by Larry Niven
There's a parable about horses and barn doors, he thought. Griffin should learn it.
37
The Final Assault
Friday, July 22, 2059 — 7:00 P.M.
Captain Cipher had packed his chillum with herbs and settled back to puff. Around him, his companions were enjoying the last of their rude, makeshift dinners. It was still break time, but he wanted to experiment.
He puffed hard a few times and then exhaled. The smoke hovered in the air…
And turned slowly red. And then black. And then red.
And sank down into the ground at his feet.
And seeped back up again. Not just at his feet, but "On your guard!" he screamed. "The graveyard is smoking, the graveyard is smoking!"
Tammi threw her dinner plate aside and had her staff in "guard" in the blink of an eye.
The Adventurers collected at the gazebo. Major Clavell peered out at the wisps of smoke rising from cracks in the mud. His fingers itched for a weapon. There was an extra sword in Tammi's bundle, and her eyes were elsewhere…
He stole it, hoisted it, feeling a terrible pleasure.
Top Nun bowed her head and pressed her palms together against the sides of Babalu-Aye's crutch. Golden light spilled from her fingertips, her eyes, her open mouth, and spread to surround them in a cocoon of protection.
Tammi kept her staff tucked under her right arm and clutched her magic necklace with her left. "Into place! Now!"
In the graveyard, smoky things appeared, wavered for a few instants, and then disappeared again. They leapfrogged from grave to ruptured grave. Will-o'-the-wisps? Vaguely human outlines quavered and became enormous, silently screaming mouths without lips or teeth or even faces to support them. They trembled to come closer and then backed away, like flames flickering in a breeze, or coyly flirtatious shadows. They circled the gazebo, locked in a ritualistic dance without music or rhythm.
Then one of the things broke free of the circle, attacking.
Tammi gripped the beads, and a bolt of light erupted from her chest, striking the creature a shattering blow. It shredded into fragments of black, leaving only an outline, which stood for a second and then collapsed.
"This is it!" Bishop said. Griffin swung his gaze to the man: he hadn't seen Bishop until that moment, wasn't sure exactly when he had reappeared.
In wedge formation, the Adventurers plowed toward a corner exit. The shadow things flitted in and out of existence, swooping on them, repulsed by the light.
"What have we got here?" Acacia panted.
"Don't know." Cipher said. "The Mayombreros have too many tricks right now."
They had almost reached the stairwell when the door burst open, and Thaddeus Dark stood before them.
He was massive, swollen, twisted with animalistic hungers, face distorted with rage and killing-fever. His fingers were crooked into beastlike talons. He shambled hunchbacked from the shadows with unmistakably lethal intent.
It would not do to laugh, Alex thought; and Thaddeus did look fearsome. Behind him came a flood of Mallbeasts.
They struck Top Nun's protective dome and rebounded. The shadow demons were utterly foiled, but the Mallbeasts raked with fang and claw, and some of them fought their way through.
There was a thunderous melee, a dizzying flux of swords and staffs and knives, fireballs, sizzling shafts of light, and the howls of the damned and dying.
Blood flowed freely, slicking the dirt and the cobblestone paths as they fought through the press, and Griffin found himself face to face with Thaddeus Dark.
A hideous growl and then a swipe of claws. Alex slashed with his sword. Dark grabbed the blade, wrenched it-a voice in Griffin's ear said, "Let it go!" — and pulled it from his hands. Thaddeus Dark brought the sword down across his knee. It snapped like a twig; he lunged at Griffin; Alex stumbled back, tripping over the bleeding body of Major Terry Clavell.
Clavell bore four diagonal slashes across his chest, and they pulsed blood in cardiac rhythm.
"Here…" he said weakly. "Take mine." He handed his sword to Alex, then went limp.
Alex spun and found himself shoulder to shoulder with Acacia. She had a long, limber fighting style, graceful as a dancer. He felt more like a trained bear, but was actually almost as quick. Together they smashed and cut and hacked their way through the ranks.
A female Mallbeast came at Acacia, and Griffin vaguely recognized the huge dark eyes and dark skin beneath the ashy complexion. This creature had once, in another life, been his friend, Millicent Summers. Scoundrels!
Acacia slashed at the transformed Millicent, and Millicent hissed and slashed in return. They circled each other, searching for openings.
Alex didn't have a chance to watch. Thaddeus Dark had found him again. The man-beast was fast, and strong, and "One side, Guide!" Bishop said behind him. "I'll take care of this."
Alex gritted his teeth and stepped back.
Bishop went after Thaddeus Dark with power bolts lancing from his aura, lightning blasts that struck Dark's flesh and exposed bone. The scraps of flesh actually attempted to knit themselves together again, and then again, and Dark roared, losing even more of his human countenance, becoming totally bestial as his lifeblood pulsed from a dozen wounds, as smoke drooled from gaping saucer-shaped burn holes.
Finally, Dark slumped to the ground, dead.
All about them, the tide seemed to be turning. Top Nun shouted, "Hoo-hoo!" and then The door crashed open again, and their own dead shambled forth.
Here was SJ, his torn body reanimated, his head slumped onto his right shoulder. His eyes burned with terrible new awareness. He carried a club studded with nails and broken glass. And there was Holly Frost, body mashed by some unimaginable pressure, eyes bulging from her head, sword trembling in her dead hand. There were Crystal Cofax, Friar Duck, Tamasan, "Aces" Wilde…
Shambling, lurching toward their former friends, hell-bent for blood.
Griffin found himself beside Top Nun. She and the crutch were glowing fiercely, extending power to her allies. Again and again, wounds that should have been fatal healed on Acacia or Tammi, and once on Griffin.
Demons, Mallbeasts, and zombies batted and scratched hungrily at her shield, struggling to get in, trying to claw their way to the meat…
SJ lurched against Top Nun's barrier, snapping his teeth. "Brains," he mumbled, black fluid drooling from his mouth. "More brains. Fresh brains." And slapped against the barrier again. "Sweetbreads?"
Some zombies were specially marked, sporting Virtual symbols on arms or legs that only Adventurers could see. Griffin struck a glowing head, and it burst. Spiders and snake-things sprayed out in ghastly profusion, and the zombie fell to its knees, twitching.
Alex leapt in, striking at the glowing designated limbs (just cut on the dotted line), getting a spectacular nauseating effect every time.
In the center of the fight, unable to contribute, were Mary-em, Alphonse, and Poule; Alphonse watched the action nervously-he had been disarmed, but it was getting too much. He pointed to Poule-Acacia had disarmed a Mallbeast, had a long and a short sword, and was wielding them like a Fury.
Poule came from behind and wrenched one of them from her hand. She gasped in surprise, seemed for a fraction of a second to consider fighting him for it, then came to her senses and turned back to the hungry dead.
"Cipher! Give Al his damned sword!" she screamed.
Cipher shucked it from his back without losing a word in his spell and tossed it to Al the B. Al snatched it, dropped it, almost lost his head picking it up, and then went on the attack.
And just in time. Top Nun had run out of juice. The golden shield failed, and she tumbled to her knees atop the crutch, exhausted. General Poule got an arm around her waist and carried her as if she were a child.
Alphonse was fighting like a fiend, but Alex saw him stop and adjust something at his belt. Griffin glimpsed a sandwich-sized Ziploc bag, and something within. A doll?
Then they had fought their way to
the door, and Tammi led the way down the stairs. The stairwell was narrow, lit from overhead by a row of little yellow bulbs. Shadows flowed from one landing to the next. They stopped to catch their breath, and Twan came lurching up the stairs.
She was still slicked with rancid water. Her mouth gaped. A chunk of meat was missing from her midsection, and viscera bulged within. Her almond eyes were alight with a terrible fire, and she was encrusted with filth. She was carrying two shields-two trash-can lids.
Her eyes found Tammi
Tammi came at her, spading, swinging her blade. One shield came up, then the other, in no obvious haste; but Twan had the sword trapped. Her foot came around and found nothing. Tammi had leapt back, dropping the sword.
A moment later it was over. Tammi had remembered her other defences. Flame burst from the Nommo crown and enveloped Twan. The undead woman slammed back into the water. Her eyes bulged from their sockets, and exploded Alex was saved from looking at the rest of it. The lights had gone out.
"They killed the power," Acacia whispered.
"Enough already with the darkness. A little light, maybe?" Top Nun's force field came to life again. It might have been too weak to offer protection, but illumination it could provide.
They continued past Twan's smoking corpse and found their way down to the Mall level.
The ceiling was cracked, and great mossy sprays of graveyard dirt hung from the cracks, matted with mud. Water ran in sticky puddles on the ground and had ruined many of the shops. It dripped into the central well with a steady echoing sewer sound.
Tammi and Acacia were on the point now, Bishop taking up the rear.
Griffin's eyes were as open as he could get them. He was watching everything around him.
Then came drumbeats. Hot, rhythmic, jungle sounds, hypnotically alive and compelling. It seemed to Griffin that they came from every corner of the third level at the same time.
"What do you think of that?" he whispered.
"Catchy. Makes you want to dance," Alphonse said, but he stood in fighting stance and his eyes were wide.
Captain Cipher's arms shot into the air. Another dome of light covered them, and the music was muted.
This murky light Griffln started to flip his Virtual shield up. "Keep shield in place," a voice whispered in his ear.
Then the Mayombreros came out of the murk. They charged from every angle; they were everywhere at once, slavering and hungry, a living carpet of enemies fighting and dying for their terrible cause.
The Adventurers fought as a unit now, and with the power of the talismans they were strong. They ripped a hole through the Mayombreros in a whirlwind of fire and steel. General Poule shook blood and sweat from his scalp, panting. "There!" he screamed, and pointed to an EXIT sign twenty feet away.
It was the last thing he said. In the next instant he was down, buried in a forest of fangs and ripping claws.
The rest reached the stairwell. Bishop slammed the door shut on a hairy arm. It dropped to the ground, writhing and trying to crawl to the attack. Cipher's magic burned it.
"Seal the door!" Bishop yelled. Magical bolts hit it from three directions, slagging it shut.
"That won't stop them," Acacia said, sagging against the wall.
"Yeah," Tammi said. "But it'll take them a minute. Maybe. And meanwhile…"
Alphonse was gasping. That had been close. Very close. Mayombrero talons had nearly clawed his belt loose.
And that wouldn't have worked at all. Not at all.
I've got something for you, Bishop. It's almost payday.
The base of the stairwell was abandoned. Tammi touched the closed door gingerly. As she did, they could hear the ringing of an alarm klaxon. Insistent. Frightening. "This is it," she whispered. "Everything depends on what happens next. Any last thoughts?"
There was an awful silence, in which only the klaxon spoke. Then Mary-em raised her hand.
Griffln stiffened. It would be good to hear the clarion call to battle, as spoken by this redoubtable Warrior-woman. What would she have to say? Words to stir the blood, no doubt. They all leaned close.
"Ah…" Mary-em said, mouth twisting into a rueful smile. "I think my water broke."
38
Endgame
Friday, July 22, 2059 8:23 P.M.
The upper door was being battered in, one shuddering crunch at a time. Cipher lit Oya's chillum pipe and puffed smoke to form a magical window. It showed them the Mallbeasts slamming their bodies mindlessly against the portal. Horribly, they seemed to ignore the tact that their own flesh was tearing, their own bones breaking with the effort.
But at the bottom of the stairs, a delicate miracle was taking place.
Tammi stood with her back to the Adventurers, scanning the landing above them. The Mayombreros would have to get through her first. Bishop and Acacia stood guard at the bottom. Top Nun focused all of her energies on the task of bringing Mary-em's child into the world.
"Push!" she coaxed. Mary-em gave a convincing imitation of a woman attempting to pass a watermelon. She bucked and writhed, she held her breath until she purpled, and she screamed and clawed the ground, gasping.
Then her abdomen glowed. Within that glow, curled sleepily, was the child of Chango, an ethereal infant who looked at them with huge star-child eyes and said, quite clearly, "I've changed my mind. I'm not coming out."
Mary-em blanked with shock. "What?"
"I'm perfectly comfortable right here, Mom."
She sputtered, searching for words that didn't come. "Well-what am I supposed to do?"
"Sit back," the babe suggested, "and watch the show."
Above them there was a rending shriek, the unmistakable cry of a door being wrenched from its hinges.
"Whatever you're gonna do, better make it fast!" Tammi yelled.
And something did happen. The light in Mary-em's stomach expanded, and expanded-became a seething cascade thrusting against the bottom door. Griffin watched disbelievingly as it bowed outward as if pushed by a giant's hand. Its hinges screeched, and it was ripped entirely away in a shower of plastic and metal, flying a dozen feet before clattering to the floor.
And then they were in the reactor room. The warning klaxon grew loud and insistent. "Warning," a synthesised voice said coldly. "The reactor has entered a terminal overload state. You have five minutes to initiate shutdown…"
The light contracted again and formed into Chango junior. Tucked safely in Mommy's tummy, he sucked his thumb. "Did I do good, Mom?"
"Ah… what can I say?"
"By the way I'm not fragile anymore. Neither are you."
Mary-em's nut-brown face creased in a smile. "You mean I can fight?"
"Does the term 'Mommy Tiger' mean anything to you?"
With a vast sigh of relief, Mary-em pulled her staff from her back, balanced it in her hand, and touched a hidden button. It expanded to a four-foot length.
"What'll I call you?" she asked.
"Junior will do. Kick butt, Mom."
She grinned a feral grin. "You gotta love 'im."
The reactor room was a living sea of swarming demonic forms, clotted like weeds in the Sargasso Sea. Only Junior's radiance kept them at bay.
A swarm of Mayombreros boiled down from the top of the stairs, howling. As Junior's light expanded and touched the other talismans, they burst into new light. The Staff of Oranyan talisman blazed at Acacia's neck. The Nommo crown, the Oggun Necklace, and the crutch of Babalu-Aye shone like captive stars.
The Adventurers pushed their way into the control room through a raging, foaming swarm of demons.
Top Nun raised her voice. "That reactor has such a mad on. Gonna get a lot worse, real quick."
"Can you protect us?" Griffin asked.
"Maybe yes, maybe no."
"Dammit, try!"
"Warning. You now have four minutes to initiate shutdown…"
Completely covered by a series of interlocking shields, Griffin and the surviving Adventurers fought their way slowly acro
ss the room. It was paved and walled in white tile. Stinking water covered the floor in puddles and trickled down the walls into the electrical connections, which sizzled and popped and reeked of burnt insulation.
The Mayombreros had backed away from the energy barrier. Tammi could slash at them through it, but they couldn't reach her. They watched with hungry eyes as the party edged across the floor.
On the far side of the room, there was a panel almost entirely shrouded with the wispy demonic forms. They seemed to feed at it, to leech upon it. As the Adventurers watched, the shadows suckled, expanded, divided and grew teeth, flew at them and were beaten back by the shields.
But with every attack, the shields buckled just a little bit more before regaining strength.
"Can we get close to it?" Bishop held his sword in both hands, blade slanting at a seventy-degree angle.
"I'm not sure," Top Nun said. She gasped and stumbled before she caught herself. She was buckling with the effort.
The reactor's main panel pulsed and glowed, and the air around it shimmered with demons. One managed to squeeze its way through the shields and attach itself to Top Nun's chest. She turned grey and then white, the life-force leaving her in a visible current. Then Mary-em's hand touched her arm. Color flowed back into Top Nun's face, and the vampiric demon crumbled to dust, fading to the ground.
"Warning, you now have three minutes to initiate shutdown sequence…"
A few more steps, and they had made it to the main panel. Light streamed from the Nommo crown atop Tammi's head, and the Plexiglas shield over the controls slid to the side.
Captain Cipher examined the motherboard. He touched a dial here, a switch there and the wall opened up.
Beyond it lay a steel-lined corridor. It hummed with energy. Water lay in puddles. At the hallway's end, lights glared bright enough to blind. Pulsing, deadly, irresistible. Hourglass Nekro symbols lined the walls.
''The motherboard has shorted!" Cipher said. "Damned Mayombreros have cut their own throats." The computer screen cleared, and a mathematical equation appeared, with a blinking cursor at its end. Cipher screamed. "I can't handle this now!"