Reamde

The only thing they would need would be petrol. Gas.

Another look at the map.

If they had acquired the Suburban up in the region where the search was going on, and if its tank had been reasonably full, they’d have been able to make it all the way to Prince George before having to refuel. Of course, there were other refueling stations scattered along the road north of there—people had to buy gas somewhere—but Jones would have avoided those instinctively, not wanting to make a memorable impression on the proprietors, who might have recognized the Suburban as belonging to a local guide service. No, he’d have taken it all the way to the relative anonymity of Prince George and then he’d have bought his petrol in the largest, most impersonal gas station he could find.

Tomorrow she would be driving north to Prince George. Somewhere in that town there must be a surveillance camera that had caught the image she needed. And if she could only sweet-talk its owners into giving her a copy of that image, then she could use it as a sort of sluice gate to divert a great deal of misdirected Jones- hunting energy into a more profitable channel

Tonight, though, she had to sleep. Was, in fact, sleeping.

MOST OF CSONGOR’S time in T’Rain had been spent blundering about in a state of hapless newbie confusion. Only his long experience as a systems administrator, struggling with Byzantine software installations, had prevented him from plummeting into despair and simply giving up. Not that any of the sysadmin’s knowledge and skills were applicable here. The psychological stance was the thing: the implicit faith, a little naive and a little cocky, that by banging his head against the problem for long enough he’d be able to break through in the end. The advances he had made in understanding the Carthinias Exchange had raised his spirits a bit. On the other hand, watching Marlon run a small war was crushing his morale. The immense power of Marlon’s character, his inventory of spells, weapons, and magical items, the size of his army, and his facility in soaking up relevant data from the boggling array of displays and interfaces on his screen and acting immediately upon that information, all bespoke many years’ experience playing the game and made it clear to Csongor that he was as out of his league here as he would have been on the field at a World Cup soccer match. Nevertheless, the dogged sysadmin in him would not concede defeat and kept gazing stupidly over Marlon’s shoulder, trying to make sense of what was happening and to pick up a few tips as to how he might make better use of Lottery Discountz’s cruelly limited set of powers.

For that reason he was completely surprised and utterly unprepared when Qian Yuxia stormed across the Internet cafe and hurled a cup of water into the face of a man who had been sitting there for approximately the last half hour. “I am not a friggin’ T-bird!” she exclaimed.

Then she said it again.

“You want a T-bird, go look some other place!”

Csongor had never heard the English expression T-bird before, but Yuxia had now uttered it three times, so he was pretty certain he was hearing it correctly. He had no idea what it meant.

The victim of the assault was a tall, lanky white man with a scraggly blond beard and green eyes that looked alert and more bemused than angry. He had been surprised by the water in the face, but after that he had sprung to his feet and turned to face his assailant. Not in a threatening manner—he was careful to keep some distance—but in a way that made it clear he was ready to address any follow-up assault should Yuxia care to mount one. He was looking at her interestedly and was by no means afraid or even embarrassed. But the moment Csongor went into movement, this fellow noticed it, and he shifted his position as if to make ready for any threat from that quarter. The green eyes gave Csongor a quick head-to-toe scan and locked in immediately on the right front pocket of Csongor’s baggy trousers, which happened to contain a loaded Makarov. Somehow he seemed to guess what was banging around in that pocket. And this fact changed everything. The man showed both of his palms to Csongor, a gesture that said both Look, my hands are empty and Stop where you are. Csongor faltered, not so much out of obedience as because he was nonplussed by the stranger’s behavior.

“It’d be a good thing for all of us,” the man said in strangely accented English, “if you could keep your hands north of your navel, as you’ll note I’m doing, and maintain a little distance. Then we can have a productive conversation. Until then, it’s going to be all about what we’re carryin’. And since you are new to these parts, let me tell you, we don’t want to go there.”

If Csongor had heard this correctly, the man had just threatened to pull out a gun and shoot him.

As if to confirm that his interpretation of matters was correct, the two other customers in the cafe bolted, leaving only Csongor, Yuxia, Marlon, and the newcomer.

While taking the threat quite seriously, Csongor was not as intimidated as he might have been prior to events in Xiamen. “My life has already ‘gone there,’ so I am not afraid to ‘go there’ again if you are causing a problem for my friend,” he said.

Yuxia, sensing that the situation wasn’t what she’d assumed at first, had backed off a couple of paces and sidestepped a bit closer to Csongor. Meanwhile the Filipino man running the front desk had stuck his head into the room to investigate. Csongor’s eyes darted toward him. The blond man, noting this, pivoted that way, relaxing his hands, and rattled off a sentence in what Csongor gathered was the Filipino language. He sounded and looked quite cheerful. Whatever he said erased the apprehensive look from the manager’s face and caused him to nod and back out smiling.

“What did you say to him?” Yuxia asked.

“Since you are so sensitive about being mistaken for a T-bird, I probably shouldn’t tell you,” the man said. “But I told him that you and I were having a little tiff, a common sort of dispute in a place like this, and that we had settled it.”

“What is a T-bird?” Csongor asked.

“A tomboy,” said the man. “In this context, a real or fake lesbian who caters to mongers who get off on that sort of thing.”

Far from wanting to pull a gun and shoot the man, Csongor now wanted to stand here and ask him questions all day. It was such a pleasure to be around someone who actually knew what the hell was going on.

“What is your name?” Yuxia asked.

“James O’Donnell,” the man decided.

“Are you a monger?” she asked.

“No. But please don’t tell anyone.”

Yuxia laughed. “Why? You are ashamed to not be a disgusting pervert?”

“Because that’s the only reason to be here?” Csongor guessed.

The man calling himself James nodded. “Any Western male in a town like this who is not a sex tourist will only arouse suspicion and curiosity. I’m guessing the locals are fascinated by him.” And he nodded toward Marlon, who had glanced up from his monitor once or twice during all this but, since there’d been no gunplay, had not seen fit to interrupt his work.

“You should talk,” said Yuxia, looking at James’s monitor. James had also been playing T’Rain. Csongor was interested to note that James’s character seemed to be tromping around in an environment very similar to the Torgai Foothills. As a matter of fact, the mountain peak in the background looked awfully familiar; James’s character was within a few kilometers of Marlon’s.

“You’re following us,” he said, “in two worlds at the same time.”

James nodded. “I cannot tell a lie. I been doing it for a few hours.”

“Do you want some of the gold?” Yuxia asked.

“Fuck the gold,” said James. “I want to know anything you might know about Abdallah Jones.”

“YOU ASKED ME to tell you when he got over the one-million-dollar mark,” Clover mentioned, “and I think it just happened.”

“You think!?”

“It fluctuates up and down as raiding parties steal money from him. He has got a lot of raiding parties coming after him right now.”

“Anything major?”

“No, nothing as big as the party we put together. There hasn’t been time. But I’d say that word is getting around that something big is happening in the Torgai. Within an hour I’d expect to see some fairly well-organized