Renie took another look out the window at the church spire made of brambles, achingly near, but still on the far side of several dozen Ticks, creatures so pale they almost seemed to glow in the dying evening. But at the moment it was a forest of vines and creepers that stretched away from the tower like guy-ropes had her attention.
"Come hold this steady," she said as she climbed cautiously onto the table, which like everything else in this strange little subworld was made entirely from living plants, densely intertwined. It wobbled but held; apparently the furniture was indeed meant to be used, if not for the purpose Renie had in mind. The Stone Girl came forward and did her best to brace it.
Renie stretched up until she could get her hands into the vegetation of the low ceiling and began digging at the tangled branches, pulling aside that which could not be broken or torn until she had made a hole through which she could see the velvety dark sky, and the faint early stars. Reassured, she quickly began to widen the hole until it was big enough for her shoulders. She pulled herself up, grunting with the effort, and took a quick look around the rooftop. Satisfied that none of the scuttling things were waiting there, she let herself down again.
"Come on," she told her companion. "I'll lift you up."
The Stone Girl took some convincing but at last allowed herself to be boosted through the hole.
"There," Renie said as she lifted herself onto the roof beside the girl. "On the far side, see? Those vines will get us to the house nearest the tower, then we can go up from there."
The Stone Girl looked down at the Ticks swarming on the ground, then eyed the sagging creepers with mistrust. "What do you mean?"
"We can climb them—put our feet on the lower ones and hang onto the ones higher up with our hands. It's how they build bridges in the jungle." She did not feel as confident as she sounded—she had never actually crossed such a bridge, in a jungle or anywhere else—but it was surely better than sitting in the little house waiting for the Ticks to notice them.
The Stone Girl only nodded, overtaken by a sort of weary fatalism.
Trusting because I'm a grown-up. Like one of those stepmothers. It was an unpleasant burden, but there was no one to share it. Renie sighed and moved to the edge of the roof. She beckoned the Stone Girl and then lifted her up to the thick vine that stretched upward at an angle beside them, not releasing her grip until she was sure it would bear the little girl's weight. "Hang on," she told the child. "I'm climbing up now."
For a long moment after she swung herself up Renie had to cling with her hands and legs until she could get in position to grab the higher vine and stand. The lower vine swayed alarmingly beneath her bare feet until she got her balance straight. "Go ahead," she told the Stone Girl as she helped her stand and reach the upper vine. "Just go slowly. We'll get off and rest at that roof there—the tall house between us and the tower."
Going slowly turned out to be their only option. It was hard enough to keep their feet on the slippery vine while stepping over knots of tangling, leafy branches. Although the Ticks did not exactly seem to have noticed them, Renie wondered whether their senses were as limited as the child had suggested: those lurking just below seemed to be growing increasingly agitated. She couldn't help imagining what the creatures' response would be if she and her companion were suddenly to drop down into the brambles, right in their midst.
It seemed like a good idea to stop looking down.
The light was now almost completely gone. When they reached the roof of the tall house, halfway to the spire, Renie began to think that resting could be a bad idea—that they might be better off using the last light to help in the difficult climb. The Stone Girl stopped, still several steps short of the roof.
"What's wrong?"
"I c–can't go anymore."
Renie cursed silently. "Just get to the roof, then we'll rest. We're almost there."
"No! I can't go anymore! It's too high."
Renie looked down, confused. It was less than half a dozen meters to the ground. She was a little girl, of course. Renie couldn't afford to forget that, but still. . . . "Can you just make it a little bit farther? When we get to the roof, you won't have to see the ground anymore."
"No, stupid!" She was almost crying with anger and frustration. "The vine is too high!"
The Ticks seemed to be gathering beneath them. Distracted by their churning, it took Renie a moment to see that the child was right. The higher of the two vines they were using for their bridge had been rising more steeply than the lower. The Stone Girl had stretched her arms almost to their capacity just to keep a grip on it, but another few paces and it would be beyond her reach.
"Jesus Mercy, I'm sorry! I am stupid, you're right." Renie struggled against panic. The Ticks were now swarming over each other just below them like worms in a bucket. "Let me get closer and I'll help you." She inched forward until she could take one arm off the upper vine and wrap it around the little girl. "Can you hold onto my leg? Maybe even stand on my foot?"
The Stone Girl, who had clearly been keeping a worried silence for some time, now burst into tears. With help, she managed to wrap herself around Renie's thigh and grip Renie's ankle with her feet—it was an awkward and undignified position, but Renie found that if she was careful she could inch upward. Still, by the time they toppled off onto the cushiony safety of the roof perhaps another quarter of an hour had passed and the last daylight was gone.
"Where's the moon?" Renie asked when she had finally caught her breath.
The Stone Girl shook her head sadly. "I don't think they have a moon in More Very Bush anymore."
"Then we'll have to make do with starlight." Sounds like a song title, Renie decided, a bit giddy with exhaustion and the very temporary respite from climbing over the Ticks. She sat up. The light was minimal, but it was enough to see the silhouette of the tower and even a glow from the belfry. Her heart leaped. Could it be !Xabbu? She longed to shout out to him, but was much less certain now about the deafness of Ticks.
"We have to go," she said. "If I wait any longer my muscles will cramp up. Come on."
"But I can't reach!" The Stone Girl was on the verge of weeping again.
A brief instant of irritation dissolved quickly. My God, what I've put this child through! The poor little thing. "I'll carry you on my back. You're small."
"I'm the biggest kid in my house," she said with a shadow of indignant pride.
"Yes, and you're very brave." Renie crouched. "Climb up."
The Stone Girl struggled up onto Renie's back, and from there was boosted onto her shoulders so that her cool, solid little legs lay on either side of Renie's neck. Renie stood and swayed a bit, but found the girl's weight manageable.
"Now the last part," Renie said. "Hang on tight. I'll tell my friends how much you helped me."
"I did," the Stone Girl said quietly as they moved out onto the vines again. In a rare stroke of good luck, the bottom vine hung a little lower than the rooftop, so that Renie could step down instead of having to climb up with the child clinging to her back. "I did help you. Remember the Jinnear? I helped you hide, didn't I?"
"You certainly did."
The last part of the climb was the hardest, and not just because of the added weight and clumsiness caused by her burden. Renie's muscles had been worked too hard for too long, with too little rest, and her tendons all seemed to be pulled tight as piano wires. If not for the nagging fear that time was running out, that any moment now the Other might stop fighting and the very world might evaporate under her, Renie might have crawled back down to the roof to sleep, even with her friends only a stone's throw away.
Each step an agony, the angle of the vines growing steeper as the tall tower grew nearer, she did her best to distract herself.
What the hell are Ticks anyway? Why should a machine be afraid of bugs? And Jinnears? What are they?
And Jinnears. The phrase stuck in her mind, an indigestible lump. And Jinnears. . . ! Startled, she almost lost her grip. The St
one Girl gave a squeak of alarm and Renie tightened her aching fist on the vine. The Ticks swarmed in agitation below. And Jinnears—engineers! Who works with machines? Engineers and . . . and techs. Jinnears and Ticks.
Renie let out a hysterical giggle. But that means I'm a Jinnear, too—I have a degree and everything. Why didn't the Other make me a killer ghost-jellyfish as well?
"Why are you laughing?" the Stone Girl demanded in a quavering voice. "You're scaring me!"
"Sorry. I just thought of something. Don't mind me." But oh my God what did the techs and engineers do to this Al or whatever it is to make it think of them like that. . . ?
The vegetable firmness of the tower wall was startlingly close now. She could see the open window only two or three meters above her head, glowing against the dark sky, but the vines, which hung from the very top of the protruding roof, would not bring her very close, and the angle was soon going to be too steep anyway.
"We're going to have to get off the vines and try to climb up the wall," she said as lightly and calmly as she could. "I'm going to lean over as far as I can before I let go, but I'm going to have to jump. Will you hold on tight?"
"Jump. . . ?"
"It's the only way I can reach it. I'm sure the bushes will hold us," she said without actually being sure at all. She got a good grip on the upper vine, then stopped so she could gently but firmly pry loose the fingers of the Stone Girl, who had decided to hold on as well. "You can't do that. If you're still holding on when I jump . . . well, we're in a lot of trouble."
"Okay," the small voice said in her ear.
She trusts me. I almost wish she didn't. . . .
Renie braced herself, then set the vine swaying, figuring even a few extra inches would help. On the fourth wide swing, she jumped toward the shadowy wall.
For a moment, as the dry leaves tore beneath her hands like paper and they slid downward, she was certain they were dead. Then she caught at something stiffer and more substantial and grabbed hard, digging her toes in as well, insensible of what she was doing to her bare feet and fingers. When they stopped sliding she clung for a moment, gasping.
Can't wait. Can't hang. No strength.
She forced herself up, grip by difficult, hard-won grip. What had looked like two or three meters to climb from the relative safety of the branch now felt like a hundred. Every muscle seemed to be writhing in agony.
The glow of the window was hallucinatory in its brightness. She pulled herself over the brambly sill and slid down to the brambly floor, gasping for breath, moaning as her muscles knotted, as star-flecked blackness rolled across her eyes.
The first thing she noticed when she could see properly again was the source of light in the tower room, a great, nodding flower hanging at the apex of the vaulted ceiling, glowing a waxy yellow at the heart of its petals. She heard the Stone Girl stirring behind her and sat up. Someone was sitting on the far side of the small room, half-hidden by leaves and shadows. It was not !Xabbu. It was Ricardo Klement, the Grail Project's only success, such as he was—handsome, young, and brain-damaged.
"Is that your friend?" the Stone Girl asked quietly.
Renie gave a sharp, cracked laugh. "Where are the others?" She could barely muster the strength to speak. "My friends. Are they here?"
Klement looked at her incuriously. He held something small cradled in his arms, but she could not make it out. "Others? No others. Only me . . . us."
"Who?" She was getting a very bad feeling. "Us who?"
Klement slowly lifted the thing he was holding. It was small and unpleasant to look at, a sort of blue-gray, eyeless blob with rudimentary arms and legs and head, a loose gape for a mouth.
"Jesus Mercy," Renie said in disgust and misery. "What the hell is that?"
"It is. . . ." Klement hesitated, his face blank as he sought for the words. "It is me . . . no . . . it is mine. . . ."
After all that, to find nothing but Klement and this inexplicable little monstrosity. . . ! Every bit of her was afire with pain, but worse than anything was the disappointment, a stunning blow like a bullet wound in the chest. "What are you doing here?"
"Waiting for . . . something," Klement said tonelessly. "Not for you."
"I feel exactly the same way." Despite herself, Renie began to cry. "God damn it all."
CHAPTER 28
Master of His Silence
* * *
NETFEED/PERSONALS: So Sad And Lonely. . . .
(visual: picture of advertiser, M.J. [anonymated])
M.J.: "I don't care any more. There's nobody here, and I don't even want to try. It's . . . it's really lonely here. Dark. I wanted someone to call me because I'm alone and I'm sad. But nobody ever called-I guess there's no one out there listening after all. . . ."
* * *
It had been bad enough falling out of Dodge City and into Egypt, but this second transition was much harder, far more painful. When Paul's thoughts came back they seemed to swim in dark, bloody waters, like primeval fish, He opened his eyes to find a yellow face hovering just before him, grinning. Paul groaned.
"Oh, good," said the clownish, lemon-colored mask. It was perched atop a body swathed in immaculate mummy wrappings. "You're awake. I was afraid the sphinx had damaged you—but he's very gentle, in his way,"
Martine was gasping in pain beside him, as though she had not been brought any more gently to this place, a windowless gray stone room. T4b and Florimel were already awake, staring at their captor with grim faces.
"What do you want with us?" Paul could not make himself sound anything but hopeless and pathetic. His arms were tied securely behind his back, his ankles too. The four captives had been propped against the wall like unwanted parcels.
"I haven't really decided yet, to tell the truth," said the yellow-faced man. "I suppose Ptah the Artificer should know these things, but I've only really started this god business in earnest pretty recently." He giggled. "But now I'm really wondering where I've met you before. I would have recognized my old traveling companions, of course, even if you weren't still wearing the same old clothes—hello! But you. . . ." He tilted his bright face as he regarded Paul. "I have met you before, haven't I? Oh, wait, you're a friend of Kunohara's."
"Wells?" Paul was shocked, although he could now see the weird, underwater resemblance. "Robert Wells?"
The response was another pleased chortle. "Oh, yes. But my Egyptian identity is rather to the fore at the moment. Lord Anubis has been kind enough to forgive my past bad associations."
"Anubis?" Martine spoke hollowly. "You mean Dread, don't you? You mean Jongleur's pet murderer."
"Yes, I suppose that's his name. I would have found it much easier piecing these things together from the outside, but I've had to make do."
"That's an understatement," said Paul. "You've fallen pretty low, Wells, haven't you—throwing in your lot with a butchering psychopath."
"Don't waste your time, Paul." Florimel's voice was cracked, the defiance unconvincingly forced. "He is no better than Dread."
"Anyone who knows anything about business knows that sometimes you have to overlook certain foibles in your CEO if you want a take-charge kind of guy," Wells said cheerfully. "And the fact is, right now Mr. Dread holds all the stock. Which means I'm proud to be on his team."
"So . . . so you'll just stand by and let him do whatever he wants?" Paul said. "Destroy the network, rape and murder and God knows what else. . . ?"
"In a word—yes," said Wells. "But he won't destroy the network. He wants to live forever, just like anyone else. Just like me." He turned and tapped on the door. "But he'll be back very soon, our gracious Lord Anubis, so I'm sure he'll be glad to explain things to you himself,"
The heavy door swung open, revealing a trio of shaven-headed guards just outside, their muscles shining with oil. The door thumped shut behind Wells and the bolt crashed back into place.
"Dread has us!" Martine seemed to speak from some far shore of despair. "Oh, God, the monster has us!"
/> Exhausted and heartsick, squeezed to cramping agony by their bonds, neither Paul nor his companions felt much like talking. Something close to an hour passed before the bolt grated again and the door swung open to reveal the bizarre , yellow countenance of Robert Wells.
"Keeping yourselves amused, I hope," he said. "Singing camp songs or something? Michael row the boat ashore. . . ?" His smile—in fact, Paul thought, his entire aspect—seemed quite insane. "I've brought along some pals of yours." A pair of guards shouldered their way into the room, each holding a sagging figure. When they let go of them, the prisoners stumbled and fell to the floor. Paul did not know the small, round woman in tattered Egyptian clothes, but after a moment recognized the man's face through the blood and bruises.
"Nandi. . . ?"
The prisoner rolled reddened, swollen-lidded eyes in his direction. "I'm sorry . . . I . . . never thought. . . ."
"Ah, yes!" said Wells. "He never thought you'd actually be here, or he would have kept his mouth shut about meeting you." The yellow mask nodded. "It took a little while before I put two and two together. Then I realized it would be a bit of a coincidence for you to be a different Paul than the one this gentleman has been telling us about so eagerly."
"You monster!" Nandi Paradivash struggled to crawl toward Wells, but was kicked brutally back to the floor by the nearest guard, where he lay, sobbing and wheezing.
"Paul Jonas." Wells surveyed him with a glittering eye. "Or 'X', as I was calling you for a long time—Jongleur's mystery experiment. First I got a name to go with it, now a face." He crossed his bandaged arms over his chest. "Soon I'll have a lot more than that. You can explain everything. Not that it means much with Jongleur dead or missing in action, but still—I'm interested."
Paul could only stare defiantly. "Even if I knew . . . and I don't . . . I wouldn't tell you. It was wiped out of my memory."
"Then maybe you'll thank me." Wells smiled. "When I help you remember." He flicked his hand and the guards hurried forward and picked up Paul like a rolled carpet. He had no time to shout something brave to his companions, not even a good-bye, before they were hurrying him along a torchlit corridor. Wells' voice echoed after them.