Piers Anthony - Total Recall

He peered at them, surprised. No, they really were garden-variety candy: Mars bars. Someone must have had a warped sense of humor. Still, they did remind him that he was hungry. Were they safe to eat?

There was a pair of strange galoshes. Huh?

He delved again, and came up with a combination wristwatch and numerical pad. He examined the little instrument, touching one of its buttons.

Suddenly he was startled by the appearance of a dangerous-looking man. The man was staring at him from the shadows about thirty feet away.

There was no time to think. Quaid drew his gun and fired. The man simultaneously aimed and shot at Quaid.

Who was going to drop? Quaid felt no injury, but that could be deceptive. A man could be severely injured and never feel it until he had dealt with the one who had given it to him. He couldn’t examine himself until he knew what the other was going to do.

The other man seemed to have the same idea. Guns extended, they held each other in check.

Quaid took a step forward. So did the man, stepping into the light. He wore a crude floppy turban on his head.

Quaid was astonished. The man was himself! Or rather, a mirror-image hologram, of extremely high fidelity.

He walked toward the hologram, which of course matched him step for step. Quaid raised an arm; the holo raised an arm. Quaid made a sudden movement, as if trying to catch the other off-guard, the way they did in the old joke routines. The holo wasn’t fooled.

The watch! He had touched a button, and the image had appeared. He touched it again. The holo-man disappeared with a bzzzt.

This could be a nice device! If Richter came gunning for him… yes. He strapped the watch onto his wrist, careful not to touch the button again.

Helm drove slowly through the abandoned industrial district. The two of them were directing searchlights onto the buildings from the roof of the car. So far, all they had spied was rain-soaked desolation.

Richter spoke into his radio. “Any sign of him?”

There were four agents in two cars on other streets, paralleling Richter’s car. “I heard a gunshot at the old Toyota plant,” one reported on the radio.

Ha! “Meet me at the loading dock,” Richter said. It was an odds-on bet that was their quarry. Maybe he had shot a rat for food, or one of the starving hounds that roamed the region.

Quaid shooed away a rat that was trying to get to his Mars bars. That was a good sign, actually; the rats were canny, and wouldn’t go for poisoned food.

There was one more item in the satchel. He brought it out: a miniature videodisc player/TV set. There was a disc in it, which meant there might be a recording for him. That was what he needed most: information. He set down the player so that its screen faced him, and turned it on.

His own face, minus the turban, appeared in close-up. It addressed the camera. “Hello, stranger. This is Hauser. If things have gone wrong, I’m talking to myself—and you’ve got a wet towel wrapped around your head.”

Quaid jumped, touching the turban.

Hauser laughed heartily. He had an air of complete self-confidence. Well, it was nice to know that someone thought he knew what he was doing. Quaid tore open a Mars bar and ate it while he listened.

“Whatever your name is, get ready for a big surprise,” Hauser continued, becoming serious. “You’re not you. You’re me.”

Quaid chomped on his bar. “No shit,” he said staring at Hauser’s face.

Richter’s car converged with the other cars at the gates of a huge abandoned factory, topped by a decaying “toyota” sign. Richter checked the tracking device, which registered a pale glow. “Bingo!”

Inside, Quaid continued watching the little screen with rapt attention. He was finally getting somewhere!

“All my life I worked for the Mars Intelligence branch of the Agency. In other words, I did Cohaagen’s dirty work. Then a few weeks ago I met somebody—a woman. And I learned a few things. Like I’ve been playing for the wrong team.” Hauser sighed and looked guilty. “All I can do now is try to make up for it.”

Quaid threw a piece of his candy bar to a persistent rat. It was foolish, but he felt some sympathy for any creature who had to hide out in a place like this, hated and hunted by man. The rat picked up the morsel and scurried away.

Hauser tapped on his head. “There’s enough shit in here to fuck Cohaagen good—and that’s what I’m planning to do. Unfortunately, if you’re listening to this, he got to me first. And here comes the hard part, old buddy: now it’s all up to you.”

Quaid chewed, not so sure he liked this idea. If his image on the screen knew what he had been through so far, and thought that was the easy part…

“Sorry to drag you into it, but you’re the only one I can trust,” Hauser said apologetically.

Richter sprang up a set of stairs, leading Helm and four agents inside the building, out of the rain. This time there would be no subway passages, no elevators or trains for the quarry to use for escape. This time they would nail him. Richter wanted to hear the bastard scream before he died.

Two rats came back, looking for handouts. News traveled fast, in this rat race! Quaid grinned briefly. What the hell! He tossed each of them a chunk of candy. Now if he could only get rid of the human rats who were after him this readily…

“First things first,” Hauser said on the screen. “Let’s get rid of the bug in your head.” He tapped his head right between the eyes. “Take the thingy in the plastic bag—” He held up the bag, exactly like the one Quaid had. “And stick it up your nose.”

Up his nose? What joy! But probably better than a bullet in the head, which was what that bug would summon.

He opened the plastic bag and removed the surgical instrument. It looked like the metallic tentacle of an alien.

He pressed the plunger. Out came an inner tentacle with a tiny grasping claw. He thought of a snake striking from a hole in the wall, catching something and dragging it back into the wall. Up his nose?

“Don’t worry, it’s self-guiding,” Hauser said reassuringly. “Just shove real hard—a ll the way up to your maxillary sinus.”

Quaid remembered an ancient joke: “ When my dog misbehaves, I give him a steak.” “But surely he likes steak!” “Not up his nose, he doesn’t!” That dog wouldn’t like this torture instrument up his nose either. But Quaid had a steak, er, stake in it: his life.

It had to be done. Gingerly, he stuck the instrument up his nose and started to push. He grimaced with the pain. He could handle regular pain, as of clobbering his fist into a wall, but there was something peculiarly discomfiting about an intrusion deep in the nose. It wasn’t just the snot; it got perilously close to the brain, up in there. He pictured one of those rotary drain cleaners, worming into the pipe, set to chew up any obstruction. But the obstruction here wasn’t a jammed turd, it was his nasal tissue!

“And be careful,” Hauser said from the screen. “It’s my head too.”

No shit! Quaid warily sat down and continued the procedure. The metal snake was indeed self-guiding; it seemed to know where it was going. All it needed was thrust. Damn, he hated this!

Richter and his men fanned out inside the cavernous factory, commencing the search. They used small but powerful flashlights. They were quiet, but rats and pigeons fled from their path. Richter hoped that wouldn’t give the quarry warning; he wanted to catch the man by surprise. For one thing, that might save some lives. He had to give that to him: eight agents taken out in one day, by a man who literally didn’t know who he was. It spoke well for Agency training! Too bad they couldn’t afford to train them all that way!