“That’s well and fine, but I want to talk—”
“You can talk while I’m showing you around,” he said, gently pushing me out of the cabin to the main deck. “I’ve arranged for transportation. I think you’re going to like it. Hoy, Holder! Can I have a couple of minutes, mate?”
Holder gave me a knowing grin as he strolled past. I ignored him, walking over to stand at the railing next to Bas. A half hour ago, as I was just stepping into the tub, the ship had ported on Mongoose Isle, a bustling island about three times the size of Turtle’s Back.
Mongoose had a proper wharf, not just a rickety wooden dock like Turtle’s Back. Warehouses lined the long stretch of docks, with probably a good two dozen ships docked of varying sizes and types. The larger ships, like Corbin’s barque, the big, three-masted square riggers, and largest of all, the ship-of-the-line frigates, were too big to dock and were anchored in the deeper water of the large harbor. As Bas and I watched, two of Corbin’s crew clambered down a rope ladder to one of two rowboats that were bobbing up and down next to the barque.
“Big island, huh?” I asked Bas as I looked at the town that glistened a rainbow of colors in the bright midday sun. The town itself was much larger than ours, probably taking up five times the space, located on a long spit of land that jabbed out into the gorgeous turquoise water. Even at a distance I could see the busy activity around the wharf, with ships arriving and leaving with regularity. Tree-lined avenues snaked around the town up to low hills blanketed in sugarcane fields. At the tip of the spit, built into the solid rock promontory, a large stone fortress watched over the town with a quiet assurance that no doubt brought much comfort to the residents of the town. Cannons bristled from the high stone walls running a third of the length of the deep channel into the harbor. I doubted whether any hostile ship would be able to make it past that gauntlet and survive. “It’s so pretty, too. Just look at those green fields. And the colors! It’s like someone took a painter’s palette and shook it over the town, coloring all the shops and buildings as brightly as possible. The Crayola people would love it here. This may be only a virtual setting, but this island and Turtle’s Back are truly the most beautiful spots I’ve ever seen. It’s so gorgeous, I just want to weep with the pleasure of seeing it.”
“I wonder what it would feel like to be shot with a cannon?” Bas asked, looking at the fort. “Do ye think ye’d feel it? Or do ye think ye’d be knocked out and wouldn’t know that ye’d been blown apart with a cannonball?”
I patted him on his non-Bran shoulder. “Thank you, Bas.”
“Eh?” the boy asked, giving me a curious glance.
“I was waxing poetic, and you brought me back from the edge,” I said, ruffling his hair and stroking Bran’s feathers before turning at the sound of Corbin’s voice. “Come along; we’re going sightseeing.”
I sat facing Corbin as he and a few crewmates rowed us to the dock, glancing over my shoulder at the ships anchored in the harbor. “Which ones are yours?”
He pointed at two more barques, a square rigger, and farthest away, a frigate. “Those are my warships. The sailing sloops are docked. All but one, and you have her. Her sister ship is at the far end of the dock, there.”
Something struck me about his ships. I looked again at the ones he’d pointed out. “You’re flying red flags. All red flags, with no design or anything.”
“Aye,” he said, his face damp with perspiration as he hauled back on the oar.
“I thought you flew black flags?” I hesitated, torn between wanting to tell him about the plans Bart had for him in case it had some importance in finding Paul, and doing what I could to bring about a cessation of hostilities, not en-flame them.
“I do, when the ship I’m attacking refuses to yield,” he grunted.
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. I always offer quarter—that’s the red flag—first. If the ship refuses to yield peaceably, I run up the black flag, indicating there will be no quarter given.”
“Quarter being mercy?” I asked, thinking of Bart’s crew that Corbin had so ruthlessly wiped out.
“Yes.”
“Hmm. So if Bart was going to attack you again—”
“He’s always attacking me,” Corbin said, waving a dismissive hand.
“He is? Oh.” I bit my lip, still hesitant (I hate that). “So you wouldn’t be surprised if I told you he has more plans to attack you?”
His grin flashed at me for a moment. “I’d be surprised if he doesn’t. Bart was programmed to create conflict in the game with the real players. In other words, his sole purpose is to declare war on me, and anyone else playing the game. You got pulled into his crew, so you’re excluded from that particular event, but you don’t have to worry on my behalf. Bart is the least of my worries.”
Whew. That relieved my mind. If Corbin wasn’t concerned, then I could do what I needed to do on my own to settle things between him and Bart—assuming Bart’s programming allowed him to be peacable. “Er . . . did you program him so he’ll negotiate a peace treaty, too?”
“Yes. Here we go. You ready?” Corbin had arranged for a horse-drawn open carriage to be waiting for us when we reached the shore.
As the horses clip-clopped their way down the cobblestone streets, he pointed out various sights, from the best place to buy rum and cannon shot (both important parts of a ship’s stock) to the newly built governor’s palace that sat at the base of the spit of land.
“I thought this was your island, but you said someone else is governor?” I asked, a bit confused.
“I helped take the island from the English, right, but I don’t run it. Edward Teach is governor here now.”
“Edward Teach? Why does his name sound familiar?”
“He was Blackbeard,” Corbin said, smiling. “You didn’t expect me to create a pirate game and not have Blackbeard in it, did you?”
“How silly of me.” I smiled as Corbin hauled me up closer to him, enjoying it so much I missed a few blocks of his narration.
By the time we had seen all there was to see of the town and were headed to a dockside inn for dinner, I felt I’d let him have his way long enough. So long as we were stuck in the game and had to play out the scenario, we needed to talk about the future. The inhabitants of Turtle’s Back might not be real in
our
world, but in this world they were, and I was growing extremely fond of many of them.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I warned Corbin as he sat down across a rough-planked table.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re on a thousand-calorie-a-day diet, and I’m a chocolate éclair. This is a public inn, and we need to talk, so behave yourself.”
His smile was so infectious, it was almost impossible to resist returning it. “Well, you
are
filled with creamy goodness. . . .”
“I want to talk about this blockade,” I said, leaning back so a well-endowed barmaid could set down my mug of ale and Corbin’s glass of brandy. As I mopped up the splashed ale I gave her a fulminating glare, which was completely wasted because she was too busy trying to get Corbin to look down her cleavage.
He kept his gaze firmly on me.
“You get beaucoup bonus points for that,” I told him when the barmaid finally skedaddled.
“Whew. Good. I hoped so, because it was totally going against nature not to look, but I did try. What did you want to say about the blockade? I assume you want to help with it.”
“I’m already signed up to do so.” I took a sip of my ale. It was the most innocuous of all the beverages in the game, but even so, experience had taught me that it packed enough of a wallop that my brain translated its effect as a form of virtual drunkenness.
Corbin frowned. “What do you mean, you signed up? I’m organizing the blockade—if someone has spoken to you about participating without clearing it through me first—”
“Corbin, I’m not a member of your crew. You said we had to fulfill the scenario, so I have to stick with Bart, regardless of my feelings. Unless you think my switching would have no impact on the game play?”
He thought for a minute, then shook his head. “If Bart approached you to join his crew, then that means the scenario needs a player in that crew. If you left it, the scenario might stall, and we’d never get any farther. Much as I’d like to have you in my crew, it’s probably better if you stay a member of Bart’s.”
I took a deep breath, dreading the moment that had come. “Well, technically I’m not really a member of the crew; I’m sort of probational there. However, Bart has asked me to help protect Turtle’s Back from the blockade, and I’ve agreed to do so.”
I leaned back against the wall, waiting for Corbin’s reaction to my statement. I had decided that my involvement in the blockade was the best bargaining chip I had to persuade him to talk peaceable negotiations rather than all-out war.
“You’re my wife,” he said, his frown growing.
“Only in the game.”
“We’re talking about events in the game,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “You can’t blockade against your own husband.”
“You just said I had to stick with the crew. Could I possibly blockade against my crew without screwing the game plan up?” I asked.
I swear a black cloud started forming over his head. “No. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to allow this—”
“Wait before you get all riled up. I didn’t think you’d like me on the other side, so luckily, I came up with a solution to the problem.”
He waited for the count of five. “What solution?”
“You and Bart get together and hammer out a peace treaty. Or,” I said quickly, sensing danger from the way Corbin’s eyes lit with menace, “your duly appointed representatives meet and work on a peaceful end to the hostilities between you and Bart. That should be within the bounds of the scenario, and yet would cancel all the war stuff.”
“Except the ‘war stuff’ is what powers the game,” Corbin said, a definite note of finality in his voice. “This game is built to generate conflict, Amy. Blockades are a part of that. In this case, I’m going to have to say that this blockade is preordained, and going to have to be carried out in order to further the scenario.”
“But you don’t know that for certain.”
“I think I know the game a bit better than you,” he said kind of testily.
“Yes, you do. But—”
“There’re no buts, Amy. You don’t like the war, and you want to stop it. I understand that. But you need to understand that it’s necessary for it to go forward in order to help us end the damn scenario.”
Now I was miffed. It’s true I wanted the war stopped, but I hated sounding so wimpy. “Fine. So while we spend however long it takes to blockade, how are we going to be finding your ex-partner?”
“I have three men in my crew I use as spies—normally they target Bart’s crew—but now I have them feeding me the latest ship sightings and taking note of conversations between pirates. On their own, the computer characters don’t chat with one another.”
“Whoa!” I thought about the women standing around the well talking and laughing. “I’ve seen people talking.”
“Yes, you have. The minute you come within range, their behavior becomes human. But when no players are around, the computer characters don’t interact.”
“Ah. Okay.” I raised my eyebrows, sidetracked for a moment with the idea that the computer characters could be made to spy on one another. “So your guys can take note of anyone talking, with the idea that someone in that conversation is human?”
“Yes, they can.” A look of pride temporarily overrode the irritation in his eyes. “I’ve got the best AI around powering the characters in this game.”
“AI? That’s artificial intelligence?”
“Right. Friend of mine works at Caltech developing sophisticated AI models. He stripped down a version for me and gave me the rights to modify it for the pirate world. The result is computer characters that carry sophisticated learning abilities. The more you interact with them, the more real they seem. There’s only one area they’re limited in—”
“They have no past beyond the game?” I asked.
A tiny little smile flashed across his lips. “You’ve discovered that, have you? Limitations on data storage make it impossible to give each character a detailed past, so we opted to use the space to increase their ability to learn and develop their own traits.”
I looked around the smoky inn. It was typical of what I imagined were the inns of the period and location—a long, low building with tiny glassless shuttered windows, a crossbeam ceiling, the dirt floor littered with debris, bones from chickens stripped of their meat, the tables and chairs scattered around the room in various states of disrepair. The patrons of the inn were just as disreputable as the furniture—pirates of every class skulked around, sang off-key sea shanties, ogled the barmaids (none of whom seemed to mind), laughed, joked, argued, fought, and slept with blatant disregard for the general chaos going on around them.
“Well, I have to say, it was a good choice. Everyone here seems so real. They all have such depth to them, it makes it hard to remember they’re not real.”
“They are real; at least they are here,” Corbin argued.
I smiled. “Yeah, I agree with that. Here, they’re real. And that’s why if you insist on being pigheaded and stubborn about this blockade thing, I’m going to do my best to help Bart stop you.”
“Amy—”
“The scenario, remember? You can’t have it both ways, Corbin. Either I have to stick with Bart’s crew, or we blow the scenario.”
“You’re using that as an excuse to try to blackmail me into canceling the blockade,” he growled. “You could find a reason to not be a part of the blockade. That would allow it to go forward, but you wouldn’t be involved.”
“Maybe. But I like the people on Turtle’s Back, Corbin. I don’t want to see any of them hurt or suffering because no food or supplies can get in because you want to play war. And if I help Bart, perhaps I can make the blockade end faster. Plus there’s the other bonus.”