NETFEED/NEWS: UN Fears New Bukavu Strain

(visual: Ghanaian Bukavu victims stacked outside Accra hospital)

VO: UNMed field workers are reporting a possible new variant of the Bukavu virus. The new strain, already unofficially called "Bukavu 5," has a longer dormancy period, which enables carriers to spread the disease more widely than those infected with Bukavu 4, which kills in two to three days. . . .

(visual: UNMed Chief officer Injinye at news conference)

INJINYE: "These viruses are mutating very swiftly. We are fighting a series of epidemiological brushfires across Africa and the Indian subcontinent. So far, we have managed to keep these conflagrations under control, but without better resources, a larger breakout seems inevitable."

 

A man was being buried alive out in the courtyard, thumping frantically on the inside of his casket as dirt rained down on the lid. In the upper reaches of the vaulted ceiling a huge, shaggy, spiderlike creature was wrapping another customer in webbing that, judging by the shrieks of the victim, burned like acid. It was all very, very boring. Orlando thought even the house skeletons looked a little slow and tired. As he watched, the small squadron performing maneuvers on his tabletop failed in their attempt to shift the virtual sugar-bowl. It rolled over, crushing a dozen of then; into tiny, simulated bone fragments. Orlando didn't even smile.

Fredericks wasn't here. None of the other Last Chance Saloon regulars could remember seeing him since the last time the two of them had been in together.

Orlando moved on.

His friend wasn't in any of the other Terminal Row establishments either, although someone in The Living End said she thought she'd seen him recently, but since this particular witness was nicknamed Vaporhead, Orlando didn't put much store in the sighting. He was more than a little worried. He had left several messages over the last week, directly to Fredericks' account and with mutual friends, but Fredericks hadn't responded to any of them, or even picked any of them up. Orlando had assumed that Fredericks, like himself, had been tumbled out of TreeHouse at the end of their sojourn there and back into his normal life, that his friend was just being quiet because he was mad at Orlando for dragging him into this latest obsession. Now he was beginning to wonder if something more serious might be going on.

Orlando shifted again, this time to the Middle Country, but instead of The Garrote and Dirk in ancient Madrikhor's Thieves' Quarter, his usual entry point for new adventures, he found himself on a vast stone staircase facing a massive pair of wooden doors decorated with a pair of titan scales.

Temple of the Table of Judgment, he thought. Wow. That was a quick deliberation.

The doors opened and the torch-flames leaped in the wall sconces. Orlando, now wearing his familiar Thargor sim, walked forward. Despite his current disaffection, it was hard not to respond to the gravity of the occasion. The high-ceilinged room was all in shadow but for a single column of light that angled down from the stained glass window. The window was also decorated with the Table of Judgment crest, and the light spilling through it perfectly illuminated the masked and robed figures sitting in a circle below. Even the stone walls looked convincingly old and impressive, smoothed by the passage of centuries. Despite having seen it all before, Orlando found himself admiring all the work that had gone into it. That was the reason he had always played the Middle Country exclusively: the people who built and owned it were gamers and artists, not slave-labor hired by a corporation. They wanted it right because they wanted to hang out in it themselves.

One of the figures rose and spoke in a firm, clear voice. "Thargor, your appeal has been considered. We are all aware of your history, and have admired your feats of daring. We also know you to be a competitor who does not lightly ask for the Table's intervention." There was a pause; all of the faces were turned toward him, unreadable beneath the cloth masks. "However, we cannot find merit in your appeal. Thargor, your death is ruled lawful."

"Can I get access to the records you used in your deliberation?" Orlando asked, but the masked figure did not even pause. After a moment, Orlando realized that the entire judgment was recorded.

". . . We are sure that with your skills, you will return to the Middle Country in another guise, and make a new name famous throughout the land. But those who revere the history of the Middle Country will never forget Thargor. Good luck.

"You have heard the decision of the Table of Judgment."

The Temple vanished before Orlando could say anything; an instant later he was in the Fitting Room, the place where new characters purchased attributes and, literally, built themselves before entering the Middle Country. He stood, staring around him, but not really seeing. He felt some pain, but surprisingly little. Thargor was definitely dead. After all the time he had spent being Thargor, it should have meant more than it did.

"Oh, it's you, Gardiner," said the attendant priest. "Heard about Thargor getting toasted. Really sorry, but we all gotta go sometime, I guess. What are you going to do now, another warrior-type or maybe something different? A wizard?"

Orlando snorted in disgust."Listen, can you find out if Pithlit the thief has been in lately?"

The priest shook his head."I'm not allowed to do that. Can't you leave him a message?"

"I've tried." Orlando sighed, "Doesn't matter. See you around."

"Huh? Aren't you going to refit yourself? Man, people are out there jockeying for your spot at the top, Gardiner. Dieter Cabo's already put out an open challenge to all comers. He just needs a few points to jump into your old place."

With only the smallest twinge of remorse, Orlando left the Middle Country.

 

He looked around his 'cot with disaffection. It was fine in its way, but it was so . . . young. The trophies in particular, which had meant so much when he acquired them, now seemed faintly embarrassing. And a simworld-window full of dinosaurs—dinosaurs! They were such a kid thing. Even the MBC window now seemed pathetic, souvenir of an obsession with an idea that only nostalgics and a few wareheads even cared about any more. Human beings weren't ever going out into space—it was too expensive and too complicated. Taxpayers in a country that had to turn its sports coliseums into tent cities and house its excess prison population on barges weren't going to pay billions of dollars to send a few people to another star system, and the idea of making a nearer planet like Mars habitable was already beginning to fade. And even if everything changed, and humans suddenly decided once more that space was the place, Orlando Gardiner would certainly never get there.

"Beezle," he said. "Come here."

His agent squeezed through a crack in the wall, legs flailing, and skittered toward him. "I'm all ears, boss."

"Anything on Fredericks?"

"Not a whisper. I'm monitoring, but there hasn't been any sign of activity."

Orlando stared at the pyramid of trophy cases and wondered what it would feel like simply to throw them away—to have them cleared right out of his system memory. Experimentally, he hid them. The corner of the virtual room suddenly looked naked.

"Find me his parents' home number. Fredericks, in West Virginia. Somewhere in the hills."

Beezle beetled a wobbly single eyebrow. "Ya can't narrow it down any? Preliminary says there's more than two hundred listings under the name Fredericks in West Virginia."

Orlando sighed. "I don't know. We never talk about stuff like that. I don't think he has any brothers or sisters. Parents work for the government. I think they have a dog." He thought hard. "He must have registered some of this information in the Middle Country when he first signed up."

"Doesn't mean it's available to the public," said Beezle darkly. "I'll see what I can find." He disappeared through a hole in the floor.

"Hey, Beezle!" Orlando shouted. "Bug! Come back!"

The agent crawled out from beneath the virtual couch, dragging his legs in a self-pitying way. "Yes, boss. I live to serve you, boss. What is it now, boss?"

"Do you think this room is stupid?"

Beezle sat motionless, looking for all the world like the discarded head of a mop. For a moment Orlando thought he had gone past the bounds of the agent's gear. "Do you think it's stupid?" Beezle asked at last.

"Don't mirror back what I say." Orlando was exasperated. That was the cheapest kind of artificial-life programming trick—when in doubt, answer a question with the same question. "Just tell me—in your opinion, is it stupid or not?"

Beezle froze again. Orlando had a sudden pang of worry. What if he had pushed it too hard? It was only software, after all. And why was he asking a piece of gear something like this, anyway? If Fredericks were around he would be telling Orlando just how utterly he scanned.

"I don't know what 'stupid' means in this context, boss," said Beezle finally.

Orlando was embarrassed. It was like forcing someone to admit in public that they were illiterate. "Yeah, you're right. Go see if you can find that phone number."

Beezle obligingly dropped out of sight once more.

Orlando settled back to think of something to do to occupy the time while Beezle did his work. It was about four in the afternoon, which meant he only had a little while until Vivien and Conrad came home and he had to surface, so he couldn't afford to get into anything too complicated, like gaming. Not that he had any particular urge to get involved in any games at present. The golden city, and the several layers of mystery that surrounded it, had made chasing monsters in the Middle Country seem a bit of a waste of time.

He created a screen in the middle of his room and began flicking through net nodes. He browsed for a while in Lambda Mall, but the idea of actually buying anything made him feel depressed, and nothing looked very interesting anyway. He jumped through the entertainment channels, watching a few minutes here and there of various shows and flicks and straight commercial presentations, letting the noises and effects wash over him like water. He scanned some news headlines, but nothing sounded worth watching. At last he vanished the elcot, went full surround, and wandered into the interactive sections. After specifying view-only, he watched almost half-an-hour's worth of a program on living at the bottom of the sea until he got bored with floating around like a fish while people demonstrated underwater farming, then began to flick through some of the specialized children's entertainment.

As the nodes flipped by, a familiar, exaggerated smile caught his attention.

"I don't know why they stole my handkerchief," said Uncle Jingle. "All I know is . . . snot fair!"

All the children on the show—the Jingle Jungle laughed and clapped their hands.

Uncle Jingle! Orlando, just about to shift again, paused, dismissed the Who Are You? query that popped up at the ten second mark—he was way too old to sign on, and anyway, I didn't particularly want any attention at the present. Still, Orlando continued to watch, fascinated. He hadn't seen Uncle Jingle for years.

"Snot fair"—man, the scanny things you watch when you're a little kid.

"Well," continued Uncle, bobbing his tiny head, "whatever the reason, I'm going to track that handkerchief down, and when I find it, I think I'm going to teach Pantalona and old Mister Daddywhiner a lesson. Who wants to help me?" Several of the participating kids, promoted out of the daily audience of millions by some arcane selection process, jumped up and down and shouted.

Orlando stared, fascinated. He had forgotten how weird Uncle Jingle was, with his huge toothy smile and tiny black button eyes. He looked like a two-legged shark or something.

"Let's sing a song, okay?" said the host "That'll make the trip go faster. If you don't know the words, touch my hand!"

Orlando did not touch Uncle's hand, and was thus spared the additional indignity of local-language subtitles, but was still forced to listen to dozens of happy childish voices singing about the sins of Jingle's arch-nemesis, Pantalona.

". . . She simply loves to be unfair

That vixen with the corkscrew hair,

She doesn't wash her underwear!

Pantalona Peachpit,

"She tosses stones at little birds

She loves to shout out naughty words

She even eats the doggy's . . . food

Pantalona Peachpit. . . !"

Orlando grimaced. He decided that, after a childhood spent in the opposite camp, his sympathies were beginning to shift to Pantalona, the Red-Headed Renegade.

Uncle Jingle and his entourage were now dancing and singing down the street past The Graffiti Wall, headed for a rendezvous with the lost handkerchief and vengeance against Uncle's enemies, Orlando, nostalgia more than satisfied, was just about to shift to something else when a slogan on the simulated wall caught his attention—painted letters that read Wicked Tribe—Rooling Tribe. Orlando leaned forward. He had thought that with his one Indigo favor called in, he was out of connections to TreeHouse, and through TreeHouse to the mystery of the gryphon and whatever light that might shed on the radiant, magical city. But here, here of all places, was a familiar name—a name that, properly followed, might get him back into TreeHouse.

It had been a long time since he had been a regular fan of Uncle Jingle's Jungle, and he had forgotten more than simply why he had liked it in the first place. There was some routine for posting a message, but he was damned if he could remember it. Instead, he pointed at Bob the Ball, the chuckling sphere that always bounced along through the air just behind Uncle Jingle. After he had pointed long enough for it to register as more than a casual gesture, Bob the Ball appeared to burst open (although none of the other viewers would see that, unless they, too, were requesting help), disgorging a number of pictographs designed to help Uncle Jingle's young audience make choices. Orlando found the one that concerned Making New Friends, and entered his message: "Looking for Wicked Tribe." He hesitated for a moment, then left a dead drop address for contacts. There was no immediate answer, but he decided to stay connected for a while, just in case.

"Oh, look!" Uncle Jingle did a little dance of pleasure, his long tuxedo coat flapping. "Look who's been waiting for us at the Bridge of Size! It's the Minglepig! But, oh, look! The Minglepig is big, big, big!"

The entire company of the Jingle Jungle Krew, along with an invisible worldwide audience, turned to look. Already as large as a house and growing larger by the second was the Uncle's friend and erstwhile pet, the Minglepig, an amorphous aggregation of dozens of porcine legs, trotters, snouts, eyes, and curly pink tails. Orlando felt a moment of recognition as he saw for the first time in its wriggling outline the roots of his own Beezle Bug design, but where he had once found the Minglepig thrillingly funny, he now found its centerless squirming unpleasant.

"Never spend too long on the Bridge of Size!" declared Uncle Jingle as seriously as if he were explaining the Second Law of Thermodynamics. "You'll get real big or you'll get real small! And what's happened to Minglepig?"

"He's big!" shouted the Jingle Jungle Krew, seemingly un-fazed by the anemone-like mass that now loomed over them like a mountain.

"We have to help him get small again." Uncle looked around, his licorice-drop eyes wide. "Who can think of something to help him?"

"Stick a pin in him!"

"Call Zoomer Zizz!"

"Tell him to stop it!"

"Make him go to the other end of the bridge," suggested one of the children at last, a little girl by the sound of her, whose sim was a toy panda.

Uncle nodded happily. "I think that's a very good idea. . . ." Uncle needed a split-second to call up the name, ". . . Michiko. Come on! If we all shout it at once, maybe he'll hear us—but we have to shout loud because his ears are very high up now!"

All the children began to screech. The Minglepig, like a particularly grotesque parade float losing its air, flattened itself toward the ground, listening. At the children's direction it moved a little way back along the bridge, but then stopped, confused. The Krew began to scream even more shrilly; the din became excruciatingly painful. Wicked Tribe or not, Orlando had reached his limit. He entered his message so that it would continue to appear on the Making New Friends band, then exited Uncle Jingle's Jungle.

 

"Orlando!" Someone was shaking him. "Orlando!"

He opened his eyes. Vivien's face was very close, full of concern and irritation, a combination Orlando was used to seeing. "I'm okay. I was just watching a show."

"How can you not hear me? I don't like that at all."

He shrugged. "I was just concentrating and I had it up pretty loud. It was this really interesting thing about farming in the ocean." That ought to hold her, he figured. Vivien approved of educational programs. He didn't want to tell her that, since he hadn't set the t-jack to keep a line open for normal external input—that is, stuff going from his actual ear to his auditory nerve—he hadn't heard her, any more than he would have if she'd been shouting his name in Hawaii.

She stared, dissatisfied, although she was clearly not sure why. "How are you feeling?"

"Sore." It was true. His joints had already been aching, and Vivien's energetic wake-up hadn't helped any. The painblocker must have worn off.

Vivien pulled a pair of dermals from the drawer beside the bed, one for pain, the other his evening anti-inflammatory fix. He tried to put them on, but his fingers ached and he fumbled them. Vivien frowned and took them from him, applying them with practiced skill to his bony arms. "What were you doing, plowing the bottom of the sea yourself? No wonder you're hurting, thrashing around on that stupid net."

He shook his head. "You know I can turn off my own muscle reactions when I'm online, Vivien. That's the great thing about the plug-in interfaces."

"For the fortune they cost, they'd better do something." She paused. Their conversation seemed to have moved through its usual arc, and now Orlando expected her either to shake her head and leave, or seize the chance to offer a few more dire predictions. Instead, she sat herself on the edge of the bed, careful not to put weight on his legs or feet "Orlando, are you scared?"

"Do you mean right now? Or ever?"

"Either. I mean. . . ." She looked away, then determinedly returned her gaze to him. He was struck for the first time in a while by how pretty she was. There were lines on her forehead and at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but she still had a firm jaw and her very clear blue eyes. In the dim afternoon light, with day fast fading, she looked no different from the woman who had held him when he was still young enough to be held. "I mean . . . it isn't fair, Orlando. It's not. Your illness shouldn't happen to the worst person in the world. And you're not that at all. You may drive me crazy sometimes, but you're smart, and sweet, and very brave. Your father and I love you a lot."

He opened his mouth, but no sounds came.

"I wish there was something else I could tell you, besides 'be brave.' I wish I could be brave for you. Oh, God, I wish I could." She blinked, then kept her eyes closed for a long moment. One hand stretched out to rest lightly on his chest. "You know that, don't you?"

He swallowed and nodded. This was embarrassing and painful, but in a way it also felt good. Orlando didn't know which was worse. "I love you, too, Vivien," he said at last. "Conrad, too."

She looked at him. Her smile was crooked. "We know that being on the net means a lot to you, that you have friends there, and . . . and. . . ."

"And something like a real life."

"Yes. But we miss you, honey. We want to see as much of you as we can. . . ."

"While I'm still around," he finished for her.

She flinched as though he had shouted. "That's part of it," she said finally.

Orlando felt her then in a way he hadn't for some time, saw the strain she was under, the fears that his condition brought. In a way, he was being cruel, spending so much time in a world that to her was invisible and unreachable. But now, more than ever, he had to be there. He considered telling her about the city, but could not imagine a way he could say it that wouldn't make it sound stupid, like a sick kid's impossible daydream—after all, he couldn't really convince himself it was anything other than that. He and Vivien and Conrad already walked a very difficult line with pity; he didn't want to do anything that would make things more difficult for everyone.

"I know, Vivien."

"Maybe . . . maybe we could put aside some time every day to talk. Just like we're talking now." Her face was so full of poorly hidden hope that he could barely watch. "A little time. You can tell me about the net, all the things you've seen."

He sighed, but kept it nearly silent. He was still waiting for the painblocker to take effect, and it was hard to be patient even with a person you loved.

Loved. That was a strange thought. He did love Vivien, though, and even Conrad, although sightings of his father sometimes seemed as rare as those of other fabled monsters like Nessie or Sasquatch.

"Hey, boss," said Beezle into his ear. "I think I got something for you."

Orlando pushed himself a little more upright, ignoring the throbbing of his joints, and put on a tired smile. "Okay, Vivien. It's a deal. But not right now, okay? I'm feeling kind of sleepy." He disliked himself more than he usually did for lying, but in a funny way it was her own fault. She had reminded him how little time he truly had.

"Fine, honey. You just lie down again, then. Do you want something to drink?"

"No, thanks." He slid back down and closed his eyes, then listened to her close the door.

 

"What do you have?"

"I got a phone number, for one thing." Beezle made the clicking noise he used to indicate self-satisfaction. "But first I think you got a call coming in. Something named 'Lolo.' "

Orlando shut his eyes, but this time left his external auditory channels open. He flicked to his 'cot and opened a screen. His caller was a lizard with a mouth full of fangs and an exaggerated, artifact-strewn topknot of Goggleboy hair. At the last moment, Orlando remembered to turn up his own volume so he could whisper. He didn't want to bring Vivien back into the room to check on him.

"You're Lolo?"

"Maybe," the lizard said. The voice was altered with all kinds of irritating noise, hums and scrapes and trendy distortion. "Why you beeped Wicked Tribe?"

Orlando's heart quickened. He hadn't expected to hear anything back on his query so soon. "Are you one of them?" He didn't remember a Lolo, but there had been quite a few monkeys.

The lizard stared at him balefully. "Flyin' now," it said.

"Wait! Don't go. I met the Wicked Tribe in TreeHouse. I looked like this." He flashed an image of his Thargor sim across. "If you weren't there, you can ask the rest of them. Ask. . . ." He racked his brain, struggling to remember. "Ask . . . Zunni! Yeah. And I think there was someone named Casper, too."

"Kaspar?" The lizard tilted his head. "Kasper, he zizz near me. Zunni, chop it, she far, far crash. But still no gimme—why you beep Wickedness?"

It was hard to tell whether English was Lolo's second language or the reptile-wearing Tribesperson was simply so sunk in kidspeak as to be almost unintelligible, even to Orlando. He guessed it might be some of both, and guessed also that Lolo was younger than it wanted people to think. "Look, I need to talk to the Wicked Tribe. I'm involved in a special operation and I need their help."

"Help? Cred-time, maybe? Candy! Whassa charge?"

"It's a secret, I told you. I can only talk about it at a meeting of the Wicked Tribe, with everyone sworn to secrecy."

Lolo considered this. "You funny-funny man?" it asked at last. "Baby-bouncer? Skinstim? Sinsim?"

"No, no. It's a secret mission. You understand that? Very important. Very secret."

The tiny eyes got even tinier as Lolo thought some more, " 'Zoon. 'L'askem. Flyin' now." The contact was ended.

Yeah. Dzang. That's something gone right, for once. He summoned Beezle, "You said you found a phone number for Fredericks?"

"Only one that makes sense. These government people, they don't want anyone finding out where they live, ya know. They buy those data-eaters, send 'em out to chew up anything tagged to their names that's floatin' around the net."

"So how did you find it?"

"Well, I'm not sure I did. But I think it's right—minor child named 'Sam,' couple other hits as well. Thing about data-eaters, they leave holes, and sometimes the holes tell you as much as the things that used to be there."

Orlando laughed. "You're pretty smart for an imaginary friend."

"I'm good gear, boss."

"Call it for me."

The number beeped several times, then the house system on the other end, having decided that Orlando's account number didn't fit the first-level profile for a nuisance call, passed him through to the message center. Orlando indicated his desire to talk with a living human being.

"Hello?" It was a woman's voice, tinged with a slight Southern accent.

"Hello, is this the Fredericks residence?"

"Yes, it is. Can I help you?"

"I'd like to speak to Sam, please,"

"Oh, Sam's not here right now. Who's calling?"

"Orlando Gardiner. I'm a friend."

"I haven't met you, have I? Or at least your name isn't familiar, but then. . . ." The woman paused; for a moment she went away. "Sorry, it's a bit confusing here," she said when she came back. "The maid has just dropped something. What did you say your name was—Rolando? I'll tell Sam you called when she gets back from soccer."

"Chizz—I mean, thanks. . . ." It took an instant to register. ". . . She? Just a second, Ma'am, I think. . . ." But the woman had clicked off.

"Beezle, was that the only number you had that matched? Because that's not the one."

"Sorry, boss, go ahead and kick me. Closest to fitting the profile. I'll try again, but I can't promise anything."

 

Two hours later, Orlando started up from a half-sleep. The lights in his room were on dim, his IV throwing a gallows-shadow onto the wall beside him. He turned down the Medea's Kids record that was playing softly on his auditory shunt. A troubling thought had lodged itself in his mind and he could not make it go away.

"Beezle. Get me that number again."

He made his way back through the screening system. After a short delay, the same woman's voice came on.

"This is the person who called before. Is Sam back yet?"

"Oh, yes. I forgot to tell her you called. I'll just see."

There was another wait, but this one seemed painfully long, because Orlando didn't know what he was waiting for.

"Yes?"

Just from that one word, he knew. Because it wasn't processed to sound masculine, it was higher than he was used to, but he knew that voice.

"Fredericks?"

The silence was complete. Orlando waited it out.

"Gardiner? Is that you?"

Orlando felt something like rage, but it was an emotion as confusing as it was painful. "You bastard," he said at last. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I'm sorry." Fredericks' new voice was faint. "But it's not like you think. . . ."

"What's to think? I thought you were my friend. I thought you were my male friend. Was it funny, listening to me talk about girls? letting me make a total scanbox out of myself?" He suddenly remembered one now cringeworthy occasion where he had talked about how he would put together his ideal female from the different body parts of famous net stars. "I . . . I just. . . ." He was suddenly unable to say more.

"But it's not like you think. Not exactly. I mean, it wasn't supposed to. . . ." Fredericks didn't say anything for a moment. When the familiar-but-unfamiliar girl's voice spoke again, it was flat and sorrowful. "How did you get this number?"

"Tracked it down. I was looking for you because I was worried about you, Fredericks. Or should I call you Samantha?" He put as much scorn into it as he could summon.

"It's . . . it's Salome, actually. 'Sam' was a joke of my dad's when I was little. But. . . ."

"Why didn't you tell me? I mean, it's one thing when you're just messing around on the net, but we were friends, man!" He laughed bitterly. "Man."

"That was it! See, by the time we were friends, I didn't know how to just tell you. I was afraid you wouldn't want to string with me any more."

"That's your excuse?"

Fredericks sounded on the verge of tears. "I . . . I didn't know what to do."

"Fine." Orlando felt as though he had left his body, like he was just a cloud of anger floating free. "Fine. I guess you're not dead or anything. That's what I called to find out in the first place."

"Orlando!"

But this time he was the one who hung up.

 

 

They're out there, so close you can almost smell them.

No, you can smell them, in a way. The suits pick up all manner of subtle clues, extending the human sensory range so that you can feel nearly a score of them moving toward you through the fog just the way a mastiff can scent a cat walking on the back fence.

You look around, but Olekov and Pun-yi still haven't returned. They picked a bad moment to check the signaling equipment at the landing site. Of course, there aren't many good moments on this hellhole of a planet.

Something moves out on the perimeter. You focus the filter-lenses in your helmet; it's not a human silhouette. Your hand is already extended, your gauntlet beam primed, and it takes only a flick of thought to send a horizontal thread of fire razoring toward the intruder. The thing is fast, though—horribly fast. The laser tears another piece off the wreckage of the first expedition ship, but the thing that had crouched in front of it is gone, vanished back into the mist like a bad dream.

Your suit sensors suddenly blast into alarm mode. Behind you—half-a-dozen loping shapes. Idiot! You curse yourself for being distracted, even as you turn and throw out a coruscating tangle of fire. The oldest trick in the book! These things hunt in packs, after all. For all their resemblance to earth crustaceans, the creatures are terrifyingly smart.

Two of the creatures go down, but one of them gets back up and drags itself to shelter on one fewer-jointed leg than usual. Illuminated by the residual fires from your assault, it darts a look at you as it goes, and you imagine you can see an active malice in the strange wet eyes. . . .

Malicious giant bugs! Orlando's finer sentiments went into revolt. This was the last time he'd ever trust a review from the bartender at The Living End. This kind of crap was years out of date!

Still, he'd paid for it—or rather his parents were going to when the monthly net bill was deducted. He might as well see if it got better. So far, it was a pretty standard-grade shoot-em-up, with nothing that appealed to his own fairly particular interests. . . .

 

There's a fireworks-burst of light along the perimeter. Your heart leaps—that's a human weapon. Olekov and Pun-yi! You rake a distant section of the perimeter to provide cover for your comrades, but also to let them know where you are. Another burst of fire, then a dark figure breaks into the clearing and sprints toward you, pursued by three shambling, hopping shapes. You don't have a very good angle, but you manage to knock one of them down. The pursued figure flings itself forward and rolls over the edge of the trench, leaving you an unencumbered shot at the things following it. You widen the angle, sacrificing killpower for coverage; they are caught, jigging helplessly in the beam as the air around them superheats. You keep it on them for almost a minute, despite the drain of battery power, until they burst into a swirl of carbon particles and are carried away on the wind. There is something about these creatures that makes you want to kill them deader than dead.

 

Something like what? Do they try to sell you memberships to religious nodes? How bad could they be?

Orlando was having trouble keeping his mind on the simulation. He kept thinking of Fredericks—no, he realized, not about Fredericks so much as the gap where Fredericks used to be. He had thought once that it was strange to have a friend you'll never met. Now it was even stranger, losing a friend you'd never really had.

 

Olekov crawls toward you down the length of the trend. Her right arm is mostly gone; there is a raw-looking blister of heavy plastic just above her elbow where the suit has sealed off at the wound site. Through the viewplate, Olekov's face'd shockingly white. You cannot help remembering that planetfal on Dekkamer One. That had been a good time, you and Olekov and ten days' leave.

The memory rises up before you, Olekov as she emerged from a mountain lake, dripping, naked, her pale breasts like snowdrifts. You made love for hours with only the trees as witnesses, urging each other on, knowing that your time was short, that there might never be a day like this again. . . .

"Pun-yi . . . they got him," she moans. The terror in her voice snaps you back to the present. The atmosphere distortion is so great that even this close, you can barely hear her voice for the noise on the channel. "Horrible. . . !"

Dekkamer One is light-years away, forever lost. There is no time to help her, or even to humor her. "Can you shoot? Do you have any charge left in your gauntlet?"

"They took him!" she screams, furious at your seeming indifference. There is something irreparably broken in her voice. "They captured him—they've taken him down into their nest They were . . . they were putting something through his . . . his eyes . . . as they dragged him away. . . ."

You shudder. At the end, you'll save the last charge of the gauntlet for yourself. You've heard rumors of what these creatures do to their prey. You will not allow that to happen to you.

Olekov has slumped to the ground, her shivers rapidly becoming convulsive. Blood is dripping back from her injured arm into her helmet—the seals are not working properly. You pause, unsure of what to do, then your suit sensors begin to shrill again. You look up to see a dozen many-jointed shapes, each the size of a small horse, skittering toward you across the smoking, debris-strewn planetary surface. Olekov's sobbing has become a dying person's hitch and wheeze. . . .

"Boss! Hey, boss! Let those poor imitations alone. I gotta talk to you."

"Damn it, Beezle, I hate it when you do that. It was just starting to get good." And God knew, distraction had been hard enough to come by during the last week. He looked round at his 'cot with irritation. Even without the trophies it still looked pretty dismal. The decor definitely needed to be changed.

"Sorry, but you told me you wanted to know if you had a contact from that Wicked Tribe group."

"They're on the line?"

"No. But they just sent you a message. You want to see?"

Orlando suppressed his irritation. "Yes, damn it. Play it."

A congregation of yellow squiggles appeared in the middle of the room. Orlando frowned and brought up the magnification. At the point where he could see the figures clearly, they had very poor resolution; either way, squinting at the fuzzy forms made his eyes hurt.

The monkeys hovered in a small orbital cloud. As one of them spoke, the others went on smacking each other and flying in tight circles. "Wicked Tribe . . . will meet you," said the foreground simian, melodramatic presentation belied by the pushing and shoving in the background. The spokesmonkey wore the same cartoonish grin as all the others, and Orlando could not tell whether the voice was one he'd heard before or not."Wicked Tribe will meet you in Special Secret Tribe Club Bunker in TreeHouse." A time and node address flashed up, full of childish misprintings. The message ended.

Orlando frowned. "Send a return message, Beezle. Tell them I can't get into TreeHouse, so they either have to get me in or else meet me here in the Inner District."

"Got it, boss."

Orlando sat himself in midair and looked at the MBC window. The little digging-drones were still hard at work, pursuing their goals with mindless application. Orlando felt strange. He should have been excited, or at least satisfied: he had opened up a connection back into TreeHouse. But instead he felt depressed.

They're little kids, he thought. Just micros. And I'm going to trick them into doing . . . what? Breaking the law? Helping me hack into something? And what if I'm right, and there are big-time people involved in this? Then what am I getting them into? And for what?

For a picture—an image. For something he had seen for just a few moments and which might mean anything . . . or absolutely nothing.

But it's all I've got left.

 

 

It was a closet. He could tell that by the slightly musty scent of clothing, and the faint, skeletal lines of coat hangers revealed by the light seeping in from the crack beneath the door. He was in a closet, and someone outside was looking for him.

Long ago, when his parents still had visitors, his cousins had once come for Christmas. His problem had been less obvious then, and although they asked him more questions about his illness than he would have liked, in a strange way he had been pleased to be the center of attention, and had enjoyed their visit. They had taught him lots of games, the sort that solitary children like himself usually only played in VR. One of them was hide-and-go-seek.

It had made an incalculable impression on him, the feverish excitement of hiding, the waiting in the dark, breathless, while "it" hunted for him. On the third or fourth game he had found a place in the closet off his parents' bathroom—cleverly deceptive, because he had to remove and hide one of the shelves to fit into it—and had remained there, undiscovered, until the "Olly Olly Oxen Free" had been called. That triumphant moment, hearing the surrender of his distant enemy, was one of the few purely happy memories of his life.

So why then, as he crouched in the darkness while something fumblingly investigated the room outside, was he now so terrified? Why was his heart pattering like a jacklighted deer's? Why did his skin feel like it was trying to slide all the way around to the back of his body? The thing outside, whatever it was—for some reason he could not imagine it as a person, but only as a faceless, shapeless presence—surely did not know where he was. Otherwise, why would it not simply pull open the closet door? Unless it did know, and was enjoying the game, reveling in its power and his helplessness.

It was a thing, he realized. That was what terrified him so. It wasn't one of his cousins, or his father, or even some baroque monster from the Middle Country. It was a thing. An it.

His lungs hurt. He had been holding his breath without realizing it. Now he wanted nothing more than to gasp in a great swallow of fresh air, but he did not dare make a noise. There was a scraping outside, then silence. Where was it now? Standing just on the other side of the closet door, listening? Waiting for that one telltale noise?

And most frightening of all, he realized, was that other than the thing outside, there was no one else in the house. He was alone with the thing that was just now pulling the closet door open. Alone.

In the dark, holding a scream clenched tight in his throat, he closed his eyes and prayed for the game to end. . . .

 

"I brought you some painkillers, boss. You were jerking around a lot in your sleep."

Orlando was having trouble getting his breath. His lungs seemed too shallow, and when he did manage at last to draw deeply, a wet cough rattled his bones. He sat up, accidentally dislodging Beezle's robot body which rolled helplessly down onto the bedcovers, then struggled to right itself.

"I'm . . . it was just a bad dream." He sat up and looked around, but his bedroom didn't even have a closet, not that old-fashioned kind anyway. It had been a dream, just the kind of stupid nightmare he had on bad nights. But there had been something important about it, something more important even than the fear.

Beezle, now set on rubber-tipped legs once more, began to crawl away down the quilt, back toward its nourishing wall socket.

"Wait." Orlando lowered his voice to a whisper. "I . . . I think I need to make a call."

"Just let me lose the legs, boss." Beezle clambered awkwardly down the bed frame, heading for the floor, "I'll meet you online."

 

 

The doors of the Last Chance Saloon swung open. An ax-murderer politely dragged his victim to one side before returning to active dismemberment. The figure that stepped over the spreading puddle of blood had the familiar broad shoulders and thick, weight-lifter's neck. Fredericks also had what seemed to be a certain wariness on his sim face as he sat down.

He? Orlando felt a kind of despair. She?

"I got your message."

Orlando shook his head. "I . . . I just didn't want to. . . ." He took a breath and started again. "I don't know. I'm pretty scorched, but mostly in a weird way. Know what I mean?"

Fredericks nodded slowly. "Yeah. I guess."

"So—so what do I call you?"

"Fredericks. That was a tough one, huh?" A smile briefly touched the broad face.

"Yeah, but I mean . . . you're a girl. But I think of you as a guy."

"That's okay. I think of myself as a guy, too. When I'm stringing around with you."

Orlando sat quiet for a moment, sensing that this particular unexplored country might be treacherous. "You mean you're a transsexual?"

"No." His friend shrugged. "I just . . . well, sometimes I get bored being a girl. So when I first started going on the net, sometimes I was a boy, that's all. Nothing unusual, really." Fredericks did not sound quite as certain as he or she might have liked. "But it's kind of awkward when you get to be friends with someone."

"I noticed." He said it with his best Johnny Icepick sneer. "So do you like boys, or are you gay, or what?"

Fredericks made a noise of disgust. "I like boys fine. I have lots of friends who are boys. I have lots of friends who are girls, too. Shit, Gardiner, you're as bad as my parents. They think I have to make all these life decisions just because I'm growing breasts."

For a moment Orlando felt the world totter. The concept of Fredericks with breasts was more than he was able to deal with at the moment.

"So . . . so that's it? You're just going to be a guy? I mean, when you're online?"

Fredericks nodded again. "I guess. It wasn't a total lie, Orlando. When I'm hanging around with you . . . well, I feel like a guy."

Orlando snorted. "How would you know?"

Fredericks looked hurt, then angry. "I get stupid and I act like the whole world revolves around me. That's how."

Against his better judgment, Orlando laughed. "So what are we supposed to do? Just keep on being guys together?"

"I guess so." Fredericks shrugged. "If you can handle it."

Orlando felt his anger soften a little. There were certainly important things he hadn't told Fredericks, so it was hard to sustain much self-righteousness. But it was still difficult to wrap his mind around the idea.

"Well," he said at last, "I guess. . . ." He couldn't think of any way to end the sentence that wouldn't sound like a bad netflick. He settled for: "I guess it's okay, then." It was an incredibly stupid thing to say, and he wasn't sure it was okay, but he left it at that for now. "Anyway, this all started because I was trying to find you. Where have you been? Why didn't you answer my messages?"

Fredericks eyed him, perhaps trying to decide if they had found a kind of equilibrium again. "I . . . I was scared, Gardiner. And if you think it's because I'm really a girl or some fenfen like that, I'm gonna kill you."

"Scared of what happened in TreeHouse?"

"Of everything. You've been weird ever since you saw that city, and it just keeps getting more and more scanny. What's next, we try to overthrow the government or something? We wind up in the Execution Chamber for the cause of Orlando Gardinerism? I just don't want to get into any more trouble."

"Trouble? What trouble? We got chased out of TreeHouse by a bunch of old akisushi."

Fredericks shook his head. "It's more than that and you know it. What's going on, Gardiner? What is it about this city that's got you so . . . so obsessed?"

Orlando weighed the choices. Did he owe something to Fredericks, some kind of honesty? But his friend had not told him anything of his own secret voluntarily—it had been Orlando who had ferreted out the truth.

"I can't explain. Not now. But it's important—I just know it is. And I think I've found a way to get us back into TreeHouse."

"What?" Fredericks shouted. The other patrons of the Last Chance Saloon, used to death rattles and agonized shrieks, did not even turn to look, "Go back? Are you scanning to the uttermost degree?"

"Maybe." He was finding it hard to get his breath again. He turned down the volume for another body-shaking cough. "Maybe," he repeated when he could speak again. "But I need you to come with me. You're my friend, Fredericks, whatever you are. In fact, I'll tell you one secret, anyway—you're not just my best friend, you're my only friend,"

Fredericks brought hands to face, as though to block out the sight of a world in pain. When he spoke, it was with doomful resignation. "Oh, Gardiner, you bastard. That's really unfair."