Time to meet her team.
Five seconds after she left the room, Nigel Bishop's breathing began to speed. He opened his eyes.
Yes, he thought. She knows something is wrong. She isn't sure what. She will justify and rationalise, because she thinks she is in love, and that should carry her well into the Game. And then?
Nigel smiled. He didn't have the faintest idea.
Alphonse 'The Barbarian' Nakagawa, Loremaster for the Texas Instruments-Mitsubishi team, was a tall, thin half-Japanese from Austin with a golden halo of Jesus hair and the thin, angular body of a stork. His grandfather had been a shrimp fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico, his father an oil rigger. For him, the California Voodoo Game began with his wife's image on a hotel phone screen, too early in the morning.
'Saray? Heck fire, woman what time is it?'
Was she glaring? 'It's six forty-five here. The Game starts in two and a half hours.'
'Christ. I feel like I was ate by a coyote and shit off a cliff. '
'I see you're working your shitkicker routine overtime. Sorry, but we've got to talk.'
'Ah… right. Okay, I'm sitting up.'
'Al, someone really wants your balls.'
'I'm a Loremaster. Goes with the territory.'
'Phone call, black screen, anonymous, twenty minutes ago. I took that long to think it through before I called you. I couldn't really tell the gender, even. Male, I think. 'Guess who's sleeping in your husband's bed?' '
'Damn! Let me in on the secret, would you?'
'Crystal Cofax, I assume, I should hope! I hung on long enough that he could have said. I don't think he knew. So I got tearful and hysterical and called you a bug-fucking pederast TexNip prick and swore I'd call you that instant and demand explanations.'
'Just right. But… um.'
'It is Crystal, isn't it?'
'Sure. Yes, dear, honestly. She's back in her room, but you could call her.'
'Okay. What means um?'
'Well, could be Bishop. Rumor has it, he's crooked as a bucket of snakes. Either he's bluffing, or he knows I've got a little friend up here. Thinks I'm cheating.'
'Why didn't he give me a name?'
'Maybe he's playing another game. He's sharp as a rat turd, but maybe he doesn't know…' Alphonse felt his thought processes coming unstuck. 'Doesn't know. Just peeked at an unmade bed. But that'd mean he was here in my room.'
The last came out as an indignant squeak.
Saray laughed. 'You're in the security wing of the Arabian Nights, dear. Aren't you letting your imagination run away with you?'
But Alphonse wasn't watching her anymore. He was studying the door, imagining Bishop overriding the lock, or bribing a maid, or stealing a key from the front desk, or emergency-coding the central processor, or…
'Al?
'Huh? Oh… I was just wondering how he did it.'
'You can't be serious.'
'Serious as cancer,' Alphonse said thickly. 'This is war.'
He had to check his valise. Was it gone? Did Bishop have all of his data cards?
'Alphonse? Alphonse? There you go again. Listen, call me back when you have a flash of sanity, however brief.'
'I'm gonna hurt that boy.'
She grimaced and was gone.
He checked the closet and found all of his gear. Bishop for sure. If something had been misplaced, it would mean he faced a lesser adversary. But if Nigel Bishop had targeted him… researched him… and why not? Alphonse Nakagawa was the only real threat to the Bishop.
So Bishop knew Saray was pregnant, but he must think their marriage was lockstepped. That was reasonable. There were only two couples in the world-and once there had been three-that Saray and Al would swap with. During a Game he kept, as the expression went, his pecker in his pocket. He believed it improved his performance.
Thought you could bitch me up? Well, Bishop, when l'm finished with you, there won't be anything left but fur and claws.
But I'll keep my smile tight for a while. I'll let you think it worked. The only question is were you in my room?
Alphonse stalked the room, peering under the bed, searching behind the cabinets for bugs, checking and rechecking the locks on his valise a dozen times before finally, reluctantly, concluding that he was probably overreacting.
But if Bishop's stolen my strategy notes, I'm fucked, and laughed at.
It's too late to change everything now. What to do? One chance: if Bishop doesn 't know I know…
The knock on the door jolted him. It was room service, with breakfast. Al the Barbarian ate as he dressed. He tried to convince himself there was no real problem, that it was all, as Saray suggested, a paranoid fantasy.
Ha. As Grandpappy Nakagawa used to say, that dog wouldn't hunt.
The room was small and stark and reminded Panthesilea more of a locker room than anything else.
Captain Cipher was the first to notice her in the doorway. He peered up at her through his oversized helmet with its blue visual shield. 'Milady,' he said. There was no whining in his voice now, no uncertainty There was a different quality to him. He even smelled clean.
Acacia looked at the rest of her team.
Steffie 'Aces' Wilde, Engineer/Scout. Mati 'Top Nun' Cohen, Cleric. Terrance 'Prez' Coolidge, Warrior. Corrinda Harding, Thief.
Each nodded, a silent salute as she came into their ken. They were appropriately busy stretching or checking their equipment.
Acacia checked her watch. '05:15 hours. Crack of dawn. Game starts in two hours. Any last-minutes to discuss?'
Corrinda pumped a pneumatic cuff around her bad knee, checked the pressure, eased off a little, flexed it… and tried to hide her grimace. 'It's fine,' she said. 'Just a little stiff.'
'We'll keep the jogging to a minimum.''
Top Nun adjusted her hood. 'How are we going to protect Cipher, and to what degree will we be expected to?'
A reasonable question. The rest of the team were all athletes. They pumped air, did grueling hours of yoga and martial arts, ran, swam, worked the rings. Cipher was a couch potato right to the eyes.
'Crystal Maze was a special situation,' Acacia said. 'I knew we'd need him more than we needed the other categories. Here, we know from the preliminary notes-' She lifted a thin sheaf of notes entitled 'California Voodoo,' then dropped it again. '-that no Gaming category is dominant.'
She checked through her own equipment as she considered. 'Prez? Work with me for a minute.'
'Prez' Coolidge, the tall, stocky African-American, slid an assegai out of his back sheath. The spear balanced like a willow wand in his gigantic hand. He flicked on the monitor, and a holographic blade projected over the slender sensor. Gyro switched on. Acacia dropped the Virtual shield in front of her face, and the spear became even sharper and more fearsome.
'What it boils down to, people, is that we're the best-balanced team that I could assemble. Cipher is our voodoka, so to speak-' Acacia weaved to the side and, despite Terrance's best parry, touched him along the ribs.
He was fast faster than she remembered, actually, but Panthesilea was the wind. Her parries and strikes were economical and unpredictable. Her every attack followed a new angle, created a new rhythm.
After a thirty-second display of swordsmanship that left the others speechless, she called it off.
' Suberbia. Gracias. Now-' She noted her heartbeat as it began its swift descent to a stable 50. 'Cipher will save our hash as often as we save his. We protect him, and take his physical skills into account exactly as if we
