War Games by Karl Hansen

activity of those accounts. Each beam of laser light was only a photon across. Once they got in an optical fiber, they stayed there. The comsat was aligned very precisely to achieve this. But a photon wasn’t very big. It was just the right size for my timestone to manipulate. I could change probability a little with it—twist the wires of coherent light a little, and make a few photons hit a few wires of my choosing.
    One of the fibers was mine, representing my account. It was child’s play to pad my balance out a little. There was no way to trace it or to even know it was being done. Digits flashed from the chargering on my other hand, marking my steadily increasing bank balance. The bank would know that they had been swindled—more had gone out than had come in. They would know they’d been robbed, but they wouldn’t know how. They would know who had done it—I’d told them I would. Only they didn’t know who I was. Pretty clever, no?
    Like I said, child’s play. Photons were easy to move about. In just a few minutes, I’d siphoned off several million credits. My chargering’s digits changed so fast, its register glowed a solid green.
    All the time I kept up an inane conversation with the woman standing beside me, setting her up for some night games afterward. I didn’t notice the way she also watched my chargering. But I did notice the hand signal she made.
    Too late an image flashed in my mind: me with a set of sonicuffs around my wrists. I looked about in alarm. A couple of varks guarded each exit. The rest were unobtrusively moving toward me. The woman Michele had fingered me. She wasn’t a vark. I could smell varks. I didn’t have time to figure out what she was. I had to get away.
    I slipped into the crowd, making my way to the far wall. There wasn’t a door there, so there were no varks, either. They took their time following me, sure I couldn’t escape. They thought they had me this time.
    I wasn’t so sure about that. I’d made a few contingency plans myself.
    As I worked my way through the crowd, I got ready. I tried not to think too much about what I was going to do. I had no other choice, so there was no point worrying about it. I knelt briefly and fastened each corner of my cape to my slippers at the ankle. I slipped the shoulder clasps over each wrist. Then I pulled out a flat piece of plastique from its hiding place under my corset and worked it into a round ball.
    The varks were holding back, waiting until they were all in position. Michele seemed to be directing things. They were in no hurry, figuring they had me trapped. Indeed, they did. The transparent wall of Club Ionosphere had no doors or windows. Besides, beyond the wall was two thousand meters of sheer drop. I felt like the proverbial cornered rat.
    So I did what I had to do.
    I threw the ball of plastique impact explosive at the wall, at the same time dropping to the floor and covering my head. A deafening explosion sounded. Flame tickled the hairs on my neck. As soon as the tickling stopped, I jumped to my feet and ran forward. A meter-wide hole gaped in the wall. Cold wind, roared in through it. Without looking back, I dove headfirst through the opening. Once beyond the edges of the wall, I spread my arms and legs into a skydiver’s frog. Air billowed under my cape, ballooning it into a parawing that both slowed my fall and provided forward thrust. I could steer by moving my arms and legs. Although I didn’t have as good a glide coefficient as I would with a real hang glider, I could still go a long way with a two-thousand-meter start. At least as far as Ophir, where my skimmer was hidden.
    I spilled air out of one side of my cape and began circling around the tower. Wind streamed past, chilling bare skin. Snow rustled against taut fabric. The lights of Telluride glowed far below, colder than the stars overhead. Brighter light blazed through the crystal pyramid of Club Ionosphere. Figures appeared in the hole I’d blasted.