Rock On by Bruce Sterling, Poppy Z. Brite, Norman Spinrad, Elizabeth Hand, Lucius Shepard, Graham Joyce, Michael Swanwick, Charles De Lint, John Shirley, F. Paul Wilson, Howard Waldrop, Alastair Reynolds, Graham Masterton, Caitlin R. Kiernan, David J. Schow, Elizabeth Bear, Edward Bryan, Lawrence C. Connolly, Bradley Denton, Greg Kihn, Pat Cadigan, Marc Laidlaw, Del James, Lewis Shiner Page B
Authors: Bruce Sterling, Poppy Z. Brite, Norman Spinrad, Elizabeth Hand, Lucius Shepard, Graham Joyce, Michael Swanwick, Charles De Lint, John Shirley, F. Paul Wilson, Howard Waldrop, Alastair Reynolds, Graham Masterton, Caitlin R. Kiernan, David J. Schow, Elizabeth Bear, Edward Bryan, Lawrence C. Connolly, Bradley Denton, Greg Kihn, Pat Cadigan, Marc Laidlaw, Del James, Lewis Shiner
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MOUNTAIN
CENTRAL ARENA
DENVER
3
My name is Robert Dennis Clary and I was born twenty-three years ago in Oil City, Pennsylvania, which is also where I was raised. I’ve got a degree in electrical engineering from MIT and some grad credit at Cal Tech in electronics. “Not suitable, Mr. Clary,” said the dean. “You lack the proper team spirit. Frankly speaking, you are selfish. And a cheat.”
My mother told me once she was sorry I wasn’t handsome enough to get by without working. Listen, Ma, I’m all right. There’s nothing wrong with working the concert circuit. I’m working damned hard now. I was never genius enough that I could have got a really good job with, say, Bell Futures or one of the big space firms. But I’ve got one marketable talent—what the interviewer called a peculiarly coordinative affinity for multiplex circuitry. He looked a little stunned after I finished with the stim console. “Christ, kid, you really get into it, don’t you?”
That’s what got me the job with Alpertron, Ltd., the big promotion and booking agency. I’m on the concert tour and work their stim board, me and my console over there on the side of the stage. It isn’t that much different in principle from playing one of the instruments in the backup band, though it’s a hell of a lot more complex than even Nagami’s synthesizer. It all sounds simple enough: my console is the critical link between performer and audience. Just one glorified feedback transceiver: pick up the empathic load from Jain, pipe it into the audience, they react and add their own load, and I feed it all back to the star. And then around again as I use the sixty stim tracks, each with separate controls to balance and augment and intensify. It can get pretty hairy, which is why not just anyone can do the job. It helps that I seem to have a natural resistance to the side-band slopover radiation from the empathic transmissions. “Ever think of teaching?” said the school voc counselor. “No,” I said. “I want the action.”
And that’s why I’m on the concert circuit with Jain Snow; as far as I’m concerned, the only real blues singer and stim star.
Jain Snow, my intermittent unrequited love. Her voice is shagreen-rough; you hear it smooth until it tears you to shreds.
She’s older than I am, four, maybe five years; but she looks like she’s in her middle teens. Jain’s tall, with a tumbleweed bush of red hair; her face isn’t so much pretty as it is intense. I’ve never known anyone who didn’t want to make love to her. “When you’re a star,” she said once, half drunk, “you’re not hung up about taking the last cookie on the plate.”
That includes me, and sometimes she’s let me come into her bed. But not often. “You like it?” she said. I answered sleepily, “You’re really good.” “Not me,” she said. “I mean being in a star’s bed.” I told her she was a bitch and she laughed. Not often enough.
I know I don’t dare force the issue; even if I did, there would still be Stella.
Stella Vanilla—I’ve never learned exactly what her real last name is—is Jain’s bodyguard. Other stim stars have whole platoons of karate-trained killers for protection. Jain needs only Stella. “Stella, pick me up a fifth? Yeah, Irish. Scotch if they don’t.”
She’s shorter than I am, tiny and dark with curly chestnut hair. She’s also proficient in any martial art I can think of. And if all else fails, in her handbag she carries a .357 Colt Python with a four-inch barrel. When I first saw that bastard, I didn’t believe she could even lift it.
But she can. I watched Stella outside Bradley Arena in L.A. when some overanxious bikers wanted to get a little too close to Jain. “Back off, creeps.” “So who’s tellin’ us?” She had to hold the Python with both hands, but the muzzle didn’t waver. Stella fired once; the slug tore the guts out of a parked Harley-Wankel. The bikers backed off very quickly.
Stella
CENTRAL ARENA
DENVER
3
My name is Robert Dennis Clary and I was born twenty-three years ago in Oil City, Pennsylvania, which is also where I was raised. I’ve got a degree in electrical engineering from MIT and some grad credit at Cal Tech in electronics. “Not suitable, Mr. Clary,” said the dean. “You lack the proper team spirit. Frankly speaking, you are selfish. And a cheat.”
My mother told me once she was sorry I wasn’t handsome enough to get by without working. Listen, Ma, I’m all right. There’s nothing wrong with working the concert circuit. I’m working damned hard now. I was never genius enough that I could have got a really good job with, say, Bell Futures or one of the big space firms. But I’ve got one marketable talent—what the interviewer called a peculiarly coordinative affinity for multiplex circuitry. He looked a little stunned after I finished with the stim console. “Christ, kid, you really get into it, don’t you?”
That’s what got me the job with Alpertron, Ltd., the big promotion and booking agency. I’m on the concert tour and work their stim board, me and my console over there on the side of the stage. It isn’t that much different in principle from playing one of the instruments in the backup band, though it’s a hell of a lot more complex than even Nagami’s synthesizer. It all sounds simple enough: my console is the critical link between performer and audience. Just one glorified feedback transceiver: pick up the empathic load from Jain, pipe it into the audience, they react and add their own load, and I feed it all back to the star. And then around again as I use the sixty stim tracks, each with separate controls to balance and augment and intensify. It can get pretty hairy, which is why not just anyone can do the job. It helps that I seem to have a natural resistance to the side-band slopover radiation from the empathic transmissions. “Ever think of teaching?” said the school voc counselor. “No,” I said. “I want the action.”
And that’s why I’m on the concert circuit with Jain Snow; as far as I’m concerned, the only real blues singer and stim star.
Jain Snow, my intermittent unrequited love. Her voice is shagreen-rough; you hear it smooth until it tears you to shreds.
She’s older than I am, four, maybe five years; but she looks like she’s in her middle teens. Jain’s tall, with a tumbleweed bush of red hair; her face isn’t so much pretty as it is intense. I’ve never known anyone who didn’t want to make love to her. “When you’re a star,” she said once, half drunk, “you’re not hung up about taking the last cookie on the plate.”
That includes me, and sometimes she’s let me come into her bed. But not often. “You like it?” she said. I answered sleepily, “You’re really good.” “Not me,” she said. “I mean being in a star’s bed.” I told her she was a bitch and she laughed. Not often enough.
I know I don’t dare force the issue; even if I did, there would still be Stella.
Stella Vanilla—I’ve never learned exactly what her real last name is—is Jain’s bodyguard. Other stim stars have whole platoons of karate-trained killers for protection. Jain needs only Stella. “Stella, pick me up a fifth? Yeah, Irish. Scotch if they don’t.”
She’s shorter than I am, tiny and dark with curly chestnut hair. She’s also proficient in any martial art I can think of. And if all else fails, in her handbag she carries a .357 Colt Python with a four-inch barrel. When I first saw that bastard, I didn’t believe she could even lift it.
But she can. I watched Stella outside Bradley Arena in L.A. when some overanxious bikers wanted to get a little too close to Jain. “Back off, creeps.” “So who’s tellin’ us?” She had to hold the Python with both hands, but the muzzle didn’t waver. Stella fired once; the slug tore the guts out of a parked Harley-Wankel. The bikers backed off very quickly.
Stella
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