Sea of Silver Light

Renie was still worrying about Stephen; it took her a second to catch up. "But I've been there!" she said. "The one you built, anyway. That was a beautiful place."

He looked at her carefully. "You seem full of worry, Renie."

"Me? Just thinking about Stephen, I guess." She settled back against the bench. The children had now scrambled down to the ground and were ru

He looked at her again, then back to the shrieking children. "What it all means. . . ?"

"I mean, well, you saw those creatures. Those . . . information people. If they're what comes next, then what about us?"

"I don't understand, Renie."

"What about us? What . . . purpose is there for us? All of us. Everyone on Earth, still living, breeding, dying. Making things. Having arguments. But those information creatures are what comes next, and they've gone on without us."

He nodded slowly. "And parents, when their children are born, do they need to die? Are their lives ended?"

"Well, no—but this is different. Parents take care of their children. They raise them. They help them." She sighed. "Sorry, I'm just . . . I don't know, sad. I don't know why."

He took her hand.

"I just wonder what it all means now," she said, laughing a little. "I suppose it's just that so many things have happened. The world almost came to an end. We're getting a place together. We have money! But I'm still not certain I want to accept it."

"Stephen will need a wheelchair and a special bed," !Xabbu said gently. "For a while, anyway. And you liked that house in the hills."

"Yes, but I'm not sure I belong in that house." She laughed again, shook her head. "Sorry. I'm just being difficult."

He smiled, a small, secret smile. "Besides, I have something I wish to spend some of my share of the money on. In fact, I have already done it."

"What? You look very mysterious."

"I have bought some land. In the Okavango Delta. One of the treaties lapsed and it was being sold."

"That's where you grew up. What . . . what are you going to do with it?"

"Spend some time there." He saw her expression and his eyes widened. "Not by myself! With you, I hope. And with Stephen, when he is strong enough, and perhaps even someday with children that you and I might have. Just because they will live in the city world should not mean they never know anything else."

She settled back, her sense of alarm fading. "For a moment there I thought you'd changed your mind . . . about us." She couldn't help frowning. "You could have told me, you know. I wouldn't have tried to stop you."

"I am telling you. I had to make the decision very quickly on the way to meet you at the hospital." He smiled again. "You see what your city life is doing to me? I promise not to hurry again for a year."

She smiled back, a little wearily, and squeezed his hand. "I really am sorry I'm such bad company. All these things to think about, everything is so big and important and . . . and for some reason I'm still wondering if any of it matters."

He looked at her for a moment. "So because the new people took my people's stories on some strange voyage we ca

"Does it. . . ? Of course not!"

"And because you have seen a version of my desert world—one that I built from my own particular memory—does that mean there would be nothing to gain from seeing its true shape and color? Nothing to gain from taking Stephen and our children there to sleep under the real and living stars?"

"No."

He let go of her hand and reached down beside the bench. When he straightened up he held a small red blossom in his hand. "Do you remember the flower I made for you? The first day you showed me how your virtual world worked?"

"Of course." She could not help staring at the petals, slightly ragged along one edge where something small had chewed them, at their rich, red, velvety color, even at the golden pollen smudged against !Xabbu's brown wrist. "It was very nice."

"I did not make this one," he said. "It is real and it will die. But we can still look at it together, in this moment. That is something, is it not?"

He handed it to her. She raised it to her nose and sniffed it.

"You're right." She took his hand again. Something within her that had been pinched and confined since she had stepped out of the tank at last began to open—to unfurl its wings inside her heart. "Yes. Oh, yes. That is definitely something."

The streetlights were coming on, but across the park the children played on as night fell, oblivious.

Afterword

Even the sounds of the battle had almost vanished now, the pounding roar of the German heavy guns reduced to bass notes that throbbed but no longer had the power to inspire terror. He was swimming up through something, caught and carried toward a light like a dawning sky, and as he rose he could hear her voice again, the dream-voice that had spoken to him for so long.

"Paul! Don't leave us!"

But there was something different about it now—something different about everything. He had heard her so many times, felt her, almost, a presence with wings, with pleading eyes, but now in the confusion and the growing light he saw her whole. She floated before him, her arms spread. Her wings, he realized, were a network of cracks that radiated light. Her face was sad, infinitely sad, but somehow not quite real, like an icon that had been painted and repainted until the original face was almost gone.

"Don't leave, Paul," she begged. For the first time there was something more than sadness in her words—a demanding note, a hopeless, harsh command.

He tried to answer her but found he could not speak. He finally recognized her. It all came flooding back—the tower, the lies, the terrible last moments. And her name came back, too.

"Ava!" But as he said it, as he finally found his voice, she was gone. And then he woke up.

For the first moments he thought he was still trapped in endless nightmare, but had simply shuffled into a different foul dream, the chaos of battle and the surreality of the giant's castle now to be replaced by some horrible vision of death—white walls, faceless white phantoms. Then one of the doctors pulled away his surgical mask and straightened. His face was an ordinary one, a stranger's face.

"He's back."

The others stood up too, shuffled back, then there was a new surgical-smocked figure on the stage, leaning over him, a smiling man with Asian features.

"Welcome back, Mr. Jones," he said. "My name is Owen Tanabe."

Paul could only stare at him, overwhelmed. He let his eyes slide around the wide white room, the banks of machinery. He had not the slightest idea where he was.

"You're undoubtedly a bit disoriented," Tanabe said. "That's all right—you may rest as long as you like. We've provided you with a first-class room—the one this hospital saves for visiting dignitaries." He laughed softly. Paul could tell the man was nervous. "But you are not merely visiting, Mr. Jonas. You're back!"

"Where . . . where am I?"

"In Portland, Oregon, Mr. Jonas. At Gateway Hospital. Where you are the guest of the Telemorphix Corporation."

Things were filtering up, scatters of memory, but they only made him more confused. "Telemorphix. . . ? Oregon? Not Louisiana? Not the . . . the J Corporation?"

"Ah." Tanabe nodded solemnly. "I see that you're begi