"You can stay with us. The guest room hasn't got too much c.r.a.p stored in it at the moment."

"Thanks, John."

As he watched them head for the nurse's station, Howard found himself pleased. They didn't have to be here. It would have been easy for them to say they hadn't heard about it, or that they had to get settled in their new lives, that they couldn't do anything anyhow. But that's what friends did-when you had trouble, they came to offer their help.

To Julio, he said, "Make sure whoever is going over Jay's life looks real close. I want the man who did this. Before I leave, after I leave, whenever."

"I hear you, John. But you'll have to stand in line behind me to have a chat with him."

12.

In the Forest Primeval Jay woke up with a headache. At least, "woke up" was the best term he could think of to describe it. It was as if he'd been dozing, only vaguely aware of his surroundings, until something brought him back to a more active mode of being.

Weird.

The scenario had changed-if indeed it was a scenario-the beach had given way to a dense northern forest with moss on all sides of some of the trees, huge primeval ferns, and pine needles scattered under the canopy of the great woods.

He'd never been here before, yet he had the strangest sense that he had made made everything-had seen the trees come into being, watching them sprout and grow into their huge adult forms, had seeded each bush, eroded the soil shapes in the ground, all over an immense time. everything-had seen the trees come into being, watching them sprout and grow into their huge adult forms, had seeded each bush, eroded the soil shapes in the ground, all over an immense time.

As if he were G.o.d Himself. G.o.d with a headache.

He stood there, zoning out, staring at the trees, each leaf a perfection of fractal form, replicating the entire tree on a small scale. He probably would have stood there all day, except the sharp stabbing pain in his head kept dragging him back to action.

Headaches weren't something you got in VR. Stim units only affected the sensory nerves. Pain from something inside of his head shouldn't be possible. And even if it had been, not something he would have inflicted on himself-what would be the point?

He frowned. A thought seemed to come close to the surface of his consciousness-something important about that. . . .

The pain intruded on his focus, and he shook his head, letting the thought slip away. It didn't matter why why he had a headache, only that he he had a headache, only that he had had it. it.

He was nearing the edge of panic. He could not tie down where he was: dream, VR, or . . . reality?

He was almost almost certain nothing was real. The scenes changed too rapidly, days into night, trees into flowers, the beach into this forest. certain nothing was real. The scenes changed too rapidly, days into night, trees into flowers, the beach into this forest.

And he hadn't felt hungry or needed to eat.

But the headache-you just didn't get headaches in VR.

Unless it's some experimental technique?

He remembered something he'd seen in an MIT chat-room. A grad student had claimed he could generate a realistic internal pain by simultaneously stimming acupressure points while keeping surface nerves stimmed to provide a focal point for whatever location he wanted. The problem was that the sensation was entirely subjective and hard to replicate from person to person.

Okay. Go with that idea.

If it wasn't real, then it had had to be either VR or a dream. to be either VR or a dream.

What if this were were real? What if he'd . . . gone insane and was hallucinating all of what he'd seen, mixing it with reality? real? What if he'd . . . gone insane and was hallucinating all of what he'd seen, mixing it with reality?

Maybe he was stumbling around in a forest somewhere, brain damaged.

He shuddered.

But he wasn't a forest kind of guy, generally. How would he have gotten there?

Another possibility occurred which was almost as terrifying: Perhaps he'd been kidnapped by one of Net Force's many enemies and was being softened up for torture? Not particularly smart, since he couldn't give them much except how to run computers. Most of what he did wasn't particularly top secret-at least the process wasn't.

There was something about that, enemies, but he couldn't quite reach it. . . .

Drifting again. Keep it together, Jay. Keep it together, Jay.

"Hey!" he called out. "If you want me to talk, I'll talk! Let's go!"

The scene shifted suddenly, and he stood on a dock near the waterfront. He wore a black trench coat and a long red scarf. A fedora was pulled low over his eyes.

Now what?

He remembered this scene, though. It was from a VR module he'd used to track some of CyberNation's money a while back.

He looked at his hand. There was the girasol, an opal, he'd created to cloud men's minds in the pulp-fiction-based scenario.

But there was no one to use it on, and his mind was cloudy enough, thank you.

He looked at the jewel for a moment. Maybe he could hypnotize himself, maybe figure out where he was. He pulled it away from his face, but it changed changed.

The opal became the glittering, nickel-plated barrel of a Colt Single-Action Army revolver. He looked down at himself again and saw chaps and spurs over blue jeans. He was wearing a silver star.

The cowboy scenario. It had had to be VR. This was another one of his. to be VR. This was another one of his.

The transition had been flawless, completely without flicker, no sense of data upload, no shimmer, a perfect cut.

He looked up and saw that the docks had become a ghost town. There was a frightening sense of bleakness, isolation. He was alone.

He shook his head again. Even ghosts ghosts would be welcome about now- would be welcome about now- Wait a minute. What if I'm dead dead?

He looked around at the scene and frowned.

Shootout at the pearly gates?

The pain behind his eyes intensified and he figured if he hurt this much he couldn't be dead yet.

He walked around the town looking for something-anything that would give him a thread, a clue, something that would give him an idea as to why this was all happening.

Through the swinging doors of a saloon he saw a carpet bag on a plain wooden table. He glanced around once, then approached the bag, his spurs jangling with each step. The bat wing doors creaked behind him in the wind.

In the carpet bag was a hardback book by Rudyard Kipling.

A sudden, mouth-drying fear came to him. He really didn't want to open this book. Really.

I've got to know. I've got to find out.

The book was an old one, with baroque, detailed color ill.u.s.trations on the left side of the page at the beginning of each story.

He flipped through the pages and stopped to look at a painting of a jungle, with thick banana plants and lush greenery surrounding dark tree trunks. The artist had done a good job of rendering: There was an almost hyper-real, photographic quality to the scene, yet the colors were reminiscent of watercolor, vivid and clear.

As he admired it, his sense of worry grew stronger. He was staring at a portion of the jungle, a hanging vine that had been painted on a tree to the left of the ill.u.s.tration, when he noticed the frame of the picture grow larger, opening wider, and wider. As he stood there, amazed, the borders expanded past him, closing, swallowing him into it.

He was in in the jungle. the jungle.

And there, way in the back between two fronds, was a slice of orange color. Not the color of a fruit, but of fur.

Tiger!

It was the tiger that had gotten him before, the one he'd seen in the VR scenario during his involvement with the quantum computer.

Jay turned and ran, screaming, and while the pain in his head pounded with each step, that didn't matter. He had to get away.

He climbed a tree that seemed to stretch as he climbed, bark chipping under his fingernails, his fear driving him. It was as though he were climbing a conveyor belt in the wrong direction, carried down as he tried to climb up. Eventually, through a sheer burst of terror, he made it onto a large branch.

The tiger, the tiger!

Jay stared down at the jungle floor, but the creature had vanished as silently as it had come.

That's the tiger that got me before!

The last time it had left him near death in a coma.

Coma . . .

The word resonated in his head like the sound of a giant gong, and the headache pain he'd felt all morning intensified.

Suddenly, Jay was terrified.

What if I'm still still in that coma? All the other stuff-Saji, the baby, Alex and Toni retiring-what if none of that ever happened? What if I'm still lying in a bed, dreaming? in that coma? All the other stuff-Saji, the baby, Alex and Toni retiring-what if none of that ever happened? What if I'm still lying in a bed, dreaming?

The thought was scarier than anything he'd contemplated yet.

The silent jungle seemed to close in on him, and Jay clung to the tree as his ancient ancestors might have, hoping against hope that he was wrong- And wondering how to figure it out.

New York City c.o.x was on a roll. The calls, the e-mails, the faxes, those never stopped, and whatever else was going on, there was business to conduct, business at which he was expert and experienced. You didn't get to sit around and wring your hands in his world when problems arose, no matter what they were.

You kept moving or the jackals would pull you down.

Jennie, his secretary, spoke over the intercom. "President Mnumba on line five."

c.o.x touched a b.u.t.ton. The man's image appeared on his computer screen, just as his own visage would on Mnumba's monitor thousands of miles and halfway around the globe from here.

"John Simon, how are you? Good. Family okay? Good. Listen, reason I called, it's about those leases. Yes, yes, I know, but listen, John Simon, that's how it has to be. If I don't get those, I can't go forward, simple as that. Yes, I understand. I appreciate your position, and naturally, I wouldn't want you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable. Yes. Great to hear that, Mr. President. Have your man call mine when they are ready. You take care."

c.o.x smiled at the image of the African on his screen as it faded.

"Bertrand on four."

c.o.x touched the control again. No image this time, Bertrand was on a vox-only phone.

"Sir. We have . . . collected the material we wanted."

"Excellent. No problems?"

"An omelet's worth, nothing major."

Bertrand was in the Baltics, doing some industrial espionage. Odd as it seemed, the Croats or the Serbs or somebody there had come up with a new petroleum flow process that was more efficient than the industry standard. c.o.x had to have that. An omelet meant there were a few broken eggs-or broken heads. All the same to c.o.x.

"Good. I look forward to seeing the new material." He broke the connection.

The incoming e-mail alert ping pinged, and it only did that when there was something of import from somebody who had the private address.

"Jennie, I'm on-line!" he yelled.

"Sir." She would start cycling and rerouting phone calls until he was done.

He logged onto his mail server. There was a single message, sent from a public machine, no signature.

"Cleaned up," it said. "Moving forward."

Eduard. Good. c.o.x nodded to himself.

"Off-line!"

"Amba.s.sador Foley on three."

"Jim, how are you? Your daughter have that baby yet?"

This was what c.o.x lived for. The game, the hunt, the wheeling and dealing that kept the engines rumbling, moving forward. Sometimes he had to take a detour, now and then, even stop occasionally, but mostly it was onward, ever onward. He'd never get to the destination, he knew that, the road never ended, it would circle back on itself, like an equator, but that didn't matter. As long as he was in control, driving it all, that was the thing. That was the important thing.

Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia Thorn pushed back from his desk and stood. One of the crew had just called from the hospital-no change in Gridley's condition.

He shook his head. Terrible thing, a man being shot like that.

So far, the state police hadn't come up with the man who had done it, and apparently the witnesses weren't much help. The shooter might never be found. Meanwhile, Net Force's best computer jock was in a coma, and n.o.body knew when-or even if-he was coming out of it. Lord.

Other than that, things were pretty quiet.

Thorn decided to take a walk around the building. He still wasn't quite used to this all being his domain.