PLAYERS: THE AI WAR
A TALE OF THE CONTINUING TIME
"Players" -- the child, the actor, and the gambler. The idea of chance is
absent from the world of the child and the primitive. The gambler also feels
in service of an alien power. Chance is a survival of religion in the modern
city . . .
-- Jim Morrison
Thunder only happens when it's raining
Players only love you when they're playing
-- Fleetwood Mac, Dreams
****************************************
These are things you should know:
On July 3, 2062, the United Nations Peace Keeping Force, under the command
of PKF Elite Mohammed Vance, used tactical thermonuclear weapons to destroy
a group of genetically engineered telepaths living at the Chandler Complex
in lower Manhattan.
There are two survivors from that disaster, two children who were raised
together and grew to love one another: Denice Castanaveras, a telepath; and
Trent the Uncatchable, reputed to be the greatest Player of his era.
On January 4, 2070, Trent, fleeing from the PKF, stole the LINK_the Lunar
Information Network Key_from under the noses of Elite Commissioner Mohammed
Vance, and a young Elite candidate named Melissa du Bois. It returned the
Lunar InfoNet from the PKF DataWatch's control to the control of those who
used it; and it made Trent the Uncatchable a legend --
-- a man who had, before the eyes of his enemies, walked through a wall.
On July 4, 2076, the TriCentennial of the American Revolution, Occupied
America rose in rebellion against the Unification of Earth. In the course of
that rebellion, rebels killed three hundred and forty-seven of the deadly
French PKF Elite; killed a hundred and ninety thousand regular PKF troops,
of all nationalities, including Americans_
The PKF, under the command of Mohammed Vance, killed two million Americans.
The rebellion failed: Occupied America remained occupied.
Mohammed Vance became the Elite Commander; after Secretary General Eddore,
the second most powerful individual in the System.
Three and a half years have passed. . . .
*************************************
Trent the Uncatchable
and the Temple of 'Toons
2080 Gregorian
<Ahimsa>, infinite love, is a weapon of matchless potency... It is an
attribute of the brave, in fact it is their all. It does not come within the
reach of the coward. It is no wooden or lifeless dogma but a living and
lifegiving force.
-- Mohandes K. Gandhi, 1924 Gregorian
Remember you don't really own anything you can't carry at a dead run.
-- Unknown
**********************************
1.
The assassin in the rented p-suit, floating next to
the holo of a crucified Porky Pig, said, "Are you
Trent?"
Trent said, "No."
Through the faceplate of the assassin's p-suit,
Trent could see the man shake his head. "Too bad." He
brought forward the gun he had been trying to hide
behind his back.
Trent said, "I wouldn't do that."
Behind the assassin, Porky Pig's beatified
holographic image radiated love and compassion. The
assassin said, "I'm sorry about this."
He aimed carefully and fired twice.
The bullets left the barrel of the gun at 850
meters per second and struck Trent square in the chest.
Trent's camouflage scalesuit went rigid all over under
the impact; the shots knocked him from his feet, sent
him tumbling backward twenty meters through the vacuum,
across the rocky surface of the asteroid, through the
Roadrunner exhibit--
"Beep! Beep beep!" The Roadrunner zipped out of the
way; the Coyote came alive and chased Trent through
their display, missed him of course, fingers clutching
after Trent's toes as Trent's scalesuited body left the
Roadrunner exhibit and tumbled on into the Ren and
Stimpy exhibit, fetching up against the backdrop. Ren
came alive and screamed "You iiiidiot!" as Trent broke
the laser beam that informed the holo of the presence
of an audience. "Look what you've *done*!"
* * *
There was no air in his lungs and his chest ached
as though it had been struck by a sledgehammer. Trent
sipped air in shallow gasps, waiting for the pain to go
away, waiting until he could breathe again. He stared
up at the stars through his helmet's faceplate; the
stars stared back down at him, cool and distant and
indifferent to one genie's brush with death.
Off somewhere to his left, Sol shone, a light so
bright his faceplate blacked it out.
He thought distantly, <Downsider>.
". . .the Big Sleep, you stupid <bloated> fool . .
."
After over ten years in space, Trent no longer
considered himself a downsider. It was a mistake no one
not fresh from Earth would have made. No SpaceFarer, no
loonie, Halfer, or Belter . . . nobody but a downsider
would have tried to shoot him with an impact weapon
while standing on the surface of a one kilometer long
asteroid that had no gravity to speak of.
With his right hand, Trent reached over and tapped
the radio bar on his left wrist.
"--means Death! <Death> you imbe--" The shrieking
Chihuahua's voice ceased in mid-word.
After most of a minute had passed, a extra-large
form in a custom scalesuit, much like Trent's own,
appeared and floated over Trent.
Over their secure suit channel, Trent's
"bodyguard"--Andrew Strawberry, a Reverend of the Temples
of Eris, former World Football League star--said, "What
are you doing down there?"
Fighting for breath, Trent answered through his
inskin, had the inskin transmit the message to his suit
radio, which turned it into speech for Reverend Andy.
"I got shot."
Reverend Andy did something that might have looked
vaguely amusing to a downsider fresh from Earth; he
held his hands out at right angles to his body, briefly
mirroring the crucified holograph of Porky Pig, ten
meters behind him. The maneuvering rockets at his
wrists came alive, two strong blasts; he did a slow
pirouette, three hundred and sixty degrees. "I don't
see him."
"People don't . . . <listen>," said Trent, gasping
for breath. "Nobody <ever> listens."
Reverend Andy completed his revolution, came to a
nearly perfect stop with another blast of his wrist
rockets. "Too true," Reverend Andy agreed. "It's the
problem of our times. What did you do with him?"
The gravity at the asteroid's surface was
effectively non-existent; moving slowly, Trent came to
his feet, ignoring the stab of pain in his ribs when he
straightened out. Silently, the bad-tempered Chihuahua
continued to chew both of them out.
"Nothing. He used an <impact weapon>." Trent
pointed out toward the stars. "Unless he's a lot better
with his wrist rockets than I think he is, he's out
there. Heading for Mars at about ten meters per
second."
Reverend Andy's head swiveled to look, as though he
thought he could make out the man's pressure suit
against the background of black space, stars, and the
occasional distant glint of burning rockets. "Really."
Trent winced at the jabbing pain. "Man, I <tried>
to tell him."
* * *
The Temple of 'Toons Asteroid is large by Belt
standards, a roughly oval rock nearly a kilometer in
length along its long axis. Back in 2053 braking
rockets had matched its orbit to that of the Belt
CityState of Gandhi, at Ceres. It trails Ceres in its
dance around the sun, only five kilometers distant: in
2080, twenty-seven years after opening for business, it
is one of the oldest and busiest tourist attractions in
the Belt.
The Museum of Animated Art which is located there
was not always a Belt institution. It had been founded
over eighty years previously, in Culver City,
California, by the great Swami Dave Leary, a Hare
Krishna whose teachings had, so legend said, helped
inspire the Prophet Harry to give up waiting tables and
become a holy man. In his great old age Swami Dave had
moved the Krishna temple from Watseka Avenue in Culver
City to the new settlement at Ceres asteroid. It had
been only natural for Swami Dave to take the museum
with him.
By 2080 the museum has grown far beyond its
original boundaries. Sections of the asteroid's surface
have been turned over to holofields that recreate,
life-size, the greatest art of the twentieth century.
Complete with copyright notices.
* * *
Reverend Andy radioed in; a sled carrying a pair of
Security Services bodyguards, employed by the museum,
came out to pick them up.
As the sled was lifting from the downlot where the
museum's curator kept her office, a pair of sleds
cycled through the SpaceFarers' Collective craft
<Vatsayama>'s cargo lock. The <Vatsayama> was docked at
an asteroid 180 klicks away from Ceres, after
delivering supplies to the small Buddhist retreat
there; its sleds tumbled once to get pointed in the
correct direction and then blasted out along the vector
Trent had given them.
They found the assassin hopelessly lost, just a
short few degrees off the vector Trent had guessed,
tumbling around his own axis so quickly he'd grown
dizzy and vomited in his helmet, so dispirited that he
did not even try to shoot at the SpaceFarers when they
dropped a snakechain on him and towed him back to the
<Vatsayama>.
* * *
Trent couldn't get out of his suit with his ribs
cracked; they disassembled his scalesuit in sections to
get it off him.
"Let's play Good Cop/Bad Cop," said Reverend Andy.
Sid Bittan, Captain of the <Vatsayama>, had met
them at the airlock; she stood in the hatch to the
infirmary after Trent's scalesuit had been removed, a
slim, attractive woman with white hair cut down to
fuzz, and watched a medbot tape Trent's ribs. "I'd
space the bastard."
"That's not fair," Trent objected. "I always end up
playing the Good Cop. It's <boring>."
Reverend Andy snorted. "They wouldn't let Gandhi
play the Bad Cop either, okay? It's not <my> fault you
keep telling people violence is sinful. <And> they keep
listening to you," he added pointedly.
"Let's play Bad Cop/Anti-Christ," Trent suggested.
Reverend Andy grinned at him. "Okay. I <love>
playing the Anti-Christ."
"I'd space him," Captain Bittan repeated.
* * *
Standing in the <Vatsayama>'s brig a meter away
from the assassin, Velcro slippers keeping him
connected to the floor, with his pressure suit removed
and his broken ribs taped, Trent said, "So what's your
name?"
The assassin, sitting on the cot in the
<Vatsayama>'s brig, stared mutely ahead. He looked
American Indian, with long black hair tied in a
ponytail, and a lack of facial hair. He was only a few
centimeters shorter than Trent, Trent guessed, 190
centimeters or so--tall for a downsider--and roughly
Trent's age, too, that indeterminate period between
twenty-five and first regeneration. He had been taken
out of his suit and had his hands snaked behind his
back. Aside from that the SpaceFarers hadn't touched
him. Vomit smeared his chin and chest; the smell of it
overwhelmed the small brig.
Trent said, "You broke my ribs, you know that?"
The assassin flashed an abrupt exhausted grin. "I
was trying to <kill> you. I'd say you got off light."
"Do you know how many times this has happened to
me?" Trent demanded. "Murderers breaking my ribs?
<Three >. Counting this one, I mean, only two if you
don't count this one."
"I guess you're counting it," said the assassin.
"You bet I am," Trent said darkly. "The only thing
you get points for is that we're in the Belt."
The assassin looked at Reverend Andy, floating in
the brig doorway just behind Trent, and said, "Does he
always talk like this?"
"He means," Reverend Andy explained, "that if you
had broken his ribs under gravity they would be hurting
more right now, and then he would be angrier at you."
He looked at Trent. "But the second time you got your
ribs broken was escaping from Luna, right? It was the
mass driver that broke them. Not a murderer at all."
"No," Trent corrected him, "it was Mohammed Vance.
He pumped about twenty rounds out of an autoshot at me
right before the mass driver shot me off of Luna. So
the first time it was Melissa du Bois kicking me when I
wasn't looking, and then it was Mohammed Vance shooting
me while I watched him."
"Oh."
"And now <this> guy," Trent said. He turned back to
the assassin. "The third rib-breaking murderer," he
concluded. "So what's your name, anyway?"
"Chuck," the man said after a pause.
"Chuck what?"
"Smith."
"Right."
"Wait," the assassin said, "no, wait, wait,
<Jones>."
Trent laughed out loud. "Oh, come <on>."
Reverend Andy said, "What? What?"
Trent was still grinning at the assassin. "Chuck
Jones was an animator. From the Golden Age. Did a lot
of the great Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons."
The assassin's expression changed slightly. "Don't
forget Duck Dodgers in the 24-1/2th Century."
Trent said, "Man, I <hate> tourists. Let me see if
I have this right; you came out here to visit the
museum, watch a couple of Bugs flicks, saw me and
decided I was Trent and figured what the hell, let's
pop him. How are we on the broad outline?"
Silence.
Reverend Andy said, "Let me hit him a few times.
Maybe cut off a few fingers. Or all of them."
The man's eyes widened slightly.
"You'll get vomit on your hands if you hit him,"
said Trent.
"OK," Reverend Andy agreed, "let's just go right to
chopping off his fingers."
"Chuck Clearmountain," the man said abruptly.
Trent expected that Captain Bittan was monitoring
the brig; in the event that she wasn't, Trent said
through his inskin, Captain Bittan: Assassin identifies
himself as Chuck Clearmountain. Tourist from Earth.
Track him down with Belt InTourist, please. To Chuck
Clearmountain he said, "That was too easy; you have a
very low fear threshold. Bad trait in an assassin. Any
reason in particular we shouldn't space you?"
Clearmountain just looked at Trent. "You wouldn't."
"Don't believe everything you audit," said Trent
mildly. "All a virtuous reputation means is you haven't
been caught at anything yet. As if I didn't know
already, just why did you try to kill me?"
The man flushed and looked down at the deck. "Oh,
Harry . . . it was just--" He looked back up at Trent,
said pleadingly, "Ten million Credits, dead or alive.
You're Number One on the bounty listings."
"Number One with a bullet," Trent muttered.
The words tumbled out of Clearmountain. "Do you
know what that kind of money <means>? I could get full
Medical for my parents, for my <grandparents>. I could
make sure my kids and <their> kids never had to worry
about ending up in Public Labor. I could afford the
third child license--"
"You're going to make me cry," said Reverend Andy.
"Goddam blood money--'scuse me. <Damn> blood money."
Sometimes Reverend Andy forgot that he was a Reverend
and reverted to football player swearing. He looked
over at Trent. "I say we let him suck death pressure."
Even in drop the assassin sagged visibly. It was
obviously no more than he had expected.
Trent grinned at Reverend Andy. "Remember the last
one? His eyes popped out just like Roger Rabbit's. Big
huge saucers," he said to Chuck Clearmountain. "Anyway,
what made you think I was me?"
Clearmountain's head floated limply. He said in a
dead voice, "Everyone knows you're out in the Belt.
There's some things biosculpture can't disguise; there
aren't all that many twenty-eight year old hundred
ninety-odd centimeter downsiders with muscles floating
around the Belt. I saw you at the Museum a couple days
ago, and you knew more about the exhibits than the
curator. I asked her about you, and she said that you
were Gus Allen and Ben Parker, holy men from Gandhi
CityState, and you came over there a lot--I figured it
had to be you. You're a well-known cartoon fan," he
added wearily.
"Jesus and Harry," said Trent. "'A well-known
cartoon fan.' That was <it>? <That> was all you had to
go on? You could have killed an innocent man. Not that
<I'm> not an innocent man," he added, "but still, my
point. Have you ever killed anyone?"
Clearmountain looked up at Trent and said slowly,
"Not--no. No. During the TriCentennial I shot at some
looters--I run a convenience store up in Montana--but I
shot high. I don't think I hit anybody."
"You ever going to try and kill anyone again?"
"What?"
"I said--"
"I heard you. Are you serious? Would you believe me
if I said I wasn't?"
The humor drained from Trent's features. Trent took
a step closer to Clearmountain, and Clearmountain had
to raise his head to look up and meet the man's clear
gray eyes. It happened right in front of him, but
Charles Pierce Clearmountain could not have described
the process had his life depended on it. The smile
vanished and a stillness descended upon the man, a
fierceness and a terrifying, radiant severity that
<struck> Charles Clearmountain like the bullets he had
fired at the man: the person in front of him <became>
Trent the Uncatchable, the Unification's deadliest
enemy, the greatest Player of the age, the man who had
ten years ago walked through a wall with a dozen
Peaceforcers watching him --
-- and said, "So long as you live, will you ever try
and kill anyone again?"
Clearmountain could not take his eyes off the man,
and he had never meant anything more in his life when
he said, "Never. I never will, God, I swear it, I swear
it on my children."
Trent relaxed slightly and the brig suddenly seemed
twice as large. "Okay. We'll send you back to Earth,
then."
"You..." Clearmountain stumbled over it. "You're
not--"
"Going to make you suck death pressure?" Trent
grinned at the man. "Nah. Killing is wrong. I do try to
avoid it."
* * *
They borrowed a pressure suit for Trent from the
<Vatsayama>; Trent had no intention of risking death
pressure again in the scalesuit Charles Clearmountain
had shot twice. It was fortunate that Reverend Andy
didn't need a loan; he was the tallest player in the
history of the World Football League, 220 centimeters,
taller than most loonies, tall enough that he had, for
two years early in his career, played both professional
football and professional dropball. Pressure suits of
his height were not totally uncommon; p-suits that
would fit a man of his height and bulk had to be custom
ordered.
Captain Bittan came down to the lock to see them
off. "You don't really want me to send this son of a
bitch back to Earth?" Trent winced as he sealed the p-suit up around his
cracked ribs. "I do. You're headed for Vesta this run
anyway; put him on an Earthbound Trans-Planet ship when
you get there. He won't be a problem, Sid. I promise."
Trent owned her ship; Bittan obviously didn't want
to do what Trent was asking of her, but couldn't think
of a way to say no. "All ight," she said finally. "But
I have just one thing to say to you: that was the
<worst> Bad Cop/Antichrist routine <I> ever saw."
Trent shrugged. "Well, the important thing is that
we enjoyed ourselves."
Reverend Andy frowned. "No, the important thing is
that we got the truth out of that boy."
Trent thought about it. "Well--that's important,
sure. But it's more important that we had a good time
while we were doing it, without having to hurt him. In
the long run," Trent said to Captain Bittan, "there's
only two reasons to ever do <anything>: to enjoy
yourself, and to help other people enjoy themselves."
He lifted his helmet into place ad sealed it shut
while Sid Bittan was still shaking her head.
"That man is crazy," she said to Reverend Andy.
The huge black man said gently, "No, he's just a
holy man--a bodhisatva," he clarified; Bittan was a
Buddhist. "They can be hard to deal with if you haven't
known one before."
Sid Bittan snorted; she'd never met a bodhisatva
before, but she knew Trent wasn't one.
Trent clicked his outspeakers on. "Don't talk about
people in front of their p-suits. It's very impolite."
"I was saying nice things about you," Reverend Andy
protested.
"Only because they're true," Trent said. "Only
because they're true."
