The California Voodoo Game

Thursday, July 21, 2059 — 4:25 A.M.

Gaming Central was alive on level three now. In two hours everything would begin.

Richard Lopez entered the domed room to a standing ovation from the technicians and took his place to Tony McWhirter's left, at a console opposite Mitsuko. She had arrived an hour early to run her checklist.

With every touch, every movement of foot or hand, every whisper of voice, shapes and sounds came alive in MIMIC.

The circular room was separated roughly into thirds, with Tony McWhirter's control console in the center. Backup technicians and assistants were behind him at consoles and holo stages. To his right, on the far side of a glass wall, was a multivision stage. Upon it, a troupe of mimes twisted and turned through their movements, practicing. El directed, and Doris led by example.

She was superb. Every movement, every torsion of the head and arch of her spine, transformed her into a different animal, a different entity. She ranged from subhuman to human to transhuman with the flicker of an eyelash. Her troupe was no less adroit. Skills thousands of years old matched perfectly with twenty-first-century Virtual imaging techniques.

The Virtual images in Tony's field of vision flickered from shape to shape, trying this and that. The hologram projections, computer-based Virtual illusions' makeup, and backdrops, combined to create the effect they called

DreamTime.

Tony felt like a voyeur, a mere observer in the process, but there wasn't much he could do. For now, his task was that of an overseer.

"Richard?" he said.

The little man turned to look at him. "Yes?"

"Have you run your testing sequences?"

"Working on that now, Tony."

Richard Lopez moved like a man prematurely aged. A touch of arthritis, perhaps? But when he sat down at the board and began to bend the machine to his will, when he fell into the thought and movement patterns he understood and loved so well, it was as if Richard Lopez swelled in size, becoming another person entirely. Then he was like a concert pianist in his prime.

Images flowed through the computer, Virtual images perfectly matched with the holograms and the backgrounds.

It was realer than real. Tony watched the DreamTime unreality that flowed and shifted, then looked back at the room around him. It made him dizzy. In comparison, reality seemed rigid and colorless.

Acacia had almost finished packing.

All equipment was designed to nest precisely together, fitting into her backpack or belt pod with a maximum of balance and a minimum of strain. She inspected every inch of her costume, then peeled the seam open with her thumb and slipped into it. She pirouetted in front of her mirror. Perfect. She lunged and recovered, shadow-fencing.

She felt the two pounds she had gained in last week's nervous eating. But thirty-two ounces be damned: balance felt good, costume looked good, and she was electricity in tights.

Except…

Nigel.

He was still asleep on the bed that they shared. He lay on his back, respiration down to three breaths a minute, arms out to his sides in savasana, the corpse pose that led him directly from meditation into sleep.

His control was something close to total.

Even or especially when they made love. Every trick she knew, everything she tried, every sensual exertion that broke the control of ordinary men, brought them gasping to the brink of climax and beyond, merely amused him. Occasionally, a light dew of perspiration glistened on his forehead.

For Nigel Bishop, control was like a religion.

Especially last night. She felt like a woman of glass. He had peered into her, seen all her secrets, and perceived the unspoken.

She had turned and writhed, atop him yet completely under his control, his fingers light upon her wrists… light, unless she tried to twist away. If she attempted escape, they became like manacles.

"Acacia. Pet," he breathed into her mouth. "You're nervous."

"Shouldn't I be? My God, Nigel, what we're doing…"

He smiled, his teeth very white and clean in the darkness. "Why yes, yes, you should be." He paused. "Is there… anything else?"

He arched his head up and caressed the side of her neck, nibbling. His teeth touched the pulse point on her throat, closed about it subtly. Acacia wanted to scream, but didn't. But didn't speak her mind, either. And somewhere deep inside her, where all of his gentle, brutal assurances could never reach, she was afraid.

One final time, Acacia evaluated herself in the mirror. Backpack. Sword. Panthesilea, hello again.

Time to meet her team.

Five seconds after she left the room, Nigel Bishop's breathing began to speed. He opened his eyes.

Yes, he thought. She knows something is wrong. She isn't sure what. She will justify and rationalise, because she thinks she is in love, and that should carry her well into the Game. And then?

Nigel smiled. He didn't have the faintest idea.

Alphonse "The Barbarian" Nakagawa, Loremaster for the Texas Instruments-Mitsubishi team, was a tall, thin half-Japanese from Austin with a golden halo of Jesus hair and the thin, angular body of a stork. His grandfather had been a shrimp fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico, his father an oil rigger. For him, the California Voodoo Game began with his wife's image on a hotel phone screen, too early in the morning.

"Saray? Heck fire, woman what time is it?"

Was she glaring? "It's six forty-five here. The Game starts in two and a half hours."

"Christ. I feel like I was ate by a coyote and shit off a cliff. "

"I see you're working your shitkicker routine overtime. Sorry, but we've got to talk."

"Ah… right. Okay, I'm sitting up."

"Al, someone really wants your balls."

"I'm a Loremaster. Goes with the territory."

"Phone call, black screen, anonymous, twenty minutes ago. I took that long to think it through before I called you. I couldn't really tell the gender, even. Male, I think. 'Guess who's sleeping in your husband's bed?' "

"Damn! Let me in on the secret, would you?"

"Crystal Cofax, I assume, I should hope! I hung on long enough that he could have said. I don't think he knew. So I got tearful and hysterical and called you a bug-fucking pederast TexNip prick and swore I'd call you that instant and demand explanations."

"Just right. But… um."

"It is Crystal, isn't it?"

"Sure. Yes, dear, honestly. She's back in her room, but you could call her."

"Okay. What means um?"

"Well, could be Bishop. Rumor has it, he's crooked as a bucket of snakes. Either he's bluffing, or he knows I've got a little friend up here. Thinks I'm cheating."

"Why didn't he give me a name?"

"Maybe he's playing another game. He's sharp as a rat turd, but maybe he doesn't know…" Alphonse felt his thought processes coming unstuck. "Doesn't know. Just peeked at an unmade bed. But that'd mean he was here in my room."

The last came out as an indignant squeak.

Saray laughed. "You're in the security wing of the Arabian Nights, dear. Aren't you letting your imagination run away with you?"

But Alphonse wasn't watching her anymore. He was studying the door, imagining Bishop overriding the lock, or bribing a maid, or stealing a key from the front desk, or emergency-coding the central processor, or…

"Al?

"Huh? Oh… I was just wondering how he did it."

"You can't be serious."

"Serious as cancer," Alphonse said thickly. "This is war."

He had to check his valise. Was it gone? Did Bishop have all of his data cards?

"Alphonse? Alphonse? There you go again. Listen, call me back when you have a flash of sanity, however brief."

"I'm gonna hurt that boy."

She grimaced and was gone.

He checked the closet and found all of his gear. Bishop for sure. If something had been misplaced, it would mean he faced a lesser adversary. But if Nigel Bishop had targeted him… researched him… and why not? Alphonse Nakagawa was the only real threat to the Bishop.

So Bishop knew Saray was pregnant, but he must think their marriage was lockstepped. That was reasonable. There were only two couples in the world-and once there had been three-that Saray and Al would swap with. During a Game he kept, as the expression went, his pecker in his pocket. He believed it improved his performance.

Thought you could bitch me up? Well, Bishop, when l'm finished with you, there won't be anything left but fur and claws.

But I'll keep my smile tight for a while. I'll let you think it worked. The only question is were you in my room?

Alphonse stalked the room, peering under the bed, searching behind the cabinets for bugs, checking and rechecking the locks on his valise a dozen times before finally, reluctantly, concluding that he was probably overreacting.

But if Bishop's stolen my strategy notes, I'm fucked, and laughed at.

It's too late to change everything now. What to do? One chance: if Bishop doesn 't know I know…

The knock on the door jolted him. It was room service, with breakfast. Al the Barbarian ate as he dressed. He tried to convince himself there was no real problem, that it was all, as Saray suggested, a paranoid fantasy.

Ha. As Grandpappy Nakagawa used to say, that dog wouldn't hunt.

The room was small and stark and reminded Panthesilea more of a locker room than anything else.

Captain Cipher was the first to notice her in the doorway. He peered up at her through his oversized helmet with its blue visual shield. "Milady," he said. There was no whining in his voice now, no uncertainty There was a different quality to him. He even smelled clean.

Acacia looked at the rest of her team.

Steffie "Aces" Wilde, Engineer/Scout. Mati "Top Nun" Cohen, Cleric. Terrance "Prez" Coolidge, Warrior. Corrinda Harding, Thief.

Each nodded, a silent salute as she came into their ken. They were appropriately busy stretching or checking their equipment.

Acacia checked her watch. "05:15 hours. Crack of dawn. Game starts in two hours. Any last-minutes to discuss?"

Corrinda pumped a pneumatic cuff around her bad knee, checked the pressure, eased off a little, flexed it… and tried to hide her grimace. "It's fine," she said. "Just a little stiff."

"We'll keep the jogging to a minimum.''

Top Nun adjusted her hood. "How are we going to protect Cipher, and to what degree will we be expected to?"

A reasonable question. The rest of the team were all athletes. They pumped air, did grueling hours of yoga and martial arts, ran, swam, worked the rings. Cipher was a couch potato right to the eyes.

"Crystal Maze was a special situation," Acacia said. "I knew we'd need him more than we needed the other categories. Here, we know from the preliminary notes-" She lifted a thin sheaf of notes entitled "California Voodoo," then dropped it again. "-that no Gaming category is dominant."

She checked through her own equipment as she considered. "Prez? Work with me for a minute."

"Prez" Coolidge, the tall, stocky African-American, slid an assegai out of his back sheath. The spear balanced like a willow wand in his gigantic hand. He flicked on the monitor, and a holographic blade projected over the slender sensor. Gyro switched on. Acacia dropped the Virtual shield in front of her face, and the spear became even sharper and more fearsome.

"What it boils down to, people, is that we're the best-balanced team that I could assemble. Cipher is our voodoka, so to speak-" Acacia weaved to the side and, despite Terrance's best parry, touched him along the ribs.

He was fast faster than she remembered, actually, but Panthesilea was the wind. Her parries and strikes were economical and unpredictable. Her every attack followed a new angle, created a new rhythm.

After a thirty-second display of swordsmanship that left the others speechless, she called it off.

" Suberbia. Gracias. Now-" She noted her heartbeat as it began its swift descent to a stable 50. "Cipher will save our hash as often as we save his. We protect him, and take his physical skills into account exactly as if we lived the adventure. From the moment we enter California Voodoo until it ends, I want everyone in character. That means during the breaks. That's at night during the rest. We think, eat, sleep as a team. And if you get lucky and tepee-creep to the bushes, by God you'd better screw in character, too."

They nodded, and chuckled a little.

A knock at the door, and a rounded older man with a peeling sunburn entered. "Elmo Whitman," he said. "I'm here for final check on Virtual diagnostics. Helmets and headsets, please."

Every player had a different headset, but in the most important particulars they were alike. Liquid-crystal visors could clear to become transparent; these gave each player his enhanced senses. Scouts could see paths, Wizards could see auras, Thieves were sensitive to treasure or hidden doors. These things appeared to them as overlays on the basic designs of prop, makeup, and hologram.

Steffie went first. Her helmet was ultralight, not much more than silvered goggles and earpieces. The complete illusion could be accurately conveyed despite the streamlined equipment.

El Whitman ran it through a complete diagnostic. "Please hum what you hear."

"La lala la lalala."

"All right. Fine. Next-"

Major Terry Clavell inhaled sharply as he entered the locker room. He tried to suppress a rather childish grin and, he believed, succeeded grandly.

His team looked ready. Clavell was wishing he knew them better.

Corporal Waters was in because of his IFGS experience, he'd never played in the armed forces war games. It might make all the difference.

Lieutenant Madonna Philips was a thirtyish, hatchet-faced brunette with a linebacker's drive and a cheerleader's body. She was here because Waters had insisted that they needed a woman. "Men and women keep secrets from each other in most cultures," he'd said. "If we're all men or all women, we'll miss some of the briefings."

Philips had silvered in fencing at the '48 Olympics before joining the Army. She was wearing a chain-mail bikini, as useless a piece of fighting gear as could be imagined, and not a man was looking at her narrow, angular face.

Mind on business. "Evil," he said sharply. "Is the team in order?"

General Harry "Evil" Poule snapped to attention and saluted. Clavell enjoyed the moment. Pulling rank on a general! At another place and time, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the general would certainly make him pay, but for now…

"Everything is in order, sir. Except that Black Elk needs a new ROM for his spell computer. Some of his blessings come out as seduction spells."

"Can't have that. Get on it."

The general was junior to Clavell in Gaming experience. He'd pulled rank to get in and he still wouldn't be there save for his willingness to retrain, to upgrade his sword- and stick-fighting; and literally because he might frighten the other

Gamers.

He was a frightening man. At fifty-four years of age he had seen combat in six tough NATO war games and countless simulation drills. He bore an awesome collection of scars, and he loomed over Clavell like a battered mountain.

Playing as Warrior and Scout, "Evil" Poule was a big, powerful blue-eyed blond of mainly Scots ancestry. Once he must have been built like a basketball player. Now his thin hair wrapped a fist-sized bald spot on the back of his head. His belly was grotesque but as hard as a drum. Poule would order junior lieutenants to punch him in the belly. It didn't sag; it rode squarely between his short ribs, making him look like he'd swallowed a smallish liberal Democrat.

Giving orders to a general was going to be awkward for Clavell. It would help if he could swallow his grin… "General, you've been in Gaming A… four times?"

" Yes sir, Blue Team all four times, won three."

"Have an opinion on what's coming?"

"Corporal Waters has studied a lot of Games within the last month. Waters?"

The youngest member of the team spoke up. "The usual mistake seems to be hotdogging. I expect that to be a problem on Bishop's team. Gamers tend to go for publicity, whereas our only mission is to win."

Clavell could trust that opinion: Waters was a Gaming addict. He had entered basic training stringy and soft. The Army had put muscle on him. He was still no Schwarzenegger, A., but he looked like he could trot through a war game without breathing hard.

Better yet-"Waters, you're here because you know Gaming Dome B. We've always used Gaming A for war games because it's bigger. This time they tell me-"

"They tell you right, sir." Waters remembered the sir, but he did like to interrupt. "Just because there are thirty of us doesn't mean they can't fit us all into B, or even something smaller. We could have a locked room mystery, or a Star Trek clone with transporter rooms, no real distances involved. Or they could use B and A and link them with a temporary tunnel. Bring in the Gravity Whip, too." The corporal grinned. "You just never know with Dream Park."

"You're familiar with the A Dome, too." Not a question: Waters's record showed that he'd played the South Seas Treasure Game eight years earlier, shortly before he joined the Army. "In fact, you played as an Engineer. You should have told me that. "

"No sir. My Engineer got killed out, dead-dead. There's nothing left, no skill points, no talents. I had to build my Scout/Thief from scratch."

Pity. And Waters didn't seem to want to talk about it. Clavell asked him, ''What do you think they'll hand us?"

"Sir, if you were a cartoonist, what could you do with a concept like California Voodoo?"

They debated the question. They had all been in Gaming A, four repeatedly. Waters hadn't been in there since the South Seas Treasure Game, but he'd been four times in B. Dream Park might give them permutations of A and B. secret connecting tunnels and trapdoors, sliding elevators and walkways, the possible integration of rides such as the Gravity Whip… they could hope for that. If Gamers found themselves unexpectedly required to perform in free-fall, Army would win that test.

The infernal ingenuity of Dream Park filled their time while they stretched, and dropped afterthought items into their packs, and rechecked each other's equipment and their own.

Expect anything.

Clavell believed he was ready for that.

Acacia took the elevator down. The tube car disengaged, slid sideways into another slot, and presently opened into the train station.

The tension had started to build. Acacia's stomach ate at her. She couldn't think or plan or project into the future now. Only the next moment was real.

The train was small. Five small shuttle cars labeled TexMits, U of C, Gen-Dyn, Army, Apple and a bubble-domed club car hovered two feet above a maglev rail sheathed in non-conducting foam plastic.

There were hundreds of spectators standing behind the security lines. Most wore costumes, though the quality varied from hologram-augmented alien creatures to twenty feet of Doctor Who scarf. They cheered and chanted the names of their favorites and held placards aloft. Some UClink, TEX-MITS were mere scrawls, or elaborate calligraphy in several colors. Some from GEN-DYN were 3-D displays. Psychedelic Day-Glo 1960s letters twisted in the air to spell ARMY! A toothy apple chewed up Apple Computer rivals and snapped at spectators.

Acacia's mood took a palpable upswing. Difficult not to, with such a send-off!

With very conscious grace she swayed to the rear of the platform. Without breaking stride she tossed her hair over her shoulder, a much-practiced gesture that brought all of the carefully nurtured highlights to the fore. In the same motion she stooped and entered the U of C compartment with the easy flow of an eel.

Her team followed. They stowed their gear under the seats. Captain Cipher reclined his chair, ready to snatch a last nap, while the rest gazed out the windows at the crowd.

Steffie said, "Quite a show, eh?"

"Quite a show." Acacia felt her skin tingle. Regardless of the surroundings, regardless of what anything seemed to be, the Game had begun.

Laughter and a tinkle of glasses echoed down the corridor. The connecting passageways were open. Somewhat curious, she motioned to the others, and together they streamed down the passageway to the club car.

They had to go past the other compartments. Two cars were still empty, but backpacks, helmets, and weapons were scattered on the seats of the Army and Texas Instruments-Mitsubishi cars. In the club car they found others waiting.

The Army players had clustered along one side of the bar, as if for defence. Five men and one woman, with Lieutenant Philips in the center. She'd changed out of that silly chain-mail outfit. A tall woman with long bones and long, hard muscles, she was dressed for rugged terrain, with lots of pockets and a saber on her back-hey, that chain-mail bikini was just a ploy, wasn't it? A fairly sophisticated one.

Beneath their expected stiffness the Army boys looked uneasy-except one. One had dancing eyes and a smile just for Panthesilea.

She said, "Congratulations, Corporal."

He glanced at his shoulders. "No stripes showing."

"I hear things. Damn, you grew muscles! You look a lot better than last time we met. Then again, you were two days' dead."

"Then again, I was a wimp. That's why I joined up. Today I think I can outrun you, Panthesilea. "

She laughed. "You are more than welcome to try, Waters. Meanwhile, what do you suppose is happening to your odds in Vegas?" She rounded the bar without waiting for an answer.

She knew the Tex-Mits crew by names and rankings, knew their Gaming histories in detail, even if she didn't know them all as individuals. Ozzie the Pike, bearded and capped in steel with a Virtual visor, grinned at her in open admiration, a feedback loop that pleased them both. Friar Duck smiled at her and babbled happily, the buzzing gibberish of a still-famous movie star. But Alphonse Nakagawa sprawled back against the wet bar, sipping orange juice, loose and gawky, hostile grey eyes following her.

"Small world. Panthesilea herself."

His apparent awkwardness didn't deceive her. Acacia had seen Al the Barbarian in recorded combat. He seemed to coast on invisible ice skates. He had incongruously blue eyes, and a deep, golden tan to go with that jarring accent.

She said, " No, we sent this duplicate instead. Much cheaper, but still too good for you."

"I ain't drunk enough to listen to this shit." His hostility made Acacia uneasy. Friar Duck, embarrassed, turned back to the bar.

So: this concerned nothing that Al the B could share with his team. Could he know that Nigel had been in his room? With anything more than a suspicion, he could complain to the IFGS.

So why the attitude? At this stage in the Game, wouldn't he normally be seeking an alliance? Or pretending to? Unless he had some unbeatable advantage…

Unless he could set her to watching and wondering about Al the B, instead of reacting to current events as in Nigel's translation of The Art of War. The book was thousands of years old, by a Chinese named Sun-tzu, and was still relevant: "Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength…"

If Alphonse simulated anger, he might only be trying to make her think he was out of control.

She smiled blissfully at him.

The Troglodykes were already squeezing through into the club car. Acacia did a quick survey. There was room for maybe fifty people, if they were all friendly, if only a handful wanted to sit. Normally that would mean room for, oh, twenty-five Gamers.

The crowding could be deliberate. No room to fight, but they could bicker.

A bar box slid down the counter and politely inquired as to her choice of beverage. She asked for fizzy grape juice, and it spritzed her a merry concoction, swiveling to place it before her.

She sauntered up to Tammi Romati, who was peering out the window. "And so it begins."

She got a wolfish smile in return. "Place your bets, Panthesilea. Where are we being taken?"

Acacia shrugged. "Nowhere in Dream Park. The Army team's going nuts. Fifty man-years of experience in Gaming A, straight into the recycler."

"I mean in Game reality."

"California Voodoo Game. Voodoo as it i s practiced in California. Usually called santeria? Our notes say it has wealthy patrons. Out of the barrio and into the boardroom."

"Is that an answer?"

"No hablo ingles," Acacia said. And she almost leapt up as Nigel entered the car.

There was a momentary hush. Then conversations returned to their former level. The rest of the Gen-Dyn team followed him in. Holly Frost, Thief, remembered her and lifted a spear in salute. Acacia hadn't met Trevor Stone or

Tamasan, the Japanese-looking Shinto priest; but she'd read their dossiers. The Radichevs were impressively muscled Warriors, a married couple who Gamed and fought as a team, and generally died that way, too. Why had Nigel picked them? Or had Gen-Dyn assigned them, like Trevor Stone?

The door sealed shut behind them, and Nigel worked his way up to the front, making eye contacts as he came.

Al the Barbarian… His eyes lit, burned on Nigel, and then he turned his back. Suppressed rage? Jealousy? Al might know what we did, she reminded herself. Watch your back.

With a barely audible hum, the train began to move.

Nigel gave Acacia a single wolfish grin before he turned to the bar just in time to miss what was happening beyond the windows.