It was like graduating from a Model T to a ninety-three Lotus. The Spad handled like a dream, responsive to Deke’s slightest thought. For weeks he played the ar- cades, with not a nibble. He flew against the local teens and by ones and threes shot down their planes. He took chances, played flash. And the planes tumbled…. Until one day Deke was tucking his seed money away, and a lanky black straightened up from the wall. He eyed the laminateds in Deke’s hand and grinned. A ruby tooth gleamed. “You know,” the man said, “I heard there was a casper who could fly, going up against the kiddies.”
“Jesus,” Deke said, spreading Danish butter on a kelp stick. “I wiped the floor with those spades. They were good, too.” “That’s nice, honey,” Nance mumbled. She was working on her finals project, sweating data into a machine. “You know, I think what’s happening is I got real talent for this kind of shit. You know? I mean, the pro- gram gives me an edge, but I got the stuff to take ad- vantage of it. I’m really getting a rep out there, you know?” Impulsively, he snapped on the radio. Scratchy Dixieland brass blared. “Hey,” Nance said. “Do you mind?” “No, I’m just ” He fiddled with the knobs, came up with some slow, romantic bullshit. “There. Come on, stand up. Let’s dance.” “Hey, you know I can’t ” “Sure you can, sugarcakes.” He threw her the huge teddy bear and snatched up a patchwork cotton dress from the floor. He held it by the waist and sleeve, tuck- ing the collar under his chin. It smelled of patchouli, more faintly of sweat. “See, I stand over here, you stand over there. We dance. Get it?” Blinking softly, Nance stood and clutched the bear tightly. They danced then, slowly, staring into each other’s eyes. After a while, she began to cry. But still, she was smiling. * * Deke was daydreaming, imagining he was Tiny Mont- gomery wired into his jumpjet. Imagined the machine responding to his slightest neural twitch, reflexes cranked way up, hype flowing steadily into his veins. Nance’s floor became jungle, her bed a plateau in the Andean foothills, and Deke flew his Spad at forced speed, as if it were a full-wired interactive combat machine. Computerized hypos fed a slow trickle of high-performance enhancement melange into his bloodstream. Sensors were wired directly into his skull pulling a supersonic snapturn in the green-blue bowl of sky over Bolivian rain forest. Tiny would have felt the airflow over control surfaces. Below, grunts hacked through the jungle with hype-pumps strapped above elbows to give them that little extra death-dance fury in combat, a shot of liquid hell in a blue plastic vial. Maybe they got ten minutes’ worth in a week. But coming in at treetop level, reflexes cranked to the max, flying so low the ground troops never spotted you until you were on them, phosgene agents released, away and gone before they could draw a bead . . . it took a constant trickle of hype just to maintain. And the direct neuron interface with the jumpjet was a two-way street. The onboard computers monitored biochemistry and decided when to open the sluice gates and give the human component a killer jolt of combat edge. Dosages like that ate you up. Ate you good and slow and constant, etching the brain surfaces, eroding away the brain-cell membranes. If you weren’t yanked from the air promptly enough, you ended up with brain- cell attenuation with reflexes too fast for your body to handle and your fight-or-flight reflexes fucked real good…. “I aced it, proleboy!” “Hah?” Deke looked up, startled, as Nance slammed in, tossing books and bag onto the nearest heap.
“My finals project I got exempted from exams. The prof said he’d never seen anything like it. Uh, hey, dim the lights, wouldja? The colors are weird on my eyes.~~ He obliged. “So show me. Show me this wunnerful thing.” “Yeah, okay.” She snatched up his remote, kicked clear standing space atop the bed, and struck a pose. A spark flared into flame in her hand. It spread in a quicksilver line up her arm, around her neck, and it was a snake, with triangular head and flickering tongue. Molten colors, oranges and reds. It slithered between her breasts. “I call it a firesnake,” she said proudly. Deke leaned close, and she jerked back. “Sorry. It’s like your flame, huh? I mean, I can see these tiny little fuckers in it.” “Sort of.” The firesnake flowed down her stom- ach. “Next month I’m going to splice two hundred separate flame programs together with meld justifica- tion in between to get the visuals. Then I’ll tap the mind’s body image to make it self-orienting. So it can crawl all over your body without your having to mind it. You could wear it dancing.” “Maybe I’m dumb. But if you haven’t done the work yet, how come I can see it?” Nance giggled. “That’s the best part half the work isn’t done yet. Didn’t have the time to assemble the pieces into a unified program. Turn on that radio, huh? I want to dance.” She kicked off her shoes. Deke tuned in something gutsy. Then, at Nance’s urging, turned it down, almost to a whisper. “I scored two hits of hype, see.” She was bouncing on the bed, weaving her hands like a Balinese dancer. “Ever try the stuff? In-credible. Gives you like absolute concentration. Look here.” She stood en pointe. “Never done that before.” “Hype,” Deke said. “Last person I heard of got caught with that shit got three years in the infantry. How’d you score it?” “Cut a deal with a vet who was in grad school. She bombed out last month. Stuff gives me perfect visualization. I can hold the projection with my eyes shut. It was a snap assembling the program in my head.” “On just two hits, huh?” “One hit. I’m saving the other. Teach was so im- pressed he’s sponsoring me for a job interview. A recruiter from I. G. Feuchtwaren hits campus in two weeks. That cap is gonna sell him the program and me. I’m gonna cut out of school two years early, straight in- to industry, do not pass jail, do not pay two hundred dollars.” The snake curled into a flaming tiara. It gave Deke a funny-creepy feeling to think of. Nance walking out of his life. “I’m a witch,” Nance sang, “a wetware witch.” She shucked her shirt over her head and sent it flying. Her fine, high breasts moved freely, gracefully, as she danced. “I’m gonna make it” now she was singing a current pop hit “to the . . . top!” Her nipples were small and pink and aroused. The firesnake licked at them and whipped away. “Hey, Nance,” Deke said uncomfortably. “Calm down a little, huh?” “I’m celebrating!” She hooked a thumb into her shiny gold panties. Fire swirled around hand and crotch. “I’m the virgin goddess, baby, and I have the pow-er!” Singing again. Deke looked away. “Gotta go now,” he mumbled. Gotta go home and jerk off. He wondered where she’d hidden that second hit. Could be anywhere.