Otherland-4-SeaofSilverLight

Like school, this is," said T4b miserably.

It had been a long time since Paul had been in school, but he knew what their Goggleboy companion meant.

They had been trapped in the bubble for what felt to Paul like hours, perhaps half a day. In a different situation the bobbing journey atop the swell of the river would have been fascinating: the current had pushed them past a great deal of Kunohara's jungle, past huge mangrove trees with roots sunk deep into the water, monstrously tangled edifices of bark proportionately large as entire cities. Strange fish had nosed them, leviathans up from the river mud to investigate, but fortunately none had decided the strange bubble was worth trying to swallow. Birds with wingspans like jumbo jets and colored like an explosion in God's own fireworks factory, a rat the size of a warehouse, water beetles big as motorboats—they had floated past all kinds of wonders. But the four of them were trapped in a sphere scarcely large enough to allow them all to sit with their legs stretched out, and they were bored, stiff, and miserable.

Worse, Renie's unfinished message seemed to hang in the sealed air of the bubble like a curl of poisonous gas. She was in trouble somewhere and her friends could do nothing.

With nothing to do but rest and talk, they had puzzled and argued for hours, but Paul thought they were no closer to solving any of the riddles that haunted them. He had related all that he had remembered so far of his life in Jongleur's tower, but although the others had been fascinated, they could offer nothing to help him make sense of what the fragments meant.

"So what happens?" T4b said, breaking the long silence. "Just go on, us, all rub-a-dub-dub like this, forever?"

Paul smiled sadly. Personally, he had been thinking of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod adrift in their wooden shoe, but the idea was much the same.

"We will go through to the next simulation," Florimel said wearily. "When we get to the gateway, Martine will try to manipulate it to send us back to Troy, so that we might perhaps cross through to the place where Renie and the others are. We have said all this before."

Paul looked to Martine, who at the moment didn't appear capable of manipulating anything more complicated than a bath towel or a spoon. The blind woman sagged, her earlier confidence gone, or at least worn down for the moment. Her lips were moving, as though she were talking to herself. Or praying.

I hope she doesn't give up, he thought in sudden fear. Without Renie to push us along, she's all we have. Florimel's smart and brave, but she doesn't think ahead like the two of them, she gets angry and discouraged. T4b—well, he's a teenager, and not a very patient one at that.

But what about me? Even the thought of taking responsibility for the lives of these people made him feel a little queasy. Yes, but that's shit, man, and you know it. You've been through things in the last weeks that nobody—nobody!—in the real world has experienced, let alone survived. Chased by monsters, fought in the bloody Trojan War. Why shouldn't you take the lead if it were necessary?

Because it feels like it's hard enough just being Paul Jonas, he answered himself. Because it's hard enough getting by when it feels like a big piece of my life is missing. Because I'm damned tired, that's why.

Somehow, they didn't sound like very good excuses.

Martine stirred and sat up. "I am troubled," she said. "Troubled by many things."

"And who is not?" Florimel snorted.

"This thing about Kunohara having an informant among us?" Paul asked her.

"No. There is nothing we can do about that if it is true, and I am willing to believe you all when you say you know nothing about it." But her sightless gaze seemed to pause for a moment on T4b, who shifted uncomfortably. "I am troubled by the song that the . . . the operating system, as I suppose I must call it, was singing. A song that I think I taught it to sing."

"You can call it the Other," said Florimel. "Many others seem to, and it is easier to say."

Martine waved her hand in impatience. "It does not matter. The fact is, I am troubled because it might hold answers to some of our questions, but I can remember very little about that time, those events."

Paul shrugged. "We don't know anything except what you've told us."

"And that is as much as I wish to tell. I was . . . experimented upon. I communicated remotely with what I thought was another child—a strange, even frightening child, but also somehow pitiful. I played games with it, as I assume other children in the institute did. I taught it stories, songs. I think that I taught it the song it was singing. . . ." She broke off, staring at nothing.

"And now you think this playmate of yours was an AI?" Paul finished for her. "They were . . . training the operating system to be like a human, for some reason."

T4b shook his head. "Locktacious. Those old Grail-knockers scan freely, huh?"

"Stories," Martine said quietly. "Yes, there was a story that went with the song. What was it? God, it was so long ago!"

"I do not remember the song," Florimel said. "Much that happened on that mountaintop—it was all very confusing. Frightening."

Martine raised her hands as though trying to keep her balance. The others fell silent. When she spoke Paul expected some revelation, but instead the blind woman said, "We are almost there."

"What? Where?"

"The end of this simulation. I can feel the . . . the falling-off. The ending." She swiveled her head. "I must have quiet. I wish we could land and go through slowly, but we have no way to control our movement, so I must take this as it comes. If I can get us to Troy, I will. If not, there is no telling where we may find ourselves."

They were all still for a moment, the bubble rising and falling with the movement of the river.

"Will we have a boat on the other side?" Florimel asked hoarsely.

Martine shook her head in irritation, hardly listening, intent on something none of the others could perceive.

"What do you mean?" Paul asked.

"This was not a standard craft," Florimel said. "We walked out of this simulation the first time we were here. Renie and !Xabbu used one of the entomological institute's planes, which was translated into something else on the far side of the gateway. But what is this?" She spread her arms. "It is a bubble, something that did not exist until Kunohara made it. Will it be something on the far side? Or will it just . . . disappear?"

"Jesus." Paul reached out and clutched Martine's hand. "Everybody grab on. At least that way we'll go into the water together." The blind woman did not seem to notice. Florimel took her other hand, then they both linked with T4b, who had gone pale and as silent as Martine. The water seemed to be moving faster now, the bubble jouncing through streaks of white foam. "I think we're heading toward another waterfall." Paul tried hard to keep his voice steady.

"Going all blue, like," T4b growled, trying as hard as Paul. "Sparkly."

"Hold tightly." Florimel closed her eyes. "If we do go in the water, lake a big breath. Do not struggle, do not swim until you know what is up or down."

"If we can tell," Paul said, but it was nearly a whisper. Beside him Martine had gone rigid, locked onto some incomprehensible signal.

The current was definitely moving faster now. The bubble bounced from one swift-moving eddy to another, barely dimpling the surface of the water. A lurch turned them all sideways, and for a moment Florimel and T4b rose up above Paul's head before tumbling down on top of him in a bruising pile of elbows and knees. Somehow they managed to keep their hands locked; a moment later the bubble had righted itself, leaving them sprawled on their backs once more, panting and silent.

Blue fire began to rise around them in glittering cascades. The bubble rose, fell, skimmed, and spun.

Where next? Paul thought wildly as they were flung head over heels again. Good God, where next?

A fog of blue sparks surrounded them completely. Martine grunted in pain and fell sideways into Paul's lap just as the bubble evaporated around them and black water splashed in on all sides.

"We're still alive," Paul said. He spoke the words aloud in part because he was still not entirely certain it was true. Their bubble was gone and already he missed it dearly. It had been replaced by a small boat, a crude craft that seemed like something to be poled rather than rowed, although there were no implements on board to do either. The storm that had greeted them at the gateway had swept past, but it had left them drenched and the air was frosty. Paul could already feel his wet clothes crackling with ice.

The river around them was black. The land, such of it as they could see through the mists, was all white. They were surrounded by snow.

"How is Martine?" asked Florimel.

Paul pulled her upright against him. "Shivering, but I think she's okay. Martine, can you hear me?"

T4b squinted out across the apparently polar landscape. "Don't look like that Troy place to me."

Martine groaned quietly and shook her head. "It is not. I could not find the Trojan simulation in the information at the gateway." She wrapped her arms tight around her body, still shivering. "I had to work so fast! Many of the gateways are closed—the information system for the gateway was like a building with most of its lights out."

"So where are we?" Florimel asked. "And if we can't get to Troy, what are we going to do?"

"Freeze, if we don't make a fire," Paul said through clenched teeth; he was shivering now. "Time later to worry about other things if we manage to survive. We'll have to go ashore." He wished that he felt as confident, as certain as he was trying to sound. This simworld along the river-banks reminded him of nothing so much as the Ice Age, although he hoped it wasn't so; it was impossible to forget the giant hyenas that had chased him into an icy river much like this one. He did not want to encounter any more primitive megafauna.

"There is nowhere here to make a fire, and nothing to make one with." Florimel pointed at the hummocks of snow which seemed to extend from the riverbanks all the way to the dim, fogbound mountains. "Do you see any trees? Any wood?"

"Those hills up ahead," Paul said. "Where the river turns—who knows what's behind them, or even under them? Maybe this is some kind of futuristic simworld, and there are underground houses with atomic furnaces or something. We can't just give up. We'll freeze."

"Not necessarily," Florimel said sharply. "None of us is like Renie and !Xabbu, with their real bodies suspended in liquid. Our bodies are all resting at room temperature somewhere. How can we freeze? Our nerves can be fooled into feeling cold, but that is not the same as actually being cold." Despite her words, she too was now wracked with trembling. "Psychosomatically we can be convinced perhaps to radiate more heat, as though we had fever, but surely we cannot be forced to freeze ourselves?"

"By that logic," Martine pointed out through chattering teeth, "we could not be bitten in half by a giant scorpion, either—it would only be a tactile illusion. But none of us were very eager to test that assumption, were we?"

Florimel opened her mouth, then shut it.

"We need to find something to use as paddles, anyway," Paul said. "It will take us days to drift through at this rate."

"Only thing for sure is turning all ice," T4b grumbled. "Rest of you can jawjack about it. Want to get warm, me."

"We should huddle close," Martine said. "Whatever the somatic truth, I can perceive heat leaving your virtual bodies very quickly."

They crowded into the center of the boat. For once even T4b, not the most companionable of their number, had no complaints. The boat moved, but the current was sluggish, the black river flat as glass.

"Somebody talk," Paul said after a while, "Keep our minds off this. Martine, you said you remembered a story that went with that song the . . . the Other was singing?"

"That is just the p–problem." She was shivering so badly now she could hardly speak, "I don't re–re–remember it. It's been so long. It was just an old fairy tale. About a b–boy, a little boy who fell down a hole."

"Sing the song." Worried for her, Paul began rubbing her arms and back, trying to make some heat by friction. "Maybe that will tell us something."

Martine shook her head, but began in a low, trembling voice to sing. "An . . . an angel touched me, an angel touched me. . . ." She frowned, thinking. "A river . . . no, the river washed me and now I am clean."

Paul remembered it clearly now, the eerie sound echoing across the black mountaintop. "And you think that it's significant somehow. . . ?"

"I know that story," Florimel said abruptly. "It was one of Eirene's favorites. From the Gurnemanz collection."

"You know it from a German book?" Martine said, surprised. "But it is an old French fairy tale."

"What's that?" T4b asked.

"A f–fairy tale. . . ?" Martine was stunned despite her suffering. "You d–d–do not know what a fairy tale is? My God, what have they done to our ch–children?"

"No," said T4b disgustedly. "What's that?"

He was pointing at a mound of snow perhaps a thousand meters ahead of them, one of the outriders to the cluster of snowy hills Paul had seen earlier.

"It's a pile of snow." Paul said it a trifle rudely, but he wanted to hear what Florimel had to say about the story. A moment later he was startled and embarrassed to see the glint of something that was not snow or ice. "Good Lord, you're right, it's a tower. A tower!"

"What, think I'm blind, me?" T4b growled. A moment later he frowned and turned to Martine, "Didn't mean no slapdown."

"Understood." She frowned into the distance. "I p–per–ceive no signs of life at all. I ca–ca–can barely sense that there is anything there at all beside ice and snow. What do you see?"

"It's the top of a tower." Paul squinted. "It's . . . very narrow. Like a minaret. Decorated. But I can't see anything of what's underneath. Damn, this current is slow!"

"A minaret, yes," said Florimel.

"Maybe this is the Mars I visited before," Paul said excitedly. "That strange sort of late-Victorian adventure world. It had a lot of Moorish-looking architecture." His gaze slipped to the countless miles of deadening white spread over both sides of the river. "But what happened?"

"Dread," said Martine quietly. "The man called Dread has happened to this place, I would bet."

They were all straining to see something now, all except for Martine who had let her trembling chin sink to her chest. As they drew closer to the great mound of snow and its single protruding spire, Paul saw something on the bank beside them, a much smaller shape half-covered by white drifts. "What the hell is that?"

T4b, who was leaning so far out of the boat the little craft was tipping to one side, said, "It's one of those Tut-Tut and the Sphinx things, like—you know, that netshow for micros? That animal they ride with bumps?"

Paul, whose grasp of popular culture had been diminishing rapidly since he left boarding school, could only shake his head. "It's a sphinx?"

"He means a camel," Florimel said. If she had not been pressing her teeth together to keep them from chattering, she might have laughed. "It is a frozen camel. Did they have camels on your Mars?"

"No." Now that they were closer, he saw the boy was right again. The dead camel was on its knees at the river's edge, teeth exposed in a hideous grin, the skin stretched so tight on its neck and head that it seemed mummified, but it was definitely a camel. "We must be in Orlando's Egypt. Or something like it,"

Martine stirred. "That man c–called Nandi. If we are in Egypt, p–p–perhaps we could find him. Orlando and Fredericks said he was the Circle's special expert on the gateways. He might be able to help us reach Renie and the others."

"If he's here, gotta be a popsicle," T4b suggested.

"Ancient Egypt with minarets?" asked Florimel sourly. "In any case, I have changed my mind about trying to outlast this cold. So let us head toward that tower or none of this speculation will matter, because we, too, will be . . . popsicles."

"We'll have to paddle with our hands," Paul said. "We'll have to get there fast or we'll all get frostbite."

"We will take our hands out in turn to warm up," Martine said. "Two paddling, two warming. Now."

For a moment, as he plunged his fingers into the dark river, Paul felt nothing but clean chill, like an alcohol-swabbing before an injection. Then his skin began to burn like fire.

It was only snow and not ice they had to kick through to reach the open arched door of the building beneath the looming, white-shrouded tower, a piece of luck for which Paul was terribly grateful. Within a few moments they were standing in a decorated antechamber, painted head to ceiling in a beautiful, elaborate scarlet, black, and gold fretwork of repeating shapes. They did not stop to look, but continued forward, bending over the freezing hands they all held pressed against their bellies.

Three more doors and three more decorated chambers led them to a smaller room whose walls were lined with shelves full of leather-bound books, and the glorious discovery of a tiled fire pit and a stack of wood.

"It's damp," Paul said as he stacked logs in the fireplace with clumsy, stinging fingers. "We need something to use as kindling. Not to mention a match."

"Kindling?" Florimel pulled a book down from the shelf and began tearing out pages. It seemed somehow sacrilegious to Paul, but after a moment's consideration he decided he could live with the feeling. He looked at a page and saw that it was in English, but English rendered in a spidery print that had the feeling of Arabic script. As he crumpled pages and arranged them around the wood, he saw a pretty lacquer box tucked into an alcove in the tile on the outside of the fireplace. He opened it, then held it up. "It's flint and steel, I think, and thank God for that. I wish !Xabbu were here. Anyone else know how to use this?"

"We did not even have electricity at Harmony Camp until I was ten years old," said Florimel. "Give it to me."

Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed, the sound of clicking teeth gradually subsiding, before Paul was willing to take his hands away from the wonderful heat of the fire. After a bit of exploration he turned up a storeroom full of soft rugs which he and the others wrapped around themselves like cloaks. Warmer now and feeling almost human, he picked up one of the discarded books and opened it.

"It's definitely supposed to be Arabic—this book is dedicated to His Majesty the Caliph, Haroun al-Rashid. Hmmm. It seems to be a story about Sinbad the Sailor." Paul looked up at the shelves. "I think this is a library of the Thousand and One Arabian Nights."

"Ain't spending no thousand nights here in this popsicle pit," T4b said. "Lock that. Lock that tight."

"That's just the name of a book," Paul told him. "A famous old collection of stories." He turned to Florimel and Martine. "Which reminds me. . . ."

"I said I could not remember the story," Martine began.

"But I said I could." Florimel pushed herself back a little way from the fire. Bundled in the stiff carpet, and with the makeshift bandage covering her eye and a large portion of the side of her head, she looked more than ever like some medieval hedge-witch.

Which is funny, Paul thought, since the witch of the group is Martine. It was an odd realization, but no less true for being odd.

"I will tell it as I remember it." The German woman scowled, exaggerating her already daunting appearance. "It is only memorized because my daughter asked to hear it—and several of that Gurnemanz collection's other stories—many, many times, so don't interrupt me or I will lose the rhythm and forget parts of it. Martine, I am sure it will be different than the version you knew, but tell me about it afterward, will you?"

Paul saw the ghost of a smile flicker on the blind woman's face. "That is fair, Florimel,"

"Good." She arranged her damp but drying robes beneath her, opened her mouth, then shut it again and glared at T4b. "And I will explain the parts you don't understand after I'm done. Do you hear me, Javier? Don't interrupt or I will throw you out into the snow."

Paul expected anger, or at least teenage indignation, but the boy seemed amused. "Chizz. Bang those squeezers. Listening, me."

"Right. Very well then, here it is as I remember it."

"Once upon a time there was a boy who was the apple of his parents' eye. They loved him so fiercely that they were frightened something would happen to him, so they got him a dog to be his companion. The dog was named Sleeps-Not, and was fierce and loyal.

"Even with the love of two parents and the mercy of God, not all accidents can be avoided. One day, while his father was out working in the fields and his mother was busy preparing the afternoon meal, the boy wandered far from the house. Sleeps-Not tried to stop him, but the boy cuffed the dog and sent him away. The dog ran back to summon the boy's mother, but before she could reach him, the boy fell down into an abandoned well.

"The boy fell and rolled and tumbled a long, long time, and when he finally struck the bottom of the well he was in a cavern very deep in the earth, by the side of an underground stream. When his mother discovered what had happened she ran to get her husband, but no rope they had in the house would reach down to the bottom. They brought all the other villagers as well, but even with their ropes all tied together they could not reach the bottom where the boy was trapped.

"The boy's parents called to him that he must be brave, that somehow they would find a way to get him out of the deep, deep hole. He heard them and was a little heartened, and when they had dropped some food down wrapped in leaves to cushion the fall, he decided to make the best of it.

"Late at night, when his parents and the other villagers had finally gone in to sleep and the boy thought he was alone again at the bottom of the well, he began to weep and to pray to God.

"No one heard him but Sleeps-Not, and when that loyal dog heard his little master crying, he rushed off to roam the wide world in search of someone who could help the boy in the well.

"The boy's parents dropped food to him every day, and he had water to drink from the underground stream, but he was still sad and lonely, and every night, when he thought that no one was listening, he wept. With his dog Sleeps-Not out searching for help, there was no one to hear him at first, except the Devil, who after all lives deep in the ground. The Devil cannot cross rushing water, so he could not reach the little boy and take him down to Hell, but he stood in the darkness on the far side of the river and tormented the boy with lies, telling him that his parents had forgotten him, that everyone above the ground had given up hope of getting him out long ago. The boy's weeping became greater and greater until an angel heard him and appeared to him in the darkness in the form of a pale and fair woman.

" 'God will protect you,' the angel told the boy, and kissed him on the cheek. 'Put yourself into the river and all will be well.'

"The boy did as he was told, and then climbed out again wet and shivering, and sang this song: 'An angel touched me, an angel touched me, the river washed me and now I am clean.'

"The second night the Devil sent a serpent up from the dark depths to attack the boy, but Sleeps-Not had found a hunter, a brave man with a gun, and brought him to the top of the well. Although the hunter could not bring the boy up from the hole, with his keen eyes he saw the serpent coming and killed it with a shot from his gun, and the boy was safe. Again the boy said his prayers and stepped into the river, and again stepped out again, singing: 'An angel touched me, an angel touched me, the river washed me and now I am clean.'

"The next night the Devil sent a ghost to attack the boy, but Sleeps-Not had brought a priest to the top of the well, and although he could not bring the boy up from his hole, the priest saw the ghost coming and threw down his rosary, dispatching the spirit back to hell. The boy said prayers of thanks and stepped into the river, then came out singing: 'An angel touched me, an angel touched me, the river washed me and now I am clean.'

"The next night the Devil sent all the hosts of hell after the boy, but Sleeps-Not had brought a peasant girl to the top of the well. It seemed there was little she could do to save the boy from all the hosts of hell, but in truth she was not a peasant girl but the angel who had first helped him, and she flew down into the well holding a fiery sword and the hosts of hell drew back, afraid.

" 'God will protect you,' the angel told the boy, and kissed him on the cheek. 'Put yourself into the river and all will be well.'

"The boy stepped into the water, but when he would have come out again, the angel raised her hand and shook her head. 'God will protect you,' she said. 'All will be well.'

"At this the boy realized what he was expected to do, and instead of stepping out of the water he let go and allowed the river to carry him. It took him a long way through darkness, but always he could feel the angel's kiss on him, keeping him warm and safe, and when at last he came out into the light again, it was no less a light than that of Paradise itself, which shines from God's face. And soon enough his dog Sleeps-Not and his two loving parents joined him in that place, and unless I am wrong, they are all there still."

"I am certain I got some details wrong," Florimel said after they had all spent a few silent moments listening to the pop and hiss of the fire. "But that is close to what I read so many times to . . . to my Eirene." She scowled and rubbed at the corner of her good eye. Caught between sympathy and courtesy, Paul looked away.

"Know how you said you'd explain parts that didn't make sense?" T4b asked.

"Which parts didn't you understand?"

"Total."

Florimel grunted a laugh. "I think you are saying that to be funny. You are not foolish, Javier, and that is a story meant for children."

He shrugged, but didn't take offense. Paul could not help wondering if the sullen teenager might be slowly turning human. Perhaps the simple fact of being out of armor was having an effect.

"Is it as you remember it, Martine?" Florimel asked. "The same story? Martine?"

The blind woman shook her head as though awakening from a daydream. "Oh. Sorry, yes, it is much the same, I think—it has been a long time. Perhaps a few differences. The dog in my childhood version was named 'Never-Sleeps,' and I think the hunter was a knight. . . ." She trailed off, still absorbed in some inner conversation. "I am sorry," she said after a moment, "but . . . but as I hear it now, hear the song and the story that go with it, I am reminded of what was for me a very bad time." She waved her hands, forestalling sympathy. "No, but that is not all. Also it has made me think."

"About the song?" Paul asked.

"About everything. About what Kunohara said—that the reason for the operating . . . for the Other's strange patterns might be that I taught it a story. But I think that is too simple. I think that many of the children at the institute must have told it stories—I am fairly certain I told it other fairy tales myself. Telling stories was one of the things the doctors often asked us to do, perhaps as a measure of our memory and general mental health. If the operating system and its growing intelligence has been corrupted by this one particular folktale, I do not think it is because it was the only tale, the only song, that it ever heard."

Paul blinked. A great wave of weariness was rolling over him. After the perils of Kunohara's bugworld and their escape along the river, he was only now feeling how exhausted he truly was. "I'm sorry. I don't understand."

"I think it has taken this story to heart, if you will excuse an inappropriate metaphor, because more than any other, this story had resonance." Martine looked weary, too. "For the Other, this was the one that spoke most clearly of its own situation."

"Are you saying it thinks it's a little boy?" Florimel said, an edge of angry amusement in her voice. "A little boy with a dog? In a hole?"

"Perhaps, but that is rather simplifying it." Martine bowed her head for a moment. "Please, give me the chance to think out loud, Florimel. I do not have the strength to take much argument."

The other woman flushed a little, but nodded her head. "Go on."

"It may not think it is a boy, a human child, but if this truly is an artificial intelligence, something that has become almost human, imagine how it does feel. What did Dread say, in that moment on the mountain when he appeared like a giant? 'Your system is still fighting me, but I have learned how to hurt it.' A metaphor . . . or not? Perhaps when the system, with its growing individuality, did things the Brotherhood did not want it to do, they had to check its efforts with something it perceived as pain."

Paul had a sudden, nightmarish memory of the Other straining against its bonds, an agonized, Promethean figure. "It thinks of itself as a prisoner."

"A prisoner in the dark. Yes, perhaps." Martine took a breath. "A thing being punished for no reason—tormented as the Devil torments people, for the pure enjoyment of another's suffering. And so it has sat in its darkness for years—at least three decades, maybe more—hoping that one day it would be saved from its pain and set free, and singing a song that a little boy sang at the bottom of a deep, black well." Her face suddenly contorted in anger and unhappiness. "It is terrible to think about, no?"

"You think it has done these things . . . against its will?" Florimel asked. "That what it did to my Eirene and the other children, to your friend Singh—all these things it was forced to do, like a slave? Like a conscripted soldier?" She looked shocked. "It is hard to think that way."

"Oh, Jesus, the angel." Paul could hardly breathe. "In the story. Is that why . . . why Ava appears the way she does? Because the Other thinks she's an angel?"

"Perhaps." Martine shrugged. "Or because that is the only way it can imagine a human female who is not part of the legions of pain-bringers. And there is the image of the river as well—certainly we must all find that familiar by now."

"But even if you are right, what good does this do us?" Florimel said, breaking a long moment's silence. "The Other is defeated, at least the part of it that thinks. Dread has taken over the system. Look at this place—the Baghdad of Haroun al-Rashid, all vanished under a glacier. Dread is not an unwilling monster. He has turned this whole imaginary universe upside down just to amuse himself."

"Yes, and with the Brotherhood dead or dispersed, he is our true enemy." Martine leaned back against the wall. "I'm afraid you are right, Florimel—my idea means little. If nothing we did before could affect the Other, I cannot imagine how we can do anything to discomfort Dread."

Paul sat up. "Aren't you forgetting something? Like the fact that we have friends who are still out there? Maybe we can't do anything to bring down the system, maybe we can't touch this murderer-turned-virtual-god I've heard so much about, but we can bloody well try to find Renie and the others."

For a moment it looked like Martine would lose her temper—Paul saw color bloom on the cheeks of her sim-face. "I have not forgotten, Paul," she said stiffly. "It is my curse that I forget almost nothing."

"I didn't mean it that way. But if we can't do anything to stop Dread, we can at least try to get out of this network. The Grail Brotherhood is dead as a doornail, so what are we fighting against anyway? You lot may have volunteered, sort of, but I sure as Christ didn't." Paul felt his anger swirling uselessly and tried to calm himself. "Right, then. So what's our next step? If the Troy simulation is offline, how can we get to Renie and the others?"

"We do not know that same trick would work twice anyway," Florimel pointed out. "It was my impression that the Other somehow wanted us to come to it—that it made some kind of special gateway for us. If the artificial intelligence is enslaved now, or at least defeated, then I doubt. . . ."

She paused because Martine had held up her hand, fingers spread, like a sentinel who hears a stealthy footstep outside the camp.

"I think you are right," Martine said slowly. "I think, along with Paul's angel, the Other tried to bring us to itself, somehow. It wanted something from us."

"But we have no idea what that might be," said Paul.

"Just wait for a moment!" The blind woman's angry flush returned. "My God, let a person think. It . . . the Other . . . wanted us for some reason. To help it free itself? As in the story?"

Paul frowned, trying to understand where her thoughts were going. "It . . . it takes the story literally? It wants us to get it out of its hole?"

"Out of its imprisonment, yes, it could be."

"Which one of us is the dog?" Florimel said with heavy sarcasm. "I hope we are not expected to volunteer."

"The dog. Of course!" Martine nodded her head violently. "Oh, could it really be? Perhaps I am right. Let me say this, however foolish it sounds." She raised her hands to her head, eyes tightly shut. "Renie told me once that all the sims I have worn within this network look very . . . unexceptional. Is that true? Almost like generic sims."

"Yes, I suppose," said Florimel. "So?"

"She told me that only in Troy did I look like a specific person. But that was because in Troy I was given a specific character made for the simulation—Cassandra, the king's daughter. All the rest of the time I have been in some version of this original peasant sim from Temilún, and it is not as detailed as yours is, Florimel, or as the false Quan Li's was."

"Granted. What does that mean?"

"We are all of us interfacing with this system as almost pure information, yes? Whatever our real bodies might look like, we exist on this system only as minds—as sense-memory and conscious thought, correct? And the system sends information back to us along the same neural pathways."

Paul looked over at T4b, expecting the teenager to be annoyed by the long, complex discussion, but the boy had his head turned away, watching the fire. For a moment, Paul envied his detachment. "But that's basically the definition of this sort of VR environment, isn't it?" he asked. "Gives people input at the sensory level, bypassing information coming from what would normally be the real world."

"Ah." Martine sat up straighten "But there is no such thing as 'this sort of environment.' We have seen that already—it is unique! Unique in that we cannot find a way to go offline, unique in that we cannot find our own neurocannulae, or even the cruder input-output devices Renie and !Xabbu are using, even though we know they are there. And when Fredericks tried to go offline, he . . . no, she, I almost forgot! . . . suffered terrible pain."

Florimel grunted. "You are still not explaining. . . ."

"Perhaps the network—or more specifically, the operating system, the Other—can interface with not just our conscious thoughts, but our subconscious thoughts as well."

"What? You mean, read our minds?"

"I do not know how it might work, or what the limits might be, but think! If it could reach into our subconscious, it could implant suggestions that we cannot go offline. Like hypnosis. It could convince us, below the conscious level, that removing ourselves from the network would cause us great pain."

"Jesus." Paul suddenly began to see it taking shape. "But that would mean . . . that it wanted you all to stay on the network. What about your friend Singh? It killed him."

"I do not know. Perhaps the security system part of the Other, the part that guarded entry, to the network, was under more direct control by the Grail Brotherhood. Perhaps it was only when we had made our way inside that the Other could truly see us, contact us." She was growing excited. "If it was trying to act out a story somehow, the story of the boy in the well, it might well have decided we were the allies it was looking for!"

"It makes a kind of sense," Florimel said slowly. "Although there is much to think about before I am ready to agree. But you haven't explained about the dog, yet. I said something about the dog in the story, and that set you onto talking about sims, about how your own sims worked. . . ?"

"Yes. Do you know what your face looks like?"

Florimel flinched. "Are you speaking of my injuries?"

"No, in everyday life. Do you know what your face looks like? Of course you do. You have mirrors, you have photos of yourself. Any normal person knows what he or she looks like. Paul, have you seen your sims? Do they resemble you?"

"Most of them. Except when I was someone specific, as you said, like Odysseus." He looked at her, puzzled, then a moment later it came clear. "You don't know what you look like, do you?"

Martine shook her head. "Of course not. I have been blind since I was a child. I know I don't look like that anymore, but what the years since have done to me, I have no idea, except by touch."

Florimel was staring at her. "You are saying that the Other . . . read your mind?"

"In a way, perhaps. It may have tried to take some sense from each of us of who we were, what we looked like—or wanted to look like. Didn't Orlando say that he looked like an earlier version of his own character? Where did that come from, if it wasn't from the mind of Orlando himself?"

Paul's weariness was still powerful, but the unfolding vistas of this new line of thought could not be ignored. "I wondered, when he told me. I wondered about a lot of this, but there hasn't been any shortage of unanswered questions."

"Of course," Martine said. "We have been fighting for our lives each and every day, in circumstances no one else in history has had to endure. It has taken a long time for, as you English say, the penny to drop."

Paul smiled wanly. "So what do we do with this knowledge, if it's all true?"

"I am not done yet." She turned to Florimel. "You asked about the dog. Orlando was not the only one of our group to find his Otherland sim a surprise. Do you remember what !Xabbu told us?"

"That . . . that he had been thinking about baboons. . . ." Florimel began, then stopped, her expression now honestly dumbstruck. "He had been thinking about baboons, because of some tribal story or some such . . . but he had not planned to be one."

"Exactly. But someone . . . something . . . chose that appearance for him. Do you know what the old name for baboon was?"

Paul nodded, impressed. "The European sailors used to call them 'dog-faced apes,' didn't they?"

"They did. So imagine the Other, trapped in darkness, praying and singing in the small corner of its own intellect where it could hide from its cruel masters. It remembers a story, one of the most vivid things it knows, something that has been with it since a time that was perhaps as close to a childhood as it ever had. A story about a boy in darkness, tortured and frightened. As it sifts through the thoughts of the latest group of intruders, while its security programming deals with the gross physical facts of the intrusion, it perceives that one of them has an image firmly in his mind—perhaps even a sort of self-image—of a four-legged creature with a head like a dog's head. And, if by probing at the subconscious it can sense anything of its subjects' true nature, it may even have perceived !Xabbu's kindness and loyalty.

"Perhaps it had a plan before that moment, perhaps !Xabbu or something else about us triggered the thought, but from that moment on the Other was not trying to destroy as—or at least the 'child' part of it, the thinking, feeling part, was not. It was trying to find us. It was trying to bring us to it. It was praying to be rescued."

"Jesus." Paul was dimly aware he'd already said this a few times, but could not help saying it several more. "Jesus. So the mountain. . . ?"

"A neutral ground, perhaps?" Florimel offered.

"Perhaps. Perhaps a spot near—if we can use such physical terms about this network—to the Other's own secret place, to the center of its 'self.' If we had been able to remain there, if Dread had not interfered, it might have spoken to us."

Paul stiffened. "And so Renie was right. She and the others really are in the heart of the system?"

Martine slumped back. "I do not know. But if we want to get there, we will have to find some other way, since Troy seems to be barred to us now."

"We will think of something," Florimel said. "Great God, I had not expected to feel this way about the thing that crippled and stole my Eirene, but if what you guess is true, Martine . . . oh! It is a terrible thought." Martine sighed. "But before anything more, we need sleep. I have quite overwhelmed myself, and I did not have much strength in reserve."

"Hang on." Paul reached out and touched her arm. He could feel it trembling with fatigue. "Sorry, but one last thing. You said something about Nandi."

"The one Orlando met."

"I know. I met him, too—I'm sure I told you. I think you were right. If anyone can help us puzzle out the gates, it's him."

"But we don't know where he is," said Florimel. "Orlando and Fredericks last saw him in Egypt."

"Then that's where we need to go. At the very least, it gives us something to aim for!" He squeezed Martine's forearm gently. "Did you notice whether it was one of the . . . available destinations? When you were looking for Troy?"

She shook her head sadly. "Too little time. That is why I accepted this place when I couldn't find Troy—it was the default setting." She reached out and patted his hand, then turned away, searching with her fingers for a clear spot to lie down and sleep. "But we will look for it at the next gateway." She yawned. "And you are right, Paul—at least it is something."

As she curled herself tighter in her blanket, and Florimel did the same, Paul turned to T4b.

"Javier? You haven't said much."

The boy still didn't have a great deal to say. He had clearly been asleep for quite a while.

CHAPTER 12The Boy in the Well

CHAPTER 12
The Boy in the Well