always thought of as the WWII look—smooth, flowing, the ends somehow rolled under, like a teardrop. She wore a pale brown dress with padded shoulders, and had a cigarette in an ivory holder. As far as Jay could tell, everybody in the place was smoking, save for him, and not a filter in the bunch. There was a package of CareFree cigarettes by Rachel’s elbow, featuring a picture of a blonde seated on a beach in a bathing suit, looking at the crotch of a rugged fellow standing in front of her in his boxer swimsuit. There was a small box of matches on the table. The logo on the matchbox showed a hot-pink, stylized, fat letter Y, presumably from the club’s name, though the logo looked somehow mildly obscene.
“So, what have you come up with?” he asked.
She took a drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke into the air. “I think I’ve got a line on the backbone server he hacked into for distribution.”
“Really? How did you manage that? I couldn’t get a fix on it.”
The singer finished her song. The audience applauded, the sound of that coming in a rhythmic wave that swelled, then receded. The lights came up—still not bright, but brighter—and the band segued into Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.”
A woman laughed behind Jay, a deep and almost sexual sound.
Most of crowd got up and headed for the dance floor. The walla of their voices was happy, excited, full of fun. That kind of music.
Rachel stood and held out her hand. “Come on, Jay, let’s cut a rug.”
He shook his head. “I’m not a dancer.”
“You are in my scenario. Just let yourself go, I guarantee you’ll be king of the jitterbug.”
“Rachel . . .”
“Up, Jay. It don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing.”
Reluctantly, Jay got to his feet. Rachel grabbed his hand.
On the polished wood floor, Jay found that if he relaxed, he had the moves Rachel had promised—the steps, twirls, even grabbing her and shooting her between his legs, then up into the air. Her skirt flared, revealing silk stockings held up by a black garter belt.
She definitely had an eye for the little details.
A very athletic dance, this.
The tune wound up to its frenetic crescendo, then ended.
Jay smiled at Rachel, who smiled back.
The band started to play again, this time a slow one—“Stormy Weather.”
Rachel smiled and raised an eyebrow at him. “One more?”
Jay shrugged. He caught her right hand in his left, and put his right hand in the small of her back, leaving about three inches of space between them.
She pressed herself against him, chest and hips, and put her head on his shoulder.
They swayed to the music.
“Rachel,” he began.
“Let’s finish the dance, Jay, then we can get back to business.”
“Okay.” It was just VR, after all, right?
But it didn’t feel okay. Or rather, it felt a lot more okay than it should. As he danced, he tried to think about Saji and his little boy, but that was hard, and Lewis wasn’t making it any easier.
He thought about disabling the feedback again, to keep his VR body from mirroring his RW reaction, but his arms were around her, and he couldn’t lift his hand just yet without breaking character.
She knew that, of course, which was undoubtedly why she had brought him out onto this dance floor.
What was she up to?
He gritted his teeth and tried to conjure up images of Saji and their son.
As they danced, Lewis allowed herself to feel Jay’s body against hers. Yes, it was an illusion, courtesy of top-grade electronics and biofeedback gear; still, it was easy enough to suspend your disbelief. They could be in a nightclub in Chicago during the war years, moving now to the music made famous by Billie Holliday, who had died long before Rachel had been born. Jay here wasn’t a bad-looking guy, and he was smart and as sharp as a box of fresh sewing needles. She’d always been a sucker for a bright man. Of course, she had to keep him off balance because he was dangerous to her. But it didn’t have to be an unpleasant chore. What could be done in VR could eventually be done in the real world, too. . . .
She wasn’t exactly dull herself. She had filled her scenario with priming elements—little devices designed to evoke a subconscious response in anybody who played it. It was an old psychological trick—give somebody a word test, making short sentences out of a jumble of five or six words, and put a theme into it by carefully choosing words in each sentence to point in a particular direction. The unconscious brain’s autopilot, used to making snap choices, would fasten upon those words: bury terms like “confident,” “reliant,” “smart,” “clever,” “capable” in a session, then send the person to take a short exam? He would do better than normal.
Put the terms “dull,” “stupid,” “inept,” “confused,” and “slow” in that same kind of little quiz and send him to the test, he would do worse than normal.
Attitude, it turned out, was more important than most people knew. Affecting that attitude via the subconscious was much easier to manipulate than most people would believe. The autopilot took certain things for granted; it tended to mirror societal beliefs. Tall, good-looking, smiling people were generally viewed as more intelligent, somehow superior. Short, ugly, frowning people came across as inferior—at least subconsciously, regardless of whether people would ever admit to it if asked. Way more company CEOs were tall than short. That said a lot.
Rachel’s scenario practically reeked with hints for Jay Gridley to let himself go and indulge in sensual pleasure, with Rachel as the prime focus of that pleasure. The songs being played by the band would invoke sympathy for the women singers—“Mean to Me” and “Stormy Weather.” The instrumental “In the Mood”? That one was pretty obvious. The cigarette girl’s hooters and offer, the package of cigarettes on the table, the overt control of the jitterbug, wherein Jay moved her as he wished, the close contact of the slow number, even the horn player moving his mute in and out of the trumpet, those were all aimed at pointing Jay down the garden path—to her bedroom door.
She smiled into his shoulder at the thought. VR sex wasn’t illegal, nor grounds for divorce, unless unfaithfulness in your mind counted, and it didn’t. Not legally, anyway. Of course, her intent was to befuddle Jay, and when it came down to the real world—which it would, eventually—certainly his sense of guilt would help. Happily married man with a child suddenly finds himself in an affair with a colleague? That would give him plenty more to think about so he wouldn’t have a clue that Captain Rachel Lewis was the bad guy he was chasing. . . .
Jay was good at what he did, but so was she. And a man facing a bright and not-unattractive woman who was intent on having him? He was at a definite disadvantage. . . .
The music ended, and the dance stopped. She saw that her plan was working, to judge from the uncomfortable expression on Jay’s face. She smiled. “Well, that was nice. So, let’s get back to work, shall we?”
As they headed for their table, the swing band began playing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
Indeed, it did.
Amos Jefferson Lowe invited Thorn to take a walk so the dog could stretch a little. Thorn agreed.
Amos was a big man, half a head taller and probably thirty pounds heavier than Thorn, and while there was white in his closely cropped hair, he moved like a man much younger than one in his late seventies or early eighties, which he had to be. He wore a work shirt and overalls over lace-up work boots, and there was no fat on him Thorn could see.
They started up the graveled driveway. The nearest house was probably a quarter of a mile away. The wind
