A very dark, slender woman with flowing dreadlocks, a flowered robe, and love beads glided from behind the counter. 'Peace to you, brothers and sisters.'
A thousand-odd geegaws crowded the room, everything from statues of saints to hash pipes.
There were Baggies of 'smoking mixtures,' various legal blends which, when set afire, smelled remarkably like illegal substances.
There were incense, and glass tubes, and voodoo dolls; there were cigarette papers in a hundred different flavors and configurations, eye-boggling posters in Day-Glo orange and violet, and jars of owl's claw. There were pamphlets on the cultivation of psychedelic mushroom, books on the Orishas, dog-eared volumes on flotation tanks, charts of energy meridian flow, and books on African mythology. There were tomes by Timothy Leary and Joseph Campbell, tiny gold-plated coke spoons, crystals, pyramid-power manuals, silver-plated razor blades, stash jewelry, one-hit minibongs, and other accoutrements.
'Last chance, heading down, man,' the dreadlocked clerk said dreamily.
'What do you mean, 'last chance'?'
'Well, the Nommo like for the people around them to keep a clean head. And lower than that…' She clucked. 'Gets deadly, mon. Like we do some trading.'
She winked an eye, reached down under the counter, and brought up a pipe, made out of a humerus bone. 'Now this pipe, she be special.'
Bishop waved his hand over it, and it glowed. He turned back to Acacia. 'We've got to have it, Panthesilea.'
'How much?' she asked.
'Oh, no, she has no price.' The storekeeper stuffed it with some herbal mixture and lit, putting away peacefully. 'She sure is fine.'
'All right… you won't take money. What will you take?'
'Riddle me,' the woman said, her voice singsong. 'Riddle me for your life, man, and the pipe, she might be yours.'
'Riddle you…' Bishop smiled at the shopkeeper. 'Does it have to be me?'
'You be afraid?'
'We have a better riddler.'
'You be afraid.'
Bishop wagged his head regretfully, controlling his irritation. 'There is one far better suited than I. Captain Cipher?'
Cipher strutted forward. The dreadlocked shopkeeper examined him with interest.
'Ah, so you riddle with me?'
'Madam, I will.'
The shopkeeper reached out a finger and drew a rectangle in the air. Thin, flaming red lines formed as she made even vertical and horizontal strokes. Four rows, four columns. She then brushed the top two boxes: they blazed red. The bottom two rows she similarly tinted green.
She gave them a toothy smile. Then she very carefully printed the following words so that each letter fell into one of the squares: R A T E Y O U R M I N D P A L
Cipher watched her carefully. 'All right, now what?'
The shopkeeper licked the tip of her finger, reached out, and began to scramble up the letters. Her fingers moved faster and faster, sliding one square at a time. There was no sleight of hand, but her speed at the end was inhuman.
When she was finished, the squares read: R A I U M E L T R P Y A 0 D N
And the colors, of course, were thoroughly confused.
The shopkeeper grinned wickedly at him. 'Three minutes to solve it, no less and no more 'If failure is yours, then damnation's in store.'
Captain Cipher reached out and nudged the Y experimentally.
When it responded, he began to move other pieces, faster and faster, building on the R in the top box, trying combinations on combinations.
Griffin watched the Adventurers who had crowded into the doorway. Quietly intent, they studied a master craftsman at work.
At thirty seconds, the box seemed no closer to being solved. At forty-five Cipher had RATE in the top box, and then… scramble scramble…
A minute and fifty seconds, and the puzzle looked nearly solved. It now read: R A T E Y O U R M I N D P L A
Cipher froze. His hands hovered motionless. A sheen of perspiration had appeared on his brow. Griffin's heart went out to him. Here, in front of all of his friends and the cameras…
Suddenly Cipher's eyes spread wide apart, and his fingers blurred. What in the hell? He was taking all of his carefully structured work apart. Griffin couldn't be sure, but it looked an awful lot as if he was running the previous moves backward, as though he had photographed the entire thing and had the moves stored away in his mind.
Why would he be doing that?
Then when Cipher had the letters in the RAIU MEL TRPY AODN configuration, with thirty seconds left, he went back to work, moved the R in the third line into position in the top lefthand square, and then zipped the other letters around and around the grid.
With five seconds left on the clock, the puzzle once again read: R A T E Y O U R M I N D P A L
And Cipher grinned. 'You shifted the first and second R's,' he panted. 'Trick… kee! Milady, I nearly missed it. Change any two blocks, you change parity. With the second R in the top left square, it's hopeless, but your mind still wants to leave well enough alone, work around it. Gotcha.'
The shopkeeper's smile was dazzling. 'Very good, mon. The pipe, she is yours.'
She handed Cipher the bone.
'Now,' she said. 'As long as you are here, would you care for any of my other items?'
There was a moment's pause, as if they couldn't believe their luck, then the Adventurers descended like locusts.
Bishop, Tammi, and Prez formed a protective shell about Cipher as he packed the pipe with herbs, then puffed it into life.
The smoke whirlpooled in front of them. Colors began to form…
Within black, oily-looking water, sleek and powerful fish shapes slid sensuously. There were human beings at the water's edge. They were looking at part of an indoor swimming pool, with diving boards and a tiled edge. The Adventurers could hear the beat, but not the melody, of half-familiar music.
'Our next stop,' Twan said.
Tammi had a thought. 'Wait. Try to find out where the other teams are.'
Cipher puffed and puffed.
The image was faint at first, then swelled and became stronger.
Clavell and Poule might have been human spiders, trailing ropes down MIMIC's external wall. They jumped carefully, pushing out hard and then sliding down, legs braced and bent to absorb the shock.
Cipher choked on his smoke. 'What in the hell are they-'
Bishop recovered first. 'They're going straight down to the flooded levels. Don't you get it? They're going to get there first, and ambush us. We've got to move!'
The major and 'Evil' Poule went down first, tightly, professionally, as if they had practiced the maneuver a thousand times.
In Poule's case, that might have been true. He may have grown a little soft in the intervening years, but there was clearly one hell of a man under those extra twenty pounds. He used a more traditional carabiner, hooked to the side of his belt. He wasn't able to use a classic rappelling position. Instead, in each hand he held a miniature Spider. The line was far too thin to control with his fingers. It would have cut his hands and thighs badly.
Clavell kicked out from the wall and bounced as he dropped about five yards. He swang back in, braked with his calves, and bounced out again.
Twenty feet to his left, just the other side of the crease, General Poule was similarly engaged and having the time of his life.
