Sleepless. Part 14

Beenie was shaking his head.

"I never much got into the hack-n-slash scene myself, but that dude there, Comicaze Y, he just laid some wicked s.h.i.+t on that barbarian."

Park rubbed his eyes. They felt grainy, almost pebbled, like they were sprouting sties. He couldn't stop grinding his teeth; his jaw muscles had started to cramp. He knew it was the speed, but knowing the cause of the symptoms gave him no relief. He knew only one of two things would make him feel any better: sleep or more speed. He wanted to be home, held by Rose, the baby safe between them He opened his mouth wide, stretching his jaw, snapped his teeth together.

"I don't like games where people just kill each other."

Beenie took a sip of his screwdriver.

"Like I said, it's not my thing either, but I've played a couple rounds. It's like golf. You may not like it, but you try it once or twice and you know how hard it is. After that, every time you see those guys on tour, all you can think is that they must be witches with the things they make the ball do. Comicaze Y, the other guys at the top, they're like that. Voodoo with the controller."

Park understood that there were people who tired of the endless puzzles and problem-solving scenarios of Chasm Tide, the social dynamics that needed to be mastered if a player was going to integrate into a raiding party or quest. Advancement in the game required long hours spent picking at tangles of logic and personality, as well as hacking and slas.h.i.+ng. He himself had no particular interest in the game. If it wasn't for Rose, he'd never have built a character of his own, let alone logged several hours adventuring and exploring the terrain. He lacked the ability to suspend disbelief to the extent required to make the experience immersive, but he admired the skill and workmans.h.i.+p that went into the building of the thing, the attention to detail. And he respected the values inherent in the system of levels that characters progressed through as they became more powerful. Certainly those levels could be bought with blood or gold, but the rewards for ingenuity and teamwork were far larger. Multiple levels could be jumped in a single bound if the right riddle was answered or puzzle a.s.sembled. He liked the idea of a world where mental acuity and the ability to play well with others were valued more highly than blood-l.u.s.t or greed.

War Hole was a Chasm Tide spin-off for players who felt otherwise. Of whom there were many. War Hole rewarded their virtual brutality abundantly, but asked that something be risked. Whereas death in Chasm Tide led to an inconvenient reincarnation in the heart of the Chasm, gamers in War Hole could advance to the highest levels of proficiency only by permanently risking the lives of their warriors. Avatars killed in tournaments such as these did not emerge to fight again; they were lost. All record of them obliterated from the War Hole servers, locally stored copies locked from reloads.

Observing a squat, bald forty-year-old, silently sobbing as he drank the repeated shots of tequila poured for him by his sullen handlers, Park guessed that he was one of the erased. A defeated fighter who had seen the fruit of hundreds of hours of gaming cut down and dispersed into the unknown.

He ground his teeth.

"This is depressing."

Beenie sipped his drink.

"What isn't?"

An announcer's voice came over the PA, informing the fans that there would be a thirty-minute break before the final match, thanking various sponsors, listing drink specials, and tipping his hat to the evening's host.

"Cager!"

Several pin spots swarmed, raced around the room, convened on a bastion of banquettes and divans, settling on a reedy young man in black Levis that rode high at the cuffs to show a few inches of sagging mismatched red and blue socks, and a vintage sleeveless black Tubeway Army T-s.h.i.+rt. Hunched over the silverfish glow of a smartphone screen, he took a black comb from his back pocket and used it to recut the side part in his immovably greased towhead blond hair. He tucked the comb away, vaguely acknowledged the crowd with a flip of fingers, and returned attention to his phone, thumbs dancing over a slide-down qwerty keyboard.

A brief cheer rose from the crowd, the spots went back to swimming the walls, and everyone moved toward the bar or the bathrooms. The screens cross-faded, tournament highlights replaced by pictures and snippets of video, taken and messaged by camera phone and smart device, the work of this evening's club patrons. Dance floor action, a couple shooting themselves having s.e.x in a bathroom stall, a boy puking, several people doing a.s.sorted drugs, flashed anatomy, and a brawl in the valet line.

Park stared at the young man.

Child of great fortune, infamous wastrel and libertine, source of endless gossip-blog fodder. Suspected plague profiteer. He looked like nothing so much as any number of wallflower students Park had known at Stanford. Acolytes in fields of obscure digital study; he'd not socialized with them but recognized in their eyes the same desperate fever that had possessed the Ph.D. candidates in the philosophy department.

He finished the bottle of water he'd been sipping at, his tense stomach resisting, and set it on a c.o.c.ktail table crowded with empty gla.s.ses stuffed with cigarette b.u.t.ts.

"I want to meet him."

Beenie finished his drink, set the gla.s.s aside, rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder, and bounced on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet.

"Let's go see the prince."

The low tables and couches in the VIP section were littered with gadgets; minivideo recorders, gaming handhelds, ultraportable DVD players, a small stack of phones that someone appeared to have been using for an improvised game of Jenga, thumb drives, a fistful of memory cards, and all the attendant detritus of instillation disks, twist-tied USB cables, styro-foam and cardboard packing materials, rebate cards, and low-quality AA and AAA batteries.

Parsifal K. Afronzo Jr., perched on the edge of a slate leather ottoman, was apparently oblivious to this clutter or to the entourage scattered in his...o...b..t. They sucked from bottles of raspberry vodka frozen in blocks of ice while unwrapping and almost immediately tiring of the electronic swag that had been piled there in tribute by the event's sponsors. Messaging their friends in the other rooms of the club to determine if they were missing anything good, they honed their nonchalance, as aspiring paparazzi caught them in the background of their Cager cell shots.

Trailing Beenie, Park took note of a crew-cut duo of alert young women wearing skintight head-to-toe ensembles of various nonreflective black tactical materials. A style that extended to the a.s.sault rifles slung on their backs and the pistols strapped to their thighs. That they had been costumed for roles as cannon fodder in a B-grade action picture didn't seem to interfere with their expertise. Spotting Park and Beenie approaching the VIP ropes on a direct line, one of them moved to intercept while the other s.h.i.+fted subtly to put herself in a position to offer cover fire or throw her body in front of her client.

The bodyguard who had stepped to the rope directed them toward a line of shoe gazers lining a nearby wall.

"Please take a spot at the back of the line. If Cager does any signing this evening, it will done on the line only."

Beenie raised a hand.

"Cager."

The bodyguard placed a hand on the b.u.t.t of her sidearm.

"Please do not address Cager, sir."

"Cage, it's Beenie."

"Please move away from the rope, sir."

Beenie lifted himself on tiptoe, trying to see over her shoulder.

"Dude, it's Beenie; just wanted to discuss what we talked about that last time."

The bodyguard came down a step and jutted her face into Beenie's.

"Hey, a.s.shole, you don't understand polite English? I said leave Cager the f.u.c.k alone and f.u.c.k off to the back of the line. Better, just f.u.c.k off out of the club before I Taser your a.s.s and drag you out to the street."

"It's all right, Imelda."

She drew back.

"Sir?"

Cager's fingers paused, and he pointed.

"It's all right. Just go stand by Magda and keep looking hot and dangerous."

She flared perfect nostrils.

"Sir?"

He tapped a message to elsewhere.

"Pose. You come over here, it throws the tableau out of balance. The bouncers can take care of this kind of thing. Unless it's something serious, I want you and Magda to maintain the composition up here. If we have a situation like when we were in Tijuana and those guys tried to kidnap me, you can break their knees and Magda can shoot them in the hands like you did there. Otherwise, I really want to uphold the integrity of the image."

Imelda gave half a nod.

"Yes, sir."

"And please call me 'boss' from now on."

"Yes, boss."

"Thank you."

She moved back to her position, her partner countering, giving themselves maximum coverage of the perimeter.

Cager's typing had subsided into a single action, repeatedly stabbing one key.

"Beenie."

"Hey, Cager."

"Beenie, have you got my Aspiration Codex?"

Beenie looked at Park, gave him an I-told-you roll of the eyes, and shook his head.

"No, man, I don't."

Cager jabbed the single b.u.t.ton violently three times, then held it down.

"Then why are you here bothering me? Why did I just keep Imelda from Tasering you? I want to break into the Apex Foundation, and I can't begin without the codex."

"Yeah, I know, man. And I thought I'd have one by now, but I got held up because a deal I was trying to make is still in escrow. As soon as it clears, as soon as I hear from Hydo that that deal is sealed, I'll be able to make a move and get your Codex."

"f.u.c.k!"

Cager raised his arm and threw the phone at the floor. The screen went instantly dead, tiny numbered and lettered keys flew, and a ripple of silence circulated through his hangers-on.

"Loganred. I've been bidding on that Hammer of Ultimate Wrath for a week. That lurker pulls a speed bid and wins the auction in the last possible nanosecond. What is the point of bidding if you use software to place your bids for you? I can't even understand a mentality like that. Loganred. Does that feel like victory to him?"

On the banquette, a boy wearing a black frock coat over red jeans tucked into black motorcycle boots flipped up the smoked clip-on lenses from over his rectangular gla.s.ses.

"You don't need a Wrath Hammer, Cage. I got mine."

Cager picked up the wreckage of his phone and used a clipped thumbnail to pry open the SIM card door on the back.

"Yes, Adrian, I know. The whole point of getting my own hammer is so I don't need you and your hammer in the war party anymore."

He slid a chit of gilded blue plastic from the slot.

"That's why I'm so upset. Because now I have to be subjected to your derivative steampunk style for another night."

He turned his head toward the boy, the comb coming from its pocket, gliding across his head in sharp strokes.

"Do you know that everyone is laughing at you, Adrian? That clockwork lapel pin and that ascot, they are pretentious. Just, why can't you wear jeans and a T-s.h.i.+rt? You're not cool. It's okay not to be cool. Just stop trying so hard. You're embarra.s.sing yourself."

Adrian flicked the dark lenses back into place over his eyes, but not before tears were clearly seen there.

"Fine, you don't need my hammer. Fine, man."

He stood up.

"Just go into the Tesseract Fold without me and see what happens."

Cager shrugged.

"Take it personally if you want. That's not how it was meant. I'm just trying to help."

He pointed at a little shaft of k.n.o.bbed plastic that Adrian was holding.

"You can keep that night-vision scope you've been fondling. And you can stay."

Adrian fiddled with a dial on the side of the scope.

"Thanks, Cager. I didn't mean to be a d.i.c.k or anything."

Cager shook his head.

"Sit down, Adrian. Even if you wanted to act like a d.i.c.k, you couldn't. You're nice. For what that's worth. And I don't have my own hammer yet. So I need you in the picture until then."

Adrian dipped his head.

"Okay, man, you'll see. You're gonna need me in the Tesseract."

Cager had turned away, reaching inside a creased and cracked leather shoulder bag that rested between his feet.

"Hydo doesn't have a Codex, Beenie. If he did, I would have bought it from him. I always buy from Hydo first. He's reliable. I buy from Hydo. Then I buy from other people. Then I come to you. As a last resort. And you don't have my Codex."

Beenie played with the Velcro straps on the back of his biking gloves.

"I know Hydo doesn't have one. But he's brokering a package deal on a bunch of artifacts I bundled for one of his customers. Once that comes through, I'll have what I need to do the deal on the codex."

Cager took a phone, identical to the Nokia he had just smashed, from the bag and studied it.

"When did you talk to Hydo?"

"Uh, yesterday?"

Beenie looked at Park.

"Is that when I saw you there?"

Cager's eyes twitched from the phone to Park and back.

"You know Hydo?"

Park nodded.

"We do business."