Dream Park

by Larry Niven;Steven Barnes

  Chester Henderson bellowed, “All right, enough is enough! I’m not sure what happened last night, but I’m sure that one of you thinks it was hysterically funny.” There was no answer. “But it’s not going to stop the Game. Roll those sleeping bags! The Game starts in twenty minutes. When it does, we move!” His eyes darted around him. “Breakfast or no breakfast,” he added, and then he saw Maibang and Kibugonai coming with the robot carts. His relief was vividly obvious.

  They trailed up into the hills, following Chester, who was following a small spider embedded in crystal. Margie chattered as if the pressure of words was too much for her. “That’s never happened to me before. Not even when I had the figure for it. We just . . . seemed to forget there was anyone else around. First we were just talking . . . talking about all the good times . . . the skiing, and the Games, telling each other stories . . . it’s surprising how much we still have to tell each other, isn’t it, dear?” She glanced at her husband, who nodded brightly. Owen Braddon wore a fatuous smile and a dazed look, but he walked like a king.

  “And then we were pulling each other’s clothes off. It was rather nice,” Margie said wistfully. “And it felt like nobody was looking anyway . . .”

  “I was just scared. I never had a case of stage fright like that in all my life,” Gwen Ryder said. “I heard Ollie calling, but it must have been half an hour before I stopped running. And then—” She stopped.

  “Yeah. Then I needed some reassuring,” Ollie said. “What could have done so many different things to us? I never heard of anything like it.”

  “Me neither,” Tony McWhirter said. His clothes were a mess, slashed by thorns and drenched in mud. He was shaken, and defensive. “I don’t know what it was that scared me like that. I just ran until it wore off.”

  “It could put some of us in mental hospitals next time!” Acacia’s snarl faded to a thoughtful frown, Suddenly she grinned at Alex and stopped talking.

  The line was bunching up. The little cluster at the tail rounded a clump of trees and found the Lore Master staring up a slope of bare rock, toward a cave mouth. “In there,” he said. “Back up a bit, troops. Walk soft. Dark Star, Fortunato, Griffin, Margie, Gwen—”

  Flat on their bellies, the six watched the cave mouth. Chester kept one eye on the crystal. “The ghastly hasn’t moved for a couple of minutes. Probably asleep. We’ll have to risk it, but we can make it a little safer.

  “Gwen, do you see that notch in the rocks to the right of the cave mouth? Margie? Good. It looks big enough to hold you both. So. The rest of you, you’re going in. Steal what you can find, but we’re particularly interested in whatever that ghastly used to snuff our fire. If you’re hurt, or if you need an Engineer—”

  “Check,” said Dark Star.

  “Remember, you’re Thieves. Don’t try to fight that thing.”

  “Not likely. If Bowan couldn’t handle it . . .”

  Chester looked irritated, but he only nodded. “Margie, you and S. J. uproot a bush big enough to cover that cleft. you Thieves may want metal containers for what you have to steal. Get ’em out of your mess kits.” He glanced at the crystal and said, “Still hasn’t moved. Okay. Get moving.”

  Margie and Gwen were in place: hidden, assuming the Haiavaha was too stupid to notice a bush that sprang up overnight. Much closer, the Thieves were flattened against rock next to the cave mouth.

  Next to Alex, Tony McWhirter wiped palms on his torn trousers and grinned crookedly. “Nerves.”

  The cave seemed pitch black. Alex whispered, “Any ideas?”

  Dark Star didn’t answer at once. She studied the approach, and finally tapped him on the shoulder. “I have the highest rating here. You’d better give me the first shot.” Without waiting for agreement, she crept around the side of the rock and was inside. An aeon later her hand and wrist reappeared, and gestured.

  Griffin went. He sensed Tony moving in behind him. He paused a moment to let his eyes readjust to the gloom. Gradually he recognised what he was hearing: breathing from within, deep and slow.

  The outlines of the cave revealed themselves as his eyes sharpened, and he looked around carefully.

  The cave seemed to have been hewn from rock by hand or claw, not by the forces of nature. As Dark Star flashed her shielded torch he saw chunks of stone that looked as if they had been pulled forcefully from the walls, and deep, wide scratch marks.

  “I think someone’s been sharpening his claws.” Alex heard his whispered words echo faintly from the walls, and wished he had been silent. McWhirter bumped into him from behind, muttered an apology.

  There was light ahead, perhaps around a bend in the cave. It was so dim that at first he thought it was a reflection from Dark Star’s torch.

  She had already shut it off, though, and depended on night vision and feel to guide her. Alex found the going easy if he stayed a few paces behind her. The footing was rough, but not treacherous, and he only stumbled once. As they neared the corner there was a squeaking sound, and a shadow whined past his ear, followed by two more. Bats.

  The sound of breathing was clearer now. The light must be around the next bend. Dark Star reached out her hands and made contact with both of them. “All right. This is it, and we can’t make any mistakes. You remember what this bastard did to Bowan. It sounds like it’s asleep, but it might be playing possum.”

  “Can it see us? I thought that Thieves were just about invisible.” McWhirter was still nervous.

  “Just about isn’t enough. Maibang didn’t specify, so it probably doesn’t have outrageous hearing ability, but be careful, all right?”

  Griffin followed her around the corner, trying to control both breathing and footsteps.

  They had come into a sizeable cave. To one side the wall had crumbled into big and little boulders: potential hiding places, if they got that far.

  The Haiavaha was here. He was asleep, all twenty feet of him, curled up like a drowsy wolf, in a nest of clean white bones. A trough surrounded him, a circular moat grooved into the rock, perhaps eighty feet in diameter and two feet wide. A fire burned in the near arc of the trough, a single column of flame that cast the only light in the room.

  There was something else, too . . . Alex rubbed his eyes. Directly opposite the dancing flames, night-black tongues of shadow danced in imitation. It might have been another fire, save that it ate light.

  Alex edged closer, on his belly, until he could look into the trough. Logs and brush were piled in the trough halfway around the ring. The fire was eating the wood, leaving red coals and then ashes behind it. The bed of ashes stretched around one hundred and eighty degrees of arc, then . . . of course. The black fire was burning its way around the circle and leaving chunks of wood behind it.

  Tony laughed, stifling it quickly. The Haiavaha stirred in its sleep, and Dark Star snarled soundlessly. They crept around the trench, toward the black flames on the far side. Alex put his lips against Dark Star’s ear and whispered. “How much of this do we want?”

  She didn’t answer. She took the lid off her mess kit and, holding it with her bandana, gingerly waved it over the Shimmering ashes. When she was sure that nothing drastic was going to happen, she shoveled out a lidful of ashes with a black glow playing over them. She began to fill her soup pot.

  Alex scooped only ashes. Save some ash to feed the blackfire later, he caught himself thinking, and added: It’s probably too late to save my mind. Bobbick and Millicent must be having a wonderful time watching this. Tony scooped up black-glowing treasure hurriedly, casting worried looks behind him. At first Griffin wondered what the problem was, then he heard it too: a muffled sound not unlike popcorn popping. A fusillade of gunshots from outside.

  Dark Star tugged urgently at Alex’s shoulder. He followed, on his belly, and was into the rubble of fallen rock before he dared look back.

  The Haiavaha was stirring. It uttered a roar that quaked the cave, sending bats fleeing from the roof and shaking down dust.

  McWhirter join
ed them in the rocks. Presently he noticed that his hands had a pale red glow. “What the hell?”

  “Frostbite, you idiot,” Dark Star hissed. “Here.” She tugged his scarf from around his neck and wrapped it around his pot. The black fire within popped and sucked up light.

  The Haiavaha was awake now, and had pulled itself erect. Its pig eyes roamed the cave for intruders, and Griffin’s hand sought his knife. The thing looked right past them as shots and yelling filtered into the cave. It stalked away, growling.

  Tony watched it go. “They’re going to need help out there.”

  “Forget it. Just do your job right here.” Dark Star checked to be sure the coast was clear, and scampered back out to finish filling her pot. Alex paused once to use the soup pot to scoop ashes—he had no need to protect his hands—and was on his way. He was first to reach the cave entrance.

  Margie and Gwen met him there. The sound outside was horrifying, the din of battle mixed with the unearthly vibration of the Haiavaha’s roar. Gwen was edgy, impatient. “Enemy attack. They’ve got guns. How’d you do? Anyone hurt?”

  “We found a kind of reverse fire, anti-fire. Tony got frostbite handling it.”

  Tony and Dark Star emerged. Gwen called up her aura and played it over the red glow of Tony’s hands until it was gone. “Anyone else?”

  “Not here.”

  Gwen nodded and was running downslope. A Cleric wasn’t needed here; she wanted to join the battle. Dark Star put a hand on Alex’s arm. “Give me that,” she said. “Just ashes? Good thinking, O Griffin. Fortunato, give your black fire to Margie. I’ll need an Engineer to help keep it going. You two can go fight. Meet us later, if you live through this. Say . . . up there where the trees peter out. How’s it sound?”

  “Sensible,” Margie said. She and Dark Star started uphill around the cave, moving slowly, careful of what they were carrying.

  Griffin and Tony followed the curve of the cliff face until they could see what was happening.

  Half of Henderson’s group were pinned down under a Foré crossfire, but two of them—it looked like Ollie and Acacia—had managed to escape the trap, and had closed to sword range with their foes. There were Foré corpses scattered about the clearing, and at first Alex didn’t understand.

  Then the Haiavaha stood up. It had a screaming Foré in each hand, and its mouth was smeared with blood. It looked around wildly as gunfire found it, and tore into a small pocket of the mountain folk with horrific results. They scattered and disappeared into the trees.

  Not until the sated Haiavaha was climbing back toward its lair did the two Thieves come cautiously down from their perch. Chester was waving his hands, calling the rest in.

  Alex felt out of breath. “Jesus Christ. What happened?”

  “Right after you left. Two parties of the enemy were waiting, and they got Eames before we even knew they were there.”

  “Dead?”

  “Wounded pretty bad, I think. Gwen is tending him.” Chester noticed their empty hands. “What did you get?”

  “Reverse fire, just like you thought. Dark Star and Margie are upslope tending it, waiting for us. I’ll take you there.

  “I sure hope that this was worth it. It has to be. They captured Maibang and Janet.” He pointed a long finger. “At least now we know where we’re heading.”

  In the distance, perhaps three miles away, was a volcano. It appeared extinct but the leveled top was unmistakable. “Nobody even saw it until I cast a Reveal Danger. And it wasn’t on the map. So that’s where they are, all right. Gwen!”

  The blonde raised her head. She was crouched over Eames. Shimmering white light reached from her aura to the wounded man. Eames watched miserably as shimmering red spread across his shirt from the blotch left by the jelly bullet. She had not noticed the pale, translucent figure patiently waiting behind her, wearing Eames’s face.

  “Come on, Gwen. Sorry, Eames.”

  Eames surprised them. “No sweat. I had a good run. Will you tell Lady Janet I died nobly? And . . . I may be seeing you again.” The tindalo moved away, and Eames followed, but swerved once to pat Mary-em’s shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  AMBUSH

  Margie and Dark Star were tending a huge fire . . . and a patient.

  Maibang seemed cheerful enough, considering. His legs were stretched straight out in front of him; they had been splinted with the split halves of a sapling. He winced every time he moved. “They broke my legs and left me,” he said. “They may have hoped you would try to carry me and be slowed down.”

  To Alex’s eye Maibang’s legs showed no sign of misuse. Like the aviation fuel, he thought. You just accept it and act on it. But there goes our guide . . .

  Chester had come to the same conclusion. “We don’t dare slow ourselves down that much. Sorry, Maibang. We’ll make you as comfortable as possible. What about Lady Janet?”

  “They will sacrifice her to the egg. Chester, can an airplane really lay eggs?”

  “No.”

  “Well. Our enemies think they have an airplane’s egg. They’re trying to hatch it in the volcano, as I told you. I expect the sacrifice will take place at night.”

  Margie said, “Good. That leaves us time for the fire to burn down.”

  The flames were already burning less fiercely, turning to yellow-white coal. Margie showed Chester the black fire unburning on a flat rock, with Alex’s pot of ash next to it. “I thought we might want a great deal of this anti-fire. It must have some purpose, mustn’t it? So we’ll need great deal of ash.”

  “How long, Margie?”

  “An hour, I’d say. Then we can rake any remaining coals out of the ash, take the ash and move on.”

  Chester looked wistfully toward the volcano, the site of the Foré stronghold, a mile and a half away now. “And we don’t even know what black fire is good for. All right. Rest break, troops!”

  Gamers began dropping their packs immediately. You learned that fast. And . . . the bonfire vanished, sound effects and all.

  Chester bellowed, “Hear me, Oh Godsl It’s a rest break, not a time out! Put the fire back, Lopez!” The bonfire reappeared. “All right. Griffin—” The Lore Master stepped up next to Alex and put a companionable hand on his shoulder, with enough force to turn him away from the rest of the Gamers. His voice level dropped. “You know something, don’t you?”

  Alex thought carefully, and nodded.

  “Just who are you, Griffin? What the hell is happening to my Game?”

  “I wish I could tell you. I think I can guarantee that you’ll know by tonight.”

  Henderson studied him, his face holding a meld of subdued hostility and curiosity. “If you can’t tell me who you are, can you tell me what happened last night?”

  “All right. I owe you that much. We were all the victims of an experimental drug. Stolen. It’s harmless, but powerful. “

  Trying to look casual, Chester forced his voice to remain calm. “But why? If this is one of Lopez’s stunts—” His voice held no conviction. “Why?”

  I’m not sure. It could even have been an accidental spill. But it wasn’t Lopez, and it wasn’t done to damage your Game.”

  The Lore Master’s slender fingers formed fists. “I’d still like to get my hands on the son of a bitch.”

  “You’ll have to stand in line. The orchestrator of last evening’s orgy of emotion has got quite a bit to answer for.” Chester’s eyes shone with questions. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can tell you.”

  The trail was easy to follow. Dozens of pairs of feet had beaten the scrubby underbrush into the dirt, marking a path that led almost straight towards the volcano. Griffin and Chester were in the front of the line.

  They had left with heavier packs. The contents Of Gwen’s and Kibugonai’s backpacks had been parcelled out among the other Gamers. Those packs were stuffed with wood ash. Everyone but the Warriors was carrying a cookpot of black fire.

  There were fourteen people left in the line, includ
ing their one remaining native bearer, Kibugonai. The flat nosed New Guinean marched directly behind Alex, talking to S. J. Waters.

  “What does your name mean, anyway?” S. J. asked the bearer. “Something like ‘terror of the battlefield’, or‘finder of yams?’ ”

  Kibugonai shook his head. “It means ‘Bitten by a pig’. My mother had a terrible fright the week before I was born—”

  Alex cut in. “Have you ever been near this region before? Or do you know anyone who has?”

  “Never. None dare intrude upon our enemy. Those who do . . .” Kibugonai shrugged. “There are many ways to die.”

  Many ways to die. Bandage a man’s mouth and then hold his nose shut . . . The thief who stole the ‘neutral scent’ must have seen the havoc he had caused. What if he had decided to take advantage of it by slitting a throat?

  It would have been a mad act. The Game would have ended immediately if the Griffin had been found dead, But he could have done it, and some Gamers were mad, and some thieves too; and knowing he had been that vulnerable made Alex’s flesh creep.

  They crossed a rise; and where it dropped away one could see the mists of low clouds in a wide, deep gorge. It was spanned by a suspension bridge; but the wooden slats that formed the flooring were worm-eaten and weather worn, and they were bound together with tattered vines. In several places the boards were broken through or splintered to uselessness.

  There didn’t seem to be another way across.

  Chester sent S. J. across to mark boards that wouldn’t hold his weight. Somehow the boy made it across without crashing through. He dropped his pack at the far end and sat hugging his knees, shaking, watching the others crawl across.

  They moved on hands and knees, one at a time, trying to avoid the boards marked with Xs, while the bridge danced in the wind. Clouds boiled evilly below the broken slats. The pot of black fire was taped to the small of Griffin’s back, an icy spot on his spine. He found it easy to tell himself that the floor of Gaming ‘A’ was probably a foot or two below him. It didn’t seem to help.