By Furies Possessed Page 10

  Now, sitting in a cubicle built for two, that old riddle came back to me, in a shockingly new form: What would a cubicle be like for two people doing it together? I had never thought about that one, but here was the answer, again a bit prosaic, if still shocking to one of my morals in its implications: it was simply like one cubicle with twice the space and double the usual facilities. In my bemused and lightheaded state it seemed to me that I was finding answers to questions I had not posed, and that this was a fact of some significance or portent. I wanted to share my sudden knowledge with someone—and in that moment I realized that there was only one person I had any desire to tell it to. Dian.

  Damn it all, anyway.

  * * *

  When I came out of the cubicle, I found Veronica waiting for me. “My, but you were in there a long time,” she cooed. “But—alone?”

  I started to reply, but a man materialized out of the shadows and elbowed me aside. Veronica disappeared into the cubicle after him. I stared at the closed door for a while, wishing that I was somewhere else, where I could think.

  “Tad!”

  I turned, and there was Ruth. She had less on than she’d worn in the front door, and that left very little indeed.

  “Oh,” she said, getting a grip on my arm and going limp against me, “I’m so woozy. But, wowee! I’m having so much fun….”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said. I could taste the word liar right on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t believe I said it aloud, because she took no notice of it. “What happened to Mr. Muscles?” I inquired.

  “Who?” she asked. She looked up into my face and her eyes wavered, and then crossed and uncrossed.

  “The guy at the door,” I amplified.

  “The door.…” she repeated. “Which door? The one in the floor or the door in the door—?” She interrupted herself with laughter.

  “Ruth,” I said.

  “What?” she said, happily.

  I was going to say, You’re a drag. But I didn’t. I didn’t know what to say. So I said, “There’s an eating cubicle right over there.” I pointed. “There are two people in it right now,” I added. At that moment I was simply imparting a handy piece of information. I could as easily have said, “It’s raining outside.”

  “Ohhh,” Ruth said. “This is a naughty place, isn’t it?”

  “This is how The Other Half lives,” I told her smugly.

  “Which Half is that?”

  “What do you mean, which Half?”

  “Well, like, is it the Other Half from us, or is it—I mean, which Half are we, anyway, for it to be the Other Half of?”

  “Huh?” I replied.

  “Well, you asked me—I mean, you told me…. Well, there was something about this Other Half.…”

  “Of what?” I asked.

  “That’s what I—”

  “What are we talking about?”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “I can’t think straight,” I told her. “Can you?”

  “No,” she said, giggling. “Of course not.”

  “Well, all right then.”

  “I’ll see you later,” she said. And the next moment she was lurching off into another room, leaving me still standing in the hall, outside the Eating Cubicle Built for Two. I decided I’d see me later too, and wandered off in another direction.

  As I entered the room I’d wandered off into, I heard a burst of laughter from a group of people across on the other side. “That’s the Other Half,” I said under my breath, and mostly just to myself, although a couple of people on the floor whom I was at that moment stepping over did give me funny looks.

  As I crossed the room toward them, the group laughed again. When I got closer, I saw that some of them weren’t real.

  They were watching a life-size 3-D. I didn’t realize the fact until several of the people among the group flickered, vanished, and were replaced by others. The sound was off, and they were simply watching the soundless antics of the 3-D holograms. Every so often, one of the voiceless images would do something completely absurd, pulling an extravagant face, or suddenly whirling about or the like, no doubt responding to some unseen voice or sound effect, and everyone would laugh uproariously. It was like watching and laughing at the antics of a bewildered blind man, but it was occasionally funny.

  I laughed too, especially at the sight of the new images—a man and two girls, all dressed in outlandish costumes and giving each other the most pigheadedly infatuated looks.

  Then something about those images jarred me for a moment from my gibbering idiocy. The man was Bjonn and the girl on his right was Dian!

  Chapter Eleven

  I awoke to the discomfiting knowledge that someone else was in my bed. The room was very dark, and I couldn’t see. At first I wondered where I was, and thought perhaps I was in a strange bed. Then, as my exploring fingers slid over the smooth warm flesh next to me and I heard a female sigh, I found my memories returning to the events of the party.

  Someone had pressed an injectab against my buttock—I’d thought at first it was a stray caress until the sudden freezing sensation reached me—and whatever it had been, it wiped all cares from my mind, completing the job the gaseous air had only begun.

  I was still quite dispassionately aware that the two people for whom I’d so futilely searched were cavorting before me in holographic replica, but the knowledge no longer sent jolts of adrenalin coursing through my system. The urgency I’d felt only moments before was gone, dissolved into a spreading sea of bliss.

  My own experiences with drugs had been rare. I was even, I must admit, naive about their use by the upper classes. I have no idea what sort of drug was injected into me, or even its relative strength or commonly defined properties. I know only that its effect upon me was to divorce my conscious mind from the more primal part of me, to subdue my conscious mind into a sort of blasé spectator, and to allow my animal instincts their full flowering. Standing there, watching Dian and Bjonn in their strange pantomimes, laughing as the crowd laughed, I experienced a sudden, unexpected, and entirely spontaneous sexual orgasm, which caught me completely by surprise.

  I was shaken by the experience, but filled with a vast sense of wonder and delight. I felt full of Satyr-like power, elemental, a rutting, strutting beast. And the distant me could only look on with wide-eyed amazement.

  At this point my memories become fragmented. I have lost the sequence of their proper order. But I recall finding the lithe and feline Veronica and dragging her to the floor on that very spot—to which she resisted not at all.

  I remember, too (I wish I could be certain it was real, not a later dream, but I remember some of those too), putting on an exhibition with an extraordinarily talented woman before admiring partygoers, and only afterward discovering she had been my hostess, Miss Moore-Williams.

  And finally—this is somewhat clearer—I remember the tear-stained face of Ruth Polonyck and her pleading voice as she implored me to take her away from there, to put my clothes on and please let’s go now—!

  We took a pod all the way to Vermont—and I received the credit statement to verify that fact. A blatantly expensive thing to do, and not at all my habit.

  The girl made another sound and I leaned closer, peering at her in the darkness. She must have felt my heavy breath upon her face, for she gasped and then spoke.

  “Tad—is that you?”

  “Yes, Ruth,” I said. I put my hand on her belly and let it slowly slide down over the outside of her hip and thigh.

  “Ohhh… that feels nice,” she said. “Do me some more.”

  I did. She sighed a little, moaned a little, and then reached for me with hungry arms. She was easy to satisfy, as I’d known she would be. Afterward, when I had stopped moving, she giggled.

  “Why are you giggling?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, her voice coy. “I guess I was just thinking about the party. You know, I’ve never been to a party like that. Before, I mean.�
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  “Yeah,” I said, feeling withdrawn and distant. “Me neither.”

  “Does that… sort of thing… go on all the time?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Perhaps.”

  “What are you thinking?” she asked dreamily.

  “Nothing,” I said. I was thinking of Dian.

  “Will you take me there again?”

  I rolled over onto my back. “No,” I said.

  “Why?” She was disappointed.

  “I didn’t care for it,” I said.

  “I thought you were having a good time.” A pouty voice.

  “Somebody was having a good time,” I agreed. “But it wasn’t me.” I’d been lost somewhere along the line.

  “I liked it,” she said. “I had fun.”

  “You would,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” It suits your mindlessness, I said to myself.

  “Maybe I’ll ask someone else to take me,” she said. “Next time.”

  “Who?” I asked, not really caring much anymore. “Tucker?”

  There was a period of silence. I was starting to drift off again when Ruth spoke: “Who told you about Tucker?” she said. Her voice sliced like fine old steel through my drowsiness.

  “It wasn’t hard to guess,” I said, feeling obscurely pleased with myself.

  “How do you mean?” she demanded, voice strident, fingers on my arm tense.

  “Did you think you were his first?” I asked sleepily. Go back to sleep and leave me alone, I told her with my mind.

  “Hey—you, Tad!” she said, shaking my shoulder. “You wake up. I want to know about this. You’ve got to tell me,” she insisted.

  “Figure it out for yourself,” I snarled. “Who’d you replace in the office?”

  “That girl—who disappeared?”

  “Dian Knight,” I said. “Yeah, that girl.”

  “What—what happened to her?”

  “She disappeared,” I said. “Until tonight.” My stomach muscles clenched and knotted as I said that. “Until tonight.…” I repeated.

  “Tonight?”

  “I saw her on the 3-D. In some crazy costume.”

  “What was she doing there?”

  I jumped out of bed and groped my way into the other room, where I turned on a light near the infomat. Sitting down before the console, I started pushing buttons, a sudden manic drive seizing me.

  A few minutes later I had it all in front of me on a plastic printout sheet.

  “What’re you doing?” Ruth said.

  I looked around. She was leaning against the doorway to the bedroom. Naked, her body looked too short, too chunky. Her waist was too thick, and her breasts, deprived of their under-supports, looked smaller and droopy. The purple rouge was gone from her nipples and her face had a puffy, unfinished look to it. Suddenly I was sick of her, sorry I’d ever gotten involved with her. Some prize! I’d have been smarter to let Tucker keep her for himself. The thought of her with Tucker cheered me a little—at that moment I felt truly superior to The Old Man. This sad creature was the best he could do for himself—and I’d even taken that away from him.

  Something in my expression, in my lack of reply, must have frightened her. She suddenly retreated into my bedroom, and the door snicked shut. “I’m going home,” came her muffled declaration.

  “Fine,” I said, and turned back to stare at the printout.

  I expected repercussions.

  I fully expected the infomat would roust me from my sleep again while Tucker once more chewed me out.

  It didn’t happen. Instead I awoke—this time to an empty bed, for which I was profoundly grateful—a few minutes before usual, while the windows were still dark. I snapped instantly awake, and quickly performed my morning ablutions, hurrying to be on my way to my office. I took the printout with me. If Tucker wasn’t going to call me, I’d damned well call him!

  I didn’t see Ruth, and I didn’t go looking for her. Instead, once in my office, I put through Tucker’s office code and sat back to see what would develop next.

  I had to work up through his outer defenses, of course, but one secretary (homely, and approaching retirement age) and two assistants later, I was face to face with The Old Man.

  He looked older. There was a sag in the skin around his jawline I hadn’t noticed before. The weathered face had felt the first touch of winter. His drawl was tired.

  “Have you talked with Ruth this morning?” I inquired, very chipper.

  His eyes focused on mine and for a single moment I saw naked hate in them. He had talked with Ruth. “Had you something particular in mind,” he asked, “or is this just a social call?”

  I opened my mouth and he added, “If it is, I’d like to remind you that this is an open line and I have a busy office.”

  You bastard, I thought. That didn’t stop you when you wanted to ride my back! “I thought she’d be talking with you,” I said, keeping my voice cheerful. “I knew you’d be the first to hear the good news.”

  That hooked him!

  His expression grew more tired, even sadder. “You’ve called to gloat,” he said. “I see.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t get you, sir,” I said. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “Listen, you vicious little—!”

  I put on a shocked face. “Sir!” I said. “Please! What are you saying?”

  “What I’m saying is that I intend to—”

  “Sir, I’m afraid we’ve lost communications,” I said, frostily. “This is the purpose of my call.” I held up the printout. “I have no idea what you have in mind, but I shall terminate this call and wait for you to digest the content of the information I’ve relayed.” (He would be punching for a printout copy of the sheet I’d displayed right now. I saw his eyes track down to his console just as I disconnected.)

  It had been a typical public 3-D show called All Around Town. The basic format was to present amusing oddities for public titillation while the show’s host, Genial Gene, made nasty remarks about his subjects. One of the particular subjects of last night’s show was the founding of a new religion, the Church of the Brotherhood of Life. Brother Bjonn, Sister Dian and Sister Rachel had appeared to attempt to describe their Life while Genial Gene hogged the soundtrack to heckle them. The partygoers had been right; it was better with the sound off. I had watched a complete recording of that segment, and had made a printout of what little information I could glean from it.

  It had given me real, if fleeting, pleasure to toy with Tucker the way I had, but as I waited for him to return my call I became increasingly apprehensive. I’d stirred him up. I’d done a nice job of covering for myself—a rerun of our entire conversation wouldn’t provide him with the slightest grounds for complaint—but we both knew what lay at the root of our little joust, and we both knew that this would hardly be our final round.

  I’d just made myself a real enemy.

  The infomat buzzed, and Tucker’s face flashed on the screen again. “How does Miss Polonyck enter into this?” he asked.

  I had to shift gears. “Ah, we were both at the same party when I saw the, ah, 3-D show. I, umm, told her about it afterward. I, well, I assumed she would tell you if she spoke with you, sir,” I said. I was Johnny Humble.

  “I see,” he said. He didn’t mention Ruth again.

  “It’s a real break,” I said. “They’re out in the open again. It would be no trouble to track them down now.”

  “And you want to do that, do you?” Tucker asked.

  “I’d like to, yes,” I said.

  “They’re still out on the west coast,” he said, pensively.

  “Yes sir.”

  “And you want to go out there.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “The warrants are null and void,” he said. “They expired I doubt we could get fresh ones. What would you do?”

  “Talk to them. Find out just exactly what happened. What really happened, I mean. Find out what’s be
hind this phony religion they’re starting up. Get some kind of picture of what’s going on.” I felt myself tensing and untensing while I wondered what form his revenge would take. Would he say no, simply to chasten me? Or might he send me out, hoping to get me out of his hair with Ruth for a while? I wanted to tell him he could have her, with my blessings, but I didn’t dare.

  “Any reason why a local man on the coast couldn’t do that?”

  “I know the situation better,” I said.

  “Umm,” he said, cupping his chin with one hand and absently stroking his jowl. “Very well, then. Go.” The screen blanked out.

  The “Church” had its headquarters near a sleepy little town in northern California called Cloverdale. To reach it I took an HST to Oakland, and a tube to Santa Rosa, which is as far north as the tube goes. There I rented a car—they hadn’t said I couldn’t, when I’d received my cost clearance for the trip—for the drive north of Bay Complex.

  North of Santa Rosa the city drops away almost immediately, and the road begins climbing. This was an automatic road, and a far cry from the old Coast Road on which I’d last driven. As I went up into the hills I looked back down into the city and saw that it was one long finger that extended up the Napa Valley from the south, tapering almost to a point that terminated with Santa Rosa. Unlike the other megacities I’d seen, however, Bay Complex did not flow over every natural formation of land like an inexorable tide. Here and there strong greens still thrust up into the cold damp air, and most of the valley itself was rich with the vineyards and orchards for which it had been famous for centuries.

  It wasn’t a long trip. Soon I was heading the car down an exit-ramp from the roadway and into Cloverdale itself.

  There wasn’t much to see: tree-shaded streets, a few local shops—most needs could be taken care of in the city—and here and there low (less than twenty-story) coops interspersed among older dwellings. Despite its closeness to Bay Complex, the town had a smugly rural appearance. I cruised along the main street, past four blocks of commercial shops, an entertainment palace, three resort hotels, looking, without luck, for some sign of the “Church.” Finally I turned around and headed back, stopping at the local fire-control station.