The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

For the beach house and Sundriver-coupй skimmer were all hers.

“We’ve come a long way,” she said. “Hey, that sounds dramatic, doesn’t it?”

“Both of us.” Ives touched his new moustache: it had come out tinged with grey, and he was not sure whether he would keep it. “I’m glad I met you, sweetheart.”

“Likewise, dearest. Shall we walk to the end?”

“Why not?” As they walked on, he began to whistle softly-the Pattern theme, from Amber: The Musical -in counterpoint to the rolling surf.

“Listen.” Gus squeezed his arm. “Are you doing anything tonight?”

A middle-aged couple in matching Hawaiian shirts and baggy shorts were staring at her and Ives, close enough to hear. She should have known the kind of answer she would get.

“Wearing you out, all night long. There’s a position I’ve been meaning to-”

But the couple walked on then, offended, and there was no point in completing the sentence.

“Oops.” Ives raised his eyebrows. “Was it something I said?”

“Ha. Is it just me, or are people more repressed than when I was younger? Even here?”

“Probably.” Ives looked gloomy for a moment, then cheered up, and gestured at the wide ocean. “Look at that. Are we lucky to be alive, or what?”

“Yes, lucky.” She squeezed his arm again. “Thanks for being alive, my friend.”

She was nearly 25, and single once more.

Saved from a big mistake.

“We’re good for each other.”

“Oh, yes.”

Their minds were both similar and complementary. When Gus developed the concepts behind Fractal of the Beast, it was Ives who helped brainstorm the network of developing relationships among the characters. She devised the aliens’ forms, he worked out the structure of the shadow organization which fought them.

She coded the game; he negotiated the license rights.

From that first product, Ives insisted that he make no money directly. He already had his earnings from lucrative consultancy; she had nothing. “But I’ll be rich,” he said, as they signed a deal giving him 20 percent of earnings from any future games they might develop together. “And so will you.”

For the first six months, download figures were minimal. Then, in a fit of nostalgia or desperation, one of the big webnets started promoting a remake of the old X-Files shows, and the whole half-forgotten alien-invasion meme had come alive once more, and sales had rocketed.

Those fictional invaders would prove more important than anyone realized.

The alien hunt in the game proceeded through many levels. The stories were labyrinthine; a dark and gloomy sense of being watched was present in almost every scene; and there was action, with tricky clues to decipher. Only three players, since the game’s release over four years before, ever reached the final level. (Unless there was someone else, with an offline copy of the game, who never hooked in with the rest of the world.)

But three users’ systems had automatically mailed her when they deciphered the final puzzle. She sent each of them a rather substantial amount of money, though the game did not advertise the existence of such a prize.

One of the three was Arvin Rubens, a protege of Danny Hills-and Arvin himself, when still a teenager, had met Hills’s legendary friend, Richard Feynman-and he transferred the money back to her, with a note saying that he had no need for it.

“I’d only get myself into trouble,” he said, in an updated Feynmanism, “by spending it on wine, women and a new holoterminal.”

He also invited both her and Ives to come and work with him in Caltech.

Sunshine, sea. She could train in JKD at the Inosanto Academy. Why would she want to stay in old, cold Oxford?

“Even if you don’t come,” Rubens had told her, “you’ve already helped my research.”

For the game’s final solution involved working out the aliens’ true nature. They appeared in many shapes and guises, but the key lay in realizing that each was a different projection of one fractal shape-a single being of dimension 6.66-into ordinary spacetime. Just as, in the Pickover book which Gus had read in childhood, five disconnected blobs appearing on the surface of a Flatland balloon might really be fingerprints from a single, otherworldly hand.

And the underlying equation was useful because it came directly out of Gus’s own research at Oxford, into the fundamental nature of the spacetime continuum.

“Come back to my place,” she said to Ives, as they turned back from the end of the boardwalk. “I’ve got something to show you.”

“Whoopee.” Then, “House or lab, do you mean?”

“I mean the lab, darling. Sorry to disappoint.”

As they passed a row of bright pastel houses, a drunk came shambling up to them, hand outstretched. If you give me money, the display on his write-capable t-shirt read, I’ll spend it on booze. But at least I’m honest.

“Here you are.”

Blinking in the sunshine, the drunk stood looking at the money in his hand-from both of them-as Gus and Ives walked on.

“If we asked him to tell us how he ended up here,” said Ives, “I wonder what he’d say.”

“Let’s not go there.” Gus used her watch to summon a cab.

“All right.”