Dangerous Games

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by Jack Dann


  OUTSIDE of town we found an old house that we could hide in and get some sleep. I slept longer than Gloria. When I woke up she was on the front steps rubbing a spoon back and forth on the pavement to make a sharp point, even though I could see it hurt her arm to do it.

  “Well, we did get fed for a couple of days,” I said.

  Gloria didn’t say anything.

  “Let’s go up to San Francisco,” I said. “There’s a lot of lonely women there.”

  I was making a joke of course.

  Gloria looked at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that maybe I can get us in for once.”

  Gloria didn’t laugh, but I knew she would later.

  RED SONJA AND LESSINGHAM IN DREAMLAND by Gwyneth Jones

  Be careful what you wish for, an old saying warns us, because you just might get it. The same applies to what games you play, as the wry little chiller that follows demonstrates-and who you play with.

  One of the most acclaimed British writers of her generation, Gwyneth Jones was a co-winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award for work exploring genre issues in science fiction, with her 1991 novel White Queen; she has also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for her novel Bold As Love; and she has received two World Fantasy Awards-for her story “The Grass Princess” and her collection Seven Tales and a Fable. Her other books include the novels North Wind, Flowerdust, Escape Plans, Divine Endurance, Phoenix Café, Castles Made of Sand, Stone Free, Midnight Lamp, Kairos, Life, Water in the Air, The Influence of Iron-wood, The Exchange, Dear Hill, Escape Plans, and The Hidden Ones, as well as more than sixteen young adult novels published under the name Ann Halam. Her too-infrequent short fiction has appeared in Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Off Limits, and in other magazines and anthologies, and has been collected in Identifying the Object: A Collection of Short Stories, as well as Seven Tales and a Fable. She is also the author of the critical study, Deconstructing the Starships: Science Fiction and Reality. She lives in Brighton, England, with her husband, her son, and a Burmese cat.

  ***

  THE earth walls of the caravanserai rose strangely from the empty plain. She let the black stallion slow his pace. The silence of deep dusk had a taste, like a rich dark fruit; the air was keen. In the distance mountains etched a jagged margin against an indigo sky; snow streaks glinting in the glimmer of the dawning stars. She had never been here before, in life. But as she led her horse through the gap in the high earthen banks she knew what she would see. The camping booths around the walls; the beaten ground stained black by the ashes of countless cooking fires; the wattle-fenced enclosure where travelers’ riding beasts mingled indiscriminately with their host’s goats and chickens… the tumbledown gallery, where sheaves of russet plains-grass sprouted from empty window-spaces. Everything she looked on had the luminous intensity of a place often visited in dreams.

  She was a tall woman, dressed for riding in a kilt and harness of supple leather over brief close-fitting linen: a costume that left her sheeny, muscular limbs bare and outlined the taut, proud curves of breast and haunches. Her red hair was bound in a braid as thick as a man’s wrist. Her sword was slung on her back, the great brazen hilt standing above her shoulder. Other guests were gathered by an open-air kitchen, in the orange-red of firelight and the smoke of roasting meat. She returned their stares coolly: She was accustomed to attracting attention. But she didn’t like what she saw. The host of the caravanserai came scuttling from the group by the fire. His manner was fawning. But his eyes measured, with a thief’s sly expertise, the worth of the sword she bore and the quality of Lemiak’s harness. Sonja tossed him a few coins and declined to join the company.

  She had counted fifteen of them. They were poorly dressed and heavily armed. They were all friends together and their animals-both terror-birds and horses-were too good for any honest travelers’ purposes. Sonja had been told that this caravanserai was a safe halt. She judged that this was no longer true. She considered riding out again onto the plain. But wolves and wild terror-birds roamed at night between here and the mountains, at the end of winter. And there were worse dangers; ghosts and demons. Sonja was neither credulous nor superstitious. But in this country no wayfarer willingly spent the black hours alone.

  She unharnessed Lemiak and rubbed him down, taking sensual pleasure in the handling of his powerful limbs, in the heat of his glossy hide, and the vigor of his great body. There was firewood ready stacked in the roofless booth. Shouldering a cloth sling for corn and a hank of rope, she went to fetch her own fodder. The corralled beasts shifted in a mass to watch her. The great flightless birds, with their pitiless raptors’ eyes, were especially attentive. She felt an equally rapacious attention from the company by the caravanserai kitchen, which amused her. The robbers-as she was sure they were-had all the luck. For her, there wasn’t one of the fifteen who rated a second glance.

  A man appeared, from the darkness under the ruined gallery. He was tall. The rippled muscle of his chest, left bare by an unlaced leather jerkin, shone red-brown. His black hair fell in glossy curls to his wide shoulders. He met her gaze and smiled, white teeth appearing in the darkness of his beard. “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings… look on my works, ye mighty, and despair… Do you know those lines?” He pointed to a lump of shapeless stone, one of several that lay about. It bore traces of carving, almost effaced by time. “There was a city here once, with marketplaces, fine buildings, throngs of proud people. Now they are dust, and only the caravanserai remains.”

  He stood before her, one tanned and sinewy hand resting lightly on the hilt of a dagger in his belt. Like Sonja, he carried his broadsword on his back. Sonja was tall. He topped her by a head: Yet there was nothing brutish in his size. His brow was wide and serene; his eyes were vivid blue; his lips full and imperious, yet delicately modeled, in the rich nest of hair. Somewhere between eyes and lips there lurked a spirit of mockery, as if he found some secret amusement in the perfection of his own beauty and strength.

  The man and the woman measured each other.

  “You are a scholar,” she said.

  “Of some sort. And a traveler from an antique land-where the cities are still standing. It seems we are the only strangers here,” he added, with a slight nod toward the convivial company. “We might be well advised to become friends for the night.”

  Sonja never wasted words. She considered his offer and nodded.

  They made a fire in the booth Sonja had chosen. Lemiak and the scholar’s terror-bird, left loose together in the back of the shelter, did not seem averse to each other’s company. The woman and the man ate spiced sausage, skewered and broiled over the red embers, with bread and dried fruit. They drank water, each keeping to their own waterskin. They spoke little, after that first exchange-except to discuss briefly the tactics of their defense, should defense be necessary.

  The attack came around midnight. At the first stir of covert movement, Sonja leapt up, sword in hand. She grasped a brand from the dying fire. The man who had been crawling on his hands and knees toward her, bent on sly murder of a sleeping victim, scrabbled to his feet. “Defend yourself,” yelled Sonja, who despised to strike an unarmed foe. Instantly he was rushing at her with a heavy sword. A great two-handed stroke would have cleft her to the waist. She parried the blow and caught him between neck and shoulder, almost severing the head from his body. The beasts plunged and screamed at the rush of blood scent. The scholar was grappling with another attacker, choking out the man’s life with his bare hands… and the booth was full of bodies; their enemies rushing in on every side.

  Sonja felt no fear. Stroke followed stroke, in a luxury of blood and effort and fire-shot darkness… until the attack was over, as suddenly as it had begun.

  The brigands had vanished.

  “We killed five,” breathed the scholar, “by my count. Three to you, two to me.”

  She kicked together the remains of their fire and crouched to blow the embers to a blaze. By that light t
hey found five corpses, dragged them and flung them into the open square. The scholar had a cut on his upper arm, which was bleeding freely. Sonja was bruised and battered, but otherwise unhurt. The worst loss was their woodstack, which had been trampled and blood-fouled. They would not be able to keep a watch fire burning.

  “Perhaps they won’t try again,” said the warrior woman. “What can we have that’s worth more than five lives?”

  He laughed shortly. “I hope you’re right.”

  “We’ll take turns to watch.”

  Standing breathless, every sense alert, they smiled at each other in new-forged comradeship. There was no second attack. At dawn Sonja, rousing from a light doze, sat up and pushed back the heavy masses of her red hair.

  “You are very beautiful,” said the man, gazing at her.

  “So are you,” she answered.

  The caravanserai was deserted, except for the dead. The brigands’ riding animals were gone. The innkeeper and his family had vanished into some bolt-hole in the ruins.

  “I am heading for the mountains,” he said, as they packed up their gear. “For the pass into Zimiamvia.”

  “I too.”

  “Then our way lies together.”

  He was wearing the same leather jerkin, over knee-length loose breeches of heavy violet silk. Sonja looked at the strips of linen that bound the wound on his upper arm. “When did you tie up that cut?”

  “You dressed it for me, for which I thank you.”

  “When did I do that?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, sometime.”

  Sonja mounted Lemiak, a little frown between her brows. They rode together until dusk. She was not talkative and the man soon accepted her silence. But when night fell, they camped without a fire on the houseless plain; then, as the demons stalked, they were glad of each other’s company. Next dawn, the mountains seemed as distant as ever. Again, they met no living creature all day, spoke little to each other, and made the same comfortless camp. There was no moon. The stars were almost bright enough to cast shadow; the cold was intense. Sleep was impossible, but they were not tempted to ride on. Few travelers attempt the passage over the high plains to Zimiamvia. Of those few most turn back, defeated. Some wander among the ruins forever, tearing at their own flesh. Those who survive are the ones who do not defy the terrors of darkness. They crouched shoulder to shoulder, each wrapped in a single blanket, to endure. Evil emanations of the death-steeped plain rose from the soil and bred phantoms. The sweat of fear was cold as ice melt on Sonja’s cheeks. Horrors made of nothingness prowled and muttered in her mind.

  “How long?” she whispered. “How long do we have to bear this?”

  The man’s shoulder lifted against hers. “Until we get well, I suppose.”

  The warrior woman turned to face him, green eyes flashing in appalled outrage.

  “SONJA” discussed this group member’s felony with the therapist. Dr. Hamilton-he wanted them to call him Jim, but “Sonja” found this impossible-monitored everything that went on in the virtual environment. But he never appeared there. They only met him in the one-to-one consultations that virtual-therapy buffs called the meat sessions.

  “He’s not supposed to do that,” she protested from the foam couch in the doctor’s office. He was sitting beside her, his notebook on his knee. “He damaged my experience.”

  Dr. Hamilton nodded. “Okay. Let’s take a step back. Leave aside the risk of disease or pregnancy: Because we can leave those bogeys aside, forever if you like. Would you agree that sex is essentially an innocent and playful social behavior-something you’d offer to or take from a friend, in an ideal world, as easily as food or drink?”

  “Sonja” recalled certain dreams-meat dreams, not the computer-assisted kind. She blushed. But the man was a doctor after all. “That’s what I do feel,” she agreed. “That’s why I’m here. I want to get back to the pure pleasure, to get rid of the baggage.”

  “The sexual experience offered in virtuality therapy is readily available on the nets. You know that. And you could find an agency that would vet your partners for you. You chose to join this group because you need to feel that you’re taking medicine, so you don’t have to feel ashamed. And because you need to feel that you’re interacting with people who, like yourself, perceive sex as a problem.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “You and another group member went off into your own private world. That’s good. That’s what’s supposed to happen. Let me tell you, it doesn’t always. The software gives you access to a vast multisensual library, all the sexual fantasy ever committed to media. But you and your partner, or partners, have to customize the information and use it to create and maintain what we call the consensual perceptual plenum. Success in holding a shared dreamland together is a knack. It depends on something in the neural makeup that no one has yet fully analyzed. Some have it, some don’t. You two are really in sync.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m complaining about-”

  “You think he’s damaging the pocket universe you two built up. But he isn’t, not from his character’s point of view. It’s part Lessingham’s thing, to be conscious that he’s in a fantasy world.”

  She started, accusingly. “I don’t want to know his name.”

  “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t tell you. ‘Lessingham’ is the name of his virtuality persona. I’m surprised you don’t recognize it. He’s a character from a series of classic fantasy novels by E. R. Eddison… In Eddison’s glorious cosmos ‘Lessingham’ is a splendidly endowed English gentleman who visits fantastic realms of ultramasculine adventure as a lucid dreamer: Though an actor in the drama, he is partly conscious of another existence, while the characters around him are more or less explicitly puppets of the dream.…”

  He sounded as if he were quoting from a reference book. He probably was: reading from an autocue that had popped up in lenses of those doctorish horn-rims. She knew that the old-fashioned trappings were there to reassure her. She rather despised them: But it was like the virtuality itself. The buttons were pushed, the mechanism responded. She was reassured.

  Of course she knew the Eddison stories. She recalled “Lessingham” perfectly: the tall, strong, handsome, cultured millionaire jock who has magic journeys to another world, where he is a tall, strong, handsome, cultured jock in Elizabethan costume, with a big sword. The whole thing was an absolutely typical male power-fantasy, she thought-without rancor. Fantasy means never having to say you’re sorry. The women in those books, she remembered, were drenched in sex, but they had no part in the action. They stayed at home being princesses, occasionally allowing the millionaire jocks to get them into bed. She could understand why “Lessingham” would be interested in “Sonja”… for a change.

  “You think he goosed you, psychically. What do you expect? You can’t dress the way ‘Sonja’ dresses and hope to be treated like the Queen of May.”

  Dr. Hamilton was only doing his job. He was supposed to be provocative, so they could react against him. That was his excuse, anyway… On the contrary, she thought. “Sonja” dresses the way she does because she can dress any way she likes. “Sonja” doesn’t have to hope for respect, and she doesn’t have to demand it. She just gets it. “It’s dominance display,” she said, enjoying the theft of his jargon. “Females do that too, you know. The way ‘Sonja’ dresses is not an invitation. It’s a warning. Or a challenge, to anyone who can measure up.”

  He laughed, but he sounded irritated. “Frankly, I’m amazed that you two work together. I’d have expected ‘Lessingham’ to go for an ultrafeminine-”

  “I am… ‘Sonja’ is ultrafeminine. Isn’t a tigress feminine?”

  “Well, okay. But I guess you’ve found out his little weakness. He likes to be a teeny bit in control, even when he’s letting his hair down in dreamland.”

  She remembered the secret mockery lurking in those blue eyes.

  “That’s the problem. That’s exactly what I don’t want. I don’t want either of us to b
e in control.”

  “I can’t interfere with his persona. So, it’s up to you. Do you want to carry on?”

  “Something works,” she muttered. She was unwilling to admit that there’d been no one else, in the text-interface phase of the group, that she found remotely attractive. It was “Lessingham,” or drop out and start again. “I just want him to stop spoiling things.”

  “You can’t expect your masturbation fantasies to mesh completely. This is about getting beyond solitary sex. Go with it: Where’s the harm? One day you’ll want to face a sexual partner in the real, and then you’ll be well. Meanwhile, you could be passing ‘Lessingham’ in reception-he comes to his meat sessions around your time-and not know it. That’s safety, and you never have to breach it. You two have proved that you can sustain an imaginary world together: It’s almost like being in love. I could argue that lucid dreaming, being in the fantasy world but not of it, is the next big step. Think about that.”

  The clinic room had mirrored walls: more deliberate provocation. How much reality can you take? the reflections asked. But she felt only a vague distaste for the woman she saw, at once hollow-cheeked and bloated, lying in the doctor’s foam couch. He was glancing over her records on his notebook screen; which meant the session was almost up.

  “Still no overt sexual contact?”

  “I’m not read…” She stirred restlessly. “Is it a man or a woman?”

  “Ah!” smiled Dr. Hamilton, waving a finger at her. “Naughty, naughty-”

  He was the one who’d started taunting her, with his hints that the meat-“Lessingham”-might be near. She hated herself for asking a genuine question. It was her rule to give him no entry to her real thoughts. But Dr. Jim knew everything, without being told: every change in her brain chemistry, every effect on her body: sweaty palms, racing heart, damp underwear… The telltales on his damned autocue left her precious little dignity. Why do I subject myself to this? she wondered, disgusted. But in the virtuality she forgot utterly about Dr. Jim. She didn’t care who was watching. She had her brazen-hilted sword. She had the piercing intensity of dusk on the high plains, the snow-light on the mountains; the hard, warm silk of her own perfect limbs. She felt a brief complicity with “Lessingham.” She had a conviction that Dr. Jim didn’t play favorites. He despised all his patients equally… You get your kicks, doctor. But we have the freedom of dreamland.

 

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