THE FEELIES Page 7

  Anxiety coursed through Wanda-Jean. "Everything's okay, isn't it?"

  "Okay?"

  "I mean, I'm still on the show, aren't I? I did get through the audition and everything, didn't I?"

  Murray laughed. "Yes, of course. That's okay. You've got to realize, though, getting on the show is only the start."

  "You have to go on and win. Even I know that."

  Murray's smile became somewhat superior. "It's not as easy as that."

  "I never imagined it was easy. I found that out at the audition."

  "There are ways that it could be made a little easier for special players."

  Wanda-Jean didn't like the way the conversation was going, but she kept it to herself. She made her eyes round and innocent. "You're not saying that the games can be fixed?"

  Murray made a hasty gesture. "No, no, I'm not saying that at all. There's nothing dishonest about 'Wildest Dreams.' "

  "So what are you talking about?"

  Murray smiled and leaned back in his seat. He spread his legs so Wanda-Jean was presented with a clear display of the tight material that covered his crotch. "You ever heard the expression 'an inside track'?"

  "No."

  "It means that some players, selected players, can get a slight edge. It's not a fix, it's just a technique we use to build a more entertaining show."

  Wanda-Jean felt a slight chill grab at her. This was the pitch. It was dirty, but there was no way around it. She asked the obvious question. "And which players get this edge?"

  "The attractive ones. The ones who really want to win badly enough."

  "You think I'm attractive?"

  "Very attractive."

  "You're pretty nice yourself."

  "That's good."

  "Is it?"

  "Oh, yeah, it really helps if a player's a special friend of one of us who put the show together.''

  That was it. Wanda-Jean's mind clicked over at high speed. She loathed creeps who didn't have the confidence to get laid on their own account, the ones who thought they had either to bribe you, blackmail you, or get you so stoned that you didn't notice. Shit, he wasn't even bad-looking, she'd have picked him up on a slow night. It was his attitude she objected to. He probably didn't swing all that much muscle on the show. He was more likely to be Bobby Priest's gofer than his right arm. She doubted that there was all that much that he could do for her. On the other hand, if she didn't come across, he probably had enough clout to spoil it for her.

  Wanda-Jean made up her mind. She had fucked guys who didn't appeal to her just because she was bored, or she didn't want to be on her own. At least if she fucked this creep it might do her some kind of good.

  She smiled and looked at the creep from under her eyelashes. "It'd be good to be someone's special friend."

  "You could be mine."

  Wanda-Jean put on her best provocative smile. "Really?"

  "Really."

  She slid out of the chair, letting the kimono fall open slightly. She moved to the floor by Murray's feet. She put a hand on the inside of his thigh. "I think I'd like to be your special friend, Murray."

  Her hand made its way up his leg. Her fingers went to work on the zip of his pants. She slipped her hand inside. As she began to manipulate him, she glanced up. Murray's eyes were closed. She stuck out her tongue and pulled a face. Then she inclined her head and went down on him.

  HE WAS A VIOLENT, THRUSTING GIANT, little short of a monster, plunging into the girl beneath him, giving loud animal cries of passion. His whole being was centered on the uncontrollable power in his loins. The girl rose to meet him, squirming sinuously, her head rolling from side to side, her black hair matted with sweat. Her arms twined desperately around him like urgent seeking snakes. Her nails drew blood from his back. She too cried and moaned as her legs gripped his waist and her sharp white teeth sank into his shoulder.

  The power mounted inside him going further and further beyond control and even past the point that he could bear. The threatening explosion rolled nearer and nearer like thunderheads born on a barbaric wind. The girl thrashed about on the hard ground with even greater ferocity.

  And finally he came. He burst with a tearing, throbbing cry. The girl also screamed, arching her back as though her spine was going to crack. For long seconds they clung to each other in rigid tension, then, bit by bit, it ebbed away. They sank down, hot sweating flesh pressed against hot sweating flesh. Their limbs tangled together.

  With slow leaden movements he disengaged himself. The girl made small soft noises, but he ignored her. He rose to his feet and, drawing himself up to his full height, he raised his arms to the black sky, the pale moon, and the cold stars. His lips parted and a high scream of defiance was drawn from him.

  The scream echoed off the dolmens of the stone circle and out across the ancient lake. Even the shamans broke off in their ritual torture of the princess. The circle of ghost girls halted their dance and came toward him. Their pale hands reached out. Their cold, dead fingers touched his skin. He shuddered as the living warmth seemed to be drawn out of him.

  The stars above him whirled faster and faster. The scene around him grew dim. The power within him failed. It ebbed away and everything became dark. For a terrible instant he was absolutely alone in silent, empty darkness.

  There were noises around him. A light shone into his face. He tried to blink it away. Hands were gently lifting him into a sitting position. A woman's face swam into his blurred vision.

  "You'll feel just fine in a moment, Mr. Flynn. Just drink this."

  A container of hot liquid was placed in his hands. Flynn was back in the real world.

  "How did you enjoy Savage Ceremony VI, Mr. Flynn?"

  RALPH MOVED WITH THE HEAVY-footed, less than steady stealth of the near drunk. His vision had the crystal clarity that comes at the point when focus is all but lost. One more belt from the bottle and it would be all gone. Ralph, however, hadn't had that belt yet.

  Ralph was creeping up on Sam. He had been off on the other side of the vault section, drinking by himself. He had heard Sam talking. Sam had gone on and on talking. Ralph had become partly irked and partly curious. He had decided to creep up on Sam and find out what was happening.

  Ralph turned the corner of the row from where Sam's voice was coming. Sam was standing up. That in itself was quite a surprise to Ralph. Sam was usually too tran-quilized to stay on his feet for any long space of time. That wasn't the only surprise, though. Sam was staring into the clear plastic cover of one of the cabinets. His face was animated by anxiety. His tone was pleading. Every few seconds he twisted his fat hands together in gestures of extreme frustration.

  "How come you got to lie there like that? You must have had so much. You're beautiful and all, and you must have been rich. I mean, you know… You could have had it made on the outside. What you want to be lying down here for? You ain't no slob like me. Now me, I couldn't do no better than this, but you… You got all the things you could…"

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  Sam swung around. Guilt froze his face. He slowly turned a deep crimson. "Unh…"

  "Have you gone quite crazy?"

  "I… er…"

  Ralph advanced quickly on Sam and grabbed him by the front of his overalls. "You're babbling to a fucking stiff!"

  Sam's face was still bright red, but as soon as Ralph took hold of him the flush seemed to take on a different meaning. Ralph was about to make a crack on the lines of Sam getting like Artie when he abruptly changed his mind. An instant flash of drunken insight took in Sam's florid face and whitening knuckles. Ralph quickly let go of him and took a step back. Sam glowered at him. "I don't like for you to be touching me that way, Ralph."

  Ralph took another pace backward and bit his lip. He didn't like the look of this transformed Sam. He wished he were still across the other side of the section, sucking on his bottle. He looked down at the cabinet Sam had been talking to.

  "Jesus Christ." The exclamation c
ame out before he could stop it.

  Sam glared at him. "What?"

  Ralph tried to keep his voice as even as possible. "That's the new stiff, Sam. The one they just brought in."

  "So?"

  "But why the hell are you talking to her?"

  "I like her, Ralph. She's so beautiful, and I feel sorry for her.''

  Ralph felt a pressure inside his head. It was his turn to make frustrated gestures. "Listen, Sam…"

  "I don't want to listen, Ralph."

  "But she's a stiff."

  "I like her, Ralph."

  "But she doesn't even know she's here. In her brain she's somewhere else totally."

  "I think I'm in love with her, Ralph."

  Ralph opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He was about to tell Sam that he was crazy. Instead, he decided to keep quiet. In Sam's present mood, he was just as likely to tear Ralph's head off.

  Sam was still looking at him belligerently. "Don't you have nothing to say about that, Ralph?"

  Ralph shook his head. "Nothing. Except…"

  "Except what, Ralph?"

  "It's nothing."

  "Except what, Ralph?"

  Ralph edged away a little more. "I don't want you to get me wrong, Sam."

  "Say it, Ralph."

  "Well… I mean, you wouldn't do anything dumb, would you, Sam?"

  "Dumb?"

  "You wouldn't do nothing like opening up the cabinet? You wouldn't do nothing like that, would you, Sam?"

  Sam gave him a long, hard look. "I think I'd kill anyone who tried to open her up, Ralph. I'm telling you. I think I'd kill anyone who tried to do that."

  Ralph dropped his gaze to the floor. He took a deep breath. It required a good deal of effort to keep his voice calm and steady. "Sam."

  "What?"

  "Sam, I'm going to take myself off."

  "Yeah?"

  "I'm going to go away across to the other side of the section and go on drinking. I'm going to leave you to get on with whatever you're doing."

  Sam nodded. "Okay, Ralph."

  Ralph walked slowly away. Now and again he glanced back; Sam was once again talking to the girl in the cabinet, although his gestures were a lot less agitated. Ralph wondered if he had maybe taken a couple of Serenax.

  Ralph reached the spot where his bottle was stashed. He sank down on the floor and unscrewed the cap. He took a liberal hit. The heat of the cheap whiskey hit his gut and his brain staggered slightly. He began to feel resentful. There was no doubt about it. He was getting a bum deal. Who needed to be stuck in a situation like the one he was in? First there was a fucking pervert like Artie shulking about, never showing his face and more than likely messing around with the stiffs. Ralph was sure that sooner or later trouble would come down on account of Artie. When it did, he knew the shit wouldn't just stop at him. Some of it would be sure to rub off on Ralph.

  Then there was Sam. Sam may have been a pain in the ass, but he was at least reliable, in his own dumb way. He was always there when he was needed. That, however, was before he had decided to fall in love with the girl stiff. Bitterness, resentment, and disgust knotted in Ralph's throat. He compulsively took another drink. He needed it to stop himself choking. He looked across the orderly, silent rows of the feelie cabinets, each one with its scarcely living stiff.

  The bitterness grew stronger and stronger inside Ralph. Those bastards had the right idea-they had gotten the hell out of the whole stinking world. The dirty rich bastards had the whole thing sewn up. They could escape. Ralph and people like him would have to stick with the entire filthy real world until they died and rotted. Ralph was strongly tempted to give it all up: leave the vault, leave the stiffs, and, above all, leave his two crazy partners before he got to be just like them. He ought to just up and quit, go on welfare. He would be just as well off being a wino.

  The voices that lurked in the vaults seemed to laugh back at him. Ralph staggered to his feet. He swung around brandishing his bottle as though he was going to take on the whole of the vault.

  "Fuck you all! Fuck every one of you!"

  Tears sprang into the corners of his eyes. His hands went limp, the bottle fell to the floor. It bounced on the concrete but didn't break. Ralph was stooping to pick it up when the phone went. Ralph ignored it. He carefully set the bottle upright. The phone went on ringing. Ralph checked his bottle from all three sides. The phone still went on ringing. Ralph finally relented. He lurched to the pillar and picked it up.

  "Yeah?"

  "You took your time."

  "So?"

  "You all asleep down there?"

  "We ain't asleep. What do you want?"

  "Just a routine check. Everything okay down there?"

  For an instant, Ralph was tempted to tell them all about Sam and Artie and how they were both stone crazy. The instant didn't last too long, though. Ralph suddenly thought, what the hell, they would only send two more mutants. They could be even worse.

  "Sure everything's alright. What's with this routine check shit? We never had no routine checks before."

  Ralph's belligerence got a mirror response from the other end of the phone.

  "Don't take an attitude with me, Mac. It's a new policy order."

  "Yeah, sure."

  Ralph hung up.

  "PLEASE TELL ME YOUR NAME."

  "Frank Zola."

  "Please sit down, Frank."

  It was one of those intimate HAL 9000 voices, soft, dependable, and reassuring, but, at the same time, strangely dead. Frank sat down. There was just one chair in the viewing pod.

  "Relax, Frank."

  Frank slid down in the chair a little, but he could not relax. The viewing pods in the basement of the CM building were like tiny individual spaceships, or maybe coffins. Once the airtight door had sighed closed behind him he was alone with just the high-backed contour chair with the speakers built into the headrest and the sixty-inch, high-resolution screen. Although they were used by executives to look at the roughcuts of commercials, view normal tapes, and watch electronic presentations, their unique design was primarily for experiencing audio-visual-chemical mock-ups of feelie software that were complete apart from the Direct Neural Interface itself. They were also used for indoctrination of the newly hired.

  "You have joined the family of Combined Media, Frank, and we all hope that you'll be very happy here. Before you commence your duties as a trainee project manager in the public relations department, you and I are going to have a little chat while I show you a short film. You should look on this as a part of the process of your getting acquainted with the corporation."

  The screen was a friendly neutral blue. Frank Zola's nose twitched as though a sneeze were starting to build. Frank might have been the new kid in the corporation, the lowliest of the lowly and at the absolute bottom of the ladder, but he wasn't completely innocent. He knew that the corporate ethical philosophy allowed any trick that might be applicable. If CM believed that raining him with a fine mist of chemical softeners pumped in through the air-conditioning vents would aid the induction process, then it would be done. If he was going to get on in the corporation, he knew that he was expected to give them not only his time and service but also his mind. Frank Zola intended to do just that. He wasn't going to complain. He would take whatever they handed out, and he would go on taking it until he was finally in a sufficiently elevated position to be the one who dished it out, and then the poor bastards underneath him would have to watch out.

  On the screen, an orchid slowly unfurled against a black background, and the voice was soft and insinuating.

  "To grow in the field of public relations is to realize that persuasion is a matter of gentle motion."

  The orchid was replaced by a green hillside covered by contentedly grazing white sheep.

  "The public doesn't like to be disturbed. Force can only be applied in the most extreme of situations. The keyword is ease. We don't bully-the public will only panic and back away. We don't harangue-they will si
mply tune us out. We ease. At this moment, and in the immediate foreseeable future, the primary task of the public relations department of this corporation is to ease the public into a full and total acceptance of IE as a part of their lives. In many cases, it will actually become their lives."

  The images were speeding up. Well-dressed people thronged a city street during the rush hour; a golden couple made love on silver satin sheets; a perfect blue sphere dropped in slow motion into mirrorlike blue liquid, there was an eruption of the initial splash, and the ripples slowly spread in even, concentric circles. The CM logo shone like the sun.

  "We are dealing with a new medium, a medium that has to be handled with tact and diplomacy. If simply thrust at the public it could produce fear and confusion, even guilt."

  A blood-red sun set over the skyscrapers of a city. Members of the underclass rioted against a background of burning buildings. Angry music swelled; Nazis marched down a wide boulevard.

  "There will be no confusion."

  The CM logo no longer glowed like the sun. It was cold, polished steel and white light.

  "It has been said more than once that the history of mankind and the cornerstone of our civilization is communication. In the civilization that we are building, communication is everything. We communicate, and the public responds."

  The CM logo expanded and spread across an infinite universe in waves of psychedelic color.

  "To understand public relations is to understand that it is an infinitely plural art."

  Frank Zola was no longer really listening. Something was definitely being pumped into the pod. He stared openmouthed at the images on the screen. He hardly listened to the words. They washed over him, barely touching the conscious leading edge of his mind, sinking instead into the porous depths of his subconscious.

  "There are as many answers to a question as there are shades of opinion among the public who are asking it. Our kinship is to the truth, but the relationship is a complex one. In this house, there are many truths, equal but separate. All is never what it appears, and the stages of strategy may not yield the obvious end result. Would you like an example?"