The Barsoom Project

Chapter Five

“Move it!”

Max Sands ran as fast as he could, thundering along on thick, muscular legs.

What was…? Who was…? A moment ago he and the rest of the group had been ambling toward the embarking area. Then an alarm whistle split the calm of the corridor, and they broke into a stumbling, confused gallop. His heart hammered in adrenal overload. What had gone wrong? He’d heard rumors that mad Arabs were after Moon Maid. Had they…?

Max and exercise were ancient antagonists. He went into a kind of fugue state, where his body seemed to perform without his conscious intervention, a sort of automatic overdrive he had learned while apprenticing in his curious profession.

Just behind him, Eviane was puffing like a choo-choo, bouncing and jiggling, but keeping up. More: her face was grin-split with happy anticipation. Her elongated friend Moon Maid Dula moved as if walking on stilts, a continuous toppling run, unsteady but still making tracks.

The tunnel boomed and shuddered. Far off, he heard the rattle of gunshots.

The tunnel dead-ended at a curved metal door sealed with a thick rubber flange. Rows of fluorescent lights flickered around the edges. A cluster of Gamers were there ahead of him.

The guy who called himself “Hippogryph” was pushing against the wall, stretching his calves. Sweat streamed down his cheeks. His chest heaved. Hippogryph’s breathing was a conscious thing: inhale through the nose only, slowly exhale… The guy acted like an outsider’s image of a typical Gamer: big sappy permanent grin, constant quotes from Asimov and Chang, sly “in” references to Luke Skywalker and Frodo. Max read him as a Dream Park security watchdog for Charlene Dula.

Brother Orson stumbled, trying to keep up. A very large, conspicuously pretty blonde named Trianna Stith-Wood helped him right himself. There was strength in that woman’s arms. She had a baby face, little pearly teeth, a smile you could use for a heliograph. He had heard she was a chef. Likely she was her own best customer.

Two more ran up. Francis Hebert was a short, dark-skinned, crop-haired career soldier, pudgy only by military standards. He ran easily; the bagel in his fist explained his late start. The second man was Frankish Oliver, a Gamer and a pure warrior, even though at this point everyone was still in street clothes.

A blast of cold air hit Max in the face, as if the air-conditioning units had suddenly gone berserk.

The door burst open, banging against the tunnel wall. A woman stood there, looking gaunt and frightened in a neatly pressed red uniform. The cords in her throat bunched as she screamed, “Hurry!” It was the voice that had shrieked panic from the intercom. “The Guard can’t hold the cannibals back much longer!”

Cannibals? Max looked behind him. Two uniformed National Guardsmen, one black and slender, the other white and burly, were the ones firing the shots. The burly man fell, his hand clapped to a spreading red glow on his leg. His face distorted with pain as he tried to crawl toward the silver door.

Trianna, Orson, and Frankish Oliver squeezed through. Charlene Dula started back. Max grabbed Charlene’s arm urgently. “Wrong way!”

“But that man! He’s hurt!”

Max pulled her toward the door. Hippogryph had her other arm and was following Max’s lead… and staring hard at Max. Certainly he was Security; and Max had touched Charlene.

Charlene looked back over her shoulder; the concern on her face suddenly changed to horror.

From around the corner surged a horde of people in tattered clothing, bundled in rags. They grabbed the wounded Guardsman and dragged him away. His screaming grew acute, then stopped.

The second soldier bellowed at them. “Get that boat off the ground!”

The cannibals were bearing down on him when the soldier took a silver cylinder from his belt, pulled the pin and Finally Charlene seemed to understand. She eeled through the doorway. It was the curved thick doorway of an airplane, wedged half-open. Max feared he would tear skin pushing through after her. Hippogryph had similar trouble following him.

The soldier tucked and rolled as the corridor erupted into flame. The plastic structure ruptured from floor to ceiling, and what poured through was Snow?

A blizzard of powder and white flakes gushed through the cracks. Frigid air slapped his face like a giant frozen hand, sent him reeling back from the door.

The soldier scrambled into the plane, snow and sweat streaking his dark face. He turned and pulled the door shut. The floor lurched under his feet.

Max caught one last glimpse through the window. The entire tunnel was collapsing. Screaming, the raggedy man-eaters tumbled through the ruptured floor and disappeared.

“Strap yourselves in. We’re taking off now!”

Max looked around, heaving for breath. He could hear a good deal of panting around him. Francis Hebert had had to pull Johnny Welsh inside. The comedian was red-faced and heaving, but recovering fast. Good lungs: a stand-up comic would need that.

Seats were four across, the fuselage constricted halfway back, where overhead wings showed through big curved windows. Max wasn’t familiar with aircraft, but this plane seemed old: one of the smaller supersonic jets. Seats at the back had been ripped out and cargo was stacked nearly to the ceiling. The seats were already crowded. Nobody knew what was going on any more than he did, but they were moving. He settled into a seat next to Frankish Oliver, across the aisle from Charlene and Eviane.

Charlene’s height forced her to sit knees to chest, and Eviane was helping her settle in. Charlene’s voice was a frantic squeal. “Eviane, what’s happening?”

Eviane smiled uneasily. “Seems to be the end of the world.”

Charlene gripped her seat, silent, lips pressed thin.

Max admired the way Eviane helped her friend. In the midst of a whirlwind of panic and murder, she seemed to be maintaining control. Something had changed in the silent, withdrawn Eviane of the Time Travel Game.

There was a rumbling purr as the plane backed away from what Max could now see was a ruined airline terminal. The roof buckled under a crushing mantle of snow.

“We’re very fortunate that the storm is dying,” the stewardess said. She looked exhausted. “We’re the last plane out of San Francisco Airport. I don’t know what happened to the rest of them. I can only hope… ”

Her voice trailed off, and she rubbed her eyes. They were red-rimmed and dark-circled, as if she hadn’t slept in days.

As she buckled herself against the wall the plane lurched, bounded across the icy ground. The windows smeared with snow flumes. The plane tilted and went up at a steep angle. Snow-locked buildings and cars swiftly became toylike.

Max craned over Frankish Oliver to peer out of the window at the city below.

The plane rose, turning right. The long overhead wing swung back. Max saw the ruin that had once been the showpiece of the west coast. The rebuilt Bay Bridge lay broken and buckled, and snow partially covered a string of cars that stretched from Mann to Oakland. Ships were frozen in the bay, and the entire city lay under a blue-white mantle of ice. The light was dim; the sky beyond the folded-back wing was slate-gray.

Study Eskimos, Dream Park’s instruction packet had read. He was beginning to understand why.

The passengers had grown quiet. A hush followed the wump as they eased through the sound bather.

The stewardess switched her throat mike on. Her voice was a near parody of the countless airplane safety recitations Max had heard over the years. “The weather has continued to worsen,” she said. “We can’t go south. The airports in Los Angeles and San Diego are swamped. Texas and New Mexico are sealed; they’re shooting unauthorized planes out of the sky. The Southwest just isn’t prepared for this kind of weather. New York has done better. Its people and social structures have survived, while California is disintegrating. Since Canada commandeered the oil pipeline, that’s no place for Americans. Alaska is our best bet.”

The plane slid through gray clouds, and out.

Eviane hissed. Charlene frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“The sun!”

Only fools look straight at the sun. Charlene caught it in her peripheral vision, glaring above an unbroken white cloud deck. “It looks fine.”

Eviane stared at her, then looked out the window. “It looks that way from Ceres?”

“I… Oh! If it’s right for Ceres, then… too small for Earth. Not enough light. What could cause that?”

Max cursed under his breath. Moon Maid was dead-on. Why hadn’t he seen it? He tried to shake the cobwebs away. For the first time since the jumbled introductions at the Tower of Night, he had a chance to really look at the people around him.

One man stood and introduced himself, “My name is Robin Bowles. I owe you all, and I guess you don’t know why.”

The group went silent. Eviane canted forward. She whispered fiercely, “Robin Bowles, the actor? He’s our guide?”

Max only vaguely recognized the name, but he knew the face from late-night movies, vidcassettes, talk shows, and tabloids. None of that mattered now. One of the first things that Gamers learned was that somebody along on the trip would have been briefed on the Game, the rules, the situation, the mission. When the “guide” spoke, you listened.

“It’s been almost two years since the series of operations that saved my life.” Bowles was a hair over six feet tall, and stout where many of the Gamers were merely chunky. His hair and beard were long and bushy, brown going gray. “The Red Cross had a severe blood shortage due to the blood bank terrorism of ‘ 54. Everyone was afraid. Infected needles, infected plasma-the entire system was beginning to fail. And the ten of you donated blood that saved me.” He sighed. “It was a miracle, and there was no way I could thank you. I’d lost a fortune speculating on adverse-environment gear. I was betting on another oil strike in Alaska.”

His face darkened, grim as a man staring into the depths of hell. “Then the sun began to die.”

Six words, said without drama, without a roll of drums or a dimming of lights, yet Max felt the chill right down to the marrow.

Bowles paused to let the implications sink in. “It wasn’t just that the sun wasn’t burning. No fusion, no neutrinos, hell, that’s news from the last century. But now the interior heat is going somewhere, somehow. Interior heat inflates a star, keeps it from collapsing. The sun is shrinking. The surface isn’t any dimmer, but it’s a smaller radiating surface. The Earth’s insulation is down to half and falling.

“The weather changed, and suddenly the gear that had been a drug on the market became gold. The film industry in Utah and Illinois died overnight, but I was making more money on the gear than I’d ever made in holos. So I stayed in San Francisco, selling and manipulating sales, until it became obvious that the city was falling. It was time to move on. And I remembered you, all of you. I’d kept track of you. I found you, and offered you this escape. Thank you for accepting my offer.” The sincerity in his thanks came through clearly. This was a man who was delighted for the chance to repay a fraction of what he owed.

“The plane is completely stocked. I own a wildlife research station in the north country. There will be heat, and food-enough to last a lifetime for us, and any children we may have. Beyond that.. ” The optimism slipped like a loose mask. “We all know what awaits us. Awaits mankind eventually. We can only hope that someone will find an answer. Some of you have technical skills.”

He took a handful of manila file folders and moved down the aisle, passing them out. “These are personalized dossiers. Please correct any faulty information. We will have to depend on each other completely. We are a totally closed society.”

He passed Max, and handed down a folder. Max broke the seal with his thumbnail.

Max Sands. 6’4”. 295 lbs. Recreational therapist-whatever the heck that meant. Sounded sexier than what he really did. He’d never met the guy in the folder, but already liked him better than the one in the mirror. This Max Sands had stayed behind when the city began to empty. He cared for the sick who couldn’t be moved. When the blizzard hit San Francisco…

He snuck a peek over at Charlene, wondering if she had taken a fantasy identity. She would have made a perfect Tolkien elf, but there were no elves in this Game.

Frankish Oliver’s biography described an SFPD sergeant. A vital job, someone who had stayed behind during what must have been a long and painful exodus from the northern climes. Max closed his eyes… it was easy to imagine. The sun shrinking, the weather cooling. Panic. The beginning of the end for Man on Earth. And what was happening to Man in space, with their dependence on solar power?

He examined the men and women around him. These were the people he would have to depend upon for his survival. He envisioned himself learning to use snow tractors, working in hothouses, tending the reactor…

Max shook himself out of the reverie. Stop being so clever. Don’t even try to guess.

Frankish Oliver was chuckling under his beard. “Isn’t he good? Robin Bowles, under all that hair!”

“Last time I saw him, he was balding.”

“Actor’s ego. He’s on camera now. He was Nero Wolfe in Fer-de-Lance and The Mother Hunt. They couldn’t be paying him enough for this.”

“He must want to lose weight for a movie.”

Oliver looked at him, scanned him up and down. “So you’re Mr. Mountain, eh? You look bigger on holovid.”

“Elevator tights,” Max said quietly. Dammit, he’d hoped no one would recognize him… ”Listen-you’re the only one who knows. Don’t spread it around, all right?”

Oliver chuckled. “Well, all right, but I wouldn’t worry about it. We’re all playing roles here.” And he turned back to his dossier.

Odd comment. Was Oliver a Gamer or an Actor? Best to watch him, see what he did, maybe do the same. He hoped Oliver could keep a secret.

Clouds were fragile veils that flashed past without leaving moisture on the windows. The land streaming below might have been a boneyard shrouded with cotton.

“Seattle,” the stewardess said. “Totally dead except for scavengers. A few unfortunates who couldn’t get out. And the frozen, unburied dead.” The stewardess was talking into a tape recorder. She caught Max staring and her lips gave an embarrassed upward twitch. “I’ve been trying to make a record. It doesn’t matter now. Maybe it won’t ever matter. But I have to believe there is hope. Someone has to.”

The mood in the room was grim. This was fun? This was supposed to be entertainment? It felt like a wake, a gathering to mourn the death of mankind beneath the marching glaciers. Suddenly Max felt so depressed that he couldn’t-

There was a low rumbling in the engines, so low that he almost didn’t notice it. Now he caught it and recognized it. Subsonics. The rumble died, and he began to feel a little better. Damn it, he knew that Dream Park was manipulating him with sound, with subliminal visuals, and if rumor had it right, with smells that impacted below the threshold of conscious perception. It didn’t matter. As his mood lifted he suddenly felt buoyant, filled with hope and energy. He looked around himself in the plane, saw everyone sitting up straight, eyes tight with determination.

Bowles nodded. “I knew that I could count on you. Now listen to me.” He spoke in an odd, measured cadence, suspiciously like a stage hypnotist Max had seen on holo once. “Sometimes we can do things for other people that we can’t do for ourselves. If that’s what it takes to get you through this, to help you survive, then that’s what I want you to do.” He scanned the room. Max felt a musical trilling sensation. It was similar to the thrill he’d experienced when he figured out the answer to the Time Travel Game: like someone using his bones for a piccolo. He felt like he could whip the world.

“We’re going to survive. Each of us is going to go beyond his ordinary limits. Every one of us is going to make sacrifices. We’re going to give up things that we love, to make a healthier situation for our friends, our family.

“I want you all to look into your hearts, and be sure that you have permission to survive. To win. Because if you don’t have that, then no matter how much food we have, how much shelter or heat, you won’t make it.” Bowles made very deliberate eye contact with each of them in turn.

Max felt comfortable, drifting, warm. He sank into an ocean of comfort… and only when he bobbled up again did he realize that Bowles had been talking the whole time. “-help that is asked for, no matter what it is. Agreed!?”

“Aye!” The Gamers answered raggedly. Max joined in late, too embarrassed to admit that he hadn’t the foggiest notion what he was agreeing to. But judging by the confused expressions around him, his lapse of attention had been more rule than aberration.

Something was being passed forward from the back. He sniffed sharp cheese and beef, and his mouth watered. Lunchlike substances! Waiting, he suddenly realized that the plane was shuddering, humming with stress.

“This is your captain speaking. We are running low on fuel, but there is nothing to worry about. The charts indicate a refueling depot just south of Bethel, within glide distance. We will land there. Please strap yourselves in.”

The shudder eased: the plane had dropped back through sonic speed. Through the window he could see the ground looming close, a vast expanse of white dotted with a few rectangular dwellings. The wing had moved smoothly forward; flaps were sliding out to extend the trailing edges. His stomach crawled up into his throat, looking for a place to hide. There was a clutch of buildings ahead. The land humped to the left, a sharp black ridge, and beyond that were more oblongs on the white blanket. An Eskimo village?

The plane shifted about, outspread wings feeling the air. The craft tilted and dropped, gripped by a freak wind. Gamers gripped their seats with white-knuckled fingers.

Max glanced across the aisle. Eviane’s bright emerald eyes were as wide as saucers, blinking rapidly as she peered out under the wing. The craft straightened and surged and touched down in a snow bed. Plumes of white spewed to either side. They slowed, sliding toward a pair of snow-shrouded refueling pumps.

Then it was as if a malicious hand clutched the wheels on the right. The plane lurched and slewed drunkenly, heaving Max against his seatbelt. It smashed straight into the pumps and ripped them away.

Half of the service station shell went next. A thick splinter of metal gouged into the hull of the plane, breaching the cabin. Max heard the clang and saw something ripping through the wall, slicing toward him at knee level. He pulled his knees to his belly as the jagged steel wedge slicked past.

The intoxicating stench of spilled fuel filled the air. The stewardess screamed at them. “Move! The emergency exits are middle and front. Take the left side exits only, but hurry!”

The passenger cabin dissolved into chaos. Everyone grabbed gear or friends or both. The copilot and pilot burst from the cockpit and reached the door ahead of the stewardess. They pulled handles; the side doors of the plane popped open, completing the cabin temperature’s descent to zero. A chute hissed as it expanded.

The copilot jumped into the chute and disappeared from view. His voice came back: “Okay. Move!”

The pilot stayed to help Robin Bowles into the chute. Bowles let out a boisterous “yaah-hoo!” as he hit the plastic. He skidded to the ground and spun dizzily on the snow.

Max was next. He slid all of the way down on his butt, hollering every inch of the way. What a trip!

Passengers followed at four-second intervals. The inflated chute bounced and flopped behind him.

He counted heads. All out, except the pilot, the stewardess, and the Guardsman. They were throwing things from the open door. Half a dozen bulky items fell in a cloud: backpacks, then crates. What about damage? But they were in haste.

“I bought good stuff!” Bowles bellowed. “Falling Angels stuff. Antibiotics made in orbit. Lines that’ll hold six elephants. Foam-steel backpack struts. Hey, use the chute for that!” He caught a crate as it slid down the chute. “We may need those medicines.”

The copilot was jogging around to the tail of the plane. His feet thrashed in the air as he pulled the tail ramp down. He yelled something undecipherable in the wind and excitement-

And then disappeared in a deceptively soft puff of fire. Yellow flame rolled up from the back of the plane like a flapping carpet, darkening to a roll of oily smoke.

Max was chilled. The man had been cremated in an instant. Killed out. One redundant guide, gone. It’s only a Game, come on- Eviane was running toward the flame. The stew had her by the arm, was shouting at her above the howling wind. Eviane desisted.

The exit had become a rush, and he thought: We’ll get clear, but what about the supplies? The food? Max made himself move.

Luggage was being thrown out of the forward door, and they scrambled for it, catching it as it fell, in a bizarre game of- what was it called? He vaguely remembered an ancient comedy routine entitled “Catch It and You Keep It!” (Announcer: “We’re here atop the twenty-story CBS building, and our contestants are below us in the parking lot for the first round of Catch It and You Keep It. Johnny, what’s our first prize? A Tappan gas range…?“)

Something soft slammed into his chest and sent him stumbling backward. He couldn’t hold the belly laugh in even as he tried to catch his balance. They were stranded! Their food was going up in smoke! The copilot, fried! This was disastrous! This was tragic!

This was getting really interesting.