Otherland-4-SeaofSilverLight

"Code Delphi. Start here.

It is daylight outside, but here in the deeps of my mountain I cannot see it. I have been back in my body for forty-eight hours. I have taken three baths, eaten two small meals, thrown them both up, spent six or seven of those forty-eight hours weeping with terrible, agonizing muscle cramps. My body is not entirely happy that I have returned to tenancy.

"I am weak as a mouse.

"Still, I have also—with Sellars' help—recovered my journal entries. I never thought to hear them again. Unable to sleep, or even to rest comfortably, I have paced slowly back and forth across the floors of my subterranean home, listening to them.

"It is the voice of another woman. I know her, but I am not her. Already those hours, those mad worlds, seem like a dream. A terrible dream, yes, but a dream nevertheless.

"The one who spoke that journal, left that record of her thoughts and fears—that Martine was blind, but she could see things others could only imagine. The Martine who hears those entries now, who makes this new record, this Martine can see. But she is blind to all that the other Martine had and much of what she knew.

"I can see. I am more blind than ever. I . . . I cannot. . . ."

"Back now. I had to go for a little while and now I am lying down in the dark. It is still so hard to see things, so hard. My head aches with it, my new vision blurs. Someone, I cannot remember who, once told me, 'Every injury is a gift, every gift an injury.' Some cursed therapist or eye doctor, probably, but oh! It is so true, so true, now that I understand.

"The Other . . . he was the one who took my sight from me so long ago. I understand that now, understand the puzzled doctors, the unanswered questions beneath the diagnosis of hysterical blindness. I do not think he did it cruelly, or even accidentally, in the way Sellars believes he plunged children into comas, trying only to make them quiet and tractable. No, he was with me there in the darkness of the Pestalozzi Institute, with me in a way I could not understand at the time—in my ears, but also in my mind. And when the lights came on, dazzling me, hurting me so that I shrieked and shrieked, he tried to do a kind thing. He made the light go away.

"Dying, he has given it back to me.

"He touched me at the end, at least I think he did. I felt him as I had not felt him since I was a child. For a moment, a brief instant, we were children again together, both afraid of the dark. He . . . touched me as he gave himself up. He touched me, then he was gone.

"I wish I had been with him at the end, riding down the night sky in flames like a bolt of divine lightning. Perhaps then I would have gone too, dissolved in that great fiery tantrum. It would be a simple solution. I long for a simple solution, although I am far too cowardly to effect one myself.

"Listen—Martine is talking to herself again, as always. Alone. In darkness by choice, even though I can now see. Back in my world beneath the world.

"For the others, life goes on. Sellars and his friend Ramsey and Hideki Kunohara, already they are busily organizing how things will be. Renie and Florimel have loved ones to attend to—they do not need me now. What use would I be, anyway? I thought once I could help Paul Jonas. I realized, even if he did not, that there was no life for him offline. I even daydreamed that if we survived we could make a sort of life together in the network—a virtual life, but a life. The witch and the wanderer. The patron spirits of the Otherland.

"Now everything has changed. Paul is dead and I have lost the thing that made me different, made me valuable. With my sight no longer suppressed, my brain struggles to make new connections, remake old ones. The Otherland information, which I could once read like a bloodhound sniffing the wind, now means nothing to me—less than nothing, because with my new eyes I can barely see what is apparent to others.

"I have listened to my journal. I will listen to it again, I suppose, even though I no longer know the woman who spoke those words. There is little else to do. Perhaps one day I will go out into the real world and explore it with my new eyes. Perhaps that is something to live for. Perhaps.

"But for a moment I had a world for myself. I had friends—comrades. Now they have their lives back. We will talk, of course—such a bond does not disappear overnight, or even quickly—but the uncomfortable truth is that they had lives to go back to and I did not. We lived through terrifying time, in a place of unbelievable danger and terror. But I was alive there. I mattered there. Now . . . what?

"It is hard to think. It is easier to rest. It is easier to keep to familiar darkness.

"Code Delphi. End here."

Renie settled into the cushioned seat and wished she was using better gear.

All those weeks in a perfect imitation of reality just so I could feel myself being gouged, slammed, shredded. Now that there's something nicer to feel, I'm linked in from a sidewalk VR shop and I can't experience it properly.

"I thought the others told me your bubble-house was destroyed," she said to Hideki Kunohara. She gestured at the huge, round table, at the view through the hemispherical roof of the towering outsized trees and of the river like a surging ocean all around. "You rebuilt it quickly."

"Oh, this one is much bigger," he said, amused. "Since we needed a meeting place, I thought I would accommodate it in my new construction." He settled back in his chair. "I remember your friend—!Xabbu, I believe?—but I do not know your other guest."

"This is Jeremiah Dako." Renie waited while Jeremiah leaned across her and shook Kunohara's hand. "If it hadn't been for him and two others, !Xabbu and I wouldn't have survived to attend this . . . meeting."

"This is quite amazing." Jeremiah seemed stunned by the hallucinatory size of the forest. "And you were really here all the time you were in that tank, Renie? We had no idea."

"Not just here—but yes, the network is a pretty overwhelming place." She frowned slightly. "And you're not even getting a very good idea of what it can really be like. Why are we here like this? We could have arranged to use much better gear."

"You must ask your friend Sellars," Kunohara said. "He should join us any moment."

"I am here." Sellars, still in his wheelchair, appeared at one end of the large table. "Apologies—things are very, very busy. What is it they must ask me?"

"Why we couldn't use better gear," Renie said. "Our friend Del Ray Chiume would have been happy to arrange some VR rigs through his UN connections, and they'd be a lot better than what we're experiencing."

"It was not the quality of the gear I objected to," Sellars told her. "And in the future we will certainly arrange better access for you. But for various reasons I did not think it a good idea for you to be using United Nations equipment, even arranged by a friend."

"What does that mean?

"I will explain when everyone is here. Ah, Mr. Dako, we meet at last—at least in person. Well, perhaps that isn't entirely accurate either. Face to face? I hope your leg is healing well."

"You . . . you're Sellars." Jeremiah seemed a bit overwhelmed. "Thank you for what you did. You saved our lives."

The old man smiled. "Most of us in this room have saved each others' lives. Your courage helped keep Renie and !Xabbu alive so they could play their own very important parts."

"It was you who called in the military, wasn't it? Tipped them off that someone had broken into the Wasp's Nest base?"

Sellars nodded. "It was the only thing left I could do to help you. I was very busy at the time. I'm glad it worked out." He lifted his head as if hearing a distant sound. "Ah. Martine is here."

A moment later Martine Desroubins appeared—or rather, an almost featureless sim popped into view in one of the chairs. Renie was startled. She had wondered whether she would actually get to see Martine's real face, even though Sellars had arranged that all the rest of them looked like themselves, but she could not help feeling that the barely-humanoid sim was a step backward.

"Hello, Martine," said !Xabbu. She only nodded.

She's hurting, Renie thought. Hurling badly. What can we do?

Renie was quickly distracted by the arrival of T4b and Florimel, who appeared only a half-minute apart. She already knew T4b's true face, although she had never seen him with his lank black hair combed and all his subdermals ignited.

"Only lit 'em halfway," he explained. "More classy, seen?" He lifted his arm to display a perfectly normal left hand. "Wish this was far shiny still, like in the network. That was crash!"

Florimel's real face was a bit of a surprise. She looked younger than the peasant sim in which she had spent so much time, perhaps only in her middle thirties, with an open, attractive, square-jawed face and a functional haircut not much longer than Renie's own. Only the black eyepatch made her someone who would provoke a second look.

"How is your eye?" Renie asked.

Florimel kissed her on both cheeks, then did the same for !Xabbu. "Not good. I'm mostly blind in this eye, although there is better news about the ear—my hearing is coming back." She turned to Sellars. "But I am grateful for the help, not just with my own injuries, but with Eirene. Hospitals are very expensive."

Reminded, Renie wanted to talk about the money, but Florimel had raised a more important issue. "How is she?"

Florimel's mouth quirked in a sad smile. "She is intermittently conscious, but she does not really see me. Not yet. I cannot stay long at this meeting. I do not like her to wake up alone." She was silent for a moment. "And your brother? I have heard the signs are good."

Renie nodded. "So far. Stephen is awake and talking—he recognized me and our father. He has a long road ahead—lots of physical therapy, and there may be some other problems we don't know about yet, but it looks good, yes."

"That is truly splendid news, Renie," said Florimel.

Hideki Kunohara nodded. "Congratulations."

"Major dzang," added T4b.

"I'm sure Eirene will get better, just like Stephen," Renie said.

"She has the best doctors in Germany," Florimel replied. "I have hope."

"Which brings up a point." Renie turned to Sellars. "The money? Several million credits in an account under my name?"

He cocked his hairless head. "Do you need more?"

"No! No, I don't need more. In fact, I'm not sure I need . . . or deserve . . . any of it."

"You deserve everything," Sellars told her. "Money is a poor substitute, but it will help you keep your family together. Please, you and all the others here have been through a terrible time, in large part because I dragged you in. And I have no use for it now."

"That's not the point. . . !" she began, but was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a well-dressed man she did not recognize. Sellars introduced him as Decatur Ramsey, an American. Ramsey greeted Renie and the others as though he was meeting people he had heard about for a long time. "Sam Fredericks and Orlando Gardiner are going to be here in a moment, too," Ramsey said. "They're finishing their preparations for a . . . little project."

"We are only waiting on them," Sellars said, "and then we can begin." He shook his head. "No, I tell a lie, there is one other on her way." Even as he finished the words a small, heavyset woman appeared in the chair beside him.

"Hello." The apparent stranger had a stern if slightly unsettled look on her sharp-featured face. "I suppose I should say thank you for inviting me."

"Thank you for making the time to come, Mrs. Simpkins," Sellars replied. "Ah, and here are Orlando and Sam."

Orlando's barbarian avatar seemed flushed and nervous, Sam's more realistic sim not much less so. "We're all set, Mr. Ramsey," Orlando announced after waving to the others.

"I can't tell you how strange this all is." Ramsey smiled. "Not just this place, but especially to be talking to you, Orlando." His face suddenly fell. "I'm sorry, you probably didn't need to be reminded. . . ."

"That I died? Hard to forget, especially today." He summoned a creditable smile. "But there's no reason you can't be friends with someone just because they're dead—right, Sam?"

"Stop it!" She clearly didn't enjoy Orlando's new line in humor very much.

"You make a joke, Orlando," !Xabbu said, "but we have all learned much about friendship and how wide it stretches. We have helped each other many times, as Mr. Sellars earlier said. We are . . . we are one tribe now." He looked a little embarrassed. "If that makes sense."

"It does," said Sam Fredericks quickly. "It utterly does."

"And perhaps that is a good beginning for our meeting today," said Sellers. "And helps to explain why I hope we will meet regularly here in the network, since great geographical distances separate us. For today, we should also thank Hideki Kunohara for inviting us to his new home."

Before Kunohara could do more than nod, Martine sat forward in her chair. "All well and good, but I believe we still have some unfinished business with Mr. Kunohara—specifically, an unanswered question." It was the first time she had spoken since her arrival, and the rawness of her voice seemed at odds with the spirit of reunion. "First, though, I would like to know how long you two have been working together."

"We two?" Sellars raised a hairless eyebrow. "Kunohara and I? Only in the last hours of the old network, when I had begun to understand the shape of things. But we knew each other a little."

"He . . . felt me out on the subject of investigating the Grail Brotherhood," explained Kunohara. "But I was not interested in risking their attention—make of that what you will. Sellars made an arrangement with Bolivar Atasco instead. The late Bolivar Atasco. I am satisfied with my choice."

"No one will criticize you for not being killed," Martine said dryly. "But what about that unanswered question—the one I asked you back in the earlier version of this house, just before we were attacked?"

"And that question was. . . ?"

Martine snorted. "Please, we must be done with games now. I asked if you were spying on us. You never answered."

Kunohara smiled and folded his hands. "Of course I was spying on you. Every time I turned around, there you all were, disturbing the status quo, threatening my own safety. Why would I not do my best to find out what you were doing, what effect it was having?"

Renie only imperfectly understood what had happened between Kunohara and the others—her own memories of him stopped with their strange conversation while watching the soldier-ant invasion. "You were . . . spying on us?"

"Not all along. But after our initial meeting, yes."

"How? Or to be more precise," Martine said ominously, "who? Is there one of us who has not told all the truth?"

"Do not be too quick to accuse," Sellars said. "Remember we are friends here."

Kunohara was shaking his head. "It was the man I knew as Azador. I first discovered him as he wandered through my simulation. He told me tales of what else he had seen and it became clear to me that he could travel the network almost as easily as one of the Grail Brotherhood. I did not understand then that he was a partial version of Jongleur or I would have been more cautious, but I did know he was valuable—and, fortunately for me, easy to convince. I reinforced some of his rather fuzzy notions about the wrongs the Brotherhood had done to him—things he may have picked up in a subliminal way from the Other itself, as the many fragmented versions of Avialle Jongleur also partook of the Other's thoughts—and set him out to discover things for me."

"You set him to spy on us," Martine said heavily.

"Not at first, no. I met him before I knew anything of you. I was mostly interested in finding out more about the Brotherhood's plans—as I told you once, living with them as neighbors and landlords was like trying to stay alive in the courts of the Medici. And he was in any case not that biddable a servant. I had no idea he had purloined the access device, the thing in the shape of a lighter, from General Yacoubian." He spread his hands. "So, yes, I am guilty of your accusation. Later, in my own covert travels through Jongleur's Egypt, I heard that these two," he paused to point to Orlando and Sam, "were asking about Priam's Walls."

"Then you must have talked to old Oompa-Loompa," Sam said. "I don't think we told anyone else."

Kunohara nodded. "Yes, Upaut. A very strange sort of a god, wasn't he? He was quite happy to tell me that, as he put it, when you weren't busy worshiping him you had told him of your quest."

"So you sent Azador to spy on us in Troy," Martine said.

"I tried. But the Iliad and Odyssey simworlds were misbehaving—some combination of your own presences and the Other's interest in you, I think. If Paul Jonas had not rescued him, Azador would not have lived to be there."

"You blame it on Paul?" Martine asked angrily.

Kunohara lifted a hand. "Peace, I blame no one. I have admitted my acts. I merely point out that coincidences—or things that seem like coincidences—have informed much of what we experienced."

"Unless there are more questions. . . ." Sellars began.

"What has happened to Dread?" Martine had clearly come to the meeting in search of answers. "Reports suggest he is unconscious, in something like a Tandagore coma. Does that mean that he will wake up someday, like Renie's brother?"

"Even if he does," Sellars said, "he is in police custody in Australia, heavily guarded—a famous murderer."

"He is a devil," she said flatly. "I will believe he is harmless when he is dead. Perhaps not even then."

"As far as I can reconstruct it, he never detached from the system." Sellars was quiet but firm. "He was in close contact with the Other right to . . . to the end. You all know what it was like to be linked to the Other's mind—you perhaps most of all, Ms. Desroubins. Do you really think Dread could survive the Other's death and stay sane?"

"But what if he is alive somewhere in the network?" Martine demanded. "What if his consciousness has survived there, like Orlando's? Like Paul's did—for a while," she finished harshly.

Sellars nodded, as though accepting a reasonable punishment. "There is no evidence that such a thing happened, no trace of a virtual mind or body constructed, no smallest hint of Dread anywhere in the resurrected system or network. That is not complete proof, perhaps, but I think that what seems true here is true. His mind could not withstand the horror at the end. The doctors who examined him say he is catatonic and will stay that way." He looked around. "Now as I was saying, if there are no more questions I will take it as my cue finally to speak about the reason we are all here."

"We're all here because you asked us to be here," Renie pointed out. "Even if we had to come with street-shop gear."

Sellars briefly closed his eyes; Renie felt like an obstreperous schoolgirl, but she had thought Martine's questions entirely reasonable. "Yes," the old man said patiently. "And rather than continue to talk, when I know you've all heard too much of my voice lately, I am going to turn over those duties to Mr. Ramsey."

Catur Ramsey stood, then decided to sit down again. "Sorry," he said. "I'm a courtroom lawyer—I do my best talking on my feet—but I suppose it's a bit more appropriate to keep it informal, as befits a discussion among friends."

"A lawyer?" asked Martine. "What in the name of God for?"

Ramsey appeared a little daunted. "I suppose that's a good question. Well, first I think I have to make one thing explicit at the very beginning. We consider you all founding members of the Otherland Preservation Trust."

Renie couldn't believe her ears. "A . . . what? A preservation. . . ?"

"The governments of southern Africa made many trusts for my people and their land." !Xabbu's voice had an uncommon edge to it. "Afterward, my people had no land."

"Just let me explain, please," said Ramsey. "No one is taking anything away from anyone. I'm involved in this because I was dragged into it, not because I wanted to be."

"You don't have to defend yourself, Mr. Ramsey," Sellars said. "Just explain what happened to you."

And so the lawyer did. It was a piece of the story Renie hadn't heard—a strange and shocking piece. It was the first time she had heard more than a brief mention of Olga Pirofsky or the little girl Christabel Sorensen.

God, this was big, she thought. It wasn't just us on the inside and my father and Del Ray and Jeremiah on the outside. And then she thought, I want to meet some of those people—the little girl and boy we saw at the end. They were real children! I want to meet everyone. After all, we're the members of a very small, special club.

And I want to see the Stone Girl again, she realized. She may not have been real, but I certainly miss her. She resolved to ask Sellars about it when she had a chance.

Ramsey's recital drew questions—many of those present were only now putting all the details together. By the time they had all lapsed into overwhelmed silence, more than half an hour had passed.

"It seems I owe you an apology, Mr. Ramsey," Martine said at last. "You have had your own difficult journey."

"Nothing like what you all went through, Ms. Desroubins. And that's not even speaking of those who didn't come through—Olga, her poor, mistreated son, your friend Paul Jonas. Compared to the rest of you, I don't have much stake in this. But that's all the more reason I'd like you to listen."

Renie said, "I think we're listening now."

"Thanks." He took a moment to compose himself. "Now, what you've heard already from Mr. Sellars is that the stored code for the network was basically intact." He gestured to the bubble-distorted view of giant trees. "As you can see, Mr. Kunohara has largely recovered his own world already. And there are other worlds waiting to be saved, too. With time, everything could be saved."

"Could be?" Martine was still asking questions, just a little more gently. "Why the conditional?"

"Because unless we take a bold step," Sellars said with some heat, "I do not want to save them." He waited until the clamor died down. "I apologize—I should not have interrupted, Mr. Ramsey. Please continue."

"The problem has a couple of parts," Ramsey explained. "The first is—who owns the network? It was built by the Grail Brotherhood, but all the guiding members are dead. They built it through various business entities, but in many cases by illegally funneling monies out of their own corporations or the countries they ruled—embezzlement for purely personal benefit." He shrugged. "The two largest pieces of technical infrastructure belonged to J Corporation and Telemorphix. J Corporation still exists, but its headquarters is a lump of rubble and molten glass in the middle of a Louisiana lake and its founder is dead. Nothing like that happened to Telemorphix, although Wells is definitely dead, too—you may have noticed they finally announced it." He took a breath. "The fact is, the squabble over ownership is going to go on for decades. Trust me—this affair is going to be worth hundreds and hundreds of millions just to the trial attorneys."

"So what are we supposed to do?" asked Bonnie Mae Simpkins, who had been largely silent. "That's just how things work, isn't it? Regular folks get it in the neck and the lawyers and big businesses make out like bandits."

"I wish I could take time to defend my profession," Ramsey said. "We're not all sharks. But there's another question—a vital one. And the person at the center of that question is right here in this room."

Sellars saved them from a search for dark corners in the cornerless bubble. "We're talking about Orlando Gardiner, of course. This network is Orlando's home now. He can't live anywhere else."

Orlando shrugged. "Nobody's going to be pulling the plug, are they? Not for a while."

"But there's even more to it," Ramsey said. "Mr, Kunohara?"

Their host leaned forward, wearing one of his odd half-smiles. "All of you—well, almost all—were with me when the information life-forms were set free. Despite the objections of some of those present, by the way, I do think that was the only rational solution. Can you imagine the political and legal struggles to determine their fate if we had left it up to the people back in the real world?" He said it as scornfully as if he owed that place no allegiance at all. "Well, I have something else to tell you. Those creatures . . . a bad word . . . those beings are gone now, released from their so-strict confinement. But the evolutionary algorithms first generated by Sellars, the processes which helped create them, were not kept in such a secure way. Remember, the Other was not a discrete entity monitoring a network from some separate location—in some ways, the network was the Other's body. Any evolutionary biologist knows that cells which prove useful in one part of an evolving organism may eventually be put to use in other parts as well. And the evolution of both the Other and the Grail network itself has been rapid and not very well understood.

"For a long time I have been discovering examples here in my own simworld of unusual or even impossible mutations. The first appeared years ago, and thus had nothing to do with the more grotesque mutations forced by Dread. Initially I thought these things were just flaws in the programming, then later I put it down to Grail Brotherhood manipulations. Now I think differently. I believe that the Other put some of the same evolutionary aigontnms which helped shape its children into use in the network at large—or at least unknowingly allowed them to seep into the code."

"So there are like, too many mutants," Sam said. "Do you want Orlando to kill them? He's ho dzang at killing mutants."

Kunohara looked at her in horror. "Kill them? Don't you understand, child? This may not be the kind of evolutionary breakthrough that the information life represented—that life was hothoused, protected, even hastened toward more complex evolution—but it is still something rare and wonderful. In a sense, this entire network may almost be alive! Whether through slow change to the general matrix, the springing up of unusual forms, or even a deepening of the individuality of the virtual inhabitants, I suspect that the algorithms have already had an effect." He settled back, smiling again, clearly pleased with the prospect. "We have no idea what this network can become—all we know is that it is far more complex and vital than any mere virtual reality simulation."

"So," Martine said, "this is the crux."

"Exactly." Catur Ramsey nodded. "We all can guess both the good and bad that might come from this network. The good—a place like no other, almost a new universe for humankind to protect and explore and study. The bad—uncontrolled growth of pseudo-evolutionary information organisms. Possible contamination of the worldwide net. Who knows what else? Now, do you really, really want to put those potentialities into the hands of the same corporations that built it—and their lawyers?"

Renie broke the long, uncomfortable silence. "Since we couldn't bring ourselves to kill off the Other's children, you're obviously not going to suggest we blow up the entire network. But sending it off into space doesn't seem to fit the bill this time. So what's the alternative? You look like you have an alternative in mind,"

Sellars nodded. "We hide it."

"What?" Dumbfounded, Renie looked at !Xabbu, but to her astonishment he was smiling. She turned back to Sellars. "How in the hell can you hide it? Del Ray Chiume, just for one, has already been repeating what I told him about the network on every newsnet that can get a feed out of downtown Durban. There must be others, too—something this big won't just vanish. People are filing court cases already, for goodness' sake."

"And I am one of them," said Ramsey. "No, we can't pretend it doesn't exist."

"But what we show them won't necessarily be the real thing," Sellars explained. "Don't forget, I have a great deal of control over the network now. In fact, with enough processing power—power I'm sure the corporations and governments concerned will be happy to supply—I can reconstitute the entire network for them. But I don't even have to do that—I can just give them the code and let them do it themselves.

"However, that doesn't mean what they get will be the network we all experienced, especially if I sanitize their version first to remove anything that was not in the Grail Brotherhood's original code—that should make sure they don't get hold of any of the Other's mutated algorithms, which didn't exist until he found my experiments. Meanwhile, the true network can exist in careful isolation on the free-floating private web I've put together, based on the TreeHouse model. There are sympathetic parties who will support us. We can keep our network entirely separate."

"Separate, yes," said Martine, "but secret?"

"If we allow very few people to enter, I think we might be able to manage it. Remember, Otherland is not really a place, it's an idea—an idea that can be moved at a moment's notice if sufficient preparations have been made."

"And who would be allowed to enter this separate, secret place?" Martine asked.

"You, of course—all of you. And selected guests of our choice. That is why we call you founding members of the Otherland Preservation Trust. If you agree, that is. If you can imagine some better alternative, please tell me."

Renie listened to the others—all except !Xabbu—as they began to talk and argue, struggling to make sense of what had been said, but she wanted a more crucial question answered. "Why did you smile?" she asked !Xabbu. "Do you think this is a good idea?"

"Of course," he said. "The big and strong cannot help but draw attention to themselves—they will always battle each other. The small and silent will hide and survive."

"But do we have a right to do that?"

He shrugged, but he was stilt smiling. "Did the shining lights—the information life-forms, as that fellow Kunohara called them—did they have a right to make the stories of my people their own? Who knows, but the world is different because of it. Who do you trust, Renie? These people, our friends . . . our tribe . . . or people who have never been here and who have not fought together to survive, as we have?"

She nodded, but she was still troubled.

"What about you, Mr. Sellars?" she asked, stilling the last of the questioning voices. "I believe you are a good man. Do you feel comfortable taking on so much responsibility? You can call us a trust, but in the end it's you we will all be trusting. Because we don't have the power you have. You will be God in this new universe."

"Only for a while," he said. "Because I am working even now to put myself out of a job." He held up a gnarled hand. "Have you wondered why, with all the resources of the Otherland network, I haven't chosen a more attractive appearance? Because this is the real Patrick Sellars—burned, twisted, all but dead. Or it was, until I found a way to lose my crippled body. But I don't want to forget it. You won't see me manifesting as Jove, throwing thunderbolts." He grinned. "Please! I'd kill myself laughing. But it's a serious question, Renie, and the only real answer is . . . no, I don't trust myself with so much power, even if it is power over a universe very few people will ever know about. But I don't know anyone else I would trust with such singular power either. That's why I need you all to help me make decisions."

"Why me?" asked Bonnie Mae. "I'm not one of your volunteers."

"You're not only a person of faith, you're a person of good faith," he said. "We need to hear what you bring. In fact, I hope you can convince Nandi Paradivash to come to the next meeting. We need him, too."

"He's hurting, Mr. Sellars." She shook her head. "He told me he was going back to the burning ground, whatever that means. That he was going to start over."

"We need him," Sellars said firmly. "Please tell him so." He raised his scarred head. "As I said, I really do want to make myself obsolete. Once things are up and running, these new worlds won't need another God—neither the twisted sort the Grail Brotherhood made or a caretaker deity like me. Besides, I have other ambitions."

Even Kunohara and Ramsey seemed puzzled by this. "Other ambitions. . . " asked Hideki Kunohara.

"You saw where the others went," Sellars said. "The new creatures. How they rode the light out into the great unknown. Well, I'm information now, too. One day, when I'm not needed anymore, it will be good to be free to fly again."

Renie wasn't sure why Catur Ramsey laughed. She thought what Sellars said was very touching. "So . . . so what does this Otherland Trust do?" she asked. "Vote on things?"

"Yes—in fact we have something to vote on now." Sellars looked over at Sam and Orlando, who were whispering. "Orlando—would you please rise?"

Renie could not hide a smile. He sounded like a schoolteacher.

Orlando stood, a strange mixture of barbarian grace and teenage awkwardness. "Have you decided on what you want to call yourself?" Sellars asked him.

"I think so."

"But he's already got a name!" It was clear Sam Fredericks had not known this was coming, whatever it was.

"It's not another name he needs," Sellars told her, "but a title. Whatever happens, the worlds of the network will need lots of supervision, especially at first as we bring them back online. I can't do it all. I considered Kunohara, but he has made it clear he does not wish such an active role. Also, I need to train someone for the long term, teach them some of my responsibilities, as a maintenance man if not as a god—especially if I hope to ride the sky-river-of-light someday, as our absent friends called it. So I need an . . . apprentice, I suppose. Orlando?"

"I think I want to be called . . . a ranger." Renie thought she saw a blush beneath the deep tan. "I plan to travel a lot, so it makes sense. And to kind of have responsibility for the place, too—like a forest ranger. And . . . and it has another meaning. From a favorite book of mine."

Sellars nodded. "An excellent choice. But may we at least dignify it with the little 'Head Ranger'?" He Smiled. "Considering that this network was largely the province of one astounding mind, that adds another layer of meaning, too." He turned to the table. "Let us vote. All in favor of Orlando Gardiner as the first Head Ranger of the Otherland network. . . ."

All the hands went up.

"Wow, Gardino," Sam Fredericks said in a loud stage-whisper. "Now you're Assistant God!"

"Yeah, and I never even got a high school education."

"Enough jokes, you two," Sellars said kindly. "I believe you have another meeting to attend?"

"Oh, yeah." Orlando's good cheer suddenly evaporated and he was pure nervous adolescent. "Yeah, we do." He and Sam stood up. "Mr. Ramsey, are you coming?"

"I'm ready," the lawyer told them.

"But we have come to no conclusion about the network itself," Martine protested. "Surely it is too important a question simply to abandon."

"It is indeed," Sellars said. "But we have days, perhaps even weeks, to make our decisions. Try to get Nandi Paradivash to come to the next meeting. Let's say in two days, shall we?"

Renie almost complained that two days was too soon, that some of them had to find jobs, but then she remembered. "About that money. . . ." she said.

Sellars shook his head, "There's no one to give it back to—I'm dead, remember? If you don't want it, I'm sure you can find a worthy cause that will accept a large donation." He seemed to enjoy her frustration. "And if you remind me, I'll arrange a better way for you to get online next time. You might want to consider getting a neurocannula, unless you have some religious objection."

By the time Sellars moved off, summoned by Hideki Kunohara for a private chat in one of the adjoining rooms, Orlando, Sam, and Catur Ramsey had already left and the others were all talking—all but Martine, who still sat apart as though she were a stranger at the gathering. Renie squeezed !Xabbu's hand before moving around the table toward her. Martine looked up, but it was impossible to glean anything about the woman's emotional state from her featureless sim.

"So does the money upset you, too?" Renie asked. I am grateful, I suppose, but it does seem a little highhanded. . . ."

Martine seemed surprised. "The money? No, Renie, I have scarcely thought of it. I was wealthy already, from my settlement, and . . . and I have few needs. I have already earmarked my share to go to children's charities. It seems appropriate."

"You can see now, can't you? Is it strange?"

"A bit." She sat motionless. "I will grow used to it. In time."

Renie searched for something to keep the conversation going. "There's something I've been thinking about. Emily. And Azador."

Martine nodded slowly. "That had occurred to me as well."

"I mean, if she was really a version of Ava—and Azador was really Jongleur. . . !"

The Frenchwoman could not show it with her face, but there was a sour tone in her voice. "It is stranger than incest, when you consider that Ava was a clone—and strangely accurate as well, when you consider the child she was meant to bear. I suppose it was a subconscious expression of Jongleur's ultimate vanity." She sighed. "It was all as haunted and ugly as the House of Atreus. But they are dead now. All of them . . . every one . . . dead."

"Oh, Martine, you seem so sad."

The featureless sim shrugged. "There is little in it worth talking about."

"And you seem very angry about Paul."

She did not reply immediately. On the other side of the table, Bonnie Mae Simpkins laughed at some remark of !Xabbu's, although the small man looked entirely serious.

"Paul Jonas was very unhappy . . . at the end," Martine finally said. "He was devastated to realize that he was a copy, as he put it. That he could never have the things he wanted most of all—that he was separated forever from the life he remembered. Yes, I am angry. He was a good, good man. He did not deserve that. Sellars had no right."

Renie thought that somehow, Martine felt the same kinds of things Paul had. "Sellars was doing his best. We all were."

"Yes, I know." The edge was gone and only listlessness remained. Renie almost missed the anger. "But I cannot get it out of my mind. His loneliness. That feeling of being exiled from your own life. . . ."

Renie was trying to think of something reassuring to say until she noticed that the quality of Martine's silence had changed. Even without a facial expression to read, Renie could see a certain tension, an alertness in the woman's sim that hadn't been there before.

"I have been a fool," Martine said suddenly. "A selfish fool."

"What. . . ?"

"I'm sorry, Renie. I have no more time to talk. We will speak later, I promise." With that, she disappeared.

Troubled, Renie wandered back around the table.

"Javier is criticizing my appearance," Florimel announced.

"Chance not!" T4b said. The glyphs of light on his cheeks dimmed when he blushed. "Just saying that the patch looks chizz. She only did some other stuff, could be major scorchery."

"Like what?" Florimel gave him a severe look. "Buy my sim some gigantic breasts?"

Javier shook his head vigorously. "Didn't say that, me—not all unrespectful like that! Just meant you could get some sub-Ds. Like your initials, something. . . ." He trailed off and his own subdermals became even harder to see. "Oh. You molly-dupping me, huh?"

"If that means teasing, Javier, then yes." Florimel shared an amused glance with Renie. "But why are you so dressed up? I'm assuming that is what you really look like today. Such nice clothes just for old friends like us?"

He shrugged. "Got an interview, me."

"For a job?" Renie asked.

"Chance not. Tryin' to get back into school. AGAPA."

"Arizona General and Pastoral Academy," Mrs. Simpkins elaborated.

"Seen. It was Bonnie Mae's idea, like." He suddenly looked like he wanted to back away from the gathering. "Well, mine too."

"Tell them what you want to do, Javier," Mrs. Simpkins said.

He scowled, "Thought . . . thought after all the things happened, I might try to be . . . a minister, like. Youth minister, seen? Work with micros." His shoulders came up as if to protect him from a beating. He looked at Florimel out of the corner of his eye.

Renie and !Xabbu congratulated him, but he was waiting for something.

"Well," Florimel said after a moment. "I think that is a wonderful idea, Javier. I really do." Smiling, she leaned forward and carefully kissed him on his glowing cheek. "I hope your dream comes true."

Even as his subdermals threatened to disappear entirely, another kind of light stole onto his face. "Make it through all that sayee lo stuff, can make it through anything, me," he promised.

"Amen," said Bonnie Mae.

CHAPTER 52The Oracle Surprised

CHAPTER 52
The Oracle Surprised