by Tad Williams
"I don't know. He didn't seem scared or nervous, like I would if someone knew something about me they shouldn't. He just seemed . . . angry." She looked to the hillside. Jongleur and Azador were talking, or seemed to be. It made her feel uneasy. "Look at that old monster just sitting there. It's his fault we can't find anyone to ask how to cross the river!" Whether it really was Jongleur's fault or not, they had seen no other inhabitants of the simworld since the old man had frightened Jecky Nibble and his charges away from their campfire.
"It is possible. But it may be they have all simply crossed over to someplace that is safer."
"Maybe." Sam frowned. "What could those two be saying to each other?"
!Xabbu looked up. "I do not know. I told the old man that Azador might become violent it he found out who Jongleur truly is. So I do not think he is telling him anything about that."
By the time they had climbed out of the mud and started up the grassy hillside, Azador had risen and walked away from Jongleur. He stood on the hilltop, facing away from them. As they neared the crest, he suddenly turned and shouted, "Come, come here! Look at this!"
Sam and !Xabbu hurried up the last few meters.
"Look," said Azador. "Can you see?"
"Oh, no!" Sam felt chilled. "They're fading out."
The distant hills were only ghostly outlines now, streaks of sunlit reflection, milky, misty indicators of where solid hills should stand. Even parts of the meadowed plain seemed to have turned transparent as glass. Sam looked around in panic, but the river and its banks were still solid behind them, the hillock beneath their feet still reassuringly lifelike.
"They are disappearing," Azador said. For the first time. she heard something like real fear in his voice. "What does it mean?"
"It means we are running out of time," Jongleur said, coming up from behind them. His face was carefully expressionless, but his voice was not entirely steady. "The simulation is dying."
!Xabbu woke her with a light touch. "I am going to be away from the camp for some time," he whispered. "I do not think I want to leave you with those two."
Sam got sleepily to her feet and stumbled after him. The stars seemed brighter than ever, as though burning in premature mourning for the vanishing world beneath them.
When they reached the nearest hilltop, !Xabbu sat and began tying something around his ankles, circlets made from river reeds and seedpods that rattled when they moved.
"What are those for?" Sam asked.
"Dancing," he said. "Please, Sam, I need quiet now."
Rebuffed, she sat down beside him and drew her knees up under her chin. The cloak of woven leaves !Xabbu had made for her was little protection against the cold, but the night was mild. She watched him finish his preparations, then he walked a few steps away from her and stood, staring straight up at the sky and its blazing stars.
He stood there a long time. Sam drifted into sleep again, then started awake to find him still standing in the same place, frozen like a statue. Her mind wandered, touching mournfully on the stars over her own backyard where she and her father had camped in sleeping bags, Sam secure in his silent company despite the night sounds of the garden, reassured by her mother's silhouette in the kitchen window.
What are they doing now? They can't spend all their time with . . . with me. In some hospital. Do they do other things? Watch the net? Have dinner with friends? Even if I die here, they have to have some kind of normal life again, don't they? But it seemed wrong—unfair. But would it be worse if they never got over it?
Oh, God, Mom, Dad, I'm so sorry. . . !
Slowly, !Xabbu began to move, lifting one foot in the air and sawing it back and forth like an impatient horse pawing at the ground. He stepped forward, lifted the other foot and shook it, then set it down too. The rattles gave a quiet, dry hiss. Gradually he began to move in a distinctive and intricate rhythm, the steps made even more exotic by the near-silence.
At first Sam watched him closely, trying to guess from the small man's absorbed expression what might be going on in his mind, but the dance went on too lengthily, too repetitively, to hold her attention: as he finished the first slow trip around a circle only he could see, she found her thoughts beginning to scatter again. His precise movements reminded her of a game she had once played, something on the net she had loved for about two weeks when she was young, where oddly-shaped building blocks had floated slowly through space and could be pushed together into expanding geometric structures. Like !Xabbu's dance, the blocks had revolved as if both heavy and weightless. Their intricate, multifaceted sides had kissed and stuck with just the same blend of delicacy and permanence as the lifting and setting down of each of the small man's feet, as though it were not blind brute gravity that held him to the earth but an act of careful choice.
I wonder if Orlando ever played that game, she thought sleepily. I wonder what he would have made with it—something different, that's for sure. Something funny and sad.
I wonder what !Xabbu would make. . . .
And then she herself spun slowly away into another place, dreaming of dark high mountains and the lonely cries of birds.
"Wake up, Sam." His voice seemed odd: for a moment, the dreams still muddling her, she thought it was Orlando who spoke.
"Let me sleep, you damn scanmaster."
"The light is coming back. We do not have the time to sleep late today, I think."
She opened her eyes to find !Xabbu leaning over her, his face gleaming with sweat, his chest expanding and contracting as though he had just run a marathon. Nevertheless, he seemed full of energy. "Oh my God, I'm sorry. I thought you were. . . ." She rubbed her eyes. "Are you okay?"
"I am fine, Sam. I have done much thinking. It was good to dance, to . . . to be me again."
She let him help her up. Her feet felt cold and prickly; it took her a moment to stamp life back into them. "Did it help you think of anything?"
He smiled. "You are like Renie in this way, too. My dance is not like a . . . what is the name? Vending machine. Put in a card, out comes an answer. But I realized why I was troubled and the answer to that may help us." He laughed—he seemed lighter than he had in days, almost buoyant. "So we will see, Sam. Now come."
"What did you mean?" she asked as they walked back across the wet grass. It felt so real under her feet that it was hard to believe it might soon dissolve back into silvery nothingness, but the distant hills were frighteningly faint, a landscape carved in crystal. Without thinking, she hurried her steps. "When you said it was good to be you again?"
"Always I try to understand this place, to think like the people who built it, to think like Renie and you others do. But that is not really the way I think best. And it is strange for me—like wearing clothing that does not fit well. I cannot change an entire lifetime in a matter of weeks. Sometimes I must . . . go back. Go back to my old ways."
Sam nodded slowly. I think I know what you mean. I feel sometimes like I don't know who I am—who the real me is." Spurred by his quizzical look, she went on. "I mean, since I've been a girl again—you know, wearing this body—I don't talk the same, I don't even think the same, sort of. I start acting like . . . like a girl!"
His smile was gentle. "Is that bad?"
"Not always, no. But when I was just Fredericks, Orlando's shadow, another boy . . . I don't know. It was easier, somehow. I tried more things, I talked different." She laughed. "I swore more."
"Ah. And you have put your finger on it, Sam. That was one of the things that was troubling me."
Surprised, she tripped over a hummock and took a second to regain her footing. "You're troubled because I'm not swearing?"
"No. But wait—we are almost there. Soon you will see what I have been thinking."
Jongleur and Azador were sitting across the fire from each other, sullen and sleepy-eyed. The older man gave them a cold look as they approached. "So, after all your talk about necessity and danger, you find time to take a romantic walk? Very sweet!"
Sam
felt her face grow hot and would have said something nasty, but !Xabbu touched her arm.
"There are many ways to solve problems," the small man said evenly. "But we need a new one, or we will still be here when this world melts around us."
Jongleur made a noise of disgust, "So it was a scouting expedition?"
"Of a sort." !Xabbu turned to Azador, who was watching blearily, perhaps regretting the absence of coffee in this meadow beyond the world. "I need to speak to you, Mr. Azador. I have some important questions to ask."
Something flickered behind his eyes, but he only waved his hand negligently. "Ask."
"Tell me again how you came here—how you reached the black mountain, then found yourself in this place."
Sam looked at !Xabbu, puzzled but trying not to show it, as Azador somewhat reluctantly reiterated the story of his arrival—following them into the maze in Demeter's temple, waking into pale nothingness to find the mountain gone.
"But I have been thinking," !Xabbu said abruptly as Azador neared the end of his story. "Thinking that we sat a long time on the side of the black mountain, arguing and talking, after we came through from Troy. Thinking that the gate was gone by the time we began to climb the trail. So how did you step through it without us seeing you?"
"Are you calling me a liar?" Azador half-rose, but sat down again when !Xabbu held up his hand in a calming gesture, as though the violent movement had been mostly bluff.
"Perhaps—but perhaps not." !Xabbu moved a few steps nearer, then seated himself beside the smoking remains of the campfire. Azador slid back a little. Sam found herself staring in fascination. What did !Xabbu know, or at least guess? Azador actually looked frightened. "I believe that you did follow us through," !Xabbu said, "and it could be you are telling what you remember—but I do not think it happened that way."
"Why are we wasting time on this trivia?" growled Jongleur.
"If you want to cross the river before this world disappears," !Xabbu said coolly, "I suggest you close your mouth."
As if the remark had been directed at him, Azador abruptly shut his own gaping jaw. "What are you saying?" he demanded after a moment. "That I am mad? That I don't know what the truth is? Or have you decided I am a simple liar after all?"
"How is it that you came through a gate that had closed, unless it opened again for you? How is it that you found your way off the mountain through all that gray nothing—something that for me needed all the tracking skill that my hunting people have learned in thousands of generations? How is it that you managed to push your raft upstream against the current to catch us? Most strange of all, why do you have clothes when the rest of us came here naked? What are the answers to any of these things if you have not been to this place before?" !Xabbu paused. "Whether you remember being here or not, that is another question."
"Yeah!" Sam said with dawning realization. "Scanbark! I didn't even think about that. He has clothes!"
"That is ridiculous!" Azador sputtered, but the haunted something was in his eyes again. "More sensible to call me a liar."
"If you like," !Xabbu said simply. "But there are other questions, too. Tell me of the Romany, Mr. Azador. Explain how you do not tell secrets to gorgios, as you told me before. How you and your Gypsy friends meet at Romany Fair, to pass stories and share information."
Now Azador truly did look befuddled, staring at the smaller man as though !Xabbu had started speaking in tongues. "What do you mean? I have never said any of those things to you—it was the girl who began this Gypsy nonsense."
Watching, Sam realized that her heart was beating painfully fast. Even Jongleur seemed stunned by what was going on.
!Xabbu shook his head. "No, Azador. You began it. In a prison cell, when I first met you. Then on a boat in a river in Kansas. Do you remember? You called me monkey-man, because I wore a baboon's body. . . ."
"You!" Azador leaped to his feet, sending the last embers of the fire in all directions. "You and your bitch of a friend—you stole my gold!" He lunged toward !Xabbu, who only took a step back.
"Stop!" Sam shrieked. She regretted the shrill, panicked sound, but not much. She yanked the haft and broken blade of Orlando's sword out of her waistband. "You touch him and I'll rip your guts out!"
"I will break your neck, girl," Azador snarled, but did not force the issue. Jongleur was on his feet now too, and for a moment they all stood frozen, a four-sided shape of mistrust.
"Before you do anything else," !Xabbu said, "tell me what we stole from you."
"My gold!" Azador shouted, but his face looked troubled, almost fearful. "My . . . gold."
"You do not remember what it was, do you?"
"I know you stole from me!"
!Xabbu shook his head. "We did not. We were separated by a failure of the system," he said as calmly as though Azador had not been glaring bloody murder at him, as though Sam were not standing with a broken sword in her hand leveled at the man's belly. "What do you truly remember? I think you have been here before, inside the so-called White Ocean. Can you not try to think? We are all in terrible danger."
Azador staggered back as though struck. His eyes wild, he waved his arms, then pointed at !Xabbu. "It is you—you are crazy! Azador is not crazy." He glared at Sam and her weapon, then at Jongleur. "All of you crazy!" A sob choked his words, "Not Azador!" He turned and ran limping out of the campsite, staggering across the meadow and up the slope of a low hill until he collapsed into the grass and lay there as if he had been shot.
"What have you done?" Jongleur demanded, but with little of his usual commanding tone.
"Saved us, perhaps. Go to him—I think he will not want either Sam or me to come near, but we need him."
Jongleur gaped as though !Xabbu, too, had thrown his arms in the air and begun to gibber. "Go to him. . . ?"
"Damn you, just go!" Sam shouted, waving the broken blade. "We were ready to leave you behind two days ago. Do something useful for a change!"
Jongleur appeared to consider several responses, but only turned his back on them and stalked off toward the fallen figure of Azador.
"That felt good!" said Sam. Her heart was still speeding.
"But Jongleur is an enemy that must be managed carefully," !Xabbu told her. "It is like handling a very poisonous snake—we should not tempt bad luck."
"How did you know? About Azador? And who is he? What is he?"
The confrontation over, !Xabbu seemed to shrink a little. "What Azador is, I cannot say for certain—not in a place as confusing as this network. But perhaps he is like the woman Ava we have all seen, or that boy that Jonas met—someone who drifts from world to world in this network, uncertain of his identity. Certainly he is not acting like the Azador I met before, who was very full of himself, too, but mostly cold and superior. And Jonas described an Azador who hardly spoke at all."
"You mean they're all different people?"
"I don't think so. But as I said, in this place, who knows?" !Xabbu seated himself beside the fire. "However, it is not who he is that is important now. Rather, it is where he has been."
"I don't understand."
!Xabbu gave her a weary grin. "Wait and see. Perhaps I will be correct again in my guesses and you will think me a very clever man. But if I am wrong, it will be less shameful if I have not bragged about what I think I can do. What comes next will be difficult."
"You seem different, too," Sam said suddenly. "I don't mean like a different person, but . . . but more confident."
"I have had time to listen to the ringing of the sun," he said. "Even though there is no sun here. To speak to the grandparent stars."
Sam shrugged. "I don't know what any of that means."
!Xabbu reached up and patted her arm. "It does not matter, Sam Fredericks. Now, let us see if we can work some magic on Mr. Azador."
"And what will you do if I don't cooperate?" Azador demanded. "Stab me with that sword?" He spoke with such an exaggerated tone of outrage that for a moment Sam could not help wondering if he mi
ght not be another stolen child hidden inside the shape of a grown man.
"It's tempting," she said quietly, but was quelled by !Xabbu's stern look.
"We will do nothing to you," the small man said. "We will simply go back to waiting for this world to disappear around us."
Jongleur stood a little apart, watching. He had regained his usual lizardlike reserve. Sam did not know what he had told the mustached man to bring him back, but she supposed she was grateful for it.
"I am in the hands of madmen," Azador said.
"That could be," !Xabbu replied. "But I promise no harm will come to you." He lifted his hand. "Give me your shirt."
Azador scowled, but stripped it off. !Xabbu took it and stood behind him, then rolled it and tied it around his eyes like a blindfold. "Can you see?"
"No, damn you, of course I can't!"
"It is important. Do not lie to me."
Azador waggled his head from side to side. "I can see nothing. If I break my leg, I will see the same happens to you, even if you gut me."
!Xabbu made a noise of irritation. "Nothing will happen. See, I will walk beside you, Sam on the other side. Come, Mr. Azador, you have said often enough that you are brave, resourceful. Why are you afraid to walk with your eyes covered?"
"I am not afraid. But the whole thing is stupid."
"Perhaps. Now the rest of us will be silent. We will walk beside the river. You will continue, please, until you feel it is a good place to cross."
Sam was puzzled but kept her peace. Even Jongleur appeared to be grudgingly interested in the experiment. They led Azador down to the last firm ground before the river-bank, then turned upstream.
They walked for a long time without talking, the quiet broken only by Azador's frustrated curses when he tripped on some unseen obstacle. In places the reed thickets grew so dense that they almost stumbled into the river; in other places the meadowlands stretched before them so openly that Sam felt her trust in !Xabbu's insights diminish. There was nothing but river and grass for as far as she could see. What difference would a man in a blindfold make?