The Barsoom Project

Alex winked. “Santa’s secret. I tell you what-after you’re out of the Game, I’ll introduce you to the elves. How’s that?”

“Fine. Thank you very much.”

Harmony and Alex drifted away from the crowd, and Griffin could feel the tension reviving in his friend.

“Alex-”

Before he had a chance to say anything else, Alex’s beeper trilled against his wrist. He said, “The office wants me. Shall I tell them-”

“We’ll talk later,” Harmony said.

Harmony’s eyes were haunted. To hell with the beeper was halfway to Alex’s lips, but he bit it back. What was going on here?

But the haunted look vanished as Harmony slammed the wall down. “Duty calls, Alex,” he said sardonically. He winked as if someone had pulled a string behind his eyeball. Alex thought it was obscene. Harmony turned and vanished into the crowd.

Alex walked toward one of the side doors, pressed tabs on his watch and heard the lock beep in response. The door opened. With a last look at Mars-the past, the fanciful, and the future-he disappeared out the side door.

Chapter Two

THE PHANTOM FEAST

Gwen Ryder had been told about the Phantom Feast, but she still stopped in the doorway, bewildered.

It might have been a library. Half the walls were books, and most of those were tall and wide, heavily illustrated. Diet books and cookbooks and nothing else. Some were quite old, some quite recent. There were hundreds.

An old book, The Beverly Hills Diet, had been disassembled. Its pages papered one wall. Customers on their way out clustered around, guffawing as they read the funnier passages aloud.

Another wall was covered with fading photos of impossibly rich desserts-with a comparison chart showing how many New York Marathon miles it would take to burn off the calories. A double-exposure photo of anorexic, number-chested men and women staggering toward a ten-story banana split was stark and somehow disturbing.

It was 2:20, ten minutes before Ollie was scheduled to show up, and well past lunch hour. The Phantom Feast was still crowded. Old and young, cheerful or morose, singles and clusters, the customers all looked somewhat alike.

They were stocky, chubby, fat, or morbidly obese. Gwen was startled to recognize a famous middle-aged actor, Robin Bowles, cheerfully scrawling autographs for a handful of supplicants. She grinned, not because she collected autographs, but because he looked so real… and so comfortable. Six feet tall, maybe five feet in circumference, the huge, balding presence who had dominated so many vidscreens signed a last book and sagged back in a chair his own size.

No need to worry about little teeny chairs in the Phantom Feast!

Mazie Henderson waved from a table for four, without getting up. She was roly-poly, an oval woman with a round, florid face, but at five four she wasn’t big enough for her chair. Her companion was bigger and a few years older.

Reluctantly, Gwen went over. The man got to his feet. It was the limit of his strength. Long black hair, full black beard, an ornate silver buckle the size of his palm. Mazie said, “Gwen, you know my husband Avram. Avram’s a Magic User now.” Avram smiled and pumped her hand once and sat down too hard. Worn out.

Marie didn’t look much better. Gwen’s broad smile had no visible malice in it, she hoped. “Well! You must have enjoyed the East Gate Game. How about we take in a few rides? I’ve tried the Everest Ski Slope and it’s-”

Marie leaned toward Avram and stabbed a weary finger at Gwen. “Kill that for me.”

“Dear, I haven’t the energy.”

Gwen laid an empathetic hand on Marie’s shoulder. “I but jested.” Hallelujah! Maybe she could escape without a numbing barrage of anecdote. It might be safe to sit, after all.

In high school Gwen had become almighty tired of Marie’s Gaming stories.

That had been old-style Gaming. A dozen kids, or as many as could find the time, would gather in somebody’s living room to play a two-day Game cassette. Interaction was limited to stiffly animated composite images: crude but effective. Marie’s living room had a monitor the size of a picture window. Gwen had liked it enough to graduate into real Gaming, Dream Park Gaming; but she had never come to love the Monday morning rehashes. Those were still as dull as somebody else’s diet.

The waiter set a chopped-steak platter in front of Avram, gave Marie a salad. She ignored it, but Avram dipped his fork into it. It looked good. Diet dressing, no doubt, but it was big and varied, all bright greens, reds, and oranges with no dairy products. Marie seemed not to notice Avram’s piracy. “I feel like I owe you a report, Gwen. After all, you talked me into it.”

“Oh, no. You don’t have to. Really. Actually, I was just waiting-” She started to get up. Her conscience was pulling her back even before Marie’s meaty hand closed on her arm.

This time Marie had earned the right.

Last August Gwen had met Marie for the first time in twelve years. Marie was a mountain. Her new husband, Avram, was another… and he had been a Gamer, years back. They’d worked