Death Dream

by Ben Bova

  He sensed Chan nodding inside his helmet. "I understand. I just want to thank you, Dan. You've saved my butt. If there's anything I can do for you, anything at all, just let me know."

  Dan's only thought was: Just let me get back to my own work, kid.

  Thank God it's a new house, Susan said to herself as she tucked the sheets under the mattress. It doesn't need the fixing and painting that our place in Dayton did. Good thing, if Dan's going to be working weekends now. He never was much help with housework but he did take care of the heavy jobs.

  Now the biggest job around the house was making the beds, taking the dishes out of the washer and putting them in their proper racks. And cooking. The all-electric highly automated house that the brochures had advertised was beginning to work out well for Susan. Once she had gotten the hang of telling the appliances what to do instead of turning knobs, things in the kitchen had improved immeasurably. And the vacuum cleaner was now programmed for each room in the house; it hummed along its preset route without any need for Susan to watch it—until it hit one of the toys Angela had carelessly left on the floor.

  The worst chore was shopping. Susan had it all worked out: she would shop for the week on Sundays, when Dan was home to keep an eye on the kids. But now Dan was at the lab seven days a week and she would have to take Angie and little Phil to the supermarket with her. It was not something to look forward to.

  She finished the bed and went into Philip's room to start dressing the baby, trying to get socks onto him while the baby was gurgling happily and kicking his feet in the air like a pair of tiny windmills. Ordinarily Susan would have laughed and played with him, but at this particular moment she was feeling harried and exasperated.

  Angela came in and sat on the edge of the bed.

  "Did you make your bed?" Susan asked.

  "Uh-huh." Glumly.

  "No smile for me, angel face?"

  Angela forced a tight smile.

  "What's wrong, sweetheart?"

  Angela looked down at Philip, wriggling and grinning with his one tooth

  "Daddy likes Phil better than me," she said.

  "He loves you, honey," said Susan.

  "He likes Phil better."

  "Men get a little silly about their sons, for a while," said Susan. "But Daddy loves you, Angie. You know that."

  "I guess."

  "Fathers get closer and closer to their daughters as the years go by," Susan said, remembering her own father. "They have fights with their sons, sooner or later."

  Angela did not seem mollified at all.

  Susan looked at her fair-haired daughter, wondering how much more she could tell her. Maybe Dan does have some ancient Italian thing about his son. Maybe he blames Angie unconsciously for the trouble we had between us when I was carrying her. What can I say? What can I tell her?

  The doorbell chimed.

  Placing the little cotton sock down on the table next to Philip's crib, Susan asked her daughter, "Angie, could you try to get his socks on?"

  As Susan headed for the front door, she realized that she herself was not spending enough time with her daughter these days. Susan promised herself to have a long talk with Angela, a real heart-to-heart to find out how she was doing and how things were going at school. Before she finally decided whether or not to let the school psychologist see her. But between her own work and taking care of the baby and Dan's longer and longer days at the lab and the house and everything she, just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

  The bell chimed again. Pushing her vague feelings of guilt away, Susan went to the front door and opened it.

  Kyle Muncrief stood there, smiting in a slightly embarrassed way. In a pair of crisply creased slacks and a starched white short-sleeved shirt he looked like a model for a men's fashion advertisement.

  "Hello Susan."

  "Kyle." Susan stepped back from the door, an invitation for Muncrief to come into the house.

  He looked a little flustered, almost embarrassed. "I uh, thought that since I've . . . well, since I've asked Dan to work weekends for a while . . ." He cleared his throat. "Well, I thought maybe I could offer you whatever help I can give you. Babysit or go to the store for you, whatever."

  Susan felt flabbergasted. "Why, Kyle, that's awfully nice of you."

  "Well, it's my fault your husband's going to be away so much. It's the least I can do."

  "I do have to do the week's grocery shopping," Susan said, leading him back toward Philip's nursery.

  "I could stay with the kids," Muncrief suggested. "I don't know much about babies, though."

  "Angie, look who's here," said Susan as they entered the blue-papered nursery. Angela smiled happily. "Uncle Kyle!"

  "Hi, Angie."

  Susan said, "Angie, Uncle Kyle's going to stay with you while I do the shopping. You can take care of Phil for an hour or so, can't you sweetheart?"

  Without taking her eyes from Muncrief, Angela said, "I guess."

  "I'll set him up in his playpen in the living room,, said Susan. "Angie, would you bring some of his toys?"

  In ten minutes the baby was happily batting at a colorful mobile attached to the rim of the playpen. Angela sat on the floor next to her brother while Muncrief sat on the sofa, the TV remote control box at his side.

  "I'll only be an hour or so," Susan said. "Maybe less."

  "Take your time," said Muncrief. "We'll be okay here. Right, Angela?"

  "Sure!"

  Susan hurried out to her Subaru wagon, thinking that Angela was capable of minding her brother for an hour or so as long as there was an adult on hand to watch over her. Kyle may not know anything about babies, she told herself, but he'll keep Angie from being frightened at being alone with Phil.

  Angela sat on the living room carpeting, watching her baby brother amusing himself, glancing shyly now and then at Uncle Kyle sitting comfortably on the sofa where Daddy usually sat.

  "Cat got your tongue?" Muncrief asked, smiling.

  "What?"

  "That's what you say when the person you're with isn't saying anything," Muncrief explained. "Does the cat have your tongue? That means, aren't you going to talk to me?"

  Angela thought that over for a moment, then said, "Can I watch TV?"

  "Don't you want to talk to me, Angie?"

  "I guess."

  "Don't you like me, Angie?"

  "Oh, sure."

  "Do you like driving to school in my convertible?"

  "Uh-huh. But the kids tease me when I don't go with them on the school bus."

  "Does that bother you?"

  "I saw you leading the orchestra," she said.

  "Oh?"

  "My father says I was imagining it, but I saw you."

  "Maybe it was just because you like me so much that you wanted to see me."

  Angela shook her head with the stubborn certainty of youth. "I saw you."

  "Have you seen anybody else you know in your VR games?" Muncrief asked.

  "Oh sure. I saw my brother, and some of the other kids from class."

  "Did you ever see your mother or father?"

  A cold hand gripped Angela's heart. She remembered seeing her father lying in the coffin in the mermaid's city beneath the sea.

  "I thought I saw my Daddy once," she said uncertainly.

  Muncrief heard the quaver in her voice. "Maybe we ought to watch some TV now." Patting the sofa cushion beside him, he said, "Come on up here and sit beside me."

  Angela wished that Amanda was with her, instead of on the night table in her bedroom. But she slowly got up and sat on the sofa, at its end, as far from Muncrief as she could get. He picked up the remote unit, but did not click the TV on.

  "Do you have any boyfriends?" he asked.

  Angela shook her head.

  "None at all?" Muncrief probed, smiling wider. "I would think a pretty girl like you would have lots of boyfriends."

  "Well," she said slowly, "There's Gary Rusic. He's nice. But he's not really my boyfriend."

  "I co
uld be your boyfriend, Angela."

  Very seriously Angela replied, "But you're too old, Uncle Kyle!"

  Muncrief sank back on the sofa and turned on the TV, trying to keep the disappointment he felt out of his flushed face.

  Dan was half asleep on the living room sofa waiting for the eleven o'clock TV news to get to the weather report. In the back of his groggy mind he thought that the local weather forecasters here in Florida always predicted warm temperatures and plenty of sunshine, no matter what was really on its way.

  Susan had told him over supper that Kyle Muncrief had come over and sat with the kids while she went shopping. Dan said nothing, but thought, that sonofabitch makes me work all day while he comes over and plays with my kids.

  "How is it going?" Susan asked, from the armchair on the other side of the end table.

  "Not bad," he said. "It's a big job but it's not all that complex. Nothing new needs inventing; just a lot of work to get done by February first."

  "What's so important about February first?" she wondered.

  "Damned if I know."

  "Who is this man you're dealing with? What do you know about him?"

  "Not much," Dan said, yawning. And whatever I find out I'm not supposed to tell anybody, he added silently.

  Not even you.

  But Susan's question echoed in his mind. What's so important about February first? Smith is from Washington; apparently from the White House itself or someplace damned close to it. Why is February first such as important date to him?

  He realized he had missed the weather forecast. The sports guy was blathering about the Dolphins game. "What'd he say about the weather?"

  Susan said, "You were staring right at the screen."

  "My mind was someplace else."

  "It's going to be fair and warm, plenty of sunshine." Then she grinned mischievously. "If it doesn't rain."

  "Thanks a lot."

  "What do you care? You're going to be in the lab all day, aren't you?"

  He looked at her. She didn't look angry but her words had a sting behind them.

  Before he could say anything the phone rang.

  "Who in hell could be calling at this time of night?" Dan grumbled, swinging his legs off the sofa.

  "Jace," Susan guessed.

  "One of your customers," he countered as he headed for the kitchen.

  "They don't have our home number and the business phone is on the answering machine. I think. Check it while you're there, will you?" Susan called after him.

  Dan picked up the wall phone on its fourth ring.

  "Dan, it's Bill Appleton."

  He could hear from the Doc's ashen voice that something terrible had happened.

  "What is it, Doc?"

  "Ralph. He's in intensive care."

  "Ralph Martinez?" Dan's voice ran an octave higher than usual.

  "Yesterday he flew the same simulation run that Jerry did. And had a massive stroke. His whole left side is paralyzed. He can't even talk." Appleton's voice choked off.

  "Jesus Christ," Dan muttered.

  "We need you here, Dan. I need you here. Something's gone haywire with the simulation."

  "I'll be there," Dan said. "Soon as I can get a flight to Dayton."

  "I can send a military plane for you."

  "Okay. Phone me tomorrow morning with the details."

  "Thanks, Dan."

  "I'll be there," said Dan.

  The line clicked off. Dan hung up the phone on its wall rack, then realized that Susan was standing beside him.

  "Ralph Martinez," Dan choked out the words. "He had a stroke. In the simulator."

  "But that's not your fault," Susan said. "It's not your problem."

  "I've got to go back there tomorrow, try to find out what's wrong."

  "No!" Susan snapped, her lips white, her eyes burning. "You're not going back to that woman!"

  DOROTHY AGUILERA DE MARTINEZ

  She had hit the simulations lab at Wright-Patterson like a bombshell. Barely twenty, her dark skin exotic, her dazzling smile inviting, Dorothy Aguilera had the men ogling openly and the women whispering to one another over what to do about her.

  At first she was considered merely a "twofer": a Hispanic female who accounted for two slots in the Air Force's affirmative action program. But within a week it became apparent that this young Latina with the thickly tumbling hair of midnight black and the big beautiful eyes was also one of the fastest typists at the lab and a cheerful hard worker who put most of the older secretaries to shame.

  She started as an assistant to one of those older women but before her first month was out Dr. Appleton commandeered her to be his own secretary. The whole lab buzzed with innuendo and off-color jokes. Appleton had never before shown any signs of susceptibility to female charms; everyone at the lab had met his wife at the parties that the Appletons gave at Christmas, and they assumed that Doc and his matronly wife were happily married. Which they were.

  It quickly became clear that Appleton took Dorothy under his wing more as a foster father than a potential seducer. He wanted to protect her from the leering men who just happened to be going past her desk each day and stopped to chat or invite her out for a drink after work or ask her if she enjoyed boating on the weekends.

  The buzz around the lab subtly shifted. The question got to be: How innocent is Dorothy? She seemed to smile and be pleasant to everyone, yet as far as the rumor mill could determine no one had laid a hand on her. Partly, of course, that was Doc's doing. It was difficult to make time with her when the boss was watching you through the open doorway of his office.

  And although she behaved like a very proper young lady she dressed in skin-tight, mini-skirted fashions that drove the men to flights of fantasy. Dorothy had the kind of full-busted, long-legged figure that turns women green and gives men a fever.

  She dated a couple of the men from the lab occasionally but they had nothing to report back to their buddies except a pleasant dinner and maybe a dance or two with a charming, beautiful young lady who smiled her goodnight at the front steps of her apartment building.

  "She's a female Nolan Ryan," grumbled one of her disappointed swains. "She keeps throwing shutouts."

  "No-hitters," said the guy he was talking to. Wistfully.

  Ralph Martinez was still a major in those days, unmarried but a veteran of much more than aerial combat. His first impression of Dorothy was that she was very young, very beautiful, and very lucky that Doc was the kind of fatherly man he was. Major Martinez also thought that it was a good thing that such an attractive Hispanic woman was also a good worker. The Anglos always thought that Latin-American women were sluts, he knew. At least Dorothy can show them otherwise. And make them drool in their disappointment.

  Dan Santorini had been working at the lab for more than five years at that point, the last two of them with Jace Lowrey. Dan and Susan had married a year earlier, and Sue was pregnant. She spent a lot of her time at her parents' home, comfortably surrounded by her three sisters and her beaming mother who anticipated the baby even more than Susan did, if that was possible.

  Dan's in-laws lived in Xenia, nearly an hour's drive from Wright-Patterson when the traffic was heavy or the weather bad, and even farther from their own home near Vandalia. Dan found himself resenting the extra distance when he had to drive there at night after work. He knew Sue was a little frightened of what was happening inside her; the pregnancy was not without its problems, especially in the first couple of months. It was pretty much of a mystery to Dan, though. Sue did not feel well, that was clear enough to see. It was more than morning sickness. She would phone her mother whenever she felt the slightest twinge and her mother would drive over take Sue back home with her. Usually Dan would get a phone call at the lab to tell him to drive to his in-laws after work. As often as not the call came from his mother-in-law rather than Sue.

  It happened on a raw sleety night as he headed out to his car, bent over against the cutting wind, clutching his hat to his head w
ith one gloved hand and fumbling in his pants pocket for the car keys. Humps of graying snow were piled beneath the light standards; Dan could see the cold sleet slanting in their feeble lights. The parking lot was almost empty; Dan had worked more than an hour after their nominal quitting time. Jace, with no transportation except his rusty bicycle, had decided to stay at work until the sleet let up.

  "Or until the snow melts, whichever comes first," Jace had said.

  Wondering if Jace actually would spend the whole night at the lab, grumbling to himself that he was going to have to drive all the way to his in-laws' and probably end up sleeping on their damned stiff sofa in their stuffy old living room, Dan noticed that somebody in a long belted coat had the hood up on his car and was peering at its engine in the shadowy darkness.

  "Need a jump?" he called out as he approached the figure.

  She turned and he saw that it was Dorothy.

  "It won't start," she said forlornly

  The first thought to pop into Dan's head was an old joke about Hispanics and the wrecks they drove. He came up beside Dorothy and looked at the engine, as if that would help.

  "Try it again." he said. "If it's the battery I've got jumper cables.

  It was not the battery. Dan spent half an hour in the cold wet wind, his ears going numb, the sleet driving into his face. Dorothy's car was dead and whatever the cause was he could neither find it nor fix it.

  "Come on," he said, rubbing his hands together. Despite the gloves his fingers were starting to tingle. "I'll drive you home."

  "Just leave the car here?"

  "Nobody's going to steal it on a night like this and nobody's going to come out to fix it."

  She looked doubtful.

  "Come on," Dan insisted. "Hell, even if somebody does want to steal it he'll have to get it started first.

  Dorothy broke into a smile. "Yes," she admitted. "That's true, isn't it?"

  So she got into Dan's Taurus and gave him directions for her apartment building. The car's heater did not really warm up until he was pulling onto her driveway, yet he could still smell her perfume despite the wet clamminess of their soaked overcoats.