Mountain of Black Glass, Page 48

  The wind mounted outside, fretful and searching. Something was beneath him—a bed, but rough and unfamiliar. It felt like nothing so much as a pile of coats, as though someone had put him down in the spare room during one of his parents' parties and then forgotten to come back for him.

  Orlando tried to sit up, but even the effort of trying almost pulled him back into oblivion once more. Dizziness so great he would have thrown up if it had not been too much trouble, if he had anything in him to throw up, swept over him.

  Weak, he thought. So weak. I can't do this again—can I? Start over?

  But he had to. He had made his choice. If he had lost his last moments with Vivien and Conrad, it had to be for something. He closed his eyes and tried to take inventory.

  We were in the temple, he remembered. And what's his name, Osiris, came and broke down the walls. Then we were running for the back room and something hit me on the head. Did I make it through the gateway? All he could remember was light, flickering like the light on the fabric around this bed.

  He slowly turned his head to one side. He could see dark walls beyond the thin cloth of the bed hanging: he seemed to be in a sort of cabin made of rough boards. The bit of the roof he could see was dry thatch. A brazier full of coals smoldered near the farthest wall. The energy it took to move his head exhausted him, and for a while he only lay, staring at the play of fire across the embers.

  When he felt a little more strength returning, he shoved himself back until he found something soft and yielding behind his head. He steeled himself for the effort and pushed with legs that did not feel quite like his own until his head slid up onto whatever lay rolled behind him and tipped upward, so that he could see what was in front of him.

  The cabin or hut was large, several meters wide, and almost entirely empty. The floor was pounded earth; light leaked in at the bottom edges. A graceful handled jug stood on the ground near him, and beside it lay a rolled cloth bundle. The only other objects in the room stood opposite the brazier—one very long spear and a few slightly smaller versions, a short stabbing-sword he had never seen but which seemed inexplicably familiar, and a huge round shield leaning against a weird figure like a truncated scarecrow.

  The manlike shape was armor on a crude stand, the bronze polished until it glinted—a breastplate, some other pieces, and a helmet with a horsetail crest perched on top.

  Orlando sighed. Fighting, then. Of course.

  They don't need me for my smile or my sense of humor, he thought. Not much left of either of those, anyway.

  So where was he? It looked old-fashioned, but he was too tired to think about it much. Troy? Had they been lucky with the gateway?

  A shadow skimmed across the bottom of the Wall as something moved outside the hut. A moment later a man pushed open the door and stepped inside. He wore simpler armor than that which hung on the stand, boiled leather held together with rope and straps and buckles, and a kind of skirt made of leather strips. He dropped to one knee inside the doorway, his dark, bearded face turned down to the ground.

  "Forgive me, Lord," the soldier said. "There are many who wish to speak with you."

  Orlando could not believe it was all starting again so soon.

  Where was Fredericks? Bonnie Mae and the others? "I don't want to see anyone."

  "But it is the Great King, Lord." The soldier spoke nervously, startled by Orlando's refusal but determined to deliver his message. "He sends a messenger to say that the hope of the Achaians rests on you. And Patroclus also asks to see you."

  "Tell them all to go away." Orlando managed to raise a trembling hand. "I'm sick. I can't talk to anyone. Maybe later."

  The soldier seemed about to say something else, but instead nodded and rose to slip quietly back out of the cabin.

  Orlando let his hand drop. Could he make himself do it all again? How? It was one thing to make a choice, another to have the strength to see it through. What if he couldn't? What if he didn't get any stronger?

  Something scratched on the cabin wall, a quiet but insistent noise. Orlando felt a surge of indignation—hadn't he just told them all to leave him alone? He gathered his energy to shout, but found himself staring openmouthed instead as a small shape crawled in through the gap where wall and floor did not quite meet.

  "You are confused?" the turtle asked, turning its head to fix him with an eye like a drop of tar. "Do not worry—I will tell you what you need to know. The Great King is Agamemnon, and he fears you are upset with him over the matter of a slave girl."

  Orlando groaned. It was like another stupid Thargor adventure, but one he did not even have the energy to participate in. "I just want them to leave me alone."

  "Without you, the Achaians cannot win."

  "Achaians?" He closed his eyes and let his head sag back, but the voice of the turtle was not so easily silenced.

  "The Greeks, we will call them. The federation that have come to conquer Troy."

  So he had reached Troy after all. But he could not find any pleasure in the knowledge. "I need to sleep. Why do they want me? Who the hell am I supposed to be?"

  There was a pause as the creature made its way to the section of dirt floor just beside his trailing hand. "You are Achilles, the greatest of heroes," it said, nudging his fingers with its cool, rough little head. "Aren't you pleased?" Orlando tried to sweep the turtle away, but with surprising nimbleness it moved just beyond his reach. "Great Achilles, whose deeds are legend. Your mother is a goddess! The bards sing of you! Even the heroes of Troy tremble at your name, and you have left the burned wrack of many cities behind you. . . ."

  Orlando tried to shut out the lecturing voice, but even fingers in his ears would not silence it. He missed Beezle more than ever.

  "Please leave me alone," he murmured, but apparently not loud enough for the turtle to hear. It continued on, reciting his fabulous history with the hideous cheer of a tour guide, even after Orlando had rolled over and pulled the bedding close around his head.

  CHAPTER 20

  Elephant's House

  NETFEED/NEWS: It's Silly Season Again, Says Investigator

  (visual: Warringer investigating at Sand Creek)

  VO: The destruction caused by a satellite falling from orbit and the discovery of ancient habitations in the Antarctic have started a new round of what writer and investigator Aloysius Warringer calls "silly season journalism," bringing the UFO debate back into the public eye.

  (visual: Warringer at home in front of wallscreen)

  WARRINGER: "It happens every few years. We've been searching for intelligent life beyond our planet for decades and haven't found it, but any time something having to do with space comes up, the conspiracy theories come out of the woodwork. 'There are aliens and the government's hiding them!' Roswell, Sand Creek in South Dakota, all the perennials get trolled out. Meanwhile, what about the real questions? What about Anford's conspiracy with international anti-monetarists to return the country to the gold standard? What about the Atasco assassination? The continuing fluoridation of our water?"

  "I can't believe you." Del Ray Chiume rolled his eyes in a theatrical way that made Long Joseph want to kick him. "How could you not know how to get back? What would you have done if you hadn't met me?"

  "Met you?" Joseph pushed off from the wall, away from Renie's irritating ex-boyfriend, but two steps took him out into the drizzling rain and he quickly moved back beneath the cement overhang. They were drinking their coffee on the street. Even in this backwater sector of Durban, the restaurant proprietor had taken one look at Del Ray's stained, rumpled suit and Joseph's slightly lurching gait and asked them to take their coffee in travel cups and their business outside. If the man hadn't been black, Joseph would have called it racism. "Met you? You crazy? Seems to me you came at me with a gun, boy."

  "Probably saved your life, too, although you've done your damnedest to make up for it." Del Ray cursed as hot coffee squirted out of the foam container and down his chin. "Why I let you talk me into going back t
o that hospital. . . ."

  "I had to see my boy." Despite the misery of the experience, Joseph felt no qualms. That was why he had left that mountain place, after all. Why was it so surprising he didn't know how to find his way back—was he supposed to have made a map or something?

  "Well, we're going to have to figure it out. It's up in the Drakensberg—you don't just walk around up there hoping to stumble onto some government base." He frowned. "I wish my brother would hurry up."

  Joseph was looking at a black van parked at the far end of the street, the silver antenna strip above its windshield pounded underneath a torrent of water draining off one of the roofs. It was one of the fat ones people in Pinetown called a "pig," and it seemed a little rich for the neighborhood. He thought about pointing it out, but didn't want to send Del Ray off on another long speech about how foolish they'd been to go to the hospital, and how they were probably being followed by Boer hitmen. . . .

  His thoughts were scattered as an old car pulled up beside them. Joseph felt a moment of alarm when he recognized it as the one into which he had been thrown before, then realized that of course it was the same car, and the same brother who had driven it. As Del Ray climbed into the front, Long Joseph opened the other door to find three small children playing a noisy game of I-smack-you, you-smack-me on the back seat. "What the hell is this?" he growled.

  "You brought your kids?" Del Ray's voice soared high with irritation. "Gilbert, what are you doing?"

  "Look, man, their mama's gone out." The brother, who Joseph was seeing properly for the first time, had the worn look of a man who had been babysitting all morning. "I don't have a choice."

  "I'm not getting back there with no children," Joseph declared. Grumbling, Del Ray got out and slid in with his niece and nephews. By the time Joseph got his long legs properly folded under the dash—Del Ray's brother was short, and had the seat close to the wheel—they had driven past the spot where the black van had been parked, so Joseph didn't get a closer look at it.

  "Look, I can't drive you and this old man around all day," Gilbert said. "I already spent enough time sitting around outside that hospital. Where are you going?"

  "Yes, and nice to meet you, too," Joseph snarled. "Last time we spending any time together, you were perpetrating a crime on me. You lucky I don't call the police on you. Old man, is it?"

  "Oh, please shut up," groaned Del Ray.

  "Wasn't my idea," his brother said quietly. "I have a job."

  "Don't start with me, Gilbert," Del Ray snapped. "Who got you that job, anyway? We're going to see Elephant. He lives over in Mayville." He gave directions, then slumped back, pausing to pull the two boys apart, but not before they had inflicted scream-provoking injuries on each other.

  "Elephant!" Joseph shook his head. "What kind of name is that? I'm not going to no game park,"

  Del Ray sighed. "Very humorous."

  "I did an elephant in school, Uncle Del," the girl beside him announced. "I colored him all green and my teacher said that wasn't right."

  "Your teacher is foolish, girl," Long Joseph called over his shoulder. "Schools are full of people who can't get no regular job, think they know everything. You can have any color elephant you want. You tell your teacher that."

  "Look," snarled Gilbert, the car rocking on its aged springs as he negotiated a narrow turn, "don't start in telling my child to disrespect her teacher. You and my brother want to ran around playing Johnny Icepick, that's your affair, but don't start with my children."

  "I'm just telling her to stand up for herself." Joseph was deeply wounded. "Don't blame me 'cause you not doing your duty."

  "Oh, for God's sake," said Del Ray. "Everyone please just shut up."

  Gilbert dropped them in front of Elephant's building, a warehouse tower built in the early part of the century, a right-angled pile of alternating brown-and-gray concrete slabs. Under the dark skies and cold rain, Joseph thought it was almost as depressing as the hospital. Del Ray thumbed the intercom and the downstairs door unlocked with a loud click.

  There was no elevator, and Joseph was complaining vigorously by the time they reached the third floor. Some of the widely-separated doors had little nameplates next to them, but many more were blank. Every door, though, had some kind of additional security locks, and some were so festooned with chains and pressure bolts that it looked like terrible monsters must be imprisoned behind them.

  "What good that going to do you when you inside?" Joseph asked. "How you going to lock all that nonsense?"

  "This isn't a flatblock, it's storage." Del Ray was breathing only a little less heavily after the climb than Joseph. "People don't live in these, they just want to keep other people out." He corrected himself as they stopped in front of one of the featureless, nameless doors. "People don't live in most of these."

  The door popped open almost immediately at his knock. It was nearly dark inside, so Joseph hung back to let Del Ray step through first while his own eyes adjusted.

  "What is this?" he asked. "Looks all old-fashioned."

  Del Ray shot him an irritated glance. "He likes it this way. Just don't start in with your usual charm, will you? He's doing us a favor—I hope."

  The huge, windowless room was indeed like something out of one of the net dramas of Joseph's youth, one of those science-fiction things that had always filled him with scorn. It looked like an aging space station or a mad scientist's laboratory. Machinery covered every surface, and had colonized the room's other spaces as well, hanging in nets from the ceiling or piled on the floor in haphazard stacks. Everything seemed to be connected, thousands of individual conduits flowing together to share one electrical circuit; huge bundles of cables ran almost everywhere so that it was hard to find somewhere to put your foot down. There were so many little scarlet readout lights blinking and so many palely glowing dials and meters that even though only one ordinary source of illumination burned at the center of the room, a tall floor lamp with a crooked shade, the cavernous space was as full of twinkling light as a Christmas display in some Golden Mile shop window.

  An ancient, peeling recliner stood in the middle of the lamp's glow. Its occupant, a large black man in a striped wirewool jumper, whose head was shaved except for a topknot like a bird's crest, sat hunched over a low table. He turned to peer at them for a moment before returning to whatever was in front of him. "Del Ray, utterly weird that you called," he said in a childish, high-pitched voice. "I was just thinking about you."

  "You were?" Del Ray picked his way through the seemingly random piles of equipment; Joseph, following close behind, couldn't figure out what any of the machines were supposed to be or do. "Why?"

  "Cleaning out some memory and found this thing I put together for a presentation a while back—remember that thing I did for your Rural Communications Project, the bit with the little dancing bullyboxes?"

  "Oh, yes. That was a while ago." Del Ray pulled up beside the recliner. "This is Joseph Sulaweyo. I used to go out with his daughter Renie, remember?"

  "Doubt not. She was fine." The chunky young black man nodded in appreciation. He glanced at Joseph but did not get up or offer his hand.

  "How come you got a name like Elephant?" Joseph asked.

  Elephant turned to Del Ray. "Why'd you tell him that? I don't like that name."

  "You don't? But it's a term of respect," Del Ray said quickly. "You know, because an elephant doesn't forget anything. Because they're wise, and they get their noses into everything."

  "Yeah?" Elephant wrinkled his forehead like a little boy who still wants to believe in Father Christmas.

  Long Joseph thought he knew where the name came from, and it wasn't anything to do with respect. Not only was the young man's belly wider than his shoulders, he had the sagging skin and gray pallor of someone who didn't get outside in the sun very much. A mulch of food wrappers, squeeze bottles, and wave boxes surrounding the table testified to the truth of it.

  "And I need a favor," Del Ray hurried on, "like I tol
d you. And you're the only one I can trust to do it right."

  Elephant nodded sagely. "Couldn't talk over the phone, you said. I hear that—man, your old bosses at UNComm, they're all over everything now. Can't fart without someone showing up at your door, talking about EBE."

  "Electronic Breaking and Entering," Del Ray explained to Joseph, who could not have cared less. "Hacking, in an old-fashioned word. My man here is one of the world's true experts on data acquisition—legitimate, very legitimate, that's why he did so much work for us at UNComm!—but there's so much red tape, tollgates, you name it. . . ." He turned back to the large young man. "And now I need you to find something for me."

  The respect due to his eminence now duly rendered, Elephant inclined his head. "Tell me."

  As Del Ray passed along Long Joseph's fragmented recollections of the military base in the mountains, Joseph wondered idly if this fat young man might have any beer. He considered asking, but after weighing it against another annoying lecture from Del Ray, figured he would do better looking around on his own. The cavernous warehouse space seemed big enough to hide anything, including a refrigerator full of something pleasant, and anyway it was something to do. As he wandered off, Elephant was already making pictures appear in midair above the desk, a succession of bright shapes that threw long shadows from the equipment towers.

  "Op that, man," Elephant said proudly. "Hologram display like this, you won't find another one in private hands south of Nairobi."

  The huge horizontal refrigerator, which at first had filled Long Joseph with such glee, seemed to contain only soft drinks—row after row of squeeze bottles like Chinese soldiers awaiting inspection. Joseph finally found a single bottle of something called "Janajan" behind the plastic bags of components inexplicably stored alongside Elephant's cola reserves and pop-up wave packs. It had an irritatingly fruity taste, but it was still beer—it even had a tiny bit of a kick to it. Joseph nursed it slowly as he strolled through the artificial fairyland, not sure when he might get his next one.