Gamerunner (22 page)

‘I need you to promise me something,’ Daed said, so quietly, suddenly, that Rick only heard the consonants. ‘Will you?’

‘What?’

‘Promise first,’ Daed said. And laughed, as if he’d made a private joke.

Rick opened his mouth to say
no
.

‘
Promise
me
.’ Daed’s hand tightened on Rick’s wrist, grinding the bones together. ‘This is important. Trust me.’

Rick’s tongue pressed against his front teeth, getting ready for the
n
. The world blurred and dripped. He thought of everything Daed had let happen — Athene, the mirror cell, Perdy — and wanted to chew up the word
trust
and spit it back at him.

Daed said, ‘You’re my son, Rick, and I love you. Trust me. Please.’

Rick blinked. Water rolled down his cheeks and dripped off his chin. He felt it soaking into his collar. When he licked his lips he tasted salt, not eucalyptus. He said, ‘
What?
’

Daed gave him a look that could be a smile. Through the fog of steam his face looked half rubbed out. Another minute and he’d have disappeared entirely.

‘Light of my life,’ he said. ‘Apple of my eye. Of course I love you, Rick. Otherwise I’d have strangled you long ago.’

Silence. Wet, hot, blind silence. Rick ran his hand over the slick warm tiles, pushing with his fingertips like he was trying to find a handhold. He breathed in, trying to imprint everything on his memory: the smell of the steam and his wet clothes, the feel of water soaking into his collar, Daed’s hand on his wrist . . .
Apple of my eye
. Rick would’ve thought that was sarcasm, before.

And he said, ‘Yes, I promise, Daed. Anything. Whatever you say. I promise.’

Daed breathed out, so long and so deeply it could have been his last breath. The steam danced. He said, ‘The Maze expansion isn’t safe. There’s a malfunction. Promise me you won’t run the Maze until I tell you it’s OK.’

Rick didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that. ‘But — the malfunction —’ He coughed and had to swallow. ‘Wait. You haven’t fixed the malfunction?’

‘Not the same malfunction. Yours was just the iTank wiring.’

‘So —’

‘So promise.’ Daed leant forward, so the contours of his face loomed through the steam. ‘It’s not the iTank, it’s the Maze. I’ll get someone to rewire your iTank, there won’t be any problem with that. You can play the demos all you want, any of the solo player games. But not the Maze.’

‘There’s a malfunction in the Maze? You’re launching the new expansion while there’s still a malfunction?’

‘Please, Rick, it’s rather tiresome to have to repeat everything.’

‘But —’

‘We’re in a steam room, Rick, let’s not get hung up on the details. Promise me you won’t go into the Maze. It’s important.’

Rick almost agreed, right then. But he was still struggling to work it out. The Maze wasn’t safe. They were launching it anyway. ‘Does Paz know?’

‘Yes,’ Daed said. ‘Well. More or less.’ But he didn’t sound worried; just impatient. ‘Rick —’

‘But you’re going to fix it? The malfunction?’

‘Rick.’ Muscles flickered over Daed’s jaw. Then he reached out and linked his fingers behind Rick’s skull, pulling his head forward. ‘Just promise me.
Now
.’

‘All right, I promise,’ Rick said. ‘But how soon will it be fixed?’

Daed kept his hands where they were and looked into Rick’s face. Rick stared back, wondering what Daed could see in his eyes. The veil of steam between them rippled and thinned.

‘Thank you.’

‘That’s OK,’ Rick said, and suddenly he was scared that he’d promised something bigger than he knew.

Silence. Then Daed got up. Rick heard the moisture dripping off his clothes as he moved. He wondered if Daed had ever said
thank you
to him before.

Daed reached out and pulled him up by the wrist. Rick could feel him trembling, right up into his shoulder. He was afraid to let him take his weight; but afraid not to, too.

He didn’t let himself think. He said, ‘You’re OK, aren’t you, Daed? With Asterion?’

Daed’s hand tightened and loosened again, like a spasm. ‘What about Asterion? What do
you
know about Asterion?’

‘I —’ Rick got to his feet. ‘Nothing. I mean . . . only what you said about it. That it makes you —’
Immortal
sounded too dramatic, but he couldn’t think of another word. ‘It stops you dying. Daed . . .’

‘Stop worrying.’ Daed opened the door of the hammam and the cold air swirled over Rick’s face and tingled on his lips. ‘I’m OK.’

‘You were sick,’ Rick said. ‘You kept coughing, and —’ But he still coughed, didn’t he? He still looked like he was being eaten from inside.

‘I’m OK.’

‘You were sick,’ Rick said again, as if it was a game.

‘Shut
up
!’ Daed rounded on him. His hand was raised, at the height of Rick’s face. ‘Gods . . . you don’t know anything about it. Asterion is —’ He stopped, suddenly, and when he blinked the condensation rolled down his face like tears. ‘Rick. Just do what I say, and everything will be fine. You keep that promise, OK?’

‘OK.’ Rick felt like he’d heard
OK
so many times it didn’t mean anything any more.

Daed looked at him for a long time. He let his hand fall, slowly. A wisp of steam coiled round his wrist and faded. Then he walked away, without a word. As he went past the corner of the swimming pool he glanced down, and the shark rose a little and flicked its tail, as if in greeting.

Rick watched him go. At the last minute, he said, ‘Daed?’

‘What?’ He didn’t turn round; just halted, his hand poised over the comms panel. His shoulders were sagging.

‘Is it a real shark?’

‘What?’ Now he did turn.

‘In the — under the pool. It’s not real, is it?’

Daed’s eyes narrowed. He said, ‘Have you ever seen it being fed?’

‘No, but — but you can’t see right to the bottom. You can’t see the shark all the time, only when it surfaces.’ Rick could feel the blood tingling in his cheeks, as warm as the wall of steam behind him. But you
can’t
see all the way down, he thought. It
could
be a real shark . . .

A fractional pause; as if Daed was listening for something Rick couldn’t hear. Then he said, ‘Of course it’s not a real shark, Rick. Relax.’

‘Oh.’ He was disappointed, somehow: that the world wasn’t scarier, nastier, beyond his cell of glass. Stupid.

‘Honestly,’ Daed said. ‘A real shark. Would I?’ He didn’t seem to expect an answer. He leant his hand on the comms panel, until the bones shone white through his skin. The door slid open.

Then he turned round and smiled at Rick. It was a strange smile; on anyone else Rick would have thought it was affectionate. No, not just affectionate.
Loving
. It was a gift, a miracle of a smile. It made Rick take a deep breath.

Daed said, ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘See you later,’ Rick said. ‘Downstairs — in the party . . .’ He took a step forward, and another, until the hammam door swung shut behind him and he was trembling in the cold. His wet clothes were sticking to him. ‘Daed —’

‘Goodbye, Rick.’

And then he went, and Rick was left standing on the brink of the swimming pool, shivering.

Chapter 21

The Nucleus was full of people; more people than Rick had ever seen in one place. They were in black and white, most of them, but their faces and hair were so bright and varied Rick couldn’t work out what was GM and what was make-up. They milled about, talking too loudly — at least someone had turned the sound-deadener off — and occasionally glancing over their shoulders at the giant staircase as if it gave them the creeps, even with all the lights and the decorations. Their champagne glasses were round-bottomed, with the same trendy curve as the iTank. There were already a few empty glasses on the floor, spinning and rolling as people caught them with their feet. Rick paused where he was, ignoring someone hissing impatiently behind him as she came through the ticket gates, and just
looked
. Gods.

And he saw that the decorations were a kind of sci-fi version of the iTank demo: skeleton trees, leaves of copper foil drifting down from the roof, 2D ruined walls, like lazy graphics. Either the ceiling glass had been tinted red, or outside there was an unusual glow in the sky. It made him think of the time he’d spent in the demo, the way a skull would make him think of a face. He hated it.

And if he closed his eyes, he thought of the black sickening flash-out when the tank malfunctioned. What the iTank could do to a brain.

He looked round. He needed something to drink; or just something to hold. The champagne glasses were hanging from the trees, like tall pale green fruit. He pushed his way through the jostling groups of people and grabbed for one. It was cool and slippery with condensation, but it didn’t have a proper stem and he had to cup it in his hand. He heard someone say, ‘Gods, whose bright idea was
this
? It won’t stay cold longer than a minute.’

‘Yeah, and if you put it down it doesn’t stay upright. Not that there’s anywhere
to
put it down . . .’

Rick glanced round, and then quickly away again, because it was the group of Creatives that had laughed at him, when he’d tried to get into Perdy’s office the second time. But he could feel them staring. He hoped it was because of his clothes — the histro suit was ruined, so he was wearing a slim-cut black pyjama instead — but he thought he could sense hostility heating the back of his neck like sunburn. He really didn’t want to be here. He took a long swallow of cold champagne and tried not to drop the glass.

There was a sweet, clear, chiming noise, like a bell. Slowly the noise subsided. Everyone looked up.

There were vidscreens set up, just too high to be comfortable to look at. Rick hadn’t noticed them before, but now they flashed into life: first the Crater logo, then a CGI sequence from the Maze, then, finally, a man’s face. He was badly designed, with a clumsy nose and weak eyes, and after the CGI it was a bit of an anticlimax.

He said, ‘Welcome, my friends — guests, employees, gamerunners and gamepros. Welcome to the launch of the iTank, the biggest virtual reality product the world has ever known.’ He pressed every word like it was a button. ‘This is not merely an upgrade of the gametank; this is not merely an expansion of the Maze.’ He paused, and his amplified breath hissed into his lungs. ‘Friends, guests, employees . . . The Maze —’ the vidscreen flashed up an ® symbol — ‘was already the biggest game ever played. Crater is the biggest employer in Ingland. We have already achieved worldwide — and
breathtaking
— success. The Maze —’ another ® — ‘is not only a world so vast, so complex, and so
adored
that it has its own economy, not to mention a higher GDP than Ingland itself; it is also a work of art. You already share in that success; you are the heroes, the creators, the owners, and the gods of our virtual world. And please — don’t make the mistake of thinking that a virtual world is somehow less real than the real one.’ There was a little titter of laughter: not amused, Rick thought, but smug.

‘But that is all in the past,’ the man went on. He lowered his voice — for dramatic effect, obviously — and went on talking. Rick tuned out and let his gaze wander from the vidscreen. With a strange jolt, he realised that the man was actually there, live, on a platform at the foot of the giant staircase. When he looked back at the screen he saw that there was a time-delay on the camera, so the man wasn’t in sync with his real self. It made Rick feel seasick.

‘Let us,’ the man was saying, ‘focus on the
now
. Crater has never been content to rest on its laurels. To be human is to create, to improve, to evolve. There is no rest for humanity. Time enough to rest when we’re dead.’ There was another laugh, although Rick wasn’t sure it was a joke. ‘It goes without saying that Crater’s products far outstrip our competitors’. But they can never be good enough — not for us, not for you, not for our consumers. And so the gametank as you know it, my friends, is finished — despite its success, despite the amazement and excitement that it still inspires. The gametank, and the Maze — the old hardware, and the Maze itself — were,
are
, a magnificent achievement. But we just weren’t satisfied. We wanted something better.’

There was a pause. Rick heard the crack of someone stepping on a fallen champagne glass, and the stifled syllables as they swore under their breath.

‘Imagine,’ the man said, and leant forward, his face expanding on the screen. ‘Imagine the days of flatgames. Imagine the consoles, how impressive they must have been, at first. PlayStation,’ he said, savouring the word. ‘Xbox. Dreamcast. And yet —’ he gulped with mirth — ‘imagine the difference, for those first realgame players, when they stepped into a tank. It was the end of an era; the end of a world. And now, my friends . . .’ He paused, and this time no one broke the silence. ‘My friends, what you are here to witness is as dramatic, as wonderful as that moment must have been. We, too, are poised, ready to witness the beginning, ready to discover a new universe. The iTank is beyond everything you have ever experienced; the Maze expansion exploits every new possibility the iTank provides. Together they are — literally —
incredible
. I hope you enjoy yourselves tonight, my friends, and I welcome you on Crater’s behalf. I hope you all have a fantastic evening. But, please, believe me when I say that this is not simply a launch party. This, tonight, is
history
.’