Niven, Larry & Steve Barnes - Dreampark

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DREAM PARK
Copyright (c) 1981 by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except
for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the
publisher.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is
purely coincidental.
Manufactured in the United States of America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART ONE
Chapter One: ARRIVALS 3
Chapter Two: A STROLL THROUGH OLD LOS
ANGELES 11
Chapter Three: THE LORE MASTER 23
Chapter Four: THE MASTER DREAMERS 37
Chapter Five: THE NAMING OF NAMES 47
Chapter Six: FLIGHT OF FANCY 57
Chapter Seven: THE ROAD OF THE CARGO 69
Chapter Eight: THE BANQUET 79
Chapter Nine: KILLED OUT 91
Chapter Ten: NEUTRAL SCENT 101
Chapter Eleven: GAME PLAN 111
Chapter Twelve: OVERVIEW 117
PART TWO
Chapter Thirteen: ENTER THE GRIFFIN 129
Chapter Fourteen: THE WATER PEOPLE 141
Chapter Fifteen: THE RITE OF HORRIFIC SPLENDOR 151
Chapter Sixteen: REST BREAK 163
Chapter Seventeen: THE LAST REPLACEMENTS 175
Chapter Eighteen: SNAKEBITE CURE 187
Chapter Nineteen: NECK RIDDLES 199
Chapter Twenty: THE SEA OF LOST SHIPS 211
Chapter Twenty-One: THE HAJAVAHA 223
Chapter Twenty-Two: THE ELECTRIC PIZZA
MYSTERY 233
Chapter Twenty-Three: BLACK FIRE 243
Chapter Twenty-Four: AMBUSH 253
Chapter Twenty-Five: THE EGG OF THE AIRPLANE 261
Chapter Twenty-Six: THE LAUGHING DEAD 271
Chapter Twenty-Seven: CARGO CRAFT 281
Chapter Twenty-Eight: THIEVES IN THE NIGHT 289
Chapter Twenty-Nine: END GAME 301
PART THREE
Chapter Thirty: THE FINAL TALLY 315
Chapter Thirty-One: DEPARTURES 327
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CAST OF CHARACTERS
DRAMATIS PERSONNAE
The Creators
RICHARD LOPEZ: The world's most respected Game Master, co-author and presently monitor of the
South Seas Treasure game.
MITSUKO (Chi-chi) LOPEZ: Richard's wife, partner, coauthor, and public representative.
The Players
ACACIA (Panthesilea) GARCIA: Experienced fantasy game player. Warrior.
TONY (Fortunato) MCWHIRTER: Inexperienced gamer, and Acacia's guest. Thief.
CHESTER HENDERSON: Famed Lore Master, leader of the South Seas Treasure party.
GINA (Semiramis) PERKINS: Experienced fantasy gamer. Cleric.
ADOLPH (Ollie, or Frankish Oliver) NORLISS: Experienced fantasy gamer. Warrior.
GWEN (Guinevere) RYDER: Fantasy gamer, and Ollie's fiance. Cleric.
MARY-MARTHA (Mary-em) CORBETT: Experienced and highly eccentric gamer. Warrior.
FELICIA (Dark Star) MADDOX: Experienced gamer. Thief.
BOWAN THE BLACK: Dark Star's partner, an experienced Gamer. Magic User.
ALAN LEIGH: Experienced fantasy game player. Magic user.
S.J. WATERS: Novice gamer. Engineer.
OWEN BRADDON: Elderly, moderately experienced gamer. Cleric.
MARGIE BRADDON: Experienced elderly gamer. Engineer.
HOLLY FROST: Aspiring novice gamer. Warrior.
GEORGE EAMES: Moderately experienced gamer. Warrior.
LARRY GARRET: Moderately experienced gamer. Cleric.
RUDY DREAGER: Moderately experienced Gamer. Engineer.
HARVEY (Kasan Maibang) WAYLAND: Professional actor. Guide.
NIGORAI: Native bearer and spy. (Actor.)
KAGOIANO: Native bearer. (Actor.)
KIBUGONAI: Native bearer. (Actor.)
PIGIBIDI: Native chieftain. (Actor.)
LADY JANET: Damsel in distress. (Actor.)
GARY (the Griffin) TEGNER: Novice Gamer. Thief. Alias for Alex Griffin.
The Dream Park Personnel
ALEX GRIFFIN: Head of Dream Park Security.
HARMONY: Dream Park Director of Operations.
MILLICENT SUMMERS: Griffin's secretary.
MARTY BOBBICK: Griffin's assistant.
ALBERT RICE: Dream Park security guard.
SKIP O'BRIEN: Dream Park research psychologist.
MELINDA O'BRIEN: Skip's wife.
MS. GAIL METESKY: Dream Park liaison with the International Fantasy Gaming Society.
ARLAN MYERS: I.F.G.S. official.
DWIGHT WELLES: Dream Park computer tech.
LARRY CHICON: Dream Park computer tech. Together with Welles and the Game Masters, he monitors the
Gaming Central computer.
NOVOTNEY: Cowles Modular Community's resident doctor.
MELONE: Dream Park security guard.
PART ONE
Chapter One
ARRIVALS
The train sat rigid as a steel bar, poised in midair above its magnetic monorail track, disgorging
passengers into Dallas Station. Its fifteen cars had borne their passengers in quiet efficiency
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from New York to Dallas in just over half an hour, cradled in magnetic fields, travelling through
vacuum at close to orbital velocity, deep underground.
Chester had cut it close. He shifted his heavy backpack and strode back along the train, walking
like a king, projecting confidence. There would be Garners aboard, and some would recognize him.
Lore Master Chester Henderson was conscious of his unseen audience.
"Chester!"
He stopped, dismayed. He knew that voice-There she was, a vision in leopard tights that drew
stares from all but the most jaded. Her long red hair, plaited into a thick rope, dangled down her
back to the top of her belt line. She wore heavy makeup that almost hid the fact that she was,
indeed, a very lovely woman. But the leotards hid nothing.
"Hello, Gina," Chester sighed with a tone somewhere south of resignation. "I should have guessed
you'd be along."
"I wouldn't miss it for anything. Remember last time, when you saved me from the mammoth?"
"Cost me three points for frostbite. I remember."
"Don't complain, it's mean. Anyway, I was very appreciative." She coiled her arm around him and
joined him in a rather strained lock-step toward the Dream Park shuttle.
She had been, he remembered, very appreciative. "One of your strong points," he said, and put his
arm around her. It felt disturbingly good, nestled there between warm curves. "Well, I'm glad
you're with us. We may need to pass you off as a virgin or something."
"Would you really?" she giggled. "I've always loved your imagination."
Chester didn't smile. "But, Gina . . . if you're in, you're going to have to follow orders a mite
more carefully. You almost screwed me good-stop that, I'm serious. This is extremely important to
me, all right?"
Gina looked up at him and her face grew almost serious. "Anything you say, Chester."
Chester groaned to himself as they boarded the train. She had skill; she was better than most
newcomers; she carried her weight and sometimes followed orders too. But she treated it like some
kind of goddam game.
Alex Griffin took his shuttle seat and settled back with eyes closed and arms folded comfortably.
He had long since learned the value of catching bits of rest where he could, and could catnap
during minutes most people spent fidgeting.
He stretched, and heard popping sounds as muscles and joints woke up. Small wonder they were still
half-asleep. Ten minutes earlier he had been snoring in his apartment at the Cowles Modular
Community, with the alarm buzzing in his ears. The third time it went off, it would refuse to shut
up until his 190 pounds were lifted from the sensor in the mattress.
He opened a sleepy green eye and watched the rear monitor as the cluster of buildings receded from
view. Five hundred Dream Park employees maintained residences in Cowles Modular Community, nestled
in the Little San Bernardino Mountains, fifteen kilometers and six shuttle minutes away from work.
Griffin was on call twenty-four hours a day, three weeks out of the month, and he appreciated the
convenience of CMC. But this morning was nothing special, just the usual 6:00 A.M. roust.
Alex rolled his wrist over to check the watch imprinted on his sleeve. (Expensive indulgence. Even
drycleaning eventually messed up the printed circuitry.) Three minutes until the shuttle slid into
the employee depot. He had about decided to close his eyes again when the picture in front of him
changed.
The woman on the flatscreen might have been beautiful by the light of noon. At 5:56 A.M. she was
evil incarnate. "Morning, Chief," she chirped, obscenely wide-awake.
"No. No, it isn't, Millicent." Alex yawned rudely, remotely disliking himself for it. He ran blunt
fingers through his light red hair and made a serious attempt to focus his eyes. "Oh, what the
hay. Maybe it is a good morning. Maybe it'll even be a good day. I'm sorry, Millicent. What's up?"
"Final prep for the South Seas Treasure Game tomorrow is the hottest item. You have some dossiers
to go over."
"I know. What else?"
She shook her head, her loosely curled afro bouncing a bit as she studied the computer display on
a second screen offscreen. "Umm. . . budget meeting with the Boss."
He was definitely more alert now. "Did I exceed Harmony's projected red last quarter?"
"Don't think so. Better not have. That's my department, and I don't make mistakes like that. Heh
heh."
"Heh heh. Well?"
"I think we're switching over from zero-base budgeting to some new system that Harmony is hot on."
"Oh, Lord. What else? Don't I have a class to teach today?"
"Yes. One o'clock, right after a scheduled lunch with O'Brien." Alex's face lit up. "Hallelujah. A
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bright spot at last. Tell Skip to meet me at 'leven-thirty at the White Hart, okay? And ask him to
bring me the L5 specs. I want to see them. What about the class?"
"Standard Constraint and Detention stuff. For the new security people."
"Right." Alex glanced at his sleeve; the station was seconds away. "Make me a memo. Standing arm
bar, crossover toe hold for the ground work, and oh, let's say knife disarms. Right and left wrist
locks with low kicks. I'll wing it from there. I'm almost in, now, hon. I'll see you in a few
minutes, okay?"
"Right, Griff," she said, flashing him a smile as the picture faded out.
The shuttle let him out in the central core of the 1200-acre Dream Park complex, two levels
underground. Activity was heavy for this early, he thought. Then he remembered the Game. Odds were
there would be five thousand dollars of last-minute work to be done, or ho didn't know the catch-
up kings over in Special Projects.
Tunnels stretched off in all directions: up, down, sideways and maybe to yesterday and tomorrow if
the Research Department had come up with anything since breakfast. Most of the people scurrying
past knew him by name, tossing off a "Hi, Alex," or "Sappening, Griff?", or "Morning, Chief" as
they ferried racks of costumes, or props, or electronic equipment to the different divisions. A
cargo tram hissed in, and a crew of overalled workers and tiny humming cargo 'bots rushed in to
unload so that another shipment could hurry down the line.
He tossed a friendly salute to the guard at the elevator and pressed his right thumb against the
ID pad. The door opened. Five or six people crowded in after him, and Alex controlled his
annoyance when only two of them put their thumbs to the pad for clearance. More memos, dammit.
It was 6:22 A.M., Thursday, March 5, 2051, according to Alex's desk clock. Propped on the clock
was a sheet of fanfold paper, Millicent's printout of the day's obligations.
Alex doffed his coat and dropped into his chair. He punched a finger at the desk console. A
hologram "window" formed above his desk: a nameplate that read "Ms. Summers," and behind the
nameplate a dark pretty face whipping around to answer the buzz.
"Millicent, can't I foist some of this off on Bobbick? How the hell is he going to earn his pay if
I do all the work?"
"Marty is already with Insurance going over the damage report on the Salvage Game that ended
yesterday in Gaming Area B. He should be free by about two this afternoon, or do you want me to. .
.
"No, leave him on it. Listen. Do I have to go all the way over to R&D or can we take care of this
mess by phone? Lord knows I've got enough paper to shuffle before eight. Check it out, would you?"
"Right, Griff...I'm pretty sure that'll go."
Her face blinked out, and Alex punched for a display of today's "paperwork." Three columns of
headings ran off the screen. An executive secretary and a deputy Security Chief and this much
garbage still filtered up to him. Work first?
A slow smile played over his face. A little peek at the Park first.
He triggered the exterior monitor and watched the room swell with the darkened spirals of Dream
Park. From the vantage of the monitoring camera the workers readying the Park for the day's
visitors were ants streaming in and out of the long black shadows of early morning.
There was the somber shape of the Olde Arkham tour. (The kids loved it. The adults. . . well, an
old lady with a heart murmur had damn near croaked when Chthulhu appeared to devour her
grandchildren. Some people!)
Snakelike and far off around the edge of the Park the Gravity Whip coiled, offering a total of
thirty seconds of weightlessness via computer-designed parabolic arcs. The monitor eye swept over
to Gaming Area B, where the Salvage Game had been conducted.
That one was interesting. Partly in desert territory and partly underwater, it had involved twelve
players for two days. Alex figured that the Game Master on that one would just about break even.
It had cost three hundred thousand dollars to set the Game up. The twelve participants had paid
four hundred a day, each, for the privilege of earning "Gaming Points" for the fantasy characters
they portrayed and, not incidentally, for having the bejeezus scared out of them. Book rights
presold, film rights likewise.
He couldn't pretend to understand the logic behind it. The vagaries of the International Gaming
Society were totally beyond him. The players seemed to speak a foreign language. And this month
they had two Games back to back!
The Games did help the Park, though. The Olde Arkham Tour had started as a Game, thirty or forty
years ago.
There, now, that was more like it. The big shooting gallery over across from the Hell Ride was
more his cup of tea. Alex slipped in there occasionally to knock off a few Nazis or dinosaurs or
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muggers. God, that was a realistic "experience." The R&D boys were incredible. And quite mad.
He thumbed the control, and the camera roved further afield. Over there- His monitor buzzed, and
with a grimace Alex shut off the holo and answered the call. Muffle's voice spoke, but the
congealing visual image was of a guard Griffin couldn't quite place.
"Research and Development, Gruff," Muffle's voice said.
"Right." Name and background fell into place now. This would be Albert Rice calling from his guard
station between Files and the technological monster known as Game Center.
Rice was strong and smart, quick to volunteer his services, and Griffin sometimes felt a twinge of
guilt at not warming to the man. Maybe just jealousy, he mused. Rice cut a handsome blond profile,
almost pretty, and several of the secretaries in Protective Services had bets going to see who
would score with him first. In the year Rice had been with Dream Park, nobody had yet collected.
Something was bothering Rice. He seemed agitated; he kept shifting his feet.
"Yes, Rice, what's the problem?"
"Ah, good morning, sir. Nothing wrong here at the post, but-" He hesitated, then blurted, "I just
got word that my apartment in CMC was vandalized."
Griffin felt himself coming to attention. "When was the report filed?"
"Only about a half hour ago. Lock broken, and some stuff scattered around, the cop said, but they
didn't take my electronics. I'd like to see what is missing."
Griffin nodded somberly. "You don't have any crazy friends over there in R&D, do you- No, scratch
that." They weren't that crazy. "You'd better take the rest of your shift off. I'll get somebody
over there to fill in in about twenty minutes. Check out then. What's going on over there?"
"Mostly prepping Game Central for the South Seas Treasure Game."
"Yeah, that looks to be a monster. Listen, would you like to make up the hours you'll lose this
afternoon?" Albert Rice nodded enthusiastic agreement. "Good. Put in for the night shift, and
check back in at midnight. We'll work you eight to five for a few days, all right?"
"Right, Chief."
Alex signed out and blanked the image. He popped on the inter-office line and Millie appeared,
smile neatly in place. "Millie, send me the dossiers on the Game tomorrow, will you?"
"Right, Griff."
The printer on his desk began hissing immediately, and sheets of fanfold paper arced slowly up and
folded themselves into a neat pile. Griffin shook his head. How could Muffle be so cheerful every
morning? Ho ought to steal a cup of her coffee and send it to R&D to be analyzed...
He tore off the first set of pages.
The picture of a handsome, dark-skinned young man with a neatly trimmed beard looked somberly out
of the holo. Details were in the opposing corner. Name: Richard Lopez. Age: 26. Gaming position:
Game Master.
Oh, well, then this once-over of the file was purely perfunctory. Lopez would have been put
through a complete security and tech checkout. Anyone who walked into Gaming Central was cleaner
than boiled soap. And sharp, too. Evans, the girl who had guided the recent Salvage Game, had had
three years at MIT on top of the Masters degree she picked up in Air Force electronics school. And
that was only Gaming Area B. Area A was twice as large, and the Gaming Central was three times as
complex. Lopez would be very good indeed. Griffin would make a point to be there when Lopez and
his assistant entered the control complex tomorrow morning.
His assistant? A tallish oriental girl with short black hair and shining white teeth smiled shyly
from the page. Mitsuko "Chichi" Lopez. Twenty-five, and a quick skim of the dossier confirmed that
she was superbly qualified to copilot the four-day jaunt ahead.
Birds of a feather, Alex guessed. Probaby met in Dream Park; might even have been married in one
of the Dream Park wedding chapels. Those could be interesting ceremonies; the wedding guests might
include anyone from Glenda the Good Witch to Bluebeard to Gandalf to a Motie Mediator. Angels were
popular.
Who else? Ahh . . . the Lore Master. The Lore Master, the Chester Henderson. Henderson ran parties
through Dream Park about three times a year, and would come out from Texas even for a relatively
small outing. Generally his way was paid by the players or the Game Masters or their backers.
Hadn't there been some trouble with Henderson about a year ago? Alex skimmed down the sheet.
Chester Henderson. Thirty-two years old (though he seemed younger in the picture. His deadly-
serious look was almost daunting). Had been to Dream Park thirty-four times, and was considered a
valuable customer.
Here it was. A year ago, Chester had taken an expedition into "the mountains of Tibet," hopefully
to bring back a mammoth. The party had met disaster, three out of thirteen surviving, and no
mammoth. Chester had dropped several hundred Gaining Points, threatening his standing in the
International Fantasy Gaining Society. And who had been Game Master on that ill-fated expedition?
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摘要：

file:///F|/rah/Larry%20Niven/Niven,%20Larry%20-%20Dream%20Park.txtDREAMPARKCopyright(c)1981byLarryNivenandStevenBarnesAllrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyformorbyanymeans,exceptfortheinclusionofbriefquotationsinareview,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublisher.Allcharactersinthi...

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