by Ben Bova
"You think Smith's going to protect you?" Dan asked.
"You bet!"
"And you're going to be developing VR systems for the White House?"
"And Congress, too."
"Jesus Christ."
"Hey, you can come along, pal. We don't need Muncrief and all this chickenshit game stuff. We're goin' to the big leagues, Danno!"
"What about my daughter?"
Jace froze for an instant, then put his grin back on. "What about her? She's okay."
"Just what have you been doing to her? The real story, Jace. No more bullshit."
"I already told you. I'm recordin' her emotional reactions for a sim that Muncrief wants."
Dan pushed himself up to a sitting position. He noticed his clothes heaped on a white chair in the corner of the cubicle.
"What's Muncrief want a simulation of Angela for?"
Looking more and more uncomfortable, Jace answered, "It's not Angela in particular. He wants a kid. A young girl."
"A twelve-year-old girl?"
Jace nodded.
"For what?"
"A simulation."
Knowing the answer but hoping he was wrong, Dan asked, "What kind of a sim?"
Jake's face screwed up into a frown that was half guilt, half exasperation. "Shit, man, what do you think?"
"For sex," Dan said.
"What else?" Jace snapped.
Dan just stared at him, his mind spinning. The son of a bitch wants to fuck my daughter. Sue was right. He wants to fuck my daughter.
"It was part of our deal," Jace explained. "Kyle hired me and swore he'd give me anything I needed, long as I developed this sim for him. Why do you think he blew all that money on the school?"
Dan's gut went hollow as he realized the truth of it.
"And when I told him I needed you," Jace added, "it didn't hurt that you had a twelve-year-old kid."
"You bastard," Dan said, his voice a stiletto-thin whisper. "I thought you were my friend and all along you were doing this."
He planted his bare feet on the floor and stood up, fists clenched, pulse thundering, fury blazing through him.
"You god-damned sonofabitch bastard." Dan advanced toward Jace.
Jace backed away. "Hey, now wait, Dan. Don't get yourself all worked up."
"We're not in a VR chamber now," Dan said. "This is the real world, Jace, and I'm going to break every bone in your face."
Jace spun around and tried to duck through the curtain but he bumped into a chunky balding middle-aged man wearing a white hospital jacket with a stethoscope jammed into one of its pockets.
"What are you doing in here?" the doctor demanded of Jace. Despite his question he was smiling amiably.
"Leaving," said Jace over his shoulder, as he disappeared past the curtain.
Dan stood rooted, shaking inside, jaws clenched so tight they hurt. "Maybe they gave you too much adrenaline," the doctor said, smiling at Dan. "You look like you're ready to kill."
"Maybe I am," Dan said.
The doctor glanced thoughtfully at the curtain where Jace had just left, then turned back to Dan, the smile still spread across his face. "Well, I guess you're ready to go home, huh?"
"Damned right," said Dan. He grabbed for his clothes as the doctor turned and left the cubicle.
Dan was buttoning his shirt when the black nurse came in again, holding a portable phone in one hand.
"It's your wife," she said.
Dan took the phone from her. "Hello Sue. I'm okay, it was just—"
"Dan!" Sue's voice sounded frantic. "Angie hasn't come home from school! Muncrief picked her up and she hasn't been seen since!"
CHAPTER 43
"Where are you?" Dan shouted into the phone.
"In the Subaru," answered Susan, "heading for the police station. I can't stay on the phone, Dan. If Angie calls the home phone it's programmed to forward the call here."
"Be careful with your driving," he said.
"Are you okay?"
"It was just an asthma attack," he half-lied, watching the black nurse watching him. "I'm at the hospital. I'll drive over to the police station as soon as I can get out of here."
"See you there." And the connection clicked off.
"You can't get out of here without one of the doctors signing a release form," said the nurse warily.
"Then you'd better get a doctor in here fast," Dan said, sitting on the edge of the bed to tug on his shoes. "My daughter's missing and I'm heading for the police station."
The nurse wheeled around and ducked through the curtains. Dan did not wait for her to come back. He pushed through the curtains and made his way through the waiting room with its sorrowful handful of old people in pain and mothers with injured children. He heard the nurse yelling behind him but kept on going through the door out into the warm late afternoon sunshine of the parking lot. And realized that his car was still at ParaReality. They must have brought me here in an ambulance or somebody else's car.
Dan stood at the top of the hospital entrance's stairs, his mind racing. If I go back to phone the lab the nurse'll grab me and make me sit around until all her forms have been signed off. Dan looked wildly around the parking lot. He did not recognize any of the cars. Not even Jace's bicycle was in sight.
A faded green four-door sedan slowed to a stop at the bottom of the stairs.
"Need a lift?"
It was the doctor who had told him he could get dressed. The white coat was gone, replaced by a wrinkled lightweight suit jacket. He was still smiling amiably.
"I need to get to the police station right away!" Dan said.
The man's eyebrows hiked up a notch, but his smile stayed in place and he said, "Okay, hop in."
Dan sprinted around the front of the car and slid into the right-hand seat. Luke Peterson put the old Cutlass in gear and pulled smoothly away just as the nurse barged through the hospital's front doors waving a fistful of papers in her hand.
The Fine Lake police station was nothing more than a wing of the community center building, quiet and cool and modern. Sergeant Wallace, chief of the three-man police squad, was a solidly built man with graying hair clipped short, a leathery tanned face etched with deeply weathered seams, and sad hound-dog eyes. He was leaning back in his chair, fingers steepled over his slightly bulging middle. His desk was like a barrier protecting him from the distraught woman sitting in his office.
"We've notified the county sheriff and the state police," he was saying to Susan. "Both my boys are out in their cars scoutin' around for her."
"What about the FBI?" asked Susan.
The hound-sad eyes focused on her. "Yew want to treat this as a kidnapping?"
"I want my daughter back!" Susan snapped.
Sergeant Wallace nodded understandingly. "We been to Mr. Muncrief's house. Nobody there. Place is locked up tight and his car's not in th' garage."
Susan was holding Philip on her lap. She had thought about asking one of the neighbors to mind him but that would have taken too much time. The baby seemed to understand that something serious was going on; he was singing quietly, without squirming or squalling, watching the police sergeant in his blue shirt and shiny badge.
"Would the FBI be helpful?" Susan asked. She felt tense with strain, ready to crack apart.
"They could be," said Wallace. "But they get kinda huffy if we call them in and it turns out to be jest a kid runnin' away from home for a few hours."
"It's been more than four hours," Susan said. "He took her from the school."
"I know. Mebbe he just took her to a movie or over to Disney World."
"No. Angie would have called—"
Sergeant Wallace smiled slightly. "I got the Disney security people lookin' for the two of 'em. And checkin' out their parkin' lots for his Jaguar." He pronounced the car's name with three syllables. "Not much more we can do, 'cept wait."
Susan wanted to scream.
The sergeant smiled patiently. "Maybe y'all ought to go home. Be there by
the phone. She'll prob'ly phone yew when she gets tired of runnin' away."
"She didn't run away," Susan flared. "Kyle Muncrief abducted her."
"I think you should take me home," she said, not getting out of the car.
Muncrief held the door open for her. "We'll phone your mother. Everything'll be fine. I've got a great surprise for you; you'll love it."
Reluctantly, Angela got out of the Jaguar and followed Muncrief up to the door of the ground-floor suite. He unlocked the door and ushered her inside the darkened room with a sweep of his arm and a little bow.
"After you, Princess," he said.
Once she saw the VR helmets and gloves and the gray box of the computer that was almost as tall as she, Angela felt both better and worse.
"My parents told me I'm not allowed to play any VR games at school," she said.
"Oh?" Muncrief looked slightly surprised as he shut the door and turned on the lights. "Well, we're not at school now, are we?"
"No," Angela had to agree.
"And I've got a really special program for you, Angie. That good-looking prince is waiting for you. He's in love with you, you know."
"My prince?" She felt her heart leap.
"Right in here," said Muncrief, tapping a fingernail on the computer box. "All you've got to do is put on the helmet and gloves."
Her worries about her mother were swept away. Angela pulled on the data gloves and then slid the helmet over her hair, mussed and tangled from the ride in the convertible.
In less than a minute she was in the castle, completely lost in its wonders.
"But where's the prince?" she asked as she moved through room after room.
"He's waiting for you," replied Mr. Muncrief's voice. "You'll find him, don't worry."
She climbed a marble staircase that spiraled up one of the castle's many towers. Each time she passed a window she saw more of the enchanted landscape out beyond the castle's walls, a green flowering land where fruit trees were always in bloom and unicorns frolicked in the meadows.
At the top of the winding stairway was a huge airy room with magnificent views of the entire world through its sweeping open windows and the most beautiful furnishings Angela had ever seen.
And, standing in the middle of the room, in front of the big canopied bed, stood the prince, her prince, young and strong and handsome and smiling at her.
"Hello, my love," he said. "You don't know how long I've waited for this moment."
Angela realized that her prince spoke with Mr. Muncrief's voice.
"Why've you going up on the highway?" Dan asked. Luke Peterson's perpetual smile dimmed just a little as he slid the Cutlass into the stream of traffic. "There's somebody wants to meet you, Mr. Santorini. I'm taking you to him." He revved past seventy and swung into the left lane, passing a big semi rig chuffing sooty black smoke.
"What the hell do you mean? What's going on?"
Peterson glanced in his rear-view mirror, then nudged the accelerator even more. "I'm not a doctor, Santorini. I'm a delivery service."
"My kid's been kidnapped, for Chrissake!" Dan yelled over the roar of the rushing wind. "I've got to get to the police station!"
"I'm afraid not."
Peterson weaved in and out of the highway traffic, constantly looking around for any cars that might be following him. The Inquisitor had been as good as his word. The tail was gone. He had been planning to nab Santorini in the ParaReality parking lot, knowing that the guy usually worked so late that the lot would be dark and empty by the time he came out. Lucky thing he parked himself back behind the building before quitting time, though. He saw two ParaReality employees lugging Santorini's half-unconscious form out to a car; he followed them to the local hospital. It had been fairly easy to insinuate himself into the hospital's busy, disorganized emergency room. Santorini had suffered a crippling asthma attack, but a healthy shot of adrenaline had fixed him up.
As he drove through the darkening night Peterson wondered if he should tell the Inquisitor about the asthma. Might be a way to make Santorini more cooperative. Probably the Inquisitor already knows about it. I'll tell him anyway, win some points with him.
"Goddammit, stop this car and let me out!" Santorini was yelling.
"Calm down," Peterson said softly. "You don't want to have another attack, do you?"
Santorini grabbed for the door handle.
"It's locked and I've got the only working controls on my side. Anyway, you don't want to jump out of a car doing nearly eighty, do you? They'll pick up what's left of you with a shovel."
CHAPTER 44
Susan gripped the wheel with both hands, staring straight ahead as she drove through the deepening shadows of evening. There were only a few other cars on the streets, the going-home rush was over.
She saw the turn-off that led to Pine Lake Gardens and drove past it without a second thought. If Angie or Dan or anybody else phones home I'll get the call here in the car. I don't need to be home.
She headed for Kyle Muncrief's house.
The police had already checked there, she knew. But Susan wanted to see for herself, wanted to be doing something. If I just go home and sit by the phone I'll go crazy, she thought.
Maybe I should go to the hospital, she thought. Or at least phone and see if Dan's still there. But she could not bring herself to touch the telephone. She glanced down at it, on the console between the front seats.
Ring, damn you! Ring and let it be Angie telling me she's all right.
The phone remained silent.
Susan turned onto the entry road for Muncrief's housing development. The Subaru's headlights picked out the sign, Fairway Estates, and the little stucco security post with the barrier gate blocking the road. She pulled to a stop.
The blue-uniformed security guard looked up from the television show she was watching, slid the glass door open and stuck her head out.
Susan fumbled in her purse and pulled out her red ParaReality security card.
"Susan Santorini to see Mr. Muncrief," she said to the guard.
The guard nodded and ducked back inside to check her computer screen. Then she came back outside.
"Mr. Muncrief isn't in," she said.
Susan had expected that. "I know. I work for him. He wanted me to drop off some computer programs that he's got to have tonight. Big meeting tomorrow and he's got to look over this stuff before it starts."
The guard looked puzzled more than suspicious. Susan waggled her ID card. "See?" she said, holding it out to her. "If he doesn't get these disks tonight I'm going to be in a peck of trouble."
"But he's not home."
"He told me to drop them into his mail slot."
"I can take them and hold them here," the guard said. "I'll leave a message on his phone."
Susan said, "He told me he wants them in his mail box by the time he gets home. If they're not there I could lose my job."
The guard looked at Susan, then at Philip sleeping in the right-hand seat. Then she smiled. "Well, you don't look much tike burglars. Okay, go on through."
"Thanks!"
The guard went back into her cubicle and her TV show. The barrier arm swung up, and Susan drove slowly down the dark tree-lined curving street.
I'm glad I'm not black, she thought. That's all they really worry about: blacks or anybody else who looks poor.
The big houses all looked pretty much alike, especially at night with nothing but the far-spaced street lamps lighting the curved roadway. But Susan recognized Muncrief's house from the staff party he had given weeks earlier. Besides, all the other houses were lit within; Muncrief's was totally dark.
Susan swung the station wagon onto the driveway. The headlights swept past a mailbox at the curb, dark gray with the house number painted in white on it and below that the name, Muncrief.
The house was not totally dark, after all.. There was a single dim light glowing faintly in the front foyer through the frosted panes lining either side of the double front doors. Susan br
aked to a stop in front of the garage doors. She looked down at Philip; the baby was sleeping peacefully. Good. She got out of the car quietly and went to the front door. She tried the doorknob. Locked. The garage was closed, but by crawling up on the warm hood of her Subaru she could peek through the window at the top of the garage door.
Totally dark inside. She could see nothing.
She walked around to the back. The screen door by the pool was also locked. There was no other way in, she saw.
Susan started back for the car. I ought to go home. I ought to try to find where Dan is; he must be frantic with worry about us by now. And get Phil into his bed.
The baby seemed to be sleeping soundly enough in his car seat, though. Susan opened the passenger-side door and unhooked Phil's car seat from the safety belt. She knew what she had to do. She took the baby out of the car and placed him, still in his plastic seat, gently on the grass of Muncrief's front lawn, well removed from the driveway.
Philip snoozed undisturbed as Susan gazed down at her son in the faint light of the tree-shaded street lamps. She thought he looked like an angel.
Susan hoped that the noise of the car's engine wouldn't wake the baby. But even if it did, it couldn't be helped. She started up the engine. Glancing at the car seat over on the grass, she saw that Phil was still sleeping peacefully. This is crazy, she thought. But she put the Subaru in reverse anyway and backed down almost to the street without turning on the headlights. Susan braked the car to a stop, then revved the engine.
This is really crazy, she told herself again as she pulled on her seat belt and tightened it hard against her chest. Crazy or not, she thought, here goes. She slammed the car forward straight into the garage door. The crash sounded enormous. The air bag exploded in her face, but still she could hear each individual part of the crash: breaking wood, metal shrieking against metal, tinkling glass.
The air bag engulfed her as she jolted against the seat belt, both her feet jammed against the brake pedal. For a moment she thought the air bag would suffocate her, but then it started to sag and deflate. Susan sat there, jaw hanging open, the front end of her wagon rammed into Muncrief's dark garage, the garage door bashed to pieces.