Open doors showed several pleasant-looking bedrooms. 'I also took the liberty of having your luggage brought up,' von Esbach said.
'And I'd say that arriving in our rooms makes a perfect place to break the action for this session,' Megan added in a softer voice. 'We'll meet in my virtual workspace for a quick postmortem. What do you say?'
The boys nodded and headed for their rooms. Megan turned to the prime minister. 'Perhaps you would accompany me to my own apartments?'
As soon as Leif was through the door, he gave a silent command to cut out of the Latvinia sim. Rather than awakening in his computer-link couch, however, he blinked and found himself in the new address he'd given his computer-Megan O'Malley's personal Net space.
No accounting for taste, Leif thought as he looked around. Maybe it was a reaction to living in a crowded house with a good-sized family, but Megan's workspace was huge-an amphitheater large enough to accommodate a football game and a good twenty thousand fans.
The setup didn't just give her space-it was out in space. Megan's stone amphitheater was set on the surface of Rhea, one of Saturn's numerous satellites. When Leif looked up, the ringed planet loomed overhead, like a grossly swollen, orange-striped moon.
Leif turned his attention from the sky show as David synched in. The other boy simply shook his head. 'Well, being a foreign prince certainly beats playing a train porter. But when I chopped that guy's hand off-'
'Real swords-and real consequences,' Leif said. 'I sure hope that robber was a nonrole-playing character.'
David turned appalled eyes towards him. 'Don't even start going there!' he begged. 'I have to believe I was just slicing electrons.'
'Hey, if you're not sure of the safety interfaces…,' Leif teased.
P. J. popped into existence beside him. 'Boy, we sure dusted those bad guys!' He blew over the top of his outstretched index finger, as if he were cooling down the muzzle of a gun. 'A real action-filled start, before things started getting boring with all the politics.'
'Nice review, coming from a politician's son.'
P. J. gave Leif a haughty look. 'My father is a senator, not a politician.'
Leif rolled his eyes. 'Yeah. Right.'
Before he could say anything more, Megan appeared. She was positively fizzing with joy. 'What a great sim!'
'Of course, you're not saying that because you got one of the starring roles,' Leif said.
'Just because somebody whacked you before you could show off your prize toadsticker doesn't mean you have to dump all over everybody else's good time,' Megan replied tartly. 'The question now is-when can we all go back in?'
Everybody's eyes got a slight faraway look as they checked with calendar programs back in their computers. 'I've got a lunch tomorrow that will run pretty long,' Leif said. 'It's a family thing-friends of Dad's from Europe. Maybe in the evening-'
Megan shook her head. 'Fencing class.'
Leif's lips quirked downward, although he managed to keep the scowl from his face. Megan had played heroes and villains with Alan Slaney in sim today, and she'd be working with him in a real-world class tomorrow…
I'd probably like the guy in other circumstances, Leif thought. He's clever, creative, and has a sense of humor in creating sims.
Too bad, then, that the existing circumstances involved Megan O'Malley.
I've got no right to be jealous, Leif told himself.
So why was the situation driving him crazy?
Chapter 5
Leif walked into his room and was just about ready to cut his link when he heard a familiar sound-the clash of steel. He ran to the open window, stopping only to grab his own sheathed sword. His room had a good vantage of the inner courtyard of the palace, much of which was cultivated as a garden.
Two stories below, on a graveled path, two young officers were dueling-at least, they were trying to. The pair looked like clowns, staggering around with no trace of footwork or any idea of the proper distance from which to launch an attack, swinging their heavy cavalry sabers as if they were trying to chop wood.
Looking down, Leif didn't know whether to laugh or be horrified. Latvinia had only been open for bare hours, and these two idiots had to fool with swordplay in the worst way.
And it was the worst way, Leif realized as he continued to watch. The two continued to hack and swat at each other with no rhyme or reason. Somewhere in the Latvinia program, there had to be some basic knowledge of swordsmanship stored for the role-players to tap into. But there was a big difference between knowledge whispered in the back of the brain and knowledge in the muscle and nerve tissue.
These guys could barely handle the weight of the heavy military sabers. Their attempted slashes wobbled in midair. One guy was huffing and puffing, looking as if his arm was going to fall off. The amateur duelists would attack at the same time, their blades clanging together, then rebounding. Or they'd manage to miss, which really scared them as razor-sharp blades whipped far to close to various pieces of their anatomy. Then both of them would fall back, or clumsily lock their blades together, they way they'd seen it done in old flatfilms or historical holodramas.
Leif turned away, unable to watch any more of this travesty.
I hope those guys down there aren ft products of the fencing school Megan is attending, he thought. Otherwise, the place should be shut down for taking money under false pretenses.
Shaking his head, he gave an unspoken command to his computer. An eye-blink later, he found himself back home on his computer-link couch. He swung around so his feet touched the floor, got up, and stretched. No matter how much the machinery in the couch tried to keep his muscles toned-and Leif's couch was a pretty expensive one- it still felt better to move around after a long session in veeyar.
A glance at his watch made Leif frown. He'd spent more time in Latvinia than he'd realized.
Apparently, time flies even when I'm having a not-so- good time, he thought. A quick pat to his midsection didn't start any growls of hunger. But Leif padded through the apartment on stocking feet anyway, heading for the kitchen.
Mom and Dad were out showing their European friends the glories of the real New York City, as opposed to the virtual version anybody could visit by synching into the Net. He had more than enough time to take a shower and join them for dinner. Besides, Leif liked a cup of coffee after spending any length of time on the Net. It brought the real-life edge back to his brain.
He was sitting on a kitchen stool, watching the cof- feemaker brew a cup to his precise specifications, when a sound like chiming silver bells filled the house. Leif took one last, longing look at the coffee still dripping down into the cup, then headed over to the terminal set in the kitchen wall to answer the call. He had to answer. It might be his folks, calling with a change of plan.
Hey, it could even be Megan, calling to talk some more about their afternoon's adventure. She'd probably prefer to talk to Alan Slaney, but he was probably still in the sim, plotting away as Gray Piotr.
Leif activated the phone connection, but the face he saw in the hologram image was neither Megan's nor either of his parents.
The model-perfect facial features, dramatically framed by hair as black as a raven's wing, spoke subtly of expert-and expensive-plastic surgery. After a moment of silence those lovely features arranged themselves into a frown that was more like a sneer. 'The polite thing to do when someone calls is to say hello, Leif.'
'Hello, Roberta,' Leif replied cautiously. 'Please forgive me. I was… surprised.'
As far as Leif was concerned, that was putting it mildly. He liked girls, and enjoyed going out with them-a lot of them. He had a reputation to uphold as playboy-in-training-at least, his friends thought so- and so his social activities were almost mandatory. But problems came along with having an active social life. Or, as his father called
