Dangerous Games

by Jack Dann

  That’s what did them in, she thought. Week after week it was the same. They forgot the little things and lost. She leaned back and ran her hand through her hair. It was standing out all over her head.

  Two of the dogs began to fight over a scrap of something and the leaping dog jumped into the battle with them. Presently they all ran away, three of them chasing the fourth.

  “Throw away your money,” Lottie said gaily, and started around Butcher. He swept out his hand and pushed her down again and left the room without a backward look. It didn’t matter who won, she thought, shaken by the push. That twenty and twenty more would have to go to the finance company to pay off the loan for the wall unit. Butcher knew that; he shouldn’t get so hot about a little joke.

  1 P.M. SUNDAY

  “This place looks like a pigpen,” Butcher growled. “You going to clear some of this junk away?” He was carrying a sandwich in one hand, beer in the other; the table was littered with breakfast remains, leftover snacks from the morning and the night before.

  Lottie didn’t look at him. “Clear it yourself.”

  “I’ll clear it.” He put his sandwich down on the arm of his chair and swept a spot clean, knocking over glasses and cups.

  “Pick that up!” Lottie screamed. “I’m sick and tired of cleaning up after you every damn weekend! All you do is stuff and guzzle and expect me to pick up and clean up.”

  “Damn right.”

  Lottie snatched up the beer can he had put on the table and threw it at him. The beer streamed out over the table, chair, over his legs. Butcher threw down the sandwich and grabbed at her. She dodged and backed away from the table into the center of the room. Butcher followed, his hands clenched.

  “You touch me again, I’ll break your arm!”

  “Bitch!” He dived for her and she caught his arm, twisted it savagely and threw him to one side.

  He hauled himself up to a crouch and glared at her with hatred. “I’ll fix you,” he muttered. “I’ll fix you!”

  Lottie laughed. He charged again, this time knocked her backward and they crashed to the floor together and rolled, pummeling each other.

  The red beeper sounded and they pulled apart, not looking at each other, and took their seats before the screen.

  “It’s the fat lady,” Butcher said malevolently. “I hope the bitch kills herself.”

  Mildred had fallen into the stream and was struggling in waist-high water to regain her footing. The current was very swift, all white water here. She slipped and went under. Lottie held her breath until she appeared again, downstream, retching, clutching at a boulder. Inch by inch she drew herself to it and clung there trying to get her breath back. She looked about desperately; she was very white. Abruptly she launched herself into the current, swimming strongly, fighting to get to the shore as she was swept down the river.

  Andy’s voice was soft as he said, “That water is forty-eight degrees, ladies and gentlemen! Forty-eight! Dr. Lederman, how long can a person be immersed in water that cold?”

  “Not long, Andy. Not long at all.” The doctor looked worried too. “Ten minutes at the most, I’d say.”

  “That water is reducing her body heat second by second,” Andy said solemnly. “When it is low enough to produce unconsciousness…”

  Mildred was pulled under again; when she appeared this time, she was much closer to shore. She caught a rock and held on. Now she could stand up, and presently she dragged herself rock by rock, boulder by boulder, to the shore. She was shaking hard, her teeth chattering. She began to build a fire. She could hardly open her waterproof matchbox. Finally she had a blaze and she began to strip. Her backpack, Andy reminded the audience, had been lost when she fell into the water. She had only what she had on her back, and if she wanted to continue after the sun set and the cold evening began, she had to dry her things thoroughly.

  “She’s got nerve,” Butcher said grudgingly.

  Lottie nodded. She was weak. She got up, skirted Butcher, and went to the kitchen for a bag. As she cleaned the table, every now and then she glanced at the naked woman by her fire. Steam was rising off her wet clothes.

  10 P.M. SUNDAY

  Lottie had moved Butcher’s chair to the far side of the table the last time he had left it. His beard was thick and coarse, and he still wore the clothes he had put on to go to work Friday morning. Lottie’s stomach hurt. Every weekend she got constipated.

  The game was between Mildred and Clyde now. He was in good shape, still had his glasses and his backpack. He was farther from his truck than Mildred was from hers, but she had eaten nothing that afternoon and was limping badly. Her boots must have shrunk, or else she had not waited for them to get completely dry. Her face twisted with pain when she moved.

  The girl was still posing in the high meadow, now against a tall tree, now among the wild flowers. Often a frown crossed her face and surreptitiously she scratched. Ticks, Butcher said. Probably full of them.

  Eddie was wandering in a daze. He looked empty, and was walking in great aimless circles. Some of them cracked like that, Lottie knew. It had happened before, sometimes to the strongest one of all. They’d slap him right in a hospital and no one would hear anything about him again for a long time, if ever. She didn’t waste pity on him.

  She would win, Lottie knew. She had studied every kind of wilderness they used and she’d know what to do and how to do it. She was strong, and not afraid of noises. She found herself nodding and stopped, glanced quickly at Butcher to see if he had noticed. He was watching Clyde.

  “Smart,” Butcher said, his eyes narrowed. “That sonabitch’s been saving himself for the home stretch. Look at him.” Clyde started to lope, easily, as if aware the TV truck was dead ahead.

  Now the screen was divided into three parts, the two finalists, Mildred and Clyde, side by side, and above them a large aerial view that showed their red and blue dots as they approached the trucks.

  “It’s fixed!” Lottie cried, outraged when Clyde pulled ahead of Mildred. “I hope he falls down and breaks his back!”

  “Smart,” Butcher said over and over, nodding, and Lottie knew he was imagining himself there, just as she had done. She felt a chill. He glanced at her and for a moment their eyes held-naked, scheming. They broke away simultaneously.

  Mildred limped forward until it was evident each step was torture. Finally she sobbed, sank to the ground and buried her face in her hands.

  Clyde ran on. It would take an act of God now to stop him. He reached the truck at twelve minutes before midnight.

  For a long time neither Lottie nor Butcher moved. Neither spoke. Butcher had turned the audio off as soon as Clyde reached the truck, and now there were the usual after-game recaps, the congratulations, the helicopter liftouts of the other contestants.

  Butcher sighed. “One of the better shows,” he said. He was hoarse.

  “Yeah. About the best yet.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed again and stood up. “Honey, don’t bother with all this junk now. I’m going to take a shower, and then I’ll help you clean up, okay?”

  “It’s not that bad,” she said. “I’ll be done by the time you’re finished. Want a sandwich, doughnut?”

  “I don’t think so. Be right out.” He left. When he came back, shaved, clean, his wet hair brushed down smoothly, the room was neat again, the dishes washed and put away.

  “Let’s go to bed, honey,” he said, and put his arm lightly about her shoulders. “You look beat.”

  “I am.” She slipped her arm about his waist. “We both lost.”

  “Yeah, I know. Next week.”

  She nodded. Next week. It was the best money they ever spent, she thought, undressing. Best thing they ever bought, even if it would take them fifteen years to pay it off. She yawned and slipped into bed. They held hands as they drifted off to sleep.

  STROBOSCOPIC by Alastair Reynolds

  Alastair Reynolds is a frequent contributor to Interzone, and has also sold to Asimov’s Science Fiction
, Spectrum SF, and elsewhere. His first novel, Revelation Space, was widely hailed as one of the major SF books of the year; it was quickly followed by Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap, and Century Rain, all big books that were big sellers as well, establishing Reynolds as one of the best and most popular new SF writers to enter the field in many years. His other books include a novella collection, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days. His most recent book is a new novel, Pushing Ice. Coming up are two new collections, Galactic North and Zima Blue and Other Stories. A professional scientist with a PhD in astronomy, he comes from Wales, but lives in the Netherlands, where he works for the European Space Agency.

  Here’s a taut, inventive, and fast-paced story that speculates that the newish realm of computer game design will eventually merge with the field of daredevil exhibitions of the jump-over-a-canyon-on-a-rocket sled sort, to produce a sport where everything can change in the blink of an eye-sometimes with fatal results.

  ***

  “OPEN THE BOX.”

  I wasn’t making a suggestion. Just in case the tone of my voice didn’t make that clear, I backed up my words with an antique but functional blunderbuss; something won in a gaming tournament half a lifetime earlier. We stood in the airlock of my yacht, currently orbiting Venus: me, my wife, and two employees of Icehammer Games.

  Between us was a gray box the size of a child’s coffin.

  “After all this time,” said the closest man, his face hidden behind a mirrored gold visor on a rococo white helmet. “Still don’t trust us?”

  “First rule of complex systems,” I said. “You can’t tell friends from enemies.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Nozomi.”

  But even as he spoke, White knelt down and fiddled with the latches on the lid of the box. It opened with a gasp of air, revealing a mass of translucent protective sheeting wadded around something very cold. After passing the blunderbuss to Risa, I reached in and lifted out the package, feeling its bulk.

  “What is it?

  “An element of a new game,” said the other man, Black. “Something called Stroboscopic.”

  I carried the package to a workbench. “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s hush-hush,” Black said. “Company hopes to have it up and running in a few months. Rumor is it’s unlike anything else in Tycho.”

  I pulled back the last layer of wadding.

  It was an animal packed in ice; some kind of hardshelled arthropod; like a cross between a scorpion and a crab-all segmented exoskeletal plates and multijointed limbs terminating in various specialized and nasty-looking appendages. The dark carapace was mottled with patches of dirty white, sparkling with tiny reflections. Elsewhere it shone like polished turtleshell. There were ferocious mouth parts but nothing I recognized as an eye, or any kind of sensory organ at all.

  “Looks delicious,” I said. “What do I cook it with?”

  “You don’t eat it, Nozomi. You play it.” Black shifted nervously as if wary of how much he could safely disclose. “The game will feature a whole ecology of these things-dozens of other species; all kinds of predator-prey relationships.”

  “Someone manufactures them?”

  “Nah.” It was White speaking now. “Icehammer found ’em somewhere outside the system, using the snatcher.”

  “Might help if I knew where.”

  “Tough titty. They never told us; we’re just one of dozens of teams working on the game.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “So you’re saying, all I have to go on is one dead animal, which might have come from anywhere in the galaxy?”

  “Yeah,” White said, his helmet nodding. “Except it isn’t dead.”

  THE mere fact that I’d seen the creature, of course, meant that I’d have an unfair advantage when it came to playing the game. It meant that I, Nozomi, one of the dozen or so best-known gamers in the system, would be cheating. But I could live with that. Though my initial rise to fame had been driven mainly by skill, it was years since I’d played a game without having already gained an unfair edge over the other competitors.

  There were reasons.

  I could remember a time in my childhood when the playing of games was not the highest pinnacle of our culture; simply one means by which rich immortals fought boredom. But that was before the IWP commenced the first in a long series of wars against the Halo Ideologues, those scattered communities waging dissent from the system’s edge. The Inner Worlds Prefecture had turned steadily more totalitarian, as governments generally do in times of crisis. Stealthily, the games had been pushed toward greater prominence, and shady alliances had been forged between the IWP and the principal gaming houses. The games enthralled the public and diverted their attentions from the Halo wars. And-unlike the arts-they could not be used as vehicles for subversion. For gamers like myself it was a near-utopian state of affairs. We were pampered and courted by the houses and made immensely rich.

  But-maybe because we’d been elevated to such loftiness-we also saw what was going on. And turning a blind eye was one of the few things I’d never been good at.

  One day, five years ago, I was approached by the same individuals who’d brought the box to my yacht. Although they were officially working for Icehammer, they were also members of an underground movement with cells in all the gaming houses. Its lines of communication stretched out to the Ideologues themselves.

  The movement was using the games against the IWP. They’d approach players like myself and offer to disclose material relating to games under development by Icehammer or other houses; material that would give the player an edge over their rivals. The player in turn would siphon a percentage of their profit into the movement.

  The creature in the box was merely the latest tip-off.

  But I didn’t know what to make of it, except that it had been snatched from somewhere in the galaxy. Wormhole manipulation offered instantaneous travel to the stars, but nothing larger than a beachball could make the trip. The snatcher was an automated probe that had retrieved biological specimens from thousands of planets. Icehammer operated its own snatcher, for obtaining material that could be incorporated into products.

  This time, it seemed to have brought back a dud.

  “IT just sits there and does nothing,” Risa said when the Icehammer employees had left, the thing resting on a chilled pallet in the sick bay.

  “What kind of game can they possibly build around it?”

  “Last player to die of boredom wins?”

  “Possible. Or maybe you throw it? It’s heavy enough, as though the damn thing is half-fossilized. Those white patches look like quartz, don’t they?”

  Maybe the beast wouldn’t do anything until it was placed into the proper environment-perhaps because it needed olfactory or tactile cues to switch from dormancy.

  “Black said the game was based on an ecology?” I said.

  “Yeah, but how do you think such a game would work?” Risa said. “An ecology’s much too chaotic to build into a game.” Before she married me she’d been a prominent games designer for one of the other houses, so she knew what she was talking about. “Do you know how disequilibrate your average ecology is?”

  “Not even sure I can pronounce it.”

  “Ecologies aren’t kids’s stuff. They’re immensely complex-food webs, spectra of hierarchical connected-ness… Screw up any one level, and the whole thing can collapse-unless you’ve evolved the system into some kind of Gaian self-stabilizing regime, which is hard enough when you’re not trying to re-create an alien ecology, where there might be all sorts of unexpected emergent phenomena.”

  “Maybe that’s the point, though? A game of dexterity, like balancing spinning plates?”

  Risa made the noise that told she was half acknowledging the probable truthfulness of my statement. “They must constrain it in some way. Strip it down to the essentials, and then build in some mechanism whereby players can influence things.”

  I nodded. I’d been unwilling to probe the creatu
re too deeply until now, perhaps still suspicious of a trap-but I knew that if I didn’t, the little arthropod would drive me quietly insane. At the very least, I had to know whether it had anything resembling a brain-and if I got that far, I could begin to guess at the kinds of behavioral routines scripted into its synapses, especially if I could trace pathways to sensory organs. Maybe I was being optimistic, though. The thing didn’t even have recognizable eyes, so it was anyone’s guess as to how it assembled a mental model of its surroundings. And of course that told me something, though it wasn’t particularly useful.

  The creature had evolved somewhere dark.

  A MONTH later, Icehammer began a teaser campaign for Stroboscopic. The premiere was to take place two months later in Tycho, but a handful of selected players would be invited to an exclusive preview a few weeks earlier, me among them.

  I began to warm up to competition fitness.

  Even with insider knowledge, no game was ever a walkover, and my contacts in the resistance movement would be disappointed if I didn’t turn in a tidy profit. The trouble was I didn’t know enough about the game to finesse the required skills; whether they were mental or physical or some combination of the two. Hedging my bets, I played as many different types of games as possible in the time frame, culminating in a race through the atmosphere of Jupiter piloting frail cloudjammers. The game was one that demanded an acute grasp of aerodynamic physics, coupled with sharp reflexes and a willingness to indulge in extreme personal risk.

  It was during the last of the races that Angela Valdez misjudged a thermal and collapsed her foil. Valdez had been a friend of mine years ago, and though we’d since fallen into rivalry, we’d never lost our mutual respect. I attended her funeral on Europa with an acute sense of my own mortality. There, I met most of the other gamers in the system, including a youngish man called Zubek whose star was in the ascendant. He and Valdez had been lovers, I knew-just as I’d loved her years before I met Risa.