River of Blue Fire (37 page)

“Florimel, who is as aggressively private as William, troubles me most of all. On the surface, she is all business, terse and almost contemptuous of the needs of others. But she herself seems at other times to be barely holding together, although I doubt anyone else would notice that but me. There are such strange fluctuations in her . . . what is the word?
Affect
, I think. There are such odd but subtle changes in her affect that at times it seems like she is a multiple personality. But I have never heard of a multiple personality pretending to be only one person. From what I understand, in true multiples each internal personage revels in its chance to become dominant.

“Still, my ability to understand all that I perceive is still limited, so perhaps I am mistaken, or am overinterpreting small oddities in her behavior. She is strong and brave. She has done no wrong and much good. I should judge her on that alone.

“Last of this small group, which may contain all that are left of Sellars' desperate attempt to solve the Otherland enigma—after all, we can only hope that Renie and the others have survived—is the young man who calls himself T4b. That he
is
a man is also an assumption, of course. But certainly there are times when his energies and presentation feel decidedly
male
to me—he has a barely-hidden swagger sometimes that I have never seen on any woman. But he can be careful, too, in a curiously feminine way, which is why I assume he is younger than he pretends. It is impossible to discern age or anything else from his street dialect, which forces a few short words to serve a variety of meanings—he might be as young as ten or eleven for all I can tell.

“So here I am, with four people who are strangers, in a dangerous place surrounded by, I have no doubt, even
more
dangerous places. Our enemies must number in the thousands, with immense power and wealth on their side, and the controls to these pocket universes in their hands. We, in contrast, have already seen our number halved in just a few days.

“We are doomed, of course. If we even survive to reach the next simulation, it will be a miracle. There is danger everywhere. A spider the size of a truck caught an insect a few meters from me just yesterday afternoon—I could hear the fly's vibrations change as the life was sucked out of it, one of the most chilling things I have ever experienced in worlds real or virtual. I am so frightened.

“But from here on I will continue this journal as though that were not true, as though I believed that someday I might again move through the familiar spaces of my home and think about these moments as something in the past, as part of a heroic but diminishing time.

“I pray to God that may be true.

“Now someone
is
stirring. I must go, returning to this strange voyage. I will not say good-bye to you, my journal-of-the-air. I will only say, ‘Until I see you again.'

“But I fear it is a lie.

“
Code Delphi. End here
.”

T
HE cat, with her usual queenly indifference to everything not directly Jones-related, was grooming herself in Dulcie Anwin's lap. Her mistress was psyching herself up for a confrontation. At least, that was what the first glass of that not-great Tangshan red had been about. The second glass—well, perhaps because the first had not made her ready
enough
.

She didn't want to do it. That was really what it came down to, and he would have to understand that. She was a specialist, had spent more than a dozen years refining her skills, had received on-the-job training that your average gear hack couldn't even imagine—the recent job in Cartagena had been perhaps the bloodiest, certainly for her personally, but by no means the oddest or most far-flung—and it was ridiculous for him to expect her just to shove that aside and become a full-time babysitter for a hijacked sim.

And for how long? Judging by the wandering way this whole thing was going, those people might be a year stuck in this network, if their life-support held up. She would have to give up even the pretense of a social life. She hadn't had a date in almost six weeks as it was, hadn't gotten laid in months, but this would be ridiculous. In fact, the whole thing was ridiculous. Dread would have to understand that. He wasn't even her boss, after all. She was a
contractor
—he was just one of the people she worked for, when she chose. She had
killed
a man, for Christ's sake! (A brief moment of worry squeezed her at this last thought. There was something rather jinxlike about that accidental juxtaposition.) She certainly didn't have to curry favor like some little mouse of a junior assistant.

Jones' increasingly energetic grooming was beginning to annoy her, so she dumped the cat off her lap. Jones shot her a look of reproach, then sauntered away toward the kitchen.

“
Priority call
,” announced the wallscreen voice. “
You have a priority call
.”

“Shit.” Dulcie drained the last of her wine. She tucked her shirt into her pants—she wasn't going to be answering the phone in her robe any more; that was just
asking
not to be respected—and sat up straight. “
Answer
.”

Dread's face popped onto the screen, a meter high. His brown skin had been scrubbed, his thick unruly hair pulled back in a knot behind his head. He also seemed more focused than he had earlier, when half the time he had seemed to be listening to some inner voice.

“Evening,” he said, smiling. “You're looking well.”

“Listen.” She barely took a breath—no point in beating around the bush. “I don't want to do it. Not full-time. I know what you're going to say, and I'm certainly aware that you have lots of important things to do, but that still doesn't mean you can force me to take over the whole thing. It's not the money either. You've been very, very generous. But I don't want to do this full-time—it's been hard enough as it is. And although I will never say another word about it to anyone no matter what happens, if you insist, I'll have to resign.” She took a deep breath. Her employer's face was almost entirely still. Then another smile began to grow, a strange one; his lips quirked up in a wide curve but never parted. His broad white teeth were entirely hidden.

“Dulcie, Dulcie,” he said at last, shaking his head in a mockery of disappointment. “I called you back to say that I
don't
want you to take over the sim full-time.”

“You don't?”

“No. I thought about what you said, and it makes sense. We risk making a more noticeable change. Whatever pattern we're showing by having two of us doing it, the blind woman may have already decided it's just the way our sim acts.”

“So . . . so we're going to keep on splitting the job?” She snatched for something to help regain her emotional balance—she had leaned so far in anticipation of an argument that she was in danger of falling over. “But for how long? Is this just open-ended?”

“For the present.” Dread's eyes seemed very bright. “We'll see what happens in the long run. And, in fact, you may have to take a little larger share of sim-time than you've been doing, especially in the next few days. The Old Man's put me onto something, and I have to get him some answers, keep him happy.” The smile again, but smaller and more secretive. “But I'll still be taking over the puppet on a regular basis. I've got used to it, see? I kind of like it. And there's some . . . some things I'd like to try.”

Dulcie was relieved, but also felt she was missing something. “So, then that's it, right? Things just kind of go on as they have. I do my job. You . . . you keep paying me the big credits.” She knew her laugh didn't sound particularly convincing. “Like that.”

“Like that.” He nodded and his picture vanished.

Dulcie had several long seconds to feel herself relaxing, then his face popped on again without warning, forcing her to stifle a squeak. “Oh, and Dulcie?”

“Yes?”

“You won't resign. I just thought I should point that out. I'll treat you well, but you won't do
anything
unless I tell you to. If you even think about quitting, or telling anyone, or doing anything unusual with the sim without my permission, I will murder you.”

Now he showed the teeth, and they seemed to spring out from his dark face and fill the wallscreen like a row of grave markers. “But first we'll dance, Dulcie.” He spoke with the dreadful calm of the damned discussing the weather in hell. “Yes, we'll dance. My way.”

Long after he had clicked off, she was still wide-eyed and shivering.

CHAPTER 15

A Late Crismustreat

NETFEED/DOC/GAME: IEN, Hr. 18 (Eu, NAm)—“TAKEDOWN!”

(
visual: Raphael and Thelma Biaginni in front of burning house, crying.
)

VO: The controversial contest/documentary continues with tonight's Part Five. Contestant Sammo Edders follows up his successful (and ratings-busting) arson on the Biaginni's house with an attempt to kidnap the three Biaggini children. Smart money has the rapidly destabilizing Raphael B. committing suicide long before the tenth and final episode
 . . .

R
ENIE stared at the hollow man, at his nodding head of straw, and her fear was washed away in a surge of indignation. “What do you mean, execute us?” She pulled herself free of the girl Emily's clinging grip. The idea that this lolling
thing
, this clownish figure from an old children's movie, should threaten them . . . “You're not even real!”

The Scarecrow's one mobile eye squinted quizzically and a weary smile twisted his sock-puppet mouth. “Whoa, there. Hurt my feelings, why don't you?” He raised his voice. “
Weedle
! I said change these wretched filters!” The rather nasty-looking little ape scampered forward, wings twitching, and began to pull at one of the mechanical devices attached to the throne. “No, I changed my mind,” Scarecrow said, “get those damn tiktoks back in here first.”

!Xabbu stood on his hind legs. “We will fight you. We have not come through so much just to lay down like dust.”

“Oh, my God, another ape.” The Scarecrow settled back in its throne, rattling the welter of pumps and tubes. “As if Weedle and his little flymonk pals weren't enough. I should never have saved them from Forest—it's not like they're grateful or anything.”

A door hissed open and a half-dozen tiktoks stepped forward out of the darkness and into the light.

“Good,” sighed the Scarecrow. “Take these outsiders away, will you? Put them in one of the holding cells—make sure the windows are too small for the baboon to get out.”

The tiktoks did not move.

“Get on with it! What's your problem?” Scarecrow hoisted himself forward, sack head wobbling. “Oil dirty? Overwound? What?”

Something clicked, then a low whistle hummed through the small underground chamber. A new light flickered in the shadows, a shimmering rectangle that revealed itself to be a wallscreen in a frame of polished tubing, with dials and meters all along its lower edge. For a few seconds there was only static, then a dark, cylindrical shape began to form in the center of the screen.

“
Hello, Squishy
,” it said to the Scarecrow.

Emily screamed.

The head on the screen was made entirely of gray, dully-gleaming metal, a brutal, pistonlike thing with a small slot for a mouth and no eyes at all. Renie felt herself drawing back with instinctive revulsion.

“What do you want, Tinman?” The studied boredom of Scarecrow's words did not completely mask a nervous undercurrent. “Given up on those little dust-devils of yours? Keep throwing ‘em at me if you want. I eat ‘em like candy.”

“I'm rather proud of those tornadoes, now that you mention it.” The metal thing had a voice like the buzz of an electric razor. “And you have to admit they're demoralizing to your meat-minions. But I called about something else, actually. Here, let me show you—it's cute.” The bantering, inhuman voice took on a note of command. “
Tiktoks, do a little dance
!”

Horribly, all six of the windup men began to stumble through a series of clanking, elephantine steps, looking more than ever like broken toys.

“I located and usurped your frequency, my dear old friend.” As Tinman laughed its grating laugh, the door inside its mouth slid up and down several times. “You must have known it was only a matter of time—the tiktoks were really supposed to be mine, after all. So, Uncle Wiggly, I'm afraid we're in one of those
game over
situations which you player-types know so well.” It indulged itself in another scraping chuckle. “I'm sure you'll be relieved to hear I'm not going to waste time on the standard ‘now I have you at my mercy' speech.
Tiktoks, kill them now. All of them
.” The tiktoks abruptly ended their dance and took a juddering step into the center of the room, jackhammer arms raised. Emily waited with the stunned fatalism of a born slave; Renie grabbed her and dragged her back against the wall. Tinman swiveled the blank curvature of its head, following the movement. “Tiktoks, wait,” he ordered. “And what are
these
, Scarecrow? Your charming guests, I mean.”

“None of your business, fender-face,” wheezed the Scarecrow. “Go ahead and make your play.”

Renie stared at the goggling, idiot faces of the mechanical men and wondered whether she could dodge past them, but it was hard to weigh the chances of successful escape when the room's periphery was in darkness. Was the way they had come in still open? And how about Emily? Would she have to drag the girl with her, or could she leave her behind, gambling that she was only a sim? Could she do it even if she knew so for certain? The suffering in these simulation worlds seemed very real—could she condemn even a Puppet to torture and death?

Renie reached down for !Xabbu's hand but felt nothing. The baboon had disappeared into the shadows.

“Tiktok, examine that woman,” Tinman ordered.

Renie straightened, hands raised to defend herself, but the mechanical man lumbered past her and lifted its clawlike hands toward Emily, who moaned and shrank back. It swept its pincers slowly up and down the length of her body, never closer than a few inches, like airport security running density-detectors over the pockets of a suspicious passenger. Emily turned her face away, weeping again. A few moments later the tiktok stepped back and its arms dropped to its rounded sides.

“Goodness,” said Tinman, as though he had read the information directly from the tiktok's internal workings. “Goodness, gracious me. Could it be?” The buzzing voice had a peculiar cracked resonance—perhaps surprise. “My enemy, you astonish me. You have found . . . the Dorothy?”

Emily sank to the floor, limp with fright. Renie moved near her, the protective impulse the only thing that made sense in this entire, incomprehensible drama.

“Piss off,” Scarecrow wheezed, clearly fighting for breath. “You can't have . . .”

“Oh, but I can. Tiktoks, kill them all except the emily,” he rasped. “Bring her to me immediately.”

The four clockwork men nearest the Scarecrow's throne turned and began to shuffle toward him, spreading into a crescent formation. The other two turned to face Renie and Emily where they stood in the shadows against the wall.

“Metal boy, you are so stupid that I'm beginning to get bored.” Scarecrow shook his ponderous head, then hawked up something unpleasant and spat it into the corner. When the mechanical men reached the base of his throne, he raised his gloved hand and pulled a hanging cord.

With an immense, booming
clang
, as though an immense hammer had struck an appropriately sized anvil, the floor all around his throne abruptly fell away beneath the tiktoks. They dropped out of sight, but Renie could hear them pinballing downward for three or four long seconds, banging against the metal walls.

“Tiktoks, bring the emily to me!” Tinman ordered the two remaining mechanical men. “I may not be able to get you, Scarecrow, but you can't do anything to stop them either!”

Renie didn't know if that were true or not, but she did not wait to find out. She threw herself forward, hands extended, and thumped her palms against the nearest tiktok's chest. The creature was heavy, and only rocked, but one of its cylindrical legs swiveled in an unsteady step backward, protecting its balance.

“
Weedle
!” shouted the Scarecrow. “
Puzzle, Malinger, Blip
!”

Ignoring this nonsense, Renie bent her knees and wrapped her arms around the tiktok's barrel torso—she could feel the grinding vibration of the thing's gears right through to her bones—and shoved again, pushing with all the strength in her long legs. A foam-padded pincer found her arm, but she jerked her wrist free just before the claw could close, then heaved again, struggling to keep her weight low and her legs extended. The tiktok tilted, forced into another backward step to keep upright. The claw groped for her again, but she gave one last shove and jumped free. The thing took a rolling drunken step and its gear noises rose to the whine of an angry mosquito. It teetered at the edge of the pit that had opened around the Scarecrow's throne, then toppled and was gone.

Renie had only a heartbeat to savor her triumph before another pair of padded claws closed on her side and shoulder, pinching her so hard in both places that she yelped in shocked agony. The second tiktok did not hesitate, but shoved her across the concrete floor toward the open trench where the others had gone. Renie could only scream panicky curses and thrash at the thing behind her with useless backhand blows.

“!Xabbu?” she cried. “Emily! Help me!” She tried to dig in her heels but could not slow herself. The pit yawned.

Something surged past her and the pressure on her shoulder abruptly eased. She craned and saw that something small and simian had wrapped itself around the tiktok's face. The mechanical man was flailing at it, but its short arms were not able to do effective damage.

“Xabbu. . . !” she began, then suddenly several more monkey shapes dropped down out of the darkness overhead. The tiktok jerked its other arm free to flail at its attackers. Released, Renie fell to her knees and crawled away from the pit, fiery pain coursing along both sides.

The tiktok was now stumbling, blind and beset, but its flailing defense took a toll. One of the monkeys was batted from the air and fell limply to the ground. The tiktok took a few awkward steps, then seemed to find its balance. Another monkey was struck down with a horrible wet crunch as the tiktok began to move slowly toward Renie again. She could not see in the darkened chamber whether either of the two battered shapes was !Xabbu's.

Abruptly, and without warning, the chamber, the struggling tiktok, the monkeys, and the Scarecrow enthroned amid his clutter of life support, all turned inside out.

It seemed to Renie that a million camera flashes all blazed at once. The small pools of light became black, the shadows flared into blinding color, and everything jerked and stuttered simultaneously, as though the universe had slipped a sprocket. As she felt herself wrenched into a thousand pieces, Renie screamed, but there was no sound, only a vast low hum that ran through everything like a foghorn buried deep in the heart of the world.

Her sense of her body was gone. She was whirled in a vortex, then spread thin over a thousand miles of nothing, and all that remained to her was the single point of consciousness that could do nothing more than cling to the bare idea that it existed.

Then, as suddenly as everything had happened, it stopped. The bleeding colors of the universe ran backward, the negative became positive, and the chamber was restored.

Renie lay gasping on the floor. Emily was stretched beside her, whimpering, arms wrapped around her head in a futile effort to keep the chaos at bay.

“Jesus H. Christ,” slurred the Scarecrow. “I
hate
when that happens.”

Renie dragged herself up onto her knees. The remaining tiktok lay in the middle of the chamber, its arms twitching slowly back and forth, its pocket-watch innards apparently disrupted past recovery. The two surviving monkeys hovered over it, wings whirring at hummingbird speed, staring fearfully around the room as though everything might go mad again any second.

The screen from which Tinman's eyeless face had watched them now displayed only a confetti-shower of static.

“That's been happening too often lately.” The Scarecrow propped his head between two hands and furrowed his burlap brow. “I used to think it was Tinman's doing, like the tornadoes—it's a bit too advanced for Lion—but he wouldn't have chosen that timing, would he?”

“What's going on here?” Renie crawled to examine both monkey corpses—neither of them were !Xabbu. “Are you all crazy? And what have you done with my friend?”

Scarecrow had just opened his mouth to say something annoyed when a small shape appeared at his shoulder.

“Stop!” The baboon reached down and grabbed one of Scarecrow's larger hoses firmly in his long fingers, then followed its length until he gripped the tube just where it entered the straw man's body at the neck. “If you do not let my friend go free,” !Xabbu said, “and the girl Emily, too—I will pull this away!”

Scarecrow craned his head. “You are
definitely
out-of-towners,” he noted pityingly. “Weedle! Malinger! Come get him.”

As the flying monkeys shot toward the throne, !Xabbu wrenched the tube free. A wisp of cotton batting floated free of the end; as the monkeys caught him and pulled him up into the air, it swirled lazily in their wake.