CHAPTER 17
A Call from Jeremiah

NETFEED/SPORTS: Caribe Youth Signs "Guinea Pig" Contract

(visual: Bando playing dirt court basketball game)

VO: Solomon Bando, a twelve-year-old Dominican boy, will become the first child to receive hormone treatments paid for and administered by a professional sports franchise. Bando's family signed a contract with the Ensenada ANVAC Clippers of the World Basketball Association that permits their son, chosen as an optimum specimen from several hundred applicants, to undergo a series of body-building hormone treatments and bone grafts designed to help him reach an adult height of at least seven and a half feet,

(visual: Roland Krinzy, Clippers vice president)

KRINZY: "We're building for the future, not just taking the short view. Our fans appreciate that."

 

Renie fumbled with her packages, trying to juggle them into some kind of manageable arrangement. The bus wheezed and rolled slowly away on underinflated tires, off to deposit a few more souls on a few more corners, like a strange animal marking the circuit of its territory.

The day had turned even hotter while she had been on the bus, although the sun was well down toward the horizon; she could feel sweat trickling down the back of her neck and along her spine. Before the fire, her stop had been only a few streets from her flat, although that had always seemed a terrible trudge at the end of a working day. Only two weeks later, she was beginning to look back on the old days with nostalgic fondness.

The streets of Lower Pinetown were full, as they usually were this time of the day. People of all ages lounged in doorways or on front steps, gossiping with neighbors next door or even across the street—shouting something scurrilous so everyone who could hear was part of the fun. In the middle of the road a group of young men were playing football, the contest watched closely by a pack of children who ran up and down the sidewalks as the progress of the match shifted from one end of the street to the other, and more casually by the audience on the stoops. Most of the players wore only shorts and battered takkies. As she watched their perspiration-slicked bodies move, listened to them laughing and shouting, Renie felt a deep, hollow craving for someone to hold her and love her.

Waste of time, girl. Too much to do.

One of the young men in the match, lean and shaven-headed, looked something like her old boyfriend Del Ray, even had a little of his insolent grace. For a moment he was there in the street in front of her, even though she knew the boy who had captured her attention was years younger. She wondered what the real Del Ray was doing, where he was at this very moment. She hadn't thought of him in a while, and wasn't sure she was happy to be reminded. Had he gone to Johannesburg, as he had always sworn he would? Surely nothing could have kept him from going into government and making his way up the ladder of respect—Del Ray had been very ambitious. Or was he still here in Durban, perhaps returning home from work to a waiting woman—to his wife, maybe. It had been at least five years since she'd seen him, time enough for anything to have happened. He might have children. For all she knew, he might be dead.

She shivered a little and realized she had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. The young man, who now raced ahead of the entire pack dribbling the scuffed ball, flew past her. She saw a flash of gold in his grin of exertion. He didn't really look much like Del Ray.

A group of small children swept past her like an ocean wave, following the young man who wasn't her old boyfriend as he hurtled toward the goal. She had to cling to her packages as the shrieking troop swirled by, then she began walking again. A few hundred yards took her past the stoops and into the small and rather depressing shopping district.

A dress in a window caught her eye. She slowed. The pale fabric had a strange sheen, and the slanting sunlight seemed to move across it unevenly. It was odd but somehow striking, and she stopped to look more closely. It had been a long time since she'd bought herself any clothes that weren't practical.

She shook her head with a small sense of triumphant martyrdom. If there was ever a time when she needed to save her money, when she couldn't afford something just because it would make her feel nice, now was that time.

A movement in or behind the reflection caught her eye as she turned back to the sidewalk, for a moment she thought it was someone in the shop window, but when she moved to a different angle, she could see the window was empty but for mannequins. Something had moved quite close behind her. She whirled, but saw only a bit of dark clothing disappearing down a sidestreet a dozen yards away. Just the other side, walking away from Renie on the sidewalk, two young women were looking back over their shoulders with faintly puzzled expressions, as though watching whoever it might have been.

Renie readjusted her bag and walked a little more purposefully. It was not as if it were after dark, or she were the only person on the street. A small crowd stood in front of the corner market just a hundred steps ahead, and there were at least a half-dozen people closer to her than that. She might well be in some kind of trouble, but it was dangerous to start believing that people were following you.

As she waited to cross the street, she casually turned and looked back, A rangy man in a dark shirt and metal-framed sunglasses was staring fixedly into the dress shop window. He did not meet her eyes or show any sign that he even knew she existed, but she still felt a kind of attention emanating from him.

Perhaps she was jumping at shadows. Then again, that was what they called it when somebody followed somebody, wasn't it—shadowing?

It's dangerous to believe that people are following you, but maybe it's dangerous to disbelieve it, too.

She went into the market on the corner even though she'd already done her shopping near the Poly. where the better stores were. When she came out with a soft drink in her hand, there was no sign of the man in the dark shirt.

 

The shelter had been a truck depot, and it still retained its former sense of intimacy and warmth. The twelve-meter-high ceilings gaped in places where the cheap corrugated fibramic didn't quite meet. The floor was concrete, still blackened in places with ancient oil stains. The Greater Durban Social Welfare Department had done what it could, mostly with volunteer labor—the huge space had been hived with fiberboard partitions across which curtains could be hung, and a wide, carpeted common area in one corner held a wallscreen, a large gas fire, dartboards, and an old billiards table—but the building had been converted hastily in the wake of the flooding three years before and hadn't been modified since. At the time it had been meant only as temporary housing for those displaced from the lower townships, but after the overspill had receded, the local government had kept the building. They hired it out between the fairly infrequent emergencies for dances and political rallies, although it had a core population that had never found other homes.

Keeping the shelter had not meant being able to improve it, though. Renie wrinkled her nose as she walked across the open area near the front door. How could a place that was so drafty in cold weather hold in the heat and stink so effectively during the summer?

She dumped the packages in the four-by-three-meter booth which was their temporary home. Her father wasn't there, but she had not expected him to be. She pulled the tab on a cigarette, kicked off her shoes, then pulled the curtain closed so she could take off her work clothes and keep them relatively clean. When she had changed into shorts and a loose-fitting shirt, she put the groceries in the tiny refrigerator, set the kettle on the hot plate, stubbed her cigarette, and went off to search for Long Joseph.

He was over by the wallscreen with the usual bunch of men, some his age, some younger. They were watching a football match being played on green grass somewhere, a contest between well-paid professionals in one of the commercial sports-ground Neverlands that only existed on broadcasts; she couldn't help thinking about the real game in the street only a short distance away. What brought the young men in out of the sunshine and turned them into the only slightly older ones here—slow of speech but quick to argue, shallow-swimming, content to sit and nurse a few beers through a long afternoon in a steamy warehouse? How could men start out so strong, so vital, and then turn so sour?

Her father looked up at her approach and, in guilty reflex, attempted to hide his beer. She ignored it. "I'm making some coffee, Papa, then we have to go see Stephen."

He sneaked a quick look down at the bottle held against his leg. It was almost empty. The other men were watching the screen intently. Renie had heard a colleague say that men were like dogs; if so, it was never more apparent than when they watched the movement of a ball. Long Joseph swallowed the last mouthful, then put it down on the concrete with a defiant flourish. "I'll come. Got to see the boy."

As they walked back across the broad expanse, Renie thought she saw the man in the dark shirt again, this time silhouetted in the front doorway, but it was hard to be certain with the light streaming in from behind him. She pushed down a surge of unease. Even if it were him, that didn't mean anything. There were almost five hundred people living in the shelter, and many more who just came in during the day to hang around. She knew only the few dozen other refugees from their burned flatblock.

She looked again when the light wasn't in her eyes, but couldn't see him anymore.

"It used to be good," her father said suddenly. "Every day. Good to do it."

"What?"

"When I was working. When I was an electrician. Finish up, put down the tools, stop with my friends to have a drink. Good to be finished. But then my back got hurt."

Renie said nothing. Her father's back injury had occurred, or at least he claimed it had occurred, in the year after the death of her Uma' Bongela, her grandmother, who had been the children's caretaker after their mother's death in the store fire. Long Joseph's injury had also coincided with his much greater interest in drinking, and in his coming back so late from his social evenings that Renie had usually taken her baby brother into bed with her to quiet his crying. She had always had her doubts about his back injury.

Unless he had been bowed down so long by hard work piled on hard work, and then by the added, almost impossible burden of losing wife and mother-in-law and being left as sole parent to two young children, that he had just reached a point where he could not straighten up anymore. That, too, could be called a back injury of sorts.

"You could still do it, you know."

"What?" He was distracted, staring out into the middle distance as he walked.

"Be an electrician. God knows, there're lots of people with problems around here. I bet they'd love to have you help them."

He gave her a quick, angry look before staring ahead again. "My back."

"Just don't do anything that will make it worse. I'm sure there're lots of other things you could do. Half the people in this building have their power outlets overloaded, old wires, bad appliances. You could go around and have a look. . . ."

"Goddamn, girl, if you want to get rid of me, just say it to me!" He was suddenly furious, his hands clenched into fists. "I'm not going 'round begging people for jobs. Trying to tell me my monthly payment isn't enough?"

"No, Papa." In his early fifties, he was becoming a querulous old man. She wanted to touch him but didn't dare. "No, Papa. It was just an idea. I'd just like to see you. . . ."

"Make myself useful? I'm useful to me, girl. Now you mind your own business."

They walked in silence back to their space. Long Joseph sat down on the bed and conducted a long, critical examination of his slippers while Renie made two cups of instant coffee. When the tablets had finished effervescing, she passed one to her father.

"Can I ask you something else, or are you going to be in a bad mood all evening?"

He looked at her over the rim of his cup. "What?"

"What did the man look like in front of our flatblock? Remember? The one you saw waiting in the car that night when !Xabbu came over."

He shrugged and blew on his coffee. "How do I know? It was dark. He had a beard, a hat. Why do you want to know that?"

The man shadowing her had been beardless, but that proved nothing—anyone could shave.

"I'm . . . I'm worried, Papa. I think there might be someone following me."

He scowled. "What nonsense is this? Following you? Who?"

"I don't know. But . . . but I think I may have upset somebody. I've been looking into what happened to Stephen. Doing some research on my own."

Long Joseph shook his head, still frowning. "What kind of silliness you talking, girl? Who following you, a crazy doctor?"

"No." She wrapped her hands around her own cup, strangely glad of the warmth despite the hot day. "I think something happened to him because of the net. I can't explain, but that's what I think. That's why I went to see my old teacher."

"What good that old white witch do you?"

"Damn it, Papa. I'm trying to talk to you! You don't know anything about Doctor Van Bleeck, so just shut up!"

He made a motion as if to rise, sloshing his coffee.

"Don't you dare get up. I'm talking to you about something important. Now, are you going to listen to me? I'm not the only relative Stephen has, you know—he's your son, too."

"And I'm going to him tonight." Long Joseph was full of wounded dignity, despite the fact that it was only his fifth visit, and all of them at Renie's strenuous urging. But he had settled back now, pouting like a scolded child.

She told him as much as she could, leaving out the more arcane bits of speculation and avoiding entirely the story of her last hour in Mister J's. She was too old and far too independent to be forbidden to do what she was doing, but she could not ignore the possibility that he might decide to protect her from herself, perhaps by damaging her pad or other equipment after a few drinks reminded him he was partly descended from warrior Zulus. She could carry on with her investigation from work if she had to, but she had already involved the Poly more than she'd liked, and she was also far behind on work because of her illness.

Long Joseph was oddly quiet after she finished her explanations. "I'm not surprised you almost kill yourself, working all day and then running around with all that other mess," he said at last. "That sounds like a lot of craziness to me. Something in a computer made that boy sick? I never heard of that."

"I don't know. I'm just telling you what I've been thinking about and doing. I have no proof."

Except one very blurry picture of a city, she thought. But only because I took my pad with me to Susan's. Only because I wasn't at home when that fire happened.

As if hearing her thoughts, her father abruptly said: "You think somebody came and set our flat on fire?"

"I . . . I don't know. I don't want to think it's that serious. I've been assuming it was just a normal fire—you know, an accident."

" 'Cause if you been messing with the wrong people, they'll burn you out. I know about that, girl. I seen it happen." Long Joseph stretched out his legs, staring at his stockinged feet. Despite his height, he suddenly seemed very small and very old. He leaned down, grunting softly as he felt on the floor for his shoes. "And now you think someone following you?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I just don't know anything right now."

He looked up at her, sullen and a little frightened. "I don't know what to say either, Irene. I hate to be hoping that my daughter is crazy in the head, but I don't like that other idea very much." He straightened up, captured shoes in his hand. "Let me put these on, then we better go see that boy."

 

 

After the visit, she led her father to the changing room so he could take off his Ensuit, then carefully changed her own, folding it before dropping it into the chute marked for the purpose. When she had finished, she walked to the restroom, sat down on the toilet, and cried. It started modestly, but within a few moments she could barely catch her breath. Her nose was even running, but she didn't care.

He was there, somewhere. Her Stephen, the little baby boy with the surprised eyes who used to crawl into her bed, was there somewhere inside that body. The lights on the machines, the monitors on his skull, all the instrumentation of modem medicine—or as much of it as was available in the Durban Outskirt Medical Facility—declared that he was not brain-dead. Not yet. But his limbs were more contorted every day, and his fingers had curled into tight fists despite the physical therapy. What was that horrible, horrible phrase? "Persistent vegetative state." Like a shriveled root. Nothing left but something stuck in the ground, darkly motionless both inside and out.

She couldn't feel him—that was the most horrifying thing. !Xabbu had said his soul was somewhere else, and although it was the sort of spiritualist homily that she usually nodded at while remaining privately scornful, she had to admit she felt the same way. The body was Stephen's, and it was still alive, but the real Stephen was not in it.

But what was the difference between that and a persistent vegetative state?

She was tired, so tired. The more she ran, the more she felt stuck in the same place, and she did not know where she would find the strength to keep running. At times like this, even a death as terrible as her mother's seemed a blessing by contrast—at least there was rest and peace for the victim and some kind of release for the mourning family.

Renie pulled down a hank of industrial-rough toilet paper and blew her nose, then took some more and wiped her eyes and cheeks. Her father would be getting restless. The kind of old magazines lying around the waiting room were not the kind of magazines that would keep his attention. Why was that? Were hospital magazines only ever provided by kindly little old ladies? The scarcity of sports news or semi-naked women showed that the reading material was never selected by men.

She dabbed at her face a little more as she stood in front of the mirror. The smell of disinfectant was so strong she thought her eyes would start watering all over again. That would be perfect, she thought sourly—work hard to look like you haven't been crying, then come out of the toilet with your eyes streaming anyway. She gave her lashes a last defiant blot.

Her father had indeed become restless, but he had found something to do. He was annoying a nicely dressed woman only a little older than Renie who had slid all the way down to the end of the couch to avoid Long Joseph's attentions. As Renie approached, her father scooted a little way nearer.

". . . A terrible ruckus, you see. Fire trucks, helicopters, ambulances. . . ." He was recounting the fire at their flatblock. Renie smiled a little, wondering if by showing up she'd spoiled the story of how he'd carried out all those women and children by himself.

"Come on, Papa," she began, then recognized the woman as Patricia Mwete, Soki's mother. They had not spoken since the disastrous conversation when Stephen's friend had fallen abruptly into seizure. "Oh, hello, Patricia," she said politely. "Papa, this is Soki's mother. Sorry, I didn't recognize you at first"

The other woman regarded her face—undoubtedly still tear-stained despite her best efforts—with a curious mixture of fear and uncomfortable sympathy. "Hello, Irene. Nice to meet you, Mister. . . ." She nodded carefully toward Long Joseph, obviously not yet sure that he wasn't going to come sliding farther down the couch toward her.

Renie paused for a moment, uncertain of what to say. She wanted to ask why Patricia was here, but the curious, almost superstitious courtesy of hospital waiting rooms didn't permit it. "We've been visiting Stephen," she said instead.

"How is he?"

Renie shook her head. "Just the same."

"They make you wear a foolish damn suit," Long Joseph offered. "Like my boy had the fever or something."

"It's not for that. . . ." Renie began, but Patricia interrupted her.

"Soki's in for tests. Three days, two nights. Just routine." She said that last defiantly, as if daring Renie to tell her otherwise. "But he gets so lonely, so I come see him after work." She lifted a package. "I brought him some fruit. Some grapes." She seemed about to cry herself.

Renie knew that Soki's troubles had not been either as mild or temporary as Patricia had claimed during their last meeting. She wanted to ask more, but didn't think it was the right time. "Well, give him my best. We'd better be going. I've got a long day tomorrow."

As her father began the apparently complicated process of standing up, Patricia suddenly put her hand on Renie's arm. "Your Stephen," she said, then stopped. The look of controlled worry had slipped; a mask of terror peeped through.

"Yes?"

Patricia swallowed and wavered a little, like someone about to faint. Her formal business clothes seemed the only thing keeping her upright "I just hope he gets better," she finished lamely. "I just hope they all get better."

Long Joseph was already heading for the exit. Renie watched him a little anxiously, as if he, too, were a troubled child. "Me, too, Patricia. Don't forget to say hello to Soki for me, okay?"

Patricia nodded her head and settled back on the couch, feeling for a magazine on the table without looking.

"She wanted to tell me something," Renie said as they waited for the bus. "Either that or she wanted to ask me something about Stephen."

"What are you talking about?" Her father prodded a discarded plastic bag with the toe of his shoe.

"Her boy Soki . . . something happened to him, too. While he was on the net. Like Stephen. I saw him having a fit afterward."

Long Joseph looked back toward the hospital entrance. "Her boy in a coma, too?"

"No. Whatever happened, it was different. But his brain was affected. I know it"

They sat side by side in silence until the bus pulled up. When her father was settled into his seat, he turned to her. "Somebody should find those net people, make them answer. Somebody should do something."

I am doing something, Papa, she wanted to say, but Renie knew that she was not the kind of somebody he had in mind.

 

 

It was dark. Even the stars barely shone, faint as mica chips in black sand. The only light in all the universe, it seemed, was the small fire burning within the circle of stones.

She heard voices, and knew that she was listening to her own children, and yet in some way they were also a tribe of strangers, a band that traveled through unimaginable lands. !Xabbu was one of them, and although she could not see him, she knew he was sitting beside her, one of the thin murmur of invisible souls.

A greater darkness lay on the distant horizon, the space it occupied the only part of the sky that contained no stars. It was a vast triangular shape, like a pyramid, but it stretched up impossibly high, as though they sat close to its base. As she stared at the great shadow, the voices around her murmured and sang. She knew they were all aware of that tall dark mass. They feared it, but they also feared to leave it behind, this the only familiar thing in all the night.

"What is it?" she whispered. A voice that she thought was !Xabbu's answered her.

"It is the place where the Burned One lives. On this night, he comes."

"We have to run away!" She suddenly knew that something was moving out beyond the firelight, something that lived in darkness the way fish lived in water. They were being stalked by something vast and tenebrous, and in all the twilit universe the only uncorrupted light came from the flames of this small fire.

"But he will only take a few," the voice said. "The others will be safe. Only a few."

"No! We can't let him have any of them!" She reached out, but the arm she clutched turned insubstantial as smoke. The murmuring grew louder. Something was coming nearer, something huge that rattled the trees and stones, that hoarsely breathed. She tried to pull her friend back, but he seemed to come apart in her hands. "Don't! Don't go!"

Old Night itself was coming down on them, the jaws of darkness stretching wide. . . .

 

Renie sat up, panting. The murmuring still filled her ears, louder now, voices gasping and growling. Something was thumping in the darkness nearby. She did not know where she was.

"Quiet yourself in there!" someone shouted, and she remembered that they were in the shelter. But the sounds were not distant. Bodies were struggling on the floor only a meter away from her.

"Papa!" She fumbled for the torch, turned it on. By its light she could see limbs moving erratically, thrashing and rolling, banging up against the fiberboard partitions. She could see the pale striped length of her father's pajamas, and nearby another torch lying on its side, spilling light like a tipped goblet. She rolled off the bed and grabbed Long Joseph's attacker around the neck, shouting: "Help! Someone, help us!"

There were more noises of complaint from other compartments, but some of the occupants seemed to be rousing themselves. She kept her grip on the stranger and curled her fingers in his hair, then pulled back hard. He let out a high-pitched shriek of pain and clawed at her hand.

Her father used the moment's respite to scramble free. The stranger had wriggled loose from Renie, but instead of fleeing, he crawled into a corner of the compartment and huddled there with his hands wrapped around his head to ward off further attacks. Renie kept the flashlight on him, then saw her father coming back with a long dull carving knife in his hand.

"Papa! Don't!"

"I kill the bastard." He was breathing painfully hard. She could smell the rank alcohol sweat coming off him. "Follow my daughter around!"

"We don't know! He could have got the wrong room. Just wait, damn you!" She crawled a little way toward the cowering stranger. "Who are you?"

"He knew what he doing. I hear him whisper your name."

Renie had a moment of horror—could it be !Xabbu, looking for her? But even in partial darkness, the stranger seemed far too large. She reached out carefully and touched his shoulder. "Who are you?" she repeated.

The man looked up, blinking in the torchlight. He had a cut across his hairline which was sheeting blood down his forehead. It took her a long moment to recognize him.

"Jeremiah?" she said. "From Doctor Van Bleeck's house?"

He stared for a moment, clearly unable to see her behind the torch. "Irene Sulaweyo?"

"Yes, it's me. For God's sake, what's happening here?" She stood. Already several people from the neighboring compartments were gathering outside the curtain, some with defensive weapons in hand. She went out and thanked them, telling them it had been a case of mistaken identity. They gradually dispersed, all relieved, some muttering imprecations about her drunkard father.

She went back inside to find Jeremiah Dako sitting against the wall, watching her father with some distrust. Renie found the small electric lantern and turned it on, then gave Dako some paper toweling to wipe his bloodied face. Her father, who was still staring at the intruder as though he might sprout fur and fangs at any moment, allowed himself to be conducted to a folding chair.

"I know this man, Papa. He works for Doctor Van Bleeck."

"What's he doing this hour, coming round here? He your boyfriend?"

Dako snorted with indignation.

"No, he's not my boyfriend." She turned. "What are you doing here at. . . ." she looked at her watch, ". . . one in the morning?"

"The doctor sent me. I couldn't find your number to call you."

She shook her head, puzzled. "She has my number—I know she does."

Jeremiah stared at the bloodsoaked paper in his hand for a moment, then looked up at Renie, eyes blinking rapidly.

Everybody's crying today, she thought What's going on?

"Doctor Susan is in the hospital," he said abruptly, furious and miserable. "She's very bad . . . very bad."

"Oh, my God." Renie reflexively tore off several more sheets of paper towel and gave them to him. "What happened?"

"Some men beat her up. They broke into the house." Dako just held the towel. A rill of blood descended to his eyebrow. "She asked to see you." He closed his eyes. "I think . . . I think she might die."

 

 

Smugly ensconced in his role as defender of the household, Long Joseph at first insisted on accompanying them. Only after Renie pointed out that they might have to spend several hours in the hospital waiting room did he decide to remain at the shelter as a bulwark against other, less forgivable prowlers.

Jeremiah drove swiftly through the nearly empty streets. "I don't know how the bastards got in. I went to see my mother—it's the night I always go. She's very old now, and she likes me to come and do things for her." The piece of toweling gleamed on his dark forehead, rorschached by drying blood. "I don't know how the bastards got in," he repeated. It was obviously something he considered a personal failure, despite his absence. In such circumstances, Renie knew, the housekeeper or other employees were usually the first suspects, but it was hard to doubt Dako's misery.

"Was it a robbery?"

"They didn't take much—some jewelry. But they found Doctor Susan in her lab downstairs, so they must have known about the elevator. I think they tried to make her tell where she kept the money. They broke everything—everything!" He sobbed, then clenched his lips tightly and for a few moments drove in silence.

"They destroyed things in her lab?"

He scowled. "They smashed things. They are like animals. We keep no money in the house! If they wanted to steal, why did they not steal the machines? They are worth more than the few rands we keep around to tip delivery boys."

"And how did you know the doctor wanted to see me?"

"She told me, while we were waiting for the ambulance. She could not talk much." Another sob shook him. "She was just an old woman! Who could do such a thing?"

Renie shook her head. "Terrible people." She could not cry. The streetlights sliding past had lulled her into a sort of dream state, as though she were a ghost haunting her own body. What was going on? Why did dreadful things keep happening to those around her? "Terrible, terrible people," she said.

Asleep, Susan Van Bleeck looked like an alien creature. She was festooned with sensors and tubes, and only the mummifying bandages seemed to be holding her discolored and broken body in something like human form. Her breath wheezed in and out of her parted lips. Jeremiah burst into tears once more and slumped to the floor beside her bed, hands clasped at the back of his neck as if to keep his head from flying off with the force of his grief.

As horrifying as it was to see her friend and teacher this way, Renie was still in a state of cold removal. This was the second time today she had been in a hospital, standing over the body of a silent loved one. At least the Westville University Medical Center did not have a Bukavu quarantine.

A young black doctor wearing a stained smock and glasses with a taped nosepiece looked in. "She needs rest," he said, frowning. "Concussion, lots of bones broken." He gestured loosely down the ward full of sleeping patients. "And it's not visiting time."

"She asked to see me," Renie explained. "She said it was important."

He frowned again, already distracted by some other thought, and wandered out.

Renie borrowed a chair from beside one of the other beds. The patient in the bed, a cadaverously thin young man, blinked awake to watch her with a caged beast's eyes, but did not speak or move. She returned to the bed and adjusted herself in a comfortable position to keep vigil, taking the less-bandaged of Susan's hands in hers.

She had sagged into a half-sleep when she felt a pressure on her fingers. She sat up. Doctor Van Bleeck's eyes were open and moving from side to side, as though she were surrounded by fast-moving shapes.

"It's me, Renie." She gently squeezed. "Irene. Jeremiah's here, too."

Susan stared at her for a moment, then relaxed. Her mouth was open, but nothing came out past the tube except a dry sound like an empty paper sack being blown along a street. Renie stood to go in search of water, but Dako, kneeling beside her, pointed to the "Nothing By Mouth" sign hung on the bed-stand. "They put wire in her jaw."

"You don't need to talk anyway," Renie told her. "We'll just stay here with you."

"Oh, little grandmother." Jeremiah pressed his forehead to the tube-girded arm. "I should have been there. How could I let this happen?"

Susan pulled her hand free from Renie's grip and lifted it slowly until she could touch Dako's face. Tears from his cheeks ran into her bandages. Then she gradually and deliberately put her hand back into Renie's once more.

"Can you answer questions?"

A squeeze.

"Two squeezes for no, then?"

Another squeeze.

"Jeremiah said you wanted to see me."

Yes.

"About the thing we talked about? The city?"

Yes.

Renie suddenly wondered if she could be misinterpreting, since she hadn't received anything but single squeezes. Susan's face was so swollen it was hard even to be sure of her expression; only her eyes moved.

"Do you want me to go home now and let you sleep?"

Two squeezes, quite firm. No.

"Okay, let me think. Did you find the place in the picture?"

No.

"But you found out something about it."

The squeeze was gentle and prolonged.

"Maybe?"

Yes.

Renie hesitated. "Did the men who hurt you . . . did they have something to do with this? What we talked about?"

Another long, slow pressure. Maybe.

"I'm trying to think of yes or no questions. This is really difficult. Do you think you could write or type?"

A long pause, then two squeezes.

"Then is there someone I should talk to? Someone who gave you information and who could give me the same information."

No. Then, a moment later, an additional pressure. Yes.

Renie briskly named all of Susan's colleagues she could remember, but received a negative response to all of them. She worked her way through various police and network agencies, but had no better luck. As she despairingly considered the amount of time an elimination process carried out entirely in manual binary might take, Susan pushed her hand farther into Renie's and turned it so all her fingers were against Renie's palm. They moved fitfully, like the legs of a dying moth. Renie gripped the old woman's hand, trying to give comfort. Susan hissed at her.

"What?"

The doctor laboriously moved her fingers in Renie's palm again. Where the full-hand squeezes had been easy to interpret, these movements were so light and so cramped as to seem nothing more than wriggling. Renie was defeated. "This is terrible. There must be some better way—typing, writing notes."

"She can't type," Jeremiah said mournfully. "Even when she could still talk. I tried before. I gave her pad to her, when she said call you, but she couldn't push the squeezer keys hard enough."

Susan weakly bumped her hand against Renie's palm again, glaring from the purple and red mask. Renie stared.

"That's it. That's what she's doing! Typing!"

Susan opened her hand again and squeezed Renie's fingers.

"But only the right hand?"

Two squeezes. No. Susan bumped the heel of her hand against Renie's palm, then laboriously lifted her arm and moved it across her body. Renie gently caught it and brought it back.

"I get it. You push like that when it means you're switching typing hands. That's what you mean, isn't it?"

Yes.

It was still a laborious process. Susan had great difficulty making Renie understand what squeezer keys the fingers of her right hand would be touching if they belonged to her left. It took almost an hour, with frequent stops for yes-and-no editing and correction, before she had finished her message. Susan had grown weaker throughout, and during the last fifteen minutes had barely been able to move her fingers.

Renie stared at the letters she had jotted in the margin of the hospital diet sheet. "B-L-U-D-G-A-N-C-H-R-I-T-B-C-R-F-L. But it doesn't make sense. Some of it must be abbreviated."

A final, weary squeeze.

Renie stood and leaned over the bed to brush her lips against Susan's broken-veined cheek. "I'll figure it out, somehow. Now, we've kept you awake far too long. You need some sleep."

Jeremiah stood, too. "I'll give you a ride back." He leaned over the doctor. "Then I'll be right back, little grandmother. Don't you be scared."

Susan made a whistling noise that was almost a moan. He paused. She stared at him, clearly frustrated by her inability to speak, then at Renie. Her eyes blinked slowly, once, twice.

"Yes, you're tired. You sleep now." Dako also leaned and kissed her. Renie wondered if that was the first time he had ever done so.

On the way out to the car, she had a sudden feeling that she knew what those blinks had been meant to say. Good-bye.

 

By the time Dako dropped her off, it was past four in the morning. She was too full of furious, frustrated anger to sleep, so she spent the hours before dawn staring at her pad, trying every way she could to find some shape behind the sequence of letters Doctor Van Bleeck had given her. The databanks of the net dumped back hundreds of names from all over the world—a dozen came from Brazil alone, and almost as many from Thailand—that actually contained most of the letters in sequence, but none of them seemed particularly likely. But if she couldn't turn up any better information, she would have to contact every one of them.

She watched as a codebreaking algorithm she had downloaded from the Polytechnic library assembled thousands of combinations that fit smaller segments of the letters, a dizzying assortment that made her eyes ache and her head buzz.

Renie smoked and watched the screen, punching in additional queries as they occurred to her. The day's first light began to leak in through the cracks in the roof. Her father snored happily in his bed, still wearing his slippers. Somewhere else in the shelter, some other early riser was playing a radio, bringing in news in an Asian language she didn't recognize.

Renie was just about to call !Xabbu, who she knew got up with the dawn, and tell him the news about Susan, when she suddenly saw the obvious thing she had missed. The last five letters of the doctor's laborious message: B-C-R-F-L. Be Careful.

Her irritation at her own weary blindness was quickly pushed aside by a clench of fear. The doctor, in the hospital with critical injuries quite possibly given to her by the very people Renie had offended, had taken a great deal of effort to tell her old student something that should have gone without saying. Susan Van Bleeck was not someone who wasted effort at the best of times, let alone when struggling for every movement.

Renie set the code algorithm back to work minus the last five letters, then phoned !Xabbu. After some time his landlady answered, keeping the visual blacked out, and said crossly that he was not in his room.

"He said he sleeps outside sometime," Renie said. "Could he be out there?"

"That little man isn't anywhere here, I told you—not inside, not outside. Tell the truth, I don't think he came back last night at all." The line went dead.

Her fears rapidly multiplying, she checked her mail to see if !Xabbu had left her a message. He had not, but to her astonishment, there was a voicemail from Doctor Van Bleeck.

"Hello, Irene, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you." Susan's voice sounded strong and cheerful, and for a moment Renie was completely baffled. "I'll try to get hold of you later tonight directly, but I'm in the middle of something right now and don't have time to talk much, so I thought I'd just dump this quickly."

It had been recorded before the attack. It was a message from another world, another life.

"I haven't found anything definite yet, but I've got a few connections that may prove fruitful. Let me tell you, dear, this whole thing is very strange indeed. I can't find anything like an actual match with your picture anywhere, and I've had every single urban area on the globe under scrutiny. I know things about Reykjavik that even the Reykjaviktims, or whatever they call themselves, don't know. And, although I know you didn't agree, I've been running searches on image banks as well, just in case it was something cobbled up for a simworld or a netflick. No luck there either.

"But I have had some success with statistical similarity searches—nothing definite, just some intriguing clusters of hits. Martine should be calling back soon, and she may have some ideas, too. In any case, I won't say more until some of the calls I've put out get answered—I'm too old to enjoy looking foolish—but I'll just say I'm going to be renewing some previous acquaintances. Very previous.

"Anyway, dear, that's it. Just wanted to let you know I was working on it. I haven't forgotten. And I hope you haven't become so wrapped up in this yourself that you're skipping meals or sleep. You used to have a very bad habit of trying to make up for initial laziness with last-moment diligence. Not a good plan, Irene.

"Take care. I'll talk to you in person, later."

The line clicked. Renie stared at her pad, wishing that she could make it say more, feeling that if she could just push the right button, her teacher would come back on and tell her all the things she'd been holding back. Susan had talked to her in person later, which made the whole thing an even crueler joke.

Previous acquaintances. What could that mean? She had already tried the names of all of the doctor's colleagues she could remember.

Renie sent the computer searching through various educational guild records, trying to match the letters of Susan's message with the names of anyone at any of the institutions that had employed her. Her eyes were blurry from staring at the padscreen, but there was nothing else to do until it was time to go to work. There wasn't a chance in hell she would be able to catch any sleep in her current frame of mind. Besides, work made it easier not to worry about !Xabbu.

She was on her seventh or eighth cigarette since dawn and watching a coffee tab dissolve in her cup when someone tapped lightly on the front of the partition, near the curtain that served as the front wall. Startled, she held her breath for a moment. She looked around for something to use as a weapon, but the torch had disappeared somewhere. She decided that the cup of boiling water in her hand would have to suffice. As she moved quietly toward the curtain, her father coughed in his sleep and rolled over.

She jerked back the heavy cloth. !Xabbu looked up at her, slightly startled.

"Did I wake you. . . ?" he began, but did not finish his sentence. Renie stepped forward and hugged him so incautiously that she spilled coffee on her own hand. She swore and dropped the cup, which shattered on the concrete.

"Damn! Ow! Sorry!" She waved her singed hand.

!Xabbu stepped forward. "Are you well?"

"Just burned myself." She sucked her fingers.

"No, I mean. . . ." He stepped inside, pulling the curtain closed. "I . . . I had a fearful dream. I feared for you. So I came here."

She stared. He did look quite out of sorts, his clothes rumpled and clearly donned in haste. "You . . . but why didn't you call?"

He looked down at his feet "I am ashamed to say that I did not think of it. I awakened and was afraid, and set out to come here." He squatted beside the wall, a simple, lithe movement.

There was something about the way he did it that reminded Renie he was not entirely of her world, something that remained archaic despite his modern clothes. "I could not find a bus, so I walked."

"From Chesterville? Oh, !Xabbu, you must be exhausted. I'm fine—healthy, anyway—but bad things have happened."

She quickly told him about Doctor Van Bleeck, describing what she knew of the attack and its aftermath. Instead of growing wide with surprise at the news, !Xabbu's heavy-lidded eyes narrowed, as though he were being forced to look at something painful.

"This is very sad." He shook his head. "Ay! I dreamed that she shot an arrow at you and that it pierced your heart. It was a very strong dream, very strong." He clapped his hands softly together, then pressed them tight "I feared it meant that you had been injured in some way by something the two of you had done."

"She shot something to me, but I hope it will save people, not kill them." She curled her lip. "Or at least, I hope it will help us find out if I'm going mad or not."

When she had finished explaining the doctor's messages and her night's work, speaking swiftly but quietly so as not to bring her father into things any earlier than she had to, the little man remained squatting on the floor, his head down.

"There are crocodiles in this river," he said at last. In her weariness, it took her a moment to make sense of what he said. "We have pretended as long as we could that they were only rocks pushing above the surface, or floating logs. But we can ignore them no longer."

Renie sighed. She had sparked a bit in relief at seeing !Xabbu safe. Now she suddenly felt that she could sleep—sleep for a month, given the chance. "Too many things have happened," she agreed. "Stephen lost, Stephen's friend with some kind of brain damage, what happened to us in the club. Now our flatblock's been burned and Susan's been attacked and beaten. We'd be idiots not to believe something's very wrong here. But," she felt her anger turn sour and miserable, "we can't prove anything. Nothing! We'd have to bribe the police just to get them not to laugh out loud when we told them."

"Unless we find that city, and finding it teaches us something. Or unless we go back in again." His face was curiously blank. "To that place."

"I don't think I could ever go back in there," she said. She blinked, sleepiness pulling at her very hard. "No, I could—for Stephen. But I don't know what good it would do us. They'll just be waiting for us this time. Unless we could find some better, more secret way to hack in—" She stopped, thinking.

"Do you have an idea?" asked !Xabbu. "Surely a place like that would have very good . . . what is the word? Security,"

"Yes, of course. No. That's not what I was thinking. I was just remembering something Susan told me once. I had been involved in some stupid thing—messing with the college record systems, just for fun, something like that. Anyway, she was completely scorched, not because I'd done it, she said, but because I was risking my chance to make something of myself." Renie ran her fingers across her padscreen, calling up options. "She told me the thing itself was no big deal—all the students did it. She'd done it, she said, and lots worse. She'd been quite a daredevil in the early days of the net."

Long Joseph Sulaweyo grunted and sat up in bed, stared at Renie and !Xabbu for a moment with no sign of recognition, then fell back into his thin mattress, snoring again within seconds.

"So you are thinking. . . ."

"She said 'previous acquaintances, very previous.' What do you want to bet she's been talking to some of her ancient hacker buddies? What do you want to bet?" She stared at the screen. "Now, all I have to do is think up some kind of search criteria for retired online troublemakers, match it to what we've got in the way of letters, and just see if we don't come up with Doctor Susan's mystery source!"

It took fifteen minutes, but the hit, when it came, seemed conclusive.

"Mural Sagar Singh—and look at this guy's background! University of Natal, same time as Susan, then extended work with Telemorphix, S.A., and a bunch of smaller companies over the next twenty years or so. And there's a six-year gap just a few years after he got out of school—what do you want to bet he was working for the government or military intelligence?"

"But this Sagar Singh—those letters do not match. . . ."

She grinned. "Ah, but look at this—he had a handle! That's a codename that hackers used, so they could sign their work without using their real names, which tends to get you prosecuted." She tilted the pad so !Xabbu could see it better. "Blue Dog Anchorite. The world must be full of Singhs, but she knew there wouldn't be many of those!"

!Xabbu nodded. "It seems that you have solved the puzzle. Where is this person? Does he still live in this country?"

"Well, that's a problem." Renie frowned. "The addresses kind of dry up about twenty years ago. Maybe he got into some sort of trouble and had to disappear. Of course, a gifted hacker can disappear in plain sight." She ran a few more criteria through and sat back to wait for an answer.

"Girl?" Long Joseph was sitting up again, this time eyeing !Xabbu with obvious suspicion. "What the hell's going on here?"

"Nothing, Papa. I'll get you some coffee."

As she poured water into a cup, guiltily remembering the shards of her own mug which were still scattered in front of their compartment where someone might step on them, !Xabbu stood over her pad.

"Renie," he said, eyeing a row of listings, "there is a word coming up here several times. Perhaps it is a place or a person? I have not heard of it."

"What?"

"Something called 'TreeHouse.' "

Before she could reply, the pad's phone light began to blink. Renie set down the cup and the package of coffee tablets and hurried to answer it.

It was Jeremiah Dako, and he was crying. Before he had even said an intelligible word, Renie already knew what had happened.

Otherland 1 - City of Golden Shadow
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