"EB - Edward L. Ferman - The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction 23rd EditionUC - SS" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine)

The payoff. The precision-engineered and carefully timed upslope leading to climax. The Big Number. I've kept the stim tracks pla-teaued for the past three sets. "Coining," I say. "It's coming. There's time."
"You're in bad trouble with New York if there isn't," says the tech. "I want to register a jag. Now."
"Okay," I say.
Love me Eat me All of me
"Better," the tech says. "But keep it rising. I'm still only registering a sixty per cent."
Sure, bastard. It isn't your brain burning with the output of these million strangers. My violence surprises me. But I push the stim up to seventy. Then Nagami goes into a synthesizer riff, and Jam sags back against a vertical rank of amps.
"Robbie?" It comes into my left ear, on the in-house com circuit reserved for performer and me alone.
"I'm here, Jain."
"You're not trying, babe,"
I stare across the stage and she's looking back at me. Her eyes flash emerald in the wave from Hollis' color generator. She sub-vocalizes so her lips don't move.
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"I mean it."
This is new territory," I answer. "We never had a million before." I know she thinks it's an excuse.
"This is it, babe," she says. "It's tonight. Will you help me?"
rve known the question would come, though I hadn't known who'd articulate itЧher or me. My hesitation stretches much longer in my head than it does in realtime. So much passion, Rob. . . . It seems to build. Would you kill for me? "Yes," I say.
"Then I love you," and breaks off as the riff ends and she struts back out into the light. I reluctantly touch the console and push the stim to seventy-five. Fifty tracks are in. Jain, will you love me if I don't?
A bitter look
Eighty. I engage five more tracks. Five to go. The crowd's getting damn near all of her. And, of course, the opposite's true.
A flattering word
Since I first heard her in Washington, I've loved this song the best. I push more keys. Eighty-two. Eighty-five. I know the tech's happily watching the meters.
A kiss
The last tracks cut in. Okay, you're getting everything from the decaying food in her gut to her deepest buried childhood fears of an empty echoing house.
Ninety.
A sword
And the song ends, one last diminishing chord, but her body continues to move. For her there is still music.
On the com circuit the tech yells: "Idiot! I'm already reading ninety. Ninety, damn it. There's still one number to go."
"Yeah," I say. "Sorry. Just . . . trying to make up for previous lag-time."
He continues to shout and I don't answer. On the stage Nagami and Hollis look at each other and at the rest of the group, and then Moog Indigo slides into the last number with scarcely a pause. Jain turns toward my side of the stage and gives me a soft smile. And
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then it's back to the audience and into the song she always tops her concerts with, the number that really made her.
Fill me like the mountains
Ninety-five. There's only a little travel left in the console slides.
The tech's voice is aghast. "Are you out of your mind, Rob? I've got a ninety-five hereЧdamned needle's about to peg. Back off to ninety."
"Say again?" I say. "Interference. Repeat, please."
"I said back off! We don't want her higher than ninety."
Fill me like the sea
Jain soars to the climax. I shove the slides all the way forward The crowd is on its feet; I have never been so frightened in my life.
"Rob! I swear to God you're canned, youЧ"
Somehow Stella's on the com line too: "You son of a bitch! You hurt her-"
Jain flings her arms wide. Her back impossibly arches.
All of me
One hundred.
I cannot rationalize electronically what happens. I cannot imagine the affection and hate and lust and fear cascading into her and pouring back out. But I see the antenna mesh around her naked body glowing suddenly whiter until it flares in an actinic flash and I shut my eyes.
When I open them again, Jain is a blackened husk tottering toward the front of the stage. Her body falls over the edge into the first rows of spectators.
The crowd still thinks this is part of the set, and they love it.
xn
No good-bys. I know I'm canned. When I go into the Denver Al-pertron office in another day and a half to pick up my final check, some subordinate I've never seen before gives me the envelope.
"Thanks," I say. He stares at me and says nothing.