Dream Park

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 lit-tie 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 Garners 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 toward 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 midst 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 Fore 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 Garners 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