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disturb me any less for my knowing that they were supposed to disturb me.

    Most attractions didn't try this hard to put tourists off.

    We turned left, then right, then left again. Two of the frescoes repeated themselves. The carved head of the Minotaur protruded from the tunnel at regular intervals and if it were not for my sense of direction, I'd assume we were going in circles and passing the same carving again and again.

    Couldn't make it too easy to find our way out, could they?

    I huffed under my breath, doubting that my complaints would be met with such gentle rejoinders as natural-born Nary's.

    Mostly, I was mad at myself. Why hadn't I begged off this particular attraction? For that matter, why had I signed up for this tour of Mythos at all?

    But I knew why. Greek mythology, with its capricious gods, its heroic mortals, drew me like a half-healed lip sore, to which your tongue strays irresistibly. Hard to read the myths and not to think of our present world, of capricious humans playing god and long-suffering artifacts enduring their whimsy. Hard not to identify with the situations created.

    "Imagine Theseus making his way through these dark corridors," the guide said. "Knowing that at the end he will have to fight a supernatural beast for his life and the lives of his companions."

    I shook my head. Not while discreet electrical lights shone on me, not when I knew the Minotaur was vegetarian and had the intelligence of a seven-year-old.

    A high pitched, tremulous scream echoed through the chamber. It ended in a gurgle.

    Ahead of us, the corridor bifurcated via doorways opening to the right and left of another horrendous fresco.

    I froze in place, all my instincts alert. My heart raced.

    Scene-setting, my mind said. But my senses protested it had been too realistic. Too real. The scream had sounded too present, too anguished to be part of the scene-setting.

    My nostrils flared.

    I caught the smell of the charnel house, the metallic tang of blood mixed with animal waste: the smell of sudden death.

    "What! What is that?" Nary asked. "What I want out."

    "Hey, take us out of here," Pol said. "My friend is" He stopped. "Where did he go?"

    I looked around for the guide, as did other tour members. But we saw only each other's frightened expressions. Our guide had vanished.

    "Where did he go?" A young teenage girl clutched at my arm with her hot, moist hand. "Where did he go?"

    "He ran," Pol said.

    "Out?" I asked. My voice sounded alien, disembodied. My heart beat too fast, up by my throat.

    "I don't know." Pol shuffled back a step, opened his eyes wide. He looked restless and skittish as if he too could smell better than natural humans. As if he knew that somewhere close by people had died violently. "But he has to have run. He was here, and then not."

    The teenager giggled. "It's probably a trick to scare us." She started ahead.

    "We should go out, Nary," Pol said, his voice hoarse and low. "Something is wrong. We should"

    "I'm not going anywhere." Nary stomped her dimatough heel. "The guide said if we got lost we should just stay where we are and the rescuers would find us."

    ""But that was if we got lost alone." The girl stared at Nary wide-eyed. "I'm sure it's different as a group. Come on. This is just supposed to make it more exciting. Why else would the guide leave?"

    A couple of other people stepped forward.

    I backed up against the wall. If this was a simulation, its creators had raided an abattoir for parts to make it smell right.

    Then again, Mythos had a very good reputation. Perhaps it came from stage-setting like this. Maybe the girl was right.

    I took a step forward. A scream sounded, high, insane, ending in a gurgle. Another, then another reverberated off the tunnel walls. The first one had been female, the last two male.

    Pol grabbed his girlfriend and pulled her back, against the wall, away from the noise and the smell.

    In the doorway on the right, something large and