“They don’t do that,” Rik said. “Or so I’m told.”
“Well, this isn’t your fault!” Barbara said. “You just wanted us to see it right away. And who could blame you? Besides, we talked you into it. Doesn’t matter. It’s exciting, Rik! Keep us posted and let us know when you get it working again. I want to pop the virtual cork at your opening.”
“Yeah,” Rik said. “I’ll do that. Game management?”
“Here, Rik.”
“Can I have the door back into my office, please?”
In the darkness, a door opened on muted afternoon light that now seemed very bright indeed. Rik headed for it, the others following. In his office, they said their good-byes for the time being. “If there’s any problem with the meeting schedule,” Tom said to him as he made his way toward Rik’s outer office door, “give me a call.”
Rik shook his head. “Shouldn’t be a problem,” he said. Barbara smooched him as she went past: Raoul patted his shoulder, heading after her. “See you guys later . . .”
“Later,” they all said. The door shut.
Rik stood there, looking at the shut door, and sighed.
He was tempted to go straight back into the Microcosm and start tinkering again. But no, he thought. I promised Angela I wouldn’t be in here all day.
Damn it!
“Game management?”
“Here, Rik.”
He was about to say “Log off,” but stopped himself. Not just yet. “Ring of Elich, please.”
His office vanished. He was standing near the Ring.
Rik sighed and looked around him again. The plaza was back to normal, as far as he could see. Despite it being the middle of the night, the usual unending traffic was passing in and out of the Gate. He took a deep breath, turned his back to it and started to walk back to his normal ingress spot. A few minutes’ walk, he thought, just to get rid of—
Of what? Of being pissed off at the Microcosm for crashing in front of everybody? Well, yes. No point in taking that annoyance home and dumping it on Angela and the kids. But that wasn’t all of it.
He paused briefly by the great statue of Lahirien the Excessively Far-Traveled, feeling the spray from the fountain, and then moved on. Oh crap, Rik thought, why couldn’t Raoul have come in a few minutes later? Then he wouldn’t have seen anything but the bare substrate.
Of course the others would have told him what happened—
But as he thought about it, Rik became less sure. He remembered particularly that strangely sympathetic look from Tom. But in any case, Tom and Barbara would have been, had been, more understanding about it.
Anyway, it’s just some kind of software glitch! Get over it. It’s stupid to feel down about it. Yet he did feel down. And worse, he felt obscurely like some kind of traitor. He couldn’t get Raoul’s initial expression in the Last Man out of his mind. Betrayed! it seemed to say. How come you and not me? It’s not fair! And even now Rik wanted to shout at him, How should I know how come me? It doesn’t make any sense to me either!
But Jean-Marie had been clear enough about how many different factors were involved. And it’s not my fault if Raoul is getting something wrong. He’s been so intense about what he’s been planning, about how it’s going to make all the difference for him when he gets a Microcosm. But does he ever really have fun in here anymore? Sure, we see him at group meetings, but he never has an independent campaign story to tell anymore. Who knows what he’s doing? Does he even campaign by himself anymore? And does anyone even ask? And maybe that was part of the problem. Are we just feeding into that attitude by letting him concentrate so much on his Microcosm obsession? For that was exactly what Barbara had called it, once, before Raoul had turned up for another of their nights out.
He sighed as he made his way up through the beast market, empty and dark now, on up Hook Street in the torchlight, and onward into the quiet and dark of Troker’s Lane. There, at the mouth of Troker’s Lane, Rik paused, seeing something moving in the shadows.
What the heck? Rik thought. He peered down into the darkness, but the flutter of the guttering torchlight was hard to see by. An animal? No. Well, maybe not—
“Do you believe this?” said a grumpy voice down in the darkness. “The mess people leave behind them, you wouldn’t believe it. Didn’t any of them have mothers, do they just throw stuff around like this at home? I ask you—”
There was no telling who the little scratchy voice was asking, unless maybe it was Rik. “Uh, excuse me—” he said.
“Yeah, you too, probably some of this is yours,” said the little voice, “and now what, am I supposed to think you’re coming back here to pick it up again? I don’t think so—”
Rik blinked—not that he wasn’t doing enough of that in this bad light—and headed down toward the source of the voice. But all the time, his hand was on the knife at his belt; he was thinking that if things could get as broken loose as they had in the plaza around the Ring, what could happen in some back alley? He got closer to the shape, and with his free hand pulled loose one of the cressets from its wall holder, held it high—
Upturned eyes gleamed in the torchlight, then went dark again as the eyes turned away from him. Rik suddenly realized that he was looking at a little man who was busily picking up garbage from the street and tossing it into a rickety-looking wheelbarrow. He was wearing what looked like some slightly crazed attempt at a uniform, but one all made up of rags and tatters stitched or even tied together, as if the whole business had been assembled from the pickings of many rubbish heaps. Hanging by two pieces of frayed hempen rope over his shoulders, on his chest and his back the man wore a pair of crude cardboard signs on which had been scrawled the words OMNITOPIA SANITATION, and in smaller letters, YOUR GAME GOLD AT WORK.
Rik burst out laughing. “Guy,” he said, “why are you doing this? How hard up for gold are you? I’ll make a donation.”
The little old man gave him a cranky sidelong look, made a “Hmf” sound, and turned back to picking up garbage. After a moment he said, “Do I look hard up?”
“Well, jeez, man, this is hardly a high-end job,” Rik said. “Even a noob player wouldn’t do it for long. You run through your grubstake already?”
“Fifty thou doesn’t go very far in this world,” the little old garbage guy said, methodically picking up garbage and dropping it into his sack. “Every time you turn around, somebody’s hitting you with another fee. Subscriptions, virtual food, virtual booze: drip, drip, drip, it’s gone in a few weeks. You want clothes? Gotta pay for ’em. Want a horse? Want a magic flying unicorn? Somebody’s gonna soak you for ’em. A suit of armor? A really good sword? There goes ten thou. Want to join a decent guild so you can make some money? Bang, you wind up paying some other game grubber a big fat initiation fee. Might as well be in the real world.”
“One big difference,” said Rik. “No taxes here.”
The garbage guy made the “Hmf” sound again. “This month,” he said. “Read the news lately? State of Arizona’s trying to change that. Only thing slowing them down is they can’t figure out whether to try to tax it as player income or virtual property. Either way, you and I wind up paying. Bastards.” He straightened up, groaned, and looked down the cul-de-sac with a critical eye.
Rik raised an amused eyebrow, for the Garbage Guy seemed to have his curmudgeon levels set on high. Regardless, there was no arguing that the lane certainly looked much cleaner than it had when Rik had come down it last. “You ever find anything worthwhile in all this stuff?” he said.
The Garbage Guy shrugged, looking at Rik with watery blue eyes. “Sometimes you pick up a gold piece someone dropped after a bar fight,” he said. “Some little weapon they don’t care about, a piece of jewelry . . .” He shrugged again, dropped the bag into the wheelbarrow. “It’s a living.”
But is it much fun? Rik wondered. Though you did meet some strange types in Omnitopia: people who had trouble interacting . . . even some who seemed to have no real world life at all. Some
of them were best avoided: there were entirely too many online panhandlers, creep-out cases looking for a way to walk off with some of your gold. Other people, less creepy but just sadder—poor players, unlucky ones—sometimes you wished you could find a way to help. A lot of the time there was nothing in particular you could do.
But now Rik thought of that sign hanging glowing in the sky, and started to wonder whether that was strictly true anymore. “Listen,” he said. “I’m building a Microcosm. Maybe I could use some help. Come on over and work for me.”
Garbage Guy gave him a funny look. “Sure,” he said, utterly skeptical. “Funny. Very, very funny.”
“No, I’m serious! I’m really a MicroLeveler. You can check my game profile.” Rik grinned: this was the first time he’d told anybody in the game but his own group about it. “Just getting started. You can help me beta it.”
The Garbage Guy stuffed his hands into a tangle of rags: Rik assumed there were pockets in there somewhere. When Garbage Guy looked up again, there was an odd look in those pale blue eyes: like someone who’d forgotten what kindness sounded like. The expression was half startled, half sad. “Why?” he said. “Why me?”
It was the question of the day, it seemed. Rik found himself having to search for an answer that didn’t make him sound snotty or stuck up. “Uh, I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “You seem like a smart guy, and I don’t see why you should be doing this for gold when you can do something more interesting.”
Garbage Guy’s odd look didn’t quite go away, but it looked a little less sad. “I don’t know how much I’m going to make off this,” Rik said, “but if you’re going to help me beta, I’d certainly pay you what your time is worth out of what I make.” And no sooner had he said it than Rik was tempted to laugh at himself in sheer scorn. One percent of infinity, he thought. Right. What’s one percent of nothing? For there was absolutely no guarantee—especially at the rate he was going at the moment—that he would ever make anything from his Microcosm at all. One newsfeed story Rik had seen had suggested that one out of every three new Microcosms survived for less than a year: and Omnitopia Inc. wasn’t forthcoming with data on the subject, at least not to gamers at Rik’s level.
He was startled out of the sudden fit of downheartedness by a cackle of laughter. Garbage Guy was laughing at him, those watery eyes actually tearing with amusement. For just a moment Rik wondered once more whether he was dealing with a game-generated character. But there was something about this man’s face that made Rik wonder whether he was perhaps dealing with the kind of player who used their own genuine face as part of their game presence, certain that as long as they kept the rest of their identity properly concealed, you would never find out who they were.
“What’s so funny?” Rik said.
Garbage Guy wiped his eyes and got control of himself. “Never had a real steady job before,” he said. “Before this one, I mean. And now somebody offers me another one.”
“Well,” Rik said, “will you take it? It’s going to take me a day or so before I can get back in here, but I’ve got some troubleshooting to do when I do.”
Garbage Guy sniffed and wiped his nose, then reached back into his raggy clothes and came up with a blue-glowing profile token, the kind of electronic business card you gave other players who you wanted to meet again. He handed it to Rik. “Here,” Rik said, and dug around in his pouch to find a similar token to give Garbage Guy. And I can’t keep calling him that— He eyed the token he’d been given as he passed his own over: but it had no sigil or name branded on it. “What’s your name?”
The Garbage Guy gave him a shocked look. “I didn’t mean your real name!” Rik said hurriedly, for in his experience the vast majority of gamers guarded their privacy jealously: their bosses or families didn’t always approve of where they spent their time and money.
Garbage Guy relaxed a little. “. . . Dennis,” he said finally.
“Dennis? Hi. I’m Arnulf. Arnulf Manyfaced.” He put his hand out.
The little man reached up and clasped arms with Rik. Rik caught a whiff of what Dennis had been rooting around in, but kept his face straight. “Arnulf,” said Dennis. “Well, young Arnulf, when do I start?”
“Uh. Tomorrow night?”
Dennis paused to consider. “All right,” he said. “You’re on. Now would you put that back where you found it so I can see what I’m doing and finish this up?”
“Sure.” Rik stepped back to the cresset holder, shoved the torch back into it, then tried to wipe his arm clean of what had gotten on it without the gesture showing. “I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow, then.”
“Fine, yeah, tomorrow,” Dennis said and got back to business with the garbage again.
“Game management?” Rik said.
“Listening, Rik,” the control voice said in his ear.
“Egress to home space and logout, please.”
“Thank you. Exit recorded at seventeen forty-one local time, and come back soon to Omnitopia!”
Troker’s Lane vanished. Rik pulled off his headset, blinking at the early evening light coming in the den’s windows, stretched in his chair, and got up to go find Angela and tell her about his “day.”
In Troker’s Lane, eyes glittered with amusement in the torchlit darkness, then turned their attention back to the garbage.
SEVEN
THE SHADOWS OF THE SKYSCRAPERS were leaning low and eastward over the river. It had been an unseasonably hot day down there; in the canyons between the steep cliffs of glass and steel you could see the heat haze wrinkling silvery against the sidewalk, if you cared to look at it. Phil didn’t care to. He wouldn’t have to feel that heat for more than the ten seconds it took him to get across from his building’s front door to his waiting car. All the same, he was already thinking of the weekend out at the Hamptons: the cool wind, the gray-bright glitter and dazzle of the surf, the dry crunchy squeak of the pale sand underfoot as he walked eastward along his beach. Yet at the same time, even now, Phil already knew that when he got there something would inevitably go wrong with the weekend perfection. The Hamptons just weren’t what they’d used to be when he first bought the house. Something was missing. Once again, as he had many times this last year, Phil thought about selling the place; trading up a little for an area up the coast somewhere, possibly a little less well serviced but also less tony, less full of posers. Anywhere the chopper can get to an within an hour, he thought—no, make that three-quarters of an hour—would be fine with me. Something to talk to Dean about next week—
Phil gazed out at the river, hardly seeing it for the moment. “You were always a hippie, goddamn it,” he said under his breath, finally turning away from the window with a frown. “Even after all the hippies were gone you were still a hippie. . . .”
He made his way back to his desk and sat down at it, gazing out the window, still mostly unseeing. All of today’s inconsequentia had been cleaned off its shining granite-topped expanse: which was just as it should’ve been, since he had four assistants whose job was to keep his desk clean of everything except the most important business. And right now, that boiled down to the phone call Phil was waiting for.
He stared at the phone, already getting angry at the way the call he was expecting was taking so long. Unfortunately, that was the nature of working with some of these hired- in people; they weren’t old-school business types and couldn’t be depended upon to manage an owed-call list correctly. Also, in their small, nasty ways, they were not above a few high school power plays, tiny passive-aggressive attempts to make you understand who was really running things, based on the idea that you should somehow be grateful to them for getting down in the dirt and getting the work you needed done. Phil smiled thinly. Well, he thought, let them think that’s the way it is. For at the end of the day, it was all about getting the result.
That was the only thing on Phil’s mind, and it surprised him sometimes that some of his allies and some of his enemies never fully wrapped their brains around
that concept. He glared at the phone, got up from the desk again, and went up the stairs to the gallery level of his office, where he began to pace. Phil’s office had been built to accommodate that pacing; it was how he did his best thinking, and his desk stood a few feet below the gallery walkway, which wrapped around inside the corner of the building as the rest of the office did. Here he could keep an eye on the desk, and any visitors—not that many people had entrée here—while also being able to gaze out at the river. Here Phil could wander up and down, thinking on his feet, dictating to the office note management system or to his assistants, while at the same time keeping a weather eye on the view southward toward the Battery, and the wrinkled flow of water where the Hudson poured out into New York Bay. “The widow’s walk,” some of his assistants called it, joking, though never to his face. When did they stop telling jokes around me? Phil thought briefly. Then he shrugged the idea away. Not a problem, not for here and now, anyway. There were too many things to think about today.
He paused in the walk, glaring down at the phone again. It still hadn’t rung. It’s almost end of business here, he thought; they know they were supposed to be in touch with me by now. How am I supposed to make my final assessments on this move if they don’t— Then Phil shook his head, went back to walking. There was no point in getting all type-A about it. The whole purpose of this business was to make other people sweat . . . one in particular.
The phone rang. “Sorensen,” he said immediately.
“Mr. Sorensen,” Brandy’s voice said from the outer office, “I have Link Raglan on the line.”
“Put him through.”
“Mr. Sorenson,” Link’s voice said, “I’ve got those end of day download figures for you.”
“Go,” Phil said.