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  Intellectually, Jay knew this. Emotionally, however, it was hard to accept.

  Jay Gridley did not like to lose. Ever.

  The track followed the shoreline for maybe a quarter of a mile, then veered into the dry sand, heading away from the beach. The footprints weren’t as distinct here, but still easy to see across the otherwise smooth sand. Two hundred yards away from the water, there was a line of trees and underbrush, and there the footprints disappeared. But even so, there was a trail, narrow and winding, and no sign of broken branches or disturbed bushes leaving the path. A couple years back, Jay had learned how to track a man on foot, even one trying to hide his trail, and whoever this was, he was sticking to the easy way.

  There was a gentle rise, and it was cooler here in the trees, but not enough so that Jay needed a shirt. The dirt and moss underfoot were soft and warm. Birds cheeped, some kind of small creature chittered in the trees, and Jay enjoyed the hike.

  After another fifteen minutes or so, the animal track widened into a clearing, ringed by banana and palm trees.

  In the middle of this glen stood a woman dressed in a sarong, a bright red patterned wrap that covered her from her breasts to just above her knees. She had a Polynesian look to her, silky black hair that hung to the middle of her back, dark skin made darker by the sun, and a flashing white smile. Altogether gorgeous, Jay decided.

  He returned her smile. Well. This was easy enough. About time.

  He walked toward her. She waited.

  Fifteen feet away, he stepped onto a broad palm leaf and felt his belly lurch as he fell into a pit.

  He landed heavily on his feet, collapsed, and stood up again, shaking his head, already angry with himself. Fortunately, the trap had not been lined with stakes; but it could have been. As it was, the edges of the pit were two feet above his outstretched hands. He jumped up, caught the edge, and it gave way under his grip. He fell, cursing.

  He shook his head again, disgusted with himself. And here he’d just been thinking about how great he was.

  Jay shook his head. He would have to dig climbing notches in the dirt, which, with his bare hands, was going to take a while, even in the soft soil. And he knew that the smiling woman he had been following would be long gone by the time he reached the surface.

  Gritting his teeth, and biting back a few more choice curses, he got to work.

  WTC Airlines Flight #217

  Somewhere over the Atlantic

  Locke wished that the Concorde SSTs were still flying the Atlantic route between Paris and New York. Yes, he was in first class, and certainly there were things he could do to pass the time; still, commercial air travel was so much less interesting than almost any other mode of transportation. There was nothing to see, just clouds and distant ocean. The air on board a modern jet was dry, stale, and full of enough germs to infect an entire army.

  A train, a riverboat, those gave you sights. Even an old prop plane chugging along at low altitude was better. Riding a bike or walking was the best of all—you could interact with the scenery. You saw things while walking you’d miss in a car or on a train, and certainly would miss on a jet roaring along at six hundred miles an hour.

  Still, if you needed to get somewhere quickly, the jet was obviously the way to travel. Crossing an ocean on a ship could take a week; flying over it, a matter of hours. One had to balance the means against the end. Too bad there were no such things as matter transmitters, like in the sci-fi stories on television.

  Locke had seen those as a kid—with Captain Kirk and Spock speaking dubbed Mandarin. Step onto a pad, Scotty pushes the sliders, and presto! You were instantly where you wanted to be. . . .

  Locke sipped at his club soda. When he had been making his living from women, he had drunk alcoholic beverages at social gatherings; it was necessary. These days, he seldom indulged in liquor. He did not like to have his thoughts fuzzed by anything.

  In fact, he had found certain smart drugs and mild psychedelics to be enhancing, and he sometimes took these. In competition, with all things else being equal, the smartest player had the advantage. The kind of work he had come to required a sharpness of mind, a concentration, and anything that altered his consciousness and made him feel less clever? No, thanks.

  This venture with Wu was intriguing on many levels. If it succeeded, it would be hard to top. The money aspect of it was enormous, the level of detail needed immense, and offhand, Locke couldn’t think of any way he could better it. Well, toppling a government, perhaps, and becoming a king himself . . .

  Locke smiled, and sipped his tonic water again. He would worry about that once he accomplished the task at hand.

  He had come a long way from the streets of Hong Kong. And not just in distance.

  9

  People’s Military Base Annex

  Macao, China

  Wu hated computers. But then he pretty much disliked high technology in general. Were it not for such things, the Chinese would rule the world. It was a simple matter of numbers, and the Chinese had more of them—more citizens, more soldiers, more weapons, more everything. At least, everything that wasn’t high-tech.

  But with their electronic smart missiles and radar and sonar and IR satellites that could spot a man smoking a cigarette at night in the fog from hundreds of miles up in the sky, the armies of the West had the advantage. And their superiority in technology more than made up for the Chinese superiority in numbers, the Chinese superiority in tradition, and the Chinese superiority in moral standards.

  For now, anyway.

  Wu recalled the first American Gulf War, wherein the Iraqi troops had dug in, formed lines as had been done for hundreds of years—and had been whipped like a housewife beating a dirty rug. The Iraqis had been outflanked, outmaneuvered, and outgunned. They sat there in their trenches in the desert while the United States flew over them unseen like a sharp-eyed eagle, watching every move they made. If, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man was king, then a man with two eyes and high-tech telescopes was a god. The Iraqis had not had a prayer of winning—not using the tactics of the past against those of the future. No chance at all.

  Wu sighed. The Chinese could put millions of soldiers onto a field, but today, those numbers were not enough. To win a battle, much less a war, against an enemy with a vastly superior technology, you either had to develop weapons of your own to match his—or you had to somehow take his away.

  A smart weapon with its brain removed was no danger. The playing field would be leveled considerably if the West could not bring its toys to the game.

  Thus the need for Comrade Shing. Water could defeat fire, but with a large enough fire, water was not the best way—fire itself was.

  “Report, please,” Wu said, giving Shing his usual enigmatic smile.

  “We progress according to plan,” Shing said. He was bored with this; it shone from his face. He felt superior to Wu, felt a contempt for him and his oldness, had no respect for tradition. Shing was one of the new dragons of the air, all looks, bright red wings fluttering, pretty to gaze upon, but no substance, no connection to the ground. You must have roots to withstand the cyclone’s winds. Men like Shing would be blown around the skies in a moderate breeze. Computers were amazing playthings, smart bombs could not be denied, but their reality was ephemeral. Take those away, and it was the man on the ground who decided the battle.

  The pen, in the long run, might indeed be mightier than the sword, but on a street facing a man with a sword, a pen was a poor weapon. There would be no long run for the scribe against the warrior in such a situation. Shing did not know this. He had not yet learned that real power always comes down to the sword. All else flowed from that.

  Wu knew. Wu also knew that the sword of power must, at times, be taken from those who did not know how to wield it. From those who did not wish to give it up.

  Shing was of some value. Locke was worth more.

  Men with swords of power were not to be faced directly, however. They might be less than ad
ept with their blades, but even a casual backhanded swipe could behead somebody foolish enough to stand in front of them making annoying noises. One needed to distract them, misdirect their attention, and while they were busy, slip in and steal their weapons for one’s own use.

  This was Shing’s worth. He would be a distraction, though he would have no idea this was the use to which he was being put.

  Shing was too full of himself, his own skill and talent, to even consider that a man such as Wu could use him thus.

  Pride was both terrible and wonderful—terrible for the man who suffered it; wonderful for one who could use another man’s hubris to his own ends. . . .

  So, go on, flying dragon, feel superior. Look down from the skies upon lowly Wu, plodding across the ground like a turtle, ancient and slow. Eventually, the cyclone would come, and Wu, safe in his shell, would be here long after the dragons of the air had been dashed against the mountains, their bodies left there to freeze in the chilly heights. . . .

  He smiled at the image. Even a poor general could be a poet, if not a great one. But there were other ways to make up for that.

  Edward’s Park

  Washington, D.C.

  Jay Gridley, who had survived countless VR battles, a quantum computer-generated stroke, and a brush with Mr. Death Himself in the form of a bullet to the head, stood at the edge of the sidewalk, worried about crossing the street.

  The walk sign had just lit, and bright LEDs gleamed at him, offering the same promise the witch in the fairy tale had offered Hansel and Gretel: inviting, but surely a dark side lay hidden in it somewhere.

  He eyed the traffic on both sides of the intersection. All the cars were stopped now, waiting for him to head out into the street. Waiting for the baby.

  Come on, Gridley.

  He felt a nervous tingle, but stepped forward, pushing the pram. He paused to eye little Mark, who lay quietly, watching the world go by overhead, with seemingly no cares in the world.

  If you only knew, son.

  Not willing to be distracted from their imminent peril, Jay scanned the street again, looking for signs that the drivers at either side were planning to run him over. Eyes that had been trained to note the slightest change in the hyper-realistic environments of VR scanned every detail. He saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  Part of him laughed at his nervousness, but another more primal part nodded, satisfied.

  It was okay.

  He made it across the street and pushed the carriage toward the entrance to Edward’s Park, still not sure this was a good idea. Saji was doing a how-to VR-cast on Buddhist meditation, and had suggested he get out of the house for a while, so she could focus.

  “Go to the park, Jay,” she’d said. “Have some fun, and show Mark around!”

  It had sounded good, but now, alone, without his wife nearby, ready to use her mothering superpowers, he was nervous. Plus, there was the whole danger thing. It was fine to go for a walk by himself—not that he really liked going out in RW that much—but here he was with a little defenseless person, and he was completely in charge. What if something happened to him? What would happen to the baby?

  Come on, Jay, you can handle a walk in the park.

  Well, maybe.

  It was a new feeling for him, this responsibility. Maybe it was because he hadn’t yet had enough time with his son on his own. Saji was always there, ready to help out. God, was this what she went through when he was at work?

  It wasn’t that he couldn’t handle the physical part of things. He was brighter than most people he knew—come to think of it, brighter than most people he didn’t know and would never meet. He could handle a bottle, and Saji had supplied some milk for the one in the little incubator bag at the back of the carriage. Plus he had a binky, if all else failed.

  The pram looked like those seen in old movies set in the late 1890s, a big black carriage with huge wheels and a pullover top that protected the baby from the sun and errant looks from strangers. He and Saji had looked all over D.C. for one like it. Saji had read somewhere that babies felt more secure if they could look at their parents, so it had to be the pram.

  No, it wasn’t the physical part of things that made him nervous. It was the thought that maybe something would happen from which he couldn’t protect his child. It was a heavy weight, and one that explained all kinds of things he’d seen in other people with children. He had been admitted to the secret fatherhood; the fatherhood of knowing just how terrifying the world really was.

  Before, when he’d worried about things going to hell, it hadn’t been so bad—the world only had to last long enough to see himself and his friends through it. After that, nothing mattered much anyway. But that time period had now been extended another lifetime, and it added a certain amount of pressure.

  His son gurgled a happy sound, and Gridley looked down, feeling a warm pleasure run through him. If there was a dark side to these new minefields of responsibility, there was also a light one. He’d never felt such unconditional love for anyone in his life. Whether he was up at five in the morning feeding the boy, or changing a dirty diaper, that pleasure didn’t diminish in the least. Part of him knew that this was purely biological, but he just didn’t care.

  Amazing.

  There was a pond at the center of the park, where ducks swam. He’d brought part of an old loaf of bread to feed them, thinking it might amuse his son.

  But maybe not. No one had bothered to tell him that babies younger than about six months tended to just sit there, not doing anything. Well, if you didn’t count eating, crying, and filling diapers. All his life he’d seen pictures and vids of babies crawling or running, or sitting up and playing. He just hadn’t been told that there was a time frame around such things.

  Oh, well. He could always just sit and hold him.

  He glanced down again, and little Mark was looking up at him.

  “What are you looking at, little tiger?”

  The boy grinned a toothless smile. Daddy was talking to him.

  Jay wished he could have this much fun at work. He’d been struggling to figure out his latest puzzle. It seemed so close sometimes, as if there was something that he just wasn’t seeing.

  One of his old mentors had said more than once that his intuition was a plus for programming: that it could short-circuit hours of scut work with one sudden realization. This time, though, it just wasn’t coming.

  Ahead was the pond. He looked at the water. The breeze pushed ripples across it. A pair of white ducks swam sedately along. He noted the details for future VR work, and looked for a likely place to park the pram.

  “Wahhhhhhhhh!”

  At Mark’s sudden wail, Jay went tense.

  “What is it, pumpkin? What’s the matter?”

  He leaned down and sniffed. It didn’t smell like a full diaper.

  He quickly ran through the list. Hungry? Didn’t sound like a hungry cry. He reached in the little incubator bag anyway and produced the bottle, warmed to just the right temperature.

  Nope. He didn’t want that.

  The crying went on. Jay began to feel an edge of panic.

  Binky, binky, fallback plan.

  He lowered the gemlike plastic pacifier to his son’s mouth, which popped open and latched right on.

  The crying stopped immediately.

  Whew.

  He pictured what he might have done if the binky hadn’t worked: running full-tilt across the park, heading home to get Saji.

  Glad it didn’t come to that.

  He looked down and saw that Mark had spit out the binky. His little arms flailed around for it in frustration. Jay could see that it had fallen just to the right of the boy’s head, and reached down to get it. Mark’s hands twitched, trying to find his lost comforter. The boy had such a look of irritation that Jay found himself thinking about his own problems.

  Yeah, he thought, all I need is a little help from someone else, get them to reach down and hand me the solution.

  And th
en the realization clicked, the situation spun around, and he saw how he might beat the locked-room mystery.

  Yes!

  Jay smiled at his son again, and stroked his head. Not bad—take the baby to the park, and cut the Gordian knot at the same time.

  Mark’s eyes started to close. Get a binky, go to sleep. Must be nice . . .

  Jay grinned.

  Smokin’ Jay Gridley was about to ride again.

  He turned the pram around and headed home. Saji would be done teaching her lesson by now, the boy would nap for at least an hour, and Jay could get on-line and run with his new idea.

  10

  Wormwood, South Dakota

  Instinct was like inspiration. Neither were things they taught in computer school, though a few of Jay’s teachers had spoken about one or the other. Nor were they things you should depend upon with any regularity; then again, they weren’t things you should ignore when they tweaked you, either.

  Jay felt that tweak again now—a sixth sense of somehow knowing he was close. It was different from wishful thinking—he’d experienced that often enough to recognize the feeling.

  The scenario wasn’t a complicated one. It was an old standby he’d built years ago, a town in the Old West, with cowboys and shopkeepers and schoolmarms, and that atmospheric High Noon twang underlying it. He had changed names and places and upgraded the sensoria, and it was one of his favorites.

  Jay strode along the boardwalk, tipping his hat to the ladies he passed, inhaling the odors of dust and horse dung. Tumbleweeds had gathered in the alleyways, and the sun-bleached storefronts and graying wood buildings baked in dryness.

  Ahead, at the entrance to the town saloon, the Hickory Branch, a figure suddenly moved from the boardwalk and into the place.

  Jay wasn’t sure who he was hunting, but he knew, he knew that this was his quarry. His realization at the park with his baby son had pointed him in this direction, and it felt right.