"Edward L. Ferman - Best From F&SF, 23rd Edition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferman Edward L)

credit at Cal Tech in electronics. "Not suitable, Mr. Clary," said the dean. "You lack the proper team
spirit. Frankly speaking, you are selfish. And a cheat."
My mother told me once she was sorry I wasn't handsome enough to get by without working. Listen,
Ma, I'm all right. There's nothing wrong with working the concert circuit. I'm working damned hard now.
I was never genius enough that I could have got a really good job with, say, Bell Futures or one of the big
space firms. But I've got one marketable talentтАФwhat the interviewer called a peculiarly coordinative
affinity for multiplex circuitry. He looked a little stunned after I finished with the stim console. "Christ, kid,
you really get into it, don't you?"
That's what got me the job with Alpertron, Ltd., the big promotion and booking agency. I'm on the
concert tour and work their stim board, me and my console over there on the side of the stage. It isn't
that much different in principle from playing one of the instruments in the backup band, though it's a hell of
a lot more complex than even Nagami's synthesizer. It all sounds simple enough: my console is the critical
link between performer and audience. Just one glorified feedback transceiver: pick up the empathic load
from Jain, pipe it into the audience, they react and add their own load, and I feed it all back to the star.
And then around again as I use the sixty stim tracks, each with separate controls to balance and augment
and intensify. It can get pretty hairy, which is why not just anyone can do the job. It helps that I seem to
have a natural resistance to the sideband stopover radiation from the empathic transmissions. "Ever think
of teaching?" said the school voc counselor. "No," I said. "I want the action."
And that's why I'm on the concert circuit with Jain Snow; as far as I'm concerned, the only real blues
singer and stim star.
Jam Snow, my intermittent unrequited love. Her voice is shagreen-rough; you hear it smooth until it
tears you to shreds.
She's older than I am, four, maybe five years; but she looks like she's in her middle teens. Jain's tall,
with a tumbleweed bush of red hair; her face isn't so much pretty as it is intense. I've never known
anyone who didn't want to make love to her. "When you're a star," she said once, half drunk, "you're not
hung up about taking the last cookie on the plate."
That includes me, and sometimes she's let me come into her bed. But not often. "You like it?" she
said. I answered sleepily, "You're really good."
"Not me," she said. "I mean being in a star's bed." I told her she was a bitch and she laughed. Not
often enough.
 I know I don't dare force the issue; even if I did, there would still be Stella.
Stella VanillaтАФIтАЩve never learned exactly what her real last name isтАФis Jain's bodyguard. Other stun
stars have whole platoons of karate-trained killers for protection. Jain needs only Stella. "Stella, pick me
up a fifth? Yeah, Irish. Scotch if they don't."
She's shorter than I am, tiny and dark with curly chestnut hair. She's also proficient in any martial art I
can think of. And if all else fails, in her handbag she carries a .357 Colt Python with a four-inch barrel.
When I first saw that bastard, I didn't believe she could even lift it
But she can. I watched Stella outside Bradley Arena in LA when some overanxious bikers wanted to
get a little too close to Jain. "Back off, creeps." "So who's tellin' us?" She had to hold the Python with
both hands, but the muzzle didn't waver. Stella fired once; the slug tore the guts out of a parked
Harley-Wankel. The bikers backed off very quickly.
Stella enfolds Jain in her protection like a raincape. It sometimes amuses Jam; I can see that. Stella,
get Alpertron on the phone for me. Stella? Can you score a couple grams? Stella, check out the dudes in
the hall. StellaтАФ It never stops.
When I first met her, I thought that Stella was the coldest person I'd ever encountered. And in Des
Moines I saw her crying alone in a darkened phone boothтАФJain had awakened her and told her to take
a walk for a couple hours while she screwed some rube she'd picked up in the hotel bar. I tapped on the
glass; Stella ignored me.
Stella, do you want her as much as I?
So there we areтАФa nice symbolic obtuse triangle. And yetтАФWe're all just one happy show-biz