Saga (25 page)

The launderette was
perfectly ordinary: STEVE’S SUDS. The faded sign made me think of Arnie, and I felt a little pang. I really ought to check up on the grumpy mechanic. But then again, his place was probably being watched. Could our actions have landed him in trouble? I hoped not, but at the very least, he must have been questioned about us.

In the distance, we could hear the faint sounds of protesting voices, reverberating to us through long rows of tall, dark tenements. It was as if there was a lively children’s playground somewhere nearby, except that the cries came to us against a background of deep-toned chants. The streets here were relatively busy with slow-moving aircars, probably traffic that had been diverted from wherever the marchers were. We were boarding, taking the side of Thirty-First Street that was in the deep shadows cast by the blocks of residential units that towered above us.

We’d made our plan back inside the tank. While Athena and Milan went into the restaurant opposite and took seats in the window, Nathan and I waited in a nearby parking lot, performing boarding tricks like we used to, as if all the pressures on us were forgotten. It was a pleasure to be outdoors and boarding again. Once they had finished their quick snack, Athena and Milan returned, having affixed a tiny camera to the restaurant windowsill, so that Athena could monitor images of the entrance to the launderette. Just before two, she called us over. We crowded around to see that Cindella was entering the launderette, accompanied by a man dressed in a dark suit, wearing sunglasses. A few minutes passed.

“Well?” asked Milan.

“Let’s risk it.” I really wanted to speak with Cindella. She had faced the Dark Queen recently, and I wanted to know what had happened.

So we snaked our way along the sidewalk until we were at the launderette. Then we kicked up our boards and walked into the humid room. It was large; all around the walls were massive washing machines, some of them churning away noisily. In stark contrast to the tired-looking people waiting for their washing, sat the stunning pirate, Cindella, and next to her a man who was dressed for a meeting of high-powered businesspeople. It was a measure of how dispirited the other people in the room were that they didn’t seem to take any notice of the unusual clientele or of our arrival. After all, we were a punk airboard gang, who although young, must nevertheless appear intimidating with our perma-tats and piercings.

“Hi, I got your message; it was a clever one.” Cindella stood up and turned to her companion. “This is my friend, B.E.; I wanted you to meet him, too.”

“Hello,” I said, nodding.

“Come with us,” ordered Athena.

All of us left, making our way through litter-strewn roads until we came to an empty block of flats, windows all broken. I let us inside; there was nowhere public we could safely spend time with a person as striking as Cindella. So, in an abandoned room, bare but for the dark marks of fire damage on the roof, we sat on our boards, more or less in a circle around Cindella and her friend.

“Congratulations on your aircar race win,” she began.

“Thanks. Did you see it?” Nathan answered with a smile.

“Yeah. From real close. We entered it. We were doing pretty well until that last bend.” The tall suited man spoke for the first time. He sounded more amused than bitter.

“Hah! Never mind. You and a lot of others.” Milan chuckled.

“So, what’s up? You asked to meet us, all over the forums,” Athena interjected with a note of urgency in her voice. There was a pause. Cindella glanced at B.E., then spoke for them both. “We’re getting organized, and we have some ideas. I wanted to run them by you first. Saga is a dark and unpleasant world and the only enjoyment I’ve really had here is with you people. So I want to make sure what we have in mind suits you.”

“Go on.” Athena was interested.

“I met the Dark Queen. She wants to force us to read certain changes into the fabric of this world. I’m not sure exactly what, but it’s stuff like immortality for the children she intends to have. She wasn’t afraid of me. Or, at least, she realized she had nothing to fear from me, or any of us, because if she dies, then half my world dies of the addiction she has caused in them. So, we need to find something that she is willing to negotiate over. Either that or give her what she wants, with no guarantees she won’t go ahead and kill two million people anyway.”

This prompted Nathan to interrupt with the same question that had occurred to me. “So . . . you’re saying you don’t want her dead?”

“Blood and thunder, no!” Cindella waved the question away emphatically. “Tell them what it’s like, B.E.”

“It’s a nightmare.” Cindella’s friend leaned against a wall, checking it carefully first so as not to dirty his suit. “All I want to do is play Saga. But it’s turning me into a wraith. I don’t eat properly; I don’t exercise. I don’t even want to unclip to go to the toilet; I’m here sixteen or more hours a day. When I go to sleep, I dream about being in Saga. Several times, I’ve fallen asleep while playing. I’ve tried leaving it alone, of course. In the early days, I could stay away for maybe forty-eight hours. But not now. If I stay away, my thoughts fill up with Saga, until even when I’m wide awake, I’m dreaming of Saga. Flashbacks of the game constantly interrupt whatever I’m doing. Outside of Saga, I can’t concentrate at all; I’m broken. I can’t fight the craving anymore.”

“What do you do when you are here?” asked Athena.

“I’m supposed to be an assassin. That was the character class I chose. The models looked stylish.” He gestured at his body. “But once I was in the game, here, I found that none of the missions work, even the training ones. The people I’m supposed to talk to are long gone. So I’m stuck at red. Mostly I earn credit by killing rats, foxes, and rabid dogs in miserable housing blocks like these.”

Milan snorted with amusement. “Sorry, mate,” he immediately apologized. “It’s just that you don’t look like a rat-catcher.”

“If I had to live like this forever, I couldn’t do it,” B.E. continued, without appearing to take any notice. “And nor could anyone else in the same circumstances. So, we have to get the Dark Queen to rescind the addiction.”

“I see,” said Nathan, with a nod. “And how are you going to do that?”

“Put her in a position where she can no longer rule. Destroy all her offices, her palaces, her communications systems. Hound her personally.”

“She’ll kill you,” Athena pointed out.

“Yes!” Cindella was excited. “That’s the beauty of the idea. She can shoot us down, but we will keep coming back, in our tens and hundreds of thousands. It’s only our Saga characters that disappear; we’ll just create new ones. Again and again. Until she’s sick of us.”

Only now did it really crystallize in my mind what it meant to live in a universe that was the creation of another. She was right; they could die over and over. It didn’t matter. Our world was just a game to them.

The grimy room was silent.

“Hell’s teeth. They really are from outside our world, and they really do think it’s a game.” Athena eventually spoke.

“We don’t think it’s a game anymore.” Cindella was bitter.

“What do you do in your own world? What do you look like?” wondered Nathan.

“Our village runs an olive farm; Osterfjord is its name. I live there. My real name is Erik. I’m sixteen, with dark hair.”

“Erik?” I was shocked. “You’re male?”

“Ya.” Cindella, or as I now struggled to see him, Erik, gave a slight laugh. “Our characters, or avatars as we call them, can be anything; they don’t have to reflect what we’re like outside the game.”

“Amazing.” Nathan came over to Cindella and took hold of the embroidered cuff of her blouse, feeling it between his finger and thumb. “You are so real, but this is just your computer-generated being . . . your avatar.” He turned to B.E. “How about you?”

“I’m B.E. in Osterfjord, too. Most of us stick to names and models that have some resemblance to our own bodies.”

Here we were, a meeting of two entirely different species, in the dingiest room imaginable. Surely an event of this kind should have been in a palace?

“So, what do you think of our plan?” B.E. asked.

“It’s smart.” Athena spoke in a musing tone. “It might work. We can help point out some targets for you. Although you’ll be lucky to get anywhere near her personally.”

“So, you wouldn’t mind?” Erik asked.

“Mind? Bring it on. Trash the joint. You couldn’t make it much worse for reds.” Milan gestured at the room we were standing in.

“But I was thinking I’d like to do a news broadcast first, to explain to your people what we are doing. I’d like them on our side, or at least to understand the situation and why we are destroying buildings. There’s about ten thousand of us have agreed to this plan, and I’m anticipating a lot more as the word spreads. But ten thousand should be enough to seize a big broadcasting station for an hour or so and send out our message, right?”

“Ten thousand.” Milan whistled, impressed. “You could take out her government with that. Have you got arms?”

“Some of us, but we can’t use them. It doesn’t matter if we die, but if anyone from your world is killed, that’s a real death. That poor policeman . . . I had no idea he was real. Now that we understand that, we are all extremely anxious not to hurt anyone.”

Milan laughed derisively. “You’re going to fight a war with the Dark Queen but not use weapons? Good luck with that.”

“Yes, we are.” B.E. was cold. “We are going to destroy her world, brick by brick, if we have to. Everything she depends upon will be broken. Until she is so anxious to be rid of us, she takes away the addiction.”

“Well, if that works, can you do something for us?” Milan suddenly became serious.

“Of course. What?” Erik replied.

“Ask her to give us an amnesty, a pardon.”

“Certainly.”

“Do you know how our guild system works?” Athena had a sudden thought, and straightaway I could see where she was going.

“Sort of. You register with one and as it goes up in the standings, it gets more local powers and benefits?” Erik suggested tentatively.

“Right.” Athena nodded brightly in return. “At around a hundred thousand members, depending on their individual ranking, the guild leader gets a seat on the High Council, theoretically the most important governing body after the Queen. I’ve set up a guild, Defiance. I want to get on that council and stir things up. Why don’t you all join? If I get there, it will help your strategy of disruption.”

“Good idea, thanks. Defiance it is. We’ll pass the word.” B.E. sounded grateful.

“I’ll make you both officers. Cindella and B.E., right?”

“Actually,” said B.E., sounding a little sheepish, “my full name is B.E. the Executioner.”

“And mine is Cindella Dragonslayer.”

With a smile, Milan shook his head. “Well, at least you both look the part.”

“I know you’ve said it before, but just to repeat. You don’t want the Dark Queen killed?” Nathan glanced at me when he asked the question.

“No! No, she mustn’t die. Either that would somehow break the connection and leave us without the game . . . or worse.” B.E. shuddered. “Trapped by our addiction to Saga, we’d die a slow death, our bodies declining through neglect. We need her alive, to reverse whatever it is she has done to us.”

“We’ll help,” I offered, with a quick check on the reaction of the gang. “Athena can list the government buildings we know about, especially the indigo-class ones, the important ones. And we can point out the best building for doing a world newscast.”

“I was thinking about that,” Athena joined in, as positive toward them as I was. “I can help you to design your newscast, to prepare something in advance. So all you have to do is get in there and play it, while keeping the security and the police off your backs for the duration.”

“That’s great! Thanks a lot. It’s good to have met with some friends in this place.” Erik’s smile, through the beautiful Cindella, was infectious. We were all smiling, but deep down I felt guilty. I still wanted to hunt down and kill the Dark Queen. To free my friends from the danger she represented. Just that? Or was that the excuse that fitted an unconscious desire? I couldn’t condemn these visitors to our world to the indefinite torture of their addiction, could I?

In the end
, We decided to have the dress made, not with many eyes but two, front and back, like a Caligo butterfly. The frame could not be copper, for We would then find the weight too great. In fact, it consists of a delicate weaving of carbon nanotubes, copper coated. When the dressmakers stood before Us in trepidation, they were mistaken as to Our humor; We were delighted with them. Their construction was ingenious, fluttering in response to movement, but elastically firm enough always to return to shape. The frame itself was so beautiful We were tempted simply to wear it, to appear at the ball as a flying sprite, a metal-winged angel. This, however, We rejected, well aware that Our days of enchanting appearance were over. Some cruel guests might even take amusement from the incongruity of Our aged body and the costume of a balletic nymph. No, a poisonous, dangerous butterfly was the correct apparel for Our current stage of life. So, We clad the frame in velvet, upon which were mounted gems: pink diamonds; opals; aquamarines; spinels of lilac, indigo, and blue; sapphires of every hue. The mosaic they formed is of dark tiger stripes curving in fractal paths around the two great irises. It is a beautiful and extraordinary costume, which conveys more than any speech could that We are at the height of Our powers.

Michelotto has forced Us out of the barracks, and We are glad. It did not suit Our nature to stay on the defensive. It is time to rally the troops, crush the nascent rebellion before it gains any significant following, and in the process locate and destroy him.