Cohaagen’s minions still hadn’t come after him. Had he truly given them the slip, or were they waiting till the time they thought he would be asleep? After their several unsuccessful attempts to kill him, they might have learned caution. More likely they just didn’t want a big messy scene here in the tourist district of Mars. They might succeed in taking him out, but if it cost them a bad tourist season because travelers would be afraid of getting murdered in their hotel rooms, it wouldn’t be worth it. So maybe he was safe, for the moment—and maybe he wasn’t. He would take precautions when he slept, setting up a dummy in the bed while he slept elsewhere, just in case.
But his mind really wasn’t on survival at the moment. It was on Melina. What should he have done to make it right with her? He was now assured that she was the woman of his dream, for a setup would have played along with him, pumping him for information while she had supposedly spontaneous sex with him, then signaling the goons to come. Instead she had thrown him out. That convinced him, painful as it was to take. So maybe he had played it right after all, because now he knew he could trust her—if only he could get her to trust him.
Well, he would sleep on it. Maybe he would dream again, and the dream would be of her, and show him how to approach her. Meanwhile he would try to relax. He had eaten, perhaps foolishly: he had loaded up on more Mars candy bars, and a package of vitamins, just to keep things balanced. It wasn’t that he was a freak for candy, but it made him feel closer to Hauser, and he hoped that he could get close enough to remember something vital. He wasn’t any more of a psychologist than he was of a social worker, but it seemed to him that the more he immersed himself in the things associated with Hauser, the more likely he was to trigger some additional insight into the man. Such an insight could save his life, or give it more meaning.
He turned on the video. The room didn’t sport a wall-sized screen, as Mars didn’t have much of a consumer industry, but it was possible to adapt to the smaller set.
An in-house documentary about—what else?—Mars came on. There were boring images of black rocks in the red desert. The same sort of scene had fascinated him earlier in the day, but now that he had blown it with Melina, anything that didn’t look like her was dull.
“The first evidence of an alien presence on Mars was not uncovered until forty years after the first manned expedition,” the narrator said, off-camera. “When glazed sand provided proof of visitations by nonhuman travelers.”
Quaid lay on his bed in the dark hotel room, bathed in the pale blue glare of the screen and the pale red glare from the skylight. This should really interest him, he knew, but the image of Melina’s angry face pretty much blotted it out. With her by his side, everything about Mars was wonderful; without her, the allure was gone.
He changed the channel. The face of Vilos Cohaagen filled the screen and Quaid sat up to watch more closely. Cohaagen was delivering a speech from his office.
“Tonight, at 6:30 P.M., I signed an order declaring martial law throughout the Mars Federal Colony. I will not tolerate any further damage to our mineral export operations. Mr. Kuato and his terrorists must understand that their self-defeating efforts will only bring misery . . .”
Quaid regarded the face of his enemy. Why was Cohaagen declaring martial law? What was the point? With the power of Administrator and with the Agency at his fingertips, it seemed ridiculously redundant. But that was the way of politicians. As long as things appeared to be aboveboard, they could continue with all the dirty work they pleased belowdecks.
The news report changed. Here was something else they never mentioned to Earthlings considering emigration to Mars.
The scene was of an air lock in which four shackled prisoners were standing. The air was being slowly let out of it. It was evident that the prisoners knew this, and were helpless.
“Francis Aquado, defacing public property,” the announcer said. “Judith Redensek and Jeannette Wyle, resisting arrest. Thomas Zachary, treason.”
The depressurization continued. The prisoners gasped, suffocating. Their mucous membranes bled. Their eyes bulged. The camera focused on each in turn, the close-ups showing all the detail a sadist could desire. This was obviously death by torture. Not only was it evidently standard, here, it was so firmly established that it was done openly, televised for a mass audience. That said something ugly about the nature of the audience. On Earth, at least, the dirt was usually swept under the carpet.
The screen went dark. He had turned it off involuntarily. He held his head, lost.
If the penalty for defacing public property on Mars was an agonizing death, that meant that anyone who made graffiti was doomed if caught. If an innocent person was arrested on a trumped-up charge and resisted, that resistance became grounds for execution. Treason might be no more than stating an objection to such policies. He was already guilty of them all! He hated Cohaagen, and he had in effect defaced public property when he resisted arrest, because he would be blamed for the broken spaceport window. There was no doubt he was guilty of treason, because already he condemned the government of Mars. If there ever appeared before him a magical button labeled ABOLISH MARS GOVERNMENT, he would push that button in an instant. But the chances were that the Mars government would catch him first and push the button marked ABOLISH HAUSER/QUAID.
Yet there was supposed to be a secret locked in his head that could blow it all wide open. If he could just remember it!
He was startled by a knock at the door. He froze, on the alert. Would the goons knock?
The knocking was repeated. “Mr. Quaid . . .”
He hesitated, then decided to answer. After all, the goons would probably just have broken in, or fired bullets through the door. “Yes?”
“I need to talk to you—about Mr. Hauser.”
Quaid had used neither name at this hotel. He was registered under the name of Brubaker. That meant that this was no routine caller. The voice seemed familiar, though, and Quaid squinted with the effort of trying to place it. It was no good.
He couldn’t take a chance. He got out his gun and cocked it. The first thing he had done, once he got private, was to assemble it from the various segments stashed in his pockets, which had in turn been assembled from the various items of apparel that its components seemed to be. He approached the door very carefully, from the side. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“Dr. Edgemar,” the muffled voice came. “I work for Rekall, Incorporated.
“It’s difficult to explain,” Edgemar said after a pause. “Could you open the door, please? I’m not armed.”
Quaid opened the door, carefully, ready to shoot.
An unthreatening intellectual in a tweed jacket stood there. Seeing him, Quaid finally knew where he had heard the voice before. It was the narrator from the Rekall commercial he’d seen on the subway, back on Earth. The commercial that had triggered this whole chain of events.
Quaid trained the gun on the man and glanced down the hall.
“Don’t worry,” Edgemar said. “I’m alone. May I come in?”
Quaid pulled the man roughly into the hotel room and closed the door. He frisked Edgemar, but found no weapon.
“This is going to be very difficult for you to accept, Mr. Quaid.”
“I’m listening,” Quaid said tersely.
“I’m afraid you’re not really standing here right now.”
Quaid could not repress a chuckle, though he was tense. “You know, Doc, you could have fooled me.” Which might be exactly what the man was doing! So far he had mentioned neither Cohaagen nor Melina—and Quaid would not be able to trust him anyway. He could claim to be from Melina, to lull Quaid and get him to go along peaceably into the trap Cohaagen had set. But this ploy was interesting, even in this nervous situation. What could Cohaagen stand to gain by convincing Quaid that he was somewhere else? It would be easier to send him somewhere else—such as to hell, riding on a bullet through the brain.
“As I was saying, you’re not really here,” the man insis
ted. “And neither am I.”
Some delusion, if the doctor shared it with the patient! Quaid squeezed Edgemar’s shoulder with his free hand, verifying its solidity. “Amazing. Where are we?”
“At Rekall.”
Quaid’s cockiness wavered. Could this be making sense? He had gone to Rekall, and suffered severe disorientation. In fact, his world had collapsed, making him a hunted fugitive.
“You’re strapped into an implant chair,” Edgemar continued. “And I’m monitoring you at a psycho-probe console.”
“I get it—I’m dreaming!” Quaid said sarcastically. “And this is all part of that delightful vacation your company sold me.” Only no prepackaged dream would have included that scene with Melina, where instead of fulfillment he had received a painful setback. Only reality did that kind of thing to a man!
“Not exactly,” Edgemar said, not bothered by Quaid’s attitude. Doctors learned early not to be moved by their patients’ reactions. “What you’re experiencing is a free-form delusion based on our memory tapes. But you’re inventing it yourself.”
That made Quaid pause. Suppose the tape had Melina scheduled as a joyful reunion, but his cynical mind was not able to settle for that? So his suspicion became her suspicion, in the dream, and she rejected him? He had heard that a person’s mind could do that; it was called transference, or something. He could have ruined it himself!
Still, he didn’t buy it. “Well, if this is my delusion, who invited you?”
“I’ve been artificially implanted as an emergency measure,” Edgemar said without hesitation. Then, gravely: “I’m sorry to tell you this, Mr. Quaid, but you’re experiencing a schizoid embolism. We can’t snap you out of your fantasy. I’ve been sent in to try to talk you down to reality.”
“And ‘reality’ is that I’m not really here?” Quaid asked.
“Think about it, Mr. Quaid. Your dream started in the middle of the implant procedure. Everything after that—the fights, the trip to Mars in a first-class cabin, your suite at the Hilton—these are all part of your Rekall package.”
“Complete and utter bullshit!” Quaid said, beginning to fear that it was not.
“What about that girl?” Edgemar asked evenly. “Brunette, buxom, wanton and demure, just as you specified. Is that ‘bullshit’?”
“She’s real,” Quaid said. “I dreamed about her before I ever went to Rekall.”
“Mr. Quaid, can you hear yourself?” Edgemar asked persuasively. “She’s real because you dreamed her?”
“That’s right.” And indeed, he believed it, not expecting the doctor to understand.
Edgemar sighed, discouraged. “Perhaps this will convince you. Would you mind opening the door?”
Quaid jabbed his gun into Edgemar’s ribs. “You open it.”
“No need to be rude.” The man straightened his shoulders and walked to the door. Quaid shadowed him, ready for anything as the man opened the door.
Anything except what he saw.
Lori stood on the threshold!
Quaid did his best to absorb this extra shock. Lori was beautiful, in exactly the kind of wanton and demure outfit he liked, showing more breast than she seemed to be conscious of, her face evincing a trace of color where he had hit her with the gun, by the eye. He was abruptly sorry about that; he had never hit her before.
Lori put on a brave face, almost like holding back tears in front of a sick child. There was not the slightest indication that she had ever been anything other than Quaid’s adoring wife. “Sweetheart . . .”
But she had blasted away at him with the gun! She had tried to knock him out, and to kill him with a kitchen knife. His scratches from those slices were still healing. She had become seductive only to distract him while she watched Richter and Helm approach on the monitor. She had told him how their entire relationship had been implanted, except for the past six weeks. Sweetheart?
God help him, he wanted to believe her! If this was a dream, then her attack on him had never occurred, and she really was his adoring woman.
“Please come in, Mrs. Quaid,” Edgemar said.
Hesitantly, Lori entered the room. Her hips still moved in that way that used to drive him crazy. And still did. He might not love her, but he sure as hell didn’t hate her either!
Then why would he have cast her as such a villain in his dream? To make a pretext to get rid of her so he could go after his Mars woman? That made ugly sense. A crazed mind—he could not afford to do that in reality!
Neither could he afford to trust her! Quaid pulled Lori to him and roughly frisked her. Even in this he hurt, because his traveling hands verified just how good her body was. He had caressed that body so many times, and had had such delight in it. How could he doubt her now?
“I suppose you’re not here either,” he said gruffly. He was coming across to himself as boorish, but what choice did he have? One mistake meant disaster.
“I’m here at Rekall,” she said.
Quaid laughed and pushed her away. But he was hurting inside. If only she would break, and curse him, and say she hated him! Then he would feel justified in treating her like this, whether this scene was dream or real.
“Doug, I love you,” Lori said, her large eyes moist.
“Right. That’s why you tried to kill me!” He had to maintain the pose, covering his awful doubt.
“Nooo!” she protested, breaking into tears. “I would never do anything to hurt you. I love you. I want you to come back to me.” Her despair was heartbreaking.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered. But his certainty was shaken. It would be so easy to take her in his arms . . .
“What’s unbelievable, Mr. Quaid?” Edgemar asked. He assumed a reasonable tone. “That you’re having a paranoid episode triggered by acute neurological trauma? Or—” Now his voice was derisive. “That you’re really an invincible secret agent from Mars who’s the victim of an interplanetary conspiracy to make him think he’s a lowly construction worker?”
Quaid’s certainty, such as it was, was being further undermined. The recent events he had experienced certainly did seem nonsensical now! The things that didn’t make much sense—how better to explain them than as the product of a slightly deranged dreaming mind?
Edgemar looked at him with great sympathy and kindness. “Doug, how many of us are heroes? You’re a fine, upstanding man. You have a beautiful wife who loves you.”
Lori beamed at Quaid with pure affection.
“You have a secure job with a bright future,” Edgemar continued. “Your life is ahead of you, Doug.” He frowned benignly. “But you’ve got to want to return to reality.”
It did seem to fit together. Quaid was almost convinced. Certainly he had wanted to be an adventurous hero, but this adventure had pretty well turned him off that sort of thing. He had wanted a beautiful woman, and in fact Lori was that. So her hair wasn’t dark—was that cause to throw her away? Considering the way Melina had treated him . . .
“What do I do?” he asked.
Edgemar opened his hand, revealing a small pill. “Take this pill.”
“What is it?” Quaid was not so dull as to miss the fact that an imagined pill could not do anything the imagination couldn’t.
“It’s a symbol. A symbol of your desire to return to reality,” Edgemar explained. “Inside your dream, you’ll fall asleep.”
And wake up in reality? That had happened before, when he had fallen down the alien tube on Mars and woken in bed with Lori. That had its appeal! He picked up the pill and contemplated it. He could appreciate the rationale: in life a person took a pill to get well. In a dream he took one to want to get well. The effect could be similar.
“You should know, Mr. Quaid, that Rekall will provide you with free counseling for as long as you need it. In addition, if you sign a release, we’ll agree to a large cash settlement.”
“How much?” The question was automatic, though he hardly cared. The larger question was whether he wanted the reality he had known on E
arth or a continuation of this crazy-quilt adventure on Mars. The answer should have been obvious, but the memory of Melina, and the hint of something else, something so important that—
“A hundred thousand credits. Maybe more.”
Lori brightened, becoming hopeful. “Think about it Doug. We could buy a house.”
Instead of the conapt on the two hundredth floor. That, too, had its appeal. Maybe a vacation in an undersea dome.
“Of course,” Edgemar said, “this all hinges on your taking the pill.”
On the verge of succumbing to their logic, Quaid grew suspicious again. Why should it all hinge on his taking the pill? Why couldn’t he merely declare, “I’m through with dreaming! I want to return to reality and Lori!” and be there? On rare occasions he had had what he thought was called lucid dreaming, where he came to realize that it was a dream, and could control it somewhat. Generally when that happened, though, the dream lost its substance and he woke. So instead of hauling in a lucid sexpot, he woke with a hard-on and nowhere to put it. That had been back when he was a teenager, before Lori. Still, the principle was there: if he couldn’t break out of the dream without the symbol, why should it work with the symbol? Why were they so eager for that symbol?
“Let’s say you’re right,” Quaid said. “This is all a dream.” He raised the gun to Edgemar’s head. “Then I can pull this trigger, and it won’t matter.”
He started to pull the trigger. Here was a test that meant something. If this was not a dream, Edgemar would be exceedingly eager to avoid this test!
“Doug, don’t!” Lori cried.
But Edgemar remained preternaturally calm. His eyes and voice expressed his unselfish concern for his patient. “It won’t make the slightest difference to me, Doug, but the consequences to you would be devastating. In your mind, I’ll be dead. And with no one to guide you out, you’ll be stuck in permanent psychosis.”
Was it possible? Psychosis was a disease of the mind. Could his own act determine which way his mind went? Would shooting Edgemar be his decision to avoid reality, rather than any tangible act to embrace it, such as taking the pill?