"Kunohara was highly amused by what happened to Jiun, but did not seem overly concerned about Wells being loose in his simworld. Actually, it is hard to tell what Kunohara thinks at all. Paul says he believes our host is ready to share information, but I have seen little of it, and as the day goes on, he grows more silent and strange. Despite his promise, he has still told us little we do not already know. What kind of ally is this? Only slightly better than the enemies we already have. With so many of our friends lost or dead, it is hard not to resent him and his self-pity.
"At times this Kunohara reminds me of a boy I knew in university, highly popular and very daring—he would do anything for applause. But always I heard in his voice a note of darkness. He died trying to climb the wall of a ten-story residence building and everyone said it was a terrible, sad accident, but I thought when I heard it that he was searching for that accident, and finally found it.
"Kunohara, especially with this quiet drunkenness upon him, seems to me like that boy. . . .
"The others are stirring again, and there is much to discuss. I will have to continue these thoughts later.
"Code Delphi. End here."
Paul was surprised by how much better he felt simply having Martine and the others sitting beside him. Kunohara's right—I barely know these people, he thought. But it doesn't feel like that.
"So, Mr. Kunohara." There was an edge in Martine's voice. "Now perhaps it is your turn to share a little information. After all, your life is now as much in danger as ours."
Kunohara smiled, acknowledging her point. "I have never harmed you. As I told your friends, it was a risk simply to speak to you. You have the sort of enemies someone like me tries to avoid."
"You can't avoid them anymore," Florimel said bluntly. "So talk to us. What do you know about all this?"
Kunohara sighed and folded his legs beneath him. Outside the bubble the first morning light was warming the sky from black to violet. The river was almost completely obscured by mists—they might have been floating through the clouds in a balloon. "I will tell you what I can, but it is not much. If you do not already know who I am and how I came to be here, I see no sense in explaining. I have built this place because I could, and have lived in uneasy truce with the Grail Brotherhood for a long time. I will not pretend I did not know what they were doing, or what crimes they committed, but I have done nothing wrong myself. It is not my duty to save the world."
Florimel made a low noise that might have been an angry growl, but Kunohara ignored her.
"All I wanted—all that I still want—is to be left alone. I am not particularly fond of people. It is strange now to see my quiet, private house turned into a barracks, but there is nothing to be done about it. It is hard to ignore someone who keeps appearing in one's garden, however much one might wish it."
"You said you knew what the Grail Brotherhood were doing," Martine said. "Tell us. We have had to rely on guesswork."
"I think by now you must know all that I do. They have made an immortality machine for themselves and killed to keep it secret, although it has done them little good so far. Despite all their planning they did not account for this maniac employee of Felix Jongleur's who, from what you tell me, seems to have somehow hijacked the operating system."
"But what is the system?" Florimel said. "It has a name of sorts. They call it the Other. What is it?"
"By now you probably know more about it than I do." Kunohara showed a thin smile. "Jongleur has kept it secret even from the rest of the Brotherhood. How it was constructed, what its principle of operation is, only Jongleur knows. It is as though it sprang from nowhere."
"It didn't spring from nowhere," Martine said suddenly. "I met it myself twenty-eight years ago."
Having heard her say something about this on the mountaintop, Paul was the only one who did not look at her in surprise. Martine quickly told her story. Despite her calm, dry voice, it was not hard to hear the terror of that long-ago child reverberating in her words.
Kunohara shook his head wonderingly. "So however it is constructed, Jongleur has been programming it in some way for perhaps three decades. As though teaching it to be human." He frowned, considering; his strange mood seemed to have abated, at least for the moment. "He must have gained something by both mimicking and using human consciousness as the root of his system."
"That's right!" Paul said urgently. "God, I had nearly forgotten. This man Azador—Renie and !Xabbu met him, too—he told me that the system used the brains of children, Gypsy children, and also . . . what did he call them? The unborn?" The memories were dim, distorted by his dreamlike experiences on the island of Lotos. "Why do you seem so surprised?" he asked Kunohara, who was looking at him very oddly. "We knew they were using children somehow—that's what brought most of these people here in the first place."
Kunohara realized he was staring and made a show of poking the fire. "So this is what they have constructed, then? A sort of net of linked human brains?"
"But what does 'unborn' mean?" Florimel seemed to be struggling to hold down anger. "Stillborn children? Aborted fetuses?"
"We have only hearsay from . . . from the person Jonas mentioned," Kunohara said. "But it would not surprise me if the most basic array of neural nodes were unimprinted brains of that sort, yes." He shrugged liquidly. "The South American, Klement, he made his fortune in the black market for human organs."
"Chizz that those old scanners sixed out, then," said T4b with sudden loathing. "Wish those Grail-Knockers had even more exit-pain, like."
"It is a horrible idea," scowled Florimel. "Horrible. But why would they need living children, too? Why would they need to take someone like Renie's brother, or . . . or my Eirene?"
"Matti, too," T4b said. "Just a poor little micro—didn't scuff no one."
"Hard to know," said Kunohara. "Perhaps they derive some different value from a more developed brain."
"How do they do it anyway?" Florimel demanded. "You can't just suck someone's mind out like a vampire stealing blood. This place is madness on top of madness, but it still has rules. It still exists within the real universe of physics. . . ."
"I want to ask Mr. Kunohara another question." Martine's quiet but firm voice shut Florimel off like a faucet. "You have said that we know all we need to know about you, but I'm not certain I believe that. If nothing else, there are still the riddles you set for us. Why? And what did they mean?"
Kunohara looked at her coolly. It was interesting and a little depressing, Paul thought, to see how quickly the owner of this particular world had sized up Martine as his most formidable challenge, relegating Paul and the others to bystander status. "In my own way, I tried to help. I am a meddler, I suppose, and thus not the perfect type to be a hermit, after all. You came crashing through my world as innocent as sheep and I thought it might help you to think a little about what was happening. But as I said before, I could not afford to assist you too obviously. I have remained safe both here and in the real world largely because of the indifference of Jongleur and his cabal."
"So you taunted us with riddles." Martine sat back, her face bland. "Dollo's Law and . . . what was the other? Something Japanese. Kishimo . . . something."