Death Dream (29 page)

"Got a minute?" he asked.

Not really
, Dan thought, but he felt himself smile back at the younger man as he said, "I guess. How's it going?"

"I think I've got it."

"The Moonwalk sim?"

"Yes. Want to see?"

"Uh, Gary . . . I'm pretty busy here."

"Oh." Chan looked crestfallen. "Sure, I understand. Sorry I bothered you." He retreated toward the door.

"Wait up, Gary," Dan said to him. "I can squeeze a couple minutes in." And he got up from his desk, wondering how much of Chan's Oriental politeness and self-effacement was a ploy for maneuvering the people around him.

Five minutes later the two of them stood side by side on the dusty surface of the Moon.

"It took a lot of calculation," Chan's voice came through earphones in Dan's helmet. "but that program you tipped me about saved me weeks of work."

"Good," said Dan.

They were both in spacesuits, big bulky cumbersome suits with thick-soled boots and clear plastic fishbowl helmets. As they walked across the lunar surface their boots kicked up dust that fell in dream-like slow motion back to the ground. Dan could see their boot prints clearly, bright against the dark lunar soil. All around him the barren, crater-pocked emptiness of the Moon stretched off to a horizon that seemed disturbingly close. Worn-down old mountains slumped across the horizon and beyond them the stars shone with hard, brilliant intensity.

"Okay," Chan's voice said in his earphones, "now try to jump."

Dan nodded. He trotted a couple of steps and then jumped toward a big dark boulder some fifty yards away.

"Holy cow!" Dan soared across the rock-strewn ground as if he were flying and landed, staggering, almost halfway between the boulder and the spot where Chan was still standing.

"How's that?" Chan asked eagerly.

"Terrific!"

Dan jumped back, again gliding across the barren ground. He had time almost to count the tiny craterlets pockmarking the ground before he landed again at Chan's side.

"It works just the way you said it would, Dan. I can't eliminate your inner feeling of weight," Chan said proudly, "but I can make your body behave as if you were really in the Moon's one-sixth gravity."

"This is great, Gary. Simply great!"

"And it's pretty simple to refigure the program for the Mars sim."

"You've done a marvelous job."

"Want to see Mars?"

For a few moments Dan had been able to forget his own work, his own responsibilities. But it all came back to him.

"I'd love to, Gary, but I can't. I'm really loaded with a lot of stuff."

He sensed Chan nodding inside his helmet. "I understand. I just want to thank you, Dan. You've saved my butt. If there's anything I can do for you, anything at all, just let me know."

Dan's only thought was:
Just let me get back to my own work, kid.

Thank God it's a new house, Susan said to herself as she tucked the sheets under the mattress. It doesn't need the fixing and painting that our place in Dayton did. Good thing, if Dan's going to be working weekends now. He never was much help with housework but he did take care of the heavy jobs.

Now the biggest job around the house was making the beds, taking the dishes out of the washer and putting them in their proper racks. And cooking. The all-electric highly automated house that the brochures had advertised was beginning to work out well for Susan. Once she had gotten the hang of telling the appliances what to do instead of turning knobs, things in the kitchen had improved immeasurably. And the vacuum cleaner was now programmed for each room in the house; it hummed along its preset route without any need for Susan to watch it—until it hit one of the toys Angela had carelessly left on the floor.

The worst chore was shopping. Susan had it all worked out: she would shop for the week on Sundays, when Dan was home to keep an eye on the kids. But now Dan was at the lab seven days a week and she would have to take Angie and little Phil to the supermarket with her. It was not something to look forward to.

She finished the bed and went into Philip's room to start dressing the baby, trying to get socks onto him while the baby was gurgling happily and kicking his feet in the air like a pair of tiny windmills. Ordinarily Susan would have laughed and played with him, but at this particular moment she was feeling harried and exasperated.

Angela came in and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Did you make your bed?" Susan asked.

"Uh-huh." Glumly.

"No smile for me, angel face?"

Angela forced a tight smile.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?"

Angela looked down at Philip, wriggling and grinning with his one tooth

"Daddy likes Phil better than me," she said.

"He loves you, honey," said Susan.

"He likes Phil better."

"Men get a little silly about their sons, for a while," said Susan. "But Daddy loves you, Angie. You know that."

"I guess."

"Fathers get closer and closer to their daughters as the years go by," Susan said, remembering her own father. "They have fights with their sons, sooner or later."

Angela did not seem mollified at all.

Susan looked at her fair-haired daughter, wondering how much more she could tell her. Maybe Dan does have some ancient Italian thing about his son. Maybe he blames Angie unconsciously for the trouble we had between us when I was carrying her. What can I say? What can I tell her?

The doorbell chimed.

Placing the little cotton sock down on the table next to Philip's crib, Susan asked her daughter, "Angie, could you try to get his socks on?"

As Susan headed for the front door, she realized that she herself was not spending enough time with her daughter these days. Susan promised herself to have a long talk with Angela, a real heart-to-heart to find out how she was doing and how things were going at school. Before she finally decided whether or not to let the school psychologist see her. But between her own work and taking care of the baby and Dan's longer and longer days at the lab and the house and everything she, just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

The bell chimed again. Pushing her vague feelings of guilt away, Susan went to the front door and opened it.

Kyle Muncrief stood there, smiting in a slightly embarrassed way. In a pair of crisply creased slacks and a starched white short-sleeved shirt he looked like a model for a men's fashion advertisement.

"Hello Susan."

"Kyle." Susan stepped back from the door, an invitation for Muncrief to come into the house.

He looked a little flustered, almost embarrassed. "I uh, thought that since I've . . . well, since I've asked Dan to work weekends for a while . . ." He cleared his throat. "Well, I thought maybe I could offer you whatever help I can give you. Babysit or go to the store for you, whatever."

Susan felt flabbergasted. "Why, Kyle, that's awfully nice of you."

"Well, it's my fault your husband's going to be away so much. It's the least I can do."

"I do have to do the week's grocery shopping," Susan said, leading him back toward Philip's nursery.

"I could stay with the kids," Muncrief suggested. "I don't know much about babies, though."

"Angie, look who's here," said Susan as they entered the blue-papered nursery. Angela smiled happily. "Uncle Kyle!"

"Hi, Angie."

Susan said, "Angie, Uncle Kyle's going to stay with you while I do the shopping. You can take care of Phil for an hour or so, can't you sweetheart?"

Without taking her eyes from Muncrief, Angela said, "I guess."

"I'll set him up in his playpen in the living room,, said Susan. "Angie, would you bring some of his toys?"

In ten minutes the baby was happily batting at a colorful mobile attached to the rim of the playpen. Angela sat on the floor next to her brother while Muncrief sat on the sofa, the TV remote control box at his side.

"I'll only be an hour or so," Susan said. "Maybe less."

"Take your time," said Muncrief. "We'll be okay here. Right, Angela?"

"Sure!"

Susan hurried out to her Subaru wagon, thinking that Angela was capable of minding her brother for an hour or so as long as there was an adult on hand to watch over her. Kyle may not know anything about babies, she told herself, but he'll keep Angie from being frightened at being alone with Phil.

Angela sat on the living room carpeting, watching her baby brother amusing himself, glancing shyly now and then at Uncle Kyle sitting comfortably on the sofa where Daddy usually sat.

"Cat got your tongue?" Muncrief asked, smiling.

"What?"

"That's what you say when the person you're with isn't saying anything," Muncrief explained. "Does the cat have your tongue? That means, aren't you going to talk to me?"

Angela thought that over for a moment, then said, "Can I watch TV?"

"Don't you want to talk to me, Angie?"

"I guess."

"Don't you like me, Angie?"

"Oh, sure."

"Do you like driving to school in my convertible?"

"Uh-huh. But the kids tease me when I don't go with them on the school bus."

"Does that bother you?"

"I saw you leading the orchestra," she said.

"Oh?"

"My father says I was imagining it, but I saw you."

"Maybe it was just because you like me so much that you wanted to see me."

Angela shook her head with the stubborn certainty of youth. "I saw you."

"Have you seen anybody else you know in your VR games?" Muncrief asked.

"Oh sure. I saw my brother, and some of the other kids from class."

"Did you ever see your mother or father?"

A cold hand gripped Angela's heart. She remembered seeing her father lying in the coffin in the mermaid's city beneath the sea.

"I thought I saw my Daddy once," she said uncertainly.

Muncrief heard the quaver in her voice. "Maybe we ought to watch some TV now." Patting the sofa cushion beside him, he said, "Come on up here and sit beside me."

Angela wished that Amanda was with her, instead of on the night table in her bedroom. But she slowly got up and sat on the sofa, at its end, as far from Muncrief as she could get. He picked up the remote unit, but did not click the TV on.

"Do you have any boyfriends?" he asked.

Angela shook her head.

"None at all?" Muncrief probed, smiling wider. "I would think a pretty girl like you would have lots of boyfriends."

"Well," she said slowly, "There's Gary Rusic. He's nice. But he's not really my boyfriend."

"I could be your boyfriend, Angela."

Very seriously Angela replied, "But you're too old, Uncle Kyle!"

Muncrief sank back on the sofa and turned on the TV, trying to keep the disappointment he felt out of his flushed face.

Dan was half asleep on the living room sofa waiting for the eleven o'clock TV news to get to the weather report. In the back of his groggy mind he thought that the local weather forecasters here in Florida always predicted warm temperatures and plenty of sunshine, no matter what was really on its way.

Susan had told him over supper that Kyle Muncrief had come over and sat with the kids while she went shopping. Dan said nothing, but thought,
that sonofabitch makes me work all day while he comes over and plays with my kids.

"How is it going?" Susan asked, from the armchair on the other side of the end table.

"Not bad," he said. "It's a big job but it's not all that complex. Nothing new needs inventing; just a lot of work to get done by February first."

"What's so important about February first?" she wondered.

"Damned if I know."

"Who is this man you're dealing with? What do you know about him?"

"Not much," Dan said, yawning. And whatever I find out I'm not supposed to tell anybody, he added silently.

Not even you.

But Susan's question echoed in his mind. What's so important about February first? Smith is from Washington; apparently from the White House itself or someplace damned close to it. Why is February first such as important date to him?

He realized he had missed the weather forecast. The sports guy was blathering about the Dolphins game. "What'd he say about the weather?"

Susan said, "You were staring right at the screen."

"My mind was someplace else."

"It's going to be fair and warm, plenty of sunshine." Then she grinned mischievously. "If it doesn't rain."

"Thanks a lot."

"What do you care? You're going to be in the lab all day, aren't you?"

He looked at her. She didn't look angry but her words had a sting behind them.

Before he could say anything the phone rang.

"Who in hell could be calling at this time of night?" Dan grumbled, swinging his legs off the sofa.

"Jace," Susan guessed.

"One of your customers," he countered as he headed for the kitchen.

"They don't have our home number and the business phone is on the answering machine. I think. Check it while you're there, will you?" Susan called after him.

Dan picked up the wall phone on its fourth ring.

"Dan, it's Bill Appleton."

He could hear from the Doc's ashen voice that something terrible had happened.

"What is it, Doc?"

"Ralph. He's in intensive care."

"Ralph Martinez?" Dan's voice ran an octave higher than usual.

"Yesterday he flew the same simulation run that Jerry did. And had a massive stroke. His whole left side is paralyzed. He can't even talk." Appleton's voice choked off.

"Jesus Christ," Dan muttered.

"We need you here, Dan. I need you here. Something's gone haywire with the simulation."

"I'll be there," Dan said. "Soon as I can get a flight to Dayton."

"I can send a military plane for you."

"Okay. Phone me tomorrow morning with the details."

"Thanks, Dan."

"I'll be there," said Dan.

The line clicked off. Dan hung up the phone on its wall rack, then realized that Susan was standing beside him.

"Ralph Martinez," Dan choked out the words. "He had a stroke. In the simulator."

"But that's not your fault," Susan said. "It's not your problem."