River of Blue Fire

by Tad Williams

  Mrs. Fredericks still had one hand over her mouth; her mascara, fashionably exaggerated, was beginning to run a little at the corner of her eyes. “Oh, the poor boy.”

  “He’s a wonderful kid.” Vivien was having trouble speaking. “I can’t tell you how brave he’s been. He’s been . . . different all his life. Stared at when he goes out. And he’s known since he was little that the chances of him living . . . even long enough to be a teenager . . .” She had to stop. Conrad looked at her from the foot of the bed, but did not move to comfort her. It was Enrica Fredericks who at last stepped forward and put a hand on her arm. Orlando’s mother made a visible effort to gather herself. “He hasn’t deserved any of this, and he’s dealt with it so well that . . . that it would break your heart just to see it. It’s all been so unfair. And now this! So I . . . so we wanted you to understand about Orlando, and about what a rotten deal he got. When we explain why we called you.”

  Catur Ramsey took it upon himself to break this silence.

  “Sounds like it’s time for us all to go somewhere and talk.”

  “So,” Enrica Fredericks said, “this menu looks lovely.” Her good cheer was as brittle as old glass. “What do you recommend, Vivien?”

  “We’ve never been here before. We picked it at random out of a directory. I hope it’s okay.”

  In the silence, the snapping of the awning overhead was quite loud. Ramsey used his wineglass to pin down his napkin, which was threatening to blow away, and cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should jump right in, so to speak.”

  “That’s why we’re sitting outside, too,” Conrad said suddenly.

  “You’ve lost me again,” Fredericks replied. He squinted at the menu. “I think I’m going to have the sea bass.” He called the skulking waiter over from where he was huddling out of the wind. “Are you sure this is Pacific sea bass?”

  When they had ordered, and the waiter had hurried back to the warmth of the indoor portion of the restaurant, Vivien began to speak.

  “The problem,” she said, tracing a near-transparent circle of white wine on the tabletop, “is that kids today don’t write anything down. They talk—God knows, they talk—and they go places together on the net, but they don’t write anything down.”

  “Yes?” said Fredericks.

  “We’ve had a really hard time figuring out what Orlando’s been up to,” Conrad Gardiner said. “On the net. But we think that’s what’s wrong with them both.”

  “That’s not possible.” Enrica Fredericks’ voice was flat. “It doesn’t work that way. Our doctor told us. Unless someone . . . someone ran some charge on them.” Her face was pinched and angry. “That’s what they say, isn’t it? ‘Ran some charge’?”

  “That may be it,” Vivien said. “But if so, it’s some kind of charge the doctors haven’t heard of. Anyway, you’d have to abuse it seriously for years to have that effect—no, even then it wouldn’t be the same. Look, you said it yourself—you can’t unplug Sam. She screams, she fights, you have to plug her back in. The same thing’s true with Orlando, except that he’s been so sick we can only tell the reaction by what happens to his vital signs. We’ve checked with neurologists, neuropsychologists, charge-addiction treatment centers, everything. No one’s ever heard of anything like this. That’s why we contacted you.”

  The salads and hors-d’oeuvres arrived. Ramsey frowned at his bruschetta. Maybe it was time to start taking this health stuff seriously. There was a list a mile long for heart transplants, even with the new generation of clonal replacements. He would have been better off ordering a green salad.

  He pushed away the bruschetta.

  “Forgive me for being impatient,” said Jaleel Fredericks, “but it seems to be my role in this particular gathering. What is the point? We know all this, although not the details.”

  “Because we all know that something has happened to your Sam and our Orlando, but we don’t think it’s an accident.”

  Fredericks raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”

  “We’ve done our best to open up all Orlando’s files on his system. That’s why it’s so frustrating that kids don’t even use mail any more, like we did. There are pathways, but no records to speak of. And to make things more difficult, his agent has been removing files. In fact, that’s one of the things we’re worried about.”

  Ramsey sat forward, intrigued. “Why is that?”

  “Because it’s not supposed to happen,” Conrad said. He was drinking only water, and he stopped to take a long swallow. “We froze the house system when this happened—well, all of Orlando’s part of it, anyway. The only way his agent could be moving files against our wishes is with Orlando’s permission, and . . . well, you saw him. So why is it that the thing is still removing files and destroying others? It’s even hidden itself, so we can’t turn it off without killing the whole system and losing any evidence we’ve got of what happened to Orlando. In fact, the thing’s gone AWOL entirely. The robot body it uses around the house is gone, too. That’s what I thought I saw in the hospital.” He shook his head. “The whole thing is creepy.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Enrica said plaintively. “Why would any of this happen? If someone’s hiding files, or destroying them, or whatever, what reason could there be?”

  “We don’t know.” Vivien toyed with a celery stick. “But we saw enough before the files disappeared to know that Orlando was in touch with some strange people. He was . . . he is a very, very smart kid. Spent all his time on the net. So we want to find out where on the net he’s been, what he’s been doing, and who he’s been doing it with. And we don’t want anyone to know that we’re trying to find out, which is why we’re sitting outdoors at an unfamiliar restaurant.”

  “And from us . . . ?” Fredericks asked slowly.

  “We want your files. Sam and our son were doing something together. Someone or something has corrupted our system, against our express orders. Yours may still be untouched—and in any case, you owe it to yourselves to find out, even if you think we’re nuts. But we want your files. Or Sam’s, to be perfectly accurate.” Vivien fixed him with a surprisingly fierce gaze. “We want to find out who did this to our son.”

  Vivien and Jaleel stared at each other. Their partners looked on, waiting for the outcome, but Ramsey already knew what it would be. He sat back, caught in a mix of elation and despair. Not loonies, then. And with a really interesting puzzle that might turn out to be nothing, but certainly could not be ignored. It would, of course, mean a lot of research, a ton of detail, and a variety of very difficult problems to solve.

  It seemed he was going to be spending a lot more time at work.

  OLGA Pirofsky put the last melon in the bag, then took her groceries up to the express counter. You could have anything and everything delivered, but there was still something to be said for actually handling a piece of fruit before you bought it. It kept you in touch with something from human history that was now almost lost.

  She walked home down Kinmount Street, as she always did, making her way under the great elevated tracks that carried the maglev commute train south to Toronto. Juniper Bay was basking in sunshine today, and the warmth felt good on the back of her neck.

  She stopped, as she had told herself she wouldn’t, (but knew that she would) in front of the children’s store. An array of holographic youngsters played decorously in the window, and handsome phantom babies modeled handsome baby outfits. It was early in the afternoon, so most of the real children were in school somewhere; only a handful of mothers and fathers with strollers were inside the store.

  Olga watched them through the window as they moved with perfect assurance from display to display, stopping occasionally to soothe a cranky infant, or to share a joke or a question with each other, living completely in the now—a now in which happy parenthood would go on forever, with the small provision that anything bough
t last month would already be too small. She wanted to hammer on the window and warn them not to take anything for granted. She had thought once that she would be one of those people, one of those frighteningly blithe people, but instead she felt like a homeless spirit, watching in envy from the cold.

  A floater—a toy that constantly changed its magnetization, making it hard to keep it between two accompanying paddles—bumbled past, being tossed between two of the holographic tykes. But I’m not a ghost, she realized. Not really. These imaginary window-children are ghosts. Uncle Jingle and his friends are ghosts. I’m a real person, and I’ve just bought some melons and tea and twelve packs of dog food. I have things to do.

  Not entirely convinced, but at least having manufactured the strength to pull herself away from the children’s store, she continued her walk home.

  Someday I won’t be able to leave, she thought. I’ll just stand and stare through that window until winter comes. Like the Little Match Girl.

  She wondered if that would be a bad way to go.

  “We’ll come back and help Princess Ape-i-cat later, kids. But first, Uncle Jingle needs you to take a walk with him over to Toyworld!”

  The Pavlovian cheers came back, filling her hearplugs. Uncle Jingle dismissed a quick mental image of leading her charges through a snowy railyard onto windowless boxcars. It was silly, thinking that way—these were just commercials, just harmless capitalist greed. And if it wasn’t harmless, it certainly was part of the world they lived in. It was most of the world they lived in, or at least it felt like that sometimes.

  “We’re going to sing the ‘Let’s Go Shopping’ song,” she said, spreading her arms in a gesture of excitement, “but first I want you to meet someone. Her name is Turnie Kitt, and she’s the newest member of The Kasualty Klub! She’s very educational, and she’ll show you why!”

  The kids—or their online avatars—jumped up and down, whooping. The Kasualty Klub was a favorite toy series, and all its grisly members, Compound Ken, Decapitate Kate, and others even less savory, were a serious hit. The new tie-in episodes would begin soon, and Uncle Jingle was not looking forward to them at all. As Turnie Kitt began to explain how after her limbs had been twisted off, she would fountain lifelike blood until pressure was applied, Uncle Jingle hit the four-hour wall and ceased to be Olga Pirofsky.

  . . . Or rather I stop being Uncle Jingle, she thought. It’s hard to remember where the line is, sometimes.

  A voice buzzed in her hearplugs. “Nice show, Miz P. McDaniel’ll take ‘em from here.”

  “Tell Roland I said ‘break a leg.’ But tell him not to do it in front of that group, or they may pull it off to watch his lifelike blood fountaining.”

  The technician laughed and clicked off. Olga unplugged. Misha was sitting across the room from her, head cocked on one side. She wiggled her fingers near the floor, and he came forward to be scratched on the white spot beneath his chin.

  She hadn’t had any recurrences of the headaches lately. That was something to be grateful for. But as though they had been the first thin end of a wedge driven into the core of her being, the mysterious pains had split her open. More and more often in these last weeks, she found that the show upset her, its flashier and more commercial aspects seeming little different than the slaughters of animals and slaves the ancient Romans had used to spice up their entertainments. But the show had not changed any, Olga had: the bargain she had once struck with herself, where her disapproval about content would take second place to the joy of working with kids, was beginning to come apart.

  And even though the head pains had been absent, she could not forget them, or the revelation that had struck her on that day. She had talked to her new doctor about it, and to the show’s medical people, and they had all reassured her that online headaches were not unusual. They seemed to have forgotten that just weeks before they had been testing her for brain tumors. She had found the common link, they told her, and should be happy it was so easy to remedy. She was spending too much time online. She should seriously think about some time off.

  Of course, the undercurrent was plain: You’re getting a bit old for this anyway, aren’t you, Olga? The Uncle Jingle gig is a young person’s job, all that bouncing and singing and strenuous, cartoony overacting. Wouldn’t you be happier leaving it to someone else?

  Under other circumstances, she would have wondered whether they might not be right. But these were not normal headaches, any more than Compound Ken’s little specialty was a bumped shin.

  Olga got up and wandered to the kitchen, ignoring the pins and needles of four hours in the chair. The groceries still sat in the bag on the counter. Misha, who was very firm about routine, stood by her feet, waiting. She sighed and emptied a pack of food into his bowl.

  If your doctors didn’t believe you, what then? She had begun calling around, of course, checking with various other medical (and sort-of-medical) people, and with the Interactive Performer’s Guild. She had asked Roland McDaniel to ask retired performer friends if they had ever experienced something similar. She had even broken her own rule about using the net in her free time to begin to examine articles and monographs on net-related disabilities. A nice young man in neurobiology at McGill University had responded to her questions by giving her a list of a whole new series of possibilities, apparently unrelated specialty disciplines that might have some bearing on her problem. So far, not a single thing had proved useful.

  She left Misha making little snarfle noises over his bowl and went to lie down on the couch. Her special chair, as festooned with wires as an execution device, stood in silent reproach. There was more research to be done—far more. But she was so tired.

  Maybe they all were right. Maybe it was her work. Perhaps a long vacation was just what she needed.

  She grunted, then swung her legs off the couch onto the floor and stood up. On days like these, she felt every year of her age. She walked slowly to the chair and climbed in, then hooked herself up. Instantaneously, she was in the top level of her system. The company supplied her with the very best equipment—it was a pity, really, that they had to waste it on someone who cared so little about modern machinery.

  Chloe Afsani took a while to answer; when she did, she was wiping cream cheese off her upper lip.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, dear. I’ve interrupted your lunch.”

  “Problem not, Olga. I had a late breakfast—I’ll survive a little while longer.”

  “Are you sure? I hope I’m not adding to your work load too much.” Chloe was now a manager in the network’s fact checking department, a hive of plugged-in people in sightless rows that had made Olga more than a little nervous when she had gone to ask her favor. Chloe had been a production assistant on the Uncle Jingle show when she first broke in to the business—a “junior blip,” as she termed it—and Olga had been a confidante during the breakdown of the younger woman’s first marriage. Even so, Olga had hated to ask the favor—it always made friendship seem like a trade agreement.

  “Don’t worry about it. In fact, I’ve got some good news for you.”

  “Really?” Olga jumped a little at an odd sensation, then realized it was only Misha climbing into her lap.

  “Really. Look, I’m sending you everything, but I can give you the basics now. It was a pretty broad subject area, because there have been so many vaguely health-related things written about net use. Ergonomics alone, thousands of hits. But the more you narrow it down, the easier it gets.

  “I’ll cut to the chase. There have been a ton of supposedly net-related illnesses, chronic stress, disorientation, eyestrain, pseudo-PTSS—I’ve forgotten what they actually call it—but the only thing that would be what you’re talking about—in other words, the only thing that might be other than just you working too hard—is something called Tandagore’s Syndrome.”

  “What’s a Tandagore, Chloe?”

 
“The person who discovered it. Some guy in Trinidad, if I remember right. Anyway, it’s kind of controversial—not fully accepted yet as a distinct thing, but they’re talking about it in a few researcher SIGs. In fact, most doctors and hospitals don’t use the term. That’s in part because there are so many different variations, from headaches to seizures, all the way up to comas and one or two deaths.” Chloe Afsani saw the look on the other woman’s face. “Don’t worry, Olga. It’s not progressive.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.” Misha was nudging her stomach in a very distracting way, but Chloe’s words had struck a chill into her. She stroked the little dog, trying to quiet him.

  “You don’t go from one symptom to a worse one. If you have this—and no one’s saying you do, sweetie, in fact I’ll explain why I doubt it—and you’re getting headaches, then that’s probably as bad as it’s going to get for you.”

  The thought of spending the rest of her life going from one of those bolts of brilliant, sickening pain to the next was more frightening in some ways than the possibility of just dying. “Is that the good news?” she asked weakly. “Is there a cure?”

  “No cure, but that wasn’t the good news.” Chloe smiled a sad smile. Her teeth seemed to have gotten whiter since she had gone into management. “Oh, Olga sweetie, am I making things worse? Just hear me out. You probably don’t have this in the first place, because something like ninety-five percent of the sufferers are children. And, what makes it even more likely that you don’t have this, and that what you’ve got instead is just a bad, bad case of need-a-vacation, is the fact of where you work.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Here’s the good news at last. Tandagore’s Syndrome appears to be net-related, right? That is, the one common element, not counting the mostly-children angle, is heavy net usage.”