False Memory

“They’re both the real you,” she said. “And that’s okay.”

Hearing her say that it was okay actually made it okay in his mind. Although she didn’t know it, and although he would never be able to quite put his feelings into words that she would understand, Martie was the only touchstone by which Dusty measured his value as a human being.

Later, when he was near sleep, she said, “There’s got to be a way out. Just… shift perspective.”

Maybe she was right. A way out. But he couldn’t find it either in the waking world or in dreams.

72

In the blue morning, flying out of Albuquerque with neither a toy fire truck nor a handgun, stiff and sore from the previous day’s exertions, Martie felt tired and old. While Dusty read Learn to Love Yourself to better understand their enemy, Martie pressed her forehead to the window and gazed down at the snow-dusted city as it rapidly disappeared below them. The whole world had grown so strange that she might as well have been flying out of Istanbul or another exotic capital.

Slightly less than seventy-two hours ago, she’d taken Valet for his morning walk, and her shadow had briefly frightened her. After the odd moment passed, she’d been amused. Her dearest friend had still been alive. She had not yet been to Santa Fe. Back then, she believed that life had a mysterious design, and she saw reassuring patterns in the events of her days. She still believed in the existence of design, though the patterns she saw now were different from those she’d seen before, different and troublingly more complex.

She had expected to suffer terrible nightmares — and not from two cans of beer and crummy cheese sandwiches. But her sleep hadn’t been disturbed.

Smilin’ Bob had not come to her in dreams, either, nor in those moments during the night when, awake, she had searched the shadows of the motel room for the distinctive shape of his helmet and the faintly luminescent stripes on his turnout coat.

Martie had badly wanted to see him in dreams or otherwise. She felt abandoned, as if she no longer deserved his guardianship.

With California coming and with all that waited there, she needed both the men in her life, Dusty and Smilin’ Bob, if she were to have hope.

The doctor rarely saw patients other than on the first four days of the week. Only Martie and Dusty Rhodes were on his schedule this Friday, and they were not going to be able to keep their appointment.

“You better be careful,” he told his reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Pretty soon, you’re not going to have any practice at all if you keep killing off your patients.”

Having sailed through the crises of the past two days with his tail unbobbed and both horns intact — a little metaphysical humor, there — he was in a splendid mood. Moreover, he had thought of a way to revive the game that had seemed hopelessly unplayable last night, and he had arrived at a lovely use for the fragrant contents of the blue bag.

He dressed in another fine Zegna suit: a black, sartorially cut number with the very latest lapel style and a two-button jacket. He cut such a dashing figure in the three-panel dressing mirror in his walk-in closet that he considered setting up the video camera to record how terrific he had looked on this historic day.

Unfortunately, time was of the essence, just as it had been the previous night. He had promised the Keanuphobe that he would be in the office all day, awaiting her decision as to whether or not she would join the rebellion against the malevolent computer. He must not disappoint the nouveau-riche nutcake.

For the second day in a row, he decided to carry a gun. The threat seemed to have been reduced, with so many potential enemies dead, but these were dangerous times.

Although the Taurus PT-111 Millennium was not registered — having been provided to him, as were all his weapons, by the good folks at the institute — he couldn’t use it again. Now that it could be linked to the murders of two men, it was a hot piece; it would have to be broken down and disposed of with maximum discretion.

From his gun safe, concealed behind bookshelves in the master-suite sitting room, he selected a.380 Beretta model 85F, an elegant twenty-two-ounce pistol with an eight-round magazine. This, too, was an unregistered handgun with no traceable history.

He packed a compartmentalized, hand-tooled Mark Cross briefcase with the blue bag, the Green Acres bag, and the tape recorder that he used for dictation. While he waited for the Keanuphobe to call, he would do some game planning and compose a chapter of Fear Not for l Am with You.

In his study, he checked his E-mail and was surprised to find that he had still not received a confirmation of the double hit in New Mexico. Puzzled but not worried, he composed a short encrypted query and shot it off to the institute.

He drove his antique Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud.

The car inspired several haiku during the short trip to the office.