Burning Bright

Ransome sprawled in his chair, caught in his web of images that all but blocked out the cityscape spread out below the loft windows. A solitary firework burst into a flower of golden rain—someone on the far side of the Water getting a head start on Storm—and he watched it fall and fade into a last trail of sparks, ignoring the dancing images. Most of them were Game nets—he was trying to do what Chauvelin wanted—but his heart wasn’t in it. There was nothing new in the Game, had been nothing new for years, only the same sterile repetitions, theme and variations all gone stale with overuse. His eyes stole to the image sitting alone to the left of his chair, a direct feed from one of his dataspheres. The last of the tiny stone heads looked back at him, a faint, sly smile on its carved mouth. Idly, he reached into a secondary control space, flicked on the controls that would allow the Imani Formstone Works to produce copies of his originals. The head looked back at him, caught now in a maze of numbers and guidelines. It had taken him most of the morning to find a workshop that would admit it could do the job in the time required—and the hefty surcharge, twice what the job should actually cost, was the only reason the shop manager had agreed at all. But the ambassadorial accounting system had accepted the charges, and he was left to deal with the Game. Voices babbled from the floor speakers, no channel given priority; Ransome made a face at the noise, but did not bother to adjust the tuning.

A light flashed in communications space, and at the same time an identifying glyph crackled in the air overhead. Ransome sighed, recognizing the image—knowing too well that the caller was the kind who did not give up—and muted his images with a wave of a gloved hand. With the other hand, he reached into the main control space to connect himself with the communications channel. “What the hell do you want, Sanci?”

“About fucking time, Ransome.”

There had been no delay. Ransome sighed again, shoved the familiar face—sharp chin framed by a short and tidy beard, eyes always slightly narrowed, as though he were looking into a bright light—to one side of the Game net images. “What do you want?”

“Have you been tracking the Game nets—the Old Network, by any chance?” Sanci smiled. “You might want to tune in.”

“I doubt it,” Ransome said.

Sanci’s smile widened, and Ransome realized the other man was tracking his net hookups. “Someone’s playing with your toys.”

“What channel?”

“The mainline feed out of Shadows.”

Ransome shoved Sanci’s image farther to his left, reached into control space to fiddle with the icons hanging there. He opened a connection to the Old Network, not even thinking of the costs. Shadows was easy to find, its distinctive icon flashing to signal an interesting session in progress, and he brought it on-line, feeding the image into a small space directly in front of his eyes. Figures moved in an unfamiliar, cell-like room, altogether too like Jericho’s prison system. He reached for the session precis even as he recognized two of the templates. Lord Faro was an old favorite, and so was Ibelin Belfortune, and if they both were there… He flicked the precis into prominence, skimmed quickly through the screen. Desir of Harmsway’s name seemed to leap out at him.

“Who’s running this?” he said aloud, and felt rather than saw the malice in Sanci’s look.

“I knew you’d be interested in this one. And it’s not a fill-in-the-background session, either. That’s Ixion’s Wheel you’re looking at.”

I put those characters on Ixion’s Wheel to keep them out of other people’s hands. And Desir of Harmsway is my character, my property—more than that, my creation. Who the hell does this session leader think s/he is, using my persona in a session? Ransome bit back his instinctive reaction—Sanci didn’t deserve the satisfaction—and said again, “Who is it?”

Sanci sighed, rather theatrically. “Woman named Lioe, out of the Republic. She did the Frederick’s Glory scenario everyone was so hot about.”

Ransome said, “She’s good, or so I hear.” His hands were busy in the control space, expanding the picture, so that hand-high figures moved in a cube of space half a meter square.

“Good enough?” Sanci murmured, still with that knowing smile, and Ransome managed a shrug.

“It’s possible, I suppose. I don’t follow the Game that closely these days.”