“No. Thirty years, right? Sixteen asteroids, and three more on their way with Falling Angel crews? That’s not many. One asteroid strike can ruin your whole day.”
“Brrr. You’re rather grim tonight, aren’t you?”
Definitely the wrong mood. He reached across the table to squeeze her wrist; which took some care, because she was holding a forkful of scalloped potatoes. “Sorry. All work and no play makes Jack et cetera.”
Millicent smiled. “No play at all? That’s my Alex.”
“If I don’t invite the occasional young, beautiful account executive to my humble abode, I’d never find surcease of sorrow.” He put on his sincerest expression. “One of the burdens of power is that Communications can beep me twenty-five hours a day. One of the advantages of a loyal staff is that they’ve promised me the night off, if it’s humanly possible.”
She sipped at her wine, peering at him over the edge of the glass. Her eyes were alight with mischief. “We can hope, can’t we?”
Does that mean yes? He interpreted it as a good strong “maybe” and decided to back off, soft-pedal, and make another approach in a minute or two.
Millicent sensed the mood change, flowed with it. She cracked open a lobster claw with sudden force. “How’s Marty doing?”
“He’s keeping up. He looks like the point man in a Zimbabwe expedition. They’ve got him carrying a flintlock, for Christ’s sake.”
“Oh, Alex… sometimes it’s so easy for me to get lost in the accounts and the computers that… I guess I just miss Security. A lot more craziness.”
“Yeah… but you have a lot more talent than we could hold back. I’m glad you made it out.”
She sighed. “And Marty’s still playing games.”
“That’s Marty.”
“Well. I’m glad you recommended me.”
“It would have been criminal not to.” He found himself feeling slightly warmish. She lowered her eyes, and began pushing potatoes around the plate, doodling her fork with great intensity. Which smile was that blossoming…?
“Ah, Alex..
BRRRRRNG!
“I’d hoped,” he said, “they’d keep that thing off until eight tomorrow.”
Millicent’s smile broadened. “No rest for the wicked.”
“I’ve been on duty for twenty hours straight. Millicent, I’m plagued with these things called ‘griffins,’ nasty little nocturnal animals that only come out at night. They usually”- BRRRNNGG! — ”manage to wake up just about the time that my mating cycle is running riot. I remember sex. Why, back in naught-six-” BRRRRNG!
“Alex, the beeper.”
“Aye aye. Griffin. Telephone.” The comets vanished, replaced by the smooth round face of Dwight Welles. Twenty-four-year-old Dwight Welles was senior computer tech for all of Dream Park, a man whose four-poster at Cowles Modular saw him far less than his cot at Research and Development.
“What’s up, Dwight?”
“Griff, we got a problem here.”
More Arab madness? “Tell me.”
“Alex, somebody’s messed with my program for the Fimbulwinter Game. I know I got all of the bugs out of it-”
“Hold it hold it hold it. Tell me what happened first.”
“Somebody got killed out of the Game.”
Drown me! “What? How-” Suddenly he felt very foolish. “Sorry. Killed out. Right. My heart will return to normal presently.” He thought for a minute. “I thought none of the Gamers got killed out of Fat Rippers.”
“Not for the first two days. Definite glitch.”
“A glitch. Hmmm. It wasn’t Charlene Dula, was it? Or Marty?”
Then it wasn’t really a Security matter. “So? Don’t you leave room for random-”
“Random events? Sure we leave room for random events, but you don’t understand. It wasn’t ‘one of those freak things.’ It wasn’t an accident. A monster came up out of sequence. We call it a ‘burrowing mammoth.’ According to legend, they die on contact with air. This one lived long enough to target and kill a Gamer. It shouldn’t have been possible. The thing hunted her. I want to know who’s been tampering with my friggin’ program.”
The other line was beeping now, and Millicent was suddenly all business. “Alex, should I…?”
“No, no, wait…” Dwight Welles’s voice muted as the second line flashed to life. The screen divided into two, and on the other side was Dr. Vail. He seemed tight, tired, agitated.
“Mr. Griffin, something unusual has happened here.”
“I’m on it. Somebody has gotten killed out of the Game.”
“Hah! If that was all. The problem is that the Gamer who was killed out is coming apart!”
“I’d be a little pissed myself.”
Vail shook his head. “Watch.”
The screen split again. The new entry was a chunky redheaded woman. Her gaze was all daggers as she studied first Vail, and then a slender Japanese nurse. “I don’t know why or how you did this, but I know this is a trick,” she said. Griffin recoiled from the raw hatred in her voice. “Tell Ahk-lut he’ll get nothing from me, do you understand? Nothing! You have warmth here, and food. People are starving by the millions, and it’s your doing.”
Ahk-lut?
“Miss Rivers.” Vail’s recorded tones were carefully soothing. “The Fimbulwinter Game is just that, a Game. There was an accident, and you were killed out. Now, we are prepared to refund-”
Her face twisted with anger, and for a moment, Griffin heard martial music in the air. He looked for insanity, but saw only righteous wrath. In that moment she was beautiful, a Valkyrie, a leopard protecting her young. “You call the death of civilization a ‘Game’? You call the slaughter of millions an ‘accident’? You wait. My people will come for me. They’ll come!” She paused, and her next words were delivered with lethal calm. “Unless I get you first.”
The recorded image froze, and then the real-time Vail returned.
Alex was on his feet. “I’ll be right down there.” He clicked that part of the screen off. “Dwight. Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m coming right in. No, wait. First, pipe the records in on the office com line. I want to see what happened to this Rivers. Then I’ll come.”
He looked at Millicent. “Damn, I’m so sorry about dinner-”
“I’ve eaten it, Gruff.”
“Oh. Yeah. You want to go home, or come with?”
“Can I come with? Sounds like old times.”
“Glad to have you. Got a bad feeling about this.”
He beeped for a shuttle, and one was waiting at the rail by the time his side door hissed shut. The hatch lifted, and he and Millicent scooted in. The pressure of her thigh against his was more comforting than stimulating. His mind was already on the job ahead.
Cowles Modular Community, dwindling behind the shuttle, looked to Alex like a spreading clump of young mushrooms. Irregular, eccentric, but very organic. The people who worked for Dream Park had a lot of respect for the environment, for the way things fit together, for elegance. Something about this action, the way Michelle Rivers had been yanked unceremoniously from the Game, was jarringly inelegant.
By the time that the Modular Community had faded into the distance, Millicent had collected her thoughts.
“Ah… if it’s not a glitch, and Welles seems certain that it’s not a glitch, then… what is it?”
“A glitch. People who say that they have all the bugs usually haven’t turned over enough rocks. What do you think?”
“I think you sound like a man trying to convince himself.”
The shuttle sank into the labyrinth beneath the largest entertainment complex in the world. And kept sinking, three stories deep. There, hidden beneath the surface, were the concrete, steel, and plastic guts of the Park. No one mind knew all of the thousands of turnings, the hundreds of miles of tunnels. Here were the transportation systems, sewage systems, food networks, walkways, slideways; the routes for cars, trucks, transports, the monorails; the conduits that kept the water and electricity flowing, the people moving. Here were millions of feet of superconducting wire, steel pipe, PVC tubing, and fiber optic cable. As they slid along in the shuttle, passing through the center of the labyrinth, endless connecting corridors stretching off in all directions like Krell tunnels, Dream Park felt more myth than reality. Who was to say that there weren’t trolls in those tunnels, demons in those depths? Perhaps the real illusion of Dream Park was the pretense of technology.