The Woman Who Stopped Traffic

by Daniel Pembrey

  She tapped him on his shoulder. “Um Winston, it’s me. Natalie.”

  “Hey! Natalie! What’s up?” and his face lit up with a thousand-watt smile.

  “Winston, who were you just talking to?”

  “Just some angry fighting gnome.”

  “What had she done?”

  “He. Got on my wrong side. It’s so great to finally see you!”

  In the game, he was a particularly flamboyant magician going by the name of Magé. “It’s pronounced like Sade,” he said. “The pop singer that is, not the Marquis de’.” Magé had a penchant for purple satin gowns and spectacular golden scepters, “the difference being the ermine collars,” he said, stretching his neck up and out in a regal sort of way.

  She said: “Bit of a trek down from the city, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I got laid off. Yup, found out through Twitter! The all-new combined HR department of Accidental Bank And Now Carmichael sent out a global tweet to the summer interns, telling ‘em twasn’t to be. Thought I’d try my luck down here in the Valley.” He looked round approvingly. “I like it here! Just went for a job interview at Clamor, with Nancy Wu.”

  “I thought Nancy left Clamor?”

  “She came back. She’s now running the show. Lot of the staff there really liked her apparently, wanted her to return.”

  “What about Dwayne Wisnold?”

  “Oh, he’s on permanent sabbatical. Or some fellowship thing? Who knows. Who cares! Nancy Wu’s cool! Or rather, she’s hhh-ot!” – And Ma’s face turned into the surprised look of a freshly caught fish.

  Tolemy, the cleric whom they’d ridden up to the Scintanel Plateau with that one time, turned out to be a tall, good-looking Indian programmer – one of the original search-algorithm engineers at Google. He wore a knee-length green leather jacket and introduced himself as V.K.Venkateshanonandonananda.

  V-and-on-and-what?

  “You can call me V.K.,” he smiled, with the easy confidence of a man who’d received early Google stock options. In addition to being perhaps the most respected cleric in the land, he had an alter-identity in the game: alchemist.

  There were half-a-dozen others present, all members of the Order of the Knights Templar, including a large teenage girl who’d evidently come straight from work. She wore a Burger King uniform. In the game she was a fierce old warrior queen called Lyne.

  Adam, or rather Brastias, called the Order to order. “Let’s get straight down to it. We’ve been searching for Rage for a week now. What are we going to do?”

  “The interpretation of the religious texts is clear,” Tolemy warned. “Either Rage is slain by sundown on the 13th – this Friday, that is – or the world is condemned to another great age of darkness. Perhaps several.”

  “That’s two day’s time! Magé said. “How do we slay him when he won’t engage?”

  The stakes had risen. A group of hackers had managed to de-activate MultiQuest’s billing engine, making it free to join. The rave reviews continued to roll in; the widely followed consumer technology post of the Trumpington Bugle blog had lauded it as “perhaps the most mythologically complete representation of modern times available to any gamer anywhere.” It was adding a million new members a week. A hundred million total members didn’t seem so far fetched now.

  “Listen, I hate to come out of character,” Natalie said, “but there are some pretty serious real-world issue here – human trafficking for one. We can’t risk another dark age of the game. Not with the number of players involved. If someone could hack in and unhook the billing engine, why can’t we go in and delete a Non-Player Character such as Rage?”

  “It’s just not that simple,” V.K. said. “The billing engine is a discreet piece of software – necessarily so, as it interfaces with the banks’ payments systems. But, Deep Thought – the code base running the game itself – is a different animal altogether. To allow the graphics to build as fast as they do, the code is distributed across peer-to-peer networks. Millions of personal computers, all around the world. There is no central server to hack into.”

  “– or Central American server farm to blow up, Ms Bond,” Winston said, eyebrow arched.

  “OK, I get it: so the game effectively runs itself now,” Natalie said, frowning heavily. “What the hell is Deep Thought written in, anyway? Why can’t we ask your friend, Winston? The one who told us about the ownership structure?”

  “Eeesh, he was fired. For that reason.”

  Winston steepled his fingers. “As for what Deep Thought’s written in, it’s actually derived from the concatenation of internal numeric commands, textual commands, and a nonce, hashed using an MDX algorithm, then inserted into blocks finally encrypted with 4,096-bit keys. And that’s about all my newly unemployed friend would tell me,” Winston shrugged. “Oh well.”

  V.K. said: “I think what Winston, or rather Magé, is trying to say is that Rage resides deep in Deep Thought itself. That the only way out is to defeat him in the game. Which first means finding him. By Friday, sun down.”

  Lyne said: “We’ve already reached the high pass of the Atalantans. We may as well keep going and cross to the west side. Everything we’ve heard points to him lurking somewhere in the new worlds there.”

  “But we also know he only ever engages one or two people at a time,” Magé said.

  “That’s true. Two of us should go ahead. It really would be faster,” Tolemy said.

  “Which two?” Lyne asked.

  “An armourer for sure. And the best rider among us, I guess.”

  “Then that’s Brastias, and Caerleone,” Lyne said. Turning to Natalie: “Guess it’s your destiny.”

  The plan was for Tolemy to help Brastias and Caerleone traverse the treacherous high pass, while Magé, Lyne and the others returned to the Quorn Valley, in case Rage showed up there instead.

  The high Atalantans were an alpine wonderland of emerald waterfalls, wasted glaciers and pristine snowcaps. On and on they traveled, through the high windy pass, through horizontal hail and sunrays so fierce that they felt like they could’ve fried a Pterodactyl or Quetzalcoatlus egg on whatever rock surface wasn’t shaded. That night, Tolemy kept guard while Brastias and Caerleone rested in an incense-filled monastery (separate rooms), barnacled to a high cliff-face.

  The Silicon Bean was starting to resemble the dispersal hut of a war time fighter squadron: fully clothed figures dozing fitfully in seated positions as dawn broke.

  Waiting – for Rage to arrive.

  V.K. with his eyes half open, a book spread in his lap. He was thumbing the bottom of the pages. Funny, he didn’t seem to be turning any, Natalie noted.

  At 06:55 hours, they had to stand down. Josie needed to open the Bean up to the regular early work trade. Time was running out.

  CHAPTER 34

  That evening, Natalie drifted off in her hotel room, dead to the world.

  She awoke at 02:45, unable to remember her dreams, yet incapable of returning to sleep. Finding the remote, she turned on the TV, and was confronted with an array of entertainment options at that hour, ‘Adult Desires’ being most prominent among them.

  Curiosity led her. The types of movies displayed alphabetically, ‘Asian’ being first, ‘Asian Dreams’ the lead title from a list filling the screen. A prompt asked her to confirm her purchase for $16.95 + tax, reassuring her that the title would not appear on her bill. After the briefest of title sequences, the film cut straight to a young girl with long black hair riding an older man. Her back was arched, her head back, mouth forming a perfect ‘o’. Pause, Play and Fast Forward controls appeared along the bottom of the screen.

  Natalie looked at the actress. “Hahh,” she kept crying, to a rhythmic slapping sound, the orgasmic throes contradicted by her void eyes and flaccid stomach. Her crotch was depilated to look like a little girl’s – who was this actress? What was her story? Natalie fast-forwarded. The scenes followed a sequence of sexual positions like some latter-day ritual. There was a
repeating change in the actress’s demeanor from defiance, hostility even – to compliance, gratitude finally.

  Every scene ended with the man coming in the woman’s face.

  The businessmen, movers and shakers staying a place like the Keaton were among the more influential members of society. As a woman and a security professional, Natalie was struck by the vast insecurity system it amounted to.

  Why did it have to be this way?

  The phone rang – Adam Lau: “Rage is up.”

  They thundered down the far-side foothills, picking up speed as they went, the horses’ hooves sounding their urgent, four-thump gallop. Finally they entered the infamous Serafin Valley where, word had it, Rage lay in wait. Scenes of devastation confronted them: healers consoling the injured, fires burning out of control. At one point the heat became so fierce their entire field of vision wavered watery white. Still they did not let up: the sun’s orb was sinking ever lower in the sky, ever closer to that serrated horizon.

  “Here,” Brastias yelled over the thump of hooves, and handed her something long, thin and sharp: “This is the legendary Sword of swords.”

  “Huh? It is too light!”

  She was about to discard it for her heavier weapon when he urged: “No! It has weight enough.” He was having trouble keeping up with her. “It is not point heavy, the handle is weighted. The magic is in the balance!”

  He was right, she realized, taking a couple of practise swipes. It sang, the blade humming through the onrushing air.

  “OK,” she said to him – but he had already fallen behind. Phariance was now swimming with energy like a river bursting its banks, flying forward!

  And then there he was, coming towards her like he’d ridden straight up out of the underworld. All in black, with coal-black eyes, his massive warhorse black too, the dark shaffron and crinet of its head armour chinking ominously. Her innards sank as she recognized the hundreds of pounds weight advantage they had over Phariance and her.

  Still, she looked resplendent, in a dazzlingly bejewelled fighting cape.

  The horses accelerated into such a fierce gallop that the hoof beat became continuous. For a second it looked like the two horses would collide head on at a closing speed of more than eighty miles an hour. Somehow they knew to pass at just an arm’s distance on the left. Shocked by the pace and aggression of it all she froze, gripping her sword before her. His blade flashed crosswise – the beheading stroke, clattering hers flat against her visor. Sparks showered and she saw stars, halo-like shapes behind her eyes.

  The horses cantered round in wide, preparatory circles, Phariance attempting to look back over its shoulder, checking on its charge. Rage was looking at her too, studying her with expressionless eyes. He seemed familiar to her. His arm hung casually, the razor-sharp blade slicing dead scrub.

  She heard the others through her cell phone, set to LOUDSPKR:

  “Crouch lower in the saddle, Caerleone!” one of them was saying; “Make yourself less of a target!”

  “No! – Sit up tall, so you can manipulate the sword properly!”

  “Celestial clock’s ticking, Nat,” a third voice said.

  She punched the phone to OFF as the horses squared off again, breaking into another gallop, terrifically fast this time, Rage and his warhorse hurtling towards her like some great black streak. At the last moment, with all her will and might, she kicked her horse onto its opposite leg. Instead of leading with its left hoof it switched to lead right, lurching violently through the transition and shouldering into Rage’s horse such that the two ton-weight mounts really did almost collide. At the last second, Rage’s horse veered, throwing Rage off balance, his favoured beheading stroke thrumming the air above her awfully as she feinted and – with the dexterity of a seamstress – nicked his saddle girth, briefly exposed.

  There was a scintilla of contact with his stirrup too.

  Again the horses cantered round, Rage checking his foot armour, finding it to be fully intact, but studying her differently now. That was when she realized that this was no Non-Player Character.

  This player was all too human.

  Through the pixels, she felt a familiar presence.

  He’d slowed to a walking gait, silhouetted against the sun’s orb dipping precariously below the horizon. High above a circling eagle screamed. For a third time they faced off. Then they charged again, utterly exhausted now. She saw Rage dig his spurs in hard, the blood whickering off the black beast’s foaming flanks. Phariance, with a lolloping gait, plunged forward, carrying her ever onward. At the last moment, Phariance shouldered in towards its heavier opponent-horse in a suicidal lunge, the other wavering in response, Rage swaying from side to side above – first away from Natalie, then towards her, the saddle girth starting to unravel; the saddle slipping half way down the horse’s nearside.

  The real challenge with jousting, Natalie Chevalier had discovered, was that the shoulder floats free from the rest of the skeleton in a harness of soft muscle and tissue… She couched the Sword of swords like a lance, pressing her elbow against her bodice as hard as she could. The tip punctured his breastplate. There was no further resistance, his lower body jerking ragged in the stirrups. And then she felt herself tremendously light, as Phariance’s front legs buckled. She was somersaulting over his shoulder, hitting the scrub ground with a thud. Winded.

  Fighting to keep consciousness.

  Rage had planted his sword in Phariance’s neck.

  She scrambled back across the prickly scrub, to where Phariance now lay on his side, shaking.

  She buried her face in his dishevelled mane. “Don’t go,” she whispered into his still-alert ear.

  His heroic sideways glare found her gaze one last time, then the eye dulled, and gently rolled skyward.

  CHAPTER 35

  She was asleep for a while. Then a voice penetrated her consciousness: “Natalie? You there?” A familiar voice, through the hotel room answering machine.

  “Cindy.”

  “Ah! I was wondering if I could buy you that coffee an’ eggs-over-easy. You know? Like we were gonna have the other day, before being so rudely interrupted.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Six forty five. – Six.”

  Natalie groaned, and Cindy said: “We still can’t find him, Natalie. Let’s talk about it. – over breakfast.”

  At Cindy’s favorite North Beach diner, Natalie heard how federal agents had drawn a complete blank on Paul Towse’s movements since Nguyen had been taken into custody. “Zip. Nada. No flight plans filed for his private jet. No cell phone activity. The only chatter being through Internet surveillance. That online game you and Adam are so intimately involved with.”

  Changing the subject, Natalie said: “Cindy, d’you remember at school, our Honor Code? How a dishonourable deed demanded action ‘in accordance with its severity’?”

  “’Course I do.”

  “Well, what could be more severely dishonorable than the deeds we witnessed during that raid?”

  Cindy looked distant. “That girl whose head was almost severed. It felt like I was holding my own daughter...”

  “Right. You said yourself it was a question of going deep, of getting those nasty roots out. But surely the source is several thousand miles away?”

  “It’s not that easy. Oh, you’ve guessed right: Towse is only half the story – and just like any other business joint venture in China, Surefar Enjoy does have a local partner there – and here. But things are real delicate with the Chinese these days, Natalie.”

  “Would this local partner go by the name Xiao Lin?”

  The two women looked into each other’s eyes for an unusually long time.

  Ben called. She was going to ignore it, but she’d missed his calls all week.

  “Natalie,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure that you’re safe and well.”

  “I really am, thanks. But I’m with someone; can I call you back?”

  “When d’you fly off to the
Bahamas?”

  “Don’t know. I may be staying here on the West Coast for a while. I never got to see my friends in Seattle properly, so I’ll probably spend some time up there.”

  “But that’s great! I’m up there often enough for work. We could go for cocktails sometime?”

  “Sure Ben, that would be nice,” she said. Hanging up, she thought about the Alibi Room. Maybe Ben could be inducted. Yes, that would be quite OK. “Sorry Cindy, where were we?”

  “Towse. We searched his place down in Woodside, then the one up in Pac Heights. He ain’t there. We had a team comb through it. All fifty rooms. The wine vaults even –”

  Natalie recalled something. “Did you check the mausoleum?”

  “What mausoleum?”

  “The original owner, some movie mogul. He built a mausoleum there – or so Towse told me one time, over a game of chess.”

  Cindy fixed her with another look, before grabbing her bag and Natalie’s too.

  Her Yukon got them up to Towse’s mansion in under seven minutes. It was raining again. As they approached, a black Lamborghini Murcielago flew out of the entranceway, its low haunches twitching on the rain-slicked road surface. Cindy’s head shot round: “Lin.”

  She sped up to the duty officer guarding the main entrance: “John, what was that guy doing here?”

  “He drove in, saw me and fled,” the duty officer replied.

  “You get eyes on him?”

  “Here,” and the duty officer spun round his laptop – to which CC cameras were apparently hooked up, judging by the rain-blurred image. It showed the man with the blank, prison-like stare, looking up through the Lamborghini’s long windshield.

  “Adam,” Cindy said into her radio: “Get a team on Xiao Lin. Now.”

  She waited for Adam to say something. Then: “Yeah, just leaving Towse’s place – apparently eager to find the man too.”