Capitol

LIFELOOP

Jellicle Cats are black and white, Jellicle Cats are rather small; Jellicle Cats are merry and bright, And pleasant to hear when they caterwaul.

-- T. S. Eliot, The Song of the Jellicles

Arran lay on her bed, weeping. The sound of the door slamming still rang through her flat. Finally she rolled over, looked at the ceiling, wiped tears away delicately with her fingers, and then said, "What the hell."

Dramatic pause. And then, at last (at long last) a loud buzzer sounded. "All clear, Arran," said the voice from the concealed speaker, and Arran groaned, swung around to sit on the bed, unstrapped the loop recorder from her naked leg, and threw it tiredly against the wall. It smashed.

"Do you have any idea how much that equipment costs?" Triuff asked, reproachfully.

"I pay you to know," Arran said, putting on a robe. Triuff found the tie and handed it to her. As Arran threaded it through the loops, Triuff exulted. "The best ever. A hundred billion Arran Handully fans are aching to pay their seven chops to get in to watch. And you gave it to them."

"Seventeen days," Arran said, glaring at the other woman. "Seventeen stinking days. And three of them with that bastard Courtney."

"He's paid to be a bastard. It's his persona."

"He's pretty damned convincing. If you get me even three minutes with him next time, I'll sack you."

Arran strode out of her flat, barefoot and clad only in the robe. Triuff followed, her high-heeled shoes making a clicking rhythm that, to Arran anyway, always seemed to be saying, "Money, money, money." Except when it was saying, "Screw your mother, screw your mother." Good manager. Billions in the bank.

"Arran," Triuff said. "I know you're very tired."

"Ha," Arran said.

"But while you were recording I had time to do a little business--"

"While I was recording you had time to manufacture a planet!" Arran snarled. "Seventeen days! I'm an actress, I'm not going for the guiness. I'm the highest paid actress in history, I think you said in your latest press releases. So why do I work my tail off for seventeen days when I'm only awake for twenty-one? Four lousy days of peace, and then the marathon."

"A little business," Triuff went on, unperturbed. "A little business that will let you retire."

"Retire?" And without thinking, Arran slowed down her pace.

"Retire. Imagine-- awake for three weeks, and only guest appearances in other poor slobs' loops. Getting paid for having fun."

"Nights to myself?"

"We'll turn off the recorder."

Arran scowled. Triuff amended: "You can even take the thing off!"

"And what do I have to do to earn so much? Have an affair with a gorilla?"

"It's been done," Triuff said, "and it's beneath you. No, this time we give them total reality. Total!"

"What do we give them now? Sure, you want me crap in a glass toilet!"

"I've made arrangements," Triuff said, "to have a loop recorder in the Sleeproom."

Arran Handully gasped and stared at her manager. "In the Sleeproom! Is nothing sacred!" And then Arran laughed. "You must have spent a fortune! An absolute fortune!"

"Actually, only one bribe was necessary."

"Who'd you bribe, Mother?"

"Very close. Better, in fact, since Mother hasn't got the power to pick her nose without the consent of the Cabinet. It's Farl Baak."

"Baak! And here I thought he was a decent man."

"It wasn't a bribe. At least, not for money."

Arran squinted at Triuff. "Triuff," she said, "I told you that I was willing to act out twenty-four-hour-a-day love affairs. But I choose my own lovers off-camera."

"You'll be able to retire."

"I'm not a whore!"

"And he said he wouldn't even sleep with you, if you didn't want. He just asked for twenty-four hours with you two wakings from now. To talk. To become friends."

Arran leaned against the wall of the corridor. "It'll really make that much money?"

"You forget, Arran. All your fans are in love with you. But no one has ever done what you're going to do. From a half-hour before waking to a half-hour after you've been put to sleep."

"Before waking and after the somec." Arran smiled. "There's nobody in the Empire who's seen that, except the Sleeproom attendants."

"And we can advertise utter reality. No illusion: you'll see everything that happens to Arran Hanto daily for three weeks of waking!"

Arran thoughtfully considered for a moment.

"It'll be hell," she said.

"You can retire afterward," Triuff reminded her.

"All right," Arran agreed. "I'll do it. But I warn you. No Courtneys. No bores. And no little boys!"

Triuff looked hurt. "Arran-- the little boy was five loops ago!"

"I remember every moment of it," Arran said. "He came without an instruction booklet. What the hell do I do with a seven-year-old boy?"

"And it was your best acting up to then. Arran, I can't help it-- I have to spring surprises on you. That's when you're at your best-- dealing with difficulty. That's why you're an artist. That's why you're a legend."

"That's why you're rich," Arran pointed out, and then she walked quickly away, heading for the Sleeproom. Her eligibility began in a half-hour, and every waking moment beyond that was a moment less of life.

Triuff followed her as far as she could, giving last-minute instructions on what to do when she woke, what to expect in the Sleeproom, how the instructions would be given to her in a way that she couldn't miss, but that the audience watching the holos wouldn't notice, and finally Arran made it through the door into the tape and tap, and Triuff had to stay behind.

Gentle and deferent attendants led her to the plush chair where the sleep helmet waited. Arran sighed and sat down, let the helmet slip onto her head, and tried to think happy thoughts as the tapes took her brain pattern-- all her memories, all her personality-- and recorded it to restore her at waking. When it was done, she got up and lazily walked to the table, shedding her robe on the way. She lay down with a groan of relief, and leaned her head back, surprised that the table, which looked so hard, could be soft.

It occurred to her (it always had before, too, but she didn't know it) that she must have done this same thing twenty-two times before, because she had used somec that many times. But since the somec wiped clean all the brain activities during the sleep, including memory, she could never remember anything that happened to her after the taping. Funny. They could have her make love to all the attendants in the Sleeproom, and she'd never know it.

But no, she realized as the sweet and deferent men and women soothingly wheeled the table to a place where monitoring instruments waited for her, no, that could never happen. The Sleeproom is the one place where no jokes are played, where nothing surprising or outrageous is ever done. Something in the world must be secure.

Then she giggled. Until my next waking, that is. And then the Sleeproom will be open to all the billions of poor suckers in the Empire who never get a chance at the somec, who have to live out their measly hundred years all in a row, while sleepers skip through the centuries like stones on a lake, touching down only every few years.

And then the sweet young man with the darling cleft chin (pretty enough to be an actor, Arran noticed) pushed a needle gently into her arm, apologizing softly for the pain.

"That's all right," Arran started to say, but thin she felt a sharp pain in her arm, that spread quick as a fire to every part of her body; a terrible agony of heat the made her sweat leap from her pores. She cried out in pain and surprise-- what was happening? Were they killing her? Who could want her to die?

And then the somec penetrated to her brain and ended all consciousness and all memory. Including the memory of the pain that she had just felt. And when she woke again she would remember nothing of the agony of the somec. It would always and forever be a surprise.

Triuff got the seven thousand eight hundred copies of the latest loop finished-- most of them edited versions that cut out all sleeping hours and bodily functions other than eating and sex, the small minority full loops that truly dedicated (and rich) Arran Handully fans could view in small, private, seventeen-day-long showings. There were fans (crazy people, Triuff had long since decided, but thank Mother for them) who actually leased private copies of the unedited loops and watched them twice through on a single waking. That was one hell of a dedicated fan.

Once the loops were turned over to the distributors (and the advance money was paid into the Arran Handully Corporation credit accounts) Triuff went to the Sleeproom herself. It was the price of being a manager-- up weeks before the star, back under somec weeks after. Triuff would die centuries before Arran. But Triuff was very philosophical about it. After all, she kept reminding herself, she might have been a schoolteacher and never had somec at all.

Arran woke sweating. Like every other sleeper, she believed that the perspiration was caused by the wake-up drugs, never suspecting that she was in that discomfort for the five years of sleep that had just passed. Her memories were intact, having been played back into her head, only a few moments before. And she immediately realized that something was fastened to her right thigh-- the loop recorder. She was already being taped, along with the room around her. For a brief moment she rebelled, regretting her decision to go along with the scheme. How could she bear to stay in character for the whole three weeks?

But the one unbreakable rule among lifeloop actors was "The loop never stops." No matter what you do, it's being looped, and there was no way to edit a loop. If there was one thing-- one tiny thing-- that had to be edited out in mid-action, the loop could simply be thrown away. The dedicated fans wouldn't stand for a loop that jumped from one scene to another-- they were always sure that something juicy was being left out.

And so, almost by reflex, she composed herself into the tragically beautiful, sweet-souled yet bitter-tongued Arran Handully thit all the fans knew and loved and paid money to watch. She sighed, and the sigh was seductive. She shuddered from the cold air passing across her sweating body, and turned the shiver into an excuse to open her eyes, blinking them delicately (seductively) against the dazzling lights.

And then she got up slowly, looked around. One of the ubiquitous attendants was standing nearby with a robe; Arran let him help her put it on, moving her shoulder just so in a way that made her breast rise just that much (never let it jiggle, nothing uglier than jiggling flesh, she reminded herself); and then she stepped to the newsboards. A quick flash through interplanetary news, and then a close study of Capitol events for the last five years, updating herself on who had done what to whom. And then she glanced at the game reports. Usually she only flipped a few pages and read virtually nothing-- the games bored her-- but this time she looked at it carefully for several minutes, pursuing her lips and making a point of seeming to be dismayed or excited about individual game outcomes.

Actually, of course, she was reading the schedule for the next twenty-one days. Some of the names were new to her, of course-- actors and actresses who were just reaching a level where they could afford to pay to be in an Arran Handully loop. And there were other names that she was quite familiar with, characters her fans would be expecting: Doret, her close friend and roommate seven loops ago, who still came back now and then to catch up on the news; Twern, that seven-year-old boy, now nearly fifteen, one of the youngest people ever to go on somec; old lovers and old friends, and a few leftovers from feuds on ancient loops. Which ones would be catty, and which ones would want to make up? Ah, well, she told herself. Plenty of chances to find that out.

A name far down the list leaped out at her. Hamilton Ferlock! Involuntarily she smiled-- caught herself in the sincere reaction and then decided that it would do no harm-- the Arran Hndully character might smile in just that way over a particular victory in a game. Hamilton Ferlock. Probably the only male actor on Capitol who could be considered to be in her class. They had started out at the same time, too, and he had been her lover in her first five loops, back when she only had a few months on somec between wakings. And now he was going to be in this loop!

She thought a silent blessing for her manager. Triuff had actually done something thoughtful.

And then it was time to dress and leave the Sleeproom and walk the long corridors to her flat.

She noticed as she walked along that the corridor had been redecorated, to give the illusion that somehow even the halls she walked along had class. She touched one of the new panels. Plastic.

She refrained from grimacing. Oh well, the audience will never know it isn't really wood, and it keeps the overhead down. She opened the door of her flat, and Doret screamed in delight and ran to embrace her. Arran decided that this time she should act a little put out at Doret for some imagined slight. Doret looked a little surprised, backed away, and then, like the consummate actress that she was (Arran didn't mind admitting the talents of her co-workers), she took Arran's quite subtle cue and turned it into a beautiful scene, Doret weeping out a confession that she had stolen a lover away from Arran several wakings ago, and Arran at first seeming to punish her, then forgiving. They ended the scene tearfully in each other's arms, and then paused a moment. Dammit, Arran thought, Triuff is at it again. Nobody entered to break the scene. They had to go on after the climax, which meant building it to an even bigger climax within the next three hours Arran was exhausted when Doret finally left. They had had a wrestling match, in which they had ripped each other's clothes to shreds, and finally Doret had pulled a knife on Arran. It was not until Arran managed to get the weapon away from her that Doret finally left, and Arran had a chance to relax for a moment.

Twenty-one days without a break, Arran reminded herself. And Triuff forcing me into exhaustion the first day. I'll fire the bitch, she vowed.

It was the twentieth day, and Arran was sick of the whole thing. Five parties, and a couple of orgies, and sleeping with someone new every night can pall rather quickly, and she had run the gamut of emotion several times. Each time she wept, she tried to put a different edge on it-- tried to improvise new things to say to lovers, to shout in an argument, to use to insult a condescending visitor.

Most of her guests this time had been talented, and Arran certainly hadn't had to pull the full weight all by herself. But it was grueling, all the same.

And the buzzer sounded, and Arran had to get up to answer the door.

Hamilton Ferlock stood there, looking a little unsure of himself. Five centuries of acting, Arran thought to herself, and he still hasn't lost that ingenuous, boyish manner. She cried out his name (seductively, in character) and threw her arms around him.

"Ham," she said, "oh, Ham, you wouldn't believe this waking! I'm so tired."

"Arran," he said softly, and Arran noticed with surprise that he was starting out sounding as if he loved her. Oh no, she thought. Didn't we part with a quarrel the last time? No, no, that was Ryden. Ham left because, because-- oh, yes. Because he was feeling unfulfilled.

"Well, did you find what you were looking for?"

Ham raised an eyebrow. "Looking for?"

"You said you had to do something important with your life. That living with me was turning you into a lovesick shadow." Good phrase, Arran congratulated herself.

"Lovesick shadow. Well, you see, that was true enough," Ham answered. "But I've discovered that shadows only exist where there is light. You're my light, Arran, and only when I'm near you do I really exist."

No wonder he's so highly paid, Arran thought. The line was a bit gooey, but it's men like him who keep the women watching.

"Am I a light?" Arran said. "To think you've come back to me after so long."

"Like a moth to a flame."

And then, as was obligatory in all happy reunion scenes (have I already done a happy reunion in this waking? No) they slowly undressed each other and made love slowly, the kind of copulation that was not so much arousing as emotional, the kind that made both men and women cry and hold each other's hands in the theatre. He was so gentle this time, and the lovemaking was so right, that Arran felt hard-pressed to stay in character. I'm tired, she told herself. How can he carry it off so perfectly? He's a better actor than I remembered.

Afterward, he held her in his arms as they talked softly-- he was always willing to talk afterward, unlike most actors, who thought they had to become surly after sex in order to maintain their macho image with the fans.

"That was beautiful," Arran said, and she noticed with alarm that she wasn't acting. Watch yourself, woman. Don't screw up the loop after you've already invested twenty damned days.

"Was it?" Ham asked.

"Didn't you notice?"

He smiled. "After all these years, Arran, and I was right. There's no woman in the world worth loving with you around."

She giggled softly and ducked her head away from him in embarrassment. It was in character, and therefore seductive.

"Then why haven't you come back before?" Arran asked.

And Hamilton rolled over and lay on his back. Because he was silent for a few moments, she rubbed her ringers up and down his stomach. He smiled. "I stayed away, Arran, because I loved you too much."

"Love is never a reason to stay away," she said. Ha. Let the fans quote that piece of crap for a couple of years.

"It is," Ham said, "when it's real."

"Even more reason to stay with me!" Arran put on a pout. "You left me, and now you pretend you loved me."

And suddenly Hamilton swung over and sat on the edge of the bed.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Damn!" he said. "Forget the stupid act, will you?"

"Act?" she asked.

"The damn Arran Handully character you're wearing for fun and profit! I know you, Arran, and I'm telling you-- I'm telling you, not some actor, me-- I'm telling you that I love you! Not for the audiences! Not for the loop! For you-- I love you!"

And with a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach Arran realized that, somehow, that stinking Triuff had gotten Ham to be a dirty trick after all. It was the one unspoken rule in the business-- you never, never, never mention the fact that you're acting. For any reason. And now, the ultimate challenge-- admitting to the audience that you're an actress and making them still believe you.

"Not for the loop!" she echoed back, struggling to think of some kind of answer.

"I said not for the loop!" He stood up and walked away from her, then turned back, pointed at her. "All these stupid affairs, all the phony relationships. Haven't you had enough?"

"Enough? This is life, and I'll never have enough of life."

But Ham was determined not to play fair.

"If this is life, Capitol's an asteroid." A clumsy line, not like him. "Do you know what life is, Arran? Life is centuries of playing loop after loop, as I've done, screwing every actress who can raise a fee, all so I can make enough money to buy somec and the luxuries of life. And all of a sudden a few years ago, I realized that the luxuries didn't mean a damn thing, and what did I care if I lived forever? Life was so utterly meaningless, just a succession of high-paid tarts!"

Arran managed to squeeze out some tears of rag, The loop never stops. "Are you calling me a tart?"

"You?" Ham looked absolutely stricken. The man can act, Arran reminded herself, even as she cursed him for throwing her such a rotten curve. "Not you, Arran, don't even think it!"

"What can I think, with you coming here and accusing me of being a phony!"

"No," he said, sitting beside her on the bed again, putting his arm around her bare shoulders. She nestled to him again, as she had a dozen times before, years ago. She looked up at his face, and saw that his eyes were filled with tears.

"Why are you-- why are you crying?" she asked, hesitantly.

"I'm crying for us," he said.

"Why?" she asked. "What do we have to cry over?"

"All the years we've lost."

"I don't know about you, but my years have been pretty full," she said, laughing, hoping he would laugh, too.

He didn't. "We were right for each other. Not just as a team of actors, Arran, but as people. You weren't very good back then at the beginning-- neither was I. I've looked at the loops. When we were with other people, we were as phony as two-bit beginners. But those loops still sold, made us rich, gave us a chance to learn the trade. Do you know why?"

"I don't agree with your assessment of the past," Arran said coldly, wondering what the hell he was trying to accomplish by continuing to refer to the loops instead of staying in character properly.

"We sold those tapes because of each other. Because we actually looked real when we told each other we loved, when we chattered for hours about nothing. We really enjoyed each other's company."

"I wish I were enjoying your company now. Telling me I'm a phony and then saying I have no talent."

"Talent! What a joke," Ham said. He touched her cheek, gently, turning her face so she would look at him. "Of course you have talent, and so have I. We have money, too, and fame, and everything money can buy. Even friends. But tell me, Arran, how long has it been since you really loved anybody?"

Arran thought back through her most recent lovers. Any she wanted to make Ham's character jealous over? No... "I don't think I've ever really loved anybody."

"That's not true," Ham said. "It's not true, you loved me. Centuries ago, Arran, you truly loved me."

"Perhaps," she said. "But what does it have to do with now?"

"Don't you love me now?" Ham asked, and he looked so sincerely concerned that Arran was tempted to break character and laugh with delight, applaud his excellent performance. But the bastard vas still making it hard for her, and so she decided to make it hard for him.

"Love you now?" she asked. "You're just another pair of eager gonads, my friend." That'd shock the fans. And, she hoped, completely mess up Ham's nasty little joke.

But Ham stayed right in character. He looked hurt, pulled away from her. "I'm sorry," he said. "I guess I was wrong." And to Arran's shock he began to dress.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Leaving," he said.

Leaving, Arran thought with panic. Leaving now? Without letting the scene have a climax? All this buildup, all the shattered traditions, and then leaving without a climax? The man was a monster!

"You can't go!"

"I was wrong. I'm sorry. I've embarrassed myself," he said.

"No, no, Ham, don't leave. I haven't seen you in so long!"

"You've never seen me," he answered. "Or you wouldn't have been capable of saying what you just did."

Making me pay for throwing a curve back at him, Arran thought. I'd like to kill him. What a fantastic actor, though. "I'm sorry I said it," Arran said, wearing contrition as if she had been dipped in it. "Forgive me. I didn't mean it."

"You just want me to stay so I won't ruin your damn scene."

Arran gave up in despair. Why am I doing this, anyway? But the realization that breaking character now would wreck the whole loop kept, her going. She went and threw herself on the bed. "That's right!" she said, weeping. "Leave me now, when I want you so much."

Silence. She just lay there. Let him react.

But he said nothing. Just let the pause hang. She couldn't even hear him move.

Finally he spoke. "Do you mean it?"

"Mmm-hmm," she said, managing to hiccough through her tears. A cliche, but it got 'em every time.

"Not as an actress, Arran, please. As yourself. Do you love me? Do you want me?"

She rolled partway onto her side, lifted herself on one elbow, and said, the tears forcing a little catch in her voice, "I need you like I need somec, Ham. Why have you stayed away so long?"

He looked relieved. He walked slowly back to her. And everything was peaceful again. They made love four more times, between each of the courses of dinner, and for variety they let the servants watch. I've done it once before, Arran remembered, but it was five loops ago, about, and these are different servants anyway. Of course the servants, underpaid beginning actors all, used it as an excuse to get some interesting onstage time, and turned it into an orgy among themselves, managing every conceivable sexual act in only an hour and a half. Arran barely noticed them, though. They were the kind of fool who thought the audience wanted quantity. If some sex is good, a lot is better, they think. Arran knew better. Tease them. Let them beg. Let them find beauty in it, too, not just titillation, not just lust. That's why she was a star, and they were playing servants in somebody else's loop.

That night Ham and Arran slept in each other's arms.

And in the morning, Arran woke to find Ham staring at her, his face an odd mixture of love and pain. "Ham," she said softly, stroking his cheek. "What do you want?"

The longing in his face only increased. "Marry me," he said softly.

"Do you really mean it?" she asked, in her little-girl voice.

"I mean it. Time our wakings together, always."

"Always is a long time," she said. It was a good all-purpose line.

"And I mean it," he said. "Marry me. Mother knows we've made enough money over the years. We don't ever have to let these other bastards into our lives again. We don't ever have to wear these damned loop recorders again." And as he said that, he patted the recorder strapped to her thigh.

Arran inwardly groaned. He wasn't through with the games yet. Of course the audience wouldn't know what he meant-- the computer that created the loop from the loop recorder was programmed to delete the recorder itself from the holo. The audience never saw it. And now Ham was referring to it. What was he trying to do, give her a nervous breakdown? Some friend.

Well, I can play his game. "I won't marry you," she said.

"Please," he said. "Don't you see how I love you? Do you think any of these phonies who pay to make love to you will ever feel one shred of real emotion toward you? To them you're a chance to make money, to make a name for themselves, to strike it rich. But I don't need money. I have a name. All I want is you. And all I can give you is me."

"Sweet," she said, coldly, and got up and went to the kitchen. The clock said eleven thirty. They had slept late. She was relieved. At noon she had to leave to get to the Sleeproom. In a half hour this farce would be over. Now to build it to a climax.

"Arran," Ham said, following her. "Arran, I'm serious. I'm not in character!"

That much is obvious, Arran thought but did not say.

"You're a liar," she said, rudely.

He looked puzzled. "Why should I lie? Haven't I made it plain to you that I'm telling the truth? That I'm not acting?"

"Not acting," she said, sneering (but seductively, seductively. Never out of character, she remindead herself), and she turned her back on him. "Not acting. Well, as long as we're being honest about things, and throwing away both pretense and art, I'll play it your way, too. Do you know what I think of you?"

"What?" he asked.

"I think this is the cheapest, dirtiest trick I've ever seen. Coming here like this, doing everything you could to lead me into thinking you loved me, when all the times you were just exploiting me. Worse than all the others! You're the worst!"

He looked stricken. "I'd never exploit you!" he said.

"Marry me!" Arran laughed, mocking him. "Marry me, says you, and then what? What if this poor little girl actually did marry you? What would you do? Force me to stay in the flat forever? Keep away all my other friends, all my other-- yes, even my lovers, you'd make me give them all up! Hundreds of men love me, but you, Hamilton, you want to own me forever, exclusively! What a coup that would be, wouldn't it? No one would ever get to look at my body again," she said, moving her body in such a way that no one in the world could possibly want to look anywhere else, "except you. And you say you don't want to exploit me."

Hamilton came closer to her, tried to touch her, tried to plead with her, but sheonly grew angry, cursed him. "Stay away from me!" she screamed.

"Arran, you can't mean it," Ham said, softly.

"I have never meant anything more thoroughly in my life," she said.

He lookod in her eyes, looked deep. And finally he spoke again. "Either you're so much an actress that the real Arran Handully is lost, or you really do mean that. And either way, there's nothing for me to stay here for." And Arran watched admiringly as Hamilton gathered up his clothing, and, not even bothering to dress, he left, closing the door quietly behind him. A beautiful exit, Arran thought. A lesser actor couldn't have resisted the temptation to say one last line. But not Ham-- and now, if Arran played it right, this grotesque scene could be, after all, a genuine climax to the loop.

And so she played the scene, at first muttering about what a terrible man Ham was, and then progressing quickly to wondering whether he'd ever come back. "I hope he does," she said, and soon was weeping, crying out that she couldn't live without him. "Please come back, Ham!" she said pitifully. "I'm sorry I refused you! I want to marry you."

But then she looked at the clock. Nearly noon. Thank Mother. "But it's time," she said. "Time to go to the Sleeproom. The Sleeproom!" New hope came into her voice. "That's it! I'll go to the Sleeproom! I'll let the years pass by, and when I wake, there he'll be, waiting for me!" She rhapsodized for a few more minutes, then threw a robe around herself and ran lightly, eagerly down the corridors to the Sleeproom.

In the tape-and-tap she chattered gaily to the attendant. "He'll be there waiting for me," she said, smiling. "Everything will be all right." The sleep helmet went on, and Arran kept talking. "You do think there's hope for me, don't you?" she asked, and the woman whose soft hands were now removing the helmet answered, "There's always hope, ma'am. Everybody has hope."

Arran smiled, then got up and walked briskly to the sleep table. She didn't remember ever doing this before, though she knew she must have-- and then it occurred to her that this time she could watch the actual loop, see what really happened to her when the somec entered her veins.

But because she didn't remember any other administration of somec, she didn't realize the difference when the allendant gently put a needle only a millimeter under the surface of the palm of her hand. "It's so sharp," Arran said, "but I'm glad it doesn't hurt." And instead of the hot pain of somec, a gentle drowsiness filled her, and she was whispering Ham's name as she drifted off to sleep. Whispering his name, but silently cursing him under her breath. He may be a great actor, she told herself, but I ought to kick his head through a garbage chute for giving me a rotten time like that. Oh well. It'll sell seats in the theatres. Yawn. And then she slept.

The loop continued for a few more minutes, as the attendants went through a mumbo-jumbo of nonsensical, meaningless activities. And finally they stepped back as if they were through, Arran's nude body lying on the table. Pause for the loop recorder to take the ending, and then:

A buzzer, and the door opened and Triuff came in, laughing in glee. "What a loop," she said, as she unstrapped the recorder from Arran's leg.

When Triuff had gone, the attendants put the real needle in Arran's arm, and the heat poured through her veins. Asleep though she had already been, Arran cried out in agony, and the sweat drenched the table in only a few minutes. It was ugly, painful, frightening. It just wouldn't do to have the masses see what somec was really like. Let them think the sleep is gentle; let them think the dreams are sweet.

When Arran woke, her first thought was to find out if the loop had worked. She had certainly gone through enough effort-- now to see if Triuff's predictions of retirement had been fulfilled.

They had been.

Triuff was waiting right outside the Sleeproom, and hugged Arran tightly. "Arran, you wouldn't believe it!". she said, laughing uproariously. "Your last three loops had already set records-- the highest-grossing loops of all time. But this one! This one!"

"Well?" Arran demanded.

"More than three times the total of those three loops put together!"

Arran smiled. "Then I can retire?"

"Only if you want to," Triuff said. "I have several pretty good deals worked out--"

"Forget it," Arran said.

"They wouldn't take much work, only a few days each--"

"I said forget it. From now on I never strap another recorder to my leg again. I'll guest. But I won't record."

"Fine, fine," Triuff said. "I told them, but they made me promise to ask you anyway."

"And probably paid you a pretty penny, too," Arran answered. Triuff shrugged and smiled.

"You're the greatest ever," Triuff said. "No one has ever done so well as you."

Arran shook her head. "Might be true," she said, "but I was really sweating it. That was a rotten trick you pulled on me, having Ham break character like that."

Triuff shook her head. "No, no, not at all, Arran. That must have been his idea. I told him to threaten to kill you-- a real climax, you know. And then he went in and did what he did. Well, no harm done. It's an exquisite scene, and because he broke character-- and you, too, there at the end-- the audience believed that it was real. Beautiful. Of course, everybody and his duck is breaking choracter now, but it doesn't work anymore. Everyone knows it's just another device. But the first time, with you and Ham--" and Triuff made an expansive gesture "--it was magnificent."

Arran led the way down the corridor. "Well, I'm glad it worked. But I'm still looking forward to a chance to rake Ham over the coals for it."

"Oh, Arran, I'm sorry," Triuff said.

Arran stopped and faced her manager. "For what?"

Triuff actually looked sad. "Arran, it's Hamilton. Not even a week after you went under-- it was the saddest thing. Everybody talked about it for days."

"What? Did something happen to him?"

"He hung himself. Turned off the lights in his flat so none of the watchers could see him, and hung himself from a light fixture with a bathrobe tie. He died right away, no chance to revive him. It was terrible."

Arran was surprised to find a lump in her throat. A real one. "Ham's dead," she said softly. She remembered all the scenes they had played together, and a real fondness for him came over her. I'm not even acting, she realized. I truly cared for the man. Sweet, wonderful Ham.

"Does anyone know why he did it?" Arran asked.

Triuff shook her head. "No one has the slightest idea. And the thing I just can't believe-- there it was, a scene they've never had before in a loop, a real suicide. And he didn't even record it!"