River of Blue Fire (28 page)

“Midnight.” The cartoon Indian smiled a hard smile. “When all of Kitchen awake.”

I
T
was the same nightmare; as always, he was powerless before it. The glass broke, showering outward into the sunlight like a spray of water, each piece spinning like a separate planet, the cloud of iridescence a universe that had lost its equilibrium and was now flying apart in high-speed entropic expansion.

The cries echoed and echoed, as they always did.

He woke, shuddering, and brought his hand to his face, expecting to feel tears, or at least the sweat of terror, but his own features were hard and cold beneath his fingers. He was in his throne room in the lamplit great hall of Abydos-That-Was. He had fallen asleep and the old nightmare had returned. Had he cried out? The eyes of a thousand kneeling priests were on him, startled stares in frozen faces, like mice caught in the pantry when the light is switched on.

He rubbed his mask of a face again, half-believing that when he took his hands away he would see something else—but what? His American fortress on the shore of Lake Borgne? The inside of the tank that kept his failing body alive? Or the house of his childhood, the chateau in Limoux, where so much had begun?

The thought of it brought him a sudden picture, the reproduction of David's drawing that had hung on the back of his bedroom door, Napoleon the First crowning himself emperor while a disconsolate pope looked on. What an odd picture to have in a child's room! But he had been an odd child, of course, and something in the grandeur of the Corsican's unstoppable self-belief had caught his imagination.

It was strange to think of the old house again, to see so clearly his mother's heavy curtains and thick Savonnerie carpets, when all of it—and all of the people except him—were so many, many years gone.

Felix Jongleur was the oldest human being on Earth. Of that he felt certain. He had lived through both World Wars of the previous century, had watched the foundation and decay of the Communist nations of the east and seen the rise of the city-states along the Pacific Rim. His fortune, established first in West Africa, in bauxite and nickel and sisal, had grown with the years, spreading into industries of which his
hommes des affaires
father, Jean-Loup, could never have even dreamed. But though his fortune was self-renewing, Jongleur himself was not, and as the century and the millennium waned, the bolder news agencies readied their obituaries, with the emphasis on the mysteries and unfounded assertions that had clouded his long career. But the obituaries remained unused. In the decades after the turn of the new century, he had abandoned day-to-day use of his dying body in favor of an existence in virtual space. He had slowed his physical aging by, among other things, experimental cryogenic techniques, and as the facilities of virtuality had improved—in large part because of research funded out of his own fortune, and the fortunes of like-minded folk he had gathered around him—he had found himself reborn into a second life.

Like Osiris in truth
, he thought.
The Lord of the Western Horizon, slain by his brother, then resurrected by his wife to live forever. The master of life and death
.

But even in the sleep of gods, there could be bad dreams.

“
Great is he who brings life to the grain, and to green things
,” someone was singing nearby. “
O, Lord of the Two Lands, he who is mighty in worship and infinite in wisdom, I beg that you hear me
.”

He took his hands away from his face—how long had he been sitting this way?—and frowned at the priest who writhed on his belly at the bottom of the steps. Sometimes the rituals he had designed annoyed even him. “You may speak.”

“O, Divine One, we have received a communication from our brethren in the temple of your dark brother, the burned one, the red, raw one.” The priest bumped his face against the floor, as though even to speak of that entity pained him. “They wish most urgently to drink of your wisdom, O Great House.”

Set. The Other. Jongleur—no, he was fully Osiris again; he needed the armor of godhood—straightened on his throne. “Why was I not told at once?”

“They have only now spoken to us, Lord. They await your divine breath.”

No one would interrupt his meditations for a problem germane only to the simulation—it was unthinkable—so he knew it must be the engineers.

Osiris gestured, and a window opened before him in the air. For half an instant, he could see the anxious face of one of the technicians from the Temple of Set, then the image froze. The technician's voice fizzed and died, then crackled into life again, like a radio signal during sunspot activity.

“. . . 
Need a greater . . . readings are . . . please give us
 . . .” The voice did not come back.

The god was perturbed. He would have to go to them. He would have none of his usual time to prepare. But it was not to be helped. The Grail—everything—depended on the Other. And only he, of all the Brotherhood, realized how precarious a foundation that was.

He gestured again. The window disappeared. A score of priests carrying something huge and flat came hurrying forward from the shadows at the back of the great hall. The other priests struggled to get out of the way, but some could not and were knocked down and then trampled by those carrying the ponderous burden. Osiris took a breath to calm himself, to find the peaceful center where problems were solved and death itself had been so often outwitted, as two score of priests raised the polished bronze mirror before him, groaning beneath its immense weight.

Osiris rose, and watched himself rise, observing with a little satisfaction even in this moment the majesty of the Lord of the West standing before his throne. He walked forward until he could see nothing but his own brazen reflection, paused for one last moment, then stepped through.

The temple was deserted except for half a dozen men in desert-pale robes. The priest-technicians were so upset that none of them remembered to kneel as Osiris appeared, but the god put aside his displeasure for the moment. “I could not understand your message. What is wrong?”

The chief engineer pointed to the door of the tomb chamber. “We can't get through. It . . .
he
 . . . won't let us.”

Osiris thought the man seemed curiously intense, his energy almost feverish. “Are you speaking metaphorically?”

The priest shook his head. “He's resisting communication, but his readings are very, very low. Frighteningly low.” He took a breath, and ran his hands through hair that did not grace the shaven-headed sim. “It started about an hour ago, a real fast downturn. That's why Freimann was trying to communicate—just to see if he was capable of it, or if he was . . . I don't know what you'd call it. Sick.” Again the quaver in the priest's voice, as though at any moment he might burst out laughing or weeping.

“Someone other than me spoke to him?”

The head shake was more emphatic now. “Freimann tried. I told him we should wait until you got here. But he was top of the onsite CoC and he overruled me. He got on the direct line and tried voice communication.”

“And nothing happened.”

“Nothing? No, something definitely happened. Freimann's dead.”

The god shut his eyes for a brief moment. So this was the reason for the technician's overexcited state. Would he have to deal with two emergencies at the same time, a tantrum by the Other and a mutiny among his hired lackeys? “Tell me.”

“Not much to tell. Just . . . he opened the line. Asked if . . . if the Other was there. Did it . . . did
he
, sorry . . . did he want something. Then Freimann made a funny noise and just . . . stopped. His sim went rigid. Kenzo dropped offline and found him on his office floor, bleeding from the nose and the corners of his eyes. Profound cerebral hemorrhage, as far as we can tell.”

Osiris swallowed an involuntary curse; it seemed inappropriate to bring other deities into his own godworld, even in name only. “Is someone taking care of it?”

“It?” A strangled laugh escaped the technician. “You mean Freimann? Yes, security has been called in. If you mean the other ‘it,' none of us are going near him. We've been convinced. He doesn't want to talk to us, we don't want to talk to him.” The laugh again, threatening to turn into something else. “This wasn't in the job description, you know.”

“Oh, pull yourself together. What is your name?”

The priest seemed taken aback—as if a god had time to memorize every one of his worshiper's names. “My real name?”

Behind the mask of the deity, Osiris rolled his eyes. Discipline was breaking down entirely. He would have to think of a way to stiffen this whole department. He had believed he had hired tough-minded types. Obviously, he had underestimated the effect of daily contact with the Other. “Your Eyptian name. And make it quick, or security will have to drop by your office, too.”

“Oh.
Oh
. It's Seneb, sir. Lord.”

“Seneb, my servant, there is nothing to fear. You and the others will remain at your positions.” He had been tempted to give them all the afternoon off while he dealt with the Other's latest bit of bad behavior, but he didn't want them talking to each other, reinforcing their fears and comparing notes. “I will speak with him myself. Open the connection.”

“He's closed it, sir—Lord.”

“I realize that. But I want it open, at least on our end. Do I make myself clear?”

The priest made a shaky obeisance and scuttled off. Osiris drifted forward until he hung before the great doors to the tomb chamber. The hieroglyphs incised in the dark stone glowed, as if aroused by his presence. The doors swung open.

Inside, the subtle cues of a throughputting connection were gone. The black basalt sarcophagus lay as cold and inert as a lump of coal. There was none of the usual charged air, none of the feelings of standing before a portal into a not-quite-comprehensible elsewhere. The god spread his bandaged arms before the great casket.

“My brother, will you talk to me? Will you tell me what is paining you?”

The sarcophagus remained a mute lump of black stone.

“If you need help, we will give it to you. If something is hurting you, we can make it stop.”

Nothing.

“Very well.” The god floated closer. “Let me remind you that I can also
give
pain. Do you wish us to make it more difficult for you? You must speak to me. You must speak to me, or I will cause you even greater unhappiness.”

There was a subtle change in the room, a tiny adjustment of angles or light. As Osiris learned forward, he heard the voice of Seneb, the priest, in his ear.

“
Lord, he's opened
 . . .”

“Shut up.”
Idiot. If these were not such difficult positions to fill properly, I would have him killed this instant
. The god waited expectantly.

It rose up as if from some unimaginable distance, a shred of voice from the bottom of a deep, deep well. At first Osiris could hear it only as a sussuration, and for a moment he feared he had been mistaken, that he was listening to the movement of the sands of the endless desert outside. Then he began to hear words.

“. . . 
an angel touched me . . . an angel . . . touched me . . . an angel . . . touched . . . me
 . . .”

Over and over, the refrain went on, as scratchy and remote as something played on a gramophone back in Felix Jongleur's childhood. Only the bizarre lilt to the painfully inhuman voice demonstrated that the words were supposed to have a melody. The god stood listening in amazement and confusion and more than a little fear.

The Other was singing.

I
N his dream he thought it was an airplane, something from a history-of-flight documentary, all struts and guywires and canvas. It passed him, and someone in the cockpit waved, and there was a smiling monkey painted on the plane's side, and even though it was flying away now, the sputtering noise of the engine got louder and louder. . . .

Orlando opened his eyes to darkness. The noise was right next to him, and for a moment he thought the dream had followed him, that Renie and !Xabbu were flying toward him and would take him back to the real world. He rolled over, blinking blearily. Chief Strike Anywhere was snoring, and it did indeed seem as loud as a small plane. The Indian's outsized nose was bouncing like a balloon in the stream of his exhaled breath. His squaw lay curled beside him, snoring in coloratura counterpoint.

It's a cartoon
. It still hadn't quite sunk in.
I'm living in a cartoon
. Then the dream came back to him.

“Fredericks,” he whispered. “Where's Renie and !Xabbu? They came through with us, but where are they?”

There was no reply. He turned to shake his friend awake, but Fredericks was gone. Beyond the empty bedroll, the flap of the teepee fluttered in the wind of the chief's noisy slumbers.

Orlando clambered to his knees and crawled toward the flap, heart suddenly pounding. Outside, he found himself surrounded by boxes and bottles, and although he could not easily make out the labels in the near-dark (the lightbulb had been dimmed so that it barely shone) he could hear the sound of loud snores coming from some of them as well. To his left, the facing wall of the kitchen cabinets led up to the sink, as invisible from his position as the top of a tall plateau. There was no sign of Fredericks there, and no visible way for him to have climbed it. Containers of various kinds blocked Orlando's view to the other side of the table. He walked forward, stepping carefully past a wrapped bar of something called Blue Jaguar Hand Soap, which rumbled rather than snored.

He saw the glow first, a faint red light outlining the edge of the table like a miniature sunset. It took him a moment to make out the dark silhouette. Was it Fredericks? What was he doing standing so close to the edge?