The Tomorrow File (70 page)

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say. “I want to know you.”

I spread her knees wider, standing now between them. I scrape the insides of her naked thighs gently with my fingernails. She closes her eyes.

I kneel. I rub my mustache and beard along her legs. Then begin to kiss. Lick. I pause to look up. Her eyes are open. Somber.

“Untie your shirt,” I tell her.

She obeys. Pulls the knotted shirttails free, opens them wide. Her skin is coarse, bruised. Her liberated breasts swell down. They are heavy eggplants. Purplish. Glossy. Aureoles are hardly distinguishable; nipples are retracted. I lean forward awkwardly. I blow gently on one nipple. It begins to grow. When it has extruded sufficiently, I touch it softly with my wet tongue. Her entire body leaps convulsively on the chair. Couch. I pulp the elongating nipple between my lips. The other begins to extrude. Her breasts harden. She slumps sideways. I ease her down. Put a pillow beneath her head. Her hair is quite long. Black without luster. Streaked with gray.

I take her hand, make her cup a breast. Then I kiss her lips. Lightly. Our tongues serving. As we flicker, I push her hand and breast upward. Pull her head forward, down. Her breast is full enough so that we can both kiss and suck. Simultaneously. Tongues circling the erectile nipple, meeting, circling. The taste is sharp, almost acrid..

Now her breasts are slick. Slipping from my grasp. I draw back from her. Gesture toward her shorts. Then they are gone. The opened shirt gone from her shoulders. She is naked. I am still wearing my silver zipsuit. Red tab on right epaulette.

I begin. Moving her hands and fingers to show her how she must hold herself for me. Her knees are up. Then her feet. High in the sky. A cloud beneath her hips. Warm moisture collects on my mustache and beard. She adores the beard. Worships it. I nuzzle deeper, straining my tongue. She groans.

I slide her fingers lower. Demonstrate how I want her buttocks prized apart. My fingers are coated with petrogrease. I slide into the brown rosebud.

“Am I hurting you?” I ask anxiously.

“Deeper,” she says.

My forefinger probes slyly. She begins a slow paroxysm. My other hand fumbles at her navel. Exploring slickly.

Her movements become stormy. Unruly. I manipulate her. First here. There. Together. It crescends. The bruises on her coarse flesh become livid. Bright violet and yellow splotches. Then, with a great pelvis heave, she summits. I hang on, continuing my service.

I turned my eyes upward to see her expression. I saw Paul Bumford. Leaning over me.

“Nick?” he said. Anxiously, I thought. “You all right?” 

“Time?” I asked.

He glanced at his stopwatch.

“From the moment you took the package,” he said, “about seventy-three minutes.”

I looked about the room. Seth Lucas was checking the dials and long strip of paper tape. Mary Bergstrom was regarding me curiously. Maya Leighton was grinning, the clotted towel wadded up in her hands.

“Total time disorientation,” I reported.

“Get this:” I said. “Euphoric physical weakness. Visual dis-acuity. Total auditory loss. From the looks of that towel Maya is playing with, I gather I summited. But no memory of it. No psychic guilt. No hangover. No regrets. Quite an experience.
Quite
an experience. How much time elapsed after I stopped talking?” They all looked at me queerly.

“You never stopped talking,” Paul said. “Not for a second.”

I groaned. “You mean you’ve got it all on tape? Even the eggplants?”

“Even the eggplants,” Maya giggled. “And the bruises.” “That was interesting,” Paul said. “Nick, do you agree that—” “Please.” I held up a hand. “Let’s have no cut-rate psychoanalysis of my personal hangups. We’re just trying to evaluate a new drug. Do you think my verbal outpouring was a result of the UP?”

“Nooo,” Paul said slowly. Judiciously. “That particular reaction hasn’t been reported in any other test. I think it was just your conditioning. A desire to give us—if you’ll excuse the expression— a blow-by-blow account. Let’s go through some physical and mental coordination workups now. Seth, how does he look?”

“Parameters back to normal,” Lucas reported. “Pulse, respiration, and skin temperature just slightly higher, but nothing significant.”

“You summited, baby,” Maya Leighton said decisively. Enviously? “You really ultimized.”

A few hours later I was in my bedroom, robed, serving at my desk. Knock at the door; I called out, and Paul entered, carrying his vodka-and-Smack, and bringing me one. .

“For this relief, much thanks,” I said. “Hamlet.” I took a big gulp. “I’m trying to rough a report on the UP while it’s all fresh. You might send it on to Houston.”

“Of course. Your posttests proved affirmative. Any late reactions?”

“Warm lassitude. Pleasant. Slight physical weakness. No mental or psychological effects I can detect. Paul, if possible I’d like them to work on that initial jolt. See if they can mildify it. A slower lead-in would be more effective. Another thing that disturbs me: Shouldn’t I have been physically conscious of the orgasm?”

Paul computed a moment. Frowning.

“No,” he said finally. “Not necessarily. The fantasized experience apparently was psychologically satisfying. To such an extent that you summited. While still under the UP, you felt no sense of loss, did you?”

“No.”

“And when you came out of it, you felt satiety. Correct?” 

“Correct.”

“Then your objection now is based on your conditioning to conventional orgasm. Did the UP satisfy you?”

“Yes. Definitely, yes.”

“Well, then it achieved the goal. In your case, apparently, the psychological, or psychic, ruled the physical. The effect of the UP won’t be identical on all objects. Some will be aware of physical orgasm. To some objects it might be great art, music, poetry, cruelty, suffering—anything. It’s formulated to be generic.”

“ Yes. Still, I’d hardly call an involuntary emission the Ultimate Pleasure.”

“Not even in the context of your fantasy?”

“Well . . . that’s a thought. It was quite a go. Strange.”

“Nick, could I—no, no! Don’t hold up your hand. I’m not going to analyze your dream. At least not try to individualize it. But to universalize. . . . The problem, we agreed, is not the UP injection > itself, but the surrounding social and political environments.” 

“So?”

“Would it be reasonable to interpret your fantasy as one of i submission? Total surrender? ”

I computed a moment.

“I think it could be interpreted that way.”

Paul nodded. Thoughtful.

“You haven’t had a chance to scan the Houston interviews. But the same factor turns up in a surprising percentage of experimental object tapes.”

“What factor?” I asked.

“The slave factor,” he said. Looking at me steadily.

I blinked at him. I had an unpleasant feeling that he had gone beyond me. That he was off somewhere. In realms I could not appreciate.

. “Let’s get this straight,” I said to him. “Are you suggesting the slave factor may be primary to Ultimate Pleasure?”

“Yes,” Paul said. Definitely. “All indicators point that way.”  

“And?”

“If it proves out, it should give us a valid guide to the essential nature of the political society that might enforce and enhance that pleasure.”

I stared at him a long moment. He
was
ahead of me. Computing in spheres that had never concerned me.

“You
have
made a giant step,” I said.

“Yes.” He nodded. “I have. Look, Nick,” he said earnestly, “we agreed a political drug could only function with optimum effect in a society that complements it. Neither of us brainstormed the structure of that society. If, after additional testing, the slave factor in the UP proves to be valid, wouldn’t you say it constitutes a steer to the nature of the society required?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe that UP injection does have residual and negative mental effects. Paul, there’s something inoperative in your computing.

It just doesn’t scan. I don’t know where you’re off. I can’t isolate it.

I just feel you’re wrong. In any event, assuming what you say
is
operative, what do you propose now?”

He hunched forward on his chair. Very serious. Very sincere.

“Nick,” he said, “this Operation Lewisohn gives us a marvelous opportunity for a field test. About half the staff have already come aboard at Hospice No. 4. The remainder should be reporting in a week or so. What if I call in a miniteam of psychoneurologists from Houston as observers. We divide the staff of Operation Lewisohn into thirds. Mixed disciplines. One-third a control group. One-third on placebos. One-third on the UP. Placebos and UP injections awarded for good service and extended hours. And so forth. Let the psychoneurologists run a computer study. Analyzing hours served, efficiency, morale, physical condition, and so forth. When Operation Lewisohn is over—whether it succeeds or fails— we should have a concretized idea of the value of the UP in a realistic productive situation.”

“Good idea,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

A year ago, even six months ago, it would have been my idea.

I checked on the progress of Operation Lewisohn at Hospice No. 4, finalized plans with Joe Wellington for a PR gig through the Midwest, sent three dozen natural roses to Louise Rawlins Tucker, and then returned to GPA-1. There I spent a day serving with Phoebe Huntzinger and her computemiks. They were programming our largest hardware, a King Mk. V, with a 200,000-word English vocabulary, plus additional foreign words and phrases.

“More, Phoebe,” I said.

“More?”

“Pick up a dictionary of profanity and obscenity. Add it to your storage. Shouldn’t be more than a thousand bits.”

“Profanity and obscenity,” she repeated. “I wish I knew what this was all about.”'

“It’s better you don’t,” I told her. “Rush your wire link with Denver. The moment it’s through and tested, let me know.”

“And then?”

“Then you pull it,” I laughed. “And switch to Alexandria, Virginia. When I tell you.”

“Whee!” she yelled. Tossing papers into the air. “Insanity incorporated.”

It wasn’t. Really. It was carefully structured. With a timetable and flow chart. I had called in a project systems em with top security, and he had served on the logistics. We had allowed wiggle room, but as of that date in late April, we were right on schedule. As to equipment and objects. We had prepared fall-back positions and fail-safe alternatives. I was satisfied we were contravening Murphy’s Law.

The twenty-eighth of April. About 2315.1 was in my apartment at Manhattan Landing. Packing to begin the Midwest PR tour in the morning. Computing how many Somnorifics I might need, when the flasher chimed. Paul came on. Visage grave and pulled. “Paul?” I said. “What is it?”

“It’s an open line,” he said tensely. “I’ll cheat on what I say. Keep your questions glossed. Got that?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“The business in GPA-11. The stamps. Sam’s stakeout. Follow that?”

“Stakeout? In D. C.?” I asked.

“Yes. I got all this from Art Roach. He got it from pals in BPS. Not complete. Anyway, about an hour ago, another attempt.” 

“Ohhh,” I breathed.

“Caught him. One em. Contaminating the adhesive. Follow?” 

“Yes.”

“Tried to put a tranquilizer dart into him. Sam’s servers. But before it worked, he gulped. Suicided. Got that?”

“I think so. Instant?”

“No. But he’s stopping. No way. You understand? A mouthful.”

“That should do it,” I said.

“You know him,” Paul said.

“
What?'

“Not know him. But saw him. I knew him. Met him. Talked to him. Raddo. Arthur Raddo. That pale, blond fanatic. At the Beist Christmas meeting.”

“Oh-oh,” I said. “The wowser.”

“Yes. Served at Bureau of Printing and Engraving.”

“Anyone else?”

“No word. As of now. Just him.”

“Motive?”

“Not known. Sam is checking.”

“I can imagine. No doubt?”

“None. He had a little bottle of the stuff. Five cc. It broke when he fell. A TDT had to move in.”

I was silent.

“Nick, it’s not good. The Beist connection.”

“Maybe no connection at all.”

“That’s what I’m hoping. Or that the CD will pillow it. Because of you-know-who.”

“Yes.”

“I think he was just a loner.”

“Hope you’re right. But why?”

“No idea.”

“Anything else?”

“No,” he said.

“Thanks for flashing. Let me know what happens.”

“Will do. Have a good trip.”

“Thanks.”

We switched off.

Arthur Raddo. The young em with lank blond hair falling untidily over his forehead. Enormous eyes with a fervid stare. Flat lips he licked constantly. Wearing a wrinkled, soiled zipsuit of a PS-5. His physical appearance gave the impression of limp ineffectuality. But his voice was unexpectedly loud, passionate. Still, I was certain he was a frail.

That was the em who had poisoned thousands of objects in GPA-11.

But that wasn’t important. At the moment. What was crucial, to me, in Paul’s staccato report, was the 5 cc flask Raddo had been carrying. The bottle that smashed when he suicided. That required calling in a Toxin Decontamination Team. A 5 cc flask of
Clostridium botulinum
in glycerol.

I immediately went into the same drill. Pulled on a raincoat. Slogged through a rainy night to B Lab. Down to the third sublevel. Into the pharmacology library. I went through a charade of looking up acetylsalicylic acid in the file computer. Because I remembered 416HBL-CW3 was stored in the restricted section in Room G, Bin 3, Stack 4, Position R.

I finally buzzed a dozing Vinnie Altman awake. He let me in and I signed the register while he breathed petroport fumes in my face. He wanted to talk. I didn’t.

I went directly to the room, the bin, the stack, the position. Extracted tooth. A gap. The 5 cc flask was gone.

I stood there. Staring at that emptiness. Smelling the piercing, pinching odor of manipulation. I had been. That forgery. The 2 cc taken, the bottle left. What else would I do but replace the missing