The Mind-Riders (3 page)

I could understand something of the doubt that was creeping into Angeli's soul. The vamps would be too high on his feelings to know or care about what he was thinking—and in any case that's something MiMaC can't do, because thoughts are transient, tentative, evanescent, and can't be captured. But I knew, because I'd been there.

What Angeli was thinking was this:

Herrera is moving faster and further than I am. He's burning up more energy. But he's not tiring. He's hitting just as hard. He doesn't get hurt. What do I have to do? What has to be done to break through? When and how does that facade ever waver, ever begin to fail.

And Angeli had one thought to fight against.

Eighteen years.

Like everyone else, Angeli knew there had to be a way to crack Herrera. That was a matter of faith, and a logical certainty. Paul Herrera was human, and had human limits. But where were they? And how did you have to go about pushing him beyond them. Angeli was thinking hard, and finding no answers. He'd find a hundred, in time—after the fight—and he'd be able to write off his defeat and carry on. But for now, he was going under. Slowly.

That eighteen years was one hell of a powerful testament to Herrera's invincibility. It was one hell of a fact to have rebounding in your mind—a thought to destroy your composure, to undermine your confidence.

Ray Angeli had been six years old when Herrera first took the title. He was too young to remember, but he was old enough to know. He knew that Herrera had started winning and never stopped, and that once upon a time he had hurt a man so badly that he had died of shame. That's hard knowledge to carry around, especially when you come to it so long after it's happened and become meaningful. It did no good at all for Herrera's opponents to know that he fought so hard that he had killed a man—not with punches but with sheer humiliation. Herrera was a man who could do damage—psychological damage—to his opponents.

Angeli wasn't scared. But he
knew.
And that has to make a difference.

It wasn't Herrera's fault, of course. It never had been. He only did what he was supposed to do. He just gave the mind-riders their big kicks. He was a feeler in a million. Maybe he loved winning more than any other man alive. He loved carving people into pieces. He gloried in the way he hurt them. If the vamps are addicts, what does that make Herrera? I don't know, but it still wasn't his fault that a man had died after facing him in the ring.

In an earlier age, Paul Herrera would have been a misfit, a crazy man. With his own body he could never have found an outlet for the things inside his mind. But in this age he had become an idol and an institution. He was the champ. That's the way the cards fall. And that was the way Ray Angeli had to look at them spread out all over his mind.

When they came out for the seventh I expected to see Herrera begin to tee up his man for the hammer. But Angeli was still tough, and he didn't let go of his style. He hung on in, taking on the champion and preserving the margin narrowly.

Through the seventh and the eighth and the ninth the fight ran on, as if frozen into a fixed regime, with change in abeyance, content to wait in the wings. Herrera was better, but he wasn't so much better that he could swing things entirely his way. Punches were going both ways—good punches—and it had all the makings of a really tough fight, hard on both men. The sim skins were showing the signs of hurt. Angeli's white body was staining red, and one eye was looking bad, seeping blood. But the black face was beginning to inflate as the flesh took punishment. Herrera looked uglier by the minute. But nothing dramatic happened in all three rounds. If Angeli couldn't reach Herrera, he was damned sure he wasn't letting Herrera get to him.

I knew it had to break some time. I knew there had to come some elusive moment in the dimension of time in which some tiny event, of little intrinsic significance, would finally tip the scales and send them swinging out of true. Once the balance was gone the whole structure of the fight would tumble. It would turn into a massacre.

But in the meantime, Angeli held his vamps. He shored up his own hopes. He stayed on the tightrope, and stayed, and stayed.

The tally counter showed Herrera still ahead at the end of the ninth. Not by much, but enough to hang on to if he wanted to go the distance and take the fight on points. But that seemed unlikely. It wasn't his style.

Angeli won the tenth—one might almost say a shade luckily, if one accepted that there was any such thing as luck in a sim fight. When the sim zeroed in to show the world his face as he turned for his corner at the end of it that shadow of doubt—the thin lattice of thought that had foreshadowed his eventual defeat—was gone.

I wasn't fooled. There was nothing happening to rekindle my faint hopes that Herrera was booked for a fall.

By this time, both fighters would be in top gear and coming to the end of their emotional resources. The cruising had gone on long enough, and from the vamps' point of view it was time to climax. They'd had their ride, now they wanted their crash. By now, Angeli would have stopped thinking. His mind would be frozen over, feeling still, but not doing much else. Thanks to the miracle of MiMaC, however, the resonance link would still be strong—sweetness pouring out of the strong like a hive of bees, into the minds of the weak.

As they came out for the eleventh, I found myself praying that something might yet happen—that the dispelled doubt might be the signal for a change in the wind. It wasn't reason or experience that was urging me, but desire. I still wanted to see Herrera beaten. I always had. Sometimes, you just can't help yourself flying in the face of what you know to be inevitable.

I cared. I knew I was going to be disappointed.

In a hypocritical moment, I could tell myself that I wanted Herrera to lose because I disapproved of what he did for the vamps. I could tell myself that I was disgusted by the way they fed on him. And maybe that was true. The thought of countless emotional voyeurs enjoying orgasms every time Herrera threw a K.O. punch was pretty sickening. But in slightly less self-congratulatory moments I had to admit that there was more to it than that. I bore Paul Herrera a grudge.

And in the beginning of the eleventh, I was charging up—not, like the vamps, on the fighters' emotion, but on my own. I was getting excited, getting involved. Curled up on the edge of the bed I was tensing my muscles in sympathy. I had my fists clenched and held rigid. I wasn't waving them or pushing them, just holding them. But if Angeli had landed a good punch I would be able to feel it in one of those fists. I would get the tingling in the nerves as he hit Herrera hard.

Only he didn't.

Under my breath, I was urging Angeli on.

But he was going to pieces.

Herrera, with a burst of sheer power, came through Angeli's guard like a knife and landed a superb combination—left to the temple, right just above the heart.

Angeli went reeling. His arms went wild, and a third punch, which only glanced off him, put him down. He came up at seven, backed on to the ropes, tried to shield himself and pull Herrera into a clinch. He didn't make it, and went down to one knee to take eight, still wanting to come back and mix it.

Back he came, but without all the things which had made him into a contender, kept him going for so long. He couldn't keep the champ out, couldn't put together his own punches.

The bell came, and Angeli went to his corner to be brought back to life, but it was all over. The tally counter no longer mattered, and the link meter was swinging.

Angeli had held his thirty right to the bitter end, but they were gone now. No one believed in him any more, and most weren't going to take what Angeli was going to take when he went back to be slaughtered in the twelfth. They were running—flopping back into their chairs in a blind, black drunk, overcharged and ready to let themselves sink. Only the real gluttons would switch to Herrera so late.

When the twelfth began, Angeli was holding just six percent, and even that seemed high. Old ladies hoping for miracles and groovers who lapped up suffering as well as—or instead of—exultation.

While Herrera took him apart, knocking him down for a full count half a minute before the end, I trudged down from the sorry heights of forlorn hope. I didn't want to watch what was left—I wanted to think about something else, but you can't switch off your eyes and somehow I couldn't move towards the controls. I saw it all happen.

There was no real backlash. After it was over, I knew it had always been the same way. I didn't feel disturbed. I was calm. My unclenched fists were resting easy on the blanket. I just shrugged off the sad adrenalin draining through my bloodstream, and instructed myself not to care.

Herrera had won again. So what.

I finally switched off the holo. Herrera would stay with his sim awhile yet so that the vamps could gorge themselves on his triumph a little time longer. It would slide away from its peak very slowly, ebbing away gently rather than plunging down. The connoisseurs reckoned that a better charge than the best of erotic spasms.
Chacun à son goût.

I went to sort through some cassettes, looking for something to take my mind away. Somehow, everything I looked at struck me as being insipid. I found it difficult to choose one.

Then I tested the cut on my little finger, to see if it still hurt.

CHAPTER THREE

The bell rang.

I was in mid-dream, and the frail images fled away into the dark recesses of my mind. I was slowly decanted into consciousness. I opened my eyes, and found that it was almost completely dark. Only the wan glow of the city lights filtered through the cracks on either side of the window screen.

For a moment I was suspended, groping for the ill-formed memory of the bell and wondering what had dragged me out of my dreams. Then the sound came again, this time rudely shattering my drowsiness.

I turned over. A tell-tale light was glowing mutely on the console. The luminous dials on my wrist-set, which was hanging from its buckle beside the bed, told me that it was three in the morning.

I thumbed the switch which would enable me to speak to the lobby.

“You got the wrong number,” I said. I wondered briefly whether kids had managed to break in and were dancing a finger-jig on the bells, waking up the whole building. If so, the superintendent would half-kill them. He was a mean man.

“Hart,” said a voice. It was a brittle voice, guttural. It dragged out my name in a funny kind of dilute drawl. It wasn't asking a question. It knew who I was. No wrong number.

“Who's that?” I asked, trying to match his harshness in my own tone.

“I want to talk to you.”

“In the morning.”

“Now.” He sounded confident as well as determined. He had a right to be. Anyone who goes out in the streets at three a.m. just to talk to someone has enough of a reason to get listened to. Also an armored car. Capstack concom is not the sort of district where you take a peaceful stroll.

“Who the hell are you?” I wanted to know.

“Name's Curman.”

I'd never heard of him. It didn't surprise me. There weren't any acquaintances of mine with the habit of waking people up at this time.

“Are you a cop? An agency man?”

“No.”

“Is the superintendent there?”

A new voice came over the mike. “It's okay, thirty-nine twelve,” it said. “I checked his ID. It's clean. I got his gun.”

The superintendent knew his job. He was the kind that lets innocent cap dwellers sleep at nights. Except when people come calling. He'd held the job seven years and was still calling me by my cap number, but that was okay. I'd be no worse protected for being a number.

“Send him up,” I said.

“Thanks.” This—dryly—from Curman.

There was a click as the phone link was cut. I got out of bed and groped for a pair of trousers and a shirt. I unlocked the door and switched the light on. While I waited, I looked around for something to do with my hands. I couldn't find anything, so I just jammed them in my pockets and twisted the keys around my fingers. I had an apprehensive feeling in my stomach. I still couldn't think of a reason why I should be gotten out of bed at this time. My instinct still said
cop,
though he'd denied it, but I had a crystal clear conscience for the month. Where law, order and security were concerned I was a real good joe.

There was a knock on the door, and he came in without waiting for his invitation to be renewed.

He was a tall man, looking thin because he was elongated but not really lightly built. He had a dark face with a lot of fake worry lines. He also had bad teeth. I got the impression he had put a lot of practice into looking tough.

“You're Ryan Hart,” he said. It still wasn't a question.

“What do you want?” I asked. It seemed like about the fifth time of asking.

It was his move, but he wasn't in a hurry to make it. He closed the door gently behind him, and looked around.

“Don't know how people live in these things,” he said. He extended his long arms to touch both walls simultaneously.

“It's very fashionable,” I said. “Not to mention public-spirited. We got a space problem in the city. People have to adapt their lifestyles. I'm in the vanguard of a great social movement. That's what the commercial said, anyhow. What do you want?”

“I live out of town,” he muttered, uncommunicatively. He moved toward me. I didn't retreat.

“Got a drink?” he said—not aggressively. Almost ruminatively.

“Got a reason why I should give you one?”

“Sure,” he drawled. “Makes it all feel better. Cuts the ice. You know. Eases the tension.”

I slid out the locker and touched a bottle, looking at him. He shrugged slightly, and nodded. I pressed a glass to the catch and then passed it to him. It wasn't a double and I didn't bother asking him whether he wanted anything in it.

He stood there with it in his hand.

“You?” he asked.

“Too early,” I said, sarcastically.

He shrugged. “I saw your program tonight,” he said. “That was some ape.”

I had to think hard to realize what he was talking about. I didn't know what the crud channels had been putting out that I might have done some fancy handling for. I didn't remember any apes. Not recently.

“So?” I said.

“We knew it was you,” he said. “When the old man was tracing you, they told him. I would've come earlier, only we sat through it. I don't know why.”

He drained the glass in one gulp.

I stood and waited. I didn't want to waste any more breath.

“D'you see the fight?” he asked. Suddenly, there was a new note in his voice. He was getting to the point. I guessed then why he'd taken so long. He was weighing me up, studying me. There was something about me he couldn't figure. It was mutual.

“Yes,” I said.

“Too bad,” he commented. “About Ray. In with a chance until those last minutes. So far, then up in smoke. Pity.”

“I cried myself to sleep,” I told him, laying on the sarcasm hard because it didn't seem to be getting through.

He put the glass down on the ledge of the heater.

“You fought Herrera yourself once,” he said. Again, it wasn't a question.

By now, I was ahead of him. I knew who he was and why he'd come. It was a shock. It took some getting used to.

“It was a long time ago,” I said, flatly. “Before he was a champ.”

Curman nodded, slowly. “You beat him.”

“That's right,” I said. “I beat him. A long, long time ago.”

“You better get dressed,” he said. “Properly. You have to come with me.”

“Like hell,” I said, not meaning it. Now it was me who wanted time to weigh things up, to try and understand. There was a chasm opening up before me. My life was being ripped in two. Now—many, many years too late. If it's ever too late.

“Velasco Valerian wants to see you,” he said, gently.

I studied his face for thirty seconds or so. He wouldn't blink. Then I picked his glass up and put it in the sterilizer.

“You know,” I said, letting my mouth run away with my thoughts, “sixteen or seventeen years ago I used to live most of my days expecting that someone might come to that door to tell me that Velasco Valerian wanted to see me. To me, then, it seemed like a thing that had to happen—that ought to happen. A thing with some sense in it. I wanted Valerian to come to me, and I thought he'd have to. But time just went by, and nothing changed in the world. Valerian grew old, and I grew older. And nothing changed. The same ritual repeated itself over and over again. Tonight, it came to an end for—what is it now? Twenty-five? Thirty? And now me. But why? Why, after all these years? It makes no sense. Not any more.”

I shouldn't have said all that out loud. It spilled out. Maybe I should have saved it all for Valerian. Maybe I should have bottled it up forever. But at three a.m. anyone can get caught on the hop. For a moment or two I was tilted by circumstance, and it all spilled. But it helped to clear my head.

Maybe I'd given it up, but it was here.

A chance.

What did it matter whether two years had gone by, or twenty, or two hundred? The long wait had been just that. In transit between phases of a life. Like a thirty-mile cruise on the monorail, frozen in a seat and whirled through a liquid world.

To arrive—where? By now, maybe it was a joke. A farce.

But I knew that Valerian played all his games hard, and this one hardest of all. He had to be up against the wall now, to have changed his mind after so long. I'd been squeezed out, but now I was in again. He had to be getting desperate. It wasn't a joke. Not so far as Valerian was concerned.

Suddenly, I felt a distinct and cold aversion to the idea of being a pawn in a sick drama. I revolted.

“Get dressed,” said Curman.

“Go pick up your gun,” I said, calmly. “I'll join you in the lobby.”

“Pack a bag,” he advised.

“Not yet,” I told him. “I want to see Valerian first. Maybe after that I'll come back and pack a bag. But let's not take things for granted.”

He shrugged. He was obviously a man who always took things for granted—a man so much at peace with the world and all it contained that he could
afford
to take everything for granted. It is given to certain people that they should find themselves at home in their lives. He was probably a damn good bodyguard.

He left, shutting the door quietly. He moved softly, like a sneak-thief. I dropped my trousers and began getting into my underpants.

I took my time, and even buckled on my wrist-set with calm, deliberate precision. I could feel things swelling inside me. A little resentment, perhaps a little disgust for Valerian. Mostly, it was something indefinable—something heavy and warm.

Damn near twenty years, I thought, puppet-jerking spares. And now—I can jerk myself. As Valerian's puppet.

Like hell,
I added.

I locked the door and went slowly along the corridor. I hadn't bothered to pack. Not even a gun. Curman would look after my health and safety.

The elevator, dropping thirty-nine floors, took a little of the weight off my stomach.

He was waiting for me, wearing a smile like a cheap plastic sphinx. He had a big black limousine down in the drop, looking very lonely. Nobody in the capstack had the credit or the pull to rate a car in these economically stagnant days. This car was a rude gesture directed at the world—all the things a car shouldn't be according to today's priorities. Such gestures are the prerogatives of pure wealth—the toys of a rich man who doesn't have to bother courting public goodwill. Apolitical wealth, if there is such a thing.

The superintendent let us out through the double doors, holding his shotgun in the crook of his elbow. Absently, I wondered when he ever found the time to sleep. He probably didn't.

The car drove smoothly and silently. The capstacks loomed around us like fiery needles even at this time of night. Curman threaded a way through the maze of streets back to the arterial highway, and then he turned outwards, away from the urban complex. Valerian, I knew, lived a long way out—up in the foothills where darkness actually fell, and where the sun shone throughout the daylight hours. His home was his castle, and from its battlements he could look down at the sprawling city, the civilization which laid futile siege to his way of life. Valerian was determined to maintain feudalism as a living social system within his own little enclave, and he had the money to do it.

My eyes probed the shadows that littered the roadside, searching for the perennial population of gypsies and hitchers camping just beyond the city limits. But everything was quiet, nothing showed. Today's world doesn't shut down at night, but it watches from behind half-closed eyelids.

I didn't really want to talk to Curman, and he had said just about all he had to say to me. But he didn't like the silence, and he was easy enough in his mind to break it instead of putting up with it.

“Quiet night,” he said.

“All the little mice are home in bed,” I said. “Overloaded. Zapped out when their sets switched off. Network's contribution to bringing down the crime rate. More effective than the S.S.”

“I thought it was the people who haven't got E-links who commit all the crimes,” he said.

I didn't bother to respond to that. The exchange was pretty meaningless anyhow.

“You know Valerian well?” he asked.

“Never met him.”

He glanced sideways at me then, his face showing his surprise.

“I thought—” he began, and then abandoned the sentence, not sure what he
had
thought. He tried again. “He talked as if he knew you. And you talk as if you knew him.”

“Oh,” I said, lazily, “we know one another. We just never met. We have this kind of mutual understanding. I think.” I was willing to let it lie there. He had been content to let me wonder what the hell was what when he first rang my doorbell. Now I was willing to let him stay puzzled for awhile.

I inspected his profile from the corners of my eyes. His face had tightened slightly. Maybe he wanted to ask questions but didn't like to drop his act. He had his image to think of.

He settled for silence. We were too close to home for him to get the whole story. Valerian would be waiting. He drew away from me slightly, maybe because I wasn't what he'd expected.

Valerian's palace was at the top of a long shallow rise, along a private road through a small wood. The gates were pretty but I was willing to bet a lot that the tasteful aspect of the layout discreetly concealed some very effective equipment for discouraging ramblers. Even in the dark I could see that the gardens were pure kitsch—but yesterday's kitsch always becomes today's vanity. This place was something entirely disconnected from the reality of contemporary life: an alternative dimension, with its own cocoon of space-time and sense of values.

The doors of the underground garage were oak outside and good clean steel inside. They shut with a quiet firmness.

“Don't make too much noise,” said Curman, as we got out and shut the car doors. “Mr. Valerian appreciates discretion.”