City of Golden Shadow (118 page)

There was also the issue of the actual adversary, the person who had so cleverly subverted TMX security and freed Paul Jonas. That would have to be the subject of many hours' contemplation all by itself. Still, Osiris had known there was an enemy out there somewhere, and in a way was glad of it. The Americans had certainly proved an insufficient challenge.

When Anubis had finished his report and signed off, Osiris raised his gauze-shrouded hand for silence. Khepera stopped, his tribute uncompleted; he stood awkwardly for a moment, then lowered himself back into his chair.

"Thank you, my dear friend, for those inspiring words," the god said. "I will never forget them. But now I have an announcement to make. I have just received word that the Sky God Project has come to a successful conclusion. 'Shu' has been neutralized, along with his intimate circle, and we have possession of his system. Losses-of information-were negligible, and cleanup is finished. In short, a complete success."

The Western Palace echoed with cheers and congratulations, some of them sincere.

"I think today is an auspicious day to declare that we have begun the final phase of the Grail Project." He raised his other hand. The walls of the Western Palace fell away. The Ennead were now seated in the midst of an endless, twilit plain. "In only a matter of weeks our work will be completed and the fruits of our long labor available at last. The Grail system is about to become operational. Now we are truly become gods!" A red shimmer appeared along the far horizon. Osiris spread his arms as if he had summoned it into being-as, in fact, he had. There was a dramatic rumble of tympanis, a thundering crescendo of percussion.

"Rejoice, Brotherhood. Our day has come!" The great disk of the rising sun edged upward into the heavens, bleaching the sky, scattering gold across the plains, and bathing the hungry, upraised animal faces in fire.

The docks were only a short distance from the broad front steps of the palace, perhaps less than half a mile judging by the rigging lights that glimmered between the buildings. Orlando and his new allies did their best to form a coherent group before setting off on foot.

This scans utterly! Orlando fumed. This is a VR simulation, the most powerful one anyone's ever heard of-and we're going to walk! But any loopholes for instantaneous travel or other useful reality-molding tricks that might be built into the structure of Temilún were lost to Orlando and his new allies. If we only had one of the Atascos with us. . . .

They marched as quickly as they could, just beneath the threshold at which their anxious haste would be obvious. The city was busy at this early evening hour, the streets full of traffic, motorized and pedal-driven, the stone sidewalks crowded with Temilúni citizens on their way home from work. But even in this crush of pseudohumanity, the band of travelers attracted attention. It wasn't that surprising, Orlando decided-there were few cities, virtual or otherwise, where someone as flamboyantly outrageous as Sweet William would not at least briefly draw the eye.

Tall Renie fell in beside him again. "Do you think Sellars meant that as soon as we get on the water we'll cross over into another simulation? Or are we going to have to sail for days?"

Orlando shook his head. "I can't even guess."

"What's to keep them from catching us on the river?" Fredericks asked, leaning in at Orlando's shoulder. "I mean, they're not going to leave that throne room alone forever, and when they go looking. . . ." He stopped, his eyes widening. "Fenfen! For that matter, what happens if we get killed here?"

"You drop offline," Renie began, then paused. The baboon, loping along beside her on all fours, looked up.

"You are thinking that if we cannot go offline now, there is no guarantee that dying a virtual death will change that?" he asked. "Or are you considering something worse?"

She shook her head violently. "It's just not possible. It can't be. Pain is one thing-that could just be hypnotic suggestion-even induced comas I will believe, but I really don't want to believe that something happening to you in VR could kill you. . . ." She stopped again. "No," she said firmly, as if putting something in a drawer and shutting it. "We'll have time to talk about everything later. None of this is useful now."

They hurried on in silence. Since the tall downtown buildings were now blocking the view of the water, Fredericks ran ahead to scout. Surfing along on the surreality of the moment, Orlando found that he was staring at Renie's baboon friend.

"What's your name?" he asked the simulated monkey.

"!Xabbu." There was a click and then a swallowing sound it the beginning. Orlando couldn't tell whether the first letter was supposed to be a G, an H, or a K. "And you are Orlando." The look on his face might have been a baboon smile. Orlando nodded. He was sure the person behind the monkey had an interesting story to tell, but he didn't have the strength to wonder about it very much. Later, as Renie had said. Later there would be time to talk.

If there is a later.

Fredericks was hurrying back toward them. "It's just around the corner," he said. "The boat's all lit up. What if it's not ready to go, Orlando?"

"It's ready to go," he said curtly. He had no idea, but he was damned if he was going to give these people anything else to worry about. "I saw it when they were bringing us in."

Fredericks gave him a doubtful look but kept silent.

"Tchi seen, tchi seen, man," muttered the robot sim dolefully, fingering his own anodized neck in search of his 'can. "They gonna catch us, do some harm. This dire, man, this far dire."

The barge was moored at its own dock, a single bright flower of pomp and colorful decoration amid the brutal functionalism of the working side of the harbor. Looking at the graceful ship, Orlando felt the weakness in his limbs recede a little, the dull pain in his head abate. The barge would take them away where their enemies couldn't find them. There would be time to rest, to recover his strength.

Renie was looking back over Orlando's shoulder, her finger wagging in the air as though she were conducting a very small orchestra.

"What are you doing?" Fredericks asked.

"Counting. There are nine of us. Is that right, or were there more when we left the palace?"

Fredericks shook his head. "I don't know. I didn't think about it"

"We should have." Renie was clearly angry, but it seemed to be at herself. "We may have lost people along the way."

"Can't worry about it," Orlando said flatly. "Let's just hope there's someone on board who knows how to make the thing go."

As if in answer, a group of figures began gathering at the top of the ramp that led onto the barge from the dockside stairs. As Renie gathered the travelers at the ramp's base, two of the figures on the ship detached themselves from the rest and came down the gangway toward them. One looked like a reasonably high muckamuck, his cape thatched in silver fish scales. Orlando wondered for a moment if he were the captain, but decided that no one could spend a life at sea and have such unweathered skin. The other man, a noncom in a small plain cape who was clearly the Temilúni navy's equivalent of a bone-breaker, had another of those large and unpleasant stone axes in his belt and some kind of pearl-handled pistol sheathed on the other hip.

Renie held up the ring. "We have been sent by the God-King, He gave us this and commanded that you take us where we want to go."

The official leaned forward to inspect the ring while keeping his hands respectfully at his side. "It certainly looks like the signet of He Who Is Favored Above All Others. And who, may I ask, are you?"

"We are a delegation from. . . ." Renie hesitated.

"The Banana Republic," said Orlando hastily. "Sent to request a boon from He Who Is Favored Above All Others." He looked up. At the top of the gangway, the dozen waiting sailors were managing simultaneously to stand at rigid attention and to watch the proceedings with interest. "Now we are being sent back with a message for our masters."

"The Ba. . . ." The official shook his head as though it were all too much for him. "Still, it is very strange we have not been warned."

"The God-King-I mean, He Who Is Favored Above All Others-only made the decision a very short while ago. . . ." Renie began.

"Of course." The official bowed. "I will contact the palace to receive my clearance. Please forgive me-I cannot allow you on board until that has been done. I apologize deeply and abjectly for the inconvenience."

Renie looked helplessly down at !Xabbu, then to Orlando.

Orlando shrugged, fighting a great and depressing weariness. He had half-known something like this would happen-that he could not wear the Thargor sim without inheriting certain responsibilities. He leaned a little closer toward the bonebreaker. The pistol was on the man's other hip, out of reach. Regretfully, Orlando curled his fingers around the stone ax and snatched it out of the belt even as he shouldered the startled noncom off the gangplank.

"Grab him," he said, shoving the official toward Renie and the others. The sailors at the top of the gangway, bellowing in surprise, had drawn their own sidearms. Orlando was gambling that they would not shoot for fear of harming this obviously important man. However, he couldn't afford to let them start thinking about alternative methods of capture. "Follow me," he called, already sprinting up the ramp.

"What are you doing?" Fredericks shouted.

Orlando didn't answer. If there was anything he knew about, it was virtual combat, and his own personal Lesson One was "Avoid Unnecessary Chitchat." Now he just had to pray that some of the Thargor sim's designated strength and speed remained despite his own illness and the strictures of an unfamiliar system.

"Help him!" Fredericks was shouting down below. "They'll kill him!"

Orlando leaped from the top end of the gangway and hit the deck rolling, upending the first two sailors. He brought the ax around in a swift arc and felt the sickening give of blade on bone as he shattered another sailor's kneecap, but he could already feel stickiness in his own usually fluid reflexes. The three bodies writhing on the deck around him gave him a moment's desperately needed cover. What little strength he had, and it was less than he was used to in this sim, was draining fast; already his breath was stinging in his lungs. As he got to his knees, someone jumped onto his back, bearing him down so hard that his forehead cracked against the deck. For a moment he felt his limbs go uncontrollably limp, but he forced himself to pull his legs under him once more and rise to a crouch.

The man on his back was trying to snake an arm around his neck. As Orlando fought to hold him off, a hand with a gun in it swung down close to his face. Orlando smashed at it with the ax and was rewarded with a howl of pain; the gun skittered away, under the railing and into the water. He ducked his head, throwing the man on his back to the deck, then grabbed at the belt of the man he'd kneecapped a few moments before and tugged his pistol out of its holster.

Shadows were all around him, closing in. The urge to start firing, to clear away these threatening figures, was very powerful, but they were so much more convincingly human than his usual foes that he found himself almost fatally reluctant. He tossed the gun down the ramp. "Grab it!" he gasped, hoping one of his companions would see it lying on the dark gangway. He didn't know if he'd been loud enough to be heard; his head was filling with echoes.

Several more men seized the chance and grabbed at his legs and arms. Another fell on top of him, jabbing a knee into his back and closing strong fingers on his throat. Struggling, he managed to throw off a few of his attackers, but more crashed down on top of him in their place. He fought wildly to rise, but only managed to turn over, face to the sky as he sucked desperately for air. The lights in the barge's rigging stretched and wavered as the blackness in his head grew, as though they were stars sending their dying flare into the eternal night of space.

It's funny, he thought Stars, lights . . . none real . . . all real. . . .

Something was hammering on his head, a dull, rhythmic thump that seemed to rattle his whole skull. Each pounding beat sent a splash of blackness through his thoughts, the tidal mark higher each time. He heard someone shouting-the woman, what was her name? It didn't matter. The breath, the life was being pressed out of him, and he was glad to let it go. He had been so tired, so very tired.

He thought he heard Fredericks calling him, but he could not answer. That at least was a little sad. Fredericks would have loved the lights-stars, they were stars, weren't they?-would have loved how bravely they burned in the darkness. He would miss Fredericks. . . .

He was in a place-a between-place, it seemed. A waiting-place, maybe. He couldn't really think about the whole thing very well, and it didn't matter just now anyway.

He was lying down, he knew that, but he was also standing, looking out across a great canyon. A massive slope of shiny blackness dropped sheerly away below him, its bottom edge invisible in a sea of swirling fog. On the far side of the canyon, dimly visible through the tendrils of rising mist, was the golden city. But somehow it was not the same city he had seen before-this city's buildings were taller and stranger than anything he could have imagined, and tiny radiant shapes flitted back and forth among the spiraling towers, brilliant specks of light that might have been fireflies. Or angels.

It's another dream, he thought, and was startled to hear he had said it aloud. Surely he should not speak here-someone was listening, he knew, someone or something who was looking for him, someone he did not want to meet.

"It's not a dream," a voice said in his ear.

He looked around, startled. Sitting on a glossy outcrop of the smooth black substance was an insect the size of a small dog. It was made entirely of glittering silver wires, but was somehow completely alive.

"It's me, boss," it said. "I've been trying to reach you for hours. I've got you amplified all the way and I can barely hear you."

"What's. . . ." It was so hard to think. The cottony fog had somehow got inside his head as well. "Where. . . ."