The Barsoom Project dp-2

by Larry Niven

  “Chief! Got it!”

  “Then take control, dammit!”

  Charlene screamed, and Ambassador Arbenz smiled thinly to himself. Even after three days of fantasy role playing, his niece was unused to Dream Park’s magic.

  Still, as the mining rig came at him, disconcertingly straight at him, Arbenz himself began to feel a bit of discomfort. And when those glistening steel claws reached for him-straight for him-

  The machine stopped, hesitated And then continued, reaching out. He felt the claws touch him, gently, close on him and lift him into the air, chair and all, as gently as a mother lifts a baby. It scooped him high into the air and held him there, as triumphant music played.

  From his vantage point he could see security men scurrying around the room, and the uncertain faces of the other guests wondering how to feel about what they had just seen.

  Ambassador Arbenz brushed himself off, stood in the cup of the claws, and smiled, striking his hands together smartly in applause.

  After a moment’s hesitation, a confused Charlene did the same, and within a few seconds, the rest of the audience followed.

  Chapter Forty

  NIGHTMARES ‘R’ US

  Kareem Fekesh was in a frenzy.

  By remote camera he had watched the entire fiasco, safe in his San Diego tower. Arbenz should have been dead, the Barsoom Project in chaos. All of the Cowles shares he had bought on margin… all of the sell orders…

  Paying off wouldn’t cripple him, but he would feel the sting.

  Everything had gone wrong. It wouldn’t be long before the California police would want to question him. Let them wait. He wouldn’t be available. Freight flights and tanker ships sailed and flew under the aegis of his company. Nothing could keep him in the United States if he didn’t want to be here.

  But first there was a matter of personal business, of honor.

  He supervised the Kismet-126 program as it searched for the fool who had broken him. Who had it been? Dream Park must have many computer technicians capable of the job. How many would Griffin trust with an assignment of such sensitivity?

  Kismet-l26 had chosen twenty-two possibles. Through penetration of the Dream Park personnel files, Fekesh had access to each of their schedules for the past five days. He should certainly need no more than that.

  Thus far he had found nothing. Very well. Outside contacts? Every phone call that Griffin or his assistant had made.

  He was still getting nowhere. Patience. He who takes vengeance after forty years has acted in haste… but circumstances change, and haste was called for. He considered calling a guard for coffee. Later.

  He set the Kismet-l26 program to tracing Griffin’s personal identification number as it moved through the Park. As it ambled through the Park. Taking its own sweet-

  There, it intersected with the woman Millicent Summers. She used to be his secretary. Would she know There, Griffin had made a call from her office to Chino Men’s Prison to an Anthony McWhirter.

  McWhirter. Was that name familiar?

  Fekesh’s finger touched the Return key, about to start a search program. Instead, he suddenly clapped his hands and laughed aloud, delighted with the symmetry of life. He had used McWhirter against Dream Park, and now Griffin had returned the joke upon him. It was almost worth leaving the little fool his life!

  But no. McWhirter’s death would serve as an immediate message to Griffin. Griffin himself could die later, but first he must anticipate. Fekesh tapped Return.

  McWhirter vanished. Collia Aziz lay dead in a trash dumpster, sprawled head-down in a bed of used printout paper. Her mouth gaped slackly, and her eyes, and her throat. Dried blood crusted her hair.

  Fekesh threw himself backward. The chair tipped and he somersaulted and was on his feet before any enemy could have reached him.

  It was her. His fingers stabbed the keys, and the screen cleared. What could that have been? Why would he have put a record of the assassination of poor Collia in his files?

  He wiped his forehead. His throat felt tight.

  He set his chair in place, and sat. Now, then! He could enter the command that would cause the computer store to pass a message for the special security branch. And security would arrange for McWhirter, even safely ensconced in Chino At the touch of his fingertip the screen flashed a picture of an Oriental male sprawled against a featureless white background. An Eskimo’s fur headpiece lay half-shredded near his outflung hand. The ragged top of his head gaped against snow splashed with bright red. Izumi must have been freshly dead when this was taken.

  Fekesh didn’t scream.

  He pushed his chair back from the screen. He reached forward to hit Return and the image became a corpse torn almost in half by a fallen girder. Fekesh stared for some seconds, but he didn’t recognize the man at all.

  Irrelevant; distracting. Fekesh stood, snatched up his briefcase, pushed his hand forcefully into one corner. The plastic shell gave, and now he was holding the pistol grip and trigger of a still-concealed spitgun.

  They had penetrated him, had found him, here in his private offices. He was no longer safe. What he had considered to be beyond consideration, he must accept now: Dream Park intended to assassinate him.

  Well. On his home ground they couldn’t reach him, and they could not know how many ways he had of reaching home ground.

  He pushed a button on the wall. A panel slid back to expose an elevator door. Private. Safe. He heard a shshsh, the windsong of an elevator moving upward through its shaft, and then the door slid open.

  He half-expected to see a crouching assassin. Too melodramatic, too practical for Dream Park. He lowered the briefcase! spitgun. He was about to take that step forward when a wave of fear hit him. In hasty paranoia he tested the floor And his toe went right through. There was nothing there.

  Beyond where he perceived patterned scarlet rug, his foot turned murky, nearly invisible. Then the top and bottom edges of the door began to extrude teeth. Fekesh yanked his foot back, overbalanced, and fell on his arse, without ever taking his eyes off the elevator. Sharp teeth, dripping Dream Park stuff, Dream Park’s signature, and if they wanted his attention here, then what was happening behind him? Fekesh gathered himself and abruptly rolled backward, briefcase aimed, wait. Nothing? Look again. Nothing?

  An empty office, a computer running quietly. That gory photograph onscreen must be one of the men who died in the accident that gave him control of Colorado Steel.

  He hit the Escape key with savage force. The screen printed ESCAPE? in block letters across Colorado Steel’s torn work foreman.

  Fekesh was sweating now, heart thundering in his chest, and his fingers ripped at his tie. He was struggling for breath, and not finding it. What was happening? What was-

  He staggered back to his desk, and punched his phone line.

  “I am sorry,” an operator’s disconnected, recorded voice said mockingly. “This line is temporarily out of service-”

  The special security number was dead. The fire alarm circuits, dead. The elevator was alive and deadly, but what about the fire stairs?

  Too damned predictably, the lock was jammed. Everything was dead, broken, jammed, and now he was gasping for breath. He staggered to the wall vents, sucking for air By Allah’s Holy Name? The vent was working. He could hear it, but there was no air pressure against his palms.

  In fact He screamed. It was pumping air out of the room.

  Air. Air.

  He tore off his jacket and held it against the vent. Air hissed through the cloth.

  He aimed his briefcase at the picture window, at the San Diego skyline, but he didn’t fire. There was a reason… what was it? A bullet fired into this glass would ricochet. He’d shoot himself. He dropped the briefcase. He heaved a chair up from beside the desk, and hammered once, gaping like a fish now, twice against the shatterproof glass, spots before his eyes, and again And it cracked. He swung again and it spiderwebbed, and the crack ran all along the glass-

  And down a
cross the floor. The floor was turning crystalline even as he watched, and then everything around him turned transparent, all of the chairs, the tables, the desks turned to broken glass and vanished, and on hands and knees he was suspended above San Diego. Then Then!

  His clothing dissolved, his skin, his organs and flesh, and then his bones. He was gone. He began to understand that there was no more Kareem Fekesh.

  There was time for him to say goodby to himself, a discorporate awareness suspended above San Diego. Then San Diego dropped away. Kareem Fekesh rose with the speed of a rocket. The Earth dwindled to the size of a tennis ball, and there was no air, no air. Something passed across the black starscape, flapping vast golden wings.

  “Griffin… ” he whispered. Or thought of whispering.

  His vision went black and red, black…

  And then, nothing.

  Chapter Forty-One

  EPILOGUE

  “A tragic accident’ is what the papers call it.”

  Seated gingerly on a table near the window, Griffin turned to face Millicent. His back was still terribly sore, and his left elbow was bandaged. “How’s Fekesh?”

  It was a quarter to nine in the morning. As if sensing his black mood, Millicent had appeared at his doorway ten minutes earlier with a pot of the best damned decaffeinated coffee he had ever tasted. She was seated at his desk now, scanning his computer screen. Like the friend and helper she had always been, she noted his discomfort, but chose to distract him rather than call his attention to it.

  “Well,” she said slowly, “there was considerable organic brain dysfunction due to oxygen deprivation.”

  “In medical terms, then, he’s a vegetable.”

  “Not quite. Massive motor dysfunction, recurring nightmares. Memory impairment. Mental level of a ten-year-old, maybe.”

  Alex tsk’d. “And the final notes, on his computer at the time?”

  “How did you know to ask that?” Millicent said suspiciously, scanning the newsfax. “It was a call to arms, asking his followers to stand one hundred percent behind the Barsoom Project.”

  “Isn’t that interesting.”

  “Fascinating. There’s no suggestion here that it might be fake if that’s what you were wondering. Even more interesting is the fact that he’s too sick to leave the country right now. This clinic in La Mesa-doesn’t Vail work out of there?”

  “A few hours a month.” Alex smiled warmly. The nagging pain had him feeling vicious. “I’m certain that Fekesh will get the very best of care.”

  “Cowles owns a share of the clinic.”

  “I’m not surprised at all.”

  “And recently acquired an interest in Fekesh’s elevator repair company. Jesus, Alex, I don’t know who scares me more: you or Vail!”

  “No need to see conspiracy in every little coincidence. Diversification is the wave of the future.”

  Millicent joined Griffin by the window, sat so close that their knees were touching. “Griff, how much did you have to do with this?”

  “Absolutely nothing.” His face was all innocence… until something slipped. “I only opened the box. And all these things flew out.” He looked inside him for the guilt, and found none. Even so- “I don’t imagine I’ll ever open that box again.”

  He wondered if she’d pursue it. He was being judged. Alex wondered what verdict he would have rendered. He’d been on painkillers, but he’d been lucid enough when he went to the magicians… when he turned Izumi and Khresla and Welles and, God help him, Vail loose.

  She said, “And what were you doing on the night of June seventeenth?”

  The lobster dinner? “The same thing I was doing on the night of June twenty-fifth.”

  She smiled. “That’s tonight.”

  “Hope springs eternal.”

  He could see her shoulders relaxing. “What hope was that?”

  “Finishing dinner with my beautiful ex-secretary.”

  “Who was much too good for you.”

  “Correction. Was much too good to be my secretary.”

  “Ah-ha.”

  Her fingers touched a file folder on his desk, and a fingernail flicked it open. In it was a picture of Marty. “Poor Marty.”

  Alex’s attempt at good humor faded. “Nobody intended it. Vail swears he had nothing to do with it. I swear it, Millie.”

  “Not a bite?”

  “Hasn’t eaten for almost two weeks. If they force-feed him, he vomits. County put him on IVs, and Marty kept tearing them out of his arm. Legally, we can’t force him to eat.”

  She shook her head. “Try the Dream Park diet,” she said. “Lose a pound a day, and never be hungry again.”

  “Jesus,” Griffin said. “You’ve got a morbid streak, don’t you?”

  Millicent shuddered. “Listen, maybe if one of the other Gamers talked to him-”

  The outer office door opened, and a tall, slender man entered. He looked a little pale and wan, but the smile was genuine.

  “Griffin,” he said, cautiously extending his hand. “You kept your promise.”

  “Tony McWhirter, you kept yours,” Alex said. “You’re on work furlough, loaned to the municipality of Dream Park. Ah-as the duly elected Sheriff of Dream Park, I tell you that you are restricted to within two kilometers of this office-” Alex’s voice softened. “The only other restriction is that you make up for lost time, Tony.”

  The two men faced each other, looking uncomfortable. Tony looked around the room. And through the external windows, around the Park.

  The Barsoom Project was gone. Dream Park was alight again, ready for the public. It wore its public face. Dream Park was bright and beautiful and flashy.

  “I feel… so strange,” Tony said. “I can’t believe that you’re giving me a chance like this.”

  “You’ve panned out,” Griffin said. “Let’s start over again. I want you here, in Security. Meantime, until we know exactly what the situation is, you’ll stay in CMC, with full protection. Just in case.”

  “Appreciate that.”

  McWhirter nodded to Millicent. His eyes lingered on her until he suddenly flushed with embarrassment. He left the office hurriedly.

  Millicent watched him go. “Could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  “Yeah,” Alex sighed. “Based on honesty and trust.”

  “Based on fantasy,” she said.

  “Not the worst place to start,” he said.

  His arm stole around her.

  It wasn’t his fault. None of the death, the deception, the injury surrounding the Barsoom Project, and the past of Cowles Industries, had been his fault. But his aching back and bruised ribs, and the sight of Tony’s hollow face, had reminded him that it was all his responsibility. He had done the best he could. And he had to believe Vail.

  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.

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