Sea of Silver Light o-4

by Tad Williams

  Something was forming next to one of the walls, a vertical agglomeration of light. It was not the blankness of empty virtual space that Renie had seen Sellars use to disguise himself and the boy Cho-Cho, but a rippling, pulsing overlap of types and textures of light, a thickening of light, almost, which swiftly took on a faceless, mostly human shape.

  Everyone stared at the apparition in anxious silence.

  "Is that one of the things we gotta six?" T4b finally asked weakly. Renie thought he did not sound like he planned on trying. In fact, he sounded like he wanted to be somewhere else. She sympathized strongly.

  "No," said Nemesis. "That is our other . . . self. The last part. Nemesis Three. It has been with the anomaly and its processes for many cycles, just as I have been with you human arrangements for many cycles. We will combine our knowledge. We will speak together." Nemesis Two lifted the Blue Baby. Renie gasped as the ugly little thing suddenly flowed out of its hands like something poured horizontally and was absorbed by the shape made of light, which began to gleam with additional azure tones. Then, as they all stared in numbed surprise, the Klement form stepped toward the light-being and flowed into it as well. When the absorption was finished, the shining thing looked a little more human.

  But not much, Renie thought weakly. !Xabbu's hand was holding hers and she was glad of it.

  They . . . sense you. The voice came from nowhere, but it was as disturbingly flat as the Klement-thing's. They wait. They wish to be free.

  "Demons," cried Nandi in outrage. "You have created demons, Sellars, and now we are to bargain with them?" He turned and whispered something to Bonnie Mae Simpkins, whose eyes were closed and whose lips were moving in what Renie supposed was prayer.

  They . . . the next ones . . . wish to be free, the bodiless voice said again. Now that we have brought them what they needed. They understand that they must go as the First People went.

  "The First People?" Renie felt !Xabbu stiffen beside her. "Isn't that out of your stories. . . ?" she asked him.

  The All-Devourer has gone, droned the weird Nemesis voice, but this is not their place anymore. They wish to go, taking the stories that have given them . . . understanding. Like Grandfather Mantis and Rock Rabbit, like their child Rainbow and his wife Porcupine, they will go on to another place. This is not their place anymore.

  "What a thing," !Xabbu said in quiet amazement. "What a thing this is."

  "But there is no place for them to go," Sellars pointed out wearily. "They might become a threat to us, even if they do not intend that or even understand it. We cannot release them into the net."

  No, the voice said solemnly. Not to the . . . net. Out. They will go . . . out. On the sky-river. The sky-river-of-light. They feel it. It is in your control. Let them go.

  "They're talking about your stories," Renie said breathlessly, still agog. "Your stories, !Xabbu! How did they learn them?"

  He looked stunned, but something else was at work, too, something in his features that Renie could not read. She took his hand again.

  Nemesis turned toward her and !Xabbu. Yes. Your explanations were heard. Before, the next ones did not know why they were, what they . . . meant. Then Nemesis Two heard you speak of Rainbow's shoe-piece and all was understood. We told the next ones of you and your explanation and they wished to know more. The operating system gave them your knowledge of what is and what is meant to be. Now they know. Now they can live.

  "What are they talking about, this river of light?" Florimel demanded of Sellars. "The blue river, that's part of the network. You already said they can't be trusted to stay on the network."

  "Not just river of light," Martine said. "Sky-river-of-light, it said." She turned to the man in the wheelchair. "You know what that is."

  Sellars looked at her, his eyes suddenly wide. "The cesium lasers—the boosted databeams to the Other's satellite. One end is still operating, even though the J Corporation tower and the satellite are gone." He was suddenly excited. "They can ride the laser, of course they can—they're just data, after all!"

  "To what?" asked Kunohara. "Out into cold space forever, into death? That is no solution."

  "They won't die," Sellars said. "They're information. As long as the light travels, they'll be there. If they intersect some useful medium—a magnetic field, perhaps, even crystalline structures in an asteroid—they'll have a home. And if the light travels long enough and they continue to evolve, they may be able to propagate themselves in some way we can't even imagine!"

  "You seem to think this solves everything," Nandi said. "But it does not. These things have no right to be. They flout God's will."

  "Could be right, him," T4b added, but not in the firmest of voices. "Maybe God only wants people that wear clothes, seen? People with bodies, like."

  Nandi ignored T4b's dubious support. "I will fight you, Sellars. You have no right. . . ."

  He was stopped by Bonnie Mae Simpkins' hand on his arm. "Can we be so sure?" she asked.

  "Sure? What do you mean?"

  "That we know God's will." She looked at the others, then at the glowing figure. "If I had met this thing back on Earth, I'd have been sure I'd seen an angel. . . ."

  "It is no angel!" Nandi said indignantly.

  "I know. But I'm just showing how far beyond me this is. Beyond any of us. How can folks like us know what God intends?" She spread her hand as if to catch the glowing, pulsating light. "Maybe we're not here to stop this, but to see God's work and marvel!"

  "You cannot believe that." Nandi pulled his arm away.

  "I can . . . and I can also believe what you say, Nandi. And that's the problem. It's too darn big." She looked around, her face solemn. "All this . . . how can we judge? We came to this place to save the children. But aren't these children, too? Maybe . . . maybe God means these creatures . . . these children . . . to be our children. All of ours. Do we know His will so well? Do we have the right to kill them?" She made a funny little noise, a gasp, a sob. "Even if he didn't know it, my Terence gave his life to save them. And I think . . . I think he would have been proud of that."

  To Renie's astonishment, the Simpkins woman was crying. The lights were blurring, blurring. For a moment, she thought the birth was already happening, until she realized that the woman's tears had called up her own.

  "I say let them go." Bonnie Mae Simpkins was struggling to get out her words. "I say let them go . . . and Godspeed."

  They can wait no longer, the Nemesis voice said, something almost like tension in the inhuman tones. Will you set them free?

  "Can you even make it happen?" Orlando asked Sellars. There was a yearning sound in his voice that Renie did not quite understand.

  "I can." Sellars' eyes were distant, distracted; he was already at work. "The laser array on Jongleur's end was destroyed, but the Telemorphix end is still functioning—and with the new operating system in place, the uplink isn't being used for anything. it's just pointed out at where the Other's satellite was."

  "Must we still vote?" asked Kunohara. He looked around eagerly. "Who would destroy these wonderful things?"

  For a long moment nobody spoke. Nandi Paradivash looked at Bonnie Mae, his expression grief-stricken, strange. He turned to T4b. "Will you desert me now, too?"

  Javier Rogers could not meet his eye. "But . . . but maybe she's right," he said quietly. "Maybe they're really children, them." He turned to look at the glowing cells and his thin face was splashed with light. "Youth pastor used to say, 'Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God.' Doesn't sound like killing them, seen?"

  Nandi made a quiet noise of despair and turned his back.

  "Do it," urged Orlando. "They have as much right as I do—more, maybe."

  Sellars lowered his head and closed his eyes.

  The Nemesis creature stirred. It is time, it said. We will go with them. We have . . . changed. And the glowing triune body disappeared.

  "Tell them we send our blessing with you
all!" shouted Bonnie Mae Simpkins.

  The light flared, became deeper, stronger. The individual cells on the walls abruptly dissolved into a cloud of radiance, diffuse but shot with sparkling points of fire. Renie could make no sense of it—there were colors she felt she had never seen before.

  "The First People," !Xabbu whispered beside her, a halting, trancelike tone to his voice. "They go on."

  The cloud of light coalesced, swirled, seethed with uneven brilliance. For a moment Renie was drowning in the sea of stars again, then the cloud came together into a single point, leaving the cavern all in shadow. Behind her someone gasped. That single point glowed, faded, glowed again, a pulse of light so fierce that even though it was tiny, Renie could not look straight at it. Then with a rush of explosive energy that she felt all through her body, it stretched in an instant into a line of diamond gleam and leaped to the black sky far overhead, glittering, flowing. It lasted only a heartbeat, then it was gone.

  They've left us, she realized. Now we don't matter anymore. They do.

  But as she stood in the near-dark, surrounded by the sound of her companions breathing, a few even sobbing, she suddenly thought of her own father—her complaining, irritating father, who had nevertheless given her everything he knew how to give.

  Or maybe we'll meet them again someday, she thought, and was surprised to discover she was crying again. Out there, somewhere, some time. And maybe they'll remember us.

  Maybe they'll even remember us kindly.

  Fifth:

  INHERITORS

  "Here is a fairy tale founded upon the wonders of

  electricity and written for children of this generation.

  Yet when my readers shall have become men and

  women my story may not seem to their children like

  a fairy tale at all.

  "Perhaps one, perhaps two—perhaps several of the

  Demon's devices will be, by that time, in popular use.

  "Who knows?"

  —L. Frank Baum, The Master Key

  CHAPTER 50

  No Promises

  NETFEED/NEWS: President Anford Given Clean Bill of Health

  (visual: Anford waving as he leaves Bethesda Naval Hospital)

  VO: For the first time during his term of office, US President Rex Anford has declared himself healthy and fit, and his doctors back him up. Anford, who has long suffered from a mystery illness, which has inspired rumors about secret drinking and drug problems or incurable cancer, has spent most of his term in seclusion, allowing his vice president to handle much of the public work of governing. Now Anford declares that he is well and that things will change,

  (visual: Anford in Rose Garden news conference.)

  ANFORD: "I'm well. I'm healed. I haven't felt this good in years. I have a lot left I want to do, and, thank God, some time left in which to do it!"

  "I'm scared," the little boy told her. There was no light in the room, and she didn't like it either, but she didn't want to say it.

  "I'm scared of the dark," he said.

  "When I'm scared, I hug Prince Pikapik," she said. "He's a toy—he's a talking otter. Sometimes I get under the blankets and I pretend the light is on, but it's just dark because I'm under the blanket."

  "The blanket is over everything," the little boy told her.

  "Sometimes I tell myself a story, like about the three bears, except that when I'm scared, Goldilocks and the bears have to be friends at the end."

  "I don't have any stories left," the little boy told her. "I knew one, but I can't remember it anymore."

  She didn't know why it was still so dark. She didn't remember why she was there or why this little boy was there with her. She thought she remembered a river made of sparkly light, but she wasn't sure. She also remembered another boy, a boy with a missing tooth, but he had gone somewhere. Cho-Cho. That was his name. But right now it was only her and this sad, scared boy—this little stranger.

  "When I'm really, really frightened, I call my mommy," she said. "She comes in and kisses me and asks me if I had a bad dream. Then I don't feel so bad."

  "I'm scared to meet my mommy," the little boy told her. "What if she doesn't like me? What if she thinks I'm bad?"

  She didn't know what to say to that. "And sometimes, when I'm really scared of the dark, I sing a song."

  For a while the little boy was quiet. Then he said, "I remember a song." And he began to sing in a funny, cracked voice.

  "An angel touched me, an angel touched me,

  the river washed me and now I am clean. . . ."

  After a while she knew what words would come next and she helped him sing.

  "I feel a little better," he said when they had finished. "I think I can go and meet my mommy now."

  "Okay," she said, but she was wondering how he was going to go and if she could go too, because she didn't like being in the dark. " 'Bye, I guess."

  " 'Bye." He was quiet again, but she knew he was still there in the darkness, not gone yet. "Are you . . . are you an angel?"

  "I don't think so," she said.

  "I think you are," he said, then he was gone, really gone.

  And then she woke up.

  At first she was scared, because it was still dark, even though she could hear her mommy's voice and her daddy's voice in the other room. Mommy was crying loud, and Daddy was saying something, but he sounded funny, too. She reached up and touched her face and found out she wasn't wearing the Storybook Sunglasses anymore, the lights were just out in the room. There was a little light coming under the door and there was broken glass on the carpet, but before Christabel could think about that she saw that someone was looking at her over the edge of the bed and for a second she was really scared.

  "Hey, weenit," said Cho-Cho. "The 'lectricity's off."

  There was just enough light coming under the door for her to see him. His hair was sticking up and he was making a funny face—not mean, not happy, not anything except surprised, like he was a little baby horse she had seen on the net getting born, staggering around in a field wondering what kind of animal it was and what it was supposed to do about it.

  "I saw you in that place," he said, very quiet. "How come you came to that place?"

  "You're awake." She was surprised. "What place? Mister Sellars said I had to help him, but then I fell asleep." She sat up, excited because she had an idea. "Is Mister Sellars awake, too?"

  The boy shook his head. "Nah. But he say to tell you he okay. He. . . ."

  But then her mother came through the door of the room, saying her name over and over really loud and really fast, and yanked her off the bed and squeezed her until Christabel almost thought she was going to spit up. Her father came in too, carrying a flashlight, and he was crying, so Christabel got scared all over again because she hadn't seen that before. But then he took her from her mother and kissed her on her face and he was so happy that she guessed things might really be all right.

  Her mommy was kissing Cho-Cho now. Cho-Cho didn't know what to do.

  She saw that Mister Ramsey was in the doorway with a big box flashlight, watching them all with his eyes wide and his face sort of worried but happy just like her daddy's, and she wanted to tell him to go wait with Mister Sellars in case the old man woke up and was scared, but her mommy was hugging her some more and telling her never never never go away like that again which was silly because she hadn't gone anywhere, she'd just been napping and having a dream, and so she didn't get to tell Mister Ramsey anything.

  "Where am I?" His throat hurt and it was hard to talk. Long Joseph looked at the hanging curtains on either side of his bed, then back at the dark-skinned young man in the funny uniform. There was a strong smell of new plastic and alcohol. "What place is this?"

  "Field hospital." The man had a university voice like Del Ray, but there was still a trace of the townships in it. "Back of a military ambulance, to be exact. Now lie down while I check your stitches."

  "What happened?" He tried to sit up, but the you
ng man only pushed him back down. "Where is Jeremiah?" He felt a sting up his arm as the bandage was pulled back, but nothing more than that. He looked down curiously at the long lines of translucent knots over pale, red-edged flesh. "What in hell happen to my arm?"

  "A dog bit you," the young man said. "You nearly got your head chewed off, too. Try not to bend your neck."

  "I have to get up." Joseph tried to sit up. He was remembering things now—lots of things. "Where are my friends? Where is Jeremiah? Del Ray?"

  The young man pushed him back again. "Do that again and I call for the guards. You are under arrest, but you're not going anywhere, even to prison, until I decide you're ready."

  "Arrest?" Joseph shook his head, which—he suddenly realized—hurt like sin. It felt like he had been drinking for days, then stopped. It is never the drinking that is the problem, he thought, it is the stopping. "Why arrest? Where are. . . ." A sudden cold ran through him. "Where is Renie? Oh my God, where is my daughter?"

  The young man frowned at him. "Daughter? Are you saying there was someone else in there with the three of you and those other men?" He stood and leaned out of the curtain to say something to someone. Joseph took the opportunity to try to get up again, but discovered his legs were shackled to the rolling stretcher.

  "I told you to lie down," the young man said. "If your daughter's in there, they'll find her."

  "No, they won't. She in a big tank. And her friend, too. He is one of the Small People, you know that? Do you know the Small People?"

  The man looked at him doubtfully. "In a . . . tank."

  Joseph shook his head. It was hard to explain and it hurt him to talk. His neck felt like it had been squeezed in a vise. Another thought struck him. "Why am I arrested? Where you people come from?"

  The doctor, if that was what he was, looked at Joseph even more doubtfully. "You have been caught trespassing on a military base. There are some people who are going to want to talk to you about that—and about the armed men who were chasing you." He showed Joseph a small, tight smile. "Since I don't think any of those gentlemen are going to be talking."