he asked himself. You knew this wasn't going to be easy.
What bothered him more, though, was that this was exactly what a big part of him had wanted. God help him; but it did.
'This is silly,' he said. 'How am I supposed to talk to you like this?' 'You just did,' she pointed out softly. 'Now do it again.' Hood's forehead was hot, his heart was on overdrive, and blood was racing everywhere. He smelled the apricot shampoo in her hair, felt her warmth, saw those eyes he had looked down into so often in the dark— 'Nancy, no,' he said firmly. He took her wrists and held them as he stepped back. 'We can't do this. We can't.' She looked down as her magnificent, sensual posture deflated.
'Your work,' Hood said, breathing deeply. 'I need you to tell me— I mean,' he said, calming, 'I'd like you to rtell me what you're working on.' She shot him a disgusted look. 'You're out of your mind, you know that?' she asked. She crossed her arms and half-turned.
'Nancy—' 'You reject me and you still want me to help you. I've got a teensy-weensy problem with that, Paul.' 'Like I said before,' Hood told her, 'I didn't reject you.
I didn't reject you at all.' 'Then why am I here and you over there?' Hood reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew his wallet. 'Because you rejected me.' He took out the two movie tickets and let them flutter to the bed. Nancy looked at them.
'You rejected me,' he said, 'and I made myself another life. I won't jeopardize that. I can't.' Nancy picked up the tickets, ran them gently between her thumb and forefinger, then suddenly tore them in half.
She gave one set of stubs to Hood and put the other in her jeans pocket.
'I didn't reject you,' she said quietly. 'Not a day has crept by that I didn't wish I'd grabbed you and taken you with me. Because I saw this in you as well, the conviction of a goddamn knight. You were the only person I ever knew who didn't need New Year's Eve to make resolutions. You always did what you thought was right and then stuck to your decisions.' Hood put the stubs in his wallet. 'If it's any consolation, I wish to hell you had grabbed me and taken me with you.' He grinned. 'Though I'm not sure how I would've taken to being Paul and Nancy, the jet- setting Bonnie and Clyde.' 'Shittily,' she said. 'You'd probably have made me turn myself in.' Hood embraced her, pulled her head to his chest. She held onto him tightly, then tighter still. But it was innocent this time. And a part of him was very, very sad.
'Nance?' he said.
'I know,' she replied, still snuggled in his arms. 'You want to know about my work.' 'Something rotten's happening on-line,' he said.
'But something nice is happening here,' she said. 'I feel safe. Can't I enjoy it a little bit longer?' Hood stood there listening to his watch tick, looking at the sky darkening outside the window, concentrating on anything but the dream that was in his arms and in his memory. He stood there thinking, checkout is in the early afternoon. She stayed to see me, hasn't checked out because she's anticipating more.
But that wasn't why he was here. An end had to be made.
'Nancy,' he said into her ear, 'I have to ask you a question.' 'Yes?' she said expectantly.
'Have you ever heard of a man named Gerard Dominique?' Nancy stiffened in his arms, then pushed off against his chest. 'Could you possibly be more romantic?' His face turned as if he'd been slapped by the rebuke.
'I'm sorry,' he said quietly. 'You know—' he started, stopped, looked into her eyes. 'You know I can be. You should know that I want to be. But I didn't come here for romance, Nancy.' Her own eyes pained, she looked at her watch. 'There's a plane I can still catch and I think I'll go catch it.' She looked from her watch to the bed to her suitcase. 'I don't need a ride, thanks. You can go.' Hood didn't move. It was as if two decades had evaporated and he was standing in her apartment, caught in one of those arguments that had started as a flake and had suddenly become a blizzard. It was funny how memory diminished those, but there had been a lot of them.
'Nancy,' Hood said, 'we think that Gerard Dominique may be behind the hate video games which have begun showing up in America. A game like that just showed up on Hausen's computer, with Hausen in it.' 'Video games are easy to make,' Nancy said. She went to the closet, got her stylish off-white jacket, and pulled it over her shoulders. 'Scanning someone's picture in is also easy. Any well-equipped teenager could do it.' 'But earlier today, Dominique phoned and threatened Hausen.' 'Government officials are threatened all the time,' Nancy said. 'And maybe he deserved it. Hausen gets on a lot of people's nerves.' 'Does his thirteen-year-old daughter get on people's nerves too?' Nancy's lips came together slowly. 'I'm sorry,' she said.
'Of course you are,' Hood said. 'The question is, can you help me? Do you work for this man?' Nancy turned away. 'You think that because I betrayed an employer years ago I'll do it again.' 'This isn't the same thing, is it?' Hood asked.
Nancy sighed. Her shoulders rolled forward. Hood could feel the storm die aborning.
'Actually,' she said, 'it's exactly the same thing. Paul Hood needs something and once again I'm ready to flush my life down the toilet so he can have it.' 'You're wrong,' he said. 'I didn't ask for the first one.
That was your doing.' 'Let me bask in the waves of compassion,' she said.
'I'm sorry. I feel bad for that headstrong girl, but what you did affected a lot of lives. Yours, mine, my wife's, whoever you were with, whoever we might have touched together—' 'Your kids,' she said bitterly, 'our kids. The kids we never had.' Nancy stepped forward and put her arms around Hood.
She began to cry. Paul held her closer, felt her shoulder blades heaving against his open hands. What a waste, he thought. What a tragic goddamned waste this all was.
'You don't know how many nights I lay in bed alone,' Nancy said, 'cursing myself for what I did. I wanted you so bad I was going to go back and turn myself in. But when I called Jessica to see how you were, she told me you had a new girlfriend. So what was the point?' 'I wish you had come back,' he said. 'And I wish I'd known all of this then.' Nancy nodded. 'I was stupid. Insecure. Scared. Angry at you for filling my place. I was a lot of things. I guess I still am. In many ways, time stopped for me twenty years ago and started up again this afternoon.' She stepped back and pulled a tissue from the nightstand. She blew her nose and wiped her eyes. 'So here we are, full of regrets and one of us at least feeling that you can't go back. And that one isn't me.' 'I'm sorry,' Hood said.
'Me too,' she said back. 'Me too.' Nancy, took a deep breath, stood tall, and looked into his eyes. 'Yes,' she said, 'I work for Gerard Dominique. But I'm not privy to his politics or personal life, so I don't think I can help you there.' 'Is there anything you can tell me? What are you working on?' 'Maps,' she said. 'Of American cities.' 'You mean like regular road maps?' Hood asked.
She shook her head. 'They're what we call point-ofview maps. A traveler inputs the street coordinates and what appears on the computer screen is exactly what you're looking at. Then you input where you want to go, or ask what's around the next corner, or where the nearest subway or bus stop is, and the computer shows you. Again, from your point of view. You can also get a printout of an overhead map if you want. It helps people plan what they're going to see and how they're going to get around in a particular city.' 'Has Dominique ever done travel guides before?' 'Not to my knowledge,' Nancy said. 'This'll be a first.' Hood thought for a moment. 'Have you seen any marketing plans?' 'No,' Nancy said, 'but that doesn't surprise me. That's not my area. Though one thing which did surprise me is that we haven't done any press releases on these programs.
Usually, the publicists come and ask me questions like what's unique about this program or why do people have to have it. That actually happens pretty early in the process so the sales people can solicit orders at the consumer electronics shows. But on this, nada.' Hood said, 'Nancy— I have to ask this, and I'm sorry.
It won't go any farther than myself and my closest associates.' 'You can take out an ad in Newsweek,' she said. 'I can't resist you when you're so damn doing-your-job earnest.' 'Nancy, there may be lives at risk.' 'You don't have to explain,' she said. 'It's one of the things I loved about you, Sir Knight.' Hood flushed. 'Thank you,' he said, and tried to concentrate on what he was doing. 'Just tell me, is Demain working on any kind of new technology? Something that ordinary video-gamers would find compelling?' 'Constantly,' she said. 'But the one we're closest to marketing is a silicon chip which stimulates nerve cells. It was developed for amputees to be able to operate prosthetic limbs or for the augmentation of diminished spinal cord function.' She grinned. 'I'm not sure whether we actually developed that one, or if it came to Demain the same way my old chip did. In any case, we've changed it quite a bit.
When it's placed inside a joystick, the chip generates gentle pulses to make a player feel a kind of subtle contentment or harsher pulses to suggest danger. I've tried it. It's all pretty subliminal, something you might not even be aware of. Like nicotine.' Hood was feeling slightly overwhelmed. A feel-good, feel-bad chip marketed by a bigot. Hate games on-line in the U.S. It seemed like it should be science fiction, but he knew that the technology
