Death Dream (35 page)

"How do you know?"

His look turned sly. "Listen, Sue, I'm the creative genius around here, remember? I bet I can teach you a couple things about nerve physiology you won't be able to find in the friggin' literature."

"Really?"

"I bet." Jace grinned crookedly.

My God, he's drunk!
Susan realized.
In less than five minutes.
She had barely sipped her own drink.

"There's a lot you don't know and I do," he said, his grin widening. "A helluva lot. Not even Dan knows what I know an' he knows me better'n anybody else."

"Would you like some coffee?" Susan asked.

Jace shook his head. "Nope. One's my limit."

"I said coffee."

"It was a joke, Sue."

"Oh."

"I'm all right."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure." He rose to his feet, only slightly unsteady. From her sitting position it seemed to Susan that his neatly combed hair might brush the ceiling.

"I'll brew some fresh coffee," she said. "It won't take a minute."

By the time she came from the kitchen with two steaming mugs of coffee Jace seemed to have recovered.

"I'm really okay," he told Susan. His smile was back to normal. He was standing by the bookshelf that Dan had built in Dayton, peering at the titles. "
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
," he said. "I always wanted to read that."

"You can borrow it," said Susan.

"Naw. No time to read. I saw the video, anyway."

They finished their coffees and Jace headed for the door.

"You're sure you're all right to drive?" Susan asked.

"My bicycle?" Jace laughed. "Yeah, I'll make it okay, don't worry."

It wasn't until he had pedaled down the lamp-lit street with a final farewell wave and she had closed the front door that Susan realized she had never felt the slightest twinge of worry at being essentially alone in the house with Jace. Even drunk he did not give her the least flutter of alarm.

As she headed off to her bedroom Susan smiled at how quickly Jace had become intoxicated, and how quickly he had sobered up again. But her smile faded as she thought about how unthreatening Jace was. It's as if he has no interest in women at all, Susan said to herself. He's like an overgrown nine-year-old.

But once she finally got to bed Susan found it difficult to sleep. It was more than Dan's absence. She missed his warm body in the bed beside her, but something was preying on her mind, something just below the surface of consciousness. Something was pecking away at her, trying to get her attention. It would not allow her to sleep.

She lay in the darkness, ears trained to detect the slightest hint of difficulty from her children. Thank God Phil hasn't been troubled with asthma. Maybe this Florida climate really will be good for him. And Angie's settled down at school, even though she's still seeing things in the VR games that shouldn't be there.

Imagine her asking about oral sex! What are those little sluts telling her in school? Maybe I ought to talk to Eleanor about it; after all, she's their teacher. They won't allow sex education classes in the school but it sounds as if some of those kids are getting an education on their own. No wonder we have teenaged mothers and VD and AIDS all over the map.

She turned and punched her pillow. It did no good. Her mind was all stirred up and she could not sleep.

At least Angie's talking to me about it, she told herself. That's a good sign. And once I'm inside the lab I can look into those school games for myself. There's got to be more to those games than Vickie is admitting. I can't ask Dan to probe into them, but I can do it myself once I'm into their computer system. There's got to be something—

The thought broke through to her consciousness with the force of a wrecking ball demolishing a building. If a VR simulation can cause a stroke in an Air Force pilot, why can't it hurt a child in a classroom game?

Virtual reality can be dangerous, Susan realized. And she knew she would have to do something about it.

Vickie Kessel was also awake as midnight neared. And working. She had watched the local TV news at eleven o'clock, then went down to the garage on the ground floor of her condo building and driven out on Interstate 4 to the big Marriott Hotel near the Disney World grounds.

The bar was almost empty this late at night. The families that thronged the parks retired early, exhausted. Even the men who had come for conventions or business conferences had gone off to bed. So the bar was almost empty. But not completely. Luke Peterson sat in a booth in a shadowy corner, a tall drink in front of him, that slap-happy smile of his gone from his jowly face. He looked somber, almost grim. Soft rock music purred from the speakers in the ceiling. The bartender, young and blond and scrubbed pink, was polishing glasses, looking disconsolate and bored.

Peterson got to his feet and made a little bow as Vickie came up to the booth. She slid in on the opposite side of the table from him.

"Isn't this a little melodramatic?" Vickie asked. "Meeting at midnight." But she kept her voice low.

"I have to talk to you; this is the only time I could arrange it."

"Peeking through keyholes all day long?" Vickie sneered.

He ignored her sarcasm. "I've tried to get to you, more than once. You've been putting me off."

"I'm rather busy."

"Sure, sure." He hesitated a beat, then asked, "What do you want to drink?"

She saw that the bartender had come out from behind the bar and was approaching their booth. Nice looking boy; athletic build.

"Irish coffee," Vickie said. As the bartender headed back she said to Peterson, "I don't have anything new to tell you."

"Nothing, huh?"

"Nothing significant. I gave you the complete rundown the last time."

He grimaced, almost as if he was in pain. "Oh really? Who's this guy Smith from Washington? And why has Lowrey's chief assistant dashed off to Ohio?"

Vickie realized all over again that Peterson, or the people he worked for, had other informants inside ParaReality.

"I don't know anything about Smith," she lied. "He's dealing entirely with Muncrief."

"And you don't know anything about him? Or what he's here for?"

"No," said Victoria firmly. "I don't."

The bartender deposited her Irish coffee on the table. It was in a fancy tall cup topped with whipped non-dairy creamer, a green cherry, and a plastic straw. Vickie took one look at it and pushed it away.

"Okay, we'll let Smith go for the moment," Peterson said once the kid had returned to the bar. "What about Santorini? What's sent him rushing off to Dayton?"

"The Air Force is having some problems with one of the simulations he worked on before he came to ParaReality. They asked him to come back for a few days and check it out for them."

"And Muncrief let him go?"

Vickie actually laughed. "Dan didn't ask permission. Muncrief nearly had a stroke when he found out."

"And the baseball simulation?"

"Lowrey's still working on it."

"No progress?"

"None that I've heard of."

"You're not exactly a fount of information," Peterson grumbled.

"Look, I don't have to do this," Vickie snapped. "In fact, I don't think I want to play your game anymore."

"What's that supposed to mean?

"I quit."

"Quit?"

"I'm finished. I don't want to see you again. I'm not going to tell you another thing."

He shook his head like a teacher disappointed over a star pupil's glaring mistake. "It ain't that easy, Victoria. You can't just walk away."

"The hell I can't."

"Listen to me, lady. I'm just a harmless, overweight, middle-aged private snoop. But I'm working for people who can get very angry and very rough."

"What are they going to do, send Minnie Mouse to beat me up?"

He actually looked frightened. "This isn't a joking matter. My client plays hard ball. If you don't give me enough material to make him happy somebody's going to get hurt."

"Are you threatening me?"

"I'm trying to warn you. We made a deal and—"

"What deal?" Vickie snapped. "You still haven't told me who's involved in this."

"We've made a substantial deposit in a Swiss bank account. for you."

"You can have it back. I told you I wasn't interested in just money. I want out."

Peterson was almost pleading. "I tell you for your own good, Victoria, my client is going to be very pissed off. Somebody's going to get hurt."

She leaned across the table until their noses were almost touching. "Then tell your goddamned client that I've got protection from the United States government. From the highest levels of the government. Do you know what that means?"

His eyes widened with surprise. "Smith . . ." Peterson's voice trailed off into silence. She could see the wheels turning inside his head.

"That's right, buster. Smith can provide all the protection I need. He can get the FBI on you. And your client, whoever the hell he is."

Peterson puffed out his cheeks. "You're a lot more ambitious than I thought. I underestimated you."

Vickie gave him an acid smile.

But he clutched at her wrist. "Let me give you a piece of advice, lady. Don't underestimate the people I'm working for. They're not going to take this lying down."

Vickie pulled free of his grip and slipped out of the booth, leaving her Irish coffee untouched. As she headed out for the parking lot she told herself, Now you've got to make certain that Smith actually will protect you. It's life or death now.

CHAPTER 26

Dan remained at Wright-Patterson for more than a week, digging into every line of programming for the flight simulation. He awoke each morning in his narrow little room at the BOQ, went to the simulations lab, and worked through until dinner. At Dr Appleton's insistence Dan rented a compact car that the Air Force paid for. At the end of the normal working day he drove to one of the seedy restaurants near the base, ate a quick meal, and then returned to the lab and the intricate unfoldings of the computer program.

Each night he phoned Susan, then went to sleep in his narrow bed at the BOQ. Each morning he awoke weary and drenched with perspiration, his dreams winking out like the picture on a TV tube before he could consciously recall them. But he knew that Jace was in those dreams.

Jace and Doc and Martinez and sometimes even Muncrief. And Dorothy. She was there too, he knew. Never Susan.

His only break from work came when he went to the base hospital to see Ralph Martinez. The colonel had survived his stroke, but he was still on the critical list, still in the intensive care ward, still half paralyzed and unable to speak. If Martinez recognized Dan he gave no sign of it. His one good eye burned pain and rage; his right hand constantly clenched and unclenched, the only voluntary movement his body could make.

Dan usually visited the hospital on his way off-base to dinner. He never saw another visitor for the colonel there, until the evening Dorothy came.

She was older, of course, more mature and obviously stricken with grief. But still stunning. She wore a modest knee-length skirt of navy blue and a loose-fitting metallic gold sweater beneath her caramel-brown leather coat. She looked ravishing to Dan.

Dorothy's eyes were rimmed with dark circles. Her face was pale, drawn. But still Dan's knees went watery.

"Hello, Dan," she said, her voice low.

"Hello," he managed.

That was it. Dorothy turned away and hurried down the hospital corridor.
Is she running from me?
Dan wondered.

Or from the sight of her husband?
Then he heard a voice in his head ask,
Does she blame me for what's happened to Ralph?

It was then that the full enormity of it struck him. For a solid year after Jace had left for Florida, Dan had been the principal engineer on the F-22 simulation: the chief technical guy, the head honcho.
It's my sim, more than anyone's
, he realized.
More than Doc's, more even than Jace's. If there's anything wrong with it, it's my fault. Nobody else's. Mine.

That night Dan could not sleep. He phoned Dorothy three times, each time getting Martinez's recorded voice. She did not return his calls.

But the next morning he got other calls:

"I ought to fire you!" Kyle Muncrief bellowed into the telephone at him. "The whole place here is falling apart and you're off playing games for the blasted Air Force!"

"This Thursday is Thanksgiving," Susan reminded him. "I expect you to be home with your family."

Even Jace called. "It's gettin' real intense around here. Muncrief expects me to put the stuttering program into the baseball game but I can't get much done without you, pal."

Dan stalled them off, all of them, even Susan. Then Appleton told him firmly, "The lab will be shut down for the holiday weekend, Dan. The entire base will, except for the operational flying units."

"But I haven't gotten anywhere yet," he said.

"Today is Tuesday. Tomorrow I'm putting you on a plane for Orlando. You're going to spend the holiday with your family," Appleton said. "You can come back next Monday if you want to."

They were in Appleton's office, the Doc sitting behind his desk fiddling with his everlasting pipe and Dan standing worriedly at the room's only window staring blindly at the concrete wall of the adjoining building. This isn't the first time Doc's spoken to me like a stern father, he said to himself.

Dan turned to his former boss. "Okay then," he said, his breath feeling weak, fluttery, as if he were on the edge of a high precipice or maybe facing the gang of bullies that had bedeviled him when he was a kid.

Forcing his voice to sound calm and unafraid, Dan said, "In that case I want to fly the simulation tomorrow."

Appleton's mouth dropped open. The pipe fell onto his lap.

"I'll wear the medical sensors. If I get into any trouble You can terminate the run."

Before Appleton could do more than start to shake his head Dan went on, "You know it's the only way to break through this puzzle, Doc. Ralph can't tell us what happened and it's take months to run through every facet of the computer program. I'm not sure the program would give us the answer anyway. You need a guinea pig, I volunteer."