Death Dream Read online

  "Yeah. But I see a problem."

  "Problem?"

  "GIGO."

  Smith's face went hard again. "Garbage in, garbage out."

  "Right," said Dan. "These scenarios will only be as good as the data that's fed into them. A VR system isn't a magic wand. Just because you experience a certain scenario in a virtual reality simulation doesn't mean that the scenario is any better or more accurate or apt to turn out right in the real world."

  "That's my problem, not yours," Smith said tightly. "All you've got to worry about is making the system work. I'll provide the inputs."

  "The garbage?" Dan joked.

  Smith did not laugh.

  "It's going to be a pretty big job, then," Dan said.

  Smith leaned back in the creaking plastic chair. "Yeah, I know. We've got a lot of work to do between now and February first."

  "We?"

  "We," he said with a sigh. "I'm stuck here in this tropical paradise until the job is finished."

  "You're staying in Orlando?"

  The man looked decidedly unhappy. "For the duration. Dammit."

  When Dan finally arrived home that evening the kids had already had their dinner. He gave Philip his nightly bath in the sink of the second bathroom while Angela watched, already in her pajamas. The baby splashed them both with warm sudsy water.

  "How's it going with you, Angel?" Dan asked his daughter as he toweled off the baby.

  "Okay," she said.

  "Everything all right in school?"

  "I guess."

  Dan sighed inwardly. Angela either babbled so much he could not stop her or she was as incommunicative as a clam. There did not seem to be any in-between with her these days. And she's not even a teenager yet, he told himself.

  Finally Dan settled onto the living room sofa with Susan, both children tucked safety in their beds. The local weather channel was showing a special about the continuing drought. Dan saw that the water district was imposing limits on watering lawns and washing cars.

  "I don't care what Vickie says," Susan muttered, frowning, "there's something weird going on with those VR games."

  Dan had been waiting to tell her about Muncrief's "special" job. He felt his own brows knitting.

  "Not that again," he grumbled.

  "Vickie keeps saying there's nothing wrong, but Angie says she's seeing people she knows in those games. This—afternoon it was Phil—he was in a game she was playing about babysitting."

  "I think Angie's just very impressionable," Dan said. "Maybe too impressionable."

  Susan shook her head.

  "Maybe we should just tell her teacher not to let her play any of the games."

  "And what will she do when all the other kids are playing games?" Susan snapped.

  Dan shrugged. "She could read a book, I guess. Wouldn't hurt her."

  "She'd be the class oddball."

  "She could still use the teaching programs. They haven't bothered her any, have they?"

  "No, apparently not."

  "It's just the games, then. She gets wrapped up in them too much."

  Susan shook her head stubbornly. "It's not Angie. It's the games themselves."

  "But none of the other kids have had a problem with them."

  Susan did not reply. Dan studied her face. He saw doubt there, worry, and a simmering anger. Time to change the subject, he thought.

  Forcing a grin, he said, "I've got good news and bad news."

  Susan's eyes lit up. "Give me the good news first!"

  "I have a consulting contract for you in my briefcase. You'll get a minimum of thirty days over the next twelve months, guaranteed."

  "Great!" She clapped her hands. Then, "At what fee?"

  "You're supposed to phone Vickie tomorrow and settle the fee with her."

  "Oh."

  He saw the disappointment darkening her face. "What's the matter? Don't you like Vickie?"

  Looking troubled, Susan replied, "I don't know. She seems—cold. Maybe it's because I've been bugging her about Angie's reaction to the games, but I get the feeling she doesn't really like me. At all."

  Dan had gotten the same feeling, although he had never thought of Vickie as cold. "She's okay," he said. "She didn't give me any trouble over giving you a contract. Give her a call and work out your fee."

  But Susan looked dubious. "That's the good news?"

  He nodded. "The bad news is that Muncrief's got a super special job he wants me to do and I'll have to work overtime on it because I can't take the time away from the work I'm doing with Jace."

  "Overtime?"

  "Nights," Dan said. Then he added weakly. "Weekends too, I guess."

  "Nights and weekends." Susan frowned. "And you're already working fifty or sixty hours a week. You're not sleeping well, either. You've been grinding your teeth every night for the past several weeks."

  "At least I haven't had another asthma attack," he countered weakly.

  "Are you still having nightmares?"

  "No," he half-lied. His dreams were disturbing, frightening, but he had willed himself to forget them when he woke up. All he recalled was a vague feeling of dread, a kind of terror buried so deeply in his subconscious that he barely recognized it. But he knew it was there, like the asthma, always lurking and ready to pounce on him.

  Susan asked, "Will Jace be working nights and weekends, too?"

  "Jace always works nights and weekends. But he won't be working on this project."

  "He won't?"

  "Too hush-hush. I'm supposed to do it completely alone and not tell anybody about it, not even you."

  Strangely, Susan almost smiled. "You mean Kyle has asked you to do a special job by yourself? Without Jace?"

  "Yeah."

  She seemed actually happy about it. "He's recognizing your value, Dan! He knows you're reliable; he knows you'll get the job done for him, whatever it is."

  "At night and over weekends," he reminded her.

  "How long will it take?"

  "Got to be done by February first."

  "Ten weeks."

  "Ten weekends," he said, thinking, The rest of the football season, right through the goddamned Superbowl.

  "Yes, but it'll be your job. Your accomplishment."

  "I guess."

  Susan hopped off the sofa and headed toward the kitchen. "Well, I'm going to make some fresh coffee!" she announced-cheerfully. "Want a cup?"

  "Okay," he called after her, baffled by her sudden chipper attitude.

  As he sat alone in the living room, sniffing the aroma of perking coffee, Dan wondered how his wife's mind worked. To her it's more important that Muncrief respects me than my being home weekends. But Angie needs me, the kid needs her father. Sue's drummed that home often enough. Maybe if I spent more time at home Angie wouldn't need to see a shrink.

  He shook his head. I guess I just don't understand her priorities, he told himself.

  Even though he was smiling as usual, Luke Peterson was unhappy and sweating inside the hot, stuffy phone booth.

  Through its curving glass door he could see the hotel lobby; the room clerk looked perfectly comfortable in a jacket and a tie. But the air conditioning did not penetrate the closed phone booth and he had been in there for almost half an hour.

  He could feel his shirt sticking damply to his back as he said into the phone, "ParaReality's in real trouble, financially. There's even talk that Muncrief's backers are going to make a deal with Disney or maybe a Japanese outfit."

  The Inquisitor asked, "Did the Kessel woman tell you that?"

  "Not in so many words. She's very cagey about what she tells me. But that's the sense I make of it."

  "Yes, that is what I have heard, as well."

  Peterson felt relieved. The Inquisitor was working for a European consortium of corporations that wanted ParaReality stopped. They must be thinking about buying out Muncrief's investors. If that was in the wind, then he wouldn't have to pressure Vickie or Santorini.

  But the Inquisito
r said, "Do you think you could get Santorini to spend a weekend with us?"

  "What?"

  "I have come to the conclusion that I would like to tap Santorini's brain for forty-eight hours or so. To find out what he knows about their technical accomplishments."

  "But I thought your people are going to buy out Muncrief's investors."

  He could sense the Inquisitor's chilling smile. "Why buy what you can steal?"

  "You want Santorini? He won't come willingly; he's got a very strong sense of loyalty, from all I've been able to find out about him. Why not try the other one, Lowrey? He's the really creative one."

  "No," said the Inquisitor. "Lowrey is too creative. He wouldn't cooperate and there's no telling what he would do under drugs or physical pressure. Santorini has a wife and family to think of. He'll be much more amenable to talking to me."

  "I don't like it. Why don't we use the Kessel woman to—"

  "Forget the woman. And you don't have to like it. The money will be worth the risk, I guarantee it. Deliver Santorini to me and you can retire for life."

  Peterson hesitated, uncertain of what to say.

  "Deliver Santorini to me," the Inquisitor repeated. Peterson heard the unvoiced "or else" in his coldly menacing tone.

  CHAPTER 21

  Saturday morning. Ralph Martinez snapped awake and, sat bolt upright in bed. The digital clock on the TV said 7:07.

  "What is it?" Dorothy mumbled sleepily.

  "Got to get up."

  He felt his wife's warm hand slide across his thigh reaching for his groin.

  "Feels like you're already up," Dorothy said. Even in the shadows of the curtained bedroom he could see her smile.

  "Got to get to the base."

  "It's Saturday!"

  "The Doc's people screwed up the simulator yesterday so bad we couldn't fly the mission. We're going to do it this morning."

  "On Saturday?"

  He knew he should be getting out of bed but he had not budged since Dorothy's hand had closed around his penis. "Yes," he said, with a sad sigh, "on Saturday."

  "What time is the mission scheduled for?"

  "Nine sharp."

  Dorothy raised her head slightly and squinted at the TV clock. "You've got plenty of time, querido."

  Martinez leaned across and pulled the covers from his wife's naked body. "Yes," he murmured, smiling at her beauty, "you're right."

  By 8:45 Martinez was striding across the concrete floor of the simulator hangar, decked out in flight coveralls, g-suit, equipment vest, sidearm and parachute. Appleton and the three technicians stood by the F-22 cockpit waiting for him. The one item of equipment that the lieutenant colonel had not put on was the medical sensor net.

  The real reason that they had not run his mission the day before was that Martinez and the usually soft-spoken Appleton had gotten themselves into a knock-down battle over the medical sensors. Martinez had refused to wear the net. Appleton had refused to run the mission without his wearing it.

  "It's for your own safety," Appleton had insisted.

  "Fuck it!" Martinez had snapped. "I'm not going to let a pack of transistors terminate my mission again. We've already lost damned near the whole week."

  They were in the locker room but already their voices were loud enough for the techs outside to hear.

  "But, Ralph, you wrote those safety regs yourself!"

  "The hell I did! You and those clowns in the medical staff wrote them and then you got me to sign off on it."

  "They are the rules by which we run these simulations," Appleton shouted. "You can't scratch them out just because you feel like it."

  "I'm in charge of this group and I'll do what the hell ever I think is necessary!"

  "I won't permit it!"

  "You don't have the authority to override me!" Martinez had roared. "You're just a goddamned civilian! I'm the one who's putting his ass on the line."

  "That's exactly my point, Ralph." Appleton's voice lowered a bit; he tried to placate his angry friend and colleague. "You're taking a medical risk. We need the sensors to warn us if you're getting into real trouble."

  "Bullshit! What trouble can I get into in a fucking simulation?"

  Appleton sighed and almost whispered, "You know as well as I do, Ralph. Your blood pressure. Jerry died of a stroke in there. You're in much greater danger of a stroke than Jerry ever was."

  They talked around the subject for another two hours, Martinez insisting and Appleton just as stubbornly refusing. But at least they were talking, not screaming at one another. In the end, Appleton bent to the lieutenant colonel's inflexible will. Martinez dictated and signed a memorandum stating that he was overriding the medical regulations for this one simulation in the interests of testing the program to its fullest capacity.

  "Test to destruction," he muttered grimly as he signed the memo in Appleton's office. Doc knew what he meant: to find the absolute limits of a piece of equipment you tested it with more and more strain on it until it finally shattered. Then you knew how far you could push it in the real world.

  "We're talking about people in these tests," he reminded Martinez.

  "I know it," said the colonel.

  "Your life."

  "I know!"

  Now, as Martinez strode toward the simulator, Appleton looked embarrassed, sorrowful, worried. The technicians managed to busy themselves with their consoles so they would not have to look at either one of the men.

  "I'm ready," Martinez said.

  Appleton, fiddling with his unlit pipe, asked, "You're sure you want to go ahead with this, Ralph?"

  "Yep. One hundred per cent."

  Appleton put the pipe in his mouth .and clamped his teeth hard on it. "All right, then. Let's get it over with."

  Martinez climbed up and swung one leg over the sill of the cockpit like a cowboy mounting his horse. He settled down in the seat as the male corporal climbed up after him and handed him the data gloves and helmet.

  "This Jerry's helmet?" Martinez called down.

  Appleton turned to the chief technician, who nodded.

  "Yes," he shouted up to the pilot. "We adjusted it for your head size."

  Martinez pulled the helmet over his close-cropped hair, keeping the visor up. It felt snug to him, but not uncomfortably so. He put on the gloves, then wiggled his fingers inside them as the two young techs checked all the connections between his equipment and the cockpit: gloves and helmet lines, electricity for his g-suit, oxygen, radio.

  The female tech sergeant gave him a thumbs-up. "All plugged in, sir."

  Martinez nodded. "Clear the aircraft."

  They clambered down to the hangar floor and he leaned on the button that closed the canopy. Its little electrical motor whined and the plastic teardrop settled over the cockpit, closing Martinez into an opaque gray world separated from everyone and everything else outside his cockpit.

  He went through the engine start-up and taxied to the runway, the sound effects and vibrations of the simulator as realistic as they could be. In his earphones Martinez heard the crackling instructions of the nonexistent traffic controllers. He set his flaps and ran the throttles up to full take-off power. The simulator roared and shook nicely.

  Pulling the helmet visor down in front of his eyes, Martinez saw the runway stretching out ahead of him.

  "Flight oh-oh-one," said the controller's electronic voice, "cleared for take-off."

  "Rog."

  His hands moved automatically. The runway slid past and Martinez saw the ground fall away below him as he arrowed the F-22 into the sky.

  This was a daylight mission and there would be enemy fighters meeting him, he knew. Stealth was not as important for this mission as speed, maneuverability, and the pilot's skill at air-to-air fighting. Martinez licked his lips in anticipation. He felt almost like a kid going into an ice cream parlor with a blank check. I can't lose, he told himself. I'll knock down anything they throw against me and even if they get me, it's only a sim. Even if I crash and
burn I'll just get up and walk out and have lunch with Doc.

  He laughed to himself. How in the hell could he have thought even for an instant. that a piece of cake like this might give Jerry a stroke? Bullshit.

  He went through his fence check as he approached the line that marked the border of enemy airspace. All systems working smoothly except for the radio, which was being jammed. No matter. He was a lone eagle on this mission and he was supposed to maintain radio silence anyway.

  That is why he felt a distinct shock of surprise when a voice said in his earphones, "A pair of bandits, Daddy. Five o'clock high."

  Ralph Martinez was startled by the little girl's voice.

  Then he remembered Doc telling him they were going to experiment with using familiar voices to warn the pilot of emergencies, rather than warning buzzers or flashing lights or even a computer-synthesized voice. That was Jerry's daughter, Martinez realized. How in hell did Doc get her voice on tape?

  Even as he wondered about that, he pulled back on the pistol-grip side stick and felt his fighter tilt upward into a steep climb. Strangely, his arm felt heavy as the plane nosed upward, almost as if he were really experiencing the g-forces that an actual maneuver would put him through.

  It's just your imagination, he told himself. Damned simulation's so good your mind is filling in the missing details.

  Still, both his arms felt heavy and his g-suit was hissing air pressure against his midsection and thighs.

  With his thumb he nudged the throttles on the knob of the control stick and he felt himself pushed deeper into his padded seat from the increasing acceleration. He knew it was actually the seat deflating, but damn! it felt real. Even his neck was feeling the g-forces now; the helmet felt heavy on his head.

  He called for a panoramic view. His Agile Eye IV helmet visor lit up and he saw his own fighter as a bright yellow swept-wing symbol in the center of the universe, its nose aimed at the sky. Sure enough, a pair of red symbols were moving in swiftly after him, but far behind him. Nothing else in the area. No radar locks, no missiles launched. Not yet. The ground was a rolling green carpet far below, like a cartoon or a kid's drawing, with his potential targets drawn in with big red X's painted over them.