The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction Part 8

I'm done with the circuit chips. Now the easy staff. I wryly note the male and female plugs Fm connecting. Jain. . .

The com circuit buzzes peremptorily and Jain's voice says, "Robbie? Can you meet me outside?"

I hesitate, then say, "Sure, I'm almost done with the board."

"I've got a car; we're going away."

"What?"

"Just for the afternoon."

"Listen, Jain-"

She says, "Hurry," and cuts off.

It's gonna be a h.e.l.l of a concert.

IX.

Tonight's crowd strains even the capacity of the Rocky Mountain Central Arena. The gate people say there are more than nine hundred thousand people packed into the smoky recesses of the dome. It's not just hard to believe; it's scary. But computer ticket-totes don't lie.

I look out at the crowd and it's like staring at the Pacific after dark; the gray waves march out to the horizon until you can't tell one from the other. Here on the stage, the crowd-mutter even sounds like the sea, exactly as though I was on the beach trying to hear in an eighteen-foot surf. It all washes around me and I'm grateful for the twin earpieces, rea.s.sured to hear the usual check-down lists on the in-house com circuit I notice that the blowers have cut off. It's earlier than usual, but obviously there's enough body heat to keep the dome buoyed aloft I imagine the Central Arena drifting away like that floating city they want tomake out of Venice, California. There is something appealing about the thought of this dome floating away like dandelion fluff. But now the ma.s.sive air-conditioning units hum on and the fantasy dies.

The house lights momentarily dim and the crowd noise raises a few decibels. I realize I can't see features or faces or even separate bodies. There are simply too many people to comprehend. The crowd has fused into one huge tectonic slab of flesh.

"Rob, are you ready?" The tech's soft voice in my earpiece.

"Ready."

"It's a big gate tonight Can you do it?"

Sixty overlay tracks and one com board between Jain and maybe a cool million h.o.r.n.y, sweating spectators? "Sure," I say. "Easy." But momentarily I'm not sure and I realize how tightly I'm gripping the ends of the console. I consciously will my fingers to loosen.

"Okay," the tech says. "But if anything goes wrong, cut it Right? Damp it completely."

"Got it"

"Fine," he says. "About a minute, stand by. Ms, Snow wants to say h.e.l.lo."

"h.e.l.lo, Robbie?"

"Yeah," I say. "Good luck."

Interference crackles and what she says is too soft to hear.

I tell her, "Repeat, please."

"Stone don't break. At least not easy." She cuts off the circuit I've got ten seconds to stare out at that vast crowd. Where, I wonder, did the arena logistics people sc.r.a.pe up almost a million in/out headbands? I know I'm hallucinating, but for just a moment I see the scarlet webwork of broadcast power reaching out from my console to those million skulls. I don't know why; I find myself reaching for the shield that covers the emergency total cutoff. I stop my hand.

The house lights go all the way down; the only illumination comes from a thousand exit signs and the equipment lights. Then Moog Indigo troops onstage as the crowd begins to scream in antic.i.p.ation. The group finds their instruments in the familiar darkness. The crowd is already going crazy.

Hollis strokes her color board and shoots concentric spheres of hard primaries expanding through the arena; Red, yellow, blue. Start with the basics. Red.

Nagami's synthesizer spews a volcanic flow of notes like homing magma.

And then Jain is there. Center stage.

"d.a.m.n it," says the tech in my ear. "Level's too low. Bring it up in back." I must have been dreaming.

I am performing stupidly, like an amateur. Gently I bring up two stim balance slides.

"-love you. Every single one of you."

The crowd roars back. The filling begins. I cut in four more low-level tracks.

"-ready. How about you?"

They're ready. I cut in another dozen tracks, then mute two. Things are building just a little too fast.

The fine mesh around Jain's body seems to glitter with more than reflected light Her skin already gleams with moisture.

"-get started easy. And then things'll get hard. Yeah?"

"YEAH!" from thousands of throats simultaneously.

I see her stagger slightly. I don't think I am feeding her too much too fast, but mute another pair of tracks anyway. Moog Indigo takes their cue and begins to play. Hollis gives the dome the smoky pallor of slow-burning leaves. Then Jain Snow sings.

And I fill her with them. And give her back to them.

X.

s.p.a.ce and time measured in my heart In the afternoon: Jain gestures in an expansive circle. "This is where I grew up."The mountains awe me. "Right here?"

She shakes her head. "It was a lot like this. My pa ran sheep. Maybe a hundred miles north."

"But in the mountains?"

"Yeah. Really isolated. My pa convinced himself he was one of the original settlers. He was actually a laid-off aeros.p.a.ce engineer out of Seattle."

The wind flays us for a moment; Jain's hair whips and she shakes it back from her eyes. I pull her into the shelter of my arms, wrapping my coat around us both. "Do you want to go back down to the car?"

"h.e.l.l, no," she says. "A mountain zephyr can't scare me off."

I'm not used to this much open s.p.a.ce; it scares me a little, though I'm not going to admit that to Jain.

We're above timberline, and the mountainside is too stark for my taste. I suddenly miss the rounded, wooded hills of Pennsylvania. Jain surveys the rocky fields rubbed raw by wind and snow, and I have a quick feeling she's scared too. "Something wrong?"

"Nope. Just remembering."

"What's it like on a ranch?"

"Okay, if you don't like people," she says slowly, obviously recalling details. "My pa didn't"

"No neighbors?"

"Not a one in twenty miles."

"Brothers?" I say. "Sisters?"

She shakes her head. "Just my pa." I guess I look curious because she looks away and adds, "My mother died of teta.n.u.s right after I was born. It was a freak thing."

I try to change the subject. "Your father didn't come down to the first concert, did he? Is he coming tonight?"

"No way," she says. "He didn't and he won't. He doesn't like what I do." I can't think of anything to say now. After a while Jain rescues me, "It isn't your ha.s.sle, and it isn't mine anymore."

Something perverse doesn't let me drop it now. "So you grew up alone."

"You noticed," she says softly. "You've got a h.e.l.l of a way with understatement."

I persist. "Then I don't understand why you still come up here. You must hate this."

"Ever see a claustrophobe deliberately walk into a closet and shut the door? If I don't fight it this way-" Her fingers dig into my arms. Her face is fierce. "This has got to be better than what I do on stage." She swings away from me. "s.h.i.t!" she says. "d.a.m.n it all to h.e.l.l." She stands immovable, staring down the mountain for several minutes. When she turns back toward me, her eyes are softer and there's a fey tone in her voice. "If I die-" She laughs. "When I die. I want my ashes here."

"Ashes?" I say, unsure how to respond. Humor her. "Sure."

"You." She points at me. "Here." She indicates the rock face. The words are simple commands given to a child.

"Me." I manage a weak smile.

Her laugh is easy and unstrained now. "Kid games. Did you do the usual things when you were a kid, babe?"

"Most of them." I hardly ever won, but then I liked to play games with outrageous risks.

"Hammer, rock and scissors?"

"Sure, when I was really young." I repeat by long-remembered rote: "Rock breaks scissors, scissors cut paper, paper covers rock."

"Okay," she says. "Let's play." I must look doubtful. "Rob," she Bays warningly.

"Okay." I hold out my right hand.

Jam says, "One, two, three." On "three," we each bring up our right hand. Hers is a clenched fist: stone. My first two fingers form the snipping blades of a pair of scissors. "I win!" she crows, delighted.

"What do you win?"

"You. Just for a little while." She pulls my hands close and lays them on her body.

"Right here on the mountain?" I say.

"I'm from pioneer stock. But you-" She shrugs. "Too delicate?"

I laugh and pull her close."Just-" She hesitates. "Not like the other times? Don't take this seriously, okay?"

In my want I forget the other occasions. "Okay."

Each of us adds to the other's pleasure, and it's better than the other times. But even when she comes, she stares through me, and I wonder whose face she's seeing-no, not even that: how many faces she's seeing. Babe, no man can fill me like they do.

And then I come also and-briefly-it doesn't matter.

My long coat is wrapped around the two of us, and we watch each other inches apart. "So much pa.s.sion, Rob. ... It seems to build."

I remember the stricture and say, "You know why."

"You really like me so much?" The little-girl persona.

"I really do."

"What would you do for me, if I asked you?"

"Anything."

"Would you kill for me?"

I say, "Sure."

"Really?"

"Of course." I smile. I know how to play.

"This is no game."

My face must betray my confusion. I don't know how I should react.

Her expression mercurially alters to sadness. "You're scissors, Robbie. All shiny cold metal. How can you ever hope to cut stone?"

Would I want to?

XI.

Things get worse.

Is it simply that I'm s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up on my own hook, or is it because we're exploring a place no performance has ever been? I don't have time to worry about it; I play the console like it was the keyboard on Nagami's synthesizer.

Take it When you can get it Where you can get it Jain sways and the crowd sways; she thrusts and the crowd thrusts. It is one gigantic act. It is as though a temblor shakes the Front Range.

Insect cluttering in my earpiece: "What the h.e.l.l's going on, Rob? Tm monitoring the stim feed. You're oscillating from bell to fade-out."

"I'm trying to balance." I juggle slides. "Any better?"