decides what to send on to the next station and what to ignore. And each successive station handles input from, say, a dozen sensors, and it sorts through that and sends on what it thinks is important. And so on through maybe a dozen generations of substations, until you get to the main processing unit. Development of the sensors was easy. Developing the intelligent software was a miracle.'
'It took seven years,' McWhirter said. 'Over a million manhours. If you can tap the sensors and run some stimulus in front of them-'
'Say a special-effects extravaganza?'
'Perfect. Sound, visual, warm human bodies doing all manner of strange things. Sort through all of that. Find out what's being kept, what's being thrown away. What does the system pay attention to? What has it been told to ignore? You can reverse-engineer the software, find the conceptual holes in ScanNet, and beat the system.'
There was silence around the table.
'Did he get it?' Harmony asked.
'This is where the real dilemma begins,'' Alex said. 'Don't you see? We can't afford to assume that he didn't get it. But if he smuggles it out to his employers, we have to rewrite the entire software scheme and we don't have time to do that. Or we could implement another, inferior system.'
'Could he have already smuggled it out?'
Tony shook his head slowly. 'Bishop has a reputation for being a loner. Trusting no one. He let Acacia into part of his plan, because he needed a spy, a distraction. I think I think it's safe to assume she was his only confederate. If that's true, then I'd guess it went like this:
'First night, Bishop slips out and plants his taps. The next day his team, or someone else's team, fights monsters in front of ScanNet, and his taps pick up their information. Record it on any kind of storage medium.'
'Could he broadcast it out of the building?' Millicent asked.
'MIMIC is shielded. If he was near an external window he might use a line-of-sight laser transmission or something, but he was never near one once the Game began the second day, and he didn't get back to the roof.'
'You'd know, I guess. Tony, couldn't he have gone down the modular wall with Army and Tex-Mits?'
Tony barked laughter. 'Al the Barb would have cut his line!'
'Oh. Right. Then… his recordings must still be somewhere in MIMIC. On him, or one of the other Gamers, or one of the extras-'
'NPCs.'
'Or hidden in a tool, or a wad of chewing gum stuck to a wall… or spilled out with the water when Mgui- Smythe blew the tenth level.'
Tony said, 'Millie-'
'We'll check it, Alex.'
'Jesus. Or all of the above! Why not make a zillion copies and hide them everywhere?' Alex lowered his head into his hands. 'There's no way in hell we can scan this whole building for something that might be the size of a thumbnail.
We're screwed.'
Vail drummed his fingers. 'Tony could we conduct some kind of massive magnetic pulse through the entire building, wipe out every piece of storage in the whole thing? We don't have anything irreplaceable…'
Tony wagged his head. 'We don't know he's using magnetic storage. Why would he? More than likely some kind of laser holographic storage system. EMP won't touch that.'
'Shit.'
Griffin was staring at the metal collar and finally said softly, 'Damn, he's a tricky bastard. But there's a hole. There's something we're not considering.'
'What's that?' Millicent asked.
'If we can't afford to have our system stolen, Bishop can't afford to fail. At least six hundred thousand dollars has been invested and that was just the bait to bring in Acacia and cloud the issue. How much more to get the information for Sharon? And his equipment? Call it at least a million dollars. Remember as far as Bishop's primaries are concerned, his mission fails if we even discover the information is stolen. If we can change the system, or switch the system, or prevent any highsecurity data from being stored at MIMIC, Ecuador's stolen goods become worthless. There has to be enormous pressure on him-he was willing…'
Griffin faltered for the first time, and he lowered his voice. 'He might have killed Sharon to protect the secret. If he doesn't deliver the goods within a reasonable time, it could cost him his life.'
For the first time, some of the tension left Harmony's face. 'Bishop's as nervous as we are? Poor bastard.'
'He's got to have a backup plan. More than one way to get the information out of the building.' Alex called up the rotating model of MIMIC. 'Picture information recorded on a disk as big as a quarter but thin as plastic wrap. Push it on a flat surface with your thumb, it sticks. Now picture a handful of quarters-'
Tony said, 'Why not a hundred?'
'No. If we found one, we'd search. Find two, we might bite the bullet and change the whole system. He can't afford that. He wouldn't hide more than a dozen, maybe, and he's been careful where he put them.'
'Well, that's not so bloody bad. What we need to do is eliminate most of his choices, then lead him to the one we want.'
'Tony, we don't have one.'
'I know, I know. Jesus, I'm tired. Well, we'll search. Meanwhile, try this…'
Smiling security personnel met the Gamers as they left MIMIC. El and Doris Whitman met them, congratulating each Gamer in turn.
'Your attention, please,' El said.
They were half-looped from the free-flowing champagne, but ready to get back to the hotels, to husbands and wives and lovers and friends, to hot baths and real beds.
'You probably noticed that we were using some new technology during California Voodoo.' Doris waited for the inevitable nods and murmurs of appreciation. 'We were lucky enough to get permission from Cowles to use some of these techniques, on the condition that no raw recordings be made. Some of the illusion technology hasn't been patented yet. So as per section six subparagraph twelve of your contracts, we're exercising our options to confiscate all recording apparatus. They will be erased and returned to you.'
'Sorry about this,' El said, 'but it's the only way we can protect ourselves. You will all receive free recordings of any Game perspective you choose, of course.'
There were a few grumbles, and then Bishop shrugged. 'What the hell,' he said. 'Only a Game, right?'
Everybody laughed. 'Tell that to my hamstrings,' Tammi said.
And some made speeches or threw tantrums, but every Gamer did hand over his equipment, and then passed through a doorway lined with scanning apparatus.
All weapons, costumes, and Gaming computers were thoroughly scanned. Nobody and nothing left MIMIC without going through the procedure.
The entire process took over an hour for the Gamers. In the black wee hours they boarded a ground shuttle and returned to their Dream Park hotels via the same track that had fired them into a talus slope a little more than forty hours earlier.
Alex caught six good hours of sleep in his own bed. It wasn't nearly enough… but he was almost smiling as he answered the doorbell.
Tony looked grouchy but clear-headed. 'Come on in,' Alex said.
Dawn light glared through the bay-window wall. Tony stood closer than Alex would have, looking down, sipping coffee.
'Tony, don't you have an acrophobia?'
'Not when I'm inside. I'm just picturing it the way it must have looked to Clavell when his rope broke.' He turned back. 'So we've locked Bishop out. Right?'
'He didn't leave MIMIC with anything,' Alex said. 'If he planted something on another Gamer, it didn't leave either. We can't seal MIMIC off forever, but a month will screw him just fine. What's next?'
'Acacia?'
'She should have let Bishop cut her in half. Panthesilea would have been killed out, not dead-dead!'
