Death Dream (49 page)

Lifting 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."

Susan saw the look of absolute certainty on her husband's face. She turned and scooped up the baby, saying to Angela, "Help me get Phil ready for bed, dear, and then we can have dinner with Daddy."

Two hours later Dan had kissed his daughter goodnight after tucking her into her bed. He turned out the light in her bedroom and walked back to the kitchen where Susan was putting the last of the dishes into the washer.

"Angie seems okay," he said.

"She's glad you're home. It makes her feel safer."

He felt a slight touch of surprise.

"Makes me feel safer, too," Susan added.

"This business scares you?"

"Yes! Didn't you know? I tried to tell you—"

"Hey, hey," he said gently, sliding his arms around her. "Don't be scared. Whatever happens, I'm here now and we're going to handle this thing together."

Susan looked into his eyes. "I don't know how you can stay so cool about all this."

He almost wanted to laugh. "Cool? Me? If you tried to take my temperature the thermometer would pop."

"You hide it awfully well."

"Come on," he said, changing the subject. "Show me what you've dug up on Jace."

She slipped out of his arms and said in a firm voice,

"Dishwasher: pot scrubber cycle. Start. Now."

The machine hummed to life.

Susan pointed to a four-inch stack of paper sitting next to her computer printer. "I printed out about one piece in ten so you could sample the material. If you need more I can print out the rest."

Dan grunted. "Looks like a weekend's work."

"You're not going to the lab tomorrow?"

"Not until I've waded through this stuff," he said, stepping into the alcove and hefting the pile of paper.

"Don't you want to call Jace?"

"Not yet," he said, feeling the anger surging again. "Not until I've gone through this material. I don't want to accuse him of anything unless I can back it up."

"Okay," said Susan, following him. "I'll start accessing the Wright-Patt files."

"Now?"

"Right now. You read while I work."

He grinned at her, but there was no mirth in it. "This isn't work, huh?"

"You know what I mean." Susan sat at her little chair and booted up her computer,

"I never knew it could be like this," Chuck Smith was saying. "It was fan-fucking-tastic!"

Sitting beside him in his rented BMW, Vickie tried to keep as straight a face as she could, allowing only the slightest of smiles to curl her lips. Smith took no notice, he was so wrapped up in describing his VR session.

"I mean, I've been in simulations before, but I've never gone through anything like this. I was there! I was really there. I thought one of those greasers was going to kill me. For real! I popped him, though. Bam, right through the head."

He was speeding toward a new restaurant that Vickie had read about in the local newspaper, weaving through the evening traffic as if he had a siren and blinker on the car.

One session in the VR system and he's bubbling over, Vickie said to herself. That tough no-nonsense facade of his has crumbled away; he's like a little boy who's just seen Santa Claus for the first time

"Jace has pulled it off, all right," Smith was saying, gesturing with one hand as he roared through the highway traffic. "In just a couple of days, too."

At least his eyes are on the road
, Vickie thought gratefully

"I mean, he's really done it. The guy's a flake and all that but he really can produce when he wants to. I could take this system to the White House tomorrow if I had to. But Jace says he's got some refinements he wants to add to it. Improvements. We'll make the February first deadline with no sweat and it'll be incredible!"

"You have to be careful about Jace's refinements," Vickie warned. "Sometimes he starts down a side alley and doesn't come out for months on end."