The Feelies

RALPH HAD DECIDED NOT TO GO HOME.

It had been a tense, unhappy day at the vault.

There were rumors all over the building, rumors that had even penetrated as deep as the underground dreamworld over which he and Sam presided. There were changes coming. That seemed to be the only point of agreement in the numerous conflicting stories. There was some major reorganization being planned. What exactly that meant was far from clear. Everyone claimed to know the inside scoop. Everyone had the details, but when taken as a whole, all the gossip really added up to was a mass of contradiction and confusion. Some said that there was going to be massive cutbacks and thousands would be thrown out of work. Others whispered that there was going to be equally massive expansion, and that with thousands of new jobs and increased bonuses, happy days were really here. Many responded to that with mutterings of "Don't hold your breath." The worst doomsayers claimed that there was something radically wrong with the entire system, and that the government was going to close down the whole IE operation. Those last claims, however, were made very quietly. To talk about anything like that within the walls of CM and in the places that CM employees gathered was viewed as a clear case of sedition, and although it wasn't actual grounds for dismissal, grounds could be easily found. Needless to say, Ralph feared for his job. Although he cursed it, Ralph's job was everything to him. It was all that stood between him and being absolutely lost in the twilight as just another wino. Sam probably feared, too, but on this particular day, he appeared too doped up even to approach his anxieties.

Ralph had actually started out going for the RT in the usual way, driven by the force of habit. He made it as far as Reagan Plaza when something inside him revolted. He couldn't face the ride; he couldn't face sitting on the slowly emptying train, watching the doors, waiting for some mob of sociopath weirdies to come storming aboard and make him a victim. Without really thinking about it, he stood up as the monorail pulled into Reagan and left the train along with the late shoppers and the executives on their way to the heliport and their comfortable apartments in the security towers that surrounded the plaza. As he came out of the station and walked through the lavish Reagan atrium, he had no real idea where he intended to go, but that soon fell into place. Beyond the Reagan development there was a small enclave of traditional streets with shops and old-style Irish bars. They were not unlike the streets he had known when he was a boy, streets that were reasonably well policed and safe to stroll down without having an obvious reason for being there.

The first bar he came to was an executive hangout, recognizable by its polished brass and hanging plants. He gave the place, ironically called Ralph's, the go by and continued to walk. The next bar he came to, the Saddle Horn, was too dark and gay and noisy for his taste, filled with too many cruising figures briefly illuminated by spinning lasers. He kept on going, enjoying the chance to walk aimlessly, in no hurry to get anywhere. It was another two blocks before he saw what he wanted. The green neon shamrock and the red and white Himmler beer sign glowed like the lights of home in the gathering dusk.

The place was called the Pride of Erin, and the inside was quite as welcoming as the exterior. It was filled with the comfortable smell of beer and cigarette smoke. When one lived out in the twilight sprawl, it became all too easy to forget what comfort really meant. Sure there were bars along Lincoln Avenue, and they also smelled of beer and cigarettes, but out there, one could never quite get away from the tension, the automatic glance up when a stranger walked in, the ostentation of the antitheft devices on the cash register, and the nagging fear that at any given moment one of the other customers might explode. There was too much poverty out around the bars on Lincoln Avenue. There were always the broken fittings in the bathrooms, and the Christmas decorations that no one had bothered to take down in five or six years. In the Pride of Erin, there were bowls of pretzels on the bar, and the bartender actually smiled at Ralph when he walked in and sat down on a stool.

The bartender was a young kid with slicked-back hair and a tan. "So how's it going?"

Ralph eased the cramps in his shoulders. "Well, I got to tell you, it's been a bitch of a day, but I'm hoping that it'll get better."

The bartender nodded sympathetically. "Maybe a drink would help?"

Ralph grinned. "I didn't come in here for a prayer meeting."

"What'll it be?"

Ralph didn't hesitate. "Scotch and a beer back."

"You want the Jap or the real stuff?"

Ralph had intended to go with Japanese, but then he changed his mind. "Give me the real stuff. Dewars if you've got it."

"We don't have no beer on tap."

"Never mind, nothing's perfect. Give me a bottle of Himmler Light."

The bartender placed Ralph's drinks in front of him and then pointed to the CM logo on the front of his overalls. "You work for them?"

Ralph nodded. "Sure do."

"You must be doing okay then?"

Ralph grimaced. "Tell me about it."

The bartender seemed genuinely interested. "You work on the feelies?"

Ralph sighed. "It ain't as glamorous as you might think. It's really only a job."

The bartender smiled knowingly. "Yeah, I bet."

Ralph warmed slightly, basking in the third-hand celebrityhood. "Well, you know, every job does have its moments."

The bartender tapped the side of his nose. "You ever meet Connie Starr?"

Ralph laughed. "Stood next to her in an elevator once, but most of the time they keep the stars away from the likes of me."

"So what do you do? Technician or something?"

"Right. I actually work in the client end of the operation, with what we call the stiffs."

"Stiffs?"

"The ones who've signed on for life. The rich folks who just lay there, dreaming they're James Bond or Genghis Khan for the rest of their days. Me and my partner take care of six hundred of them."

"That sounds like some job."

Ralph shook his head. "It's mainly automated. There isn't that much to do. Thank God for the union, that's what I say."

The bartender moved away to serve another customer but came back to Ralph when he was through. Like most people, he was fascinated by the idea of the feelies. "That's got to be the life, though. Spending all of your time living out a fantasy."

Ralph had a thought. Okay, so he wasn't going to blow the whistle on CM. Nobody said that he couldn't start a grassroots rumor. "To tell the truth, we've been having a bit of trouble lately with the longtimers."

The bartender immediately looked interested. "Trouble?"

Ralph looked around to see that no one else was listening, then leaned forward conspiratorially and lowered his voice. "They've been dying on us."

The bartender didn't seem to know if he believed Ralph or not. "Dying?"

"Just passing away."

"I never heard about that."

"Of course you didn't. It's a very closely guarded secret."

"Why are they dying?"

"Nobody knows. It might be a glitch in the equipment, although those Germans don't usually screw up, or it could be that, after a couple of years in a feelie, they just give up and die. It may be that human beings just ain't designed to live like a cactus."

The bartender was shaking his head. "That's pretty freaky. How many have died so far?"

"Not many yet, but I'm afraid it's only the start."

The bartender poured Ralph a shot on the house. "It's one time that I'm glad I'm poor."

Ralph drained the free drink. "Amen to that."

"What are they going to do about it? They can't just let people die."

"Can't they? So far, all they've been doing is keeping it quiet."

"That's terrible."

Ralph sipped his beer. "That's big corporations for you. They just don't give a damn."

"THERE HAVE BEEN, FOR WANT OF A better word, rumors."

Kingsley Deutsch stood at the end of the absurdly long conference table. His stance was dramatic, as was the pause that he left for his opening statement to sink in.

"In fact, the rumors that are circulating in this corporation have reached totally unacceptable levels, levels that can only indicate that morale is approaching a state of instability. Instability at any time is something, gentlemen, that we simply cannot afford. We cannot afford it at any time, but we particularly cannot afford it right now."

The special emergency meeting was being held in the penthouse boardroom, the highest pinnacle of power in Combined Media. The boardroom itself was designed to embody, reflect, and amplify that power. The vast panoramic window behind Deutsch looked out over an expanse of city that stretched out almost to the horizon. The sky was a deep blue with streaks of wispy, pale clouds, planes came and went, and the light of the towers and streets were just starting to come alive.

Outside, everything seemed so normal. In the boardroom, there was a feeling of isolation, almost a sense of impending doom. The pair of huge marble neo-Assyrian godheads that flanked the window and supported the vaulted cathedral ceiling glared angrily down from behind Deutsch at the men and women assembled there as though silently demanding explanations. Deutsch himself looked as though he was also about to demand explanations. Kingsley Deutsch wasn't a tall man, but he made up for what he lacked in stature by unrelenting energy. More than once he had been described in the media as Napoleonic. Like Bonaparte, his dress was deliberately understated. His black conservative suit may have been infinitely forgettable, even if it had cost more than three thousand dollars, but there was no forgetting his face. He was not a handsome man, but there were few faces outside of a handful of mass murderers and psychopaths that showed such will and determination. His chin jutted in permanent belligerence; his small blue eyes, beneath knitted, almost invisible brows, were penetrating to the point of being scary. The only touch of vanity was the way in which he compensated for his thinning gray hair with a deep, even tan that seemed to be the main reason behind weekends spent at his tax haven, a Haitian chateau just outside Port au Prince.

"I have called this special meeting because I have an announcement to make that I believe may be of historic proportions."

Kingsley Deutsch didn't mince words. He was a megalomaniac, certainly, but he was an absolutely successful megalomaniac, and if he said historic proportions, he meant historic proportions. Historic as in history, not historic as in a fifteen-second sound bite on the next day's news shows. The men and women who had been summoned to the penthouse stood transfixed, and the pause before he continued was a form of torture. The torture, however, wasn't about to stop.

"Before the announcement, though, I think we have to spend a little time taking stock of the situation that currently exists within this enterprise of ours. There is little point attempting to advance into history if we cannot summon even the confidence to face tomorrow. I said that this corporation was beset by rumor. Your comments please."

The frightening blue eyes scanned the assembled men and women. There were just ten of them, so small an assembly that they were dwarfed by the overwhelming conference table that was almost thirty feet of dark mahogany polished to the finish of glass. For ten people, however, they wielded a great deal of power. They were the ten department heads, the ten top people in the whole of Combined Media. Between then, they commanded almost, although not quite, as much power as Deutsch himself. And yet, they said nothing. The meeting itself already had them off balance. It had been the end of the working day when they had been summoned without warning to Deutsch's presence: "The penthouse. Immediately."

Deutsch looked around once more and half smiled. Behind him, hanging over the city, a skyboard advertising Pepsi Cola had lit up. He focused on Madison Renfield.

"What about you, Madison? You're our hero of the glib."

Renfield raised his hands in a somewhat helpless gesture. "There are always rumors, Kingsley. It'd be unhealthy for a corporation to be without rumors in this day and age. Let's face it, the ways of the modern corporation are a little Byzantine."

Deutsch raised his eyebrow. "Byzantine, Madison?"

Renfield had the expression of a man who had very little left to lose. "Byzantine, Kingsley."

Deutsch smiled. "So, Madison, do you see me as a Byzantine emperor?"

"I wouldn't volunteer the analogy."

Deutsch looked at the other nine. "Madison may, in fact, be right, but let us remember one thing. The Byzantine emperor could rule only according to the information that he received. He was frequently only as good as his intelligence, and that was only if his intelligence was untainted. One of Adolf Hitler's greatest problems was that he surrounded himself with individuals who told him only what he wanted to hear. That's not only bad intelligence but criminally unintelligent. I have, throughout my long career, taken great care to see that my own intelligence sources were as direct and pure as I could make them."

That, also, was no exaggeration. Deutsch was famous for his elaborate spy system, which seemed to extend to every level of the corporation despite all the efforts of the individual departments to suppress, filter, and regulate stories that went up to the penthouse.

"During the last few days, these sources have been telling me a great many things. So many things, in fact, that the sheer volume of information that I have been receiving recently would be enough on its own to cause me a measure of alarm. Let me enumerate some of the things I've been hearing."

The ten heads of department were no longer transfixed. They were now preparing to squirm in their leather chairs with the CM logo embossed in gold on the backs. No one could remember when Kingsley Deutsch had called a meeting that promised so much discomfort. It was quite usual for him to call individual department heads onto the carpet, but to summon them en masse for a dressing down was quite unprecedented.

"Now, where shall I start? Perhaps with the phenomenon of client death that, although substantively a closely guarded corporation secret, seems to have become widely talked about."

Gorges Gomez of Client Services and Renfield of PR exchanged worried glances. Deutsch caught the exchange.

"You have something to say? Something to add to the discussion?"

Gomez cleared his throat nervously. "There are a lot of rank and file workers who know about this. Many of them are employed only because of the concessions that were made to the union in the original charter. It is virtually impossible to silence so many people whose company loyalty may at best be tenuous."

Renfield jumped in. "I think the important thing is that we have been extremely successful at keeping even a hint of this from the media-"

Deutsch waved him to silence. "Just relax. This is not a court of inquiry. I am merely conducting an informal review of some of our current problems. All will become clear when, following this review, I make my promised announcement. All I want to do now is to bring some matters out into the open that have previously been the preserve of locked doors and whispered conversations, matters like, for instance, the reason that two of my most senior executives should meet in a public restaurant to discuss the reestablishment of death experience research."

Edouard Hayes went white. His face took on a strangled expression.

Deutsch looked directly at him. "You have something you want to add?"

"I… really must make it clear that Vallenti and I were only discussing the possibilities that some clandestine group might be attempting to start up such research again. After Jonas's research and the resulting prostitute murders when he went insane-"

Deutsch held up a hand. "How many times do I have to tell you that this is not an inquiry?"

He walked slowly down the length of the table. In the middistance, outside the panoramic window, the sky-board was flashing the current Pepsi slogan in red, white, and blue holotype.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it would appear that we are spending too much of our time reflecting on thoughts of death. The death of clients, the death experience, perhaps these are a cover for a deeper unease about the basic philosophy behind what we are doing. It's there in our own vernacular. We refer to our clients as 'stiffs,' to the standard IE unit as a 'coffin.' Could it be that we subconsciously feel that, in marketing a technological discorporate fantasy, we have become vendors of a form of death? That is a question that you may find answered sooner than you think. Before that happens, however, I cannot impress upon you more strongly that this is absolutely the wrong time for this question to be asked. An army that broods upon death through the eve of battle is not going to win any place in history. Unless they are defending the Alamo. Has Combined Media become the Alamo, gentlemen? If it has, I have to warn you. You may have to start thinking of me as your personal Santa Ana."

THE PRIDE OF ERIN WAS STARTING TO fill up, and Ralph's money was definitely dwindling. He had never been the kind who could nurse a single drink through half the evening. He drank up and ordered again. When he couldn't order any more it was time to get the hell out of wherever he was. Also, he was no longer feeling comfortable in the place. There were couples meeting up for dates, junior execs in sweatpants hot from the raquets court, and women who had been working late now, with their blouses unfastened a couple of notches, looking for fun. Ralph knew perfectly well that sitting in his overalls, three parts drunk, he had nothing that represented any approximation of their idea of fun. God, it had been so long since he had been with a woman. He really didn't need the reminder. He finished his drink, nodded to the barman, and headed for the door.

There was nothing left to do but return to the RT and make the ride out to Lincoln Avenue. He had been a damn fool to go looking for that bar. It was starting to get late, and even the monorail would be doubly dangerous.

As he walked through Reagan Plaza, he noticed that a fairly large crowd had gathered in front of the Sanyo-Hyatt. Using any excuse to put off boarding the train for as long as possible, he sauntered in the direction of the big modern hotel to investigate.

It wasn't the usual crowd that he would have expected to find in Reagan Plaza. They were mainly blue collar like himself, welfare cases, even, and a sprinkling of definite oddities. A lot of them carried cameras; he saw autograph books, and a bearded individual in a ragged suit of the executive style of five years earlier was holding up a placard that read YOU ARE DOOMED! There had to be some major celebrity staying inside. He ambled up to a woman in a blue coat who looked very unhappy to be way in the back of the crowd. Ralph smiled at her, doing his best to look every inch the amiable drunk.

"What's going on?"

"I'm not going to be able to see."

"What's there to see?"

The woman in the blue coat looked at him as though he were crazy. " 'Wildest Dreams.' "

"Huh?"

"The contestants are coming out, and I ain't going to see them."

"No shit."

"Would you help me get through?"

"Jesus, I don't know."

Ralph took a closer look at the crowd. They weren't in front of the main entrance to the hotel; police saw-horses and squads of uniformed officers held them back on the sidewalk at either side, so they wouldn't get in the way of the guests coming in and out. The cops controlling the crowd seemed to be treating the whole event as fairly routine, although Ralph did notice that there was a large, black, unmarked armored truck of the kind used by the CRAC squad parked across the street.

"The contestants for 'Wildest Dreams' stay here?"

"Don't you know nothing?"

Ralph blinked. "Apparently not."

"So will you help me through to the front?"

Ralph looked at the woman for the first time. She wasn't really bad-looking in a washed-out kind of way. She really could be quite attractive if one could get past the shabby nylon utility coat. He reminded himself that he was no raving prize. "Maybe we could ease ourselves a little closer. How soon do the contestants come out?"

"It's only the Dreamroad contestants. Bobby Priest himself is with them sometimes."

Ralph was a little bemused. There was a definite light of obsession in the woman's eyes. Even the obsessed could be grateful after the fact. "How soon do they come out?"

"Any minute."

Ralph put a protective arm around her and started easing them deeper into the crowd. The "Wildest Dreams" fans didn't part easily, and Ralph had to use some degree of applied pressure. He received a few threats and curses for his pains. All of the "Wildest Dreams" fans seemed to be equally desperate and equally obsessed. How could anyone get that way about a goddamned game show? There was a definite tension in the crowd, but there was also a lonely, unhappy feeling, as well. These people seemed to take little pleasure in what they were doing. Ralph knew drunks like that. He and the woman in the blue coat did make some progress, though, and came within four layers of the front before they were stopped by the pressure of bodies. He still had his arm around the woman's shoulders, and since she didn't ask him to take it away, he left it there.

There was shouting at the front rows. The woman in the blue coat stiffened.

"They're coming! They're coming!"

She started bouncing up and down, making small squeaking noises. Ralph realized that it was the same thing that contestants did when they won big on the greed shows like "Hundred Thousand Giveaway." And she wasn't the only one. The whole crowd was pushing and jumping. The situation suddenly felt very unstable, and Ralph realized that it was about the last place in the world that a drunk needed to be. He had to fight for his footing as the crowd surged sideways. He still had his arm around her and couldn't get it free. The whole mob was pressing forward as though some very, very stupid collective mind was brutishly determined to push its way through the police lines. Ralph stumbled again. He let go of the woman. There was chaos up ahead. People were screaming. It was hard to tell if it was hysteria or pain. One of the barriers seemed to have collapsed, and people had gone down with it. There were people on the sidewalk. They were being trampled. He almost lost his footing as he stumbled into one of the ones who had fallen. He went down himself a moment later, but was able to struggle up again. The two people who went down in front of him and cushioned his fall were not so lucky. He started pushing backward against the tide, trying to ease over to the wall of the hotel. At least he would have his back to something. He had to get out of this bloody insanity.

THE MEETING IN THE PENTHOUSE boardroom of Combined Media continued. It seemed destined to go on all night. It had moved into its second phase. Deutsch was cross-questioning each department head in turn, dragging out corporate secrets that they never would have willingly revealed to other departments. Covert glances were being exchanged, and there was real fear in the room. Either something earth-shaking was coming, or Deutsch had gone stone mad. Right at that moment it was the turn of Charlotte Estes, the head of Research. Deutsch stood behind her, lightly resting his hands on the back of her chair.

"So, Charlotte, to clarify, according to your research, there would appear to be no way to predict which clients will succumb to premature death syndrome. You're saying that some will die after a couple of years, while others will last out their full natural span."

Estes shook her head. "There's really no such thing as a natural span in the IE dreamstate. Of the twenty test subjects that we have been monitoring since the start of public availability, one died after seven months. Three more went in the third year, and a fourth one a year later. One died four months ago, and two more went in the last three weeks. The others are still alive, but they show distinct signs of premature aging. I see no chance of them surviving beyond another five years."

Gorges Gomez leaned forward in his chair. "You mean you knew about the probability of premature death all along?"

"We suspected it."

"And no one was warned?"

Deutsch took over. "What would you have had us do, Gorges? Shut down the entire service and go into liquidation?"

Gomez shook his head. "No, but…"

Madison Renfield half raised a hand. "Perhaps I might assist here."

Deutsch smiled. "The floor is yours, Madison."

"We in Public Relations have done a little research of our own on the matter of PDS."

Gomez muttered under his breath. "When the shit turns nasty, call it by its initials."

Deutsch fixed him with a cold stare. "You have something to add, Gorges?"

Gomez shook his head sadly. "No, Kingsley, not a thing."

Deutsch turned to Renfield. "Please go on."

"Well, to boil it down to basics, all the research that we've done on lifespan clients seems to demonstrate that, once they've entered the program, no one on the outside gives a damn about them. As far as the world is concerned, they've gone down a one-way street and aren't coming back. Beneath this there is also a measurable level of resentment. The lifespan client is perceived to have committed an act of terminal selfishness, and what happens to them from there on in is strictly their own problem."

Throughout the meeting, David Patel of Legal had been making periodic notes on a yellow pad. Now he looked up questioningly. "Was this attitude research conducted only in terms of the public at large, or was there a specific survey of friends and families of those who became lifespan clients?"

Renfield smiled. He was ahead of that question. "It combined both. We discovered that among the families of longtimers, there was frequently a good deal of relief mingled with the resentment. All too often they were getting rid of a relative who was proving to be a liability of one kind or another."

Edouard Hayes frowned. "The fact that the stiff's family didn't like him isn't going to stop them bringing a lawsuit for some hundred million or so if he drops dead in our care."

Patel looked at Hayes as though he was stating the childishly obvious. "The original charter covers us against this kind of eventuality. The lifespan client basically renounces most of his or her civil rights when they enter the program. As far as the law is concerned, they are legally dead. Their assets are held in trust or disposed of just as in the event of death, and they have no estate as such on which claims can be made. Our only legal responsibility is to see that the clients don't cause harm to the living. It would take an act of Congress to change our position."

Charlotte Estes looked up with a grin. "I take it we have nothing to fear from Congress."

Deutsch also smiled. "We have made a considerable investment over the years to insure that we have nothing to fear from Congress."

He walked back to the head of the table.

"While we are indulging in this almost Maoist exercise in confession and self-criticism, there is something that I should perhaps bring out into the light. A number of you seem to be concerned that-how did you put it, Edouard?-'a clandestine group within the corporation' was attempting to revive death experience research. I see that I must look to my own security."

Edouard Hayes stared at Deutsch openmouthed. "Your security, Kingsley?"

"I authorized the monitoring of that execution down in Mississippi."

There were ten stunned faces around the conference table. Since the failure of the initial research, the monitoring of an actual death, on Deutsch's specific personal instructions, had been the most taboo act in all of Combined Media. That Deutsch himself should have secretly authorized such a thing was unthinkable.

"You look surprised. Did you think that, just because Jonas went insane, the whole subject of humanity's greatest mystery should be shelved forever? I waited until I was confident that the dust had settled sufficiently and then I made my move. It is, after all, the ultimate curiosity. Did you really think that I would resist it?"

It was Charlotte Estes who asked the obvious question. "Have you experienced the recording?"

Deutsch shook his head. "Not yet. I have never seen myself as a human guinea pig. There is another set of convicts who are, as we speak, being exposed to the experience. If no harmful effects are revealed, I will experience the recording myself. After that, I will decide on our next move."

Renfield leaned back in his chair. "Is that the announcement?"

Deutsch laughed. "Oh, no, Madison. That was just a minor confession. My announcement is something else again."

BY THE TIME THEY HAD REACHED THE foyer, it had all become very brisk. Wanda-Jean, the other three Dreamroad contestants, and Bobby Priest were surrounded on all sides by a loose phalanx of aides, network bodyguards, and hotel security. Wanda-Jean felt as though she was riding on a wave of nervous excitement. She wasn't sure whether her nerves or her excitement were the stronger. On one hand she was about to go through the tension and thoroughly degrading exposure of another show. On the other, being in the middle of this small, urgent crowd of men in dark suits and uniforms made her feel wanted and important.

Heads turned as they came out of the elevators. The entourage closed up as they made their way past the long reception desk, the deep armchairs, the hanging plants, and the small fountain. Although people stared there was no other response inside the hotel. The customers of the Sanyo Hyatt had too much credit to get in an uproar over TV celebrities. Outside on the street, however, it was a whole different thing. Cops and more hotel security men were holding back a milling, pushing mob that filled the entire pavement in front of the hotel.

The "Wildest Dreams" party hesitated just inside the automatic glass doors of the hotel. Two limousines drew up outside. The cops had their clubs out, and were only with difficulty keeping the crowd off the cars. Wanda-Jean stared at the surging crush in horror. For the first time since she had been involved with the game show, she was physically frightened. She looked at the nearest security man in some alarm.

"Why don't they take us out through the back way? Won't it save all this trouble and fuss?"

"I think they like the fuss, sweetheart. They figure it's good for business."

A police sergeant, just outside the glass doors, signaled to the squad inside. The doors opened, and everyone moved out. The first few steps were slow and tentative. Then they hit the air and it started in earnest. The security formed into a flying wedge. They were off and running, hands clutched. She was swamped by the noise of the crowd but, at the same time, couldn't make out a word they were saying. She couldn't even judge their mood. Did they hate her or love her? Were they grabbing at her to show their affection or tear her apart? The fingers were clawed, the faces were distorted. They slammed into the cops with furious, violent determination to get through. They seemed unwilling to give up, even when the cops moved in with clubs swinging.

There was a brief moment when Wanda-Jean thought they were going to get to her. Then the broad back of a network man moved into her line of vision as he put himself in the way of the rush. A middle-aged woman, with two-tone orange and pink hair and inch-thick makeup, howled something before a cop grabbed her and swung her bodily away. Absurdly, Wanda-Jean had a picture of her open mouth imprinted, almost photographically, on her memory. There had been flecks of orange lipstick on her teeth.

They were almost to the cars and out of the worst of it. A teenage girl tried to duck under a cop's arm. He seized her by the hair but, in so doing, left a space for a short chubby figure of undecided sex to force its way through. It had thick, moist, sagging lips set in a bland, doughy, piggy-eyed face.

It held a plastic spiral-bound book in its hands. It opened this as though offering it to Wanda-Jean for inspection and dropped to its knees. Wanda-Jean had to stop dead to keep herself from falling over it. For a fleeting instant, she had a good look at the inside of the book. It was crammed with pictures of her, pictures of Wanda-Jean, presumably taken from a TV set. They showed her in the most contorted, obscene, and humiliating poses.

Wanda-Jean knew there must be people who did bizarre obsessive things because of some celebrity fixation. It just seemed incredible it could be done to her. She was totally spooked for a second. What else were people doing? She jerked away and collided with a bodyguard. She was lifted off her feet and virtually thrown in the back of one of the waiting cars. She fell in a heap on Brigitte and another contestant. The door slammed. She saw the kneeling figure bowled over by a headlong rush. Both he and his book of pictures were trampled underfoot. Hands beat on the windows and roof of the car. The driver gunned it away. Everyone was jerked into the back of the seats. They were wrapped in the smell of old leather. Almost miraculously they broke free of the crowd. Ahead of them a police car with three sets of sirens broke up the downtown traffic.

Wanda-Jean pulled herself up and peered out of the car window. People on the sidewalk were stopping to stare at them as they raced past with their police escort. At least she was going to the show in style.

RALPH WAS HURLED BODILY AGAINST A plate glass window; it didn't shatter. Right in front of him a man was being clubbed to the ground. The woman in the blue coat had vanished. The CRAC squad was out of their van, employing the only answer they had to any kind of disturbance, which was to break heads. On the other side of the glass, rich folk were drinking cocktails and eating an early dinner before taking in a show. They stared in blank amazement at the violence on the sidewalk. Ralph was only two feet from a fat woman who had frozen in shock with a forkful of creamcake halfway to her mouth. There was only the shock of the unexpected in the drinkers' and diners' faces. There was no real concern or outrage. What was going on beyond the glass might as well have been happening to another species on another world.

Ralph slid along the window toward a doorway that would afford a minimal protection. He rolled into it. The violence was streaming past him. People were running, shrieking, doing anything to get away from the clubs of the police. Two CRAC officers grabbed a woman and dragged her off to the van. The only mercy was that, so far, they hadn't used gas. Suddenly there was a helmeted, gas-masked cop in front of his doorway. Seeing Ralph, he raised his club.

Ralph cringed. "Don't hurt me! Don't hurt me!"

The cop paused and lowered the club. "Get out of there!"

Ralph ducked past the cop, who shoved him roughly. Ralph started running. He didn't look back. He ran blindly with the rest, sharing their terror. There were cops in front of the RT station-there would be no refuge in there. Then he was in the atrium, along with a number of others. He looked back. There were no cops in sight. He spotted the woman in the blue coat. She was walking around in a daze. There was blood on her face from a cut forehead. Ralph hurried over to her.

"Are you alright?"

The woman looked at him in complete mystification. It was only after a number of seconds that recognition dawned. "It's you."

"Right."

"You helped me through the crowd."

"Are you okay?"

"Why did they have to do that?"

"You're bleeding."

The woman put a hand to her forehead. She looked surprised at the blood on her fingers. "I'm bleeding."

"You want to go to the emergency room?"

She shook her head emphatically. "I don't like those places."

"You ought to get someone to look at that cut."

"It'll be alright. What I'd really like is a drink."

Despite himself, Ralph grinned. "Now you're talking."