Death Dream (48 page)

Stepping along the corridor beside his former boss, Dan saw Dorothy standing in the little waiting area outside the intensive care ward. All in black, already mourning, her eyes staring into infinity. This wasn't the vibrant exciting woman he had made love with all those years ago. This was a widow, a woman struggling to keep herself from breaking in two, a woman whose husband had been killed.

By me? Dan accused himself silently. But Ralph said that Jace did it.

I ought to say something to her, Dan told himself. But what? I'm sorry Ralph died? I'm sorry I pushed him to the limit? He looked across the distance between them into her dark, dark eyes, rimmed with red now, circled with grief and sleeplessness. Dorothy looked through him, as if he weren't there, staring at images that only she could see.

"Doc," Dan pulled at Appleton's tweed jacket sleeve. "We've got to talk."

The older man nodded, but said, "I've got to get her home."

"Ralph said that Jace did this to him."

"And the plane's waiting for you."

"Let it wait!" Dan snapped, gripping Appleton's thin arm. "What the hell did Ralph mean by that?"

Startled, Appleton turned to face Dan. "I don't know, Dan. I don't know if it means anything or not."

"He said Jace killed him!"

"He might have been delirious. Or maybe that's not what he meant. He never liked Jace."

Dan stared at the older man.
I owe this man my career, my whole life
, Dan thought.
And I'm bullying him as though he's a murder suspect.
Yet he tugged Appleton across the corridor, away from the waiting area and Dorothy.

"Why would he say Jace did it to him?" Dan insisted. "Did he mean that Jace programmed something into the simulation? Something that we don't know about?"

"You've gone over the program," Appleton replied. .Did you find anything?"

"Two men have died, Doc. That's not a coincidence. And I'm working for a company that's going to use VR sims in an amusement park. For the general public. If somebody can be killed in a VR simulation—"

"Murdered," Appleton corrected. "When you deliberately kill a human being it's called murder."

Dan gaped at him.

Appleton nodded solemnly. "There's something in that simulation that kills people," he said, his voice row but unshakably certain. "And Jace put it in there."

"But he hasn't been here for more than a year," Dan pointed out. "You said it yourself. I'm the only one who worked on the sim for the past year."

"Jace did it."

"Miserable," Dan pleaded, "you're sure? It couldn't be—"

"No one else would know how, or even want to," Appleton said. "You'll have to find out what he did."

"But why—?"

"It's up to you, Dan. I'm keeping that simulation shut down unless or until you can tell me how to make it safe again."

It's up to me, Dan said to himself. There's nobody else.

He stood there rooted to the spot, realizing that Doc was right, feeling the weight of all the responsibility pressing on his shoulders. Doc turned away und started walking toward Dorothy. Dan shook himself like a man waking from a dream, squared his shoulders, and strode across the waiting room to catch up with Doc and Dorothy.

"Wait," he said. "We're not finished yet."

"I've got to get Dorothy home," Doc murmured.

"Dorothy—" Dan's voice caught in his throat when he looked at her, close enough to touch.

She said sadly, "We had a good life together, Ralph and I."

"If there's anything I can do," Dan said, "Anything you need . . ." He could not help staring at her, remembering.

"No. It'll be all right. Ralph has provided for me very well."

"But where will you go? What will you do?"

"It's all finished, Dan. What we had was finished a dozen years ago. We can't relive the past. You know that."

"Too much has happened," he agreed reluctantly.

"Goodbye, Dan," said Dorothy, in a throaty whisper.

"Not yet," he said, so sharply that her eyes widened with surprise. "I've got something to say—"

"Dan, I don't blame you for what happened to Ralph. Honestly I don't."

He could see the effort it took for her to speak the words. The pain. The grief.

"I may have helped to kill him," Dan said, his voice low.

Appleton started to protest.

"But I promise you this, Dorothy," Dan said urgently, silencing Doc. "Whoever did kill Ralph—I'll find him. I'll find out who did it and see to it that he's brought to justice. If I have to do it all by myself," he said, glancing at Doc, "I'll get the job done."

Jace was grinning as he watched Chuck Smith pull the helmet over his sandy crew cut. Smith's air of crisp authority had melted away like a pat of butter left out in the sun. He looked doubtful now as he stood alone in the bare VR chamber, uncertain, almost afraid.

Leaning toward the microphone, Jace asked softly, "Can you hear me okay?"

Through the one-way window he could see Smith twitch with surprise at the voice in the helmet earphones. He nodded.

"You can talk, y'know," Jace said. "There's mikes built into the cheek flaps."

"I hear you."

"Good put the gloves on and connect the wires. They're color-coded. Don't get them mixed up."

"Right."

Jace settled his bony frame in one of the squeaking little typist's chairs and surveyed the control board like the captain of a starship. He laughed inwardly.
That's just what I'm gonna do, take out uptight Mr. Smith on a long ride.

The gloves felt strange to Smith: stiff, like leather that had been left out in the rain. And kind of nubby inside, as if they were inside-out. The light in the bare, low-ceilinged chamber wasn't all that good. He had to squint to match the colors of the hair-thin optical fibers to the plugs on the gloves. The helmet had already been wired up when he had put it on.

He looked at the window and saw only a reflection of himself in the helmet. He had taken off his suit jacket and then rolled up his shirt sleeves, all at Jace's suggestion.

"You wanna be as comfortable as possible in there," Jace had told him.

Okay, so I'm as comfortable as I'm going to get
, he thought, surprised that his throat felt so dry.

"I'm ready," he said in a gritty croak.

"No you're not."

"Yes I am."

"The visor."

"Oh."

His hands trembled slightly as he reached up and lowered the visor over his eyes. The world went totally dark, like a planetarium before they turn the stars on. Smith stood in the middle of the chamber, arms spread out as if to balance himself, thinking, Jace must've turned out all the light sin here, otherwise I'd be able to see some stray light form under the visor's rim. Or maybe—

"Here we go," Jace's voice sounded amused.

Smith saw a swirl of colors, heard the unmistakable background hum of a mediocre sound system in his earphones. He started to feel slightly dizzy; his stomach knotted.

And he was high up above the earth, out in space looking down at the vivid green expanse of the Amazonian jungle. His stomach cropped out of him; his breath caught in his throat. He was floating in space, weightless, like a tiny one-man satellite, arms and legs spread-eagled like a sky diver. Broad ugly brown scars slashed through the rain forest where logging companies had cleared away the trees, There was no wind, no sound. Within moments his nausea faded. He felt fine.

"You're in charge now," Jace's voice whispered to him. "It's your ballgame."

Smith licked his lips. "Bolivia," he said. "False-color infrared imagery."

Like a ghost he drifted across the continent, saw the Andes as a set of gray bony wrinkles topped with lean clutching fingers of white snow. The forest below him was still green but he could see yellow and blue patches of cultivated farmland in the clearings.

And red dots here and there: coca plantings. Even beneath the sheltering trees the satellite sensors picked up the coca farms. Good. As he moved closer to the Andes he saw more and more areas of red broad swathes of red in the rugged mountainous valleys.

"Initiate ECS delivery," he said, barely mouthing the words. "Fast-frame forward."

The red areas shriveled. Many of them winked out altogether. Smith smiled. Stealthy jet bombers, invisible to radar and flying so high that no one could see or hear them, were delivering cargoes of bioengineered bacteria over the coca-growing areas. The genetically-altered bugs can wipe out most of the coca crop, just like the science guys had promised. The cocaine industry would go broke within months.

"All right," he called, his voice firmer. "Let's move to the processing plant scenario."

Darkness again for several heartbeats. Then he was on solid ground, standing behind a massive tree looking out though thick foliage at a low, long cinderblock building painted ugly olive green. Big trees swayed in the hot breeze and the building's roof was covered with camouflaging and greenery. Insects buzzed around him in the humid jungle air but Smith felt no discomfort at all; he was not even perspiring.

Several trucks were parked at the far end of the building. Men lounged in the shade of a low overhang on benches along its side while others came and went though the big open front doors, toting wooden crates.

Smith nodded and whispered, "Now."

A multi-engined jet plane swept low over the little clearing, disgorging soldiers with jet packs on their backs and assault rifles in their hands. The men lounging along the building leapt to their feet and dashed toward their trucks. The soldiers landed in clouds of jet gasses and kicked-up dust, firing at the fleeing truck drivers. Others threw grenades into the open doorways of the building. Smith heard no explosions but saw thick white smoke billowing out. Then he realized the soldiers were all wearing gas masks.

It was over in a few minutes. The soldiers dragged out the men and women who had been gassed inside the building and then took off their masks. Several of them looked familiar to Smith; the tall one he recognized as the star of several martial arts films. Medics bent over the bodies of the truck drivers, a chaplain among them to give last rites for the dead.

"Incredible," Smith muttered. "Absolutely incredible! Now let's go to the hacienda. And this time I want to go in with them."

Again the moment of utter darkness. Then he was standing behind flowering shrubbery on the edge of a parking lot. Beyond the luxury European cars rose a beautiful stucco-walled house with a red tiled roof. Intricately wrought iron gratings on all the windows and delicate iron railings on the house's many balconies. The sky above was crystal blue and in the distance Smith could see the purple masses of the Andes and snowcaps that seemed to hover in midair.

Armed men were patrolling the grounds, submachine guns casually slung over their rumpled jackets. Their faces were brown, weathered, accustomed by generations of heredity to the cruelty and violence of serving their patron.

Instinctively Smith ducked down behind the shrubbery. He felt the bulk of a leather holster beneath his left armpit. He pulled out a Colt automatic. and hefted it. The gun felt solid and heavy in his hand.

Again a jet plane roared out of nowhere, disgorging soldiers. But this time the guards scattered around the grounds and immediately began firing at the troops as they swooped to the ground. Smith saw men hit in mid-air, jerking convulsively as the bullets slammed into them. One soldier's jet pack exploded in a shower of flame, flinging bloody pieces of his body everywhere.

Smith gripped his pistol so hard his fingers began to ache. Men all around him were shooting, killing and being killed. Soldiers landed on the hacienda's sloping rooftop and tossed gas grenades through the windows up there. But he stood frozen at the edge of the parking lot, screened by the shrubbery, unable to move.

The real battle was taking shape on the parking lot, right in front of Smith's stunned eyes. Several of the drug lord's men had taken refuge behind the heavy bullet-proof cars parked there and were firing back at the slowly advancing soldiers. And he stood frozen, terrified, his heart thundering in his ears, his mouth dry and burning.

The noise and the confusion were shattering. Guns firing, grenades exploding, men screaming and yelling, smoke billowing. Smith saw that three of the men were slinking into one of the Mercedes sedans, starting the engine, ready to use the bulletproofed car as a tank against the soldiers.

Their backs were to him. Each of them had a submachine gun and extra clips of ammunition poking out of their pockets. If nobody stopped them they were going to kill a lot of the soldiers, maybe break the back of the attack.

And nobody had noticed them except Smith himself. It was up to him.
There's nobody else
, he knew.
It's up to me.

Gritting his teeth, forcing himself to move, Smith rushed through the bushes and yanked open the back door of the Mercedes. He stuck his gun into the back of the nearest man and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The man turned toward him awkwardly, crouched between the front seat and the rear, his lean hard face wild-eyed with rage and terror, an ugly short-snouted Uzi in his hands.

Desperately Smith cocked the gun with his left hand and fired pointblank. The man's head exploded in a shower of blood and bone and brain. Smith shot again and the driver splattered forward over the steering wheel. The third man jumped out of the open front door, flat onto his belly on the blacktopped parking lot. Smith whirled and emptied the gun into him.

And it was over. He leaned against the car, smoking gun in his shaking hand, and watched the soldiers pushing their prisoners out of the house. Dead bodies littered the parking lot and the grounds. Many of them were American soldiers. Smith's knees barely held him up. He felt sick and his trousers were wet. He had pissed himself.

The scene faded away into darkness.

"Program's terminated," he heard Jace's voice in his earphones. "You can lift the visor. And, uh—I guess you'll wanna clean yourself up, huh?"

For a moment Smith felt embarrassed, ashamed. But then a new feeling swept over him.
I killed those guys. I saved the attack. So I was scared for a minute, who wouldn't be?