by Tom Clancy
“If we can find out what we need to,” Leif said, “that might just happen.”
Wayland stretched. “All right. Tomorrow morning, then — I’ll meet you in the marketplace. I won’t be moving the cart out of the city until I’m actually ready to leave.”
“Great. Thanks, Wayland.”
Wayland lifted a hand in casual farewell and headed for the door. The young man came out of the back room and let him out into the dark street, then closed the door again.
They stayed long enough to finish their beer, then headed out into the street themselves, and started walking slowly back toward the marketplace. “Pity we couldn’t take care of this tonight,” Megan said.
Leif shrugged. “Never mind. Are you going to be able to log in tomorrow morning, early? That’s when we’ll need to take care of this.”
“Shouldn’t be any problem. Mornings are quiet around my place. It’s evenings that’re the…”
She suddenly fell silent.
“Huh?” Leif said.
“It’s nothing,” she said in a low voice. “Just keep walking.”
“It’s not nothing. What is it?”
“It’s evenings that’re the problem,” Megan went on loudly, looking sideways down an alley as they passed it. “My father can be an incredible nuisance about family nights. It’s him again,” she whispered.
“Oh, well, fathers,” Leif said as they walked. Megan saw that he, too, was trying to look down the alley she had been looking down, without seeming to do so. But he still looked baffled. I guess my night vision must be better than his…. “They’re pains, but you can’t live without them, and you can’t shoot them…Him, who?”
“Gobbo,” she whispered. “Once might be a coincidence…twice might be an accident…but three times is enemy action.”
“Sorry?”
“He’s following us.”
“Are you sure?”
“He has to be. And you know what? He’s been following us since Minsar.”
“It could be paranoia, Megan.”
“It’s not.” She turned suddenly into another alleyway, and pulled Leif in after her. For a moment they both leaned against one of the damp stone walls in the dead silence.
Not quite dead. A scurry of feet, then nothing. Then another scurry, closer.
“Down there,” Leif whispered.
“Maybe he is. I’m not waiting. I don’t like being followed…it makes me want to practice dwarf-chucking.”
“What?”
“Dwarf-chucking. A very old and very incorrect sport. My mother would be shocked to even hear me mention it.” Megan grinned, and looked around them. “Where are we?”
“Between the third and fourth walls.”
“No, I mean which way is east?”
Well ahead of them, leftward against one stone wall, was a patch of moonlight. Leif pointed off to the right.
“Oh, yeah,” Megan said softly, and thought for a moment. Being an incurable map-reader, Megan had had a good look at the game’s stored map of Errint before coming in today. Now she compared the spot where they stood with her memory of the map, and considered for another second or so.
“All right,” she whispered then. “There’s a gate in the wall to your left about sixty yards ahead. It goes through into the next circle. I’m going to leave you. Count thirty seconds and then follow me. Walk down the middle of the street. Don’t stop at the gate. Just keep going.”
“What are you going to do?”
She smiled. And she vanished.
Leif stared. She had not used game-based magic — there was a typical aura, a feel in the air, associated with magic use at close range, which he would have detected. But very quietly, very simply, between one blink and one breath and the next, Megan had stopped being where he had thought she should have been. It was a little unnerving.
One, two, three, he thought, wondering as always whether his seconds were as accurate as he thought they were. Leif listened to the sleeping city, listened hard. Somewhere, up high, a bat made its tiny squee-squee-squee of sonar, possibly targeting bugs attracted to the lights still burning in the windows of the towers of the High House. Nothing else moved.
Scuffle…scurry.
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, Leif thought. Nineteen, twenty…
Out in the open country, there was a brief, distant, astonishing burst of sweet-voiced song. A nightingale. It ran its descant through to its end, almost making Leif forget where he was in his counting. For a moment, the scurrying stopped. Then it started again.
— twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty—
Leif stepped out into the street and began walking calmly down toward the gate. He was not particularly calm. Errint was a city where it was permissible to carry weapons within the walls, so he had a knife. He was good enough with it to make serious trouble for anyone who tried anything, and he had enough general self-defense training to make him feel comfortable in any large real-world city. But this was not any large real-world city. This was Sarxos, and you never knew when someone was going to jump at you out of a dark alley carrying a loaded cockatrice…against which front snap-kicks would do you no good at all.
Leif walked on, resisting the temptation to whistle. It might make you feel better in the dark, but it also pinpointed your location for someone whose night vision might be no better than yours. He strolled, as calmly as he could, and passed the square of moonlight on the left-hand wall, just a thin ray of it passing between two taller buildings on the east side. The gate Megan had mentioned was maybe another twenty yards on. Very, very quietly, Leif reached down and started loosening his knife in its sheath.
Behind him, very softly, something went scuffle.
He didn’t stop to look behind, though he was sorely tempted. Leif kept walking. His mother’s voice said in his head, No common thug ever sneaks up right behind you. They always break into a run, those last few steps. If it’s a professional stalking you, you don’t have a hope. You’re probably dead already. But if it’s just a thug, so long as you can’t hear those last few steps, you’ve still got at least a few feet between you and him or her. When you hear those steps, though, they’re in reaching range. Do something quick—
Leif just went strolling on.
Scurry. Scuffle—pause—scurry, pause—
He kept walking.
There was the gate, a faint, wide, arched dimness in the darkness of the left-hand wall. Leif walked innocently past it, not turning his head to look through it, just taking his time: though he could see by peripheral vision that no one was there.
Scuffle.
Footsteps. Soft shoes on the stones. Much closer now.
Leif swallowed.
Scurry, scuffle—
— and someone breaking into a run—
Leif whirled, whipping the knife out, going forward just enough on the balls of his feet to jump or run.
He never had a chance to do either. A dark shape shot out of the gateway and got jumbled up with the very small dark blot that had been running at him. Leif was uncertain what happened next, except that the two dark forms seemed to consolidate…and then one of them flew away from the other, and into the wall opposite the gate, with stunning force. There was a shriek, cut off suddenly as the smaller form slid down the wall and hit the cobblestones.
Leif hurried over. Megan was standing there, not even looking particularly winded. She was standing over that smaller shape now, her hands on her hips, looking down with an expression that was hard to make out in the darkness, but it looked thoughtful.
“He weighs nearly as much as my number-three brother,” she said mildly. “Interesting. All right, Gobbo, get up off your butt, it wasn’t that bad.”
The dwarf lay moaning and sniveling on the ground. “Don’t hurt me, don’t do that again!”
Megan reached down and hoisted Gobbo up by the front of his motley, and briefly held him straight-armed against the wall at nearly eye level. She and Leif studied his face. It was that of
a middle-aged man, much collapsed together because of his dwarfism: a nasty face, eloquent of much troublemaking.
“I’m a very important person, I can get you in a lot of trouble!” the dwarf squealed. “Let me go!”
“Oh, yeah,” Leif said, “we’re shaking, the two of us. Was that dwarf-chucking?” he said to Megan.
“Very incorrect,” she said, in an abstracted tone of voice. “But you could get used to it.”
The dwarf’s face spasmed with fear. “Don’t!”
“Why were you following us?” Leif said.
“And why have you been following us since Minsar?” said Megan. “Answers, quick — or I’ll chuck you right over this wall, honest, and we’ll see how important gravity thinks you are when you come down.”
“What makes you think—”
Megan lifted him a little higher.
“Your arm getting tired?” Leif said. “I could take him. I can press almost one-fifty these days.”
“No,” Megan said, “no need. I won’t wait much longer. Gobbo, this is your last chance. I saw a lady get hurt today, and it’s put me in a real bad mood, and made me short-tempered with people who don’t answer reasonable questions.” She started to lift him higher.
The dwarf looked at her, a strange expression. “Put me down,” he said, “and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Megan looked at him for a moment, then put him down.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s hear it.”
The dwarf began feeling around in his pockets. Megan was watching him like a hawk. Leif was wondering what those pockets might conceal—
“Here,” the dwarf said, and reached up, holding out something for Megan to take.
She reached down her hand and took it, curious. She lifted it close to her eyes, turning it over and over in the dimness. It looked like a coin, except that its edges were smooth, not milled. It was not made of metal either. It was a circle of some dark mineral, with a design engraved on it. Megan held it up toward another of the squares of moonlight high up on a nearby wall, and looked at it, through it. So did Leif. He caught a wink of the darkest red, even in this silver light. The thing was made of pigeon’s blood ruby, and deeply engraved in it, in an old uncial font, was the letter S.
Megan looked at Leif with an odd expression on her face. “Game intervention,” she said.
“Listening.”
“Identify this object.”
“Object is identified as the Creator’s Token,” said the computer voice. “The Sigil of Sarxos — positive in-game identification of the game designer and copyright holder.”
Both of them looked down at the dwarf in complete astonishment.
“Yes,” Gobbo said, in an entirely different voice. “I’m Chris Rodrigues.”
4
They finally wound up in the Scrag End again. It was closed when they got there, empty except for a young man who took care of the door.
A slit in the door came open. “Show him what I gave you,” said the dwarf.
Megan held up the ruby token for the doorman to see. His eyes, seen through the slit, widened. The slit closed, and the door opened for them.
Inside, as they went in, the young man was looking with utter astonishment at Megan. “You?”
“No, no, him,” she said, indicating the dwarf. Except that he wasn’t a dwarf anymore.
Suddenly a tallish guy was standing there, in jeans and a T-shirt and somewhat beat-up-looking sneakers: a big-boned man, somewhere in his early middle years, with curly unruly hair and a curly beard and brown eyes, the kindliest eyes Megan thought she had ever seen. “Listen,” said Rodrigues to the young man, “I know you’d love to talk to me, but I need to talk to these people just now, and it’s urgent. Can I come back and see you next week — would that be okay?”
“Uh, yeah, sure, fine,” said the young man. “You’ll make sure you shut the door when you go out.”
“No problem.”
The doorkeeper went out the front door, and closed it behind him.
Chris stood there for a moment, then picked up the bolt and dropped it in place, and came back to sit at the rearmost table, where they had sat with Wayland.
Leif, sitting there staring at Rodrigues, was still having trouble coping with it all. “It’s really you, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is. There’s no faking this.” Chris gave the token on the table a little push. “I always anticipated that sometimes I would need to make my presence known, so I made sure there was a way for players to know it was me, one that couldn’t be faked.”
Megan nodded. “Why were you following us?” she said.
“Because you’ve something to do with these bounces, don’t you?”
She and Leif stared at Rodrigues in complete shock. “No, I don’t mean that you’re involved with them!” Rodrigues said. “But you’ve been hanging around with some people who may have been involved…haven’t you? And one of them — Ellen. Elblai—”
“Yes. We were with her just last night.”
“So I saw from the game logs. And the descriptions of you that her niece gave me were quite precise.” Rodrigues sat back. “So I thought I would have a look at you myself — this was before Elblai, mind you — and then followed you here. I had the system alert me when you came back into gameplay.”
“I have to tell you,” said Leif, “we’re not just doing this for fun. We’re with the Explorers…we’re with Net Force.”
“Net Force, yeah,” Rodrigues said, and leaned forward on the table, running his hands through his hair. “Yeah, I’ve had some people from there in here already today. Naturally the Elblai situation brought them in, and I’m glad they came. But I don’t know what they can do. I’m not sure what any of us can do.”
He sounded despondent. Megan said, “Whoever has been doing this…they can’t be doing it tracelessly. And they have been leaving some clues behind…we think. It’s only a matter of time before we, or the senior Net Force operatives, work out—”
Rodrigues looked up. “Time,” he said. “How much of that do we have before this person bounces someone else? And does it violently? The early bounces, the smash-and-ruin bounces, those were bad enough. But attempted murder? This is not the kind of thing I wanted happening in my game.”
“We know,” Leif said. “We didn’t think so either. So we came in and started looking around to see what we could find out.”
“The same here,” said Rodrigues. “But I didn’t expect to get flung at a wall.”
“Sorry,” Megan said, blushing hot. “I thought you were—”
“Some little creep dwarf,” said Rodrigues, grinning. “Yes. He’s a favorite of mine, Gobbo.”
“Is he the character you run, then?” said Leif.
“One of about twenty,” Rodrigues said. “Some of them are fairly quiet…some of them are pretty outrageous. They give me a chance to wander around and interact with people in different ways…and make sure they’re playing the game correctly.” He smiled a little. “One of the pleasures of playing God. Or Rod.” The smile got more ironic.
“But the past few months, I’ve been doing it more with an eye to seeing what I can find out about these bounces. It’s not just that I don’t like my creation being used this way…which I don’t. But Sarxos has always had a reputation as a safe place, a place where the Game was played fairly…not one of those fly-by-night operations where the gamesmaster changes the rules on you without warning. And it’s not just a game, of course. It’s a consumer-driven operation. You have to treat your customers right. If word gets out that this kind of thing is starting to happen — if there’s even one more instance of an attack like the one on Elblai — it’s going to do immense damage to the game. It could be shut down. I leave to your imagination the kind of legal trouble that could ensue. The bottom-line boys at the parent company would not be happy with me, not at all.”
Leif was studying the table with a rather noncommittal look on his face. “Look,” Rodr
igues said, just a little sharply, “I’m already a millionaire so many times over that it’s not even fun counting it at night anymore when I need to fall asleep. I have a great privilege: I get to do what I love to make my living. There’s nothing better than that. But there are more important things than my pleasure, and a whole lot more important than money. If there’s no other way to stop this, I’ll damn well see the game shut down. A lot of people disappointed is better than a few people dead. And that’s where it’s heading, if you ask me. I wish to God I was wrong, but I’m a pessimist at heart — that’s why I’m such a good designer.”
He sighed. “Anyhow, I’ve told the Net Force people that I’ll cooperate with them every way I can. The company won’t let me give them the game logs directly — they’re moaning about proprietary information — but I can read them and pass excerpted information on. They were asking about yours, by the way.”
Megan nodded. “We know. There’s e-mail going out shortly — if it hasn’t already gone — giving my release.”
“Okay, that’s fine. You, too?” He looked at Leif.
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
“What about your game logs?” Leif said suddenly.
Rodrigues looked at him. Megan briefly felt as if she wished the Earth would open and swallow her.
“How do you mean?”
“The Net Force people may suggest to you,” Leif said in a very even and almost gentle voice, “that one possibility is that you might have been involved with these bounces.”
“Now why would I do a thing like that?” Rodrigues said, looking at Leif strangely.
“I have no idea,” Leif said, “and I don’t believe it myself. But…” He shrugged.
“Well,” said Rodrigues, “as for that, the game servers keep track of me exactly the way they do of everyone else. You can never tell, I might go crazy and try to sabotage the code.” He made that ironic “fat-chance” expression that seemed to appear on his face about once every couple of minutes. “The server logs will confirm when I was in here…which frankly is most of my waking hours. If I’m not doing maintenance on bugs, which contrary to popular belief pop up constantly, then I’m in the game itself, walking up and down to see who’s naughty and who’s nice. There’s fortunately no way to forge that information.”