John Brunner – Jagged Orbit

After some cogitation, he instructed his computers to look for three things: the site to which the Gottwere having all this equipment delivered, which would itself be illuminating; notice of any recent techbreakthrough which might lead to the marketing of a brand-new product; and every single clue, no matter how tenuous, regarding the current quarrel within the cartel. Since there was absolutely no hope of anything turned up by such a blanket order being comped and usable by show-time today, he flagged the subject for overnight holding and turned back to immediately exmaterial.

Rumor-trapping, like running after butterflies with a muslin net, was one of his chief professional talents, and that he was good at it was proved by his show having survived-mutilated, one had to concede, but the loss of a leg was better than being put in a shroud for creNonetheless this patent truth did not greatly reassure him as he looked over the final selection of seven items, with three held in reserve against the risk of something being comped out at network HQ. Before making any kind of a charge against anybody his conobliged him to let Holocosmic’s own computers rethe background data, and sometimes they downa reading past the limit fixed by the firm which insured them against losing libel suits. Recently about one item a week had been being rejected, far too many in Flamen’s view; still, there were good reasons for supthe urge to complain.

It was a lean harvest today. At least, though, he now knew he was going to have a show. It was safe to spend the time needed to ingest some breakfast. But the food tasted of ashes as he forced it down.

The mechanism of the flotabed was beginning to go home. It had been bought secondhand, and in any case even though it was a meter thirty wide it hadn’t been designed for use as a double. So the first thing Lyla Clay was aware of on waking was that as usual she had remained rigid in her sleep to avoid the top left corner where the support was weakest, and by lying on her right arm had cut off its circulation. From elbow to fingertip it rang like a bell with the agony of returning sensation.

Annoyed, she opened her eyes to find a man she didn’t know grinning at her. His lips were writhing in comsilence, but the implications of that did not at first strike her.

She was completely naked; however, she had no reato be ashamed of her body, which was lean, youthand evenly tanned, and the reflex left over from her somewhat old-fashioned childhood which impelled her to reach for a nonexistent blanket-the heater circuits of the bed, at least, were still working properly-ran foul of the stiffness of cramp. Anyhow, it wasn’t the first time in her twenty years that she had woken up to find herself being admired by a man whose face and name were alike unknown to her.

Then the stranger dissolved in a shower of pink and purple snowflakes, and she remembered the vuset Dan and his friend Berry had trolleyed along the corridor from the elevator yesterday with so much sweating and cursing. They hadn’t had a vuset in the apt before-only an ancient non-holographic TV which offered nothing more interesting than the three surviving 2-D satellite transmissions insisted on by the PCC. Since those were beamed primarily at India, Africa and Latin America, and she and Dan spoke neither Hindi, Swahili, nor more than a smattering of Spanish, they had seldom bothered to switch on unless they were orbiting. Then, it didn’t matter that the programs were chiefly concerned with latrine-digging, fish-traps and the recognition of epidisease symptoms-in fact, as Dan had once pointed out, if they’d had a plot of land to dig latrines in, the information might have come in useful next time the toilets were blocked.

She looked around for Dan and found him on the other side of the bed. Rozar in hand, he was feeling for a spot on the wall where the magnetized leech on the end of the flex could pick up some power, rather like a mainliner hunting for a usable patch of skin. He located a section where the induction wire was still un-corroded, the rozar hummed into life, and he set about making good the defects in his beard. He was cursed with large round bald patches on both cheeks.