THE FEELIES

"I guess he doesn't have the intellectual scope of a thinker like Bones Bolt."

"Mallory, I-"

"Dustin, please don't make hangdog faces at me. I only mentioned Wintek's column because I thought it might appeal to your new-found obsession with the feelies."

"I don't have an obsession with the feelies."

"Don't pout at me, either."

"I'm not pouting, and I don't have an obsession with the feelies."

"You did the other night. You were certainly more interested in some dumb TV show about them than you were in me."

"How many times do I have to tell you that I was just tired and a little drunk?"

"You weren't too tired to be trying to cop a peer down the front of Laramie Fedder's dress all through di

This was an entirely new charge and also a complete fabrication. What in hell would he be doing looking down the front of Laramie Fedder's dress, for Christ's sake? Mallory was a hundred times better-looking. That was part of the trouble. She even looked good right now, with her loose, sleep-tousled, honey blond hair and practically transparent black lace peignoir offset by the aloof expression and the George Bush reading glasses. A part of him would have liked to have reared across the breakfast nook and had her right then and there among the Finwear dishes, the Gunden place settings, the too-small grapefruit, and the Hi-Bran, but there was no chance of that. She probably wouldn't let him near her for at least a week, and even then it would only be after a considerable period of begging. A lesser woman might have given in to her own needs long before the week was up, but not Mallory. She wasn't the kind to let mere lust come between her and total moral victory. Mallory had once confided in him during the aftermath of passion that when she was a little girl, her ambition had been to be Margaret Thatcher when she grew up. And what did she mean she went along with his little perversions? She had more than a few little quirks of her own.

"Mallory, this is starting to get ridiculous."

She ignored him, slowly lowering the paper and taking off her glasses. "I heard from Daphne Ziekle that Christopher Elwin, the idiot who's been ru

"I keep telling you that I'm not interested in the feelies." In fact, Dustin was very interested in the feelies at that moment-anything that would spare him psychwar over breakfast. A life contact seemed very appealing. Maybe he should be Caligula or some Turkish sultan with a very large harem.

Once again, Mallory ignored him. She looked thoughtful. "Maybe Wintek's right. Of course, not for the reasons that he's putting forward. They're twentieth-century bleeding heart nonsense. It could be, however, that their real function is to take the inadequates out of circulation. It could be a way to return to the survival of the fittest without anyone actually getting hurt. When the news came out that Elwin had taken the contract the company's stock went up nine points. What I don't see is why they've made them so expensive. Sure, I can see the value in taking rich idiots off the streets, but why in hell don't they offer it to the underclass? Let the damned epsilons be rapists and junkies while safely locked up in a plastic coffin instead of roaming the streets unchecked and doing it for real."

"Maybe that's the eventual plan. Maybe CM is just creating a market pressure."

"Well, all I can say is that I wish they'd hurry up. It's not safe to go out, even around here."

Mallory's face actually contorted when she talked about the underclass as though the very thought of them put a bad taste in her mouth. Dustin realized that the woman he had married was a real Nazi at heart. He didn't know whether to feel proud or frightened.

"THEY DON'T LIKE ME!"

"You've got a page and a half in Game World."

"They're calling me the bad girl of 'Wildest Dreams.' Mean Wanda-Jean. What did I ever do to them?"

Brigitte the chaperone/dresser/gofer sat down on the bed. "I've been with maybe a dozen contestants while they were on the Dreamroad. The fan rags always cook up some kind of personality for them. You don't want to let it get to you."

Brigitte had been provided by the network. She came with the hotel suite and the bodyguard who waited outside the door. It was what you got when you started on the Dreamroad. Wanda-Jean found that she had been removed from her normal life and shut away in luxurious isolation. Her only contact with the outside was either through the show or through Brigitte.

Wanda-Jean threw the magazine on the floor and pouted. "I never heard of a bad girl wi

Brigitte looked genuinely scandalized. "Don't talk like that."

"Why not? It's true, isn't it?"

"Of course it's not. Anyone can win."

"It's just that it feels really unlucky to be the bad girl."

Brigitte stood up. "Maybe I should fix you a drink?"

"I shouldn't start drinking this early in the day."

"It's the middle of the afternoon."

"Yeah, but I only just got up."

It seemed to Wanda-Jean that just about everything in her life had been turned upside down. From being anonymous she now appeared on TV and had her picture in fan magazines. She seemed to sleep all day and live by night. Where once she had been on her own, making her own decisions and facing her own problems, now all she had to do was order from a menu, or come up with a yes or no answer when someone offered to mix her a drink, fetch her a pill, or run out for a magazine. The network didn't expect Wanda-Jean, or any of the other contestants, to think for themselves while they were on Dream-road. The network's minions acted accordingly.

The real physical change was the hotel suite. The downtown Sanyo-Hyatt was a far cry from the minuscule singles apartment in the faceless high rise. The big open-plan day room almost gave her agoraphobia. It seemed as big as a football field. The wraparound, ceiling to floor, double-glazed windows and the wall-to-wall, dark green carpet added to the sense of space and exposure. The fashionably sparse, ultra modern furniture didn't help to give the place any sense of coziness.

Even the bedroom wasn't any refuge. It was as big as her own apartment. The bed alone could accommodate maybe five people in comfort. Just to make matters worse, Brigitte felt she could walk in anytime she wanted to. Wanda-Jean didn't have any place in which she could feel confident she was alone. She had even offered to trade the vast bedroom for the suite's much smaller second room, the one in which Brigitte slept. But Brigitte had told her that it was impossible-she would be fired if anyone found out. The inability to even organize a simple thing like switching rooms made Wanda-Jean feel even more like a prisoner of luxury. There was, of course, also Brigitte herself, a short woman with pale skin, orange hair, and an air of continual confidence, a combination of nurse, nun, big sister, and warden.

Wanda-Jean lay on her side and watched Brigitte moving around the room. Brigitte was a compulsive tidier. She seemed incapable of just sitting still and slouching. If nothing else was going on, Brigitte would get up and tidy. It got on Wanda-Jean's nerves. A lot of things about Brigitte got on Wanda-Jean's nerves. Sometimes she wondered if that was the way condemned prisoners felt. They used to be watched nonstop by obliging guards. The thing Wanda-Jean couldn't get over was that Brigitte had sat with a dozen other contestants before her. She propped herself up on one elbow. "How many of the contestants won?"