F Paul Wilson - Novel 05 (50 page)

 
          
"Only
kidding." She sighed. "Look, I'm going to get some sleep. I'll call
you first thing tomorrow
—
eight
o'clock
your time
—
and we'll take another look
into Sam."

 
          
"Okay.
But no soloing in the meantime. Promise?"

 
          
"Promise:
No trips into Sam's 'scape till tomorrow."

 
          
"Good.
See you then."

 
          
No.
No more trips into Sam's 'scape.

 
          
But
that doesn't mean I won't try to peek into my own.

 
          
She
rose and headed for the bathroom. A shower... not only did she need one, but
she did her best thinking in the shower.

 
          
And
she had a lot of thinking to do.

2

 
          
Julie
spent the late afternoon in Sam's room, pounding on the computer's keyboard.

 
          
The
shower had worked its usual magic. As she'd lathered her body and shampooed her
hair, the solution had floated to the surface of her mind. If she looped the
outflow from her own headset through Sam's empty headset, she could fool the
program into thinking it was reading someone else's 'scape, and make it feed
it back to her.

 
          
The
changes would allow her to enter her own memoryscape.

 
          
Sounded
logical. At least she hadn't yet found a reason why it wouldn't work.

 
          
The
question was, Would it work without destabilizing the rest of the program?

 
          
Only
one way to find out.

 
          
Julie
knew that even under the most controlled circumstances, this was one hell of a
risky experiment. To try it alone was downright reckless. Some might even say
stupid. But the -nly one she could go in with was Dr. S., and he'd never
per-nnt that. She could threaten to quit, to jump off one of the
World
Trade
Towers
, to immolate herself in the
center of
Washington Square
, and he'd still refuse to
allow it.

 
          
With
good reason . . .

 
          
So
she was going to go it alone
.. .if
she could successfully alter the
program. And if she could complete the trip before Eathan arrived. He hadn't
returned from his previous trip to
London
until
7
P.M.
or so. She hoped he'd be running on
the
same schedule this time.

 
          
Because
by then she hoped to have the answer to the
final
question: What awful
secret was buried in their minds?

 
          
Her
fingers ran across the keyboard and she hit ENTER like a pianist ending a
concerto.

 
          
There.
The last patch of altered code blocked the audio-video feed to
New York
. It wouldn't do at all to
have Dr. S. stroll by a monitor and see Julie's memoryscape flowing by.

 
          
With
that entered, she was ready to give it a try.

 
          
I
should feel scared half to death, she thought, but she
was
curiously
exhilarated.

 
          
The
nurse gave Julie a funny look when she asked her to wait outside. A new shift
had started at 4 P.M., but undoubtedly the day nurse had given her a
blow-by-blow description of
the
strange goings-on behind the locked door,
and how she'd
had
to bandage a mysterious laceration on the patient's
sister's arm.

 
          
"This
will only be a brief equipment test," Julie said in
her
most
reassuring tone. "Samantha's not even going to be involved in this, so
there's absolutely no cause to worry. Twenty minutes, tops. Then she's all
yours for the rest of the night."

 
          
The
nurse looked unsure. She'd probably complain to Eathan when he returned.

 
          
But
every word Julie told the nurse was true. She didn't need Sam for this. The
only reason Julie was using Sam's room
was
because this was where the
hardware was set up.

 
          
She
locked the door behind the nurse, then hit the Record button on the VCR. She
most definitely wanted a record of this.

 
          
Minutes
later she was gloved up, goggles and headphones in place, ready to go.

 
          
But
she hesitated.

 
          
Okay
... I'm scared, she thought.

 
          
Yes,
more frightened than she'd ever been in her life.
More
than when she'd
almost tumbled off the cliffs outside. A different kind of fear. Not visceral.
. . almost intellectual.

 
          
One
thing to venture into someone else's unknown, but to wander your own
memoryscape.... It was almost like examining your own soul, or your karma.

 
          
That
could be the ultimate horror.

 
          
For
what could be riskier than digging into your own memory, looking to unearth
buried secrets, secrets interred for a very good reason: because they're
dangerous.

 
          
Only
a fool pokes through a toxic-waste dump.

 
          
Then
again, if she didn't clean up the toxins now, they could eventually pollute her
whole countryside.

 
          
Look
what happened when Sam's dump sprang a leak.

 
          
Of
course, poking around also risked
causing
a leak. She could precipitate
a catastrophe.

 
          
Still,
she had to know. She couldn't go through the rest of her life wondering if she
had a ticking bomb in her brain. If it was there, she wanted to find it and
defuse it.

 
          
If
she could.

 
          
Julie
bit her lip and adjusted her goggles. Enough vacillation. Do it.

 
          
Fascinating
results
from U.C. at
Irvine
. A group of volunteers was
shown a movie about a series of traumatic events. Before the film, half of them
were dosed with propranobl to block the effects of adrenaline on the brain; the
other half were not. A week later, the group that received the beta-blacker
remembered significantly fewer details about the traumatic events in the film,
but had excellent recall of the nontraumatic events. This
might
lead
to a means
of preventing
post-traumatic
stress syndrome.

—
Random
notes: Julia Gordon

 
          
You've
become used to the darkness within Samantha’s ‘scape. The clear blue skies of
your own memoryscape come as a shock.
You
rise and hover, gazing at your
own peaceful inner panorama.

 
          
At
first glance you're reminded of Lorraine's memoryscape, or any of the dozens of
other normal 'scapes you've wandered. Towns and villages dot the countryside
all around you, and directly below, an island city of skyscrapers
—
your own
Man*
hattan.

 
          
But
not like any
Manhattan
you know. This city is
clean
and
well ordered, laid out completely in a neat grid; even the
lower
city, where
Greenwich
Village
and Wall Street would be, are methodically gridded.

 
          
You
drift over the perfectly laid out suburbs, and then out to the countryside,
where each farm is perfectly square and neatly bordered with rows of trees.

 
          
God,
you think. This is so embarrassing. Am I really such a compulsively ordered
nerd?

 
          
Off
to your left, deeper in the countryside, you see smoke rising from a stand of
trees. You start toward it, then stop. You can guess what's burning in those
woods. The last thing you need is another replay of that scene.

 
          
You
look down at yourself and notice that you have a body here, a much more
substantial model than you had in Sam's 'scape. And that makes sense
—
this is
your
place, after all. In no other
memoryscape will you have a more physical presence.

 
          
You
head back toward the city.

 
          
So
far so good, right? Not so bad, really. Of course, you haven't been down to
ground level to observe the nitty-gritty, but you've no time for that now.
You've got to find that buried memory
—
if
it exists here.

 
          
You
wish you'd been able to browse Sam's 'scape before the cataclysm, and seen if
there'd been any surface clues to the location of her deadly memory. You don't
care how deeply it's buried; a memory that toxic has got to leave traces on the
surface.

 
          
You
start above the center of your city and begin moving outward in a widening
gyre, searching the terrain below for something, anything, out of the ordinary.
One good thing about this anal-retentive layout is that the slightest warping
effect will stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.

 
          
But
the cityscape remains perfect: clean streets, smoothly flowing traffic, a
subway stop every ten blocks, a verdant, mugger-free
Central Park
. Even the
South Bronx
has been tidied up.

 
          
Your
concentric circles take you over the suburbs. You note with approval that your
subways continue out here as elevateds. How convenient. Tight-ass Julie hasn't
missed a trick. And out here in suburbia the story is the same as in the city:
nothing out of the ordinary.

 
          
It's
a mathematically perfect world.

           
Which isn't all bad, you think. If
you don't find anything amiss, you'll never know what Sam was hiding from, but
at least you won't have to worry about a ticking bomb inside your own mind.

 
          
You
increase your speed as you leave the populated areas and hit the countryside.
You notice that the tracks of the elevated subway once again disappear into the
earth at the outer edge of the 'burbs. Is that their terminus? Or do they
continue under the countryside? Below you lie farms and fields in varying
shades of green and gold, with corn and wheat and soybeans filling field after
field. You're getting bored. You're beginning to feel safe.

 
          
And
then you see something ahead that looks a little out of the ordinary. The color
is off, and it doesn't have the sharp right angles of the rest of your 'scape.

 
          
Your
gut winds into a slow knot as you zoom toward it, then pulls tight as you
recognize what it is.

 
          
A
bare spot.

 
          
Neatly
laid out grain fields and orchards surround you on all sides, but here in this
roughly circular patch, maybe two hundred feet in diameter, nothing grows.

 
          
Nothing.
Not even a weed. No hint of green mars this dry, cracked expanse of sterile
earth.

 
          
Poisoned,
you think. Poisoned from below. Bad soil. Bad earth. Bad bedrock.

 
          
Something
wrong below.

 
          
You
fight the sick, weak feeling that threatens to overcome you. Here is what you
were looking for. Here is what you'd hoped you wouldn't find. Here lies the
secret that can leave you like Sam. And now that you've found it you can't walk
away.

 
          
You're
going to have to deal with it.

 
          
But
how? How to get it? Dig it up? With what? You have no virtual tools. And you'll
have to be careful
—
extremely careful. One false
move and you'll be a vegetable. But there has to be a way.

 
          
You
turn and see the spires of your city. Maybe there ...

 
          
As
you glide over the outlying suburbs you notice the tracks again. One set runs
in the direction of the bare spot. Is it possible?

           
Deciding it's worth a try, you
descend to the northbound platform outside the tunnel and check the train map.
Yes, the tracks run for miles under the countryside with regular stops along
the way. But not forever. They stop at a place called, appropriately enough,
End of the Line.

 
          
You
don't like the sound of that.

 
          
You
turn and the sight of a waiting train startles you. The doors are open. As you
step into the front car, they slide closed behind you and the train lurches
into motion. And into the tunnel.

 
          
The
well-lit, clean, neat
—
of course
—
train car hurtles through the subterranean darkness with a
minimum of noise and wobble. Every so often an empty subway platform flashes
by, but the train never stops. Why should it? You're the only passenger.

 
          
Finally
it slides to a halt at a station and the doors hiss open. A voice announces,
"End
of the Line. All passengers off, please
."

 
          
This
may be the end of the line, but this isn't your destination. You look out the
front window and see that the tunnel goes farther. A line of widely spaced
incandescent bulbs curves off into the darkness. You knock on the engineer's
door.

 
          
"Hello?
Is anybody in there?"

 
          
The
door swings open and you gasp at the sight of Eathan sitting at the controls.

 
          
"End
of the line, miss," he says officiously. "All trains stop here."

 
          
You
shake off the shock, reminding yourself that anything can happen in a
memoryscape, even yours.

 
          
"Can't
you take me farther? I need to go
—
"

 
          
"End
of the line, miss," he repeats. Then his features soften and he looks at
you. "I've taken you as far as I can, Julie. You'll have to finish the journey
on your own."

 
          
You
nod. On your own ... you should have known this is how it would end.

 
          
You
exit the train, hesitate a moment on the platform as you contemplate the dark
maw of the tunnel, then you glide toward it and begin the last leg of your journey.

 
          
As
you follow the trail of bulbs, hurrying from one pool of Sight to the next, the
cool dampness seeps through your skin and chills you. The thought of the
unknown terror you are approaching sets off an even deeper chill.

 
          
You
pass an abandoned train stop, exit gate bricked up, platform strewn with
trash, walls marred with graffiti.

 
          
No
question about it. The environment is deteriorating.

 
          
Farther
down the tunnel, the tracks disappear. The lights are spaced farther apart, and
dimmer, and soon there are no lights at all. You're moving through perfect
darkness. And as you push on, you notice a foul odor, a mixture of mold,
mildew, and putrefaction.

 
          
Death
is here.

 
          
And
fear.

 
          
Where
is all the orderliness now? This is like something from Sam's 'scape. You fight
the urge to run, reminding yourself of that wonderful Exit button that's always
available. You can bail out anytime you feel too threatened. So you press on.

 
          
And
suddenly there's a sharp turn in the tunnel, and dim light leaking around the
corner. This could be it. Taking a breath, you make the turn...

 
          
And
find the tunnel blocked. Twenty feet away, a seamless wall of granite. And
seated before it in a cone of light, a man at a desk, writing furiously in a
notebook. As you take a step forward he stops his scribbling and looks up. You
freeze.

 
          
Nathan.

 
          
The
man you thought of as "Daddy" until yesterday, looking just as he did
twenty-three years ago when he ran back into the burning house. And suddenly
you know that he's behind it all. Nathan did something to you and Sam,
something worse than the neurohormones, something horrible.

 
          
And
now he's here, guarding the memory of it.

 
          
"Couldn't
stay away, could you, Julie," he says, his tone a mixture of contempt and
amusement. "Couldn't leave well enough alone." He
tsks
and
shakes his head. "Too bad. I had such high hopes for you. Now you're going
to be left with the intellectual capacity of a cabbage. What a waste."

 
          
You
begin to back away, begin to reach for that blessed Exit button. You'll come
back some other time and face this. With Dr. S. You're not ready for this now.
You
—

 
          
"Don't
run off," he says. "It will
do
you no good. You've al' ready
set the machine in motion." He points to the digital clock behind him as
it begins counting down by seconds from one hundred. "That's all the time
you have left, so you might as well stick around and see if you can buy
yourself some more."

 
          
You
stop. Is he lying? But this isn't really Nathan. This is an image constructed
from your own mind. And you wouldn't lie to yourself. Would you?