the Pleasure Dome. There had been five zones. First some sort of temple, with a crossbow and a sword concealed in the walls. Would Cray provide him with weapons in this reconstruction? He would have to wait and see. What came after the temple? There had been a pit with a flying creature: half butterfly, half dragon. After that Alex had run down a corridor—
spears shooting out of the walls—and into a jungle, the home of the metallic snakes. Then there had been a mirror maze guarded by Aztec gods and finally a pool of fire, his exit to the next level.
A pool of fire. If that was reproduced here, it would kill him. Alex remembered what Cray had said. The comfort and the quiet of death. There was no way out of this madhouse. If he did manage to survive the five zones, he would be allowed to finish it by throwing himself into the flames.
Alex felt hatred well up inside him. He could actually taste it. Damian Cray was beyond evil.
What could he do? There would be no way back through the tunnels and Alex wasn't sure he had the nerve even to try. He had only one choice, and that was to continue. He had almost beaten the game once. That at least gave him a little hope. On the other hand, there was a world of difference between manipulating a controller and actually attempting the action himself. He couldn't move or react with the speed of an electronic figure. Nor would he be given extra lives.
If he was killed once, he would stay dead.
He stood up. At once the gates swung silently open, and there ahead of him was the temple that he had last seen in the game. He wondered if his progress was being monitored. Could he at least rely on an element of surprise?
He walked through the gates. The temple was exactly how he remembered it from the screen at the Pleasure Dome: a vast space with stone walls covered in strange carvings and pillars, statues crouching at their base, stretching far above him. Even the stained-glass windows had been reproduced with images of UFOs hovering over fields of golden corn. And there too were the cameras, swivelling to follow him and, presumably, to record whatever progress he made. Organ music, modern rather than religious, throbbed all around him. Alex shivered, barely able to accept that this was really happening.
He walked further into the temple, every sense alert, waiting for an attack that he knew could come from any direction. He wished now that he had played Feathered Serpent more carefully.
He had raced through the zones at such speed that he had probably missed half of the ambushes.
His feet rang out on the silver floor. Ahead of him, rusting staircases that reminded him of a submarine or a submerged ship twisted upwards. He thought of trying one of them. But he hadn't gone that way when he was playing the game and preferred not to now. It was better to stick with what he knew.
The alcove that contained the crossbow was underneath a wooden pulpit, carved in the shape of a dragon. It was almost completely covered by what looked like green ivy—but Alex knew that the twisting vines carried an electrical charge. He could see the weapon resting against the stonework, and there was just enough of a gap. Was it worth the risk? Alex tensed himself, preparing to reach in, then threw himself full length on the floor. Half a second later and it would have been fatal. He had remembered the razor boomerang at the same instant that he had heard a whistling sound coming from nowhere. He had no time to prepare himself. He hit the ground so hard that the breath was driven out of him. There was a flash and a series of sparks. He felt a burning pain across his shoulders and knew that he hadn't been quite fast enough. The boomerang had sliced open his T-shirt, also cutting his skin. It had been a close thing. Any closer and he wouldn't even have made it into the second zone.
And silently the cameras watched. Everything was being recorded. One day it would be fed into Cray's software—presumably Feathered Serpent 2.
Alex sat up and tried to pull his torn shirt together. At least the boomerang had helped in one way. It had hit the ivy, cutting and short-circuiting the electric wires. Alex stretched an arm into the alcove and took out the crossbow. It was antique—wood and iron—but it seemed to be working. Even so, Cray had cheated him. There was an arrow in it, but it had no point. It was too blunt to damage anything.
He decided to take both the crossbow and the arrow with him anyway. He moved away from the alcove and over to the wall where he knew he would find the sword. It was about twenty metres above him but there were loose stones and handholds indicating a way up. Alex was about to start climbing but then he had second thoughts. He had already had one close escape. The wall would almost certainly be booby-trapped. He would be halfway up and a stone would come loose. If he fell, he would break a leg. Cray would enjoy that, watching him lie helpless on the silver floor until some other missile was fired into him to finish him off. And anyway, the sword would probably have no blade.
But thinking about it, Alex suddenly realized that he had the answer. He knew how to beat the simulated world that Cray had built.
Every computer game is a series of programmed events, with nothing random, nothing left to chance. When Alex had played the game in the Pleasure Dome, he had collected the crossbow and then used it to shoot the creature that had attacked him. In the same way, locked doors would have keys; poisons would have antidotes. No matter how much choice you might seem to have, you were always obeying a hidden set of rules.
But Alex had not been programmed. He was a human being and he could do what he wanted. It had cost him a torn shirt and a very narrow escape—but he had learnt his lesson. If he hadn't tried to get the crossbow, he wouldn't have made himself a target for the boomerang. Climbing up the wall to get the sword would put him in danger because he would be doing exactly what was expected.
To get out of the world that Cray had built for him, he had to do everything that wasn't expected.
In other words he had to cheat.
And he would start right now.
He went over to one of the blazing torches and tried to remove it from the wall. He wasn't surprised to find that the whole thing was bolted into place. Cray had thought of everything. But even if he controlled the holders, he couldn't control the flames themselves. Alex pulled off his shirt and wrapped it round the end of the wooden arrow. Then he set it on fire. He smiled to himself. Now he had a weapon that hadn't been programmed.
The exit door was at the far end of the temple. Alex was supposed to take a direct path to it.
Instead, he went the long way round, staying close to the walls, avoiding any traps that might be lying in wait. Ahead of him he could see the second chamber—the rain-drenched pit with its pillars rising from the depths below and ending at floor level. He passed through the door and stopped on a narrow ledge; the tops of the pillars —barely bigger than soup plates—offered him a path of stepping stones across the void. Alex remembered the flying creature that had attacked him. He looked up. Yes, there it was, almost lost in the gloom: a nylon wire running from the opposite side to the door above his head. He thrust upwards with the burning arrow, holding the flame against the wire.
It worked. The wire caught fire and then snapped. Cray had built a robotic version of the creature that had attacked him in the game. Alex knew that it would have swooped down when he was halfway across, rushing into him and knocking him off his perch, causing him to plunge into whatever lay below. Now he watched with quiet satisfaction as the creature tumbled down from the ceiling and dangled in front of him, a jumble of metal and feathers that was more like a dead parrot than a mythical monster.
The way ahead was clear but the rain was still falling, splashing down from some hidden sprinkler system. The stepping stones would be slippery. Alex knew that his avatar would have been unable to remove its shoes for better grip. He quickly slipped off his trainers, tied them together and hung them round his neck. His socks went into his pocket. Then he jumped. The trick, he knew, was to do this quickly: not to stop, not to look down. He took a breath, then started. The rain blinded him. The tops of the pillars were only just big enough to contain his bare feet. On the very last one he lost his balance. But he didn't have to use his feet—he could move in a way that his avatar couldn't. He threw himself forward, stretching out his hands and allowing his own momentum to carry him towards safety. His chest hit the ground and he clung on, dragging his legs over the edge of the pit. He had made it to the other side.
A corridor ran off to the left, the walls close together and decorated with hideous Aztec faces.
Alex remembered how his avatar had run through here, dodging between a hail of wooden spears. He glanced down and saw that there was what looked like a smoking stream in the floor.
Acid! What now?
He needed another weapon and he had an idea how to get one. He took out his socks, rolled them into a ball and threw them down the corridor. As he had hoped, the movement was enough to activate the sensors that controlled the hidden guns. Short wooden spears spat out of the lips of the Aztec gods at fantastic speed, striking
