City of Golden Shadow (107 page)

He let go and slid under the water. It was surprisingly easy. The surface snapped shut over him like an eyelid closing, and for a moment he felt complete weightlessness, complete ease, and a certain dull smugness at his decision. Then something seized his hair, jerking him into fiery pain and a throatful of sea water. He was pulled to the surface, spluttering.

"Orlando!" Fredericks shrieked, "what the hell are you doing?"

He was clinging to the raft with one hand so he could maintain his grip on Orlando's-Thargor's-long black hair,

Now nobody's kicking, Orlando thought sadly. He spat out salty water and barely avoided a coughing spasm. It isn't doing any good at all.

"I'm . . . I just can't go any farther," he said aloud.

"Grab the raft," Fredericks directed. "Grab the raft!"

Orlando did, but Fredericks didn't relinquish his grip. For a moment they just floated, side by side. The raft rose and fell as the waves moved past. Except for the stinging pain in his scalp, nothing had changed.

Fredericks, too, had gotten a mouthful of seawater. His nose was running, his eyes red-rimmed. "You aren't going to quit You're not going to!"

Orlando found enough strength to shake his head. "I can't. . . ."

"Can't? You impacted bastard, you've made my life a living hell about this stupid goddamned city! And there it is! And you're just going to give up?"

"I'm sick. . . ."

"So what? Yeah, yeah, it's really sad. You've got some weird disease. But that's the place you wanted to go. You've dreamed about it. It's the only thing you care about, practically. So either you're going to help me get to that beach, or I'm going to have to drag you like I learned in that stupid swimming class, and then we'll both drown, five hundred yards away from your goddamned city. You goddamned coward." Fredericks was breathing so hard he could barely finish his sentence. He clung to the bobbing raft, neck-deep in the water, and glared.

Orlando was faintly amused that anyone could muster so much emotion about a pointless thing like the difference between going on and going down, but he also felt a slight irritation that Fredericks-Fredericks!-should be calling him a coward.

"You want me to help you? Is that what you're saying?"

"No, I want you to do what was so important that you got me into this impacted, fenfen mess in the first place."

Again, it had become easier to paddle than to argue. Also, Fredericks was still gripping his hair, and Orlando's head was bent at an uncomfortable angle.

"Okay. Just let go."

"No tricks?"

Orlando wearily shook his head. You try to do a guy a favor. . . .

They edged forward until their chests were back on the raft and began kicking again.

The sun was very low in the sky and a cool wind was making the tips of the waves froth when they made it past the first breakwater and out of the cross-current. After a short celebratory rest, Fredericks let Orlando climb up onto the bowed raft and paddle with his hands while Fredericks continued his out-board-motor impersonation.

By the time they reached the second breakwater they were no longer alone, but merely the smallest of the waterway's travelers. Other boats, some clearly equipped with engines, others with full-bellied sails, were beginning to make their way back from a day's work. The wakes of their passing made the raft rock alarmingly. Orlando climbed back into the water.

Above them and around them the city was beginning to turn on its lights.

They were debating whether or not to try to signal one of the passing boats when Orlando began to feel another wash of fever pass over him.

"We can't try to take this raft all the way in," Fredericks was arguing. "Some big ship will come through here and they won't even see us in the dark."

"I think all the . . . big ships come in the other . . . side," Orlando said. He was finding it hard to get enough breath to speak. "Look." On the far side of the harbor maze, beyond several jetties, two large vessels, one of them a tanker of some sort, were being hauled into the port by tugboats. Nearer, vastly smaller than the tanker but still fairly large and impressive, was a barge. Despite his exhaustion, Orlando couldn't help staring at it. The barge, covered in painted carvings and with something that looked like a sun with an eye in it painted on the bow, seemed to belong to a different age than the harbor's other ships. It had a single tall mast and a flat, square sail. Lanterns hung in the rigging and at the bow.

As Orlando stared at this strange apparition, the world seemed to pass into some greater shadow. The lanterns flared into blurry star shapes. He had a moment to wonder how twilight had become dark midnight so suddenly, and to feel sad that the city's residents had doused all their lights, then he felt the water slide up and over him again.

This time Orlando barely felt it when Fredericks pulled him out. The fever had gripped him again, and he was so exhausted that he could not imagine it ever letting go. A distant foghorn had become a smear of sound that rang in his ears, fading but never completely stopping. Fredericks was saying something urgent, but Orlando could not make sense of it. Then a light as bright as anything Orlando could imagine replaced the darkness with a whiteness far more painful and terrible.

The spotlight belonged to a small boat The small boat belonged to the Harbor Police of the great city. They were not cruel, but they were briskly uninterested in what Fredericks had to say. It seemed that they were on the lookout for outsiders, and the two men treading water beside a handmade raft seemed to fit the description. As they hauled Orlando and on board, they talked among themselves; Orlando heard the words "god king," and "council." It seemed that he and Fredericks were being arrested for some kind of crime, but he was finding it harder and harder to make sense out of what was happening around him.

The barge loomed above them, then the carved hull began to slide by as the patrol boat motored past it on the way to the dock of the Great Palace, but before they had reached the hull's far end, consciousness escaped Orlando's grasp.

CHAPTER 35

NETFEED/NEWS: Vat-Beef Poisoning Scare in Britain

(visual: mob outside Derbyshire factory)

VO: A rash of fatal illnesses in Britain has caused chaos in the cultured meat industry. One food product company, Artiflesh Ltd., has seen drivers attacked and a factory burned to the ground.

(visual: Salmonella bacteria under microscopic enlargement)

The deaths are blamed on a Salmonella infection of a beef "mother," the original flesh matrix from which up to a hundred generations of vat-grown meat can be derived. One such "mother" can be the source of thousands of tons of cultured meat. . . .

"Atasco!" Renie raised her hands to defend herself, but their captor only regarded her with faint irritation.

"You know my name? I am surprised."

"Why? Because we're just little people?" Confronted with the first real face-as real as any sim face could be-behind Otherland, she found she was not frightened. A cold anger filled her and made her feel she was standing apart from herself.

"No." Atasco seemed genuinely puzzled. "Because I did not think my name was commonly known, at least outside of certain circles. Who are you?"

Renie reached out and touched !Xabbu on the shoulder, as much for her own comfort as his. "If you don't know, I'm certainly not going to tell you."

The God-King shook his head. "You are a most impertinent young woman."

"Renie. . . ?" Martine began, but at that moment something slithered at high speed across the floor of the Council Chamber, an iridescent blur that skirted Renie and !Xabbu by a matter of inches before disappearing into the shadows.

"Ah!" As he followed the odd apparition with his gaze, the annoyance faded from Bolivar Atasco's face. "There it is again. Do you know what that is?"

Renie could not gauge his tone. "No. What?"

He shook his head. "I haven't the slightest idea. Well, that is not exactly true-I have an idea of what it represents, but not what it is. It's a phenomenon of complexity, the immense complexity of the system. Not the first, and I dare say not the last or the strangest." He stood for a moment, pondering, then turned back to Renie and her friends. "Perhaps we should cut this unsatisfying conversation short. There is still much to do."

"Torture?" Renie knew she should keep quiet, but months of frustration and rage could not be ignored; she felt hardened and sharpened like a knife blade. "Firebombing people's apartments and putting children into comas and beating old women to death not satisfying enough?"

"Renie. . . ." Martine began again, but was interrupted by Atasco's angry shout.

"Enough!" His eyes had narrowed to slits. "Are you a madwoman? Who are you to come into my world and make such accusations?" He turned to Martine. "Are you her caretaker? If so, you have failed. The monkey has better manners."

"The monkey is perhaps more patient," Martine said quietly. "Renie, !Xabbu, I think we may have made a mistake."

"A mistake?" Renie was astonished. Perhaps Martine had developed some kind of amnesia because of her traumatic entry into this simworld, but she herself remembered Atasco's name only too well. In any case, she had only to look at the arrogant, aristocratic face that he had chosen to know everything about him. "I don't think there's any mistake except him thinking that we'll be polite about this."

!Xabbu clambered up onto one of the chairs, and from there onto the surface of the vast table. "A question, Mister Atasco. Why did you bring us here?"

He took in the talking monkey without comment. "I did not bring you here. You brought yourselves here, I would assume."

"But why?" !Xabbu persisted. "You are the ruler of this fantastical place. Why are you spending time speaking to us? What do you think that we want?"

Atasco raised an eyebrow. "You have been summoned here. I have let the person who summoned you use my city, my palace, for the sake of convenience-well, and because I share some of his fears." He shook his head as though it were all quite obvious; his high, feathered crown swayed. "Why am I speaking to you? You are guests. It is courtesy, of course-something you seem able to do without."

"Are you saying. . . ." Renie had to stop for a moment to figure out just what he was saying. "Are you saying that you haven't brought us here to hurt us or threaten us? That you don't have anything to do with my brother being in a coma? With the people who killed Doctor Susan Van Bleeck?"

Atasco stared at her for a long moment The handsome face was still imperially condescending, but she could sense a certain hesitation. "If the terrible acts you describe can be laid at the doorstep of the Grail Brotherhood, then I am not entirely without blame," he said at last. "It is because I fear I may have unwittingly contributed to that evil that I have made my beloved Temilún available as a gathering place. But I am not personally responsible for the things you suggest, for the love of God, no." He turned to look across the broad room. "Lord, these are odd times. Few strangers ever come here, and now there will be many. But, this is a time of change, I suppose." He turned back. "Do you know what tomorrow is? Four Movement. We inherited our dates from the Aztecs, you see. But that is a very significant day, the end of the Fifth Sun-the end of an age. Most of my people have forgotten the old superstitions, but of course that's because it's been a thousand years in their time."

Is he crazy? Renie wondered. I'm talking about people killed and crippled, he's talking about Aztec calendars.

"But you said we were 'summoned.' " !Xabbu spread his long arms. "Please, summoned by whom?"

"You must wait for the others. I am the host, but I am not the one who has chosen you."

Renie felt as though the world had abruptly reversed its spin. Were they just going to take this man's word for it that he was somehow on their side? If that were true, why all this vagueness? She picked at the knot, but could see no immediate solution. "So that's all you can tell us, even though you're the big chief around here?" she asked at last, earning a reproachful stare from !Xabbu.

Atasco had not conquered his initial dislike, but he made an effort to answer her civilly. "The one who called you has labored long and with great subtlety-even I do not know everything he has done or thought."

Renie frowned. She was not going to be able to make herself like the man, that seemed certain-he reminded her of some of the worst South African whites, the rich ones, subtle, secretive heirs of the ancien régime who never had to assert their superiority because they just assumed it was obvious-but she had to admit to herself that she might have misjudged him.

"Okay. If I've been too quick to accuse, I apologize," she said. "Please understand, after the attacks we've survived, and then to find ourselves in this place, manhandled by police. . . ."

"Manhandled? Is this true?"

She shrugged. "Not violently. But they certainly didn't make us think we were honored guests either."

"I will pass them a word. Gently, of course-they must have autonomy. If the God-King speaks too harshly, the whole system becomes perturbed."