Sea of Silver Light

"It makes a kind of sense," Florimel said slowly. "Although there is much to think about before I am ready to agree. But you haven't explained about the dog, yet. I said something about the dog in the story, and that set you onto talking about sims, about how your own sims worked. . . ?"

"Yes. Do you know what your face looks like?"

Florimel flinched. "Are you speaking of my injuries?"

"No, in everyday life. Do you know what your face looks like? Of course you do. You have mirrors, you have photos of yourself. Any normal person knows what he or she looks like. Paul, have you seen your sims? Do they resemble you?"

"Most of them. Except when I was someone specific, as you said, like Odysseus." He looked at her, puzzled, then a moment later it came clear. "You don't know what you look like, do you?"

Martine shook her head. "Of course not. I have been blind since I was a child. I know I don't look like that anymore, but what the years since have done to me, I have no idea, except by touch."

Florimel was staring at her. "You are saying that the Other . . . read your mind?"

"In a way, perhaps. It may have tried to take some sense from each of us of who we were, what we looked like—or wanted to look like. Didn't Orlando say that he looked like an earlier version of his own character? Where did that come from, if it wasn't from the mind of Orlando himself?"

Paul's weariness was still powerful, but the unfolding vistas of this new line of thought could not be ignored. "I wondered, when he told me. I wondered about a lot of this, but there hasn't been any shortage of unanswered questions."

"Of course," Martine said. "We have been fighting for our lives each and every day, in circumstances no one else in history has had to endure. It has taken a long time for, as you English say, the pe

Paul smiled wanly. "So what do we do with this knowledge, if it's all true?"

"I am not done yet." She turned to Florimel. "You asked about the dog. Orlando was not the only one of our group to find his Otherland sim a surprise. Do you remember what !Xabbu told us?"

"That . . . that he had been thinking about baboons. . . ." Florimel began, then stopped, her expression now honestly dumbstruck. "He had been thinking about baboons, because of some tribal story or some such . . . but he had not pla

"Exactly. But someone . . . something . . . chose that appearance for him. Do you know what the old name for baboon was?"

Paul nodded, impressed. "The European sailors used to call them 'dog-faced apes,' didn't they?"

"They did. So imagine the Other, trapped in darkness, praying and singing in the small corner of its own intellect where it could hide from its cruel masters. It remembers a story, one of the most vivid things it knows, something that has been with it since a time that was perhaps as close to a childhood as it ever had. A story about a boy in darkness, tortured and frightened. As it sifts through the thoughts of the latest group of intruders, while its security programming deals with the gross physical facts of the intrusion, it perceives that one of them has an image firmly in his mind—perhaps even a sort of self-image—of a four-legged creature with a head like a dog's head. And, if by probing at the subconscious it can sense anything of its subjects' true nature, it may even have perceived !Xabbu's kindness and loyalty.

"Perhaps it had a plan before that moment, perhaps !Xabbu or something else about us triggered the thought, but from that moment on the Other was not trying to destroy as—or at least the 'child' part of it, the thinking, feeling part, was not. It was trying to find us. It was trying to bring us to it. It was praying to be rescued."

"Jesus." Paul was dimly aware he'd already said this a few times, but could not help saying it several more. "Jesus. So the mountain. . . ?"

"A neutral ground, perhaps?" Florimel offered.

"Perhaps. Perhaps a spot near—if we can use such physical terms about this network—to the Other's own secret place, to the center of its 'self.' If we had been able to remain there, if Dread had not interfered, it might have spoken to us."

Paul stiffened. "And so Renie was right. She and the others really are in the heart of the system?"

Martine slumped back. "I do not know. But if we want to get there, we will have to find some other way, since Troy seems to be barred to us now."

"We will think of something," Florimel said. "Great God, I had not expected to feel this way about the thing that crippled and stole my Eirene, but if what you guess is true, Martine . . . oh! It is a terrible thought." Martine sighed. "But before anything more, we need sleep. I have quite overwhelmed myself, and I did not have much strength in reserve."

"Hang on." Paul reached out and touched her arm. He could feel it trembling with fatigue. "Sorry, but one last thing. You said something about Nandi."

"The one Orlando met."

"I know. I met him, too—I'm sure I told you. I think you were right. If anyone can help us puzzle out the gates, it's him."

"But we don't know where he is," said Florimel. "Orlando and Fredericks last saw him in Egypt."

"Then that's where we need to go. At the very least, it gives us something to aim for!" He squeezed Martine's forearm gently. "Did you notice whether it was one of the . . . available destinations? When you were looking for Troy?"

She shook her head sadly. "Too little time. That is why I accepted this place when I couldn't find Troy—it was the default setting." She reached out and patted his hand, then turned away, searching with her fingers for a clear spot to lie down and sleep. "But we will look for it at the next gateway." She yawned. "And you are right, Paul—at least it is something."

As she curled herself tighter in her blanket, and Florimel did the same, Paul turned to T4b.

"Javier? You haven't said much."

The boy still didn't have a great deal to say. He had clearly been asleep for quite a while.

CHAPTER 13

King Joh

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