The Barsoom Project

Chapter Fifteen

Max’s Thunderbird was wounded. Its left wing fluttered weakly against the driving wind. The great eagle strove to pace itself: two strong beats, and then a rest. Gain altitude, and then pause into a gentle downward glide.

They flew through a clear layer between two cloud decks. The upper haze layer let the sun through as a brighter disk. It was thirty degrees above the horizon of the lower cloud deck, though the time must have been about noon.

They flew above a knobby white landscape, so dense that Max could see no trace of an earth below. Suddenly, and for the first time, he felt the primal fear of falling, that cling-to-Mommy, hairless-ape-in-the-treetops fear. His Thunderbird’s beak was open, and he could hear the ragged whistling of its breath even above the wind.

Trianna put her lips to his ear and whispered, “Look,” and pointed down.

Curiously, as his air sickness increased, hers had begun to fade. A mile below them there was a break in the clouds. They could find outlines of a mountain range, vast and foreboding, all jagged peaks sheathed in impenetrable ice.

The Thunderbird began to glide down, making its slow and gentle descent. A mist of blood streamed from the wounded right wing.

The Thunderbird was fighting for its life, for their lives. Max felt gratitude and admiration for the creatures, repaying their debt in so heroic a fashion. The only problem was that he could see no place to land. The mountain was all cliffs, all bare rock faces at varying angles.

There might be ledges, landing places, somewhere below; but diving blind through the clouds would be suicide. What would the wounded bird do?

Half-hidden by mist was a tiny ledge, too narrow, narrower than the bird’s spread wings.

Max’s chest ached with the tortured wheeze of its breathing. He felt its triumph of will as gilded wings spread wide. It swooped toward the ledge. The wings half-folded-he felt the drop in the pit of his stomach-and the bird’s feet slammed into rock. Three hopping steps brought it to a halt.

It looked back at them. In its eyes shone a mixture of pride, and anger, and gratitude. Max swung himself over and landed heavily on rock. “Off! Get off, Trianna. Let the beast rest!” He helped her descend. She was heavy… and he saw her surprise at the strength in his arms.

Francis Hebert descended without help and at once began trying to stretch his back out.

The other birds came down behind them, landing with half-folded wings on the same narrow, fog-shrouded ledge. Stiffly the Gamers unstrapped themselves from their mounts and tumbled to the ground.

Max’s toes curled hard against the ground, and his knees half-buckled, then became firm again. His stomach felt a little shaky, and he called an old trick into play: find a spot on the horizon, gaze at it until the dizziness passes…

He chose the distant, pale disk of the sun, yellow-white and wan in the mist. He had to squint a little… but this world’s sun, crippled by magic, was such that his eye could meet it squarely.

Even on this side of the magical barrier, Seelumkadchluk, there was something visibly wrong with Sol’s disk. A shadow, perhaps an enormous sunspot: an alien shape that didn’t quite belong… The clouds thinned for a moment, but Max held his gaze against the increased glare.

What in the world?

His eyes were squeezed tight against tears. “Does anyone have a pair of binoculars?”

Kevin Titus dismounted just behind Snow Goose. He reached into his backpack. He pulled out a leather case. He extracted a pair of binoculars with molded plastic handgrips, and gave them to Max a bit reluctantly. “Be careful with ‘em.”

“Actually, I was planning to heave ‘em off the…” Max aimed and focused, squinting hard. Even through the clouds, it was too damned bright, but… ”I will be dipped in shit.” There, in the center of a pale wavering disk, was the shadowed form of a great black bird. The shadow’s beaked profile turned… looked at him?

He handed the binoculars to his brother Orson. “What do you make of that?”

Orson focused the glasses. Presently he said, “I’d say we know where the Cabal is hiding the Raven, wouldn’t you?”

There was a general ripple of excitement as news of the discovery spread down the line, then Max handed the binoculars back. He felt pretty damned good. They had just solved a major piece of the puzzle.

Snow Goose was gazing into the sun. “I can’t believe it. How could the Cabal get enough power to do something like this?”

“What would it take?” Robin Bowles asked. He walked with an exaggerated, bow-legged gait. The ride must have left him sore.

“The Raven created the world! I can’t even imagine that much power. I just don’t know..

“The satellite?” Orson asked hopefully.

“Right, sure. The satellite. And they caught the Raven while he was in human form.” She sounded doubtful but afraid. “We’ve got to find Sedna.”

The five Thunderbirds preened, and ministered to each other, and inspected their wounds. From time to time one would glance up at the frail humans who had set them an impossible task. The birds seemed so beautiful, so terrible, but there was a fragility beneath the strength. Try as he might, he couldn’t get the image of those shattered eggshells out of his mind.

Human and Thunderbird owed each other much. Max felt fumble-tongued, but he knew he should speak.

They let him approach, watching him from the depths of those emotionless, void-black eyes. Max stood close enough to touch, but didn’t. Dammit, he didn’t know when Dream Park switched from hologram to mechanical, and he didn’t want to spoil the illusion now. For him, at this moment, these creatures were as real as his companions.

“Thank you, great ones.”

A low, buzzing voice reverberated through his body. “ We have repaid our debt. When next we meet, beware!”

Then the great eagles, one at a time, spread their wings and veered away. The Gamers stood silently in the snow, watching until the Thunderbirds vanished into the clouds.

Snow Goose spoke. “Legend says that the entrance is here in the mountains. I don’t know exactly where.” A gust of wind blew her straight black hair into her face, and she paused to wipe the strand aside. “We’re going to form a circle, and have a prayer smoke.” She motioned them down against the mountain wall, under a slight overhang where they had a little protection from the weather. When they were all seated in a circle, she produced a leather pouch from her backpack. She undid the thong tie with fingers and teeth, and shook a hand-rolled cigarette out.

“Tobacco?” Max was shocked. “I haven’t seen tobacco since Milan.”

“Nicotine can save your life,” Snow Goose said piously. She lit it, inhaled deeply, and then exhaled in a thin stream that was so white it seemed to glow. “To my brothers in the north,” she said. “Brothers of the mind, children of the wind. Guide us, help us. Help us find the doorway to the nether kingdom, to the land of the dead, to the realm of the All-Mother.”

She blew a second puff directly into the whistling wind. The smoke should have vanished instantly, but it didn’t. It merely drifted, as if on the faintest of breezes. “The south. Brothers of the heart. Help me feel my way. Let your water nurture us, and help us in our quest!” Another breath. “Brothers of the east, you who are of spirit, beings of fire and light. Open the path. Show us the way!”

With a final puff, she saluted the West. “Brothers of the west! Children of the Earth! Holders of physical form, guardians of the body, protect us in our quest.”

The smoke: it had not dissipated into the wind, although the wind continued to build. Four tendrils of smoke were drifting haphazardly, ignoring the wind.

Snow Goose was sliding into a trance. “Ohhh… they are near. The dead, the endless legions of dead, are near. Show us! Great… great evil! There is great evil…

Four tendrils of smoke turned and twisted in the wind, but would not go where the wind went. Instead they were beginning to move all in the same direction, turning like four blind snakes who have caught a scent. They drifted toward the mountain wall. One by one they brushed against the gray rock, and again, and, gradually, were gone, scattered by the wind or absorbed by the rock.

The mountain began to shudder.

“Jesus! What’s going on?” Orson yelled.

The snow above them began to tremble. Snow Goose, stirring from her trance, suddenly screamed, “Up against the wall!”

Kevin muttered, “-motherfuckers!” But he was moving, rolling, like the other Gamers.

Snow Goose’s warning barely came in time. The slight rumbling that had alarmed Orson abruptly became a thunderous, malevolent roar, and their entire world turned white as countless tons of snow and displaced rock crashed past them.

They huddled together, tight against the wall. Somebody down at the other end screamed, and Max didn’t blame him a bit. He felt sick to his stomach, genuine gut-fear hammering at his desperate attempt to remember that it was only a Game. He closed his eyes tightly, and waited.

After an endless time the ground stopped shaking, and Max opened his eyes again.

And could see nothing. His reaching hand met a solid layer of snow.

Francis Hebert triggered a flashlight. The luminescence lit them an eerie yellow in their tomb of ice. The overhang was all that had saved them.

For a long time, no one spoke. There was the sound of their constricted breathing, and the low, bass rumble of a distant tremor. Then even that died away.

Snow Goose broke the silence. “I guess the Gods were listening,” she said calmly, and lit another cigarette.

She exhaled in a long, long stream… in fact, she didn’t stop exhaling, even after a solid thirty seconds of feathery breath. The smoke formed a glowing cocoon around her. It lit the interior of their makeshift snow cave so brightly that Hebert switched off his flashlight.

Without another word she turned, and walked directly at the wall of snow. It melted before her, the water flowing and fusing into the crystal ice walls of a snow tunnel.

She almost floated as she walked, yesterday’s college-girl persona completely submerged. She seemed to be a different person entirely, one not wholly of this world. All they could do was follow her. Max looked to Orson for advice or comment, and Orson shook his head.

The snow tunnel twisted and wound, angling steeply into the very heart of the mountain. Max stretched out a hand to touch the walls. They were hard and cold, although the air in the tunnel was pleasant.

Ahead of them walked the glowing Snow Goose, carrying herself as might a great lady, a princess, the mistress of all dark secrets. She had stopped puffing on the cigarette, but a steady stream of vapor poured from her mouth, her nose-Jesus! Her eyes and ears, continually re-forming that glowing cocoon that melted snow and rock ahead of her, building a way for the rest of them.

She stopped, canting her head as if to hear phantom music. Snow Goose shuffled a few more steps, then halted again.

At the low end of the audible, Max heard the rumble, and felt it in his bones. Sudden claustrophobia raged at him. Were they going to be trapped underground? Were they…?

No. The screaming had a personality. It was the roar of something alive, something huge.

They were approaching the gates of Hell. Didn’t he expect the Inuit equivalent of Cerberus?

Orson gripped his spear. “Snow Goose. Can I have one of those cigarettes?”

She nodded, and a twitch at the corners of her lips told Max that his brother, as usual, had been dead on the money. There was a swift babble of requests as the rest of them followed suit, and then swift multiple fires as the sacred cylinders were lit all around.

Max braced himself for the worst, and sucked smoke. He was surprised. For unfiltered, hand-rolled cigarettes, these were, mild, almost like smoking air. But luminous smoke poured from his mouth and nose as he exhaled, and his harpoon began to glow.

Ahead of him, Snow Goose stopped, exhaling smoke against an unyielding wall.

Hebert joined her, blew hard against it, then slapped at it with the pink palm of his hand. “What’s the matter?”

“The ice’s been protected against magic.” She said it in one of those matter-of-fact voices that made you ashamed to have asked such a stupid question.

“How do we get through it?”

“We can’t stop here. The way to Sedna lies beyond the underworld.” Snow Goose frowned. “Where magic fails, perhaps muscle…”

The face of the ice sheet measured eight feet across. Behind it, something flickered dimly, a vague, sluggish movement. Max had the impression of something monstrously tall that moved with unnatural vitality. It seemed to be balancing on one leg.

Then the shadow was gone, and the skin on the back of his neck ceased to creep.

“ Karate Kid,” Kevin said. “Part Seventeen.”

Exactly,” Snow Goose said softly. “Let’s put our backs to it.”

Max set his cheek against the ice. Orson and Trianna joined him; both flinched from the cold. “Go,” said Orson, and they heaved. The ice might have moved a tenth of an inch.

Charlene moved between Orson and Max. Heave. Nothing.

She and Orson shared a ragged smile. “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?” she gasped.

“My brother said, ‘Let’s go for a walk.”

“Heave,” Max said, and they heaved. The ice wall might have shifted, or not. “Rest. Let it settle. Heave!”

Kevin consulted his pocket computer, then politely moved Charlene and Orson aside. “I’ve got soot!” he chirped. “And Max has an owl claw. That makes us the strongest ones here!” He leaned against the ice and strained mightily.

There was no more conversation, just the sound of fevered breathing in a confined space, as the largest and smallest of the Gamers bent their backs against eight feet of ice.

With a long brittle note, the first fissure appeared in the wall. As it deepened, a vast network of tiny cracks turned the entire sheet milky.

Max stepped back. He heaved for breath and said, “Hulk smash!” and ran at the wall.

The thud must have been audible in Gaming A. There was a moment in which nothing happened, and then the entire barrier shattered, almost in slow motion. Max lurched through a couple of steps, skidding on shards, before he could stop.

Kevin flexed his arm and made a tiny biceps, face positively luminous.

The air was gray with a dense mist that flowed like an angry ocean, churned in the cavernous opening like cold smoke. Every sound they made, every footstep or whisper, reverberated like a sneeze in a tomb. The mist chilled Max to the bone. It was a sticky cold. The furs and thermal-reflective lining of his jacket seemed helpless against it.

His mind noted, trying to make sensible shapes out of that roiling fog. It formed and re-formed itself into grotesque illusions, shadows cast by impossible shapes: a suggestion of tremendous jaws, a sudden glimpse of a hundred pairs of eyes, the bones of a hand brushing across his face. As the other Adventurers pushed through behind him, he felt their unease as an extension of his own.

“Welcome to Hell,” he said quietly, helping Trianna past a stack of ice chips. She looked pained.

Without any stated intention, the group formed a circle, standing close enough to touch shoulders. One could not see the size of it, but the moving rivers of fog, the echoes, all told of a cavern as big as the world.

Max felt the urge to scream, to do something to fill the horrid emptiness around him. He felt utterly cowed.

“It must be your decision to go ahead,” Snow Goose said. “I don’t know how much protection I can offer you.”

Yarnall peered out into the mist. Somewhere on the other side of that shifting veil, a vibration sounded. It might have been something natural-the sound of the earth shifting, perhaps, or the cry of an animal. If it was an animal, it was a maddened one, and the hair on Max’s arms stood up and tingled. “We’ve gotta go,” the National Guardsman said. “Listen. There’s something out there. We can’t go back-the sun is dying, and so will we. We can’t stay where we are. The Cabal will just send something to get us.”

Frankish Oliver’s club raised in agreement. “Let’s meet it head-on.”

Snow Goose nodded approvingly. “We will sing songs for the spirits of those who die.”

Unless we all buy it,” Orson reminded her.

“A rainbow of light and happiness, you are.”