Orbit 2

There was a large red print on her cheek. Her gray eyes had turned black with rage.

“Honey, relax,” Herb said after a moment. “It won’t make any difference to you, in what you do, or anything like that. You know we can’t use most of the stuff, but it gives the editors a bigger variety to pick from. It was getting to the point where most of the interesting stuff was going on after you were off. Like buying the gun. That’s great stuff there, baby. You weren’t blanketing a single thing, and it’ll all come through like pure gold.” He finished mixing his drink, tasted it, and then swallowed half of it. “How many women have to go out and buy a gun to protect themselves? Think of them all, feeling that gun, feeling the things you felt when you picked it up, looked at it.

“How long have you been tuning in all the time?” she asked. John felt a stirring along his spine, a tingle of excitement. He knew what was going out over the miniature transmitter, the rising crests of emotion she was feeling. Only a trace of them showed on her smooth face, but the raging interior torment was being recorded faithfully. Her quiet voice and quiet body were lies; the tapes never lied.

Herb felt it too. He put his glass down and went to her, kneeling by the chair, taking her hand in both of his. “Anne, please, don’t be that angry with me. I was desperate for new material. When Johnny got this last wrinkle out, and we knew we could record around the clock, we had to try it, and it wouldn’t have been any good if you’d known. That’s no way to test anything. You knew we were planting the transmitter.

“How long?”

“Not quite a month.”

“And Stuart? He’s one of your men? He is transmitting also? You hired him to… to make love to me? Is that right?”

Herb nodded. She pulled her hand free and averted her face. He got up then and went to the window. “But what difference does it make?” he shouted. “If I introduced the two of you at a party, you wouldn’t think anything of it. What difference if I did it this way? I knew you’d like each other. He’s bright, like you, likes the same sort of things you do. Comes from a poor family, like yours. . Everything said you’d get along.”

“Oh, yes,” she said almost absently. “We get along.” She was feeling in her hair, her fingers searching for the scars.

“It’s all healed by now,” John said. She looked at him as if she had forgotten he was there.

“I’ll find a surgeon,” she said, standing up, her fingers white on her glass. “A brain surgeon—”

“It’s a new process,” John said slowly. “It would be dangerous to go in after them.”

She looked at him for a long time. “Dangerous?”

He nodded.

“You could take it back out.”

He remembered the beginning, how he had quieted her fear of the electrodes and the wires. Her fear was that of a child for the unknown and the unknowable. Time and again he had proved to her that she could trust him, that he wouldn’t lie to her. He hadn’t lied to her, then. There was the same trust in her eyes, the same unshakable faith. She would believe him. She would accept without question whatever he said. Herb had called him an icicle, but that was wrong. An icicle would have melted in her fires. More like a stalactite, shaped by centuries of civilization, layer by layer he had been formed until he had forgotten how to bend, forgotten how to find release for the stirrings he felt somewhere in the hollow, rigid core of himself. She had tried and, frustrated, she had turned from him, hurt, but unable not to trust one she had loved. Now she waited. He could free her, and lose her again, this time irrevocably. Or he could hold her as long as she lived.

Her lovely gray eyes were shadowed with fear, and the trust that he had given to her. Slowly he shook his head.

“I can’t,” he said. “No one can.”

“I see,” she murmured, the black filling her eyes. “I’d die, wouldn’t I? Then you’d have a lovely sequence, wouldn’t you, Herb?” She swung around, away from John. “You’d have to fake the story line, of course, but you are so good at that. An accident, emergency brain surgery needed, everything I feel going out to the poor little drabs who never will have brain surgery done. It’s very good,” she said admiringly. Her eyes were black. “In fact, anything I do from now on, you’ll use, won’t you? If I kill you, that will simply be material for your editors to pick over. Trial, prison, very dramatic. . On the other hand, if I kill myself. .”

John felt chilled; a cold, hard weight seemed to be filling him. Herb laughed. “The story line will be something like this,” he said. “Anne has fallen in love with a stranger, deeply, sincerely in love with him. Everyone knows how deep that love is, they’ve all felt it, too, you know. She finds him raping a child, a lovely little girl in her early teens. Stuart tells her they’re through. He loves the little nymphet. In a passion she kills herself. You are broadcasting a real storm of passion, right now, aren’t you, honey? Never mind, when I run through this scene, I’ll find out.” She hurled her glass at him, ice cubes and orange slices flying across the room. Herb ducked, grinning.

“That’s awfully good, baby. Corny, but after all, they can’t get too much corn, can they? They’ll love it, after they get over the shock of losing you. And they will get over it, you know. They always do. Wonder if it’s true about what happens to someone experiencing a violent death?” Anne’s teeth bit down on her lip, and slowly she sat down again, her eyes closed tight. Herb watched her for a moment, then said, even.more cheerfully, “We’ve got the kid already. If you give them a death, you’ve got to give them a new life. Finish one with a bang. Start one with a bang. We’ll name the kid Cindy, a real Cinderella story after that. They’ll love her, too.”

Anne opened her eyes, black, dulled now; she was so full of tension that John felt his own muscles contract. He wondered if he would be able to stand the tape she was transmitting. A wave of excitement swept him and he knew he would play it all, feel it all, the incredibly contained rage, fear, the horror of giving a death to them to gloat over, and finally, anguish. He would know it all. Watching Anne, he wished she would break now. She didn’t. She stood up stiffly, her back rigid, a muscle hard and ridged in her jaw. Her voice was flat when she said, “Stuart is due in half an hour. I have to dress.” She left them without looking back.

Herb winked at John and motioned toward the door. “Want to take me to the plane, kid?” In the cab he said, “Stick close to her for a couple of days, Johnny. There might be an even bigger reaction later when she really understands just how hooked she is.” He chuckled again. “By God! It’s a good thing she trusts you, Johnny boy!”

As they waited in the chrome and marble terminal for the liner to unload its passengers, John said, “Do you think she’ll be any good after this?”

“She can’t help herself. She’s too life-oriented to deliberately choose to die. She’s like a jungle inside, raw, wild, untouched by that smooth layer of civilization she shows on the outside. It’s a thin layer, kid, real thin. She’ll fight to stay alive. She’ll become more wary, more alert to danger, more excited and exciting. . She’ll really go to pieces when he touches her tonight. She’s primed real good. Might even have to do some editing, tone it down a little.” His voice was very happy. “He touches her where she lives, and she reacts. A real wild one. She’s one; the new kid’s one; Stuart. . They’re few and far between, Johnny. It’s up to us to find them. God knows we’re going to need all of them we can get.” His expression became thoughtful and withdrawn. “You know, that really wasn’t such a bad idea of mine about rape and the kid. Who ever dreamed we’d get that kind of a reaction from her? With the right sort of buildup. He had to run to catch his plane.