Read Saga for Free Online

that the rest of us are just playing out of curiosity.”
    “Don’t you believe it. B.E. will be trying to win, too.”
    “Anyway, you can’t. It’s all broken. None of the NPCs that you are supposed to talk to are around.”
    “It’s a strange game. A lot stranger than Epic was.”
    “Yeah.” She was suddenly contemplative. “It’s dark. A dark, sinister city.”
    “It’s a shame we can’t both go on at the same time. I’d like to hang out with your character—she sounds great, whatever a ‘neo-punk’ is.”
    Injeborg shrugged. “Are you going to clip up?”
    “In a bit; Freya said she’d be on, and I’d like to let her know we were fine up here.”
    “We certainly are.” Injeborg leaned over and kissed him.
    A while later the fire had died down, although Erik was in no hurry to move—just having Injeborg beside him filled him with contentment.
    “Look.” She suddenly sat up and pointed toward the northern mountain peaks. “That must be it, the new satellite.”
    It took Erik a moment to see what she was pointing to, but she was right. A silver dot, shining steadily rather than glittering as the stars did, had come into view above the black line that divided the stars from the mountains. The satellite was moving slowly southward across the sky.
    “Why come all this way to give us Saga, but not speak to us?” Injeborg shook her head.
    “It’s automated.”
    “But they could address us through it. Or inside Saga.”
    “True.” Erik shrugged.
    “Do you think it’s from Earth?”
    “Yeah, it has to be. It wouldn’t be able to integrate with our system otherwise.”
    “Couldn’t it be another colony, like ours, but with the technology to send out satellites?”
    “Oh.” He hadn’t thought of that. “I suppose that’s possible. Did you try asking around in Saga?”
    “Yeah.” Injeborg laughed. “The NPCs just treat me like I’m completely crazy. You should hear me. ‘Excuse me, are you from Earth?’ ”
    “Hah, yeah. Their NPCs are very sophisticated, aren’t they? I had to escape from prison, and I was talking to this girl, I thought she was maybe a player, but she went kind of blank when I asked her. If someone was playing her, they would have talked to me.”
    For a while they watched the sky together. Far below them were one or two beacons of light from the nearest village, tiny orange dots on a cloth of black velvet, but above them the stars had never been clearer. The universe was rich and vibrant with sparkling silver energy. Eventually Erik’s eyes began to water. He gathered up the game controls.
    “I’m going to clip up inside the tent.”
    “Good idea.” Injeborg followed him in, pulling their sleeping bags after her.
    “See you in a while.” He lifted the goggles over his eyes.
     
    A fall, a dizzy fall that crashed through a wall of sound and color. When he looked up he was Cindella again, and it felt good.
    The meeting point that he had agreed with his mum was underneath a fountain, where paths dropped away to allow pedestrians to cross a square, untroubled by the aircars that glided swiftly along the roads above.
    She was already there, a woman dressed in black overalls, with a helmet beside her. Some kind of pilot, apparently, although she had not found the right type of vehicle for her start-up skills. In any case, Erik doubted that Freya cared much about the game; she was just using it to stay in touch.
    “Hi Mum, been here long?”
    “Hi Erik, what’s with the long coat?”
    “Oh.” Cindella looked down. She was clad in a big wrinkled raincoat. “I got into trouble with the police here the other day, so I thought I’d better cover up the swashbuckler outfit. It does stand out a bit.”
    “Yes, it does, just a bit.” The incredibly lifelike face of Freya’s avatar broke into a smile. “What’s the weather like up there—still dry, I hope?”
    “Not a cloud.” Cindella stood under a bright strip light beside the pilot. “What about you,