From Heinlein base to Hanzo crater and the Pan-Asian group, to the European Union spray on Luna’s dark side… to Falling Angels, the industrial complex orbiting in geosync, to the L5s and the surface of Earth a quarter-million miles away, the adventures of the first lunar expedition into nineteenth-century fantasy dominated the entertainment news.
They crowded in bars watching the vidscreens, they hosted home parties with overflowing bowls of popcorn served to couches filled with engineers and tram-jockeys hypnotized by wall screens, they programmed their watches and glasses and the corners of their transport windows to display the streaming live or edited feeds from the gaming dome.
And that was hardly the extent of it. With seconds or minutes of delay, the feeds flew out as far as the asteroid belt, to the other L5s, and crossed the quarter-million-mile gap to Earth. And there, if the reaction on the Moon had been in any way restrained, all pretense of dispassion dissolved as soon as the images hit the thousand million screens.
From Rangoon to Portland, from Tunisia to Tel Aviv, it was estimated that 12 percent of all the viewers available were tuned in to what the IFGS called the Moon Maze Game. Legal and illegal gambling had already placed a half-billion New dollars; that amount growing by the second. And the network had yet to edit much of the footage at all: This was raw, real and unfiltered. The secondary market for more polished versions was enormous. While the initial viewers were treated to the occasional glitch or imperfect effect, those willing to wait for a day received visual perfection. In forty-eight hours they got supplemental narration, and a week after the game the gamers themselves would have laid down their own commentary.
Games were always popular. But unusual games, with unusual stakes or locales, could become cultural phenomena. The Moon Maze Game was arguably the most expensive game ever mounted (the final details wouldn’t be available until the insanely complex web of subsidizers, exchanged labor and energy, and all construction work was combed through by an army of lawyers and accountants) so a half-billion Earthviews was not a particularly impressive number. In fact, it was assumed that the IFGS was still chewing its collective fingernails.
And would, until the game was over.
“Chris? Pick up, dammit.” Wu Lin was fighting a rising wave of irritation, trying to keep it out of her voice, and losing the struggle.
“Hello! I am currently evolving into something unrecognizable. Leave your message at the sound of the beep.”
“Chris, this is Wu Lin. I have tried everything sane to get to you. Xavier says you’re on now. Get your hideously modified arse into the game.” Pause. “Oh, wait, the word is you’ve already entered. Why aren’t you at your post? I think I have to call Security, Chris.”
Wu Lin drummed her elaborately tapered fingernails on the desk, lips puckered into an angry O. Something was wrong, she could feel it. Something always went wrong, which was why redundancy was built into all games. First things first: She signaled her assistants in the dome to slip an alternate into Foxworthy’s role.
Second, she called Piering in Security and told him to send someone to Chris Foxworthy’s pod. Find him. Break the door down and wake him up. Whatever it took.
Five minutes later, Max Piering had arrived at Foxworthy’s door. An attempt to establish electronic communication had failed, suggesting some kind of glitch. It happened. He remembered back in ’76 when a computer error had sealed a pair of newlyweds into their pod for two days, and they’d barely noticed Piering banged on the door, heard a faint, muffled shout from inside, followed by the dull, repeated thump of a fist. He clicked his tongue. “Maintenance? I need door 88-C opened right now. Jammed, I think. Send someone up?”
He had barely finished replaying the delicious scene presented when the newlyweds’ door opened, when Mike Berke, one of the Maintenance techs, whisked around the corner on a go-bike, hopped off and immediately opened a tool pouch on his belt.
“A jam?” he asked.
“You tell me.”
Mike whistled a bit as he slipped a pronged tool into the door jamb, pulled, and the door popped open.
Chris Foxworthy had been leaning against the door. He tumbled out into the corridor, hyperventilating.
“What the hell, Chris! You all right?”
Foxworthy couldn’t speak. He braced himself against the far wall and pointed a finger into the room. The finger shook.
Piering took one step into the room, inhaled, and stepped back out. He clicked his tongue. “Kendra Griffin,” he said. Then when she came online, he said: “Boss, we’ve got an excessively big problem…”
The corpse was rapidly identified as a “Victor Sinjin” who had recently arrived from Earth. Foxworthy knew less than that. He said that the box Sinjin had been carrying was supposed to be a change of costume. It held only tissue paper and a pair of slippers with gooey-looking soles.
By the time Kendra arrived at Foxworthy’s apartment, the first U.N. cops had already been summoned, and would be no more than five minutes behind her.
Chief of Security Max Piering had been the first one on the scene. She hadn’t ever known the guy well. After the disaster that almost killed him and Scotty, the big man had put in for an indoor gig, and she had been impressed: Too many men and women, after a major mishap on the Moon, packed their bags and fled home to Earth. Too many Moon marriages gone. She could hardly blame Scotty for making tracks.
On the contrary, she was impressed with both of them: Scotty had returned, and Piering had never left at all.
The attacker was turned at an odd and ugly angle; the expression on his face one of terminal ease. He was dressed in a classic green microfiber business suit, a little loose, and even so the fight had ripped it down the back. “He jumped you? Did he try to kill you?”
Foxworthy was inclined to babble. “I wasn’t minded to negotiate! How would I know what he wanted?”
“You had some luck,” Piering said. “Unless you aimed his head to hit just there? No. We’ll look into his background, Chris.”
“There’s something else,” Kendra said.
“What?”
“Chris was slated to be an NPC in the game.” She tapped her epaulet, and it beeped in response. “Macy?”
“Here.”
“Patch me through to gaming central.”
“But they’re still in the middle of a scene.”
Kendra grimaced. No point in asking how Macy knew that.
“Emergency. Get one of Xavier’s assistants on the link. Now, or I shut the game down.”
The line wasn’t clear for more than a minute before her epaulet beeped again. “Griffin.”
“Xavier,” a voice said, high and irritated. “You’ve got a hundred and twenty seconds.”
“Then don’t waste it with attitude,” she said. “You have an NPC named Chris Foxworthy in the game?”
A pause. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you report him missing?”
A snort. “Because he’s not.”
“Not an NPC? He’s listed-”
“He’s not missing. Look, what is this?”
Not missing? She shot Piering a glance. “Listen. Hang here for the U.N. guys. I’m going over to game central. We have a problem.”
It took three minutes to reach the western control room, now given over to gaming. While only Xavier and his two associates were the official Game Masters, in the hours since arrival at Heinlein base, a gaggle of groupies and sycophants had clogged the west quadrant.
Everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of the little man, or to ferry in food or supplies, or help Xavier and his exotic assistants in any way possible. Kendra had to thread her way through them to the sealed and guarded door. The guard was a big guy named Trainor from Food Services. He had no real authority, but as a member of Xavier’s fan club, had apparently plucked a plum assignment.
“Ms. Griffin,” he said, and saluted. He wasn’t one of the ones who kept his exercise points up. His gut bulged above his belt, but didn’t sag as it would have on Earth.
“Let me in, Sammy.” He stood aside, and the door slid open.
The control center’s basic structure, including the holostage that had been modified from a mining waldo, remained much the same. In the four days since Xavier had arrived, the walls had been covered with posters and maps of the gaming dome, pictures of alien critters of every imaginable stripe, drawings of costumes and strange alien equipment, as well as other equipment that seemed a hybrid of alien and what had once been labeled “steam punk.”
What in the world?
“Cavor has been busy,” Xavier said at her elbow. She turned to look down at the little man, who grinned up at her as if he was standing in a hole. She caught no whiff of insecurity about their relative size, and she knew that he was already calculating how he would manage this or that if he ever managed to get her in bed.
“We figure that in the years since his capture, he’s shared some aspects of Earth technology with the Selenites, resulting in some really nifty hybrid tech. Angelique will have a kitten trying to figure it out.”
Dammit, she felt a smile wanting to tug at the corner of her mouth. Even under the current circumstances, she could appreciate the work and care and creativity, let alone the resources, that had gone into the game.
She hoped to God she wasn’t about to blow it all up.
“We have a problem,” she said.
Xavier frowned. “A problem? In my game? What exactly are you talking about?”
“You have an NPC named Chris Foxworthy?”
Xavier blinked. Without turning his head, he said: “Wu Lin?”
Both his assistants were up on the platform, twisting and turning their bodies like contortionists while the computer transformed them into alien worms. “Hold,” Wu Lin said. “Yes, Xavier?”
“We have an NPC named Foxworthy?”
“Yes. Local, won a lottery, I believe. Playing a minor Selenite during a melee, but he’s out of place. I called Security twenty-five minutes ago.”
“Let’s find him.”
Magique stepped down from the stage, narrowing her eyes at Kendra as she approached the wall console. “NPC holding area personnel list please.”
The wall displayed a series of faces, some of them familiar, most not. Twenty in all. And one of them was… Chris Foxworthy. His avatar blinked in the dome’s third level restroom.
“Give me video in that toilet area,” Kendra said. A chord, and they were looking in the restroom. The cubicals glowed emerald. Empty. The hair on the back of her neck tingled.
Magique’s plump hands fluttered, and Wu Lin watched carefully. When she had finished, the Asian girl said: “Magique thinks he ditched his tracer. Show me all the NPCs.” The screen divided into rectangles, each rectangle filled with a costumed gamer.
“That’s not live, is it?” The background behind each of them was a uniform blue, and she noted that their smiles and grimaces were repeating. This was some kind of a looped program.
“Ah… no. These are just the CAD models for each of them. But they show in the holding area.”
“Do you have a live feed into that area?”
Xavier was curious now. He chorded in the next set of directions personally. The wall shifted, showing a room with a couple of couches, lots of chairs, and a table stocked with cold cuts and pouches of juice and soda. A dozen or so people lounged around the room, talking and watching monitors. Some were in Selenite garb, others dressed as even stranger creatures, although their headpieces were off, giving them a damned strange aspect.
“Do all of these people match your records?”
Wu Lin hopped down and joined them. “What’s going on?”
“We have a missing NPC,” Xavier said.
“I know. He entered the gaming dome, then-poof.”
“Actually,” Kendra said, fighting to keep her voice calm, “I’ll be rather surprised if he turns up.”
“And why is that?” Xavier said. It wasn’t quite a snarl, but it would do.
“He’s in my office right now. Someone attacked him last night, maybe trying to keep him out of the game. He’s been locked in his room. Whatever the intent was, the question remains: Who the hell checked in to your game as Chris Foxworthy, and where is he now, and why?”