The Barsoom Project dp-2

by Larry Niven

  Kevin’s ears were red, and he stared at her even after she turned away. Hmmm? To Max it looked like… well, young lust, at least.

  Suddenly Max noticed Eviane’s expression and the Remington that she still held in her hands. Eviane’s weapon remained a rifle. For the moment before her face went quite neutral, she’d looked grief-stricken? Bereaved?

  Several rifles remained unchanged. Why? The spirits must be preparing some, but not all, for situations where spears or clubs would be needed instead.

  Shoot a seal with a rifle and it slips back into the water. A tethered harpoon might be more appropriate.

  Then again… would some unnamed ghastly rather face a primitive spear than a rifle? If so, then their fighting efficiency had just been cut almost in half…

  That thought having crossed his mind, Max sobered up and kept his eyes open.

  They kept moving. The National Guardsman was watching, running back and forth along the line, almost like a Rottweiler on extreme alert. His rifle had transformed, and he looked so absurd carrying a war club at port arms that it was all Max could do to keep from laughing out loud.

  Maybe because of the increased warmth, or perhaps because of the pace of their trek, Max was beginning to feel out of breath. He would have been embarrassed to ask for a halt… and in all his life he had never needed to. He simply waited.

  “Snow Goose!” Orson gasped, very predictably. “Anyone! For God’s sake… take a break!”

  Snow Goose ignored him for a while, her eyes on the horizon. Finally, she said, “Daddy said there’s a frozen lake up ahead. Warm as it is this side of Seelumkadchluk, it might not be frozen anymore, but that just makes it better for us.”

  The snow was receding, and Max could see hills now, and splotches of brown and grass-green spreading. An arctic hare, its blotches of pale brown conspicuous against this new backdrop, poked its head at them curiously. Its ears twitched, and it sprinted across the hill.

  Fatigue was a dull, leaden throbbing now, balanced by a growing awareness of hunger. He hadn’t really realized how starved he was. At the end of this trek there would be a break, with fresh water and food. He scanned the sled as it slid along, its wheels furrowing the icy ground. What was in those packages? Tinned meat? Tinned cake?

  Hmmm. Army rations had been a joke since Hannibal, but Max loved the pound cake in army surplus survival kits. He hoped that there was an envelope of that in there. Was it likely, in this crowd?

  Thin broth, a lettuce leaf, six spaghetti noodles with no sauce. Bet on it. They’d told him the Fat Ripper didn’t exactly starve the weight off. Run it off, that they might do. But no beer…

  “No cake,” he murmured.

  “And,” Trianna said, in tune with the flow of his thoughts, “no lasagna or steak Diane or noodles Romanoff, and as for the crepes Suzette, forget it.”

  “My very thoughts.”

  Her laugh was musical. Without projecting it, this woman had more sexual amperage than the other three combined. She was holding it leashed: Max was getting no direct signals.

  “Playing menus in my head is an old game,” she sighed. “It’s more fun than thinking about how tired I am.”

  She was too pretty not to give it a try. “Do you play any other games?”

  She gave him a playful chuck with her elbow and dropped further back in line.

  Birds called somewhere, although the horizon was still clear no, wait-there, at the edge of the sky he saw a few dark shapes, coming closer until for a glorious few seconds the entire sky was filled with birds, a gigantic flock that divided the sky with wing and call. The clouds were more golden and a wider gray, moving slowly across the sky. The sun was burning higher and brighter, hotter, almost as bright as a normal sun.

  Nice. He was falling into Dream Park reality. It was becoming easy to distract himself with the teeming sky, the chunky poncho-wearing Adventurers, and rifles twisted into bizarre variants of spears and clubs… it was easy to slip into the dream, and believe that they were on their way to a great adventure. And ignore Orson’s whimpering. Would a real Adventure be this tiring?

  Worse! Dream Park went easy on the Fat Rippers.

  The path twisted up the low rise of a hill. His ankle turned on the gravel. He slipped and almost fell, but caught his balance and straightened up again with Eviane’s hand on his elbow. He looked at her and she looked away quickly, but the moment of contact was blistering.

  There: another distraction from hunger. Amazing. He walked a little behind her and wondered when they were going to get a break. A nice, hour-long break, and a chance to sit with Eviane and schmooze.

  He liked her, without knowing exactly why. Mystery woman? Nothing like curling up with a good mystery…

  At the top of the hillock they looked down on a shallow valley and a lake. The air was so warm now that some of the Gamers were taking off their jackets. Red Bear seemed overjoyed that the sled was pulling itself now, and ran arfing toward the distant lake.

  The Gamers broke into a run. The lake swelled up in their sight surrounded by reeds and tall grass. Before they went too many more steps, Grant stopped them. “Wait! Something’s wrong here.”

  Orson wasn’t the only one who groaned. But Kevin ran up puffing to the front of the sled, freckled face burning with curiosity. “Something like what?” His nose twitched as he scanned the lake ahead. He puffed out his chest, and glanced sideways at Trianna.

  “I can feel something wrong. I don’t know how.”

  Snow Goose knelt down, took a closer look at the ground. “Something scary big has moved through here, and recently.”

  The group gathered at the lip of the hill, gazing down as the wind blew thinly around them. Yeah, the ground had a roiled look, but wouldn’t melting and refreezing frost do that? Snow Goose chewed on her lip, then shook her head. The waters of the lake reflected the sun, choppy wind-blown swells rolling up to lap at the shallows and the reeds.

  “Oh, nuts,” Grant said finally. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

  The surface of the lake erupted, and fifteen tons of madness intruded on their world.

  It burst up, spouting, whistling like a blue and white nuke missile. It hung in the air an impossible moment, a thousand gallons of water raining from its back. With a roar that shook the earth, it slammed back into the lake.

  Max’s mind worked at Mach speed, trying to correlate. This is a joke. This is a freakin’ joke! You don’t find orcas in lakes, f’ chrissakes!

  Water splashed away from the immense blue and white mass.

  The killer whale lunged again, but forward. The thud shook the earth. The whale had beached itself.

  With motions reminiscent of a legless, armless man crawling toward a hated enemy, the whale pulled itself out of the water and humped up onto dry land. Wait: there were arms! A gnarled pair of tree-trunk-sized human arms projected from the body of the beast. Fingers as thick as thighs gouged furrows in the ground as it lifted its head and bellowed in rage.

  “Jesus Christ!” Grant screamed, and tumbled off his sled as it slid down almost into the orca’s mouth. The sled dogs howled their terror. They tried to run in different directions. The reins held them in place.

  The creature was on Red Bear and Otter in a moment, grinning and deadly, its rows of lethal teeth gleaming.

  The refugees were scattered across the slope as the beast finished making puppy chow out of the huskies. Eviane had her gun up and firing faster than anyone else. Blood and water sprayed from the beast’s hide. Shucking his paralysis, Grant yelled:

  “Dammit! Fire at will!”

  He dropped to one knee and began placing careful shots into the whale as it made a bloody mess of the last of the pilot’s huskies.

  It noticed him.

  It came straight at the pilot with dreadful, unanticipated speed, humping across the ground on its stubby, grotesquely muscled human arms. Captain Grant stood his ground. Those who still had rifles began to fire, and more red splotches opened up on the
whale’s flank. It twitched but didn’t slow.

  Hippogryph was running toward it, zigzagging. His flintlock would only have one bullet.

  Then the whale had reached the pilot, thirty times his size with a mouthful of razors. Grant shrieked as the teeth closed on him, ripped him into pieces, and swallowed him in an eternity that couldn’t have lasted more than six seconds.

  The guns were useless. Snow Goose pulled at Max’s arm. “Harpoon! Use your harpoon!”

  He had almost forgotten that he held it. If rifles didn’t work, why would a harpoon?

  Because it’s magic, you idiot. He hefted the twisted spear and tried to find a balance. What had he ever done that could prepare him for this? Pitch softball? Throw darts maybe?

  The beast’s next action ended his hesitancy. It reared about, managed somehow to give the impression of turning a neck that wasn’t there, and heaved itself directly at him.

  Max let fly as the creature came within single-lunge distance.

  The spear impacted in the dome of its head.

  Instead of charging, the creature screamed in palpable agony. It flinched back. The other refugees howled their encouragement and let fly with their weapons. Spears and war clubs sailed true, and barbed the monster’s hide until it ran with blood. As it turned broadside Hippogryph fired point-blank. The beast shuddered and howled its misery, spraying black fluid from its spout-hole.

  It fled for the safety of its lake. It rolled once in an attempt to rake the spears from its body. Weapons came free, clattering to the ground covered in whale blood. The spears and spiked clubs, baptized in combat, glowed with power. They sparkled green and red, colors arcing from weapon to weapon like tame auroras.

  The land whale smashed back into the water. A huge wave expanded outward. When it subsided the creature was gone. Red boiled to the surface, and dissipated, and left the water clear.

  Quietly at first, they walked dazedly over the site of the combat and gathered up the weapons. Max found his harpoon in the rubble, and hoisted it. It seemed different somehow. It tingled to the touch, and the white glow crawled down the length of the spear and onto his arm. The tingling grew more intense.

  Bowles was the first to scream in triumph, lifting his war club to the sky. His voice was drowned in a dozen others.

  “We did it!” Orson cried. He brandished a glowing spear: longer than Max’s harpoon, with a smaller, flatter head.

  “I don’t get it,” Snow Goose said.

  Orson looked around, irritated. Snow Goose was a guide: she was supposed to get it. “Now what?”

  “That was a land whale. We should be dead now. All we had were Daddy’s talismans, and they were the leftovers, the weakest of the lot. Why aren’t we…” She paused, puzzling darkly.

  Orson grinned. “We’ve got our own talismans. When you said that a good talisman gets its magic from-wup!”

  They were dancing, falling. The land shuddered and roared. Max was on his hands and knees, but he saw the earth split and a shaggy, writhing wormlike shape rise questing into the light not twelve feet away.

  Snow Goose’s face paled. She murmured, “Now, just a damn-” then changed her mind and screamed, “Kogukhpuk!”

  Max stalked it, spear held ready. The snake wasn’t big; no more than three meters were showing. Pythons came larger than that.

  Then the worm-shape trumpeted with pachydermic fury. The ground roared and crumbled above a great shaggy skull. The creature heaved the ground up and away with such ease that it seemed capable of shouldering the very heavens aside. Tiny eyes glared. The rest of it climbed free of the earth, twelve feet tall and twenty feet long, shaggy brownish fur almost draping the ground, worn and cracked tusks curling up and around like the bow of a sousaphone.

  “A mammoth! A goddamned mammoth! But-” was all that the Guardsman had time to say, and then it was on him and — and past. It shuddered as if in agony, twitching and throwing its head back and forth. Trumpeting, it ignored the Guardsman and went straight for Eviane.

  She was firing steadily. At the last instant she turned to run. The beast reared up and landed on her with both front feet. She disappeared in a thundering avalanche of dust, and was just gone.

  For two or three seconds the mammoth stood like a stop-motion model, and shimmied. Max could almost hear gears hum but Max was in motion, running to get past the great shield of its head, then screaming as he hurled his harpoon into its side, behind the short ribs, aimed at the heart.

  The spear went through it, sailed out the other side, and clattered audibly to the ground.

  The mammoth flickered back and forth as if incapable of making up its mind. Other Adventurers were attacking. Bowles whacked effortlessly through its leg with a war club… and suddenly it was in motion again. It flailed at Bowles with its trunk, then, with blood streaming from a dozen wounds, it crumpled to the ground and lay sagging like a half-empty rag doll.

  Max looked at Snow Goose, and her face was drop-jawed silly. The Guardsman looked the same.

  What in the hell?

  The mammoth sagged further. It was dissolving. Within a minute it had become dust and bones, then nothing but dust. The torn ground around it healed, until there was no trace that something singular had happened.

  And where Eviane had stood, there was no blood, no clothing, nothing but flattened earth. As if she had never existed at all.

  “Oh, shit rocks,” Snow Goose said, blanching. “She’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “She’s dead. I…” Snow Goose looked up, bewildered, at twenty-six pairs of bewildered eyes. She said, “The burrowing mammoth has claimed her for his own. T-tonight we mourn.” The formal words sounded utterly alien in her mouth. She seemed uncertain of her next word or move. “I… I guess we can camp here. We ran it off. We should be safe now…”

  With equal uncertainty, the others shucked their packs. Max distinctly heard the Guardsman mutter, “Well, if that don’t beat all-” before their eyes met. The Guardsman was an Actor… wasn’t he? But the consternation in his face was real.

  As for Max, it was as if the fates, or Dream Park, had promised him Eviane and then reneged.

  He prepared to make camp. What else could he do? But something had happened, even if he couldn’t figure out precisely what. Was it an accident, or a glitch in the programming, or more goddamn clues?

  For once, the guides seemed more shaken than the Gamers!

  Chapter Ten

  I’VE HAD DATES LIKE YOU

  Pins of fire leavened the darkness. That one, much brighter than the rest, had to be the sun. There was little else to catch the eye.. but here was a tiny twinkling point; there, another; there, a tumbling snowball marked with black fissures. Alex Griffin’s video wall was open to the realm of the protocomets.

  Weird skirling music floated in and out, low in the background. A tiny voice spoke of billions of iceballs a few kilometers in diameter, spaced as far apart as Earth and sun, growing sparser yet as the sun dwindled aft. Compared to the inner solar system, the Oort Cloud was nearly as empty as interstellar space.

  The view zoomed in on a world banded in black and dull reds, nested in a wide ring: Nemesis, a giant planet in a wide eccentric orbit, whose mass periodically hurled flurries of comets into the inner solar system. Nemesis was impure fiction. There was reason to think there might be a Nemesis, a world too distant to have been found by probes or telescopes.

  The Oort Cloud presentation must have been infinitely more impressive in Gaming A this morning. Even so, the illusion was so deep and complete that Alex felt as if he and Millicent were sitting sideways above a pit. It surely had Millicent’s attention. Her hands moved like independent entities, bringing lobster to her mouth while comets buzzed her in the video wall.

  He enjoyed watching her like that, in profile. He saw African and Spanish and English in her features, a recipe that brewed an almost irresistible meld of earthiness and intelligence. She was just what he needed to salve the day’s frustrations. But e
ven if the doctor had prescribed her, the nurse still had to agree to the treatment…

  Words from the screen caught his attention. “-probes will be driven by solar sails, powered by tremendous lasers stationed on Earth’s moon-”

  “That bothered me,” he said.

  Millicent looked at him. “Why?”

  “I eavesdropped on our guests. They weren’t saying anything, but I saw their faces. Some of the Arabs and Brazilians, they don’t care about the comets or Mars. They want those terrawatt lasers. If a terror-monger could get control of one of those, he could fry Tehran or Sao Paulo before Earth could launch a ship.”

  “Not your department,” Millicent said. “Anyway, I can’t picture a terror-monger with enough schooling to run one.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. A lot of them are sending their kids off to college. MIT. Cambridge. Intelligence and fanaticism live in two overlapping worlds. Life isn’t a sliding scale, where you have single-minded fanatics on one end, and intelligent people on the other. Some of us can be very single-minded about things which are purely emotional…”

  She said, “We’ve been moving asteroids for thirty years, and no one’s heaved one at us yet.”

  “No. Thirty years, right? Sixteen asteroids, and three more on their way with Falling Angel crews? That’s not many. One asteroid strike can ruin your whole day.”

  “Brrr. You’re rather grim tonight, aren’t you?”

  Definitely the wrong mood. He reached across the table to squeeze her wrist; which took some care, because she was holding a forkful of scalloped potatoes. “Sorry. All work and no play makes Jack et cetera.”

  Millicent smiled. “No play at all? That’s my Alex.”

  “If I don’t invite the occasional young, beautiful account executive to my humble abode, I’d never find surcease of sorrow.” He put on his sincerest expression. “One of the burdens of power is that Communications can beep me twenty-five hours a day. One of the advantages of a loyal staff is that they’ve promised me the night off, if it’s humanly possible.”