by Larry Niven
Prince Ali tensed as the intruders ordered them about, seemed about to swell up like a frog. The wrong damned time to be imperious. Scotty gripped his arm until Ali winced, gave him a quick, warning shake. Not now.
“Move! Move!” The blond woman who looked like a biker angel said the words calmly, but there was a kind of frenzy under the surface, well-leashed. For now. She held some kind of jerry-rigged air gun, and Scotty didn’t want to test her speed or accuracy.
He thought he heard this “Shotz” character call her Celeste.
* * *
Even though the gamers, NPCs and techs were herded efficiently, their captors missed one. Just one.
Darla Kowsnofski, killed out right on schedule, had been creeping through back passages, avoiding gamers on her way to an NPC holding area, when the intruders showed up. Now she crouched in a shadow, prying at the edge of a hidden hatch. Muttering a prayer.
Darla cursed herself for a coward. Should she try to help someone else escape? Or just take care of herself, and consider that victory enough? Even as an awkward honor student at Oklahoma State, Darla had always thought of herself as a good person. She had always had more confidence in her mind than in her generous, well-cushioned body … and that mind had taken her all the way to Heinlein. But at this moment all she wanted was to be somewhere dark, and alone, and away from the people with guns. And God help her, there was no part of her that felt guilty about it.
“Please, please, please,” she whispered, prying at the panel. Just before she gave up hope it slid open an inch. She got her finger under it, levered it up, slipped in and was gone.
* * *
In Heinlein base’s nerve center, Kendra found herself juggling a dozen conversations with two dozen different people. Her assistant buzzed her. “Ms. Griffin? We have a call on two-nine-nine.” A pause. “It’s from inside the dome.”
For a moment Kendra was taken aback, but then she jumped on the communication. “Hello?”
She was looking at a mask: not a game mask, a diver’s mask. The voice on the other side was gravelly, almost as if it had emerged from a machine, or a damaged voice box. “Ms. Griffin?”
“Yes. Who is this?’
“Call us Neutral Moresnot.”
She blinked. “I can’t pronounce that without being rude. Who are you?”
“We are the very serious people who control this dome, and every human being within it.”
That she accepted without another thought. “What do you want?”
“At the moment, what I want is to put your mind at ease. I have no wish to kill our hostages. In fact, if my demands are met, they will all be released unharmed.”
“Does that include Chris Foxworthy, my assistant?”
“I trust so. I seem to have lost contact with my man. Would he be in custody at this time?”
“No. There was an accident. Your man is dead.”
“Dead?” She couldn’t read that damaged voice, but her best guess was that his response was one of surprise. And not mild surprise, either. Anger?
“Oh, my,” he said. The mild words and flat vocal quality concealed hidden emotional currents. “I wasn’t aware of that. Well, that is regrettable, and unexpected. But he can be the last, if you follow my directions.”
“And what directions are those?”
“You will send over a Scorpion transport vehicle. Twenty-eight seats, if it matches spec. There will be no weapons on board, and no one in the transport. We will be scanning.”
But of course he would. By this time, the intruders were probably tied into every communication line they had. “And you are using this transport to…?”
“Evacuate twenty members of the gaming staff, professional and volunteer.”
“From the kindness of your heart?”
“Madam, under the current conditions, do you truly consider antagonism the wisest course? Until you can demonstrate such restraint, I suggest you listen more than you speak. And please have the Scorpion here in ten minutes.”
“If I don’t?”
“We’ll send them out walking … without suits.”
And with that, the visual field dissolved.
Foxworthy drummed his fingers against the console. “What do you think?”
“I think that he wants to reduce the number of people he has to manage. Most of the NPCs are Lunies … locals who know more about the Moon than he does. This way, he’s mostly got gamers. As ignorant of the Moon as he is. Easier to control. And most of them are Earthers. That means off-planet political pressure on us. They want to muddy the water, Chris.”
Foxworthy nodded agreement, as if he had already come to that conclusion. “What do we do?”
“Send him a transport. No tricks.” Pause. “Yet.”
Foxworthy was on it instantly. “Give me the garage. I need a transport for twenty people delivered to the gaming dome. No one on board. No tricks. A Scorpion if you’ve got it.”
The garage manager’s voice was both professional and curious. “What in the hell is going on over there? I’ve heard rumors…”
Kendra interjected. “Keep them to yourself. We’ll have an announcement within the hour.”
24
No Resistance
1150 hours
Fear hung in the room like a curtain of hot, wet air. It was like trying to breathe steam. Scotty Griffin examined the plastic bands cuffing his wrists in front. Given time he could find a way to sever them … but would he have time? He couldn’t guess when or even if such an action might be advisable. And even if he managed to free himself and his companions, where could they go?
The captives were sequestered in a storage bubble. Ali had been separated a few feet from the other gamers. The implication was perfectly clear: This was all about the Prince.
Judging by the degree of deference displayed by the others, the lead kidnapper was the one named “Shotz.” A golden-locked golem, as solid as a granite spur. His face could look flat and hard or masculinely attractive, depending on his expression. Shotz radiated a sense of disconnected amusement about everything, and Scotty wondered where the man had picked up the scars on the right side of his throat. His second-in-command seemed to be the red-haired Viking goddess they called Celeste. He had the ugly suspicion he had seen her before, briefly, in Switzerland. And wondered if she had recognized him in turn.
She and a couple of the others had entered and exited the room repeatedly. She was now looking down at them with a low flame in her eyes, as if she enjoyed their helplessness and hungered for the opportunity to exploit it. He reminded himself not to give her an excuse.
“These names: Michael Abernathy, Maud Abernathy, Angelique Chan, Sharmela Tamil, Wayne Gibson, Scott Griffin … move to this side of the room,” she said. “On your knees, hands behind your heads.”
Ali looked as if he wanted to faint. Scotty wanted to say something, but was cautious about announcing their relationship to these people. Why give them information they had, as yet, shown no sign of possessing? “What about me?” Ali said weakly.
“Ali Shannar? Excuse me: Ali Kikaya the Third. You will come with me.”
Time to forget caution. “I’d like to go with him.”
“And you would be…?” The blonde said, smiling pleasantly. Her eyes roamed over him.
“His friend.”
She chuckled. “Well, ‘friend,’ I think not.” She leaned close. “I think I know you, my friend.” So much for Switzerland. “We may have playtime later. But now, I think you had better get back on your knees. Shotz?”
Behind her, Shotz seemed to come out of his internal trance, almost like popping in and out of a separate reality. “Here is the situation: We have business with Ali Kikaya the Third. In fact, it is this business that brought us here. We have no interest in any of the rest of you, which may be to your advantage, assuming you cooperate. If you cooperate, you will remain unmolested. You will be reasonably comfortable, and will have all the amenities we can offer in exchange for your coopera
tion. Because we don’t care about you.”
A pause. “But … if you cause us difficulty of any kind, that will be an entirely different matter. Because we do not care about you. Do not care whether you live or die. It is marginally easier for us to keep you alive than it is to shoot you, or march you naked into the sunlight. I would suggest that you remember the word ‘marginally.’”
Behind Scotty’s shoulder, Angelique snarled. “You can’t get away with this. There are security forces.”
The woman looked at Angelique as if she were something in a petri dish. “If the dome is attacked, you die.”
Their bonds were checked carefully. Shotz left the room, and Celeste turned to face them. “There is nowhere for you to go. If you cooperate, you will be reasonably comfortable. If not…” She shrugged, but again, Scotty saw the little light go on in her eyes. This one wants to make an example of one of us, he thought.
As lightly as if he were a baby, she picked Ali up by the arm, and carried him from the room.
* * *
The door had just closed behind the kidnappers, and Wayne could no longer constrain himself. “Who the hell is Ali? I mean, I figured he was some kind of rich kid, but…”
Mickey picked up the topic swiftly. “But these bastards went to a hell of a lot of trouble to get their ’ands on him. People are going to die as a result of this.” He wiped his mouth against his shoulder. “Yeah, they’ve been polite enough so far, but this isn’t going to end well. I think that we deserve to know what the ’ell is going on.” Stress made his Cockney more pronounced.
For a long moment Scotty debated lying or stonewalling. But dammit, now they were all in this mess together, and they deserved better. He sighed. “His name is Ali Kikaya the Third. He’s heir to the throne of the Republic of Kikaya. His father thought that he might be at risk, but nobody could have anticipated this.”
Angelique looked like she wanted to skin him and roll him in salt. “So what do they want? What do they think they’re going to do? There’s no way out of here!”
“I don’t know. But I do know that they seem to know what they’re doing. And they haven’t made a mistake yet.”
Not yet, Scotty thought. But the day was young.
* * *
The room on the far side of the door was just more undecorated storage beneath a curved, unpainted gray ceiling. It wouldn’t have been a part of the game at all. Shotz was sitting on a corrugated cardboard box that probably would have folded under his weight on Earth.
“Frost,” Shotz said. “They said that Victor was dead. Why is this news to me?”
Thomas tried to meet Shotz’s eyes, failed, and then tried again. “It’s news to me, too. I knew nothing of it. He was alive when last I saw him.”
Shotz’s eyes glittered in the dim light, and for a moment he seemed almost buoyant, as if the two of them held a great and mysterious secret. “Was he? There will be more about this later.”
* * *
Kendra Griffin sat at her main conference table. The men and women around her, trained and experienced administrators, blinked and frowned furiously, as if trying to awaken themselves from a nightmare. She thought that they used to call the condition shell-shocked. “There are twelve people who checked into Heinlein base who are, at present, unaccounted for. All of them are tourists.”
Foxworthy bent his head, one hand cupping his left ear. “Kendra, Alex Griffin on line two.”
A ray of sunshine on a foggy, moonless night. Kendra clicked her tongue, triggering her com link.
The air in front of her cleared, and Scotty’s father appeared. “Kendra. What is happening up there?”
“I’m betting you’ve heard. Dad, you still have fingers everywhere. Who are these people? Who or what is a ‘Neutral Moresnot’?” Her pronunciation was perfect.
A quarter-million miles put a short but perceptible pause in every conversation, about a second and a half per comment. “Kendra, I’m linking with some of my people. Just bits and pieces right now, but ‘Neutral Moresnot’ is the code name for a kidnapping ring.”
“What nationality?”
Alex wagged his head. “I’m not sure. I remember hearing about this group before I retired. But nothing since. I’ll call Foley Mason. He keeps his hand in.”
“Please.”
There was a long, awkward pause. Then Alex spoke in a very quiet voice. “Kendra. Have you heard anything from Scotty?”
“Not a word,” she said. “And I have to assume that we won’t, until this thing is resolved.”
“Dear?” Millicent Griffin came online. Her expression was all business. “I’ve been researching while Alex was talking, and here’s what I’ve come up with. ‘Neutral Moresnot’ is the code name of an international kidnapping ring. Kidnapping is big business. Officially speaking in Esperanto to hide their nationalities, they take their name from the country Esperanto devotees once wanted to create. They have no politics. Current speculation is that they are there to kidnap Ali and put pressure on his father in the Republic of Kikaya: Abdicate, or lose a son.”
“Are they willing to kill?”
“Yes. And have. But only if their demands aren’t met.”
* * *
Neutral Moresnot had set up primary communications in bubble 37-C, twenty meters in diameter with a parquet floor and glow panels for windows. Their commander held up a hand, pointing to their observation screen. “We have a Scorpion inbound this way from Heinlein. No one on board. Automatic, riding the rails. Arrival in three minutes?”
“And nothing else approaching from any direction.”
“Excellent,” Shotz said.
* * *
Lunies and Earthers who had until quite recently believed they were in for a jolly adventure were clustered in bubble 35-C, supervised by McCartney and Gallop, two very professional, very unsympathetic men. Gallop was a heavyweight bodybuilder, huge, twice McCartney’s size, but was notably cautious and deferential to the smaller man, and for good reason. Shotz entered and surveyed the lot for a moment, finally nodding in approval. “All individuals designated Non-Player Characters will shed their costumes and prepare to enter the transport,” the blond man said in his dead, fractured voice. Without a smile, the face beneath the brilliant hair resembled a slab of raw rock. “There will be no talking, no resistance, or I promise you that there will be screaming and dying.”
Nineteen NPCs and techs were escorted from 35-C down through the infrastructure to bubble 137-H on the ground level, out an airlock and to the Scorpion transport. The kidnappers watched until the doors sealed, then the transport broke dock, and headed back toward Heinlein base.
“Mi ami gxi kiam a plano veni kune,” McCartney said.
The blond shrugged. “Might as well lose that. We’re finished after this. Might just as well speak Spanish.”
* * *
Inside the Scorpion transport, the nineteen NPCs and techs sat strapped in their seats, marveling at their narrow escape, hugging each other and celebrating as the treaded vehicle chugged back toward Heinlein. “We’re safe!” cried a sheet-metal worker who had, until recently, hoped to spend a few playful hours as an insect.
Then he looked around, and a curtain of concern fell across his face. “Where’s Darla?”
* * *
Inside the dome, Darla gasped for breath. Not that the quality of air had actually diminished, but she found that, under stress, she was experiencing her very first bout of claustrophobia.
She was crawling in the spaces between the bubbles used to create the main room systems. It was so dark she was forced to navigate primarily by feel and memory, but from time to time a pinhole of light showed her the way. That was enough to give her hope. And sometimes, as her mother had told her all through a childhood darkened by a succession of grabby stepfathers and drunken “uncles,” hope was all you had.
* * *
In the break room, now a makeshift communications room, Ali sat leaning against the wall of bubble 37-C, squinting at th
e beige walls, wrists bound in the front with plastic cuffs. “What do you want from me?”
“Not you,” Shotz said. “Your father.”
Ali sat up so straight his head banged against the wall. “What?”
“For him to step down from the throne of Kikaya. The people who fund me would like that very much.”
“Who are these people?”
A man entered the room who looked like a Congolese to Ali. A countryman. He held his breath. Danger had entered the room. “I, for one. Look in my eyes. I wish you were your father.” Ali held his breath. The other men were professionals. This Kikayan was a true believer, a far more dangerous thing.
“What did my father do to you?”
The man knelt down to Ali’s level. His breath was sharp. “He crushed the dream of a true democracy. Just the fact of his existence, his belief that he is entitled to a throne others died to protect … is an affront.”
“Who are you?” Ali breathed.
The man’s nostrils flared. “They call me Douglas Frost. I am the son of Kweisi Otoni. Thirty years ago, my father was driven from Kikaya. I have never even seen my country.”
“What do you want?” Ali asked. He tried to keep the fear from his voice, but did not entirely succeed.
“I want your father to die. Or, if that is too much to ask, that he leave, and allow our poor country to heal itself.”
Ali’s head swam. “Kweisi Otoni. I don’t know that name.”
Douglas Frost spat. “Of course you don’t. You know nothing of the true history of your country, and yet you probably think that you are worthy to inherit the throne. You are what people say.”
“Was Kweisi Otoni an important man?”
Frost’s eyes narrowed, and Ali instantly knew he’d said the wrong thing.
“He was to me,” Frost replied.
25
“This Door Has Been Mined”
1215 hours
Despite the attempts to keep things quiet, Heinlein dome buzzed with speculation. Kendra had made a brief announcement, asking for calm and noninterference. In such a frontier community, it was easy to imagine someone trying something heroic and suicidal.