4
Sleep-deprived, bruised and emotionally drained, Scotty stood in the middle of the Imperial suite on the eleventh floor of the Exeter hotel, the very last place in the world he wanted to be. He was in absolutely no mood to be abused by an enraged father who was relieved, but not mollified, by his daughter’s rescue.
Christian Vokker was a short, stocky man, dwarfed by his three bodyguards, who encircled little Adriana like alps sheltering a hillock. The girl sat with her legs folded primly, fingers folded in her lap and face blank, the unwilling focus of the current conversation.
No, that was wrong. It wasn’t a conversation. In a conversation, one person speaks and another answers. This was a monologue. Mr. Vokker had been speaking nonstop at Scotty and Mason for five minutes, and very little of it had been easy to hear.
“Yes, I am grateful,” he said. Something in his tone made Scotty hope he was winding down. “And I understand that you placed your life at risk. It is only for those reasons that I simply suggest you find other employment, rather than purchasing advertising in English, Chinese and Spanish, etching your colossal ineptitude on every Web and across the sky, for all with eyes to see.”
Scotty managed to smile. “Sounds grateful to me.”
Vokker made a dismissive gesture, and turned his back. Adriana peered between the enormous bodyguards, face pinched. I’m sorry…, she seemed to be saying.
“Son of a bitch…,” Scotty muttered as they left.
Older and wiser, Mason merely shook his head.
An hour later Scotty lay alone in his room, staring up at the ceiling. He rotated the glass in his right hand, listening to the ice clink. Now was definitely the time for a drink. Long past time, he figured. And if he didn’t stop until Wednesday, well…
“Well, that’s two careers and a marriage down…,” he muttered.
Quite unexpectedly, a com field blossomed above his briefcase, on the desk across from the bed. At the edge of the field blinked a man-in-the moon icon.
“What the hell.” So. Vokker wasn’t done with him. Part of him wanted to roll over and sleep until dinnertime, or until they kicked him out of his room, whichever came first. Another part urged him to freshen his drink. Another wanted to hear what the chocolate king’s lawyers wanted to say. “Open,” he said, triggering the icon.
The face of a very dark black man appeared. Triple vertical scars on his cheeks proclaimed him African with strong tribal affiliations. A remarkably relaxed intensity suggested that he was accustomed to command.
“Welcome to my home,” he said. “I am Abdul Kikaya the Second, President for Life of the Republic of Kikaya. I have a proposition I would like to present face-to-face. If you are amenable to travel, my shuttle will arrive for you at noon, your time. In exchange for traveling here, and merely hearing me out, I promise you ten thousand dollars, against a much larger possibility. Then, if you are not interested, my shuttle will take you anywhere your passport will allow. If you accept, I promise you an adventure unlike any other, one you are uniquely equipped to enjoy. Please respond, but the shuttle will be there, on the roof of your hotel, at twelve noon your time. I will await you… or your answer. Thank you.”
Well I’ll be damned, Scotty thought, and smiled as he took a sip. One door closes, another opens.
Maybe his career hadn’t bled out quite just yet. He looked at the time again: 4:15 A.M. Just time for a good nap, and packing. And then, what the hell? Maybe a little trip.
Just maybe the trip of a lifetime.
5
An anemic sun hung low on the horizon, casting baleful shadows across a glittering field of bloodstained ice. The plain was littered with the honored dead, their sprawled corpses mangled into arcane siguls, redolent of valor, and skill, and death. Thousands lay split-skulled, their brains cooling and drying beneath a pale, cool sun. A few dozen of their stronger, more fortunate companions battled on, armor bent and bloodied, swords notched and gore-crusted.
From time to time the warriors paused, wiping sweaty arms against their helms, leaning on their swords like exhausted amputees on bloody crutches, gasping and glowering at their opponents before they hoisted swords and began the slaughter anew. Action swirled around an oversized human shape: Loki, writhing in the grip of a snake thrice his size.
The tableau shifted: The darkening sky bled red, then split. Clouds parted as a flock of winged wolves appeared. At first they appeared as faint specks against the pitiless clouds. Now they resolved into sharper focus.
A brassy wail drowned out the ring of metal on metal, and the moans of the wounded and dying. Combatants raised their weary eyes to the heavens, and laid down their swords, stretching their arms up as if calling to the beautiful Valkyries whose crimson or golden hair flagged out in the wind, placid faces surveying the carnage with infinite compassion and calm.
The wind seemed to shape itself into a controlled whistle. A cynical ear might have suggested that it sounded much like Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” Played through a kazoo.
Now even the dead rose from their places, and held their arms up to the sky. The Norse angels plucked up first one, and then another… and carried them off to the skies. A parade of Valkyries carried off more and more of the dead and dying. Each survivor was spirited away, along with about half of the dead. In less than two minutes, it was over.
The winged wolves wheeled and returned to the heavens. Clouds roiled as the sky closed. The remaining corpses moaned and cursed in a manner unbefitting the dead.
“Shit! I never get chosen-”
Lights snapped on and the frozen plain, the cold mountains and the bleak sky all disappeared, leaving behind eight frustrated people in a domed room fifty meters in diameter, just large enough for three times that number to swing padded swords without thumping one another.
Amid a chorus of disappointed curses, they unbuckled their light armor. The losers trudged off the combat stage toward the dressing rooms and showers, and, thought a thoroughly bored Wayne Gibson, probably the slot machines and gambling pits, to drown their disappointment in more disappointment.
“That’s a wrap,” he said to his one-woman crew. Buffy Childress applauded ritually, as if it had truly been a job well done.
Eighteen months past he would have agreed with Buffy. Two years ago he had landed this job at the Fantasy Park Escalade, a tenth-rate Dream Park rip-off a half mile off the Vegas strip. Three times daily he coordinated the Escalade’s big games, the motifs generally rotated on a monthly basis. This month was The Ragnarok Experience ™. Fifty minutes ago, twenty bright-eyed players had entered the arena. Judging by the body language, adrenaline and exertion had toasted them all.
The side door opened and the winners, who had been quietly asked to leave the stage-only a fool argues with a Valkyrie-emerged. One of the survivors was a woman most would have thought too skinny these days, but Wayne liked just fine. He had recognized her superior coordination and conditioning the instant she had stepped onto the platform. There was something familiar about her, but she was using an assumed gaming name, wearing a mask, and had declined to use a gaming profile. So… whatever happened here wouldn’t affect her IFGS points (not that she could pick up many from a place like the Escalade). She was just enjoying a little anonymous slaughtering of her inferiors. Not especially admirable, but he’d done as much himself, in bad moods on bad days.
“What now?” Childress said. She had the body of a showgirl and the bored manner of a blackjack dealer on a midnight shift. Just Wayne and Buffy were needed to run the game. The Escalade’s management weren’t the kind
