Skip nodded. “What it adds up to is that all the big projects are being kept quiet until the details are worked out. So if you want a look at those plans, you’ll have to go and sign for them yourself.”
Griffin made a sound of disgust. Then, “I should be glad they’re tightening up. Security consciousness around here has been sloppy. I think we may have to have a real problem before Harmony gives me the word to tighten up on the rumor mill.” He looked at his sleeve-watch and winced. “Oh dear oh dear, the Queen will have my head! Skip, I’ve got to teach a class in about three minutes. Melinda—” He shook her hand with the gentlest of grips. “Always a pleasure. Skip, I think Lopez—tomorrow’s Game Master . . . “ Skip nodded recognition of the name. “Well, he’s coming into Game Central tonight, and I for one want to check him out. Want to drop by? It might be interesting.”
“Sure. About midnight, isn’t it?”
“You’ve got it. Okay, I’ll see you tonight”
Gwen leaned against the rail of the Hot Spot refreshment stand across the way from the Everest Slalom exit. She was drinking a Swiss Treat special: coffee and cocoa generously topped with marshmallowed whipped cream. It was taking the chill from her bones fast. Her muscles were beginning to quiver with belated fatigue. Dream Park’s automatic controls made mistakes almost impossible. Otherwise the ski run down Mount Everest was a damnably realistic experience.
Acacia was talking animatedly with an older couple. “I do the Everest Slalom every time I come here. I’m getting better, too. Eighty-five percent control this time. But, by God, that’s the first time they ever threw a baby yeti at me! There he was, right in front of me, all fluffy white fur and big trusting blue eyes. I damn near slammed a tree getting around him . . .”
Gwen watched a strolling band of acrobats perform their flip-flops and joined in the applause, wishing that she had kept up with the gymnastics that her mother had pushed her into at the tender age of five. Her thumb traced a line over the bulge around her waist, and she cast a wistful eye at Acacia’s trim figure. Gwen compared her own wispy blond hair to the dark girl’s lush brown mane. Even Margie Braddon’s hair, though white, was long and thick; and her wrinkles were all smile wrinkles, and her figure was enviable. Envy was what Gwen felt now.
Gwen Ryder didn’t often dwell on the differences between herself and other women. Most of the time she considered comparison-shopping either odiously self congratulatory or self-pitying. She liked her mind in neither mode. But there was a four-day jaunt ahead, and romances were known to bloom or die during such, and Gwen wondered . . .
Ollie and Tony were playing a computerized hockey game in a small arcade nearby. She loved to hear Ollie laugh, or see him smile, even the uneasy smile he wore when he thought he was the focus of attention.
It was easy to remember her first meeting with Adolf Norliss. It was an IFGS function. He was wearing motorized armor lifted from an old novel, Starship Troopers, and she had knocked on the chest cannon and asked if it wasn’t a little humid in there. He’d started telling her all about the cooling and dehumidifying system he had rigged up for it. before they knew it they were in a nearby coffee shop finding out how much they had in common, while a goggle-eyed waitress brought them breakfast.
Dating and wargaming together had followed, with the spectre of romance hovering close behind. Maybe it was the fact that he never took himself seriously that made her love him. Heck, somebody had to take him seriously, and she wasn’t doing anything better than falling in love. But sometimes she worried about what he could see in her, worried that some day he’d decide the whole thing was a mistake, and she would be alone again haunting the conventions and tourneys and libraries alone, just another little fat blond girl marking off bland days in a bland life . . .
The older woman’s words broke her reverie.
“Oh, I was playing Zork when I was seven,” Margie Braddon was saying. “My father had a computer and a Modem. You know Zork?” Acacia shook her head. “You played a role playing game against a program in the computer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zork was a treasure hunt with death traps, just like some of the Games we play now, but with no sensory effects at all. The computer led you around like a blind person. There were a lot of ways to get killed,” Margie laughed. “Monsters, and mazes to get lost in, and logic puzzles . . .
“And you Gamed with Hap the Barbarian?”
Her thick white hair bobbed when she nodded. “His real name was Willie Hertz. He was superb. He was a Lore Master for eighteen years. Owen and I had an open marriage, and he wasn’t interested in Games—”
“Wrong oh!” said Owen Braddon. He was white haired too, and bald on top, with a tanned and freckled scalp. His long body was all stringy muscle, but for a small, discrete pot belly. “The Games sounded too damned interesting,” he said. “I could see how it got to Margie. It would’ve wrecked my career if I’d let myself get that hooked. So I’d go skiing with someone, and Margie would become Shariett the Sorceress and go off with Hap the Barbarian.”
“Then Willie died,” said Margie, “and Owen retired, and now he is hooked. Aren’t you, dear?”
The older man grinned. “I’m getting good, too. The Startrader Game, last year was the first time I haven’t been killed out.”
“He tries to research the Games,” Margie said. “This time he was right.”
“The lizard was a Merseian. Never trust a Merseian. I think I’m right about the South Seas Treasure, too.”
Acacia waited, but Owen didn’t go on. Margie said, “He won’t even tell me.”
Ollie ran up to Gwen, breathing heavily. “I trounced the infidel, my lady!” Gwen squeezed his hand.
The white haired couple took their leave, headed toward the Gravity Whip, by God. Tony McWhirter, moving to join Acacia, stopped and looked past her shoulder. A trio of weary looking, dusty tourists had come stumbling into the Hot Spot carrying backpacks.
Tony said, “I wonder what did that to them?”
“Let’s ask.” Acacia smiled brightly and called, “Hey, we’ve got some empty seats!” The trio, two young men and a woman who looked to be in her late twenties, waved gratefully and ambled over, weaving to avoid other customers. They propped backpacks against the low wall, then staggered to the service window to order. Presently they were back with sandwiches and Swiss Treats.
“Whew. Thanks, people. This place is a madhouse,” said a tall, lanky fellow with long yellow hair plaited in braids. He reached over to shake hands. I’m Emory, and these are Della and Chris.”
Talk paused while Emory and his group made a ritual of tasting civilized food.
Chris looked well rested except for his eyes, which were bright and glassy. Della had a bad complexion and ears that stuck out a little too far, but her voice was sheer magic, a husky growl that was pure female animal. “Hi,” she said. “You guys just coming in?”
McWhirter tore his eyes away from her mouth with a visible tug. “How did you know?”
“You look too rested. In a few days you too will join the ranks of the walking dead.”
Della looked at Gwen for a second and asked, “Didn’t we do a Game together about two years ago?”
Gwen looked uncertain. Tony said, “You’re a Gamer, Della?”
“How else would I get so tired? We just went through a two day Game in ‘B’.”
Tony’s eyes widened. Two days? But they looked like they’d fought the Vietnam War!
Ollie perked up. “How was it? I mean, was it good? How many points did you win? Who ran it?”
The drawn look left Chris’s face. “It was Evans’s Game. Heard of her? Mean broad. It was hotter than Hell, and never a second to relax. Between the three of us we got three hundred twenty seven points.”
Tony looked sheepish. “Is that a lot?”
Everyone laughed, and he took it without flinching. Acacia said, “The average player earns about thirty points a day on an extended Game.” She turned to the three Gamers. “You people re
ally did a job.” And they all beamed proudly.
“What kind of Game was it?” Tony asked.
Della said, “Salvage. We were following the trail of a lost archeological expedition somewhere in Persia. We ended up in a subterranean lake, fighting off a tribe of cannibal troglodites for the right to lug back a golden idol that came to life on us anyway.”
“Lose many of your party?”
“About half. Chris got killed. But we figured out how to make the idol—”
“Ssss!”
“Sorry. Emory’s right, you might want to play it yourself one day.”
McWhirter looked at Chris, who was looking wrung out again. “What’s it like to die?”
“Cold.”
“Cold?”
“Persian hell is cold,” said Chris.
Ollie piped up. “That would be Zoroastrian. Early Persian.”
Chris nodded. “It wasn’t cold enough to be really uncomfortable. Sort of a maze filled with spirits of the dead. Took me about an hour to find my way out, then I cashed in my stuff, got my points registered and went back to the Shogunate Fortress—that’s my hotel—to watch the rest of the Game.”
Tony asked, “Didn’t it bother you, getting killed?”
He shrugged. “Part of the Game.” It bothered him.
Gwen asked, “You’re taking off today?”
“We’ve still got to check out of the hotel. We shuttle out to New Frisco in about an hour. Are you guys in South Seas Treasure?”
All four nodded. Tony said, “Any idea how many of us there’ll be?”
Acacia nudged him. “Won’t know till this evening. You and I are reserved, and I guess Gwen and Ollie are, and there must have been six more people on the tram with us . . . I’d guess better than twenty of us, about half of them invited. Della, how many were there in your group?”
Della did some quick figuring. “Fourteen? Fifteen. I waited a year to get in, too. You?”
“Eighteen months.”
Tony was really interested now. “What if Dream Park doesn’t like the Game enough to buy rights to it? No movie money, no book . . . what happens then?”
Everyone shrugged, but Ollie spoke, willing to take a guess. “The Game Master’d be in trouble if he was running on a big deficit. Unless Dream Park took up the slack. But a good Game Master has got maybe two-three movies behind him, and maybe half a dozen books, and if he’s really good he’s got a Game running here four months out of the year, and there are royalties on that.”
Gwen turned to look at him. “Ollie . . . ?”
“Well?” He shrugged again. “Heck, I’ve thought about trying to get a Game together. Heck, why not?”
Gwen opened her mouth to answer him, but Acacia cut her off. “Announcing that it is five minutes after five. We’ve just got time to finish our sandwiches before Chester’s preliminary briefing.”
Acacia and Tony were the last to join the conclave. There must have been thirty people jammed into the small mezzanine conference room. The Dream Park Sheraton was decorated in Twenty-First Century Mundane; it had no fantasy motif at all. Acacia was tickled to find Chester staying here. Still, it fit. Starting a few hours from now, the Lore Master was going to get all the fantasy he could handle.
The Gamers were all shapes and sizes and ages, in all forms of dress from western modern to PseudNude to medieval and neolithic. Some were barely adolescent and some had detectable face lifts, and they were all paying respectful attention to the musings aloud of a tall, almost birdlike young man.
He was sprawled across a couch, taking three men’s elbow room. A quite lovely redhead leaned into the curve of one arm. As he spoke he gestured lazily with his free hand. “—wish I knew more about the Game Lopez has set up. I do know that he said I won’t need a parka, and a little bird tells me that the gaming area was used by the military to simulate an assault on Brazil. And of course we’ve got the title: South Seas Treasure. If I’m right . . . well, I did some research.”
Gwen Ryder raised her hand as if in a classroom. “What do you think it means, Chester?”
“Magic of a kind we’re not used to. We’ll have to watch that. Light clothing . . . good boots . . . bug spray. With anyone else the bugs would be holograms, but Lopez—”
Tony whispered, “That’s your Lore Master? With the gorgeous redhead?”
“A little respect, please,” Acacia murmured, jabbing him with an elbow. “Chester Henderson is king at this Game. You listen, or you’ll get killed early.”
The blond girl had the jitters, Tony thought. It didn’t seem Gwen was going to Dream Park for the fun of it.
Tony himself was feeling decidedly twitchy. The rules, the players, Dream Park itself, it was all more complex than anything he had anticipated. The players were all too serious. Even Acacia was behaving as if death in a Game were real. Tony wondered if he had made a mistake, letting himself be talked into this.
“The thing to remember,” the potentate was saying, “is that Lopez will do about the maximum damage to a party that he can without someone yelling foul. He’s got to think about the next Game. If it gets out that he hit us with an eighty-percenter blizzard or a flock of plague bats, he won’t be able to sell it. So it’ll be nasty, but fair.”
Tony asked, “What exactly is fair?”
Henderson turned to face him. “Fair is anything that could be found naturally in the given environment, plus anything the internal logic could imply. Like . . . in my second Game. Medieval world. First person we met was a Round Table knight, obscure, but I knew the name. Well, I started watching for anything that might imply. Black plague, dragons, Inquisition . . . and I didn’t try for the Grail at all, because I’d never be judged pure enough. You follow?”
“Vaguely.”
“Look for the internal logic, always. And who are you? Are you with Acacia?”
“Tony. McWhirter.” He put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close enough that her dark hair pillowed against his. “We’re together, yes.”
“Wonderful. You’ll have a great time. Hey, Acacia, remember the ‘Frost Holocaust’?”
It sparked an elfin grin of remembrance. “Who could forget those dog packs? And you should see my pictures of the mutants. Some of them didn’t come out too well on film, though.”
“I hear the holos are hellaciously sharper this year. Shouldn’t be a problem.” He thought for a moment, then continued, “We can expect a forest or tropic region. I doubt Lopez would use any common or well-known myth-pattern, so we’ll have to be on our toes. We may or may not be allowed modern weapons. I’ll get all of that information tomorrow. Magic Users are probably Go, maybe some Swordspersons, an Engineer or two, a couple of Thieves . . .”
The doorman was appropriately cadaverous. He wore a tattered black hat, and a motheaten cloak that dragged loose threads on the ground. He opened the door for Gwen and Ollie, stepping out of their way with creaking torpidity. “This way, young masters,” he rumbled.
“Will you look at this?” Ollie whispered to Gwen, goggle-eyed.
The tram had unloaded them at the Haunted House, the theme hotel east of the main amusement area. They were still underground, in a depot decorated in Early Caligari. Cobwebs festooned the corners of the station, and crawling things with glowing red eyes stalked their strands. The path before them led into a hallway with a glass ceiling.
Gwen looked up. “Wow.” It was their own reflection; but as they proceeded, the flesh began to melt off their bones. When they reached the end of the corridor their reflections were a pair of skeletons shambling back to the mausoleum after a hard night’s haunt.
“ I don’t know if I really want to open the door,” she said. Ollie edged it open with his fingertips. It creaked hideously.
The lobby was dim, and decorated in blacks and dark reds. Even the couches and chairs were somewhat foreboding. The red seat cushion on one dark chair gave it the unmistakable appearance of an open mouth. The ceiling was low. Flickering candelabra supplied th
e light.
A lovely hostess in a flowing, wraith-white gown greeted them. Her red lipstick was just bright enough to bring out the paleness of her cheeks. She brought one delicate hand up to her mouth and coughed politely, then favored them with a dazzling smile.
“Good morning, my name is Lenore and I’d like to welcome you to the Haunted House, one of the nine Dream Park hotels. This is a theme hotel, so be ready. Anything can happen.”
The check-in terminal bore the guise of a great orchid plant; and the lovely flowers bowed toward them in entirely too friendly a fashion. Ollie fished out his preregistraton card and allowed a flower to take it. A quick display of words and numbers ran up the orchid festooned screen; then the words “Adolph Norliss and S. O. room 7024.”
Ollie looked at Lenore curiously. “S. O.? What’s that?”
She laughed sweetly. “Significant Other. I assume that you and the lady aren’t married?”
“Oh, yeah. We’re engaged . . .”
“Then if she’s not your wife or your sister, she’s a Significant Other.”
Gwen sniffed. “You could have just listed my name.”
Ollie looked uncomfortable. “That’s my fault, I guess. I wasn’t absolutely sure we would be coming together.” He retrieved his card.
Lenore led them off to a brace of elevators. Gwen walked with her head turned to look up into Ollie’s face.
“And if I hadn’t come, who would you have invited?”
He walked on, ignoring her question for a few steps, and she tugged at his sleeve. “Ollie? Who would you have invited?”
He was trying, without terrific success, to hide a smile. “Oh, I don’t know. Anyone who could pay half the bill, I guess.”
“You guess?”
They had reached the elevator. Lenore motioned them in. “Room seven-oh-two-four, on the seventh floor. And I hope you have a pleasant stay here at Dream Park.” She gave the slightest of curtsies, and slowly turned transparent. Only her ringing laughter was still with them as the doors slid shut.
Dream Park Page 4
