Reamde

“He’s a farmer. Owns land and equipment that are worth a lot of money. Takes in huge federal subsidy checks. That’s why.”

“He has a bachelor’s degree.”

“Ag engineering, I’ll bet.”

“He has bought seventeen books in this calendar year.” Meaning, as Richard understood, T’Rain-themed books from the online store.

“All by D-squared?”

“You called it. How’d you know?”

“Call up his character.”

Typing. “Okay,” Corvallis said, “looks like a pretty standard-issue Dwinn to me.”

“Exactly my point.”

“How so?”

Richard pulled the paper placemat out from under his platter and flipped it over. Pulling a mechanical pencil from his shirt pocket, he drew a vertical line down the middle and then poised the tip of the implement at the head of one of the columns.

“Richard? You still there?”

“I’m thinking.”

In truth, he wasn’t certain that “thinking” was the right word for what was going on in his head, since that word implied some kind of orderly procedure.

There were certain perceptions that pierced through the fug of day-to-day concerns and the confusions of time like message arrows through the dark, and one of those had just hit him in the forehead: a memory of a scene from a generic fantasy world, not Tolkien but something derivative of Tolkien, the kind of thing that a Devin Skraelin would have created. It had been painted on the side of a van that had picked him up in 1972 when he had been hitchhiking to Canada so that he wouldn’t have to get his legs blown off like John. In those days—strange to relate—there’d been a connection between stoners and Tolkien buffs. For the last thirty years it simply hadn’t obtained; the ardent Tolkien fans were a disjoint set from the stoners and potheads of the world. But he remembered now that they were once connected to each other and that the van-painting types used the same album-cover palette as these ­people—some Good, some Evil—groping out to find one another with their cobalt blue message arrows and their acid yellow scrolls.

“New research project,” Richard heard himself saying.

“Uh-oh.”

“You seen all Diane’s shit about attractors in palette space?”

“I’m aware of it,” Corvallis said, pivoting into a defensive crouch, “but—”

“That’s all that matters,” Richard grunted. His hand had begun moving, drawing letters at the top of the left-hand column. He watched in dull fascination as they spelled out: FORCES OF BRIGHTNESS. Then his hand skated over to the right column. That one only took a few moments: EARTHTONE COALITION.

“Forget everything you’re supposed to know about T’Rain. The races, the character classes, the history. Especially forget about the whole Good/Evil thing. Instead just look at what is in the way of behavior and affiliation. Use attractors in color space as the thin end of your wedge. Hammer on it until something splits open.” Richard thought about supplying Corvallis with these two labels but thought that if he wasn’t completely full of shit, C-plus would discover the same thing on his own.

“What prompts this?”

“At Bastion Gratlog this morning, horse archers were shooting messages over the walls to people inside.”

“Why don’t they just use email like everyone else?”

“Exactly. The answer is: they don’t actually know each other. They are reaching out. Reaching out to strangers.”

“Completely at random?”

“No,” Richard said, “I think that there is a selection mechanism and that it’s based on…”—he was about to say color, but again, he didn’t want to tip Corvallis off—“taste.”

“Okay,” Corvallis said, stalling for time while he thought about it. “So your fifty-five to sixty rich farmer with college degree who reads lots of books by Don Donald … he’d be on one side of the taste line.”

“Yeah. Who is on the other side?”

“Not hard to guess.”

“Bring me hard facts though, once you’re done guessing.”

“Any particular deadline?”

“My GPS tells me I’m two hours from Nodaway.”

“De gustibus non est disputandum.”

Day 0

SCHLOSS HUNDSCHÜTTLER

Elphinstone, British Columbia

Four months later

“Uncle Richard, tell me about the…”—Zula faltered, then averted her gaze, set her jaw, and plowed ahead gamely—“the Apostropo…”

“The Apostropocalypse,” Richard said, mangling it a little, since it was hard to pronounce even when you were sober, and he had been hanging out in the tavern of Schloss Hundschüttler for a good part of the day. Fortunately there was enough ambient noise to obscure his troubles with the word. This was the last tolerable week of skiing season. All the rooms at the Schloss had been reserved and paid for more than a year ago. The only reason that Zula and Peter had been able to come here at all was that Richard was letting them sleep on the fold-out couch in his apartment. The tavern was crowded with people who were, by and large, very pleased with themselves, and making a concomitant amount of noise.