Burning Bright

“Yeah.” The pilot manipulated her controls, and the helicab lifted easily, pivoting toward the cliff edge and the descent to Underface. She was on-line, Ransome saw, bound into the cab’s systems so that her arms and legs seemed to end in the black boxes of the control consoles; more wires, a complex, braided band of them, fell from the junction box at the base of her skull. Her hair was shaved around that connection, but the rest of it fell in a scarlet tail from an untidy topknot. “I wish I wasn’t working.”

“You’re a Gamer, then?” Ransome asked, and saw, too late, the pins studding her left sleeve. MI-Net, Court Life V, Vimar Nessen’s Game, RedApple, Old Network, and dozens of others: she was a Gamer, all right, and a committed one.

She didn’t seem offended, however, just shrugged that shoulder to make the pins glitter in the light from the instrument panel. “That’s right.”

“So what have you heard about this Lioe?” Ransome asked. This wasn’t his style at all—this was the kind of information he preferred to find on the nets—but the chance was too good to pass up.

The pilot shrugged again, both shoulders this time. “What haven’t I heard, really? Frederick’s Glory got an Adouble-star on Callixte, which those judges don’t hand out like candy, and she wrote it. She’s supposed to just be running a sample session for Davvi tonight, but what everyone’s saying is that it’s turning out to be something kind of special.” She looked sideways, into the space that showed her the passenger camera view. “What I heard from one woman was, she’s pulled one of Ambidexter’s characters out of storage, playing him as a major character.”

Ransome nodded, caught up in spite of himself in the old habits of the Game. “Desir of Harmsway. I was watching for a while on the nets.”

“ Sha-mai.” The pilot’s curse was more admiring than anything. “Ambidexter’s going to murder her. Very God, I wish I wasn’t working.”

Ransome gave her a bitter grin. If he’d ever wanted confirmation of how the white-sickness had changed him in the past three years, he had it now—not that he’d really needed it. Even a year ago, before the disease really took hold, she would have recognized him as Ambidexter, even if he hadn’t been in the clubs for a year or so before that… He shook the thought away, annoyed that he’d even acknowledged it, made himself pay attention to the pilot.

“That’s assuming Ambidexter’s still around, of course,” she went on, quite cheerfully. “There was talk he was dead, not long back.”

“I don’t think so,” Ransome said, with involuntary pique, and the pilot shrugged again. The helicab banked sideways into the airpath that paralleled the Old Dike; its lights, and the glow of the shops on Warden Street, filled the cab’s interior with patches of bright color.

“The work on the nets under that name hasn’t been very like him, that’s for sure.”

Ransome drew breath for an indignant response— how dare she accuse me of not being myself?—and stopped suddenly, wondering if this was Cella’s doing. It wouldn’t be unlike her, to whisper that he was dead, that his work was not his own. He opened his mouth, trying to figure out how to phrase the question, but the helicab tilted again, and he realized that the pilot’s attention was once again on her craft. After a moment, his mouth twisted into a wry smile. That would be very like Cella, to assume that the rumor of his death would bring him back onto the nets— and it would have worked, too, if I hadn’t been so busy with other things.

The helicab tipped again, responding to wind or air currents or an unseen traffic signal, and the door panel was filled with the city lights. Ransome stared, caught once again by the breathtaking beauty: the tidy geometry of the well-lit squares and canals of Dock Road, bounded by the twin lines of the Straight to the north and the Crooked to the south. In the distance, the broad triangle that was the landformed extension of Mainwarden Island jutted into the Water, dividing the massive stream into two channels. A line of light ran from apex to base, broke slightly at the edge of the low cliff that rose to Mainwarden Island proper: Compass Road, where the Lockwarden Society had their main offices. The Society’s certification officers, the elite of the Wet Districts around the Water, generally lived in the tidy, decent neighborhoods to either side of that main thoroughfare. The Great Island light blazed at steady intervals from the tip of the Extension, directing the all-but-invisible traffic that filled the Water even at this hour.