Sam stared at the bull's-eye. "Hang on—that just scans. Look out there—look!" She pointed to the far side of the river, its low hills and river meadows still glowing in the directionless light. "Like !Xabbu said, we'd have seen Renie if she was over there. And besides, if it is another world, then your operating system doesn't have much imagination, because it's just like this one!"
Jongleur's self-satisfied chuckle made Sam want to hit him. "Just because you can see it does not mean it's there, child."
"What?"
"There are many places in the Grail network where only one side of the river was built. Those who try to reach that other side find that although they can see it, they never manage to reach it—but still the illusion of two sides is maintained. If we managed to cross that river somehow, who knows where we would be? Or what we would see if we looked back at this spot. . . ?"
The twilight was upon them, and it was getting hard to see the far side anyway. Sam was too tired and depressed to stay interested in a discussion of yet another mystery. Even if Jongleur was right, even if they could make sense of it and find Renie, maybe even find the Other itself, they would still be exactly nowhere. Sam remembered the Other, its cold presence, the way it had made the cartoon Freezer a hole into complete nothingness. . . .
I wonder what Mom and Dad are doing right now? she thought suddenly. They can't be at the hospital all the time, watching me. Her loneliness was touched with something like jealousy. Maybe they're home eating dinner. Watching something on the net. Mom calling Grandma Katherine. . . .
!Xabbu was still looking at the river. "There is someone there." He sounded very calm, but Sam knew better—she had learned something about him in their days together.
"Somebody where?" She sat up, surveying the now-shadowy farther bank. "I don't see anyone."
"In the reeds at the edge of the river." He stood. "It is a human shape."
Sam could see only the faint movement of the stalks, a wavering wall of gray. "Is it . . . can you see who it is?" She tried to keep excitement out of her voice, having just realized it was just as likely to be the zombie Klement as Renie. It might even be Jecky Nibble or one of the other strange creatures from a couple of nights ago.
Something was indeed clambering out of the reeds—something very human in its shape and movements.
Her moment of hope lasted only until !Xabbu's next words, spoken in a voice so flat that Sam could only guess at the pain behind it. "It is a man." He had been poised, pulled taut like a bowstring, ready to run down the slope. Now she saw him sag, even the possibility of danger less important than the fact of loss.
The stranger raised his hands in the air. "Don't run!" he called. "I cannot stand to spend another night in the cold!"
He was limping, and the black trousers and loose white shirt he was wearing were badly torn and pink with washed-out blood. If he was faking, trying to lull them, Sam thought, he was doing a very good job of it. He staggered like a runner in the last meters of a grueling marathon and appeared to be dripping wet as well. !Xabbu watched his approach with a very strange expression on his face, but he did not seem frightened.
The stranger was of more or less ordinary size, his body older than hers, younger than Jongleur's, and very fit. Except for the bedraggled black mustache and wet hair, he was quite good-looking in what Sam thought of as a tanned, netsoap-actor sort of way, and seemed to be in the peak of life and health.
"Oh, share your fire, please," he begged as he stumbled the last few steps toward them. When none of them said anything, he threw himself down beside the flames, shivering. "Thank God. There is nothing good to make a raft here—the one I made keeps sinking. All last night I spent, wet and freezing. I saw your fire, but could not reach it. I have been following you. Ah, God, this empty, miserable place."
Sam was surprised that !Xabbu had not made the stranger welcome. She looked to him for a cue, but the small man still seemed oddly distracted. "We don't have much to give you," she said, "not even a blanket. But you can certainly get warm at our fire."
"Thank you, young lady. You are very kind." The stranger tried to smile but his teeth were chattering too briskly to hold it for more than a moment. "You do me a favor, and Azador does not forget favors."
"We should go get more wood," !Xabbu said suddenly, touching Sam's arm. "Come with me and we can carry back enough to last all night."
!Xabbu walked very close to her as he led her toward a copse of trees farther up the meadow where he had gathered the first batch of deadfall. "Do not look back," he whispered to her. "Don't you remember the name Azador?"
"It . . . it sounds familiar, now that you mention it."
"He traveled with Paul Jonas for a while. Before that, with Renie and me. The lighter—the access device—came from him."
"Oh my God! You're dupping, aren't you?" She fought the urge to look back. "But what's he doing here?"
"Who knows? But what is important is that he doesn't know we recognize him. You see, he knows me only in the shape of a baboon."
"You don't want him to know who you are?"
"We will learn more if he thinks us all strangers. At least we will be more likely to notice if he tells lies." !Xabbu frowned. "But now that I think about it, this is a very complicated problem. From what Paul Jonas said, this man calls himself a victim of the Grail Brotherhood. If he finds out who Jongleur is. . . ." He shook his head. "And since Renie and I used our real names in front of him, you cannot call me by name. But if you call me something else, some false name, Jongleur will notice."
"This is making my head hurt," she said as they reached the trees. "Maybe we should just kill him." !Xabbu turned to her, eyes wide. "I'm joking, utterly!"
"I do not like such jokes, Sam." !Xabbu bent and began picking up branches from the ground.
"Look," she said as she filled her arms with deadfall, "it wasn't a very nice joke, okay. Seen. But if we can't use Renie's name in front of him, if we can't use your name, if we can't talk about anything that's really going on, that's going to slow us down. What's more important, fooling this guy or finding Renie?"
!Xabbu nodded slowly. "Of course you are right, Sam. Let us just see what Azador has to say for himself tonight—it is normal for us to ask him what brings him to our campfire—and then we will try to make sense of things."
"Of course you would want to know my story," Azador said expansively. The fire had warmed him; but for his swollen ankle and a certain damp-dog look to his upper lip, he seemed completely recovered. "It is full of danger and excitement—even, if I must say it, heroism. But what you really wish to know is, how is it that Azador comes to you in this godforsaken place, yes?"
Sam wanted to roll her eyes, but restrained herself. "Yes."
"Then I will tell you a secret." The handsome newcomer leaned forward, raising his eyes and looking from side to side in a children's-theater gesture of confidentiality. "Azador has been following you for a long time."
She resisted the urge to look at !Xabbu. "Really?"
"Since . . . Troy." Azador sat up and folded his arms across his chest as though he had performed a magic trick.
"What . . . what are you talking about?"
He smiled kindly. "Do not try to trick me, pretty lady. I have been all around—I have seen more of the network than any other man. You are the only people in this place. I saw you on the mountaintop—yes, you remember! I see it on your faces. I know you are the same people I followed from Troy."
Sam was trying to make sense of this. Were they in trouble? Were all !Xabbu's warnings to her now useless? She looked from the Bushman's intent face to Jongleur, whose expression was entirely unreadable. "But . . . but why would you follow us? If we were the people you think we are, that is."
"Because you were with the man Ionas. I knew he was more than he admitted to me, and when I saw him lead you and the others into a temple in the middle of a burning city, I knew he was looking for a gateway. Do not forget, Azador has been all over this network!
The Grail Brotherhood has pursued me everywhere! There are some that say that I am the bravest man in all these worlds." He spread his hands in a gesture of humility. "I myself would never make such a claim."
His silliness was beginning to subdue her fears, but she could not help wondering if that was an intended effect. God, this whole adventure just scans and scans. It's like playing Halloween party games in a pitch-black room, like for months—but if you lose, someone kills you.
"Why were you following this . . . Ionas?" !Xabbu asked.
"Because he was my friend. I knew he would get himself in trouble in that Trojan world—he had not done the things I have done, seen the things I have seen. I wished to help him, to . . . protect him."
!Xabbu was carefully keeping doubt off his face. Sam cleared her throat, "So you followed . . . these people . . . into a temple?"
Azador laughed. "You wish to keep pretending, little lady? Very well—I have nothing to hide. Yes, I followed Ionas and . . . his friends into the temple. All through the maze—I could hear them just ahead of me. Then they stopped. I stopped, too, out of sight in the corridors behind them while they argued. It was a long argument, and I thought the gateway was broken, that they would all turn back and I would have to follow them out into the city again, where people were being killed like animals. But instead the gate opened and all went through, with much shouting and more arguing. I waited as long as I could but I was afraid the gate would close again, so I went through."
"But if Ionas was your friend, why didn't you want to be seen?"
For a moment a flicker of irritation crossed Azador's face. "Because I did not know the people he was with. I have many enemies."
"Okay," Sam said. "So you went through. And. . . ?"
"And found myself in a strange place—the strangest yet. I heard voices on the mountain ahead of me, so I waited until they began to move, then followed. Slowly, slowly, and very quietly. You . . . or should I say, the friends of Ionas. . . ?" He smiled in a way that Sam felt sure he thought extremely winning. "The people ahead of me, they walked very slowly. But patiently I followed. By the time we reached the top I had let them get far ahead of me. I saw the giant there." He shook his head, apparently in genuine dismay. "What a thing that was! I have seen nothing like it in any of these worlds. And I saw Ionas and the others very close to it. But when I went to follow them, something . . . something happened." He closed his eyes, thinking. "Everything came apart, as though someone had broken a window and the pieces flew everywhere."
There was a sudden stir beside her. Sam realized that Jongleur had sat upright; from the corner of her eye she could see tension in the lines of the old man's body. In all this strangeness, what had grabbed his attention so firmly? "Everything came apart," she prompted.
"And then I do not remember much," Azador said. "I fell. I think I hit my head." He reached up and massaged the base of his skull. "When I awakened the mountain was gone and I was surrounded by nothing—all gray, like a fog, but with no up or down. I have been searching ever since, and even when I found a world to be in, there was no one there. Azador was alone, except for the hunting creatures. Until I saw the light of your fire."
"Hunting creatures?" !Xabbu poked up the fire. "What are those?"
"You have not seen them? You are lucky." Azador patted himself on the chest. "Shapes that freeze the blood. Monsters, ghosts—who knows? But they hunt men. They hunted me. Only on the river was I safe, so I built myself a raft."
Satisfied with the drama of his recitation, the newcomer sat back and gazed solemnly into the shifting flames.
"So we've let you get warm at our fire," Sam said. "What else do you want?"
"To travel with you," he said promptly. "There is safety in numbers, and you will have much benefit from pining Azador as a companion. I can trap animals for food, I can fish. . . ."
"We don't eat," Sam pointed out.
". . . And I can build a raft with my bare hands!"
"Which keeps sinking, you said." She looked to !Xabbu, half-amused, half-disgusted. Was it just chance that kept saddling them with horrible traveling companions?
"There is no Ionas here," !Xabbu said. "I can say with truth that I have never known such a person in this world."
"Ah, even with your different faces, I knew that he was not with you," said Azador cheerfully. "After all, Ionas was brave, in his way—for an Englishman, that is. He would not have stayed silent and pretended he was someone else with his friend Azador standing before him. But if he is lost somewhere in this world, then I will find him."
Sam looked at !Xabbu, who was watching Jongleur, but the old man's face was again an impenetrable mask. When !Xabbu finally turned to her she saw that, beneath his composed expression, the only person here she trusted was just as worried and confused as she was. She almost used his name, but caught herself. "So what should we do, then?"
He looked at Azador, who was smiling confidently. "I do not know," !Xabbu shook his head. "I suppose you will travel with us, Azador. For a while, at least."
The newcomer smiled and ran a finger along the bottom of his mustache. "You will not regret it. This I swear."
CHAPTER 2O
Thompson's Iron
* * *
NETFEED/NEWS: Expert Decries Apocalyptic Themes
(visual: excerpt from How to Kill Your Teacher,)
VO: Net ethics watchdog Sian Kelly thinks kid's programming is going too far these days-all the way to the end of the world.
KELLY: "It's a trend, and it's not a good one. So many of the children's interactives-Teen Mob, Blodger Park, Backstab, that Kill Your Teacher thing-are running shows with apocalyptic themes. Kids are very suggestible, and the emphasis on suicide cults and the end of the world is irresponsible and frightening."
VO: The networks uniformly deny any collusion between writers and creators of the shows cited.
(visual: Ruy Contreras-Simons, GCN)
CONTRERAS-SIMONS: "It's a trend, sure, but it's nothing anyone has decided to do. I guess it's just in the air. . . ."
* * *
The trip down into the burrow had been horrible, the four of them carried like pieces of dead meat, which was clearly how the mutant web-builders already thought of them. Paul had fought back, but with his limbs tightly held had managed only to get himself dragged along sharp rocks and to earn a stinging blow on the head from a misshapen claw that was not quite either a hand or a hoof.
The only bit of good fortune was that they were not bound. The sticky cables remained as part of the web; the creatures had needed to drool some putrid-smelling fluid on their captives just to pull them free of it.
Several dozen of the monsters were in just this open part of the burrow where the captives had been thrown down, but Paul, his senses raw in the darkness, thought he could hear chattering voices down the side tunnels as well. It was not completely dark; something was burning or gleaming in one of the tunnels, letting in a bit of the light and throwing just enough definition onto their crawling captors and the nest to make Paul see how hopeless was any thought of escape.
The things were not human. He had to keep reminding himself of that, both to ease the horror and to keep the embers of hope smoldering. The spider-buffalos showed little or no organization, and were clearly used to prey that was either stunned or already dead. Other than roughly shoving T4b back when the boy had tried to scramble out of the pit, they had not bothered with any other precautions against escape. Not that more precautions seemed needed: they outnumbered Paul and his friends by ten to one or more, and were each at least as strong as a person.
Trying to decide what the things actually were, with an eye toward discovering a weakness, was little help. They were just some wild mutation of the simworld, possibly intentional—perhaps there was even a cruel joke in the way they resembled the buffalo of the American West that had been so completely and swiftly slaughtered for their hides, massacred by the thousands, skinned, and then left to rot on the plains. In any case, t
hey were big, fast, apparently without conscience, and obviously had a tooth for human flesh. Man-bones crunched underfoot on the tunnel floors and in greater numbers here in the pit itself, becoming even more common lower down the slope toward the pit's black depths.
As if to underscore this, Paul put his hand down on something sharp. He felt around, expecting to discover another jawbone, and found instead something small, square and hard which he held up to catch the faint light. It was a rusty belt buckle, bent as though the belt itself had been torn open with great force while still fastened. Paul's stomach lurched. It was not hard to imagine these fierce, hairy creatures doing just that in their haste to make a meal of the tender flesh beneath it.
Despair swept over him like a cold rain. What could they do? Fight the monstrosities with bare hands and a belt buckle? Or take up jawbones, like Samson, to smite their enemies?
But I'm no bloody Samson, am I?
"Paul?" It was Florimel, a short distance away. "Are you there? You cried out—are you hurt?"
"Just put my hand on something." He stared up the slope at the grotesque figures moving in the half-light—probably performing the mutant equivalent of setting the table—and tried to keep the hopelessness out of his voice. "Any ideas?"
He could not see her, but he could hear her grunt of misery. "Nothing. I can barely crawl. I landed hard when we fell from the wagon."
"How are the others?"