Endgame: The Calling (22 page)

Playing in the grass with Jamal
.

Shari is calm. Even after the ambush and her capture and the beating they gave her. She is calm
because
of these things. They have given her a chance to use her training, to refocus her mind. She has not cried out once since they took her, grabbed her when she got off the bus to buy a snack. By all appearances, Shari feels nothing.

Jalair looks at Baitsakhan. He is impressed by this girl. It’s like she is made of stone. Baitsakhan doesn’t notice Jalair’s look; he is not impressed. He watches the blood ooze out from where Shari’s finger used to be and smiles.

The cut hurts, the stump of her finger throbs, but the pain is nothing compared to the pain of childbirth.
These stupid boys know nothing of pain,
she thinks, and she walls her mind off from the pain.

Baitsakhan sips his tea. Shari looks at him. Through him. She has never killed a person before, but she would kill this one in a second.

Because he is not a person.

Baitsakhan sets down his tea and turns down the music.

“Tell me your clue, Harrapan, and your end will be swift,” Baitsakhan promises in English, as if he is some kind of dark king.

But Shari says nothing. Betrays no emotion other than indifference. She doesn’t stop staring through him.

Not human.

He is not even an animal.

Not worthy of this or any other life.

And as far as she is concerned, he is already dead.

Church of the Covenant, Kingdom of Aksum, Northern Ethiopia

Hilal leaves the small crossroads town. He leaves the people there a small redstone talisman in return for their hospitality. The talisman is from Ethiopia, a finely carved cross, inlaid with a vein of pure platinum. He does not tell them what it is worth. There is no point. They will all be dead soon enough, and the Earth will take back everything humanity has built, everything humanity thinks it owns.

He rides an oxen cart to a bigger town. A pickup truck to a bigger one. A jeep to a bigger one. A bus. A taxi. A train. A plane. He flies to Hong Kong, to Brussels, to Addis Ababa. He picks up his uncle’s Nissan Maxima and drives to the crater. He sits at the edge and prays for the victims and their families, prays for the future, that it be good, that it simply be.

For this is Endgame,
he thinks, standing over the still-reeking pit.
The future will end, and time will restart.

He leaves the crater, returns to the Maxima, and drives north. To the old kingdom of Aksum, the kingdom of his forefathers’ forefathers. He is the great-grandson of Ezana, the grandson of Gebre Mesqel Lalibela, the unknown leader of Timkat, the Showing of God.

He is versed in stone, and prophecy, and the kindness of death.

He gets out of the car and walks among his people. He walks for miles, wrapped in stark white and bright red cloth. He wears leather sandals on his feet. The people are scattered here and there, farming, tending goats, slaughtering chickens, beating the chaff from wheat. A few old ones recognize him and they genuflect, and he raises one of his beautiful young hands, palm up, as if to say,
No, brother, I am you; you are me. Stand next to me. Stand with me.

And they do.

“Live,” he tells them.

And they do.

They can see it in his brilliant, gentle eyes: he is theirs; they are his.

He passes over the barren hills, brown and red. And he reaches it. One of the stone underground churches, shaped like a cross, carved from the subterranean volcanic rock.

This one is secret, hidden, surrounded by a thick stand of cedars.

It is 3,318.6 years old.

Hilal makes his way through the maze of ditches that leads down to the church. The air cools; the light dims. He reaches the main doorway, carved from stone like the rest of it. His mentor is there. His spiritual guide. His counsel.

The ex-Player Eben ibn Mohammed al-Julan.

Hilal kneels, bows his head. “Master.”

“You are the Player, so I am no longer the master. Come in, and tell what you have seen.”

Hilal rises and takes Eben by the hand and they walk into the dank church.

“I saw a god, and he told us of the game.”

“Yes.”

“I saw the others. They are crude, for the most part.”

“Yes.”

“I saw one die. Several tried to kill. I saw ten escape.”

“Yes.”

“The god called himself kepler 22b.”

“Yes.”

“It is a planet, if memory serves.”

“Yes.”

“It said we must retrieve the keys: Earth Key, Sky Key, Sun Key. The winner must have all three.”

“Yes.”

“He left a disk of stone, but did not call our attention to it. The Olmec got it. He was with another, the Cahokian. They were followed by the Mu. None noticed that I saw the disk, or that the Olmec took it.”

“Watch that last one, Player.”

“Yes, Master.”

“No more master. I am only Eben now.”

“Yes, Eben.”

“He left us each a clue, in our heads.”

“Yes.”

“Mine is a circle.”

“Of?”

“Just a circle. A line. Empty inside and out.”

They reach an altar. Eben kneels before it, and Hilal kneels with him. They lower their heads. The Christ is there above them, forever bleeding, forever suffering, forever dying, forever giving life, love, and forgiveness.

Eben says slowly, “And you do not know its meaning?”

“I think it was for the disk the Olmec took. He should have gotten my clue. It would have served him better. Or perhaps I should have gotten the disk.”

“You cannot know that. Assume for now that all is as it should be, and the gods do not err. What does this circle tell you?”

“It makes me think of the disk, but also something else. A circle of stone. A stone circle.”

“Yes.”

“It references a construct. One made in the ancient world, the one that existed here when the gods visited.”

“Yes.”

“One made to last, like so many things were made in those days: of rock and stone. A monument to space and time and the cosmos. A thing that sought the memory and permanence of stone. The ancient power of it.”

“Yes.”

“But which stone circle? There are many.”

Eben rises. Hilal does not.

Eben says, “I will bring you wine and wafers.”

“Thank you, Eben. I must meditate. There is more to this simple clue. More to what I must discern from it.”

“Yes.”

Eben turns and leaves, his robes rustling.

Hilal the Aksumite of the 144th brings his hands together in his lap.

Closes his eyes.

The circle in his mind.

Terracotta Warriors Museum, Lintong District, Xi’an, China

Sarah and Jago climb out of a taxi at the main tourist entrance of the great and ancient Terracotta Army. They are met immediately by Wei’s cousin, Cheng Cheng Dhou. Cheng Cheng is a tiny man, barely 153 cm, affable, with bright eyes and Coke-bottle glasses. It is only 17 degrees Celsius outside when they meet him, but he is sweating through his white collared shirt.

“Yes! Yes! Hello!” he says. His right hand is open in front of him, and in an odd gesture he is gripping his right wrist with his left hand, as if he needs to use one arm to move the other. They shake hands and introduce themselves, Sarah and Jago using their real first names. Cheng Cheng leads them to the entrance and ushers them through with his security pass. Just like that, they are in the complex.

“So, what exactly are we looking for?” Sarah whispers to Jago, Cheng Cheng a few feet ahead, oblivious.

Jago rolls his shoulders lazily. “Beats the hell outta me.”

“I might just do that if this is all a wild-goose chase,” Sarah replies with a smirk.

“Looking forward to it,” Jago replies.

Twenty meters away, working her way through the tour group, is Chiyoko Takeda. She made a stop at the guesthouse after Sarah and Jago left, hoping they might be dumb enough to leave the disk behind. They weren’t, and so she joined this group to visit the great Terracotta Army. She has on a blond wig and cargo pants and a black T-shirt and carries a hiker’s daypack.

Chiyoko watches Sarah and Jago talking to a little troll man. A transmitter is set deep in her ear, enabling her to hear what Jago and those closest to him are saying. Unlike the locator, the audio transmitter only works when she is close to the Olmec. Chiyoko consults a wrist-mounted locator disguised as an analog watch. A unique polarization array in the clear lenses of her glasses, which are part of her disguise, enables her to see the digital display embedded in the watch’s faceplate.

The locator is working. She will get in the complex on her tourist ticket, disappear, and follow the Olmec and the Cahokian to wherever it is they are going.

Follow them to where, she suspects, this Cheng Cheng Dhou will tell them something about the disk.

And after they leave, she will have to kill the poor troll man.

There can be no witnesses to Endgame.

What will be will be.

An Liu
blink
climbs off his
blink
matte-black Kawasaki ZZR1200. He is
blink
two kilometers
SHIVER
from the entrance of the Terracotta Army. Cover-up is pasted over his tattooed tear.
Blinkblinkblink.
His head is newly shaved. His backpack is full of
blink
fun things. Full of fun
SHIVER
fun
SHIVER
things. He wears an earpiece that tells him, every 30 seconds, the
blink
location of Jago’s phone.

Blinkblinkblink.

He will sneak overland now
blink
past the guards
blink
into the burial complex.

On this day Endgame
blink
Endgame
blink
Endgame will lose two Players.

Blinkblinkblink.

He has been scouring the
SHIVERBLINK
the internet for the
blink
others. Has found good leads for Kala Mozami and Maccabee Adlai and Hilal ibn Isa al-Salt. The rest are like ghosts, but no matter. They
blink
they
blink
they will turn up.

BlinkSHIVERblink.

Besides, after these two are gone, he needs to find Chiyoko Takeda. He needs to find her and unlock her
blinkblinkblinkblinkblink
her secret. If he has to drink her
blink
still-warm blood or
SHIVER
turn her skin into a shirt or
blink
keep her prisoner until the Event is through, he will. He will do anything
blink
do anything
blink
do anything to cure what ails him.

“It is mind-boggling big, you see. Finished around 240 BCE, we think. Seven hundred thousand men work thirty years on it! Four pits, one unfinished, plus an unexcavated burial mound that hold untold riches. Only Pit One has been excavated, and only partially, you see. It is the biggest. Measures two hundred three feet by seven hundred fifty-five feet. Has ten rows of warriors and chariots and horses and standard bearers and pikemen and swordsmen and generals and ranged crossbowmen. Most rows are three or four abreast. Between rows you see the wide columns separating the ranks and these make the tomb structure. Over one thousand warriors dug up, but many thousands more to go! We estimate eight thousand total! Eight thousand! All to guard one dead man from invading hordes of afterlife. Crazy funny, you see!”

Cheng Cheng is in front of them, his arms out wide, pointing here and there, as if he is a conductor and the motionless statues before him his musicians. The three of them stand on a viewing platform, and it’s one of the most amazing things Sarah and Jago have ever seen, even with all their training and their knowledge of their own cultures’ ancient sites and buildings. Even in the wake of beholding the Great White Pyramid.

“All the figures had paint, beautiful paint. Recently we found some perfectly preserved! Very secret, these, very secret. They used paint made of malachite, azurite, cinnabar, iron oxide, ground bones, even figured out how to make barium copper silicate and mix with the cinnabar to make beautiful vibrant lavender, you see. And more: the bronze weapons! Some have blades coated with chrome-saline oxide. Amazing! They are like brand-new, right out of the blacksmither’s. Sharp as the day they were born. And the crossbows are of highest quality. They shoot bolts over eight hundred meters!”