Walter Williams - This Is Not a Game

They didn’t wear uniforms. They wore tropical shirts and T-shirts with the names of bands on them and baseball caps and headscarves and pitji hats. They looked more like the rioters Dagmar had encountered on the first day than anyone’s martial Islamic association.

Her heart gave such a violent lurch that her first grab for the door handle missed. She tried again, moved quickly into the lobby, and faded as fast as she could in the direction of the elevators. She scuttled to the double row of polished metal doors and jabbed at the call button.

Other vehicles had drawn up behind the bus, and more men were piling out. There was no one to stop them-the Sikh doormen hadn’t been seen for days, and Dagmar presumed they had been evacuated along with the other Indian nationals.

The leader entered. He had a Japanese long sword stuck in his belt. One of the managers made a diffident approach, and the leader told him to stand back, which he did. A mob of people followed him into the lobby.

Some of the invaders pushed hand trucks. Several seized the carts the bellmen used to carry luggage. One white-haired man had a list written in an old school notebook.

The leader drew his katana and made a broad gesture in the direction of the lounge. A dozen of his followers charged into the lounge and ran behind the bar. Bottles of liquor were piled on the bar to be swept up later. The bar television was torn from its moorings, and another looter moved a chair so that he could stand on it and disconnect another television that was mounted high in a corner.

Hotel employees clumped in one area of the lobby and did nothing.

The elevator dinged, and Dagmar ran for it. While she counted the seconds until the door closed, she remembered the six exits from the lobby that Tomer Zan had told her to locate, and realized that she should have used one of them.

Instead she’d panicked and run for the elevators.

It occurred to her that she was really unequipped for this kind of life.

The doors closed with an infuriating lack of haste, and Dagmar began her rise to her precarious aerie on the fourteenth floor.

FROM: Dagmar

Okay, this is it. The martial arts association that was guarding the

hotel fled last night, and today the looters moved in. It’s not spontaneous

looting this time; it’s highly organized. I can look out the

window and see trucks moving off with televisions, toilets, sinks,

microwaves, and the gas ranges from the kitchen. I guess I’ve had

my last hot meal. Or maybe my last meal of any sort, since they’ve

probably taken all the food as well.

The looters are armed with swords, knives, and spears. I haven’t

heard of them attacking anyone, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t

happened.

I need out of this hotel, and I need to go now. Any ideas?

“Is this Dagmar?”

A strange male voice, very deep and authoritative, with the same accent as Tomer Zan.

“Yes,” Dagmar said.

“My name is Mordechai Weitzman. I’m calling for Tomer Zan, who is in transit to Singapore and can’t speak right now.”

“Yes!” said Dagmar. “Hello!”

“We got your email. Can you get onto the roof later tonight?”

Dagmar’s heart gave a leap of delight at the prospect of the helicopter finally arriving.

“Yes!” she said. “Yes, of course!”

“The package should arrive about midnight Jakarta time, but it may be delayed. You’ve got to be ready when it comes.”

Her mind seemed to skip several tracks, like a needle hurled across an old LP.

“Package?” she said.

“We’re sending you a package of dollars. They may help you acquire food and other supplies until we can arrive to pick you up.”

Dagmar felt her sudden joy evaporate.

“You’re dropping money, but you’re not picking me up?”

“We’re sending it on a surveillance drone. It’s not big enough to carry you.”

“Shit!” Dagmar kicked the chest of drawers in her room: it banged solidly against the wall. “There are armed men in the hotel! I need to get out of here now!”

“You need to stay in your room.”

“I am in my fucking room!”

At that moment the lights died, and the air-conditioning whimpered to a stop.

“I am in my fucking room,” Dagmar announced, “in the fucking dark.” She was not unaware of a degree of melodrama in her delivery.

“We are coming as soon as we can,” said Weitzman. “But we need a working aircraft.”

“The world is full of aircraft!” Dagmar said. “They’ve been flying in and out of here for days. They could even spare one to fly out the American ambassador!”

“Now that was a profile in courage, wasn’t it?” There was cold humor in Weitzman’s voice.

“I’d say,” Dagmar said, “that the Alamo spirit is definitely dead.”

On the roof at eleven, she thought.

And fuck you, Mordechai, whoever you are.

FROM: Desi

I’ve emailed the Bayangan Prajurit people, but it’s the middle of

the night in Indonesia and it may be a while before we hear from them.

I did hear what happened with Bersih Jantung. They’re pro-military,

remember, and the army was supplying them with food, fuel, and

other black market items. So their neighbors, who all hate the military,

decided to hijack their latest convoy and steal their food and stuff.

Which they did. Successfully.

Bayangan Prajurit claims they weren’t involved, but they’re very

pleased with this development, and they had a hard time keeping

a straight face.

Dagmar stood atop the silent, dark tower as the monsoon spat warm drizzle in her face. She hoped that the reconnaissance craft would be able to find her through the cloud cover.

If it was like everything else Zelazni had tried so far, it would drop into the ocean somewhere west of Krakatoa.

As she looked over the edge, she could see that lack of electricity hadn’t stopped the looters. They were working by flashlight, and now they were loading mattresses and chests of drawers into their trucks.

They’d finished looting the ground floors, she saw, and had started on the guest rooms. The power outage meant they weren’t going to get to the fourteenth floor anytime soon, but Dagmar had considerable respect for their industry and assumed they would reach her eventually.

And besides, sooner or later she was going to have to descend to the ground in search of food and water.

Around her, the city was dark except for a few fires burning here and there. The locals were still exercising blazing benevolence upon their neighbors.

She could see the pool down below, on the third-floor terrace.

She had decided against her nightly swim. Her courage did not extend to defiance of mobs with spears and knives.

Not that her courage had done anything so far but fail her.

She gave a jump as her phone let out a bray. She answered.

“Are you on the roof?” said Mordechai.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

She ransacked a mental map. “Northeast corner,” she said.

“Stay back from the edge. We don’t want the package dropping to the street.”

She stepped back until she came up against one of the roof structures. Water dripped down her neck, a surprising splash of warmth, and she took a step forward.

“Any minute now,” said Mordechai.

Dagmar scanned the sky. A flurry of rain pelted down for a few seconds, then ceased. Then there was a faint whooshing noise, and the wind carried a warm breath of burned hydrocarbon.

Suddenly she saw it, hovering right above her. There were no wings and no tail structure-the thing was just an aerodynamic shape, like an elongated Frisbee, black against the opalescent cloud. It made a sound like a crowd in a distant stadium, a far-off roaring, and Dagmar realized it was propelled by arrays of the same miniturbines that served as backup power for her computer. There had to be some method of directing the thrust so that the machine could hover or fly in any direction. From the smell, Dagmar assumed the machine was loaded with some form of high-powered aviation fuel, as opposed to the stuff in her computer, a substance that, at the insistence of the Department of Homeland Security, couldn’t burn fast enough to be used to blow up an airplane.