Death Dream

by Ben Bova

  Angela wrapped an arm around her mother's waist and Susan clutched her daughter's shoulder as they left the hotel room. The sheriff's deputy was still standing by the door outside, holding Philip in his car seat.

  "He's still sleeping," the deputy whispered hoarsely."

  "Thank you." Susan reached for the car seat.

  "I'll take him to the car for you," said the deputy. "Got one of my own comin' in a coupla weeks. Be good practice for me."

  It wasn't until they were halfway home that Susan remembered what she had done to Muncrief's garage door. I should have told Sergeant Wallace, she said to herself. Then she thought, No. It's better that I didn't. Let me get the kids home and settled in bed.

  "Daddy killed Mr. Muncrief," Angela whispered in the darkness of the car.

  "What?"

  Her voice trembling slightly, Angela said" Daddy said he was going to kill him, and Mr. Muncrief just fell down and died."

  "Your father didn't kill Mr. Muncrief, Angie. He had a stroke and died, just like Grandpop Santorini, remember?"

  "Daddy was awful mad at him."

  "I know. I don't blame him for that, do you?"

  "No. He came and rescued me."

  "Yes he did, didn't he? But he didn't kill Mr. Muncrief. Your father is too sweet a man to kill anybody."

  Angie had screamed when Muncrief collapsed. Dan had whirled about and scooped her back into the safety of his arms.

  "It's all right, Angel. It's all right. Nobody's going to hurt you. I've got you and nobody's going to touch you until the police come and bring you home."

  Angela peeped around her father's protective form.

  Muncrief had disappeared.

  "He—he's not there anymore."

  Dan turned back and saw that Muncrief had indeed disappeared. The bed, the tower-top room, all the trappings of the castle simulation were still there and solid as rock. But Muncrief was gone.

  He knelt on one knee to be on eye level with his daughter. There was a lot of explaining to do.

  "Now listen to me, Angel. You remember the motel room where Mr. Muncrief took you?"

  She nodded, on the verge of tears.

  "Well, in a few minutes you're going to find yourself in that room again. Just like you come back to the VR booth when you play the games at school. You'll be back in the room where you started. Do you understand?"

  Angela nodded.

  "There'll be policemen in there with you, honey. They've been searching for you because your mother and I didn't know where Mr. Muncrief had taken you. You're not afraid of policemen, are you?"

  "No." Weakly.

  "They'll be in the room with you because we asked them to find you. But I've found you in this game, in the castle. See?"

  "But you found me. "

  "That's right, I did. But I found you in the game, right? We're still in the game, in the castle. See?"

  She glanced around, then turned her gaze back on her father's eyes.

  "The policemen will be in the real world. Your mother's waiting for you in the real world, honey. So's little Phil. He misses his big sister."

  She almost smiled. "He's asleep by now."

  He conceded the point with a nod. "I'm in that real world too, honey. But not in that hotel room. I'm at my lab, but I'll come right home so we can all be together again."

  "I'm sorry I stayed away after school."

  "That's all right, Angel. It's all okay now."

  She threw her arms around his neck and kissed her father on the cheek. Dan clasped his daughter for a moment longer.

  Then, "One more thing, Angel. When you go back into that room, with the police and all, Mr. Muncrief is going to be there."

  He felt her stiffen in his arms.

  "He'll be dead, sweetheart. I'm pretty sure of that. Or at least he'll be unconscious. The police will be there to protect you, in any case."

  "Will Mommy be there?"

  "I don't know. Probably not. But either she'll come to where you are or the police will bring you home and she'll be there."

  Angela nodded solemnly. Dan knew this was a lot for a kid to absorb in just a few minutes, especially after what she had just been through.

  "Daddy?" she whispered into his ear.

  "What is it, honey?"

  "Did you kill Mr. Muncrief?"

  The question stunned him. And before he could even try to frame an answer, Angela disappeared from his arms. Suddenly Dan was alone, kneeling in the fantasy castle bedroom, his arms empty as if Angela had never been there. She never was, he realized, getting to his feet. She never really was.

  His shirt lay on the carpeted floor. Dan picked it up and realized that Angie would be naked except for the sensor net when she came out of the game. The anger flared in him again. She'll be stark goddamned naked in front of a bunch of policemen.

  Dan waited impatiently for the illusion to disappear. He knew he was in the VR chamber at ParaReality. Time to go home and hold his daughter for real. Dan felt tired, drained; it would be good to go to bed and sleep with Susan beside him.

  The tower bed chamber remained. "Come on, Jace," he called. "Wrap it up." And he started to remove his helmet.

  "Not just yet, Danno." Jace's voice in his earphones was low, strained.

  "Come on—"

  "I mean it, Dan! You try to take that helmet off and I'll zap you just like I zapped Muncrief."

  CHAPTER 48

  "What the hell do you mean?" Dan said. But he took his hands off the helmet.

  "I don't know what to do about you, Dan. You're such a friggin' straight arrow. You're gonna make trouble for me, aren't you?"

  Feeling only slightly ridiculous to be talking to a disembodied voice in a castle tower bed chamber that did not really exist, Dan replied, "You just murdered a man, Jace. That makes three you've killed."

  "Ralph and the other flyboy were accidents. I didn't mean for them to die, not really. I just wanted to teach Ralph a lesson. I told you that," Jace said, his voice growing irritable.

  "And Muncrief?"

  "He wanted to die. He said so himself, you heard him. I just put him out of his misery."

  "That's called homicide, Jace. Murder."

  "And you're gonna turn me in?"

  As calmly as he could, Dan said, "I'm going to see to it that you get help. No matter what you've done, Jace, you're still my friend, my partner. I won't let you down. I'll help you all I can."

  "By puttin' me in some funny farm? No thanks."

  Dan's chest felt raw, tight. "So what are you going to do, kill me too?"

  "Naw, I don't wanna do that."

  "Then what?"

  "I don't know what to do! Lemme think a minute."

  "The first thing to do," Dan said slowly, "is button up this sim so we can talk this over face to face."

  A long silence. Dan waited for a reply but none came. He tried to calm his breathing, tried to soothe the rasping in his lungs. Maybe I could snatch the helmet off my head and then I'd be out of this. Maybe he's not paying attention to me, not fully. I could get it off before he knows I've made a move.

  But Dan found that he could not move his arms. It was as if the gloves on his hands weighed ten tons each. He could no longer raise his hands from his sides.

  Jace laughed. "You're as transparent as glass, Danno. And don't you think that if I could make that hillbilly Rucker think he's got two good arms I can fix you so you can't move your arms at all?"

  "Jesus Christ, Jace, what're you going to do, keep me in here forever?"

  That hushed, tense voice, almost a whisper, answered, "No, that wouldn't work."

  "Then what?"

  "Look outside."

  Dan looked at the wide window. It had no glass. In this fantasy land there were no insect pests, no cold winds or rain. He saw that now it was full daylight out there, bright sunshine bathed the wooded hills and gently rolling meadows.

  "Go to the window and look down," Jace's voice instructed.

  Dan did as he was to
ld. A knight in black armor sat on a powerful black charger at the base of the castle wall. He held a lance in one mailed fist upright like a flag pole. At the lance's pointed end fluttered a sky-blue pennant with white lettering emblazoned; Who Dares Wins.

  "What's that all about?" Dan asked the empty room.

  "Who dares wins. That's what it's all about, Danny boy. That's what it's always been all about. Who dares wins."

  "I don't get it."

  "It's simple, pal. I'm not leaving you alone in the simulation. I'm coming in with you. I'm the black knight. You're going to fight me. Who dares wins."

  Unconsciously rubbing at the pain in his chest, Dan replied, "I've got to fight you?"

  "Until you admit that I'm right and you're wrong. Until you swear to me that you won't make any trouble out there."

  "Jace, you can't do—"

  "I can do anything I friggin' want to! You're in my world now, Danno, and you're gonna play by my rules."

  "You're just as crazy as Muncrief!"

  "Yeah? By the time I'm through with you, pal, you'll be on your knees worshipping me."

  "Turn off the goddamned simulation," Dan shouted.

  Jace laughed. "There's only one way out of my world, Danno. You've got to beat me."

  Dan remembered the asthma attack that had crippled him only hours earlier. And the gunfight where Jace had killed him. The crazy sonofabitch wants to keep me in here until he's got me completely cowed. He wants to dominate me so completely that I'll do whatever he wants.

  "Come on, Dan. Go down and get into your armor. Prepare to meet your maker. Pronto, Tonto."

  Anger flared through Dan like crackles of electrical sparks along his nerves. His chest was raw, tightening painfully. But he told himself, It's only a matter of time until somebody gets to the lab and shuts down this sim.

  Maybe Gary Chan or one of the technicians will see what's going on and turn off the power. Maybe the police will come in. What time is it? How long until the office opens in the morning?

  "Nobody's gonna bother us, Danno," Jace said. "Anybody tries to shut down this sim, it'll zap your brain automatically."

  "Not yours?"

  Jace laughed. "Hey, d'you think I'm stupid enough to rig my own suicide?"

  "Jace, this isn't the way—"

  "Better get your armor on, Tonto. I wouldn't want to zap you in cold blood."

  "I'm not going to fight you, Jace."

  "You wanna die like Muncrief did?" Jace's voice flared with anger. "I'm givin' you a chance."

  "With the deck loaded in your favor."

  "Hey, I'll be fair and square! All you've gotta do is beat me. If you can."

  Dan looked out the window again. The black knight held his lance aloft. The pennant fluttered in the breeze.

  And when Dan turned away he saw that the bedroom had changed into some sort of armory, with shields hanging on the walls and lances stacked in rows and two silent, stolid men standing waiting for him, sections of armor in their hands. The armor was dazzling white.

  "You're the good guy," Jace's voice said, with an audible sneer.

  It took only minutes for the two armorers to suit Dan from head to toe in the steel plate. The armor weighed nothing. They buckled a huge sword to his side and then slid an armored helmet over his head. None of them had any weight. Dan found that he could move his hands and arms once more, but shod in the armor, he could no longer feel his VR helmet.

  "You can't get out of the game, Dan. Just like the laws of thermodynamics: you can't win, you can't even break even, and you can't get out of the game. Only I make the laws here."

  "This is ridiculous," Dan grumbled as his two armorers led him to his horse, caparisoned in white with crisscrossed red arrows, waiting patiently for him in the castle courtyard.

  Dan squinted through the helmet's visor slits. It was hard to see anything except straight ahead. His armorers helped him up into the saddle and placed his armored feet into the stirrups. Then they handed up a big curved shield, white with the red arrow symbol.

  "I don't know how to drive a horse," Dan complained.

  "Like I do?" said Jace. "Don't worry about it—the horse knows the rules."

  Dan's powerful steed trotted across the bare earth of the courtyard and through the big castle gate, hooves booming on the wooden drawbridge across the moat. Then they were out on the grass. The black knight sat on his mount a hundred yards away. Dan's two armorers had disappeared, or at least he could no longer see them in the restricted view through his visor.

  "Hey, don't I get a lance?"

  "Oops! Almost forgot."

  Another squat, sour-faced man in grimy jerkin and trousers appeared at the horse's side and handed a six-foot-long wooden lance to Dan. It felt surprisingly light. Dan saw that its tip bore a needle-sharp steel point.

  His horse trotted a few more paces out onto the green meadow. The black knight remained where he was, but lowered his lance and pointed it straight at Dan.

  Dan's horse suddenly bolted into a flat-out charge, jouncing and banging across the grass so hard Dan almost fell out of his saddle. The black knight charged straight at him, smooth as a well-oiled machine. No telling how many times Jace has practiced this damned game, Dan thought.

  He tried to get the shield in front of him, between his body and the sharp point of that lance that was flying toward him with terrifying speed. He tried to aim his own wavering lance at the black knight's body.

  The impact lifted him out of the saddle and flung him through the air. Dan felt nothing at first. The world tumbled dizzyingly in the slit view through his visor: black armor rushing past, then bright blue sky, fleecy clouds spinning past, and finally green grass and solid ground.

  He hit the ground with a crash and it felt as if every bone in his body had been broken. His shield hung from his left arm, bent almost double from the impact of the lance that had struck it squarely in its center. Dan's own lance had been torn from his grasp.

  Painfully, slowly, he pulled himself to his knees. The black knight was dozens of yards away, reining in his charger and turning the horse around. Dan fumbled for his sword, still on his knees, too weak to stand up.

  The black knight swung a vicious spiked ball of iron at the end of a short chain and spurred his charger straight at Dan again. Dan held his sword in his right hand and tried to use his left to push himself to his feet. The black horse thundered down on him and he raised his shield feebly to protect himself from the spiked iron mace. The black knight caught his shield with it and ripped it from Dan's arm. Dan screamed with the pain of his arm being torn out of its shoulder socket.

  The black knight wheeled his horse around and swung the mace again. The iron ball caught Dan on the side of his helmet, knocking him flat again, ears ringing, head spinning dizzily. He saw the great black body of the horse looming over him, those terrifying hooves stamping the grass next to him. He's going to trample me! Without thinking, Dan tightened his grip on his sword and rammed it upward into the horse's unprotected belly.

  Everything went black.

  "Goddammit, Danno, that's not fair! You killed my friggin' horse."

  Dan lay panting in the darkness. He could feel the hard surface of the VR chamber floor beneath him. The fantasy world of armored knights was gone. He tried to bring his hands up to his face, but again his arms were just too heavy to move.

  "You're not gettin' out yet, man," Jace said. "We haven't settled a friggin' thing yet." His voice in Dan's helmet earphones sounded surly, annoyed.

  Dan lay flat on his back in utter darkness, struggling to breathe, the pain of his simulated wounds submerged by the real pain of asthma. I've got to get out of this, Dan thought, wheezing, straining for each breath. He's going to kill me, one way or the other. He's gone crazy.

  "Let it go, Jace," he said, gasping. "This isn't going to solve anything."

  "The hell it won't. I want your promise to keep quiet about the Air Force sim and Muncrief. You're a man of your word, Danno. I trust you.
Just give me your word and I'll let you out."

  Dan stayed silent.

  "Okay then," Jace taunted. "It's you against me. One on one. Mano a mano. You want to turn me over to the cops, you've got to beat me first."

  Dan pushed himself up into a sitting position. Inside the VR helmet his breathing sounded like a ragged calliope. He remembered when the kids in school would laugh at him, make fun of his gasping struggles for breath. "Here comes the circus," they would yell. "Listen to that music!"

  Even at home, his sister would giggle when his brother jeered, "Hey, play something from the Beatles on that pipe organ, huh?"

  "You're not gettin" out of this by pretending to be sick, Danny boy, " Jace demanded, his voice hardening. "I didn't give you any asthma attack; you've done it to yourself."

  Dan remembered his father hollering at him, exasperated, frightened, angry, "It's your own damned fault! If you'd go out into the air once in a while instead of sticking your nose in books all the time, maybe you'd breathe better!" And the doctors, even when he was a grown man, "Asthma has a large psychological component, Mr. Santorini. In your case, it's almost entirely psychological. Have you seen a psychologist about your condition?"

  And even Susan, "You've got to learn how to relax, Dan. You never get asthma when we're making love, do you?"

  They all blame me. Like I want this. Like I enjoy gasping like a motherfucking fish out of water.

  "Come on, Danno," said Jace. "You've had enough time to rest. On your feet. We're going to the OK Corral, pardner."

  Dan felt icy fear clutch at his heart. He remembered Jace gunning him down, the shock and pain of the bullets, the bottomless pit of death. Slowly he struggled to his feet as if in response to Jace's command.

  But his mind was racing. "Wait a minute," he said. "Don't I get a chance to pick the game we use?"

  "What's the matter? Scared of the gunfight scenario?"

  He could sense Jace's amusement. But Dan felt something else flowing through him: burning anger, rage at himself, at everyone he had ever known, everyone who had poked fun at him or muscled him around or pushed him this way or that. Soaring fury at Muncrief and Jace who had tried to take his daughter, tried to destroy his family. And now Jace is trying to destroy me. He thinks he owns me. Thinks he can beat me and kill me, thinks he's God inside his machine.