by Larry Niven
There followed a momentary pause, while the visual field blanked out. Then another face appeared. Dark hair, strong cheekbones, Polynesian eyes. A far prettier face, far more welcome.
“Kendra!” Scotty said, and Wayne could hear the naked relief in the big man’s voice.
“Scotty.” Whatever their history might have been, the affection in her voice was clear. Dammit, he wanted that for himself. If there was nothing else this adventure had taught Wayne, it was that he wanted someone to care like that.
Darla?
She was close behind him, and her hand stole into his. He pressed it.
“Scotty,” Kendra continued. “Piering and a rescue team are down in the tunnel, on the far side of the airlock. If you can disarm the bomb, they can get in. What do you think?” Her smile looked just a little desperate and sick. “Could bomb disposal be part of that wild, wide, wonderful training of yours?”
“Ah…” Scotty looked a little scared, and Wayne saw that the answer was no.
Darla raised her hand. “Listen. If this bomb is like everything else, it was jerry-rigged. Can’t be terribly sophisticated.”
“If it was made here, then…” Kendra’s eyes closed for a moment. “Maybe I have someone who can tell us what we need. Give me ten minutes, will you?”
“If we can.”
“I’ll get right back.”
The air in Toby McCauley’s holding room was stifling, almost as if it had gelled thick with fear. When Kendra entered, he was staring at his fingers.
Very slowly, he turned to look at her. That mischievous, cocky light in his eye was dead and gone. “What do you want now? I already told you everything I have to say.”
“I’m thinking that you might want to say a little more,” Kendra said. “There seems to be an explosive device attached to the airlock leading from the aquifer into the maintenance room.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” McCauley said, his long face had taken on a greenish pallor, but managed to stay neutral at the moment.
“I know, I know,” Kendra said. “But there’s something you need to know. So far, no one outside my staff knows what you have done.”
“What I’m suspected of doing,” he corrected, without much enthusiasm.
“Not to us. But here’s the thing. My husband is down there. And he is going to try to dismantle that bomb. And if he dies…” Kendra stopped herself, surprised at the lump that had materialized in her throat. “If Scotty dies, I swear that all and any evidence needed to convict you in the court of public opinion will materialize, and be mysteriously leaked far and wide. I further promise you that you will be moved, in a low-security vehicle, to a holding cell in the mining district. And there will be no pressure suit or emergency supplies in that vehicle.” She leaned closer. “I promise you that that vehicle will never make it. It will break down… or be hijacked… or spring a mysterious leak. Look at me, Toby. Look at me.”
He forced himself to face her. Stared into her eyes, and blinked.
“We’ve played poker for years. I usually lose. You know me, Toby. I’m not a good bluffer. Am I bluffing now?”
Toby blinked again, and looked away. “What if I did have something to say?” The words came slowly, like pulling teeth. “What happens then?”
“I swear to you that if you can help us, you will be allowed to leave Luna. Health reasons. You’ll have your career, and your reputation. I will have no reason to want you prosecuted… so long as you leave.”
Toby said, “They brought their own detonator. It looked like an old wristwatch.”
“Which door is mined?” Scotty asked, when Kendra was back on the line.
“Big Figjam said just the inner door. Our side. You should be able to enter the chamber, from your side.” She ran down the rest of what she had learned from McCauley, while Scotty listened intently.
“What’s the length of the tunnel?” he asked.
“Fifty meters. Why…” Then sudden comprehension. “Oh, right. Your breathing equipment is broken.”
“We’ll manage it, Kendra. I’ll make contact when we’re in.”
“You be safe,” she said.
He nodded, giving her a cocky smile. Then when she clicked off he turned to Darla. “Can you hold your breath that long?” Scotty was already peeling off his pants.
“Hey, cowboy. I’m a mermaid, remember?”
Together, the two of them stripped until Darla was pink plumpness in panties and bra, and Scotty buff in briefs. “Fifty meters,” Scotty said. “That’s Special Forces stuff.”
Darla poked a finger at his gut. “Ow. Smuggling drywall there? Good swimmer?”
“Yeah.” He could hear the voice in his head clearly: But are you that good?
She nodded. “All right. Hyperventilate to get your lungs full. The trick will be to stay relaxed. Don’t panic, and we might just get through this. We have to swim it, get into the chamber, and trigger the cycle. Can you do that?”
“Easy,” he lied.
“Not to be a wet blanket,” Mickey said. “But what if they’ve sealed the door? Or you can’t open it?”
“Then we’ll have to swim back,” Darla said.
Her smile didn’t mask the fear in her eyes. And suddenly, Wayne’s heart broke.
Standing there in her underwear, shivering in the cold, Darla seemed so brave, so strong, so very beautiful to him. He went to her and held her. “When this is over. If we’re still-”
“When this is over,” she said. “I’m coming back.”
“Right,” he said. “Right.” Wayne scratched his head, sighing. “Look. I don’t know if it would make more sense for me to invite you down, or you to invite me to stay up here for a while. But I think… I think I’d like to find out what there is between us.”
She laid the softness of her palm along his cheek, a fond gesture. “Sex,” she said. “And right now, I could use a lot more of that. We’ll work out the details later.”
He sighed, deeply. “You’ve got it,” he said.
And kissed her. And no kiss of his life had ever been sweeter, or more sincere.
For three minutes Scotty had been breathing deep and exhaling shallow. He gulped air, exhaled half of it, took another and then another until he felt full almost to bursting, and light-headed. Let it out. Then inhaled deeply again.
He and Darla nodded to each other, waved to their companions, and then dove.
The water was chilly but not freezing. If the power had been off here, the cold might have given him muscle-lock. The aquifer was intended for recreation. They must have sealed off part, and warmed it with induction coils.
He followed Darla’s lead, diving deep into the pool, strong smooth strokes taking them down. His ears didn’t hurt. Lunar gravity made for less pressure. The blue lights were mounted at the bottom, down through a forest of what simply had to be fake coral.
A startling sight: Seahorse-type creatures as big as real horses, anchored deep, motionless, waiting to play.
Ali’s horses. Briefly he wondered: What was supposed to have happened here? How would the game have gone, barring pirates?
No time. He swam on: Darla was an eel, thank God, and seemed to know just where she was going, down into a tunnel halfway to the bottom. Fifty meters. All right…
He clamped his mind down on doubt and swam on.
Angelique clapped her hands together. “All right, everyone! We can’t just wait for help. We need to prepare, in case the pirates arrive before the marines.”
She looked up into the Game Master’s cloud. “Xavier-what do we have in terms of control?”
“Just about everything,” he said. “Including a few things that you would have picked up along the way.”
“Good,” she said. “I need all the help you can give us. We want to make the next few minutes absolute hell for the pirates, and hope that that’s enough. It should be easy. When they drop into the water they’ll be dead meat.”
“Hold up a minute, love. I can’t
see them in the ‘Little Wars’ scenario. They may have used the other mirror.”
“Other mirror?”
Something alive and frantic kicked in Scotty’s chest, struggling to win freedom. Not pain. Not yet. But pain was on its way. And soon after pain, panic. Then blackness, and death.
Hewn from bedrock, the underwater tunnel seemed to go on forever, little rows of blinking yellow lights lining the sides like reflective speedbumps on an endless desert road. Fifty meters? Seemed more like five hundred. The more they swam, the farther away that door seemed. Had to be an oxygen-debt hallucination, but still he wondered: Could Kendra have been wrong? Was it possible she had misread the specs, sending him and Darla to their deaths?
Then he saw the end of the tunnel, blessedly close at hand.
Darla scanned it briefly, then punched in a code.
Every disastrous scenario imaginable flashed through his mind in those seconds. She had the wrong code. The pirates had sabotaged the door, McCauley had lied about their intentions. He would drown here in this tunnel, his lungs exploding as he The door slid open. They entered, and the door slid shut behind them. The world spun, darkness and blood pounding at his vision. When the water began to drain from the chamber he braced his arms and legs against the walls, lifted his head up above the level of the water, sucked, spat, and gulped air.
Damn, that tasted good. If he’d been the first man to drown on the Moon, Saint Peter might have laughed him out of heaven.
As the water was pumped out through the floor grill, Darla was already crouched at the inner door, studying a package composed of a bundle of red clay-like bricks bound with wire and anchored to the door with some kind of clear, hard resinous substance. A dial the size and appearance of a wristwatch was set into it, anchored with wires and covered with more of that clear resin. Darla’s expression was glum indeed.
“Well?” Scotty asked.
“With the right tools… maybe. But I’m not sure at all. This isn’t makeshift, like I’d hoped. McCauley said they’d smuggled up some kind of fancy timer, and he’d spliced it into a bundle of mining explosive.” Darla had spoken with McCauley for almost a minute, and one tense, terse conversation it had been. “Someone knew exactly what they were planning to do, and smuggled a piece of equipment up from Earth. This”-she pointed at the watch-“started life as a wristwatch. The display is wonky. It’s been seriously reprogrammed. They turned it into a movement sensor. I’m guessing that it’s also sensitive to a range of other stimuli. Pure pro.”
“Can you beat it?”
“Maybe,” she said. She felt around her belt pod, extracted her multitool. “I’m not sure. Judging from this readout… I’d say it’s not very forgiving.”
“What can I do?” Scotty asked. “Is there anything I can do?” He was feeling useless, and there was no worse feeling in a crisis.
“Yes. Get the hell out of here,” she said.
Scotty pressed his face against the fist-sized viewport. Through inches of composition plastic, he waved at the room on the other side.
A flurry of movement, and Max Piering appeared on the window’s far side. Despite the tension, Scotty smiled, recognizing Professor Cavor’s face shorn of facial hair. Piering motioned down to the communications link on the inner door.
Scotty felt nervous about triggering it. “Darla?”
“Go for it. I think McCauley told the truth about this whole setup.”
He turned it on.
“How are you doing in there?” Piering asked. Scotty hadn’t seen the man in years, not since shortly after the accident that had stolen his Moon legs.
“Not bad. Could be a lot better.”
“Can you see the device?”
Darla nodded. “Looks like it’s synched into the door. Mechanics, electronics-try anything, and it will go off. Boom.”
“Can you deactivate it?”
“Same question, same answer. Maybe. With the right tools. All I have is my multi. I’m really not sure. But I’ll try.”
“What can we do out here?”
“Get back. Way back,” she said. “In case I’m wrong.” She turned and looked at Scotty. “You, too, cowboy. I think they have more use for you up top.”
Scotty nodded. He would have backed away from her, but the chamber was too small for any effective backing. “If you’re sure.”
“I don’t think I’m sending you to a picnic, mister. Go on.”
Scotty extended his hand, and Darla shook it, hard. Was she saying good-bye? “Good gaming with you,” he said.
“Good gaming with you, too,” she replied. “Take a deep breath.”
37
Final Gambit
1841 hours
Scotty emerged from the pool, water thick as syrup sliding slowly from his face. The cool air bristled with magic. Angelique danced five feet above the ground, levitated by a pillar of light flowing from Sharmela’s palms. He had to look very closely indeed to detect the tiny blur of the “real” Angelique, concealed in radiance.
Ali held both hands in front of him, projecting a wall of shimmering crystal. “I speak to the Gods of my fathers,” he said, “who peopled the Earth in the First Days. Children of Air and Water and Earth. I call upon Zarabanda, God of iron, God of my fathers long ago, to give me strength! I throw off the colonial shackles, and step into my true power as a warrior of my people!” He held his arms up, waiting…
And waiting…
Nothing.
Scotty shivered, wiping himself dry with his shirt, and then slipping his pants back on. Soggy. “What… was that?”
Ali shrugged. “If this is to be my last stand,” he said, “I want to die as a hero of my people, not just another African soldier loyal to one European crown or another.”
“A little late to get political, isn’t it? And… this isn’t a game, Ali-”
The boy laughed at him, but the tone was bitter. “Oh, it’s a game. This entire thing is a game designed to trap my father. He escaped their grasp, but I have been caught. You have been caught. All of you-”
The gamers ceased their practice to listen. Ali seemed to have grown somehow, easily commanding their attention. “All of you!” he said. “Whatever happens here today, know that Prince Ali knows what you have done for him. Know that I will not forget, and that I will not forget you, any of you.”
Sharmela slapped his shoulder, hard. “Nor I you, young mage. You may have concealed secrets, but you have carried yourself with honor.”
She extended her hand to him, and he took it. Wayne placed his hand atop hers. “All of us. We all came from distant lands, at the call of our Queen. And the adventure we have shared went beyond our dreams.”
Scotty still couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. This wasn’t a game! It was…
Oh, what the hell. Some games are played for very high stakes. This time they were betting every marble they had. If there was a right more sacred than the ability to choose the manner of one’s own death, he didn’t know what it could be. He watched as, one at a time, they clapped their hands down one upon the other in a vow of fealty. “We stand together,” Mickey said, and put his hands down. Followed by Maud. And Angelique. They were a clan of a kind, making the very best of the very worst. Something dark and magical glittered in their eyes. For the first time he thought he grasped the logic of it all.
Angelique turned and extended her hand to Scotty. “Come on, big guy. Get in here.”
Scotty hesitated, and then felt the voice inside him say: Oh, why not.
And he put his hand onto the pile. Win, lose or draw, this had been one hell of a game.
“And I,” he said, impressed by the timbre of his voice. “A mere thief, pledge my all in this mortal combat. We stand together!”
The others nodded, a circle of power, well pleased with what they had wrought.
Xavier, a floating bald god, smiled down upon them. “I will help where I can,” he said. His expression grew more serious. “And get ready. Griffin and Gibso
n, you are both thieves. Your power is stealth. You would have found something right out of Wells, given the right path-” Xavier jerked. “I hear them. Take your places. The pirates are coming.”
Celeste moved slowly, unwilling to take even the slightest chance that some hidden trap or concealed antechamber hewn into the lunar rock or constructed by Cowles engineers might provide comfort and safety to her prey.
They were her prey now, especially that smug bastard Griffin. Nothing else mattered. She would see them all dead, all but Ali… if that was possible.
Kill them all.
Shotz, darling dead Alexander, would not have had that. He would say that she had obligations to her men, to those who had followed him in the name of a country that would never be. An artificial island that might have been their home.
Madness.
She fought the sound of a giggle, a tickle in the back of her throat that triggered the urge to laugh aloud. That would be insane, wouldn’t it?
The five men remaining to her followed behind as they combed the stage, this strange setting decorated like an English manor, seeking signs of life. A game of some kind had been played here, one for which the rules were uncertain. Cannons, strange toy tripods and inanimate costumed grubs were strewn about, as if awaiting commands for a new awakening.
“What is all of this?” Fujita said, crossbow cradled in his huge hands like a child’s toy. The wound in the big man’s side had been bandaged, but it seeped red. Still, he was more than a match for three of these play-acting morons.
“More nonsense,” she said. “I am tired of this fantasy. We will finish this, and go home.”
No one dared disagree aloud, but she could read their expressions. None of them seriously believed that they were going home, regardless of what happened here.
They circled the room and returned to near the big entrance door. Standing between barber’s mirrors, she saw two infinite lines of her own images… skewed. One mirror was ajar, just by a crack. “Here,” she said.