Death Dream

by Ben Bova

  "You're the one who's scared, Jace. Sacred to let me pick the game we use."

  "I'm the boss in this universe, I do whatever I friggin' feel like."

  "Some boss. You're scared of the real world, aren't you? You're just an overgrown kid hiding from his mommy and daddy, aren't you?"

  "You're gonna regret you said that."

  "What are you going to do, kill me?" Dan countered.

  "I could."

  Dan's mind was searching frantically. Any edge I can find, anything that'll shake him out of a scenario that he's obviously played a thousand times. "Then do it in the Moonwalk sim," he blurted.

  "Charlie Chan's game?"

  "Show me how good you are on the Moon, Jace."

  He heard Jace's low chuckle. "You think the low gravity's gonna give you some kind of edge, don't you?"

  "Maybe," he said, hoping desperately for exactly that.

  "Okay, "Jace said, amusement in his voice. "We can have a shootout on the moon, I guess. With laser pistols instead of six-guns. You'll be just as dead at the end of it; what difference?"

  "So do it," Dan snapped. "Set up the Moonwalk game."

  "Hold on a minute."

  Dan thought that now was the time to take off his VR helmet and get out of this, but his hands would not leave his sides.

  "You don't think I'm that dumb, do you, Dan?"

  He's still got me locked in here. Christ, are we going to stay in this fantasy of his forever? No, Dan realized. Just until he kills me. Jace is going to keep playing these stupid games until he kills me. Like a cat playing with a mouse. He'll keep it going, no matter how many simulations it takes. He'll stay locked inside his own fantasy universe until the games actually do kill me. Or maybe he'll get tired of it and kill me outright, the way he killed Muncrief.

  The best I can do, the best I can hope for, is to kill him first. Or take him down with me.

  Susan was drowsing on the living room sofa when the front doorbell chimed. She awoke with a start and glanced at the clock on the wall between the two front windows: 1:21.

  Dan's not home yet!

  She got to the door as the chime sounded again. It was Sergeant Wallace, looking like a worried grandfather. "What's wrong?" she blurted. "Where's my husband?"

  The sergeant shifted his feet slightly, broad-brimmed hat in both hands. "He's at the ParaReality building, just like yew said, Missus."

  "Is he all right?"

  "I think so. Kinda hard to say, really. We got that one-armed security guard of theirs out of bed to open up the building for us. Mr. Santorini and that other fella, Lowrey—they seem to be locked inside one the laboratory chambers or whatever that room is. None of my people knows how to get them out. The two of 'em seem to be cut off from seeing us or hearing us."

  Susan clung to the door for support. She felt totally drained. She needed Dan here, home. "They're in a simulation together?"

  "If that's what you call it."

  Why? Susan asked herself. Why would Dan still be in the simulation? And with Jace?

  "I got a policewoman in the car," Sergeant Wallace said. "State trooper. She can sit with yer kids if yew want to go to the building with me and see if yew can figure out how to get them out of there."

  Feeling dazed with fatigue, Susan managed to mumble, "Yes . . . all right. Let me—"

  "Yew take all th' time yew need, Mrs. Santorini. From the looks of things, those two guys aren't going anywhere—"

  The state policewoman looked terribly young to be carrying a pistol, but she smiled reassuringly at Susan. "I have two little brothers at home; I was babysitting before I learned to read."

  Susan worried that Angie would be frightened if she woke up and found this stranger with her instead of her mother.

  "Don't worry about nothin'," said the policewoman. "I can change diapers blindfolded and if your little girl wakes up I'll tell her you've gone out to fetch her daddy."

  "All right," said Susan at last. "Thanks."

  Sergeant Wallace showed her to the front seat of the cruiser. As they started off for the ParaReality building he muttered, "Damnedest thing I ever saw: your husband and this other guy inside this spooky room with some kinda helmets on, like bikers you know, with visors down over their eyes. They were jumpin' around like a coupla freaks in there."

  "It's all right," Susan said, staring into the night darkness whizzing past her. window. "It's a kind of game. An electronic game."

  Joe Rucker let them in the front door and they hurried down the corridor to the VR lab, Rucker limping along behind them.

  Wallace yanked open the door to the control booth. Seeing the array of dials and screens, Susan realized that she did not know any more than the police sergeant how to operate the equipment.

  "We'll have to call one of the technicians," she said. "Dan told me he had worked with somebody named Chan."

  "Gary Chan," said Rucker, leaning against the open doorway. "I can look him up in the phone directory and call him."

  Wallace looked at Susan, who nodded. "Do that," the sergeant said to Rucker.

  As the security guard lumbered eagerly away, Susan stepped to the bank of consoles and peered through the one-way window into the darkened simulation chamber. Her heart clutched in her chest.

  She saw Dan lying face down on the floor, as if he were dead.

  CHAPTER 49

  Dan waited in total darkness in the VR chamber. He tested his strength again but he still could not move his arms.

  "If I wanted to murder you, Danno, I could've done it about six million times," said Jace's disembodied voice. "But I always give the other guy a fair chance."

  "Like Ralph?" Dan snapped.

  "That asshole could've stayed out of the sim. He wanted to be the big shit hero. He killed himself."

  Dan did not reply. The anger that had boiled within him had damped down now, but it simmered hot through his blood. Dan nursed his anger, fed on it. Adrenaline, he knew. That's what they inject you with in the hospital to stop an asthma attack. That's what happened to me when I had to fight Jace. My own glands pumped adrenaline into my bloodstream. I stopped the asthma myself.

  Despite himself, the anger was ebbing away. Dan's lungs felt okay, but he wondered how long that would last. Got to think clear and fast, he told himself. This is life and death, this game Jace is playing. The only way out of this is over his body. I hope I don't have to kill him. But if that's the only way out, that's what I'll have to do. Just stay calm, think clearly. You've got to stay at least one jump ahead of him. The Moonwalk gives you an edge. Maybe. Maybe.

  I just hope he really is setting up the Moonwalk, Dan thought. I can handle that. I'm sure of it. And maybe he doesn't know that Chan worked out the low-gravity stuff. Maybe that's the edge I need.

  It was like being bound and blindfolded. Dan could not move his arms or see anything but blank darkness. He stood there waiting like a prisoner facing a firing squad. Nothing to be afraid of, he told himself. He's just using his remote control box to set up the programming. Maybe he's taking his time just to make me sweat. He's enjoying this cat-and-mouse stuff. All those years and he never really saw me as anything but a fucking mouse for him to use.

  Well, we'll see about that soon enough.

  "Okay, Danno, we're off to the Moon."

  The darkness lightened, but not much. Dan saw that he now wore a bulky space suit of gleaming white. He was standing on the utterly barren landscape of a lunar plain. The uneven ground was bare, crusted over like a poor blacktop job, pockmarked with little craters as if somebody had been poking fingers into the surface.

  Rocks and pebbles everywhere, some considerable boulders a hundred yards or so away. Tired old smooth-worn mountains slumped over by the horizon. A gibbous blue and white Earth hung in the black sky, fat and glowing.

  Is this the version with Chan's gravity subprogram? Dan took a few tentative steps. Yes! His booted feet seemed to float off the ground; each stride was like a broad jump.

  "Hey, I'm o
ver here," Jace called. "This-a-way."

  Dan turned and saw a dim figure standing amid a jumble of house-sized boulders, half the distance to the horizon.

  Jace was encased in a shiny black spacesuit with a bubble helmet that glinted slightly in the wan earthlight. It was night on the Moon, but in the airless lunar landscape the glow from the daylit side of Earth made an eerie twilight.

  "A black spacesuit?" Dan said.

  "That's 'cause I'm the baaadest badass this side of Copernicus."

  Dan realized that although Jace was standing amid the boulders, he himself was out in the open with nothing bigger to protect him than a scattering of fist-sized rocks strewn along the ground.

  "Your spacesuit is nice and white," Jace said. "I can see you fine."

  Dan saw that Jace wore a metallic holster fastened to his left hip. Reaching down with his gloved right hand, Dan felt the butt of a pistol.

  "So what do we do?" Dan asked. "Count to three and draw?"

  "Sure. But let's do it like a countdown, NASA style."

  Without waiting for a reply Jace swiftly counted, "Three, two, one, draw!"

  Dan was still tugging at the pistol clipped to the flank of his spacesuit when a pencil-thin beam of ruby red lanced through the darkness and exploded at his feet. Startled, Dan jumped sideways, a long lunar jump, like floating in a dream. He had time to realize that the beam of laser light was an artifact Chan had put into the game; on the airless Moon any light beam would be invisible. Landing on the thick soles of his boots Dan staggered and struggled to stay upright.

  "That's right, buddy! Dance!" Jace laughed wildly and fired again at Dan's feet.

  Dan dodged backward. Jace's having fun, is he? Dan held his arm out straight and fired his laser pistol. A beam of electric blue light shot out and hit the boulder nearest Jace. His black-suited figure ducked behind the boulder.

  "Come on, chicken!" Dan yelled, forgetting that they were speaking to each other over their suit radios. "Don't hide. Come on out and fight!"

  "No more Mr. Nice Guy," Jace's voice replied, flat and hard.

  Dan had no cover. He knew that if he tried to run in this low gravity he would end up floating like a balloon from one stride to another, an easy target. Got to get him out from behind those rocks. Got to get him before he gets me. Carefully he got down on his hands and knees and began crawling slowly, hoping that Chan hadn't made the simulation so realistic that he could tear his space suit and kill himself by blowing all the air out of the suit.

  A glint of light off Jace's helmet warned him. Jace popped out from the other side of the boulder, fired, and ducked back again. The beam went wide.

  "Is that the best you can do, chickenshit?" Dan called as he inched carefully toward the boulders.

  "I'm just giving you a chance to say your prayers, pardner," Jace retorted.

  "The hell you are." Dan fired at the spot where he had last seen Jace. Then he squirted a blast at the other side of the boulder. The rock exploded where the blue beam touched it, puffing out silent bursts of gas and rock chips in the airless vacuum.

  Hoping that would keep Jace behind the boulder, Dan crabbed sideways, scuffing his boots and one gloved hand across the lunar soil, scraping up clouds of dust that blossomed and fell back to the ground with the slowness of a dream.

  Got to get to those boulders so I can have some protection, Dan thought. But the closer I get to them, the closer I get to him.

  He didn't see Jace this time until the red laser beam seared the left shoulder of his suit. There was no impact, but from inside the suit Dan heard the hiss of escaping air. How long before the suit decompresses? He had no idea.

  "How's that, wiseass?" Jace taunted. "Got you, didn't I?"

  He had ducked behind the boulder without looking to see how much damage he had done.

  Dan stretched himself onto the ground face down. He lay sprawled on the cold lunar dust, the only sounds he could hear were his suit air hissing away and his own terrified breathing.

  "Dan?" Jace called.

  He said nothing. Let him think I'm dead. Or passed out, at least.

  "Dan?" That was Sue's voice! "Dan, it's me! Susan! Are you all right? We're going to get you out of there!"

  "No!" Jace yelled. "Anybody touches the controls and Dan gets fried! Understand? Don't touch a friggin' thing or you'll kill him!"

  Stretched out on the ground, his chin plastered against the transparent plastic of his helmet, Dan looked up and saw Jace pop up from behind one of the boulders, waving his arms, screaming:

  "Stay out of it! This is between him and me. Don't touch any of the controls. None of 'em, you understand?"

  Jace was bobbing sideways as he yelled, floating in the low lunar gravity like a scarecrow being blown by puffs of wind.

  Sighting carefully, Dan squeezed the trigger of his laser pistol. The blue beam struck Jace's suit squarely on the chest. Dan moved the beam upward to his helmet. It exploded in a silent shower of air and blood and brains.

  And Dan was lying face-down on the floor of the simulation chamber in his slacks and sweat-soaked shirt, his data-gloved hands empty, the helmet on his head the one he had put on to get into the VR simulation. Dan felt weak, drained, but he found that he could move his hands.

  He pushed himself to a sitting position and slid the visor of his helmet up, squinting to focus his eyes in the dim lighting of the VR chamber.

  Jace was across the room, slumped against the wall in a sitting position, chin on his chest, VR helmet twisted slightly awry.

  "You cheated," Jace accused, like a sullen little boy. "Susie distracted me."

  "Give it up, Jace," Dan said.

  "Like hell."

  "Susan must have brought the police with her. It's all over now."

  For several moments Jace said nothing. He just sat there limp as a scarecrow, staring at Dan, his narrow eyes red with something close to hatred.

  "I'm gonna kill you, pal," Jace said at last. "This is the end of the game."

  Dan saw that Jace held the remote control unit in his left hand. He tried to scramble to his feet and take off his VR helmet at the same time, but suddenly his legs would not work and his arms were once again too heavy to move. He flopped to the floor with a painful thump.

  "Dan! Are you all right?" Susan called.

  "Don't touch any of the controls," Jace warned again, scrambling to his feet. "They're slaved to my remote unit. If you try to change 'em it'll kill Dan."

  "Dan?"

  "I'm all right, Sue," he said, still lying on the floor helpless as a boated fish. "Do what Jace says, leave everything alone."

  Dan watched, paralyzed, as Jace slowly walked over to him. Jace dropped to his knees beside Dan and carefully, almost tenderly, adjusted Dan's helmet.

  "We coulda done really big stuff, Danno. I would've let you be my number one man, my friend. But it's not gonna work out like that, is it?"

  "Jace, you need help—"

  He snorted angrily. "I don't need anything! Or anybody. I've got the power of life and death in my hands, pal. Just like God."

  He slid the visor of Dan's helmet down over his eyes.

  "Time to get this over with," Jace said.

  Dan lay there, immobilized, waiting for the inevitable.

  He knew what Jace was setting up. The gunfight. He's going to kill me again. Only this time it's going to be for real.

  Susan and Sergeant Wallace watched the two men capering in the simulations chamber. To Susan it looked like two little boys playing a game of imaginary cops and robbers.

  Bang, bang, I got you! No, you missed!

  But that was her husband in there and Jace had gone insane. Could he really kill Dan? Is there any way I can stop this game and get Dan out of there? Jace said if we touched the controls we would kill Dan. Is he bluffing or did he really kill Ralph and Kyle?

  The outside door of the control booth squealed open and a young Chinese-American stepped in. He had obviously been rousted from his bed; eyes still
puffy, stiff black hair uncombed, wrinkled white shirt tucked unevenly into his dark slacks. He looked terribly worried, almost afraid.

  "I'm Gary Chan," he said in a whisper. "You must be Dan's wife. What's going on?"

  "Can yew turn off this machinery?" Sergeant Wallace asked curtly.

  "I don't see why not." Chan slid into one of the chairs and looked over the control board.

  "Jace said if we touched the controls it would kill Dan," Susan blurted.

  "That's Jace and Dan in there?"

  "Yes!"

  Chan pulled his hands back from the board as if it were a hot stove. "Who's been running the controls?"

  "Nobody," said Sergeant Wallace.

  "I think Jace has some sort of remote control in there with him," Susan said.

  Chan blew out a breath and tugged at his ear. "And Jace said if we tried to shut down the sim it would kill Dan?"

  "That's what he said."

  He kept scratching at the ear. "Let me think about this. Jace must have rigged the controls in some way, but it'll take a while for me to figure out what he's done."

  "Can you undo it?" Susan asked.

  "I don't know. First I've got to see what he's done."

  Sergeant Wallace said, "Well, get to it, son. From what we've overheard on this intercom, this man Jace is going to murder Mr. Santorini."

  "For God's sake, Jace," Dan was saying, "Susan's in the control booth watching us. The police must be here by now. You can't get out of this. Give it up."

  Jace giggled. "Let 'em watch. I'd like to see them try to prove I murdered anybody."

  Dan was still sheathed in darkness, unable to move.

  Except for Jace's voice in his helmet earphones he was totally cut off from the real world.

  "I can just see 'em all in court, saying they saw me kill you," Jace said. "Some big deal eye-witnesses. Did you see a murder weapon? I'll ask 'em. No, the defendant did not have a weapon in his hands. What did the deceased die from? A massive cerebral hemorrhage. So how could the defendant have murdered the bum when he didn't have a weapon and the guy died of a friggin' stroke?"