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

"That's a fair description of the whole Game," Alex Griffln said. "five teams of masochists submitting themselves to the tender mercies of Tony McWhirter. "

"Well ... me and four other gentle souls." Tony felt warm and chummy. Alex could do that to him, if they were face to face. It was easy to forget the intense intelligence behind those dark green eyes and the tremendous strength and technique that had once held Tony McWhirter as helpless as a baby. Tony grinned like a minstrel. "Yes, boss. Isn't it obvious? If there was diving gear for sale before the Quake, somebody must have been buying it. So I'll put some in the upper apartments, too."

Griffln chuckled. "You're getting sly in your old age. Why aren't you partying?"

"I thought if I went through the territory again, I'd come up with something more."

"You've got four hundred NPCs out there, all partying their hearts out in the forty hours left before your Game begins." Alex Griffln was being just a little bit careful with his tongue. Might have been drinking, yes? Never seen Alex drunk. Might be interesting to douse his punch with a little Kleerlite 190 proof. "Why not go out and get a little adulation? Your public awaits. "

"Uh-huh." Tony's cheeks were getting tired, and he relaxed the grin. "What are you doing here?"

"Routine check. We need our screens back, Tony. Wrap this up, would you?"

"Oh, Lord. How long?"

"Give me an hour. If everything checks, you can have it all back. The damn Game is done, isn't it?"

Tony bit back a retort: No Garne is ever complete while the authors live, Alex. He stood up, and Alex slid into his chair.

Dream Park's security chief was at work almost instantly. He had a running view of the train depot on levels one and two. Then the Mall on level three. The Mall extended up to level six, with another two stories of light-well. Escalators
ran from there down to the train gates. The gates had been there already, but with only one set of track laid, a split-level station carved into the ground and the cliff face.

"How much of this did you actually build?" Sharon asked.

Griffin didn't seem inclined to answer, so Tony said, "We cleaned out the broken glass and planted merchandise in the stores, and bombed out the stinks and the vermin. Otherwise we left it alone. There're some clues in the MallЧ"

"What about the rest of the building?"

"Ah. Well, most of it was in place. MIMIC had eleven thousand in residence, and was going slowly broke, on May twenty-third, nineteen ninety-five."

"The California Ouake," said Sharon.

"Yep. You can see for yourself, the place wasn't totaled. California's always been antsy about quakeproofing. MIMIC stood up pretty well. Part of the west face is sagging. See how it's distorted, like someone slammed the oven door on the souffle? Maybe two thousand people were trapped. Rescue was a long time coming, because the whole damn state needed rescue. Over eight hundred died. The building wasn't a total loss, but who'd want to live here after that? Cowles stole it at auction. Hell, everything in California was going for nickels.''

The scanner's eye shifted just north of the vertical ridge on the west face, to focus on the waterfall. The western edge of the rooftop lake cascaded over the broken masonry in a silvery flood. The viewpoint moved down the torrent in jumps.

"When we finish, we'll turn this back into industry housing. Home base for the Barsoom Project. But first, we get to play with it. We'll run the California Voodoo Game from roof to basement, the biggest role-playing game ever.

"We flooded levels ten and eleven, Sharon. There'll be more flooding by the end of the game. We clean it up afterward. The waterfall, that'll stay part of the building forever. Along the crease "taptap" here we go. This was what
Meacham called 'the modular wall.' "

The view was from the desert floor, straight up the crease. A central track ran the crease, with tributaries splaying out and up like Christmas-tree branches. There were egg-shaped bulges on some tracks, each the size of a camper. Half-crushed eggs lay at the base of the building. One egg hung three hundred feet up from cables that looked no larger than threads.

Griffin spoke. "Tony, you're not going to use those?"

"Oh, hey, Griff, they're not dangerous. Not anymore. I watched the work."

"But you've got a whole apartment dangling there." He leaned closer. "Crap. That's not mine, is it?"