Larry Niven: The Barsoom Project

Kevin and Orson tinkered with the vehicle, fiddling with the buttons until lights triggered around the metal ring, and the air vibrated until it sang. Max felt the tingle all over his skin, and laughed and stomped delightedly. They were going to make it, they were “All right. Everybody gather around, and get ready.” The room was heating up. The hair on his arms stood up away from the skin as the time machine’s whir grew loud.

All five of them grabbed the ring, felt the electric trill as the power increased. The entire room began to vibrate. Alura released the ring with one hand to grab Max’s shirt, pressing her warm little body against him. Max was terribly glad that Alura, unlike the rest of her family, was a real live unhologram-type person.

The entrance of the cave splashed with lava. For a moment fear filled his stomach, and a shrill whir filled his ears The room whirled, and there was nothing there, nothing at all. When the smoke and lava cleared, they were back in the clean, sterile Time/Life building.

The woman who called herself Eviane wandered out of the Time/Life building into the main thoroughfare. It had been a long time since she had been to Dream Park, although in another sense, Dream Park was with her wherever she went.

The facades of the rides and exhibits rose like a fabulous array of circus balloons. The hologram images rose thirty and forty feet into the air-Polynesian Paradise, DragonWorld, Fokker Biplane (duel the Red Baron!), the Ali Baba ride, the infamous Snuff Show (kill any of two thousand famous historical or contemporary figures!), and the hallucinogenic Little Nemo.

Some of the facades were pure delightful fantasy: the rosy cheeks of Snow White blended naturally with the Alpine splendor of the Ski Chalet. But there were also strong elements of the grotesque. Here was the face of a screaming South American Indian, with ants swarming..

Before her eyes, naked bone appeared.

The Marabunta Challenge. The threat of violence made Eviane’s head spin. She stopped for a moment, leaned against a railing, and squeezed her eyes shut.

No violence. No pain. Just fun. Right? Nobody gets hurt…

It was self-defense. Plot smashed, the Cabal had been rabid for vengeance. The Terichik…

She opened her eyes, and when the film of tears cleared, she remembered to breathe again. The pain in her chest went away. Maybe she shouldn’t be here at all.

She shrugged that thought aside. She had already met somebody nice, not even counting Charlene Dula. Charlene had been a miracle, a genuine seven-foot elvish miracle. But Max Sands was nice. Bright, cheerful. Curiously athletic for his size. And he seemed to like her. Maybe she should have gone with them…

The voice snapped back on her instantly. How could anyone like you? You’re a murderess. A crazy woman, and if they find you, they’ll put you where the birds don’t sing and the sun don’t shine, and sleep comes in black capsules with little white bands.

She swallowed hard, and forced her shoulders back and the voices into retreat. They grew quieter, but didn’t go away. They never went away.

A little boy swiveled, and pointed. “Mommy! Wow! Look at that costume the lady’s wearing! She must be ten feet tall!”

Eviane turned and made herself smile. “Charlene!”

The hypertall woman picked her way through the crowd. It was true: she was grotesquely tall; she might have been another exhibit. Jewelry at her ears and throat had a high-tech look: medical monitors. But she carried herself with a grace and dignity that inspired respect rather than pity or shock.

Eviane ran to her friend, and hugged her. Charlene returned the hug for a second, then gently pushed the shorter woman back. For an instant, Eviane was overwhelmed by the variance in body type. With Charlene balancing on Eviane’s shoulders, they could go to a masquerade ball as an exclamation point.

“How were the rides?” Charlene’s voice was that of a cultivated child. “I wish that I could have been with you. Uncle wanted me with him at that Barsoom thing.” She smiled in shy apology. “This was supposed to be our time together. I’ve made friends over the holo for years, but it’s just not the same.”

“Oh, don’t worry. If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be here in the first place. This is just the best time ever.”

Charlene hugged her friend’s arm. “I know I would have had more fun with you.”

“The fun is in getting out alive.”

They stepped aside to let a comical car cruise past. It loped along on jointed hairy legs instead of wheels. The “driver” had headlights instead of eyes, and fenders for ears. Charlene chuckled. “It’s usually more crowded than this, isn’t it?”

“Hard to believe, but true.”

This wasn’t ordinary Dream Park time. The Park was only half-full. This was a VIP week, reserved for people like Charlene, bigwigs and their families involved in the Barsoom Project, and people participating in the Fat Ripper Special…

She closed her eyes. The next thing she knew, Charlene was holding her.

“Eviane? It looked like you blacked out for a moment there. You didn’t know where you were.”

“It was the crowd. The noise.”

Charlene looked unconvinced. “Right.”

“Maybe I’m just hungry.”

“Now, that I’ll believe. Come on. Isn’t it time for our briefing?”

“You bet.”

Red-shirted acrobats juggled balls of fire bare-handed, with dazzling agility. The flame formed a stairway up into the sky, disappearing in a bank of mist. As exotic flute music played, one acrobat after another did hand-springs up the stairway and vanished.

The walls of Dream Park twisted and turned around them like the walls of a mare, every foot crammed with shops, exhibits, and concession stands, the entrances to rides and “experiences.” To the north, like a great moon rising at the end of the street, was the gleaming dome of Gaming Area B.

They reached the restaurant, an ivory tower labeled “The Tower of Night,” which rose from the middle of an Arabian bazaar. Eviane felt a little more at ease. Here, finally, would be people that she would be comfortable with. Gamers, Magic Users. Sorcerers. Keepers of the Dark Secrets, the same breed that she was…

… had been?

She got into the tube lift on the side of the tower, and pressed her hands against the tube as it began to rise.

And rise.

The cage moved at impossible speed. The sun was sinking behind the mountains when only minutes ago it had been midafternoon. Now they were above the entire arc of Dream Park, the hundreds of acres laid out in glittering array: conical towers and silvered spheres, twisting roller-coaster loops and the thousand hotels and motels crowding hivelike beyond, all shrinking, shrinking. Now she could see the entire valley basin, and as the elevator continued to rise, the lights of Los Angeles stretched out like strings of glowing pearls.

Neat! The illusion was magnificent. The cage was still accelerating. Around a black Earth, refracted light outlined the atmosphere in a bright circle that was still contracting. Eviane felt the chill of fear, just enough acrophobia to make things interesting.

Charlene’s breath fogged the glass. “Wow.” No acrophobia there!

Sunlight flared along one rim of the world, which had become a tremendous ball. Eviane wrenched her eyes away to look up. A structure was coming at her, a cluster of bubbles on the tower. The bubbles engulfed the car. The elevator stopped, and the doors opened.

Noise hit her like a solid wall, the cacophony of a hundred throats rumbling at the top of their collective voices. A flood of images rushed in on her, colliding somewhere between her ears.

Eviane wandered away from Charlene, meandering through the group. She felt both at home and alienated, able to float along on the periphery of the groups, skimming bits of conversations without the nerve to join in.