Death Dream (62 page)

"You're the good guy," Jace's voice said, with an audible sneer.

It took only minutes for the two armorers to suit Dan from head to toe in the steel plate. The armor weighed nothing. They buckled a huge sword to his side and then slid an armored helmet over his head. None of them had any weight. Dan found that he could move his hands and arms once more, but shod in the armor, he could no longer feel his VR helmet.

"You can't get out of the game, Dan. Just like the laws of thermodynamics: you can't win, you can't even break even, and you can't get out of the game. Only I make the laws here."

"This is ridiculous," Dan grumbled as his two armorers led him to his horse, caparisoned in white with crisscrossed red arrows, waiting patiently for him in the castle courtyard.

Dan squinted through the helmet's visor slits. It was hard to see anything except straight ahead. His armorers helped him up into the saddle and placed his armored feet into the stirrups. Then they handed up a big curved shield, white with the red arrow symbol.

"I don't know how to drive a horse," Dan complained.

"Like I do?" said Jace. "Don't worry about it—the horse knows the rules."

Dan's powerful steed trotted across the bare earth of the courtyard and through the big castle gate, hooves booming on the wooden drawbridge across the moat. Then they were out on the grass. The black knight sat on his mount a hundred yards away. Dan's two armorers had disappeared, or at least he could no longer see them in the restricted view through his visor.

"Hey, don't I get a lance?"

"Oops! Almost forgot."

Another squat, sour-faced man in grimy jerkin and trousers appeared at the horse's side and handed a six-foot-long wooden lance to Dan. It felt surprisingly light. Dan saw that its tip bore a needle-sharp steel point.

His horse trotted a few more paces out onto the green meadow. The black knight remained where he was, but lowered his lance and pointed it straight at Dan.

Dan's horse suddenly bolted into a flat-out charge, jouncing and banging across the grass so hard Dan almost fell out of his saddle. The black knight charged straight at him, smooth as a well-oiled machine. No telling how many times Jace has practiced this damned game, Dan thought.

He tried to get the shield in front of him, between his body and the sharp point of that lance that was flying toward him with terrifying speed. He tried to aim his own wavering lance at the black knight's body.

The impact lifted him out of the saddle and flung him through the air. Dan felt nothing at first. The world tumbled dizzyingly in the slit view through his visor: black armor rushing past, then bright blue sky, fleecy clouds spinning past, and finally green grass and solid ground.

He hit the ground with a crash and it felt as if every bone in his body had been broken. His shield hung from his left arm, bent almost double from the impact of the lance that had struck it squarely in its center. Dan's own lance had been torn from his grasp.

Painfully, slowly, he pulled himself to his knees. The black knight was dozens of yards away, reining in his charger and turning the horse around. Dan fumbled for his sword, still on his knees, too weak to stand up.

The black knight swung a vicious spiked ball of iron at the end of a short chain and spurred his charger straight at Dan again. Dan held his sword in his right hand and tried to use his left to push himself to his feet. The black horse thundered down on him and he raised his shield feebly to protect himself from the spiked iron mace. The black knight caught his shield with it and ripped it from Dan's arm. Dan screamed with the pain of his arm being torn out of its shoulder socket.

The black knight wheeled his horse around and swung the mace again. The iron ball caught Dan on the side of his helmet, knocking him flat again, ears ringing, head spinning dizzily. He saw the great black body of the horse looming over him, those terrifying hooves stamping the grass next to him. He's going to trample me! Without thinking, Dan tightened his grip on his sword and rammed it upward into the horse's unprotected belly.

Everything went black.

"Goddammit, Danno, that's not fair! You killed my friggin' horse."

Dan lay panting in the darkness. He could feel the hard surface of the VR chamber floor beneath him. The fantasy world of armored knights was gone. He tried to bring his hands up to his face, but again his arms were just too heavy to move.

"You're not gettin' out yet, man," Jace said. "We haven't settled a friggin' thing yet." His voice in Dan's helmet earphones sounded surly, annoyed.

Dan lay flat on his back in utter darkness, struggling to breathe, the pain of his simulated wounds submerged by the real pain of asthma. I've got to get out of this, Dan thought, wheezing, straining for each breath. He's going to kill me, one way or the other. He's gone crazy.

"Let it go, Jace," he said, gasping. "This isn't going to solve anything."

"The hell it won't. I want your promise to keep quiet about the Air Force sim and Muncrief. You're a man of your word, Danno. I trust you. Just give me your word and I'll let you out."

Dan stayed silent.

"Okay then," Jace taunted. "It's you against me. One on one.
Mano a mano
. You want to turn me over to the cops, you've got to beat me first."

Dan pushed himself up into a sitting position. Inside the VR helmet his breathing sounded like a ragged calliope. He remembered when the kids in school would laugh at him, make fun of his gasping struggles for breath. "Here comes the circus," they would yell. "Listen to that music!"

Even at home, his sister would giggle when his brother jeered, "Hey, play something from the Beatles on that pipe organ, huh?"

"You're not gettin" out of this by pretending to be sick, Danny boy, " Jace demanded, his voice hardening. "I didn't give you any asthma attack; you've done it to yourself."

Dan remembered his father hollering at him, exasperated, frightened, angry, "It's your own damned fault! If you'd go out into the air once in a while instead of sticking your nose in books all the time, maybe you'd breathe better!" And the doctors, even when he was a grown man, "Asthma has a large psychological component, Mr. Santorini. In your case, it's almost entirely psychological. Have you seen a psychologist about your condition?"

And even Susan, "You've got to learn how to relax, Dan. You never get asthma when we're making love, do you?"

They all blame me. Like I want this. Like I enjoy gasping like a motherfucking fish out of water.

"Come on, Danno," said Jace. "You've had enough time to rest. On your feet. We're going to the OK Corral, pardner."

Dan felt icy fear clutch at his heart. He remembered Jace gunning him down, the shock and pain of the bullets, the bottomless pit of death. Slowly he struggled to his feet as if in response to Jace's command.

But his mind was racing. "Wait a minute," he said. "Don't I get a chance to pick the game we use?"

"What's the matter? Scared of the gunfight scenario?"

He could sense Jace's amusement. But Dan felt something else flowing through him: burning anger, rage at himself, at everyone he had ever known, everyone who had poked fun at him or muscled him around or pushed him this way or that. Soaring fury at Muncrief and Jace who had tried to take his daughter, tried to destroy his family. And now Jace is trying to destroy me. He thinks he owns me. Thinks he can beat me and kill me, thinks he's God inside his machine.

"You're the one who's scared, Jace. Sacred to let me pick the game we use."

"I'm the boss in this universe, I do whatever I friggin' feel like."

"Some boss. You're scared of the real world, aren't you? You're just an overgrown kid hiding from his mommy and daddy, aren't you?"

"You're gonna regret you said that."

"What are you going to do, kill me?" Dan countered.

"I could."

Dan's mind was searching frantically. Any edge I can find, anything that'll shake him out of a scenario that he's obviously played a thousand times. "Then do it in the Moonwalk sim," he blurted.

"Charlie Chan's game?"

"Show me how good you are on the Moon, Jace."

He heard Jace's low chuckle. "You think the low gravity's gonna give you some kind of edge, don't you?"

"Maybe," he said, hoping desperately for exactly that.

"Okay, "Jace said, amusement in his voice. "We can have a shootout on the moon, I guess. With laser pistols instead of six-guns. You'll be just as dead at the end of it; what difference?"

"So do it," Dan snapped. "Set up the Moonwalk game."

"Hold on a minute."

Dan thought that now was the time to take off his VR helmet and get out of this, but his hands would not leave his sides.

"You don't think I'm that dumb, do you, Dan?"

He's still got me locked in here. Christ, are we going to stay in this fantasy of his forever? No, Dan realized. Just until he kills me. Jace is going to keep playing these stupid games until he kills me. Like a cat playing with a mouse. He'll keep it going, no matter how many simulations it takes. He'll stay locked inside his own fantasy universe until the games actually do kill me. Or maybe he'll get tired of it and kill me outright, the way he killed Muncrief.

The best I can do, the best I can hope for, is to kill him first. Or take him down with me.

Susan was drowsing on the living room sofa when the front doorbell chimed. She awoke with a start and glanced at the clock on the wall between the two front windows: 1:21.

Dan's not home yet!

She got to the door as the chime sounded again. It was Sergeant Wallace, looking like a worried grandfather. "What's wrong?" she blurted. "Where's my husband?"

The sergeant shifted his feet slightly, broad-brimmed hat in both hands. "He's at the ParaReality building, just like yew said, Missus."

"Is he all right?"

"I think so. Kinda hard to say, really. We got that one-armed security guard of theirs out of bed to open up the building for us. Mr. Santorini and that other fella, Lowrey—they seem to be locked inside one the laboratory chambers or whatever that room is. None of my people knows how to get them out. The two of 'em seem to be cut off from seeing us or hearing us."

Susan clung to the door for support. She felt totally drained. She needed Dan here, home. "They're in a simulation together?"

"If that's what you call it."

Why? Susan asked herself. Why would Dan still be in the simulation? And with Jace?

"I got a policewoman in the car," Sergeant Wallace said. "State trooper. She can sit with yer kids if yew want to go to the building with me and see if yew can figure out how to get them out of there."

Feeling dazed with fatigue, Susan managed to mumble, "Yes . . . all right. Let me—"

"Yew take all th' time yew need, Mrs. Santorini. From the looks of things, those two guys aren't going anywhere—"

The state policewoman looked terribly young to be carrying a pistol, but she smiled reassuringly at Susan. "I have two little brothers at home; I was babysitting before I learned to read."

Susan worried that Angie would be frightened if she woke up and found this stranger with her instead of her mother.

"Don't worry about nothin'," said the policewoman. "I can change diapers blindfolded and if your little girl wakes up I'll tell her you've gone out to fetch her daddy."

"All right," said Susan at last. "Thanks."

Sergeant Wallace showed her to the front seat of the cruiser. As they started off for the ParaReality building he muttered, "Damnedest thing I ever saw: your husband and this other guy inside this spooky room with some kinda helmets on, like bikers you know, with visors down over their eyes. They were jumpin' around like a coupla freaks in there."

"It's all right," Susan said, staring into the night darkness whizzing past her. window. "It's a kind of game. An electronic game."

Joe Rucker let them in the front door and they hurried down the corridor to the VR lab, Rucker limping along behind them.

Wallace yanked open the door to the control booth. Seeing the array of dials and screens, Susan realized that she did not know any more than the police sergeant how to operate the equipment.

"We'll have to call one of the technicians," she said. "Dan told me he had worked with somebody named Chan."

"Gary Chan," said Rucker, leaning against the open doorway. "I can look him up in the phone directory and call him."

Wallace looked at Susan, who nodded. "Do that," the sergeant said to Rucker.

As the security guard lumbered eagerly away, Susan stepped to the bank of consoles and peered through the one-way window into the darkened simulation chamber. Her heart clutched in her chest.

She saw Dan lying face down on the floor, as if he were dead.

CHAPTER 49

Dan waited in total darkness in the VR chamber. He tested his strength again but he still could not move his arms.

"If I wanted to murder you, Danno, I could've done it about six million times," said Jace's disembodied voice. "But I always give the other guy a fair chance."

"Like Ralph?" Dan snapped.

"That asshole could've stayed out of the sim. He wanted to be the big shit hero. He killed himself."

Dan did not reply. The anger that had boiled within him had damped down now, but it simmered hot through his blood. Dan nursed his anger, fed on it. Adrenaline, he knew. That's what they inject you with in the hospital to stop an asthma attack. That's what happened to me when I had to fight Jace. My own glands pumped adrenaline into my bloodstream. I stopped the asthma myself.

Despite himself, the anger was ebbing away. Dan's lungs felt okay, but he wondered how long that would last. Got to think clear and fast, he told himself. This is life and death, this game Jace is playing. The only way out of this is over his body. I hope I don't have to kill him. But if that's the only way out, that's what I'll have to do. Just stay calm, think clearly. You've got to stay at least one jump ahead of him. The Moonwalk gives you an edge. Maybe. Maybe.

I just hope he really is setting up the Moonwalk, Dan thought. I can handle that. I'm sure of it. And maybe he doesn't know that Chan worked out the low-gravity stuff. Maybe that's the edge I need.