The Imperium Game

by K. D. Wentworth

  Amaelia’s stomach tightened. Gaius was staring at Proserpina as though she were an expensive work of art and he was the prospective buyer. Amaelia stepped forward to stand between them. “As a matter of fact, he came for me.”

  “FOR YOU, TWIT?” Proserpina’s laughter rolled through the audience room like thunder.

  Gaius seemed to shake himself. Then he took Amaelia’s arm, his fingers warm as sunlight on her rain-chilled skin. “Well, actually, I did.”

  “OH, BUT LOOK AT HER BRACELET.” Proserpina turned back to her black-garbed consort. “THE BRAT IS DEAD, AND THEREFORE, MINE.”

  The King of the Dead stood up, threw back his star-studded cloak and crossed his muscular arms across his chest. Their misty faces rapt, the crowd of shades pointed and murmured among themselves.

  “HOW CAME YOU HERE?” Pluto’s wild, dark eyes smoldered across the throne room at Gaius. “THE GUARDIAN OF THE GATE, CERBERUS, DID NOT REPORT YOUR PASSAGE, NOR DOES THE COMPUTER KNOW YOU. WHAT SORT OF PLAYER IS IT THAT WEARS NO BRACELET?”

  “One that comes to rectify a mistake.” Gaius’s arm pulled Amaelia closer to his side. “You see, this player’s enrollment has been canceled, but through some foul-up, she wound up down here instead. She must leave the playing field immediately.”

  “NO!” Proserpina tossed her head back and increased her size until her head brushed the open sky above. “SHE ONLY WANTS TO TAKE MY PLACE WITH YOU, JUST AS SHE THOUGHT TO TAKE MY PLACE AS EMPRESS!”

  “AND WHAT IS IT TO YOU IF SHE DOES?” Pluto’s intense gaze transferred to her, and he too grew until he equaled her size.

  “Well, Pluto, old boy—” Towing Amaelia, Gaius edged toward the door. “—it’s just that Proserpina, here, used to be married to me.”

  Amaelia shuddered as Gaius dragged her straight through the nebulous crowd of shades.

  “I mean, what can I say?” Gaius winked. “I guess, in spite of everything, those old fires are still burning.”

  “THEY ARE NOT!” Proserpina extended one arm toward the door. It swung shut with a hollow clang. “BUT I WILL NOT BE CHEATED OF MY REVENGE. I HAD TO PUT UP WITH THIS CLINGING, WHINING BRAT FOR YEARS AFTER I MARRIED MICIO, AND NOW SHE HAS THE UNMITIGATED GALL TO TRY AND TAKE MY PLACE!”

  “You had to put up with me?” Amaelia struggled to free her wrist from Gaius’s grip. “My father and I were doing just fine before you pushed your way into our lives! If it weren’t for you, he’d probably still be alive right now!”

  “YOUR FATHER COULDN’T HAVE MADE ENOUGH POINTS TO PLAY CHIEF EUNUCH WITHOUT MY GUIDANCE!”

  “STOP!” Pluto’s enhanced voice thundered through the chamber until the floor quivered and Amaelia swayed, almost too dizzy to stand. He seized Proserpina’s shoulders and blue electricity crawled over their two huge bodies. “YOUR OLD LIFE HAS PASSED AWAY AS THOUGH IT NEVER EXISTED. THERE IS ONLY NOW AND TOMORROW, NOTHING MORE. I FORBID YOU TO THINK ABOUT YOUR MISERABLE MORTAL EXISTENCE EVER AGAIN!”

  Proserpina writhed within his grasp. “YOU FORBID—” Then she stiffened, her head arching back, her black eyes staring.

  Pluto looked down at Amaelia and Gaius. “GO, AND WALK THIS DARK REALM NO MORE!”

  The door swung open. Without another word, Gaius pulled her through it and into the long, dark hall.

  * * *

  There were limits to her new powers; the realization flooded through her like a bitter black river. Even she, a goddess, could still be overridden!

  “LET—ME—GO!” She longed to smash his proud dark face into a thousand million pieces.

  “I AM YOUR LORD!” Pluto buried his fingers in the plaits of her hair. “LONG DID I WAIT WHILE YOU DALLIED WITH OTHER, LESSER BEINGS, BUT UNDERSTAND THIS—I WILL WAIT NO LONGER!”

  “I DON’T WANT HIM!” Even as she tried to resist it, Pluto’s touch stirred her. “I ONLY WANT THE GIRL.”

  “THAT LITTLE SNIPPET?” His finger traced the line of her jaw with a fire that made itself felt all the way down to her toes. “SHE IS NOTHING, EVEN LESS THAN THE DUST BENEATH YOUR FEET. FORGET HER AND THINK ONLY OF ME.”

  Without even meaning to, her arms reached out. He was the flash of lightning and the heady, sweet scent of jasmine, the deafening roar of a waterfall, but . . .

  She gave herself up to him, knowing that she would not forget. Her time would come later.

  * * *

  “Wait!” Amaelia dragged at Kerickson’s arm, her face pale except for two red-cherry dots that danced in her cheeks.

  Letting her pull him to a stop in the middle of an oleander thicket, he shook his head, almost as breathless as she was. “Okay—for a few minutes—but we’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Do—” she began, then coughed. She rubbed at her forehead. “Do you know the way back from here?”

  “Well, yes—” He thought of the strange rooms underneath the Spear and Chicken Inn, and the neuronic buzzer. “—and no. We can’t go back that way.”

  Eyes closed, she leaned her head back against the leathery leaves, trying to get her breath. “Cerberus guards the way out. Do you think we can get past him?”

  He glanced down at his bare wrist. “I’m not an official shade. Maybe that will do the trick.”

  “Maybe.” She sat back up and looked around the junglelike garden. “Anyway, I can’t believe you came all the way down here just to find me.”

  “Well—” He felt his face go volcano-hot. “I—I was worried about you, after that little bit of trouble with Jupiter, I mean.”

  “Yes, Jupiter.” Her eyes narrowed. “That was all your idea, wasn’t it?”

  “I—guess.” He scratched his head. “But it got rid of Mars, didn’t it?”

  Her lips tightened. “And got me killed.”

  He smiled thinly, wondering why women were never—ever—satisfied. “Do you feel up to—”

  “NO, NO, YOU’RE HANDLING THIS ALL WRONG!” a throaty female voice exclaimed from above. “THE POOR GIRL’S ALREADY BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH TORTURE FOR ONE DAY. QUIT TRYING TO TALK HER EARS OFF AND KISS HER!”

  “What?” Amaelia looked up into a huge live oak whose limbs spread over them like a canopy.

  “OH, LEAVE THEM ALONE,” a different female voice said, younger, lighter. “SOME RELATIONSHIPS ARE MEANT TO BE COOL AND INTELLECTUAL.”

  Kerickson pulled Amaelia to her feet. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.

  “NOT SO FAST THERE, SONNY.” Blueness wavered on one dangling limb, then became a buxom woman dressed in long, low-cut robes of dazzling white. “THAT WAS A VERY ROMANTIC THING YOU DID, CHASING DOWN HERE AFTER THE WOMAN OF YOUR DREAMS.”

  “Not—really.” He looked at the goddess more closely, seeing the ivory complexion, the golden girdle, and the doves perched on each bare shoulder—it was Venus, Goddess of Love. “You’re not supposed—”

  “TO BE DOWN HERE.” The goddess twined a strand of her sun-gold hair around one finger. “TELL ME ABOUT IT.”

  “DON’T BOTHER.” A second blueness sparkled beside Venus, then solidified into a slim young girl clad in a short tunic embroidered in silver with the phases of the moon. “I’M SURE SHE FEELS QUITE SORRY ENOUGH FOR HERSELF WITHOUT ANY HELP FROM YOU.”

  He noted the stout bow slung across her shoulder—Diana, the Virgin Huntress. He looked at Amaelia. “Someone must be going crazy up there in the Interface.”

  Diana leaped lightly to the ground. “FOR A MAN WHO’S SUPPOSED TO BE ESCAPING, YOU’RE CERTAINLY DOING A LOT OF SITTING AROUND. DON’T YOU THINK YOU HAD BETTER GET ON WITH IT?”

  “DON’T LISTEN TO HER.” Stepping off the branch, Venus floated down to the overgrown grass. “THIS—TOMBOY HAS NO POETRY IN HER SOUL, NO ROMANCE, NO SAVOIR FAIRE, IF YOU CATCH MY DRIFT. I’M SURE IF YOU JUST GIVE THIS LOVELY GIRL A KISS, SOMETHING INTERESTING WILL DEVELOP.”

  “IS THAT ALL YOU EVER THINK ABOUT?” Diana shook her head. “
THEIR LIVES ARE AT STAKE.”

  Venus frowned, then motioned Kerickson closer. “I’M AFRAID YOU’LL HAVE TO FORGIVE DIANA,” she said in a low voice. “WITH HER, IT’S NOTHING BUT STAGHOUNDS AND ARROWS, DAY IN AND DAY OUT.” She winked cheerfully. “I MEAN, JUST LOOK AT HER; IT’S OBVIOUS THE POOR GIRL NEVER GETS ANY!”

  “Yes, well.” Kerickson seized Amaelia’s arm. “It’s been great chatting with you both, but we really have to run now.”

  “IT WON’T DO A BIT OF GOOD, YOU KNOW. CERBERUS MIGHT WELL IGNORE YOU, BUT—” Venus smiled fondly at Amaelia. “—HE’LL TEAR HER TO BLOODY SHREDS. HE’S NOT GOING TO LET A BONA FIDE SHADE ESCAPE FROM HADES. THE TWO OF YOU MIGHT AS WELL ENJOY YOURSELVES. I SAW A LOVELY LITTLE BOWER OF MOSS JUST THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT PALM TREE OVER THERE—”

  “THERE IS A WAY.” Diana elbowed the other goddess aside. “IF YOU HAVE THE HEART FOR IT.”

  “How?” Amaelia asked.

  “THERE WAS ONE OCCASION WHEN CERBERUS DID ALLOW A SHADE TO LEAVE HADES.”

  “OH, WELL, THAT WAS DIFFERENT.” Venus sniffed. “THAT BOY REALLY HAD WHAT IT TAKES. YOU CAN’T EXPECT OUR HANDSOME YOUNG FRIEND HERE TO TRY THAT.”

  “WHY NOT?” Diana’s gray-eyed gaze swung to Amaelia.

  “Try what?” Amaelia asked.

  Diana’s tanned face regarded her soberly. “HE MUST SING TO THE THREE-HEADED BEAST. IT HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE.”

  “AND JUST LOOK WHERE IT GOT HIM.” Venus crossed her arms. “TORN INTO TINY, QUIVERING PIECES, PARTS OF HIM SCATTERED HERE, PARTS THERE, AND HIM SO WELL PUT TOGETHER, TOO. SUCH A WASTE OF A PERFECTLY GOOD MAN-FLESH, EVEN IF HE WAS MORTAL.”

  “WELL, IT WAS HIS OWN FAULT. HE DIDN’T FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS.” Diana grimaced.

  “Sing?” Kerickson suddenly realized that they were speaking about him. “But I can’t even carry a tune.”

  “THAT’S WHAT I HATE MOST ABOUT BEING TRAPPED DOWN HERE!” Diana stamped her sandalled foot. “NOTHING BUT DOOM AND GLOOM ALL THE TIME! DON’T YOU HAVE ANY SENSE OF ADVENTURE, ANY FIGHTING SPIRIT?”

  “UH-OH.” Venus’s creamy face turned a delicate pink. “I THINK YOUR TIME IS UP, KIDS.”

  Kerickson looked over his shoulder. In the distance he could see several large, black, shiny things trampling straight toward them through thickets of honeysuckle and jasmine.

  “WHAT EXACTLY DID PLUTO TELL YOU?” Diana asked.

  “Something like ‘Go and walk this dark realm no more,’ ” Kerickson said weakly.

  “THEN MIGHT I SUGGEST THAT YOU GET ON WITH IT?” Diana gestured at the approaching armored figures. “UNLESS YOU FANCY MEETING HIS PERSONAL BLACK GUARD UNDER LESS THAN PLEASANT CIRCUMSTANCES.”

  AN HOUR later Kerickson glanced back over his shoulder for the hundredth time, but fortunately the black guards seemed to be slow movers, although extremely steady. The devices fell behind as he and Amaelia descended into the narrow gorge that formed the boundary of the far edge of Hades.

  About halfway down the winding trail, Amaelia pointed out a wooden bridge spanning the dark, oily river about fifty feet below. “That way.”

  “Are you sure?” He was disoriented; although he’d made routine repair runs down to the Underworld, he’d never approached the River Styx from this direction.

  “I remember that bridge, and besides—” She wiped at the sheen of perspiration on her face. “—it’s getting hotter fast.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Her mouth tightened. “You’ll see.”

  The trail zigzagged back and forth across the steep gorge wall like an undecided snake. Just before they reached the bottom, Kerickson snagged his toe on a rock, then bit back curses while he hopped on the other leg.

  “Shh!” A furrow appeared between Amaelia’s brows. “It will hear you!”

  A spinning rock bounced down the rocky slope, careening from side to side, narrowly missing them at the bottom. Still cradling his aching toe, Kerickson looked up and saw two shiny black figures at the top of the gorge. “I don’t think that will matter if we don’t hurry!”

  He pulled her across the rough, wooden bridge, then stopped before a sheer wall of red-orange rock.

  “The opening’s got to be here somewhere.” Turning away, Amaelia trailed her fingers over the rough, unbroken cliff. “Maybe there’s a button or a lever.”

  Or maybe it could only be opened from the other side, Kerickson thought. Shades weren’t supposed to go back this way. He wished he could remember how the players’ gate into the Underworld operated.

  Limping after her, he tapped the rocks with his knuckles. Did the gate perhaps operate on a voice code instead of a manual trigger? And was Amaelia even right about the location, or had she missed the place altogether? Downstream, he could see that the river widened, then disappeared into another sheer rock wall. Upstream, the dark, slimy-looking water cascaded down from an opening at least twenty feet above their heads. The gate had to be here. There was simply no place else to look.

  He could hear the black guards’ footsteps now, heavy and deliberate. He looked back up the trail. They had improved their rate of descent by ignoring the trail altogether; they had simply leaned back and marched straight downhill, their massive weights providing a counterbalance. Kerickson swore again, this time not quite under his breath. He and Wilson had worked on the black guards together. Hadn’t it been his idea to program a certain level of problem-solving ability in that class of robots?

  A small voice in the back of his mind whispered that it had.

  A clumping black guard’s foot dislodged another rock, fist-sized this time. It struck the cliff a few feet from Amaelia with a loud crack, then showered them both with slivers.

  He brushed rock chips out of his hair. “For Minerva’s sake, Amaelia, hurry up!”

  “I—” Her arm disappeared up to the elbow into the grainy red-orange rock. “—am!” She pulled it out. “Here! It’s covered with a holo. Come on!” She pushed through the rock wall and disappeared.

  Closing his eyes, he plunged after her.

  “Welll, nowww,” a raspy chorus said. “Whattt havvve weee herrre, selvesss—dinnerrr or desserttt?”

  Kerickson opened his eyes to find a slavering, scaly snout only inches from his own nose. He jerked sideways and cracked his head against the rock wall.

  “G—Gaius?” Amaelia quavered.

  His head aching, he tried to focus through his watering eyes. Amaelia was pinned to the ground by a wickedly clawed, green-scaled foreleg. He edged away, well aware that Cerberus, unlike the gods and many of the other special effects, was not a hologram. The original designers of HabiTek had ordered up a mechanical for this particular role, wanting something more substantial and dramatic for the “deceased” player’s entrance into Hades.

  He fingered the rapidly swelling knot on the back of his head and tried to think. Like all the gods and robots used in the Game, Cerberus had originally been programmed not to hurt players, but that had been before things had started to go wrong in a big way. Proserpina, Queen of Hades, was not supposed to be on-line either, and certainly not programmed with what seemed to be a personality print of his ex-wife. Very little in the Game was as it should be anymore.

  “Cerberus,” he said with more confidence than he felt, “this is a code four-A override. Let her go!”

  One of the grinning heads how led, while the other two stared into each other’s eyes and laughed. “Interacttt threeee pointtt onnne! Howww quainttt!”

  “Three point one?” Stooping down, he reached for Amaelia’s arm just a few feet away, but the red-eyed head on the left snapped at him, spattering his arm with realistically hot dog drool.

  “We’vvve beennn upgradeddd, foolll.” The middle head winked at him. “Weee don’ttt runnn onnn thattt obsoleeete versionnn offf theee sacreddd languaggge anymorrre!”

  “Gaius!” Amaelia whispered up at him from th
e ground. “Sing to it!”

  “What?” He wiped his arm off on his toga. “Oh—yeah.” He grimaced, remembering that his voice was so bad, he didn’t even sing in the privacy of the ’fresher. “Uh, why don’t you sing?”

  She opened her mouth, then grunted as the three-headed dog shifted its massive weight and forced the air from her lungs. “Singgg, yourselfff, mortalll, ittt mighttt beee amusinggg.”

  “S—Sure.” He wiped at the sweat on his forehead “What would you—like?”

  The right-hand head licked its yellow fangs. “Surrrprise usss.”

  He opened his mouth to sing something—anything—but unfortunately his mind was as blank as if he’d never sung a note in his whole life.

  “We’rrre waitinggg!” the three heads said in unison. The middle one twined its snaky neck downward and gave Amaelia’s face a slobbery lick. She writhed.

  Sing . . . he had to sing. Music to soothe the three-headed beast, Diana had said to him. What would soothe a creature like Cerberus? He felt like a, child again, standing in front of the whole class, his lessons forgotten, nothing but silly rhymes running through his head. Silly rhymes . . . and songs . . . He had known a few silly childhood songs.

  Wetting his lips, he began to sing in a nervous, weedy voice, much too high. “One hundred bottles of beer on the wall, one hundred bottles of beer—”

  “Beerrr? Whattt isss beerrr?” All three heads turned to him, the six red eyes staring.

  “Take one down, pass it around, ninety-nine bottles of—” He thought hard. “—wine on the wall.”

  The heads wove back and forth with the beat as he picked up speed. “Ninety-nine bottles of wine on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of wine!”