Larry Niven - The Barsoom Project

“He must want to lose weight for a movie.”

Oliver looked at him, scanned him up and down. “So you’re Mr. Mountain, eh? You look bigger on holovid.”

“Elevator tights,” Max said quietly. Dammit, he’d hoped no one would recognize him… ”Listen-you’re the only one who knows. Don’t spread it around, all right?”

Oliver chuckled. “Well, all right, but I wouldn’t worry about it. We’re all playing roles here.” And he turned back to his dossier.

Odd comment. Was Oliver a Gamer or an Actor? Best to watch him, see what he did, maybe do the same. He hoped Oliver could keep a secret.

Clouds were fragile veils that flashed past without leaving moisture on the windows. The land streaming below might have been a boneyard shrouded with cotton.

“Seattle,” the stewardess said. “Totally dead except for scavengers. A few unfortunates who couldn’t get out. And the frozen, unburied dead.” The stewardess was talking into a tape recorder. She caught Max staring and her lips gave an embarrassed upward twitch. “I’ve been trying to make a record. It doesn’t matter now. Maybe it won’t ever matter. But I have to believe there is hope. Someone has to.”

The mood in the room was grim. This was fun? This was supposed to be entertainment? It felt like a wake, a gathering to mourn the death of mankind beneath the marching glaciers. Suddenly Max felt so depressed that he couldn’t-

There was a low rumbling in the engines, so low that he almost didn’t notice it. Now he caught it and recognized it. Subsonics. The rumble died, and he began to feel a little better. Damn it, he knew that Dream Park was manipulating him with sound, with subliminal visuals, and if rumor had it right, with smells that impacted below the threshold of conscious perception. It didn’t matter. As his mood lifted he suddenly felt buoyant, filled with hope and energy. He looked around himself in the plane, saw everyone sitting up straight, eyes tight with determination.

Bowles nodded. “I knew that I could count on you. Now listen to me.” He spoke in an odd, measured cadence, suspiciously like a stage hypnotist Max had seen on holo once. “Sometimes we can do things for other people that we can’t do for ourselves. If that’s what it takes to get you through this, to help you survive, then that’s what I want you to do.” He scanned the room. Max felt a musical trilling sensation. It was similar to the thrill he’d experienced when he figured out the answer to the Time Travel Game: like someone using his bones for a piccolo. He felt like he could whip the world.

“We’re going to survive. Each of us is going to go beyond his ordinary limits. Every one of us is going to make sacrifices. We’re going to give up things that we love, to make a healthier situation for our friends, our family.

“I want you all to look into your hearts, and be sure that you have permission to survive. To win. Because if you don’t have that, then no matter how much food we have, how much shelter or heat, you won’t make it.” Bowles made very deliberate eye contact with each of them in turn.

Max felt comfortable, drifting, warm. He sank into an ocean of comfort… and only when he bobbled up again did he realize that Bowles had been talking the whole time. “-help that is asked for, no matter what it is. Agreed!?”

“Aye!” The Gamers answered raggedly. Max joined in late, too embarrassed to admit that he hadn’t the foggiest notion what he was agreeing to. But judging by the confused expressions around him, his lapse of attention had been more rule than aberration.

Something was being passed forward from the back. He sniffed sharp cheese and beef, and his mouth watered. Lunchlike substances! Waiting, he suddenly realized that the plane was shuddering, humming with stress.

“This is your captain speaking. We are running low on fuel, but there is nothing to worry about. The charts indicate a refueling depot just south of Bethel, within glide distance. We will land there. Please strap yourselves in.”

The shudder eased: the plane had dropped back through sonic speed. Through the window he could see the ground looming close, a vast expanse of white dotted with a few rectangular dwellings. The wing had moved smoothly forward; flaps were sliding out to extend the trailing edges. His stomach crawled up into his throat, looking for a place to hide. There was a clutch of buildings ahead. The land humped to the left, a sharp black ridge, and beyond that were more oblongs on the white blanket. An Eskimo village?

The plane shifted about, outspread wings feeling the air. The craft tilted and dropped, gripped by a freak wind. Gamers gripped their seats with white-knuckled fingers.

Max glanced across the aisle. Eviane’s bright emerald eyes were as wide as saucers, blinking rapidly as she peered out under the wing. The craft straightened and surged and touched down in a snow bed. Plumes of white spewed to either side. They slowed, sliding toward a pair of snow-shrouded refueling pumps.

Then it was as if a malicious hand clutched the wheels on the right. The plane lurched and slewed drunkenly, heaving Max against his seatbelt. It smashed straight into the pumps and ripped them away.

Half of the service station shell went next. A thick splinter of metal gouged into the hull of the plane, breaching the cabin. Max heard the clang and saw something ripping through the wall, slicing toward him at knee level. He pulled his knees to his belly as the jagged steel wedge slicked past.

The intoxicating stench of spilled fuel filled the air. The stewardess screamed at them. “Move! The emergency exits are middle and front. Take the left side exits only, but hurry!”

The passenger cabin dissolved into chaos. Everyone grabbed gear or friends or both. The copilot and pilot burst from the cockpit and reached the door ahead of the stewardess. They pulled handles; the side doors of the plane popped open, completing the cabin temperature’s descent to zero. A chute hissed as it expanded.

The copilot jumped into the chute and disappeared from view. His voice came back: “Okay. Move!”

The pilot stayed to help Robin Bowles into the chute. Bowles let out a boisterous “yaah-hoo!” as he hit the plastic. He skidded to the ground and spun dizzily on the snow.

Max was next. He slid all of the way down on his butt, hollering every inch of the way. What a trip!

Passengers followed at four-second intervals. The inflated chute bounced and flopped behind him.

He counted heads. All out, except the pilot, the stewardess, and the Guardsman. They were throwing things from the open door. Half a dozen bulky items fell in a cloud: backpacks, then crates. What about damage? But they were in haste.

“I bought good stuff!” Bowles bellowed. “Falling Angels stuff. Antibiotics made in orbit. Lines that’ll hold six elephants. Foam-steel backpack struts. Hey, use the chute for that!” He caught a crate as it slid down the chute. “We may need those medicines.”

The copilot was jogging around to the tail of the plane. His feet thrashed in the air as he pulled the tail ramp down. He yelled something undecipherable in the wind and excitement-

And then disappeared in a deceptively soft puff of fire. Yellow flame rolled up from the back of the plane like a flapping carpet, darkening to a roll of oily smoke.

Max was chilled. The man had been cremated in an instant. Killed out. One redundant guide, gone. It’s only a Game, come on- Eviane was running toward the flame. The stew had her by the arm, was shouting at her above the howling wind. Eviane desisted.

The exit had become a rush, and he thought: We’ll get clear, but what about the supplies? The food? Max made himself move.

Luggage was being thrown out of the forward door, and they scrambled for it, catching it as it fell, in a bizarre game of- what was it called? He vaguely remembered an ancient comedy routine entitled “Catch It and You Keep It!” (Announcer: “We’re here atop the twenty-story CBS building, and our contestants are below us in the parking lot for the first round of Catch It and You Keep It. Johnny, what’s our first prize? A Tappan gas range…?“)