Press Start to Play (33 page)

They had come upon the cottage now, the fourth one, having exterminated four different sniper nests on the way.

“Are you in, Anda? Are you here to play, or are you so worried about these leeches on the other side of the world that you want out?”

“I’m in, Sarge,” Anda said. She armed the BFGs and pointed them at the cottage.

“Boo-yah!” Lucy said. Her character notched an arrow.

> Hello, Kali

“Oh, Christ, he’s back,” Lucy said. Raymond’s avatar had snuck up behind them.

> Look at these

he said, and his character set something down on the ground and backed away. Anda edged up on them.

“Come on, it’s probably a booby trap, we’ve got work to do,” Lucy said.

They were photo objects. Anda picked them up and then examined them. The first showed ranked little girls, fifty or more, in clean and simple T-shirts, skinny as anything, sitting at generic white-box PCs, hands on the keyboards. They were hollow-eyed and grim, and none of them older than she.

The next showed a shantytown, shacks made of corrugated aluminum and trash, muddy trails between them, spray-painted graffiti, rude boys loitering, rubbish, and carrier bags blowing.

The next showed the inside of a shanty, three little girls and a little boy sitting together on a battered sofa, their mother serving them something white and indistinct on plastic plates. Their smiles were heartbreaking and brave.

> That’s who you’re about to deprive of a day’s wages

“Oh, hell
no
,” Lucy said. “Not again. I killed him last time and I said I’d do it again if he ever tried to show me photos. That’s it, he’s dead.” Her character turned toward him, putting away her bow and drawing a short sword. Raymond’s character backed away quickly.

“Lucy, don’t,” Anda said. She interposed her avatar between Lucy’s and Raymond’s. “Don’t do it. He deserves to have a say.” She thought of old American TV shows, the kinds you saw between the Bollywood movies on telly. “It’s a free country, right?”

“God
damn
it, Anda, what is
wrong
with you? Did you come here to play the game, or to screw around with this pervert dork?”

> what do you want from me raymond?

> Don’t kill them—let them have their wages. Go play somewhere else

> They’re leeches

Lucy typed,

> they’re wrecking the game economy and they’re providing a gold-for-cash supply that lets rich assholes buy their way in. They don’t care about the game and neither do you

> If they don’t play the game, they don’t eat. I think that means that they care about the game as much as you do. You’re being paid cash to kill them, yes? So you need to play for your money, too. I think that makes you and them the same, a little the same.

> go screw yourself

Lucy typed. Anda edged her character away from Lucy’s. Raymond’s character was so far away now that his texting came out in tiny type, almost too small to read. Lucy drew her bow again and nocked an arrow.

“Lucy,
DON’T
!” Anda cried. Her hands moved of their own volition and her character followed, clobbering Lucy bare-handed so that her avatar reeled and dropped its bow.

“You
BITCH
!” Lucy said. She drew her sword.

“I’m sorry, Lucy,” Anda said, stepping back out of range. “But I don’t want you to hurt him. I want to hear him out.”

Lucy’s avatar came on fast, and there was a click as the voice link dropped. Anda typed one-handed while she drew her own sword.

> dont lucy come on talk2me

Lucy slashed at her twice and she needed both hands to defend herself or she would have been beheaded. Anda blew out through her nose and counterattacked, fingers pounding the keyboard. Lucy had more experience points than she did, but Anda was a better player, and she knew it. She hacked away at Lucy, driving her back and back, back down the road they’d marched together.

Abruptly, Lucy broke and ran, and Anda thought she was going away and decided to let her go, no harm, no foul, but then she saw that Lucy wasn’t running away, she was running
toward
the BFGs, armed and primed.

“Bloody hell,” she breathed as a BFG swung around to point at her. Her fingers flew. She cast the fireball at Lucy in the same instant that she cast her shield spell. Lucy loosed the bolt at her a moment before the fireball engulfed her, cooking her down to ash, and the bolt collided with the shield and drove Anda back, high into the air, and the shield spell wore off before she hit ground, costing her half her health and inventory, which scattered around her. She tested her voice link.

“Lucy?”

There was no reply.

> I’m very sorry you and your friend quarreled.

She felt numb and unreal. There were rules for Fahrenheits, lots of rules, and the penalties for breaking them varied, but the penalty for attacking a fellow Fahrenheit was—she couldn’t think the word, she closed her eyes, but there it was in big glowing letters:
EXPULSION
.

But Lucy had started it, right? It wasn’t her fault.

But who would believe her?

She opened her eyes. Her vision swam through incipient tears. Her heart was thudding in her ears.

> The enemy isn’t your fellow player. It’s not the players guarding the fabrica, it’s not the girls working there. The people who are working to destroy the game are the people who pay you and the people who pay the girls in the fabrica, who are the same people. You’re being paid by rival factory owners, you know that? THEY are the ones who care nothing for the game. My girls care about the game. You care about the game. Your common enemy is the people who want to destroy the game and who destroy the lives of these girls.

“Whassamatter, you fat little cow? Is your game making you cwy?” She jerked as if slapped. The chav who was speaking to her hadn’t been in the Baang when she arrived, and he had mean, close-set eyes and a football jersey, and though he wasn’t any older than she, he looked mean, and angry, and his smile was sadistic and crazy.

“Piss off,” she said, mustering her braveness.

“You wobbling tub of guts, don’t you
dare
speak to me that way,” he said, shouting right in her ear. The Baang fell silent and everyone looked at her. The Pakistani who ran the Baang was on his phone, no doubt calling the coppers, and that meant that her parents would discover where she’d been and then—

“I’m talking to you, girl,” he said. “You disgusting lump of suet—Christ, it makes me wanta puke to look at you. You ever had a boyfriend? How’d he shag you—did he roll yer in flour and look for the wet spot?”

She reeled back, then stood. She drew her arm back and slapped him, as hard as she could. The boys in the Baang laughed and went
Whoooooo!
He purpled and balled his fists and she backed away from him. The imprint of her fingers stood out on his cheek.

He bridged the distance between them with a quick step and
punched her
, in the belly, and the air whooshed out of her and she fell into another player, who pushed her away, so she ended up slumped against the wall, crying.

The mean boy was there, right in front of her, and she could smell the chili crisps on his breath. “You disgusting whore—” he began, and she kneed him square in the nadgers, hard as she could, and he screamed like a little girl and fell backward. She picked up her schoolbag and ran for the door, her chest heaving, her face streaked with tears.

“Anda, dear, there’s a phone call for you.”

Her eyes stung. She’d been lying in her darkened bedroom for hours now, sniffling and trying not to cry, trying not to look at the empty desk where her PC used to live.

Her dad’s voice was soft and caring, but after the silence of her room, it sounded like a rusting hinge.

“Anda?”

She opened her eyes. He was holding a cordless phone, silhouetted against the open doorway.

“Who is it?”

“Someone from your game, I think,” he said. He handed her the phone.

“Hullo?”

“Hullo, chicken.” It had been a year since she’d heard that voice, but she recognized it instantly.

“Liza?”

“Yes.”

Anda’s skin seemed to shrink over her bones. This was it: expelled. Her heart felt like it was beating once per second, time slowed to a crawl.

“Hullo, Liza.”

“Can you tell me what happened today?”

She did, stumbling over the details, backtracking and stuttering. She couldn’t remember, exactly—did Lucy move on Raymond, and Anda asked her to stop, and then Lucy attacked her? Had Anda attacked Lucy first? It was all a jumble. She should have saved a screenmovie and taken it with her, but she couldn’t have taken anything with her, she’d run out—

“I see. Well, it sounds like you’ve gotten yourself into quite a pile of poo, haven’t you, my girl?”

“I guess so,” Anda said. Then, because she knew that she was as good as expelled, she said, “I don’t think it’s right to kill them, those girls. All right?”

“Ah,” Liza said. “Well, funny you should mention that. I happen to agree. Those girls need our help more than any of the girls anywhere in the game. The Fahrenheits’ strength is that we are cooperative—it’s another way that we’re better than the boys. We care. I’m proud that you took a stand when you did—glad I found out about this business.”

“You’re not going to expel me?”

“No, chicken, I’m not going to expel you. I think you did the right thing—”

That meant that Lucy would be expelled. Fahrenheit had killed Fahrenheit—something had to be done. The rules had to be enforced. Anda swallowed hard.

“If you expel Lucy, I’ll quit,” she said, quickly, before she lost her nerve.

Liza laughed. “Oh, chicken, you’re a brave thing, aren’t you? No one’s being expelled, fear not. But I wanta talk to this Raymond of yours.”

Anda came home from remedial hockey sweaty and exhausted, but not as exhausted as the last time, nor the time before that. She could run the whole length of the pitch twice now without collapsing—when she’d started out, she could barely make it halfway without having to stop and hold her side, kneading her loathsome podge to make it stop aching. Now there was noticeably less podge, and she found that with the ability to run the pitch came the freedom to actually pay attention to the game, to aim her shots, to build up a degree of accuracy that was nearly as satisfying as being really good in-game.

Her dad knocked at the door of her bedroom after she’d showered and changed. “How’s my girl?”

“Revising,” she said, and hefted her maths book at him.

“Did you have a fun afternoon on the pitch?”

“You mean ‘Did your head get trod on?’ ”

“Did it?”

“Yes,” she said. “But I did more treading than getting trodden on.” The other girls were
really
fat, and they didn’t have a lot of team skills. Anda had been to war: she knew how to depend on someone and how to be depended upon.

“That’s my girl.” He pretended to inspect the paintwork around the light switch. “Been on the scale this week?”

She had, of course: the school nutritionist saw to that, a morning humiliation undertaken in full sight of all the other fatties.

“Yes, Dad.”

“And—?”

“I’ve lost a stone,” she said. A little more than a stone, actually. She had been able to fit into last year’s jeans the other day.

She hadn’t been in the sweetshop in a month. When she thought about sweets, it made her think of the little girls in the sweatshop. Sweatshop, sweetshop. The sweetshop man sold his wares close to the school because little girls who didn’t know better would be tempted by them. No one forced them, but they were
kids
, and grown-ups were supposed to look out for kids.

Her da beamed at her. “I’ve lost three pounds myself,” he said, holding his tum. “I’ve been trying to follow your diet, you know.”

“I know, Da,” she said. It embarrassed her to discuss it with him.

The kids in the sweatshops were being exploited by grown-ups, too. It was why their situation was so impossible: the adults who were supposed to be taking care of them were exploiting them.

“Well, I just wanted to say that I’m proud of you. We both are, your mum and me. And I wanted to let you know that I’ll be moving your PC back into your room tomorrow. You’ve earned it.”

Anda blushed pink. She hadn’t really expected this. Her fingers twitched over a phantom game controller.

“Oh, Da,” she said. He held up his hand.

“It’s all right, girl. We’re just proud of you.”

She didn’t touch the PC the first day, nor the second. The kids in the game—she didn’t know what to do about them. On the third day, after hockey, she showered and changed and sat down and slipped the headset on.

“Hello, Anda.”

“Hi, Sarge.”

Lucy had known the minute she entered the game, which meant that she was still on Lucy’s buddy list. Well, that was a hopeful sign.

“You don’t have to call me that. We’re the same rank now, after all.”

Anda pulled down a menu and confirmed it: she’d been promoted to sergeant during her absence. She smiled.

“Gosh,” she said.

“Yes, well, you earned it,” Lucy said. “I’ve been talking to Raymond a lot about the working conditions in the factory, and, well—” She broke off. “I’m sorry, Anda.”

“Me too, Lucy.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” she said.

They went adventuring, running some of the game’s standard missions together. It was fun, but after the kind of campaigning they’d done before, it was also kind of pale and flat.

“It’s horrible, I know,” Anda said. “But I miss it.”

“Oh, thank God,” Lucy said. “I thought I was the only one. It was fun, wasn’t it? Big fights, big stakes.”

“Well, poo,” Anda said. “I don’t wanna be bored for the rest of my life. What’re we gonna do?”

“I was hoping you knew.”

She thought about it. The part she’d loved had been going up against grown-ups who were not playing the game but
gaming
it, breaking it for money. They’d been worthy adversaries, and there was no guilt in beating them, either.

“We’ll ask Raymond how we can help,” she said.