Piers Anthony - Total Recall

“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 theml” It seemed impossible, yet he was sure mat 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.