Total Recall

CHAPTER 7 Problem

McClane was interviewing another prospective client, a lonely middle-aged woman. These were fairly common customers; women seemed to have more suppressed dreams than men, and to be more depressive. They weren’t necessarily poor, either, just tired of being stuck at home while their husbands got all the action. What he offered was ideal for them.

“So you see, Mrs. Killdeer, we really can remember it for you wholesale. This will be the best experience you ever had!”

“But there won’t be any souvenirs,” she complained.

“Not true,” McClane said earnestly. “For just a few credits more, we supply postcards, photographs of you at the sights, letters from the handsome men you met—”

The videophone rang, interrupting him. Damn! He’d told them not to do that when he was closing a deal. He activated the ’phone and Dr. Lull appeared on the screen.

“Bob?” she asked. Her voice was tense. “You better get down here.”

McClane rolled his eyes in the full view of Mrs. Killdeer, as if in league with the customer against the company. It was hardly an exaggeration; good sales were not all that common, and he hated to have his clincher speech messed up. “I’m with a very important client.”

“Looks like another schizoid embolism,” Dr. Lull said.

McClane was shocked. Worse, so was Mrs. Killdeer. She understood the reference! This was all too likely to cost him two clients: Quaid and Killdeer. What an awful break!

He stood and attempted a reassuring smile. “I’ll be right back.”

But he very much feared she would not be there when he returned. Damn, damn, damn!

He strode out of the sales office and down the hall to the rear memory studio. The fools, to interrupt him with an announcement like that, in the hearing of a client! He was going to kick some ass! Did Renata Lull think she could pull a stunt like this and—

But as he entered the studio he pulled up short, his ire forgotten. He stood appalled at what was happening.

The client, Douglas Quaid, had gone crazy. He was shouting and thrashing about in the chair, struggling violently to break the straps that held him down. He was a powerful man—just how powerful McClane hadn’t properly appreciated before—and the IV connection was in danger of being separated. Indeed, the whole chair was rocking. What had happened? An adverse reaction to the sedative?

Quaid was like a different person. He wasn’t crazed so much as enraged. His eyes were flinty, and his voice was cold and menacing. “You’re dead meat, all of you!” he shouted with perfect clarity. “You blew my cover!”

Dr. Lull and Ernie were cowering against the far wall, trying to keep a safe distance from the struggling man. But McClane had had more experience with cases gone bad; they were more common than he allowed the records to show. Every client was an individual, with different synapses and reactions; there were bound to be some mismatches.

“What the fuck is going on here?” McClane demanded, aggravated. “You can’t install a simple goddamn double implant?!” Politeness was for prospective clients, not for errant employees.

“It’s not my fault,” Dr. Lull protested. “We hit a memory cap.”

“Untie me, you assholes!” Quaid roared. “They’ll be here any minute! They’ll kill you all!”

Huh? “What’s he talking about?” McClane snapped.

“Stop this operation now!” Quaid yelled.

How could the guy be talking so clearly? A reaction-induced berserker might scream and froth at the mouth, but his words would be mostly blasphemy and gibberish. Quaid sounded alarmingly coherent. “Mr. Quaid, please calm down,” McClane said, trying to be soothing. Maybe they could change the mix, get him sedated all the way down, then explore the problem. A memory cap? Who would have expected that!

“I’m not Quaid!”

Multiple personality? That just might account for this, and react like a memory cap, because of the memory taken by the alternate personalities. But Lull should have caught that! McClane nervously walked closer to examine Quaid’s eyes.

“You’re having a reaction to the implant,” he said, though he was by no means sure of that. Anything to get this thing muscled down so they could work their way out of it! “But in a few minutes—”

Quaid strained again at his bonds. Suddenly the strap holding his right arm snapped. That arm shot up and grabbed McClane by the throat. What devastating power the man had!

“Untie me.” Quaid’s words were softly spoken now, but the quiet menace was all too apparent.

McClane, choking, tried to pry Quaid’s hand from his neck. But even his two hands couldn’t loosen the iron grip. Construction workers had strong arms; he had known that. Why hadn’t he told them to double the straps? He was going to faint before he could even talk!

Ernie came out of his stasis. He rushed over and tried to wrestle Quaid’s arm down, using his full body weight. He might as well have pushed against the branch of an oak tree. McClane felt his consciousness wavering as he struggled unsuccessfully to breathe.

Dr. Lull hastily readied a syringe gun and frantically jabbed it into Quaid’s thigh. She fired dose after dose of narkidrine, until the man finally released his grip and passed out.

McClane fell to the floor, gagging, the studio and the world reeling. Ernie clung to him, managing to slow his fall.

Dr. Lull came over to help. “Are you all right?” she asked anxiously, putting a hand down to check his forehead.

McClane shoved her hand away and gasped for breath. What a mess this was!

“Listen to me!” Dr. Lull said urgently. “He’s been going on and on about Mars.” Now it was evident that she was genuinely frightened. “He’s really been there!”

The world slowly ground down and fell into its proper place, but McClane still felt the pressure of those terrible fingers against his throat. He was bruised, for sure, but lucky it was no worse. What a monster! “Use your fucking head, you dumb bitch!” he rasped. “He’s acting out the secret agent role from his Ego Trip! You should have strapped him securely enough to hold him, so that when he thought—”

“That’s not possible,” Lull said coolly. She didn’t like strong language, but this time her carelessness had invited disaster.

“Why not?” he inquired condescendingly. She wasn’t going to get away with any pseudo-medical jargon to talk her way out of this foul-up!

“We haven’t implanted it yet.”

McClane stared at her, his oncoming retort abruptly stifled. “Oh, shit…” Suddenly he was terrified. No implant? And the man had been talking about an actual Mars experience? This was no longer weird, it was dangerous!

“I’ve been trying to tell you,” Dr. Lull said significantly. “Somebody erased his memory. The man really has been to Mars! And that’s not all—”

“Somebody?” Ernie cried hysterically: “We’re talking the fucking Agency!”

“Shut up!” Dr. Lull slapped him. The stinging blow stunned them all into silence.

McClane tried to think. But how could he think about the unthinkable? The mess they had walked into made a schizoid embolism look like an eyestrain headache. Because it looked like Ernie was right: the memory cap must have been implanted by the Agency. No one else had the technology. And everyone, from heads of state to the lowliest rockrats in the Martian mines, knew that interfering with the Agency’s plans could have serious, not to mention fatal, results. He didn’t have to be an Einstein to figure out that blowing an operative’s cover, even by accident, would qualify as major interference.

The Agency was a semisecret government outfit. Its network was spread throughout Earth and the Martian colony and it was bound by no civilized law. It achieved its goals by any means necessary, although what those goals were and who set them, no one knew for sure. It did indeed have agents like Quaid: brute killers who could be stopped only by others of their kind. The fact that this exposure of one of their agents was unintentional would count for nothing. The three of them could literally be dead meat, exactly as Quaid had threatened. Why the hell had he walked into Rekall?

McClane was no killer. But now, horribly, his life was on the line. They could kill Quaid simply by increasing the sedative to lethal level. They could do it right now. But could they get away with it? What would they do with the body? The three of them could hardly move it, let alone get it safely out of here unobserved. Was it bugged? He greatly feared it was—which meant that the Agency would be in motion the moment Quaid’s life-blip dropped from somebody’s monitor screen. Could they drug him down to near-death, until they got him to somewhere that he couldn’t be found? There was nowhere he couldn’t be found, if they were tuning in on a bug! They would trace his route, and nail Rekall without asking questions. No answer there.

Then it came to him. They didn’t have to kill him or hide him! All they had to do was hide themselves, hide Rekall, Inc., from Quaid and the Agency. Divert him from here, erase all memory of his visit here, just as they would have done for the regular treatment. But with a difference—

“Okay, this is what we’re gonna do,” he said. “Renata, cover up any memory he has of us or Rekall.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she said nervously. “It’s getting messy in there.”

McClane turned to the frightened youth. “Ernie, dump him in a cab. Around the corner. Get Tiffany to help you.”

Ernie nodded. He would walk Quaid to the cab and give the cabbie Quaid’s home address. It would be hard to track back to the actual point of pickup, and if Dr. Lull did her work well, no one would ever try. For certain, the Agency hadn’t sent Quaid here; he had done it on his own, because of some leakage in their conditioning shield. He had had Mars on his mind—no wonder! If they got him clear of Rekall, there should be no repercussions. If nothing went wrong.

If nothing went wrong. There was the key. But Lull knew that her life as well as his was on the line here; she would do the job right. She did know her trade, as he knew his.

“I’ll destroy his file and refund his money,” McClane said, even as his thoughts raced through the details. He got back to his feet and paced the limited floor space. “And if anybody comes asking… we’ve never heard of Douglas Quaid.”

They all looked at Quaid, sprawled unconscious in the chair. McClane sincerely hoped he never saw the man again.

He returned to the front office. Sure enough, Mrs. Killdeer was gone. He no longer begrudged the lost sale; in fact, he was relieved. He had more urgent business to do at the moment. He had to clean up those records, and notify everyone who had seen Quaid that they hadn’t, beginning with the receptionist. Actually, he could use her in back, because they couldn’t process Quaid properly while he was all the way under, and he might recover a bit too far while they made the delicate adjustments. Tiffany was excellent at pacifying people, especially males; she could help keep the man quiet. Also, that refund—maybe he could null the payment before it was permanently recorded in the main computer system, so that there would never have been any payment. That would be much better. No payment, no refund—nothing happened.

If this worked, life would continue much as before. If it didn’t, they might all be dead before they realized it. McClane knew he wasn’t going to sleep well tonight, or any night this week.