The Deadliest Game

“Store display,” Megan said.

“File name?”

“Megan-and-Leif-One. Can I copy this display to e-mail?”

“Yes.”

“Copy to player Leif Hedge-wizard.”

“Done. Holding for pickup.”

“Copy it to him out of the system as well.”

“Message dispatched to the Net at 0554 local.”

Now what do I do?

Megan swallowed, had to do it again. Her mouth was dry. Lateran. We were right. I know we were right. The new up-and-coming young general… She smiled a little grimly. Something of an analyst. And something of a danger, to judge by this. Anyone who could invent a way to fool a virtual-reality system into thinking they were there when they weren’t…

More to the point, Megan thought, why would they waste the technique in here? It’s only a game. True, there were people who felt that Sarxos was a life-or-death matter, who spent almost all their waking hours in it, who lived it and slept it and ate it and drank it and, as Chris said, wanted to move in. But this, though…Megan shook her head. This is someone willing to use, or possibly invent, a technology whose whole purpose is to exploit the basic issue of presence in a virtual environment.

She had always believed that the “fingerprint” you left in the Net by your presence with an implant attached was indelible and uncounterfeitable. It was one of the truisms on which safe use of the Net was built: that you were who your implant said you were, that you were where you claimed to be, when you claimed to be. The implant hooked to your own physicality supposedly made authentification of your actions in the Net final and certain. But somebody — Wayland? Lateran? Whoever this person really was had found a way to be “there” when they weren’t there. While their genuine physicality was somewhere else, doing something else. Breaking into someone’s house and smashing their computer…running a middle-aged grandmother off the road and into a pole.

What next?

And all for the sake of a game.

Or was that all it was? For the implications of such a technology were horrific.

Megan shuddered, swallowed again, her mouth still dry. There’s still no proof. This is still circumstantial evidence.

But it’s real good circumstantial evidence, and it’s gonna raise a lot of questions.

Now what?

To the computer, she said, “Store the graphs…remove them from my workspace. Copy the file to James Winters at Net Force.”

“Done.”

Megan sat and looked at Saturn out the window.

He’ll know, of course. We told him to his face, what we were investigating, what our suspicions were. Even about Lateran. He knows we’re onto him.

It’s not Fettick and Morn we should be worried about. It’s us.

And it’s not like we’re that hard to find either. Megan thought. Schedules that we don’t vary. Known addresses. She smiled a wry smile.

I need to get hold of Winters right now. But—

And then she stopped.

What was in her mind was the image of Wayland, Lateran, whoever ran him — coming here, coming after her. Or coming after Leif. It was all too easy to get addresses and phone numbers and all kinds of “personal” information off the Net. But at the same time—

Why do I need to worry? Megan thought, her mouth starting to undry itself a little. We’ve got the standard number of defensive firearms here, and I know how to use them all. Someone comes up to me in the street, or tries to get physical with me—She smiled grimly. No, I think I’d like to hand this one — we’d like to hand this one — to Winters, on a plate….

Well, I can’t do that. Gotta go by the book. But that doesn’t mean I should just sit here waiting for it to happen, for Wayland to come after me….

She looked again thoughtfully at those attempted chat contacts. J. Simpson, she thought. Where are you, J. Simpson?

“Sarxos computer,” she said. “Thank you. Log out.”

“You’re welcome, Brown Meg. Enjoy your day.” The copyright notice came and went in a flash of crimson.

“Computer,” Megan said. “Access e-mail address for J. Simpson. Open new mail….”

And she smiled.

Leif popped into his stave-house workspace and sat down on the Danish Modern couch, rubbing his eyes. “Mail?” he said to his computer.

“Loads of it, oh, my lord and master. How do you want it? Important first? Dull first? In order of receipt?”

“Yeah, the last,” Leif said, and rubbed his eyes again. He felt deathly tired.

He had thought he would sleep like a log (however logs slept) when he got out of Sarxos last night. But instead he’d tossed, and turned, and hadn’t been able to get settled. Something was bothering him, something he couldn’t identify, something he’d missed.

Not Lateran. Sukin syn, it’s not Lateran. He couldn’t get rid of the thought. And he was thinking about Wayland, too. What Megan had been saying. “A ‘canned’ quality…”

An e-mail about some event his mother wanted him to attend was playing. “Look,” he said to the machine, “put it all on hold for a moment.”

“Okay.”

Leif thought back to other encounters he had had with Wayland, right back to the very first ones he’d had with him. The man had seemed a little eccentric…but you got that with people in Sarxos, sometimes. The more Leif thought about those conversations, though, the more what Megan had said began to ring true. And a player could play back his own experiences, if he’d thought to save them.

Leif smiled grimly. He was something of a packrat, and tended to archive everything, until his father started complaining that there was no room left in the machine for business. “Listen,” Leif said, “get my Sarxos archives.”

“Their machine’s on the line, Boss,” said his own computer, “and the things it’s saying about you, I wouldn’t want to repeat. The storage space you use—!”

“Yeah, I pay for it. Never mind. Listen, I want to hear all the conversations I’ve had with the character ‘Wayland.’”

“Right you are.”

He started listening. By the third conversation, he had already begun to pick up repetitions of phrases. Not just because they were familiar — but because they were spoken in exactly the same intonation every time. The hair began to rise on the back of his neck. Another phrase: “Now that is very interesting.” Repeated again, a couple of months later: “Now that is very interesting.” The very same intonation. And a third time: perfect, the same timing, to the second.

But then…he played the record of his and Megan’s conversation with Wayland. “Now that is very interesting.”

A different intonation. Much more amused…and definitely more aware.

He swallowed, and looked up at something vibrating just off to one side. It was one of the pieces of e-mail… and it had Megan’s address on it.

“Dammit. Open that!” he said to the computer.