Burning Bright

by Melissa Scott

  I put those characters on Ixion’s Wheel to keep them out of other people’s hands. And Desir of Harmsway is my character, my property–more than that, my creation. Who the hell does this session leader think s/he is, using my persona in a session? Ransome bit back his instinctive reaction–Sanci didn’t deserve the satisfaction–and said again, “Who is it?”

  Sanci sighed, rather theatrically. “Woman named Lioe, out of the Republic. She did the Frederick’s Glory scenario everyone was so hot about.”

  Ransome said, “She’s good, or so I hear.” His hands were busy in the control space, expanding the picture, so that hand‑high figures moved in a cube of space half a meter square.

  “Good enough?” Sanci murmured, still with that knowing smile, and Ransome managed a shrug.

  “It’s possible, I suppose. I don’t follow the Game that closely these days.”

  Sanci sneered, but said nothing. Ransome hesitated, wanting to lie, to deny that he would follow this scenario now that it had been brought to his attention, but knew that Sanci would recognize the truth–knew too that Sanci would probably try to trace the taps, and blocking him was hardly worth the trouble. But I’ll be damned if I’ll thank him for this. “Good‑bye, Sanci,” he said instead, and flicked away the other man’s image. The movement cut the communications channel as it sent the bearded face spinning, so that it turned end over end three times before it disappeared.

  The gesture had done something to soothe his feelings, but Ransome was still frowning when he sat up fully. The image‑shell shifted with him, so that he looked down at the narrowcast from Shadows as though it were a desktop screen. He banished the rest of the images with a quick gesture, brought up the sound until he could follow the dialogue in the little world that hung in the air in front of him. One did not forget the Game, not when one had spent as much time in its worlds as he had done, but one did get out of practice. He scowled at the characters, reading the iconography of clothing and Face/Bodynumbers, and reached into control space to tap the session leader’s display bar. In the Game, Belfortune and Lord Faro whispered together, fearful of interruption, and a familiar figure moved through the hall behind them, deliberately eavesdropping. Avellar…

  He studied the string of glyphs and numbers that bloomed along the base of the main image, skimmed quickly through the overlapping screens to confirm what he suspected. The overall shape of the Game was almost as familiar to him as the layout of his studio, and it was easy to see where this scenario would fit into the whole. It was ostensibly a Rebel scenario, but it was tied both to the Psionics variant and the Rival Claimants offshoot of the Court Life Game– and all of that done through Avellar and Desir of Harmsway, who was my character, and the situation between them was my invention–Ransome reached out to expand the image, drawing out the details. Some of the players were old friends, old rivals in the Game–Peter Savian he’d known for years, and Kazio Beledin; Imbertine was another familiar name, as was Roscha, though he’d never met the latter off‑line. But they were players, not session leaders: it was the leader who’d chosen to play with these characters– my characters, and it should have been my Game. This Lioe’s got nerve… He rolled the name over in his mind, recalling the little he’d heard. She was a notable‑in‑the‑making, or so everybody said, a pilot out of the Republic, off Callixte, which was a good introduction in the Game… and her first name was Quinn, Quinn Lioe. He hesitated for a moment, running down the list of friends who still followed the Game and who would give information, and reached into control space to open another line. The Game session still swam in front of him, the characters murmuring to each other, and he pushed it aside to make room for the new image.

  A disk of static appeared, a hazy oval that flickered through so many colors so quickly that the eye could only read it as grey: the system had made contact. “Hally?”

  A face took shape, forming from the disk itself, so that it became a mask hanging in space, a face thin and rather fine beneath the canalli weathering. Earrings gleamed in both ears, and a fine chain–a datawire, Ransome guessed–ran from one particularly elaborate stud to a jewel‑rimmed socket at the inner corner of his right eye. The iridescent strand seemed to glow against his pale brown skin. “Ransome?” Thin, delicately arched eyebrows rose in surprise, then contracted into a frown. “I’m watching a Game,” Hally Ventura said, and broke off, seeing the face in his own screens.

  “From Shadows?” Ransome asked, and was answered by a brief, lopsided smile.

  “That’s right. So what do you want to know about her, I‑Jay?”

  “What do you know?”

  “About what everyone does. She’s been a name on Callixte, everyone says a notable‑to‑be. And she’s a pilot, union pilot, also works out of Callixte for that. Angele up at the port says her ship’s in for repairs, and she’s come to play. People’ve been at her to quit space, go into the Game full time, but she’s not been interested.”

  “Piloting’s a good job,” Ransome said. “I’d think twice before I quit.”

  Hally shrugged. “She’s very, very good at the Game.” His eyes shifted, looking at something outside his own display. “Look, I‑Jay, I want to watch this session. Was that all?”

  “I just thought, if anyone knew anything, it would be you,” Ransome said, and was rewarded by a quick smile: the apology was acceptable. “Thanks, Hally.”

  “Not at all,” Hally answered, and the hanging mask dissolved into the oval of static. Ransome cut the connection.

  The Game session floated back in front of him, expanded at a gesture to display its full detail. Belfortune sat with his head in his hands, answered, low‑voiced, Lord Faro’s questions. The tension between them was palpable: the players’ affair had been over for years, but its memory still informed their play. Mijja Lyall, the scientist/technician, watched uneasily, her gaze flickering between the two men and the metal face that hung on the wall overhead. Baron Vortex, the Game’s great villain, was overseeing this himself.

  Ransome frowned, reached for the library icons, and had to shuffle access spaces until he found dead storage. It had been a long time since he had gone looking for his template libraries. He flicked them back into the working volume, searched the most recent issues until he found Lord Faro’s listing. He had forgotten that Faro had become one of the Baron’s henchmen–that had happened almost two years ago, just after he’d quit the Game. He leaned back in his chair, the images tilting around him, and saw another firework flare through the pattern of the Game. You couldn’t ask for better, he thought, and reached for a hand‑held remote to summon the drinks tray.

  The machine trundled over, the lid sliding back to give access to the freezer compartment. Ransome chose abstractedly, opened the container, his eyes still on the session unfolding in front of him. Faro was clearly torn between his loyalty to Baron Vortex–a loyalty bought with fear and the promise that Faro’s lost estates would someday be returned–and his– love? desire?–for Belfortune. Belfortune clearly shared both passion and fear, and Baron Vortex watched from the wall. Lioe was handling him well, he admitted grudgingly. Too many leaders made the Baron too villainous right from the start; Lioe was keeping him just reasonable enough–though still with that edge of madness–that it seemed suicidal to oppose him.

  Abruptly, he wanted to be there, at Shadows, watching firsthand–or, better still, to be in the control booth with Medard‑Yasine. It was the first time in three years that he’d actually wanted to attend a Game, and his lips quirked upward as he realized that at least he now had an excuse for doing what Chauvelin wanted. He closed both fists, shutting down the system–in the corner of his eye, glyphs tumbled headlong as the slaved machines ran through their shutdown procedures–and reached for a stand‑alone com‑unit and punched codes that would cycle through the helicab companies until he found one that could respond. It took perhaps two minutes, the bar of light flashing in front of him, not quite blocking his sight, and he spent the time searching for his jacke
t and the cylinder of Mist he was forced to carry. The com‑unit beeped at him before he found the red‑banded tube, and he scrabbled impatiently for the hand‑held unit.

  “How can we be of service?”

  It was a machine voice, or so the telltale at the base of the unit said–it would have been impossible to tell from the sound alone. Ransome curbed his impatience, and smoothed his tone to be as emotionless as possible. “I need transport to the helipad closest to Shadows–Face Road, by the center of the Dike in the Dock Road District. I think that’s Underface.”

  “Just a moment, please.” There was a little silence, not even the hiss of static, while Ransome scanned the cluttered space of his loft for the missing cylinder, and then the machine said, “Yes, Underface is closest. Your location code is Warehouse?”

  “That’s right.” The cylinder was lying on the shelf beside the shell for the Syndic’s egg.

  “Thank you. Your helicab will arrive at the Warehouse helipad in fifteen minutes.”

  “Thanks,” Ransome said, in spite of himself, in spite of knowing it was a machine, and broke the connection. He collected the cylinder, shoved it and his credimeters into the pocket of his jacket, and left the loft.

  It took him almost fifteen minutes to reach the helipad–the computers were scrupulous in their calculations–and he barely had time to catch his breath before he heard the soft beat of the muted rotors. Somewhat to his surprise, there was a live pilot, who grinned cheerfully at him as she popped the passenger hatch.

  “To Underface, right? Going to Shadows?”

  Does everyone on the planet know about this fucking game? Ransome wondered. “Yes, to Underface–and, yes, to Shadows, too.”

  The pilot nodded, closing the hatch behind him. “I hear there’s one hell of a session in progress there. You’re like the fifth person I’ve dropped there in the last two hours.”

  “Really.” Ransome settled into the center seat, the most comfortable of the three, and adjusted the door controls so that the whole panel went transparent, an enormous curved window on the city spread out below the cliff face.

  “Yeah.” The pilot manipulated her controls, and the helicab lifted easily, pivoting toward the cliff edge and the descent to Underface. She was on‑line, Ransome saw, bound into the cab’s systems so that her arms and legs seemed to end in the black boxes of the control consoles; more wires, a complex, braided band of them, fell from the junction box at the base of her skull. Her hair was shaved around that connection, but the rest of it fell in a scarlet tail from an untidy topknot. “I wish I wasn’t working.”

  “You’re a Gamer, then?” Ransome asked, and saw, too late, the pins studding her left sleeve. MI‑Net, Court Life V, Vimar Nessen’s Game, RedApple, Old Network, and dozens of others: she was a Gamer, all right, and a committed one.

  She didn’t seem offended, however, just shrugged that shoulder to make the pins glitter in the light from the instrument panel. “That’s right.”

  “So what have you heard about this Lioe?” Ransome asked. This wasn’t his style at all–this was the kind of information he preferred to find on the nets–but the chance was too good to pass up.

  The pilot shrugged again, both shoulders this time. “What haven’t I heard, really? Frederick’s Glory got an Adouble‑star on Callixte, which those judges don’t hand out like candy, and she wrote it. She’s supposed to just be running a sample session for Davvi tonight, but what everyone’s saying is that it’s turning out to be something kind of special.” She looked sideways, into the space that showed her the passenger camera view. “What I heard from one woman was, she’s pulled one of Ambidexter’s characters out of storage, playing him as a major character.”

  Ransome nodded, caught up in spite of himself in the old habits of the Game. “Desir of Harmsway. I was watching for a while on the nets.”

  “ Sha‑mai.” The pilot’s curse was more admiring than anything. “Ambidexter’s going to murder her. Very God, I wish I wasn’t working.”

  Ransome gave her a bitter grin. If he’d ever wanted confirmation of how the white‑sickness had changed him in the past three years, he had it now–not that he’d really needed it. Even a year ago, before the disease really took hold, she would have recognized him as Ambidexter, even if he hadn’t been in the clubs for a year or so before that… He shook the thought away, annoyed that he’d even acknowledged it, made himself pay attention to the pilot.

  “That’s assuming Ambidexter’s still around, of course,” she went on, quite cheerfully. “There was talk he was dead, not long back.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ransome said, with involuntary pique, and the pilot shrugged again. The helicab banked sideways into the airpath that paralleled the Old Dike; its lights, and the glow of the shops on Warden Street, filled the cab’s interior with patches of bright color.

  “The work on the nets under that name hasn’t been very like him, that’s for sure.”

  Ransome drew breath for an indignant response– how dare she accuse me of not being myself?–and stopped suddenly, wondering if this was Cella’s doing. It wouldn’t be unlike her, to whisper that he was dead, that his work was not his own. He opened his mouth, trying to figure out how to phrase the question, but the helicab tilted again, and he realized that the pilot’s attention was once again on her craft. After a moment, his mouth twisted into a wry smile. That would be very like Cella, to assume that the rumor of his death would bring him back onto the nets– and it would have worked, too, if I hadn’t been so busy with other things.

  The helicab tipped again, responding to wind or air currents or an unseen traffic signal, and the door panel was filled with the city lights. Ransome stared, caught once again by the breathtaking beauty: the tidy geometry of the well‑lit squares and canals of Dock Road, bounded by the twin lines of the Straight to the north and the Crooked to the south. In the distance, the broad triangle that was the landformed extension of Mainwarden Island jutted into the Water, dividing the massive stream into two channels. A line of light ran from apex to base, broke slightly at the edge of the low cliff that rose to Mainwarden Island proper: Compass Road, where the Lockwarden Society had their main offices. The Society’s certification officers, the elite of the Wet Districts around the Water, generally lived in the tidy, decent neighborhoods to either side of that main thoroughfare. The Great Island light blazed at steady intervals from the tip of the Extension, directing the all‑but‑invisible traffic that filled the Water even at this hour.

  “Coming down,” the pilot said, her voice distant and professional again. The helicab straightened and slowed to hover, almost motionless. Ransome craned his neck to see through the lower curve of the door, and could just make out the blue concentric lines of the helipad below them. One band of light blinked, as though something had moved across it, and a moment later another one did the same. Kids, probably, Ransome thought, and in the same instant a strong white light flashed from the cab’s underbelly, all but drowning out the landing lines. Ransome saw a last small figure scramble over the low barrier. The pilot smiled, and the helicab began to sink delicately toward the ground. They touched down almost without a thud, and the credit reader unfolded itself from the wall of the passenger compartment, beeping politely but insistently. Ransome fed his card through the reader, winced slightly when the total was presented, but touched the confirmation code without further protest. The door opened, and Ransome swung himself out onto the brightly lit pavement. The cab lifted away as soon as he was clear, trailing a diminishing cone of light.

  It was not a long walk from the Underface helipad to Shadows, but Ransome felt his lungs clog and falter, stopped in the mouth of a half‑enclosed courtyard to breathe from the cylinder of Mist. He grimaced at the bitter taste, grimaced again as the drug took hold, the cold pain clearing his lungs. He waited a moment longer, listening to a strand of distant music, a single violo drawn against the night, that floated down from somewhere above him, closer to the base of the Dike. The pain f
aded, and he kept walking. Shadows appeared out of the darkness a few minutes later, all its windows unshuttered and blazing with light, a suppressed excitement humming in the air around it. Even the food shop across the intersection seemed quiet by comparison, both the bouncers, conspicuous in their rusty black jerkins and studded wristbands, sitting comfortably in chairs just outside the doorway, a thermoflask on the ground between them.

  There was no trouble gaining admission to the club, despite the crowd that overflowed from the main lobby into the access hall. Most of them wanted only to maintain their view of the large display screens, and were perfectly willing to let Ransome past as long as he showed no desire to linger. He fetched up against the far wall, beside the little office. The dreamy‑eyed woman behind the counter only reluctantly took her attention from the display board balanced in her lap.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Is Davvi here?”

  The abrupt request raised her eyebrows, and then she frowned, visibly searching her memory to match the face in front of her. Ransome smiled, unable to keep the expression from turning sour, and said, “Tell him Ambidexter’s here.”

  The dreamy eyes widened almost comically. “At once, N’Ambidexter. It’s good to see you back again.”

  A few of the Gamers close to the desk heard the name even over the direct‑input sound from the room systems, and turned to look. Ransome met the stares blandly, and turned his attention to the displays overhead. In the screens, Gallio Hazard confronted a figure he didn’t recognize, an enormously fat man in prison clothes. Bricks and stones, a halo of debris, floated in the air around him, and Ransome realized that the fat man was a telekinetic.

  “She is good, isn’t she?” Davvi Medard‑Yasine had come quietly through the door that led to the session rooms, and smiled at Ransome’s shrug.

  “So far, yes,” Ransome answered. “Look, Davvi, I need a favor.”