Endgame: Rules of the Game

by James Frey

  She screams and screams and screams.

  This noise should shake Shari Chopra from her meditation within a meditation, but it does not. Instead, when the screams drift into her awareness she sees a playful Little Alice on a swing set, pealing with shrill delight, smiling, filled with life and joy and happiness.

  She sees her as she should be.

  As she is, always, in Shari’s heart.

  HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT, LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA, KEPLER 22B

  Star chamber, 24.43161, 123.01314, near Yonaguni, Japan

  Hilal stops shy of the door. The Maker stands not three meters away. He holds the girl. He stares at Hilal, black-eyed and smug.

  Hello, Aksumite.

  Hilal raises the weapon. “Good-bye.”

  He angles the weapon so that it will strike kepler 22b and not Little Alice. He drops his thumb into the trigger and squeezes. His arm lights in pain and the weapon glows and the disk shoots forward, the light consuming Hilal and the door between them and kepler 22b.

  But instead of relieving the alien of his head, the blast hits the invisible shield suspended between them and it explodes and dissipates and throws Hilal violently backward into darkness.

  Fool.

  kepler 22b places the girl in the bowl with Earth Key. As soon as Sky Key comes in contact with the bowl she stops screaming, becoming quiet and peaceful.

  The end won’t hurt. kepler 22b didn’t lie to the Nabataean about that.

  All he needs now is the third and final key.

  A Player.

  All he needs is the La Tène.

  JENNY ULAPALA

  Very quietly, very discreetly, very gently, Jenny says, “Hell with this. I’m old anyway.”

  She releases Shari’s hand in the Dreaming, keeps ahold of it in the physical realm back in Australia.

  She drifts into the center of the star chamber, hovering over Little Alice. She watches the Maker unwrap the redheaded Player named Aisling Kopp. The Maker remains unaware of Jenny and Shari. He cannot see them. He is so sure of himself.

  Too sure of himself.

  Jenny turns away from the Maker and faces the limitless psychic void of the Dreaming. She leaves the room and Shari and the felled Players and moves to the great line that feeds and serves the Dreaming and which is always there just beyond perception. She gives herself to it. The world of her ancestors grows and surges and glows to life around her. She sees those she knew in the flesh and those she met in the Dreaming and those she only ever heard of. She sees the great expanse of the desert and the ancient trees and the mountains and valleys of her native land but also all of Earth, rivers of ice and pinnacles of stone and teeming jungles and voluminous life-giving seas and molten iron and nickel and black storms laced with electricity and power and windswept dunes as high as skyscrapers and deep caves dripping with mineral water and the depths of the oceans black and cold yet full of life and orange pluming vents bubbling up from the center of the ancient planet, every inch as ancient as the Maker’s home world, every inch as complete and wondrous and and and otherworldly, right here.

  Earth.

  Home.

  Home to life and death and the Dreaming. Because Jenny knows heaven isn’t up there in the stars—it’s right here, on Earth and of it.

  And salvation is coming.

  “Hey!” she calls into the Dreaming, and the lands and seas and peaks and glaciers and drifting treetops fill and overfill with faces and shoulders and arms and fists.

  “Come on now. Jenny Ulapala needs you.”

  And they silently raise their fists in unison, millions and billions of the dead and gone in the Dreaming. Her army. Their army. Ours. Greater than any otherwise assembled on this planet or any other at this time or any other.

  She turns her back on humanity.

  Not to forsake it.

  But to lead it.

  She takes one step back from the void and toward the Maker.

  And there, next to her, comes Big Alice.

  “Oi, Jenny.”

  “Alice,” Jenny smiles.

  “Baiame fucked up good, yeah?”

  “How so?”

  “They shouldn’ta shown us how to go walkabout in the After-After like this. It was foolish.”

  Jenny is so pleased. She sights the head of the Maker in the room back in the physical world. “It was.”

  Big Alice points at Sky Key, at the doorway blocking a stirring Hilal ibn Isa al-Salt. “Time we show him how powerful we’ve become.”

  “Quiet now, Alice.”

  “You got it, Gram.”

  Jenny marches into the star chamber. The Maker carries the La Tène, naked and pale and asleep and breathing shallowly, in his arms. Shari remains calm and connected. She holds the connection in spite of everything. Jenny concentrates her mind to a point and aims this at the door. She could strike the Maker, but the weapon that will definitely kill him lies outside the room, in Hilal’s hand.

  Jenny is ready. Before she launches forward she whistles at the Maker.

  He finally sees them.

  And he is aghast.

  How?

  “You made a mistake. We all do.”

  And before he has a chance to say anything else, she carries herself forward with the psychic weight of all that’s behind her and materializes in the star chamber and smashes into the barrier that seals off Hilal and the weapon that can slay their common enemy.

  HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT, LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA, JENNY ULAPALA, KEPLER 22B, AISLING KOPP

  Star chamber, 24.43161, 123.01314, near Yonaguni, Japan

  “Now!” Jenny yells as she appears as if from nowhere and flies over Hilal and collapses behind him.

  Hilal lies on the ground, his limbs akimbo. He twists and aims and though he’s groggy and his vision is imperfect and cloudy he holds up the weapon. The Maker drops the La Tène and raises his own gun and Hilal squeezes and squeezes and squeezes and the first shot meets a shot fired by the kepler and these cancel each other out but the next shot and the next and the next all launch from Hilal’s hand and fire into the room and Hilal feels the power and his arms tingle and he sees the light in his eyes and there is a loud noise and then a louder one and a deep and clamorous scream and then—

  Silence.

  Hilal sits bolt upright. He blinks. He is surrounded by pitch blackness.

  He feels around the floor and finds what he’s looking for. Night vision.

  He slips the goggles over his head and presses the button and, thank the stars, they work.

  Jenny is under him. He gently shakes her by the shoulders. She moans. She is alive. He takes her face in his hands, pinching her pockmarked cheeks, moving her head, slapping her lightly. “Master Ulapala. Master Ulapala.”

  “Uhn . . . Oh . . .”

  “Wake up, Master Ulapala!”

  “Hilal?”

  “Yes,” he says, full of disbelief. “How did you . . . ? You did not come through the portal . . . you just appeared in thin air . . .”

  “It was a trick I never tried before. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Did we?”

  “Yes. I mean, I think so.”

  Jenny strains to look past Hilal but winces. “Ah. My leg. I think it’s broken.”

  Hilal pushes aside a pile of rubble. The old woman’s ankle is bent at a strange angle. “This will hurt,” he says, “but I have to check.”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  He runs his hand along her leg, feeling for bone or blood.

  “It is not compound. You will be fine.”

  “Hilal. You gotta go check on . . .”

  He stands. “Yes. I know. I will be right back, Master Ulapala. Do not move.”

  “Not going anywhere,” she says.

  Hilal moves into the star chamber, listening to the aches and pains of his own body.

  “Uncle?” Little Alice says.

  She sits cross-legged on the floor, Earth Key in her hand. Hilal ru
shes to her.

  “Hello there. I am a friend of your mother’s.”

  “Another?” Little Alice says. “So was Maccabee.”

  Hilal won’t argue with her, not now. First he has to know: “Where is the Maker?”

  “What?”

  “The Maker.”

  She points directly to her left. “There, Uncle.”

  Hilal spins and looks and

  And

  Yes

  The Maker is cut into at least three pieces. He is as dead as he will ever be. And Hilal looks past the Maker and sees Aisling, naked and her skin very pale in the strange green hue of the night vision, but breathing.

  They did it.

  They did it.

  “Wait here, Alice,” Hilal says.

  He goes to the portal that will lead them back to Australia and to safety. It is not black and inky but bright. He pulls off the goggles and sees the red earth of the outback on the far side casting its daylight into the room. The Koori guards stand alert and shocked. They’re waving their arms at him and gesturing for him to cross over. At their feet is Shari Chopra, sitting on the ground, eyes closed and entranced, holding her meditative place in the Dreaming, keeping the portal open.

  He holds up a finger. “I am coming, brothers,” he says. “We are coming.”

  He backtracks to Jenny. Alice says, “Uncle,” but he says, “One moment. You will be with your mother soon. I promise.”

  “I know, Uncle, but—”

  “One moment,” he says, so full of joy and triumph and relief.

  He reaches Jenny and pulls her arm over his broad shoulders and picks her up. “We did it,” he says. “You did it.”

  Jenny blinks. “Really, mate?”

  He laughs. “Yes, Master Ulapala. Really.”

  “Stop calling me that. I mean it.”

  He laughs again. “All right, Master Jenny,” he says, his teeth gleaming in a broad smile.

  “And Little Alice?”

  “Come.”

  He puts his other arm around her waist and they walk slowly to Little Alice and stop in front of her.

  “Auntie,” Alice says.

  “Little Alice,” Jenny says quietly, holding out her hand.

  Alice takes it and stands. “I’m hungry,” she says.

  Jenny and Hilal laugh. “I am too, sweets,” Jenny says. “Starved, actually.”

  Together they move toward the portal.

  “Uncle,” Alice says.

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Auntie.”

  “I’ll cross with you and then come back for Aisling,” Hilal says.

  And then they reach the doorway that will transport them away from here, but when they try to move through it they are blocked.

  Jenny slaps a hand on the image of the outback in front of them, but hits what feels like a sheet of glass. She slaps it again. Hilal whispers, “No!”

  Jenny punches it. Glances around the room at the Maker’s body and blurts, “He sealed it!”

  “Can you take us back the way you came?” Hilal asks.

  “Can’t. That was a one-way trip,” Jenny says.

  “We will have to leave the way I came then,” Hilal says, thinking how long it will take and how much effort. Thinking of how distraught Shari will be to have to wait that much longer to have her child in her arms.

  “Uncle,” Alice says. “Auntie.”

  Both look at the girl. “What is it?” they ask together.

  She points to her left. “Him. There.”

  Their heads whip to where she points. And then they see. They were so excited about the death of the kepler, and the end of Endgame, that they had forgotten.

  An Liu.

  He is motionless and wedged into a corner and completely nonthreatening.

  Hilal says, “He cannot hurt you anymore, Little Alice.”

  “I know,” the girl says. “But look. His arm.”

  Hilal squints at the Shang and there—yes—a flashing red light.

  “Wait here,” Hilal says, propping Jenny against the shuttered portal.

  Hilal bounds to An, reaching him in seconds. He takes his arm. Sees the wrist pad, the buttons, the notations in Chinese and English.

  He pats down An’s body and feels the bulk and grabs his shirt and tears it open. The nylon the straps the wires the explosives.

  Not C4.

  Not TNT.

  Not PETN.

  Hilal is not sure what it is, but given what he knows about An Liu, he knows it is worse than any of these other options.

  The red light flashes faster.

  And faster.

  He quickly inspects the wiring. There are too many for him to disarm it, and he does not have tools to work with anyway.

  He stands.

  “What is it?” Jenny asks.

  “Bomb!” he yells, running to them. “There is no timer readout, but it is armed.”

  “What kind?” Jenny asks.

  “I do not know. Probably a small nuclear device.”

  Jenny’s eyes widen. “We need to get through this portal!”

  “I know!”

  Hilal zips around the room looking for something anything something.

  Jenny runs her hands up and down the blocked portal, tries to ignore the people on the other side, her guards and the call of the Outback, the proximity of safety.

  “Auntie,” Alice says.

  “Not now, honey,” Jenny says.

  “There,” Alice says, ignoring her.

  She points at the stone to the side of the doorway. Jenny runs her hands up to it and—yes!—when her fingers touch it, it liquefies and she pushes her hands into the stone. She doesn’t know what it is, but inside she feels buttons and switches and sliders. “Hilal, I think . . .” She moves her fingers, twists her arm, pushes it in deeper. “I think . . .” Hilal appears at her side. “This is the lock,” Jenny says.

  “Can you open it?”

  “Maybe?” she says unconvincingly.

  Hilal looks at the Shang. The red light blinks faster. “Hurry.”

  Jenny turns her hand again and there is a click from inside the stone and Hilal reaches for Australia but no, it is still sealed off.

  “Bugger!” Jenny says.

  “What?”

  “I can’t . . . I think it scanned my hand. And you know, I ain’t got Maker mitts, so . . .” She pulls out her arm with a painful-sounding pop.

  Hilal turns a tight circle. The light blinks faster. Faster.

  “Uncle.”

  “Not now. I am trying to think.”

  Little Alice doesn’t say anything else. She just tugs hard at Hilal’s HATE machete and he actually lets it go and the small girl drags it scraping across the floor to the Maker. Hilal and Jenny watch her with perplexed looks as she stops by his pale torso and struggles to lift the blade.

  “His hand, Hilal!” Jenny blurts. “Get his bloody hand!”

  Hilal leaps to Alice in a single bound and snags HATE. He peels back the Maker’s armored sleeve and lifts his blade high and snaps it down and he drops the metal and replaces this with frozen Maker flesh.

  He snags the girl around the waist and bounces back to the portal, giving Jenny the limb. She jams it into the stone and it melts again and there is another click and a hiss and the warm dry Australian air hits their faces. Hilal thrusts Alice through the portal as the guards rush to them. They take the girl and help Jenny through. Hilal steps through too when he remembers Aisling. He pivots, catches sight of An’s red light flashing so fast it’s practically solid. He stumbles and falls over Aisling and picks her up and jumps back to the portal. He passes Aisling through to a Koori guard, the surface twinkling and snapping with electricity, and then he jumps in, through space and time and into another part of the known world.

  Little Alice runs to her mother and wraps her arms around her neck, but Shari is so far away that she doesn’t notice. Hilal tries to get everyone away from the portal, away from the path of the coming blast. Th
e guards move Jenny and Aisling and themselves. Hilal comes back to pick up Shari and the girl, and as he leans over them Shari’s nostrils twitch with the scent of her daughter’s hair and her eyes shoot open and the portal flashes white for a fraction of a second before being snuffed out and sealed with the blackness of dark stone.

  Shari is awake, free of the Dreaming. The connection is lost. The portal is closed.

  They are safe.

  Hilal collapses onto the ground, panting and sweating. He sits slump-backed, staring at what’s in front of him.

  He laughs. Deep and throaty.

  He laughs at it.

  At the kissing, loving, fawning, pawing, desperately grateful lives of a mother and a child, brought together for good and at last.

  Come to me, love.

  An blinks. He can’t move. His body is broken and pain-ridden. Like it has always been, in one way or another.

  Come to me.

  He watches the others. The red light illuminates his face and the tattoo tear under his eye. He watches them take the Maker hand and use it in some way he can’t understand. Watches the second key leave, and he doesn’t care. He watches them escape.

  “He’s”—blink—“he’s”—SHIVER—“he’s”—BLINKBLINK—“he’s gone, Chiyoko.” BLINKSHIVERSHIVERBLINK. “He’s dead.”

  I know. I saw it.

  BLINKBLINKblink.

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  They Played for life.

  “They did,” An says.

  In your way, you did too.

  He watches Hilal almost leave and then return and trip over Aisling Kopp and then pick her up.

  “No,” An says.

  Yes.

  “No.”

  Hilal passes Aisling through the doorway, and then he jumps after her and is gone.

  Only An is left.

  He manages to bring his hand to his neck. He finds her dark hair with his fingers. He caresses it.

  The red light is nearly solid.

  “No.”

  Yes, love.

  “I didn’t Play for life.”

  Yes, you did.

  He grips the necklace tightly.

  “I Played for you.”