by Ben Bova
Fluttering a hand in the air, Muncrief said, "He sounded apologetic as all hell. Said he'd work through the weekend to make up for the time he's taken off."
Vickie was not as easily assuaged as Muncrief. She knew that Dan would probably have worked through the weekend anyway.
"I see that Jace is working with Smith now," she said.
Muncrief's dejected face settled into a scowl. "Yeah," he said, sourly.
"Is that wise?"
"Not a blasted thing I can about it. He just waltzed in here, told Smith he knows all about it and he can do a better job than Dan can. Smith bought it."
"That's going to be trouble," said Vickie.
"Like we don't have trouble already."
"I know. But Jace—"
Muncrief shook his head like a fighter who had taken too many punches. "Look, the guy wants Jace to do his job, but he doesn't trust Jace as far as he can throw the Washington Monument. So he's going to stick so close to Jace he's going to be like a tapeworm."
Vickie felt her hands gripping the arms of the chair tightly. Forcing herself to relax, she mused, "Well, Jace is certainly the better man for the job, if Smith can keep his nose to the grindstone."
"Maybe, maybe not. At any rate Smith is going to stay right here for the duration."
"I see," said Vickie.
Muncrief gave her a bleary glare. "Do you? Do you have any idea of what this means? That blasted G-man hanging around here, poking his nose into everything?"
"Kyle—"
"Toshimura trying to slit my goddamned throat, making deals with who-knows-who behind my back. Reporters sniffing around. We're behind schedule on Cyber World. Money running out. Good God, Vickie, it's all going to come crashing down on my head!"
He looked as if he would burst into tears.
"It's all right, Kyle," she said placatingly. "It's all going to be all right,"
"How can it be all right? Everything's coming unglued, for God's sake!"
"Don't get your blood pressure up. Dan's coming back, you said. They'll get the baseball game on track, you'll see. And Jace will keep Smith happy, which means the Washington money will keep coming in."
Muncrief sunk his head into his hands. "That guy scares me, Vickie. If he finds out about me . . ."
Vickie thought Kyle should be more worried about what would happen if Dan found out about what he was doing. But she said soothingly, "Don't worry about Smith. I'll look after him. He's not interested in your past. I'll take care of him, you'll see."
Dan awoke with a start when the jet's wheels thunked down and the servomotors that actuated the flaps began their high-pitched whine.
The Air Force co-pilot ducked his head through the cockpit hatch and hollered over the engine noise, "You awake?"
"Yeah," Dan shouted back.
"Seat belt tight? We're on the downwind leg."
Dan nodded and tugged at his seat belt. He had been dreaming. He vaguely recalled being with Dorothy, in bed, the way they had made love years ago. But somebody else was watching them; he could not tell if it was Ralph or Doc or maybe even Jace. Whoever it was, his face was hidden. In his dream Dan wanted to make love to Dorothy but he couldn't until he found out who it was that was watching them and made him go away.
Jace. Everything boiled down to Jace. He made a masturbation machine for Ralph and Dorothy. That's what it is, Dan told himself. No matter how sophisticated it may be, no matter what kind of visions and sensory inputs Jace was able to build into the system, it's nothing more than an electronic jerk-off. Dan had not been inside a church since Philip's christening, but his childhood catechism classes still triggered a trained reflex of revulsion.
The jet's wheels screeched on the runway once, twice, then the plane, settled down. The pilot reversed thrust and slewed the executive twin-jet onto the ramp that led to the modest flat-roofed structure of the Kissimmee Airport terminal.
Topcoat and travel bag in hand, Dan ducked through the hatch and down the shaky metal ladder and saw Susan waiting for him just inside the air-conditioned terminal's glass door. Angela stood beside her and Philip was sitting in his stroller, apparently asleep.
He ran for the door, pushed it open, dropped his bag and coat and wrapped his arms around his wife.
"I'm glad you're home," Sue said after a long kiss.
"Me too!"
Dan saw that Phil was indeed sound asleep as he turned d swooped Angie up in his arms.
"Hello Angel!"
She grabbed his ears and kissed him wetly on the cheek.
Susan drove the Subaru home, Dan in the right-hand seat and Angela in the back next to Phil's car seat. For a few minutes Dan forgot about the mess at Wright-Patt, the work at ParaReality, about Jace and Doc and everything except the tight little family that surrounded him.
"How's Ralph?" Susan's question brought him back to reality.
"They don't think he'll make it," Dan answered. "But he seems to be holding his own. For now."
"Still paralyzed?"
"His whole left side. He can't talk, either."
"God, he must feel like he's in prison—inside his own body."
Dan felt himself biting his lip. "Yeah. It must be pretty bad."
"Did you see Dorothy?"
A danger signal flashed in Dan's mind. He recalled his dream. "Just for a minute. She's . . . pretty broken up by all this."
"I can guess."
Twisting around inside his shoulder belt, Dan turned to his daughter. "How're you doing, Angel?"
"Fine." Angela smiled widely enough to show both sets of braces.
Dan saw that Philip was awake now and looking at him with a strangely studious expression on his chubby round-cheeked face.
"Yes, it's your father," he said to Phil, reaching over the seat to tickle his tummy. "I haven't been away so you've forgotten me, have I?"
Philip laughed and waved all four of his limbs. Angela smiled at her father. Susan kept her eyes on the road she drove into the deepening twilight.
"Oh, by the way," she said as casually as she could manage, "we're going out to dinner tomorrow."
Dan turned back from the children. "Going out to eat? On Thanksgiving?" He felt almost betrayed.
Susan nodded, eyes fixed straight ahead. "I've got work to do. I won't have time to cook, I haven't even had time to shop. So I made a reservation at the Empress Lilly in Disney Village."
"The Empress Lilly?"
"It's a very nice restaurant on a Mississippi River paddle-wheel boat," said Susan.
"With the kids?"
"Yes."
Watching his wife's profile, Dan saw that Susan's chin was up in her no-nonsense posture. The decision had been made and there was no use arguing about it. He realized that in all the time they had been living here in Florida he had not yet taken the family to Disney World. He made a weak grin.
"Okay, honey," he said. "I was planning to spend most of the day at the lab, anyway."
"Me too," said Susan.
It was almost nine when Smith finally called Vickie. She was half undressed and half asleep on her bed watching a rerun of Dynasty when the phone rang.
"That guy Lowrey has no concept of time," Smith complained.
"We need to have to be patient with genius," said Vickie with a small smirk, glad that her phone was not a video instrument.
"I appreciate your invitation for dinner," he said. "But it's probably too late for you, huh?"
Vickie realized she had not eaten a thing since breakfast. "Well. it is rather late . . ."
"I'm starving," he said.
He sounded hungry, she thought, for more than food. "All right. But there won't be many places open at this time of night."
"How about the Moroccan pavilion at EPCOT? They keep their restaurant open until midnight."
Without further thought Vickie said, "Fine. I'll meet you there in three-quarters of an hour."
As she swiftly dressed and put on her makeup, Vickie smiled at his choice of restaurant: there wou
ld be belly dancers at the Moroccan Pavilion, she knew. She decided to wear a white belted tank dress with a gold-trimmed white jacket over it. Simple and modest, with a knee- length skirt.
When she saw Smith waiting for her at the restaurant's bar he was in the same light gray suit he had worn all day.
She had never seen him in anything else. Did he bring only the one suit or did he have several of the same cut and shade?
"What's it like living in Disney World?" she asked over the reedy Middle-Eastern music. The restaurant, an opulent Hollywood version of the Arabian Nights, was barely half-full at this late hour. And the service seemed painfully slow.
Smith shrugged his square shoulders. "The hotel's okay. Good service. Everybody's very pleasant. I don't know if that's Floridian or Marriott training."
"Some of both, I should think," said Vickie. Once they were seated at their table and dabbing at an appetizer of stuffed grape leaves, Vickie said, "Quentin seems such a formal name."
"It's a family tradition. Actually I'm Quentin Wayne Smith the Third."
"That's a mouthful. What do your friends call you?"
"Mr. Smith."
That brought Vickie up short. Then she saw he was grinning at her.
"Chuck," he said. "My friends call me Chuck."
"Not Smitty?"
"No." He shook his head. "Never Smitty. I hate that."
He was rather handsome when he smiled, Vickie thought. Good-looking in a boyish athletic way. But he didn't come across as boyish. This was a man, an adult who looked out at the world through those startling blue eyes and measured everything very rationally. He was ambitious, that Vickie could see easily. Already working in the white House. It seemed perfectly clear to her that he had plans to move higher.
But apparently his mind was on things closer to hand.
"I guess I'll be in the lab all day tomorrow with resident genius," he grumbled. "Is there a portable TV I can bring into his lab? I don't want to miss the Thanksgiving games."
"I don't think there are any portables in the building," Vickie replied, reaching for a piece of the round flat pita bread.
"Rats."
"But there's a tabletop TV in Muncrief's room. You could watch the games in there. Or carry it down to Jace's lab if you want to stay there with him."
His face brightened. "Okay. That'll work."
"Just remember to bring it back again after you're through with it."
"Sure. Okay."
They made innocuous conversation through dinner, Vickie wanted to tell him about her problem with Peterson and whoever he was working for, but she hesitated, waiting for the right moment, the right mood. Then the belly dancer came out and she saw that Smith pulled a pair of eyeglasses from his jacket pocket and wiped them carefully before putting them on. The dancer was young and lithe and buxom. Smith never took his eyes off her.
She made a mental note of that.
After dinner they went out to the artificial lake and watched the nightly fireworks display. As the crowd gasped and applauded the colorful bursts, Smith asked, "You said you needed my help?"
"I think I do," she said, trying to keep her voice low, despite the fireworks and the crowd's delighted shouts.
"What's the problem?"
"Security." she replied, hoping that it was a word that would catch his interest.
It did. In the shadowy light she could not make out the expression on his face, but his whole body seemed to tense.
"We have competitors—"
"We?"
"ParaReality. There are plenty of big corporations who are curious about what we're doing."
She saw teeth flash into a grin. Smith gestured toward the lake, the fanciful buildings, the crowd, the fireworks. "Our genial host, for one, I would imagine."
"Disney, yes. MGM. plenty of others. From overseas too."
"Foreign competition," he murmured.
"They've hired a private investigator. At least one, that I know of. He contacted me—"
"How?"
"Phoned me at home one night. Said he wanted to meet with me and make me rich. Not in so many words, but his meaning was pretty clear."
"What did you do?"
Victoria took a deep breath. She was walking a tightrope here and she knew it. "I went along with him. To find out as much as I could. Find out how much he already knew, who he was working for. You know."
"That can be pretty tricky."
"So I discovered. He seems to know quite a lot about ParaReality. He must have informants inside the company. And he knows you're from the government."
"Damn!"
"I don't think he knows what you're doing here," she added hastily.
"Who's he working for?"
"I haven't been able to find out. I—" Vickie realized that her voice was shaking slightly and it was no act. "He scares me, Chuck. He's starting to threaten me. I told him I wouldn't talk to him any more and he said things could get very rough for me."
For several moments Smith said nothing. Vickie looked up into his face, lit by the flickering glow of the fireworks. He looked grim.
"I'll take care of it," he said at last. "Give me his name, anything else you know about him. I'll have some check him out."
Vickie gushed thanks all over him while a part of her marveled at the fact that she actually felt almost as relieved and grateful as she was telling him.
Then she said, "Look—there's no reason to tell Kyle about this."
"He doesn't know?"
"I haven't told him. He has enough to worry about."
Smith's expression seemed to go stony. It was hard to tell in the staccato light of the fireworks but he seemed to be eyeing her suspiciously now.
"Besides," she added quickly, "Kyle's very sensitive about having you around. He doesn't like having to deal with the government. He wants to keep ParaReality entirely under his control."
"But it isn't, is it?"
Ignoring his jab, Vickie went on, "He's almost paranoid about the company. If he found out that you're going to involve more government people—"
"For his own company's protection."
"Even so," Vickie said. "Just leave him out of this, okay? You and I can handle it without getting Kyle involved."
He nodded, but Vickie thought it was reluctantly. He can see through me, she told herself. He knows I haven't told him the whole truth.
The fireworks ended and everyone started for their cars once the last starburst had faded from the midnight sky.
Smith started to stroll around the perimeter of the lake. "Give them a little time to clear out the parking lot," he suggested. "Be easier to find your car then."
"Good thinking," said Vickie.
"You'll be okay to drive home alone?"
"I think so. But I feel a lot better about everything now that you're going to do something about Peterson. Thanks again."
"Nothing to it. I ought to thank you for taking pity on a lonely man and having dinner with me," Smith said as meager crowd moved past them.
"My motherly instinct," she said.
He smiled in the darkness. "Do I come across like a little boy to you?"
"Not really, But I was surprised that you didn't fly back to Washington for the holiday. Don't you have family there? Friends?"
"I've got to stick close to Jace," he said tightly. "He may be a genius but I can't trust him to do what I want without blathering about it to everybody he sees unless I'm right there with him. And now I've got this Peterson thing to worry about. I'm not going anywhere until this job is finished."
"But you let him go home alone?"
Again that tight smile. "He's being watched, don't worry. If he sneezes I'll know it."
"Oh." Vickie was surprised for a moment, then relieved that Smith already had helpers on hand. She returned to her original line of questioning. "Do you have family and friends in Washington?"
"In Washington what I have mostly are associates, teammates, a few helpers, a lot of hinderers." He hesitated a
beat, then added, "Plenty of competitors."
"Esther never told me exactly what you do in the White House . . ."
"Esther Cahan. Nice woman. Very bright."
"What do you do there?"
He stopped and leaned on the railing that circled the lake In the darkness her white skirted suit looked almost ethereal. Despite her age she was an attractive woman, Smith realized. Not as lushly exotic as the belly dancer but nice legs, a neat figure, probably good muscle tone underneath that tan.
He asked, "What are you after, Vickie?"
"Me?" The question caught her by surprise and she had to make time to think. "What do you mean?"
"You're an extremely attractive woman and the boss's right hand. I'll admit that I'm young and handsome and incredibly attractive. And unattached. But why did you invite yourself to dinner with me? You could've told me about Peterson in your office. What are you after?"
Vickie decided that he was too sharp to play games with. "Your job in the White House," she said. "Whatever it is."
He gaped at her, then threw his head back and laughed. "My job? And then what do I do? Retire to Disney Village?"
"No," Vickie replied. "You move up."
For a long moment he made no reply. Finally, "I don't think you have any idea of what a shark pool Washington really is."
"I have some idea," she said. "I've been there."
"And you want to help me get ahead, is that it? Because of your motherly instinct?"
She ignored his sarcasm. "If I help you then you can help me. Isn't that the way the game is played?"
"This isn't a game, kid. It's deadly real."
"So am I," Vickie snapped. "I don't intend to be Kyle Muncrief's nursemaid forever."
"Are you sleeping with him?"
"With Kyle?" She almost laughed aloud. She almost said that Kyle was not interested in any woman older than twelve. But she caught herself. "Never sleep with the boss. It's foolish."
"Amen." He said it with a fervor that made her wonder.
Then he added, "My hotel's about a fifteen minute walk from here."
"Let's get my car from the parking lot."
"Good thinking. you can park all night at the hotel."
And, Vickie said to herself, this will seal the bargain. He knows I'm not telling him everything but he's willing to go along with it as long as I'm willing to go along with him. Smiling inwardly, she thought that it might be the best deal she had made in a long time.
