"Larry Niven & Steve Barnes - The California Voodoo Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

countries were animated, eager, expectant.
At the lobby floor was a multileveled crystal dome with a narrow, tapering
top. Beneath that dome lay a miniature city that sparkled as if riven from
diamonds or carved from ice. Within its walls, lights crawled like glowing
snakes, panels slid like ships through oiled seas, and braziers pulsed with
scented smoke. Any lurking minotaurs would have felt right at home.

This was the Crystal Maze. It was covered by one-way transparent plastic,
allowing observers on the mezzanine and upper levels of the Hyatt to
witness the duel to come. Vid cameras would broadcast everything to
thousands of room
monitors and hundreds of thousands of homes and gaming venues
worldwide.

A whistle split the air, stilling voices. A door opened at the western edge of
the lobby. Four combatants advanced to the mark.

Tammi Romati's ash-blond hair was tied back by the band of her slimline
Virtual goggles. She was beautiful, a vision in white leather. Tammi had the
physique of a semipro bodybuilder. Her energy and intensity intimidated
most men even before they learned her sexual preference.

Beside her, enfolded in a red cloak and an emerald sheet of flames, was
Twan Tsing, Magician. Twan's black hair was chopped short and hidden
under the emerald skullcap that incorporated her Virtual apparatus. The
green-tinted liquid crystal lenses of the Virtual gear leached the color from
Twan's Cantonese eyes but couldn't disguise their intensity. She was half a
head shorter than Tammi, and more smoothly muscled. She gestured
mystically, fingers intertwining in arcane, angular configurations. Her aura
flared until it matched and then surpassed the radiance of all the Hyatt's
lights, then silently subsided.

To her left stood Tammi's son, Mouser. He was clad in grey leather, a silver
saber weighting his belt at the left hip. He was a Thief, if not a reaver or
slayer. Two months shy of his fourteenth birthday, he combined an
adolescent's narrow-eyed insolence with an adult's cold-blooded
self-assurance. His thumb tested the edge of his blade.

Beside Mouser was the Warrior Appelion. He was everything Mouser was
not: tall, sinewy, black-bearded, and ferocious in countenance. He balanced
a single-headed battle-ax easily in his massive left hand.

Both wore their own versions of the Virtual gear, video equipment that
would enable them to see specialised overlays on the holographic and
mechanical illusions to come.

All four raised their hands to the assembled multitude, graciously receiving
a deafening ovation.

And then, the eastern portal swung open.