by Larry Niven
Sword and staff leapt and swished and clacked. Now the sounds of cheering from the gallery were piped in. From behind Acacia's eyes, Panthesilea exulted.
If only she'd brought Captain Cipher! The little man could certainly have handled Twan. But she was winning! Scenting the kill, the cheering throng above them was going nuts.
Block and spin, a lethal tornado of motion. Low feint, trap the staff down, kick to the head blocked with the other end of the staff Acacia saw her opportunity. She accepted a shattered rib to touch Tammi's right arm. Ribs and arm glowed red. Cursing, Tammi dropped her weapon.
Twan screamed, "Excellent!" The red ball dropped neatly into its hole.
The demon of the Maze appeared. "Your pleasure?"
Panthesilea froze, and Acacia's personality emerged, figuring the odds. Twan could kill her right then-her Magic User rating was high enough. Then she would stalk down Cipher.
But before the spell worked, Acacia would kill Tammi. For the first time in Crystal Maze history, one of the dread Troglodykes would die.
What would she do? Twan squinted up at Acacia owlishly. "Stand by," she said to the demon.
"As you wish," it hissed.
The crowd was silent.
"I offer a draw," Twan said.
"Not quite," Acacia reminded her. "If we quit now, it's even kills, but you're a few points up."
"Draw. Take it or leave it." Tammi's eyes wouldn't leave hers, wouldn't look to the left… she was about to leap for that damned staff. She'd continue the fight left-handed.
"Accepted," Acacia said, and lowered Panthesilea's sword.
5
The Phantom of Dream Park
The mezzanine thundered its applause, echoed by five thousand hands in surrounding hotels.
Dream Park's twenty-six hundred acres was surrounded by dozens of fantasy-theme hotels. Some were owned by Cowles Industries, many were not. All were touched with the Dream Park magic; all were a tram away from the most fabulous amusement park in the world. At the moment, most of them were operating at minimal capacity.
Dream Park was closed.
In thirty-six hours, four hundred of the Park's employees would be involved in the greatest Game in its history. For one week, the management would take a rare opportunity to shut down, to perform as much maintenance and overhaul work as they could.
The Arabian Nights Hotel was a prickly forest of minarets under a canopy of laughing jinn. It was raucously noisy now, swelled to capacity with Gaming enthusiasts.
If Dream Park, crown jewel of the Cowles empire, was momentarily subdued, it still burned in the night like far Damascus. At this precise moment, to one special observer, it seemed to be blazing upside down.
A man hung by his heels from the roof of the Arabian Nights. His calf-boots were snugged in a loop of synthetic filament the approximate thickness and weight of a spiderweb. It had a breaking strength of twenty-seven hundred kilograms.
His was an unusual figure: wasp-sleek, perfectly muscled, moving beautifully beneath a leotard-thin shadow-black jumpsuit.
Surprisingly, the wind blowing off the Mojave carried a mist of rain. It slicked his face, dropping the temperature to below fifty. He hadn't reacted to the heat, or to the exertion, and now had no reaction to the wet.
The sky above crackled with lightning and a distant roll of thunder. The wind stiffened, and the rain became a pounding curtain.
He hung, a spider weaving its web in a torrent. Unmindful, he watched the inverted phantasmagoria of Dream Park and sighed. It had been… what? Seven years?
He spoke a quiet word. His visor fogged. On its clouded interior was projected an image stolen from the Hyatt's security cameras. Excellent. The crowd was still congratulating Acacia on her rather plebeian draw.
The Troglodykes. Tammi Romati and her brat, and her lover.
Did they think the family that slays together stays together? He snickered.
He breathed another word into his helmet. A thermal sensor triggered. The pod at his belt scanned the room for sound and heat, bounced a beam around and off the wads, and then reconstructed the interior for his visor screen.
"Not home, Alphonse." Heat blurs, but nothing more recent than a half hour. Still some warmth in the bed, a feathery tangle of bodies, fading even as he watched.
Stepping out on the pregnant wife? Alphonse! I'm shocked! Does Saray know about this? A hint dropped, say, three hours before the beginning of California Voodoo, could result in a disturbing phone call from a hysterical, pregnant woman. A juicy confrontation might ensue, leading to split attention at a vital moment…
Sun-tzu said: The highest form of generalship is to disrupt the adversary's will to compete. The next highest is to disturb vital personal relationships and alliances.
He grinned and broke the five-digit emergency code that sealed the window. Another twelve seconds defeated the alarm system. The window slid open.
Silence.
He hitched his weight onto the sill, shook his foot out of the loop, and dove into the room. He rolled with perfect coordination and came to balance squatting on the balls of his feet, silent. Black against black. Drops of rainwater puddled on the carpet beneath him.
His reimaging system picked up sounds and heat impressions from the bed beyond, transmuting the wads to glass.
He giggled with pleasure and dried his hands on a used bathroom towel. A quick sweep found luggage. It was sealed with a mechanical lock, which the intruder broke in less time than most men would have spent fumbling for keys.
It contained nothing worth stealing. But there was another suitcase.
It was tougher. The lock looked the same, was the same, but the case didn't open. He probed patiently… there was another lock, hidden… There.
Inside, a few data cards. All right, then: Alphonse Nakagawa used a personal data system, and kept it with him at all times. But he would have encrypted backups.
The intruder didn't know what system his adversary would use, but he would break it.
And he had time. Alphonse, like a good little Loremaster, would be watching Acacia's lackluster performance over at the Hyatt. Most IFGS members could watch in their rooms, but the LMs had to be present for the kill, had to parade themselves in front of their public. This the intruder had counted on.
Swiftly, without any fuss, he drained the data, then replaced the cards in their pouch.
Proximity. People approaching from the hall.
The intruder's wraparound visor sparked with data. Auditory channels amplified, filtered, scanned, and attempted to identify. No match.
He snapped the luggage closed again and slid it back into its place.
Voices closer now. Could Alphonse have loaned his key or code number to some stranger?
The voices stopped in front of the door. The intruder sprang to the window, his foot in the loop. A whispered word started a remote circuit and triggered a tiny powerful motor that reeled him up and out of the room. A second word slid the window closed a moment before the door opened.
The intruder smiled coldly, suspended forty stories above the ground. The rain had stopped. He breathed deeply, watching the subdued lights of a closed amusement park as they dwindled even further.
He chortled melodramatically. "The Pink Panther is gone missing again, " he whispered, and it took all of his considerable self-control to keep from laughing with unabashed, urchin glee.
What a lovely evening.
Acacia Garcia was surrounded by admirers as she rode up in the Hyatt's elevators.
"Captain Cipher predicts we'll kick serious butt, milady."
"Tammi may have a different opinion, Cipher," she said. She was exhausted, and boggled that this strange little man would rather talk than crawl away somewhere and slip into a coma.
She couldn't bring herself to snap at him: his eyes were worshipful, as guileless as a puppy's. She placed her hand on his, and he almost swooned. "Listen. We make a good team?" She mustered enough strength to make intense eye contact. "
I need rest."
He tried to peek around her shoulder, peering into the room beyond. "He's in there, isn't he?"
Fatigue vanished momentarily. She stood hipshot, head canted to the side, smiling mischievously. "And just who are we talking about?"
"Oh, milady it's not a secret really, everybody knows you and Bishop are an item. When's he coming out?"
"Man of mystery." She changed the subject. "Corby, we'll be on public display tomorrow. I want you clean. That means soap and water and maybe a wire brush." She slid the door shut without waiting for a reply.
She sighed relief and collapsed with her back against the panel.
The room was entirely dark.
If she stood motionless and opened her senses, Acacia imagined that she could hear the slightly husky sound of his exhalations. She imagined that she could smell his sweat. And that thought triggered a wave of heat that drove away all fatigue.
For the thousandth time, she warred with her own instincts. Just turn around. Walk back out the door. It's not too late.
But then he'll never touch you again.
Lightly, she moved into the room, into the darkness.
In the dark a computer screen flickered pale green, like the face of a ghost. Its fluctuating luminescence flowed with numbers and letters and symbols.
Nigel Bishop was at work. She watched as his fingers manipulated the stylus and tapped at the keyboard, as he whispered into the throat monitor.
He was swathed in shadow, his wiry body sheathed in a leotard that was darker still: Occasionally the light reflected on his torso. He was whipcord slim, chest and back more knotted and corded, more sinewy and powerful, than any she had ever known except one.
And Bishop was wirier, denser than Alex Griffin. Quicker. Maybe not stronger. The thought of Bishop atop her, or she astride him, the pressure of his hands, the taste of his mouth, his faintly sweet and musky scent filling her senses…
She felt dizzy, and hollow, and confused. Did Acacia love Nigel? Or was Panthesilea in lust with the Bishop?
Sometimes she hated that hot-blooded bitch.
His hands were a blur, switching from longhand to typing as the mood struck him. The computer synthesised writing and shorthand typing and whispered cues seamlessly together. Without turning, he said, "You were superb, darling. Your variation on the Horshact maneuver was nonpareil. Excellent trial for your team. You pulled them together, and sacrificed them at just the right moments.''
He paused for effect, or perhaps lost in a parallel train of thought. She could never be sure which. "Did you know that you are just a teensy bit ruthless? "
"I wonder who I learned that from?" She came close enough to peer over his shoulder.
On the screen was data on each of the five teams entered in the California Voodoo Game. Bishop already knew his team, of course, and Acacia's team. But the other three were supposed to be mysteries, their identities and personae concealed until the last possible moment.
One face after another flicked onto the screen. Bishop tapped out notes.
"Did I keep them long enough?"
"Just," he said, bending back to work. A network of lines and curves appeared, fluctuated, and expanded from the screen into three-dimensional abstracts.
"What is that?"
"Preliminary chart," he said. "I now know the full IFGS records of every team." He grinned up at her, his smile brilliant in his night-dark face. His watch beeped. "Ah. Appointment time."
"Appointment?" she asked. Sudden sharp disappointment made her feel hot, flushed, and embarrassed.
And damn the bastard, he knew it. He grinned up at her again and shut down his computer. "Business before pleasure, sweetheart. The lady can't wait."
The lady can't wait. And I can? "Lady?"
"Tsk. Jealousy? From you?" He spun to his feet, swirling her into his arms with the same motion. "You, more than anyone, should know my aversion to ladies."
"Bastard," she whispered. He laughed, and with two fingertips brushed her eyes closed.
"Shhh," he said. He backed her into the bed and folded her down onto it. The sheets rustled against her neck as she sank down into them.
"Just quiet," he said. She shivered, knowing what was to come.
She felt the slight, liquid pressure of his lips and tongue as they drifted over her, touching her at the nape of her neck, behind her ears, brushing her eyelashes. His teeth nipped at her earlobes. Reflexively, her body began to arch, but his thumbs ran along the edge of her hips, pressing, calming them back down, as his mouth nipped and played along the long, warm column of bare throat.
His fingers twined in hers, pressed her hands into the bed as he caressed her for what seemed an hour, but could only have been a few minutes.
When her breath was explosive, her entire body shuddering and molten, she felt his weight leave the bed, and heard him say: "I'll be back." His voice was neutral. "Be ready for me."
The door sighed shut behind him. Acacia waited ten seconds, feeling the tension build inside her until she thought she would explode. Then she screamed in the soundproof room, shrieked until her throat ached, and hurled her shoe against the back of the closed door.
The rain-swept town of Yucca Valley, just south of Dream Park, was a warren of exploitation, a boomtown of auxiliary entertainments and service facilities designed to catch the trickleover from the world's largest tourist trap.
An astonishing variety of pleasures, ethereal or mundane, legal or illegal, could be found there. There was a thriving redlight district, as well as a Buddhist temple, a Methodist church, a Catholic mission, and a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Alcohol was available all over. Cocaine, marijuana, and tobacco could be had in every alley and parking lot along the central strip. Nigel Bishop breathed it in, revering in the sights and sounds and smells of human degradation.
They were pawns, every one of them. Even more amazingly, they liked being pawns. All the easier to use.
A hot-eyed pair of hustlers watched him as he pulled his car into the lot across from the Mate 'N' Switch Adult Emporium. He paid the toll and nosed his car up to an idle charging post. It clicked as the couplings mated and the trickle of current began.
The charging light blinked, splashing the bottom half of his face with green. Despite the darkness, he wore sunglasses of a tint similar to his visor.
He checked his watch. One fifty-five. In five minutes it would happen. He stepped out of the car, sniffing the air. It smelled humid but clean.
His watch beeped. His eyes scanned the Mate 'N' Switch. Just another fantasy sex trap, like any of a hundred in a fifty-mile radius of Dream Park, or a thousand others in southern California that catered to the very special needs of jaded flesh.
There was one difference, a difference known to only a select clientele. In addition to the usual mechanical accoutrements and procurement services, the Mate 'N' Switch offered a commodity increasingly rare in a high-security world: anonymity. They guaranteed it. Pay with cash, and they were notably lax about records, recalled no faces, and routed all phone messages through a cutoff satellite service subscribed to by a select high-security clientele worldwide.
The blocky stucco building was sleazily unassuming, but its customers had included some of the most powerful men and women in the world by their own very private admissions. The Mate 'N' Switch would never comment. Managers paid their fines for noncooperation, or served their time for contempt. When the place was eventually closed down, the shell corporation owning it would dissolve. Weeks or months later the owners would form a new shell and open a new hot-sheet special. Once again the word would spread along the grapevine that privacy was available.
Bishop flicked his cigarette away. It spun, striking sparks against the rain-slick pavement. He cinched his trench coat and crossed the street with studied casualness. His door lay in a shadowed alcove, away from street lamps.
He fed bills into a slot, carefully keeping his back to passing cars. The door opened into an ele
vator. He punched in a room number. The lift capsule shuttled him up a wall and around the edge of the building, finally coming to rest in a corner slot.
No Mate 'N' Switch guest ever needed to encounter another. Undoubtedly there were entrances even Bishop knew nothing about.
The door opened on an otherworldly garden, reeking with hot citrus. Glimpsed between flowering trees, fertile fields and green-speckled hills stretched off into the horizon. Flocks grazed. Birds cawed in looped melody.
The Garden of Eden? How declasse.
He whispered, "Scan," and the room's genuine dimensions appeared, banishing the phantasms.
It was a mere cubbyhole, an area marked off by the shadow of a single towering fig tree. Beneath it was spread a blanket.
And on the blanket sat Sharon Crayne. Her face was as expressionless as a waxwork.
"Bishop."
His gaze slid past her, examining the room, ignoring the illusion. Bathroom. Wet bar. A closet of possibilities. It opened for him, and he brushed the hanging garments with the back of his hand.
"Sharon. Delightful to see you again." He slid his hand into a long glove that felt like fur-lined silk. It breathed into his hand, tickling and caressing.
He lost the sensation of his arm. His hand felt long and graceful and fragile… feminine.
"This is really rather decadent," he said, smiling. "Shall I slip into something comfortable? And then you can be Adam, and slip into me. I'm certain that all of the anatomical bits are quite clever."
He pulled it free from the closet, holding it in front of him. It was some kind of stretch material. Breasts, now flaccid, would doubtless grow firm if he donned it. Was there a menu of shapes?
Her smile was mirthless, meaningless, tacked on like a doll's glass eyes. "Let's stick to business, shall we?"
"You're just no fun anymore." He slid the woman suit back into the closet and let the door shut and disappear.
Back in the garden.
Sharon spread a series of slender packets out on the blanket. "This is what you want," she said flatly.