Page 90 of Blow Me Down
“I’m not going to sign any such thing,” Corbin said pleasantly.
I looked up from the parchment. “You’re not?”
“No.”
“But you said you’d stop the blockade.”
“I said I’d come here and discuss an end to the blockade, yes. I never agreed to forgo my intentions to take Turtle away from Bart.”
“But he’s not here. I am,” I pointed out.
“Yes, you are now, but what if he was to come back? Would you fight him for control of the island?”
The serious mien of Corbin’s face told me he was in deadly earnest about this subject. I decided that the time had come to get a few things straight.
“No, I wouldn’t fight him for control. He left me in charge until he returned.
It’s understood I would hand back the reins at such time as he comes back.”
“As I thought.” His fingers drummed on the arm of the chair. “And what about the mine?”
“The emerald mine?” I asked, a dull feeling cramping my stomach. I knew that money was the motivation for almost everyone in the game—the acquisition of it and the spending of it—but I had assumed that Corbin had endless resources as the game’s creator, and thus must be above such mundane things as acquiring wealth.
He nodded.
“Well, I talked to the town leaders about it, and they said it had been closed down a short while ago.”
“And?” he asked, his eyes burning on mine. I frowned, unsure what the intensity of his gaze meant. “What do you intend to do about it?”
“The mayor says that the mine brought prosperity to the island. I thought it would be good if it was reopened. This island has few natural resources and can’t even support the small population that’s here now. It just makes sense to use—after a detailed environmental impact assessment, naturally—the resources available. Within reason, of course. I certainly wouldn’t support any practice that provided the wholesale destruction of valuable resources and commodities.”
“You wouldn’t?” Corbin asked, a steely note in his voice. “Valuable resources such as, oh, say, people?”
“Huh?” The quill had dripped a big black inky blotch on the parchment. I set it down and gave Corbin a puzzled look. “What are you talking about? What people?”
“Try the sixty-five men that Bart sacrificed to his greed,” Corbin answered, his words sending a chill down my arms.
“Sixty-five men?”
“Surely you knew about that? Or has his stranglehold on this island precluded even the mention of the murder of sixty-five members of his crew?”
The chill swept up my arms to my back, making the skin on the back of my neck tighten with horror. “What are you talking about? Bart didn’t murder his crew—you did.”
It was Corbin’s turn to look stunned. “Iwhat?”
“Well… murder might be a bit harsh since everyone died in battle, but it was your ships that destroyed them. Pangloss told me all about how you tried to take Turtle’s Back and lured Bart’s men around to the other side of the island where you had set up a trap.”
The look on his face was indescribable, but it made my heart wrench regardless.
“You think I killed Bart’s crew? You really believe I’m capable of something like that?”
“It’s not a matter of capable, Corbin. They’re computer people—I knew you knew that, so I figured either you were testing out a function of the game, or you got a little too much into the role of scourge of the Seventh Sea. Are you telling me you didn’t kill Bart’s crew?”
“No, I did not kill them.” His eyes flashed as he jumped out of the chair, pacing the length of the room before turning and marching over to me. He leaned across the desk until his face was an inch from mine. “When Bart discovered that emeralds were the only thing this island produced, he started mining for them without any sort of expert help. And yes, before you ask, we did program in mining experts. They are expensive, though, so a player needs to have a good resource base to use them. But Bart didn’t. He sent team after team into the mines, regardless of their safety, all in the name of his desire for wealth. But one day his dreams came crashing down… along with the roof of the main shaft in the mine, killing all sixty-five members of his crew that he’d forced to dig emeralds.”
“Oh, my God,” I said, my stomach twisting in a sick ball. “How could that happen? It’s just a game—”
“An extremely complex game with literally hundreds of thousands of variables programmed for almost every eventuality. And since I believed that Bart was a computer player, I didn’t think anything of it at the time other than noting that his character chose to ignore a possible option for great wealth. But now I wonder if Paul hadn’t taken over Bart’s character right from the start.
