F Paul Wilson - Novel 05 (12 page)

 
          
Another
silence, longer this time. Eathan's eyes were troubled, almost tortured, his
expression grim. He pulled the napkin off his plate and began twisting it in
his hands.

 
          
"I'm
not at all comfortable with this, Julie," he said finally. "I love
you both. I couldn't bear losing you, too.... But how can I turn my back on
what may be Sam's only chance for recovery? Especially when her own sister
will be in charge?"

 
          
Julie
reached across the table and gripped one of his hands to save the napkin from
further abuse.

 
          
"Don't
worry. This is the right thing to do. It can't hurt her
—
it can only help her."

 
          
"And
what about you?"

 
          
"I’ll
be fine." I
hope.

 
          
"I
must impose one condition, however."

 
          
Another
condition? Dr. Siegal had to have one, now Eathan was insisting on one.

 
          
"What's
that?"

 
          
He
leaned forward, his expression grim. "I will be watching everything very
closely. At the first sign of any
—
any
—
ill effects whatsoever to
either
of you, I will
call a halt to the procedure."

 
          
She
leaned back and stared at him, offended.

 
          
"And
you think
I
wouldn't?"

 
          
"If
you had the slightest suspicion that Sam's condition might be deteriorating
—
of course you would. But I'm not so sure you'd stop if you
thought
you
were being affected. I can see you ignoring the warning
signs and pushing on." He squeezed her hand and gave her a smile.
"You're still young, Julie. All you young people think you're immortal."

 
          
"Not
me," she said, giving him a level stare. "I stopped believing in
immortality at age five."

4

 
          
DHL
did its part: The hardware was delivered right on time.

 
          
Setting
it up and getting it working was another story. Despite his reservations, Eathan
threw his support behind her and became indispensable, running interference for
her with the nursing home and dealing with its medical director, who was
understandably upset at all this strange equipment being set up on his turf.
Eathan soothed him, assured him that nothing invasive was being done,
convinced him that this was little more than a supersophisticated EEG. Eathan
signed a stack of releases absolving the
Sainte
Gabrielle
Home
of all liability. He helped
Julie hire workmen to set up the dish on the roof and run the cable to Sam's
room.

 
          
Finally
all was ready.

 
          
Three
of them in Sam's room: Julie, Eathan, and Sam
—
no
anesthetist needed. Gloomy, with late afternoon light fading behind the drawn
curtains. The room was only slightly crowded with the extra hardware, which
Julie had kept to a minimum: two headsets and a VR glove, a monitor, a
terminal, a VCR to record the monitor feed, and wires,
lots
of wires.

 
          
They'd
spent all day making the final preparations, testing the equipment, the
satellite feed
—
everything was go now. Julie
realized she needed sleep, but with the time difference, it had to be this
afternoon or wait until tomorrow.

 
          
No
way could she wait.

 
          
Sam
lay in her bed with the Medusa-like headpiece snug around her scalp. Julie
looked across the room at Eathan, seated before a monitor where he'd be able to
watch a mono-scopic feed of what would play in Julie's goggles. He'd be passive
—
no chance to interact.

           
"Comfortable?" she said.

 
          
He
tried a smile. It looked awful. He looked as if he was about to be sick.

 
          
"Absolutely
not."

 
          
"Relax,"
she said. "This is a trial run. We'll make it short and sweet."

 
          
"I
hope so."

 
          
She
tried to look calm, but inside she was wound as tight as an armature coil. Her
underarms felt soggy, and her fingers trembled as she adjusted her headphones.
She had to radiate confidence for these two men: Eathan here and Dr. S. on-line
in
New
York
.
Either one could call this whole procedure to a halt at any time.

 
          
And
for the thousandth time, she questioned her motives. Did helping Sam play any
part in this? Or was she recklessly venturing into her sister's memoryscape
merely because no one had done it before? Or were her true motives even more
base? Was she playing voyeur with her sister's past?

 
          
Whatever
the truth, she'd have to reflect on it later. Right now she had someplace to
go.

 
          
She
pulled on the data glove. Something so medieval about this
—
like suiting up to do battle with demons and dragons. She
wriggled the fingers. The hand icon danced on the screen.

 
          
Next,
she grabbed the headset and lowered that onto her head. She pushed back her
hair to keep it off her face. My helmet, she thought.

 
          
The
headset was a clunky item, heavy, and though padded all around, you never
forgot that your head was encased in plastic.

 
          
She
adjusted the headphones and clicked the goggles into place.

 
          
Sky-blue
emptiness ahead of her. She moved her hand. The icon skated across the blue.
She clicked the Window button on the upper bar. A small block of sky in the
upper right corner under the button wavered and Dr. Siegal's face appeared.

 
          
"All
set on your end, Dr. Siegal?" she said.

 
          
He
nodded. "All set. But I'd like to make one more plea
—
"

 
          
"Thank
you," she said, cutting him off. "We're ready to go."

 
          
He
sighed. "Very well. Remember, there'll be a slightly sluggish feel to the
program due to the satellite delay. Be patient. I'm available when you
need
me.
And I'll be watching."

 
          
"I
appreciate that," she said, and clicked the Window button again. Dr.
Siegal disappeared.

 
          
Everybody's
watching me, she thought. Let's hope everything goes as smoothly as I've
promised.

 
          
She
pressed the Enter button with her virtual finger, held her breath, and watched
the blue fade to black.

 
          
"I
think, therefore
1 am
," doesn't quite make
it. "I
remember,
therefore I
 
am" is more like it.

 
          
—
Random notes: Julia Gordon

 
          
Something
is wrong.

 
          
You're
in a closet, and the lights are out. Or you're sealed in a cave, buried alive.
Dark like a womb, but absent its warmth. Maybe a glitch in the satellite link:
no visuals, no sound
—
nothing.

 
          
You
should pull out and contact Dr. Siegal.

 
          
And
then you notice the sparks. Tiny dull pinpricks of light out there, ahead
somewhere. Are they close enough for you to touch or are they on the other end
of the universe? There's no way for you to tell. No scale here, no way to gauge
distance.

 
          
You
lick your lips.

 
          
The
wetness is a reassuringly real sensation.

 
          
You
reach out and see your smooth, realistic virtual hand as it magically draws you
on. If you had feet you'd be stumbling about like a blind man on an obstacle
course. But you glide like an angel through the haze of smoke and fog.
Somewhere above
—
far above
—
you see a faint blob of light, a moon of sorts, or a
moribund sun, but it adds no worthwhile illumination to this scorched
wasteland.

 
          
The
other lights seem closer, or at least they've grown larger. As your eyes adjust
to the cavelike darkness, you begin to
see.

 
          
The
tiny lights sputter like small fires dotting a bomb site. You make out twisted shapes,
indeterminate structures like bombed-out buildings catching the faint glow. You
turn left to see how far this, this . ..
devastation
goes. And it's
everywhere, as far as you can see....

 
          
Everywhere.
You pull back your hand
—
and pause.

 
          
"My
God!"

 
          
Your
own voice startles you. It's the only sound you've heard since you entered this
borderland of hell.

 
          
You
search for something to compare it to.
Hiroshima
.
Dresden
after the fire. Yet even in
those horrors, people survived, life struggled out of the rubble. But here,
nothing is moving here.

 
          
And
so intensely lonely, so unrelievedly bleak; a knot tightens in your chest. You
want to leave. This is nothing like what you imagined you'd see. Yes, you want
to leave, if for no other reason than to make sure that you can leave. You want
to rip off the headset and scream for light:
Give me some light!

 
          
But
you calm yourself. You know this is merely a memoryscape, as harmless as
Lorraine
's, with the same underlying
architecture: neural links connecting the memory nodes. Somewhere below, Sam's
neural pathways weave and interconnect, linking events and experiences along
the pathways that used to carry Sam's emotions and feelings and information to
her consciousness.

 
          
But
you see nothing moving here.

 
          
You've
entered the land of the dead.

 
          
Suddenly
the Window button begins to blink. You click it. The window drops down and
there's Dr. Siegal. He looks frazzled.

 
          
"Julie!
Julie, get out of there!"

 
          
''Why?"
You know damn well why, but vou want to hear someone else tell you.

 
          
"The
devastation. It's
—
it's unimaginable. And it
can't help affecting you as well."

 
          
"You
don't know that."

           
"I don't want to argue,
Julie..
This
is far worse than either of
us expected
in
our worst
nightmares. Get out, Julie. Get out now!"

 
          
You're
ready to agree, ready to click the Exit button and return to the real world of
warmth and light and life, when you notice a blue glow somewhere near the
center of the twisted structures that dot the memoryscape. A pale blue light,
cool fire, small, flickering, like a pilot light on a stove.

 
          
"In
a minute," you tell Dr. S. "There's something I want to check out
first."

 
          
"Me,
please
—
"

 
          
You
click the Window button and Dr. Siegal disappears.

 
          
You
take a breath and reach out your hand. The glove feels heavy. The act is a
decisive one. The hand drags you toward the blue glow, drifting over the razed
nodes. You trace the gopher-trail connections leading from one structure to
the next. Most look broken, shattered here and there along their lengths like
ruptured water mains.

 
          
You
look down at them, expecting to see something scurry out, some ratlike creature
that can thrive among these ruins.

 
          
If
you had arms you'd rub them to drive off the chill.. . .

 
          
Chill?
Why are you chilled? Certainly not from Sam's memoryscape. You can't feel
anything in a memoryscape
—
you can only observe it.
Probably an emotional response to the desolation. Or perhaps someone left a
door open in the nursing home and cool air is seeping into Sam's room. But no
sensations from the memoryscape itself. That simply can't be.

 
          
Your
eyes are fully adjusted to the darkness now, and you see dimly glowing mounds
dotting the ruined horizon. They shine with a warmer light than the blue glow
before you, almost inviting.

 
          
Memory
nodes maybe? Is there still life in this place?

 
          
You
look ahead and now you're close to the blue glow. This doesn't resemble a
bombed-out building. No
Eiffel
Tower
here, no house with a
picket fence. Just this cool blue sphere.

 
          
You
pull back for a moment and watch the blue orb. You've seen nothing else like it
in this barren landscape. If you're to learn anything here, perhaps this is
where you must begin.

 
          
You
raise the glove and it looks as if your hand is reaching out to touch the blue
sphere, perhaps to grasp it.

 
          
You
begin falling into it, the blue light ready to swallow you.

           
Too late to pull back. An instant of
panic, of featureless cold blue fire. You hear a noise. A door opening, the
jangle of keys, and then the blue light is gone and you're in a room.

 
          
In
an art studio.

 
          
Sam's
studio. You were here last week. You look around. The floor is clean.
Samantha's bureau is intact, the drawers all closed. The studio looks
unrealistically neat. No sign of anyone breaking in. Nothing like what you saw
then.

 
          
You
turn to your left and see the paintings. One canvas is all slashing blue and
black streaks, a violent piece of work, similar to the one you saw in the
real-world studio. You raise your hand to it and you're closer.

 
          
The
paint glows. It looks like alien lava dripping off the canvas. The painting is
changing before your eyes. It seems alive. Is Sam's unconscious trying to
finish the work? Or trying to destroy it?

 
          
You
wait, but nothing intelligible emerges from the swirling streaks.

 
          
You
turn farther left. There's a delay, as
if
your command to look left has
to be processed. Which of course it does. Another painting leans against the
wall but this looks like one of the old masters, a Brueghel. Villagers at
harvest time. Women in their starched linens, men in baggy trousers with
sheaves of wheat strapped on their shoulders.

 
          
You
know you're in Sam's studio, her workplace. And yet here is a painting that's
clearly not hers. Or perhaps it is; perhaps one she painted and sold during
all those years you barely spoke. There could be hundreds
of
those.

 
          
And
this one moves too. You look in the upper right corner and see a tiny red demon
with a pitchfork. The demon moves closer to the villagers. He carries his
pitchfork with determination, with purpose.

 
          
The
demon pounces upon a villager and spears the hapless man with a vicious jab.
The bumpkin writhes on the end of the fork as a fiery pit opens in the sward
and he's tossed into the flames.

 
          
"No!"

 
          
Your
own voice startles you again, not because it pierces the silence, but because
of the sudden surge of horror that forced you to cry out. Why should this
crudely animated image disturb you so? It's not even a real painting.

 
          
And
yet, as you watch the poor man tumble backward into hellfire, you want to reach
for him, help him, and it breaks your heart that you can't.

 
          
He
vanishes, and then...

 
          
It
starts
all over.
Like a loop, the painting is back the way it was, the
happy villagers, the demon up in the right, beginning his grim resolute march.

 
          
You
pull back, turn away, searching out the other paintings in this studio,
anything but that one.

 
          
You
find a large canvas hanging way to the left where the walls of this studio come
together in a V, an impossibly sharp corner. The large canvas is empty.

 
          
But
no, you must have missed it. A moon hangs in the upper right corner of the
canvas, a nearly full moon floating near the top of the canvas. A yellow,
sleepy moon ...

 
          
You
think:
sleepy moon.
And that means something to you.
Sleepy moon.

 
          
This
canvas, too, is disturbing.
Sleepy moon.
Why does that seem important?

 
          
How
long have you been in here?

 
          
You
hear something behind you. A crackling sound. Some-thing that sounds like a
fireplace. Shakily, warily, you raise your hand, the disembodied appendage that
stands in for the rest of your body. You make it glide right.

 
          
Another
canvas. A lion with a mane
of
fire stands proudly in an elegant Venetian
gondola painted red and gold along its railing. The fiery head sizzles and
crackles as it bums. Your fingers reach toward the painting and you drift
closer. Is this one of Sam's, another work completed and sold in the lost years
between you?

 
          
You
turn around.

 
          
Something
on the floor, standing out amid the immense empty expanse of virtual wood.

 
          
A
palette knife, still thick with crusty blue paint, as if it had been dropped in
die rush of the moment.