Slant

by Greg Bear

  “Got it,” Alice says. “Gentlemen, do we gate it or do we stand here with our clothes on?”

  “I’m ready,” says one of the execs warmly, watching Alice like a hungry puppy. She brushes past him through the door. She knows the routine. Jake, whatever his tendency, is not a pimp. She’s good behind glass today.

  Richard Thompson is standing in the main ballroom with Catherine Deneuve and Judy Garland. They just aren’t attracting that much attention today, perhaps because they seem to be malfunctioning: fading and rippling every few seconds. Thompson is still staring at Alice and she does not like it.

  Jake makes his announcements and does his puffery, hyping the process. Alice strips with style until she is naked, and Minstrel removes his shirt as if preparing for an underwear shot. They stand on a foam pad set in the middle of the room. Some of the men in the audience hoot.

  Twist is still out of sight. Maybe she’s falling in love with the goon.

  Arbeiters roll portable flat vid screens from the corners and elevate them so the crowd can see. Two techs, a man and a woman, give up on trying to make the celebs work smoothly and open the silver canisters carrying the inducers. These are long and slender, skin-sticky on one side, with a silver stripe up the length, like minimal jewelry for the spine. Alice stretches her arms up provocatively as her inducer is applied. Minstrel gets his, and the inducers are hooked to a fibe which feeds into a larger than usual Yox player.

  “Just to show you what the future holds,” Jake says, “we’ll let two of the most sensual people I know revel in a world of sensation, total emotional and bodily immersion. Silk and fire and scented oil.”

  “Not a dry seat in the house,” one of the execs comments. Jake lets this crudity pass.

  Alice will ignore the people, concentrate on Minstrel and on this exposure. She needs a boost now, affirmation, both the crowd’s and Minstrel’s. Proof of her solid worth.

  Jake gives them sheer silk robes and whispers in her ear, “You’re on. Alice, let it all go. You can do all it takes.”

  Let them stare.

  One of the techs seems to be having difficulty. “Excuse me,” Jake says, smiling broadly. “A few beta snags.”

  “Bugs for tea,” someone in the crowd says, quoting a familiar vid punch line. The crowd is warm and receptive. She can feel the energy, the support. They’re all lovers now.

  Alice hears the tech mutter to Jake, “We’re getting some feed from another line. You have a high-flow system running somewhere?”

  “No,” Jake says. “Maybe the neighbors.”

  “It’s here,” the tech says, and then the other tech says, “We’re clear. Let’s do it.”

  Alice and Minstrel improvise a small dance on the pad, stepping over their fibes as they cross, hands held high, gallant and elegant before the unknown. The party crowd eats it happily.

  “We’re worth a fortune,” Minstrel tells Alice, smiling at her. Alice beams and leans her head to one side, coming in tune with the moment and the simple grace of this man. Her body treats this as a seduction already and the Yox has not begun.

  She has never seen Minstrel more handsome. Eyes just skirting sadness, mouth wry, attention on her.

  The adolescent male with his feet in dirt is back, flickering and shimmering in the front of the circling crowd. Alice ignores him.

  Then the inducer becomes a warm tea-bath along their spines, with a smell of roses and a hint of sand under their heels. Alice giggles. The effects are well chosen. She feels sun on her face and arms. It lacks the hints of jitter she’s had under previous Yox immersions; this is round, velvety, and totally convincing, high-flow and very high-rez without being jagged.

  Minstrel takes her fingers and they walk up to a huge cold stone gate. Snow is falling and they are shivering. This is going to be some demo; hot and cold, sweet and sour.

  The gate opens and beyond lies a Maxfield Parrish twilight over an Arabian Nights bazaar, small beautifully dressed people walking on streets paved with shimmering wet cobbles. The air is full of tinkling raindew that lands sweetly on their hands, warming like alcohol on the tongue. Her shoulders are weighted with heavy brocaded cloth and she looks to one side to see Minstrel in a suit of the same, violet and blue and red and shot through with gold threads.

  Lightning splits the sky and the rain becomes little moths.

  A sweeping cut and they stand at the parapet of a palace, and behind them a vast round chamber filled with beautiful men and women, large and small, some giants, some barely the size of her hand, and they murmur and whisper of the beauty of the two on the parapet, with the ancient city spread beneath them.

  Alice does not care about being female, she is too powerful for that, all her misconceptions are erased and new embodiments replace them. The play of sense is all in this city, this chamber. To dance is to experience an intense pleasure in one’s feet, as if they might melt in supplication. For Minstrel, all of her will melt; he can command and she can command, and they will flow into one another.

  Alice and Minstrel continue to dance on the pad in the middle of the ballroom, but the moves are repetitive. They are elsewhere.

  Jake and, at last, Tim, along with the rest of the crowd, watch the vid screens and ooh and ahh in communion. Tim avoids looking directly at Alice; he seems numb to the whole spectacle. He is here because Jake has asked him to be here.

  The sim celebs have all shut down and moved to a corner to get out of the way.

  Alice knows this structure; Yox at its most abstracted, sweep and visual and now intense sensory excitation, all flesh and muscle but no joints, all push without leverage, linearity abandoned for immediate gratification. The gratification would ring hollow if not for the artistry of the sensory, its own kind of music; the Yoxicians have developed this to a fine art, and the producers have hired the best to showcase their new enhancements.

  For a moment Alice forgets who and where she is. The parapet is a universe, the figures all around are her friends, she is awash in social confirmation from tail to tete, as Minstrel said. Stars twinkle in a false sky better than real; stars and moon are her friends, beaming sharp jewel approval down on her liaison with the Partner. What she sees is enhanced. Minstrel is her Partner, but he is, if anything, even more beautifully angular, and his skin seems bathed in musk.

  “It’s what we’re here for,” the Partner tells her, bringing her closer. The brocades part across their chests and she feels his pelt against her nipples. The nipples need to weep honey and milk. She sees the dripping gold and cream fluid from her breasts bead on his curled hairs, smells his musk intensifying, becoming very nearly skunky.

  Somewhere, the crowd is caught up and has fallen silent, good Yoxers riding on a thick saddle the horse that Alice rides bareback, but all with accepting uncritical nerve endings, all seeking that release more controlled and artifactual than a drug-induced plunge.

  Minstrel tells her again this is what they’re here for. She can feel his reaction echo her own and then double it, wave-trains in phase, they are being watched by thousands who approve, the stars are overjoyed that this communion is taking place under their sphere. No strain, no adverse judgment, no criticism; sneaking off as teenagers with all the neuronal flushes in flood, and finding that all families involved have arranged it this way, full cultural and social approval, celebrating joy, all instincts confirmed, there will be a party after.

  Blank.

  Ice, broken glass.

  Discontinuity //// like a skip in the feed.

  A curious face confronts her from the edge of the parapet. The adolescent. The floor of the pavilion is covered with thick black dirt, steam rising from the dark heat of fermentation.

  “Are you Alice Grale?” the adolescent asks. “Did you visit Terence Crest just before he died?”

  Alice feels a tug and parts from Minstrel.

  “Please tell me,” the adolescent says. “I must be sure.”

  “Yes,” Alice says, completely off guard and confused that thi
s should be in Jake’s demo.

  “I apologize, but this is my DUTY.”

  With that large, brief word, the pavilion collapses into a thatch of misplaced scans and slipping overlays, of color. All of Alice’s senses skew. Melting becomes incineration, acceptance becomes angry condemnation. She is guilty beyond redemption; the crowd loathes her, the stars turn away.

  Minstrel’s hands reach through the sliding, rippling fragments of the Yox. “Grab me!” he yells. “Something’s wrong!” Alice hears Minstrel scream.

  The air smells of sulfur and vinegar. She feels her skin burn away and her muscles pop their tendons free from her bones. She jerks.

  It seems forever. The crowd is shrieking abuse, she is a little girl stripped of all protection, everything she does, even taking a breath, is condemned. She cries out for sympathy, to regain that approval so sharply cut loose. Minstrel’s hands float before her but she can’t touch them, she has her own desperate concerns.

  And then something rips loose from her spine. She catches slices of Tim standing over her; Jake is cursing.

  “Christ did we get the wrong type? Is something wrong with her head?”

  That is Jake.

  The techs are yelling about a scrambled signal.

  “Come on,” Tim tells Alice, leaning down over her. “Don’t go to sleep. Stay awake. Don’t sleep.”

  But Alice can’t help herself. Sleep is the only escape, besides death, and that would be even better, if she had enough strength to make the arrangements.

  And then there is pain beyond belief, tail to tete and in her soul. It will never end; Alice knows that in fact she has died and, without an instant’s pause, she has gone straight to hell.

  The medical are human and seem professional. They connect her and diagnose her and whisper to each other like professionals.

  Tim is telling her something.

  She can still see Minstrel’s hands, limned in purple and frozen like the afterimage from a brilliant flash.

  She is back in the autumn room with the falling leaves.

  Jake is trying to tell her something;

  “The whole house net is a shambles. Something broke the firewalls. Do you think they did it? Some sort of sabotage? Who employed them last?”

  That’s Jake speaking.

  “You need to stay awake and let your nerves throw off the—”

  The burn is inescapable. Disapproval is her burn. Always and everywhere she has feared the disapproval of men and lovers and larger society.

  “Come on, Alice.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  That’s me speaking.

  “Where is Minstrel?” she asks.

  She is sitting in a chair in the autumn room drinking a glass of water while the medical sit one on each side and a third, an arbeiter, rises before her. They apply patch after patch to balance her monoamines and transmitters. The burn will not go away.

  “Shi fuh muh ick,” she babbles. She feels her face and arms twitching

  “She’s lost it, she’s a fucking wreck, and what the fuck is wrong with him?”

  Jake is talking, angry and scared.

  “She kicked it all down. I know she did it, she’s a fucking wreck.”

  Jake again. Tim is talking quietly. “Shut up, Jake. How in hell could she have done anything it’s your machines.”

  The leaves fall. Alice watches them with zombie dedication. Tim is saying something important. He’s saying that Minstrel is dead.

  “Oh,” Alice says. Minstrel’s hands fade. It is time now to hang on to those things that are most basic; it is time to survive and maybe she can work to get things right again later, to make sense of it all. “I need you to reach this person.” She gives them a name and a number.

  “That’s Seattle PD. The cops are coming already—the medical called them. Christ, he’s dead. A stupid Yox can’t kill somebody.”

  That’s Jake again.

  “Someone tried to kill me,” she tells them.

  They stare at her in silence. All of them a circle of faces. Silence is the same as incendiary disapproval. Alice’s head is on fire.

  “Call her. Please.”

  “All right. I’ll send a touch.”

  And that, at the last, is Tim.

  The party has died as well. Only two or three friends of Jake’s remain. The medical have done all they can and two Eastside PD officers and a forensic-pathology arbeiter have arranged a cooling frame around Minstrel’s body in the middle of the ballroom.

  Alice sits in a corner, still hooked to the medical arbeiter, listening to her own heartbeat and inner voices, all saying it’s time for her to give it up. But she knows she’s tough enough to survive this one, too. The burn is out of control; her self is a scorched wasteland, but this is still much better than what went before—desert heat compared to a wall of blowtorches.

  She knows that everyone in the room thinks of her as human garbage; she must be responsible for what happened, and for Minstrel being dead.

  Tim left ten minutes ago, when the PD arrived. Clearly he could not stand to look at her. Jake has left the room, too. The techs who arranged the Yox beta are still being questioned, and a PD Comm specialist turns from them and walks over to Alice’s corner, pad in hand.

  “How are you?” the young man asks. Alice can hardly bear to look at him.

  “Better,” she says.

  “Yeah,” he says, shaking his head. “I believe that. Do you know what a hell-crown is?”

  “Yes,” Alice says. “Torture.”

  “Do you know the secret of a hellcrown?”

  “No.”

  “It creates a loop between parts of your brain and other parts, parts that don’t belong together. It takes any weakness or doubt and magnifies it, and it magnifies guilt and even physical pain—all very simple. People don’t realize how easy it is to make a hell-crown. But it is not easy to convert a Yox into a hellcrown, even with this full spinal interface. You’ve asked for another PD officer to come here. Fourth Rank Mary Choy. She’s working homicide. Do you think someone tried to kill you?”

  “Yes,” Alice says, cringing at his tone.

  “Okay, we’ll leave it there for now. You were subjected to about twenty seconds of something worse than a hellcrown. Minstrel, your friend—he was a friend, a colleague, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “He had twenty-five seconds. That extra five seconds is what killed him. Autonomic limbic signals were fed directly into his cerebral cortex. Do you understand any of this, Miz. Grale?”

  “No,” Alice says. She cringes again, terrified that she is unable to be more cooperative. “I saw who tried to do it. A young man. He said his name was Roddy.”

  “He was here, at the party?”

  “He was in the Yox, too. He…” It sounds so ridiculous she has to steel herself just to keep talking. She is ridiculous enough just sitting where she is, under this officer’s gaze.

  “Go on.”

  “He was standing in dirt. He replaced a sim celeb, I mean—his image. And he appeared in the Yox.”

  “Could you give an artist a clear description?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I’m sorry you’re in pain, Miz Grale. The medical recommend a course of full therapy and deep balancing, just as if you had been subjected to a hellcrown, but we can’t make you do that. I just wanted to remind you—”

  “When is she coming?”

  Alice looks up at the sound of footsteps. It’s the woman with the mahogany skin. She’s wearing casual PD garb, pants and utility jacket, and is carrying a satchel.

  Mary Choy kneels beside Alice. I’m very sorry about your friend,” she says, touching Alice’s face and then holding her hand. Alice does not draw back; this is the person she wants. The touch feels as good as anything can feel now.

  “Someone tried to kill me.”

  “I know. All right.” Mary pats her hand, stands, and speaks to the Eastside Comm officer in a low voice. Alice does not want
to hear what she is saying; she does not want to hear anything about Minstrel.

  But she catches the response of the Eastside officer: “We’ll link it, then. Keep us informed.”

  Mary assures him she will.

  “Alice, I’d like you to come with me. If you want, I can protect you.”

  “I want to be protected,” Alice says. “I want to talk to you. I want you to like me, I really do.”

  “I like you,” Mary says. “Don’t worry about that. It’s just the pain talking. It’ll go away. You are not a suspect in this or any other case. Though you might be a material witness. If you wish to contact any personal representative, an advocate—”

  “My agency needs to know. God, if they dump me—they might dump me.”

  “I’ll let them know. Would you like to contact an advocate?”

  “No. I… my agency handles that.”

  “Will you sign my pad and give me permission to put you under my protection?”

  “Yes,” Alice says, and signs the pad with a shaky hand.

  “Your agency hasn’t treated you very well, Alice. If you want to contact an outside advocate, let’s do that now. Then you’ll come with me.”

  Alice stands on shaky legs. “Minstrel is so sweet,” she tells Mary, as if confiding a secret. “He has never been anything but the sweetest friend. Roddy killed him just because he was with me. Can you believe that?”

  “Who’s Roddy?” Mary asks.

  In the PD car, Alice tells Mary what little she knows.

  Mary listens closely as the car takes them to her home. None of it makes sense. This is the work of an amateur, a cruel and immensely powerful amateur, but still…

  A child.

  It’s absurd, but at least now the problem is assuming a form, and it has a name.

  RESULTS OF THE THIRD SEARCH

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