by Tom Clancy
David’s dark, serious face looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know, Leif—’
‘I do know what a snake pit this whole race will turn into if we start making outright accusations … and the studio refuses to back us up,’ Leif cut in. ‘You heard the big man back there. Everything that isn’t strictly forbidden is allowed. Do you want everybody pushing the bad-sportsmanship envelope? We have to be subtle here.’
‘I hate to say it, but I think Leif is right,’ Jane’s lips quirked unhappily. ‘We’ll have a war, not a race. And it’s my job to make sure the race runs smoothly.’ She shot a not-too-friendly glance at Leif. ‘Although it’s not my job to tell lies - in spite of what some people might think.’
Leif just raised his eyebrows. ‘I always thought that was a job requirement in publicity and public relations.’
Jane laughed at that. ‘Call it more of a professional hazard. I’ll cover for you.’
David still didn’t look very happy about the situation, so Leif took their team captain aside. ‘We know we’re going to get zip in the way of help from the powers that be around here. If we push this, we look like the troublemakers - and get lots of grief between the studio and the other teams.’
‘So?’ David asked.
‘We play along, so we don’t have the studio on our backs, while we pursue the matter of cheating … privately.’
David still didn’t look convinced.
‘Look, David, I know you want to do the right thing. But in the situation where we find ourselves, knowledge is power. If we set off a hue and cry, the race becomes a free-for-all - every team will try to nail the competition, and the guys who started all this disappear into the crowd. But if we keep a low profile - and stay on the alert for any other nonsense - maybe we have a chance to catch those clowns.’
David’s expression reminded Leif of the time his father had bitten into a peach that had gone bad. ‘So it’s a choice of the lesser of two evils, is that it?’ he finally said. ‘All right, we’ll play it your way. But we’ll keep a really watchful eye on what’s going on. And if we see anyone getting up to anything suspicious, we come down on them - with both feet.’
Leif nodded. ‘Can’t argue with that. Come on, let’s make nice with Jane. Then we catch up with our cast of suspects.’
‘Lead on, Sherlock,’ David said.
They caught up with the tour on one of the soundstages just as the group began filing onto bleacher seats to watch the lensing for a situation comedy. Jane made her fictitious explanation, and the Net Force Explorers joined the group.
Leif recognized the show as soon as he saw the sets. It was Old Friends, a remake of a show from flatscreen TV, picking up on the lives of the original characters decades later. The cast of elderly actors actually included a few who had been in the cast back in the nineties.
‘My mom would flip out if she knew I was here,’ David whispered as they sat down. ‘This is one of her favorite shows.’
‘It’s going to be a bit rough around the edges today,’ Jane whispered. ‘The actress who plays Monica just broke her hip.’
The scene they were watching did go on longer than it had to, what with actors forgetting new lines and writers coming in to tinker with the script, covering for the missing actress.
‘We’re not usually this bad,’ a white-haired star assured the audience during one of these breaks. ‘We really are professional actors.’
Except for the holo-lenses capturing the scene from all directions, this probably wasn’t all that different from the days when they filmed the original show for flatscreen, Leif suddenly realized. Audiences probably sat on bleachers just like these and laughed at the same silly jokes.
Why are we watching so many holo-dramas which are just rehashes of shows that appeared a few seasons, years, or decades ago? he wondered as the cast and crew started yet another take. It doesn’t say much for Hollywood - or for the resident geniuses like Milos Wallenstein.
‘I’m afraid we’ll have to move on if we want to keep up with our schedule,’ the studio guide announced as lensing broke up yet again.
‘How nice to know that all Americans aren’t late,’ a deep, heavily accented voice came from the tour group.
Leif spotted the speaker - it was the most hulking of the three guys from the Carpathian Alliance team. Many in the crowd broke into laughter. Leif caught a scornful look from a coffee-skinned boy with hair cropped so short it almost seemed as if his head had been shaved.
That has all the looks of a military haircut, Leif thought. Could that be one of the cadets from Corteguay?
An intense-looking Asian boy nearby took up the teasing tone. ‘You only had to cross three time zones to get here. My team has to deal with a seven-hour difference. For us^ this feels like three o’clock in the morning. And we were on time.’
Leif shrugged. ‘We had to talk with the hotel people. Something about imauthorized use of a room near ours.’
‘I just bet that was it,’ the Japanese boy scoffed.
‘Hey, idioms and everything! You certainly speak English very well/ Leif complimented him.
He got a haughty look in return. ‘Probably better than you speak Japanese,’ the boy retorted.
Leif had grown up speaking both English and Swedish, his father’s native tongue. He was fluent in Norwegian, Danish, German, and Dutch as well. Thanks to his father’s business travels he had a smattering of many more languages, both Western and Eastern European - plus some Malay, Chinese, and Japanese. He certainly had the vocabulary to tell the Japanese boy to go soak his head - or do a couple of ruder things - in the boy’s own language and with a passable accent.
Instead, Leif just shrugged again. ‘I thought that’s why we invented translation software,’ he replied.
The tour moved through several outdoor locations - a couple of blocks of an old-fashioned New York City, next to the false-front wooden buildings of a Western town.
Then they arrived at the high point of the tour, the promised behind-the-scenes look at the Ultimate Frontier set. Because the mob of contestants was so large, lensing was suspended during the visit. But the fans stood in silent fascination as the actors rehearsed a scene on the Constellation’s bridge set.
Although he was on the set. Lance Snowdon didn’t have a part in this scene. He amused himself by walking among the kids, glad-handing them.
‘I hope you don’t mind having us come in to stare,’ David said to the actor.
Snowdon looked as though he were fighting not to laugh out loud. ‘Are you kidding?’ he asked. ‘We ought to thank you for the break. Milos usually has us jumping through hoops with his lensing schedules.’ The rakish-looking actor shook his head. ‘He may spout the anarcho-libertarian line when he’s talking to people, but on the set, he’s more like a dictator. What he says, goes.’
‘He’s really into politics?’ Leif asked. ‘I didn’t know that.’
Tom Cloncq’s Her Force Explorers
‘A lot of people in the industry are into the gospel according to Derle,’ Snowdon replied. ‘They feel they’ve gotten burned by the traditional political parties, but I don’t know if Wallenstein or any of the others are really ready to change the world. It may just turn out to be the flavor of the month - something hot and new that dies out before the next elections.’
‘And you?’ Leif asked.
‘I’m an economic determinist,’ Snowdon said.
Leif shook his head. ‘That’s another new one on me.’
‘No, it’s a very old philosophy.’ The actor grinned. ‘Just means I’m determined to earn my paycheck.’
He moved on, and soon enough the tourists were ushered out so the serious business of lensing could be resumed. They were herded over the rest of the lot, finally ending at the studio commissary for lunch. The publicity people decided to try to split up the teams, mixing groups of various contestants at large tables.
Leif drew a guy from the African team, one of the Danish kids, a Chinese girl, his English-spea
king Japanese acquaintance, the loud-mouthed Corteguayan cadet, and a very surly-looking C.A. competitor. At least, without Mr Cetnik around, the guy didn’t claim he couldn’t eat in the presence of a polluting American.
Letting the others go first, Leif took the only empty seat at the table, next to the Japanese kid.
‘What were you saying about the hotel management?’ the boy abruptly demanded. ‘Did you break into another room?’
Leif gave him his best lackadaisical American shrug. ‘Not us, but somebody got into a room that was supposed to be empty. The assistant manager called it … a security breach.’
Okay, he thought, the ball’s in play. Let’s see how the others respond.
The Dane and the Chinese girl looked disapproving. Security breaches, apparently, were out of their experience.
Leif’s announcement brought a hoot of laughter from the African boy - Daren Something-or-other, he’d introduced himself.
‘Security breach!’ he scoffed. ‘Sounds like a very businesslike way to say that a thief visited.’
‘Cowardly Americans!’ the big guy from the C.A. sneered. ‘They probably look under every bed at night, afraid of what they’ll find.’
‘Crime-ridden,’ the buzz-cut Corteguayan agreed. ‘We have no such problems in my country.’
Right, Leif thought. In your country, all the crooks wear uniforms. He gave another shrug, and turned his attention to his food. The tree had been shaken, and only nuts had fallen out. But at least no one could complain that there’d been no warning if more trouble came down the pike.
He corrected himself. When trouble came down the pike.
After lunch, the contestants were herded off to the other high point of the day - their first visit to the special-effects studios. Computer effects made up an important part of many Ultimate Frontier adventures - spaceships, planets, stations, cityscapes … and, of course, the occasional character like Soma. Stored images of the major characters allowed them to do stunts that would be too dangerous -or too expensive - to try in real life.
The place where all this magic was created, however, was almost depressingly humdrum. It was an elderly office building with cracks in its stucco walls and a roof that seemed to sag in the middle.
‘Looks like this place just made it through the last quake,’ Andy muttered. ‘You’d think they’d treat their computers with a little more respect.’
‘Oh, the computers are in the same building as Mr Wallenstein’s office,’ Jane said. ‘This is just a temporary location to accommodate all the terminals needed for this episode.’
Leif looked dubiously at the old, rickety building. ‘Who’s in here usually then?’ he asked.
Jane shrugged. ‘Writers,’ she replied.
Most of the contestants eagerly rushed through the doors, where a baldheaded man in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up met them. ‘I’m Hal Fosdyke, the effects coordinator for Ultimate Frontier, he introduced himself. ‘You’ll get to know me - and Casa Falldown here - a lot better over the next few days.’
Leif looked around. Fosdyke’s nickname for the office building was horribly on target. The inside, if possible, was even less pleasant than the exterior. Paint was peeling on the walls, and several of the office doors were hopelessly warped. To top it off, cables writhed like multicolored snakes along the hallways, through office doors, even up the stairs.
‘I’m afraid this building was never hardwired, even for the studio’s local-net system,’ Fosdyke explained. ‘So watch your step - you never know whose connection you’ll be stepping on.’
He picked his way carefully over cable bundles to a half-opened door and pushed it open. ‘Each team will have a setup like this.’
The small office was now crowded with a quartet of computer-link chairs. ‘This is where you’ll, uh, drive your spaceships.’ The effects man gave a quick grin at the dismay on the contestants’ faces. ‘Your virtual accommodations will be much nicer, I assure you, but you’ll see them a little later. Right now, I think I know what you want to see.’
He led everyone down the hallway as the contestants tiptoed and stumbled around and over the cable bundles until they reached a large room dominated by a fairly beat-up holo-suite.
‘My folks threw out one like that - about five years ago,’ Matt muttered.
Fosdyke flicked a switch. The image was a little cloudy, but clear enough. In the depths of space, a collection of ships floated. It wasn’t a fleet. Each ship in the long line of vessels was one of a kind. Leif grinned when he spotted the Onrust - fifth from the right.
Many of the ships were recognizable types - styles adopted by the various sentient species that regularly appeared on Ultimate Frontier. There was a Thurien sword-ship - better balanced than the imitation model that had crashed and burned in the racing trials. Leif also spotted the spindly elegance of an Arcturan star-scout and a streamlined Laragant quadship.
‘This is the starting line,’ Fosdyke announced with understandable pride. ‘We’ve incorporated each of your designs into a deep-space setting. From this angle, you can’t see the observation ships - or the Constellation, which, oddly enough, was selected to be the starter.’
The view suddenly shrank down to one of two much smaller structures that flanked the starting line. ‘These are the space-buoys which will mark the course of the race. They’re anchored in eight different systems, deep enough in each star’s gravity well that you’ll have to drop out of hyperspace and approach on sublight drive. Unless otherwise specified, each racer must pass within three thousand kilometers of the buoy to register - but then, you know all that.’
Wk certainly do, Leif thought. As soon as we became actual competitors^ the studio downloaded tons of data to us – rules, charts, additional technical information^ all sorts of stuff, David’s spent every spare moment plotting the courses to the optimum hyperspace insertion point from each star system.
He sighed. Undoubtedly, all the other competitors had been doing exactly the same thing.
‘Besides recording the progress of the race, we’ll feature action from the bridge of each ship,’ Fosdyke went on. ‘Here are the character designs our staffers have developed for the teams.’ The starting line reappeared again, to be replaced by images of their crews in the same locations.
‘Now we know why they asked for holo-images of us,’ Matt said.
The character-design people had outdone themselves, Leif had to admit. He and the other Net Force Explorers looked like themselves, except they were in Fleet Academy uniforms. He recognized the Danish kids he’d seen, stretched taller and idealized into Laragants. Thurien facelessness made the Carpathian Alliance team harder to recognize, except for the blond girl’s figure and the size of their hulking teammate. But for every race that had human features, the special-effects people had invested serious effort to make the team members recognizable.
Of course, theArcturans are human-sized bugs. We won’t see much of that snotty Japanese kid - except for his personality. Leif thought.
Contestants pushed forward, oohing and aahing at the appearance of their holo counterparts. Fosdyke let them admire themselves for a moment, then spoke up again. ‘That leaves just one practical point to discuss,’ he said. ‘Creating holo-proj images of the race and all the ships will go on in the time we can spare from the filming schedule for the regular episodes of Ultimate Frontier. That means we’ll be working through slack time - evening hours, mainly. And we’ll be aiming for one-take recordings to keep Corporate off our backs.’
The bald man’s face suddenly seemed to fill with authority, and Leif could see how Fosdyke had risen to his position, ramrodding the precise and technically demanding effects for the show. ‘Captains, be careful of your ships,’ Fosdyke warned. ‘If you make a mistake, that’s the way the race turns out. There’ll be no do-overs unless you all crash and burn.’
The studio had laid out a pleasant dinner party, including cast members, but the contestants were pretty quiet for the most part
- thoughtful, maybe, or maybe just plain worried.
The Net Force Explorers’ team captain seemed remarkably calm, Leif thought.
‘We’ve got our course,’ David told his nervous team members. ‘And I take it for granted that there’ll be lots of jockeying to get far enough from each star’s gravitation to drop into hyperspace. But the spots I plotted for our insertions are calibrated for our engines. The other ships have other capabilities. We aren’t all going to be aiming for the exact same spots.’
‘I hope not,’ Andy said.
Leif just nodded. That scenario could get very messy, very fast.
He walked among the tables, responding good-naturedly to some joshing about turning up to eat on time.
If David’s so confidenty I guess I can just relax and enjoy myself, he thought. Right then, he spotted one of the younger cast members of Ultimate Frontier, Kyra Matthias. She played the daughter of the head physician on the Constellation, half-human, half-Laragant. In make-up, she was stunningly exotic. In reality, Leif was a little shocked to discover that she was much taller than he was - and much skinnier than she seemed in holoform.
‘Let’s just pass right over all those “how’s the weather up there?” comments,’ she said when Leif introduced himself.
‘I promise, they’d never even occurred to me,’ he said.
At least she had the grace to look a little embarrassed then. ‘I’m sorry. Studio parties always put me in a bad mood. The commissary people go wild creating good food, and the actors can’t eat any of it. We have to be able to fit into our costumes.’
‘I can’t believe that you have to worry about that,’ Leif said. ‘Although I’ve heard that some chunkified actors have had to appear in holoform until they slimmed down.’
‘Maybe,’ Kyra said. ‘But with holo-programs - unlike veeyar - lensing actors is still faster to produce and more cost-effective than programming. It’s okay for stunts, where the image appears just for a second or two. But the programming just gets too expensive when you need a superb performance sustained over time. And unless a studio’s willing to spend the money to get the incredible level of detail required, well, the image may be perfect, but—’ She hesitated for a second, groping for the way to explain. ‘Have you ever seen a statue by a good, but not great, sculptor? The muscles may be where they’re supposed to be, the face will have the right number of eyes and ears … but it’s not quite alive. Bad holo performances can end up looking like people filtered through a computer.’