Interesting. He’d been told to expect that. But the reference to his father “The Griffin” implied that Xavier knew exactly who he was. Did he know the Prince’s true identity as well?
The question was answered a moment later. “Prince Ali,” he said to Scotty’s charge. “You have traveled far, all the way from the Republic of Kikaya, to partake in our adventure. Now you travel farther still. Salaam Alaykum.”
“Wa Alaykum As-Salaam,” Ali replied courteously. But when Scotty met his eyes, it was clear that the young man was worried. Later, Scotty would reassure him. Surely, there was no safer place for Prince Kikaya than Heinlein base.
They marched through the door… and into a maze of plastic struts. Assistants hustled them off to the side, so that they would not obstruct the doorway. From this position, he saw that the great curving wall was a hologram-assisted facade. When the last gamer and NPC was aboard, the door was closed, and the assistants gave a collective sigh of relief.
“We’re off!” quoth a plump, charming redhead. Scotty noticed that she seemed rather attached to Wayne, who himself was linked to Angelique Chan. “Game time is over, you are all off-duty until nine tomorrow morning. Please follow your escorts to your lodgings, where you will find your personal gear already stowed. If you have any needs, please let us know. Game starts at ten tomorrow morning, and until that time no cameras or recording devices will invade your privacy.” Again, she glanced significantly at Wayne. Her eyes were liquid heat.
A lunar hookup. Sweet.
“So…,” Angelique said. “What is happening now? I mean in game time?”
“Look for yourself,” the redhead said.
She clapped her hands and the bare wall blossomed. In the void, a crowd waving British flags cheered as a Cavorite sphere lifted off from the middle of Piccadilly Circus. Like a feather caught in an updraft it drifted into the sky, accelerating until it was swallowed by clouds.
“Ten days of game time will be condensed into ten hours of real time. A clock on the screen will give viewers on Earth and even here on the Moon a countdown to tomorrow’s game. We had to make a choice: either reduce the number of hours it takes for a sphere to reach the Moon, or use time-lapse. We chose time-lapse. Any other questions?”
She was so bright and perky, and it all seemed so reasonable, that he relaxed. Fine. The game aspect of all of this was well in hand.
The redheaded mermaid’s name was Darla, and her two-legged incarnation had attached herself to Wayne during the party, all twinkling eyes and smiles and warm soft promise. Her voice hinted at north Texas, or Oklahoma. She wasn’t exactly pretty, and her Fit/Fat curves were fuller and rounder than Wayne’s usual flirtations. But her energy was irresistible, her obvious interest in a tryst provocative as hell. His fingers tingled when they touched hers.
Angelique had raised an eyebrow at their connection, but after all, she was the one who had insisted that their partnership was all business and no yum-yum.
“I’ll be ready,” he said. “Trust me.” Muscles and joints still ached from the months of training, and he knew that there was no way he would waste all that he had done, all that he’d been through.
Darla walked him to a rim elevator, taking him up to the surface, where shuttles waited to hustle them out to a clutch of dorms set in minor craters around Heinlein’s rim. At every step, they’d each had to thumbprint the reader to pass to the next station.
The shuttle sped over its levitation track and deposited them in the dorm in about thirty seconds, barely enough time to accelerate and decelerate. The windows were deeply polarized, but the sun still blistered the white sandy ridges and meteor pockets. Hypnotic. He’d seen this territory countless times in films and vids, but to actually be here…!
The dome rose before them, and the shuttle slowed. Darla had leaned into him more fully. He could feel her body heat even through his dress uniform.
“Ask me in, darlin’?” she asked.
“I’m not sure I could find my way without you.”
She giggled as the door opened. The hall outside was sealed to the side of the shuttle, the extending walkway firmly in place. “I assume my luggage is already here?”
“You assume correctly,” she said. “Twenty-one, and twenty-two. Here you are. Your thumb?”
He extended it, and she took hold of it, and pressed her lips against the pad. They were pillow soft, and quite warm.
Wayne’s throat felt thick. “I’m actually not sure I’m supposed to have anyone in the room with me… technically speaking, I’m on game time.”
Her smile was gamine, her bright green eyes twinkling at him. “These pods need permission for overnight guests,” she said. Then she pushed her thumb against the card. It flashed green. “See? I’m already clear.”
Questions instantly raced through his mind. When had she inserted her name in his file? Had she been so certain of herself? Or…
“Are you…?”
“Shhh,” she whispered, and shushed his words with a kiss. Her breath was peppermint and brandy. Then she pulled back. “I asked for you. That’s all you need to know.”
An NPC? On a mission of seduction? Was Xavier operating Off the Grid?
She shook her head. “We’re on our own time until morning,” she said.
“Is that the truth?” He came close enough to brush noses with her. She never blinked. “Are you friend… or foe?”
Her eyes were hot enough to melt glass. “Search me.”
Chris Foxworthy was floating on air. The halls of level four were almost deserted: It was between shift changes, and most people on the Moon drifted toward the time zones of their youth, all else being equal. Chris had grown up in California, and on the West Coast it was now two o’clock in the morning. In a little more than five hours, he’d be on the clock!
Gaming had been a part of his life long before he reached Luna and took a position as Kendra Griffin’s personal assistant. In California, either in commercial venues or hooked into the ’net wearing reality gear, he’d loved the international community of loons who would forgo a weekend’s sleep to be part of the latest Middle Earth or Berserker campaign. They were his folk, and in fact it was in the beginning of the Oort Cloud Game back in ’68, which began in a secret alien ship buried beneath the lunar surface, that he first fell in love with Earth’s Moon.
His first years on Luna had been as exciting as anyone could have hoped, but anything eventually becomes just another twenty-four hours, as the daily grind transforms the extraordinary into the commonplace. He’d thought about putting in for a billet on Ceres, when the first rumors about the Moon Maze Game filtered down through the ranks.
Flash forward two years, and Chris was pulling every string, calling in every favor, and cutting every corner to get on the NPC short list. Even then, he’d had to tap-dance his ass off. There was nothing easy about it, and even in a community as seen-it-all as the Lunies, a chance to participate in the first major off-planet game in history was intoxicating. Sure, there’d been some minor zero-gee LARPs on some of the stations and L5s, and there’d been brouhaha and global coverage, but this was different: a real gaming environment, top-notch players… This was for the history books, and Mrs. Foxworthy’s little boy Chris was in the middle of it.
The door to his sleep capsule sighed open, and Chris stepped in, having to slide sideways to slip past his costume, which hung next to the little bathroom stall.
He fingered it appreciatively, laughing to himself. All the NPCs had received their Victorian costumes days before, and attended a four-hour workshop on carriage and dance. Of course, they had received far more training than that for the days ahead, and he chortled at the thought.