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very nice, Henry. Much bigger than the other place. Maybe this will all turn
out after all."
They held hands like lovers as they toured their spacious new apartment. It
was all very touching. The men who watched the monitors didn't even notice the
way her fingertips moved against the leathery calluses of his palm.
--------
*Chapter Twelve*
He strode like a giant through a place of milk and blood. In his hand was a
great sword. Sheets of thunder rolled in endless waves across the land, which
was a barren, scorched crust beneath his boots. Fire blossomed in the livid
sky. When the thunder stopped, he heard the sound of multitudes laughing. His
nostrils twitched at a cacophony of stinks: burnt flesh, rotting bogs, parched
earth.
He came to a high place and looked over desolation. After a time, he raised
the immense sword and said, "Come on, asshole.
Enough is enough."
It was as if some unseen hand had flicked a switch. The thunder stopped. The
fires blew out. The wind died. He stood on his mountaintop in silence.
Eventually he heard the sound of another, walking.
"You don't like the light show?" It was a metallic voice, full of
bone-grinding partials and sniggling half-tones, a voice with which to conjure
nightmares. Most horribly, beneath the machine insanities of the upper
registers, a thick, greasy underlayer of cheerful, hungry humanity bubbled
like a pot of rancid stew.
Berg turned and watched the golden youth climb the last few yards to his
eyrie. The youth trailed a host of alloyed insectile monstrosities in his
wake. They bickered and twittered and convulsed against each other, creating a
sound like wind over steel wheat fields.
"You know," Berg said, "for a guy that's half machine, you have an awfully
perverse liking for lurid melodrama. What's this crowd supposed to be? Your
brokerage house?"
The golden youth, who had once been a man named William Norton, and also a
machine named Arius, and was now both, and neither, chuckled softly. "Allow me
my little idiosyncrasies. I see you have your own, ah, retainer along."
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Berg glanced over his left shoulder. Sure enough, a form even shorter than his
own, with a bigger nose and a black mustache that hid half his lower jaw,
stood there grinning at him, black eyes twinkling. "Oh, Jesus. I don't
remember inviting you."
Levin's grin grew brighter. "Wouldn't miss it for the world, boss. Besides, I
think old brass bootie over there is kinda cute."
Berg turned back to Arius. "Fair's fair. You want an introduction?"
"Thank you, no. I don't swing that way."
Berg shrugged. "You never know till you try it. I bet Levin's a hot little
hunk."
Arius said dryly, "I don't like facial hair."
"I can change it," Levin said eagerly.
Arius ignored him. "Something you wanted to see me about?"
Berg spread his legs and planted the tip of his huge silver sword on the rock
in front of him. "How do you think the war's going?"
he said.
"So so. You don't seem to be doing any better than you were at the beginning.
Or, for that matter, any worse. I must admit, that surprises me a bit."
"Why?"
"Well, after all, I did create you. One would think the creator would have
dominion over the creation."
Berg laughed. "Thus spake the industrialist backers of Hitler. And the man who
promoted Benedict Arnold. And, I suppose, Shag
Nakamura about Bill Norton."
A wispy hiss of flame darted between Arius's golden lips. His pinkish eyes
flashed with demented humor. "A point well taken. So.
We seem to be well matched, then. I can't escape this interesting little
purgatory you've dragged me to, but you can't vanquish me, either. A
stalemate."
Berg nodded. "That's the way I read it, too, hot pants. So I want to propose a
small wager."
"Oh? A deal with the devil, you might say?"
"Well, I guess that's all in the perspective, but sure, you got the general
idea."
"Mm. What kind of deal?"
Berg told him.
After a while everybody went away, and darkness returned to the spot of their
compact. Only now the scene was perfused with a thin blue glow, and the torn
earth seemed faintly transparent, as if it were a scummy film over something
brighter, greater, more real.
As if the earth itself was only a dream.
Several perfect white sheep ambled slowly across the lower slopes of the hill,
small black-faced eating machines whose occasional plaintive bleats provided a
properly bucolic background to the endlessly sunny day.
"Berg, what is it with you and sheep? You were a city kid. You never even saw
a fucking sheep until you were a grown man."
Berg chewed absently on a stem of grass. "I dunno. I find them ... restful."
"They stink. Sheep shit, you know. I stepped in a pile just a few minutes
ago."
He was lying on his back, one hand tilted across his eyes. He wore faded
jeans, a new Harvard University sweatshirt, and flip-flops. "You got to watch
where you put your feet, kiddo. First rule for city kids. All those dogs and
not enough pooper scoopers."
Calley hitched herself over onto her side and propped her head on one hand.
"You know, these interfaces or analogs or dreams or whatever you want to call
them don't have to be so goddamned real. Sheep shit, for chrissakes."
"I like it."
"Yeah. And whatever Berg likes, he gets. You're a selfish mother, aren't you?"
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"Let's not fight."
She glared. "Berg, it's what we do best. Why should we stop now?"
He didn't answer that. Finally he spat out the bit of chewed grass and said,
"You still gonna go along with the deal?"
"Your magical mystery tour? I said I would. What do you want? Blood?"
"How about Ozzie?"
She paused. Then, a different, huskier tone to her voice, she said, "He'll go
where I go."
"You know, you could do worse."
"Than Ozzie? Sure I could. I have. Guy named Jack Berg, in fact. Name sound
familiar?"
"No, seriously. I mean it. I haven't ever done anything right for you. It's
like, you know, there's no hope for us."
"Where there's life, there's hope." But her voice sounded brittle, as if she
were trying to convince herself more than him.
"Maybe, when this is all over, you two should -- I mean, we should -- "
"Look, Jack. You're forgetting a few things. Like, for one, there's still what
happened to us in the metamatrix. You said we were joined. I didn't fully
understand then, but I do now. It isn't something either of us chose, it just
happened. Now it's like ... some kind of basic _function,_ something that just
_is_. You know what I mean?"
He sighed. "Yeah. No choice. Not for either of us. Sometimes, I wish..."
"What?"
"Naw. Nothing. Forget it. Okay, so you and Ozzie are ready?"
She shrugged. "I guess. As ready as we're gonna get. This is really stupid,
Berg. I don't know why I'm going along with it."
He grinned. "To get away from the sheep, maybe?"
"Or the shit. All the shit."
"Well, whatever jerks your gourd. It's not gonna be easy. You understand
everything?"
She nodded. "You and Arius control the playing field. You won the toss, so the
playing field is Chicago. Me and Ozzie, we're the pieces. And Arius will have
his rep there, too. Then we play the game. Simple enough."
"I wish it was. Lotta stuff riding on it, babe."
"That's what's so fucking stupid, Berg. You bet the whole ranch on Ozzie and
me. Why? Are you doing so bad right now?"
"Not bad, but not good, either. It's a stalemate, but it could change. And not
even Levin can predict the outcome. This way, we come to a decision."
"Uh. And you trust Arius to keep his side of the bargain if he loses?"
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