The California Voodoo Game

39

Friday, July 22, 2059 10:00 P.M.

Griffin reached Gaming Central in time to see the Game Masters packing and preparing to leave. "I heard," he said softly to Richard Lopez, "that this was your final Game."

"It is what the doctors tell me." The dark rings beneath his eyes lightened, as if his reply pleased him.

"He's cheated them before." Mitsuko held his arm tightly. In affection? Or to help him remain erect? Alex wasn't sure. All he could be sure of was that they wanted no pity. They were the best. They had presented their masterpiece to the world. If it was their final work, there were worse exit lines.

He squeezed Richard's hand warmly, and they left.

El and Doris had already dismissed most of their mimes and were busily gathering their props and character sheets.

Then Alex was alone with Vail, Thaddeus Harmony, Millicent Summers, and a handful of noisy workmen dismantling the Virtual theater platform.

Alex took a tiny metal collar out of a foil wrapper, gazed at it, and held it up to the light. "McWhirter found this?"

"Affirmative," Millicent said.

"Wish I could claim prescience, say I wanted to get him out of the control room and into the field, but the truth is that I'm so tired I can hardly think. I just blew my top. "

She nodded without speaking.

On a viewscreen between them was a shot of a celebration party whipped up for the Gamers in one of MIMIC's apartment suites. All the Gamers were there, and only two or three seemed aware that they were detained against will. Security had politely informed them that transportation would take a couple of hours. and requested the honor of their company at a special party.

You're not leaving MIMIC yet.

A little grumbling, a couple of protests. Al Nakagawa called his wife; Clavell and Poule had to alert their superiors and subordinates.

Then the party began.

Alex had yet to change out of his grubby costume as he scanned the information before him. Vail, quiet for once, watched him with professional curiosity. Millicent and Harmony, still in partial makeup, sat in uneasy silence. Millicent spoke first.

"What are we going to do, chief?"

"Use the hours that party buys us," he said. "Time to think."

"He was trying to force a win," Harmony said. "Or cheat."

Alex finished scanning Vail's report.

Harmony leaned forward. "Whatever it was, we stopped him. And ScanNet stopped him."

Griffin sat back in his chair.

ScanNet may have stopped him. He hadn't acted like it! But Bishop was all poker face and if Dream Park didn't know he'd been stopped, they'd have to act as if he'd won.

He might have been after some piece of the Barsoom Project, hired by an Ecuador concern to get it. He might have a map of MIMIC's defences. He'd tapped the security cameras. There was little in MIMIC for him to steal. ScanNet was only forty percent operable, but even so, it had probably stopped him.

Unless…

Alex Griffin's eyes flew wide open.

"Griff?" Harmony asked, alarmed. "What is it?"

A light dew of perspiration had appeared on his brow. "Oh my God. Wheelbarrows. It's been under our noses the entire time."

"Wheelbarrows?" Vail asked, genuinely confused. "What are you talking about?"

Alex stood up, shaking. "Get Tony McWhirter in here. He's earned it." His voice cracked, and he smashed his fist down on the control panel. The picture of the partying Gamers fizzled out. "Can't you see it? Bishop is stealing goddamned wheelbarrows!"

Mitch Hasegawa was very polite to the Gamers as he conveyed the news of another unfortunate delay.

"It's going to take a little more time. There are some things to work out."

Tammi and Twan. huddled by the artificial fireplace with Mouser, grinned up at him. "Just keep the champagne flowing, bud," Tammi said. "We can party all night!"

Twan corrected her: "And grape juice for the Sprout." Mouser glared.

All thirty Gamers were mingling with the NPCs from the previous day and a half.

Thaddeus Harmony kept popping in and out. He cheerfully admitted that they were being held at his orders; but somehow it wasn't easy to whine complaints at Thaddeus Dark.

Mary-em, Top Nun, and SJ sat together in a triangle, scarfing down canapes. "So…" SJ said, a huge grin splitting his freckled features. "How does it feel to be a permanent mommy?"

She patted her tummy. "M'power just went through the roof, sonnyboy. As far as I'm concerned, I won this Game. Know what this means? I've got more than enough points to go for Loremaster now! Got my eye on the Terminator Game coming up next year. Heh heh. Me and Junior are gonna kick robot butt! "

She was glowing. Texas Instruments-Mitsubishi had come in first, due to a last-minute maneuver by Al the Barbarian. The only Loremaster to emerge with a surviving team member-Mary-em-he had simultaneously saved the day and destroyed two opposing Loremasters. Mary-em's perpetual divine pregnancy hadn't hurt things at all.

In second place had been the Troglodykes. Then Acacia's UC team, then Army, and last, Bishop's General Dynamics team.

Who weren't talking to Nigel Bishop.

Bishop himself stood next to a video window currently displaying an alpine scene. He seemed lost in thought, for once without an epigram or a joke on his lips.

Occasionally someone would approach him and offer condolences. He accepted smoothly and made it clear, with subtle tones of reply and closed body language, that he wished to be left alone.

And so he was. He stood staring, as if trying to imagine himself flying down the slopes. From time to time he would check his watch, or take a sip of champagne.

The flow pattern was a curdle around Corrinda. She'd found a chair and she stayed in it. Friends brought her drinks and rice crackers. Her left leg was stiff and straight, swollen at the knee.

Acacia Garcia floated through the room like a wraith. When she smiled, the mirth went no further than her lips. Tammi watched for a while, and then rolled out from under the blanket and went to her.

"Listen, Acacia, sorry about Panthesilea," she said. "It'll take you a while to work back up to Loremaster again, but I wanted you to know you're welcome on my team anytime."

Acacia tried to respond, but couldn't seem to get her face to cooperate. When she replied, it sounded as if she had a sore throat. "Maybe it was time she died," Acacia said. "She was starting to think she was immortal. Like she could get away with anything." The left corner of her mouth flickered up. "Guess she learned, huh?" There were tears very close to the surface now. Suddenly she surrendered to the grief, letting Tammi hug her hard.

"Dammit," Acacia said, fighting for control. "I hate that bitch, and I'm going to miss her so damned much. I'm just going to…" She couldn't speak any more, and just held on, and let the tears come.

Griffin met Tony McWhirter at the door and held out his hand. "I made a mistake," he said. "I've made a lot of them, lately. I hope to God I can correct them."

Tony shook the hand and took a seat, without saying a word.

Harmony seemed to stop breathing. "Now. He's here. Will you finally tell us what you meant about wheelbarrows?"

"It's an old story," Griffin said. "There was a man suspected of being a smuggler. The chief of police had his men watching at the borders for him.

"Well, the first day the man came by, pushing a wheelbarrow full of straw. And they said, 'Wait! Let's take a look.' And they looked through the straw, but it was just straw, so they had to let him go. And the next day he came with a wheelbarrow full of straw, and they searched it. And the day after that, and the day after that. Every day it was straw, and just straw.

''Years later, the police chief ran into the thief in another city. He said, 'Listen. we know that you were stealing something, but we can't figure out what it was, or where you were hiding it. You're safe now, come on. What was it? Gold, gems?'

"And the thief laughed, and said, 'Wheelbarrows.' "

There was a moment of silence, finally broken by Millicent's small voice. "I don't want to sound stupid, but I still don't get it."

"Not yet? We thought Bishop was trying to beat ScanNet. Later he can get at whatever we use ScanNet to protect, right? The answer is yes and no. He's stealing ScanNet!"

Tony's eyes were still cautious. Griff must be running on fatigue poisons. "Why? How?"

"Let's call them Ecuador. Whoever's behind this. Ecuador, maybe, or some industrial forces within Ecuador. They want proprietary technology, which will be coming in when the Barsoom Project starts in two months. To do that they have to beat ScanNet. Once the system is in place, they can't beat it, but maybe they can get someone into MIMIC before the system is entirely operational. That someone is Nigel Bishop."

"Shit." Tony slapped his palm against his forehead. "Of course. I've got it. I've got it. Here's what Bishop wants-he wants to measure the output from the ScanNet sensors and compare them with the input, what they're seeing. That's the standard Game tapes. That will tell him how ScanNet selects its data, what it sends on to the next substation."

"How does that help him?" Vail, for once, seemed baffled.

"The p-" Griffin began.

"If h-" Tony bit it back.

Griffin said, "The problem with an automated security system is teaching it what information is irrelevant. No processor could handle the insane amount of raw data that ScanNet can pick up. So every sensor is intelligent. It decides what to send on to the next station and what to ignore. And each successive station handles input from, say, a dozen sensors, and it sorts through that and sends on what it thinks is important. And so on through maybe a dozen generations of substations, until you get to the main processing unit. Development of the sensors was easy. Developing the intelligent software was a miracle."

"It took seven years," McWhirter said. "Over a million manhours. If you can tap the sensors and run some stimulus in front of them-"

"Say a special-effects extravaganza?"

"Perfect. Sound, visual, warm human bodies doing all manner of strange things. Sort through all of that. Find out what's being kept, what's being thrown away. What does the system pay attention to? What has it been told to ignore? You can reverse-engineer the software, find the conceptual holes in ScanNet, and beat the system."

There was silence around the table.

"Did he get it?" Harmony asked.

"This is where the real dilemma begins,'' Alex said. "Don't you see? We can't afford to assume that he didn't get it. But if he smuggles it out to his employers, we have to rewrite the entire software scheme and we don't have time to do that. Or we could implement another, inferior system."

"Could he have already smuggled it out?"

Tony shook his head slowly. "Bishop has a reputation for being a loner. Trusting no one. He let Acacia into part of his plan, because he needed a spy, a distraction. I think I think it's safe to assume she was his only confederate. If that's true, then I'd guess it went like this:

"First night, Bishop slips out and plants his taps. The next day his team, or someone else's team, fights monsters in front of ScanNet, and his taps pick up their information. Record it on any kind of storage medium."

"Could he broadcast it out of the building?" Millicent asked.

"MIMIC is shielded. If he was near an external window he might use a line-of-sight laser transmission or something, but he was never near one once the Game began the second day, and he didn't get back to the roof."

"You'd know, I guess. Tony, couldn't he have gone down the modular wall with Army and Tex-Mits?"

Tony barked laughter. "Al the Barb would have cut his line!"

"Oh. Right. Then… his recordings must still be somewhere in MIMIC. On him, or one of the other Gamers, or one of the extras-"

"NPCs."

"Or hidden in a tool, or a wad of chewing gum stuck to a wall… or spilled out with the water when Mgui-Smythe blew the tenth level."

Tony said, "Millie-"

"We'll check it, Alex."

"Jesus. Or all of the above! Why not make a zillion copies and hide them everywhere?" Alex lowered his head into his hands. "There's no way in hell we can scan this whole building for something that might be the size of a thumbnail.

We're screwed."

Vail drummed his fingers. "Tony could we conduct some kind of massive magnetic pulse through the entire building, wipe out every piece of storage in the whole thing? We don't have anything irreplaceable…"

Tony wagged his head. "We don't know he's using magnetic storage. Why would he? More than likely some kind of laser holographic storage system. EMP won't touch that."

"Shit."

Griffin was staring at the metal collar and finally said softly, "Damn, he's a tricky bastard. But there's a hole. There's something we're not considering."

"What's that?" Millicent asked.

"If we can't afford to have our system stolen, Bishop can't afford to fail. At least six hundred thousand dollars has been invested and that was just the bait to bring in Acacia and cloud the issue. How much more to get the information for Sharon? And his equipment? Call it at least a million dollars. Remember as far as Bishop's primaries are concerned, his mission fails if we even discover the information is stolen. If we can change the system, or switch the system, or prevent any highsecurity data from being stored at MIMIC, Ecuador's stolen goods become worthless. There has to be enormous pressure on him-he was willing…"

Griffin faltered for the first time, and he lowered his voice. "He might have killed Sharon to protect the secret. If he doesn't deliver the goods within a reasonable time, it could cost him his life."

For the first time, some of the tension left Harmony's face. "Bishop's as nervous as we are? Poor bastard."

"He's got to have a backup plan. More than one way to get the information out of the building." Alex called up the rotating model of MIMIC. "Picture information recorded on a disk as big as a quarter but thin as plastic wrap. Push it on a flat surface with your thumb, it sticks. Now picture a handful of quarters-"

Tony said, "Why not a hundred?"

"No. If we found one, we'd search. Find two, we might bite the bullet and change the whole system. He can't afford that. He wouldn't hide more than a dozen, maybe, and he's been careful where he put them."

"Well, that's not so bloody bad. What we need to do is eliminate most of his choices, then lead him to the one we want."

"Tony, we don't have one."

"I know, I know. Jesus, I'm tired. Well, we'll search. Meanwhile, try this…"

Smiling security personnel met the Gamers as they left MIMIC. El and Doris Whitman met them, congratulating each Gamer in turn.

"Your attention, please," El said.

They were half-looped from the free-flowing champagne, but ready to get back to the hotels, to husbands and wives and lovers and friends, to hot baths and real beds.

"You probably noticed that we were using some new technology during California Voodoo." Doris waited for the inevitable nods and murmurs of appreciation. "We were lucky enough to get permission from Cowles to use some of these techniques, on the condition that no raw recordings be made. Some of the illusion technology hasn't been patented yet. So as per section six subparagraph twelve of your contracts, we're exercising our options to confiscate all recording apparatus. They will be erased and returned to you."

"Sorry about this," El said, "but it's the only way we can protect ourselves. You will all receive free recordings of any Game perspective you choose, of course."

There were a few grumbles, and then Bishop shrugged. "What the hell," he said. "Only a Game, right?"

Everybody laughed. "Tell that to my hamstrings," Tammi said.

And some made speeches or threw tantrums, but every Gamer did hand over his equipment, and then passed through a doorway lined with scanning apparatus.

All weapons, costumes, and Gaming computers were thoroughly scanned. Nobody and nothing left MIMIC without going through the procedure.

The entire process took over an hour for the Gamers. In the black wee hours they boarded a ground shuttle and returned to their Dream Park hotels via the same track that had fired them into a talus slope a little more than forty hours earlier.

Alex caught six good hours of sleep in his own bed. It wasn't nearly enough… but he was almost smiling as he answered the doorbell.

Tony looked grouchy but clear-headed. "Come on in," Alex said.

Dawn light glared through the bay-window wall. Tony stood closer than Alex would have, looking down, sipping coffee.

"Tony, don't you have an acrophobia?"

"Not when I'm inside. I'm just picturing it the way it must have looked to Clavell when his rope broke." He turned back. "So we've locked Bishop out. Right?"

"He didn't leave MIMIC with anything," Alex said. "If he planted something on another Gamer, it didn't leave either. We can't seal MIMIC off forever, but a month will screw him just fine. What's next?"

"Acacia?"

"She should have let Bishop cut her in half. Panthesilea would have been killed out, not dead-dead!"

"She must have thought Bishop wanted to kill her." Tony rubbed his jaw. "How's she taking it?"

"Like a death in the family. Tony, I'm not going to hold her hand. Sharon-"

"She didn't know, Griff." Tony sat. He gulped coffee. "Where were we?"

"Say a dozen disks. Say we've blocked him from eleven. Where's the other? Why does he think he can get it?"

Tony nodded. "Play a game with me. What's outside of MIMIC that we think is inside?"

"We should be asking Captain Cipher!"

"Can't. Sewer system?"

"Ask Mgui-Smythe. It probably recycles."

"The water from the flooded levels "

"That was a good thought," Griffin said. "He only had to drop one of the disks. How would he find it, though?"

"Chango only knows. We're guarding that patch of desert. Griff, he didn't go back to the roof, and he could have. There were talismans, one in the pool and one in the cornfields. It would have been legit."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Maybe he never had a transmitter at all. Just the bug and a dozen record disks, of which I would dearly love to find at least one as a sanity check."

"We'll search. We'll keep him out of MIMIC. I don't know what else to do except go toddling back to Dream Park like some cyborg turtle."

The coffee must be helping. Somewhere in Tony's muddled mind, two things connected. "Griff? There's something more we might try…"