Sea of Silver Light

(visual: Christ in press conference)

CHRIST: "Lawsuit? You know what International Entertainment can do? It can bend right over and start counting shower tiles. . . ."

Like school, this is," said T4b miserably.

It had been a long time since Paul had been in school, but he knew what their Goggleboy companion meant.

They had been trapped in the bubble for what felt to Paul like hours, perhaps half a day. In a different situation the bobbing journey atop the swell of the river would have been fascinating: the current had pushed them past a great deal of Kunohara's jungle, past huge mangrove trees with roots sunk deep into the water, monstrously tangled edifices of bark proportionately large as entire cities. Strange fish had nosed them, leviathans up from the river mud to investigate, but fortunately none had decided the strange bubble was worth trying to swallow. Birds with wingspans like jumbo jets and colored like an explosion in God's own fireworks factory, a rat the size of a warehouse, water beetles big as motorboats—they had floated past all kinds of wonders. But the four of them were trapped in a sphere scarcely large enough to allow them all to sit with their legs stretched out, and they were bored, stiff, and miserable.

Worse, Renie's unfinished message seemed to hang in the sealed air of the bubble like a curl of poisonous gas. She was in trouble somewhere and her friends could do nothing.

With nothing to do but rest and talk, they had puzzled and argued for hours, but Paul thought they were no closer to solving any of the riddles that haunted them. He had related all that he had remembered so far of his life in Jongleur's tower, but although the others had been fascinated, they could offer nothing to help him make sense of what the fragments meant.

"So what happens?" T4b said, breaking the long silence. "Just go on, us, all rub-a-dub-dub like this, forever?"

Paul smiled sadly. Personally, he had been thinking of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod adrift in their wooden shoe, but the idea was much the same.

"We will go through to the next simulation," Florimel said wearily. "When we get to the gateway, Martine will try to manipulate it to send us back to Troy, so that we might perhaps cross through to the place where Renie and the others are. We have said all this before."

Paul looked to Martine, who at the moment didn't appear capable of manipulating anything more complicated than a bath towel or a spoon. The blind woman sagged, her earlier confidence gone, or at least worn down for the moment. Her lips were moving, as though she were talking to herself. Or praying.

I hope she doesn't give up, he thought in sudden fear. Without Renie to push us along, she's all we have. Florimel's smart and brave, but she doesn't think ahead like the two of them, she gets angry and discouraged. T4b—well, he's a teenager, and not a very patient one at that.

But what about me? Even the thought of taking responsibility for the lives of these people made him feel a little queasy. Yes, but that's shit, man, and you know it. You've been through things in the last weeks that nobody—nobody!—in the real world has experienced, let alone survived. Chased by monsters, fought in the bloody Trojan War. Why shouldn't you take the lead if it were necessary?

Because it feels like it's hard enough just being Paul Jonas, he answered himself. Because it's hard enough getting by when it feels like a big piece of my life is missing. Because I'm damned tired, that's why.

Somehow, they didn't sound like very good excuses.

Martine stirred and sat up. "I am troubled," she said. "Troubled by many things."

"And who is not?" Florimel snorted.

"This thing about Kunohara having an informant among us?" Paul asked her.

"No. There is nothing we can do about that if it is true, and I am willing to believe you all when you say you know nothing about it." But her sightless gaze seemed to pause for a moment on T4b, who shifted uncomfortably. "I am troubled by the song that the . . . the operating system, as I suppose I must call it, was singing. A song that I think I taught it to sing."

"You can call it the Other," said Florimel. "Many others seem to, and it is easier to say."

Martine waved her hand in impatience. "It does not matter. The fact is, I am troubled because it might hold answers to some of our questions, but I can remember very little about that time, those events."

Paul shrugged. "We don't know anything except what you've told us."

"And that is as much as I wish to tell. I was . . . experimented upon. I communicated remotely with what I thought was another child—a strange, even frightening child, but also somehow pitiful. I played games with it, as I assume other children in the institute did. I taught it stories, songs. I think that I taught it the song it was singing. . . ." She broke off, staring at nothing.

"And now you think this playmate of yours was an AI?" Paul finished for her. "They were . . . training the operating system to be like a human, for some reason."

T4b shook his head. "Locktacious. Those old Grail-knockers scan freely, huh?"