6
Wednesday, July 20, 2059 — 10:00 P.M.
Acacia glided through the ballroom, nodding and accepting nods, flirting and accepting flirtations, saving an edge of her awareness for her team.
Corrinda Harding, her excellent Thief, was dancing with Terrance 'Prez' Coolidge. They looked like Mutt and Jeff: Prez was almost a foot taller, although they weighed about the same. Corrinda wasn't fat, but she was one beefy Wagnerian Valkyrie, a picturesque contrast to Terry's Zulu Warrior.
But Corrinda was nursing a knee injury suffered two weeks earlier in sword practice. Damn it, even with the pneumatic cuff, that knee might cause problems. At least she and Prez were slow-dancing, working a little more of the stiffness out. One could assume that was their intent…
The music became a hurricane shriek. Corrinda stepped back. Terry snatched at Mati 'Top Nun' Cohen's hand and seemed to go into rhythmic convulsions. Top Nun's habit flipped to the music. The little Israeli had no skill but sufficient grace to make her fun to watch.
Where was Steffie? That was Steffie's chair, and twelve feet of huge pike propped upright between chair and table. Steffie must be dancing with Ozzie the Pike. They were old friends. Maybe she could learn something.
Oswald Murphy was with Tex-Mits on this roll, and he was a hell of a dancer, too.
Captain Cipher orbited somewhere near Acacia's elbow, as he had all night. On the breast of his jacket rode a green tag emblazoned Universities of California. His own attendees had kept him from being a nuisance. Yes, Captain Cipher had fans, and tales to tell, as well.
Look at those pudgy hands swooping through the air. Let the fans listen for enough years, and one day he would talk well. He'd play with his image, get a suit that fit and a tie with less flash and more imagination… She'd seen it happen in others.
The Universities of California were one of the strongest teams. Captain Cipher was from UC Irvine. Steffie 'Aces' Wilde and 'Prez' Coolidge were from UCLA, Corrinda from San Diego, Mati from Berkeley. Acacia was something of a ringer. She had home-linked courses in Polynesian Cuisine and Archaeology through UC Berkeley. She had never actually seen the campus, had never entered a classroom even in Virtual mode. She hated cooking. The thought of digging up old bones made her yawn. She probably had enough life-experience credits from the last few years of Gaming to get undergraduate degrees in either. It was just barely within the rules, and no one complained loudly enough to make a difference.
She was one of the highest-rated players in the United States. There had been sly offers of 'part-time' employment at Texas Instruments, and a proposal for a very temporary enlistment in the Army. UC's cash scholarship offer was a token at best, but their team actually had a chance.
She had chosen and crafted well. She had one Cleric, one Thief, a Warrior, a Magic User, and an Engineer/Scout. Panthesilea would compete as a second Warrior.
A newsman drifted up to her. He was short, with pink cheeks and long white hair. A vidbot trailed behind him on a tripod dolly, balancing upon its slender stalk. Both fixed her with dreadfully serious gazes. 'Panthesilea?'
She winced. 'Acacia, please. Jimmy Crest?'
The reporter from Star and Shield magazine dimpled and half bowed. 'Acacia, isn't it a bit unusual for rival team captains to be…' He paused, rolling his adjectives around, searching for the one that would give the proper impression of reluctant intrusion.
'Romantically involved?' she offered politely. She tried not to look at her own image, suddenly vast above the crowd, a bronzed goddess surveying her subjects.
'Well, yes. There are no rules against it, but there really isn't a precedent, either.'
'There isn't really a precedent for Nigel, either, is there? Or me. We don't break rules, but we bend the hell out of them.' There. She could almost hear the little delighted intakes of scandalized breath, all across the wide, wide world of sports.
'Are you sure you can do your best against a man you are involved with?'
'Especially against a man I'm involved with,' Acacia said. 'I know his soft spots, and I never back off. He'd better watch his sweetbreads.'
They laughed. Women nearby applauded. But that was Panthesilea talking: Acacia Garcia had retreated into silence, miserably wishing that it was all true.
Seventy miles northeast, in MIMIC, Tony McWhirter watched his vid sourly, feet up on a bolster, drinking a fifth beer. He was drunk, and didn't care. He wished only that he dared switch to Scotch.
'But I have promises to keep,' he said to himself, to the walls, to no one in particular. He wadded up the beer pod and hurled it at the wall.
He had known she was coming. He had kept the knowledge buried somewhere inside him, hidden deeply enough for him to cope with the pain.
She didn't have to look so damned good. She didn't have to sound so fine. He remembered that voice whispering warmly in his ear, encouraging him, urging him, cooing and caressing.
She didn't have to…
'Damn,'' he said sourly, and pressed himself back into the chair and closed his eyes hard.
'It's delightful being a scandal,' Acacia said breathlessly. 'Everyone should try it at least once.'
Every eye was on them. Acacia Garcia and Nigel Bishop roamed the expo pavilion, sampling hors d'oeuvres, nibbling at a cherry cake sculpted in the shape of a dragon. They walked like a pair of strolling tigers, perfectly matched for stripe and muscle. Her dress was cut from here to there, exposing every curve to best effect. Nigel wore a custom-made ensemble, an elegant meshing of a traditional African dashiki and a tuxedo. The jarring contrast probably wouldn't have worked for any other couple.
'It's good for the Game, don't you think, Mr. Crest?' Nigel asked over the edge of his champagne glass.
'Well, maybe, but…' The little reporter lowered his voice conspiratorially. 'There was some controversy about you being top-seeded after all of this time. What do you think about that?'
'I had to pass my preliminaries. I'm completely conversant with all of the recent IFGS rule changes, and we conducted six pure strategy sessions. My physical fitness has been rated 'superior' by two separate panels of experts. I'm not sure whether people think I'm being exploited for my reputation, or whether General Dynamics has purchased an unfair advantage…'
The convention center was crowded with Gamers from all over the world. There were exhibits on every side, Gaming systems, costumes, makeup, weaponry, logic crystals for every make of Gaming computer on the market, sign-ups for
Games with a display of options. Gaming tours that would take players into exotic lands and match them against environments in Africa, Asia, and even one to be played in a cluster of shuttle tanks anchored near the Falling Angels lunar industrial complex.
Gamers strolled in costumes, in armor, in holographic projections and nude. She tried not to giggle, but some of them strutted about absolutely starkers, with grotesque genital prostheses in every conceivable configuration.
These, of course, didn't show to the naked eye. These Gamers were broadcasting on one of the Virtual Kink channels. Acacia wore slimline glasses/movement sensors-cost a damnedfortune, way more expensive than a standard helmet system and her decoder brought in every public channel, including the adult ones. Some Gamers were broadcasting multiple images simultaneously, some explicitly X-rated.
A man with a pink, prickly organ that would have cored a rhinoceros smiled slyly. Acacia realized that she must have been staring and quickly turned away. She let him see her program her glasses to filter out the porno.
She waved when she recognized friends. Friar Duck… was with Texas Instruments-Mitsubishi this trip, wasn't he? Normally a burly gentleman with a wide mouth and large feet, he was projecting as Dirty Duck, a squat, cigar- chomping alcoholic mallard from the Golden Age of the National Lampoon's comics section.
She thought for a moment before returning another woman's smile. Felicia… something. Played as Dark Star. She wouldn't be in California Voodoo-Felicia had been caught cheating once or twice. Acacia… hadn't.
