"H-how . . . how could that be?"
"WHY DO YOU NOT LOOK ME IN THE EYE, LITTLE SONGBIRD? SOMETHING IS AMISS HERE." The steps grew closer. The floor shuddered, and Paul could hear a discordant creaking like a bridge in high wind. "I BELIEVE THERE IS A MAN HERE. I BELIEVE YOU HAVE HAD A VISITOR."
"Run!" the bird woman screamed. Paul cursed and staggered to his feet, surrounded by head-high branches. A vast shadow hung over the room, blocking the soft gray light from the windows, replacing it with the stark blue-white of its own nimbus of sparks. Paul flung himself forward, smashing through the clinging leaves, his heart beating like a greyhound's. The door . . . if he could only find the door again.
"SOMETHING SCURRYING IN THE SHRUBBERY." The titan's voice was amused. "WARM FLESH . . . AND WET BLOOD . . . AND CRISP LITTLE BONES."
Paul splashed through the pond and almost lost his balance. He could see the door, only a few yards away, but the great clanking thing was just behind him.
"Run!" the woman pleaded. Even in his terror he knew that she would suffer some dreadful punishment for this; he felt that he had somehow betrayed her. He reached the door and flung himself through, skidding and then rolling on the smooth stone floor. The huge gate stood before him, and thank God, thank God, it was open!
A hundred steps, maybe more, difficult as running in treacle. The whole castle shook beneath his pursuer's tread. He reached the door and flung himself through and out into what had been sunlight, but was now twilight-gray. The topmost branches of the great tree stood just above the edge of the clouds, a seemingly impossible distance away. Paul bolted toward it across the field of clouds.
The thing was pushing through the door—he heard the great hinges squeal as it forced its way. Lightning-scented air billowed past him, almost knocking him off his feet, and a great roar filled the sky: the Old Man was laughing.
"COME BACK, LITTLE CREATURE! I WANT TO PLAY WITH YOU!"
Paul sprinted across the cloud-trail, his breath scorching in his lungs. The tree was a little closer now. How fast would he have to climb down to move beyond the reach of that terrible thing? Surely it couldn't follow him—how could even the great tree bear the weight of such a monstrosity?
The clouds below his feet stretched and jounced like a trampoline as the Old Man stepped from the castle. Paul tripped and fell forward; one of his hands came down to the side of the trail, pushing through the cloud surface as through cobwebs. He scrambled to his feet and sped forward again—the tree was only a few hundred paces away now. If he could only. . . .
A great gray hand as big as a steam shovel curled around him, a thing of cables and rivets and rusting sheet iron. Paul screamed.
The clouds fell away as he was jerked high into the air, then turned to dangle in front of the Old Man's face. Paul screamed again, and heard another cry, dim but mournful, echo from the distant castle—the keening of a caged bird.
The Old Man's eyes were the vast cracked faces of tower clocks, his beard a welter of curling, rusted wire. He was impossibly huge, a giant of iron and battered copper pipes and slowly turning wheels that steamed at every crack, every vent. He stank of electricity and grinned a row of concrete tombstones.
"GUESTS MAY NOT LEAVE BEFORE I CAN ENTERTAIN THEM." Paul felt the bones of his skull vibrate from the power of the Old Man's voice. As the great maw opened wider, Paul kicked and struggled in the cloud of choking steam.
"TOO SMALL TO MAKE MUCH OF A MEAL, REALLY" said the Old Man, then swallowed him. Shrieking, Paul fell down into oily, gear-grinding darkness.
"Quit that, you bloody idiot!"
Paul struggled, but someone or something was holding his arms. He shuddered and went limp.
"That's better. Here—have a little of this."
Something trickled into his mouth and burned down his throat. He coughed explosively and struggled to sit up. This time he was allowed to. Someone laughed.
He opened his eyes. Finch was sitting beside him, almost on top of him, framed by the mud of the trench top and a sliver of sky.
"You'll be all right." Finch put the cap back on the flask and stowed it in his pocket. "Just a bit of a knock on the head. Sad to say, it's not enough to get you home, old man. Still, Mullet will be pleased to see you when he gets back from shifting his bowels. I told him you'd be fine."
Paul leaned back, his head full of muddled thoughts.
"Where. . . ?"
"In one of the back trenches—I think I dug this bastard myself two years ago. Fritz suddenly decided the war wasn't over yet. We've been pushed quite a way back—don't you remember?"
Paul struggled to hold onto the diminishing tatters of his dream. A woman with feathers like a bird, who spoke of a grail. A giant like a railroad engine, made of metal and hot steam. "And what happened? To me?"
Finch reached behind him and produced Paul's helmet. One side of the crown was dimpled inward. "Piece of shrapnel. But not enough to get you shipped back. Not very lucky are you, Jonesie?"
So it had all been a dream. Just a hallucination after a minor head wound. Paul looked at Finch's familiar face, his grayshot mustache, the weary eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles, and knew that he was back where he was supposed to be, sunk once more in the mud and the blood. Of course. The war went on, uncaring of the dreams of soldiers, a reality so devastating that no other reality could compete.
Paul's head ached. He reached up to rub his temple with a dirty hand, and as he did so something fluttered from his sleeve into his lap. He looked quickly at Finch, but the other man was rooting in his bag, hunting a tin of bully beef, and had not seen. He lifted the object and let it catch the last rays of the sun. The green feather sparkled, impossibly real, impossibly bright, and completely untouched by mud.
First:
UNIVERSE NEXT DOOR
pity this busy monster,manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim(death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness —electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange;lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself. A world of made is not a world of born—pity poor flesh and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence. We doctors know a hopeless case if—listen:there's a hell of a good universe next door;let's go
—e. e. cummings
CHAPTER 1
Mister Jingo's Smile
NETFEED/NEWS: Failed Chip Leads to Murder Spree
(visual: Kashivili at arraignment in body restraints)
VO: Convict Aleksandr Kashivili's behavioral chip suffered an unexpected failure, authorities said today after the mod-paroled Kashivili—
(visual: scorched shopfront, parked fire trucks and ambulances)
—killed 17 restaurant customers in a flamethrower attack in the Serpukhov area of Greater Moscow.
(visual: Doctor Konstantin Gruhov in university office)
GRUHOV: "The technology is still in its early stages. There will be accidents. . . ."
One of the other instructors pushed open the cubicle door and leaned in. The noise of the corridor swept in with him, louder than usual.
"Bomb threat."
"Again?" Renie set her pad down on the desk and picked up her bag. Remembering how many things had gone missing during the last scare, she retrieved the pad before walking into the hallway. The man who had told her—she could never remember his name, Yono Something-or-other—was several paces ahead, vanishing into the river of students and instructors moving leisurely toward the exits. She hurried to catch him.
"Every two weeks," she said. "Once a day during exams. It makes me crazy."
He smiled. He had thick glasses but nice teeth. "At least we will get some fresh air."
Within minutes the wide street in front of Durban Area Four Polytechnic had become a sort of impromptu carnival, full of laughing students glad to be out of class. One group of young men had tied their coats around their waists like skirts and were dancing atop a parked car, ignoring a
n older teacher's increasingly shrill orders to cease and desist.
Renie watched them with mixed feelings. She, too, could feel the lure of freedom, just as she felt the warm African sun on her arms and neck, but she also knew that she was three days behind grading term projects; if the bomb scare went on too long, she would miss a tutorial that would have to be rescheduled, eating up more of her rapidly dwindling spare time.
Yono, or whatever his name was, grinned at the dancing students. Renie felt a surge of annoyance at his irresponsible enjoyment. "If they want to miss class," she said, "why the hell don't they just skip out? Why play a prank like this and make the rest of us—"
A flash of brilliant light turned the sky white. Renie was knocked to the ground by a brief hurricane of hot, dry air as a tremendous clap of sound shattered glass all along the school facade and shivered the windows of dozens of parked cars. She covered her head with her arms, but there was no debris, only the sound of people screaming. When she struggled to her feet, she could see no sign of injuries on the students milling around her, but a cloud of black smoke was boiling above what must be the Admin Building in the middle of the campus. The campanile was gone, a blackened, smoking stump of fibramic skeleton all that remained of the colorful tower. She let out her breath, suddenly nauseated and light-headed. "Jesus Mercy!"
Her colleague clambered to his feet beside her, his dark skin now almost gray. "A real one this time. God, I hope they got everyone out. They probably did—Admin always clears first so they can monitor the evacuation." He was speaking so rapidly she could hardly understand him. "Who do you think it was?"
Renie shook her head. "Broderbund? Zulu Mamba? Who knows? God damn it, that's the third in two years. How can they do it? Why won't they let us work?"
Her companion's look of alarm deepened. "My car! It's in the Admin lot!" He turned and ran toward the explosion site, pushing his way through lost-looking students, some of whom were crying, none of whom seemed in any mood for laughing or dancing now. A security guard who was trying to cordon off the area shouted at him as he ran past.
"His car? Idiot" Renie felt like crying herself. There was a distant ululation of sirens. She took a cigarette out of her bag and pulled the flame-tab with trembling fingers. They were supposed to be noncarcinogenic, but right at the moment she didn't care. A piece of paper fluttered down and landed at her feet, blackened along its edges.
Already, the camera-drones were descending from the sky like a swarm of flies, sucking up footage for the net.
She was on her second cigarette and feeling a little steadier when someone tapped her shoulder.
"Ms. Sulaweyo?"
She turned and found herself confronting a slender boy with yellow-brown skin. His short hair curled close to his head. He wore a necktie, something Renie had not seen in a few years.
"Yes?"
"I believe we had an appointment. A tutorial?"
She stared. The top of his head barely reached her shoulder. "You . . . you're. . . ?"
"!Xabbu." There was a clicking sound in it, as though he had cracked a knuckle. "With an X—and an exclamation point when the name is written in English letters."
Light suddenly dawned. "Ah! You're. . . ."
He smiled, a swift crease of white. "One of the San people—what they sometimes call 'Bushman,' yes."
"I didn't mean to be rude."
"You were not. There are few of us left who have the pure blood, the old look. Most have married into the city-world. Or died in the bush, unable to live in these times."
She liked his grin and his quick, careful speech. "But you have done neither."
"No, I have not. I am a university student" He said it with some pride, but a hint of self-mockery as well. He turned to look at the drifting plume of smoke. "If there will be a university left."
She shook her head and suppressed a shudder. The sky, stained with drifting ash, had gone twilight-gray. "It's so terrible."
"Terrible indeed. But fortunately no one seems badly hurt"
"Well, I'm sorry our tutorial was prevented," she said, recovering a little bit of her professional edge. "I suppose we should reschedule—let me get out my pad."
"Must we reschedule?" !Xabbu asked. "I am not doing anything. It seems that we will not get back into the university for some time. Perhaps we could go to another place—perhaps somewhere that sells beer, since my throat is dry from smoke—and do our talking there."
Renie hesitated. Should she just leave the campus? What if her department head or someone needed her? She looked around at the street and the main steps, which were beginning to resemble a combination refugee center and free festival, and shrugged. Nothing useful would be done here today.
"Let's go find a beer, then."
The train to Pinetown was not running—someone had jumped or been pushed onto the tracks at Durban Outskirt. Renie's legs were aching and her damp shirt was stuck to her body when she finally reached the flatblock. The elevator wasn't running either, but that was nothing new. She trudged up the stairs and dumped her bag on the table in front of the mirror and stopped, arrested by her reflection. Just yesterday a colleague at work had criticized her short, practical haircut, saying that a woman as tall as Renie should try to look more feminine. She scowled and examined the dust streaked down her long white shirt. When did she have time to make herself pretty? And who cared, anyway?
"I'm home," she called.
No one answered. She poked her head around the corner and saw her younger brother Stephen in his chair, as expected. Stephen was faceless behind his net headset, and he held a squeezer in each hand as he tilted from side to side. Renie wondered what he was experiencing, then decided it might be better if she didn't know.
The kitchen was empty, nothing in sight that looked like a hot meal being prepared. She cursed quietly, hoping it was just because her father had fallen asleep.
"Who's there? Is that you, girl?"
She cursed again, anger rising. It was clear from his slurred tone that her father had found something besides cooking to while away his afternoon. "Yes, it's me."
After a rattling thump and a sound like a large piece of furniture being dragged across the floor, his tall shape appeared in the bedroom doorway, swaying slightly.
"How come you so late?"
"Because the train's not running. And because someone blew up half the university today."
Her father considered this for a moment "Broderbund. Those Afrikaaner bastards. For sure." Long Joseph Sulaweyo was a firm believer in the indelible evil of all white South Africans.
"Nobody knows yet. It could have been anyone."
"You arguing with me?" Long Joseph tried to fix her with a baleful stare, his eyes red and watering. He was like an old bull, she thought, enfeebled but still dangerous. It tired her out just looking at him.
"No, I'm not arguing with you. I thought you were going to make dinner for once."
"Walter come by. We had a lot of talking to do."
Had a lot of drinking to do, she thought, but held her tongue. Angry as she was, it wasn't worth going through another evening of shouting and broken crockery. "So it's up to me again, is it?"
He swayed again, then turned back into the darkness of his bedroom. "Suit yourself. I'm not hungry. I need some rest—a man needs his sleep." The bedsprings rasped, then there was silence.
Renie waited a moment, clenching and unclenching her fists, then stalked over and pulled the bedroom door closed, trying to make herself some room, some free space. She looked over at Stephen, still rocking and jiggling in the net. He might as well be catatonic. She slumped into a chair and lit another cigarette. It was important to remember her father as he had been, she reminded herself—as he still occasionally was—a proud man, a kind man. There were some people in whom weakness, once it had appeared, grew like a cancer. Mama's death in the department store fire had found and revealed that weakness. Joseph Sulaweyo no longer seemed to have the strength to fight back against life. He wa
s letting it all go, slowly but surely disconnecting from the world, its pains and disappointments.
A man needs his sleep, Renie thought, and for the second time that day, she shuddered.
She bent down and tapped the interrupt button. Still faceless in his headset, Stephen spasmed in indignation. When he did not lift the insectoid visor, Renie held the button down.
"What for?" Stephen was already demanding before he had finished pulling the headset free. "Me and Soki and Eddie were almost to the Inner District Gateway. We've never gotten that far before!"
"Because I made you dinner, and I want you to eat it before it gets cold."
"I'll wave it when I'm done."
"No, you won't. Come on, Stephen. There was a bomb at school today. It was frightening. I'd like to have your company over dinner."
He straightened, the appeal to his vanity effective. "Chizz. What'd you make?"
"Chicken and rice."
He made a face, but was seated and pushing it into his mouth before she returned from the kitchen with a glass of beer for herself and a soft drink for him.
"What blew up?" He chewed rapidly. "People killed?"
"No one, thank God." She tried not to be disheartened by his clear look of disappointment. "But it destroyed the campanile—you remember, the tower in the middle of the campus."
"Chizz major! Who did it? Zulu Mamba?"
"No one knows. But it frightened me."
"A bomb went off in my school last week."
"What? You never said a word about that!"
He grimaced in disgust, then wiped grease from his chin. "Not that kind. In SchoolNet. Sabotage. Someone said that some guys from Upper Form did it as a graduation prank."
"You're talking about a system crash on the net." She wondered for a moment if Stephen understood the difference between the net and real life. He's only eleven, she reminded herself. Things outside of his narrow circle aren't very real yet. "The bomb that went off at the Poly today could have killed hundreds of people. Killed them dead."