by Tad Williams
He waved her away. "Don't want to take it off, do I? Probably holding me together, like."
Renie doubted that, but she couldn't help wishing he would let her clean out any scraps of the shattered armor that had worked their way into his virtual skin—who knew what kind of opportunistic infections might be coded into this quasi-medieval House world? But T4b seemed to prefer wincing stoically at every movement, which brought tears of sympathy to Emily's huge eyes as she sat holding his hand.
"What happened to you?" Renie asked !Xabbu as she cleaned the cuts on his creased monkey hands. The repressed emotion made her voice quiver; she hoped she didn't sound like she was angry with him. "You were gone so long—where did you go? I was so worried. I mean, we all were."
Before he could reply, Martine abruptly groaned and tried to sit up. The effort failed; the blind woman rolled onto her side and made dry retching noises.
Renie crawled to her side. "Martine, it's okay. You're safe. That thing, that monster—he's dead."
Martine's eyes rolled, unfocused. "Renie?" Tears formed. "I did not think to hear your voice again. He is dead? Truly dead, or just pushed offline?"
"Well, he's out of the network." She stroked Martine's hair. "Don't try to talk—you've been hit on the head. We're all here."
"He didn't want me making noise," Martine said, "didn't want you to know he was waiting." One quivering hand stole up to touch the bump behind her ear. "Even though he was behind me, I sensed the blow coming. I leaned forward, so he did not hit me directly. I think he meant to kill me." She covered her eyes with her fingers, a curious and pathetic gesture. "I wish he were truly dead. God, how I wish it!"
Renie touched Martine's arm. Martine snatched at her hand with a surprisingly desperate grip and held it.
"We cannot go anywhere until we are healed, at least a little," said Florimel slowly. "We can stay here while we plan what we will do next. Unless there are other dangers we do not know about. . . ?"
Brother Factum Quintus, who had been quietly making bandages, looked up. "Other than bandits, some of whom you met the other day. . . ." He frowned, considering. "Hmmm. Perhaps you should gather up your enemy's guns. Yes, yes. Even if we cannot find powder or shot, they might convince a potential foe to leave you alone."
Renie nodded. "Good idea. But you have already more than done your duty to us, and we're sorry it's brought you into so much danger. If you want to get back to the Library now. . . ."
"Oh, I will, when I have helped as much as I can here. And my own small suffering has been more than worthwhile—I have seen enough new things to keep me writing and studying for years." His look turned shrewd. "But I think I see disappointment in your face. Could it be I have offended you in some way, that you are tired of my company?"
"Oh, no! Of course not. . . !" Renie stammered.
"Then I suspect it is because you have things to discuss you do not feel comfortable speaking about in front of me." The monk folded his hands in his lap. "I know that your group is unusual, and I could not help but notice that you spoke of your enemy as being other than 'truly dead,' but instead as being 'off the network.' " Factum Quintus wrinkled his brow. "What sort of net might that be? I rather doubt you are talking about the cords we use to protect the books in the Library. What do the ancients say of the word?" He paused for a moment to recall. "Yes, I believe the citation is, 'anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections. . . .' Hmmm. Unhelpful." His homely face brightened. "A metaphorical meaning, perhaps? A network can mean a political faction, or even a sort of maze. Whatever the answer, clearly there are things here I do not understand . . . and perhaps cannot understand. But even if you wish to send me away, I would ask first to hear your ape companion's tale, as the Spire Forest is largely unexplored in our day, and I cannot help wondering if he has made any interesting discoveries."
A strangely bitter smile curled along !Xabbu's baboon muzzle. "I have no objection to telling my story, although it brings me no happiness."
"Go on," Renie told her friend. Something about the monk's words or the way he said them had left her oddly troubled, and she wanted time to understand why.
"During the first hours, little happened," !Xabbu began. "I climbed many of the towers, peered in at windows, but found nothing. It was not fast work—almost every time I had to climb back down to the level of the roofs after I had finished my search, so I could be sure I was not missing any of the towers in the dark. There are many! Perhaps a hundred, and each a different kind of challenge.
"Late in the evening, as I was resting on a stone rainspout, partway up one of the larger towers, I heard voices. At first I thought they came from inside the tower. I listened carefully, thinking it might be the bandits we had already met or others like them, but I realized after a moment that the people speaking were above my head on the tower roof!
"I climbed cautiously until I found a place where I could hide behind an ornament on the roof corner and watch them. There were perhaps a dozen all together, mostly men, but I heard at least one woman's voice, and a few of the shapes were small enough to be children. They had built a fire right on the roof tiles, up against one of the chimneys, and seemed to be cooking dinner. They were even more shabby than the bandits we had met, their clothes and faces so dirty that the people themselves were hard to see even from a short distance away. Their speech, too, was unusual—I could understand much of it, but only by listening carefully. The words had strange shapes, and they pushed them together in strange ways."
"Steeplejacks!" declared Factum Quintus with deep pleasure. "They are few—in fact, some believe that there are none left. They have lived atop the House so long that they are supposed to have become part bird. Did they have wings or beaks?"
"No, they are just people," !Xabbu said. "And there are more than a few left, if I understood them correctly, since they seemed to speak of other families. But there are fewer of them now than when I found them," he added sadly.
When he had been silent a few moments, Renie asked him, "What do you mean?"
"I will come to it. Anyway, I watched them from my hiding place. They had long thin spears and nets and ropes with hooks, and I saw that they were roasting small birds over the fire. I should have left, but I stayed, hoping that they would say something that might prove useful, and they did, although it was not for a long while.
"When the birds were ready, and they had divided up the small amount of meat between themselves, two of them began a friendly argument about a shadow one of them had seen more than once in an empty place they called . . . Whipping Burn Tor—the one who had seen it swore it was a person. The other said that no lights and no fires burned there after dark, and that no one from the House—he said 'bellaroofers', which I think meant 'below-roofers'—would live without candles or oil light, which he called 'Houselights'.
"When another arrived late to the gathering, climbing up onto the roof from the far side, and asked them what they talked about, they pointed away toward where Whipping Burn was—I could see the tower I thought they meant, a faint dark shadow against the sky.
"Whipping Burn Tor," said Factum Quintus, nodding his head. "Weeping Baron's Tower."
"Yes, although I did not remember hearing the name," !Xabbu said. "I should have been thinking more clearly about many things, but I was fascinated by their talk, and by the idea that the unusual shadow the man had seen might be our enemy. I did not stop to think that there might be other late arrivals to the gathering, and that they might climb up from other directions.
"I heard them just before they stumbled on me, but too late to find a better hiding place. They climb quickly and silently, these Steeplejacks of yours. We surprised each other very badly. I was so startled that I actually jumped in the direction of the people gathered around the fire, almost into their arms. In a different place it might not have made any difference, because most people would stop and stare, which might have given me a chance to swing down off the roof and make my esc
ape. But these people were hunters, and I think they seldom see much meat at a time. Climbing roofs is hard work, and the birds they catch are mostly small, I guess. In any case, only a moment went by before someone cried out and flung a net over me."
"They do not entirely live off birds, if the old stories are true," Factum Quintus said. "They poach from the rooftop gardens and grazing places. Some even say that they will come through windows in the higher parts of the house and make away with things, shiny things to wear sometimes, but mostly food."
"I can believe anything of them," !Xabbu said. "They are quick and clever. In a way, they remind me of my own people, squeezing out a living in a hard, hard place." He shook his head. "But I had no time for sympathy. I barely escaped from under the net before they could draw it tight—if I had been a true beast, I would be roasting on a spit by now, or I would already be gnawed bones. I went over the side, scrambling down the tower walls as quickly as I could in the dark, but I had lost the advantage of surprise. Several of them came after me, hunting like a pack, whistling to each other as they spotted me moving in the darkness. Everywhere I turned it seemed another was in front of me, calling to his companions."
"!Xabbu!" Renie said. "How horrible!"
He shrugged. "Hunters and hunted. We are almost always one or the other. Perhaps it is a good thing to experience both. I have certainly been hunted more than once since we came to this network.
"I could not let them catch me, but neither could I lose them. They knew the rooftops much better than I did, and when I was down off the tower and onto the rooftops where the danger of falling was less, they could spread out and try to surround me.
"The chase went on for hours, from roof to roof. Sometimes I would find a place to hide and catch my breath, but always I would hear them coming closer, surrounding me, until I would have to run again. Again, a real animal would have had no chance, for several times they threw their spears at me, which had long cords to keep them attached to their owners. Because I was a human—because I have hunted with a spear myself—I knew that I could not let them get a good throw at me, and I always managed to dodge just as the spear flew. They must have thought me one of the cleverest or luckiest animals they had ever hunted. But even luck cannot hold out forever, and I was growing very tired.
"I made my last attempt at escape by climbing a very high, very thin tower, up to a place where I thought they could not reach me, so far up the tower spire that I did not believe they could even get close enough to throw a spear. I huddled there, clinging to an iron needle far, far above the rooftops. The sun was rising. I had no idea where above the House I was, but I thought at least I was safe.
"But the Steeplejacks are not just grown men and women. They sent a boy up after me. He was perhaps eleven or twelve years old, but he climbed as well as I do, even without the advantage of this baboon body. He drew himself up hand over hand until he found a solid foothold only a few meters beneath me, easy range for a spear throw. With the cord attached to his weapon he could simply keep trying until he hit me. Small as he was, he was still much larger than I am, so I could not even hope to catch the spear without him simply pulling me off.
"His eyes were wide, although his face was so dirty that even with the dawn sunlight I could not make out much more than that. He was clearly excited to be able to go where none of the older men could reach, joyful to be the one who would bring this prize back to his people. Perhaps this was his first hunt with the grown men. He was singing to himself or praying as he drew back his arm.
"I shouted, 'Please, do not kill me!'
"His eyes grew even wider, and he screamed 'Dimmon!'—it may have been someone's name, or just the way he said 'demon.' He tried to slide farther down, but instead he lost his balance. For a moment, as his feet went out from under him and he clung by one hand only, he stared as though despite his terror of me I might somehow save him . . . but I could do nothing. He fell. The men climbed quickly to where he had landed. One picked him up and clutched him to his chest, but the boy was clearly dead. They turned their backs on me then, as though I no longer meant anything, and took the boy and headed back toward the rest of their tribe." !Xabbu's eyes were unusually hard, as though he had decided not to speak about something that had made him very angry. "I did not dare come down for some time, and they disappeared quickly. I could only follow in the general direction they had gone. It took me much of the day to find my way back to the Spire Forest—the roofs of this House are truly endless—and another painful hour to find the place they had called 'Whipping Burn.' "
"But you did find it, !Xabbu," Renie said gently. "And you saved my life. Again."
!Xabbu shook his head. "He was only a child."
"A child who was trying to kill you," she pointed out.
"So his family could eat. I have done the same thing many times."
"It is sad, yes," said Brother Factum Quintus suddenly. "Perhaps some of us who share this House owe a little more to our less fortunate brethren than we have given. There is something in that to think on, indeed. But I am amazed to find that there are Steeplejacks on the very roofs above the Library. Amazed. What a great deal I have learned!"
"I think I am tired of being an animal," !Xabbu said quietly.
"Code Delphi. Start here.
"I will try to compose my thoughts, but it is not easy. Ever since Renie and the others took me from that small room, I have felt as though my skin has been stripped from my body. I am cold, raw. I weep easily. Something has changed me, and it does not feel as though it is for the better.
"We have come through again—passed through another portal, entered another world. I can smell the ocean and can perceive the points of demarcation that must be stars in a broad, broad sky. But no, it is too soon to tell this. Order. I must find some order. If the universe has none, or at least none we can discern, well, then it is our job to give it some. I have always believed that.
"I think I still do."
"I will start again.
"We could not leave the House immediately, even if we had all been healthy—but of course we were not. Florimel in particular was badly injured. It is a fluke that she was not killed. I think she was saved only by the unreliability of such ancient weapons, because Dread shot at her point-blank. As it is, she is still very ill from her wounds and loss of blood, and has only one eye, as we feared. Renie once said she had trouble telling the three sims apart—Quan Li's, mine, and Florimel's. That is no longer the case.
"But even had Florimel been well enough to move the first day, we would not have been able to leave the House simulation. We had recovered the lighter from the corpse Dread left behind, but it was all !Xabbu and I could do with it last time to open up a gateway we already knew was there. We had no idea if there was a gate anywhere near Weeping Baron's Tower, and it was too long a march for Florimel back to the place we had first entered the House. We used the opportunity to examine the lighter.
"I had learned more things from Dread than he supposed, which was some assistance. I was surprised the device was even functioning, since he had asked me pointedly about how easy it might be to trace, and I had told him that it seemed likely a working model could be located by its owner. For some reason, though, Dread had chosen not to turn it off.
"The abstract shorthand that !Xabbu and I had developed before was not . . . robust, I suppose would be the word . . . was not robust enough to let us use the device the way we needed to. Renie had explained to me about their strange encounter with what the monk called the Lady of the Windows, and although I had no better idea than Renie about why it had happened, it seemed foolish to ignore her summons, since it might have been Sellars forced into one of his indirections, trying to give us information. But even though we had the device, simply wanting to move to a Troy simulation world was not enough, any more than having a car and a map would help someone who had never learned to drive.
"It is hard to explain what passes between !Xabbu and me when we collaborate on these
problems. His understanding is almost purely impressionistic—augmented, I believe, by the fact that he is now perceiving network information in the same direct way as he once learned to read signs in wind and scent and drifting sand. Although we have found a sort of language where we can meet to share information, I only grasp what he has learned or sensed, not how he has learned it. The information I share with him is equally personal, equally subjective, so our progress is slow at best. Fortunately, I have enough new and practical information gleaned from Dread that Renie has been able to lend her own virtual engineering expertise to our experiments, suggesting why certain things might cause certain others, and what sorts of basic functions are likely to be performed by the device.
"I am glad we had this work to do. T4b and the child Emily are always content to live in the moment, and the monk kept himself busy making lists and drawings of the furnishings and architecture. Florimel has been too debilitated to do much except rest. But Renie chafes without things to keep her busy.
"Nevertheless, even with the huge challenge of the access device to occupy her mind, she has still been distant and distracted. I could not understand it at first, so oppressed have I been by my own feelings of vulnerability, but on the second night after my rescue, she confessed to me that Brother Factum Quintus' words had troubled her.
"She said, 'What are we trying to do? When all is said and done?'
"I told her we were trying to solve a mystery, and most importantly save the children like her brother who had been harmed by the Grail.
" 'But what if we have to destroy the network to save them—to free them?' The unhappiness in her voice was impossible to ignore. 'Not that we have a chance in hell of doing it. But what if we do, somehow? What happens to Factum Quintus? Look at him! He's planning to spend the next few years writing about all this. He's as happy as a pig in muck. He's alive! If he isn't, who is? But what happens to him and all the others if we destroy the network? The Library Brothers, those young lovers we met, your flying people in that other simworld—what happens to them all? It will be like condemning a whole galaxy to destruction!'