River of Blue Fire (59 page)

“Who are you?” Orlando asked. “Are you a real person? Are you trapped here?”

“
I am only a shadow
,” she sighed. “
I am the wind in empty spaces
.” Great weariness dragged at her words, as though she explained something that could not possibly make any difference. “
I am
 . . .
the queen of air and darkness. What do you want of me
?”

“Where . . .” Fredericks was trying hard to master his voice, which wanted to squeak. “Where are our friends? We've lost our friends.”

For a long time there was only silence, and Orlando feared she had dropped back into slumber, but the mists eddied a little and he saw that her dark eyes were still open, still staring at something unseeable. “
All of you have been called
,” she said then. “
You will find that which you seek as the sun sets on Priam's walls. But another waits for you, too. He is close, but he is also far away. He is coming
.”

“Coming? Who's coming?” Orlando leaned forward, as though proximity could make things clearer. “Coming when?”

“
He is coming now
.” The words, spoken with a distant carelessness, sent a shiver through Orlando that had absolutely nothing to do with the frost. “
He is already here. He is the One who dreams
—
we are his nightmares. He dreams you, too
.”

“What is she talking about?” Fredericks demanded, tugging at Orlando's hand in growing anxiety. “Who's coming? Here?”

“
Let me sleep again
,” the voice said, the faintest tone of petulance creeping in, a child dragged from her bed for some incomprehensible, grown-up purpose. “
Let me sleep. The light is so far away
 . . .”

“We'll find our friends at Priam's what?” Orlando asked. “Priam's walls?”

“
He comes
.” Her voice was growing fainter. “
Please let me go. Don't you understand? I have
 . . .
lost
 . . .
my
 . . .” The rest of her words were too faint to hear. The lids slid back down to cover the great, dark eyes.

As they stood in silence, the mist rose again until the coffin was completely obscured. Orlando turned, but it was even hard to see Fredericks, though his friend stood only an arm's length away. For a long moment Orlando felt himself weighted down by a crushing sadness, a misery that for once was not his own, and it left him speechless.

“I think we should go,” he began at last, then the light changed and things were immediately, inexplicably different.

“
Orlando
 . . . ?” Fredericks' voice suddenly seemed very far away. Orlando reached out but his fingers, first probing, then frantically grabbing, touched nothing. His friend was gone.

“
Fredericks? Sam
?”

The mist around him began to glow, a diffuse gleam that turned the whole world translucent, as though he were trapped in the center of a piece of quartz. The light, which at first had only been a brighter whiteness, soured into an unnameable color, a hue that on a not-quite-imaginable spectrum where red did not exist would have fallen directly between purple and orange. A horrible electric fear pinned Orlando, sweeping away all sense of up and down, pushing away the walls and the floor so that the light itself became a void, an absence, and he was the only living thing left, falling endlessly in the terrible orange-lavender nothing.

Something wrapped itself around him—something that was the void, but was not the void. It spoke in his head. He became its words, and each word was a thing painful to shape, painful even to think, an inhumanly powerful howl of misery.

Angry
, it said inside him. The thoughts, the feelings, became the entire universe, turned him inside-out, raw against the great emptiness.
Hurt things
, it said, and he felt how it hurt, and how it would hurt others.
Lonely
, it said.

The bit of him that still was Orlando understood suddenly, and dreadfully, that there was something more frightening than Death.

Black mountain
. The words were also a vision, a black spike that stretched so high the very stars were shoved aside in the night sky, a terrifying vertiginous thing that grew up from impossibility into sheer blasphemy.
Kill everything. My children
 . . .
my children
 . . .
kill everything
.

And then it was gone, and the void turned inside out again with a silent clap like all the thunder that had ever been. Then the mist and the white burst into being around him once more. Orlando fell onto his face in the snowy floor and wept tears that froze hard on his eyelids and cheeks.

After a while, Fredericks was beside him—so abruptly and completely that it made a strong argument that his friend had been quite dramatically
somewhere else
. Orlando stood. They looked at each other. Even though they saw Pithlit and Thargor, the pretend-faces of a children's game, both could tell without uttering a word that the other had heard the same things, felt the same indescribable presence. There was actually nothing that could be said just then, or needed to be. Shivering and silent, they made their way back through the mounds, through the now-voiceless freezer, and at last staggered out to the place where the mists grew thin.

Chief Strike Anywhere was waiting at the freezer door. He looked at them and shook his head, but his large hands were gentle as he helped them onto the shelf below and then assisted them in the long climb down to the base of the Ice Box.

Neither of them could walk very well. The chief kept them from falling until the battlefield was a good distance behind them, then found a protected spot against the base of the counter where they could huddle, and built a fire before it. As they stared in dull stupefaction at the flicker of the flames, he got up and vanished into the darkness.

Orlando's thoughts were at first small and flat and without much meaning, but after a while the worst of the shock ebbed away. By the time the chief returned some time later with the tortoise, and carrying his blanketed baby sleeping in his arms—the top of Little Spark's head was blackened, but he seemed otherwise healthy—Orlando was at least able to muster a faint smile.

He fell asleep still staring at the fire, the flames a curtain that obscured, but did not entirely hide, the darkness beyond.

CHAPTER 22

Inside Out

NETFEED/ENTERTAINMENT: Ronnies Deny Non-Existence

(visual: DYHTRRRAR giving press conference, Luanda Hilton)

VO: The flurry group Did You Have To Run Run Run Away Ronnie? gave its first ever live press conference in Luanda, Angola, to refute the rumors that they are in fact software Puppets. The all-female group have been magnets for rumors ever since their first net appearances, and suspicious critics have called them “too contrived, too perfect,” to be real. Ribalasia Ronnie, speaking for the group, read this statement
:

R. RONNIE: “It's a shame when hard-working artists have to waste their time trying to prove that they're real people
 . . .
”

But the press gathered in Luanda were not an easy crowd
.

REPORTER: “How do we know that you're not lookalikes selected to match the gear
. . . 
?”

R
ENIE leaned on the railing where !Xabbu was perched and watched the dark, faintly oily river.

Another day
, she thought,
another world. God help me, I'm tired
.

The Works was slipping away behind them, the tangle of pipe and pylon crowding along the bank infiltrated and then gradually replaced by cottonwood trees and sedge, the flicker of security lights supplanted by a waxing prairie moon. If she ignored the dull throb of pain from cuts and bruises, and the baboon shape her friend wore, she could almost convince herself she was somewhere normal. Almost.

She sighed. “This isn't going to work, you know.”

!Xabbu turned, flipping his tail to the outside of the rail so he could face her. “What do you mean, Renie?”

“All of this.” She waved her hand, encompassing Azador, sullen and silent at the wheel, Emily in fitful sleep in the cabin, the river and the Kansas night. “This whole approach. We're just being dragged—or chased—from place to place. From simulation to simulation. We're no closer to our goal, and we're certainly no threat to the bastards who got my brother.”

“Ah.” !Xabbu scratched his arm. “And what is our goal, then? I do not ask to make a joke.”

“I know.” She frowned and let herself slide down until she was sitting on the deck with her back to the gunwale, staring now at the opposite but equally dark and quiet riverbank. “Sellars told us to look for this Jonas person, but that's the last we've heard of Sellars. So how do we find Jonas, out of millions of virtual people? It's impossible.” She shrugged. “And there are all kinds of new questions, too. What's-his-name, Kunohara, said that your friends in the Circle were tied up in this somehow, too.”

“They are not my friends, exactly, if he was talking about the same group. They are people for whom I have respect, an organization of men and women who try to help others of their tribes, and who helped me. Or so I believed.”

“I know, !Xabbu, I'm not accusing you of anything. I couldn't tell whether he meant they were helping the Grail people or fighting them, anyway. What did he say? ‘Opposite sides of the same coin'?” She leaned her head back against the railing, overwhelmed by it all. They had been in this virtual universe so long! How was Stephen? Had there been any change in his condition? And how was her father, for that matter, and Jeremiah? It was almost impossible to consider that they might be only inches away from her. It was like believing in the world of spirits.

“If I would be making a guess,” !Xabbu began slowly, “it would be that Kunohara meant the Grail people and the Circle are at war, somehow. But he did not think there was really much difference between them.”

“Could be.” She frowned. “But I'm tired of guessing at things. I want facts. I need information.” Either the river was narrowing, she noted absently, or Azador was steering them closer to the bank: the trees loomed higher than they had only minutes before, their shadowy presence blocking more of the sky. “We need a map, or we need to know where Martine and the others are. Or both.” She sighed. “Damn it, what happened to Sellars? Has he given up on us?”

“Perhaps he cannot get back into the network,” !Xabbu suggested. “Or he can, but like us, he can only search without knowing.”

“God, what a gloomy thought.” She sat up, ignoring the protesting ache from her back and legs. “We need information, that's all there is to it. We don't even understand how
this
place works.” She swiveled. “Azador!”

He looked up but did not answer.

“Fine, then,” she said, dragging herself upright. “As you wish.” She limped to the back of the tugboat, !Xabbu trailing after. “It seems like a good time to talk,” she told the man. “What do you think?”

Azador took a last drag, then flicked his cigarette over his shoulder. “The river is getting smaller. Narrower, I mean.”

“That's nice, but I don't want to talk about the bloody river. I want to talk about you and what you know.”

He eyed her coldly. He had found some bargeman's coat, which hid the holes torn in his boiler suit and the dreadful bruises they revealed. Blood had dried on his face in patches. She could not help remembering how he had thrown himself into a crowd of their enemies. He might be irritating, but he was no coward. “You talk,” he said. “Me, I don't talk. I am sick of talking.”

“Sick of talking? What does that mean? What have you told us about yourself? That you're a gypsy? Do you want a medal for that? Help us, damn it! We are in trouble here. So are you!”

He turned up his collar, then took yet another cigarette and screwed it into the corner of his mouth below his dark mustache. Frustrated, Renie broke her own resolution and extended her hand. Azador smirked, but gave her one. Then, in what seemed an uncharacteristic act of courtesy, he insisted on lighting it for her.

“So?” she tried again. She disliked herself for giving in to her addiction so easily and so quickly. “Tell me something—anything! Where did you find cigarettes?”

“Things, objects, do not travel from one world to another,” he said flatly. “I found these on someone's desk in New Emerald City.” He smirked. “Munchkin goods are salvage under rules of war.”

Renie ignored his joke, if it was one. “Objects do translate—I've seen it. Orlan . . . I mean, one of our friends had a sword in one simulation, then he had it in the next one, too.”

Azador waved his hand dismissively. “That was someone's possession—like clothes. Those go everywhere the sim goes. And some of the things that travel,” he pointed down to the deck, “like a boat, they go to the next simulation, but then they change. There is another thing like them in the next world, but . . . but different.”

“An analogue,” Renie said. Like the boat from Temilún that had become a leaf.

“Yes, that. But cigarettes, other small things—money or someone else's jewels that you have found—these you cannot carry from one world to another.”

She had little doubt what he meant by “found” but knew better than to say so; it was much better to keep him happy and talking as long as he seemed willing. “How did you learn so much? Have you been in this network a long time?”

“Oh, very long time,” he said offhandedly. “I have been many places. And I hear things at the Fair.”

Renie was puzzled. “What do you mean, the fair?”

For the first time in the conversation Azador looked uncomfortable, as though he might have said more than he wished. But neither was he the type who would admit to second thoughts. “Romany Fair,” he said, in a tone that suggested Renie should be ashamed not to have known already. She waited a moment for an amplification, but none came. Even with his present talkative mood, the man was not what anyone would call long-winded.

“Right,” she said at last, “Romany Fair. And that is. . . ?”

“It is where the travelers—the Romany—meet, of course.”

“What is it, another simworld?” She turned to !Xabbu, wondering if he were making any more out of this than she was. Her friend was perched on the stern rail. He did not seem to be listening, staring out at the files of trees slipping past on either side as the long, silvery “V” of the river narrowed behind them in the moonlit distance.

“It is not a place, it is . . . a gathering. It changes. The travelers come. When it is over, they leave, and next time it is somewhere else.” He shrugged.

“And it's here in . . . in this network?” She had almost called it the Grail Project—she was having trouble remembering what information she had already let slip in front of him. Her head and muscles were still throbbing with the pain of their escape, God only knew what or who would try to kill them next, and she was finding it increasingly difficult to keep track of the lies and evasions that security demanded.

“Of course!” He was full of scorn that she could even imagine something different. “This is the best place—this is where all the rich people have hidden their greatest treasures. Why should we travelers settle for second-best?”

“You mean you and your friends roam around here at will, having little parties? But how did you get in? This place has security that kills people!”

Did she again see a moment's hesitation? A shadow? But when Azador laughed, his harsh amusement sounded genuine enough. “There is no security that can keep out the Romany. We are a free people—the last free people. We go where we want to go.”

“What does that mean?” A sudden thought occurred to her. “Wait a moment. If you can all agree on a place to meet, then that must mean you can find your way around—you must know how to use the gates.”

Azador looked at her with studied indifference.

“Jesus Mercy, if that's so, you have to tell me! We have to find our friends—people's lives depend on it!” She reached out to clutch his arm, but he shook her off. “You can't just keep it to yourself and let people die—little children, too! You can't!”

“Who are you?” He took a step away from her, scowling. “Who are you to tell me what I can do? You tell me I am a pig for what I did to that silly Puppet in there,” he slashed a hand at the cabin where Emily lay, “and then, when I have already told you much, you order me to tell you more—order me! You are a fool.” He stared at her, daring her to argue.

Renie tried to bite back her fury, which was as much at herself as at him.
When are you going to learn, girl
? she fumed.
When do you figure out how to keep your mouth shut? When
?

“I do not even know who you are,” Azador went on, his accent thickening with his anger. He looked her up and down with insulting slowness. “A white woman pretending to be a black woman? An old woman pretending to be young and beautiful? Or are you even a woman at all? That sickness is common on the net, but not, thank God, among the Romany.” He turned and spat overboard, narrowly missing !Xabbu, who stared back at him with an unreadable baboon expression. “What I do know is that you are
gorgio
. You are an outsider, not one of us. And yet you say, ‘tell me this, tell me that' like you had a right to our secrets.”

“Look, I'm sorry,” Renie began, wondering how many times she would have to apologize to this man when what she really wanted to do was slap him hard enough to knock his mustache off his lip. “I shouldn't have spoken that way, but . . .”

“There is no ‘but,”' he said. “I am tired, and it feels like all my bones are broken. You are the leader? Okay, then you steer this ugly boat. I am going to sleep.”

He let go of the wheel and stalked away around the cabin, presumably headed for the prow. Unpiloted, the boat pulled sharply toward the bank. Within seconds, Renie was so busy wrestling it back into the center of the river that she lost any chance for a parting shot, either dismissive or conciliatory.

“Next time, you talk to him,” she suggested to !Xabbu. Her scowl felt as though it had been carved permanently onto her face. “I don't seem to be handling it very well.”

Her friend slid down from the railing and padded over, then reached up to squeeze her arm. “It is not your fault. He is an angry man. Maybe he has lost his story—I think so.”

Renie squinted. The river and the trees ahead of them were so dark as to be almost inseparable from the night. “Maybe we should stop. Throw out the anchor or whatever you do. I can hardly see.”

“Sleep is a good idea.” !Xabbu nodded his head. “You need rest. We all need rest. In this place, we never know when something will happen.”

A variety of possible replies flitted through her head, some sarcastic, some not, but she didn't have the strength to waste on any of them. She throttled down the boat and let it drift toward the shallows.

Renie could feel the sun broiling her exposed skin. She groaned and rolled onto her side without opening her eyes, questing for shade, but there was none to be found. She threw her arm across her face, but now she was conscious of the sun's glare and could not ignore it. It poured down on her, as though some giant, sadistic child were focusing its rays with a titan magnifying glass.