“Why not?” he inquired condescendingly. She wasn’t going to get away with any pseudo-medical jargon to talk her way out of this foul-up!
“We haven’t implanted it yet.”
McClane stared at her, his oncoming retort abruptly stifled. “Oh, shit…” Suddenly he was terrified. No implant? And the man had been talking about an actual Mars experience? This was no longer weird, it was dangerous!
“I’ve been trying to tell you,” Dr. Lull said significantly. “Somebody erased his memory. The man really has been to Mars! And that’s not all—”
“Somebody?” Ernie cried hysterically: “We’re talking the fucking Agency!”
“Shut up!” Dr. Lull slapped him. The stinging blow stunned them all into silence.
McClane tried to think. But how could he think about the unthinkable? The mess they had walked into made a schizoid embolism look like an eyestrain headache. Because it looked like Ernie was right: the memory cap must have been implanted by the Agency. No one else had the technology. And everyone, from heads of state to the lowliest rockrats in the Martian mines, knew that interfering with the Agency’s plans could have serious, not to mention fatal, results. He didn’t have to be an Einstein to figure out that blowing an operative’s cover, even by accident, would qualify as major interference.
The Agency was a semisecret government outfit. Its network was spread throughout Earth and the Martian colony and it was bound by no civilized law. It achieved its goals by any means necessary, although what those goals were and who set them, no one knew for sure. It did indeed have agents like Quaid: brute killers who could be stopped only by others of their kind. The fact that this exposure of one of their agents was unintentional would count for nothing. The three of them could literally be dead meat, exactly as Quaid had threatened. Why the hell had he walked into Rekall?
McClane was no killer. But now, horribly, his life was on the line. They could kill Quaid simply by increasing the sedative to lethal level. They could do it right now. But could they get away with it? What would they do with the body? The three of them could hardly move it, let alone get it safely out of here unobserved. Was it bugged? He greatly feared it was—which meant that the Agency would be in motion the moment Quaid’s life-blip dropped from somebody’s monitor screen. Could they drug him down to near-death, until they got him to somewhere that he couldn’t be found? There was nowhere he couldn’t be found, if they were tuning in on a bug! They would trace his route, and nail Rekall without asking questions. No answer there.
Then it came to him. They didn’t have to kill him or hide him! All they had to do was hide themselves, hide Rekall, Inc., from Quaid and the Agency. Divert him from here, erase all memory of his visit here, just as they would have done for the regular treatment. But with a difference—
“Okay, this is what we’re gonna do,” he said. “Renata, cover up any memory he has of us or Rekall.”
“I’ll do what I can,” she said nervously. “It’s getting messy in there.”
McClane turned to the frightened youth. “Ernie, dump him in a cab. Around the corner. Get Tiffany to help you.”
Ernie nodded. He would walk Quaid to the cab and give the cabbie Quaid’s home address. It would be hard to track back to the actual point of pickup, and if Dr. Lull did her work well, no one would ever try. For certain, the Agency hadn’t sent Quaid here; he had done it on his own, because of some leakage in their conditioning shield. He had had Mars on his mind—no wonder! If they got him clear of Rekall, there should be no repercussions. If nothing went wrong.
If nothing went wrong. There was the key. But Lull knew that her life as well as his was on the line here; she would do the job right. She did know her trade, as he knew his.
“I’ll destroy his file and refund his money,” McClane said, even as his thoughts raced through the details. He got back to his feet and paced the limited floor space. “And if anybody comes asking… we’ve never heard of Douglas Quaid.”
They all looked at Quaid, sprawled unconscious in the chair. McClane sincerely hoped he never saw the man again.
He returned to the front office. Sure enough, Mrs. Killdeer was gone. He no longer begrudged the lost sale; in fact, he was relieved. He had more urgent business to do at the moment. He had to clean up those records, and notify everyone who had seen Quaid that they hadn’t, beginning with the receptionist. Actually, he could use her in back, because they couldn’t process Quaid properly while he was all the way under, and he might recover a bit too far while they made the delicate adjustments. Tiffany was excellent at pacifying people, especially males; she could help keep the man quiet. Also, that refund—maybe he could null the payment before it was permanently recorded in the main computer system, so that there would never have been any payment. That would be much better. No payment, no refund—nothing happened.
If this worked, life would continue much as before. If it didn’t, they might all be dead before they realized it. McClane knew he wasn’t going to sleep well tonight, or any night this week.
CHAPTER 8
Harry
Quaid, befuddled, found himself in the back seat of a vehicle. Rain was beating against the window beside his head. He tried to orient, but his brain barely functioned. How had he come here? In fact—
“Where am I?” he asked of whoever might be within hearing.
“You’re in a JohnnyCab!” a cheerful voice responded.
A cab. A car. He had surmised as much! “I mean, what am I doing here?”
“I’m sorry. Would you please rephrase the question?”
Quaid blinked and looked, swiveling his dull gaze from the wet window to the driver in the front of the cab. It wasn’t a man, it was a fixedly smiling mannequin in an old-fashioned cabbie’s uniform. Now Quaid remembered: this brand of cab sported the pseudo-human touch, supposing that a fake man was better than none at all. Quaid normally used the verbally programmable, fully automatic cabs, instead of the semiautomated mannequin-interface models.
The mannequins tended to be a pain. One reason was because they were prone to misunderstand directions, being relatively unsophisticated machines.
Impatiently, he enunciated carefully: “How did I get in this taxi?”
“The door opened. You sat down.”
There was a second reason! They tended to take things with infuriating literalness. Exasperated, he sat back as Johnny raced to beat a red light. Would it make any sense to ask the idiot machine where he was going? Probably not. It was easier to wait until he got there. Meanwhile, maybe his woozy head would clear. What had he gotten into? The last thing he remembered was quitting work for the day, and—blank.
In due course the cab pulled up at a place he recognized: his apartment building. So he had been going home! But why so late? It was night now. He had lost hours!
The cab door opened and the mannequin turned its head, piping: “Thank you for taking JohnnyCab! I hope you enjoyed the ride.” Quail had a strong urge to wipe the manic grin off the dummy’s face, but he was feeling too woozy to follow through. He almost welcomed the cold rain that stung him as he stepped out of the cab. It soaked him to the skin, but it also helped him recover his senses somewhat. As he staggered toward the building, a familiar voice called out.
“Hey, Quaid!” The Brooklyn accent was unmistakable. It was Harry from work. Quaid was pleased but puzzled.
“Harry! What are you doing here?”
Harry clapped him on the shoulder and grinned. “How was your trip to Mars?” he asked.
“What trip?” Quaid pushed his wet hair back from his forehead and returned Harry’s grin with a blank look.