Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan

Author:Pat Cadigan [Cadigan, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

FANDANGO

“But if you’d gone into neurosis peddling, what would you do to relax?” said Fandango. She’d taken to hanging around my place in her various neurotic drag. This week she was dead white all over with a coating of lanugo. Early Petulant Child, she called it; it looked more like the Invasion of the Giant Baby to me.

“Huh?”

“Neurotics should never go into neurosis peddling. It only encourages them.”

“I’m neurotic?”

“Sure you’re neurotic. AU you pathosfinders are neurotic. You have to be. You’re always looking for what things mean. It’s part of your job, of course, but it’s still neurotic.”

“And what about you? You’re not neurotic?”

She shrugged. “Oh, sure. But it’s different for me. I’m into it as an art form, like all neurosis peddlers. Can you honestly say you have an appreciation for neurosis as another form of art?”

“No.”

“Well, there you have it. You’re stuck with pathosfinding unless you quit and you can’t quit. You’re under contract until you make back what NN invested in training you, plus a twenty-percent profit. That fancy vacation you took with Lindbloom is included in that figure, you know.”

I hadn’t known. Or rather, I hadn’t read my contract carefully enough, but it didn’t matter that much to me. After all, I had nowhere better to go.

Fandango popped up off the floor where she’d been knotted up like a sheepshank or something and dialed herself another birch beer. “Anything for you?”

I held up my glass to show her I was only half done with mine.

“You’re the first one I know of that the old fox hired in right out of an institute. Everyone else here had a few years in private practice. Were you some kind of prodigy at J. Walter?”

“No,” I said, laughing a little. “Not me.”

“Ah.” Fandango ambled over, clinking her ice cubes. “Then he was the prodigy.”

“ ‘He’? ‘He’ who?”

Fandango blinked. Moonstone eyes; they didn’t really become her. “Whoever it was that left such an indelible mark on your life. Or she, excuse me.”

Indelible mark; that was one way to put it. “Sorry, I hadn’t realized we’d gone from a discussion of my hiring to, uh, something else entirely. You were right the first time. He. Yah, he was. A prodigy, I mean.”

“I know what you mean, I’m following this conversation. After all, I started it.” She lit on the couch next to me. “So tell me, was he the reason you went into mindplaying?”

I laughed again, shaking my head. “No, not him.”

Fandangos smile got broader. “Outrageous, Deadpan. Another one. Quite the vixen, were you?”

“Oh, no, not me.”

Now she looked puzzled. “Well, then, who?”

“Who what?”

“Who was the vixen?”

I broke up completely. “It wasn’t anything like that, Fandango,” I said when I stopped laughing.

She drew back a little, frowning at me. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You need a life, Deadpan. Hey, listen to that, that’s the second time I’ve called you Deadpan. That’s what I mean. What kind of a life have you got just pulling down the big ones for Nelson goddam Nelson?”

“Hey, give me a little time.

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