Mindwar

by Andrew Klavan

  Inside, the U-28A was fitted out like a military cargo plane, stripped of all decoration and with serviceable canvas seats lining the sides.

  “No in-flight movie?” Victor One asked Echo Eight.

  “No, but I’m gonna sing a medley of my greatest hits,” the Echo rumbled, deadpan.

  The Traveler and Leila Kent strapped themselves into seats against the right wall. Bravo Niner strapped himself in on one side of them, Victor One on the other. Echo Eight took a seat across from them, next to another man: an older man with silver hair and a craggy face that seemed to be pulled downward into a permanent frown. The silver-haired man was dressed in khaki military pants but wore a civilian’s button-down white shirt. He said nothing, merely nodded once at Leila, who nodded back.

  Victor One had never seen the silver-haired man before, but he recognized him from his dossier. This was Jonathan Mars, the commander of the mission.

  The moment they were all seated, the plane began to roll.

  Above Reza’s head, Kurodar’s shifting essence was spreading out across the Sky Room’s dome. He already had the transport plane in his power, but he wanted more than that. The Great Assembly had agreed to fund the Realm in the hopes of destroying America once and for all, but there were plenty who doubted the worth of the project, and some who outright opposed it. The Realm was not ready for full use yet, but with this mission, Kurodar wanted to demonstrate its capabilities.

  As the pink mist that was Kurodar’s mind spread across the painted sky, Reza was filled with a warmth of admiration—more than that, even a kind of worship. He wanted to stay and watch this first trial of his master’s genius from beginning to end.

  But just then, there was a soft fizzing in his ear. A mechanical growl said: “Intruder!”

  Reza cursed silently. The guards had spotted something. He’d better go see what was going on.

  He flapped his leathery wings and flitted swiftly to the room’s big double doors. The alligator guards stationed there swung the doors open, and Reza flew out into the Great Hall. He needed to find out what was going on by the moat, but first, just to be sure, he traveled along the wall to the door of the Generator Room. The alligator there pulled the bolt, opened the iron door, and let him in.

  All was well. The three-story-high Disperser Wheel was turning smoothly. Down below, Reza could see the intermittent blasts of energy feeding into it from the portal points outside. The power station of the fortress was working perfectly.

  Reza flew out through the iron door. He crossed the Great Hall to the stairs as the alligator shut and locked the door behind him.

  He flew up the winding stone stairs quickly. Came out on the battlements among his alligator bowmen. They stood arrayed along the castellated stones, their weapons at the ready. They scanned the darkness below, the red beams from their eyes trying to pick out any signs of trouble.

  Slin—the chief bot of the archers—saw Reza emerge from the stairs and hurried toward him, his heavy alligator feet tromping loudly on the stones.

  “An intruder?” said Reza.

  Slin spoke in the inhuman burr of the alligators: part growl, part static. “Kaaf saw signs of disturbance in the grass. They are searching.”

  Reza nodded, stepped to the edge of the wall, and looked over. Hard to see in the darkness. Reza didn’t know why there had to be night here. It only made his job more difficult. But Kurodar had decreed it so, and Kurodar was his master, so he asked no questions and merely peered down into the shadows.

  As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the shadows of the alligators searching the grass beside the floating purple diamond of the portal point. He saw the red beams from their eyes crisscrossing in the shadows.

  “Kaaf,” he said. The communicator was built into his avatar as it was built into the bots. They could hear him when he spoke to them, even at a distance. “Is there an intruder?”

  With another fizz of static, Kaaf replied, “We do not see him. There is a disturbance in the grass, but the intruder is not here.”

  Reza was not reassured. Obviously the intruder, whoever he was, was coming and going through the portal points that supplied the Realm with power from RL. These points had to be spread out around the Realm in order to keep the whole world operational, and they had to be left open to keep the power flowing, but it made the Realm vulnerable to invasion. If the grass around the moat was disturbed, it might well mean the intruder had returned.

  Reza continued to stare down at his searching soldiers. They were checking the intruder’s trail, moving between the portal point and the moat. Reza lifted his gaze a little to scan the silver moat.

  He thought, The drain.

  Aloud he said through his communicator, “Send guards below. He’s heading through the pipes for the cellar.”

  Rick traveled through the network of pipes as quickly as he could, but he felt the digital timekeeper in his palm ticking away relentlessly. He had to keep himself bent over as he worked his way down one narrow cylinder, then down another. The posture made his back ache. A low-running stream of water bathed his feet in freezing cold. After a while, his teeth began to chatter. He felt his will weakening. He had to force himself to keep moving at top speed.

  A small glow continually appeared ahead of him like the glow from a fireplace. He kept hoping he would turn a corner or come around a bend and see the source of the light: an exit. But with each new turning, the glow seemed to recede from in front of him. He began to suspect that the light was simply a design flaw in the Realm. Maybe Kurodar had been unable to imagine utter darkness and had put the light here without a source—sort of like the light that shone down from the yellow sky. It was a weird world, after all.

  Rick traveled on. He kept his hand on the hilt of his sword. Some kind of strength seemed to come to him through the steel, as if a piece of Mariel herself was fashioned into the weapon.

  Remember, your emotions are only emotions. Live in your spirit, Rick, however you feel. Live in your spirit and you can defeat them.

  He came to a junction of pipes, and the space opened up above him. He stood erect gratefully, groaning as he stretched his back to work out the aching pain.

  He stood still. He listened. At first, all he could hear was the murmuring breath of the running water. But as his ears got used to the sound and set it aside, he heard something more: footsteps. Splashing footsteps.

  Guards! he thought.

  More footsteps arrived—then more. It sounded like the guards were rushing en masse into the fortress cellar to search for him. Had they somehow guessed he was traveling through the pipes?

  Hand on his sword, he bent forward again. He entered another pipe and crept along slowly, moving toward the noise. He slid his feet carefully so as not to splash through the metallic water and give himself away. Meanwhile, the tromping, splashing footsteps ahead of him grew louder.

  Then he saw them: beams of red light crisscrossing the circle of darkness where the pipe ended up ahead. He heard the sound of water as the guards kicked through the puddles to search the fortress underbelly.

  Quickly, he pulled up short. He pressed close to the iron wall of the pipe. At almost the same time, an alligator—dressed in armor and walking upright—came into view at the exit point. Rick saw the leathery snout of the thing as it bent forward to peer into his pipe. He could make out the teeth overbiting the long jaws as the creature scanned the darkness with its red beams.

  Rick had truly stopped himself just in the nick of time. He was just far enough into the pipe so that the angle prevented the guard’s beams from reaching him. The red laser-like lights scoured one wall of the pipe then began to cross to the other—coming toward Rick where he pressed himself against the curved side of the iron cylinder. The red beams shot down the center of the tube, right past Rick, not two feet away. He held his breath, his heart hammering in his chest.

  But when the beams reached his wall, they fell short. They hit the iron about two inches away from Rick’s elbow. The a
lligator guard could not see him from where he was. Satisfied the pipe was empty, the guard moved on.

  Cautiously—very cautiously—Rick edged forward, still pressed tight against the side of the pipe, still bent over in the low space. Inch by inch, he moved to the pipe opening and peeked out.

  What he saw made his heart sink.

  He had come to the end of the pipe. He had reached the cellars of the fortress. Spreading out on every side of him were dank, dripping walls of heavy stone, dripping archways and moss-covered vaults, running streams of metallic water, corridors vanishing into darkness, and stairways rising out of sight.

  And everywhere there were guards. The two-legged alligators in their suits of armor patrolled the cellars with red lights beaming out of their lizard eyes. Their right hands—green, horned, and clawed—rested on the hilts of their swords, each ready to grip the weapon, draw, and fight—and kill—the moment they spotted the enemy.

  The enemy—that meant Rick. He just managed to pull back into his pipe as one of the alligators turned its snout and the red lines of light from its eyes swept over the space where he had been. Rick pressed against the pipe’s curved iron wall, breathing hard as the lights swept past him. He snuck a glance down at his palm. He nearly groaned aloud to see how much time had been lost as he wandered through the maze.

  46:08 . . . 07 . . . 06 . . .

  That was all the time he had left—assuming his mind didn’t disintegrate early this time.

  He had to move. He couldn’t just hide here—and yet he knew if he stuck his head out of the pipe again, he would be spotted in seconds. He had to get past this army of guards. But how?

  He gripped his sword more tightly, felt Mariel’s power flowing up through him.

  Live in your spirit, Rick, . . . and you can defeat them.

  Yes—but how?

  About an hour after takeoff, the plane carrying the Traveler came within radar range of the GTD Terminal Radar Approach Control Facility (TRACON). Three controllers were working the sectional screens in the glassed-in top floor of an air traffic control tower rising about 150 feet above the airport below. Overlapping long-range and short-range radar feeds gave the controllers a view of traffic in airspace that included more than thirty other airports. But the controllers were responsible for guiding and separating only nearby traffic flying below 17,000 feet.

  William Lasenby was one of those controllers. He was a quick-witted, intense man in his thirties with thinning blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses that reflected the colored lights on his radar screen. At the moment the U-28A appeared in his section, he was vectoring two commercial flights into their approach for landing, and guiding two more through the airspace above.

  “Air East 2612, fly heading 120, descend and maintain 10,000 feet,” he murmured into his microphone to one of his approaching aircraft. “Expect visual approach runway 33R.”

  “One hundred twenty for 33R, maintain 10,000 feet, Air East 2612,” the Air East pilot’s voice came back.

  “Jet Tomorrow 151, descend and maintain 15,000 feet,” Lasenby continued in the same low voice, speaking to the other approaching pilot.

  “JT 151, descend and maintain 15,000,” came the pilot’s reply.

  It was at this point that the aircraft carrying the Traveler appeared at the bottom left of Lasenby’s black screen. But because it was not his responsibility, he considered it “eye clutter,” and he didn’t pay it any mind. He went on guiding his planes.

  “Air East 2612, descend and maintain 8,000 feet . . .”

  Lasenby was responsible only for the planes that appeared on his screen in yellow—data-blocks that showed the plane’s type, direction, speed, and altitude. The Traveler’s U-28A was just a blue dot, with no information at all, which meant it was a private plane carrying no transponder. He ignored it.

  “Air East . . . ,” he began when his approaching pilot didn’t respond at once.

  “Air East 2612,” came the pilot’s voice—suddenly tense. “Controls are suddenly unresponsive here.”

  Lasenby sat up quickly in his chair, his heart racing. “Say again.”

  “Air East 2612, controls unresponsive, unable to descend.”

  “TRACON Approach, Jet Tomorrow 151,” came the other pilot’s voice. “My controls are unresponsive suddenly . . .”

  A cold sweat broke out on Lasenby’s forehead. He raised his hand to wave his supervisor over. “Stand by, Jet Tomorrow; Air East 2612, are you declaring an emergency?”

  There was a pause. Then the Air East pilot said, “Uh . . . negative emergency, Approach. Air East 2612 is entering a steady holding pattern at 10,000 feet, but . . . well, it’s not in my control.”

  “Approach,” came the Jet Tomorrow pilot, “JT entering a holding pattern at 16,000 feet, uh, but, uh, I’m not doing it.”

  Lasenby blinked, trying to understand what was happening. He looked around for his supervisor, a fat little man named Mark Stanley. Stanley, framed against the night sky seen through the tower’s glass walls, was hurrying across the room—but not to him. He was moving to the radar screen two stations down—Julie Winner’s station. Julie Winner also had her hand up to signal him, and Lasenby heard her say, “I’ve got two on approach with unresponsive controls . . .”

  Before he could even take this in, Lasenby heard yet another voice coming over his headset, saying, “TRACON Approach, TransNational 3630, controls unresponsive, entering a holding pattern . . .”

  “I’ve got three incoming with unresponsive controls,” Lasenby called out. His mind was racing as quickly as his heart, but he couldn’t make any sense of it.

  And in all the excitement, he failed to notice—everyone failed to notice—that the little blue dot representing the Traveler’s U-28A prop plane had disappeared from his screen altogether.

  Trapped inside the pipe, with the alligator guards marching back and forth in the cellars beyond, Rick leaned against the wall and tried to think what to do. Again, as he clasped the hilt of the sword in his scabbard, he could almost hear Mariel’s voice whispering to him:

  Your spirit has power here. A lot of power. If you focus it, use it, it can transform the substance of the Realm itself.

  It was not the first time she had told him something like that. He remembered back when he had killed the spider-snake. His sword had been a ruined, rusty relic then. Mariel had said to him:

  Your spirit has power here—power over material things, once you learn to use it. Strike with your spirit and the sword will be strong enough.

  She’d been right, too. When he attacked the spider-snake, he had focused some power inside himself—some power that was not his brain, not his feelings, not his wishes or hopes—something that was essentially himself—he had focused it, and the rusty blade had been transformed in his hand into a weapon strong enough to do what it needed to do.

  Now he had been given a much stronger sword, but so what? What good was a single blade against all those alligator guards marching around out there? There were twenty of them at least, each one a bot programmed to hunt and fight and kill. No matter how powerful his sword was, he stood no chance against them. The moment one of the guards spotted him, they would all . . .

  But the thought dissolved in Rick’s head as a new idea came to him. He saw at once that it was a great idea. Unfortunately, it was also nuts. There was no possible way it could work, but . . .

  Well, but maybe it could. After all, this wasn’t what gamers call RL—real life. This whole world was the construction of one madman’s imagination. Rick himself had entered the imaginary country by willing his spirit into it, willing it to slip through a portal like liquid through a straw. What he was here—his body—was just an avatar, a digital representation of that spirit inside him. It wasn’t flesh and bone like his body back home. If he could will it to become like liquid, then maybe . . .

  His fingers tightened on the hilt of his sword, and Mariel whispered into his mind:

  If you focus it, use it, your spirit can
transform the substance of the Realm itself.

  He glanced up. The red lights beaming from the alligator guards’ eyes darted here and there across the dungeon darkness beyond the mouth of the water pipe. He drew his gaze away from that and looked down instead at his own hand.

  If you focus, he thought.

  Rick knew all about focus. Focus was when you were fading back to pass and you had to keep your mind pinned on the receiver downfield, even as two ginormous tacklers were charging toward you like crazy bulls. Focus was when you had to throw with the full motion of your arm, smooth and crisp and accurate, even though you knew some 250-pound guy was about to hurl himself headfirst and full speed into your midsection.

  He could do that. He could do this.

  Forget the alligator guards, he told himself. Forget the footsteps splashing only a few yards away. Forget the red beams searching for him in the shadows. Think about the hand. There was nothing in the world but his own hand. Nothing . . .

  Despite the danger all around him, Rick slipped into a zone of concentration. His hand. Nothing but his hand. The shape of his hand, the feel of his hand, the substance of his hand . . .

  Suddenly, something shifted deep inside him.

  The shape of his hand began to change.

  Hiding there inside the water pipe, he drew a deep breath. Using the strength of his focus, the strength of his spirit, he forced his hand to grow and metamorphose. He transformed the pink, soft skin into green-brown living leather. He forced the change to ooze up his arm, into his torso, through his whole body. His face elongated into a snout. His teeth grew sharp and overlapped his jaws. His spine extended into a great, heavy tail.

  It was a huge effort of will, an enormous expense of energy. It felt like he was bench-pressing the earth and he knew he couldn’t keep it up for long. Any minute now, any second, his focus would falter and his body would snap back into the only shape it had ever known.