Sea of Silver Light (84 page)

"It took a long time, but when it happened, it was quite sudden—a single twist of perception, then I could feel the information arrayed in front of me, layer upon layer, the information of the guards in the corridor outside just as significant as that of my companions in the cells. One of them was scratching his head. I laughed. It felt a bit like discovering a trick, like that childhood day when I first learned to ride a two-wheeled bicycle. I moved cautiously to expand my survey, tracing the knitted expression of the wall-information on the corridor's far side, then sliding through it, as it were, to examine other corridors and rooms.

"This ability is not by any means limitless. The farther from myself I aim my perception, and the more barriers I penetrate, the less reliable the information. A hundred meters away from our cell the signature of a person—a sim pretending to be a person, that is—was little more than a humanoid shape, identifiable mostly because of movement. Twice that distance and only movement itself was noticeable. As my attention roved, I found several clusters of human shapes and movement, any one of which might have been Paul and his captors, but they were too far away for definite identification.

"I let my perceptions travel farther outward, looking for the energy-shadow of a gateway, the thing that lingers even when the gateway itself is closed. I found one at last which seems to be just at the edge or just outside of the temple-palace, but by this time my head was pounding. I surfaced, returning to the cell and my companions, and told them what I had discovered. I asked Nandi a few questions, and his answers confirmed Orlando's description of him as an expert on the network's internal travel mechanisms. Armed with this extension of my own investigations of the gateways, I let myself reach out to find the gateway again.

"It was more difficult this time. I was weary and my head ached, but I needed to examine the gateway to make sure it was functioning. Strangely, although it seemed open and in working order, I could not access the usual gateway information. But at least it seemed like it would take us somewhere else, and right now, that is our main need.

"I barely had time to explain this to the others before exhaustion pulled me down and I slept like a dead thing. When I woke, perhaps an hour later, the tiny bit of good cheer my news had roused in the others had turned back into a miserable silence, since as long as we were trapped in a cell, even a nearby gateway might as well have been on the moon.

"Despite feeling like my skull was made of old, brittle glass, I decided to try something different. Time was running out—time
is
running out. I could not afford to wait until I felt better, since Dread might appear at any moment, but I did not want to raise anyone's hopes either.

"In fact, although I experienced some success with this last attempt, there is still little about which to be hopeful.

"Again I let myself open. For a moment I feared I had lost the knack, that the walls would remain solidly impenetrable, but I thought of !Xabbu and calmed myself and at last the shift came. I reached out, not in any one direction, but generally, letting my attention flow diffusely outward through the information patterns. I was looking for something less specific than the signature of a gateway, and the farther away from the cell I went exploring, the harder it was to sift through the information.

"I had nearly given up when I found something that seemed a possibility. It was a nested confusion of signatures, of small movements, on the far side of the temple. From what I could discern it was located in a sort of alcove, perhaps a niche behind a cloth hanging, which was worrisome. The second and less-formed part of my plan would be very difficult if it was.

With the location fixed in my mind I surfaced again. My head was throbbing even more painfully now, but I had only to consider what Nandi and Bonnie Mae Simpkins had endured, and what we all could still expect, to drag myself up off the floor and move toward the door of the cell, where I lay down with my face against the open space at the bottom.

" 'What are you doing?' Florimel asked worriedly. 'Are you having trouble breathing?'

" 'I need silence now more than ever!' I told her. 'Please, just be patient for me. Try not to move if you can help it.'

"I turned my ear to the crack under the door and listened. I listened in the same way I had let all my senses roam, but with a narrowing of focus. All I wanted now was sound, in any form I could perceive it. I imagined the temple as a two-dimensional maze and did my best to locate and chart the movement of air currents, following back along the track I had navigated earlier until I could detect the quiet rustle and murmur from the alcove. Describing it, I make it easier than it was, not out of false modesty—it was astoundingly difficult—but because I am running short of time to describe what happened.

"Once I had heard the excruciatingly faint sounds I sought, I began the hardest part of all. I turned my face and spoke a soft, almost silent word to the crack under the door, then followed its progress. The coherence of the wave of sound dissipated quickly, vanishing into diffused silence by the end of the corridor.

"Someone, I think it was T4b, moved behind me, and to my fiercely-straining senses it was like the roar of the ocean. It was all I could do not to scream at my companions. Instead, I tried again.

"It took me the better part of two hours, and could have taken forever if I had not had the wonderful luck that the corridors I was using were mostly deserted. It was like plotting the most complicated billiard shot in the universe, trying to move a small sequence of sound from one end of the temple to the other—bouncing off walls, caroming around corners, all dependent on nearly microscopic differences in the initial direction and on excellent guesses about the swirl of air currents. Still, for all my painstaking care, the fact that I eventually succeeded was mostly luck.

"It was easier to hear the reply, although it took some moments drifting back, No one but me could have heard it—in fact, the sound wave was so small I was not really hearing it, but reading it.

"
'Who that?'
it said.
'How you know Zunni's name? How you know Wicked Tribe?'

"It was too difficult to carry on a conversation—it would have taken hours of hit and miss—and based on the stories I had been told, I did not have the highest belief in the patience of the Wicked Tribe children. I banked my entire roll on one message.

"
'We are friends of Orlando Gardiner's. We are locked in a prison cell here in the temple. They are going to hurt us. We need help right now.'

"I heard no reply back. A guard had begun to talk in the corridor outside, blasting the subtle pipeline of space and movement into crazy ripples.

"So that is that. It is a ridiculously unlikely possibility that they even heard the whole of my message, or that they can do anything about it, but it was the only plan I could devise. At least I was right in my guess that the monkey-children were still hiding in the temple. And against all odds I have told
someone
that we are here, that we need help. The fact that our safety is now dependent on a group of preschool children leaves us no worse off then we were, if not a great deal better.

"Still, although Bonnie Mae Simpkins was happy to hear that the children had survived, I think the rest of my companions were depressed to hear of the slim thread I had expended so much time and energy constructing, and on which our hopes now hung.

"However, I was so tired and felt so sick at that point that I was not even afraid of Dread—would not have cared if Satan himself had knocked on the cell door. I fell asleep almost immediately despite my head banging like a drum. Now I am awake again, but nothing has changed. My head still aches, a persistent throb that I fear will never leave me. Poor Paul Jonas is suffering God alone knows what kind of punishments. The rest of us still wait for death—or worse. We wait for Dread. And perhaps I have accomplished nothing—perhaps I am a failure as a witch. But at least I have done . . . something.

"If I am to die soon, that might be a little solace. A little.

"Code Delphi.
End here."

He was tied and helpless, his back bent across the curved stone table so that he felt the merest touch would split open his belly. In the dim, torchlit chamber the yellow face of Ptah hovered like a sickly sun.

"Comfy?"

Paul struggled against the bonds that were already rubbing skin from his wrists and ankles. "Why are you doing this, Wells?"

"Because I want to know." He straightened up and told the guard who had tied Paul, "Go find Userhotep."

"But I don't know myself! You can't torture someone into telling something he doesn't know!"

Robert Wells shook his head in mock sadness. "Oh, but I can. This isn't the real world anymore, Jonas. This is something much more complicated—more interesting, too."

"Interesting enough to get you killed if your new master doesn't like what you're doing to me."

His captor laughed. "Oh, I'll leave plenty for him to play with, don't worry. But first we're going to try a few tricks of our own." He looked up at the sound of footsteps. "And here's the chief trickster himself."

"I live to serve you, O Lord of the White Walls." The man who spoke might have been old or young—it was hard to tell in the shadowy chamber, and was made more difficult by the fleshy smoothness of the stranger's features. He was not fat—his arms showed hints of terrifying muscle beneath the unusually pale skin—but he was rounded, almost curvaceous, and had the sexless look of a eunuch.

"Userhotep is a very special person," Wells said solemnly. "A . . . damn, what's the term? There's a little snake that talks in my ear, but it almost never shuts up and I get tired of listening. Ah, right, a
kheri-heb
. A special kind of priest."

"He's a torturer," Paul snapped. "And you're an arrogant criminal bastard, Wells. Does your snake-gear have an Egyptian translation for that?"

"You know it already. The term is . . . a god." Robert Wells smiled. "But Userhotep is far more skilled than any mere torturer. He's a lector priest. That means a magician. And he's going to help you tell me everything you know. And everything you don't know, too."

Userhotep moved closer, raising his hands above Paul's unprotected belly. When Paul flinched, the priest frowned slightly, but his eyes remained as empty as the glazed stare of a fish.

No, a shark,
Paul thought miserably.
Something that uses its teeth just because it has them.

"No need to squirm," Wells said. "The painful bit is a pretty small part of the whole operation—I just mentioned it to give your cellmates something to think about. No, Userhotep here is going to cast a spell over you, then you're going to sing like a canary."

"You've been in here too long if you think some of Jongleur's ancient Egyptian mumbo-jumbo is going to make me tell you anything." He strained against the ropes, lifting his head until he could look into Userhotep's epicene face. "You're code, did you know that? You don't even exist. You're imaginary—a bunch of numbers in a big machine!"

Wells chuckled. "He won't hear anything that doesn't fit in with the simulation, Jonas. And it's you who doesn't understand much if you think this . . . mumbo-jumbo won't affect you."

Userhotep bent. When he stood again a long bronze blade was in his hand, more like a straight razor than a dagger. Before Paul had time to react, the priest swiped it across his chest. He had made three shallow cuts before Paul felt the burning pain of the first.

"You bastard!"

Paying no attention to Paul's struggles, Userhotep lifted a jar from the floor and dipped out something black and viscous. He rubbed it across the incisions. It was all Paul could do not to scream as it burned into the raw flesh.

"I think that's probably poppy-seed paste," Wells observed. "Kind of a primitive opium to help you dream. They have a multidisciplinary approach here, you see—a little science, a little magic, a little pain. . . ."

"Here is the malefactor, O gods,"

the priest chanted,

"The one whose mouth is closed against you

as a door is shut

Here is the one who will not tell truth

Unless you open his mouth so that his spirit

has no shade in which to hide!

Give unto me the provenance of his tongue!

Give unto me the secrets of his heart!"

Even as he spoke the charm Userhotep sliced at Paul's skin again and again, caulking each wound with salty black paste. His fluting voice was distant, distracted, as though he were reading the minutes of an unimportant, forgotten meeting, but there was a curious intensity to the man's flat, cold eyes: as the pain mounted, they seemed to grow brighter, until the face was all Paul could see, the rest of the room falling back into shadow.

"See, it doesn't matter whether you believe or not," Wells said from somewhere behind him, the yellow Ptah-face eclipsed by the priest's round visage like the sun disappearing behind the moon. "That's one of the clever things about this network—really, you have to give old Jongleur credit, it approaches genius. . . ."

"I don't
know
anything!" Paul groaned, fighting uselessly against the ropes, the burning of his skin.

"Oh, but you do. And if we play the system right, perform the proper spells, you'll talk whether you want to or not—whether you think you remember or not. Surely you've noticed by now that the network operates below the conscious level? Makes everything more real? Hides things that you know must actually be there, even kills people just by convincing them they're dead? If I'd known how Jongleur managed it all, I would have pushed him out a long time ago." Wells' bad-boy giggle penetrated only slowly—Paul was having trouble understanding, his mind beset by storms of agony and confusion.

"See, the gods are waiting for you in the caverns