prayer.
But a last stand was better than no stand at all.
“Drag that topiary over next to the front door,” he shouted.
“The stuff is just foam. It won’t stop them.”
“If they blow the door, it might cushion the explosion. Listen,” he said. “They want Ali. The rest of you were just following my orders.”
“And why would I follow your orders?” Angelique snapped.
Scotty drew close, and said in a quiet voice: “Tell them that I swore I’d beat the shit out of you if you didn’t. They’ll believe you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Is that a-”
“I’m trying to save your life, lady. Let it go.”
Her mouth worked a few times without producing words. Then she broke eye contact.
Ali clutched at him. The boy’s eyes were frantic. “No!” he said, voice husky with fear. “I don’t want you to-”
“I’m in charge,” Scotty said.
“You…” Ali looked down. “The woman Celeste is insane. They will kill you.”
Scotty took Ali’s small hands in his own rough ones. “That’s the job,” he said, forcing his voice into a calm that he did not feel.
“You…” Ali’s eyes misted. “You…” Words failed him.
But Maud had found her voice. “Listen up,” she said, a spark of new excitement in her voice. “I may have figured something out.”
“What?” Angelique asked.
“I’m starting with the assumption that there is a solution to this, one that makes sense in context.” She sounded like a British schoolmarm. “The IFGS simply wouldn’t have let that dreadful Xavier back us into a corner without a way out.”
“All right…”
“Follow me. We went about this all wrong. This is a teaching game… for Selenites. That means that the lesson to be learned is for them. We can’t win by beating them, you see? We tried that.”
“What else is there?”
“Join them. The point of the game was of desperate importance to Cavor. Remember what he said? ‘Teach the young generation the rules they will need to thrive.’ New rules. For a new time-a time of human-Selenite cooperation.”
She paused, hands spread a little, eyes wide and mouth open in a smile, as if waiting for them to catch up with her.
And then, Angelique said it: “Truce?” She blinked. “Maud, you are either brilliant, or an idiot.”
“May I offer an opinion?” Mickey asked.
“When pigs fly,” Maud said. “Come on. Let’s be idiots, shall we?”
It looked as absurd as it felt. After requesting “reset” again, scouts from the army of Earth approached the Selenites with little white flags attached to their muskets, around the left side of no-man’s-land, as far from the Martians as possible.
They stood there, at Maud’s direction. There was nothing to be done but wait: Only the Earth forces moved at human command.
But at last, something happened: A caterpillar humped out from the lunar side, a white flag attached to one of its drooping antennae. Xavier’s idea of a joke, no doubt. Human and insectoid confabbed for a few seconds, and then the worm humped back to its own ranks.
“What?” Ali asked. “What is happening?”
Maud’s expression was serene, for the first time in the entire game, she seemed to be in control. “Watch,” she said.
She concentrated, waving her hands in arcane patterns, and the Earth forces turned toward the Martians, attacking with all force, and exposing their flank to the Selenites.
The Selenites did not betray them. Instead, they attacked the Martian forces it had lured into a ground assault, obliterating them, trusting Earth to protect them from the longe-range Martian response.
But the war machines had their mechanical hands full. Upgraded human defenses hammered at them, and grubs wearing little spaceship hats humped across the no-man’s-land and struck at the Martian home base.
The Martians broke, and Earth forces harried them home, inflicting terrible casualties.
The gamers were transfixed, panting as if they’d hiked a hill. The small war game was motionless… and then…
“We won. Where’s the door? Dammit!” cried Angelique.
“There,” Scotty said. He jogged back to the entrance. One of the mirrors was ajar. He swung it wide open. He knelt, as gamers crowded around him. “It’s a ramp. Steep.” He put his hand flat on a darkly shining surface. “Slippery. In fact… frictionless. We’re in for a ride.”
Angelique said, “Wayne, take point. Scotty, you go last, and facing backward. You get the crossbow. Everybody, hang on to your weapons! They could be right behind us. Ready?”
Wayne slid smoothly into the dark opening, air gun in hand. Angelique followed, and the rest, in haste.
36
1821 hours
Wayne dropped, cradling his crossbow in his arms, alert as if something very real and dangerous might be waiting for them. The tilted, twisted floor was very slick, but friction heat was still building up under his butt and shoulderblades.
He hit the water hard, and sank deep. Kicked away and leftward as Angelique dropped in behind him. The water was tepid. Not salty, but something… spent gunpowder? A taste of moondust.
His head broke the surface and he scooped water off his eyes and mouth, and looked around him quick.
The pool was a circle of Olympic size… a hemisphere, in fact, very deep in the center. A ledge ran all the way round under a tremendous volume of rock cave. The slide had dropped them near the middle of the pool.
“Get to the edge!” he cried. “If we’re standing and they’re floating, we can shoot them like sitting ducks!” He started swimming like mad.
Angelique popped up behind him. Others were following.
How much was real? This stone ledge, at least. It seemed to run all the way around, making a perfect swimming pool. Wayne heaved himself out. Water came with him, a sheath that drained slowly in lunar gravity.
The cavern was bathed in blue, a restless wave of azure light washing across the floors and ceiling. The entire room was gray unweathered rock. He was stunned by the size… until Wayne realized that it simply couldn’t be this large. It was larger than the largest caverns on Earth, with stalactites the size of Moon missiles depending from a ceiling high enough to shelter clouds. To the sides… well, there were no limits to the sides, so far as he could see. The room’s light dwindled away to shadows long before it revealed walls. Just… rock. Spars of rock like jagged teeth, broken jaws grinning and gaping at them in all directions.
How much was illusion?
“Nervous?” Angelique heaved herself clear. Her crooked little smile had never seemed so endearing to him. She had watched him with Darla. Angelique had set the rules, from the very beginning. Had she come to regret them?
He turned to her. The others were still far enough behind that they had a moment of privacy. “Angelique,” he said. “Look. Whatever happens now… whatever happens in there, I just wanted to say… thank you.”
