Part 3 (2/2)
”Yes.” Kathy nodded. ”I've seen it before in public people, from a distance, but never up close like this. I can see why you imagine you're a TV personality; you really seem like you are.”
He said, ”How do I get away? Are you going to tell me that? Or does that cost a little more?”
”G.o.d, you're so cynical.”
He laughed, and again took hold of her by the wrist. ”I guess I don't blame you,” Kathy said, shaking her head and making a masklike face. ”Well, first of all, you can buy Eddy off. Another five hundred should do it. Me you don't have to buy off--if, and only if, and I mean it, if you stay with me awhile. You have . . . allure, like a good perfume. I respond to you and I just never do that with men.”
”With women, then?” he said tartly.
It pa.s.sed her without registering. ”Will you?” she said.
”h.e.l.l,” he said, ”I'll just leave.” Reaching, he opened the door behind her, shoved past her and out into her workroom. She followed, rapidly.
Among the dim, empty shadows of the abandoned restaurant she caught up with him; she confronted him in the gloom. Panting, she said, ”You've already got a transmitter planted on you.”
”I doubt it,” he answered.
”It's true. Eddy planted it on you.”
”Bulls.h.i.+t,” he said, and moved away from her toward the light of the restaurant's sagging, broken front door.
Pursuing him like a deft-footed herbivore, Kathy gasped, ”But suppose it's true. It could be.” At the half-available doorway she interposed herself between him and freedom; standing there, her hands lifted as if to ward off a physical blow, she said swiftly, ”Stay with me one night. Go to bed with me. Okay? That's enough. I promise. Will you do it, for just one night?”
He thought, Something of my abilities, my alleged and well-known properties, have come with me, to this strange place I now live in. This place where I do not exist except on forged cards manufactured by a pol fink. Eerie, he thought, and he shuddered. Cards with microtransmitters built into them, to betray me and everyone with me to the pols. I haven't done very well here. Except that, as she says, I've got allure. Jesus, he thought. And that's all that stands between me and a forced-labor camp.
”Okay,” he said, then. It seemed the wiser choice--by far. ”Go pay Eddy,” she said. ”Get that over with and him out of here.”
”I wondered why he's still hanging around,” Jason said. ”Did he scent more money?”
”I guess so,” Kathy said.
”You do this all the time,” Jason said as he got out his money. SOP: standard operating procedure. And he had tumbled for it.
Kathy said blithely, ”Eddy is psionic.”
4
Two city blocks away, upstairs in an unpainted but once white wooden building, Kathy had a single room with a hotcompart in which to fix one-person meals.
He looked around him. A girl's room: the cotlike bed had a handmade spread covering it, tiny green b.a.l.l.s of textile fibers in row after row. Like a graveyard for soldiers, he thought morbidly as he moved about, feeling compressed by the smallness of the room.
On a wicker table a copy of Proust's _Remembrance of Things Past_.
”How far'd you get into it?” he asked her.
”To _Within a Budding Grove_.” Kathy double-locked the door after them and set into operation some kind of electronic gadget; he did not recognize it.
”That's not very far,” Jason said.
Taking off her plastic coat, Kathy asked, ”How far did you get into it?” She hung her coat in a tiny closet, taking his, too.
”I never read it,” Jason said. ”But on my program we did a dramatic rendering of a scene . . . I don't know which. We got a lot of good mail about it, but we never tried it again. Those out things, you have to be careful and not dole out too much. If you do it kills it dead for everybody, all networks, for the rest of the year.” He prowled, crampedly, about the room, examining a book here, a ca.s.sette tape, a micromag. She even had a talking toy. Like a kid, he thought; she's not really an adult.
With curiosity, he turned on the talking toy.
”Hi!” it declared. ”I'm Cheerful Charley and I'm definitely tuned in on your wavelength.”
”n.o.body named Cheerful Charley is tuned in on my wavelength,” Jason said. He started to shut it off, but it protested. ”Sorry,” Jason told it, ”but I'm tuning you out, you creepy little b.u.g.g.e.r.”
”But I love you!” Cheerful Charley complained tinnily.
He paused, thumb on off b.u.t.ton. ”Prove it,” he said. On his show he had done commercials for junk like this. He hated it and them. Equally. ”Give me some money,” he told it.
”I know how you can get back your name, fame, and game,” Cheerful Charley informed him. ”Will that do for openers?”
”Sure,” he said.
Cheerful Charley bleated, ”Go look up your girl friend.”
”Who do you mean?” he said guardedly.
”Heather Hart,” Cheerful Charley bleeped.
”Hard by,” Jason said, pressing his tongue against his upper incisors. He nodded. ”Any more advice?”
”I've heard of Heather Hart,” Kathy said as she brought a bottle of orange juice out of the cold-cupboard of the room's wall. The bottle had already become three-fourths empty; she shook it up, poured foamy instant ersatz orange juice into two jelly gla.s.ses. ”She's beautiful. She has all that long red hair. Is she really your girl friend? Is Charley right?”
”Everybody knows,” he said, ”that Cheerful Charley is always right.”
”Yes, I guess that's true.” Kathy poured bad gin (Mountbatten's Privy Seal Finest) into the orange juice. ”Screwdrivers,” she said, proudly.
”No, thanks,” he said. ”Not at this hour of the day.” Not even B L scotch bottled in Scotland, he thought. This d.a.m.n little room . . . isn't she making anything out of pol finking and card-forging, whichever it is she does? Is she really a police informer, as she says? he wondered. Strange. Maybe she's both. Maybe neither.
”Ask me!” Cheerful Charley piped. ”I can see you have something on your mind, mister. You good-looking b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you.”
He let that pa.s.s. ”This girl,” he began, but instantly Kathy grabbed Cheerful Charley away from him, stood holding it, her nostrils flaring, her eyes filled with indignation.
”The h.e.l.l you're going to ask my Cheerful Charley about me,” she said, one eyebrow raised. Like a wild bird, he thought, going through elaborate motions to protect her nest. He laughed. ”What's funny?” Kathy demanded.
”These talking toys,” he said, ”are more nuisance than utilitarian. They ought to be abolished.” He walked away from her, then to a clutter of mail on a TV-stand table. Aimlessly, he sorted among the envelopes, noticing vaguely that none of the bills had been opened.
”Those are mine,” Kathy said defensively, watching him.
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