Death Dream (39 page)

He climbed out of the cockpit and clambered down to the hangar floor, shaky but on his own.

"The medical subprogram wasn't keyed to asthma, was it?" Dan asked rhetorically.

"I heard you gasping in there," Doc said as they started for the locker room. "It sounded like you were strangling. That's why I terminated the program."

"I don't think an asthma attack would've killed me," said Dan. "But it sure made me useless in there."

"Did you get far enough into the mission to find out anything?

Dan opened the locker room door and turned to face Appleton. "I found out what happened to Ralph, I think. And the other pilot. Only, it doesn't make any sense."

An hour later Dan still felt puzzled. He and Appleton had gone to the cafeteria. The day before the long Thanksgiving weekend the base was half-deserted. The cafeteria, huge and hard-used, usually rang with the clattering of trays and silverware and dishes echoing off the brick walls and stainless steel counters.

Now it was hushed and nearly empty. One cashier perched on a stool glumly; barely a trickle of people came through the line.

Dan was ravenous; he stacked his tray with chili, the first sandwich he could find (insides unidentifiable), a large styrofoam cup of coffee, and a slab of pumpkin pie. Appleton took a salad and a lemonade.

Doc steered them to the farthest corner of the quiet cafeteria, where there was a virtual sea of empty tables between them and the nearest diners.

"What you're telling me, then," said Doc as they sat down, "is that
physiological
inputs have been built into the program?"

"I felt the g-forces, Doc," said Dan, nodding. "And it wasn't in my head. I couldn't lift my damned hands out of my lap!"

"But that's impossible."

"Is it?" Dan took a spoonful of the chili and winced. It was bland and tasteless, but steaming hot enough to burn his tongue.

"You know it's impossible," Appleton said.

Wishing he had taken an iced drink instead of the hot coffee, Dan answered, "Doc, there's two kinds of impossibilities here: one, it's impossible to make the VR system put physical stresses into your body; and, two, it's impossible that somebody rigged the simulation to include physical stresses."

Appleton nodded.

"Which impossible are you talking about?" Dan asked.

"Both."

"You're saying it's impossible to make a VR system that gives the user physical stresses?"

"I'm saying it's impossible to make that system, the one out in the hangar, do that." Hunching closer over the tray-covered table, Appleton said, "There's no sensory input devices for the kinds of physical stresses you're talking about, Dan! The system has visual inputs, yes. Audio inputs. But that's it. Not even the data gloves put sensory inputs
into
the user. They're one-way, outgoing. You move your hands and fingers and the system reads the motions as commands to the computer. you know that."

"I know what I felt," Dan insisted.

"It was psychological. It had to be psychological."

"You think psychological stress gave Ralph a stroke? And killed Adair?"

Appleton fell silent.

"Suppose it's not impossible," Dan said, his lunch and his hunger utterly forgotten. "Just suppose, for the sake of discussion, that it could be done."

"All right." Reluctantly.

"Who could have done it?"

"No one could have done it, Dan. you know that. It's just not possible.

"But suppose it is possible," Dan insisted, hunching closer to Doc.

Appleton hesitated. "Ralph thought it might have been Yuri Yevshenko."

"The Russian exchange guy? Dan shook his head. "No. He didn't have the smarts for something like this."

With a beleaguered sigh, Doc said, "Then that leaves nobody but you and Jace."

"It wasn't me."

"Then it has to be Jace."

"But it couldn't have been Jace. He wasn't here for the past year. I was the only one working on the sim after Jace left."

Doc looked lost, bewildered.

"Besides," Dan went on, "why would Jace louse up the sim? He put as many years into it as I did. Even if somehow he could have done it, why would he try to screw things up?"

"Ask him," said Doc.

"But we worked side by side for all those years. Would he want to ruin his own work? And mine? Chrissakes, Doc, he's my friend! The closest friend got. He's your friend too."

Appleton's pale eyes went cold. "He's not my friend or yours, Dan."

"What do you mean?"

"Jason Lowrey is nobody's friend," Doc said. "I don't think he's capable of friendship."

"No, Doc, you're wrong."

"Face the facts, Dan. Jace would crucify his own mother if he thought it would make an interesting VR simulation."

CHAPTER 29

It was only three o'clock but as she walked up the corridor toward Muncrief's office Vickie could see that the lab was emptying out. A steady trickle of people passed her heading toward the back door and the employee parking lot.
The day before a holiday
, Vickie thought.
With all the work we've got to get done in order to open Cyber World on time they still slink out of here like kids sneaking out of school.

Most of them looked embarrassed as they passed her. Man or woman, they each put on the same shitty little smile and wished her a happy holiday.

"Happy Thanksgiving," Vickie sang back cheerily at each of them. "See you Monday, bright and early."

Maybe I'm being too hard on them
, she thought.
A lot of them will be back in here Friday and through the weekend.
Still, she bristled inwardly that they were leaving before the official quitting time.

Muncrief was at his desk, phone clamped to his ear. There's no Thanksgiving weekend coming up in Tokyo, Vickie knew. Nor in Switzerland.
And I'll bet Max Glass is in his office in New York, too.

"Okay, Dan," she heard Muncrief say as she took one of the cushioned chairs in front of his desk. "Thanks for calling."

"Dan?" Vickie asked as Muncrief hung up.

Kyle looked haggard, as if he had not slept in days. His eyes were rimmed with red, dark bags under them. pressure's really getting to him, Vickie told herself.

"He's coming back tonight," Muncrief said wearily. "The Air Force is flying him into Kissimmee."

"Well that's something, at least."

Fluttering a hand in the air, Muncrief said, "He sounded apologetic as all hell. Said he'd work through the weekend to make up for the time he's taken off."

Vickie was not as easily assuaged as Muncrief. She knew that Dan would probably have worked through the weekend anyway.

"I see that Jace is working with Smith now," she said.

Muncrief's dejected face settled into a scowl. "Yeah," he said, sourly.

"Is that wise?"

"Not a blasted thing I can about it. He just waltzed in here, told Smith he knows all about it and he can do a better job than Dan can. Smith bought it."

"That's going to be trouble," said Vickie.

"Like we don't have trouble already."

"I know. But Jace—"

Muncrief shook his head like a fighter who had taken too many punches. "Look, the guy wants Jace to do his job, but he doesn't trust Jace as far as he can throw the Washington Monument. So he's going to stick so close to Jace he's going to be like a tapeworm."

Vickie felt her hands gripping the arms of the chair tightly. Forcing herself to relax, she mused, "Well, Jace is certainly the better man for the job, if Smith can keep his nose to the grindstone."

"Maybe, maybe not. At any rate Smith is going to stay right here for the duration."

"I see," said Vickie.

Muncrief gave her a bleary glare. "Do you? Do you have any idea of what this means? That blasted G-man hanging around here, poking his nose into everything?"

"Kyle—"

"Toshimura trying to slit my goddamned throat, making deals with who-knows-who behind my back. Reporters sniffing around. We're behind schedule on Cyber World. Money running out. Good God, Vickie, it's all going to come crashing down on my head!"

He looked as if he would burst into tears.

"It's all right, Kyle," she said placatingly. "It's all going to be all right,"

"How can it be all right? Everything's coming unglued, for God's sake!"

"Don't get your blood pressure up. Dan's coming back, you said. They'll get the baseball game on track, you'll see. And Jace will keep Smith happy, which means the Washington money will keep coming in."

Muncrief sunk his head into his hands. "That guy scares me, Vickie. If he finds out about me . . ."

Vickie thought Kyle should be more worried about what would happen if Dan found out about what he was doing. But she said soothingly, "Don't worry about Smith. I'll look after him. He's not interested in your past. I'll take care of him, you'll see."

Dan awoke with a start when the jet's wheels thunked down and the servomotors that actuated the flaps began their high-pitched whine.

The Air Force co-pilot ducked his head through the cockpit hatch and hollered over the engine noise, "You awake?"

"Yeah," Dan shouted back.

"Seat belt tight? We're on the downwind leg."

Dan nodded and tugged at his seat belt. He had been dreaming. He vaguely recalled being with Dorothy, in bed, the way they had made love years ago. But somebody else was watching them; he could not tell if it was Ralph or Doc or maybe even Jace. Whoever it was, his face was hidden. In his dream Dan wanted to make love to Dorothy but he couldn't until he found out who it was that was watching them and made him go away.

Jace. Everything boiled down to Jace. He made a masturbation machine for Ralph and Dorothy. That's what it is, Dan told himself. No matter how sophisticated it may be, no matter what kind of visions and sensory inputs Jace was able to build into the system, it's nothing more than an electronic jerk-off. Dan had not been inside a church since Philip's christening, but his childhood catechism classes still triggered a trained reflex of revulsion.

The jet's wheels screeched on the runway once, twice, then the plane, settled down. The pilot reversed thrust and slewed the executive twin-jet onto the ramp that led to the modest flat-roofed structure of the Kissimmee Airport terminal.

Topcoat and travel bag in hand, Dan ducked through the hatch and down the shaky metal ladder and saw Susan waiting for him just inside the air-conditioned terminal's glass door. Angela stood beside her and Philip was sitting in his stroller, apparently asleep.

He ran for the door, pushed it open, dropped his bag and coat and wrapped his arms around his wife.

"I'm glad you're home," Sue said after a long kiss.

"Me too!"

Dan saw that Phil was indeed sound asleep as he turned d swooped Angie up in his arms.

"Hello Angel!"

She grabbed his ears and kissed him wetly on the cheek.

Susan drove the Subaru home, Dan in the right-hand seat and Angela in the back next to Phil's car seat. For a few minutes Dan forgot about the mess at Wright-Patt, the work at ParaReality, about Jace and Doc and everything except the tight little family that surrounded him.

"How's Ralph?" Susan's question brought him back to reality.

"They don't think he'll make it," Dan answered. "But he seems to be holding his own. For now."

"Still paralyzed?"

"His whole left side. He can't talk, either."

"God, he must feel like he's in prison—inside his own body."

Dan felt himself biting his lip. "Yeah. It must be pretty bad."

"Did you see Dorothy?"

A danger signal flashed in Dan's mind. He recalled his dream. "Just for a minute. She's . . . pretty broken up by all this."

"I can guess."

Twisting around inside his shoulder belt, Dan turned to his daughter. "How're you doing, Angel?"

"Fine." Angela smiled widely enough to show both sets of braces.

Dan saw that Philip was awake now and looking at him with a strangely studious expression on his chubby round-cheeked face.

"Yes, it's your father," he said to Phil, reaching over the seat to tickle his tummy. "I haven't been away so you've forgotten me, have I?"

Philip laughed and waved all four of his limbs. Angela smiled at her father. Susan kept her eyes on the road she drove into the deepening twilight.

"Oh, by the way," she said as casually as she could manage, "we're going out to dinner tomorrow."

Dan turned back from the children. "Going out to eat? On Thanksgiving?" He felt almost betrayed.

Susan nodded, eyes fixed straight ahead. "I've got work to do. I won't have time to cook, I haven't even had time to shop. So I made a reservation at the Empress Lilly in Disney Village."

"The Empress Lilly?"

"It's a very nice restaurant on a Mississippi River paddle-wheel boat," said Susan.

"With the kids?"

"Yes."

Watching his wife's profile, Dan saw that Susan's chin was up in her no-nonsense posture. The decision had been made and there was no use arguing about it. He realized that in all the time they had been living here in Florida he had not yet taken the family to Disney World. He made a weak grin.

"Okay, honey," he said. "I was planning to spend most of the day at the lab, anyway."

"Me too," said Susan.

It was almost nine when Smith finally called Vickie. She was half undressed and half asleep on her bed watching a rerun of Dynasty when the phone rang.

"That guy Lowrey has no concept of time," Smith complained.

"We need to have to be patient with genius," said Vickie with a small smirk, glad that her phone was not a video instrument.

"I appreciate your invitation for dinner," he said. "But it's probably too late for you, huh?"

Vickie realized she had not eaten a thing since breakfast. "Well. it is rather late . . ."

"I'm starving," he said.

He sounded hungry, she thought, for more than food. "All right. But there won't be many places open at this time of night."

"How about the Moroccan pavilion at EPCOT? They keep their restaurant open until midnight."

Without further thought Vickie said, "Fine. I'll meet you there in three-quarters of an hour."