Soda Pop Soldier (41 page)

“You know one of your shoulders is lower than the other,” he states. “I can cut the suit so no one will know.”

“I know. No, I need to hold it up. It's good for my posture. A doctor told me so, once.”

“Okay. I make a note, next time you no hafta tell me.”

Lola enters the cutting room. Circles me and nods approvingly. “What are you doing later?” Her whisper is a soft purr, but Giuseppino catches it anyway.

“Mama, what would Poppa say?”

“He would say ‘have a good time, I'm dead.' ”

“Mama!”

I leave the store in my new suit. My old clothes are in bags under my arm. Giuseppino even gave me a nice pair of dark calfskin loafers to wear.

I return to my hotel room. I set the Gauss on the bed. For a moment, I want to take it with me. But I don't need to, so I leave it and ask the concierge to seal the room electronically once I leave. High-end hotels can do that for you.

An hour later, I'm standing in front of the address RiotGuurl had given me. It's a luxury apartment tower. The door avatar asks who I'm calling for, and I give her the room number.

A moment later RiotGuurl answers.

“Why should I let you up?”

I play it stupid.

“Because you owe me an explanation.” Let her think I'm lovesick.

The avatar smiles, and the pneumatic door swings open. A floor path lights the way to the elevator. When I arrive at her door on the eighteenth floor, I don't get a surprise once it opens. It is Tatiana from the Chasseur's Inn. Her face is serious now. No games. She looks at me, and in the brief moment before she turns to stone, I see something else. Something that says,
What do you think of me now?
Then she turns and walks back into the apartment.

“Going on a long trip?” I ask, passing suitcases stacked in the hall.

“You know he's going to kill you,” she says to the wall.

I walk to the window and look out at the seven cluttered hills of Rome, lit like piles of precious stones in the night.

“Maybe,” I say.

“Not maybe. He's insane. Even I know that. But he's also brilliant. He always gets what he wants. Now he wants you dead.”

“Over a game? Really? He wants me dead?”

“It's more than a game and you know that. It was a war for power. The most important power man has ever had over other men. The power to tell others what to buy. What to do. What to think.”

“That's a way of looking at it. But as far as him always getting what he wants . . . well, he didn't get it at Song Hua Harbor,” I shoot back.

She's standing. Not moving. Wearing sweats, not the stockings and corset of the Chasseur's Inn. She sits down, staring into an empty fireplace.

“He's in a lot of trouble,” I say after a moment of silence.

“He can take care of himself.”

“Against Interpol?”

“You don't get it, do you?” She turns to me. The venom comes out all at once. She's another person, not the demure party doll that had me spinning that night on the way to SkyVault. “Up there . . . there aren't any laws. When you get that rich, you don't have to play by the rules. There isn't any right or wrong anymore.”

“There's always right and wrong,” I hear myself flinging back at her. “Just because you made the wrong choice, don't try to tell the rest of us it's right.”

For a long moment there's just silence between us.

“I like you.” I say it and watch her reflection in the eighteenth-story window against night-lit Rome. “I liked you when you were just RiotGuurl.”

“Stop it!” she yells at me, then suddenly sobs. Once.

“I liked you because I thought we had something. Maybe that's wrong and another reason why all my relationships end badly. But I liked you. I still do.”

“And what about up there?” she mumbles.

“What's that got to do with anything?”

“It's got everything to do with everything,” she shouts. “That's where I belong. Not down here. Up there. I belong up there, and all this, all that before, was to get up there. And don't think you're so noble that you're above wanting better things. You wanted me when you were up there, and up there is where I'll be, no matter what it takes.”

Her tirade echoes off the walls of the mostly empty apartment. As though she hadn't been there long. As though she hadn't ever really moved in. No matter how many years ago it was that she first showed up there.

“I don't think you're getting up there,” I say bluntly.

“He's coming to get me.”

“I wouldn't hold your breath on that. I'd say don't quit your day job, but you did.”

“He said he was coming to get me.” She's starting to cry.

“He's not.” It hurts her, and I get a sudden sick thrill out of it.

“You lie. You're a liar! You're a filthy liar, PerfectQuestion.” She cries into the arm of her oversize sweatshirt for a long time, and when she stops, I think about giving her one of my new silk handkerchiefs Giuseppino threw in with the suit.

But I don't.

I'm not that guy anymore.

“I'm not lying,” I whisper. “It's the truth. It's been two days since he shot down a Skyliner. Heads are rolling everywhere, including at WonderSoft. If he isn't dead or arrested, he will be soon.”

“He's not dead,” she whispers.

That's what I need. It's time to wrap it up now.

“I said I like you. If up there is where you wanna be, then fine. There are ways I can make that happen, but it's going to take time. I'm leaving for South America tomorrow. Rio's got some big games coming up this spring with a lot of prize money. We'd make a great team, RiotGuurl, besides the fact that I like you. I'll be back at eleven in the morning to collect you. Think about it and be ready to leave.”

I walk to the door.

“You're like that Samurai you're playing, you know?” she says.

I pause.

“Code of honor,” she continues. “Right and wrong. I studied them in college. You fight for principles not money, like they did. That's rare these days. Everything is money now. Everything is Ronin. Except you use a gun in WarWorld instead of that katana. You're just a Samurai with a gun.”

She doesn't move.

“He knew you were playing it, and he sent me in as Plague to stop you. To kill your Samurai, to cut you off so you'd be more likely to need money. So you'd have to work with us. If I had . . . if I'd killed you . . . things would have been different. We could have worked together. We could have been rich. We could have been up there . . . together.”

“Tomorrow. Think about it,” I say and close the door behind me.

Chapter 31

I
walk the streets until two in the morning. I stop in a small restaurant and point at a pizza a couple is sharing at a nearby table. The guy nods, and twenty minutes later, it comes out of the oven. I have a slice and it tastes great: garlic and clams with rosemary. I want to eat more, but I ask for a box. The chef seems disappointed. I pay and leave.

Back in my room, I look at the minibar. A scotch would be . . . what, I don't know. I'm done. I knew I was coming to the end of things. I'm burned out. If I live past tomorrow morning, I want a break. I want to go somewhere. The Amalfi Coast. I'd heard Sancerré mention it once when she talked about fashion shoots with models from Milan. Talked about how beautiful it is, set between volcanoes and the wide open Mediterranean. I want to go there and rest and swim.

I start up the Gauss MK 7. The backlit keyboard glows a soft blue. I pull out my gaming mouse and sync it with the book. On-screen, graphics pour out like crystal droplets of water. My eyes, used to the strain of over-the-counter graphics cards, relax. I uplink to the Gauss satellite system and scroll through some of its features. Gauss even runs an international bank. I transfer all my funds to the Gauss International Bank. At ten minutes to three, I load the Black disk. The Gauss cracks it and asks if I would like to hack the disk. I decline. If the Black programmers are running good security software, they'll boot me from the game.

For ten minutes, I drink a bottle of water and look at my new suit coat. I'd hung it up in the closet. It's the most beautiful piece of clothing I've ever owned.

At one minute to three, the Black disk activates and connects with the mainframe running the game.

“So here we are, my worldwide audience of sickos,” says the game's unseen announcer. “No doubt you're dead. Slain by our traps, our monsters, even your fellow perverts. But don't give up. Don't despair. There might still be some fight left in you tonight.”

The camera resolves on my Samurai and the Minotaur.

“Which of these warriors will make it to the top and rescue the child? Only one of them can claim the prize.”

The camera pans to the top of the tower. Above it, the morning sun is breaking over the battlements. Sunshine and dark clouds mix, racing across the turbulent game-sky.

“Or . . . there is always the chance that neither of them will make it. Wouldn't that be nice? Ladies and gentlemen, sickos and perverts, welcome to the last night of your lives.”

I move the Samurai to the crumbling stone wall. I click on
Free Climb
in the submenu.

“I can't climb the side of the tower,” says Morgax over chat.

“I have a rope. I'll pull you up as we go.”

The music reminds me of fingertips drumming on a coffin lid.

Around us, the ground begins to churn, as cracked and dusty earth erupts through the pavement around the massive, lunatic tower. Finger bones of the undead begin to claw their way up through the desert sand and ancient paving.

“Players of the Black,” roars the announcer. “Now is your last chance to bring down your betters and take your revenge on them.”

A wild assortment of characters crawl from the earth, shrugging off the sand and dirt. Their death wounds, delivered over the course of the contest, still gape, surrounded by rust-colored dried blood. Their weapons broken or smashed, they shamble awkwardly forward, after us.

“Go,” says Morgax. “I'll hold them off down here and keep them from climbing the tower after you.”

“All right,” I mutter and start the Samurai free-climbing the side of the rotting tower. Two stories up, I look back down and watch as the Minotaur swipes, one-handed with the great axe, at a familiar leather-clad corpse, taking off his misshapen head. The blow flings Creepy sideways into an archer pulling back a bent arrow in a rotting recurve bow. The Minotaur already has another arrow sticking out of him. There's nothing I can do for him now.

Four stories up and I come to a thin ledge. I pause to let the Samurai's drained Stamina meter rebuild. Below, the Minotaur waves the haft of the broken battle-axe as he steps back within the darkness of the tower. Corpses crawl in after him like hungry rats vying for a meal.

“How ya doing, Morgax?”

“Not good. Falling back inside the tower . . .”

He pauses. I see the Minotaur step forward and kick one of the corpses back into the crowd. He draws both flaming, smoking swords and begins to strike down the approaching zombie-players. Then, “My weapons don't have much left in them. Maybe I can find some more in the tower.” Below, he disappears within the stone edifice, securing the heavy door behind him.

“Let me find an opening back into the tower and I'll drop the rope down to you.”

I crawl along the outside of the tower and notice the beginning of the large section of wall the demon giant had torn out, above me. I climb upward, slowly manipulating the Samurai's four limbs, inching up the face of the tower.

“Don't bother . . . ,” says Morgax breathlessly over chat. “I'm almost done. They'll get through this door in a minute or so.”

I climb upward to the crack.

“Morgax, have you ever heard of a restaurant in Upper New York called Seinfeld's?”

Pause.

“No. I mean, I think my wife might have mentioned an article she read to me one night about places to eat in Upper New York. Or do you mean the old TV show from a century ago?”

“The restaurant. You don't know the owner?”

“No, why? Should I?”

“No, you probably shouldn't.” I was almost at the crack.

Then I ask, “Does anybody know you're playing this game?”

Silence. I lever the Samurai inside the bottom of the crack. Below and above me are the insides of the tower, all the floors collapsed into a pile of rubble at the bottom. The Minotaur struggles to the top of the pile as corpse-players swarm through the narrow entrance leading within. He's too busy fighting them off to respond to my question.

“Is there any reason why anyone would pay me to kill your character in-game?”

“No. None that I can think of. No one, except the people who run this game, knows I'm playing it. And even they don't know who I am.”

I pull
Deathefeather
from its sheath. I look into the blade and see the face of Callard.

And the face of the raggedy man, the Vampire.

Morgax had told me the writer had gone crazy. But he probably didn't know that meant schizophrenia.

“You wanted me to kill him, didn't you?” I ask both versions of that long-lost writer.

“He can't have it. I've worked my entire life to create this world,” whines Callard.

“Hey, buddy,” whispers the Vampire, pushing Callard from view inside the blade. “It's almost all yours. You realize that, don'tcha? All yours?”

Callard struggles back into frame. “I'll give you whatever you want if you just stop Morgax from reaching the child and opening the doomsday file. I dropped you into the Oubliette that night after I crashed the game to test you and you passed. You're rare. You're good. You still love a game for what it can be, fun.”