Mountain of Black Glass

  Eurycleia shook her head. She did not seem overly perturbed. "Perhaps her long sorrow has sickened her wits. Or perhaps some god has clouded her vision, so she cannot see you truly."

  "Or maybe I'm just doomed," Paul muttered. "Maybe I'm just meant to wander around forever."

  The old woman clicked her tongue. "You should be careful of your words, my lord. The gods are always listening."

  He lay curled on the packed earth of the kitchen floor. The sun had set and the cold night wind off the ocean crept through the huge, draughty house. The ash and dirt on the floor were more than offset by the welcome heat of the oven, which pulsed out at him through the stone, but even being warm when he might have been outside, chilled to the bone, was not much comfort.

  Think it through, he told himself. Somehow you knew it wouldn't be so easy. The serving woman said, "Maybe a god has clouded her vision." Could that be it? Some kind of spell or something? There were so many possibilities within this world, and he had so little real information—only what Nandi Paradivash had told him, with many deliberate omissions. Paul had never been much good at solving puzzles or playing games as a child, far happier just daydreaming, but now he felt like cursing his childhood self for slackness.

  No one else was going to do it for him, though.

  As Paul thought about what he had become—a thinking game-piece, perhaps the only one, on this great Homeric Greece game board—a realization came to him, muffled and yet profound as distant thunder. I'm doing this all wrong. I'm thinking about this simworld like it's real, even though it's just an invention, a toy. But I need to think about the invention itself. What are the rules of how things work? How does this network actually function? Why am I Odysseus, and what's supposed to happen to me here?

  He struggled to summon up his Greek lessons from school days. If this place, this simworld, revolved around the long journey of Homer's Odyssey, then the king's house on Ithaca could only come into it at the beginning of the tale, when the wanderer was about to leave, or at the end when the wanderer had returned. And as realistic as this place was—as all the simworlds he had visited were—it was still not real: perhaps every possible contingency could not be programmed in. Perhaps even the owners of the Otherland network had limits to their budgets. That meant there would have to be a finite number of responses, limited in part by what the Puppets could understand. Somehow, Paul's appearance here had triggered several contradictory reactions in the woman currently called Penelope.

  But if he was triggering conflicting responses, why had the servingwoman Eurycleia immediately recognized him as Odysseus returned in disguise from his long exile, and then never deviated from that recognition? That was pretty much as it had been in the original, if his long-ago studies had served him properly, so why should the servant react correctly and the lady of the house not?

  Because they're a different order of being, he realized. There aren't just two types of people in these simulations, the real and the false—there's at least one more, a third sort, even if I don't yet know what it is. Gally was one of those third types. The bird-woman, Vaala or Penelope or whatever she's really called—she must be another.

  It made sense, as far as he could think it through. The Puppets, who were completely part of the simulations, never had any doubt about who they were or what was happening around them, and apparently never left the simulations for which they had been created. In fact, Puppets like the old serving woman behaved as though they and the simulations were both completely real. They were also well-programmed; like veteran actors, they would ignore any slip-ups or uncertainties on the part of the human participants.

  At the other end of the spectrum, the true humans, the Citizens, would always know that they were inside a simulation.

  But there was apparently a third type like Gally and the bird-woman who seemed to be able to move from one simworld to another, but retained differing amounts of memory and self-understanding in each environment. So what were they? Impaired Citizens? Or more advanced Puppets, some kind of new model that were not simulation-specific?

  A thought struck him then, and even the smoldering warmth from the oven could not stop his skin pimpHng with sudden chill.

  God help me, that describes Paul Jonas as well as it describes them. What makes me so sure I'm a real person?

  The bright morning sun of Ithaca crept into almost every corner of the Wanderer's house, rousting the usurped king from his bed by the oven not long after dawn. Paul had little urge to linger, in any case—knowing the kitchen women were virtual did not much soften their harsh words about his raggedness and dirtiness. Old Eurycleia, despite her workday already having reached full gallop as she saw to the demands of the suitors and the rest of the household, made sure that he received something to eat—she would have brought him far more than the chunk of bread and cup of heavily watered wine he accepted, but he saw no purpose in rousing envy or suspicion in the household. He found himself chewing the crusty bread with some pleasure, which made him wonder how his real body was being fed. Despite the frugal meal and his best efforts to be unobtrusive, several of the maids had already begun to whisper that they should have one or another of their favorites among Penelope's suitors drive this filthy old man out of the house. Paul did not want to fight with any of the interlopers—even assuming he had been given the strength and stamina to outduel one of those strapping warriors, he was tired and depressed and wanted no part of any more struggles. In an effort to avoid controversy entirely he took his heel of bread and went out to walk on the headlands and think.

  Whatever else the creators of this simulation might have planned, Paul thought, they had done a very fine job of capturing the Mediterranean world's astonishingly clear, bright light. Even early on this hot morning the rocks along the cliff seemed as crisply pale as new paper, the reflected glare so fierce that he could not stand too close to them. Even with the sun behind him, he had to shade his eyes.

  I've got to learn the rules of this thing, he thought as he watched the seagulls wheeling below him. Not Greece, but the whole network. I have to make sense of it or I'll just wander forever. The other version of Vaala, the one that spoke first in my dream, then through the Neandertal child, said that I had to get to a black mountain.

  "It reaches to the sky," she had told him, "covers up the stars. . . . That is where all your answers are." But when he had asked her how he could find it, she had answered, "I don't know. But I might know, if you can find me." And then the dream-version of Vaala had sent him here, to search for what seemed herself in another guise—but that was where the whole thing fell apart completely. How could she know . . . but not know? What could such a thing mean? Unless, as he had guessed the night before, she was neither normal person nor simulation, but something else. Perhaps she had meant that in different simulations she had access to different memories?

  But this Penelope version of her doesn't seem to know anything at all, he thought sourly. She doesn't even know she's a version—doesn't know that she's the one who sent me here.

  He stooped and picked up a flat rock and skimmed it out into the stiff ocean breeze; it splashed long seconds later at the base of the rough cliffs. The wind shifted direction and jostled him a step nearer the precipice, still healthily distant from the edge but enough to make his groin tighten at the thought of the long fall.

  There's so much I don't know. Can I really die from something that happens here in a simulation? The golden harp told me that even though nothing was real, things could hurt or kill me. If this is all a simulation network, the message was tight about the first part, so I should assume it told the truth about the second part too, even though it doesn't make much sense. Nandi certainly acted as though we were both in real danger in Xanadu. . . .

  A skirl of primitive music came from somewhere behind him, breaking his concentration. He sighed. Questions and more questions, seemingly without end. What was that other Greek myth, a many-headed, dragonlike creature—the hydra? Cut off a hea
d and two more would grow from the stump, wasn't that how it had gone? He would have thought that meeting Nandi and the Venetian woman Eleanora would erase all the mysteries that plagued him, but the more he chopped away at the questions, the more rapidly he created a dense bouquet of new hydra-heads. It was like some tangled modernist tale about conspiracy theories gone out of control, a fable about the danger of paranoid thinking.

  The flute shrilled again like a child trying to attract his attention. He frowned at the distraction—but it was all distraction these days. Even the messages apparently meant to help him were dubious. A dream-version of Vaala had sent him here to meet another version of herself that did not know him. He had received assistance from the golden harp he had found in a giant's castle, but it had not actually spoken to him until he was in the Ice Age, where the harp had become a gem.

  So was the castle a dream, or another simulation? And who sent me that harp-message in the first place? If it was Nandi's people—they're the only ones I've heard of who might try to warn someone like me—then why hadn't Nandi ever heard of me? And who is this bird-woman Vaala, and why am I so bloody, painfully certain I know her?

  Paul took the last of his bread from a fold of his tattered robe, chewed and swallowed it, then continued along the hillside, wandering in the general direction of the insistent flute. As he followed the hill path down, the music was submerged in an angry baying which rapidly grew louder. It had only just begun to intrude itself on his distracted thoughts when a quartet of huge mastiffs burst into view, speeding up the trail toward him in full cry, red mouths wide, voices full of excitement and bloodlust. He halted in surprise and sudden fear and took a few steps backward, but the hill behind him was steep and without shelter and he knew he could not hope to outrun these four-legged monsters.

  As he bent, clawing the ground for a branch to use as a weapon and slow down the inevitable for at least a few moments, a loud whistle shrilled across the hillside. The dogs pulled up a dozen meters from Paul, circling and barking angrily, but came no closer. A lean young man appeared from around a stone farther down the hill and examined Paul briefly, then whistled again. The dogs snarled as they retreated, unhappy at giving up a kill. When they reached the young man he gave the nearest a light smack on the flank and sent them all trotting back down the slope. He beckoned for Paul to follow, then lifted a flute to his lips, turned, and sauntered back down the path after the swiftly-vanishing dogs, tootling away merrily if not exactly musically.

  Paul had no idea what any of this was about, but was not about to offend someone who was on good terms with such large, hostile animals. He followed.

  A flat area between the hills came into view around the next bend, a great open space with a few buildings on it, but what Paul at first took for another large dwelling, a crude version of the palace upon the hill, turned out to be a compound for animals—specifically swine. A large walled area had been sectioned off into sties, and each open-roofed apartment had a contingent of several dozen pigs. Hundreds more lolled around outside the sties in the wide space between the compound's walls, as indolent as rich tourists on a Third World beach.

  The young man with the dogs had disappeared somewhere, but an older man with a slight limp now appeared from the shade of one of the compound's higher walls, the sandal he was repairing still dangling from his broad hand. His beard was almost completely gray, but his heavy upper body and corded arms suggested he retained most of the vigor of his younger days.

  "Come, old fellow," he called to Paul. "You were lucky that my boy was with the dogs when they went after you. I'm glad of it, too, of course—don't need any more problems around here, and it would have been a shame to see you chewed up and swallowed. Come have some wine with me, and you can give me any news you have."

  This man and his speech rang a bell of some kind for Paul, but he could not tell what it reminded him of; once again he cursed himself for having paid so little attention to Homer when he'd had it, first at Cranleigh, then again at university.

  Still, how was I supposed to know? I mean, yes, if someone had warned me, "Say, Jonas, one day you're going to get chucked into a live version of The Odyssey and have to fight for your life there," I would probably have hit the books a bit harder. But who could have guessed?

  "You are kind," he said aloud to what he guessed must be the chief swineherd—the pork production foreman, as it were. "I didn't mean to upset your dogs. I'm afraid I'm a stranger here."

  "A stranger? From that ship that landed at Phorcys' Cove, I'll be bound. Well come, then—all the more reason. Never let it be said that Eumaeus did not offer hospitality to a stranger."

  Paul felt sure he had heard the name, but simply knowing he should recognize it was absolutely no help at all.

  The swineherd's hut was modestly appointed, but it was still pleasant to get out of the sun, already quite hot long before noon, and to let the dry dust settle. The watered wine Eumaeus offered was also welcome. Paul took a long swallow, then a second, before he felt ready to make conversation.

  "So tell me the truth, stranger," Eumaeus said. "You are from that Phaecian ship that stopped in the cove barely long enough to take on fresh water from the spring, are you not?"

  Paul hesitated, then nodded. There had definitely been something in The Odyssey about the Phaecians—he remembered that much, at least.

  "You come at a sad time, if this is your first visit to Ithaca." Eumaeus belched and rubbed at his stomach. "In other days I could have offered to dine you on fatted hog, but all I have to spare is suckling pig, and a lean, small one at that. The suitors who are encamped in my master's house are emptying his larders. Still, beggars and strangers come in Zeus' name, and you will not go away hungry."

  The swineherd continued to ramble on in this vein for no little time, emphasizing the viciousness of Penelope's unwanted suitors and the shame of how the gods had treated his master, Odysseus. Paul dimly remembered that he was supposed to be disguised in some way—one of the gods had changed Odysseus' face so he could return to his home without his enemies realizing it was him—and wondered why the slave Eurycleia had been able to recognize him but the swineherd could not.

  After perhaps an hour of preliminary chat his host slaughtered two young pigs and cut up their flesh to roast on sticks over the fire. Despite the swineherd's kindness, Paul found himself growing impatient and angry. I could spend weeks wandering around here, with all the noble old servants rhapsodizing about their noble missing master, but meanwhile I'm going to be sleeping on the floor in my own house. He caught himself and grinned tightly. In the house of the character I'm playing. But the fact remains, I have to do something.

  Eumaeus served him barley meal and skewers of roasted pork. As he ate, Paul made desultory conversation, but he did not remember enough of the epic to be able to say much that interested the swineherd. After a while, assisted by the food, several generous bowls full of wine, and the afternoon heat, he and Eumaeus lapsed into a surfeited silence not much different than that of the animals outside. A dim memory tickled at Paul.

  "Doesn't the king have a son? Tele . . . something?"

  "Telemachus?" Eumaeus belched gently and scratched himself. "Yes, a fine lad, the very image of his father. He has gone to search for our poor Odysseus—I believe he has snuck away to see Menelaus, his father's comrade at Troy." As he went on to describe Telemachus' ill-treatment at the hands of the suitors, Paul could not help wondering if the son's absence was part of the simworld's scenario, or whether it might somehow be more personal. Was it supposed to have been Gally? The thought was painfully sobering, and for a moment Paul was looking at himself as though from outside—lolling in the reek of an imaginary swineherd's cottage, drunk on watered wine and unwatered self-pity. It was not a pleasant sight, even in his imagination.

  Don't be stupid, he told himself. The system wouldn't have any way of knowing Gally was traveling with me unless he came into this simulation with me, and he didn't. The bastards killed him in Venic
e. Whatever his confusion about his own state, it was hard to doubt what had happened to Gally—the horrible, shocking finality of it had been too great.

  But as he thought about the boy, he began to wonder again how the whole system worked. There were Citizens and Puppets, that was clear, but did everyone else, the Gallys and the Penelopes, fall into a single category? The bird-woman was here, but there was also a version of her on Mars. And what about the one that appeared to him in dreams? If there were somehow multiple versions of her, could they never coexist, never share their knowledge with each other? They must have some common thread, otherwise how could the Neandertal dream-spirit have known about her other self here in Ithaca?

  And what about his pursuers, those two ghastly creatures that had hounded him from simulation to simulation. Were they real people?

  The last moments in Venice came back to him, the bizarre confusion of events—Eleanora, a real woman, but appearing as a ghostly spirit in her own simulation, the Finch-thing and Mullet-thing, tracking him down again, heartless and inexorable as some kind of virus . . . and the Pankies.

  My God, where do they fit in? Paul wondered. They looked like Finch and Mullet, but they weren't—sort of like the different versions of my bird-woman. But there's only been one version of her in any simulation I've been in, either a real character, like Penelope, or sort of a dream version. The Pankies and their doubles both showed up at the same time in Venice. . . .

  It was hard to forget the strange expression that had crossed Undine Pankie's vast, flabby face—something almost automatic, so instinctive as to seem mechanical. Then she and her tiny husband had simply left—walked off, vanishing into the catacombs like two actors who had discovered themselves to be in the wrong play.

  It was odd how often important things—especially having to do with the mystery woman—seemed to happen around the dying and the dead. The Venetian crypts, the dying Neandertal boy, the exhumed cemetery on the Western Front. Death and the dying. Although there had been the maze at Hampton Court, too. Mazes and cemeteries—what was it with these people, anyway?