Larry Niven - The Barsoom Project

“Not for the first two days. Definite glitch.”

“A glitch. Hmmm. It wasn’t Charlene Dula, was it? Or Marty?”

Then it wasn’t really a Security matter. “So? Don’t you leave room for random-”

“Random events? Sure we leave room for random events, but you don’t understand. It wasn’t ‘one of those freak things.’ It wasn’t an accident. A monster came up out of sequence. We call it a ‘burrowing mammoth.’ According to legend, they die on contact with air. This one lived long enough to target and kill a Gamer. It shouldn’t have been possible. The thing hunted her. I want to know who’s been tampering with my friggin’ program.”

The other line was beeping now, and Millicent was suddenly all business. “Alex, should I…?”

“No, no, wait…” Dwight Welles’s voice muted as the second line flashed to life. The screen divided into two, and on the other side was Dr. Vail. He seemed tight, tired, agitated.

“Mr. Griffin, something unusual has happened here.”

“I’m on it. Somebody has gotten killed out of the Game.”

“Hah! If that was all. The problem is that the Gamer who was killed out is coming apart!”

“I’d be a little pissed myself.”

Vail shook his head. “Watch.”

The screen split again. The new entry was a chunky redheaded woman. Her gaze was all daggers as she studied first Vail, and then a slender Japanese nurse. “I don’t know why or how you did this, but I know this is a trick,” she said. Griffin recoiled from the raw hatred in her voice. “Tell Ahk-lut he’ll get nothing from me, do you understand? Nothing! You have warmth here, and food. People are starving by the millions, and it’s your doing.”

Ahk-lut?

“Miss Rivers.” Vail’s recorded tones were carefully soothing. “The Fimbulwinter Game is just that, a Game. There was an accident, and you were killed out. Now, we are prepared to refund-”

Her face twisted with anger, and for a moment, Griffin heard martial music in the air. He looked for insanity, but saw only righteous wrath. In that moment she was beautiful, a Valkyrie, a leopard protecting her young. “You call the death of civilization a ‘Game’? You call the slaughter of millions an ‘accident’? You wait. My people will come for me. They’ll come!” She paused, and her next words were delivered with lethal calm. “Unless I get you first.”

The recorded image froze, and then the real-time Vail returned.

Alex was on his feet. “I’ll be right down there.” He clicked that part of the screen off. “Dwight. Are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m coming right in. No, wait. First, pipe the records in on the office com line. I want to see what happened to this Rivers. Then I’ll come.”

He looked at Millicent. “Damn, I’m so sorry about dinner-”

“I’ve eaten it, Gruff.”

“Oh. Yeah. You want to go home, or come with?”

“Can I come with? Sounds like old times.”

“Glad to have you. Got a bad feeling about this.”

He beeped for a shuttle, and one was waiting at the rail by the time his side door hissed shut. The hatch lifted, and he and Millicent scooted in. The pressure of her thigh against his was more comforting than stimulating. His mind was already on the job ahead.

Cowles Modular Community, dwindling behind the shuttle, looked to Alex like a spreading clump of young mushrooms. Irregular, eccentric, but very organic. The people who worked for Dream Park had a lot of respect for the environment, for the way things fit together, for elegance. Something about this action, the way Michelle Rivers had been yanked unceremoniously from the Game, was jarringly inelegant.

By the time that the Modular Community had faded into the distance, Millicent had collected her thoughts.

“Ah… if it’s not a glitch, and Welles seems certain that it’s not a glitch, then… what is it?”

“A glitch. People who say that they have all the bugs usually haven’t turned over enough rocks. What do you think?”

“I think you sound like a man trying to convince himself.”

The shuttle sank into the labyrinth beneath the largest entertainment complex in the world. And kept sinking, three stories deep. There, hidden beneath the surface, were the concrete, steel, and plastic guts of the Park. No one mind knew all of the thousands of turnings, the hundreds of miles of tunnels. Here were the transportation systems, sewage systems, food networks, walkways, slideways; the routes for cars, trucks, transports, the monorails; the conduits that kept the water and electricity flowing, the people moving. Here were millions of feet of superconducting wire, steel pipe, PVC tubing, and fiber optic cable. As they slid along in the shuttle, passing through the center of the labyrinth, endless connecting corridors stretching off in all directions like Krell tunnels, Dream Park felt more myth than reality. Who was to say that there weren’t trolls in those tunnels, demons in those depths? Perhaps the real illusion of Dream Park was the pretense of technology.

The shuttle eased to a stop. They hopped out and took three steps to the elevator. The sealed tube rose swiftly to the seventh floor of the security building.

His office was a storm-struck anthill. Cary McGivvon met him at the door with a stack of printouts, their initial security file on Michelle Rivers. The flat photo showed intensely red hair around a pale, heavily freckled face, very plump, with high cheekbones under the padding. The girl was trying to look angry, or competent, or dangerous. She was none of those, really. To Griffin’s eye she seemed depressingly young and plain.

“Wasn’t she with Ambassador Arbenz’s niece? Christ-no wonder we’ve got so little on her.”

Cary sniffed. “Charlene Dula sneaked her buddy in on a diplomatic pass. We didn’t match her ‘Michelle Rivers’ name with anything in our files, computer just assumed she was a first-timer.”

“Great,” Alex said. “But everyone in the Game went through Psych. Why the hell didn’t they catch this looney tune?” She was short. One look would tell anyone: this was no old friend from the low-gravity places. This was someone the Ambassador’s niece had met on Earth, maybe a terrorist’s plant, and they’d want to examine her brain.

“No answers yet.” Cary seemed almost defensive. “It just happened, Griff.”

“Sorry, Cary. Honest. She got through me somehow too. That damned diplomatic override.” He slammed his hand down on the desk hard enough to scatter papers. “Why the hell didn’t we catch her?”

“She has a real Social Security number. She was clean. She’d worked as a clerical assistant in Montana, spent some time in a hospital in Utah, applied for credit with NipponAmericard.” She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “It’s starting to look like some of her previous history might have been… falsified.” Cary brightened. “We matched her fingerprints, though.”

“Fingerprints?” Millicent asked. You always try fingerprints, just because it’s easy, but it’s not supposed to work. “Does she have a police record?”

“No, she has no record at all, but she’s been here before. We had trouble with her under the name ‘Michelle Sturgeon.”

Alex’s ears perked up. “What kind of trouble?”

“Damned if I know. It’s in a sealed file. Haven’t been able to find the access code.”

“Who sealed it?”

“Harmony.”

“Did you get in touch with him?”

“He hasn’t answered his beep, Griff.”

“Play it for me again. The death scene.”

Cary punched her console and the wall disappeared. Griffin saw the mammoth rise from the earth, the attack, heard the screaming, felt his own adrenaline pump. He saw the flicker as the monster stalked and killed the redhead.