Larry Niven - The Moon Maze Game

The truth was simple: He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t engage with the game deeply enough anymore. It was like a line from one of his favorite old movies.

I’ve been to the puppet show. I’ve seen the strings.

Gamers had to believe. Gamers marched arm-in-arm with the faithful.

Didn’t they?

He had passed from the Azteca casino, with its hourly human sacrifices, to the edge of the Da Vinci, with its ornate bridges and flight stunts. Real people in those winged machines, even if the engine designs would have baffled the legendary inventor. He’d heard some of them had actually trained on Luna. No holograms here, except the visual field that transformed the entire world into fifteenth-century Milan.

“Listen to me carefully, for I tell you this from the bottom of my heart,” he said. “Get a life.” Half a dozen passersby didn’t even glance at the apparent madman. He must be talking on a phone. Wayne stepped onto a bench as an ersatz soapbox and continued William Shatner’s classic “Get a life!” speech for the City of Illusions.

He was going to the Moon. He was going with Angelique. He didn’t even have to win to come out ahead. How could any man resist?

There had to be a way to deal with Xavier.

Did Wayne still have the mental agility to play it by ear? Xavier was a monomaniac. Tunnel vision. There would be something he’d overlooked. Go to the Moon, and see.

1523, Congo Brazzaville Time, June 23, 2085

The flight from Switzerland to the Republic of Kikaya had taken three hours, most of it with autopilot locked securely into a diplomatic flight grid. While they referred to their time zones differently, the Republic of Kikaya and Switzerland utilized the same time zone, so his body felt no oddness.

The shuttle was first class, the hostess who kept the champagne flowing even more so. The alcohol, in combination with his fatigue, encouraged Scotty to recline his seat and close his eyes for a blessed catnap.

When he regained his senses, his glass had been balanced carefully on the serving table and the pilot had taken control for the landing.

The girl was lovely, dark as eggplant, hair woven into tight rows that exposed a scrubbed scalp. Her epicanthic folds were so pronounced her eyes were almost Asiatic. When she spoke, her accent suggested that her English teachers might have actually been English. “Did you have a pleasant nap, sir?”

“Very,” he said. They were at about three thousand feet. Spokes of golden light radiated through the eastern clouds. His body still felt heavy, but his spirits were light. He had been offered work, an opportunity to blot out the memory of the last seventy-two hours.

Excellent.

The shuttle descended through the clouds, over a patchwork of cultivated land and crisscrossing roads. The agricultural lands slowly transformed into residential spirals nestled within urban squares, housing arranged in circular patterns subtly different from comparable European or Asian housing tracts. This was followed by an industrial region. That gave way to another urban sprawl, this one with tighter, more carefully designed spirals and circles, evidence of greater organization and wealth.

Ahead, just touched by the first rays of sunlight, lay Marozi, the capital of Kikaya. The business district, and at the center of it, the royal palace itself.

He’d done a bit of Internet research on the republic before boarding the plane. The country had been carved out of the Republic of the Congo in 2034 by a bloody coup. Kikaya I had been a Congolese general with ties to royalty, the family connections sufficiently impressive to entice allies at home and investors abroad. Seizing power had been the easy part. Crafting the RK into a prosperous and healthy country was another matter. He’d look more deeply into that later, but now, at least he had a basic idea what he was dealing with.

With a barely perceptible shush, the shuttle landed. The hostess smiled. “We are home.”

The grit of fatigue and irritation still grinding under his eyelids, Scotty grabbed his hastily packed overnight bag and followed the lady. If this turned into an actual assignment, he would call the hotel in Geneva and have them send the rest of his luggage, including his equipment. For right now, this was enough.

As he ducked his head and stepped down from the sleek shuttle, he wondered if a band was going to play the local version of “Hail to the Guest,” and was slightly disappointed when it didn’t happen.

There was, however, a spiffy officer whose blue-black skin gleamed brightly as the gold braid on his shoulders. His spine was so erect he might have been smuggling bamboo.

“Mr. Griffin,” he said in perfect English. “I trust your flight was pleasant?”

“Fine, thank you,” repeating his automatic reply.

“I am Mboui Otama. At your service, sir. May I take your luggage?”

Scotty offered the bag, but held on to one of the straps, so that both of them were holding it at the same time. “My understanding was that if I didn’t like the proposition, this shuttle will take me wherever I want to go. Does that offer still hold?”

“Of course.”

“Then let’s just leave my things here on the shuttle, and if I need them, I’ll send for them.” A symbolic gesture. He was watching carefully gauging the reaction.

Otama didn’t flinch. “Fine. This way, please.”

He hated to admit it, but he enjoyed this to an absurd degree. It seemed a throwback to some older, more elegant time. “Does everyone get this treatment?”

Otama’s lips turned up in a slight grin. “Almost everyone.”

Ah. Deflate the American. Scotty squashed a flash of disappointment. “Oh,” was all he said.

Otama grinned now, a mouth filled with gold teeth. “I joke. Only guests of the royal house are treated in such a manner.”

Scotty grinned. He doubted that Otama joked like that with everyone. Was he being tested because of his own dark skin? “And that’s me?”

“That, I believe, is you.”

The airpad was at the center of a young hedge maze, and the honor guard followed at a walk as Scotty and Otama were shuttled through it, to the steps of a three-story, white colonial mansion with eight porch columns and at least a hundred windows. The filigree looked handwrought, knobs and handrails inset with ivory and gold.

Again, Scotty was impressed. “This is… amazing.”

Otama nodded. “Built for King Leopold in 1879. At one time, it was thought that the King himself might come to visit his rubber-tree holdings.”

“It never happened?”

A warm, friendly smile. “A good thing for him. His plantation workers were sharpening their knives.”

Scotty had been many places in his career and travels, but never in a palace. Its high, arching ceilings and ornately carved abstracts were almost overwhelming. Striding toward them was an imposing white-haired black man in regal dress, effusively extending his hand. Scotty recognized him from the computer images. This would be Kikaya II, the son of the country’s first leader. Scotty didn’t know whether to kiss the hand or bow, and settled for a warm, dry shake. Calluses crusted that broad flat hand like barnacles on an old battleship. “Mr. Griffin. So kind of you to come.”

He nodded. Kikaya clasped his hand affectionately. Scotty sensed that he was being thoroughly measured. What was this man looking for? In all likelihood men of this nature were used to indirect approaches by petitioners currying favor. Scotty was in the odd position of being the one sought, and decided to use that. “Your highness,” he said. “It’s been a long trip. I’d appreciate knowing what this is about.”

Kikaya tilted his round head. One of his eyes, Scotty noticed, was slightly offset. “Ah. You have no idea at all?”