Death Dream

by Ben Bova

  He could not turn his head but his eye swung toward her. Slowly his fingers moved across the keyboard.

  PLS DON CRY

  One of the machines behind the bed changed the tone of its monitoring hum. Dan looked up and saw that Ralph's heart rate had quickened. Is that good or bad? he wondered. Narlikar did not seem to notice it.

  "Ralph," he said swiftly, "can you tell us what happened to you in the simulation? Anything at all. What happened?"

  MY FAULT

  "What does he mean?" Appleton whispered, staring at the letters glowing on the little screen.

  "Was it a normal mission?" Dan asked. "Did the stimulation go the way we programmed it?"

  Y/N

  "Yes or no?"

  BOTH

  "I don't understand," Dan said. "How could that be?"

  JAVE

  "Say again." Dan unconsciously lapsed into the clipped jargon of the fliers.

  JACE

  "Jace was a thousand miles away, Ralph."

  No response. The monitoring machines were all running at a higher pitch. Narlikar was looking at the worriedly. "We must stop," he said.

  But Dan went on. "Ralph, tell us what happened to you. We've got to know what happened."

  JACE

  "Jace couldn't have had anything to do with it."

  JACE DID THIS TI ME

  "It must stop!" Narlikar insisted. "It must stop now!"

  The monitors were all screeching thin high-pitched wails of danger. Dan saw the jagged peaks and valleys of the display screens smoothing, flattening into pencil-thin straight lines. Narlikar punched the red emergency button on the bedside console.

  "Get out!" he screeched. "Clear the area!"

  Dan took the computer with him and followed Doc Appleton, who was holding Dorothy by the shoulders and helping her through the doorway as a team of grim-faced medics barged past them pushing a cart full of emergency equipment.

  They stood outside the cubicle, surrounded by the intensive care ward's semicircle of desks and monitoring screens. The two nurses on duty gave .them unhappy glances but said nothing. For fifteen minutes they waited in morbid silence while the emergency team surrounded Ralph's bed, shouting, flailing at his dying body. Dan felt as if he were underwater trying to hold his breath for fear of drowning. Another pair of green-suited medics raced into Ralph's cubicle. Another ten minutes went by.

  Then Narlikar came out, ash-gray, exhausted. "There was nothing we could do," said the physician. His face hardened as he turned to Dan. "Your interrogation was too much for him."

  Dorothy half-collapsed in Appleton's arms, sobbing.

  Dan stood there. Narlikar, the two desk-bound nurses, even Doc Appleton all stared at him accusingly. But in his hand he held the open computer and its screen still read JACE DID THIS TI ME.

  CHAPTER 36

  "Somebody's following me," said Luke Peterson" He was driving his Cutlass through the Friday afternoon traffic on Interstate 4 with one hand, his other holding the cellular phone clamped to his ear.

  "Following you? Are you certain?" The cold voice of the Inquisitor sounded more incredulous than alarmed.

  "I know when I'm being followed," Peterson said, glaring into his rear-view mirror. "It's a bronze Dodge Intrepid and it's been tailing me since this morning. Everywhere I go, it's right behind me."

  "They're not very good if they let you spot them"

  "I think they want me to know they're watching me."

  The Inquisitor fell silent for a moment. "We've been checking out this man Smith. He's not FBI."

  "These aren't FBI men," Peterson said. "I know the local feds."

  "They could have brought agents in from Washington—"

  Unconsciously Peterson shook his head. "They don't behave tike FBI. Not the same MO."

  "Can you see their license number?"

  "No, they're behind me," Peterson answered with some irritation. "But it's a rental, I can tell you that much."

  A long silence while he weaved one-handed through the four lanes of heavy traffic. He cut in front of a station wagon full of kids; the woman driving it blared her horn angrily at him.

  "Well," Peterson demanded, "What do you want me to do?"

  "Do nothing," came the response. "Stay away from Santorini for the time being—"

  "That's easy. He's gone back to Dayton. "

  "And his family?"

  "They're still here."

  "You've tapped their phone?"

  The Intrepid slid in behind him. Faintly he heard the station wagon's horn blasting again.

  "Nothing so crude as tapping," Peterson answered. "I just pick up their phone conversations remotely with the ELINT gear. But I've got to be within a block of their house to do it."

  "Let it go for now. I can get someone else to monitor their phone."

  "And what do I do?"

  "Nothing. Not until I find out exactly who this man smith is and who is following you."

  "I don't like this. He must have some pretty strong friends back in Washington," Peterson said.

  "We have friends in the capital, also," said the Inquisitor. "Powerful friends."

  "So I'll just spend the weekend taking life easy and hoping these guys behind me aren't licensed to kill, is that it?"

  "Don't be melodramatic."

  "You're not the one being followed. And don't think diplomatic immunity is going to help you if they put the screws to me. I'm no hero."

  "I can take care of the situation, don't worry."

  "I'm already worried."

  "You just take the weekend off and spend the time thinking of a way to deliver Santorini."

  "From Dayton?"

  "No, he will be back. We checked into the situation there. He will most likely return this evening."

  They've got contacts inside the Air Force, Peterson thought. Impressive. Maybe he really can take care of the men following me. If he feels it's in his own best interest. The main thing is to keep him from throwing me to the wolves.

  "Once Santorini has settled down once again, you must find a way to get him to me."

  "Not while I'm being tailed."

  "Of course not. I will take care of that part of it."

  Peterson had always known that the kind of games he played could occasionally get rough. But as he glanced in his rear-view again at the big bronze Intrepid planted on his tail he worried that this time he would be the one on the receiving end. Plenty of cubes in that engine; they'll be able to outrun me even if she's not souped up. And all I've got to give them is the Inquisitor's name and phone number. One lousy contact. His name's probably a phony and he'll leave the country the instant he realizes I've been grabbed.

  He clicked the phone back into its holder and reached into his jacket pocket for a handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from his brow and bald pate. What other cards do I have? he asked himself. If they grab me, what can I offer them?

  Not a damned thing. He found himself hoping that the Inquisitor would not be able to peel the tail off him and would call the whole operation off. Not even the amount of money they were paying him was worth this kind of risk. A guy could wind up dead in a game like this. A nice convenient car wreck or maybe a heart attack or a fatal stabbing by muggers. Peterson felt scared. Best thing to do is call the whole thing off.

  But he knew the Inquisitor wouldn't do that. He wanted Damon Santorini and he always got what he wanted.

  "She popped in here today looking for m make like it was nothing special but I can tell when somebody's pissed off."

  Dan's on his way home, Susan said to herself as she hung up the phone. At least that's something, she thought. His voice had sounded so down on the phone, so utterly exhausted, that she hadn't had the heart to ask him any details about what had happened. Ralph Martinez was dead and her husband was coming back to her. That was all that really mattered. For the moment.

  As she went back to her desk in the kitchen alcove Susan glanced out the bay window at Angela, running across the lawn of
stiff Bermuda grass with a handful of neighborhood kids. That's the way children should play, she told herself. out in the open air and sunshine, running and laughing. Not locked up in some VR booth with electronic LSD pumping into their brains.

  Still, she worried about fire ants and sunburn and a thousand other dangers that the world could throw at a twelve-year-old girl.

  Phil was sitting on the kitchen floor happily banging on a pair of lids from Susan's pots. Surrounded by a month's income-worth of toys, he still preferred the shiny noisy lids. Boys, thought Susan. Before long he'll be outside too, playing baseball and skinning his knees and getting into fistfights with his friends. The baby was showing increasing signs of rambunctiousness. A month ago he had been content to spend half the afternoon in his playpen. Now he wants to get out and explore. They don't stay babies for long.

  But as she sat in the little secretary's chair in front of her computer, Susan's seething anger rose up again. Dan had driven his own car to the airport to meet the Air Force jet that Dr. Appleton had sent. He would drive himself home when the plane returned him to Kissimmee. Out and back in the same day. At least he did not have to stay in Dayton overnight again.

  Susan had been glad to see him go. The smoldering rage she felt about Muncrief and Vickie lying to them, tampering with the school games, assaulting Angela's mind and then blandly insisting that nothing of the sort tad taken place, that hot wrath of hers blistered Dan too. It wasn't his fault, she knew that, but still it infuriated her that he could not accept what seemed so obvious to her.

  "They're trying to rape your daughter!" she had raged at rim the night before.

  "Sue, for chrissake, stop exaggerating!"

  "Rape her mind."

  "Maybe so," Dan had answered. "When I come back we'll get to the bottom of this. I'll find out what's going on and then we'll know who's doing what to whom. But until we have some real proof you can't go barging around making wild accusations."

  They had argued half the night, Susan getting angrier and more frantic while Dan struggled to stay calm and under control. His asthma started, the way it always did when he was faced with a crisis, and Dan had spent the remaining hours until dawn sitting up in bed, wheezing, struggling to breathe. which just made Susan angrier at Kyle and Vickie and Dan and herself.

  Her first instinct, after Dan had left the house that morning, haggard and tight-lipped, was to go down to the lab and face Vickie in her own den. But the offices were closed for the Thanksgiving weekend and when she tried to phone Vickie's apartment all she got was a stupid answering machine. So Susan spent her Friday morning setting up the key-word list Dan would need to search the files she had pulled on Jace's information requests, fuming inwardly. Ever since lunch, though, she had been trying to ferret out more information about the VR games in the ParaReality programs.

  To no avail. Yes, there were back-ups to each of the fourteen school games on file. But she could not access them from her home computer.

  Still Susan worked at it doggedly, trying to crack the security codes that guarded the games and their back-ups. She glanced at the window every now and then, though, and saw that Angela was still playing with the neighbor's kids. Philip was happily clanging away a few feet from her. She looked up at the kitchen clock and saw that Dan's plane would be leaving Wright-Patterson in less than an hour. If it took off on time.

  "I'll take Dorothy home," said Dr Appleton.

  Dan had just hung up after calling Sue from one of the pay phones lining the wall of the hospital corridor.

  Appleton looked grim, but he no longer had the defeated, hang-dog look he had worn a few days earlier.

  "Maybe I should," Dan said.

  "No," Doc answered firmly. "You go home to your wife. I'll take care of Dorothy. It's my responsibility."

  Dan heard the unspoken words: I may have helped you to kill her husband but I'm not going to let you destroy your marriage.

  "Does she have any relatives in the area?" Dan asked.

  "I don't think so. She told me some friends are coming over to stay with her tonight."

  Stepping along the corridor beside his former boss, Dan saw Dorothy standing in the little waiting area outside the intensive care ward. All in black, already mourning, her eyes staring into infinity. This wasn't the vibrant exciting woman he had made love with all those years ago. This was a widow, a woman struggling to keep herself from breaking in two, a woman whose husband had been killed.

  By me? Dan accused himself silently. But Ralph said that Jace did it.

  I ought to say something to her, Dan told himself. But what? I'm sorry Ralph died? I'm sorry I pushed him to the limit? He looked across the distance between them into her dark, dark eyes, rimmed with red now, circled with grief and sleeplessness. Dorothy looked through him, as if he weren't there, staring at images that only she could see.

  "Doc," Dan pulled at Appleton's tweed jacket sleeve. "We've got to talk."

  The older man nodded, but said, "I've got to get her home."

  "Ralph said that Jace did this to him."

  "And the plane's waiting for you."

  "Let it wait!" Dan snapped, gripping Appleton's thin arm. "What the hell did Ralph mean by that?"

  Startled, Appleton turned to face Dan. "I don't know, Dan. I don't know if it means anything or not."

  "He said Jace killed him!"

  "He might have been delirious. Or maybe that's not what he meant. He never liked Jace."

  Dan stared at the older man. I owe this man my career, my whole life, Dan thought. And I'm bullying him as though he's a murder suspect. Yet he tugged Appleton across the corridor, away from the waiting area and Dorothy.

  "Why would he say Jace did it to him?" Dan insisted. "Did he mean that Jace programmed something into the simulation? Something that we don't know about?"

  "You've gone over the program," Appleton replied. .Did you find anything?"

  "Two men have died, Doc. That's not a coincidence. And I'm working for a company that's going to use VR sims in an amusement park. For the general public. If somebody can be killed in a VR simulation—"

  "Murdered," Appleton corrected. "When you deliberately kill a human being it's called murder."

  Dan gaped at him.

  Appleton nodded solemnly. "There's something in that simulation that kills people," he said, his voice row but unshakably certain. "And Jace put it in there."

  "But he hasn't been here for more than a year," Dan pointed out. "You said it yourself. I'm the only one who worked on the sim for the past year."

  "Jace did it."

  "Miserable," Dan pleaded, "you're sure? It couldn't be—"

  "No one else would know how, or even want to," Appleton said. "You'll have to find out what he did."

  "But why—?"

  "It's up to you, Dan. I'm keeping that simulation shut down unless or until you can tell me how to make it safe again."

  It's up to me, Dan said to himself. There's nobody else.

  He stood there rooted to the spot, realizing that Doc was right, feeling the weight of all the responsibility pressing on his shoulders. Doc turned away und started walking toward Dorothy. Dan shook himself like a man waking from a dream, squared his shoulders, and strode across the waiting room to catch up with Doc and Dorothy.

  "Wait," he said. "We're not finished yet."

  "I've got to get Dorothy home," Doc murmured.

  "Dorothy—" Dan's voice caught in his throat when he looked at her, close enough to touch.

  She said sadly, "We had a good life together, Ralph and I."

  "If there's anything I can do," Dan said, "Anything you need . . ." He could not help staring at her, remembering.

  "No. It'll be all right. Ralph has provided for me very well."

  "But where will you go? What will you do?"

  "It's all finished, Dan. What we had was finished a dozen years ago. We can't relive the past. You know that."

  "Too much has happened," he agreed reluctantly.

 
; "Goodbye, Dan," said Dorothy, in a throaty whisper.

  "Not yet," he said, so sharply that her eyes widened with surprise. "I've got something to say—"

  "Dan, I don't blame you for what happened to Ralph. Honestly I don't."

  He could see the effort it took for her to speak the words. The pain. The grief.

  "I may have helped to kill him," Dan said, his voice low.

  Appleton started to protest.

  "But I promise you this, Dorothy," Dan said urgently, silencing Doc. "Whoever did kill Ralph—I'll find him. I'll find out who did it and see to it that he's brought to justice. If I have to do it all by myself," he said, glancing at Doc, "I'll get the job done."

  Jace was grinning as he watched Chuck Smith pull the helmet over his sandy crew cut. Smith's air of crisp authority had melted away like a pat of butter left out in the sun. He looked doubtful now as he stood alone in the bare VR chamber, uncertain, almost afraid.

  Leaning toward the microphone, Jace asked softly, "Can you hear me okay?"

  Through the one-way window he could see Smith twitch with surprise at the voice in the helmet earphones. He nodded.

  "You can talk, y'know," Jace said. "There's mikes built into the cheek flaps."

  "I hear you."

  "Good put the gloves on and connect the wires. They're color-coded. Don't get them mixed up."

  "Right."

  Jace settled his bony frame in one of the squeaking little typist's chairs and surveyed the control board like the captain of a starship. He laughed inwardly. That's just what I'm gonna do, take out uptight Mr. Smith on a long ride.

  The gloves felt strange to Smith: stiff, like leather that had been left out in the rain. And kind of nubby inside, as if they were inside-out. The light in the bare, low-ceilinged chamber wasn't all that good. He had to squint to match the colors of the hair-thin optical fibers to the plugs on the gloves. The helmet had already been wired up when he had put it on.

  He looked at the window and saw only a reflection of himself in the helmet. He had taken off his suit jacket and then rolled up his shirt sleeves, all at Jace's suggestion.