by Steve Perry
But then she had met Mourn, the game had gotten way too personal, and now she was much more deeply involved than she had ever expected. First-person journalism was valid, of course, people had been doing it since the first caveman came back to the fire and told a story about the monster he’d fought. The first thing you learned in school was that total objectivity didn’t exist—by the very nature of choosing what to tell and show, you made a subjective decision. Still, a tale needed to be respun once the teller became a player in the program.
“Replay last ten seconds, quarter speed.”
The holoproj images snapped back in time and began to crawl. She watched them with a practiced eye.
The shift had come to her gradually, and when Mourn had beaten Cluster so fast and decisively, it had gelled in her thoughts. The general rule in telling a story was to start as close to the end as possible and backfill what was necessary to keep things rolling. What had started out as a general overview of the Flex had fined itself down. She had realized that, aside from a relatively brief intro to the Flex, its rules and history, what would make her documentary work was going to be the players themselves. Who they were, why they did it, what it took and cost them, how they trained, where they met, how they felt before and afterward . . .
Which brought her to Mourn. Mourn had to be the centerpiece. An old, established player, a man who had been around a long time, the consummate professional. The weary player who had seen most of it, done most of it, and was thinking about leaving the game when a sudden idea had galvanized him, made things fresh again. She had a part in that, small, but definite, and she’d have to speak to it, acknowledge it, break the frame and step into view, but that was okay.
Mourn, the tired old gunslinger who had, in his realization that it was time to quit, discovered a way to oil his stiffening joints, to gain that edge that had always been just out of his reach . . .
“Freeze image,” she said. She chuckled at herself. Starting to sound like a voice-over, hey, Sola?
But she couldn’t shake the rightness of it. The length was still open for discussion, but the arc was there. Open with Mourn fighting Weems—she had some outstanding imagery there. Getting beat, hurt. Cut to a CGI history of Musashi Miyamoto, real atmospheric, all brown tones, sword fighting as a teener, a montage of his duels. Fade to the present, some of the other fighters, the voice-over telling them about the Flex. Do some interviews with various players, eyewitnesses, cross-cut that with more fights, plenty of action. Back to Mourn, show him all beat up, run some of the early interview material with him.
Too bad she didn’t have that street attack in the can, that would be a nice touch. Well. No point in crying over missed shots.
More fighting, more interviews, more history. Get to Mourn’s moment of realization, have to CGI some of that, but that was okay. His new direction. The fight with Cluster.
She could end it there, make it about renewed hope. It didn’t matter if Mourn ever went any higher, though that wouldn’t hurt, the point was that he had been ready to leave, had realized he was never going to get what he wanted, but then there had been a flash and it had opened up the possibility again . . .
She had it, she had it nailed. She could see it all in her mind, from start to finish. Whether it was two hours or twenty, that didn’t matter, she had plenty of material, she had everything she needed already. A stand-alone or a series, the arc was there, and all she had to do was flesh it out.
She felt a surge of joy well within her. This was how it should be. This was how she’d felt when she’d first started in the biz, full of ideas she couldn’t wait to make manifest. She could show and tell her story, grab watchers and pin them to their seats, make them see what she wanted them to see. Make them laugh or cry or wince in pain, hold them in a place where they didn’t exist separate from her tale, where they were so lost in it they couldn’t get up to go eat or drink or pee . . .
It was a great fantasy. But even as she gloried in it, that little nagging voice in her head was there: So what? Then whaddya do, huh? Build a big place to showcase your awards, run out and spend your money? So fucking what?
“Go away!” she said aloud.
28
Shaw sat in a massage chair in his yacht’s main office and tried to relax as the knobs of the shiatsustyle unit dug into the muscles on both sides of his spine, cycling from his low back to his neck and down again, hard enough to push his entire upper body forward. It was the state-of-the-art system, full of biofeedback sensors and bio-mechanicals that offered therapy as good as most human experts could manage. Not as good as his personal therapist, Liana, of course, but she was at home—he should have brought her—and the chair was available. One made do.
Physically, it was relaxing. Mentally, he was still tied into a Gordian knot. What was he going to do about Azul, his little spy? It would be so easy to shove her out an air lock and watch her pinwheel into the cold vacuum, freezing solid in a cloud of her own fluids, to drift alone and undiscovered forever. Well, maybe that wouldn’t be so easy to watch—up until he had discovered she was not what he thought, he had enjoyed her company more than that of any woman he had ever had. That vexed him. Her facade was a lie, but it was most convincing. And he couldn’t believe that she hadn’t enjoyed rolling around on various beds with him—there had been too much evidence to the contrary. When you brought a woman to an orgasm that caused tears? He didn’t believe she was good enough to fake that. A spy needed only to be fairly good in bed to convince most men she enjoyed it; but Ellis Shaw was not the average man. For sure, he had touched the real woman under the disguise during those sessions, he knew he had. The question was, how much more of her had he reached? What connection had been made when you stripped away the phony artist?
He sighed. Of course, that was the problem, wasn’t it? The real reason she was here. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure she was Randall’s cat’s-paw. The PR wanted Reflex, and there was no limit to what he would do to get it. Bringing in a Confed agent to get next to Shaw? That was nothing. Confederation Representatives wielded great powers—he could summon the best spy with a snap of his fingers.
Randall was going to get the drug anyhow, eventually, but a man like that wouldn’t leave anything to chance on something so important. That was not how you got rich and powerful, leaving anything to chance that you could control.
Shaw could have Cervo sit Azul down in a chair and try to pry information out of her, but that might not work. A field operative so skilled had to be valuable. She might have implanted fail-safes that would blow her head up, or mental blocks that would hold under the most rigorous tortures. You had to assume the Confed wouldn’t want its secrets being extracted easily, and that they would take pains to keep that from happening. Lay a hand on Azul, she might curl up like a plastic flimsy in a hot fire, poof!
On the one hand, she deserved that, for her charade.
On the other hand, he wasn’t ready to see her dead just yet.
She had gotten to him in ways no other woman ever had. He needed to sort some things out before he did anything that couldn’t be undone.
It was a thorny forest, and Shaw wasn’t happy to be standing at the edge, planning to enter it. But that was the situation, and he had to figure out what he was going to do.
“Massage off,” he ordered. This wasn’t helping.
The chair shut down.
Somebody knocked at the door.
“Come in.”
Cervo entered. Shaw raised his eyebrows.
“Good news. There are sixteen Flex players in the Top Hundred on Koji.”
“That many?”
Cervo shrugged. “Guys got philosophical, maybe.”
“Go on.”
“Two are in your immediate upreach, one eight places away, one four. Nine are ranked in the Seventies to the mid-Nineties, but probably won’t get you any real points. Beat the one eight digits lower than you, it puts you in range of two more. Beat them, it puts you in the c
ohort of one more here. Beat him, you can go looking for whoever is ranked Twentieth.”
“My. Four fights on the same world that gets me that far? Amazing.”
“Nobody on-planet in the Twenties . . . yet.”
Shaw caught the hesitation.“‘Yet’?”
Cervo fought to hide a grin. Something was up.
“Yeah, here’s a funny thing: My searchbots and BOTG spies have found seventeen upper-ranked players in transit around the galaxy, and six of them, Twenty-Second, Seventeenth, Ninth, Fifth, and Second—are all on their way here.”
Shaw frowned. That was way past any reach of coincidence. Those players had a reason for coming here. What could it possibly be?
Hold up a second. “You said six were heading here, but you only listed five.”
Cervo couldn’t stop the grin now. “Yes, sir, that’s right. The other one? It’s Weems.”
Shaw let that sink in for a second. Six top players, heading here? Why would—?
Then he understood. “Ah. Primero. And potential challengers have figured out he’s heading this way. They are coming to try him.”
Cervo nodded. “Where the alpha goes, so do those who would eat his dinner.”
Shaw smiled. “Several players who can go against him directly, and some who can get there in two. Makes strategic sense. But I don’t think any of the challengers can defeat Weems. I, on the other hand, can beat them—then him.”
“If you don’t burn out from using the juice too much.”
“Oh, that won’t happen. Eight, nine fights. If I space them out right, I can do it in two weeks or less. Truly this is a holy world, to have such a thing happen. A miracle, dropped right into my lap. There must be a God.” And in that moment, Shaw felt as if this might be close to true. His goal was about to be reached, and it was being delivered to his doorstep! How amazing was that?
“When?”
“Starting tomorrow, over the next week and a half. Primero will be here in ten days, if he comes direct. Others may follow.”
“Perfect.”
Cervo said, “What about Azul?”
Shaw smiled. “What about her? If I can pull this off in a few weeks? I won’t care what happens to the drug then. Let the Confed have it. I might even be feeling so magnanimous I’ll let Randall have it and not kill him.”
And maybe let Azul live, too.
Or not. We’ll just have to see how that feels when I get there.
The Confed mostly left Koji alone. It might not be the smartest beast, but somewhere along the line, the idea of alienating a number of the major religions must have come into its collective thought, and something sparked back what a bad idea that would be. The Confed had the men and guns to win against any world or even a group of worlds, but holy wars were nasty, because some of the more zealous religions were willing to die to the last man, woman, and child, if it came to that. If you pissed off eight or ten of the major religions to the point where they were willing to call jihad? You might win, but the cost would be incredible. Somebody would pay it, and the men or women who were considered most responsible for such a folly would be the first called on to address the debt.
Not a career path a politician wanted to go down.
Accommodations were made. Koji paid its taxes, and influential ministers, priests, monks, brothers, sisters, imams, rabbis, and other spiritual teachers and leaders got and gave favors that kept things quiet and peaceful. Most of them didn’t want a long and debilitating war, either. Bad for harvesting souls when the bodies got all shot up before you could convert them.
Which, as Azul walked along the city streets, smiling back at passersby, didn’t mean that the Confed had no presence on Koji. Just not an obtrusive one. No armed troopers wandering around, no armored vehicles rumbling down the streets, no big imposing embassy sticking out like an eye-sore in the middle of town. Low-key was the ticket. There, but incognito. Anybody paying attention knew they were around, but as long as they didn’t make it too obvious, people shrugged it off. Some religious folks had worldly concerns, but many did not. As long as a problem wasn’t in their path, they could pretend it wasn’t there at all.
She could, Azul knew, stop at a public com and get hold of whoever was running things for the Confed here. Her ID would get her a fast pickup. She could do it now. The bodyguards shadowing her—four new ones who were pretty good, but not great—probably wouldn’t even try to prevent her from doing it. And if she wanted, she could lose them fast enough. She had a military-issue confounder in her jacket pocket that should stop dead any bugs she might have picked up. Trigger that, duck into a shop and out the back, she’d be gone. And if they were good enough to stick, even so? She also had a dart gun in her pocket that she’d assembled from innocuous-looking components—a makeup stick, a light pen, a couple of small jars of vitamins—that would give her five shots. One more than she’d need . . .
But—not yet. She wasn’t sure what Shaw was going to do, but she didn’t think he wanted to take her out, at least not yet. Their lovemaking the day after they’d had gotten here hadn’t seemed any less enthusiastic—he certainly wasn’t faking that. Really hard for a man to fake orgasm. And once she took that first step to run? That would end things. And she wasn’t ready to end things.
She wanted to see him fight again. He’d be doing that soon, and from what he’d said, several more times in the not-too-distant future. She wanted to see how high he would get before the showrunners of the Flex figured out what he was doing and took steps to prohibit it. She guessed that would stop his rise; if he could have gotten as high as he had without the drug, he probably would have done it on his own. He was good, but among this company, good wasn’t anywhere close to enough.
Whatever else it was, it was interesting. And she wasn’t likely to have the Confed stomping in and leaving bodies in any case, which was a pleasant change from a lot of her assignments.
Was there a risk? Sure. But life was about risk. Without that, how boring would it be?
So, she wouldn’t fly. Not just yet.
Mourn was working on the ninety-first step, enjoying the sweat and ache in his muscles from getting something new and different just right when a sudden thought came to him:
Kiley, the old man. He had moved to Koji five or six years ago. Was he still around?
Of a moment, he felt a desire to know. He couldn’t say why, exactly, only that it seemed important.
He went into the cottage. Cayne sat in front of her computer, a one-sixth-scale holoproj lit over the desk. She looked up. She appeared tired to him.
“You okay?” he asked
She rolled her head, stretching her neck. “Too long sitting in one spot. I need a break.”
“Me, too. Is the house com working?”
“Far as I know. Who you gonna call?”
“An old friend, if he’s here.”
Mourn went to the com and lifted it. “Directory,” he said.
“Go ahead,” a pleasant and probably artificial female voice said.
“I need a listing for Akeem Kiley.”
The pause was almost imperceptible. “We have an Akeem Kiley, Bladesmith, listed in Shtotsanto. Would you like me to connect you?”
Mourn grinned. “No, that won’t be necessary. Just an address will do.”
The pleasant voice said, “Forty-four Artesian Row, street-level shop, second-level, personal residence, Hotai District.”
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome, sir.”
Cayne looked at him. “Want to go visit a local store?”
“Something I can use in my project?”
“Oh, yeah. The best knifers in the Flex all own blades made by Akeem Kiley.”
He saw the interest replace the fatigue. “I’ll get my slippers on.”
“I’ll call a hack.”
Sola enjoyed the ride—it really was a pretty town, in a quiet, back-planet kind of way. As many people walking or riding trikes or spinwheels as were in flitters or wheeled ca
rts. Lot of them smiling. Lot of children, too.
Well, when you had a connection to your god, little things didn’t worry you all that much, at least not that you could tell by looking around here. No sign of brewing religious wars evident.
“We have arrived,” the human driver said.
Mourn paid the man with a handful of hardcurry coins, was thanked for the large tip. They got out.
The shop front was small, maybe five meters wide, with a single window to one side and a door to the other. Natural wood, or something that looked just like it, almost blond, with some kind of oil or shellac on it as a protectant.
The upper level looked to be much larger, though it was hard to tell from the front how much of it belonged to which street front.
No sign identified the place, not that she could see.
She mentioned that to Mourn.
“He doesn’t need to advertise. People who know who he is and what he does, they can find him. Anybody else? He doesn’t want their business.”
In the window, on a block covered by what appeared to be black velvet, was a knife. It had a white handle that looked like some kind of ivory, the blade was a striated gray, watery patterns in the steel. The guard was black, a small oval as thick as a ten-stad coin, probably ceramic, maybe denscris or metal. The knife was small, just big enough for a medium-sized hand to grip the handle, and the blade no longer than Sola’s middle finger.
“Nice,” she said. She had seen a few blades since she’d started this project.
“Nice? Seven or eight years ago, it would have cost you maybe two thousand stads. Probably two, three times that now.”
“Five or six thousand standards for a knife?”
He laughed.
“Who has that kind of money to spend?”
“You’d be surprised. But just having the money isn’t enough. Doesn’t matter how rich you are—he won’t make you a knife unless he thinks you deserve it.”
“Deserve a knife? Who the fuck does he think he is?”
