The Barsoom Project dp-2 Read online

  “Nothing but fruit or raw vegetables after nine in the evening. In that way your digestive system gets to rest while you sleep. Second, all of the participants will be wearing heart and blood pressure transmitters wired into the mesh of their underwear. These will be in constant operation.

  “Well-I think that’ll do it for the time being. You’ll find everything else you need to know as the Game proceeds.”

  The two screens winked out. Griffin sipped the dregs of his coffee. “What do you think?”

  Marty’s face broke into a huge smile. “You know, for years I’ve been telling myself that I was going to do a Game. You seemed to have so much fun in the South Seas Treasure Game! But I just never did it. Now I’ve got the chance. I love it. I’ll make you a little side bet-I outpoint everyone there.”

  “I’ve got a different bet for you. Lose twenty pounds within eight weeks, and we’ll see about that raise.”

  “Aw, Chief, c’mon. I can still pin you two out of three-”

  “That’s the deal. What do you say?”

  Marty waited a minute, then extended a heavy hand. “You’re on.”

  Griffin pumped it solemnly. “Now, then. Is War-Bots set up yet?”

  Marty rubbed his hands together. “Let’s see.”

  Griffin punched a series of buttons, and the window cleared and Razul sat in a tiny cabin that pitched and yawed as he manipulated his controls. Each thundering footstep of the War-Bot reverberated to the core of his spine.

  The enemy War-Bot came at him again, scarlet trimmed in black, two hundred feet tall. A thousand tons of mechanized thunder, with Andrew Chala invisible in the torso. It swung a gigantic fist that impacted like the direct strike of an avalanche.

  Razul went down, and when he did, a row of buildings was crushed beneath him. Razul must keep the War-Bot rolling, must bring it back to its feet; but he was rolling across a park and into a block of apartment buildings, while families screamed and fled. Tiny nannies pushed prams at sprinter’s speed, or abandoned them to die beneath the metal behemoth. He’d smashed the base of a building. It disintegrated. Concrete and screaming people showered his shoulders as he came to his feet.

  “ Have you never wished to fight a war all by yourself? Yourself the only general and the only warrior. No ally to betray you. No subordinate to ruin your plans through mistake or misunderstanding. War reduced to its basics!” Dream Park’s fool of a psychiatrist thought he knew Razul’s mind.

  He was wrong. Razul had accepted the War-Bots challenge in spite of Vail.

  He glimpsed his enemy through the wreckage. Razul and Chala had agreed to fight without missiles; but one could improvise. Razul clutched a mass of the concrete beehive and hurled it. It smashed through a shell of wall that was still standing; the scarlet behemoth behind it staggered, then came on.

  By the sacred mountains of Allah! Dream Park’s servants had violent, bloody dreams. He was a war all to himself, facing one monolith of an enemy now wading toward him through waisthigh structures: a bank, some ancient business buildings that had become apartments. It was good, it was simpler than life, it was a heady experience. If only he couldn’t hear the screams, he could enjoy the battle, concentrate on smashing Andrew Chala. They were little white English, antlike, insignificant; not his people at all.

  Yet his battle with the black man, no matter what he did, no matter what crushing blow he dealt, continued to hurt the little people. He couldn’t help but feel the shame and guilt associated, even as the exhaustion of moving the controls began to wear down his endurance. But the War-Bot was back on its tremendous feet, and Razul waded back into the park.

  Sweat drooled down his face, and the sounds of screaming and wailing rang in his ears. Razul readied himself for the assault. His enemy’s great black and red machine stalked toward him, nearly running now. If Chala maintained that speed he might be able to dodge Its right foot suddenly sank to the knee!

  Razul screamed defiance and threw his machine forward behind its massive fist. Chala’s behemoth was off balance. Its arms came around too slowly… everything seemed slow, the robots were so large.. but Razul’s fist plowed into the other robot just below the throat. The world rang like a million broken bells. Now duck, while the other’s arms came around Where Chala’s robot’s foot had penetrated the turf, white light flared from underneath. Turf exploded upward. Razul blinked, dazzled, and fought the controls to avoid falling over backward. He could guess what had happened. Chala had stepped into the Chunnel, the vacuum subway that ran between Britain and France. A train must have impacted at meteor speed. Thousands dead in fractions of a second.

  And his enemy’s leg was off at the knee! Razul threw three missile-velocity punches. His enemy fell back and landed hard, and Razul had won.

  He was crying like a baby as he struggled out of the cabin. War reduced to its basics. Smash things. Hope your enemy is smashed too. No honor in this, only fatigue and death and blood ruining the pretty parks. War reduced to its basics, oh, you sons of dogs.

  He saw Andrew Chala climbing out of what was, after all, only the midsection of a giant red and black robot. Chala was sobbing helplessly.

  We must keep war off Mars, Razul told himself. We will. I’ll have to talk to Chala… later.

  Chapter Five

  CATCH IT AND YOU KEEP IT

  “Move it!”

  Max Sands ran as fast as he could, thundering along on thick, muscular legs.

  What was…? Who was…? A moment ago he and the rest of the group had been ambling toward the embarking area. Then an alarm whistle split the calm of the corridor, and they broke into a stumbling, confused gallop. His heart hammered in adrenal overload. What had gone wrong? He’d heard rumors that mad Arabs were after Moon Maid. Had they…?

  Max and exercise were ancient antagonists. He went into a kind of fugue state, where his body seemed to perform without his conscious intervention, a sort of automatic overdrive he had learned while apprenticing in his curious profession.

  Just behind him, Eviane was puffing like a choo-choo, bouncing and jiggling, but keeping up. More: her face was grin-split with happy anticipation. Her elongated friend Moon Maid Dula moved as if walking on stilts, a continuous toppling run, unsteady but still making tracks.

  The tunnel boomed and shuddered. Far off, he heard the rattle of gunshots.

  The tunnel dead-ended at a curved metal door sealed with a thick rubber flange. Rows of fluorescent lights flickered around the edges. A cluster of Gamers were there ahead of him.

  The guy who called himself “Hippogryph” was pushing against the wall, stretching his calves. Sweat streamed down his cheeks. His chest heaved. Hippogryph’s breathing was a conscious thing: inhale through the nose only, slowly exhale… The guy acted like an outsider’s image of a typical Gamer: big sappy permanent grin, constant quotes from Asimov and Chang, sly “in” references to Luke Skywalker and Frodo. Max read him as a Dream Park security watchdog for Charlene Dula.

  Brother Orson stumbled, trying to keep up. A very large, conspicuously pretty blonde named Trianna Stith-Wood helped him right himself. There was strength in that woman’s arms. She had a baby face, little pearly teeth, a smile you could use for a heliograph. He had heard she was a chef. Likely she was her own best customer.

  Two more ran up. Francis Hebert was a short, dark-skinned, crop-haired career soldier, pudgy only by military standards. He ran easily; the bagel in his fist explained his late start. The second man was Frankish Oliver, a Gamer and a pure warrior, even though at this point everyone was still in street clothes.

  A blast of cold air hit Max in the face, as if the air-conditioning units had suddenly gone berserk.

  The door burst open, banging against the tunnel wall. A woman stood there, looking gaunt and frightened in a neatly pressed red uniform. The cords in her throat bunched as she screamed, “Hurry!” It was the voice that had shrieked panic from the intercom. “The Guard can’t hold the cannibals back much longer!”

  Cannibals?
Max looked behind him. Two uniformed National Guardsmen, one black and slender, the other white and burly, were the ones firing the shots. The burly man fell, his hand clapped to a spreading red glow on his leg. His face distorted with pain as he tried to crawl toward the silver door.

  Trianna, Orson, and Frankish Oliver squeezed through. Charlene Dula started back. Max grabbed Charlene’s arm urgently. “Wrong way!”

  “But that man! He’s hurt!”

  Max pulled her toward the door. Hippogryph had her other arm and was following Max’s lead… and staring hard at Max. Certainly he was Security; and Max had touched Charlene.

  Charlene looked back over her shoulder; the concern on her face suddenly changed to horror.

  From around the corner surged a horde of people in tattered clothing, bundled in rags. They grabbed the wounded Guardsman and dragged him away. His screaming grew acute, then stopped.

  The second soldier bellowed at them. “Get that boat off the ground!”

  The cannibals were bearing down on him when the soldier took a silver cylinder from his belt, pulled the pin and Finally Charlene seemed to understand. She eeled through the doorway. It was the curved thick doorway of an airplane, wedged half-open. Max feared he would tear skin pushing through after her. Hippogryph had similar trouble following him.

  The soldier tucked and rolled as the corridor erupted into flame. The plastic structure ruptured from floor to ceiling, and what poured through was Snow?

  A blizzard of powder and white flakes gushed through the cracks. Frigid air slapped his face like a giant frozen hand, sent him reeling back from the door.

  The soldier scrambled into the plane, snow and sweat streaking his dark face. He turned and pulled the door shut. The floor lurched under his feet.

  Max caught one last glimpse through the window. The entire tunnel was collapsing. Screaming, the raggedy man-eaters tumbled through the ruptured floor and disappeared.

  “Strap yourselves in. We’re taking off now!”

  Max looked around, heaving for breath. He could hear a good deal of panting around him. Francis Hebert had had to pull Johnny Welsh inside. The comedian was red-faced and heaving, but recovering fast. Good lungs: a stand-up comic would need that.

  Seats were four across, the fuselage constricted halfway back, where overhead wings showed through big curved windows. Max wasn’t familiar with aircraft, but this plane seemed old: one of the smaller supersonic jets. Seats at the back had been ripped out and cargo was stacked nearly to the ceiling. The seats were already crowded. Nobody knew what was going on any more than he did, but they were moving. He settled into a seat next to Frankish Oliver, across the aisle from Charlene and Eviane.

  Charlene’s height forced her to sit knees to chest, and Eviane was helping her settle in. Charlene’s voice was a frantic squeal. “Eviane, what’s happening?”

  Eviane smiled uneasily. “Seems to be the end of the world.”

  Charlene gripped her seat, silent, lips pressed thin.

  Max admired the way Eviane helped her friend. In the midst of a whirlwind of panic and murder, she seemed to be maintaining control. Something had changed in the silent, withdrawn Eviane of the Time Travel Game.

  There was a rumbling purr as the plane backed away from what Max could now see was a ruined airline terminal. The roof buckled under a crushing mantle of snow.

  “We’re very fortunate that the storm is dying,” the stewardess said. She looked exhausted. “We’re the last plane out of San Francisco Airport. I don’t know what happened to the rest of them. I can only hope… ”

  Her voice trailed off, and she rubbed her eyes. They were red-rimmed and dark-circled, as if she hadn’t slept in days.

  As she buckled herself against the wall the plane lurched, bounded across the icy ground. The windows smeared with snow flumes. The plane tilted and went up at a steep angle. Snow-locked buildings and cars swiftly became toylike.

  Max craned over Frankish Oliver to peer out of the window at the city below.

  The plane rose, turning right. The long overhead wing swung back. Max saw the ruin that had once been the showpiece of the west coast. The rebuilt Bay Bridge lay broken and buckled, and snow partially covered a string of cars that stretched from Mann to Oakland. Ships were frozen in the bay, and the entire city lay under a blue-white mantle of ice. The light was dim; the sky beyond the folded-back wing was slate-gray.

  Study Eskimos, Dream Park’s instruction packet had read. He was beginning to understand why.

  The passengers had grown quiet. A hush followed the wump as they eased through the sound bather.

  The stewardess switched her throat mike on. Her voice was a near parody of the countless airplane safety recitations Max had heard over the years. “The weather has continued to worsen,” she said. “We can’t go south. The airports in Los Angeles and San Diego are swamped. Texas and New Mexico are sealed; they’re shooting unauthorized planes out of the sky. The Southwest just isn’t prepared for this kind of weather. New York has done better. Its people and social structures have survived, while California is disintegrating. Since Canada commandeered the oil pipeline, that’s no place for Americans. Alaska is our best bet.”

  The plane slid through gray clouds, and out.

  Eviane hissed. Charlene frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “The sun!”

  Only fools look straight at the sun. Charlene caught it in her peripheral vision, glaring above an unbroken white cloud deck. “It looks fine.”

  Eviane stared at her, then looked out the window. “It looks that way from Ceres?”

  “I… Oh! If it’s right for Ceres, then… too small for Earth. Not enough light. What could cause that?”

  Max cursed under his breath. Moon Maid was dead-on. Why hadn’t he seen it? He tried to shake the cobwebs away. For the first time since the jumbled introductions at the Tower of Night, he had a chance to really look at the people around him.

  One man stood and introduced himself, “My name is Robin Bowles. I owe you all, and I guess you don’t know why.”

  The group went silent. Eviane canted forward. She whispered fiercely, “Robin Bowles, the actor? He’s our guide?”

  Max only vaguely recognized the name, but he knew the face from late-night movies, vidcassettes, talk shows, and tabloids. None of that mattered now. One of the first things that Gamers learned was that somebody along on the trip would have been briefed on the Game, the rules, the situation, the mission. When the “guide” spoke, you listened.

  “It’s been almost two years since the series of operations that saved my life.” Bowles was a hair over six feet tall, and stout where many of the Gamers were merely chunky. His hair and beard were long and bushy, brown going gray. “The Red Cross had a severe blood shortage due to the blood bank terrorism of ‘ 54. Everyone was afraid. Infected needles, infected plasma-the entire system was beginning to fail. And the ten of you donated blood that saved me.” He sighed. “It was a miracle, and there was no way I could thank you. I’d lost a fortune speculating on adverse-environment gear. I was betting on another oil strike in Alaska.”

  His face darkened, grim as a man staring into the depths of hell. “Then the sun began to die.”

  Six words, said without drama, without a roll of drums or a dimming of lights, yet Max felt the chill right down to the marrow.

  Bowles paused to let the implications sink in. “It wasn’t just that the sun wasn’t burning. No fusion, no neutrinos, hell, that’s news from the last century. But now the interior heat is going somewhere, somehow. Interior heat inflates a star, keeps it from collapsing. The sun is shrinking. The surface isn’t any dimmer, but it’s a smaller radiating surface. The Earth’s insulation is down to half and falling.

  “The weather changed, and suddenly the gear that had been a drug on the market became gold. The film industry in Utah and Illinois died overnight, but I was making more money on the gear than I’d ever made in holos. So I stayed in San Francisco, selling and manipulating sa
les, until it became obvious that the city was falling. It was time to move on. And I remembered you, all of you. I’d kept track of you. I found you, and offered you this escape. Thank you for accepting my offer.” The sincerity in his thanks came through clearly. This was a man who was delighted for the chance to repay a fraction of what he owed.

  “The plane is completely stocked. I own a wildlife research station in the north country. There will be heat, and food-enough to last a lifetime for us, and any children we may have. Beyond that.. ” The optimism slipped like a loose mask. “We all know what awaits us. Awaits mankind eventually. We can only hope that someone will find an answer. Some of you have technical skills.”

  He took a handful of manila file folders and moved down the aisle, passing them out. “These are personalized dossiers. Please correct any faulty information. We will have to depend on each other completely. We are a totally closed society.”

  He passed Max, and handed down a folder. Max broke the seal with his thumbnail.

  Max Sands. 6’4”. 295 lbs. Recreational therapist-whatever the heck that meant. Sounded sexier than what he really did. He’d never met the guy in the folder, but already liked him better than the one in the mirror. This Max Sands had stayed behind when the city began to empty. He cared for the sick who couldn’t be moved. When the blizzard hit San Francisco…

  He snuck a peek over at Charlene, wondering if she had taken a fantasy identity. She would have made a perfect Tolkien elf, but there were no elves in this Game.

  Frankish Oliver’s biography described an SFPD sergeant. A vital job, someone who had stayed behind during what must have been a long and painful exodus from the northern climes. Max closed his eyes… it was easy to imagine. The sun shrinking, the weather cooling. Panic. The beginning of the end for Man on Earth. And what was happening to Man in space, with their dependence on solar power?

  He examined the men and women around him. These were the people he would have to depend upon for his survival. He envisioned himself learning to use snow tractors, working in hothouses, tending the reactor…