Neal Stephenson - Reamde

Overall, he decided that it had been worth it. He knew a great deal more now of how Zula had comported herself during the apartment building showdown and in the hours afterward, and all of it made him proud and would make the rest of the family proud when it went up on the Facebook page and when, in future years, they retold the story at the re-u. And that was all true whether Zula was alive or, as seemed likely, dead.

“All right already,” he shouted. He approached the main entrance and hit a switch that turned on the lights in the driveway.

Two men were standing there, sort of wrapped around each other. They looked like backpackers. One of them, a burly middle-aged man, was supporting a taller fellow who was all bundled up in warm clothes with a hood pulled up over his head. The latter’s leg was encased, from the knee down, in a splint that had been improvised from tree branches, duct tape, and climbing rope. His head was bowed as if he were only semiconscious or perhaps doubled over in pain.

Nothing Richard hadn’t seen before. He unlocked the front door and pulled it open.

“Thank God you’re here, Mr. Forthrast!” the man exclaimed, very loudly, as if he wished to be heard by someone else—someone who was not standing directly in front of him.

The lights went out.

The injured man, who until this moment had been draped over his comrade’s shoulders, stood up straight and took his full weight evenly on both feet.

Richard by now knew that something funny was going on but was too fuzzy-headed from sleep deprivation and T’Rain playing to do anything other than watch it play out before him like a cut scene in a video game. The tall man reached up and stripped the hood away from his face. But Richard could not see much of him because of the darkness.

“Good morning, Richard,” he said. His voice sounded like that of a black man, but his accent told that he was not from around here. His companion had unzipped his jacket and pulled something out. Richard heard the sound of a round being chambered into a semiautomatic pistol. This man backed up a pace and aimed it at Richard’s face. Richard flinched. In all the time he had spent messing around with guns, he’d never had one aimed at him before.

“You’d be Jones?” Richard said.

“That I would. May we come inside? I’ve been tracking your website—the one that keeps asking whether anyone has seen Zula—and I’ve come to give you news and claim the reward.”

“Is she alive?”

“Not only is she alive, Richard, but you have the power to keep her that way.”

“WELL, THAT HAPPENED,” Seamus announced. He crossed his arms over his chest and used his legs to shove his chair back from the computer.

Csongor had already logged out. Never again, he suspected, would Lottery Discountz walk the streets of Carthinias. Marlon was still engaged, typing chat messages—apparently aimed at the character called Clover, who seemed to be Egdod’s bagman. On his screen it was possible to see Clover and Reamde standing so close that their heads were almost touching. Thorakks loitered a few meters away and Egdod—suddenly poignant in his smallness and aloneness—just stood there.

Yuxia was perched on a counter near Seamus. “What’s next for you guys?” the latter asked. Grammatically, the question was aimed at all of them, but he was looking at Yuxia when he asked it.

Which was just as well since Csongor hadn’t the faintest idea how to answer it. Apparently they were going to get some money now. At least enough to buy an airplane ticket. But to where? And could Csongor even get out of this country legally? The last stamp in his passport was from Sheremetyevo Airport, Moscow. Since then he’d entered and left China illegally and sneaked into the Philippines. He might be wanted for God only knew what sorts of crimes in China. Did the Philippines have an extradition treaty with China? Did Hungary?

He could only brood and worry and listen to Yuxia giving Seamus the third degree. “Who the heck are you?”

“I already told you,” he said innocently.

“A cop? A spy?”

“I’m a sex tourist.”

Yuxia laughed in his face. “You would have to travel much farther,” she said, “to find someone willing to do it with you.”

This seemed to Csongor shockingly rude, and his head swiveled around just to be sure that such words had actually come from Qian Yuxia’s mouth. They had.

And Seamus was eating it with a spoon. “Okay. Not a sex tourist.”

“Why do you ask what is next for us?”

“Oh, I just feel that we have established the beginnings of a friendship here, and I want to make sure you are all taken care of, that’s all.”

“You can take care of me,” she said, “by getting me back home.”

Seamus made a face. “Now, that’s going to be tricky,” he said. “I didn’t know much about you until just now.”

By “just now” he meant the conversation that had occupied much of the preceding hour, in which Csongor, assisted somewhat by his comrades, had narrated the remainder of their story.

“So? Now you know all about us,” Yuxia said, trying to sound insouciant. But Csongor knew her well enough, by now, to tell when she was troubled. Her eyes wandered and her face fell.

“I know enough to charge you with a list of crimes as long as my arm, if I were a Chinese prosecutor,” Seamus said. Reacting, apparently, to a look on her face, he became dismayed and held out his hands as if trying to tamp something down. “Not that they would. What do I know? All I’m saying is, think hard before you go running back to China.”

“I’m not going back,” Marlon scoffed. “It is my country and I love it, but I can’t go back.” And he returned to his money-shuffling activities.

“Mystery man,” Csongor said, “what can you do to help us?”

“In the next half hour or so, not so very much,” Seamus returned. “I need to make at least one phone call about our goon with the rifle. And I want to keep an eye on Egdod. He is worrying me a little. But after that, I will try to put something together. Maybe you guys can help us.”

“Who is ‘us’ and what do you think we can help you with?”

“The good guys and killing Jones.”

“I am all about killing Jones,” Yuxia volunteered, holding up her hand like a little girl in school.

Csongor, raised from birth to be a little more cautious in his utterances, only took this under advisement. But he did ask, “Why are you worried about Egdod?”

“He has reverted to his bothavior.”

“Which is?”

“Trying to walk home,” Seamus said. “And home, for him, is, like, five thousand miles away.”

“What does this mean?” Yuxia asked.

“It means that Richard Forthrast’s computer crashed, or he lost his Internet connection.”

“Maybe he just went to sleep,” Yuxia said.

“Yes, or maybe he’s having coffee with whoever was ringing his doorbell, and his computer went to sleep,” said Seamus. “But in the meantime, the most powerful character in all of T’Rain is wandering around the world on autopilot.”

“So what are you going to do?” Yuxia asked.

“Maybe tag along. Like escorting a drunk president home after a long night in the bar.”

“Didn’t you say you had to make a phone call?”

“I have been trained by the United States government,” Seamus said, “to do more than one thing at a time.”

“TURNABOUT IS FAIR play,” said a disgustingly cheerful voice, with a South Boston accent, on the other end of the line.

Olivia groaned. “What time is it?”

“Something like five, where you are. Not that bad. Up and at ‘em.”

“What is happening?”

“Just a little update for you. I can’t say everything I’d like to, because of where I am. But I found them, and I’ve been hanging out with them, and oh so much has happened in the magical world of T’Rain while you have been getting your beauty sleep.”