The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Vistata Form

by J. Neil Schulman

  After dinner, Filcher asked Joan to play for him in the dome. She played The Rainbow Vistata for him with her new cadenza, of which he was properly appreciative; but he wasn't interested in an encore...at least, not any encore she could perform with a lazer.

  He literally swept Joan into his arms and carried her off to the master bedroom--somewhat of a feat in itself; Joan was not a small woman. He laid her down on his bed, and they began undressing each other.

  A few minutes later, Joan discovered that Filcher hadn't chosen her carelessly. He was hung--according to the Corp's classification of penis size, borrowed from the Kama Sutra-- like a horse. This meant a "high union"--a tight fit--since Joan's classification according to the measurements of her unstretched vagina was "mare."

  Burke hovered over Joan for a second after he made sure she was ready for him. He noticed her expression when she saw his phallus size. "Why do you think they call us Members?" he asked.

  That he did not wait for Joan to finish laughing proved it was a rhetorical question.

  Joan had her days pretty much to herself, and she spent them around the islands sight-seeing and shopping, and at home swimming and practicing--but her nights were spent with Filcher. She had not yet reached a climax with him, but had the feeling that it was only a matter of time. He was an expert lover-- innovative, considerate, and sensous. On Thursday night, however, Joan had her first indication that the honeymoon, as far as she was concerned, was over. "Get yourself outfitted with a flying belt tomorrow," he told her. "I'm taking you on your first hunt tomorrow night."

  "But I'm not a Marnie," Joan objected.

  Filcher produced a medallion. "You are now."

  The hunting party, Friday night, was made up of commen, ladies, gaylords, and their guests--sixteen in all--who hopped a private shuttle to Alamo City late Friday afternoon and were suited up an hour before dusk. The plan for the evening was for the party to break into eight pairs--tracking as many Touchables as possible to what looked to be their final destination for the night--then compare notes and see if any location came up more than once on the map. If it did, they would suit up and perform the same tracking with skybelts and "hawks"--robot belts with scanning equipment--in the "hot' sector. Immediately after dusk, they would triangulate on the area in the hopes of finding a camp.

  Just exactly where Touchables went for the night was the problem that, as far as Filcher was concerned, made Touchable hunting a sport. There was no immunity from capture--even in a private home--but a home offered natural protections anyway: it could not be entered without a search warrant affirming probably cause , and the only way a Marnie could get such a warrant was to get a firm tracking on the Touchable's brainprint signal to a stable destination. Anything over five minutes of the same signal from the same location was enough to permit the Marnie to move in--after, of course, getting the legal go-ahead from Federation computers.

  Hunting parties from the Manors had been notoriously bad about ignoring the legal amenities, but Filcher disapproved of that strongly. It was not particularly the law he cared for--it was the "ruining of the sport of it."

  The main difficulty with getting a sufficient signal, though, was that the brainprint tranponders put out a signal so weak that almost anything thicker than air would block it. It was, perhaps, possible to implant brainprint transponders with a higher efficiency of converting body heat to radio signal, but the traditionalists in the Marnies had always opposed such action. They liked the hunts just the way they were, and anything giving them too much advantage would ensure that a Touchable never stuck his or her head out at night.

  As it was, just so long as a Touchable was uncloaked-- illegal, but not unduly punished unless compounded by other crimes--there was a fair chance that he or she could move around at night without being caught.

  The best hunting strategy of all--though it seldom worked, since Touchables were by necessity such a tight-lipped lot--was to capture one Touchable and offer immunity in exchange for providing the location of an entire ghetto. Immunity included not letting the other Touchables know who had squealed. Aside from whatever loyalties Touchables had toward one another, the main difficulty with this approach was that the Judas Goat might decide that simply being absent during a pogrom would be considered by the others evidence of his or her guilt.

  But this night it worked.

  It was Gaylord Hernandez's Ward, Denis, who actually made the capture. He received a hot reading and swooped down like a bat, confronting the Touchable in a vacant lot. He was an old drunk-- red-cloaked, but obviously of no interest to anyone sexually-- and he could be bought for the price of a bottle. "These old ears hear things, they do," he told Hernandez. "Certainly you wouldn't begrudge an old man a quart of the good stuff--say, a bottle of real Scotch?"

  "Straight liquor is illegal, old man," Hernandez said. "You know that, so why bring it up?"

  "An important gentleman like you, the law's no problem for you," the old man said. "That's my price to tell what I know."

  "I'll give you money, old man. Enough to buy a case of wine."

  The old man shook his head. "Wine I've got plenty of--I've got a lot of customers, I do."

  Hernandez spat on the ground, then phoned the others. It turned out that Lady Moslow had anticipated the problem, and had left a bottle back in the shuttle; she phoned the shuttle and ordered a robot aide to fetch it to Hernandez.

  Twenty minutes later, the old man had his Scotch and Hernandez had his address--a camp inside an abandoned stadium in the northern part of the city. Hernandez and his ward waited with the old man until the others signaled him that they had hot readings in the area of the stadium; then Gaylord Hernandez and Denis flew to join the others.

  It was a bonanza. There were thirty Touchables encamped under the bleachers--enough that no one had to have sloppy seconds. The Touchables offered no resistance as the hunting party lined them up and proceeded to make their choices. Filcher chose for both himself and Joan. He chose a young dark-haired girl-- perhaps only fourteen, and so scared she was wetting herself. "Take her," he told Joan.

  "I'll pass," Joan said. "Enjoy yourself."

  "That's just what I intend to do. Take her."

  Joan looked disgusted. "What do you want me to do?"

  Filcher smiled. "You'll figure out something."

  "It's alright, sweetheart," Joan told the girl. "I won't hurt you."

  Joan unstrapped herself from the flying belt, removed her leathers and helmet, and proceeded to kiss, caress, and lick the Touchable girl. Filcher stood back and watched.

  A few seconds later, there was a high-pitched scream from across the stadium. Then a second and a third.

  Joan stopped. "What was that?" she asked Filcher.

  "I believe Lady Moslow has brought out the whips and chains," he said. "Go on with what you were doing."

  Joan glared at Filcher and got her first reaction out of him that night--a bulge under his leathers. She went back to licking the girl while Filcher stood back and watched, the screams continuing in the distance.

  Later that night, after they returned to Charlotte Amalie, he took Joan into his house and stopped her. "You didn't like the hunt, did you?" he asked.

  "I thought it was reprehensible," she said.

  "Excellent," he said. Without another word, he ripped Joan's clothes off her and took her right in the entranceway. He came as soon as he entered her. Thus did Joan get her first real notion of what motivated Burke Filcher.

  Chapter 27

  "THIS HEARING is again in session."

  It was in a conference room, rather than in a courtroom, that the case of Darris v. Darris and Delaney was heard. Linda Klausner had suggested--Stanton and Vera's attorney, Marv Hastings, had agreed--that the custody suit could be best handled in arbitration rather than in a public courtroom battle. By contract, however, the outcome would be just as legally binding.

  The judge in the case was a short, dark-haired attorney, an androman specializing in copyright
law. He had been assigned to judge the case by the North American Arbitration Association, to whom Joan's and her father's attorneys had taken the case. His name was Arther Endicott, and Joan thought he looked very judicial.

  The first part of the hearing, before lunch, consisted mainly of the attorneys' presenting the facts of the case to their judge -- essentially amplifications of materials they had already presented to the association before the hearings began. Endicott had listened to both sides without any comment--though Joan noticed that their judge spent as much time watching the emotional reactions of the disputants as he did listening to the facts.

  Neither side had seen any need to clutter up the issues by calling any witnesses.

  The reaction of Joan to her father and Vera, of Stanton to Joan, and of Vera to Joan were restrained. They greeted each other politely when they saw each other, but did not go any further than that. There would have been no point in words--the attorneys would simply have told them to shut up.

  "All right," Ednicott said. "I'm ready to hear final arguments. Plaintiff may proceed."

  "Thank you, Mr. Endicott," Linda Klausner said. "I'll be brief. The issues here are simple. My client's mother, Eleanor Darris--whom she loves very dearly--lies frozen in cryonic suspension, and her guardians--the defendants--have taken no action to revive her, even though the medical procedures are well established, with no risk to the patient. Plaintiff has offered to take upon herself all pains, costs, and burdens necessary to reanimate Eleanor Darris, but defendants have refused. Plaintiff contends that the defendants are in conspiracy against Eleanor Darris--Stanton Darris's wife and Vera Delaney's mother-- principally because the two defendants are living together as man and wife now--though not legally recognized as such--and the reanimation of Eleanor Darris would prove inconvenient to their affair. In the meanwhile, Eleanor Darris is being deprived of her most basic right--the right to breathe. We petition for custody of Eleanor Darris's suspended body so that her reanimation may proceed at our expense, and will accept any court supervision required to that end."

  "Thank you. Defense may proceed."

  "Mr. Endicott," Marv Hastings said, "this is more of an emotional quarrel within a family than anything else, with strong passions and feelings on both sides. Plaintiff's notion of a conspiracy against her mother is ridiculous--the defendants in this case are Eleanor Darris's husband and first daughter. Regardless of the fact that the two defendants are living together, they have made no move to have Eleanor Darris declared legally dead, or to discontinue her suspension--for which they are paying--nor has Stanton Darris made any move to divorce his wife, though he could easily obtain a decree. Defendants have informed plaintiff that their decision not to revive Eleanor Darris is solely for the reason that such reanimation would require the surrogate for Eleanor Darris to have its brain cerebrally aborted--a procedure to which defendants have profound moral objections. The defendants can sympathize with plaintiff's desire to reunite with her mother--as they themselves would like to do if this reanimation could be accomplished by less drastic means--but they are not prepared to abandon their moral principles even out of love for the plaintiff's mother."

  "I'd like to thank you both for being so concise," Endicott said. "All right. I don't see any point in going back and forth over this again--as I would if there were some possibility of mediation here. Given the case you have presented it to me, there just doesn't seem to be any way to divide this one down the middle. It requires an all-or-nothing decision. I'll render my decision now. First, I admire the plaintiff's loyalty to her mother. It's aesthetically pleasing to me that for once I don't have a case where brothers are squabbling to make the rest of the family pay for the reanimation of a loved one. I am less moved by the defendants. It is a primary principle of law for parties to come into court with clean hands--and I'm afraid that the fact that the two defendants sleep together while Eleanor Darris lies suspended makes their hands, in my view, less than clean. Still, their defense--that they object to cerebral abortion--is one I find both legally and morally valid. I do not feel I have the right to deprive them of their right to make this moral choice. Therefore, I find against the plaintiff. Arbitration costs will be assumed by plaintiff entirely."

  Endicott shut off his recorder and turned to Joan. "I hope, if I'm ever suspended, young woman, that my ward will be as loyal to me as you are to your mother. I apologize that I couldn't see my way clear to helping you."

  Joan sighed. "I understand, sir."

  Endicott left the conference room. Stanton said, "Marv, we'd like a few minutes with my daughter." Hastings nodded to Stanton and left. Joan nodded to Linda Klausner that it was all right; she left too.

  "You're still my daughter and I'm still your father," Stanton said to Joan. "The question remains where we go from here."

  Joan laughed bitterly. "Fine. I'm not due back in Charlotte Amalie until tomorrow night. Why don't you lend me a flying belt, and we'll go on a family hunt together?"

  "What the rape does hunting have to do with this?"

  "I started wondering what sort of men used their flying belts to hunt after I saw a Touchable use one to ick another one when I was five."

  "No, it was a Marnie," Vera said. Then bit her tongue.

  "No, another Touchable--you were in time!" A shiver ran up Joan's spine as she realized the import of what Vera had accidentally let out. "You could have stopped him! And then you had the audacity to blame Andrew McIntosh?"

  "Look," Stanton said, "I don't know anything about this--and what does a dead Touchable matter, especially after twelve years? You say you're free tonight, Joan? Why don't you stay at Helix Vista?"

  Joan tried to calm herself. "To what end, Father?"

  "Well, for one thing, you might want to see your brothers."

  "Did Mark or the twins make any effort to see me when I needed them? Zack I can see elsewhere, where we won't be so strained. As for my younger brothers, when they are old enough to make a choice in this matter, I'll take it up with them individually."

  "I'm not talking about 'this matter,'" Stanton said. "I'm talking about reuniting our family."

  "You may begin by reuniting me with my mother," said Joan.

  "You have no right to judge me this way!" Stanton said.

  "Talk to my sister. She's the judge in this family, not me."

  "I told you earlier," Vera said to Stanton, "that you'd be wasting your time with her."

  "Have you no feeling left for me?" Stanton asked.

  Joan looked at her father directly. "Yes, Father. But I'm too discreet to tell you of it."

  Stanton fumed up. "All right--to the caldron with you! Nobody can ever say that I didn't try to make peace with you."

  "Father," Joan said, "there is a debt of honesty I must settle with you. Do you remember when I was four years old, the night of Vera's coming-out party? You flew your belt onto my terrace, climbed in my window, and I asked you to sing a song for me. You sang Going to St. Clive. After you sang it, I told you that you sang much better than Mr. McIntosh."

  Stanton nodded, hesitantly. He remembered the night well.

  Joan stood up and paused at the door. "I loved you that night. And because of it, I lied about your singing," she said.

  On Friday, December 18, the Yule recess of both Manors began, and Joan moved into Burke Filcher's estate for the duration of recess. In one sense she was grateful to be having to spend the holidays with him--it gave her a valid excuse to decline Adele Sommer's renewed invitation to spend Solstice with her family. Otherwise, she was not particularly thrilled to be at Filcher's beck and call twenty-four hours a day for the next three weeks.

  Oddly, the week of Solstice went smoothly. Flicher left Joan to trim the Solstice Tree and otherwise practice in the laserium as much as she wanted. He gave her a bedroom of her own and did not approach her sexually all week; he slept in his own bedroom. They spent Yule Eve at a congressional Solstice party with those who had not returned to their home districts for the holida
ys, sang Yule carols such as Ruby the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and exchanged gifts Solstice morning--Joan giving Burke a set of hand-embroidered blue silk pajamas, and Burke giving Joan a copy of the new biography of Wolfgang Jaeger, a documentary called The Wolf Who Hunted Tigers.

  The only thing that Joan found particularly strange during the week was that Filcher had decided that the two of them would eat nothing but fruits and vegetables--a "cleansing routine," he called it--and while by the end of the week Joan wanted a steak so badly she told Filcher of visiting the Televison Museum in Newer York and watching episodes of The Twilight Zone starring Rod Sirloin, she had never been so regular in her life.

  The point of all this became clear to her the morning of Saturday, December 26, when Filcher instructed her to join him-- in her dress white uniform--for breakfast in his bedroom. He wore the new silk pajamas Joan had given him for the first time.

  Breakfast was in bed, consisting of omelettes, croissants with butter and jam, fruit juice, and mocha. Joan ate enthusiastically; while there was no meat, it was a better meal than she'd had in a week. After her third cup of mocha, she got the urge to relieve herself--as she did every morning after drinking mocha--but Filcher kept delaying her, chatting away merrily on meaningless subjects.

  Finally, the situation was desperate. "Burke, I've got to go."

  "Eh? All right. What are you waiting for?"

  "I was waiting for you to finish talking. Goddess, you're talkative this morning!"

  Joan started to get out of bed.

  "Where are you going?" Filcher said.

  "Haven't you been paying attention? I have to go to the bathroom."

  "No, you don't," he said.

  "Come on, Burke, this isn't funny anymore. You said I could go to the bathroom just two seconds ago."