NETFEED/NEWS: "Autostalking" Not Illegal, Court Rules

(visual: defendant Duncan's "Smiling Avenger" avatar)

VO: A UN regional court has ruled that there is nothing inherently illegal in a piece of gear that follows a user into virtual simulations and does harm to that user's simuloid unless it violates the laws pertaining to that node. Amanda Hoek, a seventeen-year-old South African schoolgirl, has been pursued online by a piece of code created by an ex-boyfriend and, in the words of her lawyer, "systematically stalked and assaulted numerous times."

(visual: Jens Verwoerd, Hoek's attorney)

VERWOERD: "This poor girl cannot use the net—vital to her schoolwork and her social life—without her online character being followed into every node by the defendant's avatar, a piece of code designed specifically to harass her. She has been insulted, attacked, and sexually assaulted numerous times, both verbally and through the tactors of the VR nodes, and yet this court seems to think this is nothing more than the horseplay of adolescents on the net. . . ."

Even as she swam and died in the glittering darkness Renie could not rid herself of the taste of fear—but it was someone else's fear.

Not someone, she thought, something. How can a thing, a machine made of code, be so frightened. . . !

The operating system had touched her and then pushed her away, had fled back into the recesses of itself, leaving her to drown in a sea of stars. It was a slow drowning—an ebbing away of consciousness, a fragmenting of the personality. She had felt something like it before when the system had been angry; then it had filled her with terror. Now she drifted, pulsing like a fading echo through the lonely lights, and knew that the operating system lived in a state of fear far worse than anything she could understand—a terror so complete and so alien that even its distant resonances could kill.

But does it make any difference? she wondered. Dying like this instead of dying from fright? She could feel herself letting go, coming apart, but it was all so gradual, so . . . unimportant. Freezing to death, they said, was a kind death. Body and mind disassociated, what had been painful chill came to seem like warmth, and at last sleep came like a friend. This must be a little like that.

But I don't want to go, she thought distantly, and even convinced herself a little. Even if it doesn't hurt. I don't want to cut the string.

Never to see Stephen again, or Martine and the others, Fredericks . . . and !Xabbu. . . . That was from his poem, wasn't it? Something about death—or was it just about string. . . ?

"There were people, some people

Who broke the string for me

And so

This place is now a sad place for me,

Because the string is broken."

She could almost hear him saying it, his soft voice, the slightly alien inflections hurrying the words at surprising moments, then slowing down to voice a single syllable like music. !Xabbu.

"The string broke for me,

And so

This place does not feel to me

As it used to feel,

Because the string is broken."

What had the unbroken string been? A life? A dream? The cord that held together the universe?

All of those things?

Now she could hear it as though he stood beside her, as he had stood through so many moments of anguish, a stalwart flame in all darknesses.

"This place feels as if it stood open before me

Empty

Because the string has broken

And so

This place is an unhappy place

Because the string is broken."

This place is an unhappy place, she repeated to herself. Because the string is broken. Because I am alone.

This place feels as if it stood open before me, she told the darkness as she drifted and disintegrated, mere flotsam left behind in the flight of a terrified child-thing.

Empty, something whispered to her across the flashing emptiness. Because the string has broken.

For a moment she floated, bemused, trying to remember what it was that had caught her fragmenting attention. A voice. A voice?

The operating system, she thought. It's come back for me. Whatever "back" means. Whatever "me," means. . . . It was growing harder and harder to think.

Because the string has broken.

The chant wafted to her through the void, but it was not a sound, it was both more and less. It was a spattering of tight like a distant explosion in vacuum space, a tiny pulse of heat at the bottom of a frozen, sluggish ocean. It was a whisper from a dream heard on the porch of wakefulness, an idea, a scent, a muffled heartbeat. It was. . . .

!Xabbu?

From the other side of the universe, still, small: Renie. . . ?

Impossible. Impossible! !Xabbu! Jesus Mercy, is that you?

And suddenly diminishment was not a blessing but a horror. Suddenly she wanted back all she had lost even though she knew it must be too late. She was almost gone, reduced to essences and drawn apart into the cloudy impermanence of the sea of stars.

No, she thought. He's out there, somehow. He's out there! She fought, but she scarcely felt real—there was no leverage, nothing to push against. !Xabbu! I'm drowning!

Renie. He was faint, only a voice and barely that. Reach for me.

Where are you?

Beside you. Always beside you.

And she opened herself and felt him there just as he had said, a presence as vague and dispersed as her own but right beside her, as if they were two galaxies rolling down the long night-tides of the universe to meet and pass through each other like ghosts.

I feel you, she said. Don't leave me.

Don't leave me, he might have echoed her, or Believe me.

She believed. She reached for him and willed the string to unbreak.

Touch, she said. I touch.

I feel.

And then they met and embraced—light-years wide but close as the ebb and flow of a single heartbeat, two matrices of naked thought drawn together in the darkness and held tight by the infinite compression of love.

She had a body again. She knew it even with her eyes shut, because she was holding him closer than she had ever held anyone.

"Where are we?" she finally asked. She could hear his heartbeat, fast and strong, hear his breath in his lungs. All else was silence, but she needed nothing else.

"It does not matter," he said. "We are together."

"Did we . . . make love?"

"It does not matter." He sighed, then laughed. "I do not know. I think . . . we were made of love."

She was afraid to open her eyes, she realized. She clutched him more tightly when she had not thought such a thing possible. "It doesn't matter," she agreed, "I thought I would never find you again. . . ."

His fingers touched her face—cool, real. It startled her so that she looked in spite of herself. It really was his face, his dear face, that looked down on her in the cool evening light. There were tears in his eyes. "I . . . I would not believe it . . . could not let myself. . . ." He lowered his forehead until it touched hers. "I was swimming so long . . . in all that light. Drowning. Calling you. Coming apart. . . ."

She was weeping. "We have bodies. We can cry. Are we . . . back? In the real world?"

"No."

Worried by his strange tone, Renie sat up, taking care to keep her arms around him, not trusting him or herself to stay solid. The landscape was alien but oddly familiar, gray in the dying light. For a moment she thought they had returned to the black mountaintop but the outline of a leafless tree, the fuzzy sprung shape of a bush, confused her.

"At first I thought we were in the place where I dived in to search for you," !Xabbu said slowly.

"Dived in. . . ? Where?"

"The Well. But I was wrong." He pointed to the sky. "Look."

She raised her head. The stars were bright. The moon was round and yellow, hanging fat above the horizon like a ripe fruit.

"It is an African moon," he said. "The moon of the Kalahari."

"But . . . but I thought you said we weren't . . . back. . . ." She leaned away from him, staring. He wore a loincloth of animal hide. A bow and a crude quiver of arrows lay on the dirt beside him. And she was also dressed in skins.

"It's your world," she said quietly. "The Bushman simulation you took me to—God that seems like a century ago! Where we danced."

"No." He shook his head again. He had wiped the tears from his cheeks and eyes. "No, Renie, it is something different—something . . . more."

He stood, extending a hand to help her up. The seedpods tied around his ankles rattled as he moved.

"But if this isn't your world. . . ?"

"There is a fire," he said, pointing to a flicker of light that stained the desert sands red and orange. "Just beyond that rise."

They walked across the dry pan, kicking up dust that hid their feet so that it seemed they walked across clouds. The moon touched the dunes, rocks, and thorn bushes with silver.

The campfire was small, made of only a few crossed sticks. Other than the fire itself there was no sign of human life in all the immensity of desert night.

Before Renie could ask again, !Xabbu pointed to a gulley that carved through the cracked earth beside the campfire, the drywash shell of some long-dead stream. "Down there," he said. "I see him. No, I feel him."

Renie could see nothing but the jittering of shadows around the campfire, but !Xabbu's voice made her look to him. His face was solemn but there was something else in it as well, a kind of exalted fire behind the eyes that in anyone else she would have feared was hysteria.

"What is it?" She took his hand, suddenly afraid.

He kept her hand in his and led her down the pan, stopping beside the fire. She could not help noticing that theirs were the only footprints crossing the dust. When they looked down into the gulley, she saw that the stream that had carved it was not entirely dead: a trickle of water ran along the bottom, so narrow that if she climbed down into the hole she could dam it with one foot. Something was moving beside this streamlet—something very, very small.

!Xabbu sat in the dust beside the shallow scrape. His rattles whispered.

"Grandfather," he said.

The mantis looked up at him, triangular head cocked, sawtoothed arms held high.

"Striped Mouse. Porcupine." The calm, still voice came from everywhere and nowhere. "You have come far to see the end."

"May we sit at your fire?"

"You may."

Renie began to understand. "!Xabbu," she whispered "That's not Grandfather Mantis. It's the Other. It's taken this from your mind, somehow. It appeared to me as Stephen—pretended to be my brother."

!Xabbu only smiled and squeezed her hand. "In this place, it is Mantis," he said. "After all, whatever you call it, we have finally met the dream who is dreaming us."

She sat down beside him, feeling limp and emotionally exhausted. All she wanted was to be with !Xabbu. And maybe he's right, she thought. Why fight it? Logic is gone. We're definitely in someone else's dream. If this was the way the Other chose to communicate—perhaps the only way it could communicate—then they might as well accept it. She had tried to force the Stephen-thing to see reality in her terms and its anger and frustration had almost killed her.

The mantis tipped its shiny head down, then up, regarding them with tiny, protuberant eyes. "The All-Devourer will be here soon," it said. "He is coming to my campfire, too."

"There are still things that can be done, Grandfather," said !Xabbu.

"Wait a minute," Renie whispered. "I thought if anyone was the All-Devourer in this story, he was. It was. The Other, I mean."

The insect appeared to have heard her. "We are at the end of things now. My fight is over. A great shadow, a hungry shadow, will swallow all I have made."

"It does not have to be that way, Grandfather," said !Xabbu. "There are those who might help you—our friends and allies. And see! Here is your Beloved Porcupine, she of the clear thought and brave heart."

Brave heart, maybe, Renie thought. Clear thought? Not bloody likely. Not in the middle of this cracked fairy tale. But aloud she said, "We want to help. We want to save not just our own lives, but the children's lives, too. All the children."

A minute twitch as the mantis shook its head. "It is too late for the first children. Even now the All-Devourer has begun to eat them."

"But you—we—can't just give up!" Renie's voice rose in spite of her best intentions. "No matter how bad it looks we still have to fight! To try!"

Mantis seemed to shrink even smaller, drawing in on itself until it was little more than a spot of shadow. "No," it whispered, and for a moment its voice was as raw and miserable as a child's. "No. Too late."

!Xabbu was squeezing her hand. Renie leaned back. However frustrating it was, she had to realize that this . . . thing, whatever had formed it, whatever shaped its thoughts and dreams, was not going to be argued into doing the right thing.

After a long silent time !Xabbu said, "Do you not think of a world beyond this? A world where the good things can be saved, can grow again?"

"His mouth is full of fire," Mantis whispered. "He runs like the wind. He is swallowing everything I have made. There is nothing beyond this." It was quiet for a moment, crouching, gently rubbing its forelegs together. "But it is good not to be alone, we think. It is good to be where the campfire still burns, at least for a little while. Good to hear voices."

Renie closed her eyes. So this was what it had all come down to—trapped in the imagination of a mad machine, waiting for the end in a world built from !Xabbu's own thoughts and memories. It was an interesting way to die. Too bad she'd never get to tell anyone.

"Come, it is too quiet," said Mantis. Its voice was very small now, like the merest brush of wind through the thorn bushes. "Porcupine, my darling daughter, you are sad. Striped Mouse, tell the story again of the feather that became the moon."

!Xabbu looked up, a little startled. "You know that story?"

"I know all your stories now. Tell it, please."

And so, in a moment of calm beneath the fiery stars of an African night sky—a moment that seemed like it could last forever, although Renie knew better—!Xabbu began to recite the story of how Mantis created life from a discarded piece of shoe leather. The dying mantis crouched beside the trickling stream, listening intently to the tale of its own cleverness, and seemed to find it very interesting indeed.

They had prepared not just a fire, but a wall of fire—an arc of papers, boxes, empty grain sacks, and other combustibles they had piled in front of one corner of the room and set alight. Behind the fiery barrier was stacked every piece of remaining furniture not bolted to the floor—desks and chairs, even the lids from the V-tanks that were not being used. Even the spaces between objects were crammed tight with thin military mattresses.

But those things will not stop bullets, Joseph thought sadly. Stop no dogs either.

A flicker on the monitor caught his attention. "They are moving now. Light the fire."

"It's t–tempting," said Del Ray, not hiding his panic very well, "but I'll wait until you're back here with us. Just tell us what's happening up there."

Joseph was feeling increasingly exposed as he watched the four mercenaries upstairs leaning over the hole, gesturing. They had already strapped on their combat gear, puffy vests, and hoods with goggles. He resented having been given monitor duty just because he had supposedly fouled up before. That—we were going to stop that truck driving away, somehow? Stop them getting those big monster dogs? But even his resentment was nothing against the skin-tightening, horrible certainty of what was to come. "They are ready," he said out loud. "I don't need to stand here no more."

"Just tell us what they're doing," Jeremiah said.

"Dressing up the dogs," Joseph told him.

"What?"

He squinted at the monitor. "No. First I think they wrapping the dogs up in blankets, but they are doing something else." Just the sight of the things made his guts watery. The huge animals were shivering with excitement, their cropped tails wagging rigidly. "They . . . they are using the blankets to do something. Maybe to carry them." He watched miserably as the men approached the pit they had dug into the floor, using attached ropes to haul the blanket, the first mutant ridgeback sitting upright in the center like a royal personage. "Oh. Oh. They are going to use the blankets to lower the dogs down through the hole."

"Shit," said Del Ray miserably. "Time to light the fire. Come on!"

Joseph did not need to be urged. He sprinted across the floor of the darkened lab and jumped over the wall of file papers, then clambered up over the furniture barricade, almost knocking over Del Ray as he tumbled down the far side. "Go ahead! Light it!"

"I'm trying!" Jeremiah moaned. "We didn't have enough petrol left to get it really soaked." He flicked another of Renie's cigarettes from shaking fingers. The papers caught with a whuff of ignition. For a moment, as blue flames ran along the makeshift barrier, Joseph felt a tingle of hope.

"Why the lights out?" he whispered. "Then we can't see to shoot them."

"Because we've got two bullets and they've probably got thousands," Del Ray said. "Just stop arguing, Joseph, Please?"

"Dark isn't going to fool no dogs," Joseph pointed out, but more quietly.

Del Ray made a strange noise, a kind of groan. "I'm truly sorry, Joseph—I don't want the last thing I say to be 'shut up.' But shut up."

Long Joseph could feel his heart getting big in his chest, big but weak, trying so hard to beat fast even though something was squeezing it badly. "I am sorry we are all here."

"I am too," Del Ray said. "God knows, I am too."

"Something's coming," said Jeremiah in a cracking voice. They all stared out past the flames, trying to see movement in the shadows at the other end of the laboratory.

Joseph's chest seemed tighter and tighter. He tried to imagine his Zulu ancestors, the ones he bragged of so often, staring out from their campfire at the African darkness, tried to imagine how brave they felt even when they heard the rumbling of a lion, but he couldn't. His only weapon, a steel bar from the underside of a conference table, hung loose in his sweaty hand.

Please, God, he thought. Don't let them hurt Renie. Make it fast.

Joseph saw something moving at the far end of the lab—a low and silent shadow. Then he saw another. The first one looked up, swiveling its head from side to side. Two points of baleful yellow gleamed as its eyes caught and reflected the firelight.

A loud voomp made Joseph jump. Something smashed through their little wall of fire, scattering sparks, and rolled toward their hiding place. A moment later a cloud of smoke billowed over him, filling his eyes, fouling his lungs. He waved his hands, heard Jeremiah choking and shouting, but before he could do anything more a huge dark shape plunged over the flaming barrier and landed on top of him, growling.

He was smashed to the floor and something tore into his arm—he felt a spike of silver pain brighter than any fire. He struggled but he was being pressed down beneath something heavier than he was, something that wanted to get its teeth into his belly. A volley of explosions roared above his head but they seemed far away, meaningless. The thing had him, the beast had him. He heard one of his companions screech in frightened anger, then Del Ray's pistol cracked and spit flame by his head and the heavy burden slid off him.

Joseph struggled up off the floor, gasping for breath. A string of stuttering shots—katokkatokkatokkatok—went off like firecrackers. More animal shapes were picking their way through the scattered remnants of the fire; he could hear men shouting, then more shots. Several human figures were pushing through the doorway into the smoke-clouded room. To Joseph's blurred eyes there seemed too many, far more than four.

Not right! he wanted to shout but his mouth was burning, his throat constricted. Del Ray crouched trembling beside him, the pistol with its one remaining bullet in his outstretched hand. Joseph couldn't hear him fire it over the noise of the other guns, didn't even see a flash from the muzzle, but two of the dogs fell.

Two with one shot, Joseph marveled, dazed by smoke in his lungs and in his thoughts. Just like you said. How can you do that, Del Ray?

But before he could make sense of it another mutant dog came up out of the smoke and over the wall of desks and mattresses, striking Joseph like a thunderbolt and hurling him back onto the ground. A grunting head shoved up toward his face, dug its hot, wet muzzle into Long Joseph's throat, and took away his air.

Paul Jonas lay at Sam's feet, twitching and moaning like a man who had received a terrible electric shock. Sam herself had only recovered a few moments earlier after her abrupt ejection from the Well, and now she struggled to make sense of what was happening. The weeping angel had flickered and vanished from the air above the Well. The Twins, in the form of Jack Sprat and his wife, were shrieking in wordless fury at her disappearance, snatching up screaming refugees and throwing them into the flaring pit as though that might force her to return. But none of the hapless creatures who fell into the pit came up again and the angel did not reappear.

"Sam Fredericks!" It was Martine's voice. Sam could not see her through the stampede of terrified creatures. She tried to get a grip on Paul's arm to drag him to safety but he was slippery with sweat, writhing like a man in the grip of nightmare. Someone pushed in beside her to help her pull and together they managed to drag Jonas back from the worst of the crush, to a spot on the very edge. After the lunatic events of the last minutes Sam was only mildly surprised to discover that her helper was Felix Jongleur.

"We must get away from this," he snapped. "I have no control over this version of Finney and Mudd. Where are your friends?"

Sam shook her head. It seemed impossible to locate anyone in the chaos; it was all she could do to stand her ground and protect Paul from being trampled by maddened milkmaids and panicked dwarfs.

"Fredericks!" Martine was shouting for her again, but this time Sam spotted her a dozen meters farther down the shoreline, crowded with several others along a dip in the rim that seemed only a handspan above the surface of the Well. Sam bent and grabbed Paul under the arms, straining to lift his upper body. His head lolled but his eyes were open, staring at the sky. Jongleur took his feet and they half-carried, half-dragged him toward the spot where Martine and the others huddled, temporarily out of the worst of the chaos.

Paul Jonas' face swung toward her. For a moment his eyes appeared to focus.

"Tell him to turn off the window. . . ." he said urgently, as though it meant something sane and useful, then his eyes rolled up and his words fell away again into murmuring nonsense.

They made it a dozen awkward steps before something grabbed Sam's ankle and dragged her to the ground.

"Bring back the princess!" a voice hissed behind her. She tried to crawl forward but the grip on her leg was painful and strong; it flipped her on her back as though she were a rag. "We want the princess!" demanded Jack Sprat and shook something at her. It was another victim—a small, bulge-eyed man dressed in green, dangling by the neck from the monster's other hand. Jack Sprat leaned closer, blind face as grainy as old, white wood. So frightened she could not take in enough breath to scream, Sam kicked, but could not dislodge the twining fingers. The tree-tall creature yanked her into the air and dangled her upside down, then his attention wandered to the struggling, green-clad man. He squeezed the prisoner's neck in a gentle, almost experimental way, watching with interest as the little man's struggles first sped, then slowed.

"The blade!" shouted Felix Jongleur. "Give me the sword!"

Sam could only wonder why the old man had remembered the broken sword but she hadn't. She fumbled it out of her belt and let it drop to the ground. Jongleur snatched it up with such a look of triumph that for a moment Sam could only curse her own stupidity.

That's the last I'll see of him. . . . she thought, her head roaring and aching as she swung like a pendulum two meters above the ground. But Jongleur surprised her by leaping forward to hack hard at the twiggy hand pinioning her ankle. Still fascinated by the death throes of its other prisoner, Jack Sprat scarcely even seemed to notice what Jongleur had done, but his fingers popped and parted; Sam fell to the ground so hard it took her a moment to know which way was up.

"Hurry!" Jongleur shouted. "Help me with Jonas!"

Reeling, Sam climbed to her feet. They lifted Paul and stumbled to the edge of the well, shoving their way between yelping, sobbing refugees. Hands reached up from the low spot along the shoreline and helped Paul down, then Sam too was assisted over the edge and onto a narrow shelf scarcely three paces wide and a dozen paces long, the whole thing only a few meters below the rim of the pit and less distance than that above the glimmering surface of the Well. Jongleur climbed down after her and crouched beside her on the ledge, panting, ignoring startled or even hostile glances from the others.

Martine, Florimel, T4b, even Mrs. Simpkins and Nandi were already crammed along the ledge with chittering Wicked Tribe monkeys perched on several of them. The strange boy named Cho-Cho huddled beside Martine, his back against the gray earth, eyes wide with terror.

"Do we just wait here until they find us?" Bonnie Mae Simpkins demanded in a breathless whisper.

"What are those things?" said Florimel. "Where did such monsters come from?"

Nandi Paradivash looked down at where Paul lay beside Sam's feet, still locked in some miserable dream. "They are copies of the real Twins—the men who have followed Jonas through the network. Apparently there are many of these duplicate versions, all obsessed with Jongleur's daughter, but usually harmless. Dread has control of the system, even though for the moment the Other is keeping him at bay. Apparently he has found a way to mutate these copies."

"But why?" Florimel demanded. She flinched as a long, choking scream cut through the already terrible noises above them, then plucked a nervously fidgeting monkey off her forehead and deposited it back on her shoulder. "He cannot destroy the operating system this way—all he is doing is killing the children! Is he simply mad?"

"He wants us to give up," Martine said in a slow, dead voice. "He wants us to surrender, to save the children."

"But even if we did they'd never survive." Sam waved her hands, trying to get the others to listen. "He's killing the what-do-you-call-it—the operating system! They'll all die anyway!"

"Perhaps . . . perhaps Dread is being more clever than we give him credit for." Martine sounded frighteningly hollow, as if she no longer cared about anything. That scared Sam badly. "He was clearly startled and very angry to find that the Other was still resisting him, but it he destroys it completely, he loses control of the network. Maybe he is not really expecting to lure us out. Maybe by doing this terrible thing to these children the Other is protecting, he is trying to drive the operating system insane."

"But don't any of you care?" Florimel's anguished words tore through the din. "Those are our children out there! Our children! And those creatures are murdering them! My daughter Eirene—I can feel her beside me at this moment, feel her real body next to mine, I swear it! She must be terrified, her heart is beating so fast! Because whatever part of her the Other stole must also be out there—and those things will murder her!"

And who else is up there with her? Sam wondered miserably. Who else is getting crushed and eaten right next to us? Renie's brother? T4b's friend? That poor kid who called himself Senbar Flay in the Middle Country? A great, cold hopelessness folded around her. Everything was pointless now. If they had shared one goal, it was to save the children and get themselves out of the network alive. They were going to fail on both counts.

"So what do we do?" Bonnie Mae said in a cracked, urgent voice. "Let them go on slaughtering the innocents?"

"Princess!" The jiggling bulk of Jack Sprat's wife appeared atop the rim of the pit only a dozen meters away. Sam and her friends shrank back against the ledge but the shapeless face was staring out over the pulsing waters and did not see them. The groaning, belching voice no longer sounded human at all. "Come back to us, Princess—we want to eat you up!"

Her scrawny, hideous husband followed her to the edge of the crater then began to move sideways along the rim, snatching up and throttling anything it could catch. It was headed right toward their hiding place. Even if it did not know they were there it would stumble onto them in moments. "Kill until you feed us," it creaked. "Feed us."

Bonnie Mae had fallen into prayer again. Almost paralyzed with fear, Sam looked at the looming Twins for a second, then turned her head away. She, too, wanted to close her eyes—not to pray, but so that she wouldn't have to see the things that were going to kill them all. Instead she found herself staring at a spreading darkness in the Well itself, a cloudy obscurity that rippled out from a point near the shoreline, dousing the vast, pulsing lights as it grew.

It's really dying, she thought. We're all going to die in the dark. . . ! Then something else caught her attention. A prickle of smaller lights trailed up through the darkness, tiny incandescent bubbles that grew more numerous by the second.

"Look," she said softly, then realized no one could hear her. "Look!"

Something was rising from the troubled waters. The angel again? Sam wondered. The Other? Is the Other finally coming? But it did not feel that way, nothing like the immense cold presence that had filled the Freezer. It was something smaller and more human—she could even get a dim sense of its shape now, a murky silhouette swimming upward through the midst of the twinkling lights.

The thing that broke the surface of the Well and clambered up onto the rim was the size and shape of a man, the lean, muscular body gleaming with smears of phosphorescence. The lights of the Well had faded to a dull gleam—even the massive Twins had become shadowy, obscure shapes. Frosted with streaks of light, the newcomer was the brightest thing on the landscape and all eyes turned toward him. For a sinking instant Sam thought it was Ricardo Klement, but then he turned and raised his sword and his face lifted so that she could see his profile, his long black mane of hair. Her heart exploded with astonishment and joy.

The Wicked Tribe rose shrieking from Nandi's shoulders. " 'Landogarner! 'Landogarner!"

"Orlando!" Sam screamed. "Oh, my God, it's Orlando!"

The roar of both murderers and victims had fallen away, but if he heard Sam's cry the newcomer gave no sign. He turned toward the Twins and pointed his sword at them, a mixture of salute and threat. The Jack Sprat thing let out a sobbing noise—Sam recognized only a moment later that it was an excited laugh—and lurched toward him. The lights of the Well suddenly blazed up again, returning the world to unsteady twilight.

Sam was scrambling up over the lip of their shoreline refuge when someone caught her by the leg and dragged her back down. She shouted in anger and slapped wildly at the restraining hand, certain it was Jongleur, but it was Nandi Paradivash, his face like gray marble in the light from the Well.

"Let him go," he told her. "This is his fight, I think."

"That's fenfen! I have to help him. . . !" She kicked, but Florimel had grabbed her other leg and would not let go.

"No, Sam," she growled. "The rest of us, we will only slow him down. See!"

"Yes, look," said Martine. "The Other has played his knight."

Sam had no idea what she meant and did not care—she could only tug helplessly against her friends' restraining hands. Orlando had sprung toward his huge adversary, the Thargor body moving with a speed she hadn't seen since the Middle Country simulation, his sword so quick it was all but invisible in the strange half-light from the Well. He struck three hard blows against Jack Sprat's legs before it could swipe at him for the first time, so that it was stumbling by the time its arm flailed out toward him. Even so it was a near-miss: the twiggy fingers whickered past his head so swiftly Sam knew they would have smashed it off his shoulders if Orlando had not flung himself to the ground.

Sam could not take her eyes from what was happening, even as she felt the others crowding up behind her. It was a dream, a nightmare—Orlando! Fighting for his life!

But there was something different about him, she saw now—not just his speed but even his shape. The body he wore was not the Thargor of the last days gaming in the Middle Country, the scarred, battle-hardened veteran of a hundred wars, nor even the younger version of the character he had become when they first crossed into the Grail network. This new Thargor was still muscular but lithe and lighter of foot than he had ever been in the Middle Country, as though Sam watched a version of the character she had never seen—a stripling Thargor that had existed only in Orlando's imagination.

The greater weight of the older versions might have been a useful advantage, for now the Jack Sprat creature surprised him with a backhanded blow and lifted him completely off his feet, smashing him to the earth just a few meters from the quivering form of the wife-thing. The second monster slithered forward with surprising speed then rose and folded over him like a huge, living jelly. For a heart-tripping moment Sam thought Orlando had disappeared into the immense mouth; instead the blade of his sword suddenly poked out through the side of the thing's head and it contracted away from the attack, roaring liquidly. Orlando had thrown himself to one side to avoid its killing stoop and now managed to jackknife away from a follow-up swipe by Jack Sprat, which had hurried forward to grab him while he was engaged with its blubberous companion.

The wife, its head streaming with fluids from its wound, attacked again, catching him between the two of them. Both creatures had learned their lesson and moved in on him with greater caution. He backed away, trying to lengthen the triangle, but he had the Well behind him and was running out of room.

Sam's joy had turned to helpless misery. There was no way he could beat them both. She was watching him die all over again. She hit out at the hands restraining her but her friends would not let go. "Run!" she screamed. "Run, Orlando!"

He took a last step backward. As his heel teetered on the edge of the Well he threw a quick glance back at its flickering impermanence. His measured but fearful gaze was enough to tell Sam a terrible truth: he had come out of it, but he could not go back into it and survive.

He'll break up again if he goes in, she thought wildly—he'll disappear. She did not know how she knew it but she was certain: there was not enough energy left in the Well to make him again.

Make him? But that's Orlando, it really is Orlando. . . !

The Jack Sprat creature limped toward him on its wounded legs, swinging its arms like giant brooms, trying nothing more ambitious than to force him over the rim of the pit. With no room left he did the only thing he could: he leaped forward between the flailing hands and rolled into the thing's scrawny legs like a bowling ball. A leg cracked with a dry pop and the monster tottered, giving out a whistling shriek of rage. It staggered, hobbled a step, and as it regained its balance began to reach down, but Orlando was behind it now. He chopped through the wounded leg with a two-handed stroke. As it teetered on its remaining leg he threw his weight against it and shoved it toward the Well.

Jack Sprat toppled over the edge, but managed to sink its fingers into the soft soil and cling, its long legs kicking above the roiling waters. It had even begun to pull itself back up but Orlando dodged a hammering, sideways blow from the other beast and hacked the grasping fingers into splinters. Jack Sprat slid into the pulsing depths, shrieking and whistling like a boiling lobster, then surfaced for a moment with arms thrashing before it dissolved at last into the glimmering substance of the Well.

The monstrous, gelatinous form of the wife-thing humped up behind Orlando, spluttering in fury. He had only a fraction of an instant to jump away as it smashed down like a titan fist made of putty. It oozed quickly to the side to trap him against the precipice then stretched upward again, its mouth hanging open in an idiot gape that made it look like some kind of giant, cancerous sock puppet. Before it could drop and crush him Orlando shoved the blade of his sword deep into its bulk, then struggled around to one side, dragging the blade with him, his long muscles knotting as he pulled it through the rubbery flesh even as the creature folded down on top of him.

Sam's heart stuttered and seemed to stop entirely until Orlando scrabbled back out from under the bulky thing, covered with its slime. The sound of the creature's anger went sharper in pitch, into pain and even fright. It heaved upward again but something viscous was running out of the long jagged hole across its middle. Jack Sprat's wife swayed, grew slack as a deflating balloon, then collapsed and slid over the edge in a wet, sticky glob and vanished into the Well.

Sam was already up and running, forcing her way through the stunned refugees, leaping over the dead and dying without any thought for them at all. Orlando turned away from the edge of the Well, staggered, and fell to his knees.

"Orlando!" she screamed. "Oh, dzang, Gardiner, is it really you?" She crouched and wrapped her arms around him. "Don't die, you better not die! Oh, God, I knew you couldn't be dead. You came back! Like Gandalf! You utterly came back!"

He turned his head to look at her. For a moment he seemed to be looking at a stranger and her stomach contracted. Then he smiled. It was a miserable, weary smile, but she thought it was the most wonderful thing she had seen in her whole life. "But I am dead, Frederico," he said. "I really am."

"No, you're not!" She hugged him as hard as she could. She was weeping, babbling—she didn't care, she didn't know anything, he was alive, alive! The others were running toward them but she did not want to let go, ever. "No, you're not. You're here."

After a long moment he pulled back a little. "Gandalf?" He peered at her, tried to blink away his own tears, then laughed. "Damn, you did read it. You read it but you never told me. You are such a scanmaster, Fredericks." And then he collapsed in her arms.