The California Voodoo Game dp-3

by Larry Niven

  Bishop gave Alex a meaningless smile and continued to examine the apartment. "Isn't there something you'd like to say?" Bishop asked.

  Waiting for me to make a move, Alex thought. Doesn't want an assault charge. No breaking and entering. Smart.

  Alex poured himself a mug of coffee and went out onto the balcony. His unit was on a slope, and he gazed out over the rolling hills. It was a good life, all in all. He had done stupid things, risky things, and become many different men along the way. And all of those moments had brought him here, to this.

  "Yes." Alex said. He nosed at the coffee, but didn't sample it. It was still much too hot to drink. "I'd like to say something. I can't prove it, but we both know you killed Sharon Crayne. I don't know whether I loved her or not. I don't know if it could have worked. But she was young, and lovely, and very alive, and now she's dead. And you killed her."

  Bishop made no denial, offered no affirmation. He merely waited, silently.

  There weren't going to be any verbal games, then.

  His left leg felt a little looser than his right. All right, then. Let's get it done.

  Alex threw the scalding coffee at Bishop's left eye, then whipped a low sweeping kick into his right knee as he dodged.

  But Bishop was rolling, under the coffee and over the kick. The man was as agile as a monkey, a tight springy rubber ball that bounced once, feinted left, and with eye-baffling speed slipped behind him.

  Bishop pounced on Alex's back, hissing like a cat. His thumbs and fingers dug for Alex's windpipe, his carotid artery, gripped and tore at the muscles themselves. Griffin fell backward slammed to the ground, trying to smash the air from Bishop's lungs. Bishop squirmed from beneath him, and Alex lurched up, roaring.

  Bishop had his arm in some kind of hold. Alex didn't have time to recognize it before Bishop spun and threw him. Alex felt as if his fingers, wrist, and elbows were all being torn apart. The pain made his whole body leap, and he spun through the air. He slapped the ground with his left arm, hard enough to make a bad breakfall against the carpet. Bishop was already jerking him up again, by the fingers this time. Alex's fingers were torqued into a sankyo wristlock, and in a moment, his head was going to be through the wall.

  With a desperate surge of strength Alex went against the hold, wrenching his hand loose. He felt his index and second fingers snap under the unearthly torque.

  Alex's mind went blank. He abandoned technique, smashing into Bishop shoulder-first, tackling him, carrying him back over the couch, sprawling on the floor with him, and crashing his elbow into Bishop's face: once, twice, thrice. Bishop's eyes were wide and wild, his face split, blood drooling in a mask from eyes to chin. He snapped forward and butted Alex in the mouth, mashing lips against teeth and driving his head back.

  Bishop struck the exposed throat with the web between thumb and forefinger, and Alex retched. Bishop arched his back massively, heaving Alex up and into a table.

  Bishop tried to regain control, to return to some kind of a balanced posture, but Alex drove back in with no concern for pain, or injury, or anything except the primal urge to finish what had begun.

  They thundered against the wall, into the corner, upsetting another table. Bishop strove to get the distance to use his superior technique, to no avail. Griffin time and again took fearful abuse to ribs and face to hammer Bishop back. To hurt him, punish him, make him forget all of the carefully learned combat maneuvers and force him to react on the animal level. This wasn't a dojo ballet. This was two cats in a sack, and Griffin was beyond concern for life or limb or anything but smashing the man before him.

  Alex's face was a mask of blood, but with head bowed he worked Bishop's body, left hooks and right elbows, grunting with the effort, broken fingers standing out at an angle, not thinking, not feeling, a perpetual-motion machine that went on and on and Bishop's nerve broke.

  He screamed, forgetting his human skills, forgetting everything except the blind urge to get away from the maniacal thing that Alex Griffin had become.

  Alex slammed a knee into Bishop's crotch, the hardest and most heartfelt blow of his life.

  Bishop went limp, gagging. Alex stepped back with his left And his foot slipped on the coffee.

  He fell, and Bishop twisted under him, sobbing with the effort, foot striking up and into Griffin's groin in a modified tomoenage stomach throw, arching up and back, throwing Griffin high Alex smashed through the patio glass, somersaulting out and over the balcony.

  Bishop lurched to his feet, vomited, and almost choked on it. He managed to steady himself and focus his eyes.

  He had only seconds, if that. He spun a chair into the center of the room and reached up to the ceiling next to the lighting fixture. There, hidden in a shadow, was a piece of white glue no bigger than a thumbnail. And upon it was a tiny beige plastic chip. His hand shook as he pried it loose.

  With agony in every joint and muscle, blood oozing from his nose, Bishop managed to crawl over the balcony and drop to the ground five feet below.

  Griffin lay at the bottom of the slope, his head twisted at an odd angle. Maybe the bastard's neck was broken. Bishop didn't have time to check. No time! He had to escape, to find a doctor, to get his precious data into the right hands before someone put a bullet in his brain.

  Fingers clutching bruised ribs, Bishop limped into the shadows. Every step hurt. He made his way along a line of retreat secured far in advance. Within minutes he was in his car, had punched in an address and collapsed against the seat, tears of pain starting from his eyes. I'm alive, he thought. Alive and flying now, as the car began to rise. Flying away from Griffin, away from Dream Park. Away from the clamor of alarms and yapping dogs, the steady panicked cry of first two and then a dozen throats. As fast as the car could travel he flew, away from that one thing worse than an honorable defeat: a humiliating victory.

  Epilogue: Part One

  Tuesday, September 27, 2059

  The house was a rambling, Spanish-style two-story dwelling with a red tile roof and enormous bay windows looking out over a cliff above the Malibu beach. It belonged to Millicent Summers, and although she had tried for years to get Alex Griffin out for a week, this was the first time he had accepted the invitation.

  The sun was minutes above the horizon, swathed in orange clouds, so that Alex could look almost directly at it. Millicent and Tony seemed as torpid as he, lounging in wet swimsuits and dampening terrycloth robes, listening to the hard, steady roll of the waves below.

  Alex felt exposed. There was a part of him that wanted to go back to Dream Park, to its safety and consistency. To be able to reach out and touch a button and change the image: now a beach; now a mountainscape; now the far side of the moon.

  But you couldn't control the tides. You rode them, or avoided them, or they drowned you.

  They were all pleasantly tired after a day of snorkeling and swimming and roaming in the hills. Smelling real air, chasing real birds. Running on a real beach. Watching the sun set on a real horizon.

  He felt so small.

  "I don't know," Tony was saying. "I know what I want to do. I know what Cass wants. I just don't know if I can give her a chance."

  "Then don't do it for her," Millicent said. "Do it for yourself. You have a chance to see whether there was ever anything there. If it doesn't work, fine, but let it be real this time."

  Do it for yourself, she thought. And if you don't know who you are? Then you'd better the hell find out. There's always someone ready and willing to fill an empty cup.

  Alex donned a happy expression as Acacia Garcia came back from Millicent's house with a platter of margaritas. Alex tasted his, licked at the salt along the rim, and said, "Compliments to the mixologist."

  Acacia dimpled. She was thinner, by maybe six pounds. She had lost some of the sass, and her cheekbones were a little too sharp. Her hair often looked a tad disarrayed, as if she had only fussed with it as an afterthought. Some of the carefully cultivated seduction ploys were still in evidence, but the
frayed edges were showing. And often, she caught herself in mid-posture, mid-calculated sigh, mid-knowing wink and stopped.

  Shorn of her artifice, there was something wistful about Acacia. She was still an exquisitely lovely woman, but she seemed… frailer somehow. And loud noises or sudden shadows made her flinch.

  Tony took his drink, and her hand. She sat next to him on the lounge chair. They didn't speak; they hadn't spoken much around Alex or Millicent, but they had taken long walks together, and after four days at the beach house, Tony had moved into her room.

  He stood, still holding her hand, and motioned with his head toward a cut stone path winding down to the beach. She nodded, and they started toward it and then she stopped. Acacia turned and faced Alex, as she often had over the last five days, and during the weeks since the end of California Voodoo. She looked as if she might be about to say something: "Thank you," perhaps, or "I've changed," or

  … maybe something else. Alex couldn't guess. Apparently Acacia couldn't, either; she just broke eye contact and led Tony to the stairs and down to the beach, where they would walk together, talking, until long after dark.

  "What do you think?" Millicent asked finally.

  "I think that they'll be together as long as Acacia is frightened."

  "Of Bishop?"

  He nodded.

  "Should she be?"

  "He's a pretty scaly guy," he said, trying to be light about it. Despite the attempt, his mood darkened. He stretched his right hand out, examining the fingers. "I still have trouble typing. Swimming today, my ribs felt full of broken china."

  "I'll bet you're glad you put breakaway glass on the patio." She grinned. She could see that he was still locked in that memory-not a pleasant place to be. "How long will it take to heal, Alex? Not your body. I mean inside. Where you feel beaten."

  "Millicent, you know I threw that fight."

  She sipped. "Uh-huh."

  "I used Sun-tzu against him. 'It is inferior to destroy an army it is better to capture it.' We'll end up with the entire Ecuador connection."

  Millicent said nothing. He was annoyed with himself for rushing to fill the silence with more words.

  "Mill, I planned it all. Between Vail and Lopez and Tony, we knew that he would have multiple copies. He went mountain climbing before the final assault. The bastard put one in my own apartment! By the time we found it, Tony and the tech boys had already cracked the cipher on the disk he left in the reactor. We put in our own version of the data. He had to come for it-MIMIC was all sewn up."

  "And?" She was watching him. She was listening to his words but paying attention to his expression. His ears burned.

  "Anyone who tries to use the ScanNet data gets mousetrapped. After that, nobody will trust Bishop. Even if he recovers a genuine copy of the data, who'd buy it? They've lost everything. With any luck, they'll kill him." The word "kill" was spoken too flatly, with too much control, and Millicent knew.

  "It hurts you, doesn't it?"

  "Millie, for Christ sakes…"

  "Naaah." Her voice tautened. "Bishop scared you, Alex. He was too smart, too fast, too strong. You had your little schoolboy turn at him, and he drop-kicked you through a plate-glass window-"

  "I wore a cup-"

  "Shut up!" Her intensity was shocking. She had turned away from him. Alex reached out and turned her face. A tear had formed in her right eye and she tried to blink it away. "You listen to me, Alex. It's time you learned what everybody else knows."

  Alex felt a great void open within him, and he stood, face a mask. "I'm not sure I want to hear this."

  Millicent locked glares with him, and before her sudden, unaccountable fierceness, he had no defence.

  And he sat down.

  "Bishop," Millicent said, "is the perfect loner. Trusts no one. Uses everyone, and everything. Life is a game, and the only rule is to win. And there's some part of you that envies him that, that total freedom. What you've never considered is the cost."

  "What cost?" he muttered.

  "Love. Friends." She took his hand. "Family. Alex, you could have been Nigel Bishop. All you'd need is to live in constant fear. To see the whole world as a battleground. He beat you in the battles and you beat him in the war because you're stronger than he is."

  He looked at her quizzically. "Stronger?"

  "Why can't you see it? Don't you know how much courage it takes to care? To let other human beings in? Bishop is what he is because he has no options. You had me, and Tony, and Harmony, and even Vail, dammit. You had family. We care about each other. And together, we took him apart. Why do you think that you have to do it all yourself?"

  "Because…" The next thought was stuck within him. Unspeakably anachronistic. And too damned real.

  Millicent's eyes softened. "Because that's what a 'man' does?" He couldn't look at her. "Well, you're not a man. Look at me! You're not a unit-you're a human being. A 'man' is just part of what you are. Don't throw the rest away, like Bishop has, Alex. Don't throw the people who love you away. Let us in."

  He still didn't, couldn't, face her. Alex felt as if that void within him had suddenly widened. As if he were tumbling now, uncontrolled and uncontrollable.

  A cold breeze blew in from under the dying sun, and he began to shake. "I need a blanket," he said lamely.

  "Alex?" Her voice was low, almost a whisper. "I watched you hurt yourself with Sharon, and with Acacia, and I think sometimes that you only open yourself when you know it won't work."

  The sun was lower now, and the orange of the clouds had deepened. More of them had clustered there, obscuring what little light remained in the day. "Seems like that," he said finally, almost to himself.

  "Maybe I've done the same thing. And maybe that's why we've managed to avoid each other. I just wanted to say it's over, Alex. I can't sit back and watch anymore. I can't be your friend anymore-"

  "Oop. Hello? Millie-"

  "Not if you don't trust me enough to know that we're family! That if things don't work out between us we'll still be family. But if we never even try, it's a waste of your life, and mine, and I'm afraid that you'll go right out and find someone else to use you, Alex. Someone to make you close up even tighter." She rested her hand on his. "I won't hurt you, Alex," she said. "I'm your friend."

  "Millicent-"

  "I'm not finished," she said, but the anger and pain were gone. In its place was a mischievous grin, and eyes that sparkled with challenge. "I've thought about this for a long time. And what I've decided is that I love you, and I intend to seduce you. Tonight, in that four-poster bed upstairs. I'm going to lock the door, and stuff a washcloth in your mouth to muffle your cries for mercy. Do you understand me?"

  "Why-"

  "Am I saying this? Because if I wait for you to say it, we'll both be talking through liquid nitrogen!"

  Alex's head spun. She looked so small and fierce and determined. And beautiful. And afraid of what he might say, or do, next.

  Shit.

  "So, mister… what do you say?"

  Alex Griffin sat up and wrapped his big arms around his knees and buried his face there, peeping out between them at the sunset. The clouds had cleared, and the sun was almost down. It was only a partial disk now, but it shone as brightly as it could, even at the end of the day. It painted the sea in copper, and the beach in gold, and for a moment the air seemed not so frigid, the day not so near the night.

  Alex stood up. He took her face between his hands and kissed her long enough and hard enough that when he pulled back they were both a little dizzy.

  "Well, it's certainly worth a try."

  "And if it doesn't work?"

  He kissed her again, tasting salt and tequila. "We'll still be family."

  The pink tip of her tongue darted out and wet the end of his nose. "Damned straight!" Millicent giggled and jumped off the couch. He grabbed for her. Shrieking, she eluded him and dashed barefoot across the grass to the house.

  Alex watched that tired old sun disappear and downed
the last of his drink in one swallow. Fair's fair. Give her a head start, he thought. The end of a day meant the beginning of a night.

  He spun up off the couch and sprinted after her. And if Millicent hadn't stopped to shed her swimsuit, she might well have made it all the way to that four-poster before he caught her. Or she caught him.

  Or…

  Epilogue: Part Two

  Quito, Ecuador, Saturday, October 8, 2059

  Nigel Bishop sat in an oak-paneled waiting room, beneath a gigantic neomodernist rendition of a bullfighting scene. He hadn't studied it.

  Beneath the broad double windows to his right, street musicians were playing, vying with the horns and motors of a Tuesday's evening traffic. He paid no attention.

  For the first time in weeks, when he breathed or moved his face, he experienced no sharp stab of agony. He felt no gratitude.

  What he felt, instead, was a niggling feeling of doubt. Somewhere, somehow, something was wrong. It wouldn't come into focus, but he was almost certain…

  Bishop cursed softly. Why couldn't he see the flaw? His mind just wouldn't perform with its usual clarity and precision. When he closed his eyes he saw Alex Griffin.

  He had to think…

  A door opened, and a pretty, light-skinned, almost Asian Hispanic woman beckoned to him. "Senor Bishop? They are ready to speak with you."

  Nigel stood and brushed invisible dust away from his coat. He gripped his suitcase with hands that were suddenly cold and wet.

  There was something. He was certain of it, but but it kept eluding him.

  "Excuse me. Senor Bishop?"

  "Yes. I'm ready." He breathed deeply, banishing his doubts. Vague fears and uncertainties often accompanied major life events. Victory, he reminded himself, belonged to the bold.

  And so thinking, Nigel Bishop strode across the threshold. "There are Paths that should not be taken. "There are Armies that should not be confronted.