Holly Frost, Warrior and Thief extraordinaire, hated playing baby-sitter. Such passive work really wasn't in her nature. She would much rather have been stealing something or killing someone.
Still, it had to be done. 'My turn? Something I overheard from an old Game Master. 'The Orb of Eternity' was a twenty-four-pound bowling ball. Some teams carried it the whole eight miles before they realised it wasn't what they wanted, and it sucked the power out of magic spells…'
It wasn't exotic enough, she had lost him. 'This whole level is an H. Rider Haggard movie,' he said. 'I think you were right, Holly. It was some kind of ritual. The fans are still running. Movie cameras still set up. So where are the actors?'
Holly watched him carefully. 'Go on.'
'We are the actors. It's been set up. The whole village is a ritual waiting to happen.'
'This is voodoo?'
'Similarity magic. Reenactment of ancient events, Hollywood-style.'
'So?'
'So let's put on a show.'
Holly didn't much like the sinking sensation in her gut. Stone was dying to do something, anything. And Bishop had to know it. Why had he left like that? Something was wrong here, and Holly Frost was stranded in the middle of it.
'I think,' she said finally, 'that we had better wait for Bishop. Finish what you were telling us. You were halfway up a mountain? Before Bishop-'
'Yes. Fifty years ago, near as dammit. I wasn't a player, I was an Implementer, one of the chaps who makes the Game happen. I could watch the Gamers going up another peak a mile away, and I had a walkie-talkie to guide the NPCs who were going to fight them. I could also see a kind of black whirlwind, a real one, mind you, coming toward them. They couldn't see it, and I'm a Brit, you know, we don't get tornados, but I couldn't believe it was any kind of special effect…' Trevor stood up abruptly. 'You wait if you want to. I'm going to start a ceremony. There are personal points to be won here. I was performing sorcery before he could spell it.'
Trevor drew a circle in the ground with a sprinlde of powders, chanting softly as he did. The circle glowed and hummed. Lightning flashed overhead, filling the air with a sharp, stinging metallic scent.
'I call to the gods of this land. The Drama Cosmic unfolds! Your cast awaits! Ready when you are, CB.'
'Trevor, Jesus-'
He turned on her, furious. 'Go and hide if you want, Miss Frost. This is Gaming.'
Too late anyway. Out of the darkened sky an oblong shape formed and dropped toward them, a shape with stumpy legs and a thrashing black tail. It landed in the common with a thump. They couldn't quite make it out, despite the overhead lighting. It unfolded itself, a two-meter length of pinkish tongue whipping out and back repeatedly.
'What in the hell?'
It was ten meters of rather loony chameleon, multicolored, changing shades to match every object it passed in a steadily shifting, fractured rainbow. Big, but hard to see. It plodded toward them, enormous pop-eyes rolling. Its entire body flickered. Unmistakably, it was a stop-motion monster, a refugee from a Gumby film festival.
Tamasan was running toward them. He stopped suddenly and set his staff against the ground. 'I'm scanning-'
'Yes,' Trevor said sarcastically. 'Scan it. Haven't you ever seen a Ray Harryhausen movie? Kill the damned thing!' He spoke a spell in some unknown language and hurled his sword. The sword burst into brilliant flame as it spun toward the thing's head.
The results were disproportionate. Flame singed the lizard from tail to tip. Its distended eyes bulged, and its entire claymation body rippled with agony.
Frost and Tamasan never had the chance to add their own power. The chameleon fluttered, glowed, seemed to electrify, and was transformed into a jet of lightning, crackling and arcing in the shape of a lizard.
Then, with a howl, it burst apart. Beneath its skin was a clockwork maze of metal gears and plastic knobs. It steamed and shuddered, and then was motionless.
'There's for you!' Trevor cheered it.
Holly eyed her teammates nervously. 'Trevor…'
Trevor relaxed suddenly. 'I know. Too easy. We've been had. I've been had, but I still don't understand-' He stopped, giving up, as the earth beneath them began to tremble.
The sound was as rhythmic as a slow drumbeat. Footsteps. Then a violent crackling, the sound of trees and shrubs torn up by the roots.
They could see nothing, but they heard a voice that crackled like thunder, coming from everywhere. 'Haven't… you read… the script?' it asked.
Stone's voice was thin and cracking. 'We are the defenders-'
' Who are you?' The voice was closer. Terribly close, and now they could see an immense shape forming in the sky. Staggeringly huge. Wearing a black beret and Brobdingnagian sunglasses; carrying a riding crop. A gigantic potbelly bulged from beneath a sun-bleached safari shirt. Bermuda shorts exposed knees as white as fish bellies, quaking with rage.
'Ohmigod,' Holly moaned. 'The director.'
The Adventurers fanned out in the semblance of a defensive posture.
'Foolhardy… miserable… pitiful… actors!'
Trevor screamed at the others. 'We can negotiate with this guy!'
Holly barked derisively. 'I've gotta meet your agent!'
But by then the shadow of the director lay upon them, as dark as night.
The creature leaned down, its grin filled with gleaming, capped teeth a cubic foot in size.
And it hissed, 'Strike the set.'
20
'An African tribe named the Dogon… were in possession of information… that the actual orbital period (of Sirius B) is fifty years.'
'There are legends that other, specialised knowledge spread out from Africa. There are strange repetitions of the number fifty in the mythology of pre-dynastic Egypt. For instance, the Argo, the boat of Isis and Osiris, has fifty Argonauts…'
Thursday, July 21, 2059 — 6:55 P.M.
Cautiously, Bishop and Coral entered the deserted village of Ile Ife.
It was exactly-exactly-as it had been when they first entered. The Panaflex camera sat deserted. Behind a stand of banana trees, the wind machines howled and churned the air. The General Dynamics team might never have existed at all.
Bishop made a megaphone of his hands and shouted, 'Hello!'
His answers were echoes buffeted on the artificial wind. Then nothing. The planetarium sky/ceiling above them shifted. Tarnished statues and bronze busts, human figures caught in midscream, moved not, spoke not. Wept not.
