Free Shatterday by Harlan Ellison Page A

"communicaster," but as an attractive woman, thirty-four years old, body tanned and well toned from afternoons at the Beverly Hills Health Club, nose bobbed exquisitely by Dr. Parks, auburn hair coddled and cozened just so at Jon Peters's parlor in the Valley. She had a momentary flash of regret at not having worn something bulky and concealing. The blouse was too sheer, the skirt too tight, the whole image too provocative. But she had dressed for after the broadcast, for the party CBS was hosting that night at the Bonaventure to promote its new midseason sitcom. The party at which she would use the sensual good looks, the tanned and well-toned body, the exquisite nose and brushfire hair to play some ingratiating politics; to move herself out of a seven-year rut on local talk radio and into a network job. Dressing with care this afternoon, before coming in to the station, she had given no thought to the effect on her guests; only to how she would present herself at the party. Attention where it mattered.
    But Brother Michael Darkness was staring at her the way men stared at her in the Polo Lounge or in the meat-rack pickup bar of the Rangoon Racquet Club. And she wished she were wearing a kaftan, a fur-lined parka, a severe three-piece tweed pantsuit.
    "Would you like a cup of coffee?" She heard her voice coming thickly and distantly. Not at all the liquid honey tone she used as the trademark of an aural sex object when broadcasting.
    "No thank you, Miss Ketchum. I'll just sit here, if that's all right."
    She nodded. "Yes, of course. That'll be fine. I'll go get Dr. Theiss and be right back. We have five minutes before we're back on the air." And she escaped into the corridor quickly, finding herself leaning against the sea-green wall breathing very deeply.
    Over the station speakers in the hall the newscaster was headlining the Los Angeles razorblade slayings, commenting on the discovery that morning of an eleventh young woman, nude and with throat sliced open, in the bushes near the Silverlake off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway. She heard the voice, but paid no attention.
    She stepped into the waiting room beside the studio. Jake Theiss was leaning against the wall sipping coffee from a paper cup. The telephone switchboard was lit from one end to the other, all ten lines strobing with urgency. Millie looked up from the log and rolled her eyes. "Jesus, Terri, you've got a live one tonight. They're crawling down the wires to talk to him."
    She felt her heart racing. "Keep the best ones on hold; I'll try to get to them after I introduce Jake."
    Then she turned to Jake Theiss, who smiled at her, and it was as if someone had returned her stolen security blanket. He had been on the show a dozen times before, and they had even gone out several evenings. His mere presence reassured her.
    "Theresa," he said, stepping away from the wall and taking her hand, "you look a trifle whiplashed."
    She hugged him and kissed his cheek. "My God, Jake, have you been listening to him?"
    The psychiatrist nodded slowly. "I have indeed. But it's not so much what he says, as the way he says it. A little de Sade, a little Gilles de Rais, echoes of Proterius, a smidgeon of Cotton Mather and some direct quotes from the Evangelium Nicodemi , if memory serves well. All made contemporary by the addition of Jung, Freud, Adler and Werner Erhard's look-out-for-number-one. Nothing particularly spectacular about it; most modern demonologists plunder the same bag. But your Brother Michael in there has a sense of the dramatic, and a voice to match, and a nasty way of bringing in current events that … well … I can't say I'm looking forward to sharing a microphone with him."
    She drew a deep breath. "Jake, stop it ! This flake does a good enough job scaring the hell out of me on his own. I mean, it's like Exorcist time in there. When he starts talking about the return of the devils I swear to God I can feel the slimy things in that booth. And I never thought a