The Deadliest Game

They looked around in the marketplace, before making their transit, but found that Wayland had already left. No one was sure exactly when. “Oh, well,” Leif said. “We’ll hear from him. Ready for transit?”

“Yup. Same size circle?”

“Same locus.”

“Ready. Cover your ears, we’ve got an altitude change.”

The world went black and white and phosphene-filled, and Megan swallowed to pop her ears, and swallowed again. They finally agreed to pop, and she looked down on a landscape as different from Errint as night from day. Everything in sight was flatland, a low swampy oxbowed river delta in which countless pools and trickles of water glittered and shone in the morning. Reeds stood up everywhere, and red-winged blackbirds and orioles perched on the reeds, swaying and singing in the wind that stroked through the reed-beds. In the center of everything was a great platform built on massive piles sunk into the water, and on the platform was a huge wooden house, turreted and towered like a castle. A wooden road was laid to it across the watery landscape, ending in a drawbridge and a steep switchback causeway that led up to the platform.

The two of them began to walk down the wooden path to the Duchess’s castle. As they went, Megan slapped an opportunistic mosquito and said, “Were you noticing Wayland this morning?”

“Huh? Not particularly.”

“Maybe it was just me,” Megan said, “but there was something, a little, I don’t know…a little ‘off’ about him this morning. He seemed distracted somehow.”

“I noticed you distracting him, all right. Where did that come from?”

“It occurred to me that we might not want everybody and his brother to know about the token,” Megan said. “For one thing, it’s a good way to get it stolen. By the way, let me have it for a while.”

“Sure.” Leif handed it over.

“For another…” Megan trailed off. “You notice the way he was answering questions?”

“No. Why?”

Megan shrugged. “Just that I kept getting back these answers that were kind of general, or…I don’t know… not really germane to what was said….”

“Maybe he has trouble hearing,” Leif said.

“Oh, come on.”

“No, seriously. If it’s nerve damage causing the hearing problem, not even virtuality can do much about it, supposedly. He might not be hearing us right. I’ve seen that kind of thing happen with hearing aids.”

“Huh.” Megan thought about that. “And it’s not really something you’d ask about, I guess.”

“You sure you’re not imagining it?”

Megan gave him a look, and then rubbed her eyes. She was feeling a little grainy around the edges, possibly from all the transits. “Oh, I don’t know…maybe I am. Or maybe he was just distracted. God knows I am at the moment. Anything’s possible.” She sighed.

But just a little while later, as they walked, Megan thought about what she had said, and the answers she had gotten back, and finally she thought, No. No, it was real enough. He’s just a little off, somehow. Not concentrating…I guess anybody can be distracted, even when they’re playing. Though for what people pay to play in here, you’d think they’d go get the distractedness out of their systems before they waste the money.

She thought for a moment more, then said quietly as they walked, “Game intervention.”

“Listening.”

“Do you detect your boss’ token here?”

“Concessionary token is detected. How can I help you?”

“The player called Wayland. Is he real or generated?”

“Do you mean, is the player human?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, the player is human.”

“Huh. Finished,” Megan said, and shoved the token back in her pocket. I hate it when this computer tells me things I don’t want to hear.

“I see the guards up on the walls have noticed us,” Leif said. “Look at all those crossbows.”

“Maybe this is what we really needed that armor for,” Megan said as they came to the far end of the drawbridge, under the shadow of its gatehouses.

“Too late to go back now,” Leif said, entirely too cheerfully for someone who had so many weapons trained on him.

“I don’t know,” Megan said softly, as guards began to pour down out of the gatehouses and onto the castle side of the drawbridge. “Late breakfast is beginning to look real good.”

Megan stepped out of Sarxos into her personal space to find a pile of e-mail waiting — all kinds of things that needed to be handled, and she just wasn’t up to it. Too many disappointments, too much excitement. Too many things hadn’t worked.

She blinked herself out of the personal space, feeling intensely weary…and also feeling as if she had been hit all over her body with a baseball bat. Stress… As she stood up from the chair, she glanced at the clock. 0516. Ooooh…it can’t be that late…can it?

Yes, it can….

Megan left the office and went off into the kitchen, groaning a little as she moved. Somebody had thoughtfully left her tea-making things out, and a banana on the counter.

Dad, she thought, and smiled slightly. Bananas are good for all- nighters, he always said. The potassium helps keep your brain working. And since he pulled so many all-nighters himself, he would know.

There had been fewer repercussions regarding Megan’s skipping “family night” than she had feared. Her dad had clearly understood that something important was going on. He had apparently spoken to her mom about it as well, and hadn’t asked Megan any questions about it…which was kind of him, and typical. But there would be questions today, all right. She was going to have to explain what was going on…and she dreaded that. She knew that what she hadn’t told Winters, her dad would quickly deduce, and he would tell her to forget about the bouncing problems in Sarxos and let Net Force handle it. If he told her that, she would have to do what he said. Megan respected him that much, at least.

Still….

She put the kettle on the stove and turned the burner on under it, peeled the banana, and sat down at the kitchen table, eating reflectively. For about the tenth time she began going over again, in her head, the lines of investigation she and Leif had been following. It was hard to think, though. She was really tired, and the image of Duchess Morn, laughing at them uproariously, kept intruding.

She and Leif hadn’t exactly needed armor to deal with her. Maybe Fettick had been overstating that end of things. But Morn’s good-natured scorn at the idea that someone might be about to bounce her was like enough to Fettick’s to be its twin. Morn was in her seventies, small and skinny and tough as old boot leather, and intensely funny. Fierce, Megan thought. She found herself wishing that when she hit seventy, she could be something like that.

“Let them try to get me,” had been Morn’s attitude about the whole thing. She was satisfied that her computer was secure enough, that her life was well enough protected. But even if it hadn’t been, Megan thought, Morn had the total fearlessness of someone who reckons that she’s lived her life well, for a long time, and is not afraid to “check out” if that is the card that falls in front of her when the next deal comes along. Megan and Leif had gone away from Woodhouse with their ears full of an old lady’s amused scolding of those who had the nerve to intrude in her personal business. And then both of them had had to get out of Sarxos, because school was coming up later in the day, and they were both dead tired, though they’d hated to admit it to each other.

“I’ve had a long day,” Megan had said to Leif. “But I may be back in here later. Leave Chris’s token with me, okay?”

“No problem,” Leif had said. He’d handed it to her and disappeared, looking as tired as Megan felt, and more dejected.

So there the thing sat, on her “desk” in her virtual workspace. Now, as she finished the banana and the kettle started shrieking, Megan got up hurriedly to shut it up, and thought about the token again.