He squeezed her hands back, but there was little affection there. "Yeah, well, you were so busy slaying dragons that I guess you

didn't have time to notice that you were coming on a little strong. I mean, I might like to play too." There was hurt in his voice, and Acacia didn't know what to say.

"Hey, Tony, I'm sorry, really. Listen-"

He thrust outward with his hands and shook his head defen­sively. "File it, Cas. I'll be all right. You just can't keep telling me to take everything seriously, then suddenly tell me it's just a game. I didn't get to do a damn thing today, alright? I got to watch ev­erybody else play hero while I lay with my face in the dirt. I don't know what that would feel like to you, but I felt pretty shitty, airight?" He reached out and stroked her gently on the left cheek, then turned and walked away.

Acacia watched him go, her mouth hanging open, jaw working as if trying to find something, anything to say. Words wouldn't come.

Gwen tugged at her arm. "Come on, Cas, let's check out our bunk space." Numbly, Acacia nodded and followed.

One of the village women showed them to their hut. Gwen, Acacia, and Mary-em laid their bedrolls down one side of the woven-reed flooring; Gina and Felicia down the other. Acacia said nothing as she watched her mattress inflate.

A callused palm slapped her heartily across the back. "Man problems?" Mary-em boomed cheerfully. "Don't worry about your boyfriend, honey. He's just got first day jitters, that's all it is. Just hunt him down after lights-out and give him a little bit to calm him down, and he'll be all right."

The little woman chucked her under the chin with a playful nudge that nearly lifted Acacia from her feet, but the dark-haired girl managed to keep smiling. "Right, Mary."

"Right? Of course I'm right. Mary-em sees all, knows all. You take it from me." And she waddled away humming a verse from "Eskimo Nell" that dwelt on the amorous advantages of six­month nights.

Acacia grinned in spite of herself, and lay down on her bedroll, gazing at the ceiling and waiting for Closedown.

And approximately thirty seconds later, without noise or fuss, the natives outside the door turned transparent and faded gently away into the night.

KILLED OUT

Albert Rice unlocked the front door of the R&D complex and stepped aside. It was 9:15 P.M., and Rice had just twenty-two minutes to live.

His public smile was in place, but Ms. Metesky and the Lopezes never saw it. There was a bite in Richard's voice. "It may be that you don't quite realize just what three-tenths of a second's delay can do to the Game, the Gamers, and me."

"Welles and Chicon are thoroughly competent," Ms. Metesky said placidly. "They'll have it fixed long before morning."

"They'd better. They'd drowning well better. It wasn't my pro­gramming, Metesky. That bird didn't drop right away, and Panthe­silea had to stand there with her foot out in the middle of a battle! And Bowan had to repeat himself before he got his fire-blast..."

They passed outside. "Thank you," Ms. Metesky said to Rice,

and stepped after them, adjusting her wire-rimmed spectacles as she went, frail hands trembling a bit from the cool air. Rice locked the door behind them.

As the door slid shut his smile faded like a happy-face drawn in a puddle of mud.

He was thinking, How could anyone give a damn about three-tenths of a second, anyway? Lopez was a cocky little shrimp who liked giving orders. Talked funny, too. Prissily precise even when he was being nasty. Always: "Excuse me, do you think you could assist me with. ..." Or, "May I have a tracking badge, please? I'd like to stretch my legs a bit, and I don't want anyone to get nervous." Always with that phony politeness: phony, because the correct answer to every such question was, "Yes, sir."

Time to start rounds. Rice hopped the elevator to the third floor and thumbprinted the tirneclock as soon as he stepped out.

On the third floor were many of the model-building shops. Working in steel, aluminum, wood, fiberglass, styrofoam, molded plastic and many more exotic materials, the wizards of Dream Park designed in miniature the rides and attractions of the future. Structures first produced as computer-drawn holograms would one day become foamed steel or the absurdly delicate-looking carbon crystal fibers. Rice enjoyed the occasions when he worked the day shift and could look in on the shops, hear and feel the vibrations of lathe and press and drill working their wonders, smell the burnt-plastic tang from the molds as a new concept was given solid life.

But now the shops were empty, the building deserted except for a few techs in Game Central on the second floor, and a few of the late workers in the Psych and Engineering sections on the fifth.

He checked every door and peered down every hallway, check­ing the shadows, checking the nooks. He remembered a tale about the niece of one of the lathe workers. She'd hidden in the building until after close-up, then managed to get into one of the molding shops. Security found her five hours and twenty thousand dollars worth of damage later. In the course of her spree she had some­how interfaced a roller coaster and a human anatomy model. The results had been so interesting that it inspired the Mr. Digestion ride sponsored by Bristol-Meyers in Section I.

She ended up with a spanking and a college trust fund. But a guard had lost his job.

Corridors branched and split, and Rice followed them all,

checking every inch before he was confident enough to thumbprint the time clock clear and take the elevator to the second floor.

Even while remaining cautious to check every cranny for secu­rity breaches, he still took time to cakewalk. He glided from side to side with graceful speed, ducking imaginary blows. Cakewalk. Typical name Griffin would give a fighting move. Strange man, Griffin. Tough but soft. Always encouraged gentleness in his men, always wanted them to give the tourists the benefit of the doubt.

Rice approached the vaultliko door of Game Central's control room, where the Lopezes worked their magic. He pressed his palms to the door, then, almost timidly, his cheek. He felt its me­tallic smoothness, and the purring vibration from the machinery within. He stood there for a while, and whispered, "Playing God." His expression, soft for a bare moment, hardened to a frown and he walked on. Next to the control room was the Dream Park over­ride, where Larry Chicon and Dwight Welles supervised the tech­nical data being fed into the Dream Park computer system. This room had a shatterproof plastic window, and in the interior dimness there twinkled a few tiny red and white lights.

Next came the chamber where Metesky and the other officials checked the events of the game to insure that all was conducted ac­cording to the rules of their crazy organization.

The hallway threw his footsteps after him as ho reached the last door and doubled back. Working during the day was good, but Rice liked the night too. Nobody around, no oddballs to deal with. Plenty of time to think, to remember.

If he dwelt on it, Rice could remember visiting Dream Park when he was ten years old. How long ago that seemed. Twenty years seemed like eternity. At the same time it seemed that he could reach out and touch the head of the little blond boy with the perennial sniffle. And now he had grown up to work at the great illusion factory.

Come with me, little Albert, Rice invited himself as he sum­moned the elevator. Come with me and peek behind the dreams. See the computers and cameras. See the gears and oilcloth and plastic struts that make th. magic. Then squeeze the last tears out of your eyes, mix liberally with the fractured fairy tales of youth, and try to mold the resultant mess into an adult who can stand on his own, and damn well fend for himself.