Reamde

“It’s literally hard to say. My Chinese is a little weak.”

“So the name of the character is in Chinese?”

Ivanov and Sokolov looked at each other as only Russians could look at each other when the Chinese came into it.

“Yeah, and he or she didn’t bother to slap a Western handle onto it.”

This was part of Richard and Nolan’s efforts to make T’Rain as Chinese friendly as possible. In other such games, each player had to use a name written in Latin characters, but in T’Rain it was optional.

“He or she—so, no demographics or personal data about the player?”

“It’s transparently a load of crap generated by a bot or something,” Corvallis said.

“Credit card?”

“It’s a self-sus.”

Another one of Richard and Nolan’s innovations. In most online games, you had to link your account to a credit card number to cover the monthly fees. Not so Chinese teen friendly. But since T’Rain had hard currency money plumbing built into its guts, this too was somewhat optional; if your character was turning a profit, for example, by selling gold, you could pay your monthly fee by having it deducted automatically from your character’s treasure chest. These were called self-sustaining accounts.

“Is there any way to get any hard information at all about who runs that character?”

Zula didn’t like the effect that this had on Ivanov’s face.

“I can give you the IP address that they were connected from.”

“That’d be fantastic!” Zula said, hoping that she was really selling its fantasticness to Ivanov. She gestured for something to write with. Sokolov wheeled and plucked a Sharpie from a mug on a side table. Perhaps it was a bit odd that he knew the location of every pen in the room better than Peter did, but maybe it was his job to spot everything in his vicinity that could be used as an improvised weapon. Sokolov bit the cap off and held out his palm for Zula to write on. She took the pen and rested her writing hand on Sokolov’s, which had taken a lot of abuse and was missing the end of one finger, yet was as warm as any other man’s.

“Ready?” Corvallis asked.

“Shoot,” said Zula, then cringed at the choice of word.

Corvallis, speaking extremely clearly and crisply, recited four numbers between 0 and 255: a dotted quad, or Internet Protocol address. Zula wrote them down on the palm of Sokolov’s hand. Ivanov watched with spectacular intensity, then gave her a wondering look.

He knew what it was.

It was the same sort of thing that Csongor had used to detect Wallace’s lie and route him to Peter’s place. And having seen it work perfectly once, Ivanov supposed it could not fail to work again.

“Thanks,” Zula said, “and my next question—”

Typing. “It’s one of a large block of addresses allocated to an ISP in Shyamen.”

“Come again?”

Corvallis spelled it, and she wrote it on Sokolov’s flesh: X-I-A-M-E-N.

This triggered furious but comically silent activity among Ivanov and his minions.

“You can google it yourself,” Corvallis said, and Zula—who was, in spite of everything, still being watched intently by Sokolov—resisted the temptation to say No, I can’t. “Formerly called Amoy,” he continued, in a singsongy voice to indicate that he had googled it. “A port city in southeastern China, at the mouth of the Nine Dragons River, just across the strait from Taiwan. Two and a half million people. Twenty-fifth largest port in the world, up from thirtieth. Blah, blah, blah. Pretty generic, for a Chinese city.”

“Thanks!”

“Sorry I couldn’t get more specific.”

“Gives me something to work on.”

“Anything else I can help you with?”

Yes. “No.”

“Have a good one!” And he was gone.

The word “Bye” was hardly past Zula’s lips when Sokolov had pulled the phone from her hand. He knew how to work it and pulled up its web browser and googled Xiamen.

She had been vaguely aware for a while of some gratifying smells in the room: flowers and coffee.

Ivanov, smiling, approached her with a vast bouquet of stargazer lilies cradled in his arms. They still bore the plastic wrap and barcode from the grocery store up the hill. “For you,” he announced, bestowing them on her. “For because I made you cry. Least I could do.”

“That is very sweet of you,” she said, trying through all her exhaustion to sell it.

“Latte?” he asked. For the T-shirted man was at his side with a cardboard tray crowded with cups from Starbucks world HQ, whose colossal green mermaid loomed over Georgetown like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

“Love one,” she said, and she didn’t have to lie about that.