Her smile slipped a little. Unless Alan/Gray Piotr was pretending he'd thought ahead, which would mean..
She thrust away all thoughts of court intrigue before they made her head burst. Better to concentrate on the grand ball to come.
Matt Hunter came out of the Metro station at Dupont Circle to find Leif already waiting for him.
'Hey!' Matt said, giving his pal a friendly punch in the shoulder, 'been a while since I saw you. Thought you were going to spend all your time in New York City this summer.'
Leif shrugged. 'Mom headed back to Europe with some friends. Dad's down here in D. C. right now working on some sort of intense negotiations. It's all a very hush-hush deal. He won't talk about it, not even to me. I figured I'd come down, keep him company, and catch up with some of my friends.'
Then it was Matt's turn to shrug. 'You want to catch up with me, I can do it fast-not much is going on. It's been a pretty quiet summer down here. Hot, mainly. Except for sweating a lot, I don't have anything to report. How about you?'
'Let's see.' Leif screwed his face into a look of deep concentration. 'Since finishing that summer course that Andy sabotaged for me, I nearly got whacked by a robber, survived a duel, helped wreck a couple of nasty political intrigues, and unmasked a traitor in the palace guard.'
Matt stared for a moment, his eyes going wide. Then he began to laugh. 'That crazy sim! Lithuania, or whatever they call it.'
'Latvinia,' Leif corrected him.
Matt shook his head. 'Yeah. I've heard a lot about it. In our crew-the Net Force Explorers especially-people are either crazy for it… or they're being driven crazy by it.'
'Megan, P. J., and David are really talking it up that much?' Leif said.
'Not so much David-that's not his style,' Matt replied. 'But P. J. obviously thinks it's the coolest thing since indoor plumbing. And from the way she's been talking about it, I think Megan is beginning to believe she really is a princess.'
Leif winced. 'Ooh, I could see that happening. How about the rest of you guys-the unbelievers?'
'I can take it or leave it,' Matt admitted. 'The Squirt won't even talk about it. He tried to get in, but got bounced because of his age.'
That got a laugh out of Leif. 'The Squirt' was Mark Gridley, son of the Net Force director. Mark was a computer wizard and a Net Force Explorer, but very young, only thirteen years old.
'I figured he'd be telling everybody he could design a better sim,' Leif said.
'Nope, he just iced it out,' Matt said. 'Maj Greene has started ducking whenever she sees Megan. She says this sim is like a long, boring flatfilm-only it's worse because people you know are in it.'
'I would think Andy would be having a field day with this turn-of-the-century stuff,' Leif said. 'Asking Megan if she wears a bustle on her butt, that kind of stuff.'
'Not anymore,' Matt said, shaking his head. 'The last time he goofed on Lith-Latvinia, Megan acted as if she were going to challenge him to a duel.'
Leif jammed his hands in his pockets and laughed. 'She might do just do that, too. Fencing and Latvinia seem to be the two things she's doing this summer.' He rolled his eyes. 'Some people take things too seriously. They start to think virtual reality is reality.'
'And you don't?' Matt asked.
'I can take Latvinia or leave it,' Leif told him.
'I thought that would be your thing,' Matt said. 'Hauling out your trusty sword and charging around with it.'
'The place can pop some nasty surprises on you.' Leif's hands clenched into fists for a second as he remembered some of them. 'In my case, they seem to crawl out of the woodwork the moment I happen to touch the hilt of my sword.'
'Doesn't sound like a lot of fun,' Matt said. 'David didn't sound exactly wild about the place, either.'
Leif shrugged.
Matt grinned. 'On the other hand, Captain Winters is delighted that you and Megan are so into this Latvinia place.'
Captain James Winters was the liaison agent between Net Force and the Net Force Explorers. 'Winters likes it?' Leif said in disbelief.
'He said it's kept two of his biggest headaches-you and Megan-too busy to create any trouble for him this summer.' Matt laughed. 'At least, so far.'
'I think he should pay more attention,' Leif said. 'There's some exposure possible if something goes wrong on the beta test. Besides us regular Net Force Explorers, he's got a Senator's son in Latvinia-not to mention the Russian ambassador's kid.'
All this mentioning of Latvinia got Leif glancing at his watch. This was about the time he usually synched in with his computer, opening the cybergate to Latvinia. There was a royal ball that evening… but nothing important happening this afternoon.
Leif hesitated for just a moment, then slapped Matt on the back. 'Enough of this Latvinia crap,' he said decisively. 'That's not what I came to Washington for. Let's have fun.'
He grinned as he and Matt left the central traffic island, crossing the street. 'What's doing around here in real life?' Leif asked. 'Think we could find ourselves a baseball game?'
Leif got home later than he'd planned that evening. He'd already checked in by phone and gotten the message from his dad. The super-secret business negotiations were going to continue over supper. Leif unlocked the apartment door to the Andersons' Washington pied a terre and zipped straight to the kitchen. Given the family's often weird schedules, the freezer was always stocked with dinners to be nuked.
Sniffing appreciatively as a nice beef dish began to bubble in the cooker, Leif rummaged around for a plate and silverware. This wasn't some mass-produced glop prepackaged in a food factory. The Andersons could pay for real people to prepare real food. Nowadays, it seemed to Leif that commercial frozen food sometimes tasted faintly of fish oil-even when the dish was supposed to be meat. Probably just his imagination-or maybe it was that heart- healthy stuff the government had added to any high-cholesterol meal.
The oven bleeped, signaling that its heating job was done. Leif removed his dinner, juggling the hot container until he got it emptied onto his plate. Then, blowing on each forkful, he began shoveling the food into his mouth.
There was supposed to be a big feast during the ball tonight. One of the big nightmares about the Net had been the specter of people jacked into fantasy worlds, forgetting reality for so long that they starved to death.
Built-in safety features would keep that from happening, but there was a big difference between starvation and missing a meal. On the other hand, Leif knew from personal experience that eating virtual food instead of the real thing would leave him with a ravenous case of the munchies when he synched out. Better to feed his face now than wait until later and get socked.
He took another look at his watch. There was still a little time before the ball was supposed to begin. All he'd miss would be the boring last-minute preparations- hair-combing and so on. Leif finished his hurried meal at the kitchen counter, washing it down with a glass of juice. Then he washed his dishes, made a quick pit stop in the john, and headed down the hall to his bedroom.
The computer-link chair by the window here was the same top-of-the-line model as the one back home. Leif bypassed it to set the room's air-conditioner for low- no sense freezing in reality while he was in Latvinia. Then he took a moment or two to carefully calibrate the chair. It had been a while since he'd used it, and he didn't want to be dealing with implant pains when he arrived at the ball.
That should do it, he thought, finishing his minute adjustments. He settled back into the comfortable upholstery, let his eyelids come together, and gave a mental command to synch straight into Latvinia.
Leif opened his eyes to find himself walking down a palace corridor.
Nice to know Vm on time, he thought, pausing for a second to lean against the tapestry-covered wall and let the brief twinge of static in his implants die away. Vm already on my way to the ball.
Leif looked down at the conservative uniform he'd chosen to wear tonight. No super-tight riding pants tucked into tall boots this evening. He was wearing a dress uniform military tunic and gray trousers with gold piping down the seams. The jacket was bloody-nose red, with enough gold braid worked into the chest to qualify as light
