by Larry Niven
"If it makes you happy, but I like Griffy better."
This was insane. He was being nursemaided by a fifty-year-old battleax of a midget who carried a nasty halberd on her back, and continuously sang snatches of dirty songs. If a man had called him "Griffy", teeth would have flown like popcorn. In Mary-em's case, he wasn't sure whether it was amusement or caution that kept his dander down. The woman was as solid as the warrior she pretended to be.
Henderson called the column to a halt. They had reached the edge of a waterway that stretched in three directions as far as he could see. It was choked with plants and floating debris, and subtle disturbances of the surface suggested living things within. Griffin shuddered. Realism. Henderson conferred with Maibang out of his hearing, and Alex went back to Mary-em.
"I take it you're a long-time Gamer."
"Oh, yeah."
"How many of the Garners do you know?" he asked nonchalantly.
"Y'mean before this Game started?" She scratched her head thoughtfully. "Well, Chester an' me are old buddies. Hell, I wet-nursed him through his first stretch as a Lore Master."
"How long ago?"
"Seven years. A jaunt into the Hyborean Age to steal the Serpent Ring of Set from the finger of Thoth-Amon." She gave a harsh bark of amusement. "Now there was a pretty bit of thievery for you."
"Difficult, was it?"
"You wouldn't believe it. Chester lost three-fourths of our party, but the Game Master was penalized by the I.F.G.S. for running an excessively nasty game."
"I wouldn't have thought you would complain about anything, Mary."
"Mary-em, Griffy."
"That's Griffin, Mary-em."
There was something moving on the marshy water. Boats? Boats. Several rude canoes were floating toward shore. They shimmered and wavered like things of myth, their pace as slow as the setting of the sun. By now the entire party was standing at the edge of the water, and Griffin peered out, hands shadowing his eyes from the reflected glare of the Dream Park sun.
There were six of the canoes, all large enough for more than the two apiece who were paddling them.
"What's this?"
"Looks suspiciously like transport, Griffin."
"Where are we going?"
She gave him her kindest shut-up-and-see smile and then ignored his question.
Henderson waved greeting to the approaching boatmen. There was no response, and even from a distance Griffin could feel
Chester's body go tense. The Lore Master raised his thin arms and performed an invocation. Green light enclosed his body, then streamed across the water to envelop the canoes. When they reflected only green, the Lore Master relaxed and dissolved his spell.
Now the oarsmen were closer. They seemed dead-eyed and unnaturally quiet. Even their paddles were silent as they dipped into the lake.
The lead canoe nosed into the gooey excuse for a shore. Its occupants exchanged greetings with Kasan.
"Do you know him? Our guide?"
Mary-em looked at him curiously. "Not before the Game. Why?"
Griffin cursed himself silently. These surroundings were affecting his professional judgement. He could not just line up suspects and quiz them. "I just had the feeling that I'd seen him somewhere before. Funny."
"Why funny? He's bound to be a professional actor. Now will you kindly shut up and let me enjoy the Game?" She gave him an affectionate elbow-nudge in the gut. Griffin gasped for breath.
She was one of the three. Chester Henderson, Alan Leigh, Mary-Martha Corbett: the three who had explored Gaming Area A on previous Games. Drown it, he had to ask her questions. But he didn't have to like it.
Henderson called them all around him. "These folk are the Agaiambo. They are our next link in the chain, and will take us to our rendezvous. Split into groups of three, and get ready to board the canoes."
"You and me?" Griffin asked Mary-em playfully.
"Try getting rid of me, Handsome."
They joined Rudy Dreager, the plump Engineer who had pulled Griffin from the quicksand. They piled in between two silent boatmen.
The paddlers crossed a stretch of clear water, then turned into a channel choked with green and yellow vegetation. It looked like a stagnant canal in the last throes of nutrient strangulation, the vines and roots growing so fast that they kill themselves and the entire eco-system of the waterway.
The going was painfully slow. The lead canoe halted at frequent intervals so that the front paddler could saw vines with a longhandled knife. At last Griffin began to relax. He leaned over to
speak to Mary-em, who was humming tunelessly, her sharp little eyes never ceasing their side-to-side sweep of the vegetation.
"How did you get into this, Mary-em?"
"Regular little psychiatrist, aren't you? What do you do on the outside? I mean for work. Very few people can make a living out of prying into other people's business."
"I'm supervisor for Gavagan's Bar in Dream Park." The lie came surprisingly hard. Masochistically, he forced himself to elaborate: "Most of my job is keeping the food and the service up to par. R&D does the special effects. But letting a customer bend my ear is part of the job too. What about you?"
"Well, I retired myself at thirty-five."
Griffin whistled. "Good going." He trailed his hand in the water, until he remembered the vague stirrings he had seen at the bank of the main body, and pulled it out quickly. "How did you manage that? Lose a toe on the job?"
He felt her tense, and wondered what nerve he'd scraped. "Nothing so dramatic, sonny. Just a little principal called Modular Economics. That means that instead of getting a lot of money for doing one thing, you get little chunks for doing different things well, and you're your own boss. It's flexible, fun, and free. The three F's."
"Sounds good. What do you do well?"
"If your ears were a little dryer I might be convinced to show you. If, however, you mean what do I do for money, I'd have to give you an alphabetical listing."
"A few highlights would do."
"Did you grow them muscles just so you could survive being nosy?" She tickled him, and he coughed to cover his broken giggle of surprise. "I do guide work for rock climbers in Yosemite, and I teach Kendo-"
"You what?"
"Let's see. I do a little philately, sculpt bonsai trees half-well, and have been known to pick up a few bucks sewing costumes for Gainers. Want more?"
Griffin swallowed hard. "Jesus. How many of those things do you do well?"
"The Kendo and the rock climbing, mostly. The rest I just picked up."
Alex nodded. He was wondering what such a superwoman was doing playing fantasy games, like a kid... but that was obvious
enough. Didn't R&D have something on the boards that would let someone like Mary-em play as a statuesque blond? Yeah, he'd heard something about distorted holograms: a process too expensive to use, so far, that would let a man play as a woman or vice versa, or as a dwarf or a giant... but he wasn't about to mention it to Mary-em. She'd feed him her halberd.
After what seemed an interminable trip, the canoes drew into a less choked patch of water. Now instead of travelling single file, the five canoes spread out abreast of each other. Presently they pulled up to a rude dock with wooden moorings sunk in the muck.
It didn't look like much, but it was indisputably a village. The foundations were tree trunks that rose out of the swamp five or six feet, and the wooden platforms set atop them looked as stable as any paranoid schizophrenic.
Griffin tied their boat up next to one of the dwellings, and they waded soggily and carefully ashore. The boatmen followed unsteadily, as if walking on ice skates. When the men reached land, Alex could see why; their feet were hideously deformed, scarcely more than misshapen clubs.
Looking around, Alex found that all of the boatmen were similarly crippled. Most were using their paddles as crutches.
He chose not to ask what was going on. A detective should spend some of his time detec
ting.
They were being led to a central platform. It was set on firmer ground than the dozen or so thatch-roofed houses grouped around it. Like the others, it too rose several feet above the ground, perhaps to discourage alligators from basking on the front porch. People were coming out of hiding, women and children and older men, and a small contingent of spear-carrying warriors. All were club-footed nearly to disability.
As they reached the central platform, Griffin watched the nightmarishly long shadows of their hobbling companions and suddenly realized that it couldn't be later than two o'clock. But the sun was nearly set! He checked the watch on his cuff. It was quarter past two.
What were the Game Masters planning for tonight, to be bringing the night so early?
The Gamers were directed to a wooden ladder, and one at a time they mounted it. The two bearers waited below.
"Please," Maibang was explaining softly. "The Agaiambo are a
boat-people who spend most of their lives in and on the water. They venture onto land rarely. Over the years their feet have shriveled away to what you see. But they are a proud, fierce people, and great allies in our fight. Pay them the respect due to a warrior people who have resisted evil at tremendous cost."
There was a muffled clumping sound, and the ladder shook as it was mounted. A face rose over the edge of the platform, a face in-credibly aged and weathered. Only the eyes seemed truly alive:
chips of diamond stuck in a withered black apple. The man was supported on one side by a walking stick, and on the other by a woman scarcely younger than he, her empty and wrinkled breasts swaying pendulously with each uncertain step. She helped him to a sitting position but remained standing herself. She held his hand with what Griffin interpreted as protective affection.
The old man mumbled, rubbery lips twitching with palsy, and as he did a thin streak of drool ran glistening to his chin. The woman spoke. After a minute of halting dialog, Maibang translated. "She says that her man is sorry not to greet us in strength, but he is very tired, the fight is not going well. The village of the Agaiambo is too close to the lands of the enemy, and the assaults come more frequently now. The end is near."
The old man experienced a facial spasm, and his lips pulled back from brown stubby teeth. With an enormous effort of will he controlled himself, and mumbled again to his woman. She repeated his words aloud, and Maibang translated. "I am not the leader of the Agaiambo, he says, for the leader has been dead for a week. We placed him in his ku, his exposure coffin, so that the rain and the sun might return his flesh to the earth, and speed his spirit on its way to Dudi, the village of the dead. But our enemy, who had brought death to him in the form of the dreaded biditaurabo-haza-"
Chester interrupted. "Pardon me. 1 don't mean to be rude, but I may need to know about that. What is this Bidi-Tar-whatever? I know that ‘Bidi' means ‘man'..."
Maibang relayed his request to the old woman, who gave a lengthy reply. "It is the man-ripe-making snake. If you meet its eyes you rot from within."
Chester nodded, murmuring, "Tropical twist on the Gorgon legend."
"Please," Maibang insisted, "this is important. In four days he died, badly swollen and already nearly putrefied. His body was
placed on the ku. Two days later, be was half rotted. The flesh hung loose on his bones-"
Next to Griffin, MeWbirter groaned. "Good Lord. Is this really necessary?" Acacia had her band over her mouth. She looked a little green herself.
"But then his eyelids opened, and in the empty wet sockets there burned a terrible flame, and the man who had led us came down from the ku, and with the strength of ten he decimated us. Not fire, nor spear, nor knife could slow him, and he killed all who came within his grasp. At last, desperate, we bound his limbs with snares, cut him in pieces, and threw the pieces into the swamp. Even that was not enough, for one of the arms came out of the swamp and tried to re-enter the village. One of the great lizards who haunt the water's edge caught the arm and devoured it."
McWbirter looked dyspeptic. Griffin hid his amusement.
"This is why we are so weak, he says. We have undergone many such assaults in past years, and each has taken its toll. We would not have survived even as long as we have; but this village is situated on ground holy to both your gods and ours. Years ago, missionaries came to teach us of God and Jesus. Not far from here they built a place of worship. Because we of this village helped supply materials and what labor we could, they blessed our land and our boats."
The old man had been mumbling to the woman as Maibang spoke, and she relayed more information to them. "But now," Maibang continued, "we fear that our protection is weakening. We know that strange things have been happening at the old Anglican mission, and that tonight a sacrifice will take place there, on the altar of your God. They will desecrate the holy place, and end our protection. We will be doomed. We are not strong enough to stop them. You are strong. You have powers. Your world is at stake as much as ours. It is in your hands."
It was slow in coming, but it was there: an almost tangible crackle of emotion in the air, a feeling of shared purpose that ran through the adventurers like an electric current. And strangely, unmistakably, Griffin's heart speeded up by a few beats, and he found himself thinking: this sounds like fun. Then he remembered who he was and why he was here, and pushed these thoughts aside.
"We can do it. Count on it," Chester said grimly. "Tell Maibang how to get there, if you can't supply us with a guide."
It was very dark now, but a full moon was rising, and it would soon be light enough.
The last few hundred meters the adventurers bad traversed as quietly as possible. Griffin watched Mary-em for his cues. The dwarf-woman was deadly serious, her balberd threaded and in band, tilted against danger from any direction. Alex was aware of the inadequacy of the dagger in his belt, and wished for one of the stolen guns. Fortunato seemed at home with his Smith & Wesson, and Dark Star had unslung her rifle and was carrying it at port arms as she traveled.
Whatever else he might think, these people were taking their Game seriously. The Griffin would too, if he wanted to survive long enough to find Rice's killer.
The progress of the line had ceased, and they were bunching up. Henderson came back down the line. "We're near the mission," he told them briskly. "I sent Oliver and Gina ahead to scout for us, and we can't move in until we know what we're up against. I'm sure they've got guards and fortifications, and probably a ghastly or two." He glanced significantly at Dark Star. "If my hunch is right, we'll have some action for our Thieves. You'll have to brief Fortunato and Griffin, honey. You're our only experienced Thief."
Oliver broke through the line, breathing shallowly. "It's up there, all right. And it's not empty. Looks as if there are about two dozen natives, and maybe one boss man. I don't see the sacrifice, but they're preparing for it, no question."
"Weapons?"
"I saw spears, mostly. Knives, a couple of bows, and two guns. No machine weapons."
"Good. Gina?"
"I took a read on the area, and there's plenty of magic, all right. At least two priests fifth-level or higher, and one vibration I don't like at all. I think that was one of the... Enemy, and if they're all as powerful as him, we're in trouble."
"Stow that. We can handle them. What does the lead man look like?"
The redhead pursed her lips thoughtfully, trying to remember. "Strange. Animalistic. Leather loin cloth, long fingernails and toenails, very dark. Looked like his hair had been shampooed with mud. Very strong aura, and even though I was shielded, he knew I was there."
Chester grunted. "Any link with the sacrifice?"
"Slight. She's in there, and she's plenty scared, I can tell you. Chester, we can't try a frontal assault, they'll kill her, and she's our only link to the Enemy."
"Got it. You're right, of course. Good work, hon. Did it tax your energy much?" The green field glowed around Gina, and Chester judged her aura with a practiced eye. "You'll
do. When the assault begins, team with me."
"You talked me into it," she grinned, snuggling against him. He pretended not to notice. "It looks like we are going to need the Thieves. Gina's no slouch, and if her shielding wasn't good enough to slip past them, then no one but the Thieves can do the primary work."
Despite himself, Griffin felt a bubble of excitement percolating its way to the surface. "What's our mission?"
"Rescuing the fair maiden, of course."
Chapter Fifteen
THE RITE OF
HORRIFIC SPLENDOR
At the edge of the clearing, hidden behind a broad-leaved tree, crouched three Thieves. Two were novices, and their hands and foreheads were damp with expectation. One of these was blueeyed with shaggy black hair; he carried a pistol and dagger. He wore dark pants and shirt, and his face had been blackened with charcoal. His name was Fortunato.
He hawked and spit quietly, too near the boot of the second novice, a huge man who moved with disquieting ease, who squatted on his haunches with the relaxed endurance of an Outback Abo. His hair was red and cut short. His thickly callused hands were curled loosely around a twelve-inch poniard. He called himself the Griffin.
The third Thief held a subtle but powerful influence over the others. She was not what one would call pretty, except perhaps by the light of a lonely campfire. Her lips were too large; they gus-
tened momentarily as she wet them with the tip of a pink tongue. Her ears sprouted like semaphore flags from under her short dark hair. Now they were straining to catch any slightest sound. Only her eyes might honestly have been called beautiful. Within them was a swirl of tiny reflected lights, oilfires floating in a whirlpool. Her eyebrows arced together like markings on the face of a bird of prey. Her entire body was canted forward like a runner awaiting the gun. Her name was Dark Star.
Before them was spread a strange and barbaric panorama, one which assaulted every sense. Lean, dark figures twisted in rhythmic movement, as the sound of wooden drums and reed pipes mingled beneath a bloody moon. Maibang, their dark wiry guide with the quick eyes and the ready tongue, had said that this was originally an Anglican church. No living man remembered clearly the day that the forest creatures arose and slew the missionaries; but since that day, no sane man came within a spear's cast of those vine-mottled walls. So much blood had soaked the ground that the very souls of the priests cried out in agony at any footfall.
