The California Voodoo Game

Thursday, July 21, 2059 — 2:50 P.M.

Al the Barbarian never got dizzy. It said so right in his character notes. This was of little comfort to Al Nakagawa's stomach, which wanted nothing more than to squeeze itself dry and empty, curl up quietly, and die.

He and S. J. Waters lay at the outer lip of a modular apartment on the seventeenth floor. It was an abandoned shambles, its dock open to the elements; and its intended mate, a portable office quarters, was a cracked half-eggshell dangling far down the side of New Africa. At a whisper of "Reveal treasure," the eggshell glowed green. There was something in there worth having.

Al slid away from the edge and rolled onto his back. "First talisman," he said drearily. "She's there, all right."

The wind whistled in from the California-Nevada border, hot and dry and hollow. The steel and concrete box creaked slowly back and forth. Two hundred feet below was the desert floor.

"Phew." The cables ran up to the modular wall track. It looked like some force had ripped the box free of the apartment and sent it tumbling down. Or a cargo copter had attempted to link it up, decades before, and the job had never been completed.

Modular apartments were the twenty-first century's answer to an increasingly mobile society. The living and office quarters of a house or apartment could be detached and shipped to the other side of the country within forty-eight hours, allowing employees to bounce from one job assignment to the next without leaving home.

But he'd never seen a modular wall as high as this one. It seemed to him now that the whole concept was idiotic.

Crystal's mane of unkempt red hair flagged around her shoulders as she coaxed secrets from the circuit box. It was plain metal and glass, disguised as a lamp by the edge of the open wall. The rolling sheet of weatherproofing protecting the apartment had long since worn away, and the box was uncomfortably close to the edge.

Crystal traced a line with her finger: Al wished that he could see what she saw, but that was one of her abilities. All Gaming categories overlapped, a little. Crystal's Engineering abilities gave her a little facility with mechanical things-less than a Thief, usually, but SJ had taken his crack and failed.

Major Clavell hovered over her, worried. "What have you got?"

"Problems," she said. "This diagram is complex. I'm not entirely sure…"

Al watched the major. He had suggested a truce, adding his Warriors to Al's team. Jockeying and trading had erupted the minute their conference with Mamissa Kokoe ended.

A truce between Clavell and Alphonse was a natural: Clavell needed Al's women. At the current attrition rate, Al would need the extra sword arms, but he didn't look forward to a power struggle.

Al the Barbarian touched Crystal's shoulder, and suddenly he could see the diagram. His heart fell: the glittering maze of circuitry was interrupted in a dozen places. A real Engineer would have seen a perfect model.

While the major conferred with Poule, Al bent to whisper in Crystal's ear.

"I notice the major is hovering. Problems?"

Crystal shook her head. "No! Man's made some useful suggestions. He's no dummy.''

"Nervous?"

"Me or him?"

"Either."

"Both."

Al was nervous, too nervous to have Army at his back but Army teams tended to play straight, and he knew of no instance in which they had broken truce or sabotaged allies. That they left for Congress, maybe. With Bishop and Acacia and, for God's sake, the Troglodykes out there, the Army was a welcome ally.

New Africa was vast, and he was glad to have three Scouts. The Tex-Mits/Army grouping had crept down the halls, following arcane clues visible only to the Scouts' eyes, or Crystal's mirror.

At the end of a dark corridor on the twelfth level, SJ found a locked door that glowed orange to his Reveal location spell.

He picked the lock under Clavell's approving eye. Al let Clavell enter the apartment first, hoping that the major would get first crack at a Beastie, and maybe a chance to reclaim a little lost honor. The scuffle with Bishop had been enough to bruise anyone's ego.

But there was nothing alive in the apartment. Crystal's spell of Revelation gave them the control panel, and when they looked out over the open lip…

Crystal passed her hand over the mirror, and the image of Coral's brother Tod appeared. "Hey," he said. "It's dull being dead. Thanks for calling."

Crystal held the mirror out over the edge. "What can you tell us about this?"

"Oh," the mirror said, "Like I heard that we used to live in these dangling little boxes, but that was like back in the ice age or something. Then during some little cat fight between my people and the roof yokels, some of the boxes got ripped away. Long way to fall-like people pizza time."

"Is there anything valuable in it?"

"Not that I know. But who tells me anything? I'm just a mirror."

SJ inserted a probe into the panel, and it sparked gently.

"All right, let's give it a try." Crystal punched a button, and the ancient machinery began to creak. Cable rolled smoking through the winch, and the dangling box was reeled back up toward its berth.

Mary-em slapped Crystal's broad back in congratulation, and General Poule puffed up to make a short speech Twenty feet below them, the room stopped. A little glowing rectangle on the control panel blinked: NEED ACCESS CODE.

"Oh, crap," Clavell said disgustedly. "We need an Engineer to break the code."

"Only Peggy the Hook had enough experience," Al grunted. "Last time I saw Peggy, her face was being chewed off."

"Just great. Can you do it, SJ? You're a Thief-"

"Half-Thief. If a half-Engineer can't do it, neither can half a Thief. This happened because of a magical war. If anything's lurking about, trying to break that code without a scan would be suicide."

Al sighed. "I've got a notion. We can signal one of the other teams, and borrow an Engineer."

For a moment Clavell was preoccupied, then he shook himself out of it. "Hell with that."

He shucked off his pack, spun and unzipped it, and dug inside. "SJ," he snapped. "Let Al have your Spider."

Alphonse winced. "You're kidding, of course."

"Ah." The major stopped digging. He brought out a hand grip device that looked very like a dead spider: six stubby curved arms connected to a flat handle. On the underside of the handle was a Teflon gear device. It was a standard rappelling implement, adjustable to cables from 1/2 inch to 3 inches, standard equipment for a Hazardous Environment Game.

Clavell grinned maliciously up at Alphonse. "You speak Spider, don't you? All we have to do is slide down twenty-odd feet of line and go in through the roof."

Alphonse's head hurt. "Now wait just a redheaded minute."

Reality came popping back into his mind, tearing apart the carefully constructed illusions. In that very crystalline instant he remembered that he was Alphonse Nakagawa, acrophobic systems analyst for Texas instruments. That Al had once offended his Sunday-school teacher by implying that it was hell, and not heaven, where people were forced to cling precariously to clouds.

Clavell's eyes sparkled with mischief. "We all knew that this adventure was risky…"

Translation: This is a master's level Game. We've all signed personal liability waivers.

"The easy thing to do would be trade with another team. Who? Bishop? Hasn't he got enough of an edge already? If we can handle this ourselves, we can even the score."

SJ was holding his rappelling apparatus out to Alphonse, an enormous grin on his freckled face.

Clavell's logic was compelling. Bishop, Panthesilea, and the Troglodykes were certainly ahead on points. If they could really pull this off… Al said, "Mary-em? You're our mountain climber. Can this be done?"

She looked down at the capsule swaying twenty feet beneath them. The floor, the dock's underlip, extended three feet farther than the ceiling. The cable winches ran at each upper corner, and the center of the roof. With a winch operating properly, the capsule should have been drawn up and into its place comfortably.

"I'll give it a shot, boss man," she said. The tiny woman doffed her rucksack. She tightened her sword belt and took the Spider from SJ. "Let's see this thing. Wrist thongs?"

"Or belt attachment. "

"I prefer wrist."

"Go for it." SJ squatted down next to her and helped her stretch out her shoulders. He wrapped her wrist thongs snugly into place. "How've you been?" he whispered happily.

The little woman with the nut-brown skin grinned up at him. "Just fine, youngster. Haven't seen you since South Seas Treasure." She tested the connections on her wrists. "Hell of a Game." Her eyes twinkled with the memory.

"Hell of a Game."

The major was ready. "Fair's fair, Alphonse? One from each team."

Al's curiosity was piqued. "Why did you suggest it like that? You and SJ could have done this."

"Cooperation," Clavell grinned. "I figure that teamwork will accomplish more than backstabbing."

"And when it comes down to the wire?"

"Let's play it straight," Clavell said, wrapping his wrist thongs into place. "And let the gods sort it out."

Alphonse froze for a moment. Was Clavell saying "Let the Best Man Win"? Could he really be that much of a straight arrow?

Clavell bowed to Mary-em. "Ladies first?"

"Age before beauty? Blow balrogs, sonny."

Mary-em climbed up on SJ's shoulders and found the lower rung of the service ladder that took her up to a corner cable. She grinned down at him. "Got it."

The first thing that Mary-em thought as she clamped her Spider around the cable was, Going down is easy. Coming back up will be a bitch-kitty.

She twisted and locked the Spider's handle, ensuring that its Teflon and plastic gears were fully engaged. She slid it back and forth smoothly a few times, satisfied with its action. She rolled her shoulders, anticipating the strain when her weight hit her wrists. She breathed deeply, exhaled, and stepped off.

It was a long way down to a desert floor dotted with brownish green shrubs and cactus. The wind plucked at her hair. Peripherally, she watched the modular apartment's empty shell recede as she slid away.

She'd learned that the challenge in a Game was to keep the adrenaline level high. If her grip on unreality started to wane, she would tell herself over and over how real it was, to deliberately get her juices flowing.

But now, swinging two hundred feet above the desert floor, she needed just the opposite. She needed calm, and so she whispered to herself, "Aren't the illusions nice today? How do they do that? Look at the desert floor down there. Wayyyy down there. Nope, just another wonderful illusion from the mischievous boys and girls at Dream Park…"

Mary-em kept the Spider's braking action at about seventyfive percent, and the device vibrated just enough to make her nervous as it ate friction.

She was dangling in space now, halfway between the apartment and the modular box. She risked a look back up and saw her friends' faces disappear as she slid down out of sight.

Her toes touched the top of the apartment, and she felt it sway, then settle back down. She anchored a lifeline to the cable no need to take unnecessary risks, now, was there?

Major Clavell landed a moment later, on the opposite cable. Their combined weight rocked the box enough to give her the willies, but they steadied themselves, brought the flash of panic under control, and saluted each other like cavaliers.

The desert floor swung dizzyingly, back and forth and back and forth…

And gradually came to a halt.

Clavell was vibrating with pleasure, really enjoying himself for the first time in the Game. "Let's get down to cases, shall we?"

The man was crazed. She liked it. "Why not?"

Both of them had safety lines attached by this time, cords that occasionally snapped taut as one or the other of them lurched or lost footing.

"This is the life, eh, Mary?"

"One teensy mistake and that'll be past tense."

There was a trapdoor in the capsule's roof. Clavell carried twenty pounds of tools on his belt. Mary-em wasn't complaining. The man had unexpected class.

The lock in the trapdoor was an antique, a circular design taking a special key. Mary-em had never seen its like, but Clavell must have recognized it. He had it open in about thirty seconds. He wedged open the trapdoor and slipped inside, kicking a light fixture out of his way.

Lightly, as if afraid of jarring the room from its cable track, he jumped down. The major landed on the balls of his feet, instantly alert.

Mary-em followed a moment later. She dangled from one burly arm in almost simian fashion, sniffing for danger. "Oook oook," she chuckled, then dropped down as lightly as Clavell.

The transportation sections of modular apartments were generally office space and bedroom. This bedroom was walled in shatterproof Plexiglas, and the view out over the desert floor was spectacular.

She sighed. "My enclave could never afford such wealth," she said.

''If we can just solve this puzzle, wealth will come to both our peoples."

Good man.

"You take the office. I'll take the bedroom."

"Check and double-check," Clavell said.

Tony McWhirter bunched his shoulders, dreading the sound as the feet came tromping up behind him.

"Hello, Mr. Meyers," he said politely. He turned and held out his hand. Meyers ignored it. He was furious.

Mitsuko Lopez glanced around, lost interest. Richard and the Whitmans didn't bother. They're no busier than I am. I'm low man on the totem pole; I'm the worst choice for playing dominance games with the IFGS.

Ordinarily calm, the little man was swollen purple around the neck, and red in the face. He looked like a were-frog caught in midtransforrnation. "Just what the blazes do you think you're doing?"

"Ah… coordinating a Game?"

"Those two could have died sliding down that cable, don't you realize that?" He didn't say "I knew that we shouldn't have let someone like you run this Game." Perhaps he wasn't even thinking it. But he'd not been happy when he'd read the fifth Game Master's dossier.

Tony worked to keep the irritation from his voice. "I'm sorry you feel that way, but it was an internal decision."

Meyers sniffed. "If a player dies during a Game, it could cause a blot on the record of the IFGS "

"With all respect, sir, if those two players had slipped, it would have made a blot elsewhere, as well. The risk was theirs. This is a Nekro-Max Extreme Environment Game, and everyone involved knows it. Waivers have been signed all around. If anyone, or anyone's heirs, so much as whisper the word 'lawsuit,' their firstborns grow tails."

"Are you trying to be funny?"

"No. Yes. Look there's no need for conflict here." Tony McWhirter steepled his fingers. He'd finally realized why it was his turn in the barrel. "We both want to show Gaming in the best possible light. The audience likes the excitement, sir."

Arlan Meyers tried to calm himself. "The IFGS is a family organisation, McWhirter. If parents see people plummeting from the sides of buildings "

"Then the ratings will go up. Stop thinking of this as a chess match, and start calling it what it is: a sporting event. The risk/benefit ratio is-"

Meyers had heard enough. "We are going to revoke our sanction, Mr. McWhirter."

Tony examined him shrewdly, like a lepidopterist examining a new and rather ugly species of moth. "Um-hmm. And if nobody dies, will you give it right back, like you did for Ancient Enemy last year?"

Meyers flinched. Expressionless now, he squared his shoulders and said, "Good day." And stalked off.

Tony's whistle of relief was echoed all over the control room. The whistle wasn't enough. His whole body tingled with suppressed tension.

Then Doris was behind him, her strong fingers kneading his shoulders. "He's an idiot," she whispered. There was a sudden starburst on Tony's holo field, and a cartoon caricature of Arlan Meyers appeared. The field expanded, and

Meyers was staked out before a firing squad. A further expansion, and a row of Richard and Chi-Chi Lopezes were pointing rifles.

Nice to know that he had the gods on his side. Better make sure the lawyers were there, too.

And if the IFGS revoked Dream Park's sanction… yeah. They'd claim that Meyers had acted from prejudices against one of the Game Masters: against the jailbird, Tony McWhirter. The Lopezes never missed a trick.

Back to work. Where had the wandering Adventurers gotten to now?

Mary-em had searched the cubicle of bedroom. From time to time she or Clavell would call out, "Find anything?" and receive a negative response.

She had torn back the bed sheets, emptied the closet, taken apart everything that she could find and nothing.

At an almost subliminal level, a soft musical refrain had begun, a chanting sound that whispered in her ears:

Chango mani cote Chango mani cote olle -

She tapped at the earpiece of her Virtual set. Was this… Then she was on instant alert.

A rooster, red-combed and white-feathered, crawled out from under the bed and pecked its way across the floor, ignoring her.

…masa Chango mani cote olle Maya Chango ara bard…

A closet door flung itself open, and above the hypnotic chant, she clearly heard "baaaa…" and a longhorn sheep wandered out, grazing at the rug. It sauntered across the room and into the hall.

The chant was loud now, drowning out thought.

…mani cote ada mani cote aran bansoni Chango mani cote Chango mani cote elle masa Chango arambsoni Chango ara mani cote…

The air swam hazily in front of her. Where was Clavell? Didn't he hear the music? Hadn't he seen the animals? Where Then a voice behind her said softly, "I have what you seek."

Mary-em turned and faced the window.

A man stood there, a man who burned. He was African, fantastically muscled, utterly naked, and his skin crawled with fire. Mary-em was stunned. His body was perfect, his dimensions formidable in every respect.

"Who are you?" Her voice shook. At first she wasn't sure why, and then she knew.

Crom, but he was a fine-looking man.

It felt like her shorts were percolating, and Mary-em fought for control. She was a loner by nature, and even if men had come flocking after her, she would have been difficult to approach. But her age and diminutive size, not to mention her extremes of preferred activity, made her all but celibate.

It had been five years since her last lover.

A voice whispered in her ear: "You are bewitched. Let yourself go."

She relaxed, letting herself slip into the syrupy warmth of the illusion. No need to be so defensive-who the hell turns down a god? And as gods go, Chango was prime.

Woof.

How far did Dream Park expect her to go? For that matter, how far did she want "I am… Chango," he said, and smiled hugely.

And came closer.

He had to be a Virtual projection. With one shaking hand, she flipped her Virtual shield up.

He was still there. Hologram, then, with a Virtual overlay. That explained his graphic arousal. She was almost ashamed of herself for lowering the Virtual shield again. She hoped to God he was computer-animated. Could she maybe meet this guy, later?

"Come to me…'' he whispered. His voice was intoxicatingly warm and exciting. "Take the gift…"

His hand opened, palm outstretched, and resting in it was a bloodred gemstone. A ruby.

Mary-em's head swirled. She heard herself say "yes" with a stranger's voice

And took the step forward.

Her hand reached out, and the gem dissolved as she touched it. Her world exploded into flame. The chanting in her ears drowned out thought, clouded sensation as his downturned face came to hers.

There was no physical contact, nothing but the sudden heartbeat throb of the electric mesh in her costume. The air became a kaleidoscope of colors, raging, pulsing Major Clavell screamed, "Hold! Demon!"

The perfect face flickered away from hers. Fire jetted from his eyes, hammering Clavell squarely in the chest.

Clavell smashed back into the wall, jarring the entire capsule.

Dazed, Clavell raised his sword and chanted, "By the powers entrusted in me-"

Chango, still enfolding Mary-em in an embrace of cold fire, turned to look at him. "You? You think that you can best me? I will destroy you, mortal!"

Clavell was panicked. War games weren't like this; weren't this personal. This thing had seduced the indestructible Mary-em, and her body, convulsing rhythmically, was He had to snap his mind out of that track. The visual was designed to throw him off base.

Now. "Fire, god, lust. Which god?" He'd spent enough time preparing: the meager information sheets that they had been given, and the volumes the Army research team had found. "Chango, of course." And can he be destroyed?

Idiot. He's a god!

Bargained with? Frightened away? Ah!

Major Clavell pulled himself off the wall and spread his arms again, chanting.

The skin on Clavell's own head began to singe and peel away. Flesh rolled down in droplets, burning and spattering on the floor beneath him.

Incandescent in the narrow hallway, Clavell's head had become a naked, blazing skull.

Chango screamed, a high-pitched sound that shook the entire dangling apartment. He turned to run. In three steps he had dwindled to a point.

It was in the notes, Clavell crowed. Chango fears skulls!

Mary-em lay on the floor, apparently unconscious.

He rushed to her and did a quick scan. Magically speaking, she was alive and healthy, but…

"Oh, shit," he said.

The cable had started to creak. The modular room was being hauled back up. The gods had decided to be merciful, he guessed.

Mary-em raised herself to a sitting position. "What happened?"

"I've got good news and bad news," Clavell said.

"All right, give me the good news?"

"We defeated Chango. And we don't have to climb back up that damned line which is especially good news for you."

"Why?" Her eyes crinkled at the edges. "Coming down was fun."

"Sure was. But now you're pregnant."