Perhaps not all art corrupts; but
absolute art corrupts absolutely.
Michael Conner
Sunlight reflected dully from the polarized cap of the Stockton Condo Dome that rose out of the winter-morning Tule fog. Inside, a young man peered through the gloom toward the central plaza. To him, the fog presented a paradox of arrested movement, an ethereal ocean that embraced the entire circumference of the complex. Dieter, nervously gripping his portfolio, thought how dark it was for mid-morning; it was not dark enough, however, to shroud Dwalae Workshop.
There it was, almost at the center of the low curved layerings of Condo units that radiated outward from the plaza all the way to the shimmering margin of the Dome field. It stood apart, different, tawny styroflo exterior a little more massive, sculptured just enough to set it off markedly from any other building within the Dome.
Dieter crossed the plaza, scuffing his feet cautiously on the terrazzo surface, as if the fog could somehow have made the tile slick. It wasn’t, and the sharp echoes across that empty space made him a little embarrassed, made him walk a little faster to the Dwalae’s front entrance. There he halted to stare at the stylized lettering on the door:
K. KINCHON’S DWALAE WORKSHOP
Fine Transfers
Galleries: Tahoe, Marin, Mendocino, Santa Cruz
DEALERS ONLY
Kinchon: Dieter read the name again. The man whose elegant scrawl had graced Dieter’s letter of acceptance was one of the best—no, the best—transferist in all of North America. From Canada to Mexico, Kinchon’s work was in demand; now he, J. Dieter, was going to work for him. “Join my little stable,” the fuzzy voice had told him over the phone. And he would. It was hard for him to push through the swinging panel without a complete surrender to panic. But he did it, and opened his eyes to the cool white of a waiting room.
Dieter stared. It seemed a joke, a mocking understatement. Certainly, it was not what he had expected: Ivory wool (yes, wool!) carpet, simple fluorescent panels spaced at odd intervals along the concave surface of the walls. Indeed, the only color in the whole space was the red of two painfully artificial poinsettias which stood on a rough wood dais not quite in the center of the room.
The effect was unsettling, and Dieter wandered around the pedestal attempting to locate a place to sit. Abruptly a young man leaned, penstyle in mouth, from a receptionist’s window.
“May I help you?”
“What? Oh.” Dieter glanced quickly at his portfolio. “Yes. I’m contracted to work here.”
The man stared.
“M. Kinchon requested that I see him first thing today.”
“Hm. Oh, yes. M. J. Dieter, is it not? This way, please.”
He opened a door for Dieter, then indicated another, stenciled with Kinchon’s familiar signature. Dieter hesitated.
“Go on in,” the man said. “K’s been waiting.”
Dieter opened the door to a room decorated in the same manner as the lounge, except that light was provided by a staggered array of skylight bubbles. In a far corner, he noticed two large viewing consoles; on either side of these stood easels and a worktable. Directly in front of Dieter was a large freemold desk where Kinchon sat gazing at some papers. For a moment, Dieter feared that he wouldn’t be noticed, but suddenly Kinchon stood up.
All the pictures Dieter had seen of the man did nothing to prepare him for his presence. He was shorter than Dieter had imagined, but powerful, with a bull’s chest deeply tanned where his open-fronted cream velcro jumpsuit revealed a thick mat of bleached golden hair. A platinum cross with a soldered Redeemer twisting across its face hung from a heavy chain around his neck. Kinchon smiled; it was a wide smile, hung between shiny protruding cheekbones and below a drooping dark-brown moustache.
“M. Dieter, welcomed he said, quickly glancing up the length of Dieter’s thin body.
“Thank you, M. Kinchon.” (Oh, the feel of that warm steel hand!) “I’m a little late, I’m afraid.”
“Nonsense, forget it. We’re not peasants, eh?” He gently placed his hand on the small of Dieter’s back, guided him to a silk brocade styrobag in front of the shining desk. “Sit down.” Kinchon returned to his own chair, then pointed to Dieter’s portfolio.
“May I see that, please?” Kinchon opened the portfolio and began leafing through the work. One by one, he glanced at the sketches and holo reproductions Dieter had selected as his best. Occasionally he grunted, and Dieter had to fight the temptation to lean closer. Finally Kinchon put the work down.
“You like to sketch, I see.”
Dieter responded a trifle too eagerly. “Yes, M. Kinchon, that’s what I concentrated on at Sorbonne Complex.”
“Mm-hm. That’s good, Dieter. Allow me to say that there are not many here so proficient as you.” He smiled, eye-corners crinkling in a flattering way. “In this area. I see you have some transfer reproductions here also. Forgive me, I know my representatives have been over this all with you before. Ah, how much console experience have you had?”
“Three months, M. Kinchon, intensive exercise in console operation and technique. However, as I told your interviewer, these transfers were made from imagined console projections, not actual beaded images. I felt—”
Kinchon held up a hand. “No need to explain—that is simply all the more impressive.” He stood up and walked over to one of the consoles. “But please, I wish to show you something.” As Dieter stood up next to him, Kinchon activated the screen. “The particular advantages of beaded images.”
Even before Kinchon switched to holoproject, Dieter realized that he could make no sense of the image he was looking at. It seemed to be a corniced blackness, scuffed with gray dust, with a stark angular shadow thrusting out of the bead field. But the angles and the depth were all wrong—or all right—or simply incomprehensible. Dieter finally looked helplessly at Kinchon, who grinned, twisting his thick silver wristband.
“You see, this is something you could not imagine, because you can’t even identify it. I’ll tell you. I sent someone to San Francisco last week to bead the shoe of an aged alcoholic in the old Halladie Plaza on Market Street. The unfortunate man was subsequently arrested, and this is the view from just under the back seat of the police vehicle. With a boosted light level, of course.”
Dieter whistled, amazed that the man would attempt a transfer from an image containing so little real information.
“Good, good, you see it. My point is that here at the Dwalae we deal with a certain effect, different from anything the other plastic arts can produce. Of course, this effect is determined by the technology, but the selection of materials and the craft of the transferist do play their part. At any rate, it is the final product that matters, and the transfer, removed by bead and console from its subject, allows appreciation by many more people than do the older forms.”
“Much less subjective,” Dieter offered.
“Ah, yes.” Kinchon strode back to the desk and pressed a button.
“Yes, K?”
“Call everyone in for a moment.” He sat down again. “Dieter, I want you to meet my other artists. They are good people, though given at times to excess, eh?” He laughed. The door opened, and five people walked in.
“Persons! This is M. J. Dieter of Sorbonne Complex. He is joining us, our good fortune, as his talents are most considerable.”
Kinchon gestured toward a short man with steel-gray hair who nodded curtly but did not extend his hand. “Maximus.”
“Dwight.” Neither the clipped smile nor the gold brocade tunic impressed Dieter.
A gaunt creature shook his hand limply, leaving a scent of fermenting orchids. “Mm. Silva.”
“Bryon you’ve met already.” The receptionist grinned, sagging slightly with a bend of his knee.
“Finally, M. C.”
“Excuse me?” Dieter felt distinctly uncomfortable.
“C,” C said. “I prefer it to Carruthers, wouldn’t you?” He was sullenly British.
“Back to your projects now, children,” Kinchon said, waving them away. Dieter thought he heard someone—was it C?—mumble “Good luck,” but he did not count upon the sincerity of this wish. Already the names were fading away, and Dieter was not sure it was worth the effort to keep them in mind.
Kinchon smiled. “They are quite a group, are they not?” He put a heavy hand on Dieter’s shoulder, kneaded his neck muscles, a massage that was at once immensely relaxing and a new source of tension. “We want you here, Dieter. Go back to Bryon and he’ll show you to your console. Just tell him what materials you’ll need—he’s quite efficient. Make good use of them and you’ll succeed, eh?”
“Yes. Yes, I will. Thank you very much, M. Kinchon.”
“Please.” The massage ended. “My artists call me K.” Dieter nodded, mumbling thanks, then left Kinchon’s room.
Just as Kinchon had promised, Bryon directed him (much more cordially) back to a small cubicle that was to be his work area. It was spartan, but complete. In a corner were his console, an older and smaller unit than Kinchon’s, and his chair. Beside them stood his plotting easel, and across from that a large worktable equipped with storage bins. After Bryon left, Dieter tilted several of them open and was pleased to find the bins filled with fresh materials. Finally, satisfied with his working environment, Dieter sat in the contour chair and activated the image.
Since his first assignment was more a test than a real project, a subject had been beaded for him. A single fact sheet informed him that the subject lived in the maintenance compound outside the Condo Dome, and that a fabric-textured bead had been placed on the right sleeve of a work jumpsuit, just above the front part of the hem. The uniform was short-sleeved, so that the bead hung just below the subject’s biceps, a position almost impossible to detect, given the quality of beads used by the Workshop. This particular model was a transparent disk that had even been successfully textured to blend with bare human skin.
At any rate, the bead provided an image of exceptional clarity. Dieter sat back and watched. According to the fact sheet, the subject was a waste cycler working a four-hour afternoon shift, so his mornings would usually be spent in his room in the compound. That room, in fact, was on screen now. By making a few exploratory sketches and comparing them to the screen display, Dieter was able to determine that the subject was sitting on a mattress in the corner of the room with his back against the wall, facing a brown wooden door. The subject read a book propped against his thighs, and he periodically brought a cigarette to his mouth by a slow bending of his long forearm.
It was interesting enough, but there was not much material for a transfer. Dieter thought about the theory of art he had often expounded to friends at Sorbonne Complex: that the purpose of art was to make the unnoticed noticeable in such a way as to reveal to the viewer the defects in his own perceptions. As he tried to make something out of the flat screen image, Dieter wondered whether his own perceptions were defective. But the fact that he was sitting in a console chair as an employee of the Dwalae Workshop made it an easy thought to dismiss.
Shortly before noon (and an hour after he had become bored, despite his desire to perform well) the image on the screen tilted crazily and grew larger as the subject rose to open the door. Then the image resumed its former angle while a visitor, a young red-haired woman, pulled a chair away from the wall. Hoping for additional information, Dieter activated audio. The woman sat down, petted the cat she had carried in (how perfect, Dieter thought, hands through fur), and asked the subject how long his beard had been growing. She called him Coe.
The conversation was not very interesting, although Dieter was amused by Coe’s blunt efforts to resist what was plainly an attempt to initiate a sexual liaison. Eventually, she gave up; then Coe put on a jacket, blacking the image out for nearly forty-five minutes. It resumed inside the metal-gray confines of the cycling plant. That was a subject Dieter had no wish to deal with, so he spent the remainder of the afternoon experimenting with the console, making occasional prints whenever a partial view of Coe’s face appeared.
Next morning, Dieter decided to concentrate on details and was ready to search for them when he activated the screen. Search was unnecessary, however. When the image popped into focus it revealed a wealth of the very particulars Dieter had hoped for. He could see a worn, fuzzy carpet scattered with cigarette butts, sections of old newspapers, balled socks, along with a few books and food wrappers. Never in his life had Dieter seen such an accumulation of refuse! Fascinated, he made several prints of the scene, and was even tempted to begin a transfer. Yet he waited, hoping for more.
Several hours later Coe stood up and walked to the closet. When he turned, Dieter saw a large window just above and to the right of the mattress, centered between it and a cheap lampstand that served as a base for a hotplate and various other pieces of cooking equipment. Despite a thick coating of grease, noon light blazed strongly through the glass, resulting in an amazing visual quality Dieter recognized at once. He wondered if Coe liked the room because of that window. He printed it a few times, but again he waited for the exact image he wanted. Soon it blanked again, however, as Coe went to work. Dieter, feeling there was nothing to gain by spending the afternoon behind the console, decided to go home early to attempt a few full-face sketches of his subject. After all, as Kinchon himself had said, he was not a peasant.
* * * *
Since Dieter was a new resident of the complex, his three-room unit was at the very edge of the developed area. Still, it was an easy half-kilometer walk, most relaxing to Dieter, who enjoyed exercise. When he arrived he went immediately to the largest and farthest back of the three rooms, one designed as a living area but which Dieter had converted to a workshop. Here the white walls were unadorned, save for a few prints—Van Gogh, Rand—and some of his own landscapes sketched inside French domes. An easel stood next to a tall narrow window that revealed, when the drapes were open, wavering light that passed through the Dome field, and beyond that, the city of Stockton itself. Somehow, the view of the dusty Central Valley depressed him; consequently, he was only able to work with the drapes drawn.
Dieter tossed his portfolio onto an old stuffed chair, then prepared an early dinner. When he was finished, he sat down and began studying the prints he had made of Coe. He was pleased with the contrast between Coe’s place and his own spotlessly sterile unit.
Idly he went through the prints again, pulling out several of the window views and arranging them on the floor next to his sketch of Coe’s face. Imagine what that man felt when he looked through that filthy glass! The window frame was bright red enamel against the leeched pink of peeling wallpaper, and Dieter stared at the colors until his eyes grew tired and he dozed off.
After a night in the chair, Dieter was not at his best the next morning at the Dwalae. Nevertheless, he was alert enough to seize his opportunity when it arose. He was watching Coe warm some soup on the hotplate, leaning over it slightly to peer out the window. At that moment Dieter lunged at the console panel, slamming the hold stud with his fist. He leaned back slowly, almost afraid to see if he had succeeded, but it was there: hotplate, from above, chipped enamel with milk-red soup just boiling up around the edges; Coe’s left arm, shadowed, leaning palm-down on the sill. And the window in oblique view, grease split by sun and shadow. Dieter fiddled with the gain until his cubicle was flooded with this light, then sat down, suddenly intent upon an idea.
Reaching over and pulling his easel closer, he punched out print after print of the held image in a variety of projected views. He taped these prints to the top of the easel, then swiveled around to the work-table to get a large rectangular piece of neutral backing plastic. This he placed on the easel below the prints. Carefully then he began scoring the image onto the plastic with an etching stylus. As always, he took all possible care in the crafting of proportion and relationship of objects. And only when he was completely satisfied did he bring out the rolls of shiny acrylic from another bin, along with the appropriate knives, sealing irons and adhesives.
The work went quickly. He stayed late each night for the remainder of the week, making templates and cutting acrylic of various shades of red, gray and black. When he finished, he glued the cut sheets together to create a terracing of color with the window as focal point, built up high enough to throw an actual shadow inside itself. Dieter fancifully embellished it with a tiny red trash canister embossed upon the alley below the window amidst a riotous littering of garbage.
Dieter further altered the original image by eliminating Coe’s arm from the scene. Human forms appeared too stiff in acrylic layering, and anyway, he felt that the bubbling soup (he had had great stinking fun blistering the plastic) provided enough of a human element. He thought it was good; when he had squared all the edges precisely and sprayed the piece with acrylic finisher, he knew it was. He decided to ask Kinchon to view the finished piece.
Kinchon answered his intercom summons quickly, bounding into the cubicle with an amazing burst of energy, then halting abruptly to stare at the easel. Dieter watched tensely as Kinchon picked it up, tilting it slightly at arm’s length. Inwardly, he was quite proud at the way light reflected off the fine topographic variations.
Finally Kinchon spoke. “What are you calling it?”
“Ah—” Dieter chuckled nervously. “ ‘Soupgon,’ I think.”
Scowling, Kinchon turned to face him. “No, please, don’t ever fool with titles.” He fingered his cross. “Hm. How about ‘Red in Filtered Red’?”
The wit of his own title faded against the glow of a Kinchon suggestion. Dieter nodded. “Yes, K, that’s amazing. Thanks.” Still, Dieter found it impossible to look Kinchon in the eye when the artist put the transfer back on the easel.
“This is not bad, Dieter, much better in fact than I expected. It breaks down in places, here.” He pointed to the silver-gray forks and spoons near the base of the hotplate and laughed. “Yes, you do see. These are very gross.” Dieter did not see, exactly, but laughed anyway.
“However, I do not think anyone can really criticize you for it, if they notice.” He placed a hand over his mouth, then snapped his fingers. “Do you know Rudi Gersch?”
Dieter shook his head.
“No matter, you will. He is a close friend with a gallery of his own in Tahoe. This is not quite up to Dwalae standards, Dieter, but . . . let’s see. There will be a large showing and party there in two weeks. I’ll have him show this, and some of your things from the Sorbonne, and we can go, and you will certainly make a sale and meet some important people.” His grin spread as he reached out to pat the back of Dieter’s head with a cupped hand. “How does that sound?”
Dieter found it difficult to say anything.
“Do not be modest! Your success is deserved. But do not become self-satisfied, begin work on something else right away! Another medium, perhaps, with the same bead. You can set up holoprojections!”
“Yes. Sine-curve aspects of the conversion were—”
“Well, whatever you decide, work hard so that Gersch can follow up on you.” Then, as quickly as he had entered, Kinchon started off.
“And don’t worry,” he called over the partition, “I get my commission.” The workroom door shut on his laughter.
* * * *
Despite Kinchon’s admonitions, it was several days before a renewal of interest in Coe prompted an eager Thursday-morning reactivation of the console. On the screen was the old held image, which Dieter smugly took as an affirmation of his success. Feeling guilty about the layoff, however, he did not stare at the screen long. He punched resume and settled into his chair.
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.
Coe lived on Av D, Number 135, easy enough to locate since the compound was laid out on a grid. As Dieter passed Av A, he was most impressed by the design and arrangement of the old buildings. It was said that the compound had been an undomed complex late in the last century, and he believed it; the wood-framed structures were covered with a patchwork of weathered pine shakes and yellowing styroflo, the result of the activities of wood scavengers during the Twenty-Year Depression. Dieter was glad of the vandalism, because the juxtaposition of natural and artificial building materials made for an interesting texture. These were narrow buildings, starkly angular, with many windows. In Dieter’s opinion they had more character than any of their successors inside the Dome field.
He reached Av D and walked slowly down to 135. There, a dirty glass door led to a staircase. Hesitantly Dieter touched the buzzer. But there was no response; then Dieter remembered that Coe would probably still be on his shift. Somewhat relieved, he sat down, pulled out his sketchpad and furtively observed the activities of the Maintenance people who passed.
For almost an hour he sketched the unit facing him across the Av, inventing different proportions and elevations. When street traffic increased, he stopped to check his watch. Four-twenty: the shift had ended and people in Maintenance uniforms were entering the buildings all around him.
Coe would be coming! The thought frightened him enough to make him think of returning to the complex. But what would he say to Kinchon, who had shown trust, however reluctantly, in his judgment? Firmly, he slid the pad back into the portfolio, feeling the tiny bulge the beads made in the inside zippered pouch.
Then he heard a voice, the voice, there was no mistaking it. Dieter forced himself to be calm. He turned in the direction of the sound and saw him, shocking in his solid, vital presence. Strangely, all of it— the beard, the blue eyes, everything Dieter had so casually sketched— was less emotionally intense than on those frightening prints. But there was more, Dieter realized, a way of moving, an odd combination of the fluid and the mechanical, a pulling stride that was directed by a bent head rocking a broad yoke of shoulders. He stepped in his heavy workshoes so close to Dieter that for a terrible instant he loomed just as he had in the heel image. Dieter drew his knees up.
Coe checked his mailbox, took a key from his jumpsuit pocket. But before he could put the key in the lock, Dieter was there behind him.
Coe turned, just as Dieter was about to tap his shoulder. “Ah, ha, excuse me. Your name is Coe, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Coe said quizzically, one hand on the doorknob. “You know me. Who’re you?”
“Dieter. I’d like to talk with you”—Dieter stared at the ground between them— “about that bead you found this week.”
Alarm hardened Coe’s impassive features. “Hey, look, if you’re Security, I know right where it gives the rules about remote surveillance—”
“No! No, I’m not Security. The farthest thing from it, in fact, I work at the Dwalae, and I was at the console when you, uh, terminated the broadcast.”
Coe relaxed, looked at him, laughed softly. He stared at Dieter again and laughed very loudly while Dieter gripped his portfolio tightly.
Then the laughter ended. “I ought to waste you, pig.”
“You won’t even find out why I want to see you?”
Impassive once again, Coe simply shrugged and turned. “Come on,” he said, starting up the narrow stairway. At the second-floor landing Dieter was startled as Coe stepped around a naked woman who was talking into a pay phone. She smiled and waved at Coe, who merely grunted, continuing to the third floor. Halfway down a dark corridor, Coe unlocked a door and suddenly they were in the room.
His room! There it was—the mattress, the closet, the littered floor. And the window, different in the evening light, of course. The door closed. Coe paced in front of it.
“All right, Condo boy, tell me why you’re here.”
“I want to explain.”
Coe nodded, continuing to pace. Where could I bead to catch that motion? Dieter realized that it was the wall that should have been beaded in the first place.
“You want to explain. Since when does a screen vamp have a conscience?”
“Since me. No, please, I’d just like you to look at what I was doing,” Dieter reached into his portfolio, pulled out the holo reproduction of “Red in Filtered Red,” and gave it to Coe. The tall man halted to peer at it.
“I watched you for a week. I got involved, and what you did was a shock. I’m still involved. That’s why I came.”
“Hm. My window.”
“Yes, your window. I did it hoping that people would see something there that would make a difference the next time they walked into their white bedrooms.”
Anxiously he watched Coe, who tilted the transfer the way Kinchon had. Suddenly he was grateful for Coe’s openmindedness; the man apparently appreciated the complexity of the situation. And Dieter smiled a little too—for the first time his theory of art had practical application, and here, in a built place, it sounded solid. More solid, in fact, than all the echoing balk of the styroflo Condo units.
“You like the window, huh? What’s your name again?”
Dieter told him. Coe’s deep laughter came, genuine, its phrasing matching the rhythm of his walk. “Yeah, it’s a nice view. Saw Stockton all summer long. You been to Stockton?”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t like it.” Almost shyly, he handed the holograph back. “Let’s see something else.”
Dieter gave him some of the partial face sketches, and, sensing a warmth between them, took the opportunity to apologize for the beading.
“I didn’t do it. You see, you were my very first subject for the Dwalae, and the staff did it for me before I even came here. It’s not something I really approve of, but as I sort of said before, there’s always the possibility of working change in any artform.” He retrieved the sketchpad while Coe settled onto the mattress to look at the rest of the drawings.
“I really prefer to sketch, you understand, and there’s absolutely nothing worth drawing at the Complex.” He hesitated. “You wouldn’t mind if I sketched you—?”
“That depends.” Coe slid the sketches across the carpet toward Dieter. “On the deal. Young man, are you still vamping me?” The blue eyes didn’t waver.
“Coe, this transfer will help change this rotten system—I live in there, you live here—”
“Don’t forget Stockton,” Coe said drily.
“We should all be living in the same place! Look, Coe, I think my stuff is different enough to matter. Art is a way of showing people how wrong they can be, if it’s done in the right way.”
“Okay, okay. I’ve seen beadwork before. Used to work in a component shop. Maybe you can give it to those grumbles you live with. So shit, yeah, sketch, but not now. Come back later and let me see what’s happening.” He stretched and stood up. “I gotta take a leak. Be right back.”
Without hesitation Dieter reached for a bead. He looked at the wall for a good spot, and when he was satisfied he peeled the backing off the tiny disk. He slapped it onto the stained wallpaper, then resumed his position, as if negating what he had just done.
When Coe returned, hand on zipper, Dieter obtained a vague promise to meet sometime in the future. Then he left to reenter the windless security of the force dome.
* * * *
On Monday, Kinchon surprised Dieter by visiting the cubicle to remind him of the party. When he saw the new bead field on the screen, however, he scowled.
“Why place the bead in such a position? There’s not much more that you can do with such a view, is there?”
Dieter was suddenly annoyed with Kinchon. “There wasn’t time for me to find another place. He was gone for only a moment. Besides, I’ve got another idea for a different approach to the window. I want to make it part of a series.”
Kinchon sighed. “Fine. So long as it succeeds.” Dieter was sure the transferist thought he was wasting time, and he was prepared to argue; but Kinchon abruptly changed the subject.
“We will, by the way, fly to Tahoe in my hopper.”
“Thanks, K.”
Kinchon nodded, looked once more at the screen image, then left the cubicle.
* * * *
The centered window threw a marvelous pattern of changing light and shadow onto Coe’s furnishings, and sometimes Coe himself would come, somber, to muse by the window with arms folded. Each time it happened Dieter printed the image and taped it to the easel; soon the easel was entirely covered with Coe, frozen in various postures. After Coe had gone to work, Dieter spent his time assembling power components for a linear series of holoprojection strips in ascending tones, soft yellow to murderous red. With everything fabricated in advance, he might be able to assemble another transfer in time for the weekend showing. All he needed was a suitable image.
Next morning he watched Coe dress. Slowly, with Dieter following every move, Coe sauntered to the window. “Over a little, Coe, come on,” Dieter muttered, and Coe seemed to respond. Suddenly he was dead center in the field, pausing in the window light, face absolutely void. One knee was bent slightly toward the bead. Dieter jammed his finger against hold: He had his image.
The crafting of this transfer took only about three hours. Once again he used acrylic sheets, this time as multicolored puzzle pieces in a planar rendition of the window, with Coe a gray silhouette inside it. Then, using this figure as core, Dieter mounted a succession of the holo strips to form a concentric layering of Coes, partly transparent, all surrounding the window. The shape of the finished piece was Coe, reduced in size and dimension but startling all the same.
Friday afternoon Dieter took the new transfer directly to Kinchon in hopes of having it presented with the other piece. At Kinchon’s door he was nearly knocked down by two grinning dealers. They left the door open; inside, Kinchon was shouting violently into his phone. When he noticed Dieter standing in the doorway, he wiped his forehead with a damp silk handkerchief, then motioned him toward the styrobag. Dieter sat patiently until Kinchon was through with his tirade.
Wearily Kinchon blanked his screen and walked around the desk. “Ah, my apologies, Dieter. A dealer has attempted to take advantage of us. So! You’ve finished another one. Hold it up for me, please.”
Dieter held it high between his own face and Kinchon’s.
“All right.”
Dieter looked at him.
“Please, enough.” The transfer went back to Dieter’s lap. Kinchon leaned against his desk, moved his hands back and forth along its edge.
“You have fine technique in this, Dieter.” His voice rose. “But again you are fascinated with the man.” He shook his head. “No, this will not sell, Dieter, do you know why?”
Though he resented this blunt rejection, Dieter tried to seem unconcerned and open to criticism. “I really didn’t think about that. I just did the transfer.”
“Not thinking of selling! A serious fault in a commercial artist, Dieter. But beyond that, this is not a transfer. It is a sentimental fantasy, which would not be so bad, except for the fact that it is entirely subjective. Can anyone who does not know you or the subject guess the reason for this type of presentation?”
“I would think so.”
“Then you are wrong. For instance, what about this man is so gray, so small? His soul, his body, who can tell? And why this magnificent expansion? Because he had the heroism sufficient to destroy a small piece of solid-state equipment? Pure projection, fancied with Dwalae facilities.” He walked behind the desk, pulled open a drawer and withdrew an enameled box, from which he took a tiny red pill. “Really, Dieter, there is no excuse for this.” He swallowed the pill, sighed deeply.
“You must excuse my curtness today, there have been some business unpleasantries. My point, without attacking you personally, is that this is not commercially saleable because it ignores the boundaries of the medium. You see what is here, but no viewer ever will. I warned you—I felt you should have moved on to other subjects. But I was inclined to trust you. If my trust was rewarded with your mistake, well—” The phone buzzed. “That is my mistake. Yes, David, how goes it!”
Dieter turned to leave.
“... a moment, David. Dieter, it is an exercise, so do not become discouraged. Next week we start again, eh? Oh, and meet me here tomorrow at nine?”
Numbed, Dieter nodded and returned to his cubicle. The console screen was still activated, but since Coe had left for work the room was empty, a held image without the tension generated by his presence.
Searching for that presence, for that part of Coe that appealed so powerfully to him, Dieter closed his eyes and with an act of will placed Coe in the screen image. There he was, clothed, nude, clothed again; on the floor, legs apart, leaning against the table, cigarette burning dangerously close to that dry lower lip. Finally the fantasy stabilized, oh so beautifully. There was his man, near the window, his naked body edged in a beige glow that dissolved like sugar to shadow-suggestions of limb and torso. It was vivid enough for Dieter to hit the hold stud; vivid enough for Dieter to be desperately confused when he confronted that empty, static image. He didn’t bother punching resume. He cut the power and went home, taking the new transfer with him.
Dieter woke groggy from the effects of a half-liter of anisette. A hot shower clarified his mind. He was going to Tahoe, work in hand! Tahoe, the most affluent complex on the entire western coast of North America, a center of art and culture. Everyone he had ever wanted to meet, everyone who mattered—patrons, promoters, all with money enough to indulge a taste for fine art—lived there at one time of the year or another. People he wanted to change—but to change them he had to meet them and be taken into their confidence.
He spent the day gathering energy; when evening came, he put on the royal blue jumpsuit he had bought in the duty-free shop at Orly Transmat. He felt quite decorative, felt even more so outside the Dwalae when he saw Kinchon’s chrome hopper resting on its three rollers, its opened bubble reflecting the low crescent moon in curved slashes. Gingerly, Dieter bent over to admire the crystal panel display, the monogrammed joystick, the upholstery of the contour seats. It was beautiful. Not something to be owned, necessarily, but something to be seen in, definitely.
Kinchon called from the doorway and urged him to get in. He did so, staring as Kinchon approached. The transferist wore a golden jumpsuit, open to the navel and bound at the waist by a sash formed of tiny linked rings of white metal shiny as the hopper. The platinum cross was gone, replaced by a choker of the same metal as the sash.
Nodding to Dieter, Kinchon dropped a briefcase behind the pilot’s seat, then stepped in and turned on the panel lights. Even in their soft glow Dieter could tell that Kinchon’s tan had been chemically renewed. For the first time since Dieter had known him, Kinchon looked like the old idealistic concept of K Kinchon, Master Transferist. He was beautiful, all jeweled flash and white-toothed glint. Still, Dieter wondered whether there was any substance to the man to compare with the solidity of Coe’s far different life. He found the comparison unpleasant.
“Ah, now we have a complete cockpit, eh?” Kinchon said as they taxied through the hopper portal. They lifted off with barely a whisper from the air induction tubes. Kinchon said nothing until they reached cruising altitude. Then he leaned back from the controls.
“You look good tonight, Dieter. You will fit in well.” Dieter was flattered, but relieved when Kinchon excused himself to examine some papers from the briefcase. It was enough simply to be able to watch the Sierra foothills pass below as mottled pools of black/gray in the transparent moonlight. The newsfax forecast had been correct —it was a clear night in the mountains, and the sight of the Sierras, jagged and dusted with the season’s first snowfall, obliterated any trace of the strange thoughts that had disturbed him all day.
As they traveled into the mountain range, Dieter peered ahead until he was sure of the bulbous glow he saw well up the side of a large peak. It was Tahoe Complex, just as he had seen it in holo reproductions. Four kilometers of dome blistering the side of Silver Peak, the Complex dominated the entire Tahoe Basin. The mountainside had been carefully stripped and reworked so that a terracing of subcomplexes ascended to the peak, all protected by the obliquely bulging dome. Now, in the basin, Condo light competed with moonlight, a harmonious duel which cast a pale yellow on the snow. Kinchon continued studying his papers as if they were doing nothing more than driving over a dirt road. He’s used to it—he lives here. Still, Dieter was convinced that Coe’s reaction would have been at least appreciative.
“Here already?” Kinchon crammed his papers back into the briefcase, then pressed a stud on the panel. They descended slowly.
“Do you see, Dieter, there is our party.” Kinchon pointed out what appeared to be a flaw in the dome high above the rest of the sub-complexes. In it, Dieter could almost make out tiny figures, but the hopper landed before he could be sure. A valet attended to the hopper; they got out, entered a small pneumatic tube that whisked them up the mountain? through it? to the party area.
The tube ended at a round platform perhaps a hundred meters in diameter, illumined by wedge-shaped floor panels. Along the perimeter was the exhibition—various works of art interspersed with large potted plants and pieces of furniture which stood unused, possibly because they provided no good view of either art or people. Most of the guests were crowded about the bar and buffet in the middle of the platform, where the gray noise of conversation drowned out the electronic efforts of the music generators.
Such scenery! Of course, the pale mountains surrounded everything here, but they were pale indeed in comparison to the people-hundreds of them, arrayed in a dazzle of color. There were several faces Dieter recognized immediately, but when he turned to Kinchon to ask about them, he discovered that his companion had been led away by an eager group.
Left to himself, he scanned the display area for his own work, and spotted it on the opposite side of the platform. He circled toward it, avoiding the knots of guests in the center.
There it was. Not near the best mountain scenery, of course, but nicely mounted on a slab covered with black velvet. His pleasure faded, however, when he discovered that his name had been misspelled “Deiter” on the small white card below the transfer. Glumly he stood back a little to watch the guests as they drifted by.
“Tsk. My god, Jorma, look at this! How absolutely depressing!”
“Oh, I don’t know, Edith, it’s-”
“It’s not something I should have to look at. This Deiter person ought to have known better. Or at least Rudi should have, I’m going to talk to him. To even think of living this way!” She pulled her escort away.
“Condopigs,” he muttered. People like her knew nothing, could learn nothing. In his frustration he walked blindly into a crowd that had collected in front of the piece to the right of his. He pushed his way through until he could see the object of their interest.
He stared, horrified. Here was a mixed-medium oil-and-holo competently executed, but of a completely degenerate character. Two stallions were fighting in a field; the mouths of both animals were open, hideously grinning, teeth smeared with holoprojected blood.
Turning away in anger, he found himself facing Kinchon. Something was wrong with the man. His mouth was like a gaping wound; his eyes were glazed, he blinked continually. “Dieter,” he said, almost in a whisper, caressing the back of Dieter’s neck. “Here.” His other hand came around under Dieter’s nose, popped a tiny ampule, releasing a puff of lime-green dust.
Instantly Dieter’s eyes filmed over. He tried to blink the tears away, but could not. It was as if his visual field had expanded horizontally, narrowed vertically, while thoughts sped through his brain like a plaza faxstrip display. All of it was helplessly observed by a tiny bubble—for that was how it seemed—of fascinated objectivity. The discrepancy between the two thoughtforms was immediately, sickeningly funny. Dieter giggled, awash in the moist warmth of Kinchon’s hand.
“You do like cylanite, yes?”
“Oh, yes. Never, thank you, K, never had it be—”
“Good, good.” Then the touching stopped and Dieter, coasting on the dwindling sensation, realized that Kinchon was gone again. He turned, vaguely searching, until he lost his balance and fell upon a providential couch to watch the distorted movement of color and form around him. He longed, achingly, for Kinchon. But the small part of Dieter untouched by the drug picked out only one face—was it Carruthers’?—from the muddle before it.
Then, gradually, the ocean cleared, the bar and the music generators rolled silently away from the platform center, leaving a space adorned only by the inlaid shield of the complex, an ambiguous heraldry of crystal and rosewood placed (deviously placed, the bubble insisted) just off center, a nagging, incorrectable deviation from the perfect. Dieter licked his lips.
“Entertainment!” someone called; from the tube exit spilled a running stream of black-clad attendants bearing armfuls of small objects which they piled in the middle of the platform. Dizzily Dieter got up and circled the ring of spectators, his wide-band perception noting that the objects were stuffed animals of some sort, the bubble determining that they were either lemurs or tarsiers. A smaller group of attendants clad in scarlet moved to the pile, each one holding an instrument resembling a large gilded garlic press. Dieter blinked; the yellow sparkle from the animals’ eyes was almost too much.
Back to back, the attendants put their animals into the presses, then gently closed the handles until only the soft furry-brown heads were visible.
How orderly. A jarring screech startled him. Whizzing lemur eyes separated from exploded heads, saucering high overhead; screaming guests retreated from a heavy spray of red liquid which rolled, like mercury, on the floor. The bubble protested weakly, while the rest of Dieter watched the last few eyes caroming off the dome. He was jostled in the scramble for lemur souvenirs, and he wanted very badly to see Kinchon again.
A servant with a squeegee touched his arm impatiently, then, when Dieter failed to respond, pushed him aside to continue moving the remaining drops of fluid to a small glistening pool near the bar. Light from the floor panels began to fade. Suddenly Carruthers was there, frowning.
“C! Oh, ha! You’ve got some of that stuff on you.” Dieter tried, clumsily, to brush the glistening droplets off his sleeves.
“Leave it, Dieter. God, K’s done it again.”
“K. Yes, K, I must see him. C, all in gold-”
“Shh “ Around them, the party noise dwindled. Carruthers whispered: “You’ll see him soon enough.” Then he was gone. Unsteadily, Dieter leaned forward to see that only the shield remained illuminated, silhouetting the ruins of the exploded toys. No one spoke.
Suddenly someone ran past Dieter, a lithe androgynous figure dressed in a pale body stocking. As it flashed into the open space, Dieter saw, blearily, that a softly pointed cap of the same material covered its head and shoulders. A young Amanita mushroom, the bubble noted.
“M. Kinchon to do the honors!”
And there he was, Kinchon, jumpsuit shimmering in the interrupted light, a long knife held in both hands above his head. Dieter reached out in the darkness toward the devastating radiance.
Slowly Kinchon walked an eccentric route about the figure, which held its position, trembling. The knife was put to use; Kinchon cut the costume around the circumference of the cap. Then, winking, he reached up and grasped its point.
“Now-”
The lights came on full as he pulled the cap away.
Galvanized, Dieter stared at a face obliterated by glossy flesh putty that concealed eyes, nose and ears. Only a slick and vivid red mouth remained to open and close slowly below the word “head” stenciled on the forehead. Spasmodically the figure arched its back to applause that began softly, then rose to a laughter-filled crescendo.
“Circumcision!” Kinchon screamed, both hands high again. The figure (a dancer, the bubble told Dieter) settled into graceful repose at Kinchon’s feet.
Kinchon! The drug ravaged Dieter’s stomach, but oh, how he wanted Kinchon. Even so, the bubble still had a voice of its own: Coe, Dieter seemed to hear, Coe, Coe, but it wasn’t right. Kinchon was there and he wanted to leave with him now.
He drifted into the circle, where Kinchon was talking to the dancer and two women. Touching Ks shoulder, he waited for him to turn and then stared with everything he felt into quizzical, then decidedly satisfied eyes.
Dieter began perspiring. “K, please. Could we go now?”
Kinchon laughed a little nervously in the direction of the women, who regarded Dieter suspiciously. “You do not like this? Dieter, you haven’t yet met Rudi—”
“Another time. Now, please.” He closed his eyes until the new drug-waves passed.
Kinchon shrugged. “Camella, excuse me please. The young man has had his first sniff of cylanite, so-o-o . . . Perhaps I will be back.”
“I doubt it.” The dancer laughed as her two companions helped her move off into the crowd.
They returned to the hopper pad in silence, Dieter unable to express his confused thoughts and emotions. Finally, when they were well away from the complex, he put his hand on Kinchon’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, K,” he said blurrily. “The entertainment—I just couldn’t-”
“No need, no need, it’s just as well, Dieter. The party was a bore. This is just fine.” He opened a compartment between their seats. There was a rattling—like the rattling of beads, said the bubble—then Kinchon busied himself with his sash for a moment. “More cylanite, Dieter?”
No. He shook his head. There was enough drug in him, more than enough desire for contact, the flowing contact toward which he knew he was moving. The pale blister of the Stockton Dome was below suddenly, and as they landed and taxied toward Dieter’s unit, he knew that something of this great artist would come to him. Shyly, Dieter leaned his head against Kinchon’s powerful shoulder. He was rewarded with a smile; then Kinchon pushed him gently away.
“Dieter, up now. Yes, move slowly, that’s it.” Dieter managed to get his other leg out of the cockpit. “Now. Let’s see where you live.”
“My doorway’s too wide, K.” He giggled helplessly as Kinchon pushed him toward it. Somehow Dieter managed to get the door open and his hall lights switched on.
And there K. Kinchon stood, fingering his choker in a way that excited Dieter intensely. Apparently Kinchon had been feeling the effects of the drug too; shiny rivulets of sweat ran down the open V of his jumpsuit. Trembling, Dieter approached, hand extended, his intention to run a single finger slowly down that slick brown chest. But Kinchon grabbed his wrist suddenly, twisting it enough to hurt as his smile flowed smoothly. His eyes shone.
“What do we say, my young friend?”
“Wha-” Very softly: “Please?”
“Ah-ha. I could not hear you.”
“Please,” Dieter said, pulling his wrist away, melting.
“Much better. You learn quickly. Here”—he pulled Dieter onto the bed beside him—”we must sit together.”
They faced each other, Dieter’s thought bubble noting with resigned amusement the extent to which sweat stains had spread under both golden arms of Kinchon’s jumpsuit.
Love, for this man? Attempting to express it, Dieter’s lips only met Kinchon’s salt palm. The man laughed and stood up, staring thoughtfully at his hand.
“Truly an eloquent invitation, J.” Wide-eyed, Dieter looked up; Kinchon had never used his diminutive before. “However, reality intrudes upon the vapors of love. I have not been near a rest room all evening. Please, Dieter, may I use yours?”
“Uh, through here.” Dieter switched on the light to the workroom and pointed to the bathroom door. As he brushed the hair on Kinchon’s forearm, the man suddenly stiffened.
Kinchon was staring at a wall covered with the sketches Dieter had made at Coe’s room. His brown face went livid.
“What is this! You bring me here to mock me! Perhaps you love me, eh, just as you love that man there!”
Coe? Not now, oh god— Dieter’s voice broke. “Please, K.”
The smile hardened, as if encased in lucite. “Please,” Kinchon mimicked. His hand fumbled with his sash for a moment, then cupped Dieter’s neck gently.
“Is this what you like, eh?” The grip tightened cruelly; suddenly Dieter was pushed back onto the bed. “Yes, moan, you idiot. You take me for a fool! Making overtures to me when you are so obviously fascinated with that lowlife who never should have been beaded in the first place.” Again he mimicked: “ ’I wish to deal with this subject in an objective manner.’ Faugh!”
The door slammed and Dieter was alone.
In bed, alone between cold sheets, he realized what was wrong. He had wanted contact, yes. But he had gone to the wrong person.
* * * *
Dieter’s mind was clear and determined when he awoke. For the first time in weeks, his situation was plain. The job at the Dwalae had ended, he knew. But that was good; console spying would have destroyed him eventually, made him into another Kinchon, insulated, callous. All his life he too had been insulated, but only because he had known nothing else. Now he would leave the Condos to travel with Coe, perhaps to the city, to gather material no other transferist could ever hope to capture. Together, they could change everything.
Outside the Dome it was cool and clear, strangely silent, with little traffic between complex and compound. At 135 Av D Dieter found the stairway door unlocked. He ran eagerly up to the third floor. There was no response to his rap on Coe’s door. He knocked again. “Yeah, come in,” came low and muffled from behind the door. Dieter opened it.
Coe stood by the window, silhouetted by the indirect early morning light. Dieter greeted him; Coe said nothing.
Dieter put down his rucksack. “I’ve got to tell you about what happened last night.”
“Enjoyed it, huh?”
“Enjoyed it? Whoa, I found out everything you said was right!”
“Not what I hear, terrysuiter.”
“What?”
“Your fellow snotsucker came by last night, pig. Showed me where this was.” Coe held out the bead on an extended fingertip. “You like to sketch. You want to change things. You, an artist. Ha!” Coe reached into his jumpsuit pocket, took out a knife.
“Coe, I, I—listen!”
“No, you don’t like working on no console, no sir. You want to break up the whole act through your own little cylanite haze!” He flipped the blade out, holding it point upward in his fist.
“I—hey, I’m not afraid of your fucking knife, Coe—I didn’t use the console, but I had to be sure. Kinchon was—”
Coe came forward. “You are dead on the world, fool, I’m no stunt man for the likes of you.”
Seized with a desperate thought, Dieter didn’t move. “Don’t you see? Don’t you really see? I love you. I love you, I won’t resist, I care.” His voice was hoarse.
The blue eyes softened, but only for an instant. “You eat shit. Vamp! Finger puppet!” Then the knife hand arced upward, the blade touched Dieter’s waist, he pulled back violently, screaming his love.
* * * *
With a calm born of years of experience, Kinchon lightly touched hold. He was tired, having sat up all night, but the wait had been worth it. Quite right to bead the neck, even if the image was slightly off-center. That could be corrected, for the essence was there, on the screen: the intensity of the bearded face, the flailing arm of that young fool, the first glint of blood, red as the window behind them. Dieter had been quite right about that window.
He was planning it in flat black and red mylar cilia. He already had his title: “For My Vamp in Party Red.”