The rock beneath the bomb crackled and flakes of it fell away, sliding down the slope towards Chester and Gina, Henderson had closed his eyes, and his hands were outstretched. The green darkened and more rock slid away. McWhirter snarled and heaved; his long gymnasium muscles stood out like an anatomy diagram. The bomb shifted and rose several centimeters, and the Gamers loosed a cautious cheer.
Owen’s foot slipped a fraction, and he had to move nimbly to catch himself. He turned his head and grinned at Alex, then yelled “Pull! Pull!” His mood was infectious and suddenly the whole group was laughing and sweating in the steam.
The pale green aura blinked and went red.
“Hold it!” Chester’s voice was frantic, and the tension left the lines so fast that the bomb almost slid back down the incline.
S. J. crept closer to the bomb, and swallowed hard. “It’s ticking . . .” When he turned to look at them all of the color had left his face. The bomb’s red aura was darkening smoothly toward black. Part of his head went dark as he leaned close. “Chester . . . I think it’s gonna blow . . .”
Shadow had entirely engulfed the bomb.
Henderson was incredulous. “An atomic bomb? He can’t do this! Just what the hell does Lopez want from me? There’s no way—wait a minute.” Alex could see wheels turning behind his eyes. “The black fire. Everybody empty your pots onto this thing! Margie, you’re carrying ashes? Dump it. It’ll stop the priming charges. Who else has black fire? Or ash? Who’s got Gwenivere’s pack?”
Dark Star and Holly still had anti-fire, and they snatched up their packs and dumped them out, fingers shaking with excitement as they searched for the makeshift firepots. Ollie dumped the ash from Gwen’s pack onto the corroded casing. The blackness began to spread through the ash.
“S. J., Margie, heap it on while—what the hell are you doing?”
Waters had pulled a leverage bar out of his pack, and way prying at a hatch in the nose of the bomb. “We can’t just pour the stuff on, chief. We’ve got to try to stuff it as close to the primer as possible—” His voice was shaking, and his skinny arms jerked almost spastically as he fought with the panel. The ticking stopped.
Griffin hesitated only a second, then rushed to help. “Get out of here, Gary,” S. J. panted. “I can do this myself.”
“Stop trying to be a hero, friend.” Griffin yanked the bar from S. J.’s hand and squeezed it into the narrow crack, leaning his weight against it. Distantly he heard Chester telling the others to clear out. The door popped open. Alex sniffed. Odd—
“Thanks and get out,” S. J. hissed, grabbing the bar back.
“No sooner said . . .” Griffin slapped the Engineer on the back and hightailed it. The gravelly surface of the slope gave that stomach-sinking two-forward-and-one-back traction of a sand dune, but Alex sprinted anyway. Wondering why they ran. He had sniffed cordite and hot metal. The primer had already gone off; the bomb’s explosion was retarded only by the black fire. How could they outrun an atomic explosion?
Just below the volcano’s lip, he looked back.
S. J. was still shoveling anti-fire and ashes into the hatch, and had pushed Margie away. She said something to the boy that Alex couldn’t hear, and Waters snapped at her. She ran stumbling up the slope. Owen went down after her, to help her the last several yards to the top. They both arrived gasping.
And that cleared the volcano, except for Waters. “Run, you little idiot!” Henderson bellowed, and Alex was surprised to hear his own throat echoing the words.
Tony McWhirter was already a good way down the slope, hauling Acacia behind him by one arm. Alex heard him shout back at them: “Come on!” The others were bounding after him, and Alex joined them.
He was halfway down when a voice called from above. “Keep going! Keep going!” He looked back over his shoulder and saw S. J. at the rim of the volcano, just as the airplane’s egg hatched.
It outlined Waters with a halo of light and flame. The ground shook as if a giant’s palm had slapped the earth, and then the sound came.
Alex lost his footing and tumbled, falling across a split rock that began to gush steam. He fell into Holly Frost, who frantically tried to regain her balance before cascading with him in a rolling heap. Everywhere geysers of steam erupted from the ground, and he managed to roll around them more by instinct than thought.
By the time he reached the bottom he was totally out of breath, unnerved, elbow-skinned but otherwise alive. He got to his feet and dusted himself off, coughing, looking for bodies to count. Miraculously, there were no black auras.
Then he remembered, and his eyes searched the top of the volcano for a certain young Engineer. It was difficult for him to deal with what he felt at that moment: hope, fear, anger . . . and what else? All of them absurd, all of them real as a cut finger. He saw a plume of black smoke rising, rocks rolling, and nothing else. S. J. was gone.
Acacia read his mind. “He knew he wasn’t going to make it, Gary.”
Griffin fought with his emotions. “All right, dammit, he knew. But did he know he was dying for nothing?“
“What do you mean?”
“He’s right, Acacia,” Henderson had the same mixed emotions warring on his face. “That was no atomic bomb. Even in 1945, they weren’t that small. We’d all be blown to hell and back.”
“Well then, what . . .”
“Decoy, dammit. Another decoy.” He watched the smoke churning at the top of the flattened peak. “That crazy little bastard. He’s going to make a hell of a Lore Master one day . . .” he shook himself out of it.
Most of the Gamers were back on their feet, although none of them looked too steady. They clustered around Chester like little children around their mother. Numb, disbelieving, and confused.
Holly rubbed a scraped knee. “What now, Ches?” There was no sass in her voice.
“Regroup and rethink. I guess we had better go back for Maibang.” He tried to force some life into his voice, but Griffin saw the shallow backward glance towards the top of the volcano and knew what he was thinking: Three down. And the day was yet young.
The brush was blackened and burned away, and great pockets of earth were tarry scorch marks.
“Where did we leave him?” Acacia asked, her voice whispery with ugly anticipation.
Alex could only guess. “There used to be a patch of shrubs around here, and a group of low trees. . .”
The group was about to spread in search when Dark Star waved her arm. They followed her toward a cluster of black fingers standing up from black ground: charred trees, still standing. There they found Maibang’s smoking bones.
Gina sat down and cried. Henderson poked in the ashes with the tip of his toe, as if looking for something, some tiny symbol of victory in the mid of stunning defeat, then he too slumped to the ground and stared off at the horizon, silent and drained.
The Haiavaha. It had found the little guide and had finished what the Foré started.
Chester was muttering to himself, so softly that Griffin almost thought himself imagining it. Ever faithful, Gina came to his side and massaged his shoulder, trying to comfort. He flinched away at first, then began to relax, some of the tension draining from him. The other Gamers seemed to go into neutral, waiting for their leader to unscramble his thinking.
Griffin fidgeted, then plopped down next to Henderson. “Listen,” he said, “we need to talk. We have some unsolved logic puzzles here. I don’t know any of the answers, but I’ve got some interesting questions.”
Chester didn’t look around. “All right. Shoot.”
Griffin paused to collect his thoughts. He ticked off questions on his fingers: “First. The bomb in the crater was just an ordinary bomb. Where’s the great super-weapon the ghost Marines told us about, the one that was supposed to help win World War II? Second, why weren’t the enemy guarding their egg if they valued it so highly? Just where were they? Third, if the super-weapon is hidden somewhere, why wasn’t there a second blank spot on the map? Dammit,
why was the first blank spot there if we couldn’t get anything of value at the volcano? Why did Maibang get killed off like that, without any chance for us to save him? I mean, if he’s a vital part of the Game, how could that happen?” He paused in frustration. “Or does any of this make sense?”
It has to make sense, Tegner. “ Henderson ground his teeth together. “Lopez isn’t crazy. He can’t wipe me out like this without some way out. The rules don’t allow it.”
Henderson scratched a line in the dirt with his toe. “Let’s see if we can make sense from this jumble. Let’s start with Maibang. Lopez practically murdered him outright. I think we can assume that was orchestrated. It was in the script from the beginning. All right?”
“Why?”
“It means that we already have the answers. We don’t need Maibang anymore.”
“Have the answers? Hell. We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”
“No, but look: Maibang got us as far as the volcano. There was nothing of value at the volcano—of value to us, that is. According to Lady Janet, it was quite valuable to the enemy. So where were they? Defending something more valuable, that’s where. Defending the real Cargo.”
Henderson was beginning to smile. Griffin felt the gears turning in his own head as he fought to keep up. “Then we were lured to the volcano because it was near the real cargo?”
“Maybe so, maybe no. You were right, there should have been a second blank spot. We examined that map. Was there a second blank spot?”
“I looked. No.”
“Then . . . mmm . . . it’s in a bigger blank spot. The ocean.”
“In it? Underwater?”
“In, on, over, whatever. Maibang takes us by the sea road. The volcano is within spitting distance of the ocean. It has to add up, otherwise Lopez has lured us halfway across New Guinea for nothing, and that I don’t believe.”
“Well,” Griffin scratched his head, genuinely puzzled. “What the hell is it?”
Chester laughed out loud “Drown me if I know! Maybe a new submarine, or some kind of spy plane . . . maybe even the one that took the map photos. It could be any friggin’ thing, and I don’t care.” He stood up and stretched, grinning. “I don’t care because I know it’s there. I can feel it. Tegner—I think we’re all going to get some answers before today’s over.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE LAUGHING DEAD
Myers watched over their shoulders as the Lopezes worked.
Mitsuko Lopez was talking steadily into her mike. One of the screens showed troops forming up near shore: eight dark men and women horribly mutilated by makeup, all listening to her instructions in their earphones.
Richard Lopez nodded, nodded, interrupted rarely, while his fingers and feet raced over the controls. Hologram figures danced in response on a second screen, lurching among the dunes and into the trees; vanishing there, to reappear at the shore and begin their march again. They were horrible, these ghosts: long dead and half disintegrated. Some giggled uncontrollably and twitched like marionettes. Richard’s lips pursed; his fingers blurred, and Myers watched a long-dead zombie being dismembered by an unseen sword. Richard nodded to himself.
“The woman who’s missing a leg and an arm,” Mrs. Metesky whispered in Myers’s ear. “That’s Gloria Washington. She got caught in the Antarctica Ciudad collapse and lost both limbs to frostbite. She took off her prosthetics for the show, of course. She loved the idea, but I’ll never understand where Chi-Chi got the nerve to ask her.”
Myers said, “Looks like your husband is getting ready to kill them all off.”
Lopez heard and answered. “Henderson should have kept some of the anti-fire.”
“Why are some of the actors, giggling like that?”
“Kuru.” Suddenly Richard’s fingers were flying again.
Kuru didn’t tell Myers anything. He nudged. “You can justify it, of course . . .”
Richard laughed.
Now holograms and fleshly actors marched together, the actors trying to match the lurching walk of Richard’s constructs. Richard Lopez turned for an instant. “Myers, it’s there for justification. Shows I did my homework. Have you heard of kuru? The laughing sickness?”
“No.”
“Look it up. You get it by eating infected human brain tissue. It causes convulsions of an exhausting, hysterical laughter. The Foré used to get it. Some of our zombies obviously died of it.”
Myers’s stomach lurched. “It’s real?”
“Quite real. Or used to be. The Foré haven’t eaten human meat since the last century . . . as far as anyone knows. That area’s mostly a tourist trap these days. But about half the women used to die of kuru, and a fifth of the general populace. The fighting men got the best parts of the missionaries, leaving the brains and, ah, chittlins for those with less status . . . women, children, the old ones . . .”
Richard let it trail off. On another screen, Henderson was leading his Gaming party down out of the burned area.
Owen Braddon, at the tail, suddenly turned and bounded back uphill. He scooped up a blackened skull and jogged to rejoin the party. The Lopezes turned to each other, grinned, nodded.
Myers was minded to ask; but Richard was talking again. “Can you imagine how long they must have been eating each other if a disease evolved to take advantage of it? It’s extinct now. We think.”
Griffin watched every bush, every tree, waiting for death. It was going to be bad. Already he could hear he murmur of surf. They must be close, dangerously close . . .
“Penny,” Acacia said, and her voice scrambled his thoughts. He knew only that he spun half around, his hands strangling the rifle stock, aiming the gun at Acacia. momentarily he felt foolish. Then he saw the fatigue in her face, and knew she understood.
The Gamers behind him had no spring left in their step. He could see their fierce determination, but no sign of confidence anywhere.
“What next? What the hell is he going to hit us with next?”
“That’s the way to get killed,” Acacia said soberly.
“There’s no ‘he’ to hit us with anything. Stop trying to play, and live it.” She was exasperated. “Gary, you drive me crazy. One half of you is just dying to jump in head-first, and the other half stands back dunking toes. If you could just stop wondering, weighing, planning . . .”
He managed to find a genuine laugh. “You’re a fine one to talk. We play Twenty Questions every time we say Hello.”
“Touché. Maybe nether of us has been very real.” Something went out of her voice as she looked up at him. “What if it had been for real, Gary?”
“If what had been real? This?”
“Us.” There was no overt movement, but suddenly she was closer to him. Not touching, not even looking at him now, but there, and the air was charged.
“We’re a little deep in the bullshit to try to sort this out now. Maybe we’ll still think it’s worth talking about after this is over.”
Her eyes probed the bushes too pointedly, and he felt the warmth in the air drain away. “Maybe.”
Somebody giggled, far ahead.
“What’s funny?” he wondered. But Acacia had frozen. The giggle came again . . . hey, that wasn’t a Gamer. It wasn’t close enough, and besides that, it was wrong. It is strained, broken, like the helpless, painful laughter of someone forceably tickled, tickled until the humor was gone, until the nerves, beg for release. It made him cringe just to hear it, aid it grew steadily louder.
Chester snapped commands. “Oliver! To the rear. Non-fighters to the center of the column. It’s coming, so get ready.”
They moved forward, slowly.
Alex heard shuffling footsteps. They came in odd rhythm with the laughter. A pained chuckle, then a dragging step. A hiccough of bizarre mirth, and another plodding thump . . .
And the first one appeared. He stood five and a half feet tall, dressed in brown rags. He laughed, and a hideous grin split the blackened face, and the whole body shuddered. In h
is right hand he carried a machete.
Mary-em measured him. “He’s mine.” She broke away from the line and walked warily toward him, her blade in front of her.
Griffin could see her opponent more clearly now. Like the native Alex had ambushed earlier, he showed dark skin and eyes with epicanthic folds. Sure enough the Japanese invaders must have mated with the native Foré; and the resulting race would have hybrid vigor on their side. As if Chester didn’t have enough trouble.
As Mary-em drew close, the man stopped and seemed truly to see her for the first time. He blinked slow gummy lids, and Alex saw how filthy he was. Dirt crusted his face and hands, and the earth looked damp where it clung.
Unbidden, the logical allusion sprang to Alex’s mind: “ . . like he just stepped out of a grave . . .”
And that was when the odor hit. Neutral scent was Alex’s first panicked reaction, almost immediately squelched. This smell was far from neutral.
Once, years before, Alex had bought an old-fashioned fly trap, the kind that catches them in water. Or July he had forgotten to clean it out for a week and thousands of flies had fermented in the sun. When he finally went to clean it out, the reek went through him like a brick through sheet glass, and everything in his stomach crawled the walls.
This was similar. Rotten . . . something rotten. Something less clean than meat. Something that had been horribly corrupt even in life. Something bottle-fly blue on the outside, and pasty green within.
Mary-em was turning green, but now, with a foe in front of her, she moved more surely.
It charged. Mary-em sidestepped the wobbly advance, and drew the blade of her halberd cleanly it’s stomach, and whirled to face it again. It laughed and hacked at her head.
Alex yelped with surprise, but Mary-em ducked as if she’d been expecting it. She kicked low and cross-legged, as if smacking a soccer ball halting an inch from its shin. Its leg gave way, but it slashed as it fell and Mary-em blocked again, spinning like a dancer with a parasol, and with a flicker of her wrists cut the thing on both sides of the neck. It fell to the dirt.
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