Piers Anthony - Total Recall

“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.

“What do you mean, ‘What trip?’ You went to Rekall, remember?”

Confused, Quaid tried to remember. “I did?”

“Yeah, you did,” Harry said. Quaid fell in step with him and they approached the building entrance together.

Quaid was still uncertain. Maybe he had gone there. They had discussed it briefly at work, and Harry had told him about the lobotomy accident. Then he had—or had he? He must have spent those lost hours somewhere …

“C’mon,” said Harry, “I’ll buy you a drink. You can tell me all about it.” He reached out to take Quaid’s arm, but Quaid pulled back. A drink wouldn’t help whatever was wrong with his head. All he wanted to do was go home and let Lori look after him. Maybe then he could figure out…

“Thanks, Harry, but I’m late,” he said with a touch of impatience.

“Tough shit,” Harry snapped. His face had gone grim, his voice harsh. Before Quaid knew what was happening, three large men in business suits were behind and beside him, hustling him into the building.

“Hey!” Quaid shouted. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but it scared him and he struggled to break free. Then he felt something. He glanced down. Harry was jamming a gun in his ribs.

“Relax,” Harry said evenly. Quaid stopped resisting, though his heart continued to race. The four men marched him through the lobby and into the emergency staircase that led down to the lower level parking garage.

He had to go. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that they would just as soon knock him out and toss him down the stairs, or worse. He had to recover more of his physical control if he wanted to get out of this alive. When he acted, it would have to be by surprise, and fast, and effective. So for now he kept both his body and his speech slower than it had to be. Let them think he was still doped out. It would be to his advantage in the long run.

“What’s going on, Harry?” There was no answer. Thanks to the adrenaline rush, Quaid’s head was clearing. His memory was starting to fill in now. He had gone to Rekall, and—and what? He had wanted a memory of Mars. He had talked with a man—but the memory faded.

Quaid tried again. “Are you a cop?” Still no answer. The timing of the attack meant that it had to relate to his visit to Rekall. Maybe someone didn’t want him to remember something. But he had gone there only because of his dream of Mars…

“Harry, what did I do?” he asked, both afraid and angry. This time he got an answer.

“You blabbed, Quaid!” Harry said angrily. “You blabbed!”

“Blabbed? About what?” Before he had time to decipher the riddle, the goons threw him against a wall and twisted his arms viciously behind his back.

“You shoulda listened to me, Quaid.” Harry’s voice was quiet now, but that only made it more menacing. “I was there to keep you out of trouble.”

Out of what trouble? Something to do with a memory? How could a memory hurt anyone? Or maybe it had to do with his dream. No, that was even more ridiculous. Quaid didn’t have any answers, couldn’t remember enough to even hazard a guess.

But it was obvious by now that it didn’t matter what he remembered; they were going to kill him anyway. He had thought Harry was his friend. Now he knew he’d been duped. This maneuver had been planned; it wasn’t any spur-of-the-moment thing, and Harry was evidently in charge. Which meant that, when he made his break, he’d have to take out Harry first.

“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.

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.