The Barsoom Project dp-2

by Larry Niven

  Max looked at the boxes. They were marked flare grenades. “I’d think we could make use of these..

  “And these!” Hebert said. There was a cache of survival chocolate in one of the boxes. Hebert grabbed a handful, peeled wrappers with his teeth, and began to chow down.

  “Ah… maybe you’d better go easy on those,” Trianna said nervously.

  “Hey. You wait for a bowl of fruit to show up.”

  Orson began to inspect the wall carvings. “You know,” he said, “there’s something about these drawings that bugs the hell out of me. I’m not totally sure what it is… Maybe it isn’t anything important, but I think that I’ve seen them somewhere before.”

  Charlene stood next to him, six inches taller. “These don’t look like Eskimos.”

  “No, not a whole lot. These other things don’t look like any beasties we’ve seen so far.”

  The creatures were vaguely star-shaped or octopus-headed. One image set the creature next to what might have been… a brontosaurus?

  The creature stood a head higher.

  Eviane felt awful pressure behind her eyes, and fought against the darkness. There was an image of an enormous door opening. Something lurked behind it, something unspeakably large and horribly alien.

  “Are you all right, hon?” Max said.

  She leaned back into him, let him wrap his arms around her. For a moment she lost herself, had the sensation of floating above her own head, watching as she was cuddled safe in the strong arms of a man who cared for her. Some tense, knotted part of her began to relax.

  After all, it’s just a Game…

  Her head nodded to her. Just a Game…

  Thank you, Michelle.

  “There’s that Michelle again,” Max said. “Who is this lady?”

  “Who? I…” She thought for a moment, then disentangled herself from his arms. “I didn’t realize I was talking. I’m sorry.” She touched her lips to his, and went over to talk with Charlene.

  The moon woman rolled her shoulders, and twisted the slender bone-sword around and around in her grip, experimenting with different positions. “Hi,” she said without looking around.

  Hippogryph was bristling. Eviane laughed inwardly. What kind of name was Hippogryph, anyway? “We might not get another chance to talk,” she said to Charlene.

  “I know that we’re close to the end,” Charlene said. “We haven’t spent much time together. You look like you’ve been enjoying yourself, though.”

  “Charlene, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, anything.”

  “I know that we knew each other, knew each other somehow before this all happened. But I’m not sure how. I just don’t know.”

  Now Charlene turned around. “Boy, you really get into it, don’t you?”

  Eviane tried to smile, but the strain was too much. “Please. I know that it sounds strange. Humor me. Maybe I took a little bump back there in the fight. A little amnesia?”

  Charlene was ready to laugh again. “You know, I don’t know whether to take you seriously or not, Eviane. You’ve gotten so deeply into the Game.”

  Eviane raised a hand. “The Game. I keep hearing everyone talking about the Game. I… need to know what you mean by that.”

  “I mean-the whole Fimbulwinter Game,” Charlene said, mystified. “All of this, you know. Monsters. Eskimos. Fighting. Talking swordfish steaks and butterfly-eating ghosts.” Charlene was looking worried now. “It’s a commercial product. Or you could say we’re dreaming somebody else’s dream.”

  “Somebody else’s dream.” Something in Eviane’s mind relaxed for a moment. For just that moment, everything seemed clear: it was all a Game, and Charlene was her friend, and they were all in a place called Dream…

  Dream Park?

  The mists closed in again, but this time they left her feeling unaccountably calm and centered. She stood, brushed herself off in a businesslike fashion, and said, “Well, shall we get on with it?”

  “Sure,” Charlene said. She tried to keep her face sober, but another grin broke out. “You know, you’ve really made my vacation.”

  Impulsively, Eviane bent over and gave her friend Charlene a quick, affectionate peck on the cheek. It felt right.

  The shadows of the tilted slabs offered shelter from prying, inhuman eyes, but not enough to make Max comfortable.

  They had lost two! That realization hit him hard. They had been living in a fool’s paradise. Death waited around every corner…

  The island fortress had the appearance of a city partially destroyed by an earthquake. Great slabs of rubble lay toppled everywhere. He had the disturbing impression that a gigantic, insane child had striven to build a city, and then, tired of its accomplishment, had destroyed it in a fit of pique.

  And there were… things moving in the rubble. Things that had no analog in the world that he knew, creatures grotesque beyond his imaginings. Creatures on the hunt.

  He didn’t have to be told what they were hunting for.

  Johnny Welsh crawled up through the shadow to crouch next to Max. They were in an enclave formed by the shadow of two slabs joined together in a steeple shape. From their perch they could look down on the Cabal’s meeting place.

  The cave was ringed with broken statuary. Once again, the statues seemed not of Inuit derivation. They portrayed strange, alien shapes, hideous shapes, and Max felt a little ill just examining them from a distance.

  But there was worse going on down there. Although the line of shambling Eskimo zombies had disappeared, a ceremony continued in full swing. They could hear it, and through the dark, heavily veined chanting, they could hear a familiar voice screaming in agony.

  “That’s Robin,” Johnny said. “They’ve got him, and I don’t know what the hell they’re doing with him, but we’ve got to stop them.”

  Just ahead of Max, Yarnall agreed. “All right. Now listen-I think we can work our way around above the place they’ve taken Robin.” He pointed. “See that stream of smoke? I think there’s a vent hole there. We can spy.”

  “Let’s be careful,” Max said. “That terrain looks rough. Last thing in the world we need is a twisted ankle.”

  The three of them crawled backward along the narrow tunnel until they’d reached the other Adventurers. “All right,” Yarnall said. He scanned each anxious face in turn. “We have to mount a rescue operation for Robin. We’ve got to work our way to the other side of the clearing. I need volunteers.”

  Charlene raised her hand, and then Hippogryph, and Max. Eviane’s shot up an instant later.

  “All right. Here’s the plan-”

  “Ah-just a second, Yarnall,” Hebert interjected. “Who died and made you king?”

  “If you’ve got a plan, now would be a terrific time to share it.” Yarnall was smiling indulgently. “Otherwise, I would suggest that we proceed.”

  Hebert reluctantly agreed.

  Yarnall was warming to his task. “All right. Two groups. Volunteer group, how are you at climbing?”

  Charlene was most enthusiastic. “I can do that. I’ve been feeling stronger every day.”

  “All right, then. Both groups will work their way around, one at a time. Each group watch for the other. Cover in teams. When we reach the far side, that’s when we need the most care. Then we send the volunteer team in… ”

  He began to draw a diagram on the ground.

  I’ve been here before, I’ve…

  Eviane stumbled, but darling Max caught her hand and pulled her to safety.

  The jumble of tumbled slabs was disturbing in a way that she found difficult to express. At other times during their adventure she had experienced deja vu. Here, she had the feeling that some of the angles weren’t angles at all, that they were illusory pockets. When she stared at them, it was like staring at one of those damned optical illusions where the angle went from obtuse to acute as your depth of focus changed.

  She waited in the shadow, waited for Yarnall to give her the signal to cross. The s
pace was so vast, the hieroglyphics so disturbingly unearthly that she felt like a bug dashing across an alien cereal box.

  She ran as fast as she could, heart pounding in her chest. Hippogryph caught her hand and pulled her up to the level of the next slab. Their eyes met for a long, tense moment, and then he crinkled in a smile. “Come on-too late for that-you’re spoken for.”

  From somewhere deep inside she summoned a laugh, but it was in no way genuine. Her hand found a grip, and she pulled herself up. The last few feet of horizontal slab had been somewhat spongy. Damned lucky, in case anyone fell-

  She looked down at the slab. From where she was, the hieroglyphics took on a new appearance, like viewing the abstract rock drawings in the Andes that old von Daniken had used to “prove” that the ancients had set out welcome mats for vacationing aliens.

  From up here, the hieroglyphics seemed to fit together. She could see that the images were in series. As she climbed higher from slab to slab, she could see more of them. In this whole area, the crumbled wall which seemed to stretch a thousand yards and more, the hieroglyphics resembled nothing so much as a comic strip, an illustrated story. As Max helped her to the top slab, she lay down on her stomach and read the story stretched out below.

  “Do you see what I…?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But I don’t quite understand what it means.”

  Trianna was climbing below her. She stopped too, and brushed a few strands of blond hair out of her face to examine the pictures below.

  “Come on,” Max hissed. “Time to read the comics later.”

  Eviane crawled across a pitted stone surface to the other side, where, finally, they could look down on the stronghold of the Cabal.

  The sound of chanting and screaming had grown more pervasive, and Robin Bowles’s voice more distinct.

  Eviane clutched her hands to her head. Visions of horror crushed in on her, devouring her desperately needed confidence.

  When she thought about the plain of hieroglyphics below, she could see the pieces, the shadows and outlines, but she also saw a hideous shape, a form that was only hinted at in the drawings; and this was no drawing. In her mind she saw it: titanic, octopusheaded, making sounds that it would be blasphemy to translate into any human tongue.

  “Are you all right?” Trianna asked. Eviane opened her eyes, stared into her companion’s face. Was this woman going to die? She had had visions about some of the others, and one of them had already come true.

  They were trying to rescue Robin Bowles, but with every fiber of her being, Eviane knew that it was already too late.

  But was Trianna, specifically, already one of the dead? Eviane stared into the face, trying not to listen to the wind, to remember the creature around her, to resolve her riddle named Michelle, and discover Was Trianna going to die? “Why are you looking at me like that?” the girl asked. Eviane lied. “I just realized that this is almost over, and we never really sat down and talked. I don’t know you at all.” Trianna smiled. “We’ll have time after it’s all over.”

  “I hope so,” Eviane said. “I really hope so.”

  The Adventurers looked down over the rocky decline that separated them from the stronghold of the Cabal. A wisp of pale smoke drifted up from a round ventilation hole, marking the spot.

  “I think I see a path,” Francis Hebert said. “See there?”

  Max shielded his eyes. “Dammit, I can’t tell whether that’s concave or convex. This place is crazier than chopsticks for a snake.”

  “I’ll go first,” Francis said.

  Hebert slipped the first couple of feet, adjusted himself, and found purchase. Eviane noted the bone-breaking distance that he would fall if the next slip were as bad as the first. She held her breath.

  Ollie and Orson followed him down the side of the cliff at intervals. Ollie had jury-rigged a bandoleer from his belt, and strung a string of flare grenades from shoulder to hip. They clanked when he moved.

  Hebert winced at one of the clanks. He glared back at Ollie and, just for a moment, forgot to watch where he was stepping.

  Eviane saw what was going to happen a good three seconds before she managed to scream.

  One of the shadows fluxed. It concealed an angle which had seemed convex until Hebert’s foot moved across it. Then it was no angle at all; it was a black gap, and Hebert’s foot was in it, and Hebert was still descending. Then it was too late.

  Hebert scrambled for purchase, eyes mad. Ollie tried to get down to him, but it was to no avail.

  Hebert didn’t cry out. Even at the moment of death he kept control, knowing that the sound of a scream would betray them all.

  And then he was gone.

  “Mistake,” Max said nervously. “He made a mistake.”

  Orson looked back over his shoulder. “Test the ground. Test the ground at every step.”

  “Too late for Hebert,” Eviane muttered.

  Ollie tested the ground where Hebert had fallen through. There was no ground there, just the illusion of solidity, and a shadow that seemed too dark to be entirely natural.

  Cautiously, Ollie moved around it.

  Three!

  They had lost three in as many hours. It made them nervous. They slid down the side of the defile, testing those odd, hallucinogenic angles one after another, staying in the shadows, ever closer to the place of Robin Bowles’s torture and imprisonment.

  They reached the smoke hole without incident. And paused, as the music fluxed, and Robin Bowles screamed again.

  The stone throbbed beneath Eviane’s feet. She could hear the chanting, and she could feel the moans of agony. What were they doing to Bowles? She remembered those sounds-deja vu-but she had no image of what was going on. Just the deep, terrible dread.

  She bumped into Yarnall’s foot, and swallowed an “oops.” He touched a finger to his lips, then scooted sideways so that she could move in next to him.

  There was a spot where the stone slabs parted to make room for a rising column of smoke. From time to time the pulse of smoke ceased, and then Yarnall shielded his eyes and looked down into the hole.

  He pulled his head away, struggling against a retching cough. “I can’t see a thing,” he whispered as another soul-tearing scream vibrated the stones.

  Charlene reached into her backpack, extracting a pair of snow goggles. She whispered, “Here, try these.”

  Eviane adjusted the strap, and snugged the glasses down over her eyes. She touched Yarnall’s shoulder to move him out of the way, and peered down.

  For a few seconds, she couldn’t see anything. Then the smoke began to shift.

  Every few seconds she turned her head away from the hole to pull in a breath of fresh air, and then looked back down. Slowly, slowly, she began to place the objects and events in the ancient temple below.

  The room functioned as a qasgiq of sorts, perhaps even the one seen in their earlier vision.

  There was a circle of men and women around a central fire, and there was something else.

  Stretched out on a lateral framework, writhing in torment, was-the corpse of Robin Bowles.

  Oh, he was dead, all right, Eviane knew that much. A low fire cast hellish orange shadows on the walls, illuminated the proceedings to show her more than she wanted to see.

  Robin Bowles’s corpse was stretched spread-eagled on the rack, and his internal organs very carefully removed. A cavernous hole gaped in the middle of his body. One of the men sitting in the circle stood, and reached into the corpse. He wrenched free a handful of glistening red, and cast it onto the fire.

  Eviane gagged. The wind changed, and she accidentally inhaled a rancid whiff of sickeningly sweet smoke.

  The man spoke. “Interloper!” he said. “You who came to break our power. Your soul is ours now, and I command you to tell us everything.”

  Robin twisted on the rack as if he was still alive, the bonds cutting into his already red and raw wrists.

  “Told you. Told you.”

  “No!” the Cabalist
thundered.

  “Everything. Everything.”

  Eviane pulled her head away from the hole, breathed a few gulps of clean air, and then hazarded another peek. She recognized the man this time. It was Ahk-lut, the son of Martin the Arctic Fox. His dark, scarred face was twisted and gaunt.

  Now that she thought of it All of them looked sick.

  Her tendency was to mark that down to the unspeakable evil of their practices. But now, looking at the twelve members of the Cabal, she saw that one and all seemed spent, sickly, and diseased, as if each had paid some ungodly price for the necromantic gifts and powers they coveted.

  The leader reached into Robin’s body and chanted something so low that she couldn’t hear it and then he twisted…

  Robin screamed. She hoped never to hear another such scream. She slid back against the rock slab, panting. Yarnall pulled her goggles away from her, and donned them, hanging over the smoke stack to hear what was going on.

  “Aiiiee!.. ” Robin sounded like a soul dragged over the coals. “All right. All right. All right.”

  The leader’s voice was smarmy with self-satisfaction. “Good. Speak. What could have given you enough power to overcome our bathers?”

  “We… my companions carried magic of our own.”

  “Magic? Greater than the sky-metal?” There was a general hush of anticipation, and Eviane heard herself saying:

  No! Robin! Wherever your soul is, don’t let them force you “Aiiie!”

  She didn’t need to see to know what had been done. Yarnall crawled back next to her, choking. “Good Lord! Did you see what they were-”

  Charlene took the goggles away from Yarnall and looked for herself. For about three seconds. “They play rough,” she said.

  Bowles shrieked madly, “Falling Angel wire! Woven into our backpacks and tents! Round and round it goes, and where it stops-”

  Yarnall blanched. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Robin just spilled his g- I mean he’s told them everything. They’re going to be looking for us.”

  “For us?” Charlene asked. Her lantern jaw worked furiously on a nonexistent stick of gum.

  “If they can get the Falling Angel wire, they’ll have more power than ever before. We may have made a mistake, bringing it to them.”