“Which painting did you like best?” Collette is asking me.
I open my eyes. I have been dozing on the couch after Collette and I have made love; I wonder if it’s time we returned to my cabin. The light is dim; now I see she’s wearing a black and red kimono. “Mmmm,” I say, “…third from the left.” There’s a sexy look in her green eyes. I stir, think, Well, I’m not desynched from this part of her program, here she comes again.
“Surprise,” Collette says, stepping aside. The sight of another woman sends me awake. The other woman is Japanese, she’s from the third painting, dressed in a gold brocaded kimono. She looks at me sharply with wide almond eyes, tilts her head, and giggles, her hand over her mouth.
channel 393//IN IN IN
sign key 0208//SCHOLE
telex medium
route: Guam Agana
Midway
Honolulu
SoCal Center
LasVenus Local
thePleasureTube fit. 8 (trace)
debugging rider: erase if intercept/only 393
ATTN: RAWLEY VOORST
TRIED LIVE LINE WITHOUT SUCCESS, WILL TRY AGAIN AT 1800 TOMORROW. FRIGHTENED DOWN TO HALF DOSE FEEL LIKE WE’VE JUST LANDED.
DEBRIEFING SUSPENDED 48 HOURS. REPEAT: DEBRIEFING SUSPENDED 48 HOURS. CREW RELEASED SCICOM AUTHORITY TWO-DAY LEAVES.
BUT LISTEN TO THIS: DID ROUTINE CHECK AND COOPER’S NAME NOT ON DEATH LIST. REPEAT: COOPER’S NAME NOT ON DEATH LIST. AND NO RECORD OF INTERNMENT. LAST GUAM PROGRAM ENTRIES SHOW INTERVIEW, THEN EVACUATION TO HOUSTON. THEN “APPARENT SUICIDE.” FINAL INTERVIEW GUAM IS ONLY ONE NOT IN TRANSCRIPT. MISSING TRANSCRIPT: ONLY KNOW INTERVIEWER WAS WOMAN. I TELL YOU MY DATA SHOWS COOPER MAY STILL BE ALIVE SOMEWHERE. KNUTH SAYS IMPOSSIBLE, BUT COOPER’S NAME IS NOT ON DEATH LIST.
MORE LATER IF I FIND SOMETHING. GETTING OUT OF HERE, LEAVING NOW HONG KONG.
WERHNER
I read the message again, my eyes racing through the words, my feelings shifting from relief to a crawling sensation, God, I don’t know what to think. I feel vindicated; at the same time there is a hollow itch in my chest, an overwhelming, crawling sensation at my sternum. Cooper’s name not on a death list?
I am confused and relieved at the same time. In the middle of my tumbling thoughts I find myself wishing Massimo were alive, that I could talk to him. The thought of his death makes me sigh audibly again; I’ve wondered if he was the one who saw to my appeal and didn’t tell me, that would be his way.
“Cooper,” I say to myself.
“Who is he, Rawley?”
I see Cooper in my mind, chewing on his mustache, forehead drawn tight, mulling over figures on his clipboard, looking up, his eyes for an instant meeting mine, looking away, his lips becoming motionless as he stares out a low porthole in the dome, something else on his mind. “He’s the one Taylor told me committed suicide in Houston, the program man who wrote up our report,” I tell Collette. “I… don’t like to think about Cooper. He did me over with a woman once. That got straightened out, but after that we avoided one another. They said he came in experiencing a gross psychotic episode—I tried to see him, but they shipped him almost straight to Houston. I thought he might know what was missing, what SciCom was after.”
“Does this make sense to you?” she asks; I can see my worry flooding onto her. “Do you know what’s going on?”
I clear the screen, obliterate the message and leave a blue-gray ground, start to unbutton my shirt; the crawling sensation is becoming unbearable. “Says the debriefing is suspended for forty-eight hours,” I say, scratching my chest. “Let’s call that good news. My leave was approved, Werhner’s probably in Hong Kong already. It looks to me,” I say deliberately, “as if I’m in the clear. I don’t see that anything can happen here.”
“What about… that program officer?” Collette asks, close to me, moving my hand and putting her own in its place.
“I don’t know, I just don’t know,” I say. Strange how quickly my relief at the approval of my appeal has passed; strange, the news about Cooper. Werhner might be wrong, I think, Cooper is not alive until one of us sees him. The last interview is puzzling—could he have told them something different from the report?
As if in response to the questions I have, a winking light appears on the console—incoming traffic.
My heart jumps; from her expression Collette feels it. I am thinking, Well, my leave is good, at least for the next few days, anticipating Werhner. I punch up the screen, reset the code channel. No, it doesn’t take, the traffic is local. I let the message come through.
The screen displays the tape of a very Swedish couple inviting Rawley Voorst and friend to a dinner party in the suite of Director Eva Steiner. As the woman speaks she slowly opens the silky black robe she is wearing. Beneath it she is wearing some sort of harness, she is writhing at her midsection—the man is tugging at the harness from behind as the woman goes through the menu in her heavily accented, sultry voice. “Come,” she says finally. Then she snaps her robe shut, stands stock-still, perspiring, saying, “Come. Come.”
I shut down the wall screen, clear to the view, and realize I’ve started to perspire myself. “Eva Steiner,” I mutter. “Jesus Christ.”
“She makes you nervous?” Collette responds. “God.” Collette asks what I’m going to do about the invitation.
“Ignore it,” I say flatly. “Just ignore it.”
“Look,” Collette says after a minute, “let’s go somewhere to relax, to the pool. Let’s go swimming, spend the rest of the day there.”
Very late. The hours since Werhner’s message have been so blessedly uneventful, my paranoia has collapsed of its own weight into heavy, jangled nerves. I adjust the screen to display the program/information channel, time it to run for a few minutes along with the lights, then move from the couch to the recliner, where Collette lies waiting for me under satin sheets.
On the screen a woman’s face is almost transparent, silvery, superimposed on the image of a receding earth. “For night owls,” she says, her voice soothing:
“thePleasureTube offers a variety of stimulating options. Martial arts competition continues in third class. In second class, couples can reestablish their pleasure bond with a hologram production that chases symptoms of sensory overload away, leaving you as fresh as the day you boarded. In first class, all the clubs are open, and there’s something new: a quick-cure plastic surgery that erases wrinkles and makes that new face you. A special Vietahiti options tape, BaliHi in the new Pacific, runs every two—”
The screen flashes on a beach just as the timer switches it off, the lights go. I sit in the darkness alongside Collette.
“Vietahiti?” I say, sliding down with Collette. “Tropical reserve?”
“Mmmm. We’ll be there for a day, the day after tomorrow.”
I close my eyes. I think of beaches, think of Utama Bay and the soft bulk of the ocean. I remember Werhner standing, staring out to sea in gray weather, the sea gray, the sky gray, the horizon impossible to distinguish in the distance. There are other possibilities, he said. You’re right not to think of them.
I touch Collette, run my hand up her back, circle the nape of her neck, feel her pulse in the soft hollow above her shoulder. At least we’ve been left alone, at least I’ve shaken Taylor. No nightmares tonight, I tell myself, curling up against her, my body warm against hers, no nightmares tonight.