with anything worth having, we'll hijack them.'
'Grody,' she grumbled, 'to the max.' Stone had nothing to say… or maybe he lacked the breath. Nigel was leading them a stiff pace. The younger General Dynamics Adventurers were keeping up, but Stone was pushing his envelope.
By 5:50 P.M. they were combing an abandoned office suite on the fourteenth floor, finding nothing but cartons of paper cups and ancient computer disks. Reveal information spells reaped nothing but columns of accounting data. Disgusted, Bishop called a break.
He watched his team scatter to perform their various ablutions. There was a brief, mutinous glare from Trevor Stone as he dropped his pack and wobbled off.
Nigel wandered off by himself and leaned back against a wall, sliding down to a squatting position. He drew his belt knife and unscrewed its handle. He shook out his own tiny cube, and plugged it into the electrical outlet at his heel.
The tiny transceiver sent out a coded pulse along the copper wiring that webbed densely through the building. In a tenth of a second it had located and communicated with its mate, the device Acacia had plugged in at the video arcade. Acacia's transceiver uploaded its data in a supercompressed, encrypted format. ScanNet failed to differentiate this from ordinary static, although it did register the disturbance.
Bishop waited a few seconds and then plucked the transceiver from the wall, plugging it into his Virtual display equipment.
He listened to Acacia's voice: clipped, concise, urgent. It was time to make a move, but what?
He brightened.
It was time to let Trevor Stone's pent-up frustrations out to play.
For an hour the General Dynamics team had crept down empty hallways and narrow, unlit stairwells, ready for anything. There were no more apartments; no other Adventurers crossed their path; nothing attacked them.
The stairwell opened up into a grove of banana trees lit by rows of artificial lights. Their fronds rustled in a synthetic wind. Bishop moved out, testing the ground as he went, suspicious as hell. He spied other vegetation growing alongside the banana. Bamboo, and maybe coconut?
Bishop spared a glance for their guide, but Coral was hanging back, silent.
There was no natural order to the trees. Bishop suddenly realized that some of them-no, all-were planted in rectangular wooden pots.
The ceiling crawled with clouds distorted shapes, as with an old-fashioned planetarium ceiling. A distant crackle of thunder rumbled through the floors, but it felt more like Sensurround than reality.
Tamasan reached into the dust and retrieved a faded clapboard, like something from an old movie set. Silently he held it up. It read: Scene 34, Ile Ife.
The village itself was made up of storefronts and flats, imitation native huts built over fiberglass frames, and wooden shacks with three walls.
Holly Frost looked at it uncomprehendingly for a minute and then nudged Bishop. 'Be damned. It's the set of King Solomon's Mines.'
Trevor said, 'Hollywood refugees. Trying to get into the spirit.'
'So where are they?' asked Holly.
It wasn't completely empty. There were dozens of statues or partial statues of human beings. Bronze busts of men and women and children were apparently half-buried in the earth. Their expressions were of exaggerated pain and terror, extras emoting for the camera.
'Touch nothing until our Cleric has scanned,' Bishop said testily.
Trevor glared at him. 'Aye-aye, sir.'
Tamasan began an elaborate Shinto ritual, taking his time.
The set's most prominent feature was a gigantic cylindrical shaft, which jutted from the ground at an eighty- degree angle and pierced the ceiling twenty feet above them. The shaft was of pitted, weathered stone. About its base were the remains of dozens of baskets of fruit, long withered. The last one might have been placed there a year before, and only stones at the bottoms of the rotted baskets kept the wind Wind?
Holly touched Bishop's sleeve, and he peered through the artificial grove. Just barely, they could make out the shapes of giant wind fans, eight-foot monsters humming and pulsing with electricity, whipping air across the set.
She came close to the shaft, but didn't touch. ''Wonder if this whole thing is a matte painting,' she muttered.
The surface was studded with iron nails in patterns of wave and curlicue, driven to various depths.
Bishop came up behind her. 'Language of some kind. Can't scan it.'
'What about this?'
There was a stone tablet set in the ground in front of the shaft. Commentary in several different scripts was carved into it, including one in English: The Staff of Oranyan. And a smaller, older sign under it: Wet Paint.
'Scan,' he said softly, and it began to glow.
He couldn't keep his eyes off those statues. Or busts. Or petrified people? If they had once been people, they were now buried to thigh or chest or chin.
The slate showed no residue of magic, nothing dangerous.
He scanned the statues next. Nothing. 'Not transformed human beings,' he said to Holly. 'Statues. Just statues.'
'Check out the set?'
Tamasan, a brown swirl of monk's robes, was scuttling about checking buildings. Bishop remained in the center of the town. Thinking.
Looked like they had broken for lunch. Just about ready to film a scene? Did he have to guess hard to figure out which one?
Bishop raised his hand and whistled. Coral and his three remaining team members flocked to him. He squatted on the ground to talk. 'Booty?'
Holly Frost's dark brown face was streaked with dust and sweat. 'We haven't found a talisman, if that's what you mean. There's some costume jewelry, some plastic pottery. It's a movie set, all right. I suspect similarity magic. I'm not sure I want to see the special effect.'
'Tamasan? Danger?'
'Nothing, Bishop-san.'
' Ile Ife,' Bishop began stentorianly, 'was the mythical birthplace of the Ibo people. They were protected by a mighty god-' His voice was sonorous and dramatic, and he was starting to work himself into a roll.
'Excuse me,' Trevor interrupted. 'I believe that it is part of the Yoruba legends. Not the Ibo.'
'No, I'm sure-' Bishop paused. 'Are you certain?'
Trevor hid his smirk. 'It wasn't in the notes. I can finish the briefing, if you'd like.'
Bishop allowed a trace of unease into his voice. 'Ah yes. Why don't you do that-I'll be gone for maybe twenty minutes. I'm sure I don't have to remind you not to touch anything, Trevor.'
Trevor's eyes were hooded.
'Right, then,' Bishop said, and rose to his feet. 'I want to do a little spying on Da Gurls. Coral, come with me.'
Alex squatted with his back to one of the battered video machines, arms draped over his bent knees.
Acacia sat next to him. She smelled a little sweat-sour, and her hair was a ruin, but in a remote way he had to admit that she was, physically at least, as attractive as ever.
He knew that guilt wasn't acid: it might eat at the heart, but it didn't necessarily etch the human face. He searched for its signs, anyway. Where might it show? Around the eyes? Were those wrinkle lines a little deeper, more pronounced? Or was she just tired?
Tired…
Suddenly, and with a little shock, he realized that he hadn't slept the night before. When the adrenaline burned itself out he was going to crash, and crash hard.
Acacia offered him half of a tropical chocolate bar. 'It's good to have a guide,' she said, studiously avoiding direct eye contact. He nodded without comment. 'It's good to have… someone that I can trust. Can I trust
