Deadly Pink (19 page)

Emily roused herself enough to protest, “Hey.” But not with much enthusiasm. She looked barely able to keep her eyes open, and she didn't even try to stand.

On the other hand, I found King Rasmussem's words chilling. “Who says?” I asked, trying to make my voice selfassured and forceful, rather than scared. “So what?”

“As artificial constructs,” King Rasmussem said, “we are given enough intelligence to fill in the gaps.”

“Huh?” I said.

“With early versions of computer games, the player had to use the exact wording the designers had anticipated or the program was unable to respond. A programmer would have to try to cover a variety of ways a player might phrase a request; for example, 'Pick up the sword,' or 'Get the sword,' or 'Lift the sword.' If a player happened to choose a phrase the programmer hadn't thought of ... say, 'Take hold of the sword,' the game would freeze. Unsatisfying for everyone. For a smooth user-machine interface, the machine needs to make leaps of logic—the way people do.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but—”

The king kept on talking. “Think of how getting one character wrong in an e-mail address means that your gazillion-gigabyte computer has no idea where to send your letter. But your average-intelligence, just-three-more-years-till-retirement postal carrier can figure out that '317 Main' means '317 Main Street,' and that 'Roch., NY' means 'Rochester, New York.' And if the zip code is written '19611' instead of '14611,' which is Reading, Pennsylvania—and not Rochester, New York, at all—a human being, or artificial intelligence, can surmise what was probably meant.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I can't surmise what you mean.” It was too good a line to pass up
—and
it was true.

King Rasmussem crinkled his face in a semblance of good humor. “I
mean
we're ticked off at the way your sister has been cheating like crazy, so we're not going to let you out of the game until the two of you can finish a task without cheating.”

He was a game character. Could he do that?

Well, duh, he already had or we'd be home by now. Artificial intelligence was still intelligence, so I appealed to reason. “But Emily has been in the game too long already. She
needs
to get out.”

Once again the king leaned forward till we were nose to nose. “And I
need
her to do so without cheating. I'm stripping her of her magic, her ill-gotten possessions, her servants. I'm setting the number of butterflies back to a level that does
not
indicate an infestation. I'm making the games of chance once more involve...” He paused for dramatic effect. “Chance.” Emily was rummaging through her pockets. “Hey,” she said again, this time with an edge of annoyance.

I felt my pocket for the small stash she had given me. Gone. The gold coins had changed into wooden nickels. Every bit as eloquent as my sister, I, too, said, “Hey!” Then I protested, “I haven't cheated.”

The king snorted. “As good as: you accepted help from a cheater.”

Now
I
was ticked. “Yeah?” I said to the king. “Like this wheel of yours that always comes up a hundred isn't cheating?”

“My wheel,” King Rasmussem said, “is now and always has been working exactly as it's meant to.” He reached into the pouch where he kept his coins and plunked two down on the counter that separated us. “Gifts,” he said. “One for Miss Grace. One for Miss Emily. Go ahead. Try the wheel.” I was tempted to just take my coin and leave. But what good was one gold coin? And where could we go? Finding Rasmussem had been a last resort. Emily was failing, and if we didn't play along with the king, did we even have another option?

With no idea what the king's point was, I touched one of the coins to acknowledge possession of it. “Sure. Why not?” I slid the coin toward him.

He took the coin and spun the wheel.

click click click click click

Then slower.

click click click

Then slower.

click click

Then one final
click.

The wheel had stopped at 87.

Well, at least that was different.

I had no idea what it meant, but it was different.

“Not a bad score,” King Rasmussem said. “Not as high as us make-believe people. But not bad.”

“So...?” I asked. His booth consisted of the wheel and the counter to separate us from the wheel. There were no numbers on the counter, so we weren't betting on what would come up, and there were no shelves with prizes—neither exorbitant nor conventional. Had I just won eighty-seven pieces of our gold back? But he hadn't given any coins to the gypsy girl or the pig man when he'd spun for them. “What do I win?”

The king and the gypsies exchanged a bemused look over that. “You won an eighty-seven,” the king said.

Before I could say, “Wow! That
IS
exciting!” I became aware that Emily was standing directly behind me. She had pulled herself up to see what was going on as the wheel spun.

Now she put her hand over the remaining coin. “Since you took all of mine, I should keep this,” she said. “Spend it on something useful.” Same thought I had had. Which maybe showed that we were more alike than I thought. Or maybe it just showed that this interminable game had made us both cranky.

In any case, King Rasmussem shrugged.

Emily lifted her hand off the coin, hesitated a second, then pushed it forward with the heel of her palm. She kept both her hands on the counter—I suspected that was to keep herself steady.

Once more the king spun the wheel.

It landed at 22.

Suddenly, without any idea what was going on, I had a very bad feeling about this.

“Oooo,” the king said, sounding impressed, but certainly not in a good way. Sounding like when someone says “Oooo, so how long did your parents ground you for?” or “Oooo, that burn looks as though it hurts,” or “Oooo, that girl in the movie should definitely
not
go to investigate the noise in the basement.”

“Oooo,” the other two gypsies echoed.

“That
is
low,” the king told us. His voice gave away that he was tickled to be the bearer of unfortunate news.

“Twenty-two
what?”
I demanded.

“Twenty-two on the life scale,” King Rasmussem said. He leaned forward and spoke to Emily in a loud whisper. “Better put your life in order, Emily Pizzelli. There isn't time for much else.”

Chapter 19

By Royal Decree

I
PURPOSELY AVOIDED
looking at Emily's face.

"
See?
" I said to King Rasmussem, still expecting—I have no idea why—to find sense in this game. “We need to get out of here. We don't have time to play anymore. Emily is sorry she cheated—tell him you're sorry, Emily.”

I finally did steal a glance at her, and saw that her face was gray, and she was shaking. I'm guessing the same was probably true for me. She'd spun 22 out of 100. How much time did that translate to?

Barely above a whisper, Emily agreed, “I
am
sorry,” as I continued, “We're both sorry. And if you want, we can come back later, or we can promise never to come back—whichever you prefer. Because, really, you have been wronged here, there's no denying that. It's just that now is not a good time. Which your wheel has just verified.” My babbling, and I admit I was babbling, petered out. It wasn't that the king wasn't reacting—he was reacting with boredom.

Flatly, he said, “Huzzah,” which is Ren-Faire-speak for “Hurray.” As with
hurray,
how you say it can be a good indication of your sincerity level. I'd guess the king's sincerity hovered somewhere around ... NOT.

He said, “So you admit your guilt?”

“Yes,” Emily whispered.

“Yes,” I said.

The king gave me a long, level look. “You just denied being a cheater not two minutes ago.”

“But you explained it to me,” I said, eager to be forgiven. “Now I see that I
am
guilty. Because I knew she had modified the code so she could have more money and wishes, and yet I accepted money from her. I'm an accomplice after the fact. A guilty cheater accomplice, that's me.”

The king turned back to Emily. “And you're remorseful over this cheating?”

“Yes,” Emily said.

“Definitely remorseful,” I agreed.

“And you're willing to prove this?”

Emily and I exchanged a worried look.

“Prove?” Emily repeated.

“What do you mean,
prove?”
I asked. I glanced at gypsy girl and pig man and didn't see anything reassuring in their faces.

“You will work to accomplish the task I give you, even though I have removed the code you wrote, the code that made things easier?”

“Excuse me,” I said. “Isn't that what you said before?”

“Yes.”

“Then what have you changed now that Emily and I have confessed and apologized?”

“Nothing.”

Some negotiation. “So what,” I asked, trying not to let my anger show, “did apologizing accomplish?”

King Rasmussem considered. “Did it make you feel better?” he suggested.

I was tempted to say
no,
but figured that couldn't improve the situation and might conceivably make things worse, because then the king would accuse me of being a guilty cheater
liar.
Grudgingly, I admitted, “Yes,” and dug my elbow into Emily's side.

“Yes,” she echoed, playing along.

“Huzzah,” the king said—also playing along, because we all knew, he didn't believe us for a second.

Her voice raspy, Emily asked, “What, exactly, is the task you're setting for us?”

“Return your ill-gotten gains to the sprites.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Miss Emily set the golden butterflies to come every five minutes rather than once an hour. She set the flowers in the flower-match garden game to grow back as soon as they were cut off rather than the next day. She set the prices of the articles she wanted to buy from the sprites too low, and made the market dwarves accept the ridiculously high prices of the articles she wanted to sell. She set the arcade games to be won too easily, and the prizes to be too grand. She—”

“Yes, yes,” Emily said. Despite her general fogginess, despite her obvious fear, more than anything she sounded out of patience. “I cheated. I admitted that.”

“By my calculation, you have accrued 87,853 more gold coins than even the most diligent and attentive player
could
have. And you”—he turned to me—“owe the sprites 7 coins.”

Had I missed something?

“Excuse me?”

“Seven.” The king spun the wheel and it landed on 7.

“Huzzah,” the gypsy girl and the pig man said.

“Yeah, but...” Well, I certainly shouldn't be putting ideas in anybody's head—but how had he calculated seven when I'd taken that chest of jewelry and gems from Emily's pavilion and used that to bargain with the sprites?

The king gave his zero-degree-Fahrenheit smile. “You're thinking about that money you stole from your sister.”

Now Emily was looking at me, too. “You did what?”

“Well...” I said.

“That wasn't cheating,” the king said. “That was gamesmanship. And the trades you made with the sprites—you were working with the game as your sister had changed it.”

Well, as long as he was cutting me so much slack ... I asked, “So which seven coins are you counting against me?”

“The seven you asked for and received right here in front of me. That was knowing receipt of stolen goods.”

“Okay,” I said. Not that it made any difference. Getting seven coins was accomplishable; eighty-seven-thousand-whatever was not. But it wasn't like I was going to abandon Emily.

Emily asked, “Where are we going to get eighty-eight thousand coins?”

“Don't exaggerate,” the king said. “It's 87,853.”

“Whatever.”

“Well, let's see. There's always a golden butterfly when you first arrive, and since I just reset the game for the two of you...”

I snatched at the glittery little thing that I suddenly realized was hovering around my shoulder. Emily, with sluggish reactions, missed the one that alighted on the counter. It rose back up into the air—and the gypsy girl caught it.

“Hey!” Emily protested.

“You should have been quicker,” the girl told her.

“Don't worry,” the king said. “Another pair will come by in fifty-nine and a half minutes.”

“It'll take
years
to earn enough money two butterflies at a time,” I said.

King Rasmussem looked at me as though I had spaghetti coming out my nose. “What are you thinking?” he asked, as though I'd said I
wanted
to play for years. “Your sister doesn't
have
years.”

What I was thinking involved my hands, his throat, and squeezing, but I didn't think this was a good thought to share.

“Do you have any suggestions?” I asked as pleasantly as I could.

As though it were a big revelation, he recommended, “Get more coins faster.”

The pleasantness got even more strained as my favorite mental image grew more vivid. I repeated, “Do you have any suggestions?”

“Well, let's see...” The king paused as though considering. “Who has a lot of gold coins?”

I assumed it was a rhetorical question, but the gypsy girl said, “The sprites.”

Pig man, with his newfound ability to speak English, added, “Except they've run out because of”—he nodded toward Emily, as though she and I weren't standing right there watching and listening—“you-know-who.”

“Hmmm,” the king said, still playing at being the thoughtful helper.

“Dragons,” Emily blurted out, surprising me because I'd written her off as being no help at all. “Dragons always have gold.”

“Huzzah,” the gypsies cheered.

Chapter 20

Go Back to “Go”

D
RAGONS
?” I repeated. “Where are there dragons? Present company excepted, of course, seeing as we've both lost our magical ability...” Using the word
lost
was a politeness on my part, since I felt
stolen away
was more strictly accurate.