The Scarab (11 page)

Saturday. Poems are full of praise of the majesty and
splendor of the night, and quaint, friendly phrases like “the wee hours of the
morning.” Poets are rarely forced to stagger blindly out of their bedrooms
after less than three hours sleep. At least when they are forced to do so, they
can think of something more eloquent to say than, “Go away! I’m trying to
sleep.”

The microwave clock read 4:00 AM.
Something was ringing. Not the door. Not a fire. A phone. I had unplugged the
one in my bedroom, but neglected to turn off my private cell phone. Moonlight
came in through the balcony window, and I grabbed a pillow to hold in front of
me as I walked across the exposed patch.

I avoided the arm of the sofa, but
whacked my shin on the glass coffee table. The sharp explosion of pain woke me
up faster than a bucket ice water. Within minutes, I was going to have a
spectacular purple bruise on my leg, with a yellow and red starburst.

I wanted to shout, but held it down
through clenched teeth so I wouldn’t wake up Mare. “Ouch... who is it? I mean,
hello.” I held back on the profanity in case it was important.

“Hayes, my good friend,” said a
drunk with a familiar Dutch accent. “I am calling from the lobby.” I heard
giggles in the background. “You are a man after my own heart.”

Oh great, the man I think is the
lowest slime at the convention thinks of me as an equal now. Just what I
needed. “She passed the interview?”

He chuckled. “I will give you what
you asked. Do you ever play Adventure Live?” He was referring to a remake of
one of the original interactive text games as a virtual reality sim. A lot of Hollywood talent had contributed out of fond memories of the game.

“Who hasn’t?”

“Remember the lowest level, how you
get the big treasure through the narrow tunnel?”

The gemstone was the size of a
plover’s egg, an allusion to the Encyclopedia Britannica definition for
testicle. You could only teleport to the other side with one of the magic
words.

“Yes.”

There was a click on the other
side. Evidently, he felt that he had fulfilled his end of the bargain.

As long as I was awake, I had to
find out what was inside the vault. I logged on for system maintenance, using
time gleaned from other players to pay. I put the evidence cartridge into my
removable drive to record the session, and went straight to inventory.

I dialed the word PLOVER on the
safe, and nothing happened. I tried several variations, still with no luck.
Eventually, I typed “XYZZY”, and I had a new item in my inventory—ELECTRONIC
WARFARE DEVICE, category seven. It appeared to tie into the vehicle
communications system through a Universal Connector (YUKON as we usually
referred to them) and had a touch screen interface. I couldn’t look at the
internals, but the power requirements were significant. The patent, of course,
was held by Pensatronics.

The moonlight and my lack of sleep
lent an air of unreality to the moment. I plugged the device in, just to try it
out. I heard the whine of the drives and most of my systems powering up as the
device integrated itself. Suddenly, all my panels went dark, except for a faint
silver pentagram in the forward virtual view screen.

At first, I thought it was some
sociopathic prank. Then, I remembered the power requirements. I amplified my
Virtual Reality pick-ups and started raising the energy feed. I had to pump in
repair time at five times the normal rate in order to see any change in the
display. At six times the normal rate, the view zoomed through the pentagram,
focusing on flaming letters in the distance. When the company name exploded
around me, I was lowered into a pit of fire.

“This side show better be worth
what I’m paying.”

An enormously muscled Djinn dressed
only in a loincloth appeared on the screen in holographic glory amid the
smoldering piles of brimstone. It spoke in low, rumbling German phrases. I made
out a word that sounded like Master. Not wanting to waste a moment longer, I
swept my hand over the language control for universal icons.

“Three wishes, I’ll bet.”

Bronze hieroglyphics now floated in
the air beside the Djinn, among them, a bio-hazard symbol, a lightning bolt, an
ear, an eye, and an open hand. Meanwhile, my repair account meter was dropping
like a rock. When prompted, I selected English as the language. Now, several
options appeared on the screen: target, subsystem affected, severity, rapidity
of onset, contagiousness, trigger, and deactivation fail-safe. I was sitting on
a state-of-the-art virus factory!

This would be great to use. First I’d
stick Exotech with a nice slow one in the guidance systems. Next, I’d hit TSM
up with a weapons system worm that would trigger when a player other than me
passed too close. The problem was, how could I afford to use it? Once I used
it, everyone would zero in on my location and exterminate me on principle.
Corporations hate viruses, because even the best tailored ones seldom stay
contained, and the only answer was net-wide isolation of every machine having
contact during the infected period. That could sometimes cost more than the
actual machines being saved.

Perhaps that’s why Pensatronics
hadn’t unveiled it yet. Its use would be messy and unpopular. Until I could
decide what to do with it, I set a booby trap in case someone else took this
device from me, or I wanted another mine. I chose a highly contagious virus
that would affect the disk system slowly and the electronic mail system
immediately, triggered by opening the mini-vault. As the fail-safe password, I
typed the password PANDORA.

Next, I backed up the booby-trapped
program to my removable drive and used it to guard the evidence file I already
had. This was great stuff, but I was dangerously short of sleep. I promised
myself I would explore the other options of the program and experiment with
effective ranges as soon as I knew it wouldn’t wipe out the world by mistake.
As quickly and deliberately as possible, I powered off the Electronic Warfare
device, and stuffed it back in the vault; however, I left the lock unlatched.
Popping out my portable drive, I turned off the workstation, and made my way
back to bed.

I woke up at 7:00 AM, wound tighter than a ten-day clock.
Reality has a nasty way of sneaking up behind somebody. Here we were at day
three already and the real pressure-cooker was about to begin. Someone had
slipped a copy of the latest standings underneath our door before sunrise and
most of the twenty remaining vehicles were heavyweights, damaged, or sole survivors
on their teams. All of them had high kill ratings, while I had the award for “most
shot-at of the year.” TSM, predictably, had no entries left; however, GEDM and
Exotech still had a couple entries each. The two companies might forget their
previous animosities to join forces against me. Luckily for me, the Exotech
Viper had brake trouble, crashing spectacularly on the final approach to Monaco. As I expected, last year’s second place, the sole Hicks-Eisner Overdrive vehicle
looked like a guaranteed winner. The Australian-engineered and Indonesian-built
sports vehicle dubbed the “Tasmanian Tornado” was predicted to beat all known
speed records for this event once it reached the open road of the Autobahn.

After the late shift, Mark Waters
had scribbled a note on the printout saying that he had to leave for a few
hours but would be back soon.

Between the shower and the time I
hit the planning table in the living room, I developed an acute sense of my own
weaknesses. I guess I had been so concerned about surviving the preliminaries
that I didn’t put much thought into what we’d do to get to the finish line. I
was nearly out of information and had already used my fifth ace without anybody
catching me. I was getting superstitious; my luck was bound to run out soon,
and the stakes were getting high enough that I wouldn’t want to be around me
when it did.

Mare came out for coffee at eight,
smiling languidly. “What did you get up for last night?”

I explained the Pandora device to
her. “I checked it out a little this morning. It’s more than just a virus
breeder. From what I can tell, the lightning bolt symbol can be used to blind
other players through satellite links, radio, or direct circuit overload at
close range. This might have been what hit the pilot who came after me at the
casino. It can look like an accident if you do it right.”

She caught on fast. “I get the
idea. The eye is for locating or tracking, the ear for eavesdropping,
recording, whatever. That’s hardly worth a mint.”

“It’s more sophisticated than that.
It can perform pre-programmed acts based on detailed trigger events, notify you
when something you’re interested in has been detected, even sniff the radio
emissions of enemy computers for passwords. Mare, I’m starting to worry about
who else has these things.” I pointed to the on-line chat group the losers were
holding to back my worries.

“A lot of disks have been turning
up bad lately, more than you can explain by the usual rate of infant mortality.
I mean, they have these weapons classed by number, and this bundle of
Armageddon only rates a seven. What if someone out there is packing a ten?”

While she was telling me not to be
so paranoid, I put in a panic-button call to Foxworthy. His wife, Celeste,
couldn’t tell me where he was or when he’d be back. Fifteen minutes after that,
she told me the same thing. Celeste sounded like a classy lady. When I
apologized for annoying her, she explained, “This is nothing. You’re a client
in trouble. I come from a family with three generations of lawyers. I promise
Nigel will get the message as soon as possible.” Then she took down my number.

When our bodyguard didn’t show up
after a while, I rang his office. His answering service said that Mr. Waters
had been “unavoidably detained” but would meet me at noon to explain. We would
be on our own until the mid-day break. To top it all off, my starting position
was smack in the center of the line-up, a target for both groups. Everything
that had happened so far today was conspiring to make me as nervous as a
long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

“Just because you’re paranoid ...”
I muttered.

I tinkered with all of Ghedra’s
systems compulsively and still had the headset and data-glove on as I pored
over all the photos and clippings on the table. I was so desperate, I was even
reading the latest stories in the press on my competition. The most informative
one had the unlikely title of “The Car as a Weapon, a Retrospective.” It was by
a psychologist who had done his thesis on vehicular personality analysis. The
phrase “psychopath” came up a dozen times, as well as the average number of
laws a pilot in the SimCon competition violated per hour.

From a more practical standpoint,
it told me that with the tighter playing field, some of the players I had
trusted as allies yesterday might be gunning for my back today. If I wanted to
survive, I had to follow the advice of Tsun Tsu, “Seek weakness, avoid
strength.”

According to the game guidebook,
the route for day three was shorter in horizontal distance than the other days,
but not in vertical distance or strain on the machines. It was designed to try
the endurance of both the vehicles and the teams. We would start slow, leaving Monaco and heading into Italy through San Remo. We’d get to Milano by way of Genoa, and then the
hard part would begin. We’d head north into Switzerland on the Autobahn. What
had started out as a foot-race would digress into an ironman competition. I
predicted that at least three vehicles would crap out while trying to cross the
Alps. The stumps of Roman columns still visible beside the road were the same
ones seen by Hannibal on his trip through those mountains.

Beyond that, I had no idea where I
was going, as almost all of my maps for East Germany were out of date. The only
books about the Alps still available at the local library were about a 1918
trip through the Andorran Alps on the wrong side of France. I pitched the book
across the room, and into the balcony sliding door. “Oh, that’s good if I want
a fold-out copy of the Andorran national anthem. Cripes, we need facts!”

Mare said “Relax, Ethan. I’ve seen
Sound of Music.”

“Those were the Austrian Alps. We
need Italian Alps.” After almost an hour of furtive stewing and honing my
engine performance ratios to a razor’s edge, tuning them for the steep slopes
and rarefied air, I snapped. I vaguely recall shaking the Swiss road map, and
screaming, “Why can’t they write them in English?”

To her credit, Mary resisted the
impulse to slap me like they do hysterical people in movies. Instead, she put
two hands on my back in pre-massage position and calmly said, “I’m sure the
Chinese team is having a much harder time, dear.”

That got a chuckle. I butted my
forehead against the interface screen. “I have no idea how to make up the time
we lost the last few days. I definitely have no idea what the best route
through downtown Zurich might be.” I didn’t tell her that I was still unable to
contact the only other people we trusted in the world.

She took off my head-visors and
said, “Why don’t you let me help?” I struggled for a moment with no good
answer. Without a word, I handed her the mangled Swiss road map.

“Where do we start?” she asked.

I kept my head down, as weight came
off my shoulders. “We’ll ride the A9/E9 from Milano into Lugano at the edge of
your map. It’s easy to spot; look for the only city around there with an
airport. The way everyone else seems to be taking is to follow the autobahn
straight north through der Mittenland to Zurich, to Staad, across the lake to
Ravensburg, and into the German map over on the chair. It’s over 325
kilometers, and has grades of nine and ten percent on the uphill roads.”

She laughed at my pronunciations,
and said “First, it’s Mittel, not mitten, and second they use the Sh sound at
the beginning of Staad.”

“How do you know so much?” I asked,
looking askance at her.

“Remember the ski instructor who
was hitting on me?”

“Did he have any useful
information?” I snapped.

“No, but looking at this map, why
don’t we take the right fork, and save half the time?”

I was stunned. There had to be a
reason why everybody in the world wasn’t taking that way. It went right past
Torrente Alto, through the Saint Bernardino Tunnel, Bad Ragaz, and followed the
Rhein through Liechtenstein into Germany. Measuring it out, it was only 200
kilometers, had no lakes, no major cities, and no major drawbacks.

“The grades go up to eighteen
percent, but that’s also on the downhill. It’ll cost us some time on the way
up, but we should set one hellacious speed record on the way through the Rhein
valley,” Mary reasoned.

Then I found the problem. “We’d
miss Zurich altogether. We can’t do that!”

“Why not, they just penalize you
twenty minutes. We’ll make that up and more to spare.”

I was hopping up and down like a
kid on a sugar binge. “Yes!” As Mary went into the bedroom to get dressed, I
started hacking the course into the autopilot.

I got as far as the mother of all
down-hill runs when she came back in. “I meant to ask you, what’s the little
mailbox for in the corner?”

“Just net mail that came in since
our last session, while we were at the party and last night.” I hit the glyph
to show her and almost ran the autopilot off the mountain-side. There were
three messages. All said simply, “I cheat at solitaire.” But the last one was
login five from an anonymous user. There was no login five. Someone wanted that
Exotech log badly, and I’d bet my last dollar they arranged the Viper’s crash
because the crew had seen it. I rushed over to the phone, pulling several
connections loose and nearly lost an ear. I rabbit-punched Playfair’s number
into the poor touch pad and waited for a pick-up.

“Hello, I’m not here right now, but
my phone is lonely and will talk to you (beep).”

“Playfair. We’ve got to meet. Come
to my room. I’ve got a disc I need to give to you. It’s too hot for me,” I
waited a few extra seconds in case he decided to answer himself, then threw
down the receiver in disgust.

Two minutes before race time, the
phone rang, sending me through the ceiling. As Mare picked it up, I asked, “Foxworthy,
Playfair, LAS, Waters?”

She plugged the ear facing me and
shook her head. “No interviews, the Maestro is meditating before the race.”

She was answering someone’s
questions rapidly. “Bull fighter videos.

“Yes.

“He is the chief scientist.

“No, Maria is busy with the Sports
Illustrated camera crew right now.

“I’m sorry, we represent certain
government issues and that information is classified.

“I’m sorry, we have another call on
line seven. Good-bye.” She hung the phone up and unplugged the jack to avoid
further interruptions. “Wall Street Journal reporter,” she explained.

“You handled that very well.”

“As a police officer, you learn to
say no comment, none of your business, and go away in the politest possible
way. Who drives first?”

I thought about getting the ring
for her. “I will. You can take over at the Swiss border, and I make a chow run
and scope the competition down in the convention center. If you get in a bind,
I have the autopilot set to pick the nearest racer and tag along after them, in
stealth mode if possible. That way, we look like a computer ghost if we show up
at all.”

“I thought that only worked with
submarines,” she said.

“Planes and GEVs, too. Jane’s
On-line talked about it briefly in the electronic warfare section,” I said as
she turned on the ESPN coverage of the Monaco starting line.

“Thank you, Tom Clancy.”

“I’m not Tom,” I said, grinning. “He’d
have a Soviet defector to help him crack this case by now. Yikes, that crowd is
a zoo. How many people are watching this game?”

“It’s number three this year behind
the Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup,” she said, a fountain of statistical
information, one of the hundreds of reasons I kept her around. “Maybe this game
would be number two if you put it on an ice rink and showed more blood on the
safety glass. I couldn’t condone beer commercials during a sport involving
vehicles, so you could never be number one.”

“I’ll settle for not peeing my
pants in front of several million couch jockeys, thank you. I don’t need any
more pressure. Ready?” I asked as the first vehicle launched. “Team DeClerk!” I
said, as we exchanged good luck kisses.

I went stealth as soon as we curved
past the final virtual camera in Monaco. The heavyweight behind me maintained
visual, though, till I flew through a quaint European archway that he wedged
into tighter than T-shirts in a tourist’s suitcase. He couldn’t turn his turret
backward, so the next GEV along scored a freebie. And then there were nineteen.

After a few minutes on cruise
control, someone got bored. No one was likely to meet another player for
several hours, and the viewers were starting to switch. Bored gamers get
dangerous, but bored viewers create sponsors that make sharks look discreet.
One of the younger pilots suggested something often done in sand-lot games,
time compression. If everyone agreed, we’d speed up the game clock by a factor
of up to two. That would put my top speed at nearly 500 kilometers per
real-world hour. I voted yes mainly because everyone’s tactical display would
flicker so much that I would become invisible.

Our accelerators now made us time
machines, and one person braking would bring everybody down. For the first ten
minutes, it was a rush. For the next ten, it was a contest of machismo, and
then it became a white-knuckle rodeo. Andiron Enterprises slowed down for a
curve and got flamed by everybody on the net. The next person to say “chicken”
would get artillery-shelled. A bridge out in Milano claimed two victims, and we
hit normal speed in a spate of curses. I nearly over-corrected into an
embankment.