City of Golden Shadow

"I'm not having a heart problem. More of a comprehension problem." She turned wearily to the old man and the Mona Lisa. "So what do we have here? I mean, let me get this straight. Some crazy archaeologist, maybe working for the CIA or something, builds a huge, superfast VR network. Then he starts killing off all the people who worked on it. At the same time, he puts my brother—and maybe a few thousand other kids—into a coma. Meanwhile, he's beaming me some kind of Aztec-influenced building designs. It all makes perfect sense."

  "It is indeed very strange," Martine said. "But there must be a pattern."

  "Tell me when you figure it out," Renie replied. "Why is this man sending me pictures of an imaginary city? Is this supposed to be a warning to back off? If so, it's the most damned obscure warning I can imagine. And I can believe—just barely—that there could be some project this TGB group, or whatever their name is, wants to keep hidden, even to the point of killing off a bunch of old programmers. But what does that have to do with my brother Stephen? He's lying unconscious in a hospital bed. I almost wound up the same, thanks to some bizarre horror movie with too many arms, but I'll just leave that out for now, to keep things simple." She snorted in disgust, the giddiness of fatigue threatening to overwhelm her. "What in the name of heaven does my Stephen have to do with an international plot?" She turned on Martine, who had been silent for some time. "And what do you know about all this? You've heard of Otherland before. What do you know about these people?"

  "I know almost nothing," the French woman said. "But Mister Singh's story. combined with yours, makes me feel certain that there are larger concerns here, shapes that we have not fully understood."

  Renie remembered !Xabbu's borrowed phrase. A rough beast. The little man met her eye, but the cut-rate sim kept his expression inscrutable. "Which means?" she asked Martine.

  The Mona Lisa sighed, a fluting of breath out of keeping with the painted expression. "I have no answers to your questions, Renie, only information that raises perhaps more questions. The 'TGB' Mister Singh mentions is known to me, although I did not know before they were involved with Otherland. They call themselves The Grail Brotherhood, or sometimes simply The Brotherhood, although the group is reputed to have female members. There is no positive proof that the group even exists, but I have heard of it too many times from sources I trust. They are a very disparate collection, academics like Atasco, financiers, politicians. They are rumored to have other members of an even more unsavory nature. I know nothing else about them for certain, except that they are a magnet for . . . how do you say it? Theories of conspiracy. They are like the Bilderbergers or the Illuminati or the Masons. There are people who blame them every time the Chinese dollar drops, or a hurricane disrupts line service in the Caribbean. But what could they want with children? I have no idea."

  This was the longest speech Renie had ever heard Martine make. "Could they be . . . pedophiles or something?"

  "They seem to be going to a great deal of trouble without actually laying their hands on any children," Martine pointed out. "Surely rich and powerful people would not expend so much energy when they could procure victims much more simply. More likely, it seems to me that they are trying to frighten these children away from something important, and the illness is an accident, a . . . by-product"

  "Organs," said Singh.

  "What does that mean?" Renie stared at him.

  "Rich people can have lousy health, too," the old man said. "Believe me, when you get to my age, you think a lot about what you could do with a couple of new lungs or kidneys. Maybe it's some kind of organ-harvesting thing. That would explain why they don't want to hurt them, just put them in comas."

  Renie felt a cold pang, then a sense of helpless, scalded outrage. Could it be? Her brother, her almost-baby? "But that doesn't make any sense! Even if these children eventually die, the families still have to say the organs can be used. And hospitals don't just sell them to the highest bidder."

  The old man's laugh was unpleasant. "You have a young person's faith in the medical establishment, girl."

  She shook her head, giving up. "Maybe. Maybe they can bribe the doctors, get the organs. But what does that have to do with your friends and what they worked on, this . . . Otherland?" She turned and pointed to Early Mesoamerica, still hanging in the middle of Singh's room. "And why would Atasco the organ-robber send me a picture of this place? It just doesn't make sense."

  "It makes sense to somebody," the old man said bitterly. "Otherwise, I wouldn't be the last security programmer on that project left alive." He sat up suddenly, as though he had been jolted with electrical current. "Just a minute." He remained silent for long moments as the others watched him, wondering. "Yeah," he said at last, speaking to someone not present. "Well, that's interesting, all right. Send me the information."

  "Who are you talking to?" Renie asked.

  "Some of my fellow TreeHouse residents—the Security Committee. Hold on." He went silent again, listening, then with a few terse sentences ended the conversation, "Apparently someone's been snooping around, asking about 'Melchior,' " he explained. "That was a handle for me and Felton—the one who had the so-called heart attack in the Underground. We used it for some gear contracts, stuff like that. These people came into the programming meeting and started asking for Melchior. Pretty arrogant of them, walking right into TreeHouse that way. Anyway, the programmers jumped on them."

  Renie felt her skin bump into gooseflesh at the thought of their faceless enemies so close. "Them?"

  "There were two. I'm getting a snapshot of them now. See, I'd posted a general message that anyone asking about any of my colleagues on the Otherland project should be viewed with extreme suspicion, and interrogated if possible."

  !Xabbu put his hands on his thighs and stood. "But they have escaped?"

  "Yes, but we'll have lots to work with—how they got in, their aliases, things like that."

  "You seem pretty calm," Renie told him. "These are the people who killed your friends, killed Susan. They're dangerous."

  Singh raised a tufted eyebrow and grinned. "Back in RL they may be dangerous as hell, but TreeHouse is ours. When you come here, you play by our rules. Here comes the picture."

  Two hefty figures popped into view in the middle of Singh's 'cot, the single-moment snapshot magnified until it took up most of the space in the room. The two sims hovered side by side in midair, one of them apparently frozen in the act of talking. One was fairly nondescript, but the speaker was dressed in furs and skins as though he had stepped out of some low-budget netflick.

  "We have seen these people before," said !Xabbu.

  Renie stared, appalled and fascinated, at the broad-muscled bodies. "Yes, we have. It was in the first place you brought us," she told Martine. "Your friend thought they needed fashion help, remember?" She frowned. "I suppose it's impossible to be conspicuous in a place like this, but he. . . ." she fought back a smirk, indicating the mustachioed barbarian ". . . still has been pushing his luck. I mean, it looks like the kind of sim one of my little brother's friends would wear for some online game." The thought of Stephen sobered her, obliterating her small moment of amusement.

  "We'll know more about them soon," Singh said. "I wish that lot at the meeting had been a little more low-key though—it would have been nice to find out more about what they wanted before letting them know we were on to them. But that's engineering types for you. Subtle as a flying mallet."

  "So we add this in to the mix," Renie said, "All this other crazy stuff, then they send in a couple of spies who look like something out of one of those kiddie interactives—Borak, Master of the Stone Age or whatever."

  "Makes sense for spies coming to TreeHouse," Singh said blithely. "Everybody's a freak here. I'm telling you, I worked for that Atasco guy and he was no fool. Slick as snail snot." He held up his hand, listening again to an inaudible voice, "That's something," he said. "Yeah, round them up. I'll come and talk to them when I'm finished here." He turned his attention back to the room. "Appare
ntly, these guys were hanging around with some of the culture club kids, so we might get some information from them. Talking to those kids is like talking to static, though. . . ."

  !Xabbu, who had been examining the flash-frozen intruders, floated back toward Renie. "What should we do now?"

  "We can try to find out more about Otherland," Martine offered. "I fear that they have been as careful with information as they were with other forms of security, but we may be able to. . . ."

  "You can do whatever you want," Singh said, interrupting her. "But I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to go and find the bastards."

  Renie stared at him. "What do you mean?"

  "Just what I said. These people think they can hide behind their money and their fortress houses and their corporations. Most of all, they think they can hide in their expensive network. But I helped build that damn network, and I'm betting I can get back into it. Nothing like a little old-fashioned akisu to get things done. You want to take them to court or something? Go ahead. By the time you're finished getting the runaround, I'd be long dead. I'm not going to wait."

  Renie was having trouble following him. "You mean you're going into this Otherland place? Is that right? Just going to bust in and have a look around, ask the people using it, 'Hey, did any of you people put a bunch of kids in comas or kill my friends?' Great plan."

  Singh was unconcerned. "You can do what you like, girlie—this isn't the military or anything, I'm just tipping you what I'm going to do." He paused, chewing his lip. "But I'll tell you something for free. You want to know where that city of yours is? Why it looks so real, but you can't find it anywhere in the known world? Because it's on Atasco's net."

  Renie was silenced. The old man's words had the feel of truth.

  "The mystery centers around this Otherland," Martine said slowly, the da Vinci eyes focused on nothing present "All roads seem to lead there. It is a thing, it is a place. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it. The best minds of two generations labored to build it. And it is surrounded in secrecy. What could this Grail Brotherhood want? Is it simply to harvest and sell organs? That would be dreadful enough. Or is it something larger, harder to understand?"

  "What, like they want to rule the world?" Singh laughed harshly. "Come on, that's the oldest and worst cliché in the books. Besides, if these people are what they seem to be, they already own half the world. But they're up to something, that's for damn sure."

  "Is there a mountain in this place?" !Xabbu asked suddenly. "A great black mountain that reaches into the clouds?"

  No one said anything, and Singh looked mildly annoyed, but Renie suddenly felt a memory, a tattered scrap of dream, blow through her mind on a chill wind. A black mountain. Her dream, too. Maybe Martine was right. Maybe all roads did lead to this Otherland. And if Singh was the only person who could get her inside. . . .

  "If you did hack in," she said out loud, "could you take other people in with you?"

  The old man raised an eyebrow. "You talking about yourself? You want to come with me? I said this wasn't the military, but if I'm doing the work, then I am definitely the general. Could you live with that, Shaka Zulu?"

  "I think so." She suddenly and inexplicably found herself liking the cranky old bastard just a little. "But I've got no decent equipment—I won't even be able to use this stuff anymore." She gestured at her sim. "I've just been suspended from my job over all this."

  "You have your pad and your goggles, Renie," !Xabbu reminded her.

  "Never work." Singh waved his hand imperiously. "A home system? One of those little Krittapong station boxes or something? This may take hours, days even, and that's just to get inside. Even twenty-five years ago this would have been an almost impossible system to hack—God knows how they've upgraded the defenses since then. If any of you go in with me, you'll need to be ready to stay online for hours. Then, if we get through, we're going to need the best input-output equipment we can get. That city you're so impressed by is an example of the processing power they have. There'll be an incredible amount of information, and any and all of it might be important."

  "I would offer to bring you in on one of my links, Renie," Martine said. "But I doubt your pad could handle that much bandwidth. In any case, that would not solve your problem as far as being online for an extended period."

  "Can you think of anything, Martine? I'm desperate. I can't just sit back and wait to see if Singh finds anything." Nor could she imagine putting much trust in Singh's capacity for subtlety once the security was breached. Better if she were there with him.

  "I—I will consider the problem. There may be something I can do."

  In her hopeful gratitude, it took Renie a moment to realize that Martine seemed to be planning to join the expedition, too. But before she could consider this, a swarm of tiny yellow monkeys abruptly popped into existence in the middle of the room, spinning like a cartoon tornado.

  "Whee!" one of them shouted. "Wicked Tribe ruling tribe!" Whooping, they swirled like autumn leaves.

  "Good God, get out of here, you kids!" shouted Singh.

  "You want to see us, Apa Dog! Want to see! Here are we!" They swirled toward the snapshot of the two intruders, who still floated like parade blimps at the center of the 'cot; one of the monkeys looped out of the banana-colored cloud to hover before them. "Knew it!" the tiny voice shrieked. "Our friends! Knew it!"

  "Why you send them away?" another demanded. "Now boring boring boring!"

  Singh shook his head in disgust "I didn't want you here, I told them I'd talk to you later. How did you little monsters get in? What, do you eat code or something?"

  "Mejor hacker tribe! Too small, too fast, too scientific!"

  "Been snooping where you shouldn't. Christ what else is new?"

  The image of the intruders was now surrounded by tiny yellow creatures. Renie found herself staring. On the outskirts of the whirling crowd, several of them were playing catch with a small, shiny, faceted object. "What's that?" she said sharply. "What have you got there?"

  "Ours! Found it!" A handful of microsimians bunched protectively around the golden nugget.

  "Found it where?" Renie asked. "That's just like the thing that was left on my system!"

  "Found it where our friends were," one of the monkeys said defensively. "They didn't see it, but we did! Wicked Tribe, ojos mejores!"

  "Give that here," growled Singh. He skimmed toward them and plucked it from their midst.

  "Not yours! Not yours!" they wailed.

  "Be careful," Renie warned him. "It was something just like that which put the image of the city onto my system."

  "What did you do to get it to display?" asked Singh, but before she could answer him, the gemlike object pulsed light, then vanished in a sudden whiteflare. For an instant, Renie could not see at all; moments later, as she contemplated the now familiar vista of the golden city, there were still afterimages of the flash on her eyes.

  "That's not possible." Singh sounded furious. "Nobody could have walked that much information into TreeHouse under our noses—we built this place!"

  The image abruptly shivered, then dissolved into a single blinking point of light. A moment later, it expanded outward again, taking on a new form.

  "Look!" Renie dared not move, for fear she would disrupt the information, "Look at that! Martine, what is that?"

  Martine remained silent.

  "Don't you even recognize it?" asked Singh. "Jesus, I feel ancient. It's what they used in the old days, before they had clocks. It's an hourglass."

  Everyone watched as the sand flowed swiftly through the narrow neck. Even the Wicked Tribe hung motionless and rapt. Just before the final grains had run out, the image vanished. Another object popped into view, this one more abstract.

  "It's some kind of grid," Renie said. "No, I think it's supposed to be . . . a calendar."

  "But there aren't any dates on it—no month." Singh was squinting.

  Renie was counting. As she finished
, the grid winked out, leaving nothing behind. "The first three weeks were x'd out—only the last ten days were blank."

  "What in hell is going on here?" Singh rasped. "Who did this, and what the hell are they trying to say?"

  "I believe I can answer the second question," !Xabbu said. "Whoever has tried to tell us about this city is now trying to tell us something else."

  "!Xabbu's right." Something had seized her, an unshakable certainty like a vast cold hand. She had no choice any more—that freedom had been taken from her. She could only go forward, dragged into the unknown. "I don't know why, and I don't know whether we're being taunted or warned, but we've just been told that our time is running out. Ten days left. That's all we have."

  "Left before what?" demanded Singh. Renie could only shake her head.

  One of the monkeys fluttered up and hung before her, yellow pinions beating as swiftly as a hummingbird's.

  "Now Wicked Tribe really angry," it said, screwing up its tiny face. "What you do with our shiny thing?"

  Third:

  ANOTHER COUNTRY

  The dews drop slowly and dreams gather unknown spears Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes, And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears, We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore, The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew, Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you, Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.

  —William Butler Yeats

  CHAPTER 24

  Beneath Two Moons

  NETFEED/HEALTH: Charge Damage May Be Reversible

  (visual: charge users on Marseille street corner)

  VO; The Clinsor Group, one of the world's largest medical equipment companies, announced that they will soon be marketing a therapy for the damage caused by the addictive use of deep-hypnosis software, called "charge" by its users.

  (visual: Clinsor laboratories, testing on human volunteers)

  VO: The new method, which the inventors call NRP or "neural reprogramming," induces the brain to find new synoptic pathways to replace those damaged by excessive charge use. . . .