In Death 30 - Fantasy in Death

chair. “You can’t do that. That’s my work. My property. You’ve got no right to do that.”
    “Tell it to your lawyer.”
    “Let’s just hold off. Let’s just wait.”
    “Are you saying you don’t want legal representation at this time?”
    “Yes. Let’s just talk this through.” He folded his hands again, but this time, Eve noted, his knuckles had whitened. “That work is valuable and complex. Your e-people aren’t going to get it. It’s years in the making. It’s mine.”
    “Yours? Not U-Play’s? You have a contract, Var. Share and share alike. Any of you develops something, it goes in the kitty.”
    “That doesn’t seem altogether fair,” Peabody added. “Not when you did this on your own. Something this brilliant.”
    “I would’ve shared it, but Bart . . . Look, I discussed all this with Bart and he didn’t want any part of it. So it’s mine. Exclusively.”
    “You told Bart about the work, the concept for the program?”
    “He’s the marketing genius. We could’ve revolutionized the market.”
    “But he was shortsighted.”
    “Games are games, that was Bart’s line. He couldn’t see expanding
    beyond that, couldn’t see the possibilities. He was all about the risks. So it’s mine. I did all the work, put in all the time—my own time.”
    “And melded it with the concept and technology in Fantastical,” Eve finished. “Not yours exclusively.” She pointed a finger. “You cheated.”
    “I did not!” Color rose, hot and bright, on his cheeks. “Look, he had a choice, and he made it. It’s all about choices, isn’t it? Every gamer decides what action to take, then plays it out.”
    “And Bart was a better gamer than you.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “He had a better focus, and looked at long-range strategy. You’re the detail man, and you tend to miss the big picture.”
    “He’s the one who’s dead,” Var snapped back.
    “Yeah, got me there. You set him up, and you took him out.”
    “Facts.” Var punched a finger on the table. “Bart took the disc. Bart plugged it. Bart played the game. I wasn’t there. Nobody forced him to play. He had a bad game, a terrible accident, but I’m not responsible. I created the program, worked the tech, but that’s like saying the guy who built that weapon you’re carrying is responsible when you zap somebody.”
    “He’s got a point.” Peabody nodded. “You’re just the brains behind it.”
    “That’s right.”
    “I guess you’re the smartest one of the four, too. None of them came up with anything close to what you did.”
    “They never think outside their box.” He drew four connecting lines in the air. “Four square.”
    “Frustrating for you, to be able to see so much more than they could.” Peabody sighed a little in sympathy. “Why didn’t you ever cut loose, just go out on your own? You didn’t need them.”
    He shrugged.
    “Or maybe you did,” Peabody continued. “I mean, a smart man knows he needs to use other people, pick their brains, let them handle some of the work so he can focus on what’s most important. You’ve known them a long time, worked with them, so you know their strengths and weaknesses, and how to use them for, you know, that big picture.”
    “You’ve got to make a living so you can do the work.”
    “Right. They supplied that. I get it. So when you gave Bart the disc, it was really just an experiment. You needed to see what would happen. To test it out with an actual human player.”
    “That’s right. He gives good game. I thought he’d last longer than . . . I couldn’t know,” he said, backtracking. “I wasn’t there.”
    “You couldn’t know when you gave Cill the disc either,” Peabody agreed. “You couldn’t know she’d fall. Plus, their weapons were as lethal as their opponents’. It wasn’t like you sent them in unarmed.”
    “It had to be fair.” Var leaned forward, focusing on Peabody. “Look, Bart played that scenario a million times. If he hadn’t figured out how to take out the Black Knight, it’s not my fault.”
    “How could it be? And if you’d told them they were plugging in your program, your new technology, it wouldn’t have been a valid experiment. A true gamer is supposed to believe it’s real, right?”
    “Exactly.” He gave the table a quick slap. “There’s no point otherwise.”
    “You had no responsibility to tell them about the program when you gave them the discs.”
    “No, I didn’t. What happened after that was