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.But what if hehadn’t?A startled eddy of reaction passed over the faces around her.Most of the terrace crowd turnedtoward the door of the Yellow Room.Renie turned, too.Something huge had appeared in the passage behind her, vast and round, wider than four or fivenormal sims and still growing.Its shaven head swiveled like the turret on a tank; black eyes likemachine gun barrels raked the crowd, then locked on her.The thing that called itself Strimbello smiled.“ There you are.”Renie spun, took two swift steps, and flung herself over the rim of the well.Moving at toppermissible speed, she dove downward through other, less hurried club patrons who floated likelazy fish.Her descent was still agonizingly slow – the well was a browsing device, not a thrillride – but she did not intend to outrun the fat man: he almost undoubtedly knew Mister J’s fartoo well for that to work.She had simply moved out of his visual field for a moment, which shehoped would give her time to do something more effective.“Random,”she commanded.The well and its thousands of sims bobbing like champagne bubbles blurred and vanished,replaced a moment later by another crush of bodies, all naked this time, although some boreattributes she had never seen on a living human form.The light was directionless and low, theclose-leaning walls velvety folds of uterine red.Throbbing music made her hearplugs almostbounce.A sim face, frighteningly imprecise, looked up from the nearest coil of forms; a handsnaked free and reached out to her, beckoning.“Oh, no,” she murmured.How many of these shapes were minors, children like Stephen,admitted with a smirk by the management and allowed to glut themselves on the filth of thisplace? How many disguised children had been present in the Yellow Room, for that matter?Nausea knotted her stomach.“Random.”A vast flat-walled space opened before her, its farther end so distant as to be nearly invisible.Gasflame blue letters appeared before her in a script she did not recognize, while a voice intonedwords into her hearplugs that were equally incomprehensible.An instant later the whole pictureshuddered as the translation software read her index and changed to English.“.Choose now whether you wish a team game or an individual competition.”She stood and stared as humanoid shapes snapped into existence just behind the blue-burningletters.They wore spiked helmets and shiny body armor, the eyes within the visors were onlysparks.“You have opted for an individual competition,”said the voice with a faint note of approval.“The game is creating your designated opponents now.”“Random.”She moved through the rooms faster and faster, hoping to lay down so many kinks in her trailthat even if they tried to pin her location directly it would take Strimbello some time to find her.She jumped, and found.A pool, surrounded by lazily swaying palm trees.Bare-breasted mermaids lounged on the rocksbeside it, combing their hair as they swayed to languid steel guitar music.She jumped.A long table with one empty seat.The dozen men waiting there all wore robes; most also worebeards.One turned as she popped in, smiled, and cried, “Seat yourself, Lord.”She jumped again, and kept jumping.A room full of blackness, with stars gleaming distantly up where the roof should be, and red-litcrevices in the floor.Somebody or something was groaning.A thousand men with smooth heads like crash dummies, all dressed in identical coveralls, sittingon benches in two long rows, slapping each other.A jungle full of shadows and eyes and bright, colorful birds.A woman in a torn blouse was tiedto a tree.Oily red blossoms were piled around her feet.A cowboy saloon.The bad guys wore nothing but spurs.A ship’s rocking cabin, oil lamps swinging, tankards waiting in the gimbals.A glittering ballroom where all the women’s faces were hidden behind animal masks.A medieval inn.The fire burned high and something howled outside the tiny windows.An empty park bench beside a streetlight.A blast of throbbing noise and blinding glare that might have been a dance club.A cave with wet walls, illuminated by strands like glowing spiderwebs that dangled from theceiling.An old-fashioned phone box.The receiver was off the hook.A desert with walls.A casino that seemed to inhabit the gangster era of Hollywood movies.A desert without walls.A chamber with an oven-hot floor and all the furniture made of metal.A formal Korean garden, the bushes full of grunting naked shapes.An open-air café beside the ruins of an ancient freeway.A terraced garden jutting like a theater balcony from the side of a tall cliff.Beside it, a vastwaterfall thundered down into the gorge [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]