Gill’s thoughts were running at full speed—so many questions and so little time! He wished he had a way to immerse himself in all his companion’s experiences in this fascinating world, all the knowledge accumulated in his long existence connected to the interface, all the games, the bixan’s perfidy—he wanted to smell all of them at once. He hesitated, now knowing how to begin, but something slowed down his excitement: the Antyran looked at him calmly, without the slightest surprise on his face. He knew all too well that Gill was going to arrive! Hmm… Ugo said he was a traitor, but that obviously didn’t mean anything. He wondered if the old Antyran was a prisoner or a part of Ugo’s plans for him…
“Rascal little ones, aren’t they?” the Antyran questioned him without bothering to introduce himself.
Gill was starting to get used to the Ropolitans’ blatant lack of manners—after all, it was the land of the miners, Antyrans as harsh as the planet’s crust from where they plucked the mineral wealth—so he decided to ignore his companion’s rudeness. As for him, he didn’t have to worry: like Ugo, he doubted there was a single Antyran still unaware of his name, unless he or she was completely isolated from the madness outside—a bit hard to believe. But what about the “little ones”? Following his gaze, Gill noticed the old Antyran was watching a greedy licant stalking their gills.
“On Zhan’s eye, what sickly kyis brought these foul creatures here? Isn’t it enough they exist in reality?” Gill exclaimed, pointing at a hungry creature flying around them.
“Errr, that would be me,” he answered without appearing offended by Gill’s question. “The bixan is so relaxing that many forgot to wake up before we invented the portal spheres. The licants are the drug’s guardians. But how come you don’t—” He stopped suddenly, and with a sparkle of understanding, he gazed at him, astounded. “You’re not from Ropolis!” he exclaimed. “Any Ropolitan would know this already!”
“What question is this?” Gill asked, annoyed. “You don’t know who I am?”
“And why should I know, may I ask? You think it’s carved on your gills?” he asked with sarcasm.
“You mean you don’t recognize me?”
The old Antyran exploded in laughter, which had the effect of quickly enraging Gill. He had no time to fool around, and his companion didn’t seem to have the slightest intent to hurry. Here, on the green hill, time stood still, but surely it was whirling madly around the slimy nest hosting his unprotected body…
“How would I recognize you? Just look at you,” the Antyran told him, continuing to smile.
Gill touched his face, baffled. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it…
“Look here,” the old Antyran said, pulling aside the arched branches of a shrub beside him.
A small hole full of clear water opened near its gnarled roots. As he looked into the water, Gill understood his companion’s amusement. A very familiar, dull mug looked at him from the water mirror—it was the standard face of the artificial intelligences, the ones that drove the taxis and took the food orders. He touched his cheek again. Curiously, his fingers didn’t notice it wasn’t his face. You’re still Gill, they seemed to whisper with a soothing voice.
“Yes, yes, most have a shock on their first visit. But you’ll get used to it in time,” he said, trying to encourage him. “Maybe you’ll even have the chance to activate your sphere if they let you leave this place. Then you can pick the face you like.”
“What do you mean ‘if they let you leave’? I can’t disconnect?” he asked, panicked, touching the virtual contacts on his spikes.
“Come on—leave the prison island, Tormalin, that’s what I meant,” he quickly replied, pointing at the hill behind him. “To jump on the other islands or in the games where the portal spheres materialize.”
He was stuck here, too. Gill began to understand Ugo’s words when he ordered him not to cross the stream in the valley. Barriers everywhere, but unlike in the real world, he was unable to use the bracelet here, to twist the space as he wished.
“My name’s Gillabrian,” he said, introducing himself.
“Ahhh! Now I understand,” the Antyran exclaimed, surprised—quite convincingly. “Gillabrian, one of the five Antyrans who doesn’t need to be introduced anywhere! Please excuse the lack of manners of a poor haggard; my name is Urdun,” he replied affably.
Gill accepted his companion’s excuses with a slight hand flutter. It appeared that he had access to the holofluxes—or at least he had during the last few days—because he knew his name. The Antyran seemed friendly, so he decided to say the burning reason why he connected to the virtual world, his spikes congested by the stinging aroma of hope, a hope that—against all logic—Urdun was going to open his mouth and simply tell him how to contact the other inhabitants of the Blue Crevice.
“Urdun, you’ve got to help me. I need to meet the architects!”
“Hmm…”
He didn’t say anything for several seconds. The beginning didn’t seem too encouraging…
“They haven’t told you how things work around here? We’re prisoners on this meadow.”
“How do you talk—how do you call someone? Do you have a virtual holophone or some other way?”
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have any of those. You wait for the guardian’s portal sphere to appear—”
“Ugo!”
“Well, I see you had the pleasure of meeting our jure.”
“Ugo is the city’s jure?” Gill exclaimed, astounded. That explained how he managed to track his moves like a nifle and keep him hidden from the nostrils of the other Antyrans. “I wonder if you have lost your smell to trust this Antyran.”
“He leads our soldiers from Firalia 9, the clone of the city’s catacombs. Ugo is their smell, sight, and hearing.”
Firalia 9 had to be one of the virtual islands… He understood the words—after all, they were in Antyran—but their meaning was deeper than the Cenote of the Purple Stone, colder than the Eger’s whirls, and muddier than Gondarra’s shores. What he saw in the catacombs started to make sense, however unbelievable it may have seemed. During the fight, the drugged rebels abandoned their bodies to the jure! The implications were muddying the springs of reality, as if they weren’t muddy enough even without this problem. Another unknown factor appeared in the Baila–Gill equation—and not an easy one. Ugo was something akin to a god-in-the-making, if he hadn’t reached that level yet, he admitted, finally acknowledging the absurd thought he had during the meeting with the jure. I can’t ignore this possibility, the voice of reason whispered in his gills, reminding him of the strange movement of the strategist’s head, which betrayed his weird consistence.
Maybe Gill’s desire to meet the architects was a ridiculous and worthless idea. Maybe in Ropolis, only Ugo mattered. Ugo, the one who controlled a whole drugged army through the eyes of the metal licants and portable holophones, from a virtual simulation of the mining capital! The jure of the architects’ world! Gill couldn’t stop asking himself what strange circumstances threw him here in such a place, at such a moment, and in the path of such a creature. Perhaps a coincidence, but it was one that bore the seal of the decantation of strangeness, as if such seemingly meaningless, chaotic happenings became stuck in time’s web, and all of them gathered in the same knot through which he was stubbornly trying to pass.
Gill closed his eyes for a moment and recalled in his olfactory memory the nine primordial Guk aromas in the focusing harmonics. It had become more important than ever to make sure he didn’t allow haste to blind him and leave essential details un-smelled, details offered too easily… Did the jure underestimate him like Baila, or had things gone as he wished? Gill was more and more convinced that he was exactly where Ugo wanted him to be. And immediately, he had another revelation: Urdun, with all the cover of surprise he played so skillfully, was part of the jure’s plan.