by Sloan, David
A voice came from nowhere. “Welcome to this very special presentation,” it announced, filling the cavern. “You represent the select few that were able to break our code, which means that your tribe has the kind of ambition and expertise that will set you apart in the city. And that makes you our target audience.”
A holographic image of the city materialized above the water, with ragged-edged sectors blocked out in different colors. The General recognized his 16%, a patchwork of the Tsepesian red and black on the east side, a territory that was above average in size but still puny compared to the General’s ultimate goals. The voice continued: “We know the hardships you face as tribal leaders. You are constantly battling to maintain every inch of your territory and gain more. You must devote time to recruiting and forming tenuous alliances and spend precious resources just to keep ahead of the competition. We have invited you here to offer you a proposition that will allow you all of the satisfaction of fighting for your Tribe without the tedium of dealing with supplies, personnel, or funds. We are forming the first-ever Tribal Alliance.”
There was some hushed talking in the audience. Alliances of more than four tribes were prohibited under the Tribal Wars bylaws and were enforced by the Ahtzon—ostensibly to protect newer, smaller tribes. But everyone always suspected that Kaah Mukul higher-ups just didn’t want the Ahtzon challenged by mega-tribes. Legality aside, the General didn’t like the sound of the proposition. The strategic nuances of tribal standing and dominance would be taken away by siding with their enemies. Others had the same opinion, and someone yelled out, “What’s the point of being in the Tribal Wars if we’re all on the same team?”
The voice replied, “But you are all on the same team already. The Ahtzon is your common enemy. While you are fighting each other, they hunt you down, constantly interfering and taking away your gains. You are lucky to kill off one or two at a time, and if you do, you are lucky to get away alive. But none of you has yet reached the point where you can take on a full Ahtzon patrol and win. We propose that you take your war to the next level.”
The hologram of the city disappeared. In its place, something big began to rise from the pool. Water dripped off of a levitating table holding several kicking, struggling bodies, blindfolded and gagged. They were Ahtzon officers. The voice carried on calmly.
“We can provide you with weapons, funds, and recruits. The weapons we provide will only be functional for members of the alliance and will self-destruct in the hands of others. You can use our resources to deal with whomever you want. Only occasionally will we ask for something in return.”
Tula walked up to the table and tapped one of the captive Ahtzon officers. The General watched closely. Either it was a vacant avatar, or there really was an officer in there, listening and sending information back to headquarters. If the body was empty, he would be unimpressed, but if it were a real officer—well, it would be like having a television camera in the room patched directly into Ahtzon headquarters. For Tula and her group not to be concerned about this was…unnerving. But the nature of the prisoner would be revealed soon enough. It was impossible, as far as he knew, to impersonate an Ahtzon officer. The uniforms were proprietary and impossible to steal. They were also weapons resistant, making it very hard to kill an officer, much less capture one.
Tula pointed to the General. “You, General Studblood. Would you please come down and inspect these bodies for us.” He hesitated, wishing that she hadn’t said his name out loud, but went down at her insistence. He stood behind their heads to stay out of their line of sight as best he could. Their armor certainly looked legitimate. Each of them had the official Ahtzon badge, which was impossible to duplicate. And they looked very much alive. “What do you think?” she asked.
“They look real,” he announced.
At that, Tula began to hand out guns. The General had never seen a weapon like it before, and he had seen everything that had come to Kaah Mukul in the past two years. He hefted the gun in his hand, testing the feel of it. It was nice.
“Consider these a mere taste of what we can offer,” the voice said when everyone had a gun in hand. “If any of you would like to give them a try, the Ahtzon are at your disposal.”
No one moved immediately, and the General knew why. Conspiracy was one thing, but shooting an incapacitated officer would not be forgiven easily by the Ahtzon. If caught, the punishment for the shooter would be very heavy, including death and, much worse, a fine.
“Feel free to come up to the pool directly,” the voice said again, almost tauntingly. A decisive clank of full battle armor, and the Scarmada general was on his feet, striding to the pool, holding the gun aloft. He stepped up to a helpless Ahtzon officer, smiled meanly beneath his full red beard, and pulled the trigger. The gun recoiled with a hefty blast, and the captured officer dissolved into a vapor of red. The cavern echoed with sudden talking and whooping, even some applause as half of the other tribal leaders jumped to their feet to take aim at the remaining officers. But the General sat immobilized. When the Scarmada leader had fired, a blinding flash of light had emanated from the pool, momentarily washing out the entire scene. The General had seen that light before when the Scarmada safe-house went up in flames. It couldn’t just be another graphics glitch; that would be too coincidental. Was the Scarmada already in on this weapons deal? Was their well-guarded safe-house really the armory for this… The General realized that he didn’t even know the name of this organization. But everything lined up. That’s why the Ahtzon had moved in on the safe-house; that’s why the Scarmada General wasn’t afraid to let the Ahtzon officer see him. He now had the fire power to kill with impunity, and the Ahtzon knew it. The General gripped his weapon and began looking through the smoke for the Scarmada leader. He had to take the red-bearded leader down before he got any more powerful.
The voice spoke again over the babble. “We will give you a week to consider our offer. If you wish to officially join our alliance and take advantage of our full package of resources, we will ask you to participate in a modest demonstration of our potential. It will be our introduction to the world of Kaah Mukul. You will be contacted soon with more details. Thank you, from all of us at Maascab.”
The table receded under the water, replaced with a new holographic image: a rotating knife pointed down at an angle with the name Maascab written in block letters. Already the tribal leaders were descending the tiered seating, talking to each other or into their headsets, gesturing to the hologram and the blood-stained remains of Ahtzon uniforms. Studblood looked around the big room for the tall Scarmada leader and glimpsed him at the very back where Tula had opened a door and was silently nodding to the departing men. He held back a moment to whisper commands over the comm link.
“Hey, hey, all Tsepesian Warriors converge at the rear of the café now. Major haul coming up. Scarmada’s General at the front, and we’ve got every other major player coming out behind him.”
“We’re here, we have the area surrounded. Which door are you coming out of?”
“There should be one to the…to the south. You should see a bunch of tribal generals coming out now.” The General fell in at the very end of the line, taking his time and hoping that no one noticed. His men reported back; they couldn’t see anyone. The General checked his own GPS, but it wasn’t working inside.
“Hold on, I’m coming to you,” he said as he looked out the door. He held the new gun close, expecting that the other tribal leaders had also recognized the ambush opportunity. But what met his eyes was completely surprising. He wasn’t coming up from underground at all. In fact, he wasn’t anywhere near the café. He found himself looking down from a small building that he recognized as across the street and much further to the east of where he thought he was. He was just below the mist, overlooking several boxed flower gardens and standing next to a stairway going down to the street level. His GPS came online and confirmed how far he had travelled.
“Everyone, I am not near the café. I didn’t co
me out there. You need to move east…” But before he could finish calling his real position, a minor leader from some tribe he didn’t know pushed back passed him and tried to enter the door that had been shut behind them. In a moment, the General saw why. A sizeable Ahtzon patrol was closing in from one side of the street. Several tribal leaders were retreating and trying to return fire, but the patrol was advancing inexorably. They would overtake his position soon.
“Ahtzon coming in heavy on the east side of the street. I need back-up!” he yelled into his headset as he also backed up the stairway. He quickly assessed his options. Going down the stairs would just put him in the middle of the firefight. The railing in front of him led nowhere.
“Killer, I’m a sitting duck, you need to get here—”
“You’re too far away, Stud! There are all these freaking tourists!”
Something whizzed past his head, and the General turned to see that he’d been noticed by the Ahtzon. The other leader fell off the stairway to the ground below. Another shot, and bullets struck the General in the right arm, knocking his gun over the railing and rendering his arm useless. He jumped over the railing and steadied himself on a window box. Another quick jump and he was on a roof, running at an angle and trying to find a way up and over the buildings. There was none. A narrow alleyway, partially hidden, branched off below. It seemed like his only chance. With a risky jump, he awkwardly maneuvered around stone and windows and ungracefully fell down into the corridor. But it was a mistake. The alleyway was a dead end. He turned around and noticed two Ahtzon guards closing in. There were no exits, no doors, no windows, not even any convenient tourists to use as human shields. He was cornered.
They had him. The warning light in his head-up display indicated that he couldn’t jump out of the city—no one could leave without automatically dying once they were marked by the Ahtzon. He was General Studblood; if he was to die, he would die fighting. He turned low and away in a desperate attempt to duck, then he rolled forward and up to go out with a ferocious, possibly suicidal pounce.
Guns fired as the General landed, and then a voice. “Stud! Yo, Stud!” The General opened his eyes wide, stunned to see Lazaro in front of him with the two Ahtzon dead at his feet. “C’mon, Stud, there are more coming!” They snapped back into action, firing behind as they ran down the sidewalk and ducked around to safety behind a cluster of vendor stands.
“So,” said Lazaro as the General looked back. “This will be fun to talk about at my party.” The General sighed heavily and wondered if he should have just taken the bullets.
* * * *
At one point during Perry’s drive that night, he realized that he couldn’t remember Lazaro’s real name. He hoped that wouldn’t be a problem.
There were lots of reasons for him not to go. For one, he was too old for this kind of stuff. He would certainly be older than any of Lazaro’s friends—not to mention more mature, not to mention more sane. He didn’t like parties. He especially didn’t like parties late at night when he could be doing other things, like sleeping or shooting something in Kaah Mukul or anything else in the world. He absolutely hated small talk. He couldn’t even remember what people were supposed to wear to parties, and he’d settled, after a few minutes of half-hearted worry, on a Hawaiian shirt and some wrinkled khakis. But trumping all of these complaints was the knowledge that a good leader always supported his people, and a good leader always kept his word. It was about trust. He’d already said he would go, so he had to go. But he never said he wouldn’t leave as soon as possible.
Both sides of the suburban street were lined with cars by the time Perry arrived. He took his time finding a parking spot, and then he took his time sitting in a silent car, mentally preparing to go in. Even from a full block away, he could hear the music. The neighbors could, too—he saw one man on his porch talking on the phone and gesturing down the street. A good leader always keeps his word, he repeated to himself like a mantra. Finally he sighed heavily and counted:
3…2…1…
Time to go in.
The basement entrance to the party was around the back of the house, the way marked by a paper sign with an arrow that was utterly unnecessary, given the throbbing music and shifting slivers of strobe lights that spilled into the yard. The screen door opened to a staircase that descended into the thick of the fray. Perry took a deep breath of air that consisted of a dizzying blend of smoke, alcohol, and something vaguely like the smell of a public pool, and he descended. Just ten minutes, he decided.
Pausing at the bottom of the stairs, Perry found himself looking into a kitchen area, the counters covered with bottles and chip bags. A tall woman dressed in black was leaning against the counter, looking like she’d had too good a time already. She waved at Perry unsteadily and tossed him a bottle of beer, then gestured him on to the living room with a sick but evocative grin.
The living room was crammed with people lined shoulder-to-shoulder along three of the walls. It was hot, and the floor was pulsating with such loud music that screams and gestures were the only viable forms of communication. Everyone’s attention was focused on a free-standing bath tub along the fourth wall that was filled with water and topped with bobbing pink and yellow marshmallow chicks floating on rafts made of plastic bowls. In the middle of the room, Lazaro was showing a girl how to operate a cannon made of PVC pipe and a compressed air cylinder. She closed her eyes, pulled the trigger, and squealed as the cannon popped. Perry squinted at a fantastic burst of light, then squinted again at the bath-tub which now had a new chocolate smear on it. A chick was floating sideways in the water in a mess of sugary carnage, and the girl was kissing Lazaro passionately.
This was too much for Perry, and he wanted to run back up and away from noise and lights and people and chaos. But he felt transfixed by the scene, as though he were pinned to his spot in the doorway and everything was taking place in slow-motion. He stood for a few minutes against his own will before ditching his unopened bottle on the floor and moving out of the room. When he reached the top of the stairs, he was relieved to see Killergremlin about to go down.
“You don’t want to go in there,” said Perry.
“It’s bad?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s bad.”
Killergremlin grinned and ran downstairs to see for himself. In a few minutes he was back, holding two beers and looking shocked.
“That is bad,” he said.
“Told you.”
In one corner of the back patio was a table and a few tattered lawn chairs. They sat down together, listening to the sporadic sounds of merry insanity over beats. The street lamps illuminated the night with a benign yellow glow.
“So, what are we going to do about this Mascaab thing?” asked Killergremlin.
“I have no idea,” said Perry, turning toward him. “It definitely isn’t legal, but having constant recruits, new weapons, constant funds? That’s all stuff we could use. I don’t know.”
“How many other tribes do you think will join?”
“I don’t know.”
“Scarmada?”
Perry nodded as he drank. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re already in on it somehow. You should have seen their leader shoot that Ahtzon right in the head. He wants this for sure.”
“So does that mean we need to be in it?” asked Killergremlin.
Perry resorted to his usual response. “Or we need to be against it. I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.” A good leader exercised caution when making big decisions.
They heard more screaming than usual coming from downstairs, but they ignored it.
“You know what that thing is with the tub?” Perry asked.
“Yeah, I found out when I was down there. You have to hit two chicks, one yellow, one pink, with your girlfriend or significant other or whatever. If you get both, that’s a good sign for your fertility that year.”
“Um, it’s a little creepy that he actually believes that.”
“No,” said Killergreml
in. “What’s creepy is that he’s only doing it this way because he couldn’t find live chicks.”
A pair of laughing teens came up the stairs and disappeared around the side of the house. Perry noticed one of them wearing a pair of thick golden earrings. It was hard to see, but they looked like a trendy style invented in Kaah Mukul.
“Reality imitates art,” he remarked to himself as he took a drink.
“Huh?”
“Nothing, I was, I was just thinking about something that Myung-Ki Noh said in this interview I saw this morning. He was saying that Kaah Mukul was becoming so real to people that stuff that happened in the city would start to happen in real life, that the line would blur. I think he was talking about, maybe, like, things that were invented in the city could be useful in real life. I don’t know. It just popped into my head just now.” He shifted in his chair.
Killergremlin shrugged and took a swig. “You think that happens?”
“What?”
“Stuff in the city becoming real.”
“Maybe. I guess that’s why so many people like Ullamaball, because it’s like a real thing to them. Why?”
“Well…” thought Killergremlin. “Well, just say this, and I’m just speaking like, hypothetically. What if it got so real down there that events that happened down there actually started to happen out here?”