“You expect a hell of a lot, Chiri.”

She gave me a wolfish grin. “Paybacks are a bitch, ain’t they?” she said.

Chiri was wringing every last bit of advantage out of this situation. “Okay, you pick your own crew.”

She paused to drink again. “By the way,” she said, “that’s fifty percent of the gross I’m getting, isn’t it?”

Chiri was terrific. “Uh, yeah,” I said, laughing. “Why don’t you let me give you a ride back to the Budayeen? You can start working this afternoon.”

“I already passed by there. I left Indihar in charge.” She noticed that her glass was empty again, and she held it up and waved it at Courane. “Want to play a game, Marîd?” She jerked a thumb toward the back of the bar, where Courane had a Transpex unit.

It’s a game that lets two people with corymbic implants sit across from each other and chip into the machine’s CPU. The first player imagines a bizarre scenario in detail, and it becomes a wholly realistic environment for the second player, who’s scored on how well he adapts — or survives. Then in turn the second player does the same for the first.

It’s a great game to bet money on. It scared the hell out of me at first, though, because while you’re playing, you forget it’s only a game. It seems absolutely real. The players exercise almost godlike power on each other. Courane’s model looked old, a version whose safety features could be bypassed by a clever mechanic. There were rumors of people actually having massive strokes and coronaries while they were chipped into a jiggered Transpex.

“Go ahead, Audran,” said Shaknahyi, “let’s see what you got.”

“All right, Chiri,” I said, “let’s play.”

She stood up and walked back to the Transpex booth. I followed her, and both Shaknahyi and Courane came along, too. “Want to bet the other fifty percent of my club?” she said. Her eyes glittered over the rim of her cocktail glass.

“Can’t do that. Papa wouldn’t approve.” I felt pretty confident, because I could read the record of the machine’s previous high games. A perfect Transpex score was 1,000 points, and I averaged in the upper 800s. The top scores on this machine were in the lower 700s. Maybe the scores were low because Courane’s bar didn’t attract many borderline nutso types. Like me. “I’ll bet what’s inside this envelope, though.”

That sounded good to her. “I can cover it,” she said. I didn’t doubt that Chiri could lay her hands on quite a lot of cash when she needed it.

Courane set fresh drinks down for all of us. Shaknahyi dragged a wicker chair near enough to watch the computer-modeled images of the illusions Chiri and I would create. I fed five kiam into the Transpex machine. “You can go first, if you want,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Chiri. “It’s gonna be fun, making you sweat.” She took one of the Transpex’s moddy links and socketed it on her corymbic plug, then touched Player One on the console. I took the second link, murmured “Bismillah,” and chipped in Player Two.

At first there was only a kind of warm, flickering fog, veined with iridescence like shimmery mother-of-pearl. Audran was lost in a cloud, but he didn’t feel anxious about it. It was absolutely silent and still, not even a whisper of breeze. He was aware of a mild scent surrounding him, the fragrance of fresh sea air. Then things began to change.

Now he was floating in the cloud, no longer sitting or standing, but somehow drifting through space easily and peacefully. Audran still wasn’t concerned; it was a perfectly comfortable sensation. Only gradually did the fog begin to dissipate. With a shock Audran realized that he wasn’t floating, but swimming in a warm, sun-dappled sea.

Below him waved long tendrils of algae that clung to hillocks of brightly colored coral. Anemones of many hues and many shapes reached their grasping tentacles toward him, but he cut smartly through the water well out of their reach.

Audran’s eyesight was poor, but his other senses let him know what was happening around him. The smell of the salt air had been replaced by many subtle aromas that he couldn’t name but were all achingly familiar. Sounds came to him, sibilant, rushing noises that echoed in hollow tones.

He was a fish. He felt free and strong, and he was hungry. Audran dived down close to the rolling sea bottom, near the stinging anemones where tiny fishes schooled for protection. He flashed among them, gobbling down mouthfuls of the scarlet and yellow creatures. His hunger was appeased, at least for now. The scent of others of his species wafted by him on the current, and he turned toward its source.

He swam for a long while until he realized that he’d lost the trace. Audran couldn’t tell how much time had passed. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered here in the sparkling, sunny sea. He browsed over a gorgeous reef, worrying the delicate featherdusters, sending the scarlet banded shrimps and the porcelain crabs scuttling.

Above him, the ocean darkened. A shadow passed over him, and Audran felt a ripple of alarm. He could not look up, but compression waves told him that something huge was circling nearby. Audran remembered that he was not alone in this ocean: It was now his turn to flee. He darted down over the reef and cut a zigzag path only a few inches above the sandy floor.

The ravenous shadow trailed close behind. Audran looked for somewhere to hide, but there was nothing, no sunken wrecks or rocks or hidden caves. He made a sharp evasive turn and raced back the way he’d come. The thing that stalked him followed lazily, easily.

Suddenly it dived on him, a voracious, mad engine of murder, all dead black eyes and gleaming chrome-steel teeth. Flushed from the sea bottom, Audran knifed up through the green water toward the surface, though he knew there was no shelter there. The great beast raged close behind him. In a froth of boiling sea foam, Audran broke through the waves into the fearfully thin air, and — flew. He glided over the whitecapped water until, at last, he fell back into the welcoming element, exhausted.

And the nightmare creature was there, its ghastly mouth yawning wide to rend him. The daggered jaws closed slowly, victoriously, until for Audran there was only blackness and the knowledge of the agony to come.

“Jeez,” I murmured, when the Transpex returned my consciousness.

“Some game,” said Shaknahyi.

“How’d I do?” asked Chiri. She sounded exhilarated.

“Pretty good,” said Courane. “623. It was a promising scenario, but you never got him to panic.”

“I sure as hell tried,” she said. “I want another drink.” She gave me a quirky grin.

I took out my pill case and swallowed eight Paxium with a mouthful of gin. Maybe as a fish I hadn’t been paralyzed with fear, but I was feeling a strong nervous reaction now. “I want another drink, too,” I said. “I’ll stand a round for everybody.”

“Bigshot,” said Shaknahyi.

Both Chiri and I waited until our heartbeats slowed down to normal. Courane brought a tray with the fresh drinks, and I watched Chiri throw hers down in two long gulps. She was fortifying herself for whatever evil things I was going to do to her mind. She was going to need it.

Chiri touched Player Two on the game’s console, and I saw her eyes slowly close. She looked as if she were napping placidly. That was going to end in a hell of a hurry. On the holoscreen was the same opalescent haze I’d wandered through until Chiri’d decided it was the ocean. I reached out and touched the Player One panel.

Audran gazed down upon the ball of mist, like Allah in the highest of the heavens. He concentrated on building a richly detailed illusion, and he was pleased with his progress. Instead of letting it take on form and reality gradually, Audran loosed an explosion of sensory information. The woman far below was stunned by the purity of color in this world, the clarity of sound, the intensity of the tastes and textures and smells. She cried out and her voice pealed in the cool, clean air like a carillon. She fell to her knees, her eyes shut tightly and her hands over her ears.