by Larry Niven
The brush was blackened and burned away, and great pockets of earth were tarry scorch marks.
"Where did we leave him?" Acacia asked, her voice whispery with ugly anticipation.
Alex could only guess. "There used to be a patch of shrubs around here, and a group of low trees..."
The group was about to spread in search when Dark Star waved her arm. They followed her toward a cluster of black fingers
standing up from black ground: charred trees, still standing. There they found Maibang's smoking bones.
Gina sat down and cried. Henderson poked in the ashes with the tip of his toe, as if looking for something, some tiny symbol of victory in the midst of stunning defeat, then he too slumped to the ground and stared off at the horizon, silent and drained.
The Haiavaha. It had found the little guide and had finished what the Fore started.
Chester was muttering to himself, so softly that Griffin almost thought himself imagining it. Ever faithful, Gina came to his side and massaged his shoulder, trying to comfort. He flinched away at first, then began to relax, some of the tension draining from him. The other Garners seemed to go into neutral, waiting for their leader to unscramble his thinking.
Griffin fidgeted, then plopped down next to Henderson. "Listen," he said, "we need to talk. We have some unsolved logic puzzles here. I don't know any of the answers, but I've got some interesting questions."
Chester didn't look around. "All right. Shoot."
Griffin paused to collect his thoughts. He ticked off questions on his fingers: "First. The bomb in the crater was just an ordinary bomb. Where's the great super-weapon the ghost Marines told us about, the one that was supposed to help win World War II? Second, why weren't the enemy guarding their egg if they valued it so highly? Just where were they? Third, if the super-weapon is hidden somewhere, why wasn't there a second blank spot on the map? Dammit, why was the first blank spot there if we couldn't get anything of value at the volcano? Why did Maibang get killed off like that, without any chance for us to save him? I mean, if he's a vital part of the Game, how could that happen?" He paused in frustration. "Or does any of this make sense?"
"It has to make sense, Tegner." Henderson ground his teeth together. "Lopez isn't crazy. He can't wipe me out like this without some way out. The rules don't allow it."
Henderson scratched a line in the dirt with his toe. "Let's see if we can make sense from this jumble. Let's start with Maibang. Lopez practically murdered him outright. I think we can assume that was orchestrated. It was in the script from the beginning. All right?"
"Why?"
"It means that we already have the answers. We don't need Maibang anymore."
"Have the answers? Hell. We don't even know what we're looking for."
"No, but look: Maibang got us as far as the volcano. There was nothing of value at the volcano-of value to us, that is. According to Lady Janet, it was quite valuable to the enemy. So where were they? Defending something more valuable, that's where. Defending the real Cargo."
Henderson was beginning to smile. Griffin felt the gears turning in his own head as he fought to keep up. "Then we were lured to the volcano because it was near the real Cargo?"
"Maybe so, maybe no. You were right, there should have been a second blank spot. We examined that map. Was there a second blank spot?"
"I looked. No."
"Then... mmm... it's in a bigger blank spot. The ocean."
"In it? Underwater?"
"In, on, over, whatever. Maibang takes us by the sea road. The volcano is within spitting distance of the ocean. It has to add up, otherwise Lopez has lured us halfway across New Guinea for nothing, and that I don't believe."
"Well," Griffin scratched his head, genuinely puzzled. "What the hell is it?"
Chester laughed out loud. "Drown me if I know! Maybe a new submarine, or some kind of spy plane... maybe even the one that took the map photos. It could be any friggin' thing, and I don't care." He stood up and stretched, grinning. "I don't care because I know it's there. I can feel it. Tegner-I think we're all going to get some answers before today's over."
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE LAUGHING DEAD
Myers watched over their shoulders as the Lopezes worked.
Mitsuko Lopez was talking steadily into her mike. One of the screens showed troops forming up near shore: eight dark men and women horribly mutilated by makeup, all listening to her instructions in their earphones.
Richard Lopez nodded, nodded, interrupted rarely, while his fingers and feet raced over the controls. Hologram figures danced in response on a second screen, lurching among the dunes and into the trees; vanishing there, to reappear at the shore and begin their march again. They were horrible, these ghosts: long dead and half disintegrated. Some giggled uncontrollably and twitched like marionettes. Richard's lips pursed; his fingers blurred, and Myers watched a long-dead zombie being dismembered by an unseen sword. Richard nodded to himself.
"The woman who's missing a leg and an arm," Ms. Metesky
whispered in Myers's ear. "That's Gloria Washington. She got caught in the Antarctica Ciudad collapse and lost both limbs to frostbite. She took off her prostheses for the show, of course. She loved the idea, but I'll never understand where Chi-chi got the nerve to ask her."
Myers said, "Looks like your husband is getting ready to kill them all off."
Lopez heard and answered. "Henderson should have kept some of the anti-fire."
"Why are some of the actors giggling like that?"
"Kuru." Suddenly Richard's fingers were flying again.
Kuru didn't tell Myers anything. He nudged. "You can justify it, of course...
Richard laughed.
Now holograms and fleshly actors marched together, the actors trying to match the lurching walk of Richard's constructs. Richard Lopez turned for an instant. "Myers, it's there for justification. Shows I did my homework. Have you heard of kuru? The laughing sickness?"
"Look it up. You get it by eating infected human brain tissue. It causes convulsions and an exhausting, hysterical laughter. The Fore used to get it. Some of our zombies obviously died of it."
Myers's stomach lurched. "It's real?"
"Quite real. Or used to be. The Fore haven't eaten human meat since the last century... as far as anyone knows. That area's mostly a tourist trap these days. But about half the women used to die of kuru, and a fifth of the general populace. The fighting men got the best parts of the missionaries, leaving the brains and, ah, chitlins for those with less status... women, children, the old ones..." Richard let it trail off. On another screen, Henderson was leading his Gaming party down out of the burned area.
Owen Braddon, at the tail, suddenly turned and bounded back uphill. He scooped up a blackened skull and jogged to rejoin the party. The Lopezes turned to each other, grinned, nodded.
Myers was minded to ask; but Richard was talking again. "Can you imagine how long they must have been eating each other if a disease evolved to take advantage of it? It's extinct now. We think."
Griffin watched every bush, every tree, waiting for death. It was
going to be bad. Already he could hear the murmur of surf. They must be close, dangerously close.
"Penny," Acacia said, and her voice scrambled his thoughts. He knew only that he spun half around, his hands strangling the rifle stock, aiming the gun at Acacia. Momentarily he felt foolish. Then he saw the fatigue in her face, and knew she understood.
The Garners behind him had no spring left in their step. He could see their fierce determination, but no sign of confidence anywhere.
"What next? What the hell is he going to hit us with next?"
"That's the way to get killed," Acacia said soberly. "There's no ‘he' to hit us with anything. Stop trying to play it, and live it." She was exasperated. "Gary, you drive me crazy. One half of you is just dying to jump in head-first, and the other half stands back dunking toes. If you could just stop wondering, weighing, plan
ning..."
He managed to find a genuine laugh. "You're a fine one to talk. We play Twenty Questions every time we say Hello."
"Touché. Maybe neither of us has been very real." Something went out of her voice as she looked up at him. "What if it had been for real, Gary?"
"If what had been real? This?"
"Us." There was no overt movement, but suddenly she was closer to him. Not touching, not even looking at him now, but there, and the air was charged.
"We're a little deep in the bullshit to try to sort this out now. Maybe we'll still think it's worth talking about after this is over."
Her eyes probed the bushes too pointedly, and he felt the warmth in the air go away. "Maybe."
Somebody giggled, far ahead.
"What's funny?" he wondered. But Acacia had frozen. The giggle came again... hey, that wasn't a Gamer. It wasn't close enough, and besides that, it was wrong. It was strained, broken, like the helpless, painful laughter of someone forceably tickled, tickled until the humor was gone, until the nerves beg for release. It made him cringe just to hear it, and it grew steadily louder.
Chester snapped commands. "Oliver! To the rear. Non-fighters to the center of the column. It's coming, so get ready."
They moved forward, slowly.
Alex heard shuffling footsteps. They came in odd rhythm with
the laughter. A pained chuckle, then a dragging step. A hiccough of bizarre mirth, and another plodding thump.
And the first one appeared. He stood five and a half feet tall, dressed in brown rags. He laughed, and a hideous grin split the blackened face, and the whole body shuddered. In his right hand he carried a machete.
Mary-em measured him. "He's mine." She broke away from the line and walked warily toward him, her blade well in front of her.
Griffin could see her opponent more clearly now. Like the native Alex had ambushed earlier, he showed dark skin and eyes with epicanthic folds. Sure enough, the Japanese invaders must have mated with the native Fore; and the resulting race would have hybrid vigor on their side. As if Chester didn't have enough trouble.
As Mary-em drew close, the man stopped and seemed truly to see her for the first time. He blinked slowly, with gummy lids, and Alex saw how filthy he was. Dirt crusted his face and hands, and the earth looked damp where it clung.
Unbidden, the logical allusion sprang to Alex's mind: "... like he just stepped out of a grave..."
And that was when the odor hit. Neutral scent was Alex's first panicked reaction, almost immediately squelched. This smell was far from neutral.
Once, years before, Alex had bought an old-fashioned fly trap, the kind that catches them in water. One warm July he had forgotten to clean it out for a week, and thousands of ffies had fermented in the sun. When he finally went to clean it out, the reek went through him like a brick through sheet glass, and everything in his stomach had crawled the walls.
This was similar. Rotten... something rotten. Not meat. Something less clean than meat. Something that had been horribly corrupt even in life. Something bottlefly blue on the outside, and pasty green within.
Mary-em was turning green, but now, with a foe in front of her, she moved more surely.
It charged. Mary-em sidestepped the wobbly advance, and drew the blade of her halberd cleanly across its stomach, and whirled to face it again. It laughed and hacked at her head.
Alex yelped with surprise, but Mary-em ducked as if she'd been expecting it. She kicked low and cross-legged, as if smacking a soccer ball, halting an inch from its shim. Its leg gave way, but it
slashed as it fell and Mary-em blocked again, spinning like a dancer with a parasol, and with a fficker of her wrists cut the thing on both sides of the neck. It fell to the dirt.
Alex gave her a "thumbs-up" and the little warrior acknowledged him with the barest of grim smiles.
The thing was still twitching. Wounds gaped, but there was no blood.
"Zombie," Chester said. "Our Enemy is pulling out all the stops-" He shielded his eyes and peered down the road, mouth tightening. "Second wave. Panthesilea, Griffin, you spearhead this time."
Griffin surprised himself by asking, "Should we be throwing salt at them?"
"What? No, Griffin, zombies are a different religion. Voodoo. Just fight, okay?"
There were three of the undead this time, moving with rust-stiff joints, faces split into mock-grins. Gagging on the smell, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired. Dust puffed from the face of one of the undead. It staggered back a step, then laughed and came
on.
The smell. ... Griffin jacked another cartridge into the chamber and fired again, and again, and the thing fell to one knee. The skin of its face had peeled away like rotted wet parchment. One of its eyes was gone, a moist red socket gaping, the useless eyelid shuttering up and down irregularly.
Acacia wasted a moment staring at the results of Griffin's marksmanship, then cursed and clicked her sword free of its sheath. The second and third zombies broke toward her, one carrying a machete, one carrying the bayonet off an M-1. They attacked in tandem, and she backpedaled a step to gain time, then dove to the side and slashed brutally at the nearest knee. The creature was hobbled; it fell with a bone-jarring thump. It chittered at her with brown, stubbly teeth and crawled toward her.
The second backed away more cautiously, then smiled. She felt a clammy grip on her ankle, and chopped back to catch the fallen zombie in the head. It howled, but didn't let go. "Drown you! Let go of my-" Kicking and jerking, Acacia managed to evade the second zombie's machete blow and passed her sword through its arm, which went limp. Another backhanded blow and the zombie on the ground released its grip.
Alex stood over Acacia's first victim, holding its machete. "But-
lets don't work as well as blades on these things," he said. He peered down the road.
Acacia took the other zombie's weapon. "Just how much damage can they take?" she wondered.
They moved on. Minutes later they could see man-high sand dunes through the thinning trees. This, at least, brought whoops of delight. Alex found himself missing S.J.'s tireless enthusiasm for the Game; he forced himself to make extra noise. He whipped the machete round his head and glowered what he imagined to be a savage grimace.
Mary-em spotted them first. "Company." She tilted her halberd and squared herself, her steps more measured.
They came wobbling out of the dunes, looking vaguely, disturbingly familiar. There were four this time, three men and a woman. They were blocking the path out of the trees. The woman carried a spear of some kind; the men carried the usual machetes.
"Oh, Jesus," said Mary-em, "that's Eames."
Eames's face was a blank mask. He walked at the same dead-steady pace, and there was a huge, bloody wound in his chest. Alan Leigh walked on his right, his step devoid of bounce, expression frozen in death, machete held high.
Acacia started to move in on Leigh, but Henderson warned her back. "Caution, please. We'll keep it at two-on-one as long as we can. Nothing fancy. Just get the job done." He motioned quickly, dividing up his remaining team members.
Acacia and Alex had moved in on Leigh. The zombie wizard seemed to be restraining a bare smile, but the blade in his hand was far from friendly. It flickered in the air, and Acacia made the deflection while Alex chopped at an extended arm. The arm went red, and Alan switched hands moaning. Alex raised his machete again, and Acacia screamed, "Watch out!" He wheeled and ducked in time to avoid decapitation.
His attacker was a giggling native woman, long dead, a great hanging flap of scalp obscuring much of her face. She swung a machete at Alex's throat. Alex ducked and reached for the wrist with both hands. A disarming throw- An instant late he remembered that hand-to-hand was illegal. Too late. The hologram sword-arm passed like shadow through his hands, swung back and slashed clumsily at his short ribs. Red light bathed his side.
Alex broke out of his immobility to slash backhanded with his recovered mac
hete. He chopped away until the creature slithered
to the ground and stopped moving. Alex was breathing like a bellows, dripping sweat; be looked around, wild-eyed, for more enemies.
"Griffin!" The high, nasal voice of Dark Star called for help, and he spun about. She and Lady Janet were under attack by a duo of shuffling Undead. Both zombies were clotted with dirt; one was in an advanced state of decomposition, and he showed Asian features. Janet had picked up a stick, and seemed able to keep the Asian at bay. Dark Star's forearm glowed red. She had been forced to drop her weapon.
Griffin took a step in her direction, but more Undead were emerging from the bushes around them-men and women and half-grown children-and suddenly the entire group was threatened. He saw Dark Star go down with a blade in her neck, and Holly Frost's swift reprisal. Janet had disarmed the rotting zombie, and was using its own machete against it.
Chester had slain three of the monsters with magic. His aura was weakening; he conserved energy by picking up a machete and having at them. Gina used her power staff as a physical weapon. She had little style, but four feet of reach made up for it. The staggering, stumbling Undead women couldn't cope with her extra reach, and couldn't cleave through her staff, and they went down before her in shrieks of painfully sustained laughter.
Oliver had several red streaks on his body, but none of them were in vital areas. Vigor points undiminished... Teeth clenched in a fighting grimace, he stood back to back with Margie, who couldn't quite keep the smile off her face as she warded off blows and dealt death. She gave up trying, and seemed to become a demon, her fluffy gray hair billowing behind her as she whirled and slew.
It seemed to go on forever. Alex stopped seeing opponents. They came like waves on the sea; faces formed and faded, grinning and bellowing their hate in choruses of laughter. And always his arm rose and fell, rose and fell.
He bore red slashes in half a dozen places, and he waited for the shock to his throat that would announce his death. When the shock came he could lie down... but it didn't come, wouldn't come, though the stench of death rose in his nostrils strong and thick enough to choke. Not when he tripped over the body of a fallen Undead and saw that it was Alan Leigh, who winked at him insolently. Not when only Acacia's sharp eye and piercing voice