second-in-command of MIMIC. And there would be more valuable information and material there.'
Alex nodded. 'She needed it faster. Why? She knew the security system better than I did. She knew more about the tenants who will move in. There's something here now that won't be here later, or someone needs something fast.'
'She would have had access to accounting operations,' Millicent said reluctantly. 'Also engineering designs, confidential correspondence with participating corporations not to mention Gaming Central.'
'But the time pressure? I keep thinking about the California Voodoo Game.'
Harmony's eyes were distant. 'Yeah. Maybe she placed some bets. She knew secrets; she could watch the Game Masters. Maybe she was meeting a bookie, or someone to place a bet for her… nah. She could have done that over the phone.'
'But it's an angle,' Alex agreed. 'If she had a partner, and she exchanged something physical, like a key or a bubble chip, then a face-to-face meeting might be valuable.' He sighed. 'There are just too many possibilities.'
Millicent paused and then offered her contribution almost shyly. 'Listen, Alex. I can go through payroll, find her bank codes. I could find out whether large payments were going in and out of her accounts. Might indicate gambling, blackmail, that sort of thing.'
Harmony sat, silent, until he realized that both of them were waiting for him to speak. 'As Head of Operations, I have a lot of indirect power. I just don't know where to push. What do you want?'
'Let's see if we can expand her dossier, Thaddeus. And then I want Norman Vail to go over it. I want to know if Sharon would have been vulnerable to blackmail, bribery, coercion of any kind. I want to know what her flaw was. After that mess with Marty, I ran a high-level check on everyone with access to critical data.'
'Everyone at Dream Park,' Millicent corrected gently. 'Sharon was with Cowles Inc.'
Harmony stood. 'I'll get on it, Alex.' Alex didn't look up. Harmony waited an embarrassed moment, then left the room.
Millicent remained behind. Alex sat staring at the objects in his hand. He seemed like a husk. All of his physical and mental potential was there, and deep within his private recesses the engines were roaring. But they weren't hooked up to anything. Without the engagement of gears he was like a glass shell over a furnace. If she touched the shell, it would be warm. Lukewarm. But there was a fire within that couldn't burn to the surface.
She laid a hand on his neck. His skin was cool.
He turned his head and looked up at her. His green eyes seemed almost black. 'Could I have been so wrong?' It was a plea. He needed sleep, but was far too wound up now. She wished she could take his hand, lead him to bed…
But she couldn't. To see this Alex, this face he had never shown her, let her know that things could never be the same between them.
How had Sharon slipped past Alex's defences as she, Millicent, never had? She could read his face: Alex was afraid it hadn't been his choice at all. That he had been snared as neatly as one of Harmony's marlins.
So for that moment of terrible vulnerability, she held his head, and he leaned it against her. Alex shook himself like a tired old horse and said, 'I've got some things I need to finish here, okay?'
Almost as an afterthought, he added, 'Would you help Vail? There might be things that a-a woman would spot that a man… you know,' he said miserably.
She nodded. 'Sure, Alex. I know.' Without another word she left him there. She wished there was more to say, but there just wasn't. Somehow, she wasn't disappointed; rather, she was astounded that he had let her say or do even the small amount she had.
Her last sight of him was a silhouette: a lonely man sitting in darkness, sifting through handfuls of paper and plastic. Rereading this letter, reexamining that holocube, trying them this way and that and the other. Trying with diligent desperation to make sense of the jigsaw puzzle that was Sharon Crayne.
13
'In my dreams mermaids often appear who want to drag me into the water… I am afraid…' — Gert Chesi, Voodoo, 1979
Thursday, July 21, 2059 — 12:10 P.M.
Acacia was jammed into the back of the drum-shaped elevator. At one side the Nommo stood gigantic, glowing, and alone. The Gamers about him shied from touching a probable god; else there might have been room to wiggle. As it was, Acacia had barely room to breathe.
My goodness six of us got killed off, she thought.
Coral, the Nommo, and two rows of Gamers stood between Acacia and Nigel Bishop. She kept a nervous eye on him. Her heartbeat accelerated every time she looked at him, and she was no longer sure exactly why.
'Reveal passage,' S. J. Waters said dramatically.
Nigel and Acacia both echoed: 'All Scouts cooperate,' and in the crowded confines of the elevator, the Scouts reached out and joined hands. The elevator car turned to glass.
They were rising along the wall of a structure with the volume of a dozen Astrodomes, a hundred World Trade Centers, enough to swallow all the whales in the ocean. Hallways and ramps stretched off in all directions, marking off spaces that were larger than most buildings.
The elevator floor lurched under her feet. Acacia braced a hand against the wall, a flash of acro- claustrophobia driving all other thoughts from her mind. MIMIC shuddered violently, then faded into solid wall as the Scouts lost concentration.
'What the hell was that?' SJ muttered. 'Thaddeus Dark?'
The shuddering faded out.
'Maybe just an old building,' Acacia said, irritated by the tension in her voice. She had to get a grip. The Game was just starting, dammit, and they already had her rattled. Her initial adrenaline burn was wearing off, leaving behind a gritty residue of fatigue. Her second wind hadn't cut in yet.
The Scouts linked hands again. MIMIC returned, huge and frightening. How were they supposed to find anything in a building this size? The Scouts. They had to protect the Scouts, at all costs.
The coolly glowing ceiling swept down to give them a moment of darkness. Now the floors whipped by just a little too fast for them to see anything. Here was a tropical garden, here was the graveyard again; here a vast indoor pool, its silver surface roiled by… gone.
MIMIC had a shimmy to it. The car must be vibrating and then it lurched again. Gamers screamed as it tilted to a side, and they crashed into one another, sliding into the wall in a scramble of limbs and swords and staffs. The Scouts must have been maintaining their link, because MIMIC still surrounded their tiny transparent bubble; but the vast transparent cityscape was tilted and trembling. An ear-ripping, whining, metal-against-metal vibration made the car dance, as if the tilted car were grinding against the shaft walls. The floor dropped six inches, and Acacia was the first to scream as she looked back down.
Genuine fear lived in that elevator now; even Bishop searched the walls, seeking a way out.
Al the Barb was pasty-faced. 'I'm dyin',' he gasped.
'Be polite,' Tammi said. 'Wait for me to kill you properly.'
'Eat my-' The last word was lost in a scream, as the elevator clanged, dropped, and changed its tilt. The wall was solid again. Acacia was on the floor again. Arms reached past her nose as the Scouts doggedly attempted to regain their Reveal spell.
'This damned thing is coming apart!' Bishop muttered.
Acacia took emotional refuge in analysis. Al the Barb seemed mighty twitchy, but if memory served her right, his manic edge was as much shuck as his cowboy routine. She couldn't count on him to fold under pressure. Nor did she want him to, until they had a clearer idea of what they were up against.
Mouser, the little Thief who followed the Troglodykes around like a St. Bernard puppy, was grinning like a kid on a roller coaster, completely nerveless. Furthermore, despite his frailty, she knew that he could go for seventy-
