Version 0.5 dtd 033100 STONE* Edward Bryant There Is an Image of the writer which has it that his brain only works when his fingers are connected to the keys of the typewriter, so that In normal human affairs he Is stammering and incoherent. Tisn't true. Least of all Is it true of Ed Bryant. When he Isn't writing, he Is going to science-fiction conventions; and what he does at them Is to act as toastmaster at the banquets. Lots of writers do that. Bryant does it brilliantly If the gift of writing ever passes from him, he can make a living as a stand-up comedian-but it Isn't likely he'll have to do that, as long as he Is capable of writing stories like 1 Up above the burning city, a woman wails the blues. How she cries out, how she moans. Flames fed by tears rake fingers across the sky. It is an old, old song: Fill me like the mountains Fill me like the sea Writhing in the heat, she stands where there is no support. The fire licks her body. All of me So finely drawn, and with the glitter of ice, the manipulating wires radiate outward. Taut bonds between her body and the flickering darkness, all wires lead to the intangible 'Winner, Nebula, for Best Short Story of 1978. overshadowing figure behind her. Without expression, Atropos gazes down at the woman. Face contorting, she looks into the hearts of a million fires and cries out. All of me As Atropos raises the terrible, cold-shining blades of the Nornshears and with only the barest hesitation cuts the wires. Limbs spread-eagled to the compass points, the woman plunges into the flames. She is instantly and utterly consumed. The face of Atropos remains shrouded in shadows. 2 ALPERTRON PRESENTS IN CONCERT JAIN SNOW with MOOG INDIGO Sixty-track stim by RobCal June 23, 24 One show nightly at 2100 Tickets $30, $26, $22. Available from all Alpertron outlets or at the door. ROCKY MOUNTAIN CENTRAL ARENA DENVER 3 My name is Robert Dennis Clary and I was born twenty-three years ago in Oil City, Pennsylvania, which is also where I was raised. I've got a degree in electrical engineering from MIT and some grad credit at Cal Tech in electronics. "Not suitable, Mr. Clary," said the dean. "You lack the proper team spirit. Frankly speaking, you are selfish. And a cheat." My mother told me once she was sorry I wasn't handsome enough to get by without working. Listen, Ma, I'm all right. There's nothing wrong with working the concert circuit. I'm working damned hard now. I was never genius enough that I could have got a really good job with, say, Bell Futures or one of the big space firms. But I've got one marketable talent-what the interviewer called a peculiarly coordinative affinity for multiplex circuitry. He looked a little stunned after I finished with the stim console. "Christ, kid, you really get into it, don't you?" That's what got me the job with Alpertron, Ltd., the big promotion and booking agency. I'm on the concert tour and work their stim board, me and my console over there on the side of the stage. It isn't that much different in principle from playing one of the instruments in the backup band, though it's a hell of a lot more complex than even Nagami's synthesizer. It all sounds simple enough: my console is the critical link between performer and audience. Just one glorified feedback transceiver: pick up the empathic load from Jain, pipe it into the audience, they react and add their own load, and I feed it all back to the star. And then around again as I use the sixty stim tracks, each with separate controls to balance and augment and intensify. It can get pretty hairy, which is why not just anyone can do the job. It helps that I seem to have a natural resistance to the side-band slopover radiation from the empathic transmissions. "Ever think of teaching?" said the school voc counselor. "No," I said. "I want the action." And that's why I'm on the concert circuit with Jain Snow; as far as I'm concerned, the only real blues singer and stim star. Jain Snow, my intermittent unrequited love. Her voice is shagreen-rough; you hear it smooth until it tears you to shreds. She's older than I am, four, maybe five years; but she looks like she's in her middle teens. Jain's tall, with a tumbleweed bush of red hair; her face isn't so much pretty as it is intense. I've never known anyone who didn't want to make love to her. "When you're a star," she said once, half drunk, "you're not hung up about taking the last cookie on the plate." That includes me, and sometimes she's let me come into her bed. But no often. "You like it?" she said. I answered sleepily, "You're teally good." "Not me," she said. "I mean being in a star's bed." I told her she was a bitch and she laughed. Not often enough. I know I don't dare force the issue; even if I did, there would still be Stella. Stella Vanilla---I've never learned exactly what her real last name is-is Jain's bodyguard. Other stim stars have whole platoons of karate-trained killers for protection. Jain needs only Stella. "Stella, pick me up a fifth? Yeah, Irish. Scotch if they don't." She's shorter than I am, tiny and dark with curly chestnut hair. She's also proficient in any martial art I can think of. And if all else fails, in her handbag she carries a .357 Colt Python with a four-inch barrel. When I first saw that bastard, I didn't believe she could even lift it. But she can. I watched Stella outside Bradley Arena in L.A. when some overanxious bikers wanted to get a little too close to Jain. "Back off, creeps." "So who's tellin' us?" She had to hold the Python with both hands, but the muzzle didn't waver. Stella fired once; the slug tore the guts out of a parked Harley-Wankel. The bikers backed off very quickly. Stella enfolds Jain in her protection like a raincape. It sometimes amuses Jain; I can see that. Stella, get Alpertron on the phone for me. Stella? Can you score a couple grams? Stella, check out the dudes in the hall. Stella- It never stops. When I first met her, I thought that Stella was the coldest person I'd ever encountered. And in Des Moines I saw her crying alone in a darkened phone booth ]nin had awakened her and told her to take a walk for a couple hours while she screwed some rube she'd picked up in the hotel bar. I tapped on the glass; Stella ignored me. Stella, do you want her as much as I? So there we area nice symbolic obtuse triangle.. And yet- We're all just one happy show-biz family. 4 This is Alpertron, Ltd.'s, own chartered jet, flying at 37,000 feet above western Kansas. Stella and Jain are sitting acros the aisle from me. It's a long flight and there's been a lull in; the usually boisterous flight conversation. Jain flips through a current Neiman-Marcus catalogue; exclusive mailorder list ings are her present passion. I look up as she bursts into raucous laughter. "I'll b e< goddamned. Will you look at this?" She points at the open catalogue on her lap. Hollis, Moog Indigo's color operator, is seated behind her.. She leans forward and cranes her neck over Jain's shoulder:. "Which?" "That," she says. "The VTP." "What's VTP?" says Stella. Hollis says, "Video tape playback." "Hey, everybody!" Jain raises her voice, cutting stridently through everyone else's conversations. "Get this. For a.small fee, these folks'll put a video tape gadget in my tombstone. It's got everything-stereo sound and color. All I've got to d is go in before I die and cut the tape." "Terrific!" Hollis says. "You could leave an album of greatest hits. You know, for posterity. Free concerts on the. grass every Sunday." _ "That's really sick," Stella says. "Free, hell." Jain grins. "Anybody who wants to catch the: show can put a dolllar in the slot." Stella stares disgustedly out the window. Hollis says, "Do you want one of those units for your: birthday?" "Nope." Jain shakes her head. "I'm not going to need one." "Never?" "Well... not for a long time." But I think her words sound, unsure. Then I only half listen as I look out from the plane across:. the scattered cloud banks and the Rockies looming to the, west of us. Tomorrow night we play Denver. "It's about as close to home as I'm gonna get," Jain had said in New:. Orleans when we found out Denver was booked. "A what?" Jain's voice is puzzled. "A cenotaph," says Hollis. "Shut up," St21?a says. "Uainn .it." 5 We're in the Central Arei2, the architectural pride of Denver District. This is the la est gathering place in all of Rocky Moup''ain, that heterogeneous, anachronistic strip-city clinging to the front rages of the continental divide all the way from Billings dowix to the southern suburb of El Paso. Tlic; dome stretc'_ies up beyond the range of the house lights. Ii it were rigid, there could never be a Rocky Mountain Central Arena. But it's made of r flexible plastic-variant and blowers f'amiel up heated air to keep it buoyant. We're on the inner skin of a giant balloon. When the arena's full, the body heat from the audience keeps the dome aloft, and the arena crew turns off the blowers. I killed time earlier tonight reading the promo pamphlet on this place. As the designer says, the combination of arena and spectators turns the dome into one sustaining organism. At first I misread it as "orgasm." I monitor crossflow conversations through plugs inserted in both ears as set-up people check out the lights, sound, color, and all the rect of the systems. Finally some nameless tech comes on circuit to give my stim console a run-through. "Okay, Rob, I'm up in the booth above the east aisle. Give me just a tickle." My nipples were sensitized to her tongue, rough as a cat's. I'm wired to a test set fully as powerful as the costume Jain'll wear later-just not as exotic. I slide a track control forward until it reaches the five-position on a scale calibrated to one hundred. "Five?" the tech ...
margozap