River of Blue Fire (8 page)

“Orlando?”

The voice was familiar. The feeling of being in the world was less so. He squinted and turned toward the voice.

“You're awake!” Fredericks' face was very close. Orlando realized after a moment that it was his friend's arm he felt around his waist, and that Fredericks was holding on to the edge of the leaf while they both floated chest-deep in the warm river.

“Well, cheers and welcome to the party, sunshine.” Sweet William, looking not unlike a wet black cockatoo, was clinging to the leaf-edge a few yards away. “Does this mean he can swim now, so we don't have to keep dragging you two back on board every few minutes?”

“Leave him alone,” growled Fredericks. “He's really sick.”

“He's right,” a woman's voice said. “Arguing is a waste of time.”

Orlando craned his neck—it felt boneless as taffy—to focus on the faces beyond Fredericks' shoulder. Three female sims, the women named Quan Li, Florimel, and Martine, had clambered up to a higher part of the leaf, and were holding fast to the slope. Florimel, who had spoken, looked back at him intently. “How are you?”

Orlando shook his head. “I've felt better. But I've felt worse, too.”

A vibration shuddered the leaf. Orlando grabbed at Fredericks and reached for the leaf's edge with his other hand, his heart suddenly racing. After a moment, the vibration ceased.

“I think we scraped on a root,” Florimel said. “We are close enough to the bank that we should swim the rest of the way.”

“I don't think I can do it.” Orlando hated to admit weakness, but there wasn't much he could hide from these folks, not after they'd been watching him flounder in and out of consciousness for however long it had been.

“Don't worry your pretty little head,” Sweet William replied. “We'll just carry you on our backs all the way to the Emerald City, or Mordor, or wherever the hell it is we're going. Isn't that how it works in those stories? Buddies till the end?”

“Oh, shut up,” offered Fredericks.

Orlando closed his eyes and concentrated on keeping his head above water. A few minutes later the leaf shuddered again, then bumped to a halt, rocking in the gentle current.

“We do not know how long this is going to remain snagged here,” Florimel pointed out. “Let us head for the shore now—it is not far.”

“Everybody wants to be in charge, don't they?” Sweet William sighed theatrically. “Well, soonest muddled, soonest mended. Let's get on with it.” He splashed free of the leaf and swam until he was level with Fredericks.

Orlando wondered a little dreamily what William was doing, then was abruptly jerked away from the leaf by an arm around his neck and tumbled backward into the water. He thrashed, trying to get free.

“Stop fighting, you prat,” spluttered William. “Or I
will
let you swim by yourself.”

When Orlando realized that the other was trying, in his idiosyncratic way, to help him to shore, he relaxed. William set out with a surprisingly powerful stroke. As Orlando floated backward, his chin in the crook of the death-clown's arm, he watched the blue tropical sky overhead, wider than anything he had ever seen, and wondered if this dream was going to continue forever.

This locks so utterly
, he thought.
Here I am, in a place where I could be like everyone else—better than everyone else—and I'm still sick
.

But his muscles didn't feel as weak as they had at first, which was interesting. He made a couple of experimental kicks, just to see, and was rewarded by a wet snarl from Sweet William: “You're knocking me off-balance. Whatever you're doing . . . don't do it.”

Orlando relaxed, feeling a small pleasure at the returning responsiveness of his virtual flesh.

A few moments later William dragged him up onto the rounded stones of the beach, then stood over him, sodden plumes draggled on his shoulders and head. “Now, just wait there, Hero Boy,” he said. “Think good thoughts. I've got to go back and wrestle the blind lady onto shore.”

Orlando was more than content to lie in the warm sun and flex his fingers and toes, working up after a few minutes to arm- and leg-stretching. His lungs still hurt if he took anything but the shallowest breaths, and all his muscles ached, but he felt almost none of the slippery, disconnected dreaminess he had experienced since commandeering Atasco's royal barge. But a bit of internal darkness remained to trouble him, a shadow he could not quite name or clearly see.

Something happened. I had a
 . . .
a dream? With Beezle in it? And some kind of little kid
? It was troubling because it seemed meaningless, while at the same time something was whispering deep in his thoughts that it was all very meaningful indeed.
Was I supposed to do something? Help someone
? Another thought, slow to coalesce, but even more chilling:
Was I almost dead? I went down into the dark. Was I dying
?

He opened his eyes to watch the rest of the group trudging ashore, Sweet William carrying Martine in his arms. He set her down beside Orlando with surprising tenderness. It was only as the others hunkered down in a small circle that Orlando suddenly realized that something else was wrong, too.

“Where are the others? Where's . . . ?” For a long moment he could not remember the names. “Where's Renie—and her friend? And the guy in the body armor?”

Quan Li shook her head but said nothing, looking down at the stones of the beach.

“Gone,” said Florimel. “Perhaps drowned, perhaps washed up somewhere else.” There was a false note in her matter-of-fact speech, something that might have been pain sternly repressed. “We were all washed overboard. Those you see here were able to cling to the leaf. Your friend pulled you back and held your head above the water, which is why you are alive.”

Orlando turned to Fredericks. “So take me to
Law Net Live
,” Fredericks said defiantly. “I wasn't going to let you drown just because you're an idiot.” Something turned in Orlando's stomach. How many times had his friend saved his life recently?

As it to underscore the question, Sweet William added: “In fact, my duck, just before we tipped over, you stopped breathing for a bit. Flossie here gave you mouth-to-mouth whatsit.”

“Florimel, not Flossie.” She glowered at the bedraggled William. “Anyone would have done the same.”

“Thank you.” Despite another debt of gratitude, Orlando wasn't sure how he felt about the fierce woman, and for the first time he realized the magnitude of their loss. “Could we look for Renie and the others? I mean, what if they need help?”

“Some of us aren't quite as perky, because
we
didn't get a free ride,” said William. “Some of us are that tired, we could lie down right here and sleep for a week.”

Orlando looked along the riverbank; from his shrunken perspective it was a thing of huge brown arroyos and thin stretches of stony beach. The river, a vast stretch of green that seemed active as a storm-brushed sea, wound away into the distance. On the far side of the riverbank loomed the first of the forest trees, each one as vast as the world-ash of Norse legend, tall as Jack's beanstalk. But more than just the size of things was puzzling. “It's morning,” he said. “It was evening just a little while ago. Does the time jump around here?”

“Hark at him.” William laughed. “Just because he had a nice nap while the rest of us did the dogpaddle all night, he thinks time went all funny.”

Orlando felt sure that somewhere his real face was flushed pink. “Oh. Sorry.” He snatched at something to say. “So are we going to spend the night here? Do we need to make a fire or something?”

Martine, who had been silent since William carried her ashore, abruptly sat up straight, her eyes wide. “There is something . . .!” She brought her hands to her face, rubbing so hard Orlando feared she would hurt herself even through the tactors. “No, someone . . .” Her mouth fell open and her face distorted, as though she silently screamed. She flung out a hand, pointing down the river course. “
There
! Someone is there!”

All turned to follow her gesture. A short distance away stood a white-shrouded human figure of their own size, looking down at something along the river's edge that was invisible from where they sat. Orlando struggled to get onto his feet, but was immediately struck by a wave of dizziness.

“Orlando, don't!” Fredericks scrambled up and took his arm. Orlando wavered and tried to take a step forward, but the weakness was too much. He swayed in place, trying to find his balance.

Florimel was already walking swiftly toward the spot, picking her way over the uneven stones. Sweet William followed her.

“Be careful!” called Quan Li, then moved to take Martine's hand. The French woman's sim still gazed sightlessly, head turning slowly from side to side like a tracking dish unable to lock onto a signal.

As Orlando managed his first steps, inhibited more than helped by Fredericks' insistence on propping him up, the white-cloaked form turned toward Florimel and William as though realizing for the first time that there were others present. Orlando thought he saw a glint of eyes in the shadows of the hood, then the figure vanished.

Fredericks let out a breath. “Scanny. Did you see that? He just disappeared!”

“It's . . . VR,” panted Orlando. “What did you . . . expect, a . . . puff of smoke?”

Their two companions were kneeling over something that lay in one of the shallow backwaters of the river. At first Orlando thought it was some kind of discarded machinery, but it was far too shiny to have been in the water long. When William and Florimel helped the machinery to sit up, Orlando suddenly recognized it.

“Look who we have here!” William shouted. “It's BangBang the Metal Boy!”

They helped T4b out of the water as Orlando tottered forward on Fredericks' arm; an observer might have thought that two ancient and venerable celebrities were being introduced.

“Are you okay?” Fredericks asked the warrior robot. Florimel began checking T4b in much the same way any accident victim might be checked, flexing joints, exploring for a pulse reading. Orlando wondered how much good that would do on a sim. “I mean, wow.” Fredericks took a deep breath. “We thought you were dead!”

“And what
do
we call you, anyway?” fluted William. “I forgot to ask. Is just ‘T' acceptable, or do you prefer ‘Mr. Four Bee?”'

T4b groaned and brought a spike-gauntleted hand up to his face. “Feel pure
fenfen
, me. Fish ate me.” He shook his head and one of his helmet prongs almost poked Florimel in the eye. “Puked me up, too.” He sighted. “Doing that again? Never.”

“T
‘S not much, but it's home,” Cullen declared. Renie could see nothing but a sprinkle of dimly-glowing lights before them.

“Hold up.” Lenore's voice was sharp. “We got a bogey at 12:30 and closing.”

“What is it?”

“One of those damn quetzals, I think.” Lenore scowled, then turned to Renie and !Xabbu. “Birds.”

“Hold tight.” Cullen dropped the dragonfly into a steep dive. “Better still, grab those belts and strap in.”

Renie and !Xabbu fumbled their way into the crash-belts hanging in the alcove. They fell for only seconds, then slowed so swiftly that Renie felt she was being squeezed like an accordion. They were floating downward, as far as Renie could tell, when a mechanical wheeze and bang came from underneath their feet, making her and !Xabbu jump.

“Extending the legs,” explained Lenore. As the dragonfly thumped down on something, she continued to stare at the readouts. “We'll just wait until the damn bird gets bored. They can't see you if you're not moving.”

Renie could not understand these people. They acted as though they were playing some sort of complex game. Perhaps they were. “Why do you have to do this?” she asked.

Cullen snorted. “So it doesn't eat us. Now there's a real waste of time.”

“All clear,” said Lenore. “He's circled off. Give it another few seconds to be on the safe side, but I see nothing except empty skies.”

Shuddering, the wings beating hard, the dragonfly lifted off again. Cullen aimed it at the lights once more, which flattened as they drew closer into a vertical wall of gleaming points. One rectangular spill of light grew larger and larger before them, until it revealed itself as a huge, square doorway that dwarfed the aircraft as they passed through. Cullen brought the dragonfly in neatly, hovered for a moment, then landed.

“Top floor,” he said. “Mandibles, chitinous exoskeletons, and ladies' lingerie. Everyone out.”

Renie felt a sudden urge to smack him, but it diffused in the effort of dragging her tired body out of the crash-belt and through the hatchway behind the two dragonfly pilots. !Xabbu followed her down, climbing slowly so as not to hurry her.

The insect-plane stood in a vast hangar whose outside door was just now sliding shut with a whine of hard-working gears. Renie thought of the military base in the Drakensbergs, and then had to remind herself that the base was real but this place was not. Like all the Otherland simulations, it was incredibly lifelike, a high-ceilinged architectural monster constructed of, or appearing to be constructed of, fibramic tie-girders, plasteel plates, and acres of fluorescent lighting. All the half-dozen sims who trotted forward to begin servicing the dragonfly had individual and very realistic faces. She wondered if any of them represented real people.

She suddenly realized she had no idea whether even their rescuers were real.

“Come on.” Lenore beckoned. “We'll debrief you—that shouldn't take long, although Angela may want a chat with you—then we'll show you around.”

The Hive, as Lenore kept calling it, was a huge installation built into a mound of forest earth. The mound, in comparison to the tiny humans, was even larger than the mountain containing the Wasp's Nest base, but Renie thought the whole thing still seemed an eerie parallel to their RL situation. As they walked out of the landing bay into a long corridor, Lenore and Cullen in front arguing amiably, !Xabbu pacing on all fours beside her, she wondered again whether this was some kind of elaborate game-world.