The California Voodoo Game

12

The cargo elevator doors slid shut.

There was a long, hushed pause, quiet breathing, no talking.

Each of the hundreds of Mallbeasts listened or watched anxiously for some sign of approval, dismissal, or reproach. Doris Whitman's husky voice growled over hidden speakers: "All right, people that's a wrap!"

Three hundred miscellaneous ghouls and were-creatures cheered. Thaddeus Harmony, sometime Chief of Operations of Dream Park, temporary leader of the Mallbeasts? exhaled a long sigh of relief.

Beside him, a slender Mallbeast smiled. Flabby thin lips pulled up in grotesque mirth, exposing yellowed fangs. It slapped him on the back, jovially. Harmony's was a large back, a reminder of his short, intense career in pro football.

"Not bad," the smaller creature said. "Ever wonder if you've missed your true calling?"

"Excuse me while I wring out my shorts. I'm not sure I can do this again."

The were-thing peeled off half a latex mask. Beneath it were radio-controlled air bladders. When triggered in sequence, they inflated and changed hue to nightmarish effect. Harmony knew that the face beneath the remaining makeup was very dark, very pretty, very feminine. It belonged to Millicent Summers, one of Dream Park's top financial-management officers.

Millicent said, "It's a little late to back out now."

"I know, I know," Harmony grumbled as he peeled makeup off. He winced as a bit of stickum caught on a real wart. He popped out a rather canine dental appliance. Most of the prosthetics were designed as three or four interlocking pieces for easy application and removal.

The crowd had thinned out. Dream Park employees who had opted to be Mallbeasts were drifting back to their amusements. On Mall level, there were plentiful amusements to be found.

Three of the restaurants were open for business. Games were available, video, halo, sense, and others. Music rang through the halls. Sensors built into the Virtual scanners kept track of the Gamers. If any of them approached this level, all employees would be altered. Meals, games, or naps would end, and the Mallbeasts would live again.

Millicent was right behind Harmony as he reached the commuter elevator.

"How's Alex?" he asked as the door shushed closed behind them.

"Not good. He's taking Sharon's death pretty hard."

"Getting pretty close, were they?" Harmony looked at Millicent more closely. Her makeup transformed her into a thing of nightmare, broken facial bones fused beneath puffy swollen skin. He dipped his fingers into a running sore and sniffed the glaze that rubbed away. "Smells like cold cream. Ah, my undead Nubian queen…"

She didn't smile, and couldn't meet his eyes.

He stopped chuckling. "Did it hurt? Alex and Sharon?"

She peeled away another section of mask. Only the forehead piece remained now. "Alex and I were always a… convenience for each other. We were both too busy with our careers. It was nice to have somebody nearby to take the edge off. We never considered it a romance."

"Oh," he said in the same tone another man might have said Bullshit. "And?"

"Well, Alex was in deeper than he thought. He's wrung out about it."

The doors opened, and they were in Gaming Central.

A ten-meter skeletal halo of the entire complex rotated majestically in the air. Within it, a glowing green matchbox-sized freight elevator ferried miniature Gamers toward the roof.

Tony McWhirter was at work coordinating the two primary labor pools: the Lopezes, who handled the electronics, and the Whitmans, who handled the Non-Player Characters. For the Gamers, it was a marriage made in hell.

Harmony liked Tony well enough, but would never completely trust him.

McWhirter looked up suddenly, grinning. "Mr. Harmony! I didn't know you had thespic ambitions."

"Yes, well, Millie convinced me that I was the right physical type, and I had to admit it sounded like fun. Who hasn't wanted to play Mister Big? Everything all right here?"

"Some interesting glitches, but we're holding on. And I don't suppose they'll reach Mall level again for twenty-four hours at least. Probably more. Got to sleep sometime. Hi, Millicent."

Harmony asked, "Aren't sleep breaks built into the Game?"

"Not this one. You take it when and where you can but teams that try to get ahead by skipping sleep lose their creative edge. No way to make it through the whole Game in less than forty-eight hours. They had better sleep sometime, that's all I can say." Tony pivoted to face Harmony. "What can I do for you?"

"Looking for Alex. Is he on the roof?"

"No. He was supposed to be." Tony scowled. "Lucky I had a guy big enough. Harry Lessenger, he already looks like a surfer, but I have to keep feeding him lines." He whistled a short, high note, and barked, "Roof, roof."

The hole image cut to the top level. Revelers were partying throughout a primitive village mockup, making up rain dances, trying to climb the little glassy-smooth pyramid, sunbathing, and in general having a wonderful time. They were in a holding pattem: the five-minute warning buzzer had sounded, and they were ready for the ten-second trill that would put them completely in character, ready for the appearance of the Gamers.

"Sharon's death just flatlined him," Tony said.

"Easy to understand. So where is he?"

"At DP, I'd guess. He won't talk to me."

Harmony's big, round face drooped. "Well… hell. I guess we'll go and check in on him there."

Tony watched them leave. When they were out of sight, he used a monitor to follow them into an elevator and down.

Then he caused a tiny window to appear on another monitor screen. Wearing a bland, not-quite-bored look, he watched statistics stream by.

The Army team had slipped from third to last place.

Now they knew it in Vegas: Califomia Voodoo wasn't being played in Dream Park. Army's odds were falling. The Army had played dozens of successful games in Gaming A, but had a mediocre record elsewhere.

The Universities of Califomia ran just behind the Troglodykes right now. Best odds. But Vegas didn't know what was coming next.

Whistling to himself, Tony manipulated his bank account, placed a quiet little bet against Tammi and Twan, routed through carefully constructed cutouts. With the right system in place, bets could be placed and collected without revealing his identity, without any direct contact at all. What he was doing was illegal, and unethical, and probably endangered his immortal soul. Therein lay the interest.

There were several kinds of bets he could place. How long would the Game last? Who would win? What would the point spread be? There were ways for an ingenious lad to make money, and all without hurting anyone. Right, Albert?

It was a thrill to watch the odds changing in Vegas or Atlantic City. Intoxicating to feel the constant ebb and flow of the numbers as a high roller dropped a really big bet, changing the odds. The bookies made their own adjustments. A bookie never lost big, never won big. The house always took a steady, even percentage, three to six percent or so. Suckers played the other suckers, unless one sucker was really a house in disguise.

Tony McWhirter felt like playing house.

According to Alex Griffin's secretary, he wasn't in his office and hadn't been in his apartment. He was still right there at MIMIC, in the personal quarters of the late Sharon Crayne.

Millicent pursed her lips. "Figures."

Harmony spoke briefly to the elevator. It programmed itself and headed off toward Sharon's apartment.

"You know…" Millicent was staring straight ahead. He'd seen her do that in confined spaces. "I've wondered if I broke something when I left Security."

"How so?"

"We were a team, sort of. Me and Alex and Marty Bobbick. When Alex came down from Tacoma he slipped right into harness, but we were there to help. Always."

The box sighed to a halt, and the door slid open.

The hallway was empty and sepulchrally silent. When they reached Sharon's door, they were almost reluctant to open it. The diagonal red slash of a Security sticker read Entrance denied.

"And?"

"And I left. And right after, we found out Marty was rotten." She shivered. "And Alex hasn't been the same. It's not easy for him to let anyone in. Or even close. When he finally tries to open up with Sharon, this." She looked down again. "He and I were safe together, you know. We both knew it was going nowhere." Her brown eyes were very deep and numbed. With pity? Pain? "Safe."

Harmony thumbed the door, and the Security sticker faded.

There was dim light in the hallway, with brighter light farther on. He heard a faint scrabbling sound, the kind of sound a crab might make scuttling across rocks.

Harmony stepped in, following the light, and found Alex near the kitchen. He was seated on a plastic chair, sorting a pile of paper and plastic. There was another pile, of discards, to his left.

He looked as if he hadn't slept in a day and a half.

"Hello, Alex," Harmony said quietly.

Alex nodded to them. Millicent hung back. Something in Alex's eyes had shifted unpleasantly.

Then their eyes met, and he was friendly old Alex again, smiling crookedly. "I'm just… cross-referencing."

"I see," Harmony said. "And you've been here all night?"

"Here, or on the horn to Tacoma, or on the computers."

"What are you looking for, Alex?" Harmony hitched his pants and squatted next to his friend.

"I–I've only got a couple of ways to look at this," Alex said mechanically. "First, her death was an accident. She went to meet a lover, and she slipped. Or else it wasn't so innocent." He blinked. "A: She was murdered by someone with no interest in Cowles Industries. B: She met with someone antagonistic to Cowles, but died accidentally. C: She was murdered by an enemy of the company.

"If she was compromised, I have to see how someone could get his hooks in her. I'm building backwards. I want to know if there was anything that she wanted…"

That you couldn't give her, Millicent said silently.

Millicent groped behind herself and found a box to sit on, and Harmony a chair. They pulled up close to Alex in the synthetic dusk. Millicent stopped wanting to turn on the ceiling lights. Somehow, it seemed important to leave things just the way they were.

"This is the way I reasoned," Alex said dully. "Assume the worst. Assume that she got involved in something illegal. She met someone to exchange something. It had nothing to do with sex."

Why, Alex? Is it easier to think she was a traitor to Cowles Inc. than to your bed?

"The assumption I made," Alex said, "is that the timing of her arrival was important. She needed to be close to MIMIC, and to me." He winced, blinking again.

"Why you, Alex?"

"She needed information."

Harmony scratched his head. "But all she had to do was wait a month or so, and she would have been second-in-command of MIMIC. And there would be more valuable information and material there."

Alex nodded. "She needed it faster. Why? She knew the security system better than I did. She knew more about the tenants who will move in. There's something here now that won't be here later, or someone needs something fast."

"She would have had access to accounting operations," Millicent said reluctantly. "Also engineering designs, confidential correspondence with participating corporations not to mention Gaming Central."

"But the time pressure? I keep thinking about the California Voodoo Game."

Harmony's eyes were distant. "Yeah. Maybe she placed some bets. She knew secrets; she could watch the Game Masters. Maybe she was meeting a bookie, or someone to place a bet for her… nah. She could have done that over the phone."

"But it's an angle," Alex agreed. "If she had a partner, and she exchanged something physical, like a key or a bubble chip, then a face-to-face meeting might be valuable." He sighed. "There are just too many possibilities."

Millicent paused and then offered her contribution almost shyly. "Listen, Alex. I can go through payroll, find her bank codes. I could find out whether large payments were going in and out of her accounts. Might indicate gambling, blackmail, that sort of thing."

Harmony sat, silent, until he realized that both of them were waiting for him to speak. "As Head of Operations, I have a lot of indirect power. I just don't know where to push. What do you want?"

"Let's see if we can expand her dossier, Thaddeus. And then I want Norman Vail to go over it. I want to know if Sharon would have been vulnerable to blackmail, bribery, coercion of any kind. I want to know what her flaw was. After that mess with Marty, I ran a high-level check on everyone with access to critical data."

"Everyone at Dream Park," Millicent corrected gently. "Sharon was with Cowles Inc."

Harmony stood. "I'll get on it, Alex." Alex didn't look up. Harmony waited an embarrassed moment, then left the room.

Millicent remained behind. Alex sat staring at the objects in his hand. He seemed like a husk. All of his physical and mental potential was there, and deep within his private recesses the engines were roaring. But they weren't hooked up to anything. Without the engagement of gears he was like a glass shell over a furnace. If she touched the shell, it would be warm. Lukewarm. But there was a fire within that couldn't burn to the surface.

She laid a hand on his neck. His skin was cool.

He turned his head and looked up at her. His green eyes seemed almost black. "Could I have been so wrong?" It was a plea. He needed sleep, but was far too wound up now. She wished she could take his hand, lead him to bed…

But she couldn't. To see this Alex, this face he had never shown her, let her know that things could never be the same between them.

How had Sharon slipped past Alex's defences as she, Millicent, never had? She could read his face: Alex was afraid it hadn't been his choice at all. That he had been snared as neatly as one of Harmony's marlins.

So for that moment of terrible vulnerability, she held his head, and he leaned it against her. Alex shook himself like a tired old horse and said, "I've got some things I need to finish here, okay?"

Almost as an afterthought, he added, "Would you help Vail? There might be things that a-a woman would spot that a man… you know," he said miserably.

She nodded. "Sure, Alex. I know." Without another word she left him there. She wished there was more to say, but there just wasn't. Somehow, she wasn't disappointed; rather, she was astounded that he had let her say or do even the small amount she had.

Her last sight of him was a silhouette: a lonely man sitting in darkness, sifting through handfuls of paper and plastic. Rereading this letter, reexamining that holocube, trying them this way and that and the other. Trying with diligent desperation to make sense of the jigsaw puzzle that was Sharon Crayne.