by Tom Clancy
That isn’t very hopeful. Matt considered the online brochure they’d gone through. At least four hundred games were coming out and on display at the convention. Some of them they’d been able to rule out immediately due to familiarity with the gaming product.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Kris said, “but I’ve got to get back to the game. The people playing this demo are going to expect me to put on a show for a while. If I’d gotten captured, I could have relaxed in a Burgundian prison. Now I’m going to have to dip into my bag of tricks and stir up some more intrigue.”
“Sorry,” Leif said.
“Don’t worry about it. I spent a lot of time imprisoned during the testing phase of the game. This will be stressful, but it’ll be fun.”
“Will you do me a favor?” Leif asked.
“If I can.”
Leif opened his hand and swirling green lights coalesced into a coin. “This icon has my e-mail address. If you hear of any games that are really big on dragons, can you drop me a note?”
“I’d be happy to.” Kris took the coin, then turned and marched away, bellowing orders to her troops while full dark settled over the town, demanding to see Guillaume de Flavy.
Andy fidgeted and paced restlessly. “Let’s blaze. I’m done here.”
Matt grinned at his friend’s discomfort, but his mind stayed busy with how they were going to find the dragon and the dragonrider.
The gaming convention menu appeared ahead of Matt when he opened his eyes. The fatigue from the jaunt through Maid of Orleans quickly left him. Icons representing various games and gaming corporations spun against a backdrop of star-lit space.
Andy and Leif stood on the electric-blue sheet of crystal that oriented up from down. Andy swept the rows of icons with his eager gaze. “As I recall, it’s my turn to choose.”
Staring at all the selections, Matt felt totally lost.
“You look frustrated,” Leif observed.
“I’m getting that way,” Matt admitted. “There’s no way we’re going to be able to sample every game.”
“We’re not sampling every game,” Leif said.
“Right,” Andy added. “Only the cool ones. And I’ve got one here called Goblin King. It promises a fantasy setting and lots of combat action.”
“We need a way of narrowing down the field,” Matt said. “But I’m fresh out of ideas.”
“Until you get one,” Leif pointed out, “I’d rather stay busy. I don’t think sitting and worrying — even in first class — is going to be beneficial.”
Matt let out a long breath. “No. I just wish I knew for sure what Maj and I entered was a game.”
Leif shook his head. “From the way you describe the environment, it couldn’t be anything else.”
“I know. But why did we get caught in the bleed-over interface?”
“I don’t have an answer for you, buddy. I think we’ll know that when we find the game we’re looking for.”
“If those guys in the black suits haven’t found it first.”
“That’s a lot of negative energy to carry around.” Leif smiled. “Remember, we’re the guys who just saved Joan of Arc from the Burgundians.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
“While you guys are flapping your lips,” Andy pointed out, “we’re burning daylight. Let’s hit it.” He touched a whirling red icon in the shape of a gargoyle, and red sparks spread over him, whirling him away in a sudden tornado.
Leif and Matt touched the icon and followed him.
Bitter cold soaked into Matt’s body in the next moment. He blinked his eyes open and found his head encased in a round clear bubble. The air inside the helmet tasted stale.
He was also in orbit in a space suit around a slow-turning planet. He gazed up at the world, knowing that way was actually down. The planet was predominantly the blue-green of oceans with only sporadic splotches of red-brown earth. Scanning the curvature of the planet, he spotted three satellites, much closer than he would have figured possible with the gravity well that existed. Two of them were true green while the third was purple.
“Rhidher!”
Matt experienced a sharp, stabbing pain between his temples, then realized the voice came from inside his head. He twisted and spotted a huge shape bearing down on him. When he saw the bat wings that flared out on either side of the gigantic creature, he thought for a moment that they’d found the great dragon.
But the shape wasn’t long and sleek like that of the dragon. Despite its enormous size, the creature’s body was squat and man-shaped, possessing two arms and two legs. Blue-silver armor covered it, showing great hinged joints. Even the wings looked too stunted for its size.
“Rhidher! Sit!”
The great creature came to a stop in front of Matt with a flurry of bat wings despite the fact there was no atmosphere in space. The thing dwarfed him. A seat, built along the lines of a cockpit console, was strapped across the thick, broad neck. Long, tubular weapons occupied areas on either side of the seat.
“Rhidher!” The great beast looked at Matt imploringly with manhole-sized brown eyes that held glints of cyberwear. “You must sit! Enemy come!”
The voice inside Matt’s head didn’t hurt as much as it had. He reached out and caught the edge of the seat, pulling himself in. Belts automatically stretched across his chest and shoulders, locking him down.
Andy’s face blurred into focus on the screen at the front of the console. “Welcome, Rhidher Matt.” Like Matt, he wore the bubble helmet and bulky space suit.
“These aren’t the dragons we’re looking for,” Matt said.
“We’ll look around for a minute.”
Before Matt could reply, a triangular-shaped aircraft attacked. Pink lasers strafed the darkness. The sizzle was even audible. The gargoyle beast he rode dodged automatically.
“Oh, yeah,” Andy said. “Meet the enemy.”
Maj peered up at Peter Griffen as the game designer held court on the table he’d climbed up on. In spite of the fact that he had a reputation for shying away from publicity, Peter seemed at home in front of the convention crowd.
HoloNet reporters stood in the forefront of the crowd with their equipment trained on him. “Why was there so much secrecy involved in this game?” one of them asked. Maj didn’t know the man’s name, but she’d seen him reporting on the up coming gaming convention over the last few days.
Peter smiled shyly. “To get you to ask questions like that.”
The crowd laughed.
Well, he has a sense of humor, Maj thought.
“Seriously,” Peter said. “There were a lot of reasons not to talk about the game until now. How many times have we heard about a game’s release date pushing out a month or three? Or even a year?”
The response from the crowd was a grudging acknowledgment of the industry’s primary pitfall. Even with all the technology available on the Net, designers fell behind on delivery dates.
“I look around today,” Peter went on, “and I can name six different games I can point to from here that were supposed to release six months and more ago.”
“If you’ve found a way to fix that,” one of the reporters commented, “you’re going to make a mint.”
Peter shook his head. “I haven’t fixed that for anybody but me.” He paced on the table, showing nervous energy instead of a planned attack to get more attention. “I’ve been in this business for four years. Luckily, I’ve gotten the chance to work on a number of well-received games.”
“It wasn’t luck,” someone in the crowd said. “The guy has a real gift for picking the right property.”
“I’ve written code, game designs, worked with art, done finished as well as concept treatments, written dialogue, and everything else it takes to make a really good game,” Peter said.
Maj remembered reading that from the text files available over the Net. Peter Griffen had been a true Renaissance man in the gaming industry. There hadn’t been any aspect of computer-base
d gaming that he hadn’t touched.
Some of the articles Maj had read that were taken from top game review magazines had lamented at the loss of the crown prince of the game scene. But that had been then, eighteen months ago, right after the launch of the Promethean Directive, a game based on politics and economics that had rocketed up the sales figures in the gaming industry.
“Eighteen months ago,” Peter went on, “I quit my position with my last software developer. I had an idea for a world, and for gameplay that would be so cutting edge that no man, woman, or child could resist picking it up. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Realms of the Bright Waters.” He waved his hand and the holoprojectors behind him filled with dazzling color that took the crowd’s breath away.
10
“How are you doing, Montoya?”
Facing the security guard, Gaspar accessed a file on the man. The flatfilm pictures flashed by in the corner of his virtual vision, flipping through images. He found the one he was looking for. Leon Tatum was a day guard. According to the records Heavener’s people had turned up, Montoya — the personality proxy Gaspar currently wore — and Tatum worked together only occasionally.
“Fine, Tatum,” Gaspar replied. “Sleepy, I guess.”
Tatum nodded. “You worked all the excitement last night?”
“Yeah. What’s going on out there?”
Tatum shrugged. “Some whiz kid unveiling the goods. Getting quite a draw.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “You can get a free cuppa caffeine back there. Help you stay awake.”
“I think I’ll go see what’s going on.”
“Whiz-kid stuff,” Tatum said. “Me, I’ll take holo and a good ball game any day.”
Gaspar walked to the outer fringe of the crowd and peered up at Griffen. Jealousy stirred restlessly within him, taking first place over the fear. Peter Griffen had it all — talent, skill, and the breaks to help him make the most of them, and Gaspar had nothing. For just a moment it felt good that he was helping take it away from Griffen.
Leaving his holo active, Gaspar accessed the deeper programs inside the virtual version of the hotel. Although the convention center stayed in place around him, Gaspar seemed to step outside himself, cloning his presence as he slipped into the security code protecting the veeyar that had been set up to run the Eisenhower Productions booth.
A freestanding doorway formed in front of Gaspar. He put his hand on the door and pressed. The metal felt cool to the touch. It also felt impenetrable.
Gaspar rubbed the door slowly, then more vigorously, using crack programs he’d developed, found, and traded for. Gradually the door’s surface peeled away, leaving only the cycling orbit of atoms standing in his way. He kicked in another part of the crack program and turned his second virtual self into two-dee.
Moving carefully, he flowed through the orbiting atoms, sliding inside the veeyar controlling Griffen’s presentation.
“The Realm of Bright Waters is bigger than anything out there,” Peter Griffen said. “It’s almost half again as large as Sarxos.”
Maj watched the images on the holo, as mesmerized by the sheer beauty of the world as the rest of the audience. This has to be the same place.
“It’s gonna replace Sarxos, dude!” someone shouted from the audience.
The viewpoint suddenly climbed, rising above the thickly bunched trees. For the first time the crowd saw how tall the trees were. Near the canopy, the branches and leaves thinned out enough that diffused green sunlight punched occasional holes through. Maj spotted the red sun above, and she didn’t doubt that the blue one would be long in coming.
“Look!” someone shouted.
There, just for a wisp of a second, was a glimpse of a civilization built in the treetops. Materials stripped from the trees created fantastically shaped huts suspended in the branches of the huge trees. Narrow bridges connected them, some of them built with steps that led up or down. Small humanoid figures dressed in leaves and bark, colors added from fruits or vegetables, clambered through the bridges and branches. They drew back bows, and arrows whizzed too close for comfort, reaching out into the audience using the holoprojector set up in the room.
“Elves!” someone cried.
“The world,” Peter went on, “is filled with dozens of races, all of them equipped with their own history, their own economic and environmental needs. There are physical talents, skills, and magic you can learn. You can be a warrior, a bard, a historian, or a mage. And all of those races and abilities are as evenly weighted as I can make them.”
The viewpoint sailed above the trees, cutting through the green sky. The red and the blue suns shined. A diamond-bright river wound through the heart of the forest.
“The water is the key to everything in the realm,” Peter said. “So many people’s lives depend on the rivers, streams, and oceans that are in this world. Water is a thing of mysticism and power.”
The viewpoint scanned down to a fishing village, then to an old man dressed in animal skins sitting cross-legged on the bank of the river. A dozen small children sat around him, their faces obviously enraptured. The old man stuck his hand into the water and drew it back. A shiny tendril of river water followed the hand out, twisting inquisitively. Then the tendril rolled into a ball that floated between the old man’s hands. Images formed in the watery depths.
“You can explore and interact with small villages,” Peter went on, “or you can journey to vast civilized areas.”
The viewpoint hurtled across the sky again, then focused on a towering city carved from the side of a mountain. Roads twisted and ran through the buildings. Horsemen rode down the thoroughfares amid strangely shaped buggies pulled by large, wingless birds and huge lizards.
“You’ll be called on to help kings,” Peter said, “or you can aid those not so fortunate.”
The viewpoint locked on a ragged beggar seated in the mouth of an alley filled with slithering shadows and hungry red eyes.
“You can live a totally alien experience.” Peter smiled. “At least, as alien as I’ve been able to make it.”
Images of creatures seemingly made of mud slithered through dank riverbanks under the water. Long millipedes the color of rainbows suddenly attacked the mud creatures, coring through them or tearing them to bits. Other mud creatures battled the millipedes, using iridescent pieces of shell that shot out white-hot beams.
“You can protect, or you can pillage,” Peter said.
The sea blurred by, then a wooden submarine came into focus. It floated at the top of the waterline, obviously stalking the merchant ship racing the wind ahead. Suddenly a hatch opened, revealing a being with black chitinous hide. Its eyes sat on stalks, and its face was totally inhuman.
Peter paced, smiling proudly, his own eyes drawn to the holos. “You can build—”
Men and women struggled in an arctic wilderness, using hatchets, hammers, and chisels to punch holes into mountains of ice. Others fed campfires and turned spits of meat, all of them struggling to stay warm and alive. Suddenly the ice beneath them split and a huge whalelike creature surged high into the air.
“—or you can search abandoned cities.”
Torch-lit shadows shifted across the interior of a collapsed building. The dulled sheen of beaten gold drew the eye, holding the promise of treasures yet to come.
Abruptly the holo images faded, leaving a ghost in the air for a moment. Then it was gone, too. And Maj knew there wasn’t a person in the room who wasn’t wanting to see more.
“It’s a whole world,” Peter promised. “A place of huge potential for gamers who love the wonderment of exploration, the thrill of battle, and detailed civilization. It’s a game that I created, and one that I still enjoy adventuring in.”
Conversation broke into dozens of pockets as the audience started talking excitedly.
“When is the game going on sale?” one of the reporters asked.
Peter waved to the booth. “Sign-up packages will be available as soon as we open the doors
.”
“What about sales over the Net?”
“Those will be available, too.”
Lines started to form at the two doors Maj could see. She couldn’t blame them. The view she’d gotten of the world the night before had only been the tip of the iceberg.
“You play this game?” the reporter asked.
Peter grinned bashfully. “Every day. I don’t know if I’m admitting to gluttony or pride here, but anything that feels this good has got to be some kind of sin.”
Another wave of laughter went through the crowd.
“When do we get a chance to play?” a girl in the front row asked.
“Actually, Eisenhower Productions was a little reluctant about letting anyone online until it was completely finished,” Peter said.
“Why?” Dunn asked sarcastically. “Do they think it may impact the sales potential by showing that the world interaction isn’t quite as good as you make it sound?”
“Actually,” Peter said, “no. Even at this point players can join up on the game and run through a small adventure.”
“Good,” Dunn said. “Then maybe we can find out exactly how limited this game is before anyone starts paying for it.”
Peter shook his head and looked at the reporter. “It’s too late for that. Pre-orders for Realm of the Bright Water have already set new records.”
The crowd cheered, then started chanting, demanding access to the game.
Peter returned to the middle of the stage. “What we’re going to do now is give you a slight peek into this world.”
The small group of businessmen who’d walked in with Peter started forward. Maj tried to read their expressions, but all she saw was concern, and no reason at all for it to be there. What’s going on?
Peter stretched his right hand high into the air. Silver glitter splashed all around him, so thick it became a mist. Steel hardened in his fist, becoming a broadsword that splintered the light. In the next instant, silver armor covered him from head to toe.
It is him! Maj thought. As politely as she could, she started pushing her way through the crowd.
“Shut him down!”