Филип Керр - The Second Angel

Gates remained motionless on the ground, still wrapped inside the body bag. If not for the fact that it and his space suit were intact, Dallas might have suspected that he had already succumbed to the molecular disassembler. Instead Gates had clearly suffered some kind of hypothermic reaction which made it imperative that Dallas, who was himself chilled to the bone, get him warmed up as soon as possible. Dallas switched on the heaters in both their suits, filling them with hot air. Then he dragged Gates into the airlock and repressurized the chamber before opening the hatch that led into the R&R area.

Once Gates was out of the body bag, Dallas was able to see his life-support computer and read off the man’s vital signs. These were not encouraging: Gates’s core body temperature was down to only eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit — much colder than Dallas — while the heart rate was twenty per minute and the breathing rate just one every fifteen seconds. Perhaps having the virus had made him extra sensitive to the extreme cold. After all, body temperature had everything to do with surface blood flow and vasodilation. The only plausible explanation for what had happened to Gates, but not to Dallas, was that having P2 resulted in a quicker maximal vasodilation and increased cutaneous blood flow.

Feeling a little warmer now, Dallas took off his own helmet but decided not to remove Gates’s, so as to help hot air circulate inside the man’s self-contained environment. Searching the frost-covered plastic shielding on the other man’s face he found no indication of life and, had it not been for the vital signs displayed on Gates’s life-support computer, he might have assumed his friend was dead. It was clear that he was looking at a case of metabolic icebox.

What Dallas really couldn’t understand was why Prevezer hadn’t simply ended the simulation by now. Here was Gates, only just alive, with a hardly discernible heart rate and a core body temperature that ought to have told Prevezer something had gone badly wrong, and yet still the simulation continued. Dallas didn’t think it was possible for Gates to die in the simulation, but he hardly felt he could neglect his condition on the assumption that at any minute they would find themselves switched back into the Galileo Hotel and the real world. He had no alternative but to keep Gates warm and wait for his vital signs to improve.

Dallas stood up, stretched out a painful cramp in his leg, and suddenly found he badly wanted to pee. He recognized this was a sign of cold diuresis: vasoconstriction created a greater volume of pressure in the bloodstream, resulting in his kidneys pulling off excess fluid to reduce the pressure. A full bladder was another opportunity for his body to lose heat, so urinating would serve to help him get warm again. There was no time to find a washroom. Fumbling with numb fingers to open the codpiece on his space suit, he stumbled toward a corner of the R&R area to relieve himself. Besides, in the simulation, he didn’t much care how he left the R&R area, especially as he expected the simulation to end at any moment. But when he’d finished urinating and found it still remained in progress, he quickly checked on Gates and then went to find the galley, intent on making them both a hot drink.

‘You know, if you fire that thing,’ Prevezer said carefully, ‘your bullet will go straight through a human body and then shatter the window. We’ll all be killed when the room depressurizes.’

‘You let me worry about the gun,’ insisted Rimmer. ‘You just concentrate on doing what I tell you, friend. Besides...’ He collected a small bust of Galileo off the suite’s writing desk and launched it at the window. It bounced off the glass, ricocheted back into the room, and was neatly caught by Simou. Rimmer smiled and added redundantly, ‘Don’t you know anything? It’s armor-plated. After all, you never can tell when a meteorite’s going to give you a cold call from deep space. I thought everyone knew that. Or maybe you just haven’t stayed here before.’ He waved the gun at the bust in Simou’s hands. ‘I wouldn’t get any ideas with that thing, if I were you. Ronica will tell you that I’m the gregarious type. I like killing new people.’

‘Do exactly what he says, Sim,’ Ronica advised him.

Simou placed the bust slowly on the marble floor. Rimmer nodded his approval and then looked at the faces of the other two men in the room — Cavor and Prevezer — sizing them up for any resistance. Cavor understood this and felt certain that Rimmer would underestimate him. In which case he might stand a chance of disarming Rimmer.

‘Ronica and I, we’ve met before,’ Rimmer told the three of them. ‘You gentlemen should be careful of her. She’s the treacherous type. Aren’t you, Roni? You carrying a gun, sweetheart?’

‘Not this time, Rimmer.’

‘Better let me see those panties — make sure.’ Rimmer jerked the gun at the ceiling. ‘So lift that pretty dress you’re wearing and show me there’s nothing more lethal down there than what the Lord gave you to have dominion over men.’

Ronica knew better than to argue with Rimmer. She took hold of the hem of her dress, and lifted it as ordered.

‘Mmm,’ said Rimmer. ‘You’re wearing my favorite kind of underwear. None.’ He shrugged. ‘Looks like you were stripped for action, Roni. I guess this is a love hotel.’

Ronica sneered. ‘Satisfied?’

‘I’ll get to you in a while. We’ve got some unfinished business, you and I.’

Ronica smoothed her dress down over her thighs.

Rimmer turned toward Prevezer. ‘I’ll take a wild guess here. Dallas and the big guy are taking a trip in virtual reality and you’re the tour guide, right?’

‘I prefer the term “Simulated World” myself,’ said Prevezer.

‘Oh, you do, huh?’ Rimmer waved the gun at the others. ‘Okay, apart from the man who just expressed a preference, I want everyone else belly-down on the floor with your hands on the back of your neck.’

Cavor, Ronica, and Simou knelt and then prostrated themselves on the floor as ordered. Cavor recognized that there was little chance of any of them tackling Rimmer while they were on the floor. Clearly, Rimmer knew what he was doing.

‘Shall I tell you what I think is going on here?’ Rimmer wagged his finger thoughtfully. ‘I think that Dallas and friend are carrying out a little experiment. I think they’re using virtual reality’ — he smiled at Prevezer as if challenging the other man to contradict him — ‘to test the integrity of a plan you’re all intending to carry out for real. Now this part is just a guess. But I’d say you and he are planning to rob the First National Blood Bank. Am I right?’

Prevezer said nothing. Rimmer put the gun against his head and repeated the question.

‘Am I right?’

Prevezer nodded. ‘You’re right.’

Rimmer sniffed. ‘Reality, huh? The more we try to get a hold on it, render it, depict it, the more it eludes us. Explain how your setup works.’

While Prevezer told him how the simulation operated, Rimmer stared through the mesh-screen sphere that enveloped Dallas’s head. With eyes closed and his face entirely immobile, Dallas looked quite peaceful, almost as if he was asleep. There was just the odd flurry of rapid eye movement to indicate some activity inside the brain.

When he had been told all he needed to know, Rimmer bit his lip excitedly. Dallas looked like he was merely dreaming. But perhaps a nightmare was what was required.

‘How real is it for them, in the simulation?’

‘Indistinguishable from the real world,’ admitted Prevezer, professional pride getting the better of his tongue. ‘They’re aware that it’s a simulation, but all their senses inform them that it’s very real. They can experience all normal physiological thresholds.’