The Sacrifice Game

by Brian D'Amato

  “Let me carry your handbag,” I said, grabbing it on the second word.

  The lobby was almost large enough to enclose the Ocelots’ mul. But it was still all in earth colors, with five kinds of grass growing out of slits in the granite floor and clusters of furniture twisted out of unfinished hardwood. There were about two thousand people milling around on the floor in black and white clusters dotted with much more colorful neo-Maya outfits, all mood-lit by pin spots slowly roving through the gloom. I noticed Shaquille O’Neal and a few other emeritus basketball players sticking up out of the crowd like spirit poles in a cornfield. There were also quite a few officers’ uniforms, Belizean, British Territorial, and U.S. In the center of the room, where the information kiosk would have been, a giant thing rose up three rope-lengths, almost too confusing-looking to name at first, a tower, a ceiba tree, a poplar tree, a wooden stele, a stone stele, a high-angled pyramid, a Christmas tree. The ornaments were all DHI spheres, most of them running different views of the Ix IIä softworld. One of them showed a slowly rotating readout of today’s soon-to-expire Maya date:

  On the far side of the lobby high-arched corridors led through to what I figured were the stadium seats. There weren’t any crowd-control stanchions that I could see. Good.

  The first person we knew who saw us was Michael Weiner, in full NeoMaya drag.

  “Hi,” I said. “Wow. You look absolutely . . . uh . . . suburban.”

  He opened his mouth and then shut it. It was a true-bliss moment.

  “Tony?” he asked.

  “Hi,” I said. He didn’t clap me on the back, like usual, so I clapped him on his. He had on a sort of carcanet, a quilted ceremonial collar, and I managed to get the brown Bug Bom planted on it without anyone noticing. The colors didn’t quite match, but I figured nobody would notice. “How’s my favorite thing on the History Channel?” I asked.

  “I’m, I’m fine,” he said.

  “Yoo-hoo!” someone said. She pushed through to us. She had hair. Very faintly, Jed’s crumbling Book of Uay’s Names seemed to read that they called her Ashley1. She was holding a phone, which I guess she’d spotted us on.

  “Come on,” I said to Michael. “We’re going to go talk with Lindsay and I want to ask you both something. Okay?”

  “Uh, okay,” Michael said.

  “You are so great,” A1 said to Marena, talking loud above the noise of the crowd. “You actually decided to make it!” She’d met Tony Sic, but she didn’t recognize me, although that didn’t mean much because she was as dumb as a bag of squashes. Two bags. “So, great, great, great,” she went on, “let me show—”

  “Thanks,” Marena cut her off. “Listen, could you find Lindsay for me?”

  “Uh, okay, he’ll be thrilled you made it—”

  “It’s really important. Seriously.”

  “Sure.” She held her phone up to the crowd and waved it around. “Okay, I got him,” she said. I looked over Marena’s shoulder at the screen. It turned the real architecture behind it to a wire-frame model of the room with little security-tag dots floating around.

  “Okay,” A1 said, “Lindsay’s this pink dot with the L.”

  “Great,” I said. It meant he was over behind the Tree of Life, under the giant display screen. Marena clocked him herself and led me left and down a flight of stairs on the left out onto the floor and around a tableful of barbecued emu skewers and would-be primevally menacing ice sculptures and into a darkened area behind a row of dichromatic halogen spots. Michael and Ashley1 followed along.

  “That’s Bob Costas over there,” she whispered to me.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “There.”

  “Huh.”

  “You know, the great many, many award-winning sportscaster,” she said. “He’s here with John Tesch.”

  “Oh, right, that’s, yes,” I said. “That’s a big deal.”

  “Exactly,” Ashley1 chirped, brightly. “Definitively. Great, great, great.” She went back to pointing out all these people you’d never heard of. Well, at least, I’d never heard of them. In the old days we would have said they were mouse-uayed people pretending to be felines. Here I guess we’d just say they were irretrievably B-list. I caught up with Marena, but some ditzy-grinned lady had buttonholed her.

  “Uh, Tony?” Marena said. “Michael? You guys know Peggy Noonan, right? Peggy Noonan, Tony Sic.” The woman held her hand out.

  “Hi. Wow, the Leni Riefenstahl of speechwriting,” I blurted out, before I quite knew what I was saying. “It is nice to meet you, but your hand has too much blood on it.” She froze for a split-beat. “Your old boss had my parents killed.” Noonan turned and stalked off. Jed would never have had the nerve to say that, I thought.

  “Thanks a lot,” Marena said. “It wasn’t Jed who said that, was it?”

  “No,” I said. “But I support some of Jed’s causes. Jed is an old friend.”

  “You’re such a self-righteous cornball,” she said. “You’re dis-fucking-gusting, I mean, I don’t love her, either, but for crying out bloody tears.”

  “What’s going on?” Michael said. “The last thing I heard you were in real trouble.”

  I mumbled something.

  “There he is,” Marena said. Lindsay was about thirty steps femaleward of us, standing under the Tree of Life, ringed by a bunch of what looked like investors. You had to hand something to him, he had this whole vast private-army black op going on right at this moment and he was standing here shmoozing like he didn’t have a care in the world. A waiter held a tray out at us.

  “Is that celery?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, they’re white chocolate sticks,” he said.

  “Oh, great.” There were ten of them. I took nine.

  “No, thanks,” Marena said.

  “Come on, have one,” I said.

  Lindsay had on a gray summery jacket and I dug the Bug Bom with two dots—the gray-covered one—out of Marena’s handbag. It wasn’t a great match, either, but it would have to do. I wanted to go right up to him, but Marena said it looked like he was going to send them on their way pretty soon.

  “Okay, let’s hang back for a beat,” I said. I ate a chocolate stick.

  There were two identifiable security people standing behind him. One of them I hadn’t seen before, a big classy-bodyguard type in a black tie with an earphone. The other was that commando woman from the Creep, Ana Vergara. She was in leggings and a close-fitting black huipil and looking almost attractive, for a hired enforceress. She hadn’t spotted me yet, but she would.

  “Do you know that they’re all, I mean, the police,” Michael said, “they’re all looking for you?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, “I know, I’m too fast for them.”

  The covey of investors laughed—what was the funny part? I wondered—nodded, and turned toward the entrance to the playing field. Other people were hanging around, too, waiting to talk with the great man, but Marena pushed through and tapped him on the shoulder. He seemed genuinely happy to see her, although of course he wasn’t. She said something to him—I hoped it was what I had told her to say—and he turned around, to his left. Ana had spotted me now, but she expected me to stay where I was so Lindsay could face me, and instead I had just enough time to move around to his right and clap him on the back. Beneath the cashmere, the silk lining, the Sea Island broadcloth, and the Jesus jumper, his trapezius muscles were surprisingly hard against my fingertips. “Hail, fellow, well met,” I said.

  Lindsay kept turning. He hadn’t felt the bug yet, since it was just held on with Velcro. When he recognized me he was pretty smooth, his expression didn’t change, but he didn’t say hello. He just stood there, waiting for Ana and whoever to take care of it, seeming relaxed, his look radiating that he was a big guy and I was a little guy and big guys just don’t get fucked with. He was wearing an American-flag lapel pin and a dressier bumblebee pin, this one with yellow sapphires.

  “Chief, don’t move,” Ana said. She’d spotted t
he bug, and she knew what it was. I squoze the button in my pocket that activated its little hooked legs. Lindsay felt them digging down through his jacket and into his flesh and jumped a little.

  “Ow,” he said. His arm jerked backward, but the Bom was correctly positioned right in his acnestis, that is, that place in the small of the back where few people can scratch.

  “DO NOT MOVE,” I said, more or less quoting from the Special Boat Service manual.

  He didn’t.

  ( 110 )

  Ana and the other guy had already grabbed me but I had my hands in my pockets and went on. “I have placed an explosive device called a Bug Bom on your back. As you may know, if you or anyone else tries to remove this device, it will detonate automatically, firing neurotoxin into your flesh.”

  “On the ground, now,” Ana said.

  “I am holding down the SUSPEND FIRE button,” I said. They already had me down on the Travertine floor. “If I get shot in the head, or trip and fall, or anything, my thumb will release it. Or if you don’t GET OFF ME NOW!”

  I gave Lindsay a friendly little zap. He gasped-and-twitched, but not so much as I would have thought.

  “Marena, what’s he doing?” Lindsay asked.

  “My guess is that he’s serious,” Marena said.

  They still hadn’t let me up. On the other hand, they weren’t trying to pull my hands out of my pockets. Maybe they already had a procedure for dealing with these things.

  “Let me up now,” I said. They didn’t. “All right, watch this,” I said. “Michael?”

  “What?” Michael said.

  Marena figured out what was happening, but by the time she got around to Michael’s back I’d already pressed his button. I was afraid that with all the quilting on his collar, and without the bug’s hooks in, the pellets might not go through, but I needn’t have worried. There was a sound like a buried firecracker and a hiss as the Bom’s hollow shell flew across the lobby. A surprised expression bloomed on Michael’s face.

  “Oh, shit, somebody get a goddamn paramedic,” Marena said, loudly but not shouting.

  It usually takes a lot longer for someone to respond to sedation or poisoning than one thinks it should. Blood in any given capillary will return to the heart in about twenty-three seconds, but after that it still takes some time for whatever it is to get absorbed through the cell walls of the heart or lungs. So often there are two hundred or so beats of lag time. But the Bom did a good job of scattering its crystals through a wide range of levels and locations in Michael’s back, and in less than thirty beats the look of surprise turned to—well, I am not sure what the English word would be. Let us say it was a rich mixture of pain, fear, and rage. He wobbled and started to fall, but Ana held him up. I looked back at Lindsay. He was still thinking about pulling off his jacket.

  “DO NOT MOVE,” I said again. “Seriously. If you pull too hard on that, it will fire on its own. It is not the tranquilizer shit it comes with in there.”

  “Shut up,” the Big Guy said. He pushed my head down.

  “There are enough neurotoxin crystals in there to kill a blue whale,” I said. As if to illustrate the point, I heard Ana easing Michael down onto the floor. He gurgled. Probably his heart had already seized up. “If you pull my arm back any farther I’m setting it off,” I said to the Big Guy. “Also, I have to enter a stay-of-execution code every two hundred and ten beats. Three minutes, rather. So, I want—”

  “We make these things,” Lindsay interrupted. “There’s a way to get them off.”

  “Go for it,” I said. I could hear the Big Guy mumbling into the air, asking for backup over his ear thing.

  “Good deal,” Lindsay said. There was just a lot of confidence there. Even to me, he just seemed senior, the way 2 Jeweled Skull had. I suppose the equivalent in this era would be the way the school principal looks to a third-grader.

  “I have said enough,” I said.

  For about twenty beats, Lindsay seemed to be conferring with Ana and maybe Marena, although I couldn’t see them. Finally they seemed to have made a decision. Lindsay came over, crouched down—I could see the heels of shoes, which, maybe oddly, were black bowling shoes, rising off the floor—and must have signaled for the Big Guy to let my head up so that I could look at him.

  “Come on, have them let me go,” I said. I gave him a little buzz and he froze. That was another well-designed thing about the system. It really felt like it was going to explode. “And do not walk away, I’ll blast you just like Fuckwad here.” I looked over at Michael for emphasis. A paraperson was already trying to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  “What do you want to talk about?” Lindsay asked.

  “I am not negotiating,” I said. “I do not want to kill you, I just want to chat, but you know, if anything happens to me I do want to take you down with me. Also I have to keep punching this thing or it’ll go off by itself anyway. Do you understand?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Anyway, the release code is thirteen digits long, and you will never get it out of me in time. Also, I promise I am not going to be asking for much. Could you get this guy to take it easy?”

  “Doug, take it easy,” Lindsay said to the Big Guy. Doug’s grip relaxed and I could look up.

  “Marena?” I asked. “Could you button Lindsay’s jacket for him? Including the top button.”

  “What do you think?” Marena asked him.

  “Fine, do it,” he said.

  She did. It made Lindsay look turn-of-the-century. I mean, the century before the last one.

  “Dump out your pockets and then put your hands in them,” I said. He started to but they were still sewn together. “Not your jacket pockets, your front pants pockets.”

  He did. A couple of old coins bounced on the floor. Behind him the paramedic pulled away from Michael and came up with a mouthful of blood. I am glad I do not have that job, I thought. I looked back at Lindsay. He had not moved.

  “Maybe you will kill me whatever happens,” he said.

  “Nonsense,” I said, “if I wanted to do that I would have done it already. You think you are that hard to get to? I am just concerned about my role in your new administration. We are on the same side of the court on this.”

  “All righty,” he said. “Except you’re not going to get out of here whether I want you to or not.”

  “I know, but I still recommend you stall for time. Is not that the standard procedure?”

  There was a kind of Woo standoff for seventy beats while Lindsay talked with Ana. Finally they let me up. Without looking away from my eyes, Lindsay cracked enough to raise a finger. Doug pried his hands off my arms.

  Lindsay just darted his eyes toward the south wall and Doug and Ana fell instantly into line, leading Marena and me on a straight cut through the freaked crowd and along the long granite wall behind the dessert tables. Doug did not loosen his grip on my arm but he did talk into the air again, telling the backup security to hold back. Ana led us around a corner toward the bank of elevators. “Let’s go up to your office,” I said to Lindsay. “This is a bummer party anyway, I’ve never seen so many nobodies in my life.” Ana opened the door to a big blond-wood-paneled container by holding her palm over a little red laser.

  “Not that one,” I said. “Let’s go up to the box.” I turned and walked to the end of the line, making them follow me, to the Elevator V, the one that led to the floor behind the VIP box. Lindsay signaled okay and Doug opened it.

  “Could you move all the VIPs out of the VIP box?” I asked Lindsay. “Maybe send them on a tour of the locker room?”

  He gave Ana the order. She sent it over her ear.

  “You can let go of his arm,” Lindsay said. Doug did.

  “Thanks,” I said. A Glorious Foodster slid past with his tray still in his hand and I grabbed a highball glass of what turned out to be upscale chocolate soda.

  “The guards can’t come up,” I said.

  “That’s impossible, they have to,” Lind
say said.

  “No, I’m sticking on that issue,” I said. There was another pause, as tense as if we were waiting for the first ball to unravel its knot and drop onto the marker. I tossed off the soda and dropped the tumbler on the floor just to hear the sweet sound of breaking glass.

  “Okay, fine,” Lindsay said, “Look, I can talk for twenty minutes. Then I have to go back down and check the guests. Or you’ll have to kill me.”

  “That’s fine, that’s plenty,” I said, “thanks for taking the time, I know a lot of people want to get in to see you—”

  “Oh, please,” he said. “Doug, you go up to twelve. Ana, you cover the fire exits.”

  “Ten-four,” she said.

  I stepped into the elevator. Marena followed and then Lindsay. The time on the panel said 3:21:02 P.M. Roughly two hours and eight minutes left before the Sweeper test. Better keep moving. Marena punched in the eight-digit code for the fourteenth floor. As the door started to close, Ana still was looking at me with her watchful eyes. We started up.

  ( 111 )

  This time there was a long acceleration. I looked away from the security camera. There was an instant of equilibrium and then a slower deceleration and a D note on a nonexistent metalophone.

  The door hissed open on a big would-be-classy waiting room. Three meters in front of us a single security dude was standing up behind a glass reception desk, holding a communicator to his ear, his mouth open. To the right a wide glass door led into Lindsay’s VIP box, with the last of the VIPs filing out of it into the Great Glass Elevator. We waited for a beat and as the elevator went down I led Lindsay and Marena past the puzzled desk guy. As the next set of glass doors opened themselves we heard the BONG of another elevator landing somewhere. Lindsay looked around. A bunch of new guards had come around the corner to the right. They were in heavy gray TAC-team gear, like puffy gnomoids. They weren’t rushing at us, though, they were just standing there wondering if there was really a problem.