The Barsoom Project

“Shall we say… unresolved matters of business.”

“And how long have these matters remained unresolved?”

“Eight years.”

He smiled blandly. “Then I’m afraid they can remain so a while longer. I am a very busy man, Mr. Griffin. In fact, I am due in San Diego in half an hour. Please call my secretary. Perhaps I can find you five minutes next month.”

He inclined his head politely and the screen cleared.

Griffin spoke sadly to the blank screen. “I assume you realize: this means war.”

“Tough cookie,” Millicent said.

“Even tough cookies crumble. I just hope Tony can come up with the leverage.”

Chapter Twenty

SIN CITY

A butterfly formed out of the thin fog and fluttered near her mouth. It was a delicate yellow thing, wings tinged with black, and it came too close. She snapped at it, didn’t feel her teeth touch anything, but tasted a sweet, mellow tang like sugared toast.

Eviane sighed. It was butterflies today, butterflies tomorrow, butterflies until the end of time. She was trapped in this drifting darkness, surrounded by strangers and silence. She had resigned herself to that fate.

Then clumsy footfalls and raucous voices broke the silence, and she knew that her living comrades had come for her.

Now, this was curious: she felt no surprise. She didn’t even turn her head. She only waited with the placid patience of the dead… until the moment she heard Max Sands’s wonderful, vibrant voice. A moment later he was beaming at her like a full moon, his huge round face shining with astonished pleasure at the sight of her.

Eviane’s heart leapt as if she lived.

She noticed Snow Goose cupping her ear, frowning. “Eviane,” the Eskimo Princess said, “we were…” She stopped, and conferred with Frankish Oliver for a moment. “Yes,” she said. Frankish Oliver went away for a few seconds. He came back holding a vicious-looking modern rifle.

“This led us to you, because you held it close to your body.” Snow Goose paused, then shook her head violently. “Eviane, I’m not used to this. You’re dead. Any of my professors would freak.”

“I don’t understand,” Eviane said, and she didn’t. But by her own unreasoning fear of the rifle, she sensed its power.

“It was with you at your death. It has great power, and its link to you was strong. If you wish, we could use it to bring you with us from the underworld.”

“Bring me back to life?” Eviane asked, as though somehow she already knew the answer.

Snow Goose was embarrassed. “No, dear. I’m sorry. As a shade, one of the dead, a tornrait. You would serve me the way a tornrait serves an angakok. You would gather information that human senses can’t reach. You could be of great help to us, if you would.”

There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation. “I will come.” She took the rifle.

The Inuit women around her nodded their approval. Eviane stood and joined the line of heroes. A butterfly drifted too close. Reflexively, Eviane snapped it out of the air. Again, the sugary taste. Also, and curiously, her teeth met no resistance, and she felt nothing go down her throat as she swallowed.

Max was ready to whip worlds. He walked beside Eviane, and could barely restrain himself from grabbing and hugging her.

“Well,” he said, trying to begin a conversation. “What’s it feel like to die?”

The smile froze on his face. Unmistakably, she was searching herself for an answer. “Well,” she said after a long pause, “it’s sort of like gym class, only quicker.”

He took five more steps before he turned and stared at her. Her face was perfectly serious. Her eyes met his. It couldn’t have been a joke. Eviane never joked. And yet. And yet…

The path wound among flat boulders of sedimentary rock, more and more of them, until they faced a wall of boulders rising into the gloom of the underworld cavern. The troupe of Adventurers trickled to a halt.

Eviane looked terrified. Max asked nervously, “Something wrong?”

“I remember…” Eviane began, and then her voice trailed off.

Charlene and Hippogryph loomed close. “You remember what?” Charlene asked.

“I’m not sure. It was back when I was alive.”

Hippogryph looked concerned. Charlene said, “Eviane, dear, if you’ve got anything to say that might save a life, please-”

“To give information is the task of a tornrait,” Snow Goose said flatly.

Eviane did her best. “Falling. Slowly. Shapes around me, big massive shadows. Like a dream. Like being dead. But I wasn’t afraid of going splat. I was afraid of being crushed.”

“Anything else?”

She shook her head.

Snow Goose walked out to where the path disappeared into the boulders. The rocks were flat-sided slabs eight to twelve feet long by half that wide, a bit too uniform for credibility. Thirty or forty feet up, the darkness swallowed them.

She gestured to the rest. “Come on-” Bubbles burst from her mouth and streamed upward. Max gaped, and she grinned at him. Bubbles?

A fish swam past his head. More of an eel, really, some kind of curvy, twisty thing that wiggled fluidly. Its tail almost flicked his nose.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. Bubbles obscured his vision for a moment.