Tad Williams - Otherland 2 - River of Blue Fire

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e-Version 3.0. Following standards at: http://ebook.ultraslack.net. 10/02

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Otherland

Volume Two

River of Blue Fire

Tad Williams

DAW Books ISBN 0-88677-844-1

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Contents

Synopsis

Foreword

First -- THE SECRET RIVER

Chapter 01 - Deep Waters

Chapter 02 - Greasepaint

Chapter 03 - The Hive

Chapter 04 - In the Puppet Factory

Chapter 05 - The Marching Millions

Chapter 06 - Man From the Dead Lands

Chapter 07 - Grandfather's Visit

Chapter 08 - Fighting Monsters

Chapter 09 - The Hollow Man

Chapter 10 - Small Ghosts

Chapter 11 - Utensils

Chapter 12 - The Center of the Maze

Second - VOICES IN THE DARK

Chapter 13 - The Dreams of Numbers

Chapter 14 - Games in the Shadows

Chapter 15 - A Late Crismustreat

Chapter 16 - Shoppers and Sleepers

Chapter 17 - In the Works

Chapter 18 - The Veils of Illusion

Chapter 19 - A Day's Work

Chapter 20 - The Invisible River

Chapter 21 - In the Freezer

Third - GODS AND GENIUSES

Chapter 22 - Inside Out

Chapter 23 - Beside Bob's Ocean

Chapter 24 - The Most Beautiful Street in the World

Chapter 25 - Red Land, Black Land

Chapter 26 - Waiting for the Dreamtime

Chapter 27 - The Beloved Porcupine

Chapter 28 - Darkness in the Wires

Fourth - BEDLAM'S SONG

Chapter 29 - Imaginary Gardens

Chapter 30 - Death and Venice

Chapter 31 - The Voice of the Lost

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Chapter 32 - Feather of Truth

Chapter 33 - An Unfinished Land

Afterword

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This book is dedicated to my father,

Joseph Hill Evans,

with love.

As I said before, Dad doesn't read fiction. He still hasn't noticed

that this thing is dedicated to him. This is Volume Two--let's

see how many more until he catches on.

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Acknowledgements

As always: huge book, much to say, lots of blame (almost entirely mine), but also lots of

credit, herewith tendered. The ever-swollen Roster of Gratitude carried over from the first

doorstopping volume was:

Deborah Beale, Matt Bialer, Arthur Ross Evans, Jo-Ann Goodwin, Deb Grabien, Nic Grabien, Jed

Hartmann, John Jarrold, Katharine Kerr, M.J. Kramer, Mark Kreighbaum, Bruce Lieberman, Mark

McCrum, Peter Stampfel, Mitch Wagner.

It must now be amended to include:

Barbara Cannon, Aaron Castro, Nick Des Barres, Tim Holman, Nick Itsou, Jo and Phil Knowles,

LES.., Joshua Milligan, Eric Neuman, Michael Whelan, and all the friendly folks on the Tad

Williams Listserve.

Still starring in their long-running, long-suffering roles as my Esteemed Editors, a bazilion

thanks should also be rendered unto Betsy Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert.

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Author's Note

I've received an awful lot of mail, electronic and old-fashioned-with-a-stamp both, about the

first OTHERLAND volume. Most, I'm pleased to say, has been extremely nice and very favorable. The

only note of discomfort has been from some readers who were upset by what they felt was the

"cliffhanger" nature of the first volume's ending.

I understand and apologize. However, the problem with writing this kind of story is that it's

not really a series--it's one very, very long novel, which should be under one cover except that

1) it would take so long to write that my family and pets would starve, and 2) they couldn't make

covers that size, unless they were adapted from circus tents. That means I have a difficult choice

to make: end each part in more abrupt fashion than some readers find ideal, or create artificial

endings for each volume which I believe would change the overall shape of the book, and perhaps

even adversely affect the structure of the story.

Thus, I can only ask for the indulgence of kind readers. I'll do the best job I can not to end

volumes in mid-sentence--"And then she discovered she was . . . oops, The End"--but please

understand that what you're getting is a part of a larger work, and may reflect that. I'll still

do the best I can to find some kind of closure for each individual volume.

Thanks.

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

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OTHERLAND: City of Golden Shadow

Synopsis

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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.

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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

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

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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

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."

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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

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.

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OTHERLAND

River of Blue Fire

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Foreword

There was snow everywhere--the world was white. _I must have been warmer in the Land of the Dead,_

he thought, mocking himself, mocking the senseless universe. _I should never have left._

Snow and ice and wind and blood. . . .

The thing in the shallow pit made a terrible raw honking sound and swung its head. Antlers the

size of small trees swept from side to side, gouging snow and dirt, narrowly missing one of the

men who had leaned in to jab at it with his spear.

The elk was larger than anything like it Paul had ever seen in tired old London Zoo, taller

than a man at its shoulders and heavy as a prize bull. It had fought with terrifying strength for

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almost an hour, and the points of the huge, curling antlers were streaked with the blood of a man

named Will Not Cry, but the animal's shaggy pelt was also drenched with its own blood, as was the

snow around the edge of the hole.

It leaped again and fell back scrabbling, hooves churning the bottom of the pit to a pink

froth. Spears snagged in the elk's thick hide rattled like exotic jewelry. Runs Far, who seemed

the party's most fearless hunter, leaned in to jerk one of his spears free. He missed his first

stab, dodged the swinging antlers, then smashed the stone point back in again just under the

creature's thick jaw. Arterial blood spurted ten feet, splashing Runs Far and the two hunters

nearest to him, adding another layer of color to their ocher-and-black hunting paint.

The elk heaved up the slope once more in a last desperate attempt to escape the pit, but

failed to crest the rim before the spears of the hunters pushed it off balance and sent it sliding

backward, awkward as a fawn.

The freshet of blood from its throat pulsed more weakly. The buck stood on wobbly legs at the

bottom of the pit, hitching as it sucked air. One leg buckled, but it struggled upright yet again,

teeth bared in final exhaustion, glaring from beneath the spread of horn. The man named

Birdcatcher jabbed a spear into its side, but it was clearly a superfluous gesture. The elk took a

step backward, its face registering what in a human Paul would have called frustration, then fell

to its knees and rolled onto its side, chest heaving.

"Now he gives himself to us," said Runs Far. Beneath his smeared paint, his mouth was locked

in a grin of exhausted pleasure, but there was something deeper in his eyes. "Now he is ours."

Runs Far and another man clambered into the pit. When his companion had grabbed the antlers,

holding them firm as the elk gasped and twitched, Runs Far slashed its throat with a heavy stone

blade.

In what seemed a piece of particularly cruel irony, the hunter with the strange name of Will

Not Cry had suffered not just deep antler-gouges across his face and head, but had lost his left

eye as well. As one of the other hunters stuffed the ragged hole with snow and bound it with a

strip of tanned hide, Will Not Cry murmured to himself, a singsong whisper that might have been a

lament or a prayer. Runs Far crouched beside him and tried to wash some of the blood from the

injured man's face and beard with a handful of snow, but the ragged facial wounds still bled

heavily. Paul was astonished by how calmly the others reacted to their companion's terrible

injuries, although all of them bore scars and disfigurations of their own.

_People die easily here,_ he decided, _so anything less serious must seem like a victory._

The Neandertal hunters quickly and adroitly razored the elk carcass into chunks with their

flint knives and wrapped the skin, organs, and even bones in the still-smoking hide for travel.

The People, as they called themselves, did not waste anything.

As work slowed, some of the men began to watch Paul again, perhaps wondering whether the

stranger they had saved from the frozen river was properly impressed by their prowess. Only the

one called Birdcatcher looked at him with open distrust, but they all kept their distance. Having

participated in neither the kill nor the dismemberment, Paul was feeling particularly useless, so

he was grateful when Runs Far approached. The leader of the hunt had so far been the only one to

speak with Paul. Now he extended a blood-smeared hand, offering the stranger a strip of the kill's

deep-red flesh. Sensible of the kindness being shown him, Paul accepted it. The meat was curiously

flavorless, like chewing on a bit of blood-salted rubber.

"Tree Horns fought hard." Runs Far took another piece into his mouth. When he could not fit it

all in, he reached up and sliced off the remainder with his stone blade, retaining it until he had

finished the first mouthful. He grinned, displaying worn and scratched teeth. "We have much meat

now. The People will be happy."

Paul nodded, unsure of what to say. He had noticed a curious thing: When the hunters spoke, it

was in recognizable English, which seemed a highly unlikely thing for a group of Neandertal

huntsmen to do. At the same time, there seemed a slight dissynchronization between their lips and

what they said, as though he had been dropped into a well-dubbed but still imperfect foreign

drama.

In fact, it seemed as though he had been given some kind of translation implant, like the kind

his old school friend Niles had received on entering the diplomatic corps. But how could that be?

For the fifth or sixth time that day, Paul's fingers went to his neck and the base of his

skull, feeling for the neurocannula that he knew was not there, again finding only goose-pimpled

skin. He had never wanted implants, had resisted the trend long after most of his friends had

them, yet now it seemed that someone had given them to him without his permission--but had also

managed to completely hide the physical location.

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_What could do that?_ he wondered. _And why? And more Importantly, where in the bloody hell am

I?_

He had been thinking and thinking, but he was no nearer to an answer. He seemed to be sliding

through space and time, like something out of the more excessive kind of science fiction story. He

had traveled across a boy's-adventure Mars, he remembered, and through somebody's cracked version

of Alice's Looking Glass. He had seen other improbable places, too--the details were fuzzy, but

still too complete to be merely the residue of dreams. But how was that possible? If someone were

to build sets and hire impostors to fool him this thoroughly, it would cost millions--billions!--

and try as he might, he could not find a single crack in the facades of any of these might-be

actors. Neither could he imagine a reason why anyone would spend such resources on a nonentity

like himself, a museum curator with no important friends and no particular prospects. No matter

what the voice from the golden harp had said, this must all be real.

Unless he had been brainwashed somehow. He could not rule that out. Some kind of experimental

drug, perhaps--but why? There was still a gap in his memory where the answer might lurk, but

unlike the strange journeys to imaginary landscapes, no amount of concentration could bring light

to any of that particular patch of darkness.

Runs Far still crouched at his side, his round eyes bright with curiosity beneath the bony

brows. Embarrassed, confused, Paul shrugged and reached down for a handful of snow and crunched it

between the crablike pincers of his crude gloves. Brainwashing would explain why he had awakened

in a frozen prehistoric river and been rescued by what looked like authentic Neandertals--

costuming and sets for a hallucination wouldn't be very expensive. But it could not explain the

absolutely, unarguably _real_ and sustained presence of the world around him. It could not explain

the snow in his hand, cold and granular and white. It could not explain the stranger beside him,

with his unfamiliar but utterly lived-in, alien face.

All those questions, but still no answers. Paul sighed and let the snow fall from his hand.

"Are we going to sleep here tonight?" he asked Runs Far.

"No. We are close to where the People live. We will be there before full dark." The hunter

leaned forward, furrowed his brow, and stared into Paul's mouth. "You eat things, Riverghost. Do

all the people from the Land of the Dead eat things?"

Paul smiled sadly. "Only when they're hungry."

Runs Far was in the lead, his stocky legs carrying him through the snow with surprising ease;

like all the hunters, even the terribly wounded Will Not Cry, he moved with the instinctive grace

of a wild beast. The others, although burdened now with hundreds of kilograms of elk parts,

followed swiftly, so that Paul was already winded trying to keep up.

He skidded on a fallen branch hidden by snow, and slipped, but the man beside him caught and

held him unflinchingly until Paul had found his feet; the Neandertal's hands were hard and rough

as tree bark. Paul found himself confused again. It was impossible to sustain disbelief in the

face of such powerful arguments. These men, although not quite the caricature cavemen he

remembered from childhood flicks, were so clearly something different from himself, something

wilder and simpler, that he found his skepticism diminishing--not so much fading as sliding into a

kind of hibernation, to awaken when it again had a useful task to do.

What sounded like a wolf howl came echoing down the hillside. The People ran a little faster.

_Nothing around you is true, and yet the things you see can hurt you or kill you,_ the golden

gem, the voice from the harp, had told him. Whatever these men were, true or false seemings, they

were at home in this world in a way that Paul most decidedly was not. He would have to rely on

their skills. For his sanity's sake, he might have to trust that they were exactly what they

seemed to be.

When he had been a boy, when he had still been "Paulie," and still the chattel of his eccentric

father and frail mother, he had spent each Christmas with them at his paternal grandmother's

cottage in Gloucestershire, in the wooded, rolling countryside that the locals liked to call "the

real England." But it had not been real, not at all: its virtue was precisely that it symbolized

something which had never completely existed, a middle-class England of gracious, countrified

beauty whose tattered true nature was becoming more obvious every year.

For Grammer Jonas, the world beyond her village had become increasingly shadowy. She could

describe the complexity of a neighbor's dispute about a fence with the sophistication of a news-

net legal analyst, but had trouble remembering who was prime minister. She had a wallscreen, of

course--a small, old-fashioned one framed in baroque gold on the parlor wall, like the photo of a

long-dead relative. It mostly went unused, the calls voice-only. Grammer Jonas had never

completely trusted visual communication, especially the idea that she could see without being seen

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if she chose, and the thought that some stranger might look into her house and see her in her

nightgown gave her, as she put it, "the creeps, Paulie-love, the absolute creeps."

Despite her distrust of the modern world, or perhaps even in part because of it, Paul had

loved her fiercely, and she in turn had loved him as only a grandmother could. Every small success

of his was a glowing victory, every transgression against parental authority a sign of clever

independence to be encouraged rather than condemned. When, in one of his fits of unfocused

rebellion, young Paul refused to help with the dishes or do some other chore (and thus forfeited

his pudding) Grammer Jonas would be at the door of his prison-bedroom later in the evening to pass

him a contraband sweet, in a breathless hurry to get downstairs again before his parents noticed

her absence.

The winter when he was seven, the snows came. It was England's whitest Christmas in decades,

and the tabnets competed for the most astonishing footage--St. Paul's dome wearing a dunce cap of

white, people skating on the lower Thames as they had during Elizabethan times (many died, since

the ice was not thick enough to be safe.) In the early weeks, before the tabs began to trumpet

"New Atlantic Storm Creates Blizzard Horror" and run daily body counts (with corpse-by-corpse

footage) of people who had frozen to death sleeping rough or even waiting for trains at the

smaller stations, the heavy snows brought a sense of joy to most people, and young Paul had

certainly been one of them. It was his first real experience of snowballs and sleds and tree

branches dropping cold surprises down the back of one's neck, of a world with most of its colors

suddenly wiped clean.

One mild day, when the sun was out and the sky was mostly blue, he and his grandmother had

gone for a walk. The most recent snowfall had covered everything, and as they walked slowly

through the fields there were no signs of other humans at all except for the distant smoke from a

chimney, and no footprints but the tracks of their own rubber boots, so that the vista spread

before them seemed primordial, untouched.

When at last they had reached a place between the hedgerows, where the land before them dipped

down into a gentle valley, his grandmother abruptly stopped. She had spread her arms, and--in a

voice he had never heard her use, hushed and yet throbbingly intense--said, "Look, Paulie, isn't

it lovely! Isn't it perfect! It's just like we were back at the beginning of everything. Like the

whole sinful world was starting over!" Mittened fists clenched before her face like a child making

a wish, she had added: "Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

Surprised and a little frightened by the strength of her reaction, he had struggled to make

her insight his own--struggled but ultimately failed. There _was_ something beautiful about the

illusion of emptiness, of possibility, but he had been a seven-year-old boy who did not feel, as

his grandmother more or less did, that people had somehow ruined everything, and he was just baby

enough to be made nervous by the thought of a world without familiar places and people, a world of

clean, cold loneliness.

They had stood for a long time, staring at the uninhabited winter world, and when at last they

turned back--Paul secretly relieved to be walking in their own reversed footprints, following the

trail of bread crumbs out of the worrisome forest of adult regrets--his grandmother had been

smiling fiercely to herself, singing a song he could not quite hear.

Paul had tried and failed to share her epiphany that day, so long ago. But now he seemed to be

the one who had tumbled into the world she had wished for, a world--thousands of generations

before even his grandmother's inconceivably ancient childhood--that she could only imagine.

_Yes, if Grammer Jonas could have seen this,_ he thought. _God, wouldn't she have loved it. It

really is the beginning--a long time before the crooked politicians and the filthy shows on the

net and people being so rude and vulgar, and all the foreign restaurants serving things she

couldn't pronounce. She'd think she'd gone to heaven._

Of course, he realized, she'd have trouble getting a good cup of tea.

The People were moving in deceptively ragged order along the edge of a hillside forest,

heading down a long, snow-blanketed slope broken up by irregular limestone outcroppings. Slender

tree-shadows stretched across their path like blueprints for an unbuilt staircase. The light was

fading quickly, and the sky, which had been the soft gray of a dove's breast, was turning a

colder, darker color. Paul suddenly wondered for the first time not when in the world he was, but

where.

Had there been Neandertals everywhere, or just in Europe? He couldn't remember. The little he

knew of prehistoric humankind was all in fragmented, trivia-card bits--cave-painting, mammoth-

hunting, stone tools laboriously flaked by hand. It was frustrating not to remember more. People

in science fiction flicks always seemed to know useful things about the places time travel took

them. But what if the time traveler had been only an average history student? What then?

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There were more limestone outcroppings now, great shelves that seemed to push sideways out of

the ground, shadowy oblongs less luminous in the twilight than the ever-present snow. Runs Far

slowed, letting the rest of the group jog past, until Paul at the end of the line had caught up

with him. The bearded hunter fell into step beside him without a word, and Paul, who was quite

breathless, was content to let him do so.

As they came around the corner of a large outcrop, Paul saw warm yellow light spilling out

onto the snow. Strange, gnarled figures stood silhouetted in a wide gap in the cliff face, spears

clutched in misshapen hands, and for a nervous moment Paul was reminded of folktales about troll

bridges and fairy mounds. Runs Far took his elbow and pushed him forward; when he had reached the

mouth of the cave, he could see that the guardians were only older members of the People, twisted

by age, left behind to protect the communal hearth like Britain's wartime Home Guard.

The hunting party was quickly surrounded, not only by these aged guardians, but by an

outspilling of fur-clad women and children as well, all talking and gesticulating. Will Not Cry

received much sympathetic attention as his injuries were examined. Paul half-expected his own

appearance to cause superstitious panic, but although all the People regarded him with interest

that varied from fearful to fascinated, he was clearly less important than the meat and tales

which the hunters brought. The group moved away from the lip of the cave, out of the cold winds

and into the fire-flickering, smoky interior.

At first the People's home looked like nothing so much as an army encampment. A row of tents

made from skins stood with their backs to the cave's entrance like a herd of animals huddled

against the wind. Beyond these, sheltered by them, was a central area where a large fire burned in

a depression in the floor, a natural limestone hall, low-roofed but wide. The few women who had

remained there tending the flames now looked up, smiling and calling out at the hunters' return.

The rest of the People were much like the men with whom he had traveled, sturdy and small,

with features that but for the pronounced brows and heavy jaws were nothing like the caveman

caricatures he had seen in cartoons. They dressed in rough furs; many wore bits of bone or stone

hung on cords of sinew, but there was nothing like the jewelry that bedecked even the least

modernized tribes of Paul's era. Most of the younger children were naked, bodies rubbed with fat

that gleamed in the firelight as they peered from the tent doorways, shiny little creatures that

reminded him of Victorian illustrations of gnomes and brownies.

There was surprisingly little ceremony over the hunters' return, although Runs Far had told

him they had been out for days. The men greeted their families and loved ones, touching them with

probing fingers as though making certain that they were real, and occasionally someone rubbed his

face against someone else's, but there was no kissing as Paul knew it, no hand clasps or hugging.

Paul himself was clearly mentioned several times--he saw some of the hunters gesturing at him, as

though to illustrate what a strange adventure it had been--but he was not introduced to anyone,

nor was there any clear hierarchy that he could see. About two dozen adults seemed to make the

cave their home, and not quite half that many children.

Even as some of the People exclaimed over the elk meat, others began preparing it in an

extremely businesslike manner. Two of the women picked up long sticks and swept a portion of the

firepit clear, pushing the burning logs to one side and exposing a floor of flat stones. They then

spread several portions of the meat across these heated stones; within moments, the smell of

cooking flesh began to fill the cavern.

Paul found himself a spot in the corner, out of the way. It was much warmer here in the cave,

but still cold, and he sat with his skins pulled tight around him, watching the quick return of

normal life; within a few moments after the hunting party's arrival, only the hunters themselves

were not busy with something. Paul guessed that on other nights, they, too, would be at work,

making new weapons and repairing the old ones, but tonight they had returned from a long,

successful trip and could wait for the victors' rewards, the first portions of the kill.

One of the women lifted a sizable chunk of flesh from the fire with a stick, placed it on a

piece of bark, and carried it like offering to Runs Far. He lifted it to his mouth and took a bite

grinned his approval, but instead of finishing his meal he sawed the meat in half with his knife,

then rose and carried the bark platter away from the fire toward one of the tents. No one else

seemed to pay any attention but Paul was intrigued. Was he taking food to a sick wife or child? An

aged parent?

Runs Far stayed inside the tent for long moments; when he can out, he was putting the last of

the meat into his own mouth, chewing vigorously with his broad jaws. It was impossible to guess

what had just happened.

A presence at Paul's elbow suddenly caught his attention, A little girl stood beside him,

staring expectantly. At least, he thought it was a girl, although the boys were just as shaggy-

haired and positive identification was made difficult by the kirtle of fur around the child's

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waist. "What's your name?" he asked.

She shrieked with gleeful terror and ran away. Several other children pulled free of the

general hubbub to chase her, laughing and calling in high voices like marsh birds. Moments later,

an other, larger shadow fell across him.

"Do not speak to the child." Birdcatcher looked angry, but Paul thought he saw something like

naked panic just beneath the man's scowl. "She is not for you."

Paul shook his head, not understanding, but the other one turned and walked away.

_Does he think I'm interested in her sexually? Or is it this of the Dead thing?_ Perhaps

Birdcatcher thought he meant to take the girl away, back to some death-realm beyond the frozen

river. _That's me, the Grim Reaper of the Pleistocene._ Paul lowered his head and closed his eyes,

suddenly as tired as he had ever been.

There had been a woman in his dream, and flowering plants and sun streaming through a dusty

window, but it was all disappearing now, pouring away like water down the plughole. Paul shook his

head and his eyes fluttered. Runs Far was standing over him, saying something he could not at

first understand.

The hunter prodded him again, gently. "Riverghost. Riverghost, you must come."

"Come where?"

"Dark Moon says you must come and talk." The hunt leader seemed excited in a way Paul had not

seen before, almost childlike. "Come now."

Paul allowed himself to be coaxed to his feet, then followed Runs Far toward the tent where

the hunter had taken the first cooked meat of the slaughtered elk. Paul thought he would be led

inside, but Runs Far gestured for him to wait. The hunter ducked through the flap, then reappeared

a few moments later, leading a tiny shape wrapped in a thick fur robe out into the firelight.

The old woman paused and looked Paul up and down, then extended her arm, the invitation--

although it was more like a command--very clear. Paul stepped forward and let her clutch his

forearm with hard, skinny fingers, then the three of them moved slowly toward the cookfire. As

they led the woman to a rounded stone near the warmest part of the blaze, Paul saw Birdcatcher

staring at him, holding the arm of the little girl who had approached Paul earlier. His grip was

so tight she was squirming in pain.

"Bring water to me," the old woman told Runs Far as she slowly settled herself on the rock.

When he had gone, she turned to Paul. "What is your name?"

Paul was not sure what kind of answer she wanted. "The men of the People call me Riverghost."

She nodded her satisfaction, as though he had passed an examination. Dirt lay in the wrinkles

of her seamed face, and her white hair was so thin the shape of her head could be clearly seen,

but the forcefulness of her personality and the respect in which the People held her was quite

clear. She raised a clawlike hand and carefully touched his.

"I am called Dark Moon. That is the name they call me."

Paul nodded, although he was not quite clear why she seemed to attach so much importance to

this exchange of information. _This isn't my world,_ he reminded himself. _To primitive people,

there's magic in names._

"Are you from the Land of the Dead?" she asked. "Tell me your true story."

"I . . . I am from a place very far away. The People--the hunters--saved me when I was in the

river and was drowning." He hesitated, then fell silent. He did not think that he could make her

understand his true story since he did not understand it himself, even the parts he remembered

clearly.

She pursed her lips. "And what do you mean for us? What do you bring to the People? What will

you take away?"

"I hope I will take nothing from you, except the food and shelter you give to me." It was hard

to talk simply without sounding like an Indian chief in a bad American Western. "I came from the

river with nothing, so I have no gifts,"

Dark Moon looked at him again, and this time the appraisal went on for some time. Runs Far

returned with a cup made from what looked like a section of animal horn; the old woman drank

enthusiastically, then turned her gaze back to Paul. "I must think," she said at last. "I do not

understand what you do in the world." She turned and patted Runs Far on his shoulder, then

abruptly raised her voice to address the People at large. "Hunters have returned. They have

brought back food."

The others, who had been pretending with almost civilized discretion not to be listening to

her conversation with Paul, now raised a few ragged shouts of approval, although most were busy

chewing.

"Tonight is a good night." Dark Moon slowly spread her arms. The weight of the fur robe seemed

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Tad Williams - Otherland 2 - River of Blue Fire

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