Omnitopia Dawn (54 page)

The queen laughed. “Oh, this isn’t just playing a game!” she said. “I visit Dev’s
world.
His countries are the only ones I spend as much time in as my own.” And she gave Dev’s father a naughty-little-girl look. “That’s why I had to come, you see. It’s only right to pay a visit to a neighboring friendly monarch when he’s just upgraded his whole nation.”

She smiled at Dev. “And this is a massive upgrade,” she said. “Suddenly we get a whole new set of levels to play with? Mesocosms—”

Dev nodded, turned to his dad. “We’ve graduated some of our most popular Microcosms to a higher level,” he said, “which they share with player-tweaked versions of some of the most popular Macrocosms. It means higher royalty levels and more accessibility for the player-created universes—which always had some limitations on access size that we wanted to overcome—and more flexible versions of the most popular in-house universes, so they can now accept player input into their structures, and share Macrocosm-level royalties out among contributing players.”

His dad nodded, but the look he gave Dev was wry. “After all the money you lost yesterday,” he said, “you’re going to start giving more of it away?”

“It’s all about flow,” Dev said. “As it happens, we’re well on our way to recouping what we lost. Jim told me earlier that once the news of the new Mesocosms got out to the press this morning—”

“Leaked out, you mean,” said the queen, her look as wry as Dev’s dad’s.

Dev glanced at her with his eyebrows up.
“Nolo contendere
, Your Majesty,” he said. “Anyway, a formal press release followed . . . at which point the ongoing raid on the retail outlets and download centers around the world started turning into an out-and-out onslaught. Most of our resellers are out of stock already.”

“Remind me to have my country ask yours for a loan,” the queen said.

Dev grinned. “We’ll discuss our relative liquidity later.”

“Tomorrow, perhaps,” said the queen. “Meanwhile, I don’t want to monopolize you tonight.”

“I know a dismissal when I hear one,” Dev said. “Majesty—” He bowed a little: so did Dev’s dad. His mom smiled at the queen as they all turned away.

“She’s such a faker,” Bella whispered to Dev. “She just wants to get back to playing.”

Dev’s dad was about to say something as he looked over his shoulder: but sure enough, the queen was already typing again. “What a fan she must be,” he said.

“One of our oldest in Europe,” Dev said. “Where do you think I got my bike?”

His mother stared at him. “You mean that old black thing?”

“Not so old,” Dev said, as his friendly waiter materialized again and returned his parents’ drinks to them. “Well, the company that makes it, yeah, they’re old. But it’s a good bike. It’s what she rides at home when she goes out for the paper in the morning. When she sent it to me, she said she thought the sovereign of a friendly foreign power might appreciate one.”

Dev’s father raised his eyebrows, already managing to look bored with the whole business. His mother blinked: then suddenly smiled at the sight of someone making his way through the crowd toward them. “Jim!”

“Mrs. Logan,” Jim said, all formality in front of Dev’s dad, though under other circumstances he had been addressing Bella as “Dev’s Mom” for most of thirty years. “Doctor Logan—”

“How’s business?” Dev’s dad said, shaking Jim’s hand after Bella finished hugging him.

“Not too bad at all,” Jim said. He leaned over toward Dev and said, very softly, “One zero five two point two.”

“What?”

“One thousand fifty-two point two—”

Dev’s eyes widened. Jim burst out in a grin that looked like it might split his face. “The Nikkei and Hang Seng are going nuts,” he said. “But then they’ve had twelve hours to react to the Asian first-night sales figures. Between hard copy sales and downloads, we’ve shifted—are you ready?—almost
eight hundred thousand hard units
between midnight and now—”

With a whoop, Dev grabbed Jim and hugged him. “And in downloads, one point six million so far,” Jim said, with what breath remained in his lungs.

“And I don’t have to sell the car,” Dev said very low in Jim’s ear.

“Nope. Tell you, though, Dev, that was a real weird bump-up we got on the Nikkei, though. Much bigger than I expected, and the Hang Seng did the same thing right afterward . . .”

“Ask me if I care!” Dev let go of Jim, turned to his father. “We broke a thousand,” he said.

“Dubai and Moscow are about to open,” Jim said, pulling his tux back into order. “Gotta run—”

He headed off across the crowd. Dev’s mom gazed after him, and then got a sudden bemused look as past Jim she caught sight of a tall state governor who had once been a film star associated with sword-wielding heroes and unstoppable robots. “Is that—”

“Of course it is,” Dev said.

His mother patted his arm and headed off through the crowd, where within a matter of seconds she had latched onto the governor in question and was explaining to him that she was Dev Logan’s mother. Dev folded his arms and watched this display with considerable amusement. After a moment he glanced sideways to say something to his dad and found that he was standing and watching his wife in a pose almost identical to Dev’s own.

His dad’s expression was as resigned as Stroopwaffel’s had been before. After a moment he caught Dev’s glance, returned it, and then laughed one of those small down- the-nose laughs of his, nearly silent. “So,” he said. “You survived the week.”

Dev nodded. “You have any bets down that I wouldn’t? Sorry to have put you out of pocket . . .”

For a moment, just a moment, that scowl came back, and Dev started to inwardly curse himself. But then his father let the expression go, and once again laughed the near-silent laugh. “Why do we have to be doing this to each other all the time?” Dev’s dad said under his breath, swirling the ice cubes in the whiskey glass. He turned his gaze to Dev. “Why, Son?”

The sound of genuine incomprehension was something Dev wasn’t at all used to hearing from his father. What upset him now was that he was so short of answers to the question, plausible or otherwise. “I don’t know,” Dev said at last, “but I don’t mind stopping if you don’t.”

His dad’s smile was dry. “It’s not like I don’t absolutely believe you,” he said. “And believe
in
you. But it’s going to be more like quitting smoking than anything else. Habit’s a bitch, Dev. How many times have I quit now?”

Forty-six,
Dev was about to say: but he restrained himself. “Habit,” he said after a moment, “is indeed a bitch.”

For a moment more they stood there together, watching Bella bend the governor’s ear. “I’d better get out there and rescue the poor man,” Dev’s dad said then, and touched Dev’s elbow lightly as he headed down from the dais. “In case I miss you in the madness—what time’s breakfast?”

“Usually six for Lolo,” Dev said. “Tomorrow, nine for us. Call and ask the concierge: he’ll let you know what’s going on.”

His dad nodded and made his way down to Bella. Dev stood there watching, while wondering at the sudden warmth that had just passed between him and his father.
This is absolutely the week for amazing things,
he thought.
Who knows? With everything else that’s been going on, why not this too?

He let out a long breath and went to get himself a glass of mineral water.

The next part of the evening progressed as these events usually did. Dev had to make a speech toward the end of the formal part of it, and kept the speech short as much for his own sanity as that of those who had to stand there listening to him. Then he had to go do half an hour with the press, after which they were instructed that they could either leave him alone and enjoy the party along with everyone else, or be thrown into Castle Dev’s moat. As usual, one of the journalists tested the boundaries, at which point tuxedoed Omnitopia security moved in. Subsequent ablutions were administered by the ladies and gentlemen of the press themselves.

After that, Dev was at liberty to wander where he liked. His normal strategy at such events was to meander in cycles from the dance floor area to the buffet to the gaming bower, then have a mineral water and do it again, so he more or less automatically fell into that rhythm now. It was at the buffet, between the grill and the salad table, that Dev saw faces he’d had to look up earlier so that he’d be sure to recognize them: a smallish plump lady in a dark cocktail dress, and a tall broad-shouldered dark-haired man in a respectable Sears suit of the kind Mirabel used to buy him, along with two small sweat suit-clad boys who had all their attention bent on the short-order chef who was grilling their burgers.

“Arnulf?” Dev said in an undertone as he came up behind them. “And Angela?”

They turned. “Mr. Logan—” Angela said.

He put up his eyebrows as he shook her hand. “Oh, are we playing it formal, then? ‘Milady.’ ”

She laughed at him. “Don’t you start! But I have to say, you
do
smell a lot better.”

“Angela!” Rik said as he and Dev shook hands.

“Well, seriously, he does, didn’t you get a whiff of him back in Indigo? All right, it was a costume you were wearing, a virtual rig, but
where
did you get that smell?”

Dev shook his head, smiling somewhat ruefully at the memory. “Once upon a time, when I lived above the shop—”

“Like you don’t now?” Rik said.

“It was a much smaller shop,” Dev said. “Well, way back then, it was my job to take out the garbage. There was this back alley, and the building we lived in shared it with a bar and a pizzeria, and all our garbage cans stood out there together. And there was a little old guy who was there every day and went through the cans. A very cranky guy, he was. He had this overcoat that hadn’t been to the cleaners’ since World War Two, and the
smell
of it, ay yi yi . . .” Dev rolled his eyes. “That’s what I borrowed.”

Angela looked thoughtful. “What happened to him?” Angela said.

Dev shook his head sadly, as he always did when thinking of that dingy little alley. “He died, one day—right out there by the cans. They took him away, and found out that he had no relatives, and no will. But they probated his estate, and you know what? He was a millionaire a couple of times over.” He sighed. “He changed my life. I swore that if I ever got rich, I wasn’t going to keep it to myself. I was going to spread it around and make a difference in other people’s lives . . . because there are more ways than one to stink.”

Rik’s look was wry. “Dev,” he said. “One thing. It’s great to be here, and we want to thank you for having us. But what exactly did we
do?
”

Dev laughed. “It’s technical,” he said. “Your Microcosm popped a symptom that was turning up elsewhere in a lot of different forms. But your version of it was simple enough for us to get a handle on what was causing the problem . . . so we were able to keep a lot of other people’s dreams from going up in smoke. As a result, you’ll forgive me if I drop in on your ’cosm from time to time, in my own skin. Just to keep an eye on things.”

“But not as casual labor,” Rik said.

“Um, no. Though I can find you a replacement assistant if you feel you need one.”

“It’s okay,” Rik said, exchanging a glance with Angela. “I think we can manage whatever might come up.”

“All right,” Dev said. “Anyway, you’ll find my fast-track e-mail in your box when you get home. If you find you need me for something, don’t hesitate.” He looked down at the boys. “And how’re you gentlemen doing? When you’re done with those, we’ve got one of those balloon-sculpture guys and a storyteller and some other entertainment over past the gaming bower. And my daughter’s there, with a bunch of her school friends. Maybe a little young for you, but the toys are pretty high-end.”

The elder of the boys paused in midburger and studied Dev critically. “Have you got PlayStations?”

“Mike!”

“It’s okay,” Dev said to the somewhat scandalized Rik. “As a matter of fact, we do. About twenty of them . . . not to mention the other major game boxes. This is a party, not a trade show.”

“Oh. That’s okay, then . . .”

“Rik, if we didn’t have them, I’d send out for one just for him,” Dev said. “He’s with you, and you’ve made a big difference to Omnitopia. I can’t tell you how big. So thanks for coming.”

The party, Dev knew, would go on till dawn—there were always diehards, Omnitopian and otherwise, who would refuse to leave a dance floor until it was disassembled underneath them—but Dev wasn’t required to stay there anything like that long. Around eleven he went about saying his first set of good nights to various personalities here and there, not hurrying, just enjoying the sense of being finished with a project that had been hanging over his head for so very long. At one point Dev paused a while by the dance floor along with many others to behold the spectacle of Giorgio and Darlene and the rest of the Princes of the Palace of Hell, now all dressed to the nines in tailcoats and long formals, going through a stomping and shouting performance that started out as a Maori triumphal
haka
and then dissolved without warning into synchronized boogiewoogie.