'I was. I'm not.'
She chewed on that for almost a minute. Then: 'Do you have someone?'
'No,' he said quietly. 'No one.'
Alex felt that chill penetrate into his bones, transforming him, as if with some subtle Dream Park magic, into a man of ice.
'I'm sorry about us, Alex.' She laid her head on his shoulder with surprising tenderness. 'I'm just your garden-variety man-eating adrenaline junkie.' She choked back a small, sad laughing sound. 'That's not what you need.'
He smiled bleakly. 'And what do I need?'
'If you knew what you needed, you'd find it. And hold it.'
If you knew…
If truth had been spoken in the past hour, it was contained in those three words. If you knew. And in the paralysing light of that truth, all thoughts of lies died quiet deaths. And Alex Griffin, cleansed of lies and thoughts of lies, gazed unblinkingly into his own heart.
They stayed that way for a time, and then she pulled her face away and looked up at him, their lips an inch apart. She kissed him, not passionately, but with her lips parted slightly. Her eyes shone.
We're both in a box, Alex, they said. We both hide in a world of dreams. We can tell lies about that, but we know the truth. And always have. But couldn't we tell just one more lie, just to each other, just for tonight?
He shook his head silently.
'I'm through with lies,' Alex said, so softly that the words were lost in the breeze howling in from the east.
So they sat there, sharing the moonlight. Acacia turned her head away from him. Alex thought he heard, or saw, or felt her crying.
But he couldn't be sure. It might, after all, have been the wind.
A few words to 'Brother' Prez, and Nigel Bishop was out the door. A little reconnaissance, if you please.
Nigel Bishop moved through shadows. Considering all that had happened, he was at peace. Sharon Crayne's death had been tucked down somewhere inside him. He would deal with it later. Later…
(But from time to time came an image, a stray memory. Just the sight of Sharon Crayne, submerged in water, a thread of blood drifting, curling up from her nostril, dispersing in the warm, oily water…)
Later, dammit!
He forced that phantasm from his mind. He triggered his Virtual apparatus, its slimline visor and auditory channels. Sharon's map floated, superimposed upon reality.
MIMIC's security system was not yet completely in place. There were still pockets where the various line-of- sight, auditory, and infrared devices failed to overlap properly, giving an incomplete image or, better still, no image at all.
Given further adjustments and modifications, all of those gaps would be filled in.
But for now…
Bishop floated through the hallway, remaining in shadow, picking locks to move through fire doors after disabling their alarm systems.
He knew which doors, which hallways, and which passages to challenge. Always. He was never deep- scanned. A few cameras or sensors picked up his ghost, but then there were Gamers in the building anyway, weren't there?
It wasn't strictly illegal for him to be out and about, was it?
The computer pod on his belt sensed the scans, targeted them, and recorded their points of origin. He slipped here and there and there, and as he went, he busied himself with the real function of his trip, the true intent, unguessed by all.
Although Sharon, in her final moments, had had a glimmer of a clue.
Sharon, her dead eyes staring at him, that thread of crimson drifting from her left nostril. It had been so bright. Terribly bright.
Bishop ground his knuckles against his temples, swallowed hard. Bitch. You twisting, faithless bitch. It was your fault, damn you to hell. It was-leave me alone!
Careful. He had almost screamed it aloud, that time. Almost. Close, close, tippy-toe.
Horrified, he heard his thoughts devolve to a giggle.
He had to be calm. He had to finish what he had begun. He should be safe: there was no evidence. Acacia and Griffin would be making the naked pretzel by now, and that suited him fine. Griffin would doubtless try to pump her for information. And that slut couldn't keep her legs together with a C-clamp.
Griffin.
Bishop pulled out of the way as a roving spy eye glided along a track in the upper corner. He steadied himself. It would be a bizarre coincidence if he fell afoul of a Gaming trap just now, wouldn't it? And he wouldn't be surprised if the Game Masters were figuring out how to bend the odds to get to him. They must be foaming at the mouth by now.
Griffin.
He was annoyed with his mind. It didn't want to obey him. Why the interest in Dream Park's rent-a-cop? True, Griffin had a certain style. A spark of challenge.
Not intellectual challenge, of course. Griffin was no match there. But the man had a certain brute physical cunning, combined with enough desperately cultivated coordination that he was probably competent in combative movement.
Bishop thought little of physical combat, although he was, of course, a master of its intricacies. Alex Griffin's head might be a trophy worth having…
Damn it! There was no time to think of things like that. It was insanity. There was only the job. And if the Game had become unexpectedly lethal, that was just more spice, wasn't it?
Wasn't it?
Alex Griffin.
There was unfinished busimess there, something for the two of them to say to each other when all of this was through. Bishop wiped his hand across the back of his neck, and it came away cold and clammy.
Bishop heard that giggle percolating again. He was beginning to like the sound.
And that scared him most of all.
25
Power had always fascinated Dr. Norman Vail. It delighted him to see what power could accomplish in the right hands. His hands.
In less than twelve hours, the money and leverage of Cowles Industries had opened Sharon Crayne's life like a filing cabinet, inundating him with a mountain of information.
Vail had pored over it for three hours before Millicent, Harmony, and Tony McWhirter joined him.
All were exhausted but driven by an almost morbid curiosity. What might the psychologist have to say that was so damned important, this late at night?
Vail's skin had a translucent quality, as if fatigue and strain had aged him in a manner that mere time could not.
He waved them toward his desk. 'Come in, please. Come in.'
They seated themselves, dragging. Harmony looked askance at folders heaped on Vail's desk. Sharon Crayne had been a human being. How could anyone's life survive such scrutiny?
A citizen's only hope for privacy was the sheer volume of information. Gathering data was easy and cheap. Sorting and culling it was a multibillion-dollar industry, resulting in AI systems like ScanNet.
'There are patterns here,' Vail said. 'Lots of them. It would be difficult to explain the exact path of my
