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  as an office, long hair pulled back from a high forehead, long thin patrician

  nose almost too sharp, lips proud as if recently slapped.

  Alice pretends languid boredom, then shifts suddenly into seductive speed.

  14

  GREG BEAR

  "Still not convincing," Minstrel teases.

  "Fuck me with your.., penis," Alice says. They both laugh.

  Minstrel's face crosses from saint to ascetic cherub. "Utterly, desperately

  limp. Only a doctor or a therapist would call it that, to make you feel inferior.

  Most men prefer cock."

  "Crows only in the morning," Alice says. All conversations with Minstrel,

  even in the down time between plugs, are contagious. "Penis sounds like a

  planet or a country."

  "Vagina. Labia. Clitoris," he prompts.

  "Like characters in a Renaissance vid," Alice says. She muses. "They are all

  royalty in the land of Penis. Vagina never touches another person without

  wearing gloves. She is cool and dresses in black lace."

  Minstrel's face lights up. "Labia is a dangerous woman, sister to Vagina and

  Clitoris," he says. "A vampire and poisoner."

  "Clitoris is the youngest, virginal sister," Alice says. She loves games. "They

  are all daughters of..." Tongue tipping through her lips, catlike, while she

  thinks. "Lucrezia Menarchia."

  "Bravo!" Minstrel says. He applauds.

  Alice bows and continues. "Clitoris is the only one with any decency. She

  blushes with shame at how her family carries on."

  Minstrel reddens with subdued laughter. They should not be too loud up

  here; it might upset Francis, who can be very testy while preparing for a plug.

  "All right. Cunt," he suggests.

  Alice pauses, scowling. "That's a tough one."

  "Not yours, my dear."

  Alice gives him a beneath-me face and taps her finger on her nose, thinking. "Cunt is a barbarian princess from the outer reaches. She is raised by the outland

  tribes of the province of Puberty."

  Minstrel squints. "Not Puberty. Not quite right." He works at it and substitutes, "Pudenda."

  Alice grins. "Pudenda it is. Cuntia is her name when she travels in the

  civilized realms."

  Minstrel snaps his slender fingers. "We're on to something. Maybe Francis

  will make us writers. Listen: Cunt is swapped in a hostage exchange between

  Lucrezia Menarchia and Cunt's father, King Hetero. Lucrezia sends her daughter-her

  hopelessly moral daughter Clitoris to learn the barbarian ways and

  loosen up a bit. Clitoris finally lets her hair down and finds fulfillment in the

  arms of Cunt's heroic brother, Glans. Cunt, however, must preserve her honor

  in Menarchia rather than submit to temptation, for Lucrezia rules a corrupt

  land."

  Alice takes a deep breath, pretending to be stunned by this burst of genius,

  then laughs out loud, the hell with Francis, who shouldn't keep them waiting

  so long. She seldom laughs this way, it sounds so much like an ass's bray to

  /

  SLANT 15

  her, but she is easy and open with Minstrel. "So who or what is your precious

  Fuck, then?" she asks.

  Minstrel holds his hands as if in prayer and pretends great gravity. "Not to

  be spoken lightly, or profaned. The tetragrammaton... Fuck... is the most

  powerful god of all, two-faced progenitor of the world. He prefers we see just

  his benign face, the baby-making, world-renewing side. But we all know his

  opposite: Trickster, the devil that rides us and whips us until we bleed."

  At this profundity, Alice stands on long legs, yawns, and stretches. "As

  always, you are uselessly instructive," she tells him. Minstrel gives her his slow

  prankboy's smile and stretches his arms higher than she can reach. She subdues

  a little shiver. Their chemistry is working, and holding back does her performance

  no good.

  Alice turns to the low horizontal slit window overlooking the black stage.

  Something twinkles down there but they are off angle and cannot see the

  projection. Francis is tediously careful with his plugs and backmind details,

  but he could have laid in all of Chinese sexual psychology by now. "Francis

  should be done. He'll want to hook us." Back in the real. Her forehead creases.

  "Are you up, dear?" Minstrel asks.

  Alice shows him her moon face. "Never less," she says. "Are you?"

  Minstrel's muscles flex at the back of his jaw. He is hiding something behind

  the cheer. He can hide from almost anyone but her; she knows him better than

  most wives know their husbands. To Alice it seems they have come far and

  survived much and against the odds, but at some cost. Minstrel hides his

  minuses poorly in front of her.

  A pity, she thinks, that his body is so seldom seen in the vids they make

  now. Preferences of the blessed audience for the psynthe exotic.

  "You look negged," she says.

  Minstrel turns away as if unfairly poked. "Let me keep. my mood," he tells

  her.

  Alice moves in, swaying her shoulders, clucking her tongue. "I'll need all

  of you in five minutes, and you can't make me work harder to get it," she says.

  "What's down?"

  "Not my libido," he shoots back.

  "You've cheered me the last hour instead of leaving me to brood over twisted

  thumbs." She wraps her arms around him. He pushes her off with what begins

  as real and angry strength, and ends gentleness and restraint.

  "Is it Todd?" she asks.

  "Todd was a year ago," Minstrel says.

  Alice nods sympathetically, lips pursed. "I should have known. Why didn't

  you tell me?"

  "I hide, you hide," Minstrel says, and tries to force more brave wit over

  what is now a sad and lost face.

  "Poor Minstrel," she says. "They do not deserve you."

  16

  GREG BEAR

  "No, they fapping well do not."

  "So what's his name?"

  "The little fap's name is Giorgio and you, dear Alice, will never meet him.

  He doesn't deserve to meet you."

  The wound is seldom far beneath Minstrel's armor when she is doing the

  probing; he comes to her, at long intervals, like a dog with a boil, knowing

  she will hurt him with her lancet; also knowing it will do him good.

  It is now that Francis chooses to blat his awful airhorn.

  Minstrel closes up his cares and assumes a heavy-lidded rouCs smile. "It is

  never duty with you," he says, "but whatever it is, it calls."

  Alice loops her arm through his and they step down the broad railless stairs

  to the stage, like royalty or Astaire and Rogers making a grand entrance.

  Francis awaits them in the plug room beside the main stage. Here as well

  as on the stage all is flat gritty black, no reflection allowed as the camera mixes

  its own glittering fairy-light dreams with the quantized lux of the real. Francis

  has named this camera Leni. Leni has become much more than an optical

  device. She scatters over the stage, feeding images and projections at one end,

  combining them with backmind layers at the other, a smooth silver and bronze

  balled and coiled snake.

  Francis is irritated. His AD, scrawny and unkempt--Ahmed, Alice remembers

  vaguely; Francis goes through four or five ADs each production--hurries

  to arrange the bottles of nan
o and their small shiny plastic conduits and dams,

  to be applied to the occiput of Alice's skull and to Minstrel's temple.

  "Alice, fabled Alice, what would you do?" Francis asks as they reach the

  bottom of the stairs. "I'm two weeks behind, two mill over, I have general fibe

  and sat release dates in four days--and I'm still layering!" Francis shakes his

  head. He always appears a little sad and irritated. Alice accepts this in Francis,

  as well as his fits of temper, only because what he does is unique and, she

  thinks, good; though Francis is not extraordinarily commercial, working on a

  Francis vid, even as backmind, can never hurt one's reputation.

  "You've kept us waiting. Plug us and get your layers," Alice says matter-offactly.

  "Echo that," Minstrel says.

  Francis wags his finger. "Fuck artists shouldn't bitch."

  Alice cringes dramatically, pushes his finger back with her own.

  Tiny black and silver machines with tactile fuzzy wheels and bug-jewel eyes

  crawl around the plug stage. They are little versions of Leni. Alice feels their

  bright little eyes sucking in her offline words. She hates them. Francis allows

  these recording arbeiters to roam with absolute freedom, examining whatever

  they choose; there are many in the audience who lose themselves in the life

  of the production. Francis makes as much on live behind-the-scenes docs

  as on the vids themselves. "Fuck artist," Alice croons to the nearest bug.

  "Francis, the nano's a little old," Ahmed says. "It isn't perking."

  /

  SLANT 17

  "You aren't going to hook us with stale nano, are you, Francis?" Minstrel

  asks.

  "No fear. Alice, have you read the text?"

  "Only from the prep you sent. It's a long book, Francis." In fact, antique

  and long and dull.

  Francis is preparing a deep-layered vid of The Faerie Queene. He smiles

  proudly. "A real challenge, to fade the wonderful Spenserian stanzas into a

  Yox." His face glows with the subject. "The Red Cross Knight is subject to

  such temptations, Alice. He is traveling with an Eastern queen named Una.

  A dragon has ravaged her land, and she hopes the Red Cross Knight will--"

  "It's set, Francis." Ahmed shows him the bottles of translucent nano, now

  fully charged with nutrients. The liquid within is turbid and finally perks; it

  appears restless. Alice regards it with misgivings. She has plugged over a

  hundred times, on various jobs, and she has never trusted the process--but

  she has never been seriously injured even when, as now, the hook is administered

  by a nonmedical.

  "The knight will rid her land of the dragon. So far, the Red Cross Knight

  has vanquished the hideous monster Error and all her progeny. A truly horrible

  scene, and I've layered it brilliantly. Now they are in a place of great temp-tations--Una

  and the knight. You've read the cues."

  "We're all primed with ghostly passions," Minstrel says.

  "Alice, my pride, you give me the most haunted libido I've ever recorded,

  when you're on point."

  "I hope that's a compliment," Alice says.

  "It is. Una and the Red Cross Knight have strayed into the workshop of

  the evil Archimago, who appears as a godly and kindly Hermit. It is a place

  of terrible temptations. You are a haunted spright, a succubus created by

  Archimago to torment and delude. You feel the deepest need for this young,

  handsome, and virtuous knight, but if you have him, you destroy him--and

  you know he will never fall for your illusion. However, by appearing in the

  form of the chaste Una, and engaging in lewd revels with fellow phantoms,

  you will mislead him into thinking this Eastern Lady has succumbed and is

  wallowing in lust. You must feel the False Una's passions as if she were actual

  souled flesh, not a demonic illusion. Many curious eyes and fingers are sure to

  want to plug into that layer."

  "Specks like you're going for broad appeal, this time," Minstrel says, picking

  at something between his teeth. He inspects his finger.

  "I'd like to pay some bills, yes," Francis barks back. "You'll go direct into

  Leni while we run the set piece on stage. You'll be layering over seven emotional

  records from other fiuffers, so I need everything clean and clear."

  Fluffers. Alice hates that word even more than fuck artist, though it is commonly

  used. It was once applied to women who kept actors erect or lubricious

  in old erotic movies. The comparison is inapt, at best; what Alice and Minstrel

  18

  GREG BEAR

  into the camera. Leni is only little less than a large set of eyes with a brain

  behind them. Francis guides Leni, cajoles her; theirs is not the relation of

  artisan to tool, they are more like partners.

  Ahmed brings up the little dams and shapes them to Alice's head first, then

  Minstrel's. He syringes a dollop of warm nano into the dams as they sit still.

  Alice is used to this method of creating a broadband plug; it's common in the

  cheaper Yox.

  A few minutes pass. A microscopic lead of conducting material has passed

  through the interstices of her skin, bone, and brain, into her deep amygdala,

  hippocampus, and hypothalamus; into the seats of her judgment engine, the

  Grand Central Terminal of her self. She feels nothing.

  Ahmed applies transponders to the little silver nipples of nano, no larger

  than a thumbnail. He takes readings for several minutes from the camera.

  Lights flash agreeably. "Hooked," he tells Francis.

  Alice removes her robe. Minstrel is already naked. Francis makes a butterfly

  gesture with his hands, then clasps his fingers.

  "Here come the Sprights and Archimago. Taking," he says. "Click one."

  Ahmed labels the backmind layer. The camera hums.

  Francis quotes from memory:

  "Thus well instructed, to their worke they hast,

  And comming where the knight in slomber lay,

  The one upon his hardy head him plast,

  And made him dream of loves and lustfull play,

  That nigh his manly heart did melt away,

  Bathed in wanton bliss and wicked joy..." ."

  Francis beams. "How like your own career, sweet Alice. How many men

  have you haunted?"

  Alice ignores this.

  On the stage behind them, in translucent and sketchy 3D workprint, the

  evil sorcerer Archimago leads the Red Cross Knight through dreams of dark

  chambers filled with writhing bodies in silken robes. Hanging tapestries are

  pulled aside by the incredulous Knight, who sees false Una's flesh revealed in

  intimate posture with an equally false Spright made a Squire. Alice ignores

  most of this. What she and Minstrel will provide has little to do with the plot.

  Alice looks directly at Minstrel. As always, the angle of Minstrel's dark

  brown eyes and the sharpness of his nose, the assurance of his professional

  smile, impresses her. They have real and reliable chemistry.

  "You will always be the most beautiful woman on Earth," Minstrel murmurs

  to her, and she knows he means it. He prefers men, but Alice affects him

  as much as he affects her, reliably, predictably. If they lived together, their

  contradictions would burn them out in a year; but in this professional capacity,

  /

>   SLANT 19

  Francis is watching the camera, his Leni. She seems happy.

  What Alice feels first is the yearning warmth, not dissimilar to what a baby

  feels for its mother; she wishes to be closer. Minstrel touches her face with the

  back of his hand, stroking her cheek, holding this off. He responds as nearly

  all men respond to her, given a chance: she notes the flush on his chest, the

  close focus of his eyes, the beginning rise. Often, the rise amuses her; men

  seem off-balance when aroused, would topple like cranes without her support.

  But Minstrel's rise is a delightful shock.

  The delicious pain of expectation meeting an inner self-doubt drops her

  back in the first sopping yet dry-mouthed experiments of youth ("Love for

  sale, appetizing young love for sale--" Billie Holiday singing Cole Porter),

  amazed at success and delighted by it.

  They kiss first, leaning forward to avoid other contact: soft roughness of lips

  like nubbled silk, oily smoothness of tongues.

  "Good," Francis says. He is recording none of the tactile, not of the surface;

  only the deep surge, the pulse of yearning from the sympathies, the letting

  down of vascular tensions by the parasympathies, the message of intense well-being

  issued by the judging amygdala; all of which Alice is aware of, but not

  conscious of.

  Her thighs seem large and obvious; she might topple too. I am all thighs.

  Minstrel wraps her, presses forearms against her back, then withdraws them