ones anyhow. He flapped his wings and soared slightly higher, watching the queue below.
He didn’t much care for nonhuman VR avatars, but this scenario required it. The security on the database was extensive. On the other hand, there were always weaknesses.
In this case, the programmer had wanted to keep the scenario realistic. It would have been more secure to restrict the VR avatars to just the penguins, riddlers, and requesters. But the programmer had been fixed on keeping the scenario more realistic, which meant a few Skua gulls flying overhead, leopard seals in the water, whales, the works.
Which had left Jay a way in.
So here we was, having dropped his request for information on the back of one of the explorers below—in the usual gull way. When said explorer reached the riddler desks, he’d include Jay’s request with his own.
Within the scenario the request wouldn’t be checked. But when the penguin brought the information back, it would be checked before being given back to the explorer.
So Jay had to grab it from the penguin before it got there.
He looked again. His explorer was at the request desk.
The man made the request, and Jay watched as the riddler handed a slip of colored paper to a nearby penguin attendant. The penguin walked away from the desk and toward the giant ice pyramid.
Jay glided along, letting out gull cries as seemed appropriate.
The penguin made its way to one of the pyramid entrances and disappeared inside. Now all Jay had to do was wait for the penguin to come back.
There were thousands of penguins here, and they all looked alike. How was he going to know when his came back out?
The request paper. The VR resolution was sharp enough that he could see the coded order number.
Penguins waddled back and forth, in and out of the pyramid, through the entrance, which was about halfway up. The steps up the side were incredibly shallow, made for the tiny strides the penguins took, which meant the pyramid was much wider than it was tall.
Jay took his time, soaring up and down the walkway, tracking each penguin that came out, dialing his vision in to check the order numbers.
There was his tuxedoed bird.
Skua gulls were the natural predators of Adelie penguins, but they tended to only attack young or old and sickly ones—healthy adults were not usually on the menu.
So while the sight of a diving gull might not stand out in the scenario, seeing one dive on a full-grown healthy penguin would probably set off some kind of alarm.
Then again, once he had his data he could drop out of the scenario. He just had to get it and boogie.
Jay dove.
Some avian sense warned the little waddler. It tilted its head to the side and saw him coming. The penguin leaped over the edge of the walkway and belly-first onto the icy pyramid, using its stomach like a sled.
Jay tightened his wings and increased his speed.
The penguin shot up a short incline and then was airborne.
Penguins couldn’t fly—!
And this one didn’t either—it coasted briefly before falling and splashing into the water below.
Jay dove into the water, morphing from Skua gull to leopard seal as he hit.
If the penguin had seemed fast on land when it was sledding, it was like a rocket now, little wings flipping out, propelling it like some kind of formal-wear torpedo.
Jay focused on his seal body.
They swam around submerged pieces of ice, through silvery schools of fish, faster and faster.
Jay realized that he wasn’t going to catch it.
Well, hell. How did leopard seals get by without starving?
Wait a second—something he’d read about cautious penguins—how they didn’t want to jump into the water and risk being eaten. But . . .
Jay slowed and let the penguin swim on ahead.
Most successful attacks happened when the penguins were least cautious—coming
Jay circled back, went up for a fresh breath, then sank and hid behind a chunk of iceberg. He waited with a predator’s patience.
Thinking he had outrun his attacker, Tux eventually made a big loop and headed back to shore. Jay spotted him a couple minutes later—fortunately, the paper was waterproof, the number still visible. It was his, all right.
Jay waited until the penguin was almost to the ice before he made his move.
Compared to the earlier chase, it was easy. He pounced and grabbled the little bird with his seal teeth.
Unfortunately, after all that, catching Tux didn’t do him any good. The bird turned out to be hollow—a simulacrum. Not a real data carrier, but a fake. It took Jay all of two seconds to determine that it wasn’t a penguin at all—it was a mouthful of red herring.
Damn!
The guy who had built the Troy scenario was good. Too good. Why would he have done this? Unless he had known he was going to use the game for nefarious purposes that far in advance? That was a hell of a long-range plan. Who had that kind of patience? That kind of forethought? That he would leave false clues
Jay shook his head.
Something was not right about this. What? And how to find it?
26
Abe Kent looked at General Roger Ellis. Roger was a couple years younger, but his hair had gone white, he’d picked up a few more pounds around the middle, and he looked ten years older. Being in command of the Marines’ Special Project section at the Pentagon was apparently more than a little stressful.
“New desk?”
“Yes. Made out of pecan.” With his Southern twang, he pronounced the last word “puh-kahn,” not “pee-can,” and had always insisted that his version was correct. A pee-can, he liked to say, was a toilet. . . .
Kent agreed with him—he’d spent time in Louisiana as a boy, and “puh-kahn” was how they said it down there, too.
Roger leaned back in his chair, which creaked a little. “You know the shit has hit the fan big-time over these Army base break-ins.” It was not a question.
“Yes, sir, I got that impression.”
“General Hadden is having fits over this. The only good thing about it is that the terrorists have confined
