Tad Williams - Otherland 3 - Mountain of Black Glass

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Mountain of Black Glass

By Tad Williams

Otherland 3

Contents

Volume One Synopsis

Volume Two Synopsis

Foreword

First - EXILES IN DREAM

Chapter 1 - A Circle of Strangers

Chapter 2 - An Old-Fashioned Sound

Chapter 3 - House of the Beast

Chapter 4 - A Problem With Geography

Chapter 5 - Tourist in Madrikhor

Chapter 6 - A Rock and a Hard Place

Chapter 7 - The Battle for Heaven

Chapter 8 - House

Second - ANGELS AND ORPHANS

Chapter 9 - Eyes of Stone

Chapter 10 - God's Only Friends

Chapter 11 - Quarantine

Chapter 12 - The Terrible Song

Chapter 13 - Tending the Herd

Chapter 14 - Bandit Country

Chapter 15 - Waiting for Exodus

Third - BROKEN GLASS

Chapter 16 - Friday Night at the End of the World

Chapter 17 - Our Lady and Friends

Chapter 18 - Dreams in a Dead Land

Chapter 19 - A Life Between Heartbeats

Chapter 20 - Elephant's House

Chapter 21 - The Spire Forest

Chapter 22 - An Unexpected Bath

Chapter 23 - Buried in the Sky

Chapter 24 - Serious Games

Chapter 25 - A Job with Unusual Benefits

Chapter 26 - Dawn at the Gates

Fourth - SUNSET ON THE WALLS

Chapter 27 - On the Road Home

Chapter 28 - A Coin for Persephone

Chapter 29 - Some Roadside Attractions

Chapter 30 - Heaven's Plaything

Chapter 31 - The Hall Wherein They Rest

Chapter 32 - Trojan Horse

Chapter 33 - A Piece of the Mirror

Chapter 34 - To Eternity

Chapter 35 - The White Ocean

Afterword

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This is still dedicated to you-know-who,

even if he doesn't.

Maybe we can keep this a secret

all the way to the final volume.

-------------------------

Acknowledgements

The list of the Kind, the Helpful, and the Patient who have contributed to the OTHERLAND books

now includes the following excellent souls: Barbara Cannon, Aaron Castro, Nick Des Barres, Debra

Euler, Arthur Ross Evans, Amy Fodera, Sean Fodera, Jo-Ann Goodwin, Deb Grabien, Nic Grabien, Jed

Hartmann, Tim Holman, Nick Itsou, John Jarrold, Katharine Kerr, Ulrike Killer, M. J. Kramer, Jo

and Phil Knowles, Mark Kreighbaum, LES.., Bruce Lieberman, Mark McCrum, Joshua Milligan, Hans-

Ulrich Möhring, Eric Neuman, Peter Stampfel, Mitch Wagner, Michael Whelan, and my friends on the

Tad Williams Listserve and the message boards of the Tad Williams Fan Page and the Memory, Sorrow

and Thorn Interactive Thesis.

As always, I am especially grateful for the support and encouragement of my wife Deborah

Beale, my agent Matt Bialer, and my editors Sheila Gilbert and Betsy Wollheim.

Confusion to our enemies!

For more information, visit the Tad Williams website at: www.tadwilliams.com

-------------------------

OTHERLAND: City of Golden Shadow

Synopsis

-------------------------

Wet, terrified, with only the companionship of trench-mates _Finch_ and _Mullet_ to keep him

sane, _Paul Jonas_ seems no different than any of thousands of other foot soldiers in World War I.

But when he abruptly finds himself alone on an empty battlefield except for a tree that grows up

into the clouds, he begins to doubt that sanity. When he climbs the tree and discovers a castle in

the clouds, a woman with wings like a bird, and her terrifying giant guardian, his insanity seems

confirmed. But when he awakens back in the trenches, he finds he is clutching one of the bird-

woman's feathers.

In South Africa, in the middle of the twenty-first century, _Irene "Renie" Sulaweyo_ has

problems of her own. Renie is an instructor of virtual engineering whose newest student, _!Xabbu_,

is one of the desert Bushmen, a people to whom modern technology is very alien. At home, she is a

surrogate mother to her young brother, _Stephen_, who is obsessed with exploring the virtual parts

of the world communication network--the "net"--and Renie spends what little spare time she has

holding her family together. Her widowed father _Long Joseph_ only seems interested in finding his

next drink.

Like most children, Stephen is entranced by the forbidden, and although Renie has already

saved him once from a disturbing virtual nightclub named Mister J's, Stephen sneaks back in. By

the time Renie discovers what he has done, Stephen has fallen into a coma. The doctors cannot

explain it, but Renie is certain something has happened to him online.

American _Orlando Gardiner_ is only a little older than Renie's brother, but he is a master of

several online domains, and because of a serious medical condition, spends most of his time in the

online identity of _Thargor_, a barbarian warrior. But when in the midst of one of his adventures

Orlando is given a glimpse of a golden city unlike anything else he has ever seen on the net, he

is so distracted that his Thargor character is killed. Despite this terrible loss, Orlando cannot

shake his fascination with the golden city, and with the support of his software agent _Beezle

Bug_ and the reluctant help of his online friend _Fredericks_, he is determined to locate the

golden city.

Meanwhile, on a military base in the United States, a little girl named _Christabel Sorensen_

pays secret visits to her friend, _Mr. Sellars_, a strange, scarred old man. Her parents have

forbidden her to see him, but she likes the old man and the stories he tells, and he seems much

more pathetic than frightening. She does not know that he has very unusual plans for her.

As Renie gets to know !Xabbu the Bushman better, and to appreciate his calm good nature and

his outsider's viewpoint on modern life, she comes to rely on him more and more in her quest to

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discover what has happened to her brother. She and !Xabbu sneak into the online nightclub, Mr.

J's. The place is as bad as she feared, with guests indulging themselves in all manner of virtual

unpleasantness, but nothing seems like it could have actually physically harmed her brother until

they are drawn into a terrifying encounter with a virtual version of the Hindu death-goddess Kali.

!Xabbu is overcome, and Renie, too, is almost overwhelmed by Kali's subliminal hypnotics, but with

the help of a mysterious figure whose simulated body (his "sim") is a blank, with no features at

all, she manages to get herself and !Xabbu out of Mister J's. Before she goes offline, the figure

gives her some data in the form of a golden gem.

Back (apparently) in World War I, Paul Jonas escapes from his squadron and makes a run for

freedom through the dangerous no-man's-land between the lines. As rain falls and shells explode,

Paul struggles through mud and corpses, only to find he has crossed over into some nether-region,

stranger even than his castle dream--a flat, misty emptiness. A shimmering golden light appears,

and Paul is drawn to it, but before he can step into its glow, his two friends from the trenches

appear and demand that he return with them. Weary and confused, he is about to surrender, but as

they come closer he sees that Finch and Mullet no longer appear even remotely human, and he flees

into the golden light.

In the 21st Century, the oldest and perhaps richest man in the world is named _Felix

Jongleur_. His physical body is all but dead, and he spends his days in a virtual Egypt he has

built for himself, where he reigns over all as _Osiris_, the god of Life and Death. His chief

servant, both in the virtual and real world, is a half-Aboriginal serial murderer who has named

himself _Dread_, who combines a taste for hunting humans with a strange extrasensory ability to

manipulate electronic circuitry that allows him to blank security cameras and otherwise avoid

detection. Jongleur discovered Dread years before, and helped to nurture the young man's power,

and has made him his chief assassin.

Jongleur/Osiris is also the leader of a group of some of the world's most powerful and wealthy

people, the _Grail Brotherhood_, who have built for themselves a virtual universe unlike any

other, the Grail Project, also called Otherland. (This latter name comes from an entity known as

the "Other" which has some important involvement with the Grail Project network--an artificial

intelligence or something even stranger. This powerful force is largely in the control of

Jongleur, but it is the only thing in the world that the old man fears.)

The Grail Brotherhood are arguing among themselves, upset that the mysterious Grail Project is

so slow to come to fruition. They have all invested billions in it, and waited a decade or more of

their lives. Led by the American technology baron _Robert Wells_, they grow restive about

Jongleur's leadership and his secrets, like the nature of the Other.

Jongleur fights off a mutiny, and orders his minion Dread to prepare a neutralization mission

against one of the Grail members who has already left the Brotherhood.

Back in South Africa, Renie and her student !Xabbu are shaken by their narrow escape from the

virtual nightclub known as Mister J's, and more certain than ever that there is some involvement

between the club and her brother's coma. But when she examines the data-object the mysterious

figure gave her, it opens into an amazingly realistic image of a golden city. Renie and !Xabbu

seek the help of Renie's former professor, _Dr. Susan Van Bleeck_, but she is unable to solve the

mystery of the city, or even tell for certain if it is an actual place. The doctor decides to

contact someone else she knows for help, a researcher named _Martine Desroubins_. But even as

Renie and the mysterious Martine make contact for the first time, Dr. Van Bleeck is attacked in

her home and savagely beaten, and all her equipment destroyed. Renie rushes to the hospital, but

after pointing Renie in the direction of a friend, Susan dies, leaving Renie both angry and

terrified.

Meanwhile Orlando Gardiner, the ill teenager in America, is hot in pursuit of the golden city

that he saw while online, so much so that his friend Fredericks begins to worry about him. Orlando

has always been odd--he has a fascination with death-experience simulations that Fredericks can't

understand--but even so this seems excessive. When Orlando announces they are going to the famous

hacker-node known as TreeHouse, Fredericks' worst fears are confirmed.

TreeHouse is the last preserve of everything anarchic about the net, a place where no rules

dictate what people can do or how they must appear. But although Orlando finds TreeHouse

fascinating, and discovers some unlikely allies in the form of a group of hacker children named

the _Wicked Tribe_ (whose virtual guise is a troop of tiny winged yellow monkeys) his attempts to

discover the origins of the golden city vision arouse suspicion, and he and Fredericks are forced

to flee.

Meanwhile Renie and !Xabbu, with the help of Martine Desroubins, have also come to TreeHouse,

in pursuit of an old, retired hacker named _Singh_, Susan Van Bleeck's friend. When they find him,

he tells them that he is the last of a group of specialist programmers who built the security

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system for a mysterious network nicknamed "Otherland," and that his companions have been dying in

mysterious circumstances. He is the last one alive.

Renie, !Xabbu, Singh, and Martine decide they must break into the Otherland system to discover

what secret is worth the lives of Singh's comrades and children like Renie's brother.

Paul Jonas has escaped from his World War I trench only to find himself seemingly unstuck in

time and space. Largely amnesiac, he wanders into a world where a White Queen and a Red Queen are

in conflict, and finds himself pursued again by the Finch and Mullet figures. With the help of a

boy named _Gally_ and a long-winded, egg-shaped bishop, Paul escapes them, but his pursuers murder

Gally's children friends. A huge creature called a Jabberwock provides a diversion, and Paul and

Gally dive into a river.

When they surface, the river is in a different world, a strange, almost comical version of

Mars, full of monsters and English gentleman-soldiers. Paul again meets the bird-woman from his

castle dream, now named _Vaala,_ but this time she is the prisoner of a Martian overlord. With the

help of mad adventurer _Hurley Brummond_, Paul saves the woman. She recognizes Paul, too, but does

not know why. When the Finch and Mullet figures appear again, she flees. Attempting to catch up to

her, Paul crashes a stolen flying ship, sending himself and Gally to what seems certain doom.

After a strange dream in which he is back in the cloud-castle, menaced by Finch and Mullet in

their strangest forms yet, he wakes without Gally in the midst of the Ice Age, surrounded by

Neandertal hunters.

Meanwhile in South Africa, Renie and her companions are being hunted by mysterious strangers,

and are forced to flee their home. With the help of Martine (whom they still know only as a voice)

Renie, along with !Xabbu, her father, and Dr. Van Bleeck's assistant _Jeremiah_, find an old,

mothballed robot-plane base in the Drakensberg Mountains. They renovate a pair of V-tanks

(virtuality immersion vats) so Renie and !Xabbu can go online for an indefinite period, and

prepare for their assault on Otherland.

Back on the army base in America, little Christabel is convinced to help the burned and

crippled Mr. Sellars with a complex plan that is only revealed as an escape attempt when he

disappears from his house, setting the whole base (including Christabel's security chief father)

on alert. Christabel has cut what seems an escape hole in the base's perimeter fence (with the

help of a homeless boy from outside), but only she knows that Mr. Sellars is actually hiding in a

network of tunnels beneath the base, free now to continue his mysterious "task."

In the abandoned facility, under the Drakensberg Mountains, Renie and her companions enter the

tanks, go online, and break into Otherland. They survive a terrifying interaction with the Other

which seems to be the network's security system, in which Singh dies of a heart attack, and find

that the network is so incredibly realistic that at first they cannot believe it is a virtual

environment. The experience is strange in many other ways. Martine has a body for the first time,

!Xabbu has been given the form of a baboon, and most importantly, they can find no way to take

themselves offline again. Renie and the others discover that they are in an artificial South

American country. When they reach the golden city at the heart of it, the city they have been

seeking so long, they are captured, and discover that they are the prisoners of _Bolivar Atasco_,

a man involved with the Grail Brotherhood and with the building of the Otherland network from the

start.

Back in America, Orlando's friendship with Fredericks has survived the twin revelations that

Orlando is dying of a rare premature-aging disease, and that Fredericks is in fact a girl. They

are unexpectedly linked to Renie's hacker friend Singh by the Wicked Tribe just as Singh is

opening his connection to the Grail network, and drawn through into Otherland. After their own

horrifying encounter with the Other, Orlando and Fredericks also become Atasco's prisoners. But

when they are brought to the great man, along with Renie's company and others, they find that it

is not Atasco who has gathered them, but Mr. Sellars--revealed now as the strange blank sim who

helped Renie and !Xabbu escape from Mister J's.

Sellars explains that he has lured them all here with the image of the golden city--the most

discreet method he could devise, because their enemies, the Grail Brotherhood, are so unbelievably

powerful and remorseless. Sellars explains that Atasco and his wife were once members of the

Brotherhood, but quit when their questions about the network were not answered. Sellars then tells

how he discovered that the secret Otherland network has a mysterious but undeniable connection to

the illness of thousands of children like Renie's brother Stephen. Before he can explain more, the

sims of Atasco and his wife go rigid and Sellars' own sim disappears.

In the real world, Jongleur's murderous minion Dread has begun his attack on the Atascos'

fortified Colombian island home, and after breaking through the defenses, has killed both Atascos.

He then uses his strange abilities--his "twist"--to tap into their data lines, discovers Sellars'

meeting, and orders his assistant _Dulcinea Anwin_ to take over the incoming line of one of the

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Atascos' guests--the online group that includes Renie and her friends--and takes on the identity

of that usurped guest, leaving Dread a mystery spy in the midst of Renie and friends.

Sellars reappears in the Atascos' virtual world and begs Renie and the others to flee into the

network while he tries to hide their presence. They are to look for Paul Jonas, he tells them, a

mysterious virtual prisoner Sellars has helped escape from the Brotherhood. Renie and company make

their way onto the river and out of the Atascos' simulation, then through an electrical blue glow

into the next simworld. Panicked and overwhelmed by too much input, Martine finally reveals her

secret to Renie: she is blind.

Their boat has become a giant leaf. Overhead, a dragonfly the size of a fighter jet skims into

view.

Back in the mountain fortress, in the real world, Jeremiah and Renie's father Long Joseph can

only watch the silent V-tanks, wonder, and wait.

-------------------------

OTHERLAND: River of Blue Fire

Synopsis

-------------------------

_Paul Jonas_ still seems to be adrift in time and space. He has recovered most of his memory,

but the last few years of his life remain a blank. He has no idea why he is being tossed from

world to world, pursued by the two creatures he first knew as _Finch_ and _Mullet_, and he still

does not know the identity of the mysterious woman he keeps encountering, and who has appeared to

him even in dreams.

He has survived a near-drowning only to find himself in the Ice Age, where he has fallen in

with a tribe of Neandertals. The mystery woman appears to him in another dream, and tells him that

to reach her he must find "a black mountain that reaches to the sky."

Not all of the cave dwellers welcome the unusual stranger; one picks a quarrel that results in

Paul being abandoned in the frozen wilderness. He survives an attack by giant cave hyenas, but

falls into the icy river once more.

Others are having just as difficult and painful a time as Paul, although they are better

informed. _Renie Sulaweyo_ originally had set out to solve the mystery of her brother _Stephen's_

coma with her friend and former student _!Xabbu_, a Bushman from the Okavango Delta. With the help

of a blind researcher named _Martine Desroubins_, they have found their way into Otherland, the

world's biggest and strangest virtual reality network, constructed by a cabal of powerful men and

women who call themselves _The Grail Brotherhood_. Summoned by the mysterious _Mr. Sellars_, Renie

meets several others who have been affected by the Grail Brotherhood's machinations--_Orlando

Gardiner_, a dying teenager, and his friend _Sam Fredericks_ (who Orlando has only recently

discovered is a girl), a woman named _Florimel_, a flamboyant character who calls himself _Sweet

William_, a Chinese grandmother named _Quan Li_, and a sullen young man in futuristic armor who

uses the handle _T4b._ But something has trapped them within the network, and the nine companions

have been forced to flee from one virtual world to the next on a river of blue fire--a virtual

path that leads through all the Otherland simulation worlds.

The newest simworld is much like the real world, except that Renie and her companions are less

than a hundredth of their normal size. They are menaced by the local insects, as well as larger

creatures like fish and birds, and the members of the group become separated. Renie and !Xabbu are

rescued by scientists who are using the simulation to study insect life from an unusual

perspective. The scientists soon discover that, like Renie and !Xabbu, they are trapped online.

Renie and !Xabbu meet a strange man named _Kunohara_, who owns the bug world simulation, but

claims he is not part of the Grail Brotherhood. Kunohara poses a pair of cryptic riddles to them,

then vanishes. When a horde of (relatively gigantic) army ants attacks the research station, most

of the scientists are killed and Renie and !Xabbu barely escape from a monstrous praying mantis.

As they flee back to the river in one of the researchers' aircraft, they see Orlando and

Fredericks being swept down the river on a leaf. As they attempt to rescue them, Renie and !Xabbu

are pulled through the river gateway with them, but the two groups wind up in different

simulations.

Meanwhile, in the real world outside the network, other people are being drawn into the

widening Otherland mystery. _Olga Pirofsky_, the host of a children's net show, begins to suffer

from terrible headaches. She suspects that her online activities might have something to do with

it, and in the course of investigating her problem, begins to learn of the apparently net-related

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illness that has struck so many children (including Renie's brother.) Olga's research also draws

the attention of a lawyer named _Catur Ramsey_, who is investigating the illness on behalf of the

parents both of Orlando and Fredericks, since in the real world both teenagers have been in a coma

ever since their entrance into the Otherland network.

John Wulgaru, who calls himself _Dread_, and whose hobbies include serial murder, has been an

effective if not one hundred percent loyal employee of the incredibly wealthy _Felix Jongleur_,

the man who heads the Grail Brotherhood (and who spends most of his time in his Egyptian

simulation, wearing the guise of the god Osiris.) But in the course of killing an ex-member of the

Brotherhood at Jongleur's orders, Dread has discovered the existence of the Otherland network, and

has even taken over one of the sims in Renie's marooned company. As his master Jongleur is caught

up in the final arrangements for the Otherland network--whose true purpose is still known only to

the Brotherhood--Dread busies himself with this new and fascinating puzzle. As a spy among

Sellars' recruits, Dread is now traveling through the network and trying to discover its secrets.

But unlike those in Sellars' ragtag group, Dread's life is not at risk: he can go offline whenever

he wishes. He recruits a software specialist named _Dulcie Anwin_ to help him run the puppet sim.

Dulcie is fascinated by her boss, but unsettled by him, too, and begins to wonder if she is in

deeper than she wants to be.

Meanwhile, a bit of Dread's past has surfaced. In Australia, a detective named _Calliope

Skouros_ is trying to solve a seemingly unexceptional murder. Some of the terrible things done to

the victim's body are reminiscent of an Aboriginal myth-creature, the Woolagaroo. Detective

Skouros becomes convinced that there is some strange relationship between Aboriginal myths and the

young woman's death she is investigating.

Back in the Otherland network, Renie and !Xabbu find themselves in a weird, upside-down

version of the Oz story, set in the dreary Kansas of the original tale's opening. The Otherland

simulations seem to be breaking down, or at least growing increasingly chaotic. As Renie and

!Xabbu try to escape the evil of Lion and Tinman--who seem to be two more versions of Paul Jonas'

Finch and Mullet--they find a pair of unlikely allies, the young and naive _Emily 22813_ and a

laconic gypsy named _Azador_. Emily later reveals that she is pregnant, and says Azador is the

father. Separated from Azador during one of the increasingly frequent "system spasms," they escape

Kansas, but to their surprise, Emily (who they had thought was software) travels with them to the

next simulation.

Orlando and Fredericks have landed in a very strange world, a kitchen out of an ancient

cartoon, populated by creatures sprung from package labels and silverware drawers. They help a

cartoon Indian brave search for his stolen child, and after battling cartoon pirates and meeting

both a prophetic sleeping woman and an inexplicable force--entities that are really Paul Jonas'

mystery woman and the network's apparently sentient operating system, known as _the Other_--they

escape the Kitchen and land in a simulation that seems to be ancient Egypt.

Meanwhile, their former companions, the blind woman Martine and the rest of the Sellars'

recruits, have hiked out of the bug world to discover themselves in a simulation where the river

is made not of water but air, and where the primitive inhabitants fly on wind currents and live in

caves along vertical cliffs. Martine and the others name the place Aerodromia, and although they

are nervous about trying it at first, they soon discover that they can fly, too. A group of

natives invite them to stay in the tribal camp.

Paul Jonas has passed from the Ice Age into something much different. At first, seeing

familiar London sights, he believes he has finally found his way home, but soon comes to realize

that he is instead traveling through an England almost completely destroyed by Martian attack--it

is, in fact, the setting of H. G. Wells' _War of the Worlds_. Paul now realizes that he is

traveling not just to worlds separate in time and space, but to some that are actually fictitious.

He meets a strange husband and wife called _the Pankies_, who seem to be another guise of his

pursuers Finch and Mullet, but offer him no harm. (Paul is also being pursued by a special

software program called the _Nemesis_ device, but he is not yet aware of it.) Then, when Paul and

the Pankies stop at Hampton Court, Paul is led into the maze by a strange man and then shoved

through a gateway of glowing light at the maze's center.

On the other side Paul finds himself in the setting of Coleridge's famous poem, _Xanadu_, and

the man who brought him there introduces himself as _Nandi Paradivash_. Nandi is a member of a

group named _The Circle_, who are working against the Grail Brotherhood. Paul finally learns that

he is not insane, nor caught in some kind of dimensional warp, but is rather a prisoner in an

incredibly realistic simulation network. But Nandi has no idea why the Brotherhood should be

interested enough in Paul--who worked in a museum and remembers his other life as being very

ordinary--to pursue him throughout Otherland. Nandi also reveals that all the simulations through

which Paul has been traveling belong to one man--Felix Jongleur, the Grail Brotherhood's chairman.

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Before Nandi can tell him more, they are forced to separate, Nandi pursued by Kublai Khan's

troops, Paul passing through another gateway into yet another simworld.

Things are no less complex and confusing in the real world. Renie's and !Xabbu's physical

bodies are in special virtual reality tanks in an abandoned South African military base, watched

over by _Jeremiah Dako_ and Renie's father, _Long Joseph Sulaweyo_. Long Joseph, bored and

depressed, sneaks out of the base to go see Renie's brother Stephen, who remains comatose in a

Durban hospital, leaving Jeremiah alone inside the base. But when Joseph arrives at the hospital,

he is kidnapped at gunpoint and forced into a car.

The mysterious Mr. Sellars lives on a military base, too, but his is in America. _Christabel

Sorensen_ is a little girl whose father is in charge of base security, and who despite her youth

has helped her friend Sellars escape the house arrest her father and others have kept him in for

years. Sellars is hiding in old tunnels under the base, his only companion the street urchin _Cho-

Cho_. Christabel does not like the boy at all. She worries for the feeble Mr. Sellars' safety, and

is torn by guilt for doing something she knows would make her mother and father angry. But when

her mother discovers her talking with Sellars through specially modified sunglasses, Christabel is

finally in real trouble.

Martine, Florimel, Quan Li, Sweet William, and T4b have been enjoying the flying world,

Aerodromia, but things get uncomfortable when a young girl from the tribe is kidnapped. Martine

and the rest don't know it, but the girl has been stolen, terrorized, and murdered by Dread, still

pretending to be one of Martine's four companions. The people of Aerodromia blame the newcomers

for the disappearance, and dump them all into a labyrinth of caverns they call the Place of the

Lost, where they find themselves surrounded by mysterious, ghostly presences which Martine, with

her heightened nonvisual senses, finds particularly upsetting. The phantoms speak in unison,

telling of the "One who is Other," and how he has deserted them instead of taking them across the

"White Ocean," as promised. The voices also identify the real names of all Martine's company. The

group is fascinated and frightened, and only belatedly realizes that Sweet William has disappeared-

-evidently to protect the guilty secret of his true identity. Something large and strange--the

Other--abruptly enters the darkened Place of the Lost, and Martine and the others flee the

horrifying presence. Martine searches desperately for one of the gateways that will allow them to

leave the simulation before either the Other or the renegade Sweet William catches them.

At the same time, Orlando and Fredericks discover that the Egyptian simulation is not a

straightforward historical recreation, but a mythical version. They meet a wolf-headed god named

_Upaut_, who tells them how he and the whole simworld have been mistreated by the chief god,

Osiris. Unfortunately, Upaut is not a very bright or stable god, and he interprets Orlando

mumbling in his sleep--the result of a dream-conversation Orlando is having with his software

agent, _Beezle Bug_, who can only reach him from the real world when he dreams--as a divine

directive for him to try to overthrow Osiris. Upaut steals their sword and boat, leaving Orlando

and Fredericks stranded in the desert. After many days of hiking along the Nile, they come upon a

strange temple filled with some terrible, compelling presence. They cannot escape it. In a dream,

Orlando is visited by the mystery woman also seen by Paul Jonas, and she tells them she will give

them assistance, but as the temple draws them closer and closer, they find only the _Wicked

Tribe_, a group of very young children they had met outside the network, who wear the sim-forms of

tiny yellow flying monkeys. Orlando is stunned that this is the help the mystery woman has brought

them. The frightening temple continues to draw them nearer.

Paul Jonas has passed from Xanadu to late 16th Century Venice, and soon stumbles into _Gally_,

a boy he had met in one of the earlier simulations, and who had traveled with him, but Gally does

not remember Paul. Seeking help, the boy brings him to a woman named _Eleanora_; although she

cannot explain Gally's missing memories, she reveals that she herself is the former real-world

mistress of an organized crime figure who built her this virtual Venice as a gift. Her lover was a

member of the Grail Brotherhood, but died too soon to benefit from the immortality machinery they

are building, and survives now only as a set of flawed life-recordings. Before Paul can learn

more, he discovers that the dreadful Finch and Mullet--_the Twins_, as Nandi named them--have

tracked him to Venice: he must flee again, this time with Gally. But before they can reach the

gateway that will allow them to escape, they are caught by the Twins. The Pankies also make an

appearance, and for a moment the two mirror-pairs face each other, but the Pankies quickly depart,

leaving Paul alone to fight the Twins. Gally is killed, and Paul barely escapes with his life.

Still trying to fulfill the mystery woman's summons from his Ice Age dream, he travels to a

simulation of ancient Ithaca to meet someone called "the weaver." Still shocked and saddened by

Gally's death, he learns that in this new simulation he is the famous Greek hero Odysseus, and

that the weaver is the hero's wife, Penelope--the mystery woman, again. But at least it seems he

will finally get some answers.

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Renie and !Xabbu and Emily find that they have escaped Kansas for something much more

confusing--a world that does not seem entirely finished, a place with no sun, moon, or weather.

They have also inadvertently taken an object from Azador that looks like an ordinary cigarette

lighter, but is in fact an access device, a sort of key to the Otherland network, stolen from one

of the Grail Brotherhood _(General Daniel Yacoubian_, one of Jongleur's rivals for leadership).

While studying the device in the hopes of making it work, !Xabbu manages to open a transmission

channel and discovers Martine on the other end, trapped in the Place of the Lost and desperately

trying to open a gateway. Together they manage to create a passage for Martine and her party, but

when they arrive, believing they are being pursued by a murderous Sweet William, they find that it

is William himself who has been fatally injured, and grandmotherly Quan Li who is really the

murderer Dread in virtual disguise. His secret revealed, Dread escapes with the access device,

leaving Renie and the others stranded, perhaps forever, in this disturbing place.

-------------------------

OTHERLAND

Mountain of Black Glass

-------------------------

Foreword

As she spoke, the flame of the oil lamp repeatedly drew his eye, a wriggling brightness that in

such a still room might have been the only real thing in all the universe. Even her eyes, the wide

dark eyes he knew so well, seemed but a detail from a dream. It was almost impossible to believe,

but this was unquestionably her, at last. He had found her.

_But it couldn't be this simple,_ Paul Jonas thought. _Nothing else has been._

And of course, he was right.

At first it did seem as though a door, long closed, had finally opened--or rather, with Paul

still reeling from the horror of the boy Gally's death, it seemed he had reached the final round

of some particularly drawn-out and incomprehensible contest.

The wife--and, most thought, widow--of long-lost Odysseus had stalled her suitors for some

while with the excuse that before considering another marriage she must finish weaving her father-

in-law's shroud. Each night, when the suitors had fallen into drunken sleep, she had then secretly

unpicked her day's work. Thus, when Paul had come to her in the guise of her husband, he had found

her weaving. When she turned from the loom he saw that the design was one of bird shapes--bright-

eyed, flare-winged, each individual feather a little miracle of colored thread--but he had not

looked at it long. The mysterious creature who had come to him in so many guises and in so many

dreams, who in this place wore the form of a tall, slender woman of mature years, now stood

waiting for him.

"There is so much that we must talk about, my long-lost husband--so very much!"

She beckoned him to her stool. When he had lowered himself onto it, she knelt with careful

grace on the stone flags at his feet. Like everyone else in this place, she smelled of wool and

olive oil and woodsmoke, but she also had a scent that seemed to Paul particularly her own, a

whiff of something flowery and secretive.

Oddly, she did not embrace him, did not even call back the slave-woman Eurycleia to bring wine

or food for her long-lost husband, but Paul was not disappointed: he was far more interested in

answers to his many questions. The lamp flame flickered, then stabilized, as though the world drew

breath and held it. Everything about her called to him, spoke of a life he had lost and was

desperate to regain. He wanted to clutch her to him, but something, perhaps her cool, slightly

fearful gaze, prevented it. He was dizzied by events and did not know where to start.

"What . . . what is your name?"

"Why, Penelope, my lord," she said, a wrinkle of consternation appearing between her eyebrows.

"Has your trip to death's dusky kingdom robbed you even of your memories? That is sad indeed."

Paul shook his head. He knew the name of Odysseus' wife already, but he had no interest in

playing out a scenario. "But what is your _real_ name? Vaala?"

The look of worry was rapidly becoming something deeper. She leaned away from him, as though

from an animal that might at any moment turn violent. "Please, my lord, my husband, tell me what

you wish me to say. I do not wish to anger you, for then your spirit might find no rest at all."

"Spirit?" He reached his hand toward her but she shied away. "Do you think I'm dead? Look, I'm

not--touch me."

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Even as she moved gracefully but decisively to avoid him, her expression suddenly changed, a

violent alteration from fear to confusion. A moment later a deep mournfulness came over her--a

look that seemed to have no relationship to the prior reactions. It was startling to see.

"I have kept you with my womanish worries long enough," she said. "The ships strain at their

anchor ropes. Bold Agamemnon and Mcnelaus and the others impatiently await, and you must sail

across the sea to distant Troy."

"What?" Paul could not make sense of what had just happened. One moment she had been treating

him as though he were her husband's ghost, the next she was trying to hurry him off to the Trojan

War, which must be long over with--otherwise, why was everyone so surprised to see him still

alive? "But I have come back to you. You said you had much to tell me."

For a moment Penelope's face froze, then thawed into yet another new and quite different

expression, this one a mask of pained bravery. What she said made almost no sense at all. "Please,

good beggar, although I feel certain that Odysseus my husband is dead, if you can give me any tale

at all of his last days, I will see that you never go hungry again."

It felt as though he had stepped onto what he thought was a sidewalk only to discover it was a

whirling carousel. "Wait--I don't understand any of this. Don't you know me? You said that you

did. I met you in the giant's castle. We met again on Mars, when you had wings. Your name was

Vaala there."

At first his sometime wife's face curdled into a look of anger, but then her expression

softened. "Poor man," she said tolerantly. "Shouldering just a few of the many indignities that

tormented my resourceful husband has driven away your wits. I will have my women find a bed for

you, where my cruel suitors will not make your life a misery. Perhaps in the morning you can offer

me better sense." She clapped her hands; the aged Eurycleia appeared in the doorway. "Find this

old man a clean place to sleep, and give him something to eat and drink."

"Don't do this to me!" Paul leaned forward and clutched at the hem of her long dress. She

jerked away with a momentary blaze of real fury.

"You go too far! This house is full of armed men who would be only too happy to kill you in

hopes of impressing me."

He clambered to his feet, not certain what to do next. Everything seemed to have crashed down

around him. "Do you really not remember me? Just a few minutes ago you did. My real name is Paul

Jonas. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

Penelope relaxed, but her formal smile was so stiff as to look painful, and for a moment Paul

thought he saw something terrified fluttering behind her eyes, a trapped creature struggling for

escape. The hidden thing faded; she waved him away and turned back to her tapestry.

Outside the chamber he put his hand on the old woman. "Tell me--do _you_ know me?"

"Of course, my lord Odysseus, even in those rags and with your beard so gray." She led him

down the narrow stairs to the first floor.

"And how long have I been gone?"

"Twenty terrible years, my lord."

"Then why does my wife think I am someone else? Or think I'm just now leaving for Troy?"

Eurycleia shook her head. She did not seem overly perturbed. "Perhaps her long sorrow has

sickened her wits. Or perhaps some god has clouded her vision, so she cannot see you truly."

"Or maybe I'm just doomed," Paul muttered. "Maybe I'm just meant to wander around forever."

The old woman clicked her tongue. "You should be careful of your words, my lord. The gods are

always listening."

He lay curled on the packed earth of the kitchen floor. The sun had set and the cold night

wind off the ocean crept through the huge, draughty house. The ash and dirt on the floor were more

than offset by the welcome heat of the oven, which pulsed out at him through the stone, but even

being warm when he might have been outside, chilled to the bone, was not much comfort.

_Think it through_, he told himself. _Somehow you knew it wouldn't be so easy. The serving

woman said, "Maybe a god has clouded her vision." Could that be it? Some kind of spell or

something?_ There were so many possibilities within this world, and he had so little real

information--only what Nandi Paradivash had told him, with many deliberate omissions. Paul had

never been much good at solving puzzles or playing games as a child, far happier just daydreaming,

but now he felt like cursing his childhood self for slackness.

No one else was going to do it for him, though.

As Paul thought about what he had become--a thinking game-piece, perhaps the only one, on this

great Homeric Greece game board--a realization came to him, muffled and yet profound as distant

thunder. _I'm doing this all wrong. I'm thinking about this simworld like it's real, even though

it's just an invention, a toy. But I need to think about the invention itself. What are the rules

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of how things work? How does this network actually function? Why am I Odysseus, and what's

supposed to happen to me here?_

He struggled to summon up his Greek lessons from school days. If this place, this simworld,

revolved around the long journey of Homer's Odyssey, then the king's house on Ithaca could only

come into it at the beginning of the tale, when the wanderer was about to leave, or at the end

when the wanderer had returned. And as realistic as this place was--as all the simworlds he had

visited were--it was still not real: perhaps every possible contingency could not be programmed

in. Perhaps even the owners of the Otherland network had limits to their budgets. That meant there

would have to be a finite number of responses, limited in part by what the Puppets could

understand. Somehow, Paul's appearance here had triggered several contradictory reactions in the

woman currently called Penelope.

But if he was triggering conflicting responses, why had the servingwoman Eurycleia immediately

recognized him as Odysseus returned in disguise from his long exile, and then never deviated from

that recognition? That was pretty much as it had been in the original, if his long-ago studies had

served him properly, so why should the servant react correctly and the lady of the house not?

_Because they're a different order of being,_ he realized. _There aren't just two types of

people in these simulations, the real and the false--there's at least one more, a third sort, even

if I don't yet know what it is. Gally was one of those third types. The bird-woman, Vaala or

Penelope or whatever she's really called--she must be another._

It made sense, as far as he could think it through. The Puppets, who were completely part of

the simulations, never had any doubt about who they were or what was happening around them, and

apparently never left the simulations for which they had been created. In fact, Puppets like the

old serving woman behaved as though they and the simulations were both completely real. They were

also well-programmed; like veteran actors, they would ignore any slip-ups or uncertainties on the

part of the human participants.

At the other end of the spectrum, the true humans, the Citizens, would always know that they

were inside a simulation.

But there was apparently a third type like Gally and the bird-woman who seemed to be able to

move from one simworld to another, but retained differing amounts of memory and self-understanding

in each environment. So what were they? Impaired Citizens? Or more advanced Puppets, some kind of

new model that were not simulation-specific?

A thought struck him then, and even the smoldering warmth from the oven could not stop his

skin pimpHng with sudden chill.

_God help me, that describes Paul Jonas as well as it describes them. What makes me so sure

I'm a real person?_

The bright morning sun of Ithaca crept into almost every corner of the Wanderer's house, rousting

the usurped king from his bed by the oven not long after dawn. Paul had little urge to linger, in

any case--knowing the kitchen women were virtual did not much soften their harsh words about his

raggedness and dirtiness. Old Eurycleia, despite her workday already having reached full gallop as

she saw to the demands of the suitors and the rest of the household, made sure that he received

something to eat--she would have brought him far more than the chunk of bread and cup of heavily

watered wine he accepted, but he saw no purpose in rousing envy or suspicion in the household. He

found himself chewing the crusty bread with some pleasure, which made him wonder how his real body

was being fed. Despite the frugal meal and his best efforts to be unobtrusive, several of the

maids had already begun to whisper that they should have one or another of their favorites among

Penelope's suitors drive this filthy old man out of the house. Paul did not want to fight with any

of the interlopers--even assuming he had been given the strength and stamina to outduel one of

those strapping warriors, he was tired and depressed and wanted no part of any more struggles. In

an effort to avoid controversy entirely he took his heel of bread and went out to walk on the

headlands and think.

Whatever else the creators of this simulation might have planned, Paul thought, they had done

a very fine job of capturing the Mediterranean world's astonishingly clear, bright light. Even

early on this hot morning the rocks along the cliff seemed as crisply pale as new paper, the

reflected glare so fierce that he could not stand too close to them. Even with the sun behind him,

he had to shade his eyes.

_I've got to learn the rules of this thing_, he thought as he watched the seagulls wheeling

below him. _Not Greece, but the whole network. I have to make sense of it or I'll just wander

forever. The other version of Vaala, the one that spoke first in my dream, then through the

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Tad Williams - Otherland 3 - Mountain of Black Glass

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