The Alejandra Variations (13 page)

Riordan stood up, putting his gun away. His hands were trembling, and now Nicholas knew why everyone wore a gun.

Riordan said as he wiped the sweat from his brow, "We get them occasionally. It's the only war we really fight anymore."

"How… how did they get so
big
?" Nick asked as Lexie clung to him. No one had told him about the cockroaches.

"Radiation. They're the only true survivors of the war. You didn't see them when you were surface-side with Captain Lazlo and the Bore, but they were out there. They're very adaptable. You have to watch for them everywhere you go."

"I hate them!" Lexie snapped. "They're not supposed to be here! You're the Counselor." Lexie turned to Riordan. "You're supposed to do something about them!"

"They are a fact of life, Lexia, my dear," Riordan said, casting a final look of disgust at the creek which had already carried the pieces of the beast out of sight. "And you must face it."

"I don't have to do anything!" she said. "I hate them!"

Riordan turned to Nicholas. He reloaded his pistol. "Now, shall we introduce you to the gaming system?"

His moods changed almost as quickly as Lexie's and the Captain's. Was this a
genna
-induced trait? These people felt strange to Nicholas. Strange.

Lights had come on in the park, and Nick felt an urgent need to watch out for other cockroaches.

"I can assure you, Nicholas, that the gaming system is absolutely without these kinds of interferences," Riordan said.

"I… I don't know," Nick responded.

Lexie was breathing deeply, regaining her equilibrium. She turned to Riordan, away from the creek. "I get to play, too," she pronounced royally.

Nick gave Riordan a look that said he'd had enough of her. Riordan was on his side. He said, "Nicholas should enjoy himself with other people, Lexie. The gaming system will allow him to mingle and get to know others without them fearing who he is."

"I want to play!" she said.

"What do you say, Nicholas?" Riordan asked.

Nick thought about it for a few seconds, then said, "Let's get the hell out of here."

Chapter Four

SUDDENLY, HE WAS playing soccer.

Around him was a crowded outdoor arena brimming with tens of thousands of cheering soccer fans. Above them all was a sky so ethereally blue that it was literally breathtaking. He couldn't believe the power of the illusion! It was a perfect day for a match. The air was cold and clear. Everywhere there was color and life. It was almost
too
real.

The crowd, like a single animated creature of heroic proportions, screamed in one gigantic roar as a black-and-white soccer ball bounced swiftly to one side of him. The game was in progress.

Nicholas looked down at himself. His jersey was a bright, sparkling green. The opposing team wore red and white. Something electric surged through his body as he picked up the excitement of the crowd.

The ball!
his body seemed to be saying.
Get the ball!
A player in red and white flashed by him and side-kicked the ball.

The soccer ball bounced across the field, and Nick raced after it. The crowd screamed tremendously. One member of his own team danced in circles around a red-and-white opponent, and the ball came in Nick's direction, kicked in a high arc over their heads.

He reacted automatically, leaping out fantastically and bouncing the ball off the top of his head to a waiting forward. An opponent, outfoxed, tripped and fell because of Nicholas's virtuosity. The crowd went wild.

Nicholas didn't actually know what he was doing, for he had only played soccer in high school, but apparently
something
did. Perhaps the Game Masters were feeding him the rules, the automatic responses, and the excitement.

He liked it.

The ball was intercepted by the opposing team and came back downfield. Nick caught a pass with his feet, danced with it, and in turn passed it on downfield to another teammate.

He noticed how acute his onrushing sensations were. The air he breathed was clean and crisp. He could even smell the grass as his cleats chewed up the playing field. The briskness of the chill air did wonderful things to his entire nervous system. He felt terrifically alive!

This was far beyond anything Mnemos was capable of. It was an incredible achievement in computer technology.

He looked into the crowd. This was how many of DefCon's citizens spent their time. Sex,
genna
, and vicarious experiences in a gaming computer were necessary to make life underground tolerable. Nicholas was completely swept up in the drama of the game—whether it was real or fabricated.

He glanced at the scoreboard at the far end of the field and realized for the first time that the teams were the West Germans and the Italians. He, in green, was a West German. Why did the gaming system choose nations a thousand years dead? It was like the Goths versus the Lombards. It didn't make much sense, but even so, he had never felt such exuberance in his life.

The black-and-white ball came back in his direction, thrust by an Italian's kick. Nicholas ran toward it as an opponent spun around. Nick jumped up and bounded the ball back to a teammate off his forehead. The crowd seemed to like such theatrics, and Nick could feel the glory of the game bursting within him.

An Italian regained the ball and shuffled it through the feet of two of his own teammates, diving into the action. But a forward from the West German team dashed out into the fracas and stole the ball. The Italian opponent faked a trip-kick, and the two players collided, both going down.

A hearty
"Boo!"
rumbled through the crowd. Nicholas ran after the ball. He scrambled through an opening between the rear guards and quickly kick-passed the ball to a team member off to his right.

That teammate returned the pass after Nick had dodged two more Italians, and now—with a strong kick off the instep of his foot—he sent the ball soaring through the nets. The goalie had tried to stop it with a long dive, but missed.
Goal!

The crowd loved it.

The West German players jumped up and hugged each other in triumph, patting Nicholas on the back. The Italians sulked. The crowd screamed, shouted, and jumped. Banners waved in the air.

"'Ray!"
Nicholas heard someone shout in a tiny voice in the crowded stands. "Oh, Nickie!
Yay!
"

Nick glanced over and saw Lexie, wrapped in expensive furs and waving a green banner. Hers was the only face he could make out in the thousands upon thousands of DefCon's troglodytes in the computer-imagined open-air stadium.

The referee returned the ball to midfield, and the game began again. Nicholas could not concentrate now that he knew Lexie was watching so adoringly. In fact, it almost seemed as if the whole game was staged just for her, despite the crowd that screamed and surged nearby.

"Forget about her," the referee said, running by.

Nicholas turned to the short man. The ref smiled. "It's me," he said, "Riordan. I'm in here with you. Don't worry about Lexie. She's harmless. Just play the game."

Nicholas stood still somewhat confused. "Riordan?"

The man didn't look in the least like the tall, charismatic professor.

"Of course, it's me!" he laughed. "You don't think we could play like this with our real bodies, do you? You're playing in the body of a twenty-year-old!"

Riordan, incarnated as a surly referee, jogged into the fray. Nicholas looked back into the stands and saw Lexie waving fiercely. The familiar sexual glow was in her eyes and on her cheeks.

His attention was shattered when the ball came his way. He made a dash for it.

Just then an Italian player came out of the corner of his field of vision, and before Nicholas could react the man had the ball between his shuffling feet.

He bumped into Nicholas and whispered above the excitement, "Go easy, Nick. Relax," then ran off before Nicholas could respond.

Nicholas was so startled by the secrecy in the man's voice that he froze. The Italian who had spoken ignored him, darted into a tussle over the ball, and knocked the sphere out of bounds. One of the West German players retrieved it and threw it back into play from the sidelines.

Nicholas caught it with his feet, juggled it away from an approaching Italian, then passed it on. He turned and tried to find the man who had spoken to him. It worried him that someone other than Lexie and Riordan knew that the Eridani was gaming. He had sudden, unpleasant visions of angry mobs stalking the grassy halls of DefCon, brandishing torches, scythes, and pitchforks, looking for the monster Frankenstein had built. Perhaps they'd toss him into a pit of giant cockroaches. He had thought he was safe in the game system. Apparently he wasn't.

Lexie yelled from the sidelines, "Don't stop, Nickie! It's over there!" she screamed giddily, pointing to the ball.

Another Italian player, a hefty yet oddly graceful youth with a wicked grin on his face, ran over to Nick. He waited for the ball. He was barely ten yards from Nicholas, crouching like a desert puma.

The kid suddenly yelled at Nick, and though his accent was thick, the words were clear. "Hey, keedo! You don'ta worry! We smasha de seestem good, no?"

It was almost comic. Nicholas rose from his defensive stance and walked over to him. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "What did you say?" he asked. He had his fists balled, ready.

"Hey, keeler!" the Italian mocked him. "Thatsa boy!" The ball flew between them, and the Italian shot after it with a tremendous burst of speed. Nick let him go.

Riordan, as referee, came running over to him. "Are you feeling all right, Nick? You want out of the game?"

The other soccer players pursued the ball, accompanied by the chants of the maddened crowd.

"I think someone wants me out," Nick said, looking at Lexie. All of the crowd's energy and excitement funneled down to her. She jumped up and down in her furs. "Nickie!
Yay!"
she yelled senselessly. Her short blond hair bounced about.

"But, Nick," Riordan said quickly. "No one knows you're in the game."

"
He
does," Nick said, pointing to the short, waddling Italian.

Riordan rubbed his chin, thinking. "Could be you picked up something."

"What are you talking about?"

Riordan laughed slightly. "Perhaps an old in-system response. Chips have memories too, you know."

The fact of the matter was that Nicholas's body was lying on a gaming couch somewhere in DefCon. Though Riordan had given his word that he'd be protected, anything could happen. As
had
happened one thousand eighty-three years ago, approximately. He had a vision of those cockroaches slipping in through the Gaming Hall's ventilation system, climbing over his plugged-in sleeping body.…

"Nick! The ball!" Lexie shouted impatiently from the stands. "Don't listen to him!" she commanded.

Riordan spoke quickly. "It might be a residual memory of the old Mnemos system. You might have triggered an age-old linkage. But, Nick, no one knows you're in the system right now. If there's anything wrong, the Game Masters will take care of it back in the Center."

Riordan's duties as referee summoned him, and he headed up the field.

Words like "Eridani" and "jinx" echoed through Nick's mind. No one here seemed interested in him simply as
Nicholas
. He was an oddity—and always would be.

He ran toward the Italian who had spoken to him, no longer interested in playing the game. He wanted to know what was going on.

The ball rocketed in his direction, and momentarily he forgot his quest. His body acted instinctively. He pirouetted and caught it, gave it a resounding kick, aiming it downfield. An Italian player blocked it with a roughed-up knee. The ball rebounded into Nick's face and he fell backward on the chewed turf.

Angrily, the crowd shouted its disapproval.

The impact had been so sudden—and so real—that Nicholas literally saw stars. Blood flowed from his nose. He shook his head and tried to rise.

"Get up, Nickie! Sweetie, get up! Hurry!" came Lexie's call.

"Shit!" he swore.

He was helped up by a teammate. He coughed blood into his hand. The crowd was insane, bordering on riot. The collective boos sounded like the hooves of an impending bison stampede.

"No fair!" Lexie yelled furiously.
"Foul!"

Some of the other West German players began arguing with the officials. In the midst of it all was Professor Riordan, as the head ref. Whistles blew and hands waved, and the teams grudgingly parted to resume the game.

Perhaps someone did have it in for Nick. The ball's impact had been so forceful, it almost knocked him into pure unconsciousness, and out of the system.

One of the West German players ran by and slapped him on the rump. The ball was set free, and everyone was off. Blood had stopped flowing from his nose, but his head felt clogged. Half of his face was numb. Lexie jumped up and down like an hysterically happy child.

The ball was downfield, being pursued by three of his fellow teammates. He stayed in his zone, waiting.

The crowd once again revved up its excitement, but Nicholas suddenly felt that the sight of blood was exactly what they wanted to see. Maybe that's what the gaming system was for. He was just a gladiator. Abruptly, he didn't like being there, despite the intense sensory pleasures.

One of the officials pulled him aside. "Listen," he said quickly, "whatever happens next, don't panic."

It wasn't Riordan.

"What… hey!" he called after him. But the official was gone. Nick tried to find Riordan, but his attention was caught by two Italian players. They were foxing a West German who had the ball.

The surrounded teammate rapped the ball in Nick's direction, but it took a bad bounce that lifted it high over his head. Nick leaped for it, hoping to ricochet it off his forehead, but as he jumped for the ball an Italian player pounced out of nowhere and kicked him squarely in the head.

He nearly lost consciousness. He collapsed onto the grass as the crowd surged to its feet, a single-minded organism yelling angrily at the tops of their assembled voices. Objects flew out of the stands onto the playing field. Beer cans, pop bottles, shoes, pieces of bleachers—just about anything they could get their hands on.