Damon Knight - Orbit 19

The new field was most puzzling. Not only were its angles very odd, but it moved too, rhythmically sweeping the walls of an unfamiliar room. The periodic appearance of Coe’s right hand provided no clues and at last Dieter became exasperated enough to activate audio.

Coe was playing a guitar, and playing rather well, too, despite the inadequacy of the audio transmission system built into the bead. The music had an intriguing rhythm to it, matching the sweep of the bead field. Dieter was disappointed when it stopped.

Then the image stabilized. For the first time, Dieter was able to tell that Coe was surrounded by a group of young people dressed in various Maintenance uniforms. Their conversation seemed to concern embarrassing objects found in Condo units during cleanup. Some of the stories were amusing; nevertheless, the sarcastic attitude of the storytellers made Dieter faintly uncomfortable.

A resonant voice, distorted beyond comprehension until Dieter lowered the gain, came over the console. Dieter recognized it as Coe’s.

“Yeah, old Charlie, he told me he was cleaning up after a big party in a fiver near the plaza. Got down on the floor to pick up some kind of mess and he found an open box with damn near a gross of cylanite ampules. ‘Damn Condopigs,’ he says, ‘easy to implode when you don’t have to work!’“

Some of the people in the room had a rather nasty way of laughing, Dieter decided.

“Then he looked at the nice white atrium.” Coe timed his pause effectively. “Which wasn’t white—stains of every color, and in the corner, one dead terrysuiter, stained the same way.”

Coe laughed. “Well, you know Charlie wasn’t going to touch a mess like that. Fortunately, the suiter was dead, so Condo Security had to handle it.” He played a few chords on the guitar. “Hm. Charlie might have killed the terry anyway, just to stay away from work.”

This postscript delighted Coe’s companions, but it had a strange effect on Dieter. It wasn’t the drugs, or the dead man, or even the flippant attitude toward them. It was everything taken together, disturbing the spherical equilibrium Dieter had always supposed existed under the perfect, nonmateriai Domes. Off-center: like the flowers in the Workshop waiting room?

Suddenly Dieter winced as a flash of afternoon sunlight came through the windows directly opposite Coe. Dieter moved to flip some filtering into line, then froze.

Someone sitting across from his subject was pointing directly bead center.

“Coe. Hey, Coe, what’s that shiny thing on your sleeve?”

“What?”

Dieter saw the top of Coe’s forehead as he peered at the bead. He had to fight a physical impulse to leave the cubicle. A hand came into view, grabbing Coe’s arm and twisting it until Coe’s face was directly centered on the console screen for the first time. Dieter printed the image.

Coe had sandy hair cut short and a thick beard which covered his square face.

His nostrils flared slightly. “I’ll be damned!”

Dieter was startled back into his chair.

“You know what this is, Morry?” Coe’s hand descended, thumb and forefinger looming large, separated, ready to pinch the bead. Abruptly, the image blacked out, but audio continued. “Shit. An image bead.”

“Hey, someone’s been watching you?” The image resumed, first of Coe at arm’s length, then over to window light.

“It’s not government, is it?”

“Naw. This here’s for Condopig scribblers.” Coe’s voice was nasal enough to rattle a loose screw somewhere inside the console chassis. Fascinated, unable to deactivate the unit, Dieter simply stared.

“With this I play rat-sack man for some vamp with money enough to buy me.”

Not me, not me.

“What you gonna do with it?”

“First . . .” Dieter saw Coe’s face instantly enlarge so that the screen contained only his mouth and teeth, which reflected the window light in long sculptured rectangles, print, Dieter punched compulsively, print, print while Coe yelled.

“Hey, artist—” God, can Kinchon hear? “You eat shit, all your people eat shit!” The image shifted wildly, stabilizing finally as Dieter realized that the bead lay on the floor with Coe and Morry standing above it, their legs thick and tapering, their predatory heads bent.

“You think he can hear this?” Morry said.

“Don’t matter. He’ll see this.” Coe brought his foot down on the bead as Dieter wildly punched hold, just before the audio terminated in a storm of static.

Even though Dieter knew it was ridiculous, he could not rid himself of the notion that the image of the gigantic heel, with Coe’s face tiny along one edge, had been aimed at him. Try as he might, Dieter could not deal with the image and the emotions it stirred in him.

By Friday afternoon, even Kinchon had noticed Dieter’s lassitude. “How are you approaching it?” he asked, reaching over Dieter’s lap to change console settings. The heel popping in and out of holo right in front of his face annoyed Dieter, but he was too depressed to express what he felt. Instead he complained vaguely about the light level.

Kinchon sighed, ran a hand through his straight black hair, then brought a chair over and sat.

“Ah, I understand the problem. Do you know how many times my own beads have been found in this way?”

Dieter shook his head.

“Well, there were times when the ending was not so quick and easy. I have had the misfortune to bead persons with access to courts of law.”

That, Dieter thought, would have been easier to take: a formal exchange of grievances—

“It happens, Dieter, and if you desire material you must take the risk. And after all, it is only a display of beamed electrons, no?”

He smiled thoughtfully and leaned closer.

“All right, Dieter, I must be plain. The first thing you must understand is that the man there”—he jabbed toward the screen with his finger—”counts for nothing. Nothing! We are concerned with one thing only—the image. The situation which produced that image is none of our concern.” Kinchon emphasized his last remark by squeezing Dieter’s thigh.

“K. Would it be all right for me to rebead this man?”

Kinchon’s eyebrows rose.

All right, in your terms then . “I wish to prove I can deal with this subject in an objective manner. Let me get some new material and I think I can get over this block.”

Kinchon rubbed his chest hair as he considered. Then, curtly, he consented. “But it is a shame you don’t work on this one,” he said, leaving. “It has so many possibilities.”

Dieter chose to ignore this advice. Coe’s violent act had disturbed the quiet relationship Dieter had enjoyed with his subject, and that relationship had to be reestablished before Dieter could hope to deal with the material. Plainly, Dieter felt like a cheap voyeur, and he knew he was anything but that. Only Coe could free him.

He went quickly to Materials, obtained several beads, then went back to Bryon’s office to find Coe’s address. Bryon was reluctant—he insisted on confirming Kinchon’s permission—but still Dieter was able to get what he wanted and was out of the workshop, headed for the Maintenance compound before three. To get there he had to pass through a busy service checkpoint. This was a wide portal in the Dome field crowded with Maintenance personnel and their vehicles. Condo Security examined his membership certification and held it, issuing him a chit. Then Dieter walked past, feeling a faint tingle on his face as he emerged from the field.

Dieter had spent most of his life inside domes, and the experience of standing in the open air always unnerved him a little. Now, with the apprehension he felt toward the task at hand, he felt nauseated. The sky was large—too large—and its clarity seemed like some amorphous weight pressing on him. But Dieter managed, with several deep breaths, to control his stomach; when the dizziness passed, he studied the map Bryon had drawn for him.