“Well,” she said sweetly, bouncing brightly over to where he sat, standing over him like some angel beholding a mortal for the first time. “That really wasn’t so bad. Now, how about the rest of the adventure? I think I prefer this to the real-fics” Innocent, intrigued eyes stared down playfully. “By the way, my name’s Angharad Shepherd.”
“My name is Spigot. Todd Spigot.”
She swept back her red, curling hair and leaned against the couch side. “If I turn you on, Spigot, pray tell what comes out?”
“Uhm—are you that interested?” Good grief.
“Perhaps. Depends what’s on tap.” She stood up straight. Todd could see the faint outline of her breasts swing beneath the translucent blouse. The springy hair, which tumbled down to her bare shoulders, jiggled dazzling carmine under the shifting soft glow from the lights. “Would you like a drink by the way?”
“Ah—beer, please.”
“Dear me, how bucolic.” She eased from her chair over to the drink dispenser. “Come now. Something more potent. Wine, perhaps. Something to set the blood moving again.”
“Yes, I suppose that wine would be just fine.”
“Maybe something tingly, bubbly? Yes.” She turned toward Todd and in the muted lighting he could see her face to its best possible advantage. Her face seemed the very essence of beauty, some dream-hole culled electronically straight from Todd’s soul. “Champagne!”
“Champagne?” He searched his memory—and images of elegant historical 3-D shows flashed through his mind. “I’ve never tried the stuff.”
Smiling, fingering the dial, she said, “I shouldn’t think so. Not the most popular potation in this age. As a matter of fact, simply that you’d ask for alcohol tells me much of your origins.”
“Does it? And what does it tell you?” A pleasant sensation was sweeping him. His previous experiences with women had been fraught with ambiguity and unfamiliarity. He’d been too eager to please, and his efforts produced severe awkwardness, mucking him up a deal. But now, there wasn’t much to worry about. Beautiful and luscious as she was, he realized that she was simply playacting; that it was all a game, a lark, a spree. Very clear to see that no serious relationship was expected. Quite simply, there was nothing to worry about. The fact that the body he wore was much more comely and attractive seemed somehow not that important. All of this was simply ... an ephemeral pleasure; every movement, gesture, word.
With a pleasant spray of tinkly sounds the dispenser chimed.
Angharad slipped two long-stemmed glasses out, sniffed them, and sighed with expectation. She offered Todd one. “What does it tell me? Well, for one thing it tells me that you’re most likely from a Rim-World. Your mode of civilization is ... well, a tad unprogressive. Yet you look quite customized. Your body, that is. Yours?”
Todd smiled easily. “Sure. But you can have it anytime.” He took a glass. “To fantasy,” he said, clinking the edge of the half-sphere crystal against hers. “May it improve our reality.”
“You puzzle me,” she said after a sip of the stuff.
He took a short swallow. The effervescent liquid slid down his throat. “Oh? How so? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? The chase, the hiding ... aren’t you supposed to ask me questions about all that?”
An amused, piercing glance. “Are you playing a game within a game?”
“Perhaps. How do you know, for example, that the adventure is over?”
Another sip of wine ... then she beckoned him to sit beside her on the couch. “What do you mean?”
He settled beside her, drank a long gulp of the champagne. “A game within a game. Isn’t that reality? I mean, what if I’m for real. What if those security things really did want to drag me away, kill me? How can you tell for sure? Maybe you actually did save my life. And maybe you actually endangered yourself.”
A perplexed frown crossed her features. “I don’t understand. I thought this was all planned. I mean, these sorts of things are supposed to happen ... that’s what the pamphlet said.” She seemed slightly fazed. “I mean, after doing double-duty in fashion-land for a year of exquisite vacation, I hope to get what I plunked down good creds for!” A flash of anger shone in her eyes; and then she was staring quizzically at Todd. “Are you serious?”
“How would you know if I was telling the truth? How can you in such a situation?” He paused, wondering if he could confide in her-just as he was going to have to confide in some real authority soon. Yes, and even if she only went along for the ride, it would be ironic-truly confiding in a woman. The fact that she was beautiful and seemed to expect romance along with the escapade perhaps might lighten the load. Suddenly, the fact that the future was a big fat question mark did not bother Todd. For, while danger certainly lurked, so did the promise of pleasure and excitement.
“All right,” Angharad said. “I’ll bite.”
“May I have another glass of that stuff, first?”
“I’ll do one better.” She dialed up a properly chilled bottle and poured. He drank the glass in one swallow.
“Well, I was right about your lack of civilization,” she said, but not scoldingly.
“Right. I’m from Deadrock.”
“That awful place we just stopped at? They showed us some pictures of it, to assure us that we really did not want to go down there. Bleak. Forbidding.”
“Absolutely,” Todd said, sloshing a bit more champagne into his glass, beginning to feel the effect. “If the universe needed an enema, there’s no question where they’d stick the nozzle.”
“No wonder you left.”
“Have to go back. Job. Mother.”
“How quaint! You have a mother? I was raised in a straight-family brood-unit. Funny to think of a two-parent unit. Old fashioned. But they seem to have done all right by you.”
Todd barked a laugh. “This isn’t my real body. That’s the trouble. I rented it ... an illicit one, it looks like ... by mistake. Didn’t like my real one much.”
The story flowed in quick phrases.
Her eyes grew progressively wider. “Fat? What’s wrong with that?”
“Believe me, the idea of staying in my usual body has more and more appeal. It seems to have liked me too. It’s along for the ride.” He told her.
She was all sparkling sympathy and awe. Todd felt himself warming toward her. When he finished his drink he felt pleasantly drained of anxiety under her understanding ministrations.
“That is some story,” she said finally. “And then you ended up here. I’ll be happy to help you in whatever way I can.” She patted his knee and gave him a brave “buck-up” smile. “You rest here a moment. All that champagne has gone straight through me. I have to use the vac-room. Put your feet up. Rest. God knows after all this, you need it.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose I do.” He lay back down on a soft cushion, closing his eyes. A quiet peace stole over him.
“Right. Rest. I’ll be back. We’ll talk more.”
He nodded groggily. The champagne had made him woozy. Evidently that was the Achilles heel of this particular body. He wasn’t sure ... all he wanted to do was sleep. Sleep. Yes, just drift off into the darkness, curl up in a fetal ball, and slip away into sleep.
* * *
She tiptoed across the carpet away from him, feeling the tiny flexible tendrils beneath her feet give way, feeling everything extraordinarily keenly.
He was nodding off; he must not waken.
The vac-room consisted of a tiny cubicle bearing a toilet booth and molecule shower. She slid the door closed behind quietly and switched on the glare-strips, half-power. Illumination spilled, caressing her swirling hair, her precise body.
Behind the door was a full-length mirror. The woman who called herself Angharad Shepherd flossed back her hair with both hands and watched what the bathing light did with the red: a mottled eruption of shadow-auburn, h
ighlighted by streaks of intense fire-crimson. She pouted her lips into a querulous bee-stung expression, winked an emerald eye, swayed to rich-textured music that flowed through her head as she admired herself.
She halted her little solo-parade before the mirror, giggled, shook her head, and abruptly gave her reflection an obscene gesture.
Above the vac-commode sequestered a small com-unit. She delicately punched out a code on inlaid buttons, and then dialed a scrambler onto it.
“C’mon, c’mon, handsome,” she muttered to herself. “I can’t sit on the john all day.”
Blinking lights detailed the sequential response of the message. A reply flashed from the other side. “Proceed.”
She leaned toward the transmitter nonchalantly, as though about ready to mutter some choice bit of gossip. “Well, you were right, dear one. He’s got a MacGuffin on. A good one. You won’t believe how he got it, either. Poor guy inside is as harmless as a slug, with about as much wits. Nice, but kinda naive, you know? No worry there. I’ll place my full report later.” She paused thoughtfully. “Oh. And what was the idea of sending those security gorillas after him with their guns?”
“In some matters,” replied the voice of Ort Eath, “they are over-enthusiastic. They shall be disciplined. In the meantime, is it possible for you to detain him for a while, keep him out of the way until I have the opportunity of interviewing him?”
“Oh, I think he might be amenable to that,” she said.
“Very well. Transmission ended.”
She punched the com-unit off and chuckled softly to herself as she put down the toilet seat.
HE HAD never felt more vulnerable in his life.
Spread-eagled on the linen-draped examination table like a rack of prime meat, he shivered as he waited for the med-unit slung over him by the doctor-ops to complete the sensor scan of his body.
Philip Amber studied the ceiling morosely. The dull ache in the back of his mind had not receded; nor had the vague echoes of the pounding guilt that had mashed into his brain like striking sledge hammers.
The ceiling was dull. Circles. Concentric circles, radiating out and out, in and in. Colors, colors. Never ending lines, around and around and ...
The robot squealed piercingly as it completed its circulatory system analysis and proceeded upon a more in-depth surveillance of his nervous system. It was just a machine, Amber told himself. A hunk of metal, glass inlaid with photosensors, X-ray devices, temp-registers, circuits circuits circuits like those circles up there on that boring hypnotic ceiling. It chittered like some manic insect, a semicircle of blinking lights and noise, traveling up and down his body fluidly.
So he watched the machine, connected to its computer extension like a hand to an arm, waving over him. Passing like the hand of some spiritual healer. Only Amber had no spirit to heal ... or so he told himself. Nor did he want any.
Suddenly a small hypo-spray emerged from a previously invisible flap on the underside of the scan-device. A small mechanical voice explained. “We’ll have to do a quick nerve-pierce. Anesthetic.”
“It won’t put me out, will it? I expressly dictated that I should not be rendered ...” He yelled. But the thing had him pinned. The hypo-spray descended and Amber felt the brief sting of penetration.
Numbness spread over his body like a rapid glacier. But he didn’t go under ... only partially. He was fully conscious, yet less in control.
And the monster memories crawled from the dark pit of his mind and showed themselves.
He would have screamed, but his mouth was frozen, his vocal chords stiff.
But he withstood. He took the pain, not accepting it as his due, but bearing up to it all the same, with sources of mental energy he had no idea he possessed. Eventually the memories faded. The wretched sins of his life sank back into the recesses of his mind, unexpiated, but finished with their tortures for now. Gradually, he was aware of the solid, real sounds of the doctor-machine at work.
Relieved, he closed his eyes.
She seeped from the darkness like a wisp of steam from hell.
The cloud coagulated into the dim shape of Simone.
And he remembered her. Everything. Everything he’d asked the army technicians to mem-wipe. The incompetent assholes. The slouching fools.
“There’s no such thing as a jinx, Philip,” she said.
He was doing push-ups. Always the exercise nut. Laps, chin-ups, weight workouts. Physical strain shut out the mental strain. He was doing push-ups, talking to her as she sat upright on the couch, watching his thick muscles moving under his tanned skin. “Yeah?” he said through gritted teeth. “You tell that to my parents in the orgbanks. You tell that to the fifty-two men on the space station, if you can fit their bits back together and breathe some breath back into ‘em. You tell that to everyone in the universe that’s been stupid enough to love me.” One final up-down, touch-your-nose, stiffen toes. Work, work, work. He rolled over, breathing heavily and looked at her. “That’s why we’ve got to end it. I don’t want you to die too. Oh, maybe not today or tomorrow you’d go. But someday, sometime. And I don’t want it to happen. I’ll just get a job somewhere in the boondocks of space, alone, where I don’t effect anybody.”
She sat on the couch like a goddamned Madonna; such caring in her eyes it made him sick. That was half the reason he wanted her to go—in some ways he found her detestable. How could she be anything but that if she loved a wretch like him? His own self-hatred was mirrored on her. And damn, if she didn’t understand. He wanted her to leave, so badly, for so many reasons. Right now. No more questions. No more explanations. Just vamoose. Pronto.
But when he looked at her, when that short brown hair bobbed up and down with her laugh and her moist eyes looked at him, the seething thoughts were quelled by the soothing oil of her love, her irrational passion for him, on the troubled waters of his life.
“I don’t intend to try to understand that, Philip. I just don’t care. I love you. I want to live with you. It’s normal enough, I’d say. A little too normal, in fact. You’re just using this as an excuse. You just don’t want to get involved. But it’s not my life you’re worried about, Philip Amber. It’s your idea of responsibility. I mean, who cares if you ruin my existence by not accepting our love? All you’re worried about is how bad you’ll feel if I do die. Which is not very likely. You’re just masking your selfishness. Doesn’t make much difference to you if life without you is rotten. Which it is.”
“We’ve gone over and over this before,” he said, getting up, going to the fridge for some beer, that other great comforter. Couple of bulbs and zippo. Sweet ease. “I’m a genetic freak. My great uncle was a telent, an esper, a brain-peeper. They said he could even move things telekinetically if he got emotional. Well, that part of the family is of with the rest of the freaks, safe on their little colonies out in space where they won’t bother us. But it’s in my blood.”
“I don’t understand. What does the fact that one of your relatives was psychic have to do with you?”
“Well, look at this way. They ought to ship me out to one of those colonies, where I belong. I’m telling you, I’ve got a talent too.” He sipped his drink, felt its cool warmth slipping through him. “Yeah. Only nothing under my control.” He gestured toward his head airily. “Some kind of emission—psychic waves, if you will. Can’t explain it. Damned if I’m going to let them examine me; the scientists that is. They might get bright and just deep-six me, cremated. No more threat.”
“But, Phil.” She stood and grabbed one of his hands emphatically. “What threat?”
He shrugged, not really caring anymore. That was the only way he could deal with it. Just not care. “Vibrations negative to life. I emit them. That’s what I figure, anyway.” He patted her hand and sat, staring away, feeling drained emotionally and physically. “Life tends to get snuffed out. You’ve heard of someone who had a green th
umb? They somehow have a magic about them—a psychic talent actually—in harmony with plants. Helps the things to grow, live. There are people around that are just vibrant with life, euphoric charisma. You’re near them and you get charged with life. Around me, people get charged with death. I’m a statistical oddity, a freaky mathematical necessity.”
“What?”
“Murphy’s Law. What can go wrong, will. So out of billions of human beings, odds are that maybe one out of a bunch is going to turn out like me, like three thumbs or two heads. The dice have got to roll snake-eyes sometimes, and, my love, you’re staring at those two black dots right here. You stick around me, and you sign your own execution notice.”
“Where’s the pen, then?”
He studied her face a moment. Silly, this soft, womanly emotion.
Love. It had injected him, too. And it gave as much pain as pleasure. How cruel it was, to subject them both to its power.
“Knowing this, you’d live around me?” She nodded.
“Why? For God’s sake, you can live almost forever here on Earth these days. I tell you...”
She punched him in the stomach. Hard. It didn’t hurt much or long, but it shocked him. “Now listen, stupid. Have you considered this? Maybe I’m suicidal?”
“But you’re not.” He’d never been with anyone who seemed more alive.
“I’ll take my chances, okay? So. Are we going to live together?”
Women, he thought. Loving leeches. But they made you feel ... human.
“All right,” he whispered, giving up. He kissed her softly. “All right… “
That memory ... that moment of transition from possibility to reality was somehow more painful than the recollection of her dead, three years later, age twenty-four. Copter accident. Brain mashed like an overripe tomato. Well, pal, they’d said. You know for a fast couple gees we could take a tissue sample, do a fast-clone for ya. Wouldn’t be the same, but it’d be something.
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