A new expression flickered across the old man's scarred face, both surprised and saddened. "I meant no disrespect to Paul Jonas, Ms. Desroubins. We still need to mourn him properly and fittingly, you are right. But I assure you. this is not a journey I bring you on lightly." He turned to the others. "And there is a bottom. But I have been properly reminded of something that the confusion of our situation made me forget. There is no need for you to . . . trudge."
"What does that mean?" asked Florimel.
"This." And suddenly, most startlingly, Sam felt herself lifted as though by a perfect agreement of air molecules, with no uneven pressure in any one spot, and swung out over the deep, dark canyon. The others hung beside her in various states of flailing startlement.
"Down!" shouted T4b, struggling wildly, "Back!"
"Before, this place did not . . . connect with the place we are going. Now it is all relatively simple, relatively . . . real." Sellars nodded. "My error was in forgetting what I could do—the ability I have gained to manipulate the network. I have made you tire yourselves unnecessarily. My apologies."
Suddenly Sam was dropping—not like a stone, but not like a feather either. T4b let out a string of very inventive street curses as he too plunged down through the darkness. Sam saw bodies on all sides of her, her companions, all dropping at the same rate. Tiny yellow monkeys tried to fly out from her hair and shoulders, but although they could hover, they could not fly back upward against the forces that pulled them all.
I'm tired of all this scannity, she thought, I just want to go home. I want to see my mom and dad. . . .
"Like the Resurrection in reverse." Florimel sounded both annoyed and nervous.
"Just hold onto your seat cushion," Orlando said cheerfully. "They always come in handy. That's why they tell you about them."
Yeah, and don't you think Orlando wishes he could go home, too? It was a painful thought.
"Save me, Jesus!" shouted T4b.
Two minutes falling, five—it was hard to tell. Despite the sensation of speed, they did not slow; when they reached the bottom they simply stopped, and found themselves standing on a smooth bed of stone. The walls stretched only above them now, an immense vista tunneling upward to the circle of night sky. But the place where they stood had a light of its own.
"Here," Sellars said, wheelchair still comfortably adrift above the ground. He led them toward a vast crack in the wall that spilled warm, pink-orange light.
"I bet we do have to kill something," Orlando whispered. He tapped his sword against the stone wall at the edge of the crevice. It rang flatly.
Sam stepped through and found herself in a great blazing chamber, a honeycomb of light. Three figures waited at the center of the vast space. Sam squinted, already hoping, but wanting to be sure.
"Renie?" she called. "!Xabbu?"
They turned in surprise as she sprinted toward them. The third figure, which was clutching something against its chest, did not move. Sellars glided up beside her, his runneled face even more surreal in the bright, almost directionless light.
"Stop, Sam," he said, an unusual note in his voice. "Wait."
She slowed. Sellars moved a little ahead of her, then paused and hovered. He seemed to pay no attention to Renie or !Xabbu, but instead addressed the third figure. "Who are you?"
Doesn't he recognize that Klement guy? Sam wondered. He knows everything else.
"Just wait," Orlando said quietly beside her. He had come up as silently as a cat. When he touched her arm she could feel the trembling strength in his big hand. "I bet that's the one we have to kill."
"He's Ricardo Klement," Renie explained to Sellars, although she looked stunned herself. "One of the Grail Brotherhood. He traveled with us for a while."
"No." The man paused a long time before shaking his head, as though he had to remember the movement. Sam could see what he was holding now, but could make no sense of the weird, semihuman bundle. "No, I am not Ricardo Klement. I wear the . . . body . . . that was meant for that one. For a length of time, at first, I think . . . thought . . . I was Ricardo Klement. Because it disorients, this body-living. It makes thinking . . . strange. But I am not that one.
"My name is Nemesis."
CHAPTER 49
The Next
NETFEED/NEWS: Middle East Unified At Last
(visuaclass="underline" Jews and Arabs demonstrating at Western Wall)
VO: Palestinians and Israelis, enemies for so long, have at last found common ground—in hatred of the UN's management of the Jerusalem Protectorship.
(visuaclass="underline" Professor Yoram Vul, Brookings Institute)
VUL: "The only thing that could bring these people together, it seems, was someone trying to stop them from killing each other. It would be ironic if it were not so sad, but now we have eleven more UN peacekeepers dead in the Hashomaim Tunnel bombing, and the most common thing you hear is, 'What do you expect—it's the Middle East!' "
Renie could only stare helplessly, first at the thing she had thought of as Ricardo Klement, then at her long-lost companions. She had never expected to see them again, yet here they were—but like Renie and !Xabbu they only stood, frozen and confused, and where there should have been rejoicing there was only more mystery. And fear, she realized. I'm frightened again, but I don't even know why.
"What . . . what's a Nemesis?" Renie asked.
"It is a machine—a piece of code." She had never heard Martine Desroubins sound so flatly miserable. "It was sent to find Paul Jonas, I think. I met it when I was Dread's prisoner. In all the confusion after that, I don't believe I ever told you." Martine turned to the inhuman, handsome face that the real Ricardo Klement had intended to wear for eternity. "And what do you want now?" she said bitterly. "Jonas is dead. That should make you happy—as happy as something like you can be."
"Oh, no!" Renie raised her hand to her mouth. "Not Paul."
"Yes, Paul," said Martine.
"But how did it turn into that Grail guy?" asked Sam Fredericks. "We saw him come alive . . . at that Ceremony thing."
"And what's with the ugly blue monkey?" With his feet on the ground, T4b had regained a little of his confidence.
"I saw it take another's form before," Martine said, "It imitated a corpse. One of Dread's victims. It did something similar with Klement, I imagine—perhaps it merely took Klement's empty virtual body before the Ceremony even began."
Renie could not bear to hear her friend sound so helpless. She wanted to go and put her arms around her—around all of them, Sam, Florimel, even T4b—but could not ignore the feeling in the air, a cloud of anxiety like an impending storm. She was almost afraid to move.
As she looked over the familiar and unfamiliar faces, she suddenly recognized the tall young man with the whipcord muscles.
"Oh, my God," she whispered to !Xabbu. "Isn't that . . . Orlando?"
The long-haired youth heard her, even from some distance away, and gave them a quick, light smile. "Hello, Renie. Hi, !Xabbu."
"But you were . . . dead, weren't you?"
He shrugged, "It's been a pretty interesting day."
The man in the wheelchair had not moved. He hovered a few paces from the Klement-thing, his eyes narrowed. "You are Nemesis, then. You heard what was said and I think you understood—Paul Jonas is dead. What do you want with the rest of us?"