The California Voodoo Game

21

Dr. Norman Vail was a man of singular talent and many responsibilities. Other employees sometimes found him intimidating, but no one had seriously suggested that he be replaced in his psychiatric capacity.

The bottom line was that Vail could get things done.

He was wondering why Thaddeus Harmony had ordered him to drop his other projects, to sift through the life of Sharon Crayne, the late love interest of his friend, Alex Griffin. He believed Harmony intended no more than a placebo effort for Alex's benefit.

It was always interesting to have unlimited access to another human being's secret workings. Because by violating the inner sanctum of Sharon Crayne, Harmony was of course giving Vail permission to take Alex Griffin apart.

Alex Griffin: born September 17, 2021, to Elliot and Darsha Griffin. Which made him… forty-three years old. Alex! We're older than we look! Father dead. Mother's whereabouts… unknown. Nothing dramatic here, Alex, just a career woman with ever-decreasing time for a young and demanding malechild. A child shunted into boarding schools? One who distinguished himself in military service… goodness, look at these classified files. Vail wondered if Tony McWhirter could do something about those…

"Cat's in the cradle," Vail hummed. Mummy made half-hearted efforts to reconcile with grown-up Alex, who would have none of it. Gradually they lost touch.

Alex Griffin, a man who had talents beyond the typical cop mentality. Perhaps with the right nurturing… of course, was it nature or nurture? The eternal argument. Even studies of identical twins begged the question: prenatal nutritional environment was essential for proper brain development, and twins shared that down to the last amino acid. Light and sound that reached the womb affected the brain of an unborn child.

Vail had once proposed an experiment that would resolve the question once and for all. Stimulate five thousand fertilized ova to produce quadruplets. Double-blind implant the little angels in mothers chosen at random from the

Embryadopt lists all income levels, all education and intelligence levels, all races.

Wait twenty years…

Vail sighed. He supposed he could understand why his colleagues were appalled by the notion. Such squeamishness often obstructed progress.

At any rate, Alex Griffin was what he was, and wasn't terribly likely to change.

On to Sharon Crayne. Thirty-two. Unmarried. Master's degree in psychology, University of Washington. Two years with the Washington State Police, recruited to Cowles Industries after a stint at a private security agency. No record of any problems at all. Six years there.

Vail sighed and leaned back in his chair, watching the numbers and patterns flash past. What was he looking for? A motive to betray Dream Park and/or Cowles Industries?

In Vail's opinion, motives nearly always broke down into three basic categories: 1) Relief from something 2) Revenge for something 3) Desire for something

Vail only knew Sharon socially, as a face at Alex's shoulder. He knew that she had climbed the ranks in Cowles Industries rather swiftly. She would have little to resent in that matter. Revenge was not a plausible motive.

Relief, then. From blackmail? A threat? Certainly possible. He would have to cull the data for a sign, for evidence. For… anything.

Desire? Ever since college, Crayne had chosen challenge over pure money-making opportunity. Her new position with the Barsoom project would entail nearly a thirty percent wage increase, and she wasn't spending the money she made now. Not desire for money, then.

Vail found his resentment slipping away. Here was a puzzle, the unravelings of this dead woman's sorry life. And somewhere in the maze lay the answer.

On level seventeen, S. J. Waters brushed a thin hand across his dripping brow. It was hot here.

The iron box in front of him had twice resisted their efforts to open it. Magic had failed: bolts from Major Clavell's magic wand had glanced off its surface, sparking uselessly. Brute strength had failed: none of the Warriors had a power rating high enough to rip the top off. A direct assault with a crowbar hadn't even scratched it.

But there was something in the box, and they needed it. It was now up to their Thief to try to pick the lock.

SJ muttered a prayer to Baal, god of thieves, and his Virtual vision exploded. He could see into the lock, peer into its most intimate workings, but that wouldn't necessarily be enough. There was no way to avoid a little genuine dexterity on this one.

The interior of the lock looked like a box filled with little gears. He extruded his lockpick and inserted it.

"Ah people," he said after a moment. "This thing has a booby trap in it."

Lawrence Black Elk waved a handful of feathers over SJ. "We can heal you," he said positively. "Fear not, lithe one."

SJ glared at him. "Oh, thank you, great mage!" He didn't look at Mary-em, but he could feel her grinning.

He could see the probe as it snaked its way through the twists and turns. He paused. There was a throbbing red obstruction, and he snaked back a little. It was like picking a lock whose tumblers kept moving. In fact, it seemed as if the "tumblers" were actually searching for the probe He yelped as an electric shock jolted through his fingers.

A dark border outlined his hand. It was creeping up his wrist.

He continued to work the probe. Presently the box sprang open. SJ backed away from it. A black aura pulsated to a funereal rhythm around his arm and shoulder, spreading down his torso Black Elk screamed, "By the gods of sun and sky bring the death into me, that I might conquer it!"

The black border flowed like ectoplasmic tar, down SJ's arm and into Black Elk. Black Elk danced; he shimmied, he threw powders into the air and twirled beneath them; and the black border settled into his body even closer.

His life energy flowed out through his fingertips, through his eyes, through his mouth and nose.

Then the aurora was solid black. He crumpled to the ground, dead.

Clavell scanned him. There wasn't a spark of life left in him.

SJ was stunned. "What in the hell was that?"

Clavell had to force himself to speak. "We can't challenge the magic here-it's just too powerful." He knelt by Black Elk and brushed two fingertips over the staring eyes. "He was a good soldier."

Mary-em straightened up. "Shall I?"

"Please. Waters, what did we get?"

SJ poked around in the box with the tip of his knife. His peripheral vision caught the motion of Mary-em's mighty swing; he cringed despite himself, and turned as Black Elk's head bounced toward him.

"In the box, Waters."

"Looks to me like we've got a map," he said. He turned it this way and that. "It says something about the land of the Nommo."

The major took the map and overlaid it on the general map that Loremasters had been given by Mamissa.

"Look," he said. "It shows a path. Hidden door here… stairway

… what do you think?"

Crystal knelt and traced a finger along the twisting route. "I think that we have to go," she said.

"And there's another passage here," SJ said, his voice a reverent hush. "One which we can hardly afford to overlook."

The major examined the spot in question and agreed soberly. "Lead the way," he said.

The halls were deadly quiet here, long abandoned. Cobwebs spanned the walkways, and the shop windows were broken and dusty. But SJ followed the map, and followed the trail that blazed in the air in front of him, a trail that no other could see.

He held up his hand. "It's here," he said.

"Are you sure?" Mary-em tightened her grip on her weapon, real tension in her face for the first time that day. She felt the burn of a rarely encountered emotion digging at her, demanding.

SJ looked at the spot where the trail terminated. "I can't open this," he said. "It's going to need magic."

Major Clavell stretched out his arms and began to chant.

Almost too slowly, the hall began to rock. The winds increased in power, swirling about them like a miniature tornado. Lights danced from the ends of his fingers. Thunder crashed and shuddered, and the hall seemed to warp out of phase Then the wall peeled back, and there were two large metal boxes stacked one atop another there in the wall.

Al the Barbarian licked his lips. "Do you think…"

"If it isn't," Poule said, "we're in bad trouble."

SJ poked it open with the tip of his stick. They breathed a sigh of relief.

Nestled within a womb of foil were sandwiches, apples, and thermoses of coffee and soup. In the other container were pods of juice and soft drinks.

Dinner!

SJ and Mary-em sat together, tucked back in a corner of the hallway. General Poule took the forward watch to ensure their privacy.

"Been a long time," Waters said happily.

Down the hall there were rooms marked off-limits with hourglass radiation symbols a guarantee of lethal roentgens for the first person foolish enough to pass the portal. Other doors were a part of the game: they might hide booty or information. For now the most important were the doors with a half-moon stenciled upon them.

It felt strange to let the adrenaline burn out, wear down, and to evaluate the fatigue behind them. SJ felt that, but it was balanced with a spring-steel sensation as well: he had trained hard for this, and was looking forward to whatever the day might bring.

Mary-em said, "Scout/Thief?"

"Code-name Aquarius, but nobody ever uses it."

"Used to be Engineer."

The wrinkled little woman seemed even harder and more deeply creased than when he had last seen her what, five years before? Her hip was stiff when she walked, and he was concerned. But her eyes were as bright as ever. It was difficult to waste too much sympathy on her. Chances were that she would run him into the ground.

She'd left him time to answer, and he hadn't. "Been traveling," she said, and rolled onto her back. "Still a lot of mountains that I haven't tried. K-4 in Tibet."

"Everest?"

"New. Been done too much. You know exactly what you're up against. I prefer a different kind of challenge. K-4 without oxygen is perfect. After Patrick died-"

"Sorry to hear-"

She waved his sympathy away. "What can I say? We both knew that it was coming, but that doesn't make things a whole lot easier. I stayed away from Gaming for a while. Wanted to do something real."

"So the mountains?"

"So the mountains."

SJ drained his pod of soft drink and groped about in the metal locker, looking for another one. "My Engineer was killed out," he said finally. "I came back as a killer cyborg-"

"The Cyberyakuza Game."

"Who's telling this? They put me back in the game as a cyborg. Kill Gamers. But I ran across a metaprogramming disk that could have left me running the whole city like it was part of my body!"

"Hospitals?"

"That, too. I could have regrown my body. I violated my programming. Ran for the nearest phone booth. It was smashed flat. Walked toward the Control Center. Cyborgs cut me off. I was so tired, I crawled into a booth that was blinking error messages because I just couldn't go any farther. And it erased my program."

Mary-em said nodding.

"I'd have made it if I wasn't such a potato. Six years building him, and bang, dead-dead, no more Engineer. I'd been spending my life in front of a terminal. So I joined the Army. And they half killed me, but I'd win this time. And now they've got me Gaming again. And what brought you back, Mary-em?"

"This Game," she said. "You can laugh, but… I had a feeling about California Voodoo. That it might be special. Then I found out you'd be here, and Acacia, and I've played with Tammi and Twan…" She sighed contentedly. "It feels like family," she said.

SJ considered making a mocking comment, but saw how very serious she was, and thought again. Instead, he raised his second pod and said, " Salud, then. To family. I'm glad you came." He had said it just to say something, but as soon as the words left his lips, SJ realized he had spoken the truth.