the Deadliest Game (1998)

by Tom - Net Force Explorers 02 Clancy

  "It's all we've got," said Megan.

  "Listen, I'm not trying to put you down," said Rodrigues. "I haven't got anything better. I've tried processing this data every way I could, and I'm stumped. I'm really hoping that your Net Force people can do something for me now, because I'm at my wits' end. I'll tell you, though--when we catch whoever this is--"

  "When," Megan said, and smiled a little. She liked the sound of certainty...but all the same it made her sad. She kept thinking of Elblai.

  "Have you heard anything about Elblai--Ellen?" she said.

  "She's out of surgery," Rodrigues said, "but she's still not conscious. She's on my mind." He sighed. "Listen, though. I have to thank you two for wanting to help, for trying to make a difference. Is there anything I can do for you?"

  Megan shook her head. "Not at the moment."

  Leif said suddenly, "We could use some extra transit allowance. I've blown a lot of mine on this."

  Rodrigues chuckled. "You're going to keep working on this problem?"

  They nodded.

  "Uh, consider your accounts open-ended until this is sorted out. Game intervention--"

  "Listening."

  "This is the boss. See to it that characters Brown Meg and Leif Hedge-wizard have open accounts from this time stamp until further notice from me."

  "Done."

  "One less thing for you to worry about anyway."

  He sighed, looking down at his folded hands on the table, then looked up again. "I love this place," he said. "You should have seen it when it started. Little, scratchy, sketchy, video-only universe. You could have fitted the whole thing into a PC." He laughed. "Then it got out of hand. They do that, supposedly, worlds: get out of the control of their creators. Now I've got something like four million users.... people inhabiting a world. People who really seem to think it's special." More soft laughter. "I got an e-mail from somebody a few months ago saying that we should petition the government to get them to let us terraform Mars, and set up Sarxos there. I get a lot of mail from people who'd like to move. I mean, this..." He thumped the table gently. "This is pretty real, pretty good. You can eat here, drink here, sleep here, fight here...do all kinds of things here. But you can't stay. People have started saying that they want to stay here...live here."

  He shook his head. "The only thing I didn't foresee.... is that people would start doing things to each other in the real world based on what they do or don't do here. This has never been a peaceful place. It wasn't built to be a peaceful place. It's a war game! Though peace keeps breaking out...and that always surprised me, that people wanted to live here, not just campaign all over the countryside and fight each other to a standstill. But now...it's like the serpent has gotten into Eden. I don't like this serpent. I want to stomp its ugly head."

  "So do we," said Megan.

  "I know. That's why we're having this conversation."

  "We intend," Leif said, "to keep going...until we find the serpent. And stomp it."

  "Do," Rodrigues said. "This kind of abuse, if it once takes root and it's not dealt with immediately...it's going to tear this world apart. I don't want to see that." He looked around him at the splintery walls, and the tattered thatch of the roof, and the cobblestones and the stuff spilled on them. "I don't want all this to vanish. This, and the mountain ranges where the basilisks nest, and the oceans with the sea monsters in them, and the moonlight...the stars...the people who come to my world to play...I don't want to see it all collapsed and put away in a box. I want it to outlive me. That would be a good immortality, to have a world that kept going while its maker was gone, or in hiding...." He smiled a little. "Sort of like what we have now, out there in the physical world."

  Rodrigues looked at them, intense. "Do what you can...but be careful. If you're going to do this, I can't be responsible...you signed the waiver when you came in."

  "We're pretty good at responsible," Megan said. "We'll manage."

  "Okay. Here, take this." He reached into his pocket and came out with another token with the S on it: not ruby, this one, but plain gold, or at least it looked like it. "You're going to be working together, so just take this one then. If you need something from the system--information about other players, within reason, or extra abilities--you're a wizard, you know the kind of things I mean--query the system. It'll give them to you. This also com-links to me or my account. You can leave me e-mail, or talk to me if I'm in the game."

  "Hey, thanks. This is really--"

  "Don't thank me. I should be thanking you for what you're doing. There are a few others like you who're making discreet inquiries. I figure the more of us who're looking, the better it is. But in the meantime, just be careful."

  "We will," Leif said.

  Rodrigues stood up. "Okay...it's getting late at home where I am. I've gotta go. Thanks again."

  They nodded to him. Rodrigues sketched a little wave at them...then, with a pop of displaced air, vanished.

  Leif and Megan looked at each other. "Not Lateran," Leif said. "Merde."

  "Back to the drawing board..." said Megan.

  They got up and left the Scrag End, carefully closing the door behind them.

  Wayland was waiting for them in the marketplace in the morning, all packed up and ready to go. He had on what Leif remembered as his "traveling hat," a large floppy one with a bedraggled feather that made him look like a cross between a run-down Musketeer and an unemployed Norse god. "I haven't been up to the High House yet today," he said, leading them up into the next circle of the city, "but there shouldn't be any trouble with finding old Tald the majordomo. He'll get you in to see the Lord right enough. Fettick isn't as standoffish as some of them are, anyway. No big ceremonies up in these parts. People wouldn't stand for it."

  "I thought they liked ceremonies up here," Leif said. "There's the Winterfest, after all, when they burn the straw man, and the Spring Madness, when everybody has to get drunk for three days."

  "Probably old Tald wouldn't care for that," Wayland said, going through the gate leading up into the next circle, and waving at some acquaintance up the road as they went along. "But he's all right, he won't give you trouble."

  Megan glanced at Wayland, a little lost by the sudden obliquity. But he was turning through another gate ahead of them, with Leif behind him. She shrugged and went on after them.

  The innermost wall of Errint was the old castle itself, built of glacier-boulders that had been sliced neatly into blocks as if they had been so much cheese. "How the Old People did that, we still don't know," Wayland said, looking up at the walls. "No kind of magic you can get these days."

  "Might've been lasers," Megan said, looking at the smoothness of the cuts, and the way the surfaces were glazed without being polished. Inside, she was thinking with some admiration of the creativity of a man who could take the time to leave details like this all over his world: not just elaborate or unusual workmanship, but mysteries and puzzles to work over at any of several levels--the place itself could be the subject of hours of cheerful pastime as you tried to work out whether Rod had just tossed in some detail as a throwaway, or meant you to mull it over and find some hidden meaning therein. And there was always the possible joke that there was no meaning: the kind of joke that Megan suspected a Creator might be inclined to pull.

  "It's pretty enough, that's for sure," Wayland said, and led them up to the gates of the castle, which were open. Out in its front courtyard, people were spreading out laundry to dry in the sun, and a big florid man in dark blue was walking around and visibly bossing everybody, waving his hands, giving directions. As the three of them walked in, he immediately boomed at Wayland, "No vacancies, good smith, there are no further employment opportunities here!"

  "Master Tald," Wayland said, "don't you start shouting. These people are here on business!"

  "What kind of business?"

  "Better ask them," Wayland said.

  Leif bowed politely enough to the majordomo and said, "Sir, if possible we need to s
ee Lord Fettick, on a matter of some urgency."

  "Now, I don't know about that, young man, he's very busy today."

  "You think it was magic they used on these stones?" Megan said suddenly to Wayland, pointing up at the closest wall. Wayland turned to follow the gesture, and as she did so, Leif slipped the token out of his pocket and showed it briefly to Tald.

  Tald's eyes got wide. "Well," he said, "it's early yet, and I doubt the first appointments will be along for some time. Come on, then, young sir, young lady."

  "Hard to say," Wayland was saying as Leif pocketed the token again, "at this end of time..."

  "I guess so," Megan said. "Look, Wayland, we may be a while."

  "I'll be down in the marketplace then," he said, "or I won't." He waved at them, and set off through the gates again.

  Leif threw Megan a briefly questioning glance as they followed the majordomo up through the castle door proper, and up a winding stairway that started making its way up around the walls of the central, circular tower. Megan shook her head, and shrugged.

  The second floor was one big airy room, rather like the keep in Minsar, except that all the tapestries seemed to have been taken down for the summer. With the weather fairly warm and pleasant here this time of year, it was not a problem. The majordomo ushered them into the middle of the room, where there were a table and a chair, and in the chair, a man.

  "Lord Fettick," said Tald, "these two travelers come on urgent business, bearing the sigil of Rod."

  The man in the chair looked up, somewhat surprised, then rose to greet them--old-fashioned courtesy, which Leif and Megan both answered with bows. "Really? Then bring them a couple of chairs, please, and make them comfortable. And excuse yourself."

  Tald bustled about, bringing a couple of light ropewood chairs, which he placed on the far side of the table, and then departed. The man gestured them to the chairs. Leif and Megan sat down.

  Megan reflected that she had never actually met someone wearing rose-tinted glasses before, since she knew very few people who actually elected to wear glasses at all, the state of laser surgery being what it was. But here was Fettick wearing them, a tall, slim, somewhat bemused-looking man in a gabardine, which was the height of style for the fourteenth century, but to Megan's eyes mostly looked like a cross between a monk's habit and a bathrobe. It's probably pretty comfortable, though, she thought.

  If this was the High House's throne room, it wasn't over-decorated. Indeed, the throne was more of a comfy chair--a rather overstuffed one--and it was pulled up to what was probably usually used as a formal dining table, but was now in intensive use as a desk. The beautiful polished ebony surface was almost completely covered with all manner of paperwork and parchments and rolled-up books and sewn-up books, quills and pens and styli and tablets. It looked like an explosion in an old and eclectic library.

  "Sir," Leif said, "thank you for taking the time to see us."

  "Well, you're welcome...briefly. I hope you understand I'm very busy this morning, and I don't have a lot of time." He waved vaguely at the desk.

  "We understand entirely," said Leif. "Sir, do you recognize this token?" He held up the golden coin that Rodrigues had given them.

  Fettick fixed a somewhat skeptical look on it. "Game intervention," he said softly, and whispered something to the computer. It whispered back, inaudibly.

  His eyebrows went up. He whispered again. Then he said, "Has Rod Almighty actually been here?"

  "Yes, sir. We saw him last night. He sends his regards," Leif said, which, while not strictly true, struck him as something Rod probably would have said.

  "What did he want?"

  "He wanted to talk to us about a matter which was concerning us...and that's why we've come to see you," Leif said.

  "Sir," Megan said, "your forces were in conflict with those of King Argath of Orxen not too long ago."

  "Yes." Fettick sat down, and a small smile with a slightly feral edge crossed his face. Suddenly he didn't look quite so feckless. "Yes, we won, didn't we?"

  "Yes, you did. The problem right now, sir, is that anyone who fought a battle against Argath and won appears to be in danger of being--excuse me, I must use the indelicate word--'bounced.'"

  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 da
ughter, 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?"