This Is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams Page A

morning—Dagmar had discovered that the hotel was now guarded by men with medieval weapons. They wore kilts over baggy pants, with short jackets, round pitji hats, and sashes in bright primary colors. The outfits of the young men were black, and of the older men, white. They carried long knives, spears, sticks, and blades on the ends of sticks. They clustered by the hotel entrances and smiled and bowed at anyone walking by. They were making a clear effort not to seem threatening.
    Mr. Tong had never reappeared, and his place seemed taken permanently by the young woman in the Muslim headdress. She told Dagmar that the hotel had hired a group of martial artists to secure the hotel.
    “What is your group called?” Dagmar asked. Maybe Tomer Zan would know something about them.
    “We are the Tanah Abang Bersih Jantung Association.” The young man touched his chest. “Bersih Jantung means ‘pure heart.’ ”
    “And the other part?”
    “Tanah Abang? That is our kampung—our neighborhood, near this hotel.” He looked at her with curiosity. “Do you like Miley Cyrus?” he asked.
    “Miley?” Dagmar said. “I think she’s swell.”
     
    “Bersih Jantung?” asked Tomer Zan that evening. “How do you spell it?”
    “It means ‘pure heart,’ ” Dagmar said.
    “What is the attitude of these people?” Zan asked. “Are they disciplined? Do you feel safe around them?”
    “They seem friendly. They like Miley Cyrus, for heaven’s sake! There are some older men in white who give the orders. They’re trying not to be scary.”
    “That’s good. Just remember that this can change at any second. You should be alert to any sign that their attitude is changing. Remember, these are the people that invented the word amok. Well, actually they call it mataglap, but amok is what they mean.”
    Great, Dagmar thought. Let’s by all means look inside that silver lining to find that all-consuming black hole.
    “How’s the helicopter?” she asked.
    “It should be in Singapore tomorrow,” said Zan.
    Dagmar wondered whether to tell Zan about the amateur efforts to rescue her that were centered on the Our Reality bulletin board, efforts she had been following online with great attention.
    She decided against it.
    Let them compete, she thought. Let the free market system prevail. Besides, she thought that Zan probably wasn’t into fan fiction.
     
    FROM: Desi
    My friend has checked with his school’s silat guru in Jakarta, and
he’s willing to help Dagmar. As an act of charity, they’ll take her in
and share their food with her, and they’ll take her anywhere that
doesn’t involve danger to their own people.
    Their style is called Bayangan Prajurit Pentjak Silat. My impression
is that they’ll take money if we give it to them, but their religion
obliges them to do charitable acts, so they don’t insist on being
paid.
    Here’s the problem. Dagmar’s hotel is being guarded by a group
that Bayangan Prajurit doesn’t get along with. The hotel guards are
allied with the military, and their organization is headed by a general.
Bayangan Prajurit are pro-democracy and they won’t cooperate
with the hotel guards in any way.
    Anybody have any ideas? Do we have to get Dagmar away from her
own guards?
     
    By the next morning a food shipment had arrived, and for breakfast, Dagmar gorged on Southeast Asia’s finest, freshest, most glorious fruit.
    The military were providing food to their allies in the city, and the Bersih Jantung were willing to supply the hotel. Dagmar presumed there were vast bribes involved, money shifting around offshore, where the banks still worked.
    There was an upside, Dagmar supposed, to dealing with a corrupt military.
     
    “What’s the word?” Dagmar asked.
    “Whatever the word is,” said Tomer Zan, “it’s not a good one. Our people have had a chance to look at this helicopter, and it’s a piece of shit. The maintenance logs are incomplete or nonsensical or forged in some obvious way, and