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

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 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 hereтАФdamned
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, youтАФ"
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.
 XII

No good-bys. I know I'm canned. When I go into the Denver Alpertron 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.
I turn to leave and meet Stella in the hall. The top of her head comes only to my shoulders, and so
she has to tilt her face up to glare at me. She says, "You're not going to be working for any promoter in
the business. New York says so."
"Fine," I say. I walk past her.
Before I reach the door, she stops me by saying, "The initial report is in already."
I turn. "And?"
"The verdict will probably end up accidental death. Everybody's bonded. Jain was insured for