Tony McWhirter was heavily in conference with Mitsuko Lopez, studying one of the skeletal diagrams of MIMIC.
'All right,' he said. 'They're all playing California Voodoo outside the boundaries. Everybody. Weird.'
She laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. 'But still playing a damn good Game,' she said. 'So. We have to help them get back onto the track. Start with Army/Tex-Mits.'
Tony pointed, his forearm sinking into the model. 'They're here on the tenth level. They've gotten around all of the traps we laid for them, but they also can't get to the Nommo. For obvious reasons, we sealed the doors and shored up the walls here and here. What do we do, and how do we keep them on camera?'
Mitsuko thought for three seconds, then pivoted and punched out a code on the main board. 'Mitch Hasegawa, please report to Security.'
Tony cocked his head. 'I know Mitch,' he said. 'He's a nice guy, but don't we need someone a little higher?'
'Sometimes rank isn't as important as communication,' Mitsuko said.
'You know Mitch?'
She twinkled. 'He's my little brother.'
Mitsuko and Mitsuo 'Mitch' Hasegawa hugged briefly, then he sat down to consider their problem.
'I can do it,' he said, 'but I'll have to activate some of ScanNet's maintenance relays on the tenth.'
'Aren't they already on?'
'New. The way the system is now, it would overload. They're on manual. In fact, most monitors on the tenth have been turned over to the DreamTime system.'
'So where's the security?'
'Well, we've got the entire exterior sealed, of course. We know the instant anyone moves into one of those peripheral units, let alone the wall. And then we have spot checks throughout the inner building. As soon as the whole thing is activated, we'll be able to scan you right down to the blood cells, big sister. Forget metal detectors- we'll know whether you had secret sauce on your cheeseburger.'
Tony scooted forward. 'Now listen to me. I need to get our Army group from here-' He indicated a sector in the tenth level that was coded blue. '-over a restraining wall and back into the Gaming area. To do that, I want to take them through a service tunnel. Here. I can guide them into it, but I don't have cameras to follow them inside. Whatever shall I do?'
Mitch tapped out commands on the main console and then grinned. 'All right. We have maintenance bots in there. They've got cameras, of course, and some other senses, too. We'll let the bots follow your Gamers around. You'll have to give them one of those 'you can't see this' orders.'
Tony laughed. 'It's been a long time since we've had to use one of those. Can I see this maintenance unit?'
Tap tap. It looked like a crab on roller skates. It was intended to motor along a tunnel two feet in diameter, cleaning, inspecting, providing routine maintenance.
Mitsuko raised one lazy eyebrow. 'How strong are those arms?'
'Exert about fifty pounds of pressure.'
'How precisely controllable?'
'Very. Good for close work.'
'And how resistant to damage?'
'Well…' Mitch's eyes narrowed at her. 'Chi-Chi, what are you-'
'Just answer the question, little brother.'
'Well, anything really valuable is inside the central casing. Pretty well shielded. The external arms are all replaceable. Maybe a thousand bucks, tops.'
'And can you get a second one into the area?'
'To watch the first, right?'
She smiled expansively.
Tony was slow, but caught on. 'Ah, Chi-Chi-Mitsuko, he's right…'
Her smile had broadened further. 'Players aren't the only ones who can improvise.'
Fast as a snake she twisted, calling, 'Owen! We need some Virtual imagery here!'
In Mary-em's womb, the godling rolled back over toward them, its eyes as vast as a moonless sky. 'Is there one among you who is a pathfinder? One who seeks?'
SJ came forward.
'Touch my mother's stomach.'
Mary-em growled, said growl disturbing the beatific expression she had cultivated so carefully. 'Watch yer hands, buster.'
'Sorry. Heh heh.'
'Now,' the child said. 'Reveal!'
A map of the entire tenth level rolled out before them like the ghost of a carpet. Their route through it was plainly mapped. A line of green dashes pointed SJ's path, and he stood saying, 'No offence, Yer Godliness' and followed the dashes to a wall grille set too high for him to reach on tiptoe.
The major threw him a chair.
SJ tested the screws at the sides of the grille. They were fairly standard, but probably hadn't been worked since the original replacement two years earlier. SJ dug into his backpack and found a multihead screwdriver.
He hummed happily when he'd finally levered the grille free. He snapped an electric lamp headband above his visor and said, 'Boost me up!' Clavell and Poule boosted him, and he eeled into the duct.
He wiggled in, elbows and knees braced against cold metal. He adjusted his Virtual visor. The green dashes bobbled in the air before him.
After a half hour, SJ's back was sore and his knees and elbows were a little skinned up. He was grateful that the duct was clean. He didn't relish the notion of getting an infected cut.
Newer ducts would have rounded corners. These antique ducts were square. Steel sheeting, and maybe rivets, under new insulation. How did they clean these ducts? Did they get midgets to crawl around in here with wet rags, or what? Had the squatters managed with dirty ducts?
The other six Adventurers of the Tex-Mits/Army combine inched along behind him. SJ found himself slipping into fantasy.
Corporal Waters, at great risk to life and limb, leads the way for the major and the general, crawling across no-man's-land, under barbed wire, and through a minefield under heavy machine-gun fire, to retrieve a live grenade…
A humming sound up ahead had grown steadily louder, finally crossing the threshold of his attention. Belatedly, he wondered what it was.
He was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the cramped, nightdark space. He widened his flashing beam.
Nothing. From a distance throbbed the soft, regular, hushed pulse of the air-conditioning. Somehow that was a reassurance, akin to the comforting rhythm of a mother's heartbeat. The building was alive. It breathed.
He called, 'Hold it!' The column behind him stopped.
Scratch scratch.
There it was again, damn it. Closer now.
He turned onto his side and held the flashlamp out ahead of him, eeling forward until he came to a branching pathway. From here he could see up, down, right, left…
Left. The sound came from there. And now it was closer.
There was no way to get everyone all the way back down the vent before whatever the hell it was made its grisly entrance. The only real option was to keep going, and hope…
Then he remembered Mary-em, the soft underbelly of their column. If he kept going straight, whatever was down there might very well intersect their line right in the middle, with lethal results to Junior.
SJ made his choice and turned toward the sound.
His Virtual goggles pumped a vaguely greenish light into his eyes. Irritated, he flipped them up. The scratching sound grew louder. Something emerged from the left side passage.
The low-pitched 'engage Virtual shield' buzzer sounded in his ears, but SJ only stared.
It was a maintenance bot. He had seen them often enough, a six-legged steel and plastic critter that roamed
