“Harry, you’re making a mistake,” he said, knowing that if he didn’t make his case now, he would never have another chance. “You’ve got me mixed up with someone else!”
Harry didn’t crack the slightest trace of a smile. “Unh-uh, pal. You’ve got yourself mixed up with somebody else.” One of the goons jerked Quaid’s arm and he lost his footing. For a moment he thought he was falling . . .
His dream-vision flooded back and suddenly he was sure. Mars did have something to do with this! That dream was too real, too persistent! Maybe he really had been there—no, that couldn’t be; he had only wanted to go there. He had spent all his adult life on Earth, with Lori. His memory of that was as clear as his notions of Mars were foggy. Still—
There had been this receptionist, with a see-peek blouse and sprayed-blue breasts beneath. “Mr. Quaid, you are a good-looking man, and it spoils your features to become angry,” she said. “If it would make you feel any better, I might, ahem, let you take me out . . .” No, that wasn’t it; he hadn’t been angry with her, and she hadn’t offered. That must have been a daydream, or an implanted memory. That was the place of implanted memories, of dreams that seemed to have come true in the past. He had wanted a memory of Mars. He had talked with a man—but the memory faded again.
Harry raised his gun to Quaid’s temple. His finger slowly tightened on the trigger. He looked as if he was really sorry to be doing this; his eyes were filled with the old this-hurts-me-worse-than-it-does-you look.
Quaid’s expression hardened. Like the errant kid in the woodshed, he had his doubts about whose hurt was worse. He was also aware, on another level, that the grouping of men had become perfect. It was time to knock down the dominoes.
Harry had made the classic mistake of holding the gun too close to the target. Quaid’s fist came up in a blur of speed and deflected Harry’s arm. The gun fired into the stairwell.
Quaid’s arm smashed across Harry’s neck, crushing his windpipe. Harry hardly had time to collapse, trying to gag, trying to breathe, before Quaid whirled and caught the nearest goon with a sledgehammer fist to the heart. The man was still standing, though dead on his feet, as Quaid leaped at the next. He caught the man’s head between his hands and twisted so savagely that there was an audible snap and the face was looking out from the wrong side of the body, the eyes wide-open startled. The last goon had had three seconds to react; he was lurching forward, his gun coming up. Quaid’s knee rose to meet his head, smashing the man’s nose straight back into the brain. Flat-faced, the goon fell.
A total of five seconds had passed since Harry’s finger tightened on the trigger. Four men were dead.
You’re slowing down, pal!
What? Quaid shook his head. There was no one there. Just himself and the dead men, gruesomely strewn on the stairs. One of them might have been his friend, once.
He stared in amazement at the bodies. How—what—?
He looked at his bloodied hands. Were these his? Had they committed this mayhem? It was as if they belonged to somebody else.
He remembered thinking about groupings and dominoes. Then—this.
He gathered his wits. Whatever had happened here, he would get the blame if he remained! He had to get away from this nightmare and safely home.
CHAPTER 9
“Wife”
Quaid flew up the stairs and into the lobby, heedless of the other residents in the building who stared as he passed. They let him have an elevator all to himself.
Upstairs, he barged into his conapt, breathless. What a relief it was to be here! But he couldn’t rest yet; if there had been one gaggle of goons after him, there might be another, and they knew where he lived.
Lori was inside the holo-console, swinging her tennis racquet in perfect synchronization with a hologram of a female tennis player. The hologram glowed bright red to signal that she’d gotten it right. She smiled as Quaid entered, satisfied with her practice session.
“Hi, baby!” she said.
Quaid darted around the conapt, keeping his head below the window level. He switched off every light in the place, then pulled Lori from the console, and switched that off, too. She looked at him in alarm.
“Some men just tried to kill me!” he exclaimed.
She froze. “Muggers?”
“No! Spies or something. And Harry from work.” Lori stepped back from him, passing in front of a window. She opened her mouth—
“Get down!” he cried, grabbing her and pulling her to the floor. He covered her with his body so that any bullet would reach him first. “Harry was the boss,” he explained.
Flabbergasted, Lori drew herself out from under, brushing ineffectively at her crumpled outfit. She seemed to be trying to make sense of it all. “What happened? Why would spies want to kill you?”
Excellent question! He peeked out the corner of a window. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “It has something to do with Mars.”
The magic word! Lori frowned. She was starting to question Quaid’s sanity. At this stage, he could hardly blame her. “Mars? You’ve never even been to Mars!”
“I know. It’s crazy. I went to this Rekall place after work, and on the way home—”
She was incredulous. “You went to those brain butchers?”
“Let me finish!” But considering what had happened, he couldn’t deny that some sort of butchery had occurred. Before Rekall, his life had been normal, even dull, except for that dream of Mars. After Rekall, his life had been confused and just about over. Yet how could even the most realistic implanted memory account for Harry and the goons?
“What did you have them do?” she demanded, worried. “Tell me!”
“I got a trip to Mars.” That memory had settled into place somewhere during the drive home: not the Mars-memory itself, which seemed to be absent, but his agreement to have them implant it. Something must have gone wrong—but would that have been his death warrant?
“Oh, God, Doug!” She must have thought she had gotten him off the Mars kick; she seemed appalled.
“That’s not important. These men were about to shoot me . . .” He trailed off, realizing more clearly what had happened. “But I killed them!” It seemed impossible, yet he was sure that that memory was real. For one thing, there was the blood on his hands—and now smeared on Lori’s tennis outfit too.
But Lori was beyond caring about that, at this stage. She forced herself to be calm. “Doug, listen to me. Nobody tried to kill you. You’re hallucinating.”
“This is real, goddammit!” he exploded. He dashed to another window and looked out.
Lori came after him and grabbed his shoulders. “Stop running around and listen to me!”
Quaid kept still, glaring at her.
“Those butchers at Rekall have fucked up your mind,” she told him earnestly. “And you’re having paranoid delusions.”
He held up his bloodstained hands. “You call this a paranoid delusion?”
She was stunned, evidently uncertain whether to be afraid for him—or afraid of him.
It was pointless to try to argue with her. He was hardly that certain of the situation himself! He ran into the bathroom, ducking out of the line of sight of the windows. Their conapt was high up, but a good sniper could handle the range, especially if he fired from another building at this level.
Lori waited until the bathroom door was closed and then walked quickly to the videophone. “Doug,” she shouted over her shoulder. “I’m calling a doctor!”
His voice came back, muffled. “Don’t! Don’t call anybody.”
A faint smile touched Lori’s lips as a man’s face appeared on the screen. “Richter,” she breathed. There was something predatory, something hard and cruel in the man’s face, but it softened as he heard her whisper his name. “Hello,” he said. She blew a silent kiss to him.
In the bathroom, Quaid washed the blood from his hands. It had probably come from the goon whose nose he had smashed in—though how he had done a thing like that he
still wasn’t certain. He knew how to fight, sure: stand up with two fists weaving before the face, and try to get past the other worker’s guard to tag him on the shoulder or head. But he had done this with his knee. And the others—he had twisted one head just about off, and smashed a larynx. There was no place in clean fighting for that sort of thing. Even if there was—where had he learned it? The sheer speed with which he had acted—instead of a clumsy shoving, he had struck four times, each strike so brutally efficient it appalled him in retrospect. He had been scared, sure, but this had been more like a killing machine.
While he pondered, he finished washing the blood off his hands. He splashed cold water on his face, then glanced at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t even scratched! Now it was beginning to seem like a fantasy!
But he knew it wasn’t. He dried off his face and hands, switched off the light, and opened the bathroom door. For some reason he didn’t quite fathom, he stood at the side of the door instead of standing squarely before it, as if to let someone else pass through first.
Tracer bullets ripped into the dark bathroom, smashing the mirror, walls, and fixtures. Glass showered out around him. Quaid dived forward and scrambled into the living area.
The goons were back, another squad! Somehow he had suspected, and his caution had saved his life. They were no longer pussyfooting by shoving him unhurt into a vehicle; they had gotten smart, and were blasting him on sight.
“Lori!” he cried from the floor as he rolled behind the sofa. “Run!”
The living room was in total darkness, except for the pale rectangles of the windows, beyond which the lights of the city flickered. Quaid moved, his knees making a sound as they scraped on the floor—and bullets tore into the upholstery, inches from his head.
He lurched up and across and dived under the coffee table, rolling silently in a fashion he hadn’t known he could do. He froze in place, listening. He heard his assailant moving around, across the room. The gunner was right here, using the darkness for cover!
There had been no answer from Lori. She must have been taken out silently while Quaid was in the bathroom. There would be a separate score to settle for that, if she had been harmed! But first he had to save his own life.
In the darkness he felt his features hardening into a familiar expression. His memory might be blank, but he realized that this was not the first time he had been under fire. He knew how to handle it.
He fetched a pillow from the couch, noiselessly. Then he tossed it across the room.
Tracer fire blasted the pillow.
Quaid launched himself. He leaped over a chair at the source of the tracers, again moving with a speed and surety that amazed him.
He made contact. Bullets were fired wildly, scoring on the wall and ceiling. Then he got the gun away and it skittered across the floor.
Already he was working on the assailant. He pounded a shoulder, a leg, trying to get the range on the struggling figure in the darkness. Then he scored on the torso and heard the pained grunt as the other person’s breath whooshed out. The gunner was small, depending on speed rather than strength. He applied a quick chokehold with one arm, just tight enough to keep the other subdued, and reached for the light switch on the wall.
The light came on. Quaid blinked, his eyes adjusting. He looked at the person he held.
It was a woman, her fair tresses in disarray. In fact, it was Lori.
He was astonished—and devastated. His wife had been gunning for him? How could this be?
“Lori . . .” he began.
She stomped on his foot. Even through the shoe, it was effective; pain flared. For a moment his grip on her relaxed.
She spun a sharp elbow into his face, forcing him to pull back, but not to release her entirely. She turned, bracing against his arm, and pummeled him with a rapid barrage of chops and punches to chest, neck, and face. She knew what she was doing; there were no dainty slaps, but well-aimed and surprisingly strong blows that were doing damage. In fact, they could have knocked out a lesser man. Only his greater mass and conditioning protected him; he automatically tensed his muscles and turned his head, resisting the strikes and causing them to slide off without full effect.
Dazed more by the identity of his attacker than by the blows themselves, Quaid did not retaliate. How could his lovely, loving wife be doing this? Just this morning, she had been so soft and sexy, her hands so gentle and evocative! Had it been a strange man, he would have countered almost before the first blow landed. But against Lori—
But she had only been warming up. Now she had proper working room. She wound up for the coup de grace. This one would not be avoided or resisted.
He punched her in the stomach. The blow was powerful rather than fast, and she was light. He had pulled his punch somewhat, still loath to really hurt her. Also, he had been shaken by her violent attack on him, and for the moment weakened. The effect of the drug had not yet worn off entirely, which made it worse. Even so, the punch launched her all the way to the kitchen.
She kept her feet, by no means downed. She was in better condition as a combatant than he had ever suspected. In fact, it seemed that there was a whole lot about her that he hadn’t known. But how could she be in on this conspiracy to kill him? She wasn’t even interested in Mars!
He staggered toward her, knowing that he had to put her down and question her. It had never occurred to him that she would know anything about this astonishing situation, but now that he knew she did, he had to learn whatever she knew.
Lori grabbed a carving knife from the holder on the wall. Now she stalked him, moving with more confidence than he did. He retreated, realizing that he was up against no amateur.
He looked around for her gun and spied it on the floor across the room. He started toward it, but she intercepted him, deftly slicing his reaching arm. He tried to dodge aside and make for the gun again, but she whipped the knife across his chest, opening a thin gash. She kept him at bay, tagging him whenever he focused on the gun instead of on her, but wasn’t able to make a lethal score on him. He was becoming a mass of shallow wounds and dripping blood.
He feinted toward the gun once more, with his left hand. She stabbed at the arm, inflicting another injury—but was caught by his right fist. It was a solid blow to her jaw.
Lori fell back, stunned. Quaid quickly picked up the gun and aimed it at her. “Talk!”
She remained stubbornly silent. He shoved the gun barrel in her ear. He meant business, and it showed. The hard alternate personality had taken over again. “Why is my own wife trying to kill me?”
“I’m not your wife,” she said.
He cocked the pistol. Lori panicked.
“I swear to God! I never saw you before six weeks ago! Our marriage is just a memory implant—aggghh!” Quaid grabbed a handful of hair and yanked her head back. How could she claim that eight years of marriage hadn’t existed? He remembered!
He remembered the way she had sauntered across the street that first day. He remembered their wedding, the startling contrast between his father’s humble finery and her father’s stylish Martian frog pelt tux. He remembered their wedding trip as vividly as though it had happened yesterday; the ride on the transcon zaptrain, the suite in the expensive hotel where they had been catered to by a veritable fleet of service droids. It had been the first time he’d slept on a gelbed, the first time he’d tasted Venusian champagne. They’d sipped it from crystal flutes grown in zero-g on one of the space stations. He could still see the strange shape of the crystal, feel it in his hand, taste the sparkling blue wine.
He thought back to the first few years they had spent together in his old neighborhood. Lori had looked as out of place as a lunar diamond in a trash recycler, and he recalled how happy she had been when he finally agreed to move to the new conapt. He could never forget that night of celebration . . . How could Lori say that none of that had happened? He remembered.
Yet she had tried to kill him, and it had been no accident of misidentificatio
n. She knew who he was and wanted him dead. That suggested there was something in what she said.
“You think I’m an idiot?” Quaid said bitterly.
Lori’s gaze and posture indicated that she thought exactly that. She seemed to have become a cold bitch, as different from the loving woman as Quaid was from the killing machine that seemed to be taking over his body. Her tennis outfit was in ruins and there would be a bruise on her face, yet she seemed haughty rather than humiliated.
“I remember our wedding!” he said.
“It was implanted by the Agency,” she said flatly.
“And falling in love?” Though now he realized that he did not truly love her. He remembered loving her, but somehow he had a truer feeling for the woman of Mars. Oh, Lori was a lot of fun in bed, but that wasn’t the same. This preposterous notion was beginning to make sense!
“Implanted.”
“Our friends, my job, eight years together. I suppose the Agency implanted that too?
“The job’s real,” she said evenly. “But the Agency set it up.”
“Bullshit.” Quaid pushed Lori away, but kept the gun trained on her. He tried to remain skeptical, but his certainty was beginning to erode. This explanation resolved too many little—and big—mysteries. Her disparagement of his dream of Mars—because he was supposed to be kept away from Mars? Harry’s effort to steer him clear of Rekall—because he wasn’t even supposed to remember Mars? There was a whole lot here that he still didn’t understand, but at least this gave him some ideas to work with. He had been distracted by the life he thought he had—a wife like Lori, a friend like Harry—so that he wouldn’t recall the life he might really have. It was as if the old structures had to be torn down before new and more solid ones could be built. Lori spoke, confirming some of his suspicions.