Wells leaned forward, apparently enjoying the lecturer's role, as though he spoke before a group of new Telemorphix engineers instead of the most powerful cabal on Earth. "That's why you must abandon your physical bodies. If you do, in the moment your body dies, your virtual duplicate will live. And it won't be a duplicate then—it will be the only version of you, every memory intact right up to the moment the cup touched your lips." He looked at the circle of largely impassive beast-faces. "When you go to sleep each night, are you afraid you won't be the same person when you wake up? This won't even be like sleeping—less than a second, then you'll be alive in the network, unlimited by physicality, by age or injury or death."
"But if we truly die," the crocodile-headed god asked, "and it is only another version of ourselves that survives, what of our souls?"
Wells laughed. "If you really believe in such things, you should have found a different way to spend your money."
A silence fell over the room. "Enough," said Jongleur, rising. "This is not the time for discussion, everyone has had a chance to make his or her decision long ago. If some wish to bow out at this late moment, we will not miss them—they have already paid their portion of constructing the eternal life the rest of us will share. Raise your cups!" More than a few followed him, although others among the Ennead still seemed troubled. "If you do not drink—if you do not trigger whatever form of physical death you have prepared for your old body, you will not step through. You will not join the rest of us as gods."
Still no one moved. Jongleur considered starting the procedure himself, but since he was not actually abandoning his physical body just yet, but only pretending to, he was not certain he wanted himself, Wells, or the other two forced to endure a too-close scrutiny.
The moment was saved by Ricardo Klement, who lifted his goblet and declared, "I believe. I believe in Señor Jongleur and I believe in the Grail. Ad Aeternum! To Eternity!" He tipped the goblet to his strange beetle-mouth and downed the contents. Somewhere in the physical world, his life-support systems disengaged.
Even Jongleur found himself staring in fascination. For a moment the scarab-faced Khepera only sat, looking mildly from side to side, then the sim abruptly stiffened as the body that animated it began to die. The waving, segmented antennae hardened into petrified branches, then Klement slid off the huge stone chair and clattered onto the golden floor.
A heartstoppingly long moment passed. All eyes turned from Klement's beetle sim, which lay on the gleaming floor like a dead cockroach in the middle of St. Peter's Basilica, to the sarcophagus beside his vacated throne. The polished scarlet lid began to lift, at first revealing only shadows. A figure slowly sat up, rising into the reflected sunlight of the golden walls. It was human, an idealized version of Ricardo Klement's younger self, sveltely naked and handsome, but the eyes were unfocused. The murmuring of the Ennead grew louder each moment that the figure sat in unmoving silence.
"Who are you?" Jongleur called. He stood for dramatic effect, and stretched out his arms. "What is your name, O resurrected soul, O newborn god?"
"I . . . I am Klement," the naked youth said. It turned to look at the others with slow curiosity. "I am Ricardo Klement."
A gasp circled the room. There were a few cries of joy and relief. "And how do you feel?" Jongleur asked, amazed to find even his own distant, ragged heart pumping with excitement. They had done it! The oldest punishment of all had been overthrown, and soon he, too, would be immortal. The Brotherhood had killed death—put the terrible, cold-eyed Mr. Jingo to final flight.
"I feel . . . well." The attractive face did not move much, but the eyes blinked as though in surprise. "It is good . . . to have a body."
Others called questions. The new Klement answered them slowly, but the answers were the right ones. Soon the rest of the Brotherhood were raising their cups, shouting "Ad Aeternum!" and drinking deeply, greedily, some laughing and calling to each other as they murderered their time-bound physical bodies. One by one, some immediately, some only after a space of minutes due to the method of real-life suicide they had chosen, the animal-headed sims of the Ennead stiffened upon their thrones. Some of the gods tottered and crashed to the floor, some simply hardened like statues where they sat.
Jongleur, Wells, Yacoubian, and Jiun Bhao drained their own cups without even the slight trepidation some of the others showed, since for the present the four of them were only miming suicide.
Within a minute four sarcophagi opened like chrysalises and four handsome new bodies sat up, one each for Jongleur, Wells, Jiun Bhao, and Yacoubian—the false revivifications Jongleur had prepared to keep the other members of the Brotherhood convinced that he and his companions had joined them. The empty sims sat up, blinked their eyes, and looked around in imitation wonderment, performing a programmed charade for an audience that was no longer present.
None of the other sarcophagi had opened.
Confusion turning rapidly to alarm, Jongleur shut off the four false rebirths and levitated himself to the nearest of the Brotherhood, a Portuguese industrialist named Figueira. His ram-headed incarnation as the god Khnum, which had slid halfway to the floor, was as rigid as marble.
"Is there a problem here?" Jiun Bhao asked with deceptive mildness.
"If you're pulling some kind of trick, old man. . . ." growled Yacoubian.
"They're dead." It was like listening to someone speak in a dream. Jongleur could not make sense of it—had the Other finally malfunctioned for good? But everything else seemed as normal. "They're all dead, they've all killed their real bodies. It's no trick—but they were supposed to wake up here. . . ." He turned to Ricardo Klement. The handsome youth still sat in his sarcophagus, unquestionably alive but apparently content simply to exist in his new body, paying no attention to what went on around him. "But it worked for Klement! How can all the rest of them be . . . be. . . ?"
Wells was examining the contorted, solidified sim-corpse of Ymona Dedoblanco. "It seems you were right to hold back on our own rebirth, Jongleur." He stood up. The yellow smile was back, although it was a bit strained around the edges. "I suppose that once we iron out this little problem, it just means there'll be more birthday cake for the rest of us."
I don't understand," Renie said breathlessly. "What's happening? Are all those Grail people really dead?"
Orlando scarcely heard her. The voices in his head were back, filling his skull with whispering confusion—a thousand velvet-winged birds trapped in an abandoned cathedral, swishing and fluttering and murmuring. He clung to one thought with the last of his fading strength.
"That's it," he said. It was hard to speak—every word wasted precious breath. Somewhere far away his body was failing, and this time there would be no recovery. "That's why I'm still here."
Fredericks pulled at his arm, questioning, but Orlando shook off his friend. He had been prepared to throw his exhausted body against the gigantic shape on the mountaintop, but had not done so. He had known before he started down into the valley that the monster would not feel even his most murderous assault, but something far different from the certainty of failure had kept him from attacking: as he drew nearer, the titan figure, though terrifying because of its sheer, incredible size, began also to seem oddly pitiful—trapped, tormented, and helpless. The realization had left Orlando bewildered, a fading hero with no quest. But now he thought he understood why he was still alive and still breathing, however laboredly.
He reached out a hand to the shimmering vision of the Grail chamber. The others were arguing among themselves and scarcely noticed, but Fredericks saw.
"Orlando? What are you doing?"
He felt a certain unphysical resistance, but the surface of the image was no more substantial than the tension on a pool of mercury. As his fingers passed through, a shudder coursed along the enormous hand that framed the window, which in turn made the golden chamber ripple, and distorted the already grotesque forms of the Grail Brotherhood. Orlando took another painful breath, then stepped thr
ough.
The room of gold now stretched on all sides. There was no sign of a gateway behind him, only the gleaming walls incised with faint carvings. Orlando lifted his sword and took a few steps toward the circle of thrones and the four Grail masters still alive and moving. The god with the yellow face saw him first; his eyes widened, and the two gods with bird heads turned to see what had surprised their comrade. A moment later Fredericks spilled out of nowhere behind Orlando and flopped to the floor.
"Don't do this," his friend said, struggling up. "Don't do it, Gardiner."
Orlando ignored Fredericks and pointed his sword at the one called Osiris, whose mummified body showed he was startled even if his stiff, masklike face did not. "You," Orlando shouted. "Yeah, you, Napkin Boy. I'm going to kill you."
The god with the falcon's head turned first to Osiris, then to the yellow-faced god. "Damn it, Bob, what the hell is going on around here?" he demanded.
"You scanny old bastards have hurt a lot of people." Orlando was trying desperately to keep his voice strong. "Now I'm going give you some of it back."
The god Osiris stared at him. "Who are you?" he snapped. "One of those sobbing ninnies from the Circle? I am too busy to dally with the likes of you." He raised a bandaged arm, index finger outstretched and beginning to smolder. Orlando pushed Fredericks behind him.
"Stop!"
Osiris paused, nonplussed by the midair entrance of yet another stranger.
Renie held something shiny in front of her as she stumbled forward, thrusting it toward the Grail people like a suicide terrorist with a hand grenade. Even as he struggled to make one breath follow another, Orlando could see that she was scared rigid. "I've got one of your access devices and I know how to use it," she shouted. "If you try anything, I'll make sure that what happened to the others happens to you. And if you think you're faster than me, go ahead, try—we'll all go together."
But she doesn't know how to use it, Orlando thought dreamily, and we didn't have anything to do with those people dying. It's a good idea, but it won't work. "It's all right, Renie," he said aloud, "I know what I'm doing."
Before she could reply, the falcon-headed god was shoving his way past the others. "That's my lighter!" he bellowed. "So you're the little thieving scum who took it."
"Don't be stupid," Osiris snapped, but the falcon god was not listening to him. With each stride Horus grew larger, swelling until he was almost three times Orlando's size, his eyes glowing like blue coals. Orlando lifted the sword again and stepped in front of Renie.
"Daniel!" the god with the yellow face called. "We don't need to. . . ."
Orlando felt a deeper shudder run through not just the room, but through him, the air, everything. The voices in his head rose to an abrupt screeching peak, so shrill with terror that he felt himself growing faint. Spots flickered before his eyes. For a timeless instant everything hung, gold and black and echoing, then reality folded in on itself.
A second later light and sound rushed back like clouds before a storm, carried ahead of a terrible thunderous groan that seemed to turn Orlando's bones to water.
The light fragmented. The golden chamber suddenly became a thousand chambers which spread out in tesseract profusion, as though Orlando, Fredericks, and the others were prisoners in a giant kaleidoscope. Countless ghostly versions of the chamber stretched away in each direction like the concatenating reflections of facing mirrors, but at the same time, as though some boundary between worlds had broken down, the black mountaintop and its writhing giant prisoner loomed above it all.
Not just the room, but the people as well had been endlessly multiplied.
"Orlando!" Fredericks screamed—a million Frederickses screamed. "Look out!"
In the midst of unspeakable confusion, Orlando turned as slowly as if he waded in a nightmare. The falcon-headed god was still bearing down on him radiating transparent ghost versions of itself. A massive multiple hand snatched at him; as he tumbled to the side, he felt its powerful talons scrape along his back like the blade of a steam shovel, ripping cloth and skin.
The temple and the mountain had not just multiplied but merged: the black peaks showed through every version of the temple walls and the valley floor glimmered like the temple's polished gold. Fredericks, crouching stunned on the chamber floor that was simultaneously black dust beneath mountain sky, Renie, the gods of the Grail Brotherhood, and all the rest of the companions Orlando had left behind on the mountaintop—everyone was now folded in on the same spot and simultaneously replicated out into infinity, reeling in the madness of endless refraction. The only thing that had remained singular was the giant figure stretched across the mountaintop—the Other—which now seemed to be the suffering heart of a universe that was both collapsing and expanding at the same time. Even the stars seemed to have multiplied upon themselves, so that each distant sun was part of a fractal cloud of light.
Ignoring the chaos, the stubborn falcon god turned and lurched toward Orlando once more, roaring with mindless rage. As its actions rippled out through its shadows, and Orlando's exhausted, stumbling mind tried to decide which of the countless versions was real, the blurry, titan shape of the Other began to struggle even harder, bending at the middle as though trying to burst its bonds and sit up.
The giant screamed. Its cataclysmic howl seemed the noise of a universe beginning or ending, and for a moment reality threatened to dissolve completely.
Far above them, the blurred gigantic face suddenly began to take on a more definite shape, as though something inside the amorphous figure was struggling to get out. As Orlando and the others watched in stunned surprise, it stretched and darkened into something snarling and bestial, looming a mile over the plain. The distortions subsided a little.
"Hello, Grandfather." The beast's yellow eye was bright and big as the moon, its voice loud enough to shake down the stars. "Fancy meeting you here. Oh, and look at who else has joined the party, too!"
The god Osiris stared upward, frozen at the center of his own galaxy of reflections. "Dread. . . ?" he croaked.
At the sound of the name, Orlando heard a few of his companions cry out.
The jackal-thing laughed. "I've found your secret, old man. And soon your system will do what I tell it to do. I think I'm going to like being the master of an entire universe."
Another terrible shudder passed through the body of the giant, and for a moment the beast's features were subsumed by the blurry face it had worn before. "It's still fighting me," the voice said, a little less thunderingly present, but still echoing in Orlando's mind and all across the mountain. "But I've found how to hurt it, you see." The giant shape howled and spasmed; again the mountain-top vibrated on the edge of dissolution. "Just give me a few moments and I'll have it behaving again. . . ."
The field of distortion pulsed. The giant continued to fight against something invisible, but its struggle was weakening. Through the storm of insanity Orlando heard a distant cry and turned to see that the falcon god had seized Fredericks and had lifted her up to its deranged, beaked face.
"What are you bastards doing to our system?" the falcon-thing bellowed. "What the hell have you done?"
Orlando staggered toward them, trying to ignore both the panicky voices in his head and the shadow Orlandos radiating away from him in all directions. Compelled by reflexes developed over half his young life, he had clung to his sword through everything; when he reached the Grail monster, he hacked at the back of its knee with all his failing strength. It dropped Fredericks in a heap and turned on him.
"Get away from it!" Renie screamed somewhere behind him, but Orlando paid no attention. The huge falcon-thing stooped, hands flexing, so angry it could think of no strategy but grab and crush. Orlando ducked under a flailing arm, then tried to stab at its unprotected side, but the other great hand flashed in and caught his blade and snapped the sword in half. Orlando tried to leap away, but he had little strength left. The creature lashed out and struck him like the front bumper of a truck; th
e impact was so great that he only knew he had been flung through the air when he smashed to the ground.
Darkness came down around him, and this time he almost did not find his way out again. He could barely see. His breathing was no longer just difficult but almost impossible. Even his inner voices seemed to have been shocked into silence.
Worst of all, he had lost his sword. He could see the hilt with its broken blade lying what seemed only a few meters away, but the distortion was still so fierce it was hard to judge—hard even to be sure it was really the sword and not one of its countless mirror-copies. Orlando began to crawl toward it, conscious through the pain only that his business was somehow unfinished. Things inside him were no longer connected the way they should be—he could feel things rubbing together—and a tiny, remote part of him marveled that he could feel so much damage to an imaginary body. Waves of blackness, red at the edges, rolled across him. He crawled on, trying to blink away the spots before his eyes, hoping that he was moving in the right direction.
Just as his hand closed on the hilt, something caught him by the foot and jerked him into the air. He hung upside down before a pair of massive legs. As blood rushed to his head, he lunged at the nearest one, hoping at least to scratch the god's skin with his broken sword, but the distance was too great. People were shouting his name, but they were also shouting Fredericks' name, even T4b's name. None of it mattered. The thing dangled him by his heel, swinging him like a clock's pendulum.