The Barsoom Project

Chapter Six

Eviane watched Francis Hebert roll clumsily down the chute. He managed to right himself, and hit the ground running. The stewardess helped Trianna Stith-Wood through the doorway. For all her size Trianna managed somehow to express panic in a dainty, ladylike manner.

Eviane decided that she definitely didn’t like the woman.

Crates of equipment lay scattered in the snow as Bowles and the pilot struggled to haul luggage from the cargo hold. The Guardsman left the chute three feet above the ground, hit the ground rolling, and took off with rifle held at the ready.

The stewardess took a last look into the plane, seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, and stepped out into the chute.

The plane shuddered against the ground, and an instant later the windows exploded, gouting fire. For an instant the stewardess was outlined in flame, her body a blackened silhouette against a yellow corona. Then she was gone.

The plane’s death-cry flattened the hapless Gamers. Chunks of burning metal rained from the sky.

Eviane lay facedown in the snow. The snow just a few feet from her head flickered with gasoline flames, and glistened as it melted. A fragment of twisted steel lay just out of reach. It was hot. It would burn her if she touched it… wouldn’t it?

It was all real. The mists were clearing…

She stood, and looked down and out at the survivors. Thirteen in all, passengers and crew. They moved toward Bowles, gathering into a tight clump to hear each other over a hammering, frigid wind.

The pilot yelled above the storm. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bowles. Made a right cock-up of that one. I think there must have been a bullet in the fuel tank. Where’s Greg? Where’s…?“

The pilot gasped, eyes fixed on a smoldering, human-shaped mass lying crumpled in the snow at least thirty feet from the plane. Ashen-faced, he ran toward it, legs plowing unsteadily through the snow, and at last stood silently above what was left of the stewardess. He removed his outer jacket and draped it over her smoldering corpse. His breath puffed little clouds into the air. He shivered, and wrapped his arms around himself, rubbing his shoulders.

After a few seconds, he rather guiltily took his jacket back.

Bowles threw a blanket over the stew’s body. He said, “Grant, we’ve got to reach the lodge. Apologize then.” He glanced up at the shrunken sun, which was a third above the horizon. “I figure we have a month of daylight left. It will just have to be enough.”

“Then three or four months of night,” the pilot said, “and after that…”

“Fimbulwinter,” Bowles said. “Carbon dioxide freezing out of the atmosphere, maybe. Ah, well. Sufficient unto the day.”

The wind was whipping the fire to death. Snow ran in blinding flurries. Eviane shielded her face as her cheeks began to numb. The Guardsman ran up to them, carrying his rifle at port arms.

“Supply store!” Bowles’s scream competed with the storm’s growing wail. He pointed into a white wall of driving snow. “Can’t see it, but it’s out there.”

“Eskimo village, half a mile that way,” the soldier shouted back. “They must have seen us come down. Probably on. their way now.”

Eviane picked up a box marked with a red cross. It was heavy. She trudged toward the cluster of buildings. The other Gamers followed her, carrying gear, leaving tracks like a colony of snow snails. The sky began to clear, the wall of white slowing to a flurry.

Charlene caught up with her. “Whew. Off to a start, aren’t we?” Charlene lowered her voice. “You’ve Gamed before. What is happening?”

Game? This isn’t a Game. It’s…

It’s…

Eviane shook her head, clearing the smoky strands that wove themselves tighter and thicker by the moment. A flicker of prescience made her say, “I don’t know. Let’s just play it by ear.”

“Ear?”

The door of the supply store was open a crack. Grant pushed against it cautiously with his fingertips. The pilot had just lost a plane, a copilot, and a stewardess. He might not be overwhelmingly eager to lose a half-dozen passengers.

The door creaked open, throwing a wedge of light into an abandoned store. As soon as Grant nodded, the Gamers crowded in, out of the freezing wind. Oh, it was stocked. Well stocked, in fact, with all manner of food, and suddenly Eviane remembered that the alarm Klaxon had sounded in the middle of breakfast. A line of portable stoves, several canisters of fuel: they could cook, too.

Orson Sands spread massive fingers, grabbing three foil packets of pork and beans. “Real men don’t need Sterno,” he proclaimed. “I’ll suck ‘em cold.”

Kevin, the skinny kid, called from elsewhere in the store. “Clothing. Coats! Hats! It’s cold out there, troops.”

“Wait just a minute.” Bowles seemed uneasy. He ran thick fingers through his beard, brushing out snow. “Why isn’t there anybody here? Where in the devil are they?”

“I don’t know and don’t really care.” Orson’s teeth tore a foil packet’s serrated corner. He spat.

“You had better start caring, if you want to stay alive very long,” his brother Max said cautiously. Eviane’s little pink heart leapt. Max was smart, and despite his girth looked like a fighter.

She remembered him, too, from the Tar Pits mini-Game. He was well over six feet tall, inches shorter than Charlene but three times as wide. He looked a lot like his brother Orson, barring his neatly trimmed beard; but he looked and moved more like an athlete. His belly didn’t sag the same way. An ex-football player, maybe? His eyes were a luminous gray-black.

He said, “Orson! Even up here, would people just walk away from a store and leave the door open? All right, maybe they would. But we have an exploding airplane out here, and nobody has even come to take a look.” His voice was patient. “It’s another puzzle, Orson.”

Orson said, “Aw, Max… yeah.”

Eviane noticed Charlene watching them. She whispered, “Brothers. Interested?”

Charlene nodded judiciously.

“Me too. His name’s Max.”

The pilot was saying, “Vote! All in favor of checking to see what is happening around here, say aye.”

“Aye!!“ Six hands and voices were raised. Three belonged to Charlene and Max and Hippogryph.

“Opposed?”

Seven no’s.

“The no’s have it,” Grant said.

The Gamers drifted among the shelves. Some were at the rear with Kevin and Hippogryph, choosing cold-weather gear. More were finding dinner.

Trianna Stith-Wood called, “Veal paprika!”

Johnny Welsh’s head rotated 150 degrees. “Veal?”

Trianna rubbed the foil packet, winking. “I make a veal loaf to die for. Thyme, tarragon leaves, minced parsley, and tomato fondue sauce.”

“Lady, you’re killing me.”

“There are worse-”

Bang.

The clatter of canned goods stopped. Another distant gunshot, then a volley. Orson Sands dropped the bag of freeze-dried pork and beans, eyes sparkling. “Puzzle, right.” He and Max thundered through the door, the others crowding right behind.

They clustered outside, looking out across the choppy permafrost of the valley floor into the blizzard-shrouded ridge to the north. Had the shots come from there? It was the only decent cover…

“Come on, baby.” Max Sands spoke again, and Eviane found herself drifting closer to him, craving an opportunity to watch more closely.

He was handsome, in a massive sort of way, and she liked the sound of his voice. Voices had always been it, for her. The sound of an announcer’s voice on the stereo. Others seemed fascinated by the glow and depth of the video arcades, but she had always loved audio. Just the sound of a voice was enough…

And he had the Voice. Something inside her melted.

Captain Grant and Hebert struggled out carrying armfuls of bulky coats and hats with earmuffs, dropped them in the snow, and began sorting for something that would fit. Bowles emerged with a double armful of tennis rackets. Huh? Snowshoes. More of the Gamers were wearing coats now.

It was cold. Eviane picked through coats, chose one, found a hat with fold-down ear flap, pulled on thermal galoshes, all while listening with her whole body.

“Come on,” Max Sands said. “Where is it? Give me another shot.”

And they got it. Crack! Crackcrackcrack, and a thin, wavering scream.

They had their direction. The group straggled off across the snow, north toward the black ridge. A long way to walk, but the snow was packed hard; Eviane carried her snowshoes. She cast a glance at Charlene, saw the fatigue in her friend’s face. They linked arms and struggled up the grade.

They were making good time.

Bowles lifted a hand and brought them to a halt before they reached the top. They followed his lead: dropped onto their stomachs, scuttled over the ridge like a line of crabs, and peered down.

It was night in the shadow of the ridge. Their eyes adjusted quickly.

Four armed men lay in an arc, facing a house that lay in partial ruins. It was burning, smoke and ashes boiling from the roof. Attached to one end of the house, a smaller shed-perhaps a smokehouse-had been blown apart as if by an explosion. Around the main door two… no, three bodies stretched out on the snow, in positions that only the dead could assume.

Eviane heard a whimper. After a long, startled moment she recognized her own voice.

She had seen this before. Been here before. Prescience.

One of the riflemen barked out a challenge. Eviane didn’t recognize the language, but the meaning was obvious. She had heard it a thousand times in flatfilms and holos and even radio plays: “Come out with your hands up!” What had they tripped into? Was this the equivalent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police? Were the people in the house desperate criminals? Eviane couldn’t remember. She’d tried to forget, she’d fought to forget, and now, when it mattered, it was all gone.

Someone emerged from the smoky hell of the front door. His hands were high in the air, and he yelled something back to the attackers.

There was a guttural laugh, and a rifle barked. The man fell, palms slapping to his forehead.

Eviane closed her eyes. Her empty stomach curled into a knot. Charlene’s whispered laughter rang in her ear: “You’re overacting. It’s embarrassing. What are we supposed to do?”

She had no answer. Dreamboat’s voice saved her. “Well, we know that they’re not the good guys.”

“We don’t have any weapons,” Hippogryph said. “We could get into a lot of trouble.”

“We have flares,” the Guardsman called. “Two boxes of them, and my rifle. Listen, with three flare guns we can convince them that they’re surrounded. Goners. I say we give it a shot.”

Hebert objected. “Flare guns? All right, they aren’t that well armed-”

Impatiently Eviane snapped, “Lead on!”

After a few whispered instructions, the group spread out. Eviane was all elbows and knees as she crawled along the ridge, the curving sickle of snow that sheltered them from the war below. Just ahead of her, Dreamboat raised his flare pistol. Bowles slashed his hand in the air, and With a chorus of dull phuts, white streamers cut through the air. Suddenly a half-dozen smoking, parachuting flares were drifting from the sky like burning blossoms.

The men on the ground looked up.

“Ooooobleobleoble-” Charlene screamed out, her cry swiftly echoed by everyone else in the group. Eviane joined them delightedly-who could resist an opportunity to scream baby talk with a bunch of supposedly grown adult-type people? It was ridiculous, and silly, and somehow cleansing.

The men in the valley looked around in confusion, but the sound was coming from everywhere and nowhere. The Guardsman aimed his rifle carefully, and squeezed the trigger. One of the enemy went down clutching his chest. The remaining three sprang to their feet, and spread their arms. For a moment Eviane thought that they were asking for mercy.

Then the clouds parted.

No, they hadn’t parted. The sky was slate-gray, threatening snow, but a northward wedge of cloud was brighter, widening, and Sky and land were flowing. Off to the north, the vast dim expanse of snow flowed to left and right, as if a folded blanket was being pulled straight. It was hard to see, because what was summoned into being was only new snowscape, no different from the old except that it glowed beneath a brighter sky.

The four gunmen hastened north, two carrying their wounded member. They didn’t look back, not even when the Guardsman stopped gaping and fired after them. He fired three careful shots. Snow puffed wide of the gunmen.

“Damn,” the Guardsman said.

A distant ridge of snow humped ahead of them. The four stopped, and one gestured wide-armed, his face lifting as the white mass lifted

… and then the snowscape flowed, the path closed, the light dimmed. Eviane huffed as her legs gave out and dropped her in the snow.

They were gone. There remained only a bare field of snow, and four corpses to mark the place where, a moment before, a dreadful battle had raged.