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about gone.
Fortunately she was coming down off the mountain now, and was no longer in danger of sluing off the
road and rolling down the slope. She picked up speed.
The road was headed into the city. Not Jounieh; she had headed out away from that, going south. So she
must be coming to Beirut, where the real action was. She saw the thickening houses and buildings ahead.
Was that good or bad for her? She hadn't had a chance to review the situation of this setting. She knew
that there were several factions, each of which controlled its section of Beirut and fought the others.
Where did the Maronite section end? Did it matter?
Now there was other traffic. But the other cars didn't try to interfere with her. That meant they were game
constructs, there just to make it look normal. But it also meant she could be caught in a traffic jam. That
could be the end of her, because the Maronites would just fire into her car until they killed her.
Unless there was a way she could use the game constructs as interference. If she got them between her
and the pursuit, maybe she could leave the Maronites in the traffic jam and get away.
She tried it. She reminded herself firmly that this was a game setting, and not real life. Anybody she
killed here didn't really die. She wouldn't really die if she crashed. She could afford to be really wild.
She veered out of her lane, passing the car ahead. There was too small a gap in the opposing traffic, but
she pushed her luck and squeezed in without having a head-on collision. It definitely helped her, knowing
it wasn't real. It gave her much increased nerve. After all, she was supposed to be strong on luck and
intelligence, so now she was giving her luck the chance to help her.
The Maronite car tried to follow her, and couldn't; the gap had closed. But she knew it would catch up
soon, if she didn't keep squeezing past other cars.
She spied another chancy opening, and took it. Again her luck held, and she squeaked through. Her heart
was racing, and she knew that wasn't any game manifestation; she was at a high fever, bodywise, because
part of her really was scared by these daredevil gambles. It was like riding the roller coaster: she knew it
was ultimately safe, but it was crafted to seem unsafe, and so it was manageably scary.
But the traffic was getting thicker ahead. Soon she would be locked into the channeled flow, with no
chance to squeeze out. That was no good. She had to keep her options open, or they would close in on her
and kill her. Already that flow was slowing, and she had to struggle with clutch and shift to return to the
middle gear. As she did so, she wondered whether the setting was realistic in this respect. In most cities
traffic got congested, but this was a city at chronic war with itself; there shouldn't be routine traffic,
should there? There weren't exactly white-collar jobs waiting downtown. Maybe a regular city had been
used as the template, and some programmer had forgotten to delete the thick traffic.
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However, this was the scene with which she had to deal. So she would deal with it.
She abruptly took a right turn onto an intersecting road that headed back out toward the country. There
was little traffic here, so she was able to move at full speed.
It took the pursuing car a while to reach the intersection, so Baal got a good lead. But that would do her
no good if she didn't exploit it to lose the Maronites.
She tried. She took a left turn, hoping the other car wouldn't see which one and would cruise on past.
There was a settlement here, with several streets. These were fairly clean, without cars. This must have
been a subdivision, deserted when the trouble started. She turned left again, before the Maronites caught
up to the first turn. Then she saw an open garage, and on impulse swerved onto that drive and pulled into
it. She could hide until they gave up and went home!
She braked hard to stop and the engine jerked and stalled. Oh, that nonautomatic drive again! She
should have shifted to neutral. Well, she could start it once more, when she needed to.
Meanwhile, she might be better off outside the car. At least she could stretch her legs, for whatever good
that might do her, considering that in real life she couldn't move out of her boots and gloves.
She detached the seat belt, opened the door, and got out. She looked at the side of the car and saw what
looked like a bullet hole in the side. They had fired at her, and scored, but not in a vital part, so she had
not been stalled or blown up. But it had been a closer call than she had thought at the time.
She tried the door into the house. It opened, and she entered. No one seemed to be here. Even in Beirut,
folk had to earn their living, and they couldn't simply stay home and relax. This was of course merely a
game-construct family anyway, which was why she felt safe exploring; even if any of them had been
home, they wouldn't have reacted to her. They were like the paintings and cardboard figures at the
beginning and end of a setting's activity. Even when they seemed three-dimensional, they weren't. And
this ordinary, undamaged suburban residence was probably another careless leftover from the template.
The game programmers just hadn't expected anyone to turn randomly off the highway and randomly hide
in a house. That would probably change as they got more experience in esoteric settings.
She decided that she had used enough time. The Maronites must have thoroughly lost her by now. She
could emerge and go her way. Where was that? On into Beirut, the center of town, where maybe
somebody was hiding the American hostage.
How was she ever going to find that hostage, since the folk who were supposed to give her directions had
turned out to be her enemies? That left her pretty much blank. She couldn't just walk into a library and
look it up!
Or could she? Who was to say she couldn't research for information she needed? There could be devious
devices in the settings, as she had discovered as the Princess. Such as that magic talking mirror that
wanted to see her perform the act of sex. Some programmer must have gotten his jollies programming
that lascivious prop. But it seemed to have helped Walter, and therefore her. So why not a library here,
with exactly what she needed? Her character was smart, so could think of something like that, and the
game would probably honor it.
So where was she to find a library? She needed a street map of the city, with public buildings identified.
A tourist guide! And maybe she knew where to look for that.
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She cast about for a telephone. But here her luck petered out; there was none. Therefore no phone book.
But maybe there was a phone booth in the neighborhood. That would do as well. Because the phone book
should list a tourist station or a library, and have enough of a map to enable her to find it.
She returned to the garage and the car. She peered out to see whether the Maronite car was anywhere
close. It wasn't. She got in, set her seat belt, and turned the key.
The car lurched forward, crashing into the wall of the garage. Damn it! She had forgotten its archaic
gearing again. This might be just a garage emulation, but she didn't like messing it up. She used the
clutch and shifted into what she trusted was the central neutral gear, then tried again. This time the motor
started without trouble.
Now she had to find reverse. Where could it be? She tried every direction the stick would go, but all
speeds were forward. Where had they hidden it?
Frustrated, she stared at the knob on the stick. Now she saw that there was a design on it, with numbers.
That was the pattern of the gears! And there to the side was "R" for reverse.
But when she tried it, it didn't go. There was no path where the diagram indicated. Had they left reverse [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]