by Tom Clancy
Fettick’s eyes went wide for a moment. “It is indelicate,” he said. And then he looked again at the pocket into which Leif had stuffed the token. “Still, you have that…so I guess we can talk about such things as the Outside. Do you mean that the lady who got bounced the other day was—”
“She was about to have a battle with Argath. She would have won. She was bounced quite near the time when she would have begun fighting. Others have been, too — usually after the battle. But now this kind of thing seems to have started happening before the fact.”
“Is Argath responsible, or is it one of his people, or—”
“No one knows. All we’ve noticed is the connection. And so we’re warning people who have fought with Argath recently, and come out the better, that they should look to their security. Here and elsewhere.”
“And take what kind of precautions?” said Fettick.
Leif and Megan looked at each other. “Uh—” Megan said.
“Exercise more than usual care in your comings and goings,” Leif said. This drill he knew well enough, from his father’s diplomatic connections. “If you have routines in your travel or outside work, vary them. If you have trips scheduled that are really unnecessary, don’t make them. Check out your living space, make sure there are no objects in it that you didn’t put there, that you don’t recognize.”
“Stay inside?” said Fettick. “Opaque the windows? Lock the doors?”
Leif looked at him, and thought maybe it might be wiser to be quiet for a moment.
Fettick sat in his chair again, lacing his fingers over his robe. “Young sir,” he said. “Do you know what I do for my living…‘out there’?”
Leif shook his head. He hadn’t quarried that deeply into Fettick’s background.
“I collect garbage,” said Lord Fettick, “in Duluth, Minnesota. And my line of work requires that I repeat my routine flawlessly, twice a week, on each of three routes. ‘Varying’ a garbage pickup route would be looked on, at the management levels above mine, with grave displeasure.” He sighed. “And yes, I know how that lady was bounced the other night. It was tragic. Have you heard anything about how she’s doing?”
“Still in the hospital,” Leif said, “and no news on when she might be likely to regain consciousness.”
“Yes. Well,” said Fettick. “She was on her way to the store, I think, when someone came along and knocked her car off the road. I work in medium to heavy traffic all day, every day, and if someone wants to kill or maim me, believe me, they’ll have no trouble doing it. My main concern is that they might miss me, and kill one of my workmates. And it sounds, from what you’re telling me, that there’s pretty much nothing that can be done to solve the problem at its root at the moment, that those of us who’re targeted have already committed the offense which has caused the targeting, and there’s nothing we can do to make amends.”
“Probably not,” Leif said.
“That being the case,” said Lord Fettick, “I can either spend the days from now until this person comes after me in a haze of fear, trying to protect against who knows what attack, from no one knows what direction — or I can get on with my life and refuse to be terrified. That’s usually the way to deal with terrorists, isn’t it?”
“While that is, ethically, a superior position,” Megan said softly, “practically, it sometimes has little effect on the terrorists, who count on something like it among proud or brave people. The terrorists have a nasty tendency to go ahead and try to blow you up anyway.”
“Well, let them come,” said Fettick. “I’m going to sit tight and do my job. There, and here.”
The tall slender man got up and came around his desk toward them. “I’ll tell you something for free,” he said. “I’ve had it. Two nights now, two nights of my good gameplay time, which costs me enough on my salary, Argath’s miserable lackey the Duke has been in here making merry with his pestilent little dwarf, ogling my daughter, eating me out of house and home, drinking all my best wine, trying to make me think a dynastic marriage to him is a good idea. Nasty superannuated creature. And here he’s sat, these two nights, trying his best to blackmail me. Or worse, to browbeat me. Trying to sign me up for an alliance in which I have no interest, and one for which I would be condemned from one end of the Northeast to the other, an alliance with a man who attacked my country, attacked me, not eight months ago! The cheapest, nastiest kind of protection racket. And I have to sit here, and mouth platitudes at him for politics’ sake — don’t think I don’t know at least that much about statecraft. I’m about up to here with pressure! I don’t need a life like that. It’s just not worth living.”
He sat back and sighed, looking down at the floor for a moment. “I will take reasonable precautions,” he said. “But no more. Whoever is behind this, I refuse to allow them to control my life. But I do thank you,” he said, “for going out of your way to warn me. I take it there are other stops on your itinerary.”
“Yes,” Megan said. “Duchess Morn—”
Fettick burst out laughing. “You’re going to bring her the same message you’ve brought me?”
“In essence,” said Megan.
“Do you have armor?”
She and Leif looked at each other. “Are we likely to need it?”
“If you’re going to tell her she has to vary her daily routine, you’ll need a testudo at least,” Fettick said. “Well, I wish you luck. I understand that you really do mean well…and if, as I think, you’re somehow involved with the attempt to find out who has been bouncing people, I wish you all the luck you can use. Now I have to get on with things here. But are you sure you won’t stay for breakfast?”
“Uh, no, sir,” Leif said. “Thank you, though. We should get straight on to Duchess Morn’s.”
“Sure you don’t want to think twice about the armor?”
Leif smiled slightly. “I think we’ll manage.”
They bowed to Fettick and headed out.
They looked around in the marketplace, before making their transit, but found that Wayland had already left. No one was sure exactly when. “Oh, well,” Leif said. “We’ll hear from him. Ready for transit?”
“Yup. Same size circle?”
“Same locus.”
“Ready. Cover your ears, we’ve got an altitude change.”
The world went black and white and phosphene-filled, and Megan swallowed to pop her ears, and swallowed again. They finally agreed to pop, and she looked down on a landscape as different from Errint as night from day. Everything in sight was flatland, a low swampy oxbowed river delta in which countless pools and trickles of water glittered and shone in the morning. Reeds stood up everywhere, and red-winged blackbirds and orioles perched on the reeds, swaying and singing in the wind that stroked through the reed-beds. In the center of everything was a great platform built on massive piles sunk into the water, and on the platform was a huge wooden house, turreted and towered like a castle. A wooden road was laid to it across the watery landscape, ending in a drawbridge and a steep switchback causeway that led up to the platform.
The two of them began to walk down the wooden path to the Duchess’s castle. As they went, Megan slapped an opportunistic mosquito and said, “Were you noticing Wayland this morning?”
“Huh? Not particularly.”
“Maybe it was just me,” Megan said, “but there was something, a little, I don’t know…a little ‘off’ about him this morning. He seemed distracted somehow.”
“I noticed you distracting him, all right. Where did that come from?”
“It occurred to me that we might not want everybody and his brother to know about the token,” Megan said. “For one thing, it’s a good way to get it stolen. By the way, let me have it for a while.”
“Sure.” Leif handed it over.
“For another…” Megan trailed off. “You notice the way he was answering questions?”
“No. Why?”
Megan shrugged. “Just that I kept getting back these answers
that were kind of general, or…I don’t know…not really germane to what was said….”
“Maybe he has trouble hearing,” Leif said.
“Oh, come on.”
“No, seriously. If it’s nerve damage causing the hearing problem, not even virtuality can do much about it, supposedly. He might not be hearing us right. I’ve seen that kind of thing happen with hearing aids.”
“Huh.” Megan thought about that. “And it’s not really something you’d ask about, I guess.”
“You sure you’re not imagining it?”
Megan gave him a look, and then rubbed her eyes. She was feeling a little grainy around the edges, possibly from all the transits. “Oh, I don’t know…maybe I am. Or maybe he was just distracted. God knows I am at the moment. Anything’s possible.” She sighed.
But just a little while later, as they walked, Megan thought about what she had said, and the answers she had gotten back, and finally she thought, No. No, it was real enough. He’s just a little off, somehow. Not concentrating…I guess anybody can be distracted, even when they’re playing. Though for what people pay to play in here, you’d think they’d go get the distractedness out of their systems before they waste the money.
She thought for a moment more, then said quietly as they walked, “Game intervention.”
“Listening.”
“Do you detect your boss’ token here?”
“Concessionary token is detected. How can I help you?”
“The player called Wayland. Is he real or generated?”
“Do you mean, is the player human?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, the player is human.”
“Huh. Finished,” Megan said, and shoved the token back in her pocket. I hate it when this computer tells me things I don’t want to hear.
“I see the guards up on the walls have noticed us,” Leif said. “Look at all those crossbows.”
“Maybe this is what we really needed that armor for,” Megan said as they came to the far end of the drawbridge, under the shadow of its gatehouses.
“Too late to go back now,” Leif said, entirely too cheerfully for someone who had so many weapons trained on him.
“I don’t know,” Megan said softly, as guards began to pour down out of the gatehouses and onto the castle side of the drawbridge. “Late breakfast is beginning to look real good.”
Megan stepped out of Sarxos into her personal space to find a pile of e-mail waiting — all kinds of things that needed to be handled, and she just wasn’t up to it. Too many disappointments, too much excitement. Too many things hadn’t worked.
She blinked herself out of the personal space, feeling intensely weary…and also feeling as if she had been hit all over her body with a baseball bat. Stress… As she stood up from the chair, she glanced at the clock. 0516. Ooooh…it can’t be that late…can it?
Yes, it can….
Megan left the office and went off into the kitchen, groaning a little as she moved. Somebody had thoughtfully left her tea-making things out, and a banana on the counter.
Dad, she thought, and smiled slightly. Bananas are good for all-nighters, he always said. The potassium helps keep your brain working. And since he pulled so many all-nighters himself, he would know.
There had been fewer repercussions regarding Megan’s skipping “family night” than she had feared. Her dad had clearly understood that something important was going on. He had apparently spoken to her mom about it as well, and hadn’t asked Megan any questions about it…which was kind of him, and typical. But there would be questions today, all right. She was going to have to explain what was going on…and she dreaded that. She knew that what she hadn’t told Winters, her dad would quickly deduce, and he would tell her to forget about the bouncing problems in Sarxos and let Net Force handle it. If he told her that, she would have to do what he said. Megan respected him that much, at least.
Still….
She put the kettle on the stove and turned the burner on under it, peeled the banana, and sat down at the kitchen table, eating reflectively. For about the tenth time she began going over again, in her head, the lines of investigation she and Leif had been following. It was hard to think, though. She was really tired, and the image of Duchess Morn, laughing at them uproariously, kept intruding.
She and Leif hadn’t exactly needed armor to deal with her. Maybe Fettick had been overstating that end of things. But Morn’s good-natured scorn at the idea that someone might be about to bounce her was like enough to Fettick’s to be its twin. Morn was in her seventies, small and skinny and tough as old boot leather, and intensely funny. Fierce, Megan thought. She found herself wishing that when she hit seventy, she could be something like that.
“Let them try to get me,” had been Morn’s attitude about the whole thing. She was satisfied that her computer was secure enough, that her life was well enough protected. But even if it hadn’t been, Megan thought, Morn had the total fearlessness of someone who reckons that she’s lived her life well, for a long time, and is not afraid to “check out” if that is the card that falls in front of her when the next deal comes along. Megan and Leif had gone away from Woodhouse with their ears full of an old lady’s amused scolding of those who had the nerve to intrude in her personal business. And then both of them had had to get out of Sarxos, because school was coming up later in the day, and they were both dead tired, though they’d hated to admit it to each other.
“I’ve had a long day,” Megan had said to Leif. “But I may be back in here later. Leave Chris’s token with me, okay?”
“No problem,” Leif had said. He’d handed it to her and disappeared, looking as tired as Megan felt, and more dejected.
So there the thing sat, on her “desk” in her virtual workspace. Now, as she finished the banana and the kettle started shrieking, Megan got up hurriedly to shut it up, and thought about the token again.
Not Lateran. She still couldn’t get over that. It just seemed wrong. But Sherlock Holmes was whispering in her ear: Eliminate the impossible, and what you have left is the truth. Or at least possible.
Five-thirty. I can’t believe I was in there all night. But…She raised her eyebrows, sighed at herself, poured boiling water into her teacup, then went into the small bathroom off the kitchen, wetted a washcloth with cold water, and just plastered it over her eyes for a moment. The chill of it on her face was something of a shock, a welcome one.
Megan let it rest there for a moment, and looked at the faint lights moving inside her eyelids, phosphene byproducts of how tired her eyes were. Then she peeled the washcloth off, left it by the sink, and went in to get her tea.
Megan sat down, sipped at it gingerly, and started to go over things one more time. She couldn’t get rid of the feeling that she’d missed something about the server logs. But then Leif seemed to think they’d exploited everything they could from examining that set of information, and she was willing enough to bow to his expertise in this area. There must be something else, she thought. Something we’ve missed…
But the back of her mind kept going back to the server logs, and wouldn’t be appeased. It’s just brain fugue, Megan thought to herself after a while, sipping at the tea again, and burning herself again. I’m like a rat going down a tunnel with no cheese in it, again and again. It was the same kind of behavior she made fun of in her mother when her mother put the car keys down and later couldn’t find them, and kept checking the same spot over and over and over, even though she knew perfectly well by now that they weren’t there. I’m no better than she is.
The tea was beginning to cool enough to drink. Megan sipped at it one more time. I feel so grungy. What’m I going to wear to school today? I haven’t checked the laundry situation in days.
Then she swore softly, got up again, and headed straight back into the office.
She went over to the desk and pushed yet another pile of books off to one side. Baedeker’s Handbook for London, 1875? Fungi of the World? Taste of the East? What, he w
ants to go back in time for a curry now? With mushrooms in it, I guess. She sat down in the implant chair again and lined the implant up.
There was Rhea’s ochre surface spread out before her, all powdered blue with new-blown snow from one of the nearby methane vents, and there was Saturn hanging golden and uncommunicative in the long cold darkness, like a message delivered and unread. All that e-mail…. Megan thought. “Computer? Chair, please.” The chair appeared. “Show me what’s come in.”
The icons of about fifteen messages appeared in the air before her, some holding still, some rotating gently, some vibrating up and down as an indication of their urgency. The urgent ones were in the majority — though as Megan read through the mail, she found once again that other people’s definitions of urgency didn’t usually match hers. Two more mails from Carrie Henderson, who really really wanted her to do something that Megan didn’t bother finish listening to. Yet another unnecessary notice about the SATs. Someone selling subscriptions to a new virtual news service, a demo account of which began playing itself noisily in one corner of her space, showing her a smoke-filled expanse stitched with the burning lines of battlefield lasers, a firefight going on in some dark place in Africa. She wished she had a hammer to hit the sender with. Instead, Megan just told the machine to turn the demo off, and went back to reducing the clutter, icon by icon.
Several failed connects of attempted live chat…Well, she routinely refused chat while she was in Sarxos. J. Simpson? Who’s that? She shook her head. You did sometimes get requests to chat from people you’d never seen or heard of before. Probably it was someone she’d run into in the game who wanted to follow up on something.
She opened the messages, but they had nothing but the characteristic “failed message, chat refused” tag inside them. Oh, well, Megan thought. As her mother usually said, if it was important, they’d call back. If it wasn’t important, they’d call back.
Maybe whoever this is left some mail inside Sarxos, Megan thought. “Computer? Sarxos log-in.”
