Endgame: The Calling

by James Frey

  Jago holds it up. “This? Uh, something I drew.”

  Wei studies it.

  “It’s remarkable.”

  “Yeah.” Jago squints at the drawing, still a little surprised that it came from his hand. “Thanks.”

  “It looks just like one of them, though I’ve never seen one with a plate like that one is holding.”

  “You recognize it?” Jago’s pulse speeds up.

  “Of course. You’re very talented.”

  “Thank you,” Jago repeats. A total lie. Left to his own, Jago can barely draw a convincing stick figure. Practicing art wasn’t covered in his Endgame training.

  Wei’s eyes shift from studying the picture to studying Jago.

  “But you don’t know what it is, do you? Even though you drew it?”

  Something in his look makes Jago feel uncomfortable. He shrugs, playing it off. “I just copied it from a picture Sarah tore out of some magazine.” He lies without missing a beat. “Why? What is it?”

  “That is a general in the Terracotta Army.”

  “Oh yeah! How stupid of me.” He knew he’d seen it somewhere before. The Terracotta Army is world-famous. Over 8,000 life-sized warrior statues guard the remains of the first emperor of China. His tomb is a local attraction, and it dates back to the 2nd or 3rd century BCE. “Sarah was talking about going to visit it while we were here.”

  kepler 22b must be telling me that I—we—need to go there. And we need to bring the disk.

  “Of course she was. Everyone goes to visit the Terracotta Army. It’s quite impressive.” Wei resumes sweeping. “I’m kind of crazy for it myself.”

  “That so?”

  “Yes.” And then he says unexpectedly, “And why are you lying to me, by the way?”

  “Lying?” Jago feels the muscles in his neck tense, readying.

  “There is no way you copied that from a photo.”

  Jago shakes his head. “But I did.”

  “No warrior of Emperor Qín Sh Huángdì ever held a disk like that.”

  Jago swallows. “Oh, I just made that part up. I was dreaming about Frisbees.”

  “Frisbees, hm? That doesn’t look like a Frisbee.”

  “What can I say? I can’t draw Frisbees. No one’s perfect, I guess.”

  “No. I suppose not.” Wei sweeps some more. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you. Weren’t you going to use the computer?”

  “Yeah, I was,” Jago says, heading to the alcove.

  Jago finds the computer and sits at the terminal and opens a browser window and starts searching. He reads more about the Terracotta Army and the Chinese pyramids and Emperor Qín. He finds cryptic internet rumors—which is to say, a load of bullshit—about the Great White Pyramid.

  Jago surfs for a while longer. Checks an old email account. Nothing but junk. Reads the local news from Juliaca and Omaha and a few other crater sites. Googles alien disk and gets a ton of useless garbage written by crackpots.

  After 17 minutes his phone vibrates.

  He is not expecting a call.

  Only four people have the number.

  He pulls it from the bag, careful to keep the disk hidden inside, and studies the number.

  It’s local.

  He frowns and hits talk.

  “Hello?”

  A pause before an automated female voice speaking jovial Mandarin comes over the line.

  A robocall wrong number.

  Jago hangs up, a little uneasy. Normally he might wonder if his phone was just tagged by a tracker, but he has the most secure, most advanced smartphone that exists.

  He erases the history and cache on the computer and quits the browser and heads back to the room, hoping that Sarah is done with her meditating. They need to get moving.

  As he passes through the lobby, Wei says, “You know, I have a cousin who is a researcher at the site. I think he would very much enjoy your picture. I’ll give him a call and see if he might be able to give you and your girlfriend a tour. He could probably let you into some areas other tourists don’t get to visit.”

  Jago isn’t sure he trusts Wei, but it will be a good way to get into the complex, if that’s what the clue is telling him he should do. “Thank you, Wei. That would be great.”

  Wei bows. “Think nothing of it.”

  AN LIU

  Liu Residence, Unregistered Belowground Property, Tongyuanzhen, Gaoling County, Xi’an, China

  Hard drives spin. Numbers fly. Coordinates are cross-referenced. IP addresses are winnowed. Packets are sent through wires to transmitters to satellites and back. An old dot matrix printer unspools sheets of paper with perforated edges. A display lights up. The script unfurls in masses of long-line code.

  An Liu’s mechanism has just pinned Jago Tlaloc’s phone.

  The Shang Player bounds into the room, hot from the street, from his fight with Chiyoko, from the flush of her power. Hot from scouring the streets for over two hours, searching for her, and failing.

  An goes to the printout. SHIVER. Consults the screen. Blinkblink. Will blink gather his blink toys and go and meet them.

  When they are removed blink are removed SHIVER removed from the game board, he will seek out this Chiyoko Takeda. The clue that blink kepler 22b blinkblink placed in his mind does not matter. He does not intend to play Endgame like the others, chasing blink riddles, acting like fools.

  blinkSHIVERblink.

  What matters is the calming blink calming blink calming silent soothing force of blink the bewitching Player blink the bewitching Player blink the bewitching Player of the 2nd line.

  The remaining Players can wait.

  The present he is making for them isn’t ready yet.

  But it will be soon.

  And what a present blink what a present it is going to be.

  MACCABEE ADLAI

  X Jng Hospital Urgent Care, Xi’an, China

  Maccabee Adlai leaves the hospital. He has been there for two days and 15 hours, checked in under the alias Paul Allen Chomsky. He couldn’t risk going on the grid with his real name. It wouldn’t have done to be paid a nighttime visit by an assassin as he lay in his bed dreaming of killing the young boy Baitsakhan, killing Jago, and killing that crazy bastard An.

  He walks into the light of day and stands in the taxi line. He’s going to the train station. His leg is sore, needs a fresh dressing once a day, and can’t get wet for a week, but is structurally fine. The shot from Baitsakhan’s arrow was clean, and by some miracle the resulting wound did not require surgery.

  The ear is another story. Jago Tlaloc ruptured his right eardrum when he thumb-stabbed Maccabee, and for now he has to endure a persistent high-pitched ringing. The doctor insisted it would heal itself and the ringing would gradually subside, but that it could take up to two or three months.

  Great.

  The doctor also told him to avoid flying for at least two weeks. He said if Maccabee did fly, it wouldn’t make his eardrum any worse, but that it probably would be very painful.

  Whatever. He’ll think about it, but he has to follow his two-part clue. Time is of the essence.

  The first part is this: .

  And the 2nd, this: 47:4f:42:45:4b:4c:49:54:45:50:45:54:45:4d:50:4c:45:4f:46:54:48:45:43:4f:4e:53:55:4d:49:4e:47:56:55:4c:54:55:52:45.

  It took him some fiddling to figure them out, which lying in a hospital bed was good for, but it wasn’t that hard. After he triple-checked the result, he fired up his tablet computer and Googled it to find out where he had to go to get a bead on Earth Key.

  It was Turkey.

  Near some place called Urfa.

  Maccabee gets into the cab. Screw what the doctor said. He’s going to fly to Urfa. Doctors always hedge their diagnoses, and besides, what’s a little ear pain in the service of winning Endgame?

  Nothing.

  Baitsakhan and the others will have to wait.

  Unless, of course, their clues lead them to Urfa as well.

  BAITSAKHAN

  Fashion Europe
Wig Factory Warehouse, Chengdu, China

  Baitsakhan is letting himself have a treat. A sugar cookie with candied lemon zest on top. It is delicious.

  He sits with his brother, Jalair, over a pile of these confections and small glasses of jasmine tea in an abandoned warehouse in Chengdu. Bat and Bold are running an errand. An essential errand.

  Baitsakhan’s mind has turned from the task at hand back to Maccabee. The tracker that Baitsakhan’s arrow implanted in the Nabataean’s leg is functioning. It survived the hospital. This much Baitsakhan can tell, because Maccabee is finally on the move.

  Baitsakhan will give him one day and start to follow.

  Seeing Maccabee again will be a wonderful treat. Like the cookies. Just as sweet, only deadlier.

  This is his Endgame.

  And it is not hard.

  It is easy.

  Fun.

  Just like his clue, which is incredibly simple and direct. Translated from Oirat, it reads:

  TAKE KILL WIN.

  The clue is so easy to crack that Baitsakhan—at 13, cold, hard, merciless, and murderous—thinks it conveys favorability.

  Yes.

  That is what it means.

  Baitsakhan knows.

  The being at the Calling respected his unwillingness to speak his line and his tribe. The being respected his strength and his resistance. And it will appreciate the way he plays Endgame.

  Baitsakhan might be the youngest and the shortest, but he is not the weakest. The weakest are those who don’t yet realize they’ve been shoved into a slaughterhouse. The ones digging through ancient ruins, making alliances, having peaceful discussions—any Player doing anything other than killing is a fool.

  Like this one here.

  Baitsakhan turns his head slowly to regard the girl. He brushes a stray cookie crumb from the corner of his mouth. He pushes play on a docked iPod. “All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles starts up. It is loud, very loud.

  He looks to Jalair and nods, and Jalair brings his blade down on Shari’s left middle finger, the one with her ring, the ring given to her by her husband, Jamal, on the day their daughter was born.

  Beautiful, smiling Little Alice.

  Where is she now? Shari wonders. Playing in the backyard. She can picture it.

  Playing in the grass with Jamal.

  Shari is calm. Even after the ambush and her capture and the beating they gave her. She is calm because of these things. They have given her a chance to use her training, to refocus her mind. She has not cried out once since they took her, grabbed her when she got off the bus to buy a snack. By all appearances, Shari feels nothing.

  Jalair looks at Baitsakhan. He is impressed by this girl. It’s like she is made of stone. Baitsakhan doesn’t notice Jalair’s look; he is not impressed. He watches the blood ooze out from where Shari’s finger used to be and smiles.

  The cut hurts, the stump of her finger throbs, but the pain is nothing compared to the pain of childbirth. These stupid boys know nothing of pain, she thinks, and she walls her mind off from the pain.

  Baitsakhan sips his tea. Shari looks at him. Through him. She has never killed a person before, but she would kill this one in a second.

  Because he is not a person.

  Baitsakhan sets down his tea and turns down the music.

  “Tell me your clue, Harrapan, and your end will be swift,” Baitsakhan promises in English, as if he is some kind of dark king.

  But Shari says nothing. Betrays no emotion other than indifference. She doesn’t stop staring through him.

  Not human.

  He is not even an animal.

  Not worthy of this or any other life.

  And as far as she is concerned, he is already dead.

  HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT

  Church of the Covenant, Kingdom of Aksum, Northern Ethiopia

  Hilal leaves the small crossroads town. He leaves the people there a small redstone talisman in return for their hospitality. The talisman is from Ethiopia, a finely carved cross, inlaid with a vein of pure platinum. He does not tell them what it is worth. There is no point. They will all be dead soon enough, and the Earth will take back everything humanity has built, everything humanity thinks it owns.

  He rides an oxen cart to a bigger town. A pickup truck to a bigger one. A jeep to a bigger one. A bus. A taxi. A train. A plane. He flies to Hong Kong, to Brussels, to Addis Ababa. He picks up his uncle’s Nissan Maxima and drives to the crater. He sits at the edge and prays for the victims and their families, prays for the future, that it be good, that it simply be.

  For this is Endgame, he thinks, standing over the still-reeking pit. The future will end, and time will restart.

  He leaves the crater, returns to the Maxima, and drives north. To the old kingdom of Aksum, the kingdom of his forefathers’ forefathers. He is the great-grandson of Ezana, the grandson of Gebre Mesqel Lalibela, the unknown leader of Timkat, the Showing of God.

  He is versed in stone, and prophecy, and the kindness of death.

  He gets out of the car and walks among his people. He walks for miles, wrapped in stark white and bright red cloth. He wears leather sandals on his feet. The people are scattered here and there, farming, tending goats, slaughtering chickens, beating the chaff from wheat. A few old ones recognize him and they genuflect, and he raises one of his beautiful young hands, palm up, as if to say, No, brother, I am you; you are me. Stand next to me. Stand with me.

  And they do.

  “Live,” he tells them.

  And they do.

  They can see it in his brilliant, gentle eyes: he is theirs; they are his.

  He passes over the barren hills, brown and red. And he reaches it. One of the stone underground churches, shaped like a cross, carved from the subterranean volcanic rock.

  This one is secret, hidden, surrounded by a thick stand of cedars.

  It is 3,318.6 years old.

  Hilal makes his way through the maze of ditches that leads down to the church. The air cools; the light dims. He reaches the main doorway, carved from stone like the rest of it. His mentor is there. His spiritual guide. His counsel.

  The ex-Player Eben ibn Mohammed al-Julan.

  Hilal kneels, bows his head. “Master.”

  “You are the Player, so I am no longer the master. Come in, and tell what you have seen.”

  Hilal rises and takes Eben by the hand and they walk into the dank church.

  “I saw a god, and he told us of the game.”

  “Yes.”

  “I saw the others. They are crude, for the most part.”

  “Yes.”

  “I saw one die. Several tried to kill. I saw ten escape.”

  “Yes.”

  “The god called himself kepler 22b.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is a planet, if memory serves.”

  “Yes.”

  “It said we must retrieve the keys: Earth Key, Sky Key, Sun Key. The winner must have all three.”

  “Yes.”

  “He left a disk of stone, but did not call our attention to it. The Olmec got it. He was with another, the Cahokian. They were followed by the Mu. None noticed that I saw the disk, or that the Olmec took it.”

  “Watch that last one, Player.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “No more master. I am only Eben now.”

  “Yes, Eben.”

  “He left us each a clue, in our heads.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mine is a circle.”

  “Of?”

  “Just a circle. A line. Empty inside and out.”

  They reach an altar. Eben kneels before it, and Hilal kneels with him. They lower their heads. The Christ is there above them, forever bleeding, forever suffering, forever dying, forever giving life, love, and forgiveness.

  Eben says slowly, “And you do not know its meaning?”

  “I think it was for the disk the Olmec took. He should have gotten my clue. It would have served him better. Or perhaps I should have gotten th
e disk.”

  “You cannot know that. Assume for now that all is as it should be, and the gods do not err. What does this circle tell you?”

  “It makes me think of the disk, but also something else. A circle of stone. A stone circle.”

  “Yes.”

  “It references a construct. One made in the ancient world, the one that existed here when the gods visited.”

  “Yes.”

  “One made to last, like so many things were made in those days: of rock and stone. A monument to space and time and the cosmos. A thing that sought the memory and permanence of stone. The ancient power of it.”

  “Yes.”

  “But which stone circle? There are many.”

  Eben rises. Hilal does not.

  Eben says, “I will bring you wine and wafers.”

  “Thank you, Eben. I must meditate. There is more to this simple clue. More to what I must discern from it.”

  “Yes.”

  Eben turns and leaves, his robes rustling.

  Hilal the Aksumite of the 144th brings his hands together in his lap.

  Closes his eyes.

  The circle in his mind.

  SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, CHIYOKO TAKEDA, AN LIU

  Terracotta Warriors Museum, Lintong District, Xi’an, China

  Sarah and Jago climb out of a taxi at the main tourist entrance of the great and ancient Terracotta Army. They are met immediately by Wei’s cousin, Cheng Cheng Dhou. Cheng Cheng is a tiny man, barely 153 cm, affable, with bright eyes and Coke-bottle glasses. It is only 17 degrees Celsius outside when they meet him, but he is sweating through his white collared shirt.

  “Yes! Yes! Hello!” he says. His right hand is open in front of him, and in an odd gesture he is gripping his right wrist with his left hand, as if he needs to use one arm to move the other. They shake hands and introduce themselves, Sarah and Jago using their real first names. Cheng Cheng leads them to the entrance and ushers them through with his security pass. Just like that, they are in the complex.

  “So, what exactly are we looking for?” Sarah whispers to Jago, Cheng Cheng a few feet ahead, oblivious.