The Woman Who Stopped Traffic (26 page)

CHAPTER 33

But that wasn’t how it went. By the time they swooped on Paul Towse’s Pacific Heights mansion, he’d ghosted on them, Adam informed Natalie the very next day.

“Gone where
?”

“We don’t know.”

“Right,” Natalie said uncertainly. “So what now?”

“Biggest source of traffic to SureFar Enjoy remains
MultiQuest,
via the Clamor site. Rage has lived on.
Has
now turned into a Non-Player Character, like some dark deity ascended into hell.”

“God in heaven.”

“We need to get back in the game.”

They all got together at the Silicon Bean café.

Josie, the owner, made it available to them after hours. Natalie was pleasantly surprised to find Winston Ma there. He sat in a big brown armchair: a diminutive figure with spiky hair and sharp-angled glasses, engrossed in his laptop. Natalie had only spoken with him on the phone, and recognized him first by his voice: “Oh there you go, you little bitch!” he was saying into his headset. “
Yeah
! That’s what I’m talkin’ about! Who’s daddy now?”

She tapped him on his shoulder. “Um Winston, it’s me. Natalie.”

“Hey! Natalie!
What’s up
?” and his face lit up with a thousand-watt smile.

“Winston, who
were
you just talking to?”

“Just some angry fighting gnome.”

“What had she
done
?”

“He. Got on my wrong side.
It’s so great to finally see you
!”

In the game, he was a particularly flamboyant magician going by the name of Mag
é. “It’s pronounced like Sade,” he said. “The pop singer that is, not the Marquis de’.” Magé had a penchant for purple satin gowns and spectacular golden scepters, “the difference being the ermine collars,” he said, stretching his neck up and out in a regal sort of way.

She said: “Bit of a trek down from the city, isn’t it?”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? I got laid off. Yup, found out through Twitter! The all-new combined HR department of Accidental Bank And Now Carmichael sent out a global tweet to the summer interns, telling ‘em twasn’t to be. Thought I’d try my luck down here in the Valley.” He looked round approvingly. “I
like
it here! Just went for a job interview at Clamor, with Nancy Wu.”

“I thought Nancy left Clamor?”

“She came back. She’s now running the show. Lot of the staff there really liked her apparently, wanted her to return.”

“What about Dwayne Wisnold?”

“Oh, he’s on permanent sabbatical. Or some fellowship thing? Who knows. Who cares! Nancy Wu’s cool! Or rather, she’s
hhh-ot
!” – And Ma’s face turned into the surprised look of a freshly caught fish.

Tolemy, the cleric whom they’d ridden up to the Scintanel Plateau with that one time, turned out to be a tall, good-looking Indian programmer
– one of the original search-algorithm engineers at Google. He wore a knee-length green leather jacket and introduced himself as V.K.Venkateshanonandonananda.

V-and-on-and-what?

“You can call me V.K.,” he smiled, with the easy confidence of a man who’d received early Google stock options. In addition to being perhaps the most respected cleric in the land, he had an alter-identity in the game: alchemist.

There were half-a-dozen others present, all members of the Order of the Knights Templar, including a large teenage girl who’d evidently come straight from work. She wore a Burger King uniform. In the game she was a fierce old warrior queen called Lyne.

Adam, or rather Brastias, called the Order to order. “Let’s get straight down to it. We’ve been searching for Rage for a week now. What are we going to do?”

“The interpretation of the religious texts is clear,” Tolemy warned. “Either Rage is slain by sundown on the 13
th
– this Friday, that is – or the world is condemned to another great age of darkness. Perhaps several.”

“That’s
two day’s time
! Magé
said
.
“How do we slay him when he
won’t engage
?”

The stakes had risen. A group of hackers had managed to de-activate
MultiQuest
’s billing engine, making it free to join. The rave reviews continued to roll in; the widely followed consumer technology post of the
Trumpington Bugle
blog had lauded it as “perhaps the most mythologically complete representation of modern times available to any gamer anywhere.” It was adding a million new members a week. A hundred million total members didn’t seem so far fetched now.

“Listen, I hate to come out of character,” Natalie said, “but there are some pretty serious real-world issue here
– human trafficking for one. We can’t risk another dark age of the game. Not with the number of players involved. If someone could hack in and unhook the billing engine, why can’t
we
go in and delete a Non-Player Character such as Rage?”

“It’s just not that simple,” V.K. said. “The billing engine is a discreet piece of software – necessarily so, as it interfaces with the banks’ payments systems. But,
Deep Thought
– the code base running the game itself – is a different animal altogether. To allow the graphics to build as fast as they do, the code is distributed across peer-to-peer networks. Millions of personal computers, all around the world. There
is
no central server to hack into.”

“– or Central American server farm to blow up, Ms Bond,” Winston said, eyebrow arched.

“OK, I get it: so the game effectively runs itself now,” Natalie said, frowning heavily. “What the hell is
Deep Thought
written in, anyway? Why can’t we ask your friend, Winston? The one who told us about the ownership structure?”

“Eeesh, he was fired. For that reason.”

Winston steepled his fingers. “As for what
Deep Thought
’s written in, it’s actually derived from the concatenation of internal numeric commands, textual commands, and a
nonce
, hashed using an MDX algorithm, then inserted into blocks finally encrypted with 4,096-bit keys. And that’s about all my newly unemployed friend would tell me,” Winston shrugged. “Oh well.”

V.K. said: “I think what Winston, or rather
Magé, is trying to say is that Rage resides deep in
Deep Thought
itself. That the only way out is to defeat him
in
the game. Which first means finding him. By Friday, sun down.”

Lyne said: “We’ve already reached the high pass of the Atalantans. We may as well keep going and cross to the west side. Everything we’ve heard points to him lurking somewhere in the new worlds there.”

“But we also know he only ever engages one or two people at a time,” Magé
said.

“That’s true. Two of us should go ahead. It really would be faster,” Tolemy said.

“Which two?” Lyne asked.

“An armourer for sure. And the best rider among us, I guess.”

“Then that’s Brastias, and Caerleone,” Lyne said. Turning to Natalie: “Guess it’s your destiny.”

The plan was for Tolemy to help Brastias and Caerleone traverse the treacherous high pass, while Magé, Lyne and the others returned to the Quorn Valley, in case Rage showed up there instead.

The high Atalantans were an alpine wonderland of emerald waterfalls, wasted glaciers and pristine snowcaps. On and on they traveled, through the high windy pass, through horizontal hail and sunrays so fierce that they felt like they could’ve fried a
Pterodactyl or Quetzalcoatlus egg on whatever rock surface wasn’t shaded. That night, Tolemy kept guard while Brastias and Caerleone rested in an incense-filled monastery (separate rooms), barnacled to a high cliff-face.

The Silicon Bean was starting to resemble the dispersal hut of a war time fighter squadron: fully clothed figures dozing fitfully in seated positions as dawn broke.

Waiting – for Rage to arrive.

V.K. with his eyes half open, a book spread in his lap. He was thumbing the bottom of the pages. Funny, he didn’t seem to be turning any, Natalie noted.

At 06:55 hours, they had to stand down. Josie needed to open the Bean up to the regular early work trade. Time was running out.

CHAPTER 34

That evening, Natalie drifted off in her hotel room, dead to the world.

She awoke at 02:45, unable to remember her dreams, yet incapable of returning to sleep. Finding the remote, she turned on the TV, and was confronted with an array of entertainment options at that hour, ‘Adult Desires’ being most prominent among them.

Curiosity led her. The types of movies displayed alphabetically, ‘Asian’ being first, ‘Asian Dreams’ the lead title from a list filling the screen. A prompt asked her to confirm her purchase for $16.95 + tax, reassuring her that the title would not appear on her bill. After the briefest of title sequences, the film cut straight to a young girl with long black hair riding an older man. Her back was arched, her head back, mouth forming a perfect ‘o’.
Pause
,
Play
and
Fast Forward
controls appeared along the bottom of the screen.  

Natalie looked at the actress. “
Hahh
,” she kept crying, to a rhythmic slapping sound, the orgasmic throes contradicted by her void eyes and flaccid stomach. Her crotch was depilated to look like a little girl’s –
who was this actress
? What was her story? Natalie fast-forwarded. The scenes followed a sequence of sexual positions like some latter-day ritual. There was a repeating change in the actress’s demeanor from defiance, hostility even – to compliance,
gratitude
finally.

Every scene ended with the man coming in the woman’s face.

The businessmen, movers and shakers staying a place like the Keaton were among the more influential members of society. As a woman and a security professional, Natalie was struck by the vast
in
security system it amounted to.

Why did it have to be this way?

The phone rang – Adam Lau: “Rage is up.”

They thundered down the far-side foothills, picking up speed as they went, the horses’ hooves sounding their urgent, four-thump gallop. Finally they entered the infamous Serafin Valley where, word had it, Rage lay in wait. Scenes of devastation confronted them: healers consoling the injured, fires burning out of control. At one point the heat became so fierce their entire field of vision wavered watery white. Still they did not let up: the sun’s orb was sinking ever lower in the sky, ever closer to that serrated horizon.

“Here,” Brastias yelled over the thump of hooves, and handed her something long, thin
and sharp: “This is the legendary Sword of swords.”

“Huh?
It is too light
!”

She was about to discard it for her heavier weapon when he urged: “No! It has weight enough.” He was having trouble keeping up with her. “It is not point heavy, the handle is weighted. The magic is in the balance!”

He was right, she realized, taking a couple of practise swipes. It sang, the blade
humming
through the onrushing air.

“OK,” she said to him
– but he had already fallen behind. Phariance was now
swimming
with energy like a river bursting its banks,
flying
forward!

And then there he was, coming towards her like he’d ridden straight up out of the underworld. All in black, with coal-black eyes, his massive warhorse black too, the dark
shaffron
and
crinet o
f its head armour chinking ominously. Her innards sank as she recognized the hundreds of pounds weight advantage they had over Phariance and her.

Still, she
looked
resplendent, in a dazzlingly bejewelled fighting cape.

The horses accelerated into such a fierce gallop that the hoof beat became continuous. For a second it looked like the two horses would collide head on at a closing speed of more than eighty miles an hour. Somehow they knew to pass at just an arm’s distance on the left. Shocked by the pace and aggression of it all she froze, gripping her sword before her. His blade flashed crosswise
– the beheading stroke,
clattering
hers flat against her visor. Sparks showered and she saw stars, halo-like shapes behind her eyes.

The horses cantered round in wide, preparatory circles, Phariance attempting to look back over its shoulder, checking on its charge. Rage was looking at her too, studying her with expressionless eyes. He seemed familiar to her. His arm hung casually, the razor-sharp blade slicing dead scrub.

She heard the others through her cell phone, set to LOUDSPKR:

“Crouch lower in the saddle, Caerleone!” one of them was saying; “Make yourself less of a target!”

“
No
! – Sit up tall, so you can manipulate the sword properly!”

“Celestial clock’s ticking, Nat,” a third voice said.

She punched the phone to OFF as the horses squared off again, breaking into another gallop, terrifically fast this time, Rage and his warhorse hurtling towards her like some great black streak. At the last moment, with all her will and might, she kicked her horse onto its opposite leg. Instead of leading with its left hoof it switched to lead right, lurching violently through the transition and shouldering into Rage’s horse such that the two ton-weight mounts really
did
almost collide. At the last second, Rage’s horse veered, throwing Rage off balance, his favoured beheading stroke
thrumming
the air above her awfully as she feinted and – with the dexterity of a seamstress – nicked his saddle girth, briefly exposed.

There was a scintilla of contact with his stirrup too.

Again the horses cantered round, Rage checking his foot armour, finding it to be fully intact, but studying her differently now. That was when she realized that this was no Non-Player Character.

This player was all too human.

Through the pixels, she felt a familiar presence.

He’d slowed to a walking gait, silhouetted against the sun’s orb dipping precariously below the horizon. High above a circling eagle screamed. For a third time they faced off. Then they charged again, utterly exhausted now. She saw Rage dig his spurs in
hard,
the blood whickering off the black beast’s foaming flanks. Phariance, with a lolloping gait, plunged forward, carrying her ever onward. At the last moment, Phariance shouldered in towards its heavier opponent-horse in a suicidal lunge, the other wavering in response, Rage swaying from side to side above – first away from Natalie, then towards her, the saddle girth starting to unravel; the saddle slipping half way down the horse’s nearside.

The real challenge with jousting, Natalie Chevalier had discovered, was that the shoulder floats free from the rest of the skeleton in a harness of soft muscle and tissue… She couched the Sword of swords like a lance, pressing her elbow against her bodice as hard as she could. The tip punctured his breastplate. There was no further resistance, his lower body jerking ragged in the stirrups. And then she felt
herself
tremendously light, as Phariance’s front legs buckled. She was somersaulting over his shoulder, hitting the scrub ground with a
thud
. Winded.

Fighting to keep consciousness.

Rage had planted his sword in Phariance’s neck.

She scrambled back across the prickly scrub, to where Phariance now lay on his side, shaking.

She buried her face in his dishevelled mane. “Don’t go,” she whispered into his still-alert ear.

His heroic sideways glare found her gaze one last time, then the eye dulled, and gently rolled skyward.