Collected Short Fiction, page 16
I spent a lot of the time letting the system eat my head. NN’s system took some getting used to; unlike the other ones I’d been hooked into at the institute, this one didn’t have a facade personality. At times that was uncomfortable, if not frightening. On other occasions I found it downright comforting. When you get stripped down and built up again, you also get embarrassed and humiliated into the bargain. It can be good to feel that no one, not even an artificial person, is watching.
I had to take all the mindplaying, of course, administered by the appropriate employee, who made a special trip in to do it. I’d had it all before and the system had dreamfed me extensively, but NN wanted me to be on the receiving end of his recommended techniques. Fandango gave me a tendency to be sexually aroused by the color orange with a side impulse to wash my hands a lot. It was an interesting kind of crazy, though crazy wasn’t really the word for it. There were (and are) people who will sell you a full-blown psychosis, which is illegal unless you’re a licensed psychomimick. A neurosis-peddler would sell you something that would just make you a little stranger than usual for awhile.
Rich dug down into my mind, found a thrill and arranged it for me. The subconscious contains no end of thrills, but a thrillseeker has to be an uncommonly good judge of what can be brought up for recreation and what ought to stay buried. A thrill might be something as simple as (true case) walking a dog—but a thrillseeker determines what kind of dog, what color leash, where the walk should take place, how long it should go on and why it should end. Frankly, that had never sounded too thrilling to me, but somebody got a real charge out of it. I was satisfied with my own thrill, though I suspected she was getting back at Fandango for making me go into rut every time she brushed her hair.
Philbert finished switching tracks, so I let him practice his dreamfeeding on me. I’ve always enjoyed dreamfeeding. It’s just mind-expansion while you sleep. Made-to-order dreams were impossible—the imagination is too autonomous for that and hypnosis won’t work on everybody. But you can be fed a few images and allowed to run with them. If you happened to run over a cliff, you woke up, having had an adventure and a mistake without any repercussions in the real world. Dreamfeeding had been used for decades as decision-making therapy; it’s also a helluva lot of fun.
Belljarring was the only thing I couldn’t look forward to. It was too much like being buried alive. It’s the total withdrawal of the conscious person, a turning inward for a set period of time—aside from death, the ultimate vacation. There used to be mystics who could achieve such a state, and maybe somewhere there still were. But your average Worn-out, rundown party animal who’s been buying neuroses (and maybe an illegal psychosis), having wild dreams and seeking thrills after working all day would eventually want to belljar and needed help to do it. Deacon was sensitive to my dislike of being cut off and worked to give me a people-just-in-the-next-room impression. It only lasted half a day and it was just fine—when it was over.
Four L.N. and I spent some time hooked in together so I could get the feel of how he worked. Pathosfinders deal mainly with artists—actors, painters, dancers, fetishists, and so on—to enhance what you might call the soul in their work. The result could be facile or honestly deep, depending on how thorough the artist and the pathosfinder were. Some people just don’t want to dig past the easy solution. Facile art has its place, I suppose, but not with me. On the other hand, the old Bolshoi never had the benefits of any kind of mindplay and their tapes could still bring goosebumps all over me. Maybe it was the primitivism. But they were the exception. Most of the arts had experienced a heightening with the advent of mindplay. After working with Four L.N., I had to admit that pathosfinding wasn’t the least bit wimpy. Even if it made you feel wimpy sometimes. Just sometimes.
Training concluded, NN gave me a week to sit around and do nothing more than breathe in and out. He even loaned me one of the Bolshoi tapes, which I accepted with slavering enthusiasm although I didn’t like the look on his face when he handed it over. It was too much like the expression a canary might have after successfully gulping down a cat, whiskers and all. I figured he probably had a tough assignment waiting for me.
I was right. One week to the minute after my training was over, I found myself reclining on the couch in his office, listening to him tell me about Marty Oren, the actor who had started to make sensations just before retiring to an anti-mindplay enclave with his new wife two years before.
“He’s back on the outside, wife and all,” NN told me. “He tried old-style theatre while he was in and apparently found it extremely unsatisfying. He was vague about that on his preliminary application. Truth to tell, I think the adulation of a few hundred people was too little for him. Anyway, his old company kept letting him know regularly they were ready for him any time he wanted to come back. So he’s back. He and Sudella Keller are in Restawhile, Kansas.”
“Restawhile? Kansas?”
NN shrugged. “It’s sort of a year-round resort-cum-village, very quiet. Ideal for making a transition back into the mainstream.”
“Transition? How do they live in those enclaves—in mudhuts?”
NN smiled. “Not exactly. It’s a difference in sensibilities. Without a transition period, he could be culture-shocked so severely, he’d develop a psychosis. Kind of like if you took an 18th century hermit and dropped him smack in the middle of the 20th century.”
“Marty Oren isn’t an 18th century hermit. He grew up—”
“Only recently. He’s just twenty-two years old, a comparative baby.”
“Compared to who?”
“You. And me. He went through his second puberty in an enclave. Don’t look at me like that, a lot of experts are calling the years between eighteen and twenty-four second puberty.”
Involuntarily I felt my face with my hand.
“Relax, Deadpan. It’s just because I know you so well. You don’t have to agree with me, just do your job. Besides Oren’s well-being, there’s also his wife to consider.”
“What’s she going to do, make the transition with him?”
“Hell, no. She’s just as anti-mindplay as she ever was. She’s your stumbling block.” He smiled pleasantly at me. “All these jobs have stumbling blocks, did I ever mention that? So it’s going to be hard for you to work with him while she’s there. The only thing you’ve got going for you is her respect of his personal choices, but she’s bound to inhibit him in some way.
“Also, Oren’s always had this bitter streak he’s had to keep in check, which I think is why they’ve always worked him with pathosfinders rather than dreamfeeders or neurosis-peddlers, like some actors. After being out of things for two years, he needs a pathosfinder more than ever. That’s why they asked the agency to handle him instead of turning him over to their resident. His compassion wires are crossed—you’ve got to get him some. Not maudlin pity, the real stuff. Next month, the Croeder Company wants to put him into rehearsal for Two Moon Night, that play about the guy who died alone on Mars.”
“I’m familiar with it. Isn’t that kind of industrial strength material to start him off on?”
“If he’s not ready for it, you’ll tell them.”
“Thanks. I’m really looking forward to something like that.” NN’s smile was broader and more benign than ever.
“No, truth now, NN. If he’s as sheltered as you say, do you really think he’ll be able to deal with the things a man in that part has to go through—the raptures, the hallucinations, the—”
“Your compassion is showing, Deadpan.”
“It’s all your fault. I used to be the best neurosis-peddler in town. Now I’m a wimp.”
“You really feel that way?”
“No, but I can remember when I used to.”
“And can you honestly say I forced you to feel differently?” I sighed and shook my head. “Empathy’s a bitch.”
“What isn’t? Education is so broadening.”
“So I get him into shape for the play. Then what?”
NN looked blank.
“What about his wife? He can’t very well move into a city with her.”
“They haven’t let me in on their plans.” NN sounded just a bit sour. “I imagine she’ll be staying in Restawhile when he’s working. It’s far enough out in the country that she can avoid most problems if she’s careful. Anyway, they want to stay Two’d, don’t ask me why. Neither one of them is about to give so much as an angstrom in their viewpoints—he’s going to mindplay, she’s dead against it. It’s going to screw his emotions around.”
“It could be a good source to draw on.”
“I doubt it, but use your own judgment. They’re both a couple of very defensive people right now.”
“I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to make any progress then. The ideal thing would be to work with both of them, but if she won’t—” I turned one hand palm up. “Oh, well. It’s their time.”
“And their marriage. Don’t bust it up.”
“They can’t blame me if they decide to—”
“They most certainly will blame you if they decide to. They’re the sort of people who tend to lay blame elsewhere for their own messes. So watch your feet. He probably wouldn’t sue us, but she most definitely would. And I don’t want that, not at ail.”
“Has she got big power connections?”
NN flipped on the ceiling holo and the familiar Bolshoi music filled the room. “Sort of. She’s my daughter.”
Ah.
I went underground tubeway to Wichita and rented a flier to take me and my equipment east to Restawhile. I spent the time on the tube getting acquainted with Marty Oren’s media notices and re-reading Two Moon Night. It was a powerful piece of work, heavy on emotion and full of tenuous science, with the potential to be a tearjerker instead of an honest study of a dying man. I had my work built up for me if Oren was going to play that part.
When I got a look at the flier, I nearly turned around and went home. It was an airplane converted to computer autopilot, and it looked like it had been put together with masking tape and spit. Nonetheless, it flew, albeit roughly. The rolling Kansas landscape, pretty as it was, gave it a lot of trouble. By the time I got to Restawhile, a hamlet nestled in a hilly patch with a lake squat in the middle, it was late afternoon. I circled the lake several times before I realized the autopilot was deadlocked in an electronic argument with itself as to whether the water could be landed on. I ended up practically landing the goddam thing myself and took a number of turns around the lake on pontoons before I found the dock I wanted. I might not have found it at all, except that Sudella Keller was standing on it, watching me.
She looked large in her loud, flowery-print muumuu, but when I climbed out of the cockpit and onto the dock, I could see she was nearly swimming in the slightly diaphanous material. She wasn’t reed thin, but she weighed a good deal less than I did. I’m no one’s idea of a little woman—big bones. She was a few inches taller than I, though. Her wide, elegant face was made up subtly but effectively, and it bore absolutely no resemblance to NN’s foxy pink features. Her eyes tilted up at the outer corners without actually being Oriental. Her nose turned up, too. If I hadn’t known so much about body engineering, I would have thought it was all natural. Apparently bodyplay was all right if mindplay wasn’t. Interesting. I chided myself for being catty, but it didn’t make things any less interesting.
We just stood taking each other’s measure for a few seconds. “You must be Sudella Keller,” I said, making an extra effort to be cordial.
“You must be Daddy’s thug,” she said, also quite cordially. Ah, I thought, court is in session, the judge is on the bench, and I’m already in contempt.
“I could have told by your eyes, even if I hadn’t been told you were coming,” she added. “Deadpan Allie. What’s so important about being deadpan?”
“A professional mindplayer has to appear neutral at all times. We aren’t judges of human behavior.” I emphasized judges only a little. “Our clients should be unaware either of our approval or displeasure, so they won’t attempt to gain either.”
“Well, I see you’ve swallowed Daddy’s menu first course to last.”
I opened my mouth to ask her why she was so bitched at Daddy, but it really wasn’t any of my business. Instead, I asked her if it would be all right to bring in my equipment.
“I’ll show you your room. Then you can decide whether you want to or not. It’s not much bigger than the inside of your flier and you didn’t mention how long you’d be staying.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know exactly how long that will be. I don’t have much with me.”
“Good thing.”
“I don’t need much.”
“So you say,” she muttered, and led me down the pier to the house. It was an old-fashioned cottage with a bare minimum of conveniences, none of which were in the broom closet they called a guest room. The bed was a waterbed, which took up most of the space. I stood in the doorway staring at it and trying not to think about my mattress back at the agency. “Nice woodwork,” I said lamely.
“As you can see, it’ll be pretty cramped.”
I smiled up at her. After the trip I’d had in the flier and seeing the size of that room, I must have looked like my face hurt. “It doesn’t worry me,” I lied. “Where’s Two Oren?”
“Gone fishing. Ever gone fishing yourself?”
“Only in the mid-Atlantic. And then only for shark.” I winced inwardly. If I couldn’t be more deadpan than to one-up fish stories, I was going to make a bigger mess than I was supposed to straighten out. But somehow it seemed to have been the right thing to say. She almost smiled back at me. Perhaps she was surprised that I didn’t spend all my waking hours letting Daddy’s computer eat my head. I left her sitting at the square plastic dining room table while I settled my stuff.
I had already decided to sleep on the roof and was wheeling the last components of my portable system over the extendable ramp from the flier to the dock when Marty Oren came home, rowing himself in a rowboat. I stopped to watch him, wondering what part of the lake he’d come from that I hadn’t seen him from the air. He looked tired, disgusted, sunburned, and very attractive. His hair had grown down below his shoulders and was plaited in two gold braids. The gold was strictly his own, probably maintained from childhood by something in his diet. As he got closer, I saw that his face was more angular than it appeared on holo. Loaded with character, as NN would put it, the kind you don’t usually find in a face that young. I decided it was those impressively high cheekbones that gave it to him. He was wearing a white variation of Sudella’s muu-muu, so I couldn’t tell much about his body. From the way he moved, he seemed to be in excellent shape.
When he reached the dock, I leaned down to give him a hand up and was surprised to see he had cat’s-eyes. They looked better in his head than they did in mine.
“Deadpan Allie.” He smiled warmly. Inside, I felt a chord being twanged, which is what’s supposed to happen when a leading thespian smiles like that in your direction. I didn’t make anything of it, but I was sure a lot of people had tried to in the past.
“My reputation took an earlier tube,” I said. “I feel famous.”
“Nelson Nelson gave you a big build-up.” Something visually imperceptible changed in his face; he had shut himself off from me at his own mention of his father-in-law. It was as sudden and effective as a slap.
“Like to row yourself?” I pointed at the boat. He was empty-handed, without even a fish-hook. I decided against asking him if he’d caught anything.
He nodded. “It’s hard work. I like the exercise. Have you eaten?”
“Not yet.”
“We’ll have some food and then get started.” He looked back out over the water, which was turning gold as the sun began to edge toward dusk. “Nice day.”
“Lovely.”
I wheeled my equipment ahead as we walked down the dock to the house together. Sudella was waiting like a statue at the door.
The meal was a roast duck the size of a turkey, cooked in an old microwave, a real, functioning antique. It took all of twenty minutes, including the algae. The message couldn’t have been clearer if Sudella had stood in the middle of the room shouting it instead of watching Marty cook: Old ways are best. We sat around the table passing each other orange sauce, (which stirred a few decidedly unusual memories in me from my months of training), and not saying much. I felt like I was in a holo period piece, complete with anachronisms. Marty and Sudella loosened up some, not so much relaxation as resignation, but they both remained pretty self-conscious. I tried reading Marty’s Emotion Index by sight, but I couldn’t get much feeling for his state of mind. Sudella’s was only too clear.
After we ate, they cleared the table, leaving me the coffeepot and a cup. I pretended not to watch them as they put the reusable dishes in the washer. For a few moments, their guards went way down. It was obvious that they loved each other a great deal and at the same time were in conflict with each other’s desires. Pretty normal, for a married couple. The love part seemed intensified, tike sunlight reflected on water, and that bothered me. If I could have delved her, just a little—but by law, I couldn’t even ask her. I’d have to work their puzzle with half the pieces.
Pouring myself another cup of coffee, I lit a cigarette and settled into a more comfortable position. They were dawdling by the dishwasher, so I indicated I could wait as long as they could. Finally, Marty came over and sat down across from me. “Do you want to start?”
“There’s no hurry if you want to relax some.”
He glanced at Sudella, still over by the dishwasher. “I want to get this over with as soon as possible.”
“You probably remember this isn’t a process you can rush. There’s no way I can tell how long it’s going to take until we start.” Peripherally, I saw Sudella cross her arms and stand up a bit straighter. “I may be here awhile.”
