It’s the nature of the Game. Lioe said instead, “I suppose. But, listen, I do have to leave, if I’m going to make this meeting on time. Thanks again.”

“My pleasure,” Ransome said, automatically. “You know where the helipad is?”

“I know where the tourist‑trolley stops,” Lioe answered. “I can’t afford helicabs.”

“All right,” Ransome said. “Are you running any sessions yourself today?”

“Tonight,” Lioe answered. She looked back, her hand on the main latch. “Why?”

“I thought–” Ransome paused, then gave a wry smile. “I thought I might see if there were any places left. Like I said the other night, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a scenario that made me want to play.”

“Shall I hold Harmsway for you?” Lioe asked.

“Why not?” Ransome’s smile changed, became openly mischievous. “I don’t think that part was played to its potential.”

Lioe smiled back, flattered and apprehensive at the same time. Ambidexter in the scenario, playing his own template: it was a thought to conjure with, and to strike terror into the souls of lesser players. It was also a challenge, and she did not turn down a challenge. “I’ll do that. And thank you again for a fascinating evening.” She let herself out into the hallway, not quite hearing his murmured reply.

Left to himself, Ransome went back into the narrow kitchen, rummaged in the cold storage until he found a package that promised to cook in three minutes. He fitted it into the wall‑mounted cooker, and made himself open the container once the timer sounded. The spicy pastry smelled good, but his appetite did not return; he forced himself to finish it anyway, standing at the counter, and turned his attention back to the main room and the empty display space. Lioe’s hat was sitting on the folded bed, forgotten in her hurry. He sighed, and hoped he would remember to return it that night.

The hawk‑woman had been a good image, for someone who’d never worked with more than the Game’s more limited editors, and Lioe had been quick to sense the difference in form between the Game images and the image loops that filled a story egg. It was just too bad she was so caught up in the Game… He crossed to the windows, staring down on the city. It would be Carnival already in the Wet Districts, the streets and canals busy with costumed figures. It would be Carnival on the nets as well, and that might be the best time to look into just why Damian Chrestil wanted him back in the Game.

He turned back to the display space, spun his chair into place at its center, but hesitated, slipping on the wire‑bound gloves. It would be Carnival, all right, but that didn’t mean that his usual net projection wouldn’t be recognized. He crossed to the shelves where he kept the shells of the unfinished eggs, searched among the clutter until he found the mask he had bought two years before, for a party he could no longer clearly remember. It was a plain white mask, of the three‑quarters size that left only mouth and chin free, a standard form, eyebrows and cheekbones and nose all coarsely modeled from the dead white plastic. He contemplated it for a moment–it had always been an affectation of his not to mask, to walk the streets and nets at Carnival as himself–but this was not the time for that. He set the mask carefully on one of the imaging tables, and switched on the cameras. Lights flared, crisscrossed, catching the mask in a web of stark white beams. He turned back to the display space, and saw the mask’s image floating in the air above his chair, waiting to be remade.

He fingered the remote to dim the windows, and the image grew correspondingly stronger as the competing daylight faded. He set the remote aside, pulled on the remaining glove, and settled himself in his chair. The servos whirred softly, tilting it and him to the most comfortable position; the image moved with him, floating in the air within easy reach. He studied it for a moment longer, then reached tentatively into another image bank to pull out a series of other faces. He found one with a mouth he liked, bleached that image to match the mask’s absolute lack of color, then patched the two together, bringing the mouth and chin from the new image to cover the missing parts of the original mask. He studied the result for a moment, then ran his hand over the compound image, deepening the modeling of mouth and chin so that it matched the mask. He cocked his head to one side, then drew the corners of the mouth down into a parody of tragedy’s mask. He tilted the eyes down as well, filled the empty holes with absolute black, and dumped the resulting image to main memory. It was not at all his usual style: no one on the nets should recognize it as him.

He reached into control space to change modes, rewriting his usual identification‑and‑projection package to display the newly created mask, and flipped the whole system to Carnival mode. Now all identification inquiries would automatically be ignored–this was the only time of year when that routine would not get one dumped from the nets in short order–and a secondary program would deflect any attempt to trace the point of origin. He smiled then–he was going to enjoy this after all–and flipped himself out onto the nets.

The nets were crowded with ghostly shapes, a cheerful anarchy overriding the narrowcast lines and filling the unreal echo of the city with light and sound and sheets of brilliant color. Scenes like the loops of a story egg filled a number of nodes: rather than simply projecting an image, many of the maskers had chosen to create a brief repeating scene, and let that represent them to the world. Ransome let himself drift for a while, slipping from one system to the next with the ebb and flow of the crowds. A few groups and systems still tried to keep to business‑as‑usual, pale geometrics and strings of symbols competing with the gaudy loop‑displays of the revelers, but they were easily overwhelmed. Some of the Carnival displays were elaborate, a sphere of scenery enclosing a character or two–often Grand Types from the Game–so that Ransome had either to bypass that particular node or move through the ongoing scenario. Near the Game nets, it was easier to go through than to try to find a way around the miniature worlds; he let himself slide through like a ghost, ignoring the spray of words and images that greeted any stranger, idly tracking the Grand Types that appeared. There were quite a few Avellars, as well as the inevitable Barons and Ladies: Lioe should be pleased, he thought, and turned his attention toward the port systems.

If Damian Chrestil wanted him back in the Game, it was all but certain that the Game was not really important, was only a blind–and certainly he’d found nothing during his time on the Game nets to indicate otherwise–which made it well worth his time to see what was happening on the various nets that served the port and the traders who depended on the port for their living. He dimmed his own image further, so that he saw his mask floating ghostly through a Bower of Love that currently filled a transfer node. It was a striking image, the death‑white mask drifting expressionless, incurious, through the flower‑draped temple where an improbably well‑endowed man and woman were locked in vigorous and detailed sex, and he touched the capture sequence to record the moment. It would make an interesting story egg, someday, but he made himself turn away once the capture was complete and follow the multiple channels into the port systems.

There were fewer Carnival images here: more off‑worlders used the port nets, and there weren’t many Burning Brighters who dealt with them who could afford to give up a day’s trade. Still, an Avellar walked through a segment of corridor, striding hard as though it was work to keep up with the moving tiles; another Grand Type, the Viverina, braided tiny human skulls into her long hair. Ransome frowned, trying to remember the scenario that had spawned the image, but couldn’t place it. The Judge Directing presided over a node that gave entrance to a merchant bank. The serene face was semitransparent, and Ransome recognized familiar features behind the cloaking Carnival image. He adjusted his own projection, allowing his familiar on‑line presence to show behind the floating mask, and slipped into the node.