Rodrigues looked up. "Time," he said. "How much of that do we have before this person bounces someone else? And does it violently? The early bounces, the smash-and-ruin bounces, those were bad enough. But attempted murder? This is not the kind of thing I wanted happening in my game."

"We know," Leif said. "We didn't think so either. So we came in and started looking around to see what we could find out."

"The same here," said Rodrigues. "But I didn't expect to get flung at a wall."

"Sorry," Megan said, blushing hot. "I thought you were-"

"Some little creep dwarf," said Rodrigues, grinning. "Yes. He's a favorite of mine, Gobbo."

"Is he the character you run, then?" said Leif.

"One of about twenty," Rodrigues said. "Some of them are fairly quiet...some of them are pretty outrageous. They give me a chance to wander around and interact with people in different ways...and make sure they're playing the game correctly." He smiled a little. "One of the pleasures of playing G.o.d. Or Rod." The smile got more ironic.

"But the past few months, I've been doing it more with an eye to seeing what I can find out about these bounces. It's not just that I don't like my creation being used this way...which I don't. But Sarxos has always had a reputation as a safe place, a place where the Game was played fairly...not one of those fly-by-night operations where the gamesmaster changes the rules on you without warning. And it's not just a game, of course. It's a consumer-driven operation. You have to treat your customers right. If word gets out that this kind of thing is starting to happen-if there's even one more instance of an attack like the one on Elblai-it's going to do immense damage to the game. It could be shut down. I leave to your imagination the kind of legal trouble that could ensue. The bottom-line boys at the parent company would not not be happy with me, not at all." be happy with me, not at all."

Leif was studying the table with a rather noncommittal look on his face. "Look," Rodrigues said, just a little sharply, "I'm already a millionaire so many times over that it's not even fun counting it at night anymore when I need to fall asleep. I have a great privilege: I get to do what I love to make my living. There's nothing better than that. But there are more important things than my pleasure, and a whole lot more important than money. If there's no other way to stop this, I'll d.a.m.n well see the game shut down. A lot of people disappointed is better than a few people dead. And that's where it's heading, if you ask me. I wish to G.o.d I was wrong, but I'm a pessimist at heart-that's why I'm such a good designer."

He sighed. "Anyhow, I've told the Net Force people that I'll cooperate with them every way I can. The company won't let me give them the game logs directly-they're moaning about proprietary information-but I can read them and pa.s.s excerpted information on. They were asking about yours, by the way."

Megan nodded. "We know. There's e-mail going out shortly-if it hasn't already gone-giving my release."

"Okay, that's fine. You, too?" He looked at Leif.

"Yeah."

"Good."

"What about your your game logs?" Leif said suddenly. game logs?" Leif said suddenly.

Rodrigues looked at him. Megan briefly felt as if she wished the Earth would open and swallow her.

"How do you mean?"

"The Net Force people may suggest to you," Leif said in a very even and almost gentle voice, "that one possibility is that you might have been involved with these bounces."

"Now why would I do a thing like that?" Rodrigues said, looking at Leif strangely.

"I have no idea," Leif said, "and I don't believe it myself. But..." He shrugged.

"Well," said Rodrigues, "as for that, the game servers keep track of me exactly the way they do of everyone else. You can never tell, I might go crazy and try to sabotage the code." He made that ironic "fat-chance" expression that seemed to appear on his face about once every couple of minutes. "The server logs will confirm when I was in here...which frankly is most of my waking hours. If I'm not doing maintenance on bugs, which contrary to popular belief pop up constantly, then I'm in the game itself, walking up and down to see who's naughty and who's nice. There's fortunately no way to forge that information."

Megan looked at Leif, and Leif looked back. They both wondered just how true that statement was. Then they turned back to the task at hand. "You know," Megan said, "we were talking about a more structured way to conduct our search." She took a few moments to explain to him the roundabout train of logic they had been following. "But there's a possibility here," she said. "The logs."

Leif looked at her. "The server logs," Megan said. "They keep track of everybody who's playing, everybody who's in the game. But also-by process of elimination-they'll show you when everyone who's a player is not not in the game. And the bounces-the physical attacks on equipment, and in Elblai's case, on people-happened when the player committing the attacks was physically in the game. And the bounces-the physical attacks on equipment, and in Elblai's case, on people-happened when the player committing the attacks was physically not not in the game. If we could run a search through the computers..." in the game. If we could run a search through the computers..."

Rodrigues looked at her a little sadly. "Do you know," he said, "how many hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of people might be out of the game at any given moment? You're going to have to find some other criterion to sort by, and cut down the size of that sample."

"We've got several other sets of criteria," Leif said. "In fact, we've got one six-name list I'd really like to run against the server logs."

"Which six names?"

"Orieta, Hunsal, Balk the Screw..."

Rodrigues shook his head. "Where do they get some of these names..."

"...Rutin, Walse, and Lateran."

"Huh," Rodrigues said. "All generals and war-leaders, huh? How did you get interested in these particular names?"

Leif told him.

"Well," Rodrigues said, "those six we certainly should be able to check."

"Do you have all the times of the actual attacks?" Megan said.

"Oh, yes, believe me." Rodrigues laced his fingers together, leaned his chin on them. "Game intervention."

"Listening."

"This is the boss."

"Verified."

"Access the real-world timings of attacks on bounced players."

"Accessed. Holding in store."

"Access server records for game usage for the following players: Hunsal, Rutin, Orieta, Walse, Balk the Screw, and Lateran."

"Accessed. Holding in store."

"Compare."

"Comparing. Criteria?"

"Identify which players were outside the game at the times of the attacks."

Leif and Megan held very still.

"Walse, outside at attack one, attack three. Orieta, outside at attack five. Balk the Screw, outside at attack seven. All other players were in-game at all times of attack."

Megan and Leif looked at each other.

Leif made a face. "That didn't work-I was hoping for something a bit more clear-cut. All the others were playing."

"So the computer says."

"What are the chances it could be wrong?" said Leif. "Or that its programming or its logs could have been tampered with?"

Rodrigues laughed softly. "It's a nice try," he said, "but you have no idea how stringently controlled our system is, or how ruthlessly access to it is managed. The computer itself writes code. We have no human programmers handling that anymore. The machine's plenty heuristic enough to handle it, and besides, there's umpty billion lines of code to deal with. No number of humans, monkeys, or other primates chained to keyboards could possibly work fast enough to meet the system's needs. I just tell the machinery what's needed, and it does it. No one else has access to code, or to the server logs, except a couple of people at the parent company. And there's no way they'd be involved with this...they handle the logs only for archival purposes. Everything's encrypted anyway, the same as the private-play keys and so forth."

"So there's no way that those could be tampered with."

"No. Believe me," Rodrigues said, "we have a lot of interest from other parties who've used Sarxos, its code and its basic structure, as a testbed for other kinds of simulations, ones which aren't public. We keep our operation tight as a drum because of those affiliations."

"But those people who were out during the attacks," Megan said. "There's no telling where they were, then-"

"Well, there is, to a certain extent," Rodrigues said, "because you can check the logs and see how soon they came back in again. Game intervention."

"Listening."

"Look at excerpted logs. Note if any of these players was absent from play for more than...one hour."

"Walse. Absent for four hours thirteen minutes."

"And returned to gameplay again."

"Yes."

"There's only one problem," said Rodrigues, getting a slightly unfocused look, which suggested to Megan that he was looking at some kind of display in the air that he could see and they couldn't. "The first attack was in Austin, Texas, and Walse lives in Ulan Bator. Even a nears.p.a.ce transport isn't going to be able to get you from Outer Mongolia to Texas in four hours. For one thing, there're no direct flights. Think how many times you'd have to change." He shook his head. "No, that won't work."

He sat back, folding his arms. "It's possible," he said, "that the line of reasoning you're following isn't really a valid one."

"It's all we've got," said Megan.

"Listen, I'm not trying to put you down," said Rodrigues. "I haven't got anything better. I've tried processing this data every way I could, and I'm stumped. I'm really hoping that your Net Force people can do something for me now, because I'm at my wits' end. I'll tell you, though-when we catch whoever this is-"

"When," Megan said, and smiled a little. She liked the sound of certainty...but all the same it made her sad. She kept thinking of Elblai.

"Have you heard anything about Elblai-Ellen?" she said.

"She's out of surgery," Rodrigues said, "but she's still not conscious. She's on my mind." He sighed. "Listen, though. I have to thank you two for wanting to help, for trying to make a difference. Is there anything I can do for you?"

Megan shook her head. "Not at the moment."

Leif said suddenly, "We could use some extra transit allowance. I've blown a lot of mine on this."

Rodrigues chuckled. "You're going to keep working on this problem?"

They nodded.

"Uh, consider your accounts open-ended until this is sorted out. Game intervention-"

"Listening."

"This is the boss. See to it that characters Brown Meg and Leif Hedge-wizard have open accounts from this time stamp until further notice from me."

"Done."

"One less thing for you to worry about anyway."

He sighed, looking down at his folded hands on the table, then looked up again. "I love this place," he said. "You should have seen it when it started. Little, scratchy, sketchy, video-only universe. You could have fitted the whole thing into a PC." He laughed. "Then it got out of hand. They do that, supposedly, worlds: get out of the control of their creators. Now I've got something like four million users.... people inhabiting a world. People who really seem to think it's special." More soft laughter. "I got an e-mail from somebody a few months ago saying that we should pet.i.tion the government to get them to let us terraform Mars, and set up Sarxos there. I get a lot of mail from people who'd like to move. I mean, this..." He thumped the table gently. "This is pretty real, pretty good. You can eat here, drink here, sleep here, fight here...do all kinds of things here. But you can't stay stay. People have started saying that they want to stay here...live here."

He shook his head. "The only thing I didn't foresee.... is that people would start doing things to each other in the real world based on what they do or don't do here. This has never been a peaceful place. It wasn't built to be a peaceful place. It's a war game! Though peace keeps breaking out...and that always surprised me, that people wanted to live here, not just campaign all over the countryside and fight each other to a standstill. But now...it's like the serpent has gotten into Eden. I don't like this serpent. I want to stomp its ugly head."

"So do we," said Megan.

"I know. That's why we're having this conversation."

"We intend," Leif said, "to keep going...until we find the serpent. And stomp it."

"Do," Rodrigues said. "This kind of abuse, if it once takes root and it's not dealt with immediately...it's going to tear this world apart. I don't want to see that." He looked around him at the splintery walls, and the tattered thatch of the roof, and the cobblestones and the stuff spilled on them. "I don't want all this to vanish. This, and the mountain ranges where the basilisks nest, and the oceans with the sea monsters in them, and the moonlight...the stars...the people who come to my world to play...I don't want to see it all collapsed and put away in a box. I want it to outlive me. That would be a good immortality, to have a world that kept going while its maker was gone, or in hiding...." He smiled a little. "Sort of like what we have now, out there in the physical world."

Rodrigues looked at them, intense. "Do what you can...but be careful. If you're going to do this, I can't be responsible...you signed the waiver when you came in."

"We're pretty good at responsible," Megan said. "We'll manage."

"Okay. Here, take this." He reached into his pocket and came out with another token with the S S on it: not ruby, this one, but plain gold, or at least it looked like it. "You're going to be working together, so just take this one then. If you need something from the system-information about other players, within reason, or extra abilities-you're a wizard, you know the kind of things I mean-query the system. It'll give them to you. This also com-links to me or my account. You can leave me e-mail, or talk to me if I'm in the game." on it: not ruby, this one, but plain gold, or at least it looked like it. "You're going to be working together, so just take this one then. If you need something from the system-information about other players, within reason, or extra abilities-you're a wizard, you know the kind of things I mean-query the system. It'll give them to you. This also com-links to me or my account. You can leave me e-mail, or talk to me if I'm in the game."

"Hey, thanks. This is really-"

"Don't thank me. I should be thanking you for what you're doing. There are a few others like you who're making discreet inquiries. I figure the more of us who're looking, the better it is. But in the meantime, just be careful be careful."

"We will," Leif said.

Rodrigues stood up. "Okay...it's getting late at home where I am. I've gotta go. Thanks again."

They nodded to him. Rodrigues sketched a little wave at them...then, with a pop of displaced air, vanished.

Leif and Megan looked at each other. "Not Lateran," Leif said. "Merde."

"Back to the drawing board..." said Megan.

They got up and left the Scrag End, carefully closing the door behind them.

Wayland was waiting for them in the marketplace in the morning, all packed up and ready to go. He had on what Leif remembered as his "traveling hat," a large floppy one with a bedraggled feather that made him look like a cross between a run-down Musketeer and an unemployed Norse G.o.d. "I haven't been up to the High House yet today," he said, leading them up into the next circle of the city, "but there shouldn't be any trouble with finding old Tald the majordomo. He'll get you in to see the Lord right enough. Fettick isn't as standoffish as some of them are, anyway. No big ceremonies up in these parts. People wouldn't stand for it."

"I thought they liked ceremonies up here," Leif said. "There's the Winterfest, after all, when they burn the straw man, and the Spring Madness, when everybody has to get drunk for three days."

"Probably old Tald wouldn't care for that," Wayland said, going through the gate leading up into the next circle, and waving at some acquaintance up the road as they went along. "But he's all right, he won't give you trouble."

Megan glanced at Wayland, a little lost by the sudden obliquity. But he was turning through another gate ahead of them, with Leif behind him. She shrugged and went on after them.

The innermost wall of Errint was the old castle itself, built of glacier-boulders that had been sliced neatly into blocks as if they had been so much cheese. "How the Old People did that, we still don't know," Wayland said, looking up at the walls. "No kind of magic you can get these days."