It was not only that he went to places he had never seen. They went there in a style to which he was not accustomed. It was several steps above what most people thought of as first class. Problems did not exist on this planet. Luggage took care of itself. He never saw any money. There was no schedule that had to be met. Cars and planes and hypersonic shuttles were always ready to whisk them anywhere they wanted to go. When he mentioned that all this might be costing too much she explained that she was paying for none of it. Everything was provided by eager corporate suitors.
Cooper thought they behaved worse than any love-smitten adolescent. They were as demonstrative as puppies, and as easily forgiving when she snubbed them while accepting their gifts.
She did not seem afraid of kidnapping, either, though he saw little in the way of security. When he asked, she told him that security one kept tripping over was just amateur gun-toting. She advised him never to think of it again, that it was all taken care of.
"You wouldn't market that tape, would you?" There, he finally had it out in the open.
"Well, let me put it this way. When I first came to you, I was near a nervous breakdown from just thinking about going into the sex tape business. This is much more personal, much dearer to me than plain old intercourse."
"Ah. I feel better."
She reached across the bed and squeezed his hand, looked at him fondly.
"You really don't want me to market it, do you?"
"No. I really don't. The first day I saw you, a good friend warned me that if I got into bed with you my technique would be seen by ninety million slobs."
She laughed. "Well, Anna-Louise was wrong. You can put that possibility right out of your mind.
For one thing, there were no vidicams around, so no one will ever see you making love to me. For another, they wouldn't use my sensations while I'm making love if I ever get into the sex-tape business. Those are a little esoteric for my audience. That would all be put together in the editing room. There would be visuals and emotionals from me—showing me making love in the regular way—and there'd be a stand-in for the physical sensations."
"Pardon my asking," he said, "but wasn't your reaction that first day a little overblown, then?"
She laughed. "Much ado about nothing?"
"Yeah. I mean, it'd be your body on the screen—"
"—but I've already shown you I don't care about that."
"And if you were making love in the conventional way, you'd hardly be emotionally transported—"
"It would register as sheer boredom."
"—so I presume you'd splice in the emotional track from some other source, too." He frowned, no longer sure of what he was trying to say.
"You're catching on. I told you this business was all fake. And I can't really explain why it bothers me so much, except to say I don't want to surrender that part of myself, even a little bit. I taped my first intercourse, but I didn't show it to anybody until you saw it. And what about you? You're worried that I might sell a tape of falling in love with you. You wouldn't be on it at all."
"Well, it was something we shared."
"Exactly. I don't want to share it with anyone else."
"I'm glad you don't plan to sell it."
"My darling, I would hate that as much as you would."
It was not until later that he realized she had never ruled out the possibility.
They went back to the Bubble when Cooper's vacation time was over. She never suggested he quit his job. They checked into a different suite. She said the cost had little to do with it, but this time he was not so sure. He had begun to see a haunted expression around her eyes as she read letter after letter rejecting increasingly modest proposals.
"They really know the game," she told him bitterly, one night. "Every one of those companies will give me any salary I want to name, but I have to sign their contract. You begin to think it's a conspiracy."
"Is it?"
"I really don't know. It may be just shrewdness. I talk about how stupid they are, and artistically they live up to that description. Morally, there's not one of them who wouldn't pay to have his daughter gang-raped if it meant a tenth-point ratings jump. But financially, you can't fault them. These are the folks who have suppressed the cures for a dozen diseases because they didn't cost enough to use. I'm speaking of the parent congloms, of course, the real governments. If they ever find a way to profit off nuclear war we'll be having them every other week. And they have obviously decided that television outside their control is dangerous."
"So what does it mean to you and me?"
"I got into the business by accident. I won't go crazy if I'm not working."
"And the money?"
"We'll get along."
"Your expenses must be pretty high."
"They are. No sense lying about that. I can cut out a lot, but the sidekick is never going to be cheap."
As if to underscore her words of the night before, the Golden Gypsy chose the next morning to get temperamental. The middle finger of Megan's right hand was frozen in the extended position. She joked about it.
"As they say, 'The perversity of the universe tends toward the maximum.' Why the middle finger?
Can you answer me that?"
"I guess you'll have the repairman up here before I get back."
"Not this time," she decided. "It'll be hard, but I'll struggle through. I'll wait until we return to Earth, and drop by the factory."
She called Sidekick while he dressed for work. He could hear her without being able to make out the words. She was still on the phone when he came out of the bathroom and started for the door. She punched the hold button and caught him. turned him around, and kissed him hard.
"I love you very much," she said.
"I love you, too."
She was not there when he returned. She had left a tape playing. When he went to turn it off he found the switch had been sealed. On the screen, a younger Megan moved through the therapy room in her Mark One sidekick. It was a loop, repeating the same scene.
He waited for almost an hour, then went to look for her. Ten minutes later he learned she had taken the 0800 shuttle for Earth.
A day later he realized he was not going to be able to get her on the telephone. That same day he heard the news that she had signed a contract with Telecommunion, and as he turned off the set he saw the trans-tape which had been sitting on top of it. unnoticed.
He got out the Transer she had left behind, donned the headset, inserted the cassette, turned on the machine. Half an hour later it turned itself off, and he came back to reality with a beatific smile on his face.
Then he began to scream.
They released him from the hospital in three days. Still numb from sedation, he went to the bank and closed his account. He bought a ticket for New Dresden.
He located Anna-Louise in the barracks of the police academy. She was surprised to see him, but not as much as he had expected. She took him to a lunar park—an area of trees with a steel roof and corridors radiating in all directions—sat him down, and let him talk.
"...and you were the only one who seemed to have understood her. You warned me the first day. I want to know how you did that, and I want to know if you can explain it to me."
She did not seem happy, but he could see it was not directed at him.
"You say the tape really did what she claimed? It captured love?"
"I don't think anyone could doubt it."
She shivered. "That frightens me more than anything I've heard in a long time." He waited, not knowing exactly what she meant by that. When she spoke again, it was not about her fears. "Then it proved to your satisfaction that she really was in love with you."
"Absolutely."
She studied his face. "I'll take your word for it. You look like someone who would recognize it." She got up and began to walk, and he followed her. "Then I've done her an injustice. I thought at first that you were just a plaything to her. From what you said, I changed my mind, even before I left the station."