by Larry Niven
Flashes of light. A few curls of stinking smoke.
Then nothing.
“God… Adriana…”
“Yes,” she said, a soft, pensive voice suddenly beside him. “It smells terrible, doesn’t it?”
He couldn’t breathe. Slowly, Scotty turned around. She stood beside him, apparently unaware of his panicked thoughts.
“Wha… what are you… why aren’t you in the barrel?”
She shrugged. “I cannot abide tiny spaces. I got out and hid in a storeroom. I suppose that once again I have angered you.”
He stared at her in disbelief. Then relief washed through him like a cool tide. He picked her up and swung her in a circle as the Swiss police closed in, weapons at the ready, their faces relieved but professionally quizzical.
4
An Offer
Sleep-deprived, bruised and emotionally drained, Scotty stood in the middle of the Imperial suite on the eleventh floor of the Exeter hotel, the very last place in the world he wanted to be. He was in absolutely no mood to be abused by an enraged father who was relieved, but not mollified, by his daughter’s rescue.
Christian Vokker was a short, stocky man, dwarfed by his three bodyguards, who encircled little Adriana like alps sheltering a hillock. The girl sat with her legs folded primly, fingers folded in her lap and face blank, the unwilling focus of the current conversation.
No, that was wrong. It wasn’t a conversation. In a conversation, one person speaks and another answers. This was a monologue. Mr. Vokker had been speaking nonstop at Scotty and Mason for five minutes, and very little of it had been easy to hear.
“Yes, I am grateful,” he said. Something in his tone made Scotty hope he was winding down. “And I understand that you placed your life at risk. It is only for those reasons that I simply suggest you find other employment, rather than purchasing advertising in English, Chinese and Spanish, etching your colossal ineptitude on every Web and across the sky, for all with eyes to see.”
Scotty managed to smile. “Sounds grateful to me.”
Vokker made a dismissive gesture, and turned his back. Adriana peered between the enormous bodyguards, face pinched. I’m sorry…, she seemed to be saying.
“Son of a bitch…,” Scotty muttered as they left.
Older and wiser, Mason merely shook his head.
An hour later Scotty lay alone in his room, staring up at the ceiling. He rotated the glass in his right hand, listening to the ice clink. Now was definitely the time for a drink. Long past time, he figured. And if he didn’t stop until Wednesday, well…
“Well, that’s two careers and a marriage down…,” he muttered.
Quite unexpectedly, a com field blossomed above his briefcase, on the desk across from the bed. At the edge of the field blinked a man-in-the moon icon.
“What the hell.” So. Vokker wasn’t done with him. Part of him wanted to roll over and sleep until dinnertime, or until they kicked him out of his room, whichever came first. Another part urged him to freshen his drink. Another wanted to hear what the chocolate king’s lawyers wanted to say. “Open,” he said, triggering the icon.
The face of a very dark black man appeared. Triple vertical scars on his cheeks proclaimed him African with strong tribal affiliations. A remarkably relaxed intensity suggested that he was accustomed to command.
“Welcome to my home,” he said. “I am Abdul Kikaya the Second, President for Life of the Republic of Kikaya. I have a proposition I would like to present face-to-face. If you are amenable to travel, my shuttle will arrive for you at noon, your time. In exchange for traveling here, and merely hearing me out, I promise you ten thousand dollars, against a much larger possibility. Then, if you are not interested, my shuttle will take you anywhere your passport will allow. If you accept, I promise you an adventure unlike any other, one you are uniquely equipped to enjoy. Please respond, but the shuttle will be there, on the roof of your hotel, at twelve noon your time. I will await you… or your answer. Thank you.”
Well I’ll be damned, Scotty thought, and smiled as he took a sip. One door closes, another opens.
Maybe his career hadn’t bled out quite just yet. He looked at the time again: 4:15 A.M. Just time for a good nap, and packing. And then, what the hell? Maybe a little trip.
Just maybe the trip of a lifetime.
5
Vegas Odds
An anemic sun hung low on the horizon, casting baleful shadows across a glittering field of bloodstained ice. The plain was littered with the honored dead, their sprawled corpses mangled into arcane siguls, redolent of valor, and skill, and death. Thousands lay split-skulled, their brains cooling and drying beneath a pale, cool sun. A few dozen of their stronger, more fortunate companions battled on, armor bent and bloodied, swords notched and gore-crusted.
From time to time the warriors paused, wiping sweaty arms against their helms, leaning on their swords like exhausted amputees on bloody crutches, gasping and glowering at their opponents before they hoisted swords and began the slaughter anew. Action swirled around an oversized human shape: Loki, writhing in the grip of a snake thrice his size.
The tableau shifted: The darkening sky bled red, then split. Clouds parted as a flock of winged wolves appeared. At first they appeared as faint specks against the pitiless clouds. Now they resolved into sharper focus.
A brassy wail drowned out the ring of metal on metal, and the moans of the wounded and dying. Combatants raised their weary eyes to the heavens, and laid down their swords, stretching their arms up as if calling to the beautiful Valkyries whose crimson or golden hair flagged out in the wind, placid faces surveying the carnage with infinite compassion and calm.
The wind seemed to shape itself into a controlled whistle. A cynical ear might have suggested that it sounded much like Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” Played through a kazoo.
Now even the dead rose from their places, and held their arms up to the sky. The Norse angels plucked up first one, and then another… and carried them off to the skies. A parade of Valkyries carried off more and more of the dead and dying. Each survivor was spirited away, along with about half of the dead. In less than two minutes, it was over.
The winged wolves wheeled and returned to the heavens. Clouds roiled as the sky closed. The remaining corpses moaned and cursed in a manner unbefitting the dead.
“Shit! I never get chosen-”
Lights snapped on and the frozen plain, the cold mountains and the bleak sky all disappeared, leaving behind eight frustrated people in a domed room fifty meters in diameter, just large enough for three times that number to swing padded swords without thumping one another.
Amid a chorus of disappointed curses, they unbuckled their light armor. The losers trudged off the combat stage toward the dressing rooms and showers, and, thought a thoroughly bored Wayne Gibson, probably the slot machines and gambling pits, to drown their disappointment in more disappointment.
“That’s a wrap,” he said to his one-woman crew. Buffy Childress applauded ritually, as if it had truly been a job well done.
Eighteen months past he would have agreed with Buffy. Two years ago he had landed this job at the Fantasy Park Escalade, a tenth-rate Dream Park rip-off a half mile off the Vegas strip. Three times daily he coordinated the Escalade’s big games, the motifs generally rotated on a monthly basis. This month was The Ragnarok Experience ™. Fifty minutes ago, twenty bright-eyed players had entered the arena. Judging by the body language, adrenaline and exertion had toasted them all.
The side door opened and the winners, who had been quietly asked to leave the stage-only a fool argues with a Valkyrie-emerged. One of the survivors was a woman most would have thought too skinny these days, but Wayne liked just fine. He had recognized her superior coordination and conditioning the instant she had stepped onto the platform. There was something familiar about her, but she was using an assumed gaming name, wearing a mask, and had declined to use a gaming profile. So… whatever happened here wouldn’t affect her
IFGS points (not that she could pick up many from a place like the Escalade). She was just enjoying a little anonymous slaughtering of her inferiors. Not especially admirable, but he’d done as much himself, in bad moods on bad days.
“What now?” Childress said. She had the body of a showgirl and the bored manner of a blackjack dealer on a midnight shift. Just Wayne and Buffy were needed to run the game. The Escalade’s management weren’t the kind to spend pinchable pennies.
“Now, we take a break, and do it all over again in two hours.”
She nodded and began her standard checklist of the computer systems while Wayne stripped himself out of the control suit and his shell-shaped chair.
“Time to make an appearance,” he muttered. He walked the narrow corridor to the door of the combat stage. He fixed a smile to his face and opened the door, holding his hands high.
“Welcome!” Wayne said, forcing cheer through his waxy smile. “And congratulations to those stalwarts who have survived, and been chosen to receive the Escalade medal of honor!”
The top 50 percent of the players applauded, commending themselves more than him. They were tired and battered to a pleasant soreness and not one iota more. Armor absorbed 90 percent of the impact of the padded swords. Only a hemophiliac with glass bones would sustain any real damage.
The Ragnarok Experience ™ was actually a pretty sweet deal for the guests. Half of them “won” on any given game, thereby accruing points to play more sophisticated contests elsewhere. Some of them even went on to play low-level IFGS games, but he imagined most were satisfied with the illusion that they were real rootin’ tootin’ gamers. They would return to their mundane lives, and remember the time they strapped on armor and wailed the crap out of a Tuskegee stockbroker for fifty minutes without garnering either a coronary or a criminal record.
But he kept those thoughts to himself, smiling and nodding and bowing…
And noticing that one woman in the back, the one with the killer body, was clapping without letting her palms touch. Pure symbol. Her half-face mask shadowed a sardonic smile.
He completed the rest of his pitch encouraging them to come back any time, and every time, and compete for more points and prizes, and to go out and spend the rest of their vacation money at the gaming tables.
After a few weary claps, they trudged back to their changing cubicles.
But the mystery woman walked up to him and said with perfect diction, “Good to see you haven’t altogether abandoned bullshit.”
If she had hit him in the chest with a Mitsubishi shocksword, it couldn’t have been a bigger jolt.
“Angelique,” he said, struggling to find something clever to say. “Angelique Chan. As always, your consonants are remarkable. Since when do you play with the kindergarten?”
“I wanted to find out how much of your talent remains unsquandered,” she said bluntly. “It’s been a long time.”
Was that a reference to their prior relationship, or his current level of skill? There was something lurking behind her words, and he just couldn’t imagine what it was. One dark, hot spark of hope flared for a moment, and Wayne tamped it down. Hope killed.
Angelique was five foot ten, just one inch shorter than Wayne, and taller in her heels. She was dressed as Hela, the death goddess from Marvel Comics: black shadings and a spiky headdress. She was leaner than a Valkyrie, a meld of Chinese and Filipina blood that promised both sensuality and fierce intelligence, and delivered on the promise.
No good could come of those memories, and he shut them down. He said, “So… you’ve seen.”
“Your subroutines?”
“Yeah. The hotel bought some standard games, but I get to tweak and then I get to operate.”
“Not bad, really. You need to tighten up the automated response loops, but really I have no major complaints.” She cut her eyes sideways at him. She was playing a game. Angelique was always playing a game. “Time for a bite?”
He managed a grin. “Schmoozing the customers is part of the job. The Escalade has a great buffet.”
“We can do better than that,” she said, twinkling at him. “Give me ten to get showered, and meet me at the eastern slots.”
“There is nothing like a dame, nothing in the world…”
The naval-white clad waiters and menus sang in unison. The walls exploded in a riot of tropical color, the ceilings opened up into a Busby Berkeley fantasy of clockwork dancers… the White Way restaurant had everything, Wayne figured, with the possible exception of memorable cuisine.
But at the moment, even the finest food would have done little for his numbed tongue. Wayne sat on his side of the table, nibbling at a five-bean salad, watching Angelique wolf down a massive chef salad, wondering where she tucked it all. Her body should have filled out until she resembled one of the Fit/Fat models parading their chubby perfection in every vidzine and holo ad. He wondered faintly if his rather retro taste in slender females was just a rebellious nature prolonged beyond adolescence.
“So,” she said between bites. “What do you know about me?”
“You mean since you dumped me?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “Since then.”
“I’ve followed your career,” he admitted. “Hard not to. You’re probably the most successful female gamer in the world. I saw that ceremony where Acacia Garcia passed the baton. She still looks pretty good, actually.”
“Better in person,” she said. “I’m guessing pineal transplant, but who knows?”
“Anyway, you play at the highest levels, and win more than you lose. The others are chasing you, but can’t catch up. I think you’re about eight thousand points above your closest competitor.”
“I’m impressed,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d keep such close tabs.”
“You’re hard to forget.” He’d actually researched that last bit while she was showering, but why tell her? He rolled the next question around in his head, wondering if he’d really ask it. “All right, we’ve established that I know what you’ve been up to. So what do you know about me?”
“I know you LARP around town,” she said. Live-Action Role-Playing. “You run some games-I really wouldn’t call it a Game Master role, would you?”
Those slanted green eyes dared him to contradict her. He couldn’t find the moxie to do it, and finally had to grin. “It’s a living.”
“Not a really good one,” she said. “I did a credit check. You’ve got markers all over town, Wayne, and some of them are in unfriendly hands. A little gambling problem?”
He winced. Anyone working for the casinos or hotels was vulnerable to credit checking, exposing patterns of… er… entertainment investment? Spontaneous analysis of cumulative distribution functions? Oh, what the hell: call it gambling. He wanted to curse at her for invading his privacy.
But reconsidered. Why would she look into his financial affairs? This was sounding less and less like idle curiosity, more and more like a serious inquiry of some kind. Angelique Chan was dangling bait there, but where was the hook? Was she testing his temper? Why did she want to know how he behaved under pressure?
You know why.
“So you’ve been helping bookies adjust odds on LARP action. And some of that gambling paid off. I know that two years ago you won a weeklong orbital vacation. How was that?”
As she nursed a forkful of ham and greens, there seemed something studiedly neutral, calm, about the way she asked that question. Calm enough to set off alarm bells.
“It was fun,” he said, more mystified than ever. “I took Buffy Childress, one of my coworkers. We had the honeymoon suite. You should try it.” There-another little dig. Was this a come-on? And if she was interested, would the Buffy story get under her skin a bit?
Rather than becoming upset, her lips curled in a smile. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “My friend didn’t have such a great time. Developed inner-ear problems. If he hadn’t come back down he would have upchucked his belly button.”
“There
are drugs for that.”
“Everyone has a special talent. Eddie’s seems to be resisting massive doses of antiemetics. I got a little tired of breathing barf.”
Two waiters warbled arias from some musical play that Wayne couldn’t name.
“-land of the Free and the Brave
We caught the Second Wave
After two hundred years of sweat and toil
We told the Arabs to drink their oil-”
Hmm. Probably something about the Second Canadian War. Their voices were actually quite good. Talent isn’t enough, he reminded himself. You need luck, too.
For a moment, he forgot himself, and his problems, and concentrated on the lovely, slender black-haired woman before him. He even began to wonder if she simply needed a friend to talk to, perhaps a broad perspective from someone who wasn’t in the game anymore. Could he handle that? Could he remember that sometimes, you just gave because it was needed, not because of what you might or might not get in return?
He sighed. All right. Let’s just do this right. If this is the last time you ever see her, how do you want her to remember this conversation? That you were a good guy, in her moment of need, and agile of mind. Try that one.
“You seem stressed,” he said.
Her smile was wan. “And you’re probably wondering why, and what this is all about.”
“Well, you’ve gone to some trouble.”
She put another forkful in her mouth, chewed thoughtfully, and then spoke. “Why am I stressed? I’ve won my way into the greatest game of my life, and there’s a part of me that doesn’t want it.”
“That does not sound like the girl I knew,” Wayne said.
“I think that people are kind of like trees,” she said. “Cut down a tree, and you see all these rings, like the younger tree is still in there, just covered up with new bark. We’re like that, Wayne. That girl is still there, but there’s been a lot of mileage along the way. It’s hard to reach her sometime.”