Total Recall

CHAPTER 26 Decision

The streets of Venusville were deserted. The people there had somehow managed to pull themselves back to their wretched hovels to die. In The Last Resort, a small cannister of air was passed from hand to hand. Tony sat on the floor, back-to-back with the bartender, cradling Thumbelina’s head in his lap. There was nothing they could do but wait for the end.

In the Pyramid Mine, Richter and sixteen soldiers stood on a platform and looked down. Richter shone a powerful light around the edges of the hole bored by Quaid’s mole. He shone the light around the area and saw the truss leading from the stone wall to the next lower platform.

He concentrated, spying something. Like two ants, Quaid and Melina could be seen walking along a truss.

Richter smiled. This time the quarry wouldn’t get away. As for the woman—he knew what he would do with her. Quaid was responsible for Lori’s death, so Richter would repay him in kind. An eye for an eye.

But the rebel slut wouldn’t die as cleanly, as quickly, as Lori had. Oh, no. And Richter would make sure that Quaid watched every minute of what happened before he killed her. Before he was done, Richter would make Quaid beg for her death.

He piled into the elevator with the soldiers.

Quaid and Melina climbed with difficulty from the truss onto the platform. There was an elevator built into the center, with its cables stretching up into the gloom. This struck him as odd, because the No’ui normally didn’t use such devices. But of course they had made this for human beings. The two of them wandered through the forest of columns, still awed. These were virtual metal sequoias with corroding bark.

“The whole thing is a gigantic nuclear reactor,” Quaid repeated. “Turbinium rods slide out of these sheaths and drop into holes in the glacier below. That starts a chain reaction. Radiation splits the ice into oxygen and hydrogen. The gas goes up, gets trapped by gravity…”

“And Mars has an atmosphere,” Melina finished.

“Not yet. That’s just water vapor: hydrogen and oxygen. We couldn’t breathe that. The hydrogen is used for nuclear fusion, merging to form helium, like the old-time hydrogen bomb. That provides the energy for the larger process. The hydrazoic acid stashed below the glacier is broken into its components, and its nitrogen joined with the oxygen from the water to make the air we can breathe. The mixture will be a bit oxygen-rich, but that’s to compensate for the reduced pressure at the outset. It will be adjusted when the atmosphere is complete. The whole thing will happen fast—much faster than any process we understand could do it.” He was amazed at how much he knew, as the rest of the No’ui information in his mind surfaced. “But that’s still only one stage. Mars is cold, so it needs to be heated so that plants can grow and people can live on the surface without space suits, just as they do on Earth. There are heat conductors spreading out all through the—”

He broke off, hearing something. The elevator was stopping. There were sounds of doors opening and boots walking on metal grating. They saw flashlight beams in the distance.

Quaid pulled Melina behind a column, but as they brushed against it, a scab of corroded metal crashed to the platform floor. Suddenly all the flashlight beams were pointed in their direction. “Time for Plan B,” Quaid murmured.

“Plan what?”

“You’ll see.”

As the soldiers advanced, they saw Quaid running and hiding behind a column, Richter and the guards rushed over, surrounded the column, and opened fire as they moved around it.

Amazingly, Quaid was not there. But four soldiers were shot and killed!

Richter scowled, uncertain how this fluke had occurred. “Spread out.”

They searched the area. A soldier closed in on Quaid, not yet seeing him.

Quaid fiddled with his watch, and a hologram became visible nearby. Melina’s eyes widened appreciatively. So that was how he had done it! She hadn’t caught it the first time. He had a holo projector, oriented on the user. Clever ruse!

The soldier spied the hologram. The soldier shot at it, charging in to be sure of his man.

The real Quaid stepped behind the soldier and broke his neck. Hauser might not have been a great person, most of his life, but he had certainly known how to fight; his reflexes made easy what Quaid might have balked at.

Richter’s search continued. Quaid popped out from behind another column.

Several soldiers spied the figure, this time. They surrounded it. They shot through it. Their bullets scored on each other. Four more bit the dust.

“Cease fire!” Richter cried. “It’s a hologram! Don’t be fooled!”

But he was too late for the nine soldiers already dead.

Quaid threw the holo-watch to Melina.

Two soldiers in different places saw Melina wander near them. They both opened fire on her hologram—and shot each other.

Three soldiers sneaked up on Quaid. They had him dead to rights. He smiled. “You think you found me, don’t you?”

But he wasn’t looking at them, but to the side. That was weird. They realized that it must be a hologram. They glanced around for the real Quaid.

But this was the real Quaid. He turned straight at them and gunned them down. “You did,” he said.

Two soldiers advanced, game to the end. Melina stepped in front of them. They shot through her. Jagged craters appeared in their chests from bullets the real Melina put in their backs.

The real Quaid met the real Melina, touching hands just to make sure. They ran cautiously from column to column toward the elevator. It was open and empty. They dashed inside.

Quaid swung the doors closed. The elevator rose at an amazing speed. They held each other, relieved.

“I didn’t know they’d gotten any of this alien system working,” he remarked. “Must be some residual power, or maybe they ran a line in. Cohaagen must have been really curious about this artifact.”

“Shut up and kiss me,” she said, lifting her face.

Suddenly her eyes widened, and she went stiff. What was the matter?

Then he heard a faint noise above them, and looked up himself. One of the ceiling panels was sliding open a few inches. Richter was on the roof! The barrel of his gun was poking through the slot. It fired. The bullet spanged around the interior, missing them.

Quaid shoved Melina out of the way somewhat less romantically than he might have wished and whipped up his gun. He and Melina returned fire, but their bullets ricocheted back at them. They would take themselves out if they continued!

Richter had not depended on his soldiers. He had let them be a diversionary force while he set up his clever little ambush, knowing that Quaid would survive and come here. Richter was protected, while the two of them were not. Richter was getting smarter.

Quaid and Melina moved erratically around the cabin, trying not to be sitting ducks. But it wasn’t enough. They remained fish in a barrel. Richter kept shooting, and winged Quaid in the shoulder.

This was no good! Quaid swung the door open. He and Melina climbed out and scaled opposite sides of the elevator. Richter shot down at them, and they shot back. Now they were outside, and Richter was no longer protected by the invulnerable metal of the elevator. He had to keep his body out of the line of fire.

Melina dodged a bullet, lost her balance, dropped her gun, and saved herself only by holding on with both hands, her feet swinging over the void.

Richter aimed at Quaid. Quaid grabbed his arm.

In that moment, Quaid looked up. Behind Richter he saw the next platform. The elevator was speeding toward it. Anything extending outside the elevator car would be guillotined! Quaid was like dough watching the cookie-cutter come at his extremities. Richter saw it too. He grinned crookedly.

Quaid tried to climb up on top with Richter, but Richter pushed him away. Quaid grabbed Richter’s other arm—and hung there. All four arms would be severed any second.

Now Richter heaved back, pulling his arms out of danger and effectively giving Quaid a helping pull onto the top of the elevator. The last thing he wanted to do was save Quaid, but he valued his own flesh. Quaid curled his feet out of danger barely ahead of the seemingly falling edge.

Melina trapezed herself into the elevator an inch ahead of the blade that sliced down her side of the car.

Cohaagen stood near the alien control room as the demolitions experts unloaded their equipment. He had hoped to get something useful from this alien contraption, but he couldn’t afford to have it start to produce air for Mars. He didn’t know who Quaid might have told his suspicion about that air, and couldn’t be sure that every last Rebel agent had been exterminated. Obviously the Rebel woman had corrupted Quaid, and she could have blabbed the secret far and wide. So he had to destroy it now, before any more pseudo-patriots got smart ideas. Monopoly was a funny thing: once it was lost, it could almost never be put back together. The specter of free air would generate an endless number of would-be revolutionaries. So it was time to put a stop to the whole thing, by eliminating the possibility. He had been foolish to delay it this long, but there had been a nuisance about preserving alien artifacts, and Earth-government officials had been pestering him. Well, after this he would give them free access to the Pyramid Mine, and they could admire the alien wreckage to their hearts’ content. One thing was certain: there would be no free air, and his power would be secure.

He peered down the elevator shaft. He saw two tiny figures fighting on top of the rising elevator. That meant that Quaid had survived Richter’s cleanup mission and was still making trouble. He had to admire Quaid’s persistence; he was drawing on the skills of Hauser, who had been matchless as an agent. Too bad the man had gone wrong. He had been much better than Richter would ever be.

But it was time for a real pro to take a hand. Cohaagen brought out a grenade and carefully placed it in the gears of the elevator. Then he jogged off to the control room.

Boom! The grenade, crushed by the gears, exploded, destroying the elevator mechanism and blasting the elevator gantry from its moorings.

Cohaagen gazed at it with satisfaction. That should take care of Quaid and Richter, who had about outlived his usefulness.

Quaid and Richter, fighting viciously, heard the explosion and felt the elevator shake. The cables whipped around dangerously. The elevator ground to a stop.

The elevator gantry swung out from its moorings, slowly, its measured pace like that of the second hand of a watch.

Richter looked up, fathoming what had happened. “Shit! He cut me off too!” he exclaimed.

“It’s so hard to find good friends in the snake pit,” Quaid said with mock sympathy.

Then the two of them hung on for dear life as the gantry levered out over the abyss like falling timber.

Quaid, despite his mockery of his enemy, was not at all sure of continued life. It looked like a long way down!

Then the gantry caught on one of the enormous trusses, forming a bridge across a small arc of the pit. They wouldn’t fall—yet.

But as the gantry caught, the shock traveled back, and the two of them were jolted off the elevator car. Both reached out desperately, grabbing hold of anything.

Quaid caught a loose elevator cable. Richter did the same. But it was no good; the cables were unattached. They were faaaaaaaalllllllling…

Quaid’s whole life did not flash before his eyes, not even all of his recent life. His only thought was of Melina, who would look out of the elevator car to see him gone, and he suffered brief regret that their relationship had to end here. Theirs—and humanity’s, when the No’ui’s nova was triggered.

Hwang! Their plunge unexpectedly snapped to a halt. The cable had snagged on something.

No—Quaid and Richter were hanging on to opposite ends of a long piece of cable, which was draped over the gantry. They were swinging wildly back and forth, serving as counterweights to each other, about twenty-five feet down. They had saved each other: another irony.

Quaid looked around for some way off. There was none; they were dangling below the gantry, and there was nothing else within reach. Quaid caught a glimpse of the open elevator door and saw part of a form, unmoving. That would be Melina, lying semiconscious in the elevator car, jolted by the same shock that had thrown them off. What could she do, even if alert and active? Quaid and Richter had to survive or fall together, on their own.

As they swung, Richter took advantage of Quaid’s distraction to maneuver himself close. He kicked Quaid in the crotch. Quaid managed to twist just enough at the last moment to take the brunt on his thigh, and his unanchored body swung away, diminishing the impact, but still it hurt.

The motion caused the cable to slip a little. Quaid was a little heavier, and he slid down, while Richter was pulled the same amount up.

“Don’t!” Quaid cried.

On the next swing, Richter was higher. He kicked Quaid in the ribs. Again Quaid tried to turn, making it a glancing blow, but again it was too solid a blow for comfort.

“Stupid—!” Quaid cried. “Listen to me!” They were swinging out of range of each other at the moment, but that was temporary. “If you kick me off, you’ll fall too!”

“Bullshit!” Richter replied. Then, swinging close, he kicked at Quaid’s head.

Once more Quaid was able only to decrease the force of the blow, not to stop it from scoring. His ears were ringing. “Think about it!” he exclaimed. “If I let go, my end of the cable will slip right over the top!”

Richter looked up, and finally realized that Quaid was right. He held back the knockout kick. He hadn’t been bright enough to see the danger, and wasn’t bright enough to see the solution either. Just as well.

Quaid grabbed Richter’s foot and quickly tied the dangling end of the man’s cable around his ankle. Richter furiously tried to kick him away. “What are you doing?”

Quaid pulled himself up his own cable and unleashed a furious barrage of punches and kicks at Richter, who was surprised to be attacked so foolishly. “Stop it!” he cried. “Stupid!” Just as Quaid had, moments before.

Quaid pummeled Richter, who fought back defensively, afraid to attack. He saw the void open below and was fazed by it. “If I fall, you fall!”

“Wrong,” Quaid said. With a mighty punch to the face, he dislodged Richter from his handhold. Tied at the feet, Richter fell headfirst. His momentum caused the cable to slide over the gantry, dropping him another twenty feet and simultaneously raising Quaid all the way to the gantry.

Quaid wrapped himself around the gantry and called to Richter, who was hanging upside down, like a swinging sandbag. “See you at the party, Richter.”

Richter tried to say something, but fear contorted his face as he realized he had been outmaneuvered.

Then Quaid let go of the cable. “Bottoms up!”

Eight more feet of line whipped through his hands, over the gantry, and Richter plummeted headfirst. His terrified scream followed him down.

Quaid hoped there was another quick way up. He still had to stop Cohaagen from destroying the reactor—and the whole human species.

Cohaagen and his crew were busy in the reactor control room. It was a stone chamber filled with complex mechanical systems and electronic consoles, just as in Quaid’s memory triggered by Kuato’s mindscan. All of the huge columns had tapered to smaller columns here. Sunlight poured in through the quartz ceiling. On one side was a stone wall with the hieroglyphic mandala.

Soldiers worked in different parts of the large room, planting explosives, running cable, and drilling holes for charges with jackhammers. The noise was excruciating.

A soldier drilled attentively. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up. It was Melina. Amazed, he froze.

Behind him, Quaid grabbed his jackhammer and drove it through his chest.

A nearby demo-man saw Quaid and came after him with his jackhammer. But this was Quaid’s weapon of choice. “Am I boring you?” he inquired as he bored through his opponent, plus two more who converged on him as he made his way to the mandala.

Cohaagen grabbed the detonator and hid.

Melina picked up a fallen soldier’s gun. She looked around.

A demo-man was sneaking up on on Quaid and was about to bore through his back. Melina shot the man in the nick of time.

Cohaagen connected wires to the detonator.

Quaid dueled with the demo-man at the mandala, churning him to a pulp. Then he threw down his jackhammer, yanked the explosives charge from a hole drilled in the mandala, and threw it far away.

He reached out to place his palm against the hieroglyphic stone palm, when Cohaagen called out.

“Sorry, Doug. I can’t let you do that.” Quaid turned to see Cohaagen holding the detonator. He signaled Quaid away from the altar. Quaid backed off.

“Once the reaction starts, it’d spread to all the turbinium in the planet,” Cohaagen said. “Mars would go into global meltdown. That’s why the builders never turned it on.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Quaid said.

“And you do?” Cohaagen’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “The great Doug Quaid, here to save the planet. Sorry to disappoint you, but in thirty seconds the great Doug Quaid will be dead. Then I’ll blow this place up and be home in time for cornflakes.”

Cohaagen sighed and shook his head sadly. He had spent so much time training Hauser, honing him into the perfect Agency machine. Together they had discussed the uses of power, of terror. Hauser had been a natural. He had also been as close to a friend as Cohaagen had ever had. He missed the man. “I didn’t want it to end this way,” he said. “I wanted Hauser back. But no. You had to be Quaid.”

“I am Quaid.”

“You’re nothing!” Cohaagen shouted, suddenly furious at the man who had taken the place of his friend. “You’re a stupid program walking around on two legs. Everything about you, I invented: your dreams, your memories, your pathetic ambitions. ‘You coulda been somebody,’ ” he mocked. “You could have been real. But instead, you chose to be a dream.” Cohaagen held the detonator with one hand, while he pulled a gun out of his jacket with the other. He raised it. “And all dreams come to an end.”

The sound of a gunshot rang through the reactor. Cohaagen fell backwards, hit in the shoulder and arm. Melina stood by the elevator, blasting away. Quaid ran to kick the gun out of Cohaagen’ s reach and saw that the man had somehow managed to keep hold of the detonator. No, Quaid thought, the man was bluffing. Cohaagen wanted to live as much as anyone. He wouldn’t be eager to set off the blast that killed him.

Cohaagen saw the doubt in his eyes. He grinned evilly. And activated the detonator.

A huge explosion shook the room, destroying almost everything except the mandala, whose charge Quaid had removed. Cohaagen had not been bluffing!

A hole had been torn in the quartz roof. A powerful suction drew everything toward the aperture. Objects and bodies twirled up in a spiral, an inverted tornado.

Cohaagen clung to a piece of the reactor. Melina lodged herself in a corner. Quaid, sucked halfway toward the hole, made a Herculean effort to crawl down against the wind to reach the mandala. It had not been destroyed, and it was the key; if it remained operative, there was still a chance! How much destruction did the reactor tolerate before it triggered its own destruct mechanism? Had the No’ui allowed for the possibility of unrelated damage, such as a meteorite striking it? Maybe it wasn’t hair-triggered. He could only hope so!

He grabbed hold of a rope made taut by the wind and pulled himself down. The dome had been holed, but as long as there was a rush of wind out the hole, there was air to breathe. When that air ran out…

Cohaagen pulled himself over and stationed himself between Quaid and the mandala. He knew that it wasn’t necessarily over.

Quaid held on with his left hand and reached for the hieroglyphic palm print with his right.

“Don’t do it!” Cohaagen screamed above the rushing roar. “You’ll kill everybody!”

Quaid hesitated. Cohaagen’s voice rang with passionate intensity. Quaid was assailed by sudden doubts. How did he know that the memories Kuato had allowed to surface were real? What if they had been implanted, too? If Cohaagen were right, the alien machine would kill everyone on Mars. And Quaid would be responsible.

Cohaagen kicked at him, still arguing. “Every man! Every woman! Every child!” He furiously bashed Quaid’s left hand with his heel. “They’ll die, Quaid! They’ll die!”

Quaid’s mind was suddenly filled with the faces of every man, woman, and child he had seen in Venusville, the listless faces of people who had been drained of every vestige of pride and self-esteem. People who had been used and discarded like so much human refuse, mercilessly, remorselessly, by the very man who was now pleading for their lives.

One face in particular stood out: the deformed face of the child Quaid had glimpsed briefly from Benny’s cab. That memory had not been implanted. It was as real as the pain in his left hand. What kind of future would that child have under the rule of a man like Cohaagen?

Quaid knew the answer. He’d seen it all around him in Venusville. Cohaagen was lying—again. Cohaagen was playing games with his mind—again. Cohaagen was trying to manipulate him just as he manipulated everyone else. Cohaagen would say anything, do anything, to hold on to his power. He was the one who would destroy every man, every woman, every child on Mars, if he was allowed to continue.

But this time Quaid would stop him.

“Bullshit!” he shouted at Cohaagen. He stretched and placed his right palm against the hieroglyphic hand.

He felt a tingle. A voice seemed to speak in his mind. Done.

An awesome low-pitched rumble shook the control room. It was starting up! The other controls must have been mere window dressing, or intended for spot adjustments. Cohaagen had destroyed them, but it might have been like breaking the knobs off a radio: it might make it hard to adjust, but the guts of it remained operative.

All the mechanical systems started to move. The ancient machinery creaked and groaned. Hundreds of rods simultaneously descended.

Cohaagen’s armhold receded into the floor. He had to let go. He was sucked up to the ceiling and out the hole.

The rods dropped out of their sheaths into the pegholes in the ice. The whole glacier, far below, started to glow. The process was starting, and operating on its own now; Quaid’s action had been enough. The chemical processes would begin, and the nuclear fusion, and would continue until all Mars had air and heat and liquid water.

Melina was sucked closer to the hole. Quaid let himself be blown over toward her and tried to hold her in place. If they could just hang on until the pressure equalized—but that seemed impossible. First it would drop, here, finishing them.

All the junk in the abyss was regurgitated. There were more bodies, rifles, pieces of moles, rocks, sand. When it was all gone, and the air pressure dropped, the two of them would die too—but Mars and mankind would be saved. At least he would die in Melina’s arms; if he had to go, that was the way he wanted to do it.

The chamber filled with a hurricane of mist. It had a strange smell, and was warm and damp.

It was the air and water vapor from the reactor! Already the process was operating to make the new atmosphere!

More refuse was disgorged. Benny. Richter, still trailing his length of cable.

Melina was pulled toward the hole. Quaid clung to her but was drawn along with her by the unremitting wind. In fact, it was stronger now, as the No’ui’s factory gained momentum. Quaid knew that most of the air was going out through other vents, all around the planet, but as long as this hole remained, it would leak out here too.

They sailed up toward the dome, still linked. Quaid stretched out and tried to block the hole, but the pressure was too strong. It doubled him over, shoving him and Melina out.

Outside the wind quickly dissipated. Quaid and Melina dropped to the side of the volcano, a few yards from Cohaagen’s body. That was a grotesque thing, its eyeballs ruptured, tongue swollen and protruding, and blood at the ears. Cohaagen had had countless people executed by depressurization for such minor things as resisting false arrest; now he had been served similarly. That was justice.

The air was drawn out of Quaid’s lungs. He and Melina gasped for breath.

Quaid squinted, trying to protect his eyeballs as long as possible. Even in this hopeless state, he was fighting for life, for just a few more seconds!

A mammoth geyser of water vapor and gas was spraying out of the dome, forming a huge white cloud. The warmth of it blasted out at them.

Quaid grasped Melina’s hands and felt her fingers squeezing his. They were dying together, knowing that Mars and mankind would live.

The mountain vibrated as the No’ui equipment intensified its operation, and wind tore out of it. The dirt was shaken from the side of Pyramid Mountain, revealing traces of an actual alien pyramid underneath. Its nature had been concealed, but now it needed to be hidden no longer.

Quaid’s and Melina’s mucous membranes started to bleed. They clung tightly to each other’s hands, knowing that this was the end.

Then the expanding cloud engulfed them. Drops of warm water splattered against their bodies, and bits of fluff sailed by. Those were the winged seeds of the special plants the No’ui had engineered, he knew, being flung out on the wind, to take root and start converting the hostile Mars soil to organic matter so that regular terrestrial plants could grow there later. It was the start of the terraforming of Mars, making of it an Earthly paradise. He was very glad he had seen this before he died.

Then he realized that he was breathing! Melina was panting beside him. They drew in more air, hungrily. They looked at each other. Was this the other side of death, and their spirits were breathing free?

The cloud moved on, but they still could breathe. They looked up.

The red Martian sky was turning blue in the region above the mountain.

The new air was spreading out, and they were close enough to receive its benefit! That was why they had suffered but not died, and now the air was thickening, and they were breathing almost normally! They were not dying after all!

They recovered some of their strength and sat up. They became aware of the chill of the air. It had burst from the mountain warm, but as it expanded it cooled. Snowflakes were falling on them. But the ground itself was warming now, as the heat of the nuclear reactor spread out, so they were merely cold, not freezing.

They noticed the snowflakes on each other’s hair. They touched them and licked them off each other’s faces.

They looked around again, awed. The sky was blue, but it was snowing more heavily now.

They clung to each other, for warmth, but they also kissed. Life was wonderful!

That thought was echoed in the shouts and cheers that rang through Venusville.

All of the domes on Mars had collapsed when the reactor kicked in. Deprived of their protection, people fell where they stood, in an agony of depressurization. The wealthy tourists writhed in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel, and the miners still at work in the great mining hub had dropped their tools and stumbled to their knees.

For the rebels, the shattered dome was almost a welcome sight. Depressurization was a horrible way to die, but it would at least put a quick end to their slow death by suffocation. In The Last Resort, Tony had just enough strength left to shake a weak fist at the sky and then—

A miracle occurred. Thumbelina stirred on the floor and then sat up. The bartender raised his head from his chest and inhaled. Tony stared at them, stunned. He took a deep breath, and then another. There was air! There shouldn’t be—the great fans hadn’t started up again—but there was! He gulped in great lungfuls and laughed out loud. There was air!

In a moment, they were all laughing. Soon they were up and dancing a jig of joy. They danced out into the street and were joined by others—men, women, and children—who joined in their crazy conga line as it wound its way around the Venusville Plaza and through the streets. There was air! The tyranny of the Cohaagen monopoly on air was broken!

It did seem like a miracle.

Quaid and Melina looked down at their feet. The snow was melting as it landed, and the ground was wet and spongy. Water was trickling over the parched soil. There would be some erosion—but already the No’ui plants were landing. They would be rooting quickly, taking hold of the dirt, anchoring it, turning it into humus. Red Mars would become green!

Melina nestled up to him. “Well, Mr. Quaid, I hope you’ve enjoyed your trip to our lovely planet.”

“ ‘Enjoy’ is not the word,” he replied somewhat gruffly. They had won the right to move on, as people and as a species, but the horrible cost remained too fresh in his mind.

“Come on. Didn’t you see the sights, kill the bad guys, and save the planet?” She smiled seductively at him. “You even got the girl of your dreams.”

She was teasing him, but her familiar words chilled him. “I had a terrible thought,” he said. “What if this really is just a dream?”

“Then kiss me quick,” she said seriously. “Before you wake up.”

Quaid cast the specter away. He took Melina in his arms and kissed her robustly. He was through with dreaming; reality was much better.