River of Blue Fire

by Tad Williams

  The things in the castle! He saw them clearly in those shapes on the riverbank, the two dreadful creatures that had been following him so long, the large hunter and the small, both heartless, both remorseless, both more terrifying than any mere human pursuers should be. And now they had caught him—no, he had delivered himself to them.

  Then he blinked, and the Pankies were again just what they appeared: two unfortunate denizens of this unfortunate world. He squinted, steadying himself on the railing of the boat. Now that the panic had subsided, the situation did not feel the same as when his two stalkers had come close before: on those occasions he had felt naked fear from their mere proximity—a sensation as tangible as chill or nausea. But here, until he had seen the resemblance in the silhouettes, he had felt no alarm at anything except the possibility that Undine Pankie might talk all night.

  And surely, if these people were his enemies, they could easily have taken him when he slept. . . .

  Mrs. Pankie leaned on her hardworking little husband and waved, holding her crushed hat firmly on her head as the wind freshened. “Oh, look at the boat, Sefton. What a noble little craft!”

  It was coincidence, he decided, that was all. One that had struck him on a very tender place, but a coincidence all the same.

  But if the Pankies were not his enemies, he thought as the greenery of Hampton Wick slid past on the north bank, they had certainly managed to distract him, and that might be harmful in the long run. The fact was, he had a goal of sorts, and he had not come a whit closer to it as far as he could tell since crossing into this other England.

  Her voice—the voice of the bird-woman in his dreams—had spoken to him through the Neandertal child and told him what to do. “You said you would come to me,” she had chided him. “The wanderer’s house. You must find it, and release the weaver.”

  But who or what was the weaver? And where in this or any other world could he find something as vague as “the wanderer’s house”? It was like being sent on the most obscure scavenger hunt imaginable.

  Maybe I’m the wanderer, he thought suddenly. But if so, and I found my house, then I wouldn’t need anything else, would I? I’d be home.

  Unless I’m supposed to find my house, but find it here in this other London?

  The prospect of actually doing something was intriguing. For a moment he was tempted to turn the boat and begin rowing back toward the crippled heart of London. Certainly the house in Canonbury that contained his flat would have been built by this time—most of his street was Georgian—but it was an open question as to whether there was anything of it left. And according to all accounts, the dead were much more numerous in the center of the city.

  It seemed, the more he thought about it, a rather long chance—”wanderer” could mean so many things. But what other ideas did he have . . . ?

  “He’s muddled it again, Mr. Johnson. Stop it, dear, you’ll just break the thread! Really, Mr. Johnson, you must come and help my Sefton.”

  Paul sighed quietly, his thoughts again scattered like the flotsam bobbing on the brown river.

  The Thames narrowed as they approached Hampton Court, and for the first time Paul saw something almost like normal English life. As he soon discovered, the people here had followed in the wake of the tripods’ original march, and a community of the dispossessed had begun to form a few months after the invasion. These refugee villages were even heralded by the unusual sight of smoke; the residents boldly tended their campfires and transacted their barter in the open, protected by a mile-wide perimeter of sentries with signal mirrors and a few precious guns. But Paul guessed that they had hiding places prepared—that, like rabbits grazing on a hillside, they would be gone to cover at the first hint of danger.

  Mrs. Pankie was delighted to see a few small settlements at last, and when they made their first stop at one of them, she climbed out of the boat so quickly that she almost turned it over.

  A man with a snarling dog on a rope leash traded them a heel of bread for news from the east. When Paul told him what he had seen only days before in the middle of London, the man shook his head sadly. “Our vicar in Chiswick said the city’d burn for its wickedness. But I can’t see where any city could be that wicked.”

  The man went on to tell him there was actually a market of sorts at Hampton Court itself, which would be the best place to go for news and a chance for the Pankies to hook on with one of the local communities. “‘Course, no one takes in any what can’t pull their weight,” the man said, casting a dubious eye at Undine Pankie. “Times are too hard, they are.”

  Mrs. Pankie, rapturous at the mere thought of being able to set up housekeeping once more, ignored him. Sefton gave a curt little nod as they parted from the man, as though he realized his wife had been insulted, but was too much of a gentleman himself to acknowledge it.

  The palace appeared shortly past a sharp bend in the river, its forest of turrets crowding up into the thin sunlight. There were a disappointingly small number of people ranged on the lawns above the Thames, but when Paul brought the boat in and helped hand Mrs. Pankie ashore, he was told by a woman sitting on a wagon that the market itself was in the Wilderness behind the palace.

  “For that’s what happened when we were in sight of the river before, and one of them Martian dreadnoughts came sailing past,” she said, pointing to the Great Gatehouse, which had been smashed to blackened rubble. For yards in front of the fallen walls, the ground was as smooth and shiny as a glazed pot.

  Mrs. Pankie hurried ahead through the grounds. Her husband struggled to keep up with her—like the bear her shape resembled, she was deceptively quick—but Paul decided on a more leisurely stroll. He passed several dozen people, some with what seemed their entire families loaded onto haywains. Others drove racy little traps and gigs that might once have been evidence of prosperity, but were now only flimsier methods of transportation than the farm wagons. No one smiled or did more than nod in return to his greetings, but these market-goers seemed far more ordinary than any of the other survivors he had met. Just the fact of having a market to go to, after so many black months, was enough to lift spirits. The Martians had come, and humanity was a conquered race, but life continued.

  As he made his way across the cobbled parking lot toward the Tilt-yard Gardens and the crowd of people he could see there, he reflected that whether this was the place the dream-woman had spoken of or not, it was at least an England, and he missed England. A terrible fate still hung over the heads of these people, and those who were here had already suffered terribly—whenever he began to forget the abnormal conditions, he saw another market-goer with missing limbs or terrible burn scars—but building a life out of the destruction he had seen at least had a purpose. He could not say as much for the rest of his journey to this point.

  In fact, he realized, he was tired—tired of thinking, tired of traveling, tired of almost everything.

  Leaving the red brick walls behind and crossing through into the greenery of the so-called Wilderness, actually a precise garden of hedges and yew trees, raised his spirits a little, even though here, too, patches of the scarlet alien grass had taken root. The market was in full swing. Piles of produce filled the backs of wagons, and barter was brisk. Everywhere he looked someone was vigorously denying the obvious truth someone else was promoting. If he squinted his eyes, it looked almost like a country fair from an old print. He could not see the Pankies anywhere, which was not entirely a tragedy.

  As he stood surveying the crowd, which might have contained as many as two or three hundred people, he noticed a dark-haired, dark-complected man who seemed to be looking back at him with more than idle interest. When Paul’s gaze met his, the newcomer dropped his eyes and turned away, but Paul could not shake the idea that the man had been watching him for some time. The dark-skinned man stepped past a pair of women haggling over a dog in a basket—Paul was not positive for what
the animal was being sold, but he had a notion, and hoped Undine Pankie did not see—and vanished into the crowd.

  Paul shrugged and wandered on. Other than his Asiatic features, which even in this earlier time were not impossibly rare, the man had seemed no different than anyone else, and he certainly had not triggered the kind of response Paul had come to associate with danger from his pursuers.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of the Pankies. Mrs. P. was in tears, and her husband was trying, rather ineffectually, to soothe her. For a moment, Paul thought she had seen the dog transaction and been reminded of poor cooked Dandy.

  “Oh, Mr. Johnson, it’s too cruel!” She clutched at his sleeve and turned her wide face up to him imploringly.

  “Perhaps they only want to raise it as a guard dog . . .” he began, but the woman was not listening.

  “I’ve just seen her—just the age our Viola would have been, if she hadn’t . . . Oh, it’s cruel, it’s cruel.”

  “Here, now, Mrs. Pankie.” Sefton looked around nervously. “You’re making a scene.”

  “Viola?”

  “Our little girl. She was just the image! I wanted to go speak to her, but Mr. Pankie wouldn’t let me. Oh, my poor little girl!”

  Paul shook his head. “Your little girl? But you said you had no . . .”

  “Made up,” said Sefton Pankie firmly, but Paul thought he heard panic in the man’s voice. “A lark, really. We made up a child, you see—named her Viola. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Pankie?”

  Undine was sniffling and wiping at her nose with her sleeves. “My dear Viola.”

  “. . . And this girl over by the hedges, well, she looked like we’d imagined . . . imagined this daughter might look. You see?” He produced a smile so sickly that Paul wanted to look away. Whatever this was, madness or duplicity, it felt like a glimpse into something he should not see.

  Mrs. Pankie had stopped crying, and seemed to have realized she had overstepped herself. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Johnson.” Her smile was no more reassuring than her husband’s. “You must think me a fool. And I am—I’m an old fool.”

  “Not at all . . .” Paul began, but Sefton Pankie was already hustling his wife away.

  “She just needs some air,” he said over his shoulder, ignoring the fact that in the open gardens there was nothing but. “This has all been terribly hard on her . . . terribly hard.”

  Paul could only watch them stagger off into the crowd, the large leaning on the small.

  He was standing by the tall hedges that marked the outside of the famous maze, chewing on some skewered meat that the man selling it had sworn up and down was goat. The vendor had exchanged these viands and a mug of beer for Paul’s waistcoat, a price that though high did not seem at the moment out of line. Paul had drained off the beer in one swallow. A little comfort seemed very important just now.

  His thoughts were whirling about, and he could not bring them to any order. Could it be as simple as it seemed—that the Pankies, in their insularity, had invented a story-child to fill their childless years? But what had they meant when they said the girl was just the age their Viola would have been, if she hadn’t. . . ? Hadn’t what? How could you lose—presumably to death—a child you had made up in the first place?

  “You are a stranger here.”

  Paul jumped. The dark-skinned man was standing in the archway that formed the entrance to the maze, a serious expression on his face, his brown eyes wide.

  “I . . . I am. I’m sure a lot of folk are. There isn’t a market like this for miles and miles.”

  “No, there is not.” The stranger gave a brief, perfunctory smile. “I would like very much to speak with you, Mr. . . ?”

  “Johnson. Why? And who are you?”

  The man answered only the first question. “Let us say that I have some information that might be of use to you, sir. To someone in . . . special circumstances, at any rate.”

  Paul’s pulse had not returned to normal since the stranger had first spoken, and the careful words the man chose did not slow it any. “Then talk.”

  “Not here.” The stranger looked grave. “But we will not go far.” He turned and indicated the maze. “Come with me.”

  Paul had to make a decision. He did not trust the man at all, but as he had noticed earlier, he had no visceral fear-reaction to him, either. And, like Mr. Pankie, although not to the same degree, the stranger was not of a size to be very threatening. “Very well. But you still haven’t told me your name.”

  “No,” said the stranger, gesturing him through the turnstiles, “I have not.”

  As if to allay Paul’s worries, the stranger kept at least a yard of physical distance between them at all times as he led him between the hedge-walls of the maze. Instead of offering revelations, though, he made small talk, asking Paul the state of affairs elsewhere—he did not know, or pretended not to know, where in England Paul had come from—and telling him in turn about the post-invasion rebuilding in the area around Hampton Court.

  “Human beings, always they build again,” the stranger said. “It is admirable, is it not?”

  “I suppose.” Paul stopped. “Listen, are you going to tell me anything real? Or were you just trying to get me in here so you can rob me or something?”

  “If I were only robbing people, would I speak to them of special circumstances?” the man asked. “Because very few can have such understanding of those words as you, I am thinking.”

  Even as a premonitory chill ran down his spine, Paul finally realized what the very faint touch of accent was: the stranger, despite flawless English, was Indian or Pakistani. Paul decided the time had come to brazen it out.

  “Suppose you’re right. So what?”

  Instead of rising to the bait, the stranger turned and walked on. After a moment, Paul hurried to catch up. “Just a little farther now,” the man said. “Then we can talk.”

  “Start now.”

  The stranger smiled. “Very well. I will tell you first that your traveling companions are not what they seem.”

  “Really? What are they, then? Satan cultists? Vampires?”

  The dark man pursed his lips. “I cannot tell you, exactly. But I know they are something other than a very nice, jolly couple from England.” He spread his hands as they turned the hedge-corner and found themselves at the heart of the maze. “Here we are.”

  “This is ridiculous.” Paul’s anger fought hard to overcome a sickly, growing fear. “You haven’t told me anything. You’ve dragged me all this way, and for what?”

  “For this, I am afraid.” The stranger lunged forward and grabbed Paul around the waist, imprisoning both his arms. Paul struggled, but the man was surprisingly strong. The light at the center of the maze abruptly began to change, as though the sun had suddenly changed direction.

  “Halloo!” Mrs. Pankie’s shrill cry came from a few passages away. “Halloo, Mr. Johnson? Are you there? Have you found the middle, you clever man?”

  Paul could not get enough air to call for help. All around him, a yellow glow was spreading, making the benches and hedges and gravel path dim into buttery transparency. Recognizing the golden light, Paul intensified his struggles. For a moment he got a hand loose and grabbed at the dark man’s thick black hair, then the other got a leg behind his, pushed him off balance, and forced him stumbling backward through the light and into sudden nothingness.

  Second:

  VOICES IN THE DARK

  May she flow away—she who comes in the darkness,

  Who enters in furtively

  With her nose behind her, her face turned backward—

  Failing in that for which she came!

  Have you come to kiss this child?

  I will not let you kiss him!

  Have you come to injure him?

&
nbsp; I will not let you injure him!

  Have you come to take him away?

  I will not let you take him away from me!

  —Ancient Egyptian Protective Charm

  CHAPTER 13

  The Dreams of Numbers

  * * *

  NETFEED/DOCUMENTARY: “Otherworld”—The Ultimate Network?

  (visual: Neuschwanstein Castle, with fog rising from the Rhine)

  VO: What kind of world would the richest people on Earth build for themselves? BBN has announced that they are preparing documentary on the “Otherworld” project, a simulation-world much whispered about in virtual engineering circles. Does it exist? Many say that it is no more real than Never Never Land or Shangri-La, but others claim that even if it has been decommissioned, it did exist at one time, and was the single greatest work of its type . . .

  * * *

  IT did not think. It did not live.

  In fact, it possessed no faculty that had not been given to it by its creators, and at no point had it approached the crucial nexus at which it might—in the classic science-fictional trope—become more than the sum of its parts, more than simply an amalgam of time and effort and the best linear thinking of which its makers were capable.

  And yet, in its growing complexity and unexpected, yet necessary, idiosyncrasy, and with no regard for the distinctions made by the meat intelligences which had created it, the Nemesis program had discovered a certain autonomy.

  The program had been created by some of the best minds on the planet, the J-Team at Telemorphix. The full name of the group was Team Jericho, and although their patron and mentor Robert Wells had never made entirely clear what walls they were meant to bring tumbling down with this or any of their other projects, they nevertheless went at their assigned tasks with a certain esprit de corps common to those who considered themselves the very best and brightest. Wells’ chosen were all gifted, intense, and frighteningly focused: there were stretches, in the searing heat of deadline, when they felt themselves to be nothing more than incorporeal minds—or, for brief moments, not even full mentalities, but only The Problem itself, in all its permutations and possible solutions.