Larry Niven - The Barsoom Project

“What happened to your own men?” Max asked softly.

Martin’s eyes dropped. “They crossed the veil of Seelumkadchluk, where the sky meets the sea. Some went to Sedna and some followed the Cabal. The most powerful of our angakoks carried the most powerful of our talismans. None have returned. We do not know why.”

Kevin clucked, punching something into a little hand-held keyboard. “This bodes not well…”

Martin ignored him. “But your power is greater. You may find them as allies on the other side.”

Or not. Eviane looked around at her companions. Overweight and soft… and youthful, with the exception of Robin Bowles, the man who had saved their lives in San Francisco. But they looked inspired. Could a dozen chubby but game neophytes match the unknown powers of these renegade Raven-spawn?

The fire had nearly died. One by one the old Inuit rose and began to dance around the coals. The walls of the sweat lodge shuddered with the low chants as they circled, their miming at first cryptic and then discernible as hunting and fighting movements.

An old, old man hopped around the fire in a crouch, as if perched next to an ice hole, awaiting a fish. Behind him, another grandfather cast a spear, and another raised an imaginary rifle to his shoulder, squeezed the trigger, spun and rolled on the floor in simulated death-throes before springing up and repeating the ritual.

Martin threw a handful of powders onto the fire. It flared to new life, and threw a ghastly emerald light against the walls. A handful of dull green embers floated down, were borne up by air currents, and then settled down again.

One by one, the old people sat. Snow Goose stood, wearing only a thin undergarment that might have been stitched from gut. Her body under it, although zaftig, moved with practiced grace. Eviane’s hands touched her own body self-consciously. She wanted to move like that. She remembered… faintly… a time when she had.

The girl writhed beseechingly, beckoning to each of them. Max Sands jumped grinning to his feet and began to dance around the fire, too close behind Snow Goose for Eviane’s comfort.

Eviane stood, embarrassed in her underwear. She gritted her teeth and began to dance, moving with the flow of the pipes, the rattles and drums. Even though the musical implements seemed like relics from another, earlier time, they blended together in surprisingly complex and precise rhythm.

One at a time, the others stood. The pilot. Charlene. The Guardsman. Hebert the soldier. Half-naked they danced around the fire. And as they did, Eviane felt her body pulse to the music.

Her sense of self, of midcentury mid-America, began to fade. There was no formal ceremony, no verbal acknowledgment or speech, but she knew that the Inuit had accepted them, had welcomed the refugees into their family.

The long shadows played upon the walls, and the music, the exertion, and the swirling smoke began to weave their subtle magic. The refugees took their place around the fire, twisting and hopping. Eviane gasped heavily for breath, blind to her exhaustion, unmindful of her ungainly heaviness, lost in the sheer exhilaration of it all.

For Eviane it was total ecstasy, the very best that life had offered her in a long, long time.

The world was blind with snow as Max Sands crawled out of the qasgiq. The frozen ground was rough on hands and knees. Other Adventurers popped out of the tunnel to sprawl gracelessly on the snow.

The sun was a pale disk daubed in watercolors upon a paler sky. Tiny flakes of ice flurried like flower petals driven by the wind.

Max stretched his back. He was cramped and sore.

A ragged chorus of barks split the air, and a dog sled appeared around the curve of the lodge, driven by an old woman. The six dogs pulling the sled described a semicircle, slowed to a crawl, and stopped. The sled carried one soot-stained crate from the plane and an additional pile of equipment.

Bowles and the Guardsman went to the sled. The Guardsman opened a sheathed knife and went to work on the crate. A slat creaked in protest, then pulled loose with a long, thin whine.

“Yeah!” Max hefted out one of the rifles, checked its action-long-forgotten ROTC training flashed to mind-then passed it to Orson.

The rifles were relayed hand to hand like fire brigade buckets. When the last weapon had been distributed, the National Guardsman balanced a gun in one big fist, then brandished it overhead. “Is there anyone who doesn’t know how to use one of these?”

Some of the refugees paused, then raised uncertain hands.

“All right. These are Remington thirty-caliber gas-operated semiautomatic carbines-”

Max sidled over to Eviane, ready to lend assistance. She didn’t need any. As the Guardsman called out instructions she worked with manic intensity, with a mixture of dread and fascination that was almost alarming to watch. During a pause in the instructions she relaxed, and then looked up at Max, through

Max, as if he wasn’t there at all. The bullets in her hand were blanks, and she was not his enemy; but there was something in her eyes, something in the way she gripped the gun that made him feel queasy.

“-we don’t know what we’re heading into, but we do know that it’s dangerous: we don’t want to lose any of our own.” There were sober nods of agreement from the others, but Eviane stared fixedly ahead, her eyes on the snow-blown horizon, or beyond.

Damn, she was really into this. Had she Gamed before, in the real Games? Once her hands closed around the rifle she didn’t seem to want to release it. Her reluctance created a neat topological puzzle as she tried to pull on her backpack.

“Need a little help, there?” Max volunteered. “Why don’t you let me hold that?”

She clutched the rifle defensively for a moment. He watched her face tighten and then reluctantly relax. “Yes. Thank you very much.”

She handed him her rifle. She shrugged into her pack, bent, and fastened on her snowshoes. “Check me, will you?”

“Nothing looks broken from here. Maybe a closer look.” He ran a finger along her shoulder.

A smile struggled with her businesslike expression, won for a moment, then fluttered nervously and died. “You’re nice,” she said shyly. “I hope we make it out of this.”

“Stick with me, kid,” he said, giving it his best Bogart.. “I’m strong enough for both of us.”

She took the rifle, twirled heel-toe, and was gone.

He knew he was pushing it. Bulky, flirtatious, helpful Max Sands. Some women seek a nonthreatening man. He could usually tell, but he couldn’t tell with Eviane. Maybe she didn’t know herself.

He could switch out of that “harmless” mode. He could do a Jekyll-Hyde and become “Mr. Mountain,” but he didn’t want to.

God, he was tired of Mr. Mountain and his lavender leotards.

Distantly, he heard a playful announcer singing about “purple Mountain’s majesty-”

With a little help from Dream Park’s magic, he just might retire that role forever.

Snow Goose knelt by the lead dogs to hug a muscular light gray husky with reddish highlights in his fur. They nuzzled each other like old friends.

Max hunkered down next to her, scratched the back of the dog’s neck, peered out toward the horizon. The weather was clearing a bit, but a curtain of snow rolled across the horizon, reminding him of an Arizona dust storm.

Snow Goose said, “This is Takuka, the Red Bear.”

“Hail, O Bear.”

Red Bear sniffed at Max, found him mildly unobjectionable, and then turned back to adoring Snow Goose. She said, “He and Otter are our last lead dogs. All of the others just ciphered. Disappeared. Lost.”