River of Blue Fire, Page 27

  “I took this stuff for granted,” Orlando said between deep breaths. “Can you see the ground yet?”

  Fredericks looked down. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “Tell me you do even if you don’t.”

  “Okay. Almost there, Gardino.”

  A few more minutes did in fact bring them into safe dropping distance. The shadows beneath the table were deep and dark, and they could see the Indian only by the gleam of his eyes and teeth. “Have canoe here,” he said. “We go on river. Plenty faster.”

  “River?” Orlando squinted. A curving line of water stretched before them, curiously circumscribed when logic suggested it should have spread into a flat puddle. Instead, it held its shape and flowed merrily by along the floor, past the battlements of the kitchen counter on one side, coiling away past the iron stove in the other direction. Where it passed the red-gleaming stove, the water seemed to steam faintly. Orlando hoped they weren’t going in that direction. “Why is there a river here?”

  Strike Anywhere was wrestling a birchbark canoe out of the shadows. He emerged from beneath the table, turned the canoe over and put it on his head, then began to carry it toward the gleaming river as Orlando and Fredericks scrambled after him. “Why river?” His voice echoed inside the canoe. He seemed confused by the question. “Sink overflow.” He gestured to where a cataract of water was pouring down the front of the cabinet, pooling at its base, and extending a tongue of river in each direction. For water that was falling such a distance, it did not splash very much. “Sink always overflow.”

  Orlando decided he was not going to figure out the whys and wherefores of this place so easily; it would be better just to concentrate on what happened next. Still, his Thargor-training made him very uncomfortable with not knowing the ground rules.

  Strike Anywhere helped them into the canoe, prestidigitally produced a paddle, and edged the craft out onto the river.

  “And who are we following?” Orlando asked.

  “Bad men,” the Indian said, then brought a long, unjointed finger to his lips. “Talk quiet. Kitchen waking up.”

  It was hard to see anything by the lunar light of the bulb far overhead. Orlando settled back, watching the shadows of counter and cabinets slide past.

  “What are we doing this for?” Fredericks whispered.

  “Because he helped us. Someone stole his kid.” The memory of Dispose Carefully’s tragic eyes seemed an unanswerable argument.

  Fredericks apparently did not feel the same way. “This is stupid, Orlando. They’re just Puppets!” He lowered his head and spoke into Orlando’s ear, unwilling to state this harsh fact loud enough for the Puppet nearest them to hear. “We’ve lost the only real people, maybe, in this whole impacted place, and instead of looking for them, we’re risking our lives for . . . for code!”

  Orlando’s rebuttal died on his tongue. His friend was right. “It just . . . it just seems like we should do this.”

  “It’s not a game, Gardiner. This isn’t the Middle Country. It’s a whole lot weirder, for one thing.”

  Orlando could only shake his head. His faint and entirely inexplicable belief that they were doing the right thing did not lend itself well to argument. And in fact, he thought, maybe he was just kidding himself. The simple fact of being able to move around without feeling like it would kill him had obscured some of the harsher facts, and he had quickly fallen into the gaming mode of taking any challenge, of building sudden and apparently pointless allegiances. But that was game logic—this, their situation, was not a game. Actual lives were at stake. The people they were contending against were not the Table of Judgment, a claque of moonlighting engineers and role-playing idiot savants. Instead, unless Sellars had made the whole thing up, the masters of Otherland were incredibly rich, powerful, and ruthless. In fact, they were murderers.

  And what was Orlando’s response to this threat, and to being separated from the only other people who understood the danger? Getting sidetracked into a search for a lost cartoon baby with a cartoon Indian through an animated kitchen. Fredericks was right. It didn’t make a lot of sense.

  He opened his mouth to admit his own stupidity, but at that moment the chief turned and brought finger to lips once more. “Sssshhhhh.”

  Something was bobbing on the water just in front of them. The Indian did not give it a look as he steered the canoe silently past it; his attention was fixed farther ahead. Orlando had time only to notice that the floating object was a waterlogged box, sinking rapidly, and that the faint smudge of words painted on it advertised some kind of floor wax, then his attention was diverted by the sound of slow, labored breathing.

  “What’s that?” Fredericks asked nervously.

  A shape gradually materialized on the river before them—an extremely odd shape. Strike Anywhere paddled forward until they were within a few feet of it, but Orlando still could not make out exactly what was floating on the water beside them. It was a hinged object, like an open oyster shell, but another shape, scrawny and bent, stood inside it, like the famous Venus Orlando had seen in so many advertisements and on so many nodes.

  It was some kind of turtle, he realized finally, but it was naked, and standing in its own open shell. Even more ludicrously, it was blowing against the raised half-shell, as though to force itself forward.

  “That is so tchi seen,” Fredericks murmured. “It’s . . . it’s a turtle.”

  The scrawny figure turned toward them. “I am not,” it said in a dignified but very nasal voice. It produced a pair of spectacles from somewhere and balanced them on the end of its beaklike nose, then examined the newcomers carefully before speaking again. “I am a tortoise. If I were a turtle, I would be able to swim, wouldn’t I?” It turned back and blew out another great shuddering breath, but the shell did not move forward even a centimeter. Instead, the canoe slid alongside, and Chief Strike Anywhere backed water to hold them there.

  “That not work,” he observed evenly.

  “I’ve noticed,” said the tortoise. “Any other useful comments?” His dignity was more than a little pathetic. Wearing nothing but his baggy bare skin, and with his head wobbling slightly at the end of his wrinkled neck, he gave the impression of an old bachelor caught outside in his pajamas.

  “Where you going?” Strike Anywhere asked.

  “Back to shore, as quickly as possible.” The tortoise frowned. “Although I would have thought I’d be closer by now. My shell, though water-repellent, does not appear well-suited for river travel.”

  “Get in boat.” The chief paddled a little closer. “We take you.”

  “Very kind!” The tortoise nevertheless examined him a moment longer. “Back to the land, you mean?”

  “Back to land,” the Indian affirmed.

  “Thank you. You can’t be too careful. A large jar of Great White scouring powder offered me a ride on its back a little earlier. ‘Just grab my fin,’ it insisted. But the whole thing didn’t feel . . . right, if you know what I mean.” The tortoise stepped from the velvety interior of its shell into the canoe, then leaned back and recaptured the floating carapace. The chief angled the canoe toward the shore at the base of the cabinet.

  The tortoise began to step into its shell, then noticed Orlando and Fredericks watching. “It would be a little more polite,” it said carefully, “if you would turn your backs while I dressed. Failing room to do that, you might at least avert your eyes.”

  Orlando and Fredericks stared at each other instead, and as the tortoise pulled his outer covering back on, making fussy little noises as he adjusted it, they fought mightily against the laugh that immediately began to bubble between them. Orlando bit his lip hard, and as he felt it sting, suddenly wondered how much of his virtual behavior the suppressor circuits in his neurocannular implant were actually suppressing in RL. Was he biting his real lip right now? What if his family, or the hospit
al people, were actually listening to all the things he was saying, watching all the things he was doing? They would really wonder what was going on. Or they would think he had scanned out utterly.

  This, which started out as an unhappy thought, suddenly struck him with its absurd side as well, and the long-withheld laugh burst out of him.

  “I hope you are enjoying yourself,” the tortoise said in a frosty tone.

  “It’s not you,” Orlando said, gaining control again. “I just thought of something. . . .” He shrugged. There was no way to explain.

  As they neared the bank of the river, they could see something sparkling on the shore and hear faint but lively music. A large dome stood on the floor just at the water’s edge. Light streamed out of it through hundreds of small holes and a variety of odd silhouettes were passing in and out of a larger hole in the side. The music was louder now, something rhythmic but old-fashioned. The strange shapes seemed to be dancing—a group of them had even formed a line in front of the dome, laughing and bumping against each other, throwing their tiny wiggling arms in the air. It was only as the canoe drew within a stone’s throw of the bank that its crew could finally see the merrymakers properly.

  “Scanbark!” Fredericks whistled. “They’re vegetables!”

  Produce of all types staggered in and out of the main door of the dome beneath a large illuminated sign which read “The Colander Club.” Stalks of leek and fennel in diaphanous flapper dresses, zucchini in zoot suits, and other revelers of a dozen well-dressed vegetal varieties packed the club to overflowing; the throng had spilled out onto the darkened linoleum beach in cornucopiate profusion, partying furiously.

  “Hmmph,” the tortoise grunted disapprovingly. “I hear it’s a very seedy crowd.” There was not the slightest suggestion of humor.

  As Orlando and Fredericks stared in amazed delight, a sudden, hard impact shivered the canoe and tipped it sideways, almost tumbling Orlando overboard. The tortoise fell against the railing, but Fredericks shot out a hand and dragged him down into the bottom of the boat where he lay, waggling his legs violently in the air.

  Something struck the boat again, a jarring thump that made the wood literally groan. Strike Anywhere was fighting to keep the canoe afloat in the suddenly hostile waters, his big hands whipping the paddle from one side of the canoe to the other as it threatened to overturn.

  As Orlando struggled for balance in the bottom of the canoe, he felt something scrape all the way down the keel beneath him. He scrambled onto his hands and knees to see what had happened.

  A sandbar, he thought, but then: A sandbar in the middle of a kitchen floor?

  He peered over the side of the pitching canoe. In the first brief moment he could see only the agitated waters splashing high, glowing in the lights from the riverside club, then something huge and toothy exploded up out of the water toward him. Orlando squealed and dropped flat. Huge jaws gnashed with a loud clack just where his head had been, then banged against the edge of the canoe hard enough to rattle his bones as the predatory shape fell back into the water.

  “There’s something . . . something tried to bite me!” he shouted. As he lay, shivering, he saw another vast pair of jaws rise on the far side of the canoe, streaming water. They opened and then clashed their blunt teeth together, then the thing slid back down out of sight. Orlando groped at his belt for his sword, but it was gone, perhaps overboard.

  “Very bad!” Strike Anywhere shouted above the splashing. The canoe sustained yet another heavy blow, and the Indian fought for balance. “Salad tongs! And them heap angry!”

  Orlando lay beside Fredericks and the feebly thrashing tortoise in the bottom of the canoe, which was rapidly filling with water, and tried to wrap his mind around the idea of being devoured by kitchen utensils.

  DREAD was reviewing the first batch of data from Klekker and Associates on his southern Africa queries, and enjoying the solid bodily hum of his most recent hit of Adrenax, when one of his outside lines began blinking at the corner of his vision. He turned down the loping, percussive beat in his head a little.

  The incoming call overrode his voice-only default, opening a window. The new window framed an ascetic brown face surmounted by a wig of black hemp laced with gold thread. Dread groaned inwardly. One of the Old Man’s lackeys—and not even a real person. It was the strangest kind of insult. Of course, Dread considered, with someone as rich and isolated as the Old Man, maybe he didn’t even realize it was an insult.

  “The Lord of Life and Death desires to speak with you.”

  “So he wants me to come visit the film set?” It was a reflexive remark, but Dread was irritated with himself for wasting sarcasm on a puppet. “A trip to V-Egypt? To whatever it is, Abydos?”

  “No.” The puppet’s expression did not change, but there was a greater primness in its speech, a tiny hint of disapproval at its levity. Maybe it wasn’t a Puppet after all. “He will speak to you now.”

  Before Dread had more than an instant to be surprised, the priest winked out and was replaced by the Old Man’s green-tinged death-mask. “Greetings, my Messenger.”

  “And to you.” He was taken aback, both by the God of Death’s willingness to dispense with formalities, and by the knowledge of his own double game, emblemized by the documents even now sitting on the top level of his own system. The Old Man couldn’t just pop in past the security and read them while the line was open, could he? Dread felt a sudden chill: it was very hard to guess what the Old Man could or couldn’t accomplish. “What can I do for you?”

  The strange face peered at him for a long moment; and Dread suddenly very much wished he had not answered the call. Had he been found out? Was this the lead-up to the horrible and only eventually fatal punishment that his treachery would earn?

  “I . . . I have a job for you.”

  Despite the odd tone in his employer’s voice, Dread felt better. The old man didn’t need to be subtle with someone as comparatively powerless as he, so it seemed unlikely he knew or even suspected anything.

  And I won’t be powerless forever. . . .

  “Sounds interesting. I’ve pretty much tied up all the loose ends from Sky God.”

  The Old Man continued as though Dread hadn’t spoken. “It’s not in your usual . . . field of expertise. But I’ve tried other resources, and haven’t . . . haven’t found any answers.”

  Everything about the conversation was strange. For the first time, the Old Man actually sounded . . . old. Although the bandit adrenals were racing through his blood, urging him either to flee or fight, Dread began to feel a little more like his normal, cocky self. “I’d be glad to help, Grandfather. Will you send it to me?”

  As if this use of the disliked nickname had woken up his more regular persona, the mask-face abruptly frowned. “Have you got that music playing? In your head?”

  “Just a bit, at the moment . . .”

  “Turn it off.”

  “It’s not very loud. . . .”

  “Turn it off.” The tone, though still a bit distracted, was such that Dread complied instantly. Silence echoed in his skull.

  “Now, I want you to listen to this,” the Old Man said. “Listen very carefully. And make sure you record it.”

  And then, bizarrely, unbelievably, the Old Man began to sing.

  It was all Dread could do not to laugh out loud at the sheer unlikeliness of it all. As his employer’s thin, scratchy voice wound through a few words set to an almost childishly basic tune, a thousand thoughts flitted through Dread’s mind. Had the old bastard finally lost it, then? Was this the first true evidence of senile dementia? Why should one of the most powerful men in the world—in all of history—care about some ridiculous folk song, some nursery rhyme?

  “I want you to find out where that song comes from, what it means, anything you can discover,” the Old Man said when he had fini
shed his creaky recital. “But I don’t want it known that you’re doing the research, and I particularly don’t want it to come to the attention of any of the other Brotherhood members. If it seems to lead to one of them, come back to me immediately. Do I make myself understood?”

  “Of course. As you said, it’s not in my normal line. . . .”

  “It is now. This is very important.”

  Dread sat bewildered for long moments after the Old Man had clicked off. The unaccustomed quiet in his head had been replaced now with the memory of that quavering voice singing over and over, “an angel touched me . . . an angel touched me.”

  It was too much. Too much.

  Dread lay back on the floor of his white room and laughed until his stomach hurt.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Center of the Maze

  * * *

  NETFEED/ADVERTISEMENT: ELEUSIS

  (visual: happy, well-dressed people at party, slo-mo)

  VO: “Eleusis is the most exclusive club in the world. Once you are a member, no doors are closed to you.

  (visual: gleaming, angled key on velvet cushion in shaft of light)

  “The owner of an Eleusis Key will be fed, serviced, and entertained in ways about which ordinary mortals can only dream. And all for free. How do you join? You can’t. In fact, if you’re hearing about Eleusis for the first time, you’ll almost certainly never be a member. Our locations are secret and exclusive, and so is our membership. So why are we advertising? Because having the very, very best isn’t as much fun if no one else knows about it . . .”

  * * *

  HIS first thought, as he struggled toward the surface of yet another river, was; I could get tired of this very quickly.

  His second, just after his head broke water, was: At least it’s warmer here.