Mountain of Black Glass (89 page)

“Who?” asked Fredericks.

“It's Odysseus,” a voice said from behind the soldier. “I am sorry to disturb you, but I think it's important we speak again.”

Orlando groaned quietly, but said, “Let him come in.”

Odysseus bobbed his head in greeting to Fredericks, then to Orlando, then found himself a stool and sat. Exhausted and depressed, Orlando had not paid much attention to the man on his first visit earlier in the day. Now he looked him over closely. There was a watchfulness to the newcomer's manner, a sly reserve that suggested he was not quite as likely as the other Greeks Orlando had met to start spouting poetry about the nobility of hand-to-hand combat.

“What is it?” Orlando asked.

“I felt there were things that were not talked about when I was here with Ajax and Phoinix,” the King of Ithaca said. “I thought perhaps we could have a conversation without those two and see if it goes more easily.”

“Turtle,”
Orlando subvocalized, calling for the agent. In just a day, he had already begun to rely on it, although its limitations made him miss Beezle all the more.

“Tortoise,”
it said in his ear.
“I have told you, I am a tortoise.”
It did not need to be visible to make its annoyance clear.

“Just tell me what I need to know about this Odysseus guy.”
Aloud, he said, “I don't think there's really much to talk about. I cannot fight. I am sick. I am not well.” He tried to think of something pertinent to say about the gods, but couldn't muster the strength to improvise.

“Odysseus, son of Laertes, King of Ithaca,”
whispered the tortoise.
“He is the cleverest of the Greeks, renowned for his stratagems. But although he is a mighty warrior, perhaps the best archer among the invaders, he did not wish to come to Troy and pretended to be mad . . .”

The man whose biography was being recited in Orlando's ear was speaking again, and Orlando had missed the first few words. “. . . find an understanding between us.”

“We don't know what you're talking about.” Fredericks sounded alarmed. Orlando hurriedly gestured for his friend to be silent.

“I did not hear what you said—my illness makes it hard to think clearly, sometimes. Please say that again.”

“An illness?” asked Odysseus. His smile did not soften the harshness of his tone. “Or a voice in your ear? Is yours a bird, or something else? A bee? A fly? A goddess, maybe?”

Orlando felt his heart turning cold as wet clay. “I . . . I don't understand you.”

“Come now—I'm taking a risk, too.” Odysseus leaned forward, his expression again shrewd and careful. “You are not from here, are you? You are not really part of this whole thing, this . . . simulation.”

Fredericks short sword hissed as she drew it from her scabbard. Odysseus did not move, even when Orlando's friend had touched the sword to the side of the stranger's neck. “Should I . . . should I kill him?” Fredericks asked.

You could at least try to sound a little more convincing, Frederico.
Orlando felt weak and short of breath, as helpless as in a bad dream. Again he mourned his former vitality. As Thargor in his prime he could have tied even this rugged warrior into a knot if need be, but he had no such confidence about Fredericks, whatever sim his friend might be wearing. “Let him talk,” he said hopelessly. If the Brotherhood had really found them, killing the messenger was not going to do much good, even if they could manage it.

“Good.” Odysseus stood up, then spread his arms wide and showed his empty hands to make clear the movement was peaceful. “I said I was taking a risk—I'll go farther out on a limb, just to show you I mean well.” He looked from Fredericks to Orlando, then briefly over his shoulder, as though to make sure no one was lurking in the shadows. When he spoke, it was with the solemn formality of one ambassador greeting another. “The golden harp has spoken to me.”

Orlando waited for more. Apparently, none was forthcoming. “What are you talking about?”

“The golden harp.” Odysseus narrowed his eyes, clearly expecting the words to have some profound effect. “The
golden harp.
”

Orlando looked to Fredericks, wondering if he had missed something along the way, but his friend only looked back at him, a matching bookend of blankness.

“We don't know what you're talking about.” Orlando had a sudden thought that raised the hairs on the back of his neck—was this some kind of Brotherhood code word? Had they gone too far in admitting that they were not of the simulation, then by not recognizing the code confirmed they had no right to be there? The only solace was that Odysseus, too, seemed completely taken aback by the failure of his overture, far more baffled than suspicious. He peered at Orlando, clearly uncertain what to do next.

“Perhaps . . . perhaps I've made a mistake.” The stranger sat down again. “I suppose it's too late to pretend that I've come to try to convince you to fight the Trojans?”

Orlando almost smiled, but the fear was too close, too deep. “Just tell us who you really are, then maybe we'll have something to talk about.”

The King of Ithaca spread his hands. “Are you going to tell me who you are, without any kind of certainty who you're talking to? I didn't think so. Well, you can understand my position, then.”

Fredericks was still standing, sword in hand. Orlando examined the stranger and considered. Whatever else might be true, their physical safety did not seem immediately threatened. One shout would bring Achilles' warriors through the door, and he had little doubt the Myrmidons would be of the stab-first, ask-questions-later school. “Okay, we'll talk. Why don't you move your stool back a little, so that none of us is too close to each other.”

The stranger nodded slowly, then did as Orlando had suggested. When he was seated again, midway between the bed and the door, he showed a crooked smile. “This is a bit of a logic problem, isn't it? We all know things that we can't say, because we don't know exactly to whom we're speaking.” He bit his lip, considering. “Let's talk generalities, shall we? We can discuss what we
do
know, but stick to things that won't put anyone on one side or another.”

Fredericks looked worried, but Orlando could see nothing wrong with the suggestion. “Okay.”

“I don't mean to be critical,” Odysseus said, “but it wasn't that hard to guess you weren't part of the simulation. You just don't talk like these other people. You use too many contractions, for one thing—whoever programmed this went for the old-fashioned, operatic effect.”

“I'm better when I'm not so tired,” Orlando said, a little embarrassed. “It's . . .” he caught himself just short of using Fredericks' name—had the stranger tried to lure him into doing just that? “It's Patroclus here who gets bored of talking that way and starts saying . . . things. Things the way he normally would.”

“Thanks a lot.” Fredericks glowered.

“We all know it's a simulation,” said Odysseus. “We know it's part of a big simulation network, right?”

Orlando nodded. “Of course. Anyone would know that.”

The stranger started to say something, but checked himself. “Good, so we agree on that,” he continued a moment later. “Most of the people here are Puppets, but some are from outside. From the real world. Like the three of us.”

“With you so far.”

“And if I mentioned a certain . . . brotherhood?” Odysseus continued.

Fredericks gave him a worried look, but Orlando knew it was an obvious direction—one that could not in fact be avoided. “The Grail Brotherhood, right?”

“Right.”

But neither side wanted to talk too much about the Brotherhood: to betray support or revulsion might immediately topple the careful structure of trust they were building.

It was maddeningly slow work—they went on minute after careful minute, for the better part of an hour, advancing careful observations about the nature of the network, hampered at all times by the need to keep things vague and general. The coals burned down until the room was mostly shadows. Outside, somebody called the midnight hour as the sentries changed.

At last Orlando felt he could wait no longer—if nothing changed, this kind of fencing match might go on for days, and he had long since decided that time was not his friend. “So tell us about this golden harp,” he said. “You came in here saying that it had spoken to you. What is it? How much can you tell us?”

Odysseus ran his fingers through his beard. “Well, without giving away too much . . . it was a message someone left for me. It told me . . .” He stopped to consider. “It told me that there were people looking for me. And that they would know me if I told them I had spoken to the golden harp.” He cocked an eyebrow. “But you said that you've never heard of it.”

“No,” Orlando said. “But I'm beginning to have an idea.” He hesitated—it was like reaching into a dark hole in the ground, a pit that might contain treasure or some terrible, venomous guardian. “Did this harp . . . did it start out as something else?”

“Something else?” Odysseus had suddenly gone very still. “What do you mean?”

“You heard me.” The tension was beginning to make Orlando giddy; he felt he might suddenly laugh or scream. “It was your stupid harp—you tell me.”

The stranger seemed to have turned to stone. “No,” he said at last. “But . . . after it was a harp, it turned into something else.”

“After?”
This threw Orlando off-balance—he had been thinking about the vision of the golden city, which for Renie and the others had appeared first as a small golden gem. Still, he had committed himself and he was running out of energy; even with the possible fate of his friends hanging in the balance, he could not play these spy games forever. In the grip of a sort of downhill fatalism, he said, “Okay, yes,
after
it was a harp, was it . . . was it still golden?”

“Yes.” It was like watching someone turn over a card in a high-stakes game. “Yes. It was a . . . small, golden thing.”

“Dzang!
That's just like what Sellars sent out!” said Fredericks excitedly.

“Fredericks!” Orlando's skin went cold. He turned back, but the stranger was not leering at him, not rising in theatrical menace. Instead, he seemed even more puzzled than he had been.

“Sellars?” His confusion was plain. “Who's Sellars?”

Orlando stared at him, trying to be certain this was not a ploy. “Let's make sure we're talking about the same thing. Someone gave you a harp, or showed you a harp, and after it gave you a message, it turned into a little golden . . . what?”

The stranger showed no emotion, but he took a long moment before he answered. “A gem. Like a diamond, but made of gold, and with a kind of light inside it.”

Orlando felt a wave of relief. Either the Brotherhood was going a very long way around trying to chase down Sellars' people, or the stranger himself was one, too. “A gem. That's what we found, too.”

“I'm confused,” Odysseus said. “Did you—how did you get one? I thought I was the only . . . I thought there was no one else like me.”

“No, there are quite a few of us.” A sudden, sad thought flickered. “At least there were. But for some reason you didn't make it to the golden city, so you didn't meet them, didn't meet Sellars.”

“Golden city?” He shook his head in confusion. “You've mentioned the name ‘Sellars' twice. Can you tell me who that is?”

Orlando considered for a moment. “Did your . . . message say anything else?”

The man they knew as Odysseus paused, then recited,
“ ‘If you have found this, you have escaped. You were a prisoner, and you are not in the world in which you were born.' ”
He frowned, struggling. “That's pretty much it. I should have memorized it word for word,” he apologized, “but . . . well, things have been a bit hectic.”

“Was that all?”

“No.
‘Nothing around you is true, but the things you see can hurt you or kill you. You will be pursued, and I can help you only in your dreams . . . '”

“Dreams . . .” said Orlando. The hairs on the back of his neck lifted again, this time in a kind of fearful wonderment. “In dreams . . . ?”

“‘The others I am sending will look for you on the river. They will know you if you tell them the golden harp has spoken to you. ' ”
The stranger paused. “Does any of this tell you anything?”

“Is your name Jonas?” Orlando asked suddenly.

For a moment he thought the bearded King of Ithaca would leap through the door and disappear into the night. The stranger's eyes grew wide and bright, a deer stepping out of the brush into a hunter's flashlight beam. Then Orlando saw that they were glossy because they were filling with tears.

“My God,” he said quietly. “Yes, I'm Paul Jonas. Oh my God. Have you come to get me out of here?”

“It's Jonas!” Fredericks said excitedly.
“Dzang,
Gardiner, we did it! This is so utterly, utterly chizz!”

But Orlando saw the hope shining in the bearded man's face, and knew that when the stranger discovered who it was who had found him, and how helpless they were themselves, he would regret this cruel moment of belief.

 

When the conversation slowed at last, Paul Jonas sat back on his stool. “You look tired,” Jonas told him. “We've been up all night already, and we could go hours more, but we should all get some sleep.”

“I am tired,” Orlando said. “I'm not . . . I'm pretty sick. In real life.”