He crossed to the service shaft on the other side of the room. It was three feet from the ground and sealed with a circular steel door. He climbed the short ladder that led to it and examined the surface of the door. There were a few smudges, but maintenance personnel had been through the tunnels during the day’s Gaming. In fact, substantial restructuring of Gaming Area A was going on right now, but the men and machines performing those tasks would be brought in through one of the environment dome’s side panels.
But this tunnel . . .
Griffin flipped out his wallet and tapped it on. “Patch me through to Maintenance, please.” There was a moment’s buzz, during which Griffin turned up the collar of his light jacket; the basement was chilly.
A beep sounded, and a woman’s voice came on line. “Yes, Mr. Griffin. How can we help you?”
“I want records of all egress and entry into Gaming Area A service shaft, um,” he glanced at the yellow numbers stenciled above the portal, “eighteen. It leads into the Research and Development building.”
“G. A. 18?”
“Right”
“One moment, please.”
While the line was dead, Griffin found himself hoping that he was wrong. How could they have overlooked this? It was inexcusable, and understandable at the same time., Why guard against Gamers? He knelt by the base of the stairs and looked carefully. There were definite smudges of dirt, and a tiny shaving of green leaf.
“Mr. Griffin?”
“Here.”
“G. A. 18 was used once today at 4:30 P.M.”
Griffin held his breath. “What was the reason?”
“Pressure check in sector twelve, apparently. That’s one of the lines that feeds the artificial lake.”
“Then there was no need for the technician to go topside?”
“No, I don’t believe so. There’s a Game on right now, you know. All of the work was accomplished in the tunnels.”
“Right.” Griffin thought quickly, weighing factors. “When that technician comes in in the morning, please have him verify that.” He signed off and folded wallet and transceiver away.
He looked again at the smudge. The steps, like every other accessible inch of the Park, were cleaned daily. The smudge must be recent. Probably a foot had descended on this ladder in the last few hours. Griffin checked his watch. Eleven twenty. Rice had been found at ten past ten, twenty-five minutes after he missed his check-in.
And where would an intruder find dirt and leaves to step in anyway?
Bet on it: these would be Brazilian plant life.
An elevator took Griffin back to the first floor. The CMC doctor had arrived, a tall thin man who ordinarily wore a warm smile. Now he wore a rumpled and hastily-donned shirt jammed into what could pass for trousers but looked suspiciously like pajama bottoms.
“Dr. Novotney,” Alex said in sober greeting.
The thin man said, “Griffin. Listen, I can’t do much here. I’ll have to take the body to my lab to learn anything. We can’t move him until the County coroner comes, or the Police clear it, is that right?”
Griffin scratched his head. “I think we can handle this. Dream Park is an independent municipality, and I have the authority to clear it. We’re going to have to deal with the County, but I’m betting that Harmony will want us to keep this as close to the chest as possible.”
“We’ve got the pictures, Griff,” Marty Bobbick said “What a mess.”
Griffin was glad he was here. Bobbick would see that things got done if Griffin had to get off by himself to think things out. A nervous tic made Bobbick’s pleasantly ugly face squint every time his eyes passed over Rice’s body He chewed a mouthful of gum with near-manic intensity as Griffin talked.
“We need prints. There’ve been too many people in and out of here for a heat scan to do much good, but try anyway. I want all the record tapes collated. Somebody wanted something in this building. I want to know what it was. Maybe the development people can tell us. Get hold of somebody who knows what the hell they’re about a tell him to join me when I meet with Harmony.”
Marty nodded, his square jaw pumping up and do with nervous rhythm. “Got most of that covered already Millie’s on the record tape right now, and the infrared equipment should be here any minute.” He counted tasks to himself and came up satisfied. “Guess that’s it for right now, then, except for moving Rice . . . ah, you want him over at CMC?”
“No. Take him to the Park medical center. Better facilities there. Check with the legal department and find out if we can do an autopsy if it’s needed.”
Rice was being carefully loaded onto a stretcher. Two guards hoisted him away, and Bobbick watched the sheet-covered body go with pained eyes. “Hell of thing,” he said softly.
“Yeah,” Griffin agreed. “A hell of a thing.”
Chapter Ten
NEUTRAL SCENT
Griffin managed to catch a couple of hours sleep before is scheduled meeting with Harmony. His office couch was uncomfortably soft, but it was better than tubing back to his apartment for a mere catnap. Afterward he shaved and washed his face in his office lavatory. The face in the mirror was a stranger’s. The green eyes, he close-cropped black hair, the massive shoulders, the two-inch scar under the left ear . . . these he knew. But the vulnerable look made it a stranger’s face. Murder made a difference.
There had been deaths at Dream Park. Coronaries, strokes, a drug overdose or two (one thing he would never understand was people who came to Dream Park to do their drugs. While most people struggled to maintain emotional equilibrium under the sensory overload, there were those few whom even Dream Park’s magic couldn’t satisfy. Call it evolution in action), and even a few genuine weirdies, like the kid who somehow managed to drown in thirty-six inches of “quicksand” in the Treasure Island Game a couple of years back.
But never a murder. Never. He remembered the stillness of Rice’s face, the tangible aura of death that had touched everyone who came into the room. Not here. Not at Dream Park. Things like that didn’t happen here.
But they do, and it has. Even here, you can die. And it’s in your lap now, he told the frightened stranger. He checked the stranger’s shirt for nonexistent wrinkles and checked his sleeve for the time. 4:25 a.m. Five minutes to get there.
Griffin’s office was on the second floor of the Administration complex, a ten story building in the exact center of Dream Park, standing on an island in the middle of the central lagoon that connected the wedges of the Dream Park pie. Harmony was on the sixth. The halls on the sixth floor were empty but for a single forlorn maintenance ’bot, whirring almost inaudibly as it sucked up dust.
Griffin let himself into the outer office, past the empty Reception desk, and knocked on Harmony’s door. A radio announcer’s voice called for him to enter.
The Dream Park Director of Operations could easily have demanded an office on the eighth or ninth floors, among the luxury suites. He preferred to be within easy, reach of his staff. The office was not impressive from the outside. Inside, it was a delight. The outer wall was all window, above a magnificent view of the lagoon and sections I and II of Dream Park. The room was high ceilinged and carpeted with natural fiber. Best of all, and the thing that made it such a pleasure to visit: most of the furniture was made of beautiful, expensive, delicately stained wood.
The mahogany desk was massive, and so was the man behind it. Harmony must have weighed two hundred and thirty pounds, only about twenty of it fat. He was in his late fifties, balding, and wore inappropriately delicate pincenez. His nose was flat enough to bring water to a plastic surgeon’s eye, and his shoulders had that linebacker look to them. Only the voice betrayed the image of overwhelming physicality.
“Griffin. Glad to see you.” The tones were cultured in the extreme, every word lovingly rounded, as if shattering the bruiser image were an old and favorite game. Harmony reached across the desk to shake Griffin’s hand with crushing strength. “Have a seat, please. We should probably wait for
O’Brien.”
“Skip’s in on this? Oh, right. We need some tech assistance.”
Harmony successfully stifled a yawn, shaking his head. “Damnable hour to roust someone from bed, but as long as we had to do it, we might as well spread a little of the grief around, eh?”
Alex laughed and looked out of the window absently. It was still too dark to see anything out there, and he found himself hoping the meeting would last until dawn came to Dream Park.
“Albert Rice,” Harmony was saying. “Blond fellow?”
“That’s the one.”
“Was he a good man?”
“He was reliable and intelligent. He was up for a desk job if his psych profile fit the bill. My guess is that he would have been working over here in a year or two.”
Harmony clucked softly. “Seems to happen like that much too often. Well, this whole thing is a mess, Alex. It puts Cowles Industries into a rather sensitive position, and I’m not sure of the best way to handle it. How much have your people learned?”
“Just what you already know. The target was a storage area on the third floor. It may have been something in development for one or more of the new attractions. The whole thing appears to be a case of industrial spying gone sour.”
Skip O’Brien opened the door. “Good morning,” he said, then shook his head. “I guess there’s not much good about it, is there?” He carried a loaded briefcase to the unoccupied chair. “I got together as much information as I could on short notice. Alex, are you sure that that was the only cabinet disturbed?”
“Absolutely. The record tapes on the locks all say that the action happened between nine-thirty and ten-fifteen. The door to the little biochemistry lab in Development on, the third floor was opened at about nine-forty. The project file had been rifled, and we believe that a sample vial of some sort may have been stolen.”
“Oh, my.” It was all that Skip said, but he cracked open his briefcase and began to run notes through a small viewscreen. When he looked up, there were little worry lines creasing his forehead. “I don’t think that you have to tell me which file it was. And the corresponding sample vial was missing? Was the file designation ‘Neutral Smell’?”
Alex nodded. “How did you know?”
“If you spent your time in R&D, you’d know the talk. There was only one thing in there that might have inspired a theft like this. It was sent down from the big Cowles facility in Sacramento. Really secret. This was only the second sample we’ve received. No offense to you, Alex, but they were worried that something like this might happen. They don’t have to worry about Gamers and tourists, so their security is tighter. Anyway, if someone was after that file, then he was hunting very large game indeed. Poor Rice got caught in the middle.” He paused, preoccupation unfocusing his eyes. “I hope that whatever information I can give you helps you catch the bastard.”
Griffin jumped a bit at that. He couldn’t remember ever having heard Skip curse.
O’Brien noticed. He said, unhappily, “If I hadn’t recommended him, Rice might still be alive.”
Alex was a handspan too far away for a comforting touch, so he tried to put softness in his voice. “He needed a job, Skip. He wasn’t your responsibility, just another ex-student of yours, and you helped him. I don’t think he’d blame you for the way things turned out.”
“Maybe not. Maybe he wouldn’t. I don’t like it anyway.”
“None of us do, Skip,” Harmony told him. “So let’s have what you’ve got. It’ll clear the air, and might even enable us to catch the bastard. As you so neatly put it.”
“Right.” Skip fiddled with the viewer until he seemed satisfied. “Some of this is going to be a bit thick, but I’ll try to hold the pidgin Swahili down to a minimum.”
Harmony leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, eyes half closing. Griffin crossed one leg over the other and canted forward.
“Dream Park deals in illusions both subtle and gross. Gross effects include physical constructions, holograms, most of the sound effects, and so forth. Subtleties are mainly concerned with the results of combining different stimuli in the attractions, the manipulation of time and space in the waiting areas, etcetera. Basically, then, placing the customer in a proper mood to ‘correctly’ interpret the gross effects. Without the ‘immersion period’ immediately preceding a ride or experience, the illusion isn’t as convincing. This is old stuff. The Disneyland people used to use waiting time to prepare the customer psychologically.”
“At any rate, as we learned more about the subconscious effects of various elements of Dream Park, we began to wonder if a more direct manipulation of the subconscious might be a fruitful area for study. Since we only want to use those techniques within the attractions themselves, we didn’t have to worry about the existing statutes covering subliminal advertising.”
Skip showed them his first real smile since entering the office. “Some of it was almost absurdly easy once we set our minds to it. We started with sounds. Some frequencies in the subsonic range are well known to stimulate uneasiness or fear. We started with the buzzing sound that angry bees make. When we were satisfied that we could produce fear response in more than eighty percent of our test subjects, we went on from there.”
“High-speed light flashes were even more effective. In the early days, such techniques could only be used on people watching projection screens or billboards, flashing a message lasting for only hundredths of a second. Our holographic projection techniques take us far beyond that. We can broadcast separate images to two people standing side by side. Effectiveness with this technique isn’t where we would like it—only about sixty percent right now—but the flexibility is enormous.”
He looked up from his viewscreen, folding the lid of his briefcase down. He had been speaking distractedly, as if one part of his mind were collating information while the other part related it to them.
“Human beings have four basic kinds of sensory receptors. Electromagnetic, mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors, and chemoreceptors. The rods and cones of the eye are electromagnetic receptors. Mechanoreceptors respond to touch, pressure, et cetera. For instance, the eardrums are mechanoreceptors; they respond to the pressure of sound waves. Thermoreceptors are free nerve endings sensitive to heat and cold. We’ve done work in each of these areas, with the promise of more to come. We had trouble with chemoreceptors. Taste buds, the cells of the carotid and aortic bodies, the olfactory cells of the nose . . . we couldn’t do much with those, so naturally that was where we concentrated our efforts.”
Griffin drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair and cleared his throat. “I take it that whatever was stolen was a result of these efforts?”
O’Brien looked sheepish. “Am I going on too much? I thought some background would be useful.”
“Go ahead, Skip, there might be something valuable in even the trivia.”
“O-kay. Our problems were manyfold: accuracy of the effect, harmlessness of the chemical agent, undetectability, means of distribution, etcetera. We made an abortive effort to trigger the olfactory nerves with sound, but it just won’t work. The receptors respond only to chemicals.
“The potential is tremendous, gentlemen. The olfactory nerves are the only ones that connect directly to the brain. The medial olfactory lobe seems to be involved with the limbic system in the expression of emotion. There is believed to be a ‘Pleasure center’ located there.
“As I said, the olfactory cells need a chemical to trigger them. What they are, actually, are bipolar nerve cells originating from the central nervous system itself. When one is triggered it becomes ‘depolarized,’ which causes a battery effect, and a current flows. Voila, a nervous impulse. Present theory holds that the molecular shape, rather than the chemical properties of a substance, determines its smell. On the basis of this theory, seven different primary classes of odor have been established: camphoraceous, musky, floral, pepperminty, ethereal, pungent, and putrid. Of course these can be combined. What we theorize
d is that there are ‘neutral’ scents, scents which trigger depolarization in the olfactory nerves without any conscious sensation of smell. If we could find the molecular shape which accomplishes this, we would be on our way.
“How many different kinds of response were you hoping to get?” Harmony asked from behind his peaked fingers, eyes still deceptively lidded.
“We weren’t sure. Nausea, salivation, sexual behavior, and—”
“Sexual behavior?”
“Everybody triggers on that one. Yes, sexual behavior. As far back as the 1960’s two chemicals, copulin and androsterone, were found to be sexual signals in monkeys, and to some extent in human beings. Humans have a more complex set of factors involved in attraction than, animals. Many of them are social in nature and no chemical yet discovered can really make up your mind for you.” He grinned. “But we’re trying.”
O’Brien extracted a cigarette from his inside coat pocket, and lit it with an unsteady hand. At a glance from Griffin Harmony unobtrusively turned on a tiny fan in the ceiling, and Skip’s smoke vanished into it.
“What we did,” he began again, “was to use an advanced version of a device called an electro-olfactograph, which registers electrical impulses in the olfactory nerves. We finally found a substance that causes depolarization without conscious recognition of scent at any concentration.”
“What was the chemical?”
“I couldn’t give you the formula, Alex. I don’t know it myself. I can say that it was a highly volatile lipid-soluble chemical, with saline as the carrying agent. Once we had that, the work really began. It was really incredible. This was all about seven months ago. Since that time I’ve heard that Sacramento has variants that will induce tears, laughter, reflex vomiting, sleep, even something suspiciously like agape, brotherly love. God only knows what they’ll come up with when they really know what they’re doing. At any rate, they sent over a sample for us to test, that and accompanying data. I’m afraid that is most probably the target of our burglary.”
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