"Does the tape show the shooter?" he asked.
"Yes, but he's unidentifiable. His suitskin had a face mask. He had a companion, similarly masked."
"But you think they're Eliminators-and you suspect that the VE pak left on the burned body will be a similar record of an execution."
"The body bag was presumably placed in the road in order to draw attention to the house, and to the tape," Yamanaka said. "That seems consonant with the hypothesis that the shooting was the work of Eliminators."
Damon couldn't be sure whether the careful wording was routine scrupulousness, or whether Yamanaka was laying down a red carpet for any alternative explanation Damon might have to offer. Damon had already laid the groundwork for a rival account by suggesting that the burned body Madoc had found wasn't Nahal's at all but merely some dummy tricked out to seem seem like Nakal's, possibly designed by Nahal himself-but Silas Arnett's body hadn't been burned to a crisp. like Nakal's, possibly designed by Nahal himself-but Silas Arnett's body hadn't been burned to a crisp.
We haven't killed anyone, the mirror man had said-but he had certainly exposed the people he had named to the danger of Eliminator attack. Now Karol's boat had been blown up, and Silas Arnett had been shot. If Conrad Helier had faked his own death, perhaps he had faked those incidents too-but that if if was looming larger by the minute. Nor was Silas the only one who had been exposed to possible Eliminator wrath by the mirror man's stupid broadcasts. Damon was the only one alive who had been forthrightly condemned as an "enemy of mankind." was looming larger by the minute. Nor was Silas the only one who had been exposed to possible Eliminator wrath by the mirror man's stupid broadcasts. Damon was the only one alive who had been forthrightly condemned as an "enemy of mankind."
There was still a possibility, Damon told himself, that this was all a game, all a matter of carefully contrived illusions piled up tit-for-tat-but if it weren't, he could be in big trouble. The question was: what did he intend to do about it?
"Your people always seem to be one step behind, Mr. Yamanaka," he observed, by way of making time to think.
"So it seems," the inspector agreed. "I think it might help if you were to tell us everything everything you know, don't you? Surely even you must see that the time has come to give us the VE pak." you know, don't you? Surely even you must see that the time has come to give us the VE pak."
It was the "even you" that did it. Damon felt that he had troubles enough without insult being added to injury.
"I don't have it," he snapped. "I don't have anything anything that you could count as evidence." that you could count as evidence."
Yamanaka's image didn't register any overt trace of disappointment or annoyance, but the lack of display had to be a matter of pride. Yamanaka still had one card up his sleeve, and he didn't hesitate to play it in spite of its meager value. "Miss Caisson is very very anxious to contact you, Mr. Hart," he said. "I'm sure she'd be grateful if you'd return her calls." anxious to contact you, Mr. Hart," he said. "I'm sure she'd be grateful if you'd return her calls."
"Thanks for your concern," Damon said drily. "I'll do that. Please call me if you have any more news." He broke the connection and immediately called the number Diana had inscribed on his answering machine in letters of fire that were only a little less clamorous than Interpol's formal demand.
The LAPD's switchboard shunted him into a VE very different from the one Hiru Yamanaka had employed: a pseudophotographic image in which Diana was seated in a jail cell behind a wall of virtual glass. Fortunately, she seemed more relieved than angry to see him. She hadn't forgiven him anything, but she was desperate for contact with the outside world.
"I've just been talking to Yamanaka," Damon said, by way of preemptive self-protection. "I told him to charge you and bail you if he wasn't prepared simply to release you, but he won't do it. He's got dead bodies piling up all over the place, and he wants Madoc badly. He'll be forced to let you go eventually, but you'll have to be patient."
"This is crazy, Damon," Diana complained. "They must know that we didn't kill the guy. We didn't even know the body was there."
"They know you didn't kill him," Damon reassured her. "What on earth possessed you you to go there? Why was Madoc fool enough to let you?" to go there? Why was Madoc fool enough to let you?"
"I was only trying to help," Diana said defensively.
"Thanks," Damon said, for diplomatic reasons. There was no point in contradicting her, even though it was a blatant lie. "I'm sorry you got involved in this, Di-but I'll do my best to make sure that you get out clean."
"If the Eliminators are after you," she told him sharply, "I'm hardly likely to stand idly by and let them get you, am I? Just because we fell out over private matters doesn't mean that I want you hurt."
For the sake of eavesdroppers, Damon said: "As soon as Madoc contacts me I'll tell him to turn himself in and hand the VE pak to Interpol. I'll pay for his lawyer and any fine he incurs. Neither of us ever intended our investigation to overstep the limits of the law, and I'll make certain that there are no further transgressions."
"And what then?" she asked, presumably hoping that he might have an olive branch ready to extend to her.
"I might have to go away for a while," he said.
"Where?" she wanted to know. She was trying hard to cling to a forgiving mood-or at least the appearance of one-but all her resentments were still bubbling away beneath the surface.
"I don't know. I've been out of touch with my family for too long; it might be a good idea to rebuild some bridges. If Karol and Silas really are dead I ought to see Eveline, even if it means a trip into space. There's just the two of us now, it seems-and I hear that one can get a very different perspective on things from L-Five. One that helps a lot of things become clear."
Diana looked at him as if she thought he might be taunting her. In her view, the first person he ought to be seeing with a view to putting things right was her. "And then then what?" she said, not bothering to apply the brake to the escalation of her anger. what?" she said, not bothering to apply the brake to the escalation of her anger.
"I don't know, Di," Damon said, refusing to be drawn. "I haven't thought any further ahead than that. Just sit tight for a while, okay? You'll be out soon."
As soon as she realized that he had no intention of sticking around for a row, her rising anger melted into mere anxiety. "Don't go," she said swiftly. "We really need to talk, Damon-to straighten things out."
"Those things are already straightened out," he said as gently as he could. "None of this concerns you, Di. I didn't know you'd gone to Madoc when I asked him to help me. I suppose I'd have asked him anyway, because he was the one who seemed best placed to help me out-but to be honest, Di, your involvement is a complication I could well do without. Let's leave things as they are, shall we?" things are already straightened out," he said as gently as he could. "None of this concerns you, Di. I didn't know you'd gone to Madoc when I asked him to help me. I suppose I'd have asked him anyway, because he was the one who seemed best placed to help me out-but to be honest, Di, your involvement is a complication I could well do without. Let's leave things as they are, shall we?"
"You ungrateful bastard!" she howled as the anger returned in full force. "After all I've done for-"
"I don't have time for this, Di," Damon said brutally-and broke the connection.
He remained silent and still in the ensuing darkness for a few moments while he collected himself, and then he returned himself to one of his own customized VEs: one which made it appear that he was imprisoned within a vast multifaceted gem. He set up his other messages on a virtual lectern and began to scroll through them tiredly, fearful of finding some Eliminator threat that would further intensify his confusion and anxiety. Mercifully, nothing of that kind seemed to be lurking among the more usual junk.
Had he been in a more conventional holding pattern Damon would have noticed the flicker earlier, but it hardly showed up against the dazzling crystalline background and its first effect was to communicate an unfocused and near-subliminal awareness that something was slightly out of kilter. He glanced around anxiously for a moment or two, wondering whether there was some kind of glitch in his code reader, before he realized what was happening-at which point he returned his attention to the lectern and tried to look as if he were engrossed in the routine business of informational triage.
Having dumped all the electronic junk and sorted the scant remainder, Damon called Karol's base at Molokai, to ask for news of the men injured in the explosion aboard the Kite Kite. The man summoned by the AI answerphone to take the call evidently knew who Damon was, although Damon didn't recall seeing him on Molokai, but he seemed to have classified Damon as an outsider, if not a hostile witness. He gave a brusque rundown of the injuries sustained by crewmen Damon had never met but said that Karol hadn't yet been found, dead or alive.
Damon put on a show of profuse apologies and deep concern, in the course of which he asked his impatient informant for permission to switch the call into one of his own VEs. When the other shrugged his shoulders Damon decanted them into a pleasantly moonlit meadow. The signal hidden within the flicker was easier to read there, but Damon carefully gave no indication that he was paying attention to anything other than the tense features of Karol's associate.
He learned nothing of interest except that Rajuder Singh had made a full recovery from his "accidental injuries" and had joined in the search for Karol-or for Karol's body. His informant didn't react to the news that Silas Arnett had been found dead.
"Have you got the centipedes out of the island's systems?" Damon asked mischievously. "It must have been very inconvenient to have the elevator out of commission."
"Everything is under our full control once again," the other informed him brusquely, "but we still have a great deal of work to do. I must go now."
"I've a lot to do myself," Damon assured him, having made his own decisions. "I'll call again for further news of Karol."
When he came out from under the hood Damon immediately went to the bathroom and took a shower. He scrubbed himself as thoroughly as he could, although he knew full well that there were bugs on the market nowadays that no amount of scrubbing could remove. He had to hope that the people who'd taken him to the foothills of Olympus and lied to him about his ability to fly hadn't been able to see any reason for getting under his skin-or that if anything had had been planted under his skin his own internal technology had been able to take care of the intrusion. been planted under his skin his own internal technology had been able to take care of the intrusion.
He went into the bedroom to put on a fresh suitskin, but he didn't take his beltpack or sidepouch from the bedside table where he'd laid them down. The only things he picked up were two swipecards that had been lurking at the back of a drawer let into the beside table; these he placed in a pocket in the lower element of the suitskin.
After leaving the apartment Damon stopped the elevator at street level instead of going down into the car park. He went out into the street, nodding politely to Building Security's desk man as he passed by, and ambled along the crowded pavement, checking the reflections in a number of plate-glass windows just in case he was dealing with people who thought that the unsophisticated approach was best.
By the time he'd taken three turns he had identified the man who was following him. It seemed infinitely more likely that the tail was one of Yamanaka's men rather than an Eliminator, but Damon knew that no one could prove that he had even considered the possibility, and he wasn't feeling much better disposed toward the forces of law and order than he was to crazy assassins.
Damon took another turn down a service alley cluttered with recycling bins that had been richly fed with the litter of a dozen stores and businesses. He had plenty of time to duck out of sight behind the second bin before his pursuer turned the corner.
The man who moved furtively into the alley, anxiously craning his neck for some sign of his target's passage, was at least five centimeters taller than Damon and eight or ten kilos heavier. Damon knew that if he were were a cop he'd also have taken lessons in the art of self-defense-but Damon had a much more extensive education in the art of attack. When his follower reached the dump bin Damon went for him without delay, aiming his first kick at the inside of the man's knee and the first upward sweep of his hand at the Adam's apple. a cop he'd also have taken lessons in the art of self-defense-but Damon had a much more extensive education in the art of attack. When his follower reached the dump bin Damon went for him without delay, aiming his first kick at the inside of the man's knee and the first upward sweep of his hand at the Adam's apple.
Damon didn't pause when his opponent went down. He kicked again and again, as hard as he could. He knew that the man's IT would take care of the damage, but that didn't figure in his calculations. He was glad of the opportunity to hit back at his persecutors, knowing that this time there would be no gas grenades to interrupt him.
Until he had laid the man unconscious, Damon had not known how much anger and frustration had been pent up in him, but the exhilaration of the whirlwind action had hardly begun the work of purging it. He felt a perverse stab of disappointment when no one else appeared in the alley's mouth to provide a further challenge.
He knelt down beside his victim and checked the pouches in the man's beltpack. There was nothing to identify him; like Damon, he was carrying no identifiers save for a gnomic set of unmarked swipecards. Damon picked these up by the edges, wondering whether it might be worth keeping the swipecards to see what might be retrieved electronically therefrom. He knew, though, that if the man were were a policeman it wouldn't be a good idea to be found in possession of stolen goods. In the end, he replaced the cards in the pouch. a policeman it wouldn't be a good idea to be found in possession of stolen goods. In the end, he replaced the cards in the pouch.
Before Damon went on he landed one last gratuitous kick on the side of the stricken man's head, just in case he deserved it: one which would leave an ugly and very noticeable bruise.
As soon as he had put a safe distance between himself and the alley, Damon went into a clothing store. He bought a new suitskin off the peg and left his own behind in the fitting room, transferring nothing to the new garment except the two swipecards. After leaving the store he booked into a public gym and took another shower, just in case his hair or skin had picked up any stray nanomachines while he had been getting rid of the inconvenient follower. Madoc had always advised him that the cleverest bugs were the ones that infected you after after you figured that you'd purged them all. you figured that you'd purged them all.
As soon as he was finished in the gym Damon moved away from the busier streets toward ones which were less well-equipped with eyes and ears, taking shortcuts whenever they became available and changing direction five times to make any attempted analysis of his movements virtually impossible. Then he called into a bar so that he could look up Lenny Garon's address on the customers' directory terminal.
He thought it best to move once more before getting down to the serious business of the day, so he slipped out into the street again and wandered into a run-down mall which had a row of terminal booths. All of them were empty.
Damon slotted one of the swipecards and immediately set to work, his fingers flying over the keyplate. He knew that he had less than two minutes in which to make his mark, and that he wouldn't be able to do much more than five minutes' worth of sabotage-but the evening traffic was already building up and five minutes would be enough to store up a wealth of trouble.
When he emerged from the mall again every traffic signal for at least a kilometer in all directions was on green, and the jams were building up at every intersection.
He'd estimated that five minutes of downtime ought to be enough to snarl up at least twenty thousand vehicles, creating a jam so tight that it would take at least an hour to clear. The pavements were jamming up almost as badly as the gridlocked vehicles, and tempers were soaring in the late afternoon heat with amazing rapidity.
Damon kept on ducking and dodging until he was certain that he was free and clear of all humanly possible pursuit, and then he began the painstaking business of making his way across town to his destination-the destination that had been coded into the flicker affecting his domestic VEs.
That flicker had used a code which he and Madoc Tamlin had worked out seven years before, so that they might exchange information while under observation, using their fingers or any object with which a man might reasonably fidget. It was a crude code, but Damon still remembered every letter of the alphabet.
L-E-N-N-Y, the flicker had spelled out.
There was only one Lenny the signal could possibly refer to, and only one reason why Madoc might want him to visit the Lenny in question. Whether Madoc was with him or not, Lenny Garon had to have the VE pak which Madoc had stolen from under the noses of the LAPD-the one piece of the mirror man's carefully constructed puzzle which had been prematurely swept from the field of play.
Damon didn't imagine for a moment that whatever the VE tape had to show him would be any more reliable than the VE tapes of Silas Arnett's bogus confessions, but just for once he wanted to be a step ahead of all the people who were trying to push him around. Just for once, he wanted to be able to do things his his way-whatever his way turned out to be, when he'd had time to think and time to make a plan. way-whatever his way turned out to be, when he'd had time to think and time to make a plan.
Damon knew that he had to advise Madoc to turn himself in, but he had told Diana the truth when he said that he might have to go away, perhaps even to rebuild bridges linking him to his estranged family. Everything depended on what Madoc had found out about Silas's kidnappers and about what had really really happened to Surinder Nahal. happened to Surinder Nahal.
Twenty-four.
T.
he capstack in which Lenny Garon lived was not one of the more elegant applications of gantzing technology-as was only to be expected, given that it dated back to a time before PicoCon had acquired the Gantz patents and begun the synergistic combination of Leon Gantz's exclusively organic technology with their own inorganic nanotech. In those days, gantzers had looked for models in nature which their trained bacteria might be able to duplicate without too much macrotech assistance, and they had come up with the honeycomb: six-sided cells laid out in rows nested one on top of another.
The pattern had the strength to support tall structures-Lenny's stack was forty stories high-but the resultant buildings had zigzag edges that looked decidedly untidy. The individual apartments came out like long square tubes with triangular-sectioned spaces behind each sidewall, into which all the supportive apparatus of modern life had to be built. Bathrooms and kitchens tended to be consigned to this inconvenient residuum, so that the square section only needed one dividing wall separating living room and bedroom.
All this might have seemed charming, in a minimalist sort of way, had it not been for the fact that the entire edifice in which Lenny Garon lived had been gantzed out of pale gray concrete rubble and dark gray mud. Beside the more upmarket blocks that had been tastefully decorated in lustrous pigments borrowed from flowering plants or the wing cases of beetles, Lenny's building looked like a glorified termite mound.
"Thanks for coming, Damon," Lenny said, anxiously blinking his eyes as he checked the corridor while letting Damon into a capsule that was only slightly more squalid than the rest. "I really appreciate your giving me the benefit of your experience."
It took Damon a moment or two to realize that the boy was putting on a show for the eyes and ears that even walls as shabby as these must be expected to contain, in case anyone should ever consult them with a view to identifying accessories to a crime. He didn't bother to add his own line to the silly charade.
"Thanks, Lenny," Madoc said to the anxious streetfighter, once Damon was safely inside. "Now take a walk, will you. I'll pay you a couple of hundred in rent, but you'll have to forget you ever saw us, okay?"
Lenny was evidently disappointed by the abrupt dismissal, but he was appropriately impressed by the notion that he could sublet his apartment by the hour for real money. "Be my guest," he said-but he dawdled at the door before opening up again. "I hear you're an enemy of mankind now, Damon. Good going-anything I can do, you only have to ask."
"Thanks," Damon said. "I will."
As the door slid shut behind the boy Damon looked around the room, wondering why people still chose to live this way in a city full of empty spaces. While the greater part of Los Angeles slowly rotted down to dust-whole counties ripe for redevelopment by today's more expert gantzers-it was preference rather than economic necessity which kept its poorer people huddled together in neighborhoods full of high-rise blocks, living in narrow rooms with fold-down beds, kitchens the size of cupboards, and even smaller bathrooms.
Perhaps, Damon thought, people had grown so completely accustomed to crowding during the years before the Crash that their long-lived children had had the habit ingrained in their mental pathways during infancy, and there simply weren't enough children in Lenny Garon's generation to start a mass migration to fresher fields. That kind of explanation seemed, at any rate, to make more sense than oft-parroted cliches about buildings needing services and the proximity principles of supply and transport.
"I suppose you heard what happened?" Madoc said miserably.
"Yamanaka gave me the brute facts," Damon admitted. "I talked to Diana, but she had other things on her mind and it wouldn't have been a good idea to tell me anything the cops didn't already know. You found a VE pak-have you had a chance to play it through?"
"Sure. I took it all the way to the top-the Old Lady herself-so that we could play it through without anyone else looking in. It shows Silas Arnett being questioned by Surinder Nahal, giving answers very different from those he gave on the tape that was dumped on the Web. Do you want to see it? The Old Lady says it's just another fake, probably cooked up for Interpol's benefit."
"It doesn't show Nahal being killed?"
Madoc was infinitely more willing than Hiru Yamanaka to display his surprise. "No," he said, raising his eyebrows. "Why would it?"
"That's what Yamanaka's expecting. They found Silas dead and a tape that shows him being shot-as if it were an execution."
"Eliminators?" Madoc asked.
"That's what it looks like," Damon said with a sigh, "but we live in a very deceptive world. Unfortunately, the fact that it's only one more fake cooked up for his benefit won't make Yamanaka any less anxious to get his hands on the VE pak. Avoiding loss of face is just about the only thing left to him-he must know by now that the people behind this are out of reach. The police might think they're maintaining the law of the land, just as the Washington Rump still thinks it's in charge of making it, but the whole system is exhausted. When all appearances can be manufactured, the concept of evidence evidence loses its meaning." loses its meaning."
Madoc released the VE pak from where he'd loaded it into Lenny Garon's console and passed it over to Damon. "Do you know who's behind this?" he asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea," Damon admitted. "According to a dream I had when they snatched me away from Karol's friends, it's someone who claims to be speaking on behalf of the entire world order, but that might be megalomania or simple overstatement."
Madoc was so enthusiastic to say what he had to say that he didn't bother to query Damon's reference to a dream. "The Old Lady says that it's someone from PicoCon. Someone high up in the corp structure." He met Damon's eyes anxiously, looking for a reaction.
"That would make sense," Damon conceded. "It has to be someone with access to cutting-edge technology, and PicoCon is the edge beyond the edge. I'm sorry I got you into this, Madoc-I thought at first that it was just a petty thing. Nobody expects to go after an Eliminator Operator and run into the full might of PicoCon."
"The cops know that I didn't kill the guy whose body we found, don't they?" Madoc queried uneasily.
"Sure. Yamanaka knows that the corpse was torched several hours before you got there. His own surveillance team gave you a perfect alibi. If you say the cops spooked you-came in without a proper warning or whatever-you might excuse the blow with the crowbar as a reflexive response. The LAPD will want to pay off some of their grievances against you, but a decent lawyer ought to be able to persuade a judge to take a reasonable view of the matter."
"Who did kill him, do you think?" Madoc asked cautiously. "PicoCon?"
"I'm not sure that anybody did. I suspect that the orchestrator of this little pantomime is trying to establish that in today's world a body, an autopsy, and a DNA analysis don't add up to proof that someone is actually dead. The people behind this are convinced that Conrad Helier's alive, and they refuse to be told that he's not."
"Where did they get a body with Surinder Nahal's DNA?" Madoc wanted to know.
"Tissue-culture tanks that turn out steaks the size of a building could turn a half a liter of blood into a skeleton with a few vital organs and a covering of skin, without even needing rejuve technology to stretch the Hayflick limit. If Karol's body ever gets fished out of the Pacific, I suspect it'll be just as thoroughly beaten up and just as fake. None of which would prove anything about my father, who died in bed of natural causes-his cadaver would have gone to the medical examiner with every last anatomical detail in its proper place. As for Silas . . . well, it looks as if he really cadaver would have gone to the medical examiner with every last anatomical detail in its proper place. As for Silas . . . well, it looks as if he really might might be dead, but I don't know what to believe anymore. What else have you got for me?" be dead, but I don't know what to believe anymore. What else have you got for me?"
"Not much," Madoc admitted with an apologetic sigh. "The way the latest round of false testimony is being set in place, it looks looks as if this guy Nahal had some kind of grudge against your father and his cronies that he'd been nursing for a hundred years. It as if this guy Nahal had some kind of grudge against your father and his cronies that he'd been nursing for a hundred years. It looks looks as if Nahal had Arnett snatched, and that he put out the counterfeit Operator one-oh-one stuff himself-although the word is already out that the woman who built up the Operator one-oh-one name and reputation has turned herself in to prove that her name's been taken in vain. If you want stand-up proof that the as if Nahal had Arnett snatched, and that he put out the counterfeit Operator one-oh-one stuff himself-although the word is already out that the woman who built up the Operator one-oh-one name and reputation has turned herself in to prove that her name's been taken in vain. If you want stand-up proof that the real real movers and shakers are PicoCon people, I don't have any-and I don't think you or I could ever come up with any. Do you think movers and shakers are PicoCon people, I don't have any-and I don't think you or I could ever come up with any. Do you think they they killed Arnett so he couldn't retract his confessions?" killed Arnett so he couldn't retract his confessions?"
Damon shrugged. "I haven't been idling around while you've been battling it out with the LAPD," he said. "I got kidnapped twice-once by Karol's hirelings and once by some people who didn't want Karol's hirelings to put me away. The second crowd introduced me to the VE to end all VEs-a manufactured dream, of the kind the industry's been trying to develop for a century and more. It might have been a trick, and I suppose it might might have been a real dream-but if it wasn't the spokesman for the movers and shakers gave me a message to pass on to my dead father. Then they stuck me in a derelict house with Lenny's friend Cathy to wait for the bloodhounds." After a slight pause he went on: "The Old Lady has to be right. No one but PicoCon could have access to VE tech that far ahead of the market-although the guy I talked to, whose image was all tricked out like some chrome-plated holovid robot, spun me some line about products not being made for the market anymore." have been a real dream-but if it wasn't the spokesman for the movers and shakers gave me a message to pass on to my dead father. Then they stuck me in a derelict house with Lenny's friend Cathy to wait for the bloodhounds." After a slight pause he went on: "The Old Lady has to be right. No one but PicoCon could have access to VE tech that far ahead of the market-although the guy I talked to, whose image was all tricked out like some chrome-plated holovid robot, spun me some line about products not being made for the market anymore."
"Lenny told me about Cathy," Madoc said. "Was she in on Arnett's kidnap?"
"I don't think so-although they probably planted the centipedes that disabled Silas's defenses in her luggage when they found out he'd invited her to stay. Her abduction was just a red herring. Whoever's doing this-and I mean the individual in charge of the operation, not the corp-believes in having his fun while he works."
"What was the message to your father?" Madoc asked curiously but tentatively. He obviously half expected to be told that it wasn't his business.
Damon didn't see any need to keep that particular secret. "Stop playing God," he said bluntly. When Madoc raised his eyebrows, expecting further elaboration, he added: "Apparently, everybody who's anybody wants to play God nowadays, and the big big gods way up on Olympus are trying to figure out a set of protocols that will allow them all to play together. They want everybody to abide by the rules. If the story I was told can be taken seriously, this thing got started because my foster parents turned churlish when they were invited to join the club. So did the people at Ahasuerus. The alleged purpose of this little game is simply to force them to play ball, but the fact that it's being formulated as a game certainly doesn't mean that it's harmless. You know what they say: gods way up on Olympus are trying to figure out a set of protocols that will allow them all to play together. They want everybody to abide by the rules. If the story I was told can be taken seriously, this thing got started because my foster parents turned churlish when they were invited to join the club. So did the people at Ahasuerus. The alleged purpose of this little game is simply to force them to play ball, but the fact that it's being formulated as a game certainly doesn't mean that it's harmless. You know what they say: 'As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport 'As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.'"