The Barsoom Project

Chapter Seventeen

Slightly blue-faced, Gwen exhaled with relief. For a few seconds, the wail of the wind and the Paija’s receding death-howl were the only sounds. Then the Gamers behind her were leaping and screeching and clapping each other on the back.

Gwen watched Hippogryph with some amusement. Hippogryph screeched and Hippogryph leapt; but his face didn’t turn toward the sky in triumph; his eyes remained at the level; his big bouncing body formed an unobtrusive barrier between the others and Charlene. Just as well. Her legs looked a little unsteady.

The darkness helped… but Gwen could never quite believe that the holograms would mask her and Ollie well enough to produce the illusion of flight. But everything had gone perfectly. Now the Gamers crowded at the lip of the precipice, watching the Paija’s image fall to its death. She saw their faces; every damned one of them had been moved by the sight of his spirit image. They stood straighter, walked prouder.

Gwen knew the gimmicks hidden in the Game, and still she felt the effect. She took the time to square herself, then dove headfirst into her “Snow Goose” routine again.

“All right, team! Way to go!”

“That was great!” Orson was vibrating where he stood, his considerable mass jiggling and wiggling with delight. “I feel ready for anything!”

“That’s what’s next,” Charlene surmised. She was panting as much from excitement as exertion. Gwen heard a low beeping tone in her ear, and she glanced over at Ollie.

His left hand was covering his ear, as he listened to medical reports from Central Processing. With his right hand he signaled her: a finger pointing to the ground, followed by a horizontal palm: slow down.

It might be that Charlene’s vital functions, picked up and broadcast through mesh underwear, had alerted Central Processing. Maybe it was the heavier Sands brother. For all Orson’s jolly sarcasm, Ollie thought he looked ripe for a nice, juicy cardiac incident…

So Gwen’s eyes unfocused, and her hand closed powerfully on Orson’s wrist as he was about to speak. “I hear them,” she said, “whispering,” rolling her eyes, “the Gods. They-”

She waited for their attentive silence, then squeezed her eyes shut and made a happy pout. “They are most pleased. They say that they will bring us gifts!”

Through the darkness at the cave’s unimaginably distant roof there shone a shaft of golden light. It pierced the black and danced palely on the far side of the gap. The beam was broken up by a fluttering motion, something like fat snowflakes… but every “flake” was a living thing, reflecting and adding to the light.

Trianna said it first. “Butterflies!”

Exactly right. White butterflies. They drifted this way and that, creasing the light, reflecting it, questing into the darkness for a moment, then returning to coruscate and sparkle anew.

They landed in a cone, prancing and fluttering in heaps, and covered the ground as if huddling together for warmth against the winter. They crawled over each other in a churning Brownian movement. Any trace of individual identity was submerged in an amoeboid tangle.

Gwen watched the Gamers’ eyes, squeezed Ollie’s hand in acknowledgment and thanks for his signal.

Then the butterflies took to the air again, leaving behind them A huge platter heaped with apples and grapes and pears. There was a small mountain of crackers and breads, four wide-mouthed jugs, and some miscellaneous cans.

“Lunch!” Johnny Welsh said reverently. “My stomach was about to sue me for desertion. Wait a minute-”

The Paija had shattered the stone bridge. They looked at lunch across an eight-foot gap. Kevin asked, “How do we get to it?”

Orson said, “Why don’t we just twist you into a rope bridge and walk across?”

“Ha-ha,” said Johnny Welsh. “Humor makes me hungry.”

“Listen to me,” Gwen said. “The stone bridge is destroyed, but in conquering the Paija, we have all gained great power. You must now have pure intention in order to use it. You must truly desire the food.”

They were looking at Gwen warily: crazy and dangerous. “Believe me, honey,” Hebert promised. “That food and I are going to share a deep, spiritual communion.”

“Do you remember the lessons you learned from the food last night?”

Sheepishly, Trianna raised her hand. “We need to treat the food like a living thing.”

“Is that different from the way you usually treat it?”

She hunched her shoulders. “I remember the lectures, dear. I love food, but it’s like building blocks to me. I can make pretty, tasty things out of it-”

The pile of food rustled, and a bunch of grapes turned into butterflies and flew away. Gwen said, “Watch it! The food here is very sensitive.”

“I pay honor to the Inua of the food!” Kevin said. Perfect.

“I’d be surprised if he eats at all,” Orson growled.

“Did you say something, Mr. Sands?” Gwen made her voice deceptively sweet.

“Well…” Puzzles. Orson had to solve puzzles. “I pledge that if this food will, will serve me… ” He paused to hunt for the right words.

“Then we will serve the food,” Johnny Welsh said solemnly. Hippogryph, blind-sided, burst into helpless laughter.

But Orson had his lines worked out. “I will pay honor to it, and attention to what I eat, and only take into my body what I need for nourishment.”

Gwen’s eyebrows went up. “Can’t argue with that.”

Max leaned over to Bowles and stage-whispered, “Did you pack your hip boots?”

A shaft of light shone down from the heavens, directly upon Orson.

“Step forward, Orson. If that was the truth, I think it’s mealtime.”

“I meant it-” Another bunch of grapes started turning white, and Orson shrieked. “All right! All right! Give me a minute, will you! Damn.” He was the picture of frustration. He glared menacingly at Gwen. “How’d you know?”

“The Great Spirits. Or maybe a lucky guess. You have that kind of face.”

“Don’t I know it. All right.” He forced his shoulders to relax, and then shrugged. “I haven’t done it until now. I was just testing. But I will try, for this meal at least. I promise.”

The butterflies fluttered back into the light, settled, and transformed back into grapes.

“If you told the truth,” Gwen said, “step out. The Great Spirit will support you.”

“You want me to step out on air?”

“No.” She said piously, “On faith. Heh-heh.”

Orson peered out over the precipice. His lips made a wet, unhappy sound. He took a step, feeling out over the gap with his toe, the rest of his balance safely held in reserve.

His foot was balancing on nothing. He breathed a sigh of relief, and took another step. Then Orson Sands was by God doing magic, walking on air like Gene Kelly. All he needed was Jerry Mouse dancing alongside.

He stopped in the middle of the gap and looked down past his feet, down into the depths where the Paija had vanished, and then back at them with a smile that showed every tooth. When he crossed to the other side he salaamed deeply, damn near kissed the ground, then did a little jig-step which took him over to the food.

Orson prodded a grape with one heavy finger. The sun came up behind his eyes. “It’s real!”

He plopped down and grabbed handfuls, a pear in one hand and a bunch of purple grapes in the other Then he set the pear down and began eating grapes one at a time.

Gwen beamed. “Next?”

One at a time they went through the ritual. The “Great Spirits” seemed to know when they were lying and when they weren’t. Gwen savored their bewilderment.

Now that they had enough of a break to realize how long it had been since breakfast, hunger was a raging fire. The butterflies returned every time a lie was told, and Gwen called them on it.

Trianna swore she would honor her food, but she was lying. Gwen knew it, Trianna knew it, and most importantly, the technicians back in Gaming Central knew. They knew from reading body signs from the mesh underwear: blood pressure, skin ternperature, galvanic skin response, heartbeat and respiration rates.

Tears streamed down Trianna’s lovely face. Her shoulder-length blond hair seemed flat and lifeless. “What do you want from me? I love food. How can you say I don’t? How do you think I got this heavy if I didn’t?”

“Do you love it,” Gwen asked soberly, “or do you use it? You hide in your body, Trianna.”

Trianna was so upset that she was actually bawling now. “What do you want me to say? I–I… shit!”

Kevin took her shoulders. “Just slow down and notice your food.”

Her eyes raked him; they should have raised welts. “And you? You damn skeleton, when did you ever notice food? You look like nobody ever told you about that part.”

Those words had hurt: Kevin blinked his hollow eyes against the pain. “I’m here too,” he said quietly. “We’re pretty much the same, Trianna. Both of us need to be okay with not being perfect. I’m tired of being scared.” He smiled tentatively. “Aren’t you?”

Trianna swallowed hard. Gwen felt sympathy but bit it back. Trianna ate sedately enough around the group, but it was increasingly easy to picture her at home, alone in her apartment. A mindless Oreo cookie zombie, shoveling food into her mouth as if that gorgeous face and that lumpy body lived in different zip codes. Deli of the living dead.

Trianna said: “I swear I’ll try. I want to tell the truth about it.” Her voice was a little girl’s, barely a squeak. “I want to.” This time Gwen didn’t get a warning beep in her ear. Trianna tottered across the bridge and sat, snuffling quietly, and picked at her lunch.

Kevin watched her, licked his lips, and ran a thin hand across the parchment of his face. On the far side of that gap was health, self-respect. Salvation.

What war was it he fought? He spoke of perfection. What was his unattainable ideal, that he compensated by being perfect at self-denial? What was so spin-dizzy in his life that he made up for it by controlling every crumb he ate, would take perverse pride in his conquest of the physical hungers?

His anguish was almost too painful to watch.

“What do you want from me?” he asked finally.

Ollie’s voice was kind. “Just the truth, Kevin.”

“If I eat too much I’ll have to throw up.” He said it as if the admission had cost him skin.

Kevin was afraid, literally afraid to cross that gap to where the others sat eating, bathed in golden light.

Slowly, Trianna came to her feet. Tears still slicked her face. She held her arms out to Kevin, and Gwen could almost see lines of strange magnetism connecting the two of them. As if they were bizarre mirror-images of each other. The fat lady and the skeleton boy, prides of the side-show.

No one said a word. There was no sound, and then Kevin made a soft, wet, desperate sound, and stumbled across the gap, dancing on air, into Trianna’s comforting arms.

One by one they went through it. Gwen was relieved to note that nobody tried to test the boundaries. It might have been interesting to try keeping Max Sands from charging across that bridge. He could carry her and Ollie without much of a second thought. Carry, or dump them over the side.

But at last they were all seated, eating, actually enjoying the meal Dream Park had set for them. The pears were crisp and flavorful, and the cheddar cheese was so sharp it almost singed her tongue. Gwen herself loved pears. It was easy to respect a good pear, because a bad pear was so bad.

Johnny Welsh was drinking coffee from a paper cup thoughtfully provided by the Gods, and chewing on a makeshift cheese sandwich. He looked as if he had died and gone to heaven. Everyone ate more slowly than they had at breakfast. Maybe the excellence of the food and drink had something to do with that. Something, but not all.

Johnny belched contentedly. “Java blend,” he said. “Last coffee I had was on the tube out from Denver.” He made a face.

Hippogryph was willing. “That bad?”

“Let’s put it this way. I had the concierge send it out to a lab. Got a call back saying ‘Congratulations, your moose is pregnant.’”

Hippogryph sprayed a mouthful of grape juice, narrowly missing Kevin, who lunged out of the way. “Jeeze-will you watch your timing?” Kevin said plaintively.

Johnny smiled wickedly. “Sorry about that.”

Orson popped open one of the cans, drank, and made a face at Snow Goose. “You brought me all the way to Hell for sugar-free 7-Up?”

They sat in a circle on a stone bridge over the pit of infinity. Max looked a little distant, wistful, that massive, muscular body sagging somewhat in repose. Gwen wondered what he was thinking. There was no way for Dream Park magic to give her that piece of information.

Yet.

They were on the move again, and the trail began to lead gently downward. The air was chilling, and the wind plucked at Max’s face and hair more fiercely.

Part of it was his imagination. The howl of the wind had increased more than its velocity. The temperature had only dropped a few degrees.

The path grew narrower and narrower, and then the walls were well within reach, rock glazed with ice. The wind was a hollow, reedlike whistle in their ears. Moods recently elevated by a fine meal went edgy. They gripped their weapons tightly and walked single file.

At first, the cries might have been mistaken for a trick of the wind. Then Max heard them for what they were-the endless moaning and shrieking of the Eskimo damned.

So far there was nothing to see. Light had diminished to a murky dusk.

Then a glowing aurora illuminated the scene, and Max felt the pit of his stomach tighten.

Naked men and women stumbled blindly through deep snow. One man staggered across jagged rocks with a caribou lashed across his shoulders. His feet were torn and bleeding. Blood trailed down his back from a gash along the caribou’s ribs. The caribou kicked and wriggled in nightmarish slow-motion.

Snow Goose stiffened, then ran jerkily to a spot where a stone wall caused the path to branch. An Eskimo was lashed to the wall with leather thongs. Butterflies fluttered around his head, and he snapped at them with his teeth. He caught one and ate it. Other Eskimos were bound identically. Their movements were sluggish and awkward as they lunged uselessly against their fetters.

“Wood Owl!” Snow Goose cried.

He looked up at her dully. “Who…? Who is there?” Then she stepped closer, and his eyes focused. His lips curved, making a small sad smile. “Snow Goose. It is you. How did you die?”

“No, Wood Owl. I come with friends. We fight to destroy the Cabal.”

He nodded. A butterfly fluttered too close to his mouth. He snapped it out of the air, and chewed thoughtfully. “Could use a little salt.”

“What’s it like being dead?” Hebert asked.

“Not bad, really,” Wood Owl answered after a moment’s consideration. “Like waiting for a tax refund, only slower.” He looked at Snow Goose regretfully. “I would not have made you a good mate, but I loved you.”

“You died for me. So you were a lousy hunter. I turned vegetarian at ASU. No problem.”

“When you see your father again? Tell him I’ve seen cousin Gray Otter. We can stop wondering about why Gray Otter’s wife cut his throat and drowned herself. Seems he was sharing furs with Weeping Walrus when he was supposed to be fishing.”

“Soap operas in Hell,” Bowles mused. “The mind boggles.”

“Death will not release you,” Wood Owl agreed.

Snow Goose smiled bravely, and they continued on. Max kept looking back at Wood Owl, lashed to his stone and snapping at the cluster of butterflies around his face, until they rounded the corner of the wall.

Hell was a small place, evidently. The next group of damned they encountered were all half-naked women. Blue lines and dots made patterns on their faces. They cried, holding their hands out to the travelers, and begging in a language that he couldn’t understand.

“What was their sin?” Max asked Snow Goose.

“They have bad tattoos.”

Orson’s jaw dropped, and he looked at the Eskimo dead with new interest. Studying their tattoos, of course. Max said, “That’s pretty minor. What kind of Gods are these?”

“Petty, like all Gods. On the other hand, there’s no penalty at all for masturbation.”

“I’m changing religion,” Kevin said positively. “Obviously, I have strong Eskimo blood and never knew it.”

The women were all black-haired and sullen, except for a woman in her thirties, with flaming red hair, who hung numbly in her bonds. Her green eyes were partially unfocused. Slowly, she lifted her head. “Who …?”

Max cried, “Eviane!”

Her confusion lasted only a moment; recognition following swiftly. “My comrades,” Eviane said. Tears streaked her face. “I knew you would come for me. Even Hell couldn’t keep us apart.”