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  “They’re afraid,” asked Ortega, “I’ll smash your stuff?”

  “Not you, but the sundry agencies who are after you.” O’Hearn had his ear to the camera. “There, it seems to be off. When I did my field interview with the leader of the Chicago PeaceBombers, two of my cameras got blown sky high.”

  “So did the CPB leader.”

  “I know, I know, Rev O. It’s a crazy world, a crazy time to live in.”

  “No, it’s a time like any other time. We happen to have a bunch of crazy assholes running the country. But they can, if we’re fast and lucky, be driven out of office. That’s still possible in this country.” The two men were alone in an office on the eleventh floor of the Empire State Building, the top floor of what was left of the ruined landmark.

  “Yes, very well. So let’s see if we can get a few minutes I can use, Rev O.” There was a pleading tone in O’Heam’s voice. “I don’t have to tell you that I myself am in sympathy with—”

  “Then give me a half hour,” Ortega told him. “Let me go on, let me present the whole case against President Hartwell and—”

  “You haven’t got enough, Rev O. If you had documentation, concrete stuff, then I could sell a half hour to CN. As it is. . . .” He shrugged, then elbowed the camera. “Let’s do it. Hmm. Surely one of the most controversial figures on the contemporary scene is the underground priest known to his increasing number of followers as Rev O. The Reverend Ortega has been active on the political-activist scene for more than five years now. It was Rev O who dug out the facts about the Little Rock brainwave tests and made them public . . . Rev O and his followers who successfully defeated the late Senator McDermott in his bid for reelection. It was Rev O who saw to it that nearly a half-million poverty-level children in the tri-state area got food when the National Food Bureau funds were being diverted by then Secretary of Food Cundall. Well, the man’s accomplishments, though highly controversial, are too numerous to list. This is Leo O’Hearn, somewhere in the tri-state area, and I’m going to be talking with Rev O, one of the most provocative and controversial men of our day . . . right after these messages.” He relaxed, grinned at the priest. “That opening went better than the first one, I think. When I pick it up I’ll talk to you about—”

  “Law!” shouted a voice from the corridor. “What?” O’Hearn glanced around the office.

  “Afraid we’ll have to postpone our interview, Leo.” Ortega reached into his tunic for his stungun.

  “The police are coming up here?”

  “Some kind of law, yeah. I’ll get back to you.” Ortega ran to the window. “And possibly I’ll have the concrete stuff you need.” He jumped out the window.

  “What?” O’Hearn nudged his robot camera, trotted to the window. “Are you getting this? Suicide of controversial cleric as law closes. . . . Oh, there was a skycar waiting for him out there. Yep, there they go, clean away.”

  The office door was smashed open, three plain-tunic men with blaster pistols popped into the room.

  “Don’t shoot my camera,” said O’Hearn.

  Chapter 12

  On his way to the floating circular bed Jay Perlberg tripped. His handsome chin clunked against the sexsuite floor, as did his tanned knees and elbows. “Son of a nerd,” he muttered. He pushed up, walked three more paces, and tripped again. “What the farb. Now I’ve lost my hard-on.”

  “Look around on the floor, maybe you dropped it someplace.” Haley was sitting on the round airfloat bed, hugging her knees and wearing the mid-twentieth-century black-lace lingerie Jay was so fond of.

  Perlberg got to his feet again. “I don’t like jokes in bed, Haley. Or in the immediate vicinity of bed,” he said as he rubbed at his elbow. “Save the witty stuff for your nerf-brained husband.”

  “To be sure.” Haley looked not at Perlberg but at one of his reflections in the pink-tinted ceiling mirrors.

  The handsome naked man walked away from the bed. He stopped at a one-way oval window. Lights of every color flashed and pulsed out in the darkness. Their sexsuite was in the Nightown sector of High World, where it was always dark. “We’re not enjoying ourselves to the fullest,” he complained, locking his hands behind his tan buttocks. “We’ve only had intercourse once since we arrived. You don’t even want to order any fetishes from room service.” He turned to frown at her. “Want to try the brainstim?”

  Haley hugged her knees tighter, resting a cheek against their smoothness. “Nope, but don’t let that deter you, Jay.”

  “No fun by myself.” He’d gone over to the twin chairs which floated beneath the electronic-brain-stimulation head pieces on the wall. “You’re in a very unconvivial mood.”

  “I’m always gloomy at night.”

  “Well, you had your choice. We could have checked into Daytown. Matter of fact, we still can,” he said. “We’ll miss today’s cockfights, but we can catch the last flogging if we—”

  “Nightown, Daytown,” said Haley, twisting black lace around her finger, “doesn’t much matter. It’s me, I’m in a gloomy phase. It’ll pass.”

  “Don’t toy with that lace, twine and twist it like that,” Perlberg said. “You’ll give me an erection.”

  “I thought that was what you were looking for.”

  “I’m going to use the brainstim first.” Perlberg started to sit down in one of the floating chairs.

  The chair moved a yard to the right. Perlberg’s backside whapped into the floor.

  “Jay! What’s the matter?”

  “Farbing chair moved. Damn, gave me a toothache I hit so hard.” He, weaving slightly, got up. Catching hold of the chair he carefully lowered himself into it. He reached up for the brain-stimulation helmet.

  The helmet came down to meet him. It whanged onto his head, pressed down until his ears stopped further progress. A huge buzzing and crackling poured out from under the helmet.

  “Yow! Wow!” cried Perlberg. His legs went stiff, spreading wide. “Ow! Yow!”

  The buzzing and crackling grew louder, a bonging sound was added. Wisps of blue smoke came swirling out from under the chromed helmet, tangling around Perlberg’s tanned ears.

  “Yow! Yow!” He struggled desperately with the helmet, striving to get it off his head.

  Haley had leaped from the bed, come running. “Jay, are you being electrocuted? Is your poor brain being overstimulated?”

  “Off, get it off!”

  Haley, gingerly, got hold of the helmet and tugged. It left Perlberg’s head quite easily. “There you are,” she said.

  Rubbing at his head, Perlberg asked, “Do you smell burning hair?”

  “No, and I don’t see any singed spots on your poor skull.”

  “Lord, that was some experience.” He slumped in the chair. “Usually you get pleasant, erotic sensations and images. This time, Lord . . . it was . . . awesome.”

  “Maybe High World has upped the brainstim voltage or whatever,” suggested Haley.

  “Awesome,” repeated Perlberg. “I was standing on a mountain peak overlooking the entire world and a figure with leathery wings was offering. . . . Do you smell brimstone?”

  “Nope, only something like hot chocolate.”

  “That’s my new hair-conditioning balm.” Perlberg sighed, stood up. “That was really . . . awesome.” He inserted a finger in the elastic waistband of Haley’s antique underwear, let the band snap against her skin. “Black lace really does. . . . Go sit on the bed again, will you?”

  Haley complied.

  “This time I’m going to do the wild-man scenario, okay? I’ll come running at the bed, give a frenzied and lustful animal cry, and leap atop you. Then I’ll tear all that frilly black lace off you.”

  “Might as well.”

  Perlberg backed across the room. “Here we go!” He rubbed his tan hands together, licked his lips, and started running. A few feet from the bed he howled like a wild man, throwing himself toward the girl.

  The bed floated up out of reach.

  Thunk!
>
  Chin, elbows, knees plus the ribs on the left side hit the hard floor. The wind went wooshing out of Perlberg.

  Haley peered over the edge of the bed. “Jay, did you hurt yourself once again?”

  “Yes, damn it to hell. Yes, Haley, I hurt myself. “ He rose to his knees, massaging his injured parts.

  “Why, do you suppose, did the bed move?”

  “I don’t know. How the hell do I know?”

  “Perhaps when you screamed like that you scared it.”

  “You can’t scare a bed.” Perlberg tottered toward an upright position. “We’ve used the wild-man scenario numerous times before and nothing like this ever happened.”

  “Yes, numerous.”

  “I better complain to the management. We’ll move to another sexsuite.”

  “This was the last available one, remember?”

  “Then they’ll have to send in a repair squad.” Perlberg surveyed the room. “I don’t see the pixphone.”

  “Phone was right there by the . . . oh, but it’s not anymore.” Haley pointed suddenly at the mirrored ceiling.” There it is, floating up there.”

  “This is very odd, decidedly strange,” said Perlberg. “I’m starting to wonder if—”

  Haley was gone. The air popped, she wasn’t on the bed anymore. “Haley?” He looked all around, saw only images of himself.

  Words started to appear on the mirrored wall opposite him, scrawled with an electric pen which had fallen from his trousers earlier.

  The words were lettered, large and shaky, one by one. “Leave her alone,” the message warned, “or it’ll get worse!”

  “Nemo,” said Perlberg.

  Chapter 13

  Ted came strolling into the lobby of the Daytown Howard Johnson Hotel, hands in the pockets of his new one-piece lycra funsuit, tongue pressed against the back of his teeth to produce a whistle. The three aluminum robots behind the floating check-in desk rotated their heads to inspect him.

  “I’d like a suite of rooms,” announced Ted.

  “Your reservation was made well in advance I trust,” said all three robots together.

  “My name is Philip Van Horn,” explained Ted, flourishing a multicard. “You’ll find I have a reservation, I’m sure.” One of the ball-headed robots turned to the reservation box of the HoJo computer beside them.

  “Ah, yes, here it is. Philip Van Horn of Cheektowaga, New York.”

  “That’s me.”

  “You wish a normal and not a sexsuite?” the trio of robots asked. “A man of your obvious savoir-faire and virility ought to—”

  “I have some thinking to do.”

  “Ah, yes, of course.”

  Another of the robots handed Ted a pseudorubber glove. It had numbers on its palm. “Your key, sir,” they all said. “Your room is on the eighteenth floor. That’s primarily a masochist floor, by the bye. Would you prefer a sadist floor?”

  “Makes no never mind. I’m here to think.”

  “If you finish your thinking, holler for room service. We feature live hookers, android hookers, robot hookers . . . not to mention fifty-three different flavors of ice cream.”

  “I’m awed.” Slipping on the glove, Ted headed for an up-tube. There was some screaming going on in the vicinity of the Floor 18 step-out area, a few pained cries of delight. Off in his wing of the hotel, however, a cool silence prevailed. Ted fit the fingertips of the print-glove into the five-hole print-lock on his room door.

  “Welcome to your room, sir,” said his room. “Today’s special vice is bestial fellation, our special ice-cream flavor is fakegrape ripple.”

  “Silence,” Ted told the dangling ceiling speaker. “I want only silence in which to contemplate.”

  “Excuse it.” The speaker blanked off.

  From his balcony Ted had a view of one of Daytown’s vast beaches. The perennial, artificial sunlight made the blue lagoon gleam. The naked bathers sparkled as they swam and cavorted.

  Sitting down on the neotile floor of his living room, Ted asked himself, “Now what?”

  He’d thrown a scare into Perlberg, teleported Haley home to Brimstone. He’d used his telek abilities to swipe the multicard from the real Philip Van Horn and he’d jobbed the hotel’s computer system to provide himself a reservation here.

  “I’m not going back.”

  Not back to Brimstone, not back to the Repo Bureau or the Total Security Agency beneath it. Not back to Reverend Ortega either.

  “Everybody expects me to use my powers to help them out, do something they want. Well, farb that. I’m going to use my powers for me for awhile.”

  He’d already acquired the suit he was wearing by using his powers. He’d noticed it in a shop display on the Nightown mall when he was hanging around near the hotel where Perlberg had brought Haley. When Ted was a safe distance away he’d caused the suit to travel from the store into his hands.

  “And I can get anything this way.” He cupped his hands behind his head, allowed his mind to wander. “I can get money. . . .”

  A wad of cash, over five thousand dollars in large bills, materialized on the floor next to his right foot.

  “. . . clothes. . . .”

  Three more raffish one-piece funsuits, including one with an illuminated codpiece, appeared in a heap next to the money.

  Laughing, Ted clapped his hands together. “I can have anything I want,” he said. “Do anything I want.”

  He could even bring Haley here, teleport her again, and tell her . . . tell her he loved her and she had to keep clear of Perlberg.

  “I won’t do that,” he decided. “Not yet.”

  “Naked wrestling?” invited the unclothed blonde girl in the shop doorway.

  Ted asked, “Watch or participate?”

  “Either.” She stroked her smooth stomach. Her nipples began to flash orange and green. “One hundred dollars for the former, five hundred for the latter.” Ted found he was blinking in time with the implanted breast lights. “I’m just window shopping now, maybe later.”

  “Come back tomorrow, we’re having our fire sale.”

  Ted, dressed in one of his newly acquired suits, continued his stroll along the widest and brightest of Daytown’s always-day light streets. His hand closed around the roll of cash in his pocket, he whistled as he walked.

  “MF can save your life,” a Japanese android told him as he went by an MF shop with a pseudocherry tree border along its narrow front.

  Ted looked down at the andy, who was squatting beside the shop entrance. “I don’t think I know what MF is.”

  “Meditation and Fornication,” replied the Oriental android, “good for mind and body, frees you of the accumulated poisons of life today.”

  “Possibly later. Right now I. . . .” Ted straightened.

  A huge bottle of beer had just gone by. Liberty Beer read the label on the truck-size bottle. The cab of the bottle-vehicle was lettered with: Woodruff’s Patriotic Foodstuff! And behind the wheel was an Uncle Sam with his gray beard stuck to his left ear.

  It’s Pop Woodruff, realized Ted. Haley’s dad.

  “Better to M and F than contemplate revenge,” advised the mechanical Japanese.

  Ignoring him, Ted hurried on, keeping his eye on the slow-rolling truck. It swung around the next corner.

  When Ted caught up, the mobile beer bottle was parking next to the flagpole on the neat green grounds of the Casanova Middle School.

  “. . . Woodruff Patriotic Foodstuff wagon is here to serve you, boys and girls, and teachers, too,” his wife’s father was saying over his truck’s talk system. “How can we best fight against the enemies of our country? Why, by being strong in mind and body. Every time you drink a delicious bottle of cold, foamy Liberty Beer you get all the essential B-complex vitamins. When you eat a wonderfully tasty Star-spangled Wienie you get not only good nutrition but a full-color tri-op picture of some famous American of. . . .”

  Kids were starting to respond. The doors of a building labeled Dope Loung
e were opening and eleven- and twelve-year-old boys and girls were reeling and stumbling out into the warm artificial sunlight. A moment later a gaggle of adults emerged from a cottage labeled Faculty Bordello.

  “. . . special of the day is our red, white, and blue ham on All-American rye, made entirely of one-hundred-percent pure and nutritious artificial ingredients, containing absolutely no pork or flour or other allergen.”

  The middle-school pupils were lining up at a window which had opened in the side of the enormous bottle.

  Ted sat beside a garbage robot across the street from the place. He rested his hands on his knees, nearly closed his eyes.

  Woodruff, weaving and shuffling, climbing out of the cab and made his way to the bottle side. All at once his false beard left his ear to begin circling around his head. Muttering, Woodruff snatched off his star-spangled hat and began swatting at the flying beard in an attempt to capture it.

  The beard rose higher, settled on the neck of the huge beer bottle. “Come back here, you half-wit beard,” shouted Haley’s father. “This is one step away from being a sacrilege, akin to spitting on the flag.” He made a few unsuccessful attempts to scale the side of the bottle.

  Meanwhile the nine-dozen bottles of Liberty Beer within the truck all opened at once, began to spurt and foam.

  The children tottered back from the window, which was foaming violently.

  The beard, flapping somewhat like a bird, flew to the top of the school flagpole and came to rest on the gold eagle.

  Shaking his fist at it, Woodruff cried, “How the hell am I going to get you now?”

  A communal gasp rose from the kids and teachers as Haley’s father left the ground. He floated, slowly, to the pole top. When his rising power left him, he managed to grab hold of the pole.

  Ted, whistling, resumed his walk.

  A bright sun glowed in the clear blue morning sky, real sunlight it was and real morning. Ted ordered his new executive-model skycar to get down on the landing area on the high roof of the bathhouse. He was over Orlando-2, Florida, having checked out of the Daytown Howard Johnson early this morning.