The California Voodoo Game

28

Friday, July 22, 2059 7:30 A.M.

Crystal and SJ hovered about, caring for Mary-em and encouraging her. "Got to be careful," Crystal said soberly. "After all, you're climbing for two."

"Hee hee," Mary-em growled, fingering her belt knife. The very worst part, a traitorous voice whispered in the back of her mind, is that you love it.

SJ soberly triple-checked both lines, Poule's and Clavell's. He studied the faulty epoxy weld while cursing most inventively. Just for safety, he disassembled and reassembled the Spiders, checking every component three times.

Mary-em sat back, doing her best to project a maternal glow. Not a difficult task her tummy was, after all, emitting a soft and lovely radiance that intermittently took the shape of a humanoid infant.

"Hell of a woman," SJ said soberly, patting her shoulder. "Glad to have a breeder in the tribe. Now. We've got a sling rigged for you, and it should be fairly comfortable. What does it take to miscarry a godling? Don't know, don't want to find out. You're our walking talisman. Just hope you're up on your Lamaze."

While Mary-em's reply did indeed have something to do with motherhood, it could hardly have been considered complimentary to SJ.

They had rigged her a sort of basket, anchoring down one of the Spiders to act as a stable braking platform. Mary-em sat in the makeshift seat. At a signal from Poule and Clavell, they began to lower her out of the lip of the modular apartment.

This was humiliating. She had watched Clavell's free climb, and knew it would make him famous. Mary-em's descent would be laughed at unless she played it for all it was worth. She composed herself with an aplomb worthy of a queen. The pulleys creaked, and she began her descent down the weathered face of MIMIC.

Clavell reeled Mary-em in with a coat hanger rigged to the end of a mop handle. Poule had already lifted the weather shield, and as soon as she unhooked herself from the sling she wandered back into the apartment and checked the refrigerator. Empty.

The basket went back up, and Crystal got into it, and the procedure was repeated…

Alphonse Nakagawa was the second-to-last Gamer to take the ride down; SJ worked the brake mechanism.

SJ had no one to work the brake, and that was just fine by him. He rode down on the Spider, whooping all the way, the morning desert spinning below him. It was glorious. Best of all, for the very first time, they were ahead of Bishop and Da Gurls.

Alphonse and the major braced themselves beside the front door, opened it gingerly, and peered out.

They were greeted by a strong marine smell. Faint echoes: sounds of laughter and water play. Clavell, his wrenched shoulder wrapped now, raised an eyebrow at Alphonse. "Well, Civilian, what do you think?"

"Nommo."

Clavell called Mary-em up to the front, and they formed another circle around her.

Alphonse knelt by her side. "Hail," he said. "Holy infant, holy mother." The shape of the infant reappeared.

"I'm going to be sick," Mary-em said.

The baby covered its little eyes. "I'm sleeping," it said petulantly.

"We need your help."

"I want a song. If you want my help, you be nice to me," it insisted.

Alphonse pursed his lips. "Does anyone know a lullaby?"

SJ cleared his throat and sang: Mary had a little lamb, Her father shot it dead. Now Mary takes the lamb to school Between two hunks of bread.

The infant looked at SJ with disgust. "Is that any kind of poem to tell a small, vulnerable child?"

"Mary-em. What are your views on abortion?"

She narrowed her eyes and placed her hands over her tummy. The flesh flowed around black finger bones. "Not another word, twerp."

Crystal smiled, came forward, and knelt by Mary-em, putting both hands on her stomach. And she sang, in a surprisingly clear and sweet contralto. Oh, the queen is giving a ball today and the talkingflowers are there! We'll play croquet with guinea pigs and all the cards will stare. A bird will be my mallet, and I will win the game! But the queen will have my head, just the same…

After she finished, the infant rolled over and looked at her with its star-child eyes. "Insane but nice. Now. Here's what you do…"

Up in the control chamber, Doris Whitman had curled into a fetal position. Remarkably agile and limber for a woman her age, her alignment and action of limbs precisely duplicated an unborn infant's.

The DreamTime Virtual system translated every motion, every flicker of a finger, with a time lag of less than three thousandths of a second. Doris was the unborn godling, the spawn of Mary-em's loins, and her performance was flawless.

She spoke as she rolled. The DreamTime system altered her voice, raising it in register and pitch until it became a sleepy, childlike whisper.

For a moment the entire control room stopped, leaving all programs on automatic loop routines.

Doris was something very special. Her entire body arched, muscle control so complete that she could imitate weightlessness. Heavy as she was, it seemed absurd that she should move so effortlessly.

And when she finally stopped, allowing her body to rest once again, the entire control room exploded into applause.

Tony McWhirter was heavily in conference with Mitsuko Lopez, studying one of the skeletal diagrams of MIMIC.

"All right," he said. "They're all playing California Voodoo outside the boundaries. Everybody. Weird."

She laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. "But still playing a damn good Game," she said. "So. We have to help them get back onto the track. Start with Army/Tex-Mits."

Tony pointed, his forearm sinking into the model. "They're here on the tenth level. They've gotten around all of the traps we laid for them, but they also can't get to the Nommo. For obvious reasons, we sealed the doors and shored up the walls here and here. What do we do, and how do we keep them on camera?"

Mitsuko thought for three seconds, then pivoted and punched out a code on the main board. "Mitch Hasegawa, please report to Security."

Tony cocked his head. "I know Mitch," he said. "He's a nice guy, but don't we need someone a little higher?"

"Sometimes rank isn't as important as communication," Mitsuko said.

"You know Mitch?"

She twinkled. "He's my little brother."

Mitsuko and Mitsuo "Mitch" Hasegawa hugged briefly, then he sat down to consider their problem.

"I can do it," he said, "but I'll have to activate some of ScanNet's maintenance relays on the tenth."

"Aren't they already on?"

"New. The way the system is now, it would overload. They're on manual. In fact, most monitors on the tenth have been turned over to the DreamTime system."

"So where's the security?"

"Well, we've got the entire exterior sealed, of course. We know the instant anyone moves into one of those peripheral units, let alone the wall. And then we have spot checks throughout the inner building. As soon as the whole thing is activated, we'll be able to scan you right down to the blood cells, big sister. Forget metal detectors-we'll know whether you had secret sauce on your cheeseburger."

Tony scooted forward. "Now listen to me. I need to get our Army group from here-" He indicated a sector in the tenth level that was coded blue. "-over a restraining wall and back into the Gaming area. To do that, I want to take them through a service tunnel. Here. I can guide them into it, but I don't have cameras to follow them inside. Whatever shall I do?"

Mitch tapped out commands on the main console and then grinned. "All right. We have maintenance bots in there. They've got cameras, of course, and some other senses, too. We'll let the bots follow your Gamers around. You'll have to give them one of those 'you can't see this' orders."

Tony laughed. "It's been a long time since we've had to use one of those. Can I see this maintenance unit?"

Tap tap. It looked like a crab on roller skates. It was intended to motor along a tunnel two feet in diameter, cleaning, inspecting, providing routine maintenance.

Mitsuko raised one lazy eyebrow. "How strong are those arms?"

"Exert about fifty pounds of pressure."

"How precisely controllable?"

"Very. Good for close work."

"And how resistant to damage?"

"Well…" Mitch's eyes narrowed at her. "Chi-Chi, what are you-"

"Just answer the question, little brother."

"Well, anything really valuable is inside the central casing. Pretty well shielded. The external arms are all replaceable. Maybe a thousand bucks, tops."

"And can you get a second one into the area?"

"To watch the first, right?"

She smiled expansively.

Tony was slow, but caught on. "Ah, Chi-Chi-Mitsuko, he's right…"

Her smile had broadened further. "Players aren't the only ones who can improvise."

Fast as a snake she twisted, calling, "Owen! We need some Virtual imagery here!"

In Mary-em's womb, the godling rolled back over toward them, its eyes as vast as a moonless sky. "Is there one among you who is a pathfinder? One who seeks?"

SJ came forward.

"Touch my mother's stomach."

Mary-em growled, said growl disturbing the beatific expression she had cultivated so carefully. "Watch yer hands, buster."

"Sorry. Heh heh."

"Now," the child said. "Reveal!"

A map of the entire tenth level rolled out before them like the ghost of a carpet. Their route through it was plainly mapped. A line of green dashes pointed SJ's path, and he stood saying, "No offence, Yer Godliness" and followed the dashes to a wall grille set too high for him to reach on tiptoe.

The major threw him a chair.

SJ tested the screws at the sides of the grille. They were fairly standard, but probably hadn't been worked since the original replacement two years earlier. SJ dug into his backpack and found a multihead screwdriver.

He hummed happily when he'd finally levered the grille free. He snapped an electric lamp headband above his visor and said, "Boost me up!" Clavell and Poule boosted him, and he eeled into the duct.

He wiggled in, elbows and knees braced against cold metal. He adjusted his Virtual visor. The green dashes bobbled in the air before him.

After a half hour, SJ's back was sore and his knees and elbows were a little skinned up. He was grateful that the duct was clean. He didn't relish the notion of getting an infected cut.

Newer ducts would have rounded corners. These antique ducts were square. Steel sheeting, and maybe rivets, under new insulation. How did they clean these ducts? Did they get midgets to crawl around in here with wet rags, or what? Had the squatters managed with dirty ducts?

The other six Adventurers of the Tex-Mits/Army combine inched along behind him. SJ found himself slipping into fantasy.

Corporal Waters, at great risk to life and limb, leads the way for the major and the general, crawling across no-man's-land, under barbed wire, and through a minefield under heavy machine-gun fire, to retrieve a live grenade…

A humming sound up ahead had grown steadily louder, finally crossing the threshold of his attention. Belatedly, he wondered what it was.

He was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the cramped, nightdark space. He widened his flashing beam.

Nothing. From a distance throbbed the soft, regular, hushed pulse of the air-conditioning. Somehow that was a reassurance, akin to the comforting rhythm of a mother's heartbeat. The building was alive. It breathed.

He called, "Hold it!" The column behind him stopped.

Scratch scratch.

There it was again, damn it. Closer now.

He turned onto his side and held the flashlamp out ahead of him, eeling forward until he came to a branching pathway. From here he could see up, down, right, left…

Left. The sound came from there. And now it was closer.

There was no way to get everyone all the way back down the vent before whatever the hell it was made its grisly entrance. The only real option was to keep going, and hope…

Then he remembered Mary-em, the soft underbelly of their column. If he kept going straight, whatever was down there might very well intersect their line right in the middle, with lethal results to Junior.

SJ made his choice and turned toward the sound.

His Virtual goggles pumped a vaguely greenish light into his eyes. Irritated, he flipped them up. The scratching sound grew louder. Something emerged from the left side passage.

The low-pitched "engage Virtual shield" buzzer sounded in his ears, but SJ only stared.

It was a maintenance bot. He had seen them often enough, a six-legged steel and plastic critter that roamed tunnels and halls, repairing, cleaning, inspecting.

He was confused. This wasn't part of the Game…

He turned to stared back at his compatriots. "Do we see this?"

Alphonse said, "The buzzer, you dipshit. Flip your visor down." SJ did that, and sighed in admiration.

It was half metallic, half fleshly tentacles. Whatever it was, this wasn't the product of an ancient African imagination. This was from a world of aquatic intelligence: a cyborg octopus.

It extruded a tentacle toward him.

He couldn't get to his bow. The passage was too narrow, and Docking an arrow would have been a topological riddle to boggle Captain Cipher.

Then the thing had wrapped its arms around him. Maybe they felt slender and mostly metallic, but they looked green and reptilian.

A head evolved out of the churning mass, and it hissed "Duck!" Alphonse yelled behind him. SJ turned his head to the side just fast enough to avoid a stream of hissing green venom.

(Funny. It smelled like ammoniated glass cleaner…)

When it struck the side of the tunnel, the metal there smoked and glowed.

" Crom!" he screamed, and grabbed the acid spout before it could eject again.

No matter how he braced himself, he could only get clumsy, partial leverage. No matter what he did, the damned thing always had another arm to attack with.

His breathing sobbed raggedly, echoing in the enclosed space. Behind him, his teammates watched helplessly. How to beat this doing? He thought of the knife in his belt. He didn't dare release either of its arms. It was all he could do to keep this damned thing off balance.

Balance. Yes. SJ fought his way to his knees, then bent his arms, getting all of the leverage that he could, wedging himself solidly in the duct And hoisted.

He tilted the creature sideways, so that it was on edge in the cramped space. His back was sore, and the muscles in his arms ached. The friggin' machine must have weighed fifty pounds, and without proper leverage it was a bitch to lift and control. It screamed and scrabbled like a beetle flipped on its back, and he watched as its claws attacked his hands, tearing flesh away. Blood spurted.

But S. J. Waters, mighty Scout, would not be denied. He managed to brace his elbow against the machine, wedging it into the wall. With his right hand he finally got to his belt knife.

The thing's underbelly was softer than its back. He wedged his knife into a crack, shrieking with concentration, loud enough to drown out the sounds made by the beast itself. He waggled the blade back and forth Green foam bubbled out of its innards, and suddenly that ammonia smell was everywhere. Acid blood spurted, miraculously spraying him with only a few mild droplets.

"Back! Back!" he yelled, and his comrades retreated as far as they could.

The creature was both smoking and screaming now, and then Its carapace burst open. Its metal legs trembled, shook, groped out one final time…

And were still. The acid blood streamed away in rivulets, leaving a harmless residue.

SJ examined his wrists and arms. Where the claws had gripped were tiny red welts (which looked much worse in DreamTime), and his eyes stung from the ammonia but he was alive.

"All right…" He nudged the beast with the tip of his knife and began to push it along in front of him. When they reached a cross-path in the tunnels he pushed it to the side.

Much softer, but still ahead of him, he heard another clicking sound. He could just make out the image of a second beast, its pseudopods pulsing with rage. Had he slain its mate?

The beast retreated, wanting no part of the mighty Scout.

"Come back, you coward!" he screamed.

It stopped, and one of its pseudopods formed into a hand. Four of the fingers bent down, leaving a single digit standing straight up, in a universal symbol of disapproval.

And then it was gone