The interior was modeled on the Scandinavian-style beach house Orlando's parents had rented when he was a child. He had been very impressed with the multitude of nooks, stairs, and partially hidden alcoves, and if anything he had exaggerated the labyrinthine effect in his virtual reconstruction. Strewn everywhere about the multilevel space were souvenirs of his—and especially Thargor's—netgaming prowess. One corner of the room held a pyramid of simulated glass cases, each one containing a replica of the head of a vanquished enemy, rendered directly from a snapshot dump of the foe's final seconds whenever possible. At the summit of the pyramid Dieter Cabo's Black Elf Prince held pride of place, cross-eyed from the swordstroke that had just split his narrow skull. That battle had lasted three days, and had almost caused Orlando to fail his biology midterm, but it had been worth it. People in the Middle Country still spoke of the epic struggle with awe and envy.
Various other objects had niches of their own. There were cages of wrestling homunculi, the remnants of another enemy's misfired spell; the Aselphian Orb that Thargor had pulled from the brow of a dying god; even the skeletal hand of the wizard Dreyra Jarh. Thargor had not removed that himself, but he had filched it from a certain merchant of oddities only moments before its original (and somewhat irritated) owner arrived to reclaim it. Up the length of the staircase, in place of a banister, stretched the body of the unpleasant Worm of Morsin Keep. An hour wrestling with the thing in the Keep's brackish moat—and a certain respect for anything so stupid and yet so determined—had earned it a place in his collection. Besides, he thought it looked pretty detailed stretched out beside the stairs.
"I didn't think you'd want to talk about it." Fredericks slid down onto the broad black leather couch. "I figured you'd be really upset"
"I am upset. But there's more to this than Thargor getting killed. Much more."
Fredericks squinted. Orlando didn't know what his friend looked like in RL, but he was pretty sure he wore glasses. "What does that mean, 'more to this'? You impacted, Thargor got killed. What did I miss?"
"You missed a lot. C'mon, Fredericks, have you ever seen me do something like that? Someone hacked my venture. Somebody got at me!"
He did his best to explain the arresting vision of the golden city, but found it was almost impossible to find words that would explain how vibrantly, unbelievably real it had been. ". . . It was like, like—like if I tore a hole in that window," he gestured to the Cretaceous gnashing and squawking on the far side of simulated glass, "and you could see the real world behind it. Not a video picture of the real world, not even with the best resolution you can imagine, but the real actual world. But it was some place I've never seen. I don't think it's a place on earth."
"You think Morpher did it? Or maybe Dieter? He was really scorched over the Black Elf thing."
"Don't you get it? Nobody we know could do this. I don't know if the government or Krittapong's top level research lab could do it." Orlando began to pace back and forth across the sunken room. He felt hemmed in. He made a quick gesture and the floorspace expanded, moving the walls and Fredericks' couch several yards back.
"Hey!" His friend sat up. "Are you trying to tell me it was UFOs or something? C'mon, Gardino, if someone was doing something that weird on the net, it would be in the news or something."
Orlando paused, then shouted, "Beezle!"
A door opened in the floor and a small something with rolling eyes and too many legs leaped out and hurried toward him. It tumbled to a stop by his feet, then tugged itself into an untidy heap and said, in a raspy Brooklyn accent, "Yeah, boss?"
"Do a news search for me on the phenomenon I just described, or any other major net anomalies. And find me the record of the final fifteen minutes of my last Thargor game."
"Doing it now, boss." Another door opened in the floor and Beezle popped into it. There was a cartoon-soundtrack noise of pots and pans crashing and things falling, then the creature reappeared, limbs flailing, dragging a small black square as though it were the anchor off a luxury liner. "Phew," the agent panted. "Lot of news to check, boss. Wanna look at this while I'm searching? It's the game record."
Orlando took the small square and stretched; it grew to the size of a beach towel and hung unsupported in space. He started to tilt it toward Fredericks, then smiled. Even with as much time as he spent on the net, he could still fall into a bit of RL-thinking when he was in a hurry. VR didn't work that way: if Fredericks wanted to see the sample, he'd see it no matter where he was sitting. But now he was thinking about angles; he rapped on the square with his finger and it expanded into the third dimension. "Run it, Beezle," he said. "Give me a viewpoint from somewhere outside the characters."
There was a moment's pause as the processors reconfigured the data, then the black cube was illuminated by the light of a torch flickering on two figures.
". . . Diamonds of imperial weight," he heard himself saying in his deepened Thargor-voice.
"Fifty! By the gods!"
"Yes. Now, shut your mouth."
Orlando surveyed the scene critically. It was strange to stand on the outside of Thargor like this, as though the barbarian were only a character in a netflick. "Too early. I haven't even dug into the tomb yet. Forward ten minutes."
Now he could see his alter-ego pushing through the upside-down thicket of roots, torch in one hand, runesword in the other. Suddenly, Thargor stood straight, Lifereaper lifted as if to ward off a blow.
"That's it!" said Orlando. "That's when I saw it! Beezle, give me POV so I can see the wall directly in front of Thargor."
The image blurred. An instant later, the viewpoint had moved to a place just behind the mercenary's right shoulder. The wall was fully visible, including the place where the burning crevice had appeared.
Except it hadn't appeared.
"What? This is scanny! Freeze it, Beezle." Orlando slowly rotated the shape, looking at the wall from different sides. His stomach lurched. "I don't believe this!"
"I don't see anything," said Fredericks.
"Thanks for pointing that out." Orlando made his agent change the viewpoint several times; he and Fredericks even froze the recorded simulation and entered it, but there was nothing out of the ordinary: Thargor was not reacting to anything visible.
"Shit." Orlando led his friend back out of the recording. "Let it run."
They watched in silence as Thargor leaned forward to stare at the still-unbroken wall. Then they heard Fredericks, as Pithlit the thief, shouting: "There is something coming into the chamber! The tomb's guardian! Thargor!"
"It didn't happen that fast, did it?" Fredericks sounded a little uncertain, but Orlando felt a surge of relief. He wasn't crazy after all.
"It sure as hell didn't! Look, here it comes." He pointed to the Lich shambling in from the edge of the cube, battle-ax flailing. "The whole sequence takes ten seconds, maybe, according to this. But you know it was longer than that, right?"
"Yeah. I'm pretty sure you were staring at that wall for a much longer time. I thought you'd had to break your connection, or the link had gone dead or something."
Orlando snapped his fingers and the cube vanished. "Beezle, investigate that section of the game record for editing or tampering of any kind. Check runtime discrepancies against the game clock. And send a copy to the Table of Judgment, noted as a possible improper character death."
The spidery agent popped into the room from out of nowhere and sighed deeply. "Jeez, boss, anything else you want me to do? I got the first download of search records."
"File 'em. I'll look at them later. Anything seriously interesting? Anything right on the nose?"
"Golden cities and/or super-real phenomena in virtual media? Not really, but I'm giving you everything I can find that's even a little warm."
"Good." Something was tugging at the back of Orlando's mind, a memory of the strange metropolis, its shining pyramids and towers of folded amber and gold leaf. At first it had seemed a personal vision, a gift for him alone—was he rea
dy to give up on that possibility? "I changed my mind about the Table of Judgment. I don't want them involved—not yet, anyway."
Beezle grunted. "Whatever. Now, if you don't mind, I got work to do." The creature produced a cigar from out of the air, stuck it in one corner of its wide, wobbly mouth, then exited through a wall, ostentatiously blowing cartoon smoke rings.
"You gotta get another agent," said Fredericks. "That one's scanny, and you've had it for years."
"That's why we work so well together." Orlando crossed his legs Indian-style and floated half a yard up into the air. "The whole point of having an agent is that you don't need to worry about commands and stuff. Beezle knows what I mean when I say something."
Fredericks laughed. "Beezle Bug. That's so woofie."
Orlando glowered. "I named it when I was a kid. C'mon, we've got some weird stuff happening—tchi seen major sampled. Are you going to help me think, or are you going to sit there making stupid comments?"
"Sit here making stupid comments."
"Thought so."
Christabel's daddy and his friend Ron—but Christabel had to call him Captain Parkins—were sitting in the living room having a couple of jars. That's what they called it when they drank her father's Scotch and talked. But when her daddy drank some by himself or with Mommy, it wasn't called that. One of those grown-up things.
She was wearing her Storybook Sunglasses, but she was having trouble paying attention to the story because she was also listening to the men. It was a treat for her daddy to be home in the daytime even on a Saturday, and she liked to be in the room he was in, even if he was talking to Captain Parkins, who had a silly mustache that looked like it belonged to a walrus. The two men were watching some football players on the wall screen.
"It's a shame about that Gamecock kid, whatever his name was," her daddy said. "His poor parents."
"Hey, football's a dangerous game." Captain Parkins paused to drink. She couldn't see him, because she was looking at Sleeping Beauty on the Storybook Sunglasses, but she knew the sounds he made swallowing, and she also knew his mustache would be getting wet. She smiled to herself. "Most of them are ghetto kids—they'd never get out otherwise. It's a calculated risk. Like joining the military." He laughed his loud ha-ha-ha laugh.
"Yeah, but still. It's a helluva way to go."
"What do you expect when you've got kids who are four hundred pounds of muscle and can run like a sprinter? One of them hits you and pow! Even with that new body armor, it's a wonder there aren't more deaths."
"I know what you mean," her daddy said. "It's like they're breeding them special in the inner city, extra-big, extra-fast. Like they're a whole different species."
"I was in the National Guard during the St. Louis riots," said Captain Parkins. There was something cold in his voice that made Christabel squirm even across the room. "They are a whole different species."
"Well, I wish the 'Heels would start recruiting a few more of them," her daddy said, laughing. "We could use some muscle on our defensive line."
Christabel got bored with listening to them talk about sports. The only thing she liked were the names of the teams—Tarheels, Blue Devils, Demon Deacons. They might have been from a fairy tale.
The picture of the handsome prince had been frozen for a little while. She touched the earpiece and let it run. He was sliding through a forest of bushes covered with thorns, big long sharp ones. Even though she'd seen the story many times, she still worried that he might get caught on one of them and really be hurt.
"He made his way through the ring of thorns, wondering what might be hidden inside," the voice said in her hearplug. She was only wearing one so she could hear Daddy and his friend talk, so the voice was quiet. "Now you read the next part," it told her. Christabel squinted at the lines of print that appeared beneath the thorns as though written on a cloud of mist.
"Sev . . . several times he was snagged on the thorny branches," she read, "and once he was ca . . . ca . . . caught fast so that he feared he might never escape. But he carefully pulled his shirt and cloak free. His clothes were torn, but he was not hurt."
"Christabel, honey, could you read a little more quietly?" her daddy called."Ron doesn't know how that one ends. You'll spoil it for him."
"Funny. Very funny," said Captain Parkins.
"Sorry, Daddy." She read on, whispering, as the prince broke through a wall of cobwebs and found himself at the gate of Sleeping Beauty's castle.
"Oh, I've got a story about our little old friend," said Captain Parkins. "Caught him yesterday mucking about in the records for the PX. You'd think with the way he goes through food that he was trying to double his meals quota, but he was just trying to increase his allowance of a certain key product"
"Let me guess. Plant food? Fertilizer?"
"Even stranger. And, considering he hasn't been out of that place in thirty years, downright bizarre. . . ."
Christabel stopped listening because there were new words forming across the bottom of the Sleeping Beauty story. They were bigger than the others, and one of them was her name.
HELP ME CHRISTABEL, it read. SECRET DON'T TELL ANYONE.
As the word "SECRET" appeared she realized she was reading out loud. She stopped, alarmed, but Captain Parkins was still talking to her daddy and they hadn't heard her.
". . . I told the PX to refuse the order unless he could give them an acceptable explanation, of course, and I also asked them to reroute any unusual requests to me. Now what do you think he's after? Making a bomb? Spring cleaning?"
"Like you said, he hasn't been out in decades. No, I think he's just senile. But we'll keep an eye on him. Maybe I should drop by and check up—after I've shaken this cold. I'm sure that place incubates viruses like nobody's business."
Christabel was still reading the words in her Storybook Sunglasses, but she was reading them silently now, and holding her breath, too, because it was such a strange secret to have right next to her daddy. ". . . AND BRING THEM TO ME PLEASE HURRY DON'T TELL ANYONE SECRET."
The regular words came back, but Christabel didn't want to read about Sleeping Beauty any more. She took off her Sunglasses, but before she could stand up, her mother appeared in the living-room door.
"Well, you boys look comfortable," she said. "I thought you were sick, Mike."
"Nothing that a little football and a few judicious doses of single malt won't clear up right smart."
Christabel stood up and turned off the Sunglasses in case they started talking out loud and gave the secret away. "Mom, can I go out? Just for a minute?"
"No, honey, I've just put lunch on the table. Have something to eat first, then you can go. Ron, will you join us?"
Captain Parkins shifted in his chair and put his empty glass down on the coffee table. "I'd be delighted, ma'am."
Christabel's mother smiled. "If you call me ma'am, again, I'll be forced to poison your food."
"It'd still be an improvement over what I get at home."
Her mother laughed and led the men into the kitchen. Christabel was worried. The message had said hurry. But once lunch was on the table, no one went anywhere. That was the rule, and Christabel always obeyed the rules. Well, almost always.
She stood up, a stalk of celery in her hand. "Can I go out now?"
"If it's okay with your father."
Her daddy looked her up and down like he was suspicious. For a moment she was scared, but then she saw he was playing a joke on her. "And where are you taking that celery, young lady?"
"I like to eat it when I'm walking." She took a bite to show him. "I like to make it crunch when I walk, so it sounds like a monster going crunch crunch crunch stepping on buildings."
All the grownups laughed. "Kids," said Captain Parkins.
"Okay, then. But be back before dark."
"I promise." She scurried out of the dining room and took her coat down off the peg, but instead of heading directly for the front door she went quietly down the hall toward the bathroom and op
ened the cabinet under the sink. When she had filled her pockets, she moved as silently as she could back to the door. "I'm going now," she shouted.
"Be careful, little monster!" her mother called back.
Red and brown leaves were skittering across the front lawn. Christabel hurried to the corner. After peeking back to make sure no one was watching, she turned toward Mister Sellars' house.
Nobody answered when she knocked. After a few minutes she let herself in, even though it felt funny, like being a robber or something. The wet, hot air pressed in all around her, so thick it seemed like something alive.
Mister Sellars was sitting in his chair, but his head was back and his eyes were closed. For a moment she was sure was dead, and was getting ready to be really scared, but one eye opened like a turtle's eye, really slow, and he look at her. His tongue came out, too, and he licked his ragged lips and tried to talk, but he couldn't make any sounds come out He held his hand up toward her. It was shaking. At first she thought he wanted her to take it, but then she saw that he was pointing at her bulging pockets.
"Yes, I brought some," she said, "Are you okay?"
He moved his hand again, almost a little angry this time. She pulled the bars of her mother's face soap out of her coat and piled them in his lap. He began scratching at one of the bars with his fingers, but he was having trouble getting the wrapping off.
"Let me do it." She took the bar out of his lap and unpeeled it. When it lay in her hand, white and shiny, he pointed to a plate sitting on the table beside him. On the plate was a very old cheese—it was all dry and cracked—and a knife.
"You want some food?" she asked.