!Xabbu did not answer. For the first time since she had found him, Renie began to feel truly frightened.
Wicket had stopped before a large natural archway. A chain of crudely sketched eyes surrounded it, dark as bruises against the torchlit stone. "We must go quietly," he whispered, lifting a long finger to his lips. "The Colleen hates clatter." He led them under the arch.
The cavern beyond was not as dark as the corridor outside. At the far end, scarlet light glared from a crevice in the floor, staining the rising steam. Barely visible through the redshot mist was someone seated on a tall stone chair, still as a statue.
The figure did not move, but a voice filled the cavern, a throbbing, growling sound which, despite the clearly understandable words, sounded more like a church organ than human speech.
"Come forward."
Renie flinched, but Wicket took her arm and led her toward the crevice. The others helped !Xabbu over the rough ground. It's the what's-it-called—the Delphic Oracle, Renie thought. Someone's been studying Greek mythology.
The shape on the stone chair stood, spreading its cloak like the wings of a bat. It was hard to tell through the rough garment and obscuring steam, but it seemed to have too many arms.
"What do you seek?" The tolling voice came from everywhere at once. Renie had to admit the whole thing was impressively eerie. The question was, would going through this charade actually help?
"They want to leave," said Wicket. "But they can't"
There was a long moment of silence.
"You four must go. My business is now with them."
Renie turned to thank Wicket and his friends, but they were already hurrying back toward the cavern's entrance, jostling each other in their haste like a gang of kids who had just lit the fuse of a firecracker. She suddenly understood what had puzzled her about Wicket since the first meeting, and about his companions as well. They moved and spoke like children, not like adults.
"And what do you offer in return for my help?" asked the Colleen.
Renie turned. !Xabbu had slumped to the ground before the crevice. She squared her shoulders and made her voice as calm as she could. "They told us we could give you a story."
The Colleen leaned forward. Her face was veiled and invisible, but the shape beneath her robes, extra arms or no, was recognizably female. A necklace briefly caught the light as large pale beads glinted against the darkness of her breast. "Not just any story. Your story. Tell me who you are, and I will set you free."
The word gave Renie a moment's pause. "We simply wish to leave, and something is preventing us. I am Wellington Babutu, of Kampala, Uganda."
"Liar!" The word clanged down like a heavy iron gate. "Tell me the truth." The Colleen lifted hands clenched into fists. Eight of them. "You cannot mock me. I know who you are. I know exactly who you are."
Renie stumbled back in sudden panic. Strimbello had said that, too—was this all some game of his? She tried to take another step and found she couldn't, nor could she turn away from the crevice. The burning light was suddenly very bright; the red glow and the dark shape of the Colleen scratched against it were now almost the only things she could see.
"You will go nowhere until you tell me your true name." Each word seemed to have physical weight, a crushing force like a succession of hammer blows. "You are in a place you should not be. You know that you have been caught. Everything will go better for you if you do not struggle."
The power of the creature's voice and the constant serpentine movement of the arms silhouetted against the glare were strangely compelling. Renie felt an almost overwhelming urge to surrender herself, to blurt out the whole story of her deception. Why shouldn't she tell them who she was? They were the criminals, not she. They had harmed her brother, and God knew how many others like him. Why should she keep it secret? Why shouldn't she just scream out everything?
The cavern warped around her. The scarlet light seemed to burn at the bottom of a deep hole.
No. It's some kind of hypnosis, trying to break me down. I have to resist. Resist. For Stephen. For !Xabbu,
"Tell me," demanded the Colleen.
Her sim still wouldn't retreat or turn away. The snakelike arms moved in ever swifter patterns, turning the glare from the crevice into a strobing succession of dark and light.
I must close my eyes. But she couldn't even do that. Renie struggled to think of something other than the shape before her, the demanding voice. How could they stop her even from blinking? This was only a simulation. It couldn't physically affect her, it had to be some kind of high-intensity hypnosis. But what did it all mean? Why "Colleen"? A maiden? A virgin, like the Delphic Oracle? Why go to such lengths just to terrify trespassers? It was the kind of thing you did to scare a child. . . .
Eight arms, A necklace of skulls. Renie had grown up in Durban, a town with a large Hindu population; she understood now what the thing before her was supposed to be. But people from other places might not understand the oracle's name, especially children. Wicket and his friends had probably never heard of the Hindu death goddess Kali, so they had come up with their own version.
Wicket, Corduroy—they weren't adults, she suddenly realized, they were children or childlike Puppets. That was why she had found them so strange. Here in this horrible place, children were being used to catch other children.
Then this monster thinks I'm a child, too! So did Strimbello! They had sniffed a false identity, but they had assumed Renie was a child sneaking through the club in adult guise. But if that was true, then Wicket and his cronies had delivered her to the process that had crippled Stephen and God knew how many others.
!Xabbu was still on his knees, staring helplessly. He, too, was caught—perhaps had been caught before she had ever found him, and was now as far gone as Stephen. He could not exit.
But Renie could, or at least she had been able to a few minutes before.
For a moment she stopped struggling against the invisible restraint. Sensing surrender, the dark shape of Kali expanded, looming now so that it filled her vision. The veiled face tilted forward, cloak billowing around it like a cobra's hood. The lights flashed. Words of warning, commands, threats, all cascaded over Renie, running together into a ragged drone so loud that it seemed to make her hearplugs vibrate.
"Exit."
Nothing happened. Her sim remained frozen, an unwilling worshiper at Kali's feet. But that made no sense—she had spoken the codeword, her system was set for voice commands. There was no reason it shouldn't work.
She stared into a vortex of swirling red light, trying to hold concentration through the shattering, never-ending noise, struggling to block out the panic and think. Any voice command should trigger her system back at the Poly . . . unless these people could somehow jam her voice in the same way they had frozen her sim. But if they could do that, why go to all the trouble to bring her to this particular place when Strimbello could just have immobilized her in the Yellow Room? Why put on such an elaborate show? They must need her here, isolated, exposed to this barrage of light and sound. It had to be hypnosis, some method using high-speed strobing and special sonics that operated right at the nervous system level, something that cut in between her higher thought processes and her physical responses.
Which might mean that she hadn't spoken at all, but only thought she had.
"Exit!" she screamed. Still, nothing happened. It was hard to concentrate, hard to feel her real body beneath the blinding, jaggedly pulsating light and the painful hum of a million wasps in her ears. She could feel her attacker ripping away at her shell of concentration, the only thing protecting her from a tumble down into nothingness. She could not keep it up much longer.
Dead Man's Switch. The words fluttered up, a few scraps of memory shaken loose by the maelstrom. Every system has a Dead Man's Switch. Something to release you if you get into serious trouble, a stroke or something. The Poly must have one. It was so loud, so excruciatingly loud. Each thought felt as slippery as an untanked goldfish. Hear
t rate? Is the switch hooked into the EKG monitor in the harness?
She would have to assume it was—it was the only chance she had. She would have to try to drive her pulse rate up beyond permitted danger levels.
Renie let the fear she had been struggling to check finally burst free. It was not difficult—even if she had guessed correctly, there was only a very thin chance of this plan working. More likely, she would fail and find herself sliding down a long tunnel into blackness, as Stephen had done before her, a blackness indistinguishable from death.
She could not feel her physical body, which was no doubt hanging uselessly beside !Xabbu's in the Harness Room. She was only eyes and ears, battered to the edge of madness by the howling whirlwind of light that was Kali.
Unchecked and without outlet, desperation ran through her like some horrible silent electrocution. But it was not enough—she needed more. She thought of her heart and imagined it pumping. Now, letting her sheer fright color the image, she visualized it pounding ever faster, struggling to cope with an emergency for which evolution could never have prepared.
It's hopeless, she told herself, and pictured her heart shuddering, hurrying. I'll die here, or fall down into madness forever. The dark muscle was a shy, secret thing like an oyster ripped from its shell, struggling hopelessly to survive. Pumping hard, straining, losing the beat for a moment as the rhythms bounced awkwardly against each other.
Streaks of hot and cold went jagging through her, fear to the toxic level, shivers of helpless animal panic.
Racing, fighting, failing.
I'll be lost, just like Stephen, just like !Xabbu. Soon I'll be in the hospital, zipped into an oxygen-filled body bag, dead, dead meat.
Images began to flash before her eyes, leaping out of the kaleidoscopic display that filled her vision—Stephen, gray and unconscious, lost to her, wandering somewhere in an empty, lonely place.
I'm dying.
Her mother, shrieking in agony during her final moments, caught on the upper floor of the department store as the flames climbed hungrily upward, knowing she would never see her children again.
I'm dying, dying.
Death the destroyer, the great Nothing, the freezing fist that seized you and squeezed you, crushed you into dust that floated in the blank dark between stars.
Her heart stuttered, laboring toward failure like an overheated engine.
I'm dying I'm dying I'm dying I'm. . . .
The world jerked and turned gray; light and dark were evenly smeared. Renie felt a sharp pain race down her arm, a streak of fire. She was in some between-place, she was alive, no, she was dying, she . . .
I'm out, she thought, and the idea rattled in her suddenly cavernous and echoing skull. The shrieking drone was gone. Her thoughts were her own, but even through the agony, a vast, adhesive weariness pulled at her. I must be having a heart attack.
But she had already determined her course before she had begun. She couldn't afford to think about what she was going to do, couldn't pay any attention to the pain—not yet.
"Backtrack—last node." Her voice, though loud against the new stillness in her head, was only a dry whisper.
Even before the gray had finished forming, it was gone. The cavern surrounded her again, the red light blazing. Her position had changed; now she stood to one side of Kali, who was leaning forward over the hunched figure of !Xabbu like an interested vulture. The death goddess' arms were motionless, the maddening voice silent. Her veiled face pivoted toward the spot where Renie had reappeared.
Renie leaped forward and seized the Bushman's sim. Another jagged bolt of pain shot up her arm; she gritted her teeth and fought off a wave of nausea. "Exit," she shouted, triggering escape for both of them, but aborted immediately when !Xabbu's part of the program didn't respond. Her stomach lurched again. The little man was still trapped, somehow, still hooked. She would have to find another way to get him out.
A shadow swung across her like a negative searchlight. She looked up to see the scarlet-limned figure of Kali looming above, arms spread wide,
"Oh, shit." Renie tightened her grip on !Xabbu, wondering how lifelike this simulation was. Bracing herself against the inevitable pain, she straightened suddenly and put a shoulder into the oracle's midsection. There was no sensation of contact, but the creature slid back several feet into the middle of the steaming pit The monster hung in midair, bathed in the red glow, feet flattened on nothing.
One of Kali's hands darted toward her own face and tore away the veil, revealing blue skin, a ragged hole of a mouth, a dangling red tongue . . . and no eyes.
It was meant to hold Renie until the visual tricks could start again. It might have worked before, but now she had no strength left to be startled. "I'm so tired of your goddamned game," she grunted. Black spots swam before her eyes, but she doubted they had anything to do with the programming in Mister J's jolly little hellhole. Dizzied, she turned her face away from the blind thing and heard the ululation beginning again.
Renie was having trouble breathing: her voice was faint "Get stuffed, bitch. Random."
The shift was surprisingly fast The cavern dissolved, and for a moment a long dark hallway began to form before her eyes. She had a dim perception of a near-endless row of candelabra along the walls, each held by a disembodied hand, then she was suddenly shifted again—this time without her command and against her will.
This transition was not as smooth as the others. For several long instants her vision was nauseatingly distorted, as if the new location would not come into correct focus. She tumbled and felt soft earth—or the simulation of it—beneath her aching body. She kept her eyes closed and reached out until her fingers touched !Xabbu's silent, still form. It was hard to imagine moving another inch, but she knew she had to get up and start looking for ways to get them out.
"We have only moments," someone said. Despite its urgent tone, it was a soothing voice, pitched almost equally distant from the stereotypical extremes of both masculine and feminine. "They will find it much easier to track you this time."
Startled, Renie opened her eyes. She was surrounded by a crowd of people, as though she were an accident victim lying in a busy street After a moment, she saw that the forms around her were gray and still. All except one.
The stranger was white. Not white as she was black, not Caucasian, but truly white, with the blank purity of unsmirched paper. The stranger's sim—for that was what it must be, since she was clearly still inside the system—was a pure colorless emptiness, as though someone had taken a pair of scissors and snipped a vaguely human-shaped hole in the fabric of VR. It pulsed and danced along its edges, never entirely at rest.
"Leave us . . . alone." It was difficult just to speak: she was short of air, and a bright fist of pain was squeezing inside her rib cage.
"I cannot, although I am a fool to take this chance. Sit up and help me with your friend."
"Don't touch him!"
"Stop being foolish. Your pursuers will locate you any moment now."
Renie forced herself up onto her knees and swayed for a moment, catching her breath. "Who . . . who are you? Where are we?"
The blankness crouched beside !Xabbu's unmoving form. The stranger had no face and no distinct shape; Renie could not tell what it was looking at. "I am taking enough risks already, I cannot tell you anything—you may still be caught, and it would mean death to others. Now, help me lift him! I have little physical strength and I dare not bring more power to bear."
Renie crawled toward the shapeless pair, and for the first time took notice of her surroundings. They were in a kind of open grassy park, pinned beneath dark gray skies, bounded by tall trees and ivy-choked stone walls. The silent figures that surrounded them stretched away on all sides, row after row; making the place seem a bizarre cross between a cemetery and a sculpture garden. Each shape was that of a person, some highly individual, some as featureless as the sims she and !Xabbu wore. Each had been frozen in some moment of fear or surprise. Some ha
d stood a long time and like the deserted structures of Toytown had lost their colors and textures, but most looked new-minted.
The stranger lifted its head as she approached. "When something happens to one of the guests while they are online, their sim remains. Those who own this place are . . . amused to keep their trophies this way."
Renie put her arms under !Xabbu and lifted him into a sitting position. The effort made the edges of her sight go black for a moment; she swayed, struggling to maintain consciousness. "I may be . . . having a heart attack," she whispered.
"All the more reason to hurry," said the empty space. "Now, hold him still. He is a long distance away, and if he doesn't return, you will not be able to take him offline. I must send for him."
"Send for him. . . ?" Renie could barely form the words. She was beginning to feel quite drowsy, and although a part of her was frightened by that, it was a small and diminishing part. This human-shaped blankness, the strange garden—they were simply a few more complications to an already complex situation. Difficult to think about . . . it would be easier simply to let herself roll down into sleep. . . .
"The Honey-Guide will fetch him back." The stranger held up the blunt white shapes that were its hands as if about to pray, but kept them a few inches apart. When nothing happened, Renie began gathering the energy to ask another question, but the featureless shape had become as rigidly still as any of the trophy garden's other residents. Renie felt a cold pall of loneliness settle over her. Everything was lost now. Everyone was gone. Why keep fighting, when she could let go, could sleep. . . ?
There was a stirring between the stranger's hands, then a sort of opening appeared there, a deeper nullity, as though something had cast a shadow onto naked air. The darkness flicked, then flicked again, then another white shape fluttered out of it. This smaller blank patch, which was bird-shaped in the way the stranger was human-shaped, fluttered onto the shoulder of !Xabbu's sim, then crouched there for a moment, vibrating gently, like a newborn butterfly drying its wings. Renie stared in lazy fascination as the tiny white shape slid close to !Xabbu's ear—or the rudimentary fold in his simulation that represented it—as if to share a secret She heard a high-pitched trill, then the bird-thing leaped into the air and vanished.