On the ledge beside her Martine breathed in short, painful gulps like a woman giving birth. Orlando was holding the blind woman's head. Florimel, T4b, and the others were all silent with shock and helpless anguish. A whirl of tiny shadows settled on Orlando and a few made their way onto Sam.
"It coming, Freddicks," something whispered miserably. She could feel the little monkey fingers pulling at her hair, trying to find a good hold. "Gotta get out of this place!"
"Nowhere to go," she said.
Martine gasped and sat up, eyes wide but unfocused. "I feel it! The Other—it is horrible! It has no body—it is only a brain, a huge brain!"
Sam reached back and took her hand, trying not to scream as Martine squeezed her fingers until she felt the bones would crack.
Won't matter long, Sam told herself. She felt Orlando take her other hand. The grinning shadow-shape drifted up toward them like a black leaf on a warm, lazy wind.
"They did not bother to keep a body," Sellars' voice sighed from a million miles away. Cho-Cho's mouth was barely moving now. "Easier . . . just to keep . . . the brain itself." The voice grew ever more distant, a fading signal. "Engineered cells replicating . . . to replace . . . dying . . . miscalculated . . . it filled the . . . satellite."
Martine's breathing sped again, a chain of rasping grunts that did not sound like anything human. The shadow floated up.
"Bye-bye," Sam said—not to anyone, even Orlando. Perhaps to herself. "Over," she whispered. "I'm sorry."
The moon had faded to a shadow of white in the sky. Even the brilliant desert stars were all but gone. Renie held !Xabbu's head in her lap. He was barely conscious, his breathing a low, vibrating rasp like nothing she had heard. Even after he had stopped speaking aloud his hands had traced the shapes of string-figures for long minutes. Now they no longer moved.
"Don't leave me, !Xabbu. Not after all this. I don't want you to go first."
Something flickered. She looked down, blearily certain that the bottom of the pit was even farther away than it had been. Light gleamed again.
The river was beginning to glow.
The faint sparkles of light began to thicken, became streaks that sent flaring, rippling light all along the sides of the pit, but the shadowy child-shape beside the river did not move or even open its eyes. Only when the whole of the watercourse was ablaze with coruscating brilliance did the small figure stir and raise its head.
Two little children, a girl and a boy, stood in the middle of the river as though they had walked there along the surface of the water. Renie had never seen them before, or at least she did not recognize them: the light surged and leaped so brightly around them that they almost disappeared in the glare of cold fire.
The little girl held out her hand to the huddled shape.
She looked like a dream-creature, but her voice was shaky, the words those of a real and frightened child. "Come with us. It's okay. You can."
The shadow-child looked at the ones bathed in light. It did not say anything, did not even shake its head, but the river suddenly leaped higher, rose to breast-high on the two children. They did not move, but Renie could see their eyes open wide.
"No, don't be afraid," the little girl said. "We came to take you to your mommy."
"Liar!"
She turned to the boy beside her, dark-haired, solemn-eyed, his mouth locked tight against what Renie thought might be a cry of complete terror. He looked back at her and shook his head violently.
"Tell him," the little girl said. "Tell him it's okay."
The boy shook his head again.
"You have to," she said. "You . . . you're more like him." She turned back to the shadow-child. "We just want to take you to your mommy."
"Liar!" The thing writhed and shrank, became something even smaller and darker and more hidden. The river blazed up, so that for a moment it covered the children over and Renie's heart flipped in her chest. "The Devil always lies!"
The flaring light subsided. The boy and girl stood, frightened but still unmoved by the rushing, scintillating waters. They were holding hands. "Tell him," the little girl said to her companion, her whispering voice carrying up to Renie as though it were meant for her alone. "He's really scared!"
The little black-haired boy was crying now, his shoulders trembling. He looked at the girl, then at the shadow-child huddled on the river bank. "P–people," he said slowly, so quietly Renie found herself leaning forward to hear, "some people, they want to help, seen?" His breath hitched. "Some people really try to help you." He was crying so hard he could barely speak. "It's t–t–true."
The glowing river swirled and sparked. !Xabbu twisted in Renie's arms but when she looked down in fright, his face seemed a little calmer. She turned back to the pit.
The shadow-child rose and stood on the bank, then stepped into the glowing river. For a long moment the children stood facing each other in a silence that seemed the deepest communication of all, the two shining in the river's light, the other so small and murky-dark that even in the heart of such radiance no light could touch him. Then all three were gone. Renie was not sure what had happened but her eyes were blurry with tears. A moment later she felt the darkness fold in on them, taking the desert, the pit, everything. With her last thought she clutched !Xabbu tightly to her.
The end, she thought. Finally. And then, Oh, Stephen. . . !
Olga was covered with scratches and bleeding in a dozen places by the time she reached the deserted house. She pushed in, then threw the bolt on the front door. It would not take them long to get past it, but she didn't care about that either. She watched the two figures, the fat one and the thin one, stagger out of the trees at the bottom of the garden and turn to look up at the house. However long they had been in those tanks, it had been long enough to make the chase difficult for them.
I've kept in shape, she thought. Who knew it was for this?
Riding the elevator up she had felt a sudden almost horrifying sense of freedom. Her life had been a lie. She had built it all on lies. All the years she had entertained children, mourning her loss, her own child had been alive—suffering as perhaps no living creature had ever suffered. What could you do, knowing that, but shake your fist at the universe? Spit at God? It didn't matter now.
"Olga. . . ." Sellars' voice in her ear was thunderously loud but paradoxically weak. She turned down the volume. "He's coming to you. Don't be afraid."
"Not afraid," she murmured. "Not that."
When her son came at last, she did not hear him, but felt him—a tiny constellation of lights drifting up out of subterranean depths, tracking toward her across unimaginable distances. He came like a flock of birds, of shadow-shapes, a whirring and a fluttering that was all confusion and fear.
"I'm here," she said gently, so gently. "Oh, my little one, I'm here."
They were banging at the front door of the abandoned house now, trying to dislodge the bolt. Olga moved from room to room, ever deeper, until she reached the girl's bedroom. She sat on the dusty coverlet beneath the shelf of ancient, wide-eyed dolls.
"I'm here," she said again.
The voices began as something she had heard in her dreams, a chaotic whispering, a moaning, laughing chorus of children. They swelled into a noise like a river, blending, merging, until at last it was one voice—nothing human, but one solitary voice.
"Mother. . . ?"
She could feel him now, could feel everything, even as her ears dimly registered the crunch of the front door being knocked off its hinges. A moment later she heard the glee-drunk shouting of the fat man down the halls, the sharp tones of his thin companion.
"I'm here," she whispered. "They took you from me. But I never forgot you."
"Mother." There was a sadness in it no human voice could have contained. It swam up like a blind thing from the bottom of the ocean. "Lonely."
"I know, my little one. But not for much longer."
"Yoo hoo!" The voice of the fat man was just outside the bedroom door now. Th
e tiny latch would last only moments.
A voice crashed in on the side channel. "Olga, this is Ramsey. You have to get out now!"
She was annoyed at the interruption, but she reminded herself that Catur Ramsey was in a different world—the world of the living. Things seemed different there.
"There may be a few minutes left, time to. . . ."
"Just a moment, Mr. Ramsey. I am finishing Mr. Sellars' errand." She disconnected from him, then stood. "I'm still here," she assured the huge, lonely thing. "I won't leave. But you have to let them help you, my beautiful child. Do you feel someone reaching to you? Give him what he wants." She felt a spasm of guilt, hating to use these precious few moments of mother-love in this way, hating to manipulate a child who had known nothing else, but she had promised. She still owed a little something to the living.
"Give him. . . ?"
"He'll save what he can. Then you don't have to worry anymore."
The bedroom door shook, made splintering noises.
"Yes . . . Mother." A brief pause, then she felt him again. "Did it."
She let out a sigh. All obligations finished now. A memory, long buried, too painful, finally surfaced. "You have a name, little one, did you know that? No, of course, you could not know—but you have a name. Your father and I chose it for you. We were going to call you Daniel."
A moment passed, a long moment. "Daniel. . . ?"
"Yes. Daniel, the prophet who kept his faith even in the lion's den. But don't be afraid—the lions can't hurt you anymore."
"Have . . . a name. Daniel."
"You do." It was hard to speak. No tears, only a dry numbness, something beyond pain. "I'm coming to see you now."
When she opened the door the fat man and the thin man started back, surprised but prepared for violence. She lifted her hands to show they were empty.
"I think there's something you should see," she said, then calmly walked past them toward the parlor. The two gleaming, naked men stared after her in astonishment. The fat man's hands twitched but she was already gone. They looked at each other for a moment, then turned and followed her through the parlor and out onto the front porch.
"So you've decided to do the sensible thing," the thin one began.
"Mr. Ramsey, can you have your mechanical agent friend open a window on this floor?" she asked. "Something big that I can see from the front of the house?"
"B–but, Olga. . . !" he stuttered in her ear.
"Just do it, please."
"What the hell is going on?" the fat man growled. He reached forward and closed his massive, stubby fingers around her wrist. "What kind of trick. . . ?" He broke off in surprise as, with a grinding of long-unused gears, a huge square section of the roof slid back, revealing the dark evening sky, the true sky, its sprinkling of stars dimmed by the lights of the metroplex below. All the stars but one, which was growing brighter, ever brighter on the horizon.
"Olga. . . ."
"It's all right, Mr. Ramsey. Catur. Thank you for everything. I mean that But I am not going anywhere." She turned and smiled again at the fat man and his thin companion. "So here we are, gentlemen. We have a few moments—time for you to catch your breath."
The fat man turned to the thin one. "What is she talking about?"
"My son." said Olga Pirofsky. "We're waiting for my son."
Sellars had hung in chill emptiness so long he could scarcely remember where he was, or even who he was, but he could feel the chain of suffering stretching into the distance, a fragile link with the heart of the void. The blind woman, the Bushman, the two frightened children—how much longer could they all last?
Then he felt it. Something in the darkness had touched the connection. Like a fisherman who had discovered Leviathan on his hook, Sellars braced for its anger. He faced it naked of defenses, risking all to ensure that he did not frighten it away. Even in its dying moments it could kill him easily if it wished.
No, not it, he thought. Him.
When the touch came, it was surprisingly gentle.
"Have a name." The inhuman voice held a new note. "Daniel."
"Ah," Sellars said. "Daniel. Bless you, child, that's a good name." He hesitated. They had only moments, but if he pushed too hard he might destroy the fragile connection.
The Other, however, had his own plans. "Fast. Mother . . . my mother . . . is waiting." He extracted a final promise from Sellars, then gave up the keys to the kingdom he had built for himself, had built out of himself—an exile's island in the ocean of his own fear and loneliness.
"I'll do my best to save them all," Sellars said.
A silent groan—release? Fear? "All done. All done."
"Goodbye, Daniel."
But the great cold thing was already gone.
Dread could actually feel himself bursting with radiant darkness, as though the fire inside him was devouring an entire planet, endless fuel, the food of gods. His inner music was blaringly loud, horns and crashing drums. As he soared upward, he reached out his hand to the quailing figures on the ledge, and at the same moment he plunged his thoughts, his glowing twist down along the silver thread into the heart of the system, reaching toward the dying thing that had hidden from him and resisted him so long.
All resistance was over now. He had won.
He found it at last, a tiny twitch of life at the center of things, a beaten, cowering presence. He gave it pain just to feel it shrivel like a burning leaf. His twist blazed, fueled by his glee and his anger, his triumphant, all-devouring rage.
Mine, he exulted. All mine!
He paused to examine what he had finally captured, the bit of individuality, of naked will, which was all that was left of the system's intelligent core. He could smother it now with only a thought. The system would be his mindless slave. And after that. . . ?
It shifted in his grasp, almost slipped free. Surprised, he focused his will, pinned it like a helplessly struggling insect even as it curled into itself, trying to hide again. How could it still be resisting him? After all that agony? Surely only Dread, of all the victims in the world, could find strength in suffering that way. No machine could do such a thing, only John Dread. For was he not a black angel, a power upon the Earth? A god?
He pried it open. A small voice was all that he found, a breath.
"Confident . . . cocky. . . ." it whispered. "Lazy. Dead."
It surrendered its last secrets and suddenly he knew everything. In horror he fought to disengage, to throw himself back into his body, but even as he tried to yank his glowing twist free from the heart of the system it grabbed at his mind, a dying animal sinking its teeth into its tormentor. His music stuttered, faded. He smashed it with his will, hurt it, tore it, but it hung on blindly.
Priority Message. The words blazed out before his inner eye. Struggling with all his might to pull out, he could not turn it off, could not even wonder where such a bizarre thing might come from. His superior strength was beginning to tell, but the thing still clung, determined to drag him down into its self-destruction.
Images began to flit across his consciousness. Bodies . . . women's bodies, torn and ragged, slick and wet. But why? Where? He could not be distracted—he had only seconds—but the images filled his brain, falling through him like angels shotgunned out of the sky. The trickle became a torrent, an obscene, unstoppable wash of dismemberment and death, of his own face leering out at him from a thousand mirrors, of a thousand mouths screaming, screaming until he couldn't think. He flailed, trying to find his way out trying to regain control to get out had to get out but the eyes were all looking at him now staring eyes knowing eyes mocking mouths the faces his mother's face laughing the screams the blood the silent music of death and dying and it didn't stop it didn't stop it didn't. . . .
Finney and Mudd had chased the intruder all the way up to the top floor, but Felix Jongleur could not see what was happening there—he had sealed himself off from the place a long time ago. The oldest man in the world could only writhe helplessly in his
preserving fluids and wonder.
Dread. It was all Dread's fault. Jongleur had raised him up from nothing but the minion had turned on him like the dog he was. His teeth were sharp, it was true, but he was only a beast after all, a beast that Jongleur himself had almost entirely created. . . .
The cacophony of alarms seized his attention again. He tried to focus but his thoughts were scattered. He had not felt so afraid in decades—how could all this have happened? How long would it take to put it all right? He forced himself to look at the security information but it was a hopeless jumble. The new alarms seemed to be about a potential violation of his airspace. Why aren't my helicopters and jumpjets seeing to it? It was probably just another false indicator, but still, that was what he paid all those useless indolent soldiers for. . . .
Gone. They were gone, of course. Evacuated.
He stared at the blinking lights, the line that started high in the atmosphere and ended . . . here?
The Apep data was flashing beside it. In the surprise, in the horror of his privacy violated, he had forgotten about the program's weird insistence that it had already been triggered. False—the readings had to be false. It said the rockets had fired hours ago, shooting it out of orbit at thousands of miles an hour, just as they were designed to do, but the trajectory for the satellite was so clearly wrong. . . .
The trajectory. Falling, not rising.
He flicked to his perimeter cameras, but could not find one that pointed at the sky. When he finally found one that could be elevated it seemed to take forever. When it stopped at last and refocused, he saw the new and fiery bloom racing toward him along the sky.
In a sudden, horrible moment he understood everything, or at least enough. But Felix Jongleur had not survived so long by letting panic rule him, even in a situation like this. All might seem lost, but something could still be salvaged. It would only take seconds to trigger the Grail process—it had been ready since before the Ceremony. The physical Felix Jongleur might die, but hidden in the network's memory, the vast reserve of Telemorphix storage safe on the other side of the country, his immortal self could survive even this catastrophic shutdown of the system. Someday he would again be free within the electronic universe, a prisoner entirely escaped from death, possessed of knowledge that could bring all his power back to him.