Steel Beach Read Free

crippling.
    “Says there’s a security interlock available, to ensure fidelity.”
    “What? Where’s that?”
    She gave me the faxpad reference. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
    “Is that legal?” I asked her.
    “Sure. It’s a contract between two people, isn’t it? Nobody’s forced to use it.”
    “It’s an electronic chastity belt, that’s what it is.”
    “Worn by both husband and wife. Not like the brave knight off to the Crusades, getting laid every night while his wife looks for a good locksmith. Good for the goose, good for the gander.”
    “Good for nobody, if you ask me.”
    Frankly, I was shocked, and not much shocks me. To each his or her own, that’s basic to our society. But ULTRA-Tingle was offering a coded security system whereby each partner had a password, unknown to the other, to lock or unlock his or her partner’s sexual response. Without the password, the sexual center of the brain would not be activated, and sex would be about as exciting as long division.
    To use it would require giving someone veto power over my own mind. I can’t imagine trusting anyone that much. But people are crazy. That’s what my job’s all about.
    “How about over there?” Cricket said.
    “Over where? I mean, what about it?” She was headed toward a patch of green, an area that, when completed, would be a pocket park. Trees stood around in pots. There were great rolls of turf stacked against one wall, like a carpet shop.
    “It’s probably the best spot we’ll find.”
    “For what?”
    “Have you forgotten your offer already?” she asked.
    To tell the truth, I had. After this many years, it had been made more in jest than anything else. She took my hand and led me onto an unrolled section of turf. It was soft and springy and cool. She reclined and looked up at me.
    “Maybe I shouldn’t say it, but I’m surprised.”
    “Well, Hildy, you never really asked, you know?”
    I felt sure I had, but maybe she was right. My style is more to kid around, make what used to be known as a pass. Some women don’t like that. They’d rather have a direct question.
    I stretched out on top of her and we kissed.
    We disarranged some of my clothes. She wasn’t wearing enough to worry about. Soon we were moving to rhythms it had taken Mother Nature well over a billion years to compose. It was awkward, messy, it lacked flexibility and probably didn’t show much imagination. It sure wasn’t ULTRA-Tingle. That didn’t prevent it from being wonderful.
    “Wow,” she whispered, as I rolled off her and we lay side by side on the grass. “That was really…  obsolete.”
    “Not nearly as obsolete as it was for me.”
    We looked at each other and burst out laughing.
    After a while, she sat up and glanced at the figures displayed on her wrist.
    “Deadline in three hours,” she said.
    “Me, too.” We heard a low hum, looked up, and saw our old friend the hoverlimo headed in our direction. We ran to catch it, leaped over the rubber skirt and landed with seven others, who grumbled and groused and eventually made room for us.
    “I am overjoyed to transport you,” said the hoverlimo.
    “I take that back about the garbage truck,” I said.
    “Thank you, sir.”
     
Chapter 02
TOP PSYCHIC SAYS:
UFOS SHATTER TIME BARRIER!
    This is not a mystery story. The people you will meet along the way are not suspects. The things that happen to them are not clues. I promise not to gather everyone together at the end and dramatically denounce a culprit.
    This is not an adventure story. The survival of the universe will not be thrown into jeopardy during the course of it. Some momentous events will occur, and I was present at some of them but, like most of us, I was simply picked up by the tornado of history and deposited, like Judy Garland, in a place I never expected to be. I had little or no hand in the outcome. In fact, this being real life and not an adventure story, it can be said there has been no outcome. Some