"Dream Park" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Albert Rice unlocked the front door of the R&D complex and stepped aside. It was 9:15 P.M., and Rice had just twenty-two minutes to live.
His public smile was in place, but Ms. Metesky and the Lopezes never saw it. There was a bite in Richard's voice. "It may be that you don't quite realize just what three-tenths of a second's delay can do to the Game, the Gamers, and me."
"Welles and Chicon are thoroughly competent," Ms. Metesky said placidly. "They'll have it fixed long before morning."
"They'd better. They'd drowning well better. It wasn't my programming, Metesky. That bird didn't drop right away, and Panthesilea had to stand there with her foot out in the middle of a battle! And Bowan had to repeat himself before he got his fire-blast. . ."
They passed outside. "Thank you," Ms. Metesky said to Rice,
and stepped after them, adjusting her wire-rimmed spectacles as she went, frail hands trembling a bit from the cool air. Rice locked the door behind them.
As the door slid shut his smile faded like a happy-face drawn in a puddle of mud.
He was thinking, How could anyone give a damn about three-tenths of a second, anyway? Lopez was a cocky little shrimp who liked giving orders. Talked funny, too. Prissily precise even when he was being nasty. Always: "Excuse me, do you think you could assist me with. . . ?" Or, "May I have a tracking badge, please? I'd like to stretch my legs a bit, and I don't want anyone to get nervous." Always with that phony politeness: phony, because the correct answer to every such question was, "Yes, sir."
Time to start rounds. Rice hopped the elevator to the third floor and thumbprinted the tirneclock as soon as he stepped out.
On the third floor were many of the model-building shops. Working in steel, aluminum, wood, fiberglass, styrofoam, molded plastic and many more exotic materials, the wizards of Dream Park designed in miniature the rides and attractions of the future. Structures first produced as computer-drawn holograms would one day become foamed steel or the absurdly delicate-looking carbon crystal fibers. Rice enjoyed the occasions when he worked the day shift and could look in on the shops, hear and feel the vibrations of lathe and press and drill working their wonders, smell the burnt-plastic tang from the molds as a new concept was given solid life.
But now the shops were empty, the building deserted except for a few techs in Game Central on the second floor, and a few of the late workers in the Psych and Engineering sections on the fifth.
He checked every door and peered down every hallway, checking the shadows, checking the nooks. He remembered a tale about the niece of one of the lathe workers. She'd hidden in the building until after close-up, then managed to get into one of the molding shops. Security found her five hours and twenty thousand dollars worth of damage later. In the course of her spree she had somehow interfaced a roller coaster and a human anatomy model. The results had been so interesting that it inspired the Mr. Digestion ride sponsored by Bristol-Meyers in Section I.
She ended up with a spanking and a college trust fund. But a guard had lost his job.
Corridors branched and split, and Rice followed them all,
checking every inch before he was confident enough to thumbprint the time clock clear and take the elevator to the second floor.
Even while remaining cautious to check every cranny for security breaches, he still took time to cakewalk. He glided from side to side with graceful speed, ducking imaginary blows. Cakewalk. Typical name Griffin would give a fighting move. Strange man, Griffin. Tough but soft. Always encouraged gentleness in his men, always wanted them to give the tourists the benefit of the doubt.
Rice approached the vaultliko door of Game Central's control room, where the Lopezes worked their magic. He pressed his palms to the door, then, almost timidly, his cheek. He felt its metallic smoothness, and the purring vibration from the machinery within. He stood there for a while, and whispered, "Playing God." His expression, soft for a bare moment, hardened to a frown and he walked on. Next to the control room was the Dream Park override, where Larry Chicon and Dwight Welles supervised the technical data being fed into the Dream Park computer system. This room had a shatterproof plastic window, and in the interior dimness there twinkled a few tiny red and white lights.
Next came the chamber where Metesky and the other officials checked the events of the game to insure that all was conducted according to the rules of their crazy organization.
The hallway threw his footsteps after him as ho reached the last door and doubled back. Working during the day was good, but Rice liked the night too. Nobody around, no oddballs to deal with. Plenty of time to think, to remember.
If he dwelt on it, Rice could remember visiting Dream Park when he was ten years old. How long ago that seemed. Twenty years seemed like eternity. At the same time it seemed that he could reach out and touch the head of the little blond boy with the perennial sniffle. And now he had grown up to work at the great illusion factory.
Come with me, little Albert, Rice invited himself as he summoned the elevator. Come with me and peek behind the dreams. See the computers and cameras. See the gears and oilcloth and plastic struts that make th. magic. Then squeeze the last tears out of your eyes, mix liberally with the fractured fairy tales of youth, and try to mold the resultant mess into an adult who can stand on his own, and damn well fend for himself.
A flicker of a grin played on his mouth. He could fend for himself, he could fend himself right into a gravy job here at the play-
ground of the world. There was room at the top for him, for anybody who knew what cards to play. Dream Park's business was lies, and little Albert knew all about lies. Some of them meshed so tightly together in the mists of years past that he could no longer separate them from reality.
Illusions . . . Just why exactly was it that only his father had brought him to Dream Park? Daddy said that Mommy was sick and had to go away for a while. But there had been the one phone call in the motel room, when his father screamed, "Emma!," over and over into the telescreen, and mother's face had been cool and distant until a man's voice in the background called her away. Daddy had cried into the darkening screen, tears streaking his strong, handsome face. And when the tears dried, he had taken young Albert by the hand and the two of them had gone to Dream Park for the second day of a four day vacation.
The last three days of that vacation were more fun than any Albert could remember, except that down underneath the smiles and laughs he remembered a grown man crying into an empty screen.
Illusions.
When the two of them returned home, mother was there with kindness and warmth, but afterward she was gone more frequently. Whether to go to "the hospital," "a relative's," or a "job seminar," the result was the same, the aching loneliness he could feel emanating from his father like waves of heat.
One day Albert came home from school and his father told him that mother was leaving for good, and that the boy had to decide which of them he wanted to live with. Albert had opted for his f ather, and within the space of six months watched a vibrant, vital man become old and broken. It wasn't hatred that he felt for his mother, for her little gifts and concerned phone calls, it wasn't resentment. In a strange way he was almost glad that this thing had happened to the man he loved most in all the world. Young Albert knew that he had learned an invaluable lesson; that all there was in this world were lies and dreams, and that was just the way it was. Thanks, Mom.
He stepped out of the elevator at the first floor, and stiffened almost immediately. Something. . . what? a sound? yes, a sound, the last hiccough of an echo in the hail, and Rice became very cautious.
Rice looked both ways down the hail and saw nothing. He toyed with the idea of calling it in. Had he really heard anything?
Walls do settle in an old building. The hall was perfectly quiet, but Rice relaxed only slightly. He walked out, almost on tiptoe, and turned left toward the secretarial pool. Passing a mirrored light panel he was almost amused to see a slightly crouched shape, the semi-snarl on his lips somehow incongruous beneath the soft blond hair.
No sound. Nothing. Nuts. He made himself check the doors on the ground floor; office space mostly, and easier to clear. Past the administrative section there were some ffling closets, but nothing valuable, really. He glanced at his watch: nine twenty-seven, and eighteen minutes until the next check-in. Time for a little break. Past the filing cabinets was the first floor break room, with sandwiches, coffee, and a few small tables.
Rice let himself in and flicked on the light. Oh yes, there was a new soft drink dispenser. He pushed his Cowles Industries charge card into the slot and punched the lemonade button. An eight ounce plastic pouch dropped into his hand. It felt cold and shapeless, like liver straight out of a meat drawer. Rice preferred bottles or cans.
He worked the nipple loose and took a long swig as the arm fastened around his neck.
Lemonade sprayed from his mouth and choked in his throat. The arm tightened. Rice gagged, doubling up, lemonade running from his nose and down his face, his hands flailing ineffectually.
He forced his head to the side, getting his throat into the crook of his attacker's elbow, so that the strangling forearm no longer crushed his windpipe. Then he fought: an elbow to his assailant's gut followed by an identical blow to the other side which brought a satisfying whoof of painfully expelled air. But instead of letting go, the attacker jumped up and wrapped both legs around Rice's waist from behind, squeezing the ribs until they creaked. Rice felt his sight wavering and threw himself backward, trying to smash a head between himself and the floor.
There was a grunt, and the pressure eased as they both hit the floor. Rice clawed at the strangling arm, gasping a precious lungful of air. With renewed strength he punched back over his shoulder and felt his fist graze flesh. Encouraged now, he punched and elbowed until the grip began to give, then braced himself and started to rise to his knees. If he could do that, he could gain the leverage to throw his weight back against the edge of a table. He made it to one knee and was moving his right into position when
his knee landed squarely on the pouch of lemonade. It popped open, and he skidded on the wet, losing all balance to tumble face-first back on the floor.
His attacker landed in the middle of his back, driving the remaining air front tortured lungs. Belly-down on the floor and thrashing, Rice felt a strong forearm slide back across his throat. Another arm clamped across the back of the neck for added pressure. Bleeding darkness boiled up around and within him, but with an enormous effort of will he pushed the ink clouds back and got one arm under himself. He began to push with arms drained of strength, his lungs aflame and his temples throbbing a bass beat of pain. He tried to scream, to hiss; dry croaking rattled in his throat as his vision blackened and he heard his own thoughts as a faraway call: ohmygod ohgod, please, just one more sip, one spoonful of air please please.

"Get Bobbick here. Now." Griffin spat it at Melone, the pudgy guard who worked the top three floors of the R&D building. Melone backed out of the room. He was glad of an excuse to leave. He had never seen a dead man before.
And Rice was inarguably dead. A hologram might have shown an unconscious man gagged and bound hand and foot. But to share the same space with Rice was to feel the presence of death. It lay still and muggy in the air. His eyes were closed, head crumpled to the side like the head of a doll, blond hair somehow reminiscent of a wig fitted to a mannequin.
Griffin stooped for a closer look. Rice's hands had been tied behind his back. No, correct that: his wrists bad been bandaged together with surgical tape, and his thumbs bad been bandaged separately. Tape had been wrapped twice around the ankles; more tape covered his mouth. Rice sat with his back against the soft drink machine, head slumped to his knees. Griffin gently took Rice's shoulder and eased him upright There was a shallow indentation in the thin metal, precisely where Rice's head would have been, were Rice sitting up.
Griffin jumped reflexively as footsteps entered the room. "Sony, boss, did I-?" Millicent Summers winced at the sight of the dead man.
"He's dead, Millie. Listen, I called you and Marty because Fm going to need some extra eyes and ears, okay?" She nodded jerkily. "I want the CMC doctor over here in fifteen minutes. I want a
complete security sweep of the building. I want to know about anything unusual going on in the line of projects.~