The Games

that showed lots of teeth when she talked, and he noticed how straight and white they were. He liked teeth, and a lot of people around here seemed to have really good ones. He thought about asking her if they were hers or veneers, but if he spoke, she might smell the peanuts, so instead he pressed his lips together and followed her.

It didn’t take long to attach the probes and strap him into the booth. The cloth pinched a little at his crotch, but by shifting his weight, it was tolerable. The nice-teeth woman in the jumper lowered the faceplate, and his vision lost its reds. He caught Baskov’s critical eye in the crowd just before the visor opaqued. Well, to hell with him; he wasn’t going to ruin Evan’s day. The old gimp could glare all he wanted, but Evan would still have his two minutes and fifty-nine seconds. Almost an eternity.

FROM SOMEWHERE a buzzer sounded briefly. Then the noise from the crowded anteroom began to fade, as if he were receding from it.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Chandler opened his eyes to whiteness.

A flash like a snapped photograph, like lightning, like quick death, and then he saw it: a long, empty corridor. The corridor’s edges were broken only by a gathering of switches protruding from the wall in the distance. He walked. It was the ultimate clean room. No dust in here, he thought. He moved quickly to start the programs, curling his fingers around the switches and throwing them one by one as he came to them. Each switch activated a different part of the computer, waking it up in bits and pieces. He could hear the thrumming of the drives now.

Evan paused at the final switch, the one Baskov didn’t know about. This switch was very, very small, little more than a tiny white toggle, actually. No, it was smaller than that even. The more you looked at it, the smaller it got, receding from your inspection—an interesting sort of camouflage he’d developed. He squinted, feeling for what was barely there, and then he flicked it. The lights went out.

Time for a little privacy.

He chuckled, and the sound was booming and happy in his ears. It was the sound of a god laughing.

His body was firm and full of energy. His mind was clear. He swung his arms as he walked and whistled a tune he remembered from a vid-show he’d seen as a child. He was Hercules. He was an athlete, a sprinter. He was rage a thousand feet tall, with muscles that rippled as he walked. When he finally stepped from the confines of the corridor and out into the secret place, he paused and took a deep breath of the fresh, clean air. Sunlight filtered through the leafy canopy high above, casting a warm greenish glow on the floor of the forest.

The forest swayed.

“Pea?” he called loudly.

It’s what his mother had called him as a child when she tucked him in at night. It was one of the few things she’d given him that he’d been able to hold on to, that name, and it had seemed only right to pass it on.

“Pea?” he called again.

A name is important. It can stamp you for life, so one has to be careful. Naming someone carries with it a lot of responsibility. Pea Chandler. Named for his grandmother’s love. Born ten months ago. Father, Evan Chandler. Mother, unknown.

A giggle.

It was supposed to be the father unknown, not the mother.

Something moved.

“Papa?”

There was a rustle of leaves as a small arm parted the bushes at the edge of the clearing. The small dark- haired boy stepped into sight. Evan surged across the clearing and scooped the boy into his arms, hugging him wordlessly against his broad chest. He’d grown so much, lengthened out. Evan guessed him to be about four years old now. Has that much time passed in here?

“Papa, where have you been?”

“I’ve tried to come back, Pea. I thought of you every day.”

“It’s been so lonely.”

“I missed you, too.”

Evan carried the child out of the forest on his shoulders. When they came to the first dune of fine white sand, he paused and lowered the boy to his feet. Then, laughing together, they raced up and over the other side of the dune and across the tidal flat into the rolling surf of a warm inland sea.

“You’ve been busy,” Evan told the boy.

“All for you, Papa,” the boy said. “I made this all for you.”

“How did you know how?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You like building things?”

“Yes. This sea has kept me busy.”

“It’s truly beautiful.”

They ran in the waves, and Evan enjoyed the heat of the sun on his back as they played. He picked up the laughing child and tossed him into the water again and again. For a short while, Evan was able to pretend that there was nothing else, that this was his true life and the lonely fat man that existed in some other universe was merely a bad dream from which he had awakened.

The boy wiped the water from his eyes and found his feet somehow in the surge of waves. He stood, pulling back a little so Evan wouldn’t grab him up and toss him again. “There is so much I want to show you.” The boy’s eyes were black and piercing. “And so much I want to ask.”

The boy extended his arm, palm down, and the waves suddenly smoothed themselves out. In the space of a heartbeat, Evan found himself standing thigh-deep in a sea that was calm and flat—a single unbroken pane that stretched to the horizon. The only sound was the wind blowing in from offshore, but after another moment, that, too, quieted. He looked down at the boy.

“I’ve made life for the sea,” Pea said. “I call them fish.” The boy pointed.

In the distance, an imperfection formed on the flat surface, a ripple, small at first. But the ripple gradually grew into a wave. Evan looked back at the boy, feeling the first stirrings of unease.

“I couldn’t wait to show you,” the boy said.

The wave swelled as it moved toward them, across the flat sea. The sound of rushing water filled his ears. At a hundred yards out, Evan saw the shape. It was dark and huge, and it roiled wildly behind the growing white wall of froth. An enormous black fin appeared, thick and fleshy, and large as a man. The bulging tail flexed in the surf, and water splashed high into the air. The sea broke away as the thing fought into the shallows. It was a distorted monstrosity, low and flat, with a wide, gaping mouth filled with ragged teeth. Its eyes were white and sightless, extending from stalks at the sides of its head. It ground its belly deeper into the sand with each powerful thrust of its tail, getting closer. Forty yards now. The fleshy fins paddled at the surf, dragging the creature through the shallowing water.

“They keep changing over time. That’s something I didn’t expect,” Pea said.

Evan watched as the thing finally ground to a halt, still twenty yards out—a huge hump of flesh jutting above the water. The eyestalks swayed as the mouth worked open and closed.

“I’ve made life for the air,” Pea said. “I call them birds.” The boy pointed again.

Evan followed Pea’s outstretched arm upward into the brilliant blue sky. There, triangular forms pinwheeled in the air currents like shiny red kites, their long, thin tails trailing behind them in the wind. As Evan watched, one of the larger creatures swooped down onto a smaller one, enveloping it and severing its tail. The wounded animal screamed and, separated from its stabilizing tail, fell spiraling to the ground in the distance.

“I’ve made life for the land, too,” Pea said. “But I haven’t decided yet what to call them.” When Pea gestured toward the shore, the dunes themselves began to shift and sag. Something moved beneath them. Something big. Evan heard a sound like sandpaper on steel, a low, corrosive lumbering that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

As he watched, a thing writhed free from beneath the dune and struggled onto the beach. It was huge and