“WHAT DID YOU think you were doing? Answer me!”
The words were full of fury, but Miss Ferris’s voice never altered. She spoke in that same robotic monotone as always, as if she felt nothing at all, not even her own anger. Her face was expressionless, her eyes were cool. Only the way she paced back and forth in front of him—the taut, cat-like play of her compact body under the black suit—gave Rick any indication of just how angry at him she was.
Rick opened his mouth to answer her—“I saw—” but before he could finish, she stormed on.
“Really,” she said, “I’m curious. What part of my instructions didn’t you understand?”
“I saw—” Rick started again, and again, she cut him off.
“ ‘Don’t stray too far from the portal point,’ I said. ‘Look around,’ I said. ‘Find the outpost. Come back.’ How difficult to comprehend was that, Rick? Were the words too long for you? Too many syllables? Answer me!”
They were sitting in some kind of conference room in the MindWar Project’s underground compound. It was a long, narrow room with one wall made completely of television screens, all of them blank, all black. A long glass table took up most of the floor space. Swivel recliners were arrayed around it. Rick sat slumped and weary in one of the chairs, his crutches leaning against the table beside him, as Miss Ferris paced back and forth between him and the blank TVs. The enormous security guard, Juliet Seven, stood in one corner watching the two of them, his massive arms crossed over his chest again. His block of a face was serious, but there was laughter sparkling in his eyes. He was clearly enjoying watching little Miss Ferris rip into the huge, muscular ex-quarterback.
Rick felt gutted, emptied of all energy. His hour in the Realm had exhausted him. Coming back had been even worse. When Juliet Seven had lifted him out of the glass coffin, the crippling pain and weakness of his legs had struck him like a mallet blow. For all the dangers of the Realm, it had felt incredibly good to have his legs whole and healthy again. Just one hour in that computerized environment and he’d almost forgotten what a weak and broken man he really was. Now, already, the Realm—the scarlet plain—the blue woods—the spider-snake—the sparkling Favian—the beautiful silver Mariel—and his healthy legs—seemed like a dream to him. He could hardly believe any of it had actually happened. Already, he felt his old depression settling over him like a shroud.
But still, he tried again to answer her. He opened his mouth and . . .
“Well?” said Miss Ferris coldly. “I really want to know, Rick. What did you think you were doing?”
“I saw a man,” Rick finally managed to say.
Miss Ferris stopped pacing.
“What?”
“I saw a man. In the Realm. Across this scarlet plain, just outside this blue wood.”
“You saw a man?”
“He was calling to me. Trying to warn me to get into the forest. I think he saved my life. Otherwise, the gigantic spider-snake would have devoured me on the spot.”
Miss Ferris blinked. Rick took this to indicate surprise. Hard to tell—it was the only change in her expression.
“The gigantic spider . . . ?” she began to say. And then she interrupted herself and said, “You’re telling me there was a man?”
“Sort of a man,” said Rick. “Favian, his name was. He was sort of a . . . well, a sprite or something. He was transparent and he sparkled and, like, flitted around. There was a woman, too.”
Miss Ferris cocked her head, like a dog who’s heard a whistle.
Didn’t she have any regular facial expressions? he wondered. Smiles? Frowns? Anything? Didn’t she have any emotions at all? “Only she was more like a spirit. Mariel. She came up out of the water as if she were made of it. She was very . . .” Beautiful, he wanted to say, but it embarrassed him. He didn’t want Miss Ferris—or that mocking blockhead Juliet Seven—to see how much the sight of Mariel had moved him.
“And did they say anything? These sprites and spirits?” Miss Ferris asked. “Did they tell you how they got there? Did they give you any usable intelligence?”
“Oh, now you’re interested,” said Rick sarcastically. “Now it’s not such a bad thing that I strayed away from the portal point.”
“Don’t be a smart-mouth,” snapped Miss Ferris without any intonation whatsoever. “Do you think this is some sort of joke?”
Rick rolled his eyes and shook his head. He didn’t think anything. He just wanted to go home and get some sleep. He was too tired to sit here being scolded like a three-year-old by the Ice Queen of Robotland. His experiences in the Realm may have begun to seem like a dream, but the injuries he’d suffered there were real enough. He’d awakened with scratches on his hands and arms, aches in his muscles, vivid purple bruises all over him from when the spider-snake had dragged him over the forest turf. There was one bruise on his lower leg that was nearly black. That was from when the creature’s web had wrapped around him, tied him tight. He smelled bad, too. He needed a bath. He needed some rest.
“They didn’t know how they got there,” he said. “They didn’t remember.”
Miss Ferris blinked again—and who knew what that meant? Maybe she just had a bit of dust in her eyes or something. She crossed her arms on her chest and stared at him. “What did they tell you about the Realm?” she said coldly.
“They said there was a Golden City in the distance, out of sight. They said that that was the heart of the place, where the real attacks, the big attacks, would come from. But they said that right now, Kurodar was building a fortress. I could see it, out on the edge of the scarlet plain. They thought he was planning to launch some kind of smaller attack from there.”
Miss Ferris nodded. It was some sort of reaction, at least.
“There’s something else,” said Rick.
The woman lifted her chin in a question: What?
Rick continued: “They’re dying. Favian and Mariel. They have a certain amount of energy and it’s running out, bit by bit. They asked me if I could help them.” With a pang, he remembered the look of anxiety on Favian’s face. You don’t know what it’s like here. And—what was almost worse—he remembered the look of faith from Mariel. He won’t desert us. He’s a hero. You only have to look at him to see it. He’s the hero we’ve been waiting for. “I said I would try,” he told Miss Ferris. Then he added, “I promised them I would try.”
Miss Ferris did something odd then. She turned away—actually swung completely around so that her back was to him. Before he lost sight of her, Rick could almost have sworn he saw an expression of actual emotion cross her face. What was it? Sorrow? Anger? Fear? No, he must have imagined it, because when she turned around again, her countenance was as stony as ever. “I’ll look into it,” she said brusquely. “We’ll see what we can do to help them. But right now, we have other problems. Juliet Seven will take you home. You need rest before re-immersion. Twelve hours is essential. Forty-eight hours is preferable.”
“You are going to send me back in, then?” Rick asked her. He had been worried that she was so angry with him for disobeying her orders that she would end the mission right here and now. He realized: He wanted to go back in. He wanted to feel the strength in his legs again. He wanted to complete his mission. He wanted, more than anything, to help Favian and Mariel.
But he needn’t have worried about Miss Ferris’s anger. She seemed to have forgotten all about it, if she had ever really felt it at all. She even seemed to have forgotten she’d been in the middle of scolding him. She now simply marched away, marched right across the floor to the conference room door, with barely a glance in his direction.
Only when she reached the door, only when she had pulled it open, did she say to him over her shoulder, “Of course we’re going to send you back in. You have to get to that fortress.”