Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (13 page)

Really you can skip all this, when the loving little girl on the yellow-brick road meets a Man. A real human male burning with angry compassion and grandly concerned with human justice, who reaches for her with real male arms and—boom! She loves him back with all her heart.

A happy trip, see?

Except.

Except that it’s really P. Burke five thousand miles away who loves Paul. P. Burke the monster down in a dungeon smelling of electrode paste. A caricature of a woman burning, melting, obsessed with true love. Trying over twenty-double-thousand miles of hard vacuum to reach her beloved through girl-flesh numbed by an invisible film. Feeling his arms around the body he thinks is hers, fighting through shadows to give herself to him. Trying to taste and smell him through beautiful dead nostrils, to love him back with a body that goes dead in the heart of the fire.

Perhaps you get P. Burke’s state of mind?

She has phases. The trying, first. And the shame. The SHAME.
I am not what thou lovest.
And the fiercer trying. And the realization that there is no, no way, none. Never.
Never
. . . A bit delayed, isn’t it, her understanding that the bargain she made was forever? P. Burke should have noticed those stories about mortals who end up as grasshoppers.

You see the outcome—the funneling of all this agony into one dumb protoplasmic drive to fuse with Delphi. To leave, to close out the beast she is chained to.
To become Delphi.

Of course it’s impossible.

However, her torments have an effect on Paul. Delphi-as-Rima is a potent enough love object, and liberating Delphi’s mind requires hours of deeply satisfying instruction in the rottenness of it all. Add in Delphi’s body worshiping his flesh, burning in the fire of P. Burke’s savage heart—do you wonder Paul is involved?

That’s not all.

By now they’re spending every spare moment together and some that aren’t so spare.

“Mr. Isham, would you mind staying out of this sports sequence? The script calls for Davy here.”

(Davy’s still around, the exposure did him good.)

“What’s the difference?” Paul yawns. “It’s just an ad. I’m not blocking that thing.”

Shocked silence at his two-letter word. The script girl swallows bravely.

“I’m sorry, sir, our directive is to do the
social sequence
exactly as scripted. We’re having to respool the segments we did last week, Mr. Hopkins is very angry with me.”

“Who the hell is Hopkins? Where is he?”

“Oh, please, Paul.
Please.
”

Paul unwraps himself, saunters back. The holocam crew nervously check their angles. The GTX boardroom has a foible about having things
pointed
at them and theirs. Cold shivers, when the image of an Isham nearly went onto the world beam beside that Dialadinner.

Worse yet, Paul has no respect for the sacred schedules which are now a full-time job for ferret boy up at headquarters. Paul keeps forgetting to bring her back on time, and poor Hopkins can’t cope.

So pretty soon the boardroom data-ball has an urgent personal action-tab for Mr. Isham senior. They do it the gentle way, at first.

“I can’t today, Paul.”

“Why not?”

“They say I have to, it’s
very
important.”

He strokes the faint gold down on her narrow back. Under Carbondale, Pa., a blind mole-woman shivers.

“Important. Their importance. Making more gold. Can’t you see? To them you’re just a thing to get scratch with.
A huckster.
Are you going to let them screw you, Dee? Are you?”

“Oh, Paul—”

He doesn’t know it, but he’s seeing a weirdie; Remotes aren’t hooked up to flow tears.

“Just say no, Dee. No. Integrity. You have to.”

“But they say, it’s my job—”

“Will you believe I can take care of you, Dee? Baby, baby, you’re letting them rip us. You have to choose. Tell them, no.”

“Paul . . . I w-will. . . .”

And she does. Brave little Delphi (insane P. Burke). Saying, “No, please, I promised, Paul.”

They try some more, still gently.

“Paul, Mr. Hopkins told me the reason they don’t want us to be together so much. It’s because of who you are, your father.”

She thinks his father is like Mr. Cantle, maybe.

“Oh, great. Hopkins. I’ll fix him. Listen, I can’t think about Hopkins now. Ken came back today, he found out something.”

They are lying on the high Andes meadow watching his friends dive their singing kites.

“Would you believe, on the coast the police have
electrodes in their heads?
”

She stiffens in his arms.

“Yeah, weird. I thought they only used PP on criminals and the army. Don’t you see, Dee—something has to be going on. Some movement. Maybe somebody’s organizing. How can we find out?” He pounds the ground behind her: “We should make
contact!
If we could only find out.”

“The, the news?” she asks distractedly.

“The news.” He laughs. “There’s nothing in the news except what they want people to know. Half the country could burn up, and nobody would know it if they didn’t want. Dee, can’t you take what I’m explaining to you? They’ve got the whole world programmed! Total control of communication. They’ve got everybody’s minds wired in to think what they show them and want what they give them and they give them what they’re programmed to want—you can’t break in or out of it, you can’t get
hold
of it anywhere. I don’t think they even have a plan except to keep things going round and round—and god knows what’s happening to the people or the Earth or the other planets, maybe. One great big vortex of lies and garbage pouring round and round, getting bigger and bigger, and nothing can ever change. If people don’t wake up soon we’re through!”

He pounds her stomach softly.

“You have to break out, Dee.”

“I’ll try, Paul, I will—”

“You’re mine. They can’t have you.”

And he goes to see Hopkins, who is indeed cowed.

But that night up under Carbondale the fatherly Mr. Cantle goes to see P. Burke.

P. Burke? On a cot in a utility robe like a dead camel in a tent, she cannot at first comprehend that he is telling
her
to break it off with Paul. P. Burke has never seen Paul.
Delphi
sees Paul. The fact is, P. Burke can no longer clearly recall that she exists apart from Delphi.

Mr. Cantle can scarcely believe it either, but he tries.

He points out the futility, the potential embarrassment, for Paul. That gets a dim stare from the bulk on the bed. Then he goes into her duty to GTX, her job, isn’t she grateful for the opportunity, etcetera. He’s very persuasive.

The cobwebby mouth of P. Burke opens and croaks.

“No.”

Nothing more seems to be forthcoming.

Mr. Cantle isn’t dense, he knows an immovable obstacle when he bumps one. He also knows an irresistible force: GTX. The simple solution is to lock the waldo-cabinet until Paul gets tired of waiting for Delphi to wake up. But the cost, the schedules! And there’s something odd here . . . he eyes the corporate asset hulking on the bed and his hunch-sense prickles.

You see, Remotes don’t love. They don’t have real sex, the circuits designed that out from the start. So it’s been assumed that it’s
Paul
who is diverting himself or something with the pretty little body in Chile. P. Burke can only be doing what comes natural to any ambitious gutter-meat. It hasn’t occurred to anyone that they’re dealing with the real hairy thing whose shadow is blasting out of every holoshow on Earth.

Love?

Mr. Cantle frowns. The idea is grotesque. But his instinct for the fuzzy line is strong; he will recommend flexibility. And so, in Chile:

“Darling, I don’t have to work tonight! And Friday too—isn’t that right, Mr. Hopkins?”

“Oh, great. When does she come up for parole?”

“Mr. Isham, please be reasonable. Our schedule—surely your own production people must be needing you?”

This happens to be true. Paul goes away. Hopkins stares after him, wondering distastefully why an Isham wants to ball a waldo. How sound are those boardroom belly-fears—garble creeps, creeps in! It never occurs to Hopkins that an Isham might not know what Delphi is.

Especially with Davy crying because Paul has kicked him out of Delphi’s bed.

Delphi’s bed is under a real window.

“Stars,” Paul says sleepily. He rolls over, pulling Delphi on top. “Are you aware that this is one of the last places on Earth where people can see the stars? Tibet, too, maybe.”

“Paul . . . “

“Go to sleep. I want to see you sleep.”

“Paul, I . . . I sleep so
hard
, I mean, it’s a joke how hard I am to wake up. Do you mind?”

“Yes.”

But finally, fearfully, she must let go. So that five thousand miles north a crazy spent creature can crawl out to gulp concentrates and fall on her cot. But not for long. It’s pink dawn when Delphi’s eyes open to find Paul’s arms around her, his voice saying rude, tender things. He’s been kept awake. The nerveless little statue that was her Delphi-body nuzzled him in the night.

Insane hope rises, is fed a couple of nights later when he tells her she called his name in her sleep.

And that day Paul’s arms keep her from work and Hopkins’s wails go up to headquarters where the weasel-faced lad is working his sharp tailbone off packing Delphi’s program. Mr. Cantle defuses that one. But next week it happens again, to a major client. And ferret-face has connections on the technical side.

Now you can see that when you have a field of complexly heterodyned energy modulations tuned to a demand-point like Delphi, there are many problems of standwaves and lashback and skiffle of all sorts which are normally balanced out with ease by the technology of the future. By the same token they can be delicately unbalanced too, in ways that feed back into the waldo operator with striking results.

“Darling—what the hell! What’s wrong? DELPHI!”

Helpless shrieks, writhings. Then the Rima-bird is lying wet and limp in his arms, her eyes enormous.

“I . . . I wasn’t supposed to . . .” she gasps faintly. “They told me not to. . . .”

“Oh, my god—
Delphi
.”

And his hard fingers are digging in her thick yellow hair. Electronically knowledgeable fingers. They freeze.

“You’re a
doll!
You’re one of those PP implants. They control you. I should have known. Oh, god, I should have known.”

“No, Paul,” she’s sobbing. “No, no, no—”

“Damn them. Damn them, what they’ve done—you’re not
you
—”

He’s shaking her, crouching over her in the bed and jerking her back and forth, glaring at the pitiful beauty.

“No!” she pleads (it’s not true, that dark bad dream back there). “I’m Delphi!”

“My father. Filth, pigs—damn them, damn them, damn them.”

“No, no,” she babbles. “They were good to me—” P. Burke underground mouthing, “They were good to me—AAH-AAAAH!”

Another agony skewers her. Up north the sharp young man wants to make sure this so-tiny interference works. Paul can scarcely hang on to her, he’s crying too. “I’ll kill them.”

His Delphi, a wired-up slave! Spikes in her brain, electronic shackles in his bird’s heart. Remember when those savages burned Rima alive?

“I’ll
kill
the man that’s doing this to you.”

He’s still saying it afterward, but she doesn’t hear. She’s sure he hates her now, all she wants is to die. When she finally understands that the fierceness is tenderness, she thinks it’s a miracle.
He knows—and he still loves!

How can she guess that he’s got it a little bit wrong?

You can’t blame Paul. Give him credit that he’s even heard about pleasure-pain implants and snoops, which by their nature aren’t mentioned much by those who know them most intimately. That’s what he thinks is being used on Delphi, something to
control
her. And to listen—he burns at the unknown ears in their bed.

Of waldo-bodies and objects like P. Burke he has heard nothing.

So it never crosses his mind as he looks down at his violated bird, sick with fury and love, that he isn’t holding
all
of her. Do you need to be told the mad resolve jelling in him now?

To free Delphi.

How? Well, he is, after all, Paul Isham III. And he even has an idea where the GTX neurolab is. In Carbondale.

But first things have to be done for Delphi, and for his own stomach. So he gives her back to Hopkins and departs in a restrained and discreet way. And the Chile staff is grateful and do not understand that his teeth don’t normally show so much.

And a week passes in which Delphi is a very good, docile little ghost. They let her have the load of wildflowers Paul sends and the bland loving notes. (He’s playing it coony.) And up in headquarters weasel boy feels that
his
destiny has clicked a notch onward and floats the word up that he’s handy with little problems.

And no one knows what P. Burke thinks in any way whatever, except that Miss Fleming catches her flushing her food down the can and next night she faints in the pool. They haul her out and stick her with IVs. Miss Fleming frets, she’s seen expressions like that before. But she wasn’t around when crazies who called themselves Followers of the Fish looked through flames to life everlasting. P. Burke is seeing Heaven on the far side of death, too. Heaven is spelled P-a-u-l, but the idea’s the same.
I will die and be born again in Delphi.

Garbage, electronically speaking. No way.

Another week and Paul’s madness has become a plan. (Remember, he does have friends.) He smolders, watching his love paraded by her masters. He turns out a scorching sequence for his own show. And finally, politely, he requests from Hopkins a morsel of his bird’s free time, which duly arrives.

“I thought you didn’t
want
me anymore,” she’s repeating as they wing over mountain flanks in Paul’s suncar. “Now you
know
—”

“Look at me!”