Bedlam (29 page)

‘I guess fire bounces off me too,’ Ross observed gratefully, accelerating towards another glass wall at the end of the passage.

‘They can’t destroy us,’ Juno said, ‘but we need to shake them off before we find a warp transit. Any they see us using are
as good as lost.’

‘But even if we lose them, am I not just going to relay the transit’s location to my Integrity masters anyway?’

‘Oh, you in a snit with me now, is that it? I was the one sticking up for you back there.’

‘Yeah, I noticed. Why was that, exactly? You’ve got no greater reason to trust me than Spudgunner.’

‘Because just like we can’t afford to assume you’re legit, we can even less afford to assume you’re a spy. We start thinking
that way, then we’re already defeated.’

The Ferrari smashed through the massive pane and sped up a steep grass embankment, Ross having to execute another sharp turn
at the top as they found themselves heading straight for the river. He proceeded along what was supposed to be a water-side
walkway, benches and lifebuoys passing in a blur on the landside to his right. Behind him he could see his Integrity pursuer
reaching the top of the incline, and about a quarter of a mile ahead two more cop cars and another Integrity cruiser were
rounding a huge Japanese-style pagoda on their way down towards the river.

‘Any other c-vars you can amend?’ he asked.

‘I’m looking. Okay, got one. Superflyguy.’

‘TRUE TRUE TRUE.’

‘Damn it: it’s locked out. Hang on while I scroll down …’

‘Make it quick.’

‘Damn, that’s locked too. Let me see what isn’t … Here we go. Shit, I don’t know what these mean. Makesomenoise, Livingincolour,
Apocalypticrenegade, Spywholovedme.’

‘Spywholovedme,’ Ross shouted. ‘Equals TRUE,
now
.’

‘Done. Okay, what did that change?’

‘Our escape options.’

Ross glanced up the slope to his right. The approaching cars had abandoned the road and were taking the most direct route
to cut him off.

‘Grab on to something,’ he said. ‘For this to work, it has to look like a disaster.’

‘Then at least we got the right guy driving.’

He swerved the car right, angling it up the slope as though trying to evade the interception. He waited for the cop cars to
make their own corresponding corrections, then reversed his course and floored it. The car rotated out of control, turning
end on end as it skidded unstoppably across the concrete walkway and flew over the edge.

It spun sideways into the river with a colossal splash then sank slowly beneath the opaque waters.

‘You asshole. What the hell did you just do?’ Juno demanded, furious. ‘Water crashes are a fatality. We’ll be respawning right
into the Integrity’s hands in about ten seconds.’

‘Not today,’ Ross told her, waiting for the car to level out.

He gently nudged the accelerator and the Ferrari began gliding silently through the water, its progress masked off to those
on the riverbank.

Juno gazed out through the windscreen and nodded to herself.

‘My apologies for the asshole remark,’ she said. ‘Spywholovedme. I get it now.’

She gave his shoulder a punch.

‘Damn, Bedlam, you got some game.’

‘Nobody does it better.’

The warp felt like a long one, but at both his point of exit and place of rematerialisation he was standing on soft grass.
They had driven ashore on to a narrow strip of sand and abandoned the Ferrari there, Juno leading him off the beach to a transit
hidden around the back of an ice-cream stand.

The land was gently undulating, and rather than being hemmed in by a body of water and a network of roadways, Ross was looking
out upon a seemingly endless pastoral landscape, blue skies and sunshine overhead. Upon closer examination, he observed that
he had never seen such fine grass: it was luxuriantly lush and microscopically short, like the glass greens at Augusta for
the US Masters, but stretching for miles.

Juno stared into space, her focus somewhere else for a moment. A wave shimmered down her from head to toe, wiping away the
sci-fi garb and replacing it with a new but equally terrifying new variant of female battle dress.

Ross donned a medieval tabard, leaving his feet bare to enjoy the feel of the grass beneath them. There were suit-of-armour
options but none that wouldn’t make him feel like he was kidding himself next to the authentically warlike sight of Juno.

‘Where are we?’ he asked.

‘Some kind of real-time strategy game,’ she answered. ‘
Medieval 2: Total War
, I think it was called. It doesn’t have a place name, because nobody lives here. It’s too stark, and a little glitched if
memory serves.’

‘What are we doing here?’

‘Lying low, taking five.’

‘I’m fed up with running and hiding,’ Ross told her. ‘It’s all I’ve done since I got here. I want to speak to one of these
Originals. Maybe they can shed some light on why both Solderburn and Ankou were so interested in me.’

‘That’s above my pay-grade. I’d need a green light from up the chain.’

‘So take me to Silent Hill.’

Juno frowned.

‘Skullhammer must have relayed his concerns. I’ve been told to stay in a holding pattern,’ she admitted.

‘He’s a real people person, isn’t he?’

‘He’s a team player,’ she replied, with what sounded like grudging conviction. ‘I give him that much. These days that counts
for a lot. We can’t afford to take chances. It’s nothing personal.’

‘Oh, in his case I think it’s probably a wee bit personal; or at least personal as an ancillary bonus. What’s so bloody special
about the Originals anyway? How come they’ve got all these powers?’

‘Nobody knows,’ Juno said. ‘All I can tell you is that the earliest arrivals had abilities that the vast majority who came
after didn’t share. They were able to change things, like the c-vars.’

‘No, they let you guys change the client-side variables, which mostly deal with cosmetic stuff. That means they must be able
to change server-side variables too. I guess that’s what makes them a threat to the Integrity.’

‘Well, duh,’ said Juno. ‘That’s why we Diasporadoes are doing everything we can to protect them. For every border the Integrity
close, every transit they shut down, the Originals can open up a new one. But if they wipe out all the Originals, or imprison
them in that fortress world of theirs, then that’s the ball game.’

Ross realised she’d given something away earlier in the conversation.

‘You said you’d need a green light. That means you know where they are. Why don’t you just tell me?’

‘Because it isn’t my call. The stakes are real high, and if you keep asking to be taken to the Originals, that’s not gonna
make me
less
suspicious of your motives.’

‘My motives are the same as yours. I want to know how I got
here and I want to know how to get out. My girlfriend is pregnant and the last time I spoke to her we didn’t part on the best
of terms. Juno, you’ve walked every inch and pixel of this place searching for the same things as me, so how about we try
helping each other?’

She sighed, looking torn.

‘Even if I told you where any of the Originals are, it wouldn’t make any difference. They can only be found if they want to
be found.’

Ross turned away, throwing up his hands in frustration.

‘Same as anybody else here,’ Juno went on, ‘they can hide in plain sight. You could be standing right in front of Lady Arrowsmith
or the Sandman or any of them and they wouldn’t reveal themselves unless …’

Ross spun on his bare heel again, something inside him all lit up.

‘The Sandman,’ he repeated, wheels starting to turn. ‘Alex.’

‘Who?’

‘He worked alongside me and Solderburn. His name was Alexander: Sandman was his nickname, from Sandy. We all worked at a company
called Neurosphere, in Stirling. Solderburn was developing this amazing prototype brain scanner, the Simulacron. Alex went
absent from work right after having a test scan, and being scanned was the last thing that happened to me in the old world.’

‘Melita was in hospital in Scotland after a car crash,’ Juno said, her voice low as though afraid of being overheard. ‘She
must have had a scan too. That don’t explain how
I
got here, but it is something.’

‘Everyone suspects there’s a secret the Originals know that they’re not telling people. Whatever that is, it’s got to be linked
to Neurosphere. If it was Solderburn’s device that brought us all here, then maybe he did find a way out.’

Juno looked buffeted, as though her thoughts were racing but she didn’t dare believe what they were suggesting.

‘You’ve got to take me to the Sandman,’ Ross pleaded. ‘You wouldn’t be risking anything: in fact it would be the proof you’re
looking for, because he’s only going to break cover and reveal himself to me if I’m telling the truth.’

Juno thought about it for a moment, but the jury wasn’t out long.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Sounds like I got nothing to lose.’

‘The transit we need is in the courtyard of that castle,’ Juno said, having led Ross to the crest of a long slope.

‘What castle?’

He stared across the rolling green plains. He could make out a grey shape close to the horizon, and summoned up his sniper
scope to get a closer look. Magnified six times, he could now see that it was not merely a castle but a fortress: formidable
walls of vast hewn stones encircling a network of medieval military buildings. The fortifications were being put to the test
too: there was an invading army on its doorstep, attacking the place with trebuchets, siege towers, catapults and battering
rams. The defenders were giving as good as they got, hailing arrows, cauldrons of boiling oil and coils of Greek fire down
upon the enemy.

‘Oh, right,’ Ross said. ‘That castle. And do we hope they’re all too busy murdering each other to notice us sneaking in the
back door, or do we throw our lot in with the invaders and hope for the best?’

‘No, actually both armies will attack us on sight, so we’re going to have to take on everybody.’

Juno seemed incongruously relaxed about this prospect. Ross couldn’t work out what he was missing, then reckoned he had found
a clue in the sheer distance they were from where the castle stood.

‘You’re guessing there’ll be hardly anybody left standing by the time we get there. I hope you’re right. By the time we’ve
walked that far we’ll be knackered.’

‘It’s not that far.’

‘It’s bloody miles. It’s a blob on the horizon.’

‘True, but it’s not
far away
.’

Her emphasis rang a bell but he couldn’t quite place it in this context.

Then, as they neared the castle – far sooner than he could have anticipated – he understood. The besieging army of NPCs took
note of their approach and reacted in alarm, turning their
weaponry to face Juno and Ross, while behind the huge stone walls, efforts were redoubled to repel the new threat. The response
was understandable: there were two giants striding towards them across the plain.

‘It’s a scale mismatch,’ Juno explained. ‘This is a real-time strategy game. Most of them are okay but this one has got a
glitch so that if you enter it via that particular warp portal, it’s like you get stuck in a zoomed-out view.’

He stole a glance up and down at her as she glided across the miniature landscape, the neatness of her shape only emphasised
by this strange new perspective.

The siege engines came up to his waist, the tallest of the soldiers ankle-height. There were thousands of the wee buggers
though, so he couldn’t just wade through them like they weren’t there. They had to be dealt with, and Juno showed that she
was taking no chances by producing a plasma rifle he recognised from
Doom 3
. The blue pulses evaporated dozens of enemies at a time, and the splash damage sent just as many careening through the air
like a human corona to each blast.

Ross laid waste with his machine-gun. Against the best the Middle Ages had to offer, the World War Two weapons technology
proved as mismatched as the scale.

‘It’s no fun when it’s no challenge,’ he observed.

‘I don’t believe the two are mutually exclusive,’ Juno replied. ‘In my mind they’re all looking exactly like Joe right now.
That makes it fun.’

Ross’s hunger returned immediately after he warped out and rematerialised, though he was quickly able to stave it off by plucking
a perfectly ripe and shiny-skinned red apple from a nearby tree. He wondered for a moment whether they had merely corrected
the scale in the strategy-gameworld, as he was still surrounded by greenery on all sides, but there were no war engines and
no armies to blight the view. In fact, it was a bucolic landscape so idyllic that he could imagine pastoral nymphs, pipe-tooting
satyrs and maybe even Little Bo Peep showing up any second.

There was no sound of gunfire, explosions, sword clashes, aircraft or even traffic; just the tweeting of birds, the rustle
of a
light wind rippling leaves, and a soft chirrup of crickets. The sun was warm but low in the sky. It felt like late afternoon
in a warm September.

He breathed in the autumn air as they walked at a dawdle down a gentle slope, at the foot of which they could see a village
surrounded by bounteously yielding crop fields. The unhurried progress was almost involuntary: something about this place
just made him want to take it easy and slow the pace of
everything
.

‘Calming sight, huh,’ Juno said.

‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘I think this is the most tranquil place I’ve ever been. Especially after some of the stuff I’ve been through
lately. It’s a blessed relief to be in an environment where death isn’t about to rain down upon me without warning.’

He saw a shadow pass across the ground and, feeling a considerable disturbance in the air, instinctively glanced up to see
what was casting it. A stone cottage plummeted from an indeterminate place in the blue sky and slammed into the earth about
ten yards in front, causing both he and Juno to throw themselves backwards in response.

They landed together in a tangle on the cool grass, Juno’s armour making this a more comfortable moment for her than it was
for Ross. Another cottage dropped from the sky and took its place about twenty yards from the first.

‘Well, at least we know he’s definitely here,’ she said, climbing to her feet.

‘How?’

‘This world is a god-game. You can visit them, even settle there if you like, but only Originals can play god on them. If
the rest of us want to do that, then we’ve got the Beyonderland. Very few people come to this particular world, though. It’s
in a secluded little niche, tucked away beyond a glitched-out RTS. That’s why it’s the Sandman’s little private haven.’

They continued down the slope, walking around the newly arrived cottages and on towards the village. They passed people contentedly
tilling fields, others taking crops away on the backs of horse-drawn carts. Nobody seemed remotely perturbed by the sight
of buildings suddenly raining down from the heavens.

‘You can see the problem,’ Juno said. ‘The Sandman could be
any one of these people and we’d never know. If you’re hiding from the Integrity, the best disguise is to pretend to be an
NPC.’

‘I know, I’ve done it myself. Hey Juno, is there a clock on me for this?’

‘A clock?’

‘Yeah, as in how long I’ve got for the Sandman to come up and high-five me before you write me off as an infiltrator. I’m
just wondering if I should do anything to make myself more noticeable.’

‘That clock started the moment we arrived, Bedlam. The Sandman’s a god here. Nothing in this world escapes his notice.’

With that, Ross felt a tremor in the earth beneath his bare feet. It was followed a moment later by another, then a third.
He sensed movement to his left and another shadow passed across the ground. He looked up, preparing himself for evasive action
should another building be plummeting his way, but instead saw a monstrous sight making its way towards them: a gigantic bullfrog,
easily fifty feet high, covering the ground in a series of huge leaps.

‘It’s okay,’ Juno assured him. ‘It’s a good sign. That’s his creature.’

Ross allowed himself a smile of relief as he realised he even knew the game. It was
Black & White
, or one of its sequels.

As it drew closer, Ross could see that the creature had a cartoonish, almost childlike face, an eagerness to please etched
in its expression. It was reassuring to know that the Sandman wasn’t an evil tyrannical deity, all the more so when the bullfrog
extended a huge green hand and picked up the pair of them. It popped them on to its head, between its bulbous great protruding
eyes, and commenced hopping back the way it had come.

Ross clung on tight to a ridge of skin at first, but found the ride to be fairly smooth once he got used to the rhythm. They
passed fields and farms, forests and lakes, towns and villages, heading towards a mountain range.

It was on the outskirts of the largest town that Ross saw something that caused a leap in his chest, a surge of emotion the
intensity of which he didn’t fully comprehend.

‘Kids,’ he said, pointing to the group of children outside what he realised was a school. But even as he watched them playing
ring-a-rosey, oblivious to the sight of a titanic amphibian hopping around the landscape, he realised they were just NPCs.
He felt slightly embarrassed, conscious of Juno’s feelings, and how the sight must have hurt her. He could imagine how much
it was going to start hurting him if he never did get back to the old world.