Joe Haldeman - Worlds

And the audience loved it. I know I wasn’t all that good, not within a light-year of Fat Charlie, but it was cute, like a bear riding a bicycle. They were “regulars,” aficionados, and when we did pieces that had coon-shout lines, they’d sing right along with us. (Which was a good thing. My singing voice is very ordinary, and an alto in with all that gravel sounded ridiculous.) They applauded and yelled and threw coins on the stage and bought us drinks. I had five mint juleps but didn’t get drunk; I was living so high and hard they just burned away. But by three o’clock I was staggering, drunk on fatigue and applause. The inside of my lips all numb pain and salt blood and my body felt like it had been squeezed through six bright hours of orgasm. Fat Charlie walked me back to the hotel and gave me a big wet kiss and a rib-cracking hug.

I slept like a dead thing. The phone woke me up at about ten.

“Hello, no vision,” I mumbled.

“Jimmy Hollis here.” The banjo player. “You know you’re in the paper?”

“What paper? What the hell are you doing up at this hour?”

“Shee-it. I’m still up.” I remembered he’d offered me ’phets last night. “In the Times-Picayune . You a star, lady, a star! ”

I put something on and stumbled down to the lobby and punched up “Entertainment” on the Times-Picayune machine. There I was, on the first page, red hair and blue denim and looking very intense. I bought another copy to send to Jeff.

I actually was, technically, a “star”—one of the 480 on the list compiled daily by The New York Times . I was number ten in the subcategory “Jazz, Traditional, Instrumental.”

I hadn’t even finished reading the article when somebody knocked on the door. I put my hand on the knob. “Who is it?”

“Newspaper. Times-Picayune.”

I opened the door. “Look, I don’t—”

He was a tall man with an ugly scarred face. He raised a small pistol and shot me in the neck.

I woke up with my wrists tied to the arms of a floater seat. To my right, out the window, a desert was rolling by about a thousand meters below. To my left was the ugly man who had shot me. There was a pilot and nobody else. My bladder was about to burst.

“I have to pee,” I said to the ugly man.

“So pee,” he said.

“Winchell,” the pilot said, “don’t be such a prick. If she does, you have to clean it up.”

“Don’t count on it.” But he untied me and I rushed back to the john. There was a small welt on my neck, anesthetic dart.

Urinating, I realized the bladder pain wasn’t everything and, disgusted, found sticky evidence of recent intercourse. I cleaned up raging and went back to the man Winchell, standing in the aisle.

“You son of a goat,” I said. “You raped me.”

“Oh no. You didn’t resist at all. I think you liked it.”

For three seconds I glared at him, trying to remember everything Jeff and Benny had taught me. I balled my right fist and hauled back as if to hit him. He stepped right into it. He laughed and reached forward to block it and I did my damndest to drive his testicles into his throat. He oof’ed and turned pale and started to fold up, and I hit his nose as hard as I could with the heel of my hand. Nearly broke my hand, but he crunched and bled in a satisfying way.

“Very well done,” the pilot said. He was looking at me over the barrel of a dart pistol. “Not smart, though. When he can stand up again he’ll bite off your arm and stuff it down your throat. Very very bad person.” He lowered his point of aim and shot Winchell in the back.

“Now. Are you going to be good, or do I shoot you another dose? It’s not healthy to have two the same day.”

“I won’t hurt you. I don’t know how to drive a floater.”

He nodded. “Sit up here, where I can keep an eye on you.”

I strapped myself in next to him. I was still trembling with rage, and with something else, something I couldn’t identify. “Who are you? What’s going on?”

“I’m a freelance pilot. Winchell’s a freelance muscle—all the way to the top of his skull, muscle. We snatched you for a guy named Wallace.”

“Kidnapped?”

“That’s right. Two hundred thousand up front, plus five percent each, of whatever he finally gets.”

The desert must mean we were headed for Nevada. I thought about what Violet had told me about kidnapping. “But that’s absurd. I don’t have any money; nobody I know has any money.”

He gave me a puzzled look. “Come on.”

“But it’s true. I’m from New New York; no one has private wealth.”

“He must have some other reason, then.” He shook his head. “Christ No royalties.”

“I don’t see what you’re complaining about. This doesn’t seem like too much work for two hundred thousand dollars.”

“I only get a hundred. It’s the risk, not the work. Snatching’s a capital crime in Louisiana, and in Louisiana they just walk you past a warm judge and take you out back and shoot you.”

“Are we in Nevada?”

“Not yet. Wait till dark to cross the border.” He lit a cigarette and leaned back to look at some dials. “Winchell, uh, raped you while you were unconscious.”

“That’s right.”

“He is a low-life son of a bitch. I should have got someone else. It was real short notice,” he said apologetically.

I stared out the window. “Twice in six months. I’ve been raped twice in six months.” I was seized with sudden fury. “What’s wrong with you groundhogs? What the hell is wrong with you?” I leaned over and was beating him on the shoulder and head with my fists, blinded with tears.

He shoved me away, not too roughly. “Hey! You want to kill us all?” We were much closer to the ground; he pulled back on the wheel and we rose to our former level.

“Here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the dart gun. I braced for it, but he turned around and shot two more darts into Winchell. “He?ll be out for a day now. And he won’t be able to keep anything down for a week. I’d kill him for you, but people would think that was just to get his part of the advance. I’d have a hard time finding partners.”

When I didn’t say anything, he elaborated. “Listen, lady. I really am sorry. This is a business to me, and I normally work with good professionals. But it was a rush job; I was in New Orleans on vacation and got the call. I had to pick up a local. He had a good reference; I’m sorry he turned out to be a thug.”

“What the hell do you call yourself?”

“Pilot. I fly merchandise and passengers under dangerous conditions.” He turned on a radar screen and slid a knob back and forth. The scale of it expanded; a green dotted state line appeared at the top of the screen. “We’re pretty safe now. A floater off autopilot isn’t that unusual here, lots of tourists. We’ll have to break a heavy police line to get in Nevada, though. They like to stop you on general principles.”

“I can imagine.”

“We might have some pursuit, though, if you’ve been reported missing. Is that likely?”

I weighed what to tell him, and decided it was in my favor for him not to be too nervous. “Not until about nine o’clock. I’m supposed to show up to play in a band.”

“Seven here, won’t be dark yet. That’s not good. If someone suspects a snatch they’ll put the border guards on alert” He banked the floater to the left and we started flying into the sun. “Think we better come in from the north-west. Let you see the Rockies.”

I was still trembling. “I feel sick. I’ve never hit anybody before.”

“Pretty good for a first try.” He reached across me and opened a small compartment in the dash. “Look in the first aid kit there. Should be some Dramamine and tranks. Water back by the john.”