Deadly Pink

by Vivian Vande Velde

  “Excuse me,” I called out to her. “We're looking for ... um...” What was the proper title for gypsy royalty? “...King Rasmussem?”

  At that point, the acrobat was hanging upside down, supported only by a twist of fabric around her ankle as she spun in spirals. “Beyond the Theatre in the Grove,” she told us, “turn at the llamas, go on to the Big Wheel.”

  Llamas?

  I was about to ask her if the Big Wheel was a ride or a game when something dropped down directly in front of us. For a second, I thought the acrobat had fallen. But it was a man dressed as a jester who had jumped from another branch in the same tree. He landed on both feet, then stood there with his arms wide as though expecting applause. Even though he didn't get any, he made elaborate gestures, like, No, no, please, I’m too modest to accept such acclaim.

  Emily and I would have gone around him, but he walked backwards, remaining in our way, pretending that he was using a broom to sweep our path clear, then pretending that he was scattering flower petals before us.

  Great. A mime. Talk about the worst of silent men.

  I tried to maneuver us around him, but he zigzagged exasperatingly to keep blocking us, now pretending to pull coins from our ears.

  “We're in a rush,” I told the guy. “We don't have time for this foolishness.”

  He put his hand to his ear, as though he were hard of hearing as well as mute.

  “Please move out of our way,” I said, speaking more loudly.

  Again with the ear gesture.

  “This is important!” I practically screamed at him. “Your delays are life threatening!” They were. I thought I was very diplomatic because I refrained from adding “as well as being infuriating, pointless, and just generally stupid.”

  The mime pulled off his ear—well, an ear; it was rubber—and he looked at it as though trying to figure out why it didn't work. He tapped it. Shook it. Then tossed it over his shoulder with a shrug and a smile.

  Emily laughed, proof that she was getting too tired to think straight.

  Okay, maybe the mime was related to the sprites. I handed him a gold coin.

  He made it disappear into his own ear, then held his hand out for another.

  Greedy thing. I handed him a second coin, which he made disappear into his other ear. And now he held out his first hand again.

  I gave him two coins, which he made disappear up his nose, and that's just downright nasty. Plus, now he held out both hands.

  I was ready to scream at the endless delaying, but knew that wasn't going to help.

  Instead, I put my hand on Emily's arm and held up my index finger to the mime, signaling them both to wait a moment. I went through my own pantomime, as though I'd found something on the ground. I bent to pick it up. By holding my hands together, then spreading them out, I showed that what I was holding was long, long, long, and thin: a rope. I handed one end of this rope to the mime; then I quickly walked around and around him at least a dozen times, going from his shoulders down to his ankles, where I showed that I was firmly tucking the other end of the rope in. Lastly, I dusted off my hands and nodded firmly.

  True to the mime code of conduct, the guy stood there writhing as though in a cocoon of rope, and Emily and I were able to step around him.

  “You're just a little bit weird, Grace,” Emily said.

  I gave an exaggerated, mimelike shrug. It was that, or kick her for not taking this seriously enough.

  We came to a bunch of enormous, big-enough-to-sit-on toadstools, arranged in rows in front of a raised platform that was obviously a stage. A sign by the path announced:

  Theatre in the Grove

  Madrigal Singers

  appearing in:

  1 minute, 47 seconds

  As we approached, the 47 changed to 46, then 45, the sign functioning as if it had a digital readout even though it looked like old-fashioned painted wood.

  “Oooo,” Emily said, “I love madrigal music.”

  Not good, I thought. Not good, not good. Emily knew the danger. Her lack of focus frightened me.

  I held tight to her arm lest she veer off.

  Emily pouted but didn't complain.

  We passed some more booths that housed arcade-style games, some older (throw the hatchet at the bull's-eye target), some newer (video tic-tac-toe). Most seemed to offer winners a choice, either gold coins or an actual prize. And the prizes weren't like the stuff you usually see at carnivals: Mardi Gras beads or plastic airplanes or goldfish in a bowl. These guys were offering things like silver-and-crystal tiaras, and bicycles, and puppies.

  “Very generous arcade,” I commented.

  “Yeah, well,” Emily said, “I don't like to wait.”

  “You don't like to wait?” I repeated, not clear about what she meant.

  “The way games start slow, and you've got to build up experience points before you can do anything worthwhile. Or like at a carnival, where you win crappy little things, and you have to trade up to the good stuff.”

  That's what happens, I thought, to someone who's always gotten everything effortlessly.

  And I remembered the sprites being mad about how she'd changed things to make the game easier.

  “Nice,” I said, but I was thinking: Sure, winning is more fun than losing, but what's the point if you KNOW you're going to win?

  As we came to a petting zoo enclosure, Emily told me, “You have to hold the chinchilla. You won't believe how soft it is.”

  “Maybe next time,” I said, feeling I'd completed the transformation into our mother.

  The path divided, and we turned after the last enclosure, the one with the baby llamas standing by the fence as though just waiting for us to pet them.

  Emily's steps were beginning to falter, whether from fatigue or from forgetting what we were supposed to be doing and being tempted to cuddle the animals. Not a good sign in either case.

  “King Rasmussem?” I asked the gypsy worker who was handing out large rubber rings for people to toss over small bowling pins set conveniently close to the counter.

  With a nod of his head, he indicated farther down the row.

  And there we were. At the Big Wheel. It was one of those wooden contraptions divided into skinny pie pieces, each with a number. The operator was a guy, which meant communication could be a problem, given my lack of knowledge of foreign languages. He didn't look royal. But on the other hand, he also didn't look like the other people I'd seen in this game, most of whom leaned toward young and attractive. He was about our dad's age, a bit short, a bit gray, and carrying a bit too much weight. He had a black mustache and was wearing a T-shirt that said: The voices in my head are generally friendly.

  Which was somewhat reassuring. And somewhat not.

  “Hello,” I said.

  "Bonjour,” he answered.

  Drat.

  Hopefully, I continued, “We're looking for King Rasmussem.”

  "Le roi, c’est moi.”

  He was speaking what sounded like French (I mean, even little kids know bonjour), but because his shirt was in English, I hoped maybe he could understand me better than I was understanding him.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked.

  Instead of answering, he spun the wheel.

  Round and round it went, clicking first quickly, then slowly, until it finally stopped at 100, the largest number.

  If that was supposed to be an answer, I didn't get it.

  I saw that the next booth over was one of those rides for really little kids, with a bunch of boats that go around in a large tub of water that is always green and somewhat funky. When I'd been the right age for that ride, I'd been convinced the water was actual seawater.

  The ride operator was a gypsy girl not much older than me, looking bored because the boats were currently empty. I ran up to her and asked with a tilt of my head, “Is that the king of the gypsies at the Big Wheel?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Do you speak whatever language he's speaking?”


  “It's French,” she told me.

  “Right. Do you speak French?”

  "Mais oui,” she said.

  I wanted to say, “Come on, come on—can't you talk any faster?” Instead, I asked, “Can you translate for me?”

  She held her hand out, and—after ten or twenty seconds—I caught on and gave her my next-to-last butterfly coin. She came back with me to good King Big Wheel.

  Emily was sitting on the ground, leaning her back against the booth.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Never better,” she answered, but I didn't believe her for a second.

  "Bonjour,” the gypsy girl said to the king.

  He smiled and nodded and said something like, “Ahnyahng hah say-o.” Which sure didn't sound French to me.

  “Oh, dear,” gypsy girl said. “Now he's speaking Korean. I don't speak Korean.” She obviously wasn't devastated by this development. She put the coin I'd given her on the counter. But before I could marvel at the thought that she was actually refunding my money since she was unable to translate, Gypsy King Rasmussem took the coin and gave the wheel a spin. It landed on the 100 again. The girl gave him a thumbs-up, a good job gesture, which he returned.

  “I hate to interrupt all these festivities, but is there anyone here, besides the king, who speaks Korean?” I asked her. “We need to talk to him.”

  She looked around, then pointed at a man who was giving little kids rides on a huge, saddled pig.

  “Okay,” I said, but I'd been in this game long enough to ask, “But does he speak English?”

  “No.” Gypsy girl grinned and added, “But he does speak French.”

  “This is ridiculous,” I complained. “You mean I have to ask my questions in English, you'll repeat them in French, that man there will ask King Rasmussem in Korean, and then we'll have to do the same thing in reverse for the king's answer?”

  “Shouting at me isn't going to make this take any less time.”

  I sighed. I looked at Emily, who shrugged. I looked at King Rasmussem of the Odd T-Shirt, who smiled. I looked at the pig man, who was just helping the last of a group of children to dismount from the pig.

  “All right,” I told her.

  “And of course,” Gypsy girl said, “you'll need to pay both of us.”

  “I already paid you!”

  Patiently, she explained, “You paid me to translate back and forth between you and the king. Now you need to pay me to translate back and forth with the pig man.”

  “Emily,” I said, “I need coins.”

  She dug into her pocket and gave me a small handful.

  Gypsy girl waved pig man over.

  I gave him one of the coins, and he plunked it down in front of King Rasmussem, who spun the wheel. It stopped, rather predictably by now, on 100.

  Pig man and King Rasmussem bumped fists in congratulations.

  “Ask,” I said to the girl, “if he can help us get out of the game.”

  Gypsy girl said something to pig man; pig man said something to King Rasmussem; King Rasmussem said something to pig man; pig man said something to gypsy girl; gypsy girl turned to me and said, “You took too long and missed his Korean phase. He's into Polish now.”

  I slammed my hand down hard on the counter of the booth. “No! That's not fair!”

  King Rasmussem folded his arms across his chest and said, “Well, it's your own damn fault. You and that cheater sister of yours.”

  Chapter 18

  The Big Wheel

  HEY!” I cried in a combination of relief and exasperation. “You speak English!”

  King Rasmussem bared his teeth at me, an expression I didn't for a second confuse with a smile or friendliness.

  “But Emily made it so the guys here...” I hesitated. Did the game characters know they were game characters? I looked to my sister for advice, but she was still sitting, leaning against the booth, yawning so big it looked like she was trying to swallow her hand. I worked on amending my thought midsentence, and in the meantime King Rasmussem finished it for me.

  “She made it so that the guys in the Land of the Golden Butterflies can't speak English. But how helpful would a Rasmussem Help function be if it was in a different language from the one used by the consumer?” He said something in some language I hadn't heard yet—Romany, maybe?—to the French gypsy and the Korean gypsy, and they both laughed.

  At me, I was sure.

  “So what was all that about?” I demanded. “With the different languages?” Even to myself, I sounded like a sulky whiner. And in the end: so what? That wasn't important. Getting out of here—that was important.

  “Just having fun,” King Rasmussem said. “Isn't an arcade supposed to be fun?”

  “That was not fun,” I corrected him. “That was annoying—that was like annoying to the tenth power—and it was time-consuming, and frustrating. And dangerous, given how vital it is that we talk to you.”

  “My mistake,” King Rasmussem said. “That's what happens with artificial intelligence sometimes—there are misunderstandings.”

  So he did know he was a game character. Sort of.

  “Okay,” I said, not believing that misunderstanding began to cover what we'd just been through, but—again—so what? “Well, what we came here for was to find out why the End Game/Return to Rasmussem function doesn't work.”

  “Ah!” His tone indicated pleased surprise—like a teacher's, when you ask the question he wants you to ask. “Well...” The gypsy king launched into an explanation. I guess. It took like about ten whole seconds before I realized he was speaking technobabble and not yet another language.

  “Stop, stop, stop!” I interrupted. “I don't understand a word you're saying.”

  “Oh,” he told me, “that's not true. Tangent. Greater than. Underscore. Backslash—”

  “All right, all right,” I interrupted again. “The individual words I get, but what—”

  It was his turn to interrupt. “Code,” he explained. “You told me you wanted to find out why the game isn't working the way you think it should, and I'm telling you the code responsible for that malfunction.”

  I leaned against the counter to move in closer to him. “I'm not interested in the code.”

  He leaned in, too, so that we were practically nose to nose. “You said you were.”

  This could be enough to turn me off games forever. “I meant,” I said, fighting through the urge to shake him, “we want to go home now.”

  “But that's not what you said.”

  “That's what I'm saying at this moment.”

  “Too late.” Once again he bared his teeth, and this was much more a smile than before. Not that it was friendly. He was inordinately pleased with himself, and I suspected that was not a good sign.

  “By too late,” I asked, “do you mean you're committed to reciting the entire computer code to me?”

  “Nooo.” He was having too good a time with this, obviously filled with glee at how the conversation was going. Well, at least one of us was entertained. “By too late, I mean your sister has meddled too much.”

  Emily roused herself enough to protest, “Hey.” But not with much enthusiasm. She looked barely able to keep her eyes open, and she didn't even try to stand.

  On the other hand, I found King Rasmussem's words chilling. “Who says?” I asked, trying to make my voice selfassured and forceful, rather than scared. “So what?”

  “As artificial constructs,” King Rasmussem said, “we are given enough intelligence to fill in the gaps.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “With early versions of computer games, the player had to use the exact wording the designers had anticipated or the program was unable to respond. A programmer would have to try to cover a variety of ways a player might phrase a request; for example, 'Pick up the sword,' or 'Get the sword,' or 'Lift the sword.' If a player happened to choose a phrase the programmer hadn't thought of ... say, 'Take hold of the sword,' the game would freeze. Unsatisfying
for everyone. For a smooth user-machine interface, the machine needs to make leaps of logic—the way people do.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but—”

  The king kept on talking. “Think of how getting one character wrong in an e-mail address means that your gazillion-gigabyte computer has no idea where to send your letter. But your average-intelligence, just-three-more-years-till-retirement postal carrier can figure out that '317 Main' means '317 Main Street,' and that 'Roch., NY' means 'Rochester, New York.' And if the zip code is written '19611' instead of '14611,' which is Reading, Pennsylvania—and not Rochester, New York, at all—a human being, or artificial intelligence, can surmise what was probably meant.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But I can't surmise what you mean.” It was too good a line to pass up—and it was true.

  King Rasmussem crinkled his face in a semblance of good humor. “I mean we're ticked off at the way your sister has been cheating like crazy, so we're not going to let you out of the game until the two of you can finish a task without cheating.”

  He was a game character. Could he do that?

  Well, duh, he already had or we'd be home by now. Artificial intelligence was still intelligence, so I appealed to reason. “But Emily has been in the game too long already. She needs to get out.”

  Once again the king leaned forward till we were nose to nose. “And I need her to do so without cheating. I'm stripping her of her magic, her ill-gotten possessions, her servants. I'm setting the number of butterflies back to a level that does not indicate an infestation. I'm making the games of chance once more involve...” He paused for dramatic effect. “Chance.” Emily was rummaging through her pockets. “Hey,” she said again, this time with an edge of annoyance.

  I felt my pocket for the small stash she had given me. Gone. The gold coins had changed into wooden nickels. Every bit as eloquent as my sister, I, too, said, “Hey!” Then I protested, “I haven't cheated.”

  The king snorted. “As good as: you accepted help from a cheater.”

  Now I was ticked. “Yeah?” I said to the king. “Like this wheel of yours that always comes up a hundred isn't cheating?”

  “My wheel,” King Rasmussem said, “is now and always has been working exactly as it's meant to.” He reached into the pouch where he kept his coins and plunked two down on the counter that separated us. “Gifts,” he said. “One for Miss Grace. One for Miss Emily. Go ahead. Try the wheel.” I was tempted to just take my coin and leave. But what good was one gold coin? And where could we go? Finding Rasmussem had been a last resort. Emily was failing, and if we didn't play along with the king, did we even have another option?