by Larry Niven
"What's that?" Millicent asked.
"If we can't afford to have our system stolen, Bishop can't afford to fail. At least six hundred thousand dollars has been invested and that was just the bait to bring in Acacia and cloud the issue. How much more to get the information for Sharon? And his equipment? Call it at least a million dollars. Remember as far as Bishop's primaries are concerned, his mission fails if we even discover the information is stolen. If we can change the system, or switch the system, or prevent any highsecurity data from being stored at MIMIC, Ecuador's stolen goods become worthless. There has to be enormous pressure on him-he was willing…"
Griffin faltered for the first time, and he lowered his voice. "He might have killed Sharon to protect the secret. If he doesn't deliver the goods within a reasonable time, it could cost him his life."
For the first time, some of the tension left Harmony's face. "Bishop's as nervous as we are? Poor bastard."
"He's got to have a backup plan. More than one way to get the information out of the building." Alex called up the rotating model of MIMIC. "Picture information recorded on a disk as big as a quarter but thin as plastic wrap. Push it on a flat surface with your thumb, it sticks. Now picture a handful of quarters-"
Tony said, "Why not a hundred?"
"No. If we found one, we'd search. Find two, we might bite the bullet and change the whole system. He can't afford that. He wouldn't hide more than a dozen, maybe, and he's been careful where he put them."
"Well, that's not so bloody bad. What we need to do is eliminate most of his choices, then lead him to the one we want."
"Tony, we don't have one."
"I know, I know. Jesus, I'm tired. Well, we'll search. Meanwhile, try this…"
Smiling security personnel met the Gamers as they left MIMIC. El and Doris Whitman met them, congratulating each Gamer in turn.
"Your attention, please," El said.
They were half-looped from the free-flowing champagne, but ready to get back to the hotels, to husbands and wives and lovers and friends, to hot baths and real beds.
"You probably noticed that we were using some new technology during California Voodoo." Doris waited for the inevitable nods and murmurs of appreciation. "We were lucky enough to get permission from Cowles to use some of these techniques, on the condition that no raw recordings be made. Some of the illusion technology hasn't been patented yet. So as per section six subparagraph twelve of your contracts, we're exercising our options to confiscate all recording apparatus. They will be erased and returned to you."
"Sorry about this," El said, "but it's the only way we can protect ourselves. You will all receive free recordings of any Game perspective you choose, of course."
There were a few grumbles, and then Bishop shrugged. "What the hell," he said. "Only a Game, right?"
Everybody laughed. "Tell that to my hamstrings," Tammi said.
And some made speeches or threw tantrums, but every Gamer did hand over his equipment, and then passed through a doorway lined with scanning apparatus.
All weapons, costumes, and Gaming computers were thoroughly scanned. Nobody and nothing left MIMIC without going through the procedure.
The entire process took over an hour for the Gamers. In the black wee hours they boarded a ground shuttle and returned to their Dream Park hotels via the same track that had fired them into a talus slope a little more than forty hours earlier.
Alex caught six good hours of sleep in his own bed. It wasn't nearly enough… but he was almost smiling as he answered the doorbell.
Tony looked grouchy but clear-headed. "Come on in," Alex said.
Dawn light glared through the bay-window wall. Tony stood closer than Alex would have, looking down, sipping coffee.
"Tony, don't you have an acrophobia?"
"Not when I'm inside. I'm just picturing it the way it must have looked to Clavell when his rope broke." He turned back. "So we've locked Bishop out. Right?"
"He didn't leave MIMIC with anything," Alex said. "If he planted something on another Gamer, it didn't leave either. We can't seal MIMIC off forever, but a month will screw him just fine. What's next?"
"Acacia?"
"She should have let Bishop cut her in half. Panthesilea would have been killed out, not dead-dead!"
"She must have thought Bishop wanted to kill her." Tony rubbed his jaw. "How's she taking it?"
"Like a death in the family. Tony, I'm not going to hold her hand. Sharon-"
"She didn't know, Griff." Tony sat. He gulped coffee. "Where were we?"
"Say a dozen disks. Say we've blocked him from eleven. Where's the other? Why does he think he can get it?"
Tony nodded. "Play a game with me. What's outside of MIMIC that we think is inside?"
"We should be asking Captain Cipher!"
"Can't. Sewer system?"
"Ask Mgui-Smythe. It probably recycles."
"The water from the flooded levels "
"That was a good thought," Griffin said. "He only had to drop one of the disks. How would he find it, though?"
"Chango only knows. We're guarding that patch of desert. Griff, he didn't go back to the roof, and he could have. There were talismans, one in the pool and one in the cornfields. It would have been legit."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Maybe he never had a transmitter at all. Just the bug and a dozen record disks, of which I would dearly love to find at least one as a sanity check."
"We'll search. We'll keep him out of MIMIC. I don't know what else to do except go toddling back to Dream Park like some cyborg turtle."
The coffee must be helping. Somewhere in Tony's muddled mind, two things connected. "Griff? There's something more we might try…"
40
The Snake Is Alive
Friday, July 22, 2059 — 11:27 P.M.
MIMIC was almost deserted. Voluntarily, all of the employees had accepted scans. Only security men and women moved in and out, and they subjected themselves to repeated inspections. A good pickpocket can place something on a person as well as take it off. Even an innocent employee can be used as a mule.
The building was searched for hours, but without real hope: in MIMIC's vastness, an elephant could have evaded a search for days.
"We can't keep this up forever," Alex said to Mgui-Smythe. "Eventually, the work crews are going to have to come back."
"So what do you want me to do?" the little engineer said softly.
"The Snake is alive," Griffin said. "You just found unexpected earthquake damage. Nobody comes in the building until we have a full reappraisal."
Mgui-Smythe nodded. "Could take weeks."
"Six weeks," Alex said. "Give me six weeks. By that time, one way or the other, it will be over."
Acacia had stopped crying by the time the shuttle reached Dream Park. During the entire trip she had remained on her side of the car, not watching anyone, enmeshed in her own thoughts.
Bishop had kept to himself as well, but as they began to file out, he gathered up his gear and crossed to her.
"Well," he said quietly, fiercely. "You managed to screw yourself out of a million dollars. I hope it was worth it."
Then he turned and left the car.
She felt like a stranger. Security had kept her Virtual projection equipment, her pack, her weapons most of her costume. It was as if she had left the corpse of Panthesilea to be buried at Dream Park. How appropriate.
Panthesilea, dead. Years of growing and fighting, gathering power and experience, all nothing. Dead. She would have to start all over again, from the bottom.
Oh, God. She didn't know if she could do that again.
"Excuse me," a voice in front of her said. "I was wondering if you need a lift."
Acacia looked up and for the first time in eight years faced Tony McWhirter. She saw his tentative smile slip and guessed how she must look.
"A lift," she said. "Yes. Definitely."
Griffin slept for twelve hours, then awakened to the buzz of the telephone.
He awakened instantly, relieved to find himself in his modular apartment, returned to CMC once again.
Moshe Osterreich, chief of the Yucca Valley Sheriff's Department, was on the line. "Sorry, Griff. The hookers who saw the man enter the motel identified the car. It was stolen. No prints, no traces, no damage either. Owner never even knew it was gone. Ladies can say it was a tall, slender person, but no description beyond that. Not race or even sex. I'm sorry."
"So am I," Alex said, and punched off the line, and went back to sleep.
In parties throughout Dream Park's peripheral hotels, music, laughter, and debates raged far into the night. Bishop made a few low-key appearances, then slunk back to his room. No eyebrows rose, and few tongues wagged. With so few previous defeats on record, how could his present behavior be judged? Depression and embarrassment seemed as likely as tantrum or bemused resignation.
He packed his bags and checked out. He took the shuttle to Los Angeles, and there changed cars to the Denver line. Two more shifts took him to his condo in Montreal.
Once there, he carefully scanned his luggage and his personal clothing for bugs, and found nothing. Griffin was either as ineffectual as he seemed, or very good indeed and so Bishop discarded luggage and clothing and bought all new.
He walked from the mall to a nearby office building. On the second door was a lawyer named Trapman, who had accepted Bishop's cash retainer a month before. Trapman admitted Bishop to a soundproofed room with a com screen. Bishop spoke a telephone number that connected to a number in Ecuador via satellite.
"It was a good Game," he said when the line was eventually picked up. No face appeared on the screen. "Looking forward to playing again. Maybe next year."
Year meant week.
"Those of us who follow your exploits," a heavy voice said, "are disappointed that it will take so long. There is great interest, Mister Bishop, which every day grows greater."
"Next year," he said. He hung up.
He templed his hands together and clapped them over his mouth. The operation could wait another week, damn it. But that was his timetable, not theirs. For the sake of this very special operation, close to two million dollars of their money had been invested.
He had succeeded, but the information on ScanNet was not in hand. There were multiple copies of it. There was no way that Dream Park could find them all, or shield them all.
It was a waiting game.
Now, as at no time during California Voodoo, Bishop felt the cold tight feeling at the back of his neck, at the pit of his stomach.
He had to control himself. Control the vision, and the dreams that he knew would come. Now was not the time to crack. Not now, when he was so close to winning that he could scream.
It was the size of a quarter, made of stiff plastic, almost transparent. A hologram. Mgui-Smythe held it up in two fingertips. "You'll never guess where we found this."
Tony walked around the image. "Oh, Lord, I'm sane. It's not just mob paranoia," he said. "Where?"
Alex Griffin's spectral head popped up next to the engineer's. "Ah. Very good, Mgui-Smythe."
"Where?"
"We found it when we were taking the nuke plant apart. It was in the radioactive tunnel, near the far end."
"He planted one then?" Tony found that awesome. "He does have nerve. Griff, we want a number of people to look that over."
The engineer rang off. Tony stayed on.
"So it's all real," Alex said. "But we still don't have anything actionable. Legally."
"Legally. But give me that disk for a while. Trust me, I'm a Game Master."
Even Norman Vail hadn't suggested taking Bishop to court, and under the civilized veneer, Vail was the most vindictive bastard it had ever been Griffin's pleasure to meet.
Even this last, desperate gambit had been Vail's idea. It had taken every bit of convincing, and Tony McWhirter and the entire tech team at Cowles were working on it.
He hoped Vail was right. Alex Griffin was out of ideas.
41
A Visit
Monday, August 29, 2059
Alex Griffln usually left CMC at seven in the morning. It was as much of a pattern for him as anything in his life. CMC was an insular community, each of the units nestled into its spread of trees and shrubbery with minimal line-of-sight interference from the other units.
So no one saw the man who was a hundred yards away from Griffin's door that morning, a slender figure in green and brown camouflage cloth. When he shifted position, crawling against a patch of white rocks, the clothing changed color. He didn't approach the apartment, just watched it. He had scanned it, thoroughly, and didn't like what he saw.
The electronic burglar-proofing was dazzling. Griffin seemed to be a gadget freak. It made sense for the head of Dream Park security to be a paranoid, but this was absurd. There was no way a fly could get past the cameras and microphones and sensors without triggering something.
He wondered if Griffin was frightened. He'd been living in his apartment even while it crawled home to CMC, and he hadn't left it since.
What the hell is wrong with you, Griffin?
Nigel was breathing too hard, although there had been no physical exertion. He took a minute to calm his breathing. This was a time to be calm. And precise. MIMIC was unapproachable, true. His principals were screaming at him. Probably looking for him. He would have to go to them, data in hand, or…
Once again, his breathing annoyed him. He was very proud that he didn't think about the dead woman anymore. Never thought about her eyes, or the single thread of bright red…
The slender man lay panting in the shadows, forcing his mind back on track. A frontal assault would surely fail. There was a surfeit of hardware. A trap could be brewing.
But perhaps the human factor could be engaged. Yes. It had worked before. A pity he'd lost Acacia.
Tuesday, August 30
Alex Griffin rarely left the grounds owned by Dream Park-too rarely, it sometimes seemed to his friends. It meant that his contacts were limited outside of Cowles and Gaming.
So when a stunning blond free-lance writer entered his office, it was something of an event.
She stopped at his secretary's desk, his secretary being an attractive black woman with infectious energy. The plate on her desk said Millicent Summers.
"Hello," the blonde said. "I'm Penny Addington. I have an appointment with Alex Griffin?"
She was in Alex's office for an hour, and the two of them left later for lunch, by now chatting like old friends. She touched Alex's arm proprietarily, and Millicent hated her. By walk and dress and tone of voice she broadcasted that she was a bundle of sexual tension held under inadequate restraint. A man looking into those sharp blue eyes must feel he was peeking into a blast furnace.
He would come back cheerful, relaxed. Millicent thought she was braced for that.
Alex returned to the office two hours later, whistling merrily. "How's my favorite temp secretary?"
Millicent glared. "You're late."
"Any sacrifice for Dream Park."
"I'll just bet."
"You wound me. I was all business. I was too stupid to take hints. And oh, Millie, was I glad to see her." He smacked his palms together in delight. "Bishop doesn't have it! And time must be running out fast."
"Excuse me for asking, but what if she's really a vidzine editor? What if she likes muscles without brains?"
"Then the two of you could barhop together. Hahaha… Seriously, you should have seen her. Her hints got broad enough to make me blush. We made a date eight nights from now. She wanted sooner."
"You animal."
"God, if I wasn't me, I'd wish I were. Give Tony her address. I want all her personal records razed."
Millicent stood and moved next to him. When she spoke, her voice held no trace of amusement. "Why don't you just disable a couple of the alarms, Alex. Wouldn't it be… safer?"
"He doesn't like safety, or he wouldn't have sent that woman to get at me. He thought he could
take on all of Dream Park, and he just can't do that. I want a chance at him, Millicent. And I'm going to get it."
Millicent started to speak, but then swallowed the words. There was more to this than Alex could ever say directly.
There was Sharon Crayne.
When it came to that little piece of unfinished business,and shadowy Ecuadorians mattered not a damn. In that realm, all that mattered was a final, terrible question which Alex Griffin needed to ask of a man named Nigel Bishop.
Wednesday, August 31
At three in the morning, Alex Griffin awoke from a sound sleep. A holographic window had opened in the air next to his bed. Even before his eye focused, he knew who it would be.
"Um-hmm." He rose, staring at his hands as he swung his feet to the floor.
He pulled on his underpants, and as an afterthought, a supporter with a plastic groin protector, as well. And a set of sweatpants, curling them up over the long, hard muscles of his thighs, to just under his flat, ridged belly.
He pulled a sweatshirt over his head and down his arms, and finally all the way down to his waist.
He gargled a mouthful of water, and spit it out.
Got to be presentable, he thought dourly.
His body creaked. He turned on lights and punched up the coffee maker. He disabled the alarms and opened the front door.
"Good morning," Nigel Bishop said flatly. "I thought that we should… talk."
"Talk?" Alex asked. "What do we have to talk about?"
Bishop walked through the open door, eyes moving constantly, evaluating without comment.
"Perhaps about Acacia. She's an interesting subject." He studied the furniture, the numbered prints, and finally an eighteenth-century ceramic statuette Griffin had acquired in Kyoto. It was a samurai, sword held in baseball-bat position, the kendo attitude known as basso, or eighth phase.
"It's a forgery," Bishop said helpfully. "I hope you didn't pay much for it."
"I don't need an art appraiser. What do you want here?" Alex was fully awake now. There was a hot, tight feeling in the pit of his stomach. And an unholy satisfaction in having lured Bishop into his lair.