The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Vistata Form

by J. Neil Schulman

  "I didn't say anything about the bathroom," Burke said.

  "Burke, if I don't get in there in about fifteen seconds, I'm going to mess my pants!"

  "Now you've got the idea," Filcher said.

  "You're crazy!" Joan said, and she started for the bathroom.

  Filcher was faster, though; he hopped out of bed and blocked her way.

  Joan was practically crying, now. "Burke, let me through! I'm holding back so hard it's awful."

  Filcher didn't move. He just stood blocking the way and smiled.

  Joan started for a bathroom in another room, but she got only a few steps before Filcher grabbed her and started fondling her. She struggled, but he was much stronger than she was.

  She struggled against him, and against herself, for almost a minute more, until there came a spasm of pain so great that she was helpless against it. She stood there, tears coming freely out of her eyes, urine pouring down her legs, and scat being pushed out to form a massive paddy in her panties.

  The smell of scat drifted upward...and without even touching himself, Burke Filcher ejaculated into his silk pajamas.

  He let Joan go. She managed to make it into the bathroom before she started throwing up.

  An hour later, Joan had finally managed to clean herself up and bathe. Filcher brought her a pink jumpsuit, and she put it on.

  When she came out, she faced him off. "Don't you ever do anything like that to me again.!"

  "Don't be absurd," he said. "I haven't enjoyed you so much since you threatened my life at our first meeting."

  "Either you promise to knock off this humiliaton routine of yours or I'll be in Matriarch Graves's office first thing Monday morning requesting a transfer back to the regular dicteria--cut in rank and all. She owes me a favor. She'll do it."

  "She does, and she'll find herself busted back to second corporal," Filcher said. "Don't underestimate me, Joan. I have you; I have the power to keep you."

  "I'll tell my uncle," she said.

  Filcher laughed. "What makes you think your uncle can do anything from St. Clive? Even if he were here, he's no longer in Gentry."

  "Maybe not, but I'll bet he has friends who still are."

  "There's no one in either Manor closer to your uncle than I am. You see, Joan, he and I were lovers for ten years."

  Joan took a breath. "You're lying--you couldn't have been!"

  Filcher dropped himself down onto his bed, put his arms behind his neck, and smiled. "Regulations forbid only heterosexual practices by gaylords. Any other alliances are perfectly legal-- and quite popular. You've heard the expression 'Politics makes strange bedfellows'? Joint-Manor conferences can become quite interesting."

  "I still don't believe you," Joan said.

  "It doesn't matter what you believe," Filcher said. "As a point of fact, it doesn't matter if you believe me that it was Wendell himself who introduced me to the practice of the Brown Handkerchief. Now, I don't want to argue about this any longer." He sat up in bed. "I'll tell you what. I'll take you into Cha- cha Town tonight for a five-centimeter-thick steak. Peace?"

  Joan thought for a moment. "I'll have to return home first. I put my dress uniform into the scintillator. My only spare is at my house."

  "All right," Filcher said. "Why don't you spend the day on you beach? I have some legislation I can look over this afternoon, anyway. I'll come by for you at seven."

  "As you wish," Joan said.

  "That's my girl!" Filcher got up and kissed Joan on the cheek, then went down to his study.

  Even though she'd just taken a bath, Joan immediately returned to the bathroom and washed her face thoroughly before she left.

  Now she knew why they called them Members.

  Chapter 28

  SHE DIDN'T THINK anybody had been watching her.

  A skymobile from the Corps motor pool arrived at her estate at 1400 hours--though she might as well begin thinking of it as two o'clock in the afternoon, she considered. She took only one, civilian-issue ferrofoam suitcase, another case with her LCAA laser and console, and a third case with a practice holoscreen Wendell had given her what seemed like a millennium ago. As a final thought, she took the biography of Jaeger. A disc was a disc, regardless of the source.

  She made a stop at her bank and withdrew virtually her entire accumulated service pay--a substantial sum--from her account. She'd spent hardly a centigram since she'd entered the Corps. She had not received a bill from her attorney, nor would she. Linda Klausner had told her that the Ambassador had already sent her a sum quite sufficient to cover all costs, and Wendell had refused to accept a refund. Joan was grateful for the reserve in her account, and decided that she would settle her legal bill with Wendell when she saw him.

  Going to St. Clive, especially in time for the Competition, was not all that simple, though. The first ship leaving for any of the habitats was the Michael Collins, departing Virginia Station on January 12th for Daedalus, in the asteroid belt. The first ship to Ad Astra was the Joan Baez on the 16th--she thought she might like to take that one for personal reasons. The first ship directly to St. Clive was the Robert A. Heinlein on the 28th. It wouldn't be possible for a deserter from the Federation Peace Corps to get through security--either in a skyport or in Virginia Station, which was legally part of Earth-- by any of those dates without considerable preparations.

  The sort of preparations she needed were going to require help. And Joan knew only one place on Earth where there were people with the inclination and the contacts to supply it.

  Joan had read somewhere that there were two main phases in any escape. The first was breaking contact with the pursuer; the second was putting as much cold trail between the escapee and the pursuer as quickly as possible. Joan did not know for certain that she was being pursued, but assuming that she was and trying to lose whoever might be following her seemed the prudent policy. She proceeded methodically.

  The first step was getting to a place where she could change to a more anonymous mode of travel, such as a bus or shuttle, and lose the Corps skymobile--which, if it didn't have a tracer on it when it was sent for her, would surely have one within a few hours. Joan flew the skymobile from Charlotte Amalie to Canaveral Skyport, smashed the vehicle's flight recorder, then told it to return to the motor pool back in the Virgin Islands. With any luck, it would run out of power and splash somewhere in the Atlantic.

  It was now 3:30 P.M. back in Charlotte Amalie. If Filcher had called the estate to check up on her, there might be Monitors looking for her already. She could have left an automatic satellite relay from her domestic computer to her wristphone-- telling Filcher, if he called, that she was talking to him from the beach--but Joan had felt safer turning off her wristphone and leaving instructions with Villa Olga's domestic computer to tell any caller that she was taking a siesta.

  She had to decide whether it was safer to alter her appearance now--which might delay her another hour--or whether she should risk getting on a shuttle before it was likely that her brainprint would be read as "Wanted by the Authorities."

  She compromised, buying a hat at the skyport gift shop that would conceal her most noticeable feature, her red hair; then hopped the three-fifteen shuttle from Canaveral to Queen of the Angels Skyport. She breathed an extra sigh of relief when she was finally out of the automatic brainprint readers of skyport security. So far, at least, there was no general alarm out for her. It was 1 P.M., GMT-plus-Eight, Standard Time, Saturday afternoon.

  She was the last appointment of the day in the Ziegfeld Follicles Hair Salon in Beverly Hills. She would have preferred to have this done at a more crowded hour, but decided perhaps it was better to be slightly more memorable to one hairstylist than to be seen by a shopful of customers. She asked, and received, only a haircut. "Are you sure you want to cut off all that beautiful hair, honey?" the stylist said to her with hesitation in his voice. "It seems such a shame."

  "I'm up for a part in a holodrama at Zoetrope," Joan said, "and I want to look the p
art at the audition."

  "Maybe you shouldn't cut it until you've got the part for sure," the comman said.

  Joan shook her head. "It's a period piece, and I just can't get into the part emotionally unless I look right. But I do want to ask a favor. Could you be extra-careful to save all my cut hair, so I can have a wig made from it?"

  "That's a splendid idea," he said.

  Joan had him cut her hair as short as his own. He boxed the hair he had cut off and gave it to her. Joan wasn't at all sure that she would get around to doing anything with it before she left Earth--it seemed unlikely--but she wanted to make sure that there weren't any samples of her hair anywhere it could be analyzed.

  She took the tube to Monica that evening, had dinner at a steak house, registered at a hotel of the sort not requiring I.D., then spent the night in her room, bleaching the hair still on her head albino white.

  Sunday morning, Joan went to the Lavender Department of Phil and Roebuck and purchased several sets of android clothing-- belated Yule presents, she told the salesman. Then she returned to her hotel room.

  Binding her breasts with self-slick elastic was uncomfortable, but no great problem. Joan had always regretted how small her breasts were...until now. It took an extra layer of fabric to conceal her nipples, which just made it look as if she had a male's well-developed chest muscles. Finally, she put on one outfit and looked at herself in the mirror.

  "Not bad," she said aloud to her mirror. "A choice little chicken if I say so myself."

  She was checked out of her hotel room by noon, tubed her luggage on ahead to the checkroom at Sunset Station, then went into a lavender cannabistro to see how she fared.

  She had two offers within five minutes. But she declined, saying that she had just come in for a quick toke before meeting a friend.

  She spent the afternoon in a holodrama double feature, then tubed herself to Hollywood by six.

  The Teapot Dome was not yet open for business when Joan arrived, but the stage door was open, so Joan let herself in. No one was in the greenroom, or inside the club itself, so Joan took the spiral staircase up to Bromley's office. He was in, working on what looked to be accounts. Joan rapped softly on the door.

  Hill looked up. "How did you get in?"

  "The door was open, friar," Joan said, "so I just let myself in."

  "We're not open yet," Hill said. "Why don't you come back in a couple of hours?"

  "I didn't come looking for action, friar," Joan said. "I'm looking for a gig, I play roga."

  "Sorry, I'm not hiring. Try The Pink Panther."

  "I'm real good, friar," Joan said. "What's more, I'm a personal friend of Roland Church."

  Hill sat back in his chair and smiled. "Are you, now? Well, what's your name?"

  "I'm calling myself J.D. Harrison," Joan said.

  "Well, I'll tell you, Friar Harrison," Hill said. "I know just about everybody Roland Church has laid eyes on in the past ten years, and he's never mentioned you."

  "That's 'cause he knows me by another name, friar."

  "So? What name is that?"

  "Joan Darris," she said, and smiled.

  She had to help him off the floor. He had fallen backward laughing.

  Hill Bromley listened to Joan's story, then said, "I'll help in any way I can. And I know just the man you'll need to see."

  That was that.

  "J.D. Harrison" made his premiere at The Teapot Dome that evening--three unscheduled sets backed by recorded music, since the Roland Church group was off that night--and after picking up her luggage, she accompanied Hill back to his apartment in a high-rise complex on North Van Ness.

  Bromley had a visitor's bed sunken into the living-room floor, which he made up for Joan himself--there being no robots on the premises; then Joan went into his bathroom, slipping out of her binding. It was the first time she could breathe comfortably all day. Bromley lent her a pair of his pajamas, since she had nothing suitable, by his standards, with her; then they toked a joynette together and went to their separate beds. Joan was amused when she saw the lock on his bedroom door flash into activation.

  She found herself exhausted and fell asleep almost immediately. She didn't even need to take a Dreamspinner.

  Monday the 28th, before breakfast, Hill phoned an acquaintance of his and made an appointment at his own apartment for noon. Joan spent the morning practicing with console and holoscreen, and Hill spent the morning reading.

  The acquaintance arrived at noon with a ferrofoam suitcase. He was a medium-height, medium-build comman with the sort of face one had a hard time remembering five minutes after he'd left the room--and even his voice was the sort it was difficult to listen to for more than a few minutes without feeling drowsy. "Meet the Invisible Man," Hill told Joan when they were introduced. "He's been in a Monitor lineup three times, and all three times someone else was identified; twice, it was a Monitor placed in the lineup."

  "Father Bromley," the man said in simple acknowledgement, "I am your humble servant. How may I help you this time?"

  "Free to the Church, as usual?" Bromley asked.

  "Do you need to ask, Father?"

  "You weren't at Midnight Mass on Christmas," Bromley said. "I was beginning to wonder."

  The Invisible Man smiled weakly. "I was detained," he said.

  "Business, no doubt," Bromley said. "I've never known you to be drawn to sins of the flesh."

  "Now, father," the man protested. "You don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, do you?"

  "Always," Bromley said. "If the Trojans had, they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble. You'll be there next Sunday?"

  "I'll try, Father."

  "Hmmph!" Bromley inclined his head toward Joan. "A complete outfitting, good enough to get by security at both skyport and Virginia Station."

  "How long until departure?" the Invisible Man asked.

  "Between two and four weeks," Bromley said.

  "You don't need a deader, then," the man said. "The chances of a double reading in a month are negligible."

  "What's a 'deader' and a 'double reading'?" Joan asked.

  "A deader," the Invisible Man explained, "is a brainprint recording taken from someone recently deceased, as opposed to a 'live' or 'icicle'. A 'live' is a recording from someone still walking around, and an 'icicle' comes from someone who's in frozen suspension."

  "How do you get a reading from someone who's dead or frozen?" Joan asked.

  "You can't," the man said. "You get it before they're dead or frozen."

  "I suppose you then 'get them out of the way'?" Joan asked.

  "That's not a polite question, J.D.," Hill told her. "And do you think I'd do business with someone who did such a thing?"

  "What other way is there?" Joan asked.

  "The Father provides me with donor recordings," he explained. "When one of them dies or is suspended, we put it into the active file. The donors arrange things in such a way that their brainprints are never put into the Federation's 'inactive file."

  "Oh," Joan said. "I apologize for misjudging you."

  "I forgive you," the Invisible Man said, then smiled pointly at Bromley. Bromley shook his head sadly at him, but couldn't resist smiling. "As for a 'double reading,'" the man went on, "that's what happens when a 'live' reading is taken almost simultaneously from the borrowed recording and the person it's been borrowed from--too far apart for it to be the same person, as far as Federation computers are concerned. This tips the computers off that something is fishy--"

  "--in our case, in the Christian sense of the term--" said Bromley.

  "--and an alarm is sent out on that brainprint. But we use deaders--very rare and very expensive--only for someone who needs a safe brainprint for a long time, or permanently. We can use a live one for you with little risk, since you're leaving Earth so soon."

  "There is one safe source of 'live' brainprints we didn't mention," Bromley said. "Christians back in St. Clive who visit Earth once, then donate their brainpr
ints so they can be used by Christian Touchables on Earth. Since they never return to Earth, there's no possibility of a double reading. That's one of the reasons being known as a priest on Earth is so dangerous--it would make my work hazardous to everyone around me. But I don't think we'll be able to use this source much longer. There's a bill pending in the Upper Manor that would file the brainprint of anyone leaving Earth as 'inactive.'"

  "But a new brainprint isn't all you'll need," the Invisible Man said. "You'll also need an exit permit--can't be faked; it'll be checked with the computers. And," the man turned to Bromley, "perhaps you'd better see about getting this young fellow's looks changed before the holos?"

  "She already has," Bromley said.

  The Invisible Man did a double take, then smiled.

  "Should you have told him that?" Joan asked Bromley. "The less he knows, the less that can be forced from him."

  "I'm afraid our friend must know everything about you," Bromley told Joan. "He'll need the information to get the exit permit through his usual channels."

  "I have money," Joan said. "I can pay my own way."

  "Make a donation to the Church in my name," he said. "Since you're with the Father, your money's no good to me."

  "Is that how you really feal," Bromley asked him, "or is it just because I'm your best source of brainprints?"

  The man smiled sheepishly. "Only God can say, Father."

  "He will, my son, He will."

  The Invisible Man opened up his suitcase and they proceeded to business.

  A false transponder was a different sort of device than Joan had thought; she realized that she had never seen one portrayed in a holodrama exactly right. Essentially, all false transponders did the same thing--mask one's own brainprint and put out a radio signal with another, previously recorded brainprint--but there were several types, depending on what one needed. There were false transponders that could be surgically implanted instead of a real one. There were transponders that performed the double duty of scrambling one's own transmission while simultaneously transponding the false brainprint--these could be used short-term and discarded, without the necessity of surgery. Finally, there were units of the latter type that could pickpocket the brainprint of someone in close proximity to it, then broadcast that brainprint to any scanner that read the pickpocket transponder.