Rue knew she had willfully ignored the danger when they'd set out to catch the Envy. Even at the time, she hadn't been able to explain why to herself or anyone else. All her explanations had been excuses, really. Why had she knowingly embarked on a suicidal quest?
The ice passing overhead reminded Rue of stories she'd heard of the boatman who transported the dead to the underworld. Here they were. She hugged herself and looked down.
The bag she'd brought with her from the marketplace lay crumpled at her feet. Absently she picked it up and rummaged through it. Jewelry— how pathetic, she thought.
She was about to drop it when her fingers touched the NeoShinto headset. She'd forgotten all about it. Now Rue drew it out, turning it over in her hands.
Religion had never interested her. She had accepted the simple message of the Supreme Meme: no matter how infinite the universe, time circles back around to here and now, to this very second. No matter where you went after you died, you'd end up back in this life again. Paradise was no more permanent than this very second. So your responsibility was to this life, not any afterlife.
But where did that leave Max? Was he fixed like a bug in amber, forever living out a life of depression and disappointment, dying again and again in the same pointless way? The thought filled her with horror.
And for herself? Rue had always felt herself swept through life by currents of incident way out of her control. When had she ever owned her own life? Certainly not when she'd been growing up on Allemagne.
Her eyes blurred with tears as Rue realized that it had been that control she had been fleeing when she agreed to go after the Envy. She wasn't used to running her own affairs; when she walked the hills of Penumbra North, sowing seeds, she had been a completely independent woman. And the experience was foreign to her, strange and threatening. She had leaped at the chance to throw away her options.
By committing to chasing the Envy, she'd deliberately thrown away her freedom. From the moment they embarked, she had been swept up again by forces beyond her control. That was what she was used to and she was happy in it.
She put her hands over her mouth, afraid she was going to throw up. Shame burned so deeply in her that she doubted she could ever face Michael Bequith, or even Dr. Herat again. And her willingness to throw away her own freedom had doomed Max and probably all of them.
The minutes dragged on. Nothing was happening except that the ice continued to pass overhead: the visible underside of the world-spanning glacial continent of Oculus. Occasionally, long tendrils of something organic-looking drifted by.
She had to do something— anything, to escape her own thoughts. A faint notion at the back of Rue's mind was growing in volume, steadily more and more loudly: This botched life was hers, infinitely. She would live the same mistakes over and over and there was no escape and nothing she could do to prevent the repetition. Even if over the aeons, a billion versions of Rue lived and died— some triumphant, some wise— given enough time this one would always return. She would always be here, in this crippled vessel, drifting slowly into the darkness.
Rue stood up and stared around at the interior of the sub. Maybe she could raid the rations in the meager galley— fix breakfast for the men. Anything to keep her hands and mind busy.
Her gaze fell on Mike's sleeping form and Rue felt a pang of regret and guilt. He shouldn't be here, he was an innocent in so many ways. Then she noticed his beltpack, which lay on the deck below the cot.
Jutting from the pack was one corner of a datapack. Of course; he always carried that thing with him. She hadn't really understood its significance until her visit to Vogel.
Rue wiped at her eyes and knelt next to the cot. She wanted to throw herself onto Mike and cry, but his sleep was precious. She took out the datapack and crept back to her seat in the front.
This was completely stupid, she thought as she connected the leads from the headset to the datapack. Then she slipped the headset over her ears.
A simple inscape menu blossomed into being in front of her. It listed several titles:
Kimpurusha Dawn
Kadesh Sea Gods
Dis
Spirits of Ember
Voice of the Cataract
Only the name Kimpurusha was familiar. Rue hesitated, then reached out and tapped the half-real words Kimpurusha Dawn.
The sub disappeared. Disoriented, she felt weightless for a second and relaxed into it. Then Rue was standing on a high mountain slope.
This place was not like the Penumbral mountains of Treya. These peaks reared thousands of meters into the predawn sky and were clothed in virginal snow along their flanks. Strong black rock patched the night-blue of the snow. The simulation was so complete that Rue felt the thin cold air in her lungs and shivered at the icy breeze that flowed down to her from the peaks. She stood on a spur of rock jutting out from a cliff. How had Michael gotten to this place?
The silence and height were awe-inspiring, but Rue was disappointed. Was this all that the famed kami were: postcards of particularly beautiful places? How could Mike have devoted his life to simple virtual realities like this?
Then she heard a distant rumble. Rue turned and saw that a jagged line of peaks in the distance were glowing with a gorgeous rose light. The rising sun had touched them and the echoing thunder that rolled up and down between the peaks came from six or seven avalanches that the hot light had touched off.
She watched the tumbling snow, enrapt, and the sound seemed to swirl around her and pick her up and then with a jolt Rue was gone. There was only the peaks and the avalanche and where she had been there was a great clap of sound that raced from peak to peak.
The sound stood up over the mountains and felt their shapes, their ancient solidity, in the standing waves of echo that crashed between them. Each peak proclaimed its millennial sovereignty to the others.
She rose, trembling, to touch the lower clouds. The reality of this place, this moment, was so overwhelming it erased any doubt. A million years these peaks had stood and in a million more they would still be here. Years nor light-years could erase them.
And way down there, all the parts of the mountains were as reaclass="underline" the tumbled rocks, the straggling trees, the lichen, and, on a jut of stone halfway up one peak, a standing woman— a woman as real as the mountains and as much a part of them as the stone and ice. They, as much a part of her.
The sound broke and fell back to sleep in the stones and snow. Rue blinked, felt herself spinning and then she was sitting in the sub again.
The echoes went on and on in her head. She reached out a trembling hand and touched the cold wall of the sub. It was hard to say what was her and what was outside her. For a few seconds, Rue had the hallucinatory sense that she was both herself and the ocean around her. The distinction between the two had been shattered.
The sensation faded gradually, but Rue sat still, in shock, for a long time. Then, half in fear and half in eagerness, she summoned up the menu again.
None of the other names on the menu were familiar, so she chose one at random.
She tapped the word Dis and blackness and stars bloomed around her.
MICHAEL AWOKE FEELING groggy. Somewhere nearby, he heard Herat talking. He opened his eyes; metal pipes formed a bizarre ceiling above his head.
Rolling over, he found there was no more bed under him suddenly and he crashed to the floor— to the deck, rather, for he was still in the submarine. Remembering that brought everything else back to him.
"Rue?" He stood up, rubbing his shoulder. She sat facing away from him in one of the two chairs at the front of the sub. The marine, Barendts, sat next to her and Herat was leaning over his seat and pointing out into the dark water.
Michael went to crouch next to Rue's chair. She looked up and smiled wanly. Putting her hand on his, she turned away again. She was turning her little medallion over and over in her fingers, touching it and examining it as though it held some secret.