Dream Park Read online

  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 eight 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 pince-nez. 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 f ore­head. "I don't think that you have to tell me which file it was. And the corresponding sample vial was missing? Was the ifie 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 Garners 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, et cetera. 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 pro-. jection 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."

  "0-kay. Our problems were manyfold: accuracy of the effect, harmlessness of the chemical agent, undetectability, means of dis­tribution, et cetera. 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 theorized 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 f at 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 h~­volved 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 unob­

  trusively 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."

  Alex asked the question. "What does this batch do?"

  Skip turned his palm briefly to the ceiling. "Not sure. That was why they sent us the sample. They felt that our proximity to Dream Park might give us some additional testing options. Prelim­inary testing indicates that it is a general emotion intensifier. If this is true, and it is a substance as totally harmless as all prelimi­nary testing indicates, it is an incalculably valuable advantage over our competition. The theft of the sample, and of the printed mat­ter, breaks us wide open." He folded his hands in his lap. "That's most of it."

  Harmony sat up in his chair and turned to Griffin. "Well, Alex? What do you think?"

  "I think I was right. Industrial espionage. How many people knew the stuff was here, Skip?"

  "Maybe five, myself included. Perhaps twice that many in Sacramento."

  "Thanks. You saved me my second question. There's a leak, that's for sure. Whether it's electronic or human I can't say now. With twice the people knowing it in Sacramento, it might be twice as likely for the leak to originate there. It would be a neat trick to wait until a sample is transferred here. Then again, it doesn't take a genius to see why I'd rather believe that theory." He sighed.

  "Well It's happened. I don't believe the damage is irreversible." Harmony's ears perked up. "Why?"

  "I don't think that the thief has left the scene yet."

  O'Brien seemed troUbled. "The building was searched. If the thief didn't leave the building he must be one of us. The security men, the psychology staff, and whoever else was here."

  "A small group from engineering was still on the fifth."

  "Right. We were all routinely searched, so the stuff wasn't on any of us physically, but that doesn't help. It could be hidden in the building."

  "Might be, and we're checking on that." Griffin nodded, arrang­ing his thoughts. "I don't think that's it, though. I found some traces in the basement of R&D that suggest that the thief came into the building from Gaming Area A. That is the weakest link in our defenses. We have excellent protection on all outer perime- ters, but between Gaming A and the basement..." He shrugged. "The Garners are so out of touch with reality that they were never considered a serious threat. But the thief used surgical bandage. Garners carry medical kits... Skip, how long ago did the sample arrive?"

  "Three weeks."

  Griffin tsked discontentedly. "Maybe still. Better yet... Skip, how long before that was it known that a shipment was to be made?"

  "At least another month."

  "That's the margin for error we need. That gives plenty of time for the information to reach our competitors. Time for them to research our defenses. After they found our weak spot, they looked for a Game that was running at the right time. After that, find the aah... right, the Lore Master being challenged. Get the names of the people he's likely to choose, and make your ap­proach from that list. Complicated, but with seven weeks lead time, not impossible."

  "What exactly do you see as the sequence of events here, Alex?" There were oceans of tension crackling just beneath the superficial calm of Harmony's voice.

  "At approximately nine o'clock last night, one of the Garners in Gaming A broke away from the others and headed toward the northwest corner of the Research and Development complex, staying clear of any workmen renovating the Gaming area. This person entered a service duct and gained access to the lower level

  of the complex. He reached the first floor by stairs or elevator. Rice blocked his path, so he rendered Rice unconscious with a ‘sleeper' hold of some kind, probably an air or blood strangle. They're easier than nerve strangles. Rice was tied and gagged, and our intruder completed his business with no further trouble."

  "Rice's death was accidental?"

  "I'd think so. Would you bind and gag a dead man? The impor­tant thing is that the killer is still in the Game. If we move now, we can collect them all before morning and begin questioning."

  Harmony raised a single thick finger. "There are several prob­lems inherent in this situation. First of all, we cannot detain these people against their wills without involving outside law enforce­ment agencies. They would demand to see their attorneys, and in such a meeting information concerning the drug could change hands. If the thief becomes aware that we know he's a Gamer, be­fore we know which Gamer it is, the drug could be hidden any­where in the seven hundred and forty acres of the Gaming area. It may a
lready be stashed away, and we might never find it. Then there is the Game itself to consider. We stand to lose a good deal of money if the drug escapes our control, but we also stand to lose approximately-" He consulted a figure scrawled on his deskpad. "-one point five million dollars of our money already invested in the South Seas Treasure Game. Not to mention an estimated twenty-two million in revenue over the next eight years if film, book, programming, and holotape leasing and sales go according to estimations."

  Harmony's voice dropped a bit. "Frankly, there's another prob­lem. You are both aware that our water rights and tax privileges are coming up for review next year. If we can isolate our suspect before we call in the authorities, we'll be that much further ahead, without investigating teams crawling over us."

  "What are you suggesting?"

  "I'm not totally sure. I need to think about this, and we'll need to consult the I.F.G.S. I believe that the Game lasts four more days? Then that's how long we have before it becomes necessary to call in outside help. I believe our legal department can negoti­ate us that much time. Alex, please meet me back here at nine o'clock, in-" He consulted his watch. "-three and a half hours. You may or may not like my idea, but I think it may be for the best."

  Chapter Eleven

  GAME PLAN

  The world around Alex Griffin blurred like dreams, then sharp­ened to near-reality, as Bobbick and Millicent fiddled with the focus of the hologram projector. Griffin found himself in the living room of an apartment at the Cowles Modular Community.

  The apartments were almost infinitely maleable to the tastes of the occupants. Windows, built-in accessories, raised or lowered ceilings or additional rooms were no problem. Even entire living units could be moved into varying clusters with a minimum of difficulty. Griffin's own apartment presently included a small gym, a large library-study and a sundeck overlooking one of the star­burst-shaped pools.