Dream Park

Skip seemed to have forgotten them. His eyes were dreamy, peaceful; he wasn't seeing anything in Harmony's office. "I found him in the break room, trussed up like a turkey. I already knew it wouldn't work. It couldn't. He'd keep pushing me as long as there was a reasonable doubt as to my weakness. I wanted my job, my freedom... my marriage. He could ruin me. And there he sat, looking at me over that big wide bandage across his mouth, wait­ing for me to turn him loose. He was sniffling, trying to suck in enough air."

Skip's voice was shot through with horrified fascination, fear and heady power. "He was sniffling. Like calling attention to his nose. Alex, it was like finding an Easter basket the day after

Easter's over. When I held his nose shut he went crazy. I had to kneel on his chest to keep him steady. It took two minutes before I could get a good grip, and another three before he finally stopped struggling. .

He looked at his fingernails, chose one after careful deliber­ation, and began to chew on it. "I never found the smoking kit. Maybe your man Bobbick will have better luck."

Alex said, "I doubt it. Rice must have dumped it, just like he told you the first time."

The office was deadly quiet for a while. Smoke wafted silently into the ceiling fan. Three still and silent men watched each other with calculating eyes.

Harmony said it first. "Well, what do I do? We know you did it, but probably can't prove it. Even if we could, we couldn't afford to turn you in. Too many i

"Yes." Alex kept his voice cold, and refused to allow himself to look at Skip. "First, Skip resigns from Cowles Industries, effective immediately. Second, he agrees never to work with children ever, anywhere again. If he does-" Now he looked at Skip. From the way his former friend pulled back, shrinking into his chair, Alex knew that O'Brien was seeing a Griffin he had never seen before. "Then we have a talk with his employers. And his wife. Do you understand?" Skip nodded.

Griffin closed his eyes lightly. "And then there's the matter of Tony McWhirter. He may be a thief, but he's no killer, and I don't want him treated like one."

"Alex, we can't tell the District Attorney-" Harmony began. "No, we can't. But we can offer Tony legal assistance. I can tes­tify that a reasonable doubt exists as to his capacity for cold­blooded murder. That, together with the voice-stress analyzer, if he takes it, may well counterbalance the coroner's report."

"All right. .

"And one more thing. Even with that, a couple of years are going to be added on his sentence for... oh, negligent homicide at the least. When he gets out of jail, I'm going to offer him a job. With me. He beat my security system, and I can use him. Well, what do you say?"

The man with the linebacker shoulders nodded. "That seems

fair." He turned to the man with the briefcase, the man with the flesh stretched tight across his cheekbones, who seemed to be try­ing to hide in the plushness of his chair. "All right, O'Brien," Har­mony said, his voice for once unmelodic, ugly. "I'd like you to dictate your letter of resignation, and then go clean out your desk. I want you out of the Park by 1400, and out of CMC by next week."

Griffin stood.

"Aren't you staying, Alex?"

"No, I don't have any stomach for this."

He had reached the door when he heard Skip whining, "But what do I tell... Melissa?"

And before he could stop his tongue, he heard himself say, "Just follow your instincts, Skip. Tell her anything but the truth."

Then the door sighed shut behind him.

Alex watched the towers and domes of Dream Park shift in his office, shadow-puppets that swirled and loomed at his command.

There were people in the streets. He couldn't see their faces or hear their sounds, but he knew they were happy. Their balloons and cotton candy and plaid cotton shirts said so. The children that skipped to a faroff jaunty melody said so.

There was sunshine out there, and color and magic and music. But tomorrow, or next week, the people would leave, go back to their worlds carrying a little bit of the Dream with them to lighten their lives. And when those lives grew dreary again, they could think of vacations, and holidays, and travel... and Dream Park.

He had to laugh at himself. How often had he accused the Garners of blurring the line between fantasy and reality? The truth was that their fantasy was his reality, and their reality his fantasy.

Tony would go to his grave thinking he had killed a man, and there was nothing to be done about it.

For that matter, it was true enough. Tony McWhirter had gam­bled the lives of anyone who crossed his path that night. He might have found a witness waiting when he emerged from G. A. 18; and then what? He might have crushed Rice's windpipe; Rice might well have died of a stopped nose; McWhirter could have died in that fight, leaving Rice to carry the guilt of the manslayer. Instead, he had left Rice as a gift to anyone with the whim to hold his nose shut.

Tony must have known the odds when he set forth to rob Dream Park. People die during burglaries.

But if Tony McWhirter was getting justice, then what was Skip O'Brien getting?

Alex's fingers dug into the controls on his desk, and the shad­ows shifted, now the abandoned Gaming area, now the streets of Section One, now the hotel transport strips.

It wasn't fair. It just wasn't. For Skip O'Brien to escape was ob­scene.

"See you later, Chief-"

Right. And maybe if Griffin had consciously noted that Rice had no words for O'Brien, his former teacher, the man who got him his job at Dream Park... if he had noticed that Rice had been talking to him for O'Brien's benefit, taunting... They must have skipped over anything important.

But that was expecting too much of himself, and that wasn't fair, either.

A holo window opened up in the air above his desk, and Mil­lie's face materialized.

"You have a visitor, Gruff." Millie was unusually subdued, eyes worried. She and Bobbick had been treating him with kid gloves ever since he'd laid out his suspicions about O'Brien. Friend. Buddy. Killer.

"Can't it wait, Millie?" His voice was more petulant than he cared to admit. Leave me alone. Let me hurt.

"I don't think so, Alex."

He sighed and faded the holo map to black. "Send ‘em in."

When she stood in the doorway, outlined in the darkness, her brown hair flowing behind her like a scarf, he swallowed, not knowing if this was something he wanted. He thumbed up the light.

"Hello, Alex."

"Hello, Cas. What brings you here?"

"Do I need a reason?"

"No. No, but you've got one."

She nodded, smiling. "I just wanted to tell you that you were voted fifty bonus points for Best Novice Player."

He leaned back in his seat and folded his hands behind his head. She walked a few steps closer. "May I sit down?"

"Please." She folded herself into a chair, and wiped her hands on her slacks.

"I thought you might want to know the final score."

He was silent, just watching her.

"As a party, we won almost 2100 points. Personally, I walked away with a hundred and sixty." She paused. "You earned a hun­dred and seventy-four, counting your bonus. Congratulations. You're no longer a novice player."

Somehow her smile grew so warm and alive that it crossed the distance between them, and they shared it. "Thank you. I really appreciate that. I've been feeling very much the novice, lately."

"There's something else, Alex. I care about Tony... Maybe I love him. I'm not sure. But he used me to get into the Game-"