by Ben Bova
Muncrief's latest phone bill filled her screen. Susan copied it to memory then asked for the previous month's bill. And the one before that. Then she cut the modem connection and accessed the Directory Assistance computer. Within minutes she had a complete list of everyone Muncrief had telephoned from his home for the past three months.
But it wasn't much, she saw. He hardly used his home phone, except to call the ParaReality office.
Susan slumped with weariness. But the thought of Angela out there somewhere in the night straightened her spine. She took a healthy slug of the cooling coffee and cleared the computer screen. There's still his credit card bills. Maybe something'll show up there.
The computer center felt chilly, colder than the rest of the building. Dan shivered involuntarily and wished he had brought his jacket with him.
Jace went straight to the control console of the Cray that was running and folded his lanky frame into the little wheeled chair in front of its keyboard. He pecked at it for half a minute, then got up again.
"Come on," he said, grim-faced. Whether his expression was anger or something else, Dan could not tell.
Wordlessly Dan followed the tall lean scarecrow down the corridor to the Wonderland VR chamber. The control booth was thick with ominous shadows, lit only by the dim safety lamps atop the consoles. Jace pulled a scuffed helmet and a pair of gloves from the storage shelves and pushed them into Dan's hands.
"Go on in," he said, pointing at the one-way window. I'll set you up."
Dan remembered being in the chamber only a few hours earlier, the crippling asthma attack he had suffered at Jace's hands. And he remembered the shoot-out, the bullets smashing into his chest.
"I'm not goin" in," Jace said, reading his thoughts. "I'll stay out here and run the board."
Still Dan hesitated. In the dim lights he barely recognized the man standing before him. Jace looked utterly serious, strangely purposeful, like a man about to enter battle.
"You wanna get to him before he does anything to your kid?" Jace urged. "This is the way to do it. Step into his simulation. Enter his fantasy."
Dan swallowed hard. "Right. Okay."
He put on the helmet and opened the door to the simulation chamber, both gloves in his free hand. As he wormed his fingers into the fuzzy gloves and hooked up the optical fiber connecting lines, Dan began to feel like a trapped animal. The big, empty, low-ceilinged chamber was like an elaborate cage. On the other side of the one-way glass stood Jace, grim and grave as death. Is he really going to inject me into Muncrief's fantasy or is this just Jace's way of getting me out of his hair for a while?
Dan felt the first scratches of rawness in his lungs. Not now! he snarled at himself. Not an asthma attack now!
"You ready?" Jace's voice in his earphones.
Dan pulled down his visor. "Ready."
"Here we go."
The darkness flickered, then vanished. Dan was standing in some kind of elaborate bedroom, like a cross between a fairy tale castle and a Las Vegas casino hotel. The walls looked like stone where they weren't covered with colorful tapestries. The floor was thickly carpeted. There was a huge canopied bed over against one wall, with candles burning softly on the night tables on either side of it.
A young man was standing beside the bed, gazing out the window at the starry night, stark naked except for strange web of glimmering jewels draped across his bare shoulders and extending down to his thighs. Like a sensor network, Dan recognized.
But no Angela.
"Where is she?" Dan snapped, coming around bed toward him.
He whirled around, startled. "How did you—?"
It was Muncrief's voice in this phony VR Prince Charming's naked body. Dan saw that he was erect, anticipating.
"Where's Angela?" Dan bellowed. "What've you done to her?"
"Daddy?" Angela appeared at the arched stone doorway. "You're back!"
Angela was naked too, except for a sensor network. Dan stared at her budding breasts, the thin patch of hair at her crotch, absolute fury boiling up within him.
Angela ran into her father and he wrapped his arms around her protectively.
"Angie, baby, he didn't hurt you, did he?"
"No," she said, almost sobbing. "He loves me, Daddy, just like you said. But I was afraid."
"I said?"
"A couple of minutes ago, downstairs. Don't you remember?"
Dan looked over at the young prince. His face seemed to be wavering, melting like candle wax.
"That wasn't me, Angel. That was a fake."
He could feel her body go stiff with alarm. Angela looked up at him, wide-eyed. "But—but how do I know it's you now?"
He smiled down at her and patted her golden hair.
"Because I'm taking you out of here and back home where you'll be safe and sound and sleep in your own bed with Mom and Phil and me right there under the same roof with you."
"You can't take her away," said the prince, in Muncrief's gruff voice.
"The hell I can't," Dan said to him. "And once she's safe I'm going to find you and kick the shit out of you, Kyle."
"I'm your prince, Angela," he said, his voice breaking. "I love you. You said you loved me too!"
"I do love you," said Angela. But she did not leave her father's arms.
"Then stay with me."
"I'll come back," she said.
"No! He won't let you come back. He won't let you ever see me again!"
She turned back to Dan. "Daddy?"
"Angela, baby, this is all an illusion. A VR game. There is no prince. It's really Kyle Muncrief running a VR game. Like the games at school, remember?"
"Uncle Kyle?"
"Yes," said Dan.
"Is it really you, Uncle Kyle?"
The prince wavered and shimmered like an image seen under water.
"Tell her the truth, you sonofabitch," Dan demanded. The handsome young mask melted into Muncrief's unhappy face. The slim youthful body aged before their eyes, belly sagging, muscles slumping, erection gone. He crumpled to his knees, face in his hands, blubbering.
Jace could not see what Dan was experiencing, but he heard the voices over the tinny loudspeaker built into the command console.
Muncrief's such an asshole, he grumbled to himself. And now he's gone down in flames. Probably wind up in a funny farm for perverts.
The phone rang, startling him. Who the hell would be calling at this time of the night? Who'd have this friggin' number?
He let it ring twice, three, four times. When it became clear that whoever was calling was not going to hang up, Jace snatched the instrument from its cradle.
"What?" he snapped.
"Dan?"
"No."
"Jace, is that you?"
"Sue?"
"Yes. Where's Dan?"
She sounded excited. Jace looked through the one-way window and saw Dan standing in a weird, half-stooped posture, his arms wrapped around empty air.
"He's not here," he half-lied.
"Jace, can you get him? Do you know where he is?"
"I think so."
He could hear Susan's breath gasping through the phone. "I've found him! Tell Dan I've found him! He's at the Travelers Inn Motel on International Drive. I'll bet anything on it! I traced him through an invoice the delivery company faxed to him. He had a DEC minicomputer delivered there!"
"Muncrief? That's where he's at?"
"Yes! Tell Dan. I'm phoning the police right now."
"But wait—" Too late. She had already hung up.
Jace put the phone down and stared through the window at Dan. Shit, if she gets the cops in there Dan's gonna find out that I copied him, too. He'll find out that I knew what Muncrief wanted, all along. Muncrief'll blab everything to them and Dan'll want to kill me.
He shook his head. Shit on all of them, he said to himself. And began to manipulate the controls of the VR equipment.
CHAPTER 47
Dan held Angela in his arms, his anger seething like mol
ten lava within him. His daughter seemed unharmed physically, but what about mentally, psychologically? What has this done to her?
He had not seen his daughter naked for more than a year; she had become very shy and Susan had explained that this was natural when a girl began to turn into a woman.
But Kyle's seen her naked. Kyle was going to fuck her maybe just in a VB sim, but it would've seemed real enough to him. And to Angie.
Muncrief was still rocking back and forth on his knees, weeping.
"I love you, Crystal. I've always loved you. I didn't want to run away but I had to. I had to. You can understand that can't you? Can't you?"
Angela clung to her father, whispered to him. "I don't think he's talking to me, Daddy."
"No, honey, it's somebody named Crystal."
"The prince wanted to call me Crystal. I wouldn't let him."
Dan wondered who Crystal might be.
"Daddy?"
"I'm right here," Dan said. He could feel his daughter pressing against him, see her as clearly as if she were really in the same place with him and not separated by miles of distance, naked except for the sensor net that was disguised in this simulation to look like jewels linked by fine golden chains.
Dan unbuttoned his shirt, tugged it off, and wrapped it around his daughter.
"The prince was Mr. Muncrief all along, wasn't he?"
"Yes, Angel."
"He said he loved me."
Now comes the tricky part, Dan thought. "He's not well, Angel. He's sick in his mind. When he said he loved you, it wasn't the way that I love you or your mother loves you."
"He loves this Crystal person, doesn't he?"
"I guess so. He keeps saying he does."
"And he wanted me to be Crystal."
Cripes, she's got a better grip on this than I do, Dan told himself. "Maybe he did," he said to his daughter. "Maybe he did."
"He didn't want to hurt me," Angela said. "He tried to make me want to love him. That's why he disguised himself as the young prince."
Dan nodded, stroking her hair, his eyes on Muncrief's blubbering form. The bastard could still be dangerous, Dan thought. He's bigger than I am, and if he goes from self-pity into anger we could have an ugly situation here.
He started to call to Jace to have him take Angela out of the simulation, but then he realized she would be alone in a room somewhere with Muncrief.
"Where did Mr. Muncrief take you when he picked you up at school?" Dan asked his daughter.
Angela screwed up her face, trying to remember. "Oh, sure—the Travelers Inn Motel."
A shock wave shivered through Dan's guts. A motel. The sonofabitch wanted more than a simulation, after all.
Gently, so he wouldn't frighten her, he asked, "Which Travelers Inn, Angel?"
"The one near Wet 'n Wild."
"Jace!" Dan called. "Did you hear that? They're in the Travelers Inn on International Drive."
"Got it," Jace's voice replied. "Help is on the way."
Angela looked back at Muncrief. "He really is sick, isn't he,. Daddy?"
"I'm afraid he is. He didn't—hurt you, did he? Touch you?"
"No." She sighed painfully. "I thought the prince really loved me. I kinda knew he wasn't real, but that made it even better, in a way.
"Did you love the Prince?" Dan asked.
"I guess."
He held her tighter. "Angel darling, there are going to be lots of boys who'll love you even more than your make-believe prince, believe me. I'll have to buy a baseball bat to keep them away from you."
She almost giggled. "Don't keep them all away, Daddy."
"Not all of them. But not until you're a little older."
Muncrief had grown silent. He was still hunched down on his hairy calves, leaning against the brocade-covered bed, face buried in his hands. But he had stopped weeping."
Now he looked up at Angela and Dan, face red, eyes swollen, hair disheveled.
"I can't get out," he muttered. "I want to get out but I can't."
"Help is on the way, Kyle," said Dan, thinking, It's just as well that you can't get out of the sim, you pederastic sonofabitch. I don't want you in the same room with my daughter. I don't want you in the same county as my daughter.
"I didn't do anything," Muncrief whined. "It was all a game. Just a game."
Dan's anger broke through. "Yeah, a game. With my daughter. Well, you're not going to play any more games, Kyle. They're going to put you away, lock you behind padded walls where you won't be able to threaten little girls anymore! And if they don't, I'll kill you, you sneaking bastard. I'll kill you with my own two hands!"
"Daddy!"
Muncrief leaned heavily on the corner of the bed and pulled himself to his feet.
"So kill me!" he shouted. Spreading his arms wide, standing there naked and vulnerable, he screamed, "Here's your chance! Kill me! You think I want to live like this! Go ahead and kill me!"
His eyes wild, Muncrief staggered toward Dan and Angela. Dan moved his daughter behind him and took a step forward to face him.
Muncrief stopped in mid-stride, his eyes flaring as if they were going to pop out of his head. His back arched so violently that his arms flung themselves almost out of their sockets. He spasmed, mouth open to scream but nothing coming out except a gargling, strangling groan.
Muncrief fell backward onto the bed and slid to the floor with a limp thud. Angela screamed as Dan stood watching the man die.
By the time Susan drove up onto the Travelers Inn's entryway, Philip was back asleep. The baby had squalled as hard as he could when Susan had lifted him from his crib and bundled him into the car seat. But she shushed and cooed at him as she strapped him into the front seat of her Subaru. Then she had forced herself to walk around the front of the station wagon; the molded bumper was crumpled on the left side and the headlight was shattered.
The hood's finish was terribly scratched up. But it had been worth it. She had found Angie.
Philip settled down once they were moving, and the street lamps flicking by soon lulled the baby back to sleep. In the darkness of the hotel's parking lot she saw the flashing lights of several police car gumballs and headed for them, down the side of the hotel's sprawling complex and out to the back lot.
She parked, dashed out of the wagon around to the passenger side, unlatched the safety belt and yanked Philip's car seat out. Leaning it against her hip she ran toward the gathering crowd, pushed her way through the curious onlookers until a tan-uniformed sheriff's deputy held up a beefy hand.
"Where d'you think you're goin', little momma?"
"That's my daughter in there!" Susan shouted, frantic. "I'm the one who phoned you!"
The deputy put a hand on her shoulder and led her toward the door of the hotel suite.
"Is she all right? Is she all right?"
Sergeant Wallace stepped out of the door, blue uniform in contrast to the deputies' tans. He smiled at Susan.
"Mrs. Santorini, Yer little girl's safe and sound. A mite confused, though. She's sayin' her daddy came and rescued her."
"She's all right!" Susan almost collapsed into Wallace's arms.
"Here, take the baby for a minute," the sergeant said to the deputy. "Come on inside and sit down, Mrs. Santorini. Yer daughter's right inside there."
With a deputy's jacket draped over her, Angela came running to her mother the instant she stepped inside the room. Susan hugged her and kissed her and hugged her some more.
"You're all right, baby. You're all right."
Angela was laughing and crying at the same time, apologizing for not coming home from school and kissing her mother back.
Breathless, Susan let the police sergeant guide her to a chair. As she sat down, she looked through the open doorway into the suite's bedroom. Kyle Muncrief lay on the carpet, stark naked, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
Sergeant Wallace looked slightly flustered. "Yer daughter was all undressed 'cept for that rig over there." He pointed to a sensor net t
hrown carelessly over one of the chairs. "Her clothes are in the other room, on the bed."
Half a dozen state troopers and one woman in street clothes were in the bedroom. One of the troopers was photographing Muncrief's body. The woman was sitting on the bed, tapping on the keys of a notebook computer.
"Daddy came and rescued me," Angela was saying, "just like in the videos."
"He's dead?" Susan asked Sergeant Wallace.
"Yep. Looks like a stroke, the medical examiner says. It's Kyle Muncrief, 'cording to his wallet."
"Yes," Susan said, "that's Kyle Muncrief."
"Daddy saved me," Angela repeated.
Susan turned her attention to her daughter. "Mr. Muncrief didn't hurt you, did he? He didn't try—" Suddenly she was embarrassed to ask such questions in front of strangers.
"No," Angela said. "He didn't touch me at all. He was going to, but Daddy came and stopped him."
"Daddy found you?"
"Yes!"
The sergeant looked as if he thought Angela's experience had bent her mind. Susan tried to explain what virtual reality was all about, pointing to the minicomputer in the sitting room and the helmet and gloves lying discarded on the floor.
Wallace grunted. "That explains the helmet he was wearin' when we found him. Looked like a biker's helmet, 'cept it was hooked up to the computer in here."
Susan made herself look back at Muncrief's body. He was still wearing data gloves and a sensor net.
"Can I take her home now?" Susan asked.
The sergeant cocked his head to one side, staring down at Angela. "Yew want the medical examiner to look her over? She's right in the next room."
"I'd rather get her home," said Susan. "I'll take her to our own doctor tomorrow morning."
Wallace nodded as if he agreed with her. "Okay. We'll need a statement from yew. And yew, too, young lady. The state police can send somebody over to yer house t'morrow, I reckon."
"In the afternoon," Susan said, getting up from the chair.
"Surely." The sergeant's face flushed slightly. "Uh, yew want to get her dressed, I s'pose."
He went into the bedroom and came out with Angela's clothes in his arms. Then he closed the bedroom door and went out the front door, ushering the sheriff's deputy who was still holding Phil in the car seat. Susan helped Angela to dress, both their hands trembling.
