by Ben Bova
Susan saw the look of absolute certainty on her husband's face. She turned and scooped up the baby, saying to Angela, "Help me get Phil ready for bed, dear, and then we can have dinner with Daddy."
Two hours later Dan had kissed his daughter goodnight after tucking her into her bed. He turned out the light in her bedroom and walked back to the kitchen where Susan was putting the last of the dishes into the washer.
"Angie seems okay," he said.
"She's glad you're home. It makes her feel safer."
He felt a slight touch of surprise.
"Makes me feel safer, too," Susan added.
"This business scares you?"
"Yes! Didn't you know? I tried to tell you—"
"Hey, hey," he said gently, sliding his arms around her. "Don't be scared. Whatever happens, I'm here now and we're going to handle this thing together."
Susan looked into his eyes. "I don't know how you can stay so cool about all this."
He almost wanted to laugh. "Cool? Me? If you tried to take my temperature the thermometer would pop."
"You hide it awfully well."
"Come on," he said, changing the subject. "Show me what you've dug up on Jace."
She slipped out of his arms and said in a firm voice,
"Dishwasher: pot scrubber cycle. Start. Now."
The machine hummed to life.
Susan pointed to a four-inch stack of paper sitting next to her computer printer. "I printed out about one piece in ten so you could sample the material. If you need more I can print out the rest."
Dan grunted. "Looks like a weekend's work."
"You're not going to the lab tomorrow?"
"Not until I've waded through this stuff," he said, stepping into the alcove and hefting the pile of paper.
"Don't you want to call Jace?"
"Not yet," he said, feeling the anger surging again. "Not until I've gone through this material. I don't want to accuse him of anything unless I can back it up."
"Okay," said Susan, following him. "I'll start accessing the Wright-Patt files."
"Now?"
"Right now. You read while I work."
He grinned at her, but there was no mirth in it. "This isn't work, huh?"
"You know what I mean." Susan sat at her little chair and booted up her computer,
"I never knew it could be like this," Chuck Smith was saying. "It was fan-fucking-tastic!"
Sitting beside him in his rented BMW, Vickie tried to keep as straight a face as she could, allowing only the slightest of smiles to curl her lips. Smith took no notice, he was so wrapped up in describing his VR session.
"I mean, I've been in simulations before, but I've never gone through anything like this. I was there! I was really there. I thought one of those greasers was going to kill me. For real! I popped him, though. Bam, right through the head."
He was speeding toward a new restaurant that Vickie had read about in the local newspaper, weaving through the evening traffic as if he had a siren and blinker on the car.
One session in the VR system and he's bubbling over, Vickie said to herself. That tough no-nonsense facade of his has crumbled away; he's like a little boy who's just seen Santa Claus for the first time
"Jace has pulled it off, all right," Smith was saying, gesturing with one hand as he roared through the highway traffic. "In just a couple of days, too."
At least his eyes are on the road, Vickie thought gratefully
"I mean, he's really done it. The guy's a flake and all that but he really can produce when he wants to. I could take this system to the White House tomorrow if I had to. But Jace says he's got some refinements he wants to add to it. Improvements. We'll make the February first deadline with no sweat and it'll be incredible!"
"You have to be careful about Jace's refinements," Vickie warned. "Sometimes he starts down a side alley and doesn't come out for months on end."
Smith waved his hand again. "Doesn't matter. I can bring the program we've got right now to the White House, if I have to. It'll do—for starters."
Vickie leaned her head back against the headrest and watched the evening traffic zooming by. Smith was leaning on the gas pedal, passing everything in sight, impatiently blinking his high beams at cars in the left lane doing a mere seventy-five.
"They do have unmarked highway patrol cars along this highway," she warned softly.
He laughed. "Am I going too fast for you?,
"You wouldn't want to get a ticket. They're quite steep around here."
"So what? I'll put it on my expense account."
"Then I'll have to pay for it out of my taxes," she countered.
"Hey, I'm going to make you a powerful woman, remember? When I go back to Washington you're going back with me."
"I am?" Vickie sat up straight, shocked.
"You sure are, sweetie. You're going to be my pipeline to Jace and those other technical guys while we set up the VR system in the West Wing."
"Nice of you to ask me so politely."
"Come on, Vic. It's what you want, isn't it?" He laughed again, louder. "I think we'll set it up right in Quigley's office. Move him out into a broom closet or something."
"Who's Quigley?"
"The fat fart who thinks he's my boss."
He slid the BMW between two big tractor-trailer rigs. Vickie saw the speedometer's digital readout pass eighty.
"I would appreciate it if you'd slow down, Chuck," she said.
"Really?" He leaned harder on the accelerator.
"Please!"
"Say pretty please."
"Damn you!"
"Pretty please or else." They were doing eighty-six now. The other cars on the road were blurring past in the gathering darkness. A big semi loomed ahead, rushing up on them.
"Pretty please!" Vickie squealed.
He roared past the semi on its right, then slowed back to seventy-five and turned to her, grinning so widely that she could see all his teeth even in the shadowed dusk.
"That was nasty," Vickie said.
"Don't be sore."
"I don't like you like this. It's as if you're drunk."
"Drunk with power, maybe."
Vickie grimaced.
"You've got to try it, Vic. It's better than coke. Better than designer drugs!"
"No thank you," she said tightly. "I haven't done any drugs since high school, and if this is the way a VR session affects you—"
"Do you realize what a tiger we've got by the tail here?"
Smith ignored her displeasure. "It's even greater than I had expected it to be, and I had expected something pretty damned powerful. It's incredible, Vickie, it really is. You're not just watching it happen; you're there. You're taking part in the scene! I've never experienced anything like it."
"You said that before."
"But it's wild, Vic. It's so goddamned powerful! Whoever controls the VR system will be able to control the President! The whole fucking government!"
"And that's what you want, is it?"
"Sure as hell is! You and me, kid. We're going to be the two most powerful people in Washington. In the world!"
"If you don't kill us in a car wreck first."
He grinned again. "I'll get you safely back to your own bed, don't worry."
She saw that he had slowed down almost to the speed limit.
"You've never tried it, have you?"
"No," said Vickie.
"You ought to. There's nothing like it."
Never, she said to herself. I've seen how it's taken hold of Kyle. I watch Jace getting deeper into it day by day. And now you've turned into a VR junkie after just one hit. You'll never get me into a VR booth. Never in a million years.
After dinner and a bottle of champagne that Smith insisted on, he drove Vickie back to her apartment just as feverishly as he had driven her to the restaurant. And once in bed . . .
"Hey, you're hurting me!"
"Then move the way I want you to."
"You don't—"
&
nbsp; "Come on, bitch. Take it. Take it!"
"You're brutal."
"Damned right. On your knees, cunt. That's the way I want you and you're going to do what you're told like a good little bitch, aren't you?"
Vickie did as she was told.
CHAPTER 38
Kyle Muncrief was on the road that night, too. Ever since he had fled from Toronto, all those years ago, he had known that a man needs a hideaway, a safe house that no one else knows about. Absolutely no one. When he lived in New York he had rented a loft in SoHo in addition to his apartment in the Gramercy Park area. No one knew about the loft except the tawdry young girls he brought there from time to time.
Now he had found the perfect place, a suite of rooms in one of the second-rate chain hotels that lined International Drive. Thousands of tourists came and went every day; no one would notice a single middle-aged man who just slipped in now and then. He took an annual lease with the hotel chain's corporate headquarters and paid by postal money order so that there would be no way to trace the transaction.
He drove past the hotel's main entrance and down the side street to the entry ramp at the rear, slowing to a crawl over the speed bumps because he did not want to jar the box filled with a pair of VR helmets and two sets of gloves resting on the back seat of the Jaguar. There were also two complete body sensor nets in the box. That goddamned idiot Joe Rucker had insisted on helping him tote the box out to his car, him with his one arm and artificial leg and endless good cheer.
He had literally bumped into Rucker that morning in the receiving room just off ParaReality's loading dock, where the equipment package was waiting for him. It had arrived several days earlier, but Muncrief had waited until Friday, when the office was closed and the receiving department people were out of the way, before he picked it up.
"What the hell are you doing here, Joe?" Muncrief had demanded of the security guard. Rucker was obviously not on duty. He was wearing threadbare old slacks and a baggy short-sleeved faded blue shirt with one sleeve hanging loose.
"I'm helpin' Jace," Rucker had replied with a broad smile.
Muncrief gave him a sour look. "Helping Jace do what?"
"We're playin' soldiers in the VR. Mr. Smith's in the game, too."
Smith was the last man Muncrief wanted to run into.
"Well then go back to the lab. I can handle this by myself."
But Rucker had insisted in his cheerful bumbling way that he had to help. Fuming, but not wanting to cause a row that might bring Jace or Smith, Muncrief allowed the guard to struggle one-armed with the box while he trotted down the ramp and opened the Jag's door and pulled down the front seat. Muncrief's heart spasmed in his chest as Rucker limped toward the car, nearly dropping the delicate equipment onto the hardtop.
Once the box was safely on the rear seat, Muncrief thanked Rucker and went around to the driver's side of the Jaguar.
"And Joe," he said, mopping perspiration from his brow, "for God's sake don't mention to Jace and Smith that I was here this morning.
"No?"
"Not a word, understand? I don't want them knowing every move I make."
"Whatcher doin' is a secret?"
"It's my business, not theirs," Muncrief growled.
Rucker bobbed his head up and down. "Yes, sir, Mr. Muncrief. I reckon I can keep a secret good 's anybody if that's what you want."
"That's what I want."
All day long Muncrief wondered if he had handled Rucker in the best way possible. Even after darkness fell and he drove out to his newly-acquired hotel suite he still mulled it over. As he parked his Jaguar next to the door of his ground-floor suite, he thought that maybe telling Rucker to keep his mouth shut hadn't been so smart, after all. Goddamned hillbilly thinks he's in on something now.
If I had just let it go he probably would've forgotten all about it by the time he got to Jace's lab.
No way to change it now, though. He hauled the box out of the back seat, put it down to lock the car, took it up to the door of his suite; and had to put it down again to fish out the door key and open it up.
There in the middle of the suite's sitting room sat a brand new minicomputer, about waist tall, gray and square and almost shiny-looking, like a small refrigerator. Muncrief put his box down on the coffee table and went to the wall to turn the air conditioning up full blast. The stupid maids always turn it down to minimum, he grumbled to himself. Then he locked the door and put on the safety chain and pulled all the window blinds shut. "A hundred thousand dollars worth of computer in here and they leave the goddamned curtains open," he muttered.
Finally he pulled a slim plastic folder from the inside pocket of his sweaty; rumpled jacket. In it were the disks on which Angela Santorini's reactions had been recorded. Muncrief grinned to himself, alone in the shadows. He plopped himself down wearily in one of the sagging upholstered armchairs and took stock. The computer stood in the middle of the room, an incongruous oblong of clean smooth metal and plastic standing on a worn gray carpet amid seedy chipped furniture.
For several minutes he merely sat there, waiting for the tension in him to ease off. All those people pounding on me. It's good to get away. Got to have some time for myself. Got to have a place where they can't find me.
My little love nest, Muncrief thought to himself, not without some bitterness. The plastic folder with the disks in it was on his lap. He opened it and took out the glimmering compact disks. My electronic love nest. And nobody knows about it, not even Vickie.
It was well past midnight before Muncrief got everything working to his satisfaction. He sat in the darkened sitting room, the minicomputer humming, his VR helmet and data gloves on.
He swam beside Angela Santorini on their way to Neptune's Kingdom. He led her through the forest woven out of Beethoven's Pastorale. He explored the Green Mansions world with her. He was her guide, her companion, her prince.
He could see clearly that she was Angie, the little girl he often drove to school. But now and then, if he half closed his eyes and did not look directly at her, she was Crystal, his sister, his love. In some part of his mind he realized that he did not even remember clearly what Crystal looked like. She might even be dead, out there in the real world where people hurt each other.
But none of that mattered. Crystal was here with him and he loved her and would protect her from any harm that might threaten her.
He desperately wanted Crystal to love him, too, but whenever he came too close to her she changed into Angela again and become frightened.
"Love me!" he begged her. But she ignored his pleas, as if she could not hear a word he said.
The sun was starting to brighten the drawn curtains. The last disk had spun out its electronic images. Kyle Muncrief sat in the armchair soaked with sweat, his hair flopped down over his eyes, his breathing ragged, a frown of bitter disappointment on his flushed face.
"It's not enough," he muttered in the darkness. "There's just not enough fucking material in there."
All these weeks. All the risks he had taken. And still what he wanted was not in the machine.
He ran a weary hand across his eyes, pushed his hair back in place. There's only one way to get what I need, he told himself. I've got to make her love me. And then I'll have her forever.
In the clear bright sunlight of early morning, Vickie Kessel studied her image in her bathroom mirror. Chuck had been a brutally different man the night before. One session in a VR simulation had brought out all the frenzied power dream he had kept under control before. He had pawed her in bed, used his physical strength to put her where he wanted her, make her do what he wanted her to. He had insisted on oral sex in the most degrading manner possible.
And she had done it, because she feared he would hit her if she didn't.
He was out of control last night, Vickie said to her image in the mirror. He was ugly. She saw that there was a bruise on her shoulder the size of his thumbprint. Another bigger one on her thigh. That's the last time I crawl into bed w
ith him, Vickie told herself. He's not going to play his domination games on me.
The phone rang. Naked she went to her bedroom to answer it. The security guard in the lobby:
"Delivery for you, Ms Kessel. Flowers."
"You can let him come up," she said.
Swiftly she pulled a robe around herself, then went back to the bathroom mirror to brush her hair. The doorbell chimed. She kept the chain on the door, accepted the box of flowers, handed the delivery man a dollar. Roses. A dozen red roses. Expensive but not very original, she thought. The note said, "I got carried away last night. Please have dinner with me this evening and let me apologize. Chuck."
Dinner, Vickie said to herself. And that's all. She went to the phone and left a message on the answering machine in his hotel room. She did not try to track him down at the lab. I'm not going to chase after him, even on the telephone; let him play with Jace and check his machine to see if I called him.
She put the roses in a vase and then went back to getting dressed for her Saturday morning's shopping. She dressed slowly, thinking, planning, reviewing her options. Every opportunity carried risks. Every danger she faced held the chance of reward.
Chuck will protect me from Peterson, but that means that I've got to depend on Chuck and forget about making a deal with whoever Peterson represents. Chuck says he wants to bring me to Washington. Good. But from now on we'll be business partners, not lovers. I'm not going to make a whore of myself for him or anybody else.
Then she thought of Kyle. Maybe I'm not a whore, Vickie thought, but Kyle's got me pimping for him, just about. ParaReality stands to make millions out of virtual reality when and if Cyber World opens. But Kyle's a man set for self-destruction. She realized that now. He's doing something with Dan's daughter, invading her VR sessions at the school, and sooner or later that will explode in his face.
If Kyle nukes himself, what does that do to the company? I could run it, as long as Jace and Dan and the rest of the technical staff stay on board. Would the investors back me? Swenson's a chauvinist pig and Toshimura couldn't even imagine a woman in charge of anything. Glass is seducible, but he's not strong enough to swing the other two.