Larry Niven - The Barsoom Project

He was handsome, in a massive sort of way, and she liked the sound of his voice. Voices had always been it, for her. The sound of an announcer’s voice on the stereo. Others seemed fascinated by the glow and depth of the video arcades, but she had always loved audio. Just the sound of a voice was enough…

And he had the Voice. Something inside her melted.

Captain Grant and Hebert struggled out carrying armfuls of bulky coats and hats with earmuffs, dropped them in the snow, and began sorting for something that would fit. Bowles emerged with a double armful of tennis rackets. Huh? Snowshoes. More of the Gamers were wearing coats now.

It was cold. Eviane picked through coats, chose one, found a hat with fold-down ear flap, pulled on thermal galoshes, all while listening with her whole body.

“Come on,” Max Sands said. “Where is it? Give me another shot.”

And they got it. Crack! Crackcrackcrack, and a thin, wavering scream.

They had their direction. The group straggled off across the snow, north toward the black ridge. A long way to walk, but the snow was packed hard; Eviane carried her snowshoes. She cast a glance at Charlene, saw the fatigue in her friend’s face. They linked arms and struggled up the grade.

They were making good time.

Bowles lifted a hand and brought them to a halt before they reached the top. They followed his lead: dropped onto their stomachs, scuttled over the ridge like a line of crabs, and peered down.

It was night in the shadow of the ridge. Their eyes adjusted quickly.

Four armed men lay in an arc, facing a house that lay in partial ruins. It was burning, smoke and ashes boiling from the roof. Attached to one end of the house, a smaller shed-perhaps a smokehouse-had been blown apart as if by an explosion. Around the main door two… no, three bodies stretched out on the snow, in positions that only the dead could assume.

Eviane heard a whimper. After a long, startled moment she recognized her own voice.

She had seen this before. Been here before. Prescience.

One of the riflemen barked out a challenge. Eviane didn’t recognize the language, but the meaning was obvious. She had heard it a thousand times in flatfilms and holos and even radio plays: “Come out with your hands up!” What had they tripped into? Was this the equivalent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police? Were the people in the house desperate criminals? Eviane couldn’t remember. She’d tried to forget, she’d fought to forget, and now, when it mattered, it was all gone.

Someone emerged from the smoky hell of the front door. His hands were high in the air, and he yelled something back to the attackers.

There was a guttural laugh, and a rifle barked. The man fell, palms slapping to his forehead.

Eviane closed her eyes. Her empty stomach curled into a knot. Charlene’s whispered laughter rang in her ear: “You’re overacting. It’s embarrassing. What are we supposed to do?”

She had no answer. Dreamboat’s voice saved her. “Well, we know that they’re not the good guys.”

“We don’t have any weapons,” Hippogryph said. “We could get into a lot of trouble.”

“We have flares,” the Guardsman called. “Two boxes of them, and my rifle. Listen, with three flare guns we can convince them that they’re surrounded. Goners. I say we give it a shot.”

Hebert objected. “Flare guns? All right, they aren’t that well armed-”

Impatiently Eviane snapped, “Lead on!”

After a few whispered instructions, the group spread out. Eviane was all elbows and knees as she crawled along the ridge, the curving sickle of snow that sheltered them from the war below. Just ahead of her, Dreamboat raised his flare pistol. Bowles slashed his hand in the air, and With a chorus of dull phuts, white streamers cut through the air. Suddenly a half-dozen smoking, parachuting flares were drifting from the sky like burning blossoms.

The men on the ground looked up.

“Ooooobleobleoble-” Charlene screamed out, her cry swiftly echoed by everyone else in the group. Eviane joined them delightedly-who could resist an opportunity to scream baby talk with a bunch of supposedly grown adult-type people? It was ridiculous, and silly, and somehow cleansing.

The men in the valley looked around in confusion, but the sound was coming from everywhere and nowhere. The Guardsman aimed his rifle carefully, and squeezed the trigger. One of the enemy went down clutching his chest. The remaining three sprang to their feet, and spread their arms. For a moment Eviane thought that they were asking for mercy.

Then the clouds parted.

No, they hadn’t parted. The sky was slate-gray, threatening snow, but a northward wedge of cloud was brighter, widening, and Sky and land were flowing. Off to the north, the vast dim expanse of snow flowed to left and right, as if a folded blanket was being pulled straight. It was hard to see, because what was summoned into being was only new snowscape, no different from the old except that it glowed beneath a brighter sky.

The four gunmen hastened north, two carrying their wounded member. They didn’t look back, not even when the Guardsman stopped gaping and fired after them. He fired three careful shots. Snow puffed wide of the gunmen.

“Damn,” the Guardsman said.

A distant ridge of snow humped ahead of them. The four stopped, and one gestured wide-armed, his face lifting as the white mass lifted

… and then the snowscape flowed, the path closed, the light dimmed. Eviane huffed as her legs gave out and dropped her in the snow.

They were gone. There remained only a bare field of snow, and four corpses to mark the place where, a moment before, a dreadful battle had raged.

Eviane stumbled down the bank of snow, caught her balance for an exhilarating moment, then tumbled again. She wiped ice from her hair and snorted it from her nose as she came back to her feet.

The other refugees plowed furrows in the snow as they plunged down. Some rolled like pill bugs, whooping. Max and the National Guardsman. both kept their balance all the way down. At the last instant Max lost his battle with momentum and plowed face-first to the bottom.

Charlene walked down fully upright, slowly, like an aged elvish queen, with Hippogryph alongside her as a dwarfish attendant.

Eviane’s amusement vanished almost as quickly as it bubbled up. What was happening here? They had left the violence of the cities behind… and now this!

Something deep within her was untouched by the cold and the fear. Some voice whispered that it was all a dream, only a recurrent nightmare. Eviane shook her head violently. Such thoughts were dangerous.

She approached the burning lodge, cautiously avoiding the bodies of the dead.

Eviane had seen corpses before. A few more meant little. One of the dead men was heartbreakingly young. His eyes stared sightless, freezing in the terrible cold. His arms were outstretched as if begging for mercy, or trying to provide some small measure of protection for his people inside.

Charlene crunched through the snow behind her, whispered close in her ear. “Be careful?”

“Why?” Eviane asked, surprised with how damned reasonable her voice sounded. “We can handle it or we can’t. If we can’t, we’re probably dead anyway. Let’s go.”

Charlene looked at her with what could only have been amazement.. but Charlene hailed from an earlier, more benign world. Here the ice ruled, and only the strong would survive. Somehow Eviane would keep her friend alive until the tall girl had a chance to adapt to reality.

The National Guardsman jogged up beside them. Eviane scanned him appraisingly. He looked young and hard, jaw square and tight-curled hair cropped short. Good. An asset. There were bad times ahead.