Impulsively she took hold of the knob.
It was cool as china and it turned in her hand. The door swung inward. Jenny could see a dimly lit room.
One instant of hesitation, then she stepped inside.
Just as she did, she consciously took in the sign above the door. It read: "More Games."
I here was a push-button lock on the inside doorknob, and Jenny depressed it. There were no windows looking out on Montevideo, of course, so she couldn't see whether the two guys had followed her. Still, she had a tremendous feeling of relief. No one was going to find her in here.
Then she thought, More Games? She had often seen signs reading "More Books" in the arty, shabby used bookstores around here, signs with an arrow pointing up a narrow staircase to another floor. But how could there be More Games when there hadn't been any games at all yet?
Just the fact that it happened to be a game store she'd stumbled onto was strange, but very convenient. She could do her shopping while she waited for the tough guys to go away. The owner would probably be glad to have her; with that mural camouflaging the door they couldn't do much business here.
As she looked around she saw just how strange the store really was. Even stranger than the usual odd shops around Eastman Avenue.
The room was lit by one small window and several old-fashioned lamps with stained-glass shades. There were shelves and tables and racks like any other store, but the objects on them were so exotic that Jenny felt as if she'd stepped into another world. Were they all games? They couldn't be. Jenny's mind filled suddenly with wild images from The Arabian Nights, images of foreign bazaars where anything-anything-might be sold. She stared around at the shelves in amazement.
God, what a weird chessboard. Triangular. Could anybody really play on a board like that? And there was another one, with strange, squat chessmen carved of rock crystal. It looked more than antique -it looked positively ancient.
So did a metalwork box covered with arabesques and inscriptions. It was made of brass or maybe bronze, decorated with gold and silver and Arabic writing. Whatever was in that box, Jenny knew she couldn't afford it.
Some of the games she could identify, like the mahogany mah-jongg table with ivory tiles spilled carelessly on the green felt top. Others, like a narrow enameled case crawling with hieroglyphics, and a red box embossed with a gold Star of David in a circle, she had never seen before. There were dice of every size and description: some twelve-sided, some shaped like pyramids, and some ordinary cubical ones made of odd materials. There were card decks fantastically colored like illuminated manuscripts.
Strangest of all, the weird antique things were intermixed with weird ultramodern things. A cork bulletin board on the back wall sported signs reading: "Flame." "Rant." "Rave." "Surf the Edge." "Cheap Thrills." Cyberpunk, Jenny thought, vaguely recognizing the terms. Maybe they sold computer games here, too. From a boom box on the counter came 120-beat-a-minute acid house music.
This, thought Jenny, is a very peculiar place.
It felt so-cut off-from everything outside. As if time didn't exist here, or ran differently somehow. Even the dusty sunlight slanting in that one window seemed wrong. Jenny would have sworn the light should have been coming from the other direction. A chill went through her.
You're mixed up, she told herself. Disoriented. And no wonder, after the day you've had-after the week you've had. Just concentrate on finding a game, if there's anything here that you can actually play.
There was another sign on the board, a sort of square:
W E L C
O M E T
O M Y W
O R L D
Jenny tilted her head, examining it. What did the letters say? Oh, of course, she had it now. Welcome...
"Can I help you?"
The voice spoke from right behind her. Jenny turned-and lost her breath.
Eyes. Blue eyes. Except that they weren't just blue, they were a shade Jenny couldn't describe. The only place she'd seen a blue like that was once when she'd happened to wake up at the precise instant of dawn. Then, between the window curtains, she'd glimpsed an unbelievable, luminous color, which had lasted only a second before fading to the ordinary blue of the sky.
No boy should have eyes as blue as that, and especially not surrounded by lashes so heavy they seemed to weigh his eyelids down. This boy had the most startling coloring she'd ever seen. His eyelashes were black, but his hair was white-true white, the color of frost or tendrils of mist. He was ... well, beautiful. But in the most exotic, uncanny way imaginable, as if he'd just stepped in from another world. Jenny's reaction was instant, total, and absolutely terrifying. She forgot Tom's existence.
I didn't know people could look like that. Real people, I mean. Maybe he's not real. God, I've got to stop staring -
But she couldn't. She couldn't help herself. Those eyes were like the blue at the core of a flame. No-like a mile-deep lake set in a glacier. No ...
The guy turned and went to the counter. The boom box clicked off. Silence roared in Jenny's ears.
"Can I help you?" he repeated, politely and indifferently.