by Tad Williams
“There are baboons on this rock,” she whispered to herself.
And, discovering this truth, she felt it burning inside her. It was so right. She had turned away from a gift, thinking it did not matter, but in fact a gift—and specifically the gift of love—was the only thing that did matter.
She wanted to grab the little man, pull him out of his trance and explain to him all that she had just comprehended, but his concentration was as great as ever, and she understood that these revelations were hers—!Xabbu was searching for his own. So instead she fell into step behind him in the circle, hesitantly at first, then with ever-growing confidence, until they moved in parallel, the diameter of the circular track always between them, but the circle itself always connecting them. He gave no sign he knew she had joined him, but inside her heart, Renie felt sure that he did.
Emily woke up again, and this time, seeing both her companions treading the circle, her eyes went even wider.
They danced on as dawn crested and morning took possession of the jungle.
Out of silence, a story. Out of chaos, order. Out of nothingness, love . . .
Renie had been in a sort of trance herself for a long time, and it was only when weariness made her stumble that she saw the world around her again. It was a disturbing transition: she had been somewhere else, and knew in an inexplicable way what !Xabbu meant by “the eyes of the heart.” He himself was still dancing, but slower now, with great deliberation, as though he were approaching a moment of reckoning.
Something else was moving in the corner of her vision. Renie turned to see Emily crouching like a frightened animal, waving her hand as if to drive something away. At first, Renie thought that the sight of her and !Xabbu dancing so long and so single-mindedly had unnerved the girl. Then she saw a face peering in at them from the undergrowth, a scant half a dozen yards away.
Renie stumbled again, but out of caution forced herself to dance on, although her heart was no longer in it. She examined the spy as best she could without obviously staring. It was one of the patchwork monstrosities they had earlier disturbed drinking at the river. The face was human, but only barely. The nose looked like something else that just happened to be in the middle of the face—formerly a toe, perhaps, or a thumb; the creature’s ears jutted from its neck, which made its naked head seem stark as a battering ram. But despite these terrifying abnormalities, the creature did not seem threatening. The cowlike eyes watched !Xabbu’s dance with a yearning that was almost pathetic.
But that doesn’t mean anything. Renie’s revelatory trance was shattered, her internal alarms jangling. Those creatures have been altered—expressions, body language, none of those things can be trusted.
She slowed her own dancing as naturally as she could, then stepped out of the circle as though she had finally tired. It was not altogether false—she was panting and soaked with sweat. She stole another look as she wiped her forehead. A second face had appeared beside the first, this one with its eyes set far too low in its cheeks. A third freakish countenance followed, then a fourth, all now jostling in the undergrowth to watch the baboon dance.
Emily had fallen to her hands and knees and was pressing her face against the ground, her thin back quivering with barely-suppressed terror. Renie was worried, but there was something so timid and helpless about the creatures that, altered or not, she had begun to feel they offered no immediate danger. Still, she called out to her friend.
“!Xabbu. Don’t do anything sudden, but we have guests.”
He danced on, stamp, shuffle, shuffle, stamp. If he was only pretending not to hear her, it was a brilliant piece of acting.
“!Xabbu. I wish you would stop now.” Behind her, Emily made a little choking noise of fear. Her friend still did not seem to notice anything outside himself.
More of the damaged people were becoming visible. At least a dozen had formed a semicircle in the thick vegetation at the edge of camp, cautious as deer, and Renie heard a faint rustling behind her as well. She and her companions were slowly being surrounded.
“!Xabbu!” she said, louder now. And he stopped.
The baboon tottered for a moment, then fell down. By the time Renie reached his side he had struggled back up to a sitting position, but the way his head wobbled on his neck frightened her, and although she held him and spoke his name, his eyes would not focus. A stream of clicking, unintelligible speech came out of his mouth, dumbfounding her, until she realized that the networks’ translation gear must not know any Bushman dialects.
“!Xabbu, it’s me, Renie. I can’t understand you.” She fought against rising panic. !Xabbu engrossed in dancing and meditating was one thing, but !Xabbu unable to communicate at all was a lonely, terrifying thought.
The baboon eyes rolled back under his lids and the incomprehensible language, fluid and yet laced with percussive sounds, trailed away to a whisper. Then, weakly, he said, “Renie?” Her name, that single word, was one of the most wonderful things she had ever heard. “Oh, Renie, I have seen things, learned things—the sun is ringing for me again.”
“We don’t have time to talk about it,” she said quietly. “Those creatures we saw earlier—they’re here. All around the camp, watching us.”
!Xabbu’s eyes popped open, but he did not appear to have heard anything she’d said. “I have been foolish.” His evident good cheer was startling. Renie wondered if he had gone a little mad. “Ah, it is different already.” His eyes narrowed. “But what is it I am feeling? What is different?”
“I told you, those creatures are here! They’re all around us.”
He clambered out of her arms, but only flicked a glance at the ring of half-humans before turning back to Renie. “Shadows,” he said. “But there is something I have missed.” To her astonishment, he put his long muzzle close to her face and began sniffing.
“!Xabbu! What are you doing?” She pushed him away, terrified that the watchers might turn violent now that the Bushman’s dance had ended. !Xabbu did not fight her, but simply walked around her and resumed sniffing her from the other side. His monkey hands moved delicately across her arms and shoulders.
The audience moved closer now, sliding out of the vegetation and into the circle of the camp. There was no threat in their movements, but they were still a frightening sight, a catalogue of malformation—heads set too low, arms growing from rib cages, extra legs, a row of hands running down a back like a dinosaur’s crest, and all the modifications done with what appeared to have been clumsy carelessness. Worst of all, though, were the patchwork people’s eyes—stupefied by pain and fear, but still aware of their own suffering.
In desperation, Renie tried to grab at !Xabbu, but he eluded her, continuing instead to sniff and pat and ignore her questions. Her terror and confusion were already threatening to overwhelm her when a loud sigh rippled through the monstrous human herd. Renie froze, certain that the creatures were about to charge, which allowed !Xabbu the freedom to thrust his hand into her pocket.
“I should have known it,” he said as he lifted Azador’s lighter up to catch the morning sun. “It was speaking, but I was not listening.”
The crowd of watchers began to move again, but instead of attacking, they stepped back into the undergrowth so quickly that their misshapen forms almost seemed to have liquified and flowed away. Renie was stunned, both by the apparently causeless retreat and her friend’s even more incomprehensible behavior.
“!Xabbu, what . . . what are you doing?” she gasped.
“This is a thing that does not belong,” He twisted the lighter from side to side as though hoping to see some secret mark. “I should have known it before, but I have let myself become confused. The First People were calling to me, but I did not hear.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” The deformed creatures were gone, but her sense of tension had not diminished. A branch snapped n
earby, loud as a firecracker. Something was crunching toward them through the jungle, careless of stealth. Even as Renie reached out to her distracted friend, a group of dark upright shapes shambled through the line of trees and stopped at the edge of the clearing.
There were perhaps half a dozen of them, huge, shaggy, bearlike creatures that were nothing so simple and clean as bears. Livid patches of moss grew on their pelts, and vines rooted to the sides of their necks coiled down through the fur, as writhingly alive as worms, to burrow in again at crotch and knee. But worse of all, where their heads should have been they wore instead the mindless smiles of carnivorous plants, great shiny purple and green pods which sprouted directly from their short necks, the mouthlike openings edged with toothy spines.
As these monsters waited, chests jerking with heavy, uneven breaths, another figure shambled out of the trees and took up a position in front of the plant-bears, a shape that although shorter, bulked even wider than its massive servants. Its tiny eyes gleamed with pleasure, and its flabby mouth stretched in a grin that revealed broken tusks of different yellowed lengths.
“Well, well, well,” rumbled Lion. “Tinman has been a bad little machine, letting you get away. But his bad luck is my good, and now the game is mine. Ah! This must be the Dorothy, and its . . . container.” He took a waddling step toward Emily, who scuttled away across the dirt like a wounded crab; Lion laughed. “Congratulations on your pregnancy, little Emily-creature.” He rotated his knobby head toward Renie and !Xabbu. “Some sculptor once said that the statue is already inside the marble—that all the artist is doing is cutting away what is unnecessary.” He laughed again. Spit glistened on the distended lower lip. “I feel the same way about the Dorothy.”
“What is the point of this?” Renie demanded, but she knew how small and unconvincing her voice sounded, how insignificant her strength was compared to even one of the massive and hideous plant-bears. Hopelessness washed through her. “It’s all a game, isn’t it? Just a cruel game!”
“But it is our game—my game, now.” Lion smirked. “You are the intruders. And, as someone once said . . . trespassers will be eaten.”
Renie wracked her mind for anything about Lion or his Twin that might help, but nothing came. They were fearsome, Azador had told her. They were unimaginably cruel.
“I can feel something,” said !Xabbu brightly, startling Renie so that she turned to stare at him. He still stared at the lighter cupped in his hands; Lion, his mindless slaves, everything else might not have existed. “Something . . .”
“!Xabbu, they’re going to kill us!” At Renie’s words, Emily whimpered on the ground at her feet. Renie’s terror was leavened for a moment by a flash of anger—could this girl do nothing except whine and cry?
“They?” !Xabbu looked up, still distant, still thinking of something else. “They are meaningless. They are shadows.” He caught sight of Lion, and his lip curled in disgust. “Not all shadows, perhaps. But still, they mean nothing.”
Lion saw the lighter and his predator’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you get that?”
“!Xabbu, what is going on?” Renie demanded under her breath.
“And I misjudged other things, too.” !Xabbu reached down with his free hand and urged Emily to her feet. She resisted, but he planted his splayed toes and kept tugging until she got into a crouch. “I will explain later,” he said; then: “Run!”
He jerked at Emily’s arm again and got her stumbling toward the river bank. Renie stared dumbfounded for a split-instant, then sprinted after them. Lion shouted no orders, but within moments she could feel the thunderous tread of the bear-creatures lumbering in pursuit.
!Xabbu led the staggering Emily all the way to the bank and out into the river shallows, until the water reached his own simian shoulders. Renie thought he was going to swim for it, but instead he turned the girl downstream and pushed her ahead of him before swinging around to look for Renie.
“Just keep going that way,” he urged. When Renie splashed past him, he swam back to the bank.
“What are you doing?”
“Keep Emily going downstream,” he called back. “Trust me!”
She thrashed to a halt and almost lost her balance. “I’m not going to let you kill yourself to save us,” she shouted. “That is old-fashioned bullshit!”
“Renie! Please trust me!” he cried from the scrub covering the bank. Already the trees were crackling a short distance away as Lion’s servants crunched closer.
She hesitated for an instant. Emily had fallen down; shoved and pulled by the current, she was having trouble getting to her feet again. Renie cursed and waded after her.
They made slow, agonizing progress through the mud and high water, but Renie saw that !Xabbu’s first idea at least had been good—they were still making better time than Lion and his huge creatures, who were forced to tear their way through the thick jungle foliage. She also knew that it was ultimately useless. She was gasping for breath already, and Emily would not last more than another few minutes, while their pursuers, she had no doubt, were virtually tireless. If !Xabbu hoped they would be able to wade all the way to the next transition point, which might be ten or twenty miles away, it was a brave but hopeless thought.
Lion had taken notice of their strategy. One of his bear-monsters crashed out of the undergrowth and down onto the bank, which crumbled beneath its weight and toppled the creature into the river, but it came up quickly, mossy fur streaming, eyeless vegetable head snapping spiny jaws as it set out through the shallows in dishearteningly swift pursuit. Renie dug on even faster, half-carrying Emily, who was having trouble keeping her balance, but she could hear the wallowing noises behind her growing closer, paced by the thunder of the bankside pursuit as it plowed through jungle.
Her legs had grown dangerously rubbery when she spotted a thin gray-brown arm waving from a tree branch just ahead.
“This way!” !Xabbu called. As they stumbled to the branch he grabbed at Emily and helped her up onto the bank. The creature behind them did not roar or hiss or otherwise show emotion, but it dropped forward so that it could wade on all fours, increasing its speed. The horrid vegetable head furrowed the water like a tanker’s prow.
Renie and Emily staggered after !Xabbu, up the bank and through the clinging branches.
“I thought I would be able to travel more quickly through the trees than you could,” he explained as they fought their way into the jungle.
“But where are we going? We’ll never outrun them.”
“Just here,” he said as he stopped to help a weeping Emily untangle herself from a vine. He was panting himself, but his voice was oddly calm. “Only a few steps more. Ah, this is it.”
They limped into a small, empty clearing covered with tumbled branches and a mulch of fallen leaves. Light arrowed down through the trees and the hanging creepers as through the window of a cathedral. The noise of pursuit was terribly close.
“But there’s nothing here.” Renie looked at her friend in despair, wondering if the strain had finally driven him mad. “Nothing!”
“You are right,” he said, raising his small hand. The first of Lion’s plant-bears reeled into view, smashing its way toward them through the trees. “There is truly nothing here at all . . . if you only look.”
A column of golden light flared in front of them, a tight helix curling endlessly on itself like a molten barber pole. An instant later it flattened and spread into a perfect rectangle. Renie could see nothing within the four straight sides except shifting colors, like the imprisoned rainbow of a radioactive soap bubble. !Xabbu took Emily’s hand in one grip and Renie’s in the other and led them toward it.
“How did you. . . ?” she began, almost beyond the point of surprise.
“Later I will tell. We must hurry now.”
Two more plant-bears had appeared behind the first, and the
dimmer but no less menacing figure of their master was right behind them; Lion shouted something at the fugitives, but his words were lost in the distorted, animal roar of his voice. “We can’t take Emily out of her simulation,” Renie said, frantic with the dwindling moment. “But if we leave her, they’ll get her. Hurt her, take her baby.”
!Xabbu shook his head, still pulling them both along. Renie caught Emily’s eye, wanting to say she was sorry, but the girl was gray with fatigue, head down and stumbling. Renie hoped that whatever the system did to a Puppet when it tried to leave the simworld, it would be quick and painless. Perhaps it would even move Emily to some other part of Kansas.
Then the glow of the gateway was all around them, a flaring plasma sunspot that gave off no heat, and Lion’s rising bellow of frustration was silenced.
They tumbled to a stop on a solid something which would have been the ground in a sane universe. Instead, it was a bumpy planar surface, angled like a hillside. The land, if it could be called that, was a curious patchwork, with all manner of colors moving in sluggish animation from surface to surface, slashed with jagged veins of flat, unreflective white, like bone showing through lacerated skin. But most disturbingly of all, in many parts of this surreal environment—particularly unsettling all across the expanse of what should have been sky—there was simply no color. But no color, she realized before her mind revolted and she had to shut her eyes, was not black, or white, or even the gray of a lost signal. It was simply . . . no color.
“Jesus Mercy,” groaned Renie after a long moment, half-reverent, half-terrified. “Where are we, !Xabbu? And how did you make that happen?” She opened her eyes a slit, looking for her friend. What landscape she could see on the periphery of her vision was uneven, with suggestions of blocky, malformed things that might have been mountains, or trees, but trying to see them made her head hurt.