When the title screen came up though, it wasn’t called Prion at all. It looked like a fairly straight arcade game called Gumball Gulch, which is what Allan had called it, Reeve recalled. Which screen was it Allan had said he couldn’t get past? Five? Six?
It took Reeve a while to follow the instructions and get into the game. As far as he could tell, he was a turtle in the Wild West, just made sheriff of the town of Gumball Gulch. In screen one, he rode into town and was voted sheriff after killing the three bad guys who had just shot the sheriff to bust their comrade out of the jail. In screen two, there was a bank robbery to foil. The graphics, so far as Reeve could judge, were pretty good, as were the sound effects, complete with voices.
After maybe half an hour, he was in screen four. In screen three he’d had the option of taking as deputy a one-legged drunk. Reeve had accepted “Stumpy,” who now guarded the villains from the bank robbery.
Suddenly Reeve paused. “What the hell am I doing?” he asked himself. But he kept on going.
Screen four was a difficult one. Reelection time was coming up, and Reeve’s popularity was only 40 percent, two of the bank robbers having escaped, and one innocent bystander having been gunned down during the shoot-out. Reeve granted a new license to the Brawlin‘ Barroom, which pushed his popularity to 50 percent. But then the rowdiness factor increased, and soon the cells were bursting. Reeve opted to take another deputy, a fresh-faced young kid.
“This is Rio Bravo ,” he muttered.
The real trouble started on screen five. There was a mass breakout attempt at the jail. Stumpy had the place locked tight with himself inside. He wasn’t letting anyone in, the sheriff in-cluded, which left Reeve outside with one kid deputy, a restless populace, and a possible lynch mob. In a little while, the escaped bank robbers would be coming into town intent on revenge. Reeve’s guns and ammo, of course, were in the jail.
And Stumpy was asking for the password.
Reeve tried a few obvious things, some only a Rio Bravo buff would know. Then he sat back, arms folded, and did some thinking. Jim had changed the name of the game to Prion. Why? Suddenly it became clear. As Marie Villambard had said, Jim was a journalist from his head to his toes. He would have kept files. He would have kept backups, and kept them well hidden.
Reeve knew now the purpose of the password. He typed in CWC, but it didn’t work. He tried Co-World, then PrP, then Prion-to no avail. He tried Killin and Preece. Nothing.
So then he tried Kosigin.
And suddenly he wasn’t in Gumball Gulch anymore. The bottom of the screen told him he was reading page one of twenty-eight. The print size was small; Jim had crammed a lot in. Single-spaced, too. At the top was a message in bold:
I’ll let you get back to the game soon, Gordon. I’m assuming it’s you reading this, and if you are reading it then I’m most probably dead. If I am dead and if you are reading this, then you’ve probably been sniffing around and I thank you for your concern. The following may be of help. I’d dearly love to get it published. A friend called Marie in France may help; I’ll give you her address at the end. But first, I have a story to tell you…
And what a story. Reeve already knew it, of course, but Jim had more information than anyone had suspected. There was the stuff about Preece’s history, his “revolutionary” shock-sex therapy, and Kosigin’s hiring of Alliance Investigative to dig up the details. Kosigin’s blackmail of Preece had been implicit, but Jim’s report made it explicit by actually interviewing two ex-investigators at Alliance who had worked on the job, as well as members of the original research team headed by Preece.
Including a Dr. Erik Korngold.
Jim had had two very cordial meetings with Korngold. It was Korngold who had admitted the blackmail. Preece had spoken to him about it at the time. But then Dr. Korngold had turned up dead, leaving Jim pretty well stuck unless he could get corrobo-ration. The only other scientist he knew of from the original research team was Dr. Killin. So he’d started pestering Killin, and Killin had gone to Kosigin.
And Kosigin had decided the reporter had to be taken out of the game.
Jim’s research was impressive-and scary. He detailed countries around the world where neurological diseases were on the increase, and showed how these increases correlated to the introduction of CWC herbicides and pesticides onto those countries’ farms. There were snippets of interviews with farmers and doctors, agrichemical experts and environmentalists. Farmers everywhere were getting more and more ill. Stress, the skeptics had said. But Jim had found out different. And when the police did start to get curious about pesticide side effects, CWC simply shifted spheres, concentrating on third world countries.
Jim found a correlation with tobacco companies who, as western markets contracted after health scares, merely opened up new unsuspecting markets-Africa, Asia… CWC was doing the same thing with chemicals. What was more, Jim had been getting, at the time of writing, inklings of crooked deals to introduce pesticides into third world countries. Deals were done with governments, regimes, and dictators, money slipped into secret bank accounts, and import barriers suddenly disappeared. Jim hinted at links between CWC and the CIA, since the CIA wanted a presence in countries that CWC was opening up. It was a global conspiracy, encompassing governments, the scientific community, and everyone who had to eat.
Jim had worked hard and fast building up his case. He did so for a simple reason, one he stated towards the end of the file: “I think some people would kill to keep this secret, because while bits and pieces are well-enough known, certainly among the environmental pressure groups, no one has really been able to link it globally. They say you are what you eat. In that case, we’re poison.”
At the end, Jim gave Marie Villambard’s address, and beneath that were some instructions. They told Reeve where he would find the “hard evidence.” Jim had hidden all the documents-transcripts, notes, archive material, and tapes of interviews. They were in a box at Jilly Palmer’s farm outside Tisbury. Jilly Palmer: Reeve remembered her long braid of chestnut hair, her rosy-red cheeks. Jim had been introduced to her by Josh Vincent, and had trusted her from the off. He’d asked her to store a large box for him, and to say nothing to anyone about it unless they told her they’d read about it on the disk.
“I’m keeping copies of some of the stuff with me,” Jim concluded, “so that if any burglaries suddenly and mysteriously occur, they’ll think they got what they came for.”
Then a final message: “To access the next game level, press Ctrl+N. To quit, press Esc.”
Reeve hit the Escape button and shut down the computer. The story had been here all the time, here under his own roof. His legs weren’t the steadiest as he got to his feet. He couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate on anything but his brother. He got down to the kitchen somehow and made himself a hot drink, then sat at the table sipping it, staring at nothing.
The mug was one-third empty when he started to cry.
He planned to call Jay’s hotel that evening, which gave him a full day to prepare. High on his list was sleep, but first he had to re-turn to the boat.
The early-morning waters were calmer, and the dawn made navigation easier. He made good time back to Mallaig. He could tell Creech had been sleeping, but he was awake now, looking miserable. Even so, he studied the boat carefully as Reeve brought her home.
“Not a scratch on her,” Reeve said, clambering out with his stuff. He checked Creech’s wrists. They were red-ringed, the skin broken at a couple of points. “Trying to escape, eh?”