The Mind-Riders Read online

  Down below it was dim and dingy, though the sky was still dull gray and brown. Twilight comes early at ground level and lingers a hell of a long time. The real day only lasts as long as it takes the noonday sun to cross the gap between the highest ledges. We live in cliff faces, canyons and caves, men of the third Stone Age. But twilight lasts a long time, and we reckon we have durability.

  “How long have you worked at—Network?” he wanted to know.

  “The same twenty years,” I told him, exaggerating slightly. “Or damn near. Spares and stunts. Master of a million puppets.” Old troupers never die—they just fade out to violins. I let myself go on, to pass the time while we walked. Time was slower now and the world was hard and steady again. “If I had a five for every sim I’d driven to its death I’d be in Consie City,” I said, ruminatively. “I guess that’s my forte—dying. Going out with a splash and a rattle. You think it’s the hero and his fancy shooting gives the vamps that flash of satisfaction when the villain buys it, but it isn’t. It’s me. The feeler’s inside the hero’s head, but it’s watching me go out that fires his little burst of glory. It’s not just the winning—it’s the way that he wins.

  “I go down screaming, like it’s a pleasure to kill me. We all need someone to look down on, someone to kick in the balls, someone to kill. That’s where the real kicks come from, so far as the vamps are concerned. That’s why it means something to them. They’re getting their own back on the cruel world, on the crowds that hustle them every moment of their lives. It’s the loser who gets the winner his big payoff. Life is a zero-sum game. Without me to go out like an exploding bogeyman there’d be nothing. You remember that when you’re feeding a billion vamps what they love. Remember the poor sod who’s handling your patsy.”

  I shut up then, feeling just a little bit cruel, although he’d never realize it or know why. He wasn’t allowed to think like that, to be sarcastic about the sacred vocation. His mind had to remain pure. A feeler has to identify with the hero-situation all the way down the line. To him, the villain has to be so much filth to be swept up. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about the guy handling the sim—he was supposed to believe in it as if it were all real, whether it was the super space patrol or knights in shiny armor.

  But he didn’t mind me running off at the mouth. It was all the same to him. Just noise. Just something to talk at now his teddy bear was retired.

  “You don’t—like it much, do you?” he said, experiencing a flash of real insight.

  “It’s a living,” I said. “And it’s something I do damn well. I don’t expect much else. It’s an average kind of life. Never mind the quality, feel the width.”

  And it was enough. There had been a time—but isn’t there always?

  The dispensers in the lobby were half-full and working, which demonstrated that the supply company with the contract for the building was at least keeping pace with the local kids, whose mission in life was to get everything for nothing and bugger up the machines in the process. We both got supper packs, hanging around looking hungry while the microwaves got to work. I nodded at the building superintendent, who looked vaguely like a sheriff out of an antique movie. Then we took the elevator to the thirty-ninth, suspending the chat as we went. Nobody talks in elevators, even when they aren’t packed tight.

  We exchanged dutiful smiles as we turned to haul out keys for our separate doors. We each muttered something inaudible.

  Once inside, relaxing like a deflated balloon, I pulled the foil off the supper pack. I accidentally ran the edge along my little finger and slit it from the nail to the first joint. I started to curse, and just for a second the syllable stuck in my teeth. I didn’t know whether to laugh or try again until I got it right.

  CHAPTER TWO

  With the magnification turned up full the image filled the cap from the back wall to the central deck. I let the bed down and perched on it, with my legs folded under so I didn’t have to dangle my toes in the fringe of the image.

  The window was behind me and the million multicolored eyes of the neighboring capstacks were staring at the back of my head. I didn’t bother with the screen. Sometimes, in between programs or when the chat got too banal to bear, I liked to turn over, make the bed into a bridge between the holo’s fantasy world and the all-too-real city. I liked to look down both ways—into the consumer dream, into the night-ridden street.

  I wasn’t ever afraid of the height.

  Living on the thirty-ninth floor for the best part of twenty years, in a capsule like a wormhole with one side all glass, is enough to cure anyone of acrophobia—or drive them mad. But I never had it. I liked the height. I guess I’m an acrophile, with no inborn fear of falling. I liked to be high up above the filthy street in 3912 Capstack 232, with the illusion of floating amid the towers of light, suspended in some kind of limbo, in the middle of it all and yet quite apart. Alone.

  But for now, it was back to the world and eyes diving into the holo. The viewpoint was hovering over the ringside, looking down and across a neutral corner. The sim that Paul Herrera was running was, as usual, dark-skinned with silver trunks. The challenger, Angeli, wore the white skin and the royal blue gear.

  Except for color, the two sims were identical. There was very little of the Negro about the features of the black body—they were the same neutral blend of racial characters as those of the white. The skin color differed only so you could tell the boxers apart with the utmost ease. Pound for pound, inch for inch, the bodies were matched dead equal. The fight was fair—as fair as computer programming and human ingenuity could make it. Even the rules were programmed into the simulation-pattern. Herrera and Angeli could make the sims do just about anything, so long as it was in the rules. If either of them tried to throw a foul punch or hang on when the break was called they would tie themselves in knots. It paid to stay legitimate—trying to make a sim do what it wasn’t programmed to do threw your mind into confusion, and you left yourself open to get hurt. In sim boxing, all fights go by the book.

  And the best man always wins.

  The best handler, that is.

  The bodies in the ring were just patterns of light, but to me and many millions of others they looked real. What’s anybody but a pattern of light on your retina? They looked real, and they behaved as if they were real. To the men handling them they even felt real. They hurt when they were hit. They bruised and they cut, and their nonexistent bones could be broken. Everything was for real, until it was all over—and then Herrera and Angeli could step right out of their battered, agonized, maltreated bodies right back into their own sweet selves. No scars—except mental ones, which don’t show. Sim boxers feel the pain, but they aren’t supposed to get damaged. That’s the theory. As to what goes on inside people’s heads—well, that’s not Network’s business and it isn’t in the retail-indexed package, except for emotional resonance.

  In the days when men used to take their flesh with them into the ring it might be the strongest man that won, or the fastest, or the one with the longest reach, or the one who didn’t cut as easily as the next man. But in the sim, all men were guaranteed equal, and the only difference was how well you could use what the machine had given you. A spastic dwarf and a walking mountain could hook up together and fight level. The man who won might be the cleverer, or the more skillful, but most likely he was the man who most desperately wanted to win, who could extract from the sim everything which it was programmed to give, and add the indefinable something extra that sorts out the winners from the losers.

  And that man was Paul Herrera. Every time, for as many years as anyone could remember. Except maybe me.

  Herrera had been a winner now for eighteen years. It would have been unthinkable, fifty years ago, for a boxer to last so long. Herrera had grown old as champion—but that didn’t matter because he kept the same body with the same abilities. Eternal youth—physically, at least. As long as his mind didn’t begin to crack or fade, as long as his spirit didn’t fail, there could b
e another eighteen years in Herrera yet. He could keep on getting better, wiser, more skillful. And any novice coming into the game with youthful enthusiasm and high hopes had eighteen years to catch up.

  There’d been a time, long ago. when Herrera had had nothing but the will to win. He’d won fights, but without much style, without much real ability in handling the sim. He’d lost a fight, too. But now he had it all. All the skill, all the experience. Year by year, it became more difficult to see anyone being able to take him. Other men who’d been in the game almost as long as he had were maybe just as clever, just as good, but they always had one thing they could never overcome—a psychological handicap. Some time back in their past, Herrera had beaten each and every one of them. They knew it, and he knew it. He was the king.

  Everyone looking in, as I was, whether they were using E-link or had the commentary switched on or were just watching, knew that Herrera had to win tonight. No up-and-coming youngster like Ray Angeli, for all his vamp-appeal, could possibly take him.

  But Angeli did have vamp-appeal. There could be no doubt about that. While the chat went on and Network’s producers carefully spun out the anticipation, the meter in the corner of the sim showed that nearly thirty percent of the vamps were hooked into the challenger. Thirty percent is a lot of support for a loser. A lot of the thirty would be hitch-hikers, intending to drink what they could out of the kid and then jack him in—get out and leave Herrera to finish him, but there would be some who’d stay with him on the forlorn hope. By the time the writing was on the wall, though, he’d be down to five percent or less—freaks who charged up on negative E and oddballs who hated Herrera so much they’d cling on till the bitter end in the hope of seeing a lightning bolt from heaven split him in two.

  I wondered, absently, as the fighters came to the center of the ring which of them Jimmy Schell would be riding. He’d asked me but he hadn’t told me. My guess was Angeli. Angeli had the right qualifications to attract a kid like Jimmy. Jimmy could identify with Angeli’s hopes—maybe tie them in with his own. But Jimmy wouldn’t stay—not for long. He’d have to get out. He’d maybe even switch over to vamp Herrera for the K.O.—a shallow mind like his wouldn’t feel uncomfortable about that. After all, he’d think, it’s only entertainment....

  The bell went and Herrera danced away, catlike, and Angeli came forward with too much eagerness, too much hurry. Angeli over-reached, got tapped, clinched, and then came away. He steadied himself, began to jockey for position, threw a couple of poor punches he didn’t really mean, and got jabbed again for his pains. Herrera came in to hustle him a bit, and got in another short-range blow when the challenger tried to clinch. They tested each other’s gloves, measuring one another’s eyes as they settled into the rhythm of the fight. Herrera was taking it easy, coasting, waiting for Angeli to come to him.

  The viewpoint swung so we could look first into the champion’s face, then full at the challenger. Already, the difference was showing clear. The identical faces were worked into very different aspects by the minds that were wearing them. Angeli was handsome. Herrera wasn’t. Angeli looked grim. Herrera looked vicious.

  They danced, they faced up, waiting for the bell. Angeli threw a couple of punches at Herrera’s head, but they were brushed aside by the dark sim’s gloves. But this time Angeli was good enough to avoid the left hook aimed at his nipple. He was more careful now, more stylish, moving as if he meant it. There was no more clinching.

  In the last few seconds of the round Herrera chased him, and couldn’t catch him. In those seconds, Angeli looked good, like a man who could really handle a sim. He must have felt good, too, and his vamps would be getting their belt, sucking him up greedily. But the seventy riding Herrera must have been drowning in the feeling that it was all okay, that this kid was in the bag.

  After the bell, neither fighter had really worked up a simulated sweat. The tally flashed the score, the round going to Herrera, but that didn’t matter a lot.

  At this stage of a fight, everyone is winning. Both fighters fancy themselves, are in to win. That’s what the game is all about, from Network’s point of view. First the contest, then the kill. It all pulls in the consumers.

  In the second, the pattern of the fight began to develop clearly. There was a lot of movement as Herrera used the width of the ring to try and harass Angeli. Herrera moved faster and covered a lot more canvas. Angeli was more economical with his movements, more graceful. He refused to be reached and he didn’t let Herrera steal space. The champion jabbed a lot, landing most of the punches but making no real impact. If only Angeli had been able to beat his opponent’s guard he could have done some good, but style is ninety percent show—Angeli’s brand of style, at any rate.

  A couple of times Herrera seemed to be over-reaching, and Angeli went in with long looping rights, but Herrera ran round the blows with almost contemptuous ease. He was barely touched.

  At this stage, both fighters were waiting—looking interested but scoring very little. Against a man of Herrera’s proven stamina that seemed like a dangerous way for the challenger to play, especially with Herrera taking points in the early minutes that would have to be won back the hard way. But Angeli wasn’t wearing himself out. He was looking easy.

  In the third, though—with the second having obviously gone to Herrera—Angeli began looking to put in a greater quantity of punches rather than sparing himself to put one in that could hurt. For awhile, they looked to trade blow for blow, and for the first time Angeli’s class began to show. He landed a couple of rights, cutting through Herrera largely by aggression, although he got solid raps in exchange. Herrera was content to go backwards instead of sideways for awhile, though his left was always licking round Angeli’s face. In the last half-minute, Herrera was forced into defense while Angeli tested him, but he made no attempt to clinch and slow down. The round went to the challenger by a shade.

  The meter showing the B-link balance was as steady as a rock. The vamps were cruising, the excitement carrying them along just nicely. Whichever boxer they were hooked into they were getting their money’s worth, for now. It was all good clean fun. So far.

  I was out of it, and glad to be. I even had the commentaries switched off, so that only the sim sound effects were coming through. I was watching the fight, not pretending to live it. I was detached, uninvolved, rational. Clarity of mind is a valuable thing, and I rate it too valuable to risk inside an B-link headdress. The kind of willful damage you can inflict upon your state of mind with drink or cigarettes or psychotropics is something to be very careful of. I saw no pleasure in strategic self-distortion. I tried to keep my interest in the fight an objective one, and tried to concentrate on the art of boxing rather than the guts.

  Maybe, I thought, as I tried to fill the empty moments between rounds, my attitude toward height and my distaste for the B-link are related. I felt, somehow, as if I were above the vamps, on a loftier plane—spectating while they clustered round to drink the emotional substance from the orgy of conflict which they had created out of what was once, perhaps, a sport.

  Perhaps, I guess, was the operative word.

  Angeli took the fourth, again by a shade, and looked pretty good doing it. But we were by no means back to square one. Angeli knew now what he had only half-known before—that Herrera wasn’t slowing down, wasn’t easing up, wasn’t impressed. Angeli was beginning to feel that the sim he was riding needed pushing along, dragging about the ring. The hammered flesh was beginning to weigh on him a little. But not on Herrera. The champ was still making the pace even if Angeli was edging the punches. If the challenger was going to do something real he was going to have to pull out more and keep pulling it out. Herrera still had reserves untapped, and always seemed to have. No one knew how much more Angeli might pull out—he had never been extended to his limit.

  The fifth was dead even and even the computer declined to give a decision. The tally counter split the round two ways. Any difference there was in that round was between the
minds of the fighters—the way they were taking their punches psychologically. Herrera, I knew, would be soaking it up, just feeding it back to his own gathering fury. Every time you hurt Herrera you made him that little bit better. I couldn’t believe that the same was true of Angeli.

  In a sense, Herrera was almost a vamp himself. He fed on emotion like his devoted fans. Where he got it from doesn’t matter—it all welled up inside him, whether he sucked it from the air or his opponents or even his audience. Somewhere in Herrera there was a powerhouse where need was created, in defiance of the law of conservation of energy. They claim that the only kind of telepathy that exists is the bastard kind that exists courtesy of MiMaC, but any really top class performer, of whatever kind, will doubt that. When you’re winning, you can prey on your victim’s mind. You can absorb the flood-tide of feeling that’s somehow always there. Herrera was sucking up Angeli and feeding on him, somehow. He knew he was winning, believed in himself, and he didn’t need the machines to make his mind resonate.

  Herrera took the sixth, and for a moment or two as the bell went and the gloves dropped the sim showed Angeli’s face, and found within the eyes just a hint of defeat. Angeli felt he was pulling out the last of his stops, and the champ wasn’t giving. Not an inch.

  I could understand something of the doubt that was creeping into Angeli’s soul. The vamps would be too high on his feelings to know or care about what he was thinking—and in any case that’s something MiMaC can’t do, because thoughts are transient, tentative, evanescent, and can’t be captured. But I knew, because I’d been there.

  What Angeli was thinking was this:

  Herrera is moving faster and further than I am. He’s burning up more energy. But he’s not tiring. He’s hitting just as hard. He doesn’t get hurt. What do I have to do? What has to be done to break through? When and how does that facade ever waver, ever begin to fail.