F Paul Wilson - Novel 05 (2 page)

 
 
          
Acknowledgments

 
          
To
Jo Fletcher,
whose Howdale Farm is around the bend from the imaginary
Oakwood. Whatever seems real in our version of the
Yorkshire
Coast
and countryside is due to
her generous help with firsthand descriptions, books, maps, and photos from her
personal album. Any inaccuracies are our doing.

 
          
To
Betsy Mitchell
for her enthusiasm, support, and keen editorial eye. No
theme is too large, no modifier too small to escape her scrutiny.

 
          
To
Al Zuckerman, Steven Spruill,
and
Bill Massey for
their input
her  enthusiasm, support,

 
          
Thank
you, one and all.

 
          
Memory
is not written in stone; it's
highly
susceptible to reconstruction. So
much of what we remember of our own pasts is nothing more than
a ...
mirage.

 
          
—
Random notes: Julia Gordon

1

                 
Julie careened into her
office. "Check my voice mail for me, will you?"

 
          
She
was running late again, but what else was new. The department had six people
doing the work of twelve.

 
          
"Already
did," Cindy said, and handed her a handwritten sheet.

 
          
Julie
scanned it. Nothing special there. Mostly interdepartmental minutiae. Return
calls she could make later, tomorrow, whenever....

 
          
And
then she came to the last item:
Your Uncle Ethan
—
call him. Urgent.
Cindy had misspelled Eathan's name, but everybody did
that. A number followed, but Julie didn't recognize the country code. Not the
usual 44 for Great Britain. Was Eathan on vacation?

           
"My uncle
—
did he say where he was calling from?"

 
          
"No,"
Cindy said. "But that's a Paris number."

 
          
Julie
stared at her secretary. "Paris? How do you know that?"

 
          
"I
knew
you'd
want to know so I looked it up." Cindy grinned and
batted her big blue eyes. "Aren't I wonderful?"

 
          
"You're
the best," Julie said, and meant it.

 
          
Cindy
was the most efficient secretary she'd ever had, possessing that rarest of
secretarial talents
—
anticipation. And she was
neat. Julie detested clutter.

 
          
Cindy's
only drawback was her looks. She was a pert little blonde with a pixie haircut
and a knockout figure. She was engaged to a computer technician at Exxon and
would be a married woman in three months. Julie dreaded the day Cindy might
walk in and announce she was pregnant and was going to stay home to be a mommy.
That was what her last secretary had done. The whole idea baffled Julie. This
was the most exciting work in the world. How could anyone leave it to stay
home?

 
          
"Did
he say what he meant by 'urgent'?"

 
          
Cindy
shook her head. "Nope. Just said, 'Call me back at once. It's urgent.'
Then he left the number. But his voice did sound a little strained, or maybe
tired. Want me to dial him?"

 
          
Why
did Cindy seem so anxious to connect her? Then Julie realized that this was
probably the first personal call Cindy had ever taken for her. And Cindy always
seemed overly concerned about Julie's lack of a "life"
—
no friends, no lovers, just the project.

 
          
So
maybe she didn't have much of what Cindy and a number of others in the department
considered a "life."

 
          
But
if 1 like it that way, why should they care?

 
          
Julie
stuffed the note in her pocket. "No time right now." She glanced at
her watch. "It's what
—
four P.M. over there? I'll
call him after the demonstration."

 
          
"But
he said
—
"

 
          
"You
don't know my uncle Eathan.
Everything's
urgent to Uncle Eathan. But
right here, right now, this demonstration is truly urgent. How do I look?"

 
          
Cindy
stood and reached over the desk to straighten Julie's lab coat, then stepped
back and considered her.

 
          
"How
about some lipstick?"

           
"Forget it."

 
          
"Maybe
just run the brush through your hair."

 
          
Julie
pulled a brush from her pocketbook and stepped over to the eight-by-ten mirror
Cindy kept on the back of the office door. She straightened some of the flyaway
strands caused by the wind-tunnel effects in the subway and checked herself
out.

 
          
She
looked pale. Why not? She was fair, a blonde
—
not
as blond as Cindy, but her color was all her own
—
and
she hadn't spent any time outdoors in years. She thought she looked okay,
though. Her short, blunt-cut hair was all in place now. Her skin, pale as it
was, was clear. And her blue eyes sparkled despite only four hours of sleep
last night Her lips were full but pale. Maybe she did need some lipstick, but
she had none with her. Never bothered with it.

 
          
What
they see is what
I've
got.

 
          
She
tried a smile. Not a great smile, but not a bad one. Had to practice that smile
for the Bruchmeyer man this morning.

 
          
She
turned back to Cindy. "Wish me luck."

 
          
Cindy
grinned and held up two sets of crossed fingers. "You wouldn't believe how
hard it is to type like this."

 
          
Julie
laughed. "Right. Probably slows you down to ninety words a minute."

 
          
"Seriously,"
Cindy said, her smile fading. "Good luck, Dr. Gordon."

 
          
"Thanks,"
she said, waving as she headed for the hall. "I'll need it."

 
          
Yeah,
she thought, all but trotting for the lab. Loads of it.

 
          
The
Maria Bruchmeyer Foundation had tons of money to spend. When Heinrich
Bruchmeyer's wife died of Alzheimer's disease, he set up the well-funded
foundation to finance research into the causes of and possible cures for
Alzheimer's. After months of barraging the foundation with phone calls,
letters, reprints, and abstracts of her journal articles, Julie had finally
persuaded a member of the Bruchmeyer board to trek downtown for a
demonstration.

 
          
Today
was the day. The demo was scheduled for 10:00 A.M.
—
twenty minutes ago. God! Why today of all days?

 
          
She
rounded a corner and saw Dr. Mordecai Siegal pacing the hall outside the lab.
Spotting her, he waddled toward her, his hands fluttering in the air before him
like meaty butterflies.

           
Don't we look spiffy, she thought,
giving her superior the once-over. Clean lab coat
—
open
as ever because he couldn't button it around his girth
—
thinning gray hair combed and parted, pressed pants, shined
shoes, and could that really be Old Spice she smelled? Mordecai Siegal, M.D.,
Ph.D., world-renowned guru of memory mapping, was trying to look the part
today.

 
          
Must
have been hard for him to get himself so together without Bernice's help. Hard?
She would have thought it impossible. He'd lost a lifelong companion just two
months ago, but somehow he was holding on.

 
          
"He's
here, Julie! He's waiting. You're late and he got here earlyl Where have you
been?'

 
          
"I
had a heavy date last night and was out partying till dawn. Just got in."

 
          
He
looked at her over the tops of his glasses. "I sincerely doubt that."

 
          
"Okay,
I was down at the mainframe running one more debug on that new chunk of code we
added last week. Won't do to have our software get temperamental this
morning."

 
          
"Please,
God, no," he said, clasping his hands before him and glancing at the
ceiling. They both knew a system crash would be a disaster. "But he's been
waiting
for you. I managed to kill some time with chitchat and the
nondisclosure forms, but I ran out of gas."

 
          
"Well,
we don't want to appear
too
anxious, do we. And I didn't exactly have
anyone else I could send down to the mainframe, did I."

 
          
"Touche,"
he said. "Maybe if we impress the Bruchmeyer man, we'll be able to hire
our own propeller head to attend to the programming. Give you a break."

 
          
"Wouldn't
that be nice."

 
          
"Speaking
of nice," he said, touching her arm, "please be patient with this
man, Julie."

 
          
She
feigned shock. "Moi? You're insinuating that I could be anything less than
patient?"

 
          
"Well,
you do have a tendency to be abrupt with people who don't catch on right away.
Just remember, no one else in the world is doing what we're doing, so it takes
time even for knowledgeable people to catch on. This man may not be... well,
knowledgeable."

 
          
"But
he's got deep pockets."

 
          
"Right.
Very deep." He gave her a shy smile and dropped into a Yiddish dialect.
"So a little charm vouldn't hoit."

 
          
"Gotcha.
I'll send Cindy out to Victoria's Secret for a see-through peignoir
—
"

 
          
"You
know what I mean, Julie."

 
          
"Yeah,
I know."

 
          
She
straightened his tie. She liked Dr. Siegal. A lot. Not only was he a brilliant
theorist and a great boss, he was a decent human being. Too bad he was thirty
years older. All the good ones were either too old or too married.

 
          
He'd
practically adopted her when he learned that she had no family here in the
States. Sometimes he was more father than boss, and she had to remind herself
every so often that he was director of this department.

 
          
"Are
we ready?" she said.

 
          
He
took a deep breath. "Ready if you are."

 
          
"All
right. Showtime."

 
          
Julie
slipped past him and stepped up to the door. MEMORY MAPPING was stenciled on
the frosted glass. She grabbed the knob, pulled, and stepped inside.

2

 
          
Julie
flipped the helmet's goggles over Mr. Henderson's eyes and adjusted the black
rubber seals around his orbits.

 
          
"Comfortable?"

 
          
He
nodded. "As comfortable as can be expected."

 
          
An
honest answer, she guessed. Henderson looked like an overgrown kid at the mall
ready to play VR Troopers. The helmet was heavy and clunky. The user's neck
would begin to ache after twenty or thirty minutes. A research tool, with no
attempt to pretty it up for commercial use. The wire-riddled metal helmet was
stereoscopic and stereophonic, supporting 3-D binocular goggles with a separate
monitor for each eye, and a pair of deep-range headphones.

           
And the gear didn't fit Mr.
Henderson's head too well. He was tall and gaunt, with an elongated skull that
wasn't made for headwear
—
especially this headwear.
But somehow they'd got it on him.