"Enemies?" Catur raised an eyebrow.
"Not in real life! Just here. In the Middle Country. We've had some big contests, seen? I've tried to destroy him, he's tried to destroy me. We've never sixed each other, but we've gone back and forth, each won a few. . . ."
"That's a lie right there, buddy," Beezle said loyally. "Orlando never lost to this guy at anything."
". . . But then he got toasted by some low-grade sport demon, and the Table denied his appeal, and he was gone."
Ramsey nodded. Accurate so far, to the extent it mattered. "And?"
"And there were all kinds of rumors that before he left, he was asking about some golden city—something nobody in MC had ever heard of before. But then he was gone, seen? So I never found out for posdef what the ups were."
At mention of the golden city Ramsey grew very still. The sullen noises of the fire seemed unnaturally loud, the rundown hovel even smaller than it had been.
"Then I found this jewel thing," Dreyra Jarh continued. "One of my zombie minions brought it to me from where they were excavating for me at the site of the lost Catacombs of Perinyum. Zombie minions don't care about jewels or that kind of thing—they make pretty good workers. Then, when I examined it, it kind of . . . I don't know, opened up. . . ."
"Yes?" It was hard to keep the excitement out of his voice. "So. . . ?"
Before the enchanter could resume, Ramsey was jolted by Beezle's voice in his ear again. "Hey, buddy, there's someone coming. . . !"
Ramsey climbed to one knee, trying to drag his sword free of the scabbard, a far trickier procedure than was apparent in adventure stories. He was still struggling to disentangle the hilt from the folds of his tunic when Belmak the Buccaneer and his companion the Red Weasel appeared in the doorway, wheezing in perfect unison.
"Gadzooks!" Belmak appeared to feel this was enough to state their case; he resumed struggling to catch his breath. After long moments had passed, the Red Weasel looked up beside him.
"The stranger moves . . . like the wind!" The Weasel made a broad gesture, trying to show how windily Ramsey had outpaced them, and how manfully they had struggled to keep up.
The corpse-skinned enchanter wiggled his fingers impatiently. "That's fine. We're talking. Lock it and rocket, okay?"
Belmak stared. "What?"
"You heard me, go on. Why don't you go down to Ye Tavern and wait for me."
"We just got here!"
"It won't kill you. Go on."
Belmak and the Red Weasel looked like it might indeed kill them. In a sudden fit of sympathy, Ramsey took a coin from his purse that he was pretty sure was smaller than an Imperial and flipped it to the Red Weasel, who almost caught it. Somewhat mollified, the adventurers recovered the coin and went clumping back out into a night lit by garbage-fueled fires.
"You can't use zombie minions for everything," an embarrassed Dreyra Jarh said by way of explanation. "And I'm a bit short of resources lately. . . ."
"Just finish the story. You found a gem."
The enchanter wove a tale much like what Ramsey knew of Orlando's. He had been obsessed by the golden city, so different had it been from anything else he had ever seen in the Middle Country, and so positive was he that it signified some quest that only the elite players would have a hope of successfully pursuing. But the quest had been fruitless, and he had exhausted every option both within the simworld and outside, in RL, trying to track the place down. He had used his position as one of the Middle Country's paramount enchanters to turn the simworld upside down, searching everywhere, questioning everyone, mounting expeditions to every dimly-remembered bit of virtual archaeology in the entire game environment.
"It broke me," he explained sadly. "After a while I was spending Imperials I didn't even have. But I didn't find it I kept thinking that maybe Orlando did, that that's how come he went off the system, but I couldn't get in touch with him." The wizard tried to make his voice casual, and failed. "So . . . so did he?"
Ramsey was half-lost in thought, trying to put pieces into a recognizable shape. "Hmmm? Did he what?"
"Did he find the city, man?"
"I don't know." After a few more questions, Ramsey stood up, irritated to discover that even sitting down for too long in a virtual environment could prove just as uncomfortable as in real life. He tossed the pouch into Dreyra Jarh's lap. "You must have information on some of the resources you used," he suggested. "Research trails, like that?"
"Huh?"
"Just . . . records of things you did, trying to find the city."
"I guess." The enchanter was counting his earnings. It was clear that while he was happy to have the money, he wasn't going to be able to buy his country back with it, or even hire too many more zombie minions.
"Tell you what," Ramsey said, "If you let me have access to all your records, strictly privately, I'll arrange to get you a lot more than that bag of funny-money." He tried to figure out the true age of Dreyra Jarh's role-player. "How about a thousand credits? Real-world money. That ought to buy you a lot of spells. And maybe you could even get some decent gear for that poor guy running those Belmak and Weasel sims."
"You want to give me . . . money? To see what's on my system?"
"I'm a lawyer. You can work it however you want to—a contract, anything. But yes, I want access to everything you did. And do you still have the golden city or the gem?"
Dreyra Jarh snorted. "Chance not. Whole thing went pffftt. Gone. Ate a little hole in my storage, too, like it had never been there at all. You'll see."
Before he remembered that he could simply drop offline, Catur Ramsey had walked a fair distance back along the edge of the vast rubbish mounds. He was caught up in his thoughts, aware of little except the possible significance of what he'd just learned.
Whatever had happened to Orlando had happened to others, too. But for some reason it hadn't gone as far with all of them. The kid playing Dreyra Jarh was flat broke and not very happy about it, but he sure wasn't comatose.
Ramsey found himself standing a few hundred yards from a shack only slightly larger and more inviting than the enchanter's hovel. The sign swinging above the entrance proclaimed it Ye Tavern at the Dump. Two familiar faces stood in the doorway.
When he recognized Ka-turr of Rhamzee, Belmak the Buccaneer shouted for him to come join them.
"No thanks," Ramsey called. "I've got to go. You two take it easy."
Just before the dump, Madrikhor, and the entirety of the Middle country vanished, Catur Ramsey saw first Belmak, then the Red Weasel, wave good-bye in sequence.
Dread parked the Quan Li sim in a dark, quiet place and left it sitting there like a marionette with slack strings. Although there was much, much more of this newest simulation world to investigate, he had explored enough already to know that there was no shortage of places of concealment—knowledge that warmed his predator's heart. Also, with Sellars' troop of misfits left behind, there was no longer a need to pretend that the sim was always occupied.
Thinking of them and the way they had jumped on him, like jackals on a lion, he felt a brief and salty pang of hatred, but he quickly pushed it away. He was after a bigger enemy, and the idea that had kindled inside him was far more important than those small people and the small irritation they had caused.
With a single command he was offline, stretched on a comfortable massage-couch in his Cartagena office. He thumbed a couple of Adrenex tablets from his dispenser and swallowed them, then downed the contents of the squeeze bottle of water he had set beside the couch before beginning this most recent session. He switched the music in his head from the Baroque strings and phase-shifted bonebass that had seemed appropriate for exploring the new simworld to something quieter and more contemplative, more appropriate for the scenes of the hero beginning his great work—magnum opus music.
It would all be so, so sublime. He would execute a stroke so bold and audacious that even the Old Man would be stunned. Dread did not know the how yet, but he could feel himself draw
ing closer, as he felt the presence of his quarry when he was hunting.
He checked to see if Dulcie Anwin had returned his reminder call. She had. When he rang her again she picked up quickly.
"Hello." He kept his smile small and cheerful, but the dark something inside him, fed by the adrenals, wanted to grin like a jack-o'-lantern . . . like a skull. "Did you enjoy the days off?"
"God, did I!" She was dressed all in white, a conservative but stylish slant-suit that emphasized the new, golden gleam a day's sunbathing had lent to her pale skin. "I'd forgotten what it was like just to do things around the apartment—read my mail, listen to some music. . . ."
"Good, good." He kept the smile, but he was tired of the small talk already. It was one of the few things he liked about men—some of them actually kept their mouths shut unless there was something to say. "Ready for work?"
"Absolutely." Her return smile was bright, and for a moment he felt a twinge of suspicion. Was she playing some game of her own? He had not been paying very much attention to her in the last few days before he put her on hiatus. She was a dangerous, weak link, after all. He added some slow pinging tones to his internal music, like water dripping on rocks, and smoothed the momentary wrinkle out of his calm, confident mood.
"Good. Well, there have been some changes. I'll bring you up to date on them later on, but I've got something important for you to do first. I need you in your gear-master mode for this, Dulcie."
"I'm listening."
"I'm working on something, so for the moment I don't want you using the sim, but I've built a box routine within the simulation and there's something there I'd like you to look at. It looks like a plain old lighter—you know, the old-fashioned kind for cigarettes and things—but it's more. A lot more. So I want you to study it. Do everything you can to figure out how it works and what it does."
"I'm not sure I understand," she said. "What is it?"
"It's a device to manipulate gateways in the Otherland network. But I'm pretty sure it has other uses, too. I need you to find out."
"But I can't get into the sim and try it out that way?"
"Not yet." He kept his voice level, but he did not like having his directives questioned. He took an unobtrusive deep breath and listened to his music. "And there's one other thing. It'll have some kind of tags for its home system, but even if it doesn't, I want you to figure out where it comes from."
She looked doubtful. "I'll try. Then what?"
"We'll signal it destroyed, or lost, or whatever. If it acts as a discrete object, it might be that it will continue to operate."
She frowned. "If it's working now, wouldn't it just be easier to keep using it until someone notices, instead of taking the chance of turning it off for good?"
He took another deep breath. "Dulcie, this thing belongs to one of the Old Man's cronies. If somehow those Grail bastards realize someone has it, they may be able to figure out who. And if they figure out who, then within about ten minutes an urban combat team will come through your door with bang-hammers and you'll be gone so quickly and so thoroughly your neighbors will think you spontaneously combusted. This will happen in the real world, not in some VR network. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"I do, yes." This time, she was properly quiet and respectful.
"Good. Check in with me every three hours, or if you find anything interesting." He broke the connection.
He sat back on the couch, lit himself a thin black Corriegas cigar, and thought about the time when he could hunt in RL once more. He found himself considering what it would be like when red-haired, backtalking Dulcinea Anwin was no longer useful. He could be in New York in a few hours. . . .
But even this familiar and entertaining sort of speculation could not long keep his mind off his new plans. And when I'm a god. he thought, what will I hunt then? Other gods?
The idea was deliciously amusing.
CHAPTER 6
A Rock and a Hard Place
NETFEED/ENTERTAINMENT: Psychopathically Violent? You Bet!
(Review of interactive game "Poison Heart Mother IV— Mother Knows Best.")
VO: ". . . But thank God the people at U Suk Gear have gotten over that brain bubble they went through with PHM HI, where players actually lost points for maiming, raping, or slaughtering innocent civilians. Box that! Ultravile IS ultravile, seen? You start differentiating kills and pretty soon characters are having to stop and think all the time—and that's fun? Chance not. . . ."
Paul Jonas clung to a spar of his ruined boat and tried to keep his head above the surface of the violent sea. He barely knew where the sky was, let alone how to find distant Troy, and he still knew nothing of the black mountain. His enemies now included gods, and he had failed the few friends he had.
If misery were money, he thought, trying to cough out the brine before the next wave hit, I would be the richest man in this whole bloody imaginary universe.
The night seemed to stretch on forever, a thing not of minutes and hours but of thousands of half-breaths snatched between the battering of waves. He had neither the strength nor leisure to indulge in a review of his failures—the one thin blessing of his predicament. At best, when he found strength enough to lift his face a little higher above the waterline than usual, he slipped into microsleeps, brief moments of darkness, fragments of dream. In one, his father leaned down, giant-high as he towered over his son, and said in a tone of muted disgust, "If you just write in any letters you want, you're not really solving the puzzle, are you?" His father's glasses threw back the light, so that Paul could see no eyes, only fluorescent bars reflected from overhead.
In another, Paul held something shiny in his hand. When he saw it was a feather, he felt a brief moment of happiness and hope, although he had no idea why that should be, but the feather proved to be more insubstantial than a butterfly wing; even as he tried to keep his dream-hand steady, the bright blue-green thing crumbled into iridescent powder.
What have I done? he thought as consciousness returned and waves slapped him. Even if this place is just a simulation, why am I in it? Where's my body? Why am I being trotted through a bizarre quest I can't even understand, like some trained dog being made to act out Shakespeare?
There was no answer, of course, and even his desperate review of questions was beginning to become an exercise in horror. Perhaps there was no because at all, only an endless catalog of whys. Perhaps his suffering was just an accident.
No. Eyes closed against the stinging salt, jounced by the waves like a highwayman's hostage tied across a horse's saddle, he reached for belief. No, that's me floating again. I made a mistake, but I tried to do something. Better than floating, drifting. Better.
Tortured the woman, another part of him pointed out in unanswerable rebuttal. Made Penelope fear for her life. That's better? Maybe you should just go back to being useless again.
It was no use arguing with yourself, he learned as the night crawled along, waves splashing him over and over like some endless slapstick sketch from Hell's own music hall. Misery always knew all the weak spots. Misery always won.
Things looked a little better when the dawn came, at least in a spiritual sense: Paul had come to terms with his inner voices and achieved a sort of detente. He had agreed with himself that he was the scum of the universe, but had pleaded special circumstances of amnesia, terror, and confusion. No final decision would be reached, it seemed. Not yet.
How things actually looked, to his actual brine-smarting eyes, was a different story. The empty ocean stretched in all directions. His arms were so cramped that he did not think he could let go of the boat-timber now even if he wanted to, but he assumed that state of affairs wouldn't last forever. Eventually he would drop away and accept the full embrace of the waters he had spurned for so long.
He had grown quite familiar, even comfortable, with his coming death by drowning when he saw the first sign of land.
At first it appeared to be only another tiny white point on the horizon, one
of a million wave crests, but it came to loom clearly and plainly even above the highest of swells, growing slowly upward toward the almost cloudless blue sky. Paul stared at it with the absorption of an idiot or an artist for most of an hour before he finally realized he was looking at the top of an island mountain.
Detaching one arm from its death grip on the spar took a long painful time, but at last he was able to start paddling.
The island grew nearer far faster than it should have, and the part of him that had not completely surrendered to the moment guessed it was the system speeding up parts of the experience to get to what its designers likely thought of as the good stuff. If that was true, Paul did not mind the dilution of reality at all, and would have been happy if there was even more of it.
He could see now that the crest of the mountain was only the highest point of a range of spiky hills above a natural harbor. The city was a proud thing, all stone battlements and white clay houses along the hillside, but the current was drawing him past the harbor and its broad causeway to another landing spot, an area of flat, pale beach and rock pools. The ocean's slow, smooth pull made him feel for the first time in a while that the designers, or others, were actually looking out for him. What he could see of the olive-clad hillsides and the distant city, the quiet peace of it all, made his eyes fill with helpless tears. He cursed himself for being soft—it had been only a day since he had left Ithaca—but could not ignore the mighty wash of relief.
The tide skimmed him safely past a large stone standing a few hundred meters off the gentle coast, and when the obstruction was gone Paul was surprised and delighted to see human forms on the nearest beach—young women by the look of them, slim and small, with masses of black hair, their pale clothes fluttering as they went through the steps of some kind of game or dance. He was just about to hail them, so as not to wash up in their midst and startle them into running away, when suddenly a cloud rolled in front of the sun and mountain, beach, and ocean all grew dark. The girls stopped their play and looked up, then a brutal crash of thunder rolled across the sky and sent them scrambling for the shelter of caves above the rock pools.