Halting State hs-1 Read online

  “That’s enough,” you cut in. “If you can introduce everyone? Then ye’d better show me what happened.”

  “Uh, sure.” Richardson points at the suits with the slits for their owners’ dorsal fins first: “Marcus Hackman, CEO.”

  Hackman gives Richardson the hairy eyeball, like he’s sizing him for a concrete overcoat, but only for a second. Then he turns the charm on you with a nod and a great white smile that reveals about two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of American dental prostheses that he probably wears because it’s the only way to stop the bairns from screaming and running away before he can eat them. Clearly by calling the Polis, Wayne has pissed in Hackman’s pint, but he’s too much of a professional to let your arrival perturb him. “We’re grateful that you could come, but really it’s not necessary—”

  “And Barry Michaels, our Chief Technology Officer.” Michaels is plump and rumpled in an old-Fettes-schoolboy Boris-Johnson sort of way, with a port nose and a boyish cow-lick of black hair: You peg immediately that he’s probably as bent as a three-bob note, but unlike Hackman, he’s not some kind of toxic-waste-eating Martian invader from the planet Wall Street. He nods nervously, looking like he’s eaten something disagreeable. “This is Beccy Webster, our Market Stabilization Executive.” The twentysomething hen’s a high-flyer, then? “Mike Russell, Sam Couper, and Darren Evans”—the latter is the one with the anti-webcam shirt—“are our senior quants.”

  “Excuse me?” You raise an eyebrow.

  “Sorry. They’re our economics wizards, they do the market programming around here that’s the bread and butter of our business. It’s just what they’re called.”

  You take a deep breath. “Right. I understand Mr. Richardson phoned in a report of a theft from your company. He tells me that you got it on video, and it’s something to do with a game. What exactly was stolen?” You take a wild guess: “Was it the source code, or something?”

  “Oh dear.” Michaels emotes like a sweaty-handed old theatre queen. “Anything but!” He sits up in his ejector seat—you’re certain, now, that you’ve seen one just like it in the air museum at East Fortune—and takes a deep breath. “Did you tell her it was the source code, Wayne?”

  “No, I—”

  “What did you tell the police?” Michaels demands. He sounds very upset about something. Okay, pencil him in as number two on your list of folks who don’t like airing their smalls in public. (And remember for later: There’s no smoke without a source of combustion…)

  “Nothing, I just called them because we’ve been robbed!”

  This is getting out of hand. “What was stolen?” you ask, pitching your voice a bit louder.

  “Everything in the central bank!” It’s Webster. At last, you think, someone who gives simple answers to simple questions.

  “Central bank where, on the high street?” You can’t be sure while you’re off-line, but you don’t think there are any banks at this end of Drum Brae—

  “Show her the video,” Hackman says wearily. “It’s the only way to explain.”

  You’re looking out across a verdant green rain-forest canopy that sprawls across the foothills of a mountain range so tall that the peaks are a vulpine blue haze in the distance, biting at the smaller of the three moons that chase each other across the sky. A waterfall half a kilometre high shimmers and thunders over the edge of a cliff like molten green glass, shattering into rainbow-clouded fragments as it nears the lake beneath. Brilliantly plumed birds soar and swoop across the treetops, occasionally diving towards the waters of the river that flows from the lake. The effect is more than real: It’s as supernaturally vivid as an exotic holiday ad, banishing the rainy Edinburgh afternoon outside to the level of a dreicht grey parody of reality.

  You’re about to ask what you’re meant to be seeing here—a bank robbery in a package holiday ad?—when the camera on the rain forest pans back and up, and you realize you’re not on Earth anymore.

  There’s an island in the sky, a plug of rock set adrift from its mooring in the sea of reality, like a painting by Roger Dean come to life. Beneath it, ghostly violet and green lights flicker, buoying it up on a wave of magic. The camera rises like a helicopter and pans across the island. Although there are trees atop it, it’s mostly given over to buildings—constructions with uneven stone walls and steeply pitched roofs, some turreted and a few supported by classical colonnades. The ground rises near the heart of the flying island, peaking at a low hill that is surmounted by the battlements and towers of a gigantic castle. The battlements flash and glitter in the sunlight, as if they’re made of a glassy substance: Rainbows shimmer in their recesses.

  “This is the Island of Valiant Dreams. It hovers above the Lake of the Lost, in the foothills of the Nether Mountains in Avalon Four. The Island is home to the city called Roche’s Retreat, and it’s supported by ancient magicks. Among other things, it is home to the central bank of Avalon Four, which we manage under contract.”

  Aye, reet, you tell yourself, as the viewpoint rotates and zooms in on the island, diving towards the cobbled streets and crowded alleys that thread the city. There are a myriad of folk here, not all of them human. You weave past the heads of giants and around the sides of a palanquin borne on the back of a domesticated dinosaur led by lizard-faced men, loop around a timber-framed shop that leans alarmingly out across the road, leap a foot-bridge across a canal, then slow as you enter a huge stone-flagged city square, and dive through the doorway of a temple of Mammon that puts Parliament to shame. So this’s what the wee one thinks he’s getting for his birthday? It’s all very picturesque, but the column of exotic dancers high-kicking their way between two temples tells you that Davey’d better have another think coming.

  “This is the central bank. Our task is to keep speculation down, and effectively to drain quest items and magic artefacts from the realm to prevent inflation. One way we do this is by offering safe deposit services to players: Avalon Four runs a non-persistent ownership mode so you can lose stuff if you’re killed on a quest and respawn, and the encumbrance rules are tight.”

  It’s not much like your local branch of the Clydesdale. Demons and magicians and monsters, oh my!—a bizarre menagerie of unreal, superreal entities stand in small groups across the huge marble floor, bickering and haggling. Here and there, a flash of light and a puff of smoke erupt as one of the staff invokes an imp or servitor to take this or that item to the safe deposit vaults, or to check an adventurer’s possessions out of their custody and return it to their owner.

  “The time is just past ten fifteen…”

  Your viewpoint jerks, then slews round to face the entrance to the bank. The doors are three times as high as a tall man, carved from giant ebony beams clasped in a frame of some silvery metal: The hinges they turn on are as thick as a body-builder’s arms. But they’re not silvery now—they’re glowing dull red, then a bright, rosy pulse of heat lights them up from the outside, and the doors begin to collapse inwards on a wave of choking black smoke.

  In through the smoke marches a formation of monstrous soldiers. They’re larger than life and twice as gnarly, prognathous green-skinned jaws featuring tusks capped in gold. Their uniform is a mixture of brown leather and chain-mail, and their helmet spikes bear the impaled heads of their trophies, nodding above the points of their pikes. Just like Craigmillar at chucking out time on a Saturday night, you figure, only not as ugly.

  There are many of them, for the column is at least ten rows deep: And something vast and red and reptilian looms behind them, ancient and malign.

  Then the picture freezes.

  “You are looking at an Orcish war band. There are at least forty of them, and they’re a very long way from home. The thing behind them is a dragon. They seem to have brought him along for fire support. Which is impossible, but so is what happens next.”

  The picture unfreezes.

  The Orcish warriors spread out and adopt a spearheaded formation. Their leader barks a sharp command, and the
pikes are lowered to face the denizens of the bank, who are turning to watch with gathering astonishment and anger. Here and there the bright glamour of incantations shows a spell-caster winding up to put the intruders in their place. And then—

  A wave of darkness descends across the room, and the occupants freeze in their tracks.

  “This is when something—we’re not sure what—nerfed our admins back to level zero and cast a Time Stop on everyone in the room. That’s a distressingly high-powered spell, and it normally affects just one target at a time.”

  Flashes and flickers of light fitfully stab into the darkness. The Orcs are dispersing, fanning out with the speedy assurance of stage-hands moving the furniture and props while the stage lights are dimmed. They move between flicker and fulmination, snatching up leather sacks and ornately decorated chests, seizing swords and swapping their cheap leather armour for glittering plate. Over the space of a minute they denude the floor of the bank, snatching up the treasures that are inexplicably popping into view from the ethereal vaults.

  Finally, their leader barks another command. The Orcs converge on his banner, his helmet nodding high beneath its column of five skulls—and they form up neatly into columns again, and march out through the mangled wreckage of the doors. As the last one leaves the threshold, the darkness disperses like mist on a summer morning. A couple of the braver warriors give shouts of rage and chase after their stolen property—but the dragon is waiting, and the smell of napalm is just the same in Avalon Four as on any other silver screen.

  “We’ve been robbed,” says Richardson. “Got the picture yet?”

  It’s time to rub your eyes and start asking hard questions. So someone found a bug in your game, and you called the Polis? Looks like a good place to start. While these tits are wasting your time, ordinary folk are being burgled.

  “You said the Orcs were a long way from home. How do you know that?”

  Sam Couper—the middle geek—sniggers. “Traceroute is my bitch.” He shuts up immediately when he sees Hackman sizing him for a side order with fries.

  “My colleague is trying to explain”—Beccy Webster’s subtlety of emphasis is truly politician grade; she probably mimes to Wendy Alexander videos before breakfast every morning—“that they were controlled by a bunch of gold farmers in a sweatshop in Bangladesh. But we lost them when they ran over the border into NIGHTWATCH.”

  “We could have nailed them if that ass-hat Nigel would show his sorry ass in the office once in a while.” Russell is clearly pissed about the missing Nigel, but you can follow that up later.

  “NIGHTWATCH is another game?” You’re in danger of getting a cramp in your raised eyebrow.

  Webster nods, sparing a warning glance for the three stooges. “Yes, it’s operated by Electronic Arts. They in-source quant services behind their own iron curtain, so we don’t have admin privileges when we go there.”

  She pauses, mercifully, and you think of your upcoming evidence session and fail to suppress a groan. “So why did you call us?” you ask. “It seems to me this is all internal to your games, aye? And you’re supposed to be the folks who stop players from, from”—you shrug, searching for words—“arsing about with virtual reality. Right?” Wasting Polis time is an offence, but somehow you don’t think the skipper would thank you for charging this shower. More trouble than it’s worth.

  “You listen to me.” When Hackman speaks, you listen: He’s got the same sense of menacing single-mindedness as a Great White homing in on a surfboard. “The exploit isn’t as simple as robbing a virtual bank of virtual objects. The way Avalon Four is architected means that someone had to leak them a private cryptographic token before they could change the ownership attributes of all those objects.” He clears his throat. “You shouldn’t have been called.” He spares a paint-blistering glare for Richardson: “This is a job for SOCA, not the local police…But seeing you’re here, you might as well note that not only has an offence has been committed subject to Section three of the CMA, as amended post independence in 2014”—shite, he’s got you—“but we just completed our flotation on AIM three weeks ago last Monday, and our share price this morning was up nearly twenty-seven per cent on the post-IPO peak. If we don’t find the bastards who did this, our shares are going to tank, which will rip the shit out of the secondary offering we were planning to make in six months. The timing’s too cute: This isn’t just a hacking incident, it’s insider trading. Someone’s trying to depress our share price for their own financial gain.”

  “What’s the current damage?” asks Richardson, unable to control his stock-option twitch.

  “Down two point four, word doesn’t seem to have leaked yet.” Michaels sounds like he’s reading an obituary notice. “But when it goes, if we lose, say, thirty per cent—that’s twenty-six million euros.”

  Hackman unleashes his fish-killer grin again: “Thirty per cent? We’ll be lucky to get away with ninety.” He glances at you, and you see that the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Now, would you like to borrow a telephone? So you can, I don’t know, maybe call in the real detectives?”

  You don’t want to let the gobshite see he’s rattled you, but 26 million puts a whole different complexion on things: Normally robbery doesn’t score too high on the KPI matrix, but something on this scale has the potential to go Political. So you stare him down while you put on your best Morningside cut-glass court-appearance accent. “I am a detective sergeant, Mr. Hackman. And I’m afraid that due to current force-manning constraints, we can’t just drop everything and start an immediate large-scale investigation. I have to file an incident report with my inspector, and he has to take it to the chief constable; then it’s his decision whether or not to call in SOCA.” (The Scottish Organised Crime Agency, who will slot the job into their priority tree somewhere between chasing international plutonium smugglers and rescuing kittens from window ledges.) You smile, oh-so-friendly, and let him see your teeth. “So I’m going to start by interviewing everyone in this room separately, then I’ll prepare my report, and as soon as it’s ready, I’ll send it up the line.” (Right after you finish with your plead-by-email recording.)

  “Now. Who’s first?”

  ELAINE: Stitch-up

  En garde!

  You are standing in the nave of a seventeenth-century church, its intricately carved stone surfaces dimly illuminated by candles. Your right foot is forward, knee slightly bent, and you can feel the gentle curve of the worn flagstone beneath the toes of the hand-stitched leather slipper you’re wearing. Your right arm is raised, and your hand extended as if you are pointing a gun diagonally across your chest, muzzle wavering towards the roof of the west wing: With your left hand, you support your right, just as if you’re holding a heavy pistol. Heavy pistol about sums it up—the long sword may be made of steel and over a metre long, but it weighs no more than a Colt Python, and it’s balanced so that it feels like an extension of your fingertips.

  You are facing a man who is about to try to kill you. He’s wearing a black Kevlar-reinforced motor-cycle jacket with lead weights Velcro’d to it, plus jeans, DMs, and a protective helmet with a cluster of camera lenses studding its blank-faced shell. Like you, he’s holding a long sword of fifteenth-century design, its steel cross-guards shielding his hands, which are, in turn, raised, like a baseball striker poised ready for the ball. But you don’t see the biker jacket or DMs because, like your opponent, you’re also wearing a full facial shield with head-up display, and it’s editing him into a full suit of Milanese plate, the Renaissance equivalent of a main battle tank.

  “Let’s try that again,” you offer, tensing.

  “Sure.” He rocks slightly on the balls of his feet, and for an instant you have the surreal sense that he’s not holding a sword at all—it’s a cricket bat, and he’s got it the wrong way up.

  “Your mother wears army boots!”

  You’re not sure that’s the right thing to say to a late fifteenth-century main battle tank, but he takes it in t
he spirit you intended—and more importantly, he spots you changing guard, lowering the point of your sword. And he goes for you immediately, nothing subtle about it, just a diagonal swing, pivoting forward so he can slice a steak off you.

  Of course, this is just what you expected when you twisted your wrist. You dip your point and grab your blade with your left hand, blocking him with a clang. He tries to grab your blade with his left hand, but you keep turning, raising the point—you’re using your sword like a short stabbing spear now—and hook the tip into his armpit like a one-and-a-half-kilo can-opener while hooking his knee with your left foot.

  Unlike a modern main battle talk, the old-fashioned version can fall on its arse.

  “Ouch! Dammit. Point to you, my lady.”

  “That’s your brachial artery right there,” you comment, taking a deep breath as you watch the bright gouts of virtual blood draining from him.

  You take a step back, and your enemy does likewise as soon as he’s picked himself up. Both of you let your blades droop. “How did you know about the army boots?” he asks.

  Whoops. “Lucky guess?”

  “Oh. I thought maybe you knew her.” There’s disappointment in his voice, but the sealed helm opposite doesn’t give anything away.

  “No, sorry.” Your heart’s still pounding from the stress of the moment—thirty seconds of combat feels like thirty minutes in the gym or three hours slaving over a hot spreadsheet—but a certain guilty curiosity takes over. “Was she a Goth or a hippy?”

  “Neither: She was in the army.” His foot comes forward, and his sword comes up and twitches oddly, and before you can shift feet, it thumps you on the shoulder hard enough to let you know you’ve been disarmed—literally, if there was a cutting edge on these things. “Ahem, I mean, she was into the army. New Model Army, dog-on-astring crusties from Bradford.”

  “I know who they are,” you snap, taking two steps back and raising one hand to rub your collar-bone, which is not as well padded as it ought to be and consequently smarts like crazy. “And in a minute I want you to show me what you just did there.” No camisole tops at work for a few days, you remind yourself, which is kind of annoying because you can live without the extra ironing and the knowledge that Mike landed one on you. (You overheard him telling a newbie “She’s got reflexes like a greased whippet on crystal meth” the other week, and you were walking on air for days: It’s true, but Mike’s got extra reach and upper-body muscle, and all you have to do is let yourself get distracted, and he’ll teach you just what that mediaeval MBT can do.) “But first, let someone else use the floor.”