Otherland-4-SeaofSilverLight

Renie looked wildly from side to side, but could see no sign of whatever had made the sound. The nearest of the ghostly shapes pursuing her was a pale smear in the twilight murk, frighteningly close, but still several dozen meters away. She took a step to steady herself and to her horror felt something clutch at her ankle. She leaped away with a muffled shriek.

"Down here," a small voice said. "You can hide!"

Something rustled near Renie's feet. "I . . . I can't see you." Wind carried the pursuing creature's liquid groan down the slope. "Where are you?"

"Down. Get down!"

Renie dropped to her hands and knees amid the undergrowth, baffled by the shadows. One of the patches of darkness widened a little and a small hand reached out, closed on her wrist, and tugged. Renie crawled forward and found herself in a recess scarcely larger than her own huddled form, a space where a tangle of fallen branches had been silted over with crushed leaves and dirt. Pushing in headfirst, she could see nothing of the pocket's other inhabitant, and could feel only a childlike form pressed the length of her side. "Who are you?" she asked quietly.

"Sssshhh." The shape next to her stiffened. "It's close."

Renie's heart was still beating uncomfortably fast. "But won't it smell us?" she whispered.

"It doesn't smell things—it hears them."

Renie shut her mouth. She huddled, the smell of damp earth in her nostrils, and tried not to think about being buried alive.

She felt the hunter's approach before she heard it, a gradually growing sense of panic that made her skin tighten and her already speeding heart threaten to rattle right out of her chest. Was this the helpless, paralyzing horror that Paul Jonas felt each time the Twins came near him? Her respect for the man went up another notch, even as she fought down shrieking panic.

The terrifying thing had moved above them now; she could sense it as clearly as if a cloud had swung in front of the sun. Her throat tightened until the urge to scream was gone. She could not have made a noise if she wanted.

But the thing itself was not silent. It moaned again, the sound so pulsingly near that it seemed to turn Renie's bones to sand in their sockets, in the wake of that awful noise she could hear other sounds, a sighing murmur, as though the phantom whispered to itself in a voice of wind, meaningless sounds just on the edge of speech. The breathy gibberish was as unbearable as the scream. It was the sound of a dying or even dead intelligence, an empty madness. Renie, already in darkness, squeezed her eyes shut until her face ached, clenched her teeth together, and prayed directionlessly for strength.

The sounds gradually grew more faint. The sensation of hungry, brainless malevolence also lessened. Renie cautiously let out her breath. The shape beside her touched her arm with cool fingers, as though to warn her against premature celebration, but Renie had no urge at all to move or make a sound.

Several minutes passed before the small voice said, "I think they're all gone now."

Renie wasted no time backing out of the tiny cavern of twigs and leaf-scatter. Afternoon, or what passed for it in this sunless place, was almost entirely gone. The world was gray, but seemed still a bit too bright for this shank of twilight, as though the stones and even the trees gave off a faint light of their own.

The foliage rustled at her feet. The little figure that crawled out was mottled gray and brown, human-shaped but not very exactly so, as though it had been cut out of raw soil with a cookie cutter.

Renie took a step backward, "Who are you?"

The newcomer looked at her, surprise evident on its face—a face mostly suggested by the arrangement of dark and light spots and bumps and holes in the dun-colored surface. "You don't know me?" The voice was soft but surprisingly clear. "I'm the Stone Girl. I thought everyone knew me. But you didn't know enough to hide, so I guess that makes sense."

"I'm sorry. Thank you for helping me." She stared out along the empty hillside. "What . . . what were those things?"

"Those?" The Stone Girl gave her a look of mild surprise. "Just some Jinnears. They come out at night. I shouldn't have stayed out so late, but. . . ." The Stone Girl's expression suddenly became morose, in its simple way. She bent and brushed herself free of clinging leaves, quite deftly considering the thickness of her limbs and the clumsy shape of her blunt fingers and toes.

"So who are you?" the little girl asked when she had straightened up. "Why don't you know about Jinnears?"

"Just a stranger," Renie said. "A traveler, I guess." The Stone Girl might look as though she had been quickly molded from raw soil, but there was an odd suppleness to her movements, as though she could bend in places other than just the normal joints. "Do you live here?" Renie asked her. "Can you tell me anything about it?" A sudden thought struck her. "I'm looking for some friends—one is a small man, almost as dark as me, the other is a girl with curly hair and paler skin. Have you seen them?"

The indentations that were the Stone Girl's eyes widened, "You sure ask a lot of questions."

"I'm sorry. I'm . . . I'm lost. Have you seen them?"

The little head tilted slowly from side to side. "No. Were you out in the Ending?"

"If you mean that place over there where things get . . . kind of strange, hard to see. . . . Yes, I guess so." Renie suddenly realized how tired she was. "I really need to find my friends."

"You need to get out of here, that's for sure. I do, too—I should never have been out so late, but I was trying to get to the Witching Tree to ask about the Ending." The Stone Girl followed this unedifying explanation with a moment of silent thought. "You'd better come with me to see the stepmother," she said at last.

"The stepmother? Who's that?"

"Don't you have one? Don't you have a family at all?"

Renie sighed. This had become another one of those incomprehensible Otherland conversations. "Never mind. Sure, take me to this stepmother. Is it far?"

"Shoes. Down by the bottom of the Pants," the Stone Girl added, equally cryptically, and waddled past Renie to begin clambering down the hillside.

It didn't take long for Renie to understand the geographical reference, although it was not the kind of understanding that really explained anything.

As they made their way down the hillside in the dying light, following the course of the river, which emerged through a gash in the hillside and splashed energetically down toward the misty valley below, Renie began to see that her earlier observations had been disturbingly true. The shapes of the distant hills mimicked that of human forms, although they were still true hills, made at least on the surface from soil and covered in vegetation, as though earth had covered over the carcasses of titan forms. But where the giant on the black mountaintop had been singular and unquestionably alive, these smaller and more numerous forms buried in the earth seemed the remnants of some impossibly earlier time.

"What is this place?" she asked her guide when she caught up with her again.

The Stone Girl tried to look back over her shoulder, but it was hard without a neck. "Haven't you been here? It's Where The Beans Talk. You can see all the giants that fell. They're big," she added somewhat unnecessarily.

"Real giants?" Renie asked, then immediately felt stupid. As if such a question could mean anything in a world like this.

The Stone Girl seemed to take it at face value, however. "They were. They fell. I don't remember why. Maybe you could ask the stepmother."

As they followed the line of the cataracts down, Renie began to understand the rest of the girl's strange description. When she had seen them through the mist, the land's unusual features had seemed only the effect of odd hills and shadowy copses of trees, but now that she could see better she began to make out a strange order. One great fold of hillside, a ridge with a line of trees stark along its spine, was now revealed to be a single huge. . . .

". . . Sleeve?" Renie said. "It's a sleeve? Do you mean we're walking down a . . . a shirt?"

The Stone Girl again twitched her head in the negative. "Jacket. We're in the Jackets now. The Shirts are over there." She pointed a stubby finger. "Do you want to go to the Shirts?"

Renie shook her head violently. "No. No, I was just . . . surprised. Why is this country . . . why is it all made of clothes?"

The Stone Girl stopped and turned, apparently tired of trying to talk over her shoulder without the proper anatomical equipment. She looked as though she suspected Renie of making sport of her. "Why, they came off the giants, didn't they? When they fell."

"Ah," said Renie, who could think of nothing else to say. "Of course."

As they descended through river mist down a long fold of one of the Jackets, picking their way between the small but stubborn pines that seemed to cluster on all the most narrow and difficult bits of the path, Renie asked her small guide, "Do you know anything about birds that talk?"

The Stone Girl shrugged. "Sure. Lots of birds talk."

"This one kept repeating the same thing again and again, no matter what I asked it."

"You can't really talk to the ones that are asleep," the girl told her.

"What does that mean? That bird was flying—it wasn't sleeping."

"No, that's just how they are when they first get here, all sleepy, doesn't matter if they're flying or nothing. Used to be, anyway—there aren't many that come anymore. But the new ones never understand much at first. Just say the same things, over and over. I used to try to talk to them when I was little." She darted Renie a quick look, just as any real girl would, to make sure that Renie realized she was very grown-up now, not just a kid. "The stepmother said it wasn't our business—we should let them sleep, let them dream."

Renie pondered this with a growing sense of excitement. "So the birds . . . are sleeping? Dreaming?"

The Stone Girl nodded, then swung herself down to a lower section of the path and waited for Renie to follow. "Yeah. Watch out for that part—it's pretty slippery."

Renie balanced, then let herself slide down beside her. "But . . . but what do you call this place, anyway? Not the . . . the Jackets, here, but all of this." She lifted her hands. "Everything."

Before the girl could answer, a terrible choking sob came echoing up the furrowed hillside. Renie flinched so badly she almost lost her footing and fell. "Oh my God, it's another one of those things!"

Her guide was calmer than she was, holding up her blunt fingers for quiet. For a moment, as they stood in the mists, Renie heard nothing but the soft rush and splash of the nearby river. Then another ragged cry rose from the valley below.

"It's farther away now," the Stone Girl pronounced. "Going the other direction. Come on."

Renie, only slightly heartened, hurried after her.

It was easier going as they neared the valley floor, but the mist was thicker, too, and the slow twilight seemed finally to have made the turn into night. In deepening shadow the strange shapes of the clothing, the mountainous shirts and pants only partially concealed by a cloak of earth and vegetation, seemed even more disturbing. Here and there Renie thought she could see smaller shapes moving in the mist, as though people watched her and the Stone Girl—people who did not particularly want to be seen in return. Renie was grateful to have a guide. Fumbling her way alone through these strange hills in growing darkness, especially with those screaming somethings on the loose, was not a pleasant idea.

From the fires she saw flickering through the mist, it seemed certain that many people, or many somethings, in any case, made their homes among the folds of Pants and Shirts. As the Stone Girl took them along the seam of a small canyon between a row of cookfires on the heights, a few voices called down greetings. Her guide lifted her stubby arm in reply, and Renie felt reassured enough to wish that !Xabbu and Sam could share this with her. There was something deeply, primitively satisfying about coming into a lighted settlement at night, especially after being in the wilderness, and she had been in something much more bleak than any ordinary wilderness for days.

As they moved out of the Pants into another dark crease between hills, the Stone Girl said, "We're almost there. Maybe the stepmother will be able to tell you where your friends are. And I have to tell her about the Witching Tree, and how the Ending's getting so much closer."

They came around an outcropping of stone into another vale of cheery light. The buildings were ramshackle but the shapes were unmistakable, some of them so much a part of the landscape that they were indistinguishable from natural features, but others actually sticking most of the way out of the ground so that cookfires gleamed in the eyelets or through gaps in the soles. There were dozens of them, perhaps hundreds—an entire town.

"They're shoes! Big shoes!"

"I told you, didn't I?"

As she got used to the light, Renie saw that the spaces between the shoes were occupied too, dozens and dozens of figures huddled beside fires, shadowy shapes that watched almost silently as Renie and the Stone Girl passed. Despite their silence, she felt little menace. The eyes that stared at them, the voices that whispered, seemed dulled with weariness and despair.

It's like a shantytown, she thought.

"There aren't usually people living out here," the Stone Girl explained. "It's because they lost their homes when the Ending came. There are so many of them now, and they're hungry and scared. . . ."

She was interrupted by a dozen shrieking shapes running toward them from out of a dark clutter of gigantic footwear. Renie's moment of panic ended quickly when she realized they were only children. Most of them were even smaller than the Stone Girl, and their energy was unmistakable.

"Where you been?" one of the nearest shouted. "The stepmother is in a state."

"I found someone." The Stone Girl gestured toward Renie. "Took a while to get back."

The children surrounded them, chattering and jostling, Renie had assumed they were the Stone Girl's siblings, but in the growing light that spilled from the mouth of the nearest shoe she saw that none of them looked anything like her guide. Most of them appeared more ordinarily human, although their clothing (for those who wore any) was of a style she could not identify. But some of the swarm of laughing children were even stranger than the Stone Girl, their shapes distorted and fantastical—one plumply furred in yellow and black like a bumblebee, another with feet like a duck's, and even one child, Renie was startled to see, who had a huge hole right through her middle, so that she had almost no torso at all.

"Are these . . . your brothers and sisters?" she asked.

The Stone Girl shrugged. "Sort of. There are a lot of us. So many that sometimes I think the stepmother just doesn't know what to do."

The shape of a vast shoe loomed before them, and Renie suddenly drew up and stopped. "Jesus Mercy," she said. "I get it."

"Come on," said the Stone Girl, and for the first time took Renie's hand. Her fingers were rough, with the cool dampness of forest loam. A little boy with the head of a deer looked up at Renie with shy, liquid brown eyes, as though he wished he could take the other hand, but Renie was busy wrestling with this new realization. "Of course—it's that damn nursery rhyme, 'The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.' " Something else was tugging at her, too, some distant memory, but it was hard enough to deal with finding herself in a Mother Goose book.

"We all live in shoes," her guide said, drawing her through a door at the back of the ancient, moss-covered boot. "Well, everybody around here. . . ."

It was a very, very old shoe. To Renie's relief, no olfactory traces of its previous giant owner remained. Two or three times as many children waited in the smoky firelight as had come out to meet them, but the stay-at-homes seemed just as weirdly diverse. Those who had eyes watched Renie with fascination as the Stone Girl led her through the great boot toward the toe. Although there were far too many for introductions, the Stone Girl called a few by name, mostly while instructing them to get out of the way—"Polly," "Little Seed," "Hans," and "Big Ears" were a few Renie heard. She had to step over many of them, and a few times she trod on someone by accident, but no one objected. She guessed that the crowded way they lived had accustomed them to it.

Could these be the children in comas? she wondered. Is that what this place is—a kind of concentration camp for all the children the Other has stolen? If so, the prospects for finding Stephen were daunting—there might well be thousands just here in the Shoes, and God alone knew how many in the other pieces of clothing throughout the hills.

"Is that you, Stone Girl?" a voice called, echoing slightly in the dome of the toe. "You're late back and you've set me worrying. These are bad times. It can't be allowed."

A dark shape sat in a rocking chair beside the fireplace. A brick chimney poked up through the shoe leather overhead, but to little effect. In fact, Renie first thought it was the pervasive smoke that made it hard to see the figure in the chair, but then she realized that the humanoid form was itself vague as mist—a suggestion of shoulders and a head atop a body shapeless as a gray cloud. Twinned glimmers of firelight seemed to reflect where the eyes should be, but otherwise it had no face. The voice, though faint and airy, did not seem either particularly feminine or kindly. It was certainly not any version of the Old Woman in the Shoe that Renie would have expected.

"I . . . I tried to find the Witching Tree, Stepmother," the Stone Girl said. "Because everything is going wrong. I wanted to ask it. . . ."

"No! You are back late. It's not allowed. And you have brought one who does not belong here. Already the streets outside are full of those who have lost their homes—why do we need another? We have nothing to share."

"But she was lost. One of the Jinnears tried to. . . ."

The smoky matter of the stepmother became for a moment more solid. The eyes flashed. "You misbehaved. That calls for punishment."

The Stone Girl abruptly fell to the floor, writhing and crying. The other children were all silent, their eyes wide.

"Leave her alone!" Renie took a step toward the fallen Stone Girl, but something jumped through her like electricity, a great convulsive snap of pain that threw her onto her hands and knees beside the child.

"This one does not belong," the stepmother said complacently. "Too big, too strange. This one must go."

Renie raised her head; her jaw flexed but nothing would come out. Fighting to control her jerking limbs, she crawled a short way forward. The stepmother stared at her, then another whiplash of agony ran up Renie's spine and exploded blackly in her skull.

She dimly felt herself lifted by many small hands. When they set her down again, she was so grateful to stop moving she tried to say so, but only managed a wheeze. The dirt against her face was cool and damp, rather like the Stone Girl's hand, and she lay against it appreciatively as the last painful twitches worked their way out of her arms and legs.

When she could sit up, she found herself in the middle of a dark street surrounded by huge Shoes, as though she had been tossed into the back of some gargantuan closet. Light leaked from some of the dwellings, but their doors were all shut tight. Even the campfires of the shantytowns seemed to have been hurriedly extinguished, but she sensed the silent homeless watching her with fear and mistrust.

Okay, she thought blearily. Don't have to hit me over the head. Know when I'm not wanted.

A thin wail floated down into the valley. Renie shivered, wondering what she was going to do now, lost and alone.

She was staggering down the twisting thoroughfare when a shape came out of the shadows.

"I left." The Stone Girl's voice was very small.

Renie wasn't certain—she wasn't certain about anything—but it seemed something important had happened.

"You . . . ran away?"

"The stepmother is getting meaner and meaner. And she won't listen to me about the Ending." The Stone Girl made a funny sound, a muddy little snort. Renie realized she was crying. "And she shouldn't have given you punishment." She thrust something toward Renie—a blanket, soft and threadbare. "I brought you this, so you won't be so cold. I'll go with you."

Renie was touched but a bit overwhelmed. As she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, she couldn't help wondering whether she had been given a huge favor or a huge responsibility. "Go with me . . . where?"

"I'll take you to the Witching Tree. Ask it for help. That's where I was trying to go today, but the Ending has eaten up the path I used to take. We'll have to go through the Wood."

"Right now?"

The little shape nodded. "It's the best time to find it. But we have to be careful—there are things hunting. Jinnears—and Ticks, too." She looked up, suddenly hesitant. "If you want to come with me, that is."

Renie let out a breath. "Oh, definitely. If you promise you'll explain a few things to me along the way." The Stone Girl's dark line of a smile was odd but genuine. "That's right, you like to ask questions, don't you?"

The world around them, Sam decided, was becoming both more and less real.

More real because as they walked farther upriver, what had been glassy translucency became more substantial, the meadows and hills all solid objects now, the river itself un-arguably wet, splashing noisily beside them. More unreal because nothing seemed quite normal, as though it were all a picture improperly copied from life—or even a picture copied from another picture. The colors and shapes were all subtly wrong, too regular or simply not quite recognizable.

"It is purely an invention, I think," said !Xabbu as he examined one of a small, scattered stand of trees by the riverside, the bark whorled like fingernails, the perfectly circular leaves like translucent silver coins. "Like the first flower I made—a flower that was more an idea than anything else."

"The first flower you made?" Sam asked.

"When Renie was teaching me how things are done in these virtual worlds." He shook his head. "This seems the same—as though made by a child playing, or someone experimenting."

"Wasn't Renie talking about that? She said the mountain might have been made by . . . the Other. That system-thing. So maybe this all is, too."

"It seems likely. It certainly is not a perfect copy of some real-world place." He brushed aside some of the silvery leaves and smiled, "Look, there is too much shininess, too much color! In that way, it is much like what a child would do."

Jongleur turned back toward them, his bony face set hard. "Are you two still wasting time? It will be dark soon."

!Xabbu shrugged. "Perhaps. We do not know the rules of this place."

"Do you want to get eaten by something, then, because you don't know the rules?"

The little man paused, restraining his temper. Until recently, Sam had thought of him as perennially good-natured, but spending so much time with Jongleur was testing even !Xabbu's tremendous reserves of courtesy and equanimity. "It is probably a good idea to make camp, yes," he said with measured calm. "Is that what you are saying?"

"We're not going to find that . . . your friend. Not before dark." Jongleur's early mood of quiet withdrawal was over. He looked at Sam and !Xabbu as though he would gladly have hit them both with a stick, although he, too, kept his voice almost civil. "This is not like being on the mountain—there may be living things here that we would not want to meet."

"Very well," said !Xabbu. "Then this is as good a place as any to stop, since at least the ground is flat." He turned to Sam. "The man is right about one thing—we do not know what will come to us in this new land."

"If you want me to gather wood or something, you could go have one last look around for Renie. Call her or whatever."

He nodded, grateful. "Thank you, Sam. I think I can make a fire—it worked in that unfinished place where we were before. See what you can find that is loose on the ground."

She was not surprised when !Xabbu returned slowly, as though carrying something heavy. She had heard him shouting Renie's name for a long time. She decided to spare him the effort of making cheerful conversation.

He crouched and began building the fire. Jongleur sat on a spotted stone, brooding silently, his naked legs pressed together. Sam thought the old man looked like a gargoyle off a church roof.

Some of the trees stirred as a breeze blew across the grassy hills and through the camp. Watching the fire ripple, Sam realized that weather was one of the things that had returned when they had reached this area of greater substance.

Will it just keep getting more real? she wondered. It was only when !Xabbu looked up at her in surprise that she realized she had said it aloud. She felt silly, but the thought would not go away. "I mean, if we keep walking, will this world just get more and more real?"

Before !Xabbu could speak, Jongleur leaned forward. "If you think we will walk all the way back to the network, child, you will be painfully disappointed. This is not part of what I built, none of this. We are in some backwater of the net constructed by the operating system, something separate from the rest—very separate."

"Well, what's it all for, then?"

Jongleur only scowled and stared at the fire.

"He doesn't know either," Sam told !Xabbu. "He's just dupping, like he knows everything, but he's scared like we are."

Jongleur snorted. "I am not 'scared like you are,' girl. If anything, I have more to fear, because I have more to lose. But I do not waste energy on pointless talk."

!Xabbu reached over and patted Sam's hand. "If only about one thing, he is again correct. We should get rest now, because who knows what we will find tomorrow?"

Sam hugged herself. "I hope one of the things we find tomorrow is something to wear. It's getting cold." She looked at !Xabbu, as contented in his own bare skin as if he were dressed. "Aren't you cold, too?"

He smiled. "I will be, perhaps. So we will spend some time tomorrow trying to discover if any of the plants here are good for weaving into clothes, or at least blankets."

The idea of a project, however small, lifted Sam's heart. Nothing since Orlando's death had seemed to have much point, and certainly they seemed no closer to learning what they truly needed to know . . . but it would be very nice to be warm again.

She felt sleep pulling on her, so she curled up near the fire.

Sam thought she had only been asleep for a second when !Xabbu's long fingers touched her face. "Quiet," he whispered. "Something is nearby." She tried to thrash herself upright but !Xabbu held her back. Jongleur too was awake and watching as shadows moved in the high grasses just beyond the firelight. Sam realized she was having trouble getting her breath. She reminded herself of all the frightening adventures she and Orlando had experienced together, how she had learned to fight through her nervous excitement to do what was needed.

Yeah, but this is real.

It wasn't, of course—just one look at the strange trees showed her that—but the danger was. A quiet hiss that might have been the wind, or might have been whispering voices, eddied past. Sam fumbled out the hilt of Orlando's sword and held it with both hands because she was trembling too much to hold it steady with just one.

A small shape slipped into the circle of firelight. It crouched low to the ground, huge round eyes staring nervously. It was one of the strangest animals she had ever seen, a bizarre hybrid of monkey and something like a kangaroo, its spindly legs covered with long fur, its tiny head set low against its body.

Jongleur suddenly lunged forward and snatched a smoldering branch from the fire. By the time he had straightened up the creature had vanished back into the tall grass.

"Stop," !Xabbu said. "It offered us no harm."

Jongleur scowled. "And doubtless the first piranha to reach a swimmer is well-mannered, too. But there are many more out there. I heard them."

Before either !Xabbu or Sam could respond, the wide-eyed face appeared at the edge of the clearing again. Despite the creature's unfortunate aspect, Sam felt her heart touched by its bravery—it was half the size of Sam and her companions, and clearly frightened almost to death. But she was still startled when the creature spoke.

"You . . . you talk?" It slurred and mumbled the words, but they were still clear.

"We talk, yes," !Xabbu replied. "Who are you? Will you come and sit by our fire?"

"Sit by our fire. . . !" Jongleur exploded. The scrawny creature flinched away from him but stood its ground.

"Yes. Where I come from, we do not drive someone from our fire who has shown us no harm." !Xabbu turned back to their small, hairy visitor. "Come and sit. Tell us your name."

The thing hesitated, bobbing on its long legs, rubbing its front paws together. "Others are with me. Cold and frightened. They can come to the fire?"

!Xabbu quelled Jongleur with a look, which impressed Sam no end, although on this particular issue she was closer to Jongleur's opinion than to her friend's. "Yes," !Xabbu told the stranger, "if they mean no harm."

The thing smiled nervously. "Nice. Things are . . . are not good. Everyone frightened." It turned on its long legs, then turned back. "Jecky Nibble. That's my name. You are nice people." It faced out toward the forest and made a fluting sound, summoning its companions.

At first it seemed to Sam as though someone had thrown open the doors of a pet shop and let the merchandise escape. The dozen or so creatures that crept cautiously out of the undergrowth and into the faint firelight were mostly small and might have been mistaken for rats or dogs or cats until the firelight began to reveal a few odd details. Even as she found herself both disturbed and fascinated by the many tiny ways they were not the things they resembled, she heard a whirring above her head and looked up to see another score or so of visitors, winged creatures in the approximate shape of birds, settling in the branches all around the clearing.

"What, has the Ark sprung a leak?" Jongleur growled.

"Hey! He made a joke—sort of." Sam tried to keep her voice light, but didn't take her eyes off the squadron of small, strange creatures that now shared their campfire. "He must be scanning out pretty bad."

"I will build up the fire," !Xabbu told the first creature. "We have no food to offer, but you are welcome to share the warmth."

Jecky Nibble gave a funny bow, long legs flexing. "Nice. Very." It fluted again and the small animals scurried forward across the clearing, making a ring around the fire.

"Who are your companions?" !Xabbu asked as he laid some colorful deadwood on the fire. "Or are they your children?"

To Sam it seemed a very strange question—how could a monkey-kangaroo be the parent of birds and three-eared rabbits?—but Jecky Nibble did not seem to find it unusual. "No, not mine. I make. . . ." It paused, big round eyes suddenly asquint as it thought. "I do . . . I take? I take care of them? Of new ones—find them places, families. But no families left. Outside the gathering-places, it's very bad."

It shook its small round head. "We are trying to find a bridge. The world is getting so small! I think the One is angry at us!"

"Who's . . . the One?" Sam asked. "And what do you mean, 'find them families'?"

A flicker of apprehension slid across Jecky Nibble's face, plain even in the dim light. "You don't know? Don't know the One?"

"We are from far away," !Xabbu said quickly. "Perhaps our name is different than yours. You mean . . . you mean the One who made all this?"

It nodded, relieved. "Yes, yes! The One who made us all. Brought us across the White Ocean. Feeds us. Gives us families."

The smaller creatures, who had been murmuring and chirping quietly, now fell into reverent silence. Some of them nodded their tiny heads, smiling distantly, lost in a dream of nourishing community.

But Felix Jongleur was not smiling. In fact, Sam couldn't help noticing that he looked angry enough to bite someone. The visitors seemed to have noticed, too, and although they were now thick on the ground across the camp, they kept conspicuously distant from him.

Sam realized she had been sitting in one place so long that her joints were aching. She sat up, and the movement sent a flurry of startlement through their small guests. A few of the birds went whirring up into the air and did not settle back on their branches until Sam was still again.

The weird audience of tiny, staring creatures was becoming almost too much for her. Sam repressed a giggle. "It's just like, what was that scanbox show for kids? Bubble Bunnies on the Torture Planet? Any minute, they're going to start singing, '. . . Bunny ears, bunny toes, extra-flexy bunny nose. . . .' "

"Shut up, child," Jongleur snapped. "How can a man think with all this prattling?"

"Do not talk to her that way," said !Xabbu.

"Worry not—I don't pay any attention to him. . . ." Sam was interrupted by one of the small, vaguely squirrellike creatures, who suddenly took a few steps toward her and stood on its rear legs, staring at her fixedly.

"He always says I spend too much time on the net," it proclaimed in a thin voice. "Just 'cause he thinks Bubble Bunnies is stupid and doesn't have mortal values." It looked at her expectantly after finishing, as though awaiting a counteroffer on a major proposal. Then its tiny face fell and it crept back among its fellows.

"Who always says?" Sam could make no sense of it. "I mean, did you hear that? It utterly talked! It talked about Bubble Bunnies!" She turned to !Xabbu, trying not to giggle, but somehow very frightened too. "What did that mean?"

"That . . . the ghost-life," said Jecky Nibble, worried again. "Didn't you have one when you first came here? The One gives it to all—but maybe you forgot yours when you found your place. It happens."

Before she or !Xabbu could reply, Jongleur suddenly bent over the monkeylike creature. "The . . . One, you say? It made you?" He leaned in closer. "Made all this?"

Jecky Nibble raised long arms above its head for protection. "Of course! One made everything. One made you, too!"

"Oh, did it?" Jongleur's voice had become quieter and nastier, like a burner turned down to a fierce blue flame. "Well, you just take me to this One." His hand snapped out with startling speed and locked on a thin, furry wrist. "Then we will damn well find out."

Jecky Nibble let out a shriek as though it had been burned. Its charges fled the clearing in a hiss of wings and trampled grass. A moment later only the captured creature remained, trying desperately to free itself from Jongleur's grip. The look of raw terror on its little face made Sam feel ill.

"Let him go!" she shouted. "You big mean mamalocker, let him go!"

!Xabbu leaped forward and grabbed Jongleur's free arm and yanked hard. Jecky Nibble jerked free, then fled the clearing in a tangle of digging limbs. Jongleur, eyes slitted with fury, raised his hand as if to strike !Xabbu.

Sam dashed forward, waving the broken blade of Orlando's sword. "If you hit him I'll . . . I'll cut your balls off, you old bastard." Jongleur snarled at her, actually snarled like an animal, and for a horrifying moment she thought he had gone completely mad, that she would have to fight this cruel, muscular man to the death. She spread her feet wide apart, forcing herself to hold the shattered blade level, and prayed he wouldn't see her knees threatening to buckle. "I mean it!"

Jongleur's eyes widened. He looked slowly from her to !Xabbu, as though he had no idea how a Remote Area Dweller of the Okavango Delta had come to be attached to his arm, then shook himself free. He turned his back on them both and stalked out of the clearing.

Sam sat down, certain that she would collapse if she did not. !Xabbu was at her side in a moment.

"Are you hurt?"

"Me?" She laughed, far too loud. "It was you whose head he was going to tear off. I never even got near him." The strangeness of it all swam up on her. What was Sam Fredericks doing in a place like this, almost getting in a knife fight with the meanest, richest man in the world? She should be home studying, or listening to music, or talking to friends on the net. "Oh, God," she said, "this just locks in so many, many different ways!"

!Xabbu patted her shoulder. "You were very brave. But I would not have been as easy a victim as he might have thought."

"Don't get all regular-guy on me, okay?" Sam tried to smile. "You're not one of those. That's why Renie loves you."

!Xabbu stared at her for a moment, then blinked. "What are we to do now?"

"I don't know. I don't think I can stand to be around that man anymore. Did you see him? He's . . . I don't know. Seriously scanny."

"It is bad enough that he attacked someone who was our guest," !Xabbu said. "But we might have learned much from those children."

"Children?"

"I am certain. Do you not remember what Paul Jonas told us? About the boy Gaily and his companions, waiting to cross the White Ocean?"

Sam nodded slowly. "Yeah. And that little chipmunk or whatever it was . . . it said something about Bubble Bunnies! That's like this net show for micros back in the real world!" She darted !Xabbu a quick glance. "Micros means kids. Children."

He smiled. "I guessed." The moment's cheer evaporated. "As I said, there is much we might have learned. . . ."

Now it was Sam's turn to touch the small man's arm in sympathy. "We'll find out what this is about. We'll find Renie, too."

"I will gather some more wood," !Xabbu said. "You should lie down and try to sleep. I will guard us—I do not think I shall sleep again for a while."

Despite !Xabbu's suggestions, a restless, wakeful hour passed for Sam before movement in the vegetation brought her upright again. She kept the hilt of the ruined sword firmly in her hand; her fingers tightened when she saw Jongleur's hawkish features looming above them.

"What do you want? Do you think I was dupping about what I'd do. . . ?"

Jongleur scowled, but there was something strange in his expression. He spread his hands. They were shaking. "I have come back. . . ." He hesitated, then turned his face away, so that it took a moment before Sam made sense of the words. "I have come back to say that I was wrong."

Sam looked at !Xabbu, then back at Jongleur. "What?"

"You heard me, child. Do you think to make me crawl? I was wrong. I let my temper control me and I spoiled an opportunity to learn something, perhaps something important." He glared, but it was directed at no one, at least no one visible. "I was a fool."

!Xabbu cocked his head to one side. "Are you saying that you wish to be forgiven?"

Sam watched a visible shudder run up the man's naked torso. "I do not ask forgiveness. I never have. Not from anyone! But that does not mean I cannot admit fault. I was wrong." As if the firelight made him uncomfortable, he stepped back until he was almost in the shadows once more. "It was . . . it was hearing what they said. How they spoke of my invention. The One. . . ! That is my operating system they spoke of, as though it were a god! He . . . it, whatever one calls it—the Other has made things without my permission, taken tremendous liberties! This is why the system was sluggish, why there were problems with the network that delayed the Grail Ceremony for so long! Because the damnable operating system was stealing power to make this little project for itself, this laughable, broken little Eden. Christ Jesus, I am betrayed on all sides!"

After a moment, !Xabbu quietly said, "Yes, you have been unlucky with your servants, haven't you?"

Jongleur gave him a wolfish smile. "You remind me that you are not a savage, after all. You have an unpleasantly sharp wit when you wish to use it—like one of your people's poisoned arrows, eh?" He shook his head and sank down onto the forest floor. Sam finally realized that the man was shaking not with anger, but with weariness and perhaps something else as well. For the first time she saw what he truly was beneath the mask—an old, old man. "I deserve it. I have made two gross miscalculations and now I am paying for them. That may provide the two of you some little satisfaction, anyway."

Before she could say anything, !Xabbu touched her arm. "We have no satisfaction in any of this," he said quietly. "We are trying to stay alive. Your operating system and your . . . what is the word? Employee. Your employee. They are our problems as much as they are yours."

Jongleur nodded slowly. "He is horrifically clever, young Mr. Dread. He used that name to taunt me—More Dread, he called himself. Do you understand the reference? But even I did not see the full significance."

Sam frowned. She knew !Xabbu wanted to keep the man talking, so surely a question wouldn't hurt, would it? "I don't know what any of that means—More Dread."

"The Grail legend. Mordred, son of King Arthur. The bastard who betrayed the Round Table. Just as Dread has betrayed me, and perhaps destroyed my Grail." Jongleur looked at his hands as though they too might prove treacherous. "He has talents, he does, my little Johnny Dread. Did you know he is a bona fide miracle worker?"

!Xabbu settled himself with the quiet unobtrusiveness of a hunter who does not wish to startle his quarry. "Miracle worker?"

"He is a telekinetic. He has power. A genetic fluke, something that has probably been in the race for a million years, but scarcely noticed. He can affect electromagnetic currents. It is such a minute amount of force that I doubt it was even noticeable as a trait until humankind developed a society dependent on those currents. He could not push a paper cup off a tabletop with his mind, but he can alter information machinery. Doubtless he found some way to use it to burglarize my system, the miserable cur. But the true irony is that I taught him to control that power!"

The fire was beginning to die again, but neither Sam nor !Xabbu made a move to stoke it. The bizarrely geometric trees grew remote as the flames faltered and shrank.

"You see, I have long been interested in such . . . talents. I have eyes and ears in many places, and when certain records pertaining to a boy named Johnny Wulgaru came to my attention, I made sure he was committed as a ward to one of my institutes. What he had was only a rough talent, but then, he was a rough boy. He'd already killed a few when I found him. He has killed many more since—only a small number of them on my behalf, I might add. But I should have known that someone so self-indulgent would never make a useful tool."

"You . . . trained him?"

"My researchers took him and his raw skill in hand, yes. We helped him learn to use his unusual ability. We taught him restraint, selectivity, strategy. In fact, we taught him more than that—we made a street animal into a human being, or at least a convincing simulacrum." Jongleur's laugh was sharp. "As I said, even I underestimated him, so we did our work well."

"And he used this . . . power . . . on your behalf?"

"Only incidentally. Even when he had learned to focus it, to fully harness his latent abilities, it was still capable of only small miracles—things that in most circumstances could be achieved by more mundane methods. He himself has found it useful for subverting surveillance equipment. But I discovered he had other, more practical skills as well. He is completely ruthless and he is clever. He made an extremely useful tool. Until recently."

!Xabbu waited a while before speaking. "And . . . the operating system? The thing some call the Other?"

Jongleur narrowed his eyes. "It is of no consequence. Dread controls it, and thus controls the network."

"But he does not control this part of the network, whatever it is." !Xabbu gestured to the surreal, shadowy forest. "Or he would have found us here, would he not?"

The old man shrugged. "Perhaps. I still do not know where 'here' is. But our true enemy is John Dread."

!Xabbu frowned. "I think that if this man Dread controls the network through the operating system, then knowing more of the operating system might be important—how it works, how Dread is forcing it to work for him."

"Nevertheless, I have said all I will say."

!Xabbu stared hard. "If Renie were here, I think she would know what questions to ask. But she is not." His eyes wandered for a moment. "She is not."

"So we're just impacted, then?" Sam was trying to keep her temper and not entirely succeeding. The memory of Orlando, staggering bravely through his final hours while this crusty old monster sat in his golden house, planning to live forever, burned her. "Everything's just utterly scorched and nothing to do about it? And what do you mean, 'our enemy is Dread.' Our enemy? As far as I can see, you're as much an enemy to us as he is."

!Xabbu watched her for a moment, eyes serious and remote. "You frightened away innocents who might have helped us," he said to Jongleur. "You or your helpers have tried to kill us many times. She is right—why should we continue to deal with you?"

For a moment it seemed the old man might lose his temper again. The lines around his mouth grew tight. "I have said I was wrong. Do you wish me to crawl? I will not. I never will do that."

!Xabbu sighed. "Never since I first left the delta has it been so clear to me that speaking the same tongue does not mean understanding. We do not care about apologies. The things you have done to us and people we care for can never be made better by apologies. We are as . . . practical . . . as you are. What can you do for us? Why should we trust you?"

Jongleur was silent for a long time. "I have underestimated you again," he said at last. "I should have remembered from my time in Africa that there are many hard-headed bargainers among the dark peoples. Very well." He spread his hands as if to show his unweaponed harmlessness. "I swear that I will help you to get out of this place, and that I will not hurt you even if given the chance. Even if I will not willingly give you all my information—and what else do I have to bargain with?—I still know much that you do not. You need me. I would be in great danger alone, so I need you, too. What do you say?"

"!Xabbu, don't," Sam said. "He's a liar. You can't trust him."

"Then if you won't bargain, what will you do?" Jongleur demanded. "Kill me? I think not. I will simply follow you, deriving some benefit of safety from your presence while you gain none from mine."

!Xabbu looked to Sam, troubled. "Renie wished us to work with him."

"But Renie's not here. Doesn't it matter what I want?"

"Of course."

Frustrated, she whirled on Jongleur. "Where are we going, anyway? How are you going to help? Like, strangle all the little forest animals until they tell us what we want to know?"

He scowled. "It was a mistake. I have already said so."

"If he comes with us, we're going to take turns sleeping." Sam said. "Like we were in enemy territory. Because I don't trust him not to kill us in our sleep."

"You have not answered her other question," !Xabbu pointed out. "Where are we going?"

"In. To the heart of this place, I suppose. To find . . . what did they call it, those pathetic creatures? To find the One."

"You said knowing about the operating system would do us no good."

"I said I had told you all I wished to tell. And in truth there is nothing much we can do as long as Dread controls it. But if the operating system built this world, then there must be a direct connection back to the operating system somewhere in it." He fell silent, musing, then seemed to realize he had not finished. "If we can find that connection, we can use it to reach Dread as well."

"And then what?" !Xabbu suddenly seemed very weary. "Then what?"

"I do not know." Jongleur too had run out of strength. "But otherwise we wander here like ghosts, until our bodies die the real death."

"I just want to go home," said Sam quietly.

"A long way." For a moment Jongleur almost sounded human. "A very long way."

CHAPTER 14The Stone Girl

CHAPTER 14
The Stone Girl