The Imperium Game (18 page)

“Wait!” Amaelia dragged at Kerickson’s arm, her face pale except for two red-cherry dots that danced in her cheeks.

Letting her pull him to a stop in the middle of an oleander thicket, he shook his head, almost as breathless as she was. “Okay—for a few minutes—but we’ve got to get out of here.”

“Do—” she began, then coughed. She rubbed at her forehead. “Do you know the way back from here?”

“Well, yes—” He thought of the strange rooms underneath the Spear and Chicken Inn, and the neuronic buzzer. “—and no. We can’t go back that way.”

Eyes closed, she leaned her head back against the leathery leaves, trying to get her breath. “Cerberus guards the way out. Do you think we can get past him?”

He glanced down at his bare wrist. “I’m not an official shade. Maybe that will do the trick.”

“Maybe.” She sat back up and looked around the junglelike garden. “Anyway, I can’t believe you came all the way down here just to find me.”

“Well—” He felt his face go volcano-hot. “I—I was worried about you, after that little bit of trouble with Jupiter, I mean.”

“Yes, Jupiter.” Her eyes narrowed. “That was all your idea, wasn’t it?”

“I—guess.” He scratched his head. “But it got rid of Mars, didn’t it?”

Her lips tightened. “And got me killed.”

He smiled thinly, wondering why women were never—ever—satisfied. “Do you feel up to—”

“NO, NO, YOU’RE HANDLING THIS ALL WRONG!” a throaty female voice exclaimed from above. “THE POOR GIRL’S ALREADY BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH TORTURE FOR ONE DAY. QUIT TRYING TO TALK HER EARS OFF AND KISS HER!”

“What?” Amaelia looked up into a huge live oak whose limbs spread over them like a canopy.

“OH, LEAVE THEM ALONE,” a different female voice said, younger, lighter. “SOME RELATIONSHIPS ARE MEANT TO BE COOL AND INTELLECTUAL.”

Kerickson pulled Amaelia to her feet. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.

“NOT SO FAST THERE, SONNY.” Blueness wavered on one dangling limb, then became a buxom woman dressed in long, low-cut robes of dazzling white. “THAT WAS A VERY ROMANTIC THING YOU DID, CHASING DOWN HERE AFTER THE WOMAN OF YOUR DREAMS.”

“Not—really.” He looked at the goddess more closely, seeing the ivory complexion, the golden girdle, and the doves perched on each bare shoulder—it was Venus, Goddess of Love. “You’re not supposed—”

“TO BE DOWN HERE.” The goddess twined a strand of her sun-gold hair around one finger. “TELL ME ABOUT IT.”

“DON’T BOTHER.” A second blueness sparkled beside Venus, then solidified into a slim young girl clad in a short tunic embroidered in silver with the phases of the moon. “I’M SURE SHE FEELS QUITE SORRY ENOUGH FOR HERSELF WITHOUT ANY HELP FROM YOU.”

He noted the stout bow slung across her shoulder—Diana, the Virgin Huntress. He looked at Amaelia. “Someone must be going crazy up there in the Interface.”

Diana leaped lightly to the ground. “FOR A MAN WHO’S SUPPOSED TO BE ESCAPING, YOU’RE CERTAINLY DOING A LOT OF SITTING AROUND. DON’T YOU THINK YOU HAD BETTER GET ON WITH IT?”

“DON’T LISTEN TO HER.” Stepping off the branch, Venus floated down to the overgrown grass. “THIS—TOMBOY HAS NO POETRY IN HER SOUL, NO ROMANCE, NO SAVOIR FAIRE, IF YOU CATCH MY DRIFT. I’M SURE IF YOU JUST GIVE THIS LOVELY GIRL A KISS, SOMETHING INTERESTING WILL DEVELOP.”

“IS THAT ALL YOU EVER THINK ABOUT?” Diana shook her head. “THEIR LIVES ARE AT STAKE.”

Venus frowned, then motioned Kerickson closer. “I’M AFRAID YOU’LL HAVE TO FORGIVE DIANA,” she said in a low voice. “WITH HER, IT’S NOTHING BUT STAGHOUNDS AND ARROWS, DAY IN AND DAY OUT.” She winked cheerfully. “I MEAN, JUST LOOK AT HER; IT’S OBVIOUS THE POOR GIRL NEVER GETS ANY!”

“Yes, well.” Kerickson seized Amaelia’s arm. “It’s been great chatting with you both, but we really have to run now.”

“IT WON’T DO A BIT OF GOOD, YOU KNOW. CERBERUS MIGHT WELL IGNORE YOU, BUT—” Venus smiled fondly at Amaelia. “—HE’LL TEAR
HER
TO BLOODY SHREDS. HE’S NOT GOING TO LET A BONA FIDE SHADE ESCAPE FROM HADES. THE TWO OF YOU MIGHT AS WELL ENJOY YOURSELVES. I SAW A LOVELY LITTLE BOWER OF MOSS JUST THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT PALM TREE OVER THERE—”

“THERE IS A WAY.” Diana elbowed the other goddess aside. “IF YOU HAVE THE HEART FOR IT.”

“How?” Amaelia asked.

“THERE WAS ONE OCCASION WHEN CERBERUS DID ALLOW A SHADE TO LEAVE HADES.”

“OH, WELL, THAT WAS DIFFERENT.” Venus sniffed. “THAT BOY REALLY HAD WHAT IT TAKES. YOU CAN’T EXPECT OUR HANDSOME YOUNG FRIEND HERE TO TRY
THAT.”

“WHY NOT?” Diana’s gray-eyed gaze swung to Amaelia.

“Try what?” Amaelia asked.

Diana’s tanned face regarded her soberly. “HE MUST SING TO THE THREE-HEADED BEAST. IT HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE.”

“AND JUST LOOK WHERE IT GOT
HIM.”
Venus crossed her arms. “TORN INTO TINY, QUIVERING PIECES, PARTS OF HIM SCATTERED HERE, PARTS THERE, AND HIM SO WELL PUT TOGETHER, TOO. SUCH A WASTE OF A PERFECTLY GOOD MAN-FLESH, EVEN IF HE WAS MORTAL.”

“WELL, IT WAS HIS OWN FAULT. HE DIDN’T FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS.” Diana grimaced.

“Sing?” Kerickson suddenly realized that they were speaking about him. “But I can’t even carry a tune.”

“THAT’S WHAT I HATE MOST ABOUT BEING TRAPPED DOWN HERE!” Diana stamped her sandalled foot. “NOTHING BUT DOOM AND GLOOM ALL THE TIME! DON’T YOU HAVE ANY SENSE OF ADVENTURE, ANY FIGHTING SPIRIT?”

“UH-OH.” Venus’s creamy face turned a delicate pink. “I THINK YOUR TIME IS UP, KIDS.”

Kerickson looked over his shoulder. In the distance he could see several large, black, shiny things trampling straight toward them through thickets of honeysuckle and jasmine.

“WHAT EXACTLY DID PLUTO TELL YOU?” Diana asked.

“Something like ‘Go and walk this dark realm no more,’ ” Kerickson said weakly.

“THEN MIGHT I SUGGEST THAT YOU GET ON WITH IT?” Diana gestured at the approaching armored figures. “UNLESS YOU FANCY MEETING HIS PERSONAL BLACK GUARD UNDER LESS THAN PLEASANT CIRCUMSTANCES.”

AN HOUR
later Kerickson glanced back over his shoulder
for the hundredth time, but fortunately the black guards seemed to be slow movers, although extremely steady. The devices fell behind as he and Amaelia descended into the narrow gorge that formed the boundary of the far edge of Hades.

About halfway down the winding trail, Amaelia pointed out a wooden bridge spanning the dark, oily river about fifty feet below. “That way.”

“Are you sure?” He was disoriented; although he’d made routine repair runs down to the Underworld, he’d never approached the River Styx from this direction.

“I remember that bridge, and besides—” She wiped at the sheen of perspiration on her face. “—it’s getting hotter fast.”

“What does that mean?”

Her mouth tightened. “You’ll see.”

The trail zigzagged back and forth across the steep gorge wall like an undecided snake. Just before they reached the bottom, Kerickson snagged his toe on a rock, then bit back curses while he hopped on the other leg.

“Shh!” A furrow appeared between Amaelia’s brows. “It will hear you!”

A spinning rock bounced down the rocky slope, careening from side to side, narrowly missing them at the bottom. Still cradling his aching toe, Kerickson looked up and saw two shiny black figures at the top of the gorge. “I don’t think that will matter if we don’t hurry!”

He pulled her across the rough, wooden bridge, then stopped before a sheer wall of red-orange rock.

“The opening’s got to be here somewhere.” Turning away, Amaelia trailed her fingers over the rough, unbroken cliff. “Maybe there’s a button or a lever.”

Or maybe it could only be opened from the other side, Kerickson thought. Shades weren’t supposed to go back this way. He wished he could remember how the players’ gate into the Underworld operated.

Limping after her, he tapped the rocks with his knuckles. Did the gate perhaps operate on a voice code instead of a manual trigger? And was Amaelia even right about the location, or had she missed the place altogether? Downstream, he could see that the river widened, then disappeared into another sheer rock wall. Upstream, the dark, slimy-looking water cascaded down from an opening at least twenty feet above their heads. The gate had to be here. There was simply no place else to look.

He could hear the black guards’ footsteps now, heavy and deliberate. He looked back up the trail. They had improved their rate of descent by ignoring the trail altogether; they had simply leaned back and marched straight downhill, their massive weights providing a counterbalance. Kerickson swore again, this time not quite under his breath. He and Wilson had worked on the black guards together. Hadn’t it been his idea to program a certain level of problem-solving ability in that class of robots?

A small voice in the back of his mind whispered that it had.

A clumping black guard’s foot dislodged another rock, fist-sized this time. It struck the cliff a few feet from Amaelia with a loud crack, then showered them both with slivers.

He brushed rock chips out of his hair. “For Minerva’s sake, Amaelia, hurry up!”

“I—” Her arm disappeared up to the elbow into the grainy red-orange rock. “—am!” She pulled it out. “Here! It’s covered with a holo. Come on!” She pushed through the rock wall and disappeared.

Closing his eyes, he plunged after her.

“Welll, nowww,” a raspy chorus said. “Whattt havvve weee herrre, selvesss—dinnerrr or desserttt?”

Kerickson opened his eyes to find a slavering, scaly snout only inches from his own nose. He jerked sideways and cracked his head against the rock wall.

“G—Gaius?” Amaelia quavered.

His head aching, he tried to focus through his watering eyes. Amaelia was pinned to the ground by a wickedly clawed, green-scaled foreleg. He edged away, well aware that Cerberus, unlike the gods and many of the other special effects, was not a hologram. The original designers of HabiTek had ordered up a mechanical for this particular role, wanting something more substantial and dramatic for the “deceased” player’s entrance into Hades.

He fingered the rapidly swelling knot on the back of his head and tried to think. Like all the gods and robots used in the Game, Cerberus had originally been programmed not to hurt players, but that had been before things had started to go wrong in a big way. Proserpina, Queen of Hades, was not supposed to be on-line either, and certainly not programmed with what seemed to be a personality print of his ex-wife. Very little in the Game was as it should be anymore.

“Cerberus,” he said with more confidence than he felt, “this is a code four-A override. Let her go!”

One of the grinning heads how led, while the other two stared into each other’s eyes and laughed. “Interacttt threeee pointtt onnne! Howww quainttt!”

“Three point one?” Stooping down, he reached for Amaelia’s arm just a few feet away, but the red-eyed head on the left snapped at him, spattering his arm with realistically hot dog drool.

“We’vvve beennn upgradeddd, foolll.” The middle head winked at him. “Weee don’ttt runnn onnn thattt obsoleeete versionnn offf theee sacreddd languaggge anymorrre!”

“Gaius!” Amaelia whispered up at him from the ground. “Sing to it!”

“What?” He wiped his arm off on his toga. “Oh—yeah.” He grimaced, remembering that his voice was so bad, he didn’t even sing in the privacy of the ’fresher. “Uh, why don’t you sing?”

She opened her mouth, then grunted as the three-headed dog shifted its massive weight and forced the air from her lungs. “Singgg, yourselfff, mortalll, ittt mighttt beee amusinggg.”

“S—Sure.” He wiped at the sweat on his forehead “What would you—like?”

The right-hand head licked its yellow fangs. “Surrrprise usss.”

He opened his mouth to sing something—anything—but unfortunately his mind was as blank as if he’d never sung a note in
his whole life.

“We’rrre waitinggg!” the three heads said in unison. The middle one twined its snaky neck downward and gave Amaelia’s face a slobbery lick. She writhed.

Sing . . . he had to sing. Music to soothe the three-headed beast, Diana had said to him. What would soothe a creature like Cerberus? He felt like a, child again, standing in front of the whole class, his lessons forgotten, nothing but silly rhymes running through his head. Silly rhymes . . . and songs . . . He had known a few silly childhood songs.

Wetting his lips, he began to sing in a nervous, weedy voice, much too high. “One hundred bottles of beer on the wall, one hundred bottles of beer—”

“Beerrr? Whattt isss beerrr?” All three heads turned to him, the six red eyes staring.

“Take one down, pass it around, ninety-nine bottles of—” He thought hard.
“—wine
on the wall.”

The heads wove back and forth with the beat as he picked up speed. “Ninety-nine bottles of wine on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of wine!”

The six blood-red eyes sagged. He continued, working his way down through the choruses to eighty-five. Then, still singing, he crouched down and took Amaelia’s hand.

Her fingers moved in his, and she crawled toward him. The central head opened its eyes again and snarled at him. He leaned back with all his weight and belted out, “Take one down and pass it around,
eighty-four
bottles of wine on the wall!” He dug in his heels and pulled. “Eighty-four bottles of—come on!—wine on the—” With a rip, she slid out from under the beast, leaving her skirt behind, and fell on top of him in the metallic black sand.

For a moment they both lay there, speechless and exhausted. Then Cerberus shook itself and howled a great reverberating cry of rage, and Kerickson pushed Amaelia up. “Come on! I don’t think his parameters allow him to leave the gate!”

Slogging wearily across the sweltering black beach, they dodged boulders until they reached the shore of the thundering, sulfurous Styx. Amaelia sank to her knees, gazing mournfully across to the other side. For a moment he didn’t understand; then it hit him, too.

Charon and his ferry were on the opposite shore.

* * *

It took a full half day before Demea deemed her god-husband sufficiently distracted by his daily inspection of his realm to risk contacting Publius Barbus and instruct him to meet her in the overgrown palace gardens.

Manifesting in her only slightly larger than life-size form, she arrayed herself in a gown of glittering black stars and wandered through a grove of vine-choked willow trees and rambling, untended azalea bushes. A dark, bitter flood of anger rose in her throat. What good was it to play Proserpina, Queen of Hades, if she couldn’t do exactly as she pleased? Supreme power was the whole point of becoming a goddess. What right did Pluto have to deny her anything?

“You sent for me, your ladyness?” a rough-edged voice asked from behind her.

Turning around, she met the mean little pinpoint eyes of Publius Barbus. “YOU WILL NOT ADDRESS ME IN THAT CRUDE AND FAMILIAR MANNER!”

“Taking on airs, eh?” Barbus rasped his fingers over his scruffy beard, then chuckled “Well, I suppose you’re entitled. It’s not every broad what can work her way up to goddess!”

Her height increased without her even thinking about it, so that she found herself staring down through the leafy treetops at his insectlike body. “I HAVE A TASK FOR YOU.”

Barbus plopped down on the ground and pulled a sandwich out of his pocket. “Well, I suppose we might be able to work something out, just for old times’ sake. What’s your best offer?”

“NOT TO TAKE YOUR WORTHLESS, WORMY LIFE!” She summoned a ball of crackling power and cradled it in one hand. “I WANT TO DISPOSE OF SEVERAL PEOPLE ABOVE, BUT AS PROSERPINA, I CAN NO LONGER GO THERE MYSELF.”

He took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. “Disposals don’t come cheap, you know. How are you going to pay me?”

She had to think for a moment—she no longer possessed anything of a material nature. Then she had it. “MICIO’S BUSINESS, WHATEVER IT WAS—YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL. I HAVE NO NEED OF IT NOW.”

“That?” He waved the sandwich at her. “The moment I turned you over to old Dark and Gloomy, it was mine. He promised me that much up front”

“PLUTO PROMISED YOU MICIO’S BUSINESS IF YOU BROUGHT ME TO HIM?”

“That’s right, Queenie—lock, stock, and laser, plus free run of the Dark Kingdom anytime I want.” He stuffed the last of the sandwich in his mouth.

She had been sold, like a leg of lamb or an airhopper. The idea staggered her so much that she lost her concentration and the ball of power in her hands fizzled away to nothing. She shrank to normal size before she noticed.

“Now don’t go getting yourself all in a tizzy.” Barbus brushed the crumbs off his hands. “It’s not like you was cut out for a life of crime, anyway. Admit it, you didn’t really have the faintest idea what his formerness, the Emperor, was up to. There’s no reason for a classy dame like you to get your hands dirty with smuggling and point-stealing and the like. You just stay down here and leave the nuts and bolts to old Publius Barbus.”

“I NEED YOUR HELP ON THIS ONE SMALL MATTER.” She crossed her arms. “THEN WE CAN CONSIDER OURSELVES EVEN. I WANT ARVID KERICKSON AND AMAELIA METULLUS DEAD, IN ANY SENSE YOU CAN CONTRIVE.”

“Who?”

“ARVID KERICKSON, MY EX-HUSBAND.” She conjured a holo image from the computer’s files and displayed it for Barbus: an old file recording from one of Arvid’s many trips out on the playing field. Dressed in the uniform of the Praetorian Guard, he looked rather more dashing than she remembered.

“You know, I seen him before.” Barbus walked around the image, scratching his head. “Yesterday, in the work crew. He was causing some kind of commotion and had the wrong kind of bracelet.”

“WELL, YOU SHOULD HAVE KEPT BETTER TRACK OF HIM.” Watching Arvid’s holo marching down the Via Ostiensis, she felt cold fury running through her veins. “HE WAS ONE OF HABITEK’S PROGRAMMERS, SO HE KNOWS THINGS ABOUT THE IMPERIUM NO ONE ELSE UNDERSTANDS.”

“A programmer? Then what’s he doing in the Game?” He shook his head. “You know, this is weird. If he was in my work gang, then he shouldn’t be able to stay away from the Spear and Chicken. In a few more hours he should be there on his knees, begging for another fix.”

When the file image ran out, she summoned another, this time Arvid standing in the throne room with that disgusting bimbo, Amaelia, at his side.

Barbus whistled “Is that the babe you was talking about? I’d keep her company any time.”

“DO ANYTHING YOU LIKE WITH THE NASTY LITTLE BRAT, AS LONG AS YOU GET RID OF HER.”

“You want her dead, huh?” He squinted at the image of the slender, red-haired girl. “Hey, ain’t that the same she-male Quintus Gracchus is tearing apart the whole dome to find?”

“QUINTUS GRACCHUS?” She tapped a long, poppy-red fingernail against her chin, thinking. Yes, that made sense. Since that Praetorian idiot had married Amaelia to legitimate his claim as Emperor, he must be looking for her. “PUBLIUS BARBUS, DO YOU KNOW HOW AMAELIA WAS KILLED?”

“Oh, yeah, that story was all over the Imperium this morning.” Barbus grinned “You see, Amaelia evidently slipped out of the Palace without no escort, then wound up at the Temple of Jupiter during all that ruckus with Mars. Jupiter—well, everyone knows what
he’s
like—he took such a fancy to her that Juno showed up and sent her straight to—”