Alex sat stonily.
'Sorry, Griff. I didn't mean to imply anything…'
The air around Alex seemed to crackle. 'Go ahead. What were you about to say?'
'We'll… say I saw this. Say I didn't know Sharon, which I don't. Say I didn't know she was your friend.'
'Will you cut the bullshit?'
Suddenly, unmistakably, the potential for physical violence normally submerged deep within Alex Griffin was quite close to the surface. Tony considered backing off. Instead he said, 'I'd say she was recording this to give to someone else.'
And there was a bugging device in the wall at the motel.
'We don't have any sound,' Alex said, controlled again. 'It looked to me as if she was saying something. Can you get that for me again?'
Tony tapped out commands. They were looking at Sharon's mouth. Griffin moved his lips along with her. 'I'm coming, sweetheart. Mommy's doing everything she can.'
Tony McWhirter froze. 'What the hell?'
Alex stood. 'Thank you, Tony.'
'Sure,' Tony said, still confused. 'Any time.'
Alex left the room.
Tony McWhirter let six seconds pass before he exhaled again. His armpits felt damp and clammy.
In Chino there were men who spent their whole lives at the edge of violence. Tony had never seen Alex Griffin like that. It disoriented him to learn that the man was human after all.
And, drown it, if he was thinking what Tony had already thought, it was no wonder.
8
'Loremasters have five major weaknesses: If they are reckless, destroy them. If too cautious, capture them. If prone to anger, ridicule them. If proud, humiliate them. If they are, or have been, sexually or emotionally involved with their teammates, harass them. '
'Study your opponent's weaknesses, and never miss an opportunity to exploit them.'
Thursday, July 21, 2059 — 4:25 A.M.
Gaming Central was alive on level three now. In two hours everything would begin.
Richard Lopez entered the domed room to a standing ovation from the technicians and took his place to Tony McWhirter's left, at a console opposite Mitsuko. She had arrived an hour early to run her checklist.
With every touch, every movement of foot or hand, every whisper of voice, shapes and sounds came alive in MIMIC.
The circular room was separated roughly into thirds, with Tony McWhirter's control console in the center. Backup technicians and assistants were behind him at consoles and holo stages. To his right, on the far side of a glass wall, was a multivision stage. Upon it, a troupe of mimes twisted and turned through their movements, practicing. El directed, and Doris led by example.
She was superb. Every movement, every torsion of the head and arch of her spine, transformed her into a different animal, a different entity. She ranged from subhuman to human to transhuman with the flicker of an eyelash. Her troupe was no less adroit. Skills thousands of years old matched perfectly with twenty-first-century Virtual imaging techniques.
The Virtual images in Tony's field of vision flickered from shape to shape, trying this and that. The hologram projections, computer-based Virtual illusions' makeup, and backdrops, combined to create the effect they called
DreamTime.
Tony felt like a voyeur, a mere observer in the process, but there wasn't much he could do. For now, his task was that of an overseer.
'Richard?' he said.
The little man turned to look at him. 'Yes?'
'Have you run your testing sequences?'
'Working on that now, Tony.'
Richard Lopez moved like a man prematurely aged. A touch of arthritis, perhaps? But when he sat down at the board and began to bend the machine to his will, when he fell into the thought and movement patterns he understood and loved so well, it was as if Richard Lopez swelled in size, becoming another person entirely. Then he was like a concert pianist in his prime.
Images flowed through the computer, Virtual images perfectly matched with the holograms and the backgrounds.
It was realer than real. Tony watched the DreamTime unreality that flowed and shifted, then looked back at the room around him. It made him dizzy. In comparison, reality seemed rigid and colorless.
Acacia had almost finished packing.
All equipment was designed to nest precisely together, fitting into her backpack or belt pod with a maximum of balance and a minimum of strain. She inspected every inch of her costume, then peeled the seam open with her thumb and slipped into it. She pirouetted in front of her mirror. Perfect. She lunged and recovered, shadow- fencing.
She felt the two pounds she had gained in last week's nervous eating. But thirty-two ounces be damned: balance felt good, costume looked good, and she was electricity in tights.
Except…
Nigel.
He was still asleep on the bed that they shared. He lay on his back, respiration down to three breaths a minute, arms out to his sides in savasana, the corpse pose that led him directly from meditation into sleep.
His control was something close to total.
Even or especially when they made love. Every trick she knew, everything she tried, every sensual exertion that broke the control of ordinary men, brought them gasping to the brink of climax and beyond, merely amused him. Occasionally, a light dew of perspiration glistened on his forehead.
For Nigel Bishop, control was like a religion.
Especially last night. She felt like a woman of glass. He had peered into her, seen all her secrets, and perceived the unspoken.
She had turned and writhed, atop him yet completely under his control, his fingers light upon her wrists… light, unless she tried to twist away. If she attempted escape, they became like manacles.
'Acacia. Pet,' he breathed into her mouth. 'You're nervous.'
'Shouldn't I be? My God, Nigel, what we're doing…'
He smiled, his teeth very white and clean in the darkness. 'Why yes, yes, you should be.' He paused. 'Is there… anything else?'
He arched his head up and caressed the side of her neck, nibbling. His teeth touched the pulse point on her throat, closed about it subtly. Acacia wanted to scream, but didn't. But didn't speak her mind, either. And somewhere deep inside her, where all of his gentle, brutal assurances could never reach, she was afraid.
One final time, Acacia evaluated herself in the mirror. Backpack. Sword. Panthesilea, hello again.
