The Pure Cold Light

by Gregory Frost

  The mask face bobbed up and down.

  Concealed behind a second set of heavy drapes, a long hall led off the tea room and into the bordello proper. Had they taken a seat at one of the tables in the smoking room, they would have been offered menus depending upon their predilections, listing a variety of proffered pleasures. Everything was discreet, tasteful. What transpired behind the closed doors was to remain a mystery … or would have done if Angel hadn’t started his own inquiry.

  They were walking along, calmly enough, and Lyell had enough on her mind that she did not at first hear the rattle of doors, Angel trying each one he passed; or maybe it was the wind chimes and birdcalls, reminding her of the Geoplatform fat farm, drowning out the noise. Had it really only been a matter of days since she’d been up there? It seemed like months had passed.

  All of a sudden, a door behind her opened, and she turned to find Angel standing on the threshold, staring dumbly inside. She stepped back to where he stood and peered over his shoulder.

  It was a large room, sparsely furnished in pseudoteahouse fashion, with a floor of tatami mats, various bamboo and rice paper screens standing about, and silk flowers in vases on low tables. In the middle of the room, eight people dressed in baggy, gray, one-piece outfits sat in two rows along benches fitted with curious saddles. Other benches before and behind them contained empty saddles.

  The saddles encased their hips, their crotches. They each wore a pair of goggles that covered their ears as well and also plugged into the saddles. All eight people held their hands out in front of them and, as if performing some warming up exercise, rhythmically reached forward and drew back, reached forward and drew back, each bench in unison.

  To the right, in a tokonoma alcove that would normally have displayed a lovely scroll, a man in what looked like a flight helmet sat in front of a thin monitor screen. He held an F/X control board on his lap but he was watching TV. On the screen was displayed the belly of a huge, ancient galley, replete with naked, underfed oarsmen. Flaming lamps rocked back and forth on chains not unlike those that secured the oarsmen to their seats and each other. A muscular woman in red leather trousers and nothing much else strode the deck between the slaves and flogged them mercilessly with a cat-o’ nine-tails. She spat on them and made threatening gestures. She might have spoken, but the speakers appeared to be turned off. It might have been a scene from a truly dreadful pirate film, except that the oarsmen on the screen and the people in the room were rowing in sync. And when the lashes bit into the backs of the poor wretches in the galley, goggled people in the baggy suits jerked and cried out.

  Lyell closed the door. “Come on, Angel,” she said, “and don’t do that again. You might have to stay here a while, and the next group might notice you sticking your nose in.”

  “What was that?”

  “That was virtual—all the excitement and the pain without the risk. Just the expense. More than that, you don’t need to know. You don’t want to know.” A far cry from the Undercity teahouses she had been thinking of, where the patrons and the cockroaches shared paltry accommodations, and where the sheets—when there were sheets—didn’t get changed. She had never visited one of these places before. Probably it was because Knewsday and their ilk already ran too many shows on the virtues of virtual sex. It wasn’t, she told herself, because she wasn’t interested. She just tended to focus on the streets, that was all.

  Certainly there was some client overlap between the two levels: the Overs enjoyed occasional slumming expeditions out of towers but inside the walls. The rakes still progressed, if that was the right term for it. Degressed? She shook her head. One of the reasons the walls had gone up where they had was to maintain a captive population which could imagine itself better off because it was inside something. People who were happy just to be indoors.

  Orbitol pervaded the towers through places like this. Drugs of all sorts were included on the menu, along with the arts of pleasure; mostly opium, but also endorphin-triggers to induce pleasure. Orbitol wasn’t promoted nor, strictly speaking, was it supposed to be available here. It was on hand in case someone asked for it, like the dusty, expensive bottles of Lambic Framboise under the counter. Orbitol was for the masses. The dingy dens on the street had lost much of their trade to various engineered, site-specific substances over the years, but Orbitol was the worst. It had decimated their clientele, transporting its victims to a different Xanadu, transporting them literally. In order to survive, the dens had been forced to buy into Orbitol’s distribution. How ScumberCorp had finagled it all—an end run around every competitor—remained a corporate secret as closely guarded as the formula itself. Reported cases of Orbitol decay in the Undercity were a thousand percent higher than among the Overs, and climbing. Her story on fast foods had begun out of a theory that some of the foods had been laced with Orbitol, creating instant addicts and cementing a drug habit to specific foods, creating totally dependent customers at the trough, at least until they decayed. That picture didn’t seem to make economic sense, but she refused to give up on it entirely.

  The hall stretched on forever. She wondered how many clients Grofé’s handled. Maybe this Mallee was someone she should interview once things quieted down. And Peat, who obviously knew things about ScumberCorp that no one else was likely to know. Like maybe even the sex fantasies of some of the Gang of Four. Now, that would make for interesting viewing.

  Around a corner, Lyell and Angel caught up with Chikako. She waited just inside the open door of another large room, filled with exercise equipment. It reminded Lyell unpleasantly again of Stardance.

  A nearly naked woman was working out on a small trampoline to one side. Lyell directed Angel to a bench and sat beside him. He fidgeted like a child who couldn’t hold still. Lyell scrutinized him quizzically. Peat walked over to the trampoline.

  The jumper reduced her bouncing until she could safely spring to the mat, then performed a tight inverted twist, landing precisely on the balls of both feet. Her perfect, compact and tanned physique gleamed. She wore a formfitting bikini bottom and a bright red breastband. She had drawn her coppery hair back into a coil. She looked like a bull-dancer from Minos.

  From another bench, she swept up a towel and mopped her face, then hung the towel around her neck as she approached Peat.

  The two women embraced; everything about the casualness of the gesture told Lyell that they were indeed old friends. They said a few words, then laughed together, then chattered happily. Lyell rested her eyes, longing for a stimulant and a massage.

  When she finally directed Mallee toward them, Peat was smiling and more relaxed than Lyell had yet seen her. Mallee’s presence had cracked the facade.

  “So, this is the Angel,” Mallee said admiringly, and Angel crossed his arms, stroked his chin, looked down, and otherwise behaved embarrassedly. She said, “Thomasina,” and nodded in greeting, then glanced back at Peat. “You say he’s got a crab unit under there? What’d he do, land on his head?”

  “He can’t remember.”

  Mallee pursed her lips. She had worked out a plan: they were to stay here until evening, when she would have a fully charged car ready for them. Then they would take the club’s private exit down to the skyway level, pile into the car, and travel to her Spring Mountain villa.

  “I didn’t realize,” Lyell commented, “that a teahouse operator was in the class that affords villas.”

  “Actually, it’s a perk of the job. Came with the title. Don’t ask me, ask Ichi-Plok’s subsidiary. It’s more for the executives than it is for me—I’m just another piece of furniture with a virtual license. At least you’ll be out of the city and in a villa owned by a competitor, so you’re a lot less likely to be twigged by Scumbers. Meantime, I’ve got you a suite here—I already took it off the menu. Sorry there’s only the one room, but we’re busy today.”

  “Yes, we saw the rowing team.”

  Mallee smiled. “Would you believe me if I told you that program has a waiting list?”


  “Probably.”

  “We have sixteen virtual rooms, more than any other local tea house.” She spoke with obvious pride.

  A buzzer sounded. Mallee walked to the bench where she had gotten the towel. She picked up a blue palm phone and spoke into it. After a moment, she pointed it at the wall. The paneling slid aside, revealing a portion of a larger screen. There was a small set beside it—an all-purpose, diskROM entertainment center. The phone doubled as a remote control.

  Wryly, Mallee said, “Looks like you’ve made the splash internash.”

  At first the entire screen lit, but she quickly reduced the image to correspond with the space she had opened. The view was of an overhead shot of ICS-IV, showing the center tower like a hub and the cellblocks like seven spokes off it. From that shot, no one would have guessed at the chaos reigning within. The sound came up. “... estimates as many as three hundred deaths. Believed to be included in that total are the school’s principal, Ms. Chikako Peat, and a man ScumberCorp officials have linked to the terrorist group Xau Dâu, which has plagued the megacorporation for years. It is now believed this man, Angel Rueda, subverted the school’s security in order to arm students, fomenting a bloody revolt.”

  First they showed a photo of Angel without the bypass, and Lyell almost didn’t recognize him. Before she adjusted to it, the picture switched to a tracking shot of Angel entering the school unaccompanied. He was glancing around as if making certain he had not been followed.

  “That’s not me,” he complained. “I never went in there alone. I’ve only been to the school once.”

  Lyell gripped his shoulder reassuringly. “We know.”

  “However,” said the television, “Knewsday now believes he fell victim to his own plan and was shot in the chaos of the riot. ScumberCorp city officials say it will be many hours before more specific information is available. Reached during rehearsals for his evening show, the President ordered an immediate investigation into the event.”

  President Odie looked sincerely into the camera. “We have tolerated the monsters behind this subversive group long enough. I know that all of America is behind me when I state that we will tolerate no more. We are going to stamp out Xau Dâu. And don’t forget to watch my ‘Best of Odie’ show Tuesday—”

  “Please,” said Peat, “shut it off before I vomit on the flag.” She dropped down beside Angel and took his hand. “Well, dear man, how does it feel to be a monster?”

  The mask’s black face looked her way, expressing mild perturbation. “I did none of that,” he said. The agony in his voice killed the humor in Peat’s expression. She took his hands in hers and faced him.

  “Angel, don’t you see? It just proves what Thomasina told you. The only way that footage could exist is if it was simulated in advance. It would have taken someone hours to doctor up.” She looked around for confirmation. “Right?”

  Lyell nodded.

  Angel leaned his head back. All of a sudden, he unplugged the LifeMask and peeled it off. “I’ve had enough of that.”

  “You’ve got blood on your shoulder, Thomasina,” Mallee observed. “Are you wounded?”

  “It’s his.”

  “Ah. You’ll want to clean up.”

  “Actually, no, thank you,” said Lyell. “I need to leave, and the sooner the better. There are connections that need forging, and I need to find out what’s really hopping before they change that report and slap my picture up there, too. If I go out, will there be a problem with my return?”

  Mallee smiled at her. “Lots of women do.”

  “Not exactly what I meant.” She turned to Angel. “I want you to hold this in your hand,” she said, and gave him her phone case. He stared at it as at some alien artifact. “Close your hand around it. Press your fingers hard against it.” When he had obeyed, she daintily took it by its edge and slipped it back in her belt bag.

  “Fingerprints?” Peat asked.

  “And blood.” She ducked her chin toward her shoulder.

  Peat mulled that over for a moment. She said, “Don’t be too long.”

  “A few hours only, I hope.” She got up and, with a grateful nod to Mallee, said, “I’ll find my way out.”

  She made it halfway down the hall before giving in to the temptation to try more of the doors. None of them opened. She wondered whom she had recorded seated at the oars. Nebergall, the sick bastard, was going to treasure that footage.

  Chapter Sixteen: Virtual Recovery

  The woman in front of him wore an elaborate leather corset. She had on laced brown boots with a line of spikes down the outside. Her bright red hair was cropped short. Her eyes weren’t human. They glowed with barely contained power that he could actually feel against his bare skin like invisible hands slithering over him, the power pressing him down, down to his knees.

  The corset pushed the woman’s tattooed breasts up impossibly over the top, making them jut forward. Her pierced nipples were as sharp as cones. She grinned maniacally with teeth that had been honed to points as sharp as the nipples. “Slave,” she said.

  The word hit him like a slap in the face. He jerked back but couldn’t move far. Chains held him naked on his knees. His penis, of its own accord, had stiffened, extending to a prodigious thirty centimeters. His skin was bronze in color, his body narrow-waisted but massive across the chest. He could flex the muscles, feel them ripple. His erection, when he touched it, was definitely attached, the real thing despite his knowing that it could not be so.

  The room was an oubliette, its exit a hatch in the ceiling. Looming to the right stood a black vinyl bed fitted with straps and devices of unimaginable intent.

  The dominatrix approached him. She had a coiled whip in her left hand. The leather of her outfit creaked like saddlery as she moved. He could smell her strong perfume—some erotic mixture to lure him. “You’ll do everything I tell you,” she said sternly, then giggled. “Sorry. But the look on your face …”

  “What does it look like? I can’t imagine it’s even my face.”

  “No, it’s not that, and anyway half of your head is missing because of that bypass. Really, it’s your expression. You looked like a little boy watching his first puppet show.”

  He glanced down at his aroused member. “A little boy? What about this?”

  “Oh, I did that. It’s fairly standard, an automatic aspect of the program to salve the male ego. I can tweak you a good deal larger if you like, Pinocchio, but you’ll have to tell me some lies first. I wanted you aroused because I thought it might bring back a memory of someone, some place, some time when you got laid. You must have made love in your closed past, Angel, a man who looks like you.”

  He tried to conjure up an appropriate image, then shook his head.

  “Ah, well,” she said, “I tried. Maybe someone else.”

  Her shape dissolved into that of a blonde princess in a gauzy gown. Her hair poured across the floor in back of her like a wedding train. Around her the room and the bed reshaped, breaking into squares, each of which transformed. The room became a huge stone chamber with vaulted ceiling and a fireplace large enough to stand in; the bed, a feather cushion. “Perhaps Rapunzel will do it.” The voice was no longer Chikako’s. It was a soft, singsong of innocence. The accompanying scent expressed milkbaths, virginity. Her gown parted as she came forward, and he saw that she lacked any pubic hair. She said, “I would give most anything if my gracious lord would let me lie with him for a night.” Her eyebrows danced. “Or is that ‘gracious knight would let me lie with him, oh lord’? It’s been a few years.” She sat on the cushion, and was nearly absorbed by it.

  He didn’t know what to say. He found each transformation vestigially arousing, but ascribed his feelings to the last traces of the inoculation he had been given earlier. It was as if he stood outside himself, watching his arousal but not actually aroused.

  Earlier, before he had regained his composure, Mallee had presented Chikako with a gift—“ibogaine,” she’d said. After taking the
capsule, Chikako had confessed that it was a chemical she loved, and hadn’t enjoyed for years—Mallee had given it to her for old times’ sake. They had time to kill, and she didn’t know any better way to pass a long stretch of time. The ibogaine gave her pleasant waking hallucinations that she could manipulate and a decided sexual appetite. He could appreciate the former from experience. Still, while they talked in the bare little virtual room, seated on a small futon, he saw the cool principal he knew thaw into a spirited, blithe woman with an urgent desire to touch and be touched. She insisted that she would show him what a sexual appetite was—after all, here they were in the perfect place for it. “Not for real sex,” she’d sworn at the outset. “Just for fun. I’ll demonstrate it to you, that’s all. Who knows, maybe it’ll jog your memory. Maybe you’ve used virtual before and don’t remember. We’ll rattle that damn bypass of yours.” For that chance, he agreed.

  The suits were lightweight, if as ugly as trash bags. They included soft boots and gloves. “You’re supposed to have a shower before this,” she explained, “you know—good hygiene.” She handed him a codpiece unit, then had to explain how it fit on. She had a corresponding unit of her own. “Easy to clean,” she said. “Much cheaper to replace if anything shorts out.”

  With the hood on, he expected a rush of claustrophobia, but before that could happen, Peat snatched him from the room and into a three-dimensional fantasy world. Initially, it didn’t look real, but like a computer model. Its depth conflicted with his senses, and she let him wander around in it a few minutes to orient himself before she shifted into the libidinous programs that Grofe’s clientele used.

  Now he couldn’t feel the suit at all, and experienced a pit-of-the-stomach clench if he tried to override the program by will and locate his own body. Was he, for instance, erect in reality as in fantasy? No way to tell from within the suit.

  She made the room an eighteenth century palace. He could feel the thick rug beneath his bucket-style boots. The new woman with him wore a blue satin gown with a ribboned echelle front. A canopied bed stood beside her. She climbed onto it, her breasts spilling like fruit out of her deep neckline. He knew the bed was nothing but the futon pallet. He knew how high it was, how small. Yet, when he rubbed the quilt between his thumb and fingers, he could feel the embroidery.