Datasets:

---

NewEden

/

Orion-LIT

like 0

Follow

New Eden 33

5d6

Robert Bevan

The Fuccubus

Thank you for your amazing generosity. Cooper put three empty mugs and a silver coin down on the bar. "I need three more scoops from the barrel, and another bottle of your cheapest stonepiss." The full-orc bartender nodded, slipped the coin into the front pocket of his brown-stained apron, and dunked all three unwashed mugs deep into the large wooden barrel behind the bar. When he set them back down on the bar, filled with the brown concoction of booze unfit for clientele with a bit more money to spend, Cooper noticed that his right hand, which he scooped with, was considerably darker brown than his left. This wasn't the type of tavern one drank at for its high standards of sanitation. "You sound like a man who's fallen under... hard times," said a half-elven woman standing at the bar next to him. She'd been facing the other way when Cooper had approached the bar. Wearing a black leather cape and a wide-brimmed hat, she hadn't looked like much from behind. But now that she was facing him, Cooper was stunned by her striking red eyes and long green hair that fell past her shoulders to frame her perfectly sculpted bosom. Her cape was actually more of a jacket, with one side wrapped over the other, barely containing a nice V of cleavage. She made him think of the beauty and danger of a forest fire, or a field full of poppies, or a Christmas tree with tits. In a raging storm of thoughts, "... hard..." was all Cooper managed to articulate. She offered a lambskin-gloved hand and smiled. Her lips looked like they were painted with blood that never dried. "My name is Kristanya." Even back in the real world, before he became a half-orc with a Charisma score of 4, Cooper wasn't generally someone women went out of their way to talk to at bars. It was generally him who had to initiate contact. Everything about this situation screamed, "Hooker that I can't afford", which seemed odd considering that her opening line, innuendo or not, indicated her awareness that he was broke. Forcing himself to focus, he accepted her handshake. "I'm..." Fuck! What is it? Come on, come on... Oh yeah. "Cooper." Her grip was surprisingly firm and powerful. His spank bank was filled for a month. "Unhand her at once, you disgusting abomination!" A shirtless man with sandy blond hair and red leather pants wedged his way between Cooper and Kristanya. The only attempt he'd made to cover his chest was a strap running diagonally across it for the greatsword he wore on his back. He looked like a barbarian who had put more points into Charisma than he'd put into Strength. Cooper felt Kristanya's fingers slide apart from his as she took a step back. "Who the fuck are you?" asked Cooper, suddenly less tongue-tied. "I am Payne!" It sounded like an over-rehearsed introduction that he didn't get an opportunity to use as often as he'd like. "As in, a pain in my ass?" "As in, Edwin Payne, mercenary for hire." Cooper half expected him to pull out a business card, but Edwin Payne merely stood his ground, staring into Cooper's eyes, daring him to make the first move. "I'll let you know if I ever need some mercenarying done." "Stupid creature. Do you even know what that means? Do you understand what I do for a living?" "You blow dudes for money?" "I kill men for money." "That probably means you're using your teeth too much, or you have a severe case of..." Cooper released a large belch which had just bubbled up from his stomach. "...oral herpes." Payne's nose scrunched up and his eyes began to water but, to his credit, he neither stepped back nor turned his head. "Is your tongue your only weapon, or would you care to cross swords?" Cooper scratched his armpit. "Does that cost extra, or is that just, like, foreplay before you start sucking?" "Your thoughts are as filthy as your breath, mongrel." Kristanya cleared her throat. Payne's face turned pale, and there was sudden panic in his eyes. He turned around. "Forgive me, sweet Kristanya! I meant no offense." Kristanya said nothing. Her glaring red eyes invited further explanation. "Your racial impurity is like the irritant which forms a pearl inside an oyster," said Payne. That almost certainly sounded better in his head before he said it aloud. "What the fuck are you doing?" asked Tim, accompanied by Julian and Dave. "You took so long we had to give up our goddamn table. How hard is it to order a couple of fucking –" His gaze met Kristanya's, and his mouth stopped working. "How... hard..." he repeated, but seemed to have lost his train of thought. "What's going on?" asked Julian. Cooper grinned. "This guy's trying to pull his foot out of his mouth, but it keeps going in deeper the more he talks. It's glorious." "Going... in... deeper..." mumbled Dave, gawking up at Kristanya. Julian slapped Dave on the top of his helmet. "What the hell is wrong with you guys?" Kristanya gently shoved Payne to the side as she slipped into Julian's personal space. "What's your name, elf?" Jolted by an unexpected surge of jealousy, Cooper grabbed two of the mugs and the bottle of stonepiss from the bar and passed them out, introducing his friends accordingly. "This is Julian, Tim, and Dave. They were just about to go look for another table." Kristanya smiled at Ravenus, who was perched on Julian's shoulder. "And what's your name?" She ran a finger from Ravenus's head down the feathers on his back. Julian tugged at his serape, which had the opposite effect of what Cooper suspected he was going for, which was to not call attention to his junk. The bird squawked back a response that Cooper couldn't understand. "How can he understand you?" asked Julian. "You didn't speak with a British accent." Kristanya narrowed her eyes with amusement at Julian. "I didn't what?" "I meant, he only speaks Elven. He doesn't speak Common." "I speak a language all men understand," said Kristanya. "I am blessed with the gift of tongues." Cooper, Tim, Dave, and even Edwin Payne made similarly conspicuous efforts to hide their junk. "So," said Cooper, holding his mug in front of his crotch like that was the most natural thing in the world. "Why don't you go find us another table. I'll be right behind you." "Excellent." Payne unsheathed the broadsword strapped to his back and brought it point down on the floorboards. Cooper assumed he meant to look threatening, but knew that he was just using the hilt to cover his crotch. "Why don't we all go back to my room?" suggested Kristanya. "I have a big bed and an even bigger appetite." Awkward glances were shared, which eventually gave way to nods. "Or," said Julian, and octave or so higher than he normally spoke. "We could keep drinking. I'm buying!" He had a good point. If Cooper was going to be in a six-way involving five dudes, it wouldn't hurt to have a solid buzz going. Cooper raised his mug and caught the bartender's attention. "Three more of these." He turned around. "Anything for you guys?" "The same," said Payne, his voice quivering. "Me too," said Tim. "Another bottle of stonepiss for me," said Dave. "Anything for you?" Cooper asked Kristanya. "I'm afraid this tavern doesn't serve what I'm thirsty for." Willing his dick not to get any harder than it already was, Cooper turned to Julian. Julian shook his head. "Nothing for me, thanks." Cooper continued to look at Julian. "Oh, right." Julian took a gold coin out of his coin pouch and slapped it down on the bar. "That should cover it." When everyone had their drinks in hand, Cooper turned to Kristanya. "Lead the way." Kristanya walked toward the stairs leading up to the rooms. Payne, Tim, Dave, and Cooper followed like a line of ducklings. "Wait," said Julian, reluctantly trailing behind them. "Where are we going?" Cooper didn't stop walking. "Where the fuck do you think? Up to her room." "When I offered to buy everyone drinks, I thought we'd be staying down here." "What? In front of all these people?" Cooper shuddered. "It's going to be weird enough with just you guys." As they ascended the stairs, Julian's voice grew more and more panicky, like he was trying to disarm a bomb. "Tim! Dave!" Julian pleaded, trying to keep his voice down. "You guys can't be serious about this." "Just be cool," Tim reassured him. "We don't have to talk about this later." "You're starting to sound a little homophobic," said Dave. "Either that or gay." "Can you hear the words coming out of your mouths? Come on, guys. Snap out of it!" The procession stopped in front of a door marked with a symbol that Cooper couldn't read. Illiteracy was a Barbarian class trait. Kristanya pulled a dull grey iron key out from inside the palm of her left glove and looked at Julian. Her red eyes glowed faintly. "Your name is Julian, is it not?" Julian stood straight, like he'd just been singled out by a sadistic drill sergeant. "Yes ma'am!" "Is there some kind of problem, Julian?" "No ma'am," Julian answered immediately. "No problem at all. I'm really excited about this." Ravenus started to squawk something, but Julian's hand flew up like a sprung trap and held his beak shut. Julian smiled sheepishly. "I'm just a little nervous is all." Kristanya smiled. "I like that." She inserted the key into the keyhole and opened the door. There wasn't a whole lot to the room. No windows. No pictures on the stained walls. Not even a table or chair. It was the sort of place one would rent by the quarter hour for a bit of privacy and the one piece of furniture in it. The bed was big and sturdy-looking enough for a hooker and her John, but perhaps not sturdy enough for a six-person orgy. Kristanya didn't even glance toward the bed as she strode across the room to a brown cotton curtain hanging from the doorway to another room. "Close the door." Being the last one in, Julian was closest to the door. He stood there like a deer that didn't understand English. Kristanya glared at him with her glowing red eyes. "Oh, this door," said Julian, quickly shutting it. Kristanya pulled back the curtain, revealing a black door which didn't match the modest décor of the rest of the room at all. The door's only adornment, where one might expect to see a knocker, stood out for being polished silver against the dull black paint on the door, and for being in the shape of a woman's spread legs. The hoo-ha in the center was an actual hole. After sliding the room key back into her left glove, Kristanya produced a shinier silver key from her right glove. It had no teeth or notches. Aside from a ring on the back end, it was perfectly cylindrical with a rounded tip. Tim gulped back the contents of one of his mugs and set it on top of a small table. "Subtle." While Cooper concentrated on not jizzing in his loincloth, Kristanya inserted the key. After a couple of loud clicks sounded from the other side of the door, she pushed it open. A wave of considerably warmer air flowed out from the doorway. It smelled of ashes and sulfur. Beyond the door was a large rock-walled subterranean chamber which Cooper was fairly certain wasn't part of this tavern. Kristanya smiled at Payne. "After you." Payne didn't need to be asked twice. He marched into the cavern like it was an oasis in the desert. Dave and Tim followed eagerly after him. Cooper started to follow, but Julian grabbed his wrist. Cooper had no idea that Julian was this timid. "Dude, it's no different than being in a locker room." Julian grimaced. "Actually, it is kinda different." "It seems weird now, but I promise you you're going to thank me for this one day." "Thank you for what?" Cooper grabbed Julian's arm and shoved him into the doorway. Kristanya was the last to enter. She closed the door behind her, and the click of the locking mechanism echoed all over the chamber. Dim light flickered against the red rocky walls from sconces made of skulls, which appeared to vomit stalactites of melted candle wax. At the far end of the chamber stood a massive bed, the four corner posts of which looked to be made of the ribs of some colossal beast. Maybe a dragon. Maybe a dire whale. Maybe Dave's mom. Cooper kept that last speculation to himself for now, not wanting to ruin the mood. "Very nice place you've got here," said Julian, eyeing one of the sconces. "Tell me, are these real human skulls?" "Some of them," said Kristanya, walking to a table near the bed made of two minotaur skulls, back to back, and a sheet of black glass resting atop the horns. "Some dwarf, some half-orc." She turned to him and grinned. "Some elf." Julian looked at a smaller sconce, then glared at Tim. "And some halfling." "Actually, that one's a human child." Kristanya cracked her knuckles. "Now who would like to go first?" The tension in the room vanished as Cooper, Tim, Dave, and Payne let out a collective sigh of relief, then clinked their mugs together. "What?" cried Julian. Payne smiled at Cooper. "I suppose we won't be crossing swords today after all." Then he turned to Kristanya. "It seems fitting that the first to make your acquaintance should be the first to... fulfill your desires." No one argued, still relieved that it wasn't going to be a five-dick orgy. "Very well." Kristanya smiled at Payne. "Step forward, Edwin Payne, and reveal yourself to me." Payne removed his sheathe and tossed it aside, then hurriedly kicked off his boots and unlaced his pants. The tight leather had left little to the imagination with regard to his ass. Cooper couldn't see what he was packing up front, but noted that Kristanya's expression didn't change upon laying her eyes on his junk. "Would you like me to reveal myself to you?" asked Kristanya. "More than anything!" said Payne, perhaps a little too eagerly. Then again, she seemed like a pretty sure thing, so Cooper supposed there wasn't a whole lot of point to playing it cool. Though they hadn't been asked, Cooper, Tim, and Dave nodded their agreement. Even Julian stopped bitching for a moment. Kristanya pulled off her gloves, one at a time, setting them on the table next to the bed. Her fingernails were at least an inch and a half long, obsidian black, and pointed. Cooper imagined them tearing down his back, shredding his kidneys while he blew his load. Next she removed her hat, revealing a set of what looked like black ram's horns which the hat had been specifically designed to conceal. Something to hold on to. She spread her arms and smiled at Payne. "What do you think?" Payne was trembling with anticipation. "Take off your coat." His voice was shaky, like he was testing the waters to see if following orders was something she was into. "I'm not wearing a coat," she said. "I'm not wearing anything at all." Her red eyes glowed brighter as her teeth seemed to grow sharper. The black leather which covered her body spread apart at the middle, becoming immediately recognizable as a giant pair of bat wings. They opened slowly, revealing her body from the top down. First, those perfect breasts, like a pair of honeydews with nipples. Then her navel, like a tiny cup waiting to be filled with splooge. Finally, the biggest blackest cock Cooper had ever seen. It was covered in scales, barbed at the end, and squirmed around like a blind snake. "The fuck?" Cooper snapped out of what seemed like a lucid dream. Everything was just as it was, but his interpretation was different. Even though what he'd mistaken as a big black snake dick actually turned out to be a tail, and even though she still had a great set of tits, he was suddenly not quite as convinced that he wanted his dick near her. The skulls all over the walls now seemed off putting, as did his memory of fantasizing about her shredding his kidneys only a moment ago. "Cooper," whispered Julian, who had just inched his way next to him. Cooper rubbed his temples as the sanity filtered back into his brain. "Are you... all there?" "I think so." "Good. Just keep acting normal until we figure out our next move." Cooper nodded. "I think that woman had me under some kind of spell." "I don't think she's a woman." Cooper laughed. "I made the same mistake. Look again. That was her tail." "What are you talking about?" "Huh? Nothing. Go on with what you were saying." "I think she's a succubus," said Julian. "I've read about them before. If they're anything in the game like they are in the books I've read, we're in some deep shit. We need to get Tim and Dave and find a way out of –" "Shut up for a second." Cooper appreciated the gravity of their situation, but he also appreciated that there would only be a limited number of opportunities in his life to be able to watch a demon chick go down on a dude. Kristanya didn't seem the submissive type, but she was down on her knees in front of Payne, taking his cock into her mouth. Payne lasted about twenty seconds before Cooper recognized the shudder and sigh of premature release. Cooper shook his head. "Dude didn't even grab her by the horns." But Kristanya didn't stop. Either Cooper had been mistaken in his interpretation, or Kristanya thought Payne might have one more in the chamber. She went at him harder now, wings flapping and tail whipping around as she dug her claws into his ass cheeks and pushed him further into her mouth. Payne's moans changed in a way that made it difficult for Cooper to enjoy the spectacle, but at least he finally put his hands on her horns. "Atta boy, Payne." "I don't think you're fully understanding what's happening right now," said Julian. "Huh?" Cooper tried to take in the scene more objectively, and saw that Payne was trying to push Kristanya's head away. "Oh shit. Should we –" Payne filled the chamber with a horrible scream, the echoes of which continued to reverberate as the scream itself faded. His hair turned white, and his skin grew dry and brittle until it started to flake off. Cooper frowned. "Probably too late to step in at this point." "We need to think of something fast," said Julian. When Payne's withered husk of a body collapsed into a pile of dry skin and bones, Kristanya got to her feet and wiped the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand. "Who's next?" Tim and Dave's hands shot up immediately. Then Julian raised his hand. "Dude," said Cooper. "What are you doing?" "Trying to buy us more time. Raise your hand." Trusting that Julian was aware that Cooper didn't want his life forced sucked out through the cock, he followed Julian's lead. "However should I choose?" said Kristanya, pacing nakedly among them. The tip of her tail ran through Tim's hair. "Should I start with the smallest and work my way up?" "Yes!" Tim yipped like a puppy. Kristanya turned her attention to Dave and ran the tip of her tail through his beard. "Or the hairiest?" "Please!" Dave fluffed out his beard to make it look even bigger and bushier. "I'll bury you in my beard." Kristanya walked to Cooper, sneaking her tail up under his loincloth. While he was terrified of having any part of her near his junk, he'd have been lying if he said he didn't find it at least a little arousing. She smiled at him with decidedly terrifying pointed teeth. "Or the dirtiest?" "Oh yeah," said Cooper, trying to sound convincing. "I'll, um... take a shit on your tits." Kristanya's tail pulled out from under Cooper's loincloth. Her smile faltered and her glowing eyes dimmed. Tim and Dave glared at Cooper like he was cramping their style. "I know!" said Julian. "We could fight for the honor!" That put the terrifying smile back on Kristanya's face and the shine back in her demon eyes. "Excellent idea!" She beat her bat wings hard, lifting herself off the floor, and flew to a throne made of femurs, and decorated on the back with a fan of ribs. Cooper was thankful that Julian had bailed him out, and relieved that he seemed to be initiating some sort of plan. When he judged Kristanya to be far enough away, he whispered, "Okay, cool. So what are we doing?" Julian shrugged. "I was just stalling for more time." "Fuck." "Rule one," said Tim. He and Dave had joined Julian and Cooper's huddle. "Everyone's going to get their turn, so no kicking in the nuts. Agreed?" Dave nodded. "Good idea. Mine are about to explode." "Maybe we should do this tournament style," Julian suggested. "Tim faces off against Dave, and I'll fight Cooper. Then the winners fight each other." Tim looked Cooper up and down, then looked back at Julian. "That sounds fair." "Let the fight begin!" announced Kristanya. Tim, utilizing his high Dexterity score and his apparent training in Taekwondo, immediately launched his foot into Dave's nuts. Dave fell forward, howling in pain and grasping his genitals, but incapacitating Tim with sheer weight. Julian lunged at Cooper, but it felt more like a hug than a wrestling move. Pulling Cooper's head toward his own, he whispered, "We need to get the key. Wrestle me toward the nightstand next to the bed." Cooper gave Julian a slight nod to show he understood what the goal was, then picked him up and gently body-slammed him onto the floor a few feet in the direction of the nightstand. Julian cried out in obviously fake pain, then sprang to his feet. He grabbed Cooper's wrist, twisted it behind his back, and jumped up for a from-behind stranglehold. "You need to sell it better," Julian whispered into Cooper's ear. "Make her think you really hate me. Throw me at the table, then come in and attack me." "Roar!" Cooper said as he gently tossed Julian toward the nightstand. Then he ran at him and stomped on the floor as he pretended to punch Julian in the chest. "Can you smell what the orc is cooking?" If it was good enough to fool white trash America, it should be good enough to fool a demon bitch from hell. Julian glanced in Kristanya's direction, then looked up into Cooper's eyes and shook his head. "She's not buying it," Julian whispered. "Put a little more feeling into it." He got to his feet, grabbed Cooper by the arm, and pulled him in the direction of the nightstand. Cooper took the hint and followed through on being an unlikely victim of Judo. "MY HEAVENS!" he shouted as he jumped toward the nightstand and pretended to lay temporarily incapacitated on the floor. He chanced a glance at Kristanya. She was standing up in front of her throne and eyeing him suspiciously. When Julian got up in his face again, he whispered, "I don't think she's buying this." "I know," said Julian. "Your Bluff check is based on your Charisma score. I'm sorry." If Cooper understood him correctly, that would be more his fault than Julian's. "For what?" "Fuck you! She's mine!" cried Julian, just before driving his knee into Cooper's goods. "Cooper cradled his nuts with both hands. "What the fuck, dude? I thought –" Julian slapped him hard in the face. "You don't think, you maggot-brained imbecile!" SLAP "Your head is more vacuous than an empty Bag of Holding!" SLAP "If brain cells were platinum pieces, you wouldn't be able to afford a handjob from a leprous hobo!" "Dude," said Cooper. "First of all, stop slapping me. Secondly, why would I want –" As Julian's hand drew back to slap Cooper again, Cooper felt a searing pain in his left thigh. "FUCK!" Cooper cried. Instinctively reacting to the only threat he could see, he backhanded Julian in the side of his head, sending him flying back toward the magic door. The pain failed to subside. Looking down, Cooper found Tim coughing and gagging, and found a crescent of tooth-marks on his thigh which looked disturbingly childlike. Tim went for an uppercut to Cooper's nuts, but Cooper caught his wrist and threw him across the room. Tim hit the wall and landed sprawled out on Kristanya's bed. Cooper took a little time to catch his breath and come to terms that all of his friends had gone batshit crazy on him, when he heard a slow clap. "You have done well, Cooper," said Kristanya. "Congratulations." Cooper turned to her. Her red eyes glowed brighter than any of the skull candles, her needle-toothed grin more sinister than ever. Still, nice tits. Dave was still awake, cradling his nuts on the floor. Julian lay still near the door. Cooper wondered if he'd hit him just a little too hard. Tim was stirring, but not looking too hot. Kristanya rose from her femur throne. "It would appear we have a winner." Her right eye stopped glowing temporarily as she winked at him. "If I'm honest, I was hoping it would be you." "Oh?" Cooper was in a position to take flattery wherever he could get it. "Why's that?" "To get you out of the way, of course." Kristanya stood up, opened her wings, then flapped toward him. "I want to save the elf for last." That sounded fair to Cooper. If he had to choose between fucking Julian and fucking a clone of himself, it wouldn't be a choice at all. But after a moment of further reflection, coming to terms with what it meant to be the last man standing in this particular scenario, the backhanded compliment felt somehow even emptier. Kristanya's wings flapped gently, then folded as she landed in front of him. "Reveal yourself to me." Cooper backed away from her. "Maybe we should take things slowly." "My body yearns to have yours inside it." Kristanya pushed her breasts together, drawing the full scope of Cooper's gaze toward them. He'd lived a good life, and there were worse ways to go. "No!" cried Cooper, slapping himself in the face to free his mind from Kristanya's tit sorcery. "I've lived a shitty life. I don't want this." "The bulge under your loincloth says differently." She made a solid point. Cooper's mind was unable to communicate the dangers of this situation to his dick, which pointed at her bosom like it was presenting its own side of the argument. Cooper tried to take another step back, but something snaked around his ankle. As soon as he looked down and identified it as Kristanya's tail, it pulled back hard, landing Cooper on his back. It was a hard fall, and the back of Cooper's head hurt. When his suddenly doubled vision sorted itself out, he was staring down at his flabby chest and belly, then at his dick trying hard to break through his loincloth. It looked like a wigwam in a wasteland. A second later, his entire field of vision was filled with Kristanya's horrifying face. Her eyes were practically fireballs now. Her forked tongue flicked between her needle-like teeth. She'd pounced on top of him, pinning his shoulders to the floor. "You will give me your seed!" The playful flirtiness was gone from her voice. She'd gone full-on rapist. Cooper struggled to move his arms, finding Kristanya surprisingly strong for her build. But as she slid her body down his bringing her head down toward his junk, she sacrificed her arms' leverage on him. He bent his elbows, bringing his hands up under her arms, and grabbed her horns. "No means no, lady," said Cooper. "And if I'm being honest, you're giving off kind of a desperate vibe." Kristanya's claws dug deep into Cooper's forearms as she tried to wrest his hands from her horns. He felt her tail release its grip on his ankle. Taking whatever advantage he could get, he pushed ineffectively with his feet as well, but then felt the tail wrap tightly around his neck and start to constrict. If it weren't for the certainty of death at the end, this all might have been even more arousing. With all the breath his lungs were able to squeeze out through his collapsing windpipe, Cooper spoke what he hoped weren't his last words. "I'm... really... angry." The pain seared through his arms as his muscles expanded into her still-digging claws. His head felt like it might burst as his neck tried to force itself out against her tail's grip. Cooper released Kristanya's horns and pulled his arms free of her grip. Kristanya hovered above him as far up as her tail tether on his neck would allow, taking in his body, transformed as it was by his Barbarian Rage. "Yes!" she cried in ecstasy. She smeared Cooper's arm blood across her breasts. "So much anger! So much passion! So much – YAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOW!" Cooper had grabbed her tail with both hands and torn out a large chunk of it with his teeth. Her tail immediately loosened, and she flew out of his reach. Able to breathe again, Cooper spat out flesh, blood, and scales, then sucked in as much air as he could. He looked for something to throw. At first glance, all he could come up with was Tim. Even with his mind clouded by Rage, he knew that wasn't an ideal option. Then he considered the bed itself. If he could tear off one of those big-ass ribs, he might have the reach to swat that demon bitch out of the air. He ran to the bed and grabbed a post. "Cooper," Tim whispered, apparently only faking unconsciousness. Cooper punched him in the face, knocking him out for real. It was for his own good. As long as he was still trying to get blown to death, he was a liability. His limited attention back on the massive bone bedpost, Cooper grunted as he wrenched it free from the rest of the frame. It was by no means an elegant weapon, but it had the reach he needed. Still cradling her wounded tail, Kristanya dodged Cooper's wild bone swings at her. A wave of exhaustion, clearness of mind, and flatulence washed over Cooper, and the bone suddenly felt much heavier in his hands. He collapsed as he farted out the last of his Barbarian Rage. "Ungrateful beast!" cried Kristanya. "You aren't worthy to enter my body!" Now they were getting somewhere. Cooper nodded while he caught his breath. "It's not you. It's me." "There are far worse ways to die than at the mercy of a Succubus." Cooper wheezed out a laugh. "Like getting hit by a Fuck You Bus?" "We'll see how you laugh when I feed you to a horde of quasits! When they begin to devour you, you'll – YOU!" That was an odd turn of phrase. Was she stuttering? Cooper looked up to find Kristanya and Julian racing toward the minotaur skull table. Julian just beat her to it, but Kristanya landed right behind him and wrapped her tail around his neck. "Give me the gloves," Kristanya demanded pleasantly, putting out her hand. Julian's face was turning red. Not left with a lot of options, he put the gloves in her hand. Kristanya smiled. "Very good, Julian. I knew you were my favorite." She released his neck and he dropped to his knees, gasping for air. Cooper finally managed to push the big bone off his chest and sit up. "Seems I was careless," said Kristanya, picking up her hat and placing her gloves inside it. "One must always take care to keep one's valuables in a safe place." Between the tone of her voice, the events of the past hour, and a lack of obvious alternatives which Cooper could readily identify, he half expected her to roll up the whole bundle and shove it up her cooch. He was mildly intrigued by the idea of being able to watch. Instead, she snapped her fingers and disappeared. Hat, gloves, demon whore. All of them just gone. Julian rushed over to Cooper, looking at the claw wounds on his arms. "Are you okay?" Cooper shrugged. "I'll live. I guess, at least until she feeds me to Quasimodo or whatever the fuck she said." The sound of metal scraping against rock came from over where Tim had knocked out Dave. "Dave?" Julian called over to him. "Are you okay?" Dave stood up. He was wearing his breast and back plates, but was bare-ass naked below the waist. His dwarf dong was fully erect, poking out like a second nose from a bush that was as thick and unkempt as his beard. "Where's Kristanya?" "Dammit." Julian shook his head and pointed at the floor in front of Dave. "Horse!" The white stallion which appeared seemed somehow surprised to find itself in hell with a half-naked horny dwarf behind it. It kicked Dave right in the nipples of his breastplate, knocking him against the wall and unconscious once again. "If he moves, do that again." The horse gave a small whinny of understanding. "That reminds me," said Cooper. "What the fuck ever happened to Ravenus?" "I left him behind to go for help." Julian helped Cooper to his feet, then ran to the door. "I had a bad feeling about this from the beginning." He pushed on the door, then shook his head. "No good. It won't budge." Still fatigued from his Barbarian Rage, Cooper took a few deep breaths and mentally focused on what he was best at. "Get out of the way." Julian looked back at him, shrugged, and stepped to the side. "I guess it couldn't hurt to try." With a solid running start, Cooper charged at the door, slamming into it with his right shoulder. Sharp pain shot down his arm all the way to his hand. The noise of the collision was immense, much more so than it should have been. But still, the door refused to budge. Cooper summed up his disappointment and pain in one word. "Fuck." "That was really loud," said Julian. Cooper sat on the floor and rubbed his shoulder. "I'm really sorry to have disturbed your goofy-ass giant elf ears." "No, I was just thinking that we might be able to get someone's attention on the other side." Julian started banging on the door. He had a good point. It was making a lot more noise than his delicate elf fist should have been capable of. Cooper reasoned that his larger half-orc fist would make even more noise. He took over pounding on the door while Julian hunched over and peeked through the keyhole. "Ravenus! Help!" Cooper stopped knocking. "Can you see him?" Julian shook his head. "I can't see anything. I was just hoping he might be able to hear me." "Should we keep knocking?" "Either that or try to think of another way out of here." "Fuck that," said Cooper. "My brain still hurts from Kristanya's mind fuck. How about you think and I'll keep knocking?" Julian sighed and nodded. Cooper resumed banging on the door. "Ravenus! Ravenus! RAVEN–" "Stop!" cried Julian. "You're saying it wrong. He only speaks Elven. He won't understand what you're saying unless you speak with a British accent." "Sorry, I don't speak Elven. I'm not wasting a skill point to learn how to talk to a fucking bird." "Surely it can't be that hard to learn one word in a foreign language. Repeat after me, syllable by syllable. Ray." "Ray," Cooper repeated. "Ven." "Ven" "Us." "Us." Julian smiled. "Not bad. Now put it all together." Cooper did his best to say the bird's name with the exact pronunciation Julian had just demonstrated for him. "Ravenus." Julian made a face like Cooper had just rubbed his balls on it. "What?" "If anything, you sound more American, like you're the living embodiment of a stubborn refusal to adopt universal healthcare and the metric system." "Your mother," was the only retort which sprang to Cooper's mind. Julian sighed. "We're just not getting out of here without that key." "That is correct," said Kristanya. Cooper's heart skipped a beat as he turned around. Kristanya was back on her throne, her tail bandaged with clean white cloth where Cooper had bitten it. She smiled at Cooper and Julian like they were a couple of altar boys in her rectory. "The key is safely out of your reach. You can beat on that door all you like. No one on the other side will hear you." "It's loud as fuck on this side," said Cooper. "I designed it that way." Kristanya rose from her throne and began walking slowly toward them. "You see, my charms occasionally fail to work on certain types of individuals." "Queers?" Cooper guessed, earning him a harsh glare from Julian. "What?" "They prefer to be called LGBT." "Dude. I'm fucking illiterate. You're going to give me shit about my spelling?" "I know not of these Eljee-beety of whom you speak," said Kristanya. "I was referring to elves. For whatever reason, they are more challenging to lure." "Darwinism," said Julian. Kristanya stopped walking. "I beg your pardon?" "Elves have crazy long life spans, right? It would make sense, then, that to maintain a stable population, we would be hardwired to think about procreation less frequently, lest our numbers explode." Kristanya thought about what Julian said, and she seemed to give just as much of a shit about it as Cooper did. "Whatever the reason, listening to their agony as their hope of escape slips away serves as an appetizer before they finally change their minds and submit to me." "So you're going to keep casting Charm spells on me until one finally works? Cooper was right. That does sound desperate." "What kind of demon do you take me for?" Kristanya frowned innocently. "Magic grows tiresome, and the suffering lasts only but a moment. That's why elves are my favorite, Julian. I'll get to prolong your suffering. Once all your friends are gone, you'll go mad with hunger and loneliness until you beg me to end it. Then I'll continue to wait until I don't think you'll survive another day. Alternatively, you may just die. Sometimes I misjudge how much life a man has left in him." Cooper shook his head. "It takes a special kind of twisted bitch to get bored with the humdrum routine of conventional rape and murder." "You surprised me, Cooper. Half-orcs, with their weak minds, are rarely able to resist my charms." "Um... thank you?" "I thought about giving you the same treatment as Julian, but my quasits need to be fed." "I understand." Kristanya looked over to where Dave was lying unconscious with his dick in his hand, like he passed out drunk while watching porn. "Speaking of pets, I see you've Polymorphed your bird into a horse." "Yes," Julian lied. "It's, um... a game we like to play." Kristanya pouted at Julian. "And here I thought you did it just for me." "What benefit would you get by me turning Ravenus into –" Julian's face went even paler than usual. "No." Kristanya grinned at Julian, her red eyes flaring brightly again. They had an understanding that Cooper couldn't figure out. Then she turned her attention toward the horse and extended her hand, beckoning it to her. "Come here, pretty bird." The horse took a step toward her. "Stay where you are," demanded Julian. Kristanya wiggled her fingers at the horse. It ignored the shit out of Julian's order and stayed its course. Its impossibly huge horse dong grew and extended from its body, and Cooper suddenly had an idea of what was about to go down. A succubus, on a goddamn horse. Fucking epic. "This isn't happening," said Julian. Cooper rested a hand on Julian's shoulder. "Oh, it's happening alright." A whirlwind of questions raced through Cooper's mind. How was it going to work? Would she just take the end in her mouth and stroke the shaft? Would she take it down like a sword swallower? How big of a load does a horse shoot? Quarts? Could she swallow that much in one gulp? If she could blow a horse, could she blow an elephant? What about a whale? Those fuckers' dicks were ten feet long. How might he go about building an aquarium? "Lie down," Kristanya instructed the horse. The horse obeyed, getting down on its belly, rolling over onto its back, then spreading its legs. Its meat harpoon waved back and forth like an uncertain compass needle. "Nope," said Julian. "This isn't happening." He snapped his fingers and the horse disappeared. Kristanya's open mouth welcomed empty air. "Dude!" cried Cooper. "What the fuck?" "I'm sorry. I didn't want to watch that." "Then turn the other way! I don't want to watch The Bachelor, but I don't come over to your house and turn off your fucking TV, do I?" "What are you talking about? I don't even watch The Bachelor!" He looked at Kristanya. "Seriously, I've never sat through a full episode. In fact, I don't watch any reality –" "Silence!" Kristanya was furious, as well she should be. You just don't take the horse cock out of a woman's mouth and expect her to be cool about it. "It's time you learned some respect." "Respect is earned," said Julian. "And it has to be mutual." Cooper wasn't sure where Julian was going with this half-assed dad lecture. He was confident that a woman who blows horses in front of dudes for attention wasn't too bothered with 'respect' as Julian was defining it. Kristanya narrowed her glowing eyes at Julian. "We'll see how defiant you are after you meet some of my pets." With that, she blinked her eyes and disappeared. "What did she call her pets?" asked Cooper. "Quibbits or something? How big do you think one of those are? Honestly, at this point, anything smaller than a horse is going to be a disappointment." Julian headed toward the bed. "Hopefully, we won't have to find out. I've got one more idea. Come on." "Does this involve us pretending to be gay? I'm not sure I can play it convincingly, and I don't know that it would put her off. In fact, if she were to catch us making out in her bed, I think she might actually be –" "Please," said Julian. "Just, stop." "Fuck you, dude. I'm not any more thrilled about it than you are." "I'm not suggesting we start making out on the bed. I was thinking we might find something here to pick the lock with." "That's a good idea." Cooper thought for a moment while Julian inspected the bed where Cooper had ripped off the bedpost. "If picking the lock doesn't work, though, should we try the gay thing as a Hail Mary pass?" "I don't want to make that decision until I absolutely have to." "What if we got Tim and Dave to make out instead. We could tell them Kristanya would be really into it." Julian paused and rubbed his chin. "I think I could commit to that. As an absolute last resort, of course." "Of course," Cooper reassured him, pretending that he wouldn't have done it just for fun. "Will you get over here and help me?" Julian was trying to further damage the bed where Cooper had gotten it started. "There are a few chunks of wood too big to fit in the keyhole, and some splinters not substantial enough to work with. Cooper got a firm grip on the footboard, and they managed to rip the entire front off the bed. Tim rolled down the mattress and opened his eyes. "Cooper! Wait! Don't –" One more solid punch to the face put Tim back in dreamland, where he wouldn't be a danger to himself or others. Cooper picked up Tim's unconscious body. "Get the pillow." Julian grabbed the pillow off the bed, gave it a good fluff, then looked closely at a tear in the seam. "Is this stuffed with people's hair?" He sighed. "What am I saying? Of course it is." He set the pillow on the floor, and Cooper laid Tim gently down on it. Something in the wreckage of the bed caught Julian's attention. He picked up a small wooden peg and held it up to Cooper. "What do you think of this?" Cooper shrugged. "It looks like Tim's dick?" "Exactly," said Julian. "It's just about the same size as that key." "Sweet!" Julian and Cooper rushed back to the door. Julian inserted the makeshift dick key into the door's vag hole. "It's a tight fit, but I can just about squeeze it in." Cooper snorted. "Said no one ever to Dave's mom." Julian shoved the peg in as far as it would go, but there was no click. He sighed. "I guess we're back to square one." "Maybe not," said Cooper. "You can't just shove it in there and expect it to open on your first try. Wiggle it around. Pull it in and out. Finesse it a little." "I'm trying to pick a lock, not bring a door to orgasm." Cooper nudged Julian aside. "Let me give it a try." He removed the peg, spit in his hand, then rubbed the peg in his spit. With his thumb and index finger, he stroked the peg up and down, making sure to get it lubed up nice and evenly. He inserted the peg gently at first, then eased it out and shoved it back in a little more forcefully. "Do you like that?" "Maybe you should buy the door dinner first," said Julian. "Maybe you should go fuck yourself. I'm doing my best." Cooper jiggled and twisted the key every way he could, then started ramming it harder in. "Come on, door. Who's your daddy? Who's your daddy? Who's your – FUCK!" "JESUS!" cried Julian as searing pain tore into Cooper's shoulder and ass cheek. "What the fuck is that?" Cooper felt like he had a rabid monkey on his back, which was somehow biting his shoulder while simultaneously stabbing his ass. "I don't know! It's like Kristanya's Mini-Me." "Well get it the fuck off my back!" Cooper punched at the creature, but was unable to get enough reach to hurt it or drive it away. Julian pulled out whatever had pierced Cooper's ass. Cooper felt the tiny monkey hands and feet scramble to maintain their grip on him, and the wind of frantically flapping wings. Finally, the creature released its hold on his shoulder and screamed like a lizard-cat that just got its tail stepped on. Turning around, Cooper found Julian biting hard on the tail of something that did indeed look like a miniature version of Kristanya, except that it was blue, bald, male, and only about a foot and a half tall, not counting the tail, which was about as long. The tiny demon grabbed Julian's long elf ears and attempted to bite him in the face, but Cooper grabbed it by the throat and pulled it off. "Let go of me!" the tiny winged shithead croaked. Cooper slammed its horned head into the wall. With a satisfying crunch, the creature's flapping wings and flailing arms, legs, and tail all went limp. He flung its lifeless body to the ground. A slow clap came from across the chamber. Kristanya sat on her bone throne, her red eyes glowing smugly. "Well done, gentlemen. You might have handled him better if he hadn't caught you by surprise. I suggest staying alert for the next round." "Next round?" said Julian. Kristanya smiled. "Of course. A single quasit is no match for two strapping young men such as yourselves. I always do a trial run so that I can make an informed decision on how many to throw at you for the real fight. Taking into account various factors, such as your size, ability to fight as a team, and what I know about my quasits, I believe ten will provide optimal entertainment value for me." Cooper considered it. He and Julian might be able to take out ten of those things, but they'd come out of it in a world of hurt. His ass cheek pulsed with pain where the little fucker had stabbed him with its tail. "Then again," Kristanya continued. "Cooper appears to have gotten stung. Depending on how severely the quasit venom affects his celerity, my calculations may be way off." She shrugged. "I suppose we'll soon find out." With a blink of the eyes, she was gone again. Cooper bent over and lifted the back of his loincloth. "I hate to ask you to do this, but I need you to suck out the poison." "It's venom," said Julian. "And absolutely not." "Quit fucking around, man. This is serious!" Julian turned away. "If it was a matter of life or death, then I might consider sucking on your ass, but –" "Fuck life and death! She said my celery stick is going to fall off." "What? No she didn't." Julian paused to think, then looked at Cooper. "She said your celerity would be affected." "What the fuck is celerity?" "It's like how fast you move. Maybe the venom affects your Dexterity score or something." Cooper let his loincloth down and stood straight. "Oh. That's preferable to having your lips on my ass." "Agreed. Now lets –" "OW!" Cooper cried as something hard hit him on the side of the head. A wooden chunk of broken bed frame clattered on the floor next to him. "Asshole!" said Tim, standing next to the bed, arm cocked back with another piece ready to throw. "Dude, that hurt." "Well how do you think it feels to keep getting punched in the goddamn face every time I wake up?" "That was for your own good." "He was trying to save your life," Julian said to Tim. "We needed to keep you from getting yourself killed while we tried to pick the lock and get out of here." Tim snorted blood out of his nose. "You were trying to pick a lock? He rubbed his chin in an exaggerated thoughtful manner. "If only we had a fucking rogue in the party." "Kristanya has you under some kind of Charm spell. We didn't think you'd agree to help us escape." Tim came closer. "Asking nicely will get you a lot farther than face punching." He gently tossed Cooper the chunk of wood he'd been threatening to throw at him. Cooper raised his hand to catch it, but caught only a fistful of air as the wood hit him in the head. "Ow." "Nice catch, shitface." "Shit," said Cooper, looking at his hands. "My senility, my salami, my –" Tim looked at Julian. "What the fuck is he talking about?" "His celerity. He got stung in the ass by a mini-demon. The venom is affecting his Dexterity score." "Well then we'd best grab Dave and get the fuck out of here, wouldn't you say?" Julian smiled. "So you'll help us pick the lock?" "Fuck that. Why pick a lock when you can just use the key." Tim reached into his pocket and pulled out Kristanya's silver dick key. Julian's mouth and eyes went wide. "How did you... When...? "When Cooper and Kristanya were wrestling around on the floor. I caught a glimpse of Cooper's taint and my dick shriveled up like a raisin. I snapped out of my trance and swiped the key." "Well shit," said Cooper. "Why didn't you say something?" "Because every time I tried, you knocked me the fuck out." "Oh, right. Sorry." "Forget it." Tim held up the key for Julian. "You'll have to do the honors. I can't reach the hole." Julian frowned at the keyhole. "There's a little problem with that. The peg we tried to pick the lock with is stuck in the hole." He pinched at it ineffectively. "It's jammed in there good, and it looks like Cooper snapped part of it off when he was attacked." Tim picked up a piece of peg from the floor. "Is this the other part?" Julian nodded. "Do I want to know why it's wet?" Julian shook his head. "I can't believe you two idiots would try to pick a lock with this. Summon one of your goddamn horses so I can take a look." "Horse," said Julian. A small grey pony appeared, just the right size for Tim to sit on to get eye level with the keyhole. Julian calmed the surprised animal by stroking its mane. "Just stay here. Everything's okay." Cooper lifted Tim up onto the horse, and Tim eyed the keyhole. After a few unsuccessful tries to grasp it, he sighed. "I can't do it. There's just not enough peg sticking out for me to grip." Julian looked around the room. "What if we snapped a couple of rib bones off Kristanya's throne? Do you think you could use them like forceps?" Tim shrugged. "I doubt it, but it's something to pass the time with while we wait to get our souls sucked out of our dicks. Cooper, go snap off two of the sharpest and strongest pieces of bone you can find. Cooper ran in a zigzag fashion toward the throne. That venom was really fucking with his celebrity. He arrived dizzily at the throne and snapped off two pieces of what he guessed were once a dwarf's rib cage. They took a little muscle to break, which meant they should serve their purpose well enough. Having completed his mission, he felt a big shit coming on. The quasit venom was doing a number on his insides as well. Supposing they didn't have much to lose at this point, he decided to give Kristanya something to remember them by. He squatted over the seat of the throne and hosed it down with liquid shit. When he was done, he felt twenty pounds lighter. Jogging back to his friends was like floating on air. Tim and Julian were glaring at him. "What?" "Was that truly necessary?" asked Tim. "The crazy bitch seems both fond of torture and creative. We don't really need to go out of our way to piss her off even more." "I had to shit somewhere, and I don't see a men's room." He held up the bones for Tim. "When we get out of here, you'll be glad I did it." "If we get out of here. This bone thing is a long shot." Tim turned his attention to the keyhole and tried to grip the wooden peg with the two pieces of bone. After a moment of struggling, Tim shook his head. "It's no use. I'm not getting anywhere." "Do you want me to try?" asked Cooper. "Fuck no!" Tim threw the bones at Cooper. "You're the one who fucked it up in the first place. Without a drill or some strong ass super glue, we're completely fucked." Cooper looked down at the ground, trying to figure out how glue might solve the problem, then looked back up at Tim. "Would earwax do?" Tim rolled his eyes. "Not unless your earwax is strong enough to fix –" His scowling eyes went wide. "Dave!" "You think my earwax can snap Dave out of his trance?" "No, you fucking moron. Dave could use a –" Tim's lips shut like a drawstring Hefty bag. "Never mind. The less you know, the better. Just hurry up and get him over here." Cooper stomped sullenly toward Dave while Tim and Julian whispered secrets to each other. He found him still unconscious and half-naked on the floor, and paused to consider how it would be best to move him. If he dragged him by the arms, Dave's ass would scrape raw against the rough rocky floor, but if he dragged him by the legs, he'd have the same issue with Dave's head. Cooper didn't know how many healing spells Dave had prepared, but he'd probably need one or two for himself after getting kicked by a horse, and Cooper wanted a couple for his own shoulder and ass. Taking the safest option, he slapped Dave lightly on the cheeks. "Dude, wake up." Dave stirred. "What? No. I don't want to touch it." Cooper cleared his throat and gave Dave a little bit harder of a slap. "Come on, man. Keep your fucking altar boy memories suppressed and get your shit together." Dave opened his eyes. "Cooper?" He looked around frantically. "Where's Kristanya? Is it over? I didn't get my turn!" "She's coming back," said Cooper. He didn't want to lie, because his Charisma score was too shitty for him to do it successfully, so he spoke in half truths. "She's bringing some friends." "Alright!" Dave rubbed his hands together, and his dick started up again from half mast. "Let's go join the others. We're all talking about Kristanya's tits." That wasn't necessarily a lie, as Cooper was prepared to steer the conversation in that direction if he had to. He needed Dave near enough to the door to shove him through when Julian and Tim opened it, or a shorter distance to drag if he had to knock him out again. "Awesome." Dave's fat dwarf ass jiggled as he waddled toward the door. "Hi, Dave!" said Tim with a welcoming friendliness in his tone that Cooper was all but certain Tim had never used with anyone before, nor had Dave ever had used toward him. Dave stopped, eyeing Julian, Tim, and the horse Tim was standing on suspiciously. "What's going on here? What are you guys up to?" He put his hands on his bare hips. "Are you trying to pick the lock?" Tim and Julian laughed. "No way!" said Julian. "We were just waiting for Kristanya to return, so that we could all, um... do her." "And her friends." Julian's overly friendly expression faltered. "Friends?" "Cooper said she left to get some friends." Tim narrowed his eyes at Cooper. "Did he?" "That's right!" said Julian. "Friends! She went back to the bar to get some friends. She should be coming back any moment now." Dave removed his helmet and started on the buckles and straps of his back and breast plates. "Why the hell are you guys still dressed?" "We've got a bit of a problem," said Tim. "We thought you might be able to help. You see, Kristanya can't get back in here." Dave stopped fiddling with his armor and looked up at Tim. "Why not?" "Cooper, the big doofus, shoved a wooden peg into the keyhole so that it would look like a woman with a big dick. He accidentally snapped half of it off, and the other half is stuck in there." "How can I help?" "I've noticed that you've been preparing a couple of Mending spells on days when we're planning to go out drinking." Dave nodded. "I figure Cooper's going to break something. If I can undo the damage with a Zero Level spell, it beats paying for it with our booze money." "That's good thinking," said Julian, laying pretty heavily into his Diplomacy skill. "Do you have any of those Mending spells prepared right now?" "Sure." Tim stuck the half of the peg in his hand into the keyhole. "Would you mind?" Dave reached up and touched the peg. "I mend thee!" Tim let go of the peg. It stayed in place. Now that Tim mentioned it, it did look like a woman with a huge dick. "Everyone's awake, I see." Kristanya had returned. She stood in front of her throne accompanied by ten more of those little demon fuckers, flapping in a cloud around her. "I wonder if ten quasits will be enough." She shrugged. "If not, there's plenty more where these came from." "Kristanya!" cried Dave, looking at her like a fat kid looks through the window of a Dunkin Donuts. "I feared I was too late!" "Shit," said Tim. "Cooper, grab Dave." Cooper put Dave in a choke hold. Dave flapped his stubby arms and croaked, "You tricked me, you bunch of fags!" "Dude," said Cooper. "Not cool, man. The preferred term is... Shit, I forgot. Leebyjeebies or something. But the point is that we can disagree without resorting to –" "FUCK YOU!" Cooper nodded, tightening his hold around Dave's throat. "See, that's okay because it doesn't –" "Why is this thing so goddamn slippery?" said Tim. Cooper turned to Tim, who appeared to be trying to jerk off the keyhole. His form was terrible. "Are you trying to pick the lock?" asked Kristanya. "That's adorable. Surely the sorcerer among you can tell you it's a magical lock, requiring a magical key." Tim and Cooper glared at Julian. Julian looked at the floor. "I supposed I could have used a Detect Magic spell." "Quasits!" Kristanya spoke to her minions. "Sting them until they're unable to move, but do not kill them." The horde of MiniMes swarmed forward, baring their teeth and dripping dark green beads of venom from the stingers at the ends of their tails. "How's that peg coming?" asked Julian without taking his eyes off the quasits. Tim was now jerking off the keyhole's dick with his shirt. "I'm working on it. Just keep those things off me." "Don't let Dave go anywhere," said Cooper. He stepped forward on unsteady legs and tried to look like a threat that everyone should converge on at once. "Magic Missile!" cried Julian. A bolt of energy smacked the leading quasit in the face, flipping it over backward in the air. It reoriented itself before hitting the ground, and continued its charge at Cooper. Dave waddled forward quickly ignoring the quasits. His dick was like a succubus-seeking missile. "Kristanya!" Four quasits grabbed him, sinking their stingers into his bare meaty dwarf ass. Not the nimblest of folks to begin with, Dave tripped over his own feet and fell hard on his face. At least he appeared to have squashed one underneath him. Cooper reasoned that if he could grab two quasits by the tail, he could both neutralize the threat they posed and use them as weapons with which to fight the remaining ones. He failed to take into account his fucked up Dexterity score, however, and how it might affect his attempts at such a specific maneuver. The problem became clearer as he swatted and grasped at thin air. Two quasits laughed at Cooper's feeble attempts as the other four flew past him. Swinging his arms around like a drunk asshole apparently didn't make him look as menacing as he'd hoped. The two laughing quasits latched onto his shoulders and planted their stingers in his belly. "Son of a –" He'd braced himself for the pain, but it still hurt like a motherfucker. On the bright side, their tails were much easier to grab now that they were stationary. Cooper pulled the stingers out of his gut and swung the wailing creatures around like living nunchuks. He swatted one of Dave's attackers right out of the air. Its scorched face suggested it was the one Julian had hit with a Magic Missile. It flopped onto the floor and didn't get back up. "Excellent!" said Kristanya, clapping giddily as she backed up to her throne. "More, Cooper, more!" "Cooper!" cried Julian. "Help!" Cooper turned around to find Julian wielding the dead trial-run quasit, swinging its lifeless body wildly as he attempted to fend off the living ones. Tim, apparently confused about what he was meant to be trying to achieve, now had his face pressed against the door and appeared to be blowing the keyhole while three quasits stung him in the leg, arm and back. Julian grabbed the tail of the quasit stinging Tim's leg while Cooper swatted away the one on his arm. Tim flew backward off the horse and landed hard on his back, squishing the quasit underneath him. He spit out the peg and shouted, "FUCK!" He rolled over, pushed himself up, and punched the quasit in the face again and again until it crunched. "They hole's open, let's get the –" "NO!" screamed Kristanya, so loudly that the fighting stopped on both sides. She rose from her throne, flinging half-orc shit from her fingers. It coated her thighs, ass, and tail as well. "Who would... Why..." Dave groaned as he rolled over onto his back, cradling his junk in his hands. "I... heal... me." Kristanya's red eyes flared up bright enough to light up the entire chamber. "I've changed my mind. Kill them all!" The five remaining quasits grinned, delighted that they were now allowed to stop fucking around, and all flew at Cooper. He tried to dodge their attacks, but he had the reflexes of a newborn calf. Teeth and claws tore at his flesh all over his body. He felt like he was on fire. Recalling PSAs from childhood, he did the only thing he could think of. He might not be able to fight effectively with a Dexterity score close to bottoming out, but he could fall down like a motherfucker. He bowed his head and fell backward, crushing the three quasits on his back. Two remained on his chest, feverishly gnawing and clawing his man tits. He grabbed them by the necks, ripped them off like Band-Aids, and smashed their skulls together until their wings stopped flapping. Kristanya advanced slowly, looking not at all concerned about her dead pets, but rather delighted at the sight of Cooper and his friends squirming around helplessly on the floor like bloody maggots. "You worthless, ungrateful swine. I invite you into my home, offer you my body and a means to end your miserable existence, and what do you do?" Tim squirmed closer to Julian and Cooper and whispered, "Julian, keep her distracted. I'm going for the door." "What about Dave?" said Julian. "We can barely move. The only hope we've got is that Ravenus rounded up a posse and they're waiting to charge in from the other side." Julian nodded. "And how do you return my generosity?" Kristanya continued. "You destroy my bed. You desecrate my throne. You filthy, disgusting creatures have the audacity to reject this body? Do you even know what I am?" "You're a disgrace!" said Julian. "How can you even call yourself a temptress? Do you realize how pathetic it is to have to use magic to get someone like Cooper to let you put his dick in your mouth?" "Ouch," said Cooper. "Harsh, but fair." Tim swayed to his feet like he had octopus legs and steadied himself against the horse. Kristanya stepped over her bedpost and walked past Dave, still cradling his nuts on the floor. "You know nothing of my kind, elf. I am a demon, a denizen of the Abyss, a –" "A coward. Once we started to resist your weak-ass Charm spells, you wouldn't come near us until you'd weakened us with a horde of your minions." "That's what minions are for, sweet Julian. Why bother getting my own hands dirty? It's much more fun to watch. And how can you call me pathetic when your little friend still persists on trying to pick a lock that he knows can't be picked?" Tim kept trying to insert the key into the hole, but he kept missing. On the fourth try, it fell out of his hand and clinked onto the floor. "What?" cried Kristanya. "How could you..." She reached her hand out toward the key. "You thieving little slime!" The key began to fly toward her open hand, but Julian snatched it out of the air. "No more games! Give me that key!" Kristanya stomped toward Julian. "How dare you steal from me, you miserable little –" "FUCK YOU, BAT WHORE!" shouted Dave as a horn sprouted out of Kristanya's abdomen, dripping with black blood. Dave stood behind her, holding the bedpost, limp-dicked and panting heavily. Kristanya screamed so loudly that all the candles flickered out. The only light left in the room came from her eyes, which were beginning to dim. Cooper crawled toward her. He couldn't do much, but he might be able to bite her ankle or something. Julian reached up and handed Tim the key, then turned to Kristanya. "Magic Miss–" Kristanya blinked, and the room went completely dark. Julian's spell fizzled out, and the bedpost Dave was holding clattered to the floor. "Way to go, Dave!" said Julian. "What happened?" "I don't know what I was thinking," said Dave. "It was like I was in a trance." "What made you snap out of it?" Cooper snorted. "He healed himself." Julian frowned. "A Cure Light Wounds spell can remove a Charm?" "Of course not, dumbass. But you know how good those spells feel. Combine that with the fact that his balls were full to the point of bursting, it's pretty obvious he jizzed himself." "I don't see how that would –" "Think of it this way. It's three in morning, and the bar's about to close. This girl's been eyeing you all night, but you were certain you could do better. Now that you've had a few more drinks and your options are running out, she starts looking a lot better. So you're making out in the back of the cab on the way back to your apartment and you jizz your pants. No big deal, right? You've got the rest of the cab ride to build it back up, and you'll probably last a little longer. But then your look at her again with a clearer head, and you wonder what the fuck you were thinking. Jesus Christ, she knows where you live now. Are you going to have to move? Do you have to –" "Cooper!" said Tim. "What?" "Shut the fuck up." Tim hopped down from the horse and pushed the door open. Dim light spilled into the chamber. "JESUS!" He hit the deck.

5d6

Robert Bevan

THWACK THWACK

The horse caught two crossbow bolts. One in the neck, and the other in the eye. It was dead before it had a chance to scream. It vanished, and the two bolts clattered onto the threshold between dimensions. "Sorry!" said a balding gnome sitting on the side of the bed with a crossbow and a hard-on threatening to tear a hole in his little pants. "That was my fault." "I was only following his lead," said the similarly equipped elf sitting next to him. Julian stumbled across the threshold and looked at Ravenus, who was perched on the headboard. "Who the hell are these people?" Ravenus squawked something. Tim shook his head. The elf on the bed glared at Ravenus. "He neglected to mention that it involved a group of men and a horse." "Why would you tell them that?" asked Julian. Ravenus flapped his wings and squawked defensively. Tim harrumphed. "That figures. What a bunch of assholes. Tell them your friends are in danger and nobody gives a shit. But tell them there's a free sex show, and you might snag a couple of gullible fuckwits." "Hey!" said the gnome. Cooper picked up one of the crossbow bolts, darkened and slick with horse blood. "If you were expecting a parade of hookers to walk out the door, why the fuck was your first instinct to shoot us?" "I did apologize for that," said the elf. "We are not, after all," He looked down at Tim. "How did you put it, a couple of gullible fuckwits? In this day and age, you can't go around trusting everything a talking bird in a tavern tells you. When we couldn't get the door open, we wondered if he might be luring us into some kind of trap." "We did that poor creature a favor," said the gnome. "Look at you! All sweaty and wobbly-kneed, covered in bites and scratches. It's disgusting!" Julian gasped. "We weren't –" "Save it, elf." The gnome raised his hands, palms out to Julian. "Whatever you want to do with each other is your own business, but don't involve innocent animals in your twisted erotic rituals." "Screw you, fuckface," said Tim. "You followed a bird to a stranger's inn room to watch a free sex show, and you're going to judge us? I see what's happening here. It's called deflection. You're ashamed of yourselves for being creepy-ass perverts, and cheap ones at that. So you project your own insecurities onto us, making up stories about us fucking a horse, a horse that you murdered, without a scrap of evidence." "Hold the door, guys!" called Dave from inside Kristanya's chamber. "I had to get my pants." He waddled through the doorway with hoofprints on his breastplate and a drop of nut sauce still hanging from his limp dwarf schlong. The gnome smiled expectantly at Tim. "You were saying?" Julian started to say something, but Cooper put a hand on his shoulder. "Let them have this one. Let's go get a drink."

5d6

Robert Bevan

Fistin' the Furious

Thank you for your amazing generosity. "So why us?" asked Tim, still bitter over his swollen hand. He downed a shot of stonepiss, then set the empty shot glass upside down beside two others, forming the beginning of a pyramid. Other patrons, sipping fancier drinks from ornately decorated tankards, occasionally frowned disapprovingly at their table. The Golden Goblet wasn't the sort of place Tim and his friends usually frequented, but they served a decent stonepiss. As long as someone else was paying, that's all that really mattered. The young woman buying them drinks smiled sympathetically at him. She might be pretty if she didn't insist on dressing like a Puritan and wearing her hair tied up in a grandma bun. "I have a task which requires your various talents, and which I will pay you handsomely for." "Bullshit, lady. This isn't my first day in the game. We've been sent on enough quests from strangers in taverns to know that what you need is a group of expendable drunks to run off and do something that's too stupid or too dangerous for you to do yourself." "Perhaps I should do the talking?" said Julian. The tips of his long elf ears were already pink from the half a glass of beer he'd drunk. Tim necked back another shot, then set the glass down atop the row of empties to start the next tier of his pyramid. "We don't need your Diplomacy skill right now. She came to us." He turned back to the woman. "You've got until I pass out and piss my pants to make your pitch, so start pitching." "You need not fear any risk that I would not be willing to face alongside you, halfling. For it is my intention to accompany you on this quest. And not one of you is expendable. Like I said, it is your individual talents which led me to request your assistance. I have been watching you from a distance since early in the evening when you tried to pick my pocket." Tim held up his bandaged hand, unable to give her the finger because they were all too puffy and full of venom. "That's my unique talent you need? The one you personally witnessed me fucking up?" "That wasn't your fault." She placed her hand on the table, and a small black snake slithered out of her sleeve. "How were you to know that little Simon here was in my pocket? I didn't feel your hand at all. Until you screamed, I hadn't the slightest idea you were there." Tim grimaced at the snake. "Just keep Simon the fuck away from me." Ula clicked her tongue, and Simon slithered back up her sleeve. "Are you a sorcerer?" asked Julian. "Sorceress," the woman corrected him. "My name is Ula Wilmott. I am touched with the gift of sorcery, but I have yet to develop my powers as you have yours." "Ha!" said Dave. "Julian, a powerful sorcerer? She really is blowing smoke up our asses." "Let's cut to the chase," said Tim. "You need Cooper's Strength, Julian's Charisma and sorcery, Dave's healing magic –" "And Wisdom," said Dave. "Whatever. And my superior Intelligence and Dexterity." Tim downed another shot. "This sounds like it has the potential to be a dangerous mission. What kind of crazy scheme do you need us to help you pull off?" "Crazy?" Ula's left eye twitched. Her teacup rattled as she placed it on the saucer. She rested her trembling hand on her fork. "Would a crazy person do this?" Quick as a viper, she grabbed the fork and pinned Tim's already wounded hand to the table. "YEOWWW!" cried Tim. Cooper and Julian gawked uselessly while Dave yanked the fork out, then touched Tim's bleeding hand. "I heal thee!" Tim shuddered with relief, cradling his re-abused hand and looking into Ula's calm eyes as she sipped her tea. "Yes, as a matter of fact. That's precisely the sort of thing a crazy person would do." He was ready to jump out of the way of a second attack, but she quietly set her teacup down again, making no move for any cutlery. "Then if one suspects another of being crazy, it would make sense for one to not insult that person to their face." Tim was still a little too freaked out to try and make sense of that logic without another shot of stonepiss to settle his nerves. "Back to the question," said Julian. "What exactly do you need us to do?" Ula looked up from her tea and smiled sweetly at him. "I need you to take the lives of my brothers." Dave choked on his beer. Tim spat out his stonepiss. "Are you fucking ins–" He stopped himself just short of getting stabbed again, but Ula was looking at him expectantly, daring him to finish his sentence. "–urance salesmen?" Ula raised her eyebrows. "I beg your pardon?" "Never mind. I was thinking of something else." "I'm sorry, ma'am," said Julian. "But I don't think we're the guys you're looking for." "On the contrary. You're perfect." "We're not murderers for hire." "Oh, my." Ula looked aghast at the suggestion. "I would never ask you to murder anyone." "But you said –" "In fact, I'll be doing all of the work. I'm not asking you to do very much at all, apart from just being there." "I don't get it," said Dave. "If you're going to 'do all the work'," he accentuated the phrase with air quotes, "then what do you need us for? To move the bodies or something?" Ula thought for a moment, then smiled at Dave. "In a manner of speaking." Money. Not a lot of work. Watching this crazy bitch attack her brothers with a fork might even count for entertainment. "How much money are we talking about here?" asked Tim. Julian glared at Tim. "Two hundred gold pieces." Dave let out a long low whistle. Julian glared at Dave. "Each." Cooper let out a long low fart. Everyone glared at Cooper. "If you could excuse us for a moment," Tim said to Ula. "My friends and I would like a moment to speak privately." "Of course," said Ula, quickly rising from the table. "Take all the time you need." She walked briskly toward the exit like she'd just started the timer on a bomb inside the place. Under normal circumstances, it would have been more polite for the rest of them to leave her at the table, but Tim could tell that she was eager to get out of Cooper's fart cloud. "What's there to talk about?" Julian demanded as soon as Ula was out of sight. "We're not doing this." "Let's not be hasty," said Tim. "We should at least discuss it." "This is accessory to murder!" "Save it for Law & Order, Dick Wolf. This is Caverns & Creatures. People murder each other all the time. They don't have CSI shit. The odds of us getting caught are infinitesimal." "That's not the only reason to not assist murderers." "We're not assisting shit. We're just moving bodies. If we don't do it, that money's just going to go to the next lowlife pieces of shit she approaches." "But our consciences, at least my conscience, will be clean." That was just the in Tim needed. "Will it? Knowing that you let this woman get away with murder when you could have stopped it, or at least brought her to justice?" Julian frowned, clearly suspicious. "What are you getting at?" "We go with her and check out the situation. Maybe her brothers deserve to die. Maybe they beat her, or abuse her in some other way." "It's not our place to –" "Hear me out. Maybe it's a money thing, and she's just a greedy bitch. We don't know, which is why we should go with her and see what's going on. She thinks we're a bunch of lowlifes." "I can't fault her for that." "Exactly. We don't come off as very heroic or virtuous, so she thinks we'll do anything for a buck. She won't be expecting us to interfere." Julian narrowed his eyes at Tim. "So you're in this strictly as a matter of altruism." "Not necessarily. There's also the possibility that we are either unwilling or unable to interfere, in which case we collect our money and do what we were hired to do." "That's precisely what I don't –" Tim raised a finger. "But after that's done, we send an anonymous letter to the authorities with her address and the exact location of where the bodies are dumped. She goes to prison, or gets hanged, or burnt at the stake, or whatever the fuck they do here, her dead brothers are avenged, and we get paid. You think any of the other assholes in this tavern would go to that kind of trouble?" Julian was clearly trying to think of a counter-argument, but coming up short. He needed a little bit more of a nudge. "Think about us, and the rest of the folks at the Whore's Head Inn," said Tim. "Eight hundred gold pieces could go a long way toward the kind of magical research that could get us out of this shitty world and back in our real bodies." An hour later, they were in a hired carriage passing through North Gate. Ula paid the driver a gold piece in advance, which was likely well more than the standard fare. The purse she'd taken the coin from was weighty in her hand, like there was plenty more where that had come from. The ride was awkward and mostly silent. Ula tried to make light conversation a few times, but everyone answered her questions briefly and succinctly. Only Ravenus seemed to be enjoying the trip, flying in wide circles high above the carriage, occasionally diving down to murder a rabbit or field mouse, no doubt just gobbling up their eyes and leaving the rest of the body to rot. Finally, the carriage stopped. Once everyone had gotten out, the driver tipped his hat to Ula, turned his carriage around, and headed back for the city. Tim wondered if Ula had a cart handy for them to put the bodies in. Julian could summon some horses if they needed to, but did she know that? As was fashionable among these older houses on the bank of the Bluerun River on the northern side of Cardinia, the property the carriage stopped in front of was surrounded by a wrought-iron gate crawling with rose bushes. The bars of this fence, however, pointed in different directions and odd angles, as if the rose bushes were all that was holding them up, rather than vice-versa. Even the roses looked off somehow. Most of the houses they'd passed sported healthy and robust bushes, bursting with shiny green vines and flowers of vibrant reds, oranges, purples, and pinks, filling the air with their sweet perfume. The leaves here were a much darker shade of green, and the vines were studded with long sharp thorns. The flowers' sepals were disproportionately large compared to the petals, which were an ugly shade of nicotine yellow. They smelled faintly of spoiled milk. Ula stopped at the gate and turned to face them. A sagging rose touched her shoulder gently, and she swatted it away like it was an annoying horsefly. "I beg you'll pardon the state of the house. I'm not the tidiest of homemakers." They were going to watch a multiple homicide. Tim didn't give a fuck about the state of her house, but he smiled politely. "I can assure you, we've all seen much worse." As if to strengthen Tim's claim, Cooper chose that precise moment to fart out a blob of greenish-brown shit on the ground. "Excuse me." "Are you ill, Mr. Cooper?" asked Ula. She swatted a little more violently at the rose which the breeze had caused to graze her shoulder again. Cooper shook his head and panted, holding his eyes shut until a healthier and drier fart escaped. "No, it's cool. Just my Charisma acting up." Ula gave him a pleasant smile and a slight bow. "Very well. And thank you for being so under– FOR THE LOVE OF –" She grabbed the sagging vice supporting the rose which had dared touch her a third time, and pulled it with both hands, not even seeming to notice the thorns tearing into her skin. "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? YOU MADE ME DO THIS!" She wrapped the vine around both hands, then pulled upward like she was trying to pull a loved one out of quicksand. "DIE! DIE! DIE!" The ground finally let go of a large clump of dirt and root, which Ula used as a flail to beat the ground with. When she was satisfied that the offending plant was dead enough, she let the vine drop to the ground. It was soaked in her blood, which was dripping profusely from her hands. Regaining her composure, she blew at a lock of hair that had fallen out of place and was touching her forehead. It fell back down on her forehead, and Tim feared she was going to start ripping her hair out. Instead, she brushed it back with her hand. The smear of blood kept it in place, which was at least as horrifying. Dave cleared his throat. "Would you like a healing spell?" Ula looked down at her hands. "I suppose the house is enough of a mess. That would be lovely, thank you." She extended her hands toward him, and he touched the least bloody part of her wrist. "I heal thee." Ula's chest heaved as she closed her eyes and inhaled ecstatically. When the blood stopped dripping from her hands, she opened her eyes and looked down at Dave. "You have quite the magical touch." She ran a finger along the leopard fur on Dave's forearm. "I wonder what it would feel like... inside." Tim couldn't think of a reason Dave's Cure Light Wounds spell might feel better indoors, but he hoped there was some explanation to what she said other than the only one he could come up with. What kind of person, on the day they've picked to murder their family in cold blood, gets distracted by fantasizing about getting fisted by a dwarf? Also, what kind of vag was she packing if it could accommodate Dave's whole forearm? Tim's little halfling dick wouldn't stand a chance of touching the sides, not that she'd shown any interest. "Shall we go inside now?" asked Ula. Everyone glanced at each other before giving reluctant nods, then followed her toward the front door. "Do you still feel like this was a good idea?" Julian whispered to Tim as they trailed behind Dave and Cooper. "Hang on." Tim pulled out his flask and gulped back some stonepiss. "Yeah. Let's go." The front lawn had a distinct redneck vibe to it, with its tall grass, overgrown hedges, and random junk strewn about. All it was missing was a rusty old pickup truck. Just before reaching the porch, Ula stopped to dip her blood-covered hands in a stone birdbath which looked like it might fall over any minute. The algae-green water turned brown as she rubbed the blood from her hands. "Please," said Dave. "Allow me." He dipped a finger in the water, touching her hand gently. "I purify thee." The water instantly turned crystal clear, with not a trace of algae or blood. Tim couldn't believe what he was seeing. Dave had obviously picked up on the same fisting innuendo as he had and was actually trying to keep that door open. Was he hoping to squeeze that in before or after the murders? Was he hoping that it would lead to a long term relationship? Was he that starved for a woman's affection? Whatever his motivations, if there was anything more stomach-turning than that rose bush incident, it was watching Dave trying to act suave. Ula smiled at him. "Oh, my!" Again, Tim was bewildered. She was genuinely eating this shit up. What could she possibly see in Dave? Or maybe she was just into dwarves. Maybe they're known to give good fist. He'd have to ask some locals next time he was in a tavern. "This way, gentlemen." Ula walked up the rickety front porch steps of what looked to have once been a beautiful mansion, but had fallen into decades of disrepair. As soon as she set foot on the top step, the large wooden doors opened slowly, seemingly of their own accord. "Jesus!" said Cooper, expressing what Tim was barely able to keep from saying out loud himself. Just on the other side of the door stood a grotesquely deformed elderly man to greet them. His good eye was brown, and as large as the patch covering his other eye. It was also slightly higher on his head. His ears were large and pointed, but not like an elf's. Instead of being long and slender, like Julian's, they were wide like a pig's, poking out sideways. Calling him human might have been generous, but he was certainly no elf. Tim glanced up at Ravenus, perched on Julian's shoulder. Sure enough, he was staring open-beaked at that freakishly big eye. The old man smiled at his guests, showing off his three yellow teeth poking out of swollen gums. Not wanting to be rude, Tim's gaze fell to the man's hands, each of which had an extra thumb, because of course they did. "Be not alarmed, little halfling," said Ula."This is my brother, Matthias." They looked to be at least eight generations apart. Tim was genuinely curious about how their mom had popped out a second kid at the age of three hundred and eight, but he was already in deep enough shit from the obviously horrified expression on his face. "I wasn't alarmed," said Tim. "Quite the contrary, in fact. I was admiring..." Tim searched for something to credibly finish that sentence with. "...his ring!" He might have oversold his excitement, but at least the ring looked interesting enough to sell the story. The ring itself, like its owner, looked old and tarnished. But it was adorned with three shiny pearls the size of Peanut M&M's. One orange, one white, and one blue. "Do you like it?" wheezed Matthias. "It's one of my own inventions." "You invented the ring?" asked Tim. He guessed it was plausible. Motherfucker certainly looked old enough. Hell, for all Tim knew, this guy could have invented the circle. "Matthias is very clever," said Ula. "This self-opening door is another one of his inventions." She certainly had a lot of praise for someone she was about to murder. Matthias pointed at a small blob of shit between Cooper's feet. "Um..." said Cooper. "That was already there." "There's a panel under the top step!" Matthias shouted. It wasn't an angry shout. It was more like he thought everyone else was as deaf as he was. Cooper frowned. "Do you want me to get that for you? Or..." "It triggers the door!" "Oooooh," said Tim, Dave, and Julian. They clapped politely, pretending to be impressed at his Walmart technology. Ula stepped inside and gestured for Tim and his friends to follow. "Come in and meet my other brothers." Tim dared not look at Julian as he got the creeping feeling that they might be making a huge mistake. "How many brothers do you have?" "Four, including Matthias. They'll be thrilled to finally meet you." What the hell did that mean? Tim could practically feel Julian's accusatory stare stabbing him in the back of the head. "Were they expecting – Holy fucking shit." What was once a living room was now a storage pit for broken furniture, dust, and spider webs. Standing in the middle were three of the most horribly disfigured human beings Tim had ever seen. "This is Dunder," said Ula, gesturing at the monstrosity on the left. "Say hello, Dunder." "Yaaaaaaa," said Dunder, dressed only in a filthy blood-smeared leather butcher's apron. His jaw appeared to be immobile, leaving his mouth permanently open, consequently leaving him unable to form consonants. Having failed to say the word, he settled for waving the two baby arms sprouting out of his right shoulder. Ula nodded, then turned her attention to the next freak. "This is Figg." Figg was a squat blob of a man. He was naked, but his skin was completely covered with long grizzled white hair, like fur made out of old man pubes. "He–lloooo," said a gravelly voice that Tim could only assume was Figg's. The long pube fur hung down over his mouth, making it impossible to tell for sure that he was the one talking. "And this," Ula walked over and placed a gentle hand on the bare shoulder of the monstrosity on the right, "is Momo." "MOMO!" said Momo, looking up at Tim with wild milky eyes. Thick black chains attached his wrists to his ankles, severely limiting his movement and no doubt causing the enormous hunch in his back. He held a large iron ball attached to a chain that ran through a ring on his wrist and ankle chains, then up to an iron collar around his neck. His legs were about the size of Dave's, but his torso and arms were bigger than Cooper's when he was in Barbarian Rage mode. Ula rested a hand on his massive bald head. "Say hello to our guests, Momo." "MOMO!" "Bad Momo." She slapped him on the head, then squeezed his cheeks together with each syllable as she said, "Hello." "MOMO!" She slapped him again. "No! Hello." "MOMO!" Ula clenched her hands and pounded Momo on the head with both fists. "HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! BAD, STUPID MOMO! HELLO!" Momo banged on the floor with his iron ball, denting the old but surprisingly sturdy wood. "MOMO! MOMO! MOMO!" As her other brothers stood by indifferently, and Tim and his friends stood by dumbstruck and terrified, Ula screamed as she jumped onto Momo's back, then sank her teeth into the back of his head as her fists rained down on top of it. "What the fuck is going on?" asked Cooper, scratching his balls. "Are we back in Mississippi?" Tim wondered if this was how she planned to murder all of her brothers. Eventually, Ula's punches grew weaker. The energy it took to try to bite through her brother's skull was only maintainable for so long. She slid off his hunched back and composed herself. Her hair was wild, her face soaked with sweat, her mouth dripping with Momo's blood, and her left tit had fallen out the top of her dress. "You'll have to forgive Momo." She cupped her right hand over the side of her mouth and tapped her left temple. "He's not right in the head." "Mooomooo," Momo groaned sadly, swaying on his squat legs. "Oh dear," said Julian suddenly. "I've just remembered that today is my niece's birthday party." "Birthday party?" said Ula. "You have a niece?" said Cooper. Dave nudged him. Julian frowned, looking at his wrist. "We're already late. I'm afraid we'll have to take a rain check." Cooper scratched his balls more aggressively. "May I use the restroom first?" Tim now had doubts as to if whatever was going on under Cooper's loincloth was indeed ball-scratching. "No!" said Tim. "We're late for Jennifer's birthday party. We need to leave right now." "Fine." Cooper sulked as he removed his hand from under his loincloth. Tim turned back toward the front doors, which were still wide open. Matthias's frail disfigured silhouette was a blemish in the sunlight. "I'm afraid we cannot allow you to leave," said Matthias, stepping on random parts of the floor with his left foot. He finally stopped when the doors slammed shut behind him. He narrowed his eye at them and added, "ever." It would have been more dramatic if he'd had a better sense of exactly where the door trigger on the floor was. "Stand down, old man!" Julian wasn't normally one to make threats, being a scrawny elf. But Tim had to admit he could hear the Charisma bonus to his Intimidation check in his voice. Matthias's giant eye blinked. "You don't want to threaten me, lad." "Why the fuck not?" Damn, Julian. Breaking out the f-bombs. "Because this!" Tim shook his head. Because this? Dude really needed to work on his one-liners. Matthias lifted his eye patch, setting free his other, normal-sized eye. It shot out of his head toward Tim and his friends, trailed by yards and yards of optic nerve. "JESUS!" cried Tim, too grossed out to jump out of the way as it wrapped around their legs, arms, and necks. "What the hell is this?" said Dave. "Get it off me! Get it off me!" Matthias lowered his eye patch and laughed at them. "Yaayaaaayaya," Dunder joined in the laughter, clapping his baby hands together excitedly. Figg's whole body jiggled, causing ripples in his pube fur. "MOMO!" said Momo excitedly, pounding the floor with his iron ball. Cooper struggled against their bindings, jostling Tim around like a rag doll tied to his back. "This is so fucking gross." "Calm yourselves, new friends," said Matthias once the laughter subsided. "It's only rope. I spruced it up with a bit of illusory magic. I'm an inventor, you see." "Yes," said Julian. "You mentioned that." The illusion faded, and the rope looked like ordinary, non-nervy rope. It was still binding them all together, but Tim felt like he might be able to free a hand with a little effort. "Tut tut," said Ula, looking down at Tim. She pinched a pin on the back of Momo's collar. "Please don't make me loosen Momo's chains. He makes such a mess." "MOMO!" said Momo. Tim stopped struggling. Ula smiled at him, then looked up at Matthias. "Let's hurry this along, shall we?" Matthias plucked the blue pearl from his ring and rolled it like a tiny bowling ball toward Tim and his friends. Matthias's giant eye squinted into the cavity in his ring where the blue pearl had been mounted. "Oh yes, that's right." He looked up and grinned at Tim. "Sleep." Blue smoke flowed out of the orb. It smelled sweet and intoxicating. "Cooper!" Tim shouted, ready to risk Momo's wrath in order to avoid being asleep and vulnerable to these crazy assholes. "Use your Barbarian Rage!" "I'm... really..." Cooper yawned. "...ang..." The snore and fart that followed were not encouraging. The smoke stung Tim's eyes, forcing them shut. But it was oddly soothing to his lungs as he breathed it in. This isn't so bad. What was I so worried about? Where does worrying ever get you anyway? Bartender, can I have another shot of...

5d6

Robert Bevan

Chapter 12

Tim woke up, sober and with a massive headache. It wasn't the first time, and he knew the cure. It was in a flask in his vest pocket. Unfortunately, he found he was unable to move his arms. "The fuck?" he said as he struggled to move. Though he didn't like the idea of opening his eyes to a new day without a bit of liquid motivation, he felt it prudent to assess his unusual situation before acting upon it. Opening his eyes, he discovered that he was held down by thick leather straps. Julian, Dave, and Cooper were likewise strapped to wooden tables, and still sound asleep. Ravenus lay asleep in a rusty iron birdcage hanging from a hook above Cooper's table. Judging by the musty air, the upward leading stairs outside the arched entryway to the room, and the faint evening light seeping in through the small barred windows near the ceiling, Tim guessed they were in some kind of dungeon. Against the wall opposite the one their tables were lined up against stood a small cage, about the size of two phone booths, with thick iron bars and what Tim appraised from a distance to be a pretty high-end lock. Even with quality tools, he would likely have a hard time picking it. Fortunately, the cage was empty and all Tim had to deal with was a leather restraint. With a bit of effort, and help from his high Dexterity score and the ranks he'd put into Escape Artist skill, he managed to coax the end of the strap backward through the buckle with the tips of his fingers. His right arm finally free, he dug his hip flask out from the inside pocket of his vest. He needed a clear head in order to get some real thinking done. A few gulps of stonepiss did the job nicely, and Tim's situation didn't seem quite as grim as it had a moment before. He began to formulate a plan which wasn't much more complicated than getting everyone else awake and untied, then getting the fuck out of this place. It seemed like an obvious and simplistic plan for Tim's high Intelligence score, but anything more complicated would likely be screwed up by his dumbshit friends. He was swallowing back another gulp of stonepiss when he heard footsteps approaching outside the wooden door opposite the stairs. He tucked his hand back through the loosened leather strap, turned his head away from the door, and pretended to still be asleep. "The first hour draws near," said Ula's voice after the door opened. "Which of them do you prefer?" "I've given it some thought," said Matthias, far louder than necessary. "My power is in my mind. The halfling would suit me fine. I could make use of his nimble fingers." Tim opened his eyes. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? He supposed that, on the surface, it was better than if he'd expressed interest in his tiny halfling asshole, but at least then there wouldn't be the added layer of ambiguity. "Perhaps you'd consider the elf?" said Ula. Tim was about to breathe a sigh of relief when Julian's eyes popped open. He had apparently also been faking sleep. Tim shook his head gently. If Ula and Matthias thought everyone else was asleep, there was a chance they might let slip a secret that could later be used against them. Julian closed his eyes again and pretended to sleep. "The elf, you say?" Matthias's tone sounded like he suspected some ulterior motive. "Interesting." "It's just that Momo is so rough and unpredictable. I thought we'd give the halfling to him." "The fuck you will!" Tim opened his eyes wide. Being raped to death by Momo was where he drew the line. Ula smiled at him, wearing nothing but a thin green semi-translucent robe, hanging open at the front and leaving very little to the imagination. She may have been batshit insane, but titties were titties. "You're finally awake. I imagine you're very confused right now." Tim stared unashamedly at her nipples, visible through the robe. "I was." Matthias hobbled over to Julian's table and began to drag it to the other side of the room. He was old, and the wheels screamed their thirst for oil, so it was kind of slow going. Tim noticed that the orange pearl was now missing from Matthias's ring, leaving only the white one. "What are you doing with me?" asked Julian, no longer feigning sleep. "Tim! Help!" Tim thought back to what Matthias had said about making use of his nimble fingers. If all he wanted was a handjob, it might be worth letting Julian just go through with it to avoid risking all their lives. He would wait to free his other hand. Tim glared at Ula, his gaze struggling to stay on her face. "This isn't what we signed up for." "Of course it is," said Ula. "Like fuck it is." He looked at Matthias. "She hired us to kill you and your brothers. Or at least to watch her do it. Now that I think back on it, it should have raised some red flags." Ula smiled. "I hired you to take my brothers' lives, which is precisely what you're about to do. You see, I wish to bear a child." "I don't understand what you're talking about," said Tim. "But it just got a whole lot creepier just the same." "The Wilmotts have not bred outside our own family for nine generations. Do you know what that makes us?" "Republicans?" Cooper laughed through his nose, then tried unconvincingly to pass it off as a snore. "Pure!" said Ula. "Purer than the gods themselves. And so they punished us with disfigurement and ailments of the mind. Still, our house maintained its purity of name and blood, continuing to share our love before their spiteful eyes. And do you know what they did then?" Tim shrugged. "Threw up?" "They made me barren!" "I'm so sorry to hear that," said Julian. "But what does that have to do with us?" It was probably for the best that he took over. Tim couldn't fake giving a shit about this woman's problems. "Matthias here has discovered a way in which we can maintain our family's purity and beat the gods at their own petty game." "I don't mean to nitpick, but you haven't actually answered my question." Matthias left Julian's table next to the cage and limped excitedly back toward the wooden door. He looked positively giddy. Ula smiled at her much much older brother, then down at Julian. "Your question will be answered very shortly." Matthias rushed back out of the room carrying what looked like an old-fashioned perfume bottle with a tube and bulb atomizer. Before reaching Julian, he made an unexpected turn into the cage and closed the door behind him. Ula strutted to the cage, pulled a steel key out from the pocket of her robe, and inserted it into the cell door's keyhole. The unmistakable sound of a clicking lock did little to reassure Tim that one of their problems had inexplicably just up and decided to solve itself. She slipped the key back into her pocket, then accepted the perfume bottle as Matthias handed it to her through the bars. Matthias turned his attention to Julian, still strapped to his table and looking terrified. He bent over so that their faces were right next to each other. Julian winced. It was anybody's guess as to when that old fucker had last brushed his three teeth. Ula stretched her arms out to hold the perfume bottle between their faces, then gave the bulb at the end of the tube a small squeeze. A small cloud of purple mist sprayed out of the bottle, which Matthias breathed in deeply, then promptly collapsed to the floor. "Ha ha!" cried Julian. "I did it!" While Tim wondered what the hell Julian was so excited about, Ula set the bottle between Julian's legs, unfastened his left arm restraint, and strode back to the wooden door which she and her brother had recently entered through. Placing her hand on the door handle, she turned back to Julian. "Don't keep me waiting long." Julian frantically went to work on his restraints, and Ula seemed surprisingly unbothered that her brother mysteriously collapsed and that one of her prisoners was setting himself free. Logic dictated that Tim should get busy with the rest of his own restraints now that nothing made fuck-all sense, but a gut feeling told him that was the wrong move. While Julian unfastened his ankle restraints, Matthias slowly climbed the cage bars, lifting himself off the ground. Tim was actually glad the old guy wasn't dead. He was clearly suffering from some kind of dementia. "I feel amazing!" said Julian, leaping off the table. He stretched his arms and legs like he was about to run a marathon. "I'm happy to hear that, sir," said Ravenus from his cage. "But I'm getting more of a sense of weakness and confusion." "What's happening?" said Matthias. He put his hand over his ear. "What happened to my ears?" His voice was louder now. He looked down at his right arm. "Why is my arm sticky?" His already massive eye grew even wider when he saw the ring on his finger. "What the fuck?" Julian stopped stretching. His face was suddenly pale and his eyes were wide. "My ring!" Matthias held the ring close to his eye and squinted. "NO! DON'T!" cried Julian. "Fireball?" Tim's world erupted in an explosion of light, warmth, and the sound of something like chunks meat slapping against a wall. He felt his table slam into Dave's, which slammed into Cooper's, which slammed into the wall. Ears ringing and temporarily blinded, he decided his gut feeling could go fuck itself and began unfastening his left wrist restraint. When his vision returned, he found everything and everyone in the room coated in a film of blood and bits of gore. Julian sat on the floor against the wall, crying and cradling a human leg in his arms. Blackened bone poked out from a partially cooked ass cheek. Matthias slumped in the corner of his tiny cage, either dead or merely unconscious. Tim's blurred gaze continuing counterclockwise around the room, he found Ula, or at least what was left of her. She appeared to be standing in a deep pool of blood, except Tim knew it was just a puddle. Everything below the tits was gone. "What the fuck just happened?" asked Cooper. His left hand freed, Tim sat up. "I think Ula just exploded." Dave lifted his head and looked over at Ula's grisly remains. "That was unexpected." "Fuck it," said Tim, freeing his ankles. "That's two down as far as I'm concerned. Let's get the fuck out of here." He felt a little awkward walking around Dave's table to release Cooper next, but if the rest of the family came down the stairs to investigate the explosion, Cooper would be more immediately valuable. No one came down, so Tim unbuckled Dave's straps as well. Cooper looked down at Julian, still sobbing on the floor and cradling the leg. "Dude, get a hold of yourself. Put down that fucking leg and let's go." Julian nodded, forced himself to stop crying, then set aside the leg. "Yes. We must abscond at once." Tim paused. That was an un-Julian-like choice of vocabulary. But what the hell. It was kind of a fucked up situation. "Yeah, let's get to absconding." "What's wrong with him?" asked Ravenus from his mangled, but still locked cage on the floor under Cooper's table. "What language is that?" "Tiiiiim," a weary voice called out from the cage. Tim turned around to find Matthias reaching out for him. He jumped back. "Keep your two-thumbed hands away from me, inbred freak!" "It's m-m-mee," groaned Matthias. "J-J-J-Julian." "What?" Crazy as it seemed, it might explain a lot of the crazier shit that had happened in the past few minutes. "He lies!" cried Julian. "His evil heart is filled with deceit! We must hurry, before –" "Hooooorse," croaked Matthias. A grey riding horse appeared in the cage, flattening Matthias against the bars. Holy shit. It was really true. Somehow, they had – "Fuck you!" Cooper punched fake Julian in the face, dropping him to the floor. Fucking up a Mount spell like that had left zero doubt as to Julian's true identity, even in the smallest of minds. "How dare you!" cried Ravenus, trying fruitlessly to bend his cage bars apart with his talons. Tim turned to the ancient freakshow being crushed by a horse in a cage. "What happened? How did you..." "The bottle," Julian croaked, pointing one of his superfluous thumbs down at the bottle on the floor. "We... breathed in the vapor and... I don't know... swapped souls or whatever." He groaned as the horse shifted its weight. "Give me... the bottle... and bring my body... close to the cage." "Have you not done enough," said fake Julian, rubbing his eye where Cooper had punched him. "Toying with magic you don't understand. You killed my sister!" Freakshow Julian got on his hands and knees so he could breathe a little easier and the horse wasn't quite as uncomfortable. "I did no such thing!" said Julian. "I don't even know what happened to her." He scanned the room with his giant eye. "I mean, besides the obvious." "You read the incantation to activate the pearl," said Tim. "It must have come loose inside her when they were..." he tried to find a delicate way to express his theory, "...in the other room." Dave and Cooper shuddered. "Is that why my arm is sticky up to my elbow?" asked Julian. "Jesus!" said Tim. "Details!" Julian looked at fake Julian. "Why wouldn't you take your ring off first?" Fake Julian was hugging Ula's leg again. "That's how she liked it. She said it enhanced her pleasure." "Enough!" said Tim. "I don't want to hear any more. Cooper, punch out Asshole Julian again and lay him down next to Freakshow Julian." "No!" said Freakshow Julian. "That's my body. I'm going to feel that when we switch back." "Who gives a shit?" "Can I at least try a more Diplomatic approach first?" Tim grimaced. "I think your Charisma score might not be operating at full capacity right now." Julian ignored him, focusing his big eye on his real body. "I'm taking my body back. You understand that there's nothing you can do to stop that, right?" Fake Julian scowled and nodded. "Then you'd want to make things as painless as possible for yourself, wouldn't you?" "Aye." Fake Julian dropped to his knees in front of Freak Julian and put his hands behind his back. Julian looked at Tim. "I think we can trust him to behave." Tim rolled his eyes. "Whatever. If he tries anything, at least we'll get to beat the shit out of him." Keeping a wary eye on Fake Julian, he handed the perfume bottle to Freak Julian. "You know this magic shit better than I do." Julian accepted the bottle. "Okay, now stand ba– Shit!" His extra thumb fumbled the bottle. Tim instinctively reached out and caught it by the bulb atomizer. A small puff of purple vapor came out, and Tim's consciousness suddenly blinked. As if someone had turned the volume all the way down, he found he could barely hear anything. His mouth tasted like spoiled meat and ass. His vision was sharp but lacked depth perception. But the strangest thing of all was that he was looking at himself. "Oh, thank God!" said Julian. "I'm me again! I'm..." He rubbed the side of his face. "Jesus, Cooper. Did you have to hit me so – UGH!" Tim saw himself, his body, punch Julian in the nuts, then run past Cooper and up the stairs. "Get him!" Tim shouted in a hoarse voice that he could barely hear himself. He tried to stand, but his head hit something soft and furry. A second later, his entire left side was soaked with what felt like the initial water from a hose which had been left out in the sun all day, but which smelled like horse piss. A quick glance to the left confirmed his nose's theory. "Goddammit, motherfucking son of a bitch!" Julian and Dave looked down at him. "Tim?" "Yes!" said Tim. "Matthias is in my body! He's getting away!" "Ow!" Cooper dropped Ravenus's birdcage, sending it rolling across the floor, then sucked on a finger. "I was trying to let you out, asshole." Once the birdcage stopped rolling and Ravenus oriented himself, he stepped on the bars, moving the cage back toward Cooper like he was in a hamster wheel. "That was for punching my master! There's more where that came from!" "Ravenus!" said Julian. "Stop!" Ravenus stopped his cage in front of Tim's and looked up at Julian. "Master, you're okay! It's so good to hear your voice again!" "Leave Ravenus here," said Tim, shouting so that he could hear his own voice. "I need his help. Go get my body!" Julian nodded, then took off up the stairs. Dave followed after him. "Since when are we taking orders from this prick?" asked Cooper. "Come on!" said Dave, stopping under the arch to look at Cooper. "The prick is inside Tim's body." Cooper's jaw dropped open. "They're cornholing him?" He pushed Dave out of the way and ran up the stairs. "I'm coming for you, buddy!" Dave got back on his feet and waddled after Cooper. "Ravenus," Tim rasped in his best old man British accent. "Don't speak to me!" said the bird. "I must go and help my master." He started hamster wheeling it to the stairs, but Tim caught the cage. Ravenus pecked and clawed at his fingers. Tim winced but didn't let go of the cage. "I'm Tim!" Ravenus stopped pecking and scratching long enough to look Tim up and down. "No you're not." He resumed his attack. Tim grabbed one of Ravenus's talons and talked to him in order to better ignore the pain of his forearm being torn to shreds. Wincing in pain with nearly every other word, he tried to explain. "The... old... freak... switched bodies... with Julian. Then he... switched... bodies with... me." Tim had never seen a birdcage with a lock that required a key before, but he supposed that pets in the Caverns & Creatures world tended to be a little cleverer than pets back home. Still, it wasn't nearly as good a lock as the one on Tim's cage door, and Ravenus's talon made a suitable lock pick. When the door opened, Tim pulled his hands back through the bars. Ravenus limped out of the cage and fell on his back, breathing heavily. He turned his head to Tim. "Were you telling the truth?" Tim nodded. "Oh," said Ravenus. "Sorry about your arm then." Tim looked at his arm and smiled. It was torn to ribbons from elbow to wrist and bleeding like a stuck pig that was also menstruating. Ravenus had fucked it up good. "It'll be worth it when we switch back. How's your leg?" Ravenus walked in a circle, limping a little less with each step. "I think I'll pull through." "Good. Listen, Ravenus. Ula had a key. I need you to help me find it." "Which one was Ula?" "The one that exploded." Ravenus nodded. "Very good." Tim scanned the room, stopping at the empty doorway where the wooden door had been. "Check in there first." Ravenus flew into the room, and Tim crawled around on the cage floor, contemplating murdering his equine cellmate. He saw a conspicuously shaped lump in the gore, plastered to the wall by a chunk of uterus or spleen or gall bladder or some shit. He wasn't a doctor. Reaching through the bars, he was just able to touch it with the tip of his finger. The gore peeled off the wall, landing on the floor with a splat and a clink. The key! Since it was barely within his reach, Tim was extra careful not to push the key further away. He pulled gently on the chunk of Ula meat it was still stuck to until it was close enough to grab. He peeled it free from its fleshy casing, shook some of the gore off, then crawled to the cell door. The lock turned easily, and the door swung open. Julian's magical horse dropped a couple of turds for its captors to remember it by, then strutted gratefully out of the cage. Tim was disappointed in how unsatisfying it was to finally be able to stand up. He was still in an old man's body with arthritis in all of his joints and a severe case of scoliosis. He shuffled carefully across the floor past the top third of Ula's dead body, wary of the large blood puddle surrounding it. The last thing he needed right now was to fall and break a hip. The door lay on the floor, slathered in liquid Ula. The room beyond, while not exactly cleaner, was at least less bloody. Ravenus was on the floor, pecking at the exposed meat at the top of Ula's other leg. "Ravenus!" said Tim. Ravenus squawked and froze. "You were supposed to be looking for the key!" "I've determined it's not inside this leg." "That's because it's in my hand, shithead. Come on, we've got to –" Tim's monocular gaze was drawn to the bed where Ula had obviously intended her brothers to boink her with Tim and his friends' dicks. Never one to turn down sex when it was available, Tim had developed a fairly high tolerance for where he was willing to do the deed. But even the filthiest basement futon his bare skin had touched in the name of getting laid seemed as pristine as a hospital operating table compared to the crime scene that was this bedroom. It smelled heavily of ass, body odor, and Tim's current right arm. The bed's rusted iron frame made his dick want to retract inside him. The mattress, insofar as a giant amorphous roughspun sack of feathers can be called a mattress, looked like it hadn't been washed in... well, ever. It was covered in stains ranging in color from yellow to near black. The freshest was a large wet spot right in the middle, presumably where Matthias had just 'warmed up' Ula. Tim desperately wanted to wash his hands. His giant eye already having taken in more than he wanted it to, Tim turned away from the bed. He saw a table in the corner of the room with a wooden box on top of it. Hoping it was full of disinfectant, or at least hard liquor, he opened the lid. Inside the box, nestled in one of two identical indentations atop a padded silk cushion, was another perfume bottle just like the one Matthias had swapped their souls with, likewise filled with purple liquid. Another one of those might come in handy. He carefully removed it from the box and slipped it into Matthias's pocket. "Let's go find the others." Tim shuffled across the floor from the bedchamber to the archway, where Julian's horse was blocking the way and looking curiously up the stairs. "You, stay here," he said to the horse, then turned his head as far as it would go back to Ravenus, who was perched on his hunch. "You, be quiet." "Righto!" "Shh!" Tim's Move Silently skill was impaired by his current body's compromised Dexterity score, but he felt he was making a solid effort at minimizing the noise as he climbed up the stairs. Of course, that could also have to do with his shitty hearing. The stairs ended in an open hatch, the door of which had planks running off the edge which, when closed, would fit into the missing floorboards. It would be difficult to spot for someone not specifically looking for it. Tim's old knees ached as he climbed out of the stairwell and into a room full of portraits hanging on the walls. It was like a study in the effects of inbreeding. He thought that, given enough time, he could sort the pictures in chronological order based on how fucked up their faces were. This room was cleaner than the living room, which Tim recognized through the open door. Cautiously peeking out, he found the living room empty. The door directly across from the one he was standing in was also open.

5d6

Robert Bevan

CRASH

The sound of breaking porcelain. Maybe a vase or a large dish. "Shit," said Cooper. "Watch where you're going!" said Dave. "Shhhhh!" said Julian. Tim shook his head. He was nearly deaf and could hear those three idiots two rooms away. They stepped out into the living room and stopped dead in their tracks when they saw Tim. "Sorry," said Julian. "You startled me for a second." He pointed his thumb back at the room they'd just come from. "Looks like a dining room, or at least it was at one time. No sign of anyone in there." "What happened to your arm?" asked Dave. "Ravenus and I had a little misunderstanding." "Do you want me to heal that?" "Fuck no." Julian's gaze shifted up to where Ravenus was still perched on Tim's hump. "Are you okay?" "Never been better, sir!" "Keep your voice down!" Tim snapped, feeling more than ever like an old man. "I don't get why we're sneaking around," said Dave. "What's the point?" Tim wheezed out a shallow laugh. "No point at all the way you guys are doing it. You might as well be playing trumpets and drums." "They know we're here, and that we've freed ourselves from the table straps. They'd expect us to go up the stairs. What the hell else would we do?" "So where are they?" asked Julian. "They're probably hiding somewhere. Regrouping. It's pretty clear that Ula was the leader. Matthias has a functioning brain in his head, but he lacks the experience to effectively lead his dimwitted brothers. He's trying to think up a plan to take us out, and we need to find him before he's able to." "He's trying to take us alive, isn't he? He wants our bodies to swap his brothers into, right?" Tim eased his weary old ass down on a rickety wooden stool. "Not necessarily. Ula was the mother of invention here. Now that her plans are off the table, as is any possibility of continuing their pure family lineage, Matthias might decide to follow a new path. His brothers, whatever bodies they're in, might only drag him down." He paused to reflect on how depressing the whole situation was. He remembered how Matthias had cradled Ula's leg, and another thought occurred to him. "And he's no doubt still pissed at us for blowing up his sister." Dave nodded. "Matthias was pretty keen on calling himself an inventor. He probably has a lab or a workshop or something. We should rule out all the upstairs rooms first, then poke around for hidden doors down here." Tim dreaded the thought of more stairs, but Dave's reasoning was sound. As he hobbled up the stairs even more slowly than Dave, Tim thought of another idea. "Dave, do you have any stonepiss?" "Jesus, Tim. Can you give it a rest for once?" "I was just thinking it might be a good idea to get this body nice and shitfaced before we switch it back. If we're able to escape, and they decided to come after us, it would make sense to get the only one of them who could find their own ass with a compass and a map falling down drunk, would it not?" "That's some impressive rationalizing." Dave pulled a short glass bottle out of his bag. "Try this. I swiped it from the dining room." Tim uncorked the bottle and swigged back some of the contents. It burned going down, like cheap whiskey. Tim felt the effects almost immediately. He was buzzed before he reached the top of the stairs. Ol' Matthias didn't have a very high tolerance for alcohol. That was for damn sure. Julian had reached the top of the stairs well before him and was already listening at a door. He whispered something. "Speak up!" said Tim. "I can't hear you!" Julian glared at him, as did Cooper and Dave. "Shit. Was that too loud?" "So much for the element of surprise," said Julian, taking a step back from the door. "Cooper?" Cooper pulled his finger out of his nose. "What?" Tim gulped back another shot of terrible booze. "Grab my body and pin it to the floor." "What the fuck is he drinking?" asked Cooper. "He went from stone cold sober to blurting out suppressed rape fantasies in less than a minute." "Not this body, fuckhead! My real body. You hold him down, I'll switch us back to normal, and we'll hightail it out of here." Cooper sighed in relief. "You had me going there for a second. I was thinking about how we used to wrestle at the pool, and –" "Will you just kick down the goddamn door?" "Okay." Cooper planted his heel right into the door, which swung wide open, appearing to not have been locked in the first place. "FUCK YOU MOTHERFU– um..." The room was mostly empty, decorated solely with manacles hanging on the walls. Its single occupant sat on the floor with a filthy cloth gag in her mouth, her wrists manacled and raised over her head. She looked like a female version of Matthias, just as wizened and malformed, with extra thumbs and one disproportionately large eye. But instead of an eye patch, she had another normal-sized eye. She looked at Tim with horror on her freakish wrinkly face. At her side sat the maggot-ridden corpse of a ten-foot-long boa constrictor. Tim cringed at the patches of scraggly grey hair flowing down from her mostly bald head. "Who the fuck is this?" "It's Ula," said Julian. Tim took a moment to consider Julian's theory, then looked down at the dead snake. "Then that must be Simon." Cooper squeaked out a small fart. "Sorry. I'm confused. Thinking too hard makes me gassy." "It's not that complicated," said Julian. "The Ula we met had already swapped souls with a younger woman. That's why she looked so much different than her brothers. This woman here, who should look like the woman who brought us here, is in Ula's real body." He ran over and pulled the gag out of her mouth. The old woman coughed as tears streaked down her cheeks. "Who are you people?" She looked at Tim. "You are not Matthias, are you?" Tim shook his head. "I'm Tim. Who the hell are you?" "My name is Enna. I am a traveling warrior. I found this old woman on the side of the road and offered to escort her home. The next thing I knew, I –" "Yeah, yeah. We get it. I hope you've learned a valuable lesson about helping old people." "Is that how they lured you here as well?" "No. Ula said she'd pay us for –" Tim stopped himself, thinking about how the truth sounded when spoken aloud. He thought up a quick alternative. "– sex." Enna gasped. Julian gave Tim a 'what the fuck' look, but didn't bother changing the story. "We didn't actually go through with it." Tim tried his cell door key and found that it worked on the manacles as well. Enna wrung the paper-thin skin of her ancient wrists. "For twenty-three years I've kept my vow. My body has never known the touch of a man." Tim glanced at his right arm but kept his mouth shut. "You must help me return to my true body before those wicked people can defile it." Tim, Julian, Cooper, and Dave, all managed to find something fascinating to look at on the floor. "That may pose a bit of a challenge," said Tim. "What if we found you a new body? Some smokin' hot girl who, for whatever reason, doesn't deserve to live?" "Why? What's wrong with my body?" "Nothing," Tim lied. "I was just spitballing ideas." He offered his elderly disfigured hand to hers to help her to her feet. "Let's find the inbrednecks before we make any rash decisions." "Who?" "The people who live in this dump. Do you know where they might be hiding?" Enna shrugged. Making sure to keep everyone in the group together, lest one of them get soul-swapped and infiltrate them, they searched the remaining three rooms upstairs. They found nothing but rats and spiders. "There are still a few more rooms to search downstairs," said Dave. Cooper and Julian led the way down the stairs. Tim and Enna followed, supporting each other's old and weary bodies. Dave took the rear, still organizing the search aloud. "I think we should try the kitchen next. They might be hiding in a big pantry or something, where they'd have enough food and water to wait until they –" "Stay where you are," said a voice similar to, but not exactly like Tim's, coming out of Tim's mouth. Tim's body stood pantsless at the other side of the living room, holding a dagger to Tim's tiny dick. Matthias's carny brothers stood on either side of him. Tim contemplated taking off his own pants but had neither a desire to see Matthias's junk, nor a dagger to threaten it with. He took a small step forward. "What are you doing, Matthias? You and I both know you're not going to cut my dick off. Why would you? It's your dick now, right?" If he could just get close enough, he could use the spray to switch them back. "It's hardly significant enough to make a credible threat." That was unnecessary. "Oh as if you're packing some monster schlong." Tim reached down Matthias's pants. Admittedly, Matthias bested Tim in both length and girth and… number of testicles? His scrotum felt like a crumpled paper bag full of marbles. "Jesus Christ, dude. How many fucking balls do you have?" "More of the gods' cruel irony. In my prime I could produce gallons of seed, and yet it all fell on barren ground. Not that it matters anymore. What use have I for this worthless appendage now that you've ended our family line?" "It can still be fun to play with. It's helpful when you need to take a piss. And cutting it off would be incredibly painful, I'd imagine." Tim took another step forward, hoping that it would indeed be too painful to follow through with if this was, as he suspected, a last ditch effort bluff. "You feel the agony I've felt since birth, living in that grotesque body. You think I can't handle a little pain? I never planned to keep this useless body anyway. Now I can walk among the normal folk without arousing suspicion. I'll find a man with the kind of body I truly desire." Tim stopped walking. Matthias was making a convincing case for being willing to cut his own dick off. "You're into dudes?" said Cooper. "Is that why you couldn't knock up your sister?" "How dare you bring up my sister! Ula is dead because of you fools!" "Dead?" said Enna. She hobbled across the living room, evidently less concerned with the fate of Tim's dick than Tim was. "What happened? Where is my body?" Matthias backed up and brandished the dagger at her. "Stay back! I'm warning you!" This was the best chance Tim had to make his move. He hobbled after Enna, swigging back as much of the terrible booze as he could choke down and digging in his pocket for Matthias's potion. "MOMO!" said Momo, slamming his iron ball down on Matthias's foot. That was going to hurt. Tim hoped that Dave had a healing spell ready to go. Matthias shrieked in pain and dropped the dagger. "She isn't our sister, Momo! Our sister is dead!" Enna picked up the dagger just as Tim pulled out the potion.

5d6

Robert Bevan

YEHEHEHEHEHEHE

Distracted by Julian's horse announcing its presence, and the fact that he still wasn't used to having extra thumbs, Tim dropped the potion. Matthias-Tim's eyes, already wide with the pain and surprise of having his foot crushed, went even wider as they followed the glass bottle to the floor, where it shattered, letting out a thick purple cloud of vapor. Suddenly, Tim's hearing amped up to eleven, and his vision was binocular again. People were screaming, falling over each other, making horse noises. It was complete bedlam. Hunched over and standing on all fours, Tim briefly worried that he'd switched bodies with the horse, but when he tried to stand straight, he discovered that his hands were chained to his ankles. Shit! I'm Momo! "What the fuck?" said Ravenus in a distinctly non-British accent. He waddled past Tim, flapping his wings in such a way that would never lift him off the ground. Just beyond Ravenus, Julian stood as if in a trance, mesmerized by his own forearms. He felt them up and down, then ran his fingertips down the sides of his face. Tears welled up in his eyes. If Tim had to guess, he was actually Figg, who had never experienced having smooth skin. His hairless bliss was cut short when Ula lunged at him and wrapped her old double-thumbed hands around his throat. Tim scanned the room for his own body and found it sitting on the floor and cradling its foot. "Yaaa! Yayaaha! Ha? Hoo? Helloooo. Hellooooo! Hellllooooooo!" With an excitement that can only be gained by suddenly being able to pronounce consonants, Dunder seemed to forget about the pain in Tim's foot. "Hellooooooooo!" Should he attack Dunder? He felt like he should attack somebody, and would have preferred to attack someone who was both his enemy and also residing in the body of one of his other enemies. He wouldn't be able to attack anyone until he got this goddamn chain off. Lifting the ball to his neck, he was able to reach the pin on his collar which loosened the chains. Fuck yeah! Tim now had the brains, the brawn, and a big ass iron ball on a chain. He looked for a target. Dunder, the guy with the immovable jaw, was indiscriminately punching people with his left fist, clapping his two right baby hands together, and shouting "Yoyo!" through his permanently-set open mouth. That had to be Momo. Tim felt kind of bad for Momo, but he fit all of the target requirements Tim was looking for. Tim swung the ball over his head, then released it in Dunder-Momo's direction. Dunder-Momo ducked just in time, and the ball slammed into the horse's screaming face. The horse vanished. Tim hoped that it hadn't been part of this mess. "Damn it!" said Cooper, a pretty good indication that he was actually Julian. Matthias stumbled around, flapping his arms up and down like someone had just removed his straitjacket. He looked even drunker than Tim's booze-guzzling body sabotage should have accounted for. "My wings!" he cried in a gravelly British accent. "What's happening to me? What's blaaaaaauuuuurrrrrgggggh..." He threw up a puddle of brown booze and chunks of who knows what all over the floor and collapsed face-first into it. Shit. Sorry, Ravenus. Cooper, still having trouble walking on bird legs, fell forward and pushed himself toward Tim-Dunder, using his wings like a sea turtle on the beach. "Dude," he said to Tim-Dunder. "What the fuck is going on here?" "Hellllloooooooo!" said Tim-Dunder. He let go of his foot and grabbed Ravenus's body with both hands. Ecstatic to have a working jaw, he bit down hard on one of Ravenus's wings. "FUCK!" said Ravenus-Cooper. He fought back ineffectively with his talons and remaining wing, but Tim-Dunder only bit down harder. "I'm really angry!" Cooper squawked. His black feathers bristled as he grew to the size of a turkey jacked up on illegal steroids. When he finally achieved functional use of his talons, they looked like fists full of black daggers as they ripped into Tim's arm and face. "Son of a bitch," said Tim. He was definitely going to feel that when he switched back to his own body. Tim-Dunder screamed, releasing Cooper's wing, and kicked him away. Cooper made a solid effort to flap his monstrous wings but landed with a thud in front of Dave, who appeared to be having some kind of seizure. "Dave!" said Ravenus-Cooper. "Tim just bit the shit out of me. Slap me some Hit Points, would you?" "YEEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE!" Dave whinnied. "Seriously?" said Figg, who Tim now guessed was actually Dave, through the grizzled white pubes obscuring his mouth. "The fucking horse?" Tim pulled in the ball connected to his chain to ready himself for another attack. But in all the chaos, it was difficult to keep track of who was who. He knew that a Wilmott was in his body, but he didn't like the idea of smashing his own face in with an iron ball. Cooper-Julian grabbed Figg's flabby body by its pube-furred man-tits. "Who are you?" "Ow! I'm Dave!" "Julian!" said Tim. "Who gives a shit? Let's you and me just start knocking motherfuckers out. We'll sort it out later." "YOYO!" screamed Dunder-Momo, just before taking a swing at Tim. He might have actually hit if he hadn't announced it first. Tim dodged the attack, dropped the ball, and grabbed Dunder-Momo by the leg and throat. Dunder wasn't exactly a waif of a man, but Momo's body was strong as fuck. Tim easily lifted Dunder-Momo over his head and looked for someone to throw him at. "Helllooooooo!" said Tim-Dunder, just before biting Tim in his giant Momo dick. "YEEEEOOOOOOWWWW!" cried Tim, losing his grip on Dunder-Momo, who dropped down hard on Tim's body, taking a chunk of dick skin with him as he went down. Tim groaned, bleeding from the dick, while Cooper-Julian punched out whoever was inhabiting Ula's body, who was still strangling his own. "I'm sorry!" said Cooper-Julian. "Cooper!" cried Ravenus, rising out of his vomit puddle on Matthias's wobbly legs. "I can understand you!" Julian's body breathed in deeply, his throat free of Ula's choking grasp. With a regretful look in Cooper's eyes, Julian punched himself in the face. "I'm really sorry." Ravenus, clearly not fully appreciating that he wasn't currently a bird, flapped Matthias's arms and ran at Cooper-Julian as fast as his arthritic knees would carry him. "You son of a bitch! I warned you!" He leaped into the air, flapping his arms even harder and thrusting both feet forward, then came down hard on his old hunched back. It looked so agonizing that Tim forgot about his own dick pain for a fraction of a second. With most of the punching having subsided, Figg-Dave stepped up behind Cooper-Julian. "Does anyone need a healing sp–" Cooper-Julian whirled around and punched Figg-Dave in the face. "Shit! I'm sorry. You shouldn't have sneaked up on me like that." "Asshole!" Dave honked out through Figg's broken nose, now locatable from the reddening pubes beneath it. "I could use some healing," said Tim. Figg-Dave looked down at Momo's bleeding dick. "Ouch. I guess you could." He raised a furry arm out for Tim to touch. "Not this me." Tim rolled Dunders body off of his own, then went through his pockets until he found Matthias's potion bottle. Fortunately, it was still intact. "Maybe we should make sure this works before we start healing anyone." "Good idea," said Figg-Dave. Tim handed the bottle to Cooper-Julian. "Don't drop this, or we're all fucked." He worked the chain through the rings on his wrist and ankle restraints, then up through the ring on his collar. "Can somebody pin this?" Figg-Dave picked up the pin and put it in Momo's collar. Tim cringed at the feel of Figg's finger pubes on his neck. "Okay," said Tim, lying down on the floor with his head next to his real head. "Hold your breath, give us a small squirt, and get the fuck back." Cooper's head nodded, and Tim had to remind himself that he wasn't entrusting this to a complete moron. Cooper-Julian sucked in a deep breath and held it, then squirted a puff of the potion between their faces.

5d6

Robert Bevan

Chapter 15

Tim awoke, groggy but feeling strangely refreshed and free of dick pain. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, opened them, and saw Cooper looking down at him. Had it all been a dream? "Helllllloooooooo! Helllllooooooowwwww!" Tim looked to his left. Momo was freaking the fuck out, thrashing in his chains and bleeding from the – SHIT! He spat out the chunk of dick skin which had been festering in his mouth. "Can I go next?" asked Figg-Dave. "I'd really like to get that horse out of my body." Tim took the potion bottle from Cooper-Julian while Figg-Dave the pube monster waddled over to Dave-Horse. Once Figg-Dave was in position, Tim gave them a good spray in the face and backed away. Dave sighed and got to his feet. "I never thought I'd be so grateful to be a dwarf again." He put his hand to his neck. "My throat's a little sore from all the neigh–" Figg-Horse whinnied and kicked Dave in the nuts. "Dave's back to normal," said Tim. "Who's next?" Julian raised Cooper's hand. "I'd like to get out of Cooper's body. It's kind of gross in here." He looked down at Ravenus-Cooper. "No offense." "Fuck you, dude," said Ravenus-Cooper. "At least you're a fucking mammal." Tim shook his head. "That would put Pube-Freak in Cooper's body, which he could use to beat the shit out of the rest of us. Let's get Coop sorted out first." "You make a good point," said Julian. He picked up Ravenus-Cooper and placed him on his shoulder. Ravenus-Cooper steadied himself with a wing on Cooper-Julian's head and shut his eyes tightly. A gushing sound came from behind him. He squawked. "How's that for gross?" Julian shrugged. "It's your back." "Shit, that's right." "Can we please get on with this?" said Tim. "Squat down so I can squirt you in the face." Cooper-Julian squatted, and Tim squirted. "Wow," said Ravenus-Julian. "This is an interesting sensation." He jumped off Cooper's shoulder and flapped his wings in such a way that didn't even slow his short descent to the floor. "Not as easy as it looks." Cooper, still squatting, farted and reached under his loincloth. "Damn, it's good to have balls again." Julian hopped away from Cooper's fart zone as fast as his bird legs could take him. "You two stay together," said Tim. "Cooper, hold Julian so that Figg doesn't freak out when he suddenly wakes up as a bird." Julian had only gotten in three hops before he planted his beak into the floor. Cooper reached him in two steps, but that was enough for Tim to spot the white streak of bird shit running down his back. While Cooper grabbed Ravenus-Julian, Tim walked over to Julian's body. Something seemed out of place, but he couldn't put his finger exactly on what it was. It didn't matter. All that mattered was getting his friends in their right bodies and getting the fuck out of this house. "Hurry up and get over here." Cooper held Julian firmly with both hands and put his beak right in Julian's face. Tim looked at the bottle. "There's not much juice left in this thing. Not a lot of room for fucking up, so hold your breath." He held his own breath and gave it a squirt. Ravenus-Figg, as expected, immediately started freaking out. "What? Who? Momo?" He turned his head left. "Ula?" Ula? Ula! Matthias-Ravenus had been unconscious right next to Julian, but Ula's body wasn't there anymore. "Summon Ape!" said a woman's voice. When Tim looked in her direction, he found Ula standing over Matthias's body, holding Matthias's pearl-less ring. Next to her stood a confused-looking gorilla. "Shit," said Tim. Ula-Matthias pointed at Tim. "You have three seconds to hand over that potion before this ape comes and takes it from you." It seemed odd that he would bother with an ultimatum. Why not just skip that part and send the gorilla after him? "Three!" Tim looked at the bottle in his hands, then up at the gorilla's hands. That was it. That massive motherfucker couldn't be trusted retrieving something so fragile. "Two!" "Cooper!" said Tim. "Throw Ravenus at Matthias!" "What?" "Just do it!" "NO!" cried Julian, evidently having figured out what Tim had in mind. It was risky, sure. There was only a twenty-five percent chance that Ravenus would go back to his proper body, but there was also a twenty-five percent chance that he'd turn into a gorilla, which would be awesome. Then again, there was a fifty percent chance that he'd turn into a deformed geriatric asshole. But it was a chance Tim was willing to take. "One!" "Now!" said Tim. Cooper cocked his arm back like he had a man open in the end zone, then launched Ravenus's body at Matthias's. It was a nice spiral throw, and Figg screamed an inarticulate caw until his beak hit Matthias's hump. Tim hurled the potion after Ravenus, then slapped his hands over his mouth. Julian and Dave did likewise. Cooper shoved two fingers up his nostrils and clamped his lips shut with his other hand. Ula-Matthias made a desperate attempt at catching it, but he was too old, too slow, and likely too preoccupied with the thought of slipping away for some private time to check out his new wrinkly tits. The glass bottle shattered, forming a cloud of mist too small to fill a space much larger than what Matthias-Ravenus, Ula-Matthias, Ravenus-Figg, and the gorilla were occupying. The gorilla had a panicked expression on its face. It looked at Tim, then Julian. Julian gasped. "Ravenus?" The gorilla roared, its eyes wide with terror. "No!" said Julian. "Ravenus!" "Down here, sir," said the bird, stumbling as he walked back toward them. "Why am I so dizzy?" Julian sighed. "Oh, thank goodness! You're –" The gorilla scooped up Ravenus in his massive black hand and growled some incomprehensible nonsense at Julian. "Put him down," said Julian. "What's done is done. We're not going to solve anything by –" The gorilla vanished. Ravenus hit the floor before he could get in a single flap. "Wow," said Dave. "Magical gorillas don't hang around as long as magical horses do." Julian picked up Ravenus and cradled him under his serape. "It's a different spell." "Why me Ula?" said Figg, wasting no time squeezing his new wrinkly tits. "Why?" Matthias groaned as he awakened. It was a hybrid groan between old man and primate, both pitiful and unsettling. Julian put a hand on Dave's shoulder. "Why don't you go heal his arm?" "Fuck his arm," said Tim. "Which room did you find that liquor in? Are there any more bottles in there?" "The gorilla didn't ask for this. He was an innocent victim. It's bad enough we put him in a human body. The least we could do is patch it up a bit." Dave waddled cautiously to Matthias-Gorilla, took a knee, and touched him on the head. "I heal thee." The deep talon wounds on Matthias-Gorilla's forearm sealed themselves up like zipper bags. Matthias-Gorilla let out another, more soothing groan, and opened his freakishly giant eye. Dave smiled. "Feeling better, big guy?" With a primal scream Matthias shouldn't have had the lung capacity for, he punched Dave in the side of the head, got up on his old legs, and started tearing his clothes off. "Are we done now?" asked Tim. "I need a drink." "Do you ever think you might have a problem?" Dave sat up and rubbed his face where he'd just been punched. "I mean, we just destroyed a family." Tim expressed his concern for the Wilmott family with an exaggerated wanking gesture. "You killed an innocent girl." "Ula? Innocent? Need I remind you that she was planning to use us to rape herself? Besides, it was Julian who detonated her uterus." "I was talking about Enna." Tim took a moment to remember who Enna was. "What ever happened to her?" asked Cooper. Tim looked at Ula, crying and playing with her tits. Definitely Figg. "She was obviously in the horse," said Dave. Tim glanced around the room. After accounting for everyone else, he concluded that Dave's theory was sound. "Shit. My bad." "That's all you've got to say? I killed a girl. Nothing a little booze can't fix." "Fuck you, Dave. I've got the taste of Momo's dick in my mouth." Dave glanced at Momo, cradling his dick wound and moaning his own name while Matthias-Gorilla, now completely naked, screamed and flung shit at him. Dave pointed to the room opposite the family portrait room. "There are some more bottles in the cabinet."

5d6

Robert Bevan

Pixie Dicks

"Fuck this place," said Tim. He was crankier than usual because the day's adventure had taken twice as long as they'd expected, yielded exactly zero treasure, and he hadn't packed an adequate supply of stonepiss. "Fuck this meadow. Fuck these flowers. Fuck this whole fucking fantasy world." "Can we take a five-minute break?" Dave asked when they came upon a smooth-topped tree stump. It was almost like he was just begging for some verbal abuse. "Fuck you, Dave." Tim did not disappoint. Trying to keep up with an alcoholic halfling on the way to a bar was testing everyone's endurance, but Dave's short dwarven legs were particularly ill-suited to long brisk walks. "You guys go ahead, then," said Dave. "I'll catch up." Julian slowed his pace. "Come on, Tim. Five minutes isn't going to make that big a difference." It was something he felt he should say, but he didn't really care if Tim hung around or not. The natural beauty of a sunlit meadow and the intoxicatingly sweet scent of the wildflowers were somehow even more beautiful and intoxicating the further away Tim walked. Tim gave Julian the finger without even slowing his stride. He was still bitter about Julian refusing to conjure up some horses. But there was plenty of daylight left, and Julian had a limited number of spells. Who knew what they might run into in the forest? He wasn't going to waste all his spells on horses just so Tim could get his drink on that much quicker. "Dude," said Cooper. Tim turned around. "What?" he snapped at Cooper. Then his gaze passed both Cooper and Julian, and he started laughing. Julian looked back at Dave and found him on his ass, legs in the air, inside the stump, which now appeared to be a hologram or something. Cooper joined Tim in laughing as Dave lay flat on his back among the daisies and cosmos. "Who would do something like that?" asked Julian. "Oh calm your tits," said Tim. "It's just an illusory tree stump. It's harmless." "That's kind of what I was getting at. It's not only harmless, it's pointless. Who would waste magic to put a fake tree stump in the middle of nowhere? What would be the point?" Tim shrugged. "It was funny to watch Dave fall on his ass. Maybe whoever put it there did so just to be a dick." "That sounds reasonable," said Cooper. Julian bit his upper lip in thought. "That sounds reasonable to you two, but think about it from a normal person's perspective." Cooper frowned. "That makes my head hurt." "What did you have in mind?" Tim asked Julian. "I don't know. Nothing really. It just seems suspicious." Dave sat up. "What if it wasn't put here to fool people into sitting down on it at all, but rather to inconspicuously mark a place they wanted to come back to at a later date. Maybe there's something buried under this stump." Cooper raised his eyebrows. "Like a body?" "No, dumbass," said Tim. "You don't mark the place where you dump a body. That completely defeats the purpose of dumping a body." "It might have been worth the risk. If you hate someone enough to kill him, you might hate him enough to want to come back and take a piss on his remains every now and again." "Guys," said Julian. "Not every burial is a body dump. This is a nice meadow. It's peaceful and filled with pretty flowers. Maybe this was someone's favorite place, and they requested to be buried here." Ravenus poked his head out from under Julian's serape. "Are we going to dig up a body? I hope it's fresh." After a brief pause, he added, "But not too fresh." Tim grimaced, then shook his head. "No, that doesn't make sense. If it was a legitimate grave, why wouldn't they mark it with a gravestone, or like a post with some religious bullshit carved on it?" "There could be any number of reasons. This is the Caverns & Creatures world. What if some necromancer comes strolling by and sees a marked grave in the middle of nowhere? 'Sweet! Free dead body!' Next thing you know, Grandma's corpse is a foot soldier in an army of the dead." "What the fuck kind of necromancer goes strolling through meadows?" "You're all aware, of course," said Dave, "that people bury things besides other people." Cooper shoved a finger deep in his ear. "You think it's a dog?" "Jesus Christ, no!" said Dave. "I'm talking about treasure." Everyone froze for a moment to consider Dave's suggestion. "You're right," said Tim. "Get your fat ass out of the way and let's start digging." Dave rolled out of the stump, removed his helmet, and used it to dig into the ground. Tim dropped to his knees and started pulling out fistfuls of long grass and flowers by the roots, taking large clumps of topsoil with them. Cooper tore straight into the ground with his massive half-orc hands, rendering Dave and Tim's work largely negligible. Julian wasn't as convinced of Dave's theory as everyone else seemed to be. "Maybe we should think about this a little more? We've had, like, three or four different dead body theories, and only one not-a-dead-body theory." "Wah wah wah!" Tim pulled the front of his shirt away from his nipples to make it look like he had tits. In a mocking voice, he said, "My name's Julian. I'm too good to touch a dead body." "I don't sound anything like that." "Sprout yourself a little pair of elf nuts, get down here, and start digging. Otherwise, don't expect to get a share in the treasure." "Fine." Julian knelt down and listlessly scooped loose dirt out of the growing hole. Hours passed. The sun sank beneath the treetops on the western horizon. The woods between them and Cardinia looked darker now, more ominous. Julian wished they were on the other side of them. He looked down in the hole to see if the expedition had turned up anything. It had grown so large that the entire illusory tree stump was floating in the air, and still, they'd found neither treasure nor rotting corpse. Cooper was doing most of the work by this point, his head disappearing into the tree stump every time he stood up to toss out another double-handful of dirt. He was the most effective at digging, and anyone else in the hole with him would have just been in his way. Julian was thankful for that when Cooper let rip a fart of epic proportions. Also fortunate was the fact that Cooper's farts tended to be denser than air, and the hole they'd dug seemed to be containing most of it. "That one was ripe," said Cooper, climbing out of the hole. "I'm feeling kind of dizzy. I'm going to take a break." "This is bullshit," said Tim. Three more wasted hours of sobriety had not lightened his mood. "We could have been home by now! Where's all the treasure, Dave?" Dave got to his feet, his fists trembling. He was filthy, sweaty, and looked to be using every ounce of restraint he had in him to not grab Tim and throw him into Cooper's fart hole. "I said there might be treasure. You're the one who was so goddamn sure about it." "Are we ready to call it a day now?" asked Julian. He was sitting in the grass next to a pile of dead and eyeless rodents which Ravenus had collected during the excavation. "As long as we've already got a hole dug, I was thinking maybe we could bury these?" "I beg your pardon, sir?" said Ravenus. "I've spent a long time collecting those." "All you do is eat the eyes. It's wasteful." "The rest of it needs to be properly aged. I was thinking perhaps we might bring them back to the tavern and let them sit out on the roof for a few days." "No way," said Julian. "I'm not putting a bunch of dead possums and rats in my bag. And besides, we're disappointing enough coming back empty-handed without throwing a bunch of dead animals on the roof." "Fuck you and your bird," said Tim. "You two can jerk off over dead rats as long as you feel like. I'm going back to the Whore's Head." He turned southeast and stomped off. Dave took one last look down into the hole, then Cooper started pissing in it. When he turned to follow Tim, Dave's foot caught on something. He lost his balance, flapped his arms wildly to regain it, but failed. He fell backwards into the hole, landing with a small splash and a hard thud. "What the fuck, Dave?" asked Cooper, still pissing in the hole. A second later, he seemed to realize that he was pissing on Dave and changed the direction of his stream to outside the hole. Julian got up and ran to the edge of the hole. "Are you okay?" Dave choked and gagged. The air down there must have been almost liquid thick with the smell of Cooper's fart and piss. He tried to stand, but his feet were tied together with a length of twine. He started to say something, but it came out as more coughing and gagging. Cooper reached down and grabbed Dave's outstretched leopard-furred forearm. Dave did his best to assist, feeling around for handholds and footholds, but it was difficult with his feet still tied together. Finally, Cooper dragged him out of the hole. He sprawled out flat on the grass and sucked in the fresh flower-scented air. When he got his breathing under control, he sat up and looked in the direction Tim had gone. Tim had come back about half the distance he'd traveled when Dave fell in the hole. He was looking back at Dave and shaking his head. "What's your problem, man?" Dave said to Tim. "What the fuck are you talking about?" Dave wiggled one of his boots out of the loop of twine, then pulled the twine loop off the other boot and held it up for everyone to see. It appeared to be hand-woven from stems of the same kinds of wildflowers which grew in this very meadow. "I'm talking about this. I understand that you're in a bad mood, and you need a drink, and you're just generally an asshole, but did you think this was going to get you back to the Whore's Head any quicker?" Tim shrugged. "I see some string. What am I looking at?" "You tied my feet together!" "I wasn't anywhere near your fucking feet." "Who else could have done it? You're the rogue, the sneakiest one here." "I'm not fucking Ninja Batman, am I? I can't sneak up on you in a goddamn meadow while you already know I'm here. Besides, you've already cleared me of a motive. Sure, if I had a full flask of stonepiss, I'd happily sit back and watch you swim around in Cooper's piss puddle all day. But we're currently miles away from the nearest source of booze, and your inability to walk is wasting even more of my time which could be better spent drinking." Tim was making a lot of sense. "Then who could have..." Dave lowered the twine, and his helmet flew off his head. He looked up to find it floating two feet above him. "What the fuck is going on?" asked Cooper. "I don't know," said Dave, still mesmerized by his levitating helmet. The helmet jerked to Dave's left, then plummeted through the floating tree stump and splashed into the piss puddle at the bottom of the hole. "Hey!" Dave shouted at whatever had just tossed his helmet. "Who are you?" High pitched giggles filled the air above him. "Were you the ones who put the fake stump there?" Julian called out. "The stump!" shrieked a voice like an eight-year-old girl who'd just sucked down a balloon full of helium. "When the dwarf tried to sit, we thought that was the end of it, but you took it soooo much farther." "So that's all it was after all? Just a prank?" "We were right the first time," said Cooper. "They put it there just to be dicks." The disembodied voices giggled again. They all sounded very similar, but Julian's sensitive elf ears could make out the subtle differences of at least three distinct voices, maybe four. But he couldn't pinpoint their exact locations. They seemed to be constantly moving. "Dicks!" cried the same voice that had spoken before. "That was the best part. You actually urinated on the dwarf! I've never even thought to do that. Here's a gift from my dick to you." A thin arc of pale yellow urine sprouted out of thin air about ten feet above Cooper's head and hit him in the face. "The fuck?" Cooper weaved left and right, but the stream followed him. He sniffed, then poked his purple tongue out between his lips. "This tastes like honeysuckle." He scratched his head as if distracted by something more pressing than an invisible flying person pissing on his face, then looked up. "Hang on, you're a dude?" A tiny floating head appeared about a foot above the urine stream, sporting a bright green mustache curled up at the ends and a long thin beard. "Bingbong Fizzbang, at your service." A pair of rapidly flapping purple gossamer wings appeared between the head and the piss stream. "Fuck you, Tinkerballs!" Cooper jumped and swatted at the semi-invisible creature but didn't even come close to hitting him. Julian searched the air for other floating heads but stopped when he spotted Tim, eyes fixed on Bingbong Fizzbang, slowly cocking his crossbow behind his back. While Tim was slowly bringing the crossbow around to his front, Julian shook his head vigorously. He'd heard at least three, they thought nothing of using magic on a prank, and this would only escalate the conflict. But Tim missed the signal; he had his eyes locked on his target.

5d6

Robert Bevan

THWACK

"FUUUUCK!" cried Tim. The bolt from his crossbow stuck out from his right foot, still trembling from the impact. The air filled with high-pitched giggles again. When Julian looked above Cooper, Bingbong Fizzbang was gone. Even his piss stream had vanished. Cooper wiped the piss off his face. Dave crawled over to Tim. "Are you okay?" "No, I'm not fucking okay. I've got a goddamn bolt in my foot! One of those invisible shitheads pulled my trigger." When Dave reached Tim, he whispered, "You were trying to murder one of them over a prank. What did you expect?" "Can we skip the lecture and get on with the healing?" Dave frowned at Tim. "I'm going to need to pull the bolt out first. It's going to hurt." Tim took out another bolt, bit down on the shaft, then nodded at Dave. Dave nodded back, then held Tim's leg with one hand and wrapped the other around the bolt in his foot. "On three. One." He yanked the bolt out, and blood gurgled up from the hole in Tim's foot. "YYYNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG!" cried Tim. The front and back of the bolt fell from the sides of his mouth, and he spit out the middle. "Asshole!" "I heal thee," said Dave. Tim's foot wound closed up. Tim took a few deep breaths, then hopped to his feet, swinging his fists in the air. "Come on! Show yourselves, you little shitheads!" Dave sighed. "You're welcome." Tim eventually stopped swinging and seemed to calm himself. But Julian could see bad thoughts brewing in his head. Just as he'd done before, he hid his crossbow behind his back, reloaded it slowly and nonchalantly, then cocked it back. Something was off, though. Tim was smart enough to know that the same trick wouldn't work twice, especially if it hadn't worked the first time, and to also know that their invisible foes would now be keeping a closer eye on him. Tim stared at a fixed point in seemingly empty air and ever so slowly moved his crossbow around to his front. His hair fluttered, and he launched a fist into the direction of the breeze. "Ugh!" cried a high-pitched voice. It may have been the one who'd pissed on Cooper, but it was too difficult to tell from such a limited sample. "Ha!" said Tim. "Fuck you! Take your assholery and go fuck yoursel–" Another tiny head appeared a good twenty feet above Tim's head. This one was a woman's. Her short pink hair framed a set of crystal blue eyes. The skin around her left eye was purple and beginning to swell. Her wings, which appeared half a second after, were orange. "Shit," said Tim. "I didn't know you were –" The rest of her body became visible. Her clothes were made of pink rose petals, stretched taut in the middle over her conspicuously large belly. No other part of her suggested she was overweight. She held a foot-long bow, and little arrow fletchings were visible over her left shoulder. "Fuck," said Tim. The fairy woman glared down at Tim. She looked pissed. Whatever the gestation period was for a fairy, she looked at least eight weeks overdue. Tim dropped to his knees and folded his hands. "I'm really sorry. I had no idea you were... But in a way, this is actually your fault." "Tim!" snapped Julian. Tim shouldn't need a bunch of ranks in the Diplomacy skill to know better than trying to turn the blame around on a pregnant woman he'd just punched in the face. "If you hadn't fucked with us, I wouldn't have hit you." Tim's argument sounded like it came straight out of the Domestic Abuser's Handbook. "You were trying to shoot my manfriend," said the fairy woman. "All because we played a little prank on your friend. "Do you mean Mr. Fizzbang?" asked Julian. It was a miracle of Diplomacy that he managed to say Mr. Fizzbang without sounding condescending. "Is he the father?" Getting her to talk about herself might take her mind off wanting to one-up Tim's move. "Could be," said another fairy who completely materialized out of thin air. His wings were pink and his hair was blue. He wore a gown of long white orchid petals and a Fu-Manchu style mustache which was braided with his beard. "Or it could be me." "Or me!" said a fourth fairy. He was smaller than the other three and had curly orange hair. His wings were dark blue and he wore what looked like a hula skirt made out of cosmos petals. The other two male fairies laughed. "Not likely, Poppin," said Bingbong. "You have pixie dust all over the inside of your skirt!" Poppin's face turned red. "There was plenty more where that came from. You two fell asleep after seconds. I can keep Cricket satisfied for minutes." The other two male fairies scowled as Poppin flew behind Cricket, lifted the rose petal covering her rear, and mounted her in midair. Cricket's wings flapped into a blur while glittery fluid dripped down from under her skirt. She smiled at Julian. "Our ways are different than yours." She paused to moan as Poppin's wings nearly disappeared in their rapid flapping. "We keep no records of lineage. Pixies are all one community." Poppin leaned in close and whispered into Cricket's ear. She nodded, then both of them vanished. The heavy breathing and buzz of flapping wings, however, remained just as audible. "Well," said Julian, not knowing what to say in this situation. "I suppose we should be leaving now. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Congratulations on the baby." "Bye bye, Cricket," Tim called out to the empty air. The buzz of rapidly beating wings had subsided, so there was no way to tell where any of the pixies were. He turned around and began walking east. "Have fun being a giant whore." Julian clenched his fists in frustration but continued walking so everyone could maybe pretend Tim hadn't just said that. "What did you call me?" said Cricket. She rematerialized ahead of Tim. Her face was livid, but a lot more sparkly than it had been just a minute ago. Julian's heart sank. They'd been so close. It was like Tim couldn't go more than a minute without being a complete asshole, like it sustained him. "He didn't mean that," said Julian. "Of course I didn't," said Tim. "I was only joking. Surely, Sprinkles McJizzjar can take a joke, right? I mean, she suffered through twenty whole seconds of not having a pixie stick up her twinkle twat in order to shoot me in the foot because I couldn't take a joke, didn't she?" The blue haired pixie made himself visible, hovering slightly lower than Cricket and to her left. "You may want to rethink your words." "Or else what? You think I'm afraid of a few obnoxious mosquitoes? I'll take on all three of you one-handed while I stick it to the Cricket." He looked at Cricket. "What do you say, Crick? You want to see what two inches feels like? Flutter on down here and bend over. I'll show you what –" In less than a second, Cricket raised her bow, nocked an arrow, and fired it. Tim's hand jerked up to what looked like a cocktail toothpick sticking out of his neck. His eyes rolled up, and he collapsed to the ground and pissed his pants. Cooper took a step toward Tim, but Cricket instantly had another arrow nocked and aimed at him. The blue haired pixie shook his head. "I tried to warn him." "Is he... dead?" asked Julian. Cricket laughed and relaxed her bowstring. "Of course not, silly elf! He's only sleeping. He'll wake up in an hour or two. Dave shrugged. "That's probably for the best. Maybe we can make it home without him shooting his mouth off." "You have insulted us," said Cricket. "You may not return home until justice has been served." "Tim insulted you," said Julian. "And you shot him." "Twice," Dave added. Julian nodded. "Has justice not already been served?" Cricket winced, re-quivered her arrow, and held her bow out to her blue-haired friend. "Hold this for me, Zingo." "Of course." Zingo accepted the bow, then flew two feet back, giving Cricket some room. She put both hands on the bottom of her bulge. Julian could clearly see movement from the inside. The pixie baby must have been kicking up a storm. "Are you okay?" asked Julian. Zingo smiled sympathetically. "It's just the grubs. Not at all uncommon." Cricket leaned forward and hurled out a stream of sparkly bubblegum pink vomit. "Okay, I'm better now." She wiped the last tendril from her lips, then tilted upright again. "Now what to do with you?" "Make them fetch the Fairyfire Gem!" suggested Poppin. Julian turned around to look in the direction the voice had come from, but Poppin remained invisible. Cricket tapped her temple. "Hmmm... I wonder if they have what it takes." "We almost certainly don't," said Julian. Cricket nodded resolutely. "I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Enter the Cave of Secrets and find the Fairyfire Gem. Return it to us, and you shall receive your reward." Cooper pulled his finger out of his nose. "Reward?" "Awesome!" said Dave. "Let's go find that gem. Cooper, grab Tim." "How delightful that you're so eager to get started!" said Cricket. "When you have the gem, return here to the stump. Good luck!" Julian was about to bring up the fact that they didn't have any idea where the Cave of Secrets was, but Dave grabbed his sleeve and pulled him along. "No time to waste, Julian." His tone was suspiciously demanding. Julian thought he might have more to say outside the range of pixie ears. When the end of the meadow gave way to forest, Dave looked back. The pixies had either turned invisible or left. "Can I speak now?" asked Julian. "Yeah." "How are we supposed to find the Fairyfire Gem? We didn't even ask where the Cave of Secrets was." "Shit," said Cooper. "Nice going, Dave." "We're not," said Dave. "We're going back to the Whore's Head Inn." Julian thought for a moment. "So we just lied to the pixies?" "Tim was being a huge asshole, but he was right about one thing. What can they really do about it? If they had any real leverage, they wouldn't have offered us a reward." Julian bit his lower lip. "I suppose that makes sense." "Conjure up some horses and let's get the hell out of here." "Horse!" said Julian, then repeated the incantation twice more. Three horses blinked into existence, saddled up and ready to ride. Cooper mounted the biggest horse. He held Tim's unconscious body against his chest with one hand and the reins in the other. Julian and Dave rode separately. It wasn't a particularly dense forest, and they made pretty good time, especially considering how dark it was now. Dwarves and Half-Orcs could see in perfect darkness, so Dave and Cooper had no trouble guiding their horses. Julian, as an elf, merely had Low Light Vision, but the moon was three-quarters full and he didn't have much trouble keeping up. "Whoa!" said Dave, stopping his horse about an hour into the ride for no obvious reason. Julian and Cooper brought their horses to a halt as well. "What the fuck, Dave?" said Cooper. "Don't tell us you need another rest. You're literally sitting on your ass." Dave climbed down from his horse. "I think this looks like a good place to set up camp for the night." "Fuck setting up camp. I don't want to sleep out here. We could be back in Cardinia in two hours." "Excellent," said Dave, walking over to Cooper's horse. He started unfastening the flap on one of the saddlebags on Cooper's horse. "I'll start setting up the tent. Why don't you two tie up the horses and get to work on building a fire?" It was one thing for Dave to ignore Cooper, but he was doing it in such a conspicuous way that Julian wondered if something else was afoot. For one thing, they didn't have a tent. They hadn't expected to be out this long. And why would he suggest tying up the horses? They were magically-summoned horses who would obey whatever Julian commanded, and their spell duration had less than an hour to go anyway. Julian's curiosity was further piqued when he saw what was inside the saddlebag that Dave had opened. It wasn't camping equipment. It was Tim's crossbow. Julian hopped down from his horse. "Here, let me help you with that." "Goddammit," said Cooper. He grabbed Tim by the back of his vest, lowered him as far as he could, and let him fall the rest of the way. "I'm gonna go take a shit." He climbed down from the horse and stepped over Tim. "Cooper," said Dave. "Before you do that, I could use some help with this knot." "Are you fucking kidding me? Do I look like a sailor to you? Go fuck a sheepshank." "This is a really tight one," said Julian. "We could really use your help over here." Cooper stopped and turned back to face them. "I'm gonna be honest, guys. This feels a little rapey." Julian rolled his eyes. "Will you get over here and help us?" Cooper trudged over and looked down at the saddlebag, which Julian and Dave were tugging back and forth to mimic the act of trying to untie a knot. "What the fuck are you guys doing?" "Don't look now, but there are goblins in the two tall trees just ahead of us. I think it's an ambush." "Huh?" Cooper looked up. A cry rang out, presumably in Goblinese. An arrow whirred past Julian's ear. Another stuck in the throat of the horse they were next to. The horse screamed and whipped its head around. "Goddammit, Cooper!" said Dave, taking cover behind the horse. "What's the one thing I told you not to – OOMF!" He caught two hooves in the breastplate just before two more arrows pierced the horse in the side. The horse vanished, and the arrows, Tim's crossbow, and his quiver of bolts fell to the ground. Guilty as it made him feel, Julian took cover behind the horse he'd ridden and squinted up into the trees. He caught a goblinoid silhouette and hoped it was enough of a target for his magic to lock onto. "Magic Missile!" he cried, thrusting his palm out. A golden bolt of magical energy flew out of his hand, zoomed toward his target, and exploded in a shower of sparks. A goblin screamed as he fell out of the tree, then abruptly stopped screaming when he hit the ground. Arrows were flying in from at least three different directions. Having used up three of his daily allotment of first level spells on horses, he didn't have enough Magic Missiles to make much of a difference against so many enemies. Cooper's horse let out half a scream before vanishing. "OW!" cried Dave, crawling back to get Tim's crossbow with an arrow sticking out of his ass. "I'm really angry!" said Cooper. Goblins shrieked and barked at each other as Cooper's body inflated to half again its normal size. The rain of arrows shifted almost exclusively to Cooper as he ran for the nearest goblin-occupied tree. He got hit at least four or five times that Julian could see, but he hardly seemed to notice as he jumped to grab two of the lower branches and pull himself up. Arrows still fired at him from other trees, but the rain falling straight down stopped as the goblin ambushers scrambled to higher branches. Dave leveled Tim's crossbow up at a different tree and pulled the trigger. One more goblin dropped down with a bolt in its throat. If that hadn't killed him, landing on his head from that high up certainly finished the job. Julian rooted through his bag, searching frantically for a scroll he could use. He tossed a Ventriloquism scroll aside, seeing no immediately obvious use for it. Then a Mount scroll. No need to slaughter any more horses just yet. He tossed a Glitterdust scroll into the beginning of a 'Maybe' pile, then chided himself for not organizing his scrolls better. Finally, he found a Web scroll. He hated to use up a Level 2 scroll on a bunch of goblins. They were so expensive and time-consuming to produce. Two arrow fletchings suddenly appeared on his horse's back, and Julian felt a searing pain in his right upper arm. "Son of a –" The rest of his scrolls fell to the ground as a third arrow struck his horse. It vanished like a popped soap bubble. Julian looked up to find the tree where it had come from. "Fuck it." He read the incantation on the scroll. "Web!" Globs of sticky white fluid sprayed out of his fingertips, like each of his fingers was Spiderman's dick, until the arrows stopped flying and goblins squirmed in what looked like a god's money shot on Mother Nature. Goblin screams rained down from Cooper's tree, as did the occasional goblin, as Cooper climbed further up after the last few stragglers. "YAAAAAAA!" cried Tim. He'd been hit in the leg. Hell of a thing to wake up to. He bolted upright and looked at his leg. "Holy shit!" Dave turned to the direction the arrow had come from, aimed Tim's crossbow, and plugged another goblin. "Calm down," he said to Tim. "Don't tell me to calm down! Who the fuck are –" Dave punched Tim in the face. That must have been satisfying. He looked like he'd wanted to do that all day. Julian grabbed a bow and a quiver of arrows from one of the fallen goblins. It was small, like wielding a toy, but proved effective in helping Dave weed out the few remaining attackers who hadn't yet died or bailed. With a loud crack, an equally loud "FUCK!", and five or six goblin screams, the top third of Cooper's tree snapped off and came crashing to the ground. The stillness of the night following the crash was once again broken by a prolonged fart as Cooper's Barbarian Rage subsided. "I'm okay." "What are those things?" said Tim, rubbing the bridge of his nose where Dave had punched him and looking horrified at the dead goblin nearest him on the ground. Dave looked down at the goblin and grimaced. "I'm not sure. Warts? Boils? Maybe scars from a rough puberty?" "Guys," said Julian. "Help me take out the ones in the web." Dave set Tim's crossbow down in front of Tim and grabbed a goblin bow. He and Julian shot every squirming lump of web until there was no more movement in the tree. Dave looked back at Tim, who still hadn't touched the crossbow. "Thanks for the help." Tim stared at Dave, his eyes wide with terror. "W-w-what the hell is going on here?" "Dude, relax. You just woke up and you're freaking out a little." "Stop telling me to relax! I've got a goddamn arrow in my leg!" Dave rolled his eyes. "Geez Louise, like that's the first time that's ever happened." He plucked the arrow out of Tim's leg. "OW!" cried Tim. "Mother fu–" Dave clapped his hand over Tim's mouth. "Keep your voice down. I heal thee." Tim's eyes rolled up, and his head swayed loose from Dave's grip. "Whoa. That feels amazing. What did you..." His eyes became alert again as he felt his leg where the arrow had struck him. "It's healed! How did you – Jesus Christ!" Tim pointed at Cooper emerging from the fallen tree. "There's another one! Shoot it! Shoot it!" "Hey, fuck you," said Cooper. Julian squatted down in front of an increasingly terrified Tim. "Are you okay?" "Where am I?" said Tim. "How did I get here? Who are you people? Shit! Who am I?" He looked down at his feet. "Why are my feet so hairy?" He looked at his hand, then felt his face. "What the fuck am I?" Dave closed his eyes and sighed through his nose. "Those sons of bitches." "Who?" asked Julian. "The pixies. That arrow they hit Tim with did more than put him to sleep. It erased his memory." Julian thought about it. It seemed plausible, but not so obvious as to be the only possibility. "How do you know? Maybe he lost his memory when you punched him in the face." "No." Dave turned to Tim. "Sorry about that, by the way." Tim stared back at him, petrified and speechless. "They told us to find the Fairyfire Gem, but then they just let us go. They knew we'd have to come back." "If that was the case, then why wouldn't they tell us about the memory loss from the beginning?" Julian knew the answer as soon as he finished the question. "Because they're dicks," said Dave. "Shit," said Cooper. Tim crawled away from Cooper and cowered behind Dave. Julian smiled at Tim. "There's nothing to be afraid of. That's just Cooper." "He's been your best friend since first grade," said Dave. Tim backed away from all of them. "None of this makes any sense. You people aren't human. It's like I'm in a world I don't belong in." "You're not wrong," said Julian. "You're from Mississippi." A glint of recognition shone in Tim's eyes. "Mississippi," he said slowly to himself. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "You said something about... the Pixies?" "Yes!" Julian was more excited than was probably appropriate that Tim's memory might be brought back via his favorite band. "Who are they?" "The Pixies are an alternative rock band from Massachusetts." "Massachusetts." Julian tried to jog his memory a little more with some of their better-known songs. "Debaser, Here Comes Your Man, Where Is My Mind?" "Dude," said Cooper. "I don't think –" "Shut up!" said Julian. "It's coming back to him." Tim opened his eyes. "And this alternative rock band from Massachusetts… they erased my memory?" Julian sighed. "No. That was done by actual pixies, as in the mythological fairy creatures." "You see, that's the part I don't get. You even describe them as 'mythological creatures', and yet you claim we've had real physical interaction with them. That doesn't make any sense." "I know this is a lot to take in right now, but you have to trust us. We were all playing a fantasy game, and the Game Master made us roll these magical dice. Like, for real magical. Next thing we knew, we were inside the fantasy game, in the bodies of our fantasy characters. We've been trying to figure out a way to get back to the real world ever since." "So hang on." Tim ran his fingers through his hair and massaged his scalp. "Let me see if I've got this straight." He looked up at Julian. "What you're saying is... I'm a fucking nerd?" Dave frowned. "Is that really the most difficult part of this for you to believe?" "Of course it is," said Tim. "The rest of it is all here in my face. I'm obviously not in my own body. The arrow that hit me hurt like a son of a bitch, so that rules out dreaming. This guy's got those long ass ears, and that guy's a fucking monster. And you! You healed my arrow wound with some kind of magical sorcery shit. If this is a hoax, then fucking bravo. You got me." "Actually," said Julian. "Dave healed you with clerical magic. I'm the sorcerer." He cast a small Prestidigitation spell as a demonstration and created the illusion of a glowing solar system above his head, with planets revolving around the central sun and moons orbiting planets. It was pretty impressive. "Holy shit!" said Tim in wide-eyed fascination. "That's incredible!" "Thank you." Tim pursed his lips. "Except you've got Jupiter and Saturn in the wrong order, and Uranus has too many moons and horizontal rings." Cooper snorted. "Somebody needs to learn how to wipe." "You guys have magic. The big guy's obviously some kind of warrior type. What about me? Do I have any special powers?" Julian and Dave exchanged a glance, then looked back at Tim. "You're sneaky," said Julian. "Sneaky?" "Yeah. Really quiet, and you can hide really well." "My fantasy power is being good at Hide-and-Seek?" "It's more useful than you might –" "Hey!" shouted Tim, his attention suddenly focused elsewhere. He jogged and waved his arms. "Go away! Shoo!" Ravenus had his beak in a goblin's ocular cavity. He jerked his head up and slurped back the optic nerve as Tim got close. "I'm sorry. Were you going to eat that?" Tim froze in his tracks. "Holy shit! I can talk to animals!" He got down on one knee. "Hello, bird. What's your name?" Ravenus ruffled his feathers. Julian could sense his annoyance. "You know I can't understand you when you talk like that." Tim looked back at Julian. "What's it talking about?" "This is Ravenus, my familiar. He can only speak the Elven tongue." "It sounded like English to me." "In game terms, it's English with a British accent." "So he doesn't understand American English?" "Correct." Tim thought for a moment. "Seriously?" Julian nodded. "That sounds... I don't know, what's the word? Dumb?" "It is what it is," said Dave. "We need to decide what we're going to do about tonight. If we head back to the pixie meadow now, we might make it back there around midnight, but sleeping in a meadow might be more comfortable and less dangerous than sleeping in this goblin-infested forest. On the other hand, if we set up camp right here, Julian could prepare his spells and summon up some more horses, so we wouldn't have to walk." "I vote we walk back there now," said Julian. "Who knows what we'll have to face in the Cave of Secrets? If we sleep in the meadow, I can prepare my spells there in the morning and we won't have to waste any of them on Mount spells." Nobody wanted to walk anymore, but everyone agreed it was the wiser decision. The trek back to the meadow took about four times as long as the journey from it had taken. Not only were they forced to walk from lack of horses, but they were forced to walk at the speed of Dave, which sucked. Fortunately, the journey was uneventful, and they made it back to the meadow exhausted, but alive. "At least I can get my helmet back," said Dave when they reached the hole. "I hope Cooper's fart has dissipated by now." He lowered himself into the hole, holding some clumps of grass at the edge, then let himself slide down the remaining two feet. "Not too bad." He picked up his helmet. "Cooper, could you give me a hand?" "How about a refill instead?" Cooper squatted next to the hole and let rip a fart that quieted the nearby frogs and crickets. Tim's jaw dropped. "Why would you do that?" "I have a low Charisma score. It gives me gas." "That wasn't just gas, asshole!" said Dave, wiping specks of shit off his face. He angrily shoved his helmet back on. Tim put his hands on his hips and glared at Cooper. "Your Charisma score didn't force you to shart on your friend. That was a purely mean-spirited act, and you should apologize right now." Dave stopped coughing on fart and stared quizzically up out of the hole. Cooper stuck out his lower lip, turned around, and lowered his hand down to Dave. "Sorry, Dave." While Cooper was helping Dave out of the hole, Julian looked up at the stars. "Should be a clear night. Anyone want to take watch while I prepare my spells?" Cooper yawned. "I'm pretty beat from tearing that tree down." "I'll do it," said Dave. "Uh-uh," said Tim. "You get your rest. You've had a long day." He smiled. "Besides, I had a nap earlier." Dave's lips quivered like he was trying to remember how to make words. "Thank you," he finally said. When Cooper and Dave started snoring, Tim looked at Julian. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to get a little sleep before you work on your spells or whatever?" "Elves don't sleep," said Julian. "But I need to meditate for four hours in order to ready my mind." "Neat," said Tim. "Well don't let me keep you." Julian sat cross-legged on the ground, hands on his knees. As his mind began to clear, he heard Tim whistling. He couldn't make out a tune. It was like Tim was whistling just for the sheer joy of whistlinng. Four hours later, he came out of his trance with his mind feeling nice and refreshed. He looked around. The first hint of light in the eastern sky revealed the silhouettes of the trees. Dave and Cooper were still sleeping. Ravenus was still nestled under his serape. Tim was sitting on the ground, his back to Julian, fiddling with something that Julian couldn't see. "Everything go okay?" asked Julian. "Huh?" Tim shoved whatever he was fooling with into his backpack, then turned around to face Julian. "Oh yeah, no problems at all. Has it been four hours already?" Julian nodded. "So what did you do?" Tim shrugged. "Nothing much. Stared up at the stars mostly, thinking about what kind of constellations the people around here might recognize. That sort of thing." "Oh, okay. You should probably get some sleep now. We don't know what we're going to have to face in the morning." Tim lay on the grass with his head on his backpack. "Goodnight." When Tim started snoring, Julian was really tempted to see what was inside Tim's backpack. He resisted the urge, as it was a clear breach of trust. But he kept coming back to Tim's suspicious behavior. Alone, in the dark, his recently cleared mind began to fill with imaginary scenarios. What if that arrow did more than put him to sleep and erase his memory? What if it was some kind of mind control? Julian forced himself to focus on preparing his mind to wield the coming day's allotment of spells. Tim couldn't do any harm while he was asleep. The others would wake up before him. He could tell them what he saw and discuss how to handle it while Tim was still sleeping. It was a long wait, but finally, Cooper yawned and scratched his balls. He and Dave stood, stretched, and trudged over to the hole. Dave took a piss and Cooper squatted down for a dump. Julian turned away, but couldn't shield his sensitive elf ears to the sound.

5d6

Robert Bevan

PLOOOOP

It sounded a lot more substantial than the previous night's shart. "Jesus," said Dave. "I'm glad I wasn't down there for that one." When Cooper and Dave had finished their business, Julian beckoned them over. "What's going on?" asked Dave. "Something weird is going on with Tim," Julian whispered. "Aside from the memory loss thing?" "When I came out of my trance last night, he was sitting with his back to me. I couldn't see what he was doing, but he was definitely doing something. When I spoke to him, he shoved something into his bag really quickly, like he didn't want me to see it." "He was whacking it to a titty mag," said Cooper. "Give him some fucking privacy." "There aren't any titty mags in this world." Cooper scratched his armpit. "That's true. Now I'm suspicious." Julian looked at Dave. "You're the wise one. What do you think?" "I don't know. Could be something. Could be nothing." "Whoa," said Cooper. "That is some Confucius level shit right there." Dave gave Cooper the finger. "I've got to go pray for my spells. Keep an eye on Tim until I get back." The wait was excruciating. Cooper whiled the hour away watching Ravenus tear into his kills from yesterday. Julian watched Tim, sleeping like a child without a worry in the world. When Dave returned from his prayer, he, Julian, and Cooper decided that it would be best to wait until Tim woke up and confront him honestly about the situation. It wasn't that they didn't trust him. It was more a matter of that they didn't know the degree to which his mind had been messed with. They were all staring at him when he finally woke up. "Good morning," said Tim, squinting up at them. "What's up?" "Tim," said Julian. "I hate to have to ask you this, but I saw you shove something into your bag last night, and we need to know what it is." He braced himself for a big Fuck you and stood ready to jump out of the way if Tim decided to try and pee on him as a response instead. "It was meant to be a surprise." Tim opened his backpack. "I wanted to wait until everyone was awake." He pulled out a wreath of brightly-colored wildflowers woven together by the stems. "It's a friendship necklace." He offered it to Julian. Julian felt like a complete dick as he slipped Tim's gift over his head. "Thank you." Tim handed friendship necklaces to Dave and Cooper as well. "This is beautiful," said Dave, donning his gift. Tim put on the necklace he'd made for himself. "I really appreciate you guys coming all the way back here just for me. I'm sorry to have caused you so much trouble." Dave wiped a tear from his eye and hugged Tim. "It's no trouble at all. Thank you." Tim hugged him back. "Thank you for saving my life yesterday." "Jesus," said Cooper, holding his necklace out like he'd just pulled it out of a clogged toilet. "We need to get that Fairyfucker Gem right now." Julian glared at Cooper. Cooper groaned but put on his friendship necklace. "Thank you so much," he said like he was reading it from a teleprompter. "I'll cherish this gift forever." Tim rubbed his hands together like he was eager to start a brand new day. "Now what?" "That's a good question," said Julian. "How do we find the Cave of Secrets?" To his left, he heard a tiny bell ringing. "What was that?" asked Tim, his eyes wide and his voice a little shaky. "It must be the pixies." Julian called out in the direction he heard the bell. "Yes?" The bell rang again. "Maybe we're supposed to follow the sound?" suggested Dave. Julian called out, "Are we supposed to follow the bell?" The bell rang a little louder. "Come on." Julian started walking toward the bell, and the others followed. "You talked to us yesterday. We could save some time if you'd just talk to us again instead of this bell-ringing nonsense." Dave, usually the slowest one in the group, was walking beside Julian. Cooper and Tim were lagging behind, Cooper three knuckles deep into his left nostril, and Tim stalking through the tall grass like a kitten, but with a crossbow. "They're just messing with us some more," said Dave. "There's no reason for them not to talk to us. The bell thing is just a bit of theatrics. Makes it more mysterious and scary for us." The ringing bell eventually led them into the forest. "How long of a walk is this?" asked Julian. "Should we have brought torches? How big is the Fairyfire Gem?" He hoped that, by asking enough questions, he might be able to annoy the pixies to reveal themselves and offer something in the way of a straight explanation. Eventually, the bell stopped ringing altogether, and Julian feared he might have pissed off Cricket again. "Look!" said Tim, running ahead. He crouched next to a long slender leaf resting in the forks of a sapling. There were words on the leaf, written in what looked like glitter glue. "Cave... of... Secrets," Tim read the sign aloud. "What is this?" He ran his pinky finger along the leaf. "Tim!" said Dave. "No!" But not soon enough. Tim had already touched his fingertip to his tongue. "Something's coming back to me. I think it's a memory." "Have you ever blown a pixie?" asked Cooper. "It's so close," said Tim. "On the tip of my tongue." Julian heard faint giggling high above his head. He looked up. "I can hear you, you know!" Tim shut his eyes and frowned in thought. "It's almost there." "Maybe it's best to just let this one stay buried," said Cooper. "I'm, like, ninety-nine percent sure that's pixie splooge." Tim snapped his fingers. "Cinnabon!" Cooper nodded. "That's in line with what their piss tastes like." "Do you remember anything else?" asked Julian. It would be nice and ironic if their semen triggered an avalanche of memory, and they could just go back to the city now instead of looking for the Fairyfire Gem. Tim shook his head. "Just Cinnabon." Dave sighed. "The pointy end of the leaf is pointing that way, but I don't see any cave." Julian noticed two trees unlike any other in the forest. They were thick and gnarled like oaks, but their bark was grey and the leaves were all a deep autumnal red. Every other tree in the forest had healthy green summer leaves. They were also in the same general direction as where the sign was pointing. The little bell rang again, this time farther away, and from the other side of those strange trees. "Guys!" said Dave. "This way!" He waddle-ran between the two red-leafed trees, then fell through solid ground. "Fuuuuuck!" Though he'd disappeared into the ground, Dave's voice was clearly audible as it continued to grunt and swear, and his armor banged repeatedly on stone. He sounded like he was falling down a flight of stairs. Julian followed the route Dave had taken between the trees, but he stepped more carefully when he got close to where Dave disappeared. "Dave?" "I'm down here," Dave called back. "The opening is about a foot and a half in front of you." Julian inched forward, looking for some kind of clue, or a seam between the real and illusory ground. Just ahead of him, he saw an ant disappear and guessed that the fake ground began there. "A little more," said Dave. "Almost there." Feeling more confident, Julian took a larger step. Just as he'd suspected it would, his foot went through the ground and touched solid stone six inches lower. Knowing the illusion was there, he could now see through it, all the way down to Dave at the bottom of the stairs. Julian stayed where he was and motioned for Cooper and Tim to follow. He guided them through the illusory patch of ground and safely into the underground tunnel. "This is the Cave of Secrets?" said Cooper. "It smells like the Cave of Ass." It required a pretty offensive odor for Cooper to rightfully complain, but he was not exaggerating. This cave was clearly no secret to every animal in the forest who'd ever needed to take a dump. Looking around, Julian couldn't see any shit smeared over the rough granite walls, or turds lying in their path on the smoother granite floor, but the stench was overpowering. Barring any magically-hidden doors or secret passages, there was only one way to go, so they followed the cave straight forward. "I'm scared," Tim whispered to Julian. Julian was scared too, but he put on a brave face for Tim. "Here, hold up your crossbow." When Tim did so, Julian touched the bolt loaded in it. "Light." The bolt glowed, bathing the cave walls in a soft white light. "Whoa!" said Tim. "That's wicked awesome! Is this a magical weapon now?" "Only insofar as it glows. It won't do any more damage than a regular bolt, but it could be useful if we need to get a look at something really far away." Cooper and Dave were about fifty feet ahead of them now since they could both see just fine in complete darkness. When Julian and Tim caught up, they found Dave and Cooper staring at a polished section of wall. It was so smooth that Julian could almost make out his reflection, except for two places. Near the ceiling, a three-foot-wide pair of rough granite lips protruded out, as if the rest of the wall had been chiseled and polished six inches back solely for this effect. And two feet off the ground, a simple mitten-shaped symbol had been carved into the otherwise smooth wall. The floor of the tunnel beyond them was covered in square tiles, each a foot across, and engraved with a single capital letter. Ten tiles across and ten deep, the letters seemed to have been placed arbitrarily. "What does it say?" asked Cooper. Illiteracy was a Barbarian class trait. "It doesn't say anything," said Julian, studying the layout of the letters. He searched for words horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. He didn't see anything except for the occasional inconsequential two letter word like IF, AS, or BE. He looked down at Tim. "Do you see anything?" Tim shook his head and shrugged. Memory or no memory, he still had the highest Intelligence score in the group. If he couldn't spot anything, they were in trouble. "What about this stuff on the wall?" asked Dave. He looked up at the granite lips. "Hello?" "Get back," said Cooper, reaching under his loincloth. "I'm gonna take a whiz in the mouth." "No you're not," said Julian. "Put that away!" Dave placed his hand inside the mitten-shaped symbol. The lips started moving and spoke in a deep booming voice. "IF YOU DESIRE TO CONTINUE, IT SHALL REQUIRE THE KNOWLEDGE WITHIN YOU." Julian cringed. That was some terrible rhyming. "HE WHO HAND-SHAPED SYMBOL PRESSED, MUST ALONE COMPLETE THE TEST." Somehow, it managed to get even worse. "PLACE YOUR FEET UPON THE SQUARES, AND SPELL THE NAME OF THE GOD OF BEARS." "The god of bears?" said Dave. "What the hell does that mean?" "Are bears religious in this world?" asked Tim. Julian shook his head. "They're just normal animals, except for dire bears, which are just bigger. "Werebears might be religious," said Dave. "At least some of them." "But do they have a particular god that they worship?" Dave shrugged. "Let's work backwards," said Julian. "We'll take the gods we know, and see if we can find any possible connection to bears. Dave, you're the cleric. Name off some gods." "Um..." Dave's failure to know the name of a single god was less than encouraging. "Guys!" said Tim, his gaze darting among the letters on the floor. "I think I've got it!" "Bullshit," said Dave. "You don't even know your own name. How would you know the name for some possibly non-existent fantasy world bear god?" "Hear me out." "I'm listening, but you'd better have something good. I'm the one whose ass is on the line for this." Tim pointed at a tile in the row nearest them. "U." Then he pointed to a tile on the next row, two columns to the right. "R." The third-row tile was five columns to the left, which would be a tricky jump for Dave. "S." The fourth tile was directly behind the third. "A." Dave stroked his beard. "Ursa?" "That's right," said Tim. "Then you skip a row and hop over to that M on the sixth row." He quickly pointed out the rest of the path. "A, J, O, R." "Ursa Major," said Dave, nodding slowly. "Who the fuck is Ursa Major?" asked Cooper. "It's Latin for "Big Bear," said Tim. "It's a constellation, also commonly known as the Big Dipper." Cooper snorted. "I thought that was Dave's mom's favorite –" A severe look from Tim shut him up. Tim held up a flower on his necklace. "What are these?" "Flowers?" Tim narrowed his eyes. "Cooper?" "Friendship necklaces." "And how do friends treat friends?" Cooper pursed his lips, searching for the answer Tim wanted. "With respect?" Tim nodded. "Very good. Do you have anything you'd like to say to Dave?" Cooper sighed. "Sorry, Dave." "Very good." Tim turned to Dave. "Now, what do you think about Ursa Major?" "I have to agree with you. It's a giant celestial bear, right? What else could it be?" Dave smiled at Tim. "Good work, buddy." Tim gave him a grin and a thumbs up. Dave took a few deep breaths, rubbed his hands together, and stepped on the tile engraved with the letter U. His foot went straight through it. "Fuck!" cried Dave as he fell forward. His whole body once again disappeared through an illusory floor. This time, however, he landed with a splat. Whatever he'd landed on, at least it sounded soft and not too deep. "WRONG!" bellowed the mouth on the wall. As the echo died down, a loud buzzing sound filled the foul cave air. "Ow!" said Cooper. "What the –" "BEES!" cried Tim. They were everywhere. Half an inch long, yellow, and angry as hell. While Julian, Tim, and Cooper slapped each other, Dave rose out of the floor. His entire front side, from his face to where his breastplate met the fake tiled floor, was slathered in shit. "What the hell are you guys – OW!" He slapped the back of his neck. "Shit! Bees!" He dropped back into the floor. It was difficult to say what caused more damage, the bees or the slapping. But by the time they were done, they were all covered in welts and bruises. More than a hundred dead bees lay at their feet. Dave's shit-caked face poked up out of the floor again. "Are they gone?" "Yeah," said Julian. "I think we got most of them." Dave climbed out the other side of the pit. "It was a trick question. We were right the first time. There is no god of bears. The whole floor is an illusion. Whatever letter you step on, you just fall into a big shit pit." "And attacked by bees." Tim shined his crossbow light around. "Where did they come from?" There didn't appear to be any cracks or holes in the wall. Cooper tossed Tim to the other side of the pit, where he landed gracefully on his feet. Then he hopped down into the pit and carried Julian across. Still unsure what perils they might have to face further into the Cave of Secrets, Dave used his healing magic sparingly, giving the others a Zero-Level healing spell. It was enough to take the edge off all the bee stings. They walked deeper into the cave for about fifteen minutes before reaching another polished section of wall, complete with the lips up top and the mitten symbol down low. Just beyond it stood three clay jugs, each about half as tall and twice as wide as Tim, and each with a different shape painted on the side. The first, a blue triangle. The second, a red square. The third, a yellow circle. Beyond the jugs was a closed wooden door with five shapes painted on it. A purple oval, an orange five-pointed star, a green hexagon, a blue diamond, and a blue triangle. "This looks like another puzzle," said Tim. He looked up at Julian. "You seem really smart. You should probably be the one to activate the mouth." Julian smiled. "That's very nice of you, but you're the smartest one here, according to our Intelligence scores." "But I screwed up the last one." "It was still a lot better than anything any of us came up with." Tim sighed and put his hand in the mitten shape. "I'll do my best." "ON THE FLOOR THREE JARS YOU SEE. CHOOSE THE ONE WHICH HAS THE KEY." That wasn't too bad. "COMPLETE THE PATTERN ON THE DOOR. IF YOU FAIL, YOU'LL LIVE NO MORE." Julian shook his head. He'd given credit too soon. "BEYOND THE DOOR LIES WHAT YOU SEEK. OPEN IT, YOU MUST, TO TAKE A PEEK." "Enough already," said Julian. "That last line was not only terrible, but it added absolutely nothing." Dave stared hard at the shapes painted on the door. "I'm not seeing much of a pattern at all. The shapes are all different, and all but the last two are different colors." "That's it!" cried Tim. "The pattern is a movement from chaos to order. Like primitive life forming in the oceans. These first three symbols represent eons of nothing happening. But once those first protein strings or amino acids or whatever got going, as represented by these last two symbols in a shift toward order, the progress was exponential. The jar with the key is obviously the one with the blue triangle." Cooper picked up the jar with the blue triangle and jiggled it. "I didn't understand any of that shit you just said, but I don't hear any keys in here." Tim grinned. "They probably attached it to the stopper or something. They wouldn't let you solve the puzzle by shaking the jugs." "Knock yourself out." Cooper handed the jug down to Tim, who then pulled out the wooden stopper. "AAAAAHHHHHH!" cried Tim as a million angry bees exploded out through the mouth of the jug, which fell out of his hands and shattered on the floor. "More bees?" said Dave, waving his arms around ineffectively as several bees got themselves stuck in the shit in his beard. "They're everywhere!" Tim's bare feet crushed broken shards of pottery from the jug he'd just dropped. "Find the key! Open another jug!" "Which one?" asked Cooper. "Either one! When we get through the door we can close the bees behind us." Cooper grabbed the jug with the yellow circle, then pulled out the stopper. "Son of a bitch!" he cried as a torrent of bees flew out. Julian pulled his serape around tightly to keep Ravenus protected. "Cooper! Put the stopper back in the –" "Fuck you, bees!" shouted Cooper as he hurled the jug at the wall, doubling the density of bees in the air. He grabbed the jug with the red square, the last one, and pulled out the stopper. He really shouldn't have been as surprised as he was when a bunch of bees flew out. "What the fuck is with all the goddamn bees?" He flung the jug at the door. But this time, instead of shattering, it simply vanished. Half a second later, Julian heard the expected shatter beyond the door. "It's an illusion!" he said, charging through the swarm, then through the false door. Tim followed, then Cooper, then finally Dave. The only bees which followed were the ones stuck in Dave's beard, but that was at least two dozen. This part of the cave was also swarming with bees, thanks to the shattered jug that Cooper had accidentally thrown through the door, but it wasn't nearly as dense as the other side. Tim's magically illuminated crossbow wasn't necessary here. They had reached the end of the Cave of Secrets. At the far end of the cave, beyond four marble steps, the Fairyfire Gem glowed bright pink and orange from the top of a white marble dais. Of course, between them and the gem, there was another polished section of wall with a set of lips and a mitten print. Once they'd swatted or been stung by most of the bees that were flying around, Dave cast a proper Cure Light Wounds spell on everyone. The pain subsided, but the welts still itched. Dave scratched his arm and neck. "Nothing I can do about the itching. The spell just brings up our Hit Points. It doesn't do anything about the bee venom in our bodies." Julian looked at his own arms. They looked like he had shingles, and they itched something terrible. "Let's just get this over with. Who wants to do the honors?" After a few seconds of nobody volunteering, he sighed. "Fine, I'll do it." He walked over to the wall and put his hand in the mitten shape. "CONGRATULATIONS ARE NOW DUE. YOU'VE PASSED THE TESTS, SO GOOD FOR YOU." Julian closed his eyes and shook his head. "WE HOPE THAT YOU'VE ENJOYED THE JOURNEY. PERHAPS, SOMEDAY, YOU WILL RETURNY." Honestly, the bees were less painful than listening to this. "YOUR HEART IS PURE, YOUR MIND IS WISE. GO FORTH NOW AND CLAIM YOUR PRIZE." "What a bunch of horseshit," said Julian. "I hope those pixies appreciate this thing." He walked up the steps before the dais. The Fairyfire gem was about as big around as a baseball. Its radiance was nearly blinding up close. Julian reached out and felt for any sign of heat, but there was no appreciable change in temperature when his hand got close to it. He tapped it quickly with one finger, then held his finger on it. It felt like glass, neither hot nor cold nor shooting lightning bolts. Satisfied that it wasn't dangerous to touch, Julian grabbed it. When he pulled it toward him, he was surprised to feel resistance.

5d6

Robert Bevan

CLICK

[ TWANG ] [ SMASH ] [ BUUUUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ] Instead of being one solid block of milky white glass, the dais was actually composed of thin sheets, hollow on the inside. Hollow, that was, except for the million gazillion goddamn bees that flew out of its shattered remains. Startled, he dropped the Fairyfire gem, lost his balance, and fell forward off the stairs. He hugged Ravenus close to his chest and braced himself to hit the stone floor littered with shards of broken glass. He was pleasantly surprised to land on something soft and crunchy instead. It was pleasant, at least, until he remembered that he was at the epicenter of a hellswarm of bees. He flailed his arms and legs wildly, hoping that he'd fend off enough so that his friends could kill the rest before he got stung to death. But the more he flailed, the more he soaked himself in some kind of sticky sweet fluid. Whatever he'd landed on wasn't just soft and crunchy. It was also really sticky. "Julian!" cried Tim, Dave, and Cooper. What the hell did they want? Could they not see that he was busy right now? "What?" he shouted back at them. "You're in the hives!" said Tim. Judging by the clear full sentence Tim had just uttered, Julian guessed that the rest of them were relatively safe from the bee attack. Julian, on the other hand, was the one destroying their home, and the one receiving the full wrath of the swarm. His body was burning with the pricks of thousands of stingers. He wasn't going to survive this for long. "Horse!" he cried, then spat out three or four bees. It must be disconcerting enough to be suddenly called into existence out of the ether under the best of circumstances. In the middle of a swarm of pissed-off bees was not the best of circumstances, and the horse reacted appropriately, bucking, screaming, stomping, and doing considerably more damage to the hive than Julian was. So much so, in fact, that Julian was able to open his eyes and rifle through his bag. He teased out a scroll. Mage Hand. He tried to toss it away, but it was stuck to his hands with honey. No time to try to salvage it. He wiped it from his hand on a chunk of hive and went for another scroll. Ventriloquism. Shit! Two ruined Magic Missiles later, he found what he was looking for. "Web!" he shouted. Sticky white fluid sprayed out of his fingers in every direction, engulfing the last twenty feet of the Cave of Secrets in strands of what looked like magical jizz. The buzzing stopped as every bee in the swarm was caught in the dripping fibers of Julian's splooge web. His horse didn't appear to share the same relief that Julian felt. It bucked and kicked even harder, not being able to rationalize that immobility was preferable to being stung to death by bees. "Julian?" called Cooper. "Are you okay?" "Yeah. I cast a Web spell." Julian's face was so swollen that he sounded like he was talking with a mouthful of marshmallows. "Oh, sweet. I thought you might have exploded, and this is what the inside of an elf looks like." "Can one of you guys light this on fire?" "I beg your pardon, sir?" said Ravenus, peeking out from Julian's serape. "Just stay under my serape. You'll be fine." "I'm not so worried about me, sir. I mean, I am, but I'm more concerned about you. You're aware that fire is very dangerous, are you not?" From their inaction, Julian sensed his friends were similarly concerned, so he answered Ravenus loudly enough for everyone to be able to hear. "It'll just be a flash of flame, consuming the web quickly, and hopefully killing all of the bees. I've got enough Hit Points to survive it." "It's going to hurt," said Dave. "I've got a protective honey coating. Hurry up before the spell duration runs out." Julian heard the clink and scrape of flint and steel and started to second-guess the wisdom of asking to be set on fire. Then came the crackle of ignited web, then the woosh of spreading flame. Exploding bees sounded like microwave popcorn. Finally, he felt the warmth of the flame rushing his way. It washed over him in a wave of intense heat. It hurt quite a bit, like being boiled in glue, but it also kind of scratched that bee sting itch. Tim rushed over, his steps marked by crunching charred bees. "Julian! Are you okay?" "Dave," Julian croaked out through his parched throat. "I've got you, buddy." Dave placed a finger on Julian's forehead. "Ow," said Julian. "I heal thee!" Julian must have looked like shit because Dave used up one of his good spells. Even the itching from the bee stings was gone. The fire must have burnt the venom out of his skin. Dave and Cooper helped Julian to his feet. "Do you have the Fairyfire gem?" asked Dave. Julian looked down at all the broken glass. "I dropped it. I don't think it was a gem at all. It was hooked to something that shattered the dais when I pulled it." "This whole cave felt like kind of a sham," said Dave. "The riddles were stupid, and they didn't have any right answers. Whatever choice we made, it all just led to us getting attacked by bees." Cooper scratched the welts on his ass. "As far as dungeon traps go, those kind of sucked. I mean, it wasn't fun getting stung by a bunch of bees, but any asshole with a beekeeper's outfit could have gone in and swiped the Fairyfire gem any time they wanted." "How are living bees even sustainable for a dungeon trap?" asked Tim. "I mean, how long can bees survive in a jar?" Stifled giggling came from above. "Hey!" said Tim, pointing his crossbow up at the cave ceiling. "Who's up there?" Julian put his hand on Tim's crossbow and forced it down. "Those are the pixies." He glared up at the ceiling. "Have you been with us this whole time?" The stifled giggling turned into open laughter. "How could they be... so stupid?" "The little one's face... when he opened the jar!" "Or the fat one, when he fell into the shit pit!" Julian folded his arms. "This was all a big prank? We could have been seriously hurt." "We may have overdone it with the bees there at the end." The disembodied pixie voice giggled. "But the looks on your faces!" "You should apologize to Zingo," said Cricket. "Fuck Zingo," said Cooper. "Why should we apologize to any of you?" "Zingo worked very hard on those riddles. You hurt his –" Cricket gasped. "Oh, dear gods, what's that?" Dave looked up. "What's wrong with –" A gush of clear sparkly slime washed over his face. "My water broke!" cried Cricket. "It's happening!" "But you're not due for another two weeks," said one of the male pixies. Cricket was breathing heavily. "Do you want to argue with them?" "Hurry!" said another one of the males. "We must get her to the birthing pool at once!" Julian felt a small gust of wind as if the pixies all flew by at once. "Hey!" he called after them. "What about Tim's memory?" He ran after them, back through the illusory door. It was pitch dark, and the air was abuzz with the sound of bees. But at least they sounded a little more chill than they had been before. He felt around on the floor for a shard of broken jar, but he found one of the wooden stoppers. Even better. "Light." The stopper glowed, illuminating the cave, and Julian resumed his chase. "Fuckin' bees!" said Cooper a moment later as he followed after Julian with Tim hot on his heels. Dave's armor clanked distantly behind them. Julian opened his serape as he ran. "Ravenus, I need you to look for a nearby pool of water. When you find it, circle overhead." Ravenus nodded. "Very good, sir. Can do!" Julian made a running leap over the shit pit, ran up the stairs and out of the Cave of Secrets, then set Ravenus free. "Hurry!" As Ravenus flapped off in search of the birthing pool, Cooper and Tim raced up the stairs. "Fuck!" cried Dave from down inside the Cave of Secrets. A few moments later, Dave trudged up the stairs, his entire front caked in a fresh layer of shit. Cooper snorted. "Been going down on your mom again, Dave?" Tim glared up at him, holding up a flower on his necklace. "Sorry, Dave," Cooper said with a sigh. "That was an unkind thing to say." Tim nodded, then turned his attention to Dave. "Are you okay?" Dave scraped some shit off his face. "I got Cricket's amniotic fluid in my eyes. My vision is all blurry and glittery. I was following you guys mostly by sound, and I didn't see the shit pit." Tim smiled at Dave. "Don't you worry. As soon as we get my memory back, we'll head back to town and get you all cleaned up." "Thanks, man. I appreciate that." A loud caw sounded from about quarter of a mile southeast. "It's Ravenus!" said Julian. "I think he found them." He ran off in the direction of his familiar's call. The land sloped down a little steeply, so Julian went from tree to tree, breaking his momentum so that he didn't lose control. He spotted the pool before he thought to look up for Ravenus. Cricket and her three manfriends were visible. Cricket lay at the edge of a pool of crystal-clear water, her wings flat against the ground and her feet resting in forked twigs. "I know you're busy right now," said Julian once he reached the pool. "But you had your fun with us, and my friend needs his memory back." "Yes, yes," Zingo snapped back at him. "We'll get to that in a moment!" "I'm sorry," Julian explained. "I don't mean to be rude about this, but we don't have a lot of reason to trust you. You've done nothing but lie to us and play juvenile –" "SHII–III–I–II–IIIT!" Dave's extended cry was interrupted by bumps and roots as he barreled down the side of the hill like Donkey Kong had just thrown him. Julian did his best Mario impression by jumping out of the way as Dave rolled past and splashed into the pool, which immediately started turning brown. The pixies all gasped. "You clumsy, dimwitted oaf!" cried Cricket. "Do you know what you've done?" Dave crawled out of the pool. Chunks of shit slid off his armor and into the water. "I'm okay. Thanks for asking." "You stupid, filthy brute!" "Now wait just a minute!" said Tim, stopping himself just short of falling into the pool of murky shitwater. "That's my friend you're talking to." "Your friend just ruined my birthing pool!" "This isn't his fault. He only chased you down here because he was trying to get my memory, which you stole from me. That's what friends do." He held a flower on his necklace and looked at Dave. "Right, buddy?" Dave found one of the flowers on his necklace with the least amount of shit on it. "That's right." Cricket's lower lip quivered, and glittery tears streamed down her cheeks. "If my babies aren't cleaned immediately in the purest spring water, their wings won't develop properly, and they'll never be able to fly." Dave placed his right hand in the pool. "I purify thee." The water turned clear instantaneously. Even Dave's hand was shiny clean where it had been submerged in the water. The distinct line separating cleanliness from filth on his wrist was remarkable. "Whoa!" said Tim, his eyes and mouth wide open in amazement at Dave's crappy Zero-Level spell. Dave gave him a wide grin and a shiny clean thumbs up. Cricket groaned loudly and pounded the earth with her tiny pixie fists. "They're coming!" Julian didn't know the proper etiquette for witnessing a stranger give birth. He didn't want to gawk, but neither did he want to appear disinterested. He sat down on the ground and settled for casually looking in that general direction. Cooper sat next to him, openly gawking. Dave let Cricket squeeze a finger on his clean hand while her manfriends talked her through the process. Tim put a hand on Julian and Cooper's shoulders. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" Cooper grimaced. "It looks pretty fucking gross from where I'm sitting." After a few moments of tense silence, save for Cricket's groans and heavy breathing, a cry rang out in the still forest air. It sounded like a cross between a human child and a cicada. Tim ran around the pool to get a look at the baby. Julian walked after him. Zingo cradled the screaming child in his arms. "Let me see!" said Tim. "Let me see!" Rocking it gently back and forth, Zingo turned around. Julian's heart nearly stopped when he saw the thing. It was a green slime-covered caterpillar, about the size of a banana. It had a hundred or more little grabby legs, round black eyes like a shark, and a mouth like a collection of animated garden tools. "It's..." He stopped himself, knowing that even with his Charisma bonus and ranks in the Bluff skill, calling this thing adorable was going to be a hard sell. "Is it a boy or a girl?" "Too early to tell," said Zingo. "That's not determinable until after metamorphosis." "Can I hold it?" asked Tim excitedly. "Of course you can." Zingo handed the massive grub over to Tim. "In fact, why don't you do the honors and cleanse it in the pool?" "That is an honor." Tim took a knee next to the pool, dunked the pixie baby under the water, then pulled it back out. It was now free of slime, but no less horrifying to look at. "Next one!" cried Cricket. She squeezed Dave's finger as Poppin stood ready to assist with delivery. By the time she finally let herself rest, Cricket had squeezed out four healthy, screaming larvae. Ravenus peeked out from under Julian's serape. "What's all this noise?" He sniffed the air. "Ooh, what's that smell?" Julian frowned. "Afterbirth?" "Delicious! Oh look, grubs!" Ravenus started to climb out, but Julian sensed his sudden hunger at the sight of Cricket's newborn children. He grabbed Ravenus around the beak and shoved him back down under his serape. "Sorry, Ravenus. Not this time." Cricket was sitting up against a tree trunk, gazing down lovingly at the little monstrosity she'd just given birth to, cradled in her arms. She looked up at Bingbong Fizzbang and nodded. Bingbong flew over to their small pile of belongings, picked up a silver hip flask which was comically large for him, yet a little small compared to what Tim normally carried. He brought it over to Tim. "This is for you." Tim smiled. "Thank you, sir. But I think it's a little early in the day for that." Dave choked back a sob as a single tear rolled down his cheek. Tim looked at Dave. "Hey, man. What's wrong?" Dave sniffled and held up a flower from his friendship necklace. "I'm gonna miss you." "This is a potion that will restore your memory," Bingbong explained. "We appreciate you and your friends' assistance in the birth of our children." Tim shifted the baby he was holding to one arm and accepted the potion. "Well they're just beautiful. Congratulations. I'm deeply honored to have been a part of it." He raised the flask. "To the miracle of life!" He tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and gulped down the contents greedily. When it was done, Tim breathed out a long sigh and opened his eyes. "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST WHAT IS THIS THING?" He pushed the baby away from him. It splashed down into the birthing pool. Bingbong gasped, then dove down to retrieve it. "Tim!" said Dave. "That's their baby!" "Well how the fuck was I supposed to know that? What the hell am I supposed to think when I wake up to some locust-faced maggot monster staring back at me?" He looked around. "Hang on a sec. How long have I been out? Why are we still hanging around with these fucking bug people?" He looked at Dave. "Why are you covered in shit?" He looked at Julian, Cooper, then down at himself. "What's with the flowers? Are we at a fucking luau?" He yanked off his friendship necklace and tossed it into the birthing pool. From the look on Dave's face, one might think Tim had just yanked out his heart. "We should be on our way now," said Julian before the pixies decided to wipe all their memories, or just outright murder them. When they reached the clearing, Julian noticed Dave staring despondently at the wildflowers. "You okay?" "Oh yeah, sure," said Dave. He had neither the Charisma nor the ranks in Bluff to sell the lie. "Totally fine. I was just thinking about how gross that birth was, right?" Julian nodded. "It was unusual, that's for sure." "What's the matter, Dave?" said Cooper. "It's not like you've never seen giant maggots crawling out of your mom's cooch before." "Ha!" said Tim. "Nice one, Coop." Dave's sad eyes looked even sadder. Cooper picked up Tim and put him up on his shoulders. "It's good to have you back, man. I missed you." Tim shook his head as they passed the levitating stump over Dave's treasure hole. "God, I need a fucking drink."

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE GIANT RAFT

[ A CAPTAIN OF THE WOODS ]  "P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h x g k f n d r x u j u g I o c y t d x v k s b x h h u y p o h d v y r y m h u h p u y d k j o x p h e t o z l s l e t n p m v f f o v p d p a j x h y y n o j y g g a y m e q y n f u q l n m v l y f g s u z m q I z t l b q q y u g s q e u b v n r c r e d g r u z b l r m x y u h q h p z d r r g c r o h e p q x u f I v v r p l p h o n t h v d d q f h q s n t z h h h n f e p m q k y u u e x k t o g z g k y u u m f v I j d q d p z j q s y k r p l x h x q r y m v k l o h h h o t o z v d k s p p s u v j h d." The man who held in his hand the document of which this strange assemblage of letters formed the concluding paragraph remained for some moments lost in thought. It contained about a hundred of these lines, with the letters at even distances, and undivided into words. It seemed to have been written many years before, and time had already laid his tawny finger on the sheet of good stout paper which was covered with the hieroglyphics. On what principle had these letters been arranged? He who held the paper was alone able to tell. With such cipher language it is as with the locks of some of our iron safes—in either case the protection is the same. The combinations which they lead to can be counted by millions, and no calculator's life would suffice to express them. Some particular "word" has to be known before the lock of the safe will act, and some "cipher" is necessary before that cryptogram can be read. He who had just reperused the document was but a simple "captain of the woods." Under the name of "Capitaes do Mato" are known in Brazil those individuals who are engaged in the recapture of fugitive slaves. The institution dates from 1722. At that period anti-slavery ideas had entered the minds of a few philanthropists, and more than a century had to elapse before the mass of the people grasped and applied them. That freedom was a right, that the very first of the natural rights of man was to be free and to belong only to himself, would seem to be self-evident, and yet thousands of years had to pass before the glorious thought was generally accepted, and the nations of the earth had the courage to proclaim it. In 1852, the year in which our story opens, there were still slaves in Brazil, and as a natural consequence, captains of the woods to pursue them. For certain reasons of political economy the hour of general emancipation had been delayed, but the black had at this date the right to ransom himself, the children which were born to him were born free. The day was not far distant when the magnificent country, into which could be put three-quarters of the continent of Europe, would no longer count a single slave among its ten millions of inhabitants. The occupation of the captains of the woods was doomed, and at the period we speak of the advantages obtainable from the capture of fugitives were rapidly diminishing. While, however, the calling continued sufficiently profitable, the captains of the woods formed a peculiar class of adventurers, principally composed of freedmen and deserters—of not very enviable reputation. The slave hunters in fact belonged to the dregs of society, and we shall not be far wrong in assuming that the man with the cryptogram was a fitting comrade for his fellow "capitaes do mato." Torres—for that was his name—unlike the majority of his companions, was neither half-breed, Indian, nor negro. He was a white of Brazilian origin, and had received a better education than befitted his present condition. One of those unclassed men who are found so frequently in the distant countries of the New World, at a time when the Brazilian law still excluded mulattoes and others of mixed blood from certain employments, it was evident that if such exclusion had affected him, it had done so on account of his worthless character, and not because of his birth. Torres at the present moment was not, however, in Brazil. He had just passed the frontier, and was wandering in the forests of Peru, from which issue the waters of the Upper Amazon. He was a man of about thirty years of age, on whom the fatigues of a precarious existence seemed, thanks to an exceptional temperament and an iron constitution, to have had no effect. Of middle height, broad shoulders, regular features, and decided gait, his face was tanned with the scorching air of the tropics. He had a thick black beard, and eyes lost under contracting eyebrows, giving that swift but hard glance so characteristic of insolent natures. Clothed as backwoodsmen are generally clothed, not over elaborately, his garments bore witness to long and roughish wear. On his head, stuck jauntily on one side, was a leather hat with a large brim. Trousers he had of coarse wool, which were tucked into the tops of the thick, heavy boots which formed the most substantial part of his attire, and over all, and hiding all, was a faded yellowish poncho. But if Torres was a captain of the woods it was evident that he was not now employed in that capacity, his means of attack and defense being obviously insufficient for any one engaged in the pursuit of the blacks. No firearms—neither gun nor revolver. In his belt only one of those weapons, more sword than hunting-knife, called a "manchetta," and in addition he had an "enchada," which is a sort of hoe, specially employed in the pursuit of the tatous and agoutis which abound in the forests of the Upper Amazon, where there is generally little to fear from wild beasts. On the 4th of May, 1852, it happened, then, that our adventurer was deeply absorbed in the reading of the document on which his eyes were fixed, and, accustomed as he was to live in the forests of South America, he was perfectly indifferent to their splendors. Nothing could distract his attention; neither the constant cry of the howling monkeys, which St. Hillaire has graphically compared to the ax of the woodman as he strikes the branches of the trees, nor the sharp jingle of the rings of the rattlesnake (not an aggressive reptile, it is true, but one of the most venomous); neither the bawling voice of the horned toad, the most hideous of its kind, nor even the solemn and sonorous croak of the bellowing frog, which, though it cannot equal the bull in size, can surpass him in noise. Torres heard nothing of all these sounds, which form, as it were, the complex voice of the forests of the New World. Reclining at the foot of a magnificent tree, he did not even admire the lofty boughs of that "pao ferro," or iron wood, with its somber bark, hard as the metal which it replaces in the weapon and utensil of the Indian savage. No. Lost in thought, the captain of the woods turned the curious paper again and again between his fingers. With the cipher, of which he had the secret, he assigned to each letter its true value. He read, he verified the sense of those lines, unintelligible to all but him, and then he smiled—and a most unpleasant smile it was. Then he murmured some phrases in an undertone which none in the solitude of the Peruvian forests could hear, and which no one, had he been anywhere else, would have heard. "Yes," said he, at length, "here are a hundred lines very neatly written, which, for some one that I know, have an importance that is undoubted. That somebody is rich. It is a question of life or death for him, and looked at in every way it will cost him something." And, scrutinizing the paper with greedy eyes, "At a conto only for each word of this last sentence it will amount to a considerable sum, and it is this sentence which fixes the price. It sums up the entire document. It gives their true names to true personages; but before trying to understand it I ought to begin by counting the number of words it contains, and even when this is done its true meaning may be missed." In saying this Torres began to count mentally. "There are fifty-eight words, and that makes fifty-eight contos. With nothing but that one could live in Brazil, in America, wherever one wished, and even live without doing anything! And what would it be, then, if all the words of this document were paid for at the same price? It would be necessary to count by hundreds of contos. Ah! there is quite a fortune here for me to realize if I am not the greatest of duffers!" It seemed as though the hands of Torres felt the enormous sum, and were already closing over the rolls of gold. Suddenly his thoughts took another turn. "At length," he cried, "I see land; and I do not regret the voyage which has led me from the coast of the Atlantic to the Upper Amazon. But this man may quit America and go beyond the seas, and then how can I touch him? But no! he is there, and if I climb to the top of this tree I can see the roof under which he lives with his family!" Then seizing the paper and shaking it with terrible meaning: "Before to-morrow I will be in his presence; before to-morrow he will know that his honor and his life are contained in these lines. And when he wishes to see the cipher which permits him to read them, he—well, he will pay for it. He will pay, if I wish it, with all his fortune, as he ought to pay with all his blood! Ah! My worthy comrade, who gave me this cipher, who told me where I could find his old colleague, and the name under which he has been hiding himself for so many years, hardly suspects that he has made my fortune!" For the last time Torres glanced over the yellow paper, and then, after carefully folding it, put it away into a little copper box which he used for a purse. This box was about as big as a cigar case, and if what was in it was all Torres possessed he would nowhere have been considered a wealthy man. He had a few of all the coins of the neighboring States—ten double-condors in gold of the United States of Colombia, worth about a hundred francs; Brazilian reis, worth about as much; golden sols of Peru, worth, say, double; some Chilian escudos, worth fifty francs or more, and some smaller coins; but the lot would not amount to more than five hundred francs, and Torres would have been somewhat embarrassed had he been asked how or where he had got them. One thing was certain, that for some months, after having suddenly abandoned the trade of the slave hunter, which he carried on in the province of Para, Torres had ascended the basin of the Amazon, crossed the Brazilian frontier, and come into Peruvian territory. To such a man the necessaries of life were but few; expenses he had none—nothing for his lodging, nothing for his clothes. The forest provided his food, which in the backwoods cost him naught. A few reis were enough for his tobacco, which he bought at the mission stations or in the villages, and for a trifle more he filled his flask with liquor. With little he could go far. When he had pushed the paper into the metal box, of which the lid shut tightly with a snap, Torres, instead of putting it into the pocket of his under-vest, thought to be extra careful, and placed it near him in a hollow of a root of the tree beneath which he was sitting. This proceeding, as it turned out, might have cost him dear. It was very warm; the air was oppressive. If the church of the nearest village had possessed a clock, the clock would have struck two, and, coming with the wind, Torres would have heard it, for it was not more than a couple of miles off. But he cared not as to time. Accustomed to regulate his proceedings by the height of the sun, calculated with more or less accuracy, he could scarcely be supposed to conduct himself with military precision. He breakfasted or dined when he pleased or when he could; he slept when and where sleep overtook him. If his table was not always spread, his bed was always ready at the foot of some tree in the open forest. And in other respects Torres was not difficult to please. He had traveled during most of the morning, and having already eaten a little, he began to feel the want of a snooze. Two or three hours' rest would, he thought, put him in a state to continue his road, and so he laid himself down on the grass as comfortably as he could, and waited for sleep beneath the ironwood-tree. Torres was not one of those people who drop off to sleep without certain preliminaries. HE was in the habit of drinking a drop or two of strong liquor, and of then smoking a pipe; the spirits, he said, overexcited the brain, and the tobacco smoke agreeably mingled with the general haziness of his reverie. Torres commenced, then, by applying to his lips a flask which he carried at his side; it contained the liquor generally known under the name of "chica" in Peru, and more particularly under that of "caysuma" in the Upper Amazon, to which fermented distillation of the root of the sweet manioc the captain had added a good dose of "tafia" or native rum. When Torres had drunk a little of this mixture he shook the flask, and discovered, not without regret, that it was nearly empty. "Must get some more," he said very quietly. Then taking out a short wooden pipe, he filled it with the coarse and bitter tobacco of Brazil, of which the leaves belong to that old "petun" introduced into France by Nicot, to whom we owe the popularization of the most productive and widespread of the solanaceae. This native tobacco had little in common with the fine qualities of our present manufacturers; but Torres was not more difficult to please in this matter than in others, and so, having filled his pipe, he struck a match and applied the flame to a piece of that stick substance which is the secretion of certain of the hymenoptera, and is known as "ants' amadou." With the amadou he lighted up, and after about a dozen whiffs his eyes closed, his pipe escaped from his fingers, and he fell asleep.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

ROBBER AND ROBBED

Torres slept for about half an hour, and then there was a noise among the trees—a sound of light footsteps, as though some visitor was walking with naked feet, and taking all the precaution he could lest he should be heard. To have put himself on guard against any suspicious approach would have been the first care of our adventurer had his eyes been open at the time. But he had not then awoke, and what advanced was able to arrive in his presence, at ten paces from the tree, without being perceived. It was not a man at all, it was a "guariba." Of all the prehensile-tailed monkeys which haunt the forests of the Upper Amazon—graceful sahuis, horned sapajous, gray-coated monos, sagouins which seem to wear a mask on their grimacing faces—the guariba is without doubt the most eccentric. Of sociable disposition, and not very savage, differing therein very greatly from the mucura, who is as ferocious as he is foul, he delights in company, and generally travels in troops. It was he whose presence had been signaled from afar by the monotonous concert of voices, so like the psalm-singing of some church choir. But if nature has not made him vicious, it is none the less necessary to attack him with caution, and under any circumstances a sleeping traveler ought not to leave himself exposed, lest a guariba should surprise him when he is not in a position to defend himself. This monkey, which is also known in Brazil as the "barbado," was of large size. The suppleness and stoutness of his limbs proclaimed him a powerful creature, as fit to fight on the ground as to leap from branch to branch at the tops of the giants of the forest. He advanced then cautiously, and with short steps. He glanced to the right and to the left, and rapidly swung his tail. To these representatives of the monkey tribe nature has not been content to give four hands—she has shown herself more generous, and added a fifth, for the extremity of their caudal appendage possesses a perfect power of prehension. The guariba noiselessly approached, brandishing a study cudgel, which, wielded by his muscular arm, would have proved a formidable weapon. For some minutes he had seen the man at the foot of the tree, but the sleeper did not move, and this doubtless induced him to come and look at him a little nearer. He came forward then, not without hesitation, and stopped at last about three paces off. On his bearded face was pictured a grin, which showed his sharp-edged teeth, white as ivory, and the cudgel began to move about in a way that was not very reassuring for the captain of the woods. Unmistakably the sight of Torres did not inspire the guariba with friendly thoughts. Had he then particular reasons for wishing evil to this defenseless specimen of the human race which chance had delivered over to him? Perhaps! We know how certain animals retain the memory of the bad treatment they have received, and it is possible that against backwoodsmen in general he bore some special grudge. In fact Indians especially make more fuss about the monkey than any other kind of game, and, no matter to what species it belongs, follow its chase with the ardor of Nimrods, not only for the pleasure of hunting it, but for the pleasure of eating it. Whatever it was, the guariba did not seen disinclined to change characters this time, and if he did not quite forget that nature had made him but a simple herbivore, and longed to devour the captain of the woods, he seemed at least to have made up his mind to get rid of one of his natural enemies. After looking at him for some minutes the guariba began to move round the tree. He stepped slowly, holding his breath, and getting nearer and nearer. His attitude was threatening, his countenance ferocious. Nothing could have seemed easier to him than to have crushed this motionless man at a single blow, and assuredly at that moment the life of Torres hung by a thread. In truth, the guariba stopped a second time close up to the tree, placed himself at the side, so as to command the head of the sleeper, and lifted his stick to give the blow. But if Torres had been imprudent in putting near him in the crevice of the root the little case which contained his document and his fortune, it was this imprudence which saved his life. A sunbeam shooting between the branches just glinted on the case, the polished metal of which lighted up like a looking-glass. The monkey, with the frivolity peculiar to his species, instantly had his attention distracted. His ideas, if such an animal could have ideas, took another direction. He stopped, caught hold of the case, jumped back a pace or two, and, raising it to the level of his eyes, looked at it not without surprise as he moved it about and used it like a mirror. He was if anything still more astonished when he heard the rattle of the gold pieces it contained. The music enchanted him. It was like a rattle in the hands of a child. He carried it to his mouth, and his teeth grated against the metal, but made no impression on it. Doubtless the guariba thought he had found some fruit of a new kind, a sort of huge almost brilliant all over, and with a kernel playing freely in its shell. But if he soon discovered his mistake he did not consider it a reason for throwing the case away; on the contrary, he grasped it more tightly in his left hand, and dropped the cudgel, which broke off a dry twig in its fall. At this noise Torres woke, and with the quickness of those who are always on the watch, with whom there is no transition from the sleeping to the waking state, was immediately on his legs. In an instant Torres had recognized with whom he had to deal. "A guariba!" he cried. And his hand seizing his manchetta, he put himself into a posture of defense. The monkey, alarmed, jumped back at once, and not so brave before a waking man as a sleeping one, performed a rapid caper, and glided under the trees. "It was time!" said Torres; "the rogue would have settled me without any ceremony!" Of a sudden, between the hands of the monkey, who had stopped at about twenty paces, and was watching him with violent grimaces, as if he would like to snap his fingers at him, he caught sight of his precious case. "The beggar!" he said. "If he has not killed me, he has done what is almost as bad. He has robbed me!" The thought that the case held his money was not however, what then concerned him. But that which made him jump was the recollection that it contained the precious document, the loss of which was irreparable, as it carried with it that of all his hopes. "Botheration!" said he. And at the moment, cost what it might to recapture his case, Torres threw himself in pursuit of the guariba. He knew that to reach such an active animal was not easy. On the ground he could get away too fast, in the branches he could get away too far. A well-aimed gunshot could alone stop him as he ran or climbed, but Torres possessed no firearm. His sword-knife and hoe were useless unless he could get near enough to hit him. It soon became evident that the monkey could not be reached unless by surprise. Hence Torres found it necessary to employ cunning in dealing with the mischievous animal. To stop, to hide himself behind some tree trunk, to disappear under a bush, might induce the guariba to pull up and retrace his steps, and there was nothing else for Torres to try. This was what he did, and the pursuit commenced under these conditions; but when the captain of the woods disappeared, the monkey patiently waited until he came into sight again, and at this game Torres fatigued himself without result. "Confound the guariba!" he shouted at length. "There will be no end to this, and he will lead me back to the Brazilian frontier. If only he would let go of my case! But no! The jingling of the money amuses him. Oh, you thief! If I could only get hold of you!" And Torres recommenced the pursuit, and the monkey scuttled off with renewed vigor. An hour passed in this way without any result. Torres showed a persistency which was quite natural. How without this document could he get his money? And then anger seized him. He swore, he stamped, he threatened the guariba. That annoying animal only responded by a chuckling which was enough to put him beside himself. And then Torres gave himself up to the chase. He ran at top speed, entangling himself in the high undergrowth, among those thick brambles and interlacing creepers, across which the guariba passed like a steeplechaser. Big roots hidden beneath the grass lay often in the way. He stumbled over them and again started in pursuit. At length, to his astonishment, he found himself shouting: "Come here! come here! you robber!" as if he could make him understand him. His strength gave out, breath failed him, and he was obliged to stop. "Confound it!" said he, "when I am after runaway slaves across the jungle they never give me such trouble as this! But I will have you, you wretched monkey! I will go, yes, I will go as far as my legs will carry me, and we shall see!" The guariba had remained motionless when he saw that the adventurer had ceased to pursue him. He rested also, for he had nearly reached that degree of exhaustion which had forbidden all movement on the part of Torres. He remained like this during ten minutes, nibbling away at two or three roots, which he picked off the ground, and from time to time he rattled the case at his ear. Torres, driven to distraction, picked up the stones within his reach, and threw them at him, but did no harm at such a distance. But he hesitated to make a fresh start. On one hand, to keep on in chase of the monkey with so little chance of reaching him was madness. On the other, to accept as definite this accidental interruption to all his plans, to be not only conquered, but cheated and hoaxed by a dumb animal, was maddening. And in the meantime Torres had begun to think that when the night came the robber would disappear without trouble, and he, the robbed one, would find a difficulty in retracing his way through the dense forest. In fact, the pursuit had taken him many miles from the bank of the river, and he would even now find it difficult to return to it. Torres hesitated; he tried to resume his thoughts with coolness, and finally, after giving vent to a last imprecation, he was about to abandon all idea of regaining possession of his case, when once more, in spite of himself, there flashed across him the thought of his document, the remembrance of all that scaffolding on which his future hopes depended, on which he had counted so much; and he resolved to make another effort. Then he got up. The guariba got up too. He made several steps in advance. The monkey made as many in the rear, but this time, instead of plunging more deeply into the forest, he stopped at the foot of an enormous ficus—the tree of which the different kinds are so numerous all over the Upper Amazon basin. To seize the trunk with his four hands, to climb with the agility of a clown who is acting the monkey, to hook on with his prehensile tail to the first branches, which stretched away horizontally at forty feet from the ground, and to hoist himself to the top of the tree, to the point where the higher branches just bent beneath its weight, was only sport to the active guariba, and the work of but a few seconds. Up there, installed at his ease, he resumed his interrupted repast, and gathered the fruits which were within his reach. Torres, like him, was much in want of something to eat and drink, but it was impossible! His pouch was flat, his flask was empty. However, instead of retracing his steps he directed them toward the tree, although the position taken up by the monkey was still more unfavorable for him. He could not dream for one instant of climbing the ficus, which the thief would have quickly abandoned for another. And all the time the miserable case rattled at his ear. Then in his fury, in his folly, Torres apostrophized the guariba. It would be impossible for us to tell the series of invectives in which he indulged. Not only did he call him a half-breed, which is the greatest of insults in the mouth of a Brazilian of white descent, but "curiboca"—that is to say, half-breed negro and Indian, and of all the insults that one man can hurl at another in this equatorial latitude "curiboca" is the cruelest. But the monkey, who was only a humble quadruman, was simply amused at what would have revolted a representative of humanity. Then Torres began to throw stones at him again, and bits of roots and everything he could get hold of that would do for a missile. Had he the hope to seriously hurt the monkey? No! he no longer knew what he was about. To tell the truth, anger at his powerlessness had deprived him of his wits. Perhaps he hoped that in one of the movements which the guariba would make in passing from branch to branch the case might escape him, perhaps he thought that if he continued to worry the monkey he might throw it at his head. But no! the monkey did not part with the case, and, holding it with one hand, he had still three left with which to move. Torres, in despair, was just about to abandon the chase for good, and to return toward the Amazon, when he heard the sound of voices. Yes! the sound of human voices. Those were speaking at about twenty paces to the right of him. The first care of Torres was to hide himself in a dense thicket. Like a prudent man, he did not wish to show himself without at least knowing with whom he might have to deal. Panting, puzzled, his ears on the stretch, he waited, when suddenly the sharp report of a gun rang through the woods. A cry followed, and the monkey, mortally wounded, fell heavily on the ground, still holding Torres' case. "By Jove!" he muttered, "that bullet came at the right time!" And then, without fearing to be seen, he came out of the thicket, and two young gentlemen appeared from under the trees. They were Brazilians clothed as hunters, with leather boots, light palm-leaf hats, waistcoats, or rather tunics, buckled in at the waist, and more convenient than the national poncho. By their features and their complexion they were at once recognizable as of Portuguese descent. Each of them was armed with one of those long guns of Spanish make which slightly remind us of the arms of the Arabs, guns of long range and considerable precision, which the dwellers in the forest of the upper Amazon handle with success. What had just happened was a proof of this. At an angular distance of more than eighty paces the quadruman had been shot full in the head. The two young men carried in addition, in their belts, a sort of dagger-knife, which is known in Brazil as a "foca," and which hunters do not hesitate to use when attacking the ounce and other wild animals which, if not very formidable, are pretty numerous in these forests. Torres had obviously little to fear from this meeting, and so he went on running toward the monkey's corpse. But the young men, who were taking the same direction, had less ground to cover, and coming forward a few paces, found themselves face to face with Torres. The latter had recovered his presence of mind. "Many thanks, gentlemen," said he gayly, as he raised the brim of his hat; "in killing this wretched animal you have just done me a great service!" The hunters looked at him inquiringly, not knowing what value to attach to his thanks. Torres explained matters in a few words. "You thought you had killed a monkey," said he, "but as it happens you have killed a thief!" "If we have been of use to you," said the youngest of the two, "it was by accident, but we are none the less pleased to find that we have done some good." And taking several steps to the rear, he bent over the guariba, and, not without an effort, withdrew the case from his stiffened hand. "Doubtless that, sir, is what belongs to you?" "The very thing," said Torres briskly, catching hold of the case and failing to repress a huge sigh of relief. "Whom ought I to thank, gentlemen," said he, "for the service you have rendered me?" "My friend, Manoel, assistant surgeon, Brazilian army," replied the young man. "If it was I who shot the monkey, Benito," said Manoel, "it was you that pointed him out to me." "In that case, sirs," replied Torres, "I am under an obligation to you both, as well to you, Mr. Manoel, as to you, Mr. ——" "Benito Garral," replied Manoel. The captain of the woods required great command over himself to avoid giving a jump when he heard this name, and more especially when the young man obligingly continued: "My father, Joam Garral, has his farm about three miles from here. If you would like, Mr. ——" "Torres," replied the adventurer. "If you would like to accompany us there, Mr. Torres, you will be hospitably received." "I do not know that I can," said Torres, who, surprised by this unexpected meeting, hesitated to make a start. "I fear in truth that I am not able to accept your offer. The occurrence I have just related to you has caused me to lose time. It is necessary for me to return at once to the Amazon—as I purpose descending thence to Para." "Very well, Mr. Torres," replied Benito, "it is not unlikely that we shall see you again in our travels, for before a month has passed my father and all his family will have taken the same road as you." "Ah!" said Torres sharply, "your father is thinking of recrossing the Brazilian frontier?" "Yes, for a voyage of some months," replied Benito. "At least we hope to make him decide so. Don't we, Manoel?" Manoel nodded affirmatively. "Well, gentlemen," replied Torres, "it is very probable that we shall meet again on the road. But I cannot, much to my regret, accept your offer now. I thank you, nevertheless, and I consider myself as twice your debtor." And having said so, Torres saluted the young men, who in turn saluted him, and set out on their way to the farm. As for Torres he looked after them as they got further and further away, and when he had lost sight of them— "Ah! he is about to recross the frontier!" said he, with a deep voice. "Let him recross it! and he will be still more at my mercy! Pleasant journey to you, Joam Garral!" And having uttered these words the captain of the woods, making for the south so as to regain the left bank of the river by the shortest road, disappeared into the dense forest.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE GARRAL FAMILY

The village of Iquitos is situated on the left bank of the Amazon, near the seventy-fourth meridian, on that portion of the great river which still bears the name of the Marânon, and of which the bed separates Peru from the republic of Ecuador. It is about fifty-five leagues to the west of the Brazilian frontier. Iquitos, like every other collection of huts, hamlet, or village met with in the basin of the Upper Amazon, was founded by the missionaries. Up to the seventeenth year of the century the Iquito Indians, who then formed the entire population, were settled in the interior of the province at some distance from the river. But one day the springs in their territory all dried up under the influence of a volcanic eruption, and they were obliged to come and take up their abode on the left of the Marânon. The race soon altered through the alliances which were entered into with the riverine Indians, Ticunas, or Omaguas, mixed descent with a few Spaniards, and to-day Iquitos has a population of two or three families of half-breeds. The village is most picturesquely grouped on a kind of esplanade, and runs along at about sixty feet from the river. It consists of some forty miserable huts, whose thatched roofs only just render them worthy of the name of cottages. A stairway made of crossed trunks of trees leads up to the village, which lies hidden from the traveler's eyes until the steps have been ascended. Once at the top he finds himself before an inclosure admitting of slight defense, and consisting of many different shrubs and arborescent plants, attached to each other by festoons of lianas, which here and there have made their way abgove the summits of the graceful palms and banana-trees. At the time we speak of the Indians of Iquitos went about in almost a state of nudity. The Spaniards and half-breeds alone were clothed, and much as they scorned their indigenous fellow-citizens, wore only a simple shirt, light cotton trousers, and a straw hat. All lived cheerlessly enough in the village, mixing little together, and if they did meet occasionally, it was only at such times as the bell of the mission called them to the dilapidated cottage which served them for a church. But if existence in the village of Iquitos, as in most of the hamlets of the Upper Amazon, was almost in a rudimentary stage, it was only necessary to journey a league further down the river to find on the same bank a wealthy settlement, with all the elements of comfortable life. This was the farm of Joam Garral, toward which our two young friends returned after their meeting with the captain of the woods. There, on a bend of the stream, at the junction of the River Nanay, which is here about five hundred feet across, there had been established for many years this farm, homestead, or, to use the expression of the country, "fazenda," then in the height of its prosperity. The Nanay with its left bank bounded it to the north for about a mile, and for nearly the same distance to the east it ran along the bank of the larger river. To the west some small rivulets, tributaries of the Nanay, and some lagoons of small extent, separated it from the savannah and the fields devoted to the pasturage of the cattle. It was here that Joam Garral, in 1826, twenty-six years before the date when our story opens, was received by the proprietor of the fazenda. This Portuguese, whose name was Magalhaës, followed the trade of timber-felling, and his settlement, then recently formed, extended for about half a mile along the bank of the river. There, hospitable as he was, like all the Portuguese of the old race, Magalhaës lived with his daughter Yaquita, who after the death of her mother had taken charge of his household. Magalhaës was an excellent worker, inured to fatigue, but lacking education. If he understood the management of the few slaves whom he owned, and the dozen Indians whom he hired, he showed himself much less apt in the various external requirements of his trade. In truth, the establishment at Iquitos was not prospering, and the affairs of the Portuguese were getting somewhat embarrassed. It was under these circumstances that Joam Garral, then twenty-two years old, found himself one day in the presence of Magalhaës. He had arrived in the country at the limit both of his strength and his resources. Magalhaës had found him half-dead with hunger and fatigue in the neighboring forest. The Portuguese had an excellent heart; he did not ask the unknown where he came from, but what he wanted. The noble, high-spirited look which Joam Garral bore in spite of his exhaustion had touched him. He received him, restored him, and, for several days to begin with, offered him a hospitality which lasted for his life. Under such conditions it was that Joam Garral was introduced to the farm at Iquitos. Brazilian by birth, Joam Garral was without family or fortune. Trouble, he said, had obliged him to quit his country and abandon all thoughts of return. He asked his host to excuse his entering on his past misfortunes—misfortunes as serious as they were unmerited. What he sought, and what he wished, was a new life, a life of labor. He had started on his travels with some slight thought of entering a fazenda in the interior. He was educated, intelligent. He had in all his bearing that inexpressible something which tells you that the man is genuine and of frank and upright character. Magalhaës, quite taken with him, asked him to remain at the farm, where he would, in a measure, supply that which was wanting in the worthy farmer. Joam Garral accepted the offer without hesitation. His intention had been to join a "seringal," or caoutchouc concern, in which in those days a good workman could earn from five to six piastres a day, and could hope to become a master if he had any luck; but Magalhaës very truly observed that if the pay was good, work was only found in the seringals at harvest time—that is to say, during only a few months of the year—and this would not constitute the permanent position that a young man ought to wish for. The Portuguese was right. Joam Garral saw it, and entered resolutely into the service of the fazenda, deciding to devote to it all his powers. Magalhaës had no cause to regret his generous action. His business recovered. His wood trade, which extended by means of the Amazon up to Para, was soon considerably extended under the impulse of Joam Garral. The fazenda began to grow in proportion, and to spread out along the bank of the river up to its junction with the Nanay. A delightful residence was made of the house; it was raised a story, surrounded by a veranda, and half hidden under beautiful trees—mimosas, fig-sycamores, bauhinias, and paullinias, whose trunks were invisible beneath a network of scarlet-flowered bromelias and passion-flowers. At a distance, behind huge bushes and a dense mass of arborescent plants, were concealed the buildings in which the staff of the fazenda were accommodated—the servants' offices, the cabins of the blacks, and the huts of the Indians. From the bank of the river, bordered with reeds and aquatic plants, the tree-encircled house was alone visible. A vast meadow, laboriously cleared along the lagoons, offered excellent pasturage. Cattle abounded—a new source of profit in these fertile countries, where a herd doubles in four years, and where ten per cent. interest is earned by nothing more than the skins and the hides of the animals killed for the consumption of those who raise them! A few "sitios," or manioc and coffee plantations, were started in parts of the woods which were cleared. Fields of sugar-canes soon required the construction of a mill to crush the sacchariferous stalks destined to be used hereafter in the manufacture of molasses, tafia, and rum. In short, ten years after the arrival of Joam Garral at the farm at Iquitos the fazenda had become one of the richest establishments on the Upper Amazon. Thanks to the good management exercised by the young clerk over the works at home and the business abroad, its prosperity daily increased. The Portuguese did not wait so long to acknowledge what he owed to Joam Garral. In order to recompense him in proportion to his merits he had from the first given him an interest in the profits of his business, and four years after his arrival he had made him a partner on the same footing as himself, and with equal shares. But there was more that he had in store for him. Yaquita, his daughter, had, in this silent young man, so gentle to others, so stern to himself, recognized the sterling qualities which her father had done. She was in love with him, but though on his side Joam had not remained insensible to the merits and the beauty of this excellent girl, he was too proud and reserved to dream of asking her to marry him. A serious incident hastened the solution. Magalhaës was one day superintending a clearance and was mortally wounded by the fall of a tree. Carried home helpless to the farm, and feeling himself lost, he raised up Yaquita, who was weeping by his side, took her hand, and put it into that of Joam Garral, making him swear to take her for his wife. "You have made my fortune," he said, "and I shall not die in peace unless by this union I know that the fortune of my daughter is assured." "I can continue her devoted servant, her brother, her protector, without being her husband," Joam Garral had at first replied. "I owe you all, Magalhaës. I will never forget it, but the price you would pay for my endeavors is out of all proportion to what they are worth." The old man insisted. Death would not allow him to wait; he demanded the promise, and it was made to him. Yaquita was then twenty-two years old, Joam was twenty-six. They loved each other and they were married some hours before the death of Magalhaës, who had just strength left to bless their union. It was under these circumstances that in 1830 Joam Garral became the new fazender of Iquitos, to the immense satisfaction of all those who composed the staff of the farm. The prosperity of the settlement could not do otherwise than grow when these two minds were thus united. A year after her marriage Yaquita presented her husband with a son, and, two years after, a daughter. Benito and Minha, the grandchildren of the old Portuguese, became worthy of their grandfather, children worthy of Joam and Yaquita. The daughter grew to be one of the most charming of girls. She never left the fazenda. Brought up in pure and healthy surroundings, in the midst of the beauteous nature of the tropics, the education given to her by her mother, and the instruction received by her from her father, were ample. What more could she have learned in a convent at Manaos or Belem? Where would she have found better examples of the domestic virtues? Would her mind and feelings have been more delicately formed away from her home? If it was ordained that she was not to succeed her mother in the management of the fazenda, she was equal to any other position to which she might be called. With Benito it was another thing. His father very wisely wished him to receive as solid and complete an education as could then be obtained in the large towns of Brazil. There was nothing which the rich fazender refused his son. Benito was possessed of a cheerful disposition, an active mind, a lively intelligence, and qualities of heart equal to those of his head. At the age of twelve he was sent into Para, to Belem, and there, under the direction of excellent professors, he acquired the elements of an education which could not but eventually make him a distinguished man. Nothing in literature, in the sciences, in the arts, was a stranger to him. He studied as if the fortune of his father would not allow him to remain idle. He was not among such as imagine that riches exempt men from work—he was one of those noble characters, resolute and just, who believe that nothing should diminish our natural obligation in this respect if we wish to be worthy of the name of men. During the first years of his residence at Belem, Benito had made the acquaintance of Manoel Valdez. This young man, the son of a merchant in Para, was pursuing his studies in the same institution as Benito. The conformity of their characters and their tastes proved no barrier to their uniting in the closest of friendships, and they became inseparable companions. Manoel, born in 1832, was one year older than Benito. He had only a mother, and she lived on the modest fortune which her husband had left her. When Manoel's preliminary studies were finished, he had taken up the subject of medicine. He had a passionate taste for that noble profession, and his intention was to enter the army, toward which he felt himself attracted. At the time that we saw him with his friend Benito, Manoel Valdez had already obtained his first step, and he had come away on leave for some months to the fazenda, where he was accustomed to pass his holidays. Well-built, and of distinguished bearing, with a certain native pride which became him well, the young man was treated by Joam and Yaquita as another son. But if this quality of son made him the brother of Benito, the title was scarcely appreciated by him when Minha was concerned, for he soon became attached to the young girl by a bond more intimate than could exist between brother and sister. In the year 1852—of which four months had already passed before the commencement of this history—Joam Garral attained the age of forty-eight years. In that sultry climate, which wears men away so quickly, he had known how, by sobriety, self-denial, suitable living, and constant work, to remain untouched where others had prematurely succumbed. His hair, which he wore short, and his beard, which was full, had already grown gray, and gave him the look of a Puritan. The proverbial honesty of the Brazilian merchants and fazenders showed itself in his features, of which straightforwardness was the leading characteristic. His calm temperament seemed to indicate an interior fire, kept well under control. The fearlessness of his look denoted a deep-rooted strength, to which, when danger threatened, he could never appeal in vain. But, notwithstanding one could not help remarking about this quiet man of vigorous health, with whom all things had succeeded in life, a depth of sadness which even the tenderness of Yaquita had not been able to subdue. Respected by all, placed in all the conditions that would seem necessary to happiness, why was not this just man more cheerful and less reserved? Why did he seem to be happy for others and not for himself? Was this disposition attributable to some secret grief? Herein was a constant source of anxiety to his wife. Yaquita was now forty-four. In that tropical country where women are already old at thirty she had learned the secret of resisting the climate's destructive influences, and her features, a little sharpened but still beautiful, retained the haughty outline of the Portuguese type, in which nobility of face unites so naturally with dignity of mind. Benito and Minha responded with an affection unbounded and unceasing for the love which their parents bore them. Benito was now aged twenty-one, and quick, brave, and sympathetic, contrasted outwardly with his friend Manoel, who was more serious and reflective. It was a great treat for Benito, after quite a year passed at Belem, so far from the fazenda, to return with his young friend to his home to see once more his father, his mother, his sister, and to find himself, enthusiastic hunter as he was, in the midst of these superb forests of the Upper Amazon, some of whose secrets remained after so many centuries still unsolved by man. Minha was twenty years old. A lovely girl, brunette, and with large blue eyes, eyes which seemed to open into her very soul; of middle height, good figure, and winning grace, in every way the very image of Yaquita. A little more serious than her brother, affable, good-natured, and charitable, she was beloved by all. On this subject you could fearlessly interrogate the humblest servants of the fazenda. It was unnecessary to ask her brother's friend, Manoel Valdez, what he thought of her. He was too much interested in the question to have replied without a certain amount of partiality. This sketch of the Garral family would not be complete, and would lack some of its features, were we not to mention the numerous staff of the fazenda. In the first place, then, it behooves us to name an old negress, of some sixty years, called Cybele, free through the will of her master, a slave through her affection for him and his, and who had been the nurse of Yaquita. She was one of the family. She thee-ed and thou-ed both daughter and mother. The whole of this good creature's life was passed in these fields, in the middle of these forests, on that bank of the river which bounded the horizon of the farm. Coming as a child to Iquitos in the slave-trading times, she had never quitted the village; she was married there, and early a widow, had lost her only son, and remained in the service of Magalhaës. Of the Amazon she knew no more than what flowed before her eyes. With her, and more specially attached to the service of Minha, was a pretty, laughing mulatto, of the same age as her mistress, to whom she was completely devoted. She was called Lina. One of those gentle creatures, a little spoiled, perhaps, to whom a good deal of familiarity is allowed, but who in return adore their mistresses. Quick, restless, coaxing, and lazy, she could do what she pleased in the house. As for servants they were of two kinds—Indians, of whom there were about a hundred, employed always for the works of the fazenda, and blacks to about double the number, who were not yet free, but whose children were not born slaves. Joam Garral had herein preceded the Brazilian government. In this country, moreover, the negroes coming from Benguela, the Congo, or the Gold Coast were always treated with kindness, and it was not at the fazenda of Iquitos that one would look for those sad examples of cruelty which were so frequent on foreign plantations.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

HESITATION

Manoel was in love with the sister of his friend Benito, and she was in love with him. Each was sensible of the other's worth, and each was worthy of the other. When he was no longer able to mistake the state of his feelings toward Minha, Manoel had opened his heart to Benito. "Manoel, my friend," had immediately answered the enthusiastic young fellow, "you could not do better than wish to marry my sister. Leave it to me! I will commence by speaking to the mother, and I think I can promise that you will not have to wait long for her consent." Half an hour afterward he had done so. Benito had nothing to tell his mother which she did not know; Yaquita had already divined the young people's secret. Before ten minutes had elapsed Benito was in the presence of Minha. They had but to agree; there was no need for much eloquence. At the first words the head of the gentle girl was laid on her brother's shoulder, and the confession, "I am so happy!" was whispered from her heart. The answer almost came before the question; that was obvious. Benito did not ask for more. There could be little doubt as to Joam Garral's consent. But if Yaquita and her children did not at once speak to him about the marriage, it was because they wished at the same time to touch on a question which might be more difficult to solve. That question was, Where should the wedding take place? Where should it be celebrated? In the humble cottage which served for the village church? Why not? Joam and Yaquita had there received the nuptial benediction of the Padre Passanha, who was then the curate of Iquitos parish. At that time, as now, there was no distinction in Brazil between the civil and religious acts, and the registers of the mission were sufficient testimony to a ceremony which no officer of the civil power was intrusted to attend to. Joam Garral would probably wish the marriage to take place at Iquitos, with grand ceremonies and the attendance of the whole staff of the fazenda, but if such was to be his idea he would have to withstand a vigorous attack concerning it. "Manoel," Minha said to her betrothed, "if I was consulted in the matter we should not be married here, but at Para. Madame Valdez is an invalid; she cannot visit Iquitos, and I should not like to become her daughter without knowing and being known by her. My mother agrees with me in thinking so. We should like to persuade my father to take us to Belem. Do you not think so?" To this proposition Manoel had replied by pressing Minha's hand. He also had a great wish for his mother to be present at his marriage. Benito had approved the scheme without hesitation, and it was only necessary to persuade Joam Garral. And hence on this day the young men had gone out hunting in the woods, so as to leave Yaquita alone with her husband. In the afternoon these two were in the large room of the house. Joam Garral, who had just come in, was half-reclining on a couch of plaited bamboos, when Yaquita, a little anxious, came and seated herself beside him. To tell Joam of the feelings which Manoel entertained toward his daughter was not what troubled her. The happiness of Minha could not but be assured by the marriage, and Joam would be glad to welcome to his arms the new son whose sterling qualities he recognized and appreciated. But to persuade her husband to leave the fazenda Yaquita felt to be a very serious matter. In fact, since Joam Garral, then a young man, had arrived in the country, he had never left it for a day. Though the sight of the Amazon, with its waters gently flowing to the east, invited him to follow its course; though Joam every year sent rafts of wood to Manaos, to Belem, and the seacoast of Para; though he had seen each year Benito leave after his holidays to return to his studies, yet the thought seemed never to have occurred to him to go with him. The products of the farm, of the forest, and of the fields, the fazender sold on the spot. He had no wish, either with thought or look, to go beyond the horizon which bounded his Eden. From this it followed that for twenty-five years Joam Garral had never crossed the Brazilian frontier, his wife and daughter had never set foot on Brazilian soil. The longing to see something of that beautiful country of which Benito was often talking was not wanting, nevertheless. Two or three times Yaquita had sounded her husband in the matter. But she had noticed that the thought of leaving the fazenda, if only for a few weeks, brought an increase of sadness to his face. His eyes would close, and in a tone of mild reproach he would answer: "Why leave our home? Are we not comfortable here?" And Yaquita, in the presence of the man whose active kindness and unchangeable tenderness rendered her so happy, had not the courage to persist. This time, however, there was a serious reason to make it worth while. The marriage of Minha afforded an excellent opportunity, it being so natural for them to accompany her to Belem, where she was going to live with her husband. She would there see and learn to love the mother of Manoel Valdez. How could Joam Garral hesitate in the face of so praiseworthy a desire? Why, on the other hand, did he not participate in this desire to become acquainted with her who was to be the second mother of his child? Yaquita took her husband's hand, and with that gentle voice which had been to him all the music of his life: "Joam," she said, "I am going to talk to you about something which we ardently wish, and which will make you as happy as we are." "What is it about, Yaquita?" asked Joam. "Manoel loves your daughter, he is loved by her, and in this union they will find the happiness——" At the first words of Yaquita Joam Garral had risen, without being able to control a sudden start. His eyes were immediately cast down, and he seemed to designedly avoid the look of his wife. "What is the matter with you?" asked she. "Minha? To get married!" murmured Joam. "My dear," said Yaquita, feeling somewhat hurt, "have you any objection to make to the marriage? Have you not for some time noticed the feelings which Manoel has entertained toward our daughter?" "Yes; and a year since——" And Joam sat down without finishing his thoughts. By an effort of his will he had again become master of himself. The unaccountable impression which had been made upon him disappeared. Gradually his eyes returned to meet those of Yaquita, and he remained thoughtfully looking at her. Yaquita took his hand. "Joam," she said, "have I been deceived? Had you no idea that this marriage would one day take place, and that it would give her every chance of happiness?" "Yes," answered Joam. "All! Certainly. But, Yaquita, this wedding—this wedding that we are both thinking of—when is it coming off? Shortly?" "It will come off when you choose, Joam." "And it will take place here—at Iquitos?" This question obliged Yaquita to enter on the other matter which she had at heart. She did not do so, however, without some hesitation, which was quite intelligible. "Joam," said she, after a moment's silence, "listen to me. Regarding this wedding, I have got a proposal which I hope you will approve of. Two or three times during the last twenty years I have asked you to take me and my daughter to the provinces of the Lower Amazon, and to Para, where we have never been. The cares of the fazenda, the works which have required your presence, have not allowed you to grant our request. To absent yourself even for a few days would then have injured your business. But now everything has been successful beyond your dreams, and if the hour of repose has not yet come for you, you can at least for a few weeks get away from your work." Joam Garral did not answer, but Yaquita felt his hand tremble in hers, as though under the shock of some sorrowful recollection. At the same time a half-smile came to her husband's lips—a mute invitation for her to finish what she had begun. "Joam," she continued, "here is an occasion which we shall never see again in this life. Minha is going to be married away from us, and is going to leave us! It is the first sorrow which our daughter has caused us, and my heart quails when I think of the separation which is so near! But I should be content if I could accompany her to Belem! Does it not seem right to you, even in other respects that we should know her husband's mother, who is to replace me, and to whom we are about to entrust her? Added to this, Minha does not wish to grieve Madame Valdez by getting married at a distance from her. When we were married, Joam, if your mother had been alive, would you not have liked her to be present at your wedding?" At these words of Yaquita Joam made a movement which he could not repress. "My dear," continued Yaquita, "with Minha, with our two sons, Benito and Manoel, with you, how I should like to see Brazil, and to journey down this splendid river, even to the provinces on the seacoast through which it runs! It seems to me that the separation would be so much less cruel! As we came back we should revisit our daughter in her house with her second mother. I would not think of her as gone I knew not where. I would fancy myself much less a stranger to the doings of her life." This time Joam had fixed his eyes on his wife and looked at her for some time without saying anything. What ailed him? Why this hesitation to grant a request which was so just in itself—to say "Yes," when it would give such pleasure to all who belonged to him? His business affairs could not afford a sufficient reason. A few weeks of absence would not compromise matters to such a degree. His manager would be able to take his place without any hitch in the fazenda. And yet all this time he hesitated. Yaquita had taken both her husband's hands in hers, and pressed them tenderly. "Joam," she said, "it is not a mere whim that I am asking you to grant. No! For a long time I have thought over the proposition I have just made to you; and if you consent, it will be the realization of my most cherished desire. Our children know why I am now talking to you. Minha, Benito, Manoel, all ask this favor, that we should accompany them. We would all rather have the wedding at Belem than at Iquitos. It will be better for your daughter, for her establishment, for the position which she will take at Belem, that she should arrive with her people, and appear less of a stranger in the town in which she will spend most of her life." Joam Garral leaned on his elbows. For a moment he hid his face in his hands, like a man who had to collect his thoughts before he made answer. There was evidently some hesitation which he was anxious to overcome, even some trouble which his wife felt but could not explain. A secret battle was being fought under that thoughtful brow. Yaquita got anxious, and almost reproached herself for raising the question. Anyhow, she was resigned to what Joam should decide. If the expedition would cost too much, she would silence her wishes; she would never more speak of leaving the fazenda, and never ask the reason for the inexplicable refusal. Some minutes passed. Joam Garral rose. He went to the door, and did not return. Then he seemed to give a last look on that glorious nature, on that corner of the world where for twenty years of his life he had met with all his happiness. Then with slow steps he returned to his wife. His face bore a new expression, that of a man who had taken a last decision, and with whom irresolution had ceased. "You are right," he said, in a firm voice. "The journey is necessary. When shall we start?" "Ah! Joam! my Joam!" cried Yaquita, in her joy. "Thank you for me! Thank you for them!" And tears of affection came to her eyes as her husband clasped her to his heart. At this moment happy voices were heard outside at the door of the house. Manoel and Benito appeared an instant after at the threshold, almost at the same moment as Minha entered the room. "Children! your father consents!" cried Yaquita. "We are going to Belem!" With a grave face, and without speaking a word, Joam Garral received the congratulations of his son and the kisses of his daughter. "And what date, father," asked Benito, "have you fixed for the wedding?" "Date?" answered Joam. "Date? We shall see. We will fix it at Belem." "I am so happy! I am so happy!" repeated Minha, as she had done on the day when she had first known of Manoel's request. "We shall now see the Amazon in all its glory throughout its course through the provinces of Brazil! Thanks, father!" And the young enthusiast, whose imagination was already stirred, continued to her brother and to Manoel: "Let us be off to the library! Let us get hold of every book and every map that we can find which will tell us anything about this magnificent river system! Don't let us travel like blind folks! I want to see everything and know everything about this king of the rivers of the earth!"

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE AMAZON

"The largest river in the whole world!" said Benito to Manoel Valdez, on the morrow. They were sitting on the bank which formed the southern boundary of the fazenda, and looking at the liquid molecules passing slowly by, which, coming from the enormous range of the Andes, were on their road to lose themselves in the Atlantic Ocean eight hundred leagues away. "And the river which carries to the sea the largest volume of water," replied Manoel. "A volume so considerable," added Benito, "that it freshens the sea water for an immense distance from its mouth, and the force of whose current is felt by ships at eight leagues from the coast." "A river whose course is developed over more than thirty degrees of latitude." "And in a basin which from south to north does not comprise less than twenty-five degrees." "A basin!" exclaimed Benito. "Can you call it a basin, the vast plain through which it runs, the savannah which on all sides stretches out of sight, without a hill to give a gradient, without a mountain to bound the horizon?" "And along its whole extent," continued Manoel, "like the thousand tentacles of some gigantic polyp, two hundred tributaries, flowing from north or south, themselves fed by smaller affluents without number, by the side of which the large rivers of Europe are but petty streamlets." "And in its course five hundred and sixty islands, without counting islets, drifting or stationary, forming a kind of archipelago, and yielding of themselves the wealth of a kingdom!" "And along its flanks canals, lagoons, and lakes, such as cannot be met with even in Switzerland, Lombardy, Scotland, or Canada." "A river which, fed by its myriad tributaries, discharges into the Atlantic over two hundred and fifty millions of cubic meters of water every hour." "A river whose course serves as the boundary of two republics, and sweeps majestically across the largest empire of South America, as if it were, in very truth, the Pacific Ocean itself flowing out along its own canal into the Atlantic." "And what a mouth! An arm of the sea in which one island, Marajo, has a circumference of more than five hundred leagues!" "And whose waters the ocean does not pond back without raising in a strife which is phenomenal, a tide-race, or 'pororoca,' to which the ebbs, the bores, and the eddies of other rivers are but tiny ripples fanned up by the breeze." "A river which three names are scarcely enough to distinguish, and which ships of heavy tonnage, without any change in their cargoes, can ascend for more than three thousand miles from its mouth." "A river which, by itself, its affluents, and subsidiary streams, opens a navigable commercial route across the whole of the south of the continent, passing from the Magdalena to the Ortequazza, from the Ortequazza to the Caqueta, from the Caqueta to the Putumayo, from the Putumayo to the Amazon! Four thousand miles of waterway, which only require a few canals to make the network of navigation complete!" "In short, the biggest and most admirable river system which we have in the world." The two young men were speaking in a kind of frenzy of their incomparable river. They were themselves children of this great Amazon, whose affluents, well worthy of itself, from the highways which penetrate Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, New Grenada, Venezuela, and the four Guianas—English, French, Dutch and Brazilian. What nations, what races, has it seen whose origin is lost in the far-distant past! It is one of the largest rivers of the globe. Its true source still baffles our explorers. Numbers of States still claim the honor of giving it birth. The Amazon was not likely to escape the inevitable fate, and Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia have for years disputed as to the honor of its glorious paternity. To-day, however, there seems to be little doubt but that the Amazon rises in Peru, in the district of Huaraco, in the department of Tarma, and that it starts from the Lake of Lauricocha, which is situated between the eleventh and twelfth degree of south latitude. Those who make the river rise in Bolivia, and descend form the mountains of Titicaca, have to prove that the true Amazon is the Ucayali, which is formed by the junction of the Paro and the Apurimac—an assertion which is now generally rejected. At its departure from Lake Lauricocha the youthful river starts toward the northeast for a distance of five hundred and sixty miles, and does not strike to the west until it has received an important tributary—the Panta. It is called the Marañon in its journey through Colombia and Peru up to the Brazilian frontier—or, rather, the Maranhao, for Marañon is only the French rendering of the Portuguese name. From the frontier of Brazil to Manaos, where the superb Rio Negro joins it, it takes the name of the Solimaës, or Solimoens, from the name of the Indian tribe Solimao, of which survivors are still found in the neighboring provinces. And, finally, from Manaos to the sea it is the Amasenas, or river of the Amazons, a name given it by the old Spaniards, the descendants of the adventurous Orellana, whose vague but enthusiastic stories went to show that there existed a tribe of female warriors on the Rio Nhamunda, one of the middle-sized affluents of the great river. From its commencement the Amazon is recognizable as destined to become a magnificent stream. There are neither rapids nor obstacles of any sort until it reaches a defile where its course is slightly narrowed between two picturesque and unequal precipices. No falls are met with until this point is reached, where it curves to the eastward, and passes through the intermediary chain of the Andes. Hereabouts are a few waterfalls, were it not for which the river would be navigable from its mouth to its source. As it is, however, according the Humboldt, the Amazon is free for five-sixths of its length. And from its first starting there is no lack of tributaries, which are themselves fed by subsidiary streams. There is the Chinchipa, coming from the northeast, on its left. On its right it is joined by the Chachapoyas, coming from the northeast. On the left we have the Marona and the Pastuca; and the Guallaga comes in from the right near the mission station of Laguna. On the left there comes the Chambyra and the Tigré, flowing from the northeast; and on the right the Huallaga, which joins the main stream twenty-eight hundred miles from the Atlantic, and can be ascended by steamboats for over two hundred miles into the very heart of Peru. To the right, again, near the mission of San Joachim d'Omaguas, just where the upper basin terminates, and after flowing majestically across the pampas of Sacramento, it receives the magnificent Ucayali, the great artery which, fed by numerous affluents, descends from Lake Chucuito, in the northeast of Arica. Such are the principal branches above the village of Iquitos. Down the stream the tributaries become so considerable that the beds of most European rivers would fail to contain them. But the mouths of these auxiliary waters Joam Garral and his people will pass as they journey down the Amazon. To the beauties of this unrivaled river, which waters the finest country in the world, and keeps along its whole course at a few degrees to the south of the equator, there is to be added another quality, possessed by neither the Nile, the Mississippi, nor the Livingstone—or, in other words, the old Congo-Zaira-Lualaba—and that is (although some ill-informed travelers have stated to the contrary) that the Amazon crosses a most healthy part of South America. Its basin is constantly swept by westerly winds. It is not a narrow valley surrounded by high mountains which border its banks, but a huge plain, measuring three hundred and fifty leagues from north to south, scarcely varied with a few knolls, whose whole extent the atmospheric currents can traverse unchecked. Professor Agassiz very properly protested against the pretended unhealthiness o the climate of a country which is destined to become one of the most active of the world's producers. According to him, "a soft and gentle breeze is constantly observable, and produces an evaporation, thanks to which the temperature is kept down, and the sun does not give out heat unchecked. The constancy of this refreshing breeze renders the climate of the river Amazon agreeable, and even delightful." The Abbé Durand has likewise testified that if the temperature does not drop below 25 degrees Centigrade, it never rises above 33 degrees, and this gives for the year a mean temperature of from 28 degrees to 29 degrees, with a range of only 8 degrees. After such statements we are safe in affirming that the basin of the Amazon has none of the burning heats of countries like Asia and Africa, which are crossed by the same parallels. The vast plain which serves for its valley is accessible over its whole extent to the generous breezes which come from off the Atlantic. And the provinces to which the river has given its name have acknowledged right to call themselves the healthiest of a country which is one of the finest on the earth. And how can we say that the hydrographical system of the Amazon is not known? In the sixteenth century Orellana, the lieutenant of one of the brothers Pizarro, descended the Rio Negro, arrived on the main river in 1540, ventured without a guide across the unknown district, and, after eighteen months of a navigation of which is record is most marvelous, reached the mouth. In 1636 and 1637 the Portuguese Pedro Texeira ascended the Amazon to Napo, with a fleet of forty-seven pirogues. In 1743 La Condamine, after having measured an arc of the meridian at the equator, left his companions Bouguer and Godin des Odonais, embarked on the Chinchipe, descended it to its junction with the Marañon, reached the mouth at Napo on the 31st of July, just in time to observe an emersion of the first satellite of Jupiter—which allowed this "Humboldt of the eighteenth century" to accurately determine the latitude and longitude of the spot—visited the villages on both banks, and on the 6th of September arrived in front of the fort of Para. This immense journey had important results—not only was the course of the Amazon made out in scientific fashion, but it seemed almost certain that it communicated with the Orinoco. Fifty-five years later Humboldt and Bonpland completed the valuable work of La Condamine, and drew up the map of the Manañon as far as Napo. Since this period the Amazon itself and all its principal tributaries have been frequently visited. In 1827 Lister-Maw, in 1834 and 1835 Smyth, in 1844 the French lieutenant in command of the "Boulonnaise," the Brazilian Valdez in 1840, the French "Paul Marcoy" from 1848 to 1860, the whimsical painter Biard in 1859, Professor Agassiz in 1865 and 1866, in 1967 the Brazilian engineer Franz Keller-Linzenger, and lastly, in 1879 Doctor Crevaux, have explored the course of the river, ascended many of its tributaries, and ascertained the navigability of its principal affluents. But what has won the greatest honor for the Brazilian government is that on the 31st of July, 1857, after numerous frontier disputes between France and Brazil, about the Guiana boundary, the course of the Amazon was declared to be free and open to all flags; and, to make practice harmonize with theory, Brazil entered into negotiations with the neighboring powers for the exploration of every river-road in the basin of the Amazon. To-day lines of well-found steamboats, which correspond direct with Liverpool, are plying on the river from its mouth up to Manaos; others ascend to Iquitos; others by way of the Tapajoz, the Madeira, the Rio Negro, or the Purus, make their way into the center of Peru and Bolivia. One can easily imagine the progress which commerce will one day make in this immense and wealthy area, which is without a rival in the world. But to this medal of the future there is a reverse. No progress can be accomplished without detriment to the indigenous races. In face, on the Upper Amazon many Indian tribes have already disappeared, among others the Curicicurus and the Sorimaos. On the Putumayo, if a few Yuris are still met with, the Yahuas have abandoned the district to take refuge among some of the distant tributaries, and the Maoos have quitted its banks to wander in their diminished numbers among the forests of Japura. The Tunantins is almost depopulated, and there are only a few families of wandering Indians at the mouth of the Jurua. The Teffé is almost deserted, and near the sources of the Japur there remained but the fragments of the great nation of the Umaüa. The Coari is forsaken. There are but few Muras Indians on the banks of the Purus. Of the ancient Manaos one can count but a wandering party or two. On the banks of the Rio Negro there are only a few half-breeds, Portuguese and natives, where a few years ago twenty-four different nations had their homes. Such is the law of progress. The Indians will disappear. Before the Anglo-Saxon race Australians and Tasmanians have vanished. Before the conquerors of the Far West the North American Indians have been wiped out. One day perhaps the Arabs will be annihilated by the colonization of the French. But we must return to 1852. The means of communication, so numerous now, did not then exist, and the journey of Joam Garral would require not less than four months, owing to the conditions under which it was made. Hence this observation of Benito, while the two friends were watching the river as it gently flowed at their feet: "Manoel, my friend, if there is very little interval between our arrival at Belem and the moment of our separation, the time will appear to you to be very short." "Yes, Benito," said Manoel, "and very long as well, for Minha cannot by my wife until the end of the voyage."

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

A FOREST ON THE GROUND

The Garral family were in high glee. The magnificent journey on the Amazon was to be undertaken under conditions as agreeable as possible. Not only were the fazender and his family to start on a voyage for several months, but, as we shall see, he was to be accompanied by a part of the staff of the farm. In beholding every one happy around him, Joam forgot the anxieties which appeared to trouble his life. From the day his decision was taken he had been another man, and when he busied himself about the preparations for the expedition he regained his former activity. His people rejoiced exceedingly at seeing him again at work. His moral self reacted against his physical self, and Joam again became the active, energetic man of his earlier years, and moved about once more as though he had spent his life in the open air, under the invigorating influences of forests, fields, and running waters. Moreover, the few weeks that were to precede his departure had been well employed. At this period, as we have just remarked, the course of the Amazon was not yet furrowed by the numberless steam vessels, which companies were only then thinking of putting into the river. The service was worked by individuals on their own account alone, and often the boats were only employed in the business of the riverside establishments. These boats were either "ubas," canoes made from the trunk of a tree, hollowed out by fire, and finished with the ax, pointed and light in front, and heavy and broad in the stern, able to carry from one to a dozen paddlers, and of three or four tons burden: "egariteas," constructed on a larger scale, of broader design, and leaving on each side a gangway for the rowers: or "jangada," rafts of no particular shape, propelled by a triangular sail, and surmounted by a cabin of mud and straw, which served the Indian and his family for a floating home. These three kinds of craft formed the lesser flotilla of the Amazon, and were only suited for a moderate traffic of passengers or merchandise. Larger vessels, however, existed, either "vigilingas," ranging from eight up to ten tons, with three masts rigged with red sails, and which in calm weather were rowed by four long paddles not at all easy to work against the stream; or "cobertas," of twenty tons burden, a kind of junk with a poop behind and a cabin down below, with two masts and square sails of unequal size, and propelled, when the wind fell, by six long sweeps which Indians worked from a forecastle. But neither of these vessels satisfied Joam Garral. From the moment that he had resolved to descend the Amazon he had thought of making the most of the voyage by carrying a huge convoy of goods into Para. From this point of view there was no necessity to descend the river in a hurry. And the determination to which he had come pleased every one, excepting, perhaps, Manoel, who would for very good reasons have preferred some rapid steamboat. But though the means of transport devised by Joam were primitive in the extreme, he was going to take with him a numerous following and abandon himself to the stream under exceptional conditions of comfort and security. It would be, in truth, as if a part of the fazenda of Iquitos had been cut away from the bank and carried down the Amazon with all that composed the family of the fazender—masters and servants, in their dwellings, their cottages, and their huts. The settlement of Iquitos included a part of those magnificent forests which, in the central districts of South America, are practically inexhaustible. Joam Garral thoroughly understood the management of these woods, which were rich in the most precious and diverse species adapted for joinery, cabinet work, ship building, and carpentry, and from them he annually drew considerable profits. The river was there in front of him, and could it not be as safely and economically used as a railway if one existed? So every year Joam Garral felled some hundreds of trees from his stock and formed immense rafts of floating wood, of joists, beams, and slightly squared trunks, which were taken to Para in charge of capable pilots who were thoroughly acquainted with the depths of the river and the direction of its currents. This year Joam Garral decided to do as he had done in preceding years. Only, when the raft was made up, he was going to leave to Benito all the detail of the trading part of the business. But there was no time to lose. The beginning of June was the best season to start, for the waters, increased by the floods of the upper basin, would gradually and gradually subside until the month of October. The first steps had thus to be taken without delay, for the raft was to be of unusual proportions. It would be necessary to fell a half-mile square of the forest which was situated at the junction of the Nanay and the Amazon—that is to say, the whole river side of the fazenda, to form the enormous mass, for such were the jangadas, or river rafts, which attained the dimensions of a small island. It was in this jangada, safer than any other vessel of the country, larger than a hundred egariteas or vigilingas coupled together, that Joam Garral proposed to embark with his family, his servants, and his merchandise. "Excellent idea!" had cried Minha, clapping her hands, when she learned her father's scheme. "Yes," said Yaquita, "and in that way we shall reach Belem without danger or fatigue." "And during the stoppages we can have some hunting in the forests which line the banks," added Benito. "Won't it take rather long?" observed Manoel; "could we not hit upon some quicker way of descending the Amazon?" It would take some time, obviously, but the interested observation of the young doctor received no attention from any one. Joam Garral then called in an Indian who was the principal manager of the fazenda. "In a month," he said to him, "the jangada must be built and ready to launch." "We'll set to work this very day, sir." It was a heavy task. There were about a hundred Indians and blacks, and during the first fortnight in May they did wonders. Some people unaccustomed to these great tree massacres would perhaps have groaned to see giants many hundred years old fall in a few hours beneath the axes of the woodmen; but there was such a quantity on the banks of the river, up stream and down stream, even to the most distant points of the horizon, that the felling of this half-mile of forest would scarcely leave an appreciable void. The superintendent of the men, after receiving the instructions of Joam Garral, had first cleared the ground of the creepers, brushwood, weeds, and arborescent plants which obstructed it. Before taking to the saw and the ax they had armed themselves with a felling-sword, that indispensable tool of every one who desires to penetrate the Amazonian forests, a large blade slightly curved, wide and flat, and two or three feet long, and strongly handled, which the natives wield with consummate address. In a few hours, with the help of the felling-sword, they had cleared the ground, cut down the underwood, and opened large gaps into the densest portions of the wood. In this way the work progressed. The ground was cleared in front of the woodmen. The old trunks were divested of their clothing of creepers, cacti, ferns, mosses, and bromelias. They were stripped naked to the bark, until such time as the bark itself was stripped from off them. Then the whole of the workers, before whom fled an innumerable crowd of monkeys who were hardly their superiors in agility, slung themselves into the upper branches, sawing off the heavier boughs and cutting down the topmost limbs, which had to be cleared away on the spot. Very soon there remained only a doomed forest, with long bare stems, bereft of their crowns, through which the sun luxuriantly rayed on to the humid soil which perhaps its shots had never before caressed. There was not a single tree which could not be used for some work of skill, either in carpentry or cabinet-work. There, shooting up like columns of ivory ringed with brown, were wax-palms one hundred and twenty feet high, and four feet thick at their base; white chestnuts, which yield the three-cornered nuts; "murichis," unexcelled for building purposes; "barrigudos," measuring a couple of yards at the swelling, which is found at a few feet above the earth, trees with shining russet bark dotted with gray tubercles, each pointed stem of which supports a horizontal parasol; and "bombax" of superb stature, with its straight and smooth white stem. Among these magnificent specimens of the Amazonian flora there fell many "quatibos" whose rosy canopies towered above the neighboring trees, whose fruits are like little cups with rows of chestnuts ranged within, and whose wood of clear violet is specially in demand for ship-building. And besides there was the ironwood; and more particularly the "ibiriratea," nearly black in its skin, and so close grained that of it the Indians make their battle-axes; "jacarandas," more precious than mahogany; "cæsalpinas," only now found in the depths of the old forests which have escaped the woodman's ax; "sapucaias," one hundred and fifty feet high, buttressed by natural arches, which, starting from three yards from their base, rejoin the tree some thirty feet up the stem, twining themselves round the trunk like the filatures of a twisted column, whose head expands in a bouquet of vegetable fireworks made up of the yellow, purple, and snowy white of the parasitic plants. Three weeks after the work was begun not one was standing of all the trees which had covered the angle of the Amazon and the Nanay. The clearance was complete. Joam Garral had not even had to bestir himself in the demolition of a forest which it would take twenty or thirty years to replace. Not a stick of young or old wood was left to mark the boundary of a future clearing, not even an angle to mark the limit of the denudation. It was indeed a clean sweep; the trees were cut to the level of the earth, to wait the day when their roots would be got out, over which the coming spring would still spread its verdant cloak. This square space, washed on its sides by the waters of the river and its tributary, was destined to be cleared, plowed, planted, and sown, and the following year fields of manioc, coffee-shrubs, sugar-canes, arrowroot, maize, and peanuts would occupy the ground so recently covered by the trees. The last week of the month had not arrived when the trunks, classified according to their varieties and specific gravity, were symmetrically arranged on the bank of the Amazon, at the spot where the immense jangada was to be guilt—which, with the different habitations for the accommodation of the crew, would become a veritable floating village—to wait the time when the waters of the river, swollen by the floods, would raise it and carry it for hundreds of leagues to the Atlantic coast. The whole time the work was going on Joam Garral had been engaged in superintending it. From the clearing to the bank of the fazenda he had formed a large mound on which the portions of the raft were disposed, and to this matter he had attended entirely himself. Yaquita was occupied with Cybele with the preparations for the departure, though the old negress could not be made to understand why they wanted to go or what they hoped to see. "But you will see things that you never saw before," Yaquita kept saying to her. "Will they be better than what I see now?" was Cybele's invariable reply. Minha and her favorite for their part took care of what more particularly concerned them. They were not preparing for a simple voyage; for them it was a permanent departure, and there were a thousand details to look after for settling in the other country in which the young mulatto was to live with the mistress to whom she was so devotedly attached. Minha was a trifle sorrowful, but the joyous Lina was quite unaffected at leaving Iquitos. Minha Valdez would be the same to her as Minha Garral, and to check her spirits she would have to be separated from her mistress, and that was never thought of. Benito had actively assisted his father in the work, which was on the point of completion. He commenced his apprenticeship to the trade of a fazender, which would probably one day become his own, as he was about to do that of a merchant on their descent of the river. As for Manoel, he divided his time between the house, where Yaquita and her daughter were as busy as possible, and the clearing, to which Benito fetched him rather oftener than he thought convenient, and on the whole the division was very unequal, as may well be imagined.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

FOLLOWING A LIANA

It was a Sunday, the 26th of May, and the young people had made up their minds to take a holiday. The weather was splendid, the heat being tempered by the refreshing breezes which blew from off the Cordilleras, and everything invited them out for an excursion into the country. Benito and Manoel had offered to accompany Minha through the thick woods which bordered the right bank of the Amazon opposite the fazenda. It was, in a manner, a farewell visit to the charming environs of Iquitos. The young men went equipped for the chase, but as sportsmen who had no intention of going far from their companions in pursuit of any game. Manoel could be trusted for that, and the girls—for Lina could not leave her mistress—went prepared for a walk, an excursion of two or three leagues being not too long to frighten them. Neither Joam Garral nor Yaquita had time to go with them. For one reason the plan of the jangada was not yet complete, and it was necessary that its construction should not be interrupted for a day, and another was that Yaquita and Cybele, well seconded as they were by the domestics of the fazenda, had not an hour to lose. Minha had accepted the offer with much pleasure, and so, after breakfast on the day we speak of, at about eleven o'clock, the two young men and the two girls met on the bank at the angle where the two streams joined. One of the blacks went with them. They all embarked in one of the ubas used in the service of the farm, and after having passed between the islands of Iquitos and Parianta, they reached the right bank of the Amazon. They landed at a clump of superb tree-ferns, which were crowned, at a height of some thirty feet with a sort of halo made of the dainty branches of green velvet and the delicate lacework of the drooping fronds. "Well, Manoel," said Minha, "it is for me to do the honors of the forest; you are only a stranger in these regions of the Upper Amazon. We are at home here, and you must allow me to do my duty, as mistress of the house." "Dearest Minha," replied the young man, "you will be none the less mistress of your house in our town of Belem than at the fazenda of Iquitos, and there as here——" "Now, then," interrupted Benito, "you did not come here to exchange loving speeches, I imagine. Just forget for a few hours that you are engaged." "Not for an hour—not for an instant!" said Manoel. "Perhaps you will if Minha orders you?" "Minha will not order me." "Who knows?" said Lina, laughing. "Lina is right," answered Minha, who held out her hand to Manoel. "Try to forget! Forget! my brother requires it. All is broken off! As long as this walk lasts we are not engaged: I am no more than the sister of Benito! You are only my friend!" "To be sure," said Benito. "Bravo! bravo! there are only strangers here," said the young mulatto, clapping her hands. "Strangers who see each other for the first time," added the girl; "who meet, bow to——" "Mademoiselle!" said Manoel, turning to Minha. "To whom have I the honor to speak, sir?" said she in the most serious manner possible. "To Manoel Valdez, who will be glad if your brother will introduce me." "Oh, away with your nonsense!" cried Benito. "Stupid idea that I had! Be engaged, my friends—be it as much as you like! Be it always!" "Always!" said Minha, from whom the word escaped so naturally that Lina's peals of laughter redoubled. A grateful glance from Manoel repaid Minha for the imprudence of her tongue. "Come along," said Benito, so as to get his sister out of her embarrassment; "if we walk on we shall not talk so much." "One moment, brother," she said. "You have seen how ready I am to obey you. You wished to oblige Manoel and me to forget each other, so as not to spoil your walk. Very well; and now I am going to ask a sacrifice from you so that you shall not spoil mine. Whether it pleases you or not, Benito, you must promise me to forget——" "Forget what?" "That you are a sportsman!" "What! you forbid me to——" "I forbid you to fire at any of these charming birds—any of the parrots, caciques, or curucus which are flying about so happily among the trees! And the same interdiction with regard to the smaller game with which we shall have to do to-day. If any ounce, jaguar, or such thing comes too near, well——" "But——" said Benito. "If not, I will take Manoel's arm, and we shall save or lose ourselves, and you will be obliged to run after us." "Would you not like me to refuse, eh?" asked Benito, looking at Manoel. "I think I should!" replied the young man. "Well then—no!" said Benito; "I do not refuse; I will obey and annoy you. Come on!" And so the four, followed by the black, struck under the splendid trees, whose thick foliage prevented the sun's rays from every reaching the soil. There is nothing more magnificent than this part of the right bank of the Amazon. There, in such picturesque confusion, so many different trees shoot up that it is possible to count more than a hundred different species in a square mile. A forester could easily see that no woodman had been there with his hatchet or ax, for the effects of a clearing are visible for many centuries afterward. If the new trees are even a hundred years old, the general aspect still differs from what it was originally, for the lianas and other parasitic plants alter, and signs remain which no native can misunderstand. The happy group moved then into the tall herbage, across the thickets and under the bushes, chatting and laughing. In front, when the brambles were too thick, the negro, felling-sword in hand, cleared the way, and put thousands of birds to flight. Minha was right to intercede for the little winged world which flew about in the higher foliage, for the finest representations of tropical ornithology were there to be seen—green parrots and clamorous parakeets, which seemed to be the natural fruit of these gigantic trees; humming-birds in all their varieties, light-blue and ruby red; "tisauras" with long scissors-like tails, looking like detached flowers which the wind blew from branch to branch; blackbirds, with orange plumage bound with brown; golden-edged beccaficos; and "sabias," black as crows; all united in a deafening concert of shrieks and whistles. The long beak of the toucan stood out against the golden clusters of the "quiriris," and the treepeckers or woodpeckers of Brazil wagged their little heads, speckled all over with their purple spots. It was truly a scene of enchantment. But all were silent and went into hiding when above the tops of the trees there grated like a rusty weathercock the "alma de gato" or "soul of the cat," a kind of light fawn-colored sparrow-hawk. If he proudly hooted, displaying in the air the long white plumes of his tail, he in his turn meekly took to flight when in the loftier heights there appeared the "gaviao," the large white-headed eagle, the terror of the whole winged population of these woods. Minha made Manoel admire the natural wonders which could not be found in their simplicity in the more civilized provinces of the east. He listened to her more with his eyes than his ears, for the cries and the songs of these thousands of birds were every now and then so penetrating that he was not able to hear what she said. The noisy laughter of Lina was alone sufficiently shrill to ring out with its joyous note above every kind of clucking, chirping, hooting, whistling, and cooing. At the end of an hour they had scarcely gone a mile. As they left the river the trees assumed another aspect, and the animal life was no longer met with near the ground, but at from sixty to eighty feet above, where troops of monkeys chased each other along the higher branches. Here and there a few cones of the solar rays shot down into the underwood. In fact, in these tropical forests light does not seem to be necessary for their existence. The air is enough for the vegetable growth, whether it be large or small, tree or plant, and all the heat required for the development of their sap is derived not from the surrounding atmosphere, but from the bosom of the soil itself, where it is stored up as in an enormous stove. And on the bromelias, grass plantains, orchids, cacti, and in short all the parasites which formed a little forest beneath the large one, many marvelous insects were they tempted to pluck as though they had been genuine blossoms—nestors with blue wings like shimmering watered silk, leilu butterflies reflexed with gold and striped with fringes of green, agrippina moths, ten inches long, with leaves for wings, maribunda bees, like living emeralds set in sockets of gold, and legions of lampyrons or pyrophorus coleopters, valagumas with breastplates of bronze, and green elytræ, with yellow light pouring from their eyes, who, when the night comes, illuminate the forest with their many-colored scintillations. "What wonders!" repeated the enthusiastic girl. "You are at home, Minha, or at least you say so," said Benito, "and that is the way you talk of your riches!" "Sneer away, little brother!" replied Minha; "such beautiful things are only lent to us; is it not so, Manoel? They come from the hand of the Almighty and belong to the world!" "Let Benito laugh on, Minha," said Manoel. "He hides it very well, but he is a poet himself when his time comes, and he admires as much as we do all these beauties of nature. Only when his gun is on his arm, good-by to poetry!" "Then be a poet now," replied the girl. "I am a poet," said Benito. "O! Nature-enchanting, etc." We may confess, however, that in forbidding him to use his gun Minha had imposed on him a genuine privation. There was no lack of game in the woods, and several magnificent opportunities he had declined with regret. In some of the less wooded parts, in places where the breaks were tolerably spacious, they saw several pairs of ostriches, of the species known as "naudus," from four to five feet high, accompanied by their inseparable "seriemas," a sort of turkey, infinitely better from an edible point of view than the huge birds they escort. "See what that wretched promise costs me," sighed Benito, as, at a gesture from his sister, he replaced under his arm the gun which had instinctively gone up to his shoulder. "We ought to respect the seriemas," said Manoel, "for they are great destroyers of the snakes." "Just as we ought to respect the snakes," replied Benito, "because they eat the noxious insects, and just as we ought the insects because they live on smaller insects more offensive still. At that rate we ought to respect everything." But the instinct of the young sportsman was about to be put to a still more rigorous trial. The woods became of a sudden full of game. Swift stags and graceful roebucks scampered off beneath the bushes, and a well-aimed bullet would assuredly have stopped them. Here and there turkeys showed themselves with their milk and coffee-colored plumage; and peccaries, a sort of wild pig highly appreciated by lovers of venison, and agouties, which are the hares and rabbits of Central America; and tatous belonging to the order of edentates, with their scaly shells of patterns of mosaic. And truly Benito showed more than virtue, and even genuine heroism, when he came across some tapirs, called "antas" in Brazil, diminutives of the elephant, already nearly undiscoverable on the banks of the Upper Amazon and its tributaries, pachyderms so dear to the hunters for their rarity, so appreciated by the gourmands for their meat, superior far to beef, and above all for the protuberance on the nape of the neck, which is a morsel fit for a king. His gun almost burned his fingers, but faithful to his promise he kept it quiet. But yet—and he cautioned his sister about this—the gun would go off in spite of him, and probably register a master-stroke in sporting annals, if within range there should come a "tamandoa assa," a kind of large and very curious ant-eater. Happily the big ant-eater did not show himself, neither did any panthers, leopards, jaguars, guepars, or cougars, called indifferently ounces in South America, and to whom it is not advisable to get too near. "After all," said Benito, who stopped for an instant, "to walk is very well, but to walk without an object——" "Without an object!" replied his sister; "but our object is to see, to admire, to visit for the last time these forests of Central America, which we shall not find again in Para, and to bid them a fast farewell." "Ah! an idea!" It was Lina who spoke. "An idea of Lina's can be no other than a silly one," said Benito, shaking his head. "It is unkind, brother," said Minha, "to make fun of Lina when she has been thinking how to give our walk the object which you have just regretted it lacks." "Besides, Mr. Benito, I am sure my idea will please you," replied the mulatto. "Well, what is it?" asked Minha. "You see that liana?" And Lina pointed to a liana of the "cipos" kind, twisted round a gigantic sensitive mimosa, whose leaves, light as feathers, shut up at the least disturbance. "Well?" said Benito. "I proposed," replied Minha, "that we try to follow that liana to its very end." "It is an idea, and it is an object!" observed Benito, "to follow this liana, no matter what may be the obstacles, thickets, underwood, rocks, brooks, torrents, to let nothing stop us, not even——" "Certainly, you are right, brother!" said Minha; "Lina is a trifle absurd." "Come on, then!" replied her brother; "you say that Lina is absurd so as to say that Benito is absurd to approve of it!" "Well, both of you are absurd, if that will amuse you," returned Minha. "Let us follow the liana!" "You are not afraid?" said Manoel. "Still objections!" shouted Benito. "Ah, Manoel! you would not speak like that if you were already on your way and Minha was waiting for you at the end." "I am silent," replied Manoel; "I have no more to say. I obey. Let us follow the liana!" And off they went as happy as children home for their holidays. This vegetable might take them far if they determined to follow it to its extremity, like the thread of Ariadne, as far almost as that which the heiress of Minos used to lead her from the labyrinth, and perhaps entangle them more deeply. It was in fact a creeper of the salses family, one of the cipos known under the name of the red "japicanga," whose length sometimes measures several miles. But, after all, they could leave it when they liked. The cipo passed from one tree to another without breaking its continuity, sometimes twisting round the trunks, sometimes garlanding the branches, here jumping form a dragon-tree to a rosewood, then from a gigantic chestnut, the "Bertholletia excelsa," to some of the wine palms, "baccabas," whose branches have been appropriately compared by Agassiz to long sticks of coral flecked with green. Here round "tucumas," or ficuses, capriciously twisted like centenarian olive-trees, and of which Brazil had fifty-four varieties; here round the kinds of euphorbias, which produce caoutchouc, "gualtes," noble palm-trees, with slender, graceful, and glossy stems; and cacao-trees, which shoot up of their own accord on the banks of the Amazon and its tributaries, having different melastomas, some with red flowers and others ornamented with panicles of whitish berries. But the halts! the shouts of cheating! when the happy company thought they had lost their guiding thread! For it was necessary to go back and disentangle it from the knot of parasitic plants. "There it is!" said Lina, "I see it!" "You are wrong," replied Minha; "that is not it, that is a liana of another kind." "No, Lina is right!" said Benito. "No, Lina is wrong!" Manoel would naturally return. Hence highly serious, long-continued discussions, in which no one would give in. Then the black on one side and Benito on the other would rush at the trees and clamber up to the branches encircled by the cipo so as to arrive at the true direction. Now nothing was assuredly less easy in that jumble of knots, among which twisted the liana in the middle of bromelias, "karatas," armed with their sharp prickles, orchids with rosy flowers and violet lips the size of gloves, and oncidiums more tangled than a skein of worsted between a kitten's paws. And then when the liana ran down again to the ground the difficulty of picking it out under the mass of lycopods, large-leaved heliconias, rosy-tasseled calliandras, rhipsalas encircling it like the thread on an electric reel, between the knots of the large white ipomas, under the fleshy stems of the vanilla, and in the midst of the shoots and branchlets of the grenadilla and the vine. And when the cipo was found again what shouts of joy, and how they resumed the walk for an instant interrupted! For an hour the young people had already been advancing, and nothing had happened to warn them that they were approaching the end. They shook the liana with vigor, but it would not give, and the birds flew away in hundreds, and the monkeys fled from tree to tree, so as to point out the way. If a thicket barred the road the felling-sword cut a deep gap, and the group passed in. If it was a high rock, carpeted with verdure, over which the liana twisted like a serpent, they climbed it and passed on. A large break now appeared. There, in the more open air, which is as necessary to it as the light of the sun, the tree of the tropics, par excellence, which, according to Humboldt, "accompanies man in the infancy of his civilization," the great provider of the inhabitant of the torrid zones, a banana-tree, was standing alone. The long festoon of the liana curled round its higher branches, moving away to the other side of the clearing, and disappeared again into the forest. "Shall we stop soon?" asked Manoel. "No; a thousand times no!" cried Benito, "not without having reached the end of it!" "Perhaps," observed Minha, "it will soon be time to think of returning." "Oh, dearest mistress, let us go on again!" replied Lina. "On forever!" added Benito. And they plunged more deeply into the forest, which, becoming clearer, allowed them to advance more easily. Besides, the cipo bore away to the north, and toward the river. It became less inconvenient to follow, seeing that they approached the right bank, and it would be easy to get back afterward. A quarter of an hour later they all stopped at the foot of a ravine in front of a small tributary of the Amazon. But a bridge of lianas, made of "bejucos," twined together by their interlacing branches, crossed the stream. The cipo, dividing into two strings, served for a handrail, and passed from one bank to the other. Benito, all the time in front, had already stepped on the swinging floor of this vegetable bridge. Manoel wished to keep his sister back. "Stay—stay, Minha!" he said, "Benito may go further if he likes, but let us remain here." "No! Come on, come on, dear mistress!" said Lina. "Don't be afraid, the liana is getting thinner; we shall get the better of it, and find out its end!" And, without hesitation, the young mulatto boldly ventured toward Benito. "What children they are!" replied Minha. "Come along, Manoel, we must follow." And they all cleared the bridge, which swayed above the ravine like a swing, and plunged again beneath the mighty trees. But they had not proceeded for ten minutes along the interminable cipo, in the direction of the river, when they stopped, and this time not without cause. "Have we got to the end of the liana?" asked Minha. "No," replied Benito; "but we had better advance with care. Look!" and Benito pointed to the cipo which, lost in the branches of a high ficus, was agitated by violent shakings. "What causes that?" asked Manoel. "Perhaps some animal that we had better approach with a little circumspection!" And Benito, cocking his gun, motioned them to let him go on a bit, and stepped about ten paces to the front. Manoel, the two girls, and the black remained motionless where they were. Suddenly Benito raised a shout, and they saw him rush toward a tree; they all ran as well. Sight the most unforeseen, and little adapted to gratify the eyes! A man, hanging by the neck, struggled at the end of the liana, which, supple as a cord, had formed into a slipknot, and the shakings came from the jerks into which he still agitated it in the last convulsions of his agony! Benito threw himself on the unfortunate fellow, and with a cut of his hunting-knife severed the cipo. The man slipped on to the ground. Manoel leaned over him, to try and recall him to life, if it was not too late. "Poor man!" murmured Minha. "Mr. Manoel! Mr. Manoel!" cried Lina. "He breathes again! His heart beats; you must save him." "True," said Manoel, "but I think it was about time that we came up." He was about thirty years old, a white, clothed badly enough, much emaciated, and he seemed to have suffered a good deal. At his feet were an empty flask, thrown on the ground, and a cup and ball in palm wood, of which the ball, made of the head of a tortoise, was tied on with a fiber. "To hang himself! to hang himself!" repeated Lina, "and young still! What could have driven him to do such a thing?" But the attempts of Manoel had not been long in bringing the luckless wight to life again, and he opened his eyes and gave an "ahem!" so vigorous and unexpected that Lina, frightened, replied to his cry with another. "Who are you, my friend?" Benito asked him. "An ex-hanger-on, as far as I see." "But your name?" "Wait a minute and I will recall myself," said he, passing his hand over his forehead. "I am known as Fragoso, at your service; and I am still able to curl and cut your hair, to shave you, and to make you comfortable according to all the rules of my art. I am a barber, so to speak more truly, the most desperate of Figaros." "And what made you think of——" "What would you have, my gallant sir?" replied Fragoso, with a smile; "a moment of despair, which I would have duly regretted had the regrets been in another world! But eight hundred leagues of country to traverse, and not a coin in my pouch, was not very comforting! I had lost courage obviously." To conclude, Fragoso had a good and pleasing figure, and as he recovered it was evident that he was of a lively disposition. He was one of those wandering barbers who travel on the banks of the Upper Amazon, going from village to village, and putting the resources of their art at the service of negroes, negresses, Indians and Indian women, who appreciate them very much. But poor Fragoso, abandoned and miserable, having eaten nothing for forty hours, astray in the forest, had for an instant lost his head, and we know the rest. "My friend," said Benito to him, "you will go back with us to the fazenda of Iquitos?" "With pleasure," replied Fragoso; "you cut me down and I belong to you. I must somehow be dependent." "Well, dear mistress, don't you think we did well to continue our walk?" asked Lina. "That I do," returned the girl. "Never mind," said Benito; "I never thought that we should finish by finding a man at the end of the cipo." "And, above all, a barber in difficulties, and on the road to hang himself!" replied Fragoso. The poor fellow, who was now wide awake, was told about what had passed. He warmly thanked Lina for the good idea she had had of following the liana, and they all started on the road to the fazenda, where Fragoso was received in a way that gave him neither wish nor want to try his wretched task again.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE JANGADA

The half-mile square of forest was cleared. With the carpenters remained the task of arranging in the form of a raft the many venerable trees which were lying on the strand. And an easy task it was. Under the direction of Joam Garral the Indians displayed their incomparable ingenuity. In everything connected with house-building or ship-building these natives are, it must be admitted, astonishing workmen. They have only an ax and a saw, and they work on woods so hard that the edge of their tools gets absolutely jagged; yet they square up trunks, shape beams out of enormous stems, and get out of them joists and planking without the aid of any machinery whatever, and, endowed with prodigious natural ability, do all these things easily with their skilled and patient hands. The trees had not been launched into the Amazon to begin with; Joam Garral was accustomed to proceed in a different way. The whole mass of trunks was symmetrically arranged on a flat part of the bank, which he had already leveled up at the junction of the Nanay with the great river. There it was that the jangada was to be built; thence it was that the Amazon was to float it when the time came for it to start for its destination. And here an explanatory note is necessary in regard to the geography of this immense body of water, and more especially as relating to a singular phenomenon which the riverside inhabitants describe from personal observation. The two rivers which are, perhaps, more extensive than the great artery of Brazil, the Nile and the Missouri-Mississippi, flow one from south to north across the African continent, the other from north to south through North America. They cross districts of many different latitudes, and consequently of many different climates. The Amazon, on the contrary, is entirely comprised—at least it is from the point where it turns to the east, on the frontiers of Ecuador and Peru—between the second and fourth parallels of south latitude. Hence this immense river system is under the same climatic conditions during the whole of its course. In these parts there are two distinct seasons during which rain falls. In the north of Brazil the rainy season is in September; in the south it occurs in March. Consequently the right-hand tributaries and the left-hand tributaries bring down their floods at half-yearly intervals, and hence the level of the Amazon, after reaching its maximum in June, gradually falls until October. This Joam Garral knew by experience, and he intended to profit by the phenomenon to launch the jangada, after having built it in comfort on the river bank. In fact, between the mean and the higher level the height of the Amazon could vary as much as forty feet, and between the mean and the lower level as much as thirty feet. A difference of seventy feet like this gave the fazender all he required. The building was commenced without delay. Along the huge bank the trunks were got into place according to their sizes and floating power, which of course had to be taken into account, as among these thick and heavy woods there were many whose specific gravity was but little below that of water. The first layer was entirely composed of trunks laid side by side. A little interval had to be left between them, and they were bound together by transverse beams, which assured the solidity of the whole. "Piaçaba" ropes strapped them together as firmly as any chain cables could have done. This material, which consists of the ramicles of a certain palm-tree growing very abundantly on the river banks, is in universal use in the district. Piaçaba floats, resists immersion, and is cheaply made—very good reasons for causing it to be valuable, and making it even an article of commerce with the Old World. Above this double row of trunks and beams were disposed the joists and planks which formed the floor of the jangada, and rose about thirty inches above the load water-line. The bulk was enormous, as we must confess when it is considered that the raft measured a thousand feet long and sixty broad, and thus had a superificies of sixty thousand square feet. They were, in fact, about to commit a whole forest to the Amazon. The work of building was conducted under the immediate direction of Joam Garral. But when that part was finished the question of arrangement was submitted to the discussion of all, including even the gallant Fragoso. Just a word as to what he was doing in his new situation at the fazenda. The barber had never been so happy as since the day when he had been received by the hospitable family. Joam Garral had offered to take him to Para, on the road to which he was when the liana, according to his account, had seized him by the neck and brought him up with a round turn. Fragoso had accepted the offer, thanked him from the bottom of his heart, and ever since had sought to make himself useful in a thousand ways. He was a very intelligent fellow—what one might call a "double right-hander"—that is to say, he could do everything, and could do everything well. As merry as Lina, always singing, and always ready with some good-natured joke, he was not long in being liked by all. But it was with the young mulatto that he claimed to have contracted the heaviest obligation. "A famous idea that of yours, Miss Lina," he was constantly saying, "to play at 'following the liana!' It is a capital game even if you do not always find a poor chap of a barber at the end!" "Quite a chance, Mr. Fragoso," would laughingly reply Lina; "I assure you, you owe me nothing!" "What! nothing! I owe you my life, and I want it prolonged for a hundred years, and that my recollection of the fact may endure even longer! You see, it is not my trade to be hanged! If I tried my hand at it, it was through necessity. But, on consideration, I would rather die of hunger, and before quite going off I should try a little pasturage with the brutes! As for this liana, it is a lien between us, and so you will see!" The conversation generally took a joking turn, but at the bottom Fragoso was very grateful to the mulatto for having taken the initiative in his rescue, and Lina was not insensible to the attentions of the brave fellow, who was as straightforward, frank, and good-looking as she was. Their friendship gave rise to many a pleasant, "Ah, ah!" on the part of Benito, old Cybele, and others. To return to the Jangada. After some discussion it was decided, as the voyage was to be of some months' duration, to make it as complete and comfortable as possible. The Garral family, comprising the father, mother, daughter, Benito, Manoel, and the servants, Cybele and Lina, were to live in a separate house. In addition to these, there were to go forty Indians, forty blacks, Fragoso, and the pilot who was to take charge of the navigation of the raft. Though the crew was large, it was not more than sufficient for the service on board. To work the jangada along the windings of the river and between the hundreds of islands and islets which lay in its course required fully as many as were taken, for if the current furnished the motive power, it had nothing to do with the steering, and the hundred and sixty arms were no more than were necessary to work the long boathooks by which the giant raft was to be kept in mid-stream. In the first place, then, in the hinder part of the jangada they built the master's house. It was arranged to contain several bedrooms and a large dining-hall. One of the rooms was destined for Joam and his wife, another for Lina and Cybele near those of their mistresses, and a third room for Benito and Manoel. Minha had a room away from the others, which was not by any means the least comfortably designed. This, the principal house, was carefully made of weather-boarding, saturated with boiling resin, and thus rendered water-tight throughout. It was capitally lighted with windows on all sides. In front, the entrance-door gave immediate access to the common room. A light veranda, resting on slender bamboos, protected the exterior from the direct action of the solar rays. The whole was painted a light-ocher color, which reflected the heat instead of absorbing it, and kept down the temperature of the interior. But when the heavy work, so to speak, had been completed, Minha intervened with: "Father, now your care has inclosed and covered us, you must allow us to arrange our dwelling to please ourselves. The outside belongs to you, the inside to us. Mother and I would like it to be as though our house at the fazenda went with us on the journey, so as to make you fancy that we had never left Iquitos!" "Do just as you like, Minha," replied Joam Garral, smiling in the sad way he often did. "That will be nice!" "I leave everything to your good taste." "And that will do us honor, father. It ought to, for the sake of the splendid country we are going through—which is yours, by the way, and into which you are to enter after so many years' absence." "Yes, Minha; yes," replied Joam. "It is rather as if we were returning from exile—voluntary exile! Do your best; I approve beforehand of what you do." On Minha and Lina, to whom were added of their own free will Manoel on the one side and Fragoso on the other, devolved the care of decorating the inside of the house. With some imagination and a little artistic feeling the result was highly satisfactory. The best furniture of the fazenda naturally found its place within, as after arriving in Para they could easily return it by one of the igariteos. Tables, bamboo easy-chairs, cane sofas, carved wood shelves, everything that constituted the charming furniture of the tropics, was disposed with taste about the floating home. No one is likely to imagine that the walls remained bare. The boards were hidden beneath hangings of most agreeable variety. These hangings were made of valuable bark, that of the "tuturis," which is raised up in large folds like the brocades and damasks and softest and richest materials of our modern looms. On the floors of the rooms were jaguar skins, with wonderful spots, and thick monkey furs of exquisite fleeciness. Light curtains of the russet silk, produced by the "sumauma," hung from the windows. The beds, enveloped in mosquito curtains, had their pillows, mattresses, and bolsters filled with that fresh and elastic substance which in the Upper Amazon is yielded by the bombax. Throughout on the shelves and side-tables were little odds and ends, brought from Rio Janeiro or Belem, those most precious to Minha being such as had come from Manoel. What could be more pleasing in her eyes than the knickknacks given by a loving hand which spoke to her without saying anything? In a few days the interior was completed, and it looked just like the interior of the fazenda. A stationary house under a lovely clump of trees on the borders of some beautiful river! Until it descended between the banks of the larger stream it would not be out of keeping with the picturesque landscape which stretched away on each side of it. We may add that the exterior of the house was no less charming than the interior. In fact, on the outside the young fellows had given free scope to their taste and imagination. From the basement to the roof it was literally covered with foliage. A confused mass of orchids, bromelias, and climbing plants, all in flower, rooted in boxes of excellent soil hidden beneath masses of verdure. The trunk of some ficus or mimosa was never covered by a more startlingly tropical attire. What whimsical climbers—ruby red and golden yellow, with variegated clusters and tangled twigs—turned over the brackets, under the ridges, on the rafters of the roof, and across the lintels of the doors! They had brought them wholesale from the woods in the neighborhood of the fazenda. A huge liana bound all the parasites together; several times it made the round of the house, clinging on to every angle, encircling every projection, forking, uniting, it everywhere threw out its irregular branchlets, and allowed not a bit of the house to be seen beneath its enormous clusters of bloom. As a delicate piece of attention, the author of which can be easily recognized, the end of the cipo spread out before the very window of the young mulatto, as though a long arm was forever holding a bouquet of fresh flowers across the blind. To sum up, it was as charming as could be; and as Yaquita, her daughter, and Lina were content, we need say no more about it. "It would not take much to make us plant trees on the jangada," said Benito. "Oh, trees!" ejaculated Minha. "Why not?" replied Manoel. "Transported on to this solid platform, with some good soil, I am sure they would do well, and we would have no change of climate to fear for them, as the Amazon flows all the time along the same parallel." "Besides," said Benito, "every day islets of verdure, torn from the banks, go drifting down the river. Do they not pass along with their trees, bushes, thickets, rocks, and fields, to lose themselves in the Atlantic eight hundred leagues away? Why, then, should we not transform our raft into a floating garden?" "Would you like a forest, miss?" said Fragoso, who stopped at nothing. "Yes, a forest!" cried the young mulatto; "a forest with its birds and its monkeys——" "Its snakes, its jaguars!" continued Benito. "Its Indians, its nomadic tribes," added Manoel, "and even its cannibals!" "But where are you going to, Fragoso?" said Minha, seeing the active barber making a rush at the bank. "To look after the forest!" replied Fragoso. "Useless, my friend," answered the smiling Minha. "Manoel has given me a nosegay and I am quite content. It is true," she added, pointing to the house hidden beneath the flowers, "that he has hidden our house in his betrothal bouquet!"

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE EVENING OF THE FIFTH OF JUNE

While the master's house was being constructed, Joam Garral was also busied in the arrangement of the out-buildings, comprising the kitchen, and offices in which provisions of all kinds were intended to be stored. In the first place, there was an important stock of the roots of that little tree, some six or ten feet in height, which yields the manioc, and which form the principal food of the inhabitants of these inter-tropical countries. The root, very much like a long black radish, grows in clumps like potatoes. If it is not poisonous in Africa, it is certain that in South America it contains a more noxious juice, which it is necessary to previously get rid of by pressure. When this result is obtained, the root is reduced to flour, and is then used in many ways, even in the form of tapioca, according to the fancy of the natives. On board the jangada there was a huge pile of this useful product destined for general consumption. As for preserved meats, not forgetting a whole flock of sheep, kept in a special stable built in the front, they consisted principally of a quantity of the "presunto" hams of the district, which are of first-class quality; but the guns of the young fellows and of some of the Indians were reckoned on for additional supplies, excellent hunters as they were, to whom there was likely to be no lack of game on the islands and in the forests bordering on the stream. The river was expected to furnish its daily quota; prawns, which ought rather to be called crawfish; "tambagus," the finest fish in the district, of a flavor superior to that of salmon, to which it is often compared; "pirarucus" with red scales, as large as sturgeons, which when salted are used in great quantities throughout Brazil; "candirus," awkward to capture, but good to eat; "piranhas," or devil-fish, striped with red bands, and thirty inches long; turtles large and small, which are counted by millions, and form so large a part of the food of the natives; some of every one of these things it was hoped would figure in turn on the tables of the master and his men. And so each day shooting and fishing were to be regularly indulged in. For beverages they had a good store of the best that country produced; "caysuma" or "machachera," from the Upper and Lower Amazon, an agreeable liquor of slightly acidulated taste, which is distilled from the boiled root of the sweet manioc; "beiju," from Brazil, a sort of national brandy, the "chica" of Peru; the "mazato" of the Ucayali, extracted from the boiled fruits of the banana-tree, pressed and fermented; "guarana," a kind of paste made from the double almond of the "paulliniasorbilis," a genuine tablet of chocolate so far as its color goes, which is reduced to a fine powder, and with the addition of water yields an excellent drink. And this was not all. There is in these countries a species of dark violet wine, which is got from the juice of the palm, and the aromatic flavor of this "assais" is greatly appreciated by the Brazilans, and of it there were on board a respectable number of frasques (each holding a little more than half a gallon), which would probably be emptied before they arrived at Para. The special cellar of the jangada did honor to Benito, who had been appointed its commander-in-chief. Several hundred bottles of sherry, port, and letubal recalled names dear to the earlier conquerors of South America. In addition, the young butler had stored away certain demijohns, holding half a dozen gallons each, of excellent "tafia," a sugared brandy a trifle more pronounced in taste than the national beiju. As far as tobacco was concerned, there was none of that coarse kind which usually contents the natives of the Amazonian basin. It all came direct from Villa Bella da Imperatriz—or, in other words, fro the district in which is grown the best tobacco in Central America. The principal habitation, with its annexes—kitchen, offices, and cellars—was placed in the rear—or, let us say, stern of the craft—and formed a part reserved for the Garral family and their personal servants. In the center the huts for the Indians and the blacks had been erected. The staff were thus placed under the same conditions as at the fazenda of Iquitos, and would always be able to work under the direction of the pilot. To house the crew a good many huts were required, and these gave to the jangada the appearance of a small village got adrift, and, to tell the truth, it was a better built and better peopled village than many of those on the Upper Amazon. For the Indians Joam Garral had designed regular cabins—huts without walls, with only light poles supporting the roof of foliage. The air circulated freely throughout these open constructions and swung the hammock suspended in the interior, and the natives, among whom were three or four complete families, with women and children, were lodged as if they were on shore. The blacks here found their customary sheds. They differed from the cabins by being closed in on their four faces, of which only one gave access to the interior. The Indians, accustomed to live in the open air, free and untrammeled, were not able to accustom themselves to the imprisonment of the ajoupas, which agreed better with the life of the blacks. In the bow regular warehouses had arisen, containing the goods which Joam Garral was carrying to Belem at the same time as the products of his forests. There, in vast storerooms, under the direction of Benito, the rich cargo had been placed with as much order as if it had been carefully stowed away in a ship's hold. In the first place, seven thousand arrobas of caoutchouc, each of about thirty pounds, composed the most precious part of the cargo, for every pound of it was worth from three to four francs. The jangada also took fifty hundredweight of sarsaparilla, a smilax which forms an important branch of foreign trade throughout the Amazon districts, and is getting rarer and rarer along the banks of the river, so that the natives are very careful to spare the stems when they gather them. Tonquin bans, known in Brazil under the name of "cumarus," and used in the manufacture of certain essential oils; sassafras, from which is extracted a precious balsam for wounds; bales of dyeing plants, cases of several gums, and a quantity of precious woods, completed a well-adapted cargo for lucrative and easy sale in the provinces of Para. Some may feel astonished that the number of Indians and negroes embarked were only sufficient to work the raft, and that a larger number were not taken in case of an attack by the riverside Indians. Such would have been useless. The natives of Central America are not to be feared in the least, and the times are quite changed since it was necessary to provide against their aggressions. The Indians along the river belong to peaceable tribes, and the fiercest of them have retired before the advancing civilization, and drawn further and further away from the river and its tributaries. Negro deserters, escaped from the penal colonies of Brazil, England, Holland, or France, are alone to be feared. But there are only a small number of these fugitives, they only move in isolated groups across the savannahs or the woods, and the jangada was, in a measure, secured from any attack on the parts of the backwoodsmen. On the other hand, there were a number of settlements on the river—towns, villages, and missions. The immense stream no longer traverses a desert, but a basin which is being colonized day by day. Danger was not taken into consideration. There were no precautions against attacks. To conclude our description of the jangada, we have only to speak of one or two erections of different kinds which gave it a very picturesque aspect. In the bow was the cabin of the pilot—we say in the bow, and not at the stern, where the helmsman is generally found. In navigating under such circumstances a rudder is of no use. Long oars have no effect on a raft of such dimensions, even when worked with a hundred sturdy arms. It was from the sides, by means of long boathooks or props thrust against the bed of the stream, that the jangada was kept in the current, and had its direction altered when going astray. By this means they could range alongside either bank, if they wished for any reason to come to a halt. Three or four ubas, and two pirogues, with the necessary rigging, were carried on board, and afforded easy communications with the banks. The pilot had to look after the channels of the river, the deviations of the current, the eddies which it was necessary to avoid, the creeks or bays which afforded favorable anchorage, and to do this he had to be in the bow. If the pilot was the material director of this immense machine—for can we not justly call it so?—another personage was its spiritual director; this was Padre Passanha, who had charge of the mission at Iquitos. A religious family, like that of Joam Garral's, had availed themselves enthusiastically of this occasion of taking him with them. Padre Passanha, then aged seventy, was a man of great worth, full of evangelical fervor, charitable and good, and in countries where the representatives of religion are not always examples of the virtues, he stood out as the accomplished type of those great missionaries who have done so much for civilization in the interior of the most savage regions of the world. For fifty years Padre Passanha had lived at Iquitos, in the mission of which he was the chief. He was loved by all, and worthily so. The Garral family held him in great esteem; it was he who had married the daughter of Farmer Magalhaës to the clerk who had been received at the fazenda. He had known the children from birth; he had baptized them, educated them, and hoped to give each of them the nuptial blessing. The age of the padre did not allow of his exercising his important ministry any longer. The horn of retreat for him had sounded; he was about to be replaced at Iquitos by a younger missionary, and he was preparing to return to Para, to end his days in one of those convents which are reserved for the old servants of God. What better occasion could offer than that of descending the river with the family which was as his own? They had proposed it to him, and he had accepted, and when arrived at Belem he was to marry the young couple, Minha and Manoel. But if Padre Passanha during the course of the voyage was to take his meals with the family, Joam Garral desired to build for him a dwelling apart, and heaven knows what care Yaquita and her daughter took to make him comfortable! Assuredly the good old priest had never been so lodged in his modest parsonage! The parsonage was not enough for Padre Passanha; he ought to have a chapel. The chapel then was built in the center of the jangada, and a little bell surmounted it. It was small enough, undoubtedly, and it could not hold the whole of the crew, but it was richly decorated, and if Joam Garral found his own house on the raft, Padre Passanha had no cause to regret the poverty-stricken church of Iquitos. Such was the wonderful structure which was going down the Amazon. It was then on the bank waiting till the flood came to carry it away. From the observation and calculation of the rising it would seem as though there was not much longer to wait. All was ready to date, the 5th of June. The pilot arrived the evening before. He was a man about fifty, well up in his profession, but rather fond of drink. Such as he was, Joam Garral in large matters at different times had employed him to take his rafts to Belem, and he had never had cause to repent it. It is as well to add that Araujo—that was his name—never saw better than when he had imbibed a few glasses of tafia; and he never did any work at all without a certain demijohn of that liquor, to which he paid frequent court. The rise of the flood had clearly manifested itself for several days. From minute to minute the level of the river rose, and during the twenty-four hours which preceded the maximum the waters covered the bank on which the raft rested, but did not lift the raft. As soon as the movement was assured, and there could be no error as to the height to which the flood would rise, all those interested in the undertaking were seized with no little excitement. For if through some inexplicable cause the waters of the Amazon did not rise sufficiently to flood the jangada, it would all have to be built over again. But as the fall of the river would be very rapid it would take long months before similar conditions recurred. On the 5th of June, toward the evening, the future passengers of the jangada were collected on a plateau which was about a hundred feet above the bank, and waited for the hour with an anxiety quite intelligible. There were Yaquita, her daughter, Manoel Valdez, Padre Passanha, Benito, Lina, Fragoso, Cybele, and some of the servants, Indian or negro, of the fazenda. Fragoso could not keep himself still; he went and he came, he ran down the bank and ran up the plateau, he noted the points of the river gauge, and shouted "Hurrah!" as the water crept up. "It will swim, it will swim!" he shouted. "The raft which is to take us to Belem! It will float if all the cataracts of the sky have to open to flood the Amazon!" Joam Garral was on the raft with the pilot and some of the crew. It was for him to take all the necessary measures at the critical moment. The jangada was moored to the bank with solid cables, so that it could not be carried away by the current when it floated off. Quite a tribe from one hundred and fifty to two hundred Indians, without counting the population of the village, had come to assist at the interesting spectacle. They were all keenly on the watch, and silence reigned over the impressionable crowd. Toward five o'clock in the evening the water had reached a level higher than that of the night before—by more than a foot—and the bank had already entirely disappeared beneath the liquid covering. A certain groaning arose among the planks of the enormous structure, but there was still wanting a few inches before it was quite lifted and detached from the ground. For an hour the groanings increased. The joists grated on all sides. A struggle was going on in which little by little the trunks were being dragged from their sandy bed. Toward half-past six cries of joy arose. The jangada floated at last, and the current took it toward the middle of the river, but, in obedience to the cables, it quietly took up its position near the bank at the moment that Padre Passanha gave it his blessing, as if it were a vessel launched into the sea whose destinies are in the hands of the Most High!

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

FROM IQUITOS TO PEVAS

On the 6th of June, the very next day, Joam Garral and his people bade good-by to the superintendent and the Indians and negroes who were to stay behind at the fazenda. At six o'clock in the morning the jangada received all its passengers, or rather inhabitants, and each of them took possession of his cabin, or perhaps we had better say his house. The moment of departure had come. Araujo, the pilot, got into his place at the bow, and the crew, armed with their long poles, went to their proper quarters. Joam Garral, assisted by Benito and Manoel, superintended the unmooring. At the command of the pilot the ropes were eased off, and the poles applied to the bank so as to give the jangada a start. The current was not long in seizing it, and coasting the left bank, the islands of Iquitos and Parianta were passed on the right. The voyage had commenced—where would it finish? In Para, at Belem, eight hundred leagues from this little Peruvian village, if nothing happened to modify the route. How would it finish? That was the secret of the future. The weather was magnificent. A pleasant "pampero" tempered the ardor of the sun—one of those winds which in June or July come from off the Cordilleras, many hundred leagues away, after having swept across the huge plain of the Sacramento. Had the raft been provided with masts and sails she would have felt the effects of the breeze, and her speed would have been greater; but owing to the sinuosities of the river and its abrupt changes, which they were bound to follow, they had had to renounce such assistance. In a flat district like that through which the Amazon flows, which is almost a boundless plain, the gradient of the river bed is scarcely perceptible. It has been calculated that between Tabatinga on the Brazilian frontier, and the source of this huge body of water, the difference of level does not exceed a decimeter in each league. There is no other river in the world whose inclination is so slight. It follows from this that the average speed of the current cannot be estimated at more than two leagues in twenty-four hours, and sometimes, while the droughts are on, it is even less. However, during the period of the floods it has been known to increase to between thirty and forty kilometers. Happily, it was under these latter conditions that the jangada was to proceed; but, cumbrous in its movements, it could not keep up to the speed of the current which ran past it. There are also to be taken into account the stoppages occasioned by the bends in the river, the numerous islands which had to be rounded, the shoals which had to be avoided, and the hours of halting, which were necessarily lost when the night was too dark to advance securely, so that we cannot allow more than twenty-five kilometers for each twenty-four hours. In addition, the surface of the water is far from being completely clear. Trees still green, vegetable remains, islets of plants constantly torn from the banks, formed quite a flotilla of fragments carried on by the currents, and were so many obstacles to speedy navigation. The mouth of the Nanay was soon passed, and lost to sight behind a point on the left bank, which, with its carpet of russet grasses tinted by the sun, formed a ruddy relief to the green forests on the horizon. The jangada took the center of the stream between the numerous picturesque islands, of which there are a dozen between Iquitos and Pucalppa. Araujo, who did not forget to clear his vision and his memory by an occasional application to his demijohn, maneuvered very ably when passing through this archipelago. At his word of command fifty poles from each side of the raft were raised in the air, and struck the water with an automatic movement very curious to behold. While this was going on, Yaquita, aided by Lina and Cybele, was getting everything in order, and the Indian cooks were preparing the breakfast. As for the two young fellows and Minha, they were walking up and down in company with Padre Passanha, and from time to time the lady stopped and watered the plants which were placed about the base of the dwelling-house. "Well, padre," said Benito, "do you know a more agreeable way of traveling?" "No, my dear boy," replied the padre; "it is truly traveling with all one's belongings." "And without any fatigue," added Manoel; "we might do hundreds of thousands of miles in this way." "And," said Minha, "you do not repent having taken passage with us? Does it not seem to you as if we were afloat on an island drifted quietly away from the bed of the river with its prairies and its trees? Only——" "Only?" repeated the padre. "Only we have made the island with our own hands; it belongs to us, and I prefer it to all the islands of the Amazon. I have a right to be proud of it." "Yes, my daughter; and I absolve you from your pride. Besides, I am not allowed to scold you in the presence of Manoel!" "But, on the other hand," replied she, gayly, "you should teach Manoel to scold me when I deserve it. He is a great deal too indulgent to my little self." "Well, then, dear Minha," said Manoel, "I shall profit by that permission to remind you——" "Of what?" "That you were very busy in the library at the fazenda, and that you promised to make me very learned about everything connected with the Upper Amazon. We know very little about it in Para, and here we have been passing several islands and you have not even told me their names!" "What is the good of that?" said she. "Yes; what is the good of it?" repeated Benito. "What can be the use of remembering the hundreds of names in the 'Tupi' dialect with which these islands are dressed out? It is enough to know them. The Americans are much more practical with their Mississippi islands; they number them——" "As they number the avenues and streets of their towns," replied Manoel. "Frankly, I don't care much for that numerical system; it conveys nothing to the imagination—Sixty-fourth Island or Sixty-fifth Island, any more than Sixth Street or Third Avenue. Don't you agree with me, Minha?" "Yes, Manoel; though I am of somewhat the same way of thinking as my brother. But even if we do not know their names, the islands of our great river are truly splendid! See how they rest under the shadows of those gigantic palm-trees with their drooping leaves! And the girdle of reeds which encircles them through which a pirogue can with difficulty make its way! And the mangrove trees, whose fantastic roots buttress them to the bank like the claws of some gigantic crab! Yes, the islands are beautiful, but, beautiful as they are, they cannot equal the one we have made our own!" "My little Minha is enthusiastic to-day," said the padre. "Ah, padre! I am so happy to see everybody happy around me!" At this moment the voice of Yaquita was heard calling Minha into the house. The young girl smilingly ran off. "You will have an amiable companion," said the padre. "All the joy of the house goes away with you, my friend." "Brave little sister!" said Benito, "we shall miss her greatly, and the padre is right. However, if you do not marry her, Manoel—there is still time—she will stay with us." "She will stay with you, Benito," replied Manoel. "Believe me, I have a presentiment that we shall all be reunited!" The first day passed capitally; breakfast, dinner, siesta, walks, all took place as if Joam Garral and his people were still in the comfortable fazenda of Iquitos. During these twenty-four hours the mouths of the rivers Bacali, Chochio, Pucalppa, on the left of the stream, and those of the rivers Itinicari, Maniti, Moyoc, Tucuya, and the islands of this name on the right, were passed without accident. The night, lighted by the moon, allowed them to save a halt, and the giant raft glided peacefully on along the surface of the Amazon. On the morrow, the 7th of June, the jangada breasted the banks of the village of Pucalppa, named also New Oran. Old Oran, situated fifteen leagues down stream on the same left bank of the river, is almost abandoned for the new settlement, whose population consists of Indians belonging to the Mayoruna and Orejone tribes. Nothing can be more picturesque than this village with its ruddy-colored banks, its unfinished church, its cottages, whose chimneys are hidden amid the palms, and its two or three ubas half-stranded on the shore. During the whole of the 7th of June the jangada continued to follow the left bank of the river, passing several unknown tributaries of no importance. For a moment there was a chance of her grounding on the easterly shore of the island of Sinicure; but the pilot, well served by the crew, warded off the danger and remained in the flow of the stream. In the evening they arrived alongside a narrow island, called Napo Island, from the name of the river which here comes in from the north-northwest, and mingles its waters with those of the Amazon through a mouth about eight hundred yards across, after having watered the territories of the Coto and Orejone Indians. It was on the morning of the 7th of June that the jangada was abreast the little island of Mango, which causes the Napo to split into two streams before falling into the Amazon. Several years later a French traveler, Paul Marcoy, went out to examine the color of the waters of this tributary, which has been graphically compared to the cloudy greenish opal of absinthe. At the same time he corrected some of the measurements of La Condamine. But then the mouth of the Napo was sensibly increased by the floods and it was with a good deal of rapidity that its current, coming from the eastern slopes of Cotopaxi, hurried fiercely to mingle itself with the tawny waters of the Amazon. A few Indians had wandered to the mouth of this river. They were robust in build, of tall stature, with shaggy hair, and had their noses pierced with a rod of palm, and the lobes of their ears lengthened to their shoulders by the weight of heavy rings of precious wood. Some women were with them. None of them showed any intention of coming on board. It is asserted that these natives are cannibals; but if that is true—and it is said of many of the riverine tribes—there must have been more evidence for the cannibalism than we get to-day. Some hours later the village of Bella Vista, situated on a somewhat lower bank, appeared, with its cluster of magnificent trees, towering above a few huts roofed with straw, over which there drooped the large leaves of some medium-sized banana-trees, like the waters overflowing from a tazza. Then the pilot, so as to follow a better current, which turned off from the bank, directed the raft toward the right side of the river, which he had not yet approached. The maneuver was not accomplished without certain difficulties, which were successfully overcome after a good many resorts to the demijohn. This allowed them to notice in passing some of those numerous lagoons with black waters, which are distributed along the course of the Amazon, and which often have no communication with the river. One of these, bearing the name of the Lagoon of Oran, is of fair size, and receives the water by a large strait. In the middle of the stream are scattered several islands and two or three islets curiously grouped; and on the opposite bank Benito recognized the site of the ancient Oran, of which they could only see a few uncertain traces. During two days the jangada traveled sometimes under the left bank, sometimes under the right, according to the condition of the current, without giving the least sign of grounding. The passengers had already become used to this new life. Joam Garral, leaving to his son everything that referred to the commercial side of the expedition, kept himself principally to his room, thinking and writing. What he was writing about he told to nobody, not even Yaquita, and it seemed to have already assumed the importance of a veritable essay. Benito, all observation, chatted with the pilot and acted as manager. Yaquita, her daughter, and Manoel, nearly always formed a group apart, discussing their future projects just as they had walked and done in the park of the fazenda. The life was, in fact, the same. Not quite, perhaps, to Benito, who had not yet found occasion to participate in the pleasures of the chase. If, however, the forests of Iquitos failed him with their wild beasts, agoutis, peccaries, and cabiais, the birds flew in flocks from the banks of the river and fearlessly perched on the jangada. When they were of such quality as to figure fairly on the table, Benito shot them; and, in the interest of all, his sister raised no objection; but if he came across any gray or yellow herons, or red or white ibises, which haunt the sides, he spared them through love for Minha. One single species of grebe, which is uneatable, found no grace in the eyes of the young merchant; this was the "caiarara," as quick to dive as to swim or fly; a bird with a disagreeable cry, but whose down bears a high price in the different markets of the Amazonian basin. At length, after having passed the village of Omaguas and the mouth of the Ambiacu, the jangada arrived at Pevas on the evening of the 11th of June, and was moored to the bank. As it was to remain here for some hours before nightfall, Benito disembarked, taking with him the ever-ready Fragoso, and the two sportsmen started off to beat the thickets in the environs of the little place. An agouti and a cabiai, not to mention a dozen partridges, enriched the larder after this fortunate excursion. At Pevas, where there is a population of two hundred and sixty inhabitants, Benito would perhaps have done some trade with the lay brothers of the mission, who are at the same time wholesale merchants, but these had just sent away some bales of sarsaparilla and arrobas of caoutchouc toward the Lower Amazon, and their stores were empty. The jangada departed at daybreak, and passed the little archipelago of the Iatio and Cochiquinas islands, after having left the village of the latter name on the right. Several mouths of smaller unnamed affluents showed themselves on the right of the river through the spaces between the islands. Many natives, with shaved heads, tattooed cheeks and foreheads, carrying plates of metal in the lobes of their ears, noses, and lower lips, appeared for an instant on the shore. They were armed with arrows and blow tubes, but made no use of them, and did not even attempt to communicate with the jangada.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

FROM PEVAS TO THE FRONTIER

During the few days which followed nothing occurred worthy of note. The nights were so fine that the long raft went on its way with the stream without even a halt. The two picturesque banks of the river seemed to change like the panoramas of the theaters which unroll from one wing to another. By a kind of optical illusion it appeared as though the raft was motionless between two moving pathways. Benito had no shooting on the banks, for no halt was made, but game was very advantageously replaced by the results of the fishing. A great variety of excellent fish were taken—"pacos," "surubis," "gamitanas," of exquisite flavor, and several of those large rays called "duridaris," with rose-colored stomachs and black backs armed with highly poisonous darts. There were also collected by thousands those "candirus," a kind of small silurus, of which many are microscopic, and which so frequently make a pincushion of the calves of the bather when he imprudently ventures into their haunts. The rich waters of the Amazon were also frequented by many other aquatic animals, which escorted the jangada through its waves for whole hours together. There were the gigantic "pria-rucus," ten and twelve feet long, cuirassed with large scales with scarlet borders, whose flesh was not much appreciated by the natives. Neither did they care to capture many of the graceful dolphins which played about in hundreds, striking with their tails the planks of the raft, gamboling at the bow and stern, and making the water alive with colored reflections and spurts of spray, which the refracted light converted into so many rainbows. On the 16th of June the jangada, after fortunately clearing several shallows in approaching the banks, arrived near the large island of San Pablo, and the following evening she stopped at the village of Moromoros, which is situated on the left side of the Amazon. Twenty-four hours afterward, passing the mouths of the Atacoari or Cocha—or rather the "furo," or canal, which communicates with the lake of Cabello-Cocha on the right bank—she put in at the rising ground of the mission of Cocha. This was the country of the Marahua Indians, whose long floating hair, and mouths opening in the middle of a kind of fan made of the spines of palm-trees, six inches long, give them a cat-like look—their endeavor being, according to Paul Marcoy, to resemble the tiger, whose boldness, strength, and cunning they admire above everything. Several women came with these Marahuas, smoking cigars, but holding the lighted ends in their teeth. All of them, like the king of the Amazonian forests, go about almost naked. The mission of Cocha was then in charge of a Franciscan monk, who was anxious to visit Padre Passanha. Joam Garral received him with a warm welcome, and offered him a seat at the dinner-table. On that day was given a dinner which did honor to the Indian cook. The traditional soup of fragrant herbs; cake, so often made to replace bread in Brazil, composed of the flour of the manioc thoroughly impregnated with the gravy of meat and tomato jelly; poultry with rice, swimming in a sharp sauce made of vinegar and "malagueta;" a dish of spiced herbs, and cold cake sprinkled with cinnamon, formed enough to tempt a poor monk reduced to the ordinary meager fare of his parish. They tried all they could to detain him, and Yaquita and her daughter did their utmost in persuasion. But the Franciscan had to visit on that evening an Indian who was lying ill at Cocha, and he heartily thanked the hospitable family and departed, not without taking a few presents, which would be well received by the neophytes of the mission. For two days Araujo was very busy. The bed of the river gradually enlarged, but the islands became more numerous, and the current, embarrassed by these obstacles, increased in strength. Great care was necessary in passing between the islands of Cabello-Cocha, Tarapote, and Cacao. Many stoppages had to be made, and occasionally they were obliged to pole off the jangada, which now and then threatened to run aground. Every one assisted in the work, and it was under these difficult circumstances that, on the evening of the 20th of June, they found themselves at Nuestra-Senora-di-Loreto. Loreto is the last Peruvian town situated on the left bank of the river before arriving at the Brazilian frontier. It is only a little village, composed of about twenty houses, grouped on a slightly undulating bank, formed of ocherous earth and clay. It was in 1770 that this mission was founded by the Jesuit missionaries. The Ticuma Indians, who inhabit the territories on the north of the river, are natives with ruddy skins, bushy hair, and striped designs on their faces, making them look like the lacquer on a Chinese table. Both men and women are simply clothed, with cotton bands bound round their thighs and stomachs. They are now not more than two hundred in number, and on the banks of the Atacoari are found the last traces of a nation which was formerly so powerful under its famous chiefs. At Loreto there also live a few Peruvian soldiers and two or three Portuguese merchants, trading in cotton stuffs, salt fish, and sarsaparilla. Benito went ashore, to buy, if possible, a few bales of this smilax, which is always so much in demand in the markets of the Amazon. Joam Garral, occupied all the time in the work which gave him not a moment's rest, did not stir. Yaquita, her daughter, and Manoel also remained on board. The mosquitoes of Loreto have a deserved reputation for driving away such visitors as do not care to leave much of their blood with the redoubtable diptera. Manoel had a few appropriate words to say about these insects, and they were not of a nature to encourage an inclination to brave their stings. "They say that all the new species which infest the banks of the Amazon collect at the village of Loreto. I believe it, but do not wish to confirm it. There, Minha, you can take your choice between the gray mosquito, the hairy mosquito, the white-clawed mosquito, the dwarf mosquito, the trumpeter, the little fifer, the urtiquis, the harlequin, the big black, and the red of the woods; or rather they make take their choice of you for a little repast, and you will come back hardly recognizable! I fancy these bloodthirsty diptera guard the Brazilian frontier considerably better than the poverty-stricken soldiers we see on the bank." "But if everything is of use in nature," asked Minha, "what is the use of mosquitoes?" "They minister to the happiness of entomologists," replied Manoel; "and I should be much embarrassed to find a better explanation." What Manoel had said of the Loreto mosquitoes was only too true. When Benito had finished his business and returned on board, his face and hands were tattooed with thousands of red points, without counting some chigoes, which, in spite of the leather of his boots, had introduced themselves beneath his toes. "Let us set off this very instant," said Benito, "or these wretched insects will invade us, and the jangada will become uninhabitable!" "And we shall take them into Para," said Manoel, "where there are already quite enough for its own needs." And so, in order not to pass even the night near the banks, the jangada pushed off into the stream. On leaving Loreto the Amazon turns slightly toward the southwest, between the islands of Arava, Cuyari, and Urucutea. The jangada then glided along the black waters of the Cajaru, as they mingled with the white stream of the Amazon. After having passed this tributary on the left, it peacefully arrived during the evening of the 23d of June alongside the large island of Jahuma. The setting of the sun on a clear horizon, free from all haze, announced one of those beautiful tropical nights which are unknown in the temperate zones. A light breeze freshened the air; the moon arose in the constellated depths of the sky, and for several hours took the place of the twilight which is absent from these latitudes. But even during this period the stars shone with unequaled purity. The immense plain seemed to stretch into the infinite like a sea, and at the extremity of the axis, which measures more than two hundred thousand millions of leagues, there appeared on the north the single diamond of the pole star, on the south the four brilliants of the Southern Cross. The trees on the left bank and on the island of Jahuma stood up in sharp black outline. There were recognizable in the undecided silhouettes the trunks, or rather columns, of "copahus," which spread out in umbrellas, groups of "sandis," from which is extracted the thick and sugared milk, intoxicating as wine itself, and "vignaticos" eighty feet high, whose summits shake at the passage of the lightest currents of air. "What a magnificent sermon are these forests of the Amazon!" has been justly said. Yes; and we might add, "What a magnificent hymn there is in the nights of the tropics!" The birds were giving forth their last evening notes—"bentivis," who hang their nests on the bank-side reeds; "niambus," a kind of partridge, whose song is composed of four notes, in perfect accord; "kamichis," with their plaintive melody; kingfishers, whose call responds like a signal to the last cry of their congeners; "canindes," with their sonorous trumpets; and red macaws, who fold their wings in the foliage of the "jaquetibas," when night comes on to dim their glowing colors. On the jangada every one was at his post, in the attitude of repose. The pilot alone, standing in the bow, showed his tall stature, scarcely defined in the earlier shadows. The watch, with his long pole on his shoulder, reminded one of an encampment of Tartar horsemen. The Brazilian flag hung from the top of the staff in the bow, and the breeze was scarcely strong enough to lift the bunting. At eight o'clock the three first tinklings of the Angelus escaped from the bell of the little chapel. The three tinklings of the second and third verses sounded in their turn, and the salutation was completed in the series of more rapid strokes of the little bell. However, the family after this July day remained sitting under the veranda to breathe the fresh air from the open. It had been so each evening, and while Joam Garral, always silent, was contented to listen, the young people gayly chatted away till bedtime. "Ah! our splendid river! our magnificent Amazon!" exclaimed the young girl, whose enthusiasm for the immense stream never failed. "Unequaled river, in very truth," said Manoel; "and I do not understand all its sublime beauties. We are going down it, however, like Orellana and La Condamine did so many centuries ago, and I am not at all surprised at their marvelous descriptions." "A little fabulous," replied Benito. "Now, brother," said Minha seriously, "say no evil of our Amazon." "To remind you that it has its legends, my sister, is to say no ill of it." "Yes, that is true; and it has some marvelous ones," replied Minha. "What legends?" asked Manoel. "I dare avow that they have not yet found their way into Para—or rather that, for my part, I am not acquainted with them." "What, then do you learn in the Belem colleges?" laughingly asked Minha. "I begin to perceive that they teach us nothing," replied Manoel. "What, sir!" replied Minha, with a pleasant seriousness, "you do not know, among other fables, that an enormous reptile called the 'minhocao,' sometimes visits the Amazon, and that the waters of the river rise or fall according as this serpent plunges in or quits them, so gigantic is he?" "But have you ever seen this phenomenal minhocao?" "Alas, no!" replied Lina. "What a pity!" Fragoso thought it proper to add. "And the 'Mae d'Aqua,'" continued the girl—"that proud and redoubtable woman whose look fascinates and drags beneath the waters of the river the imprudent ones who gaze a her." "Oh, as for the 'Mae d'Aqua,' she exists!" cried the naïve Lina; "they say that she still walks on the banks, but disappears like a water sprite as soon as you approach her." "Very well, Lina," said Benito; "the first time you see her just let me know." "So that she may seize you and take you to the bottom of the river? Never, Mr. Benito!" "She believes it!" shouted Minha. "There are people who believe in the trunk of Manaos," said Fragoso, always ready to intervene on behalf of Lina. "The 'trunk of Manaos'?" asked Manoel. "What about the trunk of Manaos?" "Mr. Manoel," answered Fragoso, with comic gravity, "it appears that there is—or rather formerly was—a trunk of 'turuma,' which every year at the same time descended the Rio Negro, stopping several days at Manaos, and going on into Para, halting at every port, where the natives ornamented it with little flags. Arrived at Belem, it came to a halt, turned back on its road, remounted the Amazon to the Rio Negro, and returned to the forest from which it had mysteriously started. One day somebody tried to drag it ashore, but the river rose in anger, and the attempt had to be given up. And on another occasion the captain of a ship harpooned it and tried to tow it along. This time again the river, in anger, broke off the ropes, and the trunk mysteriously escaped." "What became of it?" asked the mulatto. "It appears that on its last voyage, Miss Lina," replied Fragoso, "it mistook the way, and instead of going up the Negro it continued in the Amazon, and it has never been seen again." "Oh, if we could only meet it!" said Lina. "If we meet it," answered Benito, "we will put you on it! It will take you back to the mysterious forest, and you will likewise pass into the state of a legendary mind!" "And why not?" asked the mulatto. "So much for your legends," said Manoel; "and I think your river is worthy of them. But it has also its histories, which are worth something more. I know one, and if I were not afraid of grieving you—for it is a very sad one—I would relate it." "Oh! tell it, by all means, Mr. Manoel," exclaimed Lina; "I like stories which make you cry!" "What, do you cry, Lina?" said Benito. "Yes, Mr. Benito; but I cry when laughing." "Oh, well! let us save it, Manoel!" "It is the history of a Frenchwoman whose sorrows rendered these banks memorable in the eighteenth century." "We are listening," said Minha. "Here goes, then," said Manoel. "In 1741, at the time of the expedition of the two Frenchmen, Bouguer and La Condamine, who were sent to measure a terrestrial degree on the equator, they were accompanied by a very distinguished astronomer, Godin des Odonais. Godin des Odonais set out then, but he did not set out alone, for the New World; he took with him his young wife, his children, his father-in-law, and his brother-in-law. The travelers arrived at Quito in good health. There commenced a series of misfortunes for Madame Odonais; in a few months she lost some of her children. When Godin des Odonais had completed his work, toward the end of the year 1759, he left Quito and started for Cayenne. Once arrived in this town he wanted his family to come to him, but war had been declared, and he was obliged to ask the Portuguese government for permission for a free passage for Madame Odonais and her people. What do you think? Many years passed before the permission could be given. In 1765 Godin des Odonais, maddened by the delay, resolved to ascend the Amazon in search of his wife at Quito; but at the moment of his departure a sudden illness stopped him, and he could not carry out his intention. However, his application had not been useless, and Madame des Odonais learned at last that the king of Portugal had given the necessary permission, and prepared to embark and descend the river to her husband. At the same time an escort was ordered to be ready in the missions of the Upper Amazon. Madame des Odonais was a woman of great courage, as you will see presently; she never hesitated, and notwithstanding the dangers of such a voyage across the continent, she started." "It was her duty to her husband, Manoel," said Yaquita, "and I would have done the same." "Madame des Odonais," continued Manoel, "came to Rio Bamba, at the south of Quito, bringing her brother-in-law, her children, and a French doctor. Their endeavor was to reach the missions on the Brazilian frontier, where they hoped to find a ship and the escort. The voyage at first was favorable; it was made down the tributaries of the Amazon in a canoe. The difficulties, however, gradually increased with the dangers and fatigues of a country decimated by the smallpox. Of several guides who offered their services, the most part disappeared after a few days; one of them, the last who remained faithful to the travelers, was drowned in the Bobonasa, in endeavoring to help the French doctor. At length the canoe, damaged by rocks and floating trees, became useless. It was therefore necessary to get on shore, and there at the edge of the impenetrable forest they built a few huts of foliage. The doctor offered to go on in front with a negro who had never wished to leave Madame des Odonais. The two went off; they waited for them several days, but in vain. They never returned. "In the meantime the victuals were getting exhausted. The forsaken ones in vain endeavored to descend the Bobonasa on a raft. They had to again take to the forest, and make their way on foot through the almost impenetrable undergrowth. The fatigues were too much for the poor folks! They died off one by one in spite of the cares of the noble Frenchwoman. At the end of a few days children, relations, and servants, were all dead!" "What an unfortunate woman!" said Lina. "Madame des Odonais alone remained," continued Manoel. "There she was, at a thousand leagues from the ocean which she was trying to reach! It was no longer a mother who continued her journey toward the river—the mother had lost her shildren; she had buried them with her own hands! It was a wife who wished to see her husband once again! She traveled night and day, and at length regained the Bobonasa. She was there received by some kind-hearted Indians, who took her to the missions, where the escort was waiting. But she arrived alone, and behind her the stages of the route were marked with graves! Madame des Odonais reached Loreto, where we were a few days back. From this Peruvian village she descended the Amazon, as we are doing at this moment, and at length she rejoined her husband after a separation of nineteen years." "Poor lady!" said Minha. "Above all, poor mother!" answered Yaquita. At this moment Araujo, the pilot, came aft and said: "Joam Garral, we are off the Ronde Island. We are passing the frontier!" "The frontier!" replied Joam. And rising, he went to the side of the jangada, and looked long and earnestly at the Ronde Island, with the waves breaking up against it. Then his hand sought his forehead, as if to rid himself of some remembrance. "The frontier!" murmured he, bowing his head by an involuntary movement. But an instant after his head was raised, and his expression was that of a man resolved to do his duty to the last.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

FRAGOSO AT WORK

"Braza" (burning embers) is a word found in the Spanish language as far back as the twelfth century. It has been used to make the word "brazil," as descriptive of certain woods which yield a reddish dye. From this has come the name "Brazil," given to that vast district of South America which is crossed by the equator, and in which these products are so frequently met with. In very early days these woods were the object of considerable trade. Although correctly called "ibirapitunga," from the place of production, the name of "brazil" stuck to them, and it has become that of the country, which seems like an immense heap of embers lighted by the rays of the tropical sun. Brazil was from the first occupied by the Portuguese. About the commencement of the sixteenth century, Alvarez Cabral, the pilot, took possession of it, and although France and Holland partially established themselves there, it has remained Portuguese, and possesses all the qualities which distinguish that gallant little nation. It is to-day the largest state of South America, and has at its head the intelligent artist-king Dom Pedro. "What is your privilege in the tribe?" asked Montaigne of an Indian whom he met at Havre. "The privilege of marching first to battle!" innocently answered the Indian. War, we know, was for a long time the surest and most rapid vehicle of civilization. The Brazilians did what this Indian did: they fought, they defended their conquests, they enlarged them, and we see them marching in the first rank of the civilizing advance. It was in 1824, sixteen years after the foundation of the Portugo-Brazilian Empire, that Brazil proclaimed its independence by the voice of Don Juan, whom the French armies had chased from Portugal. It remained only to define the frontier between the new empire and that of its neighbor, Peru. This was no easy matter. If Brazil wished to extend to the Rio Napo in the west, Peru attempted to reach eight degrees further, as far as the Lake of Ega. But in the meantime Brazil had to interfere to hinder the kidnaping of the Indians from the Amazon, a practice which was engaged in much to the profit of the Hispano-Brazilian missions. There was no better method of checking this trade than that of fortifying the Island of the Ronde, a little above Tabatinga, and there establishing a post. This afforded the solution, and from that time the frontier of the two countries passed through the middle of this island. Above, the river is Peruvian, and is called the Marañon, as has been said. Below, it is Brazilian, and takes the name of the Amazon. It was on the evening of the 25th of June that the jangada stopped before Tabatinga, the first Brazilian town situated on the left bank, at the entrance of the river of which it bears the name, and belonging to the parish of St. Paul, established on the right a little further down stream. Joam Garral had decided to pass thirty-six hours here, so as to give a little rest to the crew. They would not start, therefore, until the morning of the 27th. On this occasion Yaquita and her children, less likely, perhaps, than at Iquitos to be fed upon by the native mosquitoes, had announced their intention of going on ashore and visiting the town. The population of Tabatinga is estimated at four hundred, nearly all Indians, comprising, no doubt, many of those wandering families who are never settled at particular spots on the banks of the Amazon or its smaller tributaries. The post at the island of the Ronde has been abandoned for some years, and transferred to Tabatinga. It can thus be called a garrison town, but the garrison is only composed of nine soldiers, nearly all Indians, and a sergeant, who is the actual commandant of the place. A bank about thirty feet high, in which are cut the steps of a not very solid staircase, forms here the curtain of the esplanade which carries the pigmy fort. The house of the commandant consists of a couple of huts placed in a square, and the soldiers occupy an oblong building a hundred feet away, at the foot of a large tree. The collection of cabins exactly resembles all the villages and hamlets which are scattered along the banks of the river, although in them a flagstaff carrying the Brazilian colors does not rise above a sentry-box, forever destitute of its sentinel, nor are four small mortars present to cannonade on an emergency any vessel which does not come in when ordered. As for the village properly so called, it is situated below, at the base of the plateau. A road, which is but a ravine shaded by ficuses and miritis, leads to it in a few minutes. There, on a half-cracked hill of clay, stand a dozen houses, covered with the leaves of the "boiassu" palm placed round a central space. All this is not very curious, but the environs of Tabatinga are charming, particularly at the mouth of the Javary, which is of sufficient extent to contain the Archipelago of the Aramasa Islands. Hereabouts are grouped many fine trees, and among them a large number of the palms, whose supple fibers are used in the fabrication of hammocks and fishing-nets, and are the cause of some trade. To conclude, the place is one of the most picturesque on the Upper Amazon. Tabatinga is destined to become before long a station of some importance, and will no doubt rapidly develop, for there will stop the Brazilian steamers which ascend the river, and the Peruvian steamers which descend it. There they will tranship passengers and cargoes. It does not require much for an English or American village to become in a few years the center of considerable commerce. The river is very beautiful along this part of its course. The influence of ordinary tides is not perceptible at Tabatinga, which is more than six hundred leagues from the Atlantic. But it is not so with the "pororoca," that species of eddy which for three days in the height of the syzygies raises the waters of the Amazon, and turns them back at the rate of seventeen kilometers per hour. They say that the effects of this bore are felt up to the Brazilian frontier. On the morrow, the 26th of June, the Garral family prepared to go off and visit the village. Though Joam, Benito, and Manoel had already set foot in a Brazilian town, it was otherwise with Yaquita and her daughter; for them it was, so to speak, a taking possession. It is conceivable, therefore, that Yaquita and Minha should attach some importance to the event. If, on his part, Fragoso, in his capacity of wandering barber, had already run through the different provinces of South America, Lina, like her young mistress, had never been on Brazilian soil. But before leaving the jangada Fragoso had sought Joam Garral, and had the following conversation with him. "Mr. Garral," said he, "from the day when you received me at the fazenda of Iquitos, lodged, clothed, fed—in a word, took me in so hospitably—I have owed you——" "You owe me absolutely nothing, my friend," answered Joam, "so do not insist——" "Oh, do not be alarmed!" exclaimed Fragoso, "I am not going to pay it off! Let me add, that you took me on board the jangada and gave me the means of descending the river. But here we are, on the soil of Brazil, which, according to all probability, I ought never to have seen again. Without that liana——" "It is to Lina, and to Lina alone, that you should tender your thanks," said Joam. "I know," said Fragoso, "and I will never forget what I owe here, any more than what I owe you." "They tell me, Fragoso," continued Joam, "that you are going to say good-by, and intend to remain at Tabatinga." "By no means, Mr. Garral, since you have allowed me to accompany you to Belem, where I hope at the least to be able to resume my old trade." "Well, if that is your intention—what were you going to ask me?" "I was going to ask if you saw any inconvenience in my working at my profession on our route. There is no necessity for my hand to rust; and, besides, a few handfuls of reis would not be so bad at the bottom of my pocket, more particularly if I had earned them. You know, Mr. Garral, that a barber who is also a hairdresser—and I hardly like to say a doctor, out of respect to Mr. Manoel—always finds customers in these Upper Amazon villages." "Particularly among the Brazilians," answered Joam. "As for the natives——" "I beg pardon," replied Fragoso, "particularly among the natives. Ah! although there is no beard to trim—for nature has been very stingy toward them in that way—there are always some heads of hair to be dressed in the latest fashion. They are very fond of it, these savages, both the men and the women! I shall not be installed ten minutes in the square at Tabatinga, with my cup and ball in hand—the cup and ball I have brought on board, and which I can manage with pretty pleasantly—before a circle of braves and squaws will have formed around me. They will struggle for my favors. I could remain here for a month, and the whole tribe of the Ticunas would come to me to have their hair looked after! They won't hesitate to make the acquaintance of 'curling tongs'—that is what they will call me—if I revisit the walls of Tabatinga! I have already had two tries here, and my scissors and comb have done marvels! It does not do to return too often on the same track. The Indian ladies don't have their hair curled every day, like the beauties of our Brazilian cities. No; when it is done, it is done for year, and during the twelvemonth they will take every care not to endanger the edifice which I have raised—with what talent I dare not say. Now it is nearly a year since I was at Tabatinga; I go to find my monuments in ruin! And if it is not objectionable to you, Mr. Garral, I would render myself again worthy of the reputation which I have acquired in these parts, the question of reis, and not that of conceit, being, you understand, the principal." "Go on, then, friend," replied Joam Garral laughingly; "but be quick! we can only remain a day at Tabatinga, and we shall start to-morrow at dawn." "I will not lose a minute," answered Fragoso—"just time to take the tools of my profession, and I am off." "Off you go, Fragoso," said Joam, "and may the reis rain into your pocket!" "Yes, and that is a proper sort of rain, and there can never be too much of it for your obedient servant." And so saying Fragoso rapidly moved away. A moment afterward the family, with the exception of Joam, went ashore. The jangada was able to approach near enough to the bank for the landing to take place without much trouble. A staircase, in a miserable state, cut in the cliff, allowed the visitors to arrive on the crest of the plateau. Yaquita and her party were received by the commandant of the fort, a poor fellow who, however, knew the laws of hospitality, and offered them some breakfast in his cottage. Here and there passed and repassed several soldiers on guard, while on the threshold of the barrack appeared a few children, with their mothers of Ticuna blood, affording very poor specimens of the mixed race. In place of accepting the breakfast of the sergeant, Yaquita invited the commandant and his wife to come and have theirs on board the jangada. The commandant did not wait for a second invitation, and an appointment was made for eleven o'clock. In the meantime Yaquita, her daughter, and the young mulatto, accompanied by Manoel, went for a walk in the neighborhood, leaving Benito to settle with the commandant about the tolls—he being chief of the custom-house as well as of the military establishment. That done, Benito, as was his wont, strolled off with his gun into the adjoining woods. On this occasion Manoel had declined to accompany him. Fragoso had left the jangada, but instead of mounting to the fort he had made for the village, crossing the ravine which led off from the right on the level of the bank. He reckoned more on the native custom of Tabatinga than on that of the garrison. Doubtless the soldiers' wives would not have wished better than to have been put under his hands, but the husbands scarcely cared to part with a few reis for the sake of gratifying the whims of their coquettish partners. Among the natives it was quite the reverse. Husbands and wives, the jolly barber knew them well, and he knew they would give him a better reception. Behold, then, Fragoso on the road, coming up the shady lane beneath the ficuses, and arriving in the central square of Tabatinga! As soon as he set foot in the place the famous barber was signaled, recognized, surrounded. Fragoso had no big box, nor drum, nor cornet to attract the attention of his clients—not even a carriage of shining copper, with resplendent lamps and ornamented glass panels, nor a huge parasol, no anything whatever to impress the public, as they generally have at fairs. No; but Fragoso had his cup and ball, and how that cup and ball were manipulated between his fingers! With what address did he receive the turtle's head, which did for the ball, on the pointed end of the stick! With what grace did he make the ball describe some learned curve of which mathematicians have not yet calculated the value—even those who have determined the wondrous curve of "the dog who follows his master!" Every native was there—men, women, the old and the young, in their nearly primitive costume, looking on with all their eyes, listening with all their ears. The smiling entertainer, half in Portuguese, half in Ticunian, favored them with his customary oration in a tone of the most rollicking good humor. What he said was what is said by all the charlatans who place their services at the public disposal, whether they be Spanish Figaros or French perruqiers. At the bottom the same self-possession, the same knowledge of human weakness, the same description of threadbare witticisms, the same amusing dexterity, and, on the part of the natives, the same wide-mouth astonishment, the same curiosity, the same credulity as the simple folk of the civilized world. It followed, then, that ten minutes later the public were completely won, and crowded round Fragoso, who was installed in a "loja" of the place, a sort of serving-bar to the inn. The loja belonged to a Brazilian settled at Tabatinga. There, for a few vatems, which are the sols of the country, and worth about twenty reis, or half a dozen centimes each, the natives could get drinks of the crudest, and particularly assai, a liquor half-sold, half-liquid, made of the fruit of the palm-tree, and drunk from a "coui" or half-calabash in general use in this district of the Amazon. And then men and women, with equal eagerness, took their places on the barber's stool. The scissors of Fragoso had little to do, for it was not a question of cutting these wealthy heads of hair, nearly all remarkable for their softness and their quality, but the use to which he could put his comb and the tongs, which were kept warming in the corner in a brasier. And then the encouragements of the artist to the crowd! "Look here! look here!" said he; "how will that do, my friends—if you don't sleep on the top of it! There you are, for a twelvemonth! and these are the latest novelties from Belem and Rio de Janeiro! The queen's maids of honor are not more cleverly decked out; and observe, I am not stingy with the pomade!" No, he was not stingy with it. True, it was only a little grease, with which he had mixed some of the juices of a few flowers, but he plastered it on like cement! And as to the names of the capillary edifices—for the monuments reared by the hands of Fragoso were of every order of architecture—buckles, rings, clubs, tresses, crimpings, rolls, corkscrews, curls, everything found there a place. Nothing false; no towers, no chignons, no shams! These head were not enfeebled by cuttings nor thinned by fallings-off, but were forests in all their native virginity! Fragoso, however, was not above adding a few natural flowers, two or three long fish-bones, and some fine bone or copper ornaments, which were brought him by the dandies of the district. Assuredly, the exquisites of the Directory would have envied the arrangement of these high-art coiffures, three and four stories high, and the great Leonard himself would have bowed before his transatlantic rival. And then the vatems, the handfuls of reis—the only coins for which the natives of the Amazon exchange their goods—which rained into the pocket of Fragoso, and which he collected with evident satisfaction. But assuredly night would come before he could satisfy the demands of the customers, who were so constantly renewed. It was not only the population of Tabatinga which crowded to the door of the loja. The news of the arrival of Fragoso was not slow to get abroad; natives came to him from all sides: Ticunas from the left bank of the river, Mayorunas from the right bank, as well as those who live on the Cajuru and those who come from the villages of the Javary. A long array of anxious ones formed itself in the square. The happy ones coming from the hands of Fragoso went proudly from one house to another, showed themselves off without daring to shake themselves, like the big children that they were. It thus happened that when noon came the much-occupied barber had not had time to return on board, but had had to content himself with a little assai, some manioc flour, and turtle eggs, which he rapidly devoured between two applications of the curling-tongs. But it was a great harvest for the innkeeper, as all the operations could not be conducted without a large absorption of liquors drawn from the cellars of the inn. In fact, it was an event for the town of Tabatinga, this visit of the celebrated Fragoso, barber in ordinary and extraordinary to the tribes of the Upper Amazon!

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

TORRES

At five o'clock in the evening Fragoso was still there, and was asking himself if he would have to pass the night on the spot to satisfy the expectant crowd, when a stranger arrived in the square, and seeing all this native gathering, advanced toward the inn. For some minutes the stranger eyed Fragoso attentively with some circumspection. The examination was obviously satisfactory, for he entered the loja. He was a man about thirty-five years of age. He was dressed in a somewhat elegant traveling costume, which added much to his personal appearance. But his strong black beard, which the scissors had not touched for some time, and his hair, a trifle long, imperiously required the good offices of a barber. "Good-day, friend, good-day!" said he, lightly striking Fragoso on the shoulder. Fragoso turned round when he heard the words pronounced in pure Brazilian, and not in the mixed idiom of the natives. "A compatriot?" he asked, without stopping the twisting of the refractory mouth of a Mayouma head. "Yes," answered the stranger. "A compatriot who has need of your services." "To be sure! In a minute," said Fragoso. "Wait till I have finished with this lady!" And this was done in a couple of strokes with the curling-tongs. Although he was the last comer, and had no right to the vacant place, he sat down on the stool without causing any expostulation on the part of the natives who lost a turn. Fragoso put down the irons for the scissors, and, after the manner of his brethren, said: "What can I do for you, sir?" "Cut my beard and my hair," answered the stranger. "All right!" said Fragoso, inserting his comb into the mass of hair. And then the scissors to do their work. "And you come from far?" asked Fragoso, who could not work without a good deal to say. "I have come from the neighborhood of Iquitos." "So have I!" exclaimed Fragoso. "I have come down the Amazon from Iquitos to Tabatinga. May I ask your name?" "No objection at all," replied the stranger. "My name is Torres." When the hair was cut in the latest style Fragoso began to thin his beard, but at this moment, as he was looking straight into his face, he stopped, then began again, and then: "Eh! Mr. Torres," said he; "I seem to know you. We must have seen each other somewhere?" "I do not think so," quickly answered Torres. "I am always wrong!" replied Fragoso, and he hurried on to finish his task. A moment after Torres continued the conversation which this question of Fragoso had interrupted, with: "How did you come from Iquitos?" "From Iquitos to Tabatinga?" "Yes." "On board a raft, on which I was given a passage by a worthy fazender who is going down the Amazon with his family." "A friend indeed!" replied Torres. "That is a chance, and if your fazender would take me——" "Do you intend, then, to go down the river?" "Precisely." "Into Para?" "No, only to Manaos, where I have business." "Well, my host is very kind, and I think he would cheerfully oblige you." "Do you think so?" "I might almost say I am sure." "And what is the name of this fazender?" asked Torres carelessly. "Joam Garral," answered Fragoso. And at the same time he muttered to himself: "I certainly have seen this fellow somewhere!" Torres was not the man to allow a conversation to drop which was likely to interest him, and for very good reasons. "And so you think Joam Garral would give me a passage?" "I do not doubt it," replied Fragoso. "What he would do for a poor chap like me he would not refuse to do for a compatriot like you." "Is he alone on board the jangada?" "No," replied Fragoso. "I was going to tell you that he is traveling with all his family—and jolly people they are, I assure you. He is accompanied by a crew of Indians and negroes, who form part of the staff at the fazenda." "Is he rich?" "Oh, certainly!" answered Fragoso—"very rich. Even the timber which forms the jangada, and the cargo it carries, constitute a fortune!" "The Joam Garral and his whole family have just passed the Brazilian frontier?" "Yes," said Fragoso; "his wife, his son, his daughter, and Miss Minha's betrothed." "Ah! he has a daughter?" said Torres. "A charming girl!" "Going to get married?" "Yes, to a brave young fellow," replied Fragoso—"an army surgeon in garrison at Belem, and the wedding is to take place as soon as we get to the end of the voyage." "Good!" said the smiling Torres; "it is what you might call a betrothal journey." "A voyage of betrothal, of pleasure, and of business!" said Fragoso. "Madame Yaquita and her daughter have never set foot on Brazilian ground; and as for Joam Garral, it is the first time he has crossed the frontier since he went to the farm of old Magalhaës." "I suppose," asked Torres, "that there are some servants with the family?" "Of course," replied Fragoso—"old Cybele, on the farm for the last fifty years, and a pretty mulatto, Miss Lina, who is more of a companion than a servant to her mistress. Ah, what an amiable disposition! What a heart, and what eyes! And the ideas she has about everything, particularly about lianas—" Fragoso, started on this subject, would not have been able to stop himself, and Lina would have been the object of a good many enthusiastic declarations, had Torres not quitted the chair for another customer. "What do I owe you?" asked he of the barber. "Nothing," answered Fragoso. "Between compatriots, when they meet on the frontier, there can be no question of that sort." "But," replied Torres, "I want to——" "Very well, we will settle that later on, on board the jangada." "But I do not know that, and I do not like to ask Joam Garral to allow me——" "Do not hesitate!" exclaimed Fragoso; "I will speak to him if you would like it better, and he will be very happy to be of use to you under the circumstances." And at that instant Manoel and Benito, coming into the town after dinner, appeared at the door of the loja, wishing to see Fragoso at work. Torres turned toward them and suddenly said: "There are two gentlemen I know—or rather I remember." "You remember them!" asked Fragoso, surprised. "Yes, undoubtedly! A month ago, in the forest of Iquitos, they got me out of a considerable difficulty." "But they are Benito Garral and Manoel Valdez." "I know. They told me their names, but I never expected to see them here." Torres advanced toward the two young men, who looked at him without recognizing him. "You do not remember me, gentlemen?" he asked. "Wait a little," answered Benito; "Mr. Torres, if I remember aright; it was you who, in the forest of Iquitos, got into difficulties with a guariba?" "Quite true, gentlemen," replied Torres. "For six weeks I have been traveling down the Amazon, and I have just crossed the frontier at the same time as you have." "Very pleased to see you again," said Benito; "but you have not forgotten that you promised to come to the fazenda to my father?" "I have not forgotten it," answered Torres. "And you would have done better to have accepted my offer; it would have allowed you to have waited for our departure, rested from you fatigues, and descended with us to the frontier; so many days of walking saved." "To be sure!" answered Torres. "Our compatriot is not going to stop at the frontier," said Fragoso, "he is going on to Manaos." "Well, then," replied Benito, "if you will come on board the jangada you will be well received, and I am sure my father will give you a passage." "Willingly," said Torres; "and you will allow me to thank you in advance." Manoel took no part in the conversation; he let Benito make the offer of his services, and attentively watched Torres, whose face he scarcely remembered. There was an entire want of frankness in the eyes, whose look changed unceasingly, as if he was afraid to fix them anywhere. But Manoel kept this impression to himself, not wishing to injure a compatriot whom they were about to oblige. "Gentlemen," said Torres, "if you like, I am ready to follow you to the landing-place." "Come, then," answered Benito. A quarter of an hour afterward Torres was on board the jangada. Benito introduced him to Joam Garral, acquainting him with the circumstances under which they had previously met him, and asked him to give him a passage down to Manaos. "I am happy, sir, to be able to oblige you," replied Joam. "Thank you," said Torres, who at the moment of putting forth his hand kept it back in spite of himself. "We shall be off at daybreak to-morrow," added Joam Garral, "so you had better get your things on board." "Oh, that will not take me long!" answered Torres; "there is only myself and nothing else!" "Make yourself at home," said Joam Garral. That evening Torres took possession of a cabin near to that of the barber. It was not till eight o'clock that the latter returned to the raft, and gave the young mulatto an account of his exploits, and repeated, with no little vanity, that the renown of the illustrious Fragoso was increasing in the basin of the Upper Amazon.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

STILL DESCENDING

At daybreak on the morrow, the 27th of June, the cables were cast off, and the raft continued its journey down the river. An extra passenger was on board. Whence came this Torres? No one exactly knew. Where was he going to? "To Manaos," he said. Torres was careful to let no suspicion of his past life escape him, nor of the profession that he had followed till within the last two months, and no one would have thought that the jangada had given refuge to an old captain of the woods. Joam Garral did not wish to mar the service he was rendering by questions of too pressing a nature. In taking him on board the fazender had obeyed a sentiment of humanity. In the midst of these vast Amazonian deserts, more especially at the time when the steamers had not begun to furrow the waters, it was very difficult to find means of safe and rapid transit. Boats did not ply regularly, and in most cases the traveler was obliged to walk across the forests. This is what Torres had done, and what he would continue to have done, and it was for him unexpected good luck to have got a passage on the raft. From the moment that Benito had explained under what conditions he had met Torres the introduction was complete, and he was able to consider himself as a passenger on an Atlantic steamer, who is free to take part in the general life if he cares, or free to keep himself a little apart if of an unsociable disposition. It was noticed, at least during the first few days, that Torres did not try to become intimate with the Garral family. He maintained a good deal of reserve, answering if addressed, but never provoking a reply. If he appeared more open with any one, it was with Fragoso. Did he not owe to this gay companion the idea of taking passage on board the raft? Many times he asked him about the position of the Garrals at Iquitos, the sentiments of the daughter for Manoel Valdez, and always discreetly. Generally, when he was not walking alone in the bow of the jangada, he kept to his cabin. He breakfasted and dined with Joam Garral and his family, but he took little part in their conversation, and retired when the repast was finished. During the morning the raft passed by the picturesque group of islands situated in the vast estuary of the Javary. This important affluent of the Amazon comes from the southwest, and from source to mouth has not a single island, nor a single rapid, to check its course. The mouth is about three thousand feet in width, and the river comes in some miles above the site formerly occupied by the town of the same name, whose possession was disputed for so long by Spaniards and Portuguese. Up to the morning of the 30th of June there had been nothing particular to distinguish the voyage. Occasionally they met a few vessels gliding along by the banks attached one to another in such a way that a single Indian could manage the whole—"navigar de bubina," as this kind of navigation is called by the people of the country, that is to say, "confidence navigation." They had passed the island of Araria, the Archipelago of the Calderon islands, the island of Capiatu, and many others whose names have not yet come to the knowledge of geographers. On the 30th of June the pilot signaled on the right the little village of Jurupari-Tapera, where they halted for two or three hours. Manoel and Benito had gone shooting in the neighborhood, and brought back some feathered game, which was well received in the larder. At the same time they had got an animal of whom a naturalist would have made more than did the cook. It was a creature of a dark color, something like a large Newfoundland dog. "A great ant-eater!" exclaimed Benito, as he threw it on the deck of the jangada. "And a magnificent specimen which would not disgrace the collection of a museum!" added Manoel. "Did you take much trouble to catch the curious animal?" asked Minha. "Yes, little sister," replied Benito, "and you were not there to ask for mercy! These dogs die hard, and no less than three bullets were necessary to bring this fellow down." The ant-eater looked superb, with his long tail and grizzly hair; with his pointed snout, which is plunged into the ant-hills whose insects form its principal food; and his long, thin paws, armed with sharp nails, five inches long, and which can shut up like the fingers of one's hand. But what a hand was this hand of the ant-eater! When it has got hold of anything you have to cut it off to make it let go! It is of this hand that the traveler, Emile Carrey, has so justly observed: "The tiger himself would perish in its grasp." On the 2d of July, in the morning, the jangada arrived at the foot of San Pablo d'Olivença, after having floated through the midst of numerous islands which in all seasons are clad with verdure and shaded with magnificent trees, and the chief of which bear the names of Jurupari, Rita, Maracanatena, and Cururu Sapo. Many times they passed by the mouths of iguarapes, or little affluents, with black waters. The coloration of these waters is a very curious phenomenon. It is peculiar to a certain number of these tributaries of the Amazon, which differ greatly in importance. Manoel remarked how thick the cloudiness was, for it could be clearly seen on the surface of the whitish waters of the river. "They have tried to explain this coloring in many ways," said he, "but I do not think the most learned have yet arrived at a satisfactory explanation." "The waters are really black with a magnificent reflection of gold," replied Minha, showing a light, reddish-brown cloth, which was floating level with the jangada. "Yes," said Manoel, "and Humboldt has already observed the curious reflection that you have; but on looking at it attentively you will see that it is rather the color of sepia which pervades the whole." "Good!" exclaimed Benito. "Another phenomenon on which the savants are not agreed." "Perhaps," said Fragoso, "they might ask the opinions of the caymans, dolphins, and manatees, for they certainly prefer the black waters to the others to enjoy themselves in." "They are particularly attractive to those animals," replied Manoel, "but why it is rather embarrassing to say. For instance, is the coloration due to the hydrocarbons which the waters hold in solution, or is it because they flow through districts of peat, coal, and anthracite; or should we not rather attribute it to the enormous quantity of minute plants which they bear along? There is nothing certain in the matter. Under any circumstances, they are excellent to drink, of a freshness quite enviable for the climate, and without after-taste, and perfectly harmless. Take a little of the water, Minha, and drink it; you will find it all right." The water is in truth limpid and fresh, and would advantageously replace many of the table-waters used in Europe. They drew several frasques for kitchen use. It has been said that in the morning of the 2d of July the jangada had arrived at San Pablo d'Olivença, where they turn out in thousands those long strings of beads which are made from the scales of the "coco de piassaba." This trade is here extensively followed. It may, perhaps, seem singular that the ancient lords of the country, Tupinambas and Tupiniquis, should find their principal occupation in making objects for the Catholic religion. But, after all, why not? These Indians are no longer the Indians of days gone by. Instead of being clothed in the national fashion, with a frontlet of macaw feathers, bow, and blow-tube, have they not adopted the American costume of white cotton trousers, and a cotton poncho woven by their wives, who have become thorough adepts in its manufacture? San Pablo d'Olivença, a town of some importance, has not less than two thousand inhabitants, derived from all the neighboring tribes. At present the capital of the Upper Amazon, it began as a simple Mission, founded by the Portuguese Carmelites about 1692, and afterward acquired by the Jesuit missionaries. From the beginning it has been the country of the Omaguas, whose name means "flat-heads," and is derived from the barbarous custom of the native mothers of squeezing the heads of their newborn children between two plates, so as to give them an oblong skull, which was then the fashion. Like everything else, that has changed; heads have re-taken their natural form, and there is not the slightest trace of the ancient deformity in the skulls of the chaplet-makers. Every one, with the exception of Joam Garral, went ashore. Torres also remained on board, and showed no desire to visit San Pablo d'Olivença, which he did not, however, seem to be acquainted with. Assuredly if the adventurer was taciturn he was not inquisitive. Benito had no difficulty in doing a little bartering, and adding slightly to the cargo of the jangada. He and the family received an excellent reception from the principal authorities of the town, the commandant of the place, and the chief of the custom-house, whose functions did not in the least prevent them from engaging in trade. They even intrusted the young merchant with a few products of the country for him to dispose of on their account at Manaos and Belem. The town is composed of some sixty houses, arranged on the plain which hereabouts crowns the river-bank. Some of the huts are covered with tiles—a very rare thing in these countries; but, on the other hand, the humble church, dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, has only a roof of straw, rather more appropriate for a stable of Bethlehem than for an edifice consecrated to religion in one of the most Catholic countries of the world. The commandant, his lieutenant, and the head of the police accepted an invitation to dine with the family, and they were received by Joam Garral with the respect due to their rank. During dinner Torres showed himself more talkative than usual. He spoke about some of his excursions into the interior of Brazil like a man who knew the country. But in speaking of these travels Torres did not neglect to ask the commandant if he knew Manaos, if his colleague would be there at this time, and if the judge, the first magistrate of the province, was accustomed to absent himself at this period of the hot season. It seemed that in putting this series of questions Torres looked at Joam Garral. It was marked enough for even Benito to notice it, not without surprise, and he observed that his father gave particular attention to the questions so curiously propounded by Torres. The commandant of San Pablo d'Olivença assured the adventurer that the authorities were not now absent from Manaos, and he even asked Joam Garral to convey to them his compliments. In all probability the raft would arrive before the town in seven weeks, or a little later, say about the 20th or the 25th of August. The guests of the fazender took leave of the Garral family toward the evening, and the following morning, that of the 3d of July, the jangada recommenced its descent of the river. At noon they passed on the left the mouth of the Yacurupa. This tributary, properly speaking, is a true canal, for it discharges its waters into the Iça, which is itself an affluent of the Amazon. A peculiar phenomenon, for the river displaces itself to feed its own tributaries! Toward three o'clock in the afternoon the giant raft passed the mouth of the Jandiatuba, which brings its magnificent black waters from the southwest, and discharges them into the main artery by a mouth of four hundred meters in extent, after having watered the territories of the Culino Indians. A number of islands were breasted—Pimaicaira, Caturia, Chico, Motachina; some inhabited, others deserted, but all covered with superb vegetation, which forms an unbroken garland of green from one end of the Amazon to the other.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE CONTINUED DESCENT

On the evening of the 5th of July, the atmosphere had been oppressive since the morning and threatened approaching storms. Large bats of ruddy color skimmed with their huge wings the current of the Amazon. Among them could be distinguished the "perros voladors," somber brown above and light-colored beneath, for which Minha, and particularly the young mulatto, felt an instinctive aversion. These were, in fact, the horrible vampires which suck the blood of the cattle, and even attack man if he is imprudent enough to sleep out in the fields. "Oh, the dreadful creatures!" cried Lina, hiding her eyes; "they fill me with horror!" "And they are really formidable," added Minha; "are they not, Manoel?" "To be sure—very formidable," answered he. "These vampires have a particular instinct which leads them to bleed you in the places where the blood most easily comes, and principally behind the ear. During the operation the continue to move their wings, and cause an agreeable freshness which renders the sleep of the sleeper more profound. They tell of people, unconsciously submitted to this hemorrhage for many hours, who have never awoke!" "Talk no more of things like that, Manoel," said Yaquita, "or neither Minha nor Lina will dare sleep to-night." "Never fear!" replied Manoel; "if necessary we will watch over them as they sleep." "Silence!" said Benito. "What is the matter?" asked Manoel. "Do you not hear a very curious noise on that side?" continued Benito, pointing to the right bank. "Certainly," answered Yaquita. "What causes the noise?" asked Minha. "One would think it was shingle rolling on the beach of the islands." "Good! I know what it is," answered Benito. "Tomorrow, at daybreak, there will be a rare treat for those who like fresh turtle eggs and little turtles!" He was not deceived; the noise was produced by innumerable chelonians of all sizes, who were attracted to the islands to lay their eggs. It is in the sand of the beach that these amphibians choose the most convenient places to deposit their eggs. The operation commences with sunset and finishes with the dawn. At this moment the chief turtle had left the bed of the river to reconnoiter for a favorable spot; the others, collected in thousands, were soon after occupied in digging with their hind paddles a trench six hundred feet long, a dozen wide, and six deep. After laying their eggs they cover them with a bed of sand, which they beat down with their carapaces as if they were rammers. This egg-laying operation is a grand affair for the riverine Indians of the Amazon and its tributaries. They watch for the arrival of the chelonians, and proceed to the extraction of the eggs to the sound of the drum; and the harvest is divided into three parts—one to the watchers, another to the Indians, a third to the state, represented by the captains of the shore, who, in their capacity of police, have to superintend the collection of the dues. To certain beaches which the decrease of the waters has left uncovered, and which have the privilege of attracting the greater number of turtles, there has been given the name of "royal beaches." When the harvest is gathered it is a holiday for the Indians, who give themselves up to games, dancing, and drinking; and it is also a holiday for the alligators of the river, who hold high revelry on the remains of the amphibians. Turtles, or turtle eggs, are an object of very considerable trade throughout the Amazonian basin. It is these chelonians whom they "turn"—that is to say, put on their backs—when they come from laying their eggs, and whom they preserve alive, keeping them in palisaded pools like fish-pools, or attaching them to a stake by a cord just long enough to allow them to go and come on the land or under the water. In this way they always have the meat of these animals fresh. They proceed differently with the little turtles which are just hatched. There is no need to pack them or tie them up. Their shell is still soft, their flesh extremely tender, and after they have cooked them they eat them just like oysters. In this form large quantities are consumed. However, this is not the most general use to which the chelonian eggs are put in the provinces of Amazones and Para. The manufacture of "manteigna de tartaruga," or turtle butter, which will bear comparison with the best products of Normandy or Brittany, does not take less every year that from two hundred and fifty to three hundred millions of eggs. But the turtles are innumerable all along the river, and they deposit their eggs on the sands of the beach in incalculable quantities. However, on account of the destruction caused not only by the natives, but by the water-fowl from the side, the urubus in the air, and the alligators in the river, their number has been so diminished that for every little turtle a Brazilian pataque, or about a franc, has to be paid. On the morrow, at daybreak, Benito, Fragoso, and a few Indians took a pirogue and landed on the beach of one of the large islands which they had passed during the night. It was not necessary for the jangada to halt. They knew they could catch her up. On the shore they saw the little hillocks which indicated the places where, that very night, each packet of eggs had been deposited in the trench in groups of from one hundred and sixty to one hundred and ninety. These there was no wish to get out. But an earlier laying had taken place two months before, the eggs had hatched under the action of the heat stored in the sand, and already several thousands of little turtles were running about the beach. The hunters were therefore in luck. The pirogue was filled with these interesting amphibians, and they arrived just in time for breakfast. The booty was divided between the passengers and crew of the jangada, and if any lasted till the evening it did not last any longer. In the morning of the 7th of July they were before San Jose de Matura, a town situated near a small river filled up with long grass, and on the borders of which a legend says that Indians with tails once existed. In the morning of the 8th of July they caught sight of the village of San Antonio, two or three little houses lost in the trees at the mouth of the Iça, or Putumayo, which is about nine hundred meters wide. The Putumayo is one of the most important affluents of the Amazon. Here in the sixteenth century missions were founded by the Spaniards, which were afterward destroyed by the Portuguese, and not a trace of them now remains. Representatives of different tribes of Indians are found in the neighborhood, which are easily recognizable by the differences in their tattoo marks. The Iça is a body of water coming from the east of the Pasto Mountains to the northeast of Quito, through the finest forests of wild cacao-trees. Navigable for a distance of a hundred and forty leagues for steamers of not greater draught than six feet, it may one day become one of the chief waterways in the west of America. The bad weather was at last met with. It did not show itself in continual rains, but in frequent storms. These could not hinder the progress of the raft, which offered little resistance to the wind. Its great length rendered it almost insensible to the swell of the Amazon, but during the torrential showers the Garral family had to keep indoors. They had to occupy profitably these hours of leisure. They chatted together, communicated their observations, and their tongues were seldom idle. It was under these circumstances that little by little Torres had begun to take a more active part in the conversation. The details of his many voyages throughout the whole north of Brazil afforded him numerous subjects to talk about. The man had certainly seen a great deal, but his observations were those of a skeptic, and he often shocked the straightforward people who were listening to him. It should be said that he showed himself much impressed toward Minha. But these attentions, although they were displeasing to Manoel, were not sufficiently marked for him to interfere. On the other hand, Minha felt for him an instinctive repulsion which she was at no pains to conceal. On the 5th of July the mouth of the Tunantins appeared on the left bank, forming an estuary of some four hundred feet across, in which it pours its blackish waters, coming from the west-northwest, after having watered the territories of the Cacena Indians. At this spot the Amazon appears under a truly grandiose aspect, but its course is more than ever encumbered with islands and islets. It required all the address of the pilot to steer through the archipelago, going from one bank to another, avoiding the shallows, shirking the eddies, and maintaining the advance. They might have taken the Ahuaty Parana, a sort of natural canal, which goes off a little below the mouth of the Tunantins, and re-enters the principal stream a hundred an twenty miles further on by the Rio Japura; but if the larger portion of this measures a hundred and fifty feet across, the narrowest is only sixty feet, and the raft would there have met with a difficulty. On the 13th of July, after having touched at the island of Capuro, passed the mouth of the Jutahy, which, coming from the east-southeast, brings in its black waters by a mouth five hundred feet wide, and admired the legions of monkeys, sulphur-white in color, with cinnabar-red faces, who are insatiable lovers of the nuts produced by the palm-trees from which the river derives its name, the travelers arrived on the 18th of July before the little village of Fonteboa. At this place the jangada halted for twelve hours, so as to give a rest to the crew. Fonteboa, like most of the mission villages of the Amazon, has not escaped the capricious fate which, during a lengthened period, moves them about from one place to the other. Probably the hamlet has now finished with its nomadic existence, and has definitely become stationary. So much the better; for it is a charming place, with its thirty houses covered with foliage, and its church dedicated to Notre Dame de Guadaloupe, the Black Virgin of Mexico. Fonteboa has one thousand inhabitants, drawn from the Indians on both banks, who rear numerous cattle in the fields in the neighborhood. These occupations do not end here, for they are intrepid hunters, or, if they prefer it, intrepid fishers for the manatee. On the morning of their arrival the young fellows assisted at a very interesting expedition of this nature. Two of these herbivorous cetaceans had just been signaled in the black waters of the Cayaratu, which comes in at Fonteboa. Six brown points were seen moving along the surface, and these were the two pointed snouts and four pinions of the lamantins. Inexperienced fishermen would at first have taken these moving points for floating wreckage, but the natives of Fonteboa were not to be so deceived. Besides, very soon loud blowings indicated that the spouting animals were vigorously ejecting the air which had become useless for their breathing purposes. Two ubas, each carrying three fishermen, set off from the bank and approached the manatees, who soon took flight. The black points at first traced a long furrow on the top of the water, and then disappeared for a time. The fishermen continued their cautious advance. One of them, armed with a very primitive harpoon—a long nail at the end of a stick—kept himself in the bow of the boat, while the other two noiselessly paddled on. They waited till the necessity of breathing would bring the manatees up again. In ten minutes or thereabouts the animals would certainly appear in a circle more or less confined. In fact, this time had scarcely elapsed before the black points emerged at a little distance, and two jets of air mingled with vapor were noiselessly shot forth. The ubas approached, the harpoons were thrown at the same instant; one missed its mark, but the other struck one of the cetaceans near his tail. It was only necessary to stun the animal, who rarely defends himself when touched by the iron of the harpoon. In a few pulls the cord brought him alongside the uba, and he was towed to the beach at the foot of the village. It was not a manatee of any size, for it only measured about three feet long. These poor cetaceans have been so hunted that they have become very rare in the Amazon and its affluents, and so little time is left them to grow that the giants of the species do not now exceed seven feet. What are these, after manatees twelve and fifteen feet long, which still abound in the rivers and lakes of Africa? But it would be difficult to hinder their destruction. The flesh of the manatee is excellent, superior even to that of pork, and the oil furnished by its lard, which is three inches thick, is a product of great value. When the meat is smoke-dried it keeps for a long time, and is capital food. If to this is added that the animal is easily caught, it is not to be wondered at that the species is on its way to complete destruction. On the 19th of July, at sunrise, the jangada left Fonteboa, and entered between the two completely deserted banks of the river, and breasted some islands shaded with the grand forests of cacao-trees. The sky was heavily charged with electric cumuli, warning them of renewed storms. The Rio Jurua, coming from the southwest, soon joins the river on the left. A vessel can go up it into Peru without encountering insurmountable obstacles among its white waters, which are fed by a great number of petty affluents. "It is perhaps in these parts," said Manoel, "that we ought to look for those female warriors who so much astonished Orellana. But we ought to say that, like their predecessors, they do nor form separate tribes; they are simply the wives who accompany their husbands to the fight, and who, among the Juruas, have a great reputation for bravery." The jangada continued to descend; but what a labyrinth the Amazon now appeared! The Rio Japura, whose mouth was forty-eight miles on ahead, and which is one of its largest tributaries, runs almost parallel with the river. Between them were canals, iguarapes, lagoons, temporary lakes, an inextricable network which renders the hydrography of this country so difficult. But if Araujo had no map to guide him, his experience served him more surely, and it was wonderful to see him unraveling the chaos, without ever turning aside from the main river. In fact, he did so well that on the 25th of July, in the afternoon, after having passed before the village of Parani-Tapera, the raft was anchored at the entrance of the Lake of Ego, or Teffe, which it was useless to enter, for they would not have been able to get out of it again into the Amazon. But the town of Ega is of some importance; it was worthy of a halt to visit it. It was arranged, therefore, that the jangada should remain on this spot till the 27th of July, and that on the morrow the large pirogue should take the whole family to Ega. This would give a rest, which was deservedly due to the hard-working crew of the raft. The night passed at the moorings near a slightly rising shore, and nothing disturbed the quiet. A little sheet-lightning was observable on the horizon, but it came from a distant storm which did not reach the entrance to the lake.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

EGA

At six o'clock in the morning of the 20th of July, Yaquita, Minha, Lina, and the two young men prepared to leave the jangada. Joam Garral, who had shown no intention of putting his foot on shore, had decided this time, at the request of the ladies of his family, to leave his absorbing daily work and accompany them on their excursion. Torres had evinced no desire to visit Ega, to the great satisfaction of Manoel, who had taken a great dislike to the man and only waited for an opportunity to declare it. As to Fragoso, he could not have the same reason for going to Ega as had taken him to Tabatinga, which is a place of little importance compared to this. Ega is a chief town with fifteen hundred inhabitants, and in it reside all those authorities which compose the administration of a considerable city—considerable for the country; that is to say, the military commandant, the chief of the police, the judges, the schoolmaster, and troops under the command of officers of all ranks. With so many functionaries living in a town, with their wives and children, it is easy to see that hair-dressers would be in demand. Such was the case, and Fragoso would not have paid his expenses. Doubtless, however, the jolly fellow, who could do no business in Ega, had thought to be of the party if Lina went with her mistress, but, just as they were leaving the raft, he resolved to remain, at the request of Lina herself. "Mr. Fragoso!" she said to him, after taking him aside. "Miss Lina?" answered Fragoso. "I do not think that your friend Torres intends to go with us to Ega." "Certainly not, he is going to stay on board, Miss Lina, but you wold oblige me by not calling him my friend!" "But you undertook to ask a passage for him before he had shown any intention of doing so." "Yes, and on that occasion, if you would like to know what I think, I made a fool of myself!" "Quite so! and if you would like to know what I think, I do not like the man at all, Mr. Fragoso." "Neither do I, Miss Lina, and I have all the time an idea that I have seen him somewhere before. But the remembrance is too vague; the impression, however, is far from being a pleasant one!" "Where and when could you have met him? Cannot you call it to mind? It might be useful to know who he is and what he has been." "No—I try all I can. How long was it ago? In what country? Under what circumstances? And I cannot hit upon it." "Mr. Fragoso!" "Miss Lina!" "Stay on board and keep watch on Torres during our absence!" "What? Not go with you to Ega, and remain a whole day without seeing you?" "I ask you to do so!" "Is it an order?" "It is an entreaty!" "I will remain!" "Mr. Fragoso!" "Miss Lina!" "I thank you!" "Thank me, then, with a good shake of the hand," replied Fragoso; "that is worth something." Lina held out her hand, and Fragoso kept it for a few moments while he looked into her face. And that is the reason why he did not take his place in the pirogue, and became, without appearing to be, the guard upon Torres. Did the latter notice the feelings of aversion with which he was regarded? Perhaps, but doubtless he had his reasons for taking no account of them. A distance of four leagues separated the mooring-place from the town of Ega. Eight leagues, there and back, in a pirogue containing six persons, besides two negroes as rowers, would take some hours, not to mention the fatigue caused by the high temperature, though the sky was veiled with clouds. Fortunately a lovely breeze blew from the northwest, and if it held would be favorable for crossing Lake Teffe. They could go to Ega and return rapidly without having to tack. So the lateen sail was hoisted on the mast of the pirogue. Benito took the tiller, and off they went, after a last gesture from Lina to Fragoso to keep his eyes open. The southern shore of the lake had to be followed to get to Ega. After two hours the pirogue arrived at the port of this ancient mission founded by the Carmelites, which became a town in 1759, and which General Gama placed forever under Brazilian rule. The passengers landed on a flat beach, on which were to be found not only boats from the interior, but a few of those little schooners which are used in the coasting-trade on the Atlantic seaboard. When the two girls entered Ega they were at first much astonished. "What a large town!" said Minha. "What houses! what people!" replied Lina, whose eyes seemed to have expanded so that she might see better. "Rather!" said Benito laughingly. "More than fifteen hundred inhabitants! Two hundred houses at the very least! Some of them with a first floor! And two or three streets! Genuine streets!" "My dear Manoel!" said Minha, "do protect us against my brother! He is making fun of us, and only because he had already been in the finest towns in Amazones and Para!" "Quite so, and he is also poking fun at his mother," added Yaquita, "for I confess I never saw anything equal to this!" "Then, mother and sister, you must take great care that you do not fall into a trance when you get to Manaos, and vanish altogether when you reach Belem!" "Never fear," answered Manoel; "the ladies will have been gently prepared for these grand wonders by visiting the principal cities of the Upper Amazon!" "Now, Manoel," said Minha, "you are talking just like my brother! Are you making fun of us, too?" "No, Minha, I assure you." "Laugh on, gentlemen," said Lina, "and let us look around, my dear mistress, for it is very fine!" Very fine! A collection of houses, built of mud, whitewashed, and principally covered with thatch or palm-leaves; a few built of stone or wood, with verandas, doors, and shutters painted a bright green, standing in the middle of a small orchard of orange-trees in flower. But there were two or three public buildings, a barrack, and a church dedicated to St. Theresa, which was a cathedral by the side of the modest chapel at Iquitos. On looking toward the lake a beautiful panorama unfolded itself, bordered by a frame of cocoanut-trees and assais, which ended at the edge of the liquid level, and showed beyond the picturesque village of Noqueira, with its few small houses lost in the mass of the old olive-trees on the beach. But for the two girls there was another cause of wonderment, quite feminine wonderment too, in the fashions of the fair Egans, not the primitive costume of the natives, converted Omaas or Muas, but the dress of true Brazilian ladies. The wives and daughters of the principal functionaries and merchants o the town pretentiously showed off their Parisian toilettes, a little out of date perhaps, for Ega is five hundred leagues away from Para, and this is itself many thousands of miles from Paris. "Just look at those fine ladies in their fine clothes!" "Lina will go mad!" exclaimed Benito. "If those dresses were worn properly," said Minha, "they might not be so ridiculous!" "My dear Minha," said Manoel, "with your simple gown and straw hat, you are better dressed than any one of these Brazilians, with their headgear and flying petticoats, which are foreign to their country and their race." "If it pleases you to think so," answered Minha, "I do not envy any of them." But they had come to see. They walked through the streets, which contained more stalls than shops; they strolled about the market-place, the rendezvous of the fashionable, who were nearly stifled in their European clothes; they even breakfasted at an hotel—it was scarcely an inn—whose cookery caused them to deeply regret the excellent service on the raft. After dinner, at which only turtle flesh, served up in different forms, appeared, the Garral family went for the last time to admire the borders of the lake as the setting sun gilded it with its rays; then they rejoined their pirogue, somewhat disillusioned perhaps as to the magnificence of a town which one hour would give time enough to visit, and a little tired with walking about its stifling streets which were not nearly so pleasant as the shady pathways of Iquitos. The inquisitive Lina's enthusiasm alone had not been damped. They all took their places in the pirogue. The wind remained in the northwest, and had freshened with the evening. The sail was hoisted. They took the same course as in the morning, across the lake fed by the black waters of the Rio Teffe, which, according to the Indians, is navigable toward the southwest for forty days' journey. At eight o'clock the priogue regained the mooring-place and hailed the jangada. As soon as Lina could get Fragoso aside— "Have you seen anything suspicious?" she inquired. "Nothing, Miss Lina," he replied; "Torres has scarcely left his cabin, where he has been reading and writing." "He did not get into the house or the dining-room, as I feared?" "No, all the time he was not in his cabin he was in the bow of the raft." "And what was he doing?" "Holding an old piece of paper in his hand, consulting it with great attention, and muttering a lot of incomprehensible words." "All that is not so unimportant as you think, Mr. Fragoso. These readings and writings and old papers have their interest! He is neither a professor nor a lawyer, this reader and writer!" "You are right!" "Still watch him, Mr. Fragoso!" "I will watch him always, Miss Lina," replied Fragoso. On the morrow, the 27th of July, at daybreak, Benito gave the pilot the signal to start. Away between the islands, in the Bay of Arenapo, the mouth of the Japura, six thousand six hundred feet wide, was seen for an instant. This large tributary comes into the Amazon through eight mouths, as if it were pouring into some gulf or ocean. But its waters come from afar, and it is the mountains of the republic of Ecuador which start them on a course that there are no falls to break until two hundred and ten leagues from its junction with the main stream. All this day was spent in descending to the island of Yapura, after which the river, less interfered with, makes navigation much easier. The current is not so rapid and the islets are easily avoided, so that there were no touchings or groundings. The next day the jangada coasted along by vast beaches formed by undulating high domes, which served as the barriers of immense pasture grounds, in which the whole of the cattle in Europe could be raised and fed. These sand banks are considered to be the richest turtle grounds in the basin of the Upper Amazon. On the evening of the 29th of July they were securely moored off the island of Catua, so as to pass the night, which promised to be dark. On this island, as soon as the sun rose above the horizon, there appeared a party of Muras Indians, the remains of that ancient and powerful tribe, which formerly occupied more than a hundred leagues of the river bank between the Teffe and the Madeira. These Indians went and came, watching the raft, which remained stationary. There were about a hundred of them armed with blow-tubes formed of a reed peculiar to these parts, and which is strengthened outside by the stem of a dwarf palm from which the pith has been extracted. Joam Garral quitted for an instant the work which took up all his time, to warn his people to keep a good guard and not to provoke these Indians. In truth the sides were not well matched. The Muras are remarkably clever at sending through their blow-tubes arrows which cause incurable wounds, even at a range of three hundred paces. These arrows, made of the leaf of the "coucourite" palm, are feathered with cotton, and nine or ten inches long, with a point like a needle, and poisoned with "curare." Curare, or "wourah," the liquor "which kills in a whisper," as the Indians say, is prepared from the sap of one of the euphorbiaceæ and the juice of a bulbous strychnos, not to mention the paste of venomous ants and poisonous serpent fangs which they mix with it. "It is indeed a terrible poison," said Manoel. "It attacks at once those nerves by which the movements are subordinated to the will. But the heart is not touched, and it does not cease to beat until the extinction of the vital functions, and besides no antidote is known to the poison, which commences by numbness of the limbs." Very fortunately, these Muras made no hostile demonstrations, although they entertain a profound hatred toward the whites. They have, in truth, no longer the courage of their ancestors. At nightfall a five-holed flute was heard behind the trees in the island, playing several airs in a minor key. Another flute answered. This interchange of musical phrases lasted for two or three minutes, and the Muras disappeared. Fragoso, in an exuberant moment, had tried to reply by a song in his own fashion, but Lina had clapped her hand on his mouth, and prevented his showing off his insignificant singing talents, which he was so willingly lavish of. On the 2d of August, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the raft arrived twenty leagues away from there at Lake Apoara, which is fed by the black waters of the river of the same name, and two days afterward, about five o'clock, it stopped at the entrance into Lake Coary. This lake is one of the largest which communicates with the Amazon, and it serves as a reservoir for different rivers. Five or six affluents run into it, and there are stored and mixed up, and emerge by a narrow channel into the main stream. After catching a glimpse of the hamlet of Tahua-Miri, mounted on its piles as on stilts, as a protection against inundation from the floods, which often sweep up over these low sand banks, the raft was moored for the night. The stoppage was made in sight of the village of Coary, a dozen houses, considerably dilapidated, built in the midst of a thick mass of orange and calabash trees. Nothing can be more changeable than the aspect of this village, for according to the rise or fall of the water the lake stretches away on all sides of it, or is reduced to a narrow canal, scarcely deep enough to communicate with the Amazon. On the following morning, that of the 5th of August, they started at dawn, passing the canal of Yucura, belonging to the tangled system of lakes and furos of the Rio Zapura, and on the morning of the 6th of August they reached the entrance to Lake Miana. No fresh incident occurred in the life on board, which proceeded with almost methodical regularity. Fragoso, urged on by Lina, did not cease to watch Torres. Many times he tried to get him to talk about his past life, but the adventurer eluded all conversation on the subject, and ended by maintaining a strict reserve toward the barber. After catching a glimpse of the hamlet of Tahua-Miri, mounted on its piles as on stilts, as a protection against inundation from the floods, which often sweep up and over these low sand banks, the raft was moored for the night. His intercourse with the Garral family remained the same. If he spoke little to Joam, he addressed himself more willingly to Yaquita and her daughter, and appeared not to notice the evident coolness with which he was received. They all agreed that when the raft arrived at Manaos, Torres should leave it, and that they would never speak of him again. Yaquita followed the advice of Padre Passanha, who counseled patience, but the good priest had not such an easy task in Manoel, who was quite disposed to put on shore the intruder who had been so unfortunately taken on to the raft. The only thing that happened on this evening was the following: A pirogue, going down the river, came alongside the jangada, after being hailed by Joam Garral. "Are you going to Manaos?" asked he of the Indian who commanded and was steering her. "Yes," replied he. "When will you get there?" "In eight days." "Then you will arrive before we shall. Will you deliver a letter for me?" "With pleasure." "Take this letter, then, my friend, and deliver it at Manaos." The Indian took the letter which Joam gave him, and a handful of reis was the price of the commission he had undertaken. No members of the family, then gone into the house, knew anything of this. Torres was the only witness. He heard a few words exchanged between Joam and the Indian, and from the cloud which passed over his face it was easy to see that the sending of this letter considerably surprised him.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

AN ATTACK

However, if Manoel, to avoid giving rise to a violent scene on board, said nothing on the subject of Torres, he resolved to have an explanation with Benito. "Benito," he began, after taking him to the bow of the jangada, "I have something to say to you." Benito, generally so good-humored, stopped as he looked at Manoel, and a cloud came over his countenance. "I know why," he said; "it is about Torres." "Yes, Benito." "And I also wish to speak to you." "You have then noticed his attention to Minha?" said Manoel, turning pale. "Ah! It is not a feeling of jealousy, though, that exasperates you against such a man?" said Benito quickly. "No!" replied Manoel. "Decidedly not! Heaven forbid I should do such an injury to the girl who is to become my wife. No, Benito! She holds the adventurer in horror! I am not thinking anything of that sort; but it distresses me to see this adventurer constantly obtruding himself by his presence and conversation on your mother and sister, and seeking to introduce himself into that intimacy with your family which is already mine." "Manoel," gravely answered Benito, "I share your aversion for this dubious individual, and had I consulted my feelings I would already have driven Torres off the raft! But I dare not!" "You dare not?" said Manoel, seizing the hand of his friend. "You dare not?" "Listen to me, Manoel," continued Benito. "You have observed Torres well, have you not? You have remarked his attentions to my sister! Nothing can be truer! But while you have been noticing that, have you not seen that this annoying man never keeps his eyes off my father, no matter if he is near to him or far from him, and that he seems to have some spiteful secret intention in watching him with such unaccountable persistency?" "What are you talking about, Benito? Have you any reason to think that Torres bears some grudge against Joam Garral?" "No! I think nothing!" replied Benito; "it is only a presentiment! But look well at Torres, study his face with care, and you will see what an evil grin he has whenever my father comes into his sight." "Well, then," exclaimed Manoel, "if it is so, Benito, the more reason for clearing him out!" "More reason—or less reason," replied Benito. "Manoel, I fear—what? I know not—but to force my father to get rid of Torres would perhaps be imprudent! I repeat it, I am afraid, though no positive fact enables me to explain my fear to myself!" And Benito seemed to shudder with anger as he said these words. "Then," said Manoel, "you think we had better wait?" "Yes; wait, before doing anything, but above all things let us be on our guard!" "After all," answered Manoel, "in twenty days we shall be at Manaos. There Torres must stop. There he will leave us, and we shall be relieved of his presence for good! Till then we must keep our eyes on him!" "You understand me, Manoel?" asked Benito. "I understand you, my friend, my brother!" replied Manoel, "although I do not share, and cannot share, your fears! What connection can possibly exist between your father and this adventurer? Evidently your father has never seen him!" "I do not say that my father knows Torres," said Benito; "but assuredly it seems to me that Torres knows my father. What was the fellow doing in the neighborhood of the fazenda when we met him in the forest of Iquitos? Why did he then refuse the hospitality which we offered, so as to afterward manage to force himself on us as our traveling companion? We arrive at Tabatinga, and there he is as if he was waiting for us! The probability is that these meetings were in pursuance of a preconceived plan. When I see the shifty, dogged look of Torres, all this crowds on my mind. I do not know! I am losing myself in things that defy explanation! Oh! why did I ever think of offering to take him on board this raft?" "Be calm, Benito, I pray you!" "Manoel!" continued Benito, who seemed to be powerless to contain himself, "think you that if it only concerned me—this man who inspires us all with such aversion and disgust—I should not hesitate to throw him overboard! But when it concerns my father, I fear lest in giving way to my impressions I may be injuring my object! Something tells me that with this scheming fellow there may be danger in doing anything until he has given us the right—the right and the duty—to do it. In short, on the jangada, he is in our power, and if we both keep good watch over my father, we can spoil his game, no matter how sure it may be, and force him to unmask and betray himself! Then wait a little longer!" The arrival of Torres in the bow of the raft broke off the conversation. Torres looked slyly at the two young men, but said not a word. Benito was not deceived when he said that the adventurer's eyes were never off Joam Garral as long as he fancied he was unobserved. No! he was not deceived when he said that Torres' face grew evil when he looked at his father! By what mysterious bond could these two men—one nobleness itself, that was self-evident—be connected with each other? Such being the state of affairs it was certainly difficult for Torres, constantly watched as he was by the two young men, by Fragoso and Lina, to make a single movement without having instantly to repress it. Perhaps he understood the position. If he did, he did not show it, for his manner changed not in the least. Satisfied with their mutual explanation, Manoel and Benito promised to keep him in sight without doing anything to awaken his suspicions. During the following days the jangada passed on the right the mouths of the rivers Camara, Aru, and Yuripari, whose waters instead of flowing into the Amazon run off to the south to feed the Rio des Purus, and return by it into the main river. At five o'clock on the evening of the 10th of August they put into the island of Cocos. They there passed a "seringal." This name is applied to a caoutchouc plantation, the caoutchouc being extracted from the "seringueira" tree, whose scientific name is siphonia elastica. It is said that, by negligence or bad management, the number of these trees is decreasing in the basin of the Amazon, but the forests of seringueira trees are still very considerable on the banks of the Madeira, Purus, and other tributaries. There were here some twenty Indians collecting and working the caoutchouc, an operation which principally takes place during the months of May, June, and July. After having ascertained that the trees, well prepared by the river floods which have bathed their stems to a height of about four feet, are in good condition for the harvest, the Indians are set to work. Incisions are made into the alburnum of the seringueiras; below the wound small pots are attached, which twenty-four hours suffice to fill with a milky sap. It can also be collected by means of a hollow bamboo, and a receptacle placed on the ground at the foot of the tree. The sap being obtained, the Indians, to prevent the separation of its peculiar resins, fumigate it over a fire of the nuts of the assai palm. By spreading out the sap on a wooden scoop, and shaking it in the smoke, its coagulation is almost immediately obtained; it assumes a grayish-yellow tinge and solidifies. The layers formed in succession are detached from the scoop, exposed to the sun, hardened, and assume the brownish color with which we are familiar. The manufacture is then complete. Benito, finding a capital opportunity, bought from the Indians all the caoutchouc stored in their cabins, which, by the way, are mostly built on piles. The price he gave them was sufficiently remunerative, and they were highly satisfied. Four days later, on the 14th of August, the jangada passed the mouths of the Purus. This is another of the large affluents of the Amazon, and seems to possess a navigable course, even for large ships, of over five hundred leagues. It rises in the southwest, and measures nearly five thousand feet across at its junction with the main river. After winding beneath the shade of ficuses, tahuaris, nipa palms, and cecropias, it enters the Amazon by five mouths. Hereabouts Araujo the pilot managed with great ease. The course of the river was but slightly obstructed with islands, and besides, from one bank to another its width is about two leagues. The current, too, took along the jangada more steadily, and on the 18th of August it stopped at the village of Pasquero to pass the night. The sun was already low on the horizon, and with the rapidity peculiar to these low latitudes, was about to set vertically, like an enormous meteor. Joam Garral and his wife, Lina, and old Cybele, were in front of the house. Torres, after having for an instant turned toward Joam as if he would speak to him, and prevented perhaps by the arrival of Padre Passanha, who had come to bid the family good-night, had gone back to his cabin. The Indians and the negroes were at their quarters along the sides. Araujo, seated at the bow, was watching the current which extended straight away in front of him. Manoel and Benito, with their eyes open, but chatting and smoking with apparent indifference, walked about the central part of the craft awaiting the hour of repose. All at once Manoel stopped Benito with his hand and said: "What a queer smell! Am I wrong? Do you not notice it?" "One would say that it was the odor of burning musk!" replied Benito. "There ought to be some alligators asleep on the neighboring beach!" "Well, nature has done wisely in allowing them so to betray themselves." "Yes," said Benito, "it is fortunate, for they are sufficiently formidable creatures!" Often at the close of the day these saurians love to stretch themselves on the shore, and install themselves comfortably there to pass the night. Crouched at the opening of a hole, into which they have crept back, they sleep with the mouth open, the upper jaw perpendicularly erect, so as to lie in wait for their prey. To these amphibians it is but sport to launch themselves in its pursuit, either by swimming through the waters propelled by their tails or running along the bank with a speed no man can equal. It is on these huge beaches that the caymans are born, live, and die, not without affording extraordinary examples of longevity. Not only can the old ones, the centenarians, be recognized by the greenish moss which carpets their carcass and is scattered over their protuberances, but by their natural ferocity, which increases with age. As Benito said, they are formidable creatures, and it is fortunate that their attacks can be guarded against. Suddenly cries were heard in the bow. "Caymans! caymans!" Manoel and Benito came forward and looked. Three large saurians, from fifteen to twenty feet long, had managed to clamber on to the platform of the raft. "Bring the guns! Bring the guns!" shouted Benito, making signs to the Indians and the blacks to get behind. "Into the house!" said Manoel; "make haste!" And in truth, as they could not attack them at once, the best thing they could do was to get into shelter without delay. It was done in an instant. The Garral family took refuge in the house, where the two young men joined them. The Indians and the negroes ran into their huts and cabins. As they were shutting the door: "And Minha?" said Manoel. "She is not there!" replied Lina, who had just run to her mistress' room. "Good heavens! where is she?" exclaimed her mother, and they all shouted at once: "Himha! Minha!" No reply. "There she is, on the bow of the jangada!" said Benito. "Minha!" shouted Manoel. The two young men, and Fragoso and Joam Garral, thinking no more of danger, rushed out of the house, guns in hand. Scarcely were they outside when two of the alligators made a half turn and ran toward them. A dose of buckshot to the head, close to the eye, from Benito, stopped one of the monsters, who, mortally wounded, writhed in frightful convulsions and fell on his side. But the second still lived, and came on, and there was no way of avoiding him. The huge alligator tore up to Joam Garral, and after knocking him over with a sweep of his tail, ran at him with open jaws. At this moment Torres rushed from the cabin, hatchet in hand, and struck such a terrific blow that its edge sunk into the jaw of the cayman and left him defenseless. Blinded by the blood, the animal flew to the side, and, designedly or not, fell over and was lost in the stream. "Minha! Minha!" shouted Manoel in distraction, when he got to the bow of the jangada. Suddenly she came into view. She had taken refuge in the cabin of Araujo, and the cabin had just been upset by a powerful blow from the third alligator. Minha was flying aft, pursued by the monster, who was not six feet away from her. Minha fell. A second shot from Benito failed to stop the cayman. He only struck the animal's carapace, and the scales flew to splinters but the ball did not penetrate. Manoel threw himself at the girl to raise her, or to snatch her from death! A side blow from the animal's tail knocked him down too. Minha fainted, and the mouth of the alligator opened to crush her! And then Fragoso jumped in to the animal, and thrust in a knife to the very bottom of his throat, at the risk of having his arm snapped off by the two jaws, had they quickly closed. Fragoso pulled out his arm in time, but he could not avoid the chock of the cayman, and was hurled back into the river, whose waters reddened all around. "Fragoso! Fragoso!" shrieked Lina, kneeling on the edge of the raft. A second afterward Fragoso reappeared on the surface of the Amazon—safe and sound. But, at the peril of his life he had saved the young girl, who soon came to. And as all hands were held out to him—Manoel's, Yaquita's, Minha's, and Lina's, and he did not know what to say, he ended by squeezing the hands of the young mulatto. However, though Fragoso had saved Minha, it was assuredly to the intervention of Torres that Joam Garral owed his safety. It was not, therefore, the fazender's life that the adventurer wanted. In the face of this fact, so much had to be admitted. Manoel said this to Benito in an undertone. "That is true!" replied Benito, embarrassed. "You are right, and in a sense it is one cruel care the less! Nevertheless, Manoel, my suspicions still exist! It is not always a man's worst enemy who wishes him dead!" Joam Garral walked up to Torres. "Thank you, Torres!" he said, holding out his hand. The adventurer took a step or two backward without replying. "Torres," continued Joam, "I am sorry that we are arriving at the end of our voyage, and that in a few days we must part! I owe you——" "Joam Garral!" answered Torres, "you owe me nothing! Your life is precious to me above all things! But if you will allow me—I have been thinking—in place of stopping at Manaos, I will go on to Belem. Will you take me there?" Joam Garral replied by an affirmative nod. In hearing this demand Benito in an unguarded moment was about to intervene, but Manoel stopped him, and the young man checked himself, though not without a violent effort.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE ARRIVAL DINNER

In the morning, after a night which was scarcely sufficient to calm so much excitement, they unmoored from the cayman beach and departed. Before five days, if nothing interfered with their voyage, the raft would reach the port of Manaos. Minha had quite recovered from her fright, and her eyes and smiles thanked all those who had risked their lives for her. As for Lina, it seemed as though she was more grateful to the brave Fragoso than if it was herself that he had saved. "I will pay you back, sooner or later, Mr. Fragoso," said she, smiling. "And how, Miss Lina?" "Oh! You know very well!" "Then if I know it, let it be soon and not late!" replied the good-natured fellow. And from this day it began to be whispered about that the charming Lina was engaged to Fragoso, that their marriage would take place at the same time as that of Minha and Manoel, and that the young couple would remain at Belem with the others. "Capital! capital!" repeated Fragoso unceasingly; "but I never thought Para was such a long way off!" As for Manoel and Benito, they had had a long conversation about what had passed. There could be no question about obtaining from Joam Garral the dismissal of his rescuer. "Your life is precious to me above all things!" Torres had said. This reply, hyperbolical and enigmatical at the time, Benito had heard and remembered. In the meantime the young men could do nothing. More than ever they were reduced to waiting—to waiting not for four or five days, but for seven or eight weeks—that is to say, for whatever time it would take for the raft to get to Belem. "There is in all this some mystery that I cannot understand," said Benito. "Yes, but we are assured on one point," answered Manoel. "It is certain that Torres does not want your father's life. For the rest, we must still watch!" It seemed that from this day Torres desired to keep himself more reserved. He did not seek to intrude on the family, and was even less assiduous toward Minha. There seemed a relief in the situation of which all, save perhaps Joam Garral, felt the gravity. On the evening of the same day they left on the right the island of Baroso, formed by a furo of that name, and Lake Manaori, which is fed by a confused series of petty tributaries. The night passed without incident, though Joam Garral had advised them to watch with great care. On the morrow, the 20th of August, the pilot, who kept near the right bank on account of the uncertain eddies on the left, entered between the bank and the islands. Beyond this bank the country was dotted with large and small lakes, much as those of Calderon, Huarandeina, and other black-watered lagoons. This water system marks the approach of the Rio Negro, the most remarkable of all the tributaries of the Amazon. In reality the main river still bore the name of the Solimoens, and it is only after the junction of the Rio Negro that it takes the name which has made it celebrated among the rivers of the globe. During this day the raft had to be worked under curious conditions. The arm followed by the pilot, between Calderon Island and the shore, was very narrow, although it appeared sufficiently large. This was owing to a great portion of the island being slightly above the mean level, but still covered by the high flood waters. On each side were massed forests of giant trees, whose summits towered some fifty feet above the ground, and joining one bank to the other formed an immense cradle. On the left nothing could be more picturesque than this flooded forest, which seemed to have been planted in the middle of a lake. The stems of the trees arose from the clear, still water, in which every interlacement of their boughs was reflected with unequaled purity. They were arranged on an immense sheet of glass, like the trees in miniature on some table epergne, and their reflection could not be more perfect. The difference between the image and the reality could scarcely be described. Duplicates of grandeur, terminated above and below by a vast parasol of green, they seemed to form two hemispheres, inside which the jangada appeared to follow one of the great circles. It had been necessary to bring the raft under these boughs, against which flowed the gentle current of the stream. It was impossible to go back. Hence the task of navigating with extreme care, so as to avoid the collisions on either side. In this all Araujo's ability was shown, and he was admirably seconded by his crew. The trees of the forest furnished the resting-places for the long poles which kept the jangada in its course. The least blow to the jangada would have endangered the complete demolition of the woodwork, and caused the loss, if not of the crew, of the greater part of the cargo. "It is truly very beautiful," said Minha, "and it would be very pleasant for us always to travel in this way, on this quiet water, shaded from the rays of the sun." "At the same time pleasant and dangerous, dear Minha," said Manoel. "In a pirogue there is doubtless nothing to fear in sailing here, but on a huge raft of wood better have a free course and a clear stream." "We shall be quite through the forest in a couple of hours," said the pilot. "Look well at it, then!" said Lina. "All these beautiful things pass so quickly! Ah! dear mistress! do you see the troops of monkeys disporting in the higher branches, and the birds admiring themselves in the pellucid water!" "And the flowers half-opened on the surface," replied Minha, "and which the current dandles like the breeze!" "And the long lianas, which so oddly stretch from one tree to another!" added the young mulatto. "And no Fragoso at the end of them!" said Lina's betrothed. "That was rather a nice flower you gathered in the forest of Iquitos!" "Just behold the flower—the only one in the world," said Lina quizzingly; "and, mistress! just look at the splendid plants!" And Lina pointed to the nymphæas with their colossal leaves, whose flowers bear buds as large as cocoanuts. Then, just where the banks plunged beneath the waters, there were clumps of "mucumus," reeds with large leaves, whose elastic stems bend to give passage to the pirogues and close again behind them. There was there what would tempt any sportsman, for a whole world of aquatic birds fluttered between the higher clusters, which shook with the stream. Ibises half-lollingly posed on some old trunk, and gray herons motionless on one leg, solemn flamingoes who from a distance looked like red umbrellas scattered in the foliage, and phenicopters of every color, enlivened the temporary morass. And along the top of the water glided long and swiftly-swimming snakes, among them the formidable gymnotus, whose electric discharges successively repeated paralyze the most robust of men or animals, and end by dealing death. Precautions had to be taken against the "sucurijus" serpents, which, coiled round the trunk of some tree, unroll themselves, hang down, seize their prey, and draw it into their rings, which are powerful enough to crush a bullock. Have there not been met with in these Amazonian forests reptiles from thirty to thirty-five feet long? and even, according to M. Carrey, do not some exist whose length reaches forty-seven feet, and whose girth is that of a hogshead? Had one of these sucurijus, indeed, got on to the raft he would have proved as formidable as an alligator. Very fortunately the travelers had to contend with neither gymnotus nor sucuriju, and the passage across the submerged forest, which lasted about two hours, was effected without accident. Three days passed. They neared Manaos. Twenty-four hours more and the raft would be off the mouth of the Rio Negro, before the capital of the province of Amazones. In fact, on the 23d of August, at five o'clock in the evening, they stopped at the southern point of Muras Island, on the right bank of the stream. They only had to cross obliquely for a few miles to arrive at the port, but the pilot Araujo very properly would not risk it on that day, as night was coming on. The three miles which remained would take three hours to travel, and to keep to the course of the river it was necessary, above all things, to have a clear outlook. This evening the dinner, which promised to be the last of this first part of the voyage, was not served without a certain amount of ceremony. Half the journey on the Amazon had been accomplished, and the task was worthy of a jovial repast. It was fitting to drink to the health of Amazones a few glasses of that generous liquor which comes from the coasts of Oporto and Setubal. Besides, this was, in a way, the betrothal dinner of Fragoso and the charming Lina—that of Manoel and Minha had taken place at the fazenda of Iquitos several weeks before. After the young master and mistress, it was the turn of the faithful couple who were attached to them by so many bonds of gratitude. So Lina, who was to remain in the service of Minha, and Fragoso, who was about to enter into that of Manoel Valdez, sat at the common table, and even had the places of honor reserved for them. Torres, naturally, was present at the dinner, which was worthy of the larder and kitchen of the jangada. The adventurer, seated opposite to Joam Garral, who was always taciturn, listened to all that was said, but took no part in the conversation. Benito quietly and attentively watched him. The eyes of Torres, with a peculiar expression, constantly sought his father. One would have called them the eyes of some wild beast trying to fascinate his prey before he sprang on it. Manoel talked mostly with Minha. Between whiles his eyes wandered to Torres, but he acted his part more successfully than Benito in a situation which, if it did not finish at Manaos, would certainly end at Belem. The dinner was jolly enough. Lina kept it going with her good humor, Fragoso with his witty repartees. The Padre Passanha looked gayly round on the little world he cherished, and on the two young couples which his hands would shortly bless in the waters of Para. "Eat, padre," said Benito, who joined in the general conversation; "do honor to this betrothal dinner. You will want some strength to celebrate both marriages at once!" "Well, my dear boy," replied Passanha, "seek out some lovely and gentle girl who wishes you well, and you will see that I can marry you at the same time!" "Well answered, padre!" exclaimed Manoel. "Let us drink to the coming marriage of Benito." "We must look out for some nice young lady at Belem," said Minha. "He should do what everybody else does." "To the wedding of Mr. Benito!" said Fragoso, "who ought to wish all the world to marry him!" "They are right, sir," said Yaquita. "I also drink to your marriage, and may you be as happy as Minha and Manoel, and as I and your father have been!" "As you always will be, it is to be hoped," said Torres, drinking a glass of port without having pledged anybody. "All here have their happiness in their own hands." It was difficult to say, but this wish, coming from the adventurer, left an unpleasant impression. Manoel felt this, and wishing to destroy its effect, "Look here, padre," said he, "while we are on this subject, are there not any more couples to betroth on the raft?" "I do not know," answered Padre Passanha, "unless Torres—you are not married, I believe?" "No; I am, and always shall be, a bachelor." Benito and Manoel thought that while thus speaking Torres looked toward Minha. "And what should prevent you marrying?" replied Padre Passanha; "at Belem you could find a wife whose age would suit yours, and it would be possible perhaps for you to settle in that town. That would be better than this wandering life, of which, up to the present, you have not made so very much." "You are right, padre," answered Torres; "I do not say no. Besides the example is contagious. Seeing all these young couples gives me rather a longing for marriage. But I am quite a stranger in Belem, and, for certain reasons, that would make my settlement more difficult." "Where do you come from, then?" asked Fragoso, who always had the idea that he had already met Torres somewhere. "From the province of Minas Geraes." "And you were born——" "In the capital of the diamond district, Tijuco." Those who had seen Joam Garral at this moment would have been surprised at the fixity of his look which met that of Torres.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

ANCIENT HISTORY

But the conversation was continued by Fragoso, who immediately rejoined: "What! you come from Tijuco, from the very capital of the diamond district?" "Yes," said Torres. "Do you hail from that province?" "No! I come from the Atlantic seaboard in the north of Brazil," replied Fragoso. "You do not know this diamond country, Mr. Manoel?" asked Torres. A negative shake of the head from the young man was the only reply. "And you, Mr. Benito," continued Torres, addressing the younger Garral, whom he evidently wished to join in the conversation; "you have never had curiosity enough to visit the diamond arraval?" "Never," dryly replied Benito. "Ah! I should like to see that country," said Fragoso, who unconsciously played Torres' game. "It seems to me I should finish by picking up a diamond worth something considerable." "And what would you do with this diamond worth something considerable, Fragoso?" queried Lina. "Sell it!" "Then you would get rich all of a sudden!" "Very rich!" "Well, if you had been rich three months ago you would never have had the idea of—that liana!" "And if I had not had that," exclaimed Fragoso, "I should not have found a charming little wife who—well, assuredly, all is for the best!" "You see, Fragoso," said Minha, "when you marry Lina, diamond takes the place of diamond, and you do not lose by the change!" "To be sure, Miss Minha," gallantly replied Fragoso; "rather I gain!" There could be no doubt that Torres did not want the subject to drop, for he went on with: "It is a fact that at Tijuco sudden fortunes are realized enough to turn any man's head! Have you heard tell of the famous diamond of Abaete, which was valued at more than two million contos of reis? Well, this stone, which weighed an ounce, came from the Brazilian mines! And they were three convicts—yes! three men sentenced to transportation for life—who found it by chance in the River Abaete, at ninety leagues from Terro de Frio." "At a stroke their fortune was made?" asked Fragoso. "No," replied Torres; "the diamond was handed over to the governor-general of the mines. The value of the stone was recognized, and King John VI., of Portugal, had it cut, and wore it on his neck on great occasions. As for the convicts, they got their pardon, but that was all, and the cleverest could not get much of an income out of that!" "You, doubtless?" said Benito very dryly. "Yes—I? Why not?" answered Torres. "Have you ever been to the diamond district?" added he, this time addressing Joam Garral. "Never!" said Joam, looking straight at him. "That is a pity!" replied he. "You should go there one day. It is a very curious place, I assure you. The diamond valley is an isolated spot in the vast empire of Brazil, something like a park of a dozen leagues in circumference, which in the nature of its soil, its vegetation, and its sandy rocks surrounded by a circle of high mountains, differs considerably from the neighboring provinces. But, as I have told you, it is one of the richest places in the world, for from 1807 to 1817 the annual return was about eighteen thousand carats. Ah! there have been some rare finds there, not only for the climbers who seek the precious stone up to the very tops of the mountains, but also for the smugglers who fraudulently export it. But the work in the mines is not so pleasant, and the two thousand negroes employed in that work by the government are obliged even to divert the watercourses to get at the diamantiferous sand. Formerly it was easier work." "In short," said Fragoso, "the good time has gone!" "But what is still easy is to get the diamonds in scoundrel-fashion—that is, by theft; and—stop! in 1826, when I was about eight years old, a terrible drama happened at Tijuco, which showed that criminal would recoil from nothing if they could gain a fortune by one bold stroke. But perhaps you are not interested?" "On the contrary, Torres; go on," replied Joam Garral, in a singularly calm voice. "So be it," answered Torres. "Well, the story is about stealing diamonds, and a handful of those pretty stones is worth a million, sometimes two!" And Torres, whose face expressed the vilest sentiments of cupidity, almost unconsciously made a gesture of opening and shutting his hand. "This is what happened," he continued. "At Tijuco it is customary to send off in one delivery the diamonds collected during the year. They are divided into two lots, according to their size, after being sorted in a dozen sieves with holes of different dimensions. These lots are put into sacks and forwarded to Rio de Janeiro; but as they are worth many millions you may imagine they are heavily escorted. A workman chosen by the superintendent, four cavalrymen from the district regiment, and ten men on foot, complete the convoy. They first make for Villa Rica, where the commandant puts his seal on the sacks, and then the convoy continues its journey to Rio de Janeiro. I should add that, for the sake of precaution, the start is always kept secret. Well, in 1826, a young fellow named Dacosta, who was about twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, and who for some years had been employed at Tijuco in the offices of the governor-general, devised the following scheme. He leagued himself with a band of smugglers, and informed them of the date of the departure of the convoy. The scoundrels took their measures accordingly. They were numerous and well armed. Close to Villa Rica, during the night of the 22d of January, the gang suddenly attacked the diamond escort, who defended themselves bravely, but were all massacred, with the exception of one man, who, seriously wounded, managed to escape and bring the news of the horrible deed. The workman was not spared any more than the soldiers. He fell beneath he blows of the thieves, and was doubtless dragged away and thrown over some precipice, for his body was never found." "And this Dacosta?" asked Joam Garral. "Well, his crime did not do him much good, for suspicion soon pointed toward him. He was accused of having got up the affair. In vain he protested that he was innocent. Thanks to the situation he held, he was in a position to know the date on which the convoy's departure was to take place. He alone could have informed the smugglers. He was charged, arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. Such a sentence required his execution in twenty-four hours." "Was the fellow executed?" asked Fragoso. "No," replied Torres; "they shut him up in the prison at Villa Rica, and during the night, a few hours only before his execution, whether alone or helped by others, he managed to escape." "Has this young man been heard of since?" asked Joam Garral. "Never," replied Torres. "He probably left Brazil, and now, in some distant land, lives a cheerful life with the proceeds of the robbery which he is sure to have realized." "Perhaps, on the other hand, he died miserably!" answered Joam Garral. "And, perhaps," added Padre Passanha, "Heaven caused him to feel remorse for his crime." Here they all rose from the table, and, having finished their dinner, went out to breathe the evening air. The sun was low on the horizon, but an hour had still to elapse before nightfall. "These stories are not very lively," said Fragoso, "and our betrothal dinner was best at the beginning." "But it was your fault, Fragoso," answered Lina. "How my fault?" "It was you who went on talking about the district and the diamonds, when you should not have done so." "Well, that's true," replied Fragoso; "but I had no idea we were going to wind up in that fashion." "You are the first to blame!" "And the first to be punished, Miss Lina; for I did not hear you laugh all through the dessert." The whole family strolled toward the bow of the jangada. Manoel and Benito walked one behind the other without speaking. Yaquita and her daughter silently followed, and all felt an unaccountable impression of sadness, as if they had a presentiment of some coming calamity. Torres stepped up to Joam Garral, who, with bowed head, seemed to be lost in thought, and putting his hand on his shoulder, said, "Joam Garral, may I have a few minutes' conversation with you?" Joam looked at Torres. "Here?" he asked. "No; in private." "Come, then." They went toward the house, entered it, and the door was shut on them. It would be difficult to depict what every one felt when Joam Garral and Torres disappeared. What could there be in common between the adventurer and the honest fazender of Iquitos? The menace of some frightful misfortune seemed to hang over the whole family, and they scarcely dared speak to each other. "Manoel!" said Benito, seizing his friend's arm, "whatever happens, this man must leave us tomorrow at Manaos." "Yes! it is imperative!" answered Manoel. "And if through him some misfortune happens to my father—I shall kill him!"

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

BETWEEN THE TWO MEN

For a moment, alone in the room, where none could see or hear them, Joam Garral and Torres looked at each other without uttering a word. Did the adventurer hesitate to speak? Did he suspect that Joam Garral would only reply to his demands by a scornful silence? Yes! Probably so. So Torres did not question him. At the outset of the conversation he took the affirmative, and assumed the part of an accuser. "Joam," he said, "your name is not Garral. Your name is Dacosta!" At the guilty name which Torres thus gave him, Joam Garral could not repress a slight shudder. "You are Joam Dacosta," continued Torres, "who, twenty-five years ago, were a clerk in the governor-general's office at Tijuco, and you are the man who was sentenced to death in this affair of the robbery and murder!" No response from Joam Garral, whose strange tranquillity surprised the adventurer. Had he made a mistake in accusing his host? No! For Joam Garral made no start at the terrible accusations. Doubtless he wanted to know to what Torres was coming. "Joam Dacosta, I repeat! It was you whom they sought for this diamond affair, whom they convicted of crime and sentenced to death, and it was you who escaped from the prison at Villa Rica a few hours before you should have been executed! Do you not answer?" Rather a long silence followed this direct question which Torres asked. Joam Garral, still calm, took a seat. His elbow rested on a small table, and he looked fixedly at his accuser without bending his head. "Will you reply?" repeated Torres. "What reply do you want from me?" said Joam quietly. "A reply," slowly answered Torres, "that will keep me from finding out the chief of the police at Manaos, and saying to him, 'A man is there whose identity can easily be established, who can be recognized even after twenty-five years' absence, and this man was the instigator of the diamond robbery at Tijuco. He was the accomplice of the murderers of the soldiers of the escort; he is the man who escaped from execution; he is Joam Garral, whose true name is Joam Dacosta.'" "And so, Torres," said Joam Garral, "I shall have nothing to fear from you if I give the answer you require?" "Nothing, for neither you nor I will have any interest in talking about the matter." "Neither you nor I?" asked Joam Garral. "It is not with money, then, that your silence is to be bought?" "No! No matter how much you offered me!" "What do you want, then?" "Joam Garral," replied Torres, "here is my proposal. Do not be in a hurry to reply by a formal refusal. Remember that you are in my power." "What is this proposal?" asked Joam. Torres hesitated for a moment. The attitude of this guilty man, whose life he held in his hands, was enough to astonish him. He had expected a stormy discussion and prayers and tears. He had before him a man convicted of the most heinous of crimes, and the man never flinched. At length, crossing his arms, he said: "You have a daughter!—I like her—and I want to marry her!" Apparently Joam Garral expected anything from such a man, and was as quiet as before. "And so," he said, "the worthy Torres is anxious to enter the family of a murderer and a thief?" "I am the sole judge of what it suits me to do," said Torres. "I wish to be the son-in-law of Joam Garral, and I will." "You ignore, then, that my daughter is going to marry Manoel Valdez?" "You will break it off with Manoel Valdez!" "And if my daughter declines?" "If you tell her all, I have no doubt she would consent," was the impudent answer. "All?" "All, if necessary. Between her own feelings and the honor of her family and the life of her father she would not hesitate." "You are a consummate scoundrel, Torres," quietly said Joam, whose coolness never forsook him. "A scoundrel and a murderer were made to understand each other." At these words Joam Garral rose, advanced to the adventurer, and looking him straight in the face, "Torres," he said, "if you wish to become one of the family of Joam Dacosta, you ought to know that Joam Dacosta was innocent of the crime for which he was condemned." "Really!" "And I add," replied Joam, "that you hold the proof of his innocence, and are keeping it back to proclaim it on the day when you marry his daughter." "Fair play, Joam Garral," answered Torres, lowering his voice, "and when you have heard me out, you will see if you dare refuse me your daughter!" "I am listening, Torres." "Well," said the adventurer, half keeping back his words, as if he was sorry to let them escape from his lips, "I know you are innocent! I know it, for I know the true culprit, and I am in a position to prove your innocence." "And the unhappy man who committed the crime?" "Is dead." "Dead!" exclaimed Joam Garral; and the word made him turn pale, in spite of himself, as if it had deprived him of all power of reinstatement. "Dead," repeated Torres; "but this man, whom I knew a long time after his crime, and without knowing that he was a convict, had written out at length, in his own hand, the story of this affair of the diamonds, even to the smallest details. Feeling his end approaching, he was seized with remorse. He knew where Joam Dacosta had taken refuge, and under what name the innocent man had again begun a new life. He knew that he was rich, in the bosom of a happy family, but he knew also that there was no happiness for him. And this happiness he desired to add to the reputation to which he was entitled. But death came—he intrusted to me, his companion, to do what he could no longer do. He gave me the proofs of Dacosta's innocence for me to transmit them to him, and he died." "The man's name?" exclaimed Joam Garral, in a tone he could not control. "You will know it when I am one of your family." "And the writing?" Joam Garral was ready to throw himself on Torres, to search him, to snatch from him the proofs of his innocence. "The writing is in a safe place," replied Torres, "and you will not have it until your daughter has become my wife. Now will you still refuse me?" "Yes," replied Joam, "but in return for that paper the half of my fortune is yours." "The half of your fortune?" exclaimed Torres; "agreed, on condition that Minha brings it to me at her marriage." "And it is thus that you respect the wishes of a dying man, of a criminal tortured by remorse, and who has charge you to repair as much as he could the evil which he had done?" "It is thus." "Once more, Torres," said Joam Garral, "you are a consummate scoundrel." "Be it so." "And as I am not a criminal we were not made to understand one another." "And your refuse?" "I refuse." "It will be your ruin, then, Joam Garral. Everything accuses you in the proceedings that have already taken place. You are condemned to death, and you know, in sentences for crimes of that nature, the government is forbidden the right of commuting the penalty. Denounced, you are taken; taken, you are executed. And I will denounce you." Master as he was of himself, Joam could stand it no longer. He was about to rush on Torres. A gesture from the rascal cooled his anger. "Take care," said Torres, "your wife knows not that she is the wife of Joam Dacosta, your children do not know they are the children of Joam Dacosta, and you are not going to give them the information." Joam Garral stopped himself. He regained his usual command over himself, and his features recovered their habitual calm. "This discussion has lasted long enough," said he, moving toward the door, "and I know what there is left for me to do." "Take care, Joam Garral!" said Torres, for the last time, for he could scarcely believe that his ignoble attempt at extortion had collapsed. Joam Garral made him no answer. He threw back the door which opened under the veranda, made a sign to Torres to follow him, and they advanced toward the center of the jangada, where the family were assembled. Benito, Manoel, and all of them, under a feeling of deep anxiety, had risen. They could see that the bearing of Torres was still menacing, and that the fire of anger still shone in his eyes. In extraordinary contrast, Joam Garral was master of himself, and almost smiling. Both of them stopped before Yaquita and her people. Not one dared to say a word to them. It was Torres who, in a hollow voice, and with his customary impudence, broke the painful silence. "For the last time, Joam Garral," he said, "I ask you for a last reply!" "And here is my reply." And addressing his wife: "Yaquita," he said, "peculiar circumstances oblige me to alter what we have formerly decided as to the marriage of Minha and Manoel." "At last!" exclaimed Torres. Joam Garral, without answering him, shot at the adventurer a glance of the deepest scorn. But at the words Manoel had felt his heart beat as if it would break. The girl arose, ashy pale, as if she would seek shelter by the side of her mother. Yaquita opened her arms to protect, to defend her. "Father," said Benito, who had placed himself between Joam Garral and Torres, "what were you going to say?" "I was going to say," answered Joam Garral, raising his voice, "that to wait for our arrival in Para for the wedding of Minha and Manoel is to wait too long. The marriage will take place here, not later than to-morrow, on the jangada, with the aid of Padre Passanha, if, after a conversation I am about to have with Manoel, he agrees with me to defer it no longer." "Ah, father, father!" exclaimed the young man. "Wait a little before you call me so, Manoel," replied Joam, in a tone of unspeakable suffering. Here Torres, with crossed arms, gave the whole family a look of inconceivable insolence. "So that is you last word?" said he, extending his hand toward Joam Garral. "No, that is not my last word." "What is it, then?" "This, Torres. I am master here. You will be off, if you please, and even if you do not please, and leave the jangada at this very instant!" "Yes, this instant!" exclaimed Benito, "or I will throw you overboard." Torres shrugged his shoulders. "No threats," he said; "they are of no use. It suits me also to land, and without delay. But you will remember me, Joam Garral. We shall not be long before we meet." "If it only depends on me," answered Joam Garral, "we shall soon meet, and rather sooner, perhaps, than you will like. To-morrow I shall be with Judge Ribeiro, the first magistrate of the province, whom I have advised of my arrival at Manaos. If you dare, meet me there!" "At Judge Ribeiro's?" said Torres, evidently disconcerted. "At Judge Ribeiro's," answered Joam Garral. And then, showing the pirogue to Torres, with a gesture of supreme contempt Joam Garral ordered four of his people to land him without delay on the nearest point of the island. The scoundrel at last disappeared. The family, who were still appalled, respected the silence of its chief; but Fragoso, comprehending scarce half the gravity of the situation, and carried away by his customary vivacity, came up to Joam Garral. "If the wedding of Miss Minha and Mr. Manoel is to take place to-morrow on the raft——" "Yours shall take place at the same time," kindly answered Joam Garral. And making a sign to Manoel, he retired to his room with him. The interview between Joam and Manoel had lasted for half an hour, and it seemed a century to the family, when the door of the room was reopened. Manoel came out alone; his face glowed with generous resolution. Going up to Yaquita, he said, "My mother!" to Minha he said, "My wife!" and to Benito he said, "My brother!" and, turning toward Lina and Fragoso, he said to all, "To-morrow!" He knew all that had passed between Joam Garral and Torres. He knew that, counting on the protection of Judge Ribeiro, by means of a correspondence which he had had with him for a year past without speaking of it to his people, Joam Garral had at last succeeded in clearing himself and convincing him of his innocence. He knew that Joam Garral had boldly undertaken the voyage with the sole object of canceling the hateful proceedings of which he had been the victim, so as not to leave on his daughter and son-in-law the weight of the terrible situation which he had had to endure so long himself. Yes, Manoel knew all this, and, further, he knew that Joam Garral—or rather Joam Dacosta—was innocent, and his misfortunes made him even dearer and more devoted to him. What he did not know was that the material proof of the innocence of the fazender existed, and that this proof was in the hands of Torres. Joam Garral wished to reserve for the judge himself the use of this proof, which, if the adventurer had spoken truly, would demonstrate his innocence. Manoel confined himself, then, to announcing that he was going to Padre Passanha to ask him to get things ready for the two weddings. Next day, the 24th of August, scarcely an hour before the ceremony was to take place, a large pirogue came off from the left bank of the river and hailed the jangada. A dozen paddlers had swiftly brought it from Manaos, and with a few men it carried the chief of the police, who made himself known and came on board. At the moment Joam Garral and his family, attired for the ceremony, were coming out of the house. "Joam Garral?" asked the chief of the police. "I am here," replied Joam. "Joam Garral," continued the chief of the police, "you have also been Joam Dacosta; both names have been borne by the same man—I arrest you!" At these words Yaquita and Minha, struck with stupor, stopped without any power to move. "My father a murderer?" exclaimed Benito, rushing toward Joam Garral. By a gesture his father silenced him. "I will only ask you one question," said Joam with firm voice, addressing the chief of police. "Has the warrant in virtue of which you arrest me been issued against me by the justice at Manaos—by Judge Ribeiro?" "No," answered the chief of the police, "it was given to me, with an order for its immediate execution, by his substitute. Judge Ribeiro was struck with apoplexy yesterday evening, and died during the night at two o'clock, without having recovered his consciousness." "Dead!" exclaimed Joam Garral, crushed for a moment by the news—"dead! dead!" But soon raising his head, he said to his wife and children, "Judge Ribeiro alone knew that I was innocent, my dear ones. The death of the judge may be fatal to me, but that is no reason for me to despair." And, turning toward Manoel, "Heaven help us!" he said to him; "we shall see if truth will come down to the earth from Above." The chief of the police made a sign to his men, who advanced to secure Joam Garral. "But speak, father!" shouted Benito, mad with despair; "say one word, and we shall contest even by force this horrible mistake of which you are the victim!" "There is no mistake here, my son," replied Joam Garral; "Joam Dacosta and Joam Garral are one. I am in truth Joam Dacosta! I am the honest man whom a legal error unjustly doomed to death twenty-five years ago in the place of the true culprit! That I am quite innocent I swear before Heaven, once for all, on your heads, my children, and on the head of your mother!" "All communication between you and yours is now forbidden," said the chief of the police. "You are my prisoner, Joam Garral, and I will rigorously execute my warrant." Joam restrained by a gesture his dismayed children and servants. "Let the justice of man be done while we wait for the justice of God!" And with his head unbent, he stepped into the pirogue. It seemed, indeed, as though of all present Joam Garral was the only one whom this fearful thunderbolt, which had fallen so unexpectedly on his head, had failed to overwhelm.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE CRYPTOGRAM

[ MANAOS ] The town of Manaos is in 3° 8' 4" south latitude, and 67° 27' west longitude, reckoning from the Paris meridian. It is some four hundred and twenty leagues from Belem, and about ten miles from the embouchure of the Rio Negro. Manaos is not built on the Amazon. It is on the left bank of the Rio Negro, the most important and remarkable of all the tributaries of the great artery of Brazil, that the capital of the province, with its picturesque group of private houses and public buildings, towers above the surrounding plain. The Rio Negro, which was discovered by the Spaniard Favella in 1645, rises in the very heart of the province of Popayan, on the flanks of the mountains which separate Brazil from New Grenada, and it communicates with the Orinoco by two of its affluents, the Pimichin and the Cassiquary. After a noble course of some seventeen hundred miles it mingles its cloudy waters with those of the Amazon through a mouth eleven hundred feet wide, but such is its vigorous influx that many a mile has to be completed before those waters lose their distinctive character. Hereabouts the ends of both its banks trend off and form a huge bay fifteen leagues across, extending to the islands of Anavilhanas; and in one of its indentations the port of Manaos is situated. Vessels of all kinds are there collected in great numbers, some moored in the stream awaiting a favorable wind, others under repair up the numerous iguarapes, or canals, which so capriciously intersect the town, and give it its slightly Dutch appearance. With the introduction of steam vessels, which is now rapidly taking place, the trade of Manaos is destined to increase enormously. Woods used in building and furniture work, cocoa, caoutchouc, coffee, sarsaparilla, sugar-canes, indigo, muscado nuts, salt fish, turtle butter, and other commodities, are brought here from all parts, down the innumerable streams into the Rio Negro from the west and north, into the Madeira from the west and south, and then into the Amazon, and by it away eastward to the coast of the Atlantic. Manaos was formerly called Moura, or Barra de Rio Negro. From 1757 to 1804 it was only part of the captaincy which bears the name of the great river at whose mouth it is placed; but since 1826 it has been the capital of the large province of Amazones, borrowing its latest name from an Indian tribe which formerly existed in these parts of equatorial America. Careless travelers have frequently confounded it with the famous Manoa, a city of romance, built, it was reported, near the legendary lake of Parima—which would seem to be merely the Upper Branco, a tributary of the Rio Negro. Here was the Empire of El Dorado, whose monarch, if we are to believe the fables of the district, was every morning covered with powder of gold, there being so much of the precious metal abounding in this privileged locality that it was swept up with the very dust of the streets. This assertion, however, when put to the test, was disproved, and with extreme regret, for the auriferous deposits which had deceived the greedy scrutiny of the gold-seekers turned out to be only worthless flakes of mica! In short, Manaos has none of the fabulous splendors of the mythical capital of El Dorado. It is an ordinary town of about five thousand inhabitants, and of these at least three thousand are in government employ. This fact is to be attributed to the number of its public buildings, which consist of the legislative chamber, the government house, the treasury, the post-office, and the custom-house, and, in addition, a college founded in 1848, and a hospital erected in 1851. When with these is also mentioned a cemetery on the south side of a hill, on which, in 1669, a fortress, which has since been demolished, was thrown up against the pirates of the Amazon, some idea can be gained as to the importance of the official establishments of the city. Of religious buildings it would be difficult to find more than two, the small Church of the Conception and the Chapel of Notre Dame des Remedes, built on a knoll which overlooks the town. These are very few for a town of Spanish origin, though to them should perhaps be added the Carmelite Convent, burned down in 1850, of which only the ruins remain. The population of Manaos does not exceed the number above given, and after reckoning the public officials and soldiers, is principally made of up Portuguese and Indian merchants belonging to the different tribes of the Rio Negro. Three principal thoroughfares of considerable irregularity run through the town, and they bear names highly characteristic of the tone of thought prevalent in these parts—God-the-Father Street, God-the-Son Street, and God-the-Holy Ghost Street! In the west of the town is a magnificent avenue of centenarian orange trees which were carefully respected by the architects who out of the old city made the new. Round these principal thoroughfares is interwoven a perfect network of unpaved alleys, intersected every now and then by four canals, which are occasionally crossed by wooden bridges. In a few places these iguarapes flow with their brownish waters through large vacant spaces covered with straggling weeds and flowers of startling hues, and here and there are natural squares shaded by magnificent trees, with an occasional white-barked sumaumeira shooting up, and spreading out its large dome-like parasol above its gnarled branches. The private houses have to be sought for among some hundreds of dwellings, of very rudimentary type, some roofed with tiles, others with interlaced branches of the palm-tree, and with prominent miradors, and projecting shops for the most part tenanted by Portuguese traders. And what manner of people are they who stroll on to the fashionable promenade from the public buildings and private residences? Men of good appearance, with black cloth coats, chimney-pot hats, patent-leather boots, highly-colored gloves, and diamond pins in their necktie bows; and women in loud, imposing toilets, with flounced dressed and headgear of the latest style; and Indians, also on the road to Europeanization in a way which bids fair to destroy every bit of local color in this central portion of the district of the Amazon! Such is Manaos, which, for the benefit of the reader, it was necessary to sketch. Here the voyage of the giant raft, so tragically interrupted, had just come to a pause in the midst of its long journey, and here will be unfolded the further vicissitudes of the mysterious history of the fazender of Iquitos.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE FIRST MOMENTS

Scarcely had the pirogue which bore off Joam Garral, or rather Joam Dacosta—for it is more convenient that he should resume his real name—disappeared, than Benito stepped up to Manoel. "What is it you know?" he asked. "I know that your father is innocent! Yes, innocent!" replied Manoel, "and that he was sentenced to death twenty-three years ago for a crime which he never committed!" "He has told you all about it, Manoel?" "All about it," replied the young man. "The noble fazender did not wish that any part of his past life should be hidden from him who, when he marries his daughter, is to be his second son." "And the proof of his innocence my father can one day produce?" "That proof, Benito, lies wholly in the twenty-three years of an honorable and honored life, lies entirely in the bearing of Joam Dacosta, who comes forward to say to justice, 'Here am I! I do not care for this false existence any more. I do not care to hide under a name which is not my true one! You have condemned an innocent man! Confess your errors and set matters right.'" "And when my father spoke like that, you did not hesitate for a moment to believe him?" "Not for an instant," replied Manoel. The hands of the two young fellows closed in a long and cordial grasp. Then Benito went up to Padre Passanha. "Padre," he said, "take my mother and sister away to their rooms. Do not leave them all day. No one here doubts my father's innocence—not one, you know that! To-morrow my mother and I will seek out the chief of the police. They will not refuse us permission to visit the prison. No! that would be too cruel. We will see my father again, and decide what steps shall be taken to procure his vindication." Yaquita was almost helpless, but the brave woman, though nearly crushed by this sudden blow, arose. With Yaquita Dacosta it was as with Yaquita Garral. She had not a doubt as to the innocence of her husband. The idea even never occurred to her that Joam Dacosta had been to blame in marrying her under a name which was not his own. She only thought of the life of happiness she had led with the noble man who had been injured so unjustly. Yes! On the morrow she would go to the gate of the prison, and never leave it until it was opened! Padre Passanha took her and her daughter, who could not restrain her tears, and the three entered the house. The two young fellows found themselves alone. "And now," said Benito, "I ought to know all that my father has told you." "I have nothing to hide from you." "Why did Torres come on board the jangada?" "To see to Joam Dacosta the secret of his past life." "And so, when we first met Torres in the forest of Iquitos, his plan had already been formed to enter into communication with my father?" "There cannot be a doubt of it," replied Manoel. "The scoundrel was on his way to the fazenda with the idea of consummating a vile scheme of extortion which he had been preparing for a long time." "And when he learned from us that my father and his whole family were about to pass the frontier, he suddenly changed his line of conduct?" "Yes. Because Joam Dacosta once in Brazilian territory became more at his mercy than while within the frontiers of Peru. That is why we found Torres at Tabatinga, where he was waiting in expectation of our arrival." "And it was I who offered him a passage on the raft!" exclaimed Benito, with a gesture of despair. "Brother," said Manoel, "you need not reproach yourself. Torres would have joined us sooner or later. He was not the man to abandon such a trail. Had we lost him at Tabatinga, we should have found him at Manaos." "Yes, Manoel, you are right. But we are not concerned with the past now. We must think of the present. An end to useless recriminations! Let us see!" And while speaking, Benito, passing his hand across his forehead, endeavored to grasp the details of the strange affair. "How," he asked, "did Torres ascertain that my father had been sentenced twenty-three years back for this abominable crime at Tijuco?" "I do not know," answered Manoel, "and everything leads me to think that your father did not know that." "But Torres knew that Garral was the name under which Joam Dacosta was living?" "Evidently." "And he knew that it was in Peru, at Iquitos, that for so many years my father had taken refuge?" "He knew it," said Manoel, "but how he came to know it I do not understand." "One more question," continued Benito. "What was the proposition that Torres made to my father during the short interview which preceded his expulsion?" "He threatened to denounce Joam Garral as being Joam Dacosta, if he declined to purchase his silence." "And at what price?" "At the price of his daughter's hand!" answered Manoel unhesitatingly, but pale with anger. "The scoundrel dared to do that!" exclaimed Benito. "To this infamous request, Benito, you saw the reply that your father gave." "Yes, Manoel, yes! The indignant reply of an honest man. He kicked Torres off the raft. But it is not enough to have kicked him out. No! That will not do for me. It was on Torres' information that they came here and arrested my father; is not that so?" "Yes, on his denunciation." "Very well," continued Benito, shaking his fist toward the left bank of the river, "I must find out Torres. I must know how he became master of the secret. He must tell me if he knows the real author of this crime. He shall speak out. And if he does not speak out, I know what I shall have to do." "What you will have to do is for me to do as well!" added Manoel, more coolly, but not less resolutely. "No! Manoel, no, to me alone!" "We are brothers, Benito," replied Manoel. "The right of demanding an explanation belongs to us both." Benito made no reply. Evidently on that subject his decision was irrevocable. At this moment the pilot Araujo, who had been observing the state of the river, came up to them. "Have you decided," he asked, "if the raft is to remain at her moorings at the Isle of Muras, or to go on to the port of Manaos?" The question had to be decided before nightfall, and the sooner it was settled the better. In fact, the news of the arrest of Joam Dacosta ought already to have spread through the town. That it was of a nature to excite the interest of the population of Manaos could scarcely be doubted. But would it provoke more than curiosity against the condemned man, who was the principal author of the crime of Tijuco, which had formerly created such a sensation? Ought they not to fear that some popular movement might be directed against the prisoner? In the face of this hypothesis was it not better to leave the jangada moored near the Isle of Muras on the right bank of the river at a few miles from Manaos? The pros and cons of the question were well weighed. "No!" at length exclaimed Benito; "to remain here would look as though we were abandoning my father and doubting his innocence—as though we were afraid to make common cause with him. We must go to Manaos, and without delay." "You are right," replied Manoel. "Let us go." Araujo, with an approving nod, began his preparations for leaving the island. The maneuver necessitated a good deal of care. They had to work the raft slantingly across the current of the Amazon, here doubled in force by that of the Rio Negro, and to make for the embouchure of the tributary about a dozen miles down on the left bank. The ropes were cast off from the island. The jangada, again started on the river, began to drift off diagonally. Araujo, cleverly profiting by the bendings of the current, which were due to the projections of the banks, and assisted by the long poles of his crew, succeeded in working the immense raft in the desired direction. In two hours the jangada was on the other side of the Amazon, a little above the mouth of the Rio Negro, and fairly in the current which was to take it to the lower bank of the vast bay which opened on the left side of the stream. At five o'clock in the evening it was strongly moored alongside this bank, not in the port of Manaos itself, which it could not enter without stemming a rather powerful current, but a short mile below it. The raft was then in the black waters of the Rio Negro, near rather a high bluff covered with cecropias with buds of reddish-brown, and palisaded with stiff-stalked reeds called "froxas," of which the Indians make some of their weapons. A few citizens were strolling about the bank. A feeling of curiosity had doubtless attracted them to the anchorage of the raft. The news of the arrest of Joam Dacosta had soon spread about, but the curiosity of the Manaens did not outrun their discretion, and they were very quiet. Benito's intention had been to land that evening, but Manoel dissuaded him. "Wait till to-morrow," he said; "night is approaching, and there is no necessity for us to leave the raft." "So be it! To-morrow!" answered Benito. And here Yaquita, followed by her daughter and Padre Passanha, came out of the house. Minha was still weeping, but her mother's face was tearless, and she had that look of calm resolution which showed that the wife was now ready for all things, either to do her duty or to insist on her rights. Yaquita slowly advanced toward Manoel. "Manoel," she said, "listen to what I have to say, for my conscience commands me to speak as I am about to do." "I am listening," replied Manoel. Yaquita, looking him straight in the face, continued: "Yesterday, after the interview you had with Joam Dacosta, my husband, you came to me and called me—mother! You took Minha's hand, and called her—your wife! You then knew everything, and the past life of Joam Dacosta had been disclosed to you." "Yes," answered Manoel, "and heaven forbid I should have had any hesitation in doing so!" "Perhaps so," replied Yaquita; "but then Joam Dacosta had not been arrested. The position is not now the same. However innocent he may be, my husband is in the hands of justice; his past life has been publicly proclaimed. Minha is a convict's daughter." "Minha Dacosta or Minha Garral, what matters it to me?" exclaimed Manoel, who could keep silent no longer. "Manoel!" murmured Minha. And she would certainly have fallen had not Lina's arm supported her. "Mother, if you do not wish to kill her," said Manoel, "call me your son!" "My son! my child!" It was all Yaquita could say, and the tears, which she restrained with difficulty, filled her eyes. And then they all re-entered the house. But during the long night not an hour's sleep fell to the lot of the unfortunate family who were being so cruelly tried.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

RETROSPECTIVE

Joam Dacosta had relied entirely on Judge Albeiro, and his death was most unfortunate. Before he was judge at Manaos, and chief magistrate in the province, Ribeiro had known the young clerk at the time he was being prosecuted for the murder in the diamond arrayal. He was then an advocate at Villa Rica, and he it was who defended the prisoner at the trial. He took the cause to heart and made it his own, and from an examination of the papers and detailed information, and not from the simple fact of his position in the matter, he came to the conclusion that his client was wrongfully accused, and that he had taken not the slightest part in the murder of the escort or the theft of the diamonds—in a word, that Joam Dacosta was innocent. But, notwithstanding this conviction, notwithstanding his talent and zeal, Ribeiro was unable to persuade the jury to take the same view of the matter. How could he remove so strong a presumption? If it was not Joam Dacosta, who had every facility for informing the scoundrels of the convoy's departure, who was it? The official who accompanied the escort had perished with the greater part of the soldiers, and suspicion could not point against him. Everything agreed in distinguishing Dacosta as the true and only author of the crime. Ribeiro defended him with great warmth and with all his powers, but he could not succeed in saving him. The verdict of the jury was affirmative on all the questions. Joam Dacosta, convicted of aggravated and premeditated murder, did not even obtain the benefit of extenuating circumstances, and heard himself condemned to death. There was no hope left for the accused. No commutation of the sentence was possible, for the crime was committed in the diamond arrayal. The condemned man was lost. But during the night which preceded his execution, and when the gallows was already erected, Joam Dacosta managed to escape from the prison at Villa Rica. We know the rest. Twenty years later Ribeiro the advocate became the chief justice of Manaos. In the depths of his retreat the fazender of Iquitos heard of the change, and in it saw a favorable opportunity for bringing forward the revision of the former proceedings against him with some chance of success. He knew that the old convictions of the advocate would be still unshaken in the mind of the judge. He therefore resolved to try and rehabilitate himself. Had it not been for Ribeiro's nomination to the chief justiceship in the province of Amazones, he might perhaps have hesitated, for he had no new material proof of his innocence to bring forward. Although the honest man suffered acutely, he might still have remained hidden in exile at Iquitos, and still have asked for time to smother the remembrances of the horrible occurrence, but something was urging him to act in the matter without delay. In fact, before Yaquita had spoken to him, Joam Dacosta had noticed that Manoel was in love with his daughter. The union of the young army doctor and his daughter was in every respect a suitable one. It was evident to Joam that some day or other he would be asked for her hand in marriage, and he did not wish to be obliged to refuse. But then the thought that his daughter would have to marry under a name which did not belong to her, that Manoel Valdez, thinking he was entering the family of Garral, would enter that of Dacosta, the head of which was under sentence of death, was intolerable to him. No! The wedding should not take place unless under proper conditions! Never! Let us recall what had happened up to this time. Four years after the young clerk, who eventually became the partner of Magalhaës, had arrived at Iquitos, the old Portuguese had been taken back to the farm mortally injured. A few days only were left for him to live. He was alarmed at the thought that his daughter would be left alone and unprotected; but knowing that Joam and Yaquita were in love with each other, he desired their union without delay. Joam at first refused. He offered to remain the protector or the servant of Yaquita without becoming her husband. The wish of the dying Magalhaës was so urgent that resistance became impossible. Yaquita put her hand into the hand of Joam, and Joam did not withdraw it. Yes! It was a serious matter! Joam Dacosta ought to have confessed all, or to have fled forever from the house in which he had been so hospitably received, from the establishment of which he had built up the prosperity! Yes! To confess everything rather than to give to the daughter of his benefactor a name which was not his, instead of the name of a felon condemned to death for murder, innocent though he might be! But the case was pressing, the old fazender was on the point of death, his hands were stretched out toward the young people! Joam was silent, the marriage took place, and the remainder of his life was devoted to the happiness of the girl he had made his wife. "The day when I confess everything," Joam repeated, "Yaquita will pardon everything! She will not doubt me for an instant! But if I ought not to have deceived her, I certainly will not deceive the honest fellow who wishes to enter our family by marrying Mina! No! I would rather give myself up and have done with this life!" Many times had Joam thought of telling his wife about his past life. Yes! the avowal was on his lips whenever she asked him to take her into Brazil, and with her and her daughter descend the beautiful Amazon river. He knew sufficient of Yaquita to be sure that her affection for him would not thereby be diminished in the least. But courage failed him! And this is easily intelligible in the face of the happiness of the family, which increased on every side. This happiness was his work, and it might be destroyed forever by his return. Such had been his life for those long years; such had been the continuous source of his sufferings, of which he had kept the secret so well; such had been the existence of this man, who had no action to be ashamed of, and whom a great injustice compelled to hide away from himself! But at length the day arrived when there could no longer remain a doubt as to the affection which Manoel bore to Minha, when he could see that a year would not go by before he was asked to give his consent to her marriage, and after a short delay he no longer hesitated to proceed in the matter. A letter from him, addressed to Judge Ribeiro, acquainted the chief justice with the secret of the existence of Joam Dacosta, with the name under which he was concealed, with the place where he lived with his family, and at the same time with his formal intention of delivering himself up to justice, and taking steps to procure the revision of the proceedings, which would either result in his rehabilitation or in the execution of the iniquitous judgment delivered at Villa Rica. What were the feelings which agitated the heart of the worthy magistrate? We can easily divine them. It was no longer to the advocate that the accused applied; it was to the chief justice of the province that the convict appealed. Joam Dacosta gave himself over to him entirely, and did not even ask him to keep the secret. Judge Ribeiro was at first troubled about this unexpected revelation, but he soon recovered himself, and scrupulously considered the duties which the position imposed on him. It was his place to pursue criminals, and here was one who delivered himself into his hands. This criminal, it was true, he had defended; he had never doubted but that he had been unjustly condemned; his joy had been extreme when he saw him escape by flight from the last penalty; he had even instigated and facilitated his flight! But what the advocate had done in the past could the magistrate do in the present? "Well, yes!" had the judge said, "my conscience tells me not to abandon this just man. The step he is taking is a fresh proof of his innocence, a moral proof, even if he brings me others, which may be the most convincing of all! No! I will not abandon him!" From this day forward a secret correspondence took place between the magistrate and Joam Dacosta. Ribeiro at the outset cautioned his client against compromising himself by any imprudence. He had again to work up the matter, again to read over the papers, again to look through the inquiries. He had to find out if any new facts had come to light in the diamond province referring to so serious a case. Had any of the accomplices of the crime, of the smugglers who had attacked the convoy, been arrested since the attempt? Had any confessions or half-confessions been brought forward? Joam Dacosta had done nothing but protest his innocence from the very first. But that was not enough, and Judge Ribeiro was desirous of finding in the case itself the clue to the real culprit. Joam Dacosta had accordingly been prudent. He had promised to be so. But in all his trials it was an immense consolation for him to find his old advocate, though now a chief justice, so firmly convinced that he was not guilty. Yes! Joam Dacosta, in spite of his condemnation, was a victim, a martyr, an honest man to whom society owed a signal reparation! And when the magistrate knew the past career of the fazender of Iquitos since his sentence, the position of his family, all that life of devotion, of work, employed unceasingly for the happiness of those belonging to him, he was not only more convinced but more affected, and determined to do all that he could to procure the rehabilitation of the felon of Tijuco. For six months a correspondence had passed between these two men. One day, the case being pressing, Joam Dacosta wrote to Judge Ribeiro: "In two months I will be with you, in the power of the chief justice of the province!" "Come, then," replied Ribeiro. The jangada was then ready to go down the river. Joam Dacosta embarked on it with all his people. During the voyage, to the great astonishment of his wife and son, he landed but rarely, as we know. More often he remained shut up on his room, writing, working, not at his trading accounts, but, without saying anything about it, at a kind of memoir, which he called "The History of My Life," and which was meant to be used in the revision of the legal proceedings. Eight days before his new arrest, made on account of information given by Torres, which forestalled and perhaps would ruin his prospects, he intrusted to an Indian on the Amazon a letter, in which he warned Judge Ribeiro of his approaching arrival. The letter was sent and delivered as addressed, and the magistrate only waited for Joam Dacosta to commence on the serious undertaking which he hoped to bring to a successful issue. During the night before the arrival of the raft at Manaos Judge Ribeiro was seized with an attack of apoplexy. But the denunciation of Torres, whose scheme of extortion had collapsed in face of the noble anger of his victim, had produced its effect. Joam Dacosta was arrested in the bosom of his family, and his old advocate was no longer in this world to defend him! Yes, the blow was terrible indeed. His lot was cast, whatever his fate might be; there was no going back for him! And Joam Dacosta rose from beneath the blow which had so unexpectedly struck him. It was not only his own honor which was in question, but the honor of all who belonged to him.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

MORAL PROOFS

The warrant against Joam Dacosta, alias Joam Garral, had been issued by the assistant of Judge Ribeiro, who filled the position of the magistrate in the province of Amazones, until the nomination of the successor of the late justice. This assistant bore the name of Vicente Jarriquez. He was a surly little fellow, whom forty years' practice in criminal procedure had not rendered particularly friendly toward those who came before him. He had had so many cases of this sort, and tried and sentenced so many rascals, that a prisoner's innocence seemed to him à priori inadmissable. To be sure, he did not come to a decision unconscientiously; but his conscience was strongly fortified and was not easily affected by the circumstances of the examination or the arguments for the defense. Like a good many judges, he thought but little of the indulgence of the jury, and when a prisoner was brought before him, after having passed through the sieve of inquest, inquiry, and examination, there was every presumption in his eyes that the man was quite ten times guilty. Jarriquez, however, was not a bad man. Nervous, fidgety, talkative, keen, crafty, he had a curious look about him, with his big head on his little body; his ruffled hair, which would not have disgraced the judge's wig of the past; his piercing gimlet-like eyes, with their expression of surprising acuteness; his prominent nose, with which he would assuredly have gesticulated had it been movable; his ears wide open, so as to better catch all that was said, even when it was out of range of ordinary auditory apparatus; his fingers unceasingly tapping the table in front of him, like those of a pianist practicing on the mute; and his body so long and his legs so short, and his feet perpetually crossing and recrossing, as he sat in state in his magistrate's chair. In private life, Jarriquez, who was a confirmed old bachelor, never left his law-books but for the table which he did not despise; for chess, of which he was a past master; and above all things for Chinese puzzles, enigmas, charades, rebuses, anagrams, riddles, and such things, with which, like more than one European justice—thorough sphinxes by taste as well as by profession—he principally passed his leisure. It will be seen that he was an original, and it will be seen also how much Joam Dacosta had lost by the death of Judge Ribeiro, inasmuch as his case would come before this not very agreeable judge. Moreover, the task of Jarriquez was in a way very simple. He had either to inquire nor to rule; he had not even to regulate a discussion nor to obtain a verdict, neither to apply the articles of the penal code nor to pronounce a sentence. Unfortunately for the fazender, such formalities were no longer necessary; Joam Dacosta had been arrested, convicted, and sentenced twenty-three years ago for the crime at Tijuco; no limitation had yet affected his sentence. No demand in commutation of the penalty could be introduced, and no appeal for mercy could be received. It was only necessary then to establish his identity, and as soon as the order arrived from Rio Janeiro justice would have to take its course. But in the nature of things Joam Dacosta would protest his innocence; he would say he had been unjustly condemned. The magistrate's duty, notwithstanding the opinions he held, would be to listen to him. The question would be, what proofs could the convict offer to make good his assertions? And if he was not able to produce them when he appeared before his first judges, was he able to do so now? Herein consisted all the interest of the examination. There would have to be admitted the fact of a defaulter, prosperous and safe in a foreign country, leaving his refuge of his own free will to face the justice which his past life should have taught him to dread, and herein would be one of those rare and curious cases which ought to interest even a magistrate hardened with all the surroundings of forensic strife. Was it impudent folly on the part of the doomed man of Tijuco, who was tired of his life, or was it the impulse of a conscience which would at all risks have wrong set right? The problem was a strange one, it must be acknowledged. On the morrow of Joam Dacosta's arrest, Judge Jarriquez made his way to the prison in God-the-Son Street, where the convict had been placed. The prison was an old missionary convent, situated on the bank of one of the principal iguarapes of the town. To the voluntary prisoners of former times there had succeeded in this building, which was but little adapted for the purpose, the compulsory prisoners of to-day. The room occupied by Joam Dacosta was nothing like one of those sad little cells which form part of our modern penitentiary system: but an old monk's room, with a barred window without shutters, opening on to an uncultivated space, a bench in one corner, and a kind of pallet in the other. It was from this apartment that Joam Dacosta, on this 25th of August, about eleven o'clock in the morning, was taken and brought into the judge's room, which was the old common hall of the convent. Judge Jarriquez was there in front of his desk, perched on his high chair, his back turned toward the window, so that his face was in shadow while that of the accused remained in full daylight. His clerk, with the indifference which characterizes these legal folks, had taken his seat at the end of the table, his pen behind his ear, ready to record the questions and answers. Joam Dacosta was introduced into the room, and at a sign from the judge the guards who had brought him withdrew. Judge Jarriquez looked at the accused for some time. The latter, leaning slightly forward and maintaining a becoming attitude, neither careless nor humble, waited with dignity for the questions to which he was expected to reply. "Your name?" said Judge Jarriquez. "Joam Dacosta." "Your age?" "Fifty-two." "Where do you live?" "In Peru, at the village of Iquitos." "Under what name?" "Under that of Garral, which is that of my mother." "And why do you bear that name?" "Because for twenty-three years I wished to hide myself from the pursuit of Brazilian justice." The answers were so exact, and seemed to show that Joam Dacosta had made up his mind to confess everything concerning his past and present life, that Judge Jarriquez, little accustomed to such a course, cocked up his nose more than was usual to him. "And why," he continued, "should Brazilian justice pursue you?" "Because I was sentenced to death in 1826 in the diamond affair at Tijuco." "You confess then that you are Joam Dacosta?" "I am Joam Dacosta." All this was said with great calmness, and as simply as possible. The little eyes of Judge Jarriquez, hidden by their lids, seemed to say: "Never came across anything like this before." He had put the invariable question which had hitherto brought the invariable reply from culprits of every category protesting their innocence. The fingers of the judge began to beat a gentle tattoo on the table. "Joam Dacosta," he asked, "what were you doing at Iquitos?" "I was a fazender, and engaged in managing a farming establishment of considerable size." "It was prospering?" "Greatly prospering." "How long ago did you leave your fazenda?" "About nine weeks." "Why?" "As to that, sir," answered Dacosta, "I invented a pretext, but in reality I had a motive." "What was the pretext?" "The responsibility of taking into Para a large raft, and a cargo of different products of the Amazon." "Ah! and what was the real motive of your departure?" And in asking this question Jarriquez said to himself: "Now we shall get into denials and falsehoods." "The real motive," replied Joam Dacosta, in a firm voice, "was the resolution I had taken to give myself up to the justice of my country." "You give yourself up!" exclaimed the judge, rising from his stool. "You give yourself up of your own free will?" "Of my own free will." "And why?" "Because I had had enough of this lying life, this obligation to live under a false name, of this impossibility to be able to restore to my wife and children that which belongs to them; in short, sir, because——" "Because?" "I was innocent!" "That is what I was waiting for," said Judge Jarriquez. And while his fingers tattooed a slightly more audible march, he made a sign with his head to Dacosta, which signified as clearly as possible, "Go on! Tell me your history. I know it, but I do not wish to interrupt you in telling it in your own way." Joam Dacosta, who did not disregard the magistrate's far from encouraging attitude, could not but see this, and he told the history of his whole life. He spoke quietly without departing from the calm he had imposed upon himself, without omitting any circumstances which had preceded or succeeded his condemnation. In the same tone he insisted on the honored and honorable life he had led since his escape, on his duties as head of his family, as husband and father, which he had so worthily fulfilled. He laid stress only on one circumstance—that which had brought him to Manaos to urge on the revision of the proceedings against him, to procure his rehabilitation—and that he was compelled to do. Judge Jarriquez, who was naturally prepossessed against all criminals, did not interrupt him. He contented himself with opening and shutting his eyes like a man who heard the story told for the hundredth time; and when Joam Dacosta laid on the table the memoir which he had drawn up, he made no movement to take it. "You have finished?" he said. "Yes, sir." "And you persist in asserting that you only left Iquitos to procure the revision of the judgment against you." "I had no other intention." "What is there to prove that? Who can prove that, without the denunciation which had brought about your arrest, you would have given yourself up?" "This memoir, in the first place." "That memoir was in your possession, and there is nothing to show that had you not been arrested, you would have put it to the use you say you intended." "At the least, sir, there was one thing that was not in my possession, and of the authenticity of which there can be no doubt." "What?" "The letter I wrote to your predecessor, Judge Ribeiro, the letter which gave him notice of my early arrival." "Ah! you wrote?" "Yes. And the letter which ought to have arrived at its destination should have been handed over to you." "Really!" answered Judge Jarriquez, in a slightly incredulous tone. "You wrote to Judge Ribeiro." "Before he was a judge in this province," answered Joam Dacosta, "he was an advocate at Villa Rica. He it was who defended me in the trial at Tijuco. He never doubted of the justice of my cause. He did all he could to save me. Twenty years later, when he had become chief justice at Manaos, I let him know who I was, where I was, and what I wished to attempt. His opinion about me had not changed, and it was at his advice I left the fazenda, and came in person to proceed with my rehabilitation. But death had unfortunately struck him, and maybe I shall be lost, sir, if in Judge Jarriquez I do not find another Judge Ribeiro." The magistrate, appealed to so directly, was about to start up in defiance of all the traditions of the judicial bench, but he managed to restrain himself, and was contented with muttering: "Very strong, indeed; very strong!" Judge Jarriquez was evidently hard of heart, and proof against all surprise. At this moment a guard entered the room, and handed a sealed packet to the magistrate. He broke the seal and drew a letter from the envelope. He opened it and read it, not without a certain contraction of his eyebrows, and then said: "I have no reason for hiding from you, Joam Dacosta, that this is the letter you have been speaking about, addressed by you to Judge Ribeiro and sent on to me. I have, therefore, no reason to doubt what you have said on the subject." "Not only on that subject," answered Dacosta, "but on the subject of all the circumstances of my life which I have brought to your knowledge, and which are none of them open to question." "Eh! Joam Dacosta," quickly replied Judge Jarriquez. "You protest your innocence; but all prisoners do as much! After all, you only offer moral presumptions. Have you any material proof?" "Perhaps I have," answered Joam Dacosta. At these words, Judge Jarriquez left his chair. This was too much for him, and he had to take two or three circuits of the room to recover himself.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

MATERIAL PROOFS

When the magistrate had again taken his place, like a man who considered he was perfectly master of himself, he leaned back in his chair, and with his head raised and his eyes looking straight in front, as though not even noticing the accused, remarked, in a tone of the most perfect indifference: "Go on." Joam Dacosta reflected for a minute as if hesitating to resume the order of his thoughts, and then answered as follows: "Up to the present, sir, I have only given you moral presumptions of my innocence grounded on the dignity, propriety, and honesty of the whole of my life. I should have thought that such proofs were those most worthy of being brought forward in matters of justice." Judge Jarriquez could not restrain a movement of his shoulders, showing that such was not his opinion. "Since they are not enough, I proceed with the material proofs which I shall perhaps be able to produce," continued Dacosta; "I say perhaps, for I do not yet know what credit to attach to them. And, sir, I have never spoken of these things to my wife or children, not wishing to raise a hope which might be destroyed." "To the point," answered Jarriquez. "I have every reason to believe, sir, that my arrest on the eve of the arrival of the raft at Manaos is due to information given to the chief of the police!" "You are not mistaken, Joam Dacosta, but I ought to tell you that the information is anonymous." "It matters little, for I know that it could only come from a scoundrel called Torres." "And what right have you to speak in such a way of this—informer?" "A scoundrel! Yes, sir!" replied Joam quickly. "This man, whom I received with hospitality, only came to me to propose that I should purchase his silence to offer me an odious bargain that I shall never regret having refused, whatever may be the consequences of his denunciation!" "Always this method!" thought Judge Jarriquez; "accusing others to clear himself." But he none the less listened with extreme attention to Joam's recital of his relations with the adventurer up to the moment when Torres let him know that he knew and could reveal the name of the true author of the crime of Tijuco. "And what is the name of the guilty man?" asked Jarriquez, shaken in his indifference. "I do not know," answered Joam Dacosta. "Torres was too cautious to let it out." "And the culprit is living?" "He is dead." The fingers of Judge Jarriquez tattooed more quickly, and he could not avoid exclaiming, "The man who can furnish the proof of a prisoner's innocence is always dead." "If the real culprit is dead, sir," replied Dacosta, "Torres at least is living, and the proof, written throughout in the handwriting of the author of the crime, he has assured me is in his hands! He offered to sell it to me!" "Eh! Joam Dacosta!" answered Judge Jarriquez, "that would not have been dear at the cost of the whole of your fortune!" "If Torres had only asked my fortune, I would have given it to him and not one of my people would have demurred! Yes, you are right, sir; a man cannot pay too dearly for the redemption of his honor! But this scoundrel, knowing that I was at his mercy, required more than my fortune!" "How so?" "My daughter's hand was to be the cost of the bargain! I refused; he denounced me, and that is why I am now before you!" "And if Torres had not informed against you," asked Judge Jarriquez—"if Torres had not met with you on your voyage, what would you have done on learning on your arrival of the death of Judge Ribeiro? Would you then have delivered yourself into the hands of justice?" "Without the slightest hesitation," replied Joam, in a firm voice; "for, I repeat it, I had no other object in leaving Iquitos to come to Manaos." This was said in such a tone of truthfulness that Judge Jarriquez experienced a kind of feeling making its way to that corner of the heart where convictions are formed, but he did not yet give in. He could hardly help being astonished. A judge engaged merely in this examination, he knew nothing of what is known by those who have followed this history, and who cannot doubt but that Torres held in his hands the material proof of Joam Dacosta's innocence. They know that the document existed; that it contained this evidence; and perhaps they may be led to think that Judge Jarriquez was pitilessly incredulous. But they should remember that Judge Jarriquez was not in their position; that he was accustomed to the invariable protestations of the culprits who came before him. The document which Joam Dacosta appealed to was not produced; he did not really know if it actually existed; and to conclude, he had before him a man whose guilt had for him the certainty of a settled thing. However, he wished, perhaps through curiosity, to drive Joam Dacosta behind his last entrenchments. "And so," he said, "all your hope now rests on the declaration which has been made to you by Torres." "Yes, sir, if my whole life does not plead for me." "Where do you think Torres really is?" "I think in Manaos." "And you hope that he will speak—that he will consent to good-naturedly hand over to you the document for which you have declined to pay the price he asked?" "I hope so, sir," replied Joam Dacosta; "the situation now is not the same for Torres; he has denounced me, and consequently he cannot retain any hope of resuming his bargaining under the previous conditions. But this document might still be worth a fortune if, supposing I am acquitted or executed, it should ever escape him. Hence his interest is to sell me the document, which can thus not injure him in any way, and I think he will act according to his interest." The reasoning of Joam Dacosta was unanswerable, and Judge Jarriquez felt it to be so. He made the only possible objection. "The interest of Torres is doubtless to sell you the document—if the document exists." "If it does not exist," answered Joam Dacosta, in a penetrating voice, "in trusting to the justice of men, I must put my trust only in God!" At these words Judge Jarriquez rose, and, in not quite such an indifferent tone, said, "Joam Dacosta, in examining you here, in allowing you to relate the particulars of your past life and to protest your innocence, I have gone further than my instructions allow me. An information has already been laid in this affair, and you have appeared before the jury at Villa Rica, whose verdict was given unanimously, and without even the addition of extenuating circumstances. You have been found guilty of the instigation of, and complicity in, the murder of the soldiers and the robbery of the diamonds at Tijuco, the capital sentence was pronounced on you, and it was only by flight that you escaped execution. But that you came here to deliver yourself over, or not, to the hands of justice twenty-three years afterward, you would never have been retaken. For the last time, you admit that you are Joam Dacosta, the condemned man of the diamond arrayal?" "I am Joam Dacosta." "You are ready to sign this declaration?" "I am ready." And with a hand without a tremble Joam Dacosta put his name to the foot of the declaration and the report which Judge Jarriquez had made his clerk draw up. "The report, addressed to the minister of justice, is to be sent off to Rio Janeiro," said the magistrate. "Many days will elapse before we receive orders to carry out your sentence. If then, as you say, Torres possesses the proof of your innocence, do all you can yourself—do all you can through your friends—do everything, so that that proof can be produced in time. Once the order arrives no delay will be possible, and justice must take its course." Joam Dacosta bowed slightly. "Shall I be allowed in the meantime to see my wife and children?" he asked. "After to-day, if you wish," answered Judge Jarriquez; "you are no longer in close confinement, and they can be brought to you as soon as they apply." The magistrate then rang the bell. The guards entered the room, and took away Joam Dacosta. Judge Jarriquez watched him as he went out, and shook his head and muttered: "Well, well! This is a much stranger affair than I ever thought it would be!"

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE LAST BLOW

While Joam Dacosta was undergoing this examination, Yaquita, from an inquiry made by Manoel, ascertained that she and her children would be permitted to see the prisoner that very day about four o'clock in the afternoon. Yaquita had not left her room since the evening before. Minha and Lina kept near her, waiting for the time when she would be admitted to see her husband. Yaquita Garral or Yaquita Dacosta, he would still find her the devoted wife and brave companion he had ever known her to be. About eleven o'clock in the morning Benito joined Manoel and Fragoso, who were talking in the bow of the jangada. "Manoel," said he, "I have a favor to ask you." "What is it?" "And you too, Fragoso." "I am at your service, Mr. Benito," answered the barber. "What is the matter?" asked Manoel, looking at his friend, whose expression was that of a man who had come to some unalterable resolution. "You never doubt my father's innocence? Is that so?" said Benito. "Ah!" exclaimed Fragoso. "Rather I think it was I who committed the crime." "Well, we must now commence on the project I thought of yesterday." "To find out Torres?" asked Manoel. "Yes, and know from him how he found out my father's retreat. There is something inexplicable about it. Did he know it before? I cannot understand it, for my father never left Iquitos for more than twenty years, and this scoundrel is hardly thirty! But the day will not close before I know it; or, woe to Torres!" Benito's resolution admitted of no discussion; and besides, neither Manoel nor Fragoso had the slightest thought of dissuading him. "I will ask, then," continued Benito, "for both of you to accompany me. We shall start in a minute or two. It will not do to wait till Torres has left Manaos. He has no longer got his silence to sell, and the idea might occur to him. Let us be off!" And so all three of them landed on the bank of the Rio Negro and started for the town. Manaos was not so considerable that it could not be searched in a few hours. They had made up their minds to go from house to house, if necessary, to look for Torres, but their better plan seemed to be to apply in the first instance to the keepers of the taverns and lojas where the adventurer was most likely to put up. There could hardly be a doubt that the ex-captain of the woods would not have given his name; he might have personal reasons for avoiding all communication with the police. Nevertheless, unless he had left Manaos, it was almost impossible for him to escape the young fellows' search. In any case, there would be no use in applying to the police, for it was very probable—in fact, we know that it actually was so—that the information given to them had been anonymous. For an hour Benito, Manoel, and Fragoso walked along the principal streets of the town, inquiring of the tradesmen in their shops, the tavern-keepers in their cabarets, and even the bystanders, without any one being able to recognize the individual whose description they so accurately gave. Had Torres left Manaos? Would they have to give up all hope of coming across him? In vain Manoel tried to calm Benito, whose head seemed on fire. Cost what it might, he must get at Torres! Chance at last favored them, and it was Fragoso who put them on the right track. In a tavern in Holy Ghost Street, from the description which the people received of the adventurer, they replied that the individual in question had put up at the loja the evening before. "Did he sleep here?" asked Fragoso. "Yes," answered the tavern-keeper. "Is he here now?" "No. He has gone out." "But has he settled his bill, as a man would who has gone for good?" "By no means; he left his room about an hour ago, and he will doubtless come back to supper." "Do you know what road he took when he went out?" "We saw him turning toward the Amazon, going through the lower town, and you will probably meet him on that side." Fragoso did not want any more. A few seconds afterward he rejoined the young fellows, and said: "I am on the track." "He is there!" exclaimed Benito. "No; he has just gone out, and they have seen him walking across to the bank of the Amazon." "Come on!" replied Benito. They had to go back toward the river, and the shortest way was for them to take the left bank of the Rio Negro, down to its mouth. Benito and his companions soon left the last houses of the town behind, and followed the bank, making a slight detour so as not to be observed from the jangada. The plain was at this time deserted. Far away the view extended across the flat, where cultivated fields had replaced the former forests. Benito did not speak; he could not utter a word. Manoel and Fragoso respected his silence. And so the three of them went along and looked about on all sides as they traversed the space between the bank of the Rio Negro and that of the Amazon. Three-quarters of an hour after leaving Manaos, and still they had seen nothing! Once or twice Indians working in the fields were met with. Manoel questioned them, and one of them at length told him that a man, such as he described, had just passed in the direction of the angle formed by the two rivers at their confluence. Without waiting for more, Benito, by an irresistible movement, strode to the front, and his two companions had to hurry on to avoid being left behind. The left bank of the Amazon was then about a quarter of a mile off. A sort of cliff appeared ahead, hiding a part of the horizon, and bounding the view a few hundred paces in advance. Benito, hurrying on, soon disappeared behind one of the sandy knolls. "Quicker! quicker!" said Manoel to Fragoso. "We must not leave him alone for an instant." And they were dashing along when a shout struck on their ears. Had Benito caught sight of Torres? What had he seen? Had Benito and Torres already met? Manoel and Fragoso, fifty paces further on, after swiftly running round one of the spurs of the bank, saw two men standing face to face to each other. They were Torres and Benito. In an instant Manoel and Fragoso had hurried up to them. It might have been supposed that in Benito's state of excitement he would be unable to restrain himself when he found himself once again in the presence of the adventurer. It was not so. As soon as the young man saw himself face to face with Torres, and was certain that he could not escape, a complete change took place in his manner, his coolness returned, and he became once more master of himself. The two men looked at one another for a few moments without a word. Torres first broke silence, and, in the impudent tone habitual to him, remarked: "Ah! How goes it, Mr. Benito Garral?" "No, Benito Dacosta!" answered the young man. "Quite so," continued Torres. "Mr. Benito Dacosta, accompanied by Mr. Manoel Valdez and my friend Fragoso!" At the irritating qualification thus accorded him by the adventurer, Fragoso, who was by no means loath to do him some damage, was about to rush to the attack, when Benito, quite unmoved, held him back. "What is the matter with you, my lad?" exclaimed Torres, retreating for a few steps. "I think I had better put myself on guard." And as he spoke he drew from beneath his poncho his manchetta, the weapon, adapted at will for offense or defense, which a Brazilian is never without. And then, slightly stooping, and planted firmly on his feet, he waited for what was to follow. "I have come to look for you, Torres," said Benito, who had not stirred in the least at this threatening attitude. "To look for me?" answered the adventurer. "It is not very difficult to find me. And why have you come to look for me?" "To know from your own lips what you appear to know of the past life of my father." "Really?" "Yes. I want to know how you recognized him, why you were prowling about our fazenda in the forest of Iquitos, and why you were waiting for us at Tabatinga." "Well! it seems to me nothing could be clearer!" answered Torres, with a grin. "I was waiting to get a passage on the jangada, and I went on board with the intention of making him a very simple proposition—which possibly he was wrong in rejecting." At these words Manoel could stand it no longer. With pale face and eye of fire he strode up to Torres. Benito, wishing to exhaust every means of conciliation, thrust himself between them. "Calm yourself, Manoel!" he said. "I am calm—even I." And then continuing: "Quite so, Torres; I know the reason of your coming on board the raft. Possessed of a secret which was doubtless given to you, you wanted to make it a means of extortion. But that is not what I want to know at present." "What is it, then?" "I want to know how you recognized Joam Dacosta in the fazenda of Iquitos?" "How I recognized him?" replied Torres. "That is my business, and I see no reason why I should tell you. The important fact is, that I was not mistaken when I denounced in him the real author of the crime of Tijuco!" "You say that to me?" exclaimed Benito, who began to lose his self-possession. "I will tell you nothing," returned Torres; "Joam Dacosta declined my propositions! He refused to admit me into his family! Well! now that his secret is known, now that he is a prisoner, it is I who refuse to enter his family, the family of a thief, of a murderer, of a condemned felon, for whom the gallows now waits!" "Scoundrel!" exclaimed Benito, who drew his manchetta from his belt and put himself in position. Manoel and Fragoso, by a similar movement, quickly drew their weapons. "Three against one!" said Torres. "No! one against one!" answered Benito. "Really! I should have thought an assassination would have better suited an assassin's son!" "Torres!" exclaimed Benito, "defend yourself, or I will kill you like a mad dog!" "Mad! so be it!" answered Torres. "But I bite, Benito Dacosta, and beware of the wounds!" And then again grasping his manchetta, he put himself on guard and ready to attack his enemy. Benito had stepped back a few paces. "Torres," he said, regaining all his coolness, which for a moment he had lost; "you were the guest of my father, you threatened him, you betrayed him, you denounced him, you accused an innocent man, and with God's help I am going to kill you!" Torres replied with the most insolent smile imaginable. Perhaps at the moment the scoundrel had an idea of stopping any struggle between Benito and him, and he could have done so. In fact he had seen that Joam Dacosta had said nothing about the document which formed the material proof of his innocence. Had he revealed to Benito that he, Torres, possessed this proof, Benito would have been that instant disarmed. But his desire to wait till the very last moment, so as to get the very best price for the document he possessed, the recollection of the young man's insulting words, and the hate which he bore to all that belonged to him, made him forget his own interest. In addition to being thoroughly accustomed to the manchetta, which he often had had occasion to use, the adventurer was strong, active, and artful, so that against an adversary who was scarcely twenty, who could have neither his strength nor his dexterity, the chances were greatly in his favor. Manoel by a last effort wished to insist on fighting him instead of Benito. "No, Manoel," was the cool reply, "it is for me alone to avenge my father, and as everything here ought to be in order, you shall be my second." "Benito!" "As for you, Fragoso, you will not refuse if I ask you to act as second for that man?" "So be it," answered Fragoso, "though it is not an office of honor. Without the least ceremony," he added, "I would have killed him like a wild beast." The place where the duel was about to take place was a level bank about fifty paces long, on the top of a cliff rising perpendicularly some fifty feet above the Amazon. The river slowly flowed at the foot, and bathed the clumps of reeds which bristled round its base. There was, therefore, none too much room, and the combatant who was the first to give way would quickly be driven over into the abyss. The signal was given by Manoel, and Torres and Benito stepped forward. Benito had complete command over himself. The defender of a sacred cause, his coolness was unruffled, much more so than that of Torres, whose conscience insensible and hardened as it was, was bound at the moment to trouble him. The two met, and the first blow came from Benito. Torres parried it. They then jumped back, but almost at the same instant they rushed together, and with their left hands seized each other by the shoulder—never to leave go again. Torres, who was the strongest, struck a side blow with his manchetta which Benito could not quite parry. His left side was touched, and his poncho was reddened with his blood. But he quickly replied, and slightly wounded Torres in the hand. Several blows were then interchanged, but nothing decisive was done. The ever silent gaze of Benito pierced the eyes of Torres like a sword blade thrust to his very heart. Visibly the scoundrel began to quail. He recoiled little by little, pressed back by his implacable foe, who was more determined on taking the life of his father's denouncer than in defending his own. To strike was all that Benito longed for; to parry was all that the other now attempted to do. Soon Torres saw himself thrust to the very edge of the bank, at a spot where, slightly scooped away, it overhung the river. He perceived the danger; he tried to retake the offensive and regain the lost ground. His agitation increased, his looks grew livid. At length he was obliged to stoop beneath the arm which threatened him. "Die, then!" exclaimed Benito. The blow was struck full on its chest, but the point of the manchetta was stopped by a hard substance hidden beneath the poncho of the adventurer. Benito renewed his attack, and Torres, whose return thrust did not touch his adversary, felt himself lost. He was again obliged to retreat. Then he would have shouted—shouted that the life of Joam Dacosta depended on his own! He had not time! A second thrust of the manchetta pierced his heart. He fell backward, and the ground suddenly failing him, he was precipitated down the cliff. As a last effort his hands convulsively clutched at a clump of reeds, but they could not stop him, and he disappeared beneath the waters of the river. Benito was supported on Manoel's shoulder; Fragoso grasped his hands. He would not even give his companions time to dress his wound, which was very slight. "To the jangada!" he said, "to the jangada!" Manoel and Fragoso with deep emotion followed him without speaking a word. A quarter of an hour afterward the three reached the bank to which the raft was moored. Benito and Manoel rushed into the room where were Yaquita and Minha, and told them all that had passed. "My son!" "My brother!" The words were uttered at the same moment. "To the prison!" said Benito. "Yes! Come! come!" replied Yaquita. Benito, followed by Manoel, hurried along his mother, and half an hour later they arrived before the prison. Owing to the order previously given by Judge Jarriquez they were immediately admitted, and conducted to the chamber occupied by the prisoner. The door opened. Joam Dacosta saw his wife, his son, and Manoel enter the room. "Ah! Joam, my Joam!" exclaimed Yaquita. "Yaquita! my wife! my children!" replied the prisoner, who opened his arms and pressed them to his heart. "My Joam, innocent!" "Innocent and avenged!" said Benito. "Avenged? What do you mean?" "Torres is dead, father; killed by my hand!" "Dead!—Torres!—Dead!" gasped Joam Dacosta. "My son! You have ruined me!"

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

RESOLUTIONS

A few hours later the whole family had returned to the raft, and were assembled in the large room. All were there, except the prisoner, on whom the last blow had just fallen. Benito was quite overwhelmed, and accused himself of having destroyed his father, and had it not been for the entreaties of Yaquita, of his sister, of Padre Passanha, and of Manoel, the distracted youth would in the first moments of despair have probably made away with himself. But he was never allowed to get out of sight; he was never left alone. And besides, how could he have acted otherwise? Ah! why had not Joam Dacosta told him all before he left the jangada? Why had he refrained from speaking, except before a judge, of this material proof of his innocence? Why, in his interview with Manoel after the expulsion of Torres, had he been silent about the document which the adventurer pretended to hold in his hands? But, after all, what faith ought he to place in what Torres had said? Could he be certain that such a document was in the rascal's possession? Whatever might be the reason, the family now knew everything, and that from the lips of Joam Dacosta himself. They knew that Torres had declared that the proof of the innocence of the convict of Tijuco actually existed; that the document had been written by the very hand of the author of the attack; that the criminal, seized by remorse at the moment of his death, had intrusted it to his companion, Torres; and that he, instead of fulfilling the wishes of the dying man, had made the handing over of the document an excuse for extortion. But they knew also that Torres had just been killed, and that his body was engulfed in the waters of the Amazon, and that he died without even mentioning the name of the guilty man. Unless he was saved by a miracle, Joam Dacosta might now be considered as irrevocably lost. The death of Judge Ribeiro on the one hand, the death of Torres on the other, were blows from which he could not recover! It should here be said that public opinion at Manaos, unreasoning as it always is, was all against he prisoner. The unexpected arrest of Joam Dacosta had revived the memory of the terrible crime of Tijuco, which had lain forgotten for twenty-three years. The trial of the young clerk at the mines of the diamond arrayal, his capital sentence, his escape a few hours before his intended execution—all were remembered, analyzed, and commented on. An article which had just appeared in the O Diario d'o Grand Para, the most widely circulated journal in these parts, after giving a history of the circumstances of the crime, showed itself decidedly hostile to the prisoner. Why should these people believe in Joam Dacosta's innocence, when they were ignorant of all that his friends knew—of what they alone knew? And so the people of Manaos became excited. A mob of Indians and negroes hurried, in their blind folly, to surround the prison and roar forth tumultuous shouts of death. In this part of the two Americas, where executions under Lynch law are of frequent occurrence, the mob soon surrenders itself to its cruel instincts, and it was feared that on this occasion it would do justice with its own hands. What a night it was for the passengers from the fazenda! Masters and servants had been affected by the blow! Were not the servants of the fazenda members of one family? Every one of them would watch over the safety of Yaquita and her people! On the bank of the Rio Negro there was a constant coming and going of the natives, evidently excited by the arrest of Joam Dacosta, and who could say to what excesses these half-barbarous men might be led? The time, however, passed without any demonstration against the jangada. On the morrow, the 26th of August, as soon as the sun rose, Manoel and Fragoso, who had never left Benito for an instant during this terrible night, attempted to distract his attention from his despair. After taking him aside they made him understand that there was no time to be lost—that they must make up their minds to act. "Benito," said Manoel, "pull yourself together! Be a man again! Be a son again!" "My father!" exclaimed Benito. "I have killed him!" "No!" replied Manoel. "With heaven's help it is possible that all may not be lost!" "Listen to us, Mr. Benito," said Fragoso. The young man, passing his hand over his eyes, made a violent effort to collect himself. "Benito," continued Manoel, "Torres never gave a hint to put us on the track of his past life. We therefore cannot tell who was the author of the crime of Tijuco, or under what conditions it was committed. To try in that direction is to lose our time." "And time presses!" added Fragoso. "Besides," said Manoel, "suppose we do find out who this companion of Torres was, he is dead, and he could not testify in any way to the innocence of Joam Dacosta. But it is none the less certain that the proof of this innocence exists, and there is not room to doubt the existence of a document which Torres was anxious to make the subject of a bargain. He told us so himself. The document is a complete avowal written in the handwriting of the culprit, which relates the attack in its smallest details, and which clears our father! Yes! a hundred times, yes! The document exists!" "But Torres does not exist!" groaned Benito, "and the document has perished with him!" "Wait, and don't despair yet!" answered Manoel. "You remember under what circumstances we made the acquaintance of Torres? It was in the depths of the forest of Iquitos. He was in pursuit of a monkey which had stolen a metal case, which it so strangely kept, and the chase had lasted a couple of hours when the monkey fell to our guns. Now, do you think that it was for the few pieces of gold contained in the case that Torres was in such a fury to recover it? and do you not remember the extraordinary satisfaction which he displayed when we gave him back the case which we had taken out of the monkey's paw?" "Yes! yes!" answered Benito. "This case which I held—which I gave back to him! Perhaps it contained——" "It is more than probable! It is certain!" replied Manoel. "And I beg to add," said Fragoso, "for now the fact recurs to my memory, that during the time you were at Ega I remained on board, at Lina's advice, to keep an eye on Torres, and I saw him—yes, I saw him—reading, and again reading, an old faded paper, and muttering words which I could not understand." "That was the document!" exclaimed Benito, who snatched at the hope—the only one that was left. "But this document; had he not put it in some place of security?" "No," answered Manoel—"no; it was too precious for Torres to dream of parting with it. He was bound to carry it always about with him, and doubtless in that very case." "Wait! wait, Manoel!" exclaimed Benito; "I remember—yes, I remember. During the struggle, at the first blow I struck Torres in his chest, my manchetta was stopped by some hard substance under his poncho, like a plate of metal——" "That was the case!" said Fragoso. "Yes," replied Manoel; "doubt is impossible! That was the case; it was in his breast-pocket." "But the corpse of Torres?" "We will recover it!" "But the paper! The water will have stained it, perhaps destroyed it, or rendered it undecipherable!" "Why," answered Manoel, "if the metal case which held it was water-tight?" "Manoel," replied Benito, who seized on the last hope, "you are right! The corpse of Torres must be recovered! We will ransack the whole of this part of the river, if necessary, but we will recover it!" The pilot Araujo was then summoned and informed of what they were going to do. "Good!" replied he; "I know all the eddies and currents where the Rio Negro and the Amazon join, and we shall succeed in recovering the body. Let us take two pirogues, two ubas, a dozen of our Indians, and make a start." Padre Passanha was then coming out of Yaquita's room. Benito went to him, and in a few words told him what they were going to do to get possession of the document. "Say nothing to my mother or my sister," he added; "if this last hope fails it will kill them!" "Go, my lad, go," replied Passanha, "and may God help you in your search." Five minutes afterward the four boats started from the raft. After descending the Rio Negro they arrived near the bank of the Amazon, at the very place where Torres, mortally wounded, had disappeared beneath the waters of the stream.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE FIRST SEARCH

The search had to commence at once, and that for two weighty reasons. The first of these was—and this was a question of life or death—that this proof of Joam Dacosta's innocence must be produced before the arrival of the order from Rio Janeiro. Once the identity of the prisoner was established, it was impossible that such an order could be other than the order for his execution. The second was that the body of Torres should be got out of the water as quickly as possible so as to regain undamaged the metal case and the paper it ought to contain. At this juncture Araujo displayed not only zeal and intelligence, but also a perfect knowledge of the state of the river at its confluence with the Rio Negro. "If Torres," he said to the young men, "had been from the first carried away by the current, we should have to drag the river throughout a large area, for we shall have a good many days to wait for his body to reappear on the surface through the effects of decomposition." "We cannot do that," replied Manoel. "This very day we ought to succeed." "If, on the contrary," continued the pilot, "the corpse has got stuck among the reeds and vegetation at the foot of the bank, we shall not be an hour before we find it." "To work, then!" answered Benito. There was but one way of working. The boats approached the bank, and the Indians, furnished with long poles, began to sound every part of the river at the base of the bluff which had served for the scene of combat. The place had been easily recognized. A track of blood stained the declivity in its chalky part, and ran perpendicularly down it into the water; and there many a clot scattered on the reeds indicated the very spot where the corpse had disappeared. About fifty feet down stream a point jutted out from the riverside and kept back the waters in a kind of eddy, as in a large basin. There was no current whatever near the shore, and the reeds shot up out of the river unbent. Every hope then existed that Torres' body had not been carried away by the main stream. Where the bed of the river showed sufficient slope, it was perhaps possible for the corpse to have rolled several feet along the ridge, and even there no effect of the current could be traced. The ubas and the pirogues, dividing the work among them, limited the field of their researches to the extreme edge of the eddy, and from the circumference to the center the crews' long poles left not a single point unexplored. But no amount of sounding discovered the body of the adventurer, neither among the clumps of reeds nor on the bottom of the river, whose slope was then carefully examined. Two hours after the work had begun they had been led to think that the body, having probably struck against the declivity, had fallen off obliquely and rolled beyond the limits of this eddy, where the action of the current commenced to be felt. "But that is no reason why we should despair," said Manoel, "still less why we should give up our search." "Will it be necessary," exclaimed Benito, "to search the river throughout its breadth and its length?" "Throughout its breadth, perhaps," answered Araujo, "throughout its length, no—fortunately." "And why?" asked Manoel. "Because the Amazon, about a mile away from its junction with the Rio Negro, makes a sudden bend, and at the same time its bed rises, so that there is a kind of natural barrier, well known to sailors as the Bar of Frias, which things floating near the surface are alone able to clear. In short, the currents are ponded back, and they cannot possibly have any effect over this depression." This was fortunate, it must be admitted. But was Araujo mistaken? The old pilot of the Amazon could be relied on. For the thirty years that he had followed his profession the crossing of the Bar of Frias, where the current was increased in force by its decrease in depth, had often given him trouble. The narrowness of the channel and the elevation of the bed made the passage exceedingly difficult, and many a raft had there come to grief. And so Araujo was right in declaring that if the corpse of Torres was still retained by its weight on the sandy bed of the river, it could not have been dragged over the bar. It is true that later on, when, on account of the expansion of the gases, it would again rise to the surface, the current would bear it away, and it would then be irrevocably lost down the stream, a long way beyond the obstruction. But this purely physical effect would not take place for several days. They could not have applied to a man who was more skillful or more conversant with the locality than Araujo, and when he affirmed that the body could not have been borne out of the narrow channel for more than a mile or so, they were sure to recover it if they thoroughly sounded that portion of the river. Not an island, not an islet, checked the course of the Amazon in these parts. Hence, when the foot of the two banks had been visited up to the bar, it was in the bed itself, about five hundred feet in width, that more careful investigations had to be commenced. The way the work was conducted was this. The boats taking the right and left of the Amazon lay alongside the banks. The reeds and vegetation were tried with the poles. Of the smallest ledges in the banks in which a body could rest, not one escaped the scrutiny of Araujo and his Indians. But all this labor produced no result, and half the day had elapsed without the body being brought to the surface of the stream. An hour's rest was given to the Indians. During this time they partook of some refreshment, and then they returned to their task. Four of the boats, in charge of the pilot, Benito, Fragoso, and Manoel, divided the river between the Rio Negro and the Bar of Frias into four portions. They set to work to explore its very bed. In certain places the poles proved insufficient to thoroughly search among the deeps, and hence a few dredges—or rather harrows, made of stones and old iron, bound round with a solid bar—were taken on board, and when the boats had pushed off these rakes were thrown in and the river bottom stirred up in every direction. It was in this difficult task that Benito and his companions were employed till the evening. The ubas and pirogues, worked by the oars, traversed the whole surface of the river up to the bar of Frias. There had been moments of excitement during this spell of work, when the harrows, catching in something at the bottom, offered some slight resistance. They were then hauled up, but in place of the body so eagerly searched for, there would appear only heavy stones or tufts of herbage which they had dragged from their sandy bed. No one, however, had an idea of giving up the enterprise. They none of them thought of themselves in this work of salvation. Benito, Manoel, Araujo had not even to stir up the Indians or to encourage them. The gallant fellows knew that they were working for the fazender of Iquitos—for the man whom they loved, for the chief of the excellent family who treated their servants so well. Yes; and so they would have passed the night in dragging the river. Of every minute lost all knew the value. A little before the sun disappeared, Araujo, finding it useless to continue his operations in the gloom, gave the signal for the boats to join company and return together to the confluence of the Rio Negro and regain the jangada. The work so carefully and intelligently conducted was not, however, at an end. Manoel and Fragoso, as they came back, dared not mention their ill success before Benito. They feared that the disappointment would only force him to some act of despair. But neither courage nor coolness deserted the young fellow; he was determined to follow to the end this supreme effort to save the honor and the life of his father, and he it was who addressed his companions, and said: "To-morrow we will try again, and under better conditions if possible." "Yes," answered Manoel; "you are right, Benito. We can do better. We cannot pretend to have entirely explored the river along the whole of the banks and over the whole of its bed." "No; we cannot have done that," replied Araujo; "and I maintain what I said—that the body of Torres is there, and that it is there because it has not been carried away, because it could not be drawn over the Bar of Frias, and because it will take many days before it rises to the surface and floats down the stream. Yes, it is there, and not a demijohn of tafia will pass my lips until I find it!" This affirmation from the pilot was worth a good deal, and was of a hope-inspiring nature. However, Benito, who did not care so much for words as he did for things, thought proper to reply, "Yes, Araujo; the body of Torres is in the river, and we shall find it if——" "If?" said the pilot. "If it has not become the prey of the alligators!" Manoel and Fragoso waited anxiously for Araujo's reply. The pilot was silent for a few moments; they felt that he was reflecting before he spoke. "Mr. Benito," he said at length, "I am not in the habit of speaking lightly. I had the same idea as you; but listen. During the ten hours we have been at work have you seen a single cayman in the river?" "Not one," said Fragoso. "If you have not seen one," continued the pilot, "it was because there were none to see, for these animals have nothing to keep them in the white waters when, a quarter of a mile off, there are large stretches of the black waters, which they so greatly prefer. When the raft was attacked by some of these creatures it was in a part where there was no place for them to flee to. Here it is quite different. Go to the Rio Negro, and there you will see caymans by the score. Had Torres' body fallen into that tributary there might be no chance of recovering it. But it was in the Amazon that it was lost, and in the Amazon it will be found." Benito, relieved from his fears, took the pilot's hand and shook it, and contented himself with the reply, "To-morrow, my friends!" Ten minutes later they were all on board the jangada. During the day Yaquit had passed some hours with her husband. But before she started, and when she saw neither the pilot, nor Manoel, nor Benito, nor the boats, she had guessed the search on which they had gone, but she said nothing to Joam Dacosta, as she hoped that in the morning she would be able to inform him of their success. But when Benito set foot on the raft she perceived that their search had been fruitless. However, she advanced toward him. "Nothing?" she asked. "Nothing," replied Benito. "But the morrow is left to us." The members of the family retired to their rooms, and nothing more was said as to what had passed. Manoel tried to make Benito lie down, so as to take a few hours' rest. "What is the good of that?" asked Benito. "Do you think I could sleep?"

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE SECOND ATTEMPT

On the morrow, the 27th of August, Benito took Manoel apart, before the sun had risen, and said to him: "Our yesterday's search was vain. If we begin again under the same conditions we may be just as unlucky." "We must do so, however," replied Manoel. "Yes," continued Benito; "but suppose we do not find the body, can you tell me how long it will be before it rises to the surface?" "If Torres," answered Manoel, "had fallen into the water living, and not mortally wounded, it would take five or six days; but as he only disappeared after being so wounded, perhaps two or three days would be enough to bring him up again." This answer of Manoel, which was quite correct, requires some explanation. Every human body which falls into the water will float if equilibrium is established between its density and that of its liquid bed. This is well known to be the fact, even when a person does not know how to swim. Under such circumstances, if you are entirely submerged, and only keep your mouth and nose away from the water, you are sure to float. But this is not generally done. The first movement of a drowning man is to try and hold as much as he can of himself above the water; he holds up his head and lifts up his arms, and these parts of his body, being no longer supported by the liquid, do not lose that amount of weight which they would do if completely immersed. Hence an excess of weight, and eventually entire submersion, for the water makes its way to the lungs through the mouth, takes the place of the air which fills them, and the body sinks to the bottom. On the other hand, when the man who falls into the water is already dead the conditions are different, and more favorable for his floating, for then the movements of which we have spoken are checked, and the liquid does not make its way to the lungs so copiously, as there is no attempt to respire, and he is consequently more likely to promptly reappear. Manoel then was right in drawing the distinction between the man who falls into the water living and the man who falls into it dead. In the one case the return to the surface takes much longer than in the other. The reappearance of the body after an immersion more or less prolonged is always determined by the decomposition, which causes the gases to form. These bring about the expansion of the cellular tissues, the volume augments and the weight decreases, and then, weighing less than the water it displaces, the body attains the proper conditions for floating. "And thus," continued Manoel, "supposing the conditions continue favorable, and Torres did not live after he fell into the water, if the decomposition is not modified by circumstances which we cannot foresee, he will not reappear before three days." "We have not got three days," answered Benito. "We cannot wait, you know; we must try again, and in some new way." "What can you do?" answered Manoel. "Plunge down myself beneath the waters," replied Benito, "and search with my eyes—with my hands." "Plunge in a hundred times—a thousand times!" exclaimed Manoel. "So be it. I think, like you, that we ought to go straight at what we want, and not struggle on with poles and drags like a blind man who only works by touch. I also think that we cannot wait three days. But to jump in, come up again, and go down again will give only a short period for the exploration. No; it will never do, and we shall only risk a second failure." "Have you no other plan to propose, Manoel?" asked Benito, looking earnestly at his friend. "Well, listen. There is what would seem to be a Providential circumstance that may be of use to us." "What is that?" "Yesterday, as we hurried through Manaos, I noticed that they were repairing one of the quays on the bank of the Rio Negro. The submarine works were being carried on with the aid of a diving-dress. Let us borrow, or hire, or buy, at any price, this apparatus, and then we may resume our researches under more favorable conditions." "Tell Araujo, Fragoso, and our men, and let us be off," was the instant reply of Benito. The pilot and the barber were informed of the decision with regard to Manoel's project. Both were ordered to go with the four boats and the Indians to the basin of Frias, and there to wait for the two young men. Manoel and Benito started off without losing a moment, and reached the quay at Manaos. There they offered the contractor such a price that he put the apparatus at their service for the whole day. "Will you not have one of my men," he asked, "to help you?" "Give us your foreman and one of his mates to work the air-pump," replied Manoel. "But who is going to wear the diving-dress?" "I am," answered Benito. "You!" exclaimed Manoel. "I intend to do so." It was useless to resist. An hour afterward the raft and all the instruments necessary for the enterprise had drifted down to the bank where the boats were waiting. The diving-dress is well known. By its means men can descend beneath the waters and remain there a certain time without the action of the lungs being in any way injured. The diver is clothed in a waterproof suit of India rubber, and his feet are attached to leaden shoes, which allow him to retain his upright position beneath the surface. At the collar of the dress, and about the height of the neck, there is fitted a collar of copper, on which is screwed a metal globe with a glass front. In this globe the diver places his head, which he can move about at his ease. To the globe are attached two pipes; one used for carrying off the air ejected from the lungs, and which is unfit for respiration, and the other in communication with a pump worked on the raft, and bringing in the fresh air. When the diver is at work the raft remains immovable above him; when the diver moves about on the bottom of the river the raft follows his movements, or he follows those of the raft, according to his convenience. These diving-dresses are now much improved, and are less dangerous than formerly. The man beneath the liquid mass can easily bear the additional pressure, and if anything was to be feared below the waters it was rather some cayman who might there be met with. But, as had been observed by Araujo, not one of these amphibians had been seen, and they are well known to prefer the black waters of the tributaries of the Amazon. Besides, in case of danger, the diver has always his check-string fastened to the raft, and at the least warning can be quickly hauled to the surface. Benito, invariably very cool once his resolution was taken, commenced to put his idea into execution, and got into the diving dress. His head disappeared in the metal globe, his hand grasped a sort of iron spear with which to stir up the vegetation and detritus accumulated in the river bed, and on his giving the signal he was lowered into the stream. The men on the raft immediately commenced to work the air-pump, while four Indians from the jangada, under the orders of Araujo, gently propelled it with their long poles in the desired direction. The two pirogues, commanded one by Fragoso, the other by Manoel, escorted the raft, and held themselves ready to start in any direction, should Benito find the corpse of Torres and again bring it to the surface of the Amazon.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

A CANNON SHOT

Benito then had disappeared beneath the vast sheet which still covered the corpse of the adventurer. Ah! If he had had the power to divert the waters of the river, to turn them into vapor, or to drain them off—if he could have made the Frias basin dry down stream, from the bar up to the influx of the Rio Negro, the case hidden in Torres' clothes would already have been in his hand! His father's innocence would have been recognized! Joam Dacosta, restored to liberty, would have again started on the descent of the river, and what terrible trials would have been avoided! Benito had reached the bottom. His heavy shoes made the gravel on the bed crunch beneath him. He was in some ten or fifteen feet of water, at the base of the cliff, which was here very steep, and at the very spot where Torres had disappeared. Near him was a tangled mass of reeds and twigs and aquatic plants, all laced together, which assuredly during the researches of the previous day no pole could have penetrated. It was consequently possible that the body was entangled among the submarine shrubs, and still in the place where it had originally fallen. Hereabouts, thanks to the eddy produced by the prolongation of one of the spurs running out into the stream, the current was absolutely nil. Benito guided his movements by those of the raft, which the long poles of the Indians kept just over his head. The light penetrated deep through the clear waters, and the magnificent sun, shining in a cloudless sky, shot its rays down into them unchecked. Under ordinary conditions, at a depth of some twenty feet in water, the view becomes exceedingly blurred, but here the waters seemed to be impregnated with a luminous fluid, and Benito was able to descend still lower without the darkness concealing the river bed. The young man slowly made his way along the bank. With his iron-shod spear he probed the plants and rubbish accumulated along its foot. Flocks of fish, if we can use such an expression, escaped on all sides from the dense thickets like flocks of birds. It seemed as though the thousand pieces of a broken mirror glimmered through the waters. At the same time scores of crustaceans scampered over the sand, like huge ants hurrying from their hills. Notwithstanding that Benito did not leave a single point of the river unexplored, he never caught sight of the object of his search. He noticed, however, that the slope of the river bed was very abrupt, and he concluded that Torres had rolled beyond the eddy toward the center of the stream. If so, he would probably still recover the body, for the current could hardly touch it at the depth, which was already great, and seemed sensibly to increase. Benito then resolved to pursue his investigations on the side where he had begun to probe the vegetation. This was why he continued to advance in that direction, and the raft had to follow him during a quarter of an hour, as had been previously arranged. The quarter of an hour had elapsed, and Benito had found nothing. He felt the need of ascending to the surface, so as to once more experience those physiological conditions in which he could recoup his strength. In certain spots, where the depth of the river necessitated it, he had had to descend about thirty feet. He had thus to support a pressure almost equal to an atmosphere, with the result of the physical fatigue and mental agitation which attack those who are not used to this kind of work. Benito then pulled the communication cord, and the men on the raft commenced to haul him in, but they worked slowly, taking a minute to draw him up two or three feet so as not to produce in his internal organs the dreadful effects of decompression. As soon as the young man had set foot on the raft the metallic sphere of the diving-dress was raised, and he took a long breath and sat down to rest. The pirogues immediately rowed alongside. Manoel, Fragoso, and Araujo came close to him, waiting for him to speak. "Well?" asked Manoel. "Still nothing! Nothing!" "Have you not seen a trace?" "Not one!" "Shall I go down now?" "No, Manoel," answered Benito; "I have begun; I know where to go. Let me do it!" Benito then explained to the pilot that his intention was to visit the lower part of the bank up to the Bar of Frias, for there the slope had perhaps stopped the corpse, if, floating between the two streams, it had in the least degree been affected by the current. But first he wanted to skirt the bank and carefully explore a sort of hole formed in the slope of the bed, to the bottom of which the poles had evidently not been able to penetrate. Araujo approved of this plan, and made the necessary preparations. Manoel gave Benito a little advice. "As you want to pursue your search on that side," he said, "the raft will have to go over there obliquely; but mind what you are doing, Benito. That is much deeper than where you have been yet; it may be fifty or sixty feet, and you will have to support a pressure of quite two atmospheres. Only venture with extreme caution, or you may lose your presence of mind, or no longer know where you are or what to do. If your head feels as if in a vice, and your ears tingle, do not hesitate to give us the signal, and we will at once haul you up. You can then begin again if you like, as you will have got accustomed to move about in the deeper parts of the river." Benito promised to attend to these hints, of which he recognized the importance. He was particularly struck with the fact that his presence of mind might abandon him at the very moment he wanted it most. Benito shook hands with Manoel; the sphere of the diving-dress was again screwed to his neck, the pump began to work, and the diver once more disappeared beneath the stream. The raft was then taken about forty feet along the left bank, but as it moved toward the center of the river the current increased in strength, the ubas were moored, and the rowers kept it from drifting, so as only to allow it to advance with extreme slowness. Benito descended very gently, and again found himself on the firm sand. When his heels touched the ground it could be seen, by the length of the haulage cord, that he was at a depth of some sixty-five or seventy feet. He was therefore in a considerable hole, excavated far below the ordinary level. The liquid medium was more obscure, but the limpidity of these transparent waters still allowed the light to penetrate sufficiently for Benito to distinguish the objects scattered on the bed of the river, and to approach them with some safety. Besides, the sand, sprinkled with mica flakes, seemed to form a sort of reflector, and the very grains could be counted glittering like luminous dust. Benito moved on, examining and sounding the smallest cavities with his spear. He continued to advance very slowly; the communication cord was paid out, and as the pipes which served for the inlet and outlet of the air were never tightened, the pump was worked under the proper conditions. Benito turned off so as to reach the middle of the bed of the Amazon, where there was the greatest depression. Sometimes profound obscurity thickened around him, and then he could see nothing, so feeble was the light; but this was a purely passing phenomenon, and due to the raft, which, floating above his head, intercepted the solar rays and made the night replace the day. An instant afterward the huge shadow would be dissipated, and the reflection of the sands appear again in full force. All the time Benito was going deeper. He felt the increase of the pressure with which his body was wrapped by the liquid mass. His respiration became less easy; the retractibility of his organs no longer worked with as much ease as in the midst of an atmosphere more conveniently adapted for them. And so he found himself under the action of physiological effects to which he was unaccustomed. The rumbling grew louder in his ears, but as his thought was always lucid, as he felt that the action of his brain was quite clear—even a little more so than usual—he delayed giving the signal for return, and continued to go down deeper still. Suddenly, in the subdued light which surrounded him, his attention was attracted by a confused mass. It seemed to take the form of a corpse, entangled beneath a clump of aquatic plants. Intense excitement seized him. He stepped toward the mass; with his spear he felt it. It was the carcass of a huge cayman, already reduced to a skeleton, and which the current of the Rio Negro had swept into the bed of the Amazon. Benito recoiled, and, in spite of the assertions of the pilot, the thought recurred to him that some living cayman might even then be met with in the deeps near the Bar of Frias! But he repelled the idea, and continued his progress, so as to reach the bottom of the depression. And now he had arrived at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet, and consequently was experiencing a pressure of three atmospheres. If, then, this cavity was also drawn blank, he would have to suspend his researches. Experience has shown that the extreme limit for such submarine explorations lies between a hundred and twenty and a hundred and thirty feet, and that below this there is great danger, the human organism not only being hindered from performing his functions under such a pressure, but the apparatus failing to keep up a sufficient supply of air with the desirable regularity. But Benito was resolved to go as far as his mental powers and physical energies would let him. By some strange presentiment he was drawn toward this abyss; it seemed to him as though the corpse was very likely to have rolled to the bottom of the hole, and that Torres, if he had any heavy things about him, such as a belt containing either money or arms, would have sunk to the very lowest point. Of a sudden, in a deep hollow, he saw a body through the gloom! Yes! A corpse, still clothed, stretched out like a man asleep, with his arms folded under his head! Was that Torres? In the obscurity, then very dense, he found it difficult to see; but it was a human body that lay there, less than ten paces off, and perfectly motionless! A sharp pang shot through Benito. His heart, for an instant, ceased to beat. He thought he was going to lose consciousness. By a supreme effort he recovered himself. He stepped toward the corpse. Suddenly a shock as violent as unexpected made his whole frame vibrate! A long whip seemed to twine round his body, and in spite of the thick diving-dress he felt himself lashed again and again. "A gymnotus!" he said. It was the only word that passed his lips. In fact, it was a "puraque," the name given by the Brazilians to the gymnotus, or electric snake, which had just attacked him. It is well known that the gymnotus is a kind of eel, with a blackish, slimy skin, furnished along the back and tail with an apparatus composed of plates joined by vertical lamellæ, and acted on by nerves of considerable power. This apparatus is endowed with singular electrical properties, and is apt to produce very formidable results. Some of these gymnotuses are about the length of a common snake, others are about ten feet long, while others, which, however, are rare, even reach fifteen or twenty feet, and are from eight to ten inches in diameter. Gymnotuses are plentiful enough both in the Amazon and its tributaries; and it was one of these living coils, about ten feet long, which, after uncurving itself like a bow, again attacked the diver. Benito knew what he had to fear from this formidable animal. His clothes were powerless to protect him. The discharges of the gymnotus, at first somewhat weak, become more and more violent, and there would come a time when, exhausted by the shocks, he would be rendered powerless. Benito, unable to resist the blows, half-dropped upon the sand. His limbs were becoming paralyzed little by little under the electric influences of the gymnotus, which lightly touched his body as it wrapped him in its folds. His arms even he could not lift, and soon his spear escaped him, and his hand had not strength enough left to pull the cord and give the signal. Benito felt that he was lost. Neither Manoel nor his companions could suspect the horrible combat which was going on beneath them between the formidable puraque and the unhappy diver, who only fought to suffer, without any power of defending himself. And that at the moment when a body—the body of Torres without a doubt!—had just met his view. By a supreme instinct of self-preservation Benito uttered a cry. His voice was lost in the metallic sphere from which not a sound could escape! And now the puraque redoubled its attacks; it gave forth shock after shock, which made Benito writhe on the sand like the sections of a divided worm, and his muscles were wrenched again and again beneath the living lash. Benito thought that all was over; his eyes grew dim, his limbs began to stiffen. But before he quite lost his power of sight and reason he became the witness of a phenomenon, unexpected, inexplicable, and marvelous in the extreme. A deadened roar resounded through the liquid depths. It was like a thunder-clap, the reverberations of which rolled along the river bed, then violently agitated by the electrical discharges of the gymnotus. Benito felt himself bathed as it were in the dreadful booming which found an echo in the very deepest of the river depths. And then a last cry escaped him, for fearful was the vision which appeared before his eyes! The corpse of the drowned man which had been stretched on the sand arose! The undulations of the water lifted up the arms, and they swayed about as if with some peculiar animation. Convulsive throbs made the movement of the corpse still more alarming. It was indeed the body of Torres. One of the suns rays shot down to it through the liquid mass, and Benito recognized the bloated, ashy features of the scoundrel who fell by his own hand, and whose last breath had left him beneath the waters. And while Benito could not make a single movement with his paralyzed limbs, while his heavy shoes kept him down as if he had been nailed to the sand, the corpse straightened itself up, the head swayed to and fro, and disentangling itself from the hole in which it had been kept by a mass of aquatic weeds, it slowly ascended to the surface of the Amazon.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE CONTENTS OF THE CASE

What was it that had happened? A purely physical phenomenon, of which the following is the explanation. The gunboat Santa Ana, bound for Manaos, had come up the river and passed the bar at Frias. Just before she reached the embouchure of the Rio Negro she hoisted her colors and saluted the Brazilian flag. At the report vibrations were produced along the surface of the stream, and these vibrations making their way down to the bottom of the river, had been sufficient to raise the corpse of Torres, already lightened by the commencement of its decomposition and the distension of its cellular system. The body of the drowned man had in the ordinary course risen to the surface of the water. This well-known phenomenon explains the reappearance of the corpse, but it must be admitted that the arrival of the Santa Ana was a fortunate coincidence. By a shout from Manoel, repeated by all his companions, one of the pirogues was immediately steered for the body, while the diver was at the same time hauled up to the raft. Great was Manoel's emotion when Benito, drawn on to the platform, was laid there in a state of complete inertia, not a single exterior movement betraying that he still lived. Was not this a second corpse which the waters of the Amazon had given up? As quickly as possible the diving-dress was taken off him. Benito had entirely lost consciousness beneath the violent shocks of the gymnotus. Manoel, distracted, called to him, breathed into him, and endeavored to recover the heart's pulsation. "It beats! It beats!" he exclaimed. Yes! Benito's heart did still beat, and in a few minutes Manoel's efforts restored him to life. "The body! the Body!" Such were the first words, the only ones which escaped from Benito's lips. "There it is!" answered Fragoso, pointing to a pirogue then coming up to the raft with the corpse. "But what has been the matter, Benito?" asked Manoel. "Has it been the want of air?" "No!" said Benito; "a puraque attacked me! But the noise? the detonation?" "A cannon shot!" replied Manoel. "It was the cannon shot which brought the corpse to the surface." At this moment the pirogue came up to the raft with the body of Torres, which had been taken on board by the Indians. His sojourn in the water had not disfigured him very much. He was easily recognizable, and there was no doubt as to his identity. Fragoso, kneeling down in the pirogue, had already begun to undo the clothes of the drowned man, which came away in fragments. At the moment Torres' right arm, which was now left bare, attracted his attention. On it there appeared the distinct scar of an old wound produced by a blow from a knife. "That scar!" exclaimed Fragoso. "But—that is good! I remember now——" "What?" demanded Manoel. "A quarrel! Yes! a quarrel I witnessed in the province of Madeira three years ago. How could I have forgotten it! This Torres was then a captain of the woods. Ah! I know now where I had seen him, the scoundrel!" "That does not matter to us now!" cried Benito. "The case! the case! Has he still got that?" and Benito was about to tear away the last coverings of the corpse to get at it. Manoel stopped him. "One moment, Benito," he said; and then, turning to the men on the raft who did not belong to the jangada, and whose evidence could not be suspected at any future time: "Just take note, my friends," he said, "of what we are doing here, so that you can relate before the magistrate what has passed." The men came up to the pirogue. Fragoso undid the belt which encircled the body of Torres underneath the torn poncho, and feeling his breast-pocket, exclaimed: "The case!" A cry of joy escaped from Benito. He stretched forward to seize the case, to make sure than it contained—— "No!" again interrupted Manoel, whose coolness did not forsake him. "It is necessary that not the slightest possible doubt should exist in the mind of the magistrate! It is better that disinterested witnesses should affirm that this case was really found on the corpse of Torres!" "You are right," replied Benito. "My friend," said Manoel to the foreman of the raft, "just feel in the pocket of the waistcoat." The foreman obeyed. He drew forth a metal case, with the cover screwed on, and which seemed to have suffered in no way from its sojourn in the water. "The paper! Is the paper still inside?" exclaimed Benito, who could not contain himself. "It is for the magistrate to open this case!" answered Manoel. "To him alone belongs the duty of verifying that the document was found within it." "Yes, yes. Again you are right, Manoel," said Benito. "To Manaos, my friends—to Manaos!" Benito, Manoel, Fragoso, and the foreman who held the case, immediately jumped into one of the pirogues, and were starting off, when Fragoso said: "And the corpse?" The pirogue stopped. In fact, the Indians had already thrown back the body into the water, and it was drifting away down the river. "Torres was only a scoundrel," said Benito. "If I had to fight him, it was God that struck him, and his body ought not to go unburied!" And so orders were given to the second pirogue to recover the corpse, and take it to the bank to await its burial. But at the same moment a flock of birds of prey, which skimmed along the surface of the stream, pounced on the floating body. They were urubus, a kind of small vulture, with naked necks and long claws, and black as crows. In South America they are known as gallinazos, and their voracity is unparalleled. The body, torn open by their beaks, gave forth the gases which inflated it, its density increased, it sank down little by little, and for the last time what remained of Torres disappeared beneath the waters of the Amazon. Ten minutes afterward the pirogue arrived at Manaos. Benito and his companions jumped ashore, and hurried through the streets of the town. In a few minutes they had reached the dwelling of Judge Jarriuez, and informed him, through one of his servants, that they wished to see him immediately. The judge ordered them to be shown into his study. There Manoel recounted all that had passed, from the moment when Torres had been killed until the moment when the case had been found on his corpse, and taken from his breast-pocket by the foreman. Although this recital was of a nature to corroborate all that Joam Dacosta had said on the subject of Torres, and of the bargain which he had endeavored to make, Judge Jarriquez could not restrain a smile of incredulity. "There is the case, sir," said Manoel. "For not a single instant has it been in our hands, and the man who gives it to you is he who took it from the body of Torres." The magistrate took the case and examined it with care, turning it over and over as though it were made of some precious material. Then he shook it, and a few coins inside sounded with a metallic ring. Did not, then, the case contain the document which had been so much sought after—the document written in the very hand of the true author of the crime of Tijuco, and which Torres had wished to sell at such an ignoble price to Joam Dacosta? Was this material proof of the convict's innocence irrevocably lost? We can easily imagine the violent agitation which had seized upon the spectators of this scene. Benito could scarcely utter a word, he felt his heart ready to burst. "Open it, sir! open the case!" he at last exclaimed, in a broken voice. Judge Jarriquez began to unscrew the lid; then, when the cover was removed, he turned up the case, and from it a few pieces of gold dropped out and rolled on the table. "But the paper! the paper!" again gasped Benito, who clutched hold of the table to save himself from falling. The magistrate put his fingers into the case and drew out, not without difficulty, a faded paper, folded with care, and which the water did not seem to have even touched. "The document! that is the document!" shouted Fragoso; "that is the very paper I saw in the hands of Torres!" Judge Jarriquez unfolded the paper and cast his eyes over it, and then he turned it over so as to examine it on the back and the front, which were both covered with writing. "A document it really is!" said he; "there is no doubt of that. It is indeed a document!" "Yes," replied Benito; "and that is the document which proves my father's innocence!" "I do not know that," replied Judge Jarriquez; "and I am much afraid it will be very difficult to know it." "Why?" exclaimed Benito, who became pale as death. "Because this document is a cryptogram, and——" "Well?" "We have not got the key!"

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE DOCUMENT

This was a contingency which neither Joam Dacosta nor his people could have anticipated. In fact, as those who have not forgotten the first scene in this story are aware, the document was written in a disguised form in one of the numerous systems used in cryptography. But in which of them? To discover this would require all the ingenuity of which the human brain was capable. Before dismissing Benito and his companions, Judge Jarriquez had an exact copy made of the document, and, keeping the original, handed it over to them after due comparison, so that they could communicate with the prisoner. Then, making an appointment for the morrow, they retired, and not wishing to lose an instant in seeing Joam Dacosta, they hastened on to the prison, and there, in a short interview, informed him of all that had passed. Joam Dacosta took the document and carefully examined it. Shaking his head, he handed it back to his son. "Perhaps," he said, "there is therein written the proof I shall never be able to produce. But if that proof escapes me, if the whole tenor of my life does not plead for me, I have nothing more to expect from the justice of men, and my fate is in the hands of God!" And all felt it to be so. If the document remained indecipherable, the position of the convict was a desperate one. "We shall find it, father!" exclaimed Benito. "There never was a document of this sort yet which could stand examination. Have confidence—yes, confidence! Heaven has, so to speak, miraculously given us the paper which vindicates you, and, after guiding our hands to recover it, it will not refuse to direct our brains to unravel it." Joam Dacosta shook hands with Benito and Manoel, and then the three young men, much agitated, retired to the jangada, where Yaquita was awaiting them. Yaquita was soon informed of what had happened since the evening—the reappearance of the body of Torres, the discovery of the document, and the strange form under which the real culprit, the companion of the adventurer, had thought proper to write his confession—doubtless, so that it should not compromise him if it fell into strange hands. Naturally, Lina was informed of this unexpected complication, and of the discovery made by Fragoso that Torres was an old captain of the woods belonging to the gang who were employed about the mouths of the Madeira. "But under what circumstances did you meet him?" asked the young mulatto. "It was during one of my runs across the province of Amazones," replied Fragoso, "when I was going from village to village, working at my trade." "And the scar?" "What happened was this: One day I arrived at the mission of Aranas at the moment that Torres, whom I had never before seen, had picked a quarrel with one of his comrades—and a bad lot they are!—and this quarrel ended with a stab from a knife, which entered the arm of the captain of the woods. There was no doctor there, and so I took charge of the wound, and that is how I made his acquaintance." "What does it matter after all," replied the young girl, "that we know what Torres had been? He was not the author of the crime, and it does not help us in the least." "No, it does not," answered Fragoso; "for we shall end by reading the document, and then the innocence of Joam Dacosta will be palpable to the eyes of all." This was likewise the hope of Yaquita, of Benito, of Manoel, and of Minha, and, shut up in the house, they passed long hours in endeavoring to decipher the writing. But if it was their hope—and there is no need to insist on that point—it was none the less that of Judge Jarriquez. After having drawn up his report at the end of his examination establishing the identity of Joam Dacosta, the magistrate had sent it off to headquarters, and therewith he thought he had finished with the affair so far as he was concerned. It could not well be otherwise. On the discovery of the document, Jarriquez suddenly found himself face to face with the study of which he was a master. He, the seeker after numerical combinations, the solver of amusing problems, the answerer of charades, rebuses, logogryphs, and such things, was at last in his true element. At the thought that the document might perhaps contain the justification of Joam Dacosta, he felt all the instinct of the analyst aroused. Here, before his very eyes, was a cryptogram! And so from that moment he thought of nothing but how to discover its meaning, and it is scarcely necessary to say that he made up his mind to work at it continuously, even if he forgot to eat or to drink. After the departure of the young people, Judge Jarriquez installed himself in his study. His door, barred against every one, assured him of several hours of perfect solitude. His spectacles were on his nose, his snuff-box on the table. He took a good pinch so as to develop the finesse and sagacity of his mind. He picked up the document and became absorbed in meditation, which soon became materialized in the shape of a monologue. The worthy justice was one of those unreserved men who think more easily aloud than to himself. "Let us proceed with method," he said. "No method, no logic; no logic, no success." Then, taking the document, he ran through it from beginning to end, without understanding it in the least. The document contained a hundred lines, which were divided into half a dozen paragraphs. "Hum!" said the judge, after a little reflection; "to try every paragraph, one after the other, would be to lose precious time, and be of no use. I had better select one of these paragraphs, and take the one which is likely to prove the most interesting. Which of them would do this better than the last, where the recital of the whole affair is probably summed up? Proper names might put me on the track, among others that of Joam Dacosta; and if he had anything to do with this document, his name will evidently not be absent from its concluding paragraph." The magistrate's reasoning was logical, and he was decidedly right in bringing all his resources to bear in the first place on the gist of the cryptogram as contained in its last paragraph. Here is the paragraph, for it is necessary to again bring it before the eyes of the reader so as to show how an analyst set to work to discover its meaning.  "P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h x g k f n d r x u j u g I o c y t d x v k s b x h h u y p o h d v y r y m h u h p u y d k j o x p h e t o z l s l e t n p m v f f o v p d p a j x h y y n o j y g g a y m e q y n f u q l n m v l y f g s u z m q I z t l b q q y u g s q e u b v n r c r e d g r u z b l r m x y u h q h p z d r r g c r o h e p q x u f I v v r p l p h o n t h v d d q f h q s n t z h h h n f e p m q k y u u e x k t o g z g k y u u m f v I j d q d p z j q s y k r p l x h x q r y m v k l o h h h o t o z v d k s p p s u v j h d." At the outset, Judge Jarrizuez noticed that the lines of the document were not divided either into words or phrases, and that there was a complete absence of punctuation. This fact could but render the reading of the document more difficult. "Let us see, however," he said, "if there is not some assemblage of letters which appears to form a word—I mean a pronounceable word, whose number of consonants is in proportion to its vowels. And at the beginning I see the word phy; further on the word gas. Halloo! ujugi. Does that mean the African town on the banks of Tanganyika? What has that got to do with all this? Further on here is the word ypo. Is it Greek, then? Close by here is rym and puy, and jox, and phetoz, and jyggay, and mv, and qruz. And before that we have got red and let. That is good! those are two English words. Then ohe—syk; then rym once more, and then the word oto." Judge Jarriquez let the paper drop, and thought for a few minutes. "All the words I see in this thing seem queer!" he said. "In fact, there is nothing to give a clue to their origin. Some look like Greek, some like Dutch; some have an English twist, and some look like nothing at all! To say nothing of these series of consonants which are not wanted in any human pronunciation. Most assuredly it will not be very easy to find the key to this cryptogram." The magistrate's fingers commenced to beat a tattoo on his desk—a kind of reveille to arouse his dormant faculties. "Let us see," he said, "how many letters there are in the paragraph." He counted them, pen in hand. "Two hundred and seventy-six!" he said. "Well, now let us try what proportion these different letters bear to each other." This occupied him for some time. The judge took up the document, and, with his pen in his hand, he noted each letter in alphabetical order. In a quarter of an hour he had obtained the following table:  a = 3 times  b = 4  c = 3  d = 16  e = 9  f = 10  g = 13  h = 23  i = 4  j = 8  k = 9  l = 9  m = 9  n = 9  o = 12  p = 16  q = 16  r = 12  s = 10  t = 8  u = 17  v = 13  x = 12  y = 19  z = 12  ——  Total... 276 times. "Ah, ah!" he exclaimed. "One thing strikes me at once, and that is that in this paragraph all the letters of the alphabet are not used. That is very strange. If we take up a book and open it by chance it will be very seldom that we shall hit upon two hundred and seventy-six letters without all the signs of the alphabet figuring among them. After all, it may be chance," and then he passed to a different train of thought. "One important point is to see if the vowels and consonants are in their normal proportion." And so he seized his pen, counted up the vowels, and obtained the following result:  a = 3 times  e = 9  i = 4  o = 12  u = 17  y = 19  ——  Total... 276 times. "And thus there are in this paragraph, after we have done our subtraction, sixty-four vowels and two hundred and twelve consonants. Good! that is the normal proportion. That is about a fifth, as in the alphabet, where there are six vowels among twenty-six letters. It is possible, therefore, that the document is written in the language of our country, and that only the signification of each letter is changed. If it has been modified in regular order, and a b is always represented by an l, and o by a v, a g by a k, an u by an r, etc., I will give up my judgeship if I do not read it. What can I do better than follow the method of that great analytical genius, Edgar Allan Poe?" Judge Jarriquez herein alluded to a story by the great American romancer, which is a masterpiece. Who has not read the "Gold Bug?" In this novel a cryptogram, composed of ciphers, letters, algebraic signs, asterisks, full-stops, and commas, is submitted to a truly mathematical analysis, and is deciphered under extraordinary conditions, which the admirers of that strange genius can never forget. On the reading of the American document depended only a treasure, while on that of this one depended a man's life. Its solution was consequently all the more interesting. The magistrate, who had often read and re-read his "Gold Bug," was perfectly acquainted with the steps in the analysis so minutely described by Edgar Poe, and he resolved to proceed in the same way on this occasion. In doing so he was certain, as he had said, that if the value or signification of each letter remained constant, he would, sooner or later, arrive at the solution of the document. "What did Edgar Poe do?" he repeated. "First of all he began by finding out the sign—here there are only letters, let us say the letter—which was reproduced the oftenest. I see that that is h, for it is met with twenty-three times. This enormous proportion shows, to begin with, that h does not stand for h, but, on the contrary, that it represents the letter which recurs most frequently in our language, for I suppose the document is written in Portuguese. In English or French it would certainly be e, in Italian it would be i or a, in Portuguese it will be a or o. Now let us say that it signifies a or o." After this was done, the judge found out the letter which recurred most frequently after h, and so on, and he formed the following table:  h = 23 times  y = 19  u = 17  d p q = 16  g v = 13  o r x z = 12  f s = 10  e k l m n = 9  j t = 8  b i = 8  a c = 8 "Now the letter a only occurs thrice!" exclaimed the judge, "and it ought to occur the oftenest. Ah! that clearly proves that the meaning had been changed. And now, after a or o, what are the letters which figure oftenest in our language? Let us see," and Judge Jarriquez, with truly remarkable sagacity, which denoted a very observant mind, started on this new quest. In this he was only imitating the American romancer, who, great analyst as he was, had, by simple induction, been able to construct an alphabet corresponding to the signs of the cryptogram and by means of it to eventually read the pirate's parchment note with ease. The magistrate set to work in the same way, and we may affirm that he was no whit inferior to his illustrious master. Thanks to his previous work at logogryphs and squares, rectangular arrangements and other enigmas, which depend only on an arbitrary disposition of the letters, he was already pretty strong in such mental pastimes. On this occasion he sought to establish the order in which the letters were reproduced—vowels first, consonants afterward. Three hours had elapsed since he began. He had before his eyes an alphabet which, if his procedure were right, would give him the right meaning of the letters in the document. He had only to successively apply the letters of his alphabet to those of his paragraph. But before making this application some slight emotion seized upon the judge. He fully experienced the intellectual gratification—much greater than, perhaps, would be thought—of the man who, after hours of obstinate endeavor, saw the impatiently sought-for sense of the logogryph coming into view. "Now let us try," he said; "and I shall be very much surprised if I have not got the solution of the enigma!" Judge Jarriquez took off his spectacles and wiped the glasses; then he put them back again and bent over the table. His special alphabet was in one hand, the cryptogram in the other. He commenced to write under the first line of the paragraph the true letters, which, according to him, ought to correspond exactly with each of the cryptographic letters. As with the first line so did he with the second, and the third, and the fourth, until he reached the end of the paragraph. Oddity as he was, he did not stop to see as he wrote if the assemblage of letters made intelligible words. No; during the first stage his mind refused all verification of that sort. What he desired was to give himself the ecstasy of reading it all straight off at once. And now he had done. "Let us read!" he exclaimed. And he read. Good heavens! what cacophony! The lines he had formed with the letters of his alphabet had no more sense in them that those of the document! It was another series of letters, and that was all. They formed no word; they had no value. In short, they were just as hieroglyphic. "Confound the thing!" exclaimed Judge Jarriquez.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

IS IT A MATTER OF FIGURES?

It was seven o'clock in the evening. Judge Jarriquez had all the time been absorbed in working at the puzzle—and was no further advanced—and had forgotten the time of repast and the time of repose, when there came a knock at his study door. It was time. An hour later, and all the cerebral substance of the vexed magistrate would certainly have evaporated under the intense heat into which he had worked his head. At the order to enter—which was given in an impatient tone—the door opened and Manoel presented himself. The young doctor had left his friends on board the jangada at work on the indecipherable document, and had come to see Judge Jarriquez. He was anxious to know if he had been fortunate in his researches. He had come to ask if he had at length discovered the system on which the cryptogram had been written. The magistrate was not sorry to see Manoel come in. He was in that state of excitement that solitude was exasperating to him. He wanted some one to speak to, some one as anxious to penetrate the mystery as he was. Manoel was just the man. "Sir," said Manoel as he entered, "one question! Have you succeeded better than we have?" "Sit down first," exclaimed Judge Jarriquez, who got up and began to pace the room. "Sit down. If we are both of us standing, you will walk one way and I shall walk the other, and the room will be too narrow to hold us." Manoel sat down and repeated his question. "No! I have not had any success!" replied the magistrate; "I do not think I am any better off. I have got nothing to tell you; but I have found out a certainty." "What is that, sir?" "That the document is not based on conventional signs, but on what is known in cryptology as a cipher, that is to say, on a number." "Well, sir," answered Manoel, "cannot a document of that kind always be read?" "Yes," said Jarriquez, "if a letter is invariably represented by the same letter; if an a, for example, is always a p, and a p is always an x; if not, it cannot." "And in this document?" "In this document the value of the letter changes with the arbitrarily selected cipher which necessitates it. So a b will in one place be represented by a k will later on become a z, later on an u or an n or an f, or any other letter." "And then?" "And then, I am sorry to say, the cryptogram is indecipherable." "Indecipherable!" exclaimed Manoel. "No, sir; we shall end by finding the key of the document on which the man's life depends." Manoel had risen, a prey to the excitement he could not control; the reply he had received was too hopeless, and he refused to accept it for good. At a gesture from the judge, however, he sat down again, and in a calmer voice asked: "And in the first place, sir, what makes you think that the basis of this document is a number, or, as you call it, a cipher?" "Listen to me, young man," replied the judge, "and you will be forced to give in to the evidence." The magistrate took the document and put it before the eyes of Manoel and showed him what he had done. "I began," he said, "by treating this document in the proper way, that is to say, logically, leaving nothing to chance. I applied to it an alphabet based on the proportion the letters bear to one another which is usual in our language, and I sought to obtain the meaning by following the precepts of our immortal analyst, Edgar Poe. Well, what succeeded with him collapsed with me." "Collapsed!" exclaimed Manoel. "Yes, my dear young man, and I at once saw that success sought in that fashion was impossible. In truth, a stronger man than I might have been deceived." "But I should like to understand," said Manoel, "and I do not——" "Take the document," continued Judge Jarriquez; "first look at the disposition of the letters, and read it through." Manoel obeyed. "Do you not see that the combination of several of the letters is very strange?" asked the magistrate. "I do not see anything," said Manoel, after having for perhaps the hundredth time read through the document. "Well! study the last paragraph! There you understand the sense of the whole is bound to be summed up. Do you see anything abnormal?" "Nothing." "There is, however, one thing which absolutely proves that the language is subject to the laws of number." "And that is?" "That is that you see three h's coming together in two different places." What Jarriquez said was correct, and it was of a nature to attract attention. The two hundred and fourth, two hundred and fifth, and two hundred and sixth letters of the paragraph, and the two hundred and fifty-eight, two hundred and fifty-ninth, and two hundred and sixtieth letters of the paragraph were consecutive h's. At first this peculiarity had not struck the magistrate. "And that proves?" asked Manoel, without divining the deduction that could be drawn from the combination. "That simply proves that the basis of the document is a number. It shows à priori that each letter is modified in virtue of the ciphers of the number and according to the place which it occupies." "And why?" "Because in no language will you find words with three consecutive repetitions of the letter h." Manoel was struck with the argument; he thought about it, and, in short, had no reply to make. "And had I made the observation sooner," continued the magistrate, "I might have spared myself a good deal of trouble and a headache which extends from my occiput to my sinciput." "But, sir," asked Manoel, who felt the little hope vanishing on which he had hitherto rested, "what do you mean by a cipher?" "Tell me a number." "Any number you like." "Give me an example and you will understand the explanation better." Judge Jarriquez sat down at the table, took up a sheet of paper and a pencil, and said: "Now, Mr. Manoel, let us choose a sentence by chance, the first that comes; for instance: Judge Jarriquez has an ingenious mind. I write this phrase so as to space the letters different and I get: Judgejarriquezhasaningeniousmind. "That done," said the magistrate, to whom the phrase seemed to contain a proposition beyond dispute, looking Manoel straight in the face, "suppose I take a number by chance, so as to give a cryptographic form to this natural succession of words; suppose now this word is composed of three ciphers, and let these ciphers be 2, 3, and 4. Now on the line below I put the number 234, and repeat it as many times as are necessary to get to the end of the phrase, and so that every cipher comes underneath a letter. This is what we get:  J u d g e j a r r I q u e z h a s a n I n g e n I o u s m I n d 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 And now, Mr. Manoel, replacing each letter by the letter in advance of it in alphabetical order according to the value of the cipher, we get:  j + 2 = l u + 3 = x d + 4 = h g + 2 = i e + 3 = h j + 4 = n a + 2 = c r + 3 = u r + 4 = v i + 2 = k q + 3 = t u + 4 = y e + 2 = g a + 3 = c h + 4 = t a + 2 = c s + 3 = v a + 4 = e n + 2 = p i + 3 = l n + 4 = r g + 2 = i e + 3 = h n + 4 = r i + 2 = k o + 3 = r u + 4 = y s + 2 = u and so on. "If, on account of the value of the ciphers which compose the number I come to the end of the alphabet without having enough complementary letters to deduct, I begin again at the beginning. That is what happens at the end of my name when the z is replaced by the 3. As after z the alphabet has no more letters, I commence to count from a, and so get the c. That done, when I get to the end of this cryptographic system, made up of the 234—which was arbitrarily selected, do not forget!—the phrase which you recognize above is replaced by...  lxhihncuvktygclveplrihrkryupmpg. "And now, young man, just look at it, and do you not think it is very much like what is in the document? Well, what is the consequence? Why, that the signification of the letters depends on a cipher which chance puts beneath them, and the cryptographic letter which answers to a true one is not always the same. So in this phrase the first j is represented by an l, the second by an n; the first e by an h, the second b a g, the third by an h; the first d is represented by an h, the last by a g; the first u by an x, the last by a y; the first and second a's by a c, the last by an e; and in my own name one r is represented by a u, the other by a v. and so on. Now do you see that if you do not know the cipher 234 you will never be able to read the lines, and consequently if we do not know the number of the document it remains undecipherable." On hearing the magistrate reason with such careful logic, Manoel was at first overwhelmed, but, raising his head, he exclaimed: "No, sir, I will not renounce the hope of finding the number!" "We might have done so," answered Judge Jarriquez, "if the lines of the document had been divided into words." "And why?" "For this reason, young man. I think we can assume that in the last paragraph all that is written in these earlier paragraphs is summed up. Now I am convinced that in it will be found the name of Joam Dacosta. Well, if the lines had been divided into words, in trying the words one after the other—I mean the words composed of seven letters, as the name of Dacosta is—it would not have been impossible to evolve the number which is the key of the document." "Will you explain to me how you ought to proceed to do that, sir?" asked Manoel, who probably caught a glimpse of one more hope. "Nothing can be more simple," answered the judge. "Let us take, for example, one of the words in the sentence we have just written—my name, if you like. It is represented in the cryptogram by this queer succession of letters, ncuvktygc. Well, arranging these letters in a column, one under the other, and then placing against them the letters of my name and deducting one from the other the numbers of their places in alphabetical order, I see the following result: Between n and j we have 4 letters  — c — a — 2 —  — u — r — 3 —  — v — r — 4 —  — k — i — 2 —  — t — q — 3 —  — y — u — 4 —  — g — e — 2 —  — c — z — 3 "Now what is the column of ciphers made up of that we have got by this simple operation? Look here! 423 423 423, that is to say, of repetitions of the numbers 423, or 234, or 342." "Yes, that is it!" answered Manoel. "You understand, then, by this means, that in calculating the true letter from the false, instead of the false from the true, I have been able to discover the number with ease; and the number I was in search of is really the 234 which I took as the key of my cryptogram." "Well, sir!" exclaimed Manoel, "if that is so, the name of Dacosta is in the last paragraph; and taking successively each letter of those lines for the first of the seven letters which compose his name, we ought to get——" "That would be impossible," interrupted the judge, "except on one condition." "What is that?" "That the first cipher of the number should happen to be the first letter of the word Dacosta, and I think you will agree with me that that is not probable." "Quite so!" sighed Manoel, who, with this improbability, saw the last chance vanish. "And so we must trust to chance alone," continued Jarriquez, who shook his head, "and chance does not often do much in things of this sort." "But still," said Manoel, "chance might give us this number." "This number," exclaimed the magistrate—"this number? But how many ciphers is it composed of? Of two, or three, or four, or nine, or ten? Is it made of different ciphers only or of ciphers in different order many times repeated? Do you not know, young man, that with the ordinary ten ciphers, using all at a time, but without any repetition, you can make three million two hundred and sixty-eight thousand and eight hundred different numbers, and that if you use the same cipher more than once in the number, these millions of combinations will be enormously increased! And do you not know that if we employ every one of the five hundred and twenty-five thousand and six hundred minutes of which the year is composed to try at each of these numbers, it would take you six years, and that you would want three centuries if each operation took you an hour? No! You ask the impossible!" "Impossible, sir?" answered Manoel. "An innocent man has been branded as guilty, and Joam Dacosta is to lose his life and his honor while you hold in your hands the material proof of his innocence! That is what is impossible!" "Ah! young man!" exclaimed Jarriquez, "who told you, after all, that Torres did not tell a lie? Who told you that he really did have in his hands a document written by the author of the crime? that this paper was the document, and that this document refers to Joam Dacosta?" "Who told me so?" repeated Manoel, and his face was hidden in his hands. In fact, nothing could prove for certain that the document had anything to do with the affair in the diamond province. There was, in fact, nothing to show that it was not utterly devoid of meaning, and that it had been imagined by Torres himself, who was as capable of selling a false thing as a true one! "It does not matter, Manoel," continued the judge, rising; "it does not matter! Whatever it may be to which the document refers, I have not yet given up discovering the cipher. After all, it is worth more than a logogryph or a rebus!" At these words Manoel rose, shook hands with the magistrate, and returned to the jangada, feeling more hopeless when he went back than when he set out.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

CHANCE!

A complete change took place in public opinion on the subject of Joam Dacosta. To anger succeeded pity. The population no longer thronged to the prison of Manaos to roar out cries of death to the prisoner. On the contrary, the most forward of them in accusing him of being the principal author of the crime of Tijuco now averred that he was not guilty, and demanded his immediate restoration to liberty. Thus it always is with the mob—from one extreme they run to the other. But the change was intelligible. The events which had happened during the last few days—the struggle between Benito and Torres; the search for the corpse, which had reappeared under such extraordinary circumstances; the finding of the "indecipherable" document, if we can so call it; the information it concealed, the assurance that it contained, or rather the wish that it contained, the material proof of the guiltlessness of Joam Dacosta; and the hope that it was written by the real culprit—all these things had contributed to work the change in public opinion. What the people had desired and impatiently demanded forty-eight hours before, they now feared, and that was the arrival of the instructions due from Rio de Janeiro. These, however, were not likely to be delayed. Joam Dacosta had been arrested on the 24th of August, and examined next day. The judge's report was sent off on the 26th. It was now the 28th. In three or four days more the minister would have come to a decision regarding the convict, and it was only too certain that justice would take its course. There was no doubt that such would be the case. On the other hand, that the assurance of Dacosta's innocence would appear from the document, was not doubted by anybody, neither by his family nor by the fickle population of Manaos, who excitedly followed the phases of this dramatic affair. But, on the other hand, in the eyes of disinterested or indifferent persons who were not affected by the event, what value could be assigned to this document? and how could they even declare that it referred to the crime in the diamond arrayal? It existed, that was undeniable; it had been found on the corpse of Torres, nothing could be more certain. It could even be seen, by comparing it with the letter in which Torres gave the information about Joam Dacosta, that the document was not in the handwriting of the adventurer. But, as had been suggested by Judge Jarriquez, why should not the scoundrel have invented it for the sake of his bargain? And this was less unlikely to be the case, considering that Torres had declined to part with it until after his marriage with Dacosta's daughter—that is to say, when it would have been impossible to undo an accomplished fact. All these views were held by some people in some form, and we can quite understand what interest the affair created. In any case, the situation of Joam Dacosta was most hazardous. If the document were not deciphered, it would be just the same as if it did not exist; and if the secret of the cryptogram were not miraculously divined or revealed before the end of the three days, the supreme sentence would inevitably be suffered by the doomed man of Tijuco. And this miracle a man attempted to perform! The man was Jarriquez, and he now really set to work more in the interest of Joam Dacosta than for the satisfaction of his analytical faculties. A complete change had also taken place in his opinion. Was not this man, who had voluntarily abandoned his retreat at Iquitos, who had come at the risk of his life to demand his rehabilitation at the hands of Brazilian justice, a moral enigma worth all the others put together? And so the judge had resolved never to leave the document until he had discovered the cipher. He set to work at it in a fury. He ate no more; he slept no more! All his time was passed in inventing combinations of numbers, in forging a key to force this lock! This idea had taken possession of Judge Jarriquez's brain at the end of the first day. Suppressed frenzy consumed him, and kept him in a perpetual heat. His whole house trembled; his servants, black or white, dared not come near him. Fortunately he was a bachelor; had there been a Madame Jarriquez she would have had a very uncomfortable time of it. Never had a problem so taken possession of this oddity, and he had thoroughly made up his mind to get at the solution, even if his head exploded like an overheated boiler under the tension of its vapor. It was perfectly clear to the mind of the worthy magistrate that the key to the document was a number, composed of two or more ciphers, but what this number was all investigation seemed powerless to discover. This was the enterprise on which Jarriquez, in quite a fury, was engaged, and during this 28th of August he brought all his faculties to bear on it, and worked away almost superhumanly. To arrive at the number by chance, he said, was to lose himself in millions of combinations, which would absorb the life of a first-rate calculator. But if he could in no respect reckon on chance, was it impossible to proceed by reasoning? Decidedly not! And so it was "to reason till he became unreasoning" that Judge Jarriquez gave himself up after vainly seeking repose in a few hours of sleep. He who ventured in upon him at this moment, after braving the formal defenses which protected his solitude, would have found him, as on the day before, in his study, before his desk, with the document under his eyes, the thousands of letters of which seemed all jumbled together and flying about his head. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "why did not the scoundrel who wrote this separate the words in this paragraph? We might—we will try—but no! However, if there is anything here about the murder and the robbery, two or three words there must be in it—'arrayal,' 'diamond,' 'Tijuco,' 'Dacosta,' and others; and in putting down their cryptological equivalents the number could be arrived at. But there is nothing—not a single break!—not one word by itself! One word of two hundred and seventy-six letters! I hope the wretch may be blessed two hundred and seventy-six times for complicating his system in this way! He ought to be hanged two hundred and seventy-six times!" And a violent thump with his fist on the document emphasized this charitable wish. "But," continued the magistrate, "if I cannot find one of the words in the body of the document, I might at least try my hand at the beginning and end of each paragraph. There may be a chance there that I ought not to miss." And impressed with this idea Judge Jarriquez successively tried if the letters which commenced or finished the different paragraphs could be made to correspond with those which formed the most important word, which was sure to be found somewhre, that of Dacosta. He could do nothing of the kind. In fact, to take only the last paragraph with which he began, the formula was:  P = D h = a y = c f = o s = s l = t y = a Now, at the very first letter Jarriquez was stopped in his calculations, for the difference in alphabetical position between the d and the p gave him not one cipher, but two, namely, 12, and in this kind of cryptograph only one letter can take the place of another. It was the same for the seven last letters of the paragraph, p s u v j h d, of which the series also commences with a p, and which in no case could stand for the d in Dacosta, because these letters were in like manner twelve spaces apart. So it was not his name that figured here. The same observation applies to the words arrayal and Tijuco, which were successively tried, but whose construction did not correspond with the cryptographic series. After he had got so far, Judge Jarriquez, with his head nearly splitting, arose and paced his office, went for fresh air to the window, and gave utterance to a growl, at the noise of which a flock of hummingbirds, murmuring among the foliage of a mimosa tree, betook themselves to flight. Then he returned to the document. He picked it up and turned it over and over. "The humbug! the rascal!" he hissed; "it will end by driving me mad! But steady! Be calm! Don't let our spirits go down! This is not the time!" And then, having refreshed himself by giving his head a thorough sluicing with cold water: "Let us try another way," he said, "and as I cannot hit upon the number from the arrangement of the letters, let us see what number the author of the document would have chosen in confessing that he was the author of the crime at Tijuco." This was another method for the magistrate to enter upon, and maybe he was right, for there was a certain amount of logic about it. "And first let us try a date! Why should not the culprit have taken the date of the year in which Dacosta, the innocent man he allowed to be sentenced in his own place, was born? Was he likely to forget a number which was so important to him? Then Joam Dacosta was born in 1804. Let us see what 1804 will give us as a cryptographical number." And Judge Jarriquez wrote the first letters of the paragraph, and putting over them the number 1804 repeated thrice, he obtained  1804 1804 1804  phyj slyd dqfd Then in counting up the spaces in alphabetical order, he obtained  s.yf rdy. cif. And this was meaningless! And he wanted three letters which he had to replace by points, because the ciphers, 8, 4, and 4, which command the three letters, h, d, and d, do not give corresponding letters in ascending the series. "That is not it again!" exclaimed Jarriquez. "Let us try another number." And he asked himself, if instead of this first date the author of the document had not rather selected the date of the year in which the crime was committed. This was in 1826. And so proceeding as above, he obtained.  1826 1826 1826  phyj slyd dqfd ...and that gave...  o.vd rdv. cid. the same meaningless series, the same absence of sense, as many letters wanting as in the former instance, and for the same reason. "Bother the number!" exclaimed the magistrate. "We must give it up again. Let us have another one! Perhaps the rascal chose the number of contos representing the amount of the booty!" Now the value of the stolen diamonds was estimated at eight hundred and thirty-four contos, or about 2,500,000 francs, and so the formula became:  834 834 834 834  phy jsl ydd qfd and this gave a result as little gratifying as the others—  het bph pa. ic. "Confound the document and him who imagined it!" shouted Jarriquez, throwing down the paper, which was wafted to the other side of the room. "It would try the patience of a saint!" But the short burst of anger passed away, and the magistrate, who had no idea of being beaten, picked up the paper. What he had done with the first letters of the different paragraphs he did with the last—and to no purpose. Then he tried everything his excited imagination could suggest. He tried in succession the numbers which represented Dacosta's age, which would have been known to the author of the crime, the date of his arrest, the date of the sentence at the Villa Rica assizes, the date fixed for the execution, etc., etc., even the number of victims at the affray at Tijuco! Nothing! All the time nothing! Judge Jarriquez had worked himself into such a state of exasperation that there really was some fear that his mental faculties would lose their balance. He jumped about, and twisted about, and wrestled about as if he really had got hold of his enemy's body. Then suddenly he cried, "Now for chance! Heaven help me now, logic is powerless!" His hand seized a bell-pull hanging near his table. The bell rang furiously, and the magistrate strode up to the door, which he opened. "Bobo!" he shouted. A moment or two elapsed. Bobo was a freed negro, who was the privileged servant of Jarriquez. He did not appear; it was evident that Bobo was afraid to come into his master's room. Another ring at the bell; another call to Bobo, who, for his own safety, pretended to be deaf on this occasion. And now a third ring at the bell, which unhitched the crank and broke the cord. This time Bobo came up. "What is it, sir?" asked Bobo, prudently waiting on the threshold. "Advance, without uttering a single word!" replied the judge, whose flaming eyes made the negro quake again. Bobo advanced. "Bobo," said Jarriquez, "attend to what I say, and answer immediately; do not even take time to think, or I——" Bobo, with fixed eyes and open mouth, brought his feet together like a soldier and stood at attention. "Are you ready?" asked his master. "I am." "Now, then, tell me, without a moment's thought—you understand—the first number than comes into your head." "76223," answered Bobo, all in a breath. Bobo thought he would please his master by giving him a pretty large one! Judge Jarriquez had run to the table, and, pencil in hand, had made out a formula with the number given by Bobo, and which Bobo had in this way only given him at a venture. It is obvious that it was most unlikely that a number such as 76223 was the key of the document, and it produced no other result than to bring to the lips of Jarriquez such a vigorous ejaculation that Bobo disappeared like a shot!

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE LAST EFFORTS

The magistrate, however, was not the only one who passed his time unprofitably. Benito, Manoel, and Minha tried all they could together to extract the secret from the document on which depended their father's life and honor. On his part, Fragoso, aided by Lina, could not remain quiet, but all their ingenuity had failed, and the number still escaped them. "Why don't you find it, Fragoso?" asked the young mulatto. "I will find it," answered Fragoso. And he did not find it! Here we should say that Fragoso had an idea of a project of which he had not even spoken to Lina, but which had taken full possession of his mind. This was to go in search of the gang to which the ex-captain of the woods had belonged, and to find out who was the probable author of this cipher document, which was supposed to be the confession of the culprit of Tijuco. The part of the Amazon where these people were employed, the very place where Fragoso had met Torres a few years before, was not very far from Manaos. He would only have to descend the river for about fifty miles, to the mouth of the Madeira, a tributary coming in on the right, and there he was almost sure to meet the head of these "capitaes do mato," to which Torres belonged. In two days, or three days at the outside, Fragoso could get into communication with the old comrades of the adventurer. "Yes! I could do that," he repeated to himself; "but what would be the good of it, supposing I succeeded? If we are sure that one of Torres' companions has recently died, would that prove him to be the author of this crime? Would that show that he gave Torres a document in which he announced himself the author of this crime, and exonerated Joam Dacosta? Would that give us the key of the document? No! Two men only knew the cipher—the culprit and Torres! And these two men are no more!" So reasoned Fragoso. It was evident that his enterprise would do no good. But the thought of it was too much for him. An irresistible influence impelled him to set out, although he was not even sure of finding the band on the Madeira. In fact, it might be engaged in some other part of the province, and to come up with it might require more time than Fragoso had at his disposal! And what would be the result? It is none the less true, however, that on the 29th of August, before sunrise, Fragoso, without saying anything to anybody, secretly left the jangada, arrived at Manaos, and embarked in one of the egariteas which daily descend the Amazon. And great was the astonishment when he was not seen on board, and did not appear during the day. No one, not even Lina, could explain the absence of so devoted a servant at such a crisis. Some of them even asked, and not without reason, if the poor fellow, rendered desperate at having, when he met him on the frontier, personally contributed to bringing Torres on board the raft, had not made away with himself. But if Fragoso could so reproach himself, how about Benito? In the first place at Iquitos he had invited Torres to visit the fazenda; in the second place he had brought him on board the jangada, to become a passenger on it; and in the third place, in killing him, he had annihilated the only witness whose evidence could save the condemned man. And so Benito considered himself responsible for everything—the arrest of his father, and the terrible events of which it had been the consequence. In fact, had Torres been alive, Benito could not tell but that, in some way or another, from pity or for reward, he would have finished by handing over the document. Would not Torres, whom nothing could compromise, have been persuaded to speak, had money been brought to bear upon him? Would not the long-sought-for proof have been furnished to the judge? Yes, undoubtedly! And the only man who could have furnished this evidence had been killed through Benito! Such was what the wretched man continually repeated to his mother, to Manoel, and to himself. Such were the cruel responsibilities which his conscience laid to his charge. Between her husband, with whom she passed all the time that was allowed her, and her son, a prey to despair which made her tremble for his reason, the brave Yaquita lost none of her moral energy. In her they found the valiant daughter of Magalhaës, the worthy wife of the fazender of Iquitos. The attitude of Joam Dacosta was well adapted to sustain her in this ordeal. That gallant man, that rigid Puritan, that austere worker, whose whole life had been a battle, had not yet shown a moment of weakness. The most terrible blow which had struck him without prostrating him had been the death of Judge Ribeiro, in whose mind his innocence did not admit of a doubt. Was it not with the help of his old defender that he had hoped to strive for his rehabilitation? The intervention of Torres he had regarded throughout as being quite secondary for him. And of this document he had no knowledge when he left Iquitos to hand himself over to the justice of his country. He only took with him moral proofs. When a material proof was unexpectedly produced in the course of the affair, before or after his arrest, he was certainly not the man to despise it. But if, on account of regrettable circumstances, the proof disappeared, he would find himself once more in the same position as when he passed the Brazilian frontier—the position of a man who came to say, "Here is my past life; here is my present; here is an entirely honest existence of work and devotion which I bring you. You passed on me at first an erroneous judgment. After twenty-three years of exile I have come to give myself up! Here I am; judge me again!" The death of Torres, the impossibility of reading the document found on him, had thus not produced on Joam Dacosta the impression which it had on his children, his friends, his household, and all who were interested in him. "I have faith in my innocence," he repeated to Yaquita, "as I have faith in God. If my life is still useful to my people, and a miracle is necessary to save me, that miracle will be performed; if not, I shall die! God alone is my judge!" The excitement increased in Manaos as the time ran on; the affair was discussed with unexampled acerbity. In the midst of this enthralment of public opinion, which evoked so much of the mysterious, the document was the principal object of conversation. At the end of this fourth day not a single person doubted but that it contained the vindication of the doomed man. Every one had been given an opportunity of deciphering its incomprehensible contents, for the "Diario d'o Grand Para" had reproduced it in facsimile. Autograph copies were spread about in great numbers at the suggestion of Manoel, who neglect nothing that might lead to the penetration of the mystery—not even chance, that "nickname of Providence," as some one has called it. In addition, a reward of one hundred contos (or three hundred thousand francs) was promised to any one who could discover the cipher so fruitlessly sought after—and read the document. This was quite a fortune, and so people of all classes forgot to eat, drink, or sleep to attack this unintelligible cryptogram. Up to the present, however, all had been useless, and probably the most ingenious analysts in the world would have spent their time in vain. It had been advertised that any solution should be sent, without delay, to Judge Jarriquez, to his house in God-the-Son Street; but the evening of the 29th of August came and none had arrived, nor was any likely to arrive. Of all those who took up the study of the puzzle, Judge Jarriquez was one of the most to be pitied. By a natural association of ideas, he also joined in the general opinion that the document referred to the affair at Tijuco, and that it had been written by the hand of the guilty man, and exonerated Joam Dacosta. And so he put even more ardor into his search for the key. It was not only the art for art's sake which guided him, it was a sentiment of justice, of pity toward a man suffering under an unjust condemnation. If it is the fact that a certain quantity of phosphorus is expended in the work of the brain, it would be difficult to say how many milligrammes the judge had parted with to excite the network of his "sensorium," and after all, to find out nothing, absolutely nothing. But Jarriquez had no idea of abandoning the inquiry. If he could only now trust to chance, he would work on for that chance. He tried to evoke it by all means possible and impossible. He had given himself over to fury and anger, and, what was worse, to impotent anger! During the latter part of this day he had been trying different numbers—numbers selected arbitrarily—and how many of them can scarcely be imagined. Had he had the time, he would not have shrunk from plunging into the millions of combinations of which the ten symbols of numeration are capable. He would have given his whole life to it at the risk of going mad before the year was out. Mad! was he not that already? He had had the idea that the document might be read through the paper, and so he turned it round and exposed it to the light, and tried it in that way. Nothing! The numbers already thought of, and which he tried in this new way, gave no result. Perhaps the document read backward, and the last letter was really the first, for the author would have done this had he wished to make the reading more difficult. Nothing! The new combination only furnished a series of letters just as enigmatic. At eight o'clock in the evening Jarriquez, with his face in his hands, knocked up, worn out mentally and physically, had neither strength to move, to speak, to think, or to associate one idea with another. Suddenly a noise was heard outside. Almost immediately, notwithstanding his formal orders, the door of his study was thrown open. Benito and Manoel were before him, Benito looking dreadfully pale, and Manoel supporting him, for the unfortunate young man had hardly strength to support himself. The magistrate quickly arose. "What is it, gentlemen? What do you want?" he asked. "The cipher! the cipher!" exclaimed Benito, mad with grief—"the cipher of the document." "Do you know it, then?" shouted the judge. "No, sir," said Manoel. "But you?" "Nothing! nothing!" "Nothing?" gasped Benito, and in a paroxysm of despair he took a knife from his belt and would have plunged it into his breast had not the judge and Manoel jumped forward and managed to disarm him. "Benito," said Jarriquez, in a voice which he tried to keep calm, "if you father cannot escape the expiation of a crime which is not his, you could do something better than kill yourself." "What?" said Benito. "Try and save his life!" "How?" "That is for you to discover," answered the magistrate, "and not for me to say."

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

PREPARATIONS

On the following day, the 30th of August, Benito and Manoel talked matters over together. They had understood the thought to which the judge had not dared to give utterance in their presence, and were engaged in devising some means by which the condemned man could escape the penalty of the law. Nothing else was left for them to do. It was only too certain that for the authorities at Rio Janeiro the undeciphered document would have no value whatever, that it would be a dead letter, that the first verdict which declared Joam Dacosta the perpetrator of the crime at Tijuco would not be set aside, and that, as in such cases no commutation of the sentence was possible, the order for his execution would inevitably be received. Once more, then, Joam Dacosta would have to escape by flight from an unjust imprisonment. It was at the outset agreed between the two young men that the secret should be carefully kept, and that neither Yaquita nor Minha should be informed of preparations, which would probably only give rise to hopes destined never to be realized. Who could tell if, owing to some unforeseen circumstance, the attempt at escape would not prove a miserable failure? The presence of Fragoso on such an occasion would have been most valuable. Discreet and devoted, his services would have been most welcome to the two young fellows; but Fragoso had not reappeared. Lina, when asked, could only say that she knew not what had become of him, nor why he had left the raft without telling her anything about it. And assuredly, had Fragoso foreseen that things would have turned out as they were doing, he would never have left the Dacosta family on an expedition which appeared to promise no serious result. Far better for him to have assisted in the escape of the doomed man than to have hurried off in search of the former comrades of Torres! But Fragoso was away, and his assistance had to be dispensed with. At daybreak Benito and Manoel left the raft and proceeded to Manaos. They soon reached the town, and passed through its narrow streets, which at that early hour were quite deserted. In a few minutes they arrived in front of the prison. The waste ground, amid which the old convent which served for a house of detention was built, was traversed by them in all directions, for they had come to study it with the utmost care. Fifty-five feet from the ground, in an angle of the building, they recognized the window of the cell in which Joam Dacosta was confined. The window was secured with iron bars in a miserable state of repair, which it would be easy to tear down or cut through if they could only get near enough. The badly jointed stones in the wall, which were crumbled away every here and there, offered many a ledge for the feet to rest on, if only a rope could be fixed to climb up by. One of the bars had slipped out of its socket, and formed a hook over which it might be possible to throw a rope. That done, one or two of the bars could be removed, so as to permit a man to get through. Benito and Manoel would then have to make their way into the prisoner's room, and without much difficulty the escape could be managed by means of the rope fastened to the projecting iron. During the night, if the sky were very cloudy, none of these operations would be noticed before the day dawned. Joam Dacosta could get safely away. Manoel and Benito spent an hour about the spot, taking care not to attract attention, but examining the locality with great exactness, particularly as regarded the position of the window, the arrangement of the iron bars, and the place from which it would be best to throw the line. "That is agreed," said Manoel at length. "And now, ought Joam Dacosta to be told about this?" "No, Manoel. Neither to him, any more than to my mother, ought we to impart the secret of an attempt in which there is such a risk of failure." "We shall succeed, Benito!" continued Manoel. "However, we must prepare for everything; and in case the chief of the prison should discover us at the moment of escape——" "We shall have money enough to purchase his silence," answered Benito. "Good!" replied Manoel. "But once your father is out of prison he cannot remain hidden in the town or on the jangada. Where is he to find refuge?" This was the second question to solve: and a very difficult one it was. A hundred paces away from the prison, however, the waste land was crossed by one of those canals which flow through the town into the Rio Negro. This canal afforded an easy way of gaining the river if a pirogue were in waiting for the fugitive. From the foot of the wall to the canal side was hardly a hundred yards. Benito and Manoel decided that about eight o'clock in the evening one of the pirogues, with two strong rowers, under the command of the pilot Araujo, should start from the jangada. They could ascend the Rio Negro, enter the canal, and, crossing the waste land, remain concealed throughout the night under the tall vegetation on the banks. But once on board, where was Joam Dacosta to seek refuge? To return to Iquitos was to follow a road full of difficulties and peril, and a long one in any case, should the fugitive either travel across the country or by the river. Neither by horse not pirogue could he be got out of danger quickly enough, and the fazenda was no longer a safe retreat. He would not return to it as the fazender, Joam Garral, but as the convict, Joam Dacosta, continually in fear of his extradition. He could never dream of resuming his former life. To get away by the Rio Negro into the north of the province, or even beyond the Brazilian territory, would require more time than he could spare, and his first care must be to escape from immediate pursuit. To start again down the Amazon? But stations, village, and towns abounded on both sides of the river. The description of the fugitive would be sent to all the police, and he would run the risk of being arrested long before he reached the Atlantic. And supposing he reached the coast, where and how was he to hide and wait for a passage to put the sea between himself and his pursuers? On consideration of these various plans, Benito and Manoel agreed that neither of them was practicable. One, however, did offer some chance of safety, and that was to embark in the pirogue, follow the canal into the Rio Negro, descend this tributary under the guidance of the pilot, reach the confluence of the rivers, and run down the Amazon along its right bank for some sixty miles during the nights, resting during the daylight, and so gaining the embouchure of the Madeira. This tributary, which, fed by a hundred affluents, descends from the watershed of the Cordilleras, is a regular waterway opening into the very heart of Bolivia. A pirogue could pass up it and leave no trace of its passage, and a refuge could be found in some town or village beyond the Brazilian frontier. There Joam Dacosta would be comparatively safe, and there for several months he could wait for an opportunity of reaching the Pacific coast and taking passage in some vessel leaving one of its ports; and if the ship were bound for one of the States of North America he would be free. Once there, he could sell the fazenda, leave his country forever, and seek beyond the sea, in the Old World, a final retreat in which to end an existence so cruelly and unjustly disturbed. Anywhere he might go, his family—not excepting Manoel, who was bound to him by so many ties—would assuredly follow without the slightest hesitation. "Let us go," said Benito; "we must have all ready before night, and we have no time to lose." The young men returned on board by way of the canal bank, which led along the Rio Negro. They satisfied themselves that the passage of the pirogue would be quite possible, and that no obstacles such as locks or boats under repair were there to stop it. They then descended the left bank of the tributary, avoiding the slowly-filling streets of the town, and reached the jangada. Benito's first care was to see his mother. He felt sufficiently master of himself to dissemble the anxiety which consumed him. He wished to assure her that all hope was not lost, that the mystery of the document would be cleared up, that in any case public opinion was in favor of Joam, and that, in face of the agitation which was being made in his favor, justice would grant all the necessary time for the production of the material proof his innocence. "Yes, mother," he added, "before to-morrow we shall be free from anxiety." "May heaven grant it so!" replied Yaquita, and she looked at him so keenly that Benito could hardly meet her glance. On his part, and as if by pre-arrangement, Manoel had tried to reassure Minha by telling her that Judge Jarriquez was convinced of the innocence of Joam, and would try to save him by every means in his power. "I only wish he would, Manoel," answered she, endeavoring in vain to restrain her tears. And Manoel left her, for the tears were also welling up in his eyes and witnessing against the words of hope to which he had just given utterance. And now the time had arrived for them to make their daily visit to the prisoner, and Yaquita and her daughter set off to Manaos. For an hour the young men were in consultation with Araujo. They acquainted him with their plan in all its details, and they discussed not only the projected escape, but the measures which were necessary for the safety of the fugitive. Araujo approved of everything; he undertook during the approaching night to take the pirogue up the canal without attracting any notice, and he knew its course thoroughly as far as the spot where he was to await the arrival of Joam Dacosta. To get back to the mouth of the Rio Negro was easy enough, and the pirogue would be able to pass unnoticed among the numerous craft continually descending the river. Araujo had no objection to offer to the idea of following the Amazon down to its confluence with the Madeira. The course of the Madeira was familiar to him for quite two hundred miles up, and in the midst of these thinly-peopled provinces, even if pursuit took place in their direction, all attempts at capture could be easily frustrated; they could reach the interior of Bolivia, and if Joam decided to leave his country he could procure a passage with less danger on the coast of the Pacific than on that of the Atlantic. Araujo's approval was most welcome to the young fellows; they had great faith in the practical good sense of the pilot, and not without reason. His zeal was undoubted, and he would assuredly have risked both life and liberty to save the fazender of Iquitos. With the utmost secrecy Araujo at once set about his preparations. A considerable sum in gold was handed over to him by Benito to meet all eventualities during the voyage on the Madeira. In getting the pirogue ready, he announced his intention of going in search of Fragoso, whose fate excited a good deal of anxiety among his companions. He stowed away in the boat provisions for many days, and did not forget the ropes and tools which would be required by the young men when they reached the canal at the appointed time and place. These preparations evoked no curiosity on the part of the crew of the jangada, and even the two stalwart negroes were not let into the secret. They, however, could be absolutely depended on. Whenever they learned what the work of safety was in which they were engaged—when Joam Dacosta, once more free, was confided to their charge—Araujo knew well that they would dare anything, even to the risk of their own lives, to save the life of their master. By the afternoon all was ready, and they had only the night to wait for. But before making a start Manoel wished to call on Judge Jarriquez for the last time. The magistrate might perhaps have found out something new about the document. Benito preferred to remain on the raft and wait for the return of his mother and sister. Manoel then presented himself at the abode of Judge Jarriquez, and was immediately admitted. The magistrate, in the study which he never quitted, was still the victim of the same excitement. The document crumpled by his impatient fingers, was still there before his eyes on the table. "Sir," said Manoel, whose voice trembled as he asked the question, "have you received anything from Rio de Janeiro." "No," answered the judge; "the order has not yet come to hand, but it may at any moment." "And the document?" "Nothing yet!" exclaimed he. "Everything my imagination can suggest I have tried, and no result." "None?" "Nevertheless, I distinctly see one word in the document—only one!" "What is that—what is the word?" "'Fly'!" Manoel said nothing, but he pressed the hand which Jarriquez held out to him, and returned to the jangada to wait for the moment of action.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE LAST NIGHT

The visit of Yaquita and her daughter had been like all such visits during the few hours which each day the husband and wife spent together. In the presence of the two beings whom Joam so dearly loved his heart nearly failed him. But the husband—the father—retained his self-command. It was he who comforted the two poor women and inspired them with a little of the hope of which so little now remained to him. They had come with the intention of cheering the prisoner. Alas! far more than he they themselves were in want of cheering! But when they found him still bearing himself unflinchingly in the midst of his terrible trial, they recovered a little of their hope. Once more had Joam spoken encouraging words to them. His indomitable energy was due not only to the feeling of his innocence, but to his faith in that God, a portion of whose justice yet dwells in the hearts of men. No! Joam Dacosta would never lose his life for the crime of Tijuco! Hardly ever did he mention the document. Whether it were apocryphal or no, whether it were in the handwriting of Torres or in that of the real perpetrator of the crime, whether it contained or did not contain the longed-for vindication, it was on no such doubtful hypothesis that Joam Dacosta presumed to trust. No; he reckoned on a better argument in his favor, and it was to his long life of toil and honor that he relegated the task of pleading for him. This evening, then, his wife and daughter, strengthened by the manly words, which thrilled them to the core of their hearts, had left him more confident than they had ever been since his arrest. For the last time the prisoner had embraced them, and with redoubled tenderness. It seemed as though the dénouement was nigh. Joam Dacosta, after they had left, remained for some time perfectly motionless. His arms rested on a small table and supported his head. Of what was he thinking? Had he at last been convinced that human justice, after failing the first time, would at length pronounce his acquittal? Yes, he still hoped. With the report of Judge Jarriquez establishing his identity, he knew that his memoir, which he had penned with so much sincerity, would have been sent to Rio de Janeiro, and was now in the hands of the chief justice. This memoir, as we know, was the history of his life from his entry into the offices of the diamond arrayal until the very moment when the jangada stopped before Manaos. Joam Dacosta was pondering over his whole career. He again lived his past life from the moment when, as an orphan, he had set foot in Tijuco. There his zeal had raised him high in the offices of the governor-general, into which he had been admitted when still very young. The future smiled on him; he would have filled some important position. Then this sudden catastrophe; the robbery of the diamond convoy, the massacre of the escort, the suspicion directed against him as the only official who could have divulged the secret of the expedition, his arrest, his appearance before the jury, his conviction in spite of all the efforts of his advocate, the last hours spent in the condemned cell at Villa Rica, his escape under conditions which betokened almost superhuman courage, his flight through the northern provinces, his arrival on the Peruvian frontier, and the reception which the starving fugitive had met with from the hospitable fazender Magalhaës. The prisoner once more passed in review these events, which had so cruelly marred his life. And then, lost in his thoughts and recollections, he sat, regardless of a peculiar noise on the outer wall of the convent, of the jerkings of a rope hitched on to a bar of his window, and of grating steel as it cut through iron, which ought at once to have attracted the attention of a less absorbed man. Joam Dacosta continued to live the years of his youth after his arrival in Peru. He again saw the fazender, the clerk, the partner of the old Portuguese, toiling hard for the prosperity of the establishment at Iquitos. Ah! why at the outset had he not told all to his benefactor? He would never have doubted him. It was the only error with which he could reproach himself. Why had he not confessed to him whence he had come, and who he was—above all, at the moment when Magalhaës had place in his hand the hand of the daughter who would never have believed that he was the author of so frightful a crime. And now the noise outside became loud enough to attract the prisoner's attention. For an instant Joam raised his head; his eyes sought the window, but with a vacant look, as though he were unconscious, and the next instant his head again sank into his hands. Again he was in thought back at Iquitos. There the old fazender was dying; before his end he longed for the future of his daughter to be assured, for his partner to be the sole master of the settlement which had grown so prosperous under his management. Should Dacosta have spoken then? Perhaps; but he dared not do it. He again lived the happy days he had spent with Yaquita, and again thought of the birth of his children, again felt the happiness which had its only trouble in the remembrances of Tijuco and the remorse that he had not confessed his terrible secret. The chain of events was reproduced in Joam's mind with a clearness and completeness quite remarkable. And now he was thinking of the day when his daughter's marriage with Manoel had been decided. Could he allow that union to take place under a false name without acquainting the lad with the mystery of his life? No! And so at the advice of Judge Ribeiro he resolved to come and claim the revision of his sentence, to demand the rehabilitation which was his due! He was starting with his people, and then came the intervention of Torres, the detestable bargain proposed by the scoundrel, the indignant refusal of the father to hand over his daughter to save his honor and his life, and then the denunciation and the arrest! Suddenly the window flew open with a violent push from without. Joam started up; the souvenire of the past vanished like a shadow. Benito leaped into the room; he was in the presence of his father, and the next moment Manoel, tearing down the remaining bars, appeared before him. Joam Dacosta would have uttered a cry of surprise. Benito left him no time to do so. "Father," he said, "the window grating is down. A rope leads to the ground. A pirogue is waiting for you on the canal not a hundred yards off. Araujo is there ready to take you far away from Manaos, on the other bank of the Amazon where your track will never be discovered. Father, you must escape this very moment! It was the judge's own suggestion!" "It must be done!" added Manoel. "Fly! I!—Fly a second time! Escape again?" And with crossed arms, and head erect, Joam Dacosta stepped forward. "Never!" he said, in a voice so firm that Benito and Manoel stood bewildered. The young men had never thought of a difficulty like this. They had never reckoned on the hindrances to escape coming from the prisoner himself. Benito advanced to his father, and looking him straight in the face, and taking both his hands in his, not to force him, but to try and convince him, said: "Never, did you say, father?" "Never!" "Father," said Manoel—"for I also have the right to call you father—listen to us! If we tell you that you ought to fly without losing an instant, it is because if you remain you will be guilty toward others, toward yourself!" "To remain," continued Benito, "is to remain to die! The order for execution may come at any moment! If you imagine that the justice of men will nullify a wrong decision, if you think it will rehabilitate you whom it condemned twenty years since, you are mistaken! There is hope no longer! You must escape! Come!" By an irresistible impulse Benito seized his father and drew him toward the window. Joam Dacosta struggled from his son's grasp and recoiled a second time. "To fly," he answered, in the tone of a man whose resolution was unalterable, "is to dishonor myself, and you with me! It would be a confession of my guilt! Of my own free will I surrendered myself to my country's judges, and I will await their decision, whatever that decision may be!" "But the presumptions on which you trusted are insufficient," replied Manoel, "and the material proof of your innocence is still wanting! If we tell you that you ought to fly, it is because Judge Jarriquez himself told us so. You have now only this one chance left to escape from death!" "I will die, then," said Joam, in a calm voice. "I will die protesting against the decision which condemned me! The first time, a few hours before the execution—I fled! Yes! I was then young. I had all my life before me in which to struggle against man's injustice! But to save myself now, to begin again the miserable existence of a felon hiding under a false name, whose every effort is required to avoid the pursuit of the police, again to live the life of anxiety which I have led for twenty-three years, and oblige you to share it with me; to wait each day for a denunciation which sooner or later must come, to wait for the claim for extradition which would follow me to a foreign country! Am I to live for that? No! Never!" "Father," interrupted Benito, whose mind threatened to give way before such obstinacy, "you shall fly! I will have it so!" And he caught hold of Joam Dacosta, and tried by force to drag him toward the window. "No! no!" "You wish to drive me mad?" "My son," exclaimed Joam Dacosta, "listen to me! Once already I escaped from the prison at Villa Rica, and people believed I fled from well-merited punishment. Yes, they had reason to think so. Well, for the honor of the name which you bear I shall not do so again." Benito had fallen on his knees before his father. He held up his hands to him; he begged him: "But this order, father," he repeated, "this order which is due to-day—even now—it will contain your sentence of death." "The order may come, but my determination will not change. No, my son! Joam Dacosta, guilty, might fly! Joam Dacosta, innocent, will not fly!" The scene which followed these words was heart-rending. Benito struggled with his father. Manoel, distracted, kept near the window ready to carry off the prisoner—when the door of the room opened. On the threshold appeared the chief of the police, accompanied by the head warder of the prison and a few soldiers. The chief of the police understood at a glance that an attempt at escape was being made; but he also understood from the prisoner's attitude that he it was who had no wish to go! He said nothing. The sincerest pity was depicted on his face. Doubtless he also, like Judge Jarriquez, would have liked Dacosta to have escaped. It was too late! The chief of the police, who held a paper in his hand, advanced toward the prisoner. "Before all of you," said Joam Dacosta, "let me tell you, sir, that it only rested with me to get away, and that I would not do so." The chief of the police bowed his head, and then, in a voice which he vainly tried to control: "Joam Dacosta," he said, "the order has this moment arrived from the chief justice at Rio Janeiro." "Father!" exclaimed Manoel and Benito. "This order," asked Joam Dacosta, who had crossed his arms, "this order requires the execution of my sentence?" "Yes!" "And that will take place?" "To-morrow." Benito threw himself on his father. Again would he have dragged him from his cell, but the soldiers came and drew away the prisoner from his grasp. At a sign from the chief of the police Benito and Manoel were taken away. An end had to be put to this painful scene, which had already lasted too long. "Sir," said the doomed man, "before to-morrow, before the hour of my execution, may I pass a few moments with Padre Passanha, whom I ask you to tell?" "It will be forbidden." "May I see my family, and embrace for a last time my wife and children?" "You shall see them." "Thank you, sir," answered Joam; "and now keep guard over that window; it will not do for them to take me out of here against my will." And then the chief of the police, after a respectful bow, retired with the warder and the soldiers. The doomed man, who had now but a few hours to live, was left alone.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

FRAGOSO

And so the order had come, and, as Judge Jarriquez had foreseen, it was an order requiring the immediate execution of the sentence pronounced on Joam Dacosta. No proof had been produced; justice must take its course. It was the very day—the 31st of August, at nine o'clock in the morning of which the condemned man was to perish on the gallows. The death penalty in Brazil is generally commuted except in the case of negroes, but this time it was to be suffered by a white man. Such are the penal arrangements relative to crimes in the diamond arrayal, for which, in the public interest, the law allows no appear to mercy. Nothing could now save Joam Dacosta. It was not only life, but honor that he was about to lose. But on the 31st of August a man was approaching Manaos with all the speed his horse was capable of, and such had been the pace at which he had come that half a mile from the town the gallant creature fell, incapable of carrying him any further. The rider did not even stop to raise his steed. Evidently he had asked and obtained from it all that was possible, and, despite the state of exhaustion in which he found himself, he rushed off in the direction of the city. The man came from the eastern provinces, and had followed the left bank of the river. All his means had gone in the purchase of this horse, which, swifter far than any pirogue on the Amazon, had brought him to Manaos. It was Fragoso! Had, then, the brave fellow succeeded in the enterprise of which he had spoken to nobody? Had he found the party to which Torres belonged? Had he discovered some secret which would yet save Joam Dacosta? He hardly knew. But in any case he was in great haste to acquaint Judge Jarriquez with what he had ascertained during his short excursion. And this is what had happened. Fragoso had made no mistake when he recognized Torres as one of the captains of the party which was employed in the river provinces of the Madeira. He set out, and on reaching the mouth of that tributary he learned that the chief of these capitaes da mato was then in the neighborhood. Without losing a minute, Fragoso started on the search, and, not without difficulty, succeeded in meeting him. To Fragoso's questions the chief of the party had no hesitation in replying; he had no interest in keeping silence with regard to the few simple matters on which he was interrogated. In fact, three questions only of importance were asked him by Fragoso, and these were: "Did not a captain of the woods named Torres belong to your party a few months ago?" "Yes." "At that time had he not one intimate friend among his companions who has recently died?" "Just so!" "And the name of that friend was?" "Ortega." This was all that Fragoso had learned. Was this information of a kind to modify Dacosta's position? It was hardly likely. Fragoso saw this, and pressed the chief of the band to tell him what he knew of this Ortega, of the place where he came from, and of his antecedents generally. Such information would have been of great importance if Ortega, as Torres had declared, was the true author of the crime of Tijuco. But unfortunately the chief could give him no information whatever in the matter. What was certain was that Ortega had been a member of the band for many years, that an intimate friendship existed between him and Torres, that they were always seen together, and that Torres had watched at his bedside when he died. This was all the chief of the band knew, and he could tell no more. Fragoso, then, had to be contented with these insignificant details, and departed immediately. But if the devoted fellow had not brought back the proof that Ortega was the author of the crime of Tijuco, he had gained one thing, and that was the knowledge that Torres had told the truth when he affirmed that one of his comrades in the band had died, and that he had been present during his last moments. The hypothesis that Ortega had given him the document in question had now become admissible. Nothing was more probable than that this document had reference to the crime of which Ortega was really the author, and that it contained the confession of the culprit, accompanied by circumstances which permitted of no doubt as to its truth. And so, if the document could be read, if the key had been found, if the cipher on which the system hung were known, no doubt of its truth could be entertained. But this cipher Fragoso did not know. A few more presumptions, a half-certainty that the adventurer had invented nothing, certain circumstances tending to prove that the secret of the matter was contained in the document—and that was all that the gallant fellow brought back from his visit to the chief of the gang of which Torres had been a member. Nevertheless, little as it was, he was in all haste to relate it to Judge Jarriquez. He knew that he had not an hour to lose, and that was why on this very morning, at about eight o'clock, he arrived, exhausted with fatigue, within half a mile of Manaos. The distance between there and the town he traversed in a few minutes. A kind of irresistible presentiment urged him on, and he had almost come to believe that Joam Dacosta's safety rested in his hands. Suddenly Fragoso stopped as if his feet had become rooted in the ground. He had reached the entrance to a small square, on which opened one of the town gates. There, in the midst of a dense crowd, arose the gallows, towering up some twenty feet, and from it there hung the rope! Fragoso felt his consciousness abandon him. He fell; his eyes involuntarily closed. He did not wish to look, and these words escaped his lips: "Too late! too late!" But by a superhuman effort he raised himself up. No; it was not too late, the corpse of Joam Dacosta was not hanging at the end of the rope! "Judge Jarriquez! Judge Jarriquez!" shouted Fragoso, and panting and bewildered he rushed toward the city gate, dashed up the principal street of Manaos, and fell half-dead on the threshold of the judge's house. The door was shut. Fragoso had still strength enough left to knock at it. One of the magistrate's servants came to open it; his master would see no one. In spite of this denial, Fragoso pushed back the man who guarded the entrance, and with a bound threw himself into the judge's study. "I come from the province where Torres pursued his calling as captain of the woods!" he gasped. "Mr. Judge, Torres told the truth. Stop—stop the execution?" "You found the gang?" "Yes." "And you have brought me the cipher of the document?" Fragoso did not reply. "Come, leave me alone! leave me alone!" shouted Jarriquez, and, a prey to an outburst of rage, he grasped the document to tear it to atoms. Fragoso seized his hands and stopped him. "The truth is there!" he said. "I know," answered Jarriquez; "but it is a truth which will never see the light!" "It will appear—it must! it must!" "Once more, have you the cipher?" "No," replied Fragoso; "but, I repeat, Torres has not lied. One of his companions, with whom he was very intimate, died a few months ago, and there can be no doubt but that this man gave him the document he came to sell to Joam Dacosta." "No," answered Jarriquez—"no, there is no doubt about it—as far as we are concerned; but that is not enough for those who dispose of the doomed man's life. Leave me!" Fragoso, repulsed, would not quit the spot. Again he threw himself at the judge's feet. "Joam Dacosta is innocent!" he cried; "you will not leave him to die? It was not he who committed the crime of Tijuco; it was the comrade of Torres, the author of that document! It was Ortega!" As he uttered the name the judge bounded backward. A kind of calm swiftly succeeded to the tempest which raged within him. He dropped the document from his clenched hand, smoothed it out on the table, sat down, and, passing his hand over his eyes—"That name?" he said—"Ortega? Let us see," and then he proceeded with the new name brought back by Fragoso as he had done with the other names so vainly tried by himself. After placing it above the first six letters of the paragraph he obtained the following formula:  O r t e g a  P h y j s l "Nothing!" he said. "That give us—nothing!" And in fact the h placed under the r could not be expressed by a cipher, for, in alphabetical order, this letter occupies an earlier position to that of the r. The p, the y, the j, arranged beneath the letters o, t, e, disclosed the cipher 1, 4, 5, but as for the s and the l at the end of the word, the interval which separated them from the g and the a was a dozen letters, and hence impossible to express by a single cipher, so that they corresponded to neither g nor a. And here appalling shouts arose in the streets; they were the cries of despair. Fragoso jumped to one of the windows, and opened it before the judge could hinder him. The people filled the road. The hour had come at which the doomed man was to start from the prison, and the crowd was flowing back to the spot where the gallows had been erected. Judge Jarriquez, quite frightful to look upon, devoured the lines of the document with a fixed stare. "The last letters!" he muttered. "Let us try once more the last letters!" It was the last hope. And then, with a hand whose agitation nearly prevented him from writing at all, he placed the name of Ortega over the six last letters of the paragraph, as he had done over the first. An exclamation immediately escaped him. He saw, at first glance, that the six last letters were inferior in alphabetical order to those which composed Ortega's name, and that consequently they might yield the number. And when he reduced the formula, reckoning each later letter from the earlier letter of the word, he obtained.  O r t e g a  4 3 2 5 1 3  S u v j h d The number thus disclosed was 432513. But was this number that which had been used in the document? Was it not as erroneous as those he had previously tried? At this moment the shouts below redoubled—shouts of pity which betrayed the sympathy of the excited crowd. A few minutes more were all that the doomed man had to live! Fragoso, maddened with grief, darted from the room! He wished to see, for the last time, his benefactor who was on the road to death! He longed to throw himself before the mournful procession and stop it, shouting, "Do not kill this just man! do not kill him!" But already Judge Jarriquez had placed the given number above the first letters of the paragraph, repeating them as often as was necessary, as follows:  4 3 2 5 1 3 4 3 2 5 1 3 4 3 2 5 1 3 4 3 2 5 1 3  P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h And then, reckoning the true letters according to their alphabetical order, he read: "Le véritable auteur du vol de——" A yell of delight escaped him! This number, 432513, was the number sought for so long! The name of Ortega had enabled him to discover it! At length he held the key of the document, which would incontestably prove the innocence of Joam Dacosta, and without reading any more he flew from his study into the street, shouting: "Halt! Halt!" To cleave the crowd, which opened as he ran, to dash to the prison, whence the convict was coming at the last moment, with his wife and children clinging to him with the violence of despair, was but the work of a minute for Judge Jarriquez. Stopping before Joam Dacosta, he could not speak for a second, and then these words escaped his lips: "Innocent! Innocent!"

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE CRIME OF TIJUCO

On the arrival of the judge the mournful procession halted. A roaring echo had repeated after him and again repeated the cry which escaped from every mouth: "Innocent! Innocent!" Then complete silence fell on all. The people did not want to lose one syllable of what was about to be proclaimed. Judge Jarriquez sat down on a stone seat, and then, while Minha, Benito, Manoel, and Fragoso stood round him, while Joam Dacosta clasped Yaquita to his heart, he first unraveled the last paragraph of the document by means of the number, and as the words appeared by the institution of the true letters for the cryptological ones, he divided and punctuated them, and then read it out in a loud voice. And this is what he read in the midst of profound silence:  Le véritable auteur du vol des diamants et de 43 251343251 343251 34 325 134 32513432 51 34 Ph yjslyddf dzxgas gz zqq ehx gkfndrxu ju gi l'assassinat des soldats qui escortaient le convoi, 32513432513 432 5134325 134 32513432513 43 251343 ocytdxvksbx bhu ypohdvy rym huhpuydkjox ph etozsl commis dans la nuit du vingt-deux janvier mil 251343 2513 43 2513 43 251343251 3432513 432 etnpmv ffov pd pajx hy ynojyggay meqynfu q1n huit-cent vingt-six, n'est donc pas Joam Dacosta, 5134 3251 3425 134 3251 3432 513 4325 1343251 mvly fgsu zmqiz tlb qgyu gsqe uvb nrcc edgruzb injustement condamné à mort, c'est moi, les misérable 34325134325 13432513 4 3251 3432 513 43 251343251 l4msyuhqpz drrgcroh e pqxu fivv rpl ph onthvddqf employé de l'administration du district diamantin, 3432513 43 251343251343251 34 32513432 513432513 hqsntzh hh nfepmqkyuuexkto gz gkyuumfv ijdqdpzjq out, moi seul, qui signe de mon vrai nom, Ortega. 432 513 4325 134 32513 43 251 3432 513 432513 syk rpl xhxq rym vkloh hh oto zvdk spp suvjhd. "The real author of the robbery of the diamonds and of the murder of the soldiers who escorted the convoy, committed during the night of the twenty-second of January, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-six, was thus not Joam Dacosta, unjustly condemned to death; it was I, the wretched servant of the Administration of the diamond district; yes, I alone, who sign this with my true name, Ortega." The reading of this had hardly finished when the air was rent with prolonged hurrahs. What could be more conclusive than this last paragraph, which summarized the whole of the document, and proclaimed so absolutely the innocence of the fazender of Iquitos, and which snatched from the gallows this victim of a frightful judicial mistake! Joam Dacosta, surrounded by his wife, his children, and his friends, was unable to shake the hands which were held out to him. Such was the strength of his character that a reaction occurred, tears of joy escaped from his eyes, and at the same instant his heart was lifted up to that Providence which had come to save him so miraculously at the moment he was about to offer the last expiation to that God who would not permit the accomplishment of that greatest of crimes, the death of an innocent man! Yes! There could be no doubt as to the vindication of Joam Dacosta. The true author of the crime of Tijuco confessed of his own free will, and described the circumstances under which it had been perpetrated! By means of the number Judge Jarriquez interpreted the whole of the cryptogram. And this was what Ortega confessed. He had been the colleague of Joam Dacosta, employed, like him, at Tijuco, in the offices of the governor of the diamond arrayal. He had been the official appointed to accompany the convoy to Rio de Janeiro, and, far from recoiling at the horrible idea of enriching himself by means of murder and robbery, he had informed the smugglers of the very day the convoy was to leave Tijuco. During the attack of the scoundrels, who awaited the convoy just beyond Villa Rica, he pretended to defend himself with the soldiers of the escort, and then, falling among the dead, he was carried away by his accomplices. Hence it was that the solitary soldier who survived the massacre had reported that Ortega had perished in the struggle. But the robbery did not profit the guilty man in the long run, for, a little time afterward, he was robbed by those whom he had helped to commit the crime. Penniless, and unable to enter Tijuco again, Ortega fled away to the provinces in the north of Brazil, to those districts of the Upper Amazon where the capitaes da mato are to be found. He had to live somehow, and so he joined this not very honorable company; they neither asked him who he was nor whence he came, and so Ortega became a captain of the woods, and for many years he followed the trade of a chaser of men. During this time Torres, the adventurer, himself in absolute want, became his companion. Ortega and he became most intimate. But, as he had told Torres, remorse began gradually to trouble the scoundrel's life. The remembrance of his crime became horrible to him. He knew that another had been condemned in his place! He knew subsequently that the innocent man had escaped from the last penalty, but that he would never be free from the shadow of the capital sentence! And then, during an expedition of his party for several months beyond the Peruvian frontier, chance caused Ortega to visit the neighborhood of Iquitos, and there in Joam Garral, who did not recognize him, he recognized Joam Dacosta. Henceforth he resolved to make all the reparation he could for the injustice of which his old comrade had been the victim. He committed to the document all the facts relative to the crime of Tijuco, writing it first in French, which had been his mother's native tongue, and then putting it into the mysterious form we know, his intention being to transmit it to the fazender of Iquitos, with the cipher by which it could be read. Death prevented his completing his work of reparation. Mortally wounded in a scuffle with some negroes on the Madeira, Ortega felt he was doomed. His comrade Torres was then with him. He thought he could intrust to his friend the secret which had so grievously darkened his life. He gave him the document, and made him swear to convey it to Joam Dacosta, whose name and address he gave him, and with his last breath he whispered the number 432513, without which the document would remain undecipherable. Ortega dead, we know how the unworthy Torres acquitted himself of his mission, how he resolved to turn to his own profit the secret of which he was the possessor, and how he tried to make it the subject of an odious bargain. Torres died without accomplishing his work, and carried his secret with him. But the name of Ortega, brought back by Fragoso, and which was the signature of the document, had afforded the means of unraveling the cryptogram, thanks to the sagacity of Judge Jarriquez. Yes, the material proof sought after for so long was the incontestable witness of the innocence of Joam Dacosta, returned to life, restored to honor. The cheers redoubled when the worthy magistrate, in a loud voice, and for the edification of all, read from the document this terrible history. And from that moment Judge Jarriquez, who possessed this indubitable proof, arranged with the chief of the police, and declined to allow Joam Dacosta, while waiting new instructions from Rio Janeiro, to stay in any prison but his own house. There could be no difficulty about this, and in the center of the crowd of the entire population of Manaos, Joam Dacosta, accompanied by all his family, beheld himself conducted like a conquerer to the magistrate's residence. And in that minute the honest fazender of Iquitos was well repaid for all that he had suffered during the long years of exile, and if he was happy for his family's sake more than for his own, he was none the less proud for his country's sake that this supreme injustice had not been consummated! And in all this what had become of Fragoso? Well, the good-hearted fellow was covered with caresses! Benito, Manoel, and Minha had overwhelmed him, and Lina had by no means spared him. He did not know what to do, he defended himself as best he could. He did not deserve anything like it. Chance alone had done it. Were any thanks due to him for having recognized Torres as a captain of the woods? No, certainly not. As to his idea of hurrying off in search of the band to which Torres had belonged, he did not think it had been worth much, and as to the name of Ortega, he did not even know its value. Gallant Fragoso! Whether he wished it or no, he had none the less saved Joam Dacosta! And herein what a strange succession of different events all tending to the same end. The deliverance of Fragoso at the time when he was dying of exhaustion in the forest of Iquitos; the hospitable reception he had met with at the fazenda, the meeting with Torres on the Brazilian frontier, his embarkation on the jangada; and lastly, the fact that Fragoso had seen him somewhere before. "Well, yes!" Fragoso ended by exclaiming; "but it is not to me that all this happiness is due, it is due to Lina!" "To me?" replied the young mulatto. "No doubt of it. Without the liana, without the idea of the liana, could I ever have been the cause of so much happiness?" So that Fragoso and Lina were praised and petted by all the family, and by all the new friends whom so many trials had procured them at Manaos, need hardly be insisted on. But had not Judge Jarriquez also had his share in this rehabilitation of an innocent man? If, in spite of all the shrewdness of his analytical talents, he had not been able to read the document, which was absolutely undecipherable to any one who had not got the key, had he not at any rate discovered the system on which the cryptogram was composed? Without him what could have been done with only the name of Ortega to reconstitute the number which the author of the crime and Torres, both of whom were dead, alone knew? And so he also received abundant thanks. Needless to say that the same day there was sent to Rio de Janeiro a detailed report of the whole affair, and with it the original document and the cipher to enable it to be read. New instructions from the minister of justice had to be waited for, though there could be no doubt that they would order the immediate discharge of the prisoner. A few days would thus have to be passed at Manaos, and then Joam Dacosta and his people, free from all constraint, and released from all apprehension, would take leave of their host to go on board once more and continue their descent of the Amazon to Para, where the voyage was intended to terminate with the double marriage of Minha and Manoel and Lina and Fragoso. Four days afterward, on the fourth of September, the order of discharge arrived. The document had been recognized as authentic. The handwriting was really that of Ortega, who had been formerly employed in the diamond district, and there could be no doubt that the confession of his crime, with the minutest details that were given, had been entirely written with his own hand. The innocence of the convict of Villa Rica was at length admitted. The rehabilitation of Joam Dacosta was at last officially proclaimed. That very day Judge Jarriquez dined with the family on board the giant raft, and when evening came he shook hands with them all. Touching were the adieus, but an engagement was made for them to see him again on their return at Manaos, and later on the fazenda of Iquitos. On the morning of the morrow, the fifth of September, the signal for departure was given. Joam Dacosta and Yaquita, with their daughter and sons, were on the deck of the enormous raft. The jangada had its moorings slackened off and began to move with the current, and when it disappeared round the bend of the Rio Negro, the hurrahs of the whole population of Manaos, who were assembled on the bank, again and again re-echoed across the stream.

800 Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne

THE LOWER AMAZON

Little remains to tell of the second part of the voyage down the mighty river. It was but a series of days of joy. Joam Dacosta returned to a new life, which shed its happiness on all who belonged to him. The giant raft glided along with greater rapidity on the waters now swollen by the floods. On the left they passed the small village of Don Jose de Maturi, and on the right the mouth of that Madeira which owes its name to the floating masses of vegetable remains and trunks denuded of their foliage which it bears from the depths of Bolivia. They passed the archipelago of Caniny, whose islets are veritable boxes of palms, and before the village of Serpa, which, successively transported from one back to the other, has definitely settled on the left of the river, with its little houses, whose thresholds stand on the yellow carpet of the beach. The village of Silves, built on the left of the Amazon, and the town of Villa Bella, which is the principal guarana market in the whole province, were soon left behind by the giant raft. And so was the village of Faro and its celebrated river of the Nhamundas, on which, in 1539, Orellana asserted he was attacked by female warriors, who have never been seen again since, and thus gave us the legend which justifies the immortal name of the river of the Amazons. Here it is that the province of Rio Negro terminates. The jurisdiction of Para then commences; and on the 22d of September the family, marveling much at a valley which has no equal in the world, entered that portion of the Brazilian empire which has no boundary to the east except the Atlantic. "How magnificent!" remarked Minha, over and over again. "How long!" murmured Manoel. "How beautiful!" repeated Lina. "When shall we get there?" murmured Fragoso. And this was what might have been expected of these folks from the different points of view, though time passed pleasantly enough with them all the same. Benito, who was neither patient nor impatient, had recovered all his former good humor. Soon the jangada glided between interminable plantations of cocoa-trees with their somber green flanked by the yellow thatch or ruddy tiles of the roofs of the huts of the settlers on both banks from Obidos up to the town of Monto Alegre. Then there opened out the mouth of the Rio Trombetas, bathing with its black waters the houses of Obidos, situated at about one hundred and eighty miles from Belem, quite a small town, and even a "citade" with large streets bordered with handsome habitations, and a great center for cocoa produce. Then they saw another tributary, the Tapajos, with its greenish-gray waters descending from the south-west; and then Santarem, a wealthy town of not less than five thousand inhabitants, Indians for the most part, whose nearest houses were built on the vast beach of white sand. After its departure from Manaos the jangada did not stop anywhere as it passed down the much less encumbered course of the Amazon. Day and night it moved along under the vigilant care of its trusty pilot; no more stoppages either for the gratification of the passengers or for business purposes. Unceasingly it progressed, and the end rapidly grew nearer. On leaving Alemquer, situated on the left bank, a new horizon appeared in view. In place of the curtain of forests which had shut them in up to then, our friends beheld a foreground of hills, whose undulations could be easily descried, and beyond them the faint summits of veritable mountains vandyked across the distant depth of sky. Neither Yaquita, nor her daughter, nor Lina, nor old Cybele, had ever seen anything like this. But in this jurisdiction of Para, Manoel was at home, and he could tell them the names of the double chain which gradually narrowed the valley of the huge river. "To the right," said he, "that is the Sierra de Paracuarta, which curves in a half-circle to the south! To the left, that is the Sierra de Curuva, of which we have already passed the first outposts." "Then they close in?" asked Fragoso. "They close in!" replied Manoel. And the two young men seemed to understand each other, for the same slight but significant nodding of the head accompanied the question and reply. At last, notwithstanding the tide, which since leaving Obidos had begun to be felt, and which somewhat checked the progress of the raft, the town of Monto Alegre was passed, then that of Pravnha de Onteiro, then the mouth of the Xingu, frequented by Yurumas Indians, whose principal industry consists in preparing their enemies' heads for natural history cabinets. To what a superb size the Amazon had now developed as already this monarch of rivers gave signs of opening out like a sea! Plants from eight to ten feet high clustered along the beach, and bordered it with a forest of reeds. Porto de Mos, Boa Vista, and Gurupa, whose prosperity is on the decline, were soon among the places left in the rear. Then the river divided into two important branches, which flowed off toward the Atlantic, one going away northeastward, the other eastward, and between them appeared the beginning of the large island of Marajo. This island is quite a province in itself. It measures no less than a hundred and eighty leagues in circumference. Cut up by marshes and rivers, all savannah to the east, all forest to the west, it offers most excellent advantages for the raising of cattle, which can here be seen in their thousands. This immense barricade of Marajo is the natural obstacle which has compelled the Amazon to divide before precipitating its torrents of water into the sea. Following the upper branch, the jangada, after passing the islands of Caviana and Mexiana, would have found an embouchure of some fifty leagues across, but it would also have met with the bar of the prororoca, that terrible eddy which, for the three days preceding the new or full moon, takes but two minutes instead of six hours to raise the river from twelve to fifteen feet above ordinary high-water mark. This is by far the most formidable of tide-races. Most fortunately the lower branch, known as the Canal of Breves, which is the natural area of the Para, is not subject to the visitations of this terrible phenomenon, and its tides are of a more regular description. Araujo, the pilot, was quite aware of this. He steered, therefore, into the midst of magnificent forests, here and there gliding past island covered with muritis palms; and the weather was so favorable that they did not experience any of the storms which so frequently rage along this Breves Canal. A few days afterward the jangada passed the village of the same name, which, although built on the ground flooded for many months in the year, has become, since 1845, an important town of a hundred houses. Throughout these districts, which are frequented by Tapuyas, the Indians of the Lower Amazon become more and more commingled with the white population, and promise to be completely absorbed by them. And still the jangada continued its journey down the river. Here, at the risk of entanglement, it grazed the branches of the mangliers, whose roots stretched down into the waters like the claws of gigantic crustaceans; then the smooth trunks of the paletuviers, with their pale-green foliage, served as the resting-places for the long poles of the crew as they kept the raft in the strength of the current. Then came the Tocantins, whose waters, due to the different rivers of the province of Goyaz, mingle with those of the Amazon by an embouchure of great size, then the Moju, then the town of Santa Ana. Majestically the panorama of both banks moved along without a pause, as though some ingenious mechanism necessitated its unrolling in the opposite direction to that of the stream. Already numerous vessels descending the river, ubas, egariteas, vigilandas, pirogues of all builds, and small coasters from the lower districts of the Amazon and the Atlantic seaboard, formed a procession with the giant raft, and seemed like sloops beside some might man-of-war. At length there appeared on the left Santa Maria de Belem do Para—the "town" as they call it in that country—with its picturesque lines of white houses at many different levels, its convents nestled among the palm-trees, the steeples of its cathedral and of Nostra Senora de Merced, and the flotilla of its brigantines, brigs, and barks, which form its commercial communications with the old world. The hearts of the passengers of the giant raft beat high. At length they were coming to the end of the voyage which they had thought they would never reach. While the arrest of Joam detained them at Manaos, halfway on their journey, could they ever have hoped to see the capital of the province of Para? It was in the course of this day, the 15th of October—four months and a half after leaving the fazenda of Iquitos—that, as they rounded a sharp bend in the river, Belem came into sight. The arrival of the jangada had been signaled for some days. The whole town knew the story of Joam Dacosta. They came forth to welcome him, and to him and his people accorded a most sympathetic reception. Hundreds of craft of all sorts conveyed them to the fazender, and soon the jangada was invaded by all those who wished to welcome the return of their compatriot after his long exile. Thousands of sight-seers—or more correctly speaking, thousands of friends crowded on to the floating village as soon as it came to its moorings, and it was vast and solid enough to support the entire population. Among those who hurried on board one of the first pirogues had brought Madame Valdez. Manoel's mother was at last able to clasp to her arms the daughter whom her son had chosen. If the good lady had not been able to come to Iquitos, was it not as though a portion of the fazenda, with her new family, had come down the Amazon to her? Before evening the pilot Araujo had securely moored the raft at the entrance of a creek behind the arsenal. That was to be its last resting-place, its last halt, after its voyage of eight hundred leagues on the great Brazilian artery. There the huts of the Indians, the cottage of the negroes, the store-rooms which held the valuable cargo, would be gradually demolished; there the principal dwelling, nestled beneath its verdant tapestry of flowers and foliage, and the little chapel whose humble bell was then replying to the sounding clangor from the steeples of Belem, would each in its turn disappear. But, ere this was done, a ceremony had to take place on the jangada—the marriage of Manoel and Minha, the marriage of Lina and Fragoso. To Father Passanha fell the duty of celebrating the double union which promised so happily. In that little chapel the two couples were to receive the nuptial benediction from his hands. If it happened to be so small as to be only capable of holding the members of Dacosta's family, was not the giant raft large enough to receive all those who wished to assist at the ceremony? and if not, and the crowd became so great, did not the ledges of the river banks afford sufficient room for as many others of the sympathizing crowd as were desirous of welcoming him whom so signal a reparation had made the hero of the day? It was on the morrow, the 16th of October, that with great pomp the marriages were celebrated. It was a magnificent day, and from about ten o'clock in the morning the raft began to receive its crowd of guests. On the bank could be seen almost the entire population of Belem in holiday costume. On the river, vessels of all sorts crammed with visitors gathered round the enormous mass of timber, and the waters of the Amazon literally disappeared even up to the left bank beneath the vast flotilla. When the chapel bell rang out its opening note it seemed like a signal of joy to ear and eye. In an instant the churches of Belem replied to the bell of the jangada. The vessels in the port decked themselves with flags up to their mastheads, and the Brazilian colors were saluted by the many other national flags. Discharges of musketry reverberated on all sides, and it was only with difficulty that their joyous detonations could cope with the loud hurrahs from the assembled thousands. The Dacosta family came forth from their house and moved through the crowd toward the little chapel. Joam was received with absolutely frantic applause. He gave his arm to Madame Valdez; Yaquita was escorted by the governor of Belem, who, accompanied by the friends of the young army surgeon, had expressed a wish to honor the ceremony with his presence. Manoel walked by the side of Minha, who looked most fascinating in her bride's costume, and then came Fragoso, holding the hand of Lina, who seemed quite radiant with joy. Then followed Benito, then old Cybele and the servants of the worthy family between the double ranks of the crew of the jangada. Padre Passanha awaited the two couples at the entrance of the chapel. The ceremony was very simple, and the same bands which had formerly blessed Joam and Yaquita were again stretched forth to give the nuptial benediction to their child. So much happiness was not likely to be interrupted by the sorrow of long separation. In fact, Manoel Valdez almost immediately sent in his resignation, so as to join the family at Iquitos, where he is still following the profession of a country doctor. Naturally the Fragosos did not hesitate to go back with those who were to them friends rather than masters. Madame Valdez had no desire to separate so happy a group, but she insisted on one thing, and that was that they should often come and see her at Belem. Nothing could be easier. Was not the mighty river a bond of communication between Belem and Iquitos? In a few days the first mail steamer was to begin a regular and rapid service, and it would then only take a week to ascend the Amazon, on which it had taken the giant raft so many months to drift. The important commercial negotiations, ably managed by Benito, were carried through under the best of conditions, and soon of what had formed this jangada—that is to say, the huge raft of timber constructed from an entire forest at Iquitos—there remained not a trace. A month afterward the fazender, his wife, his son, Manoel and Minha Valdez, Lina and Fragoso, departed by one of the Amazon steamers for the immense establishment at Iquitos of which Benito was to take the management. Joam Dacosta re-entered his home with his head erect, and it was indeed a family of happy hearts which he brought back with him from beyond the Brazilian frontier. As for Fragoso, twenty times a day was he heard to repeat, "What! without the liana?" and he wound up by bestowing the name on the young mulatto who, by her affection for the gallant fellow, fully justified its appropriateness. "If it were not for the one letter," he said, "would not Lina and Liana be the same?"

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 1

 An exclamation point above a character's head indicates that they have a quest for you. —Call to Wizardry loading screen tip  sherpa — A person who acts as a paid guide in a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Sherpas provide their clients with playable characters, equipment, and skilled teammates, allowing them to experience high-level game content that would otherwise require hundreds of hours to reach. Sherpas typically act as freelancers, unaffiliated with the companies whose game worlds they operate in.  Like gold-buying and other "pay to win" strategies, the use of sherpas is regarded by many players as a form of cheating. Game companies vary in their attitude towards the practice, with some tolerating sherpas' existence while others—notably Tempest, makers of the popular Call to Wizardry—classify sherpa activity as a violation of the End-User License Agreement (EULA) and a bannable offense. —Lady Ada's Lexicon

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 2

The client is an idiot. His name is Brad Strong, and in real life he works as a commodities trader at one of those big Wall Street banks that's always implicated, but never held accountable, whenever the economy crashes. According to his social media accounts, Brad is a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance. He owns a nineteen-hundred-square-foot duplex in Soho and drives a Jaguar XP. He rock-climbs and SCUBA dives and is a student of Krav Maga, the martial art practiced by Israeli commandos. Philosophically he considers himself a libertarian, but he votes Republican because let's be serious. He's a fan of the Three Stooges and early Chuck Palahniuk. He hates fat chicks, libtards, and people who won't shut up about their kids. Tonight, Brad is paying me and my associates at Sherpa, Inc. a substantial fee—substantial to us, trivial to him—to take him adventuring in the Realms of Asgarth in Tempest's Call to Wizardry. Like the majority of clients, he has opted for a dps character: a 200th-level elf samurai. Brad thought about going with an orc ninja instead, but decided he'd rather not lurk in the shadows like a pussy. He wants to charge the monsters head-on and "crack some skulls." I'm tanking, as a warrior troll named Blockhead of Moria. My job is to hold aggro, get the monsters to concentrate their attacks on me and my Plate Mail of Invulnerability, while the dps characters—Brad and my colleagues Jolene and Anja—do their damage-per-second thing, and Ray, running heals as a gnome cleric, staunches any bleeding that my armor can't prevent. It's a balancing act. The dps need to finish off the monsters before the healer runs out of mana and everybody dies. But if they do too much damage too quickly, they'll steal aggro off the tank, and what should be an orderly killing spree will become a chaotic melee. This shouldn't be an issue. Jolene and Anja both know what they're doing, and Brad bought his character from us. His samurai has been carefully specced out to hit the sweet spot between too much damage and too little. The problem is the hammer. When Brad hired us two days ago, he asked if he could have access to his samurai in advance, to get in some practice before the run. Since he was paying a quarter of our fee up front, I said yes. I guess I should have paid more attention to his comment about wanting to crack skulls. During practice, he decided he didn't like the katana his samurai was packing, so he went to the in-game auction house and bought himself a new weapon: Ivar's Hammer. Ivar's Hammer is basically Thor's Hammer, without the Marvel trademark issues. Even by the high production standards of Call to Wizardry, it is a gorgeously rendered virtual object, a brutal, sexy work of art with black basilisk-leather handle wraps, a dragontooth butt spike, and mithril filigree thunderbolts on the mallet head. You can see why an alpha-male skull-cracker would be drawn to it. Unfortunately, Ivar's Hammer is a tanking weapon. Anything you hit with it gets really pissed off, and on critical hits it shoots out fingers of lightning that aggro every other monster within thirty yards. Brad's samurai keeps getting mobbed, and unlike my plate armor, his scale mail can't handle that much punishment. Brad dies and Ray resurrects him. I warn Brad that this is going to keep happening if he insists on using the hammer. Brad doesn't want to hear it. As a paying customer, he feels he should be entitled to use any weapon he likes. I remind him that I'm only a guide to the game world; I don't make the rules. "Figure something out," Brad says. We do what we can. I switch from Blockhead the warrior to Sir Valence, a paladin who can call down holy fire and throw his shield like Captain America, and who is generally better at emergency crowd control. Jolene's ranger summons a special companion animal, a fire-breathing tortoise that can serve as a secondary tank. When, despite my and Jolene's best efforts, Brad dies again (and again), Ray revives him, and Anja, whose druid moonlights as an armorsmith, patches the holes in his scale mail so we don't have to go back to town for repairs. Our contract with Brad guarantees him two full dungeon runs. Even the most difficult dungeons rarely take more than three or four hours to complete, and the Caverns of Malice, where we are now, ought to be a cakewalk. But the constant cycle of death and resurrection slows our progress to a crawl; an hour in, we've barely cleared the first boss. Brad is as frustrated as we are and not professionally constrained from showing it. As he gets more impatient, he starts charging into battle before the rest of us are ready, with predictable results. Jolene tries to calm Brad down, at which point we discover he doesn't particularly like black chicks, either. Jolene shuts up and Anja takes over; her attempt to soothe Brad is more successful, but the dying continues. I crank up the gib setting on my user interface, causing Brad's demises to be rendered in as gory a fashion as possible, blood and viscera exploding from his wounds. This has no practical effect on game play, but it makes me feel better. After another forty minutes, we reach the second boss, the green dragon Anastasia. We stop outside her lair so I can explain the fight to Brad. There are three phases, I tell him. In phase one, Anastasia will bite and claw. In phase two, she'll vomit a river of acid. In phase three, she'll beat her wings and conjure a storm of tornadoes. Then back to phase one and repeat, until either she or all of us are dead. The rules of survival are straightforward: Don't steal aggro off the tank. Don't stand in the acid. Avoid the tornadoes. We also need to be mindful of Anastasia's eggs, which are stacked along the walls of her cavern. The eggs are sensitive to jostling and if bumped—or struck by lightning—they'll hatch. Anastasia's brood spit acid like their mom; they also poop little patches of Krazy Glue that make it much harder to dodge tornadoes. Hatch more than a handful of eggs, and the fight quickly becomes unwinnable. Having laid all this out, I ask Brad if he would please, just for this one battle, switch back to his katana. "No," Brad says. It's getting harder not to lose my temper with this guy, and not just because of the way he's behaving. Call to Wizardry's avatar-creation system maps your real face onto the skull of whatever mythical creature you're playing. Brad's spray-tanned mug, stretched over the angular physiognomy of an elf, produces an unfortunate suggestion of yellowface that is amplified by the samurai costume. I feel like I'm talking to the lead from an old-fashioned production of The Mikado. Who is an idiot. I'm a professional with bills to pay, so I keep my cool. But I also keep pressing: The hammer just isn't going to work in here, I say. It'll break too many eggs and we'll be stuck on this boss all night. Brad tells me that he can't switch back to the katana, OK? He doesn't have it anymore; he sold it to a vendor right before he bought Ivar's Hammer. If I want to teleport back to town and buy him a new sword, fine, he'll use it for this one fight. Otherwise, I need to suck it up and deal. I really should buy him the replacement sword. It's the smart play. But I'm running out of patience and we've still got a long way to go, so I decide to brute-force it instead. I look over at Jolene, who nods. Among the arrows in her quiver is a Shaft of Obliteration, the ranger equivalent of a tac nuke. The resources required to craft it cannot be purchased but must be gathered, tediously, by hand, and generally its use is reserved for the deadliest end-level bosses. For Anastasia, it's complete overkill, but it should get us through the fight on the first try. Next I b-channel Ray and slap a DNR order on Brad; no heals for him on this fight. Ray doesn't respond, but his expression tells me he'd already decided to cut Brad off. "All right," I say, "let's do this." Anastasia, curled in slumber at the center of her lair, blinks herself awake as we enter. I draw my sword and charge, but I don't rush to get to her first; when Brad cuts in front of me yelling "Banzai!" I let him take lead. He runs up and bops Anastasia on the nose. Wide awake now, she rears her head back, roaring. The quality of the animation is incredible; the mix of rage and confusion on the dragon's face perfectly mimics the expression of someone startled out of sleep by a band of homicidal midgets. Her eyes flit from Brad to me and back again and she cocks her head, suggesting a new level of bafflement: Why is the dps in front? Do these morons not understand how this works? Brad raises Ivar's Hammer for another blow and Anastasia swipes him with a claw, shredding his armor and tearing out his rib cage. As his heart and lungs exit stage right, she bends down and bites his head off. What's left of Brad's body collapses into a pile of quivering giblets. The cavern flares white as Jolene's nuclear arrow finds its mark. I move in, hurling my shield and hacking with my sword. "Battle rez me!" Brad's disembodied voice cries. "Battle rez me!" We ignore him. While I hold aggro, Anja, her druid now shapeshifted into a mountain lion, comes in from the side and rakes Anastasia with her claws. Jolene's pet tortoise hits the other flank and Jolene, staying behind me, looses arrow after arrow. In no time, Anastasia is caught up in her own bloody death throes; we never even make it to phase three. As the dragon crashes to the ground, the vibrations from her fall cause all of her eggs to swell up and burst, harmlessly. For an instant, all is peaceful in the cavern. "Rez me, you fucks!" Brad shouts. Ray's already doing it. I'm sure he's tempted not to, but like me, he wants to get paid. Brad doesn't appreciate Ray's professionalism. His body reassembled, he leaps to his feet, shouting, "The fuck!" and darts at Ray with Ivar's Hammer swinging. But the game won't let you attack your teammates. Or shove them: When Brad tries to chest-bump Ray, he passes right through him. "Brad," I say. I point to the treasure chest that's taken the place of Anastasia's corpse, its purple aura signifying epic loot. Still fuming, Brad stomps over to the chest and kicks it, which is allowed. The lid pops open, unleashing rays of gold-orange light; a trumpet flourish sounds. Not just epic loot then—legendary loot. Brad's won the lottery. I step up to get a better look, and my heart sinks as I see the sword hilt rising out of the chest. The Vorpal Blade of Gilliam: another tanking weapon. And not just any tanking weapon. For a paladin, the Vorpal Blade of Gilliam is the tanking weapon. It is as rare as it is powerful: You could open a thousand loot chests and not find another. And like all legendary weapons, it's bind-on-pickup, so you'll never see one for sale in the auction house. Most sherpa contracts specify that clients are only entitled to loot their characters can reasonably use: No tanking weapons for non-tanks, no dps weapons for healers, et cetera. But clients of Sherpa, Inc. are entitled to any and all loot, without restriction. That way they never feel cheated by the rules, and if they choose to pass up loot voluntarily, they get to feel virtuous and altruistic. Brad's no altruist, but he stares for so long at the sword without taking it that I foolishly allow myself to hope he doesn't want it. Then he glances over at me. I've got my best poker face on, but Brad's Wall Street trader instincts see right through it; he grins and turns back to the chest. Brad ditches Ivar's Hammer, which falls ringing to the floor and vanishes back into his inventory. His hand closes around the Vorpal Blade's hilt and another trumpet flourish signals that it is now bound to him irrevocably. The sword blade is a length of razor-sharp crystal filled with changeable light. When Brad first holds it up, it's white with holy fire, but as he waves it back and forth, it turns brimstone red, noxious green, icy blue, and finally dark purple shot through with violet sparks. My despair deepens as I realize I'm never going to be able to hold aggro against this thing. And Brad was talking about going to Crimson Castle for his second dungeon run: vampires and succubi, a crowd-control nightmare. *CHUNK!* The cavern suddenly brightens, as if Jolene's set off another nuke. I turn and shield my eyes against the bank of Klieg lights that have appeared up near the ceiling. A second bank comes on beside them, and then a third. I'm reminded of my only visit to a real-world amusement park, on a field trip when I was nine. A friend and I snuck away from the group and went on the haunted house ride, which proceeded to break down, stranding us in the middle of a ghoul-infested graveyard. We screamed our heads off until the ride operator came to rescue us, emergency lights exposing the ghouls as nothing more than puppets on a stage. These Klieg lights have a similar effect, albeit one that is entirely computer-generated. In the blink of an eye, Anastasia's lair transforms from a photorealistic cave to a cheap set constructed of wood and papier-mâché. The 3D treasure chest becomes a painted flat propped up with a plank. "What the hell is going on?" says Brad, his legendary Vorpal Blade demoted to a Styrofoam toy. What's going on is we're about to get busted by the EULA police. I should be upset about this, and I am, but I can't help being impressed as well. Any other game company, having caught us violating their terms of service, would just dump us out of the system. But not Tempest. Even when they ban you, they turn it into a show. And it's this extraordinary level of polish that has made Call to Wizardry the most successful MMORPG in history. A section of the cavern wall swings open, revealing a concrete maintenance tunnel. Two men in suits emerge. At first glance they read as lawyers, but then you notice the gloves they are wearing—blue latex, like the kind police use when handling evidence. The gloves are an inside joke, a reference to a cult science-fiction show that aired before I was born and was canceled after only one season. I'm a big enough nerd that I get it: The EULA cops aren't here to haul us off to virtual jail. They're executioners. Brad thinks he can fight them with his Nerf sword. He manages a few halting steps before the movement controls on his user interface stop working. Two by two, hands of blue, the EULA cops advance to the center of the room. We find ourselves drawn into a semicircle before them. EULA Cop #1 consults a computer tablet and addresses us one at a time, starting with me: "JohnChuAlias8437 at gmail dot com, aka Blockhead of Moria, aka Sir Valence, you are guilty of violating Section 5 of the Call to Wizardry End-User License Agreement..." Section 5 of the EULA prohibits unsanctioned commercial activities within the game world. I.e., it's the anti-sherpa clause. Jolene, Anja, and Ray are all guilty of this offense as well, as is Brad, for hiring us. Interestingly, Brad is also guilty of violating Section 2, which prohibits hacking into other players' accounts or profiting from said hacking. "The penalty for these crimes is the immediate and permanent suspension of the offending user accounts," the EULA cop concludes. "If you believe this judgment has been reached in error, you may appeal to customer service within sixty days." With that, he turns to his counterpart. EULA Cop #2 extends a gloved fist clutching a small cylindrical device; translucent blue antennae sprout from both ends of it. They emit a harsh buzzing noise that jangles the nerves like fingernails scraping on a blackboard. I can't move, but from where I'm standing I can see Brad, at the far end of the semicircle. Blood starts drizzling from his samurai's nose and ears. The buzzing gets louder and the drizzle becomes a gusher. I experience a brief moment of satisfaction as Brad's head explodes. Then it's happening to me, too. Everything goes black. Words appear, floating in the void: > ACCOUNT TERMINATED. RIP, Blockhead of Moria. RIP, Sir Valence. I'm down to eighty-eight names.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 3

 avatar — The audiovisual manifestation of a person or software agent in a virtual environment. Avatars can resemble any animate or inanimate object that their host computer is capable of rendering. They can also manifest differently to different observers simultaneously: In a three-way virtual conference, Alice might appear to Bob as a photorealistic rendering of herself, while Charlie sees and hears her as a cartoon character, a talking horse, or the ghost of Neville Chamberlain. This ability to project multiple aspects, known as faceting, allows for all manner of interesting exploits and shenanigans. —Lady Ada's Lexicon

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 4

"I'm not fucking paying you." Jolene and I have reconvened with Brad at the Game Lobby, a virtual lounge that is popular as a pre- and post-run hangout spot. The Lobby has a cyberpunk chrome-and-neon aesthetic; there's a bar with a Jumbotron TV that's always tuned to your favorite channel, a laser-lit dance floor that switches over to karaoke three times a week, an arcade where you can play emulations of old coin-op video games, and everywhere, interactive screens you can use to find teammates for Call to Wizardry and a dozen other popular MMORPGs. Because of its sponsorship agreement with Tempest, the Lobby doesn't allow advertising for sherpa services, but there's nothing to stop you opening your own pop-up screen and surfing over to the sherpa forum on GigSearch. The three of us stand around a table near the edge of the dance floor. I've invoked a cone of silence so we don't have to shout over the music. We've all switched to our default avatars. Brad no longer resembles a racist Gilbert and Sullivan character, but he still doesn't strike me as someone I'd want to know in real life. I didn't attend a normal high school, so I was spared the ritual humiliation that a lot of nerdy kids go through, but I've seen enough Glee reruns to peg Brad as the kind of guy who spent his formative years stuffing nerds into lockers. Jolene is a tall, fit black woman in her early fifties. Her avatar resembles her Facebook photos, though like most people she's made a few edits, smoothing away some blemishes on her skin and erasing the gap between her front teeth. And of course there's her hair, which on Facebook is natural but short, a conservative 'do that comports with her day job as an IT specialist for a Colorado Springs law firm. Her avatar sports a complex weave whose interlocking braids hang down to the small of her back. It's a style that in real life would cost hundreds of dollars in hair extensions alone and require God knows how many hours of upkeep. But here in fantasyland, it's free, and you don't have to worry about strangers touching it. If you subscribe to People magazine, you might recognize my avatar from the spread in the March 8 issue: "John Chu, Sherpa to the Stars." My legal surname is Conaway, but I go by Chu out of respect for my mother, who raised me, and also to cut down on awkward questions like, "How come you have an Irish name when you're Asian?" My avatar has fewer acne scars than I do, but the main difference between us is what I call the Mom-and-Pop switch. It's a piece of code created by a friend of mine, Djimon Campbell, who's also biracial: Scots-English on his father's side and Yoruba on his mother's. Djimon's folks were divorced but shared custody, and growing up he noticed he got treated differently depending on which parent he was with. One day as an experiment he took some public-domain morphing software and created an avatar extension that allowed him to emphasize one side or the other of his ethnic heritage, in effect presenting as a blacker or whiter version of himself. The results surprised him: He expected it to affect people's behavior, he said, but wasn't prepared for how strong the effect was. I paid Djimon a hundred bucks to write a version of the code for my avatar. I use it as a business tool. The historical connection between Chinese hackers and gold farming has given rise to a stereotype that ethnic Chinese are natural-born sherpas, just as we are all biologically predisposed to score high on the SATs, so for initial meetings with clients I like to put on my Mom genes. When dealing with customer complaints, on the other hand, I find that you can never be too Caucasian. At the moment I have the Dad setting cranked up to eleven. Even at that extreme, Brad may not consciously notice. But Jolene does. She b-channels me: From Brad's point of view she's standing motionless with her hands folded on the table in front of her, but I see her lean in close, eyes going wide in astonishment. "Oh my God!" she says. "White... whiter... whitest!" I ignore her. Outwardly I'm aping my father, but inside my head I'm in one-hundred-percent Mom mode, running a psych profile on Brad and trying to work out a strategy that will get him to cough up the rest of our fee. I could threaten to blackball him on the sherpa forum, but that would probably only make him laugh, while appealing to his sense of fairness might provoke the part of him that likes stuffing nerds into lockers. Really, anything that can be interpreted as weakness is best avoided. I decide my only hope is to throw him off balance and try to redirect his anger. "Did you hear me? I said I'm not fucking paying y—" "You bought gold," I say. The words bring him up short. "What?" "Ivar's Hammer would have run you at least twenty-five thousand gold pieces on the auction house. Your samurai was broke when I gave him to you, and you couldn't have gotten more than a few hundred for your katana, so you must have bought gold." "So?" "So I'm guessing you didn't buy it from the in-game currency shop." After years of trying unsuccessfully to bar gold farmers from Call to Wizardry, Tempest decided to undercut their business by allowing players to buy gold legally from the company store. The price fluctuates, just as it would on a real gold exchange, but is kept low enough that black market gold-selling is no longer profitable. With one exception. "I bought the gold from a guy advertising on the same forum where I found you," Brad says. I nod knowingly. "Here's the thing. The only way to make decent money selling gold in Call to Wizardry anymore is by stealing it. These guys crack players' accounts, liquidate their characters' possessions, and then sell the gold to"—idiots like you—"people looking for bargains." Brad shrugs. Players careless enough to let their accounts get hacked, the shrug says, are not his problem. Except they are. "Everything that happens in the game world is recorded," I say. "As soon as those hacked accounts get reported, Tempest can track exactly where the gold went. They can't punish the thieves, because the money you paid them is outside the system, but they can punish you." Brad shrugs again, but with less conviction. "You don't know it was because of me," he says. "They busted you too." "Because we were with you. When Tempest traced the gold and saw you were in a party, they must have decided to hang back and eavesdrop a while. That's how they knew we were sherpas." I go on, improvising: "And then, to really teach us a lesson, they must have waited for the perfect moment to pull the plug. I bet they even rigged the loot table in Anastasia's cavern to make sure we'd get a legendary drop." "You mean that sword you wanted? They gave that to us on purpose?" "And then snatched it right back," I say. I am talking out of my ass now, but Brad doesn't know that. "Look, I understand you're upset, but we're not the ones who fucked you over. You want to be mad, be mad at Tempest. Be mad at the rip-off artist who sold you that gold." Brad looks away and appears to think it over. When he turns back to me he is nodding, and his carefully composed expression suggests he's decided to be reasonable. It's then I know for certain that we're screwed. "You're right, it's not your fault," Brad says. "But I'm still not fucking paying you." Another shrug. "It's like what you were saying about the company: I can't punish the guys who really deserve it. So I guess I'll have to settle for taking it out on you." Jolene breaks her silence. "What is wrong with you? Why would you want to be like—" Brad cuts her off: "Who asked you to butt in, Beyoncé? You think I give two shits what you—" "Dead to me," I say. Brad disappears. His avatar still occupies the same coordinates in cyberspace, but I can no longer see it or hear it, and he can no longer see or hear me. Jolene goes on staring across the table, listening to—and, I assume, recording—whatever Brad is saying to her. Another half minute elapses before she says, "Dead to me," and sighs. "Griefnet?" I ask her. "Nah," she says. "If he'd dropped the n-word I'd post it to Griefnet. But I can't be too mad about 'Beyoncé,' even if he meant it as a slur... So, I guess we'd better break the bad news, huh?" Anja and Ray are waiting for us in the Lobby arcade. Anja's avatar looks like Anja herself did before her accident: a pretty, petite teenager with a gymnast's physique. Anja's family, the Kirchners, are a clan of German Argentines who live in Paraná. Anja was on her way to the summer Olympic trials in Buenos Aires when the van taking her to the airport got sideswiped by a bus. She was left partially paralyzed, and an experimental stem-cell treatment meant to repair the damage instead made things worse, rendering her unable to breathe on her own. The machine that keeps her alive has a thought-controlled VR rig that reads and interprets the electrical impulses in her cerebrum. Anja's online 24/7, which combined with her eagerness to please and her relative indifference to money makes her the perfect employee, a fact I try not to take too much advantage of. Jolene tells me I need to try harder. Ray Nelson presents as a thirtysomething white guy with a medium build, brown eyes, and short black hair. He has no social media presence—not under that name, at least—so I don't know if he's really a white guy, but if forced to guess I'd say he probably is. People masquerading as another race or gender tend to gravitate towards stereotypes. Ray's avatar isn't celebrity beautiful or Aryan chic, nor does it suggest an inbred hillbilly. He looks, by white guy standards, unremarkably ordinary, and who would want to pretend to be that? Jolene has some interesting thoughts on the matter. Not long after she became a Sherpa, Inc. regular, she asked me what I knew about Ray. I told her he was the best healer I'd ever worked with. What about offline? she said. What's he do when he's not playing? I don't know, I replied. He doesn't really talk about himself. Jolene, not satisfied with that, used her IT skills to sniff out Ray's IP address. She looked it up and found it was one of a block of IP addresses assigned to an internet provider in southeast California. The provider's coverage area included a region of the Mojave Desert that is said to be popular with people who are legally forbidden to live near children. You think Ray's a pedophile because of his IP address? I said when Jolene told me about this. I don't know what he is, she said, but my gut tells me he's hiding something. You don't get that vibe? Not from him, I said. But I'm starting to wonder what you haven't told me. One thing I do know about Ray is that the sherpa gig isn't a part-time job for him, it's his main source of income. Which is a concern, because good healers are hard to come by, and if he can't make rent working for Sherpa, Inc., he won't hesitate to join another crew. I already came close to losing him once before. "He stiffed us?" Ray says, not even waiting for me to deliver the news. "We got stiffed, right?" "The guy's an asshole," I say. "Look, it happens. Just bad luck, that's—" "Bad luck?" Ray's avatar's cheeks stay pale but I can tell that he's red-faced with anger. "And what about that thing last week? Or the two the week before that?" We have been going through a rough patch lately. Tonight is the third time in a month the EULA cops have busted us during a run. On the previous two occasions, our customers did pay us, but they were unhappy and left us one- and two-star ratings on the sherpa forum. Last week's incident was different. The run itself went off without a hitch, with the client, who went by the screen name Ollie Oxenfree, opting to add a third dungeon at overtime rates. The trouble started afterwards, when Ollie failed to meet us at the Game Lobby. My instant messages and emails inquiring about payment all bounced, and when I tried to log back into Call to Wizardry, the account I'd used for the run had been suspended: Besides stiffing us, "Ollie" had ratted us out to Tempest. Pranked. It happens. Concern that it might happen again was the reason I'd spent so much time vetting Brad Strong on social media, making sure he was real. "It's not bad luck," Ray says. "It's Darla." "You don't know that." Sounding uncomfortably like Brad as I say this. "She's getting even with you, like she promised she would. And she's making the rest of us pay, too." "Come on, Ray. Don't be—" "I'm sorry, John. I can't afford to keep doing this." "What if I give you my share of tonight's upfront money?" Ray makes a face. "The guy only paid a quarter in advance, right? So even with your share, that's only half of what I'm owed. And—" "You can have my share, too," Anja pipes up. Jolene interjects: "Oh no you can't. You keep your money, honey." "It's not just the money," Ray says, staying focused on me. "I don't have a million spare accounts like you do. You know how long it takes to level up a new cleric?" "You want a replacement for the one you lost tonight?" I say. "I'll give you one of mine. Two—I'll give you two." "Two clerics," Ray says. This is insanely generous and he knows it. "Max level?" "One of them is. The other's in the high hundreds, like one-seventy or one-seventy-five." "I could finish leveling that one up for you," Anja offers. "It won't take long." Jolene opens her mouth to say something, then thinks better of it. But I know I'll be hearing from her about this later. "Two clerics," says Ray, still mulling it over. "And your share of tonight's upfront money?" I nod, trying not to think about my own unpaid bills. "All right," Ray says. "I'll stick around a while longer. But you need to go deal with Darla. Find her and kiss her ass, or whatever it's going to take to get her to lay off." "I will," I promise. "Don't worry about it." Ray and Jolene log off. I give Anja the account ID and password for that second cleric I promised Ray. "Only if you really want to," I say, picturing Jolene's parting glance to me. "I wouldn't offer if I didn't want to," Anja says. And whether that's true or not, I know she'll have the cleric maxed out by the next time I see her. "Are you feeling OK?" I ask. "About tonight, I mean." I know that EULA busts, like anything involving loss of avatar control, are potentially traumatic for her. She shrugs. "It happens. Do you really think Darla was responsible?" "I think tonight was on Brad. Last week, though, yeah, could be. But don't worry, I'll figure something out." We say goodnight. Anja goes back into Call to Wizardry. I stay in the Lobby arcade, playing Gauntlet. I think about Darla.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 5

Darla has me blocked on social media, but if you go on her Facebook page you'll find a profile pic of what looks like a young Chloë Grace Moretz in combat boots and paint-spattered camo, sitting cross-legged in the grass with a paintball rifle balanced across her knees. Her green eyes look out from under sweat-matted bangs, and she's got this wicked grin on her face like she knows something you don't and is wondering just how long it's going to take you to get a clue. According to her bio, she's Darla Jean Covington, "Virginian by blood, Arizonan by birth, Oregonian by choice." A twenty-two-year-old white, bi-curious, cisgender, middle-class, apolitical atheist omnivore who doesn't like being put into boxes. "Ha ha, see what I did there?" Occupation: Shit-stirrer and gamer gurl. Relationship status: Single. We met in Call to Wizardry, in the Jurassic Swamp, where we'd gone to farm dinosaur hides and archaeopteryx feathers. The game server we were on is used primarily by South Koreans, and it was three a.m. in Seoul, so we'd both been hoping to have the swamp to ourselves. After a cursory attempt at sharing, we started stealing each other's kills. When I bagged a rare T. rex that Darla had her eye on, she challenged me to a duel, and despite her character being four levels below mine, she kicked my ass. Twice. I offered her a job with Sherpa, Inc. on the spot. Considered purely as a player, she was a great hire. Her dps skills were phenomenal, but she could also tank, and while she didn't really have the temperament for healing, in a pinch she could do that, too. In the area of customer relations, however, she left a lot to be desired. When clients were rude, Darla took it personally; when they made mistakes, or were slow to understand the rules of a boss fight, she made fun of them. This latter tendency in particular bugged the shit out of me. As I kept pointing out to her, our business model was dependent on our clients being amateurs; if they could put in the time required to become great players, they wouldn't need to hire sherpas. I know that, Darla said, but they're just so lame sometimes, it makes me want to scream. When she wasn't alienating customers, Darla poked fun at her coworkers. Anja, the German South American, got a steady stream of fugitive Nazi jokes. I got cracks about lactose intolerance and requests to share my thoughts on Mickey Rooney's performance in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Getting under Ray's skin was harder, since he revealed so little about himself, but Darla somehow deduced that he was Catholic, or at least sensitive to remarks about Catholics; she was still teasing out which heresies most offended him when he threatened to quit. I should have fired Darla then. But our relationship had gotten complicated, so instead I just read her the riot act. She laughed and told me I was cute when I was angry. I told her I wasn't kidding; she could knock it off or she could look for another sherpa crew. Fine, she said, if Ray's going to be such a huge pussy about it I'll leave him alone. Anja too, I said. And the customers. All right, all right, she said. And she did knock it off. Mostly. I was relieved, though I also assumed that this was temporary, and that in a week or a month she'd start in again, and there would be another crisis where I'd have to choose between her or the business. I still believe that; it was doomed to end badly, one way or another. But the way it did end was this: I got a call from the CAA agent who represents Janet Margeaux. She was set to costar with Jaden Smith in a film about a sherpa crew who stage a bank heist in cyberspace—"a sort of Snow Crash meets The Thomas Crown Affair." To research the role, Ms. Margeaux wanted to spend a couple days hanging out with some real sherpas. People magazine was also interested: If I agreed, they'd embed a reporter on one of the dungeon runs, get some video and some screenshots, and interview me about the business. I hadn't even said yes yet when I started worrying about Darla. What if she decided to razz Janet Margeaux about the lousy box-office on that Citizen Kane remake she did last year? Or what if she decided to get "edgy" and say something racist to the People reporter? I could have tried talking to Darla, to impress on her how potentially important this gig was for the future of the business. I could have admitted that I didn't trust her, her recent good behavior notwithstanding. But I was afraid of how she might react, so I took a more cautious, which is to say cowardly, approach: I scheduled Janet Margeaux for a weekend when I knew Darla would be offline, facetiming with her family at a reunion in Virginia. I brought in Jolene, who'd subbed for Darla a couple times before, and only told Ray and Anja what was up at the last minute—and even then, I was cagey about it. I think Ray understood that I'd cut Darla out deliberately, but Anja didn't get it; she thought it was just bad luck that Darla couldn't be with us. The gig went extremely well—Janet Margeaux was thrilled, and the reporter said she'd be devoting a full page to our interview. I told myself that I'd made the right call and that even Darla would come to agree with that, after she'd had some time to cool off. But I wasn't in a hurry to test that theory. The day Darla was due back from the reunion, I went to the Jurassic Swamp again. Call to Wizardry's most recent software patch had introduced a new subspecies of velociraptor whose claws could be used to make magic necklaces. I switched off my instant messages and settled in to farm a few hundred of them. Darla came online and went to the Game Lobby to look for me. She ran into Anja, who, not knowing any better, spilled the beans about what we'd been up to in Darla's absence. Back in the swamp, I got into another territorial pissing match, this time with a couple of low-level griefers. I picked a fight and killed them until they got bored and went away. I was still flagged for PvP when Darla found me. She'd logged in as a 200th-level deathlord, so the first sign that she was coming was when the ferns at the edge of the clearing I was in shriveled up and turned black. She burst through the dead foliage wielding a flaming two-handed sword the size of a telephone pole. "Hey Darla, let's talk," I said. She decapitated me. I came back from the graveyard and she was desecrating my corpse; I imagine she had her gib setting turned up full. I knew if I resurrected she'd just kill me again, so instead I hovered there, disembodied, saying, "Come on Darla, let's talk." She logged out. I did too. I went to the Game Lobby and waited. It was karaoke night, and a group of senior citizens were competing to see who could do the most grating rendition of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." As penance, I decided not to invoke a cone of silence. But that was self-indulgent bullshit. One of my mother's most often repeated pieces of wisdom is that there's a difference between being unhappy with the consequences of your actions and being sorry. I was unhappy that Darla was pissed off, but I didn't regret what I'd done—if anything, her reaction confirmed for me that I'd made the right decision. Not being sorry, I knew it would be wrong to apologize. I could explain why I'd done what I'd done, I could try to make it up to her, but to say sorry when I wasn't would only add insult to injury. Do not apologize, I counseled myself as I waited. Do. Not. Apologize. Then I saw her, standing over by the bar. She saw me too—had seen me first, no doubt—but pretended to ignore me. I walked up to her. "Darla," I said. She turned and threw a virtual martini in my face. This is less effective than throwing a real drink—like a chest-bump aimed at an avatar teammate, it passed right through me. Darla's words had more of an impact. "You lying, backstabbing piece of shit!" she shouted. Onstage, the latest bout of Titanic theme music had just ended, and the scattered applause hadn't yet begun; Darla's exclamation landed at full volume in the space between. Suddenly it felt like everyone in the Game Lobby was staring at us. I spoke without thinking: "Darla, I'm sorry. I—" "Sorry?" Darla said. "You're not sorry... But you will be." Then: "Dead to me." That was two and a half months ago. I spent the first week awaiting Darla's revenge, which I assumed would take the form of a post on the sherpa forum. There were things she could have revealed about the nature of our relationship that would have been embarrassing, and maybe bad for business. But time went by and no post appeared. Darla blocked me on social media, as I've said, but she didn't take her accounts private, so by logging in under a different name I could look and see that she hadn't posted on Facebook or anywhere else, either. It was as if she'd left the internet entirely—though of course, she was free to log in under a different name, too. The People magazine article came out. The publicity had the effect that I'd hoped for, and more—Sherpa, Inc. was suddenly very busy. I raised our standard fee and hired Jolene as a full-time replacement for Darla. We made good money, at first. There were a few negative repercussions. Some of the other sherpa outfits, jealous that Janet Margeaux hadn't picked them, started badmouthing us. Others complained that by inspiring "John Chu wannabes" the article was creating too much competition, driving overall profits down. Gold-selling scams increased, and Tempest, unhappy with the expansion of the black market, began cracking down harder on EULA violations. All of the accounts we'd used for the Janet Margeaux job got banned. The price of fame, I figured. I had other accounts, and could afford to get more. I settled in to what I thought was the new normal, and talked about expanding. But now our luck has changed again, and instead of building a larger crew I'm struggling to hold the core group together. Karma, or Darla? The main argument against the latter is that I just don't see Darla having the patience for an extended revenge scheme. Her idea of a long game is making sure you're listening with both ears before she unloads on you. But strong emotions can cause people to act very differently than they normally would. That's another of my mother's axioms. I keep thinking about the expression on Darla's face when she pronounced "Dead to me" in the bar that night, which was the same expression she wore when she cut my head off in the swamp. As if she were wishing the invocation of death were more than just a metaphor. Speaking of death: In Gauntlet, my elf, who needs food badly, falls to an onslaught of grunts. Rather than plug in another virtual quarter, I open a pop-up screen and surf over to Darla's Facebook page. There are no new posts. While I debate whether to leave a message tagged with my real name, Darla's profile pic stares at me, grinning.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 6

I'm about to log out when I get an instant message, the words appearing in a pop-up box at the bottom of my visual field: > ARE YOU AVAILABLE TO MEET NOW? — SMITH Smith—no first name, no "Mr." or "Ms.," just Smith—emailed me a week ago, claiming to be the personal assistant of a "wealthy, famous person" who wanted to hire a sherpa for a special project. The job paid "quite generously," Smith promised, but added that the client wished to remain anonymous. Would that be acceptable? Coming as it did on the heels of the Ollie Oxenfree incident, this offer struck me as highly suspicious, but on the off chance it was for real I wrote back. I said that I was fine with not knowing the identity of my employer, so long as they were willing to pay my full fee in advance—and by the way, what did "quite generous" mean in actual dollars? When I got no response, I assumed that whoever it was had given up the gag after having their bluff called. > I'M AVAILABLE, I message back. WHERE? > GAME LOBBY PRIVATE CHAT ROOM #24, Smith replies. ENTRY CODE 77G4M9. The door to the chat rooms is right outside the arcade. I knock and a peephole slides open; a robot bouncer jabbers at me in faux Star Wars droid language. "Room twenty-four," I tell it, and recite the code. The door opens and I step directly into a conference room where Smith and the client are waiting. They are Gray People. This is a special type of anonymizing avatar, inspired by a bit of business from an old Ursula K. Le Guin novel. Users manifest as androgynous, racially nondescript humanoids with light gray skin; the avatar suite includes an audio filter that replaces your real voice with an accentless monotone, though unless you're also speaking through a translator, your word choice can still give information away. I see they have opted not to use the avatar's lack-of-affect toggle. The Gray Person on the right is smiling as I enter, and he or she regards me with an open and intense curiosity. The Gray Person on the left is more reserved, but in a way that suggests seriousness rather than an absence of emotion. "Smith?" I say. "I am Smith," the serious one replies. He—I decide to think of him as "he," because otherwise I'll think of him as Darla—indicates his companion. "This is my boss, Mr. Jones." "Hello. I'm John Chu." I nod. Jones doesn't nod back, just goes on staring at me, his smile starting to seem a little creepy now. "I understand you're interested in hiring a sherpa for some sort of project." "Yes," Mr. Jones says. "I wish to undertake a comprehensive survey of the world of more pigs." More pigs: MMORPGs. "What kind of survey?" Smith answers: "Mr. Jones believes that the design philosophy of massive multiplayer online role-playing games may have applications beyond the realm of mere entertainment. Applications that are relevant to his own profession." "Which is?" "Not your concern." "I have researched the subject of more pigs," Mr. Jones says. "Read articles, watched videos. But I lack firsthand experience. I want you to help me rectify this." "OK," I say. "Do you know which games you'd like to play?" "All of them." "All? You know there are dozens of them, right? Hundreds, if you count legacy games." "All of them," Mr. Jones says. "I wish to experience the full potential of the medium. You can arrange this for me?" "I can," I say. "I've got accounts on all the most popular MMORPGs, and I can get others. But it'll cost you." "Money is no concern." It is to me, I think. "When do you want to start?" "As soon as Smith is satisfied with the security arrangements. You understand, I must maintain strict anonymity." "Yeah, I got that." "The logistics of that I leave to Smith. But I do have a question before we begin." "Go ahead." "It is about identity." He lowers his gaze and studies the backs of his avatar's hands. "I can resemble anything I wish to, in here." Looking up again: "And so can you." "And so can anyone else." I nod, guessing where he's going with this. "Yes," Mr. Jones says. "So when you are guiding me through the world of more pigs, how do I know that you are you, and not one of my enemies? How do you know that I am me?" I can't tell whether he's asking because he really wants to know, or just wants to see if I do. But I've got this covered. "It's a standard cryptographic protocol," I say. Jones arches an eyebrow: crypto-whaticol? "Here, let me show you..." I pass my hand over the conference table between us, causing three objects to materialize there: a small blue box, a blue key, and a red key. I pick up the red key. "This is my public encryption key," I say, offering it to Mr. Jones, who accepts it after exchanging a quick glance with Smith. "Because it's public, I can give away a copy to anybody who wants one. "The blue key is my private key," I continue, "and I'm very careful not to let anyone else have that. Now if I want to send you a message, I can put it in here..." I lift the lid of the blue box. Inside is a business card, which I hold up so Mr. Jones can read the words preprinted on it: IT'S ME, JOHN CHU. I put the card back in the box and close the lid. "Now I lock it with my private key." I turn the key and the box turns red. "And I send it to you." I slide the box across the table. "If you've got my public key, you can open it." "But so can anyone else," Mr. Jones says. "Anyone with your public key can read the message." "Unless the message is also encrypted, with a code that only you have the key to. But that's not necessary in this case. In this case, the real message is the box itself. My public key will only open boxes that were locked with my private key. So if you get a box that you can open, you know it came from me." "I see," Mr. Jones says. "Clever, but also cumbersome. Anytime I wish to verify your identity, I ask for a box?" "It's just a metaphor." I nod at the table; the box disappears, and the key in Mr. Jones's hand transforms into a key fob, the kind you use to find your car in a crowded garage. "Go ahead," I say, pointing to the little blue speaker pin that has appeared on my avatar's lapel. "Try it." Mr. Jones stares at the key fob like he's never seen one before. Then he says, "Ah," in a way that makes me think Smith just b-channeled him. He aims the fob at me and pushes the button. "It's me," the lapel pin says in my voice. "John Chu." A new smile appears on Mr. Jones's face. He laughs like a little kid and presses the button again. And again. "It's me, John Chu... It's me, John Chu... It's me, John Chu..." A dozen times. Finally satisfied, he lowers the key fob and turns to Smith. "This is the one I want," he says. And then he's gone, without so much as a goodbye glance. "Thank you for explaining public-key cryptography to my boss," Smith says. "You did a much better job than I would have." "It's no problem." I consider telling him that I created this demonstration for Janet Margeaux, but divulging even that small a detail about a former client relationship might come across as indiscreet. Instead I say, "I want you and your boss to feel totally comfortable." "It is good that this is your attitude," Smith says. "Because your encryption protocol is inadequate to our security needs." "Inadequate how? Are you worried about the integrity of my computer?" "I am worried about that, also. But I was referring to the encryption itself." "I generate the keys with a Really Good Privacy app. It's solid. No known vulnerabilities." "No publicized vulnerabilities," Smith replies. "You're saying someone's found a hole in RGP?" "I am saying my boss has powerful enemies with extraordinary capabilities." "Enemies like who, the NSA?" "Their identity is not your concern. But I am going to require root privileges on your computer; I will be modifying the operating system and installing additional software that you are not to remove or tamper with." "You understand why that's impossible, right?" I try to say this lightly, but it's hard to keep the disappointment out of my voice. For all of its weirdness, I'd been starting to hope this job offer might be genuine. "I understand why you would be reluctant to grant root access to a stranger. But you will do it." "No I won't, Darla." "I am not your darling," Smith says. "Now listen carefully, John Chu: In addition to granting me the access I require, you will clear your schedule of all other personal and business commitments. You will make yourself available on fifteen minutes' notice, any time of the day or night. You will show my boss the world of MMORPGs and answer his questions. You will explain things in a way that he can understand. You will do all of this tirelessly and without complaint, and you will tell no one else what you are up to. In exchange, you will receive a weekly salary of one hundred thousand dollars, for as long as Mr. Jones chooses to employ you." "A hundred thousand a week," I say. "And is that U.S. dollars, or Monopoly money?" "You can have it in whatever currency you like," Smith says. "As per your email, I am prepared to wire the first week's payment right now, to the bank account of your choice. The money will be available for immediate withdrawal. You can spend it, transfer it to another account, or do whatever else you require, to convince yourself it is real. In seventy-two hours, I will contact you again, and you will either agree to my terms or refund the money in full. Will that be satisfactory?"

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 7

Five minutes later I stumble out of the chat room and head for the bar. You can order drinks from the cyborg bartender, but since this is virtual reality, you have to provide your own intoxication. Tonight that won't be a problem; I'm feeling plenty stupefied. PayPal has just sent me confirmation of a deposit of one hundred thousand dollars. A part of me is wondering how Darla could have faked this, while another part is trying to figure out if it's too late to avoid reporting the income to the IRS. If I'd believed for a moment I might actually get the money, I'd have handled it differently. I'm almost at the bar when a Chinese woman catches my eye. The avatar looks a lot like my aunt Penny; it's not her, but the woman smiles as if she expects me to recognize her. "I'm sorry," I say. "Do I know you?" "That's a good question, John," she says. Her accent is British, with just a hint of Cantonese. "Let's find out. Do you have another of those red key fobs?" The question takes a moment to process. Then, feeling as though I've downed a bucket of virtual martinis, I hold out my hand and conjure another copy of my public encryption key. She doesn't take it. "It's not for me," she says, "it's for you." She points at the little blue speaker pin on her blouse. "Try it." I aim the red key fob. Press the button. "It's me," the blue pin says, in my voice. "John Chu." "There you go," says the woman. "I suppose we must be twins." "Who are you?" "I'm you, John." She laughs. "Or maybe I'm someone with 'extraordinary capabilities.'" "What do you want?" "I want you to take the job. You'll really be working for me, of course; I'll pay you twice what Smith's offering you." "Two hundred thousand dollars a week? And what else are you going to want, for that?" "One thing at a time. For now, just tell Smith yes." All the humor goes out of her expression and she gives me a look that is terrifying in its seriousness. "Don't disappoint me, John. You won't like what happens if you do that. At all." She smiles again. Winks. Then she's gone.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 8

 memory palace — A virtual architectural space used for storing data. The original memory palaces were purely mental constructs: Ancient Greek and Roman rhetoricians would populate an imaginary structure with mnemonic images and then "walk through" the space in the course of giving a speech. Although this old-school art of memory still has its enthusiasts, modern memory palaces tend to be digital and optimized for VR. —Lady Ada's Lexicon

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 9

The People article described me as a "third-generation gold farmer," which is technically true, but for a lot of readers conjures up a false image of a Chinese immigrant kid whose grandpop played video games in a Beijing internet café. In fact the Chus have been American since long before there was an internet, or video games. Or video. My great-great-great-grandfather, Chu Yi-wei, emigrated from Guangdong Province in 1871. He helped build the Northern Pacific Railway and started an import/export business in Seattle. In 1886, Seattle's white Knights of Labor rioted and tried to run the entire population of Chinatown out of the city. The local militia intervened at the last minute, but Yi-wei decided to play it safe and left town anyway, taking his family and his business to San Francisco. It was Chu Yi-wei's great-grandson, Joseph Chu, who first got into gold farming. Grandpa Joe was a graduate student in mathematics at U.C. Berkeley. In his free time, he played a primordial MMORPG called Ultima Online. The game was popular enough to support a side economy in which players exchanged virtual treasure for real-world cash. Grandpa used the money he earned selling gold pieces and magic items to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend, Judy Chen. My mother was born a year after Grandpa and Grandma got married. One night two years after that, they left Mom with a sitter and went to their favorite dim sum house to celebrate their anniversary. During the meal, a neo-Nazi named Charles Clayton came into the restaurant. California law at the time banned semiautomatic "assault weapons" like the AR-15 rifle, so Clayton had armed himself with a pair of pump shotguns, loaded with a type of heavy slug that is normally used to hunt elk. He had fired both guns empty and switched to a backup revolver when he found my grandparents hiding under a table. My mother was sent to Hawaii to live with the family of my great-aunt Tamara, who was a cryptographer for the Navy. Mom grew up on the base at Pearl Harbor. She learned how to program at an early age and played her fair share of computer games, though her tastes ran more to Sim City and Civilization. It was my father, David Conaway, who was that generation's gold farmer. Like Grandpa Joe he was a grad student, but in English rather than math; his pursuit of a doctorate was mostly a way of buying time to finish the epic sci-fi/fantasy novel he'd been working on since freshman year. Dad considered his online gaming a form of research for the novel. He did a lot of research, earning a nice chunk of change selling gold in the process—though his profits were dwarfed by the size of his student loans. The summer before his dissertation was due, Dad flew to Hawaii, ostensibly to unplug and get some writing done, but really to bum around the beach for a couple months. Mom, who'd joined the Navy straight out of high school, had just completed her first term of enlistment and was trying to decide whether to reenlist or go to college. It was the wrong time for her to get involved with anyone and Dad was one of the worst romantic choices imaginable, but as Mom later explained to me, she'd done everything right in her life up to that point and was overdue for a screw-up. Also, contrary to the stereotype about basement-dwelling video gamers, Dad was hot. They'd been together a little more than a month when Mom found out she was pregnant. Dad, in a grand gesture towards taking responsibility, asked Mom to marry him; Mom said she needed to think about it. She'd been careless but she wasn't stupid, and her instincts were telling her that this wasn't someone she could depend on in the long run. She probably would have turned him down no matter what, but two things happened that made the decision much easier. The first thing was that Dad cheated on her while he was waiting for her answer. That destroyed any lingering illusions she might have had about his suitability as a husband. The second thing was that Mom got a visit from a captain with U.S. Cyber Command. The captain was recruiting for a new covert anti-terrorism task force called Zero Day, and Mom's service record showed that she had the aptitude and skill set they were looking for. It was a dream assignment, one that Mom assumed her status as a soon-to-be single parent would disqualify her for. But when she told the captain she was pregnant, he didn't even blink. Zero Day was different, he said, a twenty-first-century organization designed to deal with twenty-first-century realities, more forward-looking even than Cyber Command. Child care issues didn't faze them. Also, Great-aunt Tamara, now a rear admiral with Naval Intelligence, had personally recommended Mom for the job. So it was hers if she wanted it. Mom said yes to the captain and no to my father. When Dad came back around, begging for another chance, Mom ghosted him, vanishing into thin air as only a member of covert services can. She took me with her. I spent my childhood shuttling from top-secret command post to top-secret command post. I wasn't always sure what continent I was on, but that didn't matter; like the other kids whose parents worked for Zero Day, my real home was the internet. It was a good time to be a digital native. After decades of overhyped promises, fully immersive VR was finally becoming a thing, and the tech Zero Day had access to was a generation ahead of what was available on the commercial market. We had great tech support, too, and bandwidth was never a problem. Of course our every move in cyberspace was monitored, to make sure we didn't blab about what our folks did. We couldn't really talk about ourselves, either, so we made up fake autobiographies to use with online friends and acquaintances. That could get weird sometimes, but trying on different identities is something all children do, and for us it was a form of patriotism. I suppose it's no surprise that I gravitated towards role-playing games, though for me it's always been as much business as entertainment. Selling gold was my version of having a paper route, and the adventurers' guild I founded with the other Zero Day kids became an early prototype for Sherpa, Inc. At seventeen I left the Zero Day nest and moved to San Francisco, where I'd gotten early admission to Berkeley. My plan was to go for a double major in computer science and business administration, then found a game company and create my own MMORPG. I did attend a few classes, but much of my freshman year was taken up by the same sort of research that had so obsessed my father. Since it seemed we were more alike than I'd realized, I decided to track Dad down. I found him in Los Angeles. After Mom left him he gave up on his novel and made his way to Hollywood, where he eventually established himself as a screenwriter. He was happy to meet me, and after some initial awkwardness the feeling turned out to be mutual. In the three years since, we've gotten to be good friends. Dad doesn't farm gold anymore, but he does play Call to Wizardry, and we've got a standing monthly game night. My father has told me many times how sorry he is that he wasn't there when I was growing up. He says he wants to make it up to me, and I believe him. Though he hasn't taken credit for it, I'm almost certain it was him who gave Janet Margeaux my contact info: He was a script doctor on her Catwoman reboot. And if I were looking for investors for my game company, or needed an emergency loan to help cover my tuition debt, Dad would be my first call. But he's the wrong parent for my current situation. I don't need an ex–gold farmer; I need a god gamer, someone with a top-down view who can see the big picture and help me figure out what's going on. Someone with power and access to special codes, who, if things get desperate, really can change the rules. My mother keeps a memory house on MySpaceII. It's got a number of unpatched security vulnerabilities, so even if you're not on the approved guest list, it's a simple hack to come inside and check out the virtual mementos that collectively tell the story of my mother's life—or rather a story, since a lot of it is fiction. While you're poking around, the house will be getting into your business, too: back-tracing your internet connection, grabbing any unsecured files off your computer, and running a threat assessment. If you're an ordinary identity thief, you'll probably be left alone (although, spoiler alert: the tax returns in the office filing cabinet are fakes, with a randomly generated address and social security number). If the house decides you're a Real Threat, your info will be forwarded to a Zero Day counterintel agent with the power to make you unhappy. I'm on the guest list, so I don't need to hack in. I come right in the front door, wave to the picture of Grandpa and Grandma on the fireplace mantel, and proceed to the back bedroom that would have been mine if this were a real house I'd grown up in. I open the secret door that only I can access and step into what looks like the reception area of an ultramodern office suite. A Korean-American woman in a Navy ensign's uniform smiles at me from behind the reception desk. Her name is Maggie Kim, and I'm not sure whether she's human or a software agent. "Hello, John," she says. "Your mother is on a call right now, but she'll be free in a few minutes." I look around idly while I'm waiting. My picture hangs on the wall beside an American flag and a photo of the president; the Janet Margeaux People issue tops a stack of magazines on a side table. This room is a kind of avatar, capable of manifesting differently to different observers, and I assume these details would not be visible to anyone else. Mom wants me to know that she loves me and is proud of me, but given the nature of her work, she can't risk letting other visitors learn what she cares about. "John," Ensign Kim says, "she's ready for you now." I don't have to move. The room morphs around me, becoming Mom's office. "Hey, kiddo," Mom says. "What's up?" She is standing in front of a window that looks out at a mountain range in twilight. Even before I spot the second moon in the sky, I know the view is fake, selected at random from a library of thousands of imaginary vistas. If you need to know Mom's physical location, she'll tell you; if you don't, she's not giving away free clues. But there are limits to how much you can conceal from people who are close to you. My mother has always been a morning person, and the chipper tone of her voice tells me she's only been awake for a couple of hours. It's close to midnight here on the West Coast, so assuming Mom got up at the crack of dawn like she always does, that would put her somewhere in Europe or Africa. But the kind of circumstances that would require her physical presence in Africa would also keep her from getting a good night's sleep, and she sounds well-rested. Europe, then: probably the Zero Day base in Berlin. Her smile tells me something, too. Once when I was a kid I asked my mother whether it bothered her to kill people for a living. She said she didn't have a problem with killing people who deserved it, but added that her job wasn't really like that. Mostly what she did was study people, to learn why they acted the way that they did and figure out how to convince them to act differently. And when she did need to hurt someone, she preferred to get them to do it to themselves, by tricking them into making bad choices. When my mother smiles the way she's smiling now, it means that one of her subterfuges has worked; somewhere in the world, some Real Threats have been coaxed down a wrong path and are now either dead or wishing they were. It's a good mood to have caught her in, and I try to make the most of it. "I need your help with something," I say. I tell her about my job interview with Smith and Mr. Jones. Her eyebrows go up at the mention of the hundred thousand dollars, but when I get to the Chinese woman in the bar I can see her turn skeptical. "You don't buy it." "That this woman you bumped into is some sort of government agent? It sure sounds like she wants you to think that. But." "What about the part where she forged my encryption key?" I say. "Is that— Can you guys actually do that?" This is one of those questions that my mother will never give a straight answer to. She turns it into a hypothetical: "Suppose someone did figure out a way to subvert public-key cryptography. Do you really think they'd brag about it just to impress you? It's a dramatic gesture, but it doesn't make sense." "She had my private key, though." "That doesn't mean she forged it. She could have just hacked you and stolen it." "I practice safe computing, Mom. I learned it from you." "I didn't teach you everything," she says. "And there are always exploits. Tell me, do you know anyone who might want to pull a prank on you? Someone you trust, or trusted, enough to run a piece of software they sent you without checking it out first?" Darla, I think. But. "I don't know anybody with a hundred thousand dollars to blow on a prank." "The money's interesting," Mom acknowledges. "Have you tried spending it yet?" "No. I thought I'd better talk to you before I did anything." "What account is it in?" I tell her, and she gets this distracted look that means she's either b-channeling someone or checking a pop-up screen. Then her avatar's eyes refocus on me and she says, "Very interesting." "What?" "The money is real," Mom says. "And it was transferred from a bank in Burma." If you pay any attention to the news you know that Burma has become notorious lately as a money-laundering haven for Chinese and Southeast Asian mobsters. "So it's like a numbered account?" "All bank accounts are numbered. Burmese accounts are designed to keep their holders anonymous, even from people like me." She thinks a moment. "All right. You're going to take the job." "I am?" "Yes. But first, you're going to use some of the money to buy yourself a new computer and VR rig. I'll give you the web address of a vendor and a coupon code to use when you order. It'll be an upgraded version of the system you have now, with some special features that won't be in the documentation." "Special features. So you're going to be watching my back on this?" Mom smiles that smile. "I can use a new project," she says.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 10

 Online Games  When interacting with other players, a little kindness goes a long way. —Call to Wizardry loading screen tip  meet cute — A scene in a romantic comedy where a couple meet for the first time and realize they are attracted to one another. Such scenes are traditionally meant to be endearing, but modern versions of the meet cute often include behavior that in real life would be grounds for a restraining order. —The New Devil's Dictionary Fuck you, perv," is the first thing Darla ever said to me. It was in the Jurassic Swamp, right after she beat my ass the second time. Newly resurrected, I lay on the ground with my armor in tatters; at higher gib settings, you could see bone fragments and bits of intestine scattered all around me. Darla was an orc that day—a green-eyed orc, with long blond hair—and she loomed above me with her scimitar, ready for round three. When I asked her if she'd like to make some money, I guess it must have sounded like a weird come-on. "Fuck you, perv." "Wait!" I said, before she could kill me again. "I didn't mean it like that. My name's John Chu, and I run a sherpa crew, Sherpa, Incorporated? Maybe you've heard of us?" "A sherpa crew." Darla was incredulous. "People pay you to be a guide? Are these retarded people?" Seeing me frown: "What, you don't like the word 'retarded'?" "I don't mind it, but some of the clients do. And the ones who do, really don't like it." Darla smirked in a way I would come to know well. "So this is one of those jobs where you have to watch what you say?" As if the concept of professionalism was the silliest thing she'd ever heard of. "Is there a dress code, too?" "No dress code. As long as you're not sending selfies to the clients, you can dress however you like." "I bet you'd like me to send you a selfie. Perv." Smiling this time, like she enjoyed whatever my face did when she said it. I decided to try selective deafness as a tactic. "What's your name?" "Darla." "Darla what?" "Why, so you can stalk me on Facebook?" "Can you tank?" "Of course I can fucking tank." "What about healing?" "If I'm feeling suicidal and want to bore myself to death, sure." "Do you play any other MMORPGs or first-person shooters?" "Ooh, you are planning to stalk me! As soon as you log out, you're going to Google 'Darla' and the names of any games I mention, see if you get a hit. Maybe find a nice picture of me to jerk off to, am I right?" Selective deafness wasn't working. "I want to know what other games you play because we're looking to branch out. Our client base is almost all Call to Wizardry players right now, but—" "You might be disappointed if you did find out more about me," Darla said. "I mean, I could be a guy for all you know. A fat, disgusting old guy with yellow underwear." "If you can tank as well as you dps, I don't care how much you weigh. Or what your underwear looks like." "Or I might be a kid. A twelve-year-old boy. What would that do for your perv fantasies?" "You're not a twelve-year-old boy." "How the fuck would you know?" "Because I used to be one. When a twelve-year-old boy plays a female character, he picks a human or an elf. Not an orc." Darla glanced down at her avatar's bust. Orc cleavage is not the stuff of typical schoolboy fantasies. "Maybe I'm a perv, too." "Maybe," I said. "But I think you're a girl. The kind who used to get into a lot of fights in high school." "Used to?" She raised an eyebrow. "It's hard to judge with the fangs, but you look more college-age to me." "You don't even know if this is my real face." "Also, it's the middle of a school day in America right now." "Who says I'm in America? Or maybe I'm cutting class." "If you were, you wouldn't suggest it." This earned another smirk. "OK, Mr. Profiler," Darla said. "Tell you what: You guess my age, and I'll come work for you." "How many guesses do I get?" "One, duh." "All right," I said, "but I get to ask you three questions, first." "Yeah? And what do I get?" "If I guess wrong? A hundred dollars." "Fuck you, a hundred dollars. How do I know you'll pay?" I shrugged. "How do I know you won't lie to get the money?" Darla thought it over. "OK. Three questions." "On your tenth birthday," I asked, "was the president of the United States a man or a woman?" "A woman." "Which makes you at least eighteen. On your eighteenth birthday, what actor was playing Doctor Who?" "You watch that stupid show?" "What actor? You can look it up on Wikipedia if you need to." "I didn't say I didn't know... It was that Pakistani actress, Miriam whatshername." "Meryem Halil? She's from Wales. And her family's Turkish." "Whatever. Her." "OK, so you're either twenty-one or twenty-two. Last question: On your twenty-first birthday, if I showed you a meme of King Charles offering Camilla a hot dog bun, would you know what that was about?" Darla rolled her eyes. "Fine, I'm twenty-two," she said. "That's a really lame parlor trick." "It's a simple trick." I nodded at her scimitar. "Like dps is simple, if you're talking about the mechanics. But to do it under pressure, without stopping to think—that takes some skill." "Plus, the Doctor Who nerdery really wows the ladies, am I right?" "I do all right with the ladies," I said. "And I'm definitely a nerd. But to be honest, I'm not a Doctor Who fan. I think I've seen like three episodes." "Well, that's even more pathetic. You don't watch the show, but you memorized the stars' bios in case you need to guess someone's age?" "I didn't need to memorize anything. I told you, it's on Wikipedia." "You checked Wikipedia? Just now, while you were talking to me?" "Yeah." "No. Bullshit." "It's a simple b-channel exploit." I held up my hands, made tapping motions with my fingers. "You can't type and talk at the same time?" "Of course I can—and I can read and talk, too. But I was watching you. You didn't cut your eyes away. You were looking at me the whole time." "My avatar was looking at you. I have a custom mod, You So Interesting. It keeps my avatar's eyes focused on whoever I'm talking to, even if I'm checking a pop-up screen." "This mod, it's something you wrote?" "An old girlfriend." Darla snorted. "That must have been some relationship." "We didn't use it on each other." "You didn't use it on her, maybe... So this is for your clients? You watch porn while you're making your sales pitch?" "Mostly I use it to look things up on the sly. It helps me keep up my end, making small talk. And I always know the answer to game-related questions, even if I have a brain fart. Clients expect that. It's part of the whole sherpa stereotype." As I said this, I gave the Mom-and-Pop switch a push towards the Mom side. It was just a nudge, but Darla saw it, and she got it. And she laughed. "All right," she said, "maybe you're not a total loser... But I still think your clients are retarded." She gave it a beat, watching my expression, then burst out laughing again. "Wow, you are going to be so much fun to mess with." In hindsight, I suppose I should have recognized that as a red flag. But in the moment I was happy, because it meant she was taking the job.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 11

 problematic — A weasel word. "Problematic" can mean immoral, heretical, politically objectionable, bigoted, rude, harmful to children and small animals, bad for society, personally offensive to the speaker, or some amorphous combination of any of the above. The word's vagueness makes it popular among the intellectually lazy: Whereas calling something "immoral" might require you to articulate—and defend—a theory of right and wrong, "problematic" expresses the same disapproval while offering nothing solid for an interlocutor to push back against. It also accords with the common belief that all right-thinking people share identical worldviews: Either you know intuitively what "problematic" means, or you are too stupid or wicked to deserve an explanation.  See also: "mistakes were made," shibboleth —The New Devil's Dictionary The day after my new computer arrives, I have my first game session with Mr. Jones. I've decided we may as well start at the top. I sign Mr. Jones up for a Call to Wizardry account and tell him to meet me in the Hall of Generation. Step one in creating a character is to choose your race and gender. "Race" in this context means species, although, in a tradition that goes back to pen-and-paper RPGs, many of Call to Wizardry's species are thinly veiled ethnic stereotypes. Humans are generic white people who live in medieval European castles and towns. Dwarves are alcoholic highlanders with funny Scottish accents. Goblins are greedy, big-nosed schemers who run all the banks. Orcs are dark-skinned marauders who worship death and love cutting innocent people's heads off with their scimitars. And then there are the trolls: savage jungle creatures who talk like Jamaican ganglords, practice voodoo and cannibalism, and have a shuffling, stoop-shouldered gait that appears to have been motion-captured at a minstrel show. The popular internet term for this is "problematic," but I don't like to be coy. My specific complaint is not that it's racist (although it is) or that it reinforces negative attitudes about minorities (it might, but let's be serious—if fantasy role-playing games are your main source of information about minorities, the problem is you). No, what bothers me is that it's such bad business practice. Black and brown people's money spends just as good as white people's, so why the hell would you insult them? Please note that this is not a rhetorical question. It would be one thing if Tempest had made a deliberate decision to alienate minorities in order to cater to people who still think Stepin Fetchit is comedy gold. That would be stupid, but at least there'd be a logic to it. But I doubt the explanation is that cynical. My guess is that the game design team just didn't realize how offensive some of their worldbuilding choices were, and the guys who were supposed to check their work didn't notice either. That may sound incredible, that otherwise intelligent businesspeople could be so clueless, but I see it happen all the time and it galls me. But that's my ax to grind. I'm curious what Mr. Jones's take will be. The Hall of Generation contains interactive models of the various races, so you can get a sense of what your character will look like. The sample troll is stirring a big cauldron as we approach. "I and I gon' use your guts for me gumbo, mon!" he greets us—a line that always gets a healthy side-eye from Jolene. Mr. Jones has no visible reaction. This could mean that he's using a translator, which would strip out the Bob Marley accent, or that he's from a part of the world with different racial stereotypes. Or he could be an English-speaking American who just doesn't think the way Jolene and I do. His only criticism of the troll concerns posture. "Do they all slouch like that?" he asks. I nod. "A pity," Mr. Jones says. "Its size is quite impressive, otherwise." We move on to the next model. The xiongmao are a race of anthropomorphic panda bears created as fan service for Call to Wizardry's millions of Chinese players. They are another stereotype, but a carefully crafted, positive one. Xiongmao study kung fu and Taoist sorcery, revere their ancestors, and know a thousand and one recipes for stir-fried bamboo, but they do not have buck teeth or exaggerated epicanthic folds, and they can pronounce the "L" sound just fine. Most Americans find them either cute or silly. Mr. Jones, oddly, is contemptuous. When the model xiongmao presses his paws together and says, "It is an honor to meet you, adventurer," Mr. Jones sneers, as if the bear were trying to pass off one of its own turds as dim sum. "You don't like pandas?" I say. "They are overrated," Mr. Jones sniffs. Mr. Jones does like elves, who are as tall as trolls and don't slouch, but he decides they are "too skinny." He passes on dwarves, gnomes, and goblins without comment. He admires orcs' "fierceness," but they, too, have posture problems. Humans earn another sneer, though he won't share what he dislikes about them. In the end, he decides to become a plainswalker: an intelligent, bipedal buffalo. Culturally, plainswalkers are Native Americans of the Mix-and-Match tribe. They live in both longhouses and teepees, carve totem poles, send smoke signals, worship the Sky Father and the Earth Mother, and shed tears whenever they see humans littering. Physically, they are the largest of the playable races, which is the part that appeals to Mr. Jones. And male plainswalkers are both taller and more broad-shouldered than females, so his choice of gender comes as no surprise. The next step is to choose a class. In another throwback to pen-and-paper RPGs, your race determines your career options. Plainswalkers, for example, can be warriors and rangers, but not paladins or ninjas—the design team having apparently decided that talking buffalo ninjas are unrealistic. Mr. Jones wants to know which class has the best leadership skills. "What kind of leadership? You mean in combat?" "In general. But in combat, yes, definitely." "You'll want a tanking class," I say. "For a plainswalker, that means either a warrior or a druid." "What is a druid?" "A shapeshifter. For tanking, they can turn into bears with armored skin." Mr. Jones purses his lips, and I clarify: "Grizzly bears, not pandas." "Show me the warrior," Mr. Jones says. The model plainswalker morphs into a warchief with a painted face and a massive eagle-feather bonnet that adds another foot to its already considerable height. Mr. Jones approves. "This is the one I want." "All right," I say. "The last step is to pick a name. Other players will be able to see it, if they want to—it'll look like a movie credit that floats over your head—so there's a length limit, but you can use any combination of extended Unicode characters you like. Don't feel like you have to stick to the Roman alphabet." "I will be Mr. Jones," Mr. Jones says. There is a pause while he types this in. Tempest's host server then checks to see whether the name is already taken, and also verifies that it does not contain any obvious profanities. The name is available. Mr. Jones locks in his choice. The model plainswalker steps off its pedestal and merges with Mr. Jones's avatar. Mr. Jones becomes a gray-faced bipedal buffalo. A mirror materializes in front of him and he checks himself out. He's pleased with his stature, but less so with his equipment: The big tomahawk the model was carrying has become a teensy stone hatchet, and in place of the war bonnet, he's wearing a headband with a single feather. "Don't worry," I tell him. "You'll get cooler gear as you level up." "What about you?" Mr. Jones asks. "Are you going to create a character?" "I'll be using an existing one. You need to be at least tenth level before you can party up for dungeon runs, so for now I'll just observe and make sure nobody hassles you... Hold on a moment." I switch to an alternate account and become Keebler, a 200th-level elf sorcerer. Mr. Jones looks me up and down, paying special attention to my wizard's staff, which is capped with a hollow crystal sphere containing a bored-looking homunculus. "Nice walking stick," Mr. Jones says, sounding jealous. "But you are still too skinny." A portal at the end of the hall teleports us to Happy Valley, the starting zone for plainswalkers. The valley is lush and green and surrounded by a ring of cliffs that provide an illusion of safety; at its center is a lake, with a large teepee encampment on the eastern shore. We arrive just south of the camp. A questgiver named Chief Wampum waits to greet newcomers. "How!" he says, focusing on Mr. Jones. "Welcome, young warrior!" "Hello," Mr. Jones says. Chief Wampum and I do not acknowledge one another. As a max-level character—and an elf—I do not belong here, and if I insist on talking to him he will just ask me if I'm lost. I keep my mouth shut. The chief tells Mr. Jones that he could use some help. Recently the tribe received a gift of blankets that turned out to be infested with gremlins. The gremlins escaped and are now breeding and making mischief along the southern lakeshore. If Mr. Jones kills ten of them and brings back their scalps, the chief will reward him with a better hatchet and a new pair of moccasins. "Very well," Mr. Jones says. "May the Sky Father light your way," says Chief Wampum. We walk clockwise around the lake until we see the gremlins. They have invaded a fishing camp, punching holes in the canoes and knocking over the salmon smoker. I count about two dozen of them, but they respawn quickly and continuously, so no matter how many scalps are taken, there will always be more. Mr. Jones indicates the nearest gremlin. "I just hit it with my hatchet?" I nod. "Try to take them on one at a time. And when they die, reach down—the scalps peel right off, like decals." "Very well." While Mr. Jones works on his quest, I keep my eye on a trio of unpleasant-looking 200th-level characters currently harassing another newbie a short distance away. These guys are, literally and figuratively, trolls. Their screen names are BootFuqqer, Choaksondik, and CukULongtime; in place of their real facial features, their avatars sport skins of Al Jolson in blackface. Collectively they represent half a dozen violations of Section 8 of the EULA, which prohibits both obscene names and "racial insensitivity." The EULA cops have their hands full running down hackers, bots, and sherpas, so Section 8 violators are a low priority. I could screenshot these guys and report them, but it's unlikely they'd get even a temporary suspension. Instead, as a precaution, I shoot off an instant message to Jolene. The trolls' current target is a first-level shaman named Medicine Girl. BootFuqqer stands behind her, screaming to break her concentration, while Choaksondik and CukULongtime run around killing all the gremlins in her vicinity. Because of the high respawn rate, they can't actually prevent her from completing the quest, but they can make it a lot harder and significantly less fun. Though clearly frustrated, Medicine Girl does her best to go on with her business without engaging them. In between screams, BootFuqqer comments on the futility of this strategy: "You think if you pretend to ignore us we're going to give up and go away? Think again!" "Can't not feed us!" the other trolls chant. "Can't not feed us!" Medicine Girl collects one more scalp, and then—either because she's reached her quota, or because she's run out of patience—she turns and starts walking away. BootFuqqer stays right on her heels, no longer screaming, but breathing hard so she'll know he's still there. It gets to her. She's only gone about a hundred yards when she stops, squares her shoulders, sighs, and logs out. BootFuqqer spins around and raises his fists in triumph. Choaksondik and CukULongtime exchange high-fives. Idiots. Mr. Jones has wandered away from me in pursuit of his fourth or fifth gremlin. I move closer to him—a protective gesture that BootFuqqer notices. "Hello there!" BootFuqqer calls to me. Pointing at Mr. Jones: "Is that your boyfriend?" BootFuqqer's sidekicks scope me out. "A five," Choaksondik pronounces. CukULongtime nods in agreement. "Definitely a five." Mr. Jones looks up from his latest kill. "Who are these people?" "Griefers," I say. "Assholes who try to ruin the game for other players. You see that red halo around their heads? That means they're flagged for PvP—player-versus-player combat. They want to pick a fight with us. With you, really." "Should I accept?" "No. They're maximum level, you wouldn't stand a chance." "Hey five!" BootFuqqer shouts. He raises his middle fingers to his face and tugs down the corners of his eyes. "Five-four!" "Why is he shouting numbers at you?" "It's code," I explain. "To get around the profanity filter." Call to Wizardry's user interface offers an optional audio filter that can bleep out specific words and phrases. The basic filter only bleeps curse words, but you can get custom add-ons to suppress racial epithets and other forms of hate speech. Griefers have adapted by making code-slurs out of common words that can't be censored without rendering ordinary conversation impossible. Numbers are popular: A shout of "six," for example, would mean "nigger," "faggot," "retard," or all of the above. "Five-four," I'm guessing, is "slant-eyes." The fact that I am guessing—that they've actually got me wasting precious brain cycles to figure out what they're calling me—says something about the genius of the method. If only they'd use that ingenuity for good. I lock my slant-eyes on BootFuqqer and his friends and say, "Mute. Mute. Mute." They fall silent. Unfortunately, I can still see them. Despite numerous requests, Tempest refuses to implement a "Dead to me" feature, saying it would cause too much confusion to have characters who couldn't see one another attacking the same monsters and trying to harvest the same resources. This is actually a fair point, one that underscores the difficulty of policing antisocial behavior in a game whose core elements are murder and pillage. When BootFuqqer realizes I've muted him, he walks over and gets in my face visually, waving his hands and mouthing obscenities with his troll-sized Al Jolson lips. Choaksondik and CukULongtime focus on Mr. Jones. His gray features have them stymied; they don't know what numbers to shout at him. Even more vexing from their perspective, Mr. Jones has better ignoring skills than Medicine Girl did. Trolls love it when you only pretend not to care about them, but they find genuine indifference intolerable. Mr. Jones, having decided that the trolls are not worth his attention, puts them out of his mind, and not even rampant kill-stealing can get them back in. He just works around them. But these assholes are nothing if not adaptable. Choaksondik waits for Mr. Jones to swing at another gremlin and then steps into the path of the blow. The game engine, which is smart but not infallible, interprets this as a deliberate attack by Mr. Jones and flags him for PvP. His hatchet nicks Choaksondik for one hit point of damage. Choaksondik winds up and hits back for a hundred thousand hit points. Mr. Jones explodes into a cloud of pink vapor. BootFuqqer claps his hands to his cheeks and shoots me a look of mock horror. Then he grins and drops a hand to his crotch and mimes jerking off. He pokes the inside of his cheek with his tongue and makes more jerk-off motions near his mouth. I open a b-channel. "You there?" Jolene's voice comes back loud and clear: "Yep. Right behind Tweedledum and Tweedledumber." I look over at Choaksondik and CukULongtime, who are now squatting over Mr. Jones's remains, pretending to shit on him. The air on the far side of them shimmers, and I glimpse the outline of a third person. Then Jolene drops back into full ninja stealth mode. "Get ready," I say. "Remember I'm not the only one who can be invisible," she replies. It's a good bet that the griefers have brought their own ninja—or two of them. If it's a pair, they can take turns stunning me with paralytic strikes while the other trolls tear me to pieces. I grip my wizard's staff with both hands. The homunculus in the crystal snaps to attention, pulling out a lighter and an aerosol can. BootFuqqer smiles and makes a "come at me" gesture. I take three quick steps to my right and set off a freezing sphere. A wave of subzero cold expands ten yards in all directions around me. BootFuqqer is caught in the blast and encased in a solid block of ice. Another ice block forms around the invisible ninja who was lurking beside me. A second ninja breaks stealth to my left. He's not frozen, but my sidestep has put me out of melee range, so his opening strike hits empty air. Before he can close the gap, I teleport backwards thirty yards. Then I light him up with fireballs and magic missiles. BootFuqqer breaks free of the ice block. I pause in my immolation of Ninja #2 and hit BootFuqqer with a polymorph spell, turning him into a pig. I turn Ninja #1 into a pig, too. Ninja #2 is almost in melee range, so I frostbolt him in the face to slow him down and teleport away again. In the background, I see Choaksondik stumbling around blindly, trying to rub ninja pepper spray out of his eyes, while CukULongtime staggers beneath a flurry of blows from Jolene's Nunchucks of Severe Head Trauma. I finish off Ninja #2 and turn my attention to BootFuqqer. I use my Arcane Trinity cooldown: My avatar splits into three identical copies, hurling fire, ice, and lightning respectively. As BootFuqqer's hit point total plummets, Ninja #1 squeals impotently and lowers his snout to root in the dirt. CukULongtime is down. I kill BootFuqqer, and Jolene kills Choaksondik. Ninja #1 de-swines and tries to make a run for it. I hit him in the back with an ice lance, and Jolene, going for style points, whips out a Flying Guillotine and takes his head off from twenty yards away. Game over. We hear the sound of disembodied applause. Mr. Jones's spirit reunites with his corpse. He gets up slowly, his deerskin armor and headband looking somewhat the worse for wear. "That was excellent," Mr. Jones says. He surveys the bodies. "Will they come back?" "They can," I say. "Without a healer to resurrect them, they'll have to walk their souls back from a graveyard, the same way you just did. And because this is supposed to be a beginners-only zone, they'll be sent to a graveyard that's farther away. It may take them several minutes to return." "But they will be back." "Probably." "And then you can kill them again." "Yes." "How many times?" "As many times as we feel like. Until we get tired, or they get tired." Mr. Jones nods. "Until they get tired," he says.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 12

 culture shock — A feeling of profound disorientation caused by exposure to an alien worldview or way of life. Once primarily an affliction of immigrants, soldiers, and wealthy tourists, it was democratized by the internet, which put culture shock on tap 24/7. Whether civilization can survive the resulting stress remains an open question. —The New Devil's Dictionary Smith is mad at me. After eight hours in Call to Wizardry with Mr. Jones, I go to the Game Lobby and leave my avatar standing at a table by the bar while I take a much-needed bio break. When I come back, my instant message queue is overflowing and Smith's avatar is snapping its gray fingers in my face. "What's wrong?" I say. Smith answers with a grunt and jerks his head in the direction of the chat rooms. I don't go. Mom has suggested that I try pushing back against Smith's authority to see how he'll react, and this seems as good a time as any. "We can talk here," I say, invoking a cone of silence. "It's OK, no one can overhear us. Just don't move your lips." Smith scowls and his hand twitches like he'd like to grab my wrist and start dragging me. If he could. "Is this about Jolene?" I ask. Losing patience, Smith speaks: "You were given strict instructions not to tell anyone what you were doing!" "I didn't tell Jolene anything. I mean, she knows he's a client, obviously, but I didn't share any details about our arrangement." "You are not to involve other people in this." "It's a massive multiplayer game," I say. "I have to involve other people, to do what your boss wants me to do. They can either be people I know and trust, who are competent players, or random strangers who may not know what they're doing. Which do you think Mr. Jones would prefer?" Smith shakes his head, furious at the dilemma this puts him in. "Your people will have to be cleared," he says after a moment. "Their systems will have to be secured, as yours was." "If you want my crew to give you root access on their computers, you're going to have to let me tell them what's going on. And they'll expect to be well-paid." "Then you will have to pay them," Smith says pointedly. "Out of the already generous fee you are receiving." "Mr. Jones said that money is no concern." "And I am saying that you will do the job for the amount you agreed to." This is not what I want to hear, but I decide to table the issue for now; later I can always lobby Mr. Jones directly for more money. "Do I have your permission to tell Jolene and the others what's up?" Smith considers. "Yes, but say as little as possible. Tell them only that you have a new client who wishes to remain anonymous." "What about your security concerns?" "Perhaps there is another way to handle that." He gives me a knowing look. "One that will not require you to pay them so well." "If you think I'm going to help you hack my friends' computers—" "I think you will do whatever is in your own best interest." Ouch. He's not entirely wrong, of course: If my mother weren't watching, I'd at least be tempted to do what he's suggesting. In this case I'm pretty sure I'd resist temptation, but I'm just as happy not to put that to the test. I suspect, going forward, I'll have plenty of other chances to demonstrate my virtue. Now that he's put me in my place, Smith relaxes a little. He looks over at the bar, where She-Hulk—or a reasonable facsimile—is hitting on Superman. "What is that?" "Superhero cosplay," I say. "They're probably coming off a run in League of Avengers." The DC/Marvel co-branded MMORPG. "Not the costumes," Smith says. "I am talking about the necklace she is wearing. I have seen other women with this, and some men as well. What is the significance?" I take a closer look. She-Hulk has a thin chain around her neck; dangling from it is a shiny silver talisman the rough size and shape of a rifle cartridge. "It's a bullet." "For another game? A shooting game?" "No, not a bullet," I say. "A bullet. You know, a virtual blow job?" Smith tilts his head and raises a finger to his ear—as if, off in reality, he were tapping his headset, checking for a malfunction. "A virtual—" "Blow job. As in oral sex? Seriously, you don't know what bullets are?" Clearly he doesn't. Which is interesting. "This is... a fad of some kind?" "A fad?" I say. "Not really. It's just something people do. I suppose it was a fad, back when it first got started. And of course originally, it was an art project... You really don't know the story?" Smith just stares at me, conflicted. A part of him wants to know, but another part really, really doesn't. So I tell him. "This would have been about seven, eight years ago," I say, doing the math in my head. "The artist was a German woman, Leni Ortmann, and the project was called Datenfetisch. Data fetish. What it was, she wired up a dildo with all kinds of sensors, and then convinced a hundred women to, you know, be recorded going down on it..." "Women," Smith says darkly. "You mean prostitutes." "One of them was a sex worker," I say. "Number sixty-two, I think. But they were from all walks of life. A few of them were already famous—there were a couple of actresses, a pop singer, a professional wrestler—but most were just ordinary women who accepted Ortmann's invitation." I pause, recalling number eighty-seven, Raquel Sandoval, a welder from Barcelona, who thirteen-year-old me had had a huge crush on. "But how is this art?" Smith wants to know. "It was transgressive art," I explain. "The point is to provoke people. The art isn't so much the project itself, it's the reaction to the project—what Ortmann called the Spectacle." "I do not understand this at all." "Think of it as the fine art version of clickbait: The more attention you get, the better. Now, anything involving famous women and sex is guaranteed a certain amount of attention, but Ortmann was savvier than that. She'd studied marketing at university, and she knew how to manipulate public interest. And the thing that really made Datenfetisch take off, that sent it into the stratosphere as far as Spectacle was concerned, is that she didn't build a playback device. She made these recordings, and she put each one on its own custom flash drive—the drives were supposed to look like lipstick cases, but what they also looked like, especially when they were racked together, was bullets, which is where the name comes from—and then, when she had all hundred of them, she destroyed her recording equipment, and all the technical notes that went with it. All that was left was the data." "Which would be useless without the technical documentation," Smith says. "That depends on your assumptions. Ortmann put up a Datenfetisch website, with pages for each of the women in the project. There were photographs, capsule biographies, video interviews, and of course, the data. Which, yeah, without the technical specs, were just long strings of ones and zeroes. But that was Ortmann's marketing savvy at work. It's a classic strategy for building demand: Show customers something they think they want, then tell them they can't have it." "But they couldn't have it," Smith insists. "On their own, such data strings would be meaningless." "On the contrary, they were full of meaning—the trick was getting access to the information. Ortmann herself had provided at least one clue: On the website, each data string was tagged with a time code showing how long that particular recording was supposed to run. With that, and an educated guess about the sampling rate, you could divide up the string into discrete data packets, and start hypothesizing about the number of different variables you were dealing with. And if you were obsessed enough to go that far, the next step, obviously, was to ask yourself whether there might not be other, subtler clues hidden in the Datenfetisch website. To wonder whether Datenfetisch was actually a puzzle that was meant to be solved." "That is repulsive and insane." "It's the power of targeted marketing," I say. "Ortmann's data strings were like the Voynich Manuscript for chronic masturbators. All over the web, people—guys—started setting up forums devoted to cracking Ortmann's code. And there was a corresponding hardware effort, an amateur Manhattan Project to build the playback device. That was what set off the Spectacle: Wired magazine ran a squib about all these Kickstarters and Patreons people had created to fund the hardware research. Then Slate did a post about how problematic it was that Men on the Internet were trying to build a magic decoder ring for fellatio, and it went viral. The whole internet started weighing in." Talking about this is making me nostalgic. The Datenfetisch affair certainly wasn't the first online controversy I'd witnessed, but thanks to the raging hormones of puberty, it was the first one I felt personally invested in. I even wrote a few impassioned Reddit posts on the subject—all of them, thankfully, lost in the noise. "It struck a lot of nerves, especially in America. This was right after a bunch of Hollywood celebrities got their nude selfies hacked, and there were people arguing that the Datenfetisch decryption effort was the same sort of violation—and that was just one subgenre of hot take. Another sore spot was that four of Ortmann's subjects were transwomen—you can imagine the reactions that provoked, right? The back and forth on that, people lecturing each other about how they were supposed to feel, went on for weeks..." Peak Spectacle was achieved when the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives held joint hearings to determine whether digital blow-job technology represented a threat to children. My own youthful eye-rolling aside, this was a reasonable thing to have a conversation about, but only if you assumed that grown-ups would be doing the talking. In Zero Day, I was used to dealing with adults who wielded power with restraint and tried to educate themselves before forming opinions; it was a jolt to log into C-SPAN and see members of Congress acting more like the dickheads I encountered in game chat. "The Spectacle did eventually die down," I tell Smith. "Ortmann sold her original set of bullets to a private collector for some crazy amount of Euros, and the outrage machine moved on to other things. As for the Men on the Internet, they never did crack Ortmann's code. But the hardware effort was more successful: They say Datenfetisch jumped cybersex technology ahead half a decade overnight." I look over at the bar, where She-Hulk is dangling her bullet above Superman's open palm, teasing him with it. "So now, yeah, it's just a thing people do." Smith's avatar has taken on a jittery quality, almost like he's lagging. But it's not a latency issue. He's trembling with rage. "This," he sputters, "this is... this is..." "Immoral? Psychologically unhealthy? An example of the toxic masculinity endemic to rape culture?" "Decadent!" Smith roars. The cone of silence keeps his voice from carrying, but She-Hulk finally notices the way he's looking at her. She gives us both the finger, mouths "Dead to me," and vanishes. Superman goes with her. Smith, still trembling, logs out. I am left with the dregs of my nostalgia. And a question. Lots of people think bullets are gross. But it's rare to encounter someone online who has no idea what they are. And Smith is an IT guy—or an IT girl. But Smith being female would make this sort of ignorance even more remarkable. Raise your hand if you're a woman in tech who's never had some creep ask you to email him a hummer. Where did you get your computer training, Smith? I wonder. On the moon? I summon Googlebot. "Hello, John Chu," she greets me. "How can I help you?" "I'm an American tourist interested in experiencing severe culture shock. Can you give me a list of travel destinations that might satisfy me? I'm looking for places that are commonly described as 'like going to the moon' or 'like being on a different planet.'" "There are a number of countries that remain culturally isolated from the West, such that an American with your travel history would probably find them very strange," Googlebot says. "Is there one country that stands out as being more culturally isolated from the West than any other?" "Yes," says Googlebot, and names it. But I've already guessed.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 13

 grinding — Engaging in a repetitive and often mindless task. In a video-game context, grinding may refer either to (a) actions performed to reach the parts of the game that are fun, or (b) the same actions performed out of habit after the game ceases to be fun.  See also: behaviorism, Skinner box —The New Devil's Dictionary I look for Jolene at her favorite fishing spot. Mom has given me permission to take Jolene into our confidence, but I need to be careful how I do it. As I log into Call to Wizardry, a telltale icon of an eye at the top of my visual field warns me that Smith is monitoring my POV. The telltale should be invisible to him, but he can see and hear everything else that I do. I play it cool. I teleport to the Hinterlands of Goth and head for the coast, carrying my Krakenmaster 3000 and a Bottomless Creel of Holding. Among all the secondary professions that a Call to Wizardry character can learn, fishing is the most tedious. The mechanics of it are simple enough: Equip a fishing pole. Find a body of water. Cast your line and wait three to fifteen seconds, as determined by the server's random number generator, for your fishing bobber to signal that you've hooked something. Reel it in and see what you've got. Repeat ad nauseam. As with other crafting and gathering skills, your proficiency is measured in levels, but fishing is unique in having no maximum proficiency. Instead, leveling up just gets progressively more difficult. To go from level 1 to level 2 requires a single successful cast, but at level 100, you might fish for half an hour before advancing. By level 500, the estimated mean fishing time between level increases is eight hours. If it's so boring and such a time sink, why do it? A comprehensive answer would require an explanation of dopamine's role in the brain's reward system, as well as a sidebar about the unusually high incidence of obsessive-compulsive disorder among MMORPG players. But the short version is, you do it for the same reason you do everything in Call to Wizardry: to get imaginary stuff. Newbie fishermen catch fish and the occasional tin can; at higher levels, the loot tables get more interesting, and there are rumors of truly exotic, even game-breaking treasures just waiting for someone skillful enough to draw them up. The current record holder is Ahmet Mirza, a French Call to Wizardry player who briefly achieved fishing level 999. Just as Ahmet was about to crack the four-digit barrier, EULA took a look at his game logs and discovered a series of marathon sessions during which he had fished literally nonstop for days—strong circumstantial evidence of bot use. On the gaming forums, Ahmet swore up and down that he hadn't cheated—he was just an insomniac with epic bladder control—but Tempest banned him anyway. When customer service denied his final appeal, he weighted his backpack with the pieces of his smashed computer and jumped into the Seine. As you would. People who fish in the Hinterlands usually go to Martin's Beach, but the site's popularity attracts griefers as well, so I know Jolene won't be there. Instead I climb Dead Man's Bluff and enter the Emerald Sea Caves. The caves are infested with bloodthirsty nagas; I know a way to sneak past them, but if Smith has an in-game spy following me, there's a good chance they'll blunder into a fight and reveal themselves. I emerge onto a narrow cobblestone beach at the base of the bluff. I listen for sounds of melee behind me, but there's only the faint hiss and slither of the nagas. I walk south over the cobblestones, my footsteps echoing beneath the overhanging cliff. A few hundred yards on, the beach bends sharply to the right, out of sight. I pause and look up, focusing on a distinctive knob of stone projecting from the cliff face. Off in the real world, I flip a control toggle. The telltale eye closes and blinks out; it is replaced by an icon of a spinning tape reel. Playback mode: Smith, or whoever he's got minding my POV, is now viewing a recording of a previous visit I made to this spot. I continue around the bend. Jolene is standing on a spit of sand. She's just reeled in a barnacle-encrusted crate. I watch her pry it open, revealing a dozen bolts of enchanted silk. These vanish into her inventory and she quickly casts her hook into the water again. I step up beside her and deploy my Krakenmaster 3000. "So," Jolene says, "you going to tell me about that weird guy from the other day?" "Even better," I reply. "I'm going to tell you twice." I've only got twenty minutes before the playback loops, so I lay out the situation as quickly as I can: Smith. Mr. Jones. The job offer. The Chinese woman at the bar. And last but not least, Mom, who I describe as a generic "federal agent," because this already sounds way too much like a spy movie plot and I don't want Jolene to think I'm bullshitting. But it turns out skepticism isn't a problem. "Which agency?" Jolene asks. "FBI? Homeland Security?" "It's a part of Cyber Command. A special task force called—" "Zero Day? For real?" Sounding seriously impressed, like I've just told her Mom's a rock star. "You know about Zero Day?" "Hell yeah. I'd have tried to join, if they'd had it back when I was in the service." "You were Navy?" "Marines. Six years. Where I got my IT training." Jolene's fishing bobber twitches, and she reels in another crate. Gold doubloons. "So who is this Mr. Jones, that Zero Day would care about him?" "We don't know yet," I say. "But I have this crazy theory that he might be North Korean." Now Jolene looks skeptical. "Do North Koreans even have internet access?" "I need to do some research about that. But I assume the guys running the country have whatever they want." "Why would a North Korean bigwig want to study MMORPGs?" "No idea. But game theory has plenty of applications outside entertainment." I reel in a magic halibut and toss it into my creel. Make another cast. "Psy ops. Economics. Military strategy." "And what makes you think he's North Korean in the first place? The bank in Burma?" "Partly that. But also..." I tell her about my last meeting with Smith. She's laughing by the time I finish. "Man," Jolene says. "And you busted my chops for reading too much into Ray's IP address... Have you told your mother about this yet? Because if not, I would like to be a fly on the wall for that conversation." "Ha ha," I say. "So are you in?" "On a Zero Day op? Sure. Do I get a new computer, too?" "That's part of the plan," I tell her. "That way you and I can b-channel right under Smith's nose, without having to do this again." "And the money? I get a cut, right?" "Of course." Then, just to get it out of the way: "I'm going to need you to fill out a W-9 form, too." "Why, so you can claim my share as a business expense?" I shrug. "It's a lot of money." "You do know the IRS likes you to declare all your income, right? Not just the individual payments that are big enough to make you nervous." "Are you saying you report all the money you make as a sherpa?" "Are you saying you don't?" A tug on my fishing line saves me from making a potentially incriminating statement. I reel in a vanity license plate: YTWHALE. "What about the split?" Jolene asks. "Fifty-fifty seems fair, especially if you're claiming me as a deduction." "The split will be fair," I promise. "But it's four ways, not two, so it can't be fifty-fifty." "You're bringing Ray and Anja in on this, too?" She sounds like she doesn't approve. "Sure, why not? We're going to need them." "I'll bet you Ray's not going to be happy about someone poking around in his system, even if you do give him a clean machine first." "Ray's not getting a new computer." Mom's orders are explicit, I explain: Ray is not to be told about Zero Day's involvement in this. "As far as he's concerned, Mr. Jones is just another client." "So your mom doesn't trust Ray either," Jolene says. "That's interesting. She say why?" "No, and I didn't ask. I don't think you're right about Ray, but if you are, I don't want to know." "You don't, huh?" "Why would I want to know a thing like that? I've still got to work with the guy." "That's right, I forgot you don't have a choice who you work with. What about Anja?" "What about her? You don't think... Come on, she's nineteen years old. And Ray's never shown any kind of interest in—" "That's not what I'm asking. Are you allowed to tell Anja what's really going on?" I shake my head. "She's a foreign national. There are strict recruiting rules that apply to those, and U.S. and Argentine intelligence aren't getting along right now." "Well, if you don't tell Anja what's up, how are you supposed to satisfy Smith's security requirements?" From the way Jolene says this I can tell she's already worked out the answer, and she really doesn't approve. "There's a malware package," I say. "Smith sent it to me. Mom's people are decompiling it right now—we're going to need to infect your computer, too, so they want to make sure they know exactly what the malware does and how to control it." Out on the water, Jolene's fishing bobber is jumping again, but she ignores it and focuses her full attention on me. "How many lines of code are we talking about?" "I'm not sure. The file was a few hundred megabytes." "A few hundred... And they're going to work out exactly what it does in a day or two?" "It's a big team. And they're really good at what they do." "Uh-huh." Jolene frowns. "Look, John, I don't really give a shit if Ray's computer accidentally gets bricked—or mine either, for that matter. But Anja—" "I know," I say. "But it's OK. Anja's VR rig and her life support are completely independent systems. Corrupting one won't affect the other. I Googled it to be sure." "Oh, you Googled it, did you?" Her expression says: There is not enough side-eye in the world for some things. "Before we go any further with this plan, I need to have a serious conversation with your mother." "Sure, no problem. I'll have her get in touch with you." We are almost out of time. Jolene makes herself scarce. I stare at my right foot as my computer counts down the last five seconds in playback mode. Then I look up, cast my hook, and fish for another hour. A couple hours after that, Jolene and I bump into each other in the Game Lobby. The telltale eye observes as I tell her about Mr. Jones again, this time sticking to Smith's preferred script: Jones is a secretive rich guy offering a lot of money, up front, for a sherpa crew willing to work long hours on short notice and not blab about it. Jolene doesn't have her new computer yet, so we cannot b-channel. But one of the benefits of being as outspoken as Jolene usually is is that even when you're unable to speak freely, people who know you can guess what you're thinking. I tell Jolene that Mr. Jones is offering us a weekly salary of ten thousand dollars per crew member, and she says, "Ten thousand? Each?" To anyone eavesdropping, it must sound as if she is impressed by—and a little suspicious of—Mr. Jones's generosity. But what I hear, loud and clear, is: "Ten thousand each? That's what you call a fair split?" The ensuing discussion about what Mr. Jones is going to expect for his money is edged with a subtext of what an incredibly greedy bastard I am. And when Jolene asks whether I've talked to Ray and Anja yet, I can tell that she's gone from being concerned for Anja's safety to being actively pissed off at me for endangering it: Not only am I selfish, I am reckless. I can't see what my own face is doing. But my VR rig needs to be able to read my expression in order to render my avatar, which means Smith can read my expression too, if he wants to. So I do my best to not react to any of this. It's not as if I could argue with Jolene, anyway. On the charge that I am a selfish and reckless person, I can only plead guilty.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 14

Darla's first outing as a member of sherpa, inc. was a level grind. The client was a junior executive at Amazon who was scheduled to go adventuring with his coworkers as part of a corporate team-building exercise. He had a high-level elf paladin he wanted maxed out in time for the run, and rather than pull an all-nighter he decided to pay us to do it for him. He also gave us a shopping list of magic items and crafting materials he wanted; our deal stipulated that in addition to our fee, we got to keep any treasure that wasn't on the list. It was Ray who'd found the client, so it was Ray's gig. He'd mapped out a conservative strategy for getting the job done with a minimum of fuss and a maximum return on time invested. I would tank, as the client's paladin; Anja and "the new girl" would dps; Ray, of course, would heal. That left one open dps spot, but the dungeons Ray wanted to run were easy enough that he thought we could manage with a smaller party—and a four-way split on experience points meant the leveling process would go faster. When I told Darla about the job, she insisted that I should let her tank. "Come on," she said, when I hesitated. "You wanted to know whether I can do it, let me show you." Of course, this meant giving her access to the client's account. But I made a snap decision to trust her, telling myself, on the basis of nothing more than intuition, that if Darla were going to screw me over it wouldn't be anything as pedestrian as stealing a customer's credit card information. Yes, I am aware of how ridiculous that sounds. I gave Darla the client's password and told her where in the game world to meet up with the rest of us. She was late. When I showed up at the meeting spot as one of my own characters—a plainswalker shaman named Dances With Hooves—Ray immediately wanted to know what was going on, and he wasn't happy with the answer. He became even less happy once Darla finally arrived. It took me a moment to recognize what the problem was: Darla looked like herself. That is to say, the paladin avatar had her face and skin tone, and a female body. This would have been fine if it was her paladin, but it wasn't, it was the client's, and the client was (a) male, (b) Hispanic, and (c) not into crossgender play. Every city in Asgarth has a transmogrification parlor where you can map a new face or hairstyle onto your avatar, swap genders, and even change races. But all of this costs gold, and sex changes are expensive, so unless Darla had been thoughtful enough to transfer the funds from one of her own accounts, she'd just spent a bunch of treasure that wasn't hers. No, Ray was not happy. I tried to smooth things over by making introductions: "Ray and Anja, this is Darla. Darla, this is Ray Nelson and Anja Kirchner..." "The girl in the iron lung," Darla said. Anja froze up and her expression turned brittle, but then Darla continued: "I saw the video of your floor routine at the Pan American Championships. You were badass." Which thawed Anja out again, but left her looking more off-balance than flattered. "So," Darla said. "Where are we going first?" "Before we go anywhere," Ray said, "I want to know—" "The Barbican," I said. "The Barbican?" Darla gave herself a once-over, double-checking the quality of her gear. "We can do a lot better than the fucking Barbican, with this. What about the Temple of the Seven Lanterns? If we four-man that on heroic mode, I'll be maxed out in no time." "The client wants three hundred ingots of orcish steel. That's a common loot drop in the Barbican." "Why not just buy steel off the auction house?" "Because then we have to pay gold for it," Ray said. "If we farm it, it's free." He gave me a look, like: Did you forget to explain who's in charge here? Darla took the hint. "Fine," she said, rolling her eyes. "We'll run the Barbican... And just so you don't wet your panties: I saved the original avatar configuration when I did the transmog, so I can switch back when we're done. Your client will never know he had tits." "What about the gold you spent?" "Jesus Christ. Take it out of my share, I don't care." According to official Call to Wizardry lore, the Barbican was originally an archmage's castle. Near the end of the Second Multiverse War, it was overrun by orcs. The murder of the archmage set off a magical earthquake that swallowed up most of the structure; all that remained above ground was the castle's front gate, which now guards the entrance to a crevasse. As Darla had noted, this was not a hard dungeon for characters of our level. The most challenging fight is right at the beginning, where you take on a squad of elite orc warriors supported by archers. The archers are on the wall above the Barbican's front gate, protected by anti-missile and anti-magic wards; you can't shoot at them, but they can and do shoot at you, pumping out a steady stream of damage until you fight past the ground troops, climb a ramp up the wall, and engage them hand to hand. There are a number of effective strategies for tackling this fight. The safest, and the one Ray favored, involves sending the tank in to aggro the warriors and draw them away from the gate, out of arrow range. Without the extra dps the warriors aren't that dangerous, and once they're dead it's a simple matter to rush in and kill the archers. Darla had a different plan. "OK," she said, as we stood on a hill overlooking the gate, "I'm going to pull the ground troops off to the right, away from the ramp. As soon as I've got their attention, Argentina, here"—pointing at Anja—"is going to run up the wall and go full mountain lion on those archers." Ray shook his head. "The archers will all aggro on her the second she steps on the ramp. She won't make it." "Yeah, she will," Darla said, "because Buffalo Boy"—pointing at me—"is going to be secondary heals on this fight. While Mr. Panties in a Bunch is busy keeping me alive, you're going to spam Blessings of the Earth Mother on Argentina." "That's not good enough," Ray insisted. "If those archers roll critical hits, Blessings of the Earth Mother won't— What are you doing?" Darla had bowed her head to check herself over again, and as she did so, the pieces of her armor began fading away. Soon all that was left was her shield and her sword, and her avatar was naked, or as naked as Call to Wizardry lets you get: A loincloth and bikini top remained, to preserve the game's Teen ESRB rating. "I've done this fight in armor a billion times," Darla explained. "It's boring." "Doing it without armor is suicidal," Ray said. "Not if you do your job. I'll pop my Shield of Righteousness cooldown right at the start. If I can kill two of those guys before the shield breaks, that should lower the damage to a point where you can keep up with it." "And what if I decide not to heal you?" Darla shrugged. "Then it's going to be a really long dungeon run. But at least you won't have to waste any gold fixing my armor when you resurrect me... OK, let's do this. Argentina, follow me!" This is not news, but people who fantasize about being knights or ninjas often can't fight worth a damn in real life. Do a search on YouTube and you'll find lots of videos of people in VR headsets flailing around hilariously as they pretend to be Brienne of Tarth or Conan the Barbarian. Good game designers understand that even though players may not be cool, they want to feel cool, and so most VR motion-capture systems incorporate a feature called "kinetic photoshopping," which translates the jerky movements of the gamer into the smooth blows and parries of a trained martial artist. Tempest, as usual, takes things a step further. Buried deep in the Call to Wizardry settings menu is an option to turn off kinetic photoshopping. Ordinarily you would only do this if you were planning to get stoned and have a good laugh at yourself. But if you actually are a martial artist, or just someone who knows how to move—someone who doesn't need help to look cool—you can take off the training wheels and really show your stuff. Darla knew how to move. She fought like a dancer, with a kind of brutal grace. She flowed. It was breathtaking to watch. I'd seen it in our duel in the Jurassic Swamp, and it had certainly factored into my decision to offer her a job. But in the swamp she'd been a green-skinned monster with fangs and warts. Here at the Barbican, she was an elf; she looked more like a real person. And yes, she was naked. I don't want to downplay that, but I don't want to oversell it, either. I mean, I like nudity. Nudity is definitely a thing for me. But my real turn-on, my big fetish, is competence. Competence gets to me in a way that nudity alone never could. Darla knew what she was doing. She tore into those orcs like nobody's business, and managed to kill half of them before her magic Shield of Righteousness collapsed. Then Ray, deciding he had no choice but to play along, stepped in with his own brand of competence, healing Darla's wounds as the orcs' scimitars finally started to bite. I was the one who nearly screwed up. Focused on the Spectacle that was Darla, I forgot about Anja. She started up the ramp and was immediately hit with a volley of arrows. A second volley dropped her to a quarter of her hit point total. Then Darla, who'd managed to maintain situational awareness despite being mobbed by orcs, called out, "Hey, Buffalo Boy, WAKE THE FUCK UP!" I started firing off blessings. It was a close call, but the random number generator was kind to me and I kept Anja from bleeding out. Once she got into melee range, she made short work of the archers. Darla finished off the ground troops, lopping the head off the last one with a flourish, then spread her arms and took a deep bow. I shuffled my feet and tried to look nonchalant. Beside me, Ray cracked open a potion and guzzled it; keeping Darla alive had used up most of his mana. "So," I said, "she's a little high maintenance, but I think you can see—" Ray tossed the empty potion flask aside. "How long?" he said. "How long what?" "How long are you planning to be stuck on this girl?" Lying about your true feelings doesn't make you stop feeling them. Another Mom saying. But Mom's point is that you should be honest with yourself about your motivations; confessing them to other people is optional. "It's not like that. Darla is—" "Trouble," Ray said. "And since you don't normally have your head up your ass, I can only think of one reason why you'd want her on the crew." He raised a hand to stop me interrupting. "I'm not judging. I've got my own history of stupid, so I get it. I just want some idea of how long I'm going to have to put up with her." "Ray—" "Hey ladies!" Darla called. "Are we here to do genocide, or what?" "Try to make it quick," Ray said to me. "Figure out what you want from this girl, get it, and get out. And when she makes you pay for it—and she will—remember that I told you so."

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 15

Korea, North — An independent kingdom for much of its long history, Korea was annexed by Imperial Japan in 1910. Following WWII, Korea was split, with the northern half coming under Soviet-sponsored communist control. After failing in the Korean War (1950–53) to conquer the US-backed Republic of Korea (ROK) in the southern portion by force, North Korea (DPRK), under its founder President KIM Il Sung, adopted a policy of ostensible diplomatic and economic "self-reliance" as a check against outside influence. The DPRK demonized the US as the ultimate threat to its social system through state-funded propaganda, and molded political, economic, and military policies around the core ideological objective of eventual unification of Korea under Pyongyang's control. KIM Il Sung's son, KIM Jong Il, was officially designated as his father's successor in 1980, assuming a growing political and managerial role until the elder KIM's death in 1994. KIM Jong Un was publicly unveiled as his father's successor in 2010. —The CIA World Factbook (text edition)

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 16

I'm sorry," the guide tells me. "The unicorn cave is a myth." "Really? I found a million references to it on Google." "Yes, it is a popular legend in Western media. The story stems from a mistranslated press release that went viral. The name of the site, Kiringul, is more properly rendered in English as Kirin's Grotto. A kirin is—" "A royal chimera." I've killed slews of them in Call to Wizardry: Dragon-headed, ox-footed beasts who guard the tombs of the xiongmao emperors. "Yes. What the DPRK archaeologists actually claimed to have found was an inscription in the rock identifying the cave as the home of a kirin ridden by King Dongmyeong, founder of the ancient Korean state of Goguryeo. The discovery is part of a broader propaganda effort to foster a sense of continuity between Korea's first rulers and the modern Kim family dynasty." "So it's the Korean equivalent of a 'George Washington slept here' plaque. But they didn't actually dig up a kirin." "No." "That's disappointing. I was picturing a sort of P. T. Barnum exhibit with fake fossils. You know, like a horse skeleton with a horn glued to its forehead?" "Kiringul has nothing like that. But if your interest is absurdities connected to the Kim regime's cult of personality, there are numerous other examples I could show you." "That's OK. I'm actually here to learn about infrastructure." I am in the DPRK section of the CIA's Virtual World Factbook. An important tool in the CIA's own propaganda arsenal, the Factbook is open to anyone with internet access. You can walk the streets of the world's capitals and visit thousands of other "sites of interest," asking questions about history and current events. Of course, everything you see and hear is the American government's preferred version of reality. But that's good enough for my purposes today; if I have any doubts, I can always ask Mom for the straight facts later. My guide to virtual Pyongyang is a software agent who goes by Mr. Park. Modeled on a North Korean intelligence officer who defected in the 2020s, he reminds me of some older Germans I knew when I lived in Berlin—people who'd grown up in the East before the Wall came down and were only too happy to share stories of how awful life had been under communism. Mr. Park and I are in a plaza atop Mansu Hill in central Pyongyang. The space is dominated by a trio of seventy-foot-tall statues depicting three generations of the Kim dynasty: the Great Leader, Kim Il-sung; the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il; and the currently presiding Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un. A group of Japanese school kids led by another copy of Mr. Park is gathered at the base of the Kim Jong-un statue. There's also an unchaperoned white guy who looks to be in his early twenties; he stares up at the faces of the statues, panning his head slowly in the way people do when they are recording. He's probably a reporter, a "foreign correspondent" for a news outlet that cannot afford a real travel budget. Looking down the hillside I can see a curving road that an overlay identifies as Sungri Street. Like every other Pyongyang street I have seen so far, it is eerily empty. "This simulation doesn't attempt to model traffic," Mr. Park tells me when I ask about this, "but the absence of vehicles is realistic. Despite recent improvements in the economy, car ownership remains rare in the DPRK, even among members of the Core Class." "Core Class?" "All citizens of the DPRK are assigned a ranking, based on their perceived political reliability. The top ranks form the Core Class, who are accorded special privileges, such as the right to live and work in Pyongyang, priority in receipt of medical care and other services, and relative freedom of movement within the country. Below the Core Class is the so-called Wavering Class, and at the bottom of the scale are the members of the Hostile Class." "Who are they?" "Descendants of people who collaborated with the Japanese during the occupation, or who supported the Americans during the Korean War. Families of defectors, including POWs who chose not to return to the DPRK after the war ended. People whose ancestors were religious, or who owned too much land, or ran successful businesses. Anyone else whose background or associations puts them at high risk of counter-revolutionary activity." "Is there any way to improve your ranking?" "Extraordinary service to the state is occasionally rewarded with an increase in status. But social mobility more often goes the other way. From time to time, the government revises the ranking system as new categories of counter-revolutionary are identified. Anyone who offends the regime is subject to demotion, along with their children and their children's children." "That's harsh." "The Kims are ruthless," Mr. Park says matter-of-factly. "It's how they've stayed in power so long." I turn back towards the statues and catch the white guy looking at us. I double-check the telltale at the top of my visual field; the icon is a closed eye. This is sleep mode, a variant of playback mode that is supposed to make it appear to anyone monitoring my computer that I am offline right now. But because this website is public, I can still, theoretically, be spied on from within the simulation. It occurs to me that I probably shouldn't be using my default avatar. I cover my mouth so the white guy can't read my lips and say to Mr. Park, "Take me somewhere else." "Where would you like to go?" "What about that big tower you pointed out before? The one that looks like the Transamerica Pyramid on steroids?" There is a blur of motion and then I am high up in the air, gazing out a wall of windows at the city below. Ordinarily this would spell instant vertigo, but the glass in front of me is dirty, thickly streaked with grime and bird shit, so I don't actually feel in danger of falling. "The Ryugyong Hotel," Mr. Park says. "At its conception in 1987, it was designed to be the tallest hotel building in the world, with one hundred and five floors and a height of three hundred and thirty meters." "Nineteen eighty-seven?" I say. Other than the windows, the floor we are on looks unfinished; I see bare concrete walls, and a wheelbarrow gathering dust beside an exposed steel pillar. "What happened, did they run out of money?" "Several times," Mr. Park says. "The initial round of construction ran three years past deadline and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget; they did manage to top out the superstructure, but for years it was an empty concrete shell. A second round of construction, commencing in 2008, finished the exterior facade before cash flow problems once more caused a halt. Since then, there have been periodic reports of military units being brought in to continue the work, but the hotel has yet to host a single guest." Mr. Park dispels the dirt on the windows with a wave of his hand, then conjures a colored overlay that highlights various buildings in the cityscape. He points out the Pyongyang Art Museum, whose six floors are devoted entirely to portraits of the Kim family, and the Museum of Natural Disasters, which documents the storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions that occurred around the world on the day Kim Il-sung died. But this isn't what I'm here for, so I interrupt him: "Talk to me about internet access." "Access to the global internet is tightly controlled. Only a few thousand citizens, at most, have the necessary security clearance. There is, however, a DPRK intranet—an internal web, with content selected and vetted by the state—that ordinary citizens can use." "How do they access it?" "Through public terminals installed in schools, libraries, and businesses. Or through smartphones." "North Koreans are allowed to have smartphones?" "Government approved models," Mr. Park says. "The state maintains a 3G wireless network with about eight million subscribers. It can only be used for domestic calls, and of course all conversations and intranet searches are subject to monitoring." "And you say it's a 3G network? I think that's what my grandparents' cell phones used." "The DPRK has been looking to modernize the system," Mr. Park explains, "but as the foreign contractor who installed the 3G network was never fully paid, they're having trouble attracting bids." "Tell me more about the cell phone subscribers. Are they mostly members of the Core Class?" "Actually, no. Phones must be registered with the police, but they aren't considered a special privilege. Anyone with money can get one." "But how do members of the other classes afford that? Aren't they poor?" "Almost everyone in the DPRK is poor, by Western standards," Mr. Park says. "And it's true, at one time, the members of the Wavering and Hostile Classes were poorer still. But that's no longer the case. These days, despite their lack of official privileges, many have as much wealth, or even more, as members of the Core Class." "And how did that happen?" "It started with the Great Famine in the 1990s. Owing to the Kims' mismanagement of the economy, the DPRK experienced terrible food shortages, and hundreds of thousands of people starved to death. Even the elite in Pyongyang went hungry, but the situation in the northern provinces, where the members of the Hostile Class are concentrated, was much worse. In desperation, people set up markets and traded whatever they could—including goods smuggled in from China—in order to get money to buy food. This sort of capitalist enterprise was illegal, but authorities turned a blind eye, because the alternative would have been even more widespread starvation. "After the famine subsided, the markets remained open and expanded to include a wider range of goods. People were able to accumulate small amounts of wealth—again, not much by Western standards, but enough to afford a few luxuries. Citizens who live close to the border often own two cell phones—a DPRK approved phone for local calls, and a black market phone that can call internationally by connecting to cell towers in China." "Why didn't the government shut the markets down after the famine ended?" I ask. "Shutting them down completely would be impossible at this point," Mr. Park says. "Most of the true believers in communism starved to death in the famine, while the people who survived became very adept at circumventing the rules. The local authorities and border guards have been corrupted by bribes. As for the central government, they don't really care if people have money to buy refrigerators or nicer clothes. They concentrate their enforcement efforts on select classes of goods. For example, one of the most popular things on the black market is foreign media: books, movies, music, TV series. Like the internet, these are forbidden to ordinary citizens, because they contradict the government's claims about the outside world. But enforcing the ban is extraordinarily difficult, because digital media are so easy to smuggle, and despite severe penalties for trafficking and possession, people are willing to take the risk." "What about video games? Are there—" I stop, suddenly aware of another figure in the room. It's the white guy from the plaza. He's materialized off to our left and is staring out the window, pretending to ignore us. This time I don't bother to hide my lips. "Take me somewhere else." "Where would you like to go?" "Surprise me." Another blur of motion, and I am staring at a rack of metal shelves. The shelves hold rows of large octagonal cases. Each case is labeled in Korean, and most are labeled in a second language as well. DAS BOOT, reads one. Another says: FRIDAY THE 13TH PT. II. I crane my head around. I am inside what looks like a large, windowless warehouse. There are many rows of shelves, holding what must be tens of thousands of octagonal cases. "This is the Kim family's private film vault," Mr. Park says. "It—" "Hold up a second. Do you have any idea who that guy was?" "What guy?" "Just now, back in the hotel, there was another guy in the room with us. You didn't see him?" "I'm a software construct," Mr. Park reminds me. "My awareness, such as it is, is focused on the user or users I'm currently interacting with." "Is there any way for you to look up information on other users accessing the Factbook right now? Like the IP addresses they're logged in from?" "I'm afraid not." "Do you know if the CIA keeps records of visits to this site?" "I have no direct knowledge of that," Mr. Park says. "But the site's privacy policy, which you declined to read, does contain language suggesting that is the case." "OK, thanks... So, you were saying? This is the Kims' movie vault?" Mr. Park nods. "It's believed to be one of the largest film collections in private hands. Much of it was amassed by Kim Jong-il while he was head of the DPRK's Propaganda and Agitation Department." "And it's actual film? These cases, they're for old-style celluloid reels, right?" "Yes. What you see here is a reconstruction based on a decades-old eyewitness description. The collection may have been digitized in the interim—but perhaps not. Again, all forms of foreign media are considered classified material, and celluloid, being harder to copy than digital files, is more secure." "Friday the 13th is classified?" "I'm unfamiliar with that title," Mr. Park says, "but, for example, if it contained scenes showing ordinary Westerners driving cars, living in beautiful houses, or eating more or better food than DPRK citizens do, then of course it would be seen as problematic by the regime." "How did they get the films?" "Most are bootleg copies. Kim Jong-il had professional duplicating equipment installed in all of the DPRK's foreign embassies. The diplomatic staff would bribe local theater owners and borrow their film reels for copying. An elaborate security protocol was devised for dubbing the films into Korean: To minimize the risk of ideological contamination, the films' audio tracks would be recorded separately, without images, and broken up into short segments, each of which was given to a different translation team for processing. Whenever possible, the teams were made up of foreigners who had already been exposed to the outside world—either defectors who had come to the DPRK willingly, or people abducted specifically for that purpose." "Kim Jong-il kidnapped people to translate movie dialog?" "Kim Jong-il kidnapped people for all kinds of reasons," Mr. Park says. "So did Kim Il-sung. And Kim Jong-un—" I put up a hand. "Did you hear that?" "Hear what?" It sounded like a cough, a couple rows over. "Hello?" I call out. "Is somebody else in here?" No answer. "Would you like to hear a story about the time Kim Jong-il kidnapped a film director from the Republic of Korea?" Mr. Park asks me. "Sure. But not here. Take me somewhere else." "Where would you like to go?" "Someplace indoors," I say, "but smaller than this, with a corner where I can sit and watch the whole room while you're talking."

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 17

 G.G.R. — "Gonna get raped," a popular video-gamers' utterance meaning either "We are about to inflict a humiliating defeat on those other players" or "Those other players are about to inflict a humiliating defeat on us." The abbreviation, originally coined to bypass speech filters, has since become common even in gaming environments where explicit, humorous references to sexual assault are considered perfectly acceptable. In environments with very strict speech codes, on the other hand, even the abbreviation is bowdlerized, becoming G.G.P., "Gonna get pwned," or G.G.F., "Gonna get fucked" (which, despite containing an obscenity, is viewed by many censors as inoffensive). —The New Devil's Dictionary In Alpha Sector near the galactic core, the big boys are getting ready to rumble. Today's MMORPG is The Fermi Paradox, a game of interstellar conquest. There are no character classes, just money, testosterone, and big things blowing up in space. The game's economy runs on space ducats, which can be acquired through honest trade, piracy, or—the most popular option—via direct purchase from Fermigames LLC. The player base skews libertarian, but the in-game ethos is more corporate than rugged individualist: The ship control AI is notoriously lame, so even if you're rich enough to buy your own battlefleet, you still need friends, or lackeys, to help crew it. Players form guilds with hundreds or even thousands of members, pool their resources, and try to take over the galaxy. There is no official code of conduct. Backstabbing and betrayal are common; even certain forms of cheating are allowed. So are profanity and hate speech: If you want to name your guild The Alte Kämpfer, or Bitch, Make Me a Sandwich, customer service won't hassle you about it. Consequently, The Fermi Paradox is also popular with bigots and people who like to kick the shit out of bigots. In one famous incident, an Israeli guild, Rainbow Pride, got into a spat with a Russian skinhead group, Jews to the Ovens. The Rainbows bought one of their members an Aeroflot ticket and sent him to the St. Petersburg housing projects where J.T.T.O.'s members all lived. Right before Rainbow Pride launched its in-game assault, the projects lost internet access; by the time it was restored, J.T.T.O.'s space fleet had been wiped out and its territory was being divvied up between the Rainbows and the Ukrainian guild Putin Fucked My Cat. Though the victory was sweet, the real winner was Fermigames, which saw a huge uptick in ducat sales as other space Nazis lined up to avenge their fallen comrades. Today's title fight involves a different sort of rivalry. In one corner is the Los Angeles–based G.R.U. Syndicate, whose leader and chief financial backer is one of Tempest's founders. In the other is a South Korean guild whose members all work for the video-game company GangnamSoft; their guild name is a play on words whose meaning in English would be something like "Penis Swarm." These are the two most powerful guilds in the galaxy right now, which by the logic of The Fermi Paradox means genocidal war is inevitable. Three hours ago, a friend of mine in G.R.U. emailed to tell me that the Mother of All Battles is about to kick off. I messaged Mr. Jones and asked if he'd like to watch two superpowers duke it out in cyberspace. We arrive just before the shooting starts. The battleground is Penis Swarm's home system. Their capital planet is protected by a ring of heavily armed space stations and three dozen star cruisers. It's an impressive amount of firepower, but to an experienced eye it's obvious that the cruisers are operating on autopilot, which means that they will suck in combat. We lurk in a conveniently located asteroid field. Our ship is a Wasp, a small vessel with a powerful cloaking device. Ray, at the helm, keeps one eye on the proximity alarm. In addition to dodging asteroids, we need to watch out for the other ships that are sure to be hiding here; the cloaking device will keep them from shooting at us, but the Wasp's lack of shields means that even a minor collision could be fatal. Anja is in charge of the Wasp's spy drones. Her avatar occupies a chair next to Ray's, but her POV is outside, zooming untethered through space, peeking around the far sides of the rocks. From the sound of her voice as she describes what she sees, she is loving every second of it. Jolene is back in the engine compartment. The antimatter drive is running smoothly and nothing else on the ship needs fixing, so she's using the downtime to catch up on some work from her real-life job. Mr. Jones sits in the captain's chair. I stand beside him, playing Spock to his Kirk, or maybe Vader to his Emperor Palpatine. I explain the fundamentals of the game and lay out what is about to happen. I make a point of referring to the Swarm as Korean, not South Korean, and stress that it is the American G.R.U. who are the aggressors here. The attack begins on schedule. "Warp signatures," Ray announces. "A lot of warp signatures." He brings up a long-range view on the main screen and we watch the American battle fleet drop out of hyperspace. Because space ducats can be bought for cash, it's possible to put a real-world value on the game's spaceships. Dreadnought battlecruisers, the largest standard class of attack ship, run about four hundred dollars U.S. apiece; the Americans have brought at least fifty of them. But the serious money is in bespoke ships, custom vessels whose size and firepower is limited only by the purchaser's budget. A pair of enormous warp signatures heralds the arrival of two bronze-tinted Death Stars whose coloring is no doubt intended as a visual pun: Big Brass Balls. You'd need to look at the schematics to calculate an exact price tag, but these are easily worth ten thousand bucks. Each. Add in the star cruisers, destroyers, frigates, carriers, fighter and bomber wings, and support ships, and the Americans are fielding at least eighty grand's worth of virtual hardware—much of which is likely to be destroyed in the next hour. But first the South Koreans will take a beating. The defense fleet reacts immediately to the incursion, but the response is uncoordinated, with each star cruiser pursuing a different target. The Americans keep their ships in formation and concentrate their fire. One by one, the Korean star cruisers lose their shields and explode. Mr. Jones is appalled. "Who is in charge of that fleet?" he says. "A blind man?" "No one." The Americans have timed their attack very deliberately, I explain: It's morning in Los Angeles, which means it is the middle of the night in Korea. For employees of GSoft, it is also crunch time, as the company puts the finishing touches on its own MMORPG, due to roll out next month. The Americans are hoping that the Swarm are all either asleep or too busy to respond. "A real fight would be more interesting," Mr. Jones suggests. "What can we do to help the Koreans?" "Nothing. Those star cruisers aren't going to take orders from us." "What if we fight alongside them? Show them—" "Wouldn't help. Anyway, we don't have any weapons." "What?" "This ship is designed for spec ops. Espionage." "You should have gotten us one of those!" Mr. Jones says, jabbing a finger at the Big Brass Balls. "If you want one of those, you're going to need to talk to Smith about sending me more money... But listen, this ship isn't useless. We will get a chance to do something. You just need to be patient." "I do not enjoy being patient." More than half the Korean star cruisers have been destroyed. The Americans have lost a frigate and suffered minor damage to one of their carriers. Soon they will begin to attack the space stations. The stations have much tougher shields and will take longer to kill, but without human controllers to issue them orders, their target selection will be as haphazard as the cruisers'. "We must contact the Korean high command," Mr. Jones says. "Warn them about what is happening here, before it is too late." "No need. The cavalry is already on its way. Look." More warp signatures are blooming on the tactical display. In a matter of seconds, the amount of money in play more than doubles: The South Koreans have brought their own fleet of Dreadnoughts and their own custom Death Stars. Bigger ones. As the reinforcements come out of hyperspace, the surviving star cruisers abruptly smarten up. They fire a combined salvo at the damaged American carrier, turning it to plasma, then fall back towards the space stations, which begin launching waves of long-range nukes from hidden missile batteries. A caution light flashes on Ray's control panel. "The Koreans just turned on a bunch of warp inhibitors. The whole system is locked down." "Warp inhibitors prevent ships from using their hyperdrives to escape the battle," I explain to Mr. Jones. He brightens instantly at the news. "This is a trap?" "Of course it's a trap. I'm not the only one with a friend in the G.R.U. Syndicate. The Koreans knew this attack was coming." "But the Americans must have spies as well," says Mr. Jones. "Oh, sure. And yes, they've probably got a counter trap lined up. That's the game." The Koreans aren't done springing surprises: As the two fleets begin slugging it out in earnest, one of the American Dreadnoughts turns traitor. It blows up another carrier, then launches a kamikaze attack on one of the Big Brass Balls. "A mutiny?" Mr. Jones says. "More likely a cyberattack," I say. "They're generally careful to let only the most trusted guild members crew the big ships. Although with a fleet this size, it's possible that a sleeper agent or two got through. Look there." One of the Korean space stations has just dropped its shields; its last missile salvo pulls a one-eighty and slams into the station's command deck, crippling it. "I wish to participate in this battle," Mr. Jones says. "What can we—" The proximity alarm sounds. Ray kicks in the subspace thrusters and boosts us hard to starboard. A small ship resembling a silver teardrop flits past with just meters to spare. The alarm keeps wailing and Ray dodges again as two more teardrops race by. "Gleaners," I explain to Mr. Jones. "When the big ships blow up, they're like piñatas—they spew space ducats equal to a tenth of their construction cost. Any ship with a tractor beam can collect the money. The Gleaners go in while the battle is under way and try to steal as much loose change as they can." "They are not allied with either side?" "No, they're opportunists with good spy networks. They go wherever they hear a fight is about to break out." "I hope this is not what you intend us to do," Mr. Jones says. "I have no interest in scavenging." "I had something a little more ambitious in mind. Gleaners are optimized for speed, but they're short-range vessels, with no hyperdrive. There's got to be a base ship back in the rocks here somewhere, that they launched from. We can use the Wasp to capture that, then threaten to strand the Gleaners unless they give us their ducats." Mr. Jones does not seem enthused about this plan, either. "How can we capture a ship if we have no weapons?" "The Wasp has a device called a cybertronic ovipositor that lets us hack into a larger ship's computer and seize control of it." "We can perform a cyberattack? Why didn't you say so? We should capture an American ship!" "We could try that," I say. "But you understand, even if we capture a Dreadnought—which is a very difficult thing to do—we won't last long against the rest of that fleet. If we take the Gleaner base ship, we have a good chance of making it out of here with enough money to—" "I don't want the stupid base ship!" Mr. Jones says. He points at the Big Brass Balls again. "I want one of those!" "That would be extremely difficult." An understatement. "To even attempt it, we'd need to land on the hull without being detected, which—" "Hey guys!" Anja breaks in. "I think I found something! Ray, bring up the POV from drone number four." The main screen switches from the view of the battle to the feed from the drone's camera. "Huh," Ray says. "'Huh,' what?" says Mr. Jones. "There is nothing there." "Exactly," I say. The drone is hovering in what should be one of the densest parts of the asteroid field. But a void has developed among the asteroids—a long, narrow, open space. And it's moving. Picture an invisible submarine nosing its way through a rock slurry: That's what it looks like. A gigantic invisible submarine. "It's got to be five hundred meters long," Ray says. "With a top-end cloaking device, and a shitload of tractor beams to move the asteroids out of the way. I don't even want to know how much that cost." "It is a ship?" Mr. Jones says. "Whose?" Ray consults the tactical display. "If it stays on its current heading, it'll exit the asteroid field in perfect position to attack the Koreans." "American, then," says Mr. Jones. "Good." He looks at me: You know what to do. "Ray." "Already on the way," Ray says. As we maneuver towards the void, I call back to the engine room and tell Jolene we're going to need her to change the laws of physics. The target ship is certain to have a deflector shield, which would ordinarily have to be blasted away before we could get close to it. But the Wasp is equipped with a Planck-Heisenberg oscillator that allows it to pass through intact force fields. "It's going to be tricky, though," Jolene cautions. "The shield will shimmer when we make contact with it. If they've got guys on lookout—and they should—there's a good chance they'll notice." "You will ensure that does not happen," Mr. Jones says. "I want this ship." We round a final asteroid and arrive at the gap in the rocks. Ray reverses thrust to avoid hitting the force field prematurely. "There's definitely something there," Jolene says. "I'm getting a really strong shield reading... It's going to shimmer, for sure. It might even spark." "Maybe there's a blind spot," Ray suggests. "If we come in from behind..." A Gleaner darts out of the rocks on the far side of the void. Oblivious to the danger, the pilot accelerates and slams full speed into an invisible wall. The Gleaner explodes. A pattern of ripples forms in space, flowing outward from the blast, and for a moment we can see the contour of the force field. It gives me an idea. "Anja," I say, "can you spot any more Gleaners headed this way?" "Plenty. They're all coming from the same direction, too. The base ship must be close." "Never mind the base ship. Here's what we're going to do..." Fifteen seconds later, a trio of Gleaners enter the void. All three crash into the force field and die. We use this as cover, the shimmer and spark of our passage through the shield obscured by the ripples. Once past the deflector shield, we are inside the radius of the cloak as well. We can see the ship. It's dark, massive, and sharp-angled, like a big black skyscraper laid on its side. The hull bristles with point-defense lasers; we hover amidships waiting to see if they will vaporize us. But the spotters must have missed our entry, and our own cloak remains intact. They don't know we're here. Ray swings us around. The big ship's command bridge is located near the stern. We read the name painted above the bridge windows: U.S.S. PAINAL. "'Painful anal,'" I translate, for Mr. Jones's benefit. "It's American, all right." "Good," says Mr. Jones. "Now what?" "We look for the external AI nexus port." A white circle flashes on the hull of the big ship, directly beneath the bridge. "There." "That is where we plug in the... ovipositor?" "Yes." "And then we take control?" "Hopefully," I say. "But first we have to beat a trivia challenge." "A what?" The beta version of The Fermi Paradox simulated computer hacking by making players solve a series of timed Sudoku puzzles. According to the handful of people who got to play it, this was a fun mini-game, and one that actually made you feel like you were breaking through walls of encryption. From a development perspective, it had another advantage: Sudoku are language-independent and can be procedurally generated, so they don't require paid translators or puzzle-makers. Unfortunately, this strength was also a weakness. Within days of the beta's debut, someone had created a mod called Spacecracker that could solve the most difficult Sudoku in microseconds, and would even plug in the numbers for you. Fermigames could have tried to ban the use of Spacecracker, but besides being tough to enforce, such a ban would have gone against the spirit of the game. Hackers should be allowed to use exploits. The trick was figuring out a way to let them cheat while still posing a meaningful challenge. One of Fermigames' lead programmers suggested switching from Sudoku to Trivial Pursuit. He crafted a backstory about how ship AIs train to pass their Turing tests by studying the lore of Old Earth; this makes them vulnerable to intruders who exhibit mastery of obscure information. To save on implementation costs, the development team came up with a plan to recruit players to write the trivia questions, paying them in space ducats. So now, to commit grand-theft spaceship, you must demonstrate your nerd cred. As our Wasp docks with the AI port, a five-minute clock appears on the main screen. To determine how many questions we must answer, the game server compares the two ships' cyberwarfare ratings. I am grateful that for once I resisted the urge to be stingy; the Wasp's ovipositor is Neuromancer grade, the best and most expensive option. If we were going after a star cruiser or even a Dreadnought, I'd be feeling pretty good about our chances. But a bespoke ship is another matter; there's no limit to the amount of security they can buy, and I've never heard of one being successfully hijacked. The target number appears on screen. At first I read it as two hundred and assume we are out of luck, but then I realize there's only one zero after the two. "Fuck me," Ray says, as surprised as I am. "What?" says Mr. Jones. "What is wrong?" "Nothing." Is it sabotage, I wonder, or did someone on the G.R.U.'s shipbuilding committee decide to cut corners on cybersecurity? The latter explanation seems crazy given the amount of money at stake, but on the other hand, if you expect everyone to assume your ship is invulnerable to hacking, why waste ducats actually making it invulnerable? "This is doable." "I don't know," Ray says. "Twenty questions in five minutes is still a stretch." "How many wrong answers do we get?" Mr. Jones asks. "None," I tell him. "The first mistake locks us out of the system and fries our life support. But it's OK," I add, staying positive. "The questions are multiple choice, and we'll have help." I conjure a control pad beneath my right hand. "I'm going to be quizmaster," I say, addressing the whole crew now. "If I know an answer is right, I'll just go ahead and send it. If I'm not sure, I'll delay as many seconds as I can to give the rest of you a chance to jump in. If I say your name, I want you to screenshot the question and go research it—quickly!—while the rest of us skip ahead. Stay focused and try not to panic. We can do this. Everybody ready?" Everyone says yes. I signal the game server. The lighting inside the Wasp goes red and a sinister voice issues from the loudspeakers. Male and vaguely British, it is meant to evoke the platonic ideal of an evil computer without violating any Hollywood trademarks. "Foolish users!" it snarls. "You think you can match wits with me? No mortal being—" I ping the server again to skip the rest of this intro. The game clock starts, and the first of our twenty questions appears on the main screen:  WHICH EPISODE OF AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE INTRODUCED THE CHARACTERS OF IGNIGNOKT AND ERR?  A. "MOON MASTER"  B. "REVENGE OF THE MOONINITES"  C. "MAYHEM OF THE MOONINITES"  D. "MOONAJUANA" The correct answer, C, is highlighted. The highlighting is courtesy of the latest version of Spacecracker, which cheats by asking Googlebot. Unlike brute-forcing a Sudoku puzzle, however, this form of cheating can be unreliable. Sometimes Googlebot answers incorrectly; sometimes Spacecracker misunderstands what Googlebot is telling it. The nerds who make up the questions delight in finding ways to confuse the bots' algorithms. For example, question two:  WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING MAN-MADE OBJECTS IS VISIBLE FROM EARTH ORBIT?  A. THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA  B. GRANT'S TOMB  C. THE SUEZ CANAL  D. ALL OF THE ABOVE The correct answer, as a moment's calm reflection will tell you, is D. But Spacecracker picks A. There is a popular myth that the Great Wall is the only artificial structure large enough to be seen from space; the myth has been debunked many times, and these debunkings have themselves become part of Googlebot's knowledge base. A human questioner is smart enough to grasp the distinction between "A lot of people believe X," and "A lot of people believe X, which is false," but Spacecracker, querying Googlebot in shorthand, misses it. Being able to spot trick questions like this one is key to successful time management. You need to know when you can trust Spacecracker and when to pause and think. You also need to know when and how to delegate to your teammates. In general you must answer the questions in order, but the rules allow you two set-asides: That is, you can skip up to two questions, but must then go back and answer them before you can skip any more. This allows you to hand off questions that require extra research. Jolene has told me stories of how she used to play vintage Dungeons & Dragons with her grandparents when she was little, so I have her double-check Spacecracker's answer to a question about the first-edition Monster Manual. I give Anja a question about soccer. Ray saves me from a rookie mistake by reminding me that it was Mary, not Jesus, who was immaculately conceived. Even Mr. Jones contributes: When I balk at what feels like another trick question (THE ASIAN GIANT HORNET IS NATIVE TO WHAT CONTINENT?), he assures me that the obvious answer is also the right one. Another key to success is a favorable metagame. Because the trivia questions are submitted by players, guilds seeking an edge in cyberwarfare can try to flood the question pool. Four years ago, when I first played The Fermi Paradox, the galaxy was dominated by guilds from mainland China; the trivia game in those days referenced an alternate nerd universe, one whose in-jokes and obsessions were, despite my ancestry, foreign to me. Today, with the Americans and South Koreans in ascendancy, it's a much easier challenge—and ironically, it seems like it's the Americans who've been working hardest to stack the deck. We get two questions in a row about Buffy the Vampire Slayer; I don't even need Spacecracker for those. With a minute remaining on the game clock, we are down to three questions. Not only does it look like we'll be able to pull this off, I may even have time to engage in a bit of subterfuge. Spacecracker routes the questions through the quizmaster's computer before passing the data on to the other players. This allows for some interesting shenanigans if you know how the program works. By abusing the skip function, I can peek ahead and see what the next question in line is. I do this, and see that the penultimate question is one that Spacecracker can be trusted to answer correctly. So when we come to it, I set that question aside and go immediately to the final one. This turns out to be another softball: WHAT FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER WAS THE FIRST TO ALLOW TARGETED HEADSHOTS? (The Quake Team Fortress mod, duh.) Now all that remains is the set-aside question:  IN KLINGON-LANGUAGE SCRABBLE SETS, THE ץ TILE IS WORTH HOW MANY POINTS?  A. 7  B. 8  C. 9  D. 10 The correct answer is B. The answer key resides on Fermigames' server, so I cannot change this. But what I can do, by messing with the data that Spacecracker forwards to my teammates, is substitute a different question of my own devising:  WHICH GROUP OF NUMBERS ALL REFER TO THE SAME YEAR?  A. 1982, 1402, 101  B. 1982, 1402, 71  C. 1982, 1372, 71  D. 1982, 1372, 101 The correct answer is still B. The year 1982 in the Gregorian calendar overlaps 1402 in the Islamic calendar. It also corresponds to year 71 in the North Korean Juche calendar, which counts from the birth year of Kim Il-sung. And because AD 1982/Juche 71 is the official birth year of Kim Jong-un, it should be especially memorable to anyone raised in the DPRK. B is the right answer, but I instruct Spacecracker to highlight C instead. Eighteen seconds remain on the clock as my doctored question appears on the main screen. "Wait." This from Jolene, who is following a script she and I worked out in advance. "It's not C, it's A or B." "Which, A or B?" "Not sure," Jolene says, speaking very quickly. "But my cousin's Muslim, and the 1980s are the 1400s in their calendar." Ten seconds. "What about the last number?" I say. "Anyone?" I can hear both Ray and Anja whispering urgently to their own infobots. Mr. Jones is stone silent. I don't look at him. Five seconds. "I'm going to guess A," I say. Mr. Jones comes alive: "No. Pick B." Three seconds. "Are you sure?" "B! Pick B!" With one second left—and just as Ray looks up shouting, "B! B!"—I hit send. The clock stops. The screen goes blank. "Well done, human," the voice of the big ship's AI says. "I submit to your superior knowledge." The interior lighting returns to normal. Now the Wasp's computer speaks to us; it is female, a cross between GLaDOS and Mother from the Alien franchise: "Control acquired. Purging target ship atmosphere." The main screen switches to a forward view of the Painal's hull. All along the ship's length, hatches fly open, venting tall columns of white vapor speckled with the flailing bodies of crew members. As we watch them die, the Wasp's helm expands to make room for a new suite of fire controls. Ray goggles at the assortment of weapons now under his command: "Antimatter cannon. Chained plasma disruptors. Graviton vortex bombs. Nukes, nukes, and more nukes... Jesus Christ, we're a superpower." The big ship is still moving forward. Its tractor beams, operating automatically, sweep aside the last few asteroids at the edge of the field. Beyond is open space, and the exposed flank of the Korean fleet. Anja, promoted automatically from dronemaster to communications officer, raises a hand to her ear. "I'm getting an encrypted message from the commander of the American fleet," she says. "He's asking where we are. He wants us to start our attack as soon as possible." "Tell the American commander not to worry," Mr. Jones replies. The corners of his mouth twitch up into a smile. "Tell him the Painal will begin momentarily."

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 18

 opiate of the masses — That which acts to preserve the status quo by short-circuiting demand for political or social change. In Marx's original formulation, the opiate of the masses was religion. Aldous Huxley, in his dystopian novel Brave New World, imagined it as a literal drug, soma. More recent candidates include Twitter, Monday Night Football, legalized marijuana, and virtual reality. —The New Devil's Dictionary It's an imaginative theory," my mother says. Today the view out her office window is of a sandy atoll surrounding a crystal blue lagoon. But Mom sounds tired, and CNN is reporting that yesterday's plane crash at Indira Gandhi Airport was the work of cyberterrorists, so I'm guessing she's in Delhi. "Imaginative," I say. "That bad?" "Sorry. I meant 'creative.'" When I was little I used to play at being one of my mother's intelligence assets. I'd collect portentous bits of info off the internet and have her debrief me over dinner. We developed our own private intel rating system. Those rare items my mother deemed "interesting" were genuinely useful to her. At the other end of the scale, "imaginative" referred to tinfoil-hat notions that only a child or a very naive adult would buy into, like the time I became convinced, based on a bad Google translation, that China had staged a secret Mars landing. "Creative" was the middle ground, home of wild theories that might be true, but which Mom needed more evidence or a much better argument to take seriously. "Tell me what you don't like about the idea," I say. "Well, to begin with, there's the question Jolene asked you: Why would a powerful North Korean want to study online role-playing games? 'Game theory' isn't a real answer. More like a placeholder for one." "I've been thinking more about that," I tell her. "Do you know the story of the Shin Sang-ok kidnapping?" "I pulled up the CIA's file on it after I heard about your conversation with Mr. Park," she says. "But why don't you go ahead and give me your version." "OK." I know she's humoring me, but it makes me happy when she does that, just like it did when I was a kid. "So this was back in 1978, when Kim Il-sung, the original Great Leader, was still running the country, and his son, Kim Jong-il, was head of the state film industry. Film was an important propaganda tool for the regime, and it was also a way for Jong-il to suck up to his dad and ensure his place as successor; but beyond that, he just really loved movies. He spent millions assembling a bootleg collection from all over the world. "One of his other hobbies was kidnapping. It's like he was role-playing the villain from a James Bond film: He abducted foreigners to serve as teachers for his spies, to train them how to blend in to other cultures. His commandos would grab random people off beaches, drug them and put them on a boat. Or if he wanted someone specific, he might trick them with a job offer, get them on a plane to Pyongyang and take their passport away, tell the world they'd defected. "So one day Kim Jong-il decided to import some filmmaking talent. North Korean movies weren't very good, and while the home crowd was a captive audience, Kim wanted to compete internationally. He told his people to find him a good director, and the name they came up with was Shin Sang-ok. "He was famous. In the fifties and sixties, Shin and his wife, Choi Eun-hee, had been like the first couple of South Korean cinema. But by the seventies, Shin's star was falling. The business was in trouble, and the marriage broke up—" "Choi left him," Mom interjects, "after she found out he'd fathered a son with a starlet half her age." I pause. Mr. Park's recitation didn't include that detail. "Sorry," Mom says. "Continue." "Yeah, OK... So Shin's career was on the rocks, and then he got in trouble with the government. South Korea in those days was better than the North, but it was still basically a military dictatorship, and Shin pissed off the state censors. They took away his filmmaking license. By the time the North Koreans came after him, he was close to bankruptcy. "They decided to use his ex-wife as a lure. They got Choi Eun-hee to Hong Kong with a phony job offer and kidnapped her, and when Shin came looking for her, they grabbed him too. Once they got him back to Pyongyang, they tried treating him nicely at first. But Shin wouldn't play ball—he kept trying to escape—so Kim Jong-il had him thrown into prison. They put him in a special kind of solitary where you spend sixteen hours a day sitting cross-legged on the floor, and anytime you move or make a sound, the guards beat you. Three and a half years of that, and then Kim Jong-il gave Shin a choice: Live in a nice house with Choi Eun-hee and make movies on an unlimited budget, or go back to solitary for good. "Shin took the film job. For the next three years he was Kim Jong-il's pet director, and Choi was his leading lady. The movies they made were better than anything North Korea had ever done before. Some of them won prizes. That's how Shin and Choi finally got away: Kim was so happy that he let them travel abroad to attend film festivals. They slipped their guards in Vienna and escaped." "Did you watch any of the films?" Mom asks. "You know they're all on YouTube now." I nod. "I checked out one of them." "Let me guess. Pulgasari?" "Of course Pulgasari." The last film Shin directed before escaping Kim's clutches, Pulgasari is the DPRK's answer to the Godzilla franchise: A giant monster movie steeped in the ideology of North Korean socialism. Not one of the award winners. "Did you see it?" "I fell asleep before the end," Mom confesses. "So, getting back to Mr. Jones: Your theory is that he's a Kim Jong-il figure who's looking to make a mark in video games rather than film?" "Not exactly. My main point with the Shin Sang-ok story is that there's precedent for North Koreans going to extremes to acquire professional expertise. As for Mr. Jones wanting to make a mark, well, who knows? I mean, people are snobby about it, but video games are an art form, and you can get recognition for making good ones. Would a dictator be as excited about winning E3's Game of the Year as he would about the Palme d'Or? Maybe, maybe not." "Well, I hate to sound snobby, but put me in the 'maybe not' column." "OK, fine. I think there's another possibility, one that actually makes more sense. Something else that came up in my conversation with Mr. Park is how much the propaganda war has changed in the last few decades. In the 1970s, the only way a typical North Korean could see a foreign film is if someone smuggled in a bunch of heavy film canisters. These days, you can carry an entire film library in your pocket. It's still a quick trip to a labor camp if you get caught, but people are willing to take the risk to get a glimpse of the outside world. They're watching South Korean soap operas, and Hollywood blockbusters, and Bollywood musicals—not the most accurate sources of info, sure, but enough to let them know how much their own government lies to them. North Korea isn't the most prosperous country on earth. South Korea isn't a hellhole. And America—well, they still hate us, which isn't entirely unreasonable given how close we've come to nuking them out of existence, but they know we aren't just bloodthirsty imperialists. "And so this has created a huge problem for the regime, right? People—especially young people—are getting more and more restless. So now what? The government can try cracking down even harder than it already does, but they can't send everybody to a labor camp... That's why they had to make that deal with China a few years back, where they agreed to limit the size of their nuclear arsenal. They needed more trade dollars, and they needed their foreign aid turned back on, so they could bribe their people with more stuff. Only it's not enough. The younger generation is still pissed off." "And video games help with this how, exactly?" "Do you remember Jimmy del Toro?" A friend of mine from Zero Day. Mom nods. "Lieutenant Commander del Toro's son. The one with diabetes." "Yeah, and sometimes when Jimmy got caught up in a game, he'd forget to take his insulin. Or he'd remember his insulin but forget to eat. Which was a problem in Jimmy's case, but what if you lived in a country that didn't always have enough food or medicine to go around? What if when you did have enough to eat, that just gave you more energy to think about all the other things you didn't have? In a situation like that, an MMORPG could be a great distraction, not to mention a way of channeling your anger. Instead of rising up and smashing the state, you'd go into the virtual world and kill monsters." "Pulgasari: The Home Game?" "Maybe," I say. "Or maybe something less metaphorical. Like, you could do a military-themed game, where the players are North Korean soldiers conquering the South for Kim Jong-un, and the bad guys are American and Japanese troops. Or you could do a covert ops game, where players gain levels for committing sabotage and assassinations in enemy countries. And to sweeten the pot, there could be a leaderboard competition with real-world prizes, like extra rations or points towards improving your citizenship ranking." "I can see you've been giving this a lot of thought," Mom says. "What about the logistics problem? Where does the regime get the money to supply millions of citizens with computers and VR rigs?" "They don't need VR rigs. Fully immersive VR is nice, but you can do video games without it. As for the computers, North Koreans have millions of those already. And a network." "Cell phones?" "Smartphones. The wifi network's only third-generation, so there will be bandwidth issues, but it's not like they've got to compete with Call to Wizardry. For an audience that's never played an MMORPG before, even a 2D game could be incredibly addictive." "True." Mom smiles. "I remember." "So what do you think?" She shrugs noncommittally. "Like I said, it's creative." "What would it take to make it interesting?" "Some actual proof connecting Mr. Jones to North Korea, for a start." "He knows about the Juche calendar," I say. I tell her about the trivia challenge. "Clever," Mom says when I've finished. "But are you certain he knew B was the right answer? Or could he have just been playing a hunch?" "Well... He sounded like he knew. Like he was sure." "But you didn't ask why. He didn't explain his reasoning." "There wasn't time. We were down to the last few seconds on the clock. And then once we took the ship, we were busy slaughtering Americans. I suppose I could have brought it up again later, but the whole point was to get him to give himself away without realizing he'd done it..." "No, I get that. It sounds like you handled it as well as you could," Mom says. Once again, I get the sense that she's humoring me, but this time it doesn't feel so good. "What about the money?" I ask. "Have you had any luck tracing the owner of the bank account?" "Not yet. But I've put some new assets in place, so we should have a better picture if and when you get your next payment. That's due in two days?" "Give or take. I have a feeling Smith may push the deadline, just to yank my chain a little. But I should have it by the end of this week." "There's also your mysterious Chinese woman, assuming she ever gets back in touch. If she does, you'll want to push her hard about the money she promised you." "Don't worry about that," I say. "I'm not worried. But I don't want you to get your hopes up. I think there's a good chance that there won't be any more money coming—and that once that's clear, Smith and Mr. Jones will just disappear." "You really think this could still turn out to be a prank?" "I think that's more likely than Mr. Jones turning out to be Kim Jong-un." "Well, I wasn't thinking it was him, necessarily," I say. "Just someone in his inner circle—a family member, or even just an aide looking to score points with the boss." "Has it occurred to you that if you are right, that might not be a good thing? Given what the Kims are capable of?" "Are you asking whether I'm afraid of being kidnapped?" It's my turn to shrug. "I guess I would be, if I were doing this on my own. But I've got you watching my back. I bet if Shin Sang-ok had had a mom like you, they wouldn't have gotten him, either." "Thanks for the vote of confidence." "It really would be something, wouldn't it? If Mr. Jones were Kim Jong-un?" "Yes," my mother says, "that would be something." "It would be valuable to you, right? Useful?" "A secret channel to the heart of the North Korean government? Oh yeah, we could find a use for that. Of course," she adds, turning mischievous, "we'd also have to confiscate the money." "What? Why?" "China may have signed an accord with the DPRK, but we've still got a trade ban in place. You can't legally profit from business with North Koreans." "Can't you get me some kind of waiver for that?" "I suppose I could," Mom says, "but then I worry you'd be wracked with guilt when you remember this is blood money the Kims stole from their own people." "Uh-huh," I say, unimpressed. "Tell me something, Mom: After you confiscate the money, are you planning to give it back to the people? Because if you are, I guess I can't object. But if you're not, I don't see how having two governments steal it adds up to justice." "The moral logic is complicated," my mother acknowledges. "Don't worry, we'll find some way to reward you. Maybe you could pitch a declassified version of the story as a screenplay to your dad." She makes a framing gesture with her hands. "'It's like Ready Player One meets The King and I.'" "Funny, Mom. Hilarious." She certainly seems to think so, though as always when the subject of my father comes up, I can sense other emotions under the surface, masked but there. And then Mom just looks tired. She glances at the watch on her avatar's wrist. "Time to get back to work," she says. "Be careful, John."

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 19

 theory of mind — A controversial hypothesis that other human beings are sentient and possess thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and goals that are different from our own. In its most radical form, the theory posits that while these differences may make other people's behavior hard to understand, the question "What the fuck are you thinking?" has a real answer which reason and empathy can discover. —The New Devil's Dictionary My father didn't believe that infidelity was wrong. This doesn't excuse his betrayal of my mother, but it does help to explain it. It's not an easy thing to wrap my brain around: Though I have my share of kinks, they all involve one partner at a time, so to really get a sense of where Dad's head was at, I need to resort to analogy. Rachel Nakamura is my go-to for that. She was the first girl I ever had a crush on. Rachel and her mother worked in the PX at Fort Meade, where Zero Day's stateside HQ was located. Jimmy del Toro's older sister, Sarah, had a part-time job in the PX too, and Sarah was friends with Rachel, which is how I came to know her. The Nakamuras were devout Christians. The conservative sect they belonged to had some peculiar taboos—or rather, taboos that seemed peculiar if you hadn't been indoctrinated with them. The weirdest one, from a Zero Day perspective, was that they didn't use virtual reality, which they apparently regarded as a high-tech species of graven-image worship. They weren't Luddites: Rachel was rarely without her iPad. But she used it mostly for reading, limiting her web surfing to what was required for schoolwork. She didn't play video games, not even Bejeweled. And she didn't date. This didn't stop a long string of boys and girls from asking her out anyway: Rachel was beautiful, and there was the added psychological lure of That Which You Know You Cannot Have. But she always said no. I was determined to take my shot like everybody else. The fact that I was nine years old, while Rachel was seventeen, meant my odds were longer than most, but I was hoping the half-Asian thing might give me a leg up. That was the same month that Paramount Studios released Amok Time—the first, and still only, R-rated Star Trek picture. It was a trending topic in nerdland; my underage friends and I had all watched the pirated 2D version online, and were now scheming ways to go see it in 3D IMAX. When I heard Rachel Nakamura was a science-fiction fan (according to Sarah del Toro, she'd been reading C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy), I decided to kill two obsessions with one stone. I went to the PX on a day when Rachel was working checkout, grabbed a copy of the latest eSports Illustrated, and got in her line. While she rang up the magazine I mentioned—trying to be smooth and casual about it—that I was planning to go see Amok Time. I said I'd heard that she might be a Star Trek fan too, and asked if she'd maybe like to see the movie with me. I added that I would be happy to pay her way, if—very smooth, here—she wouldn't mind handling the actual purchase of the tickets. I was hopeful but not delusional; I knew that Rachel would probably say no and wouldn't have been surprised if she'd humiliated me in the bargain. But her reply still stunned me. "Thank you for asking, John," she said. "But I don't go to R-rated movies." On its face, this was less weird than the no-VR thing, but it shocked me more, I guess because it ran so contrary to my own impulses. To be free to see any movie you liked without adult supervision or the hassle of illegal downloading, and yet to choose not to: What kind of crazy theology was that? I stood there with my mouth open, trying desperately to think of another movie, something PG- or even G-rated, to ask her to instead. But my mind drew a blank, and then the staff sergeant waiting behind me in line put her hand on my shoulder and said, "You've been shot down, son. Accept it and move on." A few weeks later, Mom and I deployed overseas. I never saw Rachel Nakamura again. But I still thought of her from time to time, and later, when I was trying to understand my father, I immortalized her in a thought experiment. The experiment goes like this: Imagine you're in love with a smart and beautiful girl. She loves you too, and she's willing to spend her life with you, but only if you agree to convert and follow the dictates of her religion, the first of which is, Thou Shalt Not Watch R-Rated Movies. So, no more Matrix trilogy for you; no more The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; no more Shakespeare in Love (yes, it's an R). No more Amok Time. Oh, and no more hamburgers, either. She's a vegetarian. That's the deal, take it or leave it. Imagine that you take it. Now imagine you're traveling, alone, on business. You stop for the night at a hotel a thousand miles from home. Though you didn't ask for it, your room comes with a premium cable TV package. In the elevator you overhear another guest mentioning that Strange Days—one of your favorite films—is playing on HBO tonight. Further investigation reveals that Near Dark and The Hurt Locker are also on offer. And the room service menu? They don't just serve burgers here. They serve gourmet burgers, made from grass-fed, antibiotic-free Wagyu beef, ground in-house. The kind you can eat blood-rare without worrying about E. coli. What do you do? True, you've made a vow, and a promise is a promise. On the other hand, these aren't your taboos, they're hers. To you, they're just arbitrary rules, victimless sins; the only person who will be hurt if you transgress is her, and only if she finds out. This is how my father thought about fucking other women. If you're inclined to argue that the analogy is flawed—because women aren't room service items; because you can't catch an STD from a Kathryn Bigelow film—you are missing the point, which, again, is not to excuse Dad's behavior but to make sense of it. And not just his behavior, but his timing. That used to bug me even more than the fact of the betrayal itself. Bad enough to cheat on your pregnant girlfriend, I thought, but to cheat on her while you're waiting to find out if she'll marry you? Who does that? Someone who believes his moral obligation is to not get caught, that's who. If my mother had accepted my father's proposal, as he fully expected her to, they would have moved in together, and not long afterwards, they'd have had a baby to take care of. Which would have made it hard for him to discreetly step out on her. But he had a brief window of opportunity before that happened, and he decided to make good use of it. And as awful as it might seem to me, I can see how, from his perspective, it was not just a reasonable choice, but a responsible one: By having one last fling, getting it out of his system, he'd make it easier to resist temptation later. Of course, this dubious moral logic is premised on the notion that it is possible to keep secrets from my mother. Not a safe assumption, as it turns out. My father still has no idea how my mother found out he'd been unfaithful. "It's like she just knew," he said, the one time we talked about it. "She looked at me, and she knew." Which sounds like Mom, all right. And Dad's response sounds like me, before I learned better: He denied the accusation. At first he tried to laugh it off. When that didn't work, he tried to gaslight her, acting hurt that she'd be so paranoid and untrusting of him. Mom hates that tactic, and she's not shy about expressing her displeasure physically. Their confrontation took place outside the motel where Dad was staying; the motel had a pool, and my father ended up swimming, fully clothed. By the time he dragged himself out of the water, Mom had gotten in her car and driven away. Dad waited twenty-four hours for her to come back, realized she wasn't going to, got scared, and spent another two days tracking her down. By then, he was properly contrite. He confessed. He said that he was sorry and begged for another chance. He swore he would never do it again. He sounded sincere, and, in that moment, he probably thought that he was sincere. Mom thought differently. She didn't believe that Dad was sorry; just unhappy with the consequences of his actions. Given a second chance, she believed he would act the same way, but try to make it come out differently somehow. Which it wouldn't. You could make a case for giving him a second chance anyway. My mother would say that was wishful thinking. People do change, but they change in their own time, for reasons that make sense to them. They don't change just because we want them to, or because it would be convenient to our own desires if they did. As my mother saw it, she had three choices: One, she could reconcile herself to marrying a serial adulterer, in the hope that he'd one day grow out of it, or that she'd someday stop caring. Like volunteering to be punched in the gut at random intervals, this was not an attractive option to her. Two, she could declare war: Find some threat or emotional cudgel to force my father to be faithful. As I've already made clear, Mom has a talent for behavior modification, so I don't doubt she could have succeeded at this, but the resulting marriage would have been miserable, hardly worth fighting for. She'd have done it if she'd had to, for my sake. Thank God, it wasn't necessary. She had her family's support, and then she had Zero Day; she didn't need to marry my father. Which left option three: Say no. Let him go. Simple. The decision to cut my father out of her life completely—and, by extension, out of my life—was the only part she ever agonized about. It's also the part that took me the longest to understand. I used to think she'd done it for me. To protect me from him. But the truth is, my mother didn't think of my father as a bad guy. A jerk, yes, and painful for her to be around, but not wicked. When I asked about him, she was honest about his shortcomings, but she never trash-talked him in front of me (it was some of my other relatives who did that). And when I decided I wanted to meet him, she told me where to look. It wasn't me Mom was protecting. And it wasn't just my father who she didn't trust. He was the wrong guy for her. She knew that. But she'd always known it—from the start, before they ever got together. It didn't matter. She got together with him anyway. Fell for him, hard. And even after he broke her heart, she wasn't sorry.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 20

"You can snoop, but don't be weird about it," Darla said when she gave me the link to her Facebook page. She'd been on the crew for several weeks by that point, and we'd just finished one of the best gigs we would ever work together, a fifty-person raid on the troll city of Zuul'titlan. Currently the hardest dungeon in Asgarth, Zuul'titlan takes a minimum of eight hours to complete, and even experienced raiding guilds often require multiple attempts to get through it. It's not a place you want to bring clients to, even if they're willing to pay overtime rates. Too frustrating. But there's an exception to every rule, and in this case it came in the form of the Kwan brothers, Wing and Arthur. They were engineers from Shenzhen who'd made a fortune building solar power plants in Africa, and they had a lot of eclectic hobbies, including Call to Wizardry. They didn't play often, and when they did, they were only interested in the toughest end-level content. Every few months they'd pop up on the sherpa forum, looking to recruit an army. They paid extremely well, but they expected perfection in return. They'd been known to boot whole sherpa crews mid-raid for the mistakes of a single member, and once they'd dinged you, they'd never hire your team again. Darla had already alienated one of our other long-term customers. To protect our relationship with the Kwans, Ray wanted to exclude her from the run. I overruled him. Darla could be trouble, but she was predictable: She only really acted out when she was bored or when the clients couldn't keep up with her. I thought she'd be an asset on the Kwan brothers gig, and I was right. She did wisecrack a little going into it—enough to make Ray nervous—but once we got started and she saw that she was the one who was going to have to keep up, she did great. I didn't have a lot of chance to admire Darla's form that day. The Kwans had picked me to be one of the raid tanks, so I was in front and very busy. Beating Zuul'titlan is like running a marathon. The most physically taxing part of the raid happens right in the middle, when, after fighting your way across a long series of heavily defended causeways, you enter the Plaza of Dancing Snakes, where a group of troll high priests are about to perform a human sacrifice. Killing the priests is harder than the final boss fight would be in a normal dungeon, but in Zuul'titlan, it's just a prelude. Once the priests are dead, waves of angry troll peasants start streaming into the plaza. To advance, you must kill ten thousand of them, and if you screw up and let your raid group get wiped, the body count resets to zero. It took three and a half hours, but we cleared the plaza on the first try. The brothers announced a fifteen-minute bio break. When I got back from the bathroom I looked around for Darla and spotted her unattended avatar standing beside a mountain of corpses, covered in gore and still panting with exertion from the fight. Then Darla resumed control and caught me looking. "Perv," she said, and grinned. And then it was on to the raid's final act: a running battle up a nine-step pyramid and a showdown with the troll demigod Machu Picchu Mon. Long story short, we aced it. Afterwards, we and the other sherpa crews went to the Game Lobby, where the Kwan brothers handed out performance bonuses. While Darla and I waited our turn, she told me she wouldn't be around for the next few days—she was going to visit her dad, who lived in a part of Arizona where bandwidth was sketchy. "But if another job like this comes up, let me know," she added. "I can drive into Flagstaff and find a game café if I need to." "OK," I said. "I'll hit you up on Ghost." Meaning Ghost-it Note, an anonymous contact app popular with gamer gurls who don't want their online acquaintances following them home. It was how Darla and I had been communicating since we'd met. "No, wait," she said. "Here." She handed me a virtual calling card with her phone number, instant message code, and a link to her Facebook page. It's always flattering when a woman lets you know that she's decided you're not an ax murderer, but I've learned from experience not to make a big deal of it. I just nodded and saved the contact info to my system. "You can snoop," Darla told me, "but don't be weird about it." Just then I was too tired to do anything but crash, so as soon as the Kwan brothers' money was in my PayPal account, I logged out and slept for ten hours. But the next day, after a shower and some food, I went on Facebook and finally learned Darla's full name. Darla Jean Covington's Facebook page was only four years old, which meant it probably wasn't her first. That's not unusual. I'm hardly ever on Facebook, and I've still managed to accumulate half a dozen separate accounts, for business, family, and different groups of friends. Darla's timeline consisted largely of reposts of not-safe-for-work memes, and videos in which people did stupid, dangerous, illegal, and/or offensive things. There were also videos of Darla herself at various ages, tagged "personal." The most recent of these, which had been posted less than an hour after she gave me her contact info, was titled "OMG — DARLA NIP SLIP & TWAT SHOT, SO EMBARRASSING!!!" I figured that was a test and didn't click on it. Instead I scrolled down to one marked "CLASSIC: DEENIE LOSES HER SHIT AT 2,000 FEET." The video showed two little blond girls, one in a dress and the other in ripped jeans and a Resident Evil T-shirt, riding in a hot air balloon over a landscape of wooded hills. Deenie, the girl in the dress, was terrified of heights and kept her face buried in her hands. Darla, bored with the view, leaned against the side of the gondola and tilted her head back. "Oh my God, Deenie!" she exclaimed. "The balloon has a hole in it! And look, the cables are coming loose!" Deenie began shrieking, and an unseen older woman, probably the one holding the camera, said, "Darla! Darla, you stop that!" (Spoiler alert: She did not stop that.) I scrolled down further, checking out "SISTERHOOD IS POWERFUL" (teenage Darla starts a fistfight during a roller derby game), "DARLA BREAKS HER ASS, CHAPTER 99" (a demonstration of why unicycles are rarely used for stunt jumping), and "HISTORY'S SHORTEST LIGHTSABER DUEL" (Darla and one of the girls from the roller derby video try fencing with fluorescent light tubes). My favorite was "EARL IS A GINORMOUS PUSSY," in which Darla and three boys—Jeff, Mason, and Earl—played paintball out in the woods, capturing the action with helmet and body cams. They only had three paintball guns, all of which the boys had claimed, so Darla used a BB gun instead. I know that sounds idiotic, but their helmets had solid face shields and they were wearing heavy clothes, so the chance of maiming was minimal. Darla's real problem was getting the boys to admit they'd been hit at all. After giving them a chance to play fair, she adapted, double-pumping the action on the BB gun to increase the velocity of the pellets and aiming for weak spots in their armor. Much of the footage was devoted to ambushes: Darla buries herself in a pile of leaves and shoots Mason in an exposed band of belly fat as he goes by; Darla waits in a tree, whistles as Jeff passes beneath her, and plinks a BB off his face shield when he looks up. In the video's final scene, Earl crouched behind a stone wall while Darla hectored him from the far side of a clearing, daring him to stop hiding and face her in the open. When Earl declined, Darla charged. With the video slowed to half speed, you could see the paintballs leave Earl's gun, and see Darla do this amazing series of sideways pivots, dodging every shot while somehow keeping her balance and her forward momentum. Then the paintball gun jammed, or maybe Earl just panicked. The POV switched from his helmet cam to Darla's as she vaulted the wall, knocked Earl to the ground, pulled down his pants, and shot him in the ass. I rewatched that part of the video several times, then scrolled back up to the top of Darla's Facebook page, zeroing in on a line from her bio: "Virginian by blood, Arizonan by birth, Oregonian by choice." Oregonian, I thought. Interesting. Right after I first came to Berkeley, I hooked up with another online acquaintance, Suzie O'Dell, who also lived in Oregon. We'd been flirting for a while, and when Suzie found out I was moving to the Bay Area, she invited herself down to meet me face to face. The off-campus apartment I'd rented was unfurnished, and I didn't have a bed yet, but that was OK, Suzie came prepared, driving down from Eugene with a futon mattress strapped to the roof of her car. The hookup didn't go so well: As sometimes happens, the electricity we'd felt in cyberspace didn't translate into real-world chemistry. We gave it our best try, but by the second day it was clear this would be a one-time visit. Suzie did let me keep the futon, though—so if the moral of the story was "sometimes wanting is better than having," the other moral of the story was, "even when having disappoints, you can still get something useful out of it." But in my current frame of mind, the real takeaway was simply this: Oregon is close to California. Practically next door. Darla had said she'd be at her dad's place for a few days, but two weeks passed with no word from her. I thought about calling to see if she wanted to work, but the gigs we were getting—level grinds, easy dungeon runs—were the sort that brought out Darla's bad side, and meanwhile, Ray had been much happier in her absence; so I decided it would be better all around if I were patient. Then the Kwan brothers popped up on the forum again. They wanted to take another run at Zuul'titlan, this time going for the Knights and Priests achievement, which requires you to complete the raid using only tanks and healers, no dps characters. The reduced damage output turns the marathon into something more akin to a death march: We were looking at twenty hours, start to finish. And the Kwans wanted to do it all in one day. I rang Darla's number and left her a message on voice mail, asking if she was up for an insane tanking job. She called back two minutes later. "Jesus Christ," Darla said, "why did I agree to this?" "Because you were bored, and wanted to do something fun and exciting?" "Ha ha, fuck you." It was the day before the raid, and we were out on the Mirage Salt Flats, busting rocks—grueling but necessary prep work. Armor degrades in combat—faster if you die, slower if you don't—and in an hours-long battle like the Plaza of the Dancing Snakes, even plate mail will wear away to nothing, leaving you naked before you've murdered your last peasant. The solution is Arneson's Clearcoat, a magical preparation that prevents armor degradation for up to twenty-four hours. Clearcoat's main ingredient is Essence of Gygax, which can only be obtained by mining adamantium nodes. The nodes are shiny rock clusters that spawn in the Flats; each one contains several chunks of adamantium ore and has a two-and-a-half-percent chance of yielding an Essence. You need ten Essences to make one dose of Clearcoat, so we had a long slog ahead of us. But I was OK with that. "How was it really, with your dad?" I asked. "You must have been having a pretty good time, since you stayed so long." "The first week was great," Darla said. "Dad's got this little wind racer he built himself—you know, like a sailboat on wheels? Near where he lives there's a dry lake bed, kind of like this but without the giant scorpions, and if the wind's right, you can get the racer up to seventy, eighty miles an hour, easy." "That does sound like fun." "It was, until I tipped it making a turn and broke the mast." "You OK?" "Scrapes and bruises." Darla shrugged. "But that put an end to the races." "You stayed to help fix it?" "I helped Dad put a new mast on, but me staying, that was more about pissing off my mom." She paused, sizing up a node on the ground in front of her. To mine it you hit it with a pickax; the UI judges your form, and if your aim is off, it can take half a dozen swings. Darla never needed more than three. "Your mom's in Arizona, too?" "No, she moved back to Lynchburg after the divorce." Darla swung her pickax—WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!—and frowned as the node fractured into three chunks of ore, but no Essence. "My parents have one of those 'mature' divorces where they pretend to still be friends, even though they can't stand to be in the same part of the country. The day after I was supposed to go home, she called him, and when she found out I was still there, she got jealous. She tried to play it like she was upset about the racer crash, but really it was just, 'How come Darla never overstays her visits with me?' She started calling every day to see whether I'd left yet, and so of course then I had to stay. It's like this game we play, Who's the Bigger Bitch? I always win. So what about your parents? They divorced?" "Never married. Separated, though, since before I was born." "Whose fault was it?" "His fault," I said. "But her call." "Interesting. So your mom's a bitch too, then." "I wouldn't call her that. Mom's a badass, yeah, but—" "A badass is just a bitch you happen to like." Darla grinned. "I guess that explains why you have the hots for me, huh? Don't deny it, I know it's true." This was my cue to say something like, "I wasn't going to deny it," and then swing the conversation around to how San Francisco is a convenient stopover if you're driving between Oregon and Arizona. But instead I said, "You think you remind me of my mother?" "Don't I?" "The two of you are nothing alike." "Really? I'm not a badass?" "You are, and I like that you are, but you're..." I fumbled for a way to frame the distinction that wouldn't come off as an insult. ".... a different flavor of badass." "Ooh, a different flavor!" Darla laughed. "And what about my cousin? You like his flavor, too?" "Your cousin?" "Earl. The ginormous pussy." "I liked the video." "Yeah, I know you did. Fun fact about YouTube: Not only can you see how many times a video gets watched, you can also track what part people are looking at. Somebody was really interested in the last thirty seconds of that paintball game... So what was it that turned you on? Earl's bare ass, or me pumping a BB into it?" When someone's trying to embarrass the shit out of you, sometimes the best strategy is just to embrace it. "Does it have to be either/or?" I said. "I knew it," Darla said. "Total perv." She turned away, shaking her head, and swung her pickax again. WHAM! WHAM! "Fuck." One chunk of ore. No Essence. I had better luck with my next node, though it took me five swings to crack it. When the rock finally fell apart, nestled among the ore was a glowing pile of silver dust. Already bound to me, the Essence of Gygax shimmered and vanished into my inventory. "Sorry," I said, to Darla's sullen stare. "I'd share if I could." "Yeah, whatever." She scanned the horizon. "Want to go find some griefers to kill?" I asked, guessing that was what she was looking for. "Or some innocent players to grief on?" "I'd love to, but that would only drag this misery out longer... How many of these rocks do we have to smash?" "With a two-point-five percent drop rate, you should expect to farm around four hundred nodes to get all ten Essences. Of course that's the straight average. Depending on the RNG, it could be—" "Yeah, thanks, I get it. Do me a favor?" "What?" "If you ever do get around to making your own MMORPG, leave out this grindy crap. I know the Asperger's crowd eat it up, but it makes me want to throw myself out a window." "How about I put in a special toggle for you?" I said. "Let you skip the grind, while the players who enjoy it can still do it. Everyone's happy." "Swell." WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! "Shit." "What else would you want in a game?" I asked. "If you could have anything." Darla sighed. "Is this your idea of sexy banter?" "Call it market research. I'm honestly interested." "OK... Permadeath." "Permadeath? Really?" "Do I sound uncertain?" "How would you make that work, though?" "How do you think? No resurrection: If your character dies, you've got to start over with a new one." "I know what permadeath is," I said. "But how do you get people to sign up for it? Would you really want to play a game where one mistake could cost you a character you'd invested hundreds of hours in?" "Aren't we doing that already? Think how many thousands of hours' worth of characters are going to be on that raid tomorrow. And EULA will ban every one of them if they get wind we're doing it for pay." "Eula bans are different, though. They're a cost of doing business. They're not fun." "Doesn't mean they couldn't be," Darla said. "What if you could fight the EULA cops? Trial by combat, I'd sign up for that in a heartbeat." "They'd never let you win." "They'd stack the deck, sure. But what if you had a chance, even five percent? You saying you wouldn't go for that?" My immediate thought was that I'd rather not have to deal with EULA at all. But I could see how, to a certain mind-set, being able to fight the law and win was an even more attractive option. "What about technical issues? If you lose a fair fight—or even an unfair one—that's one thing. But what if your internet goes out? What if you're lagging so bad you've got no chance at all?" She shrugged. "Make it so that can't happen." "But you can't do that." "I know you can't." Another shrug. "But we're talking about what I want, right? What you want, and what you can have, those are two different things." Eyeing me significantly: "You should know that." After that we pounded rocks for a while without talking. But then Darla's luck changed—she found two Essences in a row—and with it, her mood. "Hot streak, hot streak!" She collected her bounty and eyed me again, smiling. "So what about you? You know what you'd want in a game?" "Oh sure. I've got a whole list of things." "So tell me one," Darla said. "Come on, I showed you mine." "All right. I—" "And never mind the practical shit," she added. "Tell me an idea you think would be really cool, even if you don't think it could work. Those are the ones worth doing." "OK," I said. "Have you heard of a game called Footsteps After Midnight?" She shook her head. "What is it, some new horror movie tie-in?" "Original IP. And old. Dial-up era." "Dial-up? You talking about a MUD?" "Parts of it were MUDlike. You played a hacker-slash-private investigator caught up in a hunt for a serial killer. You had a sidekick who did fieldwork for you, and the parts where you sent him out to different locations and told him what to do, that played a lot like a traditional text adventure. But to figure out where he would go next, you'd also do things like hack into databases and email accounts. "But that was just the online part of the game," I continued. "The cool thing was, there was also an offline component. When you first started playing, you'd give the game all this personal information: your name, your mailing address, your email address if you had one, your home phone number, and so on. And then, as you made progress through the case—" "The killer would call you," Darla guessed. "Yeah," I said nodding. "And other characters, too. Like, the day after you broke into the central police database, you'd get a threatening call from the chief of detectives: 'Hey, we can't prove it, but we know it was you, knock it off...' And there were packages. The way the game company got around bandwidth limitations was by mailing you stuff. You'd hack the coroner's email and forge an evidence request, and a few days later you'd get a set of crime scene photos." "And the killer?" Darla asked. "What would he send you, body parts?" "A severed finger, at one point," I said. "Other trophies from his victims. And creepy letters and postcards, personalized to make it seem like he was watching you." "OK, I'm sold," Darla said. "This sounds awesome. How come I never heard of this game?" "The company went bankrupt a few months after the game debuted. It was expensive to play, and they couldn't get enough subscribers to cover their overhead. And the few players who did sign up had these, unique customer service issues... Like, one of the questions you'd get asked when you first started playing was what time of day it was OK to call you. But the company forgot about time zones somehow, and also, this was back when most people still had shared landlines. So these phone calls would be coming in at odd hours, and sometimes the person who picked up would be a roommate who didn't know about the game... And it was the same with the packages. Someone's mom would come home early from work and get curious about this envelope from the coroner's office addressed to her kid, and when she opened it, there'd be these photos of a hacked-up body in a bathtub." Darla was hugging herself laughing now. "Oh my God!" she said. "I would pay anything to do that to my mom!" "Well, you're special," I told her. "Most of the players weren't happy about it—or their parents weren't. The game company had the real cops called on them more than once. So they had to shut down." "Is there any way I can still play this game?" Darla asked. "Like a legacy version of the online part of it?" "No, I looked. There's a stub article on Wikipedia about it, but the links are all dead. Nothing else. The only reason I know as much as I do is that my dad has this collection of really old computer game magazines. I was looking through it the last time I visited and came across an article, 'Missteps After Midnight,' about the company going out of business." "So you want to do your own version of this? New and improved?" "Maybe," I said. "The idea's not as original anymore—there are alternate-reality games that have covered a lot of the same ground—but I still think you could do something interesting with it. With advances in technology, especially social media, you could do a much better job of personalizing the experience. And at the same time, it'd be easier to keep control of it, make sure only people who signed up to play got involved in the game." "Fuck that," Darla said. "I want the version that scares the shit out of my friends and family." "We can do another special toggle. A 'give my mom a heart attack' option." "No, fuck that, I'm serious. This is what I mean about practical shit—you barely come up with the idea, and you're already looking for ways to water it down." "Not wanting to send corpse photos to the wrong people is 'watering it down'?" "If the point of the game is to make people feel like they're involved in something real, that's what you should be focused on—how to make them feel that. Instead, you're thinking about how to put limits on it." "Because I don't want to get arrested. Or sued." "So do a EULA: 'This is an intense game, not intended for lightweights, click here if you've got the balls to indemnify us.'" I laughed. "And assuming for the sake of argument that that would hold up legally, how many people would click, do you think?" "I would." "OK, that's one subscriber." "There'd be others. If the game is really cool, cool players will find it." "But I don't just want cool players. Uncool players have money to spend, too. And there are more of them." Darla frowned impatiently. "Is the money even that important, though?" "To a profit-making business? Yeah, it's pretty important." "No, seriously, think about it: Footsteps After Midnight came out, what, thirty years ago? Forty years ago?" "Forty-five." "Which means the guys who made the game are probably dead now, or drooling in an old folks' home somewhere." "Drooling and bankrupt," I said. "Yeah, but so what? Their business tanked, but a half century later you read about what they did and you're like, 'Whoa, that sounds cool! I'd like to try that.'" "OK, but Darla—" "And isn't that better? Wouldn't you rather go broke doing something cool than get rich doing something lame?" I'd never seen Darla get this passionate before. I'd seen her excited, but there was always an element of flippancy to her enthusiasm, a sense that she was herself too cool to take anything that seriously. That flippancy was gone now. She sounded earnest. This was another cue, a signal for me to put my own opinions on hold and really hear her out. I didn't need to agree with her, but I did need to let her know that I was paying attention—that I took her seriously. But we were deep in what I considered my turf now—business—and I'd already decided that Darla, whatever her other skills, had no head for that. So I plowed ahead with my own way of looking at things. Which was, after all, the right way. "The thing is," I told her, using that know-it-all voice that women find endlessly endearing, "the thing is, Darla, you don't need to choose. You can do something really cool and turn a profit at it..." "Not if wanting to turn a profit makes you a pussy about taking risks." Her voice grew mocking. "'We'll put in a special toggle, Darla.' 'We'll make everybody happy, Darla.' Except you won't. You'll just ruin what's good about the idea." "Darla—" I broke off, laughing at her sudden fury. Probably the worst thing I could have done. "Fine, don't listen to me." Stone-faced and indignant now. "Make a lame-ass game, I don't care. I hope you make a billion dollars." "Darla, wait," I said, too late. "I'm sorry, OK? I do want to hear your thoughts about this, I just—" "Fuck you and your sorry. I know what you want." Hefting her pickax: "But I've got a ton of rocks to break, so you're out of luck. I'm going this way. You can fuck off that way." "Darla, come on... Darla..." But she was already walking away. Well played, genius, I thought. Yet at the same time I couldn't really bring myself to feel bad. Obviously you couldn't make a game that might panic innocent bystanders. How was it unreasonable to say that? Assuming that Darla's anger would be fleeting, I gave it half an hour, in the meanwhile collecting another two Essences. Then I started edging back towards her, watching out of the corner of my eye for the telltale silver sparkle that would signal she too had found another Essence. Once I saw that, I moved closer, my plan being to act as if her blowup had never happened. But I was barely within earshot when she said, "I told you to fuck off," without even looking at me. So on that day, at least, California and Oregon weren't so close together after all.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 21

 MUD — Multi-User Dungeon. One of the earliest forms of virtual world, MUDs originated as multiplayer versions of classic interactive fiction games like Colossal Cave and Zork. Most MUDs are entirely text-based. Players enter commands using simple sentences (e.g., WALK NORTH, or PUT OIL IN LANTERN) and the results of their actions are described in prose... MUDs remain popular even today. Their lack of graphics means that they can run on almost any computer system. Where a cutting-edge video game might require as big a production staff as a major motion picture, a MUD can be scripted by a single author. And while fantasy and science-fiction themes are the most common, the lack of commercial pressure means that MUDs can and do exist in every conceivable genre: There are spy MUDs, horror MUDs, Western MUDs, educational MUDs, religious MUDs, and, of course, pornographic MUDs. —Lady Ada's Lexicon

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 22

Location: A Clearing at the Edge of Town You stand in a grassy clearing on the outskirts of a small Midwestern town. It is dusk of a summer evening, and the first fireflies have begun to appear. A path leads east through a sparse thicket of woods. You see lights shining beyond the trees and hear the faint sound of calliope music. The clearing is littered with brightly colored handbills. > TAKE HANDBILL You pick up one of the handbills. > LOOK AT HANDBILL The handbill is illustrated with a drawing of a carousel. The handbill reads:  Green Meadow Midsummer Mystery Carnival  Thrills! Amusements! Contests of Brain and Brawn!  Prove Your Worth and Win a STUPENDOUS TROPHY!!! A breeze gusts from the direction of the woods, bringing a smell of hot dogs and cotton candy. The handbills flutter and dance about the clearing, like children excited by the prospect of the carnival. > TAKE HANDBILL You reach for another handbill, but realize that it is identical to the one you are already holding and decide not to bother. ... ... Mr. Jones materializes beside you. Mr. Jones is here. > LOOK AT MR. JONES Mr. Jones has not created a physical description for himself. > SAY, "HELLO, MR. JONES." ... ... > SHOW HELP SCREEN TO MR. JONES You call up a handy tutorial screen and show it to Mr. Jones. ... ... Mr. Jones says, "This seems quite primitive." > SAY, "YOU WANTED TO EXPERIENCE THE FULL POTENTIAL OF THE MEDIUM. MODERN MMORPGS EVOLVED FROM TEXT-BASED ADVENTURES LIKE THIS ONE." Mr. Jones says, "Very well. What do I do?" > SAY, "FOLLOW ME." Mr. Jones is now following you. > WALK EAST You follow the path through the sparse woods. Mr. Jones follows you. Location: The Entrance to the Carnival A wooden archway strung with lights and festooned with banners marks the entrance to the Green Meadow Carnival. Standing in front of the arch is a Tout in a cheap suit. "Ladies! Gentlemen! Children of all ages!" he cries. "Come right in! Fun and games will be had by all! And for the deserving among you... This prize!" The Tout gestures dramatically at a pedestal, spotlit from above, upon which rests a stupendous trophy! > LOOK AT TROPHY The stupendous trophy is truly stupendous! It is big, and shiny, and totally awesome! To possess it would make you the envy of everyone in town! Mr. Jones reaches for the trophy. The Tout smacks his hand away and says, "Careful, pal. That's not yours yet." Mr. Jones tries to hit the Tout. The Tout dodges the blow and says, "Whoa!" Mr. Jones tries to punch the Tout. The Tout sidesteps and says, "Hey, knock it off!" Mr. Jones tries to kick the Tout. The Tout ducks backwards and says, "What is your problem, asshole?" > SAY, "YOU CAN'T FIGHT HIM. NOT A COMBAT GAME." Mr. Jones says, "How do I get the trophy, then?" > SAY, "ASK HIM." Mr. Jones asks the Tout how to get the trophy. "An excellent question!" the Tout says. "Throughout the carnival, you will find contests and other challenges that allow you to win *PRIZE TICKETS* like this one." He holds up a gleaming golden ticket. "Collect 25 of these tickets, bring them to me, and the stupendous trophy will be yours!" "But wait!" the Tout says. "There's more! Bring me an additional 5 tickets -- 30 in all -- and I will throw in an additional prize!" The Tout gestures dramatically at a velvet curtain hanging beside the trophy pedestal. A drumroll sounds, and the curtain is swept aside to reveal... "A year's supply of Turtle Wax!" ... Mr. Jones says, "Why would I put wax on a tortoise?" > SAY, "IT'S A JOKE. NOT A VERY FUNNY ONE. GOOGLE IT IF YOU ARE CURIOUS." Mr. Jones says, "I will take your word for it. What now?" > ENTER THE CARNIVAL You step through the arch and enter the carnival. Mr. Jones follows you. Location: Main Carnival Thoroughfare, West End You are at the west end of a broad thoroughfare lined with carnival attractions. From the east you hear the sound of the calliope, louder now. To the north you see a kissing booth. To the south is a high striker. > SAY, "EACH OF THE ATTRACTIONS IS A PUZZLE THAT AWARDS A PRIZE TICKET FOR SOLVING IT." > SAY, "WHAT WOULD YOU L Mr. Bungle is here! Appearing seemingly out of nowhere, Mr. Bungle runs up to you, dressed in a heavy trenchcoat. "Balloon smugglers!" he cries, ripping open the coat to reveal a perfectly shaped pair of double-D breasts. Before you can duck away he clamps his hands around the back of your head and kisses you full on the mouth, ramming his tongue down your throat. You sputter and choke and beat your hands feebly against him, but you cannot escape Mr. Bungle's steely grip, and as he grinds against you, you feel both horribly violated and undeniably aroused. Just as you are about to pass out, Mr. Bungle breaks the kiss and steps back. "Gazonga!" he says, eyes going wide. You look down and see that the perfect breasts have somehow been transferred from his chest to yours! "Let's motorboat!" says Mr. Bungle. He buries his face in your ample cleavage and buzzes his lips. Once again, your sense of violation wars with feelings of arousal. Arousal wins; you swoon. "Dee-licious!" Mr. Bungle says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Double-dee-licious, I should say!" Then he spins around, bends over, farts explosively, and jets out of sight with his coattails flapping. ... Mr. Jones says, "What." Mr. Jones says, "What was that?" > SAY, "GRIEFERS ARE EVERYWHERE. I AM SORRY." Mr. Jones says, "This is a very stupid game so far." > SAY, "DON'T GIVE UP YET. TRY ONE OF THE ATTRACTIONS." Mr. Jones looks around. Mr. Jones says, "Not the kissing booth." > WALK SOUTH You approach the high striker. Mr. Jones follows you. Location: The High Striker A classic test of strength, the high striker is a twenty-foot-tall tower with a bell mounted at the top. The goal is to ring the bell by striking a lever at the tower's base and propelling a puck up a metal cable. Vertical gradations painted on the tower indicate ascending levels of strength, from "90-pound weakling" near the bottom to "Man of Steel!" at the height of the bell. A Tout, who appears to have been cloned from the one at the front gate, is leaning against a guy-wire beside the high striker. "Step right up!" he calls. "Ring the bell and win a *PRIZE TICKET*!!! Cave Boy, show them how it's done!" A young boy in a leopard-skin loincloth steps out of the shadows, holding a big wooden mallet. He strikes a pose, flexing his biceps, then winds up and slams the mallet down onto the lever. The puck goes flying to the top of the tower and rings the bell! "Well done, Cave Boy, well done!" The Tout steps forward to take the mallet, then shoos the boy back into the shadows. "All right," the Tout says, "who's next?" > SAY, "GO AHEAD." Mr. Jones takes the mallet from the Tout. Mr. Jones swings the mallet at the lever. The blow seems at least as powerful as the cave boy's, but the result is far less impressive: The puck ascends only a third of the way up the tower, to the level marked "Assistant furniture mover." "It's all in the wrists," says the Tout. "Go on, try again." Mr. Jones swings the mallet at the lever. The blow lands even harder this time, but the puck only rises to the halfway point, "Popeye's understudy." "Looks like somebody didn't eat his spinach," the Tout says. "But give it another try." Mr. Jones swings the mallet at the lever. The thunderous blow sets the cable quivering, but the puck barely makes it past "90-pound weakling." "Jeez," says the Tout. "Are you low blood sugar or something?" Mr. Jones starts to swing the mallet at the Tout, but fearing he will only embarrass himself further, he decides not to. > SAY, "STILL NOT A COMBAT GAME. THINK IT THROUGH. SOMETHING CHANGED BETWEEN THE TIME CAVE BOY TOOK HIS SWING AND THE TIME YOU DID. WHAT WAS IT?" ... Mr. Jones examines the guy-wire. > LOOK AT GUY-WIRE The guy-wire is a length of metal cable that holds the high striker steady and keeps it from falling over... or at least, that's what you'd expect it to do. Upon closer examination, you realize that the wire, which should be under tension, actually has some slack in it. The bottom of the guy-wire is attached to a peg in the ground, but you cannot tell how it is attached up top -- the wire just vanishes into a hole in the back of the tower behind the bell. This leads to a final observation: The cable that the puck rides on is the exact same sort of cable the guy-wire is made of... and it looks like it might be a bit slack, as well. Curious. ... Mr. Jones says, "I understand." Mr. Jones orders the Tout to lean against the guy-wire. "I'm sorry," the Tout says, "carnival gaming regulations require me to stand here and observe while you make your attempt." Mr. Jones threatens the Tout with the mallet, but the gesture is so ineffectual that, out of kindness, we are going to pretend that he does not do this. ... Mr. Jones says, "Are you allowed to help?" > SAY, "YES. YOU'VE GOT IT." > LEAN ON GUY-WIRE As you approach the guy-wire, the Tout becomes flustered. "Here now!" he says, "this is highly irregular!" He doesn't stop you, though, so you lean your weight against it. As the wire goes taut, you hear the creak of what sounds like a pulley hidden in the top of the tower, and the cable on the front of the tower goes taut, too. The puck should rise much more smoothly now, with less friction. > SAY, "GO FOR IT." Mr. Jones swings the mallet at the lever. A mighty blow! The puck rockets up the cable and rings the bell! "HIGHLY irregular," the Tout grumbles. But a crowd of onlookers has begun to gather, and fearing that his secret will get out, he quickly hands each of you a golden *PRIZE TICKET*. "Now scram!" he shouts, shooing you back to the thoroughfare. Location: Main Carnival Thoroughfare, West End Mr. Jones is here. You now have 1 *PRIZE TICKET*, out of a possible 30. Mr. Jones says, "Do all of the puzzles require the help of a second player?" > SAY, "NO. MOST HAVE MULTIPLE SOLUTIONS, AND IT IS POSSIBLE TO GET THE TROPHY SOLO. YOU *MIGHT* NEED SOMEONE ELSE'S HELP TO GET THE TURTLE WAX. I CAN'T REMEMBER." > SAY, "THIS CARNIVAL IS A SUBZONE OF A MUCH LARGER MUD CALLED 'PLANET I.F.' THERE ARE OTHER ZONES THAT REQUIRE A TEAM EFFORT THROUGHOUT." > SAY, "I KNOW OF AT LEAST ONE PUZZLE WHOSE SOLUTION REQUIRES A HUNDRED PLAYERS TO ACT IN TANDEM, PERFORMING A SPECIFIC SEQUENCE OF ACTIONS WITHIN A SHORT TIME PERIOD. VERY DIFFICULT, ESPECIALLY WITH GRIEFERS AROUND." Mr. Jones says, "Interesting." Mr. Jones says, "This type of game must be relatively easy to produce." > SAY, "VERY EASY. SETTING UP THE SERVER CAN BE TRICKY, BUT THERE ARE DEVELOPMENT KITS THAT DO THE HARD WORK FOR YOU, AND LET ANYONE WITH A STANDARD BROWSER LOG IN AND PLAY." Mr. Jones says, "Interesting." Mr. Jones says, "I will look around some more. Follow me." > FOLLOW MR. JONES You are now following Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones walks east. You follow Mr. Jones. Location: Main Thoroughfare, Carousel Intersection At this point, the thoroughfare intersects another pathway leading north and south. At the center of the intersection is a carousel, blaring calliope music. Looking around the corners of the intersection clockwise from the northeast, you can also see: a ring toss, a hot dog cart, a water pistol range, and a fortune-teller's tent. Ms. Pang waves to you from the carousel. Mr. Jones walks east. You start to follow him, but something in the calliope music makes you turn around and walk back towards the carousel. Ms. Pang waves to you from the carousel. > WHO IS MS. PANG? I don't know who Ms. Pang is. Ms. Pang waves to you from the carousel. > FOLLOW MR. JONES Mr. Jones is not here. Ms. Pang waves to you from the carousel. > WALK EAST No. Ms. Pang waves to you from the carousel. > GO CAROUSEL You climb aboard the carousel. Location: Aboard the Carousel You are riding on an old-fashioned merry-go-round. Teams of wooden horses bob up and down in time to the music of a steam-powered calliope. As the ride picks up speed, you notice a metal pole that has been erected beside the carousel. A mechanical arm extends down and inward from the top of the pole, so that its tip is almost within reach of the outermost ring of horses as they move past. Attached to the tip of the arm is a shiny brass ring with a *PRIZE TICKET* stuffed inside it! Never mind the brass ring. The brass ring is not important. You turn your full attention to Ms. Pang, who sits on a bench between two rows of horses. She is a striking ethnic Chinese woman; though small in stature, something about the way she carries herself suggests it would be a fatal mistake to underestimate her. You should do whatever she asks. Ms. Pang assumes you have already recognized her, but to avoid wasting time, she points to a small blue pin on her blouse. The pin speaks in your voice: "It's me, John Chu." > SAY, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" Ms. Pang says, "I was going to ask you the same question." > SAY, "I'M WORKING. I'M BUSY." Ms. Pang says, "Indeed." Ms. Pang whips out a computer tablet and shows you the screen. You see yourself -- or, rather, a very convincing copy of yourself -- leading Mr. Jones into the carnival funhouse. The two of you are soon lost in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Ms. Pang says, "We have a few minutes. Why did you bring Mr. Jones here?" > SAY, "HE IS STUDYING MMORPGS. MUDS ARE THE FOUNTAINHEAD." Ms. Pang says, "I know. I have done my homework. But why this MUD? Why not something more iconic?" > SAY, "I WANTED TO TRY A DIFFERENT THEME, TO SHOW HIM IT'S NOT ALL D&D AND STAR WARS. I USED TO PLAY PUZZLE GAMES LIKE THIS WITH MY MOM WHEN I WAS A KID. OUR VERSION OF BEDTIME STORIES." Ms. Pang says, "That is touching. But I don't believe you." > SHRUG You shrug. Ms. Pang says, "I think you chose this MUD for the software it uses." Mr. Bungle is here! Appearing seemingly out of nowhere, Mr. Bungle leaps onto the carousel, dressed in a heavy trenchcoat. "Check out MY trophy!" he cries, ripping open the coat to reveal a truly stupendous penis. You gape at it, awestruck, wondering how he manages to keep his balance while sporting such an enormous member. "But wait, there's more!" Mr. Bungle says. Opening up a jar of Turtle Wax, he anoints himself and begins rubbing the creamy wax into his foreskin. The truly stupendous penis becomes even more stupendous! "We're gonna go a gusher!" Mr. Bungle warns. You scramble for cover but it's too late. He ejaculates, like a proverbial fire hose, spraying semen everywhere: onto the wooden horses, into the calliope, through the brass ring, and of course, all over you. Drenched from head to toe, you feel horribly violated, yet strangely aroused. If not for embarrassment about the inadequate size of your own manhood, you might even unzip your fly and join in. Mr. Bungle's orgasm goes on and on. He begins to shrink and shrivel up as his entire body mass is converted into hot spunk. "Veni, veni, veni," he croaks, until at last, turning completely inside out, he vanishes into his own urethra, leaving you to enjoy... Location: Cum-Covered Carousel ... ... ... Ms. Pang says, "Your little hobby attracts some sick fucking people, you know that?" > SAY, "YOU DON'T HAVE TROLLS IN THE PRC?" Ms. Pang smiles at your pathetically transparent attempt to get her to divulge information about herself. Ms. Pang says, "As I was saying. This MUD uses the MUDMAKER software suite. All versions of MUDMAKER have security flaws in the server, which is why griefers are so rampant here. But this particular build also has a critical client-side flaw that can allow hackers to gain root privileges on certain users' computers." Ms. Pang says, "I believe you are aware of this. I believe you brought Mr. Jones here so that you, or a confederate, can try to hack Mr. Jones's system. This hacking attempt is futile and reckless. If Smith notices, he will terminate your relationship with Mr. Jones. Do you remember how I told you not to disappoint me?" > SAY, "I REMEMBER YOU PROMISED TO PAY ME TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS A WEEK. IS THERE A PROBLEM AT YOUR BANK?" Ms. Pang says, "Your money is coming soon. In the meantime, you need to stop your foolish sleuthing attempts. Smith is not an idiot, and you are not nearly as clever as you think you are. The fact that I am here now should be proof enough of that. If you screw this up, I will make you very, very sorry." > SAY, "I THINK IT IS WEIRD THAT YOU'RE TRYING TO SCARE ME LIKE THIS. IF YOU ARE WHAT YOU SAY YOU ARE, THE EASIEST WAY TO GET ME TO DO WHAT YOU WANT IS TO PAY ME WHAT YOU PROMISED. IF YOU WANT TO FREAK ME OUT TOO, THEN HAVE SOMEONE KNOCK ON MY DOOR AND HAND ME A SACK OF CASH. THAT WOULD MAKE AN IMPRESSION." ... Ms. Pang says, "Very well. You will get your money. And regret your words." Ms. Pang says, "He is leaving the funhouse. He is bored and wants to quit. I am having your double tell him to meet you back at the Game Lobby. Go now." > SAY, "WAIT. HOW DO I CONTACT YOU IF I NEE Ms. Pang leaves the carousel. > FOLLOW MS. PANG Ms. Pang is not here. Mr. Bungle is here! Appearing seemingly out of nowhere, Mr. Bungle bounds up to you, dressed in a heavy trenchcoat. "Who likes DONKEYS!?" he cries...

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 23

 context fail — Confusing one social, political, or technological environment for another, with disastrous consequences. A popular, if apocryphal, example is the avid video gamer who gets hurt after forgetting that in real life there is no reset button. Other examples include acting as if you are anonymous when you are not; calling your spouse by your lover's name; telling a racist joke to the wrong group of friends; or expecting a stranger to show the same patience and understanding as someone who knows you well.  Context lag occurs when switching to a new environment after an extended period in an old one. Rapid switching or overlap between multiple environments can lead to context collapse. The practice of remaining continually aware of one's environment and the rules that apply there is context vigilance. —Lady Ada's Lexicon Three days later, I still don't have the money. And it's not just Ms. Pang who's delinquent—I haven't received my second week's payment from Mr. Jones, either, and neither he nor Smith is responding to my messages. I do have a brief conversation with Mom. She's kind enough to not say I told you so, but I can tell she's thinking it. Mom sounds better rested than the last time we spoke, which makes sense—the culprit in the Delhi plane crash has been apprehended. Instead of a terrorist mastermind, he turns out to be an emotionally disturbed fifteen-year-old boy, Sunil Gupta. Sunil was angry at his parents for making him stay home while they went to Goa on holiday. He decided to get even by hacking into the air traffic control system at Indira Gandhi Airport and messing with their flight. Sunil has told authorities that he didn't mean to murder his parents; he just wanted to scare them, by engineering a near-miss between their small commuter plane and a much larger jet. But the commuter plane went down, killing all eleven people on board, and only quick work by the jet's pilots kept it from suffering a similar fate. I would love to ask Mom for more details, but she can't even confirm that she was working on the case, so like the rest of the world I am forced to rely on news reports and net gossip. The big question on everyone's mind is, did Sunil Gupta act alone? On CNN, the pundits are reluctant to accept that a teenager could crack the ATC system's sophisticated encryption without help. But after consulting Wikipedia and discovering that India is in Asia, they grudgingly acknowledge that Sunil is probably a whiz at math. There's a lot of wild speculation about how the hack worked—other than a vague pronouncement that they have "identified and fixed the problem," the authorities have no comment. But an unsourced rumor that goes viral says that the point of entry was a smart coffeemaker in the air traffic control tower. Rather than attack the ATC system directly, the rumor goes, Sunil used the insecure Bluetooth connection in the coffee machine to execute a "cyber bank shot" into the ATC computer. This strikes me as bullshit, but the CNN people love it because it sounds cool and raises a host of other questions that they can fill time blathering about: Should internet-connected appliances be banned from sensitive areas like air traffic control towers? What's a coffee machine doing in Delhi, anyway? Don't Indians drink tea? Does the presence of the coffeemaker suggest that some of the air traffic controllers are foreigners? From a Muslim country, maybe? What do people drink in Pakistan? Idiots, I think, but the fact that I am watching this—and the commercials that come with it—means that it's not just the TV people who are stupid. By the time I log out of CNN, the virus has infected me: I spend another hour wandering the net, looking for evidence that the coffee machine story might actually be true. I don't find any, but my search leads me to Kowloon Bay Daily, a Hong Kong–based news site that specializes in virtual re-creations of crime scenes. They have a 3D mock-up of the crash. A crude simulacrum of Sunil Gupta hunches over a computer desk, beaming radio waves out of the back of his laptop. The waves strike an air traffic control tower, causing a red coffeepot icon to flash ominously. Overhead, a jumbo jet and a prop plane converge. At the last second the jet increases power and pulls up; the backthrust from its engines forces down the nose of the prop plane and sends it spiraling into the ground. The cartoonish nature of the graphics makes this even more horrific and tasteless than it sounds, but I don't look away. When it's over, I decide to check out the rest of the website. Which is how I end up in another airport, Suvarnabhumi International in Bangkok, watching a nervous Korean man enter the main terminal. A floating caption identifies him as General Han Yong-chol, "believed until recently to be a trusted member of Kim Jong-un's inner circle." As the general approaches the security line, a woman—"Unknown Female"—steps in his path and spritzes him in the face with the contents of a tiny spray bottle. The general clutches his throat and falls down convulsing. Unknown Female keeps walking, but she doesn't make it far—by the time security guards intercept her, she is limping and gasping, and before they can slap cuffs on her, she collapses. Unknown Female looks surprised by this turn of events, but she shouldn't be: The stuff in her spray bottle is VX nerve agent, one of the deadliest poisons on the planet. Though it was designed as a weapon of mass destruction, VX has been used in at least three political assassinations tied to North Korean intelligence, including the 2017 murder of Kim Jong-un's half brother, Kim Jong-nam. I ask Googlebot to find me a more sober news report about the murder of General Han. I send Mom the link, along with a note. If we assume Kim Jong-un ordered the hit on the general, I ask her, could that be a sign of bigger problems inside the regime? And if there is some sort of palace intrigue going on in Pyongyang, could that be the reason I haven't heard from Smith or Mr. Jones? Forty-five minutes pass before Mom sends back a one-word response: "Creative."

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 24

It's after midnight. I'm about to log off when i get an instant message from Anja, asking me to meet her in the Game Lobby. I find her at the bar. "What's up?" "I have a game in a few minutes," she says, "and I was hoping you could come along." "Dungeon run?" She shakes her head. "Habitual Offender." I smile. "Going to do some crimes?" "Going to rob some banks. We're trying for the Butch and Sundance achievement on the South American server." "Is this a paying gig?" "No, just for fun... But I'd really appreciate it if you'd come." From the way she says this I know she doesn't want me along for my bank-robbing skills. "Is this about a guy?" She nods. "Javier," she says. "I met him when I was leveling up that cleric for Ray." "You want my read on him?" Another nod. "If you don't mind. He seems really nice, but... you know." When Anja first joined the crew, she was dating a guy who went by the name of Hans Steuri. They'd met through Reboot, a virtual support group that helps severely disabled people adjust to life online. Hans claimed to be a nineteen-year-old from Switzerland, a one-time Olympic hopeful who, like Anja, had been paralyzed in an accident—in his case, a ski jump gone wrong. Anja brought Hans along on a level grind one day. I took an instant dislike to him. He was friendly, but aggressively so, like a used-car dealer desperate to make a sale. He also played badly and didn't listen to advice. But Anja seemed smitten with him, so I did my best to make nice. Then Hans got a phone call. He tried to take it in private but screwed up the b-channel. His voice changed: He suddenly sounded older, and American. The woman he was speaking to, who was obviously his wife, seemed to think he was out showing a house to someone. When Hans realized we could hear him, he hung up on her in mid-sentence. He made a half-hearted attempt at bluffing, but between my Googling and Anja's pointed questions, we soon got the truth out of him. Hans's real name was Harvey Gladstone; he was a forty-eight-year-old Realtor from Miami. He confessed that he had never been on skis in his life, and aside from "a touch of sciatica," he was completely able-bodied. Listening to him struggle to explain himself, I couldn't quite work out whether meeting girls at Reboot was just a creepy pickup strategy, or if there was some additional kink involved. But that was more information than I needed. Anja was mortified. She pronounced Harvey dead to her. But the next day she came to me in a panic. Harvey had gotten a new online ID to get around her block, and had approached her in the Game Lobby, wanting to talk things over. She pronounced him dead again. Half an hour later he was back, disguised in a new avatar; she recognized him by his body language. She didn't know what to do. Harvey knew her routine and her favorite online hangouts; she didn't want to have to change all that, or get a new ID herself. And even more so than for most people, leaving the internet entirely wasn't a reasonable option for her. I told her I'd take care of it. I reached out to Griefnet, the cybervigilante group, and called in a favor. I don't know what they did, but less than twenty-four hours later, Anja got an email of a recording in which a scared-sounding Harvey swore he would never bother her, or anyone else at Reboot, ever again. Anja was relieved. She was also grateful. I tried to discourage the latter sentiment, because I guessed where it might lead, and I didn't want the responsibility of vetting all her future boyfriends. But some jobs fall to you whether you want them or not. It has become a thing, when Anja meets a guy she likes, that she asks for my impression. Is he as nice as he seems, or should she be wary? And while we're on the subject: Do I think he likes her, too? As Jolene is quick to remind me, I take advantage of Anja's good nature and her willingness to work overtime—more than I should. But I try to treat that as a two-way street. If Anja wants something from me, even something I'm not comfortable with, something I wouldn't ordinarily say yes to, I do my best to accommodate her. To maintain the karmic balance between us. That balance was thrown out of whack when I infected her computer with Smith's malware package. According to Mom's tech people, the malware is primarily spyware. Like all code that operates at a root level, it has the potential to be destructive, but its main function is surveillance: to keep tabs on what Anja sees and says and does, and to open her files to inspection. Even if Smith decided to turn the malware into a weapon, there are limits to what damage it could do. Google was right: Anja's life support is controlled by a separate, independent computer system. The malware can't touch it. Unless, maybe, there's a coffeepot in the room. So I haven't put Anja's physical safety at risk. But I have sold out her privacy, which is still bad, even with Mom's tacit approval. Focused on the mystery of Mr. Jones—and the money—I managed to avoid acknowledging this until after I got Anja to download the software. Now I'm feeling guilty. Which, like apologizing when you're not sorry, is self-indulgent bullshit. But I can still try to address the balance. And if Anja wants to know whether some guy she met on the internet is genuinely trustworthy, or only seems to be, I suppose I can provide some insight into that. "You're sure Javier won't mind you bringing someone else along?" I ask. "We're going as a group," Anja says. "Javier's bringing his sister and her boyfriend. We've got this cool SUV, too," she adds, "all tricked out for the bank run. You could be the driver, if you'd like." "No, that's OK," I say. "You really want to know if this Javier is worth your time? Then you need to be the driver. And you need to pretend you're not very good at it."

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 25

While I was Anja's go-to for screening potential boyfriends, there were other romance-related topics she couldn't discuss with me—or with Ray. Darla wouldn't have been my choice for sex counseling either, but I can see why Anja picked her. A few days after the second Zuul'titlan raid, we arranged to meet up for a level grind in the House by the Crossroads. I was late, and when I got to the meeting place I found Ray harvesting magic herbs by the roadside. He was alone, but judging by the irked look on his face, he hadn't been for long. "Because poop," Ray said, before I could ask. "What?" "We were coming down from Lookout Point," he explained, gesturing towards the hill I had just descended, "and we passed the spot with the outhouse quest, you know, the one with the goblin?" "Proctor." Proctor the Traveling Salesgoblin, who has gotten himself trapped in an outhouse. He wants you to kill owlbears in the surrounding woods and collect the scraps of soft parchment they are carrying. Bring him eight scraps and he will reward you with a handful of warm and smelly diamonds. "Yeah, I remember that quest." "Everyone remembers it, it's disgusting," Ray said. "Anyway, Darla sees the outhouse, and she starts riffing on all the different quests that involve poop." "It's true, there are a lot of them." Spend time leveling up characters in Call to Wizardry and you realize that someone on the design team has a thing for scatological humor. There's even a poop-related fishing quest, where you have to use a lump of unicorn dung as a lure to attract a sea monster. "Yeah, so Darla's going through the whole list. And then she looks over at Anja and she's like, 'Hey Anja, how do you poop?'" "Oh God," I said. "Was Anja upset?" "No, actually, she was cool with it," Ray said. "Now that Anja's had time to get used to her, I think she kind of likes the fact that Darla doesn't tiptoe around her condition the way most people do. So that's fine, but the thing is, I don't want to know how Anja poops. I mean, if it's one question, OK, I can close my ears and ignore it. But of course it's not one question, it's a whole goddamn topic of conversation: What sort of container does it go into? Who empties it? How often? Are there hoses? And then, and then, Darla starts talking about this fashion model she heard about who's got Crohn's disease, and her thing, right, her signature, is to be photographed with her colostomy bag showing. "And hey"—he put up his hands defensively—"I think it's great, you know, that we live in an enlightened time when people with gross medical issues can have fulfilling careers and feel empowered and whatever. OK? But I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to have to dwell on it. Especially since I know the gross-out factor is the only reason Darla's even interested. "So I don't want to hear about it, but I don't say that, because it'll make things worse, and also, I don't want to hurt Anja's feelings. But that doesn't matter either, of course, because Darla's like a goddamned bloodhound for stuff that bugs people. "So I've got my head down, I'm minding my business, I'm praying for a change of subject, and suddenly Darla is like, 'Hey, Ray, why so quiet? You don't like to talk about pooping? Pooping's natural, Ray. The Pope poops. Jesus pooped—in fact, I'll bet He shit Himself while He was up on the cross...'" "Yeah, OK," I said. "I get the picture." "Do you?" Looking at me pointedly. "I'm so glad... So anyway, I told Darla to fuck off. Which wouldn't have worked either, but Anja took pity on me. She got Darla to go take a walk with her. So that's why I'm here all alone with this pissed-off expression on my face. Because poop." "I'll have a talk with Darla." Ray laughed. "Yeah, like that's going to make a difference... Have you got an answer to my question, yet? The one about how long?" "I'm working on it, Ray." "Work faster."

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 26

"Atenção, vadia!" The motorcyclist yells as Anja cuts into his lane. Then he swerves onto the sidewalk, hits a woman pushing a stroller, and gets catapulted into the side of the Ministério do Turismo. The federal police in the cruiser behind us look over at the crash but otherwise don't react—Anja didn't actually hit the guy, so the accident does not count as vehicular assault. When she runs a red light, forcing an old man in the crosswalk to drop his cane and leap for the curb, the cops yawn. We are westbound on the Eixo Monumental, a massive twelve-lane thoroughfare that runs through the heart of Brazil's capital, Brasília. This stretch of the Eixo is lined with government office buildings—ministries of trade, finance, culture, energy, planning, defense. Our first bank is a kilometer away, in the commercial sector on the far side of the Eixo Rodoviário. Anja's date, Javier Messner, rides shotgun in the front seat of our armor-plated SUV. Javier presents as a slim young white guy with blue eyes, brown hair, and a neatly trimmed beard. Both his appearance and his story—he's a twenty-year-old barista who lives and works in Buenos Aires—check out on social media. A crosscheck on Ancestry.com shows that Javier's family emigrated to Argentina from Bavaria before the Second World War—so no, he is not descended from fugitive Nazis. Javier and Anja converse in a mix of Spanish and German. Even in the latter tongue, Javier sounds completely laid-back, and he is untroubled by Anja's driving. A few kilometers ago, just after we left the garage where we picked up the SUV, he suggested that Anja make a left turn, and she instead pulled a hard right, directly into the path of an oncoming semi. Javier stayed calm, waited for Anja to finish swerving around the truck, and then said laughing, "Das andere links." The other left. Javier's sister, seventeen-year-old Blanca, is more intense. She sits behind Javier, fiddling with the submachine gun in her lap in a way that suggests she is eager to get on with tonight's crime spree. But Blanca is also disciplined: Despite her impatience, she does not take potshots at pedestrians the way Darla surely would in the same situation. Blanca's boyfriend, sixteen-year-old Bruno Ribeiro, is originally from Brasília, though he moved to Argentina with his mother after his parents divorced. Bruno marvels at what a great job the game designers have done of modeling his native city. To Blanca's embarrassment, he keeps pointing out landmarks and commenting on how well-rendered they are. "My God," Blanca says finally. "Why not just tattoo 'I'm a newbie' on your forehead?" I sit all the way in the back with an assortment of heavy weapons. There's a roof hatch directly above me, so if need be I can stand up and shoot rockets at pursuing vehicles. But for now I just sit quiet and listen to Anja and Javier. I'm using subtitles for translation so I can hear the actual sound of their voices. So far my gut is telling me that Javier is an OK guy. A little too mellow for my taste, maybe, but Anja seems to like that. After several more traffic violations we reach the street where the bank is located. From a block away we hear gunfire—a robbery is already in progress. Following standard in-game etiquette, Anja pulls over and waits for the other crew to finish. Javier takes advantage of the delay to go over the plan one more time. The amount of cash in the bank's vault varies depending on how often it's been looted in the past hour, but it will always contain a special money sack made of red cloth. Stealing that starts a clock on the Butch and Sundance achievement. We'll then have ninety minutes to collect four other red sacks from banks in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, and Peru. Habitual Offender squeezes South America's geography into a few hundred virtual square kilometers, creating a sort of greatest-hits version of the continent, which is what makes this grand tour possible. Brasília to Buenos Aires, for example, a three-thousand-kilometer journey in reality, is just a fifteen-minute commute in the game world—though if you're being shot at by police, it's a long fifteen minutes. You can hit the banks in any order. We have tentatively decided on a clockwise route of Brasília to Buenos Aires to Santiago to La Paz to Lima. Javier double-checks that everyone is still cool with this. Everyone is. "Let's get on with it," Blanca says. At the bank, the gunfire has ceased, and ambulance crews are hauling away bodies. They work quickly. "OK," Javier says. "John, do you mind standing guard while the rest of us go inside?" "No problem." There are griefers here too, of course, and the last thing you want when you're pulling a heist is to have some clown take off with your getaway car. Anja parks in the bank's front lot, and she and the others get out. Anja and Javier, like Blanca, are armed with submachine guns; Bruno wields a combat shotgun. In the real world this would tend to draw attention, but Habitual Offender is an open-carry universe. So long as you don't aim your gun directly at someone, security guards will ignore it. While the others proceed inside the bank, I stand up in the roof hatch of the SUV. I am holding a minigun—a heavy, six-barreled rotary machine gun that can fire five thousand rounds a minute. I keep the barrels pointed skyward. A beat cop walking by on the sidewalk smiles and tips his cap to me. "Boa noite," he says. Good evening. "Foda-se a polícia," I reply. Fuck the police. "Fuck your mother," Darla said. "It's your life." I walked through the woods in the direction Ray told me Anja and Darla had gone. I found them on the edge of the zone, on a cliff overlooking the Jurassic Swamp to the south. They were facing away from me as I came out of the trees; I was just about to announce myself when I realized what they were talking about. "So you don't have any feeling in your clit at all?" "Nothing below the neck," Anja said. "At least, not when I'm awake. It's like my brain still remembers, so when I dream, sometimes..." "Remembers," Darla said. "So before the accident, you—" "Oh yeah, sure. And there was a guy on the men's team, Rolando, we did things. Never all the way, but, you know." "You and Rolando aren't together anymore? Because of the accident?" "No, we broke up before then. Rolando got impatient. He kept wanting to do more, but I wasn't ready yet. I'm kind of sorry, now, that I didn't say yes." "Nah, fuck that," Darla said. "If you weren't ready, you weren't ready." I'd begun backing up, slowly. Then Darla started to turn around. I was about to dive for cover when I remembered I was playing a ninja and hit the stealth mode toggle. "Anyway," Darla continued, looking my way now, "the fact that it's all in your head makes it a lot easier. You don't have to mess around with hardware at all, so your mother doesn't need to know what you're up to. She doesn't watch what you're doing online, does she?" "No, we have a deal about that," Anja said. "But there is this tech guy who comes in once a month, and he can be nosy. If I've downloaded a piece of software he doesn't recognize, he'll ask about it." "I can show you how to hide the software so your tech guy won't see it. Or if you want to be extra safe, you can just delete it before he comes and reinstall it afterwards." "And this software, it lets you—" "Enough to keep a guy interested," Darla said, "and then some." I faded back into the trees.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 27

"On the right," Javier says calmly, as a black government van with tinted windows appears along a side road. The van tries to T-bone us, but Anja gives the SUV more gas and gets out in front of it, while Blanca fires a full clip from her submachine gun. The driver of the van is hit and loses control; a pair of llamas grazing by the roadside watch as the vehicle goes plunging down the mountainside. We are crossing the Andes, en route to Santiago. Our notoriety level is currently four out of a possible five, which means it's not just the local and provincial cops who are after us, but the Argentine equivalent of the FBI and the Secret Service. We're OK on time, though, and the SUV is still mostly intact. Anja has dropped the pretense that she can't drive and is doing a good job of swerving around the spike strips that the feds keep throwing on the highway in front of us, while Javier, Blanca, and I deal with the pursuit. Bruno on the other hand is useless at the moment. It turns out he really is a newbie, not just to Habitual Offender but to VR games in general, and he's got a newbie's case of motion sickness: Every time Anja whips the SUV around another switchback, he groans and clutches his stomach. We crest a high point in the mountains and pass a sign reading BIENVENIDOS A CHILE. Crossing a national border instantly knocks a level off our notoriety. This is good, but not good enough: We want a clean slate before we hit the next bank. If we weren't on a clock, we could detour down to Patagonia and drive around the wilderness until the cops lost interest in us, but our current situation requires a quicker solution. Anja knows this. The highway turns sharply into a long straightaway. The Chilean-Argentine border is above us now, on a steep slope to our right, running parallel to the road. "Bruno," Anja says, "you probably want to close your eyes." She floors the accelerator and cuts across the soft shoulder. The SUV tilts at a fifty-degree angle as we climb the slope, but the high-traction tires cling like magic and Anja slaloms back and forth across the border—Argentina, Chile, Argentina, Chile—zeroing out our notoriety. As we thunk back down onto the highway, a motorcycle cop who was out for our blood just seconds ago breezes past without even a glance. We race downhill into the Chilean Central Valley. As we near the outskirts of the capital, we are treated to an amazing sight: A jumbo jet has just taken off from the Santiago Airport, and there are people riding on the outside of the plane. They run around on the roof and the wings, shooting at one another. Competing teams of hijackers, maybe, or perhaps a group of players have made up their own achievement, a guns-and-grenades version of the Mile High Club. Whatever the motivation, the outcome is predictable: A stray round knocks out one of the jet's engines. The plane rolls over and starts to nose-dive. I am reminded, inevitably, of Sunil Gupta's hack. But I also know the difference between real mass murder and a video game, so what I feel in this case is not horror but annoyance: It looks like the plane is coming down onto the main road into the city. This could delay us. "Don't worry," Anja says. "I know a good detour." She swerves right again, plowing through a barrier onto an unfinished highway exit that is perfectly angled to serve as a jump ramp. We enter Santiago in midair. Bruno makes retching noises. "Did you enjoy the show?" Darla said. The griefers had caught me on my way back to Ray. I'd uncloaked once I got clear of Darla and Anja, which turned out to be a mistake. As I passed a particularly large tree, a troll warrior jumped out at me, screaming and swinging a battleaxe. I wasn't flagged for PvP, so he couldn't actually hit me, but I reacted by reflexively slashing with my katana—and then I was flagged for PvP. A gnome sorcerer popped out from behind another tree and started hitting me with frostbolts, which slowed me down while the warrior hacked me into slabs. After I was dead, they camped on my corpse. I came back from the graveyard, resurrected, and tried to use my ninja smoke bomb to make a quick exit, but the sorcerer set off a freezing sphere to stop me turning invisible. They killed me again. And again. I was debating whether to call for help or just quit the game and get a job at McDonald's when Darla showed up. She was playing a druid tank—an armored grizzly bear—which made her the opposite of stealthy, but she ran up on the sorcerer and mauled him to death before he knew what was happening. Then she took out the warrior, dancing around him with a nimbleness no real grizzly will ever possess. It was quite the show, all right—but I knew that wasn't what Darla was talking about. "You saw me." "Of course I saw you. Pro tip, if you're going to sneak up and eavesdrop on somebody, you want to turn invisible before you step out in the open." "Where's Anja now?" I asked. "Back with Ray. Helping him get his ass unchapped." "Yeah, about that. I really need you to stop poking at him." "Ray needs to get a thicker skin, is what needs to happen." "The problem isn't Ray being thin-skinned," I said. "It's you, shit-stirring because you're bored." Darla shrugged. "That's just how I'm wired. My mom says I get the devil in me whenever I don't have enough to do." "Is that what's going on with you and Anja?" "What do you mean?" "I wasn't eavesdropping, before, but I did hear what you were talking about." "Yeah? Did it get you hot?" "It got me wondering. Are you trying to help Anja, or are you pretending to be helpful, so you can stir up some kind of trouble between her and her mom?" "Wow," Darla said. "First of all, fuck you. And second of all, what the fuck do you think of me, that you'd even ask that?" "I'm not trying to be an asshole, Darla. But I do pay attention." "If you really fucking paid attention, you'd know that I like Anja. She's not a pussy, like Ray. Or like you." "So when you ask her whether her family knows the Mengeles, or if they ever had Adolf Eichmann over for dinner, that's just you being friendly? Or the other day in Zuul'titlan, when you made that crack about how all the corpses must remind her of the old country..." Darla rolled her eyes, like she couldn't believe I was uncool enough to judge her by her actual behavior. "Fine," she said. "Maybe I do tease her, sometimes. But this is different. She asked for my help, OK? She wants a sex life, the same as any normal girl would. You have a problem with that?" "No, I don't. But it's not my opinion that matters. Anja's parents are religious—especially her mom. I don't know the whole story, but it's caused problems for her before." "So what, because her mom has a thing for Jesus, I'm supposed to tell her tough luck?" "I'm not saying don't help her. I'm saying, don't get bored and forget. If you get into a fight with your mom, you can walk away. Anja can't." Darla sighed in exasperation. "Fine," she repeated, and looked away frowning. But then the frown became a smirk. "You know she's into you," she said, turning back to me. "Anja. She told me she had a big crush on you when she first joined the crew." I did know that. It was another reason I'd agreed to vet Anja's dates for her—becoming her confidant was a diplomatic way to take myself out of the running. "Yeah," Darla continued. "She said you told her you don't date coworkers. So is that, like, a blanket policy, or just something you say to girls you don't have the hots for?" Now it was my turn to be bored. "Where are you going with this, Darla?" "Where am I going?" "It's no secret I'm attracted to you. And I think the feeling's mutual, but what I can't tell is whether you're really interested or just like pretending because it's fun to wind me up." "Well," Darla said, "if you have to ask..." "The answer's probably no, I know. But I'm asking." "Why, so you'll know who to cut from the crew, me or Ray?" "I just want to know where I stand, OK? Tell me you're not interested, and it'll never come up again." But of course that would have been way too simple, and no fun at all for her. "Maybe I haven't made up my mind yet," Darla said shrugging. "Well, is there something I could do to help you decide?" Enjoying herself now, Darla stroked her chin and made a show of thinking it over. "What about a bullet?" she said finally. "If you're serious." "You want a bullet? From me?" "No, from the Duke of Luxembourg... Of course from you. Give me ten minutes, in PPML 4.2 format, with full audio and visuals—good ones." "Uh-huh," I said. "And what do I get?" "Well, I'm not making you a bullet," Darla said. "I could offer you a hundred bucks, I guess, but that'd probably be some kind of interstate felony. Just make me the bullet. Make it good. Then we'll see." "I'll think about it." She laughed. "Oh yeah—I know you will." "I need more bullets!" Blanca shouts. "Forget bullets, get the rocket launcher!" replies Javier, who has finally lost his cool. "A tank is coming!" Like the original Butch and Sundance, we have come to grief in Bolivia. We'd hit the bank and were about to make our getaway when another group of players decided not to wait their turn and drove up shooting. Bruno was killed by the opening round of gunfire, and a lucky grenade toss blew the back wheels off the SUV. I got busy with the minigun and made short work of the attackers, but in the process I accidentally vaporized a procession of nuns in front of the cathedral across from the bank. This instantly maxed out our notoriety and put the Bolivian Army on crash alert. Blanca grabs the rocket launcher out of the crippled SUV as the tank rumbles into view at the end of the block. She takes aim and fires before the tank can bring its cannon to bear; the tank explodes and its turret goes flying. Javier and I target the Army snipers who are trying to set up on the surrounding rooftops. Anja meanwhile searches for a new getaway vehicle. She runs over to an armored car parked in front of the bank, hauls out the driver and executes him, then shouts, "Come on!" Bad idea. If our notoriety were lower, sure, but that armor won't protect us against military weapons. We need high speed and maneuverability. "Get the Lobini!" I tell her, indicating a yellow sports car farther down the street. "It's a two-seater!" Anja says. "I know," I reply. "You and Javier get inside, while Blanca rides on the roof! I'll stay behind and try to keep the soldiers occupied!" "Fuck that," says Blanca, standing over Bruno's body as she reloads the launcher. "I'll stay too." "No!" says Javier. "We all go together!" He and Blanca start arguing, faster than the subtitles can keep up, but I get the gist: Javier believes in teamwork and fair play, and doesn't want to win the achievement at someone else's expense. But Blanca doesn't really give a shit about the achievement; she's just as happy to go out in a blaze of glory. Their debate is interrupted by the arrival of a helicopter gunship. Blanca nails it with a rocket; the chopper spins out of control and crashes into the cathedral's main steeple, killing another sniper. "Take your girlfriend and get out of here while you still can," Blanca says, as fiery debris rains down all around us. "It's OK, Javier," I add. "I can get the achievement another time." I can tell he's still not happy about it, but the flaming tail rotor that comes whizzing past his head appears to decide him; he gets moving. I glance over at Anja and give her a nod: As best I can tell, Javier is a keeper. Anja nods back, mouthing, "Thank you," and gets in the car. She and Javier speed away. "Shit!" Blanca exclaims. Two more tanks have appeared at the end of the block. She fires a rocket at the one in front, turning it into a flaming roadblock. "I'm out!" She tosses the empty launcher aside and grabs an M-16 from the SUV. "Now what?" "Back inside the bank," I suggest. "We can hold them off for a while from in there." Blanca nods and retreats into the building. Burdened by the weight of the minigun, I follow more slowly, continuing to pick off snipers as I go. Another gunship appears above the cathedral and I empty my last few hundred rounds through its windshield. I drop the minigun and unsling my backup assault rifle. At the end of the block, the second tank pushes past the wreck and fires. The cannon shell zips by a few inches in front of my face and hits the armored bank truck, blasting it into shrapnel. I quickly duck into the bank. Inside it's much quieter. The only sound is the whimper of terrified customers cowering in the corners. This would be disturbing if they were real people, but they're not, so I ignore them. "Blanca?" I call. She doesn't answer. I walk slowly forward, scanning for security guards. I don't see any, but I do find Blanca. She is lying on the floor in front of the open bank vault. Her avatar's eyes are glazed and unmoving, and there is a bullet hole perfectly centered in her forehead. "Don't shoot!" a man's voice calls, in English. I take cover behind a pillar. A figure emerges from the vault with both arms raised. His right hand is empty, while his left clutches a money sack. His only visible weapon is a Taser in a holster on his right hip. "Don't shoot," he repeats. "I just want to talk, John." I recognize him then. It's the white guy from the CIA Factbook. The one I thought was a reporter, who seemed to be following me and Mr. Park around virtual Pyongyang. His Habitual Offender avatar is dressed in black body armor rather than street clothes, but the face is the same. I lower my rifle and step out from cover. "Who the hell are you?" "Ms. Pang sent me," he says. He waggles the money sack. "I have your payment." I'd laugh if I weren't so confused. "You're going to pay me in play money?" "No. It's real." The heels of his combat boots click against the marble floor as he walks towards me. But then I hear another sound, an incongruous sound—the creak of a floorboard. A wooden floorboard, like the ones in my apartment. "Here," he says, and tosses the money sack at me. I make no move to catch it, so in the game world, it passes right through me. In the real world, a cloth bag filled with soft bricks hits me in the face. I stumble backwards, more startled than hurt. I lift my hands to pull off my goggles and that's when he tases me. The synchronization is off this time: His avatar is still pulling the Taser from its holster when the real-world darts hit me in the chest and pump fifty thousand volts into my nervous system. The two realities diverge as my avatar topples over backward while I pitch forward. The money sack breaks my fall, but the pain of involuntary muscle contractions keeps me from appreciating it. When the current shuts off, I am blind. My headset was knocked askew in the fall. Once more I reach to pull it off, but he says sternly, "Don't." He nudges the money sack. A stack of bills pokes me in the cheek. "Four hundred thousand dollars," he says. "Two weeks' pay. Ms. Pang wants you to know she's good for it. But she also wants you to start taking her seriously. If she tells you to do something, you need to do it. If she tells you to not do something, you need to not do it. Do you understand?" "Yes." My voice is shaky and I'm short of breath. "I hope so, John," he says. "You really don't want me coming back here for another visit. Trust me on that." A pause. "This is so we're absolutely clear." He must have upped the voltage. The second shock is more painful than the first, and it goes on longer. I think I scream, though maybe that's just inside my head. I definitely piss myself. When it's over, I still can't see, but colors are blooming behind my eyes. Through the headphones pressed to the side of my skull, I can feel as well as hear the sound of raised voices in Spanish—Bolivian Special Forces have entered the bank. Their shouted commands mingle with the sound of his footsteps moving away, and a bang that registers dimly as a door slam. Or maybe the bang is a soldier executing my avatar—I can't really tell, and anyway it doesn't matter. The absence of pain, that's the important thing. I lie on the floor, grateful that the pain has stopped, and while I wait for my nervous system to reboot, I drool on the money.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 28

 friend of the Tin Man — Slang term for someone who possesses the necessary hardware and software to engage in cybersex. —Lady Ada's Lexicon When Men on the Internet built the first fellatio machine, they called their bullet encoding scheme Blow Job Markup Language, or BJML. This inspired a fair amount of mockery from Women on the Internet, as well as two semi-serious attempts to create a female-friendly version of the code: CML, and the functionally equivalent but more cleverly named PTBML, in which PTB stands for "petting the bunny." All of these encoding schemes were designed for solo playback of prerecorded sex acts, but of course once you got that working, the logical next step was figuring out a way to allow couples—or groups—to have cybersex in real time. Men on the Internet once more took the lead—and proceeded to bungle the job. The problem was emotional, not technological: They wanted the convenience of quick, no-strings sex with strangers, without the potential downside of discovering that the hot woman they'd hooked up with was actually a guy. (Yes, there were also gay men who feared being tricked into having sex with girls, but let's be serious: It was freaked out straight boys driving this particular bus.) The obvious solution—getting to know people before you fucked them—didn't fit with the "quick, no-strings" part of the program, so the Men opted for a brute-force approach instead. They created male and female versions of the software, and went to absurd lengths to try to ensure that only people with actual vaginas could use the female version. Saner members of the community pointed out that this was an impossible goal, but it was like trying to convince politicians that there's no such thing as a crypto back door that only good guys can use: The fanatics kept insisting that with enough nerd power, anything is possible. The Men nerded as hard as they could, but none of the vagina-recognition schemes they came up with was close to foolproof. They did manage to make the software so bloated and cumbersome as to be essentially unusable, even for gay sex—so in that limited sense, they were successful. But the project was a bust. It was a Berkeley grad named Martha Hollenbeck who wrote the first practical cybersex software. She called her creation PPML: Polymorphous Perverse Markup Language. One version fit all genders, which made sense from a technical perspective. Whether designed for men or women, the vast majority of computerized sex toys are simple vibrators, with the same limited set of functions: Speed up. Slow down. Buzz. Pulse. Hollenbeck wrote a standardized command code that allowed different devices to communicate, and added modular support for more advanced sex toys. PPML combined an intuitive and newbie-friendly interface with a wealth of customization options. Say you'd decided to give a blow job to someone halfway around the world. If sucking on a sensor-equipped dildo was really your thing, PPML would of course allow you to do that. But you could also use a cyberglove, a game pad, a keyboard, a microphone, or some other input device. Or if you were feeling lazy and just wanted to phone it in, you could activate PPML's "white noise" feature and have it convert any handy string of ones and zeroes—an MP3 of your favorite Stones track, say, or a PDF of the Song of Solomon—into blow job commands. The software also enabled a unique form of faceting. In the real world, if Alice gives Bob a blow job, Bob receives a blow job. But because PPML used the same code for different sex acts, a receiver in cyberspace could, if they wanted, turn the blow job inside-out, and experience it as an act of penetration. With larger groups of people and a bit of imagination, much wilder combinations were possible: Alice gives a blow job simultaneously to Bob, Carol, Donna, and Edgar; Bob receives a blow job, while Carol, Donna, and Edgar are licked, fisted, and fucked, respectively, and the combined bucking of their hips feeds back to Alice as anal. The accompanying sounds and visuals could be faceted too, of course: While Alice, Carol, and Donna share a prison rape fantasy, Bob sees himself as part of a living, breathing Rubens painting, and Edgar indulges in some hot furry action. No surprise, this offended some people: Spectacle ensued. And to those inclined to be outraged by PPML, the fact that Martha Hollenbeck was trans just added fuel to the fire. For mainstream pundits, she became a metaphor for whatever they thought was wrong with contemporary cyberculture. Conservative feminists damned her as a not-so-secret agent of the patriarchy. To homophobic Men on the Internet, she was a gay guy in drag, trying to put one over on the vagina detector. She got a lot of death threats. She stopped appearing in public early on, after San Francisco SWAT responded to a hoax 911 call by driving a tank through the wall of the auditorium where she was speaking. But her software was popular, even among people who publicly wished her dead, and by the time PPML 2.0 was released, it had become a de facto standard, the lingua franca of cybersex. I was an early adopter, thanks to my girlfriend, Wendy Williams. Wendy was a Zero Day kid, and she was gear queer. Late one night we met up in an empty server room to fool around, and she told me about this new software suite she'd downloaded that she wanted to try out. She asked if I was up for being a guinea pig. I said that I was. We were stationed in Osaka at the time. We went to a special computer store in Tobita Shinchi, the red light district. While Wendy chatted with the women behind the counter, I stood with my arms folded and tried to project an air of mature sophistication. My attention was drawn to a display case full of vibrators shaped like brightly colored animals. Their English-language names read like the product of an excitable machine translator: SURPRISE FANTASY CAT! TORRID HEDGEHOG! BACK DOOR MONKEY! INEXHAUSTIBLE PRICKLY HORSE! We spent around forty thousand yen on toys—including a SURPRISE FANTASY CAT!—and went back to base. There was a delay while Wendy configured PPML's encryption. Once she was satisfied that our parents probably couldn't spy on us, we put on the gear and booted up the software. It was a little strange, but a lot of fun. Which, at that early point in my sexual history, is also how I would have described regular fucking. And though with time and experience my tastes have become more refined, even now, if you ask me which is better, real sex or virtual sex, I'll tell you it's a question of what you're in the mood for. It was the late New York Times columnist David Brooks who famously observed that "you can't kiss in cyberspace." Like a lot of declarative statements made by old people, this isn't strictly true: If you and your partner are in the same physical space, you can kiss all you like, though you do need to be careful not to smash your headsets together in the heat of passion. At long distance, your tactile options are more limited. There are full-body haptic suits, but they are very expensive and have a tendency to overheat. More likely, the sense of touch will be focused on your genitals, or whatever other part of your anatomy the vibrator is attached to. This strikes some people as cold and emotionless, but it's worth remembering that vibrators are a nineteenth-century invention, and Victorians probably used them while reading steamy love letters. So the concept isn't exactly new. The store in Tobita Shinchi sold a "smell synthesizer" that looked like a piece of medical fetish gear. I thought about buying it, but I didn't really believe it could mimic Wendy's scent, and I wasn't going to spend fifteen thousand yen to have patchouli blown up my nose. Not even the Japanese make a sex toy that can reproduce taste, so if that's important to you, you'll want to stick to doing it in the flesh. It's in the realm of sight and sound that cybersex really gets interesting. People have always fantasized during sex, but computers do the heavy lifting for you, and let you keep your eyes wide open. You can look like anyone or anything, anywhere. And the soundtrack can be dynamic, reacting to what you are doing: Marvin Gaye into Led Zeppelin IV into the climax of the 1812 Overture. Which brings me back to the subject of bullets. You can knock out a no-frills blow job in a couple of minutes, but crafting a polished fantasy with 3D visuals and surround sound is a much bigger undertaking. Thanks to Wendy, I know a lot of programming tricks and shortcuts, and of course PPML has tools that can help, but still, I worked my ass off on Darla's bullet. One decision I had to make was whether to use my default avatar. Playing yourself in a bullet shows confidence, but it also risks embarrassment if the bullet's recipient decides to share it with the rest of the internet. The alternative is to use a stand-in avatar: Celebrity look-alikes are popular. In Darla's case, I could think of two strong arguments against using a stand-in. First, she would rightly regard it as a sign that I didn't trust her, which in turn would make it less likely that she'd choose to hook up with me. And second, it might not actually protect me from being publicly humiliated. With PPML, you can also edit bullets that people send you, so even if I did use some other avatar, Darla could always reskin it to look like me before uploading to a revenge porn site. Since being chicken wouldn't save me, I decided I might as well be bold—at least that would allow me to pick the most flattering version of myself. I set to work, creating a ten-minute scenario that I thought Darla would enjoy, based on various things she'd said and other little hints that she'd dropped. It took me three days to put together, and another couple days to polish. Once I had it just the way I wanted it, I encrypted the bullet and attached it to an email. Then I paused, before hitting send, and asked myself whether I really wanted to do this. But the question was rhetorical: I'd made up my mind the moment Darla had asked for the bullet. And while I understood I might not be happy with the consequences of my actions, I didn't for an instant believe that I'd be sorry. "Who would you have picked as a stand-in?" Darla asked me, afterwards. "If you'd decided to pussy out?" "I don't know. Keanu Reeves, maybe?" "Keanu Reeves?" She made a gagging expression. "He's older than my grandfather." "Real Keanu is older than your grandfather. Fantasy Keanu is whatever age you decide to skin him as. I'd have cloned the avatar from Point Break footage if I'd decided to go that way." "Yeah, well. I'm glad you had the balls to play yourself." So was I—although, all things considered, I was surprised that it had worked. After I'd sent her the bullet, I didn't hear from Darla for two days, and when she reappeared, she immediately picked another fight with Ray. I arrived in the middle of that, so I wasn't even sure what it was about, but for Ray it was the last straw. "Either she goes, or I do," he told me, before logging out. It was then that I read Darla the riot act. Or tried to—it's hard to effectively chastise someone when you're waiting to find out if they'll sleep with you. Darla took full advantage of the situation and proceeded to tease the shit out of me, even as I insisted that no, really, I was serious: Whatever I might wish for, if she forced me to choose between her and the business, I'd pick the business. In the end, I did get the point across—or maybe Darla, having had her fill of fun, got tired of hearing me repeat myself. Fine, she said, if Ray's going to be such a huge pussy about it, I'll leave him alone. And Anja. And the customers. I was still deciding whether to believe this when Darla grinned and asked me if I wanted to go someplace more private. She gave me the IP address of a mystery website and a password I'd need to get into it. And so now here we were, wherever here was. It was a barren rock in outer space, the pronounced curve of the horizon making me think of the planetoids in The Little Prince. Someone had built a love nest inside a shallow crater, tucking a four-poster bed and a heart-shaped jacuzzi under a geodesic dome. UV lights in the dome struts made the naked skins of our avatars glow, and when I came, a supernova flared in the sky. "So I've been thinking more about what I'd want in a dream game," Darla said, stretched out beside me on the bed. "And?" "What about something like this?" "You mean a science-fiction setting?" "No, genius." Darla turned towards me and propped herself up on an elbow. "I'm talking about fucking." "There already are games about fucking. There are even games about fucking that won't download malware onto your computer." "Not about fucking," she said. "With fucking. Like, what if you did a quality MMORPG like Call to Wizardry, and included an option for players to hook up between dungeon runs?" She considered. "Or during dungeon runs?" It sounded like a terrible idea. But I remembered how our last discussion about game design had ended, and since I wanted this hookup to be more than a one-time deal, I kept my mouth shut and pretended to think it over. Darla burst out laughing. "What?" I said. "What's the name of that mod you use, to keep your eyes focused on the person you're talking to? 'You So Interesting'?" "Yeah. Why?" "You should call up the ex-girlfriend who wrote it and ask her to code another one for the rest of your face," Darla said. "Because for someone who wants to get ahead in business, you are way too easy to read." Wendy had made a similar observation, on more than one occasion; the last time was on the day we broke up. "I don't know if I'd want a mod like that." "Why not?" I shrugged. "Because I'm selfish but not a sociopath? Or maybe it's a pride thing." "What, like, 'Real men should be able to lie without help?'" "When it really matters, yeah." "That's a retarded way to think," Darla said, leaning hard on "retarded." But I didn't rise to the bait, and after a moment she sighed and said, "So tell me why my idea about putting fucking in an MMORPG is stupid. It's OK, I promise I won't get pissed. You've got me in a good mood." That was nice to hear, but I thought I'd better proceed cautiously anyway. "It's not stupid," I said, "just complicated. An Adults Only rating on a game makes everything ten times more difficult. Investment money is a lot harder to come by, and there are lots of companies that won't do business with you. PayPal, for example." "Fuck PayPal." "What about Superego? You know, the guys who did the physics engine for Reign in Hell and Camp Blood Killing Spree?" "Duh, I know who Superego is." "Do you know about their new terms of service? As part of the settlement for the sexual harassment lawsuit against their CEO, they added a new rider to their standard contract. If you want to license their software, you have to promise you won't use it to make a game that promotes sexism or misogyny." "Oh, Jesus Christ!" Darla said. "Fucking is not sexist!" "I agree," I said, putting my hands up. "But it doesn't matter what we think. What matters is what Superego thinks. What their lawyers think, and what their lawyers think the plaintiffs in the settlement will think. That's what an AO rating gets you. You can have the purest heart and the best intentions in the world, and other companies will still treat you like a leper. "And that's before you finish the game," I continued. "Once you're ready to start marketing, you've got advertising restrictions. A lot of game sites won't review you, and the ones that do will tend to be stupid about it, because nerds and sex." "Stupid reviews are fine, as long as they mention the sex part," Darla countered. "That's enough to get people interested. And there are other ways to get the word out. I mean, think of the hot takes." "Yeah, you could probably gin up a controversy. Of course, Spectacle attracts politicians..." "More free advertising." "Lawyers to defend you from obscenity charges aren't free. But you're right, that could work as a guerrilla marketing strategy. Once you've got people's attention, though, you need to deliver. And to make up for the extra hassle, the game would need to be really popular." "Well, why wouldn't it be? MMORPGs are popular. Fucking is insanely popular. And two great tastes..." "Don't necessarily go together," I said, as gently as I could. "You're thinking chocolate and peanut butter, but what if this is more like chocolate and shrimp? And that leads me to one more point, which is that even people who are into that particular combination don't really need new software. I mean, right now, if you want to spice up your raid on Zuul'titlan with an orgy, all you have to do is find a quiet spot between fights and fire up PPML." "Yeah, but that takes two different programs." "Is that a problem, though? It might be, if PPML didn't play well with other VR software—but it does. And if you're into cybersex, you have PPML, so integrating its features directly into an MMORPG doesn't add anything. But if you're not into cybersex, the last thing you want is to give griefers the ability to literally fuck with you." Despite her promise, Darla had been starting to get pissed off again, but this last remark struck her funny. "I suppose that would be pretty bad for business," she acknowledged. Then, smirking: "Chocolate and shrimp." "I'm not saying it couldn't work. But there's got to be some kind of synergy, something extra you get from putting the two things together. We can brainstorm it if you like, try to come up with an angle..." "No, that's OK," she said. "It's just an idea I pulled out of my ass. But you're right, it's dumb." "We can still talk about it." "No, it's all right. I told you, you've got me in a good mood." All smiles again, she tilted her head back and gestured at the dome and the dark sky above us. "So what do you think of this?" "I like the lighting effects," I said, staying focused on her avatar. "Perv." "Where are we, anyway?" I asked. "Is this your site, or some secret online club I don't know about?" "You've got the IP address. Look it up." I opened a pop-up window. The IP address was registered to a company in southern California called Cumulonimbus. I didn't recognize the name, but guessed it was a reference to cloud storage. "Are you renting space on a server farm in L.A.?" "It's in Los Angeles, but it's got nothing to do with me. Keep looking." I ran the company name through BusinessTrak. Cumulonimbus turned out to be a subsidiary. It was a data center, and it did rent out storage space to other companies, but most of its servers were reserved for use by its parent corporation: Tempest. Darla laughed as she watched me put it together. "This is one of Tempest's servers?" I said. "We're inside... We just..." "We fucked in their corporate data core," Darla confirmed. Staring at her under the lights a few moments ago, I'd started to get hard again, but now my erection shriveled away to nothing. I nervously scanned the horizon, imagining an army of blue-gloved EULA cops converging on us from all directions. Though of course that was wishful thinking. Breaking into a private corporate server isn't a EULA violation—it's a felony. "Relax," Darla said. "We didn't break in. We used a password." "News flash, it's still burglary if you use a stolen key." "There's no reason for the sysadmin to think we don't belong here. And even if they did get suspicious, it's not like they can trace... Wait. You are using the PPML proxy server setting, right?" "Of course I am, but that's not foolproof. If they wanted to backtrace us badly enough, they could—" "Oh my God!" Darla said, looking suddenly stricken. "What if they're recording us right now? What if they digitize our faces, and then send image-recognition bots to scour the internets?" "I know you think you're being funny, Darla, but if they wanted to identify us, that's exactly how they'd—" "Attention, Tempest corporate overlords!" Darla cupped her hands to her mouth as she shouted up at the stars. "JOHN CHU and DARLA JEAN COVINGTON are FUCKING inside your computer!" She cracked up, clutching her stomach and rolling around on the bed. I decided to be fatalistic. I mean, she was probably right: The fact that we hadn't been booted off the site meant it was unlikely we'd tripped any alarms. And if the system administrator had noticed us, there was nothing we could do about that now. "Where did you get the password from?" I wanted to know. "Orville," Darla said, still laughing. "A hacker friend. Don't worry, I'm not fucking him," she added, though in fact that was the last thing I was worried about. "And what is this?" I asked, scanning the horizon again. "Concept art for a new game?" "Think TempestCon, two years ago," Darla said. "It'll come to you." I did, and it did. "Call to Infinity." That was the working title of an MMORPG that was, or would have been, a sci-fi sibling of Call to Wizardry. Tempest had shown a teaser trailer for it at one of their annual conventions, but there'd been no further news about it since then. The consensus in the gaming community was that the project had been canceled, probably because it was a little too similar to Call to Wizardry; most people only have time for one MMORPG in their lives, and it made no sense for Tempest to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a game that would cannibalize their existing player base. "This isn't just concept art," Darla told me. "It's a virtual studio for level design. This planet is hollow; there's a hatch a few craters over that leads down inside, and they've got all kinds of assembly tools stashed in there. It's what I used to build this dome. I thought you might want to check it out for yourself." She laughed again, watching my face as the words "intellectual property theft" flashed through my brain. "I'm not saying steal the tools—although we could. But you should at least play with them, maybe learn some tricks to use for our game." "Our game?" I said. "Are we partners now?" She shrugged. "I know everybody and his brother talks about making a game, but you actually started a business, so I know you're not just hot air. But you'll never do anything cool without someone to kick your ass and get you out of your comfort zone... And I suppose it wouldn't kill me to have someone practical to rein me in now and then. As long as you're not a patronizing dick about it. Of course," she added, "that's assuming we even have a future together." "Why wouldn't we?" "Because you already got what you really wanted from me. Now you can cut me from the crew and keep Ray. And not that I even care that much about the job, but you know I'm going to be pissed, right? This time next month, you'll probably be dead to me." "Jesus, Darla... I don't want to cut anyone from the crew. I want you and Ray to get along." "Yeah, well, like I said before, there's what you want, and what you can have." "What I need is for the business to be successful. It takes capital to start a game company." She snorted. "You think you can finance an MMORPG with the money you make as a sherpa?" I shook my head. "It's not about the profits. It's about the contacts." Give Darla credit, she got it right away: "You mean like the Kwan brothers? You're going to ask them to invest?" "They'd be on my short list, yeah. When I'm ready." "Huh. That's... actually not stupid." "Gee, thanks." I started to smile, but then this image came into my head, of walking into a meeting with the Kwan brothers with Darla at my side. Easily bored, extremely volatile Darla. "What is it?" she said. "Your face just did something weird." "Nothing," I said, thinking, Change the subject. "You and I should meet up in person." The suggestion caught her off guard. "You couldn't handle me in person." "I'm willing to risk it. I'll even come to you, if you want." "Gosh, that's so generous." "I'm between cars right now," I explained. "But that's OK, I'll rent something and drive up to... what city are you in?" "Nice try," Darla said. Then: "I'll think about it... If I did decide to meet you, it'd have to be after I get back from my trip." "Where are you going?" "Family reunion back east, at my mom's place." She raised an eyebrow. "Cousin Earl will be there." "You'll have to shoot him in the ass for me. How long will you be gone?" "I'm not sure. It depends what level of psychodrama Mom and I get into." Then she looked at me, dead serious, and said: "You'd better not disappoint me, if I do let you visit. Me pissed off online is nothing compared to me pissed off in person." "I won't disappoint you," I said. "Promise." "All right... So, you want to go check out those software tools?" I eyed her avatar again. "In a few minutes..." We stayed on Tempest's server for another four hours. The next day we came back again. And the next. We were going to go there once more, the night before Darla left on her trip. But earlier that same day I got the call from Janet Margeaux's CAA agent. By the time I met Darla in the Game Lobby that evening, I'd decided to cut her out of the gig and not tell her until afterwards. I was comfortable with that choice—or told myself I was—but it would have felt wrong to have sex with her, with that between us. It's weird, the lines we draw. Instead of going with her to the Tempest server I told Darla I was tired and asked for a rain check. She was immediately suspicious. "Rain check? Are you bored with me already?" When you don't trust yourself to lie effectively, the best way to do it is by telling the truth. "I'm definitely not bored with you, Darla." "Hmm... Fine then, suit yourself. But if my plane crashes tomorrow, you're going to kick yourself for passing up a last chance with me." "I will be sad if that happens," I said. Which was also true. "If my plane doesn't crash," Darla continued, "I might have a surprise for you when I get back." "Your home address?" "Maybe. But I meant something bigger. Something you'll like." She paused, studying my expression. "You sure you don't have anything you want to tell me?" "I'm sure," I said. "Have a safe trip, Darla."

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 29

 tort of wrongful seduction — A cause of action in a civil lawsuit in which the plaintiff claims to have been enticed into sex by false pretenses, such as a fraudulent promise of marriage.  In the tort's earliest incarnation, the right of action belonged to the father of a dishonored woman, and the alleged harm was loss of services to her family. In time, the right to sue was extended to the woman herself, and the harm was recognized to be moral and personal rather than strictly economic. Ironically, this liberalization of the tort undermined it, as changing sexual mores and attitudes about women's honor—as well as the perennial reluctance of juries to take women at their word—made such lawsuits much harder to argue and win. By the end of the twentieth century, the tort of seduction appeared to be extinct. But the 2020s saw a revival of the tort, as another shift in mores inspired a new generation of plaintiffs—men as well as women—to attempt to rewrite the rules of love. —Merriam-Webster's Law Dictionary So this guy breaks into your apartment, tases you, and hits you in the face with a bag of money?" Jolene says. "The tasing came last," I correct her. "Hurt like hell, too." "It's supposed to. Are you all right?" "I'm fine. Once I could stand up again, I was more worried about my rig. The goggles and earphones are OK, I think, but the gloves are a little twitchy. The good news is, I can afford to buy replacements." Our avatars are in a private chat room in the Game Lobby. In real life, Jolene is outdoors. When I reached her, she was at home, and I asked if she had a yard or patio she could go out to while we talked. I can hear the faint buzz of a lawnmower in the background. "How much money are we talking about?" "Four hundred thousand dollars. Two weeks' pay from Ms. Pang. The electricity was her way of saying I need to be nicer about how I ask for it, next time." "I take it you didn't call the cops." I shake my head. "What would I have told them?" "You did call your mom, though." "Eventually," I say. "First I made sure the guy was really gone, locked the door and moved some furniture in front of it. Then I counted the money. Then I checked that my rig was OK." "And then you called your mom." "No, then I went to sleep for a few hours." "Jesus Christ!" "I was tired. I was already tired, before, and being electrocuted takes a lot out of you. Anyway, I didn't feel like I was in any immediate danger. If they'd wanted to kill me, they could have." "It's the money, isn't it?" Jolene says. "You were thinking of not telling your mother about it. That's what you needed to sleep on." "No, I had to tell Mom about the money. What I needed to sleep on was whether to tell her it was four hundred thousand or just two." "You're an idiot." "I know," I say. "But have you ever seen four hundred thousand dollars? Not virtual cash, but real bills you can hold?" "I've seen people get stupid for a lot less than that," Jolene says. "Stacking the money higher doesn't make it less stupid." "Well, look, I wouldn't really lie to Mom. I just needed to think about it." "So when you woke up, you called her?" "After breakfast, yeah. She wasn't available, but I left a message with her assistant, Ensign Kim." "OK," Jolene says. "So now you're going to hole up in your place with the door locked until she calls you back, right?" "No, I decided to get out of there." "Why?" "After I spoke to Ensign Kim, I started thinking about what else Ms. Pang's people might have been up to in my apartment. I don't think the guy who broke in last night did anything after he zapped me, but if he had access, who knows how many times he was in there before?" "Your computer?" I shrug. "The anti-tamper seals on the case are intact, and as far as infecting the hard drive, I don't think there's anything they could do in person that couldn't be more easily done remotely. But I was looking around the room, and I saw my old Companion Cube up on a shelf. You ever have one of those?" "No, but I know what they are." A Companion Cube is like a hardware version of Googlebot—an interactive digital assistant that you can query or give commands to. And like all internet-connected devices with microphones, it can be turned into a remote listening device if someone hacks it. "I got the Cube as part of a game promotion," I tell Jolene. "I never even put batteries in it. But seeing it made me realize, it doesn't matter how secure my computer is if someone has a bug in my apartment. They can just listen to me talking on my headset." "And this is why I'm out on my lawn? You think my place is bugged too?" "I don't know. But it's possible." "Well, I've got good news," Jolene says. "The people I work for, they're paranoid about security. I get my house swept for bugs once a month. Last check was just a few days ago." "A law firm does that?" Jolene pretends not to hear the question. "Where are you now?" she asks. "In a motel. At first I had this crazy idea about going to the Hilton downtown and renting out the penthouse, but I realized that even if they were willing to take cash, they'd want to log my ID and credit card into their system." "So you went to a no-tell fleabag instead?" "It's not a fleabag," I say. "It's clean, and they've got high-speed broadband. The neighborhood's remote, but it's safe." "You hope. How'd you get there?" "Loaded my gear and the money into a backpack and rode around on BART for a few hours. Changed trains a dozen times. Then I caught a cab." "Hmm." She frowns. "That might be good enough." "Can I ask you something, Jolene?" "What?" "You told me once that the firm you work for specializes in estate planning. Why would a law firm like that need to sweep an IT person's house for bugs? Are they worried you're going to take the clients' wills home and read them out loud?" Jolene stares at me, lips pursed. She's annoyed, but not with me—with herself, for breaking character. Before she can say anything, a pop-up window appears at the bottom of my visual field: > HE DESIRES A SESSION, TO BEGIN IN 30 MINUTES. ASSEMBLE YOUR CREW. — SMITH This is followed almost immediately by a second pop-up: > CONFIRM THAT YOU ARE AVAILABLE. THEN SEE YOUR EMAIL FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. DO NOT DISAPPOINT ME. — PANG "What is it?" Jolene says. > THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE NEWS CHYRON reads: MARRIAGE OF NORTH AND SOUTH TO BE CONSUMMATED AT NOON TOMORROW. Over the airplane's loudspeaker, the pilot announces that we have begun our descent into Pyongyang. It is raining in the capital, with scattered thunder and high winds; there will be turbulence during the landing, so we are advised to remain seated for the duration of the flight. But Mr. Jones ignores the warning. He stands in the aisle, staring at the TV at the front of the passenger cabin, which is now showing scenes from the recent unification summit: While crowds cheer outside South Korea's Blue House, President Sunwoo shakes hands with an elderly Kim Jong-un. "What year is this supposed to be?" Mr. Jones asks. "Two thousand and fifty-two," I tell him. Nodding at the TV screen: "The Supreme Leader just celebrated his seventieth birthday." Mr. Jones tugs experimentally at the skin beneath his chin. "And this game—" "D.M. Zed." "—it is from the Republic of Korea?" "Yes. The company, GangnamSoft, is based in Seoul." "And the government permits this? A game about reunification?" "There's been some controversy about the content," I say, which is true enough. "But no calls to ban the game, so far. And the sale preorders have been through the roof." The first turbulence jolts the plane. I look out the window. It is night, and we are descending into an unbroken bank of moonlit clouds. The photorealistic rendering is almost perfect, but as the plane bounces, a software glitch sends a silver squiggle cascading across the cloud tops. D.M. Zed is in its final week of beta, and GSoft's programmers are working around the clock to get the last bugs out before the release date. Ms. Pang's email contained the address and password for this playtest server. My instructions are to keep Mr. Jones logged in for as long as possible. Ms. Pang didn't explain why she wants this, but my guess is that the game has an unpatched client-side security flaw that she means to take advantage of. The view is obscured as we enter the clouds. The turbulence increases; I grip the imaginary arms of my seat and glance around the cabin. Jolene, Anja, and Ray are in the row directly behind me. Our avatars are dressed in United Nations uniforms, with insignia and equipment signifying our different roles. Mr. Jones, who has a big badge on his chest, is an envoy, empowered to give orders to non-player characters and call for help on his satellite phone. Anja is an engineer. Ray is a medic. Jolene is a computer specialist. I'm security. The 9mm pistol on my hip is our only weapon at the moment, though I already have my eye on a possible upgrade. The rest of the passengers are NPCs; most of them are UN staff and reporters, but seated at the back of the cabin are two soldiers—one North Korean, one South Korean—armed with futuristic assault rifles. I've got dibs on one of those, the moment something happens to its current owner. Which, I predict, will be very soon now. "Beginning final approach," the pilot says. The cabin lights go out, and the TV image is replaced by static and then a solid blue screen. As we break through the cloud layer, the plane banks sharply to the left, and this combined with the darkness in the cabin draws everyone's attention to the view of Future Pyongyang below us. The city looks very different than it did in the CIA Factbook. The completed Ryugyong Hotel is surrounded by a forest of lesser towers, all of them as brightly lit as the skyscrapers in a normal metropolis. Across the Potong River on Mansu Hill, more lights ring the three Kim statues, which look like toy soldiers from this altitude. "Beautiful," Mr. Jones murmurs, leaning across the seats in front of me. He sounds like he might cry. "Check out the monorail." I indicate a string of lights stretching southwards from the Ryugyong. "That's the cross-DMZ express. Pyongyang to Seoul in under an hour." "Beautiful," Mr. Jones repeats. But as we circle the city center, we start to see other lights—the flashing lights of emergency and police vehicles racing through the streets—that hint not all is well on the ground. Then, without warning, a massive explosion erupts from the side of the Ryugyong Hotel, provoking gasps from the NPCs. Seconds later, an even larger blast topples the statues on Mansu Hill. The plane levels out. The cabin lights flicker back on and the TV transmission resumes. The chyron now reads: BREAKING NEWS! ".... reports of violence from Pyongyang as well," the announcer is saying. "It appears the terrorist group Red Wolf has launched a coordinated assault on both capitals." Mr. Jones looks up at the TV screen before turning to me. "Red Wolf?" "A radical separatist group opposed to unification," I say, quoting from the official game wiki. "And our goal is to crush them?" "One goal, yeah." There's also the matter of the Zed referenced in the game's title, but I opt not to spoil that for him. "We must get on the ground as quickly as possible," he says. "I wouldn't worry about it," I say. Though in fact, the plane is no longer descending. The pilot comes back on the loudspeaker: "Attention, passengers. Owing to the state of emergency in Pyongyang, we must abort our landing and return to Beijing." "No!" Mr. Jones says, starting towards the cockpit. "I forbid—" Lightning hits the plane, or maybe it's some sort of energy weapon. There's a blinding flash. The cabin lights go out for good this time, and the TV goes black. The plane's nose dips sharply and a female NPC starts screaming. Mr. Jones steadies himself in the aisle and faces me, his expression only visible because of the flames streaming from the left-side engine. "Like I said." I shout to be heard above the screams. "Don't worry about it." > RIGHT BEFORE THE CRASH, I GET AN INSTANT MESSAGE from Smith: YOU ARE LOGGED IN FROM A NEW IP ADDRESS. WHERE ARE YOU? The game has seized control of my POV and plastered my face to the window. As lightning illuminates the ground rushing up towards the plane, the sound of my character's panicked breathing fills my ears. > HOUSE-SITTING FOR A FRIEND, I reply. As I hit send, it occurs to me that Smith may not know what "house-sitting" is. I hear the pilot's voice, echoing as if down a long tunnel: "Brace! Brace! Brace!" The plane's left wing clips a power pylon. The wing shears off and the plane shudders and starts to roll. Everything goes black. Out of the darkness, Smith messages: > WHERE? > SAN BRUNO. NEAR THE AIRPORT. > WHAT STREET ADDRESS? On the way to the motel, I had the cab detour through a nearby residential neighborhood, and picked out a house with a spiked fence and a Great Dane guarding the front yard. I type in the address, adding, BE CAREFUL OF SCOOBY IF YOU COME BY. > SCOOBY? Smith responds. The darkness is lifting. > GAME IS ON. GOT TO GO. I am standing in a field strewn with burning wreckage. The rain has stopped, but lightning continues to flicker in the sky. My motion control comes back slowly: At first all I can do is stagger drunkenly, while my vision goes in and out of focus. Then things sharpen up and I'm able to look around. The plane's fuselage broke into three pieces on impact. The front end of the passenger cabin, where we were sitting, stayed mostly intact, but the tail and the rows behind us completely disintegrated—so much for grabbing one of the soldiers' rifles. The detached nose of the plane continued onward, plowing through the perimeter fence of the Kim Jong-il International Airport. It looks like we almost made it to the runway. Jolene, Ray, and Anja stumble towards me out of the gloom. Mr. Jones appears, leading a pair of shaken-up NPCs. He waves his satellite phone triumphantly. "I have made contact with another UN team," he says. "They say they can transport us to the city center. We are to rendezvous with them in the main terminal." He turns and looks back past the flames at the Pyongyang skyline, and I can tell there's a part of him that would like to just start walking. But the burning jet fuel and fragments of the tail section have formed an impassible barrier. We go through the hole in the fence and sprint towards the terminal. Nothing else is moving on the airport tarmac, and as we pass a darkened hangar, the female NPC—the same one who was screaming on the plane, I think—starts whimpering with fear. "Be quiet, woman!" Mr. Jones says. Jolene, beside me, mimes sticking a finger down her throat. As we near the terminal building we hear the sound of automatic weapons fire and see muzzle flashes behind some of the windows. Mr. Jones breaks out his satellite phone again, but before he can call the UN team for an update, there is a loud crack! of a rifle shot and the female NPC goes down. "Sniper!" the other NPC shouts helpfully. We take cover behind a stalled baggage trailer. The trailer's driver was shot, but survived; we find him sitting with his back against one of the trailer carts, fighting to draw breath. His sucking chest wound serves as a tutorial for Ray's medic skills. Once he's been patched up and can speak, he tells us where the nearest entrance to the terminal is. It's close, but we're going to have to cross an open stretch of tarmac to reach it. "You," Mr. Jones says, turning to our other NPC. "You go first." The NPC balks, but Mr. Jones pulls rank, tapping his envoy badge for emphasis. The NPC makes a dash for it. He's barely out of cover when the sniper blows his head off. "Running will not work," Mr. Jones observes. "What shall we try next?" I nod at the trailer carts. "Maybe there's something in here we can use." There is. The center cart contains several tall metal cases on wheels bearing the name and logo of a K-pop band. Anja uses her engineering skills and some scrounged bungee cords to string the cases together into a rolling ballistic shield. We crouch behind it and duck-walk across the tarmac. The sniper fires half a dozen bullets at us, but the shield holds until we are out of his line of sight. We reach the door into the terminal. The lock is controlled by an electronic keypad; the baggage car driver gave us the code in exchange for a promise to send back help. But when we punch in the number, the keypad emits an angry buzz and a robotic voice informs us that the airport is on emergency lockdown. Jolene goes to work hacking the mechanism. The door unlocks and Mr. Jones hauls it open. "Wait," I say, and remind him that of all the characters, I'm the only one who hasn't gotten to use my special ability yet. "Good point," Mr. Jones says. "Lead the way." I step through the door into a broad stairwell. Sprawled at my feet is the body of another baggage handler; it looks like he broke his neck falling down the stairs. Looking up, I glimpse another corpse on the half-landing above me, with a uniformed figure hunched over it. I hear grunting noises and the sound of tearing flesh. "What is that?" Mr. Jones says, entering the stairwell behind me. The figure in uniform looks up at the sound and turns towards us. Its face is covered in gore, and in its eagerness to feed, it has bitten its own lips off, leaving its teeth horribly exposed. "It's Zed," I say. The uniformed zombie growls at us. I draw my pistol and aim for the head. WE FIND MORE BODIES INSIDE THE TERMINAL. THE STAIRWELL exits into a passenger waiting area that's been hit by a bomb blast; corpses and severed limbs are draped over the shattered seats. Slumped against the far wall is a flight attendant who is missing the top of his skull; his brain matter is spattered across a floor-to-ceiling poster that shows a grinning Kim Jong-un arm-in-arm with his old pal Dennis Rodman. There's a lot going on here, visually, but the detail that jumps out at me is that Rodman, who broke his back in a skydiving accident while I was still in grade school, is shown standing on two good legs. Like Kim's, his image has been artificially aged—at ninety-one, he looks like a mummy with facial piercings—but he's upright. This could be a nod to political realism on the part of the game designers: Physical handicaps are taboo in the DPRK, and it's unlikely that a friend of the dictator would be portrayed in a wheelchair. On the other hand, this is the future, so maybe the idea is that the medical establishment has finally gotten spinal cord regeneration to work. I notice Anja is staring at the poster too; when she sees me looking at her, she shrugs a shoulder as if to say, It'd be nice if they did figure it out. Mr. Jones finishes talking on his sat phone. "This way," he tells us, pointing. "The UN team is in a restaurant across from boarding gate twenty-three. They have just beaten back an assault by the Red Wolves." The gate is at the other end of the terminal. Along the way we pass more scenes of carnage, all exquisitely rendered; the Red Wolves, and GSoft's art department, have clearly put in a lot of work. "Jesus," I hear Ray say, as he averts his eyes from a particularly gruesome death scene. Near gate fifteen we find the bodies of several DPRK soldiers. They've been stripped of their weapons, but one of them is carrying a couple spare clips of pistol ammo. "Tell me about the Zed," Mr. Jones says, as I search the other corpses. "They're infected with a genetically engineered virus," I tell him. "Later in the game, you find out that the Red Wolves recently infiltrated a bioweapons lab, looking for anthrax. They were caught and killed, but the Zed virus got loose, and one of the members of the tactical response team was infected before the lab could be sterilized. He brought the virus back to Pyongyang and it's been spreading ever since. Tonight's the night the zombie plague reached critical mass, just in time for the Red Wolves' big assault..." The lights in the terminal go out. I stand up slowly in the darkness, and since there are no NPCs around to state the obvious, I say: "The Red Wolves must have hit the local power station." The emergency lighting kicks in. The backup lights are dim and strategically positioned to leave large portions of the terminal in shadow. "Gate twenty-three," Mr. Jones says, sounding more annoyed than frightened. "Let's go." The ambush happens at gate twenty. A man in civilian clothes steps out of the darkness in front of us; he has a black bandanna with a red wolf's head tied mask-like over his mouth and nose, and he is carrying a submachine gun. I drop to a crouch and raise my pistol, but before I can get off a shot, a zombie emerges from the shadows as well. The Red Wolf screams as the zombie bites him on the shoulder. As the two of them grapple, a gunfight erupts in the near distance behind them, more black-clad figures opening fire on a barricaded restaurant. "Give me your weapon," Mr. Jones says. "Remember our ammo is limited," I say, handing him the pistol. "I know what I am doing," Mr. Jones says. He strikes a gunslinger pose, one eye shut and arm extended. He spends a long moment shifting his aim back and forth. Then he pulls the trigger, twice. The zombie's skull explodes, while the Red Wolf's head snaps sideways. As their bodies hit the floor, the nearby firefight culminates in a massive explosion that rattles the terminal and sends a wall of smoke billowing towards us. Silence descends. We wait. The smoke has just begun to dissipate when we hear coughing and approaching footsteps. A figure stumbles into view with its arms in the air. "Halt!" Mr. Jones commands. "Identify yourself!" "Corporal Chen Li-jun of the United Nations peacekeeping force! Don't shoot, I am unarmed!" Mr. Jones lowers the pistol and taps his envoy badge. "Report, Corporal Chen." "The rest of my team is dead, sir! One of the Red Wolves set off a satchel charge." "Did you say you are unarmed?" "Yes sir! I am a mechanic, sir, not a fighter." "What about your security people? Can we use their guns?" "Their weapons were all destroyed in the explosion, sir. And the terrorists' weapons." "How inconvenient," Mr. Jones says dryly. He hands me back my pistol and takes the submachine gun from the Red Wolf he killed. It looks like it's in working order; there's only one forty-round clip, but it's full. "This will do for now," he says. "Corporal Chen, I was told you could arrange transport to the city center." "Yes sir." Corporal Chen explains that there is—or rather, was—a monorail line linking the airport to the central station at the Ryugyong Hotel. The Red Wolves have knocked out a section of the rail near the airport perimeter, but three kilometers to the south there is another station that is still connected, and soldiers and police are reported to be rallying there. "We must find a vehicle and drive there. Then you can take the monorail into the city center." "No," Mr. Jones says. "I wish to get to the city center as quickly as possible. We will drive there directly." Corporal Chen blinks and looks momentarily confused. Then he repeats his previous statement word for word, with the exact same intonation. Mr. Jones sighs in exasperation. "We can try driving straight to the city," I say. "But if we're supposed to take the monorail, a car trip may not be possible." "Ridiculous," Mr. Jones mutters. Then he says, "Very well. Corporal Chen, get us out of here and find us a vehicle." "Yes sir! Sir, I must also inform you that there is a Red Wolf sniper on the roof of the terminal..." "Yes, we know." "Before we leave, you may wish to go up to the roof and deal with him. It will safeguard our departure, and his weapon could be useful." "I have no interest in acquiring a sniper rifle," Mr. Jones says. "I am impatient to get to the city. Find us a vehicle." He waits, frowning, to see if the corporal will repeat himself again. "Yes sir!" Chen says. "This way, sir." He turns and starts moving. Mr. Jones, Jolene, Ray, and I all follow him, but I turn back when I notice Anja isn't with us. She is standing over the Red Wolf and the zombie Mr. Jones shot. It looks like she's staring at something, but this time there's no poster in her line of vision, and as I get closer I see that her avatar is not just still but completely motionless. "Anja?" I say, reaching out. My hand doesn't just pass through her, it erases the portion of her avatar that it touches. I wave my arm back and forth, and her entire upper torso disappears, leaving her head hanging frozen in midair. Creepy. "John Chu!" Mr. Jones calls back to me. "What is the problem?" "Anja's glitched," I tell him. "She must have disconnected." "Can she rejoin the game?" "I don't know." "We will proceed without her," he says. "If she logs back in, she will have to catch up to us. Now come on!" As we make our way through the terminal, I send Anja an instant message, asking her what happened. I get no answer. But I do get a message from Ms. Pang. LOOK FOR AN OPPORTUNITY TO ISOLATE MR. JONES, it says. > WHAT DO YOU MEAN, "ISOLATE"? I write back. > LOSE THE OTHER MEMBERS OF YOUR PARTY. KILL THEM IF YOU HAVE TO, BUT TRY TO BE SUBTLE. ONCE YOU AND JONES ARE ALONE, KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN. WHEN YOU SEE ME COMING, DISTRACT HIM. > I HAVE QUESTIONS, I write. > YOU HAVE YOUR MONEY, she replies. NOW DO AS YOU ARE TOLD. In baggage claim a pitched battle is underway between a Red Wolf, a squad of North Korean soldiers, and a big pack of zombies. The Red Wolf tries to make a fighting retreat along a stalled conveyor belt; he gets grabbed from behind and dragged out of sight, along with his weapon. The zombies swarm the soldiers' position. The squad leader screams something patriotic and sets off a belt of grenades; the blast brings down a big chunk of the ceiling, burying the squad and most of the Zed. While Mr. Jones and I shoot the few zombies that are left, Jolene spies a golf bag among the scattered luggage and arms herself with a nine iron. Outside, the passenger pickup area is another scene of carnage. In addition to the bodies, there are enough cars to constitute a traffic jam by DPRK standards, but none of them are drivable: They are all shot or smashed up, or on fire. Off to our right, though, in the clear and conspicuously undamaged, is an idling passenger bus. "There is our ride," Corporal Chen says. "I will drive," says Mr. Jones, but Corporal Chen sprints ahead, and by the time we board he is already behind the wheel. No amount of envoy badge-tapping will convince the corporal to move, so Mr. Jones takes a seat across from him and glares instead. Jolene, Ray, and I move towards the back of the bus. A zombie pops up and I shoot it in the head. We sit. "What's up with Anja?" Jolene asks me. "I don't know. I messaged her, but she's not answering. Maybe her internet is out." "Lucky girl," Ray says. "What's your problem?" says Jolene. "My problem is I don't like seeing people with their faces chewed off. I mean, if it's cartoon gore, OK, but this shit..." He gestures at the downed Zed, whose left eye has come out of its socket and now dangles from a stalk, jiggling with the motion of the bus. We've cleared the terminal. The road curves to merge with a broader thruway. As Corporal Chen makes the turn, we hear a familiar crack! and the side window behind Mr. Jones shatters. The bullet hits the corporal in the head and his brains spray across the front windshield. "Great," Ray says. As the bus swerves out of control, Mr. Jones tries to grab the wheel. But the crash that follows is scripted—our penalty for declining the sniper side quest. The bus plows through a guard rail and plunges down a steep embankment. Our characters don't black out this time, but the simulated whiplash as we hit bottom is enough to make even a veteran VR player queasy. We stumble out of the wreck and regroup by the light of the one surviving headlamp. We've come down onto a two-lane road that runs beneath the thruway. To our left the road is blocked by a jackknifed tractor trailer. To our right is a dark tunnel; a blinking pair of hazard lights is visible at the far end. Our next ride, probably, if we can get to it. "I'm sure there aren't a million Zed hiding in there," Jolene deadpans. She glances towards the embankment, but without even trying she knows it's impossible to climb back up. We have to go through the tunnel. Mr. Jones, impatient as ever, is already marching into the darkness. Jolene hefts her nine iron and starts to follow him, but I stop her and say, "You and Ray wait here." "Excuse me?" "Just do it," I say. "Please?" She frowns but doesn't argue. Neither does Ray, who I think at this point would be just as happy to get killed off. I run to catch up with Mr. Jones. We are in the middle of the tunnel when the first Zed come shambling out of the dark. They are few in number and they are slow movers, so it would be easy enough to just dodge around them, but I choose to deliberately fall into the game designers' trap and fire my pistol. The gunshot echoes loudly in the tunnel, and as the echo fades I hear the crash of a metal door slamming open, followed by a chorus of growls. We are close enough now to see that the hazard lights belong to a white airport security jeep that is sitting with its front doors open. On the other side of the road is a sedan that has been flipped onto its roof. The guys in the jeep must have stopped to investigate the wreck, and you can guess what happened next. Sure enough, as Mr. Jones goes to climb in the jeep, he is ambushed by a Zed in a tattered security uniform. While he's busy shooting it, I step past him and slip behind the wheel. The jeep's keys are in the ignition and the motor starts on the first try. "I will drive," Mr. Jones says, but instead of sliding over I pull the driver's door shut and motion for him to go around. This gets him glaring again, but the rest of the Zed are almost on us. "What about the other two?" Mr. Jones asks, as he climbs into the passenger seat. I look up at the rearview mirror. The mob of approaching Zed must number in the dozens now, and they are jammed shoulder to shoulder, snarling furiously. I doubt even Darla could break through that with only a golf club for a weapon. "Don't worry, they'll catch up to us," I say. Then I step on the gas. > THE ROAD CURVES LEFT AND UP. AS WE REJOIN THE THRUWAY, I brace for more gunshots, but it seems we are out of sniper range. I get a terse instant message from Jolene: > WTF??? > LATER, I reply. The rain comes back with a vengeance. I put on the windshield wipers. Downtown Pyongyang still has power and the skyline remains hazily visible through the deluge, but it doesn't seem to be getting any closer. The blacked out landscape around us, as revealed by intermittent lightning flashes, is a mix of open farmland and concentrated apartment housing. The monorail line is on our right, running roughly parallel to the road, which confirms that we're going in the right direction—not that we actually have a choice. "The rally point can't be far," I tell Mr. Jones, but he only grunts impatiently, so I give the jeep more gas. I get another instant message: > INTRUSION DETECTED — SECURICAM/A1 When I was searching my apartment this morning, something I found, in addition to my old Companion Cube, was the nannycam I bought for my previous apartment when I thought one of my roommates was stealing from me. It occurred to me that it might be useful to get footage of Ms. Pang's white guy if he came back, so before I left I set the camera up and programmed the motion sensor to send me alerts. Keeping one eye on the road, I open a pop-up window and check out the video feed. It's not Ms. Pang's white guy. The three people in my apartment—two men and a woman—are all Asian. I want to say Korean, though they could be Chinese. Agewise I'd guess they're in their late twenties, though the tougher-looking of the two guys could be older. Thanks to my thousands of hours of experience in first-person shooters, I have a much easier time IDing their guns. The tougher-looking guy is holding a 92 series Beretta semiautomatic, the default handgun for Hong Kong movie gangsters. The woman is armed with a Beretta 21A pocket pistol that has been fitted with a silencer—a common accessory in video games and films, but one that I've never actually seen on a real concealed-carry weapon. Staring at it, I think: WTF??? "Look out!" Mr. Jones says. A makeshift barricade of sandbags and concertina wire stretches across the road in front of us. Even if I weren't distracted, there's not enough time to avoid a collision, so instead of slamming on the brakes I just try to steer through the crash. This works for a few seconds but then the tires blow and we go into an uncontrolled skid. The jeep comes to a stop with its front bumper and grill wrapped around a lamppost. The motor is dead but the headlights are somehow still working, so I can see the sign hanging askew from the post. MONORAIL STATION 0.6 KM, it reads. I try the ignition and confirm we'll be walking. We climb out of the jeep and a series of closely timed lightning flashes gives us a sense of our surroundings. We've entered one of the suburban housing complexes, the thruway now a boulevard with rows of identical six-story apartment buildings lining either side. Behind us at the wrecked barricade I spot the remains of a blown-up machine-gun nest with uniformed bodies scattered around it. Another sniper opens up with an automatic rifle from the other end of the street. I take cover behind the jeep. Mr. Jones ducks down beside me, but not before firing a long burst from his submachine gun. "Hey," I remind him, "careful with your ammo!" "Sorry!" he replies, sounding uncharacteristically abashed. Then he says: "The shooter is in a third-floor balcony about forty meters away." "Stay here." I crawl around to the back of the jeep and peek out carefully. I quickly spot the shooter, and I also see how I'm supposed to deal with him. Parked on the sidewalk almost directly beneath the balcony is a military supply truck. Its tailgate is open, and lying beside it are two more dead soldiers who must have gotten shot as they were about to unload the truck's cargo: big red steel drums with flame icons on their sides. Why would the North Korean Army be unloading barrels of fuel in the middle of a housing complex during a zombie apocalypse/terrorist uprising? Don't ask me, I just work here. I draw my pistol and wait for the next lightning flash. It's a long shot and my first bullet goes wide, but the second is dead-on, and the fuel is as volatile as nitroglycerin. The whole truck goes up, sending a huge gout of flame up the side of the building; the sniper is caught in it and dies screaming. I salvage a grenade from one of the dead soldiers by the barricade. Mr. Jones and I proceed along the boulevard, the now-blazing apartment building lighting our way. We go about three hundred meters before our progress is blocked by a pair of buses parked nose-to-nose across the road. In real life this would be a surmountable obstacle, but the game won't allow me to give Mr. Jones's avatar a boost, or let me climb on his shoulders. We are forced to detour into a small plaza to our left. At the center of the plaza, a life-sized portrait of Kim Jong-un has been placed atop a concrete pedestal. The pedestal is ringed by brightly burning torches, so despite the blackout and the storm, the Supreme Leader is clearly visible, a beacon of Juche strength in the darkness. At his first sight of it, Mr. Jones does a funny little dip, almost like he's genuflecting. My own attention is focused on the edges of the plaza. I look for an open alley or a breezeway but don't find one; the surrounding buildings form a solid wall, and the doorways are all blocked with piles of sandbags. It's a dead end. "How do we get to the station?" Mr. Jones asks. I shake my head. "We don't. Not yet. Something has to happen first." "I do not understand." I approach the Kim Jong-un shrine and check out one of the torches. It's cast bronze, about three feet long, the flame fueled by a reservoir in the handle. I lift it from its sconce and swing it experimentally; it should make a decent club. Growls echo from the direction of the boulevard. Mr. Jones and I turn to see the zombified citizens of Pyongyang emerging from the shadows. Whatever their social rank in life, they are members of the Hostile Class now, starving and eager to feast on our entrails. Mr. Jones tenses up and raises his weapon. "Single shots to the head," I remind him. "Yes, I understand," he says, nodding. There are fifteen Zed in the first wave. Mr. Jones shoots ten of them; I shoot one and use the torch to bash out the brains of the other four. I load a fresh clip into my pistol and do a quick spin around to make sure there aren't more zombies sneaking up behind us. I spot a lone figure standing on the far side of the shrine, but it's not one of the Zed. It's Ms. Pang. She is dressed all in black with a Red Wolf bandanna tied beneath her chin. She locks eyes with me and puts a finger to her lips. "More of them!" Mr. Jones cries, still looking towards the boulevard. The second wave is massive, more Zed than I can count. Mr. Jones is soon out of ammo; I toss him the torch and grab another for myself. We fight the mob hand to hand and are nearly overwhelmed. In desperation I use the grenade, taking out a dozen zombies at once and nearly killing us in the bargain. This buys us a moment's rest but it isn't enough; we can hear more of them coming. Something big slams into the bus barricade. We hear a monstrous roar, and the growls of the Zed abruptly fall silent. One of the buses slides forward as the new arrival makes an opening for itself. Lightning flashes as it breaks through. It's some kind of mutant Zed, grown to troll-like proportions. The sight of it makes me regret having used up my grenade, but there's no point crying about that now. I slam my last clip into my pistol and open fire on the monster. I can tell I hit it in the head because I see bits of skull flying off it, but this only seems to piss it off. Then my gun is empty, and the Zed pounds its knuckles on the ground and roars again. Mr. Jones roars too—a kind of Rebel yell, the loudest sound I've ever heard him make—and charges the beast with his torch. The Zed swipes at him with both fists, but Mr. Jones dodges the blows and brings the torch down like a sledgehammer on the top of the Zed's skull, once, twice, three times. The monster's head comes apart and its body crashes to the ground, even as Mr. Jones continues to pound on it. He hits it until he is certain it's not getting up again, and then he hits it some more. "Good job," I say, when he's finally finished. I say this not to praise him—although I am pretty impressed—but because Ms. Pang is walking up behind him now, and I want him to look at me instead of her. But he doesn't look at either of us, just stands there catching his breath. Then Ms. Pang is right on top of him. She raises a hand, and I see blue sparks dancing over her palm and her fingers. This is a fairly cheesy visual effect—the kind of thing an amateur might whip up at home—but whatever computer process it signifies appears to be more sophisticated. Mr. Jones grunts and stiffens up, and his avatar turns one hundred and eighty degrees, rotating as if he were standing on a turntable. Ms. Pang shoves her hand into his face and the sparks wrap around his skull, for a moment seeming to form an almost solid band, like a VR headset made of lightning. Then the sparks go out and she draws her hand back. Mr. Jones's avatar is now frozen, just like Anja's avatar was frozen. Ms. Pang thrusts her hand forward again, and erases Mr. Jones's head. "Excellent," she says. She turns to me smiling. "Well played, John Chu. You did not disappoint me." Somehow I don't hear this as good news. "What did you just do?" "A good question," says Ms. Pang. "The answer depends on how clever Smith is. But with a bit of good fortune, you will hear about it on the news very shortly. In the meantime—" The rest of her words are drowned out by a sudden whine of static in my headphones. I start lagging like crazy, my visuals breaking up into a stuttering series of still images shot through with junk pixels. Whatever this is must be affecting my avatar as well, because right before I disconnect I hear a quizzical "John Ch-ch-ch-chu?" break through the static. Then my goggles go dark. The static drops to a hum, then nothing. I spend a long moment in the silent void waiting to see if the words ACCOUNT TERMINATED will appear. They don't. But even without that confirmation, I can tell I'm down another name. THERE'S A COMMON SCI-FI MOVIE TROPE WHERE A CHARACTER thinks they've logged out of virtual reality, only to discover later that they've been tricked: They're still in the simulation. It's a believable scenario, because all of us have experienced something like this, in dreams. But when it comes to VR, the technology isn't quite there yet. As I pull off my headset, I can smell something burning, and since I haven't bought any new Japanese sex toys, I know this must be real life. The Venetian blinds on the motel room window are drawn, but enough light is coming through the slats that I can see my computer on the dresser in front of me; it's not actually on fire, but when I pick it up the case is warm, and the glow of fried components is visible through the air vents on the back. It's not just my game rig that's dead. The alarm clock and the lamp on the nightstand are both out, and when I flip the wall switch for the overhead lights, nothing happens. I go to the window and peek out through the slats. It's evening and the sun has just set. The motel parking lot looks empty—no pistol-packing mystery Asians lying in wait. But when I step outside, there's a shoebox sitting on the doormat with my name written on the lid. As I'm staring at the shoebox, the door to the motel room on my left opens and a shirtless white guy with dreads and a scraggly beard stumbles out. "Hey," he says, throwing me a confused look, "did you just lose power?" I nod. We both turn and look at the Texaco station across the street, which is lit up and open for business. The streetlight on the corner is still working, too. "Weird," says the white guy. Not really, I think. I've spent enough time browsing griefer forums to know there are lots of ways to cause a localized blackout, if that's your thing. For example, if you wire a Taser to an extension cord and plug it into a wall socket, you can melt down a building's electrical system as effectively as you can a human nervous system. I doubt that Ms. Pang's enforcer is to blame in this case, but here in America, where electroshock weapons are covered by the second amendment, he's not the only one with access to Tasers. A phone starts ringing in the shoebox at my feet. The dreadlocked white guy, helpful as any NPC, nods at the box and says, "Sounds like you got a call." "Thanks," I say. I take the shoebox back into my room and set it on the bed and open it. The smartphone inside is a Xiaomi 2035, a Chinese brand that according to my research is very popular in North Korea. Its screen reads: SMITH CALLING. I pick it up and answer it. "How did you find me?" "You have more important things to worry about," Smith says. "Look, I don't know what just happened, but—" "Don't you? Your confederate—who I believe to be an agent of the People's Republic of China—just tried to assassinate my boss." "Assassinate?" I say. "What is this, The Matrix? You can't kill someone by—" "I knew you were a security risk," Smith says. "My error was assuming that the danger was purely informational. I did not expect a physical threat." "What physical threat?" Remembering the light show in the game: "Did something happen to Mr. Jones's VR headset?" "As if you did not already know. You can be sure we will be looking much more closely at our foreign hardware sourcing, going forward." "Is Jones all right?" "Yes, he is quite well. Fortunately, we detected your confederate's incursion into our system, and as a precaution I had one of my own agents take over for Mr. Jones in the game. That agent will be honored as a hero." I step to the window and scan the parking lot again. "Look, I don't know if you're bullshitting me here," I say, "but I don't know anything about a plot against Mr. Jones's life." "You are not working for the PRC?" "I was working for someone else. She calls herself Ms. Pang, and she could be PRC. But she wasn't just paying me, she was threatening me." "Ah," Smith says. "'Carrot and stick,' is that the expression?" "Yes." "Well, John Chu, I have no more carrots for you. Your contract with Mr. Jones is terminated. You will receive no more money—but you will perform one last service. Do you see the envelope in the box I left for you?" Nestled in the bottom of the shoebox is another, smaller box, rectangular and relatively flat. Resting on top of it is a letter-size envelope. The envelope contains a train ticket, a coach seat on tomorrow morning's Amtrak Coast Starlight to Los Angeles. "You want me to go to L.A.? What for?" "You will find out when you get there." "I don't think so." "I do," Smith says. "There is a message with a video attachment on this phone's email app. Open it now and watch it." The video clip is from the feed of another nannycam that is focused on a long white medical pod. The head of the pod's occupant is enclosed in a special VR helmet, so I cannot see her face, but on the wall behind the pod are several shelves full of trophies, and a big poster of Anja performing at the Pan American Games. A red light flashes on the side of the medical pod, and a robotic voice begins shouting: "Achtung! Systemfehler!" Within seconds, a woman I recognize as Anja's mother runs into view. She goes to a computer terminal near the foot of the pod, but even as she reaches it, the alarm ceases. Anja's mom snatches up a headset from beside the terminal and puts it on. "Anja?" I hear her say. "Alles OK mit dir?" She pauses to listen and then continues talking; by the time Anja's father appears, she is calmer. "Falscher Alarm," she tells him. "Do we have an understanding now?" Smith says when I get back on the phone. "You hacked Anja's iron lung." "No, John Chu—you did. But so we are clear, if you force me to terminate her life support, there will be no alarm to warn her parents." "OK," I say. "I understand the rules." I find myself looking into the shoebox again, at the second box nestled inside it. Something tells me that whatever it contains, I'm not going to like it. It's as if Smith can read my thoughts. "Yes," he says. "Open it."

88 Names

Matt Ruff

RL

 You can play with your friends in the Realms of Asgarth, but remember to play with them outside Asgarth as well. —Call to Wizardry loading screen tip  prohibition — A popular blood sport in which a government attempts to tame desire by passing a series of ineffective and increasingly draconian laws. —The New Devil's Dictionary Yesterday must have been protest day in Sacramento. The southbound Coast Starlight is carrying scores of anti-gun activists, and an equal number of anti-abortion protesters. Amtrak, hoping to avoid a riot, has seated the two groups at opposite ends of the train. I get put in a car with the anti-gun crowd. At twenty-one I am an old man among them: Most are high-school age or even younger. They wear blood-red T-shirts, adorned on the back with the names of places where mass shootings have occurred. On the front of the shirts, above a graphic of a fist smashing an AK-47 into pieces, is the name of their movement: Repeal the 2nd. Given how my grandparents died, you might assume I'd be all in favor of this, but as usual, I get hung up on the practical shit. When I think about gun control, I think of my aunt Emma, an Army surgeon who served four tours in Iraq. Retired now, she lives on a ranch outside Carson City, Nevada, with her wife, Yoko Hayashi. Aunt Yoko has a sad story about her grandparents, too: They were interned at the Tule Lake Segregation Center during the Second World War. Her grandmother was raped by one of the guards there. Em and Yoko own a lot of firearms: a shotgun to deal with coyotes and human trespassers; a rifle for hunting; an assortment of pistols for mostly sentimental reasons (they met at a shooting range); and hidden behind a false wall in the bedroom closet, a pair of AR-15s and several thousand rounds of ammunition, their insurance against history repeating itself. Emma is mechanically gifted and Yoko can perform sorcery with a 3D printer, so in the event of a fascist takeover, I imagine they would have no trouble converting the AR-15s to full auto. This makes them sound like doomsday preppers, which they kind of are, but they are also two of the sweetest people I know, and funny as hell. They are on a very short list of relatives who I enjoy arguing politics with. But good luck trying to change their minds about anything. When I first heard about the secret arsenal in the closet, I suggested to Emma that even machine guns would be useless in a fight against the government: Mom's got drones that could incinerate the entire ranch from fifty thousand feet in the air. Aunt Em replied that America had drones in Iraq, too, but the insurgents still managed to inflict enough pain that we eventually gave up and went home. "Don't get me wrong," she added good-naturedly. "I'm sure your mother could kill me if she wanted to. But I'm not making it a freebie." Emma and Yoko raise Cavalier King Charles Spaniels for competition. This is relevant because the ATF has a standing policy to shoot any dogs they encounter during a raid. The agency does not discriminate: Even obviously harmless pets are treated as vicious attack animals and put down. My aunts regard their Spaniels as their children, and if a bunch of men and women in black showed up at the ranch and started murdering their babies, it doesn't take a genius to guess what would happen next. I would feel like a huge asshole if I were in any way responsible for that. None of which changes the fact that America has a gun problem. If I could wave a magic wand and prevent all future Columbines, stop people from shooting each other in domestic disputes, and make it harder to commit suicide on a whim—yeah, sure, I would do that. But there is no magic wand, only the blunt instrument of the law versus the endless adaptability of the human heart in pursuit of what it wants. Maybe these kids will come up with a strategy to make prohibition work at a reasonable cost in innocent lives. On another day, I might ask them about it, kill some time shooting the breeze on the way down to L.A. But at the moment, I'm dealing with too many distractions to feel like chatting. Distraction number one is the collar around my neck. To a casual observer it must look like bondage gear, or some sort of science-fiction cosplay: a two-inch-wide band of black plastic ribbon cable, secured by a chunky metal buckle beneath my chin. There's an LED light on the front of the buckle that turned green when I locked the collar in place. If I try to undo the buckle or cut the ribbon cable, or if I fail to follow Smith's instructions to the letter, the light will turn red, and then something very bad will happen to me. Smith wasn't explicit about the nature of the bad thing, but it undoubtedly has something to do with the little glass vial at the back of the collar. The vial is filled with an amber-colored liquid, and sits in a metal bracket attached to the outside of the collar; on the inside of the collar, riding flush against the nape of my neck, is a tiny grommet with a hole a couple of millimeters wide. Feeling it there, I imagine a spring-loaded needle poised to jab me in the spine. That's probably wrong, though: VX, a topical nerve poison, doesn't need to be injected. A single drop on exposed skin is all it takes to kill you. This makes it hard to get comfortable. The collar chafes, and I can't lean my head back against the seat rest for fear of breaking the glass. I sit up straight, stiff-necked, studying the faces of the people around me. Distraction number two: Figuring out which of my fellow passengers is a DPRK sleeper agent. Smith told me that he'd have someone on the train keeping an eye on me. I assume the watcher is the same person who delivered the box to the motel. I doubt it's any of the protesters. They were already on the train when I boarded, and besides, they're mostly white kids. Caucasian teenage North Korean spies seems like a stretch. I can probably also rule out the Sikh family who got on in Oakland. It could be the Asian guy in the business suit: He boarded the same time I did, and he has a pissed off resting expression that reminds me of Smith. But he's Japanese, not Korean, and while that doesn't rule him out, it does make me feel guilty about racially profiling him. Aunt Yoko would be disappointed. Maybe it's none of these people. The collar buckle is big enough to contain a GPS tracker and a microphone, so there's no reason for the watcher to be in the same car as me. He, or she, could be sitting with the pro-lifers at the front of the train, remotely monitoring my GPS signal. And listening. Which brings me to distraction number three: Finding a way to call for help. My computer got fried, and I left my cell phone back in my apartment because I was worried about being tracked with it. I have the Xiaomi phone that Smith provided, but for obvious reasons I can't use that. I need to borrow another phone, without asking for it out loud. The girl in the window seat next to me has an iPhone, but unfortunately she has decided I am some kind of weirdo. She took one look at my collar as I was sitting down and immediately put in earbuds and assumed a defensive posture that says, "I will tase you if you so much as tap me on the shoulder." I could try passing her a note anyway—"I NEED YOUR PHONE. PLEASE DON'T RESPOND VERBALLY."—but I doubt that would end well. Looking through the gap between the seat backs, I can see that the boy in front of us is using his phone to watch a video. A two-second glimpse of the footage is enough for my nerd brain to identify it as an episode of the original Star Trek. It's the one about the guy named Lazarus who's caught in an eternal feud with an insane twin from an alternate universe. One Lazarus is made of matter, the other of antimatter, and if they ever meet outside a special interdimensional corridor, the resulting explosion will destroy all of existence. I am thinking about this when the conductor announces that the dining car in the middle of the train is open for lunch. It gives me an idea. JUST AS SOME PEOPLE ASSUME I MUST BE IN FAVOR OF gun control, there are others, including several members of my own family, who argue that I ought to be in the anti-abortion camp. Their logic is straightforward: As the unplanned child of an ambitious single mother, I am lucky not to have been killed in the womb. This is true as far as it goes, but I don't think it goes very far. Because I paid attention in sex ed class, I know that a lot of things had to go right in order for me to be born. Not getting aborted is actually pretty far down on the list. For example: The average male ejaculate contains hundreds of millions of sperm. They are not identical; each carries a random combination of half the man's DNA, further altered by mutation. And their race to fertilize the egg is governed by the rules of chaos theory, in which outcomes are highly dependent on initial conditions—a nerdy way of saying that if your parents had had sex a few minutes earlier or later, they'd have conceived a different child. This is another case where a magic wand would be useful. I happen to think being alive is great, and if I could I'd happily give the gift of life—a good life—not just to all the kids who got aborted, but to those millions of potential brothers and sisters whose existence was precluded by my own conception. That's a fantasy, of course. And so is the idea that you could have stopped my mother from getting an abortion, if she'd wanted one. Granted, at the time she became pregnant, she didn't yet have access to Hellfire-equipped drones. But she was already a badass, confident in her own judgment, and she knew how to stand up for herself. If you'd told her she didn't have a choice what to do with her own uterus, she'd have tossed you into a swimming pool—and if that didn't get the point across, she'd have shot you. When the thing standing between you and your heart's desire is another person with their own wants and needs, the answer is never as simple as just laying down the law. We all understand this when someone else tries to tell us what we can and can't do, but conveniently forget it when it's our turn to give orders. This blind spot is common to people on all parts of the political spectrum, which is one reason why I don't like arguing politics much. Another thing we all have in common is that we all need to eat. So now, in a bid to save my own precious life, I head for the dining car, the interdimensional corridor where the matter of Repeal the 2nd mixes with the antimatter of Overturn Roe. The car door opens on the sound of raised voices. Looking down the aisle as I step inside, I see a teenage girl in a blood-red T-shirt going nose-to-nose with an older woman whose blouse is patterned with sonogram images. Standing beside them, trying to play ref, is a nervous looking Amtrak attendant. The woman and the girl aren't so much arguing as exchanging bumper sticker slogans; you could write their dialog yourself if you really wanted to. The Amtrak attendant's dialog consists of a single phrase, which he repeats over and over again: "Ladies, please!" This is completely ineffectual, but he keeps saying it anyway, like a sorcerer's apprentice trying to get his Charm of Silence to work. Everyone else in the car is focused on the woman and the girl, waiting to see if they'll go full PvP on each other. The girl's back is to me, so I can't read her expression, but the Overturn Roe woman looks like she's enjoying the verbal sparring too much to start throwing real punches. Which is fine. I don't want anyone to get hurt here, I just need a distraction. I turn my attention to the nearest tables. I spot what I want almost instantly: A guy sitting alone just ahead and to my left has a phone. It looks like he was scrolling through Twitter when the live-action version broke out behind him. Now he's set the phone down on the table and turned around in his seat to watch the fireworks. Thinking will only cause trouble here, so I will myself to just act: Grab the phone as if I have every right to take it, turn, and go. But even as I step forward, a teenage boy in a red T-shirt gets up from a table on the other side of the aisle. It looks like he intends to provide backup to the girl, whether or not she actually needs his help. But having gotten to his feet, he just stands there, in my way. I need to get the phone before it goes to sleep and locks itself. I could probably get away with saying "Excuse me" here, but my sense of urgency inclines me to more forceful methods, and because this is the real world, chest-bumping is allowed. The train car jolts over a rough spot on the tracks and I pretend to lose my footing, shoving the boy forward. He shoots me an angry look over his shoulder, but when he sees I'm not wearing a sonogram shirt, he turns back towards the girl. I can reach the phone now. I've got my hand on it when the train gives another big jolt. This time it's the boy who stumbles. He falls into me. More worried about losing the phone than my balance, I tip over backwards. When my head hits the floor, the bracket on the back of the collar jams painfully against my spine, and as my teeth click together I swear I hear the crunch of breaking glass. My body goes numb. This is panic, but it could also be the VX starting its attack on my neurotransmitters. I jerk my head up, reach around to the nape of my neck. Yes, I know, this is dumb: using my bare hand to check for leaking contact poison. But if the vial is broken, I'm almost certainly doomed; the only real question is how many other people will die with me. Better to find out fast, so I can start agonizing about whether to throw myself heroically from the train. I touch the bracket. The vial is intact. I feel for cracks in the glass, pressing hard enough as I do this that, if it were cracked, it would probably shatter. But as best I can tell, it's undamaged. The only moisture I feel is the cold sweat on my fingertips. I am still alive. The boy, who landed on top of me, is trying to get up; my sense of relief is cut short as he elbows me in the balls. I grit my teeth again. As I cup my wounded testicles, I see the phone, lying on the floor within easy reach and still unlocked. I grab it. The boy steps on my hand. It's OK, I needed to get my blood pumping again after that scare. I wait for the boy to get off me and haul myself to my feet. Then I try to make a quick exit. I get as far as the door at the end of the dining car. When the door slides open, the surly Japanese guy in the business suit is standing on the other side. He glances at the phone in my hand, then looks me right in the eye, scowling. I start to go numb again, but not before I feel my face compose itself into a perfectly guilty expression. He doesn't kill me. He stares at me unblinking for a few seconds, then tilts his head and looks past me to where the woman and the girl are still going at it. "What's that all about?" he asks. Even if I were free to speak, I'm not sure what I'd say to this. I answer with a shrug. Then I duck my head, and make good my escape.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 31

I find a vacant lavatory and lock myself inside. Holding up the phone, I carefully close Twitter and open the dialing app. Then I stare at the screen and realize I don't know what to do next. Normally I contact Mom through my computer. There's an emergency number I can call if I get into trouble when I'm away from my PC. I'm supposed to have that number memorized, and I do, sort of—it's programmed into my cell phone. I had optimistically assumed that the act of programming it into my cell phone would also imprint it in my brain, but now, try as I might, I cannot recall a single digit. I don't know Jolene's phone number either. Or Ray's. I do know Darla's, but reaching out to her is one of the few things I can think of that might conceivably make my situation worse. The answer, when it comes to me, is so blindingly obvious that I feel stupid: Duh, of course. I'm traveling to his city, after all, and not only can he relay a message to Mom, he's got resources of his own that could help me. I punch in his number, start composing a text. > DEAR DAD, it begins.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 32

 apophany — A false epiphany, in which a person perceives a meaningful connection between things which are in fact unrelated. The term, coined by German psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in the 1950s, originally referred to a type of delusion suffered by schizophrenics, but has since come to apply broadly to any misfire of human pattern recognition. —Lady Ada's Lexicon The Coast Starlight arrives at Los Angeles Union Station just after eleven p.m. Everyone on board is cranky. At the start of the dinner service, after another shouting match between protesters ended in a food fight, the crew shut the dining car down and sent the passengers back to their seats without supper. Now, as we roll to a stop, I see Amtrak security and LAPD out in force on the platform. When the train doors open, I'm one of the first to disembark. I keep my head down and walk swiftly past the cops. Inside the terminal, I fake towards the Metro subway escalators but instead go up and out. A black limousine is waiting at the car service pick-up; the driver sees me coming and the back door opens automatically. I duck inside, and before I've even got my backpack on the floor, the door clanks shut and we are moving. "Hi John," the driver says, turning to flash me a quick smile. "How was your trip?" "Exciting," I tell her, reluctant to say more until I'm sure we can't be overheard. "It's OK," she says. "Faraday's on." She points to the bright green shield that has lit up on the dashboard, a telltale signifying that the limo's Virtual Faraday Cage has been activated. All electronic transmissions into and out of the vehicle should be blocked; GPS trackers cannot transmit, cell phones have no bars, and booby-trapped death collars cannot be remotely triggered. So for the moment I am safe, and if we are lucky, Smith will interpret the loss of GPS signal to mean that I've taken the subway. My chauffeur's name is Bamber Holtz—"Bambi," inevitably, in the trades. Originally from Oklahoma, she did a stint in the Army after high school and then came to Hollywood to do FX work, specializing in pyrotechnics and demolition, skills she'd honed defusing IEDs in Syria. She's won two VES awards and was nominated for a Visual Effects Oscar, but to heterosexual men of a certain age she's most famous for her one on-screen role, body-doubling Sandra Bjorn during the nude motorcycle chase in Death Race 5000. After the original stunt woman suffered a bad case of road rash during a test shoot, the director, desperate to keep the film on schedule, turned to the only other woman on the crew and asked how she'd like to take her clothes off and ride a vintage Harley. Bamber agreed to do the scene in exchange for the bike. We met on one of my previous trips to L.A. Dad had told me he had a new girlfriend, but hadn't said who she was. The first night of my visit, I got up at two a.m. to get a snack from the kitchen and found Bamber raiding the fridge. We were both in our underwear, and even without a motorcycle helmet, I recognized her instantly. Which was awkward for about five seconds, but then we got dressed and made fajitas, and Bamber told me about the exploding hovercar she was building for Fast & Furious 17. We've been friends ever since. And of all the women I've seen gratuitously naked, she's the one best suited to help me with my current predicament. "Where's Dad?" I ask her. "Picking up your friend Jolene." She steers with one hand and keeps an eye on the rearview screen in the dashboard, watching to see if anyone's following us. "Her plane landed at LAX about an hour ago." "What about Mom? Were you able to get through to her?" "Your dad talked to her on the phone earlier today. She had him put me on for a few minutes at the end." "What was that like?" "Awkward, for him. I don't think they'd spoken since they broke up. With me she was all business." Bamber smiles. "Reminded me of my old squad leader in Damascus." We're on Sunset Boulevard now, near Dodger Stadium. It doesn't look like anyone's tailing us. Bamber pulls the limo into the parking lot of an Arby's. "OK," she says, "let me see this famous collar of yours." I climb through the partition and sit in the front passenger seat. She checks out the buckle under my chin first, then has me tilt my head forward so she can examine the vial in its metal bracket. "Someone told you this was loaded with VX?" "Smith didn't tell me what it was, only that I'd be sorry if I tried to take the collar off. If it is VX, though, or something like that, shouldn't you be—" "Wearing MOPP gear? Yeah, probably. Your mom gave me an address to take you to if I decided to go the full hazmat route, and I've got a couple auto-injectors of atropine in the glove box. But I don't think we'll need those." "No?" "No... Keep your head down and hold still a second." She takes a knife from a side pocket in her jeans and flicks it open. I hold very still. I feel the blade slide up against the back of my neck, and there's a tug, and then the collar pops loose and falls away. I straighten up, rubbing my neck. As Bamber turns the collar over in her hands, I see that the LED light on the buckle is still green, despite the ribbon cable being cut. She holds up the glass vial so I can take a close look at it. "VX isn't bright orange like this," she says. "It's more of a pale brown, and it's viscous, like motor oil." "So what do you think this stuff is?" "Probably ethanol, with some dye mixed in." "Ethanol?" I say. "Alcohol?" She nods. "That's why they call it a spirit level." She balances the metal bracket on her palm; with the vial lying on its side, I can see the bubble in the fluid, watch it move as she waggles her hand back and forth. When her palm is perfectly horizontal, the bubble comes to rest between two thin black lines painted on the glass. "Oh," I say, and as I belatedly recognize the level for what it is, I can feel my cheeks get hot. Bamber smiles, not unkindly. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you never worked a summer job in construction." "I was more of a Minecraft guy," I tell her. THE NEW SONY PICTURES HOTEL IS ON HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD, across the street from Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Dad, who is doing some script-doctoring for the studio, has arranged the use of one of the top-floor executive suites. The suite is equipped with a version of the same signal-blocking technology as the limo. I have the North Koreans to thank for this. Back in 2014, as retaliation for a Seth Rogen comedy that disrespected the Supreme Leader, the DPRK hacked Sony's corporate network and used the stolen information to embarrass the studio. Those studio execs who survived the resulting scandal became obsessed with data security. To say they are paranoid about leaks is like saying Kim Jong-un has a problem with satire. Bamber and I take a private elevator from the hotel parking garage to the penthouse level. Dad's waiting for us at the door to the suite. "What's the verdict?" he says. "False alarm on the deadly nerve agent," Bamber tells him. "Well, that's good!" Dad says. "Are you hungry, John? We ordered Lebanese." One of the things I like about my father is that it's almost impossible to freak him out. I suspect he was always like this, but life in Hollywood has given him lots of practice taking weird shit in stride. And as a professional artist, he is inherently sympathetic to trains of thought that my mother would deride as "imaginative," so he's not going to try to make me feel dumb for believing a carpenter's level was a weapon of mass destruction. Which is good, because I'm doing a fine job feeling dumb on my own. Jolene is inside, finishing up a plate of kafta and rice. I approach her almost shyly, and we both do that staring thing you do, the first time you meet an online friend in the flesh. The close-cropped hair is the most obvious difference between Jolene and her avatar, but it's little details that really jump out at me: the corkscrew threads of gray at her temples, and the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes. That Jolene is old enough to be my mother is not news to me. But at this point in history, video games have conquered every demographic, so when you play online, you routinely interact with people of all generations, and granting a certain base level of maturity, age just doesn't matter that much. I mean, not to exaggerate: The internet, as we know, did not eliminate prejudice. But it did create an environment where shared interests can easily count for more. And what strikes me now is how unlikely it is, in a world without the net, that Jolene and I would ever have spent time hanging out with each other. Score one point for living in the future. "Thanks for coming," I say. She smiles, exposing the gap between her teeth. "Don't mention it." "No, I mean it. I just hope I didn't get you out here for a prank." "No matter if you did. Your mom's got me on loan from my regular job, so my travel and expenses are covered. And besides, I'm as curious as you to find out who Mr. Jones really is." "I'm curious who you really are," I say. "Is Jolene even your real name?" "My middle name. My first name's Karen, but only my parents ever call me that." "And you're some kind of federal agent, right? The Colorado law firm is just a cover. What are you, FBI?" "Treasury," she says. "Treasury?" "It's a fascinating story," says Dad, returning from the kitchen. He hands me a plate. "Jolene has been working undercover, investigating the black market economies in online role-playing games. Looking for ties to organized crime." From his tone, I can tell he is already cooking up a screenplay pitch on this subject. "It's not an official investigation," Jolene clarifies. "Just one of my boss's crazy pet projects. She saw this 60 Minutes piece about gold farming, and some other report—or maybe it was a Tom Clancy movie—about narcoterrorists using game chat to send secret messages to each other. And by adding two and two to make five, she concluded that the drug cartels might be laundering money through Call to Wizardry." Unlike my father, I am quite capable of astonishment. "That's..." "Batshit, I know. Welcome to my reality... Anyway, she'd caught me messing around in VR on my lunch break often enough to know I'm a gamer, so she called me into her office, and long story short, I got drafted into this off-the-books undercover op. It's not a bad gig, really: She covers my monthly subscriptions and lets me play on the clock when I'm not busy with other things. In exchange, I file reports about any 'suspicious activity' I come across." "And have you found much?" I ask. Thinking not of money laundering, but tax evasion. Jolene grins knowingly. "Nothing too suspicious, until recently. My investigation had about run its course when the Mr. Jones thing popped up. My boss was thrilled about that—and she was over the moon when your mom reached out to her. I'm like her star agent, now. So like I say, don't apologize about getting me out here. I may get a promotion out of all this yet." The suite's doorbell rings. "That'll be Ray," Jolene says, as my dad goes to answer it. "You invited Ray?" "I didn't." This one's on you, her expression says. Which it is, in a roundabout way: Because I forgot mom's phone number, Dad, who was still ghosted, had no way to contact her directly. But he'd met Jolene on one of our monthly game nights, so in my texts from the train, I told him to go the Game Lobby and look for her. "Ray was there when your dad found me," Jolene explains. "We'd both been looking for you and Anja, to find out what the hell happened in D.M. Zed. When your dad showed, I tried to tell Ray to get lost—among other things, his computer's compromised—but, you know, good luck with that." "Dad told Ray everything?" "He told him enough. Ray got really pissed when he heard about the threat against Anja." She says this somewhat grudgingly, as if Ray getting angry on Anja's behalf contradicts her own poor opinion of him. "He wanted to help, and I guess he doesn't live that far from L.A., so..." She trails off, her eyes widening as she looks past me. I don't know if this is racist, but I'm much less surprised to learn Ray is a woman than to discover she's Hispanic. Brown skin notwithstanding, I immediately see the resemblance to her avatar. She's got the same build, the same eyes. The same hair, too, only longer and with bangs. "Renata," Ray says, in answer to my opening question. "Renata Calveros." "You're undocumented." This from Jolene, who's spent the last thirty seconds trying to work out why her law woman's intuition pegged Ray as a malefactor. And she's using the polite term, rather than "illegal," because she's worried she'll be wrong twice. If Ray appreciates the courtesy, she doesn't show it. "I don't have a birth certificate, if that's what you're asking." "Are you a desposeída, Renata?" my dad asks. I'm not familiar with the term, but later when I Google it I'll learn that it refers to someone who is legally an American citizen but who, for reasons beyond their control, can never prove it. Ray answers with a shrug. "My mother says I was born here, and the midwife just forgot to register me. I don't really know. But I grew up in San Bernardino. It wasn't until I started applying to colleges that I found out I had a problem, and by then, it was a little late to do anything about it." She looks at Jolene. "Why do you care? You have a day job with ICE you haven't mentioned?" "I'm a Treasury agent," Jolene says. Ray laughs. "Well then, you've got no beef with me. I pay my taxes." "And I'm going to pay mine," I put in. Just to get it out of the way. THE SUITE HAS A SECURE LANDLINE THAT ALLOWS YOU to make calls even when the signal blocker is active. The five of us gather around a conference table and get Mom on speaker. Jolene recaps what's happened since my arrival. Then Bamber, who has completed an autopsy on the collar, takes a turn. "John was right about the microphone and the GPS tracker," she says. The good news, she adds, is that the microphone is only equipped to transmit, not record—which means that what we say now will remain private. "Tell me about the manufacture," Mom says. "The electronics are all off-the-shelf components. Made in China, but nothing you couldn't get here—it's what I'd use, if I were building something like this." "What about the spirit level?" I feel a twinge of embarrassment as she asks this. "The logo was sanded off, but I recognize the brand," Bamber says. "American." "So it would be reasonable to conclude the collar was constructed locally," Mom says. "Does it seem like something an amateur could build?" "They'd need some technical know-how, to set up the GPS and mike transmitter, but a skilled amateur could do it, sure." "OK," I speak up, feeling more than a twinge of embarrassment now, "the collar seems like a prank, but what about the money? And what about—" "What about Anja?" Ray interjects. "Do we know if she's OK? Have you tried to warn her?" "Something's blocking internet access to her house," Mom says. "My people are working on it." "Her parents' cell phones are down too," Jolene adds. "Their numbers are both listed, but if you call you get a message saying they're not in service." "What about the local police?" Ray says. "Their phones have got to be working, right?" "Smith told me he'd have someone monitoring the emergency channels in Paraná," I say. "If we send the cops or the fire department to Anja's house, he'll shut down her life support." "That could be a bluff," Mom says, "but I'd rather not take the risk if we can avoid it." "Well, is there someone else you can call?" Ray says. "What about the CIA? They've got people all over South America, don't they?" "There's a CIA station in Buenos Aires," Mom replies. "But I've dealt with them before, and they're not going to want to help with this." "I bet I know someone in Buenos Aires who'll help," I say. "Anja's new boyfriend, Javier Messner." "Is he a tech guy?" Jolene asks. "No, he's a barista. But he's not stupid. If we send him to Anja's house, you can talk him through whatever he needs to do to deal with the malware." Jolene nods, in tentative approval. "He still needs to get to Paraná from Buenos Aires. How far is that?" "About three hundred miles, in the real world," I tell her. "I assume Javier's got a car..." Dad speaks up. "I might be able to get him a helicopter. HBO's got a film crew in B.A. right now, shooting exteriors for their Highlander reboot," he explains. "I know the DP, and I think I can talk him into loaning us a chopper along with one of his tech guys. Then all Javier has to do is convince Anja's parents to let us in." "Sounds like a plan," Jolene says. On the phone, I can hear Mom sigh. "Not the way I'd normally do it," she says. "But." "We should think about shutting down the Faraday soon," Bamber puts in. "Smith is going to be wondering where John's GPS signal went." "In a minute," I say. "First, there's one more thing I need to mention..." I tell them about the nannycam I left set up in my apartment, and about the mystery trio of gun-toting Asians. "Well," my mother says when I've finished. "That's interesting."

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 33

Smith's Xiaomi phone rings a few seconds after Dad turns off the signal blocker. Bamber has handed me back the collar, and I hold the microphone up to my throat as I answer the phone. "Hello?" "Where are you?" Smith says. "I think you already know that," I say. There's a pause, just long enough to glance at a pop-up screen. "Sony Pictures Hotel. Expensive." "I can afford it." "Enjoy your money tonight," Smith says. "Tomorrow, you go to work." "Are you ready to tell me what I'm doing here?" "I think you already know that." It's true, I have a theory. I had plenty of time on the train to think about what a ruthless dictator and kidnapper interested in MMORPGs might want from Los Angeles. But if there's one thing this evening has taught me, it's that I shouldn't be so quick to trust my own conclusions. "I'm too tired for games tonight," I say. "Just tell me." And he does.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 34

 dude — A passive-aggressive euphemism for "motherfucker." —The New Devil's Dictionary So who do you think these guys really are?" Jolene asks. It's quarter of ten the next morning, and we are sitting in the limo on the second floor of a parking garage. Our parking spot has a clear view across the street to the world headquarters of Tempest, LLC. Tempest HQ is a fourteen-story blue glass tower. Extending west from the tower's base, and occupying nearly twice as much ground space, is a two-story public amusement center and playtest space known as the Arcade. The Arcade opens at ten, and there is already a long queue of people on the sidewalk waiting to get in. Ray and Bamber are both in line. Jolene uses binoculars to scan the rest of the crowd. Last night while I slept, Bamber performed a second autopsy, this one on my fried gaming rig. Though the motherboard and video cards were slagged, the military-grade hard drive was undamaged. By mounting the drive on another computer, Bamber was able to salvage the footage from my apartment nannycam. Mom's people are now running a facial-recognition search on the mystery trio, and in the meantime, Bamber printed out some nice mug shots for us. But "I have no idea," is all I can think to say in answer to Jolene's question. I'm feeling much more clear-headed than I was last night, but that clarity just makes it easier to appreciate how little I understand what's going on. At breakfast this morning, Bamber asked me whether the backpack I'd been using was the only backpack I owned. I told her no—like most nerds, I have a pile of old backpacks gathering dust in the bottom of my closet—but it's my newest backpack, and the one you'd expect me to use if I were taking my rig somewhere. "I thought so," Bamber said, and then she showed me the GPS tracker she'd found hidden in one of the pack's side pockets. It was the same make as the tracker in the collar. So now we know how Smith found me at the motel. That business where he asked about my IP address must have been a head fake, or a test to see if I'd lie. But if he knew where I was all along, it does raise the question of why he'd send armed goons to break into my apartment. And if the mystery trio aren't his people, and they aren't Ms. Pang's—then yeah, who the hell are they? Don't ask me, I just work here. It's five minutes to ten, time for me to get ready. I open the glove compartment and take out the collar, which Bamber has patched back together. On Mom's instructions, she's also disabled the microphone in the buckle. This will likely make Smith suspicious, but it's a risk we need to take, as we are planning to pull a real-life version of a b-channel. I snap the collar in place around my neck. Then I take Smith's Xiaomi phone, turn it on, and put it in my pocket. Next are a mismatched pair of earbud phones. The one that goes in my left ear has Zero Day-approved encryption and will allow me to communicate securely with Jolene and the others. The one for my right ear is a civilian model that connects wirelessly with the Xiaomi and will let me talk hands-free with Smith while I am doing his bidding. This second earbud was part of a package that a courier delivered to the hotel early this morning. The package also contained a stolen ID badge and a prosthetic thumb. The badge belongs to Jim Boden, a senior computer programmer for Tempest who has worked on Call to Wizardry since its inception. I don't look anything like him, so if I tried to walk into Tempest HQ through the front door I'd never get past security. But according to Smith, there is a less well-guarded side door that connects to the tower from the Arcade. By swiping the badge, and using the fake thumb to spoof a biometric sensor, I should be able to enter through there. I am then supposed to take an elevator to the floor where the real Jim Boden works, and convince him to walk out of the building with me. Smith's people will be waiting to grab him at street level. To help with this last part, the courier's package also contained a handgun—a .50 Desert Eagle semiautomatic. This is another popular video-game gun, a fetish weapon that shoots bullets that are half an inch in diameter. The Desert Eagle that the courier delivered is unloaded, but the thing is so scary looking that just pointing it in Boden's direction should be enough to ensure his cooperation. If not, Smith told me, I will need to think and talk fast. "If you fail your mission, I will trigger the collar, and I will terminate your friend Anja's life support." Thanks to Bamber, I know the first half of this threat is bullshit. We're still waiting to find out about the second half. The helicopter with Javier and the tech guy touched down in Paraná twenty minutes ago, so they should be at Anja's house any moment now, and once they talk their way inside, the tech guy's first priority will be to make sure the medical pod is completely disconnected from the internet. Until we get the all clear on that, we are going to pretend to play along with Smith's plan—up to a point. I am not actually going to kidnap Jim Boden, and if Mom has her way, I won't even go so far as to breach Tempest's security. For a variety of bureaucratic and legal reasons, Mom's goal, as she puts it, is to maintain "the lightest possible footprint"—ideally, neither Tempest nor the local police will ever know we were here. Partly for this reason, I will not be bringing the Desert Eagle into the Arcade with me. The only member of our group who will be armed is Jolene. If something happens that Jolene can't handle, Mom has "other assets" that she can bring into play, but, as she stressed in our pre-op conversation, she'd really, really prefer not to use those. That's what she wants. We'll find out soon enough what she can have. At ten o'clock sharp, the Arcade doors open and the line starts moving. Beside me, Jolene makes her own final preparations. Smith knows what she looks like, so to disguise herself, and to conceal her Kevlar vest and gun, she is wearing a gray USMC hoodie. She slides a big pair of tinted glasses onto her face and milks the drawstrings of the hood until her chin and forehead disappear. "How do I look?" she asks, flashing me a gap-toothed grin. "Like the assassin who loses the knife fight to Quvenzhané Wallis in The Bourne Resurrection," I say. I reach for the button on the dash that turns off the Faraday Cage. "See you inside." Thirty seconds later I am walking out of the parking garage. There's a subway exit just to my right. As I wait to cross the street, the Xiaomi phone rings.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 35

A twelve-foot-tall troll statue stands just inside the Arcade entrance. It doesn't move or speak, but you can sit in the cauldron at its feet and have your picture taken pretending to be boiled into gumbo. I pass. Beyond the troll, spread out across the Arcade floor, are long rows of stylish gaming booths chased with blue and purple neon, each one containing a state-of-the-art VR rig. For twenty-five bucks an hour you can play all your favorite Tempest games, and take an advance look at upcoming titles and expansions. Forty bucks an hour gets you a legendary booth—these are larger, and decorated with orange neon—that will project your gameplay onto an overhead holographic display, letting passersby admire your elite skills. Off to the right, past a long counter selling time cards and merchandise, a sweeping crystal staircase leads up to a second-floor gallery. I spot Bamber at the top of the stairs. She takes a moment to admire a crossed pair of orcish scimitars that are mounted on the wall, then leans on the gallery railing and looks out over the floor. "Heads up," Ray says, her voice in my left ear. "There's a cop in the building." I raise a finger to my right earbud and make sure that the microphone is switched off before asking, "Where?" "Cheapside." This is a region of the Arcade that, like the virtual arcade in the Game Lobby, is devoted to vintage coin-op games and pinball machines. The budget entertainment option, Cheapside is a big draw in its own right, but like the dairy case in a supermarket it is located a long way from the entrance—to get to it, you must walk past the more expensive VR game booths, and a concentration of legendary booths along Cheapside's fringe serves as a constant reminder of what you are missing. "What's he doing?" This from Mom. "Fucking off on duty, looks like," Ray says. "Playing Lethal Enforcers." "Keep tabs on him," Mom says. "But try not to let him notice you." "No fear." I reactivate the mike on my right earbud. Smith hasn't said a word since he first checked in with me on the street. He told me there would be a delay while he confirmed Jim Boden's exact whereabouts. I don't mind being patient; the longer this takes, the better it is for Anja. I go over to a nearby legendary booth, where a kid in a Repeal the 2nd T-shirt is tanking a run through the Temple of the Seven Lanterns. A group of older gamers go by, and I scan their faces, instinctively looking for Smith. But this is pointless: They're a diverse bunch, but none of them are Gray People. Static crackles in my right ear. "It is time," Smith says. "Where are you?" "Inside the building," I tell him. "Near the troll by the front door." "Directly behind the troll as you come in, there is an aisle leading towards the far side of the building. Do you see it?" "Yes." The aisle, a sort of Broadway spanning the width of the Arcade's first floor, is roughly divided into two lanes by a series of padded benches, snack and drink machines, and display cases filled with game world artifacts. "Follow it to its end, to the back corridor where the restrooms are." "OK, Smith," I say, for the benefit of my other listeners, "I'm headed towards the restrooms at the end of the big aisle." But I've barely started walking when Bamber announces: "John's mystery Asians are here." "Where?" I say, Jolene echoing the question in my left ear. "Where what?" says Smith. I forgot to shut off his mike. "Coming my way, up the stairs," Bamber says. "I think they want a bird's-eye view." "Where do I go once I get to the restrooms?" I say, to Smith. I turn and look up at the gallery. I see the trio pass behind Bamber and move to the railing a few yards beyond her. "Just keep walking," Smith says. "And keep your eyes in front of you." I turn back to the aisle, take a few more steps. Even as I ask myself how he could know which way my eyes are pointed, I see, coming towards me down the aisle's other lane, a figure in a hoodie. It's not Jolene. This hoodie is black and bears the Resident Evil game logo, and though the hood is pulled forward over the wearer's head, the drawstrings are loose, so I can see the jaw and the lower part of the face. His face: It's a white guy, and even this partial glimpse is enough to tell me that I know him. Then I see his lips move, forming words, and the gray monotone voice of Smith speaks in my ear: "That's right, John. Keep going. You're almost there." I stop dead in my tracks, my head swiveling as he continues to walk forward. I feel like I've taken a hit of something, but it's what happens next that really floors me: A kid comes darting up the aisle, closely pursued by a couple of friends. They're on a collision course with the guy in the hoodie, but just as the lead kid is about to plow into him, the hoodie guy does this sideways pivot, dodging around the kid without even breaking stride. Then he does it again, and again, the kids zipping by heedlessly like paintballs flying across an open field. Only when he's cleared the last of them does he come to a stop. He's directly across the aisle from me now; we are separated by about ten feet of space and a waist-high display case. I see his lips curve in a smile. He reaches up and slips off his hood and turns to face me. I know him, all right: The white guy from the CIA Factbook. The white guy who broke into my apartment. Ms. Pang's white guy. But he's someone else, too, and though he is flesh and blood, in a moment of total context fail I see him as an avatar, controlled by another person altogether. "Darla?" I say, the word falling into a moment of perfect stillness that probably exists only in my imagination. His smile broadens. He winks at me. "Perv," he says, and Smith, in my ear, says it too. Then his right hand slips inside the front of his hoodie and comes out holding a Desert Eagle handgun. It's the same model as the one the courier delivered to me this morning, but where that one was finished in silver, this one is plated in gold. It is also, I feel quite certain, loaded. I've been in more VR gunfights than I can count, so I know what I'm supposed to do here: Move. Even at point-blank range, it is amazingly difficult to hit a target that is ducking and weaving and jumping around. I know this, but like a newbie I just stand there with my mouth open. He doesn't shoot me. He doesn't even point the gun at me, in fact, just says, "Cover your ears." Then he sidesteps, extending his arm and aiming up, towards the gallery. I clap my hands over my ears. This probably protects me from at least some permanent hearing damage. Not that I really appreciate it in the moment. This is one thing video games, by necessity, get totally wrong: how painfully loud guns are. Even a small-caliber handgun can produce more decibels than a jet engine. When the Desert Eagle fires, I feel the shockwave in the bones of my face, and the muzzle flash—a three-foot-long column of hot gas and propellant—is blinding. I am literally staggered. The second shot knocks me completely off balance; I am already falling when Jolene comes in from the side and tackles me. As we hit the floor, the glass in the display case shatters, struck by return fire from the gallery. I shut my eyes and scream into the side of Jolene's neck. The Desert Eagle booms twice more. The last shot is from a different location, and I dimly surmise that he is on the move. Seconds pass with no more shots fired. I open my eyes carefully. Someone goes running by, and I hear, through the ringing in my ears, the panicked commotion of scores of gamers fleeing towards the exits. Jolene pushes herself up on one arm and sweeps her hood back. She draws her own gun and swivels her head around. She looks down at me and says, "Get your ass out of here," mouthing the words broadly so I'll be sure to understand. Then she gets up and sprints down the aisle in a crouch. Going after the guy in the hoodie. I stand up carefully, brushing bits of glass from my shoulders. A logjam has developed by the base of the troll statue, people fighting one another to get out of the building. I look up at the gallery. Bamber and the trio have vanished. I can see where a fist-sized chunk was blasted out of the gallery railing, and three larger and more jagged holes are punched through the glass panels of the balustrade, but there are no bodies, and no blood. At the Arcade entrance, the logjam breaks. The crowd surges out onto the sidewalk. I go the other way. A grinning statue of Proctor the Salesgoblin stands guard outside the restroom corridor. From inside, just out of view, I hear two people shouting—it sounds like Jolene is one of them. Then I hear three gunshots in quick succession. Then nothing. When I poke my head into the corridor, Jolene is on the floor in front of the women's room, clutching her right side. Slumped against a trash bin outside the men's is the person who just shot her—an LAPD officer, probably the same one Ray spotted earlier. The cop has been hit in the shoulder. In most video games this would barely count as a flesh wound, but the guy looks pretty bad—pale, sweating, in shock. He's got his other hand pressed to the wound, but there's a lot of blood seeping through his fingers. Keeping a wary eye on the cop, I crouch beside Jolene. "Are you all right?" She glares at me, infuriated by the question or by the fact that I'm still in the building. I take her anger as a good sign. "Ribs," she wheezes, wincing. "Busted." "Jesus Christ," Ray says, appearing behind me. "Hey," I say to her. "Jolene's going to be OK, I think, but that guy"—nodding at the cop—"could probably use some help." Ray gives me a look. "You know I'm not a real cleric, right?" "Yeah, of course, but..." I guess I assumed, given her affinity for playing healers, that she'd at least know first aid in real life. Jolene takes a deep breath. "Pressure," she says, wincing again. "Put pressure." I nod, and look up at Ray again. Ray looks back, like: Are you serious? But then she sighs and goes to put pressure on the cop's wound, so he won't bleed out before help gets here. Past the men's room, the corridor we are in ends in a set of stairs, headed up. "The guy in the hoodie," I say. "Did he go that way?" Jolene shakes her head. Not saying no. Telling me not to do it. Which of course I'm going to. I glance at her gun, which is lying on the floor beside her, and she hisses through gritted teeth: "Touch it and I'll break your damn arm." "OK," I say, putting my hands up. "OK." Then I stand, and turn, and head for the stairs.

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 36

As I'm climbing the stairs I try to tell mom what's going on, which is when I realize I've lost my left earbud. I've still got the right one, though, and the microphone is still on. "Sorry, perv," he says, "I'm not your mom." He's turned off the Smith voice filter, so he sounds like a real person now. Though still not the person I think of him as. "Who the hell are you?" I say. The question makes him laugh. "A badass," he says. "A different flavor of badass." The Arcade's upper level is a huge food court. At the top of the stairs I pause and look around carefully. I don't see anybody, but that doesn't mean much—the sightlines are terrible, the floor space broken up by fast food kiosks and whimsical statues of NPCs eating and drinking. "What about those guys you were shooting at?" I ask, keeping my voice low. "Who are they?" "The kind of people who keep their money in Burmese savings accounts. They're pissed because I ripped them off." "Gangsters? You stole the money from gangsters?" "I told you I was going to have a big surprise for you when I got back from my trip." Oh my God. "You ripped off a bunch of gangsters... to finance our MMORPG?" "I was going to steal the money for that," he says. "Technically, the surprise was that I got my hacker friend Orville to show me how to steal it. I was going to talk it over with you before I did it, give you a chance to wet your pants and get used to the idea, then discuss how much we'd actually need. But before any of that could happen, you fucked me over. So I decided to steal the money to fuck you back, instead." "Jesus Christ," I say. "I know you're mad I cut you out of the Janet Margeaux gig, but this... You think this is proportional?" "Of course it's not proportional." He laughs. "But it is awesome." "You're an asshole." "Look, if you're worried about Anja, don't be. You know I'd never really hurt her. All I did was fiddle the alarm system on her medical pod. I had to, to get you to put on that collar... Which I can't believe you fell for, by the way." As we've been talking, I've been making my way through the food court, staying low, moving from cover to cover. Listening. At the moment I'm hunkered down beside a Panda Express kiosk. Straight ahead is a dwarven longboat with some kid's tables inside it. When he laughs again, I don't just hear it in my right ear, I hear it in my left as well. "You do have to admit it was an epic troll," he says. "One for the ages." "Yeah, really epic," I say. "Do you know Jolene just got shot downstairs?" Long pause. "Well, I didn't shoot her," he says, sounding offended by the implication. "And if you're such a fucking genius," I continue, "how come the gangsters got onto you?" "That was your fucking fault. The first withdrawal went smooth as silk. But you made me go back for more, and I guess that time they noticed. They've been on my ass ever since I picked up the cash at the bank." I'm crouched beside the longboat now. Gripping the gunwale with both hands, I stand up, stick my head over the top. He's sitting on the floor inside, looking up expectantly. "Boo," he says. Ordinarily it would be unhealthy to think about punching a guy who has a gun, but having finally grasped the rules of the game he and I have been playing, I know that even if I broke his nose, he would probably just laugh. But before I can put this theory to the test, I glimpse movement out of the corner of my eye, and some late-arriving reflex of self-preservation makes me hop over the gunwale and squat down beside him. Posed on the prow of the longboat is a figure of a drunken dwarf, dancing a highland jig. Peering out through the gap beneath his kilt, I see the male contingent of the trio headed our way with their guns out. The younger guy looks nervous—no doubt this has to do with the sound of approaching sirens outside the building—but the tough older guy just looks focused, like he's cool with being arrested as long as he gets to kill someone first. My boat mate elbows me in the side. I turn to him, and he offers me the Desert Eagle, holding the gun in his left hand while showing me his right wrist, which is swollen and badly bruised. "Recoil," he mouths, by way of explanation. "Idiot," I mouth back. I don't take the gun. I shift back in the boat and look over the gunwales, trying to decide if there's any way to run that won't get us instantly shot. That's when I see Bamber. She's crouched by the corner of the Panda Express kiosk where I was a few moments ago, and she is holding an elvish longbow. The bow is a replica of Helios, a legendary loot drop from the Fields of the Sun. Bamber briefly makes eye contact with me. Then she nocks an arrow in the bow and fires it in a high arc over the heads of the approaching gunmen. The arrow lands with a clatter in the distance and the gunmen spin around at the sound. Bamber nocks another arrow. Then she freezes, and I see a look of frustration come over her face. She tosses the bow and arrow to the floor and raises her arms. The female member of the trio, her pistol pointed at the back of Bamber's head, marches Bamber into the open. "Everybody come out," the gunwoman says, "or I shoot her now." I stand up and put my hands in the air. The boy in the hoodie stays crouched below the gunwale. "Everybody," the gunwoman says. I look down, scowling, and my boat mate rolls his eyes and says, "Fine." He gets up, leaving his own gun on the floor. We exit the longboat and stand next to Bamber. By this point the gunwoman's confederates have joined us. The young guy keeps his Beretta out, but the tough guy holsters his pistol, and then, to my consternation, reaches into the other side of his jacket and pulls out a cleaver. "Where is the money?" the gunwoman says. Bamber answers: "In a safe in our hotel room." "What hotel?" "The Sony, on Hollywood." "What room?" "Suite 10A." Glancing down: "The key card is in my pocket." The gunwoman makes no move to take it. "Tell me about the safe. Is it a number combination, or"—nodding in the direction of the guy with the cleaver—"a biometric lock?" "It's a voiceprint lock," the boy in the hoodie says. The gunwoman points her pistol at him, but he looks back unblinking with a screw-you expression on his face that makes me wish I'd punched him when I had the chance. "Go ahead, shoot me," he says. "Shoot all of us. You won't get the cash back." "Motherfucker." The young guy, really on edge from the sirens now, raises his own Beretta. "Wait!" the gunwoman says. She turns back to Bamber, and then, reconsidering, zeroes in on me. "You," she says. "Is your friend here telling the truth?" And I just gape at her, trying to think how to sell the lie, which of course means I've already blown it. In a moment of rising panic I see something flitting through the air behind her. I glance at it, look away, then look back again, even as my brain warns me not to. The gunwoman sees it all in my face. Eyes narrowing in suspicion, she turns, pistol at the ready, but the drone is small, no larger than a pack of cards, and it's much faster than she is. The instant her gun is pointed away from us the drone fires, hitting her in the neck, dumping more voltage into her body than any civilian Taser would be allowed to. She does a jittering dance, and the men, each tasked with their own drone, dance too. All three of them go down. The Taser drones settle into a protective hover, and a larger drone glides into view from behind the Panda Express kiosk. The big drone has a camera mounted inside a dome on its underside. It pauses to scan the trio, confirming that the Real Threats have been neutralized, then glides forward until it's right in front of me. As it comes to a stop, it does this little side tilt, the way a person might cock their head, and through this gesture I intuit who the driver is. "Hi Mom," I say, and I tilt my own head towards the dude in the hoodie at my side. "I'd like you to meet my girlfriend, Darla." Epilogue 88 Names On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. —Mark Twain

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 37

"The Great Impostor" — Sobriquet of Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. (1921–1982), an American folk legend who used stolen identities and forged credentials to obtain work as a prison warden, college dean, sheriff's deputy, civil engineer, and numerous other jobs for which he was technically not qualified. In what became his most famous exploit, he assumed the identity of a Canadian doctor, Joseph C. Cyr, and served as a trauma surgeon aboard the destroyer HMCS Cayuga during the Korean War. Despite his lack of medical training, he performed several successful operations, speed-reading medical reference books to learn the necessary procedures. Demara's stated motivation for his many impostures was "Rascality. Pure rascality." —The Book of Lulz

88 Names

Matt Ruff

Chapter 38

He wants to see me. Darryl Joseph Carter (aka Darla Jean Covington, aka Smith, aka Mr. Jones, aka Ms. Pang, aka Nameless White Guy, aka Mr. Bungle) is being held in the John McCain Special Housing Unit at the Federal Correctional Complex in Victorville. The McCain SHU is an ultramax-security facility designed for the sort of prisoners who used to be held at Guantanamo Bay. Darryl's incarceration there has less to do with his alleged crimes than with the circumstances of his capture. The government's logic goes like this: Darryl was the target of a Zero Day operation; Zero Day exists to hunt down super-dangerous terrorists; QED, Darryl deserves the Al Qaeda treatment. Don't get on my mom's bad side, is the moral of the story. The SHU does not have regular visiting hours. Even the prisoners' lawyers must apply in advance to meet with their clients. As a civilian with no security clearance, I require an escort to get inside the facility. For a while Mom talks about doing this herself—she'd love an excuse to fly in and spend some time with me and the other West Coast relatives—but other work duties keep intervening, so eventually she sends her latest Zero Day recruit in her stead. Jolene picks me up at LAX. This is the first time I've seen her in person since the day she got shot. She's looking much better; her broken ribs have healed, and she's thrilled about the new job. "Almost worth taking a bullet for," she jokes. Our appointment at the prison isn't until two, so we stop for lunch at a diner in the San Gabriel Mountains. Over burgers, Jolene asks me how the sherpa business is doing. Not well, I tell her. I'm working without a crew these days. "Anja left right after you did." "You told her the truth about the malware?" I nod. "I thought about pretending that Darryl hacked her medical pod without my help, but that just didn't feel right. So I came clean." "Good," Jolene says. "How pissed off was she?" "More sad than mad, I think. She didn't actually say she was quitting, just told me she was going to take a break and spend some time with Javier. Did you hear about Ray?" "Oh yeah, I heard." In the movie version of this story, Ray's reward for saving the life of the cop Jolene shot will be full recognition of her American citizenship. In the real world, Ray knew better than to count on that ending—after the SWAT team escorted her and the cop and Jolene out of the Arcade to where paramedics were waiting, she managed to slip away. But her face had been captured by Tempest's security cameras, and the LAPD IDed her as a fugitive with an outstanding ICE warrant. Mom tried to run interference by claiming that Ray was a Zero Day asset, but the local cops were upset that she hadn't told them about the op in advance, and ICE just didn't give a shit. Rather than back off, ICE demanded, and eventually got, Ray's home address, which Mom knew from having traced her internet connection. Ray was living in a rented trailer outside of Barstow. ICE raided the place two weeks ago. The agents shot a stray dog on the property, but Ray herself was nowhere to be found. From the look of things, she'd cleared out just hours earlier, taking her computer and VR rig with her. ICE is mad. They think Mom warned Ray that they were coming. I thought so too at first, but now, listening to Jolene say, "Oh yeah, I heard," it occurs to me that someone else might have given Ray the heads-up. "So anyway," I say, "I'm working solo now, when I'm working at all. It looks like my fifteen minutes' of fame from that People article are over." "That's a shame," Jolene says, not sounding too broken up about it. "Especially since you lost all that money." Just as Mom predicted, the government confiscated the half million dollars Darryl had given me. Or as much of it as they could get their hands on: The ten thousand I paid Anja for her first week's cut is safe in her bank in Argentina, and Ray cleared out her PayPal account before ICE could freeze it. I assume Jolene had to give up her share, but since she was working undercover all along, she never expected to keep it. "Yeah, I'm back in the poorhouse where I started." I shrug. "It happens." "Don't worry, I'll pay for lunch," Jolene tells me, and she does. While we're waiting for the waitress to bring her change, she says: "So listen, it's none of my business but I've got to ask. You and Darla. When the two of you were having your thing together, whatever that was, did you ever..." "Have cybersex? Yeah. A few times." "Yeah, OK. So is it weird for you, to find out that she's... well, I want to say 'a guy,' but maybe that's making assumptions." "I don't think Darryl's trans, in the traditional sense," I say. "And even if he was, I think he'd think it was funny that you were worried about the etiquette. You didn't watch the recording of his FBI interview?" She shakes her head. "I was going to check it out, for today, but I didn't get around to it." "His gender identity came up. One of the agents asked him if he felt 'like a woman trapped in a man's body,' quote-unquote." "How'd he answer?" "He laughed his ass off. Then he told them no, it wasn't like that, he just wasn't hung up on the whole male-female thing." "Hmm. And you?" "I'm a little hung up on it. I'm not going to pretend that Darla being a girl was irrelevant, because I liked the way her avatar looked—the way I thought she looked. But that was never the main attraction. The thing that got to me about her was her talent, and that was real." "I don't know. I think I'd still be pretty upset, if it was me." "It's the internet," I say. "Nobody's ever exactly what they seem like. You know what does freak me out, though? Unless Darryl erased it, the feds have the bullet I made for Darla." "You worried they're going to send a copy to your mom?" "Don't even joke about that." We're at the prison at two o'clock, but it's closer to three by the time we make it past the gates, doors, ID checks, pat-downs, and scans. Near the end of the gauntlet, Jolene and I part company. She heads for a security office to watch on closed-circuit television while I go up to the interview room alone. The room is like something out of the Combine interrogation center in Half-Life 3: an octagon assembled from poured concrete slabs, divided down the middle by a curtain of armored Plexiglas. Small circular grilles of titanium mesh are set into the Plexi to allow sound to pass through. On either side of the barrier, a broad strip of floor has been painted red, with signs warning of dire consequences if this no-go zone is violated; God help you if you actually tried to pry one of the grilles out, or messed with the cameras mounted on the ceiling. The chair on my side of the Plexi is an expensively padded and ergonomic office number, the kind of thing you'd want under your butt if you were settling in for a marathon session of online poker. The prisoner chair is a hardback plastic seat that you might buy in bulk if you were shopping for an underfunded school district. This might seem like needless cruelty, and it is, but it's also logical from a business perspective: As much as any private corporation, the Department of Corrections knows the difference between its clients and its products. I take a seat in the comfy chair. I've still got a few minutes to wait, so I have another look at the crib sheet on Darryl that Mom had prepared for me. He is twenty-four years old, and he does not live in Oregon. It's true that his parents are divorced, but the whole family still resides, as they always have, in Palo Alto. Darryl's dad works for Apple. His mom is a deputy in the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office. Darryl's own occupation, which he seems to have pursued full-time for at least the past several years, is pretending to be other people on the internet. Principally Darla, whose stories about visiting Dad in Arizona or attending family reunions with her mother were a scheduling strategy to block out time for her different online relationships. The FBI and Mom's people are still working to compile a full list of contacts, but so far they've identified four individuals who Darla spent significant time with. The first is Darla's hacker friend, Orville. A positive ID is still pending, but they believe he is Orville Slusarski, a forty-nine-year-old former NSA employee who quit the agency under a cloud of suspicion and took some stuff he shouldn't have when he left. Orville, an avid League of Avengers player whose favorite alter ego is Lex Luthor, was apparently tutoring Darla in the dark arts of cyberwarfare. The crib sheet doesn't say what Orville got out of the deal, but I think it's a safe bet that Darla lied when she told me she and Orville weren't fucking. Not that I care. The second name on the list is Martin Duncan, a New Mexico schoolteacher and Star Trek Online devotee who'd been sending Darla gifts of cash—paying Darryl's rent—in hopes that she would one day agree to meet with him in person. Then there is Jason Hoyt, a physical therapist and Call of Duty leaderboard champ from Boston who used to send Darla gifts of cash, until he lost patience and decided to stalk Darla instead. Hoyt is undergoing some serious physical therapy of his own now, after tracking Darla to a house in New Haven that actually belonged to a Navy SEAL. Individual number four is yours truly. Zero Day's psych profilers are divided on what my relationship with Darla meant to Darryl. One theory is that he was grooming me to be a replacement for Martin Duncan, which if true would be pretty funny, given the difficulty I often had paying my own rent. My preferred hypothesis is that Darryl saw me as a more age-appropriate version of Orville. I believe Darla's passion for game design was real, and that Darryl was sincere about wanting to go into business with me—however dim the long-term prospects for that might have been. Why else would his revenge have taken the form that it did? Mom, after hearing me out at length on the subject, agrees with me. She thinks Darryl did regard me as a kind of peer, a friend even. But she also pointed out that being befriended by a sociopath, like being hired to work for a dictator, is not really something I should be proud of, or flattered by. And I know that she's right, but it feels a lot better than being taken for a sucker. The door opens on the other side of the room and Darryl comes in. He is dressed in orange prison scrubs, and his arms and legs are shackled. His hair has gotten longer, and he is sporting a thick growth of beard whose unkempt nature gives him the appearance of a hermit. He stops just inside the threshold and looks around, taking in the dimensions of the room, which is significantly larger than the cell they've been keeping him in. Before sitting down, he does a brisk circuit of his side of the octagon. Despite the chain between his ankles, he doesn't shuffle, he walks, maintaining a short graceful stride, and in this, and in the way he comes right up to the edge of the red zone without going over, I see Darla's talent, that thing I found so compelling in her. But I see him, too. At the Arcade that day, there was too much going on for me to ever really take a good look at Darryl, but now, as he takes his turn around the room, I have a chance to check him out. I think about that question Jolene asked me at the diner, and find myself wondering how things might have played out if Darla ever had given me her home address. I identify as straight, and have never been with a guy in real life, but I like to believe I'm cool enough to be open to the possibility. The masculine physique isn't a problem for me. I'm attracted to athletic women, a polite way of saying I'm not a huge boob guy, and Darryl, from the neck down, could pass for a flat-chested Valkyrie. Kind of. The beard, though, really doesn't work for me. And yes, I am aware of the absurdity of this train of thought. We're talking about someone who tried to blow up my life and my business. Who tricked me, tased me, and threatened to kill me. Who threatened Anja's life too, and nearly got Jolene killed, and started a panic in a crowded building that could easily have killed or injured many more people. Ostensibly he did all this to get even with me for lying to him, but really he did it to entertain himself. For the lulz. Mom's right, Darryl is a sociopath—and as sexual turn-offs go, what's a little facial hair, compared to that? I don't know. Maybe I'm just shallow. Done with his stroll, Darryl sits in the public-school chair and looks directly at me for the first time since he entered. "Darla," I say, to break the ice. "Perv." He smiles, but it feels perfunctory. Then he says: "I'm bored shitless." As he would be. There are no video games in prison, of course, but inmates in the SHU don't get television, either. They are allowed reading material, but in a jailhouse version of the old desert island meme, they are limited to a maximum of five books at any given time. And if they tire of their current selection and want to swap out titles, they can't just run down to the prison library; they have to make a written request to the warden's office. The response time is measured in months. "My mother can get you out of here," I tell him. "Agree to cooperate, and you'll be moved to a medium-security facility, with extra privileges. If the information you provide is valuable enough, you'll eventually be released to home detention, though you'll still owe restitution for the medical bills of that cop who got shot." "What are they going to want for that?" he asks. "The bank in Burma?" "To start with. They want to know how you hacked in, and everything you learned when you did." "I can give you that. No problem." "Also, your hacker friend Orville. Is his last name Slusarski?" "He never told me his last name. But there can't be too many Orvilles who know how to tunnel past a Burmese firewall." "The NSA wants to talk to him," I say. "They want to know where he is." He shakes his head. "I can't tell you that." "Because you don't know, or—" "I'm not going to rat out Orville. He always played fair with me, and I'm no backstabber." "Darryl, come on. You really want to stay in here?" "Ask me something else." There is nothing else. Finding Orville Slusarski is a top government priority, and Mom has made it clear that this point is non-negotiable—that it is, in fact, the only thing of real value that Darryl has to offer. But I do have some questions of my own that I'd like answered. "The girl in the videos," I say. "The one you modeled your avatar on. Who is she?" He grins like he was expecting this question. "You know those videos are fakes, right?" I nod. Mom's tech people figured it out: The girl's image was added into pre-existing footage. The technique is basically the same one used to skin and reskin avatars; the editing software is widely available, and popular for making internet memes. Doctoring video crudely is easy, but to match the image to the background so that the fakery is hidden takes significant skill, along with lots of time and processing power—way too much effort for a typical prankster. But Darryl's not typical. "That was originally me, in the paintball video," he says. "And in the balloon. Most of the other clips were found footage, cool stuff I saw on the net that I thought Darla would be into." "But the girl," I say. "Who is she?" "Why do you want to know? So you can stalk her on Facebook? It's me you had the hots for," he says, and in his smirk, in the set of his shoulders as he leans forward, I see Darla again. I feel her. But the beard still doesn't do it for me. He picks up on this, and I can tell he's disappointed. "She's nobody," he says, sitting back in the chair. "I mean, literally nobody. I made her up, used morphing software to create a composite from a bunch of different images. Tweaked it for days, until I had it just the way I wanted. Then I put together a backstory for her, started building her Facebook page. I'd done that sort of thing before, made puppets, dozens of them, but Darla, she's my masterpiece." "Why? What for?" "You know why," he says. "Don't tell me you never pretended to be someone else online. It's fun, playing Darla. Getting people to believe in her and watching how they react. There are the ones like you, who fall head over heels for her, and that's fun in one way"—he winks—"and then there are the others, the assholes who try to grief on her, and that's really fun. That never gets old, taking someone who thinks they're a badass and teaching them who the real badass is. Darla, she's perfect for that." "The bigger bitch," I say. "Always." He smiles for real this time, enjoying himself. "What about that day we met in the Jurassic Swamp?" I ask next. "Was that just a coincidence, or did you—" "Come looking for you on purpose?" He laughs. "What are you thinking, that I saw one of your ads and said to myself, 'Gee, this one sherpa guy who sounds exactly like all the other sherpa guys must be super interesting, I guess I'll go pretend to bump into him by accident'?" "OK, never mind." "Aw, don't be hurt." He laughs again. "Who knows, maybe it was fate. I went to the swamp that day because I was bored and wanted to blow off steam, so I was definitely looking for someone to mess with, and there you were... I could tell how much you loved it when Darla kicked your ass, and when you offered me that job, I was like, OK, sure, let's see what kind of fun I can have with this. But then," and he hesitates, before continuing in a more serious tone, "then you showed me that eye thing, that mod you use, and your Mom-and-Pop switch, and there was just something about that, that made me think, I don't know, that maybe we were..." "What? Kindred spirits?" I'm not buying it. "I know you think I'm bullshitting," he says. "But it's true. I felt a connection, and I know you did, too." Scowling: "Of course if I'd known I could never trust you, I'd have cut your ass dead right there." "That probably would have been the smart move," I say. "But if you had done that, you'd never have gotten the chance to play Mr. Jones." "True." He brightens. "What was the plan, with Jones?" I ask. "Did you always intend me to think he was Kim Jong-un?" "It was never that specific. I assumed you'd figure out where the money came from—I was going to have Ms. Pang drop a clue-anvil on your head, if you didn't—so it made sense that Jones was some kind of powerful Asian dude, someone the PRC security ministry would be interested in. A dictator with a creative itch was an obvious choice, but I was open to other possibilities. A Chinese government official or spymaster gone rogue, or a drug kingpin, or even a pirate." "Why would a pirate want to study MMORPGs?" "I don't know. But that was the genius part of the plan—I didn't need to know, any more than I needed to know exactly who Mr. Jones was. I had you to figure it out for me. I knew you would, once the money got your imagination rolling. All I had to do was plant the seed, and let Mr. Profiler do the work." He grins. "It was amazing, watching you connect dots that weren't even there." "Yeah, you really had me going. Well played, I guess." "Oh, come on, don't be like that. I was pranking you, sure—I was mad—but don't pretend it wasn't fun for you too." "Fun?" I say. "OK, maybe not all of it... But solving the mystery? Thinking the Supreme Leader of North Korea had picked you to be his personal sherpa? Come on, that was fun." I want to tell him he's wrong, but I remember how it felt, catching Mr. Jones out on the Juche calendar, and laying out my theories for Mom. "I suppose it had its moments." "Moments!" He snorts. "It was the best fucking game you ever played. The best game I ever played, too." "Well, I'm glad we both had fun, Darryl." Thinking as I say this that it is likely to be the last game he will play, for a long while. He reads the thought in my expression. I watch him mull it over in silence. "So," he says. "About Orville..." "Yes?" "What if I don't tell you exactly where he is, but I give you a really good hint? Enough for the NSA to figure it out on their own." "Why not just give up the location?" "I told you, I'm not a backstabber. But Orville likes to brag about how much smarter he is than the people he used to work for, always one step ahead, so as long as I leave him a chance to see it coming, it's not like I'm actually betraying him." "Darryl." "The odds will be stacked in your favor, don't worry. But I've got to leave him an out. A small one." "Five percent?" "Hey, that's all I'd need... So what do you say?" "It's not my call," I tell him. "But I can talk to Mom about it, I guess." "One other thing," he says. "Even if I do get home detention, there's going to be some pretty big restrictions on what I can do, right? Like, no computers?" "I don't know. But I suppose so, yeah." He nods. "Yeah, that doesn't work for me. Not being able to go online, that's worse than being locked up. I wouldn't mind staying in here if I had my rig." "I understand," I say. "But you know they've got you flagged as a cyberterrorist." "And that's totally cool!" he says. Like it's a badge of honor. "I get that they're not going to want to just turn me loose. But maybe there's another way to handle it, so everybody benefits." He pauses, waiting to see if I'll figure it out on my own, which of course I do. We've seen a lot of the same movies. "You want a job?" I say. "With Zero Day?" "I know it sounds like a bullshit Hollywood plot twist," he tells me. "Black hat hacker gets caught and joins the good guys. But before you get all practical on me and say it's never going to happen, really think about it. That game I ran on you, I did that all by myself—well, except for the bank hack, but even that, I convinced Orville to tell me how to do it. And the rest of it, with you, I was playing all those different characters, sometimes two or three at the same time... Like, when you had your first meeting with Smith and Mr. Jones, I know you were suspicious, but did it even occur to you that the same person might be controlling both avatars?" "I don't know. I don't think I thought that hard about the actual mechanics of it. And I mean, yes, OK, you did fool me. But—" "And you're not stupid," Darryl says. "Gullible as fuck, sure, but even with the money, I had to work my ass off to make sure you bought it. And if I could do that with you, on my own, imagine what I could do with some support. You want to run a game on the real Kim Jong-un? Have your mom give me some resources, and I'll show her what I can really do." He is delusional, I realize. The prospect of being stuck in prison has made him crazy. Or maybe he was nuts all along. I think this, but I try very hard not to let it show, because I know it will piss him off and make him uncooperative. But even as I struggle to control my expression, another thought comes to me, out of left field, and before I can stop myself, I laugh. He thinks I'm laughing at him. He doesn't like it. All at once I see Darla again, at her most furious. "What?" he demands. "What's funny?" "It's not you," I say. "I just..." "What? What?" "It just occurred to me... You're never going to apologize, are you? For any of it. You're never going to say you're sorry." "I'm not sorry," he replies, indignant. "So why the fuck would I say I am?" "No reason at all," I say. And as insane as it may sound, what I feel, in that moment, is a warm and genuine affection towards him. Oh Darla, I think. "OK," I tell him. "I'll talk to Mom about the job. I can't make any promises, but I'll talk to her." "The baby dragons poop krazy glue?" Mom says. "Did i hear that right?" "The magical equivalent of Krazy Glue," I clarify. "The point is, if we break too many eggs, we can't maneuver, and then the mother dragon just kills us." "Why doesn't she break the eggs herself, then?" "Because she's a mindless drone, not a three-dimensional chess–playing badass like you, Mom." "Ooh, flattery!" Mom laughs and looks over her shoulder at Jolene. "Are you hearing this?" Tonight was supposed to be my monthly game night with Dad, but Sony moved up the deadline on his latest rewrite, so he's got to work. On a whim I messaged Mom and asked if she'd like to give Call to Wizardry a try, and to my surprise she said sure. After hearing a basic rundown of the different character roles, she decided she wanted to try tanking, so I gave her my best paladin and took her to the transmog parlor. There's something about the way Mom's head looks on top of a giant suit of plate mail that makes it seem like she's wearing power armor, so if she starts flying around like Iron Man, I won't be surprised. I thought about inviting Anja along tonight as well, but it's still a bit too soon. So we're running the Caverns of Malice as a four-person team, which is easy enough if you've got a good healer. And we do: His name is Roy Wilson, and he presents as a thirtysomething white guy with a medium build, brown eyes, and short black hair. I haven't checked Roy out on social media, so I couldn't swear under oath that he is actually a white guy, nor could I hazard a guess as to his real-world location—but I think I might hire him. "So don't break the eggs," Mom says. "Don't stand in the acid, and steer clear of the tornadoes. Anything else?" "Nope. Just keep holding aggro, like you've been doing. We'll ace this." "Cool," she says. Then, grinning mischievously, she tosses her shield into the air and catches it, spinning, on one finger. It's an impressive move—one that is not included in the paladin avatar's default repertoire. The only way Mom could do this is by turning off kinetic photoshopping. Which means that she knows what kinetic photoshopping is, and that it can be turned off, without me telling her about it. And if she's done that much advance research on her own, you can bet she's read up on the boss fights for this dungeon, too. She's been humoring me again. But what can I say—it makes me happy when she does that. And in turn, I'll do what I can to make her happy too, to keep things in balance between us. Which, in a nutshell, is what I know about love. Mom tosses her shield up one more time, catches it and grips it firmly. Twirls her sword for good measure. "All right," she says. "Let's do this."

8-bit Christmas

Kevin Jakubowski

Chapter 1

 'For the spirit of Christmas fulfills the greatest hunger of mankind.' —Loring A. Schuler  'I feel like eating after I win. Let's go to lunch. Ha, ha, ha!' —King Hippo

8-bit Christmas

Kevin Jakubowski

Boxer, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!

Timmy Kleen was not a nice kid. Maybe he grew up to be a nice adult as he got older. Maybe he runs a soup kitchen in Harlem now. I kind of doubt it, though. If I had to guess, I'd say he probably graduated from Harvard, became an investment banker and single-handedly bankrupted half the country. Of course, I don't know that for certain. It's just fun to think about. Maybe he's in jail now. That would be sweet. Growing up, Kleen's dad was some kind of vice president for ComEd. He drove a Porsche. I asked my dad once why we didn't have a Porsche and he told me, "Because we have you and your sister instead." Interesting, I thought. Did that mean I was worth half a Porsche? Could we, say, sell my sister for a Suzuki? These were things to consider. Anyway, Mr. Kleen was loaded and he drove a Porsche. He parked it in the family's three-car garage right below their pro-series adjustable basketball hoop, which was directly adjacent to their heated in-ground pool. No one in my town even had an above-ground pool, so being invited to Kleen's was basically like a free trip to Disney World. For starters, the Kleen house had its very own snack pantry. Not to be confused with their food pantry, the snack pantry's sole purpose was to house and store snacks. I'd never heard of such a thing. Fruit Roll-Ups, Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, Cool Ranch Doritos, Capri Suns and—fun size be damned—regular- size Snickers bars. They were all there for the taking. No restrictions, no locks, no health advisories or lectures on hungry Ethiopian children. Just open up the door, turn on the light and enjoy. It made the labors of trick-or-treating seem like some kind of sick joke. The pantry had a gum drawer, for crying out loud. A gum drawer! A drawer with nothing but gum in it! Are you kidding me? Such was the level of kid decadence available at the Kleen house. The first time I went to Timmy's was for his third grade birthday party. I didn't want to go. My parents made me. Maybe they knew I'd be fed there and might catch a glimpse into the upper-class lifestyle and strive to one day live in a house with an intercom system. Or maybe they just wanted me out of the house for a few hours. Whatever the reason, I went. And after that birthday party my life was never quite the same. If you grew up in the sixties, you probably remember where you were when you first saw the Beatles or where you were when the astronauts landed on the moon. Well, I grew up in the eighties. There wasn't all that much to remember. The Challenger space shuttle disaster? I blocked that out years ago. The Berlin Wall? I'm pretty sure I was at a soccer practice making fart noises out of blades of grass when it went down. So really, my clearest, most vivid memory of the years 1982 to 1989 was watching Timmy Kleen unwrap the town's first Nintendo Entertainment System. It all started out innocently enough. Unwrapping presents. Timmy plowed through the crap we bought him. What do you get a kid whose parents make ten times more than yours? There were a few He-Man figures (he already had them), a couple of board games (how embarrassing), several Micro Machines. The Grusecki twins gave him a few packs of Donruss baseball cards, which I was pretty sure they'd opened and pilfered from first. Steve Zilinski gave Kleen a Marlboro duffle bag (clearly the spoils of his chain-smoking mother). I gave Kleen the children's book The Whipping Boy. A Newberry Medal winner, it told the story of a young servant and a prince, and how the two came to have mutual respect for one another. "What's it about?" Mrs. Kleen asked. "It's about a boy who gets whipped," I said, spraying out bits of Twinkie. That was too violent for Timmy, she said, and threw the book away. Literally threw it away, like she was cleaning food scraps off the table. At the time I didn't think much of it, but looking back, that's messed up, right? If only she'd known the violence that was to come from the next gift, maybe she wouldn't have been so hasty. With the kid presents opened and discarded, Mr. Kleen plopped down a big one from him and the missus. One of the few universal truths growing up was that when it came to presents, bigger was unquestionably better. Our eyes widened at the possibilities. The box was huge. It was sturdy. Even Kleen didn't seem to know what it was. Weeks of snooping around the attic and his parents' bedroom had yielded no results. The first rip to the wrapping paper served as a stunner, rendering Kleen unable to proceed in his normal fists-of-fury manner. Through the paper tear we could plainly see onto the box itself. It looked like some kind of space scene about to be uncovered, sort of like looking through the Millennium Falcon windshield right before the jump to hyperspace. What was it? Could this be a new Star Wars toy? Was that even possible? We'd been assured that the next movie wouldn't be finished until the year 1997. "What is it?" Zilinski quivered. Kleen wasted no more time. His sickly arms tore in two directions at once, plowing apart the paper at the top of the box. We all leaned forward to have a look... And there she was, hovering in outer space, glistening in all her gray plastic glory. A maze of rubber wiring and electronic intelligence so advanced it was deemed not a video game but an 8-bit Entertainment System. Equipped with two control pads, a complimentary power gun and a front console home to the all-important on/off button and its savvy counterpart, restart. Within a week there wouldn't be a pair of blistered kid thumbs in the room that didn't feel an instinctive tingle when the word "Nintendo" was mentioned. Timmy Kleen had just hit the jackpot. We sat there at first, numb with shock. Evan Olsen had already spilled Hi-C on his crotch and was now dripping ice cream down his leg. By the time I came to, I realized I was screaming at the top of my lungs. We all were. We may have been screaming for minutes and not even known it. Kleen tried to lift the box like some kind of title belt above his head and yelled: "NINTENDO!" Pandemonium hit the kitchen. Wrapping paper started flying, two kids jumped on the table, the Gruseckis tackled each other in ecstasy, Evan Olsen ran off to the bathroom to relieve himself, and I can never be sure, but I swear I heard Kleen's three-year-old little cousin, Preston, say, "Holy shit" under his breath. This was big. And Batavia, Illinois, would never be the same. Nintendo had come to town.

8-bit Christmas

Kevin Jakubowski

Chapter 3

Batavia, Illinois, is a small, some might say forgettable, suburb about an hour west of Chicago. Not too rich, not too poor. Its claim to fame is that it's the birthplace of Ken Anderson, the losing quarterback of the 1980 Super Bowl. Ever heard of him? Didn't think so. It's also home to the world's second largest atom smasher, Fermilab, which sits on a few thousand acres of prairie just outside of town. No one's exactly sure what it does, but there it remains, billions of tax dollars at work, blasting unseen particles into smithereens in the name of science. In 1958, an ice skating scene on Batavia's Fox River graced the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. It was one of the few covers of the magazine that was not painted by Norman Rockwell. Even as a kid I found that hilarious. It seemed the whole world knew that Batavia wasn't quite good enough for someone as iconic as Rockwell. A guy named John Falter painted it. And that's Batavia in a nutshell, really—the poor man's Norman Rockwell. Nonetheless, in the '80s it was still a nice, quiet, middle-class town. This was before Pottery Barns and Menards Super Stores the size of baseball stadiums started popping up all over Randall Road. In the summer there were cornfields and fireflies, and in the winter, snowmen and central heating. It was a great place to grow up. You could throw rocks at the Fermilab buffalo, maybe even get free pop refills at the Burger King and then bounce around the Whopper Hopper until you puked. Good. Clean. Fun. Our family lived on Watson Street in a two-story, two-colored, one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old house. We were told it was originally a farmhouse built around the time of the Civil War, but now it could most accurately be described as a construction site. This was thanks to my dad, John Doyle—the dyslexic Bob Vila. Somewhere around 1979 he decided to install a kitchen cabinet and had not stopped since. The place was in a perpetual state of remodeling. It was two colors only because my dad hadn't finished putting up the new green siding on an otherwise blue-sided house. I would be in college before I could accurately say I lived in the green house on Watson Street. On this particular morning, my dad was walking around our gutted living room in his favorite Saturday attire: bathrobe and tool belt. WGN sports talk radio was playing somewhere in the background. "Bottom line, Ditka's gotta stop wussy-footing around and THROW THE FOOTBALL." My dad took talk radio literally and considered himself an integral part of the broadcast. He yelled across the room. "Oh, you can't throw the ball without more pass protection, Pat!" "McMahon doesn't have enough time to throw," the other on-air guy quipped. "He doesn't have the pass protection!" "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You see?" In the adjacent TV room, my mom and sister were doing aerobics to Jane Fonda's Workout. The exercise tape would become a staple in the Doyle house, holding prime real estate in the VHS drawer next to Harry and the Hendersons and Crocodile Dundee —both recorded off TV during the magical two weeks in '88 when we somehow managed to get Showtime. Dressed from head to toe in leg warmers, my mom huffed and puffed to Fonda. Step for step right next to her was my little sister, Lizzy. She was five going on twenty-five, with a voice so gravely and a vocabulary so sophisticated, it would often stop strangers in the street. "Work those glutes!" she rasped. My father popped his head in, chewing on a drywall nail as he often did. He patted Lizzy's Dutch Boy haircut, which held firmly in place. "Morning, Lizzy." "Morning, Johnny." "Uh-huh. What did I say about calling me Dad?" "Sorry, Daddy." "Where's Jake at? I need his help." "He left about an hour ago on his bike," said my mom between leg extensions. "Where'd he go? Lizzy, where's your brother?" Not even in first grade yet, Lizzy had already mastered the art of getting me in trouble. Next to My Little Pony and spelling out m-o-n-o-n-u-c-l-e-o-s-i-s for a dollar, it might have been her favorite pastime. "He's at Timmy Kleen's playing Nintendo. He didn't pick up the dog poop in the backyard either." In the four months since Timmy Kleen had received his birthday Nintendo, a lot had changed. Jeff Hartwell, for instance, no longer delivered the Bonnie Buyer newspaper on Saturday mornings. Instead he dumped his papers in the Mueller Crest Woods so he could get to Kleen's house in time for the nine o'clock Nintendo lineup. This was a system devised by Kleen that allowed a first-come, first-served entrance into his basement to play Nintendo. The line usually began forming sometime before dawn. Only ten lucky kids were let inside for the day, and today, even in the late-November cold, the yard was chock-full of Nintendo hopefuls, including my best friends: EVAN OLSEN: nervous, allergic to bees, constant Kool-Aid moustache MATT MAHONEY: tall, loud mouth, great at drawing army guys and lighting things on fire STEVE ZILINSKI: popular, spike haircut, all-time quarterback, mom's a psycho RYAN GRUSECKI: chubby, runny nose, smart as a whip, great baseball card collection TOMMY GRUSECKI: Ryan's twin brother; see above I was stuck somewhere around the eighth or ninth slot in line, between Mahoney and our sworn enemy, Josh Farmer. The two were already arguing. "No cutss, no buttss!" lisped Farmer. "Cool it," said Mahoney. "No, you cool it." "No, you cool it." "No, you cool it." "Idiot." "You're a idiot." "No, you are." "No, you are." And so on and so forth unto eternity. Lining up this early made even the calmest of us a bit testy. We were also missing quality Saturday-morning cartoon hours. Farmer had started a rumor that Dr. Claw had actually been captured at the end of today's Inspector Gadget episode. It had us all whipped up into a dither. "Impossible," I said. "You're full of it, Farmer." Mahoney was pushing him now. "Dr. Claw always gets away." A pathological liar, Josh Farmer had once claimed to have seen and positively identified Randy "Macho Man" Savage in the Batavia Apartments, who had told him, among other things, that WWF wrestling was, in fact, real. The Dr. Claw fib was just one of a myriad of tall tales in his demented repertoire "It totally happened, I saw it. Dr. Claw gets caught." "Bull crud." "Bull true." "Bull true like how your mom draws all the Garbage Pail Kids? Or how you saw Bigfoot jump off the Wilson school jungle gym?" "Screw you guys. Dr. Claw totally—" Farmer was cut short by the sound of high-pitched barking. The Kleens' dog, Lacey Dog, a five-time contender for Most Annoying Dog of the Year, had just been let outside to do her business. This meant Timmy was about to open up shop. We all turned to the door. Slowly it opened and Kleen stepped out onto the porch and into the light. Standing high above us in his robe and slippers, he calmly stirred a glass of chocolate milk, surveying the masses like some kind of amused Roman emperor. With a grand gesture, he checked his Swatch watch (both of them): It was nine o'clock. Eight hours of Nintendo to be had. "Anyone for a little Nintendo?" "RAAAAAAHHHH!" The crowd went nuts. Clawing, biting, kicking, scratching, jostling for position. If you were driving by in a car, you'd think zombies were making their way down Cypress Avenue after us. What felt like a hundred and fifty kids for ten spots all swarmed toward the door. Kleen tallied us up as we rushed through. "One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten!" For the third Saturday in a row I'd made the cut. I was inside, safe and sound. Kleen slammed the door behind him. "That's ten, that's the cutoff." Packs of wailing kids banged on walls and windows outside. Ryan Grusecki's little face pressed up against the glass, mouthing unheard pleas to his twin brother, Tommy. "But my brother's still out there!" "You know the rules, Grusecki. You can always go back out and join him. It's no skin off my nose." No skin off my nose? That's seriously how Timmy Kleen talked. What kind of a nine-year-old kid talks like that? He barked out more orders as we filed down into the basement. "Boots off, boots off, watch the carpet. That means you, Farmer." Lacey Dog yipped incessantly, clawing at our feet and nipping at our crotches. Mahoney casually kicked her in the face. "Hey! Watch it," Kleen snapped. "She's a purebred Shih Tzu." "She's a purebred psycho." "That's it, end of the line!" "No fair." "No fair, huh? You wanna be sittin' home next Saturday, playing Sorry! with your sister? I don't think so. End of the line." Giving the only Nintendo in town to a kid like Kleen had been a real lesson in God's cruelty. I'd already prayed several times to be made part of his family. Mahoney took his punishment and trudged behind me sadly. The ten of us finished filing down the stairs in numerical order and sat down on the couch to get to business. Kleen gave a customary blow into the Duck Hunt cartridge, picked up the gun, scooted himself three inches away from the TV screen, turned and smiled devilishly back at us. "Winner stays." Back on Watson Street, Jane Fonda and Co. were in cool-down mode, sipping Tab and Tang respectively, while my dad was outside searching for yet another lost tool in the shed. He was always just one tool away from finishing the house. "Just one tool." As if suddenly locating the missing band saw would miraculously paint the downstairs bathroom and retile the kitchen. "God bless it! Where the hell is it?" Pinewood Derby cars, green aluminum siding, old cans of Thompson's WaterSeal all tumbled out onto the lawn. Elwood, our family dog, looked on as he popped a squat in the snow-dusted grass. Two years my senior, Elwood had seen it all. He panted slightly, almost in a half smirk, anytime he watched my dad search for a lost tool. Sometimes I wondered if the dog actually went around burying screwdrivers in the backyard just to watch the old man lose it. "Where the hell is it? How do you lose a nail gun! That's not it... What the—? Aha! You dope, Doyle, it's right where you put it." He walked out of the shed, proudly displaying the nail gun to Elwood. "You see? Right where I knew it would—" Blamo. He stepped right in a pile of it. Dog poo. Some of Elwood's finest. If there was one thing John Doyle couldn't stand, it was stepping in dog poo, particularly dog poo in his own backyard. "JAAAAKE!" On cue, my sister appeared at the back door and popped her head out. "He's at Timmy Kleen's. I told you he didn't pick up the dog poo." Timmy Kleen had now been playing Duck Hunt for forty-five minutes straight. He was on level thirty-one, a feat that would be near impossible had he not been pressing the gun directly on the screen. He stood in front of the TV, a massive 42-incher, and clicked away, only pausing every once in a while to make obscene gestures to the 8-bit dog that popped up at the end of each level. "Maybe you should sit a little closer," Mahoney ventured. It was a ploy. "Maybe you should shut up." After months of sitting and watching Kleen play to his heart's content, we'd realized the only tactic to get him out of the way so we could play was to antagonize him. He was insanely antagonizable. The word "spaz" comes to mind. Had there been such a thing as ADHD in the 1980s, he most certainly would have had it. Mahoney took great pleasure in riling him up. "Hey Kleen, has anyone ever told you you look like Molly Ringwald?" "Shut up, Mahoney. Don't distract me." "Seriously, like a shorter, dumber Molly Ringwald." "I said don't distract me!" Kleen fired away at the ducks, missing a few in the exchange. "Which is weird because Angela Moran looks like Molly Ringwald too, and you're in love with Angela Moran. Does that mean you're in love with yourself? That's really weird. Don't you think that's really—" "I said SHUT UP!" The 8-bit dog hopped over the hedge and began his customary laughing fit. Kleen immediately opened fire on him, accidentally letting his shots ring out as misfires on the next level. Before he could register a complaint, the ducks sped off to safety and his game was suddenly over. "What? WHAAAAT? Those don't count! Those shots don't count!" "Tough luck, Kleen. Gimme the gun." "NOOOOOOO!" Every group of gamers has a kid who can't handle defeat. Ours was definitely Kleen. Casually I slipped Mahoney a high five as we watched him drop to the ground and writhe around in pain, screaming and kicking at nothing in particular. Kleen's tantrums were always extremely amusing to us. Over the years we'd seen him whip baseball bats at Little League umpires and call lunch ladies a plethora of vile names. "YOU STUPID GAME! YOU STUPID CRUDDY BUTTHEAD GAME!" "Jesus, Kleen. Take it easy." "I'M GONNA KILL IT!" Kleen pounced on the Nintendo and began shaking it violently. In an instant, all ten of us leapt off the couch and tackled him to the ground. Zilinski pressed a pillow to his face, Grusecki threw in a few punches for good measure, and I ripped the console from his hands, carefully backing away from the dog pile. When it came to the safety of the town's only NES, it did not pay to take chances. "What's going on down there?" Kleen's teenage sister yelled from upstairs. "NOTHING!" all ten of us shouted back. "Jake Doyle, are you down there?" "Yeah?" "Your dad's on the phone." Great. We all knew what that meant. There was only one reason for a phone call to a friend's house and it wasn't to ask you what you wanted for dinner. "He wants you to come home." "Yeah, yeah..." Nods of sympathy registered within the group. Painfully I trudged up the stairs, already thinking about how happy my departure was going to make Ryan Grusecki or any number of rejects waiting outside, still clinging to hope for a second chance at Nintendo.

8-bit Christmas

Kevin Jakubowski

Chapter 4

Elwood was eleven years old—seventy-seven in dog years—and in that time I was convinced he had pooped more times than any other dog in the history of the world. His best work dotted our snowy backyard like chocolate sprinkles on a vanilla cupcake. They were everywhere. And I had to pick up every single one of them. I stood there with a poo-caked shovel and a dumb look on my face as my dad walked by carrying half a hardware store into the shed. I did my best to get out of the chore. "What's Lizzy doing right now?" "She's being five years old, Jake. Just pick it up." "What are you doing?" Sadly, it wasn't until my high school years that I learned not to ask my father what he was doing. "What am I doing? Maybe you'd like to drywall the upstairs bathroom." You mean instead of picking up frozen dog poo? Yeah, sign me up. But all I got out was "Uh..." "You know what I think? I think you've been spending a little too much time over at the Kleens' playing video games." "Nintendo," I corrected him. There was a big difference. "That stuff makes you fat, Jake. You can't play outside?" "It's cold." "Cold? It's good for you. Take a deep breath." My dad took a deep breath, soaking in the winter air. I followed suit, slightly. "Smell that?" Poo? "Fresh air. It was all we had and we loved it. Did I ever tell you about the fort my friends and I built in the vacant lot behind Grandma's house when I was your age?" Only about ten million times. "Yeah, Dad." "All year round we played out there. Summer, winter, didn't matter. We built booby traps and everything. It was just like in Swiss Family Robinson. You remember that movie, right?" Of course I did. He'd made me watch it every year since I was three. It was his favorite movie growing up. "Yeah, Dad. The one with the pirates and tree forts." "That's right, Swiss Family Robinson. They lived outside all year round and they loved it. Those kids didn't need Nintendo." "But Dad, didn't they live on a deserted island? Like a hundred years ago? How would they even know about Nintendo?" "Ah, just forget it," he barked. "Just pick up the poop, will ya?" He made his way toward the shed, sidestepping landmines. He pointed to a particularly steamy one. "Do that one last. Let it freeze." It had become painfully obvious over the course of my birthday and the two months leading up to December that getting a Nintendo in the Doyle household was roughly as probable as Elwood and myself landing the '88 Republican nod for office. My dad thought Nintendo would make me fat, my mom thought it was too violent, not to mention too expensive, and my sister, well, she pretty much only wanted to see me suffer. But as I stood there watching my breath amid the snow and the poo, I made a promise to myself: I would figure out a way to get Nintendo for Christmas. Like Mario's Princess, she was my destiny. Two hours and two garbage bags of poo later, I was back on my Team Murray BMX bicycle, the sounds of Excitebike racing through my head as I pedaled to the one place in the world that could keep my mind off Nintendo: the Bullpen. The Bullpen was a baseball card store, but it was more than that. It was our mecca, our town hall, our clubhouse—a place where a kid could go to think and chew rock-hard bubble gum. A tiny shop no bigger than a living room, it consisted of five long glass cases filled with cards, a candy counter in the center and, inexplicably, a shelf toward the back that housed porcelain dolls. Yes, porcelain dolls. These dolls were for sale, apparently, but none of us ever saw any of them go anywhere. There was a rumor that Ronnie Dobber had bought one once, but luckily for his sake, it could never be proven. Other than Kleen's house and school, the Bullpen was probably the only indoor place we ever went. I hopped the curb out front and found Zilinski and the Gruseckis already there, sitting on the bike rack, shuffling through fresh packs of Donruss. "What are you guys doing here? Why aren't you at Kleen's still?" "Harwell told Kleen the infinity-lives code for Contra. He'll be playing all afternoon." "Infinity?" "Yeah, it's like over a hundred." I sat down next to them to have a look at today's prospects. Although baseball cards had been around almost as long as baseball itself, it wasn't until the mid 1980s that they really took off. Call it capitalism at its best or '80s greed, but once baseball card companies figured out that they could give a monetary value to each card and treat them essentially as stocks, an entire new business was born. Overnight, they went from a hobby to a multimillion-dollar industry. Kids weren't buying cards to stick in their bicycle spokes anymore, they were buying them as an "investment." Packs of cards served as a roulette of sorts. For fifty cents you could buy an assortment of random players and potentially get a card worth, say, two dollars, thus instantly quadrupling your investment. There wasn't a boy among us who wasn't thoroughly convinced that in twenty years his baseball card collection would finance swimming pools, race cars, futuristic Nintendo systems... As such, we had all become hooked on the thrill of the chase. Ryan and Tommy Grusecki were no exception. Business savvy beyond their years, they were the kind of kids who took pride in rationing their Halloween candy to last till June. That philosophy carried over into baseball cards, slowly building them one of the most valuable collections in town. They were the first to subscribe to the Beckett —basically the Wall Street Journal of card collecting—and between the two of them there wasn't a card printed in the US that they didn't have a lead on. Tommy scoured his pack, trying to find something of value in it. "Got it, got it, need it, got it, need it. A Jose Corn-ee-joe?" "That's Cornejo," Ryan corrected. "Seven cents in mint condition in the Beckett." As usual with Donruss lately, today's packs proved to be duds. Zilinski was almost finished with his jawbreaker, I had a dollar burning a hole in my pocket, so inside we went. The moment you walked into the Bullpen you were met with a smattering of animosity. The owner, Nick, who hated baseball and didn't like kids, was prone to kicking you out of the store for any infraction he saw fit. Step one to gaining entrance was money. Without it, you were back on the street. "Lemme see it," Nick barked from behind his tinted Coke-bottle glasses. I unfolded my dollar bill like a little white flag and walked inside. A sickly looking second grader was standing with his nose to the center glass case, drooling over a Mark McGuire rookie card, but other than him, we were the only customers in the store. Kleen's Nintendo had certainly put a hurt on Nick's business. If you were lucky enough to get past Nick's first round of demands, you were soon met with a warning sign, the holy decree of baseball card shop owners the world over. Handwritten in red marker, hanging prominently over the cash register, it read: YOU BEND IT, TWEAK IT, NUDGE IT, NICK IT, SMUDGE IT, DROP IT—YOU BOUGHT IT! Rumor was, Nick had posted the sign after a kid sneezed on an Ernie Banks card three minutes into his first day of business. It was his lone insurance policy. Slowly I perused the cases. Zilinski and the Gruseckis quietly followed behind me with their eyes to the floor and shirts tucked in, afraid of being kicked out. The sickly second grader tore himself away from the McGuire for a few moments and handed Nick a stack of cards. Nick got out his calculator and pencil and mindlessly shuffled through them. He made a few calculations, pressing the eraser onto the calculator's plastic buttons. He adjusted his glasses and leaned over the counter. "I'll give you seventy-five cents for the Eric Davis." The kid wiped his nose with his sleeve in meek protest. "But it's five dollars in the Beckett." "Seventy-five cents, kid." "But it's going up both ways. It's worth five dollars, Nick." "Seventy-five cents. It'll buy you another pack..." Nick dangled a new pack of cards over the kid's head like some kind of dog treat. The kid stared up at it longingly, desperately trying to fight the urge. But we all knew what would happen. Millions of government dollars were spent each year to teach us to say no to marijuana, drunk driving, violent television and airplane glue, but boy did they miss the boat on baseball cards. Every birthday penny, shoveled-driveway dollar or grandmother kickback went straight to the fix. Hooked like junkies, strung out on the one-in-nine-hundred chance that Jose Canseco's smiling face might magically appear in a pack—the Bullpen was nothing more than an operation conceived to fuel the gambling addictions of small children. The kid began scratching himself nervously—still staring at the pack, mouth agape. We probably could have said something like, you know, "Don't do it, kid, Nick's ripping you off," but we didn't want to get kicked out five minutes in. It was obvious the kid was gonna cave. He was too young, too unseasoned, temptation was far too strong. Slowly he nodded yes. Nick took the Davis and tossed him the pack. The kid gave us an anxious smile and scurried out the door to some back alley to get his fix. Nick immediately put a five-dollar price tag on the Davis and slipped it into a display case. He looked us over. "So, what'll it be, kid? We got a new box of Score, Fleer's been gettin' a lot of good hits." "Make it two packs of Topps, Nick. It's a cold ride home." I plopped down my dollar, and he slid two green-and-yellow waxy packages across the counter. I took a deep breath and dove in. The Gruseckis and Zilinski hovered over me to have a look. Although the "Future Stars" cards in this year's series of Topps ran deep, the boring faux-wood border on each card left a lot to be desired aesthetically. Anything that resembled the wood paneling on my dad's Chrysler minivan was an immediate dislike. Attempts at amusement with the "Did You Know?" section on the back of each card also proved a little weak. Did I know Montreal Expo Jim Wolford "once worked as a life-insurance salesman"? No, I did not. Nor did I give a shit. All I cared about was how much he was worth in the Beckett. In Jim's case, that would be three cents. Such began today's packs of Topps. After Wolford, I shuffled through a series of nobodies and has-beens. Ed Lynch. Mark Eichhorn. Alvaro Espinoza. Oddibe McDowell. Sparky Anderson—a manager card. Who in God's name wants a manager card? Jim Deshaies. Glenn Wilson. Ken Schrom... "This is the worst pack I've ever seen," observed the Gruseckis, in unison. "Are you gonna eat your gum?" asked Zilinski. I handed it over and he crunched away. There were only three types of baseball card collectors: the Dealers, the Junkies and those just hanging around for the gum. Zilinski was a Gum Man. You had to hand it to him. He must have saved a fortune over the years. Quickly I tore into the second pack. Ho-ho! A better start. Darryl Strawberry. The Straw! Earlier this year, our teacher Mrs. Hugo had hung up a "Just Say No" poster of Strawberry and his teammate Doc Gooden endorsing the national campaign against drugs. The fact that they were both raging cokeheads at the time apparently went unnoticed by Major League Baseball. Years later, Strawberry and his cousin would be caught by police with two grams of coke and a hooker in the back seat of their car. Allegedly, Strawberry's defense was that his cousin and the hooker had "kidnapped him" and "forced him" to do drugs. Kidnapped by a hooker and your cousin—gotta be one of the best excuses ever. After Strawberry, next in the pack came Paul Molitor. The future Hall of Famer was one of my favorites, mostly because my uncle Kevin claimed to have hit a homer off of him in Little League, an achievement he would gladly recount after a few summertime Molson Goldens. After Molitor came Tony Armas, then a few no-name pitchers, a pre-Cubs Andre Dawson and then... Mike Greenwell. "I got a Greenwell!" If you collected baseball cards in the 1980s you know who Mike Greenwell is. The mere mention of the name triggered dollar signs in the eyes of thousands of boys all across America—even though the vast majority of us had never, nor would ever, see him play. He was the perfect example of a baseball card making the player, rather than the other way around. His price, a whopping six dollars in the Beckett, was based solely on speculation. And there lay the great mystery of baseball card collecting. Who decided this stuff? Who determined that guys like Greg Jefferies, Eric Anthony or Jerome Walton should be worth more than, say, Tony Gwynn, Barry Bonds or Greg Maddux? You know, guys you'd actually heard of? A perennial All-Star like Don Mattingly only went for a buck, but a first-year Mike Greenwell went for six? Next to Jose Canseco's rookie card, this was the most expensive card in the entire Topps set that year. The Gruseckis patted me on the back as if I'd just accomplished something through skill and cunning. "Good work, man." "Thanks. I knew it was a good one. I knew it." Slowly, I took out my retainer and approached the counter. Perhaps today was the day we saw Nick actually pay a fair price. Mike Greenwell was a rare commodity. Proudly, I set the card down before him. He didn't even blink. "Dollar ten. It'll buy you two more packs." And that was how I lost my first Mike Greenwell.

8-bit Christmas

Kevin Jakubowski

Chapter 5

It was a well-known fact at HC Wilson Elementary that the true start of the Christmas season rested on the pretty little shoulders of our art teacher, Miss Ciarocci. Once the Thanksgiving decorations had come down and the recess temperatures dropped to proper loogie-hawking levels outside, we all knew we were closing in on the Christmas kickoff. Ciarocci, smiling and steadfast, would sit us down, each of us uniformly dressed in our fathers'-backward-dress-shirt smocks, and lay it on us. "Good morning, class." "Good morning, Miss Cee-ah-roh-cee." "Today is a very special day for us. Does anyone know why?" Could it be? Was today the day? Quickly my hand shot up. "Yes, Jake Doyle." "Is it because we're gonna start making our Christmas tree ornaments?" "Very good, Jake, that's right. Today we start our Christmas ornament projects." Hell yes! Every year, Ciarocci's announcement was the starter pistol's bang to an entirely new outlook on life, a call to arms that legitimized our collective insanity and excitement over the pending holiday. The ornaments meant there was no denying it anymore. Christmas was here. Officially. Parental threats of canceled Christmases in years past for bad behavior could no longer be deemed worthy of our concern. A teacher had told us to start making Christmas stuff. This was for school. This was for a grade. This was for real. Christmas had begun! "Now everyone get out your drawing materials. The first step is designing the ornament." She smiled and patted my head as she walked by. Oh man, a head pat from Ciarocci and an announcement that Christmas was here. It was almost too much to handle. I drooled a little bit on my smock as I watched her walk to the front of the class. I never learned Miss Ciarocci's first name, but I'd like to think it was something cool and groovy, like Sunshine or Gloria. She couldn't have been more than twenty-four. Trapped in an '80s world of yuppie commercialism, she'd clearly been born in the wrong era. Simply put, Miss Ciarocci was a hippie. A grade A, sweet-smiling, no-makeup-necessary, drop-dead gorgeous hippie. Ponytailed red hair, big green eyes and skin the color of peach Crayolas. Where other teachers wore shoulder pads and big earrings, Ciarocci wore flowing skirts and hemp necklaces. She smelled of patchouli and paste and I was madly in love with her. Sweet Ciarocci was probably the only person in the world who could have kept my Nintendo obsession at bay that year. So resolute was my desire to gain her affection that I vowed to create the greatest Christmas ornament ever produced. There was only one small hurdle standing in my way—namely, my utter inability to paint, draw, cut, paste, glue, glitter or otherwise assemble any type of artistic structure not resembling a blob of crud. While marginally creative, I had the fine motor skills of a Muppet. Medical records have since shown, as my sister later pointed to in moments of triumph, that I could not even hop on one foot until the age of ten. But this year I was determined to come up with an ornament masterpiece. It was December 4th. I had twenty-one days until Christmas. The season had officially begun. Even that night at the family dinner table I could feel the warmth of the holiday spirit seeping in. "Damn it, Jake! That thing's not a toy!" yelled my father, flicking at my retainer. I was spinning it like a top on the kitchen table, deep in thought. "But we're about to eat." "Do you know how much that thing costs? Put it back in." Reluctantly I popped the retainer back in my mouth. Usually I'd run water over the disgusting hunk of purple plastic (why in God's name had I chosen purple?) before inserting it back in, but when my dad was around it was best to just shove it in there as quickly as possible. The man viewed every second that it was out of my mouth as dollar bills flying out of his wallet. Lizzy came bounding down the stairs. "I washed my hands for dinner, Mommy." "That's very good, Lizzy." "I know. I bet Jake didn't wash his hands. Did you wash your hands, Jake?" "Jake, dear, go wash your—" "Yeah, yeah..." I trudged over to the sink. Oh God, washing your hands... For some reason, and I'll never really know why—I don't think any of us will—but when you're a kid there's no task more hated, more loathed at its very sanitary core than washing your hands for dinner. The abhorrence makes no sense. Washing your hands takes about nine seconds. Walk to faucet. Turn on faucet. Slide hands in and out of stream. Turn off faucet. And you're done. That's it. You could even skimp on drying off or using soap if you wanted. I, for one, was constantly pushing the limits of what I could get away with, as if unclean hands were some kind of nine-year-old's badge of honor. By about the age of seven I'd perfected the single-drip wash. That's one drip, singular. This maneuver required me to turn on the faucet in such a delicate manner that only one drip of water was released. At the millisecond of discharge my hands would dart under the faucet to catch the drip, both rubbing together and shutting off the stream at the same time. No soap. No towel. Total wash time: two-point-eight seconds. I'll show you washing hands, Mom and Dad! Sometimes I still catch myself doing it late at night in dive-bar bathrooms. I hopped down from the kitchen sink stool and shot my sister the evil eye. Chili was being dished out at the table, a sign that it was okay to take out my retainer. Chili was one of the old man's favorites. He poured on the cheese and often favored Tostito chips or Ritz crackers instead of a spoon. Very classy. "Let's pray, huh," he said, his eyes watering. We all made the sign of the cross. Never one for correct Catholic wording, my prayer went something like: "Best that oh Lord for these eye gifts which come out to receive, from somebody, oh Christ our Lord. Amen." By the time the family was making the closing sign of the cross, my dad already had two mouthfuls of chili in and was starting in on his third. Raised in an Irish/Polish family of eight, he saw prayer only as a deterrent to food. He'd developed a devious dinner prayer shorthand that he conveniently disguised as Latin. Next to driving, praying was probably the fastest thing he did all day. His Sunday post-Eucharist sneak-outs to Smiley's Doughnuts were legendary. My mom spoke between polite slurps. "You know, Jake, I ran into Steve Zilinski's mom at the Jewel today." That was never good. "You know what she said?" Something that was bound to make my life less fun? "She mentioned how much you boys have been playing Nintendo. Is that all you've been doing over at the Kleens' these past few months?" Yes. 100%. "No..." "What do his parents say about it?" "Well, they're not home all that much." "They're not at home when you're there?" Quickly I caught myself. "Um, I mean they don't come into the basement all that much, is all." Lizzy looked up slyly from her chili, waiting to pounce. "This is excellent chili, Mother." "Thank you, Lizzy." My dad chimed in. "What your mom is trying to say, Jake, is no more Nintendo." "What? No way!" "Just a few hours on the weekends, okay, honey? Mrs. Zilinski read it's been doing all kinds of strange things to children in Japan." You mean like making them smarter, faster, better at karate? Those things? "They get so involved, they forget about everything else, school, friends. It's bad for your eyes. One little boy in Tokyo supposedly had a seizure." Lies. My dad's bowl had been finished and he was now fully tuned in. "That's why they peddle their techno-junk over here, you know. New Japanese takeover tactics. Reagan won't stand for it, Patty, and neither will I. Jake, no more." "Mom!" "Your father's right, honey, just a little bit on weekends. No more during the week. That's final." Lizzy's smirk was now fully visible. "Nintendo-no-friendo." This was serious. How was I supposed to convince my parents to get a Nintendo for our own home if they didn't even want me playing it at someone else's? Later that night, curled up before the gentle glow of our ten-channel Zenith, the gears of my Christmas engine continued to churn. There had to be some way I could get a Nintendo. There had to be. Not even Marc Summers and his messy antics as host of Family Double Dare could keep my mind off of it. I had been a fan of the game show for years, regularly envisioning what it might be like if my family was ever plucked from obscurity to compete for valuable prize packages and television glory... "The Doyle family, ladies and gentlemen! Let's give them a big Double Dare round of applause!" The studio audience roared. We stood there before them, team name: "Slime and Punishment" (clearly my sister's idea), half-soaked, covered in ice cream toppings and other various goop-like products, the result of twenty minutes of victorious physical challenges. Of this much I was certain: even if my sister claimed to have the correct answer to any trivia question, John Doyle would still opt for the physical challenge. Being made to look like an idiot in public was something of a Doyle code of honor. Like moths to a flame, Doyle men had a hard time backing down from any dare of physical stupidity. Our backyard had the fireworks scars to prove it. "So, how do you feel about making it to the final round, Mr. Doyle?" "Pretty good, Marc, pretty good. I believe I have a peppermint gumdrop lodged in my ear right now, but I'm confident we can all pull through and get the job done here in sixty seconds or less." "Sounds like a man on a mission. What do you think, Mom?" "I just hope no one gets hurt, Marc." "There you have it, folks. Team Slime and Punishment has sixty seconds or less to grab all eight flags and complete the Family Double Dare obstacle course. So tighten up those safety goggles and elbow pads, Doyles, and get ready to get messy. Alright, on my signal... ON YOUR MARK. GET SET. GO!" Lizzy was off like a shot through the Wringer. Hand cranked by me with enough force to crush her innards, she squirted down the slide and picked up the first orange flag. Summers did the play-by-play, doing his best not to get goop all over his patented jeans-and-sport-coat combo. "That's one down, seven to go, we've got fifty-five seconds left on the clock!" My dad grabbed the flag from Lizzy, thrusting it down his shirt as was bizarrely customary to do. He sprinted straight to an awaiting tricycle, mounted it and fell off three times before he even got foot to pedal. He bashed and slid and muscled his way down the slippery Icy Trike path toward the flag. Chocolate-syrup-covered blood trickled down his face and elbows. You think reality TV shows today are dangerous? Double Dare would eat their children. "That's two! Go go go! Forty-five seconds left!" I was next. The Blue Plate Special. Luckily, I had a strategy. I'd noticed on TV on more than one occasion that the flag was never deep inside the waffle on the plate. Instead, it was always poking out somewhere on the perimeter. Throughout the commercial break I had searched for it, slyly, and spotted it. Cheating? Perhaps. But it got us the flag in under three seconds. I think even Summers was impressed. "Jake's got it! Right there! Pass it off! Pass it off!" My mom grabbed the flag and took off toward Pick It!—a plastic nose the size of a Volvo. Somewhere inside one of the nostrils was the flag. You literally had to nose pick it out. I had specifically volunteered my mom for this obstacle, hoping that if she succeeded, the irony of the victory would keep her from scolding me about my own nose-picking tendencies. It was worth a shot. "Dig! Dig! Dig! Find it, Patty! Aaaannnd... She's got it!" Covered in synthetic boogers, my mom tossed the flag to my dad, who immediately separated his shoulder sprinting onto the Human Hamster Wheel. WHAM! Down for the count, right on his side. He dismissed the getting-up part and segued directly into crawling his way to the flag, hamster-style. Pain did not exist in my old man's dojo. Neither did dignity. "Oh, they really want it, folks! Look at that! I have never seen it done that way before! Harvey, are you watching this? Twenty-five seconds left! Five down. Three to go!" The sheer determination in my sister's eyes could have leveled a Minnesota Viking. "Outta my way!" BANG! She punched her three-foot frame through the Baked Alaskan Squisher grabbing the sixth flag and passing it to my mom. "Hustle, Patricia! Hustle!" "Ten seconds! Nine! Eight!" Patty Doyle, all ninety-seven pounds of her, dove headfirst into the Gak Vat, pulling down fifty gallons of slime and the seventh orange flag. "Seven seconds...! Six...! Five...!" It was up to me now. All that stood between us and a prize package of incomprehensible value was Mount Saint Double Dare. Oh no! Not Mount Saint Double Dare! Surely the most feared obstacle in all of Nickelodeon Studios! Frantically I scrambled up the massive faux Nerf volcano. My goggles fogging, my complimentary Reebok tennis shoes holding on for dear life, I was running blind. Gak and slime of all colors and horrible textures spewed forth from the top. I wasn't going to make it. "Four...! Three...!" I could hear my family screaming below, my mother's shrieks of encouragement mixed nicely between my father's obscenities. It was now or never. I pushed off and leapt into the slime abyss. "Two... One...!" My hand clenched something triangular. Cautiously I rose from the goop. Could it be? The clock had stopped and the crowd had reached an eerie silence. Slowly I lifted my hand... Through the green chunks, a distinct orange glow shone through. The flag. "He's got it! He's got it! By God, the Doyles did it!" The crowd went berserk. Lizzy jumped into my dad's bloody arms. My mom planted a wet one on Summers' cheek. I did my best Michael Jordan-just-beating-Cleveland jumping fist pump. We did it! We had won it all! "Harvey, tell them what they've won!" "Sure thing, Marc! They've won the gum-ball machine, the Casio keyboard synthesizer, the Nash skateboards, the Speedo exercise attire and leg warmers, the set of Coleman coolers, the Milton Bradley ultimate board game package, the family set of Scott skis, boots and poles, and the Nintendo Entertainment System! A prize package worth over two thousand three—" At the word "Nintendo," my dad quickly reached over and grabbed Summers' microphone. "Oh, sorry, sorry there, Harvey. No, actually we won't be taking the Nintendo. I know, I know, it's just a family rule we have, everybody. We'll be giving the Nintendo to the blue team." What? Hold it right there. Wait a second. In horror I watched my dad hand over the system to our competitors. They were green eyed and redheaded and all had faces that looked exactly like Timmy Kleen's. They were pointing and laughing at me. This couldn't be happening. What was going on? Everything suddenly went into slow motion and I felt myself begin to tumble down Mount Saint Double Dare. "Jake? Jake? Jake..." Slowly my eyes opened. I'd been asleep for God knows how long in front of the TV. My sister was standing above me, not very gently poking me with a Pound Puppy. "You were picking your nose in your sleep. And then you started crying." "Oh." I said. It was all I could muster. Even in my dreams Nintendo seemed like a stretch.

8-bit Christmas

Kevin Jakubowski

Chapter 6

It had snowed overnight, the first big storm of the season. Flakes started coming down right around bedtime and hadn't stopped since. Waking up to snow was like waking up to a new lease on life. Like a little present just waiting for you outside your bedroom window; tons and tons of the stuff, as far as the eye could see. You could dive in it, climb around in it, slide down it, hurl it at your sister's face with only evaporating consequences, build forts, pretend you were Han Solo saving Luke Skywalker in Hoth—the sky was the limit. In my Nintendo haste I'd actually kind of forgotten how fun it was when it snowed. "Are we having a snow day, Mom?" I asked, my face pressed up against the kitchen window. "Don't count on it, dear." Of course not. Why should I? I often wondered where we'd even heard the term "snow day." TV, maybe? Did snow days really exist? Or was it some kind of urban myth Wisconsinites invented to make Chicagoans look like idiots? Because in all the time I'd been enrolled in the Batavia Public School System, I'd never had one. Not one single snow day. It was depressing just thinking about it. Nowadays you can't even turn on your computer without reading about some school that's canceled for the day, the week, the month because of weather. There could have been fifty inches and swine flu and we'd still have had to go to school. The policy list of justifications for school cancellation in 1980s Chicagoland must have read something like this: 1. Threat of Soviet attack 2. Snow Tornado 3. Armageddon So it was off to school I went. I forged ahead into the wind and mush, blocking a path for my little sister behind me. She trudged forth in her lime-green one-piece snowsuit. I pulled up the collar of my JCPenney bomber jacket, careful not to lick the zipper, a mistake I'd learned the hard way last winter. "Why don't you have your boots on, Jake?" She knew exactly why I didn't have my boots on. "Shut up, Lizzy." "Ooh. You said a swear." "'Shut up' isn't a swear, alright?" "I'm gonna tell Mom." "You do that." "And I'm gonna tell her you took off your boots too." There was a reason why I was the only kid in a fifty-mile radius walking to school in his gym shoes. It was a painful reason. One that troubles me even to this day. I wasn't wearing my boots because... my boots were girls' boots. Let that sink in for a second. Girls' boots. Like much of my wardrobe, the boots had been purchased in a TJ Maxx coupon–induced bout of madness by my mother in which all rationale of style, taste, comfort level or gender was thrown out in favor of conquering her ultimate test of motherhood, the closeout sale. The boots were red with pretty white trim and pretty white zippers and a pretty white logo on the heel that said ESPRIT. A word that I'd later learn was not only synonymous with female fashion but also French. French! They were cute and cuddly and a death sentence at school if anyone ever found out. As such, they were now scrunched in my backpack, where I hoped they would stay until I outgrew them and could hand them down to my little cousin Brian. It would be payback for his blatant disregard for water gun fighting rules over the summer. Earth to Brian: You can't use a garden hose in a water gun fight. I don't care what they say up in Minnesota. "Come on, Lizzy, hurry up, will ya?" I stood on the corner, about three blocks from school, and squinted. Through the snow and the minivan-lineup exhaust, I could already make out The Mound. It had only snowed one night, but already its size sent chills down my spine. The Mound was really nothing more than a snow pile, but at its February peak it could grow as high as two stories, practically dwarfing the school itself. It was ominous, looming, scary. Because of the school's circular driveway, the city's plows had to dump all excess snow and subsequent gravel in one giant heap next to the jungle gym. The result was the biggest, most dangerous piece of school property in Kane County. And Monday through Friday it was where every boy, K through five, for reasons unknown, would gather before school to have his skull crushed while playing the exceedingly violent knock-out game, King of the Mountain. I ditched my bag and saddled up next to Olsen and Mahoney at the bottom of the Mound. They were lying in the snow staring up the face of it, the way infantrymen attacking a bunker might. They looked about as scared too. "Who's on top?" I asked. "Who do you think?" It was a stupid question. In my four-plus years in school I had only known one permanent king of the mountain: Dan Delund. "Whhhhooooaaaaa! Look out!" Zilinski came crashing down next to us—Delund's first victim of the season. "I think he just broke my nose. He's really not kidding around up there this year." We were never quite certain what grade Dan "King of the Mountain" Delund was actually enrolled in, as the vast majority of his time was spent in such foreign districts as the principal's office and the Ben Franklin cigarette counter. He wore Mötley Crüe T-shirts and steel-toed boots and would often give himself pen tattoos of daggers and snakes—or if he was really feeling creative, daggers stabbing snakes. He stood about five foot five, a hundred and twenty pounds. This made him about a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier than anyone else foolishly attempting to knock him from his pedestal. Delund was basically the Andre the Giant of HC Wilson. And he was twice as mean. Mahoney tapped my arm. "Look at these idiots." From our vantage point we could see a platoon of second graders try to rush Delund from behind. He spun around and stiff-armed them two at a time. Laughing hysterically, he tossed a few right back down the hill; others, he tackled and whitewashed before discarding their bodies. The defeat of an entire class took about fifteen seconds. Olsen peered over my shoulder. "I hear he's already got hair under his pits." A crying second grader crawled up next to us, sans hat and gloves, which were now resting somewhere on the other side of the Mound. A tactic Delund had undoubtedly dreamt up in the off-season. "He took my gloves! He took my hat! He threw them in a puddle! Why-eeeee?" "Get yourself together, man!" shouted Mahoney, grabbing the kid by the shoulders. "Don't let him see the fear! You do that and we're all dead!" Every group of friends growing up has an Army Guy friend. You know the type. Camouflage bedspread, eats GI Joe cereal, actually watches WWII movies with his dad. Mahoney was our Army Guy friend. He got to see Platoon at age seven and had since developed a keen sense for war and injustice. A game of laser tag was not just a game of laser tag to Matt Mahoney. It was an exercise in truth. Up on the Mound, Delund was now hurling down snowballs and insults. "You babies! Is that all you got? I said, is that all you got?" Mahoney hawked a loogie in disgust. "Somebody's gotta put a stop to this guy. I can't take another year of this. Doyle, are you with me?" "Right now?" "Olsen, how 'bout you? Aren't you getting a little sick of this?" "Uh, I don't know, Matt... I got my nice snow pants on..." "We'll attack him head-on. He'll never expect it from the three of us. Goonies never say die, right?" "Yeah, but—" "LET'S GET HIM! RRRRRRAAAAAAHHH!" Before Olsen and I knew what had hit us, we were charging up the mountain like some kind of Ken Burns documentary, caught up in a moment of sweeping music and freedom. If I'd had a Union flag, I would have been waving it wildly. Delund's eyes locked with Mahoney's. He pushed up his sweatshirt sleeves, exposing a few bleeding snakes, and took off in a dead sprint toward us. The King was not about to go quietly. "GRRRRAAAAAGHHHH!" Flanking Mahoney, Olsen and I were immediately close-lined by Delund's outstretched arms. WHACK. WHACK. Mahoney was able to withstand Delund's initial body check, but it didn't matter. In a split second he was met with a roundhouse kick to the face. The next twenty seconds were blurry, but from what I do remember, there were a lot of dead legs and DDTs, followed by some serious retreating. Mahoney's "plan," while brave, was incredibly stupid. We nursed our wounds at the bottom of the hill. "Almost, fellas, almost." Olsen checked his snow pants. "I think he stole my milk money." The ping of the electronic HC Wilson school bell sounded off in the distance. Delund was once again victorious. He trotted down the hill, smiling and gleeking on us as we all filed into the building to face another day. Ah... third grade. Standing at the door's entrance, sniffling into Kleenex as usual, was our teacher Mrs. Hugo, affectionately known by all of us as Mrs. Huge-Blow. She was sick and perturbed today, as she had been every other day in her fifteen-year career. "Walk, don't run, children, walk, don't run... I said don't run!" Josh Farmer came galloping up in his moon boots beside us. "Hey. Did you guys hear what the sixth graders are saying yet?" Was it something like "stop talking to us, Farmer, you're annoying"? "No, Farmer," Olsen humored him, "what are they saying?" "Okay... So, I'm down at Fun Times Roller Rink, right, hanging out with the sixth graders as usual, you know, no big deal..." More often than not, around Farmer's second sentence I would try to tune out and think of something else. It was the only way to avoid punching him in the mouth. I caught a glimpse of Miss Ciarocci in the Learning Center as we passed by. She was laughing with Mr. Murphy, the fifth grade teacher and a recent Wisconsin transplant. I did not like the way this looked. She was touching the arm of his stupid Green Bay Packer's jacket... Screw you, Mr. Murphy. Let's see you make a Christmas tree ornament project of an entire manger scene. (That was my new plan, by they way—manger scene ornament—with donkeys and wise men and all that junk). Ciarocci gave a glance in my direction and flashed a smile. In my head I gave her a cool nod back, but in reality I'm pretty sure I just stared at her with my mouth open. "Jake. Jake!" Olsen was elbowing me. "Are you listening to this?" "What?" I asked. "Farmer says the top Cub Scout wreath seller this year gets a Nintendo." I stopped dead in my tracks. A Nintendo? From the Cub Scouts? Was that even possible? Every year in Cub Scouts we would have to sell Christmas wreaths. It was a fundraiser for the organization and basically meant giving up a quality Sunday afternoon in front of the TV to traipse around the neighborhood with my dad, trying to get old ladies to place orders. Last year I'd sold a grand total of five, three of them going to my grandparents. I was a horrible salesman. I always chalked it up to a lack of motivation, though. Usually the sales prizes were things like Webelo belt buckles or plastic canteens—basically, junk. But if the top prize was a Nintendo, then this was a whole new ballgame. But this was Farmer we were listening to here, not exactly a reliable source for information. "Bull crud," I said. "Bull true," lisped Farmer. "A Nintendo, with games and everything." "Bull. Crud." "Bull totally true." "Totally true like how your dad has a Babe Ruth rookie card?" "Or totally true like how Murdoch from the A-Team is your uncle?" "You guys don't have to believe me. I'm gonna win it anyway. I already sold sixty-seven wreaths already." "To who?" "People... your mom." "You're full of it, Farmer." "Says who?" "Says me." "Yeah?" "Yeah." "Yeah?" Suddenly a hand shoved a snowball directly in Farmer's mouth. "Yeah," said Dan Delund, laughing hysterically. We all joined in. Delund spun around. "Only I laugh." We all shut up.

8-bit Christmas

Kevin Jakubowski

Chapter 7

The humidifier in the corner bubbled and hissed as Mrs. Hugo paced around the classroom, occasionally pulling used Kleenex from her sleeves to blow her nose. We were all spread out on the hard orange carpet, partaking in another one of her "educational exercises" designed to get us to shut the hell up. We were a terrible class. Looking back, it wasn't really Huge-Blow's fault. Our class that year would've done any teacher in. We were loud and unruly, a gang of germ-infested, sugar-fueled heathens. And during the Christmas season? Forget it. The class was a time bomb just waiting to go off. It didn't matter that she had us all lying on the carpet listening to a New Age "relaxing" record. Silence and order weren't in the cards for us. The Relax Records, as they came to be known, seemed like something Ciarocci would've had sitting around her apartment. They were very hippie-esque. You could picture Ciarocci going home, lighting some candles (and whatnot) and making a night of it. Maybe she'd recommended them to Huge-Blow as a way to calm us down. But in an actual classroom setting, with a bunch of nine-year-olds, Huge-Blow was by no means capable of pulling it off. "We're relaxing, children. Our minds need to be relaxed to think. Now everyone close your eyes"—nose blow, nose blow —"and listen to the lady on the"—sniffle —"record." Unfortunately, the lady on the record sounded like a cross between Cyndi Lauper and Eeyore. She wasn't relaxing; she was hilarious. "Oooooh kaaaay, nowwwww. Feeeeeeel the waaaaaater. Feeeeeeel it wash away your emmmmmotions." Ha! Yes, female hippie Eeyore. Feel it, feel it. "The sunnnnnn shines as you driffffft offfffff down the peaceful blue streeeeeeeeam..." Down on the carpet things were far from peaceful. Nintendo prize rumors had been circulating like Mario Bros. fireballs all morning. With each hour that passed, however unlikely the stories, it became more and more believable that the Cub Scouts might actually be offering an NES to the top seller. Tommy Grusecki whispered the latest. "Ryan heard first prize comes with a Power Pad. Pass it on." I rolled over to Zilinski. "First prize comes with a Power Pad. Pass it on." Huge-Blow hovered above us. "This is quiet time, children. We're relaxing now." Zilinski rolled over to Olsen. "First prize comes with the Power Pad." "The Power Pad!" "RELAX!" yelled Huge-Blow. "Together we all breathe in. Then breathe out. We breathe the good in and breathe the bad out. Breeeeeeathe in and breeeeeathe out, breeeeeeeeeathe in, breeeeeeeathe out—" BURRRRFFFFTTT. Delund ripped a hard one. Wet and smelly. "Dan Delund!" "My butt's gotta breathe too, Mrs. Hugo!" The class erupted. Delund yelled a late "Door knob!" which under bully rules meant he could now hit whomever he pleased, even if it had in fact been his own fart. You had to hand it to him. He got a few jabs in before Huge-Blow pulled him off and sat him in the "time out chair." Relaxing time was officially over. She strode up to the board and put another check after Delund's name. "Back in your seats!" Falling far short of his career average of six checks before lunch, it could only be assumed that Nintendo gossip had sidetracked even Delund. Lunchtime at HC Wilson was not so much a time to eat as it was a time to do business. Apples for fruit cups, Kudos for Lunchables, PB&J for pop—there was no trade too big, no barter too small. For half an hour a day, every kid in the cafeteria became a hustler. It was cutthroat. If Mike Tuetken accidentally got two Twinkies in his lunch, you better have a line on it and you better show up to his table with fruit snacks or higher, or you weren't getting any. No slouch myself, I'm not ashamed to say that I once lifted a jumbo pack of Extra Winterfresh from Kleen's gum drawer and, stick by stick, managed to get him to trade me his Fruit Roll-Ups everyday for a month. One hundred percent markup. Score, Doyle. There were two fundamental types of lunch people. You had the "hot lunchers" and the "sack lunchers." Very rarely did you ever have a kid who mixed and matched. You were one or the other. They were like religions, passed down through generations, like Protestant or Catholic. It was in your blood. You're a sack luncher, son. I don't care how great your friends at school say Taco Day is. Your grandfather didn't sell the family pig and come to this country with negative three cents to see his family turn into a bunch of limp-wristed hot lunchers! There were pros and cons to each religion, of course. Sack lunchers had to bow down to the parental gods, who were ill tempered and forgetful and, more often than not, cheap. For years I suffered under the delusion that Cheez Whiz sandwiches were delicious. Cheez Whiz sandwiches, for crying out loud! In what world is a Cheez Whiz sandwich an acceptable meal? Sure, cafeteria food could get a bad rap for being smelly and gross, but at least you knew it had to pass some kind of government nutritional standard. With a sack lunch you were on your own, left to the whims of mom and pop. Sometimes there would be no Butter-Nut bar at the bottom of the sack. Sometimes there would just be a crummy old pear. Sometimes you would end up with your sister's celery sticks. Then what? All you could do was offer them up to the dumpster spirits and hope for grace tomorrow. Then there was the sack itself. That was reason enough to warrant a hot lunch conversion right there. Sacks were undependable, unpredictable. Condensation, rips, tears, rain, snow, wresting matches—you had to be careful. Five-second rules were hard to apply when your graham crackers were floating in a puddle. You also couldn't trust yourself with a sack lunch. What if you got hungry early? Say, on a bus field trip or on the long walk to school? A little bite of that salami sandwich could get you through it. But one little bite could turn into ten little bites plus a bag of Cheetos, and if you weren't careful you could end up with no lunch at all come lunchtime. There was no trading out of that situation. Sack lunchers had their perks, though. Leftover birthday cake could wind up in a sack lunch. So could last night's Salano's pizza or Aunt Cubby's cookies. But hot lunch had its advantages as well. For starters, it was hot. In the dead of a Chicago February that didn't go unnoticed. Secondly, it wasn't going to get left on the bus or in the fridge at home. It was guaranteed. Third, you didn't have to think about it. No preparation required whatsoever, just get the ticket punched, get the tray, get the spork and dig in. And finally, every Friday at HC Wilson was Spaghetti Friday—with garlic bread. And that garlic bread smelled pretty friggin' good. I'll admit it, I thought about converting to hot lunch several times. In first grade I even took a little nip of Missy Pearson's mashed potatoes on a bet, but ultimately I decided they weren't for me. Despite the occasional Cheez Whiz sandwich, I was a sack-lunch man. It was hereditary. When we weren't making deals or actually eating, lunchtime conversation usually flowed in question form. Deep, philosophical exchanges that touched on all the current third grade worldviews: Q: Will the Bears win another Super Bowl this year? A: Yes. Without a doubt. It's pointless to even question it. Q: Could Duran Duran beat up Wham!? A: Huey Lewis could take them both. Q: Who's cooler, the California Raisins or the Domino's Noid? A: Are you a idiot? The California Raisins. Where are you getting these questions? Q: Are you in love with Kleen's sister? A: I don't want to talk about it. Q: Sox or Cubs? A: Cubs. Carlton Fisk is a fatso. Ryne Sandburg is awesome. Q: Karate Kid the movie or Karate Kid the cartoon? A: Cartoon. There's way more fighting in the cartoon. Q: Cosby Show or Family Ties? A: Hmm, good one. Gotta go Cosbys. Q: Transformers or Gobots? A: Gobots. Q: Why Gobots? A: They're hardcore. Q: Optimus Prime is hardcore. A: Optimus Prime should be in Wham!, that's how unhardcore he is. Q: Okay, Voltron or Gobots? A: Gobots. Q: Seriously, what's with you and Gobots? A: You're not even asking me questions anymore. Q: Yes, I am. A: No, you're not. Q: Yes, I am. A: No, you're not. Q: Fine. Hi-C or Capri Sun? A: Ecto-Coolers do not exist within the Capri Sun family, therefore, Hi-C. In fact I will make that trade with you right now, Evan Olsen. Thank you very much. Of course, as anyone can tell you, the best part of lunch was recess. What better way to spend the twenty minutes immediately following mass intake of Doritos and pop than running around at full speed in subzero temperatures? Hooray, recess! We all scrambled to our cubbies in the hall and began putting on the necessary layers. Mysterious lunch ladies bustled around us, zipping up kindergarteners' coats and jamming mittens on fingers. Time was of the essence. If you didn't get outside quick enough, you ran the risk of missing the draft selection for the daily blacktop football game. That was bad. That meant you had to sit in a snowbank and watch, or worse, hang out with girls. "Jake Doyle." I turned to find Mrs. Huge-Blow lurking over me. Man, did she ever take a break? "Is there something you want to tell me, Jake?" I find it hard to believe that you're employed as a third grade teacher when you seem to inherently despise children? "Uh, no..." "You've been disobeying school rules, Jake. Don't think I'm not watching you." "Uh..." She pointed down at my shoes with a used Kleenex. "If you go out in the snow once more without wearing boots, your name goes up on the board, with a check. Snow rules. No boots, no recess." "Boots?" "Boots. You have boots, right?" Oh, man...

8-bit Christmas

Kevin Jakubowski

Chapter 8

In 1983, Boy George released a song called "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" A catchy little cross-dressing reggae tune, it has since become the soundtrack to my girls' boots nightmare. Whenever it comes on the radio or VH1 plays the video on some celebrities-turned-junkies countdown, I find myself weeping softly. Some guys wince at the memory of dropping a ball in a big high school game, others spend years regretting "the one who got away." Me, hardly a month goes by that I don't wake up at night in a cold sweat to Boy George ringing in my ears and little red Esprits flashing in the darkness. So it was, that fateful Monday afternoon in December when I finally had to venture out in my girls' boots and face the music. I did so by standing behind a tree. Out on the blacktop I could see the teams already being picked for football. As always, Zilinski and Delund were captains. Traditional draft etiquette was usually lost on Delund. He skipped such formalities as taking turns and pretty much just took whomever he wanted. Even if that meant the teams were stacked thirty-seven guys versus Zilinski and four second graders. "I pick first, I got Padula." Zilinski tried to counter. "Okay, um, I got—" "And Schafer and Schmidt. Kramer, Mueller, Nelson, I got you too." "Hey, no fair, you gotta—" "The Hussa brothers, Mahoney, Pendrock, DeGemis." "You can't do it like that, Delund, I have to—" "Wattendorf, Merlini, Olsen aaand... Gubbins." Ryan Gubbins, a portly fourth grader, trotted over, surprised at his selection. "I got your gloves, fatso," said Delund, promptly relieving him of his prized Bears receiver's gloves. "You got the rest, Zilinski. You kick." I watched Zilinski and his team of rejects trot back toward the near end of the blacktop. I could tell he was looking for me. In blacktop football, two complete passes, no matter how short, were enough to warrant a first down. Since it was rare that anyone would ever cover me, I was usually open, and that was the only way Zilinski ever kept the score close: short dump-off passes to Doyle. Team Loser needed me. "Jake!" Zilinski spotted me behind the tree. "What are you doing over there? We kick off." Casually, I tried to shoo him away. "I'm, uh, taking a leak. Play without me!" "Is there a dead squirrel back there again?" "Uh, yeah. I'm peeing on a dead squirrel. I'll be there in a minute!" It was no use. Zilinski hustled over with the ball. "You're peeing on a dead squirrel? What kind of a sick—" He stopped dead in his tracks and looked down. An expression usually reserved for horror movies or broken windows slowly washed over his face. "Holy... shit..." "I know." "Dude, you're wearing Katie Sorrentino's boots." "They're mine," I stammered. "Holy... sh..." "I know, alright." "What are you gonna do?" "I don't know." "If Delund sees you he's going to kill you." "Do you think I don't know that?" Answering too many math questions correctly, having insufficient cough drops for the taking, these were all grounds for physical retaliation. But girls' boots? Delund had once thrown Ronnie Dobber in a dumpster because there was a rumor going around that his favorite GI Joe was Lady Jaye. "Hey!" Delund yelled. He was running through the snow toward us. "You're kicking off, Zilinski, let's go." "I'm coming." "Is there a dead squirrel back there again? I got dibs on it if its guts are all out and bloody and—" Delund took one look at my boots and slowed to a halt. Like a hunter coming up on a shotgun-wielding deer in the middle of a clearing, his mind was blown. Completely. He stood there for a moment, not quite sure what to do. Bewilderment and anger had rendered him helpless, as if his bully instincts weren't fully capable of handling such a grave situation. "What the... Boyle? Are those...?" "Uh, listen, Dan..." I might as well have been inviting him to a My Little Pony sleepover. My mind flipped through the Rolodex of punishment I was sure to endure. Weeks of wedgies, whitewashings, dead legs, dead arms, dead torsos, DDTs, possible Indian burnings, swirlies... I took out my retainer in preparation. Zilinski, God bless him, tried to create a distraction. "Hey, Delund, let's go play some football, huh? We kick." Delund just stiff-armed him to the ground. "I think we got ourselves a pair of girls' boots here." "Wait, wait, there's this high schooler, okay," I tried pathetically. "He bet me a hundred bucks I wouldn't wear these boots to school. It's a joke, alright, I—" "Not buying it, Boyle. You're about to pay up. Big time." Quickly I went over my options. Running away always looked appealing, but I knew better. That just meant further punishment. Fighting back was just plain stupid. No, the best plan of attack was to take a beating now and be done with it. I closed my eyes and hoped for the best. I could feel Delund's beef-jerky breath on my face as he grabbed me by the coat and lifted me up in the air. But somewhere off in the distance I heard a high-pitched lisp. It was the voice of an angel... "HEY GUYS! HEY, YOU GUYS! CHECK IT OUT!" Midair, I opened my eyes to see an out-of-breath Farmer sprinting toward us, waving around a green piece of paper like it was the cure for chicken pox. "I GOT IT! I got it right here. Proof! Proof it's NINTENDO!" At the word "Nintendo," Delund chucked me into a bush. "What do you mean, you got proof? Proof of what?" "Proof that the Cub Scout first prize is a Nintendo. It says so right here, right in the Cub Scout take-home note for today. Look!" Farmer handed the note to Delund. Delund flipped it over a few times. "Just a picture of a dumb wreath, so what?" "You gotta read it." A crowd had now gathered around. I watched quietly from the shrubbery, trying to bury my feet in the snow. This was bigger news than girls' boots any day. Farmer read from the note. "This year's first prize comes courtesy of Geitner Toys and Books. A perfect addition to any living room. The new Nintendo Entertainment System!" Delund grabbed the note again and strung the words together. It was there alright, in dotted black computer ink. "The new... Nintendo Enter-tain-ment Sys-tem." By God, little Farmer had struck gold. A collective cheer went up among us—hugs and high fives all around. Delund went as far as patting Farmer on the back before laughing directly in Kleen's face and shoving him into a tree. And for a brief moment, my girls' boots became a neglected sideshow. It was all I needed. Quietly, and without detection, I scurried off to hide behind the dumpster. No one else had noticed the boots. I was in the clear. Ecstatic on several levels, I sat there in the stink and the mush and began to contemplate the biggest wreath-selling campaign to ever hit Batavia.

8-bit Christmas

Kevin Jakubowski

Chapter 9

The problem with having only one Nintendo prize in an already hostile one-Nintendo town is that it makes enemies out of everybody. There was no more "us versus Kleen" mentality. It was now every man for himself. Big or small, smart or dumb, first grade or fourth, it didn't matter anymore. You sold the most wreaths, you won a life of bliss and happiness; it was as simple as that. Plans were already being hatched in notebook margins, and battle lines were being drawn in the snow. Immediately following the Cub Scout take-home note revelation, Tommy Grusecki faked an earache and was sent home for the rest of the school day, where he was now, no doubt, out on the streets going door to door selling wreaths. It was a gutsy move for a three-hour head start, and I already hated him for it. By 1 p.m., wreath-selling exit strategies were running rampant. Matt Mahoney got caught trying to sneak out of PE, and half the fifth grade gifted program staged an unsuccessful classroom walkout designed as a nuclear-arms protest. The gauntlet had been laid down. If even the smart kids were willing to risk disciplinary action for Nintendo, I had to get my act together. So I came up with a plan. It was simple but daring just the same. Sometime in the middle of our afternoon quiz on the magic of petrified wood, it started to come to me. I wouldn't sneak out, per se—that had already been proven nearly impossible. At the end of the day I would simply leave faster than everyone else. I only lived about a half mile from school. It was the kid/bully/teacher/bus/minivan traffic jam that always delayed my departure. There were times it took me a good ten minutes just to get outside the building after the final bell. If I could circumvent said traffic jam, then I could be home and selling wreaths almost a full half hour before most other Cub Scouts even got their sales sheets out. Basically, my plan was this: don't go to my locker, head straight for the fire escape, beat the rush, exit the school and sprint like crazy home. It was a good plan. Straightforward. Clean. The only problem was, it meant I wouldn't have access to such take-home necessities as, you know... a coat. No gloves, hat or scarf either. That posed a bit of a problem. Now, I'd heard of frostbite. I'd seen Empire Strikes Back, I knew the dangers of Hoth, but that was the movies. And frankly, Luke Skywalker could be kind of a pussy. I was not a pussy. I was Jake Doyle—Man of Action. I was certainly not afraid of a little frostbite. To me, the term sounded like some kind of Dairy Queen concoction served in miniature batting helmets. This summer, the Frostbite! With real Snickers! That's coooool! So what was the worst that could happen? Lose a toe? What's one toe? Even losing a couple fingers was worth it if it meant getting Nintendo. I could be cold when I was dead. These were the thoughts racing through my head as I turned in my petrified-wood quiz. Not my best effort. It would later earn me a 26% and a phone call home. Apparently it's not spelled "petra-fried." Huge-Blow was a stickler for spelling. The cold witch. I sat there in my chair and inconspicuously popped the collar of my imitation Ocean Pacific polo shirt, doing my best to convince myself that this was not a fashion statement but rather a practical maneuver ensuring warmth on the way home. I gave Angela Moran my best Don Johnson look and smiled. I'd always wanted to wear the collar up in school but never had the guts. See? Nintendo was bringing out the best in me already. I watched the clock tick down to two thirty and laced up my Walter Payton KangaRoos... PING. PING— I leapt out of my seat and bolted out the classroom fire door before the third bell had even registered. Huge-Blow may have noticed, but I was out of disciplinary range before she could say anything. I rounded an icy corner and took off like a shot, my heart pounding at near audible decibels. "Danger Zone" was pumping through my imaginary headphones. I was in the zone. I skidded out toward the sidewalk and kicked it into overdrive. You know what? This wasn't bad at all. Heck, I wasn't even cold. Not even a little bit. Ha! I raced through the school grounds and dodged a few oncoming station wagons. The crossing guard didn't even have time to look up. I was doing it! The first block was a blur of houses and mailboxes. I crossed onto the second block and smiled to myself, taking what might have been my first real breath since I'd come outside. I turned the corner onto Jackson Street and—oh my God, this was terrible. What the hell was I thinking? My body suddenly began to scream at me. "It's nine degrees out, you fool!" All of a sudden I couldn't feel my legs. My chest was on fire. A wave of panic washed over me. I began panting, wheezing, slowing to a crawl. "Don't stop now, stupid! Keep going!" My hands were turning white. I tucked my thumbs under my forefingers, clenching my fists. The irony of winning a Nintendo now and not having the thumbs to play it was beginning to sink in. Panicking, I looked around. Was I past the halfway point? I was. It was too late to go back. My adrenaline was fading fast. Reality was smacking me in the face. Would I die out here? Could that happen? Maybe Skywalker wasn't such a pussy after all. Quickly, I hopped over a snowbank and went for the middle of the road. That way, I thought, if I passed out, or died or whatever, while running, then at least a car could come by and see me and take me to a hospital. A part of me thought, well, if I did almost die trying to get a Nintendo, maybe my parents, or some good Samaritan, would actually buy me one for Christmas. "Christ, the kid almost died for this thing, give him the Nintendo, for crying out loud." Yeah, that was it. The thought of a tragic near-death experience perked me up a bit. I dug down deeper and found my footing. Pain did not exist in this dojo. Nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds after the final bell, I burst into my house, a frozen, crazed wreath salesmen. "How was school, honey?" my mom asked from the kitchen. "Blaaaah! Rhaaaah!" This was no time for pleasantries. I pushed past her and ran directly upstairs, no doubt tracking snow and madness all over the carpet. Sitting at the kitchen table, Lizzy took note. "He didn't have his coat on. Did you notice that?" "I did, Lizzy, yes. I'll talk to him." "If he catches pneumonia, can we get a chameleon?" "No, Lizzy, we're not getting a chameleon. Drink your hot chocolate." "Do you know what we learned in school today, Mommy?" "What's that?" "We learned about Brazil." "Really?" "Yes, it's in South America. They speak Portuguese there. Most people don't know that, but I do. Portuguese comes from Portugal." Lizzy helped herself to a cookie, nibbling thoughtfully as she went in for the kill. "Do you think they have Cabbage Patch dolls in Portugal?" Ah, yes indeed, there were other Christmas plots hatching in the Doyle house. "Well, Lizzy, I don't really—" WHOOSH. I came flying back down through the kitchen, buttoning up my Cub Scout uniform and pulling up my long johns. A peculiar itchy feeling was slowly returning to my hands and feet. And the "petra-fried" snot around my nose was beginning to thaw. Looking back, I probably did get frostbite. But screw it. It was worth it. "Where's the clipboard? The clipboard!" I screamed. "It's in the junk drawer. Where are you—?" I was already out the door. Lizzy took another sip of her hot cocoa, unaffected. "They probably don't have Cabbage Patch dolls in Portugal. Those poor, poor children of Portugal..." It had been only fifteen minutes since school let out and I was already fitted in my dress blues and on my way, secretly envisioning the acres of Alaskan pine forests needed to cover the number of wreaths I was about to sell. I pulled down my Cub Scout stocking cap and threw on my backup gloves. There were no other scouts in sight. The neighborhood was mine. I rushed up the steps of the broken-down yellow house on the corner, poised to make my first sale. I knocked confidently and waited. Oh, I had the sales pitch all planned out. It was brilliant. I practiced it quietly in my head. "Well, the Cub Scouts have been around for hundreds of years, ma'am. Striving for truth and justice and the overall goodness of America as we know it! Without your help, thousands of boys may become drug addicts and communists before the year 1997. All we need from you is a bit of generosity that can be displayed throughout the holiday season in the form of a marvelous Merry Christmas wreath!" The door opened, revealing a man who might best be described as dangerous. He wore a wifebeater and a scowl that suggested, to me at least, that he was once in a motorcycle gang. This was not good. "Whaddya want?" I stood there, blubbering. "Uh, um, uh..." "Look, kid, they got Ditka on WGN right now tellin' ethnic jokes, what is it?" "Uh, communists, 1997..." "What?" Come on, pull it together. "Uh, sir, I..." "Wait a second. You're not trying to sell me something, are ya? Are ya!?" "Uh, bluhhh..." "Can't you read?" His index finger shot over to a white sign on the door three inches from my face. In big block letters, it read: NO SOLICITORS. Solicitors? Oh no, see, I'm with the Cub Scouts, sir, completely different type of situation here. "But... uh, wreaths. You wanna buy a wreath?" The man looked at me as though I'd just told him Mike Ditka shaved his legs. In disbelief he placed the palm of his hand on the top of my head. Slowly he tilted it upward. Hanging there on his door, a few inches from the NO SOLICITORS sign, was, in fact, a Christmas wreath. I was selling a guy who didn't want to be sold anything something he already had. "Jeeez-us kid." He shook his head. "You must be retarded." I stood there with my mouth open slightly and tried to smile. "Wait a second. You're not really retarded, are you?" I shook my head no. "Good." He slammed the door shut, pine needles grazing my nose. This was going to be harder than I thought. By now, ninety percent of the male population of HC Wilson Elementary was hitting the pavement, hawking wreaths door to door. It was a little astounding when you thought about it. I mean, not even ninety percent of us went door to door trick-or-treating. Nintendo had become the grade school equivalent of the hottest, most popular girl in high school. And this wreath-selling contest was comparable to her winking at each and every one of us in the hallway. It had hypnotized us, infatuated us, given us all false hope. It didn't matter that only one of us could have her. We were all convinced that she would be ours. Nintendo had us in her clutches and we'd do anything to get her. A whole new level of single-minded madness had taken over. Christmas lists to grandmothers weren't even lists anymore, they'd become declarations—one word on a sheet of notebook paper: Nintendo. No backups, no stocking stuffers, no subcategories filled with requests for "Super Bowl Shuffle" cassettes or He-Man accessories. It was Nintendo or nothing. Teddy Ruxpin, pack your bags, my friend, your fifteen minutes were over. Determined, I walked down Watson Street to Miss Sherman's house. In Chicago Bears terms, if I was quarterback Jim McMahon (which, when wearing my Adidas headband, I often thought I was), Miss Sherman would be my Willie Gault. She was my go-to receiver, an automatic catch, an instant gain of eight yards. Miss Sherman would buy a box of rocks from me as long as I spent a little time with her. She was approximately a hundred and fifty years old, and next to my grandparents, she'd been my only sale the year before. It had taken me an hour and a half inside her cat-infested living room, but she'd bought two wreaths and an order of garland. Certainly, Miss Sherman would start things out right this year. Optimistically, I rang the doorbell. "Who is it?" Miss Sherman yelled over the stampede of seven thousand cats. "It's Jake Doyle from across the street." "Whooooo?" "Miss Sherman, it's—" "Miss Sherman? I'm Miss Sherman." "Yes, I know, Miss Sherman, it's—" "Who is it?" "It's Jake—" "Whooooooo?" "JAKE DOYLE. FROM ACROSS THE STREET." "Oh, Jake! Come on in!" She opened the door. Nine cats jumped on my face. I went inside. Walking into Miss Sherman's house was a little bit like walking into church. It always smelled like something was burning and you knew you weren't leaving for at least an hour. The place was hairy and unkempt, much like Miss Sherman herself. She stood about four foot eight, a hundred pounds, and as always, was dressed in a bathrobe and slippers. She was a hugger too. "Oh, it's soooooo good-ta see ya, Jake! What kinda things are they teaching you in school these days?" "Oh, I don't know, stuff." "How's your little sister, Lizzy?" "Okay, I guess." "You guess? You tell her she needs to come see me. I haven't seen her in ages. She's so cute. And smart as a whip, that one." "I'll be sure to tell her, Miss Sherman. So, I've got some wreaths to—" "Would ya like a nice glass of milk?" "Um..." "And some nice ham sandwiches? You sit down right here and I'll come back with some nice ham sandwiches and some milk and you can tell me all about school." Sweet. I swatted away a few cats and settled on the couch. It was at least ninety degrees in there. I was already beginning to sweat through my merit badges. She called back from inside the kitchen. "I'm gonna warm the milk up for ya! Nice and hot to warm you up!" "Super." I glanced around the room. It was WWII-era ancient, the kind of room that looked like it came straight out of It's a Wonderful Life, except without any of that Donna Reed cleanliness. Doilies were everywhere, little glass vases, knickknacks, crafts, plates of various American prairie landscapes hung up on the walls. A mound of Life magazines rested in the corner, serving both as feline jungle gym and permanent fire hazard. And then there was the kicker—no TV. How could someone live like this? Maybe it was the light fading outside or the shadows in the house, but when you were in there it seriously felt like you'd entered real-life black and white, like you were Dorothy still in Kansas. Or better yet, a POW in Stalag 17. There was no escape from Miss Sherman's domicile. I glanced out the window. Far down the street I could see a few tiny dots of blue on the horizon trudging along the sidewalk. Cub Scouts were already treading onto my turf. "I'm gonna heat up the sandwiches too, make 'em nice and warm! I just gotta find that grill cheese maker my son sent me. Would you like to see pictures of my son? He lives in Hollywood. He works in the movies." This was gonna be tricky. Earlier in the afternoon, I'd run the wreath-selling numbers in the back of my Trapper Keeper. It was a good place to do math, what with the complimentary metric-system conversion table and all. Basically, I figured I'd have to sell at least fifty wreaths to be in the running for first prize. That was just over five wreaths a day, a tall order, especially if I was stuck here in cat land for too much longer. I needed to close this deal and get back out there and sell as quickly as possible. "Here you go. Some nice sandwiches and some milk." "Thanks, Miss Sherman." I took two big bites and a big warm gulp; it was best to get it down fast. Not only did you taste less, but it also looked like you were enjoying it—skills I'd learned from my mother's experimental cooking. In twenty seconds I'd already burned three-fourths of my mouth and polished off half a sandwich. "My goodness, don't they feed you at home?" "It's just so good, Miss Sherman. Mmmmmm." "So, tell me all about school, why-don't-ya?" "School's fine." "What are you learning? Tell me all about it." "Oh, nothing really." "Nothing? Its gotta be something. Come on, tell me. Come on..." Oh God, seriously? There wasn't much worse than being asked what you were learning in school. It was like getting out of Chino for the night and being asked how it was inside. It sucked, all right. School sucked. We learned about stuff, we ate lunch, we had recess, we learned about more stuff, we went home. Why did adults want us to talk about it so badly? I was a free man right now. I was out of school; why would I want to talk about it? It was bad enough I had to memorize the intricacies of the Dewey Decimal System without having to turn it into interesting conversation. "I'm not letting you leave until you tell me all about it, Jake." Sherman wasn't messing around. Casually, I fed a cat a bit of a sandwich under the coffee table, stalling for time. I had to give her something, something educational, something that was engaging enough to satisfy her but also bland enough not to spark a two-hour lecture on the Great Depression or photos of her son. Quickly my mind shifted into salesman mode. "Actually, we're learning about pine trees right now..." Yes sir, this was going to work. "Really." "Yes, it's fascinating stuff. Did you know that the state of Alaska has over a million acres of pine trees alone?" "I didn't know that." Probably because I just made it up. "That's right. Pine trees have a very unique, uh, way to do photo-syn, uh, photo... photosynthesis, that's it. Did you know that? Photosynthesis? That's why they make such great Christmas trees." "You're right, they do make good Christmas trees. You know, I need to start putting up my Christmas decorations myself." "Funny you should mention that, Miss Sherman..." It took another hour inside, but when I came out I'd managed to sell the woman more wreaths than she had doors on her house. God bless you, Miss Sherman. The only problem was, it was now getting dark outside. I only had half an hour before I had to be home for supper. I looked down the street and saw Josh Farmer making his way toward me. The little twerp was even wearing a tie. It matched the smug look on his fat face. "Heard you ran home without a coat, Doyle." "What's it to ya?" I snapped. "Just seems a little desperate, is all." "You seem a little des... perate." "You don't even know what 'desperate' means." "No, you don't know what it means." "No, you don't." "No, you don't." "You don't times a million." "You don't times a million, times ten. Period. No erasing." That shut him up. Farmer gave a nod toward Sherman's house, clicking the multicolor pen in his mittened hand. "Going the old-lady route, eh? Gotta have a good exit strategy to pull that off. Me, I steer clear of old ladies. Too much hassle, not enough profitability." Who was this guy? Gordon Gekko? "Whatever, Farmer. You shouldn't be on my block anyway." "And why's that?" "Because it's my block. That's the rule." "You think there are rules here, Doyle? There are no rules. The only rules are gonna be the ones that say you gotta take your shoes off when you come into my mom's house to play my Nintendo." This was getting ugly now. Did Jake Doyle have to hit a Cub Scout? "We'll see." "You bet we will." We stared each other down for a moment, neither of us flinching. He clicked his pen. I pulled my No. 2 pencil from behind my ear. Somewhere off in the distance a Metra train piped out an eerie whistle. A plastic Jewel bag turned tumbleweed blew across the sidewalk between us. It was a suburban showdown. "That Nintendo's mine," I hissed. "You'll never win it." "Watch me." With that, Farmer turned and ran up the steps of the house next door to Mrs. Sherman's: the O'Brien house. I'd tried there last year and came up with nothing. He'd never sell them a wreath. They went to Florida every year for Christmas. Sometimes they didn't even bother putting up a tree. Even when they did it was the plastic kind. The house was a total dead end. "Good luck with that one, dipstick!" Farmer rang the bell. Mrs. O'Brien answered. "Yes?" "Hello, ma'am, my name's Josh. That's a lovely blouse you're wearing." "Thank you, young man. What can I do for you?" "Well, ma'am, I just have one question to ask you. Do you love your country?" Son of a bitch. Farmer was good. Mrs. O'Brien smiled and led him inside. It was obvious I couldn't waste any more time watching this go down. I hustled down the block and got to work. I had less than thirty minutes to get as many houses as I could before Farmer stole them right out from under me. "Hey, uh, Brett," I said to the five-year-old who answered the door. "Is your mom home?" "She's at work still. Tiffany the babysitter's here." "Who is it?" yelled an annoyed Tiffany from somewhere inside. "It's Jake Doyle from down the street." I leaned down. "Listen, Brett. Here's the deal. How'd you like to play my Nintendo?" "You got a Nintendo?" "Not yet. But I'm gonna put you down for two wreaths here. All you have to do is tell your mom that Tiffany said it was okay." "But Tiffany won't say it's okay." "Do you like Tiffany?" "No. She's mean." "Exactly, Brett, exactly. She'll get fired. You'll get two wreaths to help me win the Nintendo, and I'll let you be the only kindergartener who gets to come over and play it. Deal?" "Yeah!" "Good work. See ya next week." I got through a few more houses in the next twenty minutes. I made a sale to the Garzas and got a promise from Mr. Thompson if I came back later when his wife got home with the checkbook. I had sold close to a dozen wreaths in one afternoon. I was feeling pretty good about myself. The sensation had even returned to my thumbs. I rounded the corner on Watson and saw my dad's minivan pull into the driveway. I'd even made it home in time for supper. Take that, Josh Farmer. But as I trudged up the stairs to my front door, I heard a familiar lisp making an exit. "...and God bless the United States of America. You have yourself a wonderful evening and a Merry Christmas, Mrs. Doyle." Farmer tiptoed down the stairs and patted me on the shoulder as he went by. He'd just sold two wreaths to my own mother. "Suck on that one, Jake."

8-bit Christmas

Kevin Jakubowski

Chapter 10

When you really break it down, the entire focus of kid life centers on one specific goal: having fun. All drive and brainpower is dedicated toward the purpose of playing. It's a relentless battle waged against grownups of all shapes and sizes, one that consistently begs the question: How can I, the kid, maximize my ability to play? How can I stretch the parental five-minute warning at Show Biz Pizza into ten minutes? How can I put the least amount of time acceptable into responsibilities so I can play? I just want to play. Can I go play now? Can we go upstairs and play? Can Evan come over and play? Can I go out back and play? Can I play hockey in the street? Can we play football in my room? Is Dad in a better mood now so Lizzy and I can play? Is church over yet? Is Grandpa's story finished? Is dinner done? Is practice over? Can I be excused? On all that is good and holy, I just want to play! So picture this. You're an eight-year-old kid. You like sports and baseball cards, action figures and TV. Occasionally you get a book out of the library about Bigfoot, but that's pretty much it. But then one day this thing called Nintendo comes along. It speaks to you like nothing has ever spoken to you before. In playing terms, it's off the charts. It's like an arcade that lives in your family room. You don't even need quarters or a birthday excuse to be there. It's better than TV, better than any book at the library because each game is like your own little story that you control. It's filled with magic flutes and airplanes and guys named Piston Honda. Nintendo made Choose Your Own Adventure books seem like finger painting. Sure, there was Atari before Nintendo, but only weird older second cousins who lived in Indiana, and babysitters' boyfriends, cared about Atari. Atari was boring, the graphics were weak, even the design of the system itself looked hokey. Frogger was probably its best game, and the object of that was to not get hit by cars. Seriously? I could do that out on Fabyan Parkway anytime I wanted. Nintendo games were different. Each one was its own new experience. Take Super Mario Bros., for instance. You're playing along, getting the hang of it, jumping over little mushroom men and smashing blocks with your head, when, out of nowhere, level 2.2 comes along and suddenly you're underwater. Underwater! No way you saw that one coming. Holy cow! What'll they think of next? Look at those graphics! Look at those little bubbles coming out of Mario's mouth! Look at that lobster thing. It looks exactly like a real-life lobster thing! This is amazing! With books or TV shows, even with your own imagination, results came without any required effort. You want to see what James does with that giant peach of his? Just turn the page and find out. You're not sure how Mr. Belvedere will keep Wesley from being a little asshole this week? All you gotta do is sit in front of the tube for another twenty minutes and watch. But with Nintendo, if you wanted to see what happened next, you had to work for it. Nintendo rewarded playing. Sure, winning a game of touch football brought a sense of satisfaction, but beating a level of Super Mario Bros. meant you got to lift the curtain on a whole new 8-bit world, filled with what felt like infinite possibility. This was completely different from anything we'd ever experienced before. Nintendo was more than a toy; it was a playing utopia. The only catch was Timmy Kleen working the door. In the beginning, the games were limited. Kleen's NES came with just the standard dual-game cartridge of Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros., and we played those two until our thumbs were raw and we saw flying turtles in our sleep. It wasn't until Kleen got himself sent to the principal's office for throwing a stapler at a hall monitor that his parents placed him on the decidedly effective Games for Good Behavior program. It was quite possibly the greatest disciplinary action of all time. Every week that Kleen didn't poke his sister in the eye, every week that he didn't throw his music book at Ms. Powers, every week that he didn't cry at karate lessons, he got a new Nintendo game. It was unbelievable—a carrot on a stick that gave half the school good reason to fess up for crimes we hadn't even committed. We became Kleen cover-up artists and ADD deflectors of the highest order. Who put paste on the carpet? Not Timmy, that's for sure. Who called Lisa Kowalski a stink face? Sure wasn't Timmy. Who knows the answer to number two? That would be Timmy, Mrs. Hugo, because ten of us just whispered it to him. Within three weeks of the Games for Good Behavior program, Timmy Kleen had become the most popular, sociable, well-adjusted kid at HC Wilson. And the spaz didn't even have to lift a finger. The initial game reward in the Kleen program was Excitebike. It lived up to its name and then some. Set in the apparently high-stakes world of Japanese motocross, Excitebike tested our reflexes against ramps, pits, straightaways and the clock. It was you versus the computer—three to four other bike racers all hell-bent on knocking you down and making your life miserable. Excitebike also introduced us to "power conservation"—a very foreign concept to a nine-year-old. If you went too fast all the time, your excite bike would become overexcited, crapping out and sending you headfirst into the dirt. This was a very difficult idea to grasp. I mean, what nine-year-old boy doesn't want to go fast all the time? Especially a nine-year-old boy who should be on medication? Needless to say, Kleen was not good at Excitebike. Both he and the bike spent about ninety percent of each race squarely "in the red." The only reason he didn't smash the cartridge against the wall three rounds in was because we'd usually manage to tackle him to the ground. After taking the fall for a fogged-up-bus-window drawing of a stick figure picking his nose, Matt Mahoney got Kleen through his second week of the program unscathed. The reward was RBI Baseball. It was most definitely a game changer. Made by a company called Tengen, RBI Baseball didn't look like a regular Nintendo game. It wasn't gray with grooves on the side; rather, it was black and shaped like the hood of the Knight Rider car. At first we weren't even sure if it would work in the NES. But from the first crack-of-the-bat ping, we knew we were in for a treat. Up until this point, all the games we played were one-player games. Your competition was the game itself. Sure, Super Mario Bros. allowed both Mario and Luigi to play, but that was never at the same time and certainly never against one another. RBI, or "Ribbie," as we quickly grew accustomed to calling it, changed all that. Upon the start of the game you were able to select one of eight Major League Baseball clubs as your team and you could go head-to-head with another club of your opponent's choice. You controlled an entire roster of batters, pitchers and fielders, who, despite all looking like the white version of Kirby Puckett, each had their own stats and skill levels. It seems simple now, but back then, to think that a video game could make some batters better home-run hitters than others, or give some pitchers a better curveball, well, that was mind-blowing. Years later, RBI would no doubt become instrumental in the popularization of fantasy sports. For if RBI Baseball taught us anything, it was that the key to success lay heavily in statistics. As such, we gradually composed a list of Ribbie dos and don'ts. They were: 1. Never throw strikes to Tony Armas. Ever. It doesn't matter that you've never heard of him or that his baseball card is worth seven cents. In RBI Baseball he's Babe Ruth. 2. The California Angels suck. 3. Pressing the buttons extra hard directly correlates to extra bases. 4. In the fifth inning Fernando Valenzuela will suddenly start to pitch thirty-seven miles per hour. Remove him immediately. 5. Kent Hrbek is a beast. 6. Ellis Burks should always pinch-hit for Bill Buckner. 7. Vince Coleman is a professional thief. He steals bases. 8. Roger Clemens is an asshole, even in video game form. 9. In RBI Baseball sometimes home-run balls go straight through the wall. And sometimes outfield throws get stuck in the bleachers. 10. At the end of the day, the Tengen newspaper never lies. Down in Kleen's basement, epic round-robin Ribbie tournaments were waged. Athletic attempts normally reserved for Little League failure could now be played out with a little hand–eye coordination and a quick pair of thumbs. We became baseball professionals, turning double plays, hitting sacrifice flies, and throwing wicked knuckleballs. It didn't matter that your batter ran faster to the dugout when tagged out than he did running the bases, RBI Baseball felt as real as baseball itself. But the good times didn't last. The "Pheasant Wood Meltdown," as it later became known, put the Games for Good Behavior program in serious jeopardy. On a Saturday night sometime in September, Timmy Kleen went out to dinner with his family to the St. Charles Country Club, Pheasant Wood. It was a location that none of us had ever been to—a middle-class pipe dream only glimpsed through minivan windows in passing. So Kleen was left to his own devices that night. If there were any other kids dining there, they most certainly had their own Nintendos, because nothing was done to keep Kleen in line. Perhaps in some St. Charles show of superiority, the country-club kids had even encouraged Timmy's spastic behavior just so they could keep the deprived children of Batavia from receiving their precious games. Lousy St. Charles kids. I wouldn't put it past them. The facts of that night never got out completely, but this much is known. Kleen's hamburger, his mother's plate of linguini, two deckchairs and a teenage waitress were thrown into the Pheasant Wood swimming pool, all compliments of Timmy. Did he not like his burger? Was he upset with the service? Had his sister questioned the styling of his creased dress pants? We were never sure. But the legend of Timmy Kleen's rage had now spread to the far reaches of Kane County, and his parents certainly weren't going to take it lightly. They banned new games for a month. It was a crushing blow to us all. Over the next few weeks we did our best to get by. We concerned ourselves with getting to the last level in Super Mario Bros. and seeing how slow we could make Valenzuela throw through extra innings. The record was nineteen miles per hour—a rate at which a batter could swing three full times before the ball reached the plate. Fascinating stuff. When we weren't trying to keep Kleen out of trouble, we spent much of our time petitioning him on what game to get next once the ban was lifted. There were plenty to choose from. We'd heard great things about a game called The Legend of Zelda from our Tri-City soccer opponents. And Olsen's Canadian penpal had nothing but glowing reviews for Tecmo Bowl, 1943: The Battle of Midway and, of course, Ice Hockey. Proving that even Canadians had better access to games than we did. It was decidedly frustrating. But one sunshiny day during the middle of lunch, Kleen announced the unexpected. "Double Dragon." "The arcade game?" "Yep. They turned it into a Nintendo game. It's brand new. My dad's buying it for me on the way home from work. I'm back on the program." Hell yes! Double Dragon was maybe the coolest, and definitely the most violent, arcade game we'd ever come across. And violence, to a nine-year-old American boy, is more addictive than crack. At All Seasons Ice Rink, I'd once taken five dollars from my dad, meant for hot dogs and Cokes for the family, and feverishly spent it on twenty minutes of Double Dragon bliss. Pumping in quarter after quarter, I managed to make it all the way to level four, registering electronic immortality with a top-ten score. So incredible was the accomplishment for a novice like myself that I was sure my father would see the value in his five-dollar investment. Sadly, he did not and I was grounded for a week. (It should be noted that denying John Doyle hot dogs was never a good idea.) But it was worth the punishment. As an arcade game, Double Dragon had the uncanny ability to suck you in no matter what the consequences, and the NES version ended up being just as addictive. Whips, aluminum bats, metal pipes, throwing knives—these were all weapons of choice in Double Dragon. But the weapons didn't just magically appear as they did in other games. No sir, to get a whip in Double Dragon, you had to kill a whip-wielding bad guy first. Actually, come to think of it, it wasn't even a bad guy with the whip. It was a girl. You had to kill girls in Double Dragon! With your own bare hands! Once they were dead, then the whip was yours. Then you could kill other bad guys with whips, like slightly Asian-looking bodybuilders and dudes named Lopar, eventually moving up to big rocks and dynamite and so on and so forth, leaving a bloody 8-bit trail of demise behind you. There were no gold coins to gather or enchanted mushrooms to gobble up in Double Dragon, just straightforward, unadulterated, two-fisted violence. It was glorious. So from Halloween through Thanksgiving we gorged ourselves on a steady diet of curveballs and jump kicks. While other new games made their way into the Games for Good Behavior rotation, like Mega Man, Double Dribble and John Elway's Quarterback, RBI and Double Dragon remained our favorites. But as the temperature continued to drop outside and Kleen's basement rules became more obsessive, we grew more and more fed up with the situation. The constant grind of standing in line and taking turns was wearing on us all. We wanted our own Nintendos. Badly. Surely the Christmas season would be the answer. Surely Santa Claus or a favorite grandparent would step up to the plate, and Timmy Kleen's Nintendo tyranny would come to an end. It had to.

8-bit Christmas

Kevin Jakubowski

Chapter 11

Two raisin eyes stared up at me. They were oozing with Elmer's and loosely attached to a mismanaged tapestry of pipe cleaners. This was my donkey, the shining centerpiece of my art-class manger-scene ornament. The fact that the donkey was three times the size of the manger itself didn't concern me. Nor was I concerned that my ornament project in no way resembled an actual "ornament." These were minor details, trifles in comparison to the masterpiece unfolding before me. Already there were art critics in my head peppering me with baited-breath questions. Would you say you're an artistic genius, Jake? Genius? Prodigy, maybe. I just create what I feel, you know? But I owe it all to my third grade art teacher, Miss Ciarocci. We're getting married in the autumn, actually. "What the heck is that?" Mahoney asked, looking over the apparent bomb that had just exploded on my desk. "It's a manger-scene ornament." "It looks like my butt." To the untrained eye, maybe. I brushed him off. "Just wait till it's finished." I didn't have time for the inquiries of common folk. I was on a mission here. Step one: Create genius art project. Step two: Make out with Miss Ciarocci. Step three: Get her to buy me a Nintendo. All around me kids cut and pasted, while Christmas music played cheerfully in the background. These were the days when you could actually play Christmas music in a public school. Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had yet to be deemed dangerous religious icons. It was a simpler time. In the corner, by the cleanup sink, I could see a group of boys reviewing wreath-selling numbers. In the past week, grades had dipped considerably among Cub Scouts. All academic thinking was now solely focused on selling wreaths. Rumor had it that Josh Farmer was still in the lead, but I wasn't sweating him, because, ladies and gentlemen, as of forty-eight hours ago, Jake Doyle had uncovered a secret weapon. On the night when my own mother bought two wreaths from my sworn enemy, I'd had a nice little talk with my parents. It went something like this: "HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?" "What's he crying about?" my dad asked, setting down his briefcase. "Oh, I just bought a few wreaths from the Farmer boy." "The Farmer boy? I don't trust that kid." "See!" I yelled. "He's a total dipstick!" "Watch your mouth," my dad yelled back. My mother tried to explain. "You always hated selling wreaths, Jake, I didn't even think you were selling them this year. I'm sorry." "I knew he was selling wreaths," Lizzy interjected from the stairs. "It's because the top wreath seller gets a Nin—" "Night in Chicago." I glared at Lizzy. She was one slippery little snot. She must have seen the take-home note. This was going to be tricky. "I—I thought it would be nice for the whole family to go. It's at a hotel or someplace. It's supposed to be expensive." My mom wasn't buying it. "A night at a hotel? That's a weird prize." "Yeah, I think the Kleens donated it or something." "Figures," said my dad, hanging up his coat and immediately switching gears to more-pressing matters. "So, what's for dinner?" Thirty seconds later I had Lizzy cornered at the kitchen sink as we washed up. "What the heck are you doing?" I hissed, throwing in a few soapy elbows. "I don't know what you're talking about." "You saw the take-home note. I know you did. Why are you trying to tell them about the Nintendo? Don't get me in trouble!" "You're the one getting yourself in trouble." I was not amused. "I will seriously tear off the heads of every single one of your Barbies. Don't think I won't do it." "Go ahead. I'll just tell on you." "Don't mess with my Nintendo!" Lizzy shut off the sink and dried her hands. There was something else cooking in that giant brain of hers, I could tell. She looked me straight in the eyes. "Look, you don't even have it yet, okay? You probably won't even win it." "So?" "So I have a way you can do it. A way you can win the Nintendo." "What is it?" "You have to help me first." "With what?" "Getting a Cabbage Patch. If Santa doesn't get me one, I need Mom and Dad to do it. I can't depend on Santa anymore. He didn't get me Strawberry Shortcake last year like I asked. The system is broken. I want you to help me get one. A redhead one named Dawn." "How am I gonna do that?" "Just tell Mom and Dad how much I want one. It looks bad if I say it all the time." "And what are you gonna do for me?" "I won't say anything about the Nintendo." "And?" "And I have a way to win the Cub Scout contest." "No, you don't." "Yes, I do." "Well, what is it?" I wiped my hands on my pants. "Every year you sell wreaths to Miss Sherman, right?" "Yeah." "She buys a lot, right? 'Cause she's old." "Uh-huh. Maybe." "No, definitely 'cause she's old. So what you need is a bunch of other old people to sell to. Ones that are all in the same place so you can go door to door really fast and you don't have to go all over Batavia hunting them down." "What's your point?" My mom yelled from across the kitchen. "Dinner's ready!" "Coming, Mommy," Lizzy called back. Still standing on the stool, she put her hand on my shoulder and laid it on me. "You need to go to Prairie Pines, Jake. The nursing home. You'll clean up." Prairie Pines. Man, Lizzie was smart. Why didn't I think of that? Why didn't anyone think of that? There must be two hundred lonely old saps up there, easy. Most of them waking up every day just hoping some kid comes by to visit them. They'd all want wreaths. This was genius! "So, do we have a deal?" "Yeah," I said, still a little stunned. "We got a deal. Redhead named...?" "Dawn. With freckles. Don't mess it up." Prairie Pines Nursing Home had been an institution in "half-dead living"—as my dad put it—for decades. It sat on the corner of Route 31 and Fairview Parkway, an intersection serving as the border between Batavia and neighboring thug town—Geneva. At the edge of the Prairie Pines property stood the prominent, hand-carved "welcome to Batavia" sign, which read, BATAVIA CITY OF ENERGY, an ironic slogan considering the monumental lack of activity that lay directly behind the sign. Not to mention a very loose interpretation of the word "city." Over the years I'd probably passed Prairie Pines a thousand times, but until that Saturday morning, I'd never been inside the place. As I pedaled my Team Murray up its winding sidewalk, I could already smell that hospital smell. It was something of a cross between hot-lunch vegetables and my great-aunt Bertha. Not a very palatable mix. But it didn't matter. I had work to do. There were only six sales days left in the wreath-selling competition and I was nowhere near the head of the pack. I ditched my bike in the snow, stomped down on the automatic doormat and forged ahead inside. The first thing you learn as a nine-year-old walking into a nursing home is that you are a very rare commodity. Like a life jacket on a sinking ship or the last brownie at a Phish show; everybody wants a piece. Before I'd even finished telling the nurse at the front desk my story, two elderly men in wheelchairs approached me. They were dead eyed and mush mouthed, smiling and wheezing nonsense. They made the old guys from the Muppets look like New Kids on the Block. To be completely honest, they scared the crap out of me. "That must be Charlie's grandson!" one of them coughed. "Look at how big you've gotten!" said the other one, tugging at my arm. "It's Charlie's grandson!" the same guy coughed again. "I heard you the first time," said the other guy. "What?" "I said, I heard you the first—" "Hey everybody! It's Charlie's grandson!" And that was how I became Charlie's grandson. I never did meet Charlie, but it didn't matter. I could have been a convicted juvenile delinquent and it wouldn't have mattered to these people. Before I knew what was happening I was surrounded by a dozen drooling half-deads, all smiling and petting me like a puppy. This little trip to Prairie Pines was definitely going to cause a few nightmares in the coming weeks. It reminded me of the time I made the mistake of going through Jaydee's Haunted House alone on a bet. Every molecule in my body was screaming at me to run, but my Nintendo brain kept me locked in position. The time to sell was now. "Hi, my name's Jake... I'm a Cub Scout." "A little Cub Scout, how wonderful!" a bald lady chirped. "Charlie's grandson's a Cub Scout!" "That's right. My grandpa Chuck taught me well." "I was a Cub Scout before there was such a thing," the guy who was still tugging my arm slobbered. "I could whittle you a canoe!" "Fascinating, sir." Another one bellowed out from behind me, "What kind of merit badges have you got, sonny?" "Only a couple..." I paused for effect. "I still have to get my American Business Badge. You know, for selling Christmas wreaths. Do any of you know someone who might like to buy a Christmas wreath?" Wrinkled hands shot up all around me and cash register bells immediately went off in my head. Or maybe that was just the sound of someone flatlining in the next room. Either way, these people were definitely buying what I was selling. Yes, they would all like to buy a Christmas wreath, but first I would have to come back to the lounge or the dining room or their living quarters to see pictures of their grandkids and play checkers and hear stories about the Hoover Dam. (What is it about old people and the Hoover Dam?) So that's exactly what I did. I went door to door, I smiled and laughed, I ate stale pieces of fudge. I got schooled in checkers. I gave hugs and handshakes. I listened to stories about FDR and whistled along to Benny Goodman. I took buffalo nickels as gifts. I raised beds. I turned on lights. I lifted spirits. By lunchtime word had gotten out. There was a nine-year-old boy in the building who had manners and the Christmas spirit. He wasn't selling wreaths; by God, he was selling America! And what war vet or former Depression-era teenager didn't want to buy himself a nice little piece of that? Folks came out of the woodwork. Grumpy old men who hadn't been out of bed in months suddenly found their legs. I was magic tonic. I was Ponce de León. I was Willy Wonka's friggin' golden ticket, dangling over Grandpa Joe's face. I told stories of Pinewood Derby triumphs. I explained the intricacies of the Star Wars trilogy. I pledged allegiance to the flag. And I sold wreaths, a truckload of them. I was in Prairie Pines for exactly six hours, and I left with just under three hundred bucks in sales. It was a triumph of Eagle Scout proportions. Later that night, back at home, I sloshed up the stairs weighed down with dollar bills and change. As I passed Lizzy's room I poked my head in. "A redhead, right?" She turned and nodded smugly. "With freckles."