Sea of Silver Light (149 page)

"Oh, Martine, you seem so sad."

The featureless sim shrugged. "There is little in it worth talking about."

"And you seem very angry about Paul."

She did not reply immediately. On the other side of the table, Bonnie Mae Simpkins laughed at some remark of !Xabbu's, although the small man looked entirely serious.

"Paul Jonas was very unhappy . . . at the end," Martine finally said. "He was devastated to realize that he was a copy, as he put it. That he could never have the things he wanted most of all—that he was separated forever from the life he remembered. Yes, I am angry. He was a good, good man. He did not deserve that. Sellars had no right."

Renie thought that somehow, Martine felt the same kinds of things Paul had. "Sellars was doing his best. We all were."

"Yes, I know." The edge was gone and only listlessness remained. Renie almost missed the anger. "But I cannot get it out of my mind. His loneliness. That feeling of being exiled from your own life. . . ."

Renie was trying to think of something reassuring to say until she noticed that the quality of Martine's silence had changed. Even without a facial expression to read, Renie could see a certain tension, an alertness in the woman's sim that hadn't been there before.

"I have been a fool," Martine said suddenly. "A selfish fool."

"What. . . ?"

"I'm sorry, Renie. I have no more time to talk. We will speak later, I promise." With that, she disappeared.

Troubled, Renie wandered back around the table.

"Javier is criticizing my appearance," Florimel announced.

"Chance not!" T4b said. The glyphs of light on his cheeks dimmed when he blushed. "Just saying that the patch looks chizz. She only did some other stuff, could be major scorchery."

"Like what?" Florimel gave him a severe look. "Buy my sim some gigantic breasts?"

Javier shook his head vigorously. "Didn't say that, me—not all unrespectful like that! Just meant you could get some sub-Ds. Like your initials, something. . . ." He trailed off and his own subdermals became even harder to see. "Oh. You molly-dupping me, huh?"

"If that means teasing, Javier, then yes." Florimel shared an amused glance with Renie. "But why are
you
so dressed up? I'm assuming that is what you really look like today. Such nice clothes just for old friends like us?"

He shrugged. "Got an interview, me."

"For a job?" Renie asked.

"Chance not. Tryin' to get back into school. AGAPA."

"Arizona General and Pastoral Academy," Mrs. Simpkins elaborated.

"Seen. It was Bonnie Mae's idea, like." He suddenly looked like he wanted to back away from the gathering. "Well, mine too."

"Tell them what you want to do, Javier," Mrs. Simpkins said.

He scowled, "Thought . . . thought after all the things happened, I might try to be . . . a minister, like. Youth minister, seen? Work with micros." His shoulders came up as if to protect him from a beating. He looked at Florimel out of the corner of his eye.

Renie and !Xabbu congratulated him, but he was waiting for something.

"Well," Florimel said after a moment. "I think that is a wonderful idea, Javier. I really do." Smiling, she leaned forward and carefully kissed him on his glowing cheek. "I hope your dream comes true."

Even as his subdermals threatened to disappear entirely, another kind of light stole onto his face. "Make it through all that
sayee lo
stuff, can make it through anything, me," he promised.

"Amen," said Bonnie Mae.

CHAPTER 53

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"Are you ready?" Catur Ramsey did his best to keep his voice calm. His stomach was full of small active flutterings, and he of all of them had the least reason to be nervous. Jet lag didn't help. "I think it's time."

"I don't know." Vivien Fennis looked around their living room as if she might never see it again. "I don't know what to do."

"Should we say something?" asked Conrad Gardiner hoarsely. He had been pacing for half an hour while the other two made sure the gear for his wife's new neurocannula was working properly, and now he could hardly sit still on the couch. "Or is there some . . . button we have to push?"

"No." Ramsey smiled. "If you're ready, just let me and Mr. Sellars do the rest."

The transition was instantaneous: one moment they were in a well-furnished California house in a gated community, the next on a path at the edge of a dark and ancient forest.

"Oh my God," said Vivien. She turned away from the trees and surveyed the meadowed hills, the grass glinting with dew in the morning sunshine. "It's . . . it's so real!"

"Not quite up to the network's earlier standards," said Ramsey. "But yes, it's still pretty impressive, isn't it? I haven't got used to it myself."

"Who's that?" asked Conrad. "Is that. . . ?"

Ramsey squinted at the figure coming down the curving hill path. "No, it's Sam Fredericks, right on time."

She waved, then walked briskly toward them, a little incongruous-looking in her pants and dark shirt. Ramsey could not help an inward flinch of embarrassment as he remembered her reaction when he suggested that for such a special occasion she could wear a dress if she wanted to. Still, he had to admit that other than the workaday teenager clothes, she looked like someone who belonged in a storybook setting like this, her eyes bright, her cloud of fluffy brown hair wrapped but not contained by a bright scarf.

She stopped in front of them, suddenly shy. "You're . . . you're Orlando's parents, right?"

"Yes. I'm Vivien and this is Conrad." Ramsey had to admire the woman's aplomb. After all, in the impatient hours leading up to this he had seen almost all of the emotions she was now hiding so effectively. "And you must be Sam. We've met your folks." She hesitated, then swept Sam into a trembling hug. Both of them hung on for a moment as though unsure what to do. "We feel like . . . we feel like we know you, too," Vivien said, releasing her.

Sam nodded. Her own careful composure was also threatening to come undone. "Well, I guess we oughta go," she said after a moment. "He's waiting."

As the four of them made their way up the curving, stone-lined path, Ramsey saw that Orlando's parents were holding hands.
They've had too much horror to practice on,
he thought—
but maybe it helps now.

Still, how could anyone be ready for this?

"What . . . what is this place?" Vivien asked. They had almost reached the top of the hill. A river splashed down beside the path, loud among the reeds, the water so musical it almost chimed. Behind them the forest spread like a shadowy, frozen ocean. "I've never seen anything like it."

"It's from Orlando's favorite book," Sam said. "Somebody had made it already. He could have lived in a castle or something, one of the fancy parts, but he liked this part better." She turned her gaze down to the ground; her smile was strained.

"Somebody . . . made this?" asked Conrad. "I guess I knew that, but. . . ."

"There's more than this," said Ramsey. "Lots more. You can see it all someday if you want."

"You should see Rivendell!" Sam offered. "It's so chizz! Even without the elves."

Conrad Gardiner shook his head in bafflement, but his wife was no longer listening. As they neared the crest of the low hill they could see the next rise. On a knoll above them stood a low house made of stone and wood surrounded by trees, simple in construction but somehow perfect for its setting. "Oh my God," Vivien said quietly as they reached the bottom of the short slope and started up again. "Is that it? I didn't know I'd be so nervous."

A figure appeared in the doorway. It looked down on them but did not smile or wave.

"Who is that?" asked Conrad Gardiner. "That doesn't look anything like. . . ."

"Oh, Conrad, don't you listen?" Her voice sounded like something about to rip at the edge. "That's what he looks here. Now." She turned to Ramsey eyes wide. "Isn't that right? Isn't it?"

Catur Ramsey could only nod; he no longer trusted himself to speak. When he turned back the figure was making its way down the path toward them.

"He's so big!" Vivien said. "So big!"

"You should have seen him before he got younger." Sam Fredericks laughed—a little wildly, Ramsey thought. He stopped and touched Sam's arm, reminding her. They let Orlando's parents walk the rest of the short distance to meet him by themselves.

"Orlando. . . ?" Ramsey could hear sudden doubt in the woman's voice as she looked at the tall, black-haired youth before her. "Is that . . . are you. . . ?"

"It's me, Vivien." He lifted his hands, then suddenly clamped them over his nose and mouth for a moment as though to keep in something that wanted powerfully to escape. "It's me, Mom."

She closed the distance in a step and threw her arms around him so hard that they both almost toppled onto the turf beside the path. "Hey, careful!" Orlando said, laughing raggedly, then Conrad had grabbed them both. The threesome did stumble then, and fell to the grass in awkward stages. They sat holding each other, babbling things that Ramsey could not quite hear.

Vivien was the first to lean back, but she kept one hand against Orlando's face and gripped his arm with the other, as if afraid to let him go. "But how . . . I don't understand. . . ." Her hands not free to wipe her face, she could only shake her head and sniff loudly. "I mean, I understand—Mr. Ramsey explained, or tried to, but. . . ." She pulled his hand against her own cheek, then kissed it. "Are you certain it's you?" Her smile was crooked, her eyes bright with fear and hope. "I mean, really you?"

"I don't know." Orlando watched her as though he had forgotten what she looked like and might have only this small time to rememorize her features. "I don't know. But I feel like me. I think like me. I just . . . I don't have a real body anymore."

"We'll do something about it." Conrad Gardiner had a fixed, miserable grin on his face and was holding Orlando's other arm with both hands. "Specialists . . . somebody must. . . ." He shook his head, suddenly speechless.

Orlando smiled. "Believe me—there
are
no specialists in this stuff. But maybe someday." His smile faded a little. "Just be glad for what we have."

"Oh, Orlando, we are," said his mother.

"Think of it . . . think of it like I'm in Heaven. Except you can visit me whenever you want." Tears were running down his cheeks again. "Don't cry, Mom! You're scanning me out."

"Sorry." She let go of him for a moment to blot away her own tears with the arm of her blouse, stopped to stare at it. "It . . . feels like it's real. This all does." She looked at her son. "So do you, even if I've never seen . . . this version of you before."

"It feels real, too," he said. "And this is what I look like now. That other me—well, he's gone. You don't ever have to look at him again and feel sorry because . . . because he looked like that."

"We never cared!"

"You cared about how I felt when other people stared at me." He reached out and touched her cheek, caught a drop of wetness there. "This is how it is now, Vivien. It's not all bad, is it?" He swallowed hard, then suddenly sprang to his feet, pulling his parents up as though they were children.

"You're so strong!"

"I'm Thargor the barbarian—sort of." Orlando grinned. "But I don't think I'll use that name anymore. It's kind of . . . woofie." He was eager to move now. "Let me show you my house. It's not really mine. I'm just borrowing it from Tom Bombadil until I build my own."

"Tom. . . ?"

"Bombadil. Come on, you remember—you were the one who told me to read it in the first place." He pulled her to him and hugged her; when he let go she was in tears again, swaying. "I want to show you all of it. The next time you're here the barrow wights and Tom and Goldberry and everyone will be back. It'll be different." He turned to Ramsey and Sam. "You two—come on! You should see the view I have down the river valley."

As Orlando's parents brushed leaves and grass from their clothes, they were startled by a movement at their feet. Something black, hairy, and decidedly bizarre climbed out from underneath one of the borderstones along the path.

"You gotta do something about those little psychos, boss," it shouted. "They're makin' me nuts!" It saw Orlando's guests and stopped, eyes impossibly wide.

Vivien took an involuntary step backward. "What. . . ?"

"This is Beezle," Orlando said, grinning again. "Beezle, these are my parents, Vivien and Conrad."