There were people standing further back, beyond the ring of lights, and they were talking and working, paying no attention to him.
A woman came up to him, and brusquely patted his forehead and nose with powder.
'Hold still a while longer, Shan,' she said impersonally, then moved back into the ring of lights.
Teresa thought, 1 can't take this any more.
Grove said, 'What? Who the fuck is that?'
And Teresa, at last, much later than she should have done, decided to abort. She recalled the LIVER mnemonic, rattled through the words held within the acronym, focused on the system of closure they produced, and withdrew from the scenario.
You have been flying SENSH Y'ALL
Fantasys from the Old West
Copyroody everywhere doan even THINK about it!!
Before she remembered how to cut it off, the mindless electronic music jangled interminably around her.
CHAPTER 34
Teresa returned from the scenario and found herself in the familiar surroundings of one of the ExEx recovery booths. Waking up in reality after the sensory overload of a scenario always involved a profound readjustment, a feeling of disbelief in what she found around her. No return had yet been as concerning as this.
Teresa sat on the bench, legs dangling, staring at the carpeted floor, thinking of Grove, appalled by the thought of what trouble her entry into his mind, might have caused.
A technician called Sharon appeared, and removed and validated the nanochips. At once Teresa was caught up in the practical routines of the business that was ExEx. Sharon led her through to the billing office and they waited for the paperwork to be churned out by the machine. Instead of the fairly prompt appearance of the receipt confiriming the return of the chips, together with a credit card charge slip, this time a message of some kind appeared on the LCD display, invisible to Teresa from where she was standing.
Sharon picked up the desk telephone, and keyed in several numbers. There was a pause, and then she recited a code number. Finally, she said with a glance at Teresa, 'Thanks I'll check that.'
'What's the problem?' Teresa said.
'There's something about the expiry date on your card,' Sharon said. She pressed one of the studs on the desktop, and a piece of paper wound out of the slot. She tore it off. 'Do You happen to have the card with you?'
'It's the one I've always used,' Teresa said, but looked through her bag for it. 'The girl on the desk outside validated it, and it's gone through OK until now.'
She found her Baltimore First National Visa card, and handed it over.
Sharon looked closely at it. 'Yes, this is what they told me,' she said. 'It's not the expiry date.
That's OK. It's the "Valid from" date.' She held the card out for Teresa to see. 'You've started using the card too soon. It doesn't become valid for another couple of months. Do you have the old one with you?'
'What? Let me look at that.'
Teresa took the card. As usual, both validating dates were embossed on it. They looked OK to her; she had been using the card for several months without problem. She thought for a moment. lt had been made valid from August the previous year; now they were in February.
Not valid for two more months?
She slipped the card into her bag.
'I'll give you another,' she said, not looking at Sharon. She searched through her wallet and found her GM MasterCard. Before handing it over she checked both validating dates; she was securely in the middle of the period.
' That's fine,' Sharon said, after a close examination of her own. The transaction then went through normally.
Before leaving the building Teresa went to the Ladies' restroom and leaned against a washbasin, staring down blankly into the paleyellow plastic bowl. She felt drained. Today's ExEx session had been a long one, and because of the awfulness of Grove's mental state it had also been stressful and alarming. She could still hardly bear to think of the consequences of what she had done.
She shrank from this, and other thoughts came at her in ar, onrush of trivial detail, a reaction against the tensions of the last few hours.
There were many practical things she had to sort out. Flight confirmation was one of them; she had made only a provisional booking and needed to hear back from the travel agents.
Then she had to pack her stuff, and check out of the hotel. Get across to Gatwick Airport with enough time to turn in the rental car, check in, go through security, hang around in the departure lounge, buy books and magazines she didn't want, and all that. Flying always took time, but presumably never as much as it saved, otherwise no one would do it. Before she left England she should also check in with her section chief, or at least leave a message in his office. She still had a hunch trouble was waiting for her there; would Ken Mitchell's one hour of effective passion compensate for that? Teresa combed her hair, peered closely at her eyes in the mirror. Gifts, she should buy some souvenirs to take back with her. She wondered if she would have time to go round the Old Town shops before they closed.
She glanced at her wristwatch.
Something was not right. How long had she been in Grove's scenario? What had changed?
The washroom was greypainted, clean, cool. The sound of air-conditioning was loud around her, emanating from a grille high in the wall by the door. Bright sunlight glared into the room through a square window set in the sloping halfroof above her.
A memory of Grove came to her, but she thrust the thought away in panic. All this time in England, circling around the Grove issue, and now she had at last confronted it she shrank away from it.
She wanted only to get home, try again to restart her life without Andy. Out there: she wondered what was out there, in the confusing world made by Grove. She had taught him to shoot. That child, that woman, they might be alive now if she hadn't shown Grove how to hold his weapon correctly.
No! she thought. No, that's not true! Rosalind Williams and her little boy were shot and killed by Grove eight months before. On the day it happened she was in Richmond, Virginia, thousands of miles away. lt was a historical certainty. What she had seen was only a scenario, a recreation of the event which by close observation she had seemed to influence.
. She had taught Grove how to handle his gun. Some influence.
In reaction to these unwelcome thoughts, another flood of personal concerns coursed through her: whether she should sell the house in Woodbridge, move into an apartment in Baltimore or Washington, or relocate right away from the area. She had good friends who lived in Eugene, Oregon; maybe she should make a break with everything, and move to the Pacific North West. In the meantime, should she stay with the Bureau, transfer to another section or station? Or maybe she should think about what did they call it? ~ OCERS. The Optional Corporate Early Retirement Scheme. The Bureau management had been talking up OCERS, as if it was the answer to their many woes of funding, deployment, overmanning, and all the other administrative problems they regularly memo'd to the sections.
Closing her bag she looked up again and caught an off guard glimpse of herself. She should have been ready for it, because she had been staring at the mirror off and on for the last five minutes, but for that instant she saw the reflection of a rather bulky middle-aged woman, her darkbrown hair starting to turn grey, her face not one she remembered or wanted to remember. Standing there in her warm quilted anorak, bundled up against the wintry Weather outside, she thought, How did it happen so quickly? How have the years of my life vanished?