The California Voodoo Game

31

The dolphins seemed as friendly as Flipper. They coaxed the swimmers through the water with gentle bumps and nudges. Despite their incredible delicacy, one could feel the power of a dolphin moving past: a wall of muscle, capable of smashing bone with a flick of a tail.

Their inner sanctum was tropically warm, a lagoon within a lagoon. Wisps of steam rose from slow, swirling, oily whirlpools.

Imitation rock slabs rose from the surface of the water, forming broad rough steps. Lounging on the steps were-something was wrong with the light-a man and a woman? But their arms and legs were well, flattened, a little like the flukes of a whale; and their faces were unforgettably ugly; and their skin was not white or brown or any human shade, but a dark blue reminiscent of the dolphins themselves. They whispered to each other in high-pitched, gobbling, squeaking sounds.

One of the dolphins arched backward out of the water and danced on its tail as it skipped across the surface. It balanced upright at the edge of the stone steps, shimmered, melted into an amorphous cloud of blue light, then became another of… those. The Nommo. Her face, like theirs, seemed immobile, the eyes lidless and staring, the mouth turned up in a rigid meaningless grin. Without a shred of self-consciousness, she lounged back on one of the steps and grinned at them, challenging.

She gave a dolphin-like burbling chuckle, and then addressed them in a very human voice. "Betcha like this tons better."

"May I?" Bishop indicated the steps out.

Twan said, "Go for it."

Bishop settled himself on the steps. Griffin continued treading water, working off restless energy. So did Twan, for whatever reasons.

"We are from the outside," Bishop explained.

The blue woman found that funny. "Oh? Outside. And we are from Queeepzz-from outer space, from the worlds circling Sirius Little."

Back on the surface, eight remaining Adventurers were as relaxed as might be, considering the circumstances. There was little to do until the two Loremasters resurfaced. Only a nominal guard was placed on Alphonse Nakagawa, Clavell, and Poule. They were, after all, disarmed and helpless.

All this water: it seemed likely that they'd all be under it sooner or later. Al wasn't the only Gamer who had changed into his swimband. Slender and muscular, he looked almost as good as Bishop. He'd spent a few minutes making eye contact with Tammi and Acacia and Top Nun. The ladies weren't responding; they were ignoring him, in fact.

So no one seemed to be watching Alphonse as he stood watching the water, or knelt and stirred it with one hand, near the piles of discarded clothing and costumes.

Bishop had left all of his gear behind. Al the Barb's fingertips wandered through side pockets in the Loremaster's pack. A spare shoestring… a dirty sock… good. They went into his waistband. And what's this a long-toothed comb? Humming a silent, joyous little song, Alphonse teased it out with two fingers, keeping his eyes carefully fixed on the water's surface.

Still nobody watching? He peered down. Caught in the black plastic tines were six black, curly hairs.

He plucked them out. For an instant he held them in his open palm in full view, not of any passerby, but of some omnicient deity, some hypothetical ceiling camera. The Game Masters could play it back if need be. Nakagawa's Law

#4: If the GM didn't see it, it didn't happen.

Then he rubbed the hairs into a tiny ball the size of a pinhead and tucked the ball under his right thumbnail. His folded hand returned to Bishop's pack and emerged empty. A lost comb would be noticed.

According to voodoo lore, a single hair was enough for a charm.

Mess with me, Bishop? My daddy put a rattlesnake in a man's pocket once, then asked him for a match. And he's the family wimp.

Al the Barbarian edged back from the pool. Nobody watched him too closely, and why should they? He wasn't close to any weapons, or anything valuable at all.

"Sirius Little?" Bishop asked, momentarily confused..

"The Dogon," Twan said with deep satisfaction. "Appelion was right."

"Oh, yeah," the blue woman said. "We thought we'd zip on down here. Earth looked like a party planet. We'd catch some rays…"

The blue male behind her rose, stretching until joints popped. She slapped him smartly on the buns as he passed. He jumped up, flipped, and took a header into the water. In mid-arc he transformed into a dolphin. The dolphin nosed up against Bishop, who stroked it affectionately.

"Our folks-damn near ancestors, now." The Nommo woman grimaced. "Some of them have even died. Well, they were only supposed to stay for a few months, but they took a bad splash when we landed. Couldn't repair the lander."

"Why not?" Twan asked.

"Dig it. It's not like they were some high-dome expedition. They were a buncha kids, out for a good time. Weren't supposed to be here at all. There was a mother ship, stashed up in orbit. When the lander crashed, they must have gotten scared, zipped back to the motherland." She chuckled. "I'd like to hear the story they told the folks back home. Most of the tech they brought was biomech-you've seen some of that? And the Ethereals. You folks call'em demons and angels and so on, but they're like roaches and rats where we came from. Useful, but they breed too damned fast. And we have some little tricks, mental matter-energy conversion stuff, too minor to do a really big repair, but your folk-your ancestors seemed to like'em."

"I'll just bet they did," Bishop murmured.

"Now, the lander crashed in the Atlantic, off what you called the Ivory Coast. Good people. Like the food. We just played around with them, taught 'em a little stuff, and, well…"

The male's dolphin-head popped up. "Our ancestors thought your ancestors were being polite," he buzzed. "Excessively polite, but you know, local mores…"

"They worshiped us. This was a long time ago, back around what you call the Ice Age, and I guess we were kind of unusual. We didn't catch on fast enough."

"Our ancestors taught them our technology," the male explained, and spit a mouthful of water. "What you'd call magic. The mind tricks-sound and visualisation and so on-what you'd call spells. Summoning the Ethereals, who were rutting out of control by then, but don't have much to do with humans unless someone calls 'em."

"Years passed," the female continued, "hundreds of years. Our folks couldn't go home even if they could get the ship repaired-"

"Why not?"

"Too big. Adults of our kind get as big as islands. As for us, we were having fun. Lots of sun, and water, and good company. Ever been treated like a god?"

"Not recently," Twan said.

"From time to time," Bishop admitted.

"Addictive, isn't it? We got lazy. Some of us a lot of us started making babies, going out further into the ocean where there was room for them, goin' native, I guess you'd say. They forgot even the simple magic, or didn't teach it to their kids. Not many of us even remember what we really are."

"How could that happen?" Griffin asked.

"Easier than you think. Hey the ocean was warm, the fish were slow, and nothing had teeth big enough to bother us, not even us kids. Humans are fun to play with. We've had a great time teaching you tricks!"

She laughed warmly, then grew serious.

"Then something that we hadn't really expected happened. One of the big things about what you call magic is that it takes life force to create life force-I mean, it can be amplified or converted, but not actually created. Back home, they breed a sort of hive beastie. Lots of individual bodies, one big life-form. We could 'kill' pieces of it, but it was only like trimming toenails, you see? It died out quick here, and then we actually had to sacrifice animals, harvest their life force."

"Santeria?" Twan asked.

"And the rest. All magic spread out from Africa. A lot of your magicians don't really remember anything; it's like cargocult magic and aeronautics. But we were the beginning. Through sacrifices and rituals-"

"Rituals?"

"Certainly," the were-dolphin said patiently. "Imagine, for example, a cube…" The water fluxed, and a glistening, rubbery cube of water popped up from the surface of the lagoon. It floated there, suspended apparently by the force of mind alone. "Now, divide it into octants…" Concentrating, the Nommo put on an amazing display, dividing the cube of water into ever more complex geometric shapes, while keeping it suspended above the surface. It finally evolved into a crystal castle, its component shapes rotating, dancing, and dividing all at the same time. Her blue-black face was screwed up in concentration.

Then with a tinkle the entire structure dissolved, the castle crashed back into the water, and the older male slapped his tail repeatedly on the water, applauding her performance. It sounded like a chorus of cherry bombs.

"What was that?" Bishop asked, for once impressed.

"An advanced exercise."

"Needs work," the male said lazily.

She stuck out her tongue at him. "Anyhow, it's one of the mental exercises that calls up the Ethereals, and some of the other powers."

"What about the sacrifice?"

"Our ancestors laid this big trip on you guys: it is like ultra cool to sacrifice animals with big brains. But we couldn't be everywhere at once, and some of you guys tumbled to the fact that the smarter the beastie, the more you can milk its pain."

Twan seemed to be studying the ground as she spoke. "And conscious animals, like human beings, would be the most powerful yet."

Bishop and Twan looked at each other simultaneously. "Excuse me," Bishop said. "But wouldn't the sacrifice of Nommo-of your own kind be the most powerful of all?"

"Gag me with a jellyfish. That's like disgusting." She smiled upon them as if they were simple-minded children. Her expression reminded Griffln of one of his aunts. A woman who could look straight at the truth and not see it, blinded by the light of her own assurance that The World Doesn't Work That Way.

Bishop was thinking again. "If you kill the creature quickly you release all of the energy. How about slowly?"

The Nomrno grimaced. "I don't even want to talk about it."

Twan was aghast. "You're suggesting this is the real reason for torture?"

"Have you just got to hear this? All right, all right. You people look so funny, act so friendly, but you get hooked on that death-energy stuff so easy, it's scary. Do you realize that your planet's most popular religion uses an act of torture as its central symbol?

"We did what we could, you know. Kept you in small groups. Limited the techno stuff. Tried for centuries. Results, zip. We kept really nasty weapons from being developed in Africa, but the rest of the world just…" She trailed off.

Bishop's eyebrows flew up. "Prez would have loved this. Africa was conquered and colonized because you limited their technology?"

"Mea culpa. Like, 'oops, we're sorry.' We folded our tents and snuck away in the night."

"We didn't forget you," the male said. "We watched. And when you developed some heavyweight tech of your own, we figured, Hey! Maybe we can get home now. The children, anyway. We still had that crashed shuttle offshore from Cameroon.

"So we traded little teensy bits of magic and got our worshipers back. It was easy; our families had been in the god biz for generations, after all. We got our shuttle repaired enough to hover. Got this building partially constructed and then walled in the shuttle in the dead of night."

"What happened?"

"We were too late. That big collapse came, you know? We saved as many of our people as we could, but…" She shook her head. "We just don't have the technical skills here to finish the repair job."

"Why don't you control this entire building?" Griffin asked.

"The Mayombreros. Bad dudes, man. They know all the oogy sacrifice stuff. It's been all we could do to keep 'em at the bottom. They need the roof folks to grow fresh food, roof needs the basement for power-for a long time it worked out."

"You know," Twan said. "Our enclaves have powerful scientists, but we lack power. Perhaps together…"

Mgui-Smythe was nervous. He'd run stress-analysis programs under a wide variety of assumptions. His crew had shored up the walls and floors of MIMIC until they were twice as strong as the computers said they needed to be. Still, what they were about to do was way outside standard engineering texts.

On the plus side: if MIMIC stood up to this, the building would take anything the Barsoom Project might require of it.

Sections of both the ninth and tenth levels of MIMIC had been flooded. All furniture and statuary on the submerged floor of the tenth were constructed of light, breakaway material, weighted with sandbags. Even the IFGS had finally, reluctantly, given their approval.

The floors of the first ten levels were all retractable, intended to allow the construction of enormous machinery. Under the right circumstances, they could accommodate whole rocket engines and shuttle craft. They could also survive the calculated insanity of Dream Park.

The countdown began.

Bishop held quite still, just sensing, not reacting, as the walls began to rumble. Griffin thrashed about in the water. The water was carrying vibrations through his whole body, humming in his bones. "What in the hell-"

And then the very floor beneath them gave way, and they plunged screaming into darkness.