Brian D'Amato - The Sacrifice Game

“Marena, seriously,” I said when Max was out of earshot. “I want to meet Jed-Sub-One early.”

“Let’s stick to the schedule,” she said. She still hadn’t told Jed 1 anything about me. At least, she’d sworn up and down that she hadn’t. The idea was that I should have my own head totally in order first, because of course he’d want to meet me and if he saw me all messed up then he’d get upset. But I also figured that they had some other, more serious reason.

“We still need to satisfy Lance on the debriefing.” she said. “Then we can do whatevs.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

“What did Dr. Lisuarte say?” I asked. Marena’d just been on the picture conference thingy with her.

“Well-look. I have to let you know, the readings indicate that there’s a lot you’re not telling us.”

“There was a lot that went on back there.”

“I know, but you’ll have to force yourself,” she said.

I was about to say I didn’t have to do anything, and then I didn’t, and just made a puffing sound. There was still that mosquitoish thought back there someplace. Or maybe it was more of a feeling like you’re falling asleep in a house in the country and you start wondering whether you locked the door. You decide to forget about it and nearly drift off and then you get this picture of a door that’s just a little bit ajar, and you’re like, Forget it, forget it (ajar). Good night (ajar, ajar).

“Look,” I said. “Why don’t we call-”

There was an A-flat and F chime. Doorbell. Automatically-it must have been Sic’s body memory, because normally I just lie there like a two-toed sloth-I got up. “Wait, let the Gurg get it,” Marena said.

“No, I’ve got it,” I said. I got into the front room about fifteen steps ahead of Gurgle-maybe he wasn’t that on the ball after all-and opened it just as whoever it was started to knock again. I opened my mouth to say hi Whoa. Me. I mean, it was me. There was my gangly body and corny expectant smile, wiggling a bit in the video-friendly porch light.

“Hey, Tony,” he said. “Hi.”

“… Uh, hi,” I said. “Hi, Jed.”

I motioned him inside and made a feeble gesture at the coatrack. I don’t know what I was thinking because of course, like me, he’d want to keep his coat in this icebox.

“I’m in the orifice,” Marena’s voice called. I was pretty sure she was watching us-it seemed like she had cameras in every other Robie sconce-but she sounded casual, not at all worried that I was out here with her gentleman caller. Impotently, I followed protocol and pointed Jed 1 toward the door to the living room, and watched as Marena swept across the room and planted-is that the right word? — her lips on his. Max Sleeked through the hall and vaulted over the desk. Marena gave me a funny look, held up a wait-one-minute finger, and closed the door in my face. I guess I hadn’t changed that much, after all. Big tough Jed, back from Mayaland.

I tiptoed back to the guest bedroom. Maybe if they couldn’t hear me slink away, they’d forget about me.

I could hear Marena chattering away and could tell by the thunk of stone on thick wood that they’d started up a Go game. Hmmm.

Time trickled past. Every once in a while I sort of tiptoed back over to the door. I didn’t put my ear on it, though, since I figured everything you did in this house was on video.

“Are you and he having a thing?” Jed 1 asked.

“No.”

They must have moved into a different part of the room, because their voices got too muffled to hear, and I started feeling stupid standing there. I went into the sort of living zone and flopped on the sofa. Huh. Damn. It’s me in there and he doesn’t know it. This is odding me out. And I’m jealous, sort of. Except I suppose they couldn’t be involved if he was asking insecure questions about me. Then again, she’d just said we weren’t having a thing. Weren’t we? I went back to the guest bedroom again, turned off the main light, and started one of my pacing rituals. I was on my one hundred and fifty-fourth circuit when voices started coming out of the phone. I was about to pick it up and then realized they weren’t talking to me, and that Marena must have turned on the intercom so that I could hear her conversation with Jed 1.

“Don’t even tell me, you fuck, you, you, you… you think you’re going to make that decision-you can’t make that decision, you’re not some like, wise being, you’re just, you’re a loser.” Geez, I thought. Take it easy, that’s me you’re talking to. “You’re a boring windbaggy geek loser, you don’t know anybody worth knowing, nobody’s heard of you, you’ve never done anything remotely important, you’re-”

I heard a little grunt. Had someone just gotten punched? And her voice had sounded so guttural. Like, desperate. I picked up the receiver, turned the speaker thing off, and walked out into the hall.

“You shit, ” Marena’s voice went. “I was, I was, I was practically falling in love with you and you were shit. You were worse than shit. You’re what shit would shit if it could shit.”

I skidded a little bit in Tony Sic’s athletic socks as I rounded the corner of the hallway.

“How do I stop it?”

I opened the door and saw Other Jed, Jed 1, looming over a very small-looking Marena.

“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked like an idiot.

Jed 1 looked over his shoulder at me. “Hi, Tony, nothing.” I felt something large and rocklike push me to the side. It was Grgur.

I looked back just in time to see Marena give a brutal low kick to Jed 1 ’s knee. I winced and jumped forward. I don’t know if I was planning to protect Jed 1 or help her finish the job. Neither thing happened, though. Jed 1 was backing away through the room, throwing whatever was handy at the three of us.

“Jed’s gone psycho,” Marena shrieked. Her voice wailed feeedbackily through every speaker in the house

“GRAB HIM RIGHT NOW, NOW, NOW…”

And at that, I knew they were going to kill him.

Another thing I knew, though, was that Marena’s earlobe-mounted phone, and the whole house’s phone and Internet systems, weren’t running off the increasingly sketchy post-Disney World Horror local towers. Instead, there was a pair of direct-uplink dishes on the roof. And they ran on the house’s electricity.

I toe-mushed my latex sandals off my feet and padded out, into the kitchen, and through a little pantry. It was Florida around here, so there wasn’t any basement, and the house’s gut brains were all in a little room behind a commercial water cooler. I’d already identified both the regular main circuit breaker and the big isolator switch that cut the line to a natural gas-powered backup generator that lurked in a shed in the backyard. Just to make a cleaner break, I cut the generator first and then the house main. There was a second of real dark and then a few battery-powered night-lights came on. Well offstage, Marena’s voice shouted something.

That ought to give him a few extra minutes, I thought. I’ll try some of his cold e-mail accounts later. My cold e-mail accounts. Our. I opened the kitchen door, jogged across the backyard-which wasn’t the yard with the pool and the pepper hedges and everything, but just a swath of centipede grass surrounded by dready yew bushes-and vaulted-well, vaulted sounds a little too graceful-over a steel fence post into the neighbors’ yard. I lost footing and rolled over. If they catch me, they’re going to ice me pretty fast after this, I thought. A few days of interrogation, tops. Still, I was less terrified than I would have expected I’d be. Maybe Tony’s brain-the less conscious part of it that was still there the way he’d left it-was less cowardly than the Jed mind it had appropriated. Or maybe it felt like I didn’t need to worry because I wasn’t really me. I got up again and ran around the neighbors’ big faux-Spanish-Colonial pile toward Oshkechabi Street. I’m doing great, I thought. Got to ditch the phone, though. And check again for implanted chips-oh, hell. I only got the vaguest impression of something behind me before there was something around me, crushing my chest, and as I realized that one of the guards had tackled me the grass tilted up and mashed me in the face.