Dev paused inside the first ring of trees as they came out into the moonlight again. “Just yet?”
Cora stopped still as well, looking up into the faint indigo radiance of the sky. There was something unnatural about her stillness: she breathed normally enough as she stood there, but there was no sense of her being at rest . . . unless it was the rest of a statue, a waxwork. Something else to work on, Dev thought. More natural body language. Though it was the spoken language I’ve been working on . . .
“The rollout isn’t one hundred percent complete yet,” Cora said. “Only eighty-two of the hundred new memory heaps have been brought online. Everyone had to drop everything last night when the attack started, including the transfer staff: they had to lock down the migration process and isolate the noncertified memory to make sure it couldn’t be contaminated by the attacking programs. In any case, it won’t be possible to do a full internal analysis until all the heaps are up and running. There is, besides, the considerable likelihood that because the interleave between the CO routines and the rest of the Omnitopia gaming environment was designed to work with a hundred percent of the memory heaps enabled, the problems are secondary to the gradual nature of the rollout.” Cora turned her face toward Dev, and again there was that strange sense of nonspontaneity about it that made it impossible to say “she looked at him.” “Once the remaining memory is certified, activated, and interleaved with the rest of the system, full analysis can go forward. But there may be no need for that. Once all the memory’s in place, the problems may be resolved.”
Boy, Dev thought, I really did a great job with the new articulation routine. The Omnitopia voice management systems had had to be completely rewritten for the rollout, and Dev had recalled the control voice actress (now a venerable lady of seventy) to do a top-to-bottom phoneme retraining that enabled the system to generate vocabulary seamlessly on the fly, whether it had been trained in a specific word or not. Plainly the routine was working. “So what’s the estimate for getting the remaining memory online?” Dev said and started walking again.
Smoothly Cora started walking alongside him, pacing Dev as he made his way into the shadows of the inner ring of trees. “The transfer staff are working on the ninety-second heap right now,” she said. “At the rate they’re going, it should take another four to five hours. Noon, perhaps. Do you need a closer estimate?”
“No,” Dev said, “that’ll do fine.”
“Is there anything else you need to know about?” Cora said.
Dev sighed. “How are you holding up?”
“The question would make more sense if the system of which you were inquiring was capable of some sort of personal reaction,” Cora said.
Dev smiled slightly as they passed between two of the gigantic trees, looking up at the faint shift of light and shadow high up in the canopy. “Granted.”
“Which Omnitopian myth says will not happen until the day the First Player begins to play in earnest, drawing the internal and external games into alignment with the greater forces that underlie and overarch them both.”
Dev raised his eyebrows at the sudden veer into in-game legend. “Sounds like something from one of the fan sites. Kind of cryptic . . .”
The CO routine’s AI looked at him obliquely through Cora’s dark eyes. “That would be a subjective judgment on your behalf.”
“All human judgments are subjective,” Dev said, “by definition.”
They strolled on. “The most logical assumption,” said Cora, “would be that the question was motivated by a momentary mood of whimsy, or that you’re indulging a favorite pastime of humans in general, the attribution of behaviors typical of the living to inanimate objects.”
Dev smiled wryly. When building this routine, he had been careful to provide it with access to almost all biographical data about him and a broad spectrum of textbook material on human behavior, as he had always intended it to be able to surprise him occasionally. “Perhaps so,” he said. “At any rate, there’s one possibility I want to rule out before we part company for today. Have you been compromised by any external system?”
“No, Dev. There are about a hundred different alarms that would have gone off were that the case.”
That was true enough. “All right,” he said. “Thanks.”
Together they kept walking through the shadows. Here and there a patch of moonlight managed to splash to the ground, but mostly their steps were illuminated by the Sword of Truth, which Cora was still carrying, and by the glow of the ground ahead of them, within which this region’s version of the Ring of Elich stood massive and silent, shining darkly under the moon. “Do you want this back?” Cora said, offering him the sword as they came out through the inner ring of Macrocosm trees into the clear grassy moonlit ground between them and the great trilithons of the Ring.
Dev reached out and took it from her, then turned and pushed it into the place in the air that would hold it for him until he needed it again. “Thank you.”
Cora lifted her head a little, as if hearing something far off. “The outer system management program,” she said, “is requesting your attention. Jim is trying to reach you, as is Tau.”
Dev sighed. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll get in touch with them as soon as I get back up into the office and handle a couple of things. Would you open a portal in the Ring for me, please?”
“Of course, Dev,” Cora said.
Ahead of them, one gap in the Ring swirled with rainbow fire, then cleared to show the view down the length of Dev’s virtual office. “I’ll see you later,” he said.
Cora stood still, watching him. “It does seem all too likely,” she said. “The system will be ready for you, as always.”
Dev nodded and headed off toward the Ring. Just at the portal he turned and looked behind him. She was gone.
There’s a program that still needs some work, he thought, turning back toward the portal. Next month . . . end of the year . . . whenever. But that could be a solution for what Tau was talking about: the virtual helper that can guide other trusted senior staff through the business of managing the CO routines without actually seeing the proprietary parts of the program. Something to take up with Tau. Meanwhile, time for Jim.
He stepped through the portal. Rainbow fire swirled again where he had been.
In the darkness under the trees, a formless shadow swirled too, as if watching the Ring, then melted into the gloom, was gone . . .
Under the curved landscape sky of Indigo, Rik checked his watch and then spent a few moments just gazing up at his non- misbehaving sun. He shook his head slightly.
“Hon?” someone said from outside.
He smiled somewhat sheepishly as Angela came through the door from his office space. “What’re you doing in here?” she said. “Bob’s going to be here to pick you up for work in a few minutes.”
“I know,” he said “I just needed to check and see if this was still working.”
She looked around the green field in which they were standing. “This isn’t like where we were yesterday,” she said. “Did you move the door from your office or something?”
“Just testing how different areas inside the sphere look when you come out,” Rik said, turning around to look over his shoulder at the mountain range he’d installed when he first came in this morning.
“I thought that was what you were paying what’s-his-face to do,” Angela said, frowning a little. “Dennis.”
“Well, I’d hoped to have some more eyegrabs from him this morning,” Rik said, turning back again to look more closely at one of the gigantic feather trees he’d also just plugged into the substrate, “but he called in sick.”
“Oh, great!” Angela said. “He’s been working for you, what? Two days? And already he’s taken your money and run.”
“Oh, no,” Rik said. “Nothing like that. He said he had some problem at work he had to take care of. Like I wouldn’t understand that!”
“Well, I hope you’re right,” she said. S
he eyed Rik thoughtfully. “You know what, though?”
“What?”
“You look really weird in those . . .”
Rik chuckled, for he was wearing his courier company’s brown uniform. “Maybe we should make it the Indigo traditional costume,” Rik said.
Angela snorted. “You have to be kidding.”
“No,” Rik said. “No reason everybody in an RPG has to be feudal. These people might very well be as high-tech as we are.” And he grinned. “Maybe there are two main nations, always fighting each other. The Browns versus the Red-and-Blues . . .”
Angela shook her head. “Please,” she said. “Too much like real life . . .” She stretched. She was still in her morning-get-the-kids-ready-for-school pink and gray sweats, dotted with a few dark spots high up.
“Kitchen accident?” Rik said.
“The bacon splattered me,” she said. “Nothing serious.”
“Oh, good,” Rik said. He checked his watch again. “Anyway, I’d better get going.”
“I’ll go with you—”
“No, you don’t have to!” Rik said. “If you’re going to be helping with this, you don’t need me to be looking over your shoulder all the time. If the kids are gone and you don’t have anything else to do, stick around, mess with this a little. I’ve got everything saved: you can’t do anything to hurt it.”
Angela gave him a surprised look. “Well, if you’re sure,” she said. “Just don’t be surprised if I blow up the whole thing somehow!”
“I doubt you’ll do that,” Rik said. “Read the instructions, check my log files, and play around with the WannaB blocks a little bit. There’s a history of everything I’ve done. These trees and the mountains are the most recent stuff—move ’em around if you like.”
“Okay,” she said. Then she cocked her head. “Somebody’s beeping outside. It’s Bob . . .”
“Uh oh,” Rik said. “Better get going.”
Angela looked at him with amusement. “Used to be,” she said, “on the day you had to go back to work, you’d spend every last minute in bed. But here you are. They should hire you . . .”
“Well, they have, kind of,” Rik said. “Now it’s all about what I make out of this.” He looked up again at the patchwork sky, all stippled with forests and minioceans past the blue haze of the upper atmosphere. “Anyway, have some fun. If you do see Dennis, tell him not to worry, what we had planned will keep until tonight or tomorrow night.” He grinned. “If I’m going to be an employer, I’m not gonna beat my employees up for taking the occasional sick day.”
He went over to Angela and kissed her. “See you later on.”
“Oh, no!” she said. “You think you’re going to start getting away with virtual smooching? Not a chance.”
She vanished. Rik grinned and vanished in her wake.
Under the trees, unseen, a shadow gathered itself, swirled, and vanished as well . . .
It was nearing eleven a.m. in the Eastern time zone. A hundred and ten miles east of Manhattan, under a sky milk-blue with haze, Phil Sorensen walked alone down a pale bare beach, heading eastward through a gray mist of spray. On his right the water roared up toward him in long flat bottle-green curls, broke in white foam, ran up the wet sand of the tideline toward him. He paid the thunder of the waves no attention—he was too busy trying to hear the voice on the other end of the phone.
“Not yet,” it was saying. “You’re just going to have to wait.”
Phil growled. “I am not used to waiting,” he said.
“What?”
“I said, I am not used to waiting!” His shout quarreled with the roar of the sea without a lot of success.
“You’re going to have get used to it,” said the voice on the other end. “He had to reschedule again.”
“You’d better have been using the spare time profitably,” Phil said.
“You have no idea,” said the voice on the other end. “These people love to talk. They want you to know about everything they’re doing . . . and it never occurs to them that you might be interested for reasons besides the ones they’re thinking of.”
“What about last night?”
“Mostly they’re not wild to talk about that. An informal gag order came down. But there are always a few people who have to brag about how hard the company got hit so they can impress you with how fast they’re going to bounce back.” There was a chuckle at the other end. “It was a long night, but a lot of useful information came out of it.”
“I want a précis—”
“What?”
“A précis, damn it!” Phil shouted. “With a time line. I want to know what happened when. And where, and to whom. And how much! You got that?”
“While I’m supposed to be doing other things as well? The things everybody’s looking to see if I’m doing? It’s gonna take a while,” said the voice at the other end.
“Make it a short while,” Phil said. “Be busy about this. I want it before end of business—”
The phone beeped at him. “Just do it,” he said, and hung up, switching to the other caller. “Yes?”
“They told me you called,” said the voice. It had a disguise filter laid over it, but this could not conceal the faintly foreign accent.
“How did it go?”
“We are still doing the math,” said the other voice. “But the initial results look very close to our original projections.”
“Good,” Phil said. “When will the second wave roll out?”
“Within the next two hours. We don’t want to give them more time to recoup than necessary, but we have to run our own checks also, to make sure that our own systems’ channels into the Omnitopia system are not blocked.”
“Fine,” Phil said. “Give me a call when the second wave starts.”
“All right.”
Phil punched the off button, looked out to sea. The waves rolled in, roaring. Out on the water, somebody’s little fishing boat chugged along against the horizon, its toothpicklike mast and angling rig swaying, as it made for Montauk and the game-fishing waters out past the Point.
I hope this doesn’t destroy him personally. I’d never want to do that. I want him working for me, sure, so I can teach him what real winning looks like . . . but this needs to be a wake-up call, not a deathblow.
He stood quite still there for almost a minute, looking out to sea as the little fishing boat turned slightly southward, angling down toward the southeastern end of the Great South Bay and almost invisible now as the brightness of the misty and indefinite horizon started to swallow it. That invulnerable pride of his, Phil thought. That certainty. Can he possibly give that up without a really, really big kick in the pants? Bigger than I honestly want to give him?
Because I am still his friend, even if he isn’t mine.
The little boat vanished. Phil swallowed, trying to imagine what the eventual phone call from Dev would sound like. The first feelers won’t be from him, of course. Probably from Tau or Jim or one of the other inner-circle types. They’ll hate it, of course, but it won’t matter. Dev will let them know what he wants them to do. They’ll fall in line as they always have. And then . . .
Phil shook his head. He couldn’t imagine what Dev’s voice would sound like, when the call came at last—it had been so long since they’d spoken, since he’d heard that voice doing anything but commercials and interviews. How many hours did we spend in our college years, talking all night? Phil thought. How many conversations, how many bull sessions . . . and I can’t even remember what it sounds like to hear him just laughing, or muttering at himself the way he used to when he thought he’d done something dumb . . .
Phil swore softly. What would be coming to Dev shortly was going to be bad enough. Dev’s staff would soon be explaining to him what had happened to Omnitopia. And when it had sunk in, when he realized what had happened to his company’s stock, Phil’s phone would ring, and there would be that voice saying what he’d been waiting to hear for all this time: I’m sorry, you
were right all along, let’s just—
That was when the wave ran up the beach and poured itself all over Phil’s feet.
The cold of the water filled his Gucci loafers and sank in to the bone. Phil stepped back, shocked out of hearing the voice that would have spoken to him, shocked out of the moment by a universe that seemed to be making fun of him—
As it always did where Dev was concerned.
Phil stood there, just breathing hard for a moment—then swore again. He looked at the phone in his hand, and then he brought up the contact listings and scrolled down to the Manhattan number with no name attached, and punched the dial button.
The ringing at the other end stopped; the line picked up. There was no message, just the beep of a voice mail program.
“Final confirmation. Go,” Phil said, and hung up.
Then he turned and started walking back up the beach toward his house. Behind him the ocean roared, just another voice unheard.
No one could remember who coined the usage “Castle Scrooge” for Jim Margoulies’ main offices, but whoever it was, the name had stuck even though no building less like the site of Scrooge McDuck’s famous Money Bin could he imagined. Omnitopia Financial Affairs was probably the closest building on campus to the real world, overlooking the front entrance and Tempe’s South Mill Avenue, its main drag; whereas Castle Dev was probably farthest removed, practically out into the Salt River wash. As Dev headed downstairs out of his own castle for the short trip over to Scrooge, he found himself getting a case of butterflies in the stomach—that uncomfortable sensation that usually went with waking up from a bad dream about not having studied for a test in high school. Normally Dev had to drag Jim into meetings. It was not usual for him to call one, and when Jim did, there was usually trouble.
Coming out from under the arch of his own castle, Dev glanced left and saw the bike rack almost full. A lot of people from elsewhere on campus were in Castle Dev this morning, handling business secondary either to the rollout or yesterday’s attack. Yet there was still an empty spot left down at the far end, even though his own black bike was in the rack at the middle. For some time after the company moved into the new campus Dev had been puzzled by that always empty end space, until he discovered that his fellow Omnitopian bikers had started calling the last space in any rack “the Siege Perilous” and going out of their way to relocate (sometimes into the nearest thornbush or moat) any bike but Dev’s that they found there.