"How you feelin' tonight?" he started.
Shouts of "Just fine," "Coked to the moke," and other genialities passed back to him.
"Do you feel fine enough to give a warm welcome to a massive little sister of mine? Friars and sisters, give a massive Teapot Dome greeting to a friend of mine from Ad Astra, Joan Darris!"
Joan took a breath, then walked into the Tiger Pit, under the spotlight next to Church. Church conducted the applause up and down for a few seconds, then cut it away completely, and the audience laughed.
"How you feelin', princess?"
"Uh, 'coked to the moke'?"
The audience laughed; it was obvious that Joan wasn't anythinged to the anything.
"Well, that's just fine," Church said. "Friars and sisters, this massive little princess is the Number One Ace of the Hunter of the Wolf Pack himself, Wolfgang Jaeger. Now, it merely happens that me and the band just finished working up an arrangement of one of Jaeger's magna opera, set to music. But to tell you the truth, I don't want to give it a shot in public before I see how my sister here plays it--I mean, she's got to have this Jaeger friar down. Now, I'll be back at one A.M. for my next set, but in the meantime, I'm going out to join you for once, and let somebody else fight the Tiger. It's all yours, princess. Over the rainbow."
The audience applauded again, Church climbed out of the Tiger Pit and took his place at the owner's table--the very seat from which Joan had watched his set--and Joan took her place at the console.
She lowered the glowing, started the console's recorder, took a breath, and said to Phoebe Norton, "One, two, three, four!"
The rainbow lighted up the dome, displaying the seven colors of the extropic scale in sequence, then spun off into discrete lines which began pulsating in the red-tonic, primal birth pains of the first movement of The Rainbow Vistata. The music pulsated along with the imagery.
Second movement: the charging orange spheres bringing a rousing message of hope and good cheer, while the music spun out a charging, wintry melody. The dazzling lighting conterpoints of the third movement were the natural element of Claire Church, whose job it was as antithesist to counterpoint all visual expressions with melody anyway. The music loped and swept with the green movement, waltzed in blue, lilted in indigo. The quiet ripples of the violet movement: then--silence.
Joan began playing a roga dialectic she had worked out from the previous thematic material--the red movement as thesis, the blue movement as antithesis; the orange movement as thesis, the indigo movement as antithesis; the yellow movement as thesis and the violet movement as antithesis. Then, parallel development - playing the theses and antitheses in simultanious progression, accelerating through the Golden Rectangle, back and forth, from thesis to antithesis faster and faster and faster...
Until Joan's rainbow cadenza reached a height of tension, and she signaled the musicians to rejoin her for the rebirth of the extropic rainbow which synthetically resolved the entire cadenza, a coloratura that drew all who watched it into its compelling vortex.
When the final white flash from the laser concorded with Claire Church's final chord, the audience nearly tore the house down.
Joan played Contract Bridge as an encore, with Claire Church following her by eye and the other band members following Claire. Then, while Joan was taking her bows, Roland jumped into the Tiger Pit and kissed Joan on both cheeks.
It was a moment of triumph that lasted for hours--through the break before the next set, which Joan used in feeding the recording of her rainbow cadenza into Church's transcriber and immediately posting the score to Jaeger at the Dryer School; through Church's 1 A.M set; and through the wind-down session after hours with the band.
One by one, the band members packed it in for the night, until it was down to Roland and Claire Church, Bromley, and Joan. Then Roland and Claire left also, and it was down to Joan and Hill Bromley, alone at 3 A.M. in the empty club.
Hill had Joan fill out a request for a waiver from the local of the lasegrapher's union, since her only union membership was in the almost anarchic union in Ad Astra that existed solely to allow Astran lasegraphers to perform on Earth. Then, while Bromley went around closing up, the chatted. When he had locked up, they went outside to Sunset Boulevard, and they looked at each other silently for a moment. "I'd like to sleep with you tonight," Joan said.
Bromley looked as if he were in pain. "I know you would," he said. "Come on. I'll walk you back to the tube station."
They began walking toward the slidewalk. When they got on, Joan said, "Do you have a wife back in St. Clive, or something?"
Bromley shook his head, but smiled slightly. "Roland likes to play games about it," he said. "That's why he keeps throwing pretty girls--like you--my way. He doesn't approve of my sexual lifestyle--he thinks it's disgustingly unnatural. Aside from that, we don't usually tell this to anyone because, well, it's not a good idea to be known as one on this planet. But," he said, "you were almost right when you said I had a wife back in St. Clive."
"Almost right?" Joan asked. "You're engaged?"
"I might as well be--I took a vow to her. You see, Joan," he said gently. "I took a vow of celibacy. I'm a priest of the Mere Christian Church."
Chapter 25
THE LAST TWO WEEKS of training went quickly and fairly uneventfully. There were no more difficulties with Dr. Blaine-- with whom Joan now cooperated freely, though there was no repeat of that first climax--and her acclimation to service life proceeded smoothly.
Joan received three harsh items of correspondence in those final weeks, though. The first was from her father, offering her an immediate 50 percent of her inheritance if she'd drop her suit. Joan was so angry that she was afraid she'd curse her father incoherently if she spoke to him. She phoned Linda Klausner and told her to decline. Joan's allowance from her father stopped two days later.
The second item of correspondence was from Wendell. For him it was good news; for her, bad. Burke Filcher had passed a bill through the Lower Manor confirming Wendell as Ambassador to St. Clive. Wendell had agreed to St. Clive's condition that he honor its laws against homosexuality for his stay there, and would be leaving in mid-September. Joan tried to feel happy for him. It was impossible.
The third item of correspondence was from the Dryer School of Lasegraphy. Wolfgang Jaeger said in his picturegram, "When my eyes uncross, and I climb down off my apartment ceiling, I'll tell you what I think of your new cadenza to Rainbow Vistata. For what it's worth, I can't play it--but that's because I have no desire to try. I've asked myself a hundred times in the past week: am I getting so old--am I so afraid to die and let someone else go beyond me--that I can't appreciate genius when I see it? Or is this cadenza the worst obscenity ever to be perpetrated on lasegraphy? I haven't decided yet. I may never be able to decide. I'll probably have to live with this discord till the day I die. Can you?"
She decided that she could live with it. Joan had already decided that she could live estranged from her father, and with her only sympathetic relative a quarter-billion kilometers away.
But there were nights when she lay in her bed shaking, trying to avoid waking McDonough with her mewing. She had never felt so suffocatingly lonely before--not even at five years old on the landing strip. She began to realize that the worst attacks in life came not from outside, but from within. She began to know that the most fearsome enemy in life was not the Wolf, but the Tiger.
On Monday, July 20--the one-hundred-ninety-eighth anniversary of Armstrong and Aldrin's first steps on the moon, though Greenwich Mean Time chauvinists claimed those steps for 2:56 A.M. the 21st--Taurus 25 Sorority of the World Federation Peace Corps officially completed their basic training and were given their assignments to the dicteria.
Joan wasn't going to have to relocate very far at all. "You're getting the best dicteriat in the Corps," Corporal McDonough told Joan before breakfast, "and you can take the tube over from here. Take the express to North Hollywood; get off at the Eleven-thousand block of Burban
k Boulevard. Eleanor Roosevelt Corporation, Nine Hundred Ninety-five Dicteriat--the 'Best Whores in the Corps'--commanded by Lieutenant Matron Gerry Perlulone: 'The Motherfucker' to her women."
"You seem to know it," Joan said.
"It's my old outfit," McDonough said, "and I made sure you'd get it."
"Thank you," Joan said.
"Gerry went through with me; DeJarnette was commanding then. Old DeJarnette--I won't tell you what we used to call her."
"I hope the rest of the sorority does as well."
"Can't possibly--the computers usually make the assignments of new corporals."
"May I see the roster?"
"Why not? You'll be reading it off after breakfast." McDonough instructed the terminal to display the roster.
About a third of Taurus 25 had been distributed among Roosevelt's ten divisions--45,000 women per division, divided into ten cleavages with ten dicteria per cleavage. The others had been sent to divisions in the Concord's only other corporation, Susan B. Anthony--except for one cadette from Buenos Aries who was being sent to Evita Peron Corporation in the South American Union.
Joan checked the roster. Adele Sommers had been sent to Susan B. Anthony's 811th in Alamo City. She dropped a floor down to Sommers's room to say a preliminary goodbye.
Sommers's roommates had already gone to breakfast, leaving Joan and Adele alone for a few minutes. Joan gave Adele advance posting of her assignment, and told Adele hers.
"You always land on your feet," Adele said to Joan. "You'll be close enough to hop over to Hawaii on weekends."
"Space available on Corps transports," Joan said. "I don't have the money I used to."
"Listen, you promise to phone me occasionally, won't you? And maybe you can visit us in Fort Lauderdale for Yule."
"I'd like that," Joan said. "I'll let you know later."
Adele nodded, then hesitated as if something important were on her mind--which there was. "There's something I've been meaning to tell you for a long time," Adele began. "But you have to promise you won't repeat this to anyone. Okay?"
"I promise," Joan said.
"You remember how I was late getting back from our first pass?"
"How could I forget?" Joan said. "I was calling the roll."
"Well, I wasn't late getting back by accident. I almost deserted."
Joan nodded. "I understand."
"Not yet, you don't," Adele said. "My boyfriend--I told you about Preston--was all set. He had tickets to Disney, Ad Astra, for both of us, and he'd bribed an exit permit for me. We could have made it. We were already in Soleri's final boarding area when I changed my mind."
Joan knew what was coming--what had to be coming. She braced herself, as if for a beating.
"I changed my mind because of you," Adele said.
Joan took a breath.
"I know how much you dislike the Corps. I knew it from the day we had our abortions together. And I thought, If Joan can go through that and still thinks sticking with the Corps is so important--when she hates it as much as I do--then maybe I'm wrong? I know you're smarter than me, Joan. And you're stronger, too. I felt I'd be letting you down if I--why are you crying?"
Joan stood there bracing herself against the wall, tears leaking freely down her face. She felt sick to her stomach. "You fool," she practically whispered.
"What? Joan, how can you say that to me after--"
Joan managed to shake her head. "Not you, Adele," she said miserably. "Me."
Adele got up and put her arms around Joan. Joan cried copiously for five minutes. But she couldn't bring herself to look Adele in the eye again, and she could never bring herself to explain why she'd been crying.
In architecture, organization, and housekeeping operations, the 995th Dicteriat was not really different from a luxury apartment house.
Each corporal was assigned her own apartment with kitchenette and dining alcove--though room service and several in-house commissaries were also available to the women at no charge--with a private living room, terrace, bedroom, and bath. This private apartment was available to the corporal from a private corridor that led to the other corporal's private apartments, and in which outsiders were never allowed.
Adjoining each private apartment--available to the commen through a public corridor--was the corporal's individual Hospitality Suite, with its whirlpool bath, sunken bed, love seat, and LAZAK screen. There were also two more bathrooms--one for the corporal, one for the visiting comman.
The schedule could be varied within certain limits, but each corporal was required to receive 41 commen per week, 48 weeks a year for the three years--assuming there had been no time lost to the doctors and dentists. All other things being equal, this was 1,968 visits per year per corporal, or 5,904 visits in three years.
The schedule called for each comman to receive a fifty-minute hour of treatment, with at least ten minutes between visitors for the corporal to bathe, brush her teeth, relubricate herself, dress, apply makeup and perfume, and fix her hair. Each corporal had three serving robots to perform several of these tasks simultaneously--a process not unlike that undergone by a quick- change actor in a live holoplay--while another two robots refreshed the suite for the next comman and made sure that the previous one was robed and--if slow or recalcitrant--escorted back to the locker room by Dicteriat Security.
The corporals were not visually or aurally monitored by the Corps in either the Hospitality Suites or the private apartments. But by use of a code word--Joan's was "Dumbjohn"--or telemetry of her emotional state, if he could not speak, a pair of armed and expertly trained andromen from Security just down the hall would be there in seconds to take care of a comman causing the corporal trouble. As for the performance rating of the corporal, the Corps relied exclusively on rating surveys taken from commen on their way out.
Joan requested, and received, a schedule that left her evenings and weekends free. This meant three commen from 9 A.M. to noon, an hour for lunch--which Joan found it easier to take in her apartment--five sessions in the afternoon, and dinner in the commissary at 6. One weekday evening per week, Joan took a session between 7P.M. and 8, to reach her weekly quota. Other than the work, a fortnightly session with her Sorority Adviser, and one evening of assembly and drill per month, her time was her own.
Immediately upon her installation in her apartment, Joan sent a shipping company to Helix Vista to fetch her laser, her console, and her holoscreen. They were delivered a week later, along with a voucher from Zack saying that the company had made its pickup at 2:14 P.M.--from which Joan inferred that her father and Vera had been out. She set up her console and holoscreen in her living room, with her LCAA Mark 1000 laser in her closet, packed and ready to go.
And occasionally, go it did--to The Teapot Dome for an evening of performing roga. It became a regular practice, on a weekend, for Joan to take one of Roland Church's sets--or the entire evening one night when Church was scheduled for a recording session that didn't require his backup band--and it gave Joan a chance to become good friends with Hill Bromley. She found that behind his silent exterior was a man with an immense love of life and immense compassion; but she also felt there were immense sorrows that he wouldn't share with anyone, and a scent of intrigue that made her wonder if he was as candid as he seemed.
Evenings, and weekends when she wasn't spending time at The Teapot Dome, Joan again began working on The Helix Vistata. There were many nights, however, when she was just too emotionally drained to do any more than the most perfunctory of sketches, with the rest of her evening spent reading, watching the holy, or in bull sessions with her sorority-mates on her floor. Joan was careful, though--her wretched experience with Adele Sommers still fresh in her mind--not to let any of them know what her feelings were on anything important, and she kept herself emotionally aloof from them.
The only person in the Corps with whom Joan kept up regular contact was Georgia McDonough. Occasionally, on a weeknight, they would meet for a holodrama, or for dinner at a rest
aurant in Marina Del Rey; and one weekend Joan invited McDonough to watch her perform at the mocha house.
Some nights, Joan didn't want to do anything more than walk around alone in the warm Pacifica climate that reminded her of Ad Astra--a memory that was stimulated each time she passed the private club, several buildings down from the dicteriat, with its motto DE PROFUNDIS AD ASTRA. Joan looked up the meaning of the Latin by accessing an encyclopedic dictionary on her terminal, and found that it meant, Out of the Depths to the Stars. She decided if she were to have a personal motto, this would be it.
But the stars were for later, now she had to deal with the depths.
The commen who came into her boudoir, eight times a day, were all freshly bathed, medically certified, shaved and manicured, and in a category according to weight, height, and phallus size to make sure they would not place her under undue stress.
Aside from that, no two were alike. Joan never saw any comman more than once. But she found that after a week she couldn't tell one from the next.
Her routine usually began with offering the comman a joynette or a glass of wine, then either sitting with him and talking for a few minutes before snuggling up to him, or leading him into the whirlpool bath for a massage.
The number of orgasms a man was entitled to during his fifty minutes was not specified by the Corps, and this left some variety. Some men wanted to talk, neck, or be massaged. Some merely wanted Joan to hold them and caress them. Some men weren't interested in the more sensual parts of the service at all, and simply wanted to get their rocks off as many times in the hour as possible. One comman surprised Joan by managing to ejaculate four times in the fifty minutes--though there wasn't all that much physical ejaculate by the fourth time.
The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Vistata Form Page 25