The Deadliest Game

dimness. It looked like a coin, except that its edges were smooth, not milled. It was not made of metal either. It was a circle of some dark mineral, with a design engraved on it. Megan held it up toward another of the squares of moonlight high up on a nearby wall, and looked at it, through it. So did Leif. He caught a wink of the darkest red, even in this silver light. The thing was made of pigeon’s blood ruby, and deeply engraved in it, in an old uncial font, was the letter S.

Megan looked at Leif with an odd expression on her face. “Game intervention,” she said.

“Listening.”

“Identify this object.”

“Object is identified as the Creator’s Token,” said the computer voice. “The Sigil of Sarxos — positive in-game identification of the game designer and copyright holder.”

Both of them looked down at the dwarf in complete astonishment.

“Yes,” Gobbo said, in an entirely different voice. “I’m Chris Rodrigues.”

4

They finally wound up in the Scrag End again. It was closed when they got there, empty except for a young man who took care of the door.

A slit in the door came open. “Show him what I gave you,” said the dwarf.

Megan held up the ruby token for the doorman to see. His eyes, seen through the slit, widened. The slit closed, and the door opened for them.

Inside, as they went in, the young man was looking with utter astonishment at Megan. “You?”

“No, no, him,” she said, indicating the dwarf. Except that he wasn’t a dwarf anymore.

Suddenly a tallish guy was standing there, in jeans and a T-shirt and somewhat beat-up-looking sneakers: a big-boned man, somewhere in his early middle years, with curly unruly hair and a curly beard and brown eyes, the kindliest eyes Megan thought she had ever seen. “Listen,” said Rodrigues to the young man, “I know you’d love to talk to me, but I need to talk to these people just now, and it’s urgent. Can I come back and see you next week — would that be okay?”

“Uh, yeah, sure, fine,” said the young man. “You’ll make sure you shut the door when you go out.”

“No problem.”

The doorkeeper went out the front door, and closed it behind him.

Chris stood there for a moment, then picked up the bolt and dropped it in place, and came back to sit at the rearmost table, where they had sat with Wayland.

Leif, sitting there staring at Rodrigues, was still having trouble coping with it all. “It’s really you, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is. There’s no faking this.” Chris gave the token on the table a little push. “I always anticipated that sometimes I would need to make my presence known, so I made sure there was a way for players to know it was me, one that couldn’t be faked.”

Megan nodded. “Why were you following us?” she said.

“Because you’ve something to do with these bounces, don’t you?”

She and Leif stared at Rodrigues in complete shock. “No, I don’t mean that you’re involved with them!” Rodrigues said. “But you’ve been hanging around with some people who may have been involved…haven’t you? And one of them — Ellen. Elblai—”

“Yes. We were with her just last night.”

“So I saw from the game logs. And the descriptions of you that her niece gave me were quite precise.” Rodrigues sat back. “So I thought I would have a look at you myself — this was before Elblai, mind you — and then followed you here. I had the system alert me when you came back into gameplay.”

“I have to tell you,” said Leif, “we’re not just doing this for fun. We’re with the Explorers…we’re with Net Force.”

“Net Force, yeah,” Rodrigues said, and leaned forward on the table, running his hands through his hair. “Yeah, I’ve had some people from there in here already today. Naturally the Elblai situation brought them in, and I’m glad they came. But I don’t know what they can do. I’m not sure what any of us can do.”

He sounded despondent. Megan said, “Whoever has been doing this…they can’t be doing it tracelessly. And they have been leaving some clues behind…we think. It’s only a matter of time before we, or the senior Net Force operatives, work out—”

Rodrigues looked up. “Time,” he said. “How much of that do we have before this person bounces someone else? And does it violently? The early bounces, the smash-and-ruin bounces, those were bad enough. But attempted murder? This is not the kind of thing I wanted happening in my game.”

“We know,” Leif said. “We didn’t think so either. So we came in and started looking around to see what we could find out.”

“The same here,” said Rodrigues. “But I didn’t expect to get flung at a wall.”

“Sorry,” Megan said, blushing hot. “I thought you were—”

“Some little creep dwarf,” said Rodrigues, grinning. “Yes. He’s a favorite of mine, Gobbo.”

“Is he the character you run, then?” said Leif.

“One of about twenty,” Rodrigues said. “Some of them are fairly quiet…some of them are pretty outrageous. They give me a chance to wander around and interact with people in different ways…and make sure they’re playing the game correctly.” He smiled a little. “One of the pleasures of playing God. Or Rod.” The smile got more ironic.

“But the past few months, I’ve been doing it more with an eye to seeing what I can find out about these bounces. It’s not just that I don’t like my creation being used this way…which I don’t. But Sarxos has always had a reputation as a safe place, a place where the Game was played fairly…not one of those fly-by-night operations where the gamesmaster changes the rules on you without warning. And it’s not just a game, of course. It’s a consumer-driven operation. You have to treat your customers right. If word gets out that this kind of thing is starting to happen — if there’s even one more instance of an attack like the one on Elblai — it’s going to do immense damage to the game. It could be shut down. I leave to your imagination the kind of legal trouble that could ensue. The bottom-line boys at the parent company would not be happy with me, not at all.”

Leif was studying the table with a rather noncommittal look on his face. “Look,” Rodrigues said, just a little sharply, “I’m already a millionaire so many times over that it’s not even fun counting it at night anymore when I need to fall asleep. I have a great privilege: I get to do what I love to make my living. There’s nothing better than that. But there are more important things than my pleasure, and a whole lot more important than money. If there’s no other way to stop this, I’ll damn well see the game shut down. A lot of people disappointed is better than a few people dead. And that’s where it’s heading, if you ask me. I wish to God I was wrong, but I’m a pessimist at heart — that’s why I’m such a good designer.”

He sighed. “Anyhow, I’ve told the Net Force people that I’ll cooperate with them every way I can. The company won’t let me give them the game logs directly — they’re moaning about proprietary information — but I can read them and pass excerpted information on. They were asking about yours, by the way.”

Megan nodded. “We know. There’s e-mail going out shortly — if it hasn’t already gone — giving my release.”

“Okay, that’s fine. You, too?” He looked at Leif.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“What about your game logs?” Leif said suddenly.

Rodrigues looked at him. Megan briefly felt as if she wished the Earth would open and swallow her.

“How do you mean?”

“The Net Force people may suggest to you,” Leif said in a very even and almost gentle voice, “that one possibility is that you might have been involved with these bounces.”