City of Golden Shadow (119 page)

"Hurry up, boss, tell me what you want. If anyone comes in and catches me sitting on your chest, they're gonna throw me into the recycler,"

A thought, small and fluttery as the distant lights, moved through his mind. "Beezle?"

"Tell me. What's going on?"

He fought to remember. "I'm . . . I'm trapped somewhere. I can't get out. I can't get back."

"Where, boss?"

He struggled against the waves of numbness, of darkness. The distant city was gone now and the fog was rising. He was having trouble seeing even the insect, though it sat only an arm's length away. "The place I was looking for." He wanted to remember a name, a man's name, something with an A. . . ?

"Atasco," he said. The effort was overwhelming. A moment later the insect had faded. Orlando was left alone with the mist and the mountainside and the growing dark.

CHAPTER 39

NETFEED/ENTERTAINMENT: Second Thoughts On Second Sight?

(visual: opening montage from "Here It Comes!")

VO: Celebrity psychic Fawzi Robinette Murphy, host of the popular net shows "Second Sight" and "Here It Comes!" has announced that she is retiring because she has foreseen "the end of the world."

(visual: Murphy climbing into limousine)

When asked how this differs from previous apocalypses she has predicted, Murphy was brief and to the point.

(visual: Murphy affront gate of Gloucestershire home)

MURPHY: "Because this time it's really going to happen."

The coastline gliding past, thick jungle greenery and long-rooted trees drinking at the edges of sandbars, was not entirely strange to her-Renie had seen places along the African coast that looked only a little different. What troubled her now, as she watched a flock of flamingos descending to a salt marsh like an air squadron returning to base, their brilliant pinks dulled by twilight, was the knowledge that none of it was real. It's simply too much to accept. It's . . . seductive, that's what it is. She leaned over the rail. The fresh wind cooled all of her but the parts of her face covered by her V-tank mask. Even this curious numbness-a kind of tactile blind spot, dead to the world she saw all around her-was beginning to recede, as though her brain were beginning to fill in the experiences, just as with a real ocular blind spot At certain moments, she could swear she did feel wind on her face.

It was difficult not to admire the completeness of this dream, the incredible skill and effort that had gone into it. She had to remind herself that Atasco, the man who had caused this wonder to be built, was perhaps the best of Otherland's feudal barons. He, arrogant and self-involved though he was, had at least had the basic humanity not to harm anyone in pursuit of his own satisfaction. The others. . . . She thought of Stephen's beautiful brown legs atrophied, his arms now like slender sticks; she remembered Susan's shattered body. The others who had built this place were monsters. They were ogres living in castles built from the bones of their victims.

"I have a terrible confession, Renie."

"!Xabbu! You startled me."

"I am sorry." He clambered onto the railing beside her. "Do you wish to hear my shameful thought?"

She put a hand on his shoulder. Resisting the impulse to pet him, she simply let it lie there in his thick fur. "Of course."

"Since I first came to this place, I have of course been worried for our safety, and frightened of the larger evil that the Sellars man described. But almost as strong in me, all this time, there has been a great joy."

Renie was suddenly unsure where this was going. "Joy?"

He pivoted on his rear end and stretched a long arm toward the darkening coastline, a curiously un-baboonlike gesture. "Because I have seen now that I can make my dream real. Whatever evil these people have done, or intend to do-and my heart tells me it is a very great evil indeed-they have also caused an amazing thing to be created. With such power, I think I could truly keep my people alive."

Renie nodded slowly. "That's not a shameful thought. But this kind of power-well, people who have something like this aren't going to give it away. They keep it for themselves. Just like they always have."

!Xabbu did not reply. As the last daylight vanished they remained at the railing together, watching the river and the coast become one inseparable shadow beneath the stars.

Sweet William appeared to be taking a perverse pleasure in his role.

"Just like Johnny Icepick, me." He waved the gun menacingly at the captain and the God-King's naval adjutant, the official who had met them at the gangway. The two cringed. "It's not my normal line, dearies, but I could develop a taste for it."

Renie wondered which scared the Temilúnis more, the gun or William's death-clown appearance. "How far are we from the end of the waters you know?" she asked the captain.

He shook his head. He was a small man, beardless as all the others, but his face was covered with black tattoos and he wore an impressively large stone lip-plug. "Over and over you ask that. There is no end. On the far side of these waters is the Land of Pale Men. If we continue along the coast as we are doing, we will cross the Caribbean," Renie heard her translation software pause for a split-instant before supplying the name, "and come to the empire of the Mexica. There is no end."

Renie sighed. If, as Atasco had said, there was a finite edge to the simulation, then the Puppets themselves must not know it. Perhaps they simply ceased to be, then reappeared on their "return voyage," filled with suitable memories.

Of course, the same thing could be true for me. And how would I ever know?

As difficult as it was to look at the coastline and believe it a purely digital reality, it was even harder to imagine the captain and the king's adjutant as artificial. A coastline, even one filled with exuberant vegetable life, could be created fractally, although this level of sophistication beggared anything she had ever seen. But people? How could even the most sophisticated programming, the most strenuously evolutionary A-life environments create such diversity, such seeming authenticity? The captain had bad teeth, stained from chewing some leafy herb. He wore what was obviously a favored knicknack, a fish vertebra, on a chain around his thick neck. The adjutant had a port wine birthmark just behind his ear and smelled of licorice water.

"Are you married?" she asked the captain.

He blinked. "I was. Retired because she wanted me to, stayed ashore for three years in Quibdo. Couldn't take it, so I reenlisted. She left me."

Renie shook her head. A sailor's tale, so common as to be almost a cliché. But by the slight bitterness in his voice, like scar tissue around an old wound, he clearly believed it And every single person in this simulation-in all the unguessable number of simulations that made up this Otherland-would have his or her own tale. Each one would believe himself to be alive and singular.

It was too much to comprehend.

"Do you have any idea how to make this ship work?" she asked Sweet William.

"Dead simple, really." He smiled lazily and stretched. Hidden bells jingled. "It's got a bit of a handle. Push, pull, forward, back-could do it in me sleep."

"Then we'll put these two and the rest of the crew overboard." She was startled by the adjutant's violent reaction for a moment, then realized the misunderstanding. "In the lifeboats. There seem to be plenty."

"Aye, aye." William saluted jauntily. "Whenever you're ready, Admiral."

The bed in He Who Is Favored Above All Others' massive stateroom was of a size commensurate with celestial royalty. Martine and Orlando lay at either edge where they could be reached by those caring for them, with a dozen-foot expanse of silken sheets between them.

Orlando was sleeping, but Renie didn't think it was a healthy sleep. The big man's breath rasped in and out through his gaping mouth and the muscles in his fingers and face twitched. She laid her palm against his broad forehead, but felt nothing any more unusual than the mere fact of virtual tactility.

!Xabbu clambered up onto the bed and touched the man's face, but he seemed to have a different purpose in mind than Renie had, for he left his delicate simian hand there for a long time.

"He looks very sick," Renie said.

"He is." The slender man named Fredericks looked up from his seat by Orlando's side. "He's real sick."

"What is it? Is it something he caught outside-in RL, I mean? Or is it some effect from coming into the network?"

Fredericks shook his head morosely. "He's got something bad. In real life. It's a disease where you get old too soon-he told me the name, but I forgot" He rubbed at his eyes; when he spoke again, his voice was faint "I think right now he's got pneumonia. He said . . . he said he was dying."

Renie stared at the sleeping man's almost cartoonish face, the square jaw and long black hair. Even after only a short acquaintance, the thought of his death was painful; she turned away, helpless and miserable. Too many victims, too many suffering innocents, not enough strength to save any of them.

Quan Li, who had been holding Martine's hand, stood up as Renie walked around the perimeter of the huge bed. "I wish there was something more I could do for your friend. She is a little quieter now. I thought of offering her some water. . . ." She trailed off. There was no need to finish. Martine, like everyone else, must be receiving nourishment and hydration in the real world. If not, nothing the Chinese woman or anyone else could do would help.

Renie sat on the edge of the bed and wrapped her hand around Martine's. The Frenchwoman had not spoken a word all the way to the ship, and after Sweet William had snatched up the gun which Orlando had tossed away, and pressed it against the adjutant's head to secure their passage on the barge, Martine had collapsed. Renie had carried her on board with Quan Li's help-it had taken three of the sailors to carry bulky Orlando-but there was nothing else she could think of to do. Whatever was afflicting Martine was even more mysterious than the young man's ailment.

"We're going to put the captain and crew into boats and set them free," Renie said after a while.

"Are there enough of us to run the ship?" Quan Li asked.

"William says it pretty much sails itself, but I suppose we need enough people to keep watch." Frowning, she thought for a moment. "What did I say we were? Nine?" She turned. !Xabbu was still crouched beside Orlando, his hands splayed on the big man's chest. His patient seemed to be resting a little more easily. "Well, there's the six of us in here. There's William, although he almost counts for two." She smiled wearily, for Quan Li's benefit as much as her own. "The robot man-what did he call himself, T-Four-B or something? And the woman who went up the rigging to keep watch. Yes, nine. Besides, having a full crew would matter more if we had some idea where we were going. . . ."

She broke off as she realized that the gentle pressure on her fingers was becoming stronger. Martine's eyes were open, but still unfixed.

"Renie. . . ?"

"I'm here. We're on the ship. We're hoping to be out of this Temilún simulation soon."

"I'm . . . I'm blind, Renie." She forced the words out with great effort.

"I know, Martine. We'll do our best to find a way to. . . ." She was stopped by a very hard squeeze.

"No, you do not understand. I am blind. Not just here. I have been blind for a very long time."

"You mean . . . in your real life?"

Martine nodded slowly. "But I have . . . there are modifications on my system that allow me to read my way through the net. I see the data in my own way." She paused; speaking was obviously difficult. "In some ways, it has made me better at what I do than if I had sight, do you understand? But now everything is very bad."

"Because of the information rate, like you said?"

"Yes. I . . . since I have come here, it is like people screaming in both my ears, like I am being blown in a great wind. I cannot. . . ." She brought trembling hands up to her face. "I am going mad. Ah, may the good Lord save me, I am going mad." Her face contorted, although no tears came to the sim's eyes. Her shoulders began to shake.

Renie could only hold her as she wept.

Two large lifeboats held the ship's three dozen crew fairly comfortably. Renie stood on the deck, feeling the shudder of the engine beneath her feet, and watched the last sailor drop from the ladder into the boat, black pigtail flying.

"Are you sure you don't want another lifeboat?" she called down to the captain. "You'd be less crowded."

He looked up at her, plainly unable to comprehend this kind of soft-hearted piracy. "It is not far to shore. We will be fine." He mumbled his lip plug for a moment, contemplating an indiscretion. "You know, the patrol boats have only remained at a distance to protect the lives of the crew. They will stop you and board you within minutes after we are safe."

"We're not worried." Renie tried to sound confident, but of all their company only !Xabbu seemed truly calm. The small man had found a long piece of twine in the captain's cabin and was blithely constructing one of his intricate string figures.