beaten. He suppressed a pang of unexpected shame. Come now, Kemrin, he told himself firmly. She belonged to Bluedog, after all.
«'Please,» he said. «I need to know everything. I want to stay alive.»
An odd look crossed her face, Pity? He couldn't tell. «I was his mind whore,» she said. She lifted her chin, looked him in the eye, daring him to' say something scornful.
He stood and moved to the far corner of the room. Here was a marvel, a prodigy, a woman whose erotic imagination was capable o f stimulating the hideous Bluedog. «And why did he turn you out.»
Some of the medic’s telltales were edging toward red again. «He’d used me up. That’s what he said.»
Thereafter he left her alone, and soon she slept.
Her name was Leila Tran. Her strength came back quickly. Whenever Kemrin left, he locked her in an inner room and warned her that the seeker-destroyer would kill her if she came out. She accepted the stricture with no evidence of resentment.
She was no whiner. She responded to the sanctuary Kemrin had given her with dignified gratitude. She said very little, and he didn’t attempt to draw her out. She seemed content to exist day by day, and after a time she began to smile, and even to laugh.
«How is it you can be so calm under these circumstances?» he asked her. «What’s wrong with these circumstances? I have enough to eat, a safe place to be, and I’m away from Bluedog.»
He didn’t trust her, of course, but he began to respect her.Each morning, armed and armored, he trooped off to Singh Louie’s atelier, determined to force Prince Velligon into paroxysms o f heroism. But he seemed unable to gather the threads together, unable to do anything with the dream figures he’d lived with for so long.
The numbers reflected this. Each night he would tap into the Pale’s dream channels, and each night he found a relentless drop in usership.One day when the next episode was ready, the courier didn’t come, and Kemrin understood he had been abandoned. While he was unsuccessfully trying to raise Bodrun, Bluedog patched into Kemrin’s vidphone.
Today Bluedog’s beauty stripes were lime green and plum, curved diagonally across the white expanse of his face. Bluedog didn’t say a word, but his good eye sparkled. He raised his huge meaty hand to his eye patch and flapped it vigorously, exposing with each movement the black pit beneath. Kemrin jerked the vid cable from the wall.
He went home and released Leila. When she saw his face, her usual smile faded. «What’s happened?»
He flung himself into a chair. «I’m dead. They’ve cancelled Velligon.»
«I’m sorry. Is it that important?»
He looked up at her, amazed. «Haven’t I ever explained? Velligon was my last chance to get out of Howlytown. The apartment rent’s due in three days. After that, I can live in my studio for a week or so, until Singh Louie puts me out. Then I ’m a goner.»
She looked as if she might cry. It occurred to him that she was probably dead, too. «Or maybe not,» he said. «Maybe I ’ll think o f something»
«The problem is money?»
She sat down, seemed to withdraw into herself. He watched her. She was really quite beautiful, in a subdued, understated way. He felt a surge of regret, for all the sweet possibilities that would be lost when Bluedog killed him. Not that he desired her in particular; he could not forget that she had been Bluedog’s mind-whore.
«How do you think he’ll do it?» he asked, after a while.
«Do what?» She seemed startled, as i f he had distracted her from some deep train of thought.
«Bluedog. How do you suppose he’ll kill me?»
«Kill you? He won’t kill you. That would be too easy. First, he’ll take your other eye and your dream gear. He’ll give you a little time to feel bad about it, then he’ll take your mecheye. Maybe he’ll take your legs, but he’ll leave you at least one good arm. One day he’ll walk down Motomachi Street, and you’ll be there, holding out your begging bowl, and his pleasure will be complete.»
She said it all with such matter-of-fact conviction. He shuddered, and she touched his arm gently. «It hasn’t happened yet, Kemrin. Listen; here’s an idea. Why don’t we move into your studio? The refund on the apartment will keep you going a bit longer, you’ll dream some salable dreams, and I ’ll help you put them on the Howlytown black-market channels. What do you think?»
Her hand was warm, and he thought, How strange that I should notice that at a time like this. «What about Bluedog?»
«What about him? You can’t destroy him; he protects himself too well. You can’t get away from Howlytown, just now, and I assure you that you and Bluedog will never kiss and make up. All you can do is survive, day by day. But what have you got that’s better, at the moment?»
He shrugged, but he felt a touch of inexplicable hope.
They moved to the studio, in the hour before dawn. They made the move unmolested. The seeker-destroyer preceded them through the silent streets, its sensors rotating rapidly, and Kemrin brought up the rear, clutching the splinter gun, head jerking back and forth, heart pounding.
In the studio, Leila exclaimed over the gear. «Beautiful metal,» she said, caressing the main console. «Much better than anything I ever had to work with.»
«Oh?» Kemrin recalled that mind-whoring used much the same equipment as dreaming, the output channel dumping directly to the client’s mind instead of into a wafer recorder. «Well,» he said. «I'll get started.»
But it wasn’t working. No matter what he started out to do, his dreams eventually seemed to focus on Leila; strange, formless, contradictory, suffused with a confused eroticism.
The next night he woke and saw her linked into th e monitor, eyes closed, absorbing his latest attempt. When she was done, she looked at him curiously, smiled. «Mind-whoring is a peculiar talent, a rare knack.»
«I don’t have it?»
«What can I say?» She shrugged gracefully.
«Would you like to try?»
Her smile was brilliant now. «Really?»
«Why not? I’m getting nowhere.»
Leila lay in the dream harness. Her body was relaxed, her eyes half-closed, sightless, twitching, as she followed her internal script. Kemrin watched her, sampled the signal going into the wafer recorder. The signal was clean and strong, and he began to wonder if she might actually be capable of producing a salable dream.
«I won't do porn» she had said earlier, while he was s trapping her into the harness. «I’ve done enough of that to last me forever»
«What, then?»
«Trust me, Kemrin. A lot of people will buy
Then she had laughed and pulled down the induction helmet.
After a while, he settled the monitor harness on his head, and jacked into her dream:
Here the dream segued from an enhanced and arranged memory into a wholly imaginary segment. The dream was still powerful, saturated, with a remarkable singing intensity. The texture was dense and deep. Kemrin was amazed and horrified and riveted. Mercifully, the viewpoint was detached from the action of the dream, as if
