Orson lurked in the hall until he saw Olivia and Rose separate after lunch. Then he rushed after Rose, trying not to look as if he was trying to catch her, stumbling over his own feet as he blurted out her name.
‘I need to tell you something – about what happened last night. I’m calling a meeting in Illyria, tonight, for everyone concerned. I’ve been in touch with the computer clubs at all the participating schools around the state, and posted a notice on the bulletin boards, but I thought I’d better try word of mouth as well, to get as many people as possible … I know it’s short notice, but I don’t think we can afford to wait. Have you been in touch with your brother?’
Rose looked at him blankly.
‘I’ll talk to him, of course,’ he went on, ‘but I think Roberto had probably better stay away from the meeting. I mean, since we might have to talk about unauthorised access and how to deal with it … I’m sure he’ll understand.’
‘Oh, of course, Roberto . . . no, he won’t be attending the meeting. In fact, I don’t think you’ll see Roberto again. Now that he’s dead, he’s staying that way.’
That Roberto would have made such a decision didn’t surprise Orson; although, he thought, it was ironic that an innocent outsider should be excluded when the silver metal man was actually a student with every right to visit Illyria. Why, he wondered, had Olivia bothered to use Farren’s ID number instead of her own? Was it to divert suspicion? How could someone appear to be so good and really be so calculating and aggressive?
‘So you have heard from your brother! He probably expected me to get in touch – I wanted to – but … there was something else I had to do.’ Orson was tempted to confide in Rose with her warmly sympathetic eyes, but there wasn’t time now. ‘Look, could I talk to you after school? We could go get something to eat or something, and then I’ll take you home.’ The smile that spread across her face made him glad he’d asked.
‘Yes, sure, I’d like that. I’ll just have to phone home …’
‘Great! There’s so much I’ve got to tell you … I’ll meet you at the side door, near the pay-phone, OK? If I don’t run, I’m going to be late. See ya!’
Orson looked forward to his meeting with Rose. He almost felt like he did when anticipating his meetings with Roberto, but it was different.
He saw Rose and Olivia huddled together, heads close, before French class, and felt something twist in his stomach. It wasn’t going to be easy to tell Rose that her best friend had an evil alter ego on the Net, but he had to do it. Maybe she wouldn’t be as horrified as he was; after all, it was only a game.
The last hour of the day seemed to last three times as long as usual, but finally the bell rang, and Orson dashed off. His heart lifted when he saw Rose waiting for him by the door, but sank again as he saw Olivia was with her.
‘Hey, Orson. Rose says you’re planning a meeting in Illyria to discuss what happened last night,’ Olivia said.
He couldn’t believe her nerve. He stared at her, not bothering to look friendly. ‘Oh, you know about that, do you? I guess Rose told you.’ He couldn’t help casting a reproachful look at Rose, although he knew he had only himself to blame for not warning her.
‘Rose didn’t have to tell me. I was there.’ Olivia spoke impatiently, without her usual dripping-honey tones. ‘In case you don’t recognize me without the razor-sharp nails and leathers, I’m the CyberQueen.’ She smiled at his surprise. ‘That’s right, Count Orsini, I’m that irritating female. I’m sorry to butt in on your little tête-à-tête with Rose this afternoon, but it’s important. There are things we need to talk about which we can’t say on the Net in case he’s listening. I’m the one the silver metal man is after. Somehow, he’s got hold of my personal unlisted telephone number which he’s using to pay his bills. Daddy’s informed the police, but I think we’ve got a better chance of catching the creep than they do.’ She looked around, then moved impatiently towards the door. ‘Come on, where do y’all want to go? We’ll take my car.’
*
The virtual meeting was held in the marketplace, by tradition a free zone, open to all, where personal feuds would be temporarily suspended. Because the incident had involved people from his school, Orson had been agreed by the Illyrian Council – that is, the officers of the computer clubs at the participating high schools – to be the obvious choice to chair the meeting. He asked them all to sign in as they arrived, and then he scanned down the list of characters, wondering if any of the names might be aka silver metal man.
Olivia thought silver metal man was someone from their school, if not a current student, someone who had dropped out or graduated in the past year. ‘I created the CyberQueen last year, and I did some sketches and wrote a description of her one day in study hall. I was using some pages in my loose-leaf binder, and I lost them. They must have dropped out at school, and somebody picked them up. That somebody was silver metal man. I don’t know how he got my phone number, but it wasn’t through tracing CyberQueen, because my father’s office pays my Internet account. My unlisted number doesn’t figure into it at all.’ She had looked thoughtful. ‘The other reason I think it’s someone from school is that I almost recognized his voice …’
Orson had then confessed his wee hours phone call. He’d been embarrassed, but Olivia seemed grateful. ‘Maybe he just used it because it came to hand, somehow, like Farren Wiles’ ID number. I mean, somebody must have given it to him, probably on the Internet, and that must be somebody we know, maybe somebody we’re at school with – but it doesn’t have to mean anything very much. It’s probably not personal.’
Orson didn’t tell her, because he didn’t want to worry her, but he suspected it was personal, and very far from coincidence. Whoever the silver metal man was, he was willing to bet they all knew him and that there was a real life grudge being worked out in cyberspace.
Orson finished reading the role of attending players – thirty-two in all, which had to be considerably less than a third of all Illyrians – and checked the atmosphere for the presence of ghosts.
It was a beautiful, warm day with hardly a cloud in the sky. The sun was high and not overly hot, so that no one standing in the marketplace felt uncomfortable. There were no cold breezes, therefore no invisible watchers. If the enemy was here, he was among them, one of themselves.
Count Orsini motioned to his page-boy – one of the bots he’d created at Roberto’s suggestion – to sound a blast on his horn to call the murmuring, restless crowd to attention. Briefly, he welcomed them all, apologizing for the short notice.
‘As some of you will have already heard – and I hope you’ll pass on the information to others who were unable to be here today – there was an unfortunate incident at my castle last night. Someone calling himself the silver metal man created a voodoo doll to gain control over all of us there, and used it to murder my friend Roberto and abduct the CyberQueen while Serenthia and I could only watch helplessly. Conducting my investigations later, I found that there had been unwarranted use of a student’s ID number to gain access. Naturally, I had to report this to the principal’s office, and the result is that security will be tightened and the access code changed to keep out unauthorized visitors, at least, for a little while.’
‘Oh, yeah, we all know how well those high security codes work,’ sneered Grey Hawk. ‘I’m betting the codes will be up for grabs on half a dozen bulletin boards around the Worldwide Web within two hours of being announced.’
‘Maybe this is just going through the motions,’ Count Orsini replied evenly, ‘but we have to do it. I’d like to ask for everyone’s help in keeping Illyria secure. If we can’t do it for ourselves, you know, we may lose it entirely. There’ll be a scare, and parents will start calling for Illyria to be shut down rather than risk their little darlings being infiltrated and corrupted by nasty grown-up hackers.’
‘What if this silver metal man isn’t an outsider?’ demanded Violetta, a tall, gorgeous redhead with a full figure encased in a gold lamé evening dress. ‘What if he – or she – is one of us?’
‘I’ve considered that,’ said Count Orsini. ‘Serenthia, the CyberQueen and I think it is very likely that the silver metal man is known to us, and goes to our school.’
‘So new access codes aren’t going to keep him out,’ said Medusa, winding and unwinding the hissing green snakes on her head.
‘No, they’re not,’ said Orsini. ‘He’s probably among us now, and has every right to be. He could contribute a lot to Illyria – the skills he displayed in making a voodoo doll prove that. Maybe he did it to impress us. Well, why shouldn’t he stand up now and take a bow? After all, he hasn’t committed a crime. We can’t kick him out. There’s nothing we can do to him.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ snarled the CyberQueen. She flexed her hands, and the razor-edged nails clicked smoothly into place, gleaming with a deadly promise. ‘If I find out who he is, I’ll eviscerate him.’
‘Now you’ve scared him,’ said Count Orsini. He looked around at the gathered crowd and said coaxingly, ‘Why not accept her challenge? Are you a coward? Surely voodoo isn’t your only defence? Why not tell us who you are? Why not get the credit for what you’ve done? After all, there may be plenty of people here who think that what you did wasn’t so wrong, or even serious. Isn’t this life just a game? Sure, Roberto and the CyberQueen aren’t very happy with you, but—’
‘Thank you, Mr Understatement,’ snarled the CyberQueen and, snatching a mug of foaming beer from a passing vendor, she poured it over Count Orsini’s head. ‘That’s me when I’m not very happy. Me furious is something you don’t want to experience, I assure you.’
Serenthia handed Count Orsini a towel she conveniently had hidden about her person. He wiped his head and licked a few trickles of beer out of his moustache. ‘Could we please keep this discussion on a civilized level? I’ve called you all here today to discuss rules and limits. Do we need them? What should they be? A good starting point would be someone to speak in defence of voodoo.’
‘Sure. And if anyone comes up with an argument in favour of voodoo, Count Sherlock Orsini will conclude that he – or she – is the bad guy.’ The speaker was Albertus, a large, grey-haired man in a magician’s star-speckled robe and conical hat. ‘I could construct an argument, but why should I take the risk of becoming an object of hatred?’
‘Is that what would happen?’ asked Count Orsini. ‘Does everyone here feel that voodoo should not be allowed?’
‘There’s no point talking about “allowing” it if it can’t be stopped,’ objected Blue Dwarf.
‘Maybe, maybe not. I think the first step is to find out what we all feel about it.’
‘What’s the big deal?’ demanded Medusa. ‘I’m a magic user. I’ve killed people with sorcery before now, and I will again. And, one of these days, one of you little fleshy mortals will probably kill me. I accept the risks. That’s the kind of serpent-head I am.’ She hissed, showing fangs that dripped poison.
‘There’s a difference between killing a character and taking it over,’ said Serenthia before Orsini could reply. ‘You can kill somebody because that’s part of the game. They have a chance to defend themselves. If you kill them, they may decide not to stay dead. But if you take control of somebody else’s character and make them act out of character, that’s … well, I don’t know what to call it, but it’s worse than cheating. I don’t like it. I’m utterly opposed to voodoo.’
‘I don’t think you can realize just how awful voodoo is until it happens to you,’ said the CyberQueen. ‘To sit there, helplessly watching, as somebody else puts words in your mouth, makes you do things you know you’d never do … A voodoo doll makes you helpless. You can’t fight it; you can’t fight back. It’s a coward’s weapon. A control freak’s. Only somebody who had no belief in their own intelligence, strength or wit would use voodoo. OK, maybe somebody would do it once, because they saw it as a challenge, and wanted to show off, but once is enough, more than enough. Nobody would want to do it twice if they knew what it felt like to have your own character taken away from you, if they knew what it meant to be violated like that. Sure, Illyria’s a game where anything goes. Or almost anything goes. But it’s also like real life because it’s not a game you play by yourself. The main thing about Illyria is the people you meet here and what happens between you – the friends or the enemies you make. If you have to turn everybody else into your puppet in order to function, then you don’t belong in Illyria. You should just stay home and play solitaire. Get your jollies out of killing the monsters in some adventure game, but don’t come here and treat us like we’re nothing but bots you created yourself.’
‘Right on, sister,’ purred Violetta.
‘Amen,’ said Johnny Bee Goode, combing back his pompadour with near-religious fervour.
Albertus raised his gnarled and twisted oaken staff into the air above his head. There was a crackling sound, and then the flaming red image of a voodoo doll in a slashed red circle appeared high in the sky. Beneath it, the fluttering, smoky words: JUST SAY NO.
Desperado, Flash, Grey Hawk and Lady Purple began to cheer and shout, ‘No more voodoo! No more voodoo!’ It became a chant which was taken up, one by one, by every single one of the attending citizens of Illyria.
OK, thought Orson, it’s only thirty-two . . . but it’s still unanimous. And he wondered if the silver metal man, discovering that Farren’s old ID number would no longer permit him access, had missed this inspiring moment – or if he was instead among them, pretending to be just another law-abiding citizen.
‘We don’t want voodoo in Illyria,’ said Medusa. ‘We kill each other in a fair fight, whether by magic, physical strength or trickery, but we don’t steal each other’s souls.’
‘Is this your soul, Medusa?’ asked Troll-Slayer, holding up his shield. It had been polished to mirror-brightness, and reflected the snaky head vividly. Medusa stared with her red eyes into the reflection without flinching. She hissed, and her breath caused the silver surface to fog, and then rapidly to lose its shine. The metal began to rust and corrode at speed under the impact of her poisonous breath.
‘Hey, no fair!’ complained Troll-Slayer.
‘Read my character specs if you want to try to kill me,’ snarled Medusa. ‘I ain’t afraid of no mirrors!’
Troll-Slayer raised his sword, and Count Orsini stepped forward with upraised, open hands. ‘Please, no fighting here! Remember, the marketplace is where all feuds are suspended, a permanent zone of peace.’
Troll-Slayer put down his sword, grumbling loudly. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I’m sending old snake-head the bill for getting my shield re-silvered.’
Count Orsini raised his voice to be heard over the hubbub. ‘I’d like to call for a second vote. Now that we know we’re all agreed that we don’t want voodoo, I suggest we should register our identities.’
‘What for?’ demanded Blue Dwarf and Troll-Slayer.
‘Because how do we know that silver metal man isn’t here right now, hiding behind another persona? He could be laughing at us and just waiting for the chance to strike again. He could slip from identity to identity as often as he likes, and we’d never be able to ban him, or even catch him, unless we know who we all are.’
‘I guess that’s right,’ said Lady Purple. ‘I have three identities myself, although only two of us are here today. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? I could still have as many characters as I wanted, as long as I registered them, right?’
‘Right,’ agreed Count Orsini as Orson mentally knocked off another vote in his head. Whatever they decided here tonight wouldn’t be a majority; they’d have to do this all again, try to round up more Illyrians the next time …
‘No, it’s not right,’ objected Troy, an incredibly good-looking hunk in a black leather jacket who went everywhere on a motorcycle. ‘Maybe Lady Purple doesn’t mind if you know what her name and school are, and obviously you don’t Orsini, but some of us like to disguise ourselves. Although, no matter what I call myself, I can’t disguise my attractiveness – as those lucky girls who’ve met me IRL know! But I’ll name no names … Not for me to kiss and tell …’
‘You wish,’ muttered the bear.
Vail – an ethereal being of indeterminate gender – spoke up. ‘Registration is a good idea. Nobody here has anything to hide. If they do, then there’s something suspicious about them.’
‘I object,’ said Medusa, scowling ferociously. ‘Just because I won’t give you my e-mail address … you’ve been trying to find out who I am for weeks, and I don’t see why you should get my RL identity handed to you on a plate. Yes, we do go to the same school; I’ve told you that much. And I’ve figured out who you are. If you’re really that interested in me, try talking to people IRL instead of just on the Net, fat boy.’
‘Ouch,’ murmured Vail, looking even more ethereal. ‘Rumours of my excess avoir dupois – not to mention my gender-orientation – have almost certainly been exaggerated.’
‘I object too,’ said the CyberQueen. ‘Some people here now know my RL identity, but that doesn’t mean I want it to be public knowledge.’
‘And me,’ said Albertus. ‘The point of Illyria and other places like it is that it enables us to be whoever we want to be. It enables us to build our own reality, and our own identities without the restrictions other people, or cruel fate, may try to lay on us. We can do things here that would be impossible in the outside world. Why should we voluntarily limit ourselves to one identity when we don’t have to?’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Count Orsini. ‘Registration isn’t some evil spell. It’ll just be on file, not always flashing on the screen. You can still be whoever you want to be, and in as many different personas as you like.’
‘Once we’re registered the knowledge is available to anyone who wants to look. And people will look whenever they get curious. And once they know the truth – tell me, Orson, would your response to Troy be the same if you knew he was really a girl?’
‘I’ll kill you for that, wizard,’ grated Troy, revving his motorbike and flexing his bulging muscles at the same time. ‘How dare you call me a girl? You’re the one who’s a big girl.’
‘You’d feel differently about Medusa, about me, about your poor dead friend Roberto – you wouldn’t see us the way we want to be seen, you couldn’t, if you always had our RL names and our RL faces at the back of your mind. Registration would be just like an evil spell to take our powers of self-creation away from us. If you’re honest you’ll have to admit it, Count Orsini.’
Orson felt the truth of what Albertus said. Already his attitude towards the CyberQueen was different than it had been. When she’d dumped that beer over his head, instead of just being annoyed at her dramatics, he’d wondered what Olivia was trying to tell him: did she really find him as irritating as the CyberQueen seemed to, or was it just a joke, maybe even a gesture of affection? And he had to admit, at least to himself, that knowing she was the CyberQueen had changed his perception of Olivia.
While he was musing, several others put in their two cents’ worth, and it soon became clear that there was a lot of feeling against registration. Orson decided there was no point in putting it to the vote. It was unenforceable, anyway. A hacker like the silver metal man certainly wouldn’t be bound by it, and he might find a registration list a gold mine for his own private use.
Count Orsini finally brought the debate to a close. There would be no registration. For the time being, at least, life in Illyria would continue as before.