Lotos scrambled through, last in the group. She found herself in a spiral tunnel that wound steeply down toward the middle of the fortress. There was an overpowering smell here, of chemical secretions and fungal growth, and the curving wall was made of the same hard cement. But the tunnel was deserted. They ran along it at top speed, until after a hundred steps the leaders skipped to a halt. Scores of defenders were emerging from side passages, blocking the way ahead.
“Shoot your way through.” MacDougal was waving his weapon around, as much a menace to his companions as to the enemy. “These are no real danger — but keep your eyes open for the soldiers. They’ll know any minute what we’re up to, and they’ll be after us.”
The projectile weapons were powerful enough to blow asunder the soft bodies of the workers. But there were hundreds of them. Progress became slower and slower, through a carnage of dying tower-dwellers. Lotos found herself skidding in disgust over layers of pallid flesh and greasy body fluids, losing her footing every few seconds. She was last of the group again, at least ten paces behind the rest. If the soldiers came from behind … but the big central chamber was in sight ahead.
Lotos paused to catch her breath. And heard from behind her the scrabble of hard claws on the runnel wall.
She turned. Less than twenty paces away were seven warriors, approaching at top speed. She screamed a warning, lifted her weapon, and fired it on automatic. A stream of projectiles cut into the warriors. Four curled into death spasm, knotting their bodies on the hard floor of the tunnel.
But the other three were still coming. Lotos blew the head clean off one of them, and cut another in half with a hail of fire. The last one was too close. Before she could aim her weapon, mandibles as long as her arm reached forward to grip her at chest level. Their inner edges were sharp and as hard as steel.
Lotos’s arms were pinned to her side by the encircling jaws. She could not free her gun, or fire it at the soldier. She heard the others of the party shouting at her, but they could not get a shot at her attacker without hitting Lotos. The pressure on her chest increased, from discomfort to impossible pain. Lotos could not breathe. She felt the bones in her arms crack — her ribs cave in — her heart flatten in her chest. In the final moment before she lost consciousness she bit down hard on the switch between her rear molars. As everything turned dark she felt a gush of blood in her throat, jetting up from her lungs into her gaping mouth . …
THAT IS THE END OF ADESTIS FOR YOU. Lotos was sweating and shivering in the balcony seat, the harsh voice sounding in her ear. REMAIN SEATED AS A SPECTATOR IF YOU WISH, BUT YOUR FURTHER PARTICIPATION IS PROHIBITED.
She ripped off her headset and threw it aside, leaning over to stare down at the sandy arena below. The attack on the termite mound was continuing. With the conclusion of sensory contact, her own five-millimeter simulacrum had “died” down there. And just in time! Lotos was still in agony, still feeling the pressure on breaking ribs and cracking spine — still tasting blood in her mouth. Adestis did not let losers off easily. If she had failed to activate the Monitor switch, the chance of death from heart failure was better than one in four. In any case, the pain was real enough. It would go on for hours, even though she was out of the game. That realism was one perverse reason for the huge popularity of Adestis.
Lotos glanced around her. Over half the forty participants had already returned. They were all alive, and clutching eyes, heads, or ribs — the soldier termites had their preferred targets. The other twenty players still wore their headsets and were crouched blindly in their places.
There was a gasp from Dougal MacDougal’s cowled figure, three seats away on Lotos Sheldrake’s right. It was followed by a boil of activity near the bottom of the ten-foot mound, far below the spectators’ gallery. Either the intruders had managed to kill the queen and they were fighting their way out, or the number of defenders had been too much for them and the attack was being abandoned. Tiny human-shaped figures, less than a dozen of them, came racing out of one of the tunnels at the base of the mound and scattered across the sandy plain. They were far from safe. Dozens of maddened termite soldiers were after them, dashing in from all sides.
The projectile weapons fired continuously — and uselessly. In less than thirty seconds all the figures were buried under swarms of furious defenders. One by one, the players around Lotos shuddered back to their own body consciousness.
THE QUEEN STILL LIVES, said the harsh voice over the sound system. YOU ABE DEFEATED AND THE GAME IS OVER. THIS IS THE END OF ADESTIS FOR YOUR EXPEDITION.
Dougal MacDougal was slumped in his seat, groaning and clutching at his hips. A soldier must have taken him there and crushed his pelvis. After a few more seconds he sat up and stared around him. Unbelievably, he was grinning.
“Everybody got back?” he said. “Great. No casualties, and well be better prepared next time. We came so damned close. I’ll bet we were within twenty seconds of the queen when those soldier reinforcements arrived. Talk about damned bad luck!”
“Talk about what you like, Dougal,” said a small, plump man in the uniform of a civilian liner captain. He was whey-faced, leaning far forward and nursing his genitals. “You get off on this stuff, but I’ll tell you one thing. You’ll never talk me into another one. It hurts. Do you realize where that soldier got hold of me?”
“Come on, Danny.” MacDougal was still grinning madly. “You’ll feel fine in an hour or two. The game’s the thing! We’ll be ready to try again tomorrow.”
“Without me.”
“Without me, too,” chimed in a tall, dark-haired woman who was rubbing tenderly at her neck. “You’re crazy, Dougal. I know they tell you it will be full sensories, but I didn’t have any idea how full. I was grabbed so I couldn’t move my jaw — couldn’t work the switch until the last possible moment. I thought I was dead.”
Lotos wiped the sweat from her forehead. She combed her hair carefully, controlled her breathing, and quietly slipped away out of the rear of the spectators’ chamber. Her conversation with Dougal MacDougal was important, but it would have to wait. She had seen all of Adestis that she needed to, and more than she ever wanted to.
Lotos could have used half an hour to herself. She did not get it. When she arrived at her office Esro Mondrian was sitting in the visitors’ chair. He was staring at her Appointments calendar.
If you’re looking for your name, Esro, you won’t find it on that.” Lotos slipped into her own seat. “I thought you were out on Oberon.”
“I was.” He did not look up. “Is it the end of the universe, Lotos? It must be. I think you have three hairs out of place.”
She shook her head. “Adestis.”
“You played Adestis?” Now he was staring at her. “That amazes me. I must revise my opinion of you.”
“Cut it out, Esro. I didn’t do it for pleasure, and you know it.”
“It wasn’t pleasure?”
“It was disgusting, as you are well aware. I did it for information, and because I needed to catch the Ambassador for a private conversation — which I didn’t get. But I got something else.”
“About the game?”
“About the Ambassador.” She tapped a file on her desk. “I had a chance to check your suggestion.”
“You didn’t believe it before?’
“Let’s say, I believed it, but I had to check for myself. You are quite right. Dougal MacDougal is a latent masochist. Maybe not so latent, either. I saw him when Adestis was complete. We lost, but he was grinning all over his face when he must have been hurting like hell.”