City of Golden Shadow (70 page)

!Xabbu put his hands on his thighs and stood. "But they have escaped?"

"Yes, but we'll have lots to work with-how they got in, their aliases, things like that."

"You seem pretty calm," Renie told him. "These are the people who killed your friends, killed Susan. They're dangerous."

Singh raised a tufted eyebrow and grinned. "Back in RL they may be dangerous as hell, but TreeHouse is ours. When you come here, you play by our rules. Here comes the picture."

Two hefty figures popped into view in the middle of Singh's 'cot, the single-moment snapshot magnified until it took up most of the space in the room. The two sims hovered side by side in midair, one of them apparently frozen in the act of talking. One was fairly nondescript, but the speaker was dressed in furs and skins as though he had stepped out of some low-budget netflick.

"We have seen these people before," said !Xabbu.

Renie stared, appalled and fascinated, at the broad-muscled bodies. "Yes, we have. It was in the first place you brought us," she told Martine. "Your friend thought they needed fashion help, remember?" She frowned. "I suppose it's impossible to be conspicuous in a place like this, but he. . . ." she fought back a smirk, indicating the mustachioed barbarian ". . . still has been pushing his luck. I mean, it looks like the kind of sim one of my little brother's friends would wear for some online game." The thought of Stephen sobered her, obliterating her small moment of amusement.

"We'll know more about them soon," Singh said. "I wish that lot at the meeting had been a little more low-key though-it would have been nice to find out more about what they wanted before letting them know we were on to them. But that's engineering types for you. Subtle as a flying mallet."

"So we add this in to the mix," Renie said, "All this other crazy stuff, then they send in a couple of spies who look like something out of one of those kiddie interactives-Borak, Master of the Stone Age or whatever."

"Makes sense for spies coming to TreeHouse," Singh said blithely. "Everybody's a freak here. I'm telling you, I worked for that Atasco guy and he was no fool. Slick as snail snot." He held up his hand, listening again to an inaudible voice, "That's something," he said. "Yeah, round them up. I'll come and talk to them when I'm finished here." He turned his attention back to the room. "Apparently, these guys were hanging around with some of the culture club kids, so we might get some information from them. Talking to those kids is like talking to static, though. . . ."

!Xabbu, who had been examining the flash-frozen intruders, floated back toward Renie. "What should we do now?"

"We can try to find out more about Otherland," Martine offered. "I fear that they have been as careful with information as they were with other forms of security, but we may be able to. . . ."

"You can do whatever you want," Singh said, interrupting her. "But I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to go and find the bastards."

Renie stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. These people think they can hide behind their money and their fortress houses and their corporations. Most of all, they think they can hide in their expensive network. But I helped build that damn network, and I'm betting I can get back into it. Nothing like a little old-fashioned akisu to get things done. You want to take them to court or something? Go ahead. By the time you're finished getting the runaround, I'd be long dead. I'm not going to wait."

Renie was having trouble following him. "You mean you're going into this Otherland place? Is that right? Just going to bust in and have a look around, ask the people using it, 'Hey, did any of you people put a bunch of kids in comas or kill my friends?' Great plan."

Singh was unconcerned. "You can do what you like, girlie-this isn't the military or anything, I'm just tipping you what I'm going to do." He paused, chewing his lip. "But I'll tell you something for free. You want to know where that city of yours is? Why it looks so real, but you can't find it anywhere in the known world? Because it's on Atasco's net."

Renie was silenced. The old man's words had the feel of truth.

"The mystery centers around this Otherland," Martine said slowly, the da Vinci eyes focused on nothing present "All roads seem to lead there. It is a thing, it is a place. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it. The best minds of two generations labored to build it. And it is surrounded in secrecy. What could this Grail Brotherhood want? Is it simply to harvest and sell organs? That would be dreadful enough. Or is it something larger, harder to understand?"

"What, like they want to rule the world?" Singh laughed harshly. "Come on, that's the oldest and worst cliché in the books. Besides, if these people are what they seem to be, they already own half the world. But they're up to something, that's for damn sure."

"Is there a mountain in this place?" !Xabbu asked suddenly. "A great black mountain that reaches into the clouds?"

No one said anything, and Singh looked mildly annoyed, but Renie suddenly felt a memory, a tattered scrap of dream, blow through her mind on a chill wind. A black mountain. Her dream, too. Maybe Martine was right. Maybe all roads did lead to this Otherland. And if Singh was the only person who could get her inside. . . .

"If you did hack in," she said out loud, "could you take other people in with you?"

The old man raised an eyebrow. "You talking about yourself? You want to come with me? I said this wasn't the military, but if I'm doing the work, then I am definitely the general. Could you live with that, Shaka Zulu?"

"I think so." She suddenly and inexplicably found herself liking the cranky old bastard just a little. "But I've got no decent equipment-I won't even be able to use this stuff anymore." She gestured at her sim. "I've just been suspended from my job over all this."

"You have your pad and your goggles, Renie," !Xabbu reminded her.

"Never work." Singh waved his hand imperiously. "A home system? One of those little Krittapong station boxes or something? This may take hours, days even, and that's just to get inside. Even twenty-five years ago this would have been an almost impossible system to hack-God knows how they've upgraded the defenses since then. If any of you go in with me, you'll need to be ready to stay online for hours. Then, if we get through, we're going to need the best input-output equipment we can get. That city you're so impressed by is an example of the processing power they have. There'll be an incredible amount of information, and any and all of it might be important."

"I would offer to bring you in on one of my links, Renie," Martine said. "But I doubt your pad could handle that much bandwidth. In any case, that would not solve your problem as far as being online for an extended period."

"Can you think of anything, Martine? I'm desperate. I can't just sit back and wait to see if Singh finds anything." Nor could she imagine putting much trust in Singh's capacity for subtlety once the security was breached. Better if she were there with him.

"I-I will consider the problem. There may be something I can do."

In her hopeful gratitude, it took Renie a moment to realize that Martine seemed to be planning to join the expedition, too. But before she could consider this, a swarm of tiny yellow monkeys abruptly popped into existence in the middle of the room, spinning like a cartoon tornado.

"Whee!" one of them shouted. "Wicked Tribe ruling tribe!" Whooping, they swirled like autumn leaves.

"Good God, get out of here, you kids!" shouted Singh.

"You want to see us, Apa Dog! Want to see! Here are we!" They swirled toward the snapshot of the two intruders, who still floated like parade blimps at the center of the 'cot; one of the monkeys looped out of the banana-colored cloud to hover before them. "Knew it!" the tiny voice shrieked. "Our friends! Knew it!"

"Why you send them away?" another demanded. "Now boring boring boring!"

Singh shook his head in disgust "I didn't want you here, I told them I'd talk to you later. How did you little monsters get in? What, do you eat code or something?"

"Mejor hacker tribe! Too small, too fast, too scientific!"

"Been snooping where you shouldn't. Christ what else is new?"

The image of the intruders was now surrounded by tiny yellow creatures. Renie found herself staring. On the outskirts of the whirling crowd, several of them were playing catch with a small, shiny, faceted object. "What's that?" she said sharply. "What have you got there?"

"Ours! Found it!" A handful of microsimians bunched protectively around the golden nugget.

"Found it where?" Renie asked. "That's just like the thing that was left on my system!"

"Found it where our friends were," one of the monkeys said defensively. "They didn't see it, but we did! Wicked Tribe, ojos mejores!"

"Give that here," growled Singh. He skimmed toward them and plucked it from their midst.

"Not yours! Not yours!" they wailed.

"Be careful," Renie warned him. "It was something just like that which put the image of the city onto my system."

"What did you do to get it to display?" asked Singh, but before she could answer him, the gemlike object pulsed light, then vanished in a sudden whiteflare. For an instant, Renie could not see at all; moments later, as she contemplated the now familiar vista of the golden city, there were still afterimages of the flash on her eyes.

"That's not possible." Singh sounded furious. "Nobody could have walked that much information into TreeHouse under our noses-we built this place!"

The image abruptly shivered, then dissolved into a single blinking point of light. A moment later, it expanded outward again, taking on a new form.

"Look!" Renie dared not move, for fear she would disrupt the information, "Look at that! Martine, what is that?"

Martine remained silent.

"Don't you even recognize it?" asked Singh. "Jesus, I feel ancient. It's what they used in the old days, before they had clocks. It's an hourglass."

Everyone watched as the sand flowed swiftly through the narrow neck. Even the Wicked Tribe hung motionless and rapt. Just before the final grains had run out, the image vanished. Another object popped into view, this one more abstract.

"It's some kind of grid," Renie said. "No, I think it's supposed to be . . . a calendar."

"But there aren't any dates on it-no month." Singh was squinting.

Renie was counting. As she finished, the grid winked out, leaving nothing behind. "The first three weeks were x'd out-only the last ten days were blank."

"What in hell is going on here?" Singh rasped. "Who did this, and what the hell are they trying to say?"

"I believe I can answer the second question," !Xabbu said. "Whoever has tried to tell us about this city is now trying to tell us something else."

"!Xabbu's right." Something had seized her, an unshakable certainty like a vast cold hand. She had no choice any more-that freedom had been taken from her. She could only go forward, dragged into the unknown. "I don't know why, and I don't know whether we're being taunted or warned, but we've just been told that our time is running out. Ten days left. That's all we have."

"Left before what?" demanded Singh. Renie could only shake her head.

One of the monkeys fluttered up and hung before her, yellow pinions beating as swiftly as a hummingbird's.

"Now Wicked Tribe really angry," it said, screwing up its tiny face. "What you do with our shiny thing?"

Third:

The dews drop slowly and dreams gather unknown spears

Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,

And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries

Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears,

We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore,

The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,

Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you,

Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.

-William Butler Yeats

CHAPTER 24

NETFEED/HEALTH: Charge Damage May Be Reversible

(visual: charge users on Marseille street corner)

VO; The Clinsor Group, one of the world's largest medical equipment companies, announced that they will soon be marketing a therapy for the damage caused by the addictive use of deep-hypnosis software, called "charge" by its users.

(visual: Clinsor laboratories, testing on human volunteers)

VO: The new method, which the inventors call NRP or "neural reprogramming," induces the brain to find new synoptic pathways to replace those damaged by excessive charge use. . . .

The golden light became blackness and noise.

Something was crushing him. He kicked, but there was nothing to kick against. For endless moments he thrashed helplessly. Then the world peeled back around his head and he was sucking air into his stinging lungs and struggling to keep his head above the water, straining to hold onto the beautiful, marvelous, silversweet night air.

The boy Gally, clutched in his arms, sputtered out water and rasped in breath. Paul loosened his hold and let the boy out to arm's length so he could use his other arm to help keep them both afloat. The water was gentler here than the place in the river where they had dived. Perhaps they had drifted away from the scarlet woman and that terrible creature.