The Barsoom Project

Chapter Two

Gwen Ryder had been told about the Phantom Feast, but she still stopped in the doorway, bewildered.

It might have been a library. Half the walls were books, and most of those were tall and wide, heavily illustrated. Diet books and cookbooks and nothing else. Some were quite old, some quite recent. There were hundreds.

An old book, The Beverly Hills Diet, had been disassembled. Its pages papered one wall. Customers on their way out clustered around, guffawing as they read the funnier passages aloud.

Another wall was covered with fading photos of impossibly rich desserts-with a comparison chart showing how many New York Marathon miles it would take to burn off the calories. A double-exposure photo of anorexic, number-chested men and women staggering toward a ten-story banana split was stark and somehow disturbing.

It was 2:20, ten minutes before Ollie was scheduled to show up, and well past lunch hour. The Phantom Feast was still crowded. Old and young, cheerful or morose, singles and clusters, the customers all looked somewhat alike.

They were stocky, chubby, fat, or morbidly obese. Gwen was startled to recognize a famous middle-aged actor, Robin Bowles, cheerfully scrawling autographs for a handful of supplicants. She grinned, not because she collected autographs, but because he looked so real… and so comfortable. Six feet tall, maybe five feet in circumference, the huge, balding presence who had dominated so many vidscreens signed a last book and sagged back in a chair his own size.

No need to worry about little teeny chairs in the Phantom Feast!

Mazie Henderson waved from a table for four, without getting up. She was roly-poly, an oval woman with a round, florid face, but at five four she wasn’t big enough for her chair. Her companion was bigger and a few years older.

Reluctantly, Gwen went over. The man got to his feet. It was the limit of his strength. Long black hair, full black beard, an ornate silver buckle the size of his palm. Mazie said, “Gwen, you know my husband Avram. Avram’s a Magic User now.” Avram smiled and pumped her hand once and sat down too hard. Worn out.

Marie didn’t look much better. Gwen’s broad smile had no visible malice in it, she hoped. “Well! You must have enjoyed the East Gate Game. How about we take in a few rides? I’ve tried the Everest Ski Slope and it’s-”

Marie leaned toward Avram and stabbed a weary finger at Gwen. “Kill that for me.”

“Dear, I haven’t the energy.”

Gwen laid an empathetic hand on Marie’s shoulder. “I but jested.” Hallelujah! Maybe she could escape without a numbing barrage of anecdote. It might be safe to sit, after all.

In high school Gwen had become almighty tired of Marie’s Gaming stories.

That had been old-style Gaming. A dozen kids, or as many as could find the time, would gather in somebody’s living room to play a two-day Game cassette. Interaction was limited to stiffly animated composite images: crude but effective. Marie’s living room had a monitor the size of a picture window. Gwen had liked it enough to graduate into real Gaming, Dream Park Gaming; but she had never come to love the Monday morning rehashes. Those were still as dull as somebody else’s diet.

The waiter set a chopped-steak platter in front of Avram, gave Marie a salad. She ignored it, but Avram dipped his fork into it. It looked good. Diet dressing, no doubt, but it was big and varied, all bright greens, reds, and oranges with no dairy products. Marie seemed not to notice Avram’s piracy. “I feel like I owe you a report, Gwen. After all, you talked me into it.”

“Oh, no. You don’t have to. Really. Actually, I was just waiting-” She started to get up. Her conscience was pulling her back even before Marie’s meaty hand closed on her arm.

This time Marie had earned the right.

Last August Gwen had met Marie for the first time in twelve years. Marie was a mountain. Her new husband, Avram, was another… and he had been a Gamer, years back. They’d worked

Marie in stereo, and they’d talked her into playing a Fat Ripper Special with Avram.

Marie stabbed into her salad for the first time. She grimaced: leaves! In a Fat Ripper she should have unlearned that attitude. Marie chewed, swallowed in haste, and said, “I’m three pounds down! A pound a day!“ For an instant she showed some energy. “They ran it off me. We started off with Genghis Khan’s army hot on our heels, and it didn’t get any better.”

“In spots,” Avram said.

“Yeah. The Horde was tracking us. We were more worried about them than anything we might meet. Eight hundred of us, and thousands of enemy behind us. General Wisowaty said we wouldn’t stand a chance if they caught up.”

“Guide,” Avram interjected.

Guide. General Wisowaty would be an Actor working for Dream Park within the Game. Whatever he said would be true in context, though it need not be the whole truth.

The salad looked good, and Gwen was tempted to order one. Gwen had no taste for a red vinegar dressing. Surely virtue had earned her an ounce of blue cheese…? She tapped her lunch order into the table’s console.

Marie rescued her salad from Avram, who pretended to sulk as he cut his Salisbury into inch squares. She chewed and swallowed quickly and resumed. “We were in strange territory. Nobody wants an army in his backyard. General Wisowaty was leery of farms, but we needed food. We were on short rations, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Gwen, Dream Park was starving us and working us, but they had us thinking about food all the time! I don’t get it. We’re supposed to learn how to lose weight on a Fat Ripper Special.“

“You’re supposed to notice your food. If you eat automatically, or for any reason that isn’t nutrition, you get upholstered. The Fat Rippers teach you the difference between feeding your body and feeding your face.” Gwen knew the lectures. She liked being plump, and Ollie liked it, and her doctor said her blood pressure and cholesterol count were inhumanly healthy. She hadn’t gained or lost a pound in three years. The Fimbulwinter Game would be her first Ripper, but she was going in as an employee.

“Back to the East Gate Game. Did you have fun?”

Marie thought about that. A smile flickered briefly. “Fun? I guess I must have. I didn’t get killed out. I saved two other players because I saw what was coming.”

“She saved me,” Avram said. “I got killed later. Tnanna

“We could see an Eastern-looking city in the distance. Towers like minarets, tall and pointed and lots of them, then the edge of a wall. We bought food at two farms not too near the city. Just enough to half-fill the carts… ”

Where was Ollie? In the two years that they had been married, their mutual love of Gaming had made them the hottest pair of Gamer/Actors on Dream Park’s list. Ollie had graduated medical school eleven months ago, and that made him even more popular. Doctors were needed in any Game, but particularly in Fat Rippers.

But their popularity also meant that they had less and less time to themselves. Mentally she counted off. It had been… eight days since the last time she and Ollie had shared free time and a water bed.

She flushed with warmth, and deliberately pulled herself back into Marie’s Game.

They always told it as if it had happened to them. In another age they’d have been locked up as crazy. It helped if you’d been in the Game, and of course some players were better storytellers. Marie was not.

But Marie was enjoying her tale. “The gates were rusty. The hinges weren’t in good shape. The guards were kind of sloppy, but they whooped when they saw us and went running to tell everyone. The buildings were big and round, a little like turnips, with the minarets sticking straight up from the middle. The market didn’t look like much when we got there-just goods in piles, and people coming with wicker baskets to get what they wanted-but an hour after we arrived there were hucksters everywhere. They weren’t happy people, Gwen, but they sure wanted to talk. They helped us with the loading just so we’d have time to tell them about other places.”

Between sentences, Marie had managed to eat half of her salad. She cast a sidewise glance at Avram’s steak. “Mind if I borrow a bit of this?”

Avram said nothing. His wife speared two rectangles with her fork, popped them into her mouth, and shoveled salad in on top. Calories don’t count if you steal them off somebody else’s plate. I used to do that.

“We bought another cart,” Marie said around her mouthful.

“A big one. We bought several days’ worth of food for the troops and piled it in. They didn’t bargain. We made out like bandits. The General wanted booze and opium for the troops, but there wasn’t anything like that in sight. When Jeffrey asked one of the locals she just looked puzzled. We were afraid to push. And they wouldn’t buy our spices.”

A waiter brought Gwen’s salad and a tray of crackers. Good-looking stud, but brisk; Gwen couldn’t catch his eye. Oh, well, what difference did it make? She was an ancient married woman now…

A woman caught Gwen’s eyes. She stood near the wall, pudgy as the rest, watching as the Beverly Hills Diet faded into the Jane Fonda Geriatric Workout and more general merriment. She stood out: she wasn’t laughing, or even smiling. She seemed lost. Her straggling crimson hair and large green eyes made her improbably waiflike.

Green? Gwen knew she was too far away to see the woman’s eye color. Had they met? Gwen suppressed the urge to walk over and ask if she needed help, and look at her eyes.

“-Avram set up a booth and started doing tricks. I got propositioned by a burly blacksmith type. I took him up on it, and that used up half the afternoon.” Marie’s voice had the kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge in it that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

Avram didn’t react at all. Marie must have trained him to be civilized and modern about her peccadilloes. Gwen wondered how and where his passive aggression emerged. Ollie wasn’t passive at all. Extramarital tactophilia-flirting-was part of their lifestyle, but any man who crossed a specific line was courting murder. Suddenly, and quite unspectacularly, Gwen’s dislike of Marie crystallized.

“-time I came back, Jeffrey and Carole and Blag were missing. Off getting laid, maybe. Blag and Carole came back around sunset. Jeffrey didn’t. We thought we’d better get back to camp-”

Where had Gwen seen the redhead woman before? It came to her with a jolt: the dossier on the next Fat Ripper. Sure, she was one of the players.

Even in a static holo, there had been something about her that stood out, some potential for action, some suppressed energy that impressed Gwen. Or at least caught her attention. The back of her neck itched. She needed Ollie. His memory was better than hers.

“-what I said, Gwen?”

With a start, Gwen realized that for the first time Marie had said something which required a response.

There was challenge in the way Mazie leaned across the table. That, and two words Gwen’s memory fished out of the monologue, gave her the answer. “You chewed garlic, just in case. Because the villagers didn’t want your spices. Were you already thinking vampires?”

Marie slapped the table, and Gwen captured her salad before it jiggled over the edge. “Exactly! And Carole thought she’d seen gargoyles. The vampires lived on the heights, in the minarets. Come night, they started swooping down on us. We broke into the buildings to fight there. The doors weren’t even barred. The people must have given up long ago.”

Avram said, “I got my troop into the smithy-”

“We started a fire,” Marie said. “We thought it might help. My blacksmith, Hath-Orthen, he broke down and told us all about it. The vampires owned that town. The tops of buildings were theirs, and stairs didn’t go there. They’d been there longer than anyone could remember. They kept alcohol and recreational drugs out, and anything else that might ruin the flavor of blood.” Marie’s attention snagged on the forkful of salad she was waving in the air. She put the fork in her not-quite-empty bowl and pushed it away. “I have to tell you, something permanent happened to my appetite that night. I had to think of myself as food to figure out how to fight vampires. Garlic didn’t keep them away. We decided they like flavoring. Random flavoring, that they don’t like. And we couldn’t count on any help. The locals wanted us to stay so twenty of them would live longer.”

“Your order, madam?” The voice came from behind Gwen, but she didn’t have to turn, just reach back over her shoulders and found Ollie’s strong, chubby arms and wrapped them around her neck. One of his fingers unobtrusively brushed a nipple, and she felt a shiver of pleasure race along her bones. She leaned back for a deep kiss.

Marie was polite enough to stop talking, but not enough to look away. She was staring at them when they broke for air.

Ollie was about five nine, and fifty pounds over the average. That was actually a great improvement: when they met, you could have added another sixty pounds to that estimate.

Ollie nodded to Marie and Avram. He slid into the seat next to Gwen, still holding her hand. Gwen felt the tension leaving her in a wave, lost in Ollie’s warm, wide smile. She sighed. “My lord and master.”

“The Goddess who dances in my heart.” He bent forward and kissed her again. “How ya doing?”

“Much better now.” Her eyes flickered sideways, indicating Marie, who had continued to chatter, as if frantic to get her story out before Ollie swallowed Gwen’s attention totally “There were vampire sentries on the ground floors, and no light. First building we went into, we were swarmed! After that we rolled barrels of brandy down into the basements. First the brandy, then throw in torches, then wood. That worked. We turned the minarets into chimneys! But it took us till nightfall, and some of the vampires escaped the fire and some of our own started coming to life-”

Gwen squeezed her husband’s hand. She half-whispered, “Boy am I glad to see you. Listen. Do you see that woman over there?”

He scanned the room, found Gwen’s target just as the frowzy redhead sleepwalked out of the room, brushing past people as if they weren’t really there. “Strange duck, but a recognizable breed indeed. Gamer. She’s in our files for Fimbulwinter.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a second. “Name… Eviane.” He was delighted with himself, and bounced with pleasure. “Probably just her nom de guerre.”

Somehow, miraculously, Marie had managed to finish her story. She grinned and leaned back from the table. “I want to sleep for a week. With Avram.” She stood, her lips curling salaciously. Avram heaved himself up, as enthusiastic as a steer at the slaughterhouse door. “I won’t see you till we’re back in Portland, right?”

“Right. Our final briefing is in thirty minutes. The Fimbulwinter Game starts tomorrow. I’m the shaman’s lovely daughter.” Gwen caught a flicker of disbelief in Marie’s eye. “Eskimos are allowed to have a little padding, my dear.”

Avram laughed appreciatively, and Marie gave him a polite shove toward the door.

Gwen dug into her salad.

Ollie watched the pair until they were safety out of earshot. “Another rousing Dream Park success?”

“Maybe. Avram’s too torpid, but maybe he got something out of the experience. Maybe if they ran him through again-”

“Which they can’t. These Gamers don’t nearly pay their own way. It’s all for research, love.”

“I know. And Marie’s a waste. She learns what to say and that’s all she gets out of it. Saying the magic words won’t take weight off and it won’t teach her better habits, and it’s hell on those of us who have to listen.”

“My my. What a wonderful wait you must have had.”

Gwen’s wide blue eyes were moist and grateful. “My hero. Verily, you saved the maiden from the dragon.” Her fingernails gripped the back of his hand, hard. “Claim your reward, dammit.,’

He sighed. “We’ve got about twenty minutes to make it to Gaming Central. Not nearly enough time to commit a serious indiscretion.”

“Nor yet a frivolous indiscretion.” Never be late to a briefing. “Tonight?”

“Sure, who needs sleep?”