Lake in the Clouds

by Edward Willett

  The guard didn’t answer. He just pointed at the elevators. He didn’t push a button to call one: instead he swiped a keycard.

  Together they rode up…and up…and up…sixty floors by the time they were done, and nobody else got on the elevator all the way up. Private parking and override control of elevators so he doesn’t have to share, Wally thought. Now, that’s power.

  The elevator didn’t take them into a general lobby area, either, but what was obviously a private hallway, with only two doors: one marked EXIT to their right, and one marked with a discreet Excalibur Computer Systems logo to their left. The guard used his keycard again to unlock that door and they stepped through.

  Rex Major sat at a large and uncluttered desk in a surprisingly modern office. They had entered behind him, through a door that disappeared completely into the grey padded panelling when the guard closed it. To Wally’s left, a wall of glass offered a spectacular view of the Toronto skyline and Lake Ontario beyond. He could see Major’s condo building. It looked small from the top of this tower.

  To his right was a black conference table with six white chairs pulled up to it, plus a counter with a sink and cabinets of some black wood above and below. Opposite Major’s black desk were two white leather chairs. A considerable distance beyond them, forcing anyone who came into the room the normal way to walk a long distance to reach the man at the desk, was the main entrance into the office, double doors of that same shining black wood. The artwork ran to the blocky-fields-of-primary-colours abstract, and the lighting was mostly hidden in sconces pointing upward around the office’s edges, except for the extraordinarily ostentatious chandelier of about a dozen concentric rings of dangling crystal rods in the exact centre of the room.

  Major was studying an Excel spreadsheet. He glanced their way as they entered, and then swung his chair toward them. “Excellent,” he said. “You can go, Emeka.”

  The big black man nodded once, then turned and went out the way he had come.

  Major got up and went over to the bar. “Something to drink?” he asked Wally.

  “Vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred.”

  He didn’t really expect Major to get the reference. James Bond was a pretty recent invention to a millennium-old wizard. But Major surprised him. “I may be an evil mastermind but I’m not Dr. No,” he said dryly. “And you’re no double-oh seven. How about a Diet Coke?”

  Wally sighed. “Works for me.”

  Major pulled a bottle of Diet Coke out of a refrigerator hidden in the lower cabinets for Wally, and retrieved a bottle of Perrier for himself. He gestured at the conference table. Wally sat and opened the bottle. Major sat opposite him and opened his. They drank together.

  “Any word on Ariane?” Wally asked as he lowered his bottle.

  Major shook his head. “None. I hope she’s all right.”

  I hope you mean that, Wally thought. “Any sense of where the third shard is?”

  “Not yet,” Major said. “But I hope to know something soon.”

  “I don’t suppose you’re ready to tell me what it is you suspect about me,” Wally said.

  Major shook his head again. “No,” he said. “I can’t confirm it until I have two of the shards. It’s too bad you were only able to get one of them away from Ariane. Otherwise I’d not only be able to confirm what I think might be true about you, I’d be able to go straight to the third shard.”

  And Ariane might have died trying to make it across the Atlantic, Wally thought. Maybe she did anyway.

  No, he told himself again. She’s not dead. She can’t be. I’d know.

  Wouldn’t I?

  No you wouldn’t, he forced himself to admit. You don’t believe in telepathy.

  Of course, he hadn’t believed in magic until recently, either.

  He took another swig of Diet Coke. “So…this game you were telling me about. You really want my help beta-testing it?”

  “I really do,” Major said. “Although it’s more like alpha-testing. Right now nobody outside the company even knows we’re developing it.”

  “You hope,” Wally said.

  “I know,” Major said. “Excalibur Computer Systems has…very high standards of corporate loyalty.” He smiled.

  Command, Wally thought. He could simply Command everyone working on the game to keep quiet about it.

  But he can’t Command me. Why?

  “Well…tell me about the game,” Wally said.

  “I’d rather show you,” Major said. He stood up. “Let me take you to our skunkworks.”

  An hour later Wally, wearing a skin-tight suit wired with sensors and a pair of virtual-reality goggles, stood in the middle of a room he couldn’t see – because his eyes were showing him, in splendid 3D high-definition, the great hall of a castle.

  The room was hung with shields and crossed spears and ancient banners, some moth-eaten, some that looked brand-new, some stained with blood. A fire burned in a pit in the middle of the hall, the smoke rising up to a hole in the peaked wooden roof far above. The flames crackled and popped in his headphones just like the real thing. All that was missing was the smell, and the heat.

  In his gloved right hand Wally held a plastic rod weighted to feel like a broadsword. In the game, it was a broadsword, catching the light of the fire as he swung it experimentally through the air.

  Across the fire, at the far end of the hall, stood two giant wooden doors, bound with iron, each twice as tall as he was. As he watched, they swung inward, and into the hall strode a knight, wearing a black surcoat over black mail, helmet closed, sword in hand. “King Arthur!” boomed the knight. “I challenge you to a duel to the death!”

  Wally felt his cheeks stretch as he grinned. He couldn’t help it.

  This, he thought, is the coolest game ever.

  He hefted the sword. “Challenge accepted!” he shouted, and dashed forward.

  •••

  Rex Major watched as the boy sparred with the virtual knight. “Wow,” said Howard Gustin, the lead programmer, who was watching with him. “That kid knows what he’s doing. We had top swordmasters in here when we were programming the Black Knight, and he’s more than holding his own. He’s a natural.”

  You have no idea, Major thought.

  He turned to go. “Wally’s yours for the rest of the day,” he said. “Emeka will pick him up at quitting time. I have to fly out this afternoon.”

  “Where are you off to, sir?” Gustin said.

  “Can’t tell you, Howie,” Major said. He smiled. “Well, I could, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  Gustin laughed.

  Major let the smile slip away as he turned to go out. He didn’t really care if Howard Gustin knew where he was going, but he didn’t want Wally to know. He’d already made the arrangements for his private jet to take him to Prince Albert. He’d spend the night there.

  And early tomorrow…he was looking forward to meeting Aunt Phyllis.

  He smiled again.

  Yes, he was looking forward to meeting her very much.

  Chapter Four

  Major Makes a Move

  Wally spent a very pleasant day in the “skunkworks.” At lunchtime, while he enjoyed a hamburger and fries in the company dining room, Howard Gustin, the lead designer, pumped him for information about how he had interacted with the game, what he thought of the virtual-reality headset, his opinion of the graphics…even asked for his input on the title. “We’re thinking of calling it Sword Art Online,” Gustin said.

  Wally laughed. “I think that’s taken.”

  The designer raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “Anime series about a bunch of gamers getting trapped in an online virtual-reality game,” he explained. “A lot of them die. Probably not the vibe you’re going for.”

  Gustin laughed ruefully. “Probably not.” He put a line through one of a long list of titles on a sheet of paper on the clipboard he carried. “How about…”

  At the end of a few more hours in the virtual-r
eality suit clobbering bad guys, Wally emerged from the skunkworks feeling rather like a skunk himself. He was already worrying about the telephone handset he’d left in plain sight in Major’s living room: with a clue that big, Major could hardly fail to figure out Wally had been somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. But Major wasn’t waiting for him in the hallway: Emeka was.

  “I’m here to take you home,” Emeka said.

  “Where’s Rex?” Wally said. He was pretty sure Emeka would never refer to Rex Major by his first name.

  He was right. “Mister Major,” Emeka said, “has had to fly out of town on business.”

  “That’s too bad,” Wally said, while inwardly heaving a sigh of relief. And then… “So I’ll have the place to myself?”

  “You will be guarded as usual, but yes, you will be alone in the suite,” Emeka said. “Supper is being delivered.”

  “Movie night,” Wally said out loud, but what he was thinking was, A whole night to dig through Major’s computer. “Can’t wait! Let’s go.”

  Toronto traffic was not like Regina traffic. Especially not right at 5 p.m. They finally crawled into the parking garage at 6:30, and took the elevator up to the condo, where a new guard was waiting to relieve Emeka. This one was wearing the same immaculate blue suit and black tie and shiny black shoes, but he was taller and just ever-so-slightly skinnier – which still made him look like someone who could eat Wally for breakfast. He had brown skin and brown eyes and a thick black beard.

  “What’s your name?” Wally asked him.

  “Iftekhar Al-Kharafi,” the man said.

  “Ah.” The name had flown by. “Is it all right if I call you Al?”

  “No,” Iftekhar said.

  “Right.” Where does Major get these guys? Wally wondered. Thugs ’R’ Us? “Well, um, Iftekhar…did I get it right?...want to come in and watch Spiderman 3 on the big screen?”

  “It is not allowed,” Iftekhar said.

  Emeka frowned at Wally. “Go inside,” he said. He looked at Iftekhar. “Is the pizza here?”

  Iftekhar nodded.

  Emeka’s stern gaze flicked back to Wally. “Have your supper,” he said. “Watch your movies. Tomorrow morning I am to take you back to the office for more play testing.”

  “When will Rex be back?” Wally asked. And where has he gone? he wanted to add, but he was pretty sure that would be fruitless.

  “Mister Major does not provide me with details of his schedule,” Emeka said. “I do not know. Go inside now.”

  “Okay, okay…catch you on the flip side.” Wally didn’t think he’d ever used that phrase before, but it had the distinct virtue of being annoying. He turned and went into the suite. He would have liked to have locked the door, but he was pretty sure that would have seemed suspicious.

  He desperately wanted to head straight into Major’s office and continue exploring those mysterious files, but first things first: pizza. And caesar salad. And riblets. And…

  Comfortably stuffed, he boxed up what was left of the pizza – not as much as might have been expected, but, Hey, he thought, I’m a teenage boy – and put it in the giant stainless-steel refrigerator. The pizza had come with a big plastic tumbler of Coke. He took that with him into the media room. He doubted Iftekhar could even hear anything from the hallway, but just in case he could – and just in case he was a secret superhero movie fan – he cued up Spiderman 3 as promised. As its soundtrack boomed through the speakers, he finally felt safe enough to cross the living room to Major’s office and key in the combination code again.

  The door opened without any fuss. He slipped in and closed the door behind him. He’d brought the phone from the coffee table and now he slipped it back into its dock.

  AVALON got him back into Major’s system. He cracked his knuckles – a bad habit he’d developed whenever he sat down at a computer keyboard – and reached for the mouse.

  Those secretive files were calling his name, but there was one other thing he wanted to do first: check his email. It had been days since he’d had access to a computer. And it was just possible – just barely possible – that Ariane had tried to contact him that way.

  Who are you kidding? he thought even as he opened the browser and went to his webmail home page. She must hate you. You betrayed her and your quest. Sure, it was for her own good. But you’ll never convince her of that – especially not while she still has one of the shards of Excalibur.

  Maybe I should have taken both shards, he thought. But then he shook his head. No. He’d known she’d needed the power of the first shard to get across the Atlantic to France. Leaving her in France without it might have stranded her there.

  Merlin just needs to get the other shards, he thought. Once he has them, Ariane will have to give up hers, and go back to being an ordinary girl, instead of…whatever she’s been turning into.

  He typed in his password.

  The most recent email leaped out at him.

  Suspicious that his sister had been snooping in his computer, Wally had months ago set up a program that would automatically email him whenever his computer was booted up. He’d also deliberately left the computer without password protection, to make it as easy as possible for Flish to trap herself if she came spying.

  Rather to his surprise, while she’d lived in the house he’d never once gotten an email indicating she’d turned on his computer when he wasn’t there. But now, out of the blue, his system had emailed him, not two minutes before he’d logged onto his webmail home page.

  Flish? he thought. She’s moved out. And anyway, she’s still in the hospital. He’d even talked to her on the phone. It hadn’t been a particularly pleasant conversation. She knew he was living with Rex Major and was both furious and jealous about it. But he had learned that she would probably be in hospital for another week, and then on crutches for a month after that, and probably a walking cast for a couple of weeks after that. There was no way she was in the house.

  Mrs. Carson? He shook his head. She wouldn’t even know where the on-off switch was.

  That left only one possibility: only one person he could think of who could have gotten into their locked house without setting off the alarms on the doors and windows, because she didn’t have to go through the doors or windows.

  Ariane. It has to be Ariane.

  And she’s in my room.

  He winced. He hadn’t exactly tidied it up before he’d left. Well, that’s embarrassing. But he was already searching Major’s desktop to see if he had…

  There it was. Skype.

  Skype would have opened automatically on the computer in his room when it was turned on.

  He swallowed…and called his own account.

  •••

  Twelve pages of results came up with Ariane’s first Google search, and none of the sites looked useful. If Rex Major was travelling anywhere, it hadn’t made the news.

  She frowned. He’s a famous guy, she thought. Recognizable by just about anyone. So what do people do if they see a famous guy somewhere they don’t expect to see him?

  Right, she thought. They put it out on social media.

  She called up Twitter and was just about to run a search for any Tweets mentioning Rex Major when the computer made a chiming noise. She frowned. She knew that tone…

  Skype. Someone was Skyping Wally’s computer.

  She felt a chill. Was Major watching Wally’s computer after all?

  She found Skype on Wally’s machine, and sure enough there was an incoming call…

  …from Rex Major.

  Her heart suddenly racing, she pushed away from the computer, staring at it as if it might explode. If Major were Skyping her, he knew she was alive. He knew where she was. She couldn’t stay!

  But then her eyes narrowed. On the other hand, she thought, it’s not like he can break in here and kidnap me. And I can be in the pool and away anywhere in the world in seconds. Maybe I should talk to him.

  Maybe I should tell him what I think of him. And Wally.


  The first shard burned cold against her skin. She rolled the chair forward again and accepted the call, bracing herself to once more face the age-old sorcerer.

  Instead, the screen lit with the freckled face and red hair of Wally Knight, one cheek marked with a red, still-healing scar just above his cheekbone.

  Her breath froze in her throat. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. The enormity of emotion she felt on seeing him had seized up every muscle in her body.

  Wally didn’t seem to have the same problem. “Hello, Ariane,” he said. He made a grimace that might have been intended to be a smile, though in practice it mostly made him look like he was going to throw up. “I…um…I’m glad you made it back. From France.”

  She still couldn’t speak. She couldn’t believe he had the gall even to talk to her.

  The shard of Excalibur burned.

  “Ariane,” Wally rushed ahead, “I know you must be upset with me, I just want you to know, I did it for your own good –”

  “Upset?” The word came out in a kind of strangled squawk. She swallowed, and the next words came easier…and hotter. “Upset? You betrayed me. You stole the second shard after I almost died getting it. You gave it Rex Major…to Merlin. You gave it to the man who wants to take over the world. You lied to me. You…you…” Three different obscene things to call him vied for the forefront of her brain. In the end she just spluttered.

  “Ariane, it’s… I…” Wally took a deep breath. “The shards are changing you, Ariane. You can’t see it, but I can. They’re turning you harder, colder. You…” He touched the scar on his cheek. “You hurt Flish. You hurt me. You’re going to hurt yourself. If you’d just give the shard you have to Major…”

  “He’d use it to take over the world,” Ariane snarled. “To become a dictator. To use Earth’s armed forces to attack Faerie. Wally, listen to yourself.”

  Wally shook his head stubbornly. “Ariane, you’re just saying what the Lady of the Lake told you. How do we know we can trust her? So far, Major has never lied to me.”