Read Video Star (Voice of the Whirlwind) for Free Online Page A

at a certain time, with his bank and without his friends. The phone call told him to go to another phone and be there within a certain allotted time. He complained, but the phone hung up in mid-syllable.
    At the second phone he was told to take the keys taped to the bottom of the shelf in the phone booth, go to such-and-such a car in the parking lot, and drive to Flagstaff to another public phone. His complaints were cut short by a slamming receiver. Once in Flagstaff, he was given another set of directions.
    By now he had learned not to complain.
    If there were still people with him they were very good, because they hadn’t been seen at any of the turns of his course.
    He was working for Ric, even though he didn’t know it.

21
    Marlene was practicing readiness. New patterns were constantly flickering through her mind and she loved watching her head doing its tricks.
    She was wearing her war paint as she sat up on a tall ridge behind the cabins, her form encased in a plastic envelope that dispersed her body heat in patterns unrecognizable to infrared scanners. She had a radio and a powerful antenna, and she was humming “Greensleeves” to herself as she looked down at the cabins through long binoculars wrapped in a scansheet paper tube to keep the sun from winking from the lenses. Marlene also had headphones and a parabolic mike pointed down at the cabins, so that she could hear anything going on. Right now all she could hear was the wind.
    She could see the cabins perfectly, as well as the two riflemen on the ridge across the road. She was far away from anything likely to happen, but if things went well she wouldn’t be needed for anything but pushing buttons on cue anyway.
    “Greensleeves” hummed on and on. Marlene was having a good time. Working for Ric.

22
    Two-Fisted Jesus had turned the cabin into another plastic-hung cavern, lit by pale holograms and cool video monitors, filled with the hum of machinery and the brightness of liquid crystal. Right in the middle, a round coffee table full of crisp paper envelopes.
    Ric had been allowed entry because he was one of the principals in the transaction. He’d undergone scanning as he entered, both for weapons and for electronics. Nothing had been found. His Thunder, and about half of Marlene’s, was sitting on the table.
    Only two people were in the room besides Ric. Super Virgin had the safety caps off her claws and was carrying an automatic with laser sights in a belt holster. Ric considered the sights a pure affectation in a room this small. Jesus had a sawed-off twin-barrel shotgun sitting in his lap. The pistol grip might break his wrist but the spread would cover most of the room, and Ric wondered if Jesus had considered how much electronics he’d lose if he ever used it.

23
    Where three lightposts had been marked with fluorescent tape, the kid from California pulled off on the verge of the alloy road that wound ahead to leap over the Grand Canyon into Utah. Captain Islam pulled up behind him with two soldiers, and they scanned the kid right there, stripped him of a pistol and a homing sensor, and put him in the back of their own car.
    “You’re beginning to piss me off,” the kid said.
    “Just do what we tell you,” Captain Islam said, pulling away, “and you’ll be king of Los fucking Angeles.”

24
    Ric’s hands were trembling so hard he had to press them against the arms of his chair in order to keep it from showing. He could feel sweat oozing from his armpits. He really wasn’t good at this kind of thing.
    The kid from California was pushed in the door by Captain Islam, who stepped out and closed the door behind him. The kid was black and had clear plastic eye implants, with the electronics gleaming inside the transparent eyeball. He had patterned scarring instead of the tattoos, and was about sixteen. He wore a silver jacket, carried a duffel to put the Thunder in, and seemed annoyed.
    “Once you step inside,” Jesus said, “you have five