Dream Park

by Larry Niven

  saved him from a zombie attack from the rear. Exhaustion had turned his arms to dead things. The laughter of the Undead women was driving him crazy. The sweat rolled down his forehead, ob­scuring his vison and burning his eyes.

  And in Alex Griffin's mind something gave way. It didn't matter that he could see the blades passing harmlessly through each other, that the red slashes were dye or glowing light and not ooz­ing wounds. It didn't matter that the sounds of steel on steel, and steel on rigor-stiffened flesh, were coming from the necklace on his chest. None of that mattered. He was fighting for his life in an alien place, against legions of the damned, and people he cared about were wounded and dying and slaying around him.

  He bobbed and weaved among the shadow blades without con­scious thought, spinning and capering with a fighting-smile twist­ing his mouth, and the machete wove a path of destruction. When a red slash appeared on his shoulder he gasped in pain; when a savage thrust brought an enemy down to the dirt, he howled in glee, slashing again and again and again.

  And suddenly only Garners still stood. At least twenty bodies were strewn grotesquely about, limbs tangled in death. Kibugonai, the small man whose mother had been bitten by a pig, was dead. He sat propped against a tree, hands to his stomach, eyes wide and surprised at the cascade of crimson in his lap. Dark Star was face down in the dirt.

  And Margie Braddon knelt over the corpse of Owen, stroking his hair and whispering in his ear. She looked up at Chester, her face like thunder. "What now, Chester?"

  "I've been counting. We're down to nine, and no Clerics. If we're wounded we stay wounded."

  "Ten," said Lady Janet, lifting a machete. The projected blade was bloody.

  "Nine," Chester repeated coldly. "We can't trust you." He touched Margie sympathetically on the shoulder. "Whatever it is we're after, it can't be far." Alex could see the fatigue and worry in his eyes, but his voice showed none of it. "Come on. We've got to keep moving."

  Margie kissed Owen on the back of the neck. Of all the Garners, perhaps only Alex saw Owen's hand fumble back to find hers, and give it a reassuring squeeze. Chester rolled the Cleric over and secured the padded bag, and checked to be sure that

  Kasan Maibang's skull was intact. A few teeth had come loose, and some flakes of black char.

  Three pale tindalos were coming through the trees. The Gamers didn't wait.

  Nine Gamers and Lady Janet moved out of the woods and into the great dunes. Waves boomed ahead of them. Weapons ready, they traced a weaving path. Abruptly Mary-em threw down her pack, flopped against a sandy slope, and gasped, "Rest break, Chester?"

  Chester shook his head. "We've used them all up."

  He lent her an arm and she shook it off irritably, standing on her own. "I'm not that old."

  Griffin rubbed his eyes and said, "I am." He felt as if he had been awake for days. Last night's rest hadn't touched him. Did "neutral scent" disrupt sleep, or was it just the Game? Or Acacia? His vision blurred, and a chill ran through his body. He wanted to curl up in the warm sand. From the look of the other Gamers, the feeling was shared.

  But they marched on. Now the sea showed a white-frothed tri­angle between the dunes.

  Alex watched Acacia try for the hundredth time to strike up conversation with Tony. McWhirter's dark-rimmed eyes flashed from her to Griffin, and Griffin felt murder in the air. Acacia gave up and trudged back to Alex, head low.

  "Whew. I guess I give up." Her eyes met his, and the self-pity vanished from her face. She tugged at his arm. "Come on, hand­some. Let's go get killed."

  "Let's."

  Griffin watched her as they marched, and saw her rub her eyes three times in three minutes. "Eye trouble?"

  "Yeah. Damn, I don't know what's wrong. I don't need to change my contacts for two more weeks."

  "I don't think it's the lenses. Listen-" They had reached the top of a dune, the sand sliding beneath their feet and making every step a calf-aching effort. As they crested, Griffin gathered his thoughts, gazing out at the expanse of blue-green water. What met his eyes froze the words fast in his throat.

  Chapter Twenty- Seven

  CARGO CRAFT

  Chester ran up the dune, slid down a step and finished the scramble with the assistance of his hands. He stood, dusting off his pants, and Alex was gratified to note that the Lore Master was as shocked as he was. Awe, surprise, disbelief, a growing hint of laughter-"He's kidding! There never was anything like that!"

  Less than a hundred yards out from shore floated a tremendous seaplane. It looked as big as any flying thing had ever been, short of a dirigible or a spacecraft. There were four lean-looking pro­peller-tipped motors on each huge wing. The hull was a nearly blank wall with a tiny afterthought of a windscreen on top, a pair of tiny portholes just ahead of the wing, and a tiny door open in the flank, with lines trailing out into the water.

  Margie was sitting spraddle-legged, helpless with laughter. "There was. There was," she giggled.

  Chester turned. "Margie?"

  "It's the Spruce Goose!" And she was off again.

  Big airplane. Alex covertly studied the other Gamers. McWhirter and Holly Frost and Gina Perkins, all staring across the water. McWhirter and Gina looked thoughtful, speculative; Holly laughed with her head thrown back. The rest of the Garners were looking at Margie, waiting.

  "Oh my Lord. Let me get my breath. Oh, I hope Owen's watch­ing this." Margie swallowed. "Well. I saw it once, the real thing, long ago."

  "Come on, Margie." Chester dropped onto the sand, completely relaxed. "This is it. It's got to be. Whatever it is. So what is it?"

  "It's the Spruce Goose. Oh, dear. Where shall I start? World War Two? Before my time, dear, but I read about it. There was an industrialist, Howard Hughes; you've heard of Howard Hughes?" Some of them had. "Howard Hughes designed an airplane made mostly of wood because the Allies were running short of metal. It was the biggest airplane ever built, then. Maybe it still is. It would have carried seven hundred and fifty troops."

  "So it really was supposed to help win the war."

  "Yes. I expect it was too ambitious. The plane didn't even fly until 1947, at Long Beach. It wasn't supposed to fly then. Hughes had orders to run it across the water without taking off, just for a trial run. Afterward he told the Congressmen that he couldn't hold it down."

  Henderson was nodding. "But in this line of history the Cargo Cult magicians got it."

  "I expect so. Our present allies must have taken control as soon as it was in the air. They used their magic to fly it from Long Beach to New Guinea. At some point the other tribe took control. And here it is."

  "Here it is. But it couldn't possibly have had enough fuel..."

  Margie shrugged. "Magic."

  "Uh huh. Well, that's it. Obviously we're supposed to fly it out of here somehow-"

  Gina cut him off with a kind of whispered scream. "Chester. The top of those rocks. There."

  From the dune they could see a natural wall of rock that stretched from the tree line out into the water, terminating about fifteen meters from where the plane was moored. Three shadowed silhouettes stood and gesticulated at the seaward end.

  Even at this distance there was no doubting what they were.

  Those oversized heads... Alex recognized the beaver-dam hair, shaped with the aid of sticks and mud. The clawlike hands, the scarred, greased bodies. The priest at the Anglican mission, multi­plied by three. Fore.

  Their voices harmonized with the roar of the sea, so that the sea almost drowned them out. But Gina said, "They'll be summoning more Undead." Her voice shook.

  A whiff of the wind carried the message: Gina was right. "Sta­tions!" Chester bawled, and the remaining Garners formed a rag­ged wedge bristling with machetes.

  "Space out more!" the Lore Master screamed. "We have to give each other room! Make for the rock wall!"

  But the Fore priests had abeady been answered.

  The Undead emerged from the brush in twos and threes, and the smell was
like a gut-split skunk ripening on the road. Alex held his forearm across his nose and held his blade ready. Oliver was to his left, sword high. Gina to his right, spirals of light run­ning along her power staff. Alex felt someone's warm behind wig­gle against his, and knew that Acacia guarded his back.

  To reach the rock breaker, the Garners would have to cut through a line of the Undead.

  "Advance," Chester said, voice cautious and hoarse. "Slowly." A dark, pure-blooded New Guinea zombie was the first to reach the wedge, and the first to go down under the blades of Mary-em and Oliver. They had gained another three or four meters before three Undead reached them, two of them women hiccoughing their horrible mirth. The third was the reincarnation of Rudy Dreager, the bullet-slain Engineer.

  Once again, something within Griffin, something logical and cool, died without protest. In its place rose a red shadow that yearned to kill. He chopped at Dreager. Rudy moved stiffly but in­telligently, and Alex granted him a block, swerving part of his blade to home on the ribs. Dreager blocked again, but Alex's move was a feint, and the Undead Gamer howled as a glowing blade slashed his throat. This time Griffin took no chances. He chopped twice more until Dreager's whole head glowed black:

  decapitation.

  Other Garners were engaged, and Alex wanted badly to break formation and help them; but he held his place. It was their only chance to survive. By slow increments, they had already moved to

  within twenty meters of the wall. If they could get their backs to

  it.

  A machete blade flicked past Alex's ear: someone behind him had missed a block. He turned in time to see Tony McWhirter take a wound in the arm and answer it with a stroke to the knees that sent the zombie tumbling to the sand.

  "Move!" Chester's voice could hardly be heard above the grunts and the laughter, but heard it was, and they moved another few steps before resistance grew too heavy.

  In the corner of his eye Alex saw Oliver gaping, frozen, eyes wide and puppy-moist, his sword pointing toward the sand .

  Alex spared a glance in that direction.

  Trudging with heavy steps, eyes fixed on the rotund Warrior with a bloodlust that was more threatening than the uplifted weapon, came Gwen.

  Oliver made a half-hearted attempt to block her stroke. It was as if he'd never held a sword before. Her descending blade slipped past his guard easily, and a wet red line appeared on Ollie's shoulder.

  Behind Alex, Acacia, temporarily without an opponent, had seen the attack. "For God's sake, Ollie... fight back!"

  Ollie fought like a man unwilling to strike back. Again zombie-Gwen scored. Her matted blond hair stuck greasily to her face as her arm rose and fell again, her eyes lolling lifelessly in their sockets. Ollie blocked-and missed a perfect opening to her stom­ach. In a voice so soft that Alex might have imagined it, Gwen said, "Kill me, Ollie. Please."

  And Norliss gritted his teeth and slew his woman, plunging his sword into her breast. She went down like a sack of meal, and the Warrior looked sick. Alex took an instant to grip Ollie's shoulder hard. He was relieved when Ollie wheeled to face the next zombie with a vicious stroke worthy of Franicish Oliver.

  The Garners had gained another few meters. Alex grew impa­tient; he shifted his position in the wedge until he was closer to the lead.

  Behind him, Chester used a final bolt of lightning to strike down a zombie, then snatched up a blade as his aura dimmed and winked out. He cursed as he handled the unfamiliar tool, and he attacked clumsily.

  Most of the Garners were wounded somewhere; Alex himself had half a dozen wounds. Margie was unmarked. She had taken to

  the machete like a bat to warm blood. The Undead seemed unable to deal with her style: imprecise and untutored, but full of crazy energy.

  Alex had reached the wall. He set his back to it and yelled, "Re-form!" Chester looked at him with raised eyebrow, then nod­ded in approval.

  The group broke up, hacking wildly at the lunging corpses, and formed two lines against the rocks. The zombies kept to the sand, off the rock and away from the water, and that cut the vulnerable area to two sides, far easier to defend.

  Still, they came on, and on. No longer was it possible for Griffin to pause between slayings. The Undead piled up around his feet and swarmed to cloud his vision. He was sweating, and the sweat rolled into his eyes, blurring sight. The smell of the Undead, their hideous appearance, and the sound of the laughing, the unholy tit­tering, were wearing him down.

  He saw what happened to Gina. Two corpses menaced her. One was mutilated, a tittering, twitching woman missing a leg and an arm. She leaned on a tall pole tucked under the stump of the miss­ing arm. Her good hand jabbed with a bayonet fixed to half of a shattered M-1 rifle. Gina, fending off a smallish, long-dead man, swung backhand to cleave her open. The woman wheeled; the butt of Gina's machete smacked into her crutch.

  Gina froze; she turned to stare. She must have assumed the butchered, half-decomposed corpse was a hologram. The man she'd ignored swung at her neck.

  "Gina!" Chester screamed, and Alex saw her buckle to the sand, her aura black as night, and two grinning zombies still slashed at her. Tony scooped up her magic staff desperately. The tool was drained of power, but a night's rest would recharge it.

  The line tightened, the eight remaining Garners clustered about Lady Janet, all of them ragged and wheezing with weariness, arms rising and falling, rising and falling.

  One face stood out in the press. The shaggy dark brows were whitened, and the glacial blue eyes seemed dulled by death, but it was still Bowan the Black who worked his way toward Chester. The blade in his hand seemed more like a wakizashi, a Japanese short sword, than a simple chopping implement. His target was Henderson. Alex yelled a warning, then turned to his own defense.

  Zombie-Bowan snarled and struck. Henderson, clumsy with his

  edged tool, slithered out of the way and pushed Bowan back to gain room.

  But Bowan was out for blood. There was no pause, no lag to give Henderson time to adjust his balance. Bowan spun, and back­handed his sword into Chester's leg. The Lore Master cursed, and forgot all semblance of style, chopping insanely at Bowan.

  The former Magic User was caught by surprise. His aura went red at shoulder, thigh, stomach. He was forced to the ground, where the Lore Master performed butchery.

  Next to Griffin, Holly Frost gasped as a red slash spread on her left arm. He deflected a stroke for her while she regained her poise. "Owe you," she said between clenched teeth.

  Alex took a wound in the calf, and Oliver a slashed scalp. The animated corpses died in droves; their bodies hampered move­ment, and now and then one would clutch at an ankle. The action was being forced along the rock spit, toward the sea, toward the Fore priests.

  Perhaps they realized it. There was a cry, high and wavering, like the caw of an eagle. The zombie facing Griffin stepped back a pace, and turned.

  In shock, Alex saw that the entire mass of Undead had stepped away from the beleaguered Garners, retreating in a semicircle, to­ward the trees.

  Acacia gasped, "Now what?"

  Griffin looked at his wrist. For a moment the watch imprinted on his sleeve seemed foreign, entirely magic, unreadable. Then, "Six minutes to go. We can't follow... the zombies, but..."

  Frankish Oliver turned and began to clamber up the rocks. "We can still... get the priests!"

  Alex felt that if he stopped moving he would never start again. He pulled himself up behind Oliver, who was not exactly sprint­ing. Rocks rolled underfoot. He reached the top, to see beaver-dam hair styles disappearing down the other side.

  Oliver was clambering along the top of the spit. He stopped. He pointed with his sword, seaward. As Alex came up beside him, he found breath for one word. "Boats."

  They stood panting, watching. The three small boats were ar­chaic enough, but they weren't native to New Guinea. There was English lettering on the sterns. Each boat held one Fore priest, standing, and one zombie seated at the oars.

/>   Chester and the other Garners had found the strength to join

  them. Together they watched the three boats tie up beneath the door in the flank of the Spruce Goose. The Fore climbed a dan­gling rope ladder. Their Undead oarsmen remained in the boats.

  And then the sea and the huge plane faded into darkness, though the beach was still in twilight. When Alex looked at his watch it was ten o'clock.

  They climbed down from the rocks in time to see Gina rise up to join her tindalo. Chester watched her go. When he turned back to them the defeat in his face was impossible to ignore. "He's still dragging it out. Tomorrow..."

  Acacia swallowed air and clicked her sword into its sheath. Her hair was matted with sweat and sand, and she looked as if she had dug ditches all day. "More likely he's worried, Chester."

  At first Chester seemed not to hear her; then he turned. "Worried why?"

  "What will the I.F.G.S. think about an assault like that?"

  He scratched his stubble, eyes worried. "I don't know. We sure as hell had plenty of warning..."

  Acacia seemed alarmed. "Chester! What is the matter with you? You're on our side, remember?"

  The Lore Master sank down in the sand, looking out into the darkness. "Hasn't done you much good, has it?" He turned over, face down. He sounded horribly tired. "Maybe we should have gone back for more black fire. Scatter it in the loam on the forest floor. Rot is slow fire, it should burn backward. Let the zombies come at us there... it might have stopped them.

  The Garners shifted around uncomfortably, watching Chester brood.

  Alex dropped beside him on the sand. "At least we finally know what we're after. It's right out there on the water, Chester. We even know where to find the boats!"