Ballroom of the Skies (8 page)

Karen hurried down the block with him and around a corner. She stopped and leaned against the side of a scabrous building, dipped again into her blouse pocket to bring out a cigarette and hang it on her lower lip. Lorin lit the cigarette for her with a hand that trembled. She could sense his emotions. Distaste for her, annoyance with the situation, a vague shame that he had run. She knew that he was a troubled man, as who wouldn’t be with the illusions Shard’s agent had provided for him to block the newspaper article. Yet she was slightly uneasy. She had studied Branson and Lorin. She knew them well And now Lorin seemed a bit
too
upset. She wished she dared take him under full control. He might be hard to handle.

“I cert’ny want to thank you, mister.”

“That’s all right. I hope I didn’t get us in trouble, miss.”

“Karen. Karen Voss. I bet I know you. I bet you’re Dake Lorin. I used to see your picture next to your column all the time.”

He looked mildly pleased. “Don’t tell me you used to read it.”

“Sure. Maybe you wouldn’t think so. I go for that stuff. Politics, economics, international relations. I got a friend. He’s got money. Lots of money. He was saying just the other day he’d like to see you back in business. He says you used to make a lot of sense. Maybe he’d back you—buy space in a paper or something.”

“The Public Disservice Act keeps anyone from saying anything very critical, Miss Voss. I don’t think your friend would want to join me on a shale pile.”

She snorted. “Nobody touches him. Not twice anyway. I guess you heard of him. Miguel Larner.”

“The racketeer? Certainly I’ve heard of him. He’s got his hands in every filthy …”

“Don’t go Christer, Mr. Lorin. Mig has got … well, two sides to his nature. He might be a lot of help to you.” She was secretly amused at her words. “He’s a good friend of mine. Want to see him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Maybe you’re in some kind of trouble. He likes helping people. You wouldn’t think so, would you? But he does.”

“I don’t think there’s anything he can do for me.”

“You in a rush? You got an appointment or something? It isn’t far.”

She could sense his indecision. She urged him gently. At last he agreed reluctantly. She broke the connection by sliding the stud on the catch of her bag. Miguel would have heard Lorin agree. He’d be ready. She walked beside the tall man, alert for any form of interception. She hailed a cab, settled back in the seat beside Lorin, giving him a mechanical sultry smile, crossing her round brown legs.

By the time they reached 215th Street he said, accusingly, “Not far?”

“Just a couple more blocks, honey.”

The cab let them out. Lorin paid the fare. She saw his quick curious glance at the sleek above-ground lobby. As they passed through the doorway Karen felt the barrier break, fold shut again behind them. She gave the traditional sigh of relief that came up from the stubbed toes of her shabby pumps. Nothing could touch her in here. Nothing could reach into the warm security of the egg-shaped barrier. The pointed end of the egg was above-ground, making a small dome over the entrance. The rest of the egg encircled all of the levels below-ground. Here Miguel Larner, Stage Three, presided over the agent teams, routed the field operations, maintained the communications
network. Usually, the moment she was inside, she could erase the Karen Voss hypno-fix temporarily and revert to her own identity. But with Lorin in tow she had to keep her makeup on.

The Stage One at the desk had been alerted.

“We want to go down and see Mr. Larner, Johnny.”
How did I do?

“I guess you can go right on down, Miss Voss.”
Nice going, lady.

“Thanks, Johnny.”
And scratch one Stage Two.

“You’re welcome, Miss Voss.”
Don’t get too many credits. We’ll miss having you around.

She led the way back to the elevator. As it slid silently down the shaft she gratefully let the rest of the screens slip. She had released the first one to permit communication with the Stage One at the desk. She felt warmly proud of herself, knowing that she had come out of this with a credit. One step closer to the heart worlds, my girl. One step closer to Training T to become a Stage Three, and then one more tour and you’re out of it, and you can go to work. Next time, by God, they’ll have to do better than this chippy cover. The fix went a little too deep. You had to watch your reflexes.

“Have you known Larner long?”

“A pretty long time. Here we are.” The door slid back and they walked directly from the elevator into the main room of Lanier’s suite. It was a garish room, furnished with the best that Bombay supply houses could offer. One whole wall was a vast and intricate diorama, portraying a walled garden with a pool. Miguel spent a lot of his time by the pool, and the perspective was so cleverly done that it gave the impression of being a vast open space, rather than a twenty by twenty cube cut into bedrock. Miguel kept the controls set in such a way that the diorama changed through each hour of the twenty-four, from cloudless days to full-moon nights.

Miguel was sitting out by the pool in the four o’clock sunlight, a chunky sun-browned man with very little forehead and eyes like oiled anthracite. He wore lemon-yellow bathing trunks, and had a glass in his hand.

He waved casually. “How’s it going, Karen? Come on out. Who’s your friend?”

They went out by the pool. “Don’t you recognize him, Mig? It’s Dake Lorin.”
Is this going to be one or two credits? I broke down a Stage Two.

Miguel reached up with a languid hand. “Nice to know you, Mr. Lorin.”
I suppose you were too busy congratulating yourself to scan properly. Take another look and see why it’s only one credit for not seeing the obvious.

“I was telling Dake how you always liked his stuff, Mig.”
All right, so I missed it. But when you assign two and they assign five, it keeps you busy. I see what you mean. Carelessness. Something about a fingernail.

“I’ve missed your column, Mr. Lorin. Used to get a charge out of it, the way you hacked at everybody.”
Yes, they should have had somebody there ready with an illusion, checking to see if Lorin accepted the doll.
“Have a drink, folks? Sit down.”

They took poolside chairs. “Gee, I’d go for a collins. How about you, Dake?”
Are you getting what I’m getting, Miguel? He’s balanced on the edge. It’s a little beyond his credibility, and he is wondering about his own sanity.

Miguel pushed a button. The servant appeared almost at once. He gave the orders.
So we must be very careful, girl. A little push might send him over the edge. Once we use him, maybe we can run a check and see. But I don’t think he’d make it. Rigidity there. Father image. Streak of the Puritan. Somber messiah. They seldom check through. Too dependent on the nature of reality.

“Hasn’t Mig got a nice place here, Dake?”
Don’t forget the quota. He might do very nicely.

“I guess I could be classified as unemployed right now, Mr. Larner,” Dake said. “I’ve been working for the government for a year. And today my … superior died. A bit suddenly. It was sort of unofficial employment, so I guess that ends it.”

“Weren’t you working for Branson?” Miguel asked.

“Why, yes! How did you know that?”

“I got sources. I have to keep in touch. Anything
Branson did might effect imports and exports. And anything that effects those, changes my income. You got any plans, Mr. Lorin?”

“I’m writing a newspaper article for Thursday publication.”

“Hot?”

“It would have been hotter if Mr. Branson hadn’t died. It will probably be classified as a Disservice to the State.”

“Putting your head in the noose, eh?”

“I suppose you could call it that. It just seems … more important than what can happen to me. Trouble, though, is that it’s critical of Darwin Branson. He’s the man who died today.”

“You need a place to work?”

“Thanks, no. A man is letting me use an office.”

“If it doesn’t work out, I got a place here you can use. A nice setup.”
Do you want to fix Kelly, girl? Now that we have him here I want him to stay.

“This would be a nice quiet place to work, Dake,” Karen said.
Let Dale do it. I’ve been outside too long. It made hash of my nerves, Miguel. See how restless he is getting? He wants to leave.

“I changed my mind, Karen,” Miguel said. “This is easier. I just put him under full control.”

She looked quickly at Lorin, saw the automaton rigidity of his posture, the eyes in trance.
But how can you
…

“Aloud, please. Para-voice is an insidious habit on tour. The easiest way to keep him here is to take full control. Let him believe he went back to Kelly and Kelly changed his mind and gave him a refund of his money, and backed out. Then we’ll release him up above in the lobby with the idea he has come here to take up my offer. It just seems simpler. Ready now, and I’ll turn him over to you. Take him to one of the rooms upstairs and give him the complete memory pattern of seeing Kelly and coming back here at, say, nine this evening. Leave him in stasis up there and then you can rest and take him up to the lobby at nine.”

Karen waited. When Miguel released Lorin she caught him deftly. There was a split second of release in which
Lorin stirred and made a faint sigh, almost a moan. Then she had him. As she went through the wide doors into the main room and toward the elevator, she looked back and saw him following her with that odd walking-on-eggs stride of the controlled. There was always a pathetic vulnerability about the controlled which touched her. It seemed particularly poignant in this case, all the tall hard strength of the man following as docile as a lamb.

She took the elevator up two levels and walked him down a corridor to an empty room. Lorin sat on the edge of the bed, turned stiffly, lifted his feet up, and lay back, eyes open and staring, arms rigid at his side.

Karen sat on the edge of the bed and quickly took him through all the mechanical actions of returning to New Jersey, talking to Kelly, listening to the man’s protestations, accepting the refund, returning to the city. She took him on an aimless walk, had him eat a solitary meal, decide to take Miguel’s offer, and return to the apartment. She stopped the visualization the moment he stepped through the door, through the barrier. It was the work of but five minutes to give him the entire visualization, and it took another few seconds to push consciousness even further back so that he would remain in stasis until she called to get him.

With an impulse that surprised her a bit, she bent over and kissed his unconscious lips lightly. Poor big oaf. Poor bewildered earthling, torn this way and that. Pawn in a game he’d never know. She kissed her fingertip, touched the middle of his forehead, smiled down at him, and left the room, shutting the door quietly, even though it would have made no difference at all if she had slammed it.

Kelly stubbornly pushed the money back across the desk.
He said, “Now take it, Mr. Lorin. I already told you. I’ve reconsidered. I don’t think that disclaiming the article would give me enough immunity. They’d wonder why I accepted it.”

Dake wearily pocketed the money, stood up. “I guess there’s nothing I can do but look for someone else.”

Kelly leaned back in his chair. “Now if you’d come to me with a little better backing. Say with a note from Mig Larner, or somebody like that …”

“What made you mention his name?”

“I was just using him as an example. If Mig says you won’t get in trouble, you won’t. He keeps all the right wheels greased, that lad does.”

Dake left Kelly’s place. It was after six. He had a long search for a cab. Once he was back in Manhattan he got off at New Times Square. Strange day. Darwin … or what was supposed to be Darwin … dying like that. He felt strange. Almost unreal. It was an odd sensation, as though his side vision were impaired, as though he could only see straight ahead, and everything else was a grayness, a nothingness. It was the same with sounds. He kept hearing sharp individual sounds, but the background noise of the city seemed to be missing. It seemed to him as though there were some serious impairment of all his senses. Yet, oddly, he could not seem to bring himself to stop and check that impairment—to turn his head quickly, to listen consciously for all the background noise. And those people he did see, those normal characters of the streets were subtly altered. Colors had slightly different
values. And his instinctive and automatic appraisals seemed distorted.

He saw a lovely girl looking into a cluttered shoddy store window, examining the ersatz fabrics. He found himself looking at her with a peculiar feeling of envy and jealousy. And he was conscious of the breadth of shoulder of the men. He could not be certain, or even investigate the fact, but he had the wry idea that he was mincing along rather than walking. The world had a dreamlike aspect, and it seemed to him that, almost on an unconscious level, he was trying to tell himself that he was dreaming, yet not being able to force the thought up to the level of action.

He found a quiet restaurant where he had never been before. He ordered a sweet drink which normally he despised. And found it surprisingly good. He ordered a very light meal, and yet it seemed to satisfy him completely. The world was a bit out of focus, and yet he could not capture his wandering attention and apply his intelligence to a thorough appraisal of exactly where and why it was out of focus.

After he finished the meal he decided that the next step was definitely to return to see Miguel Larner. He decided to work it from a different angle this time. Complete the article, and then find someone willing to print it, either free or for a fee. Let the article speak for itself. Let the public learn exactly what Stephen Chu and Garva had been willing to do. Let them learn about the trade concessions Gondohl Lahl had promised. Let them learn that the enemy coalitions were, behind their brave front, pathetically eager to effect a compromise, achieve a period of stability. And show them all how the conversation with Smith had destroyed this chance.