The California Voodoo Game

16

Tony McWhirter was becoming very twitchy.

With five top Game Masters to run it, Tony hadn't expected California Voodoo to give him this much trouble! But with five teams to keep track of, and glitches in the machinery, and prima donnas screwing up the story lines, Tony wasn't getting time to take a full breath.

The enclaves were clumping up a little. UC and Apple were descending via stairs, sending scouts for a quick look at each floor. Texas Instruments-Mitsubishi and Army, with more than their share of mountain climbers, were exploring the modular wall. General Dynamics was descending much faster, which meant they might miss something, unless Bishop had special knowledge as was his wont.

Army and Tex-Mits had done badly in the trading on the roof. They had two mirrors and no guide. Gen-Dyn had Coral. She looked fetching in short shorts, a neon-blue daypack, and a raggedly chopped off T-shirt reading "Shop Till You Drop." Bobo, assigned to UC and Apple, did without the shirt. The guides shared a brainless look that fitted their roles nicely. Their information had great gaps in it and was not trustworthy.

Tony hadn't planned those alliances and hadn't welcomed them, but they'd make the Gamers easier to keep track of. He needed that, with all the distractions, failing equipment, missing NPCs… and a distracted, manic Alex Griffin.

Tony hadn't felt pressure like this since the South Seas Treasure Game eight years earlier, when he had been trying to slay monsters and steal corporate secrets at the same time. They just weren't giving him room to maneuver!

Through computer cutouts Tony had carefully invested five thousand dollars with another ten sequestered in various main and side bets, spreading the bets out around the country so that no one would ever be able to trace them back to him. Nobody who wasn't better at this than Tony, anyway. On one of four screens he watched numbers flow.

His nerves were screaming at him. It had been a crazy, self-destructive impulse, carefully worked out in anal-retentive detail over the last few weeks. He was betting his job, his reputation, his friendships, against a trivial profit. He'd lose it all if he was caught. He could even lose the bets. He had special knowledge, sure, but the odds… well, they weren't fitting the expected patterns.

Hey, now… was that what had been pecking at his composure? The numbers?

Most of the bets went down as he would have expected. Halfsmart Vegas money, people betting as if this were just another sport. Idiots who assumed that if the sponsoring companies were high on the stock exchange, their teams were shoo-ins. People betting on past performance of a corporate banner before knowing the composition of the team. People betting for favorite Loremasters… and that was smarter money.

But… oh, take the odds against Army. They'd peaked at 7:45 A.M. Thursday the twenty-first, just about the time that everyone discovered that the game wasn't to be played within the Park.

Now, one could figure Army's chances in several ways.

They'd started in third place because they knew Gaming Dome A better than anyone. That advantage had evaporated… but the Army ran wargames, too, in deserts and mountains, through ghost towns ruined by the old Quake.

But a gambler might also know he could ask any soldier that war games involve tens of thousands of warriors and a bare few wizards and Loremasters (called "strategists" and "generals"). Real Games are personal.

Then again, the oldest players, like Trevor Stone of Gen-Dyn, now became really valuable. They'd done this, too: they'd Gamed in desert terrain, and up mountains and down river rapids, before Dream Park's domes had gone up in spring of 2040. Army didn't have anyone like him.

So figuring the odds was like herding rattlesnakes, and the pattern that emerged was bound to be chaotic. The odds against Army dropped, then bottomed out as more players took a better bet, then wobbled… but look at that bottom curve. It was as flat as west Kansas. When the odds hit that point, somebody had been waiting.

Something, some lost datum, had been gnawing at him, and this was it: roughly six hundred thousand carefully coordinated dollars skewing his numbers.

Timing. It was the timing that was unbelievable. So smooth had it been that the odds, which had dropped to 22-3, rose to only 14-3 before the last of the big money was recorded. If Army won, somebody was going to make a killing.

Now who could have done such a thing?

Nigel Bishop's unforgettable grandstand play. He had simultaneously saved and humiliated Army's Loremaster. Tony had been sure Bishop had done it for the cameras, a stunt for the fans and a record for the history books, but hey…

Money made a more satisfying motive. You could count it. You'd know when you won. Six hundred thousand dollars at, say, 2–3 odds…

Even if Bishop was fronting for someone, his cut could hardly be less than a million dollars. If Army won. But could he do it? Throw the Game to Army? Even if one of the other players Say Acacia Garcia Was aiding him?

Tony took the numbers off his number-four screen, to be replaced by a less damning view of the basement power plant. Nothing was happening there. No team would get that far for at least twenty-four hours.

El and Doris were working miracles, stage left. The Lopezes seemed to be loafing, talking to each other with one eye for the screens. Like Tony. But Tony's mind was seething.

If Bishop hoped to pull something like this off, wouldn't he need somebody on the inside?

Tony leaned forward in his chair and conjured up a file on Bishop.

The Art of Gaming, of course. Bishop's magnum opus, the piece of strategic writing that had secured his place in Gaming history. Tony hadn't read it in years, but a quotation flickered vaguely to mind. He summoned up the book and did a global search for the word spy.

Here: When gathering intelligence, know that reliable intelligence is the single most important factor in your success. Therefore, do not forget that there are factors which go beyond the stated rules of the game. You are engaged in a war, and those of you who remember this most clearly, without sentiment or fear, are the ones who will succeed.

There are disaffected members in any Gaming organisation. Get to know them, and their vulnerability. You can appeal to vanity, or greed, or a sense of adventure. And you can get them to give information that you would otherwise have had to sell lives to obtain.

Treat them well, and never forget them, these spies…

Bishop's highest priority in Gaming was gathering intelligence. And because Bishop had been in retirement when he had written The Art of Gaming, he had been extraordinarily candid.

A spy.

Goldfish nibbled at Tony's adrenal glands. Minutes ago he'd been worried about a few thousand dollars' worth of bets. Now… Had Bishop corrupted Acacia? Screwing her was one thing. Tony would merely have flayed him alive for that. But forcing her to throw a Game was unspeakable.

For that matter, weren't they looking for a motive for Sharon Crayne's death?

Sharon had been scanning and possibly recording some of the building specs. That would certainly be a lovely piece of intelligence data for a Loremaster. And if she had sold it to Bishop, and the sale had gone wrong somehow…

Naaah. Why would a relatively innocent misadventure blossom into murder? On the other hand, with between one and four million dollars at stake… People had died for a whole lot less.

Tony gritted his teeth. He'd have to see if he could track that money.

It was, all in all, the thinnest string of supposition he had ever considered seriously. It would never hang together. And a poor, distracted Game Master just didn't have time to deal with it! Gamers were moving into MIMIC's bowels in little paranoid clumps. They'd want his attention… heh… they'd be trying desperately to evade his attention starting real soon now.

Then again… a mystery, a veritable mystery, and a shot at Sharon Crayne's killer? That could jog Alex Griffin out of his black mood. Griffin fancied himself a man of thought but Tony knew him to be happiest in action. Get him to believe he was doing something.

After all, it had been a long time since the Griffin had stalked a Game.