by Larry Niven
"A lot of this doesn't make sense, Mr. Harmony. Maybe Rice got greedy and didn't sell the drug to his friends. Maybe McWhirter is a more calculating man than any of us realize. All I know is that something's wrong and I'm having Bobbick check Rice's place again. What we need may be there."
O'Brien squinted. "Haven't you already searched Rice's place?"
"Not thoroughly. Just photographed."
"Well, somebody searched it."
"True. And maybe they didn't get what they were looking for. There are a lot of ways to hide things in a CMC apartment, that
an outsider might miss." *
"A place large enough to hide a statue?"
"No, no, only enough to hide what someone thought was in it. Rice was a sculptor, you know. It wouldn't have been hard for him to rig a fake brick for his fireplace. A holo projection of a book could cover a hole in his shelf... I don't really know." Alex glanced at the cuff of a fresh shirt. "Bobbick must be almost there by now. If there's anything there, we'll find it."
Skip snapped his briefcase shut. "Whew. This sounds pretty bad. I'd better go and check the dates on that cabinet. If you'll excuse me-"
Alex thought a wordless curse.
Harmony patted the air with his hand. "That can wait, Skip. I need to know about the formula we recovered. How familiar with it are you? Enough to be sure it's the real thing?"
"I-it's hard to say. I, uh, I could check with Sacramento, but if the leak's there, the real formula could be switched already. And if it isn't, we can't compare them over an open line." He sat down, reluctantly, then popped up again. "Listen. I may have some notes on this in my lab. If I match them up... ?"
Harmony looked at Griffin, then back again. He hadn't liked this when Griffin broached the subject earlier, when it was still hypothetical. Now he hated it, and it showed in his face. "Why don't you just get them on the phone. Have your office check. We'll have a courier bring it over if necessary."
"I-we can't, uh... There's been too much trouble already. It's too valuable."
"You're too valuable to us here, Skip," Griffin said gently. He turned to Harmony. "There's only one person in Sacramento whose name turned up in Albert Rice's telephone book. Lady named Prentice, Sonja Prentice."
Harmony nodded grimly.
The blood was draining from O'Brien's cheeks. His eyes flicked from Harmony to Griffin to Harmony... "What the hell is this about?" He could barely speak, the breath whistling weakly in his throat.
"It's about getting to the truth, Skip."
O'Brien's mouth worked wordlessly. "You can't-"
"Yes, we can," Griffin said. "We know about Sonja and we know about you and Rice."
"Jesus..." O'Brien whispered. Then his eyes blazed and his lips set in a taut pale line. "I'm not saying a goddamned thing until I talk to my lawyer."
Harmony spoke now, and his voice, cultured and precise, was an ugly thing to hear. "I'm not sure you appreciate our position, O'Brien. Alex and I talked this over before you arrived. We can't have you prosecuted. Unfortunately."
Skip's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
"What do you think would happen if it was known that Cowles Industries' chief psychiatrist, the man who has headed up our child research division for six years, is a cold-blooded murderer?"
"You did it, Skip," Griffin said hollowly. "You were in a position to alter Rice's computer records. You could ‘discover' the forgery later, after Rice was dead. You were working in R&D the night he was killed." He leaned close to Skip, whose eyes were closed now, his breathing heavy. "We just need to know the truth, Skip, all of It. Either we get it from you, or the police come in and drag it out for us; and the papers get everything."
Again, O'Brien's mouth worked without sound, then a long, arid sigh. "It was the girl. Prentice. My god, it was so long ago. .
He lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. Griffin watched the smoke haze around Skip in a cloud until Harmony whisked it into the ceiling. "Rice was my student at Sulphur University. Bright. Promising. We became friends. My wife found it so damn easy to get into the swing of being a University wife~ The entertaining, the
parties...lbert could talk sense, and he4...e listened to me. Looked up to me."
He gestured aimlessly with the cigarette, the smoke making spirals in the air. "We bad a thing. It didn't last for that long, but it was pretty intense. More of a crush, maybe. When I tried to back off, he grn crazy. Just nuts. Swore to tell the University. Said I was abandoning him, that I didn't give a damn about him. I tried to show him that I did."
Griffin waited for him to continue, then started to prod gently, but Skip continued by himself. "Sonja was a girl who had taken a class from me the semester before. She was lonely, I knew that, and I thought that maybe... maybe there was enough common ground to form a bond between them."
"Had you had a ‘thing' with her too?" Alex's voice was dangerously quiet. O'Brien nodded miserably. Good old Skip. Giving his all for the youth of America.
"For a while, it worked. Maybe only to spite me, to prove he wasn't the emotional cripple he accused me of making him, Albert and Sonja starting relating. It was during this time that she modeled for his statue. Sometimes... sometimes the three of us would... play together." He closed his eyes and swallowed. "By damn," he whispered, "as an officer of this municipality, Alex, you had better know that none of this is admissible in court."
"I know," Griffin said, flatly. "Finish it. What was supposed to be in the statue?"
"Albert was... into drugs. That was why he made the hollow statue. He had made some freebase cocaine in the lab. One night we all got incredibly high smoking it. Sonja got too high, too damn high. I don't know why Albert kept feeding it to her, but be seemed to enjoy watching her literally lose her mind."
"And she lost more than that."
He nodded, "We were all zonked out, and finally I noticed that Sonja was having trouble breathing. I was stoned, and scared, and I tried to apply some kind of resuscitation. She just stopped breathing, that's all. I couldn't believe it. I was too scared to call the ambulance. Christ. My job, my wife. • ."
"So she died."
Skip couldn't face them. "She died. Honestly-please believe me
-I did try to call the police, then. But Albert pleaded with me. Begged me not to. Said that we could get her back into the dormi
tory without getting caught. I was still high. I didn't know what to do."
Harmony was pitiless. "So you let him talk you into it."
"Yes. Albert went out to dispose of the smoking kit, and the drugs in his apartment. Then, at three in the morning, we carried Sonja into her dormitory, got her into her room, and left her undressed in bed. I remember reading the papers, hearing them talk about ‘the suicide..." He buried his face in his hands. "I stopped seeing Rice, and that was the end of it, until two years ago. He called me at home, the bastardl He said he knew I worked at Cowles Industries and he needed a job. He didn't make any threats, but it was there, hanging. I should have gotten rid of him somehow... I got him the job."
"Then the demands started, right? A better job... Manipulate his psych proffie... Just a little twist of the arm, a little blackmail that grows-" Griffin left it open.
But O'Brien was shaking his head. "It wasn't like that, really. It was do a favor for a friend. Then it was make sure you stay my, friend. He kept pushing and I kept trying to draw the line. Finally he told me that he still had the smoking kit, and that all those sets of fingerprints were on it. His. Mine. Hers. If I didn't do as he said, the police would get it. He told me I had more to lose than he did. He was right.
"So I broke into his apartment and ripped it apart looking for the kit. I broke the statue open but there wasn't anything in it. The next day he told me I had twenty-five hours to falsify his records, or he would go to the police. I did it. The night that the R&D center was broken into, I went to meet him, to tell him that now he had as much to lose as I did, and that all bets were off."
&
nbsp; Skip seemed to have forgotten them. His eyes were dreamy, peaceful; he wasn't seeing anything in Harmony's office. "I found him in the break room, trussed up like a turkey. I already knew it wouldn't work. It couldn't. He'd keep pushing me as long as there was a reasonable doubt as to my weakness. I wanted my job, my freedom... my marriage. He could ruin me. And there he sat, looking at me over that big wide bandage across his mouth, waiting for me to turn him loose. He was sniffling, trying to suck in enough air."
Skip's voice was shot through with horrified fascination, fear and heady power. "He was sniffling. Like calling attention to his nose. Alex, it was like finding an Easter basket the day after
Easter's over. When I held his nose shut he went crazy. I had to kneel on his chest to keep him steady. It took two minutes before I could get a good grip, and another three before he finally stopped struggling. .
He looked at his fingernails, chose one after careful deliberation, and began to chew on it. "I never found the smoking kit. Maybe your man Bobbick will have better luck."
Alex said, "I doubt it. Rice must have dumped it, just like he told you the first time."
The office was deadly quiet for a while. Smoke wafted silently into the ceiling fan. Three still and silent men watched each other with calculating eyes.
Harmony said it first. "Well, what do I do? We know you did it, but probably can't prove it. Even if we could, we couldn't afford to turn you in. Too many innocent people would suffer. Cowles Industries would suffer." He drummed those thick fingers on his desk. "Griffin? You've called the shots on this thing so far. Any ideas?"
"Yes." Alex kept his voice cold, and refused to allow himself to look at Skip. "First, Skip resigns from Cowles Industries, effective immediately. Second, he agrees never to work with children ever, anywhere again. If he does-" Now he looked at Skip. From the way his former friend pulled back, shrinking into his chair, Alex knew that O'Brien was seeing a Griffin he had never seen before. "Then we have a talk with his employers. And his wife. Do you understand?" Skip nodded.
Griffin closed his eyes lightly. "And then there's the matter of Tony McWhirter. He may be a thief, but he's no killer, and I don't want him treated like one."
"Alex, we can't tell the District Attorney-" Harmony began. "No, we can't. But we can offer Tony legal assistance. I can testify that a reasonable doubt exists as to his capacity for coldblooded murder. That, together with the voice-stress analyzer, if he takes it, may well counterbalance the coroner's report."
"All right. .
"And one more thing. Even with that, a couple of years are going to be added on his sentence for... oh, negligent homicide at the least. When he gets out of jail, I'm going to offer him a job. With me. He beat my security system, and I can use him. Well, what do you say?"
The man with the linebacker shoulders nodded. "That seems
fair." He turned to the man with the briefcase, the man with the flesh stretched tight across his cheekbones, who seemed to be trying to hide in the plushness of his chair. "All right, O'Brien," Harmony said, his voice for once unmelodic, ugly. "I'd like you to dictate your letter of resignation, and then go clean out your desk. I want you out of the Park by 1400, and out of CMC by next week."
Griffin stood.
"Aren't you staying, Alex?"
"No, I don't have any stomach for this."
He had reached the door when he heard Skip whining, "But what do I tell... Melissa?"
And before he could stop his tongue, he heard himself say, "Just follow your instincts, Skip. Tell her anything but the truth."
Then the door sighed shut behind him.
Alex watched the towers and domes of Dream Park shift in his office, shadow-puppets that swirled and loomed at his command.
There were people in the streets. He couldn't see their faces or hear their sounds, but he knew they were happy. Their balloons and cotton candy and plaid cotton shirts said so. The children that skipped to a faroff jaunty melody said so.
There was sunshine out there, and color and magic and music. But tomorrow, or next week, the people would leave, go back to their worlds carrying a little bit of the Dream with them to lighten their lives. And when those lives grew dreary again, they could think of vacations, and holidays, and travel... and Dream Park.
He had to laugh at himself. How often had he accused the Garners of blurring the line between fantasy and reality? The truth was that their fantasy was his reality, and their reality his fantasy.
Tony would go to his grave thinking he had killed a man, and there was nothing to be done about it.
For that matter, it was true enough. Tony McWhirter had gambled the lives of anyone who crossed his path that night. He might have found a witness waiting when he emerged from G. A. 18; and then what? He might have crushed Rice's windpipe; Rice might well have died of a stopped nose; McWhirter could have died in that fight, leaving Rice to carry the guilt of the manslayer. Instead, he had left Rice as a gift to anyone with the whim to hold his nose shut.
Tony must have known the odds when he set forth to rob Dream Park. People die during burglaries.
But if Tony McWhirter was getting justice, then what was Skip O'Brien getting?
Alex's fingers dug into the controls on his desk, and the shadows shifted, now the abandoned Gaming area, now the streets of Section One, now the hotel transport strips.
It wasn't fair. It just wasn't. For Skip O'Brien to escape was obscene.
"See you later, Chief-"
Right. And maybe if Griffin had consciously noted that Rice had no words for O'Brien, his former teacher, the man who got him his job at Dream Park... if he had noticed that Rice had been talking to him for O'Brien's benefit, taunting... They must have skipped over anything important.
But that was expecting too much of himself, and that wasn't fair, either.
A holo window opened up in the air above his desk, and Millie's face materialized.
"You have a visitor, Gruff." Millie was unusually subdued, eyes worried. She and Bobbick had been treating him with kid gloves ever since he'd laid out his suspicions about O'Brien. Friend. Buddy. Killer.
"Can't it wait, Millie?" His voice was more petulant than he cared to admit. Leave me alone. Let me hurt.
"I don't think so, Alex."
He sighed and faded the holo map to black. "Send ‘em in."
When she stood in the doorway, outlined in the darkness, her brown hair flowing behind her like a scarf, he swallowed, not knowing if this was something he wanted. He thumbed up the light.
"Hello, Alex."
"Hello, Cas. What brings you here?"
"Do I need a reason?"
"No. No, but you've got one."
She nodded, smiling. "I just wanted to tell you that you were voted fifty bonus points for Best Novice Player."
He leaned back in his seat and folded his hands behind his head. She walked a few steps closer. "May I sit down?"
"Please." She folded herself into a chair, and wiped her hands on her slacks.
"I thought you might want to know the final score."
He was silent, just watching her.
"As a party, we won almost 2100 points. Personally, I walked away with a hundred and sixty." She paused. "You earned a hundred and seventy-four, counting your bonus. Congratulations. You're no longer a novice player."
Somehow her smile grew so warm and alive that it crossed the distance between them, and they shared it. "Thank you. I really appreciate that. I've been feeling very much the novice, lately."
"There's something else, Alex. I care about Tony... Maybe I love him. I'm not sure. But he used me to get into the Game-"
"Hey, no. They probably propositioned him after he was already registered. They'd have wanted a novice."
Her brows contracted. "Oh." She shrugged, her strong smooth shoulders lifting under her blouse. "Never mind. What he did-I can't let what happened stop me from letting you know how much I like you."
"Not now, Cas-"
"I doubt that," he heard himself say, surprised and glad that he had been able to get it out past numbed lips.
"My train leaves in twenty minutes," she said, rising. He stood, and the gulf between them grew great, impossibly great again. He held out his hand.
She looked at it for a second, then took it. Gently he pulled her closer, feeling only the slightest tug of resistance, and kissed her. It was a light, brief kiss, but it was less an ending than a promise, and he was happy.
She turned, pausing only at the door. "I'll be back, Alex," she said.
He fumbled in his mind for something appropriate to say. "Good Game," he said, finally, the beginning of a grin framing the words.
"Good Game," she echoed, and closed the door behind her. He sat there in his office, grinning like an idiot. Presently he tapped the Corn line. "Millie?"
His dark genie materialized. "Yes, Gruff?"
"My desk is irritatingly clear. Dammit, isn't there some work to do?"
"You bet, Chief."
"Then wire it in here." He stretched his head side to side, listening to his neck pop. Good Game. Damn straight, it had been.
"On its way," she said. His desk printer began to hum. "Oh, and one more thing."
"What's that?"
"I've never met a Slayer of the Unclean before. Can I have your autograph?"
"We heroes are a busy lot," he said blandly. "I'll try to work you in Tuesday." He watched the sheets of fanfold paper sprout out of his desk. When it reached a pile an inch high, it stopped.
Millie whistled. "That's a lot of business backed up there. Good luck. Personally, I'd rather be fighting monsters."
Wouldn't we all? he said silently. Wouldn't we all.
He tore off the sheets and went to work.
Afterword
The authors had a wonderful time researching Dream Park. As we hope you will agree, Melanesian myth patterns are as bizarre, convoluted and imaginative as any in the world.
