The Moon Maze Game

by Larry Niven

  “What’s this?” Mickey Abernathy called from up ahead.

  “You’re the psychic. You tell me,” Sharmela said, but when she squinted into the dark to see more clearly, her voice fell silent.

  There in the middle of the tunnel was a pile of brownish muck half as tall as a human being. Broad coarse tufts of moon grass jutted out of it, and the consistency was a lot like peanut butter. Warm peanut butter. And it stank.

  Wayne howled and wiped his hand on the tunnel floor. “It’s mooncow sh— dung!” he said, correcting his language for a family audience. That bald-headed son of a bitch! Some kind of joke? Hoping to bump them out of character?

  If audiences back home were enjoying Wayne’s discomfort as much as his companions, this game was going through the roof.

  Just as he finished wiping his hands on the ground, the walls around them began to hiss. Steam gouted forth, three streams from each side and the ceiling, focusing on the pile of mooncow excrement. The gamers scrambled away as the pile melted, shrank, finally sluiced away into grates in the floor.

  The vapor hung in the air, dissipating so slowly that it might have been smoke. Ali, the skinny African magic user, backed up with one hand on his sword. “There’s something in the mist,” he said.

  Angelique stopped laughing instantly, and dropped into a crouch. “Alert!” she called. “Ali. Sharmela. Can you dispel?”

  Sharmela ran up to stand at Ali’s side. She was a little shorter than the kid, twice his thickness, with a forceful bearing that led Wayne to suspect she could break him into pieces.

  The pair might have been practicing for a month. In tandem, they raised their arms as they stood before the growing, billowing cloud. Not steam now, but some kind of smoke.

  “By the bones of my ancestors—” Ali said.

  “By my mother’s blood—” Sharmela chanted at the same time.

  “Dispel!” they both called. A wind swept down the tunnel, punching into the mist like a fist into a cotton cloud. For a moment, they could see clearly. Perhaps two dozen Selenites stalked toward them, their carapaces vaguely warlike, as if they had been born in armor and battle helms. Each of them gripped a staff with a crooked head. Their faceted eyes glowed red as the mist dissipated. They howled, and charged.

  “Ali, Sharmela. Back to second position! Wayne, front and center!” Angelique drew her sword and charged.

  Regardless of his years in gaming, all his experience and skills, for the first hours of a new game it was impossible for Wayne to totally turn his mind off, to stop noticing the glitches, stop trying to second-guess the Game Master.

  But … there was a moment, there came a time. When the illusion of the game, the effects and the scenario and the players all melded together and overwhelmed the part of his mind that knew he was Wayne Gibson, nobody, current address Las Vegas. When the adrenaline started to run, he became Wayne Gibson, thief and warrior.

  The slithery whisper of steel on leather as sword left sheath was music to his ears. The sword balanced like a willow wand in his hand.

  His sword was a Mitsubishi FlexMax 80, designed for close-quarters impact work. Eyepieces recommended. (And he noted the faceted goggle-eyes of the Selenite masks. Protection for NPCs.) No sharp edge, and a telescoping point. While not suggested for use against bare skin, the soft plastic surface above a foamed metal core would generally produce about as much damage as a willow wand while simulating the deadly appearance of any sword imaginable. To all but the most discerning eye, the FlexMax resembled a British army officer’s sword with a brass handle and snakeskin grip.

  Dream Park’s computer system would eventually augment the localized holograms, improving the images for discriminating Earth-bound consumers. Wayne couldn’t care less: In his mind, he was fighting for his life against an entirely convincing alien horde, and a moment’s hesitation meant death.

  For Queen and country! Wayne Gibson was out for alien blood.

  Angelique stood to his right, guarding his flank as he defended hers. From the corner of his eye he caught Griffin backing them up. He was a thief, yes, but a thief with a sword. And he looked as if he knew how to use it.

  Game fencing was different from competition saber or foil. You could be an Olympic saber champion, and without IFGS points your thrusts and parries simply wouldn’t register. Meanwhile, a relatively unskilled opponent with gaming experience would cut you to ribbons. So the fact that Griffin appeared to have a bit of genuine sword skill was irrelevant. What were his points? In some games you knew everything there was to know about your teammates. In others, like this one, you learned as you went along.

  But as the gamer part of his mind took over from the logic, all he thought was My sides and back are covered. Let’s get it on.

  The first Selenite stepped into range. Sword crossed staff. A blue light at the tip of the staff glowed violently, and a brief, sharp tingle ran up his arm. Damn! He slid his head to the side, and a flare of blue fire boiled out of the tip, missing him by an inch. Those behind him would just have to fend for themselves.

  Wayne ducked under the stream, disengaged his blade and thrust. The Selenite’s scream was more like a teakettle’s whistle than the anguished howl of a living being.

  The blade slid in, and a thin stream of greenish ichor flowed in return. Wayne kicked the Selenite away and turned back to the fight in bare time to avoid the touch of a staff.

  “Stun staffs!” he screamed.

  Angelique swayed to the side and thrust at a Selenite’s segmented chest. “Can we neutralize them?”

  “Better hope so,” Mickey said. He and Maud had linked hands, and then raised them, and a shrill squealing sound rang through the tunnel.

  The insects howled in pain. Instead of clapping their hands to the sides of their heads, several of them dropped their staffs and hugged their sides, twisting and dancing in apparent pain.

  Angelique grinned. This was going to be a slaughter. At first she had worried that Xavier was playing some kind of really ugly game. Would he really kill them in the game’s first hour?

  No. Any entertainer knows that an audience can be angry with a short show, especially if they have paid premium prices. Xavier knew that an excessively dangerous game would actually diminish the profit of his next event. She could be fairly certain that his early challenges would be irritating but not lethal.

  Of course, that was assuming that he was playing for posterity, and not personal vengeance.…

  Her team had made a tight knot, and moved forward in formation, hacking and slashing. Thieves used swords and knives, but lacked the lethality of the warrior class. That was fine: They made up for it with stealth.

  Griffin and his little friend Ali were having a grand time, slaughtering Selenites by the bunch. Darla was hanging back, sword raised, ready for attack from the rear.

  Wayne killed an insect man and scooped up the energy spear it had been carrying. He blasted another Selenite, then slid the weapons down his shirt front, catching Angelique’s eye.

  The insect folk kept arms and elbows tucked to their sides and were unable to defend themselves effectively, so that even Asako Tabata was able to score kills. Her pod’s stubby little arms spouted threads of fire, perhaps a laser of some kind, cutting through their enemies so that the tunnel was heaped with smoking corpses. Mickey and Maud kept their arms raised, chanting and concentrating. The air around them rippled with energy, distorting the view of the tunnel so that the entire visual field flexed and shimmied.

  The Selenites finally broke and ran, screaming for their lives. Or … so Angelique thought.

  Then the walls, as if they were actually in some kind of immense speaker system, began to vibrate with a tone similar to the one Mickey and Maud were broadcasting.

  Pain!

  An electric crackle crawled up her shocksuit, and she cursed. In game reality, that meant they were being hit with a pain or immobilization ray of some kind, and the shocksuit’s buzz would cause genuine discomfort if a gamer didn’t ge
t the hint.

  She dropped her sword, and clapped her hands over her ears, dropping to her knees. Around her, her team was collapsing, as the Selenites reflected the psychic wave right back at the intruders.

  Angelique collapsed. Paralyzed.

  They were caught.

  * * *

  They hadn’t long to wait. Within a minute, a hollow clanking in the walls presaged the sliding of doors, circular openings in the metal walls so cunningly designed that they had been neither seen nor suspected. A small horde of bulky Selenites emerged: not the skeletal soldiers, but more like fat beetles with six arms and legs.

  These creatures were designed for work. Longshoremen Selenites, perhaps. Two of them addressed each of the downed gamers, lifting by hands and feet, hoisting them up and then hauling them toward one of the circular doors.

  Angelique ground her teeth. For a moment she came closer to Griffin’s face, and almost laughed at his frustrated expression. Nice eyes, she decided.

  No, IFGS had approved this paralysis. In her mind, that meant that this was just a transition. They were being taken somewhere that related to their game. There, the gamers would receive information, and begin to orient.

  If they were lucky, they might even get lunch.

  * * *

  The tunnels were cold and dark, and echoed with distant, vaguely crawly sounds. She heard what she might have expected to hear in a beehive or ant nest: burrings, buzzings, chewing and crawling sounds. But there was something else she noted as the longshoremen carried their limp human burdens along.

  Out there in the cloaking darkness, some of the insect sounds had a disturbingly human quality to them. What in the hell was that? An insect imitating the sound of a human voice? Humans trying to imitate insect sounds? She liked the first answer more, and wondered what Wayne thought. She couldn’t turn her head to try to find him. But without moving, she could see just behind her, to where two insect hulks were lugging Griffin down the narrow tunnel. She’d noticed the nice shoulders on the way down. That, and his soft, clear voice and warm hands. She giggled to herself. Was she getting a crush?

  The game was getting more interesting every minute.

  * * *

  She estimated that they spent about four minutes being lugged about, until they went through a second door and out into a larger chamber. The translucent surfaces glowed with a pinkish bioluminescence. If she squinted, Angelique could just make out larval shapes curled in octagonal chambers on the far side. Breeding chamber?

  The wall slid up a meter, and a delicate golden wormlike creature crawled forth, moving one segmented portion of its body at a time. It had what she was tempted to call a feminine face, with twin feathery antennae and two hose-like protrusions below at the corners of its mouth. The bulky stevedore creatures stepped aside for her, and she approached Angelique with grace that such a creature could never have equaled in full Earth gravity.

  It was about six feet long, and half again as thick as a human body. The room’s pale glow actually illumined the insides of her body. She was filled with floating organelles, and sacks filled with some kind of orange fluid.

  The creature canted her head sideways, coming very close to Angelique’s head. Her faceted eyes reflected the gamer’s face back a hundred times, and it seemed on the verge of speaking … then the twin nozzles at the sides of her mouth gushed a stream of pinkish froth, splashing up and down her frame in a silken web.

  The web gullivered Angelique to the spongy rock floor from ankles to shoulders. The froth dried within moments, and as it did, the tingling paralysis promptly ended. Paralysis was no longer required—they were well and truly caught.

  The golden worm turned around, doubling herself in a way impossible to any creature with a spine. Then it was through the door and gone.

  Angelique turned her head to the side and saw Wayne tied there, straining against the bonds. Fine. If the shocksuit paralysis had ended, then it was fair for them to attempt escape. As she expected, his struggles (and hers) accomplished nothing. She had enough wiggle room to turn her head to the other side. Asako Tabata’s pod was anchored to the ground: They must have paralyzed her electronics. Mickey and Maud were trying to lean their foreheads against each other, boosting the psychic signal. Couldn’t quite reach. The redheaded guide was writhing without effect … probably wasn’t supposed to get loose at this point.

  Ali was wiggling around, floundering. Seemed to her then he was a little green for this game, but a good Game Master went with the team she had. But now she saw that he had somehow kicked or cut his left foot free.

  Griffin … again, she found herself engaged in pleasurable speculation. His broad shoulders were relaxed, but as she watched, he inhaled, flexed so that his uniform swelled … and then contracted. He didn’t look stressed out at all. In fact, he seemed admirably relaxed. She liked that.

  The door opened again. Several things that resembled the golden slug emerged, carrying a bench made of some silvery bright metal. Seated on the bench was a creature thinner and probably more frail than anything she had seen so far.

  It was perhaps five feet tall, and its fully fleshed limbs weren’t much thicker than the bones of a human adult. It reminded her of a mantis, again with the faceted eyes, and delicate insectile movement.

  The carrier slugs brought her into the middle of the circle in which the gamers were arrayed. The bench settled, and then began to turn, as if the slugs were spinning like schoolchildren trying to get dizzy and throw up.

  Slowly at first, then a complete revolution every two seconds, the greenish creature spun to survey its captives.

  The chamber was awash with a dull, mourning buzz. A whispering voice filled her ear:

  “Who are you? What do you want? Why have you come?”

  The voice repeated once, twice, and then again.

  The other gamers had begun to speak, but when they heard Angelique’s voice rise, they quieted. “We come to rescue Professor Cavor. Give him to us, and we leave in peace.”

  “And if we do not?”

  “Then our two great civilizations will be in conflict, a thing I dearly wish to prevent.”

  “You will regret coming here. We know of your violent ways. Cavor told us, long ago.” Its glittering eyes shifted color from greenish to red. Anger? Fear?

  “We dealt with him then. We will deal with you now. You will regret ever coming here.”

  The shrill whine spiked again, and with it came a prompting tickle. Pain. The Earthlings were deep in torment, and were expected to act that way for the hidden cameras. Worse, they were confined, and obviously intended to just lie there and take it.

  She hated this, hated the sense of powerlessness in being whiplashed by psychic or magical forces, unable to fight. Suddenly, a well of old emotions filled and brimmed over: anger and frustration and even a bit of fear. Suddenly, she was the nine-year-old girl who had crawled into Lewis Carroll and J. K. Rowling to find refuge from a house filled with screaming adults. A girl who had found the world of fantasy far more pleasant than—

  Wait. Wait. Angelique realized that her breathing had shifted up into her chest, become rapid and shallow. Her blood felt like it was boiling, and the world tasted oddly sour.

  Fear. She was filled with it, and even with the emotion clawing at her, she knew that something was wrong. Wait. This thing is trying to get to me, trying to make me even more terrified than I already am.

  Wait. That last thought had been from the position of the character, not the player. The fantasy wall was breaking down a bit. She imagined Xavier performing an act only a perverted yogi could love. The little skinhead was cheating somehow. He had set some kind of trap for her. She didn’t know how he was doing it, but he had just used his knowledge of her personal history to attack her. Legal, but nasty.

  The gamers all around her were arching their backs and screaming, those sounds peaking to some kind of crescendo when—

  The wall exploded.

  18

  Resc
ue

  0920 hours

  Smoke and dust choked the air. Juice from shattered insect cocoons slicked the floor. Several embryos were dead and still, but others curled and crawled blindly, seeking shadows.

  Ali wriggled out from under his sticky bonds. He’d left some outer clothing, but he had his sword. He swept it around him and slashed along Wayne’s left side, Wayne being the nearest.

  A dozen insect soldiers stepped through the wall, climbing with a segmented angularity no human being could manage. Angelique had the bizarre impression that they were holding their power-spears in the same fashion a British soldier might have held his rifle in bayonet-ready position. As disciplined as any corps of Beefeaters, they advanced in a line. The one behind them might have been an officer: larger, scarier, four arms ending in metal claws, and a demon mask with teeth like a saber-toothed cat’s.

  The emerald creature shrieked, and a dozen guards appeared in the room, positioning themselves between the green interrogator and the sudden incoming threat.

  Ali was trying to cut other gamers free, but it was slow work. Wayne was still half tethered. Only his arm and the Selenite blasting spear were free.

  The guards scrambled, thrusting with stun-staffs and sharp objects that looked as if they might have been snapped off a praying mantis’ foreleg.

  The newcomers thrust and parried in a manner reminiscent of classical European swordplay. The parries, ripostes and dégagés might have seemed perfectly at home in a French saber salle. The green one had retreated against the wall. It opened to receive her just as the newcomers pushed the guards back and formed a line between Selenites and gamers.

  Wayne aimed his blasting spear at the newcomers’ officer. Its weapon swung toward Wayne—as Ali knocked his weapon aside.

  What?

  “Ally,” he said. A beat. The officer could have killed Wayne, but didn’t. How the hell did Ali figure that one? Wayne gaped, then nodded.

  Angelique gasped as several of the newcomers lifted her up like a sack of potatoes and carried her out of the room.