Slant

by Eikeltje

  women!"

  Jake is off, walking zag like a dog hunting up birds to flush. Alice suddenly

  specks clear as in an X-ray the anatomy of these folks, the half-life they live

  separated from work or a live audience.

  She's no better.

  She looks again for the Apollonian male, anything to douse the burn, distract

  her for a few minutes but he's not in the room now and she feels lonely,

  nobody else here will do. Still, she looks.

  /

  SLANT 193

  A balding man in his forties approaches with a servile smile. "Pardon me,"

  he says. "Miz Grale. I've seen your vids."

  "Oh?" She can do this in her sleep. Maybe he'll sense that and go away

  politely.

  But no such luck. "You're extraordinary. I think you showed me what women

  can be like, when I was going through a rough time, getting divorced... You

  kept me sane. I knew there had to be women as genuine and warm as you. I want

  to thank you."

  "You're welcome."

  He has this look in his eyes, totally vulnerable. His little male sexual coprocessor

  is running overtime; he's going to hang on this ten or fifteen seconds

  and all she has to do is reach out and touch his shoulder (he might be sly and

  top, it's been so long since she's met the new bosses) and he'll remember this

  for years to come. Making love to other women, he'll be a kind of zombie slave

  to her in his backmind, he'll think of her every time he needs to reach orgasm,

  and his wives or girlfriends will wonder why they never quite connect.

  Alice reaches out and grips his shoulder, leans forward, kisses him lightly

  on the cheek. "You're sweet to let me know," she says. "You make so many

  things worthwhile." Her smell sets the hook deeper. "Those times when it

  isn't easy. You know?"

  The man nods vigorously. "Oh, yes!"

  Alice blinks at him. "Can you tell me where the bathroom is?"

  "Oh yes, it's an amazing bathroom, it's over there, behind the forest wall--those

  trees, in the next room."

  "Thank you," and she gives him her most dazzling professional smile. When

  she turns and walks away, she does not even remember his face.

  The bathroom is bigger than her apartment. The toilet stalls are ten feet

  on a side and covered with pink marble and are fibed for full-sense spinal

  induction Yox. The wall-length mirror is virtual not reflective and the bathroom

  in the mirror is filled with female celebrities from times past, and she's

  right in among them. Marilyn Monroe emerges from one stall, in the mirror,

  and adjusts her calf-length white dress. She catches Alice's sight-line and smiles

  that sun-honey smile. "Your turn, sweetie," she says.

  Marilyn's Character Estate Manager--CEM in the trade--never rents her

  cheap. She's a perennial, no matter what decade is sly.

  Jakey is doing very well indeed; either that or is blowing everything he ever

  made, and he'll likely drag Tim with him when he sputters down.

  Alice hasn't thought about Tim in years, and with good reason. She killed

  something wonderful that time, like stepping on a beautiful butterfly; and she

  did it for no good reason, except that there were other prospects and she

  thought she needed to get on with her life.

  And maybe she thought he could do better. He was that kind of man, that

  nice.

  194

  GREG BEAR

  She gets up from the toilet as it whirls away her urine. "Excuse me," the

  toilet says. "You should check with your physician--"

  Alice slams the door and stands outside the stall, her heart hammering.

  "Don't you hate that?" asks a woman with maple and oak patterned skin,

  emerging from the stall next to hers. Both stalls continue their irrational warnings.

  "They're doing that everywhere now!"

  Outside the bathroom, Alice wonders how much of this she can ignore

  without screaming. Twist orbits past on the arm of the strangest-looking man

  Alice has seen thus far at the party. He's seven feet tall and built like a Popeye

  Goon, with heavy forearms covered with hair and incredibly broad shoulders

  and a banana nose, and his eyes are those of a proboscis monkey. Twist seems

  ecstatic. He's different and Twist is not one to turn down new experiences.

  Alice wonders how well hung Goons are. She shudders.

  Finally she comes to the back of the house and the long green lawn set

  with winterlife palms and beds of blue irises and violets. The fence is brick

  and twenty feet high; set in the bricks at intervals are vid monitors reflecting

  the party back, with add-ons: giants, dinosaurs, disjointed animes, kid-vid

  characters, all accompanied by floating icons denoting their current

  corporate owners. (Alice remembers the (cE mark on Marilyn's dress ... )

  Typical for Jakey, this is all very obvious, forced, like sausage meat, which

  everybody likes even knowing what's in it, and for that reason most of the

  guests can at least pretend they're having a good time. The party provides

  everything they expect, an excellent top-do, a shink sham, or whatever else the

  socials will call it in the trade spares.

  The burn is really giving her grief now. She's tough; she can handle six bad

  {lmmOtions and still keep a face, but she had hoped for something to take her

  ind away to body-buzz nirvana, to a himmelspace, and what she gets is just

  more EntBiz flare and glint.

  Richard Thompson has somehow migrated to the back porch, where he's

  talking with Billie Holiday. Alice walks past them. Holiday nods as if they

  know each other. Then the two projections go on talking. Alice wonders if

  somebody will reconstruct her and set her up at some party a hundred years

  from now. But then, maybe in a hundred years they won't have parties.

  Maybe they'll all lie in cold coffins and suck up Yox, forever and ever.

  She's been looking for Tim without knowing it and here he is, standing

  with three other men on the lawn. They're dressed in gray EntBiz-cut longsuits

  with fan collars and forearm-length sleeves puff-cuff like pastries. Tim has

  grown a beard and she wonders whether it suits him. He half-turns, scanning

  for new faces, and spots her. Turns away.

  Alice suddenly feels warm and touches her face, then pulls her hand away.

  Jaw muscles hard as rocks, she looks for the Apollonian again, clenches her

  hands until the fingernails bite. There is no reason on Earth for Tim Shandy

  ....... I tn nv attention to her. He's sly top and she's not; he's working EntBiz

  /

  SLANT 195

  With her back to Tim and the group, she sees a very odd-looking figure

  standing below the wall, like a tailor's dummy covered with metallic cloth.

  Then she realizes this is a portable simulacrum, its projectors turned

  off or perhaps in transition. She watches it, studiously ignoring Tim and his

  people.

  Sure enough, the projection returns, but it's nobody she recognizes. It's a

  young, odd-looking man, little more than an adolescent boy, and his feet seem

  stuck in a pile of thick steaming dirt. He stares at her with a spooky intensity.

  At one of Jakey's parties, anything is possible.

  The figure moves toward her, not walking but smoothly gliding. For a

 
flickering moment, it transforms to Richard Thompson again, but the adolescent

  returns, standing in his pile of dirt. Something seems to be malfunctioning.

  "Is your name Alice Grale?" the image asks her.

  She nods. "What are you? A practical joke?"

  "My name is Roddy," it says. "I just wanted to look at you."

  "Where's Richard?" she asks. "Billie get tired of him?"

  The figure smiles awkwardly. "They're pretty deep, actually. I've been talking

  to the dark woman for some time now. Sorry about this."

  Alice gapes at the projection. "What?"

  "I need to be certain you're really Alice Grale."

  "I really am," she says, looking around. She has never been asked questions

  by a projection before.

  "Do you know someone named Terence Crest?"

  Alice's face goes white and she stammers.

  "Do you?"

  "Yes," Alice manages, then regrets saying anything.

  "Thank you."

  The adolescent vanishes and Richard Thompson returns, but the character

  appears stuck in some loop, and shortly, the simulacrum drops its ruse and

  rolls off to a portable shed at the far northern corner of the yard.

  Alice rubs her face for a moment, wondering if she's just imagined the

  encounter. Still pale, she walks toward the buffet table several yards away

  beneath the vid monitors, absently picks up a plate and loads it with vegetables,

  then looks with caution upon a live sauce bunched to one side of a bowl.

  She takes a dollop of the live sauce and pools it next to her vegetables. The

  sauce flows into a shiny picture, Ten High Command's poster and Yox promo

  sig, and she watches it with such interest that she does not hear or see a man

  approach her left side. At the man's touch, she starts violently, expecting the

  ghostly adolescent with his feet stuck in dirt.

  Tim takes her in gentle fingers by the corner of her elbow.

  "Hey, what are you doing here?" His tone is completely friendly and non-challenging.

  Confused, Alice looks at him, then at the group of important

  196 ;REG BEAR

  "Crashing," she answers. "Twist brought me here. I didn't know it was

  yours until Jakey told me."

  "It's his more than mine. I don't know Twist. Male or female?"

  "Friend," Alice says. She puts the plate down. The sauce begins to blur.

  Finally, it's just sauce.

  "It's been years," Tim says. His face is all sympathy and interest, and the

  way he scans her from forehead to bottom of neck is just plain Tim--he never

  pulls the whole-body look, never demands with just his manner that you think

  of him any way but as a friend. He makes Alice very nervous. She has never

  known what Tim is really thinking.

  "It's good to see you again," Tim says.

  "Sure," Alice says. "I'm sorry. I can go--"

  "Why?"

  "I... didn't want to push in. I honestly--"

  "I believe you. But you're here, and I'd enjoy a talk, catching news, you

  know?"

  Alice swallows and says that she would enjoy that too. She feels so vulnerable

  with him, and she is not at all clear why; he has aged a little, but he's only a

  few years older than her, and beneath the beard, there's still that broad, pleasant

  face, not handsome but strong and good-looking, not her type at all judging

  by the record. Tim's eyes are clear blue like a little boy's.

  He takes her through the crowd back to the main house and then upstairs

  to a sitting room overlooking the backyard. From here they can watch the

  party, lounging back in two large old deep red leather chairs with their color

  finely cracked.

  "Jakey says you're working together."

  e "We are." Tim smiles at the window. Sun is coming through now. "He

  wants to move me to LA and plug with some full-spinal Yox folks. The next

  step, you know."

  "Isn't what we have now enough?"

  "Every few years, we need something new," Tim says. "I'm not saying yes

  or no yet, but it's there. It's tempting. We could all write our own ticket. LA

  is eager to make Corridor deals again. Marilyn and all the others are out there,

  but looks like the celeb marketing is cooling off. Home drama is moving up."

  "I hope it works out for you," Alice says.

  "I think it will. How about you?"

  "I've done some work for Francis."

  "Faerie Queene. Good move. Might be the hottest thing Disney's ever offered.

  It's getting great preevs."

  "Francis is just using me for backmind."

  "Pity. You look great."

  "Nice," Alice says, smiling at him. "And your wife?"

  "Living: in Macao. She's working Asian data services. We're on trial sep. I

  /

  SLANT 197

  "I'm sorry," Alice says. Now it's her turn for the sexual co-processor to work

  overtime, and not because she wants Tim back in her bed; she would do

  whatever he wants (knowing Tim is a gentleman) as access to that moment

  when they can be alone for a long time and talk. Tim has always been the man

  she was most likely to confess to, even more than Minstrel, whom she has never

  loved in the same way. Minstrel is like a place you come to to relax; Tim has

  always been a complete and beautiful shadow, a lovely deeply respected other.

  She feels herself getting weak and impulsive and clamps that quickly. If he's

  so great, why did you dis him so bad, and throe times? He kept coming back like it

  was his fault, and you just got worse, and finally you were also cruel and arrogant.

  You haven't seen him since and here it's all nicey, no traces.

  "No need to be sorry," he says. "I've always chosen badly."

  Alice makes a touch face but he doesn't pick up on it.

  "She's her own woman. I don't think she'll ever need me the way I need a

  woman. You probably know the type--all style and number crunching, you

  can hear the little chips humming in her head. She'll hook up with some Co-Prosperity

  magnate in Hong Kong or Kuala Lumpur. She's almost as beautiful

  as you are, and she'll pay a fortune to stay that way. Have you... ?"

  "No," Alice says. "What you see is what you get."

  Tim smiles wryly. "I'd like to take you out on the lawn and put you up

  against Catherine Deneuve."

  "Is she out there?"

  "Probably. Jakey rented the whole suite from 1940 on. They'll show up

  throughout the day."

  "I'm not in that category," Alice says.

  "Don't underestimate yourself. With a better temp agency slot and a better

  game-plan..."

  "I had my moment," Alice says.

  Tim says nothing for a long pause, watching her with a tense grin. "Talk

  to Jakey," he finally says. "We'll find something for you."

  "I don't take handouts," she says.

  Tim leans forward and she feels as if he is about to lecture her but he doesn't.

  "You'll be hot after the Faerie Queene goes full Yox. You could end up slyer

  and higher."

  The burn has cooled in Tim's presence. Tim has a way of driving out the

  little disparate tugs in Alice's mind, integrating her thoughts; she wants him

  to be proud of her but knows that is unlikely, given their history.

  "I'm ash," Alice says quietly.

  "You don't need sympathy, not mine," Tim says.

  "It's true. I have too many handicaps. If the busine
ss is going back to home

  and family, what'll happen to all the succubi?"

  Tim laughs until he almost howls. He shakes his head and wipes his eyes.

  Alice sits still, liking that he appreciates her wit, but not sure she has been

  198

  GREG BEAR

  "I don't think we're doing nothing but home and family just yet. Not if

  Jake has anything to say about it. Besides, there will always be teenage boys.

  You have been cutting a swath, haven't you?"

  "It's my way," Alice says.

  "I'm sure you've enjoyed it."

  "I'm sure you disapprove."

  Tim leans back, the riposte fairly and cleanly delivered. "I never thought a

  woman should live to the expectations of some man."

  "I haven't," she says.

  "No, you haven't."

  "But I'm not doing all that well," she says. "I've made some major mistakes."

  Tim looks pained. "Don't tell me that, Alice."

  "Why?"

  "Eve since you.., ruined my life," he says with a false chuckle, "you've

  held a place in my thoughts as the ultimate free spirit. Tied down to nobody

  and owing nothing to anyone."

  "Connecting with nobody for very long," Alice adds.

  "It would just hurt me worse to think your kind of freedom doesn't work,"

  Tim says. "Because you could have chosen differently."