River of Blue Fire (41 page)

“Well,” said the tortoise as he watched him paddle away, “I can't pretend to be happy I've been caught up in all this, but I suppose we must make the best of things. Too bad we have no way of lighting a fire—it would make the waiting a little less lonely.”

Fredericks seemed about to say something, then shook his head. Orlando realized that his friend had been about to ask a question, but had been suddenly embarrassed by the idea of talking to a cartoon. Orlando smiled. It was funny to know someone so well, and yet not to know them at all. He had known Sam Fredericks for years now—since they had both been sixth graders—and still had never seen his face.

Her
face.

As always, the realization startled him. He looked at the familiar Pithlit-the-Thief features—the sharp chin, the large, expressive eyes—and wondered again what Fredericks really looked like. Was she pretty? Or did she look like her usual Fredericks sims, except a girl instead of a boy? And what did it matter?

Orlando wasn't sure it
did
matter. But he wasn't sure it didn't, either.

“I'm hungry,” Fredericks announced. “What happens if we eat something here, Orlando? I mean, I know it doesn't really feed us or anything. But would it feel good?”

“I'm not sure. I guess it depends on whatever it is that's keeping us on the system.” He tried to consider that for a moment—how the brain as well as body might be locked into a virtual interface—but he was having trouble making his thoughts stay together. “I'm too tired to think about it.”

“Perhaps you two should sleep,” the tortoise said. “I would gladly keep watch, in case our friend comes back, or something less savory takes an interest in us.”

Fredericks gave the tortoise a look not entirely devoid of suspicion. “Yeah?”

Orlando settled against the broad base of the furniture leg, which was wide as a grain silo out of one of those old Western flicks and made a reasonably comfortable backrest. “Come on,” he said to Fredericks. “You can put your head on my shoulder.”

His friend turned and stared. “What does
that
mean?”

“Just . . . just so you'll be comfortable.”

“Oh, yeah? And if you still believed I was a guy, would you have said that?”

Orlando had no honest answer. He shrugged. “Okay, so I'm a total woofmaster. So take me to Law Net Live.”

“Perhaps I should tell you lads a story,” the tortoise said brightly. “That sometimes helps to dig a path toward the Sands of Sleep.”

“You said something about the Shoppers.” Orlando had been intrigued, although he did not know if he had the strength to listen to an entire story. “Do you believe they're the ones who made you? Who made all the . . . the people in the Kitchen?”

Fredericks groaned, but the tortoise ignored him. “Made us? Goodness, no.” He took his spectacles off and wiped them vigorously, as if the mere thought made him jumpy. “No, we are made elsewhere. But the Shoppers, if the stories are true, bring us here from that other place, and thus we spend our nights in the Kitchen, longing always to return to our true home.”

“Your true home?”

“The Store, most call it, although I met a group of forks and spoons once who belonged to a flatware sect that referred to the great home as ‘The Catalog.' But all agree that wherever that great home is, it is a place where we do not sleep unless we choose to, and in which the Bulb is beautiful and bright through a night which never ends. There, it is said, the Shoppers will serve
us
.”

Orlando smiled and looked to Fredericks, but his friend's eyes were already closed. Fredericks had never been very interested in the hows and whys of things. . . .

As the tortoise droned quietly on, Orlando felt himself sliding into a sort of waking dream in which he and his fellow Kitchen-mates could live their cartoon lives without fear of being put back in drawers or cabinets, and in which all the violences of the night before were gone when darkness returned again.

Kind of like it would be if I lived here all the time
, he thought groggily.
It's funny—even the cartoons want to be alive. Just like me. I could live here forever, and not be sick, and never have to go into that hospital again, ‘cause I will go there again, and next time I won't come out, maybe I won't come out this time the tubes and the nurses all pretending they're not sad but I wouldn't have to if this was real and I could live here forever and never die
. . . .

He sat up suddenly. Fredericks, who perhaps against his or her better judgment had curled up against his shoulder after all, protested sleepily.

“Wake up!” Orlando shook his friend. The tortoise, who had lulled himself into a kind of gentle reverie, peered at him over the rim of his spectacles as though seeing him for the first time, then slowly closed his eyes again and dropped back into sleep. “Come on, Fredericks,” Orlando whispered loudly, not wanting to drag the tortoise into this, “wake up!”

“What? What is it?” Fredericks was always slow as a sloth to wake, but after a few moments he apparently remembered that they were in a potentially dangerous place and his eyes popped open. “What's happening?”

“I figured it out!” Orlando was both elated and sickened. The full import of the thing—the dreadful bargain those people had made—was just becoming clear to him. It could never mean as much to Fredericks as it did to him, never be as personal to anyone else, but even with his own fears and obsessions screaming their empathy, the thought of what the Grail people were doing made him angry to the very core of his being.

“Figured
what
out? You're having a dream, Gardiner.”

“No. I'm not, I swear. I just figured out what the Grail Brotherhood people want—what all of this is about.”

Fredericks sat up, annoyance turning to something like worry. “You did?”

“Think about it. Here we are, and we've already been in a bunch of these things—these simworlds—and they're just as good as the real world, right? No, better, because you can make anything,
be
anything.”

“So?”

“So why do you think they made these places? Just to run around in, like you and I run around in the Middle Country?”

“Maybe.” Fredericks rubbed his eyes. “Listen, Orlando, I'm sure this is utterly important and everything, but could you just tell me in a few words?”

“Think about it! You're some majorly rich person. You have everything you want, everything money can buy. Except that there's one thing you can't do, no matter how much money you have—one thing money can't buy, that makes all the houses and jets and everything worthless.

“They're going to
die
, Fredericks. All the money in the world can't stop that. All the money in the world won't help you if your body gets old and dies and rots away. Until now.”

Now his friend's eyes were wide. “What are you saying, exactly? That they're going to keep themselves from dying? How?”

“I'm not sure. But if they can find a way to live here, in this Other-land place, they don't need bodies any more. They could live here forever, Fredericks, just like they've always lived—no, better! They can be
gods
! And if they had to kill a few kids to get it, don't you think they'd be willing to pay that price?”

Fredericks gaped. Then his mouth closed and his lips rounded. He whistled. “
Tchi seen
, Orlando, you really think so? God.” He shook his head. “Scanny. This is the biggest thing ever.”

Now that he understood the stakes for the first time, Orlando was also realizing that he hadn't known how frightened he could be. This was the black, black shadow of the golden city. “It is,” he whispered, “it really is. The biggest thing ever.”

T
HE dark-skinned army man behind the desk was not the normal, friendly Corporal Keegan that usually sat there. He kept looking at Christabel like the waiting room of an office was not the place for a little girl, even if it was her dad's office and he was just on the other side of the double doors. Corporal Keegan always called her “Christalulu-bel” and sometimes gave her a piece of candy from a box in his drawer. The man at the desk now was all scowly, and Christabel did not like him.

Some people just made mean faces at kids. It was scanny. (That was Portia's word, and Christabel wasn't entirely sure what it meant, but she thought it meant stupid.) And it
was
stupid. Couldn't the man see that she was being extra special quiet?

She had a lot to think about, anyway, so she just ignored the scowly man and let him go back to working his squeezers. A
lot
to think about.

The boy from outside was what she had to think about, and Mister Sellars. When the boy had come into Mister Sellars' tunnel and frightened Christabel so bad, he had been waving a sharp thing and she had been really, really sure he was going to hurt them both with it. And he had even waved it at Mister Sellars and called him bad names, like “freak,” but instead of being scared, Mister Sellars had just made a kind of funny quiet laugh and then asked the boy if he wanted something to eat.

Christabel had seen a show on the net once where a bunch of people were trying to catch the last tiger somewhere—she didn't remember if it was the last tiger in the world or just in that place, but she remembered it was the last—because the tiger had a hurt leg and broken teeth and it would die if it tried to live in the outside by itself. But even though the tiger's leg was so hurt that it could barely walk, and they were offering it food to try to get it to go in a special trap, it still wouldn't come near them.

That was the look the strange boy had given Mister Sellars, a you-won't-catch-me look. And he had waved the knife around again and yelled really loud, scaring Christabel so bad she would have peed her pants again if there was anything left to pee. But Mister Sellars hadn't been scared at all, even though he was so thin and weak—his arms weren't any bigger than the boy's arms—and was in a wheelchair. He just asked him again if he wanted something to eat.

The boy had waited a long time, then scowled just like the man at the desk was doing, and said “What you got?”

And then Mister Sellars had sent her away.

That was the hardest thing to think about. If Mister Sellars wasn't afraid of the boy who was named Cho-Cho, if he didn't think the boy would hurt him, why did he send her away? Did the boy only hurt little kids? Or was there something Mister Sellars was going to do or say that he didn't want Christabel to hear, only the boy? That made her feel bad, like the time when Ophelia Weiner had said she could only have three people to her slumber party, her mom's rules, and had invited Portia and Sieglinde Hill and Delphine Riggs, even though Delphine Riggs had only gone to their school for a few weeks.

Portia said afterward that it was a dumb sleepover, and that Ophelia's mom made them look at pictures of Ophelia's family at their house in Dallas where they had a pool, but Christabel had still felt very sad. And having Mister Sellars send her away so he could talk to the boy and give him something to eat made her feel the same way, like things were different.

She wondered if she could take out the Storybook Sunglasses and say “Rumpelstiltskin” and then ask Mister Sellars why he did it, but even though she really, really wanted to, she knew it would be a very bad idea to use them here, right in her daddy's office with that man looking over at her with his face like a rock. Even if she whispered ever so quiet, it was a bad idea. But she really wanted to know, and she felt like crying.

The door to her daddy's office room suddenly opened, like it had been pushed open by the loud voice that was talking.

“. . . I don't really care, Major Sorensen. Nothing personal, you understand, but I just want results.” The man talking was standing in the doorway, and the man behind the desk jumped up like his chair had caught on fire. The man who said he didn't care wasn't as tall as her daddy, but he looked very strong, and his coat was tight across his back. His neck was very brown and had wrinkles on it.

“Yes, sir,” her daddy said. Two more men stepped out of the office and moved to either side of the door, like they meant to catch the man with the brown neck if he suddenly fell over.

“Well, then get it handled, damn it!” the man said. “I want him located. If I have to throw a cordon a hundred miles wide around this base and institute house-to-house searches, I will—I consider finding him that important. You could have done whatever was necessary before he had time to find a hiding place, and I would have made sure General Pelham backed you all the way. But you didn't, and there's not much point in stirring up a hornet's nest now. So, do it your own way . . . but you better get it done. You read me?”

Her daddy, who was nodding his head as the man spoke, saw Christabel over the man's shoulder and his eyes opened wide for a second. The man turned around. His face was in such a frown that Christabel was certain he was going to start yelling at everyone to get this little kid out of here. He had a gray mustache, much smaller and neater than Captain Ron's, and his eyes were very bright. For a moment he stared at her like a bird would look at a worm it wanted to eat, and she was scared all over again.

“Aha!” he said in a growly voice. “A spy.”

Christabel pushed herself back into the chair. The magazine she had been holding fell onto the floor with the pages open.

“Ohmigod, I scared her.” Suddenly he smiled. He had very white teeth, and his eyes crinkled up when he did it. “It's all right, I'm just kidding. Who are you, sweetie?”

“My daughter, sir,” her daddy said. “Christabel, say hello to General Yacoubian.”

She tried to remember what her daddy had taught her. It was hard to think with the man smiling at her. “Hello, General, sir.”