Brian D'Amato - The Sacrifice Game

2 Jeweled Skull thought I might be in league with Lady Koh, and he could tell that I could see it in him.

He looked away from me and waved the commanders out of the little courtyard. Suddenly it felt all private, just him, me, the two dressers holding me, his two heralds, and Hun Xoc.

“Well, listen, if you were Lady Koh, where would you be?” 2 Jeweled Skull asked in my own nearly unaccented English.

“Dead,” I said. Hmm, I thought. Guess he’d picked up a little more of my old Jed-mind than he’d let me realize eighty-two days ago.

Idiot.

“Well, I guess it’s nice of you to let the old veil slip and everything, though,” I said in English. “Finally.”

“Oh, well, yeah, sorry,” he said, in practically a Jed voice, just a little higher and older. “You know, I didn’t want you to get confused.”

“I was already confused,” I said.

“Anyway, it’s nice to have someone you can talk to, right?” he asked. No kidding, I thought. Just hearing English spoken again was sending my emotions into a stupid, automatic tailspin.

“Right,” I said.

“I just wanted to double our chances, you know?”

“I know.” I was getting dizzy from the flood of homesickness and had to bite my lip to keep myself from crawling over and hugging him. Maybe we could just go crack a couple of hot cactus ales and grab some cheeseless nachos and kick back and chat about whatever “So maybe we can work together on this,” he said.

“Uh, yeah, and whichever one of us lives is going to go back?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “maybe we’ll both go back. There’s room in the tomb. Twombsome with youse’m. Tomb with a viewm.”

“And they’ll load both of our memories into Jed-Sub-One?”

“Sure,” he said, “I mean, maybe it’s possible, I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I don’t see why not.”

“Nonsense,” I said.

“Give it a little thought. They can probably do it. We just have to make sure they do. Whichever of us gets uploaded first has to make sure Marena girl does the other too.”

“Yeah, sure. That won’t work and you know it.”

“Well, let’s try it.”

“No way,” I said, “You’ll off me a long time before that happens.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because it’s what I’d do.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “As you well know. We’re going to off the Jed that’s back there, aren’t we?”

“What do you mean?”

“That Jed that’s there without our memories, when everything we’ve been through gets uploaded into him, that Jed, Jed-Sub-One, he’s going to basically die,” I said. “And we don’t even care. That’s just the way it is.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s survival of the shittiest. Why are you even asking me, do you think Chacal’s brain is so stunted I couldn’t work this stuff out?”

He grinned. “Well, I had wondered about that,” he said. “Chacal’s ideational skills and everything.”

“Chacal’s brain’s as smart as Jed’s was,” I said. “Maybe not so fast on calculation, but on spatiotemporal it’s way ahead.”

“How nice for you,” 2 Jeweled Me said. “Well, whatever. Anyway, maybe we can work out a deal.”

“I guess-”

“I mean, if you can’t negotiate with yourself, then, with whom?”

“Mm,” I said. “Yeah, I was just about to say that.” This whole thing was bumming me out, I felt naked talking with this hostile version of myself. It’s disturbing enough just to watch yourself on video. “So, you’re just good old Jed, right?” I asked. “You’re totally in control of 2 Jeweled Skull.”

“Believe it or not, yes,” he said.

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “You’re still 2JS. I mean, 2JS’s running you.”

Don’t let his newly cozy persona fool you, I thought. You’re not really talking to yourself, I’m talking to my personal body snatcher pod-person.

“Listen, there was as much of a chance of my getting killed here as your getting killed out there,” he said. “The main thing was just always just getting the tsam lic back.”

“Sure,” I said. Somehow he wasn’t touching my heart. “If you’re so hip and everything, why didn’t you do something really amazing? Maybe you should have built a machine gun.”

“Well, I didn’t want to rock the boat too much,” he said. “I was still in a bad spot here, you know, no matter how cool you are somebody can always get you.”

“Yeah.”

“The blowgun squad’s enough and enough is always correct. I don’t want to trip the Cosmic Censor or anything.”

“There is no Cosmic Censor.”

“Well, I just thought somebody might hear about a machine gun or something so it wouldn’t work. Or something.”

“I guess.”

“Anyway, everything’s pretty secure here. I’m not worried. Unless we can’t find Koh.”

“Great,” I said. I could tell he meant that he had the whole tomb setup ready to be installed. The folgerite, the gel stuff, everything. He was planning to head back for the bad old latter days right on schedule.

“I just wonder whether there’s something you’re not telling me. And I do need to learn that Sacrifice Game business.” He was trying to sound casual about it, but of course he was as nervous as I was. If Koh was dead there wasn’t much of a chance that he’d get very far with the Game. Especially not with setting up a human game. According to her-and although she could be cagey, I believed her on this one-there were only a few other living people who knew how to do it, and they’d been scattered with the fall of Teotihuacan. Maybe one or two of them were in Severed Right Hand’s camp, but even that wasn’t certain.

“Ask the Ocelots,” I said.

“That may be a bit difficult,” he said. “They’re a recalcitrant bunch. Anyway, I had to let 9 Fanged Hummingbird go just to get you back. For which you’re welcome, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s okay,” he said. The English words sounded odder than ever in this context. “Anyway, we should talk to Koh. And I don’t want to risk running around looking for her.”

“I don’t know where she is,” I said. “Why don’t you just bring out your nefarious instruments and we’ll get started on proving it?”

“Listen, we’re twins,” he said. “We’re even better than twins, we’re clones.”

“Clonies. Cronies,” I said.

“If we fight we’re just fighting ourself.”

“Come to me, my son,” I said in the deepest voice I could manage, imitating James Earl Jones playing Thulsa Doom in a Geraldine fright wig in Conan the Barbarian. Needless to say, he knew exactly what I was referring to. He laughed. I know I always laughed out loud whenever I thought about that scene.

“Come on, think about it, if I’d let you know I was just like you, you might have come after me. Right? How could I know what you were going to do? The right thing was to make it as possible as possible for you to get the Sacrifice Game. And meanwhile make sure everything here was ready.”

Well, it was the kind of thing I would have thought of, I thought. Except I wouldn’t have done that to myself. Would I? No. I don’t think so, anyway “I hear you got along well with Miss Koh,” he said.

“Well, yeah, pretty well.”

“So maybe she told you what she was going to do.”

“Well, or maybe not,” I said. “Maybe she didn’t trust me.”

“No, I think she probably told you something. Or gave you something to do, maybe. Maybe you were supposed to mislead me.”

“Oh, I’d never do that.”

“No, there’s something,” he said. It seemed we were having a stare-down contest. “I ought to know.”