So what was this place? Jongleur had said it was not part of the network, but how could that be? It wasn't magic. There had to be an explanation.
Something was murmuring wetly a short distance away. Renie hiked up a translucent rise, noting with interest how much it changed things simply to be able to move out of the strictly horizontal, and saw a shimmering line that looked less substantial than what lay on either side of it.
A river, she thought, then: Could it be the river?
She waited until she felt sure Klement had seen her, then descended to the river's bank. She had a direction now—upstream, whatever that might mean—and was determined to follow it. She knew !Xabbu would do the same if he was ahead of her, which meant their chances of finding each other would now be improved substantially. The thought lightened her heart.
When nothing makes sense, she thought, at least there are people you love, people you need.
But if this senseless world was something the Other had invented, then what did that really mean? A construction within the network, somehow, but not of the network? And why should it mimic reality—why should there be hills and a sky, as in the Patchwork Land, and here even a river? Had the operating system been working with some dim notion that humans needed a human place to be? But why did the operating system need humans at all?
The river valley, in its tenuous way, had begun to resemble a real valley in a real world, with grass and stones and even a few stands of trees. Even the sky, which for days had been as blank as an undeveloped level in a VR system, had begun to take on depth, although it was still murky and the light diffuse, as though this entire ghost world were built inside a giant pearl.
What if !Xabbu's not ahead of me? she suddenly thought. What if he's lost in the gray—he and Sam didn't have the lighter, after all. I should stop, wait for a while. But what if they're ahead? She considered building a sign out of sticks or some of the glass-clear reeds growing at the river's edge, but knew that if they were to follow along behind her walking even a little way up the slope, they might miss a sign constructed from this environment entirely—it would be like trying to see melting ice in a glass of water. She should wait until the things around her had more substance. Then she could build a sign out of sticks, write anything she wanted—Help! I'm Being Held Prisoner By My Own Frustration! Or maybe even, Wanted, More Reality.
She sat down on what had once been—or someday would be—a log, giving Klement a chance to catch up again. A copse of phantom trees swayed around her in an unfelt wind, but made no noise, not even the merest whisper of leaves brushing leaves.
After what seemed like a quarter of an hour, Klement had not appeared.
Reluctantly, Renie struggled up the bank to the top, looking back across the rolling land she had just crossed, but there was no sign of him and little chance he could be hidden in the monochrome expanse. She cursed bitterly—not because she feared for him or missed his company, but because she had taken a sort of responsibility for him, then had allowed carelessness to undercut her yet again. After waiting almost as long atop the bank as she had waited below, she trudged back down to the stand of trees.
I have to mark the spot, she decided. Even if I don't go look for him, I have to at least let !Xabbu and the others know I've come this way. But there remained the problem of how to do it. As she thought, she distractedly pulled at the flimsy garments she had made for herself—the more real the landscape, the more vulnerably underdressed she felt—and suddenly realized what she would use to advertise her presence.
She was tying the strip of pale cloth on a thin branch that protruded far beyond its shadowy neighbors, thinking that if she had to do this many more times she would be naked again in short order, when something moved in the branches just beside her head. She leaped back in surprise.
It was a bird . . . or at least something birdlike, smaller than her clenched fist. It seemed only slightly more real than the landscape, with a tenuous shape and colors as evanescent as a scatter of broken glass. She watched it move down the branch toward her, then cock its head—a hint of an eye, the blurry suggestion of a beak. For a moment its familiar movements almost made her feel as though things might make sense again, then the bird dipped its head and said, "Didn't think."
Renie gasped and took a few backward steps. This was a crazy place, she told herself: anything was possible, therefore nothing should be surprising. "Did you say something?" she asked.
The bird changed its position again and piped, "Didn't think I would." An instant later it sprang into the air in a tiny explosion of rainbow light, then flew off across the river.
Renie had only a moment to decide. She looked at the wisp of white cloth bobbing on the branch, then back down the valley, a world of glass frozen in eternal twilight. She ran in pursuit of the bird, a speck now against the inconstant sky.
She found a shallow place and splashed across the river. As she reached the farther bank she noticed that the light had shifted in a subtle way. The environment had suddenly grown quite solid, as though she had passed through some kind of barrier that held the pressure of reality firmly in place, but that was the least of the distractions. The new world around her was so strange that she could scarcely keep the flitting bird in view.
Rolling hills and meadows had given way to a landscape of folds and peaks, as though some great upheaval had shoved the substance of the earth together into gigantic wrinkles. The terrain was rough and rocky, the vegetation reduced to tangles of wind-twisted pines and rugged shrubbery cloaked in mist. The burgeoning sunshine was lost now behind thick overcast, so that even though the world had grown more substantial, it was not a great deal more colorful.
She paused at the top of a rise, panting, watching the bird's flight. Her quarry had grown more solid, too, although at this distance she could make out little of its color. It alighted on a twisted pine branch hundreds of meters below her down the hillside. Its voice floated up, saying ". . . I would . . . I would. . . ." softly and regretfully as a tired child.
The track down between two ragged outcroppings was steep, but Renie had run too hard and too long to turn back. This was the first voice other than her friends' that she had heard since the mountain had disappeared, the first new living thing that she had encountered.
As she made her way down the hill the bird sat placidly on the branch as though waiting for her. The mists eddied in a slow but surprisingly chill breeze—she was discovering that not all aspects of returning reality were equally welcome—and she thought she could detect hidden forms built into the curves of land, odd, almost humanoid shapes like vast bodies underneath the soil. It was hard to tell in thin light and mist, but it reminded her uncomfortably of the monstrous figure of the Other that had greeted them on the mountaintop. She shivered and brought her attention firmly back to the rocky soil beneath her feet.