"What?" Her exhilaration had turned into something quite different. She felt a breath almost of terror, a cold tingling at her neck. "It's not true, Stan—he's faking. I swear he is. I know that bastard now."
"He's been examined by doctors. He's not faking. Anyway, he's under top security until the boys and girls upstairs decide what to do with him. Twenty-four-hour guard. Strapped to a schizo-ward restraint bed." Stan Chan stood and brushed the wrinkles out of his pants—even micro-weaves could be depressed by being in a hospital, it seemed. "He was online when they found him. They think it might be some kind of serious charge damage, one of those new China Sea blasters or something, but gone badly wrong," He saw the look on her face. "Honestly, Skouros, don't worry. He's not faking it, but even if he is, he wouldn't be going anywhere. He's the biggest arrest in years." A smile flickered across his face. "You're a bit of a hero, Skouros. That why you didn't take me with you?"
"Yeah." She tried to follow his mood, but she wasn't really feeling it. "Yeah, I said, 'If I can just stiff my partner, get stabbed in the lung and almost die, then call in an ambulance while I'm puking my blood out on the floor, I'll be famous.' "
"I was joking. Calliope."
"So was I, believe it or not." She reached for another piece of ice. "What about the American woman?"
"Touch and go, but she's still alive. Bad spinal injuries, lost a lot of blood. She should have been wearing a flakkie. Like you, Skouros."
"Like me." She smiled to show him they were still friends. "If you're going, who's keeping out the tabnet flacks?" But it was not reporters she was thinking about.
"Couple of street blues just outside. Worry not."
When he was gone she tried to watch the wallscreen. There was mention of the case on many of the information nodes, spy-camera footage on the comatose killer, even once a shot of her—the picture was an old one, and she felt a bump of despair at how chunky she looked—but she could not concentrate and eventually she flicked it off. Instead she watched the narrow wedge of light at the bottom of the door, wondering what she would do if the door swung open and he was standing there, the shadow with a knife, the devil-devil man, grinning at her.
"So this is it," Orlando said softly.
Sam was scared and angry, but she didn't quite know why. "It's not it, scanbox. I just have to go offline. I have to see my parents."
"Yeah." He nodded, but she could hear what he was thinking as if he'd said it loud. Some of us don't get to go offline.
"I'll come see you every day!" She turned to Sellars. One by one the others had left the network, taking their leave with tears and promises; beside herself and Orlando, only Hideki Kunohara remained with Sellars in the shadowy cavern. "I can come back here, can't I? You can fix that."
"Not here, Sam."
Something clutched at her guts. "What do you mean?"
He smiled. It was such a strange face, almost frightening. That may he how he really looks, she couldn't help thinking, but why doesn't he choose something else? "Don't worry, Sam. I just mean that I won't hold together this particular part of the Other's central simulation, since the Other and . . . the rest are gone. We're short on processing power, so I'm consolidating some things, closing down others."
She was distracted by a thought. "All the fairy-tale children. . . ?"
"I'm only shutting down this particular part—the Well. Those who survived will be returned to their original environments," he said. "They all have a right to existence, at least existence here in the network."
"We should be able to reconstitute the ones who died, if you can call it that," said Kunohara with the air of someone considering a minor but interesting chess problem. "I am betting there are records of them somewhere—snapshot recordings, or even better, the original code. . . ."
"Perhaps," Sellars said, cutting him off. Sam got the feeling he didn't want to speculate about such things in front of her—or maybe in front of Orlando, since he was code himself.
Code. She felt a dizzy strangeness at the thought. My best friend's dead. My best friend's alive. My best friend is code. "But I can come back, can't I? Can't I?"
"Yes, Sam. We will just choose another place, that's all. We have all the network to pick from. Or almost all." Sellars was solemn. "There are a few simworlds that I may not choose to continue."
"But they are all worth study!" said Kunohara.
"Perhaps. But we will have a sufficiently difficult time just to keep the Grail network functioning. You will forgive me if I do not choose to devote precious resources to the worlds built almost entirely around torture and pederasty."
"I suppose you are right." Kunohara did not seem entirely convinced.
Sam turned back to Orlando and tried to catch his eye, but couldn't. For the first time in the years she had known him the Thargor body seemed not his real self but a costume, the face a mask. Where was he? Was he still the same Orlando in there? She thought so, but the friend that had meant so much to her seemed at the moment to be out of reach.
"I'll be back to visit you every day," she told him. "I promise."
"Don't make any promises, Frederico," he said gruffly.
"What do you mean?" Now she was angry. "Do you think I'll forget you? Orlando Gardiner, you scan so utterly, utterly. . . !"
He lifted his big hand. "No, I don't mean that, Frederico. I just mean . . . don't make promises. I don't want to think that when you come to see me, it's because . . . because you made a promise."
She opened her mouth again, then closed it. "Chizz," she said at last. "No promises. But I will come. Every day. You just see if I don't."
He smiled a little. "Okay."
She didn't like the silence that followed. She balanced on one foot. Sellars had turned Kunohara aside, she guessed to engage him in some interesting grown-up discussion. "Well, fenfen, Gardiner," she said at last, "aren't you going to hug me or anything?"
He did, clumsily, but then he held tight. His voice sounded funny. "I'll see you around, Fredericks, Sam." He squeezed. "I . . . I love you."
"I love you too, Orlando. And don't you ever dare think I'm coming to see you because I have to or some impacted idea like that." She wiped at her eyes angrily. "And don't think I'm crying because I'm a girl."
"Okay. Don't think I'm crying because I'm dead."
She laughed, gulped, then pushed him away. "See you tomorrow."
"Yeah. See you."
She made the command gesture. "Offline."
It wasn't as easy as she thought it would be—as it seemed like it should be. There was no pain this time, at least not the hideous voltage she had experienced before, but her body ached and she could not open her eyes.
When she did at last manage to get her gummed lids apart, it was almost worse. Her eyes itched, but she could not raise her arms to rub them. She seemed caught in a web of barbed wire, prickling, leaden. She rolled her head down—it was so heavy!—and saw the tubes taped to her arms and legs. How could such flimsy plastic things feel so much like chains?
Sellars had called her parents, just as he had promised he would. She could see them asleep at the end of the bed, their chairs side by side, her mother slumped across her father's chest, her head tucked against his broad neck just below his jaw.
I'm crying again, she thought as her parents' faces blurred. That's all I've been doing lately. That's so stupid. . . ! She tried to call them but her voice was as weak and unready as her limbs. Nothing came out but a wheezing gurgle.