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  The California Voodoo Game

  ( Dream Park - 3 )

  Larry Niven

  Steven Barnes

  Larry Niven,Steven Barnes

  The California Voodoo Game

  Selected Dramatis Personae

  Dream Park and Cowles Industries

  ALEX GRIFFIN: Chief of Security

  MILLICENT SUMMERS: Financial operations officer

  THADDEUS HARMONY: Chief of Operations, Dream Park

  TONY McWHIRTER: Data operations, IFGS liaison

  SHARON CRAYNE: Cowles Industries security executive

  MITCH HASEGAWA: Dream Park Security

  DOCTOR NORMAN VAIL: Dream Park psychologist

  International Fantasy Gaming Society (IFGS):

  ELMO WHITMAN: Game Master

  DORIS WHITMAN: Game Master

  RICHARD LOPEZ: Game Master of international reputation

  MITSUKO "CHI–CHI" LOPEZ: Game Master of equal renown

  ARLAN MEYERS: IFGS arbiter

  Gamers:

  The University of California "Manhunters":

  ACACIA 'PANTHESILEA' GARCIA: Loremaster, Warrior

  CORBY 'CAPTAIN CIPHER' CAULDWELL: Magic User

  MATI 'TOP NUN' COHEN: Cleric

  STEFFIE 'ACES' WILDE: Engineer/Scout

  TERRANCE 'PREZ' COOLIDGE: Warrior

  CORRINDA HARDING: Thief

  Texas Instruments-Mitsubishi "Cyberjocks":

  ALPHONSE NAKAGAWA: Loremaster, Warrior

  CRYSTAL COFAX: Engineer/Scout

  MARY-MARTHA 'MARY-EM' CORBETT: Warrior

  PEGGY 'THE HOOK' HOOKHAM: Engineer

  FRIAR DUCK: Cleric/Magic User

  OSWALD 'OZZIE THE PIKE' MURPHY: Warrior

  Apple Computer "Troglodykes":

  TWAN TSING: Loremaster, Magic User

  TAMMI ROMATI: Loremaster' Magic User

  MOUSER ROMATI: Thief

  APPELION: Warrior, Magic User

  GORDON REESE: Scout

  GEORGE 'INDIANA' HOWARDS: Warrior

  Army:

  MAJOR TERRY CLAVELL: Loremaster, Magic User

  CORPORAL S. J. WATERS: Scout/Thief

  LIEUTENANT MADONNA PHILLIPS: Warrior

  LAWRENCE BLACK ELK: Cleric, Magic User

  GENERAL HARRY EVIL POULE: Warrior/Scout

  CHAIM COHEN: Cleric

  General Dynamics:

  NIGEL BISHOP: Loremaster, Magic User

  HOLLY FROST: Warrior, Thief

  TREVOR STONE: Magic User

  TAMASAN: Cleric

  ILSA RADICHEV: Warrior

  MIKHAIL RADICHEV: Warrior

  Glossary:

  THE BARSOOM PROJECT: the ongoing attempt to transform Mars into a habitat suitable for human life. Named after the Martian locale in novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

  CHARACTER: a role played by a Gamer, in broad categories such as Magic User, Scout, Engineer, Cleric, and Warrior. Characters are often continued from one Game to the next. During Games, Gamers accumulate points, talismans, and treasures, which strengthen their characters. Gamers can also "split" accumulated points to create a character with abilities in two different areas: for instance, a Scout/Warrior.

  COWLES INDUSTRIES: Dream Park's parent corporation. Driving force behind the Barsoom Project.

  GAME MASTER: one of those responsible for designing and guiding Dream Park "Gaming" scenarios.

  LOREMASTER: one of those who plays within a scenario, recruiting and guiding a team of Gamers.

  MIMIC: Meacham Incorporated Mojave Industrial Community.

  NPC (NON-PLAYER CHARACTER): an actor who performs within a Dream Park scenario. Often, but not always, in opposition to Gamers.

  PALO MAYOMBE: Congolese variant of voodoo. Generally thought to be violent and death-oriented.

  SANTARIA: a Latin American variant of voodoo.

  SCANNET: MIMIC's security system.

  VOODOO: a belief system, or system of magic, incorporating African and European cosmologies.

  Prologue

  Tuesday, July 19, 2059 — 3:00 P.M.

  For seventy minutes now, the murmur of five thousand throats had built steadily into a cacophony. The lobby well of the Dream Park Hyatt was filled from mezzanine to rafters with cheering, stomping, hooting fans. Banners streamed and flickered in the wind like the tails of small dragons. Faces from a dozen countries were animated, eager, expectant.

  At the lobby floor was a multileveled crystal dome with a narrow, tapering top. Beneath that dome lay a miniature city that sparkled as if riven from diamonds or carved from ice. Within its walls, lights crawled like glowing snakes, panels slid like ships through oiled seas, and braziers pulsed with scented smoke. Any lurking minotaurs would have felt right at home.

  This was the Crystal Maze. It was covered by one-way transparent plastic, allowing observers on the mezzanine and upper levels of the Hyatt to witness the duel to come. Vid cameras would broadcast everything to thousands of room monitors and hundreds of thousands of homes and gaming venues worldwide.

  A whistle split the air, stilling voices. A door opened at the western edge of the lobby. Four combatants advanced to the mark.

  Tammi Romati's ash-blond hair was tied back by the band of her slimline Virtual goggles. She was beautiful, a vision in white leather. Tammi had the physique of a semipro bodybuilder. Her energy and intensity intimidated most men even before they learned her sexual preference.

  Beside her, enfolded in a red cloak and an emerald sheet of flames, was Twan Tsing, Magician. Twan's black hair was chopped short and hidden under the emerald skullcap that incorporated her Virtual apparatus. The green-tinted liquid crystal lenses of the Virtual gear leached the color from Twan's Cantonese eyes but couldn't disguise their intensity. She was half a head shorter than Tammi, and more smoothly muscled. She gestured mystically, fingers intertwining in arcane, angular configurations. Her aura flared until it matched and then surpassed the radiance of all the Hyatt's lights, then silently subsided.

  To her left stood Tammi's son, Mouser. He was clad in grey leather, a silver saber weighting his belt at the left hip. He was a Thief, if not a reaver or slayer. Two months shy of his fourteenth birthday, he combined an adolescent's narrow-eyed insolence with an adult's cold-blooded self-assurance. His thumb tested the edge of his blade.

  Beside Mouser was the Warrior Appelion. He was everything Mouser was not: tall, sinewy, black-bearded, and ferocious in countenance. He balanced a single-headed battle-ax easily in his massive left hand.

  Both wore their own versions of the Virtual gear, video equipment that would enable them to see specialised overlays on the holographic and mechanical illusions to come.

  All four raised their hands to the assembled multitude, graciously receiving a deafening ovation.

  And then, the eastern portal swung open.

  Again, the first through was a woman, Acacia Garcia. She was dressed in the leather body armor and chaps of a nomadic warrior. Not as muscular as Tammi Romati, Acacia was a lithe, athletic blend of Pueblo Indian and Spanish with a dash of Moor. She was sloe-eyed and wide-mouthed, quick to laughter or anger. Her long black hair gave her an air of sensuality that quieted the room and evoked a clearly audible "Jeeeesus Christ" from somewhere above her. She scanned the room almost absently. She relaxed, shoulders slumping

  … then in a flash her sword appeared in her hand, with only the hint of a blur to suggest a draw. She stood perfectly balanced, as alert as a hungry leopard.

  Behind Acacia came a short figure in a nun's habit, with a tranquil, sun-bronzed face. The roar "Top Nun!" rose from the crowd. The Cleric inclined her head solemnly, her fingers tracing a Star of David on her chest. A sma
ll, pale, chunky man followed her: Captain Cipher, Magician. And beside Cipher was a man with the height, color, and weaponry of a Zulu warrior. His name was Terrance Coolidge.

  All wore slimline goggles or costuming incorporating the Virtual lenses.

  The Crystal Maze shuddered before them, groaning and weeping as if it were a living thing.

  "In two days we're going head-to-head with the Troglodykes in the California Voodoo Game. They're used to winning. We've got to shake them now. Establish dominance, or at least gain respect or they'll motor over us. I've got a strategy," Acacia had told her team. "It may seem crazy, but you have to trust me…"

  Now, looking into the vid monitor and the coldly confident gaze of Tammi Romati, who had never lost a game of Crystal Maze, Acacia wondered if her confidence had been misplaced.

  The door to the Crystal Maze opened to a cloud of flaming pink smoke.

  A little man walked out of the smoke. He stood only waist-high, his thick grey skin mottled with warts the size and shape of half-dollars. His hand brushed smoke from his stubby nose, then waved Acacia and her companions forward. "This way," he whispered, raising a gnarled finger to his lips.

  Acacia followed the troll, trusting in her instincts and sword arm to save her. Her opponents hadn't had time to subvert the locals… had they?

  The wall slid shut behind them.

  "Eyes open for a double cross," she whispered to "Prez" Coolidge, the tall, stocky African-American at her left. His eyes were focused intensely. He would miss nothing, and she had seen him catch flies in midair, on a summer day…

  The walls of the Maze throbbed around them like the chambers of a titan's heart. Faces flared momentarily behind crystal panels, mouths leering or laughing. If she turned to look at the faces they dwindled, then vanished altogether, their laughter echoing mockingly through the corridors.

  Acacia glanced at her wrist monitor. She brushed a button on it and gained an aerial view of the Crystal Maze. The Troglodykes were clearly visible as a cluster of red dots. She could keep track of them-it was the only sane thing to do. But the monitor's special ViSiOII had cost dearly.

  Both teams were expected to struggle to the center of the Maze. Then, equally drained of power, they would slug it out for the pleasure of the audience. There might be another, better way…

  She punched buttons, disabling the wrist monitor.

  "What are you doing?" the slender Zulu whispered.

  "Trust me," Acacia told him. "I have a plan."

  "Jesus. Don't they all?"

  A bone-chilling buzz vibrated the walls of the Maze, and Acacia tightened her sword grip. It sounded like… what? A swarm of flies? Bees?

  Light flared ahead, light that moved with such impossible torpor that it bounced back and forth between mirrors in a visible sheet. Still, it moved much too fast for her to dodge or avoid. When it struck her face, the world was instantly seared white. Then black specks rose in a mass, black against a screen of white, and swarmed toward them.

  Bees. Swords were useless. "Top Nun!"

  The small, dark-cowled woman pushed past her to face the approaching swarm. She raised her arms high and began to chant. " fly gevalt! For honey, bees are good. One of your better ideas, God. Stingers on the other hand, pfui!"

  A brisk, irresistible wind flared up behind them, striking the bees just as they reached Top Nun's hood. The entire swarm tumbled away, down the corridor and gone.

  Acacia hissed air. Top Nun had probably won them five hundred points right there, but… "Too close. Any stings?"

  Top Nun scornfully held up unblemished arms. "Stings schmings. Am I a shmegegge now, or what?"

  1

  New Dreams

  Tuesday, July 19, 2059 — 5:00 P.M.

  Late afternoon shadows crept across MIMIC.

  Meacham Incorporated Mojave Industrial Community was one of the largest structures in the world, for all of its ruined grandeur, a testament to 1990s optimism and the vision of the late Nicholas Meacham. Built forty miles northeast of Barstow, about twenty miles west of the California-Nevada border, MIMIC looked east with a facade that resembled a nineteen-story rust-colored sandwich board with a vertical convex crease. A thirty-foot-high horizontal row of letters spelling M.I.M.I.C. divided the crease from the tenth to the twelfth floor. The flattened top extended acres of concrete roof onto Clark's Ridge, a natural mesa. At the bottom, MIMIC measured nearly half a mile across.

  According to documents found among Meacham's effects after his demise, MIMIC was intended to be the "linchpin of a planned community, an ever-expanding prefab metropolis poised to house and employ the excess population which, in years to come, will boil out of the Los Angeles basin like a crazed yeast culture."

  As one might guess, Meacham's genius lay in construction, design, and financing, rather than the realm of prose. If not for a little seismic misunderstanding in 1995, MIMIC might have been all he anticipated.

  After the Quake, MIMIC lay cracked and rotting for almost fifty years. Myths about the abandoned hulk multiplied. There was a live nuclear reactor in its guts; mutants prowled the ruins, shambling semi-human Morlocks with a taste for trysting teenagers…

  Then, abruptly, the nightmares were dispelled. Life began to return.

  And with new life came new dreams.

  The rooftop stretched to a convincingly distant horizon, a concrete flat etched with pools and gardens, shadowed with California stucco. Newly installed sensors scanned sun-bronzed tennis enthusiasts as they swished their rackets about.

  Monitors translated sounds of thudding feet and gasping lungs, waste-heat silhouettes, and cheerfully exhausted visages into multisensory data for the security banks. Like glowing ghosts, guests roamed through three minimalls, lounged in tiny parks and arboretums, or chased golf balls through the flames of purgatory and the gilded clouds of paradise in Dante's, the best miniature golf course in the state.

  A swimming pool glittered in the sun, like a pond touched by King Midas. Here its border was a white sand beach; there a rippling frictionless slide with a vertical loop; elsewhere were black basalt cliffs for diving. A hidden wave generator sent seven white crests rippling across the surface every minute. Here was an expanse of cattails sculpted of bronze; there, swimming in a programmed curve, was a weed-and-palm-covered island. Explorers would find it to be a huge lethargic flatfish with feelers the size of hawsers writhing about its mouth. In the center of the pool rose an island shaded by an artificial banyan tree, beneath which a grass-roofed tavern tinkled with laughter and the clink of glasses. One could swim to that tavern, or stroll a glass pathway hidden beneath the artificial waves.

  Four hundred Dream Park employees were partying hard: swimming, minigolfing, playing dominance games, drinking.

  Sixteen stories beneath them in level three, Tony McWhirter licked his lips. A drink? Later. He focused on the work at hand, his fingers and thumbs dancing in the holographic display of a keyboard.

  He was an intense man in his middle thirties. Light red hair ran thin above a lean face with chocolate eyes. His fingers were long and almost delicate, his forearms still wiry from years of college wrestling and gymnastics. Muscles bunched and corded as he typed. A window jumped into place, superimposed on the projection of the roof. It focused on a view of the bar beneath the island.

  Tony knew the man and woman busily mixing drinks: Elmo and Doris Whitman. Both were white-haired, pink with sun and as oval and solid as potatoes. They meshed like well-worn gears.

  Tony made adjustments. His viewpoint floated in closer, as if his camera were mounted on a skimmer. He was staring into El's face. Capped teeth and sun-peeled lips filled the visual field at point-blank range.

  Sound: the computer picked out El's voice from the surrounding gibberish, matched it to his lip movements, filtered, and compensated.

  "…part-time for eight years. Never really thought about being full-time until…"

  Doris glided onscreen. She was chunky but esthetically firm and rounded. Her
legs looked damn good beneath the barmaid's skirt.

  "Tequilla-"

  The computer made a fast adjustment, backed itself up, and now she was a vocal pattern, locked into the bank. "-Sunrise for table six. "

  Doris Whitman's face was pink with sun, pleasantly plump, and invariably glowing with some private amusement. She plopped her tray down on the counter and kissed El behind the ear as he juggled bottles and glasses. She said, "We met at drama school, Metro N.Y., did a lot of summer theater, a little off-Broadway. I guess we never quite made it big, but we always ate, which is more than most can say. Anyway, we gave it up maybe six years ago when an old buddy offered good jobs at a restaurant at Kennedy International. Lugbot jockeys, off-duty stews, mostly. They went automated, we grabbed our savings and got out. El, I said, what would we rather do than anything in the world?"

  Tony pulled farther back as another voice came in, highpitched and lightly accented. "I know your answer. "

  Chi-Chi Lopez was the prettier half of the world's most famous team of Game Masters. Her cheekbones were high and angular, but softened by ringlets of shoulder-length, jet-black hair. Her eyes were just as dark and sparkled with mischief.

  "Richard and I used three of your DreamTime routines before you even went pro, Doris."

  "Tribute from a master," Elmo said, putting two drinks on Doris's tray.

  "Later. Our room." Doris arched her eyebrows. "Tribute from a mistress?"

  "Rrrrr!" He swatted her affectionately. She dimpled, sashaying away.

  Barmaid's walk, Tony mused. Efficient, no-nonsense sex appeal. She was old enough to be his mother, but she'd been a private fantasy for months. Was the Whitman marriage lock-stepped?

  Chi-Chi watched them and then turned her attention to her husband, Richard. Tony remembered the wan little man. More specifically, he remembered playing the South Seas Treasure Game, designed and executed by the Lopezes. Their reputation had been well earned: lethal, unpredictable, but basically fair.