Leif stepped out into the street and began walking calmly down toward the gate. He was not particularly calm. Errint was a city where it was permissible to carry weapons within the walls, so he had a knife. He was good enough with it to make serious trouble for anyone who tried anything, and he had enough general self-defense training to make him feel comfortable in any large real-world city. But this was not any large real-world city. This was Sarxos, and you never knew when someone was going to jump at you out of a dark alley carrying a loaded cockatrice...against which front snap-kicks would do you no good at all.
Leif walked on, resisting the temptation to whistle. It might make you feel better in the dark, but it also pinpointed your location for someone whose night vision might be no better than yours. He strolled, as calmly as he could, and passed the square of moonlight on the left-hand wall, just a thin ray of it passing between two taller buildings on the east side. The gate Megan had mentioned was maybe another twenty yards on. Very, very quietly, Leif reached down and started loosening his knife in its sheath.
Behind him, very softly, something went scuffle.
He didn't stop to look behind, though he was sorely tempted. Leif kept walking. His mother's voice said in his head, No common thug ever sneaks up right behind you. They always break into a run, those last few steps. If it's a professional stalking you, you don't have a hope. You're probably dead already. But if it's just a thug, so long as you can't hear those last few steps, you've still got at least a few feet between you and him or her. When you hear those steps, though, they're in reaching range. Do something quick--
Leif just went strolling on.
Scurry. Scuffle--pause--scurry, pause--
He kept walking.
There was the gate, a faint, wide, arched dimness in the darkness of the left-hand wall. Leif walked innocently past it, not turning his head to look through it, just taking his time: though he could see by peripheral vision that no one was there.
Scuffle.
Footsteps. Soft shoes on the stones. Much closer now.
Leif swallowed.
Scurry, scuffle--
--and someone breaking into a run--
Leif whirled, whipping the knife out, going forward just enough on the balls of his feet to jump or run.
He never had a chance to do either. A dark shape shot out of the gateway and got jumbled up with the very small dark blot that had been running at him. Leif was uncertain what happened next, except that the two dark forms seemed to consolidate...and then one of them flew away from the other, and into the wall opposite the gate, with stunning force. There was a shriek, cut off suddenly as the smaller form slid down the wall and hit the cobblestones.
Leif hurried over. Megan was standing there, not even looking particularly winded. She was standing over that smaller shape now, her hands on her hips, looking down with an expression that was hard to make out in the darkness, but it looked thoughtful.
"He weighs nearly as much as my number-three brother," she said mildly. "Interesting. All right, Gobbo, get up off your butt, it wasn't that bad."
The dwarf lay moaning and sniveling on the ground. "Don't hurt me, don't do that again!"
Megan reached down and hoisted Gobbo up by the front of his motley, and briefly held him straight-armed against the wall at nearly eye level. She and Leif studied his face. It was that of a middle-aged man, much collapsed together because of his dwarfism: a nasty face, eloquent of much troublemaking.
"I'm a very important person, I can get you in a lot of trouble!" the dwarf squealed. "Let me go!"
"Oh, yeah," Leif said, "we're shaking, the two of us. Was that dwarf-chucking?" he said to Megan.
"Very incorrect," she said, in an abstracted tone of voice. "But you could get used to it."
The dwarf's face spasmed with fear. "Don't!"
"Why were you following us?" Leif said.
"And why have you been following us since Minsar?" said Megan. "Answers, quick--or I'll chuck you right over this wall, honest, and we'll see how important gravity thinks you are when you come down."
"What makes you think--"
Megan lifted him a little higher.
"Your arm getting tired?" Leif said. "I could take him. I can press almost one-fifty these days."
"No," Megan said, "no need. I won't wait much longer. Gobbo, this is your last chance. I saw a lady get hurt today, and it's put me in a real bad mood, and made me short-tempered with people who don't answer reasonable questions." She started to lift him higher.
The dwarf looked at her, a strange expression. "Put me down," he said, "and I'll tell you what you want to know."
Megan looked at him for a moment, then put him down.
"All right," she said. "Let's hear it."
The dwarf began feeling around in his pockets. Megan was watching him like a hawk. Leif was wondering what those pockets might conceal--
"Here," the dwarf said, and reached up, holding out something for Megan to take.
She reached down her hand and took it, curious. She lifted it close to her eyes, turning it over and over in the dimness. It looked like a coin, except that its edges were smooth, not milled. It was not made of metal either. It was a circle of some dark mineral, with a design engraved on it. Megan held it up toward another of the squares of moonlight high up on a nearby wall, and looked at it, through it. So did Leif. He caught a wink of the darkest red, even in this silver light. The thing was made of pigeon's blood ruby, and deeply engraved in it, in an old uncial font, was the letter S.
Megan looked at Leif with an odd expression on her face. "Game intervention," she said.
"Listening."
"Identify this object."
"Object is identified as the Creator's Token," said the computer voice. "The Sigil of Sarxos--positive in-game identification of the game designer and copyright holder."
Both of them looked down at the dwarf in complete astonishment.
"Yes," Gobbo said, in an entirely different voice. "I'm Chris Rodrigues."
4
They finally wound up in the Scrag End again. It was closed when they got there, empty except for a young man who took care of the door.
A slit in the door came open. "Show him what I gave you," said the dwarf.
Megan held up the ruby token for the doorman to see. His eyes, seen through the slit, widened. The slit closed, and the door opened for them.
Inside, as they went in, the young man was looking with utter astonishment at Megan. "You?"
"No, no, him," she said, indicating the dwarf. Except that he wasn't a dwarf anymore.
Suddenly a tallish guy was standing there, in jeans and a T-shirt and somewhat beat-up-looking sneakers: a big-boned man, somewhere in his early middle years, with curly unruly hair and a curly beard and brown eyes, the kindliest eyes Megan thought she had ever seen. "Listen," said Rodrigues to the young man, "I know you'd love to talk to me, but I need to talk to these people just now, and it's urgent. Can I come back and see you next week--would that be okay?"
"Uh, yeah, sure, fine," said the young man. "You'll make sure you shut the door when you go out."
"No problem."
The doorkeeper went out the front door, and closed it behind him.
Chris stood there for a moment, then picked up the bolt and dropped it in place, and came back to sit at the rearmost table, where they had sat with Wayland.
Leif, sitting there staring at Rodrigues, was still having trouble coping with it all. "It's really you, isn't it?"
"Of course it is. There's no faking this." Chris gave the token on the table a little push. "I always anticipated that sometimes I would need to make my presence known, so I made sure there was a way for players to know it was me, one that couldn't be faked."
Megan nodded. "Why were you following us?" she said.
"Because you've something to do with these bounces, don't you?"
She and Leif stared at Rodrigues in complete shock. "No, I don't mean that you're involved with them!" Ro
drigues said. "But you've been hanging around with some people who may have been involved...haven't you? And one of them--Ellen. Elblai--"
"Yes. We were with her just last night."
"So I saw from the game logs. And the descriptions of you that her niece gave me were quite precise." Rodrigues sat back. "So I thought I would have a look at you myself--this was before Elblai, mind you--and then followed you here. I had the system alert me when you came back into gameplay."
"I have to tell you," said Leif, "we're not just doing this for fun. We're with the Explorers...we're with Net Force."
"Net Force, yeah," Rodrigues said, and leaned forward on the table, running his hands through his hair. "Yeah, I've had some people from there in here already today. Naturally the Elblai situation brought them in, and I'm glad they came. But I don't know what they can do. I'm not sure what any of us can do."
He sounded despondent. Megan said, "Whoever has been doing this...they can't be doing it tracelessly. And they have been leaving some clues behind...we think. It's only a matter of time before we, or the senior Net Force operatives, work out--"
Rodrigues looked up. "Time," he said. "How much of that do we have before this person bounces someone else? And does it violently? The early bounces, the smash-and-ruin bounces, those were bad enough. But attempted murder? This is not the kind of thing I wanted happening in my game."
"We know," Leif said. "We didn't think so either. So we came in and started looking around to see what we could find out."
"The same here," said Rodrigues. "But I didn't expect to get flung at a wall."
"Sorry," Megan said, blushing hot. "I thought you were--"
"Some little creep dwarf," said Rodrigues, grinning. "Yes. He's a favorite of mine, Gobbo."
"Is he the character you run, then?" said Leif.
"One of about twenty," Rodrigues said. "Some of them are fairly quiet...some of them are pretty outrageous. They give me a chance to wander around and interact with people in different ways...and make sure they're playing the game correctly." He smiled a little. "One of the pleasures of playing God. Or Rod." The smile got more ironic.
"But the past few months, I've been doing it more with an eye to seeing what I can find out about these bounces. It's not just that I don't like my creation being used this way...which I don't. But Sarxos has always had a reputation as a safe place, a place where the Game was played fairly...not one of those fly-by-night operations where the gamesmaster changes the rules on you without warning. And it's not just a game, of course. It's a consumer-driven operation. You have to treat your customers right. If word gets out that this kind of thing is starting to happen--if there's even one more instance of an attack like the one on Elblai--it's going to do immense damage to the game. It could be shut down. I leave to your imagination the kind of legal trouble that could ensue. The bottom-line boys at the parent company would not be happy with me, not at all."
Leif was studying the table with a rather noncommittal look on his face. "Look," Rodrigues said, just a little sharply, "I'm already a millionaire so many times over that it's not even fun counting it at night anymore when I need to fall asleep. I have a great privilege: I get to do what I love to make my living. There's nothing better than that. But there are more important things than my pleasure, and a whole lot more important than money. If there's no other way to stop this, I'll damn well see the game shut down. A lot of people disappointed is better than a few people dead. And that's where it's heading, if you ask me. I wish to God I was wrong, but I'm a pessimist at heart--that's why I'm such a good designer."
He sighed. "Anyhow, I've told the Net Force people that I'll cooperate with them every way I can. The company won't let me give them the game logs directly--they're moaning about proprietary information--but I can read them and pass excerpted information on. They were asking about yours, by the way."
Megan nodded. "We know. There's e-mail going out shortly--if it hasn't already gone--giving my release."
"Okay, that's fine. You, too?" He looked at Leif.
"Yeah."
"Good."
"What about your game logs?" Leif said suddenly.
Rodrigues looked at him. Megan briefly felt as if she wished the Earth would open and swallow her.
"How do you mean?"
"The Net Force people may suggest to you," Leif said in a very even and almost gentle voice, "that one possibility is that you might have been involved with these bounces."
"Now why would I do a thing like that?" Rodrigues said, looking at Leif strangely.
"I have no idea," Leif said, "and I don't believe it myself. But..." He shrugged.
"Well," said Rodrigues, "as for that, the game servers keep track of me exactly the way they do of everyone else. You can never tell, I might go crazy and try to sabotage the code." He made that ironic "fat-chance" expression that seemed to appear on his face about once every couple of minutes. "The server logs will confirm when I was in here...which frankly is most of my waking hours. If I'm not doing maintenance on bugs, which contrary to popular belief pop up constantly, then I'm in the game itself, walking up and down to see who's naughty and who's nice. There's fortunately no way to forge that information."
Megan looked at Leif, and Leif looked back. They both wondered just how true that statement was. Then they turned back to the task at hand. "You know," Megan said, "we were talking about a more structured way to conduct our search." She took a few moments to explain to him the roundabout train of logic they had been following. "But there's a possibility here," she said. "The logs."
Leif looked at her. "The server logs," Megan said. "They keep track of everybody who's playing, everybody who's in the game. But also--by process of elimination--they'll show you when everyone who's a player is not in the game. And the bounces--the physical attacks on equipment, and in Elblai's case, on people--happened when the player committing the attacks was physically not in the game. If we could run a search through the computers..."
Rodrigues looked at her a little sadly. "Do you know," he said, "how many hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of people might be out of the game at any given moment? You're going to have to find some other criterion to sort by, and cut down the size of that sample."
"We've got several other sets of criteria," Leif said. "In fact, we've got one six-name list I'd really like to run against the server logs."
"Which six names?"
"Orieta, Hunsal, Balk the Screw..."
Rodrigues shook his head. "Where do they get some of these names..."
"...Rutin, Walse, and Lateran."
"Huh," Rodrigues said. "All generals and war-leaders, huh? How did you get interested in these particular names?"
Leif told him.
"Well," Rodrigues said, "those six we certainly should be able to check."
"Do you have all the times of the actual attacks?" Megan said.
"Oh, yes, believe me." Rodrigues laced his fingers together, leaned his chin on them. "Game intervention."
"Listening."
"This is the boss."
"Verified."
"Access the real-world timings of attacks on bounced players."
"Accessed. Holding in store."
"Access server records for game usage for the following players: Hunsal, Rutin, Orieta, Walse, Balk the Screw, and Lateran."
"Accessed. Holding in store."
"Compare."
"Comparing. Criteria?"
"Identify which players were outside the game at the times of the attacks."
Leif and Megan held very still.
"Walse, outside at attack one, attack three. Orieta, outside at attack five. Balk the Screw, outside at attack seven. All other players were in-game at all times of attack."
Megan and Leif looked at each other.
Leif made a face. "That didn't work--I was hoping for something a bit more clear-cut. All the others were playing."
"So the computer says."
"What are the chances it could b
e wrong?" said Leif. "Or that its programming or its logs could have been tampered with?"
Rodrigues laughed softly. "It's a nice try," he said, "but you have no idea how stringently controlled our system is, or how ruthlessly access to it is managed. The computer itself writes code. We have no human programmers handling that anymore. The machine's plenty heuristic enough to handle it, and besides, there's umpty billion lines of code to deal with. No number of humans, monkeys, or other primates chained to keyboards could possibly work fast enough to meet the system's needs. I just tell the machinery what's needed, and it does it. No one else has access to code, or to the server logs, except a couple of people at the parent company. And there's no way they'd be involved with this...they handle the logs only for archival purposes. Everything's encrypted anyway, the same as the private-play keys and so forth."
"So there's no way that those could be tampered with."
"No. Believe me," Rodrigues said, "we have a lot of interest from other parties who've used Sarxos, its code and its basic structure, as a testbed for other kinds of simulations, ones which aren't public. We keep our operation tight as a drum because of those affiliations."
"But those people who were out during the attacks," Megan said. "There's no telling where they were, then--"
"Well, there is, to a certain extent," Rodrigues said, "because you can check the logs and see how soon they came back in again. Game intervention."
"Listening."
"Look at excerpted logs. Note if any of these players was absent from play for more than...one hour."
"Walse. Absent for four hours thirteen minutes."
"And returned to gameplay again."
"Yes."
"There's only one problem," said Rodrigues, getting a slightly unfocused look, which suggested to Megan that he was looking at some kind of display in the air that he could see and they couldn't. "The first attack was in Austin, Texas, and Walse lives in Ulan Bator. Even a nearspace transport isn't going to be able to get you from Outer Mongolia to Texas in four hours. For one thing, there're no direct flights. Think how many times you'd have to change." He shook his head. "No, that won't work."
He sat back, folding his arms. "It's possible," he said, "that the line of reasoning you're following isn't really a valid one."
the Deadliest Game (1998) Page 13
