"Niven, Larry & Steve Barnes - Dream Park - 03 - California Voodoo Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Tony zoomed in on the roof party: some of the celebrants were almost at the edge, near the vine-camouflaged barricades. Narrow focus: he watched them enjoy the view. Meacham's architects had never planned that waterfall, either!

"Barsoom Project" was the designation for the projected terraforming of Mars. The dead planet would gain a breathable atmosphere, arable land, and enough water for an expanding human population. The Barsoom Project would take
decades, and would involve the natural, industrial, and scientific resources of almost every nation on Earth, but MIMIC would house the beginnings. The vast spaces within Meacham's arcology, and the spaceport now being built nearby, would be the Mars terraforming project for decades to come ... unless thirty Gamers and four hundred Non-Player Characters, under the supervisionof Tony McWhirter and four senior Game Masters, tore the building apart during the
California Voodoo Game.

Something buzzed at the edge of his attention.

Tony ignored itЧnot a computer sound, not an alert, nor yet the sound of data disappearing in randomized bubbles as unimportant. A notion had come to him. Fingers and thumbs tapped as inspiration took hold. Pictures jumped around
him on the white half-dome of MIMIC Security: windows into all the corners of the huge building, windows projected onto windows.

Conversation behind him, a woman speaking. "...Voodoo Game is ready?"

A man's. Deep and musical. "Yeah. McWhirter wanted to tear the building apart. Travis said no."

"So the Boss finally did something right. Aside from being born into the right family."

Tony recognised voices: Alex Griffin, and that woman from Cowles Security in Tacoma. He couldn't resist a comment. "Buildings are hardware. Software is as cheap as dreams."

"Tony?"

"We did our work in DreamTime. You'll think we spent a billion dollars. I'm finished here in a minute, Griff."

Out of the corner of his eye he watched Griffin, Dream Park's security chief, a tall man who carried his seventy-five inches and two hundred pounds with animal assurance. His hair was shaded a burnt strawberry, dark enough to make
Tony look almost blond. When Griffin answered "Fine," his voice exuded enough casual confidence to make Tony wince.

The woman at Alex's side was a stunning brunette. Sharon something ... Court? Griffin's left hand lightly touched her arm, while the other gestured with the relaxed authority of a plenipotentiary. "Sharon, there's working room for sixty people here. MIMICЧ"

"You like that name?"

"Seems appropriate."

"I like 'Meacham's Folly,' " she said. "That's what the locals call it."

"All right, Folly. ScanNet breaks it into overlapping quadrants, with variable scan depth. The entire building gets a standard four-stage coverage, but some countries have contracted for more. Half a billion dollars' worth of security.
Quite a system."

"Are you jealous?" she asked innocently.

"Cowles asked me to join up. I get all the stretch in the Park." Irritation had touched Griffin's voice, very lightly

Tony's fingers kept moving in the hologram, sensors picking up finger movement and wrist position, inputting far faster than any mechanical keyboard. The sensors "learned" eccentric movements and habitual errors, the individual shorthand of the operator, and together with voice cues created an ideal programming environment. Minimum size of portable units was no longer limited by the physical dimensions of a keyboard. He was trying to keep his mind on
programming. The last thing he wanted to think about was Alex Griffin. But it wasn't working.

Persecutor ... betrayer ... woman-thief ... savior.

Eight years before, a disguised Griffin had entered one of Dream Park's infamous live-action role-playing games to solve a case of industrial espionage. In the commission of that crime, a guard named Albert Rice had died. Very
accidental it had been, but as even Tony's own lawyer had observed, dead is dead.

Griffin had taken six years of Tony's life.