“Something like copyright violation? What about the Agaiambo? You used their name.”
“They are allies. They will be helping you on your journey.”
Chester nodded. “All right, we’re in. We’ll need some more information, and we’ll need provisions, and a couple of guides. I assume you’ll be staying with us, Kasan? Good. Is that it?”
“Only this, 0 Great Sorcerer. Tonight we will feast your people as a sign of our gratitude.”
“How many people are you having for dinner?”
Kasan repeated the quip to the chieftain, who sat in stony silence. Kasan shrugged. “I guess it loses something in translation.”
“Don’t we all.” Chester hauled himself to his feet. “Well, let’s meet the ladies and swap data before dinner.” He made a slight bowing motion to Gun-Person and left the hut, brushing the room-divider mat carelessly aside with one hand.
Gwen and Acacia stood somewhat apart from the other women, watching the Men’s Council hut while preparations for the feast went on around them. The feast would be real. Rich mingling smells of roasted pig and yam were thick in the air.
A pit had been dug in the village square, and had been, lined with coals. Alternating layers of leaves, pig meat and various vegetables had then filled the pit. Men poked holes in the layers with long spears to provide heat flow.
“That smells just too good, Cas.” The blond’s nose crinkled in delight. “I can’t take any more. I’m going to go right over there and dive in.”
“I’m afraid they might not pull you out. They’ll just divvy you up with the other—I mean, with the pork. Ahem.”
Gwen’s fingers drummed on her hips. “Could you run that past me again, Ms. Spindleshanks?”
“Oh, no, I think that one is happy right where it is. Ollie!, Tony! Over here.”
The men made their way to the waiting ladies. “Come on,” Acacia said after a firm hug, “let’s find a place to sit down.”
Oliver asked, “Won’t Chester want to debrief you?”’
Gwen stamped her foot. “Oh, forget Chester for minute. Let’s have our own debriefing.”
He considered that. “Done. It’s not cheating to compare notes privately.”
They strolled past the thatch huts to a small stand of trees in view of the main square. They watched the preparations for the feast, and Tony laughed. Acacia pillowed her head against his shoulder as they sat, and nudged him with her small fist.
“What’s so funny, cowboy?”
“I’m just wondering how much of that food isn’t really there.” He stretched luxuriously and dropped one arm around her and pulled her closer. “You know, I’ve almost stopped wondering which of the natives are real.”
“Glad to hear it,” Acacia murmured, playing in the grass with the toe of her shoe. “Anyone you only see at a distance, anybody engaged in repetitious movement, and usually anyone you see killed violently, is a hologram. Lopez will use as many holograms as possible.”
“Why? Aren’t holograms expensive?”
“So are actors. Remember, other Gaming parties are going to run this Game. The holograms are part of the package, but the actors have to be replaced every time.”
Oliver lay on his stomach in the grass, watching the native chefs. He asked, “What happened to you ladies whilst we were riddling with the savages?”
Acacia wagged a finger at him. “You first.”
Oliver and Tony obliged by telling everything they could remember. Gwen and Acacia listened intently, and finally agreed that they had received much the same.
“Trappings were a little different, though,” Gwen mused. “There were three old women. One was in a trance the whole time. A younger woman translated for us. She’s supposed to have been to missionary school as a girl.”
“They brief these actors pretty well.” Tony plucked a straw from the ground and stuck it playfully in Acacia’s hair. “It seems they can answer anything we ask.”
Acacia laughed. “Don’t be too impressed. I’m pretty sure Kasan wears a transceiver under that bushy hair. Whenever he stops to pray, or talks gibberish to one of the ‘natives,’ or scratches his ear, he’s talking to Lopez.”
“Is that legal? I mean, doesn’t that put us in a vulnerable position?”
“Not really. The I.F.G.S. is watching Lopez pretty closely. I think Lopez considers himself clever enough to destroy us, and Chester particularly, without cheating.”
Oliver sniffed the air. The rich aroma of roasting vegetables and pork had drifted up to them. “Ummm-um. Have you ever been very glad your name isn’t Goldberg? It sure feels like dinnertime.” He started to get up, then hesitated. “What time is it, anyway?”
Acacia dug into her backpack, bringing up a disk watch set in an antique silver dollar. “I’ve got six-fifteen. Why?”
Oh, just my devious mind. It’s an hour and forty-five, minutes before the Game closes down for the night. We’re about to be treated to a banquet. Nothing drastic has happened for, oh, call it five hours. We’re all pretty relaxed. Do you follow me?”
Gwen looked gloomy. “Oh, Ollie. Sometimes I don’t like the way you think. I hope you’re wrong.”
“So do I” Acacia’s hand was straying over the hilt of her sword. “But I wouldn’t go Banco on it. Eyes open, troops.”
The serving plates were attractive silvery disks with the word “Chevrolet” stenciled on the side. Ollie laughed and nudged Gwen. “Hubcaps.”
Gwen nodded and pointed a chubby arm toward the nearest hut. “Look at that window. What’s a glass window doing in a New Guinea village?”
Oliver squinted, scratching his head. “You know, I didn’t notice that before.”
“I think it’s a truck windshield. Take a closer look around this place. A lot of it is patchwork like that.”
He began to see what she meant. The thatch roofs of several huts had been finished with canvas, and many of the natives’ knives seemed jerry-rigged from flattened tin cans. Most of the spears were bamboo, but a few were thin steel tubing with nastily sharpened points. Incongruously, the roofs of a couple of the huts sprouted broken remnants of television antennae, and come to think of it, weren’t a few of the women wearing skirts made of parachute silk?
“Echoes of a Golden Age,” Ollie said soberly.
There were roast pork, yams, and leafy vegetables only S. J. could name. Although the meat had been tended largely by the women, it was divided and served by the men. Larry Garrett, a Cleric almost as dark as the natives, passed around a hubcap full of steaming maize. It was golden, delicious, and its kernels dripped with some sort of liquefied fat. Garrett told Oliver, “If Lopez keeps feeding us like this, I don’t care what he hits us with.”
“Amen to that, Brother.” Oliver muffled a belch. “Pass me the beer, will you?” Garrett handed him the big gourd. The beer was warm and flat, but Oliver quaffed it with evident pleasure.
The gamers squatted or sat on the dirt and ate and talked and laughed. Some of the natives were eating too, but many just stood back and watched. Oliver had waved away the offer of lukewarm raw milk. “No, I really don’t think I’m ready for pig milk, thank you.” The native waiter had pretended not to understand and passed on. It was probably cow’s or goat’s milk, Ollie thought, but you never knew . . .
Some of the warriors were pushing something out on a platform. A massive television set with a broken screen. Gun-person walked slowly out of his hut and raised his knobby arms. First the natives, then the gamers, fell silent.
He spoke for almost a minute. Then Kasan stood and translated. “Pigibidi wishes to demonstrate his own magic to the magicians here gathered, that they might see what once was, and understand.” Polite applause greeted this announcement, and Kasan waited it out. “Once this box brought us pictures and sounds from all over the world, yes, even beyond its edge. Our enemies have rendered it worthless, except when our great chief uses his own strength to animate it. See now his greatness.”
Pigibidi squat
ted on his heels, and began to chant, shuffling his feet in a strange rhythm. Now his chanting grew strong, now it dropped so low that they couldn’t hear it at all. Slowly he uncoiled from his squat, mouth opened so wide that his facial wrinkles seemed to radiate outward from it like the rays of the sun. A gurgling howl rose from his throat. Tendons and veins stood out in bunches from the old man’s neck as the howl reverberated from huts and trees.
In the bowels of the dead television set, merely a midtwentieth-century flatscreen model with shattered tubes and a crusted interior, a light began to grow. It pulsed like the mating glow of a firefly, shifted from red to orange to bright yellow, and the yellow curled from inside the set as a, tongue of flame might leap from a fire, and there was suddenly a flat bank of opaque amber-fog at least five times the size of the set.
The old man rolled his head in great circles. His eyes became glassy, his body trembled as if shaken by wind or cold. But he danced on.
Now the ground itself shook with the force of his incantations, and as it did, shapes formed in the smoke, dark winged shapes that seemed to wobble to the rhythms as they flew. There were perhaps a dozen small shapes within the cloud, flapping their wings with seeming awkwardness, darting and climbing, becoming more solid by the second.
Gun-person screamed and fell to the ground, twitching like one helpless in the grip of an epileptic seizure. He foamed at the mouth and clutched helplessly at the air, fingers crooked into talons.
From the corner of his eye Oliver saw Chester go taut, an instant before the first of the giant hornbills emerged from the smoke.
“Weapons!” Henderson screamed, his voice all but lost amid the screams of the villagers. Then the birds were among them. Three of the Gamers were already swathed in green light and fighting back.
Mary-em was the first to attack. She whipped the halberd off her back and assembled the threaded handle just as a wickedly long beak snapped at her. She hit the ground and rolled, and as the bird wheeled clumsily for another pass she gutted it. Its death-squawk sounded like a maniac laugh as it plunged to earth.
“One down!” she cackled triumphantly. She took a firmer grip on the halberd. “Here, birdie, birdie . . .”
A hornbill swooped at Tony. The Thief stood paralyzed with shock. The bird flew right by him. “What the hell?” he said to nobody in particular. Acacia pulled him to the ground, none too gently.
“Listen.” Her voice was a terse hiss. “You’re a Thief, so they’re going to have a hard time seeing you. But your skills won’t help the rest of us much right now, so just stay out of it, okay?” She jumped to her feet and joined the fray.
Tony stayed on his stomach and watched her go, his expression ugly.
Eames, the massive warrior, stood with his back to one of the huts, and three wall-eyed black children cowered behind him. One of the hornbills swooped in from the air while another approached on the ground, waddling forward and thrusting its three-foot beak at him with a noisy honking sound. Eames thrust at the airborne bird first, and as he did, the one on the ground bit at his wrist. The green glow around his hand immediately went pink. Eames said, “Damn!” and hastily switched his sword to his left hand. As if sensing his increased desperation, the birds began to worry him more boldly, taking turns to draw his attack, then pecking at him.
The grounded bird prepared to lunge for his neck as a bolt of red flame struck it in the side. Immediately it caught fire and flopped away trailing smoke and the smell of singed feathers. Eames took advantage of the moment’s diversion to skewer the other bird when it flapped back in for a bite. It cawed in pain and expired.
Wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, Eames looked around for his benefactor. Alan Leigh ran over. “Are you all right?”
Eames nodded. “Just caught me one on the wrist. I’ll get, one of the Clerics to fix it up as soon as the fight’s over.”
“Good,” Leigh said sincerely. “I don’t want you out of the Game too soon.” He spun around and ran toward Gwen and Oliver, who were protecting the unconscious Gun-person.
Bowan the Black had taken a stand at the far end of the roasting pit. As a hornbill swooped, honking, its brown wings beating the air like those of a condor, he called fire from the pit, engulfing the unfortunate fowl.
Chester and Gina stood back to back casting glowing spears of light. Several of Gina’s missed, but those that scored shore off wings and heads. Chester’s beams were deadly accurate.
Most of the Clerics and S. J., the Engineer, hid beneath one of the huts. This wasn’t their work. When an inquisitive bird thrust its beak beneath the building and poked around for them, S. J. used a makeshift spear to keep it away. The bird, angered, squawked to its companions and several of the monstrous hornbills joined it. They butted and slammed into the hut. The walls shook.
“It’s collapsing!” S. J. screamed. “Everybody out!”
As the last body squirmed out from underneath, the building’s supports gave way; an entire side collapsed, and the rest of the building followed it down.
Gamers ran in all directions.
Across the courtyard, Maibang fled from an attacking hornbill. He was too slow. As its claws gripped his shoulders he screamed in pain and terror. “Please! Help me!” The bird flexed mighty wings and pulled Kasan into the air.
Bowan gaped. “Chester! We’re losing the guide!”
“The hell we are. Gina! Bowan! Join hands with me!”
Maibang’s thrashing feet brushed the roof of a hut.
Hastily the three linked up, and Chester intoned solemnly, “We three meld strengths, we three meld minds. Demon of the air we find blocked before and bound behind.”
The hornbill reacted as if it had run into an invisible wall. Brown feathers flew as it beat its wings helplessly, trying to escape the grip of three mighty wizards.
Chester smiled with grim satisfaction. “Return unharmed that which is ours, and you may flee with your life, thing of evil.”
Whooping with frustration, the bird at last opened its claws, and Kasan fell butt-first through the straw roof of a hut. Straw flew as if a bale of hay had exploded, but when the dust had settled the guide limped into sight with a huge grin on his face. He waved his hand and Chester waved back, screaming at him to lie low.
Most of the remaining birds were wounded and dying. Acacia had finished one off by the roasting pit. She gave it a shove with her foot. Her foot went right through it; but a split second later the corpse rolled over and landed with a satisfying thump and a spray of embers and ashes.
The remaining hornbills were dispatched with a minimum of problem, and soon all was quiet on the Melanesian front.
Natives emerged from their hiding places to see what the powerful strangers had wrought. Only a few of the Daribi warriors had stayed to fight, and several of these were dead.
Chester raised his hand. “Any fatalities? How many injuries? Auras, please.” Everybody promptly glowed green, except for Eames, whose wrist glowed scarlet, and Larry Garrett, who had a scarlet glow all down his right leg. “What happened?”
Eames explained his own wound. Garrett had been hit by a support (foam plastic) when the hut collapsed. Chester sighed, but seemed not totally dissatisfied. “Okay, we’ve got two minor casualties. Gwen, you weren’t in that action, so your energy should still be up. Let’s have a reading on Gwen’s healing aura and see if she can handle both wounds.” Gwen’s green aura slowly shifted to a warm gold, twinkling like a field of stardust. “Good. You heal them now, and you’ll have a full recharge by morning.”
“Right, Ches.” She raised one hand. “Hear me, O Gods—” The golden glow concentrated around her right hand, then lashed out to bathe both wounds, The red glows died. “How about that. The gods can be right cooperative sometimes.”
“Thanks, Gwen. Okay, people, we’ve only got a few minutes until close-down for the night. Good day, everyone. Lots of points. We’ll get some treasure points tomorrow, I’m pretty sure, so you Thieves and Engineers don’t
worry. Everybody gets their share.” Chester looked around until he spied Kasan.“Get over here, Maibang.” The little guide skipped over with a prankster’s grin plastered across his face. “I’m not going to ask you how you managed the business with the bird. I just want to know if Gun-person’s mind is snapped for good, or what?”
Kasan managed to look serious. “Grave damage, yes, very bad. He had been helped to his resting place. Perhaps in the morning he will be able to help you, but I’m afraid that he is dying, and the men’s council will not speak to you unless he recovers, or dies, in which case they may choose a new spokesperson, who will decide whether or not to cooperate with you. I’m afraid you are on your own, now. I—”
“Not quite, my friend. You’re coming with us.” Chester thought for a second, then asked, “What about the women’s council? Will they speak to us?”
Kasan seemed to ponder that. “Yes, yes they might. But in the morning.” Maibang noticed Oliver with his arm around Gwen. He spoke sternly. “It is not proper for those of the opposite sex to sleep together before such an undertaking.
Oliver was incredulous. “Jee-zuss. We’re engaged!”
“It would not matter if you were married. Please. If you do not follow the rules of our people, the women’s council may not aid you. Further, they may forbid me to accompany you on your voyage.
Chester waved deprecatingly at Oliver. “Go along with it. All bets are off after eight anyway.”
Gwen hugged her man to her, and whispered something in his ear. He reddened noticeably, and pecked her goodbye, and moved to join Chester and the other men.
Acacia took Tony’s hand. It was cool and unresponsive. She looked into his face with playful concern. “I’ll meet you by the banana tree, hombre.”
His lip curled with ill humor. “I thought I was suppose to stay out of trouble. I’m only a Thief, after all.”
She stepped back from him, holding both of his hands, and searched his eyes. “Hey, Tony, I was only trying to help you. I was talking about the Game, Fortunato!”
Dream Park Page 10
