by Ben Bova
"Oh yes, I remember."
"I need to know about how the nervous system gets trained by constant practice."
A pause. "I'm not sure I'd even know where to begin a search like that, Dan." Susan's voice sounded slightly bewildered.
"Try sports training," he suggested, recalling Jace's idea. "Olympics, professional baseball, stuff like that. It's big business. If there's anything published on the subject it'll be there."
"I'll try." Then she asked, "Is this on ParaReality or just something of your own?"
Dan remembered the disclosure agreement he had signed his first day on the job. "ParaReality," he said. Glumly.
"Too bad."
"I can't afford your fee." He tried to make it sound amusing, clever. Neither of them laughed.
"Get a decent night's sleep," Susan said.
"Yeah. You too."
"I love you."
"Love you too," he said mechanically.
He hung up the phone, unpacked his garment bag. The other pair of slacks and sports jacket went into the closet. The shirts and socks and underwear into bureau drawers. He placed his shaving kit beside the sink in the white tiled bathroom. And that was it. He had nothing further to do but watch television or try to go to sleep.
At least the TV had a remote control unit. He sat on the bed again, still in his shirt and slacks, and clicked on CNN.
He glanced at the phone. Putting the TV remote control unit on the night table beside it, Dan picked up the receiver end dialed information.
"Martinez residence," he said to the computer-synthesized voice. "Col. Ralph Martinez."
The voice spoke out the number and Dan tapped it out on the phone's keyboard.
"You have reached the residence of Colonel and Mrs. Ralph Martinez." It was Ralph's voice, crisp and authoritative. "Please leave your name, number and time of—"
Dan slammed the phone down. Of course Dorothy would have the answering machine on. She might not even be at their home. She might be staying with relatives or friends or even in the hospital itself. He had no way of knowing. And no car to drive out to her house and see if she was okay.
He undressed and tried to sleep. He kept the TV on, clicking from one idiotic show to another, trying to bore himself to sleep. Still the vision of Ralph Martinez's madly distorted face haunted him. And with it, his memories of Dorothy.
His dreams were bad. Sometimes it was Jace who gunned him down, sometimes Ralph.
"Jace, you've got to help me," said Susan.
She had invited him to dinner and he had finally shown up just before nine o'clock, as she was getting the kids ready for bed.
"Am I too late for the food?" Jace had asked, standing in the doorway grinning like a Halloween figure, long lanky skin and bones dressed in threadbare jeans and a tee shirt that read, Born to Hack. But the shirt looked clean and Jace's hair was glistening as if it had just been washed; he had pulled it back into a ponytail tied with an elastic band.
Susan had thrown on a green and white cotton top that hung loosely on her but went well with her red hair. Matching green slacks. She had dressed for comfort, without a worry of what Jace would think. As far as Susan knew Jace never noticed what anyone wore, including himself.
Now, with Angela and Philip asleep and his warmed-over dinner reduced to crumbs, Jace leaned back in the dining room chair and burped contentedly.
"That's a compliment to the cook," he said, by way of excusing himself.
"I'm flattered," said Susan. She did not tell Jace that most of the cooking had been done long before she had brought the meals home from the supermarket. Microwave ovens were the salvation of the working mother.
She got up and started taking the dinner dishes from the table to the pass-through bar that separated the dining room from the kitchen.
"So what kinda help you need?" he asked, not moving from his chair.
"I need an excuse to come over to the lab every few days." Susan watched his eyes as she spoke.
He looked more amused than curious. "What for?"
"To rack up some consulting time," she temporized, not wanting to tell him too much. "Dan got me a consulting contract with the company, did you know that?"
Scratching at his day-old beard, Jace answered, "Yeah, I think he mentioned something about it to me."
"Well, I could use the money."
"What'll you be working on?"
"Nerve physiology," she said, stacking the dishes and glasses on the counter top. "Dan phoned earlier this evening and asked me to look up some background information."
"About nerve physiology?"
Susan said, "Dan thinks there might be something in the area of sports medicine—"
"Bullshit!"
Susan almost dropped the dishes she was holding.
"Dan shouldn't be wandering off into dead ends like that," Jace said, frowning. "There's nothing in sports medicine that'd be useful for us."
"But I thought—"
Jace seemed acutely displeased, almost angry. "Shit, I was just thinking out loud and he goes off on a tangent. He shouldn't try to get creative, it's not his strong point, y'know."
"No, I don't know," Susan snapped. "Dan has ideas of his own." She went around the counter to the sink.
"He better get his butt back here, y'know," Jace called after her. "Muncrief's about to start hemorrhaging."
"He'll be home in a day or two," Susan said, hoping it was true. She turned on the sink faucet to rinse the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher.
"To stay?" Jace asked over the sound of the running water. "Or is he going back to Wright-Patt afterward?"
I wish I knew, she said to herself. But to Jace she answered, "To stay, I hope."
"He better. We've really ground down to a stop without him. I've been foolin' around with this stuttering stuff but I don't have the patience for it. And like I said, Muncrief's about to pop his top."
"I'll bet Dan works twenty hours a day," said Susan, "trying to make up for lost time."
"He's gotta do something to make Muncrief like him again. Sonofabitch might fire Dan, y'know."
Susan stiffened with alarm. "He couldn't fire Dan! Could he?"
Jace got up from the dining room chair like a giraffe clambering to its feet. "He'd be an idiot to fire Dan. We need him. I need him."
Then why don't you ever tell that to Dan? Susan demanded silently.
"But," Jace came over to the pass-through and leaned his elbows on the counter top, "people can be assholes, y'know. Muncrief might fire Dan just 'cause he's sore at him."
"You can't let him do that!" Susan said.
Jace made a bony shrug and muttered, "Yeah, I know."
Susan stacked the dishes and glassware and the stainless steel flatware in the dishwasher, thinking that Jace could protect Dan if he wanted to. And he'll want to, because he needs Dan and he knows it, even if Muncrief doesn't.
As she closed the dishwasher door Jace pointed out, "You forgot the soap."
"It's automatic," she told him. "Comes from a dispenser under the sink."
He made a face to show he was impressed.
"Dishwasher," said Susan firmly. "Full load. Standard."
The machine chugged to life.
Jace leaned over the counter top to stare at the dishwasher. "Hey, I didn't know they had kitchen appliances on voice recognition. That's neat!"
Remembering how perplexing the voice-actuated kitchen appliances had been at first, Susan merely murmured, "Yes, real neat."
Jace followed her to the living room, an ambling grinning scarecrow following a pert petite redhead. "Would you like an after-dinner drink?" Susan asked, knowing that Jace rarely took anything stronger than Classic Coke.
But he replied, "Yeah, okay—why not? You got any rum?"
"Rum and Coke?"
"Cuba Libre. That's my favorite drink since I was at Cal Tech."
Susan went back to the kitchen and dug into the cabinet where Dan kept the liquor. There was an ancient bottle
of rum, two-thirds gone. And Diet Coke in the refrigerator. Jace won't know the difference, she told herself. Then she poured a thimbleful of anisette for herself. Dan had taught her how the Italian liqueur gave a good meal its perfect finish.
"What about that consulting time?" she asked Jace as she handed him his drink, ice cubes tinkling in the tall glass.
He had plopped down on the armchair that Dan usually took. "Sure, why not? Only—I'll have to think up some subject for you to work on."
"How about baseball statistics? For the game?" Susan sat on the sofa and took a sip of the anisette. It tasted oily smooth and slightly sweet.
Jace gulped at his Cuba Libre as if it were plain Coca-Cola. "Naw, we already got six people chewing away on that stuff. And it's too easy for you; all the stats are available in a dozen sources."
"There's the nerve physiology problem," she suggested.
He glared at her. "Forget that crap! It oughtta be something that Muncrief wants us to be doing."
"Stuttering?"
"We need somebody to do the programming, not research the background."
"Then what?"
Jace fell silent. He tilted his head back and studied the ceiling for a few moments. Then he returned his attention to his drink and downed almost half of it in one long swig.
"It'll have to be the nerve physiology then," Susan said.
His gaze flitted around the room, avoiding Susan's eyes. He took another pull of the rum-and-coke, then finally said, "I'll think of something for you."
"You're not comfortable with that subject?"
Jace gulped the last of his drink. He smacked his lips and seemed to draw himself together, sit up straighter in the armchair. "You really wanna go digging into that crap? Go right ahead! You won't find anything Dan can use. It's all a blind alley."
"How do you know?"
His look turned sly. "Listen, Sue, I'm the creative genius around here, remember? I bet I can teach you a couple things about nerve physiology you won't be able to find in the friggin' literature."
"Really?"
"I bet." Jace grinned crookedly.
My God, he's drunk! Susan realized. In less than five minutes. She had barely sipped her own drink.
"There's a lot you don't know and I do," he said, his grin widening. "A helluva lot. Not even Dan knows what I know an' he knows me better'n anybody else."
"Would you like some coffee?" Susan asked.
Jace shook his head. "Nope. One's my limit."
"I said coffee."
"It was a joke, Sue."
"Oh."
"I'm all right."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure." He rose to his feet, only slightly unsteady. From her sitting position it seemed to Susan that his neatly combed hair might brush the ceiling.
"I'll brew some fresh coffee," she said. "It won't take a minute."
By the time she came from the kitchen with two steaming mugs of coffee Jace seemed to have recovered.
"I'm really okay," he told Susan. His smile was back to normal. He was standing by the bookshelf that Dan had built in Dayton, peering at the titles. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," he said. "I always wanted to read that."
"You can borrow it," said Susan.
"Naw. No time to read. I saw the video, anyway."
They finished their coffees and Jace headed for the door.
"You're sure you're all right to drive?" Susan asked.
"My bicycle?" Jace laughed. "Yeah, I'll make it okay, don't worry."
It wasn't until he had pedaled down the lamp-lit street with a final farewell wave and she had closed the front door that Susan realized she had never felt the slightest twinge of worry at being essentially alone in the house with Jace. Even drunk he did not give her the least flutter of alarm.
As she headed off to her bedroom Susan smiled at how quickly Jace had become intoxicated, and how quickly he had sobered up again. But her smile faded as she thought about how unthreatening Jace was. It's as if he has no interest in women at all, Susan said to herself. He's like an overgrown nine-year-old.
But once she finally got to bed Susan found it difficult to sleep. It was more than Dan's absence. She missed his warm body in the bed beside her, but something was preying on her mind, something just below the surface of consciousness. Something was pecking away at her, trying to get her attention. It would not allow her to sleep.
She lay in the darkness, ears trained to detect the slightest hint of difficulty from her children. Thank God Phil hasn't been troubled with asthma. Maybe this Florida climate really will be good for him. And Angie's settled down at school, even though she's still seeing things in the VR games that shouldn't be there.
Imagine her asking about oral sex! What are those little sluts telling her in school? Maybe I ought to talk to Eleanor about it; after all, she's their teacher. They won't allow sex education classes in the school but it sounds as if some of those kids are getting an education on their own. No wonder we have teenaged mothers and VD and AIDS all over the map.
She turned and punched her pillow. It did no good. Her mind was all stirred up and she could not sleep.
At least Angie's talking to me about it, she told herself. That's a good sign. And once I'm inside the lab I can look into those school games for myself. There's got to be more to those games than Vickie is admitting. I can't ask Dan to probe into them, but I can do it myself once I'm into their computer system. There's got to be something—
The thought broke through to her consciousness with the force of a wrecking ball demolishing a building. If a VR simulation can cause a stroke in an Air Force pilot, why can't it hurt a child in a classroom game?
Virtual reality can be dangerous, Susan realized. And she knew she would have to do something about it.
Vickie Kessel was also awake as midnight neared. And working. She had watched the local TV news at eleven o'clock, then went down to the garage on the ground floor of her condo building and driven out on Interstate 4 to the big Marriott Hotel near the Disney World grounds.
The bar was almost empty this late at night. The families that thronged the parks retired early, exhausted. Even the men who had come for conventions or business conferences had gone off to bed. So the bar was almost empty. But not completely. Luke Peterson sat in a booth in a shadowy corner, a tall drink in front of him, that slap-happy smile of his gone from his jowly face. He looked somber, almost grim. Soft rock music purred from the speakers in the ceiling. The bartender, young and blond and scrubbed pink, was polishing glasses, looking disconsolate and bored.
Peterson got to his feet and made a little bow as Vickie came up to the booth. She slid in on the opposite side of the table from him.
"Isn't this a little melodramatic?" Vickie asked. "Meeting at midnight." But she kept her voice low.
"I have to talk to you; this is the only time I could arrange it."
"Peeking through keyholes all day long?" Vickie sneered.
He ignored her sarcasm. "I've tried to get to you, more than once. You've been putting me off."
"I'm rather busy."
"Sure, sure." He hesitated a beat, then asked, "What do you want to drink?"
She saw that the bartender had come out from behind the bar and was approaching their booth. Nice looking boy; athletic build.
"Irish coffee," Vickie said. As the bartender headed back she said to Peterson, "I don't have anything new to tell you."
"Nothing, huh?"
"Nothing significant. I gave you the complete rundown the last time."
He grimaced, almost as if he was in pain. "Oh really? Who's this guy Smith from Washington? And why has Lowrey's chief assistant dashed off to Ohio?"
Vickie realized all over again that Peterson, or the people he worked for, had other informants inside ParaReality.
"I don't know anything about Smith," she lied. "He's dealing entirely with Muncrief."
"And you don't know anything about him? Or what he's here for?"
"No," sai
d Victoria firmly. "I don't."
The bartender deposited her Irish coffee on the table. It was in a fancy tall cup topped with whipped non-dairy creamer, a green cherry, and a plastic straw. Vickie took one look at it and pushed it away.
"Okay, we'll let Smith go for the moment," Peterson said once the kid had returned to the bar. "What about Santorini? What's sent him rushing off to Dayton?"
"The Air Force is having some problems with one of the simulations he worked on before he came to ParaReality. They asked him to come back for a few days and check it out for them."
"And Muncrief let him go?"
Vickie actually laughed. "Dan didn't ask permission. Muncrief nearly had a stroke when he found out."
"And the baseball simulation?"
"Lowrey's still working on it."
"No progress?"
"None that I've heard of."
"You're not exactly a fount of information," Peterson grumbled.
"Look, I don't have to do this," Vickie snapped. "In fact, I don't think I want to play your game anymore."
"What's that supposed to mean?
"I quit."
"Quit?"
"I'm finished. I don't want to see you again. I'm not going to tell you another thing."
He shook his head like a teacher disappointed over a star pupil's glaring mistake. "It ain't that easy, Victoria. You can't just walk away."
"The hell I can't."
"Listen to me, lady. I'm just a harmless, overweight, middle-aged private snoop. But I'm working for people who can get very angry and very rough."
"What are they going to do, send Minnie Mouse to beat me up?"
He actually looked frightened. "This isn't a joking matter. My client plays hard ball. If you don't give me enough material to make him happy somebody's going to get hurt."
"Are you threatening me?"
"I'm trying to warn you. We made a deal and—"
"What deal?" Vickie snapped. "You still haven't told me who's involved in this."
"We've made a substantial deposit in a Swiss bank account. for you."
"You can have it back. I told you I wasn't interested in just money. I want out."
Peterson was almost pleading. "I tell you for your own good, Victoria, my client is going to be very pissed off. Somebody's going to get hurt."