The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction Part 7

She's shorter than I am, tiny and dark with curly chestnut hair. She's also proficient in any martial art I can think of. And if all else fails, in her handbag she carries a .357 Colt Python with a four-inch barrel.

When I first saw that b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I didn't believe she could even lift it But she can. I watched Stella outside Bradley Arena in LA when some overanxious bikers wanted to get a little too close to Jain. "Back off, creeps." "So who's tellin' us?" She had to hold the Python with both hands, but the muzzle didn't waver. Stella fired once; the slug tore the guts out of a parked Harley-w.a.n.kel. The bikers backed off very quickly.

Stella enfolds Jain in her protection like a raincape. It sometimes amuses Jam; I can see that. Stella, get Alpertron on the phone for me. Stella? Can you score a couple grams? Stella, check out the dudes in the hall. Stella- It never stops.

When I first met her, I thought that Stella was the coldest person I'd ever encountered. And in Des Moines I saw her crying alone in a darkened phone booth-Jain had awakened her and told her to take a walk for a couple hours while she screwed some rube she'd picked up in the hotel bar. I tapped on the gla.s.s; Stella ignored me.

Stella, do you want her as much as I?

So there we are-a nice symbolic obtuse triangle. And yet-We're all just one happy show-biz family.

IV.

This is Alpertron, Ltd.'s, own chartered jet, flying at 37,000 feet above western Kansas. Stella and Jain are sitting across the aisle from me. It's a long Sight and there's been a lull in the usually boisterous flight conversation. Jain flips through a current Neiman-Marcus catalogue; exclusive mail-order listings are her present pa.s.sion, I look up as she bursts into raucous laughter. "I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned. Will you look at this?" She points at the open catalogue on her lap.

Hollis, Moog Indigo's color operator, is seated behind her. She leans forward and cranes her neck over Jain's shoulder. "Which?"

"That," she says. "The VTP."

"What's VTP?" says Stella.

Hollis says, "Video tape playback."

"Hey, everybody!" Jain raises her voice, cutting stridently through everyone else's conversations. "Get this. For a small fee, these folks'll put a video tape gadget in my tombstone. It's got everything- stereo sound and color. All I've got to do is go in before I die and cut the tape."

"Terrific!" Hollis says. "You could leave an alb.u.m of greatest hits. You know, for posterity. Free concerts on the gra.s.s every Sunday."

"That's really sick," Stella says.

"Free, h.e.l.l." Jain grins. "Anybody who wants to catch the show can put a dollar in the slot."

Stella stares disgustedly out the window.

Hollis says, "Do you want one of those units for your birthday?"

"Nope." Jain shakes her head. "I'm not going to need one."

"Never?"

"Well. . . not for a long time." But I think her words sound unsure.

Then I only half listen as I look out from the plane across the scattered cloud banks and the Rockies looming to the west of us. Tomorrow night we play Denver. "It's about as close to home as I'm gonna get" Jain had said in New Orleans when we found out Denver "was booked.

"A what?" Jain's voice is puzzled."A cenotaph," says Hollis.

"Shut up," Stella says. "d.a.m.n it."

We're in the Central Arena, the architectural pride of Denver District. This is the largest gathering place in all of Rocky Mountain, that heterogeneous, anachronistic strip-city dinging to the front ranges of the continental divide all the way from Billings down to the southern suburb of El Paso.

The dome stretches up beyond the range of the house lights. If it were rigid, there could never be a Rocky Mountain Central Arena. But it's made of a flexible plastic-variant and blowers funnel up heated air to keep it buoyant We're on the inner skin of a giant balloon. When the arena's full, the body heat from the audience keeps the dome aloft, and the arena crew turns off the blowers.

I killed time earlier tonight reading the promo pamphlet on this place. As the designer says, the combination of arena and spectators turns the dome into one sustaining organism. At first I misread it as "o.r.g.a.s.m."

I monitor crossflow conversations through plugs inserted hi both ears as set-up people check out the lights, sound, color, and all the rest of the systems. Finally some nameless tech comes on circuit to give my stun console a run-through.

"Okay, Rob, I'm up in the booth above the east aisle. Give me just a tickle." My nipples were sensitized to her tongue, rough as a cat's.

I'm wired to a test set fully as powerful as the costume Jain'll wear later-just not as exotic. I slide a track control forward until it reaches the five-position on a scale calibrated to one hundred.

"Five?" the tech says.

"Right"

"Reading's dead-on. Give me a few more tracks."

I comply. She kisses me with lips and tongue, working down across my belly.

"A little higher, please."

I push the tracks to fifteen.

"You're really hi a mood, Rob."

"So what do you want me to think?" I say.

"Jesus," says the tech- "You ought to be performing. The crowd would love it"

"They pay Jain. She's the star." / tried to get on top; she wouldn't let me. A moment later it didn't matter.

"Did you just push the board to thirty?" The tech's voice sounds strange.

"No. Did you read that?"

"Negative, but for a moment it felt like it" He pauses. "You're not allowing your emotional life to get in the way of your work, are you?"

"Screw off," I answer. "None of your business."

"No threats," says the tech. "Just a suggestion."

"Stick it"

"Okay, okay. She's a lovely girl, Rob. And like you say, she's the star."

"I know,"

"Fine. Feed me another five tracks, Rob; broad spectrum this time."

I do so and the tech is satisfied with the results. "That ought to do it," he says. "I'll get back to you later." He breaks off the circuit. All checks are done; there's nothing now on the circuits but a background scratch like insects climbing over old newspapers. She will not allow me to be exhausted for long.

Noisily, the crowd is starting to file into the arena.

I wait for the concert.

VI.

There's never before been a stim star the magnitude of Jain Snow. Yet somehow the concert tonight fails. Somewhere the chemistry goes wrong. The faces out there are as always-yet somehow they arenot involved. They care, but not enough.

I don't think the fault's in Jain. I detect no significant difference from other conceits. Her skin still tantalizes the audience as nakedly, only occasionally obscured by the cloudy metal mesh that transforms her entire body into a single antenna. I've been there when she's performed a h.e.l.l of a lot better, maybe, but I've also seen her perform worse and still come off the stage happy.

It isn't Moog Indigo; they're laying down the sound and light patterns behind Jain as expertly as always.

Maybe it's me, but I don't think I'm handling the stim console badly. If I were, the nameless tech would be on my a.s.s over the com circuit Jain goes into her final number. It does not work. The audience is enthusiastic and they want an encore, but that's just it: they, shouldn't want one. They shouldn't need one.

She comes off the stage crying. I touch her arm as she walks past my console. Jam stops and rubs her eyes and asks me if I'll go back to the hotel with her.

VII.

It seems tike the first time I was in Jam Snow's bed. Jain keeps the room dark and says nothing as we go through the positions. Her breathing grows a little ragged; that is all. And yet she is more demanding of me than ever before.

When it's done, she holds me close and very tightly. Her rate of breathing slows and becomes regular. I wonder if she is asleep.

"Hey," I say.

"What?" She slurs the word sleepily.

"I'm sorry about tonight"

". . .Not your fault"

"I love you very much,"

She rolls to face me. "Huh?"

"I love you."

"No, babe. Don't say that"

"It's true," I say.

"Won't work."

"Doesn't matter," I say.

"It can't work."

I know I don't have any right to feel this, but I'm p.i.s.sed, and so I move away in the bed. "I don't care." The first time: "Such a G.o.dd.a.m.ned adolescent, Rob."

After a while, she says, "Robbie, I'm cold," and so I move bade to her and hold her and say nothing.

I realize, rubbing against her hip, that Pm again hard; she doesn't object as I pour back into her all the frustration she unloaded in me earlier.

Neither of us sleeps much the rest of the night. Sometime before dawn I doze briefly and awaken from a nightmare. I am disoriented and can't remember the entirety of the dream, but I do remember hard wires and soft flows of electrons. My eyes suddenly focus and I see her face inches away from mine.

Somehow she knows what I am thinking. "Whose turn is it?" she says. The antenna.

VIII.

At least a thousand hired kids are there setting up chairs in the arena this morning, but it's still hard to feel I'm not alone. The dome is that big. Voices get lost here. Even thoughts echo.

"It's gonna be a h.e.l.l of a concert tonight I know it" Jain had said mat and smiled at me when she came through here about ten. She'd swept down the center aisle in a flurry of feathers and shimmering red strips, leaving all the civilians stunned and quivering.

G.o.d only knows why she was up this early; over the last eightmonths, I've never seen her get op before noon on a concert day. That kind of sleep-in routine would kill me. I was out of bed by eight this morning, partly because I've got to get this console modified by showtime, and partly because I didn't feel like being in the star's bed when she woke up.

"The gate's going to be a lot bigger than last night," Jain had said. "Can you handle it?"

"Sure. Can you?"

Jain had flashed me another brilliant smile and left And so I sit here subst.i.tuting circuit chips.

A couple kids climb on stage and pull breakfasts out of their backpacks. "You ever read this?" says one, pulling a tattered paperback from his hip pocket His friend shakes her head. "You?" He turns the book in my direction; I recognize the cover.

It was two, maybe three months ago in Memphis, in a studio just before rehearsal. Jain had been sitting and reading. She reads quite a lot, though the promotional people downplay it-Alpertron, Ltd, likes to suck the country-girl image for all it's worth.

"What's that?" Stella says.

"A book." Jain holds up the book so she can see.

"I know that" Stella reads the t.i.tle: Receptacle. "Isn't that the-"

"Yeah," says Jain.

Everybody knows about Receptacle-fat best seller of the year. It's all fact, about the guy who went to Prague to have a dozen artificial v.a.g.i.n.as implanted all over his body. Nerve grafts, neural rerouting, the works. I'd seen him interviewed on some talk show where he'd worn a jumpsuit zipped to the neck.

"It's grotesque," Stella says.

Jain takes back the book and shrugs.

"Would yon try something like this?"

"Maybe I'm way beyond it" A receptacle works only one-way.

Stella goes white and bites off whatever it is she was about to say.

"Oh, baby, I'm sorry." Jam smiles and looks fourteen again. Then *he stands and gives Stella a quick hug. She glances over at me and winks, and my face starts to flush. One-way.

Now, months later, I remember it and my skin again goes warm. "Get oat of here," I say to the lads.

"I'm trying to concentrate." They look irritated, but they leave.