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

Her face blinked out, and Alex punched for a display of today's "paperwork." Three columns of headings ran off the screen. An executive secretary and a deputy Security Chief and this much garbage still filtered up to him. Work first?
A slow smile played over his face. A little peek at the Park first.
He triggered the exterior monitor and watched the room swell with the darkened spirals of Dream Park. From the vantage of the monitoring camera the workers readying the Park for the day's visitors were ants streaming in and out of the long black shadows of early morning.
There was the somber shape of the Olde Arkham tour. (The kids loved it. The adults. . . well, an old lady with a heart murmur had damn near croaked when Chthulhu appeared to devour her grandchildren. Some people!)
Snakelike and far off around the edge of the Park the Gravity Whip coiled, offering a total of thirty seconds of weightlessness via computer-designed parabolic arcs. The monitor eye swept over to Gaming Area B, where the Salvage Game had been conducted.
That one was interesting. Partly in desert territory and partly underwater, it had involved twelve players for two days. Alex figured that the Game Master on that one would just about break even. It had cost three hundred thousand dollars to set the Game up. The twelve participants had paid four hundred a day, each, for the privilege of earning "Gaming Points" for the fantasy characters they portrayed and, not incidentally, for having the bejeezus scared out of them. Book rights presold, film rights likewise.
He couldn't pretend to understand the logic behind it. The vagaries of the International Gaming Society were totally beyond him. The players seemed to speak a foreign language. And this month they had two Games back to back!
The Games did help the Park, though. The Olde Arkham Tour had started as a Game, thirty or forty years ago.
There, now, that was more like it. The big shooting gallery over across from the Hell Ride was more his cup of tea. Alex slipped in there occasionally to knock off a few Nazis or dinosaurs or muggers. God, that was a realistic "experience." The R&D boys were incredible. And quite mad.
He thumbed the control, and the camera roved further afield. Over there- His monitor buzzed, and with a grimace Alex shut off the holo and answered the call. Muffle's voice spoke, but the congealing visual image was of a guard Griffin couldn't quite place.
"Research and Development, Gruff," Muffle's voice said.
"Right." Name and background fell into place now. This would be Albert Rice calling from his guard station between Files and the technological monster known as Game Center.
Rice was strong and smart, quick to volunteer his services, and Griffin sometimes felt a twinge of guilt at not warming to the man. Maybe just jealousy, he mused. Rice cut a handsome blond profile, almost pretty, and several of the secretaries in Protective Services had bets going to see who would score with him first. In the year Rice had been with Dream Park, nobody had yet collected.
Something was bothering Rice. He seemed agitated; he kept shifting his feet.
"Yes, Rice, what's the problem?"
"Ah, good morning, sir. Nothing wrong here at the post, but-" He hesitated, then blurted, "I just got word that my apartment in CMC was vandalized."
Griffin felt himself coming to attention. "When was the report filed?"
"Only about a half hour ago. Lock broken, and some stuff scattered around, the cop said, but they didn't take my electronics. I'd like to see what is missing."
Griffin nodded somberly. "You don't have any crazy friends over there in R&D, do you- No, scratch that." They weren't that crazy. "You'd better take the rest of your shift off. I'll get somebody over there to fill in in about twenty minutes. Check out then. What's going on over there?"
"Mostly prepping Game Central for the South Seas Treasure Game."
"Yeah, that looks to be a monster. Listen, would you like to make up the hours you'll lose this afternoon?" Albert Rice nodded enthusiastic agreement. "Good. Put in for the night shift, and check back in at midnight. We'll work you eight to five for a few days, all right?"
"Right, Chief."
Alex signed out and blanked the image. He popped on the inter-office line and Millie appeared, smile neatly in place. "Millie, send me the dossiers on the Game tomorrow, will you?"
"Right, Griff."
The printer on his desk began hissing immediately, and sheets of fanfold paper arced slowly up and folded themselves into a neat pile. Griffin shook his head. How could Muffle be so cheerful every morning? Ho ought to steal a cup of her coffee and send it to R&D to be analyzed...
He tore off the first set of pages.
The picture of a handsome, dark-skinned young man with a neatly trimmed beard looked somberly out of the holo. Details were in the opposing corner. Name: Richard Lopez. Age: 26. Gaming position: Game Master.
Oh, well, then this once-over of the file was purely perfunctory. Lopez would have been put through a complete security and tech checkout. Anyone who walked into Gaming Central was cleaner than boiled soap. And sharp, too. Evans, the girl who had guided the recent Salvage Game, had had three years at MIT on top of the Masters degree she picked up in Air Force electronics school. And that was only Gaming Area B. Area A was twice as large, and the Gaming Central was three times as complex. Lopez would be very good indeed. Griffin would make a point to be there when Lopez and his assistant entered the control complex tomorrow morning.
His assistant? A tallish oriental girl with short black hair and shining white teeth smiled shyly from the page. Mitsuko "Chichi" Lopez. Twenty-five, and a quick skim of the dossier confirmed that she was superbly qualified to copilot the four-day jaunt ahead.
Birds of a feather, Alex guessed. Probaby met in Dream Park; might even have been married in one of the Dream Park wedding chapels. Those could be interesting ceremonies; the wedding guests might include anyone from Glenda the Good Witch to Bluebeard to Gandalf to a Motie Mediator. Angels were popular.
Who else? Ahh . . . the Lore Master. The Lore Master, the Chester Henderson. Henderson ran parties through Dream Park about three times a year, and would come out from Texas even for a relatively small outing. Generally his way was paid by the players or the Game Masters or their backers.
Hadn't there been some trouble with Henderson about a year ago? Alex skimmed down the sheet. Chester Henderson. Thirty-two years old (though he seemed younger in the picture. His deadly-serious look was almost daunting). Had been to Dream Park thirty-four times, and was considered a valuable customer.
Here it was. A year ago, Chester had taken an expedition into "the mountains of Tibet," hopefully to bring back a mammoth. The party had met disaster, three out of thirteen surviving, and no mammoth. Chester had dropped several hundred Gaining Points, threatening his standing in the International Fantasy Gaining Society. And who had been Game Master on that ill-fated expedition?
Aha! Richard Lopez. Chester had yelled Foul to the I.F.G.S., and they had passed down the decision that although something called "snow vipers" were unusually lethal, all of the nasty tricks used against the expedition were within the rules. Lopez was given a warning, but Henderson had lost three hundred and sixty-eight Gaming Points. Even more interesting: until this year, Lopez had operated anonymously, as a "mystery Game Master," carrying out gaming negotiations through his wife Mitsuko. Henderson had demanded a face-to-face meeting for this year's Game, and the I.F.G.S. agreed.
This, then, would be the first time two legends had actually met. Alex leaned back in his chair and considered the ceiling. This sounded like a grudge match, it did. And grudge matches were always interesting.


Chapter Two


A STROLL THROUGH OLD LOS ANGELES

Acacia was antsy. She had been growing progressively more eager since they boarded the subway in Dallas. Now she tugged at Tony's arm, pulling him away from the check-in counter while he tried to put his wallet away. "Come on, Tony! Let's get in there before the crowds clog up the works."
"Okay, okay. Where do we go first?"
Memories glowed in her face. "God, I can't decide. Chamber of Horrors? Yeah, there first, then the Everest Slalom. Love it love it love it. You will too, spoilsport."
"Hey. I'm here, aren't I? There's a fine line between sensible emotional restraint, and the withdrawal symptoms of a stimulus junky denied her fix."
"You're a wordy bastard," she said, and took off running down the tunnel entrance, pulling at his arm with both hands. He laughed and let her tow him into daylight.
The impact of Dream Park came suddenly, just beyond the tunnel. From the top of a flight of wide steps one could see three multi-tiered shopping and amusement malls, each twelve stories high, that stretched and twisted away like the walls of a maze. The space between was filled-cluttered-with nooks, gullies, walkways, open-air theaters, picnic areas, smaller spired and domed buildings, and thousands of milling people.
Acacia had seen it before. She watched Tony.
The air was filled with music and the laughter of children and adults. The smell of exotic foods floated in the breeze, and mixed there with the more familiar smells of hot dogs, cotton candy, melted chocolate, salt water taffy and pizza.