Sea of Silver Light

  "The path is gone," Florimel said. "It has dropped away. Melted. Something."

  "Like the mountain," Sam murmured as she staggered up behind Paul and set Cho-Cho down on the stone. "All gone."

  So this is where it ends, Paul thought. All that drifting, all that running. It got narrower and narrower until I reached the end of the trap. He looked at the others, Nandi, young T4b, all of them staring-eyed, their haunted, not-quite-real faces devolving into crude planes, the colors bleeding out of their skin and clothes and even the stones before which they stood. The walls of the pit seemed strangely abstract, like the brushstroked masses of some hurrying Expressionist painter.

  "We can still fight," said Orlando. Paul thought it was a statement so patently ridiculous that it was almost comical, a bleak joke for which their pointless deaths would be the only suitable punch line.

  Martine shuddered and tried to sit up. "Is th–th–that you, P–Paul?" She was trembling so powerfully that he crouched beside her and held her legs, afraid she would shake herself right over the ledge and down into the deeps. That endless blackness was the only thing that still looked entirely real.

  "It's me," he said and gently touched her face. She was cold. He was cold, too. "We're all here, but we need to be quiet. That thing—Dread—is looking for us."

  "I h–haven't let go," she said. "I can . . . feel . . . where !Xabbu is—and b–beyond. I can even feel where . . . the Other is. All the way . . . to the end." Her shivering had lessened, though she seemed farther away than ever.

  "I'm here."

  "Cold. It's so cold. Vacuum cold."

  He tried to rub her hand but she pulled it away. "That is so strange—I can feel you touching me but it is like it is happening on another planet. Don't. Let me think, Paul. It's so hard . . . to keep . . . to hold. . . ."

  "Hello, chums," Dread's voice crooned. "I know you must be getting tired of waiting for me." The path behind them was still empty, the light bent and strange. "I'd have been with you by now, but I've been playing with the kiddies. Listen." A thin, sobbing shriek echoed through Paul's ears, through all his companions too, making them flinch and cry out, linked by a circuit of horrified helplessness.

  "He's taking his time on purpose," Florimel groaned. "Sadist. He wants us to suffer first."

  "Smelling us scared, like," T4b said.

  "Silence!" hissed Nandi. "We don't know how far away he is—he could be trying to lure us into giving ourselves away."

  "How much trouble will he have finding us on this path?" Florimel said with ragged contempt. "I will not crawl."

  "Me neither," said Orlando. "I don't care if he's Dracula or the Wolfman or the Wicked Witch of the West—we'll put some pain in his venture before . . . before the end." As the boy spoke, Sam Fredericks climbed unsteadily to her feet beside him, reflected light flickering on her terrified, determined face. Paul felt a swelling in his heart, something he could not name. These poor, brave children. How can this be happening to them?

  "Cold. . . !" Martine shouted. Startled, Paul clamped a hand across her mouth. She shook it off. When she spoke again it was barely a murmur. "I can feel the Other—but he's so small! Frightened! The children . . . they aren't crying anymore. They're quiet, so quiet. . . !"

  "It is cold where the Other is." Sellars' voice made them all jump.

  "He's back," Sam said tunelessly.

  "There is no time to waste." Cho-Cho now lay like a fitful sleeper at Sam's feet, Sellars' bizarrely precise voice issuing from the boy's open mouth. "Martine, I will try to reach you—to join my end of the connection to yours. It will be a strange feeling, I'm sure, but please try to not to fight me."

  "Can't think. Too cold . . . hurts. . . ."

  "The Other is imprisoned in a great coldness, both inside and out," Sellars said, rapping out the words in a great hurry. "If you understand that, you will be less afraid. He is not a machine, or at least he did not begin that way. He was a child, a human child, corrupted by The Grail Brotherhood and made the heart of their great immortality machine."

  Paul felt a wash of helpless hatred. The Other, little Gally, Orlando, and Sam Fredericks, the screaming victims beside the Well—all those innocents sacrificed so a man like Jongleur could crawl on through more years of life.

  "Frightened. . . ." Martine wept. "He is so small. . . !"

  "He always has been, at least to himself. Frightened. Abused. Kept in the dark, metaphorically and literally, because they feared his almost unlimited potential. He affected the minds of those who guarded him, so they exiled him—put him in the crudest, most secure prison they could devise."

  "Prison. . . ?"

  "A satellite." Sellers spoke quietly, but his words seemed starkly loud on the ledge above the abyss. "The Other is in a satellite, orbiting above the Earth. Cryogenic engines keep his metabolism slow, make him more controllable—or so they thought. They banished him to the emptiness of space, with fail-safe devices on his prison so that if anything went wrong they could fire the rockets and push him out of orbit and into deep space." Sellers' voice was dry, cracked. "The Apep Sequence, Jongleur called it. After the serpent that tried every night to swallow the flying boat of Ra, king of the gods."

  Martine gasped. "Hurry! I . . . I can't . . ." She twitched, twitched again—it was strangely rhythmic. Paul looked down to see her hands moving in a strange pattern, the fingers held in front of her chest, weaving in and out. "!Xabbu, too . . . he hurts. . . ."

  "I am struggling to make the connection, even as I speak," Sellars said through the sleeping child. "It is . . . like threading a needle . . . with a thread a million miles long. And . . . I am holding the far end . . . of the thread."

  Something was moving now on the far side of the Well—a point of darkness so pure that even in this shadowy netherworld Paul could see it striding down the path at a weirdly unhurried pace, winding along the wall of the pit.

  "He's coming," Paul whispered, knowing it was useless to say it, knowing Sellars could not work any faster. "Dread's coming." He touched Martine with his hand, the merest featherlight brush of his fingers on her leg. She moaned and writhed.

  "No!" Her hands were moving faster now, clenching and unclenching, the fingers almost too swift to see in the weird half-light. "Don't! Hurts!"

  "Please don't touch her," Sellars gasped. "Please. It . . . is . . . very close. Very . . . difficult."

  The shadow-shape turned along the wall, still following the path. Although it was still far away, Paul could see the gleam of two pale eyes. His heart sped even faster, hammering in his chest. We're feeling what the Other feels, he realized. But that's what I've felt all along when the Twins were chasing me—its fear of them, its terror of Jongleur. I'm not even a real person, I'm just part of the bloody network code. I don't even have my own feelings!

  The dark man walked down the path.

  What did all this truly mean? Paul's panicked thoughts flared and sputtered. What was the reality here? A murderer, or the devil Himself? A boy who thought he was an operating system? An operating system that thought it was a little boy who had fallen down a well? Madness. Nightmares.

  It really is the Red King's dream. It's all true. When the dream's over, when this network dies, Paul Jonas will blow out like a candle.

  But I'm not even Paul Jonas, he thought with a sudden, chill clarity. Not really. I'm the residue of the Grail process—a copy, like Ava. I'm just a better copy, that's all.

  He looked at his companions, frozen, staring. The only sound was Martine's harsh breathing.

  It's the end, he thought, and I'm still running. Still drifting. But I said I wouldn't do it anymore. . . .

  Sellars needs time. This thought tore across the first like a sudden scream. The one thing we don't have. He needs time to save my friends.

  And what is there for me. even if I survive? An eternity in this looking glass universe?

  The black shape turned the last bend, moving in an invisible cloud of terror.

  "Hello,"
Dread called, laughing. "Have you been waiting long?" The monster's eyes and smiling teeth gleamed out of the head-shaped shadow, as though it wore a charred mask of Comedy. "Waiting for old John? Waiting for your old chum Johnny Dark?"

  The end, Paul thought. And then he ran.

  He could hear the others shouting behind him, the raw surprise in their voices, but it was just noise. The poisonous fear that surrounded the shadow-figure swept over him, a stormfront of nerve-jangling, limb-deadening panic that slowed him until it was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other. He staggered up the path like a man running against gale winds.

  The thing called Dread stopped to watch his approach. He could feel its amused interest, but that was a solitary note in a roaring symphony of utter terror which grew louder and stronger the closer he got.

  Zero. The dark. He couldn't think. He pushed himself forward two more steps. Lost. Lost! Running in the dark, lost! He took another step, his heartbeat so swift it was almost uniform, a zipper being pulled along its track, beatbeatbeatbeatbeatbeat. . . .

  "So which one are you?" The thing reached out for him with a hand cold as the bottom of a grave. Its empty eyes widened as Paul took one last stumbling step, then his brain and spine could not drive him any farther. He fell to the ground at the shadow-man's feet, twitching in helpless horror.

  "And what were you planning to do?" it asked him. "Challenge me to a fight? Marquis of Queenbury rules?" It bent closer. An icy finger lifted Paul's chin, forced him to meet the white, blindfish gaze, the smile glinting like ice in the black fog of its face. "I'm going to eat your heart, mate. And your friends—I'm going to take them home with me and rape their souls."

  Paul's quivering hands, which for a moment had risen a few inches above the ground, dropped back to the path. As the blackness closed in on him he clung desperately to a single slender point of sanity.

  "No more," he gasped.

  Dread leaned down until his grinning mouth was only a finger's breadth away. Paul felt sure his heart would stop. "You aren't giving up already, are you? Oh, that's very disappointing. . . ."

  "No more . . . drifting!" he screamed, and pushed off from the ground. He wrapped his arms around the shadow-thing and dragged them both over the side of the ledge.

  For a long moment they fell, the dark man thrashing and struggling in his arms like an immense bat. Paul could feel Dread's surprised panic, and even through his own terror something like triumph rose. Then they slowed and stopped.

  They hung in midair, Paul held like an infant at the end of Dread's outstretched arm. The grinning mouth was now contorted by rage. A terrible, scalding heat ran up Paul's body, flames suddenly crackling on his limbs, his hair, even inside him, racing up his gullet to fill his mouth. He let out a smoking shriek of agony as the monster swung him high, then flung him down, flaming like a comet, to slam against the sloping wall of the pit.

  The first blow was so hard it was like something else entirely, as sudden and transformative as being struck by lightning. He dimly felt himself caroming down the uneven rock wall, limp, helpless, but it seemed very far away, strangely unimportant. Everything was broken inside him.

  He stopped at last. He supposed he was still burning, but the flames were only more lights flickering before his eyes, and now all the lights were growing dim.

  Doesn't feel like being a copy, he thought absently. Feels . . . just like dying.

  A moving darkness floated down from above and hung just before him.

  "You wasted my time. Bad choice."

  Paul would have laughed, but nothing worked. What an unimportant thing to say. What an unimportant thing to think. His own thoughts were like smoke, curling and rising, lighter than the air, lighter than anything that had ever been.

  I wonder if there's a copy of Heaven, too. . . .

  And then he didn't think anymore.

  CHAPTER 47

  Star Over Louisiana

  * * *

  NETFEED/LIFESTYLE: Can't Diet? Maybe You Can Change Your Genes. . . .

  (visual: genetic engineering department laboratory, Candide Institute)

  VO: The Candide Institute of Toulouse, France has announced a breakthrough in the quest for what some critics have called "junk food genes," a reversal of the usual approach for dealing with poor dietary habits in the First World.

  (visual: Claudia Jappert, Candide Institute researcher)

  JAPPERT: "Some people can't improve their diet, no matter how much they try. We do not make judgments, and we are certainly not in the business of punishing people for poor habits, especially when we now believe we can optimize their body instead for the kind of food they do eat. If a few genetic adjustments can make someone better able to deal with a diet weighted toward saturated fats and sugar and too much red meat, then why should they suffer needlessly from life-shortening illnesses. . . ?"

  * * *

  The tears were finished now. All Olga could do was wait. There was nothing left at all, inside or out, nothing but the hiss of an empty channel. She had turned her link to Sellars all the way up—in their last moments he had grown so quiet she could scarcely make out his words—and now all that it brought her was the sound of his long absence.

  Maybe it's me, she thought dully. Maybe I just can't hear anymore.

  Before entering the tower she had believed she had already given up everything, but in only minutes she had been made to understand how foolish that belief had been. Thirty years of believing a terrible lie, a lie on which she had built her life and to which she had reconciled as to a decrepit but familiar home. Now it was gone.

  How many times did my baby cry? And nobody came to him. She could not move, could not open her eyes. Better I never knew. Nothing could be worse than this.

  The link to Sellars still blew nothing into her ear but the ghosts of electrons, the phantom voices of quanta. She tried to imagine a life spent that way, a life spent listening to a void like that, not even knowing that you were human. That it should be her son—that she, of all the mothers who had ever lived, should have been singled out for such horror. . . .

  The light had changed. Through the cracks between her fingers Olga saw a spill of blue, the broad black band of a moving shadow. Her heart flip-flopped, threatened to stop entirely.

  Did Sellars bring him here? After all? It was only a instant's thought as she turned, a flare of panic and hope that she knew was ridiculous, but it made the immense, dripping thing shuffling toward her all the more incomprehensible.

  "Heh-woh." It smiled, showing its big teeth. "Heh-woh, wih-uh way-ee."

  The words came out in a gargling slur—the fat man's massive jaws did not seem to be working properly. He trailed fiberlink and medical cables like some deep-sea monster twined in kelp. The mounds of his pale skin were slick with some shiny, fluorescent grease.

  Behind him, the lid of his black sarcophagus stood open. On the far side of Jongleur's huge central pod another lid was also up. Bony hands scrabbled at the rim as whoever or whatever was inside tried to climb out.

  The fat man took another dragging step, raising a huge, meaty arm. Olga stumbled backward. He was slow but getting faster. Even in the somber light she could see slimy footprints on the carpet behind him like the track of a monstrous snail. "Non't wun away," he said. His speech was improving, but not much. "We've min in vose muckets a wong, wong nime. We've min missing owah vun. Vinney? Wheah ah you?"

  Another figure now stood upright in the other pod—a naked man, painfully thin, but much more normal-looking. He turned and stared blearily at the fat man. "I g–g–gan't zee . . ." the thin man complained. "Where . . . my . . . glazzez. . . ?"

  The fat man laughed. A smear of blue froth gleamed on his lips and chin. "Non't worry, Vinney—you ahways worry noo much. Yoo woahn neen 'em. I'll hoad her nown, you noo . . . you do . . . whatever you wanna do. . . ."

  Olga turned and ran across the carpet.

  She reached the elevator in moments but the door was closed. She scream
ed for Ramsey and his agent friend, then remembered she had turned off his line so she could listen for Sellars' return.

  "Ramsey!" she said when she had activated it. "Open the elevator door!"

  "It's coming," he shouted, as frightened as she was. "I sent it already. I've been screaming at you! You didn't hear me!"

  The elevator hissed open. She jumped in and waved her hand over the door-closing sensor. The two men were lurching toward her across the carpet, the fat man waving his hands in the air, roaring gleefully. "Come back! Come back, little lady! We just want to have some fun!"

  "This elevator will only take you down to the security station," Ramsey warned her as the door finally slid shut. "Then you'll have to change to another that descends to the lobby. At least I think so—is that right, Beezle?"

  "Far as I know, but who pays attention to me?" said the cartoon voice.

  Something smashed against the door of the elevator so hard Olga saw the metal doors flex inward a little.

  "Up," she said. "Up!"

  "What are you talking about? There's only one floor above you. You'll be trapped. . . !"

  "I'm not going down. Fine, then, I will do it myself." She waved her badge and touched the up light, but the car didn't move.

  "It needs a special clearance, remember?" Ramsey said. "Beezle had to work hard on that one."

  "Just do it," she begged. Another smashing blow wrinkled the door in half an inch. She could hear the fat man outside shouting unpleasant invitations. "Do it, for the love of God!"

  "You got it, lady," said Beezle. The elevator began to rise.

  "Even with all those trees, that crazy forest, you can't hide up there for long, Olga," Ramsey told her. "I don't get it."

  "I won't need to hide very long," she said.

  Sam could only stare down into the gulf as the thing with the dead eyes and gleaming teeth rose toward them. Her chest was frozen with terror, a slab of ice where her heart and guts should be. She had watched helplessly as Paul Jonas was burned and cast down. She was too frightened even to cry out.