded. "You could at least come help us set up camp."
"No one asked me." Jongleur rose stiffly and began to walk toward where the firelight flickered along the trunks of the trees. "Is that thing gone?"
"What Azador called the stepmother? Yes, it is gone," !Xabbu said. "Do you know what it was?"
"No. But I can guess. A function of the operating system, meant to instruct and assist. A cracked version of the things we built into many of our simulation worlds."
"Like Orlando's Trojan tortoise," said Sam, remembering. She started to explain to !Xabbu, but realized suddenly that she did not want to talk about her dead friend in front of the old man.
Just because I'm feeling a little sorry for Azador, I don't have to let it spread over to the old murderer, too.
"Do you think it spoke with the voice of the One, then?" !Xabbu asked. When he saw the sour look on Jongleur's face, he amended it to, "With the voice of the operating system?"
"Perhaps." Despite his scowl, the old man had only a little of his usual fierceness, and in fact seemed troubled. Had something in Azador's misery touched even Jongleur's heart, which Sam imagined to be as small, dark, and hard as a charcoal briquette? It seemed difficult to believe.
Azador did not look up at them when they joined him at the fire, nor would he respond to any of Sam's or !Xabbu's questions. The moon had risen into the sky and now stood framed between the black hands of the trees, the stars small but bright behind it.
Sam was nodding with fatigue, and wondering if it would be too utterly creepy to sleep in one of the empty wagons, when Azador suddenly began to talk.
"I . . . I do not remember everything," he said slowly. "But when I found the bridge, much began to come back to me, as though I saw the cover of a book I had read as a child but had forgotten.
"I remember that I grew up here, in these woods. But also I roamed with my family through all the countries. We crossed the rivers, took our wagons to villages and towns in search of work. We did what needed doing. We had enough to live. And when we came together here, at Romany Fair, all was music and laughing—all the Romany together." For a moment there was light in his face, a memory of better things, but it faded. "But I never felt that I belonged—never could I accept that this was my life, the whole of it. I was unhappy even when I was happy. 'Azador,' all the Romany called me. It is an old Spanish Gypsy word, I think. It means to make ill luck, to bring mischance. But still they were kind to me, my family, my people. They knew it was destiny that made me so, not my choice."
"What is your real name?" !Xabbu asked gently.
"I . . . I do not know. I do not remember."
Even Jongleur was listening intently, an avid look on his hawklike features.
Azador abruptly sat up straight and his face darkened with anger. "That is all I can tell you. Why do you do this to me? I did not wish to come back here. Now I have again lost all the things that I lost once before."
"She said you could follow them," Sam reminded him. "Your stepmother. She said you could follow them to . . . what was it? A well?"
"They are making a pilgrimage to Kali the Black," Azador said with a scornful laugh. "But they might as well have flown to the stars. I do not know how to get there, except to walk. We are far from the center, where the Well is—we would have to cross river after river. The world would be gone before we were halfway there."
"Do you remember nothing else?" !Xabbu leaned forward. "I met you far away, in another part of the network. You must have crossed great distances to get there. How did you do it?"
Azador shook his head. "I remember nothing. I lived here. Then I wandered in other lands. Now I am back . . . and my people are gone." He scrambled to his feet so violently that he kicked leaves into the fire, which jumped and sputtered. "I am going to sleep. If the One is merciful, I will not wake up."
He strode away. They heard the creak of leather springs as he climbed into one of the wagons.
"Didn't . . . didn't his stepmother say he might kill himself?" Sam asked worriedly. "I mean should we leave him alone?"
"Azador will not
commit suicide," Jongleur said in a flat voice. "I know his type." He too rose and walked off between the wagons.
Sam and !Xabbu looked at each other across the camp-fire. "Is it my imagination," Sam asked, "or is the scan factor just, like, rocketing upward every minute?"
"I do not understand you, Sam."
"I mean, are things getting crazier and crazier?"
"No, I do not think you are imagining it." !Xabbu shook his head. "I am puzzled myself, and worried, but I am also hopeful. If all are being drawn to some place called the Well, then perhaps Renie will be going there, too."
"But we don't know how to get there. Azador said by the time we walked there, the world is going to have ended."
!Xabbu nodded sadly, but then manufactured a smile, even more admirable for the effort behind it. "But it has not happened yet, Sam Fredericks. So there is hope." He patted her. "You go sleep now—if you choose that wagon, I can see it from the fire. I wish to think."
"But. . . ."
"Sleep now. There is always hope."
Sam woke from a troubled sleep into a world of mist and shadow.
In the dream, her parents had been explaining that Orlando couldn't come with them on the camping trip because he was dead, and even though he was standing right there looking sad, he still wouldn't fit in the car because his Thargor body was too big. Sam had been angry and embarrassed, but Orlando had only smiled and rolled his eyes, sharing a silent joke with her about parents, then faded away.
When she sat up, rubbing tears from her eyes, and stumbled out of the wagon, it was into a world without daylight.
"!Xabbu!" Her voice echoed back to her. "!Xabbu! Where are you?"