Dream Park [2] The Barsoom Project

by Larry Niven;Steven Barnes

  If she didn’t get her mind back on track, she’d never get through this. Charlene unfolded the first of the backpacks and laid it across the satellite.

  Orson had suggested it. Magical objects in this world, in a way, seem to act like storage batteries. They store up power, absorb power by traveling, like an electric motor rotating through lines of magnetic force. They are discharged through the spells or circumstances dictated by tradition. Batteries.

  Now, that’s the model that we want to look at. If this thing has traveled around the world thousands of times, then it is a supercharged battery.

  And how the hell does that help us? Max was partly irritated, partly fascinated. Orson could do that to him.

  A battery can be discharged, Orson said. If you lay a conductor across the poles, you can force the battery to give up its power more quickly than the manufacturer ever intended . . .

  Charlene unfolded the backpacks carefully, with no idea how things were going to happen once the first step was taken. It could be spectacular, it might be lethal.

  Five backpacks, reinforced at the edges with Falling Angel cable, single crystal carbon fibers in an epoxy matrix. Almost unbreakable. One after the other, the backpacks landed on the satellite.

  At first there was no change. Then the satellite began to hum, and the shadows ceased to writhe in their obscene dance.

  But the backpacks . . . the backpacks began to smolder. It was as if the magic changed forms, as if the reinforcing filaments in the backpacks were conducting more power than they could safely hold. They began to sputter and smoke.

  The Cabalists began to rouse, as from a long, slow dream. Ahk-lut’s scarred eyes began to shift blindly. Charlene backed out of the cave. Now the backpacks were melting, actually changing shape, and glowed as if with heat.

  The glow shifted and flared with color, like a miniature aurora borealis. Additional small fires raced across the hidden wires within the fabric.

  The Cabalists slowly, oh, so slowly began to rouse from their trances. Orson stood, unable to move for a moment; then stepped forward and raised his ivory spear.

  Snow Goose caught his arm. “No,” she whispered fiercely. “You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  He looked back at them regretfully. Ahk-lut seemed so helpless, so ready for a killing stroke. He fought with himself, and then agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They turned and bolted. Behind them the satellite’s hum grew chillingly loud.

  An Amartoq with vast sloping shoulders emerged from the shadows, shuffling in a clumsily hurried gait. Orson jabbed with his spear. The creatures batted it aside almost nonchalantly. It reached out for Orson with blackened claws, and the invisible Charlene struck.

  Her spear sank into its back, and for a moment its face took on an almost pitiable countenance as its nails reached back, digging for the shaft. Its death-scream was blood-curdling.

  For a moment they were transfixed there by the sound, and then they heard another sound, the sly, deadly shuffle of feet against the bare rock, coming from the mouth of the cave.

  Trapped.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES

  The second spider came slow-dancing around the ledge on eight long, delicate, coarse-haired legs. It hissed, and the hair on the back of Max’s neck stood up and danced as he saw it more clearly. It was five feet tall at the shoulder . . . or at the thick of the body, if that was the proper way to describe it. He couldn’t take his eyes off the jaws.

  Johnny Welsh said “Shit!” and backpedaled. He faced the rock wall and tried to squeeze himself flat. “Trianna, get behind me. You too, Max. I’ll try a shot.”

  At its widest the ledge was barely wide enough. Trianna eased past Johnny’s back, deliberately lascivious. Fun to watch, but only the corner of Max’s eye caught it. He was dancing backward, fending off eight darting horn clubs and spikes as the spider advanced.

  He was pushed past the wide spot . . . and now the ledge was too narrow to change places. The spider, with absurd and disturbing delicacy, crawled around the turn of the ledge and attacked.

  Max swung at one of the legs, and was partially relieved when his usik passed through it. Then he remembered how little difference that made. This thing could chill him pretty damned quick. And if he even thought to mock its insubstantiality, the earth was likely to open up and swallow him whole.

  The leg flashed red, but the creature had an edge—three of its legs carried clubs. One of them flagged up and down, flashed out at him. It crept forward a little further on the ledge.

  Johnny and Max struggled. There was just enough room for one of them to edge around the ledge, and Johnny had the gun. There wasn’t enough room for them to change places, but they were determined to try.

  They squeezed together, Max momentarily embarrassed by a quick attack of homophobia, quashing it as Johnny’s breath warmed his chest.

  “We gotta stop meeting like this,” Johnny said. “People will say we’re in love.”

  “Har, har.”

  Trianna screamed, “Watch out!” Johnny turned around in time to yipe and raise his rifle. A club hammered down, striking sparks from the barrel. Johnny moaned, whether acting or serious, Max couldn’t tell.

  It did look a lonnnng way down.

  Johnny was past him now, and Max backpedaled as quickly as he could to give Johnny the range and space that he needed. Johnny leveled the rifle and fired.

  The creature’s right eye flashed red like something in a pinball game, then winked out. Unfortunately it didn’t slow down. One of the clubs lashed out in a semicircle, and Johnny’s leg went red.

  Johnny hobbled backward and fired again, and again. The club lashed out. Johnny hopped back, dodging as best he could on one good leg.

  The entire spider-beast was mostly red before it finally collapsed. It pulsed on the ledge and then tumbled over.

  The three returned to where the ledge was widest. There they paused to check Johnny’s leg. The red flashing was beginning to fade, but hadn’t died out.

  “Better than a bite.” Trianna breathed a sigh of relief. “The flashing probably would have gotten worse as the poison spread.”

  “What should we do?”

  She thought for a minute. “Well, I guess we could bandage it, and then you just be careful, and maybe we’ll get through all right.”

  Johnny slipped his belt out of its hoops, and bandaged his leg with it. “Think this’ll do?”

  “It better,” Max said. “Let’s get going.”

  The Amartoqs were gathering in the forest of jagged slabcrystals. Eviane watched . . . until she felt the huge slab beneath her feet begin to shift.

  Hippogryph lowered the point of his spear, confused. The creatures across the divide hissed and gibbered at him, shaking their fists.

  “What in the hell is going on?”

  “Earthquake?” But Eviane knew different. It felt wrong. It wasn’t the random movement of tectonic plates, nor the movement of a melting labyrinth of ice. The motion was deliberate and . . . dare she say it? Controlled.

  Behind them a gap had opened that was at least five yards across. Below it was darkness and slow, sluggish coils of sound. Something was moving down there, and she didn’t like it even a little.

  Ollie hung back, looked down. “Jesus Christ!” he screamed. His face curdled with shock, and he staggered back.

  The headless Amartoqs attacked.

  There were six. They moved with grim sureness. Their arms hung so low that their blackened claws raked the ground. The faces, sunken into those swollen bellies, leered at them.

  They were slow, and that was all that saved the Adventurers in the first moments of the attack.

  Eviane howled and darted in, her enchanted spear drawing first blood.

  Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion—except that the Amartoqs couldn’t seem to keep up with the dervish Adventurers. Ice and stone grew neon-red with blood. The monsters fell one after another, a
nd she found herself fighting side by side with Hippogryph, who wielded his spear well.

  Her spear was magic indeed! She sliced effortlessly through monster flesh, and with every stroke she slew another.

  As the last of them went down, she realized that something was wrong.

  Hippogryph was staring at the forest of slabs. The six Amartoqs they had fought were only the beginning. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, were emerging now. Their long heavy nails scratched along the slabs of ice and masonry like nails on a blackboard.

  “We’re dead,” she said, almost matter-of-factly.

  The creatures emerged another foot, and then the hideous sunken faces in the bellies looked out questioningly. Something that could only have been fear shone in their misshapen faces. They froze where they stood.

  In spite of herself, Eviane turned and looked back over her shoulder . . . and the old recurring nightmare began again.

  The slab had opened. The misshapen, octopus-headed thing, the thing from the gulfs, had begun to worm through. It was hideous beyond imagining, and Ollie had time only to scream “Chthul—” before one of the fanged cilia had him, had lifted him into the air, and was carrying him down toward the awful, gaping mouth.

  “Ollie!” Eviane had time to scream, and Ollie’s eyes met hers. She thought she saw a message there: I won’t die like this!

  The instant before that ghastly mouth would have swallowed him, Ollie’s hands ripped from his bandoleer, the makeshift belt which held flare grenades and sticks of dynamite. With an audible snick he pulled a brace of rings free from the incendiary flares.

  There was a painfully brief scream of defiance, and Ollie disappeared in a flash of light and thunder that dimmed the auroras. In that light she caught a glimpse of the thing hiding down in the darkness, and wished she hadn’t.

  It hissed and spit in pain and indignation. The damaged tentacle zipped back into the ground. The slab slammed shut with a thunderous roar.

  Sour smoke hung in the air. The ice was littered with corpses. On the far side of the plateau lay something shattered and smoking. She didn’t want to go and look.

  “Come on,” Hippogryph said. “The others need us.”

  She stared at him. She had foreseen death, but not Ollie’s. Now she saw death in Hippogryph’s face. Was it real? Was it for him?

  He turned, uncomfortable with the intensity of her gaze.

  Snow Goose saw it, but didn’t really believe it. Orson, protecting Charlene, was a totally different person.

  Backlit by the discharging satellite, his bulky figure moved not with grace but with great energy. She heard him mutter, “Here’s where Orson the barbarian battles the bloody beast that blocks their path—”

  One swipe of the Amartoq’s claws, and his left shoulder went red. He gamely transferred his sword to his right hand, stumbling out of the way as its subsequent, slower swipe missed him by inches.

  Orson lunged in with the sword in a move that looked like something out of The Prisoner of Zenda. It should have stayed there. He lost his balance and stumbled.

  The face in the middle of the beast’s torso laughed an ugly laugh. It swung its claws. They came slowly, but they came.

  Yarnall, in a movement so swift and sure that it startled her, spun Orson back and attacked in that narrow space, squeezing up from the rear and firing into the Amartoq’s rather oddly placed face. Its fighting snarl evaporated in a red mist.

  Orson was gasping for air, holding his shoulder and ankle. “Ow! I think I twisted my anide that time.”

  Charlene put a sympathetic arm around his shoulder. “I’ve got some more joint braces,” she whispered in his ear. Flickering, nearly invisible, she tried to prop him up. It must have been like leaning on a ghost. “I’ll let you borrow one if we can get out of this.” She paused, and Snow Goose heard the smack of an invisible kiss on Orson’s whiskered chin. “My hero.”

  Orson glowed, and straightened. “Ready,” he growled.

  Yarnall led the way.

  Something was happening, and Max could feel it. The ground shook, here and everywhere. Fissures divided the giant slabs that defined the walls and canyons. In the distance the bizarre geometry of the alien city was changing shape.

  They couldn’t move. They had to wait for the others to arrive.

  “Over there!” Trianna pointed.

  There were tiny dark figures in the sky. Max saw something familiar about those shapes, and he shouted, “Get down!”

  The Cabal had taken Wolfalcon form and were hunting the Adventurers.

  There was a greater brightness in the sky behind them.

  Max’s nerves were screaming at him to hide! But his curiosity won. He climbed to find a better view.

  Did the sun really look a little brighter? Did it really feel a little warmer?

  “Max!” It was Orson’s voice, and the brother himself came quickly after it, leaning on Charlene, who was flickering in and out of reality.

  “We did it. The satellite seems to be on the fritz . . . ”

  “For how long?”

  “Don’t know. By the sight of it, I think it’s discharging everything. The Cabalists who were there were just wiped out by it. We barely got out with our skins whole.” Orson scanned the group. “Where’s Eviane?”

  “Don’t know. I hope they’re all right.”

  Johnny Welsh’s shoulder wound had faded to pink. “If they had as hard a time as we did, they may not be back.”

  There was a rustling behind them, and up through the rocks climbed Eviane. Her hair was wild, her face haggard. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “The entire island is coming apart.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  STAR CHAMBER

  There were five of them seated in a horseshoe configuration in Harmony’s office.

  Izumi and Sandy Khresla were at one side of the table. Harmony and Alex were on the other. Millicent Summers was there, and that was it. There was no need for anyone or anything else.

  The office vidscreens played a multitude of images.

  Down on the floor of Gaming A, the delegates were inspecting various bits of equipment, displays on the subject of Martian exploration and terraforming. From here, from this perspective, it looked like an army of ants. Alex found himself suffering from a peculiar emotional disconnection.

  The game in Gaming B was nearing its conclusion. All nine of the Adventurers who remained alive were fleeing across an unstable ice field. Marty Bobbick helped Charlene Dula regain her feet. Ah—on her other side, a beefy guy named Orson gave a hand, helping her up even though Marty clearly didn’t need any help. Another complication. Ordinarily Alex would have smiled, but he just didn’t have one in him.

  On the last screen were images of Kareem Fekesh’s offices, images taken by a camera with no metal parts, built into Alex’s briefcase, clicking along at a steady five frames a minute. Every inch of the trip was there, from the guard at the front door, to the shape, size, and position of the elevator and its internal decor, to the secretarial and executive offices, to the positions of fire exits and security cameras, to the office where Fekesh received visitors.

  Izumi said, “We’ve seen everything but the inner office. We can map the shape of it by elimination. It’s not big. We’ve got the air system and the private elevator mapped, and magnetic fields gave us a sizable power lead and a sizable computer trunk, which implies a computer the size of a LapCray 20; and since there’s only one that size—”

  “We’re nowhere near needing that,” Harmony snapped.

  Fekesh’s face was very clear: smiling, taunting, unrepentant.

  Millicent Summers watched Fekesh with a strange expression. Alex recognized it after a moment, and added jealousy to his list of debits against the man.

  Harmony said, “So. What is your conclusion?”

  Millicent seemed to shake herself out of a stupor and returned to the business at hand. “Based on what you’ve said and on what we know, we can be fairly sure that Fekesh had a
major role in the death of a Dream Park employee, the indirect death of an-other, the maiming of several, and the corruption of at least one employee who may still be . . . ah . . . employed here.” She stopped, and looked around. They all knew exactly what she meant.

  “Do we have a legal case?”

  “I’m afraid not. Not unless we can find the woman, it seems to be just one, who subverted the employee and recruited Tony McWhirter. She’s the link. Without her, we have nothing.”

  Sandy Khresla spoke up. “Dammit, Griff—even if we find her, we can’t go to the cops. We’re guilty of obstructing justice.”

  “You don’t mean he gets away with it?”

  “We can’t even be sure he did it,” Millicent said grimly. “Or if he did, for how much he’s actually culpable. The term ‘plausible deniability’ was invented to cover situations like this. He may easily have made a bad call on which underlings to trust. He may have already dealt Out justice to them. We don’t know. And right now, he’s helped to put together the Barsoom Project. In a very real way, we have to consider him an ally.”

  She paused for a moment. “On the other hand, four years ago, there was a major industrial accident at Colorado Steel, during a safety inspection, for Christ’s sake. Fekesh picked up a controlling interest at a bargain.”

  “Hardly conclusive . . .” Harmony offered.

  “Aw, Thadeus!”

  “But it does suggest a methodology. Alex, in this room he’s innocent until we prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Okay? We’re prejudiced. We know it. It doesn’t mean we can’t protect ourselves.”

  Griffin brooded, staring at his fingers. He picked up a pencil and rolled it slowly, feeling its textures of wood and thin paint.

  “Then,” he said slowly, “the way I see it, what we have to do is, first, protect Tony McWhirter. Get him into protective custody now. Reopen his case. Anything. I won’t have him killed. Second, find ‘Madeleine,’ if it is at all possible. She’s the link. Third, keep an eye on the Barsoom Project. Get Welles on it as soon as this chubby-Eskimo game is over. Something is going to happen there.” The pencil broke in his hand. “I can feel it.”