orient.
If they were lucky, they might even get lunch.
The tunnels were cold and dark, and echoed with distant, vaguely crawly sounds. She heard what she might have expected to hear in a beehive or ant nest: burrings, buzzings, chewing and crawling sounds. But there was something else she noted as the longshoremen carried their limp human burdens along.
Out there in the cloaking darkness, some of the insect sounds had a disturbingly human quality to them. What in the hell was that? An insect imitating the sound of a human voice? Humans trying to imitate insect sounds? She liked the first answer more, and wondered what Wayne thought. She couldn’t turn her head to try to find him. But without moving, she could see just behind her, to where two insect hulks were lugging Griffin down the narrow tunnel. She’d noticed the nice shoulders on the way down. That, and his soft, clear voice and warm hands. She giggled to herself. Was she getting a crush?
The game was getting more interesting every minute.
She estimated that they spent about four minutes being lugged about, until they went through a second door and out into a larger chamber. The translucent surfaces glowed with a pinkish bioluminescence. If she squinted, Angelique could just make out larval shapes curled in octagonal chambers on the far side. Breeding chamber?
The wall slid up a meter, and a delicate golden wormlike creature crawled forth, moving one segmented portion of its body at a time. It had what she was tempted to call a feminine face, with twin feathery antennae and two hose-like protrusions below at the corners of its mouth. The bulky stevedore creatures stepped aside for her, and she approached Angelique with grace that such a creature could never have equaled in full Earth gravity.
It was about six feet long, and half again as thick as a human body. The room’s pale glow actually illumined the insides of her body. She was filled with floating organelles, and sacks filled with some kind of orange fluid.
The creature canted her head sideways, coming very close to Angelique’s head. Her faceted eyes reflected the gamer’s face back a hundred times, and it seemed on the verge of speaking… then the twin nozzles at the sides of her mouth gushed a stream of pinkish froth, splashing up and down her frame in a silken web.
The web gullivered Angelique to the spongy rock floor from ankles to shoulders. The froth dried within moments, and as it did, the tingling paralysis promptly ended. Paralysis was no longer required-they were well and truly caught.
The golden worm turned around, doubling herself in a way impossible to any creature with a spine. Then it was through the door and gone.
Angelique turned her head to the side and saw Wayne tied there, straining against the bonds. Fine. If the shocksuit paralysis had ended, then it was fair for them to attempt escape. As she expected, his struggles (and hers) accomplished nothing. She had enough wiggle room to turn her head to the other side. Asako Tabata’s pod was anchored to the ground: They must have paralyzed her electronics. Mickey and Maud were trying to lean their foreheads against each other, boosting the psychic signal. Couldn’t quite reach. The redheaded guide was writhing without effect… probably wasn’t supposed to get loose at this point.
Ali was wiggling around, floundering. Seemed to her then he was a little green for this game, but a good Game Master went with the team she had. But now she saw that he had somehow kicked or cut his left foot free.
Griffin… again, she found herself engaged in pleasurable speculation. His broad shoulders were relaxed, but as she watched, he inhaled, flexed so that his uniform swelled… and then contracted. He didn’t look stressed out at all. In fact, he seemed admirably relaxed. She liked that.
The door opened again. Several things that resembled the golden slug emerged, carrying a bench made of some silvery bright metal. Seated on the bench was a creature thinner and probably more frail than anything she had seen so far.
It was perhaps five feet tall, and its fully fleshed limbs weren’t much thicker than the bones of a human adult. It reminded her of a mantis, again with the faceted eyes, and delicate insectile movement.
The carrier slugs brought her into the middle of the circle in which the gamers were arrayed. The bench settled, and then began to turn, as if the slugs were spinning like schoolchildren trying to get dizzy and throw up.
Slowly at first, then a complete revolution every two seconds, the greenish creature spun to survey its captives.
The chamber was awash with a dull, mourning buzz. A whispering voice filled her ear:
“Who are you? What do you want? Why have you come?”
The voice repeated once, twice, and then again.
The other gamers had begun to speak, but when they heard Angelique’s voice rise, they quieted. “We come to rescue Professor Cavor. Give him to us, and we leave in peace.”
“And if we do not?”
“Then our two great civilizations will be in conflict, a thing I dearly wish to prevent.”
“You will regret coming here. We know of your violent ways. Cavor told us, long ago.” Its glittering eyes shifted color from greenish to red. Anger? Fear?
“We dealt with him then. We will deal with you now. You will regret ever coming here.”
The shrill whine spiked again, and with it came a prompting tickle. Pain. The Earthlings were deep in torment, and were expected to act that way for the hidden cameras. Worse, they were confined, and obviously intended to just lie there and take it.
She hated this, hated the sense of powerlessness in being whiplashed by psychic or magical forces, unable to fight. Suddenly, a well of old emotions filled and brimmed over: anger and frustration and even a bit of fear. Suddenly, she was the nine-year-old girl who had crawled into Lewis Carroll and J. K. Rowling to find refuge from a house filled with screaming adults. A girl who had found the world of fantasy far more pleasant than Wait. Wait. Angelique realized that her breathing had shifted up into her chest, become rapid and shallow. Her blood felt like it was boiling, and the world tasted oddly sour.
Fear. She was filled with it, and even with the emotion clawing at her, she knew that something was wrong. Wait. This thing is trying to get to me, trying to make me even more terrified than I already am.
Wait. That last thought had been from the position of the character, not the player. The fantasy wall was breaking down a bit. She imagined Xavier performing an act only a perverted yogi could love. The little skinhead was cheating somehow. He had set some kind of trap for her. She didn’t know how he was doing it, but he had just used his knowledge of her personal history to attack her. Legal, but nasty.
The gamers all around her were arching their backs and screaming, those sounds peaking to some kind of crescendo when The wall exploded.
18
0920 hours
Smoke and dust choked the air. Juice from shattered insect cocoons slicked the floor. Several embryos were dead and still, but others curled and crawled blindly, seeking shadows.
Ali wriggled out from under his sticky bonds. He’d left some outer clothing, but he had his sword. He swept it around him and slashed along Wayne’s left side, Wayne being the nearest.
A dozen insect soldiers stepped through the wall, climbing with a segmented angularity no human being could manage. Angelique had the bizarre impression that they were holding their power-spears in the same fashion a British soldier might have held his rifle in bayonet-ready position. As disciplined as any corps of Beefeaters, they advanced in a line. The one behind them might have been an officer: larger, scarier, four arms ending in metal claws, and a demon mask with teeth like a saber-toothed cat’s.
The emerald creature shrieked, and a dozen guards appeared in the room, positioning themselves between the green interrogator and the sudden incoming threat.
