At first Max saw only a blurred glow. It moved, shifted, and he understood: something intangible was pulling itself free from Max. A moment later he could see its shape.
It was himself, in a way. Once, after a debilitating stretch of fever, he had lost enough weight in his face to see the cheekbones that shaped it, and he recognized them now. But that perfect, idyllic shape turned and gave him a nod, smiling as if they shared some great secret. Max couldn’t hear the undertone chanting anymore—it was more like he was a part of it, his body one of the notes. He turned to the other Gamers, and was astonished. From each of them flowed an ectomorphic form, more beautiful than anything they could have aspired to in life. The forms rose above them, hovered there, then joined hands in a circle.
Max stared, trying to absorb what he was seeing. The cave, once the very heart of darkness, glowed with a light which was not of man, or of man’s doing. It was a holy light, a miniature aurora borealis, a light which flowed from within the floating, flaming figures.
The floating “spirit” of Snow Goose rotated slowly in the air, her face a calm oval. “Now,” she said, “we go.”
The spirit forms ranged ahead. Max felt his spear humming with power, and clutched it tightly. It felt warm. The stone bridge they traversed was as narrow, and as frighteningly high over an unfathomable pit, as it had been before; but there was something else. Something new had entered the equation.
It was a sense of possibilities.
The Paija stood waiting for them. It was gigantic, bestially beautiful, profane beyond his imaginings, balancing on that single obscene leg like something spawned in a Tijuana freak show.
Its single leg was more like the trunk of an elephant. Boneless. flexible. It weaved from side to side like some kind of top-heavy cobra, beckoning them onward to death.
For a moment the tableau was complete, and still. Max faded back a little, watching the others, saw Frankish Oliver gripping his war club as if it connected him to the spirit image floating above his head.
The Paija sniffed at the air, her thick, bovine nose wrinkling as if scenting something distasteful.
She gripped her stalagmite club and screamed defiantly and smashed it down on the bridge. The span of rock danced savagely. Dust and rock rained from the invisible ceiling. Kevin fell to his knees and had to be helped up by Bowles. For a moment a twist of genuine fear crossed that freckled face. Then bravado won out, and he was strong and brave once again.
The Paija opened its mouth, her mouth, and grinned. Max had never seen so many broken edges in one place. It looked like a junkyard for dental cutlery. The teeth were set in at odd angles, rows and rows of them, like shark’s teeth.
The Paija attacked.
“Onward!” Snow Goose yelled, and like the fools they were, they charged.
And above them, so moved their ethereal doubles. With every step they took, the floating figures above them seemed to gain power. They shone more brightly. The Paija ceased her raving, examined them suspiciously, seemed to reconsider— Max saw Trianna’s spirit fly at the enormous creature like a fairy on speed, moving with such grace and agility that the breath froze in his throat. Quite simply, she was beautiful. The Paija swung at her with its improvised club, and she backpedaled, doing a kind of breast stroke in the air.
Max snuck a peek at the flesh-and-blood Trianna, who was transfixed, her lips slightly parted, eyes gleaming with excitement.
The Paija couldn’t seem to touch her. Now the other spirit forms flew in, and when they linked together, that aurora effect was magnified. A fluxing electric rainbow blossomed, and touched the Paija.
The creature screeched in pain and indignation that these tiny creatures would dare to harm it. Far from being slowed, it charged, swinging the club. The stalagmite smashed down just short of Snow Goose, who scrambled back and then caught her balance again. “Don’t run! Don’t run! It will feed on your fear!”
The Paija glared at them, the forest of black hair shadowing her face. Grunting, it took another step.
The ethereal figures fluttered above it, weaving in and out like a flock of glowing hummingbirds. The Paija swiped at them with the club, handling it like a flyswatter, and only the unnatural agility of the spirit forms kept them from—
Oops. The Paija made contact with Orson’s image, just a glancing blow, but Max’s brother said, “Ooof!” and rubbed at his shoulder, where a red glowing mark began to grow.
The Paija was beginning to catch the rhythm now. Charlene’s image caught a nasty wallop, and Charlene cried, “Wha’?” A red stain began to grow on one leg, glowing in the dark like some kind of phosphorescent fungus. The spirit creatures began to fade.
“Join hands!” Snow Goose grabbed Hebert and Hippogryph, panting as if with physical exertion.
Max reached out for Yarnall’s wrist. Yarnall joined with Kevin. The twelve Adventurers formed a semicircle facing the beast.
The creature snarled, sensing victory. The club smashed again on the bridge. The Paija dropped the entire force of its being into the blow. An eight-foot section of rock gave way, splintering and crumbling with a roar like the end of worlds. Max stutterstepped, struggling for balance.
Snow Goose remained erect, but her face was no longer so strong and determined. She stared down into the gulf before them, the chunks of rock spinning in crazy slow motion into infinity, and she was no longer sure.
The Paija grinned at them and leapt over the gap. Her suction-cup foot gripped the bridge, leaving a moist ring where it landed. She hopped forward.
Max saw Snow Goose crumbling, and he forced himself to his feet. Dammit, he had to do something, and he had to do it now. Tag-team!
In a pro wrestling match the audience would see you screaming obscenities, but they couldn’t hear. It didn’t matter what you said. Max stood as tall as he could and he screamed up at the Paija. “Monsterrr! We challenge you! We’re gonna rip your lips off and make you kiss your own backside!”
Not particularly inspired, but it got her attention. She smiled a smile that said, me and you, numbnuts in a universal language. He hefted his spear and pointed it, waiting for magic.
Nothing.
I’m dead, he thought.
But the ethereal double was more substantial now, brighter: he could no longer see through it. It was true! The Paija fed on their fear, and their doubles fed on their courage. He put on his best drill sergeant’s voice. “Get up, you slackers! Face this thing off!”
The Paija growled at them, as if undecided, and then Max saw his double launch its spirit spear directly between the Paija’s eyes. The monster screamed, reared back, and clasped its wound. The club rose up, and thundered down again directly at Max.
Here goes nothing. Max gritted his teeth and kept the spear upraised. The club landed to the side, deflected by his spear thrust.
The monster was horribly confused now, and in pain. The other Adventurers joined him, joined hands, screamed in concert. They backed the Paija up a short hop, and when they gestured aggressively, their doubles attacked.
It was playing possum. It sprang back to life, and caught Hippogryph’s double a good lick. Hippogryph yelped and grabbed his shoulder, which began to glow red. Charlene’s double, trying to swoop in close for a shot at its eyes, caught a grazing blow and went spiraling off to the side, almost slamming into a stalagmite before it could catch itself. Charlene’s entire right side went red.
But slowly, surely, the Paija was driven back. They cheered, and they screamed, and Max said, “What the hell!” and hurled his spear. It caught the creature in the throat. The Paija staggered backward a hop, teetered for balance, and fell from the bridge. Howling, it tumbled blindly into the blackness.
They all moved to the edge to see it fall, watch it die. Max’s double landed in front of him, beautiful, lean, and muscular glowing in that darkness within the earth, and it smiled.
Hell. He was a hero!
Chapter Seventeen
BUTTERFLIES
Slight
ly blue-faced, Gwen exhaled with relief. For a few seconds, the wail of the wind and the Paija’s receding death-howl were the only sounds. Then the Gamers behind her were leaping and screeching and clapping each other on the back.
Gwen watched Hippogryph with some amusement. Hippogryph screeched and Hippogryph leapt; but his face didn’t turn toward the sky in triumph; his eyes remained at the level; his big bouncing body formed an unobtrusive barrier between the others and Charlene. Just as well. Her legs looked a little unsteady.
The darkness helped . . . but Gwen could never quite believe that the holograms would mask her and Ollie well enough to produce the illusion of flight. But everything had gone perfectly. Now the Gamers crowded at the lip of the precipice, watching the Paija’s image fall to its death. She saw their faces; every damned one of them had been moved by the sight of his spirit image. They stood straighter, walked prouder.
Gwen knew the gimmicks hidden in the Game, and still she felt the effect. She took the time to square herself, then dove headfirst into her “Snow Goose” routine again.
“All right, team! Way to go!”
“That was great!” Orson was vibrating where he stood, his considerable mass jiggling and wiggling with delight. “I feel ready for anything!”
“That’s what’s next,” Charlene surmised. She was panting as much from excitement as exertion. Gwen heard a low beeping tone in her ear, and she glanced over at Ollie.
His left hand was covering his ear, as he listened to medical reports from Central Processing. With his right hand he signaled her: a finger pointing to the ground, followed by a horizontal palm: slow down.
It might be that Charlene’s vital functions, picked up and broadcast through mesh underwear, had alerted Central Processing. Maybe it was the heavier Sands brother. For all Orson’s jolly sarcasm, Ollie thought he looked ripe for a nice, juicy cardiac incident . . .
So Gwen’s eyes unfocused, and her hand closed powerfully on Orson’s wrist as he was about to speak. “I hear them,” she said, “whispering,” rolling her eyes, “the Gods. They—”
She waited for their attentive silence, then squeezed her eyes shut and made a happy pout. “They are most pleased. They say that they will bring us gifts!”
Through the darkness at the cave’s unimaginably distant roof there shone a shaft of golden light. It pierced the black and danced palely on the far side of the gap. The beam was broken up by a fluttering motion, something like fat snowflakes . . . but every “flake” was a living thing, reflecting and adding to the light.
Trianna said it first. “Butterflies!”
Exactly right. White butterflies. They drifted this way and that, creasing the light, reflecting it, questing into the darkness for a moment, then returning to coruscate and sparkle anew.
They landed in a cone, prancing and fluttering in heaps, and covered the ground as if huddling together for warmth against the winter. They crawled over each other in a churning Brownian movement. Any trace of individual identity was submerged in an amoeboid tangle.
Gwen watched the Gamers’ eyes, squeezed Ollie’s hand in acknowledgment and thanks for his signal.
Then the butterflies took to the air again, leaving behind them—
A huge platter heaped with apples and grapes and pears. There was a small mountain of crackers and breads, four wide-mouthed jugs, and some miscellaneous cans.
“Lunch!” Johnny Welsh said reverently. “My stomach was about to sue me for desertion. Wait a minute—”
The Paija had shattered the stone bridge. They looked at lunch across an eight-foot gap. Kevin asked, “How do we get to it?”
Orson said, “Why don’t we just twist you into a rope bridge and walk across?”
“Ha-ha,” said Johnny Welsh. “Humor makes me hungry.”
“Listen to me,” Gwen said. “The stone bridge is destroyed, but in conquering the Paija, we have all gained great power. You must now have pure intention in order to use it. You must truly desire the food.”
They were looking at Gwen warily: crazy and dangerous. “Believe me, honey,” Hebert promised. “That food and I are going to share a deep, spiritual communion.”
“Do you remember the lessons you learned from the food last night?”
Sheepishly, Trianna raised her hand. “We need to treat the food like a living thing.”
“Is that different from the way you usually treat it?”
She hunched her shoulders. “I remember the lectures, dear. I love food, but it’s like building blocks to me. I can make pretty, tasty things out of it—”
The pile of food rustled, and a bunch of grapes turned into butterflies and flew away. Gwen said, “Watch it! The food here is very sensitive.”
“I pay honor to the Inua of the food!” Kevin said. Perfect.
“I’d be surprised if he eats at all,” Orson growled.
“Did you say something, Mr. Sands?” Gwen made her voice deceptively sweet.
“Well . . .” Puzzles. Orson had to solve puzzles. “I pledge that if this food will, will serve me . . . ” He paused to hunt for the right words.
“Then we will serve the food,” Johnny Welsh said solemnly. Hippogryph, blind-sided, burst into helpless laughter.
But Orson had his lines worked out. “I will pay honor to it, and attention to what I eat, and only take into my body what I need for nourishment.”
Gwen’s eyebrows went up. “Can’t argue with that.”
Max leaned over to Bowles and stage-whispered, “Did you pack your hip boots?”
A shaft of light shone down from the heavens, directly upon Orson.
“Step forward, Orson. If that was the truth, I think it’s mealtime.”
“I meant it—” Another bunch of grapes started turning white, and Orson shrieked. “All right! All right! Give me a minute, will you! Damn.” He was the picture of frustration. He glared menacingly at Gwen. “How’d you know?”
“The Great Spirits. Or maybe a lucky guess. You have that kind of face.”
“Don’t I know it. All right.” He forced his shoulders to relax, and then shrugged. “I haven’t done it until now. I was just testing. But I will try, for this meal at least. I promise.”
The butterflies fluttered back into the light, settled, and transformed back into grapes.
“If you told the truth,” Gwen said, “step out. The Great Spirit will support you.”
“You want me to step out on air?”
“No.” She said piously, “On faith. Heh-heh.”
Orson peered out over the precipice. His lips made a wet, unhappy sound. He took a step, feeling out over the gap with his toe, the rest of his balance safely held in reserve.
His foot was balancing on nothing. He breathed a sigh of relief, and took another step. Then Orson Sands was by God doing magic, walking on air like Gene Kelly. All he needed was Jerry Mouse dancing alongside.
He stopped in the middle of the gap and looked down past his feet, down into the depths where the Paija had vanished, and then back at them with a smile that showed every tooth. When he crossed to the other side he salaamed deeply, damn near kissed the ground, then did a little jig-step which took him over to the food.
Orson prodded a grape with one heavy finger. The sun came up behind his eyes. “It’s real!”
He plopped down and grabbed handfuls, a pear in one hand and a bunch of purple grapes in the other—
Then he set the pear down and began eating grapes one at a time.
Gwen beamed. “Next?”
One at a time they went through the ritual. The “Great Spirits” seemed to know when they were lying and when they weren’t. Gwen savored their bewilderment.
Now that they had enough of a break to realize how long it had been since breakfast, hunger was a raging fire. The butterflies returned every time a lie was told, and Gwen called them on it.
Trianna swore she would honor her food, but she was lying. Gwen knew it, Trianna knew it, and most importantly, the technicians back in Gaming C
entral knew. They knew from reading body signs from the mesh underwear: blood pressure, skin ternperature, galvanic skin response, heartbeat and respiration rates.
Tears streamed down Trianna’s lovely face. Her shoulder-length blond hair seemed flat and lifeless. “What do you want from me? I love food. How can you say I don’t? How do you think I got this heavy if I didn’t?”
“Do you love it,” Gwen asked soberly, “or do you use it? You hide in your body, Trianna.”
Trianna was so upset that she was actually bawling now. “What do you want me to say? I—I . . . shit!”
Kevin took her shoulders. “Just slow down and notice your food.”
Her eyes raked him; they should have raised welts. “And you? You damn skeleton, when did you ever notice food? You look like nobody ever told you about that part.”
Those words had hurt: Kevin blinked his hollow eyes against the pain. “I’m here too,” he said quietly. “We’re pretty much the same, Trianna. Both of us need to be okay with not being perfect. I’m tired of being scared.” He smiled tentatively. “Aren’t you?”
Trianna swallowed hard. Gwen felt sympathy but bit it back. Trianna ate sedately enough around the group, but it was increasingly easy to picture her at home, alone in her apartment. A mindless Oreo cookie zombie, shoveling food into her mouth as if that gorgeous face and that lumpy body lived in different zip codes. Deli of the living dead.
Trianna said: “I swear I’ll try. I want to tell the truth about it.” Her voice was a little girl’s, barely a squeak. “I want to.” This time Gwen didn’t get a warning beep in her ear. Trianna tottered across the bridge and sat, snuffling quietly, and picked at her lunch.
Kevin watched her, licked his lips, and ran a thin hand across the parchment of his face. On the far side of that gap was health, self-respect. Salvation.
What war was it he fought? He spoke of perfection. What was his unattainable ideal, that he compensated by being perfect at self-denial? What was so spin-dizzy in his life that he made up for it by controlling every crumb he ate, would take perverse pride in his conquest of the physical hungers?
Dream Park [2] The Barsoom Project Page 18