by Tad Williams
"My God," she said, watching her breath hang as vapor in the air, "it's staggering! I mean, I knew there were a lot of simworlds—we saw quite a few through the Quan Li sim, but. . . ." She shivered, mostly out of reflex. Due to some wrinkle in the simworld, or to Dread's control of it, the temperature here felt no cooler than an early spring evening. "And you can just go anywhere. . . ?"
"Go anywhere, do anything." His grin was now only half a smile, the expression of the proverbial canary-catching cat. He rolled the lighter in his fingers. "I won't need this much longer. And you can do whatever you want too, if you behave yourself and keep me happy."
She felt a tingle of warning. "What does that mean, exactly. . . ?"
"Do your job. Stay out of trouble." He paused to stare at her in a way that made her squirmingly uncomfortable. It was almost as though the attempted incursions into his hidden storage had appeared on her forehead like stigmata. "You have no idea what I've got going here."
She looked out at the endless ice fields, the northern lights shimmering. "But what about your employer? Where did he go? How is it that you have access to everything. . . ?" Nearby, a piece of ice the size of a football field groaned and shifted, lifting a jagged edge above the permafrost and tipping the entire plate on which Dulcie and Dread stood. She grunted in fear, staggered, and put her hand on Dread's arm for support.
He opened his eyes wide. "You don't have to worry," he said, although he seemed to be enjoying her discomfiture. "Even if you get killed here, you'll just drop offline. We're the only people left with on-and-off access."
"What about the owners? What are they called, the Grail people?"
He shrugged. "Things have changed a bit."
"And you can control the system? You can make things happen?"
He nodded. He seemed as pleased as a child, and Dulcie realized that just like a child, he was anxious to show off. "Anything you'd like to see?"
"Have you let those other people off the network, then?"
"Other people. . . ?"
"The ones we were traveling with—Martine, T4b, Sweet William. If you can control the access to the network, you should be able to set them free. . . ." She realized suddenly that she missed them. After living with them day in and day out for weeks, she knew them better than she knew most of the people in her real life. They had been so miserable, so frightened and trapped. . . .
Dread's blank look had become something even deeper and more distant. She pulled at his sleeve. "You are going to set them loose, aren't you?" When he did not answer, she tugged again. He snatched his arm away with a quick violence that almost yanked her off her feet.
"Shut up," he snapped. "Someone's using the main broadcast channel."
As she watched, in a white world silent but for the deep shifting of ice, his lips moved minutely as he subvocalized to the invisible someone. A slow smile stretched his face. He seemed to say something else, then his fingers flicked momentarily across the lighter. He turned to her slowly, eyes bright.
"Sorry about that. Something I'll have to see to later." He nodded. "What were you saying?"
"About the others—the ones the Grail had trapped online."
"Ah, yes. As a matter of fact, I've just been too busy to see to Martine and the rest. But I'll be getting to them directly. You're right—I need to deal with them." He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, his curious elation had been banked like the coals in a fire. "Come along—we've got one more thing to see."
Before she had time even to open her mouth the polar icecaps had dissolved and the two of them were hovering in midair above a vast and unbroken expanse of ocean. The sun was sinking toward the horizon, scalloping the wave-tops in brassy light, but otherwise there was nothing to see for miles, not even seabirds.
"What's this. . . ?" she began, but he flicked up his hand, demanding quiet.
They hung above the endless green for long moments, then Dulcie saw that the pattern of the waves was beginning to change just before them, the regular crisscross of breakers churning into something more chaotic. As she watched, openmouthed, the churn became a great boiling, the waves lifting into plumes dozens, perhaps, even hundreds of meters tall, flinging gobbets of froth into the air. Then, like the nose cone of a missile launched from some inconceivably huge submarine, the first tower top pierced the surface of the angry seas.
It lasted over an hour. For most of that time Dulcie was aware of nothing but the unfolding spectacle before her. The city heaved up from the waters with a surging roar, as though the earth itself were painfully giving birth—the spires of its tallest buildings first, tangled in great ropes of kelp, the walls of the citadel following closely behind, their armor of barnacles glittering wetly as they emerged into the sun. When the citadel had breasted, water sluicing down its roofs and walls before thundering into the ocean, turning the waters into white foam as far as she could see, the mountain and the rest of its clinging city arose, the drowned streets gleaming as they came back into the light.
When it was over, and the monstrous empty husk of island Atlantis had returned from the depths, Dread slipped his arm companionably around her shivering shoulders and leaned close to her ear.
"Play your cards right, sweetness," he whispered, "and someday all of this will be yours." He reached down and patted her on the buttocks. "I'll even dry it off for you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a few loose ends to deal with. Just keep out of trouble, and make sure that my loft doesn't catch on fire or anything, right? Cheers."
An instant later she was lying on the couch in the converted Redfern warehouse, muscles cramped and head pounding. Across the room, Dread's unmoving form lay like a corpse set out for viewing.
It was only when she had finished her shower and was sipping her second glass of wine of the afternoon that she realized she had just been taken on what must have been the strangest first date in history.
"Here, honey," Catur Ramsey told the little girl. "Come here and look at the giraffes."
She stared at him doubtfully, then at her father, who was standing on the far side of the suite. Sorensen nodded, so she came over and curled up on the couch beside Ramsey. He lifted the hotel guide and touched the picture of the Tanzanian resort; instantly the image sprang to life. Ramsey muted the soundtrack. "See how tall they are?" he asked her. "They eat the leaves on the very tops of the trees."
Christabel frowned, her big, serious brown eyes curtained by her lashes. He could see she was nervous but doing her best to control it. Catur Ramsey found himself impressed yet again by the composure of such a young child. "Does it hurt their necks to stretch like that?" she asked.
"Oh, no. Doesn't hurt them any more than it hurts you to reach up and take something off a shelf. That's what they're born to do."
She bit her lip as the brochure cycled through to a picture of a young, happy, wealthy-looking family dining on the veranda overlooking the waterhole while impala and zebra moved gracefully in and out of the spotlights bathing the veldt.
Ramsey was not feeling any happier himself. He eyed his pad, wishing he could try to call out again, but the shorter of the two men in black, the one called Pilger—shorter, but still over six feet and muscled like a professional wrestler—was watching him, broad face set in an expression of misleading indifference. Ramsey was furious with himself that he hadn't brought his t-jack.
Christabel's father, Major Sorensen, had wandered over to the suite's kitchen unit and was fiddling with the touch controls on the range. The big man named Doyle, the general's other bodyguard, or whatever they were, looked over from the European football game he was watching on the wallscreen. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"I'm just making my daughter a cup of cocoa," Sorensen said scornfully, but Ramsey saw something anomalous in his body language. He had no idea what the major might be doing but he hoped the men in black weren't paying close attention. On the other hand, he hoped that Sorensen wasn't planning anything heroic—Doyle and Pilger were armed to
the teeth, and even Sorensen's friend Captain Parkins, sitting stiffly in a chair in his uniform, scowling at the floor, was armed. It was Parkins who had arrested them in the first place, after all, and now they were cooling their heels waiting for General Yacoubian. That made it three large men with guns against himself and Sorensen, both unarmed, and a little girl who probably didn't even have the training wheels off her bike.
"Daddy," Christabel said suddenly, unable to pretend interest in the lioness that was chasing down a wildebeest for the fifth time through the loop, "when can we go home? I want to see Mommy."
"Soon, honey."
Sorensen still had his back to them, waiting for the water to boil, and Ramsey felt a shiver of unease. Doyle and Pilger might look like they were doing anything but performing their professional duty, but Ramsey had met their sort before, both on the military bases of his youth and in the cop bars in which he sometimes found himself in his adult profession. Not to mention that physiques like theirs probably owed something to metabolic enhancement. The one named Doyle certainly had more than a bit of yellow in the whites of his eyes, which could mean any number of unsavory things. If he had gone through one of the military biomod programs, it meant that even if Sorensen threw a pot of boiling water over him, the bodyguard would still be capable of snapping several necks, pain and third-degree burns notwithstanding.
Oh, man, Ramsey found himself silently begging. Major, please don't do anything stupid.
He was beginning to wonder just what exactly he had let himself into. Yacoubian clearly knew something that scared Sorensen to death—the man's blood had all but drained into his feet when the general started talking about sunglasses—and they were none of them going anywhere without the general's permission. Ramsey was furious that he had not had more time to talk to Sorensen, and had not even met the strange Sellars before this whole thing had blown up; it was like walking unprepared into a capital murder trial, then finding out that you were the one on trial.
His nervous thoughts were interrupted by Christabel scrambling past him toward her father. Sorensen turned and waved her away. "It's hot, Christabel," he said sharply. "I'll bring it to you when it's ready."
Her face screwed up, and her eyes filled. Ramsey looked helplessly to Captain Parkins, who was still glaring down at the blue carpet as though it had done something to offend him, then went and took her hand and led her back to the couch. "It's okay, honey. Come sit with me. Tell me about your school. Who's your teacher?"
Something thumped in the far room. For a moment, Ramsey thought he heard the general's voice raised in anger. The two bodyguards flicked each other a look, then turned back to the game. Ramsey wondered who the general's conference was with, and why it was more important than the interrogation of Sorensen. The general had clearly expended a great deal of energy to track the girl's father: it seemed strange he would keep the matter waiting for half an hour or more. Ramsey looked up at the wallscreen. Closer to an hour. What was this all about?
Something banged the connecting door hard, like someone had taken a sledge to it. Ramsey had only a moment to wonder why such an expensive suite would have doors thin enough to shudder just from someone banging their fist against it in the middle of a phone-conference argument, then Doyle jumped to his feet. He moved across the suite in perhaps two strides, just as frighteningly quick as Ramsey had feared he would be, and stood before the door to the general's room, listening. He knocked twice, loud.
"General? Are you all right?" He flicked a glance back to Pilger, who had risen now too, then knocked again. "General Yacoubian? Do you need some assistance, sir?" He leaned to the door, straining to hear a reply. After a moment, he pounded again, wide hand flat on the door. "General! Open up, sir!"
"What are they doing?" Christabel asked, beginning to cry again. "Why are they shouting. . . ?"
Doyle took a step back, grabbed Pilger's shoulder to brace himself, then lifted his booted foot and slammed it against the door. "Bolted," he grunted. This time they both kicked the door at the same time, which crunched and fell inward. Pilger splintered it off its broken hinges while Doyle snatched the huge machine-pistol from his shoulder holster and stepped through, the weapon already locked in firing position as he disappeared from Ramsey's view.
His voice came from a few meters inside the room. "Shit!"
Pilger stepped through after him, his weapon also drawn. Ramsey waited a moment. When no sounds of firing were heard, he stood and moved cautiously toward the door, trying to get an angle to see what was happening. Captain Parkins was leaning forward in his chair, mouth open.
"Christabel!" Sorensen shouted from somewhere behind him. "Don't get up! You stay on that damned couch!"
Doyle was squatting over the body of General Yacoubian, which lay sprawled on the floor between the door and the suite's large bed, his bathrobe rucked around his legs and open over his white-furred chest. The general's tan skin had turned a strange shade of gray. His tongue dangled from his mouth like a piece of rag. Doyle had begun CPR: for a surreal moment, Ramsey wondered how the bodyguard had pushed hard enough in just a few seconds to make that broad purple welt on the general's breast.
"Ambulance to the garage," Doyle said between his teeth. "This is massive. And get the kit."
Pilger was already hurrying back into the main room, his finger pushing against the jack on his neck. He spat a sequence of code into midair, then suddenly turned and waved his gun across the room. "All of you, lie on the floor. Right now!" Without waiting to see whether his order was obeyed, he kneeled and pulled a black valise out from under the couch, then headed back toward the bedroom. He popped its catches and slid it toward Doyle, who was still working on the general; with each blow, Yacoubian bounced on the carpet. Pilger drew a syringe out of one of the valise's inner pockets. As he checked its label, he saw Ramsey standing in the doorway. The gun came up in his other hand.
"Goddamn it, I said I wanted you all down on the floor!"
"Daddy?" Christabel was crying back in the main part of the suite. "Daddy!"
Even as Catur Ramsey backed away, helplessly watching the frighteningly large hole at the end of Pilger's gun barrel, something flared in the corner of his eye. He flinched, but there was no sound of a shot. He looked to the right and saw something that made no sense at all: Major Michael Sorensen was standing on a chair in the suite's kitchen holding a burning' napkin clutched in a pair of ice tongs. He was lifting it up to the ceiling, like some bizarre parody of the Statue of Liberty with her torch.
"I told you all to lie down!" shouted Pilger, who could not see this inexplicable sight. Even as Doyle plunged the hypodermic into the middle of the dark bruise on Yacoubian's chest, Pilger's gun tracked from one side of the doorway to the other, then tilted down at Ramsey's knees. Something clattered, then hissed.
Suddenly it was snowing purple.
The tiles of the ceiling had folded back like Venetian blinds. Dozens of nozzles racked down, spewing clouds of pale lavender fire-retardant dust. The lights of the room began to flick on and off and a painfully loud buzzing filled the air. Sorensen leaped past Ramsey and snatched his daughter up off the floor, then sprinted toward the elevator door where he began to press the button, over and over.
Doyle was pasting the second of two defibrillation patches to the general's still unmoving chest, but Pilger came out of the bedroom with gun drawn, waving his arm so he could see through the fog of choking purple. He shoved his gun against the back of Major Sorensen's head, inches from Christabel's terrified face. "You don't want it to go down this way, do you?" he snarled. "Your brains splashed all over your little girl? Just step away from the door and lie down."
"No. None of it's going to go down this way." Captain Ron Parkins had drawn his own service automatic and was pointing it at Pilger's head. Parkins' face was red with frightened anger. "We're not going to be disappeared by you bastards, whoever you are. These people are under my authority, not yours. You go tend to the general. We're leaving."
"Let us go," Sorensen said quietly, Pilger's gun still against the base of his skull. "The general's dead. You may have more of your people coming to help clean up the mess, but now the fire alarm's gone off, so there are a lot of people on the way that you don't own. Just turn around. He's dead. This isn't worth it anymore."
Pilger stared at him, then flicked his eyes sideways to the silvery snout of Captain Parkins' gun. His lip curled. He lowered his pistol, then turned and walked back into the bedroom without another look at them. The general's body was twisting on the floor as Doyle turned the defibrillator dial. Ramsey fought the urge to faint dead away.
"Get out here," growled Captain Parkins. They were five miles from the hotel, the van stopped in front of the light rail station. "You can get a cab from here, a train, whatever the hell you want. Just get going."
"Ron—thank you, man, thank you." Sorensen helped his daughter down from the van. The two young soldiers, who had fought to keep astonishment off their faces when three men and a girl stepped out of the elevator powdered in purple from head to foot, sat a little straighter.
"I don't want to know," Parkins said angrily. "But even if I lose my bars for this, I just . . . I couldn't. . . ."
"I don't think you're ever going to hear about it again, Ron. At least not through official channels." Christabel's father brushed some of the powder from her hair; she looked up quickly as though to make certain it was his hand, not a stranger's. "Trust me—you don't want to know anything more about this than you have to, anyway."