The Mind Game

by Norman Spinrad

  “No, I think I’ll hang around here a little longer,” Weller said casually.

  “I see,” Sara said.

  “Do you?”

  “I think so,” she said quietly. Then the three of them left together, and Weller went out into the empty courtyard and sat down on a bench. He sensed that he was about to cross another divide. The Transformationalism that he had known thus far was the world of the believers, the soldiers, the suckers. Even the processors and strong-arm boys, even Monitors like Gomez and Karel, belonged to the loyal legions. But the world he was about to penetrate dick first, the world of Lazio, Maria Steinhardt, and maybe even Fred Torrez, was something else again. Here the denizens weren’t the captives of illusion but the captors. He was moving into the center of Transformationalist power, where the dangers were greatest, but where the secrets were known, and where the levers of power that could get him to Annie could be manipulated at whim. By Maria. He was entering the bottom half of the ninth inning one run behind, and it was time to swing for the fences.

  “There you are … ,” Maria Steinhardt appeared, looking slightly drunk, her hair disarrayed, a slattern wildness in her eyes. She put her hands on Weller’s shoulders, leaned down somewhat woozily, and kissed him open mouthed and deeply, her breath tasting of alcohol, her tongue reaching hungrily down his throat, a hand fumbling in his pants. It only lasted a few moments, and then she was tugging him off the bench by the hands.

  “Come on upstairs, my tasty little morsel,” she said, and she led him up a flight of outside stairs to the balcony, down a second-story hallway and into the bedroom.

  The walls of Maria Steinhardt’s bedroom were a deep maroon, the ceiling was a somewhat lighter shade of the same color, the carpet was black, and the dresser, tables, chests, moldings, and bed frame were of heavily oiled wine-dark mahogany. The bed was covered in leopard skin, and the only light was a bloody reddish glow from a frosted overhead fixture. The total effect was of sinister, somber, feral power, reeking of murky S-M scenes. “You wait here for a moment, and I’ll be right back,” Maria said, disappearing into a dressing room.

  A tremor of uneasiness went through Weller; this was, after all, a woman drenched in power, and her sexual preference might very well turn out to be some ugly domination number. So far, he thought, she’s been treating me like pliant raw meat off the rack. Well, to hell with that! he decided, taking off his clothes. You may be the boss lady of Transformationalism, baby, but not in bed with this good old boy. You want to play games, games you’ll get, lady!

  A few minutes later Maria emerged from the dressing room. She was naked; nipples erect on slightly drooping breasts, hair down around her shoulders, all in all a surprising turn-on. Except for the high black boots she wore and the little golden dagger hung on a chain around her neck. She stood across the room, legs akimbo, hands on hips, arching her body toward him. “Well?” she said challengingly.

  Oh really? Weller thought. He felt himself hardening, but in mind no less than body. Meat for the monster? Is that what you think you’re getting?

  Slowly, silently, he walked across the room toward her, stopping with his chest inches from her breasts, looking down into her eyes with a cold, emotionless expression painted across his face. They stared at each other for a long moment, engaged in some ambiguous psychic contest, the outlines of which were but a dim perception of sexual warfare in Weller’s mind. I’m here to put this bitch in my power, not the other way around, Weller thought. So I had better be the director whether she likes it or not. Especially if she doesn’t like it.

  Silently he took her hands in his, prized them off her hips against sudden resistance, and placed them on his own shoulders. Then he cupped her chin in his hands and pulled her head against his chest. Slowly he forced her face downward pushing her to her knees.

  As soon as her knees touched the floor, she moaned, and began kissing and nibbling the flesh of his stomach, moving her mouth teasingly, almost imperceptibly downward, feeling him respond, feeling him anticipating what was to come in her own sweet time. And regaining, so it seemed to Weller, a dominant position, at least in the recesses of her own mind.

  Not good enough! he thought coldly. He gripped her around the jaw with his right hand, pulled her head abruptly down, and with his right hand guided his cock between her lips. Then he put both hands behind the nape of her neck and pulled her toward him as he thrust forward from the hips.

  She grunted throatily and seemed to give in entirely, sucking at him in a hungry frenzy, grabbing him by the buttocks and stuffing him into her as she began to use her mouth like a willing vagina.

  Part of Weller was lost in animal lust and exquisite sensation, but another part was watching the whole thing with grim detachment, viewing it as a political act, a nasty power game that had to be played out to its dialectical conclusion.

  When he came, it was in stony, tightly controlled silence, and without missing a beat, he kept her there for a long time afterward, lost in her private frenzy, until he had regained his ability to go on. On and on and on, he thought. I’m going to fuck you till your teeth ache.

  He dragged her to the bed, threw her down on it, and entered her. Propping himself up above her on his elbows, touching her only from the waist down, he closed his eyes, and, light-years detatched from her reality, began to fuck her.

  On and on and on he went, eyes closed, moving in an inexorable mechanical rhythm, fire in his body, ice in his mind. She moaned and she groaned and she clawed at him and she screamed and her writhing body spasmed again and again, but it was all taking place over an immense psychic distance. He was sticking it to John Steinhardt’s wife. He was fucking Transformationalism itself, and it was the archetypal grudge-fuck. He felt like a medieval battering ram, pounding away at his enemy, as if he could fuck the whole movement into submission, as if by mastering Maria with his cock, he could master Transformationalism with his will.

  On and on, until he could hear her breath coming in tired, ragged gasps, and then faster and harder, like a soldier sensing victory, like a shark sniffing blood. He felt as if he could go on all night, until she screamed for him to stop, until she begged for mercy, and then awhile longer. His body was the cold hard instrument of his will, and it felt neither fatigue nor, really, anything like normal sexual lust.

  After a long time she began moaning, “Please … please … please … ,” over and over again.

  “More?” he asked harshly. “You want more, bitch?”

  “No … no … enough … Jesus … I want you to come inside me … please …”

  “Your wish is my command,” Weller said sardonically, and he moved harder and harder and faster and faster, listening to her scream in what by now might be genuine raw pain, and finally exploded in a shower of cold metal sparks.

  He rolled off her and lay on his back beside her. Maria was breathing hard and deep, her body heavily filmed with sweat. It took her several minutes to fully catch her breath, and when she did, she rolled half over and looked at him with wide eyes and a catlike smile.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve been fucked like that,” she said. “What got up your ass, baby?”

  “Up my ass?” Weller said archly. “What are you talking about?”

  Maria sat up against the nest of pillows at the head of the bed. “Oh, don’t be juvenile,” she said. “On you, it doesn’t look very convincing. You’re not one of John’s little slavies. I can just imagine one of them having the balls to do what you did. Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?”

  “I suppose you’re going to report this to the Monitors,” Weller said sardonically, all caution to the wind. “I’m sure it violates some life directive or other, and if it doesn’t, you can always make one up.”

  Maria laughed. “On the contrary,” she said, “if you’ve violated any life directive, I’ll have it canceled retroactively. Fred Torrez isn’t going to get his greasy paws on you; I want you around for more.”

  “You could real
ly do that?” Weller said, wanting to believe it but finding it a bit difficult.

  Maria laughed again. “Fred takes orders only from John,” she said, running a fingernail up the length of Weller’s stomach. “And John takes orders only from me.”

  “Oh, really?” Weller said archly, sitting up against the pillows beside her. “Just like that?”

  “You do ask a lot of questions, don’t you? Ill bet you’re not a television director at all. Let me guess … The FBI? The Los Angeles Police? The Treasury Department?”

  “I really am a director,” Weller said. “Want to see my credits?”

  Maria fondled his crotch. “I’ve already seen your credits,” she said. “But none of that precludes the possibility of your working for some agency or other, now does it?”

  “Paranoia strikes deep ,” Weller sang. “Into your heart it will creep… .” He grinned at her. “Would you believe the KGB?” he said.

  “Around here, I’d believe anything,” Maria said. She put her arm around his shoulder. “Not that it would matter if you really were a spook. Believe me, no agency is going to be able to hurt Transformationalism. Certainly not with anything you can get from me.”

  “Hey, are you really serious?” Weller said. “Do you really think I’m working for some agency?”

  “There is definitely something strange about you, Jack Weller,” she said. “Or not strange enough. Remember, I’ve been with John since he was grinding out space opera for a penny a word. The three of us—John, Harry, and I—built the movement from the ground up, so I know exactly what kind of wimp gets roped in and what kind of loser ends up working for the movement for peon wages. I know it intimately, since I’ve balled maybe twenty or thirty of the creatures down through the years. And you are not that kind of creature. You do not talk like one. And you most certainly do not make love like one, my pretty.”

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in months,” Weller said sarcastically. This is a sharp lady, he thought. Maybe I should just lay my cards on the table. “I’ll level with you,” he said.

  “Oh, will you now?” Maria said archly.

  “Up to a point,” Weller said. “I’ll admit that I’m not a one hundred-percent-convinced Transformationalist. …”

  “Thank Godl” Maria said huskily. “What bores they are! What assholes!”

  Weller looked at her somewhat incredulously.

  “You’re shocked?” Maria said. “My God, surely you realize that the world is divided up between the suckers and the suckees. Surely you can tell which is which without a libretto.”

  “It just sounds kind of strange coming from John’s wife.” Maria’s expression darkened. She leaned over, grabbed the tip of his cock with two fingers, and ran the little golden dagger she wore lightly across the root of it. “If you call me that again, I’ll cut if off,” she said. Point made, she laughed, and sat back again. “You can’t imagine what a loathsome bore it is to be Johns wife,”

  “And that’s why you don’t live with him?”

  “John sits in the Transformational Research Institute in New York, playing wise man to all the scientists, sycophants, and flunkies he’s hired,” Maria said. “And it’s gotten to the point where he half believes it himself. He doesn’t want to leave, and I can’t stand it there. It’s like being sealed in a bottle with the Great I Am.”

  “So why don’t you leave him?” Weller asked. “You probably wouldn’t have any trouble getting a huge divorce settlement.” Maria patted his cheek softly. “You are young, aren’t you?” she said. “John and I have been together for over twenty years. I met him when he was a lousy science-fiction writer—and believe me, lousy was the word—struggling to pay the rent. He didn’t invent Transformationalism, he didn’t even want to take it over, Harry Lazio and I had to bludgeon him into it. Even today, John has no head for business—”

  “That’s exactly what Harry Lazio said.”

  Maria’s expression darkened. “That son of a bitch!” she said. “But the money-grubbing bastard is right. The three of us have always been a stable triangle. John wrote the book, John spins out the crazy theories and invents the product, John plays god, but Harry marketed Transformationalism, Harry built our financial empire, and only Harry knows enough to run it. In a way it’s no different from the days when John was writing science fiction and Harry was peddling the crap he wrote as his agent.”

  “And you?”

  “Me?” Maria shook her head ruefully. “I’m the only person in the world who really understands John, and I’m the only one who understands that puffed-up schlockmeister Harry Lazio well enough to keep tabs on what he’s doing and keep him from getting any smart ideas about taking over the movement himself I’m the only person in the world who can ever tell John when he’s being an ass and get him to listen. Without me, John would be a full-time messiah drifting further and further away from reality while Harry took over the actual power like some kind of cancer.”

  “So it’s not really a marriage anymore, it’s a business relationship?”

  Maria sighed. “You really don’t understand, do you?” she said much more softly. “In our crazy ways John and I really love each other. These days, we can’t stand being around each other for very long, but that doesn’t change what’s in our hearts. None of it really makes sense if you don’t know John, and the horrible thing is that now no one really knows John except me—including John himself. You can’t imagine what it’s like …”

  She tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling. “I’m not sure why I’m telling you all this,” she said. “Maybe I need a shrink—and I certainly can’t talk to a damn processor! But I might as well spill my guts; it may be good for what’s left of my soul.”

  She smiled softly at Weller. “Understand that John is a tremendous man—full of life, full of ideas, spinning off sparks like a pinwheel. But he’s also always been totally unfocused, and as full of bullshit as it’s possible to be. As a science-fiction writer he was full of ideas that he was never able to take seriously, and he never gave enough of a damn about writing to do anything really good. What he loved was being an author. Going to every loathsome science fiction convention there was and blathering for days on end in a drunken stupor, absolutely mesmerizing people. What he was a genius at was bullshitting, which never really paid the rent.”

  She laughed sardonically. “When he discovered Benson Allen’s little fan club, he had been in a total writer s block for a year and we were stone broke. Harry, who had been collecting ten percent of nothing for a year, smelled money, and so did I, but not John. To him the whole thing was a joke. ‘I’m living out one of my dumb novels, ’ he used to say. ”

  Her voice grew harder, more distant, almost wistful in a strangely bitter way. “But as the years passed and the money came pouring in, as hundreds of thousands of people began looking at John as the god of their personal worlds, as he came more and more to live in a closed universe where everyone he came in contact with agreed with his own half-serious image of himself as the Great I Am, John started to half believe it himself. Who wouldn’t, love? ‘Maybe I really know what I’m talking about,’ he started to say. ‘Maybe I’m transforming myself into the man of destiny.’ ”

  She shrugged. “After all, he was now living in the fantasy situation he wanted for himself when he was an unsuccessful science-fiction writer. He was famous without having to write—John always loathed actual work—he could be a fulltime bullshit artist, and he was a messiah, just like the heroes of all his crummy science-fiction novels.”

  She looked into Weller’s eyes and grinned faintly. “Wouldn’t you, Jack Weller?” she said. “If people made you rich and powerful and treated you like a god, wouldn’t you start believing it yourself, even if you knew it was your own con that got you there?”

  “I’ve never thought about it.” Weller muttered inanely.

  “Well, think about one more thing,” Maria said. “Think about how lonely it would be. Think about ge
tting nothing back from anyone around you but reflections of your own bullshit. Think about living out your life inside a house of magnifying mirrors. That’s where John would be without me. Think about loving a man like that, think about not being able to help loving him and not really wanting to.”

  She leaned her head up against Weller’s shoulder. “So we have our little arrangements,” she said. “John lives out his fantasy without my confronting him with reality except when he wants me to, or when I think he needs it. And I have my Jack Wellers, my parties, my role as grand dame of Transformationalism when I need it. But strange to say, my sweet, our marriage is as solid as a rock, and it’s for keeps.”

  She sat up again and regarded Weller narrowly. “Now that I’ve told you the story of my life,” she said, “I bloody well expect to hear some truth from you in return. What are you doing here, Jack Weller?”

  Weller had been listening passively, soaking it all up like a sponge, knowing that this moment was coming; fearing it on one level, but anticipating it with hope on another. This moment, after all, was what he was here for. And there really wasn’t anything he had to tell her that wasn’t in his Monitor dossier anyway.

  “To make a long story short, my wife became one of the suckers, as you call them” he said. “Me, I wasn’t buying, and she finally got a life directive to leave me. Now she’s disappeared into the bowels of the movement, and I’m trying to find her. That’s my ulterior motive, it’s as simple as that. I’m not with any agency, I’m on my own.” He shuddered. “Boy, am I on my own!”

  “So you sold your nubile young body to this old lady to try and find your wife?” Maria said, shaking her head.

  Weller remained silent, realizing that he had put himself in her hands and insulted her in the bargain.

  Maria laughed. She placed her hand on the inside of his thigh. “You think I’m insulted, is that it?” she said. “Quite the contrary. I find it rather charming. You’re taking a big risk with me, and you know it. It’s all rather romantic, really, isn’t it? I have a thing for younger men, and I’ve dragooned a lot of them into my bed, but seldom have they been motivated by anything as chivalrous as all that.”