Read Online Transmaniacon by John Shirley - Free Book Online Page B

stretched. “Fuller will come after me.” He said, mostly to himself.
    â€œYou really think our employer was Chaldin?”
    Ben nodded. “For a person who acts like she doesn’t care about anything, you ask a lot of questions.”
    â€œI’m curious, but I don’t care , really. Nothing’s real. I just woke up here…and a big crowd of people died yesterday night, and I don’t really know why.”
    He caught a look in her eyes, as though a shutter had been opened and for a moment he glimpsed the mind within. Then the shutter slammed in his face.
    But he had seen her misery. She felt lost.
    Gloria had awakened to an alien and exceptionally perverse world, and what friends and family she’d had were more than a century dead. Before they’d frozen her, there had been the trial and the conviction for a crime she hadn’t committed, the rejection by a world that knew nothing about her, except what the newspapers claimed—that she should be reviled as a cult murderer.
    In her eyes now he saw ennui and a dull loneliness. He was swept up in an impulse--an impulse that surprised him: He threw his arms about her and drew her close. She didn’t resist. She leaned on his chest and to his amazement he found he was stroking her hair. He noted the ear cusp plugged in her right ear. She was sad and angry, listening to sad and angry music. She swayed against him to the beat. He bent to kiss her…
    She stiffened, withdrew, sensing she’d let her guard down. The shutters were locked tightly in her black eyes. No light escaped them.
    Ben let his hands drop to his sides. To fill the uncomfortable silence he said the first thing that came into his head, “What, uh, what song’s playing on the ear-cusp?”
    She frowned, listening. “ Helter-Skelter . By the Beatles.” She made a great show of shrugging, turned and left the room, closing the door carefully behind her.
    A few seconds passed--and then the door opened and Lenny came inside. “I know how to use it,” he said.
    Ben stared at him. “Use what?”
    â€œThe exciter.” Lenny’s small jet eyes glistened. He whispered, “A whole new principle in amplification.”
    â€œNot sure I want to know...But...How’s it work?”
    â€œWe just cut open your chest and stick it in. We can probably put it in the space in there where a normal person has a heart,” said Lenny, grinning.
    ***
    Ben awoke on a hospital bed. He groaned, shifted about. The bed felt like a lab of stone. He was a mattress, but an unforgiving one. Gingerly, he felt the scar on his chest, close beneath his sternum. He could feel the exciter, the Transmaniacon, in there, hard and cold, not far beneath his heart. He hoped Lenny was right. The metal, he had told him, was devised from a silicon base which his flesh would not reject. But where had the surgeons found room for it? Contrary to popular opinion, Ben Rackey had a heart. No room there. There was no bulge, only the thin scar, healing with unnatural rapidity. Good surgeons in Las Vegas.
    He’d planned to give it all up...
    But Chaldin would be out to control, or destroy him. And Fuller--would simply kill him, if he could. Ben needed an edge.
    His clothes were laid out for him on a metal chair beside the bed. Otherwise, the windowless white room was bare. He got up, stretched, and dressed hurriedly, glancing at his watch. Nearly ten. He had been under for eighteen hours. Moving about, he could not feel the exciter in his chest. Good.
    In the narrow hall outside his room, Gloria was sitting against the wall, asleep, her head propped on her folded coat. He bent and gently shook her awake. She frowned, glared at him out of slitted lids, then stood and stretched, irritably pushed away his hand when he tried to help her up. He could see the outlines of her ribs through her yellowed T-shirt. She pulled the leather jacket on, then smiled sleepily at him.