City of Golden Shadow by Tad Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

do, then continued in the directions that interested him.
    As they watched his first attempts to control shape and color appear and then disappear in midair, he asked her "But why all this labor and expense to . . . counterfeit-is that the word? Why should we counterfeit reality at all?"
    Renie hesitated. "Well, by learning to . . . counterfeit reality, we can make things that cannot exist except in our imaginations, just as artists have always done. Or make something to show what we would like to create, as builders do when they draw a plan. But also, we can create for ourselves an environment that is more comfortable in which to work. Just as this program takes a hand gesture-" she waved her arm; a puff of white appeared in the sky overhead, "-and makes a cloud, it can take the same hand gesture and move a large amount of information from one place to another, or go and find some other information. Instead of hunching at a keyboard or a touchscreen, as we used to do, we can sit or stand or lie down, point or wave or talk. Using the machines on which our lives depend can be made as easy as. . . ." She paused, trying to find a simile.
    "As making a fish spear." His voice was oddly inflected. "So we seem to have come in a full circle. We complicate our life with machines, then struggle to make it as simple as it was before we had them. Have we gained anything, Ms. Sulaweyo?"
    Renie felt obscurely attacked. "Our powers are greater-we can do many more things. . . ."
    "Can we talk to the gods and hear their voices more clearly? Or have we now, with all these powers, become gods?"
    !Xabbu's change of tone had caught her off-balance. As she struggled to give him a reasonable answer, he spoke again.
    "Look here, Ms. Sulaweyo. What do you think?"
    A small and somewhat hard-angled flower had poked up from the simulated forest floor. It did not look like any flower she knew, but it had a certain vibrancy she found compelling; it seemed almost more a work of art than an attempt to imitate a real plant. Its velvety petals were blood red.
    "It's . . . it's very good for a first try, !Xabbu."
    "You are a very good teacher."
    He snapped his clumsy gray fingers and the flower disappeared.

    She turned and pointed. A shelf of volumes leaped forward so she could read the titles.
    "Shit," she whispered. "Wrong again. I can't remember the name. Find anything with 'Spatial development or 'Spatial rendering' and 'child' or 'juvenile' in the title."
    Three volumes appeared, floating before the library shelves.
    "Analysis of spatial rendering in juvenile development," she read. "Right. Give me a list in order of most occurrences of. . . ."
    "Renie!"
    She whirled at the sound of her brother's disembodied voice, exactly as she would have in the real world. "Stephen? Where are you?"
    "Eddie's house. But we're . . . having a problem." There was an edge of fear.
    Renie felt her pulse speed. "What kind of problem? Something at the house? Somebody giving you trouble?"
    "No. Not at the house." He sounded as miserable as when he'd been thrown in the canal by older kids on his way home from school. "We're on the net. Can you come help us?"
    "Stephen, what is wrong? Tell me right now."
    "We're in the Inner District. Come quick." The contact was gone.
    Renie pressed her fingertips together twice and her library disappeared. For a moment, while her rig had no input to chew, she hovered in pure gray netspace. She quickly waved up her basic starting grid, then attempted to jump straight to her brother's present location, but she was blocked by a No Access warning. He was in the Inner District, and in a subscription-only area. No wonder he hadn't wanted to stay in contact very long. He had been running up connection time on someone else's tab-probably his school's-and any large access group kept an eye open for just such leakage.
    "God damn that boy!" Did he expect her to hack into a big commercial system? There were penalties for that, and some of them could