Larry Niven & Steve Barnes - The Barsoom project

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This book is an Ace original edition, and has never been previously published.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is
purely coincidental.
THE BARSOOM PROJECT
An Ace Book published by arrangement with the authors
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without
permission. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
Ace books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New
York 10016.
The name "ACE" and the "A" logo are trademarks belonging to Charter Communications, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Quality Printing and Binding by:
Orange Graphics
P.O. Box 791
Orange, VA 22960 U.S.A.
CAST OF CHARACTERS AND GLOSSARY
Falling Angel
RICHARD ARBENZ: Ambassador from Falling Angel; Charlene Dula's maternal uncle.
Dream Park
MARTY BOBBICK: Griffin's assistant. Plays as Hippogryph.
ARTHUR COWLES: Founder of Dream Park.
ALEX GRIFFIN: Security Chief of Dream Park.
THADEUS HARMONY: Dream Park Director of Operations.
MITCH HASAGAWA: Dream Park Security. TOMISUBURO IZUML Dream Park R&D tech. CALVIN IZUMI: Brother
of Tom, deceased. SANDY KHRESLA: Head of Dream Park Maintenance Division.
CARY McGIWON: Alex Griffin's new assistant. MILLICENT SUMMERS: Formerly Griffin's secretary.
Now an executive in the Department of Financial Affairs.
DOCTOR VAIL: Dream Park psychologist. DWIGHT WELLES: Senior computer tech for Dream
Park; Game Master for the altered Fimbuiwinter Game.
Gamers
ROBIN BOWLES: Professional actor. Actor in the Fimbuiwinter Game. Talisman: caribou's ear, for
hearing.
CHARLENE DULA: Gamer from the zero-gray habitat Falling Angel, and friend to Michelle Sturgeon.
Talisman: a swatch of white fur, arctic seal, for invisibility.
EVIANE alias MICHELLE RIVERS alias MICHELLE
STURGEON: Veteran of the first Fimbuiwinter Game. Plays most of the game as a tomrait. Talisman:
semi-automatic rifle.
FRANCIS HEBERT: Marine, Major in the reserves. AVRAM HENDERSON: Gamer
MAZIE HENDERSON: Gamer.
OLLIE NORLISS alias FRANKISH OLIVER: Professional Gamer and MD.
MARTIN QATERLIARAQ alias MARTIN THE ARCTIC FOX: Sorcerer or angakok among the Inuit. Actor in the
Fimbulwinter Game.
GWEN RYDER alias CANDICE alias KANGUQ alias SNOW GOOSE: Professional actress. Married to Ollie
Norliss.
MAX SANDS: Gamer Professional wrestler under the name Mr. Mountain. Talisman: owl claw, for
strength.
ORSON SANDS: Max Sands's brother Gamer.
TRIANNA STITH-WOOD: Professional chef.
KEVIN TITUS: Computer programmer and computer gamer Talisman: a crumpled skin crusted with black
soot, for strength. "Soot is stronger than fire.
JOHNNY WELSH: Gamer; professional comedian. YARNALL alias THE NATIONAL GUARDSMAN:
Dream Park actor
Others
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ANDREW CHALA: Pan-African ambassador.
KAREEM FEKESH: Industrialist, suspected supporter of UMAF
ROBERT J. FLAHERTY: Producer of Nanook of the North, 1922.
TOBY LEE HARLOW JUNIOR: Alias of the person who disrupted the first Fimbulwinter Game.
LOPEZES: Legendary Game Masters, now semiretired.
TONY McWHIRTER: Computer whiz, incarcerated for industrial espionage against Cowles Industries.
MADELEINE: Mystery woman; a possible link to Kareem Fekesh.
RAZUL: Libyan ambassador
Glossary
AHK-LUT: Leader of the Cabal; son of Martin Qaterliaraq, brother of Snow Goose.
AMARTOQ: A headless troll.
ANANSI: A space shuttle, the object of a terrorist attack some years earlier
ANGAKOK: Sorcerer
BRANTA CANADENSIS alias Tuutangayak alias Canadian Snow Goose.
THE CABAL: The clique of evil sorcerers.
COWLES INDUSTRIES: The parent company of Dream Park
COWLES MODULAR COMMUNITY: Living quarters for Dream Park employees.
FALLING ANGEL ENTERPRISES: Industrial nation-state, off-Earth.
FAT RIPPER SPECIALS: Games modified for the reeducation of substance abusers.
HOLY FIRE: Terrorist organization, precursor to the UMAF
INTELCORP: The company formed by the partnership of General Electric and Falling Angel
Enterprises.
INTERNATIONAL FANTASY GAMING SOCIETY:
The governing body supervising the world of Adventure Gaming.
KOGUKHPUK: The Burrowing Mammoth.
LEVIATHAN IV: Mining rig proposed for use in terra-forming Mars.
MARK CARD: A widely accepted inter-Union credit card.
OFFICIAL IFGS KAMA SUTRA: A myth, a mere rumor. It doesn't exist. Forget it. Trust us.
PAIJA: Giant female demon.
PEWITU: Taboos.
PHANTOM FEAST: A Dream Park diet restaurant.
RAVEN: Progenerative force in Inuit mythology.
SEDNA: Goddess of the sea and of the sea's life.
SEELUMKADCHLUK: Where the sky meets the sea; the barrier between reality and the Inuit spiritual
world.
TERICHIK: A gigantic caterpillar-like monster; the spirit form of Ahk-lut.
TIN-MI-UK-PUKS, or THUNDERBIRDS: Fabulous Roc-like creatures.
TORNGARSOAK: Sedna's lover, Lord of the Hunt.
TORNR~4IT: Ghost who serves an angakok, usually as a source of information.
UNITED MOSLEM ACTIVIST FRONT or UMAF: A radical mideastem terrorist organization.
USIK: A weapon crafted from the pubic bone of a walrus.
WINIGO: Inuit Yeti.
WOLFALCONS: Hybrid creatures, half wolf, half giant bird of prey.
THE BARSOOM PROJECT
PROLOGUE
Like a raging mountain, the Terichik rose screaming from a frozen, nightdark sea. Its many-
sectioned, grotesquely wormlike body reared up; tons of water and ice thundered into the ocean
with a howl like the death of worlds. The black night swirled wind-whipped snow through mist that
tasted of salt. The Tenchik's mouth gaped cavernously. Endless rows of serrated teeth gleamed as
it shrieked its mindless wrath. Its breath was a cold and fetid wind.
The humans beneath it were warrior and wizard, princess and commoner. They were frail meat in the
Terichik's path, brittle fleshly twigs tumbled in an angry storm. They scrambled for safety, ran
back onto land, away from the sea. They fled past the wreckage of the shattered Inuit village:
rows of crushed houses, a great stone lodge with its roof stove in, boat hulls splintered and
scattered like insect husks.
Buiwar was the first Adventurer to die, and he died well. He was the greatest warrior among them,
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but foolish to think that his enchanted usik, the pubic bone of the sacred walrus, could stand
against the Tenchik. Even faced by a beast to dwarf ten killer whales, Bulwar roared defiance and
sprang forward. His ice-caked black beard flagged in the frigid air. His mightily thewed arms
coiled beneath the bear furs that lent him strength and courage. Buiwar had once been an ordinary
man, a "systems analyst" in the white man's world. Here where the heavens met the earth, he was a
great warrior, a great force for good.
His magic, his courage, his strength were not enough. The Terichik crushed him, savaged his body
with fanged cilia. His screams echoed in their heads long after his body had vanished into its
gaping maw.
The humans retreated. There were twelve now, people of the tundras and the people from the white
world beyond.
They ran until the sound of rifle shots split their screams. Two more of their number fell,
trapped in a withering crossfire.
Agile and lithe, beautiful Eviane rolled to safety behind an abandoned boathouse. Even as she hit
the ground, she unslung the automatic rifle from her back and braced the butt against her
shoulder.
She was a woman of flaming red hair and sparkling green eyes. Her mouth was generously wide, quick
to laughter or rage. Now it was flattened into a fighting grimace cold enough to freeze the stars
in the sky.
She peered along the rifle barrel and then glanced back over her shoulder. Her companions were
holding the Tenchik at bay. The sky shimmered with power, enchanted flame searing away the clouds.
It was Eviane's task to break the back of the ambush, to send the minions of the Cabal howling
back into the wastes.
The Terichik rose to blot out the moon and stars. Its screams shook the earth. Eviane's stomach
boiled acid with fear.
Now was not the moment to shirk! Now was the time to concentrate, to bring her wit and skill to
bear.
She sighted through the rifle scope. Through the driving snow, a black-speckled ridge of ice and
rock leapt into relief. Somewhere behind it were the men who held them pinned and vulnerable to
the awesome Terichik.
Her scope's crosshairs trisected a shadowed forehead. Eviane grinned: one of the Cabal's minions
was about to join his ancestors. The painted face, the glowing eyes were almost an invitation.
She inhaled deeply, held that breath, and squeezed the thgger.
The rifle jittered against her shoulder. Snow sprayed to the Cabalist's left. He jumped in
surprise. Before he could run she fired a second time. He threw his arms around his chest; his
mouth gaped wide. Recoil pulled Eviane's gun barrel upward. The Cabalist's head exploded.
Eviane was shocked. Tickled in an odd way, but shocked. Strange. Usually you just get the flash of
red. This time they're using prosthetic makeup effects. Kinda gag-out, but Wow!
Confusion reigned on the far side of the ridge, and the attack, the ambush, was breaking. It had
failed! The enemy was in rout! Eviane came to her feet, howling victory, and her companions rose
with her. Brandishing guns and spears they raced across the frozen ground. The night blizzard's
shrieks matched their own.
Another Cabalist rose, his hands raised to the air in the sign of surrender.
Take no prisoners! She laughed giddily, and fired from the hip. The Cabalist doubled over, holding
his stomach. He yelled something, something that seemed to take great effort to say, but the wind
was too loud to make out the words. His face was twisted with pain.
Eviane fired again, and his body straightened out as if hit under the chin with a baseball bat.
Twisting, he crumpled to the ground.
Eviane walked to her first target, moving more slowly now. She stared down at the body.
The wind's whistle was dying. The flakes of ice were settling to the ground. The air was warming,
but she shook.
She bent down, examining the wound she had inflicted. The man's forehead was gone.
What incredible. . . effects...
As if they had a will of their own, her fingers touched the dead man, crawled to the ghastly hole
above the still, staring eyes. They traced the edges- The wind died. Sound became silence, save
for the whimper of wounded and the growing murmur of the other warriors who approached with
lowered weapons. Mute, the titanic shape of the Terichik writhed in the sky behind them.
Eviane stood, eyes wide, mouth open but silent. Finally, as with a terrible effort she screamed,
and ran. She threw the rifle, the goddamned rifle, aside and hurled herself behind an upturned
stand of boats.
She knelt there, whimpering, and watched without comprehension as the Terichik flickered and
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dissolved. As the moon disappeared from the sky above her. And the stars. And the distant
mountains. All that had been heaven and horizon was now a blank white dome crisscrossed with
enormous rectangles.
One building at a time, the abandoned Inuit village disappeared: the lodge, the smokehouse, the
line of boats. The boathouse remained, but it was too far. Eviane whimpered and ran and hid again,
this time beneath a heap of splintered wood and iron: the only remaining boat.
Over and over in an endless loop her mind screamed: What is happening? What is happening? I don't
under-ohgodohgod- And then even the wreckage disappeared.
Eviane knelt on a blank field of white. Around her, her companions threw down their weapons and
began to gather around the two bloodstained bodies.
At the edge of the dome, a door opened. Men and women in crisp orange uniforms entered. They
mouthed phrases about "effects breakdowns" and "optical difficulties" as they hustled away the
warriors and angakoks, the princess and the commoners, separated the quick from the dead. Eviane
remained on her knees, unseeing, unhearing, even when she was lifted up and carried gently but
firmly to the exit.
The bodies were covered, belted onto stretchers, and whisked away. Only blurred imprints and
smears of red remained on the artificial snow.
Finally, men came to pick up the rifle. They handled it with infinite care, as if it were a
sleeping viper or a live grenade, something that might awaken to wreak new and greater havoc.
As if it was a thing of magic in a world of technology, or of technology in a world of magic.
Chapter One
THE BARSOOM PROJECT
"In the beginning.' Three words spoken uncounted billions of times."
The narrator's voice echoed everywhere and originated nowhere. It filled the vast dark cavern of
Gaming Area A with its rolling, resonant embrace. Alex Griffin peered into the blackness.
Phantasmal carts danced about him in elaborate patterns, orange outlines in his infr~red goggles.
The carts glided through an endless, empty night, invisible to each other.
"Yet they have never lost their magic, never diminished in majesty. Ever have we looked back to
the roots of our cultures, the origin of our species, the genesis of our planet.
"Come with us now, and peer into the past of our solar system, to the formation of our most
distinctive neighbor-"
A darkened dome a few hundred meters across became a urn-verse: the stars emerged.
Above and below, they flamed in primal glory. Never had the skies of Earth been so fully or
brightly populated. Blobs and streams of dark matter moved across the stars, dimming them. Never
had the stars made any noise at all, but now Griffin's bones rattled with the reverberations of
the best sound system in the Western hemisphere.
One dim star abruptly flared brighter than all the rest. It was blinding.. . it was already
dimming, while shells of lesser fire expanded from the supernova at ferocious speed. There were
flame-colors in the shock waves.
Griffin chuckled quietly.
The thirteen hundred dignitaries gathered here by Cowles Industries and IntelCorp were in for a
hell of a show. His chief deputy Marty Bobbick had a grip on his elbow. Marty's round face was
soft with wonder, and his eyes gleamed.
"Though details differ, current theories agree that the solar system originated as a cold cloud of
interstellar gas. There were snowflakes and snowballs, protocomets, scattered through it.
And so it remained until the shock wave from a nearby supernova disturbed its equilibrium."
The supernova had died to nothing. . . no, not quite gone. Griffin found it as a tiny blinking
dot. Then the shock waves arrived with a rolling crash that owed less to physics than to Dream
Park magic. The vast interstellar dust clouds bowed before it; flattened, then began to collapse
and condense. There were hurricane shapes at the centers. The viewpoint zoomed in on one of the
whorls as streamers began to separate, giving it the look of a carelessly spray-painted archery
target. The great storm sparkled like a fireworks display. The center began to glow.
"Gravity and spin became the dominant factors. Stars began to form," the unseen narrator said, but
Griffin found his mind blanking out the words. The illusion was so overpoweringly real that his
chest ached for breath.
A new sun blazed forth, awesomely bright within its murky sheath of dust and comets. In that
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terrible light Griffin could see lumps condensing along the rings that surrounded the sun. The
solar system was still murky; comets moved through the viewpoint like white bullets.
This was the big one, the project toward which Cowles had angled for over a decade, the beginning
of the largest venture in mankind's history. And Griffin was part of it. . . if only as the
security man who would keep these multinational billionaires from murdering each other. The 1,333
men and women taking their slow trips into the heart of the primordial solar system would be much
more a part of it, if they chose.
And if they didn't, there would be no Barsoom Project.
And if there were no Barsoom Project, then. . . very soon, by geological time, there might be no
life on Earth.
The turgid protostellar whirl was clearing now. Sunlight boiled away the nearer comets, leaving
residues that would become asteroids; boiled the atmospheres from even the closer planets. The
planets flashed and flamed from time to time as smaller bodies smashed into them. The viewpoint
moved toward one such body, a glowing, cratered, lumpy sphere that grew clearer as its atmosphere
dissipated.
Griffin wrenched his mind out of the illusion and brushed the controls before him in the cart. Of
the hundred and fifty cornputer-driven carts gliding through an embryonic cosmos, he and
Marty had the only cart equipped with manual override. In case of emergency, he could reach
another cart within moments. There was no reason to expect any such emergency, but...
He whispered to Marty, "Let's peek in on them." Marty nodded-he still had a death-grip on Alex's
elbow-and Alex rattle-tapped instructions to the heat-sensitive vidplate before him.
It lit. It became a quad splitscreen, and in each quadrant a cart appeared. Each cart seated ten
visiting dignitaries. At upper-left were intense, serious visitors from the United Kingdom. Only
one, a rotund woman in her fifties, was smiling broadly, clapping with childish glee.
Upper-right held officials from International Labor Union 207, the energy people. The
international unions were more powerful than some nations. Certainly they were prime candidates
for the offer that IntelCorp and Cowles wished to make.
Chitchat broke off, heads swiveled right, mouths gaped. A gargantuan gas-sheathed snowball roared
directly at 207's cart. A smaller cornet grazed it. A tenor scream split the air as the comet
flared blindingly and passed on the right.
They laughed and slapped each other on the backs, none knowing who among them had screamed.
Lower-left was the Pan-African coalition. . . members who were not currently embroiled in war.
What a mess. Africa was a jungle, all right. A jungle of artificially drawn lines, so complex that
things might not sort themselves out for another century. National boundaries, tribal boundaries,
industrial boundaries, and union boundaries all writhed and fluxed and left bloody tracks behind,
year after year for the past century. Project Barsoom might straighten them out
might give some of these political entities cause to fix them in place. A reason to forget the
past, for the sake of the future.
Lower-right, ten young Tolkien elves, inhumanly tall and slender, yelled and laughed and ducked a
passing comet. That was IntelCorp, the company formed by the partnership of Genera! Electric and
Falling Angel Enterprises.
Wiser heads within those companies, understanding that massive success and massive inertia are two
sides of a coin, had split off some of the best young minds from the GE think tanks. These maniacs
were backed with a hundred eighty million dollars and linked with the creative whirlwinds behind
Falling Angels, the rogue technological "nation" orbiting Luna. The zero-gravity laboratories of
Falling Angels were responsible for the Tokyo-Seoul expansion bridge, as well as a revolution in
high-tensile engineering.
The result was one of the most effective think tanks in history. They already held eight percent
of the most productive patents issued in the past decade, and the best was yet to come.
The sun had dimmed. The solar system was finally settling down. The cratered sphere in the
foreground was drifting closer. Its rocks had breathed forth a new atmosphere, pink in hue and not
thick enough to block the topography. . . and as the orange-red sphere grew huge, clean white
polar caps and a lacing of long gray-green lines were suddenly apparent. Two cratered moons rose
over the planet's eastern curve.
There was laughter from the carts. "ln 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli observed a
network of single and double lines crisscrossing the surface of the planet. Canali means
'channels' or 'grooves' in Italian, but the word was mistranslated into 'canals,' which implies
intelligent design. .
"Quite a show, eh?" Marty grinned in the dark: a new moon. "I want to sign up right now."
"Get out your Mark card if you've got the money. They'll be passing the hat pretty quick." Alex
continued to look at Marty's black silhouette. "We haven't done any mat work for over a month.
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Have you been working the treadmill?"
"Sure. Well, not every day." He sighed guiltily. "Guess I'm gonna pay for that, huh?"
In about thirty-six hours Marty would be in his first Game. It was a Fat Ripper Special. The
monsters chasing him would be slow, and that was as well. Alex's assistant had been muscular when
Security hired him. Muscular, hell. . . he had come within one point of a Bronze in judo at
Mexico's Pan-American Games in '36. By the time Griffin came over from Cowles Seattle in '49,
Marty was soft, but still strong and skilled; he could wipe the floor with Griffin in a structured
randori. Now Marty's weight was seventy pounds out of control.
They said these special Games would rip the fat right off you. And then they laughed. A week of
waddling after orcs and dragons doesn't make anyone thin.
The IntelCorp cart (lower-right) held the reason that Marty would join the Fat Ripper. Charlene
Dula stood seven feet zero, tall even for a Falling Angel. Her uncle Richard Arbenz was only an
inch shorter, a double Ph.D. responsible for two of those lucrative patents.
Both were possible targets for terrorists.
The exact origins of the feud between Falling Angel and OPEC were lost in a welter of crisscrossed
accusations. Falling Angel swore that it began in the infamous Anansi incident, when armed
mercenaries had attacked a Falling Angel spacecraft. The United Moslem Activist Front were widely
held responsible, although they had never been brought to task.
The UMAF had placed sole responsibility for the near disaster on a Brazilian industrial concern.
No one believed them, and the organization had long since disbanded or been absorbed piecemeal
into a dozen other pro-Arab organizations, especially the renegade Holy Fire group.
There had been other problems through the years-economic boycotts, military blockades, even
reports of sabotage. It formed a thinly veiled pattern of hostility which had neither resolved nor
escalated into open war.
The result was a highly effective war of nerves. At the moment, the battleground was the acid-
ravaged stomach lining of one Alex Griffin, Security Chief of Dream Park. The industrial and
political descendants of all involved parties were held in Gaming Area A of Dream Park.
Griffin tapped; the quad screen blinked and forty new faces appeared. Alex counted off Texaco,
IBM, Aeroflot, and the Mitsubishi/Red Star consortium.
Mankind had come so far in some ways, and in others remained up in the trees, chittering and
throwing rocks at each other.
If only the trees weren't so close together. If only the rocks were smaller.
Perhaps Barsoom would give mankind a second chance. There would be no room on Mars for the poor or
ignorant. Human frailties would follow man to the stars, but some of the simpler motivations to
violence could be left in the Cradle.
"-Viking probes demonstrated that the Martian environment was not the haven for extraterrestrial
life envisioned by Burroughs, Wells, and Lowell." The viewpoint skimmed above tidy, spindly-
towered cityscapes at the junctures of the canals. Alex glimpsed a street crowded with eight-
limbed beasts, red- and ebony-skinned men, and tall, insectile green tharks, each group carefully
avoiding all others...
Then the sky darkened nearly to black, cities and canals faded away, the great moons shrank to
lumpish dots. "Rather Mars is a
barren desert, without sufficient water, oxygen, or hope to support any but the simplest lie
forms. Its atmosphere is far too thin to resist the fierce solar flux. Mars is lashed by
ultraviolet radiation that would kill all but the hardiest microbes.
"Despite the dreams of the past, there is no life on Mars. But there will be Martians."
The carts rolled across the surface of Mars. The landscape stretched to a razor-sharp horizon, too
close, an endless plain of gray-red rocks and sand broken here and there by the rise of a weary-
looking mountain.
A thin, lifeless wind whispered about them. Even with Marty seated next to him, Alex felt so
unimaginably lonely that it shocked him. What was it? Subsonics? Subliminals in the light
patterns? Whatever it was, it was eerily effective.
Mars seemed then a spinster sister awaiting the kiss of life, a bridesmaid to vibrant Earth,
looking longingly across a two-hundred-million-mile gap, waiting, waiting...
Ever a bridesmaid, never a bride.
A light appeared in the sky, a moving, twinkling star crossing from east to west. It loomed larger
and brighter, like some huge diamond, and suddenly it blazed. It was like a nearby sun when it
touched the western horizon.
The ground shuddered. The sky shivered with the flash. It was as if an H-bomb had detonated. What
stood above the horizon was not a mushroom (Mars's atmosphere wasn't that thick) but a rapidly
expanding dome of flame. The dome's rim rushed at them, rolled over them with a roar. It passed,
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leaving them unharmed. Orange magma flowed forth where the intruder had struck.
"-ljfe can come to this barren world, life in a flash offire-"
A second comet streaked across the sky, and this one seemed to come straight at them, filling the
sky, filling Alex's vision. Alex screamed with delighted terror as the world exploded. Suddenly
the sky was pouring with sleet and rain. A billion tons of ice had vaporized-a thousand times the
size of the comet fragment that exploded over central Siberia on June 30, 1908.
"-we can bring air and water to Mars-"
No poet had ever pictured Mars as female and Earth as male. Too bad, Alex thought. The Barsoom
Project would get Mars with child.
As if by the power of time-lapse photography, the rain fell all around them now, utterly
convincing. If Alex reached a hand into
that, would it get wet? He did it. His hand remained dry in the midst of a torrential downpour.
Marty stifled a laugh.
The rains passed. The small sun, filtered through a thicker atmosphere, seemed gentler now.
Perspective tilted until they were staring at reddish, sandy soil. Dust became gravel became
boulders as the carts were zoomed down to a different level of existence. Alex found himself
watching Earth-tailored bacteria at work.
The wriggling shapes became more complex; rocky soil broke under their attack; the rain turned
fine Marsdust to mud. The expanding carts raced ahead of a writhing network of roots and emerged
into a shrinking jungle of green plants.
Now the carts moved through a fall of Marsdust. Great bucketlike vehicles dropped out of the sky,
each of a different bizarre design, puffing flame only at the moment before impact. Men erected
the spiderweb-thin skeleton of a dome, then filled it in with rhomboidal panels.
The carts were semi-independent now. They would go where their occupants pointed them, though they
remained out of view of each other. The central computer controlled them still, so that there was
no chance of the invisible carts colliding with each other.
Griffin cruised closer to the dome. It seemed huge: bigger than Gaming A, big enough for a small
city, an environment that could house an entire community of engineers and scientists~
"-there will be Martians. We will be the Martians. And you will be part of that process. This is
the fisture. This is how it will begin."
Griffin accepted a glass of wine from the hand of an eight-foot indigo thark. Its four arms
articulated gracefully. It delicately picked its way through the crowd, dispensing a seemingly
endless stream of wine and beverages. For an instant he wondered how the ifiusion was sustained.
Surely it was solid. Perhaps a human being within an external shell, the upper arms controlled by
waldos?
This was futile. The magic of the Dream Park technicians should be accepted as magic, and there
were more important matters to occupy his mind.
A brass-voiced Brit was telling half a dozen amused Americans that "cannelloni means 'pasta' or
'dinner' in Italian, but the
word was mistranslated into 'noodles,' which implies intelligent design..
Japanese investors chatted excitedly as they admired the Phoenix Fl, the rocket vehicle IntelCorp
had bet its roll on. It was a truncated cone, shaped much like its little brothers, the Phoenix
variations that had served between Earth and moon for fifty years. But the Phoenix F! wouldn't be
just bigger. It would be fusion-powered. The kind of plasma torus that powered Bussard fusion
plants on Earth would form the base of the beast; it would leak half-fused deuterium plasma to
form a rocket exhaust.
Special Effects had been playing with the Fl. Most of the model must be a hologram, but part of
the base had children crawling all over it. No adult in the room was likely to live long enough to
see the project's completion, but these children might. One day they would control Barsoom stock,
and they would remember.
"A neat trick, eh?" The voice as a low grumble, and Griffin turned to see Harmony's face looming
above him.
Alex said, "Good move, getting them to bring their children."
"We gave them all a week's free Gold Pass to Dream Park. What better way to make these people take
the investment seriously?"
Thadeus Harmony was a bear of a man, with the shoulders of the linebacker he had once been. But
time had sloped those shoulders, and a desk job added to the thickness of the waist. There was
extra gray in Harmony's hair now, more lines in the blunt features, and a bitter twist to his
mouth that hadn't been there a year ago.
In his first year at Dream Park, Alex had dived into the work headfirst, sometimes not emerging
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for weeks at a time. Harmony was the one who hauled Alex kicking and screaming from his desk to
ski in Aspen or cast for shark in the Bahamas.
All Alex wanted was to return the favor. He had not yet been able to find a way. All he could do
was watch a close friend turn into an old man before his eyes. The sense of helplessness was
numbing.
With a sudden clankety-rumbling sound, the Leviathan IV model rolled up to them, and stopped. The
demo version of the mining rig was only two-thirds the size of the actual unit, but at seven feet
high, still impressive. A flock of children rode the vehicle like dogfaces riding a Sherman in
World War II. The Leviathan chattered about its specs. Alex paused a moment to
listen, and to watch the digging jaws and claws extend, watched the tank-treads and steel sides
turn translucent as the whole thing went schematic: ore sample tank, three-man passenger cabin,
minilab, communications, powertrain all detailed.
"Looks like a crab on rollers," Griffin said, walking on.
Harmony was silent.
The Security Chief waited a couple of seconds, and when no comment was forthcoming, ventured
another comment. "Everything seems to be going well, don't you think?"
"Yes, everything," Harmony said. Griffin stopped. A flat note of disgust had taken root in
Harmony's voice, suddenly growing strong. Harmony's eyes were tight and wary, and moved too
quickly, as if looking for something to avoid.
"What's wrong?" Griffin asked, voice low. "Don't bother saying 'nothing.' Your nostrils twitch
when you lie."
Not a trace of a smile. Harmony shook his massive head. "I have it on the best authority that
nothing is wrong. The very best."
"Ah-hah. Well, I can accept that. But tell me."
"What?"
Nobody in earshot? "If there was something wrong-and there isn't, of course. But if you were
listing the people you'd most like to watch sky-dive into a school of sharks, who might head the
list?"
Harmony's face creased in a reluctant smile. "Ah. Evocatively phrased."
"Well?"
Harmony opened his mouth and shut it again. "Never mind, Alex. I've been told that what's done is
done. 'Are you racing toward the future, or are you mired in the past?' That's what I was asked."
Harmony smiled politely as a flock of chattering Japanese businessmen scuttled by. The instant
they passed, his face went flat and bitter. "That's what they asked me."
Thirteen hundred guests milled around "A," poking into this, peering at that. They tended to form
distinct clusters. The Arab delegation moved toward Griffin and Harmony as they inspected a 1/10
scale industrial complex, a computer-drawn hologram that pumped and hissed right down to the last
detail. Its miniature lights made it a jeweled crown in the light of a Martian sunset.
Alex watched Harmony's face darken. Was it here, someone in this group of men? Who? His eye went
to the tallest man in the group. Their leader, an industrialist named Kareem Fekesh, met
his gaze. Fekesh was six feet of effortless elegance, darkly feline in a suit that made Harmony's
Ralph Lauren look like a Salvation Army special. Fekesh inclined his head politely and turned back
to his conversation.
Anyone else? If someone posed a clear security risk, Harmony would have spoken of it regardless of
orders.
Whose orders?
The group from Falling Angel was nearby. Griffin directed himself and Hannony in that direction.
"Ambassador?"
Ambassador Arbenz inclined his head gravely. "You are the Security Chief?"
Alex nodded. "Alex Griffin. And this is Thadeus Harmony, Deputy Director of Operations for Cowles
Industries. He used to be my boss."
"Kicked upstairs." Harmony's smile was purest porcelain. Alex watched them shake hands. It tickled
him to see Harmony looking up at the man. Arbenz said, "This is a great success, I think. To have
collected so many different nations and interests at one place and one time. I wonder if any other
organization could have accomplished it."
"Time will tell whether the victory is real or symbolic, Ambassador. There are greater things at
stake than raw human ego."
"Nothing else costs so dearly."
"True enough."
A painfully thin and awesomely tall brunette came to stand at Arbenz's side. "Have you met my
niece? Charlene, Thadeus Harmony, Alex Griffin."
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The girl smiled shyly. She was pretty, in that elongated Spacer way. Alex saw her as a bit flat-
chested and far too thin; but there was a basic sweetness and cheer to her as she said, "I'm so
happy to be here."
"It's been a long eight weeks, hasn't it?"
"Yes, and only my second time down." She shook her head regretfully. "I built up my legs in the
centrifuge and on the exercise bikes, but I've still twisted both ankles." She bent her legs
experimentally. "My knee hurts."
"I hope you'll be all right for the Game."
"I've got two knees," she said, suddenly mischievous. "There's only one Dream Park."
"You don't know any of the other Garners?" Where was Marty?
"I have a companion. We met through Compunet. She's a Gamer too, and we partnered on some frantic
vid campaigns. I'm looking forward to playing with her here. Wow." Her eyes glowed. "I still can't
believe I'm really here."
"I know the feeling." He'd heard it too often. Alex realized that he hadn't a whole lot more to
say to Charlene.
Her hand pulled at his arm. "These effects. They're so... real. How do they do it?"
Alex winked. "Santa's secret. I tell you what-after you're out of the Game, I'll introduce you to
the elves. How's that?"
"Fine. Thank you very much."
Harmony and Alex drifted away from the crowd, and Griffin could feel the tension reviving in his
friend.
"Alex-"
Before he had a chance to say anything else, Alex's beeper trilled against his wrist. He said,
"The office wants me. Shall I tell them-"
"We'll talk later," Harmony said.
Harmony's eyes wer& haunted. To hell with the beeper was halfway to Alex's lips, but he bit it
back. What was going on here?
But the haunted look vanished as Harmony slammed the wall down. "Duty calls, Alex," he said
sardonically. He winked as if someone had pulled a string behind his eyeball. Alex thought it was
obscene. Harmony turned and vanished into the crowd.
Alex walked toward one of the side doors, pressed tabs on his watch and heard the lock beep in
response. The door opened. With a last look at Mars-the past, the fanciful, and the future
-he disappeared out the side door.
Chapter Two
THE PHANTOM FEAST
Gwen Ryder had been told about the Phantom Feast, but she still stopped in the doorway,
bewildered.
It might have been a library. Half the walls were books, and most of those were tall and wide,
heavily illustrated. Diet books and cookbooks and nothing else. Some were quite old, some quite
recent. There were hundreds.
An old book, The Beverly Hills Diet, had been disassembled. Its pages papered one wall. Customers
on their way out clustered around, guffawing as they read the funnier passages aloud.
Another wall was covered with fading photos of impossibly rich desserts-with a comparison chart
showing how many New York Marathon miles it would take to burn off the calories. A double-exposure
photo of anorexic, number-chested men and women staggering toward a ten-story banana split was
stark and somehow disturbing.
It was 2:20, ten minutes before Ollie was scheduled to show up, and well past lunch hour. The
Phantom Feast was still crowded. Old and young, cheerful or morose, singles and clusters, the
customers all looked somewhat alike.
They were stocky, chubby, fat, or morbidly obese. Gwen was startled to recognize a famous middle-
aged actor, Robin Bowles, cheerfully scrawling autographs for a handful of supplicants. She
grinned, not because she collected autographs, but because he looked so real. . . and so
comfortable. Six feet tall, maybe five feet in circumference, the huge, balding presence who had
dominated so many vidscreens signed a last book and sagged back in a chair his own size.
No need to worry about little teeny chairs in the Phantom Feast!
Mazie Henderson waved from a table for four, without getting up. She was roly-poly, an oval woman
with a round, florid face,
but at five four she wasn't big enough for her chair. Her companion was bigger and a few years
older.
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Reluctantly, Gwen went over. The man got to his feet. It was the limit of his strength. Long black
hair, full black beard, an ornate silver buckle the size of his palm. Mazie said, "Gwen, you know
my husband Avram. Avram's a Magic User now." Avram smiled and pumped her hand once and sat down
too hard. Worn
out.
Marie didn't look much better. Gwen's broad smile had no visible malice in it, she hoped. "Well!
You must have enjoyed the East Gate Game. How about we take in a few rides? I've tried the Everest
Ski Slope and it's-"
Marie leaned toward Avram and stabbed a weary finger at Gwen. "Kill that for me."
"Dear, I haven't the energy."
Gwen laid an empathetic hand on Marie's shoulder. "I but jested." Hallelujah! Maybe she could
escape without a numbing barrage of anecdote. It might be safe to sit, after all.
In high school Gwen had become almighty tired of Marie's Gaming stories.
That had been old-style Gaming. A dozen kids, or as many as could find the time, would gather in
somebody's living room to play a two-day Game cassette. Interaction was limited to stiffly
animated composite images: crude but effective. Marie's living room had a monitor the size of a
picture window. Gwen had liked it enough to graduate into real Gaming, Dream Park Gaming; but she
had never come to love the Monday morning rehashes. Those were still as dull as somebody else's
diet.
The waiter set a chopped-steak platter in front of Avram, gave Marie a salad. She ignored it, but
Avram dipped his fork into it. It looked good. Diet dressing, no doubt, but it was big and varied,
all bright greens, reds, and oranges with no dairy products. Marie seemed not to notice Avram's
piracy. "I feel like I owe you a report, Gwen. After all, you talked me into it."
"Oh, no. You don't have to. Really. Actually, I was just waiting-" She started to get up. Her
conscience was pulling her back even before Marie's meaty hand closed on her arm.
This time Marie had earned the right.
Last August Gwen had met Marie for the first time in twelve years. Marie was a mountain. Her new
husband, Avram, was another.. . and he had been a Gamer, years back. They'd worked
Marie in stereo, and they'd talked her into playing a Fat Ripper Special with Avram.
Marie stabbed into her salad for the first time. She grimaced:
leaves! In a Fat Ripper she should have unlearned that attitude. Marie chewed, swallowed in haste,
and said, "I'm three pounds down! A pound a day !" For an instant she showed some energy. "They
ran it off me. We started off with Genghis Khan's army hot on our heels, and it didn't get any
better."
"In spots," Avram said.
"Yeah. The Horde was tracking us. We were more worried about them than anything we might meet.
Eight hundred of us, and thousands of enemy behind us. General Wisowaty said we wouldn't stand a
chance if they caught up."
"Guide," Avram interjected.
Guide. General Wisowaty would be an Actor working for Dream Park within the Game. Whatever he said
would be true in context, though it need not be the whole truth.
The salad looked good, and Gwen was tempted to order one. Gwen had no taste for a red vinegar
dressing. Surely virtue had earned her an ounce of blue cheese...? She tapped her lunch order into
the table's console.
Marie rescued her salad from Avram, who pretended to sulk as he cut his Salisbury into inch
squares. She chewed and swallowed quickly and resumed. "We were in strange territory. Nobody wants
an army in his backyard. General Wisowaty was leery of farms, but we needed food. We were on short
rations, of course."
"Of course."
"Gwen, Dream Park was starving us and working us, but they had us thinking about food all the
time! I don't get it. We're supposed to learn how to lose weight on a Fat Ripper Special ."
"You're supposed to notice your food. If you eat automatically, or for any reason that isn't
nutrition, you get upholstered. The Fat Rippers teach you the difference between feeding your body
and feeding your face." Gwen knew the lectures. She liked being plump, and Ollie liked it, and her
doctor said her blood pressure and cholesterol count were inhumanly healthy. She hadn't gained or
lost a pound in three years. The Fimbulwinter Game would be her first Ripper, but she was going in
as an employee.
"Back to the East Gate Game. Did you have fun?"
Marie thought about that. A smile flickered briefly. "Fun? I
guess I must have. I didn't get killed out. I saved two other players because I saw what was
coming."
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file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Larry%20Niven%20and%20Steven%20Barnes%20-%2The%20Barsoom%20Project%20UC.txtThisbookisanAceoriginaledition,andhasneverbeenpreviouslypublished.Allcharactersinthisbookarefictitious.Anyresemblancetoactualpe sons,livingordead,ispurelycoincidental.THEBARSOOMPROJECTAnAceBoo...

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