by Jack Dann
“That’ll make it all the more interesting, then.”
But she wasn’t really listening to me, perhaps knowing that I’d already made my mind up.
Zubek and I arranged a press conference an hour later, sharing the same podium, microphones radiating out from our faces like the rifles of a firing squad; stroboscopic flashes of cameras prefiguring the game ahead. We explained our proposition: how we’d agreed between ourselves to another game; one that would be dedicated to the memory of Angela Valdez.
But that we’d be playing Level Two.
Icehammer took the podium during the wild applause and cheering that followed our announcement.
“This is extremely unwise,” he said, still stiffly clad in his mobility frame. “Level Two is hardly tested yet; there are bound to be bugs in the system. It could be exceedingly dangerous.” Then he smiled and a palpable aura of relief swept through the spectators. “On the other hand, my shareholders would never forgive me if I forewent an opportunity for publicity like this.”
The cheers rose to a deafening crescendo.
Shortly afterward I was strapped into the console, with neuro-effectors crowning my skull, ready to light up my pain center. The computer overseeing the game would allocate jolts of pain according to the losses suffered by my population of Strobelife. All in the mind, of course. But that wouldn’t make the pain any less agonizing, and it wouldn’t reduce the chances of my heart simply stopping at the shock of it all.
Zubek leant in and shook my hand.
“For Angela,” I said, and then watched as they strapped Zubek in the adjacent console, applying the neuro-effector.
It was hard. It wasn’t just the pain. The game was made more difficult by deliberately limiting our overview of the Arena. I no longer saw my population in its entirety-the best I could do was hop my point of view from creature to creature, my visual field offering a simulation of the electrical-field environment sensed by each Strobelife animal; a snapshot only updated during Strobetime. When there was no movement, there was no electrical-field generation. Most of the time I was blind.
Most of the time I was screaming.
Yet somehow-when the computer assessed the fitness of the two populations-I was declared the winner over Zubek.
Lying in the couch, my body quivered, saliva water-falling from my slack jaw. A moan filled the air, which it took me long moments to realize was my own attempt at vocalization. And then I saw something odd; something that shouldn’t have happened at all.
Zubek hauled himself from his couch, not even sweating.
He didn’t look like a man who’d just been through agony.
An unfamiliar face blocked my view of him. I knew who it was, just from his posture and the cadences of his speech.
“Yes, you’re right. Zubek was never wired into the neuro-effector. He was working for us-persuading you to play Level Two.”
“White,” I slurred. “You, isn’t it?”
“The very man. Now how would you like to see your wife alive?”
I reached for his collar, fingers grasping ineffectually at the fabric. “Where’s Risa?”
“In our care, I assure you. Now kindly follow me.”
He waited while I heaved myself from the enclosure of the couch, my legs threatening to turn to jelly beneath me.
“Oh, dear,” White said, wrinkling his nose. “You’ve emptied your bladder, haven’t you?”
“I’ll empty your face if you don’t shut up.”
My nervous system had just about recovered by the time we reached Icehammer’s quarters, elsewhere in the building. But my belief system was still in ruins.
White was working for the IWP.
ICEHAMMER was lounging on a maroon settee, divested of his exoskeletal support system. Just as I was marveling at how pitiable he looked, he jumped up and strode to me, extending a hand.
“Good to meet you, Nozomi.”
I nodded at the frame, racked on one wall next to an elaborate suit of armor. “You don’t need that thing?”
“Hell, no. Not in years. Good for publicity, though-neural burnout and all that.”
“It’s a setup, isn’t it?”
“How do you think it played?” Icehammer said.”
“Black really was working for the movement,” I said, aware that I was compromising myself with each word, but also that it didn’t matter. “White wasn’t. You were in hock to the IWP all along. You were the reason Black vanished.”
“Nothing personal Nozomi,” White said. “They got to my family, just as we’ve got to Risa.”
Icehammer took over: “She’s in our care now, Nozomi-quite unharmed, I assure you. But if you want to see her alive, I advise that you pay meticulous attention to my words.” While he talked he brushed a hand over the tabard of the hanging suit of armor, leaving a greasy imprint on the black metal. “You disappointed me. That a man of your talents should be reduced to cheating.”
“I didn’t do it for myself.”
“You don’t seriously imagine that the movement could possibly pose a threat to the IWP? Most of its cells have been infiltrated. Face it, man, it was always an empty gesture.”
“Then where was the harm?”
Icehammer tried a smile but it looked fake. “Obviously I’m not happy at your exploiting company secrets, even if you were good enough to keep them largely to yourself.”
“It’s not as if I sold them on.”
“No, I’ll credit you with discretion, if nothing else. But even if I thought killing you might be justified, there’d be grave difficulties with such a course of action. You’re too well known; I can’t just make you disappear without attracting a lot of attention. And I can’t expose you as a cheat without revealing the degree to which my organization’s security was breached. So I’m forced to another option-one that, on reflection, will serve the both of us rather well.”
“Which is?”
“I’ll let Risa go, provided you agree to play the next level of the game.”
I thought about that for a few moments before answering. “That’s all? Why the blackmail?”
“Because no one in their right minds would play Level Three if they knew what was involved.” Icehammer toyed with the elegantly flared cuff of his bottle-green smoking jacket. “The third level is exponentially more hazardous than the second. Of course, it will eventually draw competitors-but no one would consent to playing it until they’d attained total mastery of the lower levels. We don’t expect that to happen for at least a year. You, on the other hand, flushed with success at beating Zubek, will rashly declare your desire to play Level Three. And in the process of doing so you will probably die, or at the very least be severely maimed.”
“I thought you said it would serve me well.”
“I meant your posthumous reputation.” Icehammer raised a finger. “But don’t imagine that the game will be rigged, either. It will be completely fair, by the rules.”
Feeling sick to my stomach, I still managed a smile. “I’ll just have to cheat, then, won’t I?”
A FEW minutes later I stood at the podium again, a full audience before me, and read a short prepared statement. There wasn’t much to it, and as I hadn’t written a word of it, I can’t say that I injected any great enthusiasm into the proceedings.
“I’m retiring,” I said, to the hushed silence in the atrium. “This will be my last competition.”
Muted cheers. But they quickly died away.
“But I’m not finished yet. Today I played the first two levels of what I believe will be one of the most challenging and successful games in Tycho, for many years to come. I now intend to play the final level.”
Cheers followed again-but they were still a little fearful. I didn’t blame them. What I was doing was insane.
Icehammer came out-back in his frame again-and made some halfhearted protestations, but the charade was even more theatrical than last time. Nothing could be better for publicity than my failing to complete the level-except possibly my death.
I tried not to think about that part.
“I admire your courage,” he said, turning to the audience. “Give it up for Nozomi-he’s a brave man!” Then he whispered in my ear: “Maybe we’ll auction your body parts.”
But I kept on smiling my best shit-eating smile, even as they wheeled in the same suit of armor that I’d seen hanging on Icehammer’s wall.
I WALKED into the Arena, the armor’s servo-assisted joints whirring with each step. The suit was heated and pressurized, of course-but the tiny air-circulator was almost silent, and the ease of walking meant that my own exertions were slight.
The Arena was empty of Strobelife now, brightly lit; dusty topsoil like lunar regolith, apart from the patches of flora. I walked to the spot that had been randomly assigned me, designated by a livid red circle.
Icehammer’s words still rang in my ears. “You don’t even know what happens in Level Three, do you?”
“I’m sure you’re going to enjoy telling me.”
“Level One is abstracted-the Arena is observed, but it might as well be taking place in a computer. Level Two’s a little more visceral, as you’re now well aware-but there’s still no actual physical risk to the competitor. And, of course, even Level Two could be simulated. You must have asked yourself that question, Nozomi. Why create a real ecology of Strobelife creatures at all, if you’re never going to enter it?”
That was when he had drawn my attention to the suit of armor. “You’ll wear this. It’ll offer protection against the vacuum and the effects of the pulse, but don’t delude yourself that the armor itself is much more than cosmetic.”
“I’m going into the Arena?”
“Where else? It’s the logical progression. Now your viewpoint will be entirely limited to one participant in the game-yourself.”
“Get it over with.”
“You’ll still have the ability to intervene in the ecology, just as before-the commands will be interpreted by your suit and transmitted to the controlling computer. The added complexity, of course, is that you’ll have to structure your game around your own survival at each step.”
“And if-when-I win?”
“You’ll be reunited with Risa, I promise. Free to go. All the rest. You can even sell your story, if you can find anyone who’ll believe you.”
“Know a good ghostwriter?”
He’d winked at me then. “Enjoy the game, Nozomi. I know I will.”
Now I stood on my designated spot and waited.
The lights went out.
I had a sense of rapid subliminal motion all around me. The drones were whisking out and positioning the inert Strobelife creatures in their initial formations. The process lasted a few seconds, performed in total silence. I could move, but only within the confines of the suit, which had now become rigid apart from my fingers.
Unguessable minutes passed.
Then the first stammering pulse came, bright as a nuclear explosion, even with the visor’s shielding. My suit lost its rigidity, but for a moment I didn’t dare move. On the faceplate’s head-up display I could see that I was surrounded by Strobelife creatures, rendered according to their electrical field properties. There were grazers and predators and all the intermediates, and they all seemed to be moving in my direction.
And something was dreadfully wrong. They were too big.
I’d never asked myself whether the creature we’d examined on the yacht was an adult. Now I knew it wasn’t.
The afterflash of the flash died from my vision, and as the seconds crawled by, the creatures’ movements became steadily more sluggish, until only the smallest of them were moving at all.
Then they, too, locked into immobility.
As did my suit, its own motors deactivating until triggered by the next flash.
I tried to hold the scene in my memory, recalling the large predator whose foreclaw might scythe within range of my suit, if he was able to lurch three or four steps closer to me during the next pulse. I’d have to move fast, when it came-and on the pulse after that, I’d have another two to contend with, nearing me on my left flank.
The flash came-intense and eye-hurting.
No shadows; almost everything washed out in the brilliance. Maybe that was why Strobelife had never evolved the eye: it was too bright for contrast, offering no advantage over electrical field sensitivity.
The big predator-a cross among a tank, armadillo, and lobster-came three steps closer and slammed his foreclaw into a wide arc that grazed my chest. The impact hit me like a bullet.
I fell backward, into the dirt, knowing that I’d broken a rib or two.
The electrical field overlay dwindled to darkness. My suit seized into rigidity.
Think, Noz. Think.
My hand grasped something. I could still move my fingers, if nothing else. The gloves were the only articulated parts of the suit that weren’t slaved to the pulse cycle.
I was holding something hard, rocklike. But it wasn’t a rock. My fingers traced the line of a carapace; the pielike fluting around the legs. It was a small grazer.
An idea formed in my mind. I thought of what Icehammer had said about the Strobeworld system; how there was nothing apart from the planet, the pulsar, and a few comets.
Sooner or later, one of those comets would crash into the star. It might not happen very often, maybe only once every few years, but when it did it would be very bad indeed: a massive flare of X rays as the comet was shredded by the gravitational field of the pulsar. It would be a pulse of energy far more intense than the normal flash of light; too energetic for the creatures to absorb.
Strobelife must have evolved a protection mechanism.
The onset of a major flare would be signaled by visible light, as the comet began to break up. A tiny glint at first, but harbinger of far worse to come. The creatures would be sensitized to burrow into the topdirt at the first sign of light, which did not come at the expected time…
I’d already seen the reaction in action. It was what had driven the thrashing behavior of our specimen before it dropped to its death on the cabin floor. It had been trying to burrow; to bury itself in topdirt before the storm came.
The Arena wasn’t Strobeworld, just a clever facsimile of it-and there was no longer any threat from an X-ray burst. But the evolved reflex would remain, hardwired into every animal in the ecology.
All I had to do was trigger it.
The next flash came, like the brightest, quickest dawn imaginable. Ignoring the pain in my chest, I stood up-still holding the little grazer in my gloved hand.
But how could I trigger it? I’d need a source of light, albeit small, but I’d need to have it go off when I was completely immobile.
There was a way.
The predator lashed at me again, gouging into my leg. I began to topple, but forced myself to stay upright, if nothing else. Another gouge, painful this time, as if the leg armor was almost lost.
The electrical overlay faded again, and my suit froze into immobility. I began to count aloud in my head.
I’d remembered something. It had seemed completely insignificant at the time; a detail so trivial that I was barely conscious of committing it to memory. When the specimen had shattered, it had done so in complete darkness. And yet I’d seen it happen. I’d seen glints of light as it smashed into a million fragments.
And now I understood. The creature’s quartz deposits were highly crystalline. And sometimes-when crystals are stressed-they release light; something called piezoluminescene. Not much; only the amount corresponding to the energy levels of electrons trapped deep within lattices-but I didn’t need much, either. Not if I waited until the proper time, when the animals would be hypersensitized to that warning glint. I counted to 35, what I judged to be halfway between the flash intervals. And then let my fingers relax.
The grazer dropped in silence toward the floor.
I didn’t hear it shatter, not in vacuum. But in the total darkness in which I was immersed, I couldn’t miss t
he sparkle of light.
I felt the ground rumble all around me. Half a minute later, when the next flash came from the ceiling, I looked around.
I was alone.
No creatures remained, apart from the corpses of those that had already died. Instead, there were a lot of rocky mounds, where even the largest of them had buried themselves under topdirt. Nothing moved, except for a few pathetic avalanches of disturbed dirt. And there they’d wait, I knew-for however long it was evolution had programmed them to sit out the X-ray flare.
Thanks to the specimens on the yacht, I happened to know exactly how long that time was. Slightly more than four and a half hours.
Grinning to myself, knowing that Nozomi had done it again-cheated and made it look like winner’s luck-I began to stroll to safety, and to Risa.
SYNTHETIC SERENDIPITY by Vernor Vinge
Born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Vernor Vinge now lives in San Diego, California, where he is an associate professor of math sciences at San Diego State University. He sold his first story, “Apart-ness,” to New Worlds in 1965; it immediately attracted a good deal of attention, was picked up for Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr’s collaborative World’s Best Science Fiction anthology the following year, and still strikes me as one of the strongest stories of that entire period. Since this impressive debut, he has become a frequent contributor to Analog; he has also sold to Orbit, Far Frontiers, If, Stellar, and other markets. His novella “True Names,” which is famous in internet circles and among computer enthusiasts well outside of the usual limits of the genre was a finalist for both the Nebula and Hugo awards in 1981 and is cited by some as having been the real progenitor of cyberpunk rather than William Gibson’s Neuromancer. His novel A Fire Upon the Deep, one of the most epic and sweeping of modern Space Operas, won him a Hugo Award in 1993; its sequel, A Deepness in the Sky, won him another Hugo Award in 2000, and his novella “Fast Times at Fairmont High” won another Hugo in 2003. These days Vinge is regarded as one of the best of the American “hard science” writers, along with people such as Greg Bear and Gregory Benford. His other books include the novels Tatja Grimm’s World, The Witling, The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime (which have been released in an omnibus volume as Across Realtime), and the collections True Names and Other Dangers, Threats and Other Promises, and The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge. His most recent book is a new novel, Rainbow’s End.