The Media Candidate Read Free Page B

of man.
    Silently creeping toward Professor Halvorsen’s
study, its arachnid movements were controlled by a brain whose
evolution was integrated with that of man, not spiders. It entered
the room where its target was seated facing sideways so her
peripheral vision intersected the robot. Her attention, however,
was focused on her own mission.
    Samantha napped with her head buried in the
folds of a mauve robe. The spider’s movements slowed to mimic a
stalking cat as it approached its victim, a victim who was at that
moment reveling in her future, a future the spider was committed to
erasing.
    Suddenly Samantha raised her head, her ears at
first forward to sense the silence, and then lay back to the
frontier of terror. The spider now had its injector fully armed,
its legs tensioned for attack, its brain calculating angles,
forces, trajectories, maneuvers, sequences.
    Professor Halvorsen looked down at Samantha,
then turned her head slowly toward the doorway. A gasp rose
involuntarily from her throat, a beautiful soft throat that was now
at the center of the spider’s zoom-optics field-of-view. In a
fraction of an instant, the spider was wrapping its legs about her
head and her shoulders in the last embrace that Professor Halvorsen
would ever experience. The injector plunged deep into her throat
and remained only long enough to expel its venom. The trio was now
tumbling across the floor, but only Samantha got up and ran.
Stalker and prey were locked together in a union that would last
only a moment, only until her every muscle became limp, and a
thoughtful and beautiful woman was transformed into just a
body.
     
     

CHAPTER THREE
Looking for More
     
    The Townsends sat in their breakfast room
sipping fresh coffee and reading fresh news. They each had their
own copy of the Times in front of them dated 9:13 AM MDT, July 17,
2048. Elliott tried to enjoy his first day of not biking to the Lab
after breakfast. He looked at the newspaper corner with the “next
page” icon, and page three instantly appeared on his electronic
paper display. He folded it in half, sat back, and looked at the
top headline “LIZZIE WINS BIG.” It responded by filling the page
with a replay of last night’s “Election Beat.” Elliott had the
interface icon set to “reader only” so a coherent sound pattern
would be projected toward him, the waves interfering in such a way
that only his ears received the message so as not to bother Martha
with her own “reading.”
    “Well, Lizzie, last night you topped the comp.
And with one hell of a finish. At this rate, you’ll sweep the
finals, and you could be our next Pres.”
    Applause
    “You know, Jack, I’ve been musin’ at this for
years; and I can’t say enough about my NBC spags.” Her blond
ponytail danced in time with her breasts and gestures. “It’s a
shine, and I’ll sure try to live up to the specs. We’ve got some
tough tags coming down our bus, and I think I can help America over
the stricts.” She stalked the camera, flashed her widest smile,
waved a small American flag with one hand, and gave a thumbs up
with the other, all accompanied by more thunderous applause.
    “Lizzie,” the MC continued, “you started out as
a tennis star at Sportford, then turned pro and grabbed the top
prize money six years in a row. Then you cranked with American
Warriors for a diversion, and you just warped out a new book Priming to the Top: Drugs, Sex, Tennis, and Big Bucks . And
with all this, you still have time for your rap chap, and you’re
the highest paid on the charts according to Power Sex last
month. And if that isn’t enough, your latest movie, Cape Desire
III , has topped the box for two quads.”
    The MC turned to the TV viewers. “As you can
see, Lizzie brings it all to her bid for the Chief Chief. But
Lizzie has some pretty tough competitors. Let’s bang with the other
two. First is Tab Hardman who’s sure no stranger to our studio. Tab
started out on the Soaps and got