by Larry Niven
“I tell you what. Just tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can help. And if I can, I will.” Even though she was the one who had come to him, he could see that she had a hard time trusting or believing. “You’re not sure that you want the gig you’ve nailed. Why? Isn’t it everything you’ve been working for?”
Her smile was a bit haggard. “Oh, yeah. And one thing I hadn’t counted on. The Game Master.”
Her voice clearly implied the capital letters, and in his experience, that could only mean one thing. “Xavier?”
She nodded. “He’ll grind my bones to make his bread.”
“I thought it was only giants that did that.”
“Close enough.”
And dammit, she was right. So… the rest of the situation was starting to drop into place. It was the Moon game, the game people had been dreaming of since the first lunar tourist touched down in ’37.
That, and Xavier. Brilliant, reclusive. Sometimes wealthy, sometimes dead broke. A gambler, the kind of high roller the casino sent drop-jets to fetch. He’d pretty much created modern LARP gaming theory, the entire mathematical basis for the interactions of Lore Masters and Game Masters, formalizing the entire culture.
Live-Action Role-Playing took root in the 1970s, when a subculture of mad folk created an organization called the International Fantasy Gaming Society, based on a series of popular novels. The IFGS governed the interactions of “gamers” and “Lore Masters” as they posed each other intellectual puzzles and physical challenges in the midst of one fantasy game or other.
But in 2060 or so, Xavier, then a brilliant teenager who had been gaming since the age of eight, published the first formal gaming theory papers (“LARP Simulation and the Syntax of Combative Improvisation”), and modern gaming was born.
LARPing, which first leapt to world prominence when industrialist Arthur Cowles opened his Dream Park in 2020, was no longer exclusively a Dream Park experience. Still, the parks were considered the supreme expressions of the art, providing mental and physical challenges of the highest order.
Games were still competitions between Lore Masters who were players within the games, and Game Masters who designed and controlled the events from afar, deciding life and death with godlike power. In addition to these competitions, there were also power struggles between different teams within the games themselves.
Xavier, Angelique and Wayne had met at UCLA, and bonded over their love of gaming. Xavier had been six years their senior, a graduate student when Angelique and Wayne were mere freshmen. He was already an expert mime with ten years of ballet on his resume. But the campus IFGS club was a great leveler. Game points were redeemable in real-world status.
And the three of them, separately or together, were brilliant.
Wayne and Xavier had competed for Angelique. She’d been a tall, raven-haired tomboy in jeans and T-shirts, her huge dark eyes perpetually cast downward as if no one had ever told her she was beautiful. Wayne and Xavier had zoned in on her instantly, competing as they had at everything else. They’d suspected that nestled beneath her ice slept blazing coals. Wayne had been first to fan them into flame.
That was damned near the only contest with Xavier Wayne had ever won, and Xavier had never forgiven either of them. While still perfectly friendly on the surface, beneath that exterior the genius seethed with resentment. And as time went on, more and more often it seemed Xavier found reasons to play against, rather than with them.
And while it wasn’t easy for a Game Master to single out specific players for ire, Xavier knew their psychology, game play and character preferences. At times it seemed the games had become more complex and lethal for them, but not for others. Some of the fun had gone out of the play, and if it hadn’t been for their competitive natures, Wayne and Angelique might have dropped out altogether.
And then… scandal. Xavier left UCLA under a cloud of suspicion, accused of plagiarizing part of his doctoral dissertation from an obscure twentieth-century Bulgarian mathematician. Following this event, he voluntarily submitted himself to an institution for “rest” several times. His relationship with his Nobel Laureate father became painfully strained.
And that was the story as he knew it to this point. Because Xavier had been a graduate student, actually teaching some of Angelique’s and Wayne’s classes, there had always been a bit of the student-teacher dynamic about them. At this point, Xavier was… what… forty? While Wayne was thirty-five, and Angelique thirty-four. And that gave Xavier a psychological edge that might prove damned hard to beat.
In the backs of their minds, they might always see him as the teacher.
Wayne understood the problem now. Moon Maze was the game of a lifetime. Xavier was the Game Master. Xavier frightened Angelique.
The public disgrace of losing the Tsatsouline Math Fellowship, the accusations of intellectual theft, had nearly broken the man. But… Wayne remembered the last time he had seen Xavier. His old frenemy had radiated pure hate. You did this, damn you. I don’t know how… I swear to God, I’ll get you…
Wayne still felt chills when he thought about that last meeting. He wasn’t certain he’d ever seen hatred twist a man’s face like that. Deep inside, he’d suspected that Xavier was just posturing for Angelique. That under pressure, Xavier had actually plagarized data, and was blaming anyone, everyone for his problem except himself.
From Wayne’s point of view, Xavier had been gaming when he should have been working on his papers. The man had simply run out of time and tried to cut corners…
He didn’t know for certain, and doubted he ever would. He’d never encountered Xavier again. A year before, Xavier had come to Vegas for a high-stakes poker tournament, and Wayne had watched him walk the red carpet. For a fraction of a second Wayne had considered catching Xavier’s eye. Ultimately, nerve had failed.
A question niggled at the back of his mind, and Wayne sensed that on one level, he already knew the answer. “So… Angelique, you aren’t here to talk about old times. And you don’t need my advice. It’s been a long time since I could tell myself I belonged in your league. You’ve been in the game continuously while I’ve been out making a living. You’re current on things I’d have to research. What do you need?”
Now, for the first time, she seemed unable to meet his eyes. “I want you to be my partner,” she said.
“In… what?” he couldn’t quite believe his ears, even though one part of him had anticipated just such an invitation.
“Eddie can’t do the thing. If he can’t control his nausea, he can’t do the trip. You could. I want you for my partner.”
He pushed back, away from Angelique, squinting, head suddenly pounding with a nascent headache. Gaming again, real gaming, after all these years? And with Angelique Chan?
He had fallen out of formal gaming when his win percentage was circling the drain, and he was offered a job running games for paunchy tourists. Nothing wrong with a little income security, Wayne thought. A health plan. Retirement.
Those voices in his head belonged to his smallest, most fearful aspects. He remembered the way his friends had looked when he’d made the choice. His relationship with Angelique was long over. He’d wondered: If she hadn’t existed, wasn’t still a gaming force to be reckoned with, wouldn’t he have left the field long ago?
And now… the carousel had swung around again. Even worse-or better, depending on how you looked at it-it was the Big Game. The biggest game ever. The first lunar game. No matter what happened, no matter who won, everyone involved was headed for the record books.
But… why him? “Does he still blame me?”
Angelique leaned across the table, her fingers folded. “What do you think? He’s never forgiven you for ratting on him.”
His heartbeat accelerated. “I didn’t!” Even to Wayne, the protestation of innocence felt a bit too automatic.
Angelique smiled. It was a nasty smile.
“Riiight,” she said. “And he never forgave me for sleeping with you. I sup
pose that never happened, either?”
The discomfort vanished, replaced by another, equally powerful sensation. “Touch makes better memories than sight. How about a little reminder?”
“Hah,” she replied, but her smile was warm. So. She remembered their previous relationship with a certain fondness, just as he had. “Business. Only. ”
“Then I take it my evenings are my own?”
Her lips remained pursed into the same smile, but a tiny furrow had appeared between her eyebrows. Still a bit of possessiveness there? “I need your attention on work.”
This time, he grinned right back to her. “Stress relief is part of the package, dear heart.”
They both knew exactly what he was talking about. Gaming was a highly intense experience… emotionally, intellectually and physically. And the evenings were often filled with intense stress relief. Gaming relationships were as intense as those in Olympic villages. Yum.
“I’ll trust your professionalism,” she said.
“Why me?” he asked. “This isn’t just a game to you, and you’re playing OTG.”
That was another gaming term. “Playing Off the Grid” meant using tactics and strategies designed to upset or unbalance the other players, rather than to concentrate on the game itself.
Just like poker: Play the player, not the cards.
“I need the truth,” he said, “or I can’t even think about this.”
She drummed her fingers against the table. She’d known this moment would come, and probably wondered exactly how he would react when it did.
“Six years ago,” she said. “It was the Tesseract game. Xavier was the Game Master, but I’d thought that enough time had gone by that maybe bygones were bygones.”
“And they weren’t.”
She shook her head. “No. They weren’t. He humiliated me publicly, made me look like an idiot. He’s good enough to do that, to entertain himself privately and still function professionally.”
“What was your estimation of his skill?”
“Aren’t you listening?” Irritation was creeping into her voice. “I was at the top of my game, and he tore me to pieces.”
He thought about that for a minute. “So you don’t want me for my gaming experience.”
A short shake of the head.
“But for the fact that he hates me.”
A brief nod. She wanted Wayne Gibson because Xavier hated him, not in spite of it. Because he’d taken the woman that both of them loved. Dear God-she wanted to rattle Xavier’s cage. He’d respond by trying to destroy them both. The other gamers would take advantage of his distraction, and leap ahead. His professional pride would force him to spread his attention thin. They could predict some of his responses, and in those predictions might lie a momentary, fractional advantage…
She was playing a desperate, chancy game. But it just might pay off.
“This is either a brilliant move,” she said, reading his thoughts, “or the biggest mistake of my life. If you’re not an asset, you’ll be a lightning rod. So tell me: Want to find out which it is?”
After all these years, a path back into triple-A gaming? A chance to undo some of the mistakes that he had made? And dear God-a chance to go head-to-head with Xavier, with Angelique at his side? In front of the biggest audience in history?
“Asset,” he muttered. “Definitely asset.”
She nodded. They were back on the same page again. “And speaking of asses, mine is off limits. This is strictly business. Can you handle that?”
“I’m tougher than I look,” he said.
“You’d better be. Do we have a deal?”
“I’ll need more information. Wheres and whens. I’ve got a job. Not much in terms of ties, but…” His mind was wheeling. His bosses would bend over backward to give him this opportunity. For their resident Game Master to participate in a major IFGS event would give the Escalade a credibility it sorely needed, and could translate into a major draw. And given that, whether he won or lost, he’d be able to renegotiate his contract.
So he was in and he knew it, and she knew it. Damn her, Angelique had known that even before she’d ever sat down with him.
“How much time do I have to think about it?” he asked.
She seemed a little startled. Surely, she had expected him to jump at the chance and he could understand why.
She gave him until noon the next day to decide.
Midnight was hours gone, but Vegas never sleeps. Walking the streets, you passed from one casino zone into another. Seen from a distance of miles, the desert city was a complex of spires and theme attractions designed to convince Dad to leave his wedding ring on the dresser, and Mama into emptying the college fund. But on street level, only one casino existed at a time. Walk from one zone to another and each business manipulated the visual fields so that their casino, their restaurant, seemed to be the only one. Each establishment was a self-contained world, complete with food, rest, money and sex. Everything that a tourist needed to survive.
One world, multiplying endlessly into many worlds. It was so easy to get lost. Which he had, willingly.
Wayne had come here ten years ago, a minor gaming star, and become fixed in the firmament. He was just another of the has-beens who signed long-term contracts to sing or dance or tell smutty jokes or make tigers disappear on the casino stages.
How had it happened? How had he been caught in a life that brought him so little satisfaction, playing a game that he had once mastered, that had then proceeded to master him?
The truth was simple: He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t engage with the game deeply enough anymore. It was like a line from one of his favorite old movies.
I’ve been to the puppet show. I’ve seen the strings.
Gamers had to believe. Gamers marched arm-in-arm with the faithful.
Didn’t they?
He had passed from the Azteca casino, with its hourly human sacrifices, to the edge of the Da Vinci, with its ornate bridges and flight stunts. Real people in those winged machines, even if the engine designs would have baffled the legendary inventor. He’d heard some of them had actually trained on Luna. No holograms here, except the visual field that transformed the entire world into fifteenth-century Milan.
“Listen to me carefully, for I tell you this from the bottom of my heart,” he said. “Get a life.” Half a dozen passersby didn’t even glance at the apparent madman. He must be talking on a phone. Wayne stepped onto a bench as an ersatz soapbox and continued William Shatner’s classic “Get a life!” speech for the City of Illusions.
He was going to the Moon. He was going with Angelique. He didn’t even have to win to come out ahead. How could any man resist?
There had to be a way to deal with Xavier.
Did Wayne still have the mental agility to play it by ear? Xavier was a monomaniac. Tunnel vision. There would be something he’d overlooked. Go to the Moon, and see.
6
Kikaya
1523, Congo Brazzaville Time, June 23, 2085
The flight from Switzerland to the Republic of Kikaya had taken three hours, most of it with autopilot locked securely into a diplomatic flight grid. While they referred to their time zones differently, the Republic of Kikaya and Switzerland utilized the same time zone, so his body felt no oddness.
The shuttle was first class, the hostess who kept the champagne flowing even more so. The alcohol, in combination with his fatigue, encouraged Scotty to recline his seat and close his eyes for a blessed catnap.
When he regained his senses, his glass had been balanced carefully on the serving table and the pilot had taken control for the landing.
The girl was lovely, dark as eggplant, hair woven into tight rows that exposed a scrubbed scalp. Her epicanthic folds were so pronounced her eyes were almost Asiatic. When she spoke, her accent suggested that her English teachers might have actually been English. “Did you have a pleasant nap, sir?”
“Very,” he said. They were at about three thousand f
eet. Spokes of golden light radiated through the eastern clouds. His body still felt heavy, but his spirits were light. He had been offered work, an opportunity to blot out the memory of the last seventy-two hours.
Excellent.
The shuttle descended through the clouds, over a patchwork of cultivated land and crisscrossing roads. The agricultural lands slowly transformed into residential spirals nestled within urban squares, housing arranged in circular patterns subtly different from comparable European or Asian housing tracts. This was followed by an industrial region. That gave way to another urban sprawl, this one with tighter, more carefully designed spirals and circles, evidence of greater organization and wealth.
Ahead, just touched by the first rays of sunlight, lay Marozi, the capital of Kikaya. The business district, and at the center of it, the royal palace itself.
He’d done a bit of Internet research on the republic before boarding the plane. The country had been carved out of the Republic of the Congo in 2034 by a bloody coup. Kikaya I had been a Congolese general with ties to royalty, the family connections sufficiently impressive to entice allies at home and investors abroad. Seizing power had been the easy part. Crafting the RK into a prosperous and healthy country was another matter. He’d look more deeply into that later, but now, at least he had a basic idea what he was dealing with.
With a barely perceptible shush, the shuttle landed. The hostess smiled. “We are home.”
The grit of fatigue and irritation still grinding under his eyelids, Scotty grabbed his hastily packed overnight bag and followed the lady. If this turned into an actual assignment, he would call the hotel in Geneva and have them send the rest of his luggage, including his equipment. For right now, this was enough.
As he ducked his head and stepped down from the sleek shuttle, he wondered if a band was going to play the local version of “Hail to the Guest,” and was slightly disappointed when it didn’t happen.
There was, however, a spiffy officer whose blue-black skin gleamed brightly as the gold braid on his shoulders. His spine was so erect he might have been smuggling bamboo.