by Tad Williams
"Dying, he has given it back to me.
"He touched me at the end, at least I think he did. I felt him as I had not felt him since I was a child. For a moment, a brief instant, we were children again together, both afraid of the dark. He . . . touched me as he gave himself up. He touched me, then he was gone.
"I wish I had been with him at the end, riding down the night sky in flames like a bolt of divine lightning. Perhaps then I would have gone too, dissolved in that great fiery tantrum. It would be a simple solution. I long for a simple solution, although I am far too cowardly to effect one myself.
"Listen—Martine is talking to herself again, as always. Alone. In darkness by choice, even though I can now see. Back in my world beneath the world.
"For the others, life goes on. Sellars and his friend Ramsey and Hideki Kunohara, already they are busily organizing how things will be. Renie and Florimel have loved ones to attend to—they do not need me now. What use would I be, anyway? I thought once I could help Paul Jonas. I realized, even if he did not, that there was no life for him offline. I even daydreamed that if we survived we could make a sort of life together in the network—a virtual life, but a life. The witch and the wanderer. The patron spirits of the Otherland.
"Now everything has changed. Paul is dead and I have lost the thing that made me different, made me valuable. With my sight no longer suppressed, my brain struggles to make new connections, remake old ones. The Otherland information, which I could once read like a bloodhound sniffing the wind, now means nothing to me—less than nothing, because with my new eyes I can barely see what is apparent to others.
"I have listened to my journal. I will listen to it again, I suppose, even though I no longer know the woman who spoke those words. There is little else to do. Perhaps one day I will go out into the real world and explore it with my new eyes. Perhaps that is something to live for. Perhaps.
"But for a moment I had a world for myself. I had friends—comrades. Now they have their lives back. We will talk, of course—such a bond does not disappear overnight, or even quickly—but the uncomfortable truth is that they had lives to go back to and I did not. We lived through terrifying time, in a place of unbelievable danger and terror. But I was alive there. I mattered there. Now . . . what?
"It is hard to think. It is easier to rest. It is easier to keep to familiar darkness.
"Code Delphi. End here."
Renie settled into the cushioned seat and wished she was using better gear.
All those weeks in a perfect imitation of reality just so I could feel myself being gouged, slammed, shredded. Now that there's something nicer to feel, I'm linked in from a sidewalk VR shop and I can't experience it properly.
"I thought the others told me your bubble-house was destroyed," she said to Hideki Kunohara. She gestured at the huge, round table, at the view through the hemispherical roof of the towering outsized trees and of the river like a surging ocean all around. "You rebuilt it quickly."
"Oh, this one is much bigger," he said, amused. "Since we needed a meeting place, I thought I would accommodate it in my new construction." He settled back in his chair. "I remember your friend—!Xabbu, I believe?—but I do not know your other guest."
"This is Jeremiah Dako." Renie waited while Jeremiah leaned across her and shook Kunohara's hand. "If it hadn't been for him and two others, !Xabbu and I wouldn't have survived to attend this . . . meeting."
"This is quite amazing." Jeremiah seemed stunned by the hallucinatory size of the forest. "And you were really here all the time you were in that tank, Renie? We had no idea."
"Not just here—but yes, the network is a pretty overwhelming place." She frowned slightly. "And you're not even getting a very good idea of what it can really be like. Why are we here like this? We could have arranged to use much better gear."
"You must ask your friend Sellars," Kunohara said. "He should join us any moment."
"I am here." Sellars, still in his wheelchair, appeared at one end of the large table. "Apologies—things are very, very busy. What is it they must ask me?"
"Why we couldn't use better gear," Renie said. "Our friend Del Ray Chiume would have been happy to arrange some VR rigs through his UN connections, and they'd be a lot better than what we're experiencing."
"It was not the quality of the gear I objected to," Sellars told her. "And in the future we will certainly arrange better access for you. But for various reasons I did not think it a good idea for you to be using United Nations equipment, even arranged by a friend."
"What does that mean?
"I will explain when everyone is here. Ah, Mr. Dako, we meet at last—at least in person. Well, perhaps that isn't entirely accurate either. Face to face? I hope your leg is healing well."
"You . . . you're Sellars." Jeremiah seemed a bit overwhelmed. "Thank you for what you did. You saved our lives."
The old man smiled. "Most of us in this room have saved each others' lives. Your courage helped keep Renie and !Xabbu alive so they could play their own very important parts."
"It was you who called in the military, wasn't it? Tipped them off that someone had broken into the Wasp's Nest base?"
Sellars nodded. "It was the only thing left I could do to help you. I was very busy at the time. I'm glad it worked out." He lifted his head as if hearing a distant sound. "Ah. Martine is here."
A moment later Martine Desroubins appeared—or rather, an almost featureless sim popped into view in one of the chairs. Renie was startled. She had wondered whether she would actually get to see Martine's real face, even though Sellars had arranged that all the rest of them looked like themselves, but she could not help feeling that the barely-humanoid sim was a step backward.
"Hello, Martine," said !Xabbu. She only nodded.
She's hurting, Renie thought. Hurling badly. What can we do?
Renie was quickly distracted by the arrival of T4b and Florimel, who appeared only a half-minute apart. She already knew T4b's true face, although she had never seen him with his lank black hair combed and all his subdermals ignited.
"Only lit 'em halfway," he explained. "More classy, seen?" He lifted his arm to display a perfectly normal left hand. "Wish this was far shiny still, like in the network. That was crash!"
Florimel's real face was a bit of a surprise. She looked younger than the peasant sim in which she had spent so much time, perhaps only in her middle thirties, with an open, attractive, square-jawed face and a functional haircut not much longer than Renie's own. Only the black eyepatch made her someone who would provoke a second look.
"How is your eye?" Renie asked.
Florimel kissed her on both cheeks, then did the same for !Xabbu. "Not good. I'm mostly blind in this eye, although there is better news about the ear—my hearing is coming back." She turned to Sellars. "But I am grateful for the help, not just with my own injuries, but with Eirene. Hospitals are very expensive."
Reminded, Renie wanted to talk about the money, but Florimel had raised a more important issue. "How is she?"
Florimel's mouth quirked in a sad smile. "She is intermittently conscious, but she does not really see me. Not yet. I cannot stay long at this meeting. I do not like her to wake up alone." She was silent for a moment. "And your brother? I have heard the signs are good."
Renie nodded. "So far. Stephen is awake and talking—he recognized me and our father. He has a long road ahead—lots of physical therapy, and there may be some other problems we don't know about yet, but it looks good, yes."
"That is truly splendid news, Renie," said Florimel.
Hideki Kunohara nodded. "Congratulations."
"Major dzang," added T4b.
"I'm sure Eirene will get better, just like Stephen," Renie said.
"She has the best doctors in Germany," Florimel replied. "I have hope."
"Which brings up a point." Renie turned to Sellars. "The money? Several million credits in an account under my name?"
He cocked his hairless head. "Do you need more?"<
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"No! No, I don't need more. In fact, I'm not sure I need . . . or deserve . . . any of it."
"You deserve everything," Sellars told her. "Money is a poor substitute, but it will help you keep your family together. Please, you and all the others here have been through a terrible time, in large part because I dragged you in. And I have no use for it now."
"That's not the point. . . !" she began, but was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a well-dressed man she did not recognize. Sellars introduced him as Decatur Ramsey, an American. Ramsey greeted Renie and the others as though he was meeting people he had heard about for a long time. "Sam Fredericks and Orlando Gardiner are going to be here in a moment, too," Ramsey said. "They're finishing their preparations for a . . . little project."
"We are only waiting on them," Sellars said, "and then we can begin." He shook his head. "No, I tell a lie, there is one other on her way." Even as he finished the words a small, heavyset woman appeared in the chair beside him.
"Hello." The apparent stranger had a stern if slightly unsettled look on her sharp-featured face. "I suppose I should say thank you for inviting me."
"Thank you for making the time to come, Mrs. Simpkins," Sellars replied. "Ah, and here are Orlando and Sam."
Orlando's barbarian avatar seemed flushed and nervous, Sam's more realistic sim not much less so. "We're all set, Mr. Ramsey," Orlando announced after waving to the others.
"I can't tell you how strange this all is." Ramsey smiled. "Not just this place, but especially to be talking to you, Orlando." His face suddenly fell. "I'm sorry, you probably didn't need to be reminded. . . ."
"That I died? Hard to forget, especially today." He summoned a creditable smile. "But there's no reason you can't be friends with someone just because they're dead—right, Sam?"
"Stop it!" She clearly didn't enjoy Orlando's new line in humor very much.
"You make a joke, Orlando," !Xabbu said, "but we have all learned much about friendship and how wide it stretches. We have helped each other many times, as Mr. Sellars earlier said. We are . . . we are one tribe now." He looked a little embarrassed. "If that makes sense."
"It does," said Sam Fredericks quickly. "It utterly does."
"And perhaps that is a good beginning for our meeting today," said Sellers. "And helps to explain why I hope we will meet regularly here in the network, since great geographical distances separate us. For today, we should also thank Hideki Kunohara for inviting us to his new home."
Before Kunohara could do more than nod, Martine sat forward in her chair. "All well and good, but I believe we still have some unfinished business with Mr. Kunohara—specifically, an unanswered question." It was the first time she had spoken since her arrival, and the rawness of her voice seemed at odds with the spirit of reunion. "First, though, I would like to know how long you two have been working together."
"We two?" Sellars raised a hairless eyebrow. "Kunohara and I? Only in the last hours of the old network, when I had begun to understand the shape of things. But we knew each other a little."
"He . . . felt me out on the subject of investigating the Grail Brotherhood," explained Kunohara. "But I was not interested in risking their attention—make of that what you will. Sellars made an arrangement with Bolivar Atasco instead. The late Bolivar Atasco. I am satisfied with my choice."
"No one will criticize you for not being killed," Martine said dryly. "But what about that unanswered question—the one I asked you back in the earlier version of this house, just before we were attacked?"
"And that question was. . . ?"
Martine snorted. "Please, we must be done with games now. I asked if you were spying on us. You never answered."
Kunohara smiled and folded his hands. "Of course I was spying on you. Every time I turned around, there you all were, disturbing the status quo, threatening my own safety. Why would I not do my best to find out what you were doing, what effect it was having?"
Renie only imperfectly understood what had happened between Kunohara and the others—her own memories of him stopped with their strange conversation while watching the soldier-ant invasion. "You were . . . spying on us?"
"Not all along. But after our initial meeting, yes."
"How? Or to be more precise," Martine said ominously, "who? Is there one of us who has not told all the truth?"
"Do not be too quick to accuse," Sellars said. "Remember we are friends here."
Kunohara was shaking his head. "It was the man I knew as Azador. I first discovered him as he wandered through my simulation. He told me tales of what else he had seen and it became clear to me that he could travel the network almost as easily as one of the Grail Brotherhood. I did not understand then that he was a partial version of Jongleur or I would have been more cautious, but I did know he was valuable—and, fortunately for me, easy to convince. I reinforced some of his rather fuzzy notions about the wrongs the Brotherhood had done to him—things he may have picked up in a subliminal way from the Other itself, as the many fragmented versions of Avialle Jongleur also partook of the Other's thoughts—and set him out to discover things for me."
"You set him to spy on us," Martine said heavily.
"Not at first, no. I met him before I knew anything of you. I was mostly interested in finding out more about the Brotherhood's plans—as I told you once, living with them as neighbors and landlords was like trying to stay alive in the courts of the Medici. And he was in any case not that biddable a servant. I had no idea he had purloined the access device, the thing in the shape of a lighter, from General Yacoubian." He spread his hands. "So, yes, I am guilty of your accusation. Later, in my own covert travels through Jongleur's Egypt, I heard that these two," he paused to point to Orlando and Sam, "were asking about Priam's Walls."
"Then you must have talked to old Oompa-Loompa," Sam said. "I don't think we told anyone else."
Kunohara nodded. "Yes, Upaut. A very strange sort of a god, wasn't he? He was quite happy to tell me that, as he put it, when you weren't busy worshiping him you had told him of your quest."
"So you sent Azador to spy on us in Troy," Martine said.
"I tried. But the Iliad and Odyssey simworlds were misbehaving—some combination of your own presences and the Other's interest in you, I think. If Paul Jonas had not rescued him, Azador would not have lived to be there."
"You blame it on Paul?" Martine asked angrily.
Kunohara lifted a hand. "Peace, I blame no one. I have admitted my acts. I merely point out that coincidences—or things that seem like coincidences—have informed much of what we experienced."
"Unless there are more questions. . . ." Sellars began.
"What has happened to Dread?" Martine had clearly come to the meeting in search of answers. "Reports suggest he is unconscious, in something like a Tandagore coma. Does that mean that he will wake up someday, like Renie's brother?"
"Even if he does," Sellars said, "he is in police custody in Australia, heavily guarded—a famous murderer."
"He is a devil," she said flatly. "I will believe he is harmless when he is dead. Perhaps not even then."
"As far as I can reconstruct it, he never detached from the system." Sellars was quiet but firm. "He was in close contact with the Other right to . . . to the end. You all know what it was like to be linked to the Other's mind—you perhaps most of all, Ms. Desroubins. Do you really think Dread could survive the Other's death and stay sane?"
"But what if he is alive somewhere in the network?" Martine demanded. "What if his consciousness has survived there, like Orlando's? Like Paul's did—for a while," she finished harshly.
Sellars nodded, as though accepting a reasonable punishment. "There is no evidence that such a thing happened, no trace of a virtual mind or body constructed, no smallest hint of Dread anywhere in the resurrected system or network. That is not complete proof, perhaps, but I think that what seems true here is true. His mind could not withstand the horror at the end. The doctors who examined him say he is catatonic a
nd will stay that way." He looked around. "Now as I was saying, if there are no more questions I will take it as my cue finally to speak about the reason we are all here."
"We're all here because you asked us to be here," Renie pointed out. "Even if we had to come with street-shop gear."
Sellars briefly closed his eyes; Renie felt like an obstreperous schoolgirl, but she had thought Martine's questions entirely reasonable. "Yes," the old man said patiently. "And rather than continue to talk, when I know you've all heard too much of my voice lately, I am going to turn over those duties to Mr. Ramsey."
Catur Ramsey stood, then decided to sit down again. "Sorry," he said. "I'm a courtroom lawyer—I do my best talking on my feet—but I suppose it's a bit more appropriate to keep it informal, as befits a discussion among friends."
"A lawyer?" asked Martine. "What in the name of God for?"
Ramsey appeared a little daunted. "I suppose that's a good question. Well, first I think I have to make one thing explicit at the very beginning. We consider you all founding members of the Otherland Preservation Trust."
Renie couldn't believe her ears. "A . . . what? A preservation. . . ?"
"The governments of southern Africa made many trusts for my people and their land." !Xabbu's voice had an uncommon edge to it. "Afterward, my people had no land."
"Just let me explain, please," said Ramsey. "No one is taking anything away from anyone. I'm involved in this because I was dragged into it, not because I wanted to be."
"You don't have to defend yourself, Mr. Ramsey," Sellars said. "Just explain what happened to you."
And so the lawyer did. It was a piece of the story Renie hadn't heard—a strange and shocking piece. It was the first time she had heard more than a brief mention of Olga Pirofsky or the little girl Christabel Sorensen.