Free Electric Forest by Tanith Lee Page A

into it, to trigger neural

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    circuits, but drink is different. It's like food taste, scent, texture only. Unless my physical body were
    drunk. Then I'd feel it wouldn't I?" She waited, straight and stony, challenging him. "'What did you do?"

    "A little spirit distilled though the feed-drip in your maintenance capsule. Harmless. Arranged to coincide
with the progress of your own pseudo-drinking. I did it when you and the redhead went down to the pier."
     

    "
     
    Y· /'
     
    "As always. To manipulate you and revel in the enchanting result."

    No turmoil began in her. She was aware of a great alteration in herself. She was aware of anger, like an unlit fuse, anger and hate and power, all in abeyance. In herself, she was stilled.
    "There was a man on the pier," she said. "He apparently knew me." "A familiar gambit."
    "He was the original of the holostet man you used in the house."
    Claudio's eyes and mouth widened into childlike shock. He flung out his arms stiffly, hands upheld in incredulity like a puppet. The deliberate overacting was frankly intended to negate her.
    She went by him, into her bedroom, into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She stripped and offered herself to the stinging spray, tepid, then hot, then cool.
    She sensed him leaning by the bedroom door.
    Presently he said: "His name is Paul Hovak. He's ostensibly on E.G. government payroll, a coordinator for twenty or so subsidiary chemical research projects on Indigo. He's wealthy, mostly anonymous, and almost certainly has political affiliations outside E.C. He has learned a lot of jargon about the basics of subchem, and a lot more about wheels within wheels and strings that work strings-which the luckless hard-hitting Irlin will discover when he's fired next oneday."

     
    She did not reply. She listened to the shower, rinsing her body, not thinking. She was still switched off, like
     

    the electric trees of Claudio's holostet forest. She sensed Claudio shift beside the door.

    "When you dress, put on the present I've left you."
    She sensed him go away. She sensed the suite empty of him as if of its air. Through the vacuum, she stepped from the shower into the drier.
    In the bedroom, the dress hung ready, released from its plastase dust-resister: auburn satin with a coal-blue fringe of crystals across the shoulders. The matched coal crystal nails rose like thorns from their box, and beside them, a three-chain bracelet of black sapphires.
    Without thinking or considering, she had become fully alert. She lifted the bracelet, and ran her thumb along it. The telltale vibration was in the middle clasp. A micro-recorder, three hours worth of miniaturized tape, already active.
    She dressed and fastened the bracelet on her arm. Obediently. She was not wondering about anything.
    She was still switched off, like the electric trees.
    When the switch re-engaged, what would happen?
    She selected a perfume sachet, and squeezed its liquor into her palm. To the fragrance of Earthindian Sandalwood, like an accompaniment, the door buzzed.
    Not Claudio. Claudio and she possessed the plastic insert tags which unlocked the door from outside. Perhaps Nada, or Irlin. But she comprehended who it was.
    She would not answer, then.
    On her arm, the recorder in the bracelet faintly, faintly. Yes, she was meant to answer.
    She opened the door, and the black-haired man stood there. Paul Hovak. "Let me in,"' Paul Hovak said. So she let him in.
    He strolled deep into the room.

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    "Pleasing," he said. "Of course, your salary is adequate. Or is someone keeping you?" "Someone is keeping me," she said.

    "Then I trust he's away right now."

    And briskly he went to every door of the suite, opening them, glancing inside, even into the two bathrooms.
    She remembered the conversation in the silver house, when she had supposed she spoke to this man and did not. His real voice, his real attitude, were quite unlike those of the holostet. The actual Paul Hovak was crisp in his approach.