1646 hours
Mickey crouched, hugging his knee, moaning and muttering as he rocked. Scotty said, “You don’t kick a door down on the Moon. We build ’em strong.”
“I felt it give, just a little.” Mickey looked up, suddenly hopeful. “Maybe both of us?”
What the hell. But there was only room for two. “Rest the knee. I’ve got this.” Scotty motioned to Wayne. The two men braced themselves and charged the portal, and rammed through, spilling onto their bellies in close-mown grass that didn’t smell like grass, or anything else.
A shadowed mansion loomed above them, edged by blue sky. Rows of meticulously manicured hedges, enhanced by life-sized statues of animals, nymphs and men in heroic poses. An English countryside estate?
Angelique caught herself mugging astonishment, audience always in mind. The others were more sensible, or quicker. They fanned out and took cover behind solid-looking concrete sculptures. Scotty’s hand whacked a Chinese dolphin experimentally: foam plastic. “Not good cover,” he barked. “We need to get inside. I’ll lead.”
Nobody said, “It could be a trap.” Scotty bent low and ran for the huge front door-which stood open, very trap-like. He slid in on his belly, rolled right, and looked.
High ceiling, high enough to make him feel like a child. Floor made of… cork? No clear targets.
Light glowed only in this nearer region. They had entered a vast playroom, dotted with chairs and card tables and bureaus pulled against the walls under a facing pair of big, ornately framed mirrors. Wooden blocks had been shaped into miniature castles, public buildings, row houses. Dowels for chimneys. Cardboard had become walls and bridges. A waterfall drawn in blue chalk plunged down one wall and became a river, growing wide, until it was a rapids running in blue-and-white stream lines around pale rocks. Clumps of leaves and twigs were arrayed into a miniature forest. Nothing moved.
Beyond the play area blackness loomed.
“It’s some kind of kid’s game. I don’t see a threat,” Scotty called.
Angelique eeled in and rolled left. Then Ali, Wayne, Sharmela, Darla. Maud followed, leaning on Mickey. Wayne was trying to work a “detect danger,” but there weren’t any signals from the Game Master’s control suite. “We’re on our own,” he said, “but there’s power-”
“Look at this,” Ali said. He was on the floor some distance in, playing with a toy cannon a foot long. He triggered something. A light foam projectile flew from the cannon to impact a foot-high toy soldier, which rolled away.
No. Crawled away. In the shadows, Scotty had assumed the soldier shapes were carved wood, or ivory. Now he saw that they were grubs, infant versions of the mooncows, balanced absurdly on their tails and waiting for instruction. Their tiny limbs twitched. Their eyes rolled in endless loops.
“What in the world is this?” Angelique asked.
“At first I thought it was lawn chess, with living pawns and pieces,” Ali replied. “But now I don’t think so. This is part of Wells’ world. It’s from a pair of pamphlets called ‘Little Wars’ and ‘Floor Games.’” He lined up another target. The projectiles were little wooden cylinders; the gun was spring-loaded. There were several scattered about the floor, clustered like opposing artillery. He fired into a rank of frozen grubs and when the soft projectile struck they skittered away in different directions, then regrouped and looked at the gamers, their faceted eyes somehow… hopeful.
Alien children playing toy soldiers.
“‘Floor Games’?” Wayne asked. “What in the world is that?”
“H. G. Wells,” Maud gasped. “Tracts on gaming. Little-known, but legitimate canon.”
Ali rolled over and spoke rapidly. “I’m sorry to admit this may be more of my father’s doing. I have played a version of ‘Little Wars’ on many occasions.” He sighed.
“Regrets later,” Scotty said. “Right now, Daddy’s perfidy might save our butts. Give it up.”
“H. G. Wells invented tabletop war gaming with tin soldiers and spring cannons. He laid out systems of rules that were used for a good century. Blocks to make toy buildings. Coin flips, at first, to win hand to hand conflicts-”
“Ali! Lose the history lesson and tell us how we use this.”
“Well…” The grubs were lined up in three armies, like three different sides of a triangle. While all were the infantile insectoid forms they had seen previously, those directly in front of them were gussied up in little British uniforms. Those across the way were relatively uncostumed, and those to the right, amid toy tripod Martian walkers, had a vaguely Lovecraftian appearance.
The Selenite soldiers carried slender insects with wasplike hindquarters. In place of artillery stood rows of potato bug-looking critters, their butts turned up in the air. Coils of glowing intestines within transparent bodies, they resembled fancy little Christmas tree ornaments. Living energy weapons, perhaps? Surely, in the game Xavier had planned for them, all this would have been explained by now.
How to make it all go? The grubs mewled and crawled in little circles, then returned to their original positions. Awaiting instruction.
Wayne’s eyes lit up. “All right. This is the same biological tech we’ve seen all over the hive. Living chess pieces, and a nice plush chair here. I’m thinking Cavor sat here. ”
“And how did he control the game?”
Wayne shrugged. “Charisma. Language skills. I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. We have psychics. If this game module is programmed for independent action, I would bet that…” He turned and looked Maud dead in the eye. “We have someone just about perfect for this adventure.”
“M-me?” Maud asked. She struggled not to stutter. “Maybe Mickey-” She grasped at his arm as if holding on for dear life.
Politely but firmly, he peeled her hands away. “I don’t know ‘Little Wars,’ love,” he said. “I think you really are the expert this time.”
“I don’t have time to learn,” she said, eyes gleaming with fear… but something else, too. Eagerness? “We’d have to play it first,” Maud said. “Think there is an instructional program built into this?”
“Meanwhile,” Sharmela said tartly, “we’re being hunted by armed killers. Madame Deceased Guide, is there an easy way through here? Or around? The real game is to get down to the aquifer.”
Darla frowned. “I haven’t seen this place. The lights are on, so we’ve got power. No communication. It’ll be on automatic. Between the bubble rooms it’s still vacuum until we get down into the aquifer. We’re going to have to game our way through.”
Angelique said, “We would have had a meal and rest break here, I think. Fat chance of that now.”
Scotty said, “The pirates can’t fly. They couldn’t have trained on the Moon, and I broke their wings. I’d say we have an hour, maybe a little more. We can do this, people. Look-this was almost the end of the overall game, wasn’t it?”
Angelique nodded. “Probably.”
“And do things accelerate toward the end? Or do they slow down?”
“Accelerate. More betting, more monsters, usually bigger special effects.”
“And this is relatively sedate.” He waved at the lawn, the mansion, the statuary.
Wayne seemed to catch his meaning. “This is a pause, a breather before Xavier hits us with whatever he’s got at the very end. It’ll be pretty straightforward. Actual play, usually combat, as opposed to running in circles trying to figure things out. That would be frustrating for the viewers as well as us. So assuming that we have the right resources, we should be able to just… play the damned game.”
He crouched down. “Look. We’re not going to have to read some friggin’ book. Wouldn’t that be exciting to watch? I’d say that game time would be no longer than we’ve got right now in ‘real’ time.”
“So…,” Ali said thoughtfully. “We’re supposed to be able to figure it out pretty quickly.”
“Right. So look. What is this game? What is it that all war games do?”
“Simulate wars,” Angelique said.
“That’s right. Whether you’re talking football, or chess, or RPGs, there is”-he started ticking off points on his fingers-“territory to be taken, people to be captured or killed, perhaps a King or Queen to be neutralized. Tactics and strategy. Individual and group action. Defenses to be degraded, and weaponry to be destroyed or taken. The rules are just to simulate the structure or chaos of a military campaign, and allow a conclusion within some agreed-upon framework of time and location, you see?”
A thread of excitement was worming through the group, but Scotty couldn’t let himself get swept up in it. “Listen: Moresnot may be an hour crossing that gap, but we still need to set a guard. That’s me, I think.” He waited for a nod from Angelique, then slithered out the front door.
Mickey said, “Maud and I’ll take the Earth army. The Brits.”
“I’m not sure there’s another choice,” Angelique said. The chair on the Lunar side held a grub that looked annoyingly like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland.
The Martian chair was filled with another young Selenite, wearing some kind of partial facemask with antennae and pincers more mollusk than insectile.
“I’m betting that this is straightforward: Our psychic sits, and the game begins. Shall we give it a try?”
Maud sat. Instantly, a gigantic head and shoulders appeared above the field. It was human, white, male, bearded. And spoke in thunder.
“I am Dr. Claud Eustuce Cavor. I have been on the Moon for twenty years. The Selenite Queen has entrusted me with some of the guidance of her children, over two hundred of them. I designed this place at her command.”
Scotty was studying the floating head carefully. “I know him,” he whispered. “Another Lunie, name of Piering. So he was supposed to be Professor Cavor? Geez, he must be pissed.”
“Shhh!” Angelique said, waving her hand angrily.
“I have never seen an attack by Martians, but I am assured that such has happened, and that the weaponry we have given them in this game accurately represents reality. So do the Selenites’ weapons and various troops, of course, and I’ve imitated our own cannon and transport and other devices as best I can.
“I ask you to be gentle with our young grubs, and to remember that the nurturance of tomorrow’s leaders is today’s greatest responsibility.”
Maud wiggled to find a more comfortable position in the chair, wincing as the helmet embraced her head. An instant later, the grubs “playing” game pieces commenced moving with purpose and apparent consciousness, shaking themselves and stretching as if from a prolonged slumber.
“How shall we begin our attack?” she asked. Her hands twisted in air, as if seeking control levers.
“Let’s try shelling the village,” Wayne said. “Soften them up a little.”
And she set herself to it.
“All right. Ah… burn down those villages.”
A thin current of moist air wafted through the room, but nothing else happened.
“It’s broken?” Scotty asked.
Wayne snapped his fingers. “The autopilot thinks you aren’t gaming hard enough. Rhyme it, Maud.”
She looked at Wayne as if he must be mad, but then laughed. With a level of theatricality she had not displayed in hours, Maud touched the tips of her fingers to her temples, and fluttered her eyelids closed.
“Children of Luna,” she whispered, “fulfill my desire. Use your strength and rain down fire!”
Their team’s little grubs mouthed the trigger strings controlling the cannons. The cannons roared, arcs of fire blazed above the field, and cannonballs the approximate size and heft of marshmallows sailed into the complex of buildings representing Luna.
With a fiery whoof they splintered or collapsed. Cannons on the lunar side popped, and some of the Earther buildings exploded.
Then the Martians weighed in, sending fire at either side, and the war was on.
Scotty set himself behind a foam pillar, wishing he had a better weapon than the crossbow. What he heard from inside the mansion drifted to him in bits of talk, incomprehensible.
The bubble wasn’t as big as it looked. The far landscape was hologram wallpaper, slick to the touch. Scotty prowled, looking for other doors. Nothing. Any exits must be within the mockup mansion-which wasn’t all there either.
Someone had to guard… but could Moresnot come through inside the mansion? The gamers would be shredded. Shouldn’t he be guarding Ali directly?
Twenty minutes had passed… and there was Wayne, taking too little care for cover while he looked for enemies. Scotty whistled from behind a tall brick-like chimney.
Wayne looked up. “How did you get up there?”
Scotty gestured around and up and over. “It’s not all that steep.”
“I relieve you,” Wayne said. “I took my shot. Earth lost. Mars and the Moon are still fighting.”
Sharmela was examining the game environs, perhaps measuring lines of sight.
“I think I see what the problem is,” she said finally. Her brown curls bounced as she nodded to herself. “We wasted shells hitting these buildings, but we’ve already seen that the Selenites are primarily an underground society. So there isn’t anything really valuable here.”
“So…?”
“So the Martians have been dealing with the Selenites a lot longer than we have. I think they’re strong enough to kick lunar butt, and the Selenites know it. So… they win against Luna, then invade us and die from germs?”
The plan seemed reasonable. Earth declined to engage as Mars attacked Luna, waiting until much of the destruction was already complete. Then and only then they joined the attack. The “floor” beneath the game seemed to open up, and smoke poured out: The Selenite society was destroyed.
But instead of the Martians sending walkers to invade Earth, they launched their assault from a distance, until the buildings were knocked apart, the grubs had retreated to safety, and all the little pieces scattered.
Maud groaned and said: “So to save us grief and pain, I beg you to begin again!” The battlefield shimmered and was whole: all holograms.
Just in case they had accidentally done the right thing, Maud looked around, hoping a door might open…
Nothing.
“Damn!” Mickey said, and slunk away, defeated. “I’ll take guard.”
Ali advised Maud next, and his attempt at a pincer assault came to no better a conclusion.
Scotty came in to find the boy in depression. “The Selenites split their army. I thought it was a mistake, but they ran a pincer on us. Chewed us up. When we got our cavalry as far as the left wall, the rest of the room lit up.” Ali gestured into a cratered moonscape. “Now we’re trying to figure this next part. We still have three sides, don’t we?”
“Martians there. Wells’ Martian tripod walkers and some big brained wrinkled critters. Selenites there, including a few we haven’t seen before. And those soldiers with us are human. Cavor himself must have played those.”
It was a roughly triangular distribution of troops. Three “front lines,” with a “no-man’s-land” in the middle, and battles along adjoining sides.
“I wish we had more time,” Wayne said.
Angelique said, “Yeah. And while you’re at it, butter brickle ice cream. Scotty, any suggestions?”
“Double cappuccino, one sugar. There must be a way…”
“No,” Darla said. “There doesn’t. This game could be dead. It might not know what to do, and we’re just burnin’ time. We could play this and never win. Or win, and it won’t make a lick of difference-we’re just waiting for the pirates to catch up with us.”
After watching the others flail about, Angelique had decided to try her hand.
East, by Angelique’s ornate compass, was the front door. And East was several ranks of grubs balanced elegantly on thick tails, dressed as British soldiers equipped with rifles and cannon, wagons, a railroad, and a steamship docked on the river.
South: Martian war tripods and other machines, and four spacecraft each built like a diseased potato with a hatch open at the nose. As the Martians marched onto the field, more emerged from the hatches.
North: A variety of creatures, all of the basic lunar insectoid design. They moved onto the field with various gaits.
West was unoccupied.
East: Maud got some soldiers moving in blocks, Angelique advising from the sides.
This time, they detected a weakness in the Martian war formation, a hesitation to engage they were able to exploit. Toy cannon roared, knocking down toy machines. When the hullabaloo was over… no door opened.
“Back to square one,” Angelique said in disgust.
Ali’s turn.
South: The Martian war machines were on the move. North: Four Lunie insectoids of varying shapes put their heads together and babbled in high-pitched gibberish, then set some much bigger creatures moving. Under Maud’s control, the humans declined engagement. The alien armies converged, fought, swarmed, died. Then all suddenly froze, and Reset.
Again and again the armies clashed, with Earth getting the worst of it until, by careful observation, flaws in the defense of Martian and Selenite became clearer.
Slowly, the Martians were driven back, Angelique directing their forces via the mystical Maud. Driving them back opened no door, but grubs toted new, shiny toys out of the darkness, and placed them among the ranks of Earth’s defenders.
“What is that?” Sharmela asked, pointing.
“I think we won something,” Wayne said. “This is different. We must have done something right.”
“Maybe…,” Darla offered, “we captured Martian war machines, took ’em apart and learned their stuff?”
“That would be something Cavor might think of, yes. A lesson for the Selenites.”
And now they were in the right position: Thundering pellets at both Mars and Moon, until their enemies were a smoking ruin. They heard a low, thrumming sound, like some ancient machinery stirring slowly to life…
And then nothing.
“Dammit!” Angelique shrieked. “We won, dammit! We won! What in the hell are we supposed to do?”
Mickey came in. “I’ve been hearing sounds. I think that the pirates are working at the blocked door. What do we do?”
“Stay here,” Scotty said.
“He screwed us!” Wayne snarled. “Xavier snuck something past the IFGS, and we are frickin’ dead. We’re going to die, because he’s pissed at me.”
“Ah… why is he especially upset with you?” Scotty asked. “Anything we should know about?”
“He thinks I narked on him a long time ago.”
“And did you?”
“I’m not going to dignify that,” Wayne said.
“And you didn’t bet on the game, either, right?” No answer.
Scotty hopped down, looked at the game. It all seemed like a confusion of cast-iron pieces to him. Even though some of the pieces curled and crawled in aimless circles, seeking direction, they had run out of ideas. Earth had lost. Earth had pulled a draw. Earth had beaten Mars and stalemated Luna. Earth had beaten both Mars and Luna.
And no door had opened.
Frustration and fear were wrestling for control of his stomach. Could this really be it? If the pirates got through that door… and they would… the gamers were trapped here, and in a straight-up fight, they hadn’t a prayer.
But a last stand was better than no stand at all.
“Drag that topiary over next to the front door,” he shouted.
“The stuff is just foam. It won’t stop them.”
“If they blow the door, it might cushion the explosion. Listen,” he said. “They want Ali. The rest of you were just following my orders.”
“And why would I follow your orders?” Angelique snapped.
Scotty drew close, and said in a quiet voice: “Tell them that I swore I’d beat the shit out of you if you didn’t. They’ll believe you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Is that a-”
“I’m trying to save your life, lady. Let it go.”
Her mouth worked a few times without producing words. Then she broke eye contact.
Ali clutched at him. The boy’s eyes were frantic. “No!” he said, voice husky with fear. “I don’t want you to-”
“I’m in charge,” Scotty said.
“You…” Ali looked down. “The woman Celeste is insane. They will kill you.”
Scotty took Ali’s small hands in his own rough ones. “That’s the job,” he said, forcing his voice into a calm that he did not feel.
“You…” Ali’s eyes misted. “You…” Words failed him.
But Maud had found her voice. “Listen up,” she said, a spark of new excitement in her voice. “I may have figured something out.”
“What?” Angelique asked.
“I’m starting with the assumption that there is a solution to this, one that makes sense in context.” She sounded like a British schoolmarm. “The IFGS simply wouldn’t have let that dreadful Xavier back us into a corner without a way out.”
“All right…”
“Follow me. We went about this all wrong. This is a teaching game… for Selenites. That means that the lesson to be learned is for them. We can’t win by beating them, you see? We tried that.”
“What else is there?”
“Join them. The point of the game was of desperate importance to Cavor. Remember what he said? ‘Teach the young generation the rules they will need to thrive.’ New rules. For a new time-a time of human-Selenite cooperation.”
She paused, hands spread a little, eyes wide and mouth open in a smile, as if waiting for them to catch up with her.
And then, Angelique said it: “Truce?” She blinked. “Maud, you are either brilliant, or an idiot.”
“May I offer an opinion?” Mickey asked.
“When pigs fly,” Maud said. “Come on. Let’s be idiots, shall we?”
It looked as absurd as it felt. After requesting “reset” again, scouts from the army of Earth approached the Selenites with little white flags attached to their muskets, around the left side of no-man’s-land, as far from the Martians as possible.
They stood there, at Maud’s direction. There was nothing to be done but wait: Only the Earth forces moved at human command.
But at last, something happened: A caterpillar humped out from the lunar side, a white flag attached to one of its drooping antennae. Xavier’s idea of a joke, no doubt. Human and insectoid confabbed for a few seconds, and then the worm humped back to its own ranks.
“What?” Ali asked. “What is happening?”
Maud’s expression was serene, for the first time in the entire game, she seemed to be in control. “Watch,” she said.
She concentrated, waving her hands in arcane patterns, and the Earth forces turned toward the Martians, attacking with all force, and exposing their flank to the Selenites.
The Selenites did not betray them. Instead, they attacked the Martian forces it had lured into a ground assault, obliterating them, trusting Earth to protect them from the longe-range Martian response.
But the war machines had their mechanical hands full. Upgraded human defenses hammered at them, and grubs wearing little spaceship hats humped across the no-man’s-land and struck at the Martian home base.
The Martians broke, and Earth forces harried them home, inflicting terrible casualties.
The gamers were transfixed, panting as if they’d hiked a hill. The small war game was motionless… and then…
“We won. Where’s the door? Dammit!” cried Angelique.
“There,” Scotty said. He jogged back to the entrance. One of the mirrors was ajar. He swung it wide open. He knelt, as gamers crowded around him. “It’s a ramp. Steep.” He put his hand flat on a darkly shining surface. “Slippery. In fact… frictionless. We’re in for a ride.”
Angelique said, “Wayne, take point. Scotty, you go last, and facing backward. You get the crossbow. Everybody, hang on to your weapons! They could be right behind us. Ready?”
Wayne slid smoothly into the dark opening, air gun in hand. Angelique followed, and the rest, in haste.