Slant (3 page)

They kiss first, leaning forward to avoid other contact: soft roughness of lips like nubbled silk, oily smoothness of tongues.

"Good," Francis says. He is recording none of the tactile, not of the surface; only the deep surge, the pulse of yearning from the sympathies, the letting down of vascular tensions by the parasympathies, the message of intense well-being issued by the judging amygdala; all of which Alice is aware of, but not conscious of.

Her thighs seem large and obvious; she might topple too. I am all thighs. Minstrel wraps her, presses forearms against her back, then withdraws them until his fingers rub her ribs, just above the threshold of a tickle. Tongues plunge. For a moment this is too much and she breaks the kiss and noses the hollow of his neck, shuddering.

Minstrel is not the most lovely and stimulating she has ever had, but she is so astonishingly consistent with him. Surprise, warmth, expectancy, and then the final salt: Minstrel prefers men. Alice has a special command, a leave he gives few other women, if any. She specks him with his male lovers, wonders whether she would have the same effect on them; likely not, doesn't matter, the warm fantasy is well away now, sailing with courses full.

They clasp tight from breasts to knees. He intrudes between her thighs and friction again becomes oily smoothness, but he does not press or angle. Minstrel knows her times and frequencies. He is an instinctive lover. She might shiver a muscle here, under his palm, and he adjusts the momentary mix of pressings and withdrawals to suit her as a horseman adjusts to his mount.

The comparisons are becoming more and more basic, the sweetest and deep-es{ of cliches. She will ride, float, flow, sit in the waves, feel the high warm sun; all images in her mind, most from past joins, some never real, all falling like drowsy rivers of fine hot sand down her spine.

"Why, Cuntia," he murmurs. "So long lacking?"

"Shh," she says into his ear. Their motion more pronounced. Francis forgotten, hooks ignored, though she makes sure not to rub the transponders loose as she brushes her temples against his chest. She disengages, though she

20 GREG BEAR

by withholding. She rubs him down his stomach with her cheeks, lips, high

sensual definition against the tight skin.

"Good," Francis says.

Close-up, curls and the sweetly ugly rise, more beautiful than kittens; she adores him. Minstrel is all-valuable, all-honored; she suffers no disgrace by doing anything for him. She does not know what willingness he will take advantage of. Sometimes he assumes brusque anger, a delicate but dominant brutishness that toes a thin thread yet never goes beyond earnest play. But today Minstrel is infinitely gentle and this also falls within her range of surprise and expectancy.

"Wicked as Lucrezia," he says.

His languor is reward enough for the minute she thinks she has. Sure enough, at the end of a minute, he takes her head between his palms and removes her, and she leans back on the stiff pallet, knowing she need do nothing but react, and that none too vigorously. Among the men she has had, the many hundreds of encounters long and short, professional and personal, Minstrel needs the least indication of her fulfilled desire. He already feels what she feels from the shivers and twitches of her knees and the texture of the skin

of her hips and ribs and the muscles beneath.

"Good," Francis says.

"Under Labia's disguise, Glans finds shy Clitoris," Minstrel whispers into her ear. His weight is a surge of southern air; his breath and sweat musk. She can smell his body, a whiff of zoo, nervous but not weak; this is the part she savors most, reaching a man's deep concerns. After all their years, Minstrel wonders whether she will approve. Since she knows she will approve, his concern is a delight. Poor good men, all the good lovers, always this stretch of nerves before the partaking. A laugh even of delight might be misunderstood. Seconds pass before she shows anything other than complete and unquestioning acceptance.

"Good," Francis says. "And..."

She clutches Minstrel, presses his butt down with her nails, feels the slipping

entrance, sucks in him and an uneven breath, simultaneously.

Francis quotes again:

"With sword in hand, and with the old man went;/Who soon him brought unto a secret part,/Where that false couple were full closely ment/In wanton lust and lewd embracement;/Which when he saw, he burnt with gealous fire,/ The eye of reason was with rage yblent,/And would have slaine them in his

furious ire,/But hardly was restrained of that aged sire..." Minstrel shudders. "Enough. Cut."

He holds, withdraws. Alice's eyes dart around the stage. "What?" she says.

"Focus," Francis commands. "Disappointment. You cannot have the Red Cross Knight. You are a Spright, a Succubus, not a true female. Everything

/ SLANT 21

Minstrel lies back, flushed. Alice wants to climb onto him but that would not be professional. Of all things in her life that would keep her from him, it is this isinglass membrane of her working self-respect. Francis monitors Leni, his eyes glazing over. Alice looks on the camera as a kind of dragon, a ravenous audience suspended in a line through all future time behind the camera's many senses. "Perfect, both of you," Francis says, returning and smiling. "Good enough to earn a credit. Your followers will love this." Minstrel smiles back wearily. The muscles of his jaw tighten. The spell is broken and he is thinking of the sooty world. Minstrel leans over her. "Glans would ask dear Cuntia to marry him," he says, "but the pressures of royal life.., you know how it is." "Cuntia would accept," Alice replies. "We shouldn't leave this unfinished," Minstrel says. Alice is puzzled. "No." Francis shouts for the stage to be cleared. "But we have to." Minstrel smiles. "Better for the next time." This is their third dry embrace in the past six months. They are nearly always in shadow, backmind layering now, never up front in the fulfilled lUX. "I'll be waiting," Alice says, and Minstrel strokes her cheek before climbing the stairs to get dressed. Ahmed stares at her, flushed and awed. "You're new, aren't you?" Alice asks too sweetly. She puts on her robe and climbs the stairs after. At the top, she hears her pad chime in a loop of her street clothes. Minstrel is half-dressed. Times past, they might have finished their business up here, neither of them believing pent-up passion to be healthy, but she can see Minstrel's heart and mind are elsewhere. The courtesies have fled. They've peaked and both know it. She pulls the small pad from her purse and takes the call. "Alice here." "I couldn't leave a message or let our homes talk to each other. This is Twist." Twist is younger than Alice by six years but already a veteran. They met two years ago and took a quick liking to each other. Twist--if she calls at all--treats Alice as a kind of mother. "Hello, Twist. I'm just getting off a plug for Francis." "Something's queer, Alice." "What?" "I'm acting really queer. I need to see somebody." "How queer?" "I'm obsessing all over the place, about David." Fuck artists, like most sex care workers, take on so many partners, Alice can not immediately remember just who David is. She thinks they might have

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"I'm not a therapist, Twist." "I called my mother, Alice," Twist says. "Before I called you. You know what that cost me?" Twist often hints at the monstrosity of her mother. Alice has taken it all with a few grains; even therapied, Twist never flows the straight pipe. Alice sits on a bench and crosses her legs. Minstrel gives her an exaggerated grimace and twinkle-wave with his fingers, picks up his bag. Alice watches him go with a small sharp sadness. "All right, why not go straight to a therapist?" "Because David took me out of the agency," Twist says. "I'm out of the payment grid. He was getting me jobs. He has connections." "Ah," Alice says, suddenly remembering David. The David, Twist called him: a small, thin man with dark hair. Alice had instantly specked him as a scheming litter scrawn desperately trying to make up for being born a runt, always sure he had the answers. Twist adores him, hangs on his every reedy word. "Well, I'm sure the agency--" Alice begins. "David won't let me. He's gone aggly, too." "What do you mean?" "I feel like I felt when I began therapy. I was thirteen, Alice. I was a bad case, a real mess. It's all back now, only worse." She gives a painful, nervous giggle. "David says it must have never really took." "Why don't you come to my apt and let's talk," Alice suggests. "I can be there in half an hour--" "I don't know that David will let me." Alice takes a deep breath. Some new fluffers are coming up the stairs. Francis is working overtime. "I do need to talk, Alice. Going to be home tomorrow?" "Morning, yes." "I'll be there at ten. I'll set up David with somebody. Cardy's fuckish for him. Then I can get free for a couple of hours." Alice cringes. That word--Minstrel's tetragrammaton--sounds too hard on Twist's lips. Twist is like a little girl in so many ways. Alice realizes this is uncharacteristic; sex words hard or soft generally do not bother her, whatever her private opinions. She is darked by the scrim of others. "I'll see you in the morning," Alice says. "Yeah. Love you, Alice." "You too." She closes the link and stands among the four new fluffers, none of whom she knows. They all wear butterfly colors; they come from Sextras, now the top Yox temp agency for fuck artists. They smile at her; they know who she is. She used to be heat made flesh. She smiles back, polite and a little condescending, shakes a few hands, tongue-kisses one of the bold males, and then is down the stairs, where Ahmed

/ SLANT 23

The monstrosity of this technological era is indescribable. A man can

carry armies of progeny within his testicles, none of them his own...

some perhaps not purely human. A woman can bear within her unnatural

"artworks" quickened by science and surely as soulless as stones. We sicken and despair. There is nothing of God in these machines and machine-men.

The Mother Church has nothing to offer the time into which we have been born but a warning that sounds like a curse: As you sow, so shall you reap!

mPope Alexander VII, 2043

From: Anonymous Remailer

To: Pope Alexander VII

Date: December 24 2043

"You're just a Catholic Dickhead, you know that? Come to my town (wouldn't you like to know you shit) sometime and I'll show you a GOOD TIME. Let your bodiguards know I'm about seven feet tall and dresed like the Demans in NUKEY NOOKY which I bet youve plaid too you asswipe hippocrit!!!!! Have a nice day!!!!!"

EMAIL Archive (ref Security Inv, Re: Thread: Encyclical 2043, Vatican Library Cultural Tracking STAFF/INDA 332; reverse track through Finland> ANONYM REMAIL Code REROUTE> SWITZERLAND/ZIMBABWE> ACCT HDFinster > Harrison D. Finster ADDRESS 245 W. Blessoe Street Apt 3-H Greensboro, NC, USA. PROFILE> 27 years of age at time of message, >CONCLUSION: FLAME PROFILE No action necessary, ref Vatican Internal Investigator comments: "Young, shit for brains.")

3 ALLOSTASIS

For Martin Burke, life has become anaspace, all motion but no engagement, no interaction, no sense of progress. And yet he is not unsuccessful.

He moved from the combs of Southcoast two years ago. He had set himself up as a design consultant for miniature therapy monitors, microscopic implants that roamed freely in the body and brain, regulating balances and adjusting natural neurochemical concentrations. All of the delayed but no less painful publicity about his involvement with the mass-murderer and poet Emanuel Goldsmith had put an end to this new career; no corporation wanted to be associated with him after that, though they still license and manufacture from

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Since moving to Seattle, he has worked in special mental therapy, out of the third floor of an old, dignified building off Pioneer Square. Outside it is a rare cloudless winter morning, though at eight o'clock still dark. On the Southcoast of California, at the end of his last career, the sun had seemed inhumanly probing and constant. Martin had yearned for change, weather, clouds to hide under... Now he yearns for sun again. Strangely, away from California, the publicity has actually brought in new clients; but in balance, it also ended the love of his life. He has not seen or heard from Carol in a year, though he keeps in touch with his young daughter, Steplanie. Martin enters the round lobby and pushes open the door to his office, slinging his personal pad and purse onto their hooks on an antique coat rack. He has resisted the expense of installing a dattoo or skin pad, with circuitry and touches routed through mildly electrified skin, preferring instead a more old-fashioned implement, and keeping his body natural and inviolate into his forty-eighth year. His receptionist, Arnold, and assistant, Kim, greet him from their half-glass cubicle at the center of the lobby. Arnold is large and well-trained in both public relations and physical restraint. Kim, small and seemingly shy, is a powerhouse therapeutic psychology student with a minor in business relations. He hopes he can keep them working for him for at least the next year, before their agency fields better offers. Tucked out of sight, a year-old INDA sits quietly on a shelf overlooking the reception area, monitoring all that happens in the office's five rooms. He prepares for the long day with a ten-minute staff meeting. He goes over patient requests for unscheduled visits. "Tell Mrs. Danner I'll see her at noon Friday," he instructs Arnold. "I'm off that day," Arnold says. "She's a five-timer." Martin looks over Mrs. Danner's record. She's a five-time CTR--core therapy reject--with a long criminal record. "Want me to be here?" "She's not violent," Martin says. "Klepto mostly, inclined to hurt herself and not others. Enjoy your day off." Martin has expanded his business by taking referrals from therapists who can't handle their patients. After relieving himself of his own demon, he has a special touch with people who are still ridden. "And Mr. Perkins--?" Arnold asks. Martin makes a wry face. Kim smiles. Mr. Perkins is much less difficult than Mrs. Danner, but less pleasant to deal with. He is unable to establish lasting relations with people and relies on human-shaped arbeiters for company. Three previous therapists have been unsuccessful treating him, even with the most modern nano monitors and neuronal enhancement. "Third request in a week," Martin says. "I suppose he's still having trouble