Роджер Желязны - Warriors of Blood and Dream

One moment. One memory. One and only one. Whatever had happened later, love had lived between Brenda and Darryl. Between his mother and father.

Love.

A bridge of light. A bridge upon which he could make a stand.

Deep within David, something bared its teeth.

Now.

If he tried to shift again, the Mimbrino would have him. Every time he shifted, it shifted. Every time he won, it just upped the ante, changed to a new ...

Level?

Like in a video game ... ?

Can I dothat ?

Why not ? It's MYgoddamn dream ...

The roaring stopped. Brenda, sobbing, reached out and touched David's limp arm. It hurt her. She snatched her hand back.

"He's burning up," she whispered.

Elk grabbed Trias and pulled her to her feet, shaking her to wakefulness. "Have you got ice?"

"Ice?" she mumbled.

"Yes, dammit, ice! Frozen fucking water."

Her eyes wouldn't focus. She spoke as if explaining something to a child. "No. Why would we have ice here?"

"David's found a way to fight back," Elk said. "The Mimbrino is using everything against him. His resistance will create heat—David could literally burn up. We have to cool him off, and give him a chance to fight."

"No ice, no ice," Trias babbled.

Brenda shook her head, fighting to clear her mind. She looked up, and then at Elk. "Give me your cigarette lighter."

"What?"

"GIVE IT TO ME!"

He fumbled it out. Brenda pulled a chair to the middle of the room, stood on it, lit the cigarette lighter—

And held it to the fire sprinkler sensor overhead.

It popped , and the room was filled with rain. Steam rose from David's body.

Brenda laughed hysterically.

David dropped a mental quarter into the mental slot, and instantly found himself at the controls of a tiny blue fighter jet. Enemy planes were everywhere, zipping in from all quadrants. It should have been frightening, but he felt oddly at peace. He knew this. He knew this world, the world of Super Mario Brothers , and Sonic the Hedgehog , and Lemmings , and Commando Task Force . He knew this world, and the Mimbrino wouldn't.

Still, his enemy was adapting fast. It sent ships at him, probing his defenses....

But as if David had gained some kind of bonus powers, the ships glowed before they fired, were connected by lines of light to his own weapons. He literally couldn't miss.

David blasted wave after wave of enemy fighters out of the sky. Death rained on the flat, two-dimensional landscape beneath.

He fired and fired and fired, and was strafed in return. He could actually feel the light building inside him.

This was his kind of war. It was death, and destruction of a different kind. It was fighting that he understood, because he had always used it. Passive/dynamic resistance, an emotional weapon against his mother.

A weapon.

A weapon .

"Look," Elk said quietly. "The water is washing away the sand."

The rumbling had died. The floor, the walls were crooked, as if struck by an 8.7 tremor. The air was muggy, clouded with steam. David lay quiet, struggling to breathe.

Brenda stared. "What's happening?"

"He's leaving his body."

David took another long, slow breath—and stopped.

Without a word, Brenda shoved Elk out of the way, and stepped across the scattered grains. She arched David's head back, opened his mouth and cleared his air passages—

"Hurry!" Elk screamed. "He's in the other world now. His mind, his spirit are locked with the Mimbrino. His body is forgetting how to breathe!"

She lowered her mouth onto David's, and blew.

The world was a world of fire. The spaceships had mutated into a jungle of mercenaries. David fought them, leaping from rock to moss to patch of grass through a video jungle, each footprint glowing in advance, shining in its turn.

Power spots.

The jungle mutated into a world of tangled pipes and wires from which cascaded electric, razor-fanged fur-balls. David felt the lines of light connect him to their vulnerable underbellies, and spilled their computer-animated intestines. The Mimbrino changed the game to a racing track. David was chased by demons riding piggyback on motorcycles, howling, hurling Molotov cocktails at him—

David jumped to a power spot. And when he was there, the light lines appeared like crazy quilt rainbows. He blew enemy motorcycles into junk until the spot began to fade, then moved to the next one, and devastated the demons until that spot faded, then he moved to the next one. This one was so powerful, so filled with magical essence that David felt himself swell, and he willed the next change—

Silence.

David stood in the middle of a tiled floor. All around the edges, receding into the darkness, a crowd of leather-jacketed bikers and their tattooed Mommas cheered him on. He looked down at his arms. They were massive with cartoon muscle.

On the other side of the floor, another ponderously thewed cartoon figure manifested.

The Mimbrino.

And for the first time, his enemy's expression was ... confused.

David grinned. He was right, just exactly where he wanted to be.

"Hey, Mimbrino," he yelled. "Welcome to Kung Fu Fighter III , you stupid fuck ."

Brenda held her son, crying and remembering everything she could about the proper resuscitation rhythm.

Elk worked David's chest while she breathed for him. There was no movement. There was no response.

David hurt. He was tired. But he had been hurt and tired before. He didn't care. Elk had shown him what that space was, the space on the far side of fatigue, and pain, and fear.

It was simply death.

David, 450 pounds of cartoon muscle, stood in the center of the ring, trading thunderous blows with the behemoth Mimbrino. He saw the light flashes before the blows landed, and felt the laser bungee sensation that snapped his own limbs onto target.

The Mimbrino's first manifestation growled and raged, but finally crashed to the earth, defeated. And another appeared. Tougher. Stronger. A humanoid rhinoceros.

The lines of light guided David directly onto the weak point—the Rhinoman's horn. He glided across the floor, finding one power spot after another, punching and kicking, slamming and jamming, hopping and bopping into flying, tumbling, jumping, paroxysms of ecstatic motion.

And then another opponent. And then another. The Mimbrino tried to change the dream, tried to shift the game, but David held on for dear life. When the edges started to shift, started to peel away into nothingness, he concentrated, and held the Kung Fu biker bar scenario in place.

Punch. Kick. Jump. Over and over. He knew this world. He was the best at this game, and the best part about it was that, after ten bruising rounds had been played—

Letters, blessed letters flashing red and black in the air between them said:

Game Over

Over and over again.

Game Over.

The Mimbrino, in the form of some gigantic shark thing in blue tights, looked up at the display. And blinked.

"Game Over, man!" David yelled. "We're going down together. You can't have my mother. You can't have my friends. You can't take over the world. You're just dead . We're both dead ."

The Mimbrino stared at him as the darkness swarmed in to take them both. It looked down at itself, at its hands, and saw its bones through its skin. Its eyes literally went as wide as saucers. It groaned.

With his last strength, David spun light out of the specks in the air, spun them into mirrors. Mirrors that surrounded the Mimbrino. It turned this way, and that, and wherever it looked, it saw its own death. Its own putrescence. Its own burnt limbs. For the first time not a thing of awesome power, not the lord of nightmare, but a man, a man afraid of dying.