by Larry Niven
“Of course. Twenty years ago, he was the most celebrated English-language writer in the world. He wanted into my world. He wanted to write the Moon Maze Game with me. I’d have given up my smaller testicle, which is the right one. He was in love with an artist, January Prince. I couldn’t contact this January Prince. Reclusive. Nobody’s ever seen him, or her. I based my Moon folk on his sketches just to get Ladd.”
“Prince, hmm?”
“I am such a fucking idiot,” Xavier said. “I’d heard about Ladd’s money problems, but never thought someone might be able to buy him. I just didn’t think.”
“He’s launched!” Wu Lin called. “The Prince has launched!”
* * *
Ali was flying. On the Moon. For a moment, all thoughts of threat and risk were simply … gone. He soared and swooped between the stalactites, lips stretched in an endless grin, eyes bright with joy.
Below him, the lava boiled. A stench of sulfur clogged his nose. One chance to do this. Get it right. As he left the edge the flying machine hit a thermal, jumped up a hair, and he had to correct, skewing sideways. Ali pumped his feet madly, working his arms to stabilize again.
A moment of panic, and then he flexed his arms hard to regain control.
Flying. By all his ancestors, he was flying! He stretched his arms out, extending the wings, and embraced the wind. Then …
No! He had misjudged the distance. His left wing tip brushed a stalactite. The stalactite sprayed fragments, more like cork than rock. The flying machine skewed sideways, stabilizing just too late to make a safe landing. He crashed onto the edge of the far cliff, and teetered, beginning to slide back into the abyss. Ali clawed his way free, clinging as he slid down. The line tied to his left ankle flagged behind.
He didn’t know what was real, and what was not. Whether the lava below him was mere effect, or actual boiling rock. Whether the stench of sulfur in his nose was genuine or fantastic. Nor did he think of cameras that might be streaming his struggle to Earth and beyond. All he knew was that he would not fall, would not tumble down into the glowing crevasse.
Would not.
A foot at a time, he clawed his way up. Gasping and panting, he found hand holds, pulled himself to safety even as the flying machine tumbled down and out of sight. And when he was secure, Ali rolled onto his back, face split by an absurdly silly grin. He had never imagined that air could smell so sweet. On the other side of the canyon, the gamers howled in joy.
Ali forced himself up and began to search, finally finding an anchor point for the rope vine. It wasn’t hard. One of the stalagmites was tinged slightly silver, just enough to catch his attention. It was concrete, and anchored into rock. Strong enough. He fastened it, chanting his mnemonic to himself. “Right over left, left over right, makes a reef knot both tidy and tight.” His hands were shaking so hard that he tucked them into his armpits to calm them.
Tested the line again, and was satisfied. He walked back to the edge of the chasm, and waved.
* * *
“Well, all right!” Scotty said.
Wayne rigged a safety line around his waist, attached the loop to the rope, and grinned at Darla. “Give us a kiss, love.”
She did so, pressing her hips against him as she did. Then Wayne winked at Angelique, jumped up and began to climb hand-over-hand across the divide.
Angelique smiled wanly, and the shorter, rounder woman winked at her.
Mickey came running up, wide-eyed. “Scotty. I heard something from the other side. I think the pirates are rattling the door.”
“Not surprising,” Scotty said. “They wouldn’t flounder around forever. This rope is graded for a thousand kilograms. It’ll hold us all at the same time. Get your asses up there.”
Darla jumped up and began to shimmy across. Scotty, Mickey and Maud were last. “All right, beautiful. It’s you and me now,” Scotty said.
Maud shrank away. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
“I’ll go with you. We can do this. I swear.”
“Maud,” Mickey said. “You have to. I won’t leave you here.”
She could not be consoled. “I can’t! I thought I could, but … it’s just too much. There’s just nothing left. I’m tired,” she protested. “Let me stay here. They won’t hurt me.” She paused. “I’m just an old woman.”
“Scotty,” Mickey said. “Thank you for your offer. I think this is something I have to do myself.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” Scotty asked.
“I’m absolutely sure.”
“All right.” Scotty left them to their devices, and stomped on the second machine’s wings. The fabric would not tear, the glue did not give way, but finally the struts themselves bent until the device was useless. “Just in case,” he said.
Scotty jumped up on the line, and began to haul himself across, hand-over-hand, a safety line on the rope. In lunar gravity, it was relatively easy. A moment of panic as his feet slipped on the far edge, and then he was across.
He looked back. Mickey and Maud were fastening themselves onto the line. “I can’t look down!” Maud screamed.
“Then don’t,” Mickey said. Mickey roped himself together with Maud, and a safety line over the top. “Up we go, moppet.”
Maud managed a smile. “Moppet,” she whispered. “You haven’t called me that in years.”
“We’re not done yet, love,” he said, and kissed her. Maud threw her arms around his neck, and he began to hoist them both across. One pull at a time, grunting and groaning with every heroic effort.
* * *
Behind them: A sudden chuffing sound, followed by a dull thung as the barricaded door flew open and slammed back into the rock wall.
Maud screamed and lost her grip. Suddenly she dangled from Mickey supported only by her safety rope. He strained to cross as three men and a tall, broad blond woman burst through the door—the pirates arrived.
“Kill them!” Celeste’s severe face distorted with rage.
Lying on his stomach, Scotty aimed back through gusts of lava stench, firing a bolt back across at the pirates. Some ineffective firing back and forth followed as Mickey and Maud struggled to cross the remaining distance.
Screaming, Maud climbed up the rope, holding on to Mickey’s pants, which slid down so that he had to crook his knees to keep her from falling off.
Finally they made it to the far side, and climbed up, to the applause of gamers who pulled them behind fiberglass stalactites, and away.
Scotty pulled the line free of its mount as Frost began to climb across. A moment later, and the pirate might have plummeted into the crevasse. Instead, Frost thumped howling down onto rock. Damn, he thought, hoping that the traitor had at least separated a shoulder. Celeste watched him, radiating hatred. He just couldn’t help it: Scotty gave her a little bow, then turned and fled.
* * *
Celeste balanced at the lip of the gorge, her eyes blazing, fists clenched.
“How do we get across?” Frost asked, rubbing his wounded shoulder.
With a palpable effort of will she tore her eyes from the far side, investigating the walls, the ceiling, the gap. “Was this part of the game?” she asked. “How much of this is real?”
“Look at the weird equipment,” he said. “The big insects. Yes, I’d say game. Most of it.”
“Have you seen flowing lava?” She snarled it, tense as an angry mandrill.
“No, but…” He finally understood her body language, the tone of her voice and her expression.
“Yes,” she said. “‘Oh.’ Get me a rope. I’m going down there.”
Fujita and Miller glanced at each other. The huge man scratched his bald head, nervously. “With all the illusions,” Fujita said, “we must be careful. Once we begin to disregard what we see and hear … we become vulnerable to ambush.”
If there had been real lava in the chasm, her expression would have frozen it. “If you have no use for your balls,” she said, “I’ll just take them now.”
The big man broke eye contact, muttered something inaudible and stepped aside.
35
Little Wars
1646 hours
Mickey crouched, hugging his knee, moaning and muttering as he rocked. Scotty said, “You don’t kick a door down on the Moon. We build ’em strong.”
“I felt it give, just a little.” Mickey looked up, suddenly hopeful. “Maybe both of us?”
What the hell. But there was only room for two. “Rest the knee. I’ve got this.” Scotty motioned to Wayne. The two men braced themselves and charged the portal, and rammed through, spilling onto their bellies in close-mown grass that didn’t smell like grass, or anything else.
A shadowed mansion loomed above them, edged by blue sky. Rows of meticulously manicured hedges, enhanced by life-sized statues of animals, nymphs and men in heroic poses. An English countryside estate?
Angelique caught herself mugging astonishment, audience always in mind. The others were more sensible, or quicker. They fanned out and took cover behind solid-looking concrete sculptures. Scotty’s hand whacked a Chinese dolphin experimentally: foam plastic. “Not good cover,” he barked. “We need to get inside. I’ll lead.”
Nobody said, “It could be a trap.” Scotty bent low and ran for the huge front door—which stood open, very trap-like. He slid in on his belly, rolled right, and looked.
High ceiling, high enough to make him feel like a child. Floor made of … cork? No clear targets.
Light glowed only in this nearer region. They had entered a vast playroom, dotted with chairs and card tables and bureaus pulled against the walls under a facing pair of big, ornately framed mirrors. Wooden blocks had been shaped into miniature castles, public buildings, row houses. Dowels for chimneys. Cardboard had become walls and bridges. A waterfall drawn in blue chalk plunged down one wall and became a river, growing wide, until it was a rapids running in blue-and-white stream lines around pale rocks. Clumps of leaves and twigs were arrayed into a miniature forest. Nothing moved.
Beyond the play area blackness loomed.
“It’s some kind of kid’s game. I don’t see a threat,” Scotty called.
Angelique eeled in and rolled left. Then Ali, Wayne, Sharmela, Darla. Maud followed, leaning on Mickey. Wayne was trying to work a “detect danger,” but there weren’t any signals from the Game Master’s control suite. “We’re on our own,” he said, “but there’s power—”
“Look at this,” Ali said. He was on the floor some distance in, playing with a toy cannon a foot long. He triggered something. A light foam projectile flew from the cannon to impact a foot-high toy soldier, which rolled away.
No. Crawled away. In the shadows, Scotty had assumed the soldier shapes were carved wood, or ivory. Now he saw that they were grubs, infant versions of the mooncows, balanced absurdly on their tails and waiting for instruction. Their tiny limbs twitched. Their eyes rolled in endless loops.
“What in the world is this?” Angelique asked.
“At first I thought it was lawn chess, with living pawns and pieces,” Ali replied. “But now I don’t think so. This is part of Wells’ world. It’s from a pair of pamphlets called ‘Little Wars’ and ‘Floor Games.’” He lined up another target. The projectiles were little wooden cylinders; the gun was spring-loaded. There were several scattered about the floor, clustered like opposing artillery. He fired into a rank of frozen grubs and when the soft projectile struck they skittered away in different directions, then regrouped and looked at the gamers, their faceted eyes somehow … hopeful.
Alien children playing toy soldiers.
“‘Floor Games’?” Wayne asked. “What in the world is that?”
“H. G. Wells,” Maud gasped. “Tracts on gaming. Little-known, but legitimate canon.”
Ali rolled over and spoke rapidly. “I’m sorry to admit this may be more of my father’s doing. I have played a version of ‘Little Wars’ on many occasions.” He sighed.
“Regrets later,” Scotty said. “Right now, Daddy’s perfidy might save our butts. Give it up.”
“H. G. Wells invented tabletop war gaming with tin soldiers and spring cannons. He laid out systems of rules that were used for a good century. Blocks to make toy buildings. Coin flips, at first, to win hand to hand conflicts—”
“Ali! Lose the history lesson and tell us how we use this.”
“Well…” The grubs were lined up in three armies, like three different sides of a triangle. While all were the infantile insectoid forms they had seen previously, those directly in front of them were gussied up in little British uniforms. Those across the way were relatively uncostumed, and those to the right, amid toy tripod Martian walkers, had a vaguely Lovecraftian appearance.
The Selenite soldiers carried slender insects with wasplike hindquarters. In place of artillery stood rows of potato bug–looking critters, their butts turned up in the air. Coils of glowing intestines within transparent bodies, they resembled fancy little Christmas tree ornaments. Living energy weapons, perhaps? Surely, in the game Xavier had planned for them, all this would have been explained by now.
How to make it all go? The grubs mewled and crawled in little circles, then returned to their original positions. Awaiting instruction.
Wayne’s eyes lit up. “All right. This is the same biological tech we’ve seen all over the hive. Living chess pieces, and a nice plush chair here. I’m thinking Cavor sat here.”
“And how did he control the game?”
Wayne shrugged. “Charisma. Language skills. I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. We have psychics. If this game module is programmed for independent action, I would bet that…” He turned and looked Maud dead in the eye. “We have someone just about perfect for this adventure.”
“M-me?” Maud asked. She struggled not to stutter. “Maybe Mickey—” She grasped at his arm as if holding on for dear life.
Politely but firmly, he peeled her hands away. “I don’t know ‘Little Wars,’ love,” he said. “I think you really are the expert this time.”
“I don’t have time to learn,” she said, eyes gleaming with fear … but something else, too. Eagerness? “We’d have to play it first,” Maud said. “Think there is an instructional program built into this?”
“Meanwhile,” Sharmela said tartly, “we’re being hunted by armed killers. Madame Deceased Guide, is there an easy way through here? Or around? The real game is to get down to the aquifer.”
Darla frowned. “I haven’t seen this place. The lights are on, so we’ve got power. No communication. It’ll be on automatic. Between the bubble rooms it’s still vacuum until we get down into the aquifer. We’re going to have to game our way through.”
Angelique said, “We would have had a meal and rest break here, I think. Fat chance of that now.”
Scotty said, “The pirates can’t fly. They couldn’t have trained on the Moon, and I broke their wings. I’d say we have an hour, maybe a little more. We can do this, people. Look—this was almost the end of the overall game, wasn’t it?”
Angelique nodded. “Probably.”
“And do things accelerate toward the end? Or do they slow down?”
“Accelerate. More betting, more monsters, usually bigger special effects.”
“And this is relatively sedate.” He waved at the lawn, the mansion, the statuary.
Wayne seemed to catch his meaning. “This is a pause, a breather before Xavier hits us with whatever he’s got at the very end. It’ll be pretty straightforward. Actual play, usually combat, as opposed to running in circles trying to figure things out. That would be frustrating for the viewers as well as us. So assuming that we have the right resources, we should be able to just … play the damned game.”
He crouched down. “Look. We’re not going to have to read some friggin’ book. Wouldn’t that be exciting to watch? I’d say that game time would be no longer than we’ve got right now in ‘real’ time.”
“So…,” Ali said thoughtfully. “We’re supposed to be able to fi
gure it out pretty quickly.”
“Right. So look. What is this game? What is it that all war games do?”
“Simulate wars,” Angelique said.
“That’s right. Whether you’re talking football, or chess, or RPGs, there is”—he started ticking off points on his fingers—“territory to be taken, people to be captured or killed, perhaps a King or Queen to be neutralized. Tactics and strategy. Individual and group action. Defenses to be degraded, and weaponry to be destroyed or taken. The rules are just to simulate the structure or chaos of a military campaign, and allow a conclusion within some agreed-upon framework of time and location, you see?”
A thread of excitement was worming through the group, but Scotty couldn’t let himself get swept up in it. “Listen: Moresnot may be an hour crossing that gap, but we still need to set a guard. That’s me, I think.” He waited for a nod from Angelique, then slithered out the front door.
Mickey said, “Maud and I’ll take the Earth army. The Brits.”
“I’m not sure there’s another choice,” Angelique said. The chair on the Lunar side held a grub that looked annoyingly like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland.
The Martian chair was filled with another young Selenite, wearing some kind of partial facemask with antennae and pincers more mollusk than insectile.
“I’m betting that this is straightforward: Our psychic sits, and the game begins. Shall we give it a try?”
Maud sat. Instantly, a gigantic head and shoulders appeared above the field. It was human, white, male, bearded. And spoke in thunder.
“I am Dr. Claud Eustuce Cavor. I have been on the Moon for twenty years. The Selenite Queen has entrusted me with some of the guidance of her children, over two hundred of them. I designed this place at her command.”
Scotty was studying the floating head carefully. “I know him,” he whispered. “Another Lunie, name of Piering. So he was supposed to be Professor Cavor? Geez, he must be pissed.”
“Shhh!” Angelique said, waving her hand angrily.
“I have never seen an attack by Martians, but I am assured that such has happened, and that the weaponry we have given them in this game accurately represents reality. So do the Selenites’ weapons and various troops, of course, and I’ve imitated our own cannon and transport and other devices as best I can.