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

McWhirter tore his eyes away from her mouth with a visible tug. "How did you know?"
"You look too rested. In a few days you too will join the ranks of the walking dead."
Della looked at Gwen for a second and asked, "Didn't we do a Game together about two years ago?"
Gwen looked uncertain. Tony said, "You're a Gamer, Della?"
"How else would I get so tired? We just went through a two-day Game in 'B'."
Tony's eyes widened. Two days? But they looked like they'd fought the Vietnam War!
Ollie perked up. "How was it? I mean, was it good? How many points did you win? Who ran it?"
The drawn look left Chris's face. "It was Evans's Game. Heard of her? Mean broad. It was hotter than Hell, and never a second to relax. Between the three of us we got three hundred twenty-seven points."
Tony looked sheepish. "Is that a lot?"
Everyone laughed, and he took it without flinching. Acacia said,
"The average player earns about thirty points a day on an extended Game." She turned to the three Gamers. "You people really did a job." And they all beamed proudly.
"What kind of Game was it?" Tony asked.
Della said, "Salvage. We were following the trail of a lost archeological expedition somewhere in Persia. We ended up in a subterranean lake, fighting off a tribe of cannibal troglodites for the right to lug back a golden idol that came to life on us anyway."
"Lose many of your party?"
"About half. Chris got killed. But we figured out how to make the idol-"
"Ssss!"
"Sorry. Emory's right, you might want to play it yourself one day."
McWhirter looked at Chris, who was looking wrung out again. "What's it like to die?"
"Cold"
"Cold?"
"Persian hell is cold," said Chris.
Ollie piped up. "That would be Zoroastrian. Early Persian."
Chris nodded. "It wasn't cold enough to be really uncomfortable. Sort of a maze filled with spirits of the dead. Took me about an hour to find my way out, then I cashed in my stuff, got my points registered and went back to the Shogunate Fortress- that's my hotel-to watch the rest of the Game."
Tony asked, "Didn't it bother you, getting killed?"
He shrugged. "Part of the Game." It bothered him.
Gwen asked, "You're taking off today?"
"We've still got to check out of the hotel. We shuttle out to New Frisco in about an hour. Are you guys in South Seas Treasure?"
All four nodded. Tony said, "Any idea how many of us there'll be?"
Acacia nudged him. "Won't know till this evening. You and I are reserved, and I guess Gwen and Ollie are, and there must have been six more people on the tram with us . . . I'd guess better than twenty of us, about half of them invited. Della, how many were there in your group?"
Della did some quick figuring. "Fourteen? Fifteen. I waited a year to get in, too. You?"
"Eighteen months."
Tony was really interested now. "What if Dream Park doesn't like the Game enough to buy rights to it? No movie money, no book. . . what happens then?"
Everyone shrugged, but Ollie spoke, willing to take a guess. "The Game Master'd be in trouble if he was running on a big deficit. Unless Dream Park took up the slack. But a good Game Master has got maybe two-three movies behind him, and maybe half a dozen books, and if he's really good he's got a Game running here four months out of the year, and there are royalties on that."
Gwen turned to look at him. "Ollie. . . ?"
"Well?" He shrugged again. "Heck, I've thought about trying to get a Game together. Heck, why not?"
Gwen opened her mouth to answer him, but Acacia cut her off. "Announcing that it is five minutes after five. We've just got time to finish our sandwiches before Chester's preliminary briefing."

Acacia and Tony were the last to join the conclave. There must have been thirty people jammed into the small mezzanine conference room. The Dream Park Sheraton was decorated in Twenty-First Century Mundane; it had no fantasy motif at all. Acadia was tickled to find Chester staying here. Still, it fit. Starting a few hours from now, the Lore Master was going to get all the fantasy he could handle.
The Gamers were all shapes and sizes and ages, in all forms of dress from western modern to PseudNude to medieval and neolithic. Some were barely adolescent and some had detectable face lifts, and they were all paying respectful attention to the musings-aloud of a tall, almost birdlike young man.
He was sprawled across a couch, taking three men's elbow room. A quite lovely redhead leaned into the curve of one arm. As he spoke he gestured lazily with his free hand. "I wish I knew more about the Game Lopez has set up. I do know that he said I won't need a parka, and a little bird tells me that the gaming area was used by the military to simulate an assault on Brazil. And of course we've got the title: South Seas Treasure. If I'm right...well, I did some research."
Gwen Ryder raised her hand as if in a classroom. "What do you think it means, Chester?"
"Magic of a kind we're not used to. We'll have to watch that.
Light clothing. . . good boots. . . bug spray. With anyone else the bugs would be holograms, but Lopez-"
Tony whispered, "That's your Lore Master? With the gorgeous redhead?"
"A little respect, please," Acacia murmured, jabbing him with an elbow. "Chester Henderson is king at this Game. You listen, or you'll get killed early."
The blond girl had the jitters, Tony thought. It didn't seem Gwen was going to Dream Park for the fun of it.
Tony himself was feeling decidedly twitchy. The rules, the players, Dream Park itself, it was all more complex than anything he had anticipated. The players were all too serious. Even Acacia was behaving as if death in a Game were real. Tony wondered if he had made a mistake, letting himself be talked into this.
"The thing to remember," the potentate was saying, "is that Lopez will do about the maximum damage to a party that he can without someone yelling foul. He's got to think about the next Game. If it gets out that he hit us with an eighty-percenter blizzard or a flock of plague bats, he won't be able to sell it. So it'll be nasty, but fair."
Tony asked, "What exactly is fair?"
Henderson turned to face him. "Fair is anything that could be found naturally in the given environment, plus anything the internal logic could imply. Like. . . in my second Game. Medieval world. First person we met was a Round Table knight, obscure, but I knew the name. Well, I started watching for anything that might imply. Black plague, dragons, Inquisition. . . and I didn't try for the Grail at all, because I'd never be judged pure enough. You follow?"