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  “Practical fun,” Druin mused. “You just make that up?”

  But Wisefellow had returned his gaze to the city walls which now stretched to either side before them. "More importantly,” he said softly, “Gil is a deceitful devil himself. If he could have, he would have made off with the whole hoard, and left the rest of us to the bloodsuckers. I see too many like him in my shop, greedy and careless. I prefer the...humane quality of your ambition."

  The city guardsmen gazed at them incuriously as they marched through the plain iron gates of Bitter Edge.

  They remained silent as they made their way through the cobblestone streets, past the crowds of natives in their muted browns and grays and the gleaming figures of richly-clad adventurers like themselves. A juggler tossed what looked like small lizards from hand to hand. An acquaintance waved cheerily from a balcony. A native woman tried to sell them a horse.

  They doggedly pressed through the crowds, making their way past the town well where the rumor-mongers hawked tales of lost treasure, past the constant streams of traffic surrounding the armory, and down a side-street to the Grinning Pumpkin.

  "Truly, Druin, you must move to more luxurious quarters some day," Wisefellow muttered. "At least somewhere cleaner."

  "I hear Gil actually bought an even larger house last week, up on the hill," Druin commented absently as they elbowed their way inside the noisy tavern. "I kind of like the Pumpkin, though. It feels...I don't know. Appropriately seedy, I guess."

  "The term you are searching for is 'squalid,'" Wisefellow grunted as they shoved their way to the stairs at the back of the room. But he knew it was useless to broach the matter of moving somewhere more upscale – his friend was too attached to this, his first home in Bitter Edge.

  "Druin my friend, you are too ambitious for a thief, and you won’t take a scout’s commission in the army...”

  “Served my time,” Druin said shortly. “And you know how I feel about politics.”

  “Did I mention assassination?” Wisefellow asked with a wounded expression. “Regardless, you are now relatively wealthy. At least until you go shopping again. So, shall we meet tomorrow? I think we could even afford a brief trip to Scryers' Street. I see no reason to immediately re-enter the troll-kin's nest, now that they know we are coming."

  Druin glanced once more into his sack and mentally calculated the value of its contents: silks, earrings, an embroidered purse full of coins, a pair of armguards with elegantly scalloped edges that might be real silver. "Yeah, I think we might. Six o'clock, Pacific time? I have to help my sister finish homework from summer school, and I promised my dad I'd mow the lawn."

  Wisefellow covered his face with his hands. "Druin, I despair of you. You must learn to stay in character! It may be the only way one so eccentric as you can ever prosper in this world." He sighed. "Very well. I shall be here early. Perhaps I can convince Uriah not to cut you into tiny pieces."

  "If he's not dead," Druin countered.

  "Yes, if he is not dead. If he is dead of course...well, then should I think that he is going to be very angry with you. I would avoid him until he gets over it."

  Druin marched up the stairs and entered a long hallway lined with doors, each one marked with a name. The third on the left was his, and the door opened to his touch. Once inside, he glanced briefly about to take inventory. Unlike some of the Adventurers’ quarters he had seen, Druin’s room was spartan, and most of his possessions strictly practical. An extra jerkin hung on the back of the chair, and there was an arrangement of knives on the small dressing table. Not much, but home.

  He dropped the sack with the trolls’ booty casually into the chair and lay on the bed, still wearing all of his clothes. He stared at the ceiling and regulated his breathing. It was always less disorienting if you lay down first.

  "Logout," he declared authoritatively, and the room faded away.

  Druin the Thief. Circle: 6. Wealth: 1,455. You have been logged in for 213 minutes. Thank you for playing Crucible v3.8.

  Andrew Hunter pulled the goggles off and tossed them towards the bed, which was impossible to see from his position, semi-reclining on the virtualounge. He rubbed eyes bleary from almost four hours of strain, and he had to consciously focus on the room around him. From his position, almost flat on his back, he mostly saw the lemon-yellow plaster of the ceiling. Ugh. Luckily it was invisible to him most of the time he spent he spent in this room. His bookcase and desk, both occupied by neatly arranged books, occupied the corner opposite the virlo. Clothing hung out from the half-opened drawers of his dresser.

  Andrew tapped a button on the console beneath his right hand. The virlo ceased its persistent humming as the vinyl ribs which crisscrossed the metal frame stopped vibrating. Pressure and gravity returned. His back felt stiff from being nearly immobile for so long. The virlo wasn't a very recent model, or in particularly good repair, and he if he didn’t replace it soon, he thought, rubbing his back, he ran the risk of serious spinal damage.

  He held his finger over another button and the virlo’s seat slowly rotated into an upright position, until he could step out onto the floor. As usual after an extended session, he felt dizzy and top-heavy, as though the floor were a great distance away, and his legs entirely too spindly to support the rest of his body.

  A long trip, but worth it, Andrew mused. Over fourteen-hundred gold? Plus, if the armguards turn out to be real silver after all, he might get a good amount more from a blacksmith. He and Wise' would have no difficulty paying for the services of a top-notch Seer to help them with their next trip.

  He moved the goggles aside, sat down heavily on the unmade bed, and began stripping the data-gloves from his hands. He tossed them onto the goggles and pulled up his legs to remove the thick latex bands from his ankles, and then added those to the pile. Unlike his third generation chair, his computer equipment itself was the best he could afford. The gloves and anklets were black and seamless, with only tiny red dots indicating the sensory implants. The goggles were Blaupunkt ultra-lights with bone conduction speakers -- much better than the heavier unit he'd owned previously, which had given him neck-aches if used for more than an hour at a time.

  Andrew stretched and rolled his shoulders. Gregor -- Wisefellow in the world of Crucible -- should be offline by now. What time would it be in Greece, anyway? Gregor must work some sort of night shift there. Andrew remembered him once mentioning that he was some sort of student. Linguistics or something. Anthropology? It was odd, how little he knew about someone he’d met more than two years ago. But of course, he didn’t really know “Gregor” at all. He had never actually met him. He knew Wisefellow, which was a different matter altogether.

  But for the moment he should see what he'd missed around the house while he'd been in the game. Maybe Sara was still up. After the encounter with the trolls, and the slave who had so resembled his sister, he had an irrational urge to check on her.

  Yawning, he ambled down the hall, shuffling slightly on legs that were still sore from his virlo-time. It would take all the money from any summer job he was likely to land at this point to repair the strapping, but the expense would be worth it if he wouldn’t hurt so much.

  Not that his parents would think so, he thought as he cautiously tiptoed past the door to their room. To them, any expense which didn't relate directly to his college prospects was unwarranted self-indulgence. But he was twenty years old, he had gotten into a state college only a few miles away, and as long as he maintained his standing, there was little they could do about the way he spent his money, other than to nag him ineffectually. That was the deal, a truce negotiated as painstakingly as any international treaty, and on the same principle: mutually assured destruction.

  The door to Sara's room was open a crack, and he peered in. His sister lay on her own virlo, his parents' ancient castoff, so old that it relied upon cushions, rather than micro-vibration, to protect the user from stiffness and provide the sense of bodily dislocation so essential to virtual experience.
Sunk deep into the pink pillows, her dark brown hair a halo about her face, she looked even younger than her fifteen years. Her arms and legs rested at her sides, twitching occasionally as she moved about in whatever program she was currently running. She mumbled indistinctly, her words caught by the microphone pressed to her throat, and then laughed out loud at something she had heard in reply. She was chatting, no doubt with friends, probably in one of the infinite series of virtual fan-clubs devoted to her favorite bands.

  Andrew began closing the door, but was surprised when Sara sat up, pulling at her goggles. The deep brown eyes which he had last seen in the face of a simulated slave girl emerged from behind black rubber lens cuffs.

  “’Drew? I thought I heard you.”

  He nodded. “Didn’t mean to bother you. Sorry.”

  She stood, shakily. “No problem. I was bored anyway. Melanie Griffords is a stupid cow, and she wouldn’t know a clean song source if the file came up and introduced itself to her. I get tired of explaining things to idiots, though. You?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said, thinking of Uriah. “I’m just going to the kitchen. Do you want anything?”

  She yawned and stretched. “No, thanks. I’m going to sleep. I’ve been in since after dinner, and my eyes are steaming.” She raised an eyebrow. “You want to tell me what’s actually bothering you?”

  “No,” he lied.

  “Mom and Dad been bothering you about a summer job again?”

  “No,” he lied again.

  Sara shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She tossed the VR rig onto the virlo and made for her bed. “I wouldn’t worry too much about them, though,” she added over her shoulder. “I think they just like to feel useful, and that makes them panicky.” She lay down on the bed, not bothering with the covers. She waved a hand and the lights dimmed.

  “Useful?” Andrew prompted. He could have come up with plenty of other terms to describe his parents’ manner.

  Sara’s voice was already fuzzy with sleep. “You know: not too afraid of doing the wrong thing, but always afraid you’re not doing enough of the right thing.”

  Andrew took a second to work that out, and failed. He thought about asking for clarification, but realized she was already asleep. He shut the door quietly. It was not until he got back to his room that he wondered whether her final comment had been directed more at him than his parents.

  Thinking of the incidents in the sea-trolls’ caves brought a new wave of chagrin as he pulled off his clothing and settled into his bed. Was Wisefellow -- Gregor -- right? Was it ambition that had driven him to attempt to free the slaves earlier? Was it ambition that had caused him, too often, to veer from the plans so carefully concocted before every undertaking? If so then ambition was not what it was cracked up to be, certainly not the panacea so universally urged by his parents.

  His "ambition" certainly hadn't led to the successes enjoyed by some of his peers, people like Gil and Mim, and the others who lacked whatever character flaw seemed to grab him at those crucial instants, to drive him from the prescribed path to victory and into some new, and disastrous, trajectory.

  No, he decided as the lights dimmed automatically, Gregor was wrong. It could not be ambition which lay at the heart of his impulsiveness. Or else he did have the ambition his parents craved for him, but only in the world of the game, where it did no good. A stupid irony, if true, because after all, the game was just that. Success or failure there mattered very little. It was a world of complicated plans with unimportant outcomes -- of actions without consequences. Nothing mattered there. That was what made it so easy. And maybe that perception was the root of "ambition" after all.

  Two deep thoughts in one evening. “A new record,” he thought wryly. One more moment of introspection would be enough to turn him to poetry, like his father. Or perhaps just enough to drive him to sleep. Andrew fell into a deep slumber, and dreamed of a slave with his sister's eyes. But when he awoke, he did not remember his dreams, or think much of them. So much for poetry.

  File Capture Complete

  Organizing data...100%

  Filtering...100%

  KeyFiles ready for review

  The words floated above the desk, their greenish glow the only light in the room. They illuminated a pair of hands, long-fingered and spidery, which hovered over an ancient-looking keyboard. The fingers tapped, tapped, bounced into the air to snatch a square of light from the holographic display, and tapped again at the keys. New windows of light flared briefly into existence, were closely scrutinized, and shuffled into glowing piles. Occasionally there were grunts of satisfaction or discovery, but mostly there was the rapid-fire clacking of the keys, the sound of someone working very intently.

  The fingers paused briefly. In the air over the desktop, a small window played out a video clip.

  “Expand window five,” whispered the owner of the tapping hands.

  Obligingly, the clip blew itself up to several inches across, enough to make out a dimly lit cavern where a tiny figure raised a blowpipe to its lips and felled another tiny figure. Little people scampered forward, waving their arms in argument. Other figures ran around, trying to trace the outcry. The owner of the hands pursed his lips. Bad design, he thought. But an interesting play.

  “Volume up window five, twenty-five percent.” He listened to the argument. He watched the faces closely. Eventually, two tiny figures escaped pursuit and walked up a road toward a coastal town.

  “Close window five.”

  The owner of the hands leaned back. Before him, hovering in the air, was a green block with the words “Druin the Reaver” on it. Threads of light connected the block to other blocks of various colors, including one which pulsed an ominous red.

  Why hadn’t the thief died? He’d been woefully under-prepared for the degree of opposition he was facing. He’d raised up the whole place with his ridiculous attack on the slaver. Hell, it was a wonder his whole team hadn’t turned on him, cut his legs out from under and left him bleeding in the tunnel to throw off their pursuers. Bu they hadn’t. They’d rallied, instead, helped get him out of the stupid, stupid predicament he’d gotten himself into.

  And that, of course, was why the thief hadn’t died: because he had a knack. Not for combat, and certainly not for thievery…no, he had a knack for getting people to stick together, for getting them to cooperate when logically they should have turned on one another. Maybe it was the helpless puppy-dog face, maybe it was the unthinkingly noble behavior, but whatever it was, it worked.

  “Hmm. Odd. A thief who doesn’t act like a thief. Desk, flag file seventy-three, further interest.” The block labeled “Druin the Reaver” obligingly turned orange.

  The long-fingered hands reached up and shuffled the block off to one side, in a pile of similar orange blocks.

  “Continue scan.”

  The floating lights of the display flared. New windows opened. New threads linked new blocks together in an intricate web. The hands went back to work.

  Chapter 2 – Monopoly

  "So, I hear the new boss is coming in today."

  "Hardly new, Henry. Calloway bought us out five months ago."

  "Still, he only showed once for the signing, didn’t he? Had his accountants here to settle up. What's he coming down today for, anyhow? Thought he lived in New York, overlooking his stock market."

  "He does, normally. But I expect he's here to oversee the new software release."

  "Huh. Funny. I mean, it's not like he knows computers himself, right?"

  "No, I don't think so. But his people took over the project, so I guess he has some personal stake in it. And it’s a public-relations event."

  "Sure, but it's not like he'll understand any more of the real guts of the thing than I do. You computer types...you're all a mystery. Here's your floor."

  "Thanks. I'll see you later, Henry."

  "See you, Mr. Wallace."

  Wolfgang Wallace was a mystery to a lot of people. He was no-one's stereotypical idea of a
computer technician. He didn't wear glasses and he dressed well. He was heavyset, over six and a half feet tall, with a permanently hangdog expression accentuated by a neatly trimmed mustache. More than once he had wondered whether his meteoric rise at Archimago Technologies was due less to his skills than to the fact that he so completely violated people's expectations of what a computer programmer should look like. Perhaps they had sped him into management in order to get him out of the trenches before he gave the other nerds a bad name.

  Wolfgang had spent the better part of his life thwarting others' expectations of him. His mother had named him after Mozart, certain that she had given birth to a musical prodigy. Her theory even had support, of sorts: his father was second violin in the Seattle symphony orchestra, and she herself, as she so often reminded him, had once served as secretary to the city's opera company.

  Alas, little Wolfgang showed more interest in the computer which ran his music software than in the act of making music itself. His mother's encouragement became prodding, and then pestering, and finally verged upon abuse. But it was all for nothing: by the time little Wolfgang had become big Wolfgang, it was clear that the boy possessed no musical talent, and less inclination.

  He was duly sent off to school where he surprised everyone by displaying an absolute genius for abstract computational and algorithmic theory, a talent no one had suspected since he had previously been forced to spend all of his free time and energy scratching away miserably at a violin, while his mother kept time.

  He graduated cum laude with a degree in software architecture and was instantly snatched up by one enormous software consultancy after another, until finally Archimago Technologies made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Although the industry trade journals noted his new position, the offer was made in private, and he had never revealed what terms had been so attractive that he had resisted all subsequent offers to defect...but friends noticed that where he had always worn a look of scowling intensity at his other jobs, he seemed now contented. One mentioned at a party that it was as if Wolfgang had solved some complex problem which had been troubling him for years. The wrinkles of intense concentration on his forehead smoothed. He lost weight. And despite generous bids for his services from rival companies, he remained happily at Archimago, moving up swiftly through the ranks of programming administration, the only remaining scars of his mother's expectations an encyclopedic knowledge of classical music and a tendency to hum snatches of melody while he worked.