"Do they have any idea why he bounced Elblai so hard?"

Leif shook his head. "The police psychiatrists have been talking to him, but I think the general feeling is that Elblai just put too much pressure on him. He cracked. He might have been going that way for a while. Shel had been putting a lot of pressure on him...but not as much as Elblai did. It just all got too much for him. But he'd been very careful, very canny. Covering his tracks for a long time...lots more than four months, apparently." Leif made a bemused face. "I don't think anything the shrinks can come up with is going to help him when he comes to trial, though. Hit and run, attempted manslaughter, various burglaries and destruction of property, and in your case, attempted murder...I doubt we'll see him in Sarxos again anytime soon. Or anywhere else."

Leif looked at her, folding his arms and turning away from the window. "I'm just glad you're okay," he said.

"Yeah, well, if it weren't for you, I might not be be okay." okay."

"I was terrified that I was going to be too late."

"I thought that I might be about to be late, too," Megan said, "in the less-usual sense of the word. Look...let's just forget it. There are more important things to worry about now."

"Oh?"

"The day after tomorrow," Megan said, "at ten o'clock..."

When the hour came, Megan and Leif were sitting, virtually, in James Winters's office; but not being there physically did not make their presence any more comfortable for them.

His desk was neat. There were a couple of tidy piles of printouts laid in front of him, a couple of data-storage solids off to one side. Winters looked up from the paperwork, and his face was very cool.

"I need to talk to you two a little bit," he said, "about responsibility."

They both sat mute. It didn't seem like a good time to argue the point.

"I had conversations with both of you regarding this problem," he said. "Do you remember those conversations?"

"Uh, yes," Megan said.

"Yes," said Leif.

Winters looked particularly closely at Megan. "Are you sure sure you remember it now? Because your actions since then are such as to suggest that you had a profound incident of amnesia. I'd be really tempted to suggest that your parents take you down to the NP center at Washington U for the purpose of what my father, in the ancient days, would have called 'having your head felt.' If you can demonstrate some physical pathology to support the way you acted, it would make my life a whole lot easier." you remember it now? Because your actions since then are such as to suggest that you had a profound incident of amnesia. I'd be really tempted to suggest that your parents take you down to the NP center at Washington U for the purpose of what my father, in the ancient days, would have called 'having your head felt.' If you can demonstrate some physical pathology to support the way you acted, it would make my life a whole lot easier."

Megan's face positively simmered with embarra.s.sment.

"No, huh? I was afraid not. Why Why did you not do as I requested?" Winters said. "Granted, it wasn't an order, you're not under my orders...but normally, requests of this kind from a senior Net Force official to a Net Force Explorer can be considered as having some force." did you not do as I requested?" Winters said. "Granted, it wasn't an order, you're not under my orders...but normally, requests of this kind from a senior Net Force official to a Net Force Explorer can be considered as having some force."

Megan looked at the floor and swallowed. "I thought the situation wasn't as dangerous as you thought it was," she said finally, looking up again. "I thought Leif and I could handle it."

"The thought didn't possibly cross your mind that you would like to really look good?"

"Uh. Yes. Yes, it did."

"And what about you?" Winters said to Leif.

"Yes," Leif said. "I thought we could handle it. And I thought it would be really neat to handle this ourselves, before the senior members got involved."

"So." Winters looked at him. "You weren't thinking of sparing us danger, or trouble, not specifically."

"No."

"Time, maybe," Megan said.

"And glory?" Winters said softly.

"A little," said Leif.

Winters sat back. "You two are nothing if not an easy debrief. Well, I've had time to look over all the logs. There's no question of your tenacity. And I have to say I smell dedication here. Got your teeth into it, didn't you?"

"I didn't want to let go," Megan said.

"We started a job," Leif said softly. "When you spoke to us...we weren't finished. We wanted to finish."

Winters sat still, looking down at the paper on his desk. He reached out to the corner of the stack, riffling the many pages. "There has been a certain amount of pressure from above," he said, "to simply chuck you two out of the Explorers as a liability. The example of recklessness and disrespect for authority which your actions of the last few days suggest is not thought to be a good one for the rest of the Explorers. Because news will get out about what happened-it always gets out-and there's concern that other Explorers, in their youth and inexperience, will start thinking that this kind of behavior might actually be appropriate. We've managed to do a certain amount of damage limitation, but..." He rolled his eyes. "That little scene on your front lawn did not help, Megan. Details of what happened, and what you were involved with, are invariably going to leak out. I'm hoping for your sakes that there are no legal repercussions. When you're doing what we've suggested you do, we have some slight power to protect you. When you're not... not..."

Winters glanced at the ceiling as if asking silently for help, and shook his head. "Meanwhile, I have to figure out what to do with you...because there's pressure being brought to bear on us from more than one source. There are people in this organization who tell me that the a.n.a.lysis which brought you to your conclusions was a nice piece of lateral thinking, and they would look forward to working with you at some later date. And if I throw you out now, that's going to make that option fairly difficult. Yet at the same time, there are other people shaking their heads and saying, 'Throw them the h.e.l.l out!' So what do I do? Any suggestions?"

He looked at them. Leif opened his mouth, shut it again. "Go ahead," said Winters. "I don't see how you can make it any worse for yourself than it already is."

"Keep us on," Leif said, "but on probation."

"What does probation look like to you?"

"I'm not sure."

"You?" Winters looked at Megan. "Any ideas?"

"Only a question." She swallowed. "What happens to full Net Force professionals when they do this kind of thing?"

"Mostly they get cashiered," Winters said grimly. "Only extraordinary extenuating circ.u.mstances sometimes manage to save them. Can you suggest any in your case?"

"That we've uncovered possibly one of the most dangerous trends in thirty years' worth of virtual experience?" Leif said, just a touch innocently.

Winters gave him a sidelong look, and allowed out just one thin grudging smile. Leif saw it and knew, instantly, that they had him, that it was going to be all right. Not comfortable...but all right.

"That is, fortunately for you, true," Winters said. "Up until now, the whole virtuality system has been predicated on the certainty that transactions carried out remotely via implant were genuine. Now, suddenly, all that is thrown into confusion. There's hardly a part of the Net that this doesn't touch. All authentication protocols everywhere are going to have to be looked at, made proof against the kind of subversion that your Sarxonian friend managed to devise. With whose help, we're not sure...but it's being looked into. Sarxos has been a testing ground for some technologies that various countries are interested in. When someone starts interfering with that particular game...well, alarm bells ring. They'll ring for a long time.

"But leaving that aside for the moment, this incident has been a wake-up call for a lot of people who felt their systems were secure. Sarxos has a very highly-thought-of proprietary security system. The discovery that it was being subverted in this manner, filled with spurious data, and no one suspected that this had been going on for months, perhaps many many months...it came as quite a shock. If Sarxos could be subverted this way, so could many other carefully built proprietary systems. Banking systems. Securities clearing systems. 'Smart' systems that handle various aspects of national security for nations around the world. Weapons control systems..." Winters trailed off. months...it came as quite a shock. If Sarxos could be subverted this way, so could many other carefully built proprietary systems. Banking systems. Securities clearing systems. 'Smart' systems that handle various aspects of national security for nations around the world. Weapons control systems..." Winters trailed off.

"It doesn't bear thinking about, the amount of redesign that's going to have to be done. Except that we have to think about it now, thanks to you." The narrow smile went crooked. "There are probably more managers and systems a.n.a.lysts and hardware and software jockeys cursing your names at the moment than you'll ever have again, if you're lucky. And the same people are blessing you. If you were to die right now, no telling which direction you'd go."

He sat back. "Meanwhile...Sarxos itself..." He picked up one of the pieces of paper from the top of the stack, looked at it, and put it aside. "Sarxos has possibly just survived as a company because of what you've done. It's been a major profit-maker for its parent firm, and the attack on that player, along with the inability to catch the person who did it, was beginning to affect the company's performance in the market. The Law of the Market is, 'Know when they're greedy, know when they're scared.' Sarxos's stockholders got scared, and the market started losing confidence in the company. Their stock's value plummeted all over the world, everywhere it traded.

"Now, the game's designer, who is a man not exactly without some political pull due to being at least half a Croesus's worth of rich, has asked us to give you every possible consideration in what we do. The parent company's CEO has weighed in on your side, an astonishing event for a man who was widely thought not to care if the Big Bad Wolf was about to eat his grandmother unless at the time she happened to be carrying a bag full of his stock options.

"The police in Bloomington are very happy with you, because your suspect's testimony has led them straight to the rented vehicle used in that lady's. .h.i.t-and-run. The FBI is happy, because the same suspect has now confessed to offenses in several states-he's attempting to cut some sort of plea-bargain deal, but I don't know how much good this is going to do him. There are several organizations that neither you nor I should know about who are also happy, for reasons which they either won't tell me, or I'm not at liberty to discuss. And a general wave of unbridled goodwill seems to be sweeping the planet at the moment on your behalf."

His voice was very dry. "It's slightly bizarre. People who normally couldn't be bothered to give other people the time of day are asking us to be lenient with you." Winters sat back and looked at them. "Frankly, I think they're misunderstanding exactly what what you did, in some cases, or you did, in some cases, or why why you did it, in other cases...but still, some of them have a point." you did it, in other cases...but still, some of them have a point."

Leif stole a glance at Megan. She was holding very still. "All of this being the case," Winters said, "I really doubt if sacrificing you on the altar of blind obedience is going to do anyone any good. I would just as soon leave the option open that, someday, you might possibly serve with the-what's the phrase I heard used? 'Grownups'?"

Megan squirmed. So did Leif. "Do you read minds?" Megan said abruptly.

Winters looked at her and raised an eyebrow, then said, "Not usually. It makes my head hurt. Faces are more than sufficient. As for the rest of it..."

Winters raised his eyebrows, pushed back in his chair, pushed the report away from him a little bit. "Something you are going to have to understand, should you come to work with the 'grownups,' should you eventually reach that beatific state yourself, is that your work as part of a team is not necessarily about being 'right,' and there is a very, very small gap between being 'right' and being 'righteous.' The latter state can be fatal. The distance between the two is enough to get you killed, or your partner killed, or some innocent person around you killed." He looked over at Megan. "What if your father had come down in the middle of that attack a few days ago? What if one of your brothers had stumbled into it?"

Megan was staring at the floor again, her face burning. "All right," Winters said. "I'm not going to belabor the point. You seem at least vaguely conscious of the implications. But at the same time, the question also applies to you." He turned to Leif. "You were next on the list. He had the address of your school. He would have found you there. He would either have tried to take you away, and possibly succeeded-in which case we would have found you in a ditch somewhere, or a river-or he would have tried to deal with you on the spot. There are any number of ways he could have done it, and any number of ways he could have killed one of your schoolmates 'accidentally' at the same time. Responsibility," Winters said. "It would have been yours."

Leif, too, became very interested in the carpet. "Someday it may may be you," Winters said. "All I can offer you, at the moment, is how this feels right now: this shame, this guilt, this fear. All I can do is tell you that this is infinitely better than what you will feel when, because of your disobeying an order, one of your mates goes down in the line of duty. A death with no meaning: or something worse than death." be you," Winters said. "All I can offer you, at the moment, is how this feels right now: this shame, this guilt, this fear. All I can do is tell you that this is infinitely better than what you will feel when, because of your disobeying an order, one of your mates goes down in the line of duty. A death with no meaning: or something worse than death."

The room was very still. "Speaking of which," Winters said, sitting forward a little again. "Your friend Ellen-"

"Elblai! How is she?" Megan said.

"She woke up this morning," Winters said. "She's been told what's going on-she insisted on being told, apparently. They say she's going to be all right. But she's apparently extremely annoyed about some battle that she missed with this..." He leaned toward the desk, looked at another of the papers in the stack. "This 'Argath' person. Who, by the way, turns out to be completely uninvolved in all of this."

"We thought so," Leif said.

"Yes, you did. Which was interesting, considering how little hard data you had to go on. But hunches come into our line of work, as well as hardware...and riding the hunch on the short rein is definitely a talent we can use."

"Why did he do it?" Megan said.

"Who? Oh, you mean Simpson of the many aliases?"

Winters sat back in his chair. Quite without warning, a man sitting in a chair appeared in the corner of Winters's office. The man was wearing prison clothes-plain blue coveralls-and the same unmoved expression that Megan had seen on his face when he was pointing a weapon at her. She resisted the urge to shiver.

"I never win," the man said, in a flat voice that matched the affectless face-and Megan was suddenly glad that he hadn't spoken to her during the a.s.sault. He sounded like a robot in this holoclip. "I mean, I never used used to win. But now, in Sarxos...I win all the time. No one was as clever as I was. No one knows strategy the way I do." to win. But now, in Sarxos...I win all the time. No one was as clever as I was. No one knows strategy the way I do."

"Especially when you were playing all those different characters," said a quiet voice, just out of frame, probably a psychiatrist. Or a psych program Or a psych program, Megan thought.

"How else could I be all the people I am? How else could all of them win? Not just me," Simpson said. "I may be the main one...but winning, winning matters so much. My dad always used to say, 'It isn't how you play the game; it's whether you win or lose.' Then he died-" Only now did that face show any emotion at all: a flash of pure rage so uncontaminated by maturity or experience that you would have sworn the three-year-old owner was about to throw himself on the ground in a full-scale tantrum, screaming and turning blue. Except that the three-year-old was in his early forties. "I won lots of times," the voice said, calm again, the face's expression seamlessly sealed over, "and I was going to keep winning, too. All of me were-all the people who're inside. And I'll win again, someday, even though I'm out of the game now. Sooner or later, I'll win again...."

The figure in the chair winked out, leaving Megan and Leif looking at each other in a combination of pity, fear, and revulsion. "We no longer use the phrase 'crazy as a jaybird,'" Winters said, "but if we did, I would say that fella's a good candidate for the description. It'll take the therapists a long time to work their way down to the bottom of his difficulties...but I would say multiple-personality disorder is part of the clinical picture, complicated by an inability to tell reality from a game...or to understand that a game is for playing playing."

Silence fell again in the room. Winters sighed at the depth of it. "All right, you two. I'm not going to throw you out of the Explorers, as much because I hate to waste valuable raw material as anything else. I emphasize the word 'raw.'"

He looked at them both, and they both looked at the carpet again, faces hot. But Leif looked up. "Thank you."

"Yes," Megan said.

"As for the rest of it-if in the near future we find a piece of business which is suited to your unique talents of nosiness, inability to take no for an answer, annoying persistence, and screwy thinking...." He smiled. "You'll be the first to hear about it from me. Now go away and compose yourselves for the press conference. Both of you better have the grace to conduct yourself like modest little Net Force Explorers or, by G.o.d, I'll...." He sighed. "Never mind. See what you do to me? A whole morning's worth of composure shot. Go on, get out of here."

They stood up. "And before you go," Winters said, "just this. There's nothing more fatal than believing a lie is the truth. Think of all the fatal lies you just saved the world from. Even with all the other things you got wrong, and did wrong...that's something you can be proud of."

They turned and went out, flashing each other just the quickest grin...though being careful not to let Winters see it.

"Oh, and one last thing."

They paused in the dilating doorway, looked over their shoulders.

Winters was shaking his head. "What the heck is a 'Balk the Screw'?"

Elsewhere, in a room with no windows, three Suits sat and looked at one another.

"It didn't work," said the man who sat at the head of the table.

"It did work," said another of the men, trying not to sound desperate. "It was only a matter of a few more days. The first announcement impacted the company's stock more and more severely as the media spread the news of the first attack around. A few more hours, the next couple of attacks, the next announcements, would have affected their stock so drastically that they would have had to stop trading. People would have deserted that environment in droves. But more important: The technology worked."

"It worked once once," said the man at the head of the table. "They know about it now. It had to work and not be found not be found. It's a cause celebre cause celebre now. Everybody who's heard about this is going to be going through their databases, looking for evidence of non-presence or surrogacy among their users. This was a tremendous window of opportunity...but now it's shut." now. Everybody who's heard about this is going to be going through their databases, looking for evidence of non-presence or surrogacy among their users. This was a tremendous window of opportunity...but now it's shut."

Silence fell in the room. "Well," said the man who had tried not to sound desperate, and failed, "the necessary paperwork will be on your desk in the morning."

"Don't wait till the morning. Have it there in an hour. Clear your desk, and get out. If you go now, I'll have an excuse when Tokagawa gets here in the morning."

The third man in the suit got up and went away in great haste.

"So now what?" said the second man.

The first one shrugged. "We try another way," he said. "It's a shame. This one had possibilities. But it's made some suggestions for other possible routes of attack."

"Still...it's a shame we lost this one. Wars could have been fought inside a paradigm like this. Real wars..."

"But only as real as the controlling software makes them," said the first man with the slightest, chilliest smile. "What we've proven is that the present technology is insufficient to what we have in mind...not secure enough to convince our customers to use them instead of more conventional battlefields. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though, because the a.s.sumption would be that when the next wave of technology comes along, it'll be watertight. And of course it won't be. We'll be there again, building in the 'back doors.' And from the beginning of the process, this time, rather than starting in the middle. Because of this failure, we'll be smarter. And those of us who aren't smarter, will be cleaning out their desks." He looked at the second man. "And where will you be?"

"If you'll excuse me," the second man said, rising to leave, "I have a phone call to make."

When he was gone, the first man sat and thought. Oh, well. Next time...for what man has devised, man can unravel and debase, and in any game, there's always a way to cheat, if you look hard enough Oh, well. Next time...for what man has devised, man can unravel and debase, and in any game, there's always a way to cheat, if you look hard enough.

Next time for sure....

At the very edge of Sarxos, the legends said, was a secret place. It had many names, but the one which was most frequently used was the shortest. It was the House of Rod.

Some Sarxonians, standing on the uttermost heights of the northeastern mountains of the North Continent, and looking westward in the clearest weather, claimed to have seen it there: a single island, a mighty mountain peak standing lone in the wild waters, far out in the Sunset Sea. Tales of the place abounded, though you were unlikely ever to meet anyone who had ever been there. The souls of the good departed went there, some of the stories said, and dwelt in bliss with Rod forever; other stories said that Rod Himself went there, on weekends, and looked out on the world that he had made, and found it good.

Few knew the truth of any of these stories. But Megan and Leif knew now.

It was a castle. That was more or less unavoidable. But there the resemblance stopped, for the place looked like it had been designed by an Angeleno architect who had had a bad dream about Schloss Neuschwanstein, and tried to execute a copy of it in a cross between Early a.s.syrian and Late Rococo. Green lawns were laid out around it, with tasteful flowerbeds full of asphodel. There was a small white beach where you could land a boat. It was said that the Elves liked to stop there, on their way into the West. "The True West, though," Rod said, amused. "This is the Fake Fake West. You want the West. You want the true true one, you keep going the way you're going, straight off the planet, hang a right at the second moon, and straight after that, you can't miss it." one, you keep going the way you're going, straight off the planet, hang a right at the second moon, and straight after that, you can't miss it."