by Larry Niven
“I remember.”
“Then remember how you left.”
He didn’t want to. Once upon a time, the fear and pain had lashed him on a daily basis. To this day he could not simply lie on his back and peer up at the stars as might any schoolboy. They threatened to suck him up into the blackness. And then he knew why Kendra’s eyes were both narrow and moist.
“They’re saying I’m a coward,” he said. “They’re using my accident against you.”
She nodded without speaking. He sighed. “And what do you think, Kendra?”
“I know how you make a living,” she said. “I know you put your life on the line every day that you work.”
He nodded. “But then, that’s not exactly what we’re talking about, is it?”
Her face didn’t move, but he saw reflected in her eyes all the answer he needed. There was a particular variety of nerve necessary to make it up here. And Kendra’s ex-husband, whose name she still carried, didn’t have it. And if the husband lacks courage, what of the wife? Why else would she want to bind us into some singular group, of one will and one word … “Freedom” from people a quarter-million miles distant means tyranny here at home.
Then again, the argument could have been made the other way: Does Kendra secretly want us to keep our apron strings? Does her husband’s cowardice infect her? Will she sell us out to Earth, once we give her power…?
McCauley could attack her two ways with a single premise.
“God.” He squinted, hard. “I hate politics.”
“Me, too,” she said. “But its all we’ve got. Listen, love. Play your game. There will be time for personal talk later. Right now, I’m just glad to see you.”
And it was to her credit, and the strength of the relationship they’d always had, that he actually believed her.
“I should win,” he decided.
“That would be good,” she said. Then grinned wickedly. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
13
Downtime
Two hours later the music and merriment came to an end. The bald little man called Lord Xavier herded Scotty and the other gamers down a gleaming narrow hallway into a neighboring room. It was another cavernous chamber, lightly decorated, and Scotty had the sense that it was a storage unit of some kind, hastily reconfigured to resemble a hangar.
A thirty-foot grayish metal sphere balanced on four telescoping legs. The surface was covered with little flaps, and at the lowest edge a six-foot door opened onto a ramp.
At the base of the ramp, Xavier turned and faced them. “I present the Cavorite sphere, built to the professor’s specifications. This is the beginning of your adventure. It will take you ten days to make the lunar passage. We will be in contact with you during that time, thanks to our great friend Mr. Tesla. I wish you Godspeed, and good luck.”
He soberly shook each of their hands as they walked the ramp. The small hand within the white glove was soft and warm. Lord Xavier’s eyes were very clear, bright blue and twinkled with mirth. He paused for a moment with Scotty. “Commander Griffin,” he said gravely. “You are not known to me, but your father was. A mighty warrior, and I believe he was simply known as ‘The Griffin,’ was he not? In fact, I know that he distinguished himself highly on missions for my department, and I expect no less from his son.”
Scotty bowed. “He set a very high standard indeed. I will endeavor not to shame him.” And then passed up the ramp.
What was that about? Certainly giving Scotty more reinforcement about his role … the Non-Player Characters had circulated the room, casually mentioning aspects of the players’ backstory, allowing them to springboard their role-playing off the NPCs. A general framework for improvisation, their names and personal histories worked into their new identities.
Interesting. He’d been told to expect that. But the reference to his father “The Griffin” implied that Xavier knew exactly who he was. Did he know the Prince’s true identity as well?
The question was answered a moment later. “Prince Ali,” he said to Scotty’s charge. “You have traveled far, all the way from the Republic of Kikaya, to partake in our adventure. Now you travel farther still. Salaam Alaykum.”
“Wa Alaykum As-Salaam,” Ali replied courteously. But when Scotty met his eyes, it was clear that the young man was worried. Later, Scotty would reassure him. Surely, there was no safer place for Prince Kikaya than Heinlein base.
They marched through the door … and into a maze of plastic struts. Assistants hustled them off to the side, so that they would not obstruct the doorway. From this position, he saw that the great curving wall was a hologram-assisted facade. When the last gamer and NPC was aboard, the door was closed, and the assistants gave a collective sigh of relief.
“We’re off!” quoth a plump, charming redhead. Scotty noticed that she seemed rather attached to Wayne, who himself was linked to Angelique Chan. “Game time is over, you are all off-duty until nine tomorrow morning. Please follow your escorts to your lodgings, where you will find your personal gear already stowed. If you have any needs, please let us know. Game starts at ten tomorrow morning, and until that time no cameras or recording devices will invade your privacy.” Again, she glanced significantly at Wayne. Her eyes were liquid heat.
A lunar hookup. Sweet.
“So…,” Angelique said. “What is happening now? I mean in game time?”
“Look for yourself,” the redhead said.
She clapped her hands and the bare wall blossomed. In the void, a crowd waving British flags cheered as a Cavorite sphere lifted off from the middle of Piccadilly Circus. Like a feather caught in an updraft it drifted into the sky, accelerating until it was swallowed by clouds.
“Ten days of game time will be condensed into ten hours of real time. A clock on the screen will give viewers on Earth and even here on the Moon a countdown to tomorrow’s game. We had to make a choice: either reduce the number of hours it takes for a sphere to reach the Moon, or use time-lapse. We chose time-lapse. Any other questions?”
She was so bright and perky, and it all seemed so reasonable, that he relaxed. Fine. The game aspect of all of this was well in hand.
* * *
The redheaded mermaid’s name was Darla, and her two-legged incarnation had attached herself to Wayne during the party, all twinkling eyes and smiles and warm soft promise. Her voice hinted at north Texas, or Oklahoma. She wasn’t exactly pretty, and her Fit/Fat curves were fuller and rounder than Wayne’s usual flirtations. But her energy was irresistible, her obvious interest in a tryst provocative as hell. His fingers tingled when they touched hers.
Angelique had raised an eyebrow at their connection, but after all, she was the one who had insisted that their partnership was all business and no yum-yum.
“I’ll be ready,” he said. “Trust me.” Muscles and joints still ached from the months of training, and he knew that there was no way he would waste all that he had done, all that he’d been through.
Darla walked him to a rim elevator, taking him up to the surface, where shuttles waited to hustle them out to a clutch of dorms set in minor craters around Heinlein’s rim. At every step, they’d each had to thumbprint the reader to pass to the next station.
The shuttle sped over its levitation track and deposited them in the dorm in about thirty seconds, barely enough time to accelerate and decelerate. The windows were deeply polarized, but the sun still blistered the white sandy ridges and meteor pockets. Hypnotic. He’d seen this territory countless times in films and vids, but to actually be here…!
The dome rose before them, and the shuttle slowed. Darla had leaned into him more fully. He could feel her body heat even through his dress uniform.
“Ask me in, darlin’?” she asked.
“I’m not sure I could find my way without you.”
She giggled as the door opened. The hall outside was sealed to the side of the shuttle, the extending walkway firmly in place. “I assume my luggage is already here?”
&nbs
p; “You assume correctly,” she said. “Twenty-one, and twenty-two. Here you are. Your thumb?”
He extended it, and she took hold of it, and pressed her lips against the pad. They were pillow soft, and quite warm.
Wayne’s throat felt thick. “I’m actually not sure I’m supposed to have anyone in the room with me … technically speaking, I’m on game time.”
Her smile was gamine, her bright green eyes twinkling at him. “These pods need permission for overnight guests,” she said. Then she pushed her thumb against the card. It flashed green. “See? I’m already clear.”
Questions instantly raced through his mind. When had she inserted her name in his file? Had she been so certain of herself? Or …
“Are you…?”
“Shhh,” she whispered, and shushed his words with a kiss. Her breath was peppermint and brandy. Then she pulled back. “I asked for you. That’s all you need to know.”
An NPC? On a mission of seduction? Was Xavier operating Off the Grid?
She shook her head. “We’re on our own time until morning,” she said.
“Is that the truth?” He came close enough to brush noses with her. She never blinked. “Are you friend … or foe?”
Her eyes were hot enough to melt glass. “Search me.”
* * *
Chris Foxworthy was floating on air. The halls of level four were almost deserted: It was between shift changes, and most people on the Moon drifted toward the time zones of their youth, all else being equal. Chris had grown up in California, and on the West Coast it was now two o’clock in the morning. In a little more than five hours, he’d be on the clock!
Gaming had been a part of his life long before he reached Luna and took a position as Kendra Griffin’s personal assistant. In California, either in commercial venues or hooked into the ’net wearing reality gear, he’d loved the international community of loons who would forgo a weekend’s sleep to be part of the latest Middle Earth or Berserker campaign. They were his folk, and in fact it was in the beginning of the Oort Cloud Game back in ’68, which began in a secret alien ship buried beneath the lunar surface, that he first fell in love with Earth’s Moon.
His first years on Luna had been as exciting as anyone could have hoped, but anything eventually becomes just another twenty-four hours, as the daily grind transforms the extraordinary into the commonplace. He’d thought about putting in for a billet on Ceres, when the first rumors about the Moon Maze Game filtered down through the ranks.
Flash forward two years, and Chris was pulling every string, calling in every favor, and cutting every corner to get on the NPC short list. Even then, he’d had to tap-dance his ass off. There was nothing easy about it, and even in a community as seen-it-all as the Lunies, a chance to participate in the first major off-planet game in history was intoxicating. Sure, there’d been some minor zero-gee LARPs on some of the stations and L5s, and there’d been brouhaha and global coverage, but this was different: a real gaming environment, top-notch players … This was for the history books, and Mrs. Foxworthy’s little boy Chris was in the middle of it.
The door to his sleep capsule sighed open, and Chris stepped in, having to slide sideways to slip past his costume, which hung next to the little bathroom stall.
He fingered it appreciatively, laughing to himself. All the NPCs had received their Victorian costumes days before, and attended a four-hour workshop on carriage and dance. Of course, they had received far more training than that for the days ahead, and he chortled at the thought.
Most of them would ride the shuttles to the gaming area fully masked. It was going to be Halloween tomorrow, and even the most sober Joes would have to work hard to keep the grins off their sorry faces.
The gamers would walk the halls, getting into mischief and then escaping into their anonymity. He could hardly wait.
Chris brushed his teeth and sealed himself into the shower stall. The hot water bounced back at him from angles highly unlikely under full gravity, and he happily scrubbed and scrubbed. For the next three days, a good bath would be hard to come by. The water clung like a sheath of jelly, but Chris was used to that. He used his hands like blades to scrape water off his limbs into the suction grills. He finished by letting the cyclone whip the moisture back into the vents, air drying.
He stood to look at himself in the mirror. Fit enough, thin, bit of a paunch but nothing to be ashamed of: abdominal muscles just didn’t work as hard up here, whether for breathing or posture, and it was common to see people with toned arms and great, low heart rates, and little potbellies. He was going to be fine.
Chris programmed his bed to start cooling a half hour before wakeup, and asked his clock to monitor his sleep rhythms to find the best time to awaken him within fifteen minutes of 8:00 A.M. lunar standard time. He was sliding into a mild dream state when his door chimed.
“Yes?” he asked as a sleepy-eyed man’s face appeared in his mirror.
“Costume change,” the man said. “You are chosen for an upgrade. It will only take a minute.”
The guy’s voice was vaguely accented, like middle European … Bulgaria or something. He hadn’t seen the guy before, but he figured the Dream Park people had to be sending up all kinds of new talent. No surprise there.
He opened his door. The guy stood maybe a centimeter shorter than Chris, but broader across the shoulders. The ready smile seemed a little too ready, as if he was trying to stay polite and focused after a long, long day.
Hell, he could empathize with that.
The man held a square box in his left hand, and a metal slip with his right. “Thumb here,” he said, and Chris stepped back as he stepped in, lowered his head as the door sighed shut. There was a brief, very brief moment when something in Chris’ mind said This doesn’t feel right—
Then he felt the arm slip around his neck, and knew he was in trouble.
But then, so was his attacker.
There were many favorite sports Lunies used to keep themselves fit, and one of the most popular was nullboxing. Actually, real nullboxing was performed in zero gravity, a combination of grappling and striking performed in a chaotic cluster of jabbing elbows, gripping hands and frantic head-butts. On the Moon, there was so little gravity that most boxing or karate-type footwork went to hell pretty fast, but the resistance of another live body made wrestling, and nullboxing training, a pretty intense way to get your PT points. And Chris had been there from the beginning, sweating and snarling through his workouts three times a week for the last three years.
And one thing he knew was that newbies, even those with grappling experience on Earth, took time to adjust to the change in gravity. An Earth-bound combat man would have to be ungodly strong and agile to turn a front somersault with a full-grown opponent on his back. Chris was neither. He simply knew that the move was possible, and the man who attacked him did not.
The effect was startling. When they went off their feet, his assailant was taken completely by surprise, and loosened his grip long enough for Chris to slam elbows back into his face.
Only the first one landed, but it was enough. In an adrenaline-crazed frenzy at a sixth of earth gravity, the two men exerted enough energy to send them flying into the walls at jarring speed.
They literally bounced off the far wall, and then …
The back of his attacker’s head precisely struck the corner of a table, and his body spasmed, eyes snapping open and shut again like a marionette with tangled strings. He made a few wet rattling sounds, and then sprawled limp. Bloody spittle drifted toward the floor.
Chris bounced off the ceiling, frantic to grapple before the attacker got his bearings. As the man drifted upward, Chris slammed into him, swarmed around onto his back and got him in a headlock. The man was limp as a codfish. It only gradually dawned on Chris that the man might be—
His eyes were half open. His muscles were limp. He wasn’t breathing. His head was dented.
Foxworthy made a rapid check of the body, and cursed to himself. H
e was shaking so hard that his teeth threatened to click.
Dead. A dead man in his apartment. He touched the phone pad. That was the move, to get Security here as soon as possible.
Nothing. The screen wouldn’t respond. What in the hell?
Chris fished his shirt out of the laundry and spoke into the collar. Nothing.
Well, he would run down the hall, call from the first node. “Door, open,” he said.
Nothing. Panic fluttered at the edge of his mind, but he managed to tamp it down. “Door, open.” Nothing. No ready lights. Well, that was all right. There was a manual override …
He wrenched open the panel to the right of his door, and turned the little dial. That should have done it, should make the door pop right open …
Nothing.
Panic was beginning to look like a better and better idea. What the hell was going on here?
Foxworthy turned his attacker over, searched him and found a communications device of unfamiliar design, fist-sized, like an old cellphone. Little green lights oscillated around a three-centimeter color screen with the words Security Override flashing once per second. And beneath that: Enter Code.
This device … this thing had somehow blocked his communications and sealed his door, using some security feature he had never even heard of. And now it wanted him to enter a code to turn it off? There was an alphanumeric pad, and also a microphone for voice entry. “Open?” Nothing. “One, two, three…”
Damn. There could be millions of codes. He was stuck here for the duration, until someone came looking for him. Stuck in a tiny room with a cooling corpse. Had he been the target? Or … something to do with the game? What in the hell was going on?