"In a word—yes," said Wells. "But he won't destroy the network. He wants to live forever, just like anyone else. Just like me." He turned and tapped on the door. "But he'll be back very soon, our gracious Lord Anubis, so I'm sure he'll be glad to explain things to you himself,"

The heavy door swung open, revealing a trio of shaven-headed guards just outside, their muscles shining with oil. The door thumped shut behind Wells and the bolt crashed back into place.

"Dread has us!" Martine seemed to speak from some far shore of despair. "Oh, God, the monster has us!"

Exhausted and heartsick, squeezed to cramping agony by their bonds, neither Paul nor his companions felt much like talking. Something close to an hour passed before the bolt grated again and the door swung open to reveal the bizarre , yellow countenance of Robert Wells.

"Keeping yourselves amused, I hope," he said. "Singing camp songs or something? Michael row the boat ashore. . . ?" His smile—in fact, Paul thought, his entire aspect—seemed quite insane. "I've brought along some pals of yours." A pair of guards shouldered their way into the room, each holding a sagging figure. When they let go of them, the prisoners stumbled and fell to the floor. Paul did not know the small, round woman in tattered Egyptian clothes, but after a moment recognized the man's face through the blood and bruises.

"Nandi. . . ?"

The prisoner rolled reddened, swollen-lidded eyes in his direction. "I'm sorry . . . I . . . never thought. . . ."

"Ah, yes!" said Wells. "He never thought you'd actually be here, or he would have kept his mouth shut about meeting you." The yellow mask nodded. "It took a little while before I put two and two together. Then I realized it would be a bit of a coincidence for you to be a different Paul than the one this gentleman has been telling us about so eagerly."

"You monster!" Nandi Paradivash struggled to crawl toward Wells, but was kicked brutally back to the floor by the nearest guard, where he lay, sobbing and wheezing.

"Paul Jonas." Wells surveyed him with a glittering eye. "Or 'X', as I was calling you for a long time—Jongleur's mystery experiment. First I got a name to go with it, now a face." He crossed his bandaged arms over his chest. "Soon I'll have a lot more than that. You can explain everything. Not that it means much with Jongleur dead or missing in action, but still—I'm interested."

Paul could only stare defiantly. "Even if I knew . . . and I don't . . . I wouldn't tell you. It was wiped out of my memory."

"Then maybe you'll thank me." Wells smiled. "When I help you remember." He flicked his hand and the guards hurried forward and picked up Paul like a rolled carpet. He had no time to shout something brave to his companions, not even a good-bye, before they were hurrying him along a torchlit corridor. Wells' voice echoed after them.

"I'll be right there, boys. Make sure he stays tied. Oh, and sharpen everything, will you?"

"Code Delphi. Start here.

"I never expected to speak those words again.

"A few hours ago I was certain that continuing this journal in the face of all but certain death—a journal that no one but me would ever find, even if the network survives—would be complete madness. These entries spoken into air are only to remind me of what I felt and thought, in the unlikely event that I can look back on this time from some future I still cannot imagine. So when I was at my lowest points of despair, as I was then, it seemed even worse than mad—it seemed dull and pointless. I have never wanted to leave some dramatic last will and testament that no one will hear. I have never been moved by displays of hopeless bravery, and certainly was not going to bother with one of my own.

"In short, I had surrendered.

"I do not know that anything has truly changed—our chance of survival is still vanishingly small—but I have found a little unexpected hope. No, not hope. I still believe we will lose our lives without seeing the end of this. Determination? Perhaps.

"When we survived the feverish horror of the Dodge City simworld only to be captured in Egypt, and worst of all, when we discovered we were—and still are—being held for Dread himself, I fell for a while into the lowest despair. The pit. A hole into darkness. I could not speak, could barely even think except for nightmare images of that room in the House world where Dread tormented me. If someone at that moment had offered to put a bullet in my head, I would have accepted it with gratitude.

"Then everything changed again—for the worse, if such a thing were possible". Our captor, Robert Wells, who apparently has now become Dread's lieutenant, brought two more prisoners to join us and took away Paul Jonas for interrogation. My misery was such that I could scarcely move. I fear for Paul. God, how I fear for him. He has already been through so much. . . ! I am shamed that my own suffering should have left me so self-involved. I cannot even imagine what he has experienced, lost in this network with little memory of his own real history and no knowledge of what was happening to him. To have kept so sane, to be so kind and so brave. . . . It is astonishing. And it is equally astonishing that I did not truly realize how much I admired him until he was taken away.

"Even now, he could be dead. Or perhaps in terrible, terrible, pain. Which would be worse?

"This is the curse I perceived before, the burden I have evaded all my life. To like people, to . . . love people, is to make oneself a hostage to fortune.

"So it was I began my slide into the abyss. For long minutes after Paul was taken—it might have been hours for all I could have guessed—I simply could not speak. Could not think. Terror had seized my heart, frozen my thoughts, turned me into something which could not move, and had nowhere to go even if it could.

"This is just a more direct version, I realize now, of what I have done in my own real life. Frightened, I have gradually sealed myself in the rocky depths of the mountains, in the sanctuary I share only with my machines. Without realizing it, I have actively conspired in making myself something much less than a person.

"Still, in the grip of the terror I could not see these things, but only now that it has passed. I might never nave left the black panic if it had not been for the hands of my friends upon me, Florimel and T4b, who thought I was having a heart attack. I felt them and heard them as though from a long distance, and for a while I did not wish to be plugged back into my nerves and senses. Better to hide in the black pit. Better to let my overwhelming fear protect me, as blocks of ice make a home that shelters Arctic hunters from the cold.

"Then, still at a great distance from my own self, I felt another set of hands upon me, clumsy, halting hands, and heard another voice. The new woman prisoner had dragged herself over to help, ignoring her own injuries. Even in the depths of my isolation I was shamed. Here was someone who had suffered what I only feared, and yet she could find the strength to worry about me, a stranger!

"I had thought that I would never come back to sanity, that I would simply fall down into that slow-motion blackness forever. How much worse, in a way, to return and find myself being cared for by my exhausted friends and even this newcomer, her limbs still trembling with the pain of what she had endured, as though I were a tired, fretful child commanding the attention of a group of adults.

"There are times when kindness is the sharpest cut of all.

"But even my shame passed. I realized that I knew both of the new prisoners at least by name—Bonnie Mae Simpkins, who had shown such kindness to Orlando and Fredericks, and Nandi Paradivash, who had been the first to explain to Paul that he was trapped in Jongleur's simulation network. Nandi was in a state something like I had been, torn with guilt at what had happened to Paul, and also clearly the victim of agonizing treatment, but the Simpkins woman spoke for both of them. She told how in opening a gateway and sending Orlando and Fredericks through, the remaining members of the Circle had waited too long, so that their own escape was prevented by the collapse of the great Temple of Ra which followed Jongleur's appearance in his guise as Osiris, master of this simulation world. Jongleur had not stayed long, and the survivors had hidden in the ruins, hoping to find another way out of the simulation, but within days Osiris had been supplanted by Anubis and the already bad state of affairs rapidly became worse.