seemed to be, the Game had begun.
Laughter and a tinkle of glasses echoed down the corridor. The connecting passageways were open. Somewhat curious, she motioned to the others, and together they streamed down the passageway to the club car.
They had to go past the other compartments. Two cars were still empty, but backpacks, helmets, and weapons were scattered on the seats of the Army and Texas Instruments-Mitsubishi cars. In the club car they found others waiting.
The Army players had clustered along one side of the bar, as if for defence. Five men and one woman, with Lieutenant Philips in the center. She'd changed out of that silly chain-mail outfit. A tall woman with long bones and long, hard muscles, she was dressed for rugged terrain, with lots of pockets and a saber on her back-hey, that chain-mail bikini was just a ploy, wasn't it? A fairly sophisticated one.
Beneath their expected stiffness the Army boys looked uneasy-except one. One had dancing eyes and a smile just for Panthesilea.
She said, 'Congratulations, Corporal.'
He glanced at his shoulders. 'No stripes showing.'
'I hear things. Damn, you grew muscles! You look a lot better than last time we met. Then again, you were two days' dead.'
'Then again, I was a wimp. That's why I joined up. Today I think I can outrun you, Panthesilea. '
She laughed. 'You are more than welcome to try, Waters. Meanwhile, what do you suppose is happening to your odds in Vegas?' She rounded the bar without waiting for an answer.
She knew the Tex-Mits crew by names and rankings, knew their Gaming histories in detail, even if she didn't know them all as individuals. Ozzie the Pike, bearded and capped in steel with a Virtual visor, grinned at her in open admiration, a feedback loop that pleased them both. Friar Duck smiled at her and babbled happily, the buzzing gibberish of a still-famous movie star. But Alphonse Nakagawa sprawled back against the wet bar, sipping orange juice, loose and gawky, hostile grey eyes following her.
'Small world. Panthesilea herself.'
His apparent awkwardness didn't deceive her. Acacia had seen Al the Barbarian in recorded combat. He seemed to coast on invisible ice skates. He had incongruously blue eyes, and a deep, golden tan to go with that jarring accent.
She said, ' No, we sent this duplicate instead. Much cheaper, but still too good for you.'
'I ain't drunk enough to listen to this shit.' His hostility made Acacia uneasy. Friar Duck, embarrassed, turned back to the bar.
So: this concerned nothing that Al the B could share with his team. Could he know that Nigel had been in his room? With anything more than a suspicion, he could complain to the IFGS.
So why the attitude? At this stage in the Game, wouldn't he normally be seeking an alliance? Or pretending to? Unless he had some unbeatable advantage…
Unless he could set her to watching and wondering about Al the B, instead of reacting to current events as in Nigel's translation of The Art of War. The book was thousands of years old, by a Chinese named Sun-tzu, and was still relevant: 'Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength…'
If Alphonse simulated anger, he might only be trying to make her think he was out of control.
She smiled blissfully at him.
The Troglodykes were already squeezing through into the club car. Acacia did a quick survey. There was room for maybe fifty people, if they were all friendly, if only a handful wanted to sit. Normally that would mean room for, oh, twenty-five Gamers.
The crowding could be deliberate. No room to fight, but they could bicker.
A bar box slid down the counter and politely inquired as to her choice of beverage. She asked for fizzy grape juice, and it spritzed her a merry concoction, swiveling to place it before her.
She sauntered up to Tammi Romati, who was peering out the window. 'And so it begins.'
She got a wolfish smile in return. 'Place your bets, Panthesilea. Where are we being taken?'
Acacia shrugged. 'Nowhere in Dream Park. The Army team's going nuts. Fifty man-years of experience in Gaming A, straight into the recycler.'
'I mean in Game reality.'
'California Voodoo Game. Voodoo as it i s practiced in California. Usually called santeria? Our notes say it has wealthy patrons. Out of the barrio and into the boardroom.'
'Is that an answer?'
'No hablo ingles,' Acacia said. And she almost leapt up as Nigel entered the car.
There was a momentary hush. Then conversations returned to their former level. The rest of the Gen-Dyn team followed him in. Holly Frost, Thief, remembered her and lifted a spear in salute. Acacia hadn't met Trevor Stone or
Tamasan, the Japanese-looking Shinto priest; but she'd read their dossiers. The Radichevs were impressively muscled Warriors, a married couple who Gamed and fought as a team, and generally died that way, too. Why had Nigel picked them? Or had Gen-Dyn assigned them, like Trevor Stone?
The door sealed shut behind them, and Nigel worked his way up to the front, making eye contacts as he came.
Al the Barbarian… His eyes lit, burned on Nigel, and then he turned his back. Suppressed rage? Jealousy? Al might know what we did, she reminded herself. Watch your back.
With a barely audible hum, the train began to move.
Nigel gave Acacia a single wolfish grin before he turned to the bar just in time to miss what was happening beyond the windows.
9
Thursday, July 21, 2059 7:16 A.M.
Well-wishers, Gamers, media gadflies… all waved good-bye. But in the last twenty seconds or so before the train slid into darkness, they'd mutated subtly.
Acacia could see it in their stance (beaten down, prematurely old), their clothing (primitive, crudely made), the plaintive expressions on their gaunt faces. Crude placards in paint or charcoal on wooden boards read 'Godspeed to our united forces,' 'Power to the Five Peoples!'' 'Crystal, come back to us.'
Then they were lost in darkness. The mundane world slipped away from her. If she were to survive here, Acacia had to become Panthesilea, she of a dozen epochs, a hundred missions, and a thousand deadly skills.
The train floated silently through a black tunnel. A voice said, 'Somebody get the lights?'
Tammi bellowed, 'Lights!'' The car shuddered slightly. 'Lights? Dammit.'
The sensors didn't respond to a verbal command. Circles of golden light glimmered in the hands of various players: here a magic aura, there a flashlight, there a corpse candle. Grins were yellow-white arcs. It begins!
'All right. Let's see if I can find the circuit,' Corporal S. J. Waters volunteered. He reached high, along the rim of the roof, for something his special vision must have pointed out: a metal panel Acacia hadn't noticed at all. He thumbed it open. He jiggled a few wires, and one of the big windows lit up and became a vidscreen.
A somber woman dressed in grey tones faced them across a worn, wooden desk. Her shoulders were slumped with care, her face heavily lined. She looked like George Washington in drag. 'Greetings, once again,' she said. Her eyes and chin flicked sideways for an instant, as if she feared eavesdroppers.
An uneasy ripple of murmurs ran through the club car. The image said, 'I must add a few words to what has gone before-'
Army Lieutenant Madonna Philips snapped, 'Before what?'
'Quiet!' Bishop commanded. Philips glared.
