The Sacrifice Game

Throoomb,

Throoomb,

Throoomb…

(78)

T hrooomb,

Throoomb…

FOMP.

The shock wave punched through the stone and then the sound came and went suddenly, a round echoless explosion like a report shell in a sound studio, and then migraineish pain through my head over an absolute silence I’d never experienced before. The pressure had popped my eardrums.

So what, I thought, I won’t need them. Finally, after a lifetime of noise. It was a kind of peace you could get used to.

I was already in the uterus-shaped sarcophagus, sitting upright like it was a bathtub. I must have looked kind of silly. There were only three other people in the room, Hun Xoc, Alligator Root, and my attendant. Mask of Jaguar Night and the rest of the workmen and attendants had been out in the collapse. Just as well I can’t hear them screaming, I thought, if that’s what they’re doing. That would have harshed me out. Hun Xoc was leaning his callused elbow-stumps on the rim of the casket. We smiled at each other. A drop of blood scrolled out of his ear, wobbling on his cheek, threatening to detach and fall on me, but then it didn’t. I pointed to my ear and Hun Xoc nodded and made a casting-off gesture. I thumped my right hand on his left shoulder, the equivalent of a thumbs-up. He raised his left elbow-stump to his right shoulder, the pledge position. Still just a couple of old vets.

The tomb’s i

Okay, Step Two, I thought. It’s easy. Don’t rush it.

I signed a “now” to Alligator Root. He poked a bone dagger into the marked zero on the liquid-baskets. Horrible-smelling yellow stuff shot out, like the thing was a urinating mastodon. He got the attendant to hold the bamboo trough under the stream so that it flowed into the casket. The stuff felt colder than water, like rubbing alcohol, and at first it splashed up over my face. Alligator Root wiped me off and handed me the Little Cup, mint pulque mixed with about five percent of bellado

Cool. Step Three.

I reached down and opened my right femoral vein with my little finger-knife. The Formalin-like compound stung the wound for a few beats before the anesthetics numbed it out. The idea was that as I slowly bled to death some of my body tissues would soak up the solution to replace lost body fluid. Not that this would keep the body viable-that part was going to be a total loss-but just to more closely approach a state of deep hypothermia. I took a last look at eight jars of salted toads and scorpions and puppy dog’s tails and stuff I’d packed where my other foot used to be. They looked okay. I was bringing back enough little druggy-critters to dope up a herd of wildebeest.

Four. I signaled to Alligator Root. Hun Xoc made a wan grin that meant, “Sorry I can’t help out too.” Alligator Root held up a sealed jar the size of a coffee can. I eyed another okay and he broke the top off and poured the hardener into the casket near my feet. It was thicker than the base solution, like maple syrup, and when it hit the pooling liquid in the casket it extruded out of its glob in threads, folding over my legs, spreading and dispersing in the solvent. Basically I was being cast in a kind of a simple organic epoxy, with a few extra metal salts that were supposed to preserve my neuronal structure more or less perfectly-not so much that you could get the same brain going again, but enough so that you could map the changed co

Memories, I thought. Not consciousness. You’re dying, dude. It’s going to be Jed 1 hanging on to them, not you. Not you, your self -

Cancel. Cancel. Step Five. Alligator Root handed me the Big Cup.

It was a thi

Whoa, it’s really comfy in here, I thought, it really did feel like a womb must feel. The solution had filled it up faster than I’d thought and was flowing over the rim. It smelled worse than the courts of Xibalba, though. I wished I could have popped my nose along with my ears. A shot of cold ran down my throat into my groin, and I got a flash from when I was in the Warren Hospital for Special Diseases when I was ten and they gave me total anesthesia, and I tried to stay awake and then realized I had to just dive into the big zero and see if there had been any water in the pool and I just let myself slide, and that was okay and I was still here, dammit. Six. I signed again. Gator bent down and pushed the knife into each of the two big bear-hide sandbags that counterweighted the lid. I could see a bit of the dry silver jets of fine sand, but I couldn’t see any motion in the lid at first. It’s stuck, I thought, it’s going to crash down and shatter and the whole thing’s fucked. But then the shadow grew slightly, it was coming down, gently, like an eyelid. I squinted up at it. It was convex on the lower side to push any air bubbles out of the surface of the liquid. For Keeps, the lid said. Except that was still too weak. It exuded this total eternal stay-putness no matter what.

Alligator Root took the sandbag out from under my head and it sank back, just floating on top of the liquid. It was getting to about the consistency of homogenized milk. The dark lid grew over me like the earth looming under a nocturnal skydiver. No parachute. I repositioned the wax-sealed box on my chest and folded my left arm over it. There were two things in it, Koh’s folded feather-cloth Game-mat and a doeskin book filled with my detailed and probably redundant notes on the Game. I was actually pretty proud of the notes, I figured that with them and the drugs a quick study like Marena would learn the Game overnight. She’ll handle it, I thought, she’ll play and beat the Smokers of Randomness, and in her first play, she’ll see past the rim.