Brian D'Amato - The Sacrifice Game

“Doug, take it easy,” Lindsay said to the Big Guy. Doug’s grip relaxed and I could look up.

“Marena?” I asked. “Could you button Lindsay’s jacket for him? Including the top button.”

“What do you think?” Marena asked him.

“Fine, do it,” he said.

She did. It made Lindsay look turn-of-the-century. I mean, the century before the last one.

“Dump out your pockets and then put your hands in them,” I said. He started to but they were still sewn together. “Not your jacket pockets, your front pants pockets.”

He did. A couple of old coins bounced on the floor. Behind him the paramedic pulled away from Michael and came up with a mouthful of blood. I am glad I do not have that job, I thought. I looked back at Lindsay. He had not moved.

“Maybe you will kill me whatever happens,” he said.

“Nonsense,” I said, “if I wanted to do that I would have done it already. You think you are that hard to get to? I am just concerned about my role in your new administration. We are on the same side of the court on this.”

“All righty,” he said. “Except you’re not going to get out of here whether I want you to or not.”

“I know, but I still recommend you stall for time. Is not that the standard procedure?”

There was a kind of Woo standoff for seventy beats while Lindsay talked with Ana. Finally they let me up. Without looking away from my eyes, Lindsay cracked enough to raise a finger. Doug pried his hands off my arms.

Lindsay just darted his eyes toward the south wall and Doug and Ana fell instantly into line, leading Marena and me on a straight cut through the freaked crowd and along the long granite wall behind the dessert tables. Doug did not loosen his grip on my arm but he did talk into the air again, telling the backup security to hold back. Ana led us around a corner toward the bank of elevators. “Let’s go up to your office,” I said to Lindsay. “This is a bummer party anyway, I’ve never seen so many nobodies in my life.” Ana opened the door to a big blond-wood-paneled container by holding her palm over a little red laser.

“Not that one,” I said. “Let’s go up to the box.” I turned and walked to the end of the line, making them follow me, to the Elevator V, the one that led to the floor behind the VIP box. Lindsay signaled okay and Doug opened it.

“Could you move all the VIPs out of the VIP box?” I asked Lindsay. “Maybe send them on a tour of the locker room?”

He gave Ana the order. She sent it over her ear.

“You can let go of his arm,” Lindsay said. Doug did.

“Thanks,” I said. A Glorious Foodster slid past with his tray still in his hand and I grabbed a highball glass of what turned out to be upscale chocolate soda.

“The guards can’t come up,” I said.

“That’s impossible, they have to,” Lindsay said.

“No, I’m sticking on that issue,” I said. There was another pause, as tense as if we were waiting for the first ball to unravel its knot and drop onto the marker. I tossed off the soda and dropped the tumbler on the floor just to hear the sweet sound of breaking glass.

“Okay, fine,” Lindsay said, “Look, I can talk for twenty minutes. Then I have to go back down and check the guests. Or you’ll have to kill me.”

“That’s fine, that’s plenty,” I said, “thanks for taking the time, I know a lot of people want to get in to see you-”

“Oh, please,” he said. “Doug, you go up to twelve. Ana, you cover the fire exits.”

“Ten-four,” she said.

I stepped into the elevator. Marena followed and then Lindsay. The time on the panel said 3:21:02 P.M. Roughly two hours and eight minutes left before the Sweeper test. Better keep moving. Marena punched in the eight-digit code for the fourteenth floor. As the door started to close, Ana still was looking at me with her watchful eyes. We started up.

This time there was a long acceleration. I looked away from the security camera. There was an instant of equilibrium and then a slower deceleration and a D note on a nonexistent metalophone.

The door hissed open on a big would-be-classy waiting room. Three meters in front of us a single security dude was standing up behind a glass reception desk, holding a communicator to his ear, his mouth open. To the right a wide glass door led into Lindsay’s VIP box, with the last of the VIPs filing out of it into the Great Glass Elevator. We waited for a beat and as the elevator went down I led Lindsay and Marena past the puzzled desk guy. As the next set of glass doors opened themselves we heard the BONG of another elevator landing somewhere. Lindsay looked around. A bunch of new guards had come around the corner to the right. They were in heavy gray TAC-team gear, like puffy gnomoids. They weren’t rushing at us, though, they were just standing there wondering if there was really a problem.

“Listen, Lindseed,” I whispered, “call them off now. Seriously.”

“This is Lindsay Warren, stay there!” he yelled at them. “FLOOR GUARDS, STAND FAST!” They paused. “I’ll page you in a second,” he said.

We turned our back on them and went in. The door sealed itself behind us. Lindsay led us into the box, past the Great Glass Elevator and the windows looking down on the interior of the Hyperbowl. A stage with a proprietary Sleeker-friendly surface stage had rolled out over the ball pit and they were doing some kind of elaborate rite, or what they would call a halftime show or awards ceremony. The recipient of whatever it was-some of the signage said it was the Oskars, but since they spelled it that way I figured they had had trouble with the actual Oscars, which might still be going on somewhere-was standing on a scaffold in a tiara, giving a speech about how lucky and well-meaning she was. The VVIP SkyBox was empty, with signs of recent recreational use.

“Let’s talk in the Blue Bin, or whatever you call it.”

Lindsay punched a code into a panel on the far wall. The door slid to the side with a little sizzle. It was probably just a sound effect they’d put in to make the whole thing seem more cool. I made sure I’d remembered the code and then made the three of them go in first.

Lindsay’s Blue Room-which was really known as the Safe Room, or the Sealing Room-was steel-lined on all four sides and had no windows. It had only been slightly face-lifted since Jed 1 had been here, so it was still about two rope-lengths square, with a one-rope-length ceiling and only two doors, one directly opposite the door we’d come through. There was a square black-granite conference table in the center of the room, off-angle so that you could sit at it and see all four walls, and in the center of the table, about an arm square, a DHI holo-block layout of the Game, with the center bin taken up by a small model of the temple district and stadium complex of Neo-Teo. It was turned off, with only a single green light marking our position in the stadium, but I could still see that it had been vastly improved. The only other solid things in the room were twelve black chairs. The ceiling was white and emanated a cheap-feeling ethereal glow, and the walls looked like blue silk. Each had what looked like a big oil painting in a wide black frame. Directly across from us, that is, on the western wall, there was a scene of Lehi arriving in the Promised Land in an odd sort of boat like a wooden submarine. On our right there was a bigger canvas of Christ in America. It showed Jesus upstage left, his hands outstretched showing his wounds, and behind him the Pyramid of the Castillo at Chichen Itza. A group of rather Anglo-looking ancient Maya surrounded Christ, regarding him with varied attitudes of gratitude and awe. One of the women was wearing a huipil that was almost authentic, but the men sported anachronistic gold neck-plates and quetzal-plumed pickelhaubes like nineteenth-century Prussian officers. On our left another mural showed Nephi Making Gold Plates. Behind him, Teotihuacan burned, except, judging from the fall foliage around him, Teotihuacan seemed to be somewhere in Upstate New York. The last painting, above the door we’d come through, showed the Angel Moroni appearing to Joseph Smith, pointing out the buried Plates of Nephi with his radiant finger.