The chamber glittered in the mist like a field of diamonds. They wandered through a forest of mushrooms, and a few caterpillar creatures that sat, unanimated, observing. Their faceted eyes witnessed without judgment or reaction. What would this chamber have been if the power was running, if all control lights were green? Would it have swarmed with life? Here and there a few critters shuffled in slow circles, trapped in an endless loop.
The pathway ended in a chasm at least thirty meters across. Scotty peeked down. A glowing river of red and black liquid rock oozed below, wafting sulfurous steam. Heat prickled his face. He laughed uncomfortably. “Are we sure that’s just an effect?”
“Your lips to God’s ears,” Angelique said.
Maud peered down, her shoulders slumped. “And here… it ends. We end. We’re finished.” Shaking her head, she knelt down. “What are we supposed to do? Climb down? And then climb up again? I can’t do that. How can they expect me to do this? Did they expect poor Asako to do that?” Scotty was sorry to see her this way: Maud seemed like a confused old woman. He preferred the old Maud, acid tongue and all.
“I’m not sure,” Sharmela put as much comfort into her voice as possible. “But we’ll work something out.”
“There’s alway s a way,” Wayne said, and pointed across the divide. “Look: Notice that the far edge is lower than this one. I think that’s a clue.”
“Clues are good,” Angelique said.
“I think that we need to pay attention to this.”
Scotty knelt down, compared the levels. “It does raise some possibilities. If we could get a line across…”
“Look!” Ali screamed. “Over here!”
The boy was crouched over at the right side, near another collection of alien tools. At a flat area to the side, they found the carcasses of winged beetles, husks curled on their sides, the size of small children. Scotty looked more closely: Their membranous brown “wings” seemed suspiciously well preserved.
Next to the wings were strewn additional heaps of tools and materials. This misty cave was a workshop of some kind, a place where busy (alien?) hands had constructed a pair of rickety-looking, skeletal man-shaped pallets with foot pedals and space for a prone human rider.
“Flying machines?” Scotty asked.
“Similar to Leonardo’s designs. Reasonable that Cavor would have been familiar with them, and tried to replicate them here.”
Scotty raised an eyebrow. “Here?”
Ali gave a wan smile. “Not real here. Game ‘here.’ You know.”
Scotty swatted his head, tickled, and glad to feel a trace of amusement. “And that answers that. We’re supposed to use these to cross the chasm.”
“Without practice?” Maud whined, incredulous. “This is absurd! How could Xavier expect us to do this?”
Wayne crouched down and ran his hands over the device, checking the lines and pedals. “I’m going with Maud on this one. This is insane. How the hell are we supposed to figure this out? How much time were we supposed to have?”
“More than we’ve got, that’s for sure.” Angelique raised her hands. “All right. All right. We have to figure the IFGS signed off on this. You’ve never used one of these?”
“No,” Wayne said. “I mean, the Da Vinci in Vegas has a tourist setup, virtual simulation of how unpowered human flight might feel.”
“And you tried it?”
“Yeah, a couple of times,” Wayne admitted. “But… naw, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“That’s all it might have taken for Xavier to get it past the board. Who else?”
Sharmela raised a plump brown hand. She looked uncomfortable. “I have glider experience. And have simulated flight hours.” Her expression, momentarily brightened, dimmed once again. “The 2080 World’s Fair in Ceylon had a winged gliding chamber, but I never went.”
“That answers it then,” Angelique said. “For what it’s worth, I suspect we would have been able to contest this… if it was a game.”
“Big if. I think we have bigger fish to fry,” Scotty said.
“I have.” A quiet, embarrassed voice. Ali’s voice.
“You what?” Angelique asked.
“I have flown. Ceylon in eighty. Simulators. Wingsuits. It was a hobby for a while.”
No one said a word until Wayne cleared his throat. “You again? You just happen to have another skill none of the rest of us possess?”
Ali’s protest was weak. “I and Sharmela.”
Angelique was having none of it. “Sharmela is a happenstance. You, on the other hand, are a pattern. I heard a line once: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, it’s enemy action.’ I’ve overlooked this before, but you are leaning on my last nerve. What in the hell is going on?”
He stammered and stuttered. “I…”
Scotty took the boy’s shoulders. Hard. “Ali. I don’t know what other gamers’ houses or rooms are like, but yours I’ve seen. The walls were covered in images, gear, games… and some of those images popped up in this little adventure. Now why is that?”
Ali tried to rebut. “We are being pursued! The bad people will be here soon. We do not have time for this!”
“Yes,” Scotty said. “We have time.” And he meant it, too. When it came to ferreting out the truth, they had all the time in the world.
“Ali. Your father invested heavily in the Heinlein dome. It looks very much as if the game was modified to make it easier for you. If that’s true, if you were cheating… I don’t know quite how to put it, but if there is anything you can tell me…”
Tears sparkled in the boy’s eyes. “I should confess to cheating? It would end me!”
Scotty was incredulous. “End you? End us! This is real, Ali. People are dying. You’re afraid of the IFGS? Screw the IFGS! You’d better be afraid of those killers following us!”
Angelique looked as if she wanted to murder him. “To hell with them, too. You’d better be afraid of me.”
“Maybe it’s more than that,” Maud said. “ His life was never at risk. They don’t want to kill Ali, they want to ransom him. So to him, this whole thing is still just a game.”
“That’s not true!” he yelped.
Scotty shot him a warning glance. Let her finish.
“To us, it’s life and death. Can you understand that?”
Ali paused, looking at the faces around him, tried to bluster, and then folded with a sigh. “I… have no direct knowledge. But in the months leading up to the game, my father’s advisers took special notice of my hobbies. I noticed that they examined my drawings most carefully. Asked many questions about things that had previously held no interest to them.”
Maud seemed to have calmed down a bit, assuming an almost grandmotherly air. “And then what happened, Ali?”
“Then I arrived here, and when the game began I saw many things that felt… familiar.”
Angelique slapped his face, hard. “Just ‘familiar’?”
“All right! All right,” Ali said, collapsing into surrender. His eyes glittered, but more with tears than anger. “These Moon creatures, they’re derived from my artwork. I didn’t know what to do, what to think. I thought you would throw me out of the game.”
Sharmela shook her head, dark curls jiggling. “And you didn’t think to say anything once our lives were at risk?”
Moisture glittered at the corner of Ali’s eye. “I’ve had no time to think. And when I did, I did not think it would make a difference.”
They looked at him, skeptically.
“It is the truth!” Ali said. “I did not know, was not certain. You… you all came back for me. I trust you.”
“But can we trust you? How was it done?” Angelique asked. “Are we supposed to believe that Xavier was bribed? Because frankly, I don’t.”
