Burning Bright

Lioe turned to face the speaker, a stocky, dark-haired man with a horus-eye tattoo on one cheek, half concealing the delicate data socket.

“Thanks,” she said, and Gueremei, coming up behind the man, cleared her throat gently.

“I don’t think you’ve met Davvi—Davvi Medard-Yasine, our main owner.”

Lioe murmured something, and Medard-Yasine grinned, rather sheepishly.

“Sorry, Na Lioe, I’ve seen enough of your work on the intersystems nets that I feel as though I know you. But it was a great session tonight.”

“I enjoyed it,” Lioe said, and waited.

“I wonder,” Medard-Yasine began, and turned a shoulder to the other players, deftly easing her away from the others, “if you’d consider coming to a temporary agreement with us here at Shadows. I understand from Lia that you’re only on planet for half a week?”

“Five days at minimum,” Lioe said, and then remembered that Burning Bright kept a ten-day week. “The ship I’m crewing for is in dock for recalibration of the sail projectors, so I’m dependent on the dockyards. They told my boss it would take five to eight days.”

Medard-Yasine nodded. “Would it be presumptuous to assume you meant to spend most of that time gaming?”

“This is Burning Bright,” Lioe said, with a smile to take the sting out of her words. “I’d call that a reasonable assumption. Yes, I was hoping to get in as many sessions as possible.”

“After tonight’s session,” Medard-Yasine said, “we’d be interested in anything else you might have ready to run. We’d be willing to offer twenty-five percent of the fees, and free machine time to prepare any new ideas.”

“That’s very generous,” Lioe said, and meant it. Most Gaming clubs made a good proportion of their income from the fees they charged for use of the club’s equipment. A session could be outlined easily enough on a Gameboard, but fine-tuning the details took the raw power—and often the more extensive libraries—available through the clubs. It had cost her over a hundred credits to complete just the prison segments of Ixion’s Wheel.

“We’re very interested,” Medard-Yasine said.

Lioe grinned. “Would this be an exclusive deal?”

“We’d want it that way,” Medard-Yasine agreed.

“I see.” She hadn’t really meant much by that, was just buying time, but Medard-Yasine’s thick brows drew together slightly.

“We’d also be prepared to pay an exclusive-use fee, for Ixion’s Wheel, on a time-limited basis.”

“You are serious,” Lioe said, smiling, and Medard-Yasine nodded. His face was completely without expression, and Lioe realized for the first time that he meant to buy her—her presence at the club, as a session leader—and her scenario, whatever it cost him. It was an unfamiliar feeling, and somewhat unsettling; she wondered if she had been selling herself short, back on Callixte. That was an unpleasant thought, and unproductive; she dragged herself back to the business at hand. “What kind of a time period?”

“The length of your stay,” Medard-Yasine said promptly. “Or, since you’re not sure how long that will be, a week—ten days. We’re prepared to offer you five hundred real, over and above your cut of the session fees, and of course the free machine time, on a second-priority basis, if you’ll let us have an exclusive license on Ixion’s Wheel for the next ten days. And, of course, if you’ll run at least five sessions for us.”

Lioe hesitated, juggling numbers in her head. She could expect to clear about fifty realper session, if Shadows’ fees were in line with the rest of the club system’s; that plus the five hundred would pay all her bills at the transients’ hostel, and the machine time would let her explore some ideas that had been nagging at her for most of the trip, ideas that sprang directly from Ixion’s Wheel… She curbed her enthusiasm. It also meant that someone else would be running her scenario several times a day, without her having any control at all over how it was handled. But then, most of those players would be household Gamers anyway, people who couldn’t handle the scenario without a highly interventionist session leader, not at all the kind of players she wanted to be bothered with anymore. “What if it turns out that people want to play more than five sessions, and my schedule lets me handle it?” she asked, still playing for time.

Medard-Yasine said, “From what you’ve told me, I don’t know how likely that is.” He grinned, and looked suddenly years younger. “With Storm coming—the Carnival, that is—I’d expect you to want to see some of the celebration. Frankly, I don’t expect my full-timers to do much work, this time of year.” Gueremei gave a short bark of laughter, and Medard-Yasine gave her a conspiratorial glance. “But if you do find time to give us some extra sessions, I’ll match whatever you make from fees.”

Lioe nodded. “All right,” she said. “It sounds like a good deal. I’m willing to try it.”

“Excellent,” Medard-Yasine said, and smiled again. “I’ll draw up a contract, and you can drop by anytime tomorrow—”

“Anytime?” Gueremei said, and Medard-Yasine grimaced.