Portals of Infinity: Book Two: The God Game Read online

  “What do we know about it?” I asked. I was sitting a bit closer to Stephanie than anyone else was, and had my leg pressed against hers under the table. I think as a woman I was even worse about hiding my feelings than I was as a man, if such a thing were possible.

  “We know it was close to a place were there were a lot of singers on shore.”

  “Do you think that’s the amphitheater that guy at the pawnshop mentioned?”

  “It could be, we’ll have to go there and take a look around.”

  “So we just need to go there then,” Cenewyg said.

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” I said smiling and suddenly the lyrics and notes to the song ‘I’m Glad’ popped into my head. “Okay, that’s weird.”

  “What?” Joseph asked as the others looked at me.

  “This just popped into my head,” And I picked up the guitar, which was sitting by the table and played the first part of the song.

  “I’ve noticed you haven’t let that guitar get out of your reach all day today either,” Stephanie said.

  “Not unlike somebody else as well,” Joseph teased and I blushed.

  “Well, I’ve had more than a few songs popping into my head throughout the day as well,” Stephanie admitted. “But I haven’t felt the urge to buy an instrument.”

  “Maybe picking it up and playing it does that?”

  “I haven’t noticed anyone else with instruments,” Cenewyg said.

  “I saw a few, earlier this morning.” Joseph supplied. “They were all heading towards the town’s center.”

  “So the musicians head off to perform and we’re left here with mainly dealing with the second and third classes all day.” Stephanie mused. “That may explain why everyone was watching Will here so much today.”

  “Naw, that was just them all looking at her bust,” Cenewyg said with a smirk.

  I blushed again and Stephanie just sighed.

  “Cen, go find a transit center and find out what it will cost to get to this ‘amphitheater’ place,” Stephanie told him.

  “Sure no problem.”

  Stephanie sat there and looked at Cenewyg a moment.

  “What?” He said.

  “I meant now.” And she pointed to the door.

  Grumbling he got up and left the room.

  “Goddess, how do you guys put up with all these raging hormones,” Stephanie said after he left the room.

  “What?” Joseph said and we both looked at her.

  “I wanted to punch him in the face for teasing Will and staring at her chest like that all day.”

  Joseph and I looked at each other, I giggled and he laughed.

  “Nice to see it’s messing you up as much as it is me!” I grinned and leaned over to kiss Stephanie.

  Stephanie just sighed and looked at Joseph who was already heading for the door.

  “I think I know what comes next, so I’ll just leave you two alone,” he said smiling as he left.

  “Damn, this sucks.”

  “What, don’t you like me?” I asked pouting.

  “No, of course I like you! That’s the problem! I want to drag you off to bed again!”

  I really couldn’t help myself, I was in love with her once, and still was more or less. I got up and went to sit in ‘his’ lap and put my hands on ‘his’ shoulders. “Well, not like we have anything else to do!” And I kissed Stephanie again.

  “You’re not helping,” Stephanie growled, which as a man came out a rather sexy noise.

  I just giggled.

  “Oh the hell with it,” Stephanie said and picking me up took me to bed.

  “We have a problem,” Cenewyg told us the next day at breakfast. He was glaring at Stephanie quite a bit, and a little at me as well.

  “What?” Stephanie asked.

  “You have to have a pass in order to go to Sirenum Scopuli, which is the city with the big amphitheater on the coast.”

  We all looked at Cenewyg, and then at Stephanie, who was sitting across the table from me.

  “Did you find out why?” Stephanie asked him.

  “Only artisans who have excelled in their field are allowed to visit there, and only ones who have done well while working or performing there are allowed to stay.” He grumbled still glaring.

  “Interesting. And what’s got you all pissed off?”

  “You two,” he said shooting me a glance and then looking back at Stephanie. “You’re both carrying on like this is all fine!”

  I blinked and Stephanie just smirked at him, “Change into your local form, Cen, and I will be more than happy to accommodate you.”

  “No way in hell am I doing that! I’m not letting you or anyone else stick their penis in me! I’m not a damned sodomite!”

  “Oh really now,” Stephanie said getting a rather dark look. “But it’s been perfectly okay for you to stick yours in me all these years?”

  “That’s different!” Cen said angrily, “You’re a woman!”

  “Yes, but now I’m a man and you are supposed to be a woman!” Stephanie said back just as hotly, “and if you want to get any, you’re going to be getting it as a woman. Otherwise, you can just wait until we’re off this sphere and onto the next one!”

  “Shit, what’s the big deal, Cen,” I said trying not to laugh, “afraid you might like it?”

  “I’m not talking to you, you poofter slut!”

  “Poofter slut?” I said and laughed, “With all the women I’ve knocked up this year!” I laughed some more, “I’m just not insecure about my manhood.”

  Cenewyg got up and stormed out of the restaurant, cursing the entire time. I noticed we had drawn a few looks, I wondered how many people had overheard that, and what they thought.

  “I’m not insecure about my manhood,” Joseph said looking at me.

  “Then why are you so worried about changing?” I asked curious.

  He blushed a little, “Part of it is my upbringing; a man isn’t supposed to want to be a woman.”

  “And the other part?”

  “Well, you’re really hot and....”

  “No!” I said interrupting him, “Just stop right there. The only guy getting in my pants is Steph,” I said nodding towards where Stephanie sat. “And that’s only because we were lovers long before any of this happened. Sleeping with you or Cen would just be too weird for me.”

  Joseph nodded after thinking about that for a minute. “I see your point, it would be very strange when we left here and things went back to normal.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So what do we do about Cen?”

  “I’ll talk to Ary about it,” Stephanie said. “She can talk to his god and see about getting him put back in his place.”

  “What if he goes home?”

  “Somehow I don’t see him doing that,” I mumbled.

  Joseph nodded. “So what are we going to do to get our passes?”

  “Simple,” Stephanie said, “We form a band. Will can be our singer and guitar player, you can play keyboards, I’ll play drums.”

  “You know how to play drums?” I said surprised.

  “I was quite the tomboy when I grew up,” Stephanie said smiling.

  “We’ll need a bass player,” Joseph said.

  “Can’t you play it on keyboards?” I asked.

  He shrugged, “Yeah, I guess I could.” He looked at Stephanie, “I’m going to have to go natural, aren’t I?”

  Stephanie grinned rather predatorily at him, “I promise to be gentle.”

  Joseph blushed rather heavily then. “What about Cen?”

  “We make him our roadie,” I said.

  “Not our manager?”

  “He doesn’t know enough about how things work here,” Stephanie said. “Also as our roadie we can take him anywhere we go.”

  “He won’t like that,” Joseph said.

  “Well that’s too damn bad for him. He doesn’t want to fit in, he takes what he gets,” Stephanie said. “Now let’s pay the bill and go see about
getting a place to practice and some instruments.”

  We found a place to rent; it actually was pretty easy as there were a lot of places set up for that. We got one in a place that wasn’t terribly fancy, so it was relatively cheap. Next we when back to that pawn shop from the night before and I talked with Mike, the guy who had said he could get us on the set list at the amphitheater and worked out a deal: he’d give us a break on the instruments, and get us on the schedule, but in return we’d have to do a little advertising for him.

  We then went back and set up, and I started teaching Stephanie and Joseph, who we had to buy new clothing for again as he had gone native like me. I picked a bunch of songs from my youth that had been hits. I knew them fairly well and they weren’t all that hard to teach. Surprisingly, or maybe not that surprisingly because of where we now were, we had the basics down by the end of the day.

  Cenewyg came back rather contrite the day after his blowup; apparently he had gotten quite the dressing down from his god over his behavior. He was rather happy with his roadie status as it meant he could stay a guy and stay in the background on things. He wouldn’t have to perform; he really wouldn’t have to do much of anything, but move stuff, which was a pretty simple job for someone with a champion’s strength.

  “Okay, we’ve got ten songs that we know how to play, so that’s what, thirty minutes?” Joseph asked.

  “We’re only being given the opportunity to play three songs,” I told him and Stephanie. I had just come back from talking with Mike at the store and set up tomorrow’s performance. “If we do really well, they’ll let us do one encore.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then if they like us we come back the next night, and the night after that and the night after that....” I trailed off.

  “How long does that go on?” Stephanie asked.

  “If we do okay we get into the rotation to play Monday through Thursday. Once we’ve played that around a few times, if we impress everyone and have a big enough following we get promoted to the Friday night and Saturday night shows. Those are the big ones; you get an hour on stage there.”

  “How do we get the passes to go to the Amphitheater?”

  “Simple, we blow out a few weekend shows and the scout from Sirenum Scopuli will invite us there for a gig.”

  “Do you think ten songs are enough for that?”

  I shrugged, “I just picked a bunch of songs that were hits where I came from. I figure at least a few of them should work here. The ones that don’t work, I’ll just replace with others.”

  “You must know a lot of songs,” Joseph said with a laugh.

  “What can I say, I like music,” I said with a grin.

  “Apparently,” Stephanie said. “Well let’s go tell our adoring fans when we’ll be playing.”

  We packed up our instruments, we had actually put quite a bit into what we had bought, all good quality electric stuff. The instrument makers here could make a fortune back home, even Stephanie’s drums were electric, I’d never seen anything like them before.

  Locking up as we left the room, there were about twenty people in the hallway that all politely applauded. Where they came from, none of us really had any idea, they had started showing up two days ago. Apparently there was some huge underground network that tried to spot up and coming acts.

  “We’ll be playing tomorrow at ten twenty,” Stephanie told them.

  “Ten twenty? That’s not bad for a new group,” One of the guys who’d been the first one to show up said.

  “What’s the band’s name?” Another one asked.

  “U. K. B.” I said.

  “What’s that mean?” A girl asked.

  “Good question,” I said smiling and we hustled out of the hallway and back to our rooms to get cleaned up for dinner. There really were a lot of people interested in us for some reason.

  “What does that mean anyway?” Joseph asked.

  “I had a tape of a band when I was in college. The band was called ‘U.K.’ and well on one side someone had written U.K.A and on the other U.K.B.” I shrugged and grinned, “And for some reason whenever anyone asked what I was listening to, I’d say ‘U.K.B. as I was listening to the B side.”

  “Good a name as any,” Stephanie said. “Wonder what Cen’s up to?”

  “Trouble I’m sure,” Joseph said.

  “He still trying to get you to sleep with him?”

  “Not since I told him I sleep in my champion form,” Joseph giggled.

  I shook my head and smiled. Joseph slept with Stephanie and me now, and he definitely did not change at night. Truth was we all spent an hour or two just practicing our own instruments each night before going to sleep. Electrics were actually fairly quiet if they weren’t plugged in and we needed to get that pass to move on. Also because playing felt amazingly good, practicing was rather enjoyable. So yeah, we practiced. From what Cenewyg had been able to find out, you couldn’t just ‘sneak’ into Sirenum Scopuli. Because it was the big important place, it was a guarded walled city. You only got inside if you earned it.

  We practiced for only a couple of hours the next day, then got our stuff together and headed to the concert. Cenewyg showed up while we were still practicing and sat through it, then helped us move everything.

  We got there rather early; put our gear in the spot assigned to us, and then someone came over and told us how it was going to work.

  “Okay, you’re in the second spot of the ten o’clock slot,” she told us. “When the last band from the nine o’clock slot goes on stage, go to the staging area and set your instruments up on the platform, and your monitors.

  “When they go off and the band before you goes on, we’ll do your sound checks with the technicians. Have any of you played here before?”

  We all shook our heads ‘no’.

  “Okay, understand that the stage will move when your time is up, and only when your time is up. You run out of material, and you’ll look pretty stupid. But if you run long and are still playing when we pull you off, and you’ll look even worse. Keep an eye on the clock,” she pointed to a big clock that was on the other side of the amphitheater, “and try not to cut it too close, the next band doesn’t want to have to wait for your applause to die down.

  “Assuming you get any of course,” She said and gave a wicked little grin.

  “Oh we’ll get some,” Stephanie said and smiled back.

  “Yeah, all you first timers think that!” she laughed and walked off.

  “So now what?” Joseph asked.

  “Let’s go find a seat and watch the show,” I said and nodded to a section that was set aside for performers.

  “Might as well see what we’re up against,” Stephanie said.

  We were able to grab a row of four and sat back to watch the show, they were in the rock and roll section of the list and most of the acts were really rather good. So good that I quickly found myself being swept away by the music. Looking around me during the breaks as the bands changed, I noticed pretty much everyone else was also being drawn in rather heavily, except for Cenewyg. He seemed rather bored by most of it; I guess Rock and Roll wasn’t his thing.

  The rock got louder and pretty soon it was a serious head banger heavy metal concert, and until that moment, I’d never really considered myself that much of a head banger fan. But with the exception of Cenewyg who appeared to be wearing earplugs at this point, the rest of us were all into it pretty heavily.

  The assistant stage manager came and found us when it was almost time for us to set up.

  “Oh shit,” I said to the others as we started to move our stuff onto the platform and get set up.

  “What?” Stephanie looked at me worried.

  “The crowd is still going to be winding down from heavy metal, and we’re not heavy metal!”

  “Well, neither is the band before us,” Joseph pointed out.

  “Yeah, and they’re new too. Want to bet that they end up sucking because of it?”

  Jose
ph swore, “I see your point.”

  “So what do we do about it?” Stephanie asked.

  “Change our playlist. We need to start off with a loud song rather than a soft one.” I thought about that a moment, I’d given us a pretty diverse list of songs, a few were a bit harder than others, but they were definitely not heavy metal. “Look, we’ll start off with ‘Touch me’, move to ‘Light my Fire’, and just take your clues from me after that, okay?”

  They both shrugged and agreed.

  I looked over at the band slated to go on before us and I could see that they were not at all happy and they were arguing with the stage manager.

  “Wait here a sec,” I said to the other two and set my guitar down and went over to the other platform.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked the assistant we had been talking with earlier, the other band was arguing with what I guess was her boss, the stage manager.

  “They just found out that they’re going up after a heavy metal song. They’re a bit upset.”

  “Didn’t they know the schedule?” I asked acting surprised. Fact was, I really hadn’t known it until now either.

  She gave me an evil grin, “There was a last minute schedule change.”

  I looked at her and shook my head, “You really are an evil bitch, aren’t you?”

  She scowled at me, “These stages move in both directions you know, how’d you like to be up next instead?”

  I had a sudden inspiration and grabbing her I kissed her rather hard, shocking the hell out of her. “I love it when you talk dirty to me!” I purred into her ear. “Why don’t you go tell your boss to make it so?”

  “Oh, bitch, you are so on!” She said smiling and went over to her boss, said something to him and he looked up at me. I smiled, waved and he pointed to the sound people who literally ran over to our platform.

  The other band looked really relieved and I went back to the others and put my guitar back on.

  “What’s up?” Joseph asked.

  “We’re on next. So get ready!”

  “What?!” Joseph said and Stephanie just sighed and smiled while shaking her head.