by Tad Williams
"The river?" Florimel squinted at the wall; it seemed to pulsate gently, an illusion of the flickering torchlight. "You mean the river river? The one that runs through all the simulations?"
"I do not know, but that is how it feels. It is a torrent of change, that is all I can say for certain, and it is that way."
They began trying doors on that side of the corridor, but it was not until after at least a dozen attempts that they found one unlocked. They trooped through another large room, this one lined along the walls with gallery benches, as though it had once been used for some kind of performance. Most of the seats had collapsed. An empty space in the middle of the room where the dust was thick as icing sugar gave no indication of what the spectators might once have watched.
On the other side of a door at the room's far end they found a broad walkway, bounded on the near side by a wall not unlike the corridor they had been following, but on the far side by an ornate wooden railing. The passage was still roofed, but there was no wall behind the railing. Beyond they could see only darkness; the noise of moving water rose faintly from the void.
Renie tested the railing carefully before leaning her weight against it. The torchlight found nothing to bounce off, either across or below. "Jesus Mercy," Renie said. "It's a long way down to the river—must be at least ten floors below us."
"Don't be leaning out," T4b told her anxiously. "Just six that right now."
"I'm tired," said Emily. "I don't want to walk anymore."
!Xabbu fingered the railing. "I could climb down and see what is there."
"Don't you dare." Renie looked at the others. "Can we make it a little farther? If we turn right here we'll be heading pretty much back toward where we started."
The group agreed without much enthusiasm, although Emily continued to make her own feelings very clear. Renie did her best to be patient—the girl was pregnant, after all, or seemed to be, and they had made her walk for perhaps two hours—and concentrated instead on trying to make sense out of what they had seen so far.
"Could this be some version of Buckingham Palace or the Vatican?" she asked Martine quietly. "I mean, it's so huge!"
Martine shook her head. "It is like no place I have seen or heard of, but it seems to be bigger than either of those."
Their torches still illuminating nothing but darkness beyond the left-hand railing, their ears full of the urgent but muffled rush of water, they did not at first notice that the walkway was widening—that the wall on the right side and its row of doors had begun to curve away from the rail. When the difference had become something like a dozen meters, the companions suddenly reached a second railing that curved in from the wall side, then bent to run parallel to the first.
They stopped and looked around nervously. Although the wall that contained the doors and niches, now as familiar as a doddering uncle, continued to curve away from them to the right, the walkway beside it had run out, walled off by the second railing. Beyond, darkness lay on that side almost as deep as on the left, broken only by a few faint squares of light far in the distance. The twin railings stretched away in front of them along either side of a tongue of carpeted walkway, lonely as a trestle bridge over a gorge.
!Xabbu had already wandered past the security of the widest part, making his way cautiously out onto the carpeted spit, his torch held high despite his animal gait. "It is just as solid as it has been," he said. "And seems to be in good repair."
"Not going there," Emily said, shuddering. "Don't want to."
Renie was not particularly inclined to do so either, but she was struck by a sudden thought. "Hang on a moment. Those lights, out there." She pointed to the faintly glowing rectangles far along the right side of the great empty space.
"They are windows," said Florimel. "Why do you care?"
"They're lit windows," Renie replied. "The first lights other than our own we've seen."
"So? They are too far away even to make out properly. We did not bring binoculars."
"But there might be a crossing up ahead," Renie said. "Or this open space might only go on for a little while, then another hallway might curve out to meet it on the far side. Either way, it's the first sign of anything alive except ourselves."
The debate that followed was tense, and would have run longer except that everyone was tired. Although Martine and !Xabbu agreed with Renie, and even Florimel reluctantly admitted that it made sense to explore a little farther, Emily and T4b objected so desperately that they forced a compromise: if nothing important was discovered when Martine's undefined but so far quite reliable sense of time told her half an hour had passed, they would turn around and retrace their steps back to less nerve-racking parts.
As the little troop made its way out onto the walkway, which was of safe width and guarded by strong railings, T4b was so clearly miserable that Renie began to regret her own firmness of purpose. She remembered what Martine had said about the river-of-air—about how difficult it had been to get T4b to step out with the others and trust the wind currents—and wondered if he might be phobic.
Oh, well, she thought. Better to find out now. Might be crucial up the line somewhere.
The hulking battle-robot took a route directly down the middle of the three-meter pathway and would not walk even a step to either side, treading the rock-solid path as carefully as if on a trampoline. He shook off Renie's attempts at supportive conversation with animal sounds of discomfort.
They had gone scarcely a hundred paces when Martine abruptly clutched Renie's elbow. "I feel something," she whispered.
Renie waved the others to a stop. "Tell us."
"Something . . . someone. Maybe more. Up ahead of us."
"We're lucky to have you, Martine." Renie considered. The walkway was a bad spot to get into a fight, but the whole point of the exercise had been to find other people, perhaps learn something about this environment. In any case, why should it be someone hostile? Unless it was the Quan Li thing. . . . That gave Renie another moment's pause—it would be horrible indeed, with all of them tired and dispirited, to have to deal with the lithe, cat-quick creature that half a dozen of them had struggled vainly to subdue back in the last simulation. But it seemed unlikely that given a two-day head start their enemy would be lurking here in the middle of nothing when he or she had the Grail's access device.
No, Renie felt certain that the thing they sought would either be gone entirely or would have at least found a more comfortable part of the simulation. It wouldn't be waiting for them because it could have no idea they were coming.
Florimel agreed, although not without some reservations. After a bit more whispered argument they started forward again, this time without conversation of any kind.
They had reached something like an island—a space where the railings curved outward on either side and the floor spread, a great oval widening of the walkway like the silhouette of a python with its dinner half-digested—when Martine touched Renie's arm again.
The island was clearly meant as a place for conversation and conviviality. The railings were higher here and lined everywhere except across the walkway by tall, dusty cabinets; the open, carpeted floor was cluttered with overstuffed sofas and chairs. Even as her heart sped with anxiety and anticipation, Renie could picture the lords and ladies of the ballrooms having something like formal picnics here—perhaps in daylight, when they could see the river running far below.
Martine pointed toward a cabinet along one rail, a huge affair covered with ornate carvings, its brass door handles now black with age. The company moved quietly toward it. When they had arranged themselves in a semicircle a few meters away, Renie said loudly, "We know you're in there. Come out—we won't hurt you."
There was a pause, then the doors banged open so swiftly that one splintered off its top hinges and sagged loose. Emily screamed. The figure that leaped out of the shadowy interior was brandishing something long and sharp, and Renie had a moment to curse her own stupid certainties before the stranger stopped,
blinking in the torchlight, and raised the huge knife before him.
"I have little beside the clothes I wear," the young man declared breathlessly. "If you want them, you won't get them cheaply." The stranger was very thin, and it was hard to tell which was paler, his thatch of white-blond hair or his milky skin: if his eyes had not been dark, Renie would have thought him an albino. He waved the knife again, a wicked-looking thing as long as his forearm. "This is Gristleclip, whose fame you doubtless know, and I will not hesitate to use it!"
"Gristleclip?" Renie was almost startled into a laugh.
"We do not mean you any harm," said !Xabbu.
The young man's eyes widened briefly at the talking monkey, but he did not lower his knife—which, as Renie looked closer, appeared despite its impressive size to be something best used for chopping vegetables. "He's right," she said. "You can put your knife away."
He squinted at her, then surveyed her companions. "Where are your weapons?" he asked, a little surprised but still suspicious.
"Want weapons, you?" T4b, despite still moving like a high-wire artist in a stiff breeze, brandished a huge, spiked fist. "Op this, knife-boy."
"Stop it," Florimel told him. "We have no weapons and we want nothing from you," she told the stranger. "We are lost, that is all."
The pale young man's look of suspicion was not entirely gone, but he appeared to be considering their words. The knife sagged a little; Renie thought it must be quite heavy. "Are you from the Sunset Windows Wing?" he asked. "I do not recognize your clothes."
"Yes, we're from far away." Renie tried to sound like she was agreeing without committing herself and the others to anything. "We don't know where we are exactly, and we . . . we heard you in the cabinet. We'd appreciate any help you can give us—we'll do what we can for you in return."
His breathing now slowed, the youth stared at her hard for a moment, then carefully slid his knife into the sash at his waist. He was dressed in what Renie imagined a seventeenth century peasant would wear on his day out, all grays and browns, a blouse-like shirt with billowing sleeves over a pair of breeches, and shod in the kind of soft boots that she thought were called moccasins. "Do you swear you mean no harm?" he asked. "Swear by the Builders?"
She had no idea who the Builders might be, but she knew she and her companions had nothing against this skinny young man. "We swear."
He let out a last deep breath and deflated even farther, if such were possible. He was scarecrow thin; Renie found his willingness to stand up to a half-dozen strangers quite impressive. He surprised her then by turning to the cabinet and its sagging doors. He leaned into the shadowy interior and called, "Come out, Sidri," then turned a stern glance on Renie and her companions. "You gave your word."
The girl who stepped out was as thin and pale as her protector, wearing a long gray dress draped by a surplice figured with embroidered flowers. Renie guessed she must be the youth's sister, but he announced, "This is my betrothed, Sidri, a novice of the Linen Closet Sisters. I am Zekiel, an apprentice cutlerer—or rather I was an apprentice." There was quiet pride in his voice, and now that his beloved had appeared, he did not take his eyes from her, although she kept her own snow-lashed gaze downcast. "We are fugitives, you see, because our love was forbidden by our masters."
T4b groaned. "Not another sayee-lo fairy-story! Just want to get back on the ground, me."
"Code Delphi. Start here.
"As usual, it seems, when we find ourselves in a new simulation, we also find ourselves thrown in among people and events as complicated as anything we might find in the real world. There are differences this time, however, both good and bad. We now have a goal, which is the recovery of Renie's access device, and as I mentioned in my last weary entry, !Xabbu and I have also discovered an ability to manipulate the system by ourselves, if only in the smallest of ways. I do not have words for it—the entire process was to find a way to communicate without such things—but it has given me ideas I must carefully consider. In any case, we have entered this simulation world in pursuit of a murderer, and what little we have learned has not improved our chances of overcoming this enemy, let alone the greater villains, the Grail Brotherhood.
"Still, it is useless to worry beyond the point of careful planning, and the simulation itself is not without interest. The single large and long-deserted room which was my only experience of it during my last journal entry has proved to be only one of many such rooms. We have walked for hours through corridors and other enormous chambers, and only at the very end did we find any other living creatures—a boy named Zekiel and his lover, the girl Sidri. We have camped with them, for lack of a better word, on a wide space in a walkway high above the river, and we have all talked for hours. They have run away from their own people, which is a relief because at least now we know there are people in this echoing ruin. In fact, Zekiel says that the two of them came to this part of the house, as he calls it—a bit of an understatement for such a mammoth structure—precisely because it was deserted. They feared Sidri's religious Order would try to reclaim her, since novices are given to the Sisterhood in a kind of bond-slavery, and may not marry or leave the Order. The pair are searching for a place where they believe they can live together freely, another part of the house called the Great Refectory, which as far as I can tell they know only by ancient rumor.
"Hearing them speak I cannot help wondering at how shot through with myth and story are all the parts of Otherland we have seen. It seems an odd obsession when one considers who built the place. I had never thought of billionaire industrialists and political tyrants as being interested in the structure of folktales, but I suppose I have not truly known many of either.
"Neither Sidri nor Zekiel can be much beyond fifteen or sixteen years old, but they are the products of a more or less medieval system, and clearly consider themselves to be of adult age. Sidri's Order, the Linen Closet Sisters, apparently have some kind of ceremonial duties caring for . . . well, linens. Zekiel's own guild, centered around a place called the Cutlery, maintains edged instruments from what seems by his description to have been an antique and very extensive kitchen complex. In order to protect himself and his ladylove from bandits and monsters, both of which he claims with great certainty haunt the corridors of this abandoned part of the house, he has stolen one of the ceremonial blades—a large chopping knife with the charming name of 'Gristleclip.' For this crime, he believes he is now a wanted criminal, and I cannot doubt he is right.
"As for us, the outsiders, we still have no idea of the true size of this building or what lies beyond it. Both Sidri and Zekiel seem slightly mystified by the question, so perhaps their sharply proscribed, feudal upbringing has kept them from traveling or even inquiring. For what it is worth, we have seen signs of technologies as modern as the late nineteenth or very early twentieth century, but from Zekiel's descriptions it seems most of the residents live like early settlers in the Americas, surviving off the bounty of the house and its grounds with the same innocent rapacious-ness with which the European colonists exploited the endless natural resources of their new continent.
"Just in our short hours of conversation, we have heard Zekiel—who is more knowledgeable, because his existence has been less sheltered—casually mention at least a dozen different groups that share the house. Some he calls 'tribes,' which seems to mean that their significant characteristic is where they come from, rather than what they do—Zekiel calls his Cutlery people a 'guild,' but he has referred to others by names such as 'the Sunset Windows Tribe' or 'the Upriver Pools Tribe.' The river does indeed seem to run through this entire simulation, or at least through this immense building, which is apparently all Zekiel knows. It serves to tie the various cultures together, although its flow seems to be from the top of the house to the bottom, and thus it is convenient only for downriver journeys. Most long river trips apparently end in an even longer hike back.
"Fish live in the river, and there are fishermen who spend their lives catching them. Other sou
rces of meat are available as well, cows and pigs and sheep, which as far as I can tell are pastured in rooftop gardens, suggesting that Zekiel and Sidri are not the only people in this house who have never left the property. Has there been a plague here, I cannot help wondering? Are these folks the descendants of survivors who barricaded themselves into this great house, as in Poe's 'Masque of the Red Death,' and then never went out again? It is a strange, Gothic place, of that there can be little doubt. The idea of hunting for the person who pretended to be Quan Li through such a labyrinth fills me with unease. I cannot even guess what the mile after mile of shadowed hallways must feel like to my companions, who are not as intimate with darkness as I am.
"The discussion is breaking up. I think everyone wants sleep, although we can only guess at what the true time might be, even by the standards of the network. T4b and Emily in particular have found this a difficult day. We will continue our explorations tomorrow.
"But I cannot help wondering who made this bizarre place, and for what purpose he or she meant it. Is it a pure diversion, a Victorian folly writ large in virtual space, or was one of the Brotherhood preparing a suitably grandiose home in which to spend eternity? If the second is true, the house's creator must be someone with whom I share more than a few similarities, for the only real difference between entombing oneself in this vast ruined maze and burying oneself as I have in my underground burrow—unarguably a cave, despite its amenities—is a difference of degree, and of money. Otherwise, I would guess that the simulation's creator and I have much in common.
"I find that a very disturbing thought. "Code Delphi. End here."
But you think you have heard of such a person?" Renie asked. "A newcomer?"
Zekiel brushed his pale hair from his eyes. "I remember hearing something, Mistress, but I cannot be certain. A stranger, a woman, who said she came from one of the Attic tribes? I heard it in passing, while we were preparing for the Trooping of the Knives, and I paid little attention. People often come from far away, especially to the Library Market."