For a moment she hesitated, thinking perhaps she should go back and at least speak to the man. He had been kind, and if it was truly him, it seemed terribly cruel to drive away and leave him to knock on the door of an empty house. But what could she say? How could she explain? She couldn't. And she might have mistaken the face anyway.
Olga said nothing. The cab reached the end of the street and turned, leaving both her house and the man who might or might not be Catur Ramsey behind. Olga Pirofsky, despite being wrapped in the strange, invisible security of the voices and their plan for her, could not help feeling that something grave had just happened, some slippage of universal forces that meant far more than she could understand.
She shook off the disturbing idea and settled back in the seat, wrapping herself in her coat. All done now. Choices made, no turning back. Without even quite realizing it, she began to sing quietly as the streetlights gleamed past the windows.
". . . An angel touched me . . . an angel touched me. . . ." She had never sung it before. If asked, she could not have said where she had learned it.
CHAPTER 17
Our Lady and Friends
NETFEED/NEWS: Faces Red at Blue Gate
(visual: Blue Gate Family Fun advertisement)
VO: The virtual amusement park known as Blue Gate spent millions on one of (he biggest launch parties in the history of the net. Seems they should have spent a little more on research. Apparently almost a quarter of the customers trying to buy tickets for the first day's festivities found themselves in the Blue Gates node instead—a single letter, but a world of difference.
(visual: Koxanna Marie Gillespie, Blue Gate Family Fun customer)
GILLESPIE: "It's a porn site—but it's spelled almost the same. I'm really shocked! My kids came to me and said. 'We were looking for Widget Weasel, but we found a dark room with a lot of people with no clothes on. . . .' "
VO: Gate Family Product Industries, sponsors of the Blue Gate amusement park, are negotiating with Blue Gates Adult Playground for the rights to their name, but the adult-oriented node is reportedly holding out.
(visual: Sal Chimura O'Meara, owner of Blue Gates Adult Playground)
O'MEARA: "Are you kidding? It's going to cost them major, baby. Wild credits. "
The forced march up the stairs to the Campanile of Six Pigs was not a pleasant one. Their bandit captors were armed not just with swords and knives, although there were plenty of those on display, but also with antique guns. The blunderbusses, as Renie supposed they were, had huge bell-shaped mouths and convoluted shapes that made them look more like musical instruments than anything else, but she did not doubt they would do terrible damage when fired. The man behind her, who seemed to do nothing but giggle and hiccup, kept bumping his against her back every few steps, so that she felt sure any moment a jiggle of contact would set it off and that would be the last thing she ever felt.
Worse, in a way, was the stink of liquor that hung over the bandit party like a fog. They seemed giddy with dark amusement, heedless, a volatility that suggested that no compromise or bargain, no matter how much they might benefit, would interest them.
This did not stop Florimel from trying. "Why are you doing this?" she demanded of the huge, bearded leader. "We have done you no harm. Just take what you want from us, although we have nothing worth stealing."
The toothless giant laughed. "We are the Attic Spiders. We decide what is worth taking. And we have a use for you, missy. Yes we do."
The man guarding Renie giggled even more shrilly. "The Mother," he said, almost to himself. "It's her day. Be her birthing-day gift, you will."
Renie suppressed a shudder. The gun barrel bumped against her back again and she almost leaped up onto the next step.
Even before they climbed the final flight, they could hear what sounded like a riotous party above them—tuneless singing, the scraping of a fiddle, many boisterous voices. The Campanile was a vast open space, hexagonal, with arched windows opening to the late afternoon sky in all six walls. In the angle of each wall was a statue of a standing pig wearing human clothes; one was dressed as a greedy priest, another as an overly fashionable lady, each of the six apparently a satire on some different human folly. A cluster of giant bells so covered with verdigris that it seemed doubtful they'd been rung in years hung from the center of the roof. Two or three dozen more bandits were cavorting beneath the bells, swigging from jugs or metal goblets, bellowing boasts and imprecations. Two men with faces covered in blood were wrestling on the stone tiles, and a few of the others had paused to watch them. At least a dozen of the party-goers were women, dressed in the bosomy style of a Restoration comedy, as cacklingly drunk and foulmouthed as the men. When the revelers noticed Renie's captors they let out drunken cries of pleasure and welcome, staggering forward to surround the returning bandits and their prey.
"Eee, they look fat and healthy," one slattern said as she leaned forward and poked terrified Emily with a crooked finger. "Let's roast 'em and eat 'em!"
As others cheered her suggestion—a rough joke, Renie prayed—T4b puffed up like a blowfish and put himself between Emily and the crowd. Renie leaned forward and grabbed his robed elbow, clutching his hidden spikes by accident. "Don't do anything stupid," she whispered, wincing as she massaged her injured palm. "We don't know what's going on here yet."
"Know these dirt-hoppers better not go touching," the youth growled. "Take some heads off, me."
"You're not in a gameworld now," Renie began, but was interrupted by a high, lazy voice from the back of the crowd.
"My lads and lassies, you simply must move. I can see nothing of these newcomers. Clear away, there. Grip, let me see what you and your wastrels have fetched home."
The ragged, reeking crowd parted, so that Renie and her friends had a direct view to the far side of the Campanile and the two people sitting there.
At first she thought the long, slender figure slumped in the high-backed chair was Zekiel, the runaway cutlerer's apprentice, but this one's pallor came from powder, largely sweated away at forehead and neck, and the white hair was an ancient periwig, slightly askew.
"Mother preserve me, but they are an odd-looking lot." The pale man's finery seemed no newer or cleaner than that of any of the other bandits, but the fabrics were brocades and satins; his languid movements caught gleams of the afternoon light. He had a narrow face, handsome as far as Renie could tell, but with cheeks heavily caked in rouge and a sleepy, careless expression. A smaller man in a harlequin's costume slumped on a cushion at his feet, apparently sleeping with his head against one of the pale man's legs. The harlequin's colorful mask had been pushed down until only his cheeks showed in the eyeholes. "Still," the tattered dandy said, "odd or not, none of them seems capable of flight, so they will serve our purpose. Grip, you and your cutthroats have done well. I have saved four barrels of the best, just for you."
Renie's captors let out a howl of joy. Several of them bolted to the far side of the Campanile to open the casks, but enough remained, weapons raised, to remove any thought of trying to escape just yet.
The masked harlequin stirred and swiveled his head from side to side, then seemed to realize after a moment the reason he could see nothing. He raised his finger with the controlled concentration of a brain surgeon and pushed the mask up his nose until his eyes appeared in the slots. The eyes narrowed, and the man in the patchwork clown costume sat up.
"Well, well," he said to Renie. "So you are still on your grand tour, are you?"
The pale man on the chair looked down at him. "Do you know the sacrifices, Koony?"
"I do. At least we've met." He lifted the mask away, revealing black hair and Asian features. Renie's first dreadful thought, that they had been delivered straight to the Quan Li creature, slowed her realization of where she had seen the face before.
"Kunohara," she said at last. "The bug man."
He laughed, sounding almost as drunk as the bandits. "The bug man! Very good! Yes, that is me."
/> The pale man sat a little straighter in the chair. His voice, when he spoke, had a dangerous edge. "This is rather tedious, Koony. Who are these people?"
Kunohara patted the other man on his silk-sheathed knee. "Travelers I have met before, Viticus. Do not worry yourself."
"But why do they call you by another name? I do not like that." Viticus now sounded petulant as a child. "I want them killed now. Then they will not be so tiresome."
"Yes! Kill them now!" Those of the Attic Spiders whose mouths were not full of drink took up the chant. Renie jumped in startlement as something grasped her leg, but it was only !Xabbu climbing from the floor into her arms.
"My thought is that we should try to stay alive until they fall asleep from their liquor," he whispered in Renie's ear. "Perhaps they will chase me if I flee, giving the rest of you some time. . . ?"
The thought of !Xabbu, even in his swift baboon body, being chased through an unfamiliar place by gun-wielding thugs made Renie's throat clench with fear, but before she could say anything a deep, vibrating hum filled the room. The bandits fell silent as the sound reached a loud ringing tone and then dropped away once more.
"There is our sign," said the pale leader. "The bells have rung. The Mother is waiting." He began to say something else, but was taken by a fit of coughing. It went on far longer than seemed normal, ending in a tubercular hack that bent him double in his chair. When it had finished and he was regaining his breath, Renie saw a spot of blood flecking his chin. Viticus pulled a dirty handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped it away. "Bring them," he wheezed, flipping a limp hand toward Renie and her companions. Immediately the Attic Spiders surrounded them again.
As they were herded from the Campanile, past a marble pig wearing the mortarboard of a scholar and an expression of swollen self-esteem, Kunohara sidled up to Renie.
"He is consumptive, of course, the White Prince," he said, as though continuing some casual conversation. "Quite impressive that he should have made himself a ruler over this crude lot." He had dropped the harlequin mask somewhere, and now made a goggling face at !Xabbu, who was still crouched in Renie's arms, exactly as if !Xabbu had been a real monkey in a zoo. If Kunohara was not drunk he was doing a very good imitation.
"What are you talking about?" Renie asked. She heard a sharp voice and turned to watch T4b; the youth was not handling the jostling contact well, but Florimel had moved close to him and was speaking softly. The bandits led them down a flight of stairs, then through an arched doorway into a long, dark corridor. Some of the Attic Spiders carried lanterns, which threw shadows up the walls and onto the carved ceiling.
"Viticus, the chieftain," Kunohara continued. "He is a scion of one of the richest families, those who have their great houses along the Painted Lagoon, but even among those old and strange dynasties his habits were too controversial, and he was forced into exile. Now he is the White Prince of the Attics, a byword for terror." He belched, but did not apologize. "A fascinating story, but the House is full of such things."
"Is this your world, then?" !Xabbu asked.
"Mine?" Kunohara shook his head. "No, no. The people who made it are dead, although I knew them. A writer and an artist, husband and wife. The man became very rich because of a net entertainment he devised—something called 'Johnny Icepick'?" Kunohara swayed a little as he walked and bumped against the gun of Renie's escort, the same man who had prodded her up the staircase to the Campanile. "You will move a little farther back. Bibber," Kunohara directed.
For once the bandit did not giggle—Renie thought she even heard a quiet grunt of resentment—but he obeyed.
"In any case, the man and his wife took their money and made the House. A labor of love, I suppose. It is one of the few places in the network I will truly miss—a quite original creation."
"You'll miss it?" Renie said, wondering. "Why?"
Kunohara did not answer. The troop of bandits and prisoners now turned down another corridor, just as empty as the first, but dimly lit from above. Skylights in the roof, constructed of something bluer and more opaque than ordinary glass, turned the dying afternoon light into something like the bottom of the sea.
"Are they going to kill us?" Renie asked Kunohara. He did not reply. "Are you going to let them?"
He looked at her for a moment. Something of the sharpness she had sensed in him at their first meeting was gone, dulled by something more than just alcohol. "If you are still here, then you are part of the story, somehow," he said at last. "Even though I am not, I confess to being interested to see what will happen."
"What are you talking about?" Renie demanded.
Kunohara only smiled and slowed, so that Renie's part of the procession passed him by.
"What did that mean?" Renie whispered to !Xabbu. "Story? Whose story?"
Her friend, too, had taken on a distracted look. "I must think, Renie," he said. "It is strange. This is a man who could tell us much, if only he would."
"Good luck." Renie scowled. "He's a game-player. I know the type. He loves all this, being the only one who knows."
The thought was interrupted by Brother Factum Quintus, who had angled his way between the other prisoners until he reached Renie and !Xabbu. "I have never been here before," he said, almost in wonderment. "This corridor is on no map I have seen."
"Map!" Behind them, Bibber allowed himself a full chortle. "Hark at that! Map! As if the Spiders need a map. All the Attics are ours." He began to sing in an off-key warble.
"Who's that lurking on the stair, Weaving webs as fine as air, To catch the foolish unaware? Bow down to the Spiders!"
Other drunken voices chimed in. As they turned again into yet another dark hall, half the company was singing, banging their weapons together, making a din like a circus parade.
"Here and there on silent feet. Leave the bitter, steal the sweet, Death to every foe we meet, Bow down to the Spiders. . . !"
The blue-lit hallway was lined with massive mirrors in heavy frames, each one taller than a man, each draped with a dusty, sagging piece of cloth that did not entirely hide the reflection of the bandits' lanterns. Factum Quintus leaned out, craning his gawky neck to look at these objects more closely. "It is the Hall of Shrouded Mirrors," he said at last, breathlessly. "A myth, many thought. Wonderful! I never thought I would live to see it!"
Renie, with some difficulty, restrained herself from pointing out that he might not outlive the experience by much.
A weary voice called from somewhere back in the line, "Do not go rushing in, my bravos. There are observances to be made, you know." The company slowed as they reached the end of the corridor and its draped mirrors; as Viticus walked forward his outlaw tribe parted to let him pass. "Where is Koony?" he asked when he reached the front.
"Here, Viticus." The man in the harlequin suit stepped out of the crowd. He seemed tired and distracted now. Renie wondered what that might mean.
"Come along, then, old fellow. You wanted to see how we honor the Mother, didn't you?" The pale chieftain strode through the door at the end of the hall with Kunohara beside him.
Renie and the others now found themselves hemmed in the midst of the unwashed bandits, who gleefully poked and prodded them. "Do you think Kunohara will protect us?" Florimel asked softly. Renie could only shrug.
"I don't know what he'll do. He's strange. Maybe we should. . . ."
Her sentence was never finished. As if at some signal, the entire crowd of bandits surged forward through the door at the end of the corridor, carrying Renie and the others with them. After jostling their way with much show of evil temper through the bottleneck of a small but high-ceilinged anteroom, the bandits spread out into the wide space on the far side, a rectangular chamber even larger than the Campanile, full of chill air. Windows lined the two long sides, although the glass had been smashed from every one on the left and several on the right as well, starting at the far end of the room. Through these gaping apertures the rooftops, turrets, and spires of the House could be seen stretchi
ng endlessly into the distance, tinged a dull red by the last of the setting sun. Cold wind blew in across the few remaining spikes of glass that clung to the frames. Those windows still unbroken were of stained glass, huge multicolored squares, their subjects hard to discern by the dying light, although Renie thought she saw faces.
Their captors marched them forward until they had almost reached the far end of the room, where Viticus kneeled before an oil fire smoking in a wide bronze bowl while Hideki Kunohara stood a short distance away, watching. On the far side of the fire a shadowy shape loomed higher than a man, lit in a weirdly glinting manner by the flames, its silhouette somehow rough and unstable. The tall, seated figure, robed and hooded, had hands clasped on knees and a face shrouded by the sagging hood. Renie had a terrified moment before she realized that the thing was a statue; a fear almost as deep returned when she realized it was composed entirely of shards of broken glass.
Most of the bandits had held back, unwilling to approach the idol too closely, but the bearded giant Grip and a dozen more pushed Renie and her companions down onto their knees.
Pale Viticus turned from the thing of glass. His eyes were hooded as though he could barely keep himself awake, but there was still somehow a bright watchfulness to him. "It is the Mother's day," he said, examining Renie and the others. "All praise her. Now, which of these shall be her gift?" He turned to Kunohara. "It is sad, but we can only give her one in the proper way." He gestured to the nearest unbroken window, whose picture was entirely unrecognizable now that the sun had vanished behind the far rooftops. "Even so, in a few more years we will have no more windows, and we will have to find another spot. . . ." He paused as a cough shook him, then dabbed at his lips with his soiled sleeve. "We will have to find another place to bring the Mother of Broken Glass her gifts." He squinted, extending a languid finger toward T4b. "We have not given her a man the last two years—she will thank us for this strapping fellow, I think."