Ransome frowned, reached for the library icons, and had to shuffle access spaces until he found dead storage. It had been a long time since he had gone looking for his template libraries. He flicked them back into the working volume, searched the most recent issues until he found Lord Faro’s listing. He had forgotten that Faro had become one of the Baron’s henchmen–that had happened almost two years ago, just after he’d quit the Game. He leaned back in his chair, the images tilting around him, and saw another firework flare through the pattern of the Game. You couldn’t ask for better, he thought, and reached for a hand‑held remote to summon the drinks tray.

The machine trundled over, the lid sliding back to give access to the freezer compartment. Ransome chose abstractedly, opened the container, his eyes still on the session unfolding in front of him. Faro was clearly torn between his loyalty to Baron Vortex–a loyalty bought with fear and the promise that Faro’s lost estates would someday be returned–and his– love? desire?–for Belfortune. Belfortune clearly shared both passion and fear, and Baron Vortex watched from the wall. Lioe was handling him well, he admitted grudgingly. Too many leaders made the Baron too villainous right from the start; Lioe was keeping him just reasonable enough–though still with that edge of madness–that it seemed suicidal to oppose him.

Abruptly, he wanted to be there, at Shadows, watching firsthand–or, better still, to be in the control booth with Medard‑Yasine. It was the first time in three years that he’d actually wanted to attend a Game, and his lips quirked upward as he realized that at least he now had an excuse for doing what Chauvelin wanted. He closed both fists, shutting down the system–in the corner of his eye, glyphs tumbled headlong as the slaved machines ran through their shutdown procedures–and reached for a stand‑alone com‑unit and punched codes that would cycle through the helicab companies until he found one that could respond. It took perhaps two minutes, the bar of light flashing in front of him, not quite blocking his sight, and he spent the time searching for his jacket and the cylinder of Mist he was forced to carry. The com‑unit beeped at him before he found the red‑banded tube, and he scrabbled impatiently for the hand‑held unit.

“How can we be of service?”

It was a machine voice, or so the telltale at the base of the unit said–it would have been impossible to tell from the sound alone. Ransome curbed his impatience, and smoothed his tone to be as emotionless as possible. “I need transport to the helipad closest to Shadows–Face Road, by the center of the Dike in the Dock Road District. I think that’s Underface.”

“Just a moment, please.” There was a little silence, not even the hiss of static, while Ransome scanned the cluttered space of his loft for the missing cylinder, and then the machine said, “Yes, Underface is closest. Your location code is Warehouse?”

“That’s right.” The cylinder was lying on the shelf beside the shell for the Syndic’s egg.

“Thank you. Your helicab will arrive at the Warehouse helipad in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks,” Ransome said, in spite of himself, in spite of knowing it was a machine, and broke the connection. He collected the cylinder, shoved it and his credimeters into the pocket of his jacket, and left the loft.

It took him almost fifteen minutes to reach the helipad–the computers were scrupulous in their calculations–and he barely had time to catch his breath before he heard the soft beat of the muted rotors. Somewhat to his surprise, there was a live pilot, who grinned cheerfully at him as she popped the passenger hatch.

“To Underface, right? Going to Shadows?”

Does everyone on the planet know about this fucking game? Ransome wondered. “Yes, to Underface–and, yes, to Shadows, too.”

The pilot nodded, closing the hatch behind him. “I hear there’s one hell of a session in progress there. You’re like the fifth person I’ve dropped there in the last two hours.”

“Really.” Ransome settled into the center seat, the most comfortable of the three, and adjusted the door controls so that the whole panel went transparent, an enormous curved window on the city spread out below the cliff face.

“Yeah.” The pilot manipulated her controls, and the helicab lifted easily, pivoting toward the cliff edge and the descent to Underface. She was on‑line, Ransome saw, bound into the cab’s systems so that her arms and legs seemed to end in the black boxes of the control consoles; more wires, a complex, braided band of them, fell from the junction box at the base of her skull. Her hair was shaved around that connection, but the rest of it fell in a scarlet tail from an untidy topknot. “I wish I wasn’t working.”

“You’re a Gamer, then?” Ransome asked, and saw, too late, the pins studding her left sleeve. MI‑Net, Court Life V, Vimar Nessen’s Game, RedApple, Old Network, and dozens of others: she was a Gamer, all right, and a committed one.

She didn’t seem offended, however, just shrugged that shoulder to make the pins glitter in the light from the instrument panel. “That’s right.”

“So what have you heard about this Lioe?” Ransome asked. This wasn’t his style at all–this was the kind of information he preferred to find on the nets–but the chance was too good to pass up.

The pilot shrugged again, both shoulders this time. “What haven’t I heard, really? Frederick’s Glory got an Adouble‑star on Callixte, which those judges don’t hand out like candy, and she wrote it. She’s supposed to just be running a sample session for Davvi tonight, but what everyone’s saying is that it’s turning out to be something kind of special.” She looked sideways, into the space that showed her the passenger camera view. “What I heard from one woman was, she’s pulled one of Ambidexter’s characters out of storage, playing him as a major character.”

Ransome nodded, caught up in spite of himself in the old habits of the Game. “Desir of Harmsway. I was watching for a while on the nets.”

“ Sha‑mai.” The pilot’s curse was more admiring than anything. “Ambidexter’s going to murder her. Very God, I wish I wasn’t working.”

Ransome gave her a bitter grin. If he’d ever wanted confirmation of how the white‑sickness had changed him in the past three years, he had it now–not that he’d really needed it. Even a year ago, before the disease really took hold, she would have recognized him as Ambidexter, even if he hadn’t been in the clubs for a year or so before that… He shook the thought away, annoyed that he’d even acknowledged it, made himself pay attention to the pilot.

“That’s assuming Ambidexter’s still around, of course,” she went on, quite cheerfully. “There was talk he was dead, not long back.”

“I don’t think so,” Ransome said, with involuntary pique, and the pilot shrugged again. The helicab banked sideways into the airpath that paralleled the Old Dike; its lights, and the glow of the shops on Warden Street, filled the cab’s interior with patches of bright color.

“The work on the nets under that name hasn’t been very like him, that’s for sure.”

Ransome drew breath for an indignant response– how dare she accuse me of not being myself?–and stopped suddenly, wondering if this was Cella’s doing. It wouldn’t be unlike her, to whisper that he was dead, that his work was not his own. He opened his mouth, trying to figure out how to phrase the question, but the helicab tilted again, and he realized that the pilot’s attention was once again on her craft. After a moment, his mouth twisted into a wry smile. That would be very like Cella, to assume that the rumor of his death would bring him back onto the nets– and it would have worked, too, if I hadn’t been so busy with other things.

The helicab tipped again, responding to wind or air currents or an unseen traffic signal, and the door panel was filled with the city lights. Ransome stared, caught once again by the breathtaking beauty: the tidy geometry of the well‑lit squares and canals of Dock Road, bounded by the twin lines of the Straight to the north and the Crooked to the south. In the distance, the broad triangle that was the landformed extension of Mainwarden Island jutted into the Water, dividing the massive stream into two channels. A line of light ran from apex to base, broke slightly at the edge of the low cliff that rose to Mainwarden Island proper: Compass Road, where the Lockwarden Society had their main offices. The Society’s certification officers, the elite of the Wet Districts around the Water, generally lived in the tidy, decent neighborhoods to either side of that main thoroughfare. The Great Island light blazed at steady intervals from the tip of the Extension, directing the all‑but‑invisible traffic that filled the Water even at this hour.