Massively Multiplayer (42 page)

Needing no encouragement, his companions made their way more or less agilely across the gap, Ghostmaker last. The warrior had lost his axe somewhere in the fight, and was parrying his attackers with his shortsword. He grabbed hold of the rope with one hand, looped it about his wrist, then chopped the far end free from its mooring.

“Bombs away!” he shouted gleefully, and dove off the ledge into the pit. The rope arced in with him, then snapped taut and swung towards the waiting party. There was a loud thump as Ghostmaker hit the wall of the pit, and then a moment later he was climbing hand-over-hand over the lip of the bridge.

“Haw haw! ‘Struth, what a ride, eh?” He stood, dusting off his armor and sheathing his weapon.

On the far side of the chasm, the gray dust-men howled their rage and hunger. Ghostmaker made an obscene gesture at them. Dinah sniffed disdainfully.

Druin found himself grinning. It had been good teamwork, no,
great
teamwork. Unfamiliar as these people were, as unequal as their talents might be, they had come together as a unit in crisis. They had prevailed, and he felt the bond, that special camaraderie enjoyed by those who have shared the threat of death, and overcome it. He could depend on these people as he could depend on little else. This was why he played the game.

Then he remembered the things he had learned from the agents at his parents’ house. One of these people could be a spy, a criminal, an agent. A traitor. No, even worse, he was the traitor here. He was providing a window for the agency to watch what happened, to monitor this strange aberration which had something to do with a rogue programmer, some unauthorized computer access, and who knew what all else. In some ways it didn’t matter if one of these people was a criminal or not – they trusted him right now, and he was busy feeding information about them to someone else. He was the spy.

He deflated and drew back from the group, feeling suddenly unclean. “We made it,” he said wearily. “But where did we make it to?”

Dinah stopped her contemplation of Ghostmaker long enough to glance back at him, then indicated a square arch on one wall framed by two pillars. “Isn’t it obvious? The light coming through the ceiling indicates that we’ve come back upwards after our descent. We are in the second tomb.”

When Wolfgang emerged from the elevator, he was only slightly surprised to see that Blanks had Sumter with him. Clearly, this was not the casual meeting he’d suggested it would be. He was slightly more surprised to find both Marybeth and Bernardo Calloway were already in attendance. There was no way that Blanks could have gotten Calloway down to the game floor without alerting Marcus Tenser that something was up. Therefore, this ‘surprise’ meeting was not meant to surprise Marcus Tenser at all; it was supposed to surprise him, Wolfgang Wallace.

But if that were his intention, Blanks had already failed twice-over. First, Wolfgang now knew that Blanks, or possibly Sumter, was deliberately trying to rattle some cages, including his.

It would have worked, too, had the agents not made a second mistake: Marybeth. If her presence here was supposed to unnerve him, make him suspicious about whether some members of the team knew more or less than he did, it was failing wonderfully. He flashed her a quick smile and was met with a wink almost too swift to catch. Sumter scowled at both of them.

“So glad you could join us, Mr. Wallace,” said Blanks, hand extended for a firm shake. Whatever the game, Blanks was playing the part of gracious host this round. “Now that we’re all here, I think we should adjourn to our little temporary headquarters, off the main floor. After you.”

If the tomb of Duster had reflected its inhabitant’s name in its dusty condition, the surviving party might have expected the tomb of Macro to be some vast, vaulted chamber. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The tomb of Duster had certainly decayed into ruin, but the vault of Mender’s second acolyte looked like it had never been finished in the first place. Rusted picks, shovels, and masonry tools lay corroding in heaps around an unadorned square chamber. Everywhere there were signs that work on the tomb had been abandoned well before its completion. In addition to the abandoned tools, there was evidence that the initial stonework had been interrupted. A few half-realized carvings terminated in a large crack on the wall near a small pile of rubble, where it appeared the stonecutters had given up their work.

“First things first,” Ghostmaker said crisply, re-assuming command. “Let’s check our exit and make certain nothing’s gonna’ creep up on us, eh?”

A complete inventory of the tomb’s single square chamber took less than three minutes. Behind them, the fragmentary stone bridge jutted out over blackness. To one side, a stairway led upward, but a quick reconnaissance by Ghostmaker revealed that the ceiling there had caved in, blocking any ascent. And that, aside from the fragmentary remains of the tools and a few heaps of construction detritus which had never been cleared out, was that.

“Don’t make no sense,” Ghostmaker grumbled. “We hadda’ get here the hard way, over that gap. We know there ain’t nothin’ that direction, just the first tomb. But if this is the second,” he indicated the blocked stairwell, “then where’s the ‘tomb’ part?”

“My lord?” Malcom queried.

“He means a body,” Druin filled in. “Design symmetry again. To get through Duster’s tomb, we had to deal with his corpse. Technically, we could expect a related quest over here. But to lay the guy to rest, we need a body.”

“Even simpler than that, dear boy,” said Dinah. “Tombs are made to house the dead. If there is no body, then it is not, by definition, a tomb.” She poked at a pile of corroded tools, and the rusting metal flaked away under the pressure of her staff. “Clearly considerable labor was employed here, but the work was never completed.”

“I believe they were interrupted,” said Butterfly quietly. She too had been examining a pile of detritus, and now stood, displaying her find.

It was a bone, long and gray and clearly quite old, and even from across the chamber Druin could see that the ends had been violently snapped off.

They all contemplated the grisly trophy. Finally Ghostmaker asked, “where’d you find that then?”

Butterfly gestured at the pile of rubble nearest the crack in the wall – a crack Druin could now see was large enough to accommodate a person. Or something the size of a person.

Ghostmaker approached the crack cautiously. He unfolded a small pike from a leg sheath, and probed around for a moment. “It’s a tunnel,” he announced. “Goes down.” He flashed Druin a grin. “Ladies first.”

“First, on behalf of the various agencies involved in this investigation, let me thank you for your continued cooperation.” Blanks sounded sincere enough, but Wallace couldn’t help but wonder whether this might be just the sort of acting they taught in secret FBI training camps: how to portray a double agent, an international playboy, a perfectly gracious host. The coffee was delicious.

“And in the spirit of that cooperation,” Blanks was continuing smoothly, “I – that is, we – would like to ask you for some additional information which may be relevant to the case.”

“We’re already providing you full access to the system which Tenser has accessed,” Bernardo stuck in. Wallace had to carefully keep from shaking his head in disgust. Blanks might or might not be acting a part, but there was no way Bernardo Calloway was ever going to convince anyone of anything. The man sounded guilty as hell, and he hadn’t even been accused of anything yet.

“You have been very accommodating,” Blanks agreed, “but you are incorrect in your assessment. We know that Tenser has accessed the Archimago intranet and the house security system at this location, and possibly the other corporate offices. In addition, our technicians have determined that Tenser’s attacks on your system administrators could only have been carried out if he had – has – full access to the shell and root architecture.”

“So we’re entirely compromised,” Wallace declared. It was no surprise to him, of course, but he thought it best for the moment to let Blanks think that he was telling them something new.

“I am afraid so,” Blanks nodded. “And since we’re still not entirely certain of the threat posed by Mr. Tenser—”

“We need full access to everything,” Sumter interrupted suddenly. “All of it, every account, every file, every back-up. We know Tenser’s been mucking around with your data storage, and if he’s placed a code or classified information—“

“Agent Sumter!” Blanks barked. “Thank you for your input. I am certain that Mr. Calloway and his systems people understand the...peculiar gravity of the situation. Yes, Agent Sumter is entirely correct. Her team is going to need full access.”

Wallace nodded with what he hoped was a neutral expression, but his mind was racing. Clearly, all was not happy between the two agents, or perhaps their respective agencies...but Blanks, rather than pulling rank, was all but thrusting Sumter forward as the head of the investigation. What was he afraid of that might blow up in his face? And how could Wallace use it to keep them from shutting down the system and killing Archimago?

“Um, yes, I see.” Bernardo was waffling again, and Wallace had just about decided to nudge him forward when Marybeth spoke up.

“Is there any indication Mr. Tenser has transmitted any, uh, ‘codes or classified information’ through our system?”

Blanks considered the question carefully. “No, Ms. Langridge. Not yet.”

Marybeth adopted a look of innocent relief. “Thank goodness he’s only interested in the company files.”

“That’s what you think,” snorted Agent Sumter.

“Agent Sumter,” Blanks interjected much too quickly, “would you please provide the list of files and databases we’ll need to Mr. Calloway. You and Mr. Wallace will be given copies, Ms. Langridge, and we’d appreciate it if you’d notify your personnel.”

He signaled an end to the meeting by standing and gesturing towards the door. Sumter scowled, but slunk to the nearest terminal to produce smartpaper copies of the agencies’ latest demands.

That, Wallace thought as he gathered his copy and headed back to his office, had been interesting. Sumter had clearly slipped up by indicating that the agents knew Tenser had more irons in the fire than simple nostalgia for the game he’d helped create. But how much did they know about Tenser’s actual activities and motives? And how much did he, for that matter?

Blanks smiled at his guests as they shuffled out the door. Calloway was clearly as clueless as a cucumber, but Wallace and Langridge were up to their eyeballs in whatever Tenser had brewing. He’d known that Sumter, bull-headed and arrogant as she was, would be incapable of resisting baiting them with her suspicions. All he’d had to do was let an inkling of his actual annoyance with her shine through, and Wallace and Langridge no doubt suspected that the Agency had something on Tenser. A little nudge, and they’d no doubt run to Tenser at once to discuss it. And this time, he’d be listening.

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s a little dehydrated. Lips are cracked. Pulse up and down and all over the map. And he’s twitching a lot, which should at least keep him from developing micro-contractures or atrophy.”

“So you’d say he’s about normal?”

“Oh, yeah, about that.” Lynda Hunter flopped onto the couch next to her husband. “At least he’s young. I always get that kink in my neck when I log in for more than a few hours, and he’s been in there...what, six now?”

“Four, mama hen, just four,” Jake corrected her. “And he told me that his team had agreed on an eight hour maximum today, counting the lunch break earlier, so it won’t be much longer.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“As you pointed out, he’s young. You, on the other hand, might need a new virlo if that neck keeps bothering you.”

She swatted at him with a pillow. “That’s not what I meant. I meant this whole thing. The pressure has to be wearing him down pretty badly. How often does the FBI tell you they’re going to use you as a stalking horse for terrorists?”

“Potential terrorists,” Jake corrected her. “And they didn’t tell him that. What was it they said? They’d like his opinion as a ‘civilian expert?’ What a crock.”

“Oh I didn’t believe that part for a second. I don’t think Andrew did either. There’s no way the FBI can’t figure out how to monitor a computer system, and no way they’d rely on some random college student—”

“Even a brilliant one.”

“—Even a brilliant one, mama hen, to do their snooping for them. No, I figure they took the opportunity to bug the hell out of his setup because it was convenient for them. I just hope they are concerned enough to keep his part anonymous from any real threats.”

“Oh Jake, you don’t think they wouldn’t, do you?”

He shook his head. “I let Andrew agree to it, didn’t I?”

Lynda twisted the pillow in her hands. “Do you really think you could have stopped him?”

They sat in gloomy silence for a long while.

“Well that’s just French, that is. Absolutely brilliant. That’s
another
pair of boots gone.”

“You would not be having this problem if you would stick to conventional weaponry,” Dinah said scowling.

“At’s no fun,” Ghostmaker snorted. “If we gotta take out every damned dust-man in this whole bloody mountain to recover the bleedin’ bones, I’m gonna have fun with it.”

“It’s wasteful,” Dinah persisted. “And our resources are limited.”

“Element o’ surprise, love,” Ghostmaker snickered as he pulled off the offending boot, which trailed a broken spring mechanism attached to a retractable blade. “You stick one o’ these here beggars with a sword and they might go down. But you kick one and he splits in two, his friends sit up and take notice.”

“I was not aware that we were trying to attract notice,” Dinah growled back.

“Your old-fashioned ways are—“

“Tactical patterns become established for a
reason
...”

Druin tuned them out. Ghostmaker and Dinah had been rattling on at one another for almost an hour, ever since they’d crossed the bridge into this tomb. There were tactical differences, certainly, but underneath that was some kind of strange dance of dominance which interested him very little. That part of his brain not taken up with surviving was desperately wondering why a suspected terrorist like Marcus Tenser might be running them through a gauntlet, and the part of his brain not taken up with that was busy punishing himself for not revealing the potential danger to his teammates. As it was, their jockeying for authority interested him not at all. What interested him was the view from a certain ledge about fifty feet further into the mountain.