City of Golden Shadow (100 page)

I have lost someone, she thought suddenly. She could feel the space where that person should be. Someone dear to me is gone. An incomplete picture flitted through her thoughts, a small body, slender, a brown-skinned face with bright eyes.

Brother? she wondered. Son? Friend or lover? She knew all the words, but could not say exactly what any of them meant.

She sat up. The wind in the trees made a long sighing noise, an exhalation that surrounded her, as the trees themselves did, on all sides. What was this place?

Then, tickling her thoughts like a cough gathering in a throat, she began to hear a word. It was only a sound at first, but in her thoughts she could hear a woman's voice saying it, a sharp sound, a sound meant to get her attention: Irene! Irene!

Irene. It was her mother's voice, playing back from her memory like an old recording. Irene, put that down now. Girl, you tire me out sometimes. Irene. Irene Sulaweyo. Yes, Renie, I'm talking to you!

Renie.

And with her name, everything else came flooding back as well-her father's angry scowl and Stephen's sweet face gone slack in endless sleep, Pinetown, the wreckage of Doctor Van Bleeck's laboratory. And then the dark thing, the terrible blackness, and old Singh shrieking without any sound.

!Xabbu!

"!Xabbu?" There was no answer but the hooting green bird. She raised her voice and tried again, then remembered Martine and called her, too.

But that's foolishness. She wouldn't be here with me-she's in France, wherever. And this was clearly not France, and not the military base beneath the mountain either. This was . . . someplace else.

Where in God's name am I? "!Xabbu! !Xabbu, can you hear me?"

The vibrant jungle swallowed her voice; it died almost without echo. Renie stood on shaky legs. The experiment had clearly failed in some terrible way, but how had it resulted in this? Her surroundings were nothing like the arid Drakensberg Mountains-this looked like someplace in the north, like one of those rain forests in the West African Federation.

A thought, an impossible thought, kindled in her mind.

It couldn't be. . . .

She reached up to touch her face. Something was there, something invisible that nevertheless had form and texture beneath her probing fingers-something that even covered her eyes, although the green world before her demonstrated that nothing could be impeding her vision. . . .

Unless none of this was real. . . .

Renie grew dizzy. She sank slowly to her knees, then sat down. There was thick, soft soil beneath her, hot and alive with its own cycle of life-she could feel it! She could feel the serrated edge of a fallen leaf against the edge of her hand. The thought was impossible-but so was this place. The world around her was too real. She closed her eyes and opened them. The jungle would not go away.

Overwhelmed, she began to weep.

It's impossible. She had been walking for half an hour, struggling through thick vegetation. This quality of detail-and it goes on for miles! And there's no latency at all! It just can't be.

An insect hummed past. Renie threw out her hand and felt the tiny body smack against her knuckle and bounce off. A moment later, the bright, winged thing had struggled back into flight and was zigzagging away.

No discernible latency, even at this level of complexity. What did Singh say-trillions upon trillions of instructions per second? I've never heard of anything like this. Suddenly, she realized why the golden city had looked the way it did. At this level of technology, almost anything was possible.

"!Xabbu!" she shouted again. "Martine! Hello!" Then, a little more quietly: "Jeremiah? Is the line still working? Can you hear me? Jeremiah?"

Nobody answered her except birds.

So now what? If she was indeed in the network called Otherland, and if it was as big as Singh had said, she might be as horrendously far from anything useful as someone at the Antarctic would be from an Egyptian coffee house. Where had Singh meant to start?

The weight of hopelessness threatened for a moment to immobilize her completely. She considered just dropping offline, but rejected the thought after only short consideration. Singh had died in that . . . darkness (which was as much thought as she dared to give to what had happened) to get them here. It would be a terrible betrayal to do anything but go an. But go on where?

She ran through a quick set of exploratory commands without result. None of the standard VR control languages seemed to be in operation, or else there were permissions necessary for users to manipulate the environment that she simply didn't have.

Someone's spent an unimaginable amount of time and money to build themselves a world. Maybe they like playing God-maybe no one else gets to do anything but visit this place and take what they get.

Renie looked up. The tree-shadows had taken on a new angle, and the sky seemed just perceptibly darker. Everything else is just like RL, she thought. So maybe I better start thinking about a fire. Who knows what's going to be walking around here at night?

The impossibility of her situation once more threatened to overcome her, but beneath the shock and confusion and despair, there was also a tiny trace of sour humor. Who would ever have guessed that her precious, hard-earned college education, the thing that everyone had said would make her an integral part of the twenty-first century, would instead have led to her building imaginary fires in imaginary jungles to keep imaginary beasts at bay.

Congratulations, Renie. You are now an official imaginary primitive.

It was hopeless. Even with the trick !Xabbu had showed her, she could not manufacture a single spark. The wood had been too long on the damp ground.

Whoever made this bastard place had to be a stickler for detail, didn't he? Couldn't have left a few dry sticks around. . . .

Something rustled in the bushes. Renie jerked upright and seized one of the branches, hoping it would make a better club than it had a bonfire.

What are you so afraid of? It's a simulation. So some big old leopard or something comes out of the dark and kills you, so what?

But that would probably throw her out of the network, game over. Which would be another way of failing Singh, Stephen, everyone.

And this whole place feels too goddamn real, anyway. I don't want to find out how they'd simulate me being something's dinner.

The clear place in which she had settled was scarcely three meters wide. The moonlight filtering down through the trees was strong, but it was still only moonlight: anything big enough to harm her would probably be on her before she could react. And she couldn't even prepare herself for possible dangers, because she had no idea where she was supposed to be. Africa? Prehistoric Asia? Something completely imaginary? Whoever could dream up a city like that could invent a whole lot of monsters, too.

The rattle grew louder. Renie tried to remember the things she had read in books. Most animals, she seemed to remember, were more scared of you than you were of them. Even the big ones like lions preferred to avoid humans.

Assuming we have anything like real animals here.

Dismissing this bleak thought, she decided that rather than crouching in fear, hoping not to be discovered, she would be better off announcing her presence. She took a breath and began singing loudly.

"Genome Warriors!

Brave and strong

Battle Mutarr's evil throng

Separate the right from wrong

Mighty Genome Warriors. . . ."

It was embarrassing, but at the moment the children's show theme-one of Stephen's great favorites-was the only thing that came to her mind.

"When the mutant mastermind

Threatens all of humankind

Tries to sneak up from behind

And cut genetic ties that bind. . . ."

The rustling grew louder. Renie broke off her song and raised the club. A shaggy, strange-looking animal, somewhere between a rat and a pig in appearance and closer in size to the latter, pushed through into the clearing. Renie froze. The thing raised its snout for a moment and sniffed, but did not seem to see her. A moment later two smaller versions of the original bumbled out of the vegetation behind it. The mother made a quiet granting noise and herded her offspring back into the shrubbery, leaving Renie shaken but relieved.

The creature had looked vaguely familiar, but she certainly could not say she had recognized it. She still did not have any idea where she was supposed to be.

"Genome Warriors. . . !"

She sang again, louder this time. Apparently, at least judging by the pig-rat or whatever it was she had just met, the local fauna weren't aware that they were supposed to be afraid of humans.

". . . Bold and clean

With Chromoswords so sharp and keen

They'll fight the Muto-mix Machine

Mighty Genome Warriors!"

The moon had passed directly above her, and she had run through every song she could remember-pop tunes, themes from various net shows, nursery rhymes and tribal hymns-when she thought she heard a faint voice calling her name.

She stood, about to shout a reply, but stopped. She was no longer in her own world-she was very evidently trapped in someone else's dream-and she could not shake off the memory of the dark something that had killed Singh and handled Renie herself as though she were a toy. Perhaps this strange operating system, or whatever it was, had lost her when she slipped through, but was now looking for her. It sounded ridiculous, but the horrible living darkness followed by the overpowering realness of this place had shaken her badly.

Before she could decide what to do, something decided for her. The leaves rattled overhead, then something thumped down onto the floor of the clearing. The intruder had a head like a dog and yellow, moon-reflecting eyes. Renie tried to scream, but could not. Choking, she raised the thick branch. The thing skittered back and lifted surprisingly human fore-paws.

"Renie! It is me! !Xabbu!"

"!Xabbu? What . . . is that really you?"

The baboon settled onto its haunches. "I promise you. Do you remember the people who sit on their heels? I am wearing their shape, but behind the shape is me."

"Oh, my God." There could be no mistaking the voice. Why would anything that could copy !Xabbu's speech so perfectly bother to send an imposter in such a confusing shape? "Oh, my God, it is you!"

She ran forward and lifted the hairy animal body in her arms, and hugged it, and wept.

"But why do you look like that? Is it something that happened when we passed through that . . . whatever that was?"

!Xabbu was using his nimble baboon fingers to apply himself to fire-making. By climbing he had found some dead branches, comparatively dry because they had not yet fallen to the ground; a tiny wisp of smoke was now rising from the piece braced between his long feet.

"I told you that I had a dream," he said. "That it was time for all the First People to join together once more. I dreamed that it was time to repay the debt that my family owes to the people who sit on their heels. For that reason-and others that you would think more practical-I chose this as my secondary sim after a more ordinary human shape. But when I came through to this place, this was the body I had been given. I cannot find any way to make things change, so even when I did not wish to frighten you, I still had to remain in this form."

Renie smiled. Just being reunited with !Xabbu had lifted her spirits, and the sight of a smoldering red spot in the hollowed-out branch was lifting them higher still. "You had practical reasons for choosing that sim? What exactly is practical about being a baboon?"

!Xabbu gave her a long look. There was something inherently comical in the bony overhanging brow and canine snout, but the little man's personality still made itself felt. "Many things, Renie. I can get to places you cannot-I was able to climb a tree to find these branches, remember. I have teeth," he briefly bared his impressive fangs, "that may be useful. And I can go places and not be remarked upon because city-people do not notice animals-even in a world as strange as this, I would guess. Considering how little we know of this network and its simulations, I think those are all valuable commodities."

The curls of leaves had now begun to burn. As !Xabbu used hands toward the warmth. "Have you tried to talk to Jeremiah?"

!Xabbu nodded his head. "I am sure you and I have made the same discoveries."

Renie leaned back. "This is all so hard to believe. I mean, it feels incredibly real, doesn't it? Can you imagine if we had direct neural hookups?"

"I wish we did." The baboon squatted, poking at the blaze. "It is frustrating not to be able to smell more things. This sim desires nose information."

"I'm afraid the military didn't think smells were very important. The V-tank equipment has a pretty rudimentary scent palette. They probably just wanted users to be able to smell equipment fires and bad air and a few other things, but beyond that. . . . What do you mean, anyway, 'nose information'?"

"Before entering into VR the first time, I had not realized how much I rely on my sense of smell, Renie. Also, perhaps because I am wearing an animal sim, the operating system of this network seems to give me slightly different . . . what words do you use? . . . sensory input. I feel I could do many things that I could never do in my other life."

A brief chill went through Renie at !Xabbu's mention of an "other life," but he distracted her by leaning close and snuffling at her with his long muzzle. The light touch tickled and she pushed him away. "What are you doing?"

"Memorizing your scent, or at least the scent our equipment gives you. If I had better tools, I would not even have to work at it. But now I think I will be able to find you even if you get lost again." He sounded pleased with himself.

"Finding me isn't the issue. Finding us, that's the difficult part. Where are we? Where do we go? We have to do something soon-I don't care about hourglasses and imaginary cities, but my brother's dying!"

"I know. We must find our way out of this jungle first, I think. Then we will be able to learn more." He rocked on his haunches, holding his tail in his hand. "I think I can tell you something about where we are, though. And when we are, too."