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  Got to clean out that mess one of these days, he told himself as he stretched out on the couch, watching all three television screens at once. He knew he should be working on Muncrief's special project; he had the laser disc Muncrief had recorded from his special run of the Neptune's Kingdom game. But what Muncrief wanted bothered Jace down at a level of conscience that he seldom felt. There's nothing wrong with it, he told himself. He's not hurting the kid. Still, he felt uneasy, almost afraid.

  Muncrief's a weirdo; I should never have gotten tied up with him. Except—except he gives you a free hand to do what the hell ever you like. He's right about that. Nobody else'd give me that kind of latitude. As long as I can keep him happy about his special project, I can do whatever else I want.

  Aw, to hell with him, Jace told himself. So I'll make him the program he wants. So what if it's Dan's kid he's got the hots for. It won't hurt her and Dan'll never know about it. The kid herself will never know about it. And now that Dan's here we can polish off this friggin' baseball program and go on to some really neat stuff.

  With a snort he pushed himself up from the couch and went to the table where he kept his helmet and data gloves. He slid a disc into the CD player that was hooked up to a series of computers that he had wired together, then slipped on the helmet and gloves. Trailing their wires he went back to the couch and stretched out his lean, lanky body. Now he was in a world of his own making, a world of enslaved robots and hordes of slimy evil alien soldiers ruled by a viciously beautiful goddess who looked very much like his mother.

  His object was to wipe out the evil alien armies, liberate the robots, and capture the goddess queen for his own pleasure.

  CHAPTER 11

  "But she's got to use the VR booths," said Eleanor O'Connell. "The school's entire teaching methodology is based on the virtual reality systems."

  Susan frowned worriedly. "Angie seems to be afraid of them."

  "I can understand that, but we've got to work together to help her overcome this bad experience."

  The two women were sitting in comfortable armchairs in a corner of the teacher's lounge of the Pine Lake Middle School. Susan was impressed with the near-luxury of the lounge's carpeted floor and cushioned chairs. There were neat little tables in front of a row of gleaming machines that dispensed snack foods and cold drinks. A coffee-maker burbled next to the sink where someone had left a white cardboard box filled with doughnuts. A couple of other teachers were relaxing on the sofas by the windows on the other side of the room. One of the women was smoking; Susan's nose wrinkled at the acrid smell of the cigarette.

  Susan remembered the teacher's lounges in the Dayton schools where she had occasionally visited as part of her library duties. They had been shabby, old and bare. This school was just as new and sparkling as the rest of the Pine Lake community. She was glad that she had taken the trouble to dress well for her visit. Her pale green slacks suit said that she was a serious, successful woman, not just a panicked mother frightened about her child.

  Eleanor O'Connell was not much older than Susan but she had let herself go plump. Looking over her round face and dowdy blue polka-dot dress, Susan thought that she probably had to fight every hour of the day to keep from getting really fat. Whoever had brought those doughnuts was no friend of hers.

  "Angie's been such a good one in class," she was saying, "we can't let this little incident stop her."

  "But she seems afraid of the very idea of getting into one of those booths again," Susan said.

  O'Connell leaned forward slightly and touched Susan's knee. "If Angela can't use the VR systems she can't remain in this school. We're not set up to teach with the old-fashioned methods. This is a very special school, the only one in the state—I think it might be the only one in the country."

  Susan saw that the teacher was not making a threat; O'Connell seemed genuinely upset by the idea that Angela might have to go to an ordinary school.

  "I tried to explain to her last night that what happened was a freak . . . well, accident, I guess."

  "She had an emotional experience that she wasn't prepared for," said O'Connell.

  "Her father's tried to explain it to her, too."

  "The school psychologist talked with her this morning," said the teacher. "She told me Angela seems a little frightened, but otherwise reasonably all right."

  "She was really scared yesterday," Susan said.

  "I truly don't think it would be good for Angela to allow her to run away from this disturbing experience. She's got to face it down."

  Susan nodded but she felt terribly uncertain. "Have any of the other children had similar experiences?"

  "No," O'Connell said slowly, drawing out the word. Then she added, "One of the boys got into a bit of trouble last semester because he liked the VR games so much he didn't want to come out of the booth. He even sneaked into school over one weekend and tried to use the booth, but of course it wasn't working on the weekend."

  "A boy sneaking into school?"

  O'Connell laughed. "Yes. Strange, isn't it?" She had a hearty laugh that made the teachers across the lounge look over their way.

  "That was our first semester, of course," she went on. "We were all new at the VR systems. We had ParaReality technicians in here every morning, it seemed. The equipment was always breaking down in one way or another."

  Susan clutched at that morsel. "Could what happened to Angie have been an equipment failure of some sort?"

  O'Connell shook her head. "Believe me, the equipment has been checked out. There was a ParaReality team here half the night; they couldn't find anything wrong. Even your husband looked it over."

  "He did?" Susan was jolted with surprise.

  "He was in here first thing this morning, before classes started. Before anyone else showed up. The janitor let him in, from what I heard."

  "Oh."

  "Listen," O'Connell said. "I have an idea that may help. Why don't you go through the game that Angela was playing? You can see for yourself what it's like."

  "I've never used a virtual reality simulation," Susan heard herself say. She was still wondering about Dan. He had promised to check the VR program at his office, but he said nothing about stopping at the school to check the equipment. He should have told me, she said to herself. Maybe he didn't think of coming to the school until he was on his way to work; the school's on the way to his lab. But no, that's not like Dan. He thought about it all night and left early this morning to come here and check out the system. Without mentioning a word of it to me.

  That's like Dan. Just like him.

  "There's nothing to be afraid of," O'Connell said, misreading Susan's silence.

  "I know," she said. "You're right, it is a good idea. Can we do it right now?" Phil was at her next-door neighbor's house and Susan did not want to impose on the woman for a minute longer than necessary. Already she feared that the neighbor would take up the rest of the afternoon chatting with her once she returned and she would be unable to break away because it would make her look so ungrateful.

  O'Connell glanced at her wristwatch. "Lunch period is almost half over, but I think we can squeeze in the game before the children come back to class."

  Quickly the two women marched to O'Connell's classroom. Susan had seen it before at the PTA meeting a few weeks earlier. Now she overlooked the desks scattered irregularly across the floor and the posters tacked up to the wallboards. O'Connell took her straight to the row of six booths at the back of the room. They looked dark, confining, like confessionals in a church. Taking a breath, as if she were about to plunge into deep cold water, Susan stepped inside the nearest booth and sat down on its curved padded chair. It felt slightly small to her. On a bench next to the seat rested a pair of data gloves and a light blue plastic sensory helmet decorated with stick-on stars of red and gold. The helmet was nicked and scuffed from hard use.

  "I'll set up the game from my desk," O'Connell said as Susan wormed her hands into the metallic data gloves.

 
; "You control it from your desk?"

  "It's controlled from the ParaReality offices. I phone their computer and tell it what I want by touching keys on the phone pad. It's all automatic, actually."

  She closed the door of the booth softly, leaving Susan in nearly complete darkness. Susan flexed her fingers inside the gloves. They felt slightly stiff and a bit small for her. Each glove trailed a thick wire to electronic boxes beneath the bench. Feeling slightly nervous, she reached over and picked up the helmet. It looked like something a biker would wear, smoothly curved plastic with a visor that came down over the face. But the visor was opaque.

  Susan knew there were two small TV screens on the visor's inner surface, one for each eye. They presented stereoscopic images to the wearer's eyes, producing a fully three-dimensional picture.

  She slid the helmet over her hair. It fit snugly. There was no chin strap. Despite its bulk the helmet felt feathery light. But she was in total darkness now, like being blindfolded. Scary.

  "Can you hear me, Mrs. Santorini?" O'Connell's voice startled Susan, even though it sounded soft in the helmet's earphones, far away.

  "Yes," said Susan.

  "I'm starting the game now."

  "Okay." She felt shaky, as if she were stepping out onto a steep stairway in total darkness with no safety rail.

  "This game is called 'Neptune's Kingdom,' " said a voice. It sounded warm and friendly, but Susan could not tell if it were a man's voice or a woman's. It's a computer synthesizer, she told herself.

  The darkness remained for several moments, long enough for Susan to wonder if something had gone wrong. Then slowly it faded into a midnight blue that seemed to pulse rhythmically, almost hypnotically. Her hands tingled, but not uncomfortably so. The confining press of the helmet seemed to disappear. Susan felt herself relaxing, easing back on the padded seat. Her breathing slowed.

  The world around her became somewhat brighter, then brighter still, until she was floating in warmly sunlit water—like a skindiver in the crystal ocean of the Bahamas. Myriads of beautiful fish were swimming past, all the colors of the rainbow, and beyond their streaming schools Susan could see a coral reef shimmering in the deep currents of the sea. Her breath caught in her throat. She was not merely watching a video, she was surrounded by the ocean, she was living in this breathtakingly beautiful underwater world.

  A gaily colored fish swam up to her and said, in the same androgynous voice of the computer: "Hello there. I'm an angel fish. I'm your guide to Neptune's Kingdom."

  An angel fish, thought Susan. Was that a coincidence? Do they use the same kind of fish for everyone who plays the game or do they try to pick out fish that have some special relevance to each individual child? Maybe the game is still set for Angela.

  As the angel fish guided her through the ocean, Susan remembered that this so-called game was actually a biology/ecology lesson for the schoolchildren.

  A shark glided by, sleek and deadly looking. Susan watched fascinated as it opened its wide mouth and showed row upon row of sharp white teeth.

  "There's nothing to be afraid of," said her angel fish. "Nothing can hurt you here in Neptune's Kingdom." But Susan saw that the angel fish moved a lot closer to her until the shark swam past.

  "Most sharks are predators. They eat other fish. We may not like that, but it's the way life is. Can you think of any predators that live on land?"

  "Lawyers," Susan snapped.

  "No. Try again."

  Susan grinned to herself. She was enjoying this. Let's see, she thought, predators. "Lions," she said.

  "Very good! And tigers and wolves. Even dogs and house cats were once wild predators, before people tamed them and turned them into pets."

  Susan said nothing, and they moved deeper and deeper into the ocean. It became quite dark, but Susan felt no cold. Down at this shadowy depth she saw fish that had lights on their sides, long snake-tike eels that glowed like an airplane at night.

  They seemed to swim past a flat-topped mountain and there, down on the very bottom of the sea, was a fairy city of golden spires and alabaster rooftops. It glowed softly in the deep dark water, pulsating almost like a thing alive.

  Susan gasped. "It's beautiful!" she said. As they flowed down onto the broad main avenue of the underwater city the glowing light seemed to grow brighter.

  The golden mansions that lined the avenue were thronged with beautiful mermaids and handsome muscular mermen, the scales of their fish tails glittering like green and blue jewels, their faces smiling in welcome. Susan noticed that the mermaids were demurely clad in scallop-shell bras. Everyone seemed happy and carefree, swimming along and waving to Susan as her angel fish guide led her toward the great palace of coral and pearl up at the head of the long stately avenue.

  The palace's silver gates were wide open and they swam right through. They could see no one in the courtyard, no one in the great halls or long corridors or lofty-ceilinged chambers as they made their way through the palace. The palace seemed completely empty, but all through it Susan could hear a faint tinkling music, almost like wind chimes heard from afar.

  "This is a very special day in Neptune's Kingdom," said the angel fish. "A special day indeed."

  "Why? What day is it?"

  "You'll see."

  Up into the tower they swam, up and up until they reached its topmost chamber. The walls gleamed with precious stones. The musical tinkling grew louder.

  Then they entered what seemed to be a great hall, filled to its walls with smiling, bowing mermaids and mermen. Myriads of brightly-colored fish hovered all around Susan. A broad aisle led from the entrance where she stood to a jewel-encrusted dais at the far end of the room, where a white-bearded merman and charming mermaid sat on golden thrones, their emerald-green tails flicking gently, their faces warm with loving smiles.

  "Today Neptune's Kingdom welcomes its new princess," said the guide fish.

  "Who is it?" Susan asked.

  "Why. it's you, Susan," the angel fish answered. "You are the new princess of this kingdom."

  Everything went black. Susan jerked with shock, as if she had been slapped in the face.

  "That's the point where your daughter fainted," Mrs. O'Connell's voice said in her earphones.

  She was in darkness again. She could feel the weight of the helmet on her head and the slight stiffness of the data gloves. The small of Susan's back felt slightly cramped, as if she had been sitting frozen in one position for too long.

  "Can't we go on to the end of the game?" she called out into the darkness.

  A pause. Then O'Connell said, "I'm afraid my students are due back from their lunch period in just a few minutes. You've been in there nearly half an hour."

  "Half an hour?" Susan felt as if she'd been in the booth only a few moments. Reluctantly she pulled the helmet off and shook her hair loose. She was peeling off the gloves when O'Connell opened the booth's door. The early afternoon sunlight streaming in from the classroom windows made Susan wince and squint.

  "Did you learn anything?" the teacher asked as she walked Susan to the door of her classroom.

  Shaking her head, Susan replied, "Some biology about ocean life, I guess. Nothing that seemed frightening or scary."

  O'Connell's round face looked troubled. "Angela's got to be able to use the VR booths."

  "But something upset her so . . ."

  "I'll restrict her to regular class work. None of the games. Not for a while."

  "Until she feels better about this," Susan agreed.

  "If I were you," O'Connell said, "I wouldn't hound her about this. Drop the subject. Take the weekend off, do you know what I mean?"

  "Maybe we could all take a little trip tomorrow or Sunday. We haven't been to the beach yet."

  O'Connell made a slight smile. "That's a good idea. Get her mind off it. By Monday she'll have forgotten all about it. We'll still be worried half sick and she'll be wanting to stay in the booths all day long."

  Susan smiled back, but she felt
completely unconvinced.

  CHAPTER 12

  "I just don't understand it," Dan said to Vickie Kessel. "There's nothing wrong with the equipment at all."

  She nodded agreement. "I had Bernie and her technical crew spend half the night checking out the system."

  "And I was over at the school this morning," Dan said. "Everything seems to be perfectly all right." He gnawed at his lip.

  They were in Vickie's plush little office. She was sitting in the comfortable chintz-covered wing chair; it seemed to fold protectively about her. She looked tiny in the chair, with her legs tucked up beneath her. Dan could see her high-heeled shoes lying carelessly on the patterned oriental carpet. He thought Vickie's brightly flowered blouse and deep green skirt seemed like camouflage against the splashy flowers of the chair's chintz covering. Dan had perched himself nervously on the front two inches of the small sofa—a loveseat, actually—that was the only other piece of furniture one could sit upon.

  The wall-sized display screen showed a security camera's view of the front parking lot, just as if Vickie's office had its own big window. He could see Joe Rucker lumbering across the lot, guarding the four cars parked there as if they were armored trucks holding fortunes.

  "Of course it was a long time ago," Vickie said, smiling archly, "but I seem to remember my teen years as a time of terrific emotional turbulence."

  Dan looked at her. "You think the trouble's with Angie?"

  Vickie shrugged. "If there's nothing wrong with the equipment . . ."

  "It could be the program itself," Dan muttered, as much to himself as to her. "Maybe the simulation's too powerful for a child."

  "Dozens of kids have used that game, Dan. Kids in Angela's own class, too. Nobody else has had trouble with it."

  "I know, but—"

  "But you want to run through it yourself, just to make sure. Right?"

  "Yeah." He nodded wearily. "I guess so."