“Thadeus,” Alex said softly. “Did somebody get to you?”
“ If they fail, the meteors will pound only a lifeless world. We’ll build again. And again, until we get it right. And then we can build skyhooks for Earth. And then the solar system is ours!” Spacecraft rose from Earth and Mars, all sizes, all shapes, in ever-denser numbers, flung outward by Beanstalks and Pin-wheels. They spread across the solar system… but Alex Griffin and Thadeus Harmony saw none of that.
Harmony wiped a broad hand over his vast forehead, checked the palm for sweat. “No, Alex. They’re just watching all the time. Sometimes I feel like a goldfish in a bowl. Listen, I’m worried.”
“You should be. But, Thadeus, now it’s in my lap.”
“We backed down before that son of a bitch.” Harmony had glimpsed Fekesh. He studied the tall Arab, then abruptly looked away. “We backed down, but we had reason. We don’t do that lightly, Alex. He had us.”
“You’d almost whipped yourselves before Fekesh ever got there. You told me about it, remember? We’re stronger now, Thadeus. And the girl came back. Raw coincidence, the stuff of dreams and parables. if there’s a trace of superstition in Kareem Fekesh, he must think the fates have come for him.”
Harmony’s mouth opened and shut twice without producing sound. Then: “You’re dreaming.”
“Maybe.”
“Will you at least let me know what’s going on?”
“Minute by minute.”
Harmony gave a long, sighing exhalation. “All right, all right. I’m going to go and make a public face. Just… hell. I’ll be in touch.”
Harmony slouched away, a big, worried bear with an artificial smile plastered across his face, trying to make happy with the guests.
Alex watched him. Harmony wandered across the room shaking a hand here, clasping a shoulder there. Then, as if in response to Alex’s somewhat sadistic prayer, found himself facing Kareem Fekesh.
Both froze. Then Fekesh smiled graciously, walked around Harmony, and disappeared into the crowd.
Alex watched Harmony’s expression as he turned to watch Fekesh leave. The public smile had cracked open. Beneath it was something incandescent with loathing.
Max popped out of the water. The bubble above him burst, left him standing on a perfectly balanced piece of ice in a choppy sea. Other Gamers popped to the surface around him. The world buoyed for a few moments, then righted.
A few yards away, Hippogryph and Charlene bobbed up. Charlene was leaning on her rotund companion. They weren’t exactly holding hands, but…
Brother Orson’s eyes were fixed on the couple, and there was, if not primal fury, at the very least disappointment and discomfiture in his gaze.
Max’s chunk of ice drifted to the edge of an ice field, and fit into the rest of the floe as neatly as a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
The sky flowed with an endless ribbon of color. The northern lights? Aurora borealis? It was stunningly bright, seemed near enough to touch, and he stood on tiptoes, stretching his fingers up…
“What in the world are you doing?” Eviane asked.
“Ah… stretches.”
She was pulling a lightweight jacket out of her backpack, and he followed suit. The air carried a bit more chill here. Nothing but white, nothing but ice in all directions. Wherever they were, it was in the heart of the arctic. They had no magical reprieve from the cold.
He looked down at Eviane’s feet, startled to realize that she cast no shadow. Where she walked, her feet left no imprint. It gave him the creeps.
There were no birds overhead. There were no mountains or trees to break the endless, bleak plain. The wind howled, and the chill seemed to penetrate to a level beyond the physical.
The other Gamers donned their jackets. Max noted that Yarnall, the National Guardsman, was still with them. How hard had the Gods tried to kill him out? Hard to guess… but Max expected the Game to get considerably rougher now. He put a hand on Eviane’s shoulder, and then walked over to Snow Goose. A light wind from the… east? blew steadily, carrying an unwelcome load of snow.
“What next?”
“Ceremony,” Snow Goose said. “We need shelter from this wind, so that we can perform a ceremony. There aren’t enough of us who are Eskimo to build a snow shelter, so we’ll just have to use Robin’s prefab units.”
The Gamers gathered around in a circle to hear her. They looked tired, but exultant. The wind around them moaned a dirge, but their mood was unaffected. They were strong. They were victorious. They were on a goddamned roll.
“We’re going to need to construct shelter,” she told them. “There’s a storm coming in.”
Robin Bowles took center stage. “In the bottom of everyone’s pack there should be a segment of a shelter unit. Please extract that. Now, there are instructions included, but if you’ll just listen to me, you won’t need to take the time to read them..
The Adventurers formed a circle, and Max fit in next to Eviane.
Each shelter section was roughly triangular, and included telescoping rods that clicked together into a rigid frame. Additional coiled wire ran through cloth conduits. The whole thing swelled and stiffened admirably, until it looked more like an igloo than anything they had seen since their plane crashed.
The plane crash. How long ago had that been? Forty-eight hours? It seemed worlds away, and so much had changed since then.
Eviane still looked somewhat pale, and perhaps a bit forlorn. He imagined that was appropriate: he thought that if he were officially dead, he would be somewhat forlorn as well. But with strong, busy fingers she helped, in all likelihood as cheerful as any dead person could be.
The igloo grew until it was about twelve feet across and five feet high. The Actor attached a hissing gas cylinder to the tent. Struts swelled with pressure. The tent had become a gelatin mold.
They crawled in, single file.
The temperature outside had begun to drop. In the last few minutes of their task, Max’s fingers had grown numb. He was delighted to get inside, where Bowles was already setting up a small conical heater. Temperatures rapidly grew comfortable, if not toasty.
Snow Goose removed the tin can of cigarettes from her pack and sat cross-legged on the ground, waiting for the others to arrive. She was centered and calm, every bit the picture of a woman who strode between two worlds, the Inuit and the white.
Outside, the wind howled ferociously. Max could almost hear the voices of the Cabaclass="underline" thwarted, angry, vengeful…
But in the igloo, there was peace.
Eviane gazed at Snow Goose as if trying to remember something. Studying. Absorbing. Then she seemed to give up.
The Adventurers ringed them ‘round. Bowles. Stith-Wood.
Hippogryph. Yarnall. The Sands brothers. Dula. Titus. Frankish
Oliver. Welsh. Eviane. Hebert. These were the warriors of the West, and they had to be enough.
Snow Goose spoke. “You know we’ve won, like, major gold.”
There was a round of applause, and a great hearty lot of back-slapping. Snow Goose let it die back down. She said, “We should get a chance to rest pretty soon now.”
“I was wondering if anyone was going to remember that part!” Trianna said. “I’m pooped.”
There was a general chorus of agreements about that too.
“We need another ceremony first. We must reach my father. The elders who helped us with our last ceremony cannot aid us now, but I have something that they didn’t-one of the Dead, whose love for this world brought her back to be with us. She walks between worlds, and in traveling from death to life has gained great power.
“Eviane, you will sit at the center of our circle. You will help us to open a window between worlds.”
With evident reluctance, Eviane moved forward and sat next to Snow Goose. Cigarettes were passed around. Max shifted, and then shifted again, trying to get comfortable on the thin padding under his aching buttocks. Nothing helped. Finally he folded his jacket and sat on it.