City of Golden Shadow (58 page)

"Here, Papa, let me help you." She put her pad down on the bed and went to take the bags from him. "Did you get me some more painblockers?"

"Yes, yes." He said it as though shopping were an underappreciated lifelong specialty of his instead of something he had just done for only the second or third time in his adult life. "Got the painblockers, got the other things. Those people in that store, they crazy. Make you stand in a line even when you only got a few little things."

She smiled. "Have you eaten anything?"

"No." He frowned. "I forgot to cook."

"I'll make you something. You're going to have to get your own breakfast tomorrow because I'm going to work early."

"What for?"

"It was the only chance I could get for some uninterrupted lab time."

"You never home, girl." He slumped onto the edge of his bed, looking sullen. "Leave me here alone all the time."

"I'm trying to do something about Stephen, Papa. You know that." She suppressed a frown as she pulled out a six-pack of beer and put it under the table, then hitched up her bathrobe and got down on her knees on the rough sisal mat to look for the vacuum-sack of mielie flour. "I'm working hard."

"You doing something about Stephen at your work?"

"Trying to, yes."

While she fried griddle cakes on the two-ring halogen mini-range, her father pulled her pad onto his lap and scanned a few pages of Early Mesoamerica.

"What's this about? This whole book about some kind of Mexicans. These the people that used to cut out people's hearts and eat them?"

"I guess so," she said, glancing up. "The Aztecs used to perform human sacrifices, yes. But I haven't had much chance to look at it yet. It's something that I think Susan might have left for me."

"Huh." He snorted and closed the book. "Rich white woman, big old house, and she leaves you a book?"

Renie rolled her eyes. "It isn't that kind. . . ." She sighed and flipped the griddle cakes. "Papa, Susan had relatives of her own. They'll get her property."

Her father stared at the book, frowning. "You said they didn't come to the hospital. You better come to the hospital when I'm dying, girl. Otherwise. . . ." He stopped and thought for a moment, then grinned and spread his arms, encompassing their tiny room and few salvaged possessions. "Otherwise, I give all this to somebody else."

She looked around, not realizing for a moment that he had made a joke. Her laugh was as much surprise as amusement. "I'll be there, Papa. I'd hate to think someone else might get that mat I love so much."

"You remember, then." He lay back on his bed, pleased with himself, and closed his eyes.

Renie was just beginning to fall asleep when the pad beeped. She fumbled for it, groggy but alarmed-there were very few good things anyone might be calling her about just before midnight Her father grunted and rolled over on the far side of the compartment, mumbling in his sleep.

"Hello? Who is it?"

"I am Martine Desroubins." She pronounced it day-roo-ban. "Why are you trying to find me?" Her English was accented, her voice deep and assured-a late-night radio announcer's voice.

"I didn't . . . that is. . . ." Renie sat up. She unblocked her visuals, but the screen remained black, the other party choosing to retain her privacy. Renie lowered the volume slightly so it wouldn't wake her father. "I'm sorry if it seems like. . . ." She paused, straggling to collect her thoughts. She had no idea how well Susan had known this person, or how far she could be trusted. "I came across your name through a friend. I thought you might be able to help with-might even have been contacted about-some family business of mine." This woman had already tracked her back through her inquiries, so it wouldn't do any good to lie about her identity. "My name is Irene Sulaweyo. I'm not anything to do with a business or anything. I'm not trying to cause trouble for you, or interfere with your privacy." She reached out for her pack of cigarettes.

There was a long pause, made to seem even longer by the darkness. "What friend?"

"What. . . ?"

"What friend gave you my name?"

"Doctor Susan Van Bleeck."

"She told you to call me?" There was real surprise and anger in the woman's voice.

"Not exactly. Look, I'm sorry, but I don't feel very comfortable talking about this over the phone with a stranger. Is there somewhere we could meet, maybe? Someplace where we'd both feel safe?"

The woman abruptly laughed, a throaty, even slightly raspy sound-another smoker, Renie guessed. "Where is halfway between Durban and Toulouse? I am in France, Ms. Sulaweyo."

"Oh. . . ."

"But I can promise you that at this moment, outside of a few government and military offices, there is not a more secure phone line than this one in all of South Africa. Now, what do you mean, Doctor Van Bleeck told you to call me, but not exactly? Perhaps I should simply check with her first."

Renie was taken aback for a moment, then realized that this woman did not know, or was pretending not to know, what had happened. "Susan Van Bleeck is dead."

The silence stretched for long seconds. "Dead?" she asked softly. If she was pretending surprise, this Martine, she was a gifted actress.

Renie fished another cigarette from the package and explained what had happened without mentioning anything of her own involvement. It was very strange, sitting in the dark and telling the story to a stranger in France.

To someone who says she's in France, Renie corrected herself. Who says she's a she, for that matter. It was hard to get used to this cloak and dagger stuff, but you couldn't take anything for granted on the net.

"I am very, very sad to hear this," the woman said. "But it still does not explain what you expect from me."

"I don't feel very comfortable talking on the phone, as I said." Renie considered. If this woman was truly in Europe, she was going to have to resign herself to phone conversations. "I suppose I don't have any choice. Does the name Bolivar Atasco mean anything to you, or a book called. . . ?"

"Stop." There was a brief hum of static. "Before I can speak with you further, I must make certain inquiries."

Renie was startled by the sudden shift. "What does that mean?"

"It means I cannot afford to be too trusting either, entendu? But if you are who and what you seem to be, we will speak again."

"Who and what I seem to be? What the hell does that mean?"

The caller had noiselessly disengaged.

Renie put down her pad and leaned back, letting her tired eyes droop closed. Who was this woman? Was there a chance she could actually help, or would it be just a bizarre accidental connection, a sort of drawn-out wrong number?

A book, a mysterious stranger-more information, but no shape to any of it.

Round and around again. Weariness tugged at her like a cranky child. It's all just bits of things, fragments. But I have to keep going. No one else will do it. I have to.

She could sleep for a while-she had to sleep for a while-but she knew she would not wake feeling rested.

CHAPTER 20

NETFEED/RELIGION: Clash Shakes Islam's Foundations

(visual: Faithful at prayer in Riyadh)

VO: The splinter Moslem sect who call themselves "Soroushin" after their spiritual founder, Abdol Karim Soroush, have been banned by the Red Sea Free State, the latest Islamic country to take action against a group that is seen as a threat by many traditional Moslems. Whether this ban will prevent the Soroushin from coming to Mecca as pilgrims has not been made clear, and many fear the decision could split the Islamic world.

(visual: Faithful on pilgrimage, circling the Kaaba)

The Free State government claims that the ban was for the protection of the Soroushin themselves, who have often been victims of mob violence.

(visual: archive footage of Professor Soroush lecturing)

Soroush, a famous Islamic scholar at the turn of the last century, declared that democracy and Islam not only could be compatible, but that their association was inevitable. . . .

No sun marred the faultless blue of the sky, yet the sands sparkled with light and the great river gleamed. At a gesture from the god the barque slid out into deeper water and turned against the sluggish current. Along the banks, thousands of worshipers threw themselves onto their faces in supplication, a massive, ecstatically groaning ripple of humanity far more violent than the sleepy motion of the river itself. Others swam after the barque, shouting praise even as their mouths filled with water, happy to drown in the attempt to touch the side of their lord's painted boat.

The continuous and noisy worship, which usually provided a soothing background for his self-designed narrative, suddenly annoyed Osiris. It hindered his thinking, and he had chosen this method of transportation precisely for its slow and tranquil pace, to compose himself for his appointment. If he had not wanted an extended meditative interlude, he could have traveled to his destination instantly.

He gestured again and the crowds simply vanished, flicked into nonexistence more swiftly than a man could swat a fly. Nothing remained along the banks but a few tall palm trees. The swimmers, too, were gone, the shallows empty but for thickets of papyrus. Only the helmsman of the barque and the naked children who fanned the Lord of Life and Death with ostrich feathers remained. Osiris smiled and grew calmer. It was a pleasant thing to be a god.

His nerves calmed by the gentle water sounds, he turned his thoughts to the approaching encounter. He searched himself for signs of anxiety and, unsurprisingly, found several. Despite all the times he had done this, it never grew any easier.

He had tried in many different ways to restructure his encounters with the Other, struggling always to make the interaction more palatable. For the first formal meeting he had created an innocuous office simulation, more anodyne than anything he owned in the real world, and had filtered the Other through the persona of a callow young employee, one of the interchangeable nonentities whose careers and even lives he had crushed without hesitation countless times. He had hoped in this way to make the Other an object so devoid of menace that any discomfort of his own would be removed, but that early experiment had turned out very badly. The Other's alien qualities had been even more disturbing as they forced their expression through the simulation. Despite the fact that the meeting had taken place in a simworld belonging to and controlled by Osiris, the Other had warped and scrambled his avatar in a most frightening way. Despite his own vast experience, Osiris still had no idea how the Other managed to disrupt complex Simulation machinery so completely, especially since he very seldom seemed even rational.

Other experiments had been no more successful. An attempt to hold a meeting in a nonvisual space had only succeeded in making Osiris feel that he was trapped in infinite blackness with a dangerous animal. Attempts to make the Other subtly ridiculous failed as well-a cartoonish simulation designed by programmers from the Uncle Jingle children's program had simply expanded until it blotted out the rest of the simulation and filled Osiris with such intensely terrifying claustrophobia that he had been forced offline.

No, he knew now that this was the only way he could handle the unpleasant task-a task that the other members of the Brotherhood would not even attempt. He had to filter the Other through his own and most familiar simulation, and construct as much of a framework of ritual and distance around the encounter as he possibly could. Even the slow journey up the river was necessary, a period in which he could find the state of meditative calm that made useful communication possible.

It was quite astonishing, really, to think that anyone could inspire fear in Osiris, the master of the Brotherhood. Even in the mundane world he was a figure of terror, a man of power and influence so great that many considered him a myth. Here in his own created microcosm he was a god, the greatest of gods, with all that such stature brought. If he chose, he could destroy entire universes with only the blink of an eye.

He had made this journey dozens of times now, yet the prospect of simple contact-you could not term such interactions "conversations"-with the Other left him as frightened as when he had huddled in his bedroom in the oh-so-distant days of his childhood, conscious of his guilt and coming punishment, waiting for his father's footsteps to come booming up the stairs.

What the Other was, how he thought, what gave him the ability to do what he could do-all of these were questions that might have no comprehensible answer. There might also be simple explanations, as straightforward as the bioluminescence by which a firefly lured its mate. But it did not matter, and in a perversely terrified way, Osiris was glad. Humanity reached out, farther and farther, and still the Universe pulled away. Mystery was not dead.

The barque of the Lord of Life and Death glided up the great river. The burning sands ran unbroken to the horizon on either side. In all the world, it seemed, nothing moved at that moment but the boat itself and the slow rise and fall of the feathered fans in the hands of the god's attendants. Osiris sat upright, bandaged hands crossed on his chest, gold mummy mask staring into the infinite south of the red desert. Set, the Beast of Darkness, awaited.