Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (10 page)

It all has to be repeated while her great jaw slowly sets.
Show me the fire I walk through.
Finally P. Burke’s prints are in his ‘corder, the man holding up the big rancid girl-body without a sign of distaste. It makes you wonder what else he does.

And then—THE MAGIC. Sudden silent trot of litterbearers tucking P. Burke into something quite different from a bellevue stretcher, the oiled slide into the daddy of all luxury ambulances—real flowers in that holder!—and the long jarless rush to nowhere. Nowhere is warm and gleaming and kind with nurses. (Where did you hear that money can’t buy genuine kindness?) And clean clouds folding P. Burke into bewildered sleep.

. . . Sleep which merges into feedings and washings and more sleeps, into drowsy moments of afternoon where midnight should be, and gentle businesslike voices and friendly (but very few) faces, and endless painless hyposprays and peculiar numbnesses. And later comes the steadying rhythm of days and nights, and a quickening which P. Burke doesn’t identify as health, but only knows that the fungus place in her armpit is gone. And then she’s up and following those few new faces with growing trust, first tottering, then walking strongly, all better now, clumping down the short hall to the tests, tests, tests, and the other things.

And here is our girl, looking—

If possible, worse than before. (You thought this was Cinderella transistorized?)

The disimprovement in her looks comes from the electrode jacks peeping out of her sparse hair, and there are other meldings of flesh and metal. On the other hand, that collar and spinal plate are really an asset; you won’t miss seeing that neck.

P. Burke is ready for training in her new job.

The training takes place in her suite and is exactly what you’d call a charm course. How to walk, sit, eat, speak, blow her nose, how to stumble, to urinate, to hiccup—DELICIOUSLY. How to make each nose-blow or shrug delightfully, subtly, different from any ever spooled before. As the man said, it’s hard work.

But P. Burke proves apt. Somewhere in that horrible body is a gazelle, a houri, who would have been buried forever without this crazy chance. See the ugly duckling go!

Only it isn’t precisely P. Burke who’s stepping, laughing, shaking out her shining hair. How could it be? P. Burke is doing it all right, but she’s doing it through something. The something is to all appearances a live girl. (You were warned, this is the FUTURE.)

When they first open the big cryocase and show her her new body, she says just one word. Staring, gulping, “How?”

Simple, really. Watch P. Burke in her sack and scuffs stump down the hall beside Joe, the man who supervises the technical part of her training. Joe doesn’t mind P. Burke’s looks, he hasn’t noticed them. To Joe, system matrices are beautiful.

They go into a dim room containing a huge cabinet like a one-man sauna and a console for Joe. The room has a glass wall that’s all dark now. And just for your information, the whole shebang is five hundred feet underground near what used to be Carbondale, Pa.

Joe opens the sauna cabinet like a big clamshell standing on end with a lot of funny business inside. Our girl shucks her shift and walks into it bare, totally unembarrassed.
Eager.
She settles in face-forward, butting jacks into sockets. Joe closes it carefully onto her humpback. Clunk. She can’t see in there or hear or move. She hates this minute. But how she loves what comes next!

Joe’s at his console, and the lights on the other side of the glass wall come up. A room is on the other side, all fluff and kicky bits, a girly bedroom. In the bed is a small mound of silk with a rope of yellow hair hanging out.

The sheet stirs and gets whammed back flat.

Sitting up in the bed is the darlingest girl child you’ve EVER seen. She quivers—porno for angels. She sticks both her little arms straight up, flips her hair, looks around full of sleepy pazazz. Then she can’t resist rubbing her hands down over her minibreasts and belly. Because, you see, it’s the god-awful P. Burke who is sitting there hugging her perfect girl-body, looking at you out of delighted eyes.

Then the kitten hops out of bed and crashes flat on the floor.

From the sauna in the dim room comes a strangled noise. P. Burke, trying to rub her wired-up elbow, is suddenly smothered in
two
bodies, electrodes jerking in her flesh. Joe juggles inputs, crooning into his mike. The flurry passes; it’s all right.

In the lighted room the elf gets up, casts a cute glare at the glass wall, and goes into a transparent cubicle. A bathroom, what else? She’s a live girl, and live girls have to go to the bathroom after a night’s sleep even if their brains are in a sauna cabinet in the next room. And P. Burke isn’t in that cabinet, she’s in the bathroom. Perfectly simple, if you have the glue for that closed training circuit that’s letting her run her neural system by remote control.

Now let’s get one thing clear. P. Burke does not
feel
her brain is in the sauna room, she feels she’s in that sweet little body. When you wash your hands, do you feel the water is running on your brain? Of course not. You feel the water on your hand, although the “feeling” is actually a potential-pattern flickering over the electrochemical jelly between your ears. And it’s delivered there via the long circuits from your hands. Just so, P. Burke’s brain in the cabinet feels the water on her hands in the bathroom. The fact that the signals have jumped across space on the way in makes no difference at all. If you want the jargon, it’s known as eccentric projection or sensory reference and you’ve done it all your life. Clear?

Time to leave the honeypot to her toilet training—she’s made a booboo with the toothbrush, because P. Burke can’t get used to what she sees in the mirror—

But wait, you say. Where did that girl-body come from?

P. Burke asks that too, dragging out the words.

“They grow ‘em,” Joe tells her. He couldn’t care less about the flesh department. “PDs. Placental decanters. Modified embryos, see? Fit the control implants in later. Without a Remote Operator it’s just a vegetable. Look at the feet—no callus at all.” (He knows because they told him.)

“Oh . . . oh, she’s incredible. . . .”

“Yeah, a neat job. Want to try walking-talking mode today? You’re coming on fast.”

And she is. Joe’s reports and the reports from the nurse and the doctor and style man go to a bushy man upstairs who is some kind of medical cybertech but mostly a project administrator. His reports in turn go—to the GTX boardroom? Certainly not, did you think this is
a big
thing? His reports just go up. The point is, they’re green, very green. P. Burke promises well.

So the bushy man—Dr. Tesla—has procedures to initiate. The little kitten’s dossier in the Central Data Bank, for instance. Purely routine. And the phase-in schedule which will put her on the scene. This is simple: a small exposure in an off-network holoshow.

Next he has to line out the event which will fund and target her. That takes budget meetings, clearances, coordinations. The Burke project begins to recruit and grow. And there’s the messy business of the name, which always gives Dr. Tesla an acute pain in the bush.

The name comes out weird, when it’s suddenly discovered that Burke’s “P.” stands for “Philadelphia.” Philadelphia? The astrologer grooves on it. Joe thinks it would help identification. The semantics girl references
brotherly love, Liberty Bell, main line, low teratogenesis
, blah-blah. Nicknames Philly? Pala? Pooty? Delphi? Is it good, bad? Finally “Delphi” is gingerly declared goodo. (“Burke” is replaced by something nobody remembers.)

Coming along now. We’re at the official checkout down in the underground suite, which is as far as the training circuits reach. The bushy Dr. Tesla is there, braced by two budgetary types and a quiet fatherly man whom he handles like hot plasma.

Joe swings the door wide and she steps shyly in.

Their little Delphi, fifteen and flawless.

Tesla introduces her around. She’s child-solemn, a beautiful baby to whom something so wonderful has happened you can feel the tingles. She doesn’t smile, she . . . brims. That brimming joy is all that shows of P. Burke, the forgotten hulk in the sauna next door. But P. Burke doesn’t know she’s alive—it’s Delphi who lives, every warm inch of her.

One of the budget types lets go a libidinous snuffle and freezes. The fatherly man, whose name is Mr. Cantle, clears his throat.

“Well, young lady, are you ready to go to work?”

“Yes, sir,” gravely from the elf.

“We’ll see. Has anybody told you what you’re going to do for us?”

“No, sir.” Joe and Tesla exhale quietly.

“Good.” He eyes her, probing for the blind brain in the room next door.

“Do you know what
advertising
is?”

He’s talking dirty, hitting to shock. Delphi’s
eyes
widen and her little chin goes up. Joe is in ecstasy at the complex expressions P. Burke is getting through. Mr. Cantle waits.

“It’s, well, it’s when they used to tell people to buy things.” She swallows. “It’s not allowed.”

“That’s right.” Mr. Cantle leans back, grave. “Advertising as it used to be is against the law.
A display other than the legitimate use of the product, intended to promote its sale.
In former times every manufacturer was free to tout his wares any way, place, or time he could afford. All the media and most of the landscape was taken up with extravagant competing displays. The thing became uneconomic. The public rebelled. Since the so-called Huckster Act sellers have been restrained to, I quote, displays in or on the product itself, visible during its legitimate use or in on-premise sales.” Mr. Cantle leans forward. “Now tell me, Delphi, why do people buy one product rather than another?”

“Well . . .” Enchanting puzzlement from Delphi. “They, um, they see them and like them, or they hear about them from somebody?” (Touch of P. Burke there; she didn’t say, from a friend.)

“Partly. Why did
you
buy your particular body-lift?”

“I never had a body-lift, sir.”

Mr. Cantle frowns; what gutters do they drag for these Remotes?

“Well, what brand of water do you drink?”

“Just what was in the faucet, sir,” says Delphi humbly. “I—I did try to boil it—”

“Good god.” He scowls; Tesla stiffens. “Well, what did you boil it in? A cooker?”

The shining yellow head nods.

“What
brand
of cooker did you buy?”

“I didn’t buy it, sir,” says frightened P. Burke through Delphi’s lips. “But—I know the best kind! Ananga has a Burnbabi. I saw the name when she—”

“Exactly!” Cantle’s fatherly beam comes back strong; the Burnbabi account is a strong one, too. “You saw Ananga using one so you thought it must be good, eh? And it is good, or a great human being like Ananga wouldn’t be using it. Absolutely right. And now, Delphi, you know what you’re going to be doing for us. You’re going to show some products. Doesn’t sound very hard, does it?”

“Oh, no, sir . . .” Baffled child’s stare; Joe gloats.

“And you must never,
never
tell anyone what you’re doing.” Cantle’s eyes bore for the brain behind this seductive child.

“You’re wondering why we ask you to do this, naturally. There’s a very serious reason. All those products people use, foods and healthaids and cookers and cleaners and clothes and cars—they’re all made by
people.
Somebody put in years of hard work designing and making them. A man comes up with a fine new idea for a better product. He has to get a factory and machinery, and hire workmen. Now. What happens if people have no way of hearing about his product? Word of mouth is far too slow and unreliable. Nobody might ever stumble onto his new product or find out how good it was, right? And then he and all the people who worked for him—they’d go bankrupt, right? So, Delphi, there has to be
some way
that large numbers of people can get a look at a good new product, right? How? By letting people see you using it. You’re giving that man a chance.”

Delphi’s little head is nodding in happy relief.

“Yes, Sir, I do see now—but sir, it seems so sensible, why don’t they let you—”

Cantle smiles sadly.

“It’s an overreaction, my dear. History goes by swings. People overreact and pass harsh unrealistic laws which attempt to stamp out an essential social process. When this happens, the people who understand have to carry on as best they can until the pendulum swings back.” He sighs. “The Huckster Laws are bad, inhuman laws, Delphi, despite their good intent. If they were strictly observed they would wreak havoc. Our economy, our society, would be cruelly destroyed. We’d be back in caves!” His inner fire is showing; if the Huckster Laws were strictly enforced he’d be back punching a databank.

“It’s our duty, Delphi. Our solemn social duty. We are not breaking the law. You will be using the product. But people wouldn’t understand, if they knew. They would become upset just as you did. So you must be very, very careful not to mention any of this to anybody.”

(And somebody will be very, very carefully monitoring Delphi’s speech circuits.)

“Now we’re all straight, aren’t we? Little Delphi here”—he is speaking to the invisible creature next door—“little Delphi is going to live a wonderful, exciting life. She’s going to be a girl people watch. And she’s going to be using fine products people will be glad to know about and helping the good people who make them. Yours will be a genuine social contribution.” He keys up his pitch; the creature in there must be older.

Delphi digests this with ravishing gravity.

“But sir, how do I—?”

“Don’t worry about a thing. You’ll have people behind you whose job it is to select the most worthy products for you to use. Your job is just to do as they say. They’ll show you what outfits to wear to parties, what suncars and viewers to buy, and so on. That’s all you have to do.”

Parties—clothes—suncars! Delphi’s pink mouth opens. In P. Burke’s starved seventeen-year-old head the ethics of product sponsorship float far away.