City of Golden Shadow (106 page)

"I . . . but surely. . . ." The sweat on the hacker's brow was clearly visible.

"Listen carefully. If we lose one particle of that data, anything, I am going to personally rip your heart out of your body and show it to you. Understand?"

Celestino nodded, swallowing hard. Dread cut the connection, then began to search through his files for music that might salvage his good mood.

". . . That man has a crack in him a mile wide."

The shapeless sim that was the Beinha on the left leaned forward slightly, "He is very good at his job."

"He's a nervous small-timer. I'm flying someone in to keep an eye on things. No arguments. I'm doing you the courtesy of letting you know."

There was a long silence. "It is your choice," one of them said at last,

"It is. Damn." The red light was blinking again, but this time in a recognizable rhythm. "Excuse me. I have to take a call."

The two sisters nodded and blinked off. They were replaced by one of the Old Man's functionaries-a Puppet as far as Dread could tell, dressed in the usual costume-bazaar Egyptian.

"The Lord of Life and Death, Mighty in Worship, Who is Crowned in the West, summons you to the presence."

Dread suppressed a groan. "Now? Can't he just talk to me?"

The functionary did not bat an eye. "You are summoned to Abydos," it said, then vanished. Dread sat for a long moment just breathing, then stood and stretched to release tension-it might prove a very painful mistake to take his frustration and anger to the Old Man-and looked with more than a little sorrow at the cigar, which was now mostly gray char in the bottom of the ceramic bowl he had been using as an ashtray. He sat down again and found a comfortable position, since the Old Man's caprice often extended to hour-long waits, and closed his eyes.

The massive hypostyle hall of Abydos-That-Was stretched before him, the swollen, skyscraper pillars made even more dramatic by the light of innumerable flickering lamps. He could see the God's chair at the far end of the hall, looming above the bent backs of a thousand priests like a volcanic island rising from the ocean. Dread grunted in disgust and made his way forward.

Even though he could not actually feel the jackal ears above his head or see the cur's muzzle he wore, even though the priests kept their faces to the floor as they made way for him and not a single one even stole a glance at him, he felt angry and humiliated. The action would begin in mere hours, but would the Old Man cut through some of his ridiculous ceremony and make things a little easier? Of course he wouldn't. Dread was his dog, summoned to hear His Master's Voice, and would never be allowed to forget it.

As he reached the front of the hall, and lowered himself to all fours in front of the throne, he harbored a brief but satisfying fantasy of putting a match to the old bastard's mummy wrappings.

"Arise, my servant."

Dread stood. Even had he been standing on the dais, he would have been dwarfed by the figure of his employer.

Always has to remind me who's on top.

"Tell me of the Sky God Project."

Dread took a breath, suppressing his fury, and delivered a status report on the final preparations. Osiris, the Lord of Life and Death, listened with apparent interest, but although his corpselike face was as immobile as ever, Dread thought the Old Man seemed vaguely distracted: his bandaged fingers moved ever so slightly on the arms of his throne, and once he asked Dread to repeat something that should have been perfectly comprehensible the first time.

"The responsibility for this idiot programmer is yours," Osiris pronounced when told about Celestino's call. "Take steps to make sure this is not a weak link in our chain."

Dread bristled at the assumption that he had to be told. With effort, he managed to keep his voice even. "A professional with whom I have already worked is on her way down. She will watch over Celestino."

Osiris waved his hand as though this were all perfectly obvious. "This must not fail. I have placed great trust in you despite your many lapses of behavior. This must not fail."

Despite his own simmering unhappiness, Dread was intrigued. The Old Man appeared to be worried-if not about this, then about something else. "When have I ever failed you, Grandfather?"

"Don't call me that!" Osiris lifted his arms from the throne and crossed them over his chest. "I have told you before I will not allow it from a mere servant."

Dread barely restrained a hiss of rage. No, let the old bastard say what he wished. There was a longer game-the Old Man himself had taught him to play it-and this might be the first crack in his master's defenses.

"I apologize, O Lord. All will be done as you say." He lowered his great black head, bumping his muzzle gently against the stone flags. "Have I done something new to make you angry?" He wondered briefly if the stewardess . . . No. Her body couldn't even have been found yet, and for once he had refrained from leaving his signature, art shackled by necessity.

The God of Upper and Lower Egypt tilted his head down. For a moment, Dread thought he could see the fierce intelligence glinting in the depths of the Old Man's eyes. "No," he said at last. "You have done nothing. I am over-quick in my anger, perhaps. I am very busy, and much of the business is unpleasant."

"I'm afraid I probably would not understand your problems, my Lord. Just managing a project like the one you've given me takes everything I've got-I can't imagine the complexity of what you must deal with."

Osiris sat back in his great throne, staring out across the hall. "No, you cannot. At this very moment-this moment!-my enemies are assembling in my council chamber. I must confront them. There is a plot against me, and I do not yet. . . ." He trailed off, then twitched his huge head and leaned forward. "Has anyone approached you? Have you been asked about me, offered anything for information or assistance? I promise you, as terrible as my anger will be at anyone who betrays me, my generosity to my faithful servants is even greater."

Dread sat in silence for a long second, afraid to speak too swiftly. The old devil had never talked this openly before, never shown worry or vulnerability in front of him. He wished there was some way he could record the moment for later study, but instead he must commit every word and gesture to his own frail human memory.

"No one has approached me, Lord. I promise I would have told you immediately. But if there is something I can do to help you-information you need gathered, allies you are not sure of that you want to. . . ."

"No, no. no." Osiris waved his flail impatiently, silencing his servant "I will deal with it, as I always have. You will do your part by making sure that the Sky God Project goes as planned."

"Of course, Lord."

"Go. I will speak to you again before the action is launched. Find someone to keep a close eye on that programmer."

"Yes, Lord."

The god waved his crook and Dread was expelled from the system.

He remained in the chair for a long time, ignoring three different incoming calls while he thought about what he had just seen and heard. At last he stood up. Downstairs, the cleaning team had finished their prep and were climbing into their van.

Dread flicked the cigar end off the balcony into the dark water, then went back into the house.

"Look, we just have to tie the ends one more time, then we're done." Fredericks held up a handful of serpentine creepers and vines. "Those are waves out there, Orlando, and God only knows what else there is. Sharks-sea monsters, maybe. Come on, a little extra trouble now will make a big difference when we're on the water."

Orlando looked down at the raft. It was a decent-enough job, lengths of stiff, heavy reeds knotted together in long bundles, which had then been tied together to make one long rectangle. It would probably even float. He was just finding it hard to care very much.

"I need to sit down for a minute." He stumbled to the shade of the nearest palm tree and flopped to the sand.

"Fine. I'll do it. What else is new?" Fredericks bent to the task.

Orlando lifted a trembling hand to shade his eyes from the sun filtering down between the palm leaves. The city was different at noon; it changed throughout the day, colors and reflective metals mutating with the movement of light, shadows expanding and contracting. Just now it seemed a kind of giant mushroom patch, golden roofs springing from the loamy soil of their own shade.

He let his hand fall and leaned back against the palm trunk. He was very, very weak. It was easy to imagine burying himself in sand, like the roots of a tree, and never moving again. He was exhausted and sluggish because of his illness, and he could not conceive of how he would make it through another night like the last, a night of confusions and terrors and madness, none of it comprehensible and none of it in the least restful.

"Okay, I've double-tied everything. Are you at least going to help me carry it down to the water?"

Orlando stared at him for a long time, but still Fredericks' pink, unhappy face refused to disappear. He groaned. "Coming."

The raft did float, although parts of it remained resolutely below the waterline, so that there was nowhere dry to sit. Still, the warm weather did not make that too uncomfortable. Orlando was glad at least that he had prevailed on Fredericks to bring the wall of the palm-leaf shelter along, no matter how short a trip his friend expected. Orlando tilted it over them, letting it lean against his shoulders. It kept off the worst of the afternoon sun, but it did little to cool the heat in his head and his joints.

"I don't feel very good," he said quietly. "I told you, I've got pneumonia." It was about the only conversation he had to offer, but even he was growing tired of it. Fredericks, splashing obdurately with a makeshift paddle, did not reply.

Astonishingly-to Orlando, anyway-they were actually making a kind of slow progress toward the city. The crosscurrent was bearing them unmistakably to what Orlando guessed was the northern side of the shoreline, but the drift was slight; he thought they might very well make it to the far side before the current pulled them out into what were probably ocean waters. And if they didn't . . . well, Fredericks would be disappointed, but Orlando was having trouble seeing what the difference would be. He was adrift in some kind-of limbo, his strength leaking away hourly, and what he had left behind (in what he still quaintly thought about from time to time as the "real" world) was no better.

"I know you're sick, but could you try to paddle for a little while?" Fredericks was working hard not to be resentful; as if from a distance, Orlando admired him/her for it. "My arms are really aching, but if we don't keep pushing, the current will take us away from the beach."

It was a tough call as to which would take more energy, arguing or paddling. Orlando went to work.

His arms felt as flabby and weak as noodles, but there was a certain soothing quality to the repetition of dipping his paddle, pulling, raising it, then dipping it again. After a while the monotony combined with the sun's rippling reflections and his fevered driftiness to lift him into a kind of reverie, so he didn't notice the water rising until Fredericks shouted out that they were sinking.

Alerted but still buffered by his dreamy detachment, Orlando looked down at the water, which was now up to the crotch of his loincloth. The middle of the raft had descended, or the sides had risen; in either case, most of the craft was now at least partially underneath the water.

"What do we do?" Fredericks sounded like someone who believed that things mattered.

"Do? Sink, I guess."

"Are you scanning out, Gardiner?" Clearly fighting back panic, Fredericks looked up at the horizon. "We might be able to swim the rest of the way."

Orlando followed his gaze, then laughed. "Are you scanned? I can barely paddle." He looked at the length of split reed in his hand. "Not that it's doing us any good, now." He tossed the paddle away. It splashed into the water and then popped up again, bobbing along far more convincingly than the raft.

Fredericks shouted in horror and stretched toward it, as though he could reverse physics and draw it back through the air. "I can't believe you just did that!" He looked down at the raft again, full of twitchy, terrified energy. "I have an idea. We'll get in the water, but we'll use the raft as a float-you know, like those rafts in swimming class."

Orlando had never been in a swimming class, or anything that his mother feared might be dangerous to his fragile bones, but he was not disposed to argue anyway. At his friend's urging he slid off the raft into the cool water: Fredericks splashed in beside him, then braced his chest against the trailing edge of the raft and began to kick in a manner that was a credit to his long-ago instructors.

"Can't you kick, too, at least a little?" he panted.

"I am kicking," Orlando said.

"Whatever happened," Fredericks gasped, "to all that Thargor strength? All that monster-ass-kicking muscle? Come on!"

It was an effort even to explain, and frequent mouthfuls of salt water didn't help. "I'm sick, Frederico. And maybe the gain isn't turned up as high in this system-I always had to crank the tactor outputs way up to make it work as well as it did for someone normal."

They had only dog-paddled for a few minutes when Orlando felt his strength finally desert him. His legs slowed, then stopped. He hung onto the back of the raft, but even that was difficult.

"Orlando? I need your help!"

The city, which once had waited squarely before them, had now shifted to the right The blue water between the raft and the beach, however, had not narrowed appreciably. They were drifting out to sea, Orlando realized-as he himself was drifting. They would get farther and farther from land, until eventually the city would disappear entirely.

But that's not fair. The thoughts seemed to come in slow bumps, like the waves. Fredericks wants to live. He wants to play soccer and do things-wants to be a real boy, just like Pinocchio. I'm just holding him back. I'm the Donkey Island kid.

"Orlando?"

No, not fair. He has to paddle hard enough to pull my weight, too. Not fair. . . .