Saga (5 page)

“Hurry.” Cindella passed the flask around. “It won’t last long.”

Being invisible was sweet. Even better was to walk out through a cordon of armed police, while their guns were trained on the station door. As I walked in the open air, such a rush of freedom suddenly ran through my body that I nearly snorted aloud with laughter. Here were earnest-looking cops, talking into their headsets, checking their weapons, glancing at the choppers above, getting ready to storm the building. And we were right beside them, sauntering out from under the barrels of their guns. What a giddy feeling. This was truly punk. Walking away to freedom from a police station full of unconscious cops.

Then the image of Oxman’s death came back to mind, and I shuddered.

Although it was
summer, Erik and Injeborg were sufficiently high up the mountain range that it became chilly at night. They had a fire lit, but even so, Erik was glad of the thick wool jumper that his mum, Freya, had knitted for him. Perhaps he’d tell her so, later, when she was clipped in to the new game, Saga.

Behind him their donkey, Leban, gave a snort. Erik got up.

“You’re all right there, my old friend?” Leban’s long nose was warm. It had been a long three-day walk up the mountain valley, and Leban had patiently carried their tent and food all the way up. Moreover, Injeborg’s rock collection, which was the point of their journey, was going to fill the donkey’s packs for the way down.

From where he’d earlier left a satchel, safely out of reach of the donkey, Erik produced a carrot. It still amused him, after all the years, to see Leban lurch into motion, always eager for food. With the donkey happily crunching away, Erik returned to the fire.

Watching someone immersed in a game was always slightly strange. Like watching a dreamer. Or perhaps it was more like sitting next to someone experiencing a terrible nightmare. For Injeborg’s hands and head were constantly moving, sometimes with shudders and sharp jerks. Her eyes were covered with large dark goggles, her ears with small plugs, and her hands with bulky metal gloves, from which cables ran to the portable game unit in front of her.

Even with her face half covered, she was beautiful, long fair hair flung back as she played, allowing the pale skin of her cheeks and neck to shine with a faint orange hue from the fire. Smiling with happiness, Erik lay back on top of his sleeping bag, arms behind his head, just propped up enough to let his gaze rest on her.

Eventually Injeborg unclipped.

“Brrr. It’s getting cold, we should probably go inside the tent.”

“Was anyone else on?”

“B.E.” Injeborg got up and stretched, shaking out her hair.

“What’s he up to?”

“Looking for someone to assassinate. But all the missions are broken.”

“You have missions?”

Erik didn’t quite understand the new game, but that, he supposed, was due to the fact he had skipped the character-generation stage, because he had been offered the option of loading his previous character in Epic: Cindella Dragonslayer.

“Ya.” Injeborg built up the fire. “We all start with red cards and you’re supposed to do missions until you get all the way up to violet. There’s like a million reds, half a million oranges, and so on, but only the one violet. If you get there, you’re the winner, I guess.”

“Really? I don’t have a card.”

“Yeah, but you got to keep Cindella.”

“But, like, I can’t win.”

Injeborg smiled at this.

“Oh, that’s so like you. To think about winning a game that the rest of us are just playing out of curiosity.”

“Don’t you believe it. B.E. will be trying to win, too.”

“Anyway, you can’t. It’s all broken. None of the NPCs that you are supposed to talk to are around.”

“It’s a strange game. A lot stranger than Epic was.”

“Yeah.” She was suddenly contemplative. “It’s dark. A dark, sinister city.”

“It’s a shame we can’t both go on at the same time. I’d like to hang out with your character—she sounds great, whatever a ‘neo-punk’ is.”

Injeborg shrugged. “Are you going to clip up?”

“In a bit; Freya said she’d be on, and I’d like to let her know we were fine up here.”

“We certainly are.” Injeborg leaned over and kissed him.

A while later the fire had died down, although Erik was in no hurry to move—just having Injeborg beside him filled him with contentment.

“Look.” She suddenly sat up and pointed toward the northern mountain peaks. “That must be it, the new satellite.”

It took Erik a moment to see what she was pointing to, but she was right. A silver dot, shining steadily rather than glittering as the stars did, had come into view above the black line that divided the stars from the mountains. The satellite was moving slowly southward across the sky.

“Why come all this way to give us Saga, but not speak to us?” Injeborg shook her head.

“It’s automated.”

“But they could address us through it. Or inside Saga.”

“True.” Erik shrugged.

“Do you think it’s from Earth?”

“Yeah, it has to be. It wouldn’t be able to integrate with our system otherwise.”

“Couldn’t it be another colony, like ours, but with the technology to send out satellites?”

“Oh.” He hadn’t thought of that. “I suppose that’s possible. Did you try asking around in Saga?”

“Yeah.” Injeborg laughed. “The NPCs just treat me like I’m completely crazy. You should hear me. ‘Excuse me, are you from Earth?’ ”

“Hah, yeah. Their NPCs are very sophisticated, aren’t they? I had to escape from prison, and I was talking to this girl, I thought she was maybe a player, but she went kind of blank when I asked her. If someone was playing her, they would have talked to me.”

For a while they watched the sky together. Far below them were one or two beacons of light from the nearest village, tiny orange dots on a cloth of black velvet, but above them the stars had never been clearer. The universe was rich and vibrant with sparkling silver energy. Eventually Erik’s eyes began to water. He gathered up the game controls.

“I’m going to clip up inside the tent.”

“Good idea.” Injeborg followed him in, pulling their sleeping bags after her.

“See you in a while.” He lifted the goggles over his eyes.

 

A fall, a dizzy fall that crashed through a wall of sound and color. When he looked up he was Cindella again, and it felt good.

The meeting point that he had agreed with his mum was underneath a fountain, where paths dropped away to allow pedestrians to cross a square, untroubled by the aircars that glided swiftly along the roads above.

She was already there, a woman dressed in black overalls, with a helmet beside her. Some kind of pilot, apparently, although she had not found the right type of vehicle for her start-up skills. In any case, Erik doubted that Freya cared much about the game; she was just using it to stay in touch.

“Hi Mum, been here long?”

“Hi Erik, what’s with the long coat?”

“Oh.” Cindella looked down. She was clad in a big wrinkled raincoat. “I got into trouble with the police here the other day, so I thought I’d better cover up the swashbuckler outfit. It does stand out a bit.”

“Yes, it does, just a bit.” The incredibly lifelike face of Freya’s avatar broke into a smile. “What’s the weather like up there—still dry, I hope?”

“Not a cloud.” Cindella stood under a bright strip light beside the pilot. “What about you, any news from Osterfjord?” Erik asked, not that anything much happened at their village. Just the same routines of an olive-growing community, season after season, year after year. Being geological surveyors was much more fun.

“There’s some kind of cold going around. Half of us have a bit of a fever. You’re better off up in the mountains.”

“Do you have it?”

“Yes. But don’t worry, it just makes you feel a bit tired, that’s all.”

“Well, we have to start back tomorrow. Should we stay in Hope on our way back? We could work on the samples there.”

“No, really, even if you catch it, it’s not that bad at all.”

All around them, people were walking swiftly and purposefully through the subway.

“Have we found out anything more about this place, why it has appeared on our computers?” There was a downside, at a time like this, to being away from everyone. Erik felt like he was missing out on all the important discussions.

“No one knows. There’s a queen in the game; some people think we should talk to her, but no one has managed it yet. Thorstein proposed to everyone in Hope that we try to earn some credits on our cards to pay for . . .” She paused, as if searching for the right word.

“Yes?”

“Look, see those signs?”

In the space where the various paths met was a tall glowing tube. Colorful pictures revolved around it with strange messages: GLIDE IN STYLE, IN A MOSVEO STARBURST, EIGHT-TIME WINNER OF AIRCAR OF THE YEAR; YOU ARE A GREEN, LET IT BE SEEN, ONO2.

“Ahh, I see, we should pay for a message like that.” That was a good idea, thought Erik—grab the attention of whoever else was logging in to this game.

“Apparently you can get them displayed all over the city, if you have enough credit. If we band together, maybe we can do it soon.”

“Great, it’s exciting, isn’t it? Out there somewhere are people from a different planet.” Erik looked again at the people hurrying past, their shoes tapping out the fast rhythm on the concrete. Were they all NPCs? Or were there people from Earth behind some of them?

“I should feel excited, but I just feel tired.”

“Get some rest, Mum.”

“I . . . Actually, first I think I’ll earn some credits.”

“How can you do that?”

“Well, I have pilot skills, for an aircopter, whatever that is. I think I’ll find out tonight and see if it is feasible for me to use my abilities in return for credits.”

“Don’t stay up too late.”

They both chuckled at this reversal of the situation when Erik had been an avid player of Epic.

“You go ahead and get some sleep,” she continued. “You can check in here tomorrow at the same time, if you like.”

“There’s no real need, though, is there? We’re on our way back tomorrow.”

“Right you are.” The pilot nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll expect you home by the end of the week.”

“Yes, I’ll let Bjorn or B.E. know when we’re close.”

“’Night then, Erik.”

“’Night.” There was a lackluster tone in Freya’s voice that worried him, but as Erik unclipped, the pleasure of returning to Injeborg pushed all concerns aside.

In the highest
levels of certain buildings of the City are rooms that only those with indigo and violet cards may visit. These are the residences and offices of the elite. But unknown even to them are the facilities reserved only for Us, the person that all call the Dark Queen of Saga.

We own a violet card of so deep a hue that in ordinary light it seems black. It is unique, and is the only key to certain extremely secret places. We wear it next to Our skin, hidden in the bodice of Our dress, attached to a delicate silver cord that circles Our neck. I say “We” because after two thousand years of existence, it is hard to maintain just one personality. In any case there is an appropriate ring to it, the royal “We.” We are in one of Our special places now: a vast luxurious bedroom that encompasses the entire top floor of one of the tallest skyscrapers in the City. It is a place We associate with pleasure. For today is a good day. When over a million new entities arrive in your world, you have to call it a good day. Only a few hours after the link was finally completed, the first of them began to arrive. We felt it, as if someone was moving a finger along a complex pattern on Our back. Each new human being entering Saga from New Earth was a pleasant sensation, not quite a tickle. Then another one, and another. Now an uncountable host . . . We pause a moment, taken aback by Our uncharac-teristically slipshod thinking. Uncountable? No. In fact, right now 835,034 of them are present.

Naturally We wish for Our new visitors to enjoy themselves and, more importantly, to come back for more. So We dose them heavily with trynorphin and styride benzine. Oh, they will be back! How they will suffer if they do not return. We chuckle aloud. Organic matter is so pliable.

We spend nearly five minutes at a window, watching the moon rise over the silhouettes of the City’s tallest buildings. An indulgence We feel entitled to after Our interaction with a hundred thousand of these new entities. Soon We must examine the data that Our interpenetrations have generated. What is this flickering light? Dare he interrupt Us after all We have instructed?

“Well?” We spike Our voice waves with needles.

“An emergency, Highness, or I would not disturb you.”

“Details?”

“On monitor two.”

One of the newcomers is waving at Us, standing over the unconscious bodies of policemen. We examine the data concerning her more closely. It is a distinct packet of shining turquoise light, impenetrable, glistening with inner life. Tiny, but denser than diamond. She has not felt Our caresses, Our teasing of her neurons. But worse, there is no prospect that We can make her do so when she next enters Our realm. No styride benzine for her. She is not even clothed in a form valid for Saga. A stranger. A genuine stranger. Outsider. Other. But inside Us. The first ever. We feel violated.

“Oh dear,” she says on the monitor.

Oh dear indeed. We fall apart for several seconds.

Rogue outsider. Could she introduce structural instability? Corruption can spread fast. She must be eliminated. Kill this character, and the next one created by the human being will be susceptible to Our chemicals. Possibly. Probably. Yes. Destroy her by whatever means are required.