Wharf Rat

by Mike Adamson

Gemma Corvane grew up around the starship docks on Gagarin’s World, and what she did not know about ducking and diving was not worth knowing.

Those who knew her called her hard beyond her years. Sixteen was a tender age in an era of rejuvenation and lifespans of centuries; the pressure to grow up was eased for those of means but when you had very little you learned to make do, and to do so quickly.

She had fallen in with the Gamers after her father died in a dockyard accident when safety corners were cut—ships being turned out urgently for the Fleet—and it seemed only she had missed him. The rest of the universe went sailing on without a stumble or a blink, and the hard, hot hurt had done its part to shape her.

She became a ward of the state, an experience she tried every day to forget. But she remembered, each time she ran her fingertips over the scar on her left arm where she had taken a knife and cut out the Personal Transponder with which she had been implanted—so the state could keep 24/7 tabs on those in its “care.”

Gemma sat in the curve of an old, corroded pipeline, listened to thrumming vibrations through the steel, and was aware she palmed the scar. It was her identifying sigil, the badge of who she was—escapee, free spirit, chaff blowing on the swirling wind of forces larger than the individual. Whatever, she had her dreams. She was looking at them now.

The City Dock was massive, no other word described it. Buildings on a scale to dwarf the pyramids ran as far as the eye could see, rose a thousand meters above her as well as far below, and she smiled with the delight of one for whom the very large was familiar. Her eyes roved across the hull of the Regina Celestis, a Whitestar liner in port. She was one of the great vessels connecting the colonies of the Middle Stars, the mightiest hull ever to come out of the New Vulcan yards on distant Oceanea.

The liner rode on gravity resist, hanging motionless beside the wharf, a score of moors connecting her to the port systems, a dozen aerobridges locked in place; searchlights bathed her hull’s intricate markings and mechanical richness, and the lights of a thousand windows scattered her shadowed bulk. Behind her rose the grim, blackish industrial wilderness of the port systems, tank farms, power units, transmission conduits, accumulators and generators, the machinery of the age.

I love it, she thought abstractly. And I hate it.

These ships were the gateway to a universe of wonders, but not for people like her. The teenager with her dirty clothes and scrappy hair was unknown to the central computers, she had fallen off their playing field when she gouged out the transponder and went free. Free to starve, to be poor, free to be anything other than the state ordered.

She would often come up here to this cycling shaft, one of scores which cleaned the air after each departure, to look out at the endless kilometers of grim docks, at the beautiful ships down from the sky, to see the thousands of people from all over the Federated Worlds as they came and went; and wonder who they were and what made them so different from herself.

Her father had tried hard, she knew, and she would never hear a word against him. But life’s game was too hard for some to play. They had lived in a small apartment in the Norden Tower, somewhere among the forest of spires over toward the construction fields, and they had been managing. But when the accident came, she was left alone and pitched into state care. It had been more like state abuse, and a day came she escaped—without the transponder internal security did not work. Now she was one of the flotsam of society, the underclass, the black economy—it was called many things.

She called it freedom, and it was all that mattered.

Almost all. A person had to have a plan.

She had a plan for the future but wavered between excitement and terror. The universe was a big place and to step out of her planetary cradle was a move she both longed for and feared. She had the skills, and knew someone who knew others, put them together and they may redefine her freedom—one way or another.

Gaming, after all, was the opiate of this world, and the one thing in the universe Gemma Corvane was good at. Very, very good. She had been gaming since she was old enough to hold an input controller, her brain was wired for it, and in this last year she had discovered where her value lay. First she played at home, as all kids did, then in youth clubs, and was “referred” to those who ran the gaming houses—it was one thing for clients to game against machines, but they preferred to game against the living, and Gemma now knew she had the skill to make her mark. Certainly, when the game was on, she was aware of little else, and wanted even less.

She had no motto as such, but there were days it felt she was alone in the universe and at war with the whole human race. When she sank into game matrix, she had the opportunity to expedite the war, and was bemused to learn people exchanged large amounts of money on her performance.

That was the key, of course. Money. The moment she became a wagered entity, she had value, and knew Jaxartes kept tabs on her insofar as he could. Even now she was unsure if she trusted him fully, feared he would hold her, force her to game for him, but such did not seem to be his style, and he had made certain promises.... Gaming was big, but the law was too tight, she needed to go where things were different and gaming flourished; and the man had said he knew how to make it happen. She hated to depend on anyone, and part of her believed it all a scam, but on the one percent chance it may not be, she was willing to go with the flow.

#

Jax’s Palace was one of the better gaming dens in New London. All glitz and show, with amusement arcade level games on the ground floor for kids and other beginners, progressing up to the sport gamers by stages. Gemma remembered the first time she set foot here at age 10; in those days she came in the front door as a customer. At 16 she came in the side entrance because she was a player.

Players were special. Players had privilege and kept their anonymity, which suited her just fine. Players never mingled with the clientele, they were the ghost in the machine the best customers came to challenge.

If she had a home anymore, this was it. The gaming suites were on the top floor and within the building she had security access. Routine never varied, so long as she was there with a clear hour she was in the headspace to play. Tonight she was allotted Suite 4; a security robot patrolled the top floor and interacted with the players as necessary, and when she logged in she felt her only real safety.

Her interface suit was ready, laid out in its sterile wrap. She stripped off, stepped into the shower and enjoyed the heat on her underfed limbs, washed her hair and took a long time soaping down. This was one of life’s rewards, and when the warm air jets dried her she slipped into the metallic lilac bodyglove that interfaced her with the system. Her hair she bound with a grip, then drew the suit’s hood over and seated it comfortably around her face, pulled on slippers and fingerless gloves and at last felt ready. When she left the bathroom a tray of supper had magically appeared, just as her clothes would be magically cleaned and pressed when she was done making money for the house tonight.

With half an hour until she was on call, she ate ravenously, piling in carbs and fat to fuel her brain; this was where the fun began, and she cracked her knuckles once or twice to get into the spirit of things. Shower, dry, dress, eat, bathroom again, then....

Gametime.

A screen by the door lit with the robot’s avatar. “Good evening, Miss Corvane,” came the deep, slightly metallicized voice. “Are you ready?”

“Ready, Sandy,” she replied with a smile at the pickup. “Tell Jax ‘ll make him rich! Well, richer....”

The robot, a Sanderson Mk. VIII, chuckled softly. “Call if you need anything.” The massive blue metal machine moved on to check on other players, and Gemma breathed deeply, smoothly, finding her special place. She stood silently before a mirrored doorway, felt her blood race in her veins, dropped into a cat-like crouch and went through a few clumsy exercises, as if trying for some bastardized martial arts kata. She was getting better at it, but the mental orientation was what mattered.

Five minutes to showtime. The door hissed open like a hatch and she stepped through into the softly lit, faintly thrumming game cocoon.

Like a space capsule of ancient times, a couch was central to the systems, and it adjusted automatically to her as she settled into it. All over her body, contacts plugged in to read the neural pickups in the suit, and the seat adjusted its angle and position, feeding into the correct coordinates under a sensory dome. A neural interface helmet lowered and closed up around her skull and the manual input systems extended into her palms.

“Gemma,” came Jax’s voice in her mind, not even in her ears. “Hi, honey. All your readouts are at double-green, you look very relaxed and game-ready.”

“Hi, Jax,” she whispered. “I’m definitely in game-space tonight. How do the customers look?”

“We have a long line ready to challenge organics,” came the reply. “The standard ten-game selection. Wagering has been underway for an hour already. The odds on CyberRat are looking very nice.”

She smiled as always when hearing her handle spoken aloud. CyberRat was about right for her; once phased with the cybernetic systems she could be something other than a wharf rat—the point of her personal existence.

“Challengers coming online,” Jaxartes said softly. “Over to you, hon. Have fun and I’ll see you at the end of the evening.”

In her visual field a scoreboard lit with those throwing out their challenge to the mysterious entity known as CyberRat. She had played several of them before and with a quickfire flutter of her eyes down the menu and blink to select, she picked her first player.

Game on.

#

New London tipped below in a reeling panorama of buildings as Gemma banked the sky-blue Colt sportster, holding her adversary off by two lengths. He was good, this player who went by the handle of GoldHunter, but she did not need to see his face or know him in person to sense what he was made of: the same repressed fury made her tick.

The Colt was a mach 2 sport plane, basically an aircar with all the luxuries removed, streamlined like a fighter and given all the grunt to nearly snap necks with acceleration; one of her suite of favorite types in the gaming memory, she had checked out on it in VR sim at age 12.

For the purposes of the game the city was in bright daylight sun, air traffic at a minimum and nobody on their tail. The challenger had selected the aircraft so the conditions were her response. This was the beginning of the night so she was happy to go easy for the moment. She would ramp up to full-on thunderstorm with failed shields by the end if her mood turned dark.

He was good, she did not dispute it, and was glad to be tested. She felt the simulated G force slug into her as she cranked out of a turn over the Boston Narrows and flashed across to the other side of the city, where the old town rose in its quaint grandeur, the copies of St Paul’s Cathedral, Tower Bridge and the Palace of Westminster strung out along the New Thames River. She lead her opponent low over the languid flow, hopped bridges one after another and streaked by the turning circlet of the New London Eye observation wheel.

Speed was its own thrill, its own reward, and the course was designed for maximum thrill quotient. Heavy G force accompanied sharp turns among soaring towers, while the straights were the pure adrenalin rush of full-throttle, full-bore power. To say she lived for it would be far from overstatement.

Three laps was the challenge. Each lap was thirty kilometers, beginning and ending as they went under Tower Bridge, and in the sim the banks of the river were lined with a cheering throng, even a grandstand on the foreshore where holoscreens showed the race from the perspective of fixed cameras and a chaser drone somewhere above them. After two laps they were in close touch and Gemma knew she had to hold off this ambitious player. Her reputation was for winning and she would not let down Jax’s wagering if she could help it. It was also as mercenary as it was honest: she wanted her perks to persist.

She had flown this and five other courses more laps than she could remember, though her stats were in the system on immediate recall if she ever wanted to know. She could cut some turns closer than others, subtly tighten the racing line—the only thing she could not do was change the hardware parameters. They were fixed by the game, both aircraft were identical; this was all about operator skill, and she knew somewhere downstairs a player who had paid a large stake lay in a similar cocoon and was getting his—or her—thrills from the opposite side of the equation.

Thrills came at a price. Half way through the third lap, “GoldHunter” made a mistake, a bad one which cost him his life, or at least brought up the game over legend. Gemma shut throttle and climbed out of the racetrack, looking back over her shoulder at a still-rising ball of angry flame, rapidly turning to greasy smoke, marking where the other Colt had ploughed into a building and disintegrated. The other player was now shuddering with neural shock and self-reproach, coming down hard from his or her adrenaline high, and counting the forfeited stake.

The vista of the city faded from her visual field and she relaxed, melted back into the matrix and breathed deeply. A drink tube extended by her lips and she drew on it, tasting sweet rosemilk, and cracked her knuckles. She had a mandatory rest of three minutes before the next challenge, and used them to the full, mind cleared and heart steadied in the peculiar way she had learned.

#

The second challenge of the night was a player named “BringItOn,” who chose MazeHunter—a big change of pace, a one on one combat scenario in a three dimensional arena. Her response, exercising the right to select conditions, was to load one of her previous victory scenarios, while tweaking it slightly—she knew the play was observed by the non-playing public downstairs and a gamer would always study the pro he or she was after, so changing it in unexpected ways would combat their familiarity.

After—yes, they were hunted. The more wins a player amassed, the more young guns were after them. Like the fastest gun in the West, some young punk was always ready to call them out. They had a Western scenario too, and it was oddly fitting, she felt, to gun down an opponent. She felt nothing as she did so, except a cold dread that one day it would not be in sim.

She thought of it as “Escher’s Bane.” She had fought in twenty different mazes but this one had become a forté. In line with the ancient surrealist artist’s work, it defied gravity and all known laws of perspective and physics. Her middle ear was attuned, there was little it could do to surprise her anymore, and she walked through the maze with a mental map unfolding behind her. She did not know the way in or out, there were no such portals, in this closed world dimensionality was random. All she must do was encounter her opponent and kill him—or her—first. Best of three hits was the rule, she could take a hit and still win.

Light filtered from some nebulous blue universe beyond the cold perfection of columns and stairs, doors and windows to nowhere, and she transitioned smoothly between opposing gravity fields, to flip from one side of a staircase to the other and climb in the opposite direction. Her combat suit was lightweight, semi-chameleonic with a sensory hood, while the laser in her hands would simply deactivate her opponent’s weapon in the time-honored manner. This was a game for fun, she knew, and did not begrudge “BringItOn’s” score against her. Her own first hit was simplicity itself, she saw her opponent’s combat suit on a bridge between towers below her and instead of taking him out at once, moved closer, tracked him for some time, knowing she was giving a good show down in the halls, and closed right up to the same level behind him before whistling and dropping him as he whirled. The scenario reset and in the end it was too simple: she avoided him by jumping to the crest of a flagpole which stood in a reversed gravity region, sliding down it to a ceiling which turned out to be a tiled floor, and drilling her target through a doorway to oblivion.

Easy stuff. She rested her three minutes and drank again, calm inside and happy to be in her element.

She played fourteen times in her shift, some short and sweet, others intense and quite gruelling. “Space Fighters” in an asteroid field was a favourite, she played her opponent to a draw, both fighters too damaged to continue, and offering a tie was considered the height of sportsmanship. Another scenario was “DinoRun,” in which players hid inside the personas of different dinosaurs and exploited their chosen species’ peculiarities to win victory when the battle came. It was not always the T. rex or the Raptor which carried the day. “ChessMasters” was very different, obliging a serious knowledge of the game, which she had absorbed through dreamteaching; the twist was, it was played out by living pieces and the actual players were hidden in one unknown piece on each side. If they ever encountered each other directly they received a split second warning before it became a fight to the death with matched physical characteristics.

“GoldHunter” was back for another shot at mid-evening, challenging her to “Urban Sniper.” This time he obviously meant business as the terms he had chosen were one shot kill, an absolute with no reset. She responded in kind, selecting a ruined industrial complex in miserable weather. They stalked each other for over twenty minutes, traded fire with their precision rifles and never came close to a hit. She began to wonder if it was personal—had she ruined somebody who wagered against her? Or was it ego, pure and simple? This “GoldHunter” wanted to be known as the one who took out CyberRat one on one. It took all the skill she possessed this time, enough to make her wonder if she had bitten off more than she could chew, as the stormy night poured cold rain over the rusting metal wilderness and she hunted her prey with every trick she possessed, technical and instinctive. When she took him it was a reflex shot at three hundred meters as his own round passed over her by a handspan, and she lay soaked in the rain on a steel catwalk, exhausted and only barely able to recover in three minutes for the next challenge. She had never waived a contest, her reputation was for concentration and stamina, but for once she considered it.

Fortunately the next bout was a jetbike race against an unknown who had more stake money than sense and she held him (her?) off without trouble, giving her time to mentally readjust. After that the bouts began to blur together, and the only one she remembered afterward was the bizarre final round before closing bell.

She groaned faintly as the legend “GoldChaser” appeared again in her head up display against the scoreboards, but the selection made her blink.

Ballroom Challenge.

She hesitated for several long seconds, almost uncomprehending, then brought up the little-used direct message bar. Are you joking?

No. Ballroom Challenge. Dance you for it!

Gemma sipped her rosemilk and tried to readjust. A dance-off? Nobody had ever selected that option in all the time she had been gaming. It was.... It was not gaming! She was only vaguely familiar with it from the dream sims and wondered how to maintain gender anonymity.... She typed again. You can’t be serious.

Deadly, was the reply. Judges award style points. If I can’t out-fly you or out-shoot you, maybe I can out-dance you!

She brought up the rules with a flutter of her eyes over the menus. Challenger picked gender, she would be reacting no matter what, though she was suddenly interested to see which her opponent might select.

Okay, she replied. I pick the dance.

Go for it.

Challenge accepted, a momentary lag followed as the system loaded the scenario, and she saw a male figure appear. The avatar was tall, rakishly good looking, in a tuxedo to shame James Bond, hair worn long, drawn back from a high and distinctive brow. The features were the epitome of 25th century charm, worldly-wise but with a hint of nostalgia in the eyes, as if they saw into more innocent centuries. A dimly-lit ballroom appeared around him, shadowy figures sat at tables and the ghost of a band materialized just beyond the circle of lights filling the floor. With a deep breath, Gemma flipped through a menu of avatars, hung costume on body, added hair and makeup options, and selected tango.

The routine for the moves dropped into place and she felt the muscles of her limbs twitch as the interface stood by to translate what her mind was doing, then she blinked on the bright legend commit.

Another heartbeat and she was in the scenario, standing opposite GoldHunter’s avatar. She had to admit, he was quite impressive, and took his appreciative nod and bow as a compliment as she stood contraposto to show off the current chic—legs that went clear to the armpits, lethal heels, a waist-high-slit and ventilated gown of floral-printed silk which more accentuated the body than concealed it, more hair than three normal people combined and an off-the-shelf embassy function makeup job.

She almost sensed the hush that fell on the gaming levels as the digital audience went silent and all eyes were on them. They came together and their gazes locked, not the romance of the stereotypical moment but the challenge of reality. For a moment Gemma experienced something strange, a thrill of genuine fear.

The band crashed into a wild Spanish melody and Gemma let the sleep-taught routines flood back. She kept up with him, flowed through the set pieces and maintained rhythm. It was not the instinctive play of the pilot or soldier, and the only stakes here were pride, as far as she could see. In a way it was a compliment—if this challenger could not defeat her any other way, he had to get her away from her expertise, and she acknowledged very few would be inclined to follow suit.

A few minutes in she was tired but strangely enjoying it. She had never in reality been anywhere near such a scenario, much as with the others, but the lack of lethality in this one had an appeal all its own. Maybe it flew in the face of the dog-eat-dog mindset that drove her, she felt it to be trivial, but...maybe she could come to enjoy it.

She swirled and swayed through the pattern that appeared in her mind a split second before she needed it, grateful for the artificiality and knowing, as they reached their finale, her moves were terrible and his polished. He had her and she did not have to wait for the judges’ decision to know it. Some of them were kind to her but he was scored ten points clear, and he played the gentleman to perfection with a kiss of her knuckles before they found themselves feted with the applause of the digital audience.

Well, that was weird, she thought as the closing bell chimed and her working shift came to an end with the evaporation of the final scenario.

#

Gemma was exhausted when she climbed out of the gaming cocoon and leaned against the door, her limbs trembling. Her memories were a cascade, but the combat and race scenarios were a background buzz of speed and danger to which the closing round was a bizarre contrast. The event lay years beyond her age no matter how fast she had grown up and that aspect was a curious schism to her, something to be put aside and studied—later, when she had the attention to give it.

Her clothes had been laundered and returned and she eased out of the gaming sheath to enjoy the shower for a while again. The thought of losing the dance-off troubled her. It didn’t seem fair, and she was concerned. When she was dry and dressed the robot’s avatar appeared on the screen by the door once more. “Miss Corvane, Mr Gower asks if you would drop by his office.”

That didn’t take long, she thought and nodded to the cam pickup. “Right away.”

She hit the door release and Sandy, the massive blue security robot, stepped back, gesturing with an open hand. “This way, miss.”

She knew where Jax’s office was but had not been there often. When the robot delivered her she found herself surrounded with the junk and paraphernalia of the entrepreneur’s suite, gadgets, old-fashioned books and modern holotablets, 3D prints and shelves of holochips.... The man himself reclined behind a desk cluttered with tablets and a VR master rig he used to monitor his operation. “Hi, Jax,” she began with a half-hearted wave. “Look, I’m sorry about that loss, but who’s ever heard of a dance-off?”

“Don’t worry,” he replied with a shrug and a smile, and snapped his fingers at his service machine for tea.

Jaxartes Gower was one of the stranger beings of Gagarin’s World. He was very tall, very thin and his dress sense was a combination of fashion statements from all the wrong eras of history. A Georgian cravat counterpointed a tie-dye T-shirt and leather pants, finished with two-tone wing-tip shoes, and a selection of bizarre tattoos writhed up both arms. His long hair was styled and fluffed outrageously, and he wore platinum bangles on each wrist. A circa 1850 frock coat hung from an antiquated coat stand.

He collected the sweet hibiscus tea—an outrageous luxury on this planet—and passed her a Russian-style glass on a glass saucer, a silver spoon beside it. She breathed the steam and her mouth watered almost painfully.

“Drink up,” the man said softly as he settled into his easy chair once more.

“You’re not mad I lost....”

“Why should I be mad? Even the best lose now and then. And you are the best, Gemma. The finest native talent I have ever seen. That’s why it’s time you were getting into the bigtime.”

“Bigtime? You mean...out?” Her stomach flip-flopped.

“Yes. I do mean out.” He sipped for a moment and stared at her over his cup. She had no idea how old he was but some said he was in his fifth reju. That made him unimaginably old to her, and his face, while seeming fairly young, was inhabited by the ghosts of lifetimes. “We’ve spoken of it before. You’ve made me a fortune, you’ve earned yourself a nest-egg in the form of a trust account. The only thing you don’t have is a legitimate identity in this society.”

“That’s the hard part,” she mused. “Without it there’s nothing.”

“It’s meant to control criminals,” Jax mused, “but it controls anyone who falls off the scanners for whatever reason. Eventually, the rest of society assumes if you’re off the scanners you must be a criminal, what else is there?” He shrugged eloquently. “Not our problem, so long as we can do something about it.”

“What do you have in mind?” Her voice was very soft, she was trembling inside. “I mean, I’m doing okay here, and you’re doing loads of business.”

“Yes, but nothing compared to what we could both be doing.” He sipped and made a mysterious expression. “The laws here forbid wagering on a scale that allows real wealth to change hands. Gambling is legal, but limited. Other planets have different laws, different constitutions, and some are designed to raise capital through gambling as a form of state revenue. That’s where you need to be—plugged into gaming in that environment, your skills are worth a real fortune. Talent scouts are always watching, but you don’t need to wait for them. The fact is, I can make it happen. I can make it happen right now.”

Gemma swallowed hard. A mist seemed to rise before her eyes and her mind spun. Leave Gagarin’s World—leave everything she knew—lose the security of the familiar. Blood pressure roared in her ears and she must have looked pale as Jax let her recover for a few moments before speaking.

“Your choice, Gemma. No pressure. But consider what’s at stake. A new identity, a legitimate one, recognized by the central systems of your new home—all above board. Income from gaming you can spend without attracting attention. You’re still way under the age of maturity in any system out there so you’ll need a guardian—all that can be arranged. And more than a guardian, a protector.”

“Gaming legit,” she whispered. “Not through the backdoor.”

“Nope. Legit. There’s respect to be had.” He inclined his head as if to take in the whole establishment. “Those punters down in the public halls don’t know you, but they love CyberRat with a passion. They worship your skill and dream of being half as good. Now, you may game under an avatar your whole life through, but there will be those who know who you are, and there will never be a need to hide your identity from them—so long as your old one never puts in an appearance. And if we do this right, Gemma Corvane will never leave this planet. In fact, as far as the central computers are concerned, she no longer exists anyway.”

“Sounds difficult.”

“Yes. But not impossible.”

“You’d do this for me?” She spoke in a whisper, wanting to believe him but trust was still an alien quality.

“For us both. If I can get you there, then it will be to a ready-made gig and I will have an arrangement with the gaming palace, an investment. As you earn, so will I, and my agent there will be able to wager to the full extent of the law. In essence, you will never see or hear us, but we will always be there, looking out for you, following your career. Knowing the way you play, in one year I will be able to make more from your gaming than I have ever made from this palace. Heck, I might sell up and relocate there myself.”

“Where?”

With a smile, Jax fluttered a hand through the selection field of his comp and the screen lit over the emitters with an image of a blue, cloud-scattered planet. “They named it Aquarius. It’s an ocean planet, no continents at all, just a scatter of islands. That’s supposed to be impossible by classical theory, and scientists haven’t worked it out yet.” He shrugged. “No matter. There’s a chain of space cities in orbit, a dozen sea cities on the surface, undersea cities to serve the mariculture farms, and the planetary capital is a floater complex in the atmosphere.” He adjusted the view and the incredible structure appeared, white against a sky so blue it almost hurt the eyes. “That’s where you’d be going, Gemma. Skyport Aquarius.”

“Skyport Aquarius,” she mused, rolling the name on her tongue. “It seems so...clean.” She could think of no other term to better describe the Olympian vessel, hanging against the clouds. Then she dragged her attention back to Jax. “I’m interested. I‘d have to be crazy to want to stay here instead. Or scared.”

“Down on the game floor, they say CyberRat is fearless,” Jax whispered. “Nerves of steel. Can thread the needle between towers at the speed of sound, face down monsters in the pit of hell or take out the bad guys on any battlefield they can invoke. They are in awe of you.”

“Imagine if they knew I was a sixteen-year old girl,” Gemma murmured with a half smile. “One who never climbed into a plane or fired a weapon in her life.”

“There’s life and there’s life,” Jax said with a philosophic shrug. “Some say the life inside game-space is the one more real. When folks are mangled in accidents or war, they dump the mind into game-space for however long it takes to rebuild the body. They can live months, years, in a sim and the clever thing is, you can sim real life, so it’s as if you miss nothing, you lose nothing—you can even go visit your real body while it’s being rebuilt.” He shrugged. “Ain’t technology grand?”

“I would be nobody without it,” Gemma said softly.

“The point is, you’re somebody, and you can be a whole lot more. Gemma, will you trust me?”

“What’s involved?”

“A fair bit of shady dealing. I need to set up your new identity, then buy you passage to Aquarius with it, organize a guardian, close a deal with a gaming outfit on Aquarius.... It’ll cost a lot, but you’re taking my dreams with you, and I expect my investment back and far more besides, as you carve out a new reputation there.”

She finished her tea and set the glass down, to rub her hands together and rock slowly as she thought. “When?”

“As you know, I’ve been working on this for some time. I can make it happen overnight. You’ll be on a liner tomorrow.”

Her eyes closed as the immediacy of change cannoned into her, and she fought the fear of the unknown. “I need to think about it. I mean, we’ve been over it before, I’ve been expecting it, but.... Just a while, let me think.”

“Okay,” he whispered. “But don’t take too long. Remember, New London is not a safe town, and the risk you run living as a wharf rat comes from every quarter.”

“I know,” she murmured. “But it’s all I know outside of gaming. And you’re asking me to take my life in my hands on trust alone.”

#

New London throbbed in the night with the beat of a thousand music machines, the rumble of the monorails, the glitter of city lights. Gemma walked on a long concourse curving over the city, and breathed in the aroma of her home town. Was it so dear to her she could not live without it?

Some said a sense of place was the same as a sense of identity, and she knew uprooting to a new world was the ultimate in swapping identities, even without chicanery. Immigrants were common among the colonies, everyone started out that way—immigration was the essence of colonialism in the new age. So far, the human race had not forcibly encroached on the territory of other intelligent races, except for the whole mess with the Sendaaki, and who knew how it had started anyway? Five years of war and the colonies were bleeding white under the demands of the Fleet. It couldn’t last forever....

Gemma leaned on a safety railing and looked out across the lights of the city. Ten million people within a hundred square kilometers, the highest population density on the planet. There were forty other cities, mostly in the north, the southern hemisphere was rank, impenetrable jungle filled with lifeforms of a resilience which continued to surprise science. The military used it as the acclimation zone for units going into hell-holes out there. The vision of a blue ocean and clean cities was a taunt to her, and for a while she forgot to move on. Her street instincts returned with a thump when she sensed a drone go whirring by, and without looking up she made her way along the concourse once more, then left it at a broad stair, going down into a park.

She sat under a tree and listened to the city by night; and realized she was saying goodbye. She could not muster a tear for it, but thought wistfully, all that remained of her family lay here, her father gone these several years, the mother who died in her childhood. Roots, the thread of genetic connection reaching back across the stars to the Near Sky two generations ago, then Old Earth three generations before that. Now she was moving on again, and doing so alone.

Was it being alone she feared? Or being used? Only in game-space was she as good as invulnerable, out here she was mortal and the world had no ‘reset.’ But her value lay in game-space and she could use it as a weapon. She had never thrown a contest but whoever benefited from her skills must be certain of her goodwill. That was the real leverage she possessed.

Thinking thoughts hardened into her by the last few years, Gemma rose and made her way back. She had reached her decision and need only place herself in Jax’s hands for the future to unfold.

The last thing she expected to feel was the sting of a tranquilizer projectile smacking into her neck. Her knees buckled, the world grayed out, and her last thought was desperate self-reproach for having needed to say goodbye to her home.

#

Jumbled impressions of being manhandled came through the fog of stunning, then nothing for a long while. When she opened her eyes she was in a dimly-lit room, and her hands were bound behind her. She lay on a threadbare couch and could hear an entertainment station playing in the next room. She coughed, became aware of movement, blinked the blur from her eyes and saw a powerfully-built man in nondescript coveralls rise, open a door and speak softly.

A moment later another heavy stepped in, followed by the one they clearly worked for. He was shorter, better dressed, with a face which brooked no nonsense, eyes which seemed to have seen everything life had to offer, and more besides. He rubbed his chin with a blunt, hard hand and nodded. “Good morning, sweetheart.”

All her experience with sims told her to keep a smart tongue to herself. She struggled to rise and did not meet his eyes. “Where am I?”

“Never you mind about that,” was the reply, in an accent which sounded like the gutters of the old, original London. “Not where you were, shall we say? You, my dear, have a very peculiar skill set, and those skills are worth a lot to the right people. You know what I mean. We’ve watched your comings and goings, and you’re a player. You seem to be able to disappear for long periods, you’re a right little wharf rat, vanishing round the big moors when the ships come in. But you always end up back at Gamers’ Row every one, two, three days. And you don’t go in through the front door.” He smiled with perfect teeth. “Looks like we caught ourselves a player, and you must be good or you’d have been laid off long ago.”

“So, I’m a player,” she murmured. “What’s it to you?”

The heavies laughed, and the one in the suit pulled a straight-back chair across, to sit cowboy style and bring out a pocket-model tazer. “What’s it to me? Better to ask, what’s your hide to you?” He shook his head as if explaining things to a simpleton. “We ran your face and geneprint as soon as we had you. Did you know you’re not in the master computers? How about that, someone who doesn’t exist, but is walking and talking. There’s plenty of us, my dear, in a sense you’ve come home to where you belong. Amongst your own kind, you might say.” He flicked the tazer and the blue spark crackled between the electrodes. “Well, down here we have a certain way of doing things. Crude, if you know what I mean. You’ll game for us, my girl, or you’ll suffer. And in the end, if you can’t be convinced to win for us, there’s always the other trade that youngsters like you are good for. Know what I mean? There’s any amount of sex shops with the finest androids ever made, but you know, your real top—end clientele only pay premium credits—” he rubbed his fingers together “—for real, live flesh—flesh what cooperates.”

Her stomach was turning as he spoke. Had her time expired? Had the dubious freedom she had prized turned against her? Now she was free to be exploited, abused, used up and discarded.... Her gamers’ soul rebelled, she wanted a weapon in her hands, to face these louts on a battlefield or in the air, but that was fantasy. Reality, she realized perhaps as never before, hurt. She saw years stretching out before her, and only one surety: sooner or later, everybody made a mistake, and on that day, she would kill this grinning bastard.

“What will you do with me?” she asked softly.

“Oh, you’ll get your room and board,” the grinner said, toying with the tazer. “You’ll get to game, which is what you really want, after all. And I promise you this, win for us and nobody will lay a finger on you. Lose....” He shrugged. “You get the picture. So, are we speaking the same language?”

She had been about to nod, acquiesce, cooperate, do anything to stay in one piece and hope for some way to get a message to her only friend, but a sound from the next room brought her head up. A crash, a rending tear, glass shattering—then the wall disintegrated inward in a shower of fiberboard and plastic struts as something huge bludgeoned through. She caught an impression of blue metallic casing and a whine of servos filled the air, then a stun field hammered at point blank range and the two heavies dropped where they stood. Another split second and a huge metal hand closed about the grinner’s neck, lifting him from his feet and pinning him to the next wall.

Sandy looked down at Gemma and made a circling action with his left hand. She turned on the couch, a blade appeared from his hand and he severed the cords between her wrists. He withdrew the blade and offered her a hand up. “Are you well, miss?”

“I am now, thank you, Sandy,” she replied, with an affectionate stroke of the mighty hydraulic arm.

Figures moved in the dust haze and Jaxartes Gower, dressed in plain black coat and pants, his hair tied back, stepped through the hole in the wall, flanked by two of his own security men. Gemma went to him for a hug for a moment, then the boss moved up to flank his robot and address the grinner. “Do you know who I am?” A choked nod was all the small-time hood could manage. “If you ever work my side of the street again, you’ll be face down in the Thames. Do I make myself clear?” More nodding. “Now, you’ve had an hour and that’s long enough to have been up to no good with this young lady who happens to be under my care. So take special notice of what happens next.”

He glanced around, then slapped a hand to the robot’s armored shoulder. “Sandy, you will accept as command priority all instructions from the following voiceprint.” He looked at Gemma. “Say anything but your name.”

The girl blinked in surprise. “Um....” She dredged her memory for something appropriate when dealing with a very rich, very old person. “Live long and prosper?”

“Command identity registered,” the robot replied impassively.

Jax smiled thinly at the hood. “That means the robot will obey her to the letter. You better not have hurt her.”

Gemma scraped the cords from her wrists as she glared at the greasy little hood, then raised a finger as a thought occurred to her. “GoldChaser. You were GoldChaser, weren’t you?” She scowled. “Feeling out the quality of the house players? Found them up to speed and worth grabbing one?” She let her eyes go to Jax and asked very deliberately, “Will Sandy kill him if I order it?”

“No,” Jax returned softly, “that’s the one thing he won’t do, not even to preserve himself.”

“I figured,” Gemma replied. “Truth is, I wouldn’t ask a robot to do what I wouldn’t do myself.” She took up the dropped tazer, rammed it into the man’s crutch, and triggered it. When he was unconscious and smoke rose from his trousers along with various other noxious odors, she threw the device away and folded her arms tightly, shuddering a little now with the onset of shock.

“All done?” Jax asked with the ghost of a smile.

“Can we go?”

Jax whistled softly to his men who guarded the wrecked outer room with guns drawn. Sandy dropped the wretch and turned to safeguard Gemma as they headed out, but as they left the squalid apartment Gemma turned to Jax. “How did you find me?”

“I tagged you as you left my office,” he replied mildly. “What, you think I’d let the most precious player I’ve ever had walk out without an escort the night before her biggest gig?”

#

What a difference a day made.

Gemma could scarcely believe how far she had come, and could not resist throwing a secretive glance toward the air cycling shafts that gaped under the great embarkation concourse, as a people-mover crossed one of the aerobridges with another hundred passengers. She saw the orifice in which she had sat yesterday, just for an instant, then turned her attention to the Regina Celestis before her. The ship was even more unimaginably huge than she had felt before, but even the spectacle of her size was dwarfed by the simple fact Gemma was going aboard en route to Aquarius.

Jaxartes Gower had been as good as his word, had spared no expense. At her side sat Lydia Tyrrell, her legal guardian, tall, dark, svelte, expensively dressed—and none but Gemma would ever be aware Lydia was an android. With full state of the art updates, her countermeasures systems were enough to fool even the finest scanners in civilian use, and she possessed the strength and speed to be a protector. Her female guise allowed her to go anywhere Gemma went without raising an eyebrow, and her cover was simply business—opening a branch office for a front company owned by Jax in New London.

Gemma barely recognized herself. The specialists had worked on her all morning, hair grafts, depilation, modified skin and eye coloration, a dermal healing patch to repair the scar on her arm which betrayed the fact she had once been chipped; she wore a skinsuit of rainbow patterns with a white leather jacket and matching boots, while raven-black hair tumbled to her waist. The real kicker, though, was the anti-scan transponder fitted under the fake scalp of the wig, which would sense a genetic scanner and beam back the composited DNA print which was now appended to her identity in the New London central data system. She was Lasita Tyrrell and came from a somewhat privileged background, which explained the paucity of records about her. Medical files, remote educational affiliations—nothing very specific. Dream teaching overnight had loaded the files she needed—everything from the social scene in the city to personal deportment. All being well, she would be the only one who ever knew the truth of her origins.

On the liner, elevators whisked passengers throughout the ship and they found a shared stateroom, their luggage already aboard and unpacked by their assigned valet droid. Gemma opened the built-in wardrobe and shook her head over the colorful and beautiful things Jax had amassed for her in a swift hour of ordering, laid off through a dozen pickup points to allay suspicion.

“Can it really be true?” she murmured to herself, gazing at the view across the City Dock on the screen which doubled as a viewport—the cabin was deep in the ship.

“All of it,” Lydia said softly, sinking into an easy chair and crossing one knee over the other as elegantly as any human. None would ever tell her from an organic being, and her artificial intelligence was of the first order. She had cost a small fortune and Gemma knew the degree to which Jax was invested here: Lydia had been his personal companion and closest bodyguard for many, many years and he was entrusting the future of his entire organization to her.

To both of them.

Gemma had rarely felt true gratitude in her life but she felt it now, and no longer had any misgivings. She would do her utmost and if she could make Jax the richest man on Gagarin’s World she would be more than happy.

The ship rose from New London at two in the afternoon, a behemoth lofting into the gray and angry sky on a field of inverted gravity and the efflux of a dozen lift motors. Her passengers crowded by the panoramic windows of the promenade decks to watch the city—its roads, towers, river and industry, its sweep, grandeur, filth and the hidden human face behind it all—recede below. The craft passed through the weather shield and clouds swallowed up the view, and in that moment Gemma was homesick. Not for the poverty and fear of being a wharf rat, not even for the world of her birth, but for the entire chapter of her life which was closing.

And for the mischievous spirit that had carried her through. She had one last thing to smile about. Before they parted, a couple of hours earlier, Jax had shared hibiscus tea with her in his office and made a small confession. There was nothing sinister about GoldChaser, because GoldChaser was him. He had shrugged and explained, he was pretty sure he had only one last evening in which to see if he could best CyberRat at anything, and while resorting to ballroom dancing might not have been entirely fair, it was the only contest he knew he could win. He had been cutting rugs since before her ancestors had left Earth.

She smiled and resolved to practice at that sim, because a day would come when she offered him a return engagement, and had every intention of winning.

The liner rose gently out of the atmosphere, planed across the upper reaches of the planet’s gravity well, and turned her bows for the stars. Gemma sent one last, long glance at the cloudy sphere receding against the blackness and turned her back on it, to look across at her guardian with a smile she truly felt. “Lunch, Lydia?”

“Let’s,” was the reply, and they went in search of a restaurant.

Five star, of course.