The Sacrifice Game

(43)

Without any perceptible change of expression, his eyes shifted to that look that-hmm. It’s that look… let me think… okay. Instead of trying to describe it, let’s do this. If you have a dog, there’s a way to see this that involves scaring yourself. Make eye contact with your dog, command her/him to sit, and reward the behavior with a strip of turkey jerky or bacon or something your dog loves the smell of. Keeping him/her sitting, and keeping up eye contact, take another strip and hold it in front of your face, right between your eyes. Your dog’s expression will shift ever so subtly, but, if you’ve done it right, the shift is terrifying. Something in his face had something of my own mind in its expression, something I could read.

2 Jeweled Skull thought I might be in league with Lady Koh, and he could tell that I could see it in him.

He looked away from me and waved the commanders out of the little courtyard. Suddenly it felt all private, just him, me, the two dressers holding me, his two heralds, and Hun Xoc.

“Well, listen, if you were Lady Koh, where would you be?” 2 Jeweled Skull asked in my own nearly unaccented English.

“Dead,” I said. Hmm, I thought. Guess he’d picked up a little more of my old Jed-mind than he’d let me realize eighty-two days ago.

Idiot.

“Well, I guess it’s nice of you to let the old veil slip and everything, though,” I said in English. “Finally.”

“Oh, well, yeah, sorry,” he said, in practically a Jed voice, just a little higher and older. “You know, I didn’t want you to get confused.”

“I was already confused,” I said.

“Anyway, it’s nice to have someone you can talk to, right?” he asked. No kidding, I thought. Just hearing English spoken again was sending my emotions into a stupid, automatic tailspin.

“Right,” I said.

“I just wanted to double our chances, you know?”

“I know.” I was getting dizzy from the flood of homesickness and had to bite my lip to keep myself from crawling over and hugging him. Maybe we could just go crack a couple of hot cactus ales and grab some cheeseless nachos and kick back and chat about whatever “So maybe we can work together on this,” he said.

“Uh, yeah, and whichever one of us lives is going to go back?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “maybe we’ll both go back. There’s room in the tomb. Twombsome with youse’m. Tomb with a viewm.”

“And they’ll load both of our memories into Jed-Sub-One?”

“Sure,” he said, “I mean, maybe it’s possible, I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I don’t see why not.”

“Nonsense,” I said.

“Give it a little thought. They can probably do it. We just have to make sure they do. Whichever of us gets uploaded first has to make sure Marena girl does the other too.”

“Yeah, sure. That won’t work and you know it.”

“Well, let’s try it.”

“No way,” I said, “You’ll off me a long time before that happens.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because it’s what I’d do.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “As you well know. We’re going to off the Jed that’s back there, aren’t we?”

“What do you mean?”

“That Jed that’s there without our memories, when everything we’ve been through gets uploaded into him, that Jed, Jed-Sub-One, he’s going to basically die,” I said. “And we don’t even care. That’s just the way it is.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s survival of the shittiest. Why are you even asking me, do you think Chacal’s brain is so stunted I couldn’t work this stuff out?”

He grinned. “Well, I had wondered about that,” he said. “Chacal’s ideational skills and everything.”

“Chacal’s brain’s as smart as Jed’s was,” I said. “Maybe not so fast on calculation, but on spatiotemporal it’s way ahead.”

“How nice for you,” 2 Jeweled Me said. “Well, whatever. Anyway, maybe we can work out a deal.”

“I guess-”

“I mean, if you can’t negotiate with yourself, then, with whom?”

“Mm,” I said. “Yeah, I was just about to say that.” This whole thing was bumming me out, I felt naked talking with this hostile version of myself. It’s disturbing enough just to watch yourself on video. “So, you’re just good old Jed, right?” I asked. “You’re totally in control of 2 Jeweled Skull.”

“Believe it or not, yes,” he said.

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “You’re still 2JS. I mean, 2JS’s running you.”

Don’t let his newly cozy persona fool you, I thought. You’re not really talking to yourself, I’m talking to my personal body snatcher pod-person.

“Listen, there was as much of a chance of my getting killed here as your getting killed out there,” he said. “The main thing was just always just getting the tsam lic back.”

“Sure,” I said. Somehow he wasn’t touching my heart. “If you’re so hip and everything, why didn’t you do something really amazing? Maybe you should have built a machine gun.”

“Well, I didn’t want to rock the boat too much,” he said. “I was still in a bad spot here, you know, no matter how cool you are somebody can always get you.”

“Yeah.”

“The blowgun squad’s enough and enough is always correct. I don’t want to trip the Cosmic Censor or anything.”

“There is no Cosmic Censor.”

“Well, I just thought somebody might hear about a machine gun or something so it wouldn’t work. Or something.”

“I guess.”

“Anyway, everything’s pretty secure here. I’m not worried. Unless we can’t find Koh.”

“Great,” I said. I could tell he meant that he had the whole tomb setup ready to be installed. The folgerite, the gel stuff, everything. He was planning to head back for the bad old latter days right on schedule.

“I just wonder whether there’s something you’re not telling me. And I do need to learn that Sacrifice Game business.” He was trying to sound casual about it, but of course he was as nervous as I was. If Koh was dead there wasn’t much of a chance that he’d get very far with the Game. Especially not with setting up a human game. According to her-and although she could be cagey, I believed her on this one-there were only a few other living people who knew how to do it, and they’d been scattered with the fall of Teotihuacan. Maybe one or two of them were in Severed Right Hand’s camp, but even that wasn’t certain.

“Ask the Ocelots,” I said.

“That may be a bit difficult,” he said. “They’re a recalcitrant bunch. Anyway, I had to let 9 Fanged Hummingbird go just to get you back. For which you’re welcome, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s okay,” he said. The English words sounded odder than ever in this context. “Anyway, we should talk to Koh. And I don’t want to risk running around looking for her.”

“I don’t know where she is,” I said. “Why don’t you just bring out your nefarious instruments and we’ll get started on proving it?”

“Listen, we’re twins,” he said. “We’re even better than twins, we’re clones.”

“Clonies. Cronies,” I said.

“If we fight we’re just fighting ourself.”

“Come to me, my son,” I said in the deepest voice I could manage, imitating James Earl Jones playing Thulsa Doom in a Geraldine fright wig in Conan the Barbarian. Needless to say, he knew exactly what I was referring to. He laughed. I know I always laughed out loud whenever I thought about that scene.

“Come on, think about it, if I’d let you know I was just like you, you might have come after me. Right? How could I know what you were going to do? The right thing was to make it as possible as possible for you to get the Sacrifice Game. And meanwhile make sure everything here was ready.”

Well, it was the kind of thing I would have thought of, I thought. Except I wouldn’t have done that to myself. Would I? No. I don’t think so, anyway “I hear you got along well with Miss Koh,” he said.

“Well, yeah, pretty well.”

“So maybe she told you what she was going to do.”

“Well, or maybe not,” I said. “Maybe she didn’t trust me.”

“No, I think she probably told you something. Or gave you something to do, maybe. Maybe you were supposed to mislead me.”

“Oh, I’d never do that.”

“No, there’s something,” he said. It seemed we were having a stare-down contest. “I ought to know.”

“Uh, okay,” I said. This is getting weird, I thought. It was like when the Tin Man finds his old “meat head” in a cupboard in the eleventh Oz book and they don’t get along with each other. More of a monologue than a dialogue. Except it was also like I was one of those split-brain patients whose right hand didn’t know what the left one was up to.

“Tell you what,” I said, “you give me my command back and I’ll go find Lady Koh and bring her back here and we’ll all talk.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “You’ll probably come back with an AR-15 and take me out.”

“Well, so, like they’re going to say, if you can’t trust yourself who can you trust?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s the problem,” he said. “Listen, we’re short on time.”

“Sorry,” I said. There wasn’t much more to talk about. Except for the stuff he didn’t know, he knew everything. If you know what I mean. The first dresser, who I guess was now officially a teaser, held me a bit tighter while the second went off to get something.

And Koh had run out on me too. Silly me, I guess I’d thought a deal was a deal and we’d all live happily ever after. I guess I hadn’t really been ready to play in the big leagues. Where the main difference is the rules. Lack of.

Or maybe she was regrouping, planning a second raid.

No, she’d probably given up on the whole project and headed farther south. Leaving me stranded.

2 Jeweled Skull gestured over my shoulder to the teaser. I got the first little hit of that deep-down fear-bloom, when it feels like a little hole just opens in the bottom of your stomach and all this crud starts trickling out. The second teaser kneeled down in front of me.

Think, I thought.

Maybe Koh hadn’t told them about the earthstars. I guess I’d just kind of assumed she was getting the word to them. Maybe she hadn’t told anyone. Maybe she wanted to take out everybody.

And nobody’d told him they’d picked me out of the Great Cistern. If they had he’d have gotten wise to what had happened in about a yoctosecond. And he would have told me he was taking care of it, just so I wouldn’t have any lingering hopes.

And it’s only twelve hours since I dumped the stuff, I thought. At most. The Harpies wouldn’t have started drinking the affected water until a couple of hours ago. That meant there might be a few people just starting to feel the effects pretty soon. Even longer if it was as slow as Koh said it was in cold water.

It’s going to be a hot day, I thought. They’ll taste the water for the usual poisons and they’ll all be drinking up a storm. And they’ll be having a victory party then anyway. Maybe nobody’ll wise up until tomorrow, even.

Don’t tell him. Maybe he’ll even drink some of the shit himself. If you only don’t tell him one thing, that’s it.

The jerk, I thought. Bad timing. He should have cozied up to me a minute longer.

“So, what’s Miss Snake up to?” he asked.

“She wouldn’t really tell me,” I said. “We didn’t talk that much, I wasn’t up to her social class.”

“Liar,” he said. “Prick on fire.” The teaser pulled my penis out from under the little padded ball-loincloth and held it in his right hand.

“You can’t mess with me,” I said, “I’m 400-Capturing 9 Wax Ahau.” The teaser gently inserted a little reed-skewer into the tip and pushed it three fingerwidth up into the urethra. It was pretty painful. 2JS crouched down closer to my face, reading me, looking for something. It wasn’t just like there wasn’t any warmth there anymore. He’d never had warmth, exactly. It was like he looked like the lethal injection room at the Terre Haute Correctional Facility, nicely decorated but not a place you want to be. But something in his face was also mine. My stupid, goofy expression, all transformed into something crisp and efficient. I got a wave of that “Give Up!” feeling, like you get in chess when you get down a piece early in the game. Stifle that, I thought. Come on. Be Muhammad Ali. Bounce fucking back.

Think.

He’s pretty eager for me to give up Lady Koh. That means he thinks she’s coming after him.

Okay. Think. Get to that glassy-calm cool state. Take the long shot. Plan L. What would a Starfleet commander do in this situation? Think, think, thinkedy-dink EOOOOAOAOAAAAEEAEEEAEEEAEEEIIIEIIEIIIIIYIYIYYYY!!!!!

The teaser was blowing chili-water up into me through the reed. I tried to flex my eyes and suck the tears back into their ducts, relax the face, relax the face.

Thimk. What actually happened?

Maybe our whole expedition to Teotihuacan would have worked for him anyway, even if we hadn’t brought back the tzam lic, because the main idea was to distract the Ocelots’ attention from 2JS’s preparations. And when 2JS was sending us all those messengers on the road about how much trouble he was in, it was all just bullshit. He had to create a balanced effect. The impression that the situation was dire enough that we’d believe in his air of resignation when we got here, but not so dire that we wouldn’t get here at all. 2JS planned to use Koh’s force to fight his battle for him, then blame it all on her and turn her and the other Rattler leaders in to Severed Right Hand as a peace offering. And 2JS would stay on the throne here in Ix, without threat from the Ocelots. No mierda, Miss Marple.

And then if Koh didn’t make it to Ix, 2JS was planning to defeat Severed Right Hand with his Frederick the Great squad, and then turn her and the other Rattler leaders in anyway, from a distance.

The teasers jerked my head down and there was another blast of pain, a column of magnesium sparks up through my abdomen into the roots of my hair, and when I was sane again I realized they’d blasted the chili extract up my ass with one of those enema things. The arc of pain seemed to descend for a moment and then somewhere inside me the two blasts met and interacted somehow, and it was like I was a mother parthenogenic fly, being eaten by my own ten thousand babies. Find the gray zone, I thought. Not many people know about it, but far out in the sea of pain there’s a not-unpleasant island.

2JS signed to the second teaser to bring in the others. Time to quit screwing around and start the real show.