The Pleasure Tube (9 page)

The naked back of a tall, thin man, his buttocks pinched together, standing facing a recliner, the roundish, flushed face of—by God, it is-—Erica, she is unmistakable—soft, wide mouth, blonde hair in thick curls down to her neck. She is seated on the recliner, just behind him. Cards lie on a small cubic table before her, she flips a card over, something happens with Tonio— impossible to tell precisely what, his back is to us, but I can see his leg muscles tense.

"Tape?" I say.

"Live."

I look at Collette; she is watching intently with a smile. I look back again, look at Collette.

"Do they know? Good God," I say, "doesn't this make you feel—I mean, aren't we invading their privacy?"

"No," she laughs. "If we were on another kind of ship—but not here. We're free here. We can do anything."

I watch, Erica's hands are up, Tonio leans over. "You're right." I grin. "I feel free here. I've never felt so free before. It's amazing."

What I can't do justice to is the next stage in the transformation. After we watch for a time, Collette becomes anxious about something. I am aroused, but she will not let me touch her. "It's better to wait," she says. Yet she is anxious.

Wait for what?

She punches up the console inlaid in the table—Erica and Tonio turn toward us as if on signal, and—
the screen tracks apart from its middle;
the cabin doubles; Erica and Tonio stand before us, not holographically, but in their perfumed, perspiring flesh. The fantasy co-op: a moving wall. My disorientation is given another turn, Collette is hugging Erica, they know one another.

Erica turns out to be Tonio's service, Tonio a videon producer; he's anxious to know how I liked the day's show! I'm anxious to get my hands on Erica. I do. We all do, and on one another. This goes on through dinner.

Whenever dinner is. Tonio is directing Collette in a masturbation sequence he is videotaping; he says she inspires him. Erica and I are in the kitchen/bar, Erica has begun to microwave coquilles Saint-Jacques, I had to help her set the unit. She has located a steel can of whipping cream and has laid a line of it around my midsection; she licks it slowly, holding my legs and pressing her large breasts against my thighs—the effect is extraordinary. I can watch Collette through the divider. Erica is a fleshy woman, moans with me in her mouth, Tonio's "Now lean farther, Collette" behind her.

The window/wall is a mirror and Tonio has Collette alongside it moving her hands over her body, leaning back, leaning down, leaning back as she moves in time to Jamaican music. She is leaning down as Erica and I come in with the food—Tonio is masturbating. I cannot resist entering Collette from behind. After a minute we tumble to the rug and Erica is somehow beneath Collette and Collette begins licking Erica's breasts, running circles around the nipples, taking them full into her mouth. Finally I roll from Collette and as Tonio enters her I enter Erica from above. By the time we finish, the scallops need reheating, but they are delicious, the wine has gone flat, but Collette, gorgeous woman, has found some champagne.

It is much later. We have all taken waferlike dosages of D-Pharmacon. I am on the recliner with Erica, Tonio is fixing a snack.

Collette comes to the recliner. "Room for me?' she says.

Erica shifts over, slips away to Tonio.

Collette takes my face in her warm hands and kisses me with a wide mouth and a flashing tongue. "You luscious man, you," she whispers. "Mountain climber. Why don't you just program yourself on a continuous circuit here, ride with me all the time?"

"And what if I get bored?" I say.

Collette kisses me again. "Do I bore you?'

I laugh.

"No," she says, "you're right. We ought to go alpine climbing together, to the Andes."

"Or sign on for the next research ship, fly to the stars. You could be my aide."

"What a dream," she giggles. "I thought of something else I like about you. You don't hold your breath. Watch Tonio, he does. You don't, you just breathe when it happens. You know how to fly."

"That's something I've missed, flying. This ship rides like a barge."

"What's it really like?"

"Like this," I say, cupping her breast in my hand. "Like this," I say, kissing her nipple, sliding my hand up her thigh.

When I wake the next morning, Erica is preparing breakfast in the kitchen/bar, has an accident with the range, that's what wakes me.

"I wish Collette were here," I hear her saying. "She knows how to run this mother-fucking thing."

I look around the cabin, stretch, and yawn. I see Tonio isn't here, either; the cabin, my cabin, has been tidied up— the videon again a window/wall, now showing suborbital flight, though we are still quite a distance from the planet. "She'll be back," I say.

"No, she won't," I think I hear.

"What?"

"She won't be back," Erica says very clearly; now she is leaning around the divider. "She's been transferred."

"What?"

"Transferred.
They came for her last night. You were out like a stone; she was, too, really. Well, nobody wanted to wake you."

"Tonio?" I say.

"No, no," Erica is saying, she's almost laughing. "Tonic's switched to male service for LasVenus. No, I'm going to take care of you."

She brings the tray and sets it down on the coffee table, strokes my chest. "Your
coun
is a love root, my
couillon
its flower," she says. Apropos of what? "Wait and you'll see," she tells me. "Eat."

"How can she be transferred? That isn't the understanding I had."

"It happens," Erica mutters through a fistful of pills she is taking one at a time. "I think she may have gotten herself in a little bit of trouble, but it can't be serious. Not where to, but
whom
to, and how should I know?" She is downing pills one after the other, she must have five more left in her hand.

I ask her why the drugs.

"We're on a downangle already, I just know it. I can't stand landing or taking off."

The coffee boils over in the kitchen, Erica lurches up. "Goddammit."

"Can you find out?"

"What?"

"Where she went, whom she was transferred to."

"You know, you'd better watch your step," Erica says from the kitchen/bar. "One of the security men last night said there was a tracer out on you."

I feel blood rush to my neck, my heart beginning to pound.

"Whom to, Erica?" She says nothing. "If you don't tell me, I'm going to find out for myself."

"Shit," she says. "Look at this mess. I'm on your side, lover, but you're not going to get anywhere on this one. Steiner," she says. "Steiner, Eva B.
That's
who."

I reach Giroti on audio—he has been awake for hours, he encourages me to pack all of my clothes. The next three days we will spend at LasVenus, he wants to show me something he's had flown in.

I tell him my service has been transferred, I want her back. Is there anything he can do?

"Ahhh," he says. "Did she do something special? Tell me about it."

"I'm not sure that's it, Massimo, it's more complicated."

"A man as young as you, don't get attached," he tells me. "You must be part Italian."

"I want to find out why," I tell him. "And I want her back. Is there a way I can make an inquiry?'

"Ahhh, passion, to be so young. In the circuits of the ship—well, a man like you can find out almost anything. But to get her back... No, if I were you I'd give it some serious thinking. Since it wasn't your request, it was handled from the outside. That's very unusual."

"Then you know nothing about it?'

"Nooo, I heard nothing. You didn't mention this, my friend."

It could have been his woman, I think. Massimo and I will talk later, after disembarkation. At the moment I need to make a computer search before we land; the landing could change everything. I ask one more question.

"Who runs the ship, Massimo? I mean, what organization?"

"The corporation," Massimo says. "Which is controlled by EnergyWest. Which is controlled by NoAm Congress. From that you could say SciCom, but with SciCom, who knows?"

"SciCom? Did you say SciCom?"

"Ah, but who knows with them, whether they run anything or not?"

"SciCom."

"Rawley, my friend, good luck. Until we see one another—LasVenus, ah,
fantastico. Ciao,
my friend,
ciao.
Drink to poor Italy."

"Patching in."

"This is traffic. How did you..."

"Do you have an open line?"

"Iden, please." Another voice crackles: "He can use 363." First voice: "I'll need an authorization figure, or do you want this through control? I can give you a circuit in the console dome."

"No, patch me through this terminal, identify as deadheading. What you can do instead of an authorization figure is give me a line through Guam SciCom."

"That's like Sunday at the zoo—uh, look, use 363, it'll be open. How long do you want it?"

"Indef. Let's say a ten-day parameter."

"It's yours. I'll just vacate. That's a big ship—you've got a downangle, LasVenus arrival in less than an hour. Look, when you touch down, you're going to have to loop the channel through ground."

"Affirmative. And in the meantime, how about a sixty-second display on PT/coord. 1427-82, location map LASVENUS, then sixty more, personnel write on Steiner, Eva B., codex 1819-79, passenger PT class one."

"Eva Steiner? The EnergyWest VP, a Director, that one?"

"Eva B."

"Roger and out. Traffic series 300."

SCHWARZCHILD SOLUTION [=df special solution to general relativity which describes the distance between event horizon and naked singularity.]

I sit at the oblong window of this pale green cushiony room, my head throbbing. I am watching the ships being serviced on concrete pads and the light traffic on the trans-port runways. Shuttles sail in on the long glide path on seagull wings past this thick, tinted glass; I watch yet another offload then towed to a pad for dismemberment into units by the cranes. Behind me the wall screen displays the single readout I have been able to punch through. Even with my sign key, every query I make comes to the same thing, the computer's wink for computation and the identical display I have been sitting with for more than two hours. The pale green figures pain my eyes. I can't shake a strange feeling that I've sat here before, waiting, just this way, waiting.

LasVenus DataBase Information Service/7

Current DataBase Information//

Voorst, Rawley//