Wanda-Jean didn't have a clue. She did her best to resign herself to dropping into the mud and out of the show.
"Released in 1967 he started a hippie-style commune at Spahn Ranch, near Los Angeles."
Spahn Ranch tugged tentatively at a cord in her memory. Then, in a flash, it fell into place. She had seen a show-it couldn't have been more than a month earlier. Wanda-Jean couldn't believe her luck. She hit the answer button. The floor stopped moving. The remaining strips of floor were now so small that Wanda-Jean had to brace herself with one hand to avoid falling. She caught sight of her worried face in full close-up on the monitor. She quickly changed her expression. She was supposed to be enjoying the experience.
Bobby Priest joined her in split screen on the monitor.
"Well, in the nick of time, Wanda-Jean thinks she's got an answer. Shall we see if she's got it right or if she's going to the vat!''
The crowd howled enthusiastically.
"Okay then, Wanda-Jean. What's your answer?"
Wanda-Jean's arm was starting to ache. It wasn't easy, staying on her precarious perch. "I think the answer's Charles Manson, Bobby."
"She thinks it's Charlie Manson."
The audience howled mindlessly. Bobby Priest assumed a sorrowful pose.
"Well, Wanda-Jean, I've got to tell you that…"
Wanda-Jean panicked. She felt sick. Then Bobby Priest's face lit up.
"… You're absolutely right!"
The crowd went wild right on cue. The floor under Wanda-Jean slid back into place. She was able to move around again. A shot of Nancy came up on the monitor. She was in a bad way. She had both arms pressed hard against the sides of the booth to keep her balance. The moment the floor started to move again she would fall. She probably wouldn't be able to reach for the answer button without slipping. It was all over for Nancy. Wanda-Jean allowed herself a quick triumphant grin. Almost as soon as her expression shifted she found her smirking image flashed up on the screen. There must have been a cameraman waiting for her reaction. Wanda-Jean tried to look like a good sport, but only succeeded in looking shifty. Then Bobby Priest took over.
"Okay, here we go with the next question. Are you ladies set to go?"
Wanda-Jean nodded, projecting keenness with all her might. Nancy didn't bother to respond. She just clung on with grim hopelessness.
"Okay, let's roll."
The red light came on. The floor started to move again. The picture held firm on Nancy.
"She was born in…"
Nancy slipped. She grabbed for a handhold that wasn't there. A spray of goop arched into the air as she hit the tank.
Wanda-Jean hugged herself with delight. She was caught in a blaze of lights. The booth was slowly lowered until it rested on the rim of the tank of mud. Bobby Priest, with due ceremony, and carrying a small hand mike, came across the floor to help her out. He was followed by his own blaze of glory.
He stretched out a hand. Their glories merged. He turned to the camera.
"And it's Wanda-Jean who makes it to the Dreamroad!"
Emoting with everything that she had, Wanda-Jean grabbed Bobby Priest and kissed him. "I can't believe it! I just can't believe it."
Priest fended her off with a practiced jesture that looked affectionate but actually stopped her from taking over the two shot. The credits started to roll, and the crowd howl swamped everything. Wanda-Jean suddenly looked puzzled. There seemed to be an undertow of boos beneath the general zoo hooting. What had she done? Bobby Priest lowered his mike and whispered in her ear without the slightest slip in his perfect professional smile.
"Don't worry about those morons, honey. You won, didn't you?"
Her confusion was suddenly compounded by a strong, if unfocused, sense of foreboding.
"I'M HARDLY GETTING ANYTHING, Connie. Perhaps you ought to try a little harder.''
Connie Starr raised her head. "For your information, I've been coming so hard I'm starting to feel dizzy."
"Not so I've been able to notice."
"Don't make me the scapegoat for your inadequacies."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It must be hard to be a dyke and frigid at the same time."
"You're quite replaceable, Connie."
"So replace me. Just try it."
"Tantrums aren't going to help."
"Perhaps a director who isn't dead from the neck down might."
"Shall we just calm down and try it again?"
Connie sighed and let her head fall back onto the pillow. She was lying on her back on a large translucent block of soft plastic that supported her weight but had sufficient elasticity to allow a high-quality electrostatic induction with the areas of her body that came in contact with it. It looked like a bed from some particularly perverse theme room in a love motel, or maybe a highly specialized gynecological operating table. In the business, the thing was known as the altar, which was a little more manageable than its official title, the Krupp Full Body Sense Receptor. Naked, Connie lay with her legs spread and one knee slightly raised. A mosaic of contact nerve pickups covered the upper half of her prone body, but they had been arranged in a way that gave her room for a good deal of movement. As Connie always said, "You can't keep still when you're coming." Two lightweight recording snakes ran to the permanently implanted receptors behind her ears. Nestled between her spread legs was a heavily customized Panasonic XC 400, the one with the multiform mushroom cushion head.
In the control room, behind the airtight double glazing, the technical crew watched the exchange in silence, avoiding looking directly at either of the two women. They ran checks and fine-tuned the settings on the big board; anything to avoid being embroiled in the confrontation. The crew had known from the outset that the match between performer Connie Starr and director Felicity Springer was a bad one. Felicity Springer simply wasn't good at orgasms. Action sequences, sure. Drugs and hallucinations were a piece of cake to Felicity. But either because of some built-in lack of sensitivity or an inability to truly connect, she had serious problems with getting down a memorable orgasm.
Felicity Springer sat in the rear of the control room in what was known as the director's throne. The throne was directly connected to the altar. In theory, everything that Connie felt, Felicity should have felt, too. Feeder lines ran to implants in her neck and also to suction contacts at her wrists and fitted in a band around her head. She was slim and boyish with rather masculine features and close-cropped blond hair. Corporation gossip had her running with a procession of pretty if airheaded starlets, none of whom seemed to last for more than a couple of weeks. Her girlfriends may have come and gone at an alarming rate, but where her work was concerned she was a painstaking perfectionist. Even her enemies admitted that she did appear to have infinite patience.
"Shall we go for another?" she suggested.
Connie, on the other hand, had no patience at all and was far from through bitching. "Do you realize that I've laid down the orgasms for ninety-three programs? Ninety-three fucking programs and no one else has ever complained."
Connie had been discovered during the early days of feelie experiments. She had been an unsuccessful stripper who had been coerced by an eager young researcher to try to get an orgasm on tape. She had taken to it like a duck to water. To everyone's amazement she seemed able to produce awesome, shuddering reactions almost to order with a minimum of help and encouragement. As the feelies went commercial, she rapidly became the uncrowned queen of computerized sex.
"I'm the best. You can't sit there and tell me I'm not getting it on. I'm Connie fucking Starr. I always get it on. Ask anyone. That's why I get forty thousand per, plus residuals."
"That's why I haven't thrown you off the set and brought in a replacement. That's why I'm putting up with all your shit."