F Paul Wilson - Novel 05 (16 page)

 
          
"Okay.
I'll meet you here when you're through."

 
          
Julie
checked the computer as soon as she entered the room. She was worried that the
night nurses had fiddled with the buttons and accidentally changed the
settings, or that the mysterious prowler might have got in, but all was as it
should be.

 
          
She
reached for the power switch to turn it off, then hesitated. She looked at
Sam,
sister
Sleeping Beauty, and thought about the nightscape within.

 
          
Another
look... she needed another look.

 
          
But
alone. She knew it was safer, more sensible to have someone on-line with her,
but she wasn't keen on the idea of dear old Dr. S. looking over her shoulder
while she explored. After all, it was her life in there too.

 
          
She
fitted the subject helmet on Sam's head, donned her own headset, then picked up
the glove. Funny, the data glove was such a clunky thing in real life, a giant
robot appendage with dozens of wires running off it. But in the virtual world
of the memoryscape it became a sleek, graceful hand guiding her into alien
terrain.

 
          
Julie
flipped down the goggles and looked at the twin screens. Now she was truly
alone with Samantha.

 
          
"Okay,
kiddo," she said. "It's just me and you again." Julie hit the
Enter key and the program started. "Just the way we started out."

 
          
She
checked the readouts in the bottom ribbon bar. Pulse and respiration were
normal.

 
          
It's
been only a few hours. Is this too soon to be going back in? she wondered. Probably
won't have any effect on Sam. But what effect will it have on me?

 
          
She
chewed at her lip, once again guiltily aware that it was not Samantha she was
concerned with.

 
          
The
screen darkened to night.

 
          
And
she was
back.

 
          
Recall
—
the act of memory
—
should
not be viewed as merely opening a mental drawer and pulling out a memory.
Recall is a reconstructive act
—
the
various pieces of that memory must be located, gathered together, and
reassembled for inspection.
—
Random notes: Julia Gordon

     
      
The memoryscape draws you back, like a
gravity well sucking you in. You retract your hand, and, like hitting a brake,
you stop.

 
          
You
look around. You're prepared now, ready for the broken web of twisted
structures and scorched earth. Still, it shocks you.

 
          
You
search for the blue glow of the gallery. There
—
you
find it. A landmark. You're oriented now. And beyond that, the glow of Eathan's
Oakwood. But dimmer now, flickering.

 
          
Oh,
no. Is that dying too?

 
          
You
approach it and see something beyond it, something you didn't notice last time
when Oakwood was brighter, something that looks like a pile of pure white
sugar, a giant white hill.

           
Cocaine, perhaps? That certainly
might occupy a place in Sam's memory. Any substance that stretched her mind was
fair game. Anything to feed the frenzy that was Samantha.

 
          
You
hear a noise, a scuffling sound, and turn around. A possum. Something is alive
here!

 
          
You
watch its naked prehensile tail thrashing madly back and forth as it paws under
a pile of debris. It pulls something free and begins gnawing on it. Curious,
you move closer and it backs away, guarding its prize. You lean closer; you
aren't going to steal it away, but you're curious what it's got there. It turns
toward you and
—

 
          
You
jerk back. A hand
—
the possum has a severed
human hand clamped between its jaws. You turn away, sickened, as it begins to
gnaw on a finger.

 
          
You
raise your glove toward the hill. You want to get out of here.

 
          
You
float over the memoryscape, a clinical angel calmly inspecting the damage
below as you near the white hill.

 
          
Soon
you see it's not sugar, not cocaine. No, it's a snowcapped hill. As you near
you see that the peak is flattened. Suddenly on your left a huge wave rears up
out of nowhere, its foamy edges reaching for you like white-clawed hands. You
dart back and the wave freezes, framing the far-off mountain.

 
          
And
now you know that mountain: It's
Fuji
. And somehow you're in
Hokusai's The
Great Wave off Kanagawa.

 
          
Well,
what did you expect in your sister's memoryscape? You could have guessed it
would be lousy with art.

 
          
That
was another thing you never agreed on. You're drawn to artists like Georges de
la Tour. You adore his
The Penitent Magdalen
—
the light, the shadows, the clarity. You love the
representational schools; Sam loves everything but.

 
          
But
now you're part of Hokusai's
Great Wave,
and it's okay as art, but it's
in your way. You dart past the wave, ducking through its trough, and continue
toward the mountain.

 
          
When
you look back, the wave remains as you left it, frozen, waiting to tumble
toward a beach that doesn't exist.

 
          
Ahead,
you notice tiny people on a snowy mountain that's no longer
Fuji
. They glide back and forth,
skiing under a brilliant blue sky
—

           
Samantha pushes the goggles higher
off her face. The man with her is older, with sharp, dark eyes and a grin that
glints like the snow.

 
          
Karl
Tennstedt is director of
Berlin
's Bertolt Brecht Theater.
He's been Sam's boss, and now wants to be her mentor and lover. All through the
production of
Galileo
he's been putting moves on her, hinting about
other productions ... and their working together.

 
          
But
his wife is crazy, and so insanely jealous it's scary.... Who knows what she'll
do if she finds out.

 
          
"Let
me tell you what to expect on this slope," Tennstedt says.

 
          
Sam
shakes her head. Why listen, why experience the slope in words before
experiencing it in life? How boring.

 
          
"Don't
worry. I'll be fine."

 
          
The
man's smile changes.

 
          
"This
isn't some baby run, Samantha. This is
Die Grosse
'Edge.' This is a
professional alpine run."

 
          
Sam
pulls down her goggles.

 
          
"Good."
She pushes away, close to the edge of the run. She looks down, and the sight
takes her breath away. It's not a sheer drop, but it is an incredible expanse
of white, sloping sharply at a forty-five-degree angle.

 
          
She
sees skiers cutting left and right, controlling their speed by weaving back and
forth.

 
          
"The
run turns," Tennstedt says. "Halfway down, the run narrows and
—
"

 
          
Tennstedt
is too old. Acting like a father, so worried and concerned. All that, and he
wants to get into Sam's pants. That's what this little ski holiday is all
about. He's boring her.

 
          
But
this slope isn't.

 
          
Tennstedt
still jabbers at her. She feels his apprehension and that adds to the
excitement.

 
          
She
pushes off the edge and hits the slope already moving fast, taking the downhill
dead-on. She pulls her poles tight to her body, crouching.

 
          
Look
at me. I'm a downhill racer.

 
          
Faster,
and faster, the thin layer of powdery snow does little to slow her. She flies
past other skiers trying to tackle the steep slope in measured assaults. Such
caution, such an accounting approach to life. Tiny crystals of snow in the air
bite her cheeks. The goggles paint everything with
a
warm yellow tint.

 
          
It's
dreamlike, wonderful.

 
          
The
run begins to narrow.

 
          
What
had been a giant tablecloth of white funnels into a narrow gap.

 
          
Now
Sam realizes that her speed is out of control. With the gray granite walls
closing in from the sides, she knows she's got to do something to slow herself.

 
          
This
is the way it's always been for her.

 
          
Test
the limits. Heed no warning. Take no prisoners.

 
          
She
starts awkwardly schussing back and forth, trying to dig her ski edges into the
snow to slow her. The effect is pitiful. Then her right ski edge tries to dig
into an exposed icy patch but skids over it.

 
          
She
feels her balance go.

 
          
The
cold on her face is matched now by terror. She fights to regain control. She
can only glance at the slope, ever narrower, the stone walls closing in on
her. Then
—
with a last sickening glance
—
she sees the run turn sharply to the right.

 
          
Her
left leg, trying to counterbalance her wobbling, gives way.

 
          
And
she falls, tumbling into the snow, a biting spray flying into her face. She
begins rolling, screaming, banging
—
and
...

 
          
And
you
feel
it.

 
          
The
snow shooting into your face, filling your mouth.

 
          
You
feel your limbs smashing against the ice, rolling, flopping around.

 
          
You
moan. You
feel
this. But that's not supposed to happen. You're just an
observer here.

 
          
You
need to think about this, but how can you think while you're falling down a
mountain, experiencing your sister's memory with your body feeling every
electric jolt, every sensation?

           
You moan again.

 
          
Or
is that Sam? Why can't you tell?

 
          
Sam
opens her eyes.

 
          
She's
aware that the movement has stopped. She feels the snow on her lips and knows
she is facedown.

 
          
A
sharp pain arcs from below, a dull, throbbing message from miles away. She
tries to reach down and see what's hurting so much.

 
          
She
raises her head off the snow and twists around to look at the source of the
pain.

 
          
It
seems amazing that the sky is still blue, with the sun a brilliant yellow
hanging low in the sky. Nothing has changed. Except
—

 
          
She
raises her head higher and sees the red stain, so dark, almost black against
the white snow. From miles away, she understands. There's blood down there.

 
          
Then
another delayed realization.

 
          
It's mine.

 
          
Suddenly
all movement on the mountain stops.

 
          
You've
done nothing, but now you're gliding back from the brilliant white of the
slope, leaving the antlike speck of Sam stranded on the mountain. Farther back
until you see the whole snow'Covered mountain.

 
          
Rippling,
undulating slowly.

 
          
The
white is moving.

 
          
Closer
now, again without your doing anything. You remind yourself that this is a
memory. More like a dream, the way it cuts back and forth, mixing one scene
with the next, making surreal jumps.

 
          
You
watch, hooked by this drama of your twin, opening up her life to you in a way
that never could have happened when she was conscious.

 
          
You
see a bed. A white sheet.

 
          
The
sheet moving. Sam, her head in bandages, moves under the sheet. Someone stands
nearby, a dark figure. The director?

 
          
The
figure moves closer to the bed and puts a hand on Sam.

 
          
Eathan!

           
Is this happening now, or then? You
feel completely disoriented.

 
          
You
see Eathan touch Sam's brow. He looks younger. This was five, six years ago.
You remember this, and you don't want to be here.