[Brackets] (14 page)

Killergremlin was still skeptical. “Do you know for sure that ChangZhang is staying out of it? They might be letting this play out as a test. What if they come out after this and say that everybody who sided with the Mascaab is banned for a year or something? And that’s besides the fact that we still don’t know anything about what the Mascaab will want from us after we join up.”

“So you’re questioning my decision?” said the General tersely.

Psychopedia almost said something, but didn’t. Killergremlin just
looked at him for a long moment.
“No. You’re the General,
” he finally said.
“W
e’ll do it if you think we should do it.”

The General nodded. “Thank you. Now we have a lot of work to do. Killer, I want you to take a team inside the arena and scout it. Find all the ins and outs, try to think about what the Mascaab would be up to. And why Saturday at that particular time? Maybe we can outthink them.”

Killergremlin nodded as he prepared his controllers. “Who should I take?” he asked.

“Try Ohmen’s old patrol, they always want action.”

“Can’t,” said Killergremlin. “They barely exist anymore.”

That was news to the General. “What happened?”

“Well, Ohmen isn’t back, obviously. The new leader was Tiburon, but he has carpal tunnel and can’t use the controllers. Nutkraken just had a baby, and Typhoon150 never came back, either.”

The General listened to the list with a frown. “I didn’t know Nutkraken was married.”

“Dude, Nutkraken is a woman.”

“Oh,” said the General. “Wait, Typhoon
still
hasn’t come back?”

“Nope. I thought you knew that—you were the one that told me in the first place.”

That was troubling for the General, and not just because they’d lost a potential code-breaker. Ever since Halley had debunked the brackets code, the General had wondered what Typhoon was up to, and he had intended on talking with Typhoon personally. But the worry would have to wait.

“Fine,” he said, waving his hand. “Use whoever you want. But get in there and figure out how a trap would be set if it exists.”

“What about me?” asked Psychopedia. “You want me to patrol the plaza outside?”

“Uh, no,” the General said, looking at his watch. “I’ll do that. I have a meet there tonight with a new contact anyway. You keep working our sources for any new details about the Mascaab. There has to be somebody that can give us something useful.”

They were agreed, and each headed down to the city in his own direction.

The General landed directly in the middle of the plaza south of the Montezuma Arena. His coming was hardly noticed; the streets around the arena and the central temple were the busiest in the city. The General left the busy flow and walked around to a less trafficked area beneath a l
amppost. He checked his watch. 7
:15 pm KMT. There was enough time to unwind quietly before the meeting would take place. Although, the General never quite let himself
be
at ease
in the city. There was always the possibility that some
random tribal patrol
would notice him and attack. He interrupted his fifteen minutes of calm by looking behind him often.

The arena was an impressive sight. The dark emerald glass that formed the oblong dome seemed to vibrate like the membrane of a tight drum, refracting the image of the surrounding colors like a prism. Crowds of people were streaming from the several entrances. Scoreboards and viewing screens were placed between doors to allow a view of the action inside. From where he stood, the General could see the long black tunnel of stone and cement that connected the arena to the Central Temple. The altar on top of the temple, bathed
as always
in red light, beckoned his mind
momentarily
into second guessing his decision.

His contemplation was interrupted by a voice from behind that was familiar in a surreal way.

“General Studblood. Thank you for coming.”

The General whirled around and saw, to his astonishment, a slightly digitized version of a face that he had only ever seen in videos and pictures. The figure was shorter than him, young, Asian, with lightly bleached hair that flailed out in all directions. Around his neck he wore a round stone calendar medallion embedded with gold and emeralds, a symbolic accessory worn by only one person in Kaah Mukul. If it was
the person
Studblood suspected, he was the only
one
in the entire city who chose to resemble his real self.

“Are you Myung-Ki Noh?” the General asked in disbelief.

“Yes,” replied the figure. The voice really did sound like him. But appearances were deceiving in the city.

“Prove it.”

The figure that resembled Noh smiled briefly, then looked around and pointed to a tree that was planted next to the wide sidewalk leading up to the arena’s entrance. The General heard a low rumbling sound. The tree began to wobble back and forth as the vibrations in the ground became violently localized around it. The top of the tree burst into a bright blaze of yellowish-orange light. It was transfixing, and then it was instantly over. The tree was exactly as it had been before, and all was quiet.

For a long moment the General stared, unmoving, then finally gushed, “Mr. Noh, it is so cool to meet you! It is such an
honor. I’ve been the biggest Kaah Mukul fan since the beginning and I think you are a genius.”

“Thank you, General. I am also an admirer of your recent work,” Noh said gracefully.

“Really? I mean, I’m surprised that you know who I am,” said the General, now very flattered as he remembered what Halley had told him about Noh’s secret files. He thought of calling over the rest of the council, but that somehow felt impolite. He was there, in the moment, with the god of his favorite place standing there in the virtual flesh.

“How do you feel about your progress as a tribe?” asked Noh in his even tone. “Your ranking has been steadily increasing.”

“We’re doing awesome,” the General
blurted, eager to keep the conversation going
. “We were actually going to do some recruiting this week but never got around to it, but we got some good fighters, and some rookies that,
oh, and we have the
best
code breakers of all the Tribes, but you probably knew that. It is such an awesome pleasure. I mean, to meet you.”

Polite enough not to note the General’s fluster, Noh continued on with deliberate stride.
“I’m glad you are doing well. I would expect nothing less from someone with your predictive abilities.”

That was interesting. And confusing. “My predictive abilities?”

“Yes. Do not think that your bracket has gone unnoticed, even in the world of Kaah Mukul. You are on a very impressive streak. Still perfect as of ten minutes ago.”

What?
The General couldn’t believe it.
Does everyone know about this but me?

“
Y
ou know about the bracket
thing
? Do they do that in South Korea, too?”

Noh answered,
“I am very interested in discussing your selection method when we meet in person. I have learned enough about basketball to know that choosing winners with such precision requires insights into the complexities of the game that I am anxious to discover. As you can imagine, I am most curious about how such skills could translate to success in the City.”

“Oh,” the General exhaled, internally panicked. “I don’t
know that I can, you know, explain—wait, in person? We’re going to meet in person?”

“Yes, forgive me, I am ahead of myself. It happens that I will be flying out to the United States this weekend. I don’t have to be on the eastern coast until later that night, so I set up a connection through Seattle so that I might stop in for a time
at your KM Center
. I had hoped that I could meet you and your tribal officers and witness your process in your own Tribal Room. I presume you will be there.”

The General
had to quickly suppress some shocked words
. Instead, he said, “Oh, of course, absolutely. We’re always here. Come by any time.”

“I will be there at the Center at 11:50 AM, Seattle time. I look forward to it. For now, I have some things to attend to before I travel, so if you will excuse me…”

“Sure, yeah, I’ll excuse—” and Noh shot straight up into the air like a comet and disappeared.

Perry stared silently into space for a while. He
was replaying
the scene in his head, and important details began to occur to him in reverse order. First, he realized that he had said, “I’ll excuse you,” which was moronic. Second, he wrapped his head around the idea that he had been noticed by the most powerful virtual environment designer on the planet for sports tournament guesses that weren’t even meant to be real guesses. After two full minutes, the facts about Saturday’s schedule clicked into place.

“Oh no,” he whispered out loud to no one that could hear him. Noh’s visit would change everything
;
all their plans for Saturday would need to be rethought. But
the General
didn’t want to make an emotional decision. Good leaders didn’t make emotional decisions. He was tempted to hold onto the news until he had a good plan, but he knew that he couldn’t keep it to himself. He activated his comm link and summone
d his officers back to reality.

When t
he General informed them that Noh was coming to visit. 
“Woah” was the least among a long series of exclamations from the group.

“So, I guess we’re siding with the Ahtzon, then, right?” Killergremlin concluded.

“Why? I mean, not necessarily,”
said the General,
slowly
coming back around mentally to
his long-term ambitions.

“Stud, we can’t go in with an illegal alliance, in public, with the freakin’ Great Ahau literally looking over our necks. How would we do that?”

“Noh wouldn’t stop us. I think he would let us do what we want. It’s not like he’s going to go report us to the Ahtzon.”

“He wouldn’t have to. Kaah Mukul is his city, and we still don’t know anything about the Mascaab. We don’t know if they’re even in the city legally, and if they’re not, then Noh could kick us all out without even thinking about it. He could ban us for life for no reason at all
,
and we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
”

“Oh,
please
.” The General was getting frustrated with his second-in-command’s overreaction to the situation. “
Look, I have it on good authority that Noh isn’t going to interfere with the Mascaab situation. Besides—”

“Wait, what authority?” asked Killergremlin.

“A source,” the General sneered. “He’ll let us make our own decisions. And besides, he isn’t coming because of what we’re doing. He’s coming because of my bracket.”

“Huh?” said both of his
officers
.

“Typhoon150 said he had a line of contact
to a deep Ahtzon source
through these basketball brackets online. I told him what to write and he posted it under my name. Nothing happened with the code, and Typhoon is obviously MIA now, but the picks that were supposed to be part of the code turned out to guess all of the winning teams. It’s all a big fluke, but Noh kind of thinks I’m a prediction genius now or something.”
He said the last part somewhat self-consciously, although he wondered if he shouldn’t at least portray more pride.
The officers seemed unimpressed.

“It doesn’t matter,” the General concluded. “
For now, we have to focus on what to do about the Mascaab.”

“Well,” Killergremlin folded his arms, “I know you’re the genius and all, but telling the Ahtzon is still the safer play. We get a reward, and we don’t risk getting banned from Kaah Mukul.”

Psychopedia nodded. “I agree. Going with the Ahtzon is better.”

The General turned red, the corners of his mouth curving down as he exhaled through his nose. After some reflection, he had
to agree that they were right: telling the Ahtzon was the safer play. But he didn’t like doing the safe thing for safety’s sake, and he really didn’t like doing the safe thing under pressure. Nevertheless…

“OK,” he said at last. “But we should wait to do it until just before the demonstration on Saturday.”

“Why not just go now, save ourselves the time?” asked Killergremlin with an edge to his voice that the General didn’t appreciate.

“Because,” the General explained through gritted teeth, “we wouldn’t get the reward unless
it led to an
arrest, and if the Ahtzon know about it too soon, they might move too quickly, the Mascaab might notice and cancel, and then we wouldn’t have anything. We have to do it when we know that they can be caught, with them right in front of us.” They all agreed.
The discussion was over.

As Psychopedia began to categorically list all the questions that he had always wanted to ask Noh, the General’s mind dwelt on how much he didn’t like
their situation
. He continued thinking about tribes, alliances, dominance,
and surprises
for the rest of the meeting,
on the w
ay home,
and while lying in bed.
He finally
drifted off to sleep having reached only two conclusions. First, he needed to exercise more authority within. Too many people were making decisions for him, and too many factors were forcing his hand. Killergremlin was getting out of line. He had to maintain control.