Death Dream (18 page)

"Uh, wait a minute," said Chan, sounding suddenly flustered.

"Hey Dan," Jace's unmistakable raspy voice came through Dan's earphones, "come on outta there. I got something to show you that'll knock your ass off!"

Jace was almost dancing with excitement as he led Dan along the hallway toward his lab at the back of the building.

"Vickie asked me to help the kid out," Dan was saying. It sounded apologetic, even to himself. "He's having a problem with his Moonwalk sim."

"Aw, let Charlie Chan find his own answers," Jace said, grinning. "This is a helluva lot better than anything he can do."

"You've made a change in the baseball sim?"

"Not quite." Jace's toothy grin got even bigger. He stopped at the metal door to Wonderland, the simulations chamber that he claimed for his own exclusive use.

"Is this going to take long?" Dan asked as they stepped into the narrow control booth.

"You got a hot date?"

"It's almost seven. If we're going to be a while I want to call Susan and let her know."

Jace shook his head. "Five, ten minutes. Half-hour at the most." Jace took a helmet and glove set from the rack on the side wall and handed them to Dan.

"What is it?" Dan asked.

"Go on in." Jace's grin was almost malicious. "You'll see."

Puzzled but curious, Dan stepped through the hatch into the simulations chamber. He put on the scuffed plastic helmet and tugged on the data gloves, then connected them to the optical fiber wires.

As he looked up, Jace came into the chamber, already wearing helmet and gloves.

"Who's running the board?" Dan asked.

Jace pointed to the remote control box clipped to his old leather belt. "It's on automatic."

"Automatic? How—"

"I can start the run and stop it from here. Otherwise it chugs along to the end all by itself."

"When did you work that out?"

Jace shrugged carelessly. "You think I been sittin' around doing nothing all these weeks?"

You're supposed to be figuring out how to perfect the baseball game
, Dan said—to himself.

Jace hooked up his wires and slid the visor over his face. He was still grinning in anticipation. Wondering what was coming up, Dan pulled his visor down.

A moment of darkness and then Dan found himself standing in the middle of a dirt street in a town of the old West. The sun was high and hot. The street was lined with covered wooden walks. Saloon, bank, general store: they all had a cartoony look to them. Nothing else in sight.

Not another person anywhere. Nothing moving on the hot dusty street.

Dan looked down at himself and saw that he was wearing boots, jeans, a checkered shirt and a leather vest with a sheriff's star pinned to it. And a colt revolver in a leather holster at his hip. The gun felt solid, heavy.

"Jace," he called. "Where are you?"

"Right behind you, Sheriff."

Dan whirled and saw Jace standing a dozen paces away, in a black gunfighter's suit, broad-brimmed hat pulled low over his narrow eyes, two guns at his hips.

"I'll give you a fightin' chance, Sheriff," drawled gunfighter Jace. He crossed his arms over his chest. "You go for your gun."

"What is this, the gunfight at the OK Corral?"

"Draw, you yellow polecat!"

Feeling as though he had been tricked into playing a child's game, Dan reached for his pistol. Jace's hands dropped to his guns and he pulled them both smoothly out of their holsters. Dan had time to think that Jace must have been practicing his quick draw for weeks.

The guns roared and the bullets slammed into Dan's chest and knocked him to the ground. He felt no pain at first, only stunned surprise as the cartoon world faded into darkness. Then the pain hit: flaming agonizing pain that roared through his chest and engulfed him entirely.

Jesus Christ
, Dan thought.
He's killed me!

It wasn't until Jace lifted the helmet off Dan's head that he realized he was lying on the floor of the simulations chamber. He felt confused, helpless, frightened at a deep inner core of his being.
He killed me
, Dan kept repeating to himself.
He shot me down and killed me.

"Hey, buddy, you okay?" Jace was leaning over him, his face serious.

"I . . . think so."

"You sure you're okay? You want a doctor or something?"

"You shot me."

"That's what the game's all about, Danno."

"But I—you killed me. I felt the bullets hit me."

"Yeah!" The concern on Jace's face melted into a delighted grin. "Wasn't it terrific?"

"How did you do that?" Dan heard his own voice; it was almost whining, high and trembling with fright.

Jace was squatting on his heels, stilt wearing the fuzzy data gloves. "I've figured out a lot of things in the past year or so, pal. How about that? Bam! You're dead."

Dan's mind was spinning. How could he get such a realistic physical sensation into the simulation? I felt the bullets hit me. Knocked me over backwards. Everything went black, like I really died.

"You look kinda pasty, Danno."

"That's too damned powerful to turn loose on the public."

"Aw, don't worry. I'll tone it down for Cyber World. But wait'll Muncrief tries it! He'll go apeshit."

Dan tried to get to his feet. He needed Jace's help. His legs were shaky.

"It really hits hard, eh?" Jace was glowing.

"I've got to get home," was all that Dan could say.

"Sure. Sure. I just wanted to show you what I was doing Better than Charlie Chan's lousy Moonwalk, huh?"

Dan nodded weakly and headed for the door. He went to his office, legs rubbery, plopped down onto his desk chair and phoned Susan.

"Are you all right?" she asked. "You sound funny."

Dan pulled in a deep breath. "I'm okay. I'll tell you about it when I get home."

Still, he sat behind the wheel of his Honda for nearly half an hour in the evening darkness before he felt strong enough to turn on the ignition and start the car rolling.

Luke Peterson had a blandly unimpressive appearance: middle-aged, balding, squarish face going jowly. The normal expression on his otherwise forgettable face was an abstracted smile that seemed painted on, like a clown's. Except for that absurd smile he looked more like a high-school principal than an industrial spy.

He had started his career as a NASA engineer, but was caught in the layoffs that followed the end of the Apollo moon shots. Like so many others unable to find steady employment, he became a consultant. The last refuge of a failed engineer, he said to himself. All he needed was a briefcase, a decent suit, and a car. He spent most of his waking hours in his car.

Slowly it dawned on him that he could win more consulting hours by telling Martin Marietta what was going on inside Lockheed. Or vice-versa. But that was small potatoes compared to the curiosity that commercial electronics firms had about one another. Or toy manufacturers! There was money to be had, far more than an engineer could hope to earn. Money for a handsome house trailer to live in and women to visit in it from time to time.

Money to put in the bank and save up for the sailing sloop that he was going to retire to when he was fifty. Good old country-boy Luke, with that easy-going smile plastered on his face, took out a private investigator's license so that he had a legal reason for carrying all the photographic and electronic gear that his profession required. He bought a handgun, a compact Beretta, and took the required training course at the police pistol range. God forbid he should ever have to use it. He kept it stashed under the driver's seat of his car.

Over the years, industrial espionage evolved into a major international profession. Even the CIA was involved in it nowadays. For once in his life Luke Peterson had gotten into a growth industry. The only drawback was that he often had to deal with men who frightened him, men with foreign accents and cold remorseless demands.

But every year brought him closer to that yacht and the life he was going to lead at sea, far from all of his past. The world could go its own way then; Luke Peterson would be happily retired.

His office was his automobile, an elderly green four-door Cutlass just as undistinguished as he was. He had equipped the car with a cellular phone and a notebook computer that ran off the cigarette lighter; all the cameras and electronic gear he needed were either on the back seat or stowed in the trunk. That was why he always drove old, lackluster cars. No temptation to kids who like to snatch the fancy new models, nor to the professionals who go for cars that bring a good return from the chop shops.

He was a businessman, not an adventurer. Although on occasion he had been forced to hightail it from a darkened laboratory or office building, he had never been stopped by the law for anything more than a broken tail light cover. He had no criminal record, and the credit cards he used had names different from his own. Industrial espionage was not ordinarily a high-risk business, but it paid to be careful. And as invisible as a street lamp. so he drove at the speed limit from his motor home to Orlando International Airport. Slowly he tooled the Cutlass up and down the rows of cars in the short-term parking lot until he found the gray Mercedes four-door with the proper license plate number. Peterson parked as close to it as he could, then locked his Cutlass and walked to the Mercedes. It looked brand-new, its finish gleaming under the parking lot's tall fluorescent lamps. He laughed inwardly. Most of his corporate contacts drove prestige cars, ego cars. Mercedes were so commonplace in executive parking lots that they were called Florida Fords.

He tapped on the sedan's heavily-tinted window and heard the door lock click. Swiftly he pulled the door open and slipped into the right-hand seat.

"Well?" asked the man behind the wheel. He was lean, angular, his face almost ascetic with deep-set eyes and thin bloodless lips. He spoke with a slight accent that Peterson had never been able to identify even though he had worked with this man off-and-on for several years. The man reminded him of a priest he has seen once in a film about the Spanish Inquisition: a gaunt, austere celibate with burning eyes who put his prisoners on the rack and tortured them until they were willing to confess to anything. Peterson called him the Inquisitor—to himself.

Peterson concisely described his latest conversation with Victoria Kessel. The Inquisitor lit a cigarette but otherwise did not react to Peterson's report. Peterson coughed and waved at the smoke. The other man gave no indication that it mattered.

"Well," he said when Peterson finished, "what do you think?"

"I think she hasn't really made up her mind," Peterson said. He had given up smoking more than a year earlier and the tobacco aroma was hitting him hard.

"She has some ambition, though, doesn't she?"

"Yeah, that's true. She may be trying to counter-spy on us. But I think she's really scared that ParaReality's going to go under and leave her stranded."

"That's not enough to hold her, though."

"No. Underneath it all she's scared of dealing with us."

"Frightened of you?" The lean-faced Inquisitor turned slightly toward Peterson, a ghost of a smile on his gaunt lips.

"I don't think we can make her go along with us if she doesn't want to."

"She's taken the money. That means she's committed to us."

"Maybe."

"You think we need something stronger?"

"She's very skittish. But strong, underneath it all. She might just decide to dump us, money or no."

"That could have unfortunate consequences. Is she aware of that?"

"Not yet."

"Then you must impress her with that information."

Peterson shook his head. "I think that if we come on too strong she'll just run away from us."

"What do you know about her? What can we use to keep her with us?"

Waving at the smoke again, Peterson answered, "There's not much. She's single. No immediate family. No major vices. Just a clean, hard-working, ambitious woman."

"A liberated female," said the Inquisitor. "A Jew with ambition."

Peterson coughed.

The Inquisitor took the cigarette from his lips and held it vertically between his thumb and forefinger, its glowing end less than a centimeter from his fingertip.

"Perhaps, we should look at this from a different point of view," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"Our real objective is to prevent ParaReality from opening their Cyber World park."

"And getting our hands on the VR technology they're developing," Peterson added.

"Yes, of course. But if they fail to open Cyber World on schedule Muncrief will go bankrupt. His investors will abandon him, his company will dissolve and all the lovely technology he's developed will be on the auction block."

"Oh. I see."

"So our primary purpose is to prevent ParaReality from opening Cyber World."

"And how do we do that?"

The lean-faced man moved his shoulders slightly in what might have been a shrug. "Perhaps we can convince one of their key people to work with us."

"Like Vickie Kessel."

"Perhaps her, although she knows next to nothing about the technical work. Perhaps we can reach someone else in ParaReality through her."

"Who?"

"The easiest people to get an angle on," he said slowly, calmly, "are those with a family or debts or something in their background that they want to keep secret."

"She certainly doesn't fit any of those criteria."

"Then who does?"

Peterson ran a hand over his bald scalp. "Let's see now. There's Muncrief; about the only trouble he's ever had was dodging the draft during the Vietnam War."

"Hardly the kind of thing we could use on him."

"Jason Lowrey—he's a complete kook. No ties to anybody, no loyalties except to his work."

The other man said nothing.

"There's Lowrey's assistant, Damon Santorini. He has a wife and two kids. Just bought a new house here and a new car for his wife."

The Inquisitor took a final drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out in the dashboard ashtray. "Can you get to him?"