F Paul Wilson - Novel 05 Read online

  Mirage

  F. Paul Wilson

  Matthew J. Costello

  ENTER THE CHILLING CORRIDORS

  OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

  WITH MIRAGE

  "Compelling.... MIRAGE is a real page-turner."

  —San Francisco Examiner

  "Clever, sophisticated, and intriguing ... a compelling psycho-medical suspense novel that blends [the authors'] expertise and plays off the hotrpotato issues of repressed and false memories."

  —Trenton Times

  "A fast-paced, well-written thriller."

  —Roanoke Times

  "A medical thriller that echoes the ... psychological suspense of Hitchcock's Spellbound updated as a computer game.... If this isn't movie-bound, Hollywood needs a brain transplant."

  —Kirkus Reviews

  "I dare you to try and pull yourself away from MIRAGE'S fascinating characters, its stunning and seductive inner landscapes. MIRAGE is brilliant—a captivating novel, sensual, mysterious, gripping, and just breathtakingly good. Michael Crichton and Alfred Hitchcock meet Salvador Dali!"

  —Steven Spruill, author of Painkiller and Before I Wake

  "Messrs. Wilson and Costello deliver a solid piece of work, which will please fans of both authors."

  —Dark Echo (America Online)

  "Fast-paced, fascinating . . . one of the better meldings of technology and suspense, twisting and turning up through the emotional conclusion."

  —Library Journal

  "A marvelous novel! Takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through the darkest corridors of memory and personality and will leave the reader gasping right up to the nail-biting finale."

  —Rick Hatitala, author of Beyond the Shroud and Impulse

  "Intriguing."

  —Toronto Star

  "A fast-moving virtual reality thriller that plays with the perceptions of both memory and reality.... Smooth control . . . screenplay-style pacing . . . speedy climax.... I can't wait for the next one."

  —Booklovers (Milwaukee, WI)

  ATTENTION: SCHOOLS AND CORPORATIONS

  WARNER books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please write to: SPECIAL SALES DEPARTMENT, WARNER BOOKS, 1271 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS, NEW YORK, NY. 10020.

  MI

  also by F. Paul Wilson

  Healer (1976)*

  Wheels Within Wheels (1978)*

  An Enemy of the State (1980)*

  Black Wind (1988)

  Soft & Others (1989)

  Dydeetown World (1989)

  The Tery (1990)

  Sibs (1991)

  The Select (1993)

  Implant (1995)

  The Adversary Cycle?

  The Keep (1981)

  The Tomb (1984)

  The Touch (1986)

  Reborn (1990)

  Reprisal (1991)

  NlGHTWORLD (1992)

  editor.

  Freak Show (1992)

  Diagnosis: Terminal (1996)

  ♦combined in The LaNague Chronicles also by Matthew J. Costello

  Sleep Tight (1987)

  Revolt on Majipoor (1987)

  Fate's Trick (1988)

  Beneath Still Waters (i989)

  Child's Play 2 (1990)

  Midsummer (1990)

  Wizard of Tizare (1990)

  Wurm (1991)

  Child's Play 3 (1993)

  Darkborn (1992)

  Homecoming (1992)

  Carden (1993)

  Fire Below (1994)

  See How She Runs (1994)

  The 7th Guest (1995)

  The Time Warrior Trilogy,

  Time of the Fox (199C

  Hour of the Scorpion (1991)

  Day of the Snake (1992)

  Nonfiction

  The Greatest Puzzles of All Time( 1988)

  The Greatest Games of All Time (1991)

  How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (1992)

  Multimedia

  The 7th Guest (1993)

  The 11th Hour (1995)

  The Cartoon History of the Universe (1995)

  MIRAGE

  F. PAUL WILSON AND MATTHEW J. COSTELLO

  O

  WARNER BOOKS

  A Time Warner Company

  If you purchase this book without a cover you should, be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1996 by F. Paul Wilson and Matthew J. Costello All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Diane Luger

  Cover illustration by Franco Accanero

  Warner Books, Inc.

  1271 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Visit our Web site at http://warnerbooks.com

  ©A Time Warner Company Printed in the United States of America

  Originally published in hardcover by Warner Books. First Paperback Printing: November, 1997

  10 987654321

  To Liza Landsman (for keeping the faith)

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  About The Authors

  Acknowledgments

  To Jo Fletcher, whose Howdale Farm is around the bend from the imaginary Oakwood. Whatever seems real in our version of the Yorkshire Coast and countryside is due to her generous help with firsthand descriptions, books, maps, and photos from her personal album. Any inaccuracies are our doing.

  To Betsy Mitchell for her enthusiasm, support, and keen editorial eye. No theme is too large, no modifier too small to escape her scrutiny.

  To Al Zuckerman, Steven Spruill, and Bill Massey for their input her enthusiasm, support,

  Thank you, one and all.

  One

  Memory is not written in stone; it's highly susceptible to reconstruction. So much of what we remember of our own pasts is nothing more than a ... mirage.

  —Random notes: Julia Gordon

  1

  Julie careened into her office. "Check my voice mail for me, will you?"

  She was running late again, but what else was new. The department had six people doing the work of twelve.

  "Already did," Cindy said, and handed her a handwritten sheet.

  Julie scanned it. Nothing special there. Mostly interdepartmental minutiae. Return calls she could make later, tomorrow, whenever....

  And then she came to the last item: Your Uncle Ethan—call him. Urgent. Cindy had misspelled Eathan's name, but everybody did that. A number followed, but Julie didn't recognize the country code. Not the usual 44 for Great Britain. Was Eathan on vacation?

  "My uncle—did he say where he was calling from?"

  "No," Cindy said. "But that's a Paris number."

  Julie stared at her
secretary. "Paris? How do you know that?"

  "I knew you'd want to know so I looked it up." Cindy grinned and batted her big blue eyes. "Aren't I wonderful?"

  "You're the best," Julie said, and meant it.

  Cindy was the most efficient secretary she'd ever had, possessing that rarest of secretarial talents—anticipation. And she was neat. Julie detested clutter.

  Cindy's only drawback was her looks. She was a pert little blonde with a pixie haircut and a knockout figure. She was engaged to a computer technician at Exxon and would be a married woman in three months. Julie dreaded the day Cindy might walk in and announce she was pregnant and was going to stay home to be a mommy. That was what her last secretary had done. The whole idea baffled Julie. This was the most exciting work in the world. How could anyone leave it to stay home?

  "Did he say what he meant by 'urgent'?"

  Cindy shook her head. "Nope. Just said, 'Call me back at once. It's urgent.' Then he left the number. But his voice did sound a little strained, or maybe tired. Want me to dial him?"

  Why did Cindy seem so anxious to connect her? Then Julie realized that this was probably the first personal call Cindy had ever taken for her. And Cindy always seemed overly concerned about Julie's lack of a "life"—no friends, no lovers, just the project.

  So maybe she didn't have much of what Cindy and a number of others in the department considered a "life."

  But if 1 like it that way, why should they care?

  Julie stuffed the note in her pocket. "No time right now." She glanced at her watch. "It's what—four P.M. over there? I'll call him after the demonstration."

  "But he said—"

  "You don't know my uncle Eathan. Everything's urgent to Uncle Eathan. But right here, right now, this demonstration is truly urgent. How do I look?"

  Cindy stood and reached over the desk to straighten Julie's lab coat, then stepped back and considered her.

  "How about some lipstick?"

  "Forget it."

  "Maybe just run the brush through your hair."

  Julie pulled a brush from her pocketbook and stepped over to the eight-by-ten mirror Cindy kept on the back of the office door. She straightened some of the flyaway strands caused by the wind-tunnel effects in the subway and checked herself out.

  She looked pale. Why not? She was fair, a blonde—not as blond as Cindy, but her color was all her own—and she hadn't spent any time outdoors in years. She thought she looked okay, though. Her short, blunt-cut hair was all in place now. Her skin, pale as it was, was clear. And her blue eyes sparkled despite only four hours of sleep last night Her lips were full but pale. Maybe she did need some lipstick, but she had none with her. Never bothered with it.

  What they see is what I've got.

  She tried a smile. Not a great smile, but not a bad one. Had to practice that smile for the Bruchmeyer man this morning.

  She turned back to Cindy. "Wish me luck."

  Cindy grinned and held up two sets of crossed fingers. "You wouldn't believe how hard it is to type like this."

  Julie laughed. "Right. Probably slows you down to ninety words a minute."

  "Seriously," Cindy said, her smile fading. "Good luck, Dr. Gordon."

  "Thanks," she said, waving as she headed for the hall. "I'll need it."

  Yeah, she thought, all but trotting for the lab. Loads of it.

  The Maria Bruchmeyer Foundation had tons of money to spend. When Heinrich Bruchmeyer's wife died of Alzheimer's disease, he set up the well-funded foundation to finance research into the causes of and possible cures for Alzheimer's. After months of barraging the foundation with phone calls, letters, reprints, and abstracts of her journal articles, Julie had finally persuaded a member of the Bruchmeyer board to trek downtown for a demonstration.

  Today was the day. The demo was scheduled for 10:00 A.M.—twenty minutes ago. God! Why today of all days?

  She rounded a corner and saw Dr. Mordecai Siegal pacing the hall outside the lab. Spotting her, he waddled toward her, his hands fluttering in the air before him like meaty butterflies.

  Don't we look spiffy, she thought, giving her superior the once-over. Clean lab coat—open as ever because he couldn't button it around his girth—thinning gray hair combed and parted, pressed pants, shined shoes, and could that really be Old Spice she smelled? Mordecai Siegal, M.D., Ph.D., world-renowned guru of memory mapping, was trying to look the part today.

  Must have been hard for him to get himself so together without Bernice's help. Hard? She would have thought it impossible. He'd lost a lifelong companion just two months ago, but somehow he was holding on.

  "He's here, Julie! He's waiting. You're late and he got here earlyl Where have you been?'

  "I had a heavy date last night and was out partying till dawn. Just got in."

  He looked at her over the tops of his glasses. "I sincerely doubt that."

  "Okay, I was down at the mainframe running one more debug on that new chunk of code we added last week. Won't do to have our software get temperamental this morning."

  "Please, God, no," he said, clasping his hands before him and glancing at the ceiling. They both knew a system crash would be a disaster. "But he's been waiting for you. I managed to kill some time with chitchat and the nondisclosure forms, but I ran out of gas."

  "Well, we don't want to appear too anxious, do we. And I didn't exactly have anyone else I could send down to the mainframe, did I."

  "Touche," he said. "Maybe if we impress the Bruchmeyer man, we'll be able to hire our own propeller head to attend to the programming. Give you a break."

  "Wouldn't that be nice."

  "Speaking of nice," he said, touching her arm, "please be patient with this man, Julie."

  She feigned shock. "Moi? You're insinuating that I could be anything less than patient?"

  "Well, you do have a tendency to be abrupt with people who don't catch on right away. Just remember, no one else in the world is doing what we're doing, so it takes time even for knowledgeable people to catch on. This man may not be... well, knowledgeable."

  "But he's got deep pockets."

  "Right. Very deep." He gave her a shy smile and dropped into a Yiddish dialect. "So a little charm vouldn't hoit."

  "Gotcha. I'll send Cindy out to Victoria's Secret for a see-through peignoir—"

  "You know what I mean, Julie."

  "Yeah, I know."

  She straightened his tie. She liked Dr. Siegal. A lot. Not only was he a brilliant theorist and a great boss, he was a decent human being. Too bad he was thirty years older. All the good ones were either too old or too married.

  He'd practically adopted her when he learned that she had no family here in the States. Sometimes he was more father than boss, and she had to remind herself every so often that he was director of this department.

  "Are we ready?" she said.

  He took a deep breath. "Ready if you are."

  "All right. Showtime."

  Julie slipped past him and stepped up to the door. MEMORY MAPPING was stenciled on the frosted glass. She grabbed the knob, pulled, and stepped inside.

  2

  Julie flipped the helmet's goggles over Mr. Henderson's eyes and adjusted the black rubber seals around his orbits.

  "Comfortable?"

  He nodded. "As comfortable as can be expected."

  An honest answer, she guessed. Henderson looked like an overgrown kid at the mall ready to play VR Troopers. The helmet was heavy and clunky. The user's neck would begin to ache after twenty or thirty minutes. A research tool, with no attempt to pretty it up for commercial use. The wire-riddled metal helmet was stereoscopic and stereophonic, supporting 3-D binocular goggles with a separate monitor for each eye, and a pair of deep-range headphones.

  And the gear didn't fit Mr. Henderson's head too well. He was tall and gaunt, with an elongated skull that wasn't made for headwear—especially this headwear. But somehow they'd got it on him.

  Great, she thought. I say send me someone so I can demon
strate the equipment, and they send Lurch from the Addams Family.

  But he seemed knowledgeable about her research—apparently he'd read all the articles she'd sent—and genuinely interested. She appreciated that. And he was bright. That made it easier. She sensed that if she brought off this demonstration they had a good chance of getting a meaningful grant.

  If the system didn't crash.

  And as soon as the first check cleared she wanted to find a larger space for the lab. This place had a comfortable occupancy limit of three. Five people plus an extra console were crammed in here now. She wanted more space, more staff, a hot new Silicon Graphics computer just for image processing. ... She was dreaming.

  Money—it had become a constant chase. With funding to the National Science Foundation being cut again, the project's primary source of federal grants was iffy for next year. And NYU was cutting its contribution by a third. The whole project was in danger of collapse. Desperate, they'd gone to the private sector. So hard to get pure research dollars out of bottom-line-obsessed bean counters. Everybody found the memoryscape fascinating, but how much would it return on the dollar?

  Couldn't they see? This project was opening up the seat of consciousness, of personality. It was going to change the way the world looked at the mind.

  But not without many more trials and lots more time to tweak the software. And that took money.

  She glanced around. Good thing she wasn't claustrophobic. Dr. S. stood near the door, arms folded across his chest, looking anxious. The subject, Lorraine Deering, one of their regular volunteers, lay on the bed with her head encased in a smaller, tighter-fitting helmet lined with scalp electrodes and pickups; she snored softly in diazepam-induced sleep. Teresa Gomez, the nurse anesthetist, sat between the bed and Julie's recliner.