City of Golden Shadow

  I hope so, Renie thought. Without Singh, she's the only hope we've got of making any sense of this. She looked out at the utterly foreign yet utterly realistic surroundings and felt almost ill. Who am I kidding? Look at this place. Think of the sort of minds and money and facilities it took to make this—and we're going to put the ringleaders under citizen's arrest or something? This whole venture was ridiculous from the very beginning.

  The sensation of helplessness was so powerful that Renie could not summon the will to speak. She, !Xabbu, and Martine sat on the steps in silence, an oddly assorted trio that received its due in the covert stares and whispers of the local populace.

  Renie thought the jungle might be thinning a little, but she wasn't positive. After watching an uncountable number of trees go by, hour upon hour, she was seeing the monotonous landscape slide past even when she closed her eyes.

  The gold-toothed, feather-medallion-bedecked bus driver had not batted an eye at her two unusual companions, but when Renie had asked him where the bus went—whatever information was printed over the windscreen was illegible to her, like the foreman's books—he had stared as though she had asked him to make the battered old vehicle fly.

  "Temilún, good woman," he had said, lowering his chunky sunglasses to examine her more closely, perhaps thinking that someone might ask him later to describe the escaped madwoman. "The city of the God-King—praise to his name—the Lord of Life and Death, He Who Is Favored Above All Others. Where else would it go?" He gestured to the single straight road leading out of the sawmill town. "Where else could it go?"

  Now, with !Xabbu standing in her lap, his hands pressed against the window, and Martine sleeping against her shoulder, Renie tried to make sense of all she had learned. The place seemed to have nineteenth and twentieth century technologies mixed up together, so far as she could remember the differences between the two. The people looked something like Asians or Middle Easterners, although she had seen a few in the town who had fairer or darker appearances. The foreman hadn't heard of English, so that might indicate a great distance from English-speaking peoples, or a world in which there was no English at all, or just that the foreman was ignorant. They seemed to have at least one well-established religion and a God-King—but was that a person or a figure of speech?—and the truck driver had made it sound as if there were some kind of governing council.

  Renie sighed miserably. Not much to go on at all. They were wasting time, precious, precious time, but she couldn't think of a single thing they could do differently. Now they were headed to Temilún, which apparently was an even larger town. And if nothing there brought them closer to their goal, then what? On to the next? Was this foray, for which Singh had paid with his life, going to be just bus trip after bus trip, one long bad holiday?

  !Xabbu turned from the window and put his head next to her ear. He had been quiet during the journey so far, since there were passengers crammed into every possible space on all the seats and in the aisles, half-a-dozen at least just within a meter radius of Renie's cramped seat. Many of these passengers were also transporting chickens or small animals Renie couldn't quite identify, which explained the bus driver's disinterest in !Xabbu, but none of these creatures showed any inclination to talk, which was why the baboon in Renie's lap now whispered very quietly.

  "I have been thinking and thinking what we must look for," he said. "If we are seeking the people who own this Otherland network, then we first must discover something of who wields the power in this world."

  "And how do we do that?" Renie murmured. "Go to a library? I suppose they must have them, but we'll probably have to find a pretty large town."

  !Xabbu spoke a bit louder now, because a woman seated in front of them had begun singing, a wordless chant that reminded Renie a little of the tribal odes her father and his friends sometimes sang when the beer had been flowing freely. "Or perhaps we will have to befriend someone who can tell us what we need to know."

  Renie looked around, but no one was paying attention to either of them. Beyond the windows, she could see cleared farming land and a few houses, and thought they must be drawing close to the next town. "But how can we trust anyone? I mean, any single person on this bus could be wired right into the operating system. They're not real, !Xabbu—most of them can't be, anyway."

  His reply was interrupted by a pressure on her arm. Martine was leaning toward her, clutching as though to save herself from falling. Her sim's eyes still wandered, unfocused, but the face showed a new alertness.

  "Martine? It's Renie. Can you hear me?"

  "The . . . darkness. . . is very thick." She sounded like a lost child, but for the first time the voice was recognizably hers.

  "You're safe," Renie whispered urgently. "We've come through. We're in the Otherland network."

  The face turned, but the eyes did not make contact "Renie?"

  "Yes, it's me. And !Xabbu's here, too. Did you understand what I just said? We've come through. We're in."

  Martine's grip did not slacken, but the look of anxiety on her bony face softened. "So much," she said. "There is so much. . . ." She struggled to collect herself. "There has been much darkness."

  !Xabbu was squeezing Renie's other arm. She was beginning to feel like the mother of too many children. "Can't you see us. Martine? Your eyes aren't focusing."

  The woman's face went slack for a moment, as if she had been dealt an unexpected blow. "I . . . something has happened to me. I am not yet myself." She turned her face toward Renie. "Tell me, what has happened to Singh?"

  "He's dead, Martine. Whatever that thing was, it got him. I . . . I swear I felt it kill him."

  Martine shook her head miserably. "Me also. I had hoped I dreamed it."

  !Xabbu was squeezing harder. Renie reached down to lift his hand away, but saw that he was staring out the window. "!Xabbu?"

  "Look, Renie, look!" He did not whisper. A moment later, she, too, forgot her caution.

  The bus had turned in a wide bend, and for the first time she could see a horizon beyond the trees. A flat band of silver lay along the distant skyline, a span of shimmering reflection which could only be water, a bay or an ocean by the size of it. But it was what lay before it, silhouetted against its metallic sheen in complicated arcs and needles, glittering in the afternoon sun like the largest amusement park that ever was, that had riveted the disguised Bushman and now brought Renie halfway out of her seat.

  "Oh," she breathed. "Oh, look."

  Martine stirred impatiently. "What is it?"

  "It's the city. The golden city."

  It took an hour to reach Temilún, crossing a great plain full of settlements—farming villages surrounded by fields of swaying grain at first, followed by thicker concentrations of suburban housing and ever-increasing modernity—shopping complexes and motorway overpasses and signs festooned with unreadable glyphs. And always the city grew larger on the horizon.

  Renie made her way down the aisle toward the front of the bus so she could get a better look. She slid between a pair of pierce-lipped men who were joking with the driver, and hung swaying on the pole by the front door to watch a dream become reality.

  It seemed in some ways a thing out of a story book, the tall buildings so completely different from the towerblocks and functional skyscrapers of Durban. Some were vast stepped pyramids, with gardens and hanging plants at every level. Others were filigreed towers of a type she had never seen, huge spires that nevertheless had been built to suggest piles of flowers or sheaves of grain. Others, as wildly uncategorizable as abstract sculpture, had angles and protrusions that seemed architecturally impossible. All were painted, the bright colors adding to the impression of floral profusion, but the single most common color was the flashing yellow of gold. Shining gold capped the tallest pyramids, and wound in barberpole stripes up the tall towers. Some of the buildings had been plated top to bottom, so even the darkest recesses, the most deeply gouged niches, still gleamed. It was everything the blurry captured image salvaged
in Susan's lab had suggested and more. It was a city built by lunatics, but lunatics who had been touched by genius.

  As the bus jounced through the outer rings of the metropolis, the tops of the tall buildings rose out of sight above the windows. Renie pushed through the crowding passengers and returned to her seat, breathless.

  "It's incredible." She could not shake off what she knew to be a dangerous kind of exhilaration. "I can't believe we found it. We found it!"

  Martine had been very quiet. Still without speaking, she reached out and took Renie's hand, pulling her thoughts in another direction. Here in the midst of the larger miracle was a small one: Martine, the mystery woman, the voice without a face, had become a real person. True, she was using a sim body in the way that a puppeteer used a marionette, and she was thousands of miles away from Renie's real body, and even farther away from this purely theoretical place, but she was here; Renie could feel her, could even tell something about her real physical self. It was as though Renie had finally met a treasured childhood pen pal.

  Unable to express this odd happiness, she only squeezed Martine's hand.

  The bus stopped at last, deep in the golden-shadowed canyons of the city. Martine could now walk fairly well under her own power. She and Renie and !Xabbu waited impatiently for the other passengers to file out before making their way down onto the tiled floor of the bus station, a vast, hollow pyramid braced with mammoth beams which rose level upon level like a kaleidoscopic spider web. They had only a few moments to appreciate its high-ceilinged magnificence before a pair of men in dark clothing stepped in front of them.

  "Excuse me," one of them said. "You have just come on the bus from Aracataca, yes?"

  Renie's mind raced, but to no useful purpose. They wore overcoats with small ceremonial capes, and both had a look of hard-faced professionalism. Any hope that they might be particularly stern ticket takers slipped away when she looked at the oddly ceremonial-looking clubs at their belts and their polished black helmets shaped like the heads of snarling jungle cats.

  "Yes, we were. . . ."

  "Then you will show me your identification, please."

  Helplessly, Renie patted the pockets of her jumpsuit. Martine stared into space, her expression that of someone lost in a daydream.

  "If the show is for our benefit, you may dispense with it" Beneath the high-crowned helmet, his head appeared to be shaved. "You are outsiders. We have been expecting you." He stepped forward and took Renie's arm. His partner hesitated for a moment, staring at !Xabbu. "The monkey will come with us, too, of course," the first policeman said. "I am sure none of you wish to delay any further, so let us go. Please, content yourself that you will be transported to the Great Palace with all dispatch. Those are our orders."

  !Xabbu lowered his head, then took Renie's hand and followed docilely as the policeman walked them through the station toward the doors.

  "What are you doing with us?" Renie did not feel there was much purpose in it, but she did not want to give in without trying. "We haven't done anything. We were hiking in the country and got lost. I have my papers at home."

  The policeman threw the door open. Parked just outside was a large panel track that vented steam like a sleeping dragon. The second policeman pulled open the doors at the back and helped Martine up into the shadowed interior.

  "Please, good woman." The first policeman's voice was cold. "Everything will be better if you save your questions for our masters. We have been ordered days ago to wait for you. Besides, you should be honored. The Council seems to have special plans for all of you."

  When Renie and !Xabbu had been ushered inside with Martine, the door was slammed shut. There were no windows. The darkness was complete.

  "We've been here hours." Renie had paced the same figure eight across the small cell so many times that she was now doing it with her eyes closed as she struggled to make sense of things. All that she had seen, the jungle, the magnificent city, and now this bleak stone dungeon out of a bad horror story, swirled in front of her mind's eye, but she could make no sense of them. "Why all this show? If they're going to hypnotize us or whatever that Kali thing tried on me before, why not just do it? Aren't they afraid we'll just drop offline?"

  "Perhaps we cannot," said !Xabbu. Soon after the policeman locked them in, he had climbed to the single high window, and after ascertaining that it was covered with a metal grate sufficiently fine to prevent a medium-sized monkey slipping through, had climbed back down and squatted in the corner. He had even slept there for a while, something that Renie found inexplicably annoying. "Perhaps they know something about it we do not. Do we dare to try?"

  "Not yet," said Martine. "It might not work—they have already proved they can manipulate our minds in ways we do not understand—and even if we can, we will have admitted defeat."

  "In any case, these are the people who we're looking for." Renie stopped and opened her eyes. Her friends looked up at her with what she felt sure was the near-indifference of the helpless, but she herself was struggling against mounting rage. "If I didn't know it already, I'd be able to guess just from the way those slick, self-satisfied policemen acted. These are the people who've tried to kill us, who did kill Doctor Van Bleeck and Singh and God knows how many others, and they're as proud of themselves as can be. Arrogant bastards."

  "It will not help to be angry," Martine said gently.

  "It won't? Well, what will help? Saying we're sorry? That we'll never interfere with their horrible goddamned games again, so please send us back with just a warning?" She balled her hands into fists and swung at the air. "Shit! I am so tired of being pushed and chased and scared and . . . and manipulated by these monsters!"

  "Renie. . . ." Martine began.

  "Don't tell me not to get angry! Your brother isn't lying in a quarantined hospital. Your brother isn't a vegetable kept alive by machines, is he? Your brother who counted on you to protect him?"

  "No, Renie. They have not hurt my family as they have yours."

  She realized she was crying and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. "I'm sorry. Martine, but. . . ."

  The door to the cell clanked and then slid open. The same two policemen stood there, ominous black shapes in the shadowy corridor.

  "Come along. He Who Is Favored Above All Others wants to see you."

  "Why don't you run away?" Renie whispered fiercely. "You could hide somewhere and then help us break out. I can't believe you're not even going to try."

  !Xabbu's look, even filtered through the baboon countenance, was pained. "I would not leave you, knowing as little as we do about this place. Besides, if it is our minds they seek to affect, then we are stronger together."

  The first policeman looked over his shoulder at them, irritated by the whispering.

  They climbed a long flight of stairs, then entered a wide hall with a polished stone floor. By the shape and the height of the roof, Renie guessed that they were inside another one of the pyramids she had seen from the bus. A crowd of dark-haired people in various kinds of ceremonial dress, most of which featured capes similar to those the police wore, bustled in all directions. This multitude, full of hurry and self-obsessed energy, paid no particular attention to the prisoners; the only ones who showed any real interest were the half-dozen armed guards standing before the doors at the far end of the hall. These bulky men had animal helmets even more garishly realistic than those of the police, long antique-looking rifles and very functional-looking clubs, and seemed as though they might enjoy the chance to hurt someone.

  As Renie and the others approached, there was an anticipatory straightening of the ranks, but after examining the policemen's emblems with great care the guards reluctantly stepped aside and swung the doors open. Renie and her friends were pushed through, but their captors remained outside as the doors closed again.

  They were alone in a chamber almost as large as the hall they had just left. The stone walls were painted with scenes of fantastical battles between men and monste
rs. At the center of the room, in the pool of light cast by an electrified chandelier of wide and grotesque design, stood a long table surrounded by empty chairs. The farthest chair was considerably higher than the others, and had a canopy of what looked to be solid gold in the form of the sun's disk blazing through clouds.

  "The Council is not here. I thought you might be interested to see the meeting place, though."

  A figure stepped from behind the massive chair, a tall youth with the same hawklike features as the rest of the inhabitants. He was naked above the waist except for a long cloak of feathers, a necklace of beads and sharp teeth, and a high crown of gold studded with blue stones.

  "Normally I am surrounded by minions—'numberless as the sands' is how the priests put it, and they are nearly right." His accented English was softly spoken, but there was an unmistakable core of sharp, hard intelligence behind the cold eyes: if this man wanted something, he would get it. He was also clearly much older than he appeared. "But there are quite a few other guests expected, so we shall need our space—and anyway, I thought it best we have our conversation in private." He showed a wintry smile. "The priests would be apoplectic if they knew that the God-King was alone with strangers."

  "Who . . . who are you?" Renie struggled to keep her voice steady, but the knowledge that she faced one of their persecutors made it impossible.

  "The God-King of this place, as I told you. The Lord of Life and Death. But if it will make you more comfortable, let me introduce myself properly—you are guests, after all.

  "My name is Bolivar Atasco."

  CHAPTER 34

  Butterfly and Emperor

  NETFEED/NEWS: Refugee Camp Given Nation Status

  (visual: refugee city on Merida beach)

  VO: The Mexican refugee encampment called "the End of the Road" by its residents has been declared a country by the United Nations. Merida, a small city on the northern tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, has swollen to four million residents because of a series of killer storms along the coast and political instability in Honduras, Guatemala, and northeastern Mexico,