Free The Man Who Melted by Jack Dann

have been different tonight, she told herself. I should have been with him. It's my fault. I've lost him now, really lost him….
    â€œBut there's no chance of him finding Josiane,” Pfeiffer said with finality. “She's probably dead or else she's running slack-jawed with a gang of Screamers somewhere in New York. Either way, she's beyond his reach.”
    â€œPerhaps not,” Joan said, recovering.
    â€œBunk,” Pfeiffer said, waving for a drink. There was a waiter on duty now, and a battered old Thring domestic robot keeping the back station where Joan and Pfeiffer were sitting. The club was becoming crowded.
    â€œDo you want another drink?” Pfeiffer asked Joan as the robot hesitated beside their booth. The robot, although otherwise clean and burnished, had the flag of the old Irish Republic sloppily painted on its chest. It had a jolly, stereotyped Irish face on its video display; and it spoke in brogue. Although the robot moved smoothly on hidden wheels, it had the rectangular look of something that should rattle and squeak, like a twentieth-century automobile.
    Joan and Pfeiffer ordered another drink, and the robot whispered off.
    â€œRaymond won't find anything inside the Screamer but the last flickers of a dying mind,” Pfeiffer said. “Did you know that Raymond had to be incarcerated in a sanatorium after he plugged into his psychiatrist?”
    â€œWhat?” Joan asked.
    â€œAh, that he didn't tell you.”
    â€œI did know that he was in a private sanatorium for a time.”
    â€œWell,” Pfeiffer continued, “it was an experiment to regain his memory—the idea being that the psych could gain access to whatever it was that Mantle was hiding from himself.”
    â€œAnd…?”
    â€œRaymond plugged into the psych, and then went over the edge when the psych started probing. Raymond must have had quite a stake in hiding the information, for he almost killed the psych before the connection was broken. And this doctor was supposed to be experienced in using the psyconductor with patients. The irony is that both of them ended up in the same sanatorium.”
    â€œYou really don't like Ray, do you?” Joan asked, angry at the way Pfeiffer had told her the story, and angry at herself for being here, for not being with Mantle. And damn the church and Pretre for taking him away, she thought.
    â€œOf course, I like Raymond. Christ, I've known him for twenty years.”
    â€œYou don't seem to be much of a friend. You talk about him as if he were a thing, not a person.”
    â€œI'm sorry you misunderstand me. I know Raymond better than anyone else. I'm speaking of the things about him that worry me. Since I assumed you to be his friend too, I didn't think it necessary to review his good points, although I can do that if you wish.” He gave her a wide, boyish grin, then bowed his head to disappear it.
    â€œOkay,” Joan said, “ I'm sorry.”
    â€œForget it.”
    You asshole, she thought. No wonder Ray hates him. She wondered how Pfeiffer would be sexually. Probably not very good, but then again…. He was probably not bisexual, probably fucked-up sexually.
    â€œDo you really believe that Raymond can find Josiane by sticking into a Screamer?”
    Another gibe, Joan thought, but she would play a game and take everything seriously, ignore nuance. She could excuse herself, get rid of him; but there was too much she wanted to find out about Ray, and about his relationship with Pfeiffer and Josiane.
    â€œYes,” she said matter-of-factly, “I believe Ray has a chance of finding out about his wife.” Smiling, she said, “And one doesn't ‘stick-in,’ one plugs-in.”
    Pfeiffer grinned, then his face became serious again, as if the muscles could only hold a smile for an instant. “Is that as bad as calling San Francisco ‘Frisco’?” he asked, but the joke fell dead. “I don't