Renie stared at the newcomers. There was something naggingly familiar about the muscular, black-haired sim. As she turned to consult !Xabbu, she felt a gentle touch on her arm. One of the previous group of guests, a small, round woman in a Temilúni sim, stood beside her.
"I am sorry to bother you. I am very confused. May I speak with you for a moment?"
Renie could not help looking the stranger over, but there was no way to deduce anything certain about anyone in VR. "Of course. Sit down." She led the woman to the chair beside Martine's.
"I . . . I do not understand where I am. That man said we are in his simulation, but I have never seen a simulation like this."
"None of us has," Renie assured her. "It's a whole new universe when you've got that kind of money, I guess."
The newcomer shook her head. "It is all so strange! I have been searching for help for my poor granddaughter, and thought I had discovered a source of information about what had harmed her. I have worked so hard to learn the truth! But now, instead of finding information, I find myself in . . . I do not know what it is."
!Xabbu popped up beside her. "Is your granddaughter ill?" be asked."Is she asleep and will not wake up?"
The woman drew back, although Renie thought it was more from the startling suddenness of his question than !Xabbu's simian form. "Yes. She has been in the hospital for many months. The cleverest specialists in Hong Kong do not know what the problem is."
"The same thing is wrong with my brother." Renie described what had happened to Stephen, and how she and her friends had been led to Temilún. The woman listened avidly, making little noises of shock and unhappiness.
"I had thought I was the only one!" she said. "When my little dear one became sick, my flower, I felt sure it was something to do with the net. But my daughter and her husband, I think they believe I have lost my mind, although they are too kind to say so." Her shoulders trembled. Renie realized she was crying, although the sim did not show tears. "Forgive me. I have worried that I might indeed be going mad." She wiped at her eyes. "Oh! I have intruded on you, but have not even told you my name. I am so impolite! My name is Quan Li."
Renie introduced herself and her friends. "We're as surprised by all this as you are. We thought we were breaking into our enemies' personal playground. I suppose we did, in a way, but this man Atasco doesn't seem very much like an enemy." She looked over at their host, who was talking to the black-clad stranger. "Who is that with him—the one with the clown face? Did he come in with you?"
Quan Li nodded. "I do not know him—I am not even sure it is a him." She giggled, then lifted her hand to her mouth as though she had shocked herself. "He was waiting outside when the guards brought us—me and the other woman sitting there." She indicated the other Temilúni sim. "I do not know her name either. We all entered together."
"Perhaps he is Sellars," !Xabbu suggested.
"He is not," said Martine distractedly. She was staring at the high ceiling, her eyes still without focus. "He calls himself 'Sweet William.' He is from England."
Renie realized after a moment that her mouth was open. Even on a sim, that was not an attractive expression. She shut it. "How do you know?"
Before Martine could answer, the sound of chairs being scraped against the stone floor made them all turn. Atasco had seated himself at the head of the long table, where he had been joined by a coldly beautiful Temilúni woman dressed in a white cotton dress, her only ornament a magnificent necklace of blue stones. Renie had not seen her enter, she guessed it must be Atasco's number-crunching wife.
"Welcome to the Council Hall of Temilún." Atasco spread his arms in benediction as the rest of the guests seated themselves. "I know you have come from many places, and with many different purposes. I wish I had the leisure to speak with each one of you, but our time is short Still, I hope you have had at least a brief opportunity to see something of this world. It has much to offer the interested sightseer."
"Oh, for God's sake," Renie murmured, "get on with it!"
Atasco paused as though he had heard her, but his expression was puzzled rather than irritated. He turned and whispered something to his wife, who whispered back. "I am not sure what to tell you," he said aloud. "The one who summoned you should have been here by now."
The shiny, robotic sim Renie had noted earlier stood. Its excessively intricate armor had razor sharp points everywhere. "This far duppy," it said in a contemptuous Goggleboy drawl "No clock for this. Flyin' now." It made a series of gestures with its chrome-gleaming fingers, then seemed taken aback when nothing happened. Before anyone else could say anything, a yellowish light flared brightly beside the Atascos. Several of the guests cried out in surprise.
The figure that stood beside Bolivar Atasco when the flash subsided was a featureless, humanoid splash of white, as though someone had ripped away the substance of the council chamber.
Renie had been one of those who had shouted, but not because of the apparition's startling entrance. I've seen that thing before! In a dream? No, in that club—in Mister J's.
A memory that had been almost lost was coming back, her last feeble moments in the depths of that horrible club. This thing had . . . helped her? It was all very fuzzy. She turned to !Xabbu for confirmation, but the Bushman was watching the latest arrival with keen interest Beside him, Martine looked completely overwhelmed, as though she were lost in a dark forest.
Even Atasco seemed taken aback by the entrance. "Ah. It's . . . it's you, Sellars."
The empty space at the top of the blank turned as it surveyed the room. "So few," it said sadly. Renie felt the hair on her neck lift: she had indeed heard those high, almost feminine tones in the trophy garden at Mister J's. "We are so very few," it went on, ". . . only twelve all told, including our hosts. But I am grateful that any are here at all. You must have many questions. . . ."
"We certainly do," the one Martine had called Sweet William interrupted loudly. His accent was an impossibly exaggerated, theatrical northern English. "Like who the friggin' hell are you and what the friggin' hell is going on here?"
The empty face showed nothing, but Renie thought she heard a smile in the soft voice. "My name is Sellars, as Mister Atasco has said. Like many of the rest of you, I am in hiding now, but that name at least is no longer a secret I need to keep. As to the rest of your question, young man. . . ."
"Puh-leeeeze! Watch what you call a body, chuck."
". . . I will do my best to answer it. But it is not something I can do quickly. I ask for your patience."
"Asking's not getting," Sweet William said, but waved for Sellars to continue. !Xabbu, perhaps seeking a better vantage point, climbed up out of his chair and crouched on the tabletop beside Renie.
"I am something of an expert on the movement of data from place to place," Sellars began. "Many people examine data for particular purposes—financial market data to make money, meteorological data to predict weather—but because of my own interests, I have always tended to study the patterns themselves as phenomena, rather than for what they represented."
Renie felt Martine stiffen in the chair beside her, but she could see nothing but the same confused look on her companion's face.
"In fact," Sellars continued, "at first, my interest in the patterns that have brought us to this place today were almost purely observational. Just as a poet may examine the way water runs and splashes and pools without the practical interest of a plumber or physicist, I have long been fascinated with the way information itself moves, collects, and moves again. But even a poet may notice when the drain is blocked and the sink is beginning to overflow. I came to see that there were certain very large patterns of dataflow that did not correspond to what I knew of me accepted map of the information sphere."
"What does all this have to do with us?" demanded the woman who had entered with Quan Li. Her English was blandly unaccented. Renie wondered if she was hearing the effects of translation software.
Sellars paused. "It is important you un
derstand my journey or you will not understand the reasons for your own. Please, hear me out. After that, if you wish, you may walk away and never think of this again."
"You mean we're not prisoners?" the woman asked.
The blank space that was Sellars turned to Bolivar Atasco. "Prisoners? What have you told them?"
"Apparently some of the local police misunderstood my desire to have new arrivals brought here to the palace," the God-King said hurriedly. "I may have been a little unclear in my orders."
"What a surprise," said his wife.
"No, none of you are prisoners." Sellars was firm. "I know it cannot have been easy for any of you to come here. . . ."
"Except me," chirped Sweet William, fanning himself with his black-gloved hand.
Renie could not stand it any longer. "Will you shut up! Why can't anyone here just listen? People are dead, others are dying, and I want to hear what this Sellars has to say!" She slapped her hand on the table and glared at Sweet William, who curled up in his chair like a wet spider, plumes and points quivering.
"You win, Amazon Queen," he said, eyes wide in mock-horror. "I'll shut me gob."
"It cannot have been easy for any of you to come here," Sellars repeated. "It was certainly very difficult to gather you here. So, I hope you will hear me out before making up your minds." He stopped and took a deep, sighing breath. Renie was oddly touched. There was a living person behind the bizarre blank sim, somebody with fears and worries like anyone else. "As I said, I noticed unexplained patterns in the virtual universe some call the datasphere—excessive activity in certain areas, particularly in the wholesale accessing of technical libraries and the abrupt disappearance from their jobs of many top names in network and VR-related technologies. I began to examine these events more closely. Money, too, left its own trails as stocks were sold unexpectedly, businesses suddenly liquidated, and other businesses founded. I discovered after long research that most of these activities were being controlled by a single group of people, although they had shielded their transactions so well that only luck and a certain talent for pattern recognition allowed me to find them and learn their names.
"These people, wealthy and powerful men and women, were a consortium that called themselves the Grail Brotherhood."
"Kinda Christian thing," suggested the robot Goggleboy. "God-hoppers."
"I saw nothing particularly Christian in their activities," Sellars said. "They were spending incalculable amounts of money on technology, apparently building . . . something. What that something was I could not discover. But I had a great deal of time on my hands and my curiosity was aroused.
"I pursued this investigation for a number of years, growing ever more uneasy. It seemed unlikely that anyone would put as much effort and expense into something as the Brotherhood did and still keep it secret. At first I had assumed that the project was a long-term business being built from the ground up, but after a while the sheer amount of money and time dumped into this invisible resource began to make that seem unlikely. How could this Brotherhood spend uncountable billions on something—the resources of entire family fortunes or a lifetime's hoarding by many of the world's richest people poured down a metaphorical hole for two decades, earning nothing—and still hope to make a profit? What business could possibly be worth that sort of investment?
"I considered other goals the Brotherhood might have, some of them as extreme as any of the most lurid net entertainments. The overthrow of governments? These people already overthrew governments as easily as an average person might change jobs or wardrobes. World conquest? Why? These people already had everything a human could want—unimaginable luxury and power. One of the Brotherhood, the financier Jiun Bhao, ranked on his personal income is the fifteenth richest country in the world."
"Jiun Bhao!" Quan Li was horrified. "He is one of the men who has done this to my granddaughter?" She rocked fretfully in her chair. "They call him 'Emperor'—the Chinese government does nothing without his approval."
Sellars inclined his head. "Just so. But why would such people wish to do anything to upset the balance of world power, I asked myself? They are world power. So what were they doing and why were they doing it?"
"And?" asked Sweet William. "I'll do the drumroll, chuck. The answer is?"
"There are still more questions than answers, I fear. When I began to encounter rumors of something called the Otherland, supposedly the world's largest and most powerful simulation network, I understood the what at last. But the why . . . it is still a mystery."
"Saying this some tabnet-like conspiracy?" asked the chrome battle-robot. "Space aliens, something? Far scanning, you."
"It is indeed that," Sellars replied, "—a conspiracy. If it were not, why was such an immense exercise kept secret? But if you think I am merely an alarmist, consider the factor that I know has brought most of you here. The Brotherhood has an unusual interest in children."
He paused, but now the room was silent. Even Atasco and his wife were raptly attentive.
"Once I knew who to watch, once I began to discover the names of Otherland's secret masters, I could hunt for more specific kinds of information. I discovered that several of the organization's key members have an exceptional interest in children, but one that seems to go bizarrely farther than even pedophilia. Based on the quantities of medical and sociological research they have sponsored, the number of pediatric specialists who briefly occupied the payrolls of companies linked to the Brotherhood, the number of youth-oriented facilities-adoption agencies, sports clubs, interactive networks—which were founded or bought up by Brotherhood-related front organizations, this interest is clearly professional, all-encompassing, and frighteningly inexplicable."
"Mister J's," Renie muttered. "The bastards."
"Exactly." Sellars nodded his uppermost blank space. "I apologize," he said. "I am taking longer than I wished to explain this." He rubbed at the place where his forehead would be. "I have thought about this so long, and now I find there is so much to tell."
"But what could they want with these children?" asked Quan Li. "I am sure that you are right, but what do they want?"
Sellars lifted his hands. "I wish I knew. The Grail Brotherhood has built the most powerful, sophisticated simulation network imaginable. At the same time, they have manipulated and injured the minds of thousands of children. I still have no idea why. In fact, I summoned you here, all of you, in hopes that together we might discover some answers."
"You put on a good show, ducky," said Sweet William cheerfully. "And I admire the little touches very much, although the preventing-me-from-going-offline bit is rapidly losing its charm. Why don't you just take your strange little story to the news nets instead of involving us in all this cloak and dagger?"
"I tried in the early days to do what you suggest. Two reporters and three researchers were killed. The news nets broadcast nothing. I am only here to speak to you because I had kept myself anonymous." Sellars paused for another long breath. "I am shamed by those deaths, but they taught me that this is not a mere obsession on my part. This is a war." He turned, surveying all the faces at the table. "The members of the Brotherhood are too powerful and too well-connected. But my attempt to interest others in an investigation did bring me one huge piece of luck. One of the researchers found and contacted, Bolivar Atasco and his wife Silviana. Although they refused to answer the researcher's questions, the way in which they refused interested me, and I followed up on my own. I was not immediately successful."
"We thought you were a madman," said Silviana Atasco dryly. "I still think that is possible, Señor."
Sellars bowed his shapeless blank head. "Fortunately for us all, the Atascos, who were among the earliest members of the Grail Brotherhood, had fallen away from the central body and left the board of directors several years before. They retained their investment in the form of this simulation, Temilún, but otherwise had nothing to do with the day-to-day affairs of the consortium. Señor, Señora—perhaps you would like
to tell a little of your experiences?"
Bolivar Atasco started; he seemed to have been thinking of something else. He looked helplessly to his wife, who rolled her eyes.
"It is simple," she said. "We needed a more sophisticated simulation engine for our work. We had gone as far as possible with existing technology. We were approached by a group of wealthy men—there were no women in the group then—who had heard of our early versions of Temilún, created with what was then the state-of-the-art technology. They were planning to build the most comprehensive simulation platform ever conceived, and they brought us in to help supervise the construction of that platform," She curled her lip. "I never liked them."
She might make a better God-King than her husband, Renie decided.
"They wouldn't let me do my job properly," Bolivar Atasco added. "I mean to say, there are totally unknown factors of complexity in something this large and rapid. But when I tried to ask questions, when I tried to find out why some things were being done in the peculiar way the Brotherhood had chosen, I was interfered with. So, gave them my resignation."
"That is all?" The woman with the translator accent sounded furious. "You just said, 'I don't approve' and resigned, but hung onto your big playground?"
"How dare you speak like that to us?" Silviana Atasco demanded.
"All of this . . . these things of which Sellars speaks," her husband waved his hands in vaguely all-encompassing circles, "we knew nothing of them. When Sellars came to us, that was the first time we heard."