" . . .the brilliant Conglom strategy to save our worlds for freedom and . . ."
Ryan slapped the zine shut. He almost bumped into a skinny man reading a copy of
Fuckbook
as he hurried to get to the New Age Building down the block. As soon as he got into the lobby, he headed for the elevator to the thirteenth floor without even stopping at the drinking fountain.
He was already in the elevator when he realized that he had left his credit card in the viewstand slot.
"Jee-zus!" Well, there was nothing to do but go back and claim it. He pressed the lobby button, but the elevator continued to move majestically upward.
When it got to the thirteenth floor, he punched the lobby button repeatedly with his index finger. It seemed to take forever for the door to close, but at last he started down . . .to the twelfth floor, where a thin man wearing vacutites got on. Ryan wanted to strangle him, but there was nothing he could do.
The elevator ride finally came to an end, however, and Ryan sprinted to the door. His mouth was dry and he was sweating horribly, his shirt stuck to his back, but he ran all the way back to the viewstand.
Panting, he stopped at the slot, relieved to see that the same people were standing around looking at zines. His fingers felt around the slot, which he could not see clearly after coming in out of the blazing sunlight.
There was nothing in the slot.
He turned around and shouted: "Did any of you see who took the credit card I left here?"
A couple of
Fuckbook
browsers turned, their head gear obscuring their expressions. None of them replied.
"Somebody must have seen it!" Ryan screamed. "You were all standing here five minutes ago, when I left. Now who was near this goddamn slot?"
The viewstand customers turned away. Ryan had the uncomfortable feeling that they thought he was crazy, or was trying to pull a scam, or was unwound from too many onees.
Furious, he clutched the nearest browser by the shoulder. "Was it you?" he demanded. "Did you steal my fucking credit card?"
The guy shook himself loose and backed away.
"Which one of you took it?" he screamed. "I need that card. I'm gonna call the police if I don't get it back in ten seconds. Do you hear me?"
They all heard him, of course, but most of them just shrugged and turned away. One or two even laughed.
"Fuck you!" he shouted. "Fuck the whole bunch of you!"
He stalked off, thinking about really calling the police. But if he did, he would have to hang around while they filed a report. Fuck it, he would call in the stolen card later. He had other cards, but his credit was overdrawn on all of them. He would pay them off later. Right now, he had to get back up to the New Age Building and see if he could persuade Madame Psychosis to bill him for this visit next time. Surely she would do it. After all, he had been coming here for years; she owed him that much.
He tried to calm himself as he entered the lobby for the second time today. It was hard to do—his breathing was ragged and he felt sticky and itched all over—but he tried.
On the way up to the thirteenth floor, he counted each breath he took, from one to ten, and then he started at one again. It was the ancient Zazen training that he had learned from Madame Psychosis in one of his early visits. It served to calm him very effectively, usually. But not today.
He burst into Madame Psychosis' parlor in a fit of pique that could not be soothed by the cosmic strains of synthesized music. No psychedelic gases could contain his anxiety. No philosophical discourse could soothe his battered spirit.
"What the hell is that woman trying to do to me?" he bellowed.
Madame Psychosis smiled serenely as her credit slot snaked up from nowhere. "Please insert your credit card, in order to begin your session."
"I lost the only card I had with me," Ryan explained. "But I've been coming here for years. Can't you please bill me for this visit later?"
"Your file can't be reached without your credit card number. Can you recite it?"
"Oh, shit. I don't think I can. Isn't there some other way?"
"I'm afraid not." Madame Psychosis looked concerned. "But would it be so difficult for you to get the card? I'll still be here until you return."
"Until five o'clock, right?" Ryan looked at his watch in desperation. It was already four thirty-eight. He would never get home and back in time with a duplicate card. "Look, I can't make it, and my card's been stolen. Can't you help me out just this one time?"
"I'm afraid that there can't be any exceptions." Madame Psychosis made a compassionate gesture with her hands. "We must take responsibility when we are unprepared."
"I wasn't unprepared," Ryan said, from between clenched jaws. "I had a card when I left home. But I bought a
Pixine
, and accidentally left the card in the viewstand slot. I went back to get it, and somebody had stolen it."
"Tsk, tsk," said Madame Psychosis.
"Is that all you can say?" demanded Ryan Effner. "Is that all you can say to me after the years of analysis I've put in here?"
"You're reverting to infantile behavior," Madame Psychosis admonished him. "Your accusatory tone is inappropriate and irresponsible."
"Fuck you!" Ryan cried. "I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars here. How dare you brush me off with that line of bullshit?"
The celestial music swelled up powerfully, and the psychedelic gas issued forth from its ducts copiously. Ryan inhaled it as he raged against the cybershrink, but it didn't serve to calm him down, as intended.
"Mr. Effner," the cybershrink said calmly. "Please calm yourself."
"Ah, ha! So you do know my name! Pretended you couldn't tell who I was without the card, right?"
"Mr. Effner, please."
Ryan smacked his right fist into his left palm with a resounding crack. "Goddamn you, I want to see some action right now," he said grimly, "or I'll . . ."
"Or you'll what, Mr. Effner?"
Was she challenging him? This fucking fake human piece of shit who had been robbing him blind for years? Who had just messed up his life beyond belief in a single day?
He screamed incoherently. It was a long, full, nasty scream from down deep inside. It felt good. It felt better than anything he'd experienced in days, weeks. He screamed again, with even more passion.
"Mr. Effner, please," Madame Psychosis said sternly. "This is no time for primal scream therapy."
"Oh, yeah?" Ryan looked around for something to strike back with. The only thing he saw besides immaterial images was the credit card slot on its serpentine stand.
Reaching down, he grabbed it. Feeling it sliding out of his grasp, as it retreated back into the floor, he wrenched it with all his strength.
Grunting, he felt it come free in his hands with a crack. And he had though it was metal. Bits of plastic fell, sparks ignited and fell into the gaseous void. He stepped forward into the vertiginous artificial cosmos surrounding Madame Psychosis, and bellowed: "I'm gonna get my money's worth out of you, bitch—one way or another!"
Madame Psychosis went dead. Obviously the threat of violence had bugged her programming.
Ryan laughed. He lunged forward, only to feel a sharp pain in his shin. He fell, clutching at his leg, but not letting go of the credit stand.
He saw what he had run into, now that he was on his hands and knees on the floor. It was a projectogram, sending up 3-D images of whirling galaxies and nebulae. He got up on his knees, and, winding up like a baseball player, he smacked the 'gram as hard as he could.
The Horsehead Nebula winked out of existence as the 'gram crashed to the floor.
"Wow!" Ryan loved it. He had never felt so powerful, so in control of his destiny. He sucked in more of the gas, and went looking for more 'grams. Prodding ahead at ankle level with his makeshift club, he found another one and demolished it with a single clean stroke.
He found six altogether. When he had smashed the last one, he marveled at what he saw. It was nothing but a dimly lit room, maybe twenty by eight feet, with a weirdly dressed robot sitting in the middle on a chair with cables running from the back. Vents issued the psychedelic gas through louvers, obscuring the carpeted floor. The sensation of floating in space had been nothing but slick New Age talk, drugs, and 'grams. He had always known that, of course, but he had never really
known it
.
There wasn't much left of his splintered, plastic club, but he would use what he had to finish off Madame Psychosis.
"This is a felony," she said, suddenly active again. "Do you realize what you are getting yourself into?"
"Fucking right I do," he said, bringing the credit stand down on Madame Psychosis' head as hard as he could.
The head did not fly off, as he had hoped. Instead, it canted to one side and lolled there, a big patch of pliable pink plastic hanging down, exposing part of a titanium skull.
"This is a felony," Madame Psychosis repeated.
Ryan lifted the credit stand again, but it crumbled in his hands. There was nothing left of it at all.
He looked around for some other weapon. The pew he always sat in was nowhere to be seen. He remembered that it came up from the floor, and looked for some kind of trap door or something. He didn't see it, so he turned back to the cybershrink with the intention of dismantling her with his bare hands, if he had to.
"You'll have to live with the consequences of your actions," said Madame Psychosis, holding a hand out to him commandingly.
Grasping her wrist and forearm, he yanked the arm off. Another spray of sparks illuminated the room for a moment, and then flickered into dying embers. He hefted the arm carefully. Perfect weight for him, if he choked up a little.
He swatted Madame Psychosis in the head again, as if he were one of Beeb's Vikings swinging a broadsword. This time he had the satisfaction of seeing the jaw fly off, while the head moved up and down as if it were pleased with him. Madame Psychosis no longer lectured him on the legal punishments in store for him. In fact, as he continued to flail away at her, she ceased speaking altogether, and soon ceased moving altogether. Nevertheless, he kept on beating the cybershrink until she was nothing but a pile of plastic, metal, memory droplets, and cables scattered on the carpet.
Exhausted, he took one final poke at the pile of mechanical debris at his feet and threw the arm down.
"I could use that pew now," he panted. But the pew still didn't appear. He sat on the floor in the lotus position, just as he had learned it from Madame Psychosis.
The gas was no longer pouring from the vents. Only the acrid smoke and stench of burning plastic and his own perspiration remained. Ryan wiped his dripping face with the back of his hand, and realized that the gas had made him crazy. He had been angry and upset, and the gas had driven him insane. He had just wrecked millions of dollars worth of machinery, and Madame Psychosis had reported him to the police before he did her in.
He was a shoo-in for the Triple-S.
"Kind of funny when you think about it," he said aloud. His voice echoed through the room. He watched a spark fizzle out amid the wreckage of Madame Psychosis, and laughed. "Beeb would have said it's ironic."
Ryan Effner chuckled. He suddenly thought of himself as an asshole, for the first time in his life. A loser. He had thrown his whole life away. That woman had jinxed him, just as she had jinxed his old buddy. Now she would go back to Johnsmith and leave him to rot. He was pretty sure that he wouldn't luck out and get sent to Mars. No, this violent episode would doom him to the harshest duty in the solar system—the lunar pits.
He threw back his head and laughed. He laughed for a long, long time, until the tears came to his eyes. Until his gut ached.
Until they came to get him.
JOHNSMITH AND FRANKIE Lee were working together today. They hadn't had an opportunity to talk much recently, not since the incident a few days ago, when an Arkie had been captured. Only when they were outside, separated from the others, with a direct communication helmet-to-helmet channel, could they converse safely. The cold penetrated their supposedly seamless, heated pressure suits, making them uncomfortable enough to keep them working steadily, even though they were unsupervised. As team leader, Johnsmith was nominally in charge.
"Is that Arkie prisoner a plant?" he asked. "I mean, did they want him to get caught?"
"Sure," Frankie said, handling a wieldo. She manipulated it as though it were a marionette, and a thirty-meter long section of prefabricated sheet was delicately picked up by its extensors and set in place on the orange sand. Only a wieldo could hold the sheet steady against the powerful wind. "How do you
think
we communicate? We can't always wait for the Conglom to order an attack, you know."
"I see," Johnsmith said, admiring her dexterity. "So this guy has been sent out to be captured, just so he could be here to give us a message or something?"
"Most likely. We'll get a chance to talk to him sooner or later, I hope."
"Well, it's not as though he could just wander off somewhere, now that they've got him."
"True, but they might use a probe to get information out of him, or they might brain slice him. If that happens, not only does he end up a vegetable, but we're both in a lot of trouble, too."
"You and me, you mean?"
"Do you see anybody else working for the bad guys around here?"
"The bad guys?" Johnsmith was confused—how could she be loyal to the Arkies if she thought they were the bad guys?—until he saw Frankie grinning through her face mask. "Oh, you were joking, huh?"
"Yeah." She grinned even more broadly. "You take everything so seriously, Johnsmith. You're pretty cute, you know."
He tried unsuccessfully to manipulate his own wieldo, watching the sheet thud to the ground. He managed to pick it up again, thinking that he liked Frankie a lot, but that he was a little afraid of her at the same time. She was so worldly . . .and so dedicated, too. She had risked her life twice on the Olympus raid (as it had come to be known), once against the Conglom forces, and once against the Arkies, who easily could have mistaken her for one of their enemies.