Part 9 (1/2)

”Just another part of your adventure,” said the Wizard. ”I never really left. I'm always here, in one form or another.”

”Thenayou were just playing a role, like all the others?”

”I am Oz the Great and Terrible, the Kind and Beneficent, and everything else you need me to be. I am the man with all the answers. Come walk with me, Dorothy, and all shall be made clear.”

Reluctantly Dorothy allowed the little old man to lead her to the road of yellow brick, and they walked along together, the Wizard moving easily beside her. It bothered her on some level that all her old friends stayed behind. That even Toto didn't come with her. As though the Wizard had things to tell her that could only be said in private. Or perhaps because they already knew, as though they shared some great and terrible secret that only the Wizard himself could tell her.

”I always was the one with all the answers,” said the Wizard. ”Even if I wasn't necessarily what I seemed.”

”When I first met you, I saw a huge disembodied Head,” said Dorothy. ”The Scarecrow said he saw a lovely Lady. The Tin Man, he saw an awful Beast with the head of a rhinoceros and five arms and legs growing out of a hairy hide. And the Lion saw a Ball of Fire. But in the end, you turned out to be just an old humbug, a man hiding behind a curtain. Why did you insist we had to kill the Wicked Witch before we could all have what we needed?”

”Because gifts must be earned, and good must triumph over evil if an adventure is to have an end,” said the Wizard. ”Did you never wonder why the Wicked Witch, so afraid of water, would keep a bucket of water nearby?”

”It was a dream,” said Dorothy. ”You don't question what happens in a dream.”

”Do you remember being old, Dorothy?” the Wizard asked gently.

”Yes,” she said slowly. ”Though that seems like the dream now.”

”You have finally woken up from that nightmare and come home. Where you belong. This is a good place, Dorothy, where good things happen every day, and the day never ends. Unless you want it to, of course. Lookasee?”

Dorothy looked where he was pointing, out across the great green plain before them. Off in the distance, two young girls were dancing with a huge and n.o.ble Lion. A young girl in sensible Victorian clothes was conversing solemnly with a great White Rabbit. And a boy and his Bear played happily together at the edge of a great Forest.

”I know them,” said Dorothy. ”Don't Ia?”

”Of course,” said the little old man. ”Everyone knows them and their stories. Just as everyone knows you and your story. All these children dreamed a great dream of a wonderful place where magical things happened. And some author wrote the stories down to share their dreams with others. All of you, in your own ways, caught just a glimpse of this place, this good place yet to come. For a moment, you left your world and came to mine. And because all of you are my children, you all get to come home again in the end.”

Dorothy looked steadily at the Wizard. ”Who are you, really?”

He smiled at her with eyes full of all the love there is. ”Don't you know? Really?”

”And this isa”

”Yes. This is heaven, and you'll never have to leave it again.”

”I'm dead, aren't I? Like Toto.”

”Of course. Or to put it another way, you have woken up from the dream of living, into a better dream. Everyone you ever loved, everyone you ever lost, is here waiting for you. Look. There are Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.”

Dorothy looked down the road to where four young people were waiting. She recognized Em and Henry immediately, though they didn't seem much older than she was.

”Who's that with them?” she asked.

”Your mother and your father,” said the old man. ”They've been waiting for you for so long, Dorothy. Go and be with them. And then we'll all go on to the Emerald City. Because your adventures are only just beginning.”

But Dorothy was already off and running, down the road of yellow brick, in that perfect land, in that most perfect of dreams.

DEAD BLUE.

BY DAVID FARLAND.

Tin Man's life flashed in memory the way that it always did when rebootinga”at least, the part of his life stored within his crystal drive.

He had been traveling with Dorothy, climbing over a razor-backed ridge of gray karst rock, when the Chimeras strucka”dropping from the low-hanging fog.

The first inkling of attack came when a huge weight slammed into his back, knocking him over a precipice onto sharp boulders, and suddenly a Baboon was biting at his throat with dirty yellow fangs, hissing ”Die, you motherfua””

Its hands smelled of dung and filth; its breath stank of morning kimchee.

It wrenched Tin Man's head, as if trying to snap his neck with superhuman strength.

Tin Man was so shocked, he barely had time to shout a warning, ”Dorothy!”

He activated the vibroblade on his axe and felt it hum to life in his hand.

Something batted the axe to the grounda”a fluttering wing, enormous and batlike. Only then did he realize that his attacker was a Chimera, a life form cobbled together by a mechmage.

Dozens of others dropped out of the cloud forest, wings fluttering in a blur. They hurled Scarecrow to the ground, scattered his straw, and s.n.a.t.c.hed up Toto and Dorothy.

Tin Man could not see the Lion and hoped that the coward had made his escape. As the Winged Baboon hit his kill switch, Tin Man marveled at his attackers.

They were perfectly fitted to their humid terrain, where mountain escarpments split the jungle. Such creatures, with DNA from humans, baboons, and giant batsa”flying foxes perhaps?a”would easily haul ore from the Witch's bauxite and platinum mines.

Tin Man wondered, Do they even know how beautiful they are?

Dorothy's eyes were flat blue, the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. Her young face was pale from shock, emotionless, framed by strawberry hair the color of bloodied water.

”Oh, Tin Man, are you all right?” she begged, leaning over him, trying to help him up. He pushed away her hands and tried to rise on his own power.

As he rebooted, memories burst upon him in wavesa”flashes of his past life as a machinea”while sound files all roared at once, louder than the cras.h.i.+ng of the sea.

All that came to him now were the mech-memories. Nothing from before, nothing from the days when there had still been a fleshy component to him.

Once, he had been a man. Then he lost a leg and had it replaced with cyberware. As he had aged, more parts camea”an artificial lung here, a kidney there, drives and programs to enhance his failing memorya”until only a shriveling brain had been left to the cyborg, powered by a dying heart.

He was not sure when he had quit defining himself as a man and accepted that he was a cyborg.

Now, he told himself, I am not even a cyborg. I am a construct, a golem made from black plasteel and t.i.tanium, hardly better than Scarecrow.

The recognition brought no sense of loss. He recalled that Dorothy had asked a question. His programming required that he offer a reply. ”I feel fine, Dorothy.”

But can one truly be said to feel fine when he feels nothing at all?

He was dead inside. His quest to get a new hearta”a simple pump to keep his brain alive, his last connection to the world of emotiona”had failed. His olfactory sensors could detect the remains of his own rotting organs.