Dream Park [2] The Barsoom Project
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Vail just couldn’t have reached into Marty’s head somehow, and twisted . . .
He thought of Kareem Fekesh in La Mesa, and of Vail’s loving ministrations, and shivered.
He had to let it go. If he could just manage to live with himself for another week or so, maybe he could go on, and do his job.
He felt heavy, and old, and tired.
Millicent kissed him gently on the cheek. “You know what let’s do?” she said softly.
“What?”
“Let’s sign up, the two of us, as partners in that Shipwreck Game next week.” She paused. “I wouldn’t mind being your girl Friday again.”
“A whole week’s Game?”
“Tropical sun, digging for turtle eggs, exploring semi-extinct volcanoes for treasure. .
“I don’t know. I’m damned busy.”
She punched him in the good side. “I happen to know that you’ve got three weeks accumulated vacation. Harmony would give you three more without a blink. Refuse me and I’ll have Vail give you a psychiatric suspension.”
“On what grounds?”
She turned his head with palms that were warm and soft. Her lips parted slightly as she pressed them against his. “You’d be crazy to turn me down.”
He laughed. Not a large laugh, but it held promise, the first glimpse of sunlight through storm clouds. It was going to be all right. As long as he had friends like Millicent and Harmony, he could survive anything.
They held each other and watched the front gates open. The crowds would marvel at the effects and immerse themselves in the adventures. For a time they would lose their minds, and most would be the better for it. But if they knew what lay behind the magic . . .
That one question, at least, he could answer. Most people don’t really want to see the strings, don’t want to see what lurks behind the mirrors. They need dreams. Need magic. Always have.
Alex couldn’t hear the sounds of laughter, of gaiety and excitement, couldn’t see the individual smiles of anticipation. But he could see the flow, the tide of life as it streamed once more into the streets of Dream Park.
We are the Magicians, Griffin reminded himself proudly. We bring the dream to We.
And we’re the only ones who can.
AFTERWORD
This was an ambitious project. Dream Park was fantasy wrapped in science fiction wrapped in mystery. The Barsoom Project is cut from the same pattern. Our intent has been to blend dozens of individual threads of information into one (we hope) seamless tapestry.
In the case of the Fimbulwinter Game, it proved more difficult to trace down data on the spirit world of the northern peoples than we had anticipated. Thanks and acknowledgments are even more appropriate than usual.
The people whom we call Eskimo, orlnuit , are not a single group, but a scattering of tribes and small nations ranging down from the Arctic Circle, and up from Asia and the North American Indian peoples. There are many lifestyles and many languages. Some of the Inuit are still hunters in the “primitive” fashion of their ancestors. Many are modern professional people. As one might anticipate, the traditional tribal structure is in danger of being destroyed by contact with the forces of Western culture and technology.
Myths are the first steps toward science, an attempt to explain the unknown. The Inuit live in the most unforgiving environment on Earth. They have devised a vast and complex mythology encompassing everything from weather gods to the usual xenophobic tales of cannibals-beyond-the-mountains. There is no unified world view that one can truly call the “Inuit Way.”
We needed to find an entry into their world, their way of seeing the universe. Enter Richard Dobson, of the Transformative Arts Institute in San Geronimo, California. An expert in contemporary shamanism, Richard was of integral help in explaining the belief patterns common to all shamanic peoples worldwide. Many hours of lecturing and discussion yielded a framework within which the scattered pieces of data began to make sense.
Harley “Swift Deer” Reagan, a master of the Sweet Medicine Sundance teachings of the Cherokee and Athabascan-speaking peoples, offered additional insight into the epistemological structures through which the North, South, and Central Native American peoples organize their lives, world view, and cosmology. Additional thanks must be given for specific data on the value and techniques of the pipe ceremony, the Medicine Wheel, and that most amazing tool for spiritual enlightenment and/or masochistic semi-immolation, not to mention native cuisine: the sweat lodge.
Steven was smart enough to choose his father-in-law carefully. Thomas Young, a Texaco engineer who specializes in building ice roads in Alaska, provided books, video, photos, and stories of the Eskimo world. Special thanks.
Of the books on the Inuit peoples, by far the most useful was Inua: Spirit World of the Bering Sea Eskimo, by William W Fitzhugh and Susan A. Kaplan. Also valuable were The Nelson Island Eskimo, by Ann Fienup-Riordan, and Ancient Men of the Arctic, by J. Louis Giddings.
All of the Game’s natural magics stem from Inuit traditions of the people of the north, though not from any single tribe. Likewise with the gods, archetypes, monsters, and wildlife, except in the single case of the Wolfalcons. Here the authors took a general myth pattern, establishing that Inuit shamans can mutate themselves into bizarre bird, animal, and fish shapes, and allowed the Cabal to become creative.
Shaping the Barsoom Project was much easier.
Gary Hudson has wanted to build spacecraft for some decades now. Over the years his “Phoenix” designs have changed many times, following changing technology. Always they have been small single-stage ground-to-orbit craft, truncated cones using the aerospike engine configuration.
Schemes for terraforming Mars generally involve using comet impacts and gene-tailored algae to shape a breathable atmosphere and/or to free the air and water that once carved riverbeds on Mars. It would be cheap and easy compared to the terraforming of Venus.
Skyhook devices are pretty much as described. Every such device would be initially very expensive, but very cheap to run. Each would open the solar system to mankind. Each could be terribly destructive if it failed, and each would be more easily and safely built using Mars as a test bed. Join any of today’s space advocacy groups and you need not seek information on skyhooks; it will seek you out.
Dream Park, our first collaborative novel, has achieved some notoriety, and is considered by many to be something of a minor classic. It has never been out of print, has been under film option continuously, and has even spawned a real-life version of the International Fantasy Gaming Society.
In April of 1989, we were invited to the first convention held by the real IFGS, in Denver, Colorado. These are bright, energetic, highly creative and infectiously enthusiastic folks, who sponsor and coordinate elaborate costumed fantasy role-playing events. They are literally committed to bringing Dream Park into existence. Power to them, and may their legions increase! Presently they have chapters all over the United States and are building a network overseas. They can be reached at the following address: IFGS, P.O. Box 3555, Boulder, Colorado, 80307-3555.
They were understandably eager to know what we thought of them. Let’s just say that, although the FAA would certainly have frowned upon it, your humble authors could have flown back to L.A. without a plane.
Since the original publication of Dream Park, countless readers have requested a sequel. We have to confess a certain degree of reluctance, at least partially because it would have been too darned easy.
So we waited until the right idea came along, in the right context, at the right time. (Easy, hell. We don’t seem to get easy ideas.)
Seven years have passed since the events of Dream Park; but Dream Park technology hasn’t changed much. We assumed, then as now, that computer technology and hologram technology have become stunningly powerful by the mid-twenty-first century. Within Dream Park, reality has become almost optional. The authors find it fascinating to watch how human beings handle that.
Dream Park is
a special place for both of us, a playground in which the collaborative game of “Can you top this?” can be played on a dozen fields at the same moment. If it has been half as entertaining to read as it was to write, then it was indeed worth the wait, and the effort.
—Larry Niven and Steven Barnes Los Angeles
May25, 1989
Table of Contents
CAST OF CHARACTERS AND GLOSSARY
PROLOGUE
Chapter One
THE BARSOOM PROJECT
Chapter Two
THE PHANTOM FEAST
Chapter Three
THE TOWER OF NIGHT
Chapter Four
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
ENGAGEMENT
Chapter Five
CATCH IT AND YOU KEEP IT
Chapter Six
SUPPLIES
Chapter Seven
THE QASGIQ
Chapter Eight
THE MISSION
Chapter Nine
BAPTIZED IN COMBAT
Chapter Ten
I’VE HAD DATES LIKE YOU
Chapter Eleven
HIGH FINANCE
Chapter Twelve
BREAKFAST EGGS
Chapter Thirteen
AEROBICS
Chapter Fourteen
THE AFTERLIFE
Chapter Fifteen
HOLY SMOKE
Chapter Sixteen
THE PAIJA
Chapter Seventeen
BUTTERFLIES
Chapter Eighteen
RESEARCH AND
DEVELOPMENT
Chapter Nineteen
OLD FRIENDS
Chapter Twenty
SIN CITY
Chapter Twenty-One
TEMPTATIONS
Chapter Twenty-Two
SKYHOOKS
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE SNOWMAN’S WAR
Chapter Twenty-Four
OVERVIEW
Chapter Twenty-Five
MADELEINE
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE BEANSTALK BRUNCH
Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE ISLAND
Chapter Twenty-Eight
SECOND THOUGHTS
Chapter Twenty-Nine
THE MAZE
Chapter Thirty
THE CABAL
Chapter Thirty-One
CHALLENGE
Chapter Thirty-Two
DREAMS ‘R’ US
Chapter Thirty-Three
WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES
Chapter Thirty-Four
STAR CHAMBER
Chapter Thirty-Five
SACRED WEAPONS
Chapter Thirty-Six
MICHELLE
Chapter Thirty-Seven
CONFESSIONS
Chapter Thirty-Eight
SCORE SHEET
Chapter Thirty-Nine
LEVIATHAN
Chapter Forty
NIGHTMARES ‘R’ US
Chapter Forty-One
EPILOGUE
AFTERWORD