NETFEED/NEWS: Refugee Camp Given Nation Status

(visual: refugee city on Merida beach)

VO: The Mexican refugee encampment called "the End of the Road" by its residents has been declared a country by the United Nations. Merida, a small city on the northern tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, has swollen to four million residents because of a series of killer storms along the coast and political instability in Honduras, Guatemala, and northeastern Mexico,

(visual: UN truck being driven through frenzied crowd)

The three-and-a-half million refugees are almost entirely without shelter, and many are suffering from tuberculosis, typhoid, and Guantanamo fever. By making Merida a nation in its own right, the UN can now declare martial law and bring the new country under its direct jurisdiction. . . .

 

"Dzang, Orlando, you were right! You were right!" Fredericks was leaping up and down on the beach, almost crazy with excitement and terror."Where are we? What happened? That's it! You were right!"

Orlando could feel sand beneath the palms of his hand, hot and gritty and undeniable. He scooped up a handful and let it pour away again. It was real. It was all real. And the city, wilder and more wonderful than anything in a fairy tale, the golden city was real, too, stretching almost as far as he could see, reaching toward the sky in a profusion of towers and pyramids as ornate as Russian Easter eggs. The thing that had haunted him was now just a few miles away, separated from him only by an expanse of blue ocean. He was sitting on a beach, an inarguable beach, staring at his own dream.

And before that, he had passed through a nightmare. That darkness, and then that thing, that hungry, horrid thing. . . .

But it wasn't only a dream. There was something real behind it—like it was a puppet show. Like my mind was trying to make sense of something too big to understand. . . .

There was more wrong than just the nightmare. Wherever he was, he had not left the illnesses of his real body behind. The city stood in front of him—the couldn't-be city, the don't-dare-hope city—and yet he could barely force himself to care. He was melting like a candle, giving off too much heat. A big, hot something inside him was eating away at his thoughts, filling his head and pressing behind his eyes.

Where are we?

Fredericks was still jumping up and down in an ecstasy of uncertainty. As Orlando struggled to his feet, he realized that the Fredericks he was looking at was wearing the body of Pithlit, arch-thief of the Middle Country.

That's wrong, he thought, but could not pursue it any farther. Standing up had only made him feel worse. The golden-daubed city suddenly tilted, and Orlando tried to follow it, but instead the sand jumped up to meet him, slamming against him as though it were one solid thing.

Something in the dark touched me. . . .

The world was spinning, spinning. He closed his eyes and went away.

 

Pithlit the Thief was shaking him. Orlando's head felt like a rotten melon; at every wobble it seemed about to burst.

"Orlando?" Fredericks seemed to have no idea how much his voice was making Orlando's bones ache. "Are you okay?"

". . . Sick. Stop shaking. . . ."

Fredericks let go. Orlando rolled onto his side, hugging himself. He could feel the bright sun beating down on his skin, but it was a weather report from another part of the country; deep inside him there was now a chill resistant to any sun, real or simulated He felt the first shivers begin.

"You're shivering," Fredericks pointed out. Orlando gritted his teeth, lacking the strength even to be sarcastic. "Are you cold? But it's hot! No, what does that matter? Sorry, man. We need to put something over you—all you're wearing is that loin cloth." Fredericks looked around, scanning the empty tropical beach as though someone might have thoughtfully left a down comforter behind one of the lava rocks. He turned back to Orlando as another thought struck him. "Why are you in your Thargor sim? When did you put that on?"

Orlando could only groan.

Fredericks knelt beside him. His eyes were still wide, pupils pinned like a lab animal given too much of something strong, but he was struggling his way back to some kind of logic. "Here, you can have my cloak." He untied it and draped it around Orlando's shoulders. Beneath he was wearing his character's usual gray shirt and breeches. "But, hey, this is Pithlit's cloak! Am I Pithlit like you're Thargor?"

Orlando nodded weakly.

"But I never . . . this is scanny!" Fredericks paused. "Feel this. It feels real. Orlando, where are we? What happened? Is this somewhere on the net?"

"Nobody . . . on the net . . . has equipment like this." He struggled to keep his teeth from chattering: the clicking made his head hurt even more. "We're . . . I don't know where we are."

"But there's the city, just like you told me." Fredericks wore the look of a jaded child who has unexpectedly encountered the actual Santa Claus. "That is the city you meant, right?" He laughed, a little shrilly. "Of course it is. What else would it be? But where are we?"

Orlando was finding it difficult to keep track of Fredericks' overstressed chattering. He wrapped the cloak tighter and lay down to ride out another wave of shivers. "I think . . . I have to sleep . . . for a few minutes. . . ."

Blackness reached out for him again, gathering him in.

 

Orlando floated through fever dreams of stone tombs and Uncle Jingle singing and his mother searching through the halls of their house for something she had lost. Once he surfaced to feel Fredericks holding his hand.

". . . Think it's an island," his friend was saying. "There's a temple or something made out of stones, but I don't think anyone uses it any more, and that's about it. I couldn't set all the way to the other side, because there's like an amazingly thick forest—well, more like a jungle—but I think because of the way the beaches curve. . . ."

Orlando slid down again.

As he bobbed in the buffeting currents of his illness, he snatched at the few thoughts swimming past which seemed part of reality. The monkey-children had wanted to take him to someone . . . an animal? . . . an animal name? . . . who knew about the golden city. But instead they had all been seized by something that had shaken him almost to pieces, as a dog grabs and dispatches a rat.

A dog. Something about a dog.

And now he was somewhere else, and the city was there, so he must be dreaming, because the city was a dream-thing.

But Fredericks was in the dream, too.

Another thought, cold and hard as a stone, dropped into his fevered mind.

I'm dying. I'm in that horrible Crown Heights Medical Center, and I'm strapped onto a bunch of machines. The life is draining out of me, and all that's left is this one little part of my mind, making a whole world out of a few brain cells and a few memories. And Vivien and Conrad are probably sitting next to the bed practicing their coping-with-grief skills, but they don't know I'm still in here. I'm still in here! Trapped in the top floor of a burning building and the flames are climbing up, one story at a time, and all the firefighters are giving up and going home. . . .

I'm still in here!

 

"Orlando, wake up. You're having a bad dream or something. Wake up. I'm here."

He opened his eyes. A gummy smear of pink and brown slowly became Fredericks.

"I'm dying."

For a moment his friend looked frightened, but Orlando saw him push it down. "No, you're not, Gardiner. You've just got the flu or something."

Oddly, watching Fredericks decide to say something encouraging, despite the unlikeliness of it being true, made him feel better. Any hallucination in which Fredericks acted so much like Fredericks was pretty much as good as real life. Not that he seemed to have a lot of choice anyway.

The chills had subsided at least for the moment. He sat up, still holding the cloak tightly around himself. His head felt like it had been boiled until his brains had turned to steam and hissed out. "Did you say something about an island?"

Relieved, Fredericks sat down next to him. With the oddly sharp focus of someone whose fever is in remission, Orlando noted the brisk, bearlike clumsiness of his friend's movements.

He certainly doesn't move like a girl. The actual fact of Fredericks' sex was beginning to recede into the distance. For a moment, he wondered about what Fredericks—Salome Fredericks—really looked like, then he pushed the thought aside. Here he looked like a boy, he moved like one, he said to treat him like one—who was Orlando to argue?

"I think this is. An island, I mean. I was looking in case there was some way to get a boat—I thought I could even steal one, since I seem to be Pithlit right now. But there's no one here but us." Fredericks had been staring out at the amusement-park intricacy of the city just across the water, but now he turned back to Orlando. "Why am I Pithlit anyway? What do you think is going on?"

Orlando shook his head. "I don't know. I wish I did. Those kids were going to take us to meet someone, then they said something about a 'big hole to somewhere,' and that they were going to 'hook us up.' " He shook his head again; it felt inordinately heavy. "I just don't know."

Pithlit waved his hand in front of his own face, frowning as he watched it. "I've never heard of anywhere on the net like this. Everything moves just like in real life. And there are smells! Everything! Look at the ocean."

"I know."

"So, what do we do now? I say we build a raft."

Orlando stared at the city. Seeing it so close, so . . . actual . . . he had misgivings. How could anything that solid-looking live up to all the dreams he had invested in it? "A raft? How are we going to do that? Did you bring your Mister Carpenter Tool Kit?"

Fredericks made a disgusted face. "There's palm trees and vines and stuff. Your sword's lying right over there. We can do it." He scrambled across the sand and picked up the blade. "Hey. This isn't Lifereaper."

Orlando stared at the simple hilt, the bare blade so naked compared to Lifereaper's rune-scribed length. His burst of energy was wearing off, his thoughts dulling at the edges. "It's my first sword—the one Thargor had when he first came into the Middle Country. He got Lifereaper just about a year before you came in." He looked down at his sandaled feet sticking out from beneath the cloak. "I bet there isn't any gray in my hair either, is there?"

Fredericks examined him. "No. I've never seen Thargor without a few streaks of gray. How did you know?"

He was feeling very tired again. "Because these sandals, the sword—I'm the young Thargor, when he first came down from the Borrikar Hills. He didn't get the gray hair until the first time he fought Dreyra Jahr, down in the Well of Souls."

"But why?"

Orlando shrugged and slowly lowered himself back to the ground, ready to surrender again to the soft tug of sleep. "I don't know, Frederico. I don't know anything. . . ."

 

He slid in and out of sleep as light turned into darkness. Once he was pulled almost completely to wakefulness by someone screaming, but the sound came from far away and might have been another dream. There was no sign of Fredericks. Orlando wondered dimly if his friend had gone off to investigate the noises, but his thoughts were clotted with fatigue and illness and nothing else seemed very important.

 

It was light again. Someone was crying, and this noise was close by. It made Orlando's head hurt. He groaned and tried to fold his pillow over his ears, but his grasping fingers were full of sand.

He pulled himself upright Fredericks was kneeling a few feet away, face in hands, shoulders shaking. The morning was bright, the virtual beach and ocean made even sharper and more surreal by what was left of the night's fever.

"Fredericks? Are you all right?"

His friend looked up. Tears were streaming down the thief's face. The simulation had even reddened his cheeks, but most impressive of all was the haunted expression in his eyes. "Oh, Gardiner, we're so locked." Fredericks caught at a hitching breath. "We are in bad, bad trouble."

Orlando felt like a sack of wet cement "What are you talking about?"

"We're trapped. We can't go offline!"

Orlando sighed and let himself slump back onto the ground. "We're not trapped."

Fredericks crawled swiftly across the intervening distance and grabbed his shoulder, "Damn it, don't give me that! I went off and it almost killed me!"

He had never heard his friend sound quite so upset. "Killed you?"

"I wanted to go offline. I was getting more and more worried about you, and I thought maybe your parents were out somewhere and didn't know you were sick—like, you might need an ambulance or something. But when I tried, I couldn't unplug. I couldn't make any of the usual commands work, and I couldn't feel anything that isn't part of this simulation—not my room, not anything!" He reached up to his neck again, but this time more carefully. "And there's no t-jack! Go on, you try!"

Orlando reached up to the spot where his own neurocannula had been implanted. He could feel nothing but Thargor's heavy musculature. "Yeah, you're right. But there are simulations like that—they just hide the control points and make the tactors lie. Didn't you go on Demon Playground with me once? You don't even have any limbs on that—you're just neural ganglia strapped into a rocket sled."

"Jesus, Gardiner, you're not listening, I'm not just guessing—I went offline. My parents pulled my jack out And it hurt, Orlando. It hurt like nothing I've ever felt—like they'd pulled my spine out with it, like someone was sticking hot needles into my eyes, like . . . like . . . like I can't even tell you. And it didn't stop. I couldn't do anything but . . . but scream and scream. . . ." Fredericks stopped, shuddering, and could not speak again for a few moments. "It didn't stop until my parents put the jack back in—I couldn't even talk to them!—and, bang, I was back here."

Orlando shook his head. "Are you sure it wasn't just . . . I don't know, a really bad migraine or something?"

Fredericks made a noise of angry disgust "You don't know what you're talking about. And it happened again. Jesus, didn't you hear me screaming? They must have taken me to a hospital or something, because the next time it came out, there were all these people standing around. I could hardly see, it hurt so bad. But the pain was even worse than before—the hospital gave me a shot, I think, and I don't remember much after that for a while, but here I am again. They must have had to plug me back in." Fredericks leaned forward and gripped Orlando's arm, his voice raggedly desperate. "So you tell me, Mister Golden City—what the hell kind of simulation acts like that? What have you gotten us into, Gardiner?"

 

The hours of daylight and night that followed were the longest Orlando had ever spent. The fever returned in full strength. He lay thrashing in a shelter Fredericks had built from palm fronds, freezing and burning by turns.

He thought his subconscious must be acting out Fredericks' story of escape and forced return, because at one point he heard his mother speaking to him, very clearly. She was telling him about something that had happened in the security estate—the "Community" as she called it—and what the other neighbors thought about it. She was prattling, he realized, in that very particular way she did when she was scared to death, and for a moment he wondered if he was dreaming at all. He could actually see her, very faintly, as though she stood behind a gauze curtain, her face leaning in so close that it seemed distorted. He had certainly seen her that way often enough to make it a feature of a dream.

She was saying something about what they were going to do when he got better. The desperation in her tone, the doubt behind the words, convinced him that dream or not, he should treat it as real. He tried to make himself speak, to bridge the impossible distance between them. Mired in whatever it was, hallucination or incomprehensible separation, he could barely force his throat to operate. How could he explain? And what could she do?

Beezle, he tried to tell her. Bring Beezle. Bring Beezle.

She fell away from him then, and whether it was only another phantasm of his febrile sleep or an actual moment of contact with his real life, it was gone.

"You're dreaming about that stupid bug," Fredericks growled, his own voice clumsy with sleep.

Bug. Dreaming about a bug. As he slid back into the dark waters of his illness, he remembered something he had read once about a butterfly dreaming it was an emperor, wondering if it were an emperor dreaming he was a butterfly . . . or something like that.

So which is real? he wondered groggily. Which side of the line is the real one? A crippled, shriveled, dying kid in some hospital bed . . . or a . . . a made-up barbarian looking for an imaginary city? Or what if someone completely different is dreaming . . . both of them. . . ?

 

 

All the children at school were talking about the house that burned down, it gave Christabel a funny feeling. Ophelia Weiner told her that a bunch of people got killed, which made her feel so sick she couldn't eat her lunch. Her teacher sent her home.

"No wonder you're feeling bad, honey," her mother said, a hand on Christabel's forehead, checking for a temperature, "Up all night like that, and then having to listen to all those kids telling stories about people dying." She turned to Christabel's father, who was on his way to the den. "She's such a sensitive child, I swear."

Daddy only grunted.

"No one got killed, honey," her mother assured her. "Only one house burned and I don't think there was anyone in it."

As her mother went off to wave her some soup, Christabel wandered into the den where her father was talking with his friend Captain Parkins. Her father told her to go outside and play—as if she hadn't been sent home from school sick! She sat down in the hall to play with her Prince Pikapik doll. Daddy seemed very grumbly. She wondered why he and Captain Parkins weren't at their office, and wondered if it had anything to do with the big bad secret thing that had happened last night. Would he find out what she had done? If he did, she would probably get punished forever.

She pulled Prince Pikapik out of the nest of pillows she had made him—the otter doll tended to scramble toward dark, shadowy places—and scooted closer to the door of the den. She put her ear against the crack to see if she could hear anything. Christabel had never done that before. She felt like she was in a cartoon show.

". . . A real goddamn mess," Daddy's friend was saying. "After all this time, though, who'd have guessed?"

"Yeah," said her father. "And that's one of the biggest questions, isn't it? Why now? Why not fifteen years ago when we moved him the last time? I just don't get it, Ron. You didn't turn him down for one of his weird requisitions, did you? Piss him off?"

Christabel didn't understand all the words, but she was pretty sure they were talking about what had happened at Mister Sellars' house, all right. She had heard her daddy on the phone in the morning before she went to school, talking about the explosion and fire.

". . . Gotta give the bastard credit, though." Captain Parkins laughed, but it was an angry laugh. "I don't know how he managed to pull it all off, but he damn near fooled us."

Christabel's hand tightened on Prince Pikapik. The doll let out a warning squeak.

"If the car had just burned a little longer," Captain Parkins went on, "we wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between the stuff he left on the seat and a genuine cremated Sellars. Ash, fat, organic wastes—he must have measured it out with a teaspoon to get the proportions right. Clever little bastard."

"We would have found the holes in the fences," said Christabel's daddy.

"Yeah, but later rather than sooner. He might have had an extra twenty-four hours' head start"

Christabel heard her father get up. For a second she was scared, but then she heard him begin to walk back and forth like he did when he was on the phone. "Maybe. But shit, Ron, that still doesn't explain how he got away from the base in the time he had. He was in a wheelchair, for God's sake!"

"MPs are checking everything. Could be someone just felt sorry for him and gave him a lift. Or he might have just rolled down the hill and he's hiding out in that squatter town. Nobody who knows anything will keep their mouths shut once we finish rousting the place. Someone will come forward."

"Unless he had a confederate—someone who helped him get out of the area entirely."

"Where would he find someone like that? Inside the base? That's a court-martial offense, Mike. And he doesn't know anyone off the base. We monitor all his household contacts, outgoing calls—he doesn't even access the net! Everything else is harmless. We watched him real close. A chess-by-mail arrangement with some retired guy in Australia—yes, we checked it out carefully—a few catalog requests and magazine subscriptions, things like that."

"Well, I still don't believe he could have pulled it off without any outside assistance. Someone must have helped him. And when I find out who it is—well, that person's going to wish he was never born."

Something was making a thumping noise. Christabel looked up. Prince Pikapik had crawled away under the hall table and now the otter doll was bumping over and over against the table leg. The vase was going to fall over any second, and her Daddy would hear that for sure and come out really angry. As she scrambled after the runaway otter, eves wide and heart beating fast, her mother came around the corner and almost tripped over her.

Christabel shrieked.

"Mike, I wish you'd take some time to talk with your daughter," her mother called through the closed door of the den. "Tell her that everything's all right This poor little girl is a nervous wreck."

Christabel had her soup in bed.

 

In the middle of the night, Christabel woke up scared. Mister Sellars had told her to put on the new Storybook Sunglasses after school, but she hadn't done it! She had forgotten because she came home early.

She slid down onto the floor as quietly as she could and climbed under the bed where she had hid them. She had taken the old pair with her to school and thrown them into the trash door outside the classroom during recess, just like Mister Sellars had told her to.

Being under the bed was like being in the Cave of the Winds in Otterland. For a moment she wondered if there really was any place like that, but since there weren't any otters left that didn't live in zoos—her daddy had told her that—there probably wasn't a Cave of the Winds any more.

The sunglasses weren't blinking or anything. She put them on, but there was no writing, which made her even more scared. Had something happened to Mister Sellars down there under the ground when the house blew up? Maybe he was hurt and lost down in those tunnels.

Her finger touched the switch. The sunglasses still did not turn on, but just as she was thinking they might be broken, someone said "Christabel?" very quiet in her ear. She jumped and banged her head against the underside of the bed. When she dared, she took off the sunglasses and stuck her head out, but even with the dark all over, she could tell that there was no one in the room. She put the glasses back on.

"Christabel," the voice said again, "is that you?" It was Mister Sellars, she suddenly realized, talking to her through the sunglasses.

"Yes, it's me," she whispered.

Suddenly she could see him, sitting in his chair. Light was shining on only one half of his runny-looking face, so he looked even more scary than usual, but she was happy to see that he wasn't hurt or dead.

"I'm sorry I didn't put them on before. . . ." she began.

"Hush. Don't fret. Everything is all right. Now, from here on, when you want to talk to me, you must put the glasses on and say the word . . . oh, let me see. . . ." He frowned. "Why don't you pick a word, little Christabel. Any word you want, but not one that people say very often."

She thought hard. "What was the name of that little man in the story?" she whispered. "The name the girl was supposed to guess."

Mister Sellars slowly began to smile. "Rumpelstiltskin? That's very good, Christabel, very good. Say it yourself so I can code it in. There. And you can use it to call me every day after school, maybe on your way home when you're by yourself. I have some very difficult things to do now, Christabel. Maybe the most important things I've ever done."

"Are you going to blow more things up?"

"Goodness, I hope not. Were you very frightened? I heard the noise. You did an excellent job, my dear. You are a very, very brave girl, and you would make a wonderful revolutionary." He smiled another of his raggedy smiles. "No, nothing else is going to blow up. But I'll still need your help from time to time. A lot of people are going to be looking for me."

"I know. My daddy was talking about you with Captain Parkins." She told him what she could remember.

"Well, I have no complaints, then," said Mister Sellars. "And you, young lady, should go back to sleep. Call me tomorrow. Remember, just put on the glasses and say 'Rumpelstiltskin.' "

When the funny old man was gone, Christabel took off the Storybook Sunglasses and crawled out from under the bed. Now that she knew Mister Sellars was okay, she suddenly felt very sleepy.

She was just climbing back under the covers when she saw the face peering in through her window.

 

"It was a face, Mommy! I saw it! Right there!"

Her mother pulled her close and rubbed her head. Mommy smelled of lotion, like she always did at night. "I think it was probably just a bad dream, baby. Your daddy checked and there's no one outside." Christabel shook her head and buried her face against her mother's chest. Even though the curtains were drawn, she didn't want to look at the window any more.

"Maybe you'd better come and sleep with us." Christabel's mother sighed. "Poor little thing—that house burning down last night really frightened you, didn't it? Well, don't worry, honey. It's nothing to do with you and it's all over now."

 

 

The technicians wanted to make notes for the cleanup.

Dread was mildly irritated, since he had last-minute details to attend to and this was not the most convenient time to be forced out of the observation center, but he approved of their thoroughness. He took a small cigar from the humidor and went out onto the top floor balcony overlooking the bay.

The Beinha y Beinha technical crew had already broken down his office in the city. Now that the project had moved into the final phase, there was no longer a need for it, and once the operation was complete, there would be no time to go back and tie up loose ends, so the crew had emptied it completely, which included sandblasting the top level off all permanent surfaces, repainting, and replacing the carpets. Now the same men and women were busily examining the beach house which served as observation center. By the time Dread and his team were in the water heading for the target, the cleaning crew, like white-clad scavenger beetles, would be pulling the two-story house to pieces and destroying all clues as to who had inhabited it these past three days.

He really didn't mind at all being forced out to the balcony on a fine tropical night, he decided. He had not allowed himself a moment's recreation since the stewardess, and he had been working very, very hard.

Still, it was hard to forget business with the target literally in sight. The lights of the Isla de Santuario were barely visible across the expanse of black water, but the island's various security devices—the drone submarines, minisats, and hardened sites defended by armed guards—were not visible at all, yet each and every one had to be dealt with. Still, barring the kind of major miscalculation that Dread had never yet made. . . .

Confident, cocky, lazy, dead, he reminded himself.

. . . Barring miscalculation or criminally negligent intelligence gathering, all were known and prepared for. He only awaited the solution of a few minor loose ends and then the actual arrival of the rest of the team, slated in four hours. Dread had deliberately kept them away until this moment. There was nothing the actual site offered that could not be learned and mastered in simulation, and there was no sense doing anything that might alert the target. The cleanup crew were the one group that did not prepare in VR, but their van was parked in plain sight in the driveway, bearing the name of a well-known local carpet retailer, and of course the Beinhas had arranged for someone on their own payroll to be answering the phones at the carpet warehouse all week, in case someone on the island should spot the van and do that little extra conscientious bit.

So now, with all the leisurely pleasure of an actual householder enjoying the prospect of handsome new floor coverings, Dread turned up his internal music, then leaned back in a broadly striped canvas chair, lit his cigar, and put his feet up on the balcony railing.

 

He had smoked barely half the cigar, and was idly watching the island's perimeter spotlights reflecting on the water like amber stars, when a much smaller light began to blink at the corner of his vision. Dread cursed silently. The soaring Monteverdi madrigal—his favorite music when he was playing a contemplative scene—descended in volume to a sweet murmur. Antonio Heredia Celestino appeared in an open window superimposed on Dread's vision, his shaved head hovering above the dark Caribbean as if he were treading water. Dread would have preferred that Celestino actually were treading water.

"Yes?"

"I am sorry to disturb you, Jefe. I hope you have been having a pleasant evening."

"What do you want Celestino?" The man's attention to meaningless formalities was one of the things that did not sit well with Dread. He was a more than competent gear man—the Beinhas would not hire technical people who were second-rate—but his plodding humorlessness was annoying in itself as well as evidence of a lack of imagination.

"I am having a few doubts about the data tap. The defenses are complicated, and there is a risk that the preliminary work itself may have . . . consequences."

"What are you talking about?"

Celestino bobbed his head nervously and tried to form a winning smile. Dread, a child of the ugliest tin-siding towns of the Australian Outback, was torn between disgust and amusement. If the man had a forelock, Dread decided, he would have tugged it "I fear that these preliminary inspections, the preparation work . . . well, I fear that they may alert the . . . the . . . designate.

"The 'designate'? Do you mean the target? What in hell are you trying to say, Celestino?" His anger building, Dread turned the madrigal off completely. "Have you compromised the action somehow? Are you calling me to say that, oops, you've accidentally scorched our mission?"

"No, no! Please, Jefe, I have done nothing!" The man seemed more alarmed by Dread's sudden fury than by the implication of his incompetence. "No, that is why I wished to talk to you, sir. I would do nothing to risk our security without consulting you." He hurriedly outlined a series of concerns, most of which Dread found laughably exaggerated. Dread decided, to his great irritation, that what was going on was simple: Celestino had never cracked a system this tough or this complicated, and he wanted to make sure that if anything went wrong, he would have the excuse that he was following orders.

The idiot seems to think that just because he's in an apartment a few miles away from the exercise, he'd live through the failure of this action. He obviously doesn't know the Old Man.

"So what are you saying, Celestino? I've been listening for a long time and I haven't heard anything new."

"I wished only to suggest. . . ." He obviously found this too forward. "I wondered if you had considered a narrow definition data bomb. We could introduce a hunter-killer into the system and immobilize their entire household net. If we properly code our own equip. . . ."

"Stop." Dread closed his eyes, struggling to remain calm. Maddeningly, Celestino's pinch-faced image still haunted the blackness behind his eyelids. "Remind me—didn't you spend time in the military?"

"BIM," said Celestino with a touch of pride. "Brigada de Institutes Militares. Four years."

"Of course. Do you know when this operation begins? Do you know anything? We are less than eighteen hours away, and you come to me with this kind of shit. Data bomb? Of course you were in the military—if you're not sure about something, blow it up!" He scowled horribly, forgetting for a moment that Celestino, for security's sake, was only seeing a low-grade and largely expressionless Dread sim. "You miserable little poofter, what do you think we're going in for? Just to kill someone? If you had been a foot soldier, or a door-opener, or even the goddamned janitor, you might have an excuse for thinking that, but you are the Christ-save-us gear man! We are are going to freeze and strip the entire system and any remote atachments. Data bomb! What if the thing's programmed to dump everything under assault?"

"I . . . but surely. . . ." The sweat on the hacker's brow was clearly visible.

"Listen carefully. If we lose one particle of that data, anything, I am going to personally rip your heart out of your body and show it to you. Understand?"

Celestino nodded, swallowing hard. Dread cut the connection, then began to search through his files for music that might salvage his good mood.

 

". . . That man has a crack in him a mile wide."

The shapeless sim that was the Beinha on the left leaned forward slightly, "He is very good at his job."

"He's a nervous small-timer. I'm flying someone in to keep an eye on things. No arguments. I'm doing you the courtesy of letting you know."

There was a long silence. "It is your choice," one of them said at last,

"It is. Damn." The red light was blinking again, but this time in a recognizable rhythm. "Excuse me. I have to take a call."

The two sisters nodded and blinked off. They were replaced by one of the Old Man's functionaries—a Puppet as far as Dread could tell, dressed in the usual costume-bazaar Egyptian.

"The Lord of Life and Death, Mighty in Worship, Who is Crowned in the West, summons you to the presence."

Dread suppressed a groan. "Now? Can't he just talk to me?"

The functionary did not bat an eye. "You are summoned to Abydos," it said, then vanished. Dread sat for a long moment just breathing, then stood and stretched to release tension—it might prove a very painful mistake to take his frustration and anger to the Old Man—and looked with more than a little sorrow at the cigar, which was now mostly gray char in the bottom of the ceramic bowl he had been using as an ashtray. He sat down again and found a comfortable position, since the Old Man's caprice often extended to hour-long waits, and closed his eyes.

 

The massive hypostyle hall of Abydos-That-Was stretched before him, the swollen, skyscraper pillars made even more dramatic by the light of innumerable flickering lamps. He could see the God's chair at the far end of the hall, looming above the bent backs of a thousand priests like a volcanic island rising from the ocean. Dread grunted in disgust and made his way forward.

Even though he could not actually feel the jackal ears above his head or see the cur's muzzle he wore, even though the priests kept their faces to the floor as they made way for him and not a single one even stole a glance at him, he felt angry and humiliated. The action would begin in mere hours, but would the Old Man cut through some of his ridiculous ceremony and make things a little easier? Of course he wouldn't. Dread was his dog, summoned to hear His Master's Voice, and would never be allowed to forget it.

As he reached the front of the hall, and lowered himself to all fours in front of the throne, he harbored a brief but satisfying fantasy of putting a match to the old bastard's mummy wrappings.

"Arise, my servant."

Dread stood. Even had he been standing on the dais, he would have been dwarfed by the figure of his employer.

Always has to remind me who's on top.

"Tell me of the Sky God Project."

Dread took a breath, suppressing his fury, and delivered a status report on the final preparations. Osiris, the Lord of Life and Death, listened with apparent interest, but although his corpselike face was as immobile as ever, Dread thought the Old Man seemed vaguely distracted: his bandaged fingers moved ever so slightly on the arms of his throne, and once he asked Dread to repeat something that should have been perfectly comprehensible the first time.

"The responsibility for this idiot programmer is yours," Osiris pronounced when told about Celestino's call. "Take steps to make sure this is not a weak link in our chain."

Dread bristled at the assumption that he had to be told. With effort, he managed to keep his voice even. "A professional with whom I have already worked is on her way down. She will watch over Celestino."

Osiris waved his hand as though this were all perfectly obvious. "This must not fail. I have placed great trust in you despite your many lapses of behavior. This must not fail."

Despite his own simmering unhappiness, Dread was intrigued. The Old Man appeared to be worried—if not about this, then about something else. "When have I ever failed you, Grandfather?"

"Don't call me that!" Osiris lifted his arms from the throne and crossed them over his chest. "I have told you before I will not allow it from a mere servant."

Dread barely restrained a hiss of rage. No, let the old bastard say what he wished. There was a longer game—the Old Man himself had taught him to play it—and this might be the first crack in his master's defenses.

"I apologize, O Lord. All will be done as you say." He lowered his great black head, bumping his muzzle gently against the stone flags. "Have I done something new to make you angry?" He wondered briefly if the stewardess . . . No. Her body couldn't even have been found yet, and for once he had refrained from leaving his signature, art shackled by necessity.

The God of Upper and Lower Egypt tilted his head down. For a moment, Dread thought he could see the fierce intelligence glinting in the depths of the Old Man's eyes. "No," he said at last. "You have done nothing. I am over-quick in my anger, perhaps. I am very busy, and much of the business is unpleasant."

"I'm afraid I probably would not understand your problems, my Lord. Just managing a project like the one you've given me takes everything I've got—I can't imagine the complexity of what you must deal with."

Osiris sat back in his great throne, staring out across the hall. "No, you cannot. At this very moment—this moment!—my enemies are assembling in my council chamber. I must confront them. There is a plot against me, and I do not yet. . . ." He trailed off, then twitched his huge head and leaned forward. "Has anyone approached you? Have you been asked about me, offered anything for information or assistance? I promise you, as terrible as my anger will be at anyone who betrays me, my generosity to my faithful servants is even greater."

Dread sat in silence for a long second, afraid to speak too swiftly. The old devil had never talked this openly before, never shown worry or vulnerability in front of him. He wished there was some way he could record the moment for later study, but instead he must commit every word and gesture to his own frail human memory.

"No one has approached me, Lord. I promise I would have told you immediately. But if there is something I can do to help you—information you need gathered, allies you are not sure of that you want to. . . ."

"No, no. no." Osiris waved his flail impatiently, silencing his servant "I will deal with it, as I always have. You will do your part by making sure that the Sky God Project goes as planned."

"Of course, Lord."

"Go. I will speak to you again before the action is launched. Find someone to keep a close eye on that programmer."

"Yes, Lord."

The god waved his crook and Dread was expelled from the system.

 

He remained in the chair for a long time, ignoring three different incoming calls while he thought about what he had just seen and heard. At last he stood up. Downstairs, the cleaning team had finished their prep and were climbing into their van.

Dread flicked the cigar end off the balcony into the dark water, then went back into the house.

 

 

"Look, we just have to tie the ends one more time, then we're done." Fredericks held up a handful of serpentine creepers and vines. "Those are waves out there, Orlando, and God only knows what else there is. Sharks—sea monsters, maybe. Come on, a little extra trouble now will make a big difference when we're on the water."

Orlando looked down at the raft. It was a decent-enough job, lengths of stiff, heavy reeds knotted together in long bundles, which had then been tied together to make one long rectangle. It would probably even float. He was just finding it hard to care very much.

"I need to sit down for a minute." He stumbled to the shade of the nearest palm tree and flopped to the sand.

"Fine. I'll do it. What else is new?" Fredericks bent to the task.

Orlando lifted a trembling hand to shade his eyes from the sun filtering down between the palm leaves. The city was different at noon; it changed throughout the day, colors and reflective metals mutating with the movement of light, shadows expanding and contracting. Just now it seemed a kind of giant mushroom patch, golden roofs springing from the loamy soil of their own shade.

He let his hand fall and leaned back against the palm trunk. He was very, very weak. It was easy to imagine burying himself in sand, like the roots of a tree, and never moving again. He was exhausted and sluggish because of his illness, and he could not conceive of how he would make it through another night like the last, a night of confusions and terrors and madness, none of it comprehensible and none of it in the least restful.

"Okay, I've double-tied everything. Are you at least going to help me carry it down to the water?"

Orlando stared at him for a long time, but still Fredericks' pink, unhappy face refused to disappear. He groaned. "Coming."

 

The raft did float, although parts of it remained resolutely below the waterline, so that there was nowhere dry to sit. Still, the warm weather did not make that too uncomfortable. Orlando was glad at least that he had prevailed on Fredericks to bring the wall of the palm-leaf shelter along, no matter how short a trip his friend expected. Orlando tilted it over them, letting it lean against his shoulders. It kept off the worst of the afternoon sun, but it did little to cool the heat in his head and his joints.

"I don't feel very good," he said quietly. "I told you, I've got pneumonia." It was about the only conversation he had to offer, but even he was growing tired of it. Fredericks, splashing obdurately with a makeshift paddle, did not reply.

Astonishingly—to Orlando, anyway—they were actually making a kind of slow progress toward the city. The crosscurrent was bearing them unmistakably to what Orlando guessed was the northern side of the shoreline, but the drift was slight; he thought they might very well make it to the far side before the current pulled them out into what were probably ocean waters. And if they didn't . . . well, Fredericks would be disappointed, but Orlando was having trouble seeing what the difference would be. He was adrift in some kind-of limbo, his strength leaking away hourly, and what he had left behind (in what he still quaintly thought about from time to time as the "real" world) was no better.

"I know you're sick, but could you try to paddle for a little while?" Fredericks was working hard not to be resentful; as if from a distance, Orlando admired him/her for it. "My arms are really aching, but if we don't keep pushing, the current will take us away from the beach."

It was a tough call as to which would take more energy, arguing or paddling. Orlando went to work.

His arms felt as flabby and weak as noodles, but there was a certain soothing quality to the repetition of dipping his paddle, pulling, raising it, then dipping it again. After a while the monotony combined with the sun's rippling reflections and his fevered driftiness to lift him into a kind of reverie, so he didn't notice the water rising until Fredericks shouted out that they were sinking.

Alerted but still buffered by his dreamy detachment, Orlando looked down at the water, which was now up to the crotch of his loincloth. The middle of the raft had descended, or the sides had risen; in either case, most of the craft was now at least partially underneath the water.

"What do we do?" Fredericks sounded like someone who believed that things mattered.

"Do? Sink, I guess."

"Are you scanning out, Gardiner?" Clearly fighting back panic, Fredericks looked up at the horizon. "We might be able to swim the rest of the way."

Orlando followed his gaze, then laughed. "Are you scanned? I can barely paddle." He looked at the length of split reed in his hand. "Not that it's doing us any good, now." He tossed the paddle away. It splashed into the water and then popped up again, bobbing along far more convincingly than the raft.

Fredericks shouted in horror and stretched toward it, as though he could reverse physics and draw it back through the air. "I can't believe you just did that!" He looked down at the raft again, full of twitchy, terrified energy. "I have an idea. We'll get in the water, but we'll use the raft as a float—you know, like those rafts in swimming class."

Orlando had never been in a swimming class, or anything that his mother feared might be dangerous to his fragile bones, but he was not disposed to argue anyway. At his friend's urging he slid off the raft into the cool water: Fredericks splashed in beside him, then braced his chest against the trailing edge of the raft and began to kick in a manner that was a credit to his long-ago instructors.

"Can't you kick, too, at least a little?" he panted.

"I am kicking," Orlando said.

"Whatever happened," Fredericks gasped, "to all that Thargor strength? All that monster-ass-kicking muscle? Come on!"

It was an effort even to explain, and frequent mouthfuls of salt water didn't help. "I'm sick, Frederico. And maybe the gain isn't turned up as high in this system—I always had to crank the tactor outputs way up to make it work as well as it did for someone normal."

They had only dog-paddled for a few minutes when Orlando felt his strength finally desert him. His legs slowed, then stopped. He hung onto the back of the raft, but even that was difficult.

"Orlando? I need your help!"

The city, which once had waited squarely before them, had now shifted to the right The blue water between the raft and the beach, however, had not narrowed appreciably. They were drifting out to sea, Orlando realized—as he himself was drifting. They would get farther and farther from land, until eventually the city would disappear entirely.

But that's not fair. The thoughts seemed to come in slow bumps, like the waves. Fredericks wants to live. He wants to play soccer and do things—wants to be a real boy, just like Pinocchio. I'm just holding him back. I'm the Donkey Island kid.

"Orlando?"

No, not fair. He has to paddle hard enough to pull my weight, too. Not fair. . . .

He let go and slid under the water. It was surprisingly easy. The surface snapped shut over him like an eyelid closing, and for a moment he felt complete weightlessness, complete ease, and a certain dull smugness at his decision. Then something seized his hair, jerking him into fiery pain and a throatful of sea water. He was pulled to the surface, spluttering.

"Orlando!" Fredericks shrieked, "what the hell are you doing?"

He was clinging to the raft with one hand so he could maintain his grip on Orlando's—Thargor's—long black hair,

Now nobody's kicking, Orlando thought sadly. He spat out salty water and barely avoided a coughing spasm. It isn't doing any good at all.

"I'm . . . I just can't go any farther," he said aloud.

"Grab the raft," Fredericks directed. "Grab the raft!"

Orlando did, but Fredericks didn't relinquish his grip. For a moment they just floated, side by side. The raft rose and fell as the waves moved past. Except for the stinging pain in his scalp, nothing had changed.

Fredericks, too, had gotten a mouthful of seawater. His nose was running, his eyes red-rimmed. "You aren't going to quit You're not going to!"

Orlando found enough strength to shake his head. "I can't. . . ."

"Can't? You impacted bastard, you've made my life a living hell about this stupid goddamned city! And there it is! And you're just going to give up?"

"I'm sick. . . ."

"So what? Yeah, yeah, it's really sad. You've got some weird disease. But that's the place you wanted to go. You've dreamed about it. It's the only thing you care about, practically. So either you're going to help me get to that beach, or I'm going to have to drag you like I learned in that stupid swimming class, and then we'll both drown, five hundred yards away from your goddamned city. You goddamned coward." Fredericks was breathing so hard he could barely finish his sentence. He clung to the bobbing raft, neck-deep in the water, and glared.

Orlando was faintly amused that anyone could muster so much emotion about a pointless thing like the difference between going on and going down, but he also felt a slight irritation that Fredericks—Fredericks!—should be calling him a coward.

"You want me to help you? Is that what you're saying?"

"No, I want you to do what was so important that you got me into this impacted, fenfen mess in the first place."

Again, it had become easier to paddle than to argue. Also, Fredericks was still gripping his hair, and Orlando's head was bent at an uncomfortable angle.

"Okay. Just let go."

"No tricks?"

Orlando wearily shook his head. You try to do a guy a favor. . . .

They edged forward until their chests were back on the raft and began kicking again.

 

The sun was very low in the sky and a cool wind was making the tips of the waves froth when they made it past the first breakwater and out of the cross-current. After a short celebratory rest, Fredericks let Orlando climb up onto the bowed raft and paddle with his hands while Fredericks continued his out-board-motor impersonation.

By the time they reached the second breakwater they were no longer alone, but merely the smallest of the waterway's travelers. Other boats, some clearly equipped with engines, others with full-bellied sails, were beginning to make their way back from a day's work. The wakes of their passing made the raft rock alarmingly. Orlando climbed back into the water.

Above them and around them the city was beginning to turn on its lights.

They were debating whether or not to try to signal one of the passing boats when Orlando began to feel another wash of fever pass over him.

"We can't try to take this raft all the way in," Fredericks was arguing. "Some big ship will come through here and they won't even see us in the dark."

"I think all the . . . big ships come in the other . . . side," Orlando said. He was finding it hard to get enough breath to speak. "Look." On the far side of the harbor maze, beyond several jetties, two large vessels, one of them a tanker of some sort, were being hauled into the port by tugboats. Nearer, vastly smaller than the tanker but still fairly large and impressive, was a barge. Despite his exhaustion, Orlando couldn't help staring at it. The barge, covered in painted carvings and with something that looked like a sun with an eye in it painted on the bow, seemed to belong to a different age than the harbor's other ships. It had a single tall mast and a flat, square sail. Lanterns hung in the rigging and at the bow.

As Orlando stared at this strange apparition, the world seemed to pass into some greater shadow. The lanterns flared into blurry star shapes. He had a moment to wonder how twilight had become dark midnight so suddenly, and to feel sad that the city's residents had doused all their lights, then he felt the water slide up and over him again.

This time Orlando barely felt it when Fredericks pulled him out. The fever had gripped him again, and he was so exhausted that he could not imagine it ever letting go. A distant foghorn had become a smear of sound that rang in his ears, fading but never completely stopping. Fredericks was saying something urgent, but Orlando could not make sense of it. Then a light as bright as anything Orlando could imagine replaced the darkness with a whiteness far more painful and terrible.

 

The spotlight belonged to a small boat The small boat belonged to the Harbor Police of the great city. They were not cruel, but they were briskly uninterested in what Fredericks had to say. It seemed that they were on the lookout for outsiders, and the two men treading water beside a handmade raft seemed to fit the description. As they hauled Orlando and on board, they talked among themselves; Orlando heard the words "god king," and "council." It seemed that he and Fredericks were being arrested for some kind of crime, but he was finding it harder and harder to make sense out of what was happening around him.

The barge loomed above them, then the carved hull began to slide by as the patrol boat motored past it on the way to the dock of the Great Palace, but before they had reached the hull's far end, consciousness escaped Orlando's grasp.