The Barsoom Project

She nibbled at his ear. “Oh, we’re allowed to celebrate too. Call it a moral victory.” Another, softer laugh. “Besides, Eviane deserves it. She’s been taking this whole thing so seriously. Then getting killed out, then brought back, and she’s so perfect, she never falls out of character! You’d think it was for real points.”

“Or real money with a piece of the gross. Eviane’s a strange one.”

“Oh, she’s nice. I like her.” Charlene paused. “Listen-you’re in Security. You must have seen her files. What do you know about her? Or is that classified?”

He laughed. “Not much to tell. She’s not an Actress, if that’s what you’re thinking. And Eviane isn’t her real name. But I didn’t pay much attention to the Gamer files before I jumped into the Game. Never saw her before.”

“What is her real name?”

He chucked her under the chin. “Now, that is classified.”

“Aw, pleeease.”

“Nope.”

She rolled him over on his back, and started looking for places to tickle. “Pretty please with moondust on top…”

“Help!” He was laughing uncontrollably now. “Dammit, stop taking my mind off work-” Her hands started moving slower, more surely, and Marty stopped laughing, suddenly relaxed. “Oh, bloody hell,” he said, and rolled her over.

“Careful, lover,” she said, eyes alight. “You’ll break something.”

“The only thing I’m breaking is training,” he said, and pulled her to him. He murmured into her breath, into lips just touching his, “My self-control is legendary.”

“Half history, half myth. You feel solid enough. Are you fragile?”

Blood was rushing in Charlene’s ears when they broke the kiss. Very distantly, she could hear the Gamers singing:

“ We will have a mighty orgy In the honor of Astarte It will be one helluva party And it’s good enough for me! Give me that old-time religion Give me that old-time religion Give me that old-time religion It’s good enough for me!”

Yes indeed! she thought contentedly. Yes indeed it was.

Everything that happened in the Game came to Dr. Vail. Everything, whether it was supposed to or not. Questions of morality or privacy meant little to Vail. Efficiency was everything, and it was efficient for him to know everything that went on. When. Where. What.

Who.

Dr. Vail’s jaw hung loose as he watched the monitors. Jagged green-on-green lines shaping hillscapes. Columns of numbers, color-coded. Max Sands and Michelle Sturgeon in a pile of clothing. Yarnall moving smoothly through the warm water. Trianna and Welsh testing a self-inflating mattress to destruction. Bowles in a circle of conversation, breaking off suddenly to bellow a chorus.

Vail looked stupid; he looked stunned. A camera watching him would have shown no more… but Vail’s mind was racing, correlating.

He had just learned something very strange.

But what was he to do with it? He would have to tell Griffin something.

Chapter Twenty-Five

MADELEINE

Down the corridor, down the long, dark hall framed with steel bars and steel doors, punctuated with steel windows peering out onto a steel courtyard, Tony McWhirter heard screams.

Likely it was a wirehead in need of his juice. It probably wasn’t a beating. It probably wasn’t a rape.

Not tonight. Not again.

For the ten millionth time, Tony cursed his stupidity, cursed the day that an olive-skinned woman tempted him with an unusual proposition.

One bad, stupid decision could twist a life completely out of true.

It had started out as a lark… as a hack, a theft of information, a bit of industrial espionage committed in a deeper reality… like Dream Park’s Games.

And Tony McWhirter, would-be soldier of fortune, was sent to Chino Men’s Prison to pay his debt to society.

The words and symbols on the computer screen blurred out. He stopped, rested his head against the keyboard, tried to find a little breathing space.

Two more years. God in heaven. Two more years of this place if he didn’t make parole.

At first he had been able to con himself into looking at it as another great adventure, filled with sinister secrets and a certain noble romanticism.

Then Acacia stopped writing.

Because of Alex Griffin!

Tony rubbed his wrists. They were numb, often felt cold. The doctors said that it was in his mind, that there had been no nerve damage-no permanent nerve damage caused by the jagged chunk of glass and the frantic midnight attempt to take his own life. The cold was just an externalization of the emotional void within him.

Hang on! Two more years. Maybe less, if you can get this, he reminded himself. Hell, you’re Tony McWhirter, boy genius, soldier of fortune, hacker supreme. You can get through any defense system in the world. Alex Griffin knows that. That’s why he comes to you with the tough problems. That’s why he’s done things to make Chino tolerable.