Mountain of Black Glass, Page 2

  Meanwhile, in the real world outside the network, other people are being drawn into the widening Otherland mystery. Olga Pirofsky, the host of a children's net show, begins to suffer from terrible headaches. She suspects that her online activities might have something to do with it, and in the course of investigating her problem, begins to learn of the apparently net-related illness that has struck so many children (including Renie's brother.) Olga's research also draws the attention of a lawyer named Catur Ramsey, who is investigating the illness on behalf of the parents both of Orlando and Fredericks, since in the real world both teenagers have been in a coma ever since their entrance into the Otherland network.

  John Wulgaru, who calls himself Dread, and whose hobbies include serial murder, has been an effective if not one hundred percent loyal employee of the incredibly wealthy Felix Jongleur, the man who heads the Grail Brotherhood (and who spends most of his time in his Egyptian simulation, wearing the guise of the god Osiris.) But in the course of killing an ex-member of the Brotherhood at Jongleur's orders, Dread has discovered the existence of the Otherland network, and has even taken over one of the sims in Renie's marooned company. As his master Jongleur is caught up in the final arrangements for the Otherland network—whose true purpose is still known only to the Brotherhood—Dread busies himself with this new and fascinating puzzle. As a spy among Sellars' recruits, Dread is now traveling through the network and trying to discover its secrets. But unlike those in Sellars' ragtag group, Dread's life is not at risk: he can go offline whenever he wishes. He recruits a software specialist named Dulcie Anwin to help him run the puppet sim. Dulcie is fascinated by her boss, but unsettled by him, too, and begins to wonder if she is in deeper than she wants to be.

  Meanwhile, a bit of Dread's past has surfaced. In Australia, a detective named Calliope Skouros is trying to solve a seemingly unexceptional murder. Some of the terrible things done to the victim's body are reminiscent of an Aboriginal myth-creature, the Woolagaroo. Detective Skouros becomes convinced that there is some strange relationship between Aboriginal myths and the young woman's death she is investigating.

  Back in the Otherland network, Renie and !Xabbu find themselves in a weird, upside-down version of the Oz story, set in the dreary Kansas of the original tale's opening. The Otherland simulations seem to be breaking down, or at least growing increasingly chaotic. As Renie and !Xabbu try to escape the evil of Lion and Tinman—who seem to be two more versions of Paul Jonas' Finch and Mullet—they find a pair of unlikely allies, the young and naive Emily 22813 and a laconic gypsy named Azador. Emily later reveals that she is pregnant, and says Azador is the father. Separated from Azador during one of the increasingly frequent "system spasms," they escape Kansas, but to their surprise, Emily (who they had thought was software) travels with them to the next simulation.

  Orlando and Fredericks have landed in a very strange world, a kitchen out of an ancient cartoon, populated by creatures sprung from package labels and silverware drawers. They help a cartoon Indian brave search for his stolen child, and after battling cartoon pirates and meeting both a prophetic sleeping woman and an inexplicable force—entities that are really Paul Jonas' mystery woman and the network's apparently sentient operating system, known as the Other—they escape the Kitchen and land in a simulation that seems to be ancient Egypt.

  Meanwhile, their former companions, the blind woman Martine and the rest of the Sellars' recruits, have hiked out of the bug world to discover themselves in a simulation where the river is made not of water but air, and where the primitive inhabitants fly on wind currents and live in caves along vertical cliffs. Martine and the others name the place Aerodromia, and although they are nervous about trying it at first, they soon discover that they can fly, too. A group of natives invite them to stay in the tribal camp.

  Paul Jonas has passed from the Ice Age into something much different. At first, seeing familiar London sights, he believes he has finally found his way home, but soon comes to realize that he is instead traveling through an England almost completely destroyed by Martian attack—it is, in fact, the setting of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Paul now realizes that he is traveling not just to worlds separate in time and space, but to some that are actually fictitious. He meets a strange husband and wife called the Pankies, who seem to be another guise of his pursuers Finch and Mullet, but offer him no harm. (Paul is also being pursued by a special software program called the Nemesis device, but he is not yet aware of it.) Then, when Paul and the Pankies stop at Hampton Court, Paul is led into the maze by a strange man and then shoved through a gateway of glowing light at the maze's center.

  On the other side Paul finds himself in the setting of Coleridge's famous poem, Xanadu, and the man who brought him there introduces himself as Nandi Paradivash. Nandi is a member of a group named The Circle, who are working against the Grail Brotherhood. Paul finally learns that he is not insane, nor caught in some kind of dimensional warp, but is rather a prisoner in an incredibly realistic simulation network. But Nandi has no idea why the Brotherhood should be interested enough in Paul—who worked in a museum and remembers his other life as being very ordinary—to pursue him throughout Otherland. Nandi also reveals that all the simulations through which Paul has been traveling belong to one man—Felix Jongleur, the Grail Brotherhood's chairman. Before Nandi can tell him more, they are forced to separate, Nandi pursued by Kublai Khan's troops, Paul passing through another gateway into yet another simworld.

  Things are no less complex and confusing in the real world. Renie's and !Xabbu's physical bodies are in special virtual reality tanks in an abandoned South African military base, watched over by Jeremiah Dako and Renie's father, Long Joseph Sulaweyo. Long Joseph, bored and depressed, sneaks out of the base to go see Renie's brother Stephen, who remains comatose in a Durban hospital, leaving Jeremiah alone inside the base. But when Joseph arrives at the hospital, he is kidnapped at gunpoint and forced into a car.

  The mysterious Mr. Sellars lives on a military base, too, but his is in America. Christabel Sorensen is a little girl whose father is in charge of base security, and who despite her youth has helped her friend Sellars escape the house arrest her father and others have kept him in for years. Sellars is hiding in old tunnels under the base, his only companion the street urchin Cho-Cho. Christabel does not like the boy at all. She worries for the feeble Mr. Sellars' safety, and is torn by guilt for doing something she knows would make her mother and father angry. But when her mother discovers her talking with Sellars through specially modified sunglasses, Christabel is finally in real trouble.

  Martine, Florimel, Quan Li, Sweet William, and T4b have been enjoying the flying world, Aerodromia, but things get uncomfortable when a young girl from the tribe is kidnapped. Martine and the rest don't know it, but the girl has been stolen, terrorized, and murdered by Dread, still pretending to be one of Martine's four companions. The people of Aerodromia blame the newcomers for the disappearance, and dump them all into a labyrinth of caverns they call the Place of the Lost, where they find themselves surrounded by mysterious, ghostly presences which Martine, with her heightened nonvisual senses, finds particularly upsetting. The phantoms speak in unison, telling of the "One who is Other," and how he has deserted them instead of taking them across the "White Ocean," as promised. The voices also identify the real names of all Martine's company. The group is fascinated and frightened, and only belatedly realizes that Sweet William has disappeared—evidently to protect the guilty secret of his true identity. Something large and strange—the Other—abruptly enters the darkened Place of the Lost, and Martine and the others flee the horrifying presence. Martine searches desperately for one of the gateways that will allow them to leave the simulation before either the Other or the renegade Sweet William catches them.

  At the same time, Orlando and Fredericks discover that the Egyptian simulation is not a straightforward historical recreation, but a mythical version. They meet a wolf-headed god named Upaut, who tells them how he and the
whole simworld have been mistreated by the chief god, Osiris. Unfortunately, Upaut is not a very bright or stable god, and he interprets Orlando mumbling in his sleep—the result of a dream-conversation Orlando is having with his software agent, Beezle Bug, who can only reach him from the real world when he dreams—as a divine directive for him to try to overthrow Osiris. Upaut steals their sword and boat, leaving Orlando and Fredericks stranded in the desert. After many days of hiking along the Nile, they come upon a strange temple filled with some terrible, compelling presence. They cannot escape it. In a dream, Orlando is visited by the mystery woman also seen by Paul Jonas, and she tells them she will give them assistance, but as the temple draws them closer and closer, they find only the Wicked Tribe, a group of very young children they had met outside the network, who wear the sim-forms of tiny yellow flying monkeys. Orlando is stunned that this is the help the mystery woman has brought them. The frightening temple continues to draw them nearer.

  Paul Jonas has passed from Xanadu to late 16th Century Venice, and soon stumbles into Gally, a boy he had met in one of the earlier simulations, and who had traveled with him, but Gally does not remember Paul. Seeking help, the boy brings him to a woman named Eleanora; although she cannot explain Gally's missing memories, she reveals that she herself is the former real-world mistress of an organized crime figure who built her this virtual Venice as a gift. Her lover was a member of the Grail Brotherhood, but died too soon to benefit from the immortality machinery they are building, and survives now only as a set of flawed life-recordings. Before Paul can learn more, he discovers that the dreadful Finch and Mullet—the Twins, as Nandi named them—have tracked him to Venice: he must flee again, this time with Gally. But before they can reach the gateway that will allow them to escape, they are caught by the Twins. The Pankies also make an appearance, and for a moment the two mirror-pairs face each other, but the Pankies quickly depart, leaving Paul alone to fight the Twins. Gally is killed, and Paul barely escapes with his life. Still trying to fulfill the mystery woman's summons from his Ice Age dream, he travels to a simulation of ancient Ithaca to meet someone called "the weaver." Still shocked and saddened by Gally's death, he learns that in this new simulation he is the famous Greek hero Odysseus, and that the weaver is the hero's wife, Penelope—the mystery woman, again. But at least it seems he will finally get some answers.

  Renie and !Xabbu and Emily find that they have escaped Kansas for something much more confusing—a world that does not seem entirely finished, a place with no sun, moon, or weather. They have also inadvertently taken an object from Azador that looks like an ordinary cigarette lighter, but is in fact an access device, a sort of key to the Otherland network, stolen from one of the Grail Brotherhood (General Daniel Yacoubian, one of Jongleur's rivals for leadership). While studying the device in the hopes of making it work, !Xabbu manages to open a transmission channel and discovers Martine on the other end, trapped in the Place of the Lost and desperately trying to open a gateway. Together they manage to create a passage for Martine and her party, but when they arrive, believing they are being pursued by a murderous Sweet William, they find that it is William himself who has been fatally injured, and grandmotherly Quan Li who is really the murderer Dread in virtual disguise. His secret revealed, Dread escapes with the access device, leaving Renie and the others stranded, perhaps forever, in this disturbing place.

  OTHERLAND

  Mountain of Black Glass

  Foreword

  As she spoke, the flame of the oil lamp repeatedly drew his eye, a wriggling brightness that in such a still room might have been the only real thing in all the universe. Even her eyes, the wide dark eyes he knew so well, seemed but a detail from a dream. It was almost impossible to believe, but this was unquestionably her, at last. He had found her.

  But it couldn't be this simple, Paul Jonas thought. Nothing else has been.

  And of course, he was right.

  At first it did seem as though a door, long closed, had finally opened—or rather, with Paul still reeling from the horror of the boy Gally's death, it seemed he had reached the final round of some particularly drawn-out and incomprehensible contest.

  The wife—and, most thought, widow—of long-lost Odysseus had stalled her suitors for some while with the excuse that before considering another marriage she must finish weaving her father-in-law's shroud. Each night, when the suitors had fallen into drunken sleep, she had then secretly unpicked her day's work. Thus, when Paul had come to her in the guise of her husband, he had found her weaving. When she turned from the loom he saw that the design was one of bird shapes—bright-eyed, flare-winged, each individual feather a little miracle of colored thread—but he had not looked at it long. The mysterious creature who had come to him in so many guises and in so many dreams, who in this place wore the form of a tall, slender woman of mature years, now stood waiting for him.

  "There is so much that we must talk about, my long-lost husband—so very much!"

  She beckoned him to her stool. When he had lowered himself onto it, she knelt with careful grace on the stone flags at his feet. Like everyone else in this place, she smelled of wool and olive oil and woodsmoke, but she also had a scent that seemed to Paul particularly her own, a whiff of something flowery and secretive.

  Oddly, she did not embrace him, did not even call back the slave-woman Eurycleia to bring wine or food for her long-lost husband, but Paul was not disappointed: he was far more interested in answers to his many questions. The lamp flame flickered, then stabilized, as though the world drew breath and held it. Everything about her called to him, spoke of a life he had lost and was desperate to regain. He wanted to clutch her to him, but something, perhaps her cool, slightly fearful gaze, prevented it. He was dizzied by events and did not know where to start.

  "What . . . what is your name?"

  "Why, Penelope, my lord," she said, a wrinkle of consternation appearing between her eyebrows. "Has your trip to death's dusky kingdom robbed you even of your memories? That is sad indeed."

  Paul shook his head. He knew the name of Odysseus' wife already, but he had no interest in playing out a scenario. "But what is your real name? Vaala?"

  The look of worry was rapidly becoming something deeper. She leaned away from him, as though from an animal that might at any moment turn violent. "Please, my lord, my husband, tell me what you wish me to say. I do not wish to anger you, for then your spirit might find no rest at all."

  "Spirit?" He reached his hand toward her but she shied away. "Do you think I'm dead? Look, I'm not—touch me."

  Even as she moved gracefully but decisively to avoid him, her expression suddenly changed, a violent alteration from fear to confusion. A moment later a deep mournfulness came over her—a look that seemed to have no relationship to the prior reactions. It was startling to see.

  "I have kept you with my womanish worries long enough," she said. "The ships strain at their anchor ropes. Bold Agamemnon and Mcnelaus and the others impatiently await, and you must sail across the sea to distant Troy."

  "What?" Paul could not make sense of what had just happened. One moment she had been treating him as though he were her husband's ghost, the next she was trying to hurry him off to the Trojan War, which must be long over with—otherwise, why was everyone so surprised to see him still alive? "But I have come back to you. You said you had much to tell me."

  For a moment Penelope's face froze, then thawed into yet another new and quite different expression, this one a mask of pained bravery. What she said made almost no sense at all. "Please, good beggar, although I feel certain that Odysseus my husband is dead, if you can give me any tale at all of his last days, I will see that you never go hungry again."

  It felt as though he had stepped onto what he thought was a sidewalk only to discover it was a whirling carousel. "Wait—I don't understand any of this. Don't you know me? You said that you did. I met you in the giant's castle. We met again on Mars, when you had wings. Your name was Vaala there."


  At first his sometime wife's face curdled into a look of anger, but then her expression softened. "Poor man," she said tolerantly. "Shouldering just a few of the many indignities that tormented my resourceful husband has driven away your wits. I will have my women find a bed for you, where my cruel suitors will not make your life a misery. Perhaps in the morning you can offer me better sense." She clapped her hands; the aged Eurycleia appeared in the doorway. "Find this old man a clean place to sleep, and give him something to eat and drink."

  "Don't do this to me!" Paul leaned forward and clutched at the hem of her long dress. She jerked away with a momentary blaze of real fury.

  "You go too far! This house is full of armed men who would be only too happy to kill you in hopes of impressing me."

  He clambered to his feet, not certain what to do next. Everything seemed to have crashed down around him. "Do you really not remember me? Just a few minutes ago you did. My real name is Paul Jonas. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

  Penelope relaxed, but her formal smile was so stiff as to look painful, and for a moment Paul thought he saw something terrified fluttering behind her eyes, a trapped creature struggling for escape. The hidden thing faded; she waved him away and turned back to her tapestry.

  Outside the chamber he put his hand on the old woman. "Tell me—do you know me?"

  "Of course, my lord Odysseus, even in those rags and with your beard so gray." She led him down the narrow stairs to the first floor.

  "And how long have I been gone?"

  "Twenty terrible years, my lord."

  "Then why does my wife think I am someone else? Or think I'm just now leaving for Troy?"