The Barsoom Project

Oliver looked at him, scanned him up and down. “So you’re Mr. Mountain, eh? You look bigger on holovid.”

“Elevator tights,” Max said quietly. Dammit, he’d hoped no one would recognize him… ”Listen-you’re the only one who knows. Don’t spread it around, all right?”

Oliver chuckled. “Well, all right, but I wouldn’t worry about it. We’re all playing roles here.” And he turned back to his dossier.

Odd comment. Was Oliver a Gamer or an Actor? Best to watch him, see what he did, maybe do the same. He hoped Oliver could keep a secret.

Clouds were fragile veils that flashed past without leaving moisture on the windows. The land streaming below might have been a boneyard shrouded with cotton.

“Seattle,” the stewardess said. “Totally dead except for scavengers. A few unfortunates who couldn’t get out. And the frozen, unburied dead.” The stewardess was talking into a tape recorder. She caught Max staring and her lips gave an embarrassed upward twitch. “I’ve been trying to make a record. It doesn’t matter now. Maybe it won’t ever matter. But I have to believe there is hope. Someone has to.”

The mood in the room was grim. This was fun? This was supposed to be entertainment? It felt like a wake, a gathering to mourn the death of mankind beneath the marching glaciers. Suddenly Max felt so depressed that he couldn’t-

There was a low rumbling in the engines, so low that he almost didn’t notice it. Now he caught it and recognized it. Subsonics. The rumble died, and he began to feel a little better. Damn it, he knew that Dream Park was manipulating him with sound, with subliminal visuals, and if rumor had it right, with smells that impacted below the threshold of conscious perception. It didn’t matter. As his mood lifted he suddenly felt buoyant, filled with hope and energy. He looked around himself in the plane, saw everyone sitting up straight, eyes tight with determination.

Bowles nodded. “I knew that I could count on you. Now listen to me.” He spoke in an odd, measured cadence, suspiciously like a stage hypnotist Max had seen on holo once. “Sometimes we can do things for other people that we can’t do for ourselves. If that’s what it takes to get you through this, to help you survive, then that’s what I want you to do.” He scanned the room. Max felt a musical trilling sensation. It was similar to the thrill he’d experienced when he figured out the answer to the Time Travel Game: like someone using his bones for a piccolo. He felt like he could whip the world.

“We’re going to survive. Each of us is going to go beyond his ordinary limits. Every one of us is going to make sacrifices. We’re going to give up things that we love, to make a healthier situation for our friends, our family.

“I want you all to look into your hearts, and be sure that you have permission to survive. To win. Because if you don’t have that, then no matter how much food we have, how much shelter or heat, you won’t make it.” Bowles made very deliberate eye contact with each of them in turn.

Max felt comfortable, drifting, warm. He sank into an ocean of comfort… and only when he bobbled up again did he realize that Bowles had been talking the whole time. “-help that is asked for, no matter what it is. Agreed!?”

“Aye!” The Gamers answered raggedly. Max joined in late, too embarrassed to admit that he hadn’t the foggiest notion what he was agreeing to. But judging by the confused expressions around him, his lapse of attention had been more rule than aberration.

Something was being passed forward from the back. He sniffed sharp cheese and beef, and his mouth watered. Lunchlike substances! Waiting, he suddenly realized that the plane was shuddering, humming with stress.

“This is your captain speaking. We are running low on fuel, but there is nothing to worry about. The charts indicate a refueling depot just south of Bethel, within glide distance. We will land there. Please strap yourselves in.”

The shudder eased: the plane had dropped back through sonic speed. Through the window he could see the ground looming close, a vast expanse of white dotted with a few rectangular dwellings. The wing had moved smoothly forward; flaps were sliding out to extend the trailing edges. His stomach crawled up into his throat, looking for a place to hide. There was a clutch of buildings ahead. The land humped to the left, a sharp black ridge, and beyond that were more oblongs on the white blanket. An Eskimo village?

The plane shifted about, outspread wings feeling the air. The craft tilted and dropped, gripped by a freak wind. Gamers gripped their seats with white-knuckled fingers.

Max glanced across the aisle. Eviane’s bright emerald eyes were as wide as saucers, blinking rapidly as she peered out under the wing. The craft straightened and surged and touched down in a snow bed. Plumes of white spewed to either side. They slowed, sliding toward a pair of snow-shrouded refueling pumps.