one and four million dollars at stake… People had died for a whole lot less.
Tony gritted his teeth. He'd have to see if he could track that money.
It was, all in all, the thinnest string of supposition he had ever considered seriously. It would never hang together. And a poor, distracted Game Master just didn't have time to deal with it! Gamers were moving into MIMIC's bowels in little paranoid clumps. They'd want his attention… heh… they'd be trying desperately to evade his attention starting real soon now.
Then again… a mystery, a veritable mystery, and a shot at Sharon Crayne's killer? That could jog Alex Griffin out of his black mood. Griffin fancied himself a man of thought but Tony knew him to be happiest in action. Get him to believe he was doing something.
After all, it had been a long time since the Griffin had stalked a Game.
17
'Change is the god of fire, thunder and lightning. He… is used in Santeria to overcome enemies, as well as for works of passion and desire.'
Thursday, July 21, 2059 — 2:50 P.M.
Al the Barbarian never got dizzy. It said so right in his character notes. This was of little comfort to Al Nakagawa's stomach, which wanted nothing more than to squeeze itself dry and empty, curl up quietly, and die.
He and S. J. Waters lay at the outer lip of a modular apartment on the seventeenth floor. It was an abandoned shambles, its dock open to the elements; and its intended mate, a portable office quarters, was a cracked half-eggshell dangling far down the side of New Africa. At a whisper of 'Reveal treasure,' the eggshell glowed green. There was something in there worth having.
Al slid away from the edge and rolled onto his back. 'First talisman,' he said drearily. 'She's there, all right.'
The wind whistled in from the California-Nevada border, hot and dry and hollow. The steel and concrete box creaked slowly back and forth. Two hundred feet below was the desert floor.
'Phew.' The cables ran up to the modular wall track. It looked like some force had ripped the box free of the apartment and sent it tumbling down. Or a cargo copter had attempted to link it up, decades before, and the job had never been completed.
Modular apartments were the twenty-first century's answer to an increasingly mobile society. The living and office quarters of a house or apartment could be detached and shipped to the other side of the country within forty-eight hours, allowing employees to bounce from one job assignment to the next without leaving home.
But he'd never seen a modular wall as high as this one. It seemed to him now that the whole concept was idiotic.
Crystal's mane of unkempt red hair flagged around her shoulders as she coaxed secrets from the circuit box. It was plain metal and glass, disguised as a lamp by the edge of the open wall. The rolling sheet of weatherproofing protecting the apartment had long since worn away, and the box was uncomfortably close to the edge.
Crystal traced a line with her finger: Al wished that he could see what she saw, but that was one of her abilities. All Gaming categories overlapped, a little. Crystal's Engineering abilities gave her a little facility with mechanical things-less than a Thief, usually, but SJ had taken his crack and failed.
Major Clavell hovered over her, worried. 'What have you got?'
'Problems,' she said. 'This diagram is complex. I'm not entirely sure…'
Al watched the major. He had suggested a truce, adding his Warriors to Al's team. Jockeying and trading had erupted the minute their conference with Mamissa Kokoe ended.
A truce between Clavell and Alphonse was a natural: Clavell needed Al's women. At the current attrition rate, Al would need the extra sword arms, but he didn't look forward to a power struggle.
Al the Barbarian touched Crystal's shoulder, and suddenly he could see the diagram. His heart fell: the glittering maze of circuitry was interrupted in a dozen places. A real Engineer would have seen a perfect model.
While the major conferred with Poule, Al bent to whisper in Crystal's ear.
'I notice the major is hovering. Problems?'
Crystal shook her head. 'No! Man's made some useful suggestions. He's no dummy.''
'Nervous?'
'Me or him?'
'Either.'
'Both.'
Al was nervous, too nervous to have Army at his back but Army teams tended to play straight, and he knew of no instance in which they had broken truce or sabotaged allies. That they left for Congress, maybe. With Bishop and Acacia and, for God's sake, the Troglodykes out there, the Army was a welcome ally.
New Africa was vast, and he was glad to have three Scouts. The Tex-Mits/Army grouping had crept down the halls, following arcane clues visible only to the Scouts' eyes, or Crystal's mirror.
At the end of a dark corridor on the twelfth level, SJ found a locked door that glowed orange to his Reveal location spell.
He picked the lock under Clavell's approving eye. Al let Clavell enter the apartment first, hoping that the major would get first crack at a Beastie, and maybe a chance to reclaim a little lost honor. The scuffle with Bishop had been enough to bruise anyone's ego.
But there was nothing alive in the apartment. Crystal's spell of Revelation gave them the control panel, and when they looked out over the open lip…
Crystal passed her hand over the mirror, and the image of Coral's brother Tod appeared. 'Hey,' he said. 'It's dull being dead. Thanks for calling.'
Crystal held the mirror out over the edge. 'What can you tell us about this?'
'Oh,' the mirror said, 'Like I heard that we used to live in these dangling little boxes, but that was like back in the ice age or something. Then during some little cat fight between my people and the roof yokels, some of the boxes got ripped away. Long way to fall-like people pizza time.'
'Is there anything valuable in it?'
'Not that I know. But who tells me anything? I'm just a mirror.'
SJ inserted a probe into the panel, and it sparked gently.
'All right, let's give it a try.' Crystal punched a button, and the ancient machinery began to creak. Cable rolled smoking through the winch, and the dangling box was reeled back up toward its berth.
Mary-em slapped Crystal's broad back in congratulation, and General Poule puffed up to make a short speech Twenty feet below them, the room stopped. A little glowing rectangle on the control panel blinked: NEED ACCESS CODE.
'Oh, crap,' Clavell said disgustedly. 'We need an Engineer to break the code.'
'Only Peggy the Hook had enough experience,' Al grunted. 'Last time I saw Peggy, her face was being chewed off.'
'Just great. Can you do it, SJ? You're a Thief-'
'Half-Thief. If a half-Engineer can't do it, neither can half a Thief. This happened because of a magical war. If anything's lurking about, trying to break that code without a scan would be suicide.'
Al sighed. 'I've got a notion. We can signal one of the other teams, and borrow an Engineer.'
