Read Online Total Recall by Piers Anthony - Free Book Online Page A

ahem, let you take me out . . .” No, that wasn’t it; he hadn’t been angry with her, and she hadn’t offered. That must have been a daydream, or an implanted memory. That was the place of implanted memories, of dreams that seemed to have come true in the past. He had wanted a memory of Mars. He had talked with a man—but the memory faded again.
    Harry raised his gun to Quaid’s temple. His finger slowly tightened on the trigger. He looked as if he was really sorry to be doing this; his eyes were filled with the old this-hurts-me-worse-than-it-does-you look.
    Quaid’s expression hardened. Like the errant kid in the woodshed, he had his doubts about whose hurt was worse. He was also aware, on another level, that the grouping of men had become perfect. It was time to knock down the dominoes.
    Harry had made the classic mistake of holding the gun too close to the target. Quaid’s fist came up in a blur of speed and deflected Harry’s arm. The gun fired into the stairwell.
    Quaid’s arm smashed across Harry’s neck, crushing his windpipe. Harry hardly had time to collapse, trying to gag, trying to breathe, before Quaid whirled and caught the nearest goon with a sledgehammer fist to the heart. The man was still standing, though dead on his feet, as Quaid leaped at the next. He caught the man’s head between his hands and twisted so savagely that there was an audible snap and the face was looking out from the wrong side of the body, the eyes wide-open startled. The last goon had had three seconds to react; he was lurching forward, his gun coming up. Quaid’s knee rose to meet his head, smashing the man’s nose straight back into the brain. Flat-faced, the goon fell.
    A total of five seconds had passed since Harry’s finger tightened on the trigger. Four men were dead.
    You’re slowing down, pal!
    What? Quaid shook his head. There was no one there. Just himself and the dead men, gruesomely strewn on the stairs. One of them might have been his friend, once.
    He stared in amazement at the bodies. How—what—?
    He looked at his bloodied hands. Were these his? Had they committed this mayhem? It was as if they belonged to somebody else.
    He remembered thinking about groupings and dominoes. Then—this.
    He gathered his wits. Whatever had happened here, he would get the blame if he remained! He had to get away from this nightmare and safely home.

CHAPTER  9

“Wife”
    Q uaid flew up the stairs and into the lobby, heedless of the other residents in the building who stared as he passed. They let him have an elevator all to himself.
    Upstairs, he barged into his conapt, breathless. What a relief it was to be here! But he couldn’t rest yet; if there had been one gaggle of goons after him, there might be another, and they knew where he lived.
    Lori was inside the holo-console, swinging her tennis racquet in perfect synchronization with a hologram of a female tennis player. The hologram glowed bright red to signal that she’d gotten it right. She smiled as Quaid entered, satisfied with her practice session.
    “Hi, baby!” she said.
    Quaid darted around the conapt, keeping his head below the window level. He switched off every light in the place, then pulled Lori from the console, and switched that off, too. She looked at him in alarm.
    “Some men just tried to kill me!” he exclaimed.
    She froze. “Muggers?”
    “No! Spies or something. And Harry from work.” Lori stepped back from him, passing in front of a window. She opened her mouth—
    “Get down!” he cried, grabbing her and pulling her to the floor. He covered her with his body so that any bullet would reach him first. “Harry was the boss,” he explained.
    Flabbergasted, Lori drew herself out from under, brushing ineffectively at her crumpled outfit. She seemed to be trying to make sense of it all. “What happened? Why would spies want to kill you?”
    Excellent question! He peeked out the corner of a window. “I don’t know,” he whispered.