Philip Kerr - Gridiron

'It's my key-chain,' he explained. 'Here, Mitch, you take it. Maybe if Ray were to walk towards it, y'know? Like a beacon.'

Mitch took hold of the keys and squeezed the miniature flashlight in front of his face. He leaned across the handrail and pointed the tiny beam of light at the marooned man.

'Ray? The light is positioned at the centre of the upturned table top. The edge is about three feet from you.'

'Yeah. I can just about see it. I think.'

'As soon as you feel the branch start to bend underneath you step out and up by as much as you can. And keep ahold of the rope like before. Can you do that, Ray?'

'OK,' he said weakly. 'I'm coming.'

Mitch was only just able to distinguish the architect as he started to inch his way along the branch. He looked like an astronaut embarked upon a walk in space, and the tiny electric bulb like the most distant star in the inky black universe. Then he heard the thick leaves of the dicotyledon start to rustle. Realizing that the branch was starting to bend, he shouted to Richardson to jump.

Holding the upturned table legs, Curtis and Arnon braced themselves, while Helen made the sign of the cross upon her chest.

Ray Richardson jumped.

His first foot landed cleanly enough, but the second slipped on the woodwork of the table's box-like underside. As he started to fall forwards Richardson cried out and found a chorus in his wife's louder scream. But instead of being scooped up by the pit of darkness beneath him, he hit the table on his hands and knees, his head banging against the glass of the balcony like an approaching rumble of thunder.

'He's on,' said Mitch.

'You're telling me,' grunted Arnon as he felt the impact of the man's deadweight.

Ignoring the crucifying pain of a splinter that had lodged in the palm of his hand like a nail, Richardson pushed himself up off the table, reached for the handrail and found Mitch stretched out to grasp his wrist firmly.

'I've got him,' said Mitch and heard a sharp crack below his chest, like the sound of an ice-floe breaking.

'Look out,' yelled Curtis.

The glass had finally shattered.

'I've got him,' Mitch repeated loudly.

Without the glass to restrain the weight, the kitchen table started to pivot on the fulcrum that was made by the edge of the balcony floor. Curtis yelled at Arnon to let go and was trying to lean back when the table edge caught him a glancing blow under the chin, knocking him senseless. Helen Hussey threw herself on top of him.

Mitch gasped as he felt the table start to slip away beneath him. With his knees no longer rigid against the glass but rising into thin air, towards a chest that was pressed painfully down on top of the smooth, brushed aluminium handrail, he reached and grabbed Richardson by his other wrist and somehow held on to him. Even if he had wanted to grab David Arnon by the collar he could not have done so. There was no time for anything except perhaps another photochemical reaction as, seventy feet above their heads, the silver atoms on the clerestory roof returned their borrowed electrons to the copper ions and, in the blink of an eye, started to re-admit light to the Gridiron building. The first and last glimpse Mitch had of Arnon's elongated figure, still holding the leg of the upturned table, was as he disappeared through the balcony's now empty railing like Houdini going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

'Don't let go, Mitch,' yelled Richardson. He kicked his legs up at the empty space where the glass panel had been just a few- seconds before and, with the help of Mitch and Joan, scrambled up to safety.

A shower of glass tinkled distantly, followed, a split second later, by an enormous crash as the table impacted on the atrium floor.

Almost pulled over the top of the buckling handrail by Richardson's desperate bid to get up, Mitch pushed himself back and collapsed on top of Curtis and Helen, knocking the wind out of her body. Rolling away, he lay on his back awhile and tried to divorce his mind from what had just happened.

He thought about Alison. He might no longer love her, but she was still his wife and Mitch felt glad that at least she would be well provided for. There were no debts to speak of. The house was paid off. He had around ten thousand dollars in his checking account, a couple of hundred thousand on deposit and another hundred thousand dollars in mutual funds. Then there was the life insurance. He thought he had maybe three or four policies.

He wondered how soon she would be able to make a claim.

'How do you feel? asked Helen. 'That was some uppercut.'

Curtis shifted his jaw uncomfortably. His head was on her lap. It seemed like the best place to be. She was a good-looking woman. He was about to say 'I'll live', and then thought better of it. That was not looking like such a good bet.

'I was lucky. For once I had my mouth shut.' He sat up and rolled his head around painfully. 'Feels like I got a bit of whiplash, though. How long was I out?'

Helen shrugged. 'A minute or two.'

She helped him on to his feet and he surveyed the gap in the balcony railing.

'Arnon?'

Helen shook her head.

'Poor David,' said Joan. 'It was horrible.'

'Yeah, poor guy,' echoed her husband. He finished tying a handkerchief around the bloody gash in his hand and peered cautiously over the edge of the handrail. 'He's out of it now, I guess,' he sighed.

'Come on, Joan. Let's get that drink. I think we've earned it.'

Catching Curtis's watery eye he nodded sombrely, and added, 'Thanks, Sergeant. Thanks a lot. I appreciate what you did. We both do.'

'Forget it,' said Curtis. 'I could use a drink myself.'

They walked back to the kitchen and took some beers from the refrigerator before going into the boardroom.

Mitch and Marty Birnbaum were staring at the floor grimly. Willis Ellery was lying close to the wall. He looked as if he was asleep. Jenny was staring out of the window. And Beech was facing the skull-shaped fractal across a three-dimensional chessboard on the screen of the computer terminal.

'I like that,' grumbled Richardson. 'David Arnon sacrifices his life trying to help Joan and me and Beech is playing games? Hey, Bob, what kind of an asshole are you?'

Beech turned away from the screen looking triumphant.

'As a matter of fact, I just found out why Ishmael is doing all this,' he explained. 'Why he's killing us.'

'I thought we already knew that,' said Curtis. 'You killed his little brother Isaac.'

'I ought to have known better than to anthropomorphize like that,' said Beech. 'My fault. Ishmael has no subjective feelings at all. Revenge is a human motive.'

'Well, he's giving a pretty good simulation of it,' observed Curtis.

'No, you don't understand. A computer isn't just an enlarged human brain. We can attribute human qualities to Ishmael, we can even imagine something as fanciful as a ghost in the machine, but of course all we're doing is referring to the various aspects of his behaviour that are humanlike, which is not the same thing as human at all. Big mistake, y'know?'

'Bob,' said Richardson, wincing, 'get to the point. If there is a point.'

'Oh, you bet there's a point.' Beech's enthusiasm for his discovery was undiminished by Arnon's death or by Richardson's obvious impatience.

'It's this. When we ran the predator program to get rid of Isaac, Aidan's son was there playing computer games on CD-ROM. You know the kind of thing — splatter games, dungeons and dragons. Aid gave them to him for his birthday.'

'Don't tell me that fat idiot had something to do with this after all,' groaned Richardson.

'Let me finish. When Isaac disappeared from the Yu-5's memory, Ishmael almost went too. It's a little hard to explain exactly what happened. But imagine that he grabbed on to something, a ledge, a tuft of grass, a rope, to survive. And that something was the kid's computer games. Somehow the game commands got scrambled up with Ishmael's root auto exec commands. Building management systems have become mixed with game commands. That's why he's been trying to kill us all.'

Curtis frowned painfully. 'You mean Ishmael thinks this is a game ?'

'Exactly. We use up all our lives, and he wins. It's as simple as that.'

There was a long silence.

'In case anyone didn't know it,' said Curtis, 'our side is losing.'

'But what's in it for us?' Joan said. 'I've played those games. There's always something the fantasy character, the player, has to win, or to achieve. Like discovering buried treasure.'

Beech shrugged. 'If there is, I haven't been able to find that out yet.'

'Maybe the treasure is that we get to stay alive,' said Jenny. 'Right now, that's the most precious treasure I can think of.'

'Me too,' said Helen.

Richardson was still cursing Kenny. 'That fat fuck. I hope he's alive so I can fire his ass. Then I'm going to sue him for negligence. If he's dead, I'll sue his wife and kid.'

'If this is a game,' said Curtis, 'isn't there some way we can stop playing?'

'You can die,' Beech said bluntly.

'Bob,' said Joan, 'can't you explain to Ishmael there's been some kind of mistake? Get it to halt the game?'

'I've already tried. Unfortunately the game program is now included in Ishmael's basic programming. To halt the game he'd effectively have to halt himself.'

'Halt as in destroy?'

Beech nodded.

'Well, that sounds like a good idea.'

'All Ishmael can do is transform inputs of one sort into outputs of another sort. The trouble is that according to the corrupted form of the program that defines Ishmael, we are the inputs. So long as we are here, the game goes on. It finishes only when we escape from here, or when we're dead. And then only until the next lot of people find themselves in our shoes.

'But it might just be possible to try and understand the rules. If there are any rules. Maybe that way we can out-manoeuvre him.'

Curtis grinned and clapped Beech on the shoulder. 'A game, huh?' he said. 'Well, that's a fucking relief. At least now I know that none of this is real.'

He looked at his watch. 'What do you call it, Mitch, when you people go away on seminars and conferences? What do you call the groups you get split up into?'

'Syndicates?'

'Syndicates. OK, people, we're going to have two syndicates. You've all got one hour and then I want to hear some fuckin' ideas.'

Birnbaum looked wearily at Richardson and murmured, 'Where do cops do their training these days? Harvard Business School? Jesus, this guy thinks he's Lee Iacocca.'

'Syndicate 1 — that's Ray, Joan, Marty. Syndicate 2 — that'll be Mitch, Helen, and Jenny.'

'Who gets to have you, Sergeant?' asked Richardson.

'Me? I get to pick the winning team. First prize, a new computer.'

'And Beech? What about Beech? Who gets him?'

Curtis shook his head. 'Stupid question. Beech gets to play computer games, of course.'

'Disturbing the Cyberdemon is a risky business,' said Ishmael. 'So awesome is his power that movements of the earth are a likely consequence of incurring his wrath. If this happens you must leap the chasm to another castle.'

One thing was soon clear. There was no point in trying to find a method behind the mixture of games that were now included in

Ishmael's basic programs. Beyond the obvious aim that the Human Players should lose their lives, there was no general definition that linked the various rules that he had been able to note down. Some spoke of a shipwreck. Others of an underground citadel. One had referred to a battlefield. Another to the scene of a crime. The characters had included a Parallel Demon, a Princess, a Cyberdemon, the Caliph, the Lord of Power, the Second Samurai, the Megalomaniac, the Sheriff of