by Larry Niven
"What it boils down to, people, is that we're the best-balanced team that I could assemble. Cipher is our voodoka, so to speak-" Acacia weaved to the side and, despite Terrance's best parry, touched him along the ribs.
He was fast faster than she remembered, actually, but Panthesilea was the wind. Her parries and strikes were economical and unpredictable. Her every attack followed a new angle, created a new rhythm.
After a thirty-second display of swordsmanship that left the others speechless, she called it off.
" Suberbia. Gracias. Now-" She noted her heartbeat as it began its swift descent to a stable 50. "Cipher will save our hash as often as we save his. We protect him, and take his physical skills into account exactly as if we lived the adventure. From the moment we enter California Voodoo until it ends, I want everyone in character. That means during the breaks. That's at night during the rest. We think, eat, sleep as a team. And if you get lucky and tepee-creep to the bushes, by God you'd better screw in character, too."
They nodded, and chuckled a little.
A knock at the door, and a rounded older man with a peeling sunburn entered. "Elmo Whitman," he said. "I'm here for final check on Virtual diagnostics. Helmets and headsets, please."
Every player had a different headset, but in the most important particulars they were alike. Liquid-crystal visors could clear to become transparent; these gave each player his enhanced senses. Scouts could see paths, Wizards could see auras, Thieves were sensitive to treasure or hidden doors. These things appeared to them as overlays on the basic designs of prop, makeup, and hologram.
Steffie went first. Her helmet was ultralight, not much more than silvered goggles and earpieces. The complete illusion could be accurately conveyed despite the streamlined equipment.
El Whitman ran it through a complete diagnostic. "Please hum what you hear."
"La lala la lalala."
"All right. Fine. Next-"
Major Terry Clavell inhaled sharply as he entered the locker room. He tried to suppress a rather childish grin and, he believed, succeeded grandly.
His team looked ready. Clavell was wishing he knew them better.
Corporal Waters was in because of his IFGS experience, he'd never played in the armed forces war games. It might make all the difference.
Lieutenant Madonna Philips was a thirtyish, hatchet-faced brunette with a linebacker's drive and a cheerleader's body. She was here because Waters had insisted that they needed a woman. "Men and women keep secrets from each other in most cultures," he'd said. "If we're all men or all women, we'll miss some of the briefings."
Philips had silvered in fencing at the '48 Olympics before joining the Army. She was wearing a chain-mail bikini, as useless a piece of fighting gear as could be imagined, and not a man was looking at her narrow, angular face.
Mind on business. "Evil," he said sharply. "Is the team in order?"
General Harry "Evil" Poule snapped to attention and saluted. Clavell enjoyed the moment. Pulling rank on a general! At another place and time, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the general would certainly make him pay, but for now…
"Everything is in order, sir. Except that Black Elk needs a new ROM for his spell computer. Some of his blessings come out as seduction spells."
"Can't have that. Get on it."
The general was junior to Clavell in Gaming experience. He'd pulled rank to get in and he still wouldn't be there save for his willingness to retrain, to upgrade his sword- and stick-fighting; and literally because he might frighten the other
Gamers.
He was a frightening man. At fifty-four years of age he had seen combat in six tough NATO war games and countless simulation drills. He bore an awesome collection of scars, and he loomed over Clavell like a battered mountain.
Playing as Warrior and Scout, "Evil" Poule was a big, powerful blue-eyed blond of mainly Scots ancestry. Once he must have been built like a basketball player. Now his thin hair wrapped a fist-sized bald spot on the back of his head. His belly was grotesque but as hard as a drum. Poule would order junior lieutenants to punch him in the belly. It didn't sag; it rode squarely between his short ribs, making him look like he'd swallowed a smallish liberal Democrat.
Giving orders to a general was going to be awkward for Clavell. It would help if he could swallow his grin… "General, you've been in Gaming A… four times?"
" Yes sir, Blue Team all four times, won three."
"Have an opinion on what's coming?"
"Corporal Waters has studied a lot of Games within the last month. Waters?"
The youngest member of the team spoke up. "The usual mistake seems to be hotdogging. I expect that to be a problem on Bishop's team. Gamers tend to go for publicity, whereas our only mission is to win."
Clavell could trust that opinion: Waters was a Gaming addict. He had entered basic training stringy and soft. The Army had put muscle on him. He was still no Schwarzenegger, A., but he looked like he could trot through a war game without breathing hard.
Better yet-"Waters, you're here because you know Gaming Dome B. We've always used Gaming A for war games because it's bigger. This time they tell me-"
"They tell you right, sir." Waters remembered the sir, but he did like to interrupt. "Just because there are thirty of us doesn't mean they can't fit us all into B, or even something smaller. We could have a locked room mystery, or a Star Trek clone with transporter rooms, no real distances involved. Or they could use B and A and link them with a temporary tunnel. Bring in the Gravity Whip, too." The corporal grinned. "You just never know with Dream Park."
"You're familiar with the A Dome, too." Not a question: Waters's record showed that he'd played the South Seas Treasure Game eight years earlier, shortly before he joined the Army. "In fact, you played as an Engineer. You should have told me that. "
"No sir. My Engineer got killed out, dead-dead. There's nothing left, no skill points, no talents. I had to build my Scout/Thief from scratch."
Pity. And Waters didn't seem to want to talk about it. Clavell asked him, ''What do you think they'll hand us?"
"Sir, if you were a cartoonist, what could you do with a concept like California Voodoo?"
They debated the question. They had all been in Gaming A, four repeatedly. Waters hadn't been in there since the South Seas Treasure Game, but he'd been four times in B. Dream Park might give them permutations of A and B. secret connecting tunnels and trapdoors, sliding elevators and walkways, the possible integration of rides such as the Gravity Whip… they could hope for that. If Gamers found themselves unexpectedly required to perform in free-fall, Army would win that test.
The infernal ingenuity of Dream Park filled their time while they stretched, and dropped afterthought items into their packs, and rechecked each other's equipment and their own.
Expect anything.
Clavell believed he was ready for that.
Acacia took the elevator down. The tube car disengaged, slid sideways into another slot, and presently opened into the train station.
The tension had started to build. Acacia's stomach ate at her. She couldn't think or plan or project into the future now. Only the next moment was real.
The train was small. Five small shuttle cars labeled TexMits, U of C, Gen-Dyn, Army, Apple and a bubble-domed club car hovered two feet above a maglev rail sheathed in non-conducting foam plastic.
There were hundreds of spectators standing behind the security lines. Most wore costumes, though the quality varied from hologram-augmented alien creatures to twenty feet of Doctor Who scarf. They cheered and chanted the names of their favorites and held placards aloft. Some UClink, TEX-MITS were mere scrawls, or elaborate calligraphy in several colors. Some from GEN-DYN were 3-D displays. Psychedelic Day-Glo 1960s letters twisted in the air to spell ARMY! A toothy apple chewed up Apple Computer rivals and snapped at spectators.
Acacia's mood took a palpable upswing. Difficult not to, with such a send-off!
With very conscious grace she swayed to the r
ear of the platform. Without breaking stride she tossed her hair over her shoulder, a much-practiced gesture that brought all of the carefully nurtured highlights to the fore. In the same motion she stooped and entered the U of C compartment with the easy flow of an eel.
Her team followed. They stowed their gear under the seats. Captain Cipher reclined his chair, ready to snatch a last nap, while the rest gazed out the windows at the crowd.
Steffie said, "Quite a show, eh?"
"Quite a show." Acacia felt her skin tingle. Regardless of the surroundings, regardless of what anything seemed to be, the Game had begun.
Laughter and a tinkle of glasses echoed down the corridor. The connecting passageways were open. Somewhat curious, she motioned to the others, and together they streamed down the passageway to the club car.
They had to go past the other compartments. Two cars were still empty, but backpacks, helmets, and weapons were scattered on the seats of the Army and Texas Instruments-Mitsubishi cars. In the club car they found others waiting.
The Army players had clustered along one side of the bar, as if for defence. Five men and one woman, with Lieutenant Philips in the center. She'd changed out of that silly chain-mail outfit. A tall woman with long bones and long, hard muscles, she was dressed for rugged terrain, with lots of pockets and a saber on her back-hey, that chain-mail bikini was just a ploy, wasn't it? A fairly sophisticated one.
Beneath their expected stiffness the Army boys looked uneasy-except one. One had dancing eyes and a smile just for Panthesilea.
She said, "Congratulations, Corporal."
He glanced at his shoulders. "No stripes showing."
"I hear things. Damn, you grew muscles! You look a lot better than last time we met. Then again, you were two days' dead."
"Then again, I was a wimp. That's why I joined up. Today I think I can outrun you, Panthesilea. "
She laughed. "You are more than welcome to try, Waters. Meanwhile, what do you suppose is happening to your odds in Vegas?" She rounded the bar without waiting for an answer.
She knew the Tex-Mits crew by names and rankings, knew their Gaming histories in detail, even if she didn't know them all as individuals. Ozzie the Pike, bearded and capped in steel with a Virtual visor, grinned at her in open admiration, a feedback loop that pleased them both. Friar Duck smiled at her and babbled happily, the buzzing gibberish of a still-famous movie star. But Alphonse Nakagawa sprawled back against the wet bar, sipping orange juice, loose and gawky, hostile grey eyes following her.
"Small world. Panthesilea herself."
His apparent awkwardness didn't deceive her. Acacia had seen Al the Barbarian in recorded combat. He seemed to coast on invisible ice skates. He had incongruously blue eyes, and a deep, golden tan to go with that jarring accent.
She said, " No, we sent this duplicate instead. Much cheaper, but still too good for you."
"I ain't drunk enough to listen to this shit." His hostility made Acacia uneasy. Friar Duck, embarrassed, turned back to the bar.
So: this concerned nothing that Al the B could share with his team. Could he know that Nigel had been in his room? With anything more than a suspicion, he could complain to the IFGS.
So why the attitude? At this stage in the Game, wouldn't he normally be seeking an alliance? Or pretending to? Unless he had some unbeatable advantage…
Unless he could set her to watching and wondering about Al the B, instead of reacting to current events as in Nigel's translation of The Art of War. The book was thousands of years old, by a Chinese named Sun-tzu, and was still relevant: "Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength…"
If Alphonse simulated anger, he might only be trying to make her think he was out of control.
She smiled blissfully at him.
The Troglodykes were already squeezing through into the club car. Acacia did a quick survey. There was room for maybe fifty people, if they were all friendly, if only a handful wanted to sit. Normally that would mean room for, oh, twenty-five Gamers.
The crowding could be deliberate. No room to fight, but they could bicker.
A bar box slid down the counter and politely inquired as to her choice of beverage. She asked for fizzy grape juice, and it spritzed her a merry concoction, swiveling to place it before her.
She sauntered up to Tammi Romati, who was peering out the window. "And so it begins."
She got a wolfish smile in return. "Place your bets, Panthesilea. Where are we being taken?"
Acacia shrugged. "Nowhere in Dream Park. The Army team's going nuts. Fifty man-years of experience in Gaming A, straight into the recycler."
"I mean in Game reality."
"California Voodoo Game. Voodoo as it i s practiced in California. Usually called santeria? Our notes say it has wealthy patrons. Out of the barrio and into the boardroom."
"Is that an answer?"
"No hablo ingles," Acacia said. And she almost leapt up as Nigel entered the car.
There was a momentary hush. Then conversations returned to their former level. The rest of the Gen-Dyn team followed him in. Holly Frost, Thief, remembered her and lifted a spear in salute. Acacia hadn't met Trevor Stone or
Tamasan, the Japanese-looking Shinto priest; but she'd read their dossiers. The Radichevs were impressively muscled Warriors, a married couple who Gamed and fought as a team, and generally died that way, too. Why had Nigel picked them? Or had Gen-Dyn assigned them, like Trevor Stone?
The door sealed shut behind them, and Nigel worked his way up to the front, making eye contacts as he came.
Al the Barbarian… His eyes lit, burned on Nigel, and then he turned his back. Suppressed rage? Jealousy? Al might know what we did, she reminded herself. Watch your back.
With a barely audible hum, the train began to move.
Nigel gave Acacia a single wolfish grin before he turned to the bar just in time to miss what was happening beyond the windows.
9
"Do We See This?"
Thursday, July 21, 2059 7:16 A.M.
Well-wishers, Gamers, media gadflies… all waved good-bye. But in the last twenty seconds or so before the train slid into darkness, they'd mutated subtly.
Acacia could see it in their stance (beaten down, prematurely old), their clothing (primitive, crudely made), the plaintive expressions on their gaunt faces. Crude placards in paint or charcoal on wooden boards read "Godspeed to our united forces," "Power to the Five Peoples!'' "Crystal, come back to us."
Then they were lost in darkness. The mundane world slipped away from her. If she were to survive here, Acacia had to become Panthesilea, she of a dozen epochs, a hundred missions, and a thousand deadly skills.
The train floated silently through a black tunnel. A voice said, "Somebody get the lights?"
Tammi bellowed, "Lights!'' The car shuddered slightly. "Lights? Dammit."
The sensors didn't respond to a verbal command. Circles of golden light glimmered in the hands of various players: here a magic aura, there a flashlight, there a corpse candle. Grins were yellow-white arcs. It begins!
"All right. Let's see if I can find the circuit," Corporal S. J. Waters volunteered. He reached high, along the rim of the roof, for something his special vision must have pointed out: a metal panel Acacia hadn't noticed at all. He thumbed it open. He jiggled a few wires, and one of the big windows lit up and became a vidscreen.
A somber woman dressed in grey tones faced them across a worn, wooden desk. Her shoulders were slumped with care, her face heavily lined. She looked like George Washington in drag. "Greetings, once again," she said. Her eyes and chin flicked sideways for an instant, as if she feared eavesdroppers.
An uneasy ripple of murmurs ran through the club car. The image said, "I must add a few words to what has gone before-"
Army Lieutenant Madonna Philips snapped, "Before what?"
"Quiet!" Bishop commanded. Philips glared.
"…true that you must coop
erate with the other four cohorts. But you six have a greater obligation, and a greater destiny. "
Acacia's mind whirred. "California Voodoo," the game's artfully vague information packet, had arrived on her fax a week earlier, although the title had been known for months. Twenty single-spaced pages contained just enough information to tantalize, and to send frantic Loremasters on a frenzied last-minute data hunt.
But this was the real briefing. She triggered a recorder at her belt pod, knowing that a dozen other hands were doing the same thing.
So far, she was pretty certain that the vid had been "accidentally" triggered. This was to have played to only one… cohort. She glanced down the corridor. Screens were alight in the shuttle cars, too.
"Two hundred years ago, the Age of Miracles ended. Earthquakes, pollution, global warming, and famine struck a world already drastically overpopulated. Nuclear, chemical, and genetic warfare followed. Nations fell, supplanted by isolated states and townships. Through years of delicate negotiating, diplomatic communication between the five great North American enclaves has been reestablished but much unpleasant history has had to be censored to control public opinion. What I was pledged not to say to you, but find I must say, is: Do not trust the others."
A hush stole over the car. Beneath Acacia's feet the train hummed toward its destination. Vaguely, through the partial shadows, she saw the silhouettes of other Adventurers as they nodded uneasily. Teeth gleamed.
"Meacham's Folly is the world's last hope, true enough. There, across the desert, lies the last working power plant capable of running a city. We had neither the resources to reach it, nor the means, until a robot repair system on the old tramway was activated. That required cooperation among the five enclaves. It is therefore reasonable and right that each enclave send emissaries to MIMIC.
"It is also prudent. With the fall of technology, the old magic returned with a vengeance. Arcane techniques useless for centuries have become viable once again. Whether due to human mutation or a shift in the Earth's magnetic field, no one knows. But you have as many magicians and clerics among you as soldiers and scouts.