Death Dream

by Ben Bova

  "You wanna be as comfortable as possible in there," Jace had told him.

  Okay, so I'm as comfortable as I'm going to get, he thought, surprised that his throat felt so dry.

  "I'm ready," he said in a gritty croak.

  "No you're not."

  "Yes I am."

  "The visor."

  "Oh."

  His hands trembled slightly as he reached up and lowered the visor over his eyes. The world went totally dark, like a planetarium before they turn the stars on. Smith stood in the middle of the chamber, arms spread out as if to balance himself, thinking, Jace must've turned out all the light sin here, otherwise I'd be able to see some stray light form under the visor's rim. Or maybe—

  "Here we go," Jace's voice sounded amused.

  Smith saw a swirl of colors, heard the unmistakable background hum of a mediocre sound system in his earphones. He started to feel slightly dizzy; his stomach knotted.

  And he was high up above the earth, out in space looking down at the vivid green expanse of the Amazonian jungle. His stomach cropped out of him; his breath caught in his throat. He was floating in space, weightless, like a tiny one-man satellite, arms and legs spread-eagled like a sky diver. Broad ugly brown scars slashed through the rain forest where logging companies had cleared away the trees, There was no wind, no sound. Within moments his nausea faded. He felt fine.

  "You're in charge now," Jace's voice whispered to him. "It's your ballgame."

  Smith licked his lips. "Bolivia," he said. "False-color infrared imagery."

  Like a ghost he drifted across the continent, saw the Andes as a set of gray bony wrinkles topped with lean clutching fingers of white snow. The forest below him was still green but he could see yellow and blue patches of cultivated farmland in the clearings.

  And red dots here and there: coca plantings. Even beneath the sheltering trees the satellite sensors picked up the coca farms. Good. As he moved closer to the Andes he saw more and more areas of red broad swathes of red in the rugged mountainous valleys.

  "Initiate ECS delivery," he said, barely mouthing the words. "Fast-frame forward."

  The red areas shriveled. Many of them winked out altogether. Smith smiled. Stealthy jet bombers, invisible to radar and flying so high that no one could see or hear them, were delivering cargoes of bioengineered bacteria over the coca-growing areas. The genetically-altered bugs can wipe out most of the coca crop, just like the science guys had promised. The cocaine industry would go broke within months.

  "All right," he called, his voice firmer. "Let's move to the processing plant scenario."

  Darkness again for several heartbeats. Then he was on solid ground, standing behind a massive tree looking out though thick foliage at a low, long cinderblock building painted ugly olive green. Big trees swayed in the hot breeze and the building's roof was covered with camouflaging and greenery. Insects buzzed around him in the humid jungle air but Smith felt no discomfort at all; he was not even perspiring.

  Several trucks were parked at the far end of the building. Men lounged in the shade of a low overhang on benches along its side while others came and went though the big open front doors, toting wooden crates.

  Smith nodded and whispered, "Now."

  A multi-engined jet plane swept low over the little clearing, disgorging soldiers with jet packs on their backs and assault rifles in their hands. The men lounging along the building leapt to their feet and dashed toward their trucks. The soldiers landed in clouds of jet gasses and kicked-up dust, firing at the fleeing truck drivers. Others threw grenades into the open doorways of the building. Smith heard no explosions but saw thick white smoke billowing out. Then he realized the soldiers were all wearing gas masks.

  It was over in a few minutes. The soldiers dragged out the men and women who had been gassed inside the building and then took off their masks. Several of them looked familiar to Smith; the tall one he recognized as the star of several martial arts films. Medics bent over the bodies of the truck drivers, a chaplain among them to give last rites for the dead.

  "Incredible," Smith muttered. "Absolutely incredible! Now let's go to the hacienda. And this time I want to go in with them."

  Again the moment of utter darkness. Then he was standing behind flowering shrubbery on the edge of a parking lot. Beyond the luxury European cars rose a beautiful stucco-walled house with a red tiled roof. Intricately wrought iron gratings on all the windows and delicate iron railings on the house's many balconies. The sky above was crystal blue and in the distance Smith could see the purple masses of the Andes and snowcaps that seemed to hover in midair.

  Armed men were patrolling the grounds, submachine guns casually slung over their rumpled jackets. Their faces were brown, weathered, accustomed by generations of heredity to the cruelty and violence of serving their patron.

  Instinctively Smith ducked down behind the shrubbery. He felt the bulk of a leather holster beneath his left armpit. He pulled out a Colt automatic. and hefted it. The gun felt solid and heavy in his hand.

  Again a jet plane roared out of nowhere, disgorging soldiers. But this time the guards scattered around the grounds and immediately began firing at the troops as they swooped to the ground. Smith saw men hit in mid-air, jerking convulsively as the bullets slammed into them. One soldier's jet pack exploded in a shower of flame, flinging bloody pieces of his body everywhere.

  Smith gripped his pistol so hard his fingers began to ache. Men all around him were shooting, killing and being killed. Soldiers landed on the hacienda's sloping rooftop and tossed gas grenades through the windows up there. But he stood frozen at the edge of the parking lot, screened by the shrubbery, unable to move.

  The real battle was taking shape on the parking lot, right in front of Smith's stunned eyes. Several of the drug lord's men had taken refuge behind the heavy bullet-proof cars parked there and were firing back at the slowly advancing soldiers. And he stood frozen, terrified, his heart thundering in his ears, his mouth dry and burning.

  The noise and the confusion were shattering. Guns firing, grenades exploding, men screaming and yelling, smoke billowing. Smith saw that three of the men were slinking into one of the Mercedes sedans, starting the engine, ready to use the bulletproofed car as a tank against the soldiers.

  Their backs were to him. Each of them had a submachine gun and extra clips of ammunition poking out of their pockets. If nobody stopped them they were going to kill a lot of the soldiers, maybe break the back of the attack.

  And nobody had noticed them except Smith himself. It was up to him. There's nobody else, he knew. It's up to me.

  Gritting his teeth, forcing himself to move, Smith rushed through the bushes and yanked open the back door of the Mercedes. He stuck his gun into the back of the nearest man and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The man turned toward him awkwardly, crouched between the front seat and the rear, his lean hard face wild-eyed with rage and terror, an ugly short-snouted Uzi in his hands.

  Desperately Smith cocked the gun with his left hand and fired pointblank. The man's head exploded in a shower of blood and bone and brain. Smith shot again and the driver splattered forward over the steering wheel. The third man jumped out of the open front door, flat onto his belly on the blacktopped parking lot. Smith whirled and emptied the gun into him.

  And it was over. He leaned against the car, smoking gun in his shaking hand, and watched the soldiers pushing their prisoners out of the house. Dead bodies littered the parking lot and the grounds. Many of them were American soldiers. Smith's knees barely held him up. He felt sick and his trousers were wet. He had pissed himself.

  The scene faded away into darkness.

  "Program's terminated," he heard Jace's voice in his earphones. "You can lift the visor. And, uh—I guess you'll wanna clean yourself up, huh?"

  For a moment Smith felt embarrassed, ashamed. But then a new feeling swept over him. I killed those guys. I saved the attack. So I was scared for a minute, who wouldn't be?

  Liftin
g the helmet off his head, he smiled at his image in the one-way window, stained pants and all. He felt strong. He felt powerful. He felt great.

  CHAPTER 37

  Dan sat staring out the tiny window of the Air. Force executive jet, seeing neither the landscape far below nor the snowy mountainous clouds that floated in the air all round the plane. His mind was spinning thoughts over and over and over, faces and memories and snatches of words tumbling past one another endlessly. Dorothy. There's no place in her life for me now. She won't let me near her. I could feel the attraction, it's still there. And she could too, I know she could. But Ralph's standing between us now, more real than he was when he was alive.

  He pictured himself with Dorothy again. I'm sorry I killed your husband but let's run away together; I'll leave my wife and children and we can pretend none of this ever happened. Yeah. In your dreams, pal. Maybe in a simulation. But this isn't a game. There is the real world and you're in it for life.

  And Doc. His career, his whole life is on the line. I owe him so much. I can't let him down. I've got to get to the bottom of this so he can re-open the sim and keep developing new ones.

  Unbidden, the memory of how he met Doc came surging up into his awareness. The memory of why he left Youngstown, why he had to leave.

  In gym class, in his senior year of high school. A skinny, pale, asthmatic teenager sitting on the bench that ran along the far side of the gym while the other guys played basketball. The teacher had gone off to his office, leaving the guys to spend the period any way they wanted. None of the jocks wanted a hopelessly inept nerd on their side, so Dan sat, hating the smell of sweat and sneakers, while the other guys ran and shouted and did their best to imitate basketball players.

  He never saw the ball bounce past him. Dan was deep in thought, wondering about what kind of a job he could get after graduation, worrying about facing a lifetime of jobs and wages and eventually maybe getting married and supporting a family. On what? What can I do? What do I like to do?

  The slap across his face didn't really hurt. It shocked Dan, though.

  "I said get the ball for us, asshole!"

  Totally surprised, Dan looked up to see one of the muscular jocks looming over him, fists on hips, gym shorts and baggy tee shirt soggy with sweat.

  He grabbed Dan by the hair and yanked him to his feet. "When I tell you to get the ball, shitface, you go get the fuckin' ball!" he shouted. And he shoved Dan in the direction that their basketball had rolled, out by the parallel bars and weight-lifting equipment.

  The other guys were grinning, standing there watching with stupid monkey grins on their sweaty faces. Dan turned wordlessly and walked toward the corner where the ball rested among the barbells and weights. He ducked under the parallel bars and around the worn leather horse.

  The anger inside making his heart pound so loudly he could hear it in his ears.

  He picked up the ball and flung it two-handed back to the players. His tormentor took it and they all broke back onto the basketball court. Dan picked up one of the hand weights and walked back toward the players. No one paid him any attention at all.

  The bully shot for the basket, missed, and turned to run down to the other end of the court. He looked surprised to see Dan stepping methodically toward him. He didn't realize Dan had the weight in his hand until Dan swung it up and rammed it under his chin, knocking the kid off his feet. Suddenly blind with rage, Dan planted his knees on the fallen kid's chest and raised the weight over his head.

  He would have smashed the guy's skull in if the other kids hadn't grabbed him and pulled him off. As it was, the youngster's jaw was fractured, his tongue bitten almost in two, and eight teeth were either knocked out completely or so shattered that they had to be surgically removed. Dan was suspended from school for two weeks, saved from worse punishment only because of his unblemished previous record. The other guys all admitted that the bully had slapped Dan and pulled his hair but the seriousness of Dan's retaliation shocked everyone in the school.

  The parents sued, of course. Dan's father lost his automobile and nearly their house. Dan worked for a solid year after graduation just to pay his father back.

  His father screamed and bellowed at him. His mother cried. His younger brother and sister looked at him as if he were a stranger. Eventually the screaming and the crying stopped. But not the strange looks. The family turned to cold silence. He had brought shame upon them. And worse, lawyers. He was a potential killer, a savage in their midst. "How could I have raised such a child?" his father railed.

  After that episode it was inevitable that Dan would leave Youngstown. He got a job at a local gas station and worked there long enough to buy his father a used car to replace the one he had to sell. Then he answered an advertisement for a job at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton.

  It was Dr Appleton who plucked Dan out of his dead-end job in electronics repair. Doc Appleton who had gotten the Air Force to pay for special schooling. Doc who had teamed Dan with Jace, made Dan part of the top VR team in the country. Doc had introduced Susan to him. Doc had been more of a father than his own disappointed old man.

  When he had been riding the bus from Youngstown to Dayton, alone and knowing that he was not really welcome in his family's home any more, Dan realized that the one time he had given vent to his anger it had shattered his life completely. He had to start all over, again. He vowed he would never lose his self-control again. It cost too much.

  "I've never lost my temper without it costing me more than it was worth," Dan muttered to himself as the Air Force plane threaded its way through the clouds.

  You've got to stay in control, he told himself. Don't let your emotions run away with you, that won't solve anything. But the burning, rasping ache in his chest told him that he was not in control of himself. Not entirely. It was impossible.

  He took out his inhalator and squeezed a squirt of epinephrine down his throat. Look at it rationally, he told himself. Like an archeologist looking into a newly-excavated pit filled with the shards and fragments of an ancient civilization. It all fits together somehow; all those chips and bits can be pieced together into a coherent whole that will tell you what you need to know. But how to do it? Where to start?

  And unlike a cool-headed scientist who can attack the puzzle before him with a certain level of detachment, Dan felt deep within him this terrible surging anger. Anger at Jace for turning their simulation into a death trap. Anger at Muncrief for hiring him to be Jace's lackey. Anger even at Doc for saddling him with his responsibility and at Dorothy for walking away from him. Anger at whoever it was who was messing around with his daughter's head.

  Even anger at Susan's fiery insistence: "They're trying to rape your daughter!"

  She's right, Dan admitted to himself. Muncrief or Jace or somebody's going after Angela. And Vickie's covering up for whoever it is. An overwhelming tide of rage swept over him, but he fought it down, battled with every atom of self-control in him. Don't go off half-cocked. Don't let your emotions ruin everything. Find out who it is first. Find out why.

  And even as he fought to control himself Dan felt a smoldering implacable inescapable anger at himself for letting them do these things to him, to his child, to his family, to his work, to his life.

  The bastards, he cursed silently as the Air Force jet cruised toward Florida. The sneaking murdering child-molesting bastards. I'll get them. I'll get each and every one of them.

  And do what? challenged another voice in his head. Who do you think you are, Wyatt Earp? Going to march in there and have a shootout with Muncrief? With Jace? You already tried that once and you haven't had a decent night's sleep ever since. Get real! Get a grip on yourself. You're not going to accomplish a damned thing if you let your temper get the better of you.

  So Dan struggled with himself all during the flight home. By the time the jet landed and he set foot on the airport's concrete apron he was trembling inside with pent-up fury. Blindly he walked through the tiny terminal and out
onto the parking lot. Automatically he unlocked the Honda, cranked down all four windows, started the car and turned the fan up to maximum.

  He might have driven past a presidential motorcade for all he noticed on his way home. But by the time he got out of the car and saw Susan standing at the breezeway door smiling at him, Philip in her arms and Angie by her side, he had made up his mind about what he had to do.

  Susan's welcoming kiss was warm. "I'm sorry about Ralph," she said as Dan took the baby from her. He hoped that she meant she was sorry about their argument, as well.

  "Yeah," he said. "Me too." Then, looking down at his daughter, "How're you, Angel?"

  "Okay."

  Dan held Phil in the crook of his arm and tousled Angie's hair. "Miss me?"

  She smiled up at him, ail braces and coltish awkwardness and happy eyes. "Sure."

  Pushing his inner furies deeper below the surface, Dan followed his wife into the kitchen. "I won't be going back to Dayton," he said. "What I need to find out about is right here. Has been, all along."

  "Jace?" she asked.

  He nodded grimly.

  "I've got about a hundred pounds of journal articles and books and whatnot that Jace's looked up since he came to ParaReality. No luck with Wright-Patt, though. They won't let me into their files."

  Dan said, "I'll call Doc. He'll get you cleared." Putting the baby down on the kitchen floor, he said to Angela, "Keep an eye on your brother for a minute, will you honey?"

  "You're calling Doc now?"

  "Why not?"

  "It's almost seven o'clock."

  Dan picked up the wall phone. "He'll either be home or in his office."

  "It's Friday."

  "We're going to work the weekend on this, Sue."

  "We are?"

  "You and me, right."

  "But will Dr Appleton?"

  Pecking Appleton's number from memory, Dan replied, "All he's got to do is give me the access code for the library files. You and I will take it from there."