The Starry Rift Part 11

"Gaghn," said the Ketuban, "you have sorrow."

John understood the language, and moved in close to the lumpish fellow to hear over the howling of the wind. Once he understood the statement, the sheer simplicity of it, the heartfelt tone of it, despite the rude sound that delivered it, he told the story of Zadiiz.

When he was finished, the Ketuban said, "You believe you killed her?"

Gaghn said nothing but nodded.

"Some would call it a sin."

"I call it a sin," said the astronaut.

The storm grew more fierce outside, and the roar of the gale hypnotized Gaghn, making him drowsy. He drifted toward sleep, his memory alive with images of Zadiiz teaching him to fish with spear and rope and tackle, sitting beside him on the plateau beneath the stars, moving around the dwelling they'd shared on a bright warm morning in spring, singing the high-pitched birdsongs of her people. Just before he fell into sleep, he heard his cave-mate's voice mix with the constant rush of the wind. "Rest easy. I will arrange things."

When Gaghn awoke, the storm had abated and the Ketuban had vanished, leaving behind, on the floor of the cave, a crude winged figurine formed from its own mud. He also realized the Ketuban had taken the gear he'd worn around his neck since leaving Zadiiz on Eljesh. As the astronaut made his way cautiously over ice fields fissured with yawning crevices back to his shuttle, he remembered the mystic alien's promise. In the years that followed, though, he found no rest from his need to journey farther or from the memories that tormented him, and he realized that this must be the fate that was arranged-no peace for him, as punishment in payment for his sin.

More memories of his travels ensued as the ancient astronaut woke and slept, the music from the blue box washing over him, the scent of the lemon blossoms, the heat of the sun, his weak heart and failing will to live mixing together into their own narcotic that kept him drowsy. One last image came-his visit to the laboratory of the great inventor Onsing, inside the hollow planet, Simmesia. The aged scientist, whose mind was once ablaze with what many considered the galaxy's greatest imagination, was laid low by the infirmity of age, on the verge of death. The sight of this had frightened John, and he'd thought if he went far enough, fast enough, he'd escape the fate Onsing a.s.sured him in labored whispers came to all, and would be protected for all by a great machine of Onsing's invention.

Then Gaghn woke to the late-afternoon wind of the island, saw the ringed planet had risen in the east, and in the failing light, noticed a tall dark figure standing before him.

"I've traveled far and yet never arrived," he said.

The visitor, nearly eight foot, broad as three men, and covered in a long black cloak, the hem of which brushed against the stone of the deck, stepped forward, and the old man saw its face. Not human, but some kind of vague imitation of a human face, like a mask of varnished sh.e.l.l with two dark holes for eyes, a subtle ridge for a nose, and another smaller hole that was the mouth. Atop the smooth head was a pair of horns whose sharp points curved toward each other.

"You may leave now," said the old man.

The tall fellow, his complexion indigo, took two graceful steps forward, stopping next to Gaghn's rocker. The astronaut focused on the empty holes that served as eyes and tried to see if some sign of a personality lurked anywhere inside them. The stranger leaned over, and quicker than a heartbeat, a long tapered nozzle, sharp as the tips of the horns, sprang out of the mouth hole, pa.s.sed through Gaghn's forehead with the sound of an egg cracking, and stabbed deep into the center of his brain. The astronaut gave a sudden sigh. Then the nozzle retracted as quickly as it had sprung forth. The old man fell forward, dead, across the table, his right arm hitting the blue box sideways, sending the crystal plinking onto the stone floor of the deck.

The indigo figure stepped away from the body and sloughed its long cloak. Once free of the garment, the two wings that had been folded against its back lifted and opened wide. They were sleek, half the creature's height, pointed at the lower tips and ribbed with delicate bone work beneath the slick flesh. Its entire manlike form suggested equal parts reptile and mineral. From down the mountain came the death cry of some creature, from off in the grove came the sorrowful call of the pale night bird, and beneath them both could be heard, in the distance, the persistent pounding of the sea. The visitor crouched, and with great power, leaped into the air. The wings spread out, caught the island wind, and carried it, with powerful thrusts, into the night sky. He flew, silhouetted before the bright presence of the ringed planet from pole to pole, higher and higher, as the figure of John Gaghn receded to a pinpoint, became part of the island, then the ocean, then the night. Hours later, the winged visitor pierced the outer membrane of the planet's atmosphere and was borne into s.p.a.ce.

The Aieu, people of the jump bone animal, blended flawlessly with the white trees in the lace forest. A dozen of them-hairless, perfectly pale, crouching still as stone gargoyles among the branches, silently watched the movements of the dark giant. Its wings, its horns, told them it would be a formidable opponent, and they wondered how their enemies had created it. After it had pa.s.sed beneath them, the elder of their party motioned for the swiftest of them to go quickly and warn the queen of an a.s.sa.s.sin's approach. The small fellow nodded that he understood the message, and then, on clawed feet, took off, running through the branches, leaping without a sound from tree to tree, in the direction of the hive. The ones that remained behind spread out and followed the intruder, their leader all the while plotting a strategy of offense for when his force would be at full strength.

Zadiiz, the powder-blue queen, sat in her throne at the center of the hive, the children of the Aieu gathered around her feet. Nearly too feeble with age to walk, let alone run and climb, she could no longer lead the war parties or the hunt as she once had. She was not required to do anything at all, as her subjects owed her their very existence, but she wanted to remain useful for as long as she could, both to pa.s.s the time and to set an example. She instructed the young ones on everything from the proper way to employ the deadly jump bone against a foe to the nature of existence itself, as she saw it. On this day, it was the latter. In her weak voice, quivering with age, she explained: "Look around you, my dears. All of you, everything you see, the white forest, the gray sky, your distant past, and whatever future we have left, everything is a dream I am dreaming. As I speak to you, I am really asleep in a great vessel, in the clutch of a cradle that freezes the body but not the dream, flying through the darkness above, amidst the stars, to a far place where I will eventually awake to be with my life companion, John Gaghn."

The children looked into her orange eyes and nodded, although they could hardly understand. One of the brighter ones spoke up. "And what will become of us when you awaken?"

Zadiiz could only speak the truth. "I'm not sure," she said, "but I'll do everything I can to keep you safe inside my memory. You'll know if I've done this when, if I appear to die, you are still alive." Upon her mentioning her own death, the children gasped, but she went on to allay their fears. "I won't have really died, I'll merely have emerged into another dream, or I'll truly have awakened, the vessel having reached its destination." She could see she had confused them and frightened them a little. "Go and think on this for now, and we'll discuss it more tomorrow." The small, dazed faces, which, at one time, back on the plateau of the red gra.s.slands of her own planet, she might have considered ugly, now were precious to her. The children came forward and lightly touched her arms, her legs, her face, before leaving the hive. She watched them scamper out and take to the branches that surrounded her palace in the tree-tops, and then sat back and tried to understand, for herself, what she had spoken of.

John had warned her that the dreams would come and they would be deep and sometimes terrible, and there were parts of this one she believed herself presently imprisoned in that were, but there was also beauty and the reciprocal love between the Aieu and herself. How many more dream lives would she need to experience, she wondered, before waking. This one began with her opening her eyes, staring up into the pale faces of a hunting party of the people of the jump bone animal. Later, when she'd come to learn their language, they told her that even though many of them thought her dead when they'd found her lying on the flat stone next to the pool, their herb witch listened closely, placing her ear to the blue queen's ear and could hear, though very weak, the faint murmur of thoughts still alive in her head. Then, slowly, employing a treatment of their most powerful natural drugs and constantly moving her limbs, they'd brought her around to consciousness.

Zadiiz was roused from her reverie by the approach of one of her subjects. He was agitated and began spouting in the Aieu gibberish before he'd even reached her side. "An intruder, an a.s.sa.s.sin," he was shouting, waving his needle-sharp jump bone in the air. She shook her head and put both hands up, palms facing outward to indicate he should slow down. He took a deep breath and bowed, placing his weapon on the floor at her feet. "What is this intruder?" she asked, feeling so weary she could hardly concentrate on his description.

He put the two longest fingers of each of his three-fingered hands, pointing up, atop his wrinkled forehead. She understood and nodded. He then made as blank an expression as he could with his face, closing his eyes, turning his mouth into a perfect O. She nodded. When he saw she was following him, he held his right hand up as high as he could and then leaped up to show the stranger's height. Last he said, "Thula," which meant "deadly." In response, she made a fist, and he responded by lifting his weapon and exiting out upon the treetops to summon the forces of the Aieu.

As old and tired as she was, there still burned within her a spark of envy for those who now swarmed away from the hive to meet the threat of this new enemy. She lit her pipe, ran her hand across the old crone stubble on her chin, and, with a vague smile, found in her memory an image of herself when she could still run and climb and fight. It hadn't taken her long, once the Aieu had brought her around, before she was back on her feet and practicing competing with the best hunters and wrestlers her rescuers had among them. She took to the treetops as though she'd been born in the lace forest, and a few days after they'd demonstrated for her the throwing technique for the jump bone, she was more accurate and deadly with it than those who were still young when the jump bone animal had been hunted to extinction.

But it was in the war against the Fire Hand that she'd proven herself a general of keen strategic insight and unfailing courage. Utilizing the advantage of the treetops, and employing stealth and speed to defeat an enemy of greater number, she'd helped the Aieu turn back the bloodthirsty hordes that had spilled down over the high lip of the crater and flooded the forest. It was this victory that had elevated her to the status of royalty among them. She drew on her pipe, savoring the rush of imagery out of the past. As the smoke twined up toward the center of the hive, a distant battle cry sounded from the forest, and in the confusion of her advanced age, she believed it to be her own.

The victory shouts of the Aieu warriors woke her as they led their prisoner into the hive. The giant indigo creature, wings bound with woven white vine around its chest, hands tied together at the wrists in front, a choker around its muscular neck, strode compliantly forward, surrounded by its captors brandishing jump bones above their heads.

"Bring him into the light," commanded Zadiiz, and they prodded the thing forward to stand in the glow of the two torches that flanked her throne. When she beheld the huge indigo form, she marveled at the effectiveness of her battle training on the Aieu, for it didn't seem possible that all who lived in the treetop complex surrounding the hive could together subdue such a monster. "Good work," she said to her people. Then her gaze came to rest on the emotionless, sh.e.l.l mask of a face with its simple holes for eyes and mouth, and the sight of it startled her. It shared, in its blank expression, the look of another face she could not help but remember.

It was in the dream that preceded her waking into the lace forest and the people of the jump bone animal, the first of her sleeping lives that John Gaghn had promised after he'd closed her in the cradle. In this one, she'd lived alone in a cave on a barren piece of rock, floating through deep s.p.a.ce. She spent her time watching the stars, noting, here and there, at great distances, the slow explosions of galaxies, like the blossoming of flowers, and listening to endlessly varied music made by light piercing the darkness. A very long time had pa.s.sed, and she remembered the weight of her loneliness. Then one day, a figure appeared in the distance, heading for her, and slowly it revealed itself to be a large silver globe. Smoke issued from the back of it and it buzzed horribly, interfering with the natural song of the universe.

The vessel rolled down onto the deep sand beside the entrance to her cave. Moments later, a door opened in the side of it and out stepped a man made of metal. The starlight reflected on his shiny surface, and he gave off a faint glow. At first she was frightened to behold something so peculiar, but the metal man, whose immobile face was cast in an expression of infinite patience, spoke to her in a friendly voice. He told her his name was 49 and asked if he could stay with her until he managed to fix his craft. Zadiiz was delighted to have the company and a.s.sured him he could.

She offered him some of the spotted mushrooms that grew on the inner walls of the cave, her only sustenance. They tasted to her like the flesh of the hurrurati. 49 refused, explaining that he was a machine and did not eat. Zadiiz didn't understand the idea of a robot, and so he explained that he was made by a great scientist named Onsing, and that all of his parts were metal. He told her, "I have intelligence, I even have emotion, but I was made to fulfill the need of my inventor, whereas beings like you were made to fulfill your own desires."

"What is your master's need?" asked Zadiiz.

"Onsing has pa.s.sed on into death," said 49, "but some time ago, while alive, he discovered through intensive calculation-using a mathematical system of his own devising and entering those results into a computer that not only rendered answers as to what was possible but also what could, given an infinite amount of time, be probable-that his sworn enemies, the Ketubans, would someday create a mischievous creature that could very likely manipulate the fate of the universe."

Zadiiz simply stared at 49 for a very long time. "Explain 'infinite' and 'probable,'" she finally said.

The robot explained.

"Explain 'fate,'" she said.

"Fate," said 49, and a whirring sound could be heard issuing from his head as he stared at the ground. Sparks shot from his ears. "Well, it is the series of events beginning at the beginning of everything that will eventually dictate what must be. And all you would need to do to change the universe would be to undo one thing that must be and everything would change."

"Why must it be?" she asked.

"Because it must," said the robot. "So, to prevent this, Onsing created a machine of one thousand parts that could, once its start b.u.t.ton was pressed, send out, in all directions, a wave across the universe that would eventually find this creature and melt it. When he had finished the machine, he hoped to always keep it running so that it could forever prevent the Ketubans from undermining fate."

"And did he?" asked Zadiiz.

"Poor Onsing never had a chance to start his machine, because it was destroyed by the evil Ketubans, loathsome creatures, like steaming piles of organic waste with tentacles and too many legs. They used their psychic power to automatically disa.s.semble the machine, and all of its individual parts flew away in as many different directions as there were pieces. Onsing, too determined to give up, but knowing he would not live long enough to rebuild the machine or find all of the parts scattered across the universe, created one thousand robots like me to go out into s.p.a.ce and fetch them back. Nine hundred ninety-nine of the robots have found their parts, and they have a.s.sembled all of the machine but for one tiny gear that is still missing. That is my part to find, and they wait for my success. Once I find it, I will return with it. It will be fitted into the machine. The robot that has been designed to press the start b.u.t.ton on the machine will fulfill his task and the fate of the universe will be protected."

"How long have you searched?" asked Zadiiz.

"Too long," said 49.

Eventually, Zadiiz grew weary, as she always did when eating the mushrooms, and fell asleep. When she awoke, she found that 49 was gone from the cave. She ran outside only to discover that his sphere of a vessel was also gone. Sometime later, she realized that the metal gear that had hung around her neck was missing, and the thought of having to live the rest of that lonely dream life without even the amulet's small connection to John Gaghn sent her into shock. Her mind closed in on itself, shut down, went blank. When she awoke, she was surrounded by the pale faces of the people of the jump bone animal.

She surfaced from her memory again surrounded by the Aieus' pale faces, this time in the hot and crowded hive. They'd been waiting in expectant silence for her to p.r.o.nounce the fate of the a.s.sa.s.sin they'd brought before her. Zadiiz realized she'd had a lapse of awareness, and now tried to focus on the situation before her. She looked the horned figure up and down, avoiding another glimpse at the face. She wondered who could have sent this thing. Because of its unknown nature, its obvious power and size, she could not allow it to live. She was about to order that the creature be drowned in the white pool, when she noticed the fingers on its left hand open slightly. Something fell from between them but did not continue on to the floor. It was caught and suspended by a lanyard looped through one of its small openings.

Upon seeing the gear, she gasped and struggled to her feet. The fact that she'd just been thinking of it made her dizzy with its implications. "Where did you get that?" she asked. The implacable face remained silent, but her obvious reaction to the sight of the curio sent a murmur through those a.s.sembled. "Who sent you?" she asked. Its eye holes seemed to be staring directly at her. She started down the two steps from her throne, and her people came up on either side to help her approach the creature. As she drew near, she felt a flutter of nervousness in her chest. "Did John send you from his own dream?" she said.

When she was less than a step away from the prisoner, she reached out for the amulet, and that is when the indigo creature inhaled so mightily the ropes binding its wings snapped. In one fluid motion, it ripped its wrists free of their bonds, the vines snapping away as if they were strands of hair, and took Zadiiz by the shoulders. She was too slow to scream, for the prisoner had already leaned forward, and the pointed nozzle had shot forth from its mouth. There was the sound of an egg cracking. The Aieu did not recover from their shock until the nozzle had retracted, and by then the creature had torn the lead from its neck and leaped into the air. At the same moment, Zadiiz fell backward into their waiting arms. Jump bones were thrown, but the a.s.sa.s.sin flew swiftly up and out of the opening at the top of the hive.

The indigo creature flew on and on for light years through s.p.a.ce, past planets and suns, quasars and nebulae, black holes and worm-holes, resting momentarily now and then upon an asteroid or swimming down through the atmosphere of a planet to live upon its surface for a year or two, and no matter the incredible sights it witnessed in the centuries it traveled, its expression never once changed. Finally, in a cave whose walls were covered with spotted mushrooms, on an asteroid orbiting a blue-white star, it found what it had been searching for-a large metallic globe and, sitting next to it upon a rock, a robot, long seized with inaction due to the frustration of its inability to accomplish the task its master had set for it.

Dangling the gear upon its lanyard in front of the eye sensors of the robot, the indigo creature brought the man of metal to awareness. Robot 49 reached up for the gear, and the creature placed it easily into his ball-jointed fingers. The two expressionless faces stared at each other for a moment and then each turned away, knowing what needed to be done. The robot moved to his globe of a s.p.a.ce vessel, and the indigo creature sprinted from the cave and spread its wings. Even before the sputtering metal ball had exited the cave and set a course for the hollow world, the indigo creature had disappeared into the darkness of s.p.a.ce.

On an undiscovered world where a vast ocean of three-hundred-foot-tall red gra.s.s lapped the base of a small mountain, the creature landed and set to work. Time, which had pa.s.sed in long lazy skeins to this point, now was of the essence, and there could be no rest. At the peak of the mountain, the winged being cleared away a tangled forest of vines, telmis, and wild lemon trees, uprooting trunks with its bare hands and knocking down larger ones with its horns. Once the land was cleared, it set about mining blocks of white marble from a site lower down the slope, precisely cutting the hard stone with the nail of its left index finger. These blocks were flown to the peak and arranged so as to build a sprawling, one-story dwelling, with long empty corridors and sudden courtyards open to the sky.

When all was completed upon the mountain peak, the creature entered the white dwelling, pa.s.sed down the long empty corridors to the bedroom, and sat down upon the edge of a soft mattress of prowling valru hide stuffed with lemon blossoms. It could see through the window opening the ringed planet begin its ascent as the day waned. Twilight breezes from off the sea of red gra.s.s rushed up the slopes and swamped the house. The indigo creature folded its wings back and stretched its arms once before lying back upon the wide, comfortable bed it had made.

As the horned head rested upon a pillow, so many light years away, at the center of the hollow planet, Robot 49 fitted the small gear into place within Onsing's remarkable machine. Nine hundred and ninety-nine cheers went up from his metallic brethren gathered behind him. And the 1001st robot, designed only to press the start b.u.t.ton on the machine, finally fulfilled its task. A lurching, creaking clang of parts moving emanated from the strange device. Then invisible waves that gave off the sound of a bird's call issued forth, instantly disabling all of the robots, traveling right through the ma.s.s of the hollow planet and onward, in all directions across the universe.

The indigo creature heard what it at first believed to be the call of the pale night bird, but soon realized it was mistaken. It then made the only sound it would ever make in its long life, a brief sigh in recognition that it had finally arrived, before it began to melt. Thick droplets of indigo ran from its face and arms and chest, evaporating into night before staining the mattress. Its horns dripped away like lit candles, and its wings became increasingly smaller versions of themselves until they had both run off into puddles of nothing. As the huge dark figure disintegrated, from within its bulk emerged a pair of forms, arms clasped around each other. With the evaporation of the last drop of indigo, John and Zadiiz, again young as the moment they first met, rolled away from each other, dreaming.

In the morning they were awakened by the light of the sun streaming in the window without gla.s.s and the sounds of the migrating birds. They discovered each other and themselves but had no memory, save their own names, as to their pasts or how they came to be on the mountain peak. All they remembered was their bond, and although this was an invisible thing, they both felt it strongly.

They lived together for many years in tranquility on the undiscovered planet, and in their fifth year had a child. The little girl had her mother's orange eyes and her father's desire to know what lay out beyond the sky. She was a swift runner and climbed about in the lemon trees like a monkey. The child had a powerful imagination and concocted stories for her parents about men made of metal, and dark winged creatures, about incredible machines and vessels that flew to the stars. At her birth, not knowing exactly why, John Gaghn and Zadiiz settled upon the name of Onsing for her and wondered how that name might direct her fate.

JEFFREY FORD is the author of six novels: Vanitas, World Fantasy Award-winner The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, and The Girl in the Gla.s.s. His short fiction, which has appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, SCI FICTION, Black Gate, The Green Man, Leviathan 3, The Dar, and many year's best anthologies and has won the World Fantasy and Nebula awards, has been collected in World Fantasy Award-winner The Fantasy Writer's a.s.sistant and Other Stories and The Empire of Ice Cream. Upcoming is a new novel, The Shadow Year, and a new collection, The Night Whiskey.

He lives in South Jersey with his wife and two sons and teaches writing and literature at Brookdale Community College in Mon-mouth County, New Jersey.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

My story, "The Dismantled Invention of Fate," was inspired by the fictional work of the writer Michael Moorc.o.c.k. For readers of the literature of the fantastic who may not have had the opportunity yet to discover this writer, you have literally universes of adventure, imagination, and challenging thought waiting to unfold before you. I could throw out a few t.i.tles here, but it's best you find your own portal into Moorc.o.c.k's cosmos-there must be over a hundred books to choose from. In the field of science fiction, Moorc.o.c.k is a true visionary. His innovation was to transcend the nuts-and-bolts science of a clockwork, Newtonian conception of the universe, which had long reigned as the accepted approach in the genre, and instead to honor the discovery of quantum physics. His fiction is much less about what is "actual" and far more about what is "probable." There is no telling where his stories are going to take you. Time is a mutable phenomenon, chaos is given its due regard, human imagination is the stuff from which the stars are made, and every outbound adventure is an inward journey. So, I dedicate this story to Moorc.o.c.k for the generosity of his fiction, and more so for his personal generosity in encouraging and aiding newer writers, groping through the dark in search of their own universes.

ANDA'S GAME.

Cory Doctorow.

Anda didn't really start to play the game until she got herself a girl-shaped avatar. When Anda was twelve, she met Liza the Organiza, whose avatar was female but had sensible t.i.ts and sensible armor and a b.l.o.o.d.y great sword that she was clearly very good with. Liza came to school after PE, when Anda was ma.s.saging her abused podge and hating her entire life. Her PE kit was at the bottom of her school bag and her face was that stupid red color that she hated, and now it was stinking math, which was hardly better than PE but at least she didn't have to sweat.

But instead of math, all the girls were called to a.s.sembly, and Liza the Organiza stood on the stage in front of Miss Cruickshanks, the princ.i.p.al, and Mrs. Danzig, the useless counselor.

"Hullo, chickens," Liza said. She had an Australian accent. "Well, aren't you lot just precious and bright and expectant with your pink upturned faces like a load of flowers staring up at the sky? Warms me f.e.c.king heart it does."

That made Anda laugh, and she wasn't the only one. Miss Cruickshanks and Mrs. Danzig didn't look amused, but they tried to hide it.

"I am Liza the Organiza, and I kick a.r.s.e. Seriously." She tapped a key on her laptop and the screen behind her lit up. It was a game- not the one that Anda played, but a s.p.a.ce station with a rocket ship in the background. "This is my avatar." Sensible b.o.o.bs, sensible armor, and a sword the size of the world. "In-game, they call me the Lizanator, Queen of the s.p.a.celanes, El Presidente of the Clan Fahrenheit." The Fahrenheits had chapters in every game. They were amazing and deadly and cool, and to her knowledge, Anda had never met one in the flesh. They had their own island in her game. Crikey.

On-screen, the Lizanator was fighting an army of wookie-men, sword in one hand, laser-blaster in the other, rocket-jumping, spinning, strafing, making impossible kills and long shots, diving for power-ups and ruthlessly running her enemies to ground.

"The whole Clan Fahrenheit. They voted me in 'cause of my prowess in combat. I'm a world champion in six different games. I've commanded armies and I've sent armies to their resp.a.w.n gates by the thousands. Thousands, chickens: my battle record is 3,522 kills in a single battle. I game for four to six hours nearly every day, and the rest of the time, I do what I like.

"One of the things I like to do is come to girls' schools like yours and let you in on a secret: girls kick a.r.s.e. We're faster, smarter, and better than boys. We play harder. We spend too much time thinking that we're freaks for gaming, and when we do game, we never play as girls because we catch so much s.h.i.te for it. Time to turn that around. I am the best gamer in the world and I'm a girl. I started playing at ten, and there were no women in games-you couldn't even buy a game in any of the shops I went to. It's different now, but it's still not perfect. We're going to change that, chickens, you lot and me.

"How many of you game?"

Anda put her hand up. So did about half the girls in the room.

"And how many of you play girls?"

All the hands went down.

"See, that's a tragedy. Practically makes me weep. Games.p.a.ce smells like a boy's armpit. It's time we girled it up a little. So here's my offer to you: if you will play as a girl, you will be given probationary memberships in the Clan Fahrenheit, and if you measure up, in six months, you'll be full-fledged members."

In real life, Liza the Organiza was a little podgy, like Anda herself, but she wore it with confidence. She was solid, like a brick wall, her hair bobbed bluntly at her shoulders. She dressed in a black jumper over loose dungarees with giant goth boots with steel toes.

She stomped her boots, one-two, thump-thump, like thunder on the stage. "Who's in, chickens? Who wants to be a girl out-game and in?"

Anda jumped to her feet. A Fahrenheit, with her own island! Her head was so full of it that she didn't notice that she was the only one standing. The other girls stared at her, a few giggling and whispering.

"That's all right, love," Liza called, "I like enthusiasm. Don't let those staring faces rattle yer: they're just flowers turning to look at the sky. Pink, scrubbed, shining, expectant faces. They're looking at you because you had the sense to get to your feet when opportunity came-and that means that someday, girl, you are going to be a leader of women, and men, and you will kick a.r.s.e. Welcome to the Clan Fahrenheit."

She began to clap, and the other girls clapped too, and even though Anda's face was the color of a lollipop-lady's sign, she felt like she might burst with pride and good feeling and she smiled until her face hurt.

> Anda, her sergeant said to her, > how would you like to make some money?

> Money, Sarge?

Ever since she'd risen to platoon leader, she'd been getting more missions, but they paid gold-money wasn't really something you talked about in-game.

The Sarge-sensible b.o.o.bs, gigantic sword, longbow, gloriously orcish ugly phiz-moved her avatar impatiently.

> Something wrong with my typing, Anda?

> No, Sarge.

she typed.

> You mean gold?

> If I meant gold, I would have said gold. Can you go voice?

Anda looked around. Her door was shut and she could hear her parents in the sitting-room watching telly. She turned up her music just to be safe and then slipped on her headset. They said it could noise-cancel a Blackhawk helicopter-it had better be able to overcome the little inductive speakers suction-cupped to the underside of her desk. She switched to voice.

"Hey, Lucy," she said.

"Call me Sarge!" Lucy's accent was American, like an old TV show, and she lived somewhere in the middle of the country where it was all vowels, Iowa or Ohio. She was Anda's best friend in-game, but she was so hardcore it was boring sometimes.

"Hi, Sarge," she said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. She'd never smart off to a superior in-game, but v2v it was harder to remember to keep to the game norms.

"I have a mission that pays real cash. Whichever paypal you're using, they'll deposit money into it. Looks fun, too."

"That's a bit weird, Sarge. Is that against Clan rules?" There were a lot of Clan rules about what kind of mission you could accept, and they were always changing. There were curb-crawlers in games.p.a.ce and the way that the Clan leadership kept all the mummies, and daddies from going ape-poo about it was by enforcing a boring code of conduct that was meant to ensure that none of the Fahrenheit girlies ended up being virtual prozzies.

"What?" Anda loved how Lucy quacked What? It sounded especially American. "No, geez. All the executives in the Clan pay the rent doing missions for money. Some of them are even rich from it, I hear! You can make a lot of money gaming, you know."

"Is it really true?" She'd heard about this, but she'd a.s.sumed it was just stories, like the kids who gamed so much that they couldn't tell reality from fantasy. Or the ones who gamed so much that they stopped eating and got all anorexic. She wouldn't mind getting a little anorexic, to be honest. b.l.o.o.d.y podge.

"Yup! And this is our chance to get in on the ground floor. Are you in?"

"It's not-you know, pervy, is it?"

"Gag me. No. Jeez, Anda! Are you nuts? No-they want us to go kill some guys."