City of Golden Shadow, Page 84

  "Please." Sellars gestured for quiet "As the Atascos say, they were unaware. You can judge them harshly if you wish, but we are here by their permission, so perhaps it would be better to hold that judgment until you have all the facts."

  The woman who had spoken sat back, tight-lipped.

  "To hurry through what has already gone on too long for one sitting, I approached the Atascos," Sellars continued "After much effort, I was able to convince them that there were things about the Grail Brotherhood and Otherland they did not know. Using their access to the network, I was able to do some further investigating—only a little, however, because I dared not attract attention to either the Atascos or myself. It quickly became clear to me that I could not hope to achieve anything working alone. Still, I could not bear to send more people to their deaths.

  "I cannot overemphasize the power of the Brotherhood. They have immense holdings in all parts of the world. They control, or at least influence, armies and police forces and governmental bodies in all the world's states. They killed those researchers as swiftly as a man swats a fly, and paid no more penalty for it than that man would. Who would join me against such enemies, and how could I contact them?

  "The answer came fairly easily, at least to the first question. Those who had suffered at these people's hands would wish to help—those who had lost friends and loved ones to the Brotherhood's inexplicable conspiracy. But I dared not put more innocents at risk, and I also needed people who would be able to bring skills to the struggle, because a shared concern alone would not be—will not be—enough. So I conceived of a sort of task, like something from an ancient folktale. Those who could find Temilún would be the ones who could help me unravel the schemes of the Brotherhood.

  "I left clues, scattered seeds, floated out obscure messages in digital bottles. Many of you, for instance, received an image of the Atascos' virtual city. I put these significators in obscure places, but always at the periphery of the Brotherhood's activities, so that those who had chosen on their own to investigate might stumble on them there. But I was forced to make these hints temporary and vague, in part to protect the Atascos and myself. Those of you who have reached Temilún, whatever else you may decide about me and my hopes, be proud! You have solved a mystery where perhaps a thousand others have failed."

  Sellars paused. Several of the listeners stirred.

  "Why can't we go offline?" demanded the black-haired barbarian's friend. "That's the only mystery I want solved. I tried to unplug and it was like being electrocuted! My real body's in a hospital somewhere, but I'm still jacked in!"

  "This is the first I have heard of it." Even over the murmuring of the guests, Sellars sounded surprised. "There are things at work in this place that none of us understand yet I would never hold anyone against their will." He raised his shapeless white hands. "I will try to find a solution."

  "You'd better!"

  "And what was that thing?" Renie asked. "The thing that grabbed us—I don't know any other way to put it—when we were entering the simulation. It killed the man who got us here. Atasco says it's a neural network, but Singh said it was alive."

  Others at the table whispered among themselves.

  "I do not know the answer to that either," Sellars conceded. "There is a neural network at the center of Otherland, that much is true, but how it operates and what 'alive' might mean under the circumstances are more undiscovered secrets of this place. That is why I need your help."

  "Help? You need help, all right." Sweet William stood, plumes wagging, and sketched an elaborate and mocking bow. "Darlings, my patience has just about gone. I am going bye-bye now. I shall climb into bed with something warm and do my best to forget I heard any of this nonsense."

  "But you can't!" The brawny, long-haired man with the action-flick muscles got shakily to his feet. His voice was deep, but his way of speaking seemed incongruous. "Don't you understand? Don't any of you understand? This is . . . this is the Council of Elrond!"

  The painted mouth pursed in a grimace. "What are you rattling on about?"

  "Don't you know Tolkien? I mean, this is it! One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them!" The barbarian seemed to be getting worked up. Renie, who had been about to say something sharp to Sweet William herself, swallowed her annoyance and watched. There was something almost crazy in the man's excitement, and for a moment Renie wondered if he might be mentally unbalanced.

  "Oh, one of those sort of stories," Sweet William said disdainfully. "I was wondering about that Mister Muscle look of yours."

  "You are Orlando, yes?" Sellars sounded gently pleased. "Or should it be Thargor?"

  The barbarian did a surprised double take. "Orlando, I guess. I didn't choose the Thargor body, really—not for this. It happened when . . . when we came here."

  "That's where I've seen him!" Renie whispered to !Xabbu. "TreeHouse! Remember? The Human Breakfast hated his sim."

  "I am glad you are here, Orlando." Sellars again was grave. "I hope the others will come to share your beliefs."

  "Share scan, that's truth," said the chrome-plated Goggle-boy. "He crash, you crash, me def'ly flyin'." He stood up, spiky fists on spiky hips like a grumpy metal porcupine.

  Orlando would not be discouraged. "Don't leave! This is how it always works! People who seem to have no hope, but each has something to give. Together they solve the mystery and conquer the enemy."

  "A group of hopeless idiots all banding together to solve a seemingly impossible task, is that it?" Sweet William was scornfully amused. "Yes indeed, that sounds just like the kind of story you must like, sweetie—but it's just as good a description of a paranoid religious cult. "Oh, no! Only we clever few understand that the world is coming to an end! But if we move into these storm drains and wear our special aluminum foil hats, we alone will be saved!' Spare me that sort of drama, please. I suppose now you'll all take turns telling your pathetic life stories." He drooped a hand across his brow as though it were all too much to bear. "Well darlings, you can have your mad little tea party without me. Will someone just shut off whatever bit of silliness is interfering with my command interface?"

  Bolivar Atasco suddenly jerked upright in his seat, then stood and took a few staggering steps. Renie thought he had been offended by the foppish Sweet William, but Atasco froze in place, hands out as if to balance himself. There was a long instant of expectant silence.

  "He seems to have dropped offline for a moment," Sellars said. "Perhaps. . . ."

  Martine began to shriek. She clapped her hands against her head and tumbled to her knees, keening like a toxic spill alarm.

  "What is it?" Renie cried. "Martine, what's wrong?"

  Silviana Atasco had gone as motionless as her husband. Sellars stared at her, then at Martine, then vanished like a popped bubble.

  With !Xabbu's help, Renie hauled the Frenchwoman up into a chair, trying to find out what had gone wrong. Martine stopped shrieking, but could only moan as she swayed from side to side.

  The gathering had flown apart into anxious confusion. !Xabbu was speaking rapidly but quietly into Martine's ear. Quan Li was asking Renie if she could help. The Goggleboy and Sweet William were arguing violently. Sellars was gone. The motionless forms of the Atascos still stood at the head of the table.

  Except now Bolivar Atasco was moving.

  "Look!" Renie cried, pointing.

  The feather-crowned figure stretched its arms out to their full extension, fingers flexing convulsively. It took a staggering step, then braced itself against the table as awkwardly as a blind man. The head sank onto the chest. The guests fell silent as everyone turned to watch Atasco. The head came up again.

  "I hope none of you think you're going anywhere." It was not Atasco's voice but someone else's entirely, the vowels broad and flat, the words without warmth. Even the facial expression was subtly different. "Trying to leave would be a very bad idea."

  The thing wearing Atasco's sim turned to the frozen form of Silviana Atasco. It gave a casual
shove and her sim tumbled out of the chair and landed on the stone floor, still stiffly holding its sitting position.

  "I'm afraid the Atascos have left early," said the cold voice. "But don't worry. We'll think of ways to keep the party entertaining."

  CHAPTER 36

  The Singing Harp

  NETFEED/PERSONALS: Wanted: Conversation

  (visual: advertiser, M.J., standard asex sim)

  M.J.: "Hey, just wanted to know if there's anyone out there. Anyone want to talk? I'm just feeling kinda, you know, lonely. Just thought there might be someone else out there feeling lonely, too. . . ."

  He had hit his head, which made it hard to think of anything else. He was falling, the Great Canal heaving and spinning upward toward him. Then, through the pain and sparkling darkness, Paul felt things move sideways, a vast spasm that seemed to ripple through him and whipcrack him into fragments.

  For an instant, everything halted. Everything. The universe lay tipped at an impossible angle, the sky below him like a bowl of blue nothing, the red land and the water tilting away above his head. Gally hung frozen in the middle of the air with his small body contorted and his hands outflung, one of them touching Paul's own fingers. Paul's other arm stretched above him toward the motionless canal, sunk to the wrist in the glassy water, a cuff of rigid splash stretching back along his forearm.

  It's . . . all . . . stopped, Paul thought. Suddenly a great light burned through everything he could see, scorching it to nothingness, and then he was falling again.

  One instant of darkness, another of fiery brilliance—darkness, brilliance, darkness, becoming an ever-speeding stroboscopic alternation. He was falling through something—falling between. He could sense Gally somewhere just beyond reach, could feel the boy's terror but was helpless to relieve it in any way.

  Then he was abruptly stationary again, down on his hands and knees on cold, hard stone.

  Paul looked up. A white wall stretched before him, empty but for a huge banner of red, black, and gold. A chalice sprouted twining roses. A crown hovered above them, the legend "Ad Aeternum" written below it in ornate characters.

  "I've . . . been here before." Although he only murmured, the slow, astonished words found little echoes up in the high ceiling. His eyes filled with tears.

  It was more than the banner, more than the growing sense of familiarity. There were other thoughts crowding in, images, sensations, things that fell onto the parched earth of his memory like a renewing rain.

  I'm . . . Paul Jonas. I was . . . I was born in Surrey, My father's name is Andrew. My mother's name is Nell, and she's very sick.

  Remembrance was taking root in what had been empty places, sprouting and flowering. A walk with his grandmother, young Paul out of primary for the day and pretending to be a prowling bear behind a hedge. His first bicycle, tire flat and rim bent, and the awful feeling of shame at having damaged it. His mother with her chemical respirator and her look of tired resignation. The way the moon hung framed in the branches of a budding plum tree outside his flat in London.

  Where am I? He examined the stark white walls, the banner with its strangely shifting colors. A new set of memories filtered up, sharp and bright and jagged as pieces of a broken mirror. A war that seemed to last for centuries. Mud and fear and a flight through strange lands, among strange people. And this place, too. He had been here before.

  Where have I been? How did I get here?

  Old memories and new were growing together, but in the midst there lay a scar, a barren place they could not cover. The confusion in his head was terrible, but most terrible of all was this blankness.

  He crouched and raised his hands to his face, covering his eyes as he struggled for clarity. What could have happened? His life . . . his life had been ordinary. School, a few love affairs, too much time spent hanging about with friends who had more money than he did and could better afford the long drunken lunches and late nights. A not-very-hard-earned degree in . . . it took a moment . . . art history. A job as a bottom-level assistant curator at the Tate, sober suit, wired collar, tour groups wanting to cluck over the New Genocide installation. Nothing unusual. He was Paul Robert Jonas, he was all that he had, but that still didn't make him anything special. He was nobody.

  Why this?

  Insanity? A head injury? Could there be a madness this detailed, this placid? Not that all of it had been so quiet. He had seen monsters, horrible things—he remembered them just as clearly as he remembered the clothesline on the roof outside his university residence window. Monsters. . . .

  . . . Clanking, gnashing, steaming. . . .

  Paul stood up, suddenly frightened. He had been in this place before, and something terrible lived here. Unless he was locked in some incomprehensible kind of false memory, a déjà vu with teeth in it, he had been here and this was not a safe place.

  "Paul!" The voice was faint, far away, and thin with desperation, but he knew it even before he knew which part of his life it came from.

  "Gally?" The boy! The boy had been with him when they had fallen from that flying ship, but Paul had let that knowledge slip away in the rush of returning memory. And now? Was the child being stalked by that huge, impossible thing, the machine-giant? "Gally! Where are you?"

  No answer. He forced himself to his feet and hurried toward the door at the far end of the hall. On the far side another imposition of reality and memory, almost painfully potent. Dusty plants stretched out in all directions, reaching toward the roofbeams, all but covering the high windows. He was lost in an indoor jungle. Beyond—he knew, he remembered—there was a giant. . . .

  . . . And a woman, a heartbreakingly beautiful woman with wings. . . .

  "Paul! Help!"

  He lurched toward the boy's voice, pushing at the dry, rubbery branches. Leaves came apart in his hands, turning to powder and joining the dust that drifted and swirled at his every movement. The thicket parted before him, the branches falling back, dropping away, some disintegrating at his touch, to reveal a cage of slender golden bars. The bars were mottled with black and gray smears, and dark tendrils wound through them. The cage was empty.

  Despite his fear for the boy, Paul felt a shock of disappointment. This was the place she had been. He remembered her vividly, the shimmer of her wings, her eyes. But now the cage was empty.

  No, almost empty. In the middle, nearly covered by a tangle of vines and roots and the mulch of fallen leaves, something glimmered. Paul crouched and pushed his arm through the tarnished bars, straining to reach the center. His hand closed around something smooth and cool and heavy. As he lifted it and pulled it back through the bars, a string of chiming notes sounded in the air.

  It was a harp, a curving golden loop with golden strings. As be held it before him and stared, it warmed beneath his fingers, then began to shrink, curling like a leaf on a bonfire. Within a few moments it had become as tiny as a twenty-pence coin.

  "Paul! I can't. . . ." The cry of pain that followed was sharp and sudden in its ending. He stood, startled into trembling, then curled the golden thing in his fist and began to smash his way through the crumbling vegetation. He had gone only a few steps when a door loomed before him, five times his own height. He touched it and it swung inward.

  The massive, hangar-sized room beyond had timbered beams and walls of piled, undressed stone. Huge wheels turned slowly; great levers pumped up and down. Gears the size of a double-decker bus chewed their way around the circuit of even larger gears whose full extent was hidden, but whose toothed rims pushed in through vast slots in the walls. The place smelled like oil and lightning and rust, and sounded like slow destruction. The noise, the deep, steady ratcheting that vibrated the massive walls, the monotonous hammerthump of great weights falling, was the song of an incomprehensible, unceasing hunger, of machinery that could gnaw away even the foundations of Time and Space.

  Gally stood in the one clear space at the center of the room. Two figures flanked him, one thin, the other immensely fat.

>   A despairing darkness settled behind Paul's eyes as he walked forward. Gally struggled, but the two held him without effort. The slender one was all shiny metal, claw-handed, inhuman, with an eyeless head like a piston. Its companion was so fat that his oily skin was stretched almost to transparency, glowing with a suety yellow-gray light of its own, like a massive bruise.

  The big one's broken-tusked mouth spread in a smile whose corners disappeared into the doughy cheeks. "You've come back to us! All the way back—and of your own free will!" It laughed and the cheeks jiggled. "Imagine that, Nickelplate. How he must have missed us! It's too bad the Old Man isn't here to enjoy this moment."

  "Only right that the Jonas should come back," the metallic one said, an inner door opening and shutting in its rectangular mouth. "He should be sorry, too, after all the considerable bother he's given us, the naughty fellow. He should beg us to forgive him. Beg us."

  "Let the boy go." Paul had never seen the pair before, but he knew them as well and hated them as powerfully as the cancer that had slowly killed his mother. "It's me you want."

  "Oh, goodness, it's not just you we want anymore," the metal creature said. "Is it, Butterball?"

  The fat one shook its head. "First give us what's in your hand. We'll trade that for the boy."

  Paul felt the hard edges of the harp against the skin of his fingers. Why did they want to bargain? Here, in this place of their power, why should they bother?

  "Don't do it!" Gally shouted. "They can't. . . ." The thing called Butterball tightened sluglike fingers on his arm and the boy began to writhe and shriek, twitching as though he had fallen onto an electrified rail track.

  "Give it to us," said Nickelplate. "And then perhaps the Old Man will be kind. Things were good for you once, Paul Jonas. They could be good again."

  Paul could not bear to look at Gally's gaping mouth, agonized eyes. "Where's the woman? There was a woman in that cage."

  Nickelplate turned a near-featureless face to regard Butterball for a long, silent moment, then turned back. "Gone. Flown—but not far, not for long. Do you want to see her again? That can be arranged."