Larry Niven - The Barsoom Project

And yet…

Something of the device’s original intent still remained in that heap of slag. What had it been? A surveillance device? A targeting system? Had it watched the weather, or found locations and bearings for vulnerable human targets? Had this twisted piece of blackened metal been friend or foe, or, like so many creations of the human mind and hand, had it been merely neutral, reporting back to its masters so that they could make decisions of life and death?

Now it was an object of power. It had been used to throw the entire balance of the world out of control. It controlled the raven, controlled the sun, controlled the fate of millions, billions, because it was the balancing point for a world of technology and magic.

Now was a moment of truth, of surpassing importance, and it was all up to them.

Charlene tiptoed closer to the device, carrying the backpacks. Charlene blended into the shadows. She was more a perfect reflection of her surroundings than a truly invisible woman. If she stood still, it was almost impossible to see her. One noted a bit of shimmering, perhaps a slight disturbance in the air. But at the core of her image almost nothing could be seen. At the outer edges there was a bit more. And if you knew exactly where to look, you could see the invaluable pile of backpacks, the magical Falling Angel material-the hope of mankind.

The ranks of the angakoks had been thinned. Two women, four men. They were young, perhaps surprisingly so, but withered and pocked and diseased.

One was taller, broader than the others. His voice rose louder, rang with power. His eyes were wide open but blind, corneas scarred and white.

Ahk-lut.

Orson Sands waved at Charlene to move forward.

Robin Bowles, dead but locked into necromantic spells, stirred, and turned to look at Charlene.

Charlene didn’t, couldn’t look at Robin. Through her peripheral vision, she had an impression of enormous damage to his central body, of skin peeled away and organs laid out or cast upon the fire, but still he was conscious.

He drooled from the corner of his mouth, but his eyes focused on Charlene. From his newfound wisdom, the perspective of death, the sealskin’s magic deceived him not a bit.

Charlene paused for a minute, and locked eyes with Robin.

His eyes blazed.

He winked.

Her path took her close enough to Ahk-lut that he could have reached out and grabbed her foot. The blind eyes looked on infinity. Lost in trance and darkness, he sensed nothing.

The firelight cast their shadows against the wall, wild and irregular, as if they were standing and dancing rather than sitting still.

In fact…

The shadows were more active, more alive than the sitting figures. They were becoming less and less the shadows of human beings, or of anything normal and sane, and more and more the outlines of horrible things, nightmare things. It was as if that strange flame knew the true shapes of its master’s souls and illuminated that reality, rather than their mere fleshly disguises.

Quashing a nervous flutter, Charlene edged closer to the satellite.

She could have reached out and touched it now. But dared not.

It’s only a Game.

Then why did the hairs on the back of her neck stand up the way they did? Whence came this deep, gut-wrenching fear? Why did the sight of the Cabal, six men and women with ravaged complexions and dead, staring eyes, disturb her as it did?

If she didn’t get her mind back on track, she’d never get through this. Charlene unfolded the first of the backpacks and laid it across the satellite.

Orson had suggested it. Magical objects in this world, in a way, seem to act like storage batteries. They store up power, absorb power by traveling, like an electric motor rotating through lines of magnetic force. They are discharged through the spells or circumstances dictated by tradition. Batteries.

Now, that’s the model that we want to look at. If this thing has traveled around the world thousands of times, then it is a supercharged battery.

And how the hell does that help us? Max was partly irritated, partly fascinated. Orson could do that to him.

A battery can be discharged, Orson said. If you lay a conductor across the poles, you can force the battery to give up its power more quickly than the manufacturer ever intended…

Charlene unfolded the backpacks carefully, with no idea how things were going to happen once the first step was taken. It could be spectacular, it might be lethal.

Five backpacks, reinforced at the edges with Falling Angel cable, single crystal carbon fibers in an epoxy matrix. Almost unbreakable. One after the other, the backpacks landed on the satellite.

At first there was no change. Then the satellite began to hum, and the shadows ceased to writhe in their obscene dance.

But the backpacks… the backpacks began to smolder. It was as if the magic changed forms, as if the reinforcing filaments in the backpacks were conducting more power than they could safely hold. They began to sputter and smoke.

The Cabalists began to rouse, as from a long, slow dream. Ahk-lut’s scarred eyes began to shift blindly. Charlene backed out of the cave. Now the backpacks were melting, actually changing shape, and glowed as if with heat.

The glow shifted and flared with color, like a miniature aurora borealis. Additional small fires raced across the hidden wires within the fabric.

The Cabalists slowly, oh, so slowly began to rouse from their trances. Orson stood, unable to move for a moment; then stepped forward and raised his ivory spear.

Snow Goose caught his arm. “No,” she whispered fiercely. “You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

He looked back at them regretfully. Ahk-lut seemed so helpless, so ready for a killing stroke. He fought with himself, and then agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”

They turned and bolted. Behind them the satellite’s hum grew chillingly loud.

An Amartoq with vast sloping shoulders emerged from the shadows, shuffling in a clumsily hurried gait. Orson jabbed with his spear. The creatures batted it aside almost nonchalantly. It reached out for Orson with blackened claws, and the invisible Charlene struck.

Her spear sank into its back, and for a moment its face took on an almost pitiable countenance as its nails reached back, digging for the shaft. Its death-scream was blood-curdling.

For a moment they were transfixed there by the sound, and then they heard another sound, the sly, deadly shuffle of feet against the bare rock, coming from the mouth of the cave.

Trapped.

The second spider came slow-dancing around the ledge on eight long, delicate, coarse-haired legs. It hissed, and the hair on the back of Max’s neck stood up and danced as he saw it more clearly. It was five feet tall at the shoulder… or at the thick of the body, if that was the proper way to describe it. He couldn’t take his eyes off the jaws.

Johnny Welsh said “Shit!” and backpedaled. He faced the rock wall and tried to squeeze himself flat. “Trianna, get behind me. You too, Max. I’ll try a shot.”

At its widest the ledge was barely wide enough. Trianna eased past Johnny’s back, deliberately lascivious. Fun to watch, but only the corner of Max’s eye caught it. He was dancing backward, fending off eight darting horn clubs and spikes as the spider advanced.

He was pushed past the wide spot… and now the ledge was too narrow to change places. The spider, with absurd and disturbing delicacy, crawled around the turn of the ledge and attacked.

Max swung at one of the legs, and was partially relieved when his usik passed through it. Then he remembered how little difference that made. This thing could chill him pretty damned quick. And if he even thought to mock its insubstantiality, the earth was likely to open up and swallow him whole.