two hours without sleep, when there was a Game to be played.
The Reveal spell was flickering. MIMIC showed like hologram stills.
MIMIC's levels sank below them, giving hints of the building's complexity. Acacia was too busy keeping her stomach under control to do any mapping. She took what mental snapshots she could, storing away flashes of external detail, knowing that 'Aces' Wilde would remember far better. Given the correct spells, 'Aces' would reel back what she had seen as if it had been recorded.
Mouser was not likely to forget that she had killed him during Crystal Maze. Was there a way to manipulate that? Not yet…
Despite the chaos, Appelion had seen something. He was bursting with it. She'd seen Twan elbow him in the short ribs, warning him not to blurt secrets in the crowded elevator. What had he seen; what had Acacia missed?
The car slammed to a halt as if it had rammed a roof. The door slid up, grinding and protesting, on blue sky and a tilted horizon.
'Out! Get out!' Clavell yelled unnecessarily. They damn near trampled each other scrambling to safety, the elevator groaning behind them.
Mary-em was the last out. As her feet left the elevator floor, there came terrible sounds: shriek of old metal struts and braces giving up their rusty ghosts, cannon sounds of stressed cables snapping under immense tension. The car dropped from sight.
For a moment the silence was such that Mary-em crawled to the doorway to look. Then all hell broke loose in the elevator shaft.
The Gamers rolled away from the sounds, shaking their heads. Coral croaked, 'I think I swallowed my gum.'
Acacia heard laughter and water splashing behind her, and she turned.
A dozen giggling women stood hip-deep and flirted with a knot of men ashore. Music blared from hidden speakers: loud, heartthrob precise, but peppered with static. Off to the east were orchards of miniature orange trees, and fields of corn and wheat, and a pyramid-a featureless pyramid eight to ten meters tall, looking right at home in its cultivated fields, as if the whole set had wandered in from Mayan times.
They were on a roof, but a roof so huge that the edges formed a horizon. To the west the edge of the roof seemed to have crumbled, and the lagoon gushed over it.
A rooftop lagoon? Losing liquid at that rate? MIMIC had been built in an age when any form of power was subject to attack by various nut groups. Where had Meacham got his power?
Not hydroelectric, not in a desert. Not solar or wind; both were too weak. A nuclear plant? The Sierra Club would have freaked…
One of the revelers jogged toward them. A gaudy sarong flapped around his legs; a loop of seashells bounced around his neck. Otherwise he looked like a Westwood Beach surfer: whiteblond shaggy hair and beard, wide bronze sunglasses, a muscular bare torso. His miniature nose was peeling from sunburn.
'Nommo!' The surfer stopped, stared, then dropped hastily to his knees. 'You bring strangers here. And this Mayombrera? Why?' He was angry, frightened. and fascinated.
'She brings you allies, Bobo,' the Nommo said. 'They may be the ones we need.'
The man scratched carefully in his blond Jesus beard. He was still kneeling. 'You're saying we can trust the Mayombreros?'
Their rescuer clucked in disgust. 'Bobo, sometimes I think your mind is a few beads shy of a necklace. Of course we can't. But Coral's heart is pure. Trust the Gidget, not her people.'
The Nommo moved another step closer to the waterfall. The sky above them was very blue. A hot, dry wind blew from the east.
Alphonse was the first one to speak up. 'They can you Nommo. Are you a god?'
The Nommo laughed warmly. 'No. We Nommo never claimed to be gods. The name is generic, by the way. My own name is Wannis.'
'Can we trust you?'
Wannis grinned. 'Believe only what you see,' he said. His entire body began to shimmer, and Acacia suddenly realized that he had stepped back onto the water, hovering there rather disconcertingly. Beyond him was the edge of the roof, and the foaming waterfall.
His outline plastic. For an instant there was another shape, and then he had become six glowing feet of sleek muscular fins and tail.
That other shape… had she really seen… something like a catfish and something like a Catfish, ugly as sin. Then a dolphin leapt into the air, arced back down, and skipped across the water like a skimmed stone. It tail- danced at the crumbled edge of the roof, balancing at the edge of the roaring water. Wannis spoke, his voice rising into a buzzing Disney squeak. 'Then again believe only half of what you see!'
Then it was over the edge, and gone.
Acacia noticed that, once again, they were surrounded.
At least these were more recognisable as voodoun. They wore peasant garb simple cloth with red and silver frills; jewelry of many shapes and sizes, made of gold and silver and polished shells. They'd come noisily; she'd heard it herself and ignored it. But why hadn't her Scouts…
Where was Corrinda?
She must have slipped away while Wannis was putting on his show. Off to investigate… what?
A huge, imposing brown-skinned woman with African features parted the crowd. When she walked, it was like a battleship cresting the waves. Bobo scampered hastily out of the way, then got to his feet. She didn't notice.
'And so,' the enormous woman said. Her eyes sparkled in a nest of deep wrinkles. 'The Mami Wata are friendly to you.'
'Mami Wata?' Acacia asked.
'There are many, many names for the same creatures, the same gods. They are also called mermaids and Nommo.' She laughed. The sound was broad and warm and genuine. 'Whatever you call them, today we celebrate Their blessings. Come with me! You are our friends now.'
Acacia wanted to let her guard down. She needed to! But magic walked here that wouldn't even register on a deep scan. She had to be careful beyond any ordinary sense of the word.
'I am Mamissa Kokoe,' the big woman roared, 'and I am what you would call the Fetish Priestess.'
Some of the Adventurers introduced themselves. Coral hung back. Mamissa came to her, squatted, and brought her dark, flat face closer for an inspection. 'You are not an outsider. Who are you, child?'
Coral seemed to draw into herself. 'My name is Coral,' she said in a strangled, little-girl voice. 'They saved my life. They tried to save Tod, but he was like chipped beef, man.'
Mamissa put her palms on her enormous knees and looked at the girl more closely, like a grown woman examining a doll. 'Well. You come from the lower levels, don't you?'
Coral nodded nervously.
'And you helped these people, and you have no tribe now?'
Coral nodded again.
'I see. Well. These are hard times for you. If these newcomers had any power of their own…'
Mamissa and her followers led them across the rooftop. It was scattered with huts and small ponds and what seemed to be hundreds of acres of crops.
'What is this place?' Mary-em asked.
'This is our home. Some call it MIMIC. Some call it New Africa.'
'The people down on the lower levels didn't seem to be very African,' Mouser said. 'If you pardon me for noticing.'
Mamissa's massive frame shook with elemental laughter. It blended with the wind that rustled the leaves of sugar cane and whistled through stands of cornstalks and banana trees.
'Africa is in the heart, not the skin, little boy. The tribes of Africa are black, and white, and yellow.' Acacia heard the words echoed in her earpieces and switched her belt pod to Record. These were notes from the Game Masters. You never knew what might be useful.
'Before the great disasters struck the world, the old gods warned the faithful, told us to come here. Taught
