Jack Dann - Dangerous Games

“Yes.” There was something like madness in the phantom’s darkling bits of eyes, something reckless and fervent, but Beni dared not suggest the tombs housed what remained of the Tastan’s dead insane. It was more. It had to be more. But he did not have to stumble over words to form a question. Arasty continued speaking.

“Some ruling elite, yes. An enemy, true, that culled our millions and our cultural heritage. Downgraded us all. To simple, immortal, happy folk like you-”

“Then-”

“Immortal. Happy ichneumon. But able to be maimed, killed by violence. With time to be curious, to ponder, to forget, to indulge. Happy, happy, happy ichneumon!”

“Then you’re here-”

“Go on!” Madness spun in the darkness of the eyes.

“To cull us! Prey on us! To give purpose to immortal lives! They planned ahead. Saw we would need-”

“No!” The intercept had halted in blazing fury, actually flickered, flashed off and back again. The face was rigid with a rage and suffering held in such perfect suspension that Beni was faint with the involuntary numbing terror he felt welling up. The eyes, the black false eyes, held him.

“No, little hunter. No. See it our way. To give purpose to our thwarted lives. Some kind of revenge for those few among the elite, eighty-five out of all those many, to whom the genetic treatments did not bestow immortality. Who had helped cull and simplify, then found themselves without the intended blessing, left to die in the agony of exclusion from that. From you.”

Beni saw the extent of the resolve, the old fierce hatred, that she would never let him go. He would never get to tell this story. Never even reach the central chamber. Or know he had.

“These aren’t tombs. They’re traps,” he said, understanding, remembering the other meaning to her name for him, the insect leaving behind its offspring to feed.

“Yes, Beni. Traps to lure immortals curious in their long lives. A way of striking back at time.”

And Beni felt the deep-down dread that Ramirez, some kind of Ramirez, tampered with, changed, or no-just allowed to go back unharmed-was acting as a lure out there in the bright summer days, giving hope, keeping the dream alive in others, but part of the trap, knowing or unknowing. Pray Destiny it was unknowing. Such a small shrewd price to pay, letting one or two go free, letting others go back maimed. Let the tombs have a bad day and so keep them coming.

“Be merciful, Dormeuse. Arasty.”

“I am, little hunter. With you I truly am. Normally I grant the beautiful lie, tell those I am about to rob of life, light and limb, beauty, eons of youth, of how normally death is what makes lives, cultures, ultimately defines civilization. I remind them that it’s right that immortals should reach a point of idle curiosity and need to be challenged, extended, tested. I tell them that whatever their fates individually, those I kill or hurt are helping maintain the tenor of life for all.”

“But you’re actually culling.”

“Avenging. It’s simpler.”

“Out of envy.”

“Bad enough in life. But when it’s all there is, all that’s left, it fills the largest cup, becomes a vast power. I phrase it so they think they will be spared somehow. That they are different and special. To some I even suggest that their personalities will join mine in the tomb matrix. Then, when there is hope, when vanity and optimism is there in hints and the absolute conviction of ego, then I cripple and kill, then I bring them to the worst of hells, to such terrible insurmountable despair. You I have spared this anguish, Beni.”

“Spared me! By telling me the truth?”

“Yes.”

“But I can’t believe you, can I? Not after what you’ve just said.”

“You really should. Look at your display.”

Beni did, saw how simply, elegantly, the tomb’s long-dead owner, this printing of her anyway, had expressed his dilemma.

A maze. He was in a maze. He did not know what to say.

Arasty, the ghost of her, smiled. “Well?”

“Never be importunate, I was always told. Never beg.”

“I’ve told you I’m being merciful. I might listen.”

“All right. Don’t kill me.”

“I won’t.”

“Don’t maim me.”

“I won’t.”

“Let me return.” As part of the trap, he didn’t say, refusing to go so far.

“Earn it.”

“I need to think. Concentrate.”

“Shall I leave?”

“You’d still be here. You’re in the walls.”

“True. The tomb.”

“The trap.”

“The trap, yes. My personality is coded through all this. But it would be easier for you to concentrate.”

And the intercept vanished, took away her glow, left only dim yellow lamplight, tunnelling, vitreous, intimate darkness without her darkling eyes.

Beni stopped, pretended to think, triggered his implant, saw again the plan of her tomb picked out in light, saw that he was at the central chamber, the structural heart of what this thwarted, predatory, former woman had become. Out of despair.

“Oh, Dormeuse, Dormeuse,” he murmured. “I am so sorry.” Imagining how it had to be, the eighty-five labouring over the final secret plan, the hate and loss in their hearts as all the others sailed blissfully on, away, abandoning.

What choice then. What choice now. For them both.

“We can change this,” he said, resolved, striding on to his goal, though he did believe he was already there. “We can make a start here. Try to be friends. Let me try to be that, Arasty. At least try to be that.”

“Yes,” the tomb said, the walls, the night, as he strode on in his cone of yellow light into the endlessness of the hill. “And that is why.”

OUTSIDE the Nothing Stones pull and pull and will forever pull, drawing in the emptiness of infinity, the blackness of eyes made hard, so unforgivingly hard. She is punitive and spiteful and so so determined. It is all she will ever have.

Beni strides on with his young man’s dreams-of success, of being different, better than the best, with his wonderful new dream of achieving something more, something new. He walks into night and does not see the final reading, does not know just how merciful she has been, that this time there is mercy, as much of it as there can ever be. He believes he can still be the greatest of them all. He still believes Ramirez is someone else.

New writer Jason Stoddard has made sales to Interzone, Sci Fiction, Strange Horizons, Futurismic, Fortean Bureau, and Talebones, and is at work on his first novel. He works in the advertising industry, lives in Valencia, California, and maintains a website at www.jasonstoddard.net.

In the exciting but slyly satirical story that follows, he postulates that the Reality TV/Adventure Gaming craze will take us all the way to Mars-but that wherever we go, we’ll bring our human baggage with us.

Death came as nothing more than a thin white line in the light blue Martian sky. Like a single strand of spider-silk, gossamer and insubstantial. There was no sound.

Nandir’s team , Glenn Rothman thought, stopping for a moment to watch. Chatter from the Can above: Unstable. Tumbled. Nobody knew why.

Glenn shivered. He’d almost picked Nandir’s route, which seemed easier on the rolling and flying legs but more difficult on the Overland Challenge to the travel pod. Perfect for him and-

“Come on!” Alena said, over the local comm. She was standing thirty feet in front of him, looking back, her face twisted into an angry mask.

“We just lost Nandir.”

“I’m going to lose you if you don’t get moving!”