The California Voodoo Game

9

Thursday, July 21, 2059 7:16 A.M.

Well-wishers, Gamers, media gadflies… all waved good-bye. But in the last twenty seconds or so before the train slid into darkness, they'd mutated subtly.

Acacia could see it in their stance (beaten down, prematurely old), their clothing (primitive, crudely made), the plaintive expressions on their gaunt faces. Crude placards in paint or charcoal on wooden boards read "Godspeed to our united forces," "Power to the Five Peoples!'' "Crystal, come back to us."

Then they were lost in darkness. The mundane world slipped away from her. If she were to survive here, Acacia had to become Panthesilea, she of a dozen epochs, a hundred missions, and a thousand deadly skills.

The train floated silently through a black tunnel. A voice said, "Somebody get the lights?"

Tammi bellowed, "Lights!'' The car shuddered slightly. "Lights? Dammit."

The sensors didn't respond to a verbal command. Circles of golden light glimmered in the hands of various players: here a magic aura, there a flashlight, there a corpse candle. Grins were yellow-white arcs. It begins!

"All right. Let's see if I can find the circuit," Corporal S. J. Waters volunteered. He reached high, along the rim of the roof, for something his special vision must have pointed out: a metal panel Acacia hadn't noticed at all. He thumbed it open. He jiggled a few wires, and one of the big windows lit up and became a vidscreen.

A somber woman dressed in grey tones faced them across a worn, wooden desk. Her shoulders were slumped with care, her face heavily lined. She looked like George Washington in drag. "Greetings, once again," she said. Her eyes and chin flicked sideways for an instant, as if she feared eavesdroppers.

An uneasy ripple of murmurs ran through the club car. The image said, "I must add a few words to what has gone before-"

Army Lieutenant Madonna Philips snapped, "Before what?"

"Quiet!" Bishop commanded. Philips glared.

"…true that you must cooperate with the other four cohorts. But you six have a greater obligation, and a greater destiny. "

Acacia's mind whirred. "California Voodoo," the game's artfully vague information packet, had arrived on her fax a week earlier, although the title had been known for months. Twenty single-spaced pages contained just enough information to tantalize, and to send frantic Loremasters on a frenzied last-minute data hunt.

But this was the real briefing. She triggered a recorder at her belt pod, knowing that a dozen other hands were doing the same thing.

So far, she was pretty certain that the vid had been "accidentally" triggered. This was to have played to only one… cohort. She glanced down the corridor. Screens were alight in the shuttle cars, too.

"Two hundred years ago, the Age of Miracles ended. Earthquakes, pollution, global warming, and famine struck a world already drastically overpopulated. Nuclear, chemical, and genetic warfare followed. Nations fell, supplanted by isolated states and townships. Through years of delicate negotiating, diplomatic communication between the five great North American enclaves has been reestablished but much unpleasant history has had to be censored to control public opinion. What I was pledged not to say to you, but find I must say, is: Do not trust the others."

A hush stole over the car. Beneath Acacia's feet the train hummed toward its destination. Vaguely, through the partial shadows, she saw the silhouettes of other Adventurers as they nodded uneasily. Teeth gleamed.

"Meacham's Folly is the world's last hope, true enough. There, across the desert, lies the last working power plant capable of running a city. We had neither the resources to reach it, nor the means, until a robot repair system on the old tramway was activated. That required cooperation among the five enclaves. It is therefore reasonable and right that each enclave send emissaries to MIMIC.

"It is also prudent. With the fall of technology, the old magic returned with a vengeance. Arcane techniques useless for centuries have become viable once again. Whether due to human mutation or a shift in the Earth's magnetic field, no one knows. But you have as many magicians and clerics among you as soldiers and scouts.

"By common agreement no team carries guns. Guns would make it too easy for one team to slay another in its sleep.

"For, mark my words: as soon as you have reached MIMIC, scouted its mysteries, and determined what will be needed to conquer it, at that moment the other teams will have no further use for you. They will try to slay you. You must be alert, and dispose of them when the opportunity arises."

Now the grumbling in the car was audible. Acacia's ribs itched, expecting a dagger's point at any moment. Instead she felt a vulnerable back pressed against her in the darkness. Her hand wandered toward her own dagger… and paused.

Who knew what skills would be needed? The woman on the vid had said, "After you have scouted out MIMIC…"

After.

Defeat might well be the penalty for killing off another member too soon. She would have to wait and see.

The woman was winding up her spiel. "My brave ones, you fight for all of us. You are the best of us. You are our only hope. Do not fail us."

The image flickered and died. Moments later the train emerged into daylight. Gamers blinked out at a yellow-white desert whipping past them in eerie silence.

They watched each other cautiously, all amusement suspended. Which team was expected to play the double-cross game? Thumbs edged nervously toward daggers. Magical staffs and shields glowed at low level.

Nigel Bishop raised his hands. "My friends-" he began, with such high-octane sincerity that no one protested his presumption. They waited and grinned and nodded when he continued. "-and trusted allies. We love our cities, but their war, and their past, is their own. We are sent to start a new world! Surely we can leave the treachery of the past behind us? Surely we need not accept their legacy of hatred?"

The Bishop was in his pulpit, and his congregation was in thrall.

There were solemn or half-solemn nods. Hands dropped away from blades. The teams turned to each other, faces wreathed with saccharine smiles, and brawny arms draped about broad shoulders.

Looks like Christmas Eve on Death Row.

The train raced a few feet above the brown-and-yellow desert, at just under the speed of sound. Here windblown sand had covered the track. The train shivered slightly, but magnetic levitation didn't fail. They passed a forest of worn metal stumps, and suddenly Acacia knew where they were. Those had once been hundreds of propellers turning on posts: experimental designs for windmills. That made this the Mojave, north of Joshua Tree National Monument; and hundreds of years in the future, given what time and wind had done to those propeller mounts. Or had it been the hot breath of a thermonuclear fire-mushroom?

Time had made other changes. Plants close to the shuttle track flashed by too quickly for detail. But those farther away seemed… alien. Like twisted, mutated skeletons. Joshua trees had been weird enough, but stranger plants had invaded.

So this was the world shaped by… ecological disaster? A shift in the earth's magnetic field? Biochemical weapons to cause genetic mutation? Whatever; but the woman had spoken of magic, too.

Of course, that could be mere superstition. Acacia played her recording back into her earpiece. One never could tell what one might find concealed in a briefing.

The Adventurers crowded close, shifting like seabottom currents as some sought access to the bar. Old friendships were here, and new ones forming. No Gamer would trust another forever, but Gamers took relaxation when they could.

Trevor Stone of Gen-Dyn was a brawny middle-aged Englishman, a Gamer before Dream Park erected the Domes. He was second-in-command on Bishop's team. He was speaking of the old days, and most of the University team was lapping it up.

"We used any kind of land we could get access to. Marsh, mountains, whatever. Once we used a Scottish castle. We'd march four groups through the Game site in a day…"

Funny how no team had returned to their private cars. Were they wondering, as Acacia had, whether it was possible to detach one of the cars, seal it off, and simply leave it stranded in the desert?

"So we weren't supposed to use the whole bloody castle, because it was up for sale-the rental agency had made the arrangement with us, and they were also showing parts of it to prospective customers. Movie people, a bed-and-breakfast outfit, so forth. We went through the wrong door at full battle alert, and found ourselves face to face with a Girl Scout troop. The Loremaster stared at them for a moment-there we were dressed up like mad folk, you know, swinging these great padded swords and axes. I think the lassies were close to fainting and our Loremaster says to the Game Master, 'Do we see this?' "

Steele and Prez looked puzzled. Top Nun said, "Pray tell, what then, bubele?"

A shrug and a smile. "It wasn't in the Game. The Game Master shook his head, the Loremaster waved his hand and said, 'Away phantoms,' and back we marched to the other room. We could hear the girls going doololly, and couldn't really blame 'em."

Cheerful he was, and most amused by his own story. It was a dominance game, of course, even if largely unrecognised. Acacia understood the code.

You challenge me? Trevor was saying with polite incredulity. I've been at this infinitely longer than you have, children. I'm the Hazard from Afar.

His eyes flickered to Bishop and back. His smile lost some of its life. Acacia amended Stone's internal monologue: and I should have been the bloody Loremaster, not that upstart Bishop.

A thin, sharp elbow in her ribs. Zulu Warrior "Prez" Coolidge was pointing with his nose, through the window and ahead of the train. She looked.

Hills loomed, and something angular, artificial, hard to see because it was the same sand color as the slopes. She'd seen it before, or something like it, but where? The half-buried track was a ridge in the sand, curving left toward that building… that very distant, tremendous building.

And the ride was becoming bumpy. Acacia remembered riding an imitation mining car at Dream Park, dodging avalanches, rocking back and forth as dynamite explosions thundered about her, and holding on tight to…

Tony McWhirter?

Yes and she smiled to herself, a sad, lost smile that vanished like a drop of sweet moisture on an oven window…

This felt the same. And the sound was the same She and Twan barked simultaneously, "Buckle in!"

Easier said than done. Massing in the club car had been a mistake: twenty chairs divided by thirty Gamers equals chaos. Acacia got into a seat somehow. Other Gamers pushed through the door and into the shuttle cars. They were still swarming when the train underwent a lurching deceleration.

That was what her eyes had been trying to tell her mind. She couldn't see the end of the track! It ended under a hill of dirt or sand.

The train shuddered and ripped apart. The club car grated over rock on its metal belly. Just outside the windows, one of the shuttle cars was rolling, bouncing, jolting, getting the shape pounded out of it. Friar Duck was ripped from his seat and went rolling along the bar, yelling, thudding into more bodies. Acacia closed her eyes as screams rang out in the constricted space.

The car's nose was smashed violently sideways. The car rolled, sliding uphill, and came to rest on its side in a final lethal lurch. The scream of grit or sand or dirt grinding in gears ran down to a destructive halt.

"What happened?" Major Clavell yelled.

The air was filled with moans, whimpers of disbelief, and a few muttered prayers of gratitude or oaths of vengeance.

"This damn door is wedged closed." That sounded like the normally unflappable Twan, and Acacia managed a smile.

Somebody got a flashlight working. She saw a mass of bodies, a bizarre forest of arms and legs sticking up and waving about. Corrinda promised Mouser castration unless he removed a strategic portion of his anatomy from her eye.

A creak. The door was opening. As it did, a torrent of sand and dirt flowed into the compartment, half burying Trevor Stone before it stopped.

Acacia wiggled toward the door. It was overhead now. Sand trickled down into her face. She lowered her visor. Surrounded by the harsh rasp of her own breathing, she crawled up and out, gasping, using knees and elbows. Once free, she grabbed Trevor's big, bony hand, braced herself, and pulled until he had leverage to make his own way.

He was puffing. "Thank you, Miss… Panthesilea?" He had big square teeth, too perfect to be all his.

The tram was half buried in a spill of rocks and sand. She skinned elbows and shoulders crawling up.

Cracked, even earth and ruined ridges of sunbaked mountains surrounded them. She turned as a spray of cool mist wet her cheeks, and found herself looking straight up along a sheer cliff-a cliff partly made by men.

It was the largest building she had ever seen. It wasn't tall-though a twenty-story fall will kill-but its weather-blasted, sand-scraped, dull red walls stretched perhaps a mile along the base, bending to fit the contours of the mountain. Twisted, ruined cables dangled free from its east face, swinging in a wind that blew from somewhere in the south. Halfway down the building, a row of immense, raised stone letters spelled the word MIMIC.

Water cascaded from the rooftop, tumbling in the early light like a fall of emeralds. It impacted with balconies or outcroppings until only a fine spray reached the ground, deflected into them by that mild southern wind.

MIMIC seemed completely abandoned. The windows were all sealed up, and there was no obvious means of entry.

The slope of sand and rock had been part of the natural cliff. The Quake of '95-or a later one? — must have caused an avalanche. Hundreds of tons of rock covered the maglev track.

Over later centuries sand had softened the contours of the rubble slope. It still stood four stories high. The six cars following the track had slammed into it, ripped loose from their magnetic confinement, and continued moving uphill until their momentum was lost. The club car had reached the third story. The five shuttle cars hadn't gotten that far. Gamers were crawling out and up toward Acacia.

Acacia got her heart back down out of her throat and turned to her companions.

There were only thirty Adventurers. Hardly enough to search a single floor. That mountain of masonry could be full of…

Anything. Or Things.

With a spate of coughing and sputtering, a thin, muscular arm waved up out of the passenger compartment, seeking assistance or purchase. Acacia grasped it. She heaved with all of the considerable muscle in her back and long steely legs, and hauled Twan up.

The wind whistled low.

"Formidable. "

Acacia nodded. "At least they have water. Probably power, too."

"An Engineer, and a Scout." Twan snapped her fingers twice. "Evacuation, then evaluation-" She stopped, and seemed to be wrestling with a notion. "Panthesilea?"

Acacia nodded acknowledgment.

"Truce. Straight up. Twenty-four hours." Twan's oval, very Asian face was firmed by resolve.

"Can you control Tammi?" the Warrior-woman asked. "She wants my ass. Pardon. My hide."

A tiny smile. "Affirmative."

Acacia glanced at her watch-7:46 A.M.-and thrust out her hand. "All right. Truce." They soberly extended hands, touched thumbs, and waggled their fingers to and fro. Neither laughed.

The wind spawned dust devils at MIMIC's base. They danced away into the distance, or dissolved in the wet spray to the south.

There were no lights in any of the windows, and when she scanned the grounds around them, there was nothing but desolation, and a long, low ridge of dusty mountains.

Acacia called, "Aces!"

"Yo!" Steffie Wilde was still down in the car. She lifted her bullcy pack through a window. Acacia helped her with it, and then hoisted Steffie out.

"All right. We need a way in. "

"Pathfinder, do your stuff." "Aces" Wilde punched a combination code into a bracelet, and her face visor glowed.

The Scout would be seeing details denied to Acacia the Warrior. Acacia flipped her visor up and watched the entire building.

It was pitted and streaked, as if a thousand years of neglect had all but destroyed one of the great giants of architecture. This was Meacham's building, wrecked by the '95 Quake-the place they called "Meacham's Folly."

But within the California Voodoo Game, the facts would vary. What had she heard of MIMIC? In her… girlhood in the enclave? Yes. Had Panthesilea known of it? What would she know?

Aces lowered her glasses. "Fourth level. See? There's a ledge, and it's marked for entry."

Acacia strained, but couldn't make it out. "Marked for entry?"

"Oh, yeah-someone's in there all right. Count on it. We might be watched right now."

Acacia's hand unconsciously strayed to the blade at her belt. "All right. Keep a watch. Let's get everyone out."

The teams had to split up and somehow get into their various half-buried shuttle cars to get their gear. Major Clavell supervised the extraction of two of his team members, but he was repeatedly distracted.

"Corporal," he said under his breath. "Where are we? This is real, isn't it?"

"It's real," SJ said. "Smell the wind, Toto. I don't think we're in Dream Park anymore."

Together they hauled Black Elk up, Clavell muttering, "Serious snafu. We'd better revise tactics, and fast. First break, report to me."

But SJ was staring up at the Folly, his expression somewhere between anger and admiration.

Despite their growing alarm, within three minutes all Army personnel and equipment were out of the train, armed and ready to go.

"Trevor!" Bishop yelled. "Find us a way in." His voice was abrupt, imperious. Trevor Stone's eyes narrowed, but he pulled Aces aside and began to confer.

They formed in single file, staggered with no real concern for teams, and worked their way up a fall of twisted rocks and construction rubble. The mound was so weathered that it took Mouser and SJ, both experienced Scouts, twenty minutes to pick their way to the fourth floor.

Footholds and handholds had been cut by unknown artisans. It was true: others had been here. Somewhere in MIMIC, frightened eyes might be watching. Angry lips were whispering deadly secrets somewhere out of sight. MIMIC seemed impossibly old and evil.

Hands hovered above weapons.

Stifle the melodrama, Acacia snapped at herself. One step at a time.

It was hard not to pay attention to her instincts, hard not to wonder, not to speculate.

One step at a time.

She extended a helping hand to Black Elk. A moment later, he saved her from a twisted ankle. One step. Then another. And another.

And then they were at the top; they had climbed a tumbled fall of rocks that took them to the brink of the fourth floor, only five feet from the window.

Behind her there was a commotion. Boards were pulled out of a heap of rubble and passed forward. Alphonse said, "Looks like these are used in an emergency. Must be a more reliable system inside. Let's see."

Alphonse, moving with the assurance of a circus acrobat, helped them steady the boards against the ledge. He tested it with a halberd, felt the board jiggle, and then looked down: a nasty spill. Not fatal, but it would probably incapacitate.

"I can make it, but I'm not sure-" Alphonse said.

"Then move aside, darlin'," Mary-em said, and tested the board with a booted foot. "Piece of cake."

She spread her arms out for balance and tested one board, then the other. When she was satisfied, she strolled jauntily across.

She hunkered down onto hands and knees to peer through the window. Then she nodded as if confirming something. "Dark in there,'' she called back. She wiped at the sill with a gloved hand. "No dust. Somebody's been here. Recently. This is it."

She drew a torch from her belt and shone it around inside. Then she crawled in.

Acacia's nerves burned for a few moments, and then Mary-em reappeared. Now she had another plank of some light plastic. It was broad, with raised rounded edges, like a big chunk of surfboard. She laid it atop the other boards, anchored it on her end, and beckoned them across.

And what would Panthesilea be feeling? The wind was still moaning. The entry was open to hidden and hideous dangers. Their transport was six smashed maglev cars.

Acacia played with Panthesilea's thoughts. How are we going to get home? What if the legends are wrong? We could all die here.

She was giving herself the creeps, and it was her turn to cross the bridge. She sheathed her sword and stepped carefully across. Just before she stepped into the window she took one last glance at the outside world.

In for a penny, in for a pound…

Panthesilea hopped inside, leaving the world of the known behind her.